Trigger (4 page)

“Don't do this, Micheline,” Ryder said as Oliver checked the knots in my rope. “The brass doesn't like us baiting targets.”

“Yeah, why
are
you dangling yourself over the bay like a piece of necro-tail?” Jude asked, leaning into the railing and looking down at the water below. He made a face. “Scissorclaws don't swim.”

“This one does,” I said, double- and triple-checking my holster's safety strap
. Can't drop my gun again.
“If it hides in the tunnels during the day, it gets out through the bay at night. Hopefully, it'll recognize the scent of my blood in the water.”

“You know what else recognizes blood in water?” Jude said. “Sharks. There's great whites in the bay and you're bite-sized, Princess—”

“Christ, mate, will you shut up?” Ryder asked.

Jude smirked and punched Ryder in the shoulder. “Nervous, loverboy?”

“Can it,” Ryder said.

Oliver rolled his eyes and gave my rope a final tug. “Be careful with the depth of the laceration, Micheline. You'll be losing more blood than normal in your position.”

With a nod, I turned and eased over the balustrade, planting the soles of my feet against the boards.

“You're sure about this?” Oliver asked.

“Positive,” I said.

“Only fools are positive,” Jude said.

“Just do it,” I said. Ryder and Oliver grabbed the rope, and carefully, I let go of the balustrade and allowed them to lower me upside down over the water. Blood rushed to my head, making spots dance across my vision for a few moments. The water swelled and slipped just a few feet below me, and I wrapped my free ankle around my bound one for balance. Memories from the first hunt rushed me: The man's corpse hitting the water below with a splash; Brutus barking; the scissorclaw's blue ghostlight splashing on the walls; its claws tearing past my body in a near miss. This time would be different—this time, I'd be ready.

One by one, the boys slipped away from the balustrade. Ryder lingered so long, frowning, I had to
shoo
him away. We'd chosen my position strategically: I needed to look injured and vulnerable but give the boys a clear shot from several hidden vantage points. Oliver and Jude would be sniping, while Ryder tucked away close by, just in case things went south. I'd draw my gun if I spotted the necro, signaling the boys.

Here goes nothing
. I unsheathed the knife at my back, placed it against the palm of my left hand, and took a deep breath.
We have to kill this thing
, I told myself, feeling the blade's icy edge against my skin.

Do it.

I sliced my palm open, deep enough to get blood dripping off my fingertips. Wincing, I sheathed my knife and let my hand hang down. When my blood struck the water, it turned black.
Plip, plip, plip.
My pulse went
pound, pound, pound
inside the wound. I let my body hang like dead weight, but kept my senses sharp. If I brought the Embarcadero down, my succession would be assured. Guaranteed, even. And I would be famous for more than my last name.

Ten minutes passed.
C'mon, you big bastard. I'm the girl who got away, and you've got to be hungry by now.
Twenty. Darkness eddied through the fog.

“We're running out of time,” Oliver said into the comms. “The pro crews are going to be here in fifteen minutes. Do you see anything, Micheline?”

I shook my head slowly, knowing Oliver would see.

“This is stupid, guys,” Jude said, but the words were hardly out of his mouth when a shard of blue ghostlight caught my eye, rippling up from underwater. I put my good hand on the butt of my gun, wondering if my eyes played tricks on me.

“Micheline?” Oliver asked.

A second flash of light rose through the water. I yanked my gun from its holster and flicked the safety off, every muscle in my body tensing.

“It better not be a sea lion,” Jude muttered, his rifle clicking in the background. “‘Cause PETA's going to be all over our asses if we shoot—”

“Shut up, mate,” Ryder said.

I relaxed my gaze, waiting for the smallest movement, waiting for the necro to betray itself. The water bulged, pushing a ribbon of flotsam and jetsam beneath me. The foam lit up blue; my breath caught.

There you are, you bastard.

The scissorclaw burst from the water, claws spread, right into my sights. I fired, my bullet striking the necro's left cheek. With a snarl, it turned aside and dove back into the water, its black-lit form racing under the surface.

I fumbled for my comm with my injured hand. “Get me out!” I half shrieked, keeping my gun trained on the water.

