Trail of Dead (30 page)

“Jesse,” he said automatically.

“Jesse. She’s um…she’s not here. I left her in the office, but she must have walked out the back door. Her wallet is gone, but she left her phone here.”

“She couldn’t have gotten far,” Jesse objected. “My car is still parked there, or it was five minutes ago.”

Will coughed. “I actually went outside and checked. If your car is a blue sedan, then yeah, it’s here. But Eli’s truck is missing. His keys are gone too.” Will paused, and finally added, “I…um…think she’s gone rogue.”

I drove south, blasting the heater in Eli’s truck. I was shivering in my borrowed T-shirt and boxers, but there just wasn’t time to stop at Molly’s for a change of clothes and the White Whale, not if Mallory was really going to perform her spell at midnight. I was going to have to face Olivia just as I was, bloody boots and all.

She had given me directions to the San Mateo Clinic in Redondo Beach, which was a small, modern outpatient facility that had closed down in the mid-2000s. The once-prestigious clinic had grown famous for a perfect storm of controversy: within eighteen months, a corrupt chief of staff had set up an elaborate insurance scam and escaped the country, a huge sexual harassment lawsuit had been filed against a cardiologist on behalf of the support staff, and a little girl had died in a freak accident when she’d been climbing too quickly down a set of fire stairs. The clinic might have survived any one of those incidents, but not all three at once. The building’s owners got tangled up in legal repercussions, and even years later San Mateo stood vacant while the court battles raged on. It wasn’t much to look at: a squat, lonely brick building with a parking lot in back and faded
No Trespassing
signs to deter vandals and homeless people. Or, now that I thought about it, perhaps the deterrent was that anyone who wandered in would be eaten by vampires. I had to admit, it was an excellent choice for an evil lair.

I pulled Eli’s truck around the back of the clinic building, as instructed, and saw no signs of life: no lit windows, no cars in the lot, no sound from the building’s heating or air-conditioning systems. Cautiously, I followed the sidewalk to the clinic’s enormous loading dock and climbed up the short ramp that led to a human-sized door beside it. I knocked twice.

After only a second, I felt a vampire enter my radius from the other side of the door. Olivia had been waiting for me. Even though I’d walked into the situation of my own free will, I still felt cornered when the door swung open and she stepped forward. “Scar-bear!” Olivia cried gaily. “You made it!”

Like we were at a goddamned brunch.

I allowed myself to be enveloped, and even managed to hug her back. “Hey,” I said helplessly.

She took a step back, and her smile faded to a disapproving frown. “What on earth are you wearing?”

“Um, my clothes got shredded. Long story.”

“I see. Are you all by yourself?” Olivia asked, peering around behind me. She was a human at the moment, so her night vision wouldn’t be any better than mine, but I understood she had to make a show of it.

“Yes. Just like you said.”

“Wonderful!” she said, beaming. We were back to brunch mode. “Follow me, please.”

When the door had closed behind me she paused to type a code into a little numeric pad by the door. An alarm system. Her back was to me, and for a second I thought about just shooting her right there in the doorway.
Could I do that?
I wondered.
Just shoot her in the back, cold-bloodedly?
It didn’t matter: I still needed to know where the witch was and what they had been planning. I followed her into the clinic building.

There was still a bit of emergency lighting, and I was able to make out a couple of long hallways and a big waiting room with an
empty aquarium. Olivia led me through the waiting room and into the center of the building, where patients had been treated. There was a long corridor of exam rooms and then a big, open nurses’ area with empty desks and metal file cabinets. This was where the vampire and the witch had set up shop.

There was no emergency lighting here, but a small portable generator hummed on one side of the room, and some lamps and extension cords brightened the cavernous area from almost pitch-black to bar-lighting dim. There were also candles set up all over the place, which contributed both to the lighting and the creepy sense of atmosphere. As my eyes fully adjusted, I realized the candles were set at all the corners of an enormous pentagram that had been painted on the open floor space. There were symbols and characters within the pentagram, but nothing I recognized with my limited experience. I shivered, suddenly unnerved.

“I don’t like this,” said a cold, hard voice behind us. I spun around, caught between Olivia and the new voice. I squinted and made out a woman silhouetted against the doorway. She’d been waiting for us, and now I was truly trapped.

