Ink and Shadows (11 page)

When the wraith’s massive head nearly reached his chest, Ari shoved the dagger between the gaping plates on its neck. His shoulder muscles bulged with the effort of working through the creature’s thick body. Digging through the tightness of its moving neck, Ari struck bone. Swearing, he twisted the hilt, mindful of the wraith’s thrashing body. Smoking blood poured over Ari’s hands, scalding his tanned flesh. He set aside the pain, intent on killing the thing. Ari felt his knee pop from the creature’s weight, his leg unable to withstand the unnatural twisting of its muscles.

The creature struggled to get free, its back legs kicking furiously at the Horseman. With a stumble, they both went down, the wraith’s greater weight driving Ari to his knees, then onto his back as it attempted to eat its way through the Horseman. The flecks of spit flung from its mouth were nearly as caustic as its blood, leaving bubbling water blisters on Ari’s face and neck. Pushing up, Ari strained to put his weight behind a final thrust, nicking past the bone and into the base of the wraith’s skull.

The pop of vertebrae and the wraith’s choking gasps made Ari sigh with relief. Giving the wraith one final shove, he placed a foot on its stomach, kicking it away from his acid-splattered face. The monster’s body went limp, landing on its side. Legs twitching, it growled and tried to move, chest heaving with the effort. In the dim light, the wraith’s teeth glistened malevolently in its bloodied muzzle. Its fangs gnashed together in a final threat, a hideous snapping sound, and then the gleam faded from its eyes, its shattered neck sagging on the cement walk.

Limping, Ari walked over to Mal. His face burned, the reddened blisters bursting and soaking trails of salted water into the neck of his shirt. His jacket was a loss. Ari picked at the expensive leather with mournful fingers. The monster’s spit had left massive holes in the soft, buttery hide, the wrist lining torn out from his earlier fight with the shadow wraith. Gazing over his shoulder, Ari gave a cursory glance at the sobbing Hispanic man, a few feet behind the dead wraith lying on its side.

“Leave him, Mal. We’ve got to go before the police come and find the kid.” Sighing, Ari crouched next to his brother Horseman, touching Mal’s light blond hair with gentle fingers. “They won’t see us if we slip behind the Veil, but they’ll notice the Mustang. I don’t want to leave her here. She’ll get impounded, and then I’ll have to answer to Death. I have enough to explain away tonight.”

“We can’t leave him.” Mal cradled the unconscious artist. “The wraith hurt him.”

“Yeah, it obviously grew strong enough to hurt a human. It grew strong enough to hurt me. That happens sometimes. We’ve got to get back and tell Death what happened.” Ari tugged at the back of Mal’s shirt. “Come on. Drop the kid and let’s go.”

“I’m not leaving him.” Mal struggled to get to his feet, Kismet’s limp form an unwieldy weight in his arms. “Help me pick him up.”

“Mal, we can’t take him with us. He’s human.” Ari clenched his fists at his sides, the urge to strike Mal down and drag him off into the car nearly overwhelming him. “Leave him, already. He’s not going to live. The cops will think that other guy got to him as well. We’ve got to go. Now!”

“He can see us, Ari.” Mal’s words stopped Ari as he turned toward the car. “I remained behind the Veil, and he saw me. Spoke to me. Warned me about the wraith.”

“So he’s crazy. Even better. Now drop him.”

“Ari, help me get him into your damned precious car. I’m not leaving him behind.”

Mal’s temper flared, striking Ari full in the face. Ari tilted his head back, slightly unsure about what to do with an aggressive Mal.

“I. Am. Not. Leaving. Kismet. Behind.”

“Great! You made friends with it while I was fighting off the wraith?” Ari snapped back. “Shit. Damn it. Fine, go grab the door.”

Sirens carried through the neighborhood, a mournful, shocking wave riding the wind. Bending over, Ari took Kismet from Mal’s arms, nestling the lithe body against his broad chest. Growling as Mal opened the Mustang’s door, Ari shouldered him aside, then tumbled Kismet into the backseat.

“Get in. We’ve got to go.” Ari started the engine, and Mal scrambled into the passenger side, tucking his legs in quickly. The car lurched backward, and Mal steadied himself with one hand on the dashboard, worriedly looking at the curled-up mortal bleeding on Ari’s backseat.