“Hold on!” Ryder shouted. The rope heaved me higher, fast. I swung wild and spun, barely aware of Jude at the balustrade, pointing his rifle down at the water. Just as Ryder and Oliver pulled me over the railing, the scissorclaw leapt from the water, bounded off one of the pier's pillars, and smashed into the boardwalk behind us.

“Shit!” Jude pivoted and opened fire, his bullets slamming into the scissorclaw's shoulder. Shrieking, black blood bursting, the monster surged down the pier and into the fog. Its ghostlight turned the mist into turbulent blue storm clouds lit from the inside.

“C'mon!” I took off running, knowing we had to keep a visual on the monster. It sprang up to one of the pier's second-story bridges, shattering the railings. Bits of broken wood rained down. I took potshots at it as it ran along the upper walkway.

“Micheline, it'll outrun us,” Oliver shouted into the comm.

I touched my comm: “Only on foot!” I pulled the trigger, my bullet shattering a window behind the monster,
dammit
. “It's on the east side of the pier, headed for the pier's garages.”

“We'll head it off,” Ryder said.

Sprinting past the last of the shops, I watched the scissorclaw break out onto the suspended walkway between the pier attractions and the parking garage. I fired, missed, but a volley of rifle fire exploded over the pier. A few steps more, and I spotted Ryder and Oliver on the west side of the walkway—Oliver firing on the necro, Ryder sprinting for the motorcycle parked in the street by our Humvees.

A few bullets hit home—black blood hit the pavement with little wet
plops
. With a snarl, the creature scrambled off the catwalk, landing in the street below and behind the cover of several parked vehicles. It tore south, the fog frothing in its wake, headed toward the pier buildings.

Ryder's motorcycle growled, thrumming deep and low. He pulled up beside me. Without a word, I grabbed his shoulder and kicked my leg over the bike's back seat. I clung to him with one arm and my thighs, gripping my gun in my right hand; I couldn't think about the pain in my left.

“Don't lose it!” I shouted. Ryder hit the throttle so hard, our back tire spun before it found purchase on the pavement. We shot forward, the force shoving my guts into my spine and snapping my head back. Up ahead, the scissorclaw sliced through the fog, zero-to-sixty fast. We screamed past the pier warehouses in pursuit, the street empty thanks to the barricades that cordoned off this section of the city.

“How many bullets do you have left?” Ryder shouted over the wind.

“Six,” I shouted back. There was no using his two-handed rifle while riding double on a motorcycle, so the Colt would have to do.

“Dammit,” he said, which translated roughly as
Not enough.

We were gaining, the Bay Bridge coming into focus through the fog. The scissorclaw ducked toward a warehouse. I switched my Colt to my left hand and fired. The recoil hitting my injured palm like a butcher knife, my aim wavering.
Five.
The creature screeched, leaping straight at the building's wall and bounding off, changing directions fast as an Olympic swimmer. It streaked past us, heading down Folsom Street.

Ryder jerked the handlebars, letting the bike slide into the turn. Righting us, he cranked the throttle and sent us flying down Folsom in pursuit. The scissorclaw charged straight for the chain link barricades set half a mile down the street. Several cadets patrolled the outer perimeter, black ghosts in the fog, armed with M16s. They protected the civilians stuck in rush hour, the pedestrians. The innocent.

Shouts went up seconds before the scissorclaw smashed into the chain link fence. With a metallic groan, the fence collapsed, trapping the cadets underneath. Breaking them, from the shouts and shrieks. The scissorclaw plowed into the pedestrians, clearing the sidewalk with a savage whip of its tail. Screams colored my world red, made my heart pump harder in my chest. Tires shrieked, and people scrambled out of the monster's way and right into my sights.

I didn't have a clear shot. “Get closer!” Switching to my good hand, I fired a shot over the creature's head to scare it into the street.
Four
.

“Hold on!” Ryder shouted, just before the bike rumbled over the chain link fence. We hung left, chasing the scissorclaw into the eastbound lanes.

I lifted my gun, realizing I had to bring the necro down without shooting anyone living.

I had four bullets. Four puny .45 caliber bullets.

Shit.