“You must be Mallory,” I said, still trying to make out the woman’s features. I needn’t have bothered—she stepped forward, into the light—and into my radius.

I gasped, hit by two perceptions at once. First, that this woman practically vibrated with power. She was as strong as Kirsten, maybe even stronger. At the same time, there was something about her magic that felt different from Kirsten’s—darker, somehow, or more…decaying? There wasn’t really a good word for it. I’d never felt anything like that.

As the light hit her, I also realized that she was horrifically scarred. She had long, gorgeous black hair, and her eyes, nose, and forehead were perfect, but all the exposed skin on her chin, neck, and chest looked like it’d been burned. Somewhat ironically, it looked like those parts of her skin were made from wet,
flesh-colored clay. The scarring disappeared into her button-down shirt, which she wore under a traditional white lab coat. She leaned on some kind of cane, favoring her right leg. That was why she’d sent Olivia to take care of Rabbi Samuel. Samuel was a friend of the witches and a Jewish historian; he might have recognized the golem and known how to stop it. And Mallory couldn’t overpower a grown man by herself. They made a good team, the vampire and the handicapped witch.

“So Kirsten figured it out, finally. Well, good for her,” the woman said, nodding to herself. “I suppose it doesn’t much matter at this point.”

“Why not?” I asked, trying to keep my voice casual. Just having a little chat between us girls. They were both in my radius; it was time to make my move. My right hand drifted toward my back, but I paused.
Think it through first, Scarlett.
It would take a few seconds to pull up the long T-shirt and unstick the gun from my back. Another second to get the safety off. Olivia and Mallory would both realize what I was doing as soon as I lifted the T-shirt—did either of them have their own gun handy?

“Because Kirsten’s going to die,” Mallory was saying. “As are you.”

Fuck it. I had to try.

I was just shifting my weight to reach for the pistol when, with no warning, Olivia’s fist drove into my stomach. I gasped, doubling over so fast I lost my balance and fell on the floor, which jarred my aching back. Had Olivia seen the outline of the gun? I peered up at her, but she just smiled broadly. She’d been human, but she’d been so
fast
.

“What…was that for?” I panted.

“Sorry, darling,” Olivia said, with a sympathetic smile. “I know Mallory sounds scary, but you’ll actually be just fine. Better than ever.”

I didn’t answer, because for the second time that night I was struggling to remember the mechanics of breathing.

Mallory was looking at Olivia too. “It’s eleven thirty already. Are you
sure
this can’t wait until afterwards?” The way she said it made it sound like this was an argument they’d been having right before I arrived.

Olivia was too close to me to be a vampire, but she still bared her teeth in a feral, angry gesture. When she spoke, though, her voice was neither angry nor bubbly. “This was my condition,” she said simply. “I want her with me. I want her to be a part of this. You knew that.”

“Fine,” Mallory sighed. “I’ll prepare the IV. It’ll take a bit for the radiation machine to warm up.”

“
What?
” I gasped, but they both ignored me.

“How would you like her restrained?” Mallory asked Olivia, in a perfectly polite tone, like she was asking how Olivia wanted her eggs.

“The golem, of course.”

“Of course. I’ll go fetch it.” Mallory leaned on her cane and took a few steps away from me, toward one of the exam rooms. I felt her leave my radius. As she went I saw her pulling something from her lab coat pocket that looked like a paintbrush or a small stick. I was still too weak to care much. I managed to roll myself onto my butt, head between my knees, trying to figure out how to uncurl myself and get to the gun. But Olivia crouched down right in front of me, eyes searching my face, and I froze, shivering with cold and nerves. Would she see it on my face? Dammit, I was
terrible
at this. Bruce would be ashamed.

There was some mumbling from the exam room, and then Mallory reemerged, brushing her hands together. The stick had disappeared back into her lab coat pocket. I opened my mouth to say something—no idea what—when I heard the thudding steps coming from just behind her. And the golem emerged.