“You’re cleaning that up,” Ari muttered darkly, the burned spots on his hands crackling when he clenched the steering wheel to maneuver the car onto the street. “Every single fucking drop of blood that he spills onto my carpet and upholstery. You’re cleaning it up. If you have to lick it clean.”

“Understood.” Mal hid the smile that threatened to swallow his face.

“No smiling, and you’re telling Death why we couldn’t leave him behind.” Ari pounded at the wheel with his fist. “And the Vanquish. You’re telling him about the car and that you’re the reason it’s all fucked up.”

“He’ll understand about the car,” Mal said softly, taking one last look at the young man before settling back into the seat. “And about Kismet. He’ll understand.”

Snorting, Ari slowed the car down, moving into the stream of traffic leading to downtown San Diego. “That’s what you think. The boy, maybe. The car, never.”

M
ICHAEL
B
ECKETT
waited among the gathered curious, impatient for the cops to finally leave the motel parking lot, tracking the frenzied dogfights between different detectives, each offering up their own opinion of what happened. Trails of blood shone dully on the concrete walk, small yellow cones marking a flat slalom around the drying gore. A photographer’s flash went off periodically, leaving stars in the bald man’s vision when he stared too long.

From his vantage point, Beckett could see into the Veil, pushing his Sight nearly to the edge of its limits. The wraith he’d been able to pull free from the Veil decayed rapidly in the rising sunlight, a failure in his eyes. The man gritted his teeth, trying to keep the emotion from his face.

“Should have been here sooner, sir,” Frazier murmured softly, his larger frame looming beside his employer. The man felt the loss of the boy personally. If he’d been there a bit sooner, he would have been able to deliver the boy to Beckett.

Beckett waved the apology off. Neither one of them could have predicted the chaos that had happened. “Don’t worry about it, Frazier. We’ll find him again. His kind always circle back to where they feel comfortable. I’m guessing that it won’t be long before we stumble over him again.”

“The compound seems to be working,” Frazier commented. “I think I can see what you brought across. It’s a mess.”

“Good.” Beckett smiled broadly, his face tight around the gesture. “You at least have the Sight developing. That’s a step in the right direction. It won’t be long, then, before you’ll be like the boy.”

He was taking a risk giving Frazier the concoction, but Beckett was willing to sacrifice the man. Losing Frazier to the madness that lurked behind the Veil would be a small price to pay if the mixture actually worked, and Frazier knew what he was risking, willingly becoming Beckett’s guinea pig for the immortality the elixir promised. Once they had the boy, Beckett could confirm the effects and make any small corrections that he might need to before he took it himself.

“I’ll see if I can get closer.” Frazier didn’t wait for Beckett’s approval, stepping into the fray of people with purpose. The man knew how to work around authorities, easing his way through the crowd of policemen as if he belonged. He soon struck up a conversation with a detective, intent on drawing out information to take back to his employer.

From the condition of the wraith, Beckett guessed the addict not only could see into the Veil but
could affect it, something Beckett wanted badly. For a drugged-out wastrel to cross over the elusive
curtain of shadows seemed sacrilegious at best to the fuming man, but it was something he’d accepted
could happen. Sacrifices had to be made. A blow to his ego seemed a small price to pay in the
scheme of things. He would just have to wait things out. The addict could be dealt with later.

The heat burned moisture trails off the parking lot, running black around streams of tire tracks.

When more and more police sirens cut into the waning night, the asphalt square nearly emptied of vehicles, doors slamming shut and curtains drawn. In the dusty daylight, the motel looked abandoned, cracked stucco peeling off chicken-wire-framed walls. Oceans of rust from the exposed metal dying in the open air framed the blood splatter from Luis’s hands and the puddles left from Kismet’s wounds.

Footprints added their own splatter, a literal stampede of shoes and sneakers through the crime scene from motel residents deciding to leave before the police arrived and asked questions.

Beckett longed to get closer to the wraith before it whispered away into the nothingness that formed it. The blue-uniformed police were walking clean through it, some of the more sensitive unknowingly giving the area a wide berth, their feet circumventing the bony carcass wasting away under their noses. Its stink permeated the area, a blend of sweet decay and putrid offal. A flicker of a shadow poked up through the monster’s head, some form of wraith drawn by the creature’s death.