With a giant leap, the necro bounded over a sedan and smashed into the windshield of an SUV, forcing the vehicle to careen into the path of an electric bus. The bus slammed into the SUV with a crack of metal and glass, groaning on its tracks, power cables snapping like rubber bands. One swung wide, whistling as it whipped overhead. The bus tipped into the street. Horns blared, glass shattered. Bystanders screamed. The necro rode the destruction for several yards, then leapt into eastbound traffic.

Ryder ducked after it, riding the lane line and slicing between two cars. The wind streaming off their sides grabbed at me, trying to pull me off the bike. My heart pounded, burning rubber against my ribs. The wind sliced across my face, whipped up by cars passing us at speeds that could turn Ryder and me into splatters on their grills and windshields. I gripped Ryder harder.
No chance to puss out now; we have to take this thing down.

We tore past two blocks, then three, keeping the scissorclaw in our sight as we wove through traffic, tore past red lights and the sadistic grins of oncoming cars, gaining inches rather than yards. Vehicles dodged us, or tried to, hitting the median, light poles, and each other. Cars snarled up the lanes. Then I spotted signs for the Bay Bridge, which would be a dangerous place to play chicken on the back of a motorcycle with a necro.

“Ryder, the bridge!” I shouted, leveling my gun at the creature.

“I know!” he shouted back.

The necro charged up the onramp, finally clear in my crosshairs. I fired, the bullet clipping the monster's hip.
Three.
It stumbled but didn't go down, leaping onto a semi truck and jamming its claws into the trailer's flank. After climbing to the top, it turned and hissed at us as the semi disappeared around the bridge's bend.

The bike bucked as we hit the ramp. My stomach bottomed out as Ryder took the ramp's hairpin turn at too many miles an hour, the bike forming a sharp angle with the ground. As we leveled with the bridge, we faced five lanes of traffic, fog billowing over the deck so thick, you'd think the whole bay was made of spewing dry ice.

Twenty yards ahead, the scissorclaw rode the semi's trailer. Ryder closed the gap between the truck and our bike while I hooked my sights on the necro, trying not to think about what a motorcycle crash at 85 miles an hour would do to my skull. Couldn't go there. I had a monster to kill.

I gripped the bike with my legs as we dove forward, car horns blaring their obscenities at us. We missed a Jeep by inches, so close the end of my ponytail whipped the vehicle's side mirror. The
thwack
resounded in my head, throwing my aim off. From this angle, I could hardly see the scissorclaw—the closer we got, the more the trailer obscured the creature. It wasn't dead stupid—it hunched over, claws sunk into the trailer top, making itself a small target.

“Take it down,” Ryder shouted over the wind. “It's got nowhere to run!”

The Bay Bridge stretched from San Francisco to Oakland, covering about eight miles of open water. I couldn't let the monster step foot in Oakland or give it any options for escape.

So I had a crazy, lunatic, totally
shitbox
idea.

“Pull even and keep her steady!” Anchoring my bloody left fist in Ryder's shirt, I stood on the bike's passenger footrests and gripped his ribcage with my knees, rooting myself to him. The wind tried to tear me down. Unquestioning, Ryder accelerated until we rode even with the truck's trailer.

I lined up my sights with the scissorclaw's head—

Steeled my shooting arm against the wind,

And my own body against the recoil.

I pulled the trigger. The bullet glanced off the scissorclaw's skull.
Two, dammit.
The creature roared, shaking its head, then scrambled down the front of the semi truck and leaped off the hood, gazelle-smooth. The trucker overcompensated, turning his wheel hard to the left and making all eighteen of his wheels shriek. The truck jackknifed, trailer tipping. Ryder dodged the cab, shooting past as the entire bridge shook and metal screamed.

The scissorclaw sliced between cars, sleek as shadow. Up ahead, the mouth of the Yerba Buena Island tunnel came into view out of the fog.
Four miles left.

“Duck!” Ryder shouted. As the wind tore over me, I chanced a glance backward, realizing I'd been seconds away from smashing my skull into a U-Haul's side mirror. When I looked forward, we were two car lengths behind the scissorclaw. Twenty feet, max.

My next bullet went wild. I gritted my teeth.
One last shot.

Brake lights fired up. Traffic slowed. Screeching, the scissorclaw leapt up atop a town car, smashing the roof in. The driver lost control of the vehicle, careening into the cars both behind and left. The back car hit so hard, it forced the town car into a roll.