It was shorter than I would have expected—maybe five foot six, only an inch taller than Mallory. It was gray and clumsy looking,
with thick, long fingers, and it had been dressed in enormous baggy scrubs that strained against its wide body. A surgical cap was perched on its head, which turned slowly in my direction. Suddenly the pain in my midsection seemed awfully unimportant. Mallory had sculpted a crude nose onto it, probably so it would appear human from a distance, and she had gouged in bizarre flat holes where eyes should be.
Does he need to see where he was going?
I wondered. But she hadn’t bothered giving the golem a mouth, which was the creepiest thing about it.

I imagined a halting Frankenstein walk, but the step that it took toward me was fluid and natural, if a little slow, like it was counting out paces. A bit of gray dust sprinkled down as it moved. The next step was the same. And the next. There was an aura of careless brutality about it. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it suddenly picked up a kitten and snapped it in half. Now, I decided, would be an excellent time to actually friggin’ do something. Shooting it wouldn’t work, but I was still a null. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the outlines of my power, expanding my circle slowly until it reached the clay man. I felt the buzz of the spell enter my radius—

And the golem kept coming.

My eyes popped open. Had I done it wrong? A few steps later, he was inside the limits of my regular radius, and I narrowed my eyes at him, forgetting everything else and concentrating on the buzz of magic. It felt strange too—sort of detached. From magic. Like instead of a spell, a small generator had entered my radius.

And the golem kept coming.

Sudden laughter startled me, and as the thing continued forward I saw both Olivia and Mallory chuckling happily at each other, exchanging a look of “we got her!” like I’d fallen victim to a sorority prank. More quickly than I had expected, the golem closed the distance between us, and I felt crude fingers wrap around my left upper arm. I had expected the thing to be made of
wet
clay,
given that it was moving, but its fingers felt dry and cold against my skin. It lifted, dragging me to my feet, and the strength of that movement was petrifying. There was no give to it, no fleshiness, no jerking. It was one smooth move, like being pulled up by the Terminator. “What the
hell
?” I demanded, forgetting that I was supposed to be playing Meek Scarlett. “How is this possible?”

Olivia frowned at me. “I believe we’ve talked about language, Scarlett.”

I bit back what I
wanted
to say and forced my voice to sound contrite. “I’m sorry, Olivia. I just don’t understand why her spell is still working.”

“Isn’t it phenomenal?” Olivia asked, beaming at me. “She’s found a loophole.”

The golem shifted around behind me, grabbing my other wrist. He shifted his grip to lock both of my wrists tight against my body with his cold hands, his fingers long enough to hold my hips still along with my arms. I gasped.
Handcuffs
, I thought, and fought a wave of terror. Breathe, Scarlett. Breathe.

“What kind of a loophole?” I choked out, wanting a distraction as much as I just wanted to know.

Across the room, Mallory rolled her eyes and strode off to another exam room. But Olivia
loved
lecturing me. “The golem isn’t a normal movement spell,” she explained smugly. “Animation magic is a lot closer to physically changing an object than it is to simply moving it. Mallory uses magic to bring the golem to life, as it were, and give it a task. Then the golem is animated in its own right, until the task is done.

“Giving the golem instructions counts as magic, but completing its current task does not.” She gave an elegant shrug of her shoulders. “Like a windup doll. Your aura could stop her from winding it up, but once the windup has happened the little doll goes on its way regardless of what happens to its master.”

“A windup doll,” I repeated, dazed. The solid
wall
of clay behind me did not feel like any kind of children’s plaything.
Experimentally, I tried throwing my weight back against it. It hurt like hell, both on my sore back and with the gun digging into my spine. Not only did the golem not rock backward, it didn’t even sway a little.

Fantastic.

Olivia’s voice rang with laughter. “Not to worry, Scar-bear,” she assured me. “It’s just going to hold you still for me.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked. I couldn’t keep the nervousness out of my voice. She patted my upper arm reassuringly.

She circled me until we were face-to-face and began smoothing my hair away from my ears, straightening the locks. “Do you know where our—where your—ability comes from?”

“Magic?”

She gave me an indulgent look. “Of course. But magic and science, they’re permanently intertwined. And as it turns out, nullness is intertwined with a particular part of the body. A particular
system
.” She paused. “You really have let this grow out, haven’t you? Do you get regular trims?” She picked up a loose strand, examining the ends.