Small and squat, it scurried over the wraith’s body, furtively glancing about with round yellow eyes slitted with rectangular pupils. It froze when a cop approached, holding still as a human leg passed through it and the carcass. Pert ears, points slightly bent, rotated with each sound, the tiny wraith keeping watch while it contemplated where to start its meal. Hooking its talons into a wide gash along the monster’s rib cage, it buried its round face in the meat, only the tip of its truncated tail showing a mottled gray stub outside of the wound. Coming up with a mouthful, it chewed around fat cheeks, clotted blood circling its thin lips, a mockery of sienna lipstick. The scavenger dove in for another bite, keeping its eyes level with the gash as the movement through it increased.

“It’s fascinating that the food chain exists no matter what side of the Veil one is on,” a beloved voice whispered into Beckett’s ear.

With other humans packed tight against his body, he hated that he couldn’t answer her. Working himself free of the clamor, Beckett found a spot near a cluster of bedraggled trees, still keeping an eye on the ravaged wraith. She followed him, passing through the crowd with a blissful saunter. Several shivered as she walked, their hands moving across their chests and over their faces to ward off the chill creeping upon them.

Safe from eavesdroppers, Beckett tried to keep his eyes from wandering to the woman shimmering next to him. He’d not seen her in nearly a week, and he ached to reach out, running his fingers through her hair or touching the soft, downy skin along her exposed neck. Want tightened his throat, and he swallowed, trying to dislodge the lump that seemed to root there every time he thought of her.

He recalled the first time he saw her, walking through a graveyard of mourners, drawn by the
words spoken over the dried husk of his father. He’d gone over to her after the procession began to pay
their respects, more interested in the woman than in the man he’d spent a lifetime loathing. Before he
reached her side, she disappeared into the fog, swirls of raindrops pounding the already moist ground.

Beckett kept the image of her in his heart, stoking his memory with the fantasy of her against him.

When she sought him out years later, she looked and felt as he imagined. Now he treasured every moment they could spend together. He’d have an eternity with Faith once he found the right elixir.

“What happened?” she asked, turning soulful eyes toward him. Faith drew near, rubbing her cheek against his, her ghostly flesh skimming just under the surface of his skin. “Did the drugs work? Are we successful?”

“I think so.” Beckett touched his face where she’d been. She’d already drawn away, attention shifted to the wraith’s body. “I don’t know yet. One of the men that I passed them on to told me that one of his buyers wasn’t affected by the heroin. He came back several times.”

“Was it ineffective?” Faith turned back to face him. “Could the agent… it’s called an agent, right? Could it have gone inert… dead? Do you think it’s not working anymore?”

“I don’t think so,” Beckett replied. “Others using the same batch went insane, but I knew it would happen. I was hoping to find just one person that it would work on.”

“Wouldn’t someone miss him if he disappeared behind the Veil?” She frowned. “People would notice him being gone.”

“No one would miss a druggie if he went missing. They would just think he overdosed somewhere and died,” Beckett said, his eyes drifting back to the wraith’s remains. “I’m thinking the boy could have already been very much aware, more than anyone else we’ve tried it on, and it crossed him over to the Veil. I’ll have to get my hands on him before I can tell you exactly. But I can’t imagine how he killed a wraith. Unless he had some sort of weapon.”

“He would have had to have a knife.” She walked closer, drawn by the amount of blood. The scene was different from the places she was called to. More personal. It spoke to something inside of her, and not for the first time, she wondered if she’d been made the wrong immortal.

“He might have had a gun,” Beckett supposed. “I wouldn’t be surprised about that.”

“A gun wouldn’t have worked. It would have passed right through the creature or any one of us,” she replied softly. “Once the bullet left the gun, it would cross over and only be deadly to something mortal. Crossbows, any kind of projectile weaponry, it is all the same. It could only be killed with something anchored to the Veil.”

The small wraith chewing on the wraith’s corpse stopped, its head popping up, spotting the immortal in the Veil. She waggled her fingers at it, bursting with a giggle as it popped out, a wisp of smoke dust trailing behind it. Swallowed back up, it left nothing but its scent behind, a trace of nothingness conjured by some human emotion. Either it would find something else to eat or quickly die of starvation, its existence an eternal struggle between its burgeoning consciousness and its horrific hunger.