Death's Rival

CHAPTER FOUR

The Man Who Killed Me
I woke with my head on my boots, my body veiled by my hair. A spider perched only inches away, a big black hairy thing thrown into monster-sized silhouette by a dark gray dawn. It skittered way, shrinking to palm sized, as I pushed to my hands and knees and then to my feet. I threw back my hair and studied the situation. The car I'd been driving when forced off the road, then crashed, then been shot in, was canted at an angle, the engine silent. I could smell the road nearby, an overlay of exhaust placing it to my right.
Overhead, a hawk flew, black against the dark sky. It called, greeting the day with a piercing cry. I was muzzy-headed. And shivering. And hungry. Confused. Yeah. Confused. But I knew that it was too early for most species of hawk to hunt. Something had disturbed it.
My clothes were in a pile at my feet, which was weird, because I'd been in the car, and no way had I made it here before shifting into big-cat. I'd been too close to death. Beast had forced a shift when I couldn't, but I didn't remember anything after that, which wasn't normal. Even in the worst of shifts, when I was on the brink of death and only a shift into another form brought healing, I always, eventually, found myself inside Beast's body, along for the ride, just as Beast was along for the ride when I was in human shape.
I always remembered at least something of my time in fur. I didn't remember anything this time. Yet I was alive. I bent and found my panties and bra and pulled them on, making a face at the dried blood. I pulled on the ruined pants and stuck my fingers through the hole in the shirt. Two fingers. One hole. Yeah. It had been a big-assed gun. I found the new scar under my left arm and between my ribs, which corresponded to the hole in the shirt, and tried to figure what had been hit to make me bleed out so fast. And then I found the other scar on the right side, a little lower. The bullet had blown straight through me at an angle, probably taking out a kidney, maybe the bottom tip of my lung, and the top of my liver on the right. Bowel for sure. But kidney and liver were the likely kill spots; both organs had juicy blood supplies. I had an indentation on the right side big enough to put two knuckles in, so a big chunk of tissue had been taken out. I'd have to shift several times to smooth that out, and like the other, older kill shot on my upper chest, it might never go away completely. The old scar seemed to be permanent, I figured, because I had only shifted the one time, before I wandered out of the woods to be found by humans, and I had stayed in human form for years. These days, I shift often enough that most of the lethal wounds disappear. Most. Eventually. Even the scars on my neck from several near beheadings. Vamp hunting is dangerous business. My stomach cramped with hunger. I needed to eat. Soon.
Headlights lit up the road in the distance and I hurriedly finished dressing, shoving the empty gun into my waistband, holstering the others, and pulling the boots on over my bare feet. My socks were nowhere to be found. My black jacket hid some of the dried blood, clothing damage, and weapons, but not enough to allow me to safely hitch a ride once the sun was high. No one would stop for a bloody, armed, Amazon-sized woman on the side of the road, so I had to get moving before the sun rose.
I checked the ground as I made my way back to the car. No boot prints led away. No blood splatters marked the ground. No indication I had come this way. Just the rare sliding mark.
I stopped and bent, studying the ground up close as the sun peeked over a butte. Red light spread out over the earth, a rosy crystal clarity of illumination that revealed a paw print to the side of the slide mark. I blinked. Beast had come this way, and something had then covered her tracks. I looked back at the rock I had waked up near, and back to the car. And down at my filthy pants, long streaks of dust marking them. "Son of a gun," I murmured. "Smart girl." It almost seemed like she was getting smarter, more intelligent, more able to cope with the human world, though she would have hated that thought. Beast didn't answer.
I moved on to the car and gathered up my weapons and gear, trying to see what had happened. I'd wounded the man who killed me. His blood trail was easy to follow. I bent and sniffed, smelling the vamp who had fed the blood-servant, and something metallic underneath the vamp-scent. Odd. They had followed me, shot me, one had been shot, and they left. The blood trail got heavier the closer to the road it got. I wondered if the man had made it to a hospital or died on the way. It was getting time to ditch the nine-mil. There were too many shootings tied to it, and if a surgeon or a coroner found a silver bullet, one of the rare, expensive hand-loaded rounds made especially for killing vamps, it would come back to haunt me. I opened the tote and pulled the top off a blood collection tube. Scooped up some dirt and dried blood. Resealed the tube. I didn't know if anyone could test a dirt/blood mixture, but if they could, it would be nice to know whatever the lab tests could tell me.
I slung the tote over my shoulder and trudged to the road, thinking about the phone in the Lear. I really shoulda brought a second cell.
* * *
At the airport, I stepped off the running board of the big-wheeled truck and handed the cell phone back to the old man who had given me a ride. I'd given him a fifty and fed him breakfast, watching him laugh as I ate enough food to feed a platoon of soldiers. Men seemed to like to watch me eat, which was weird, but if it kept them happy and out of my business I was content. It took a lot of calories to shift, and four fast-food paper bags and more than a dozen wrappers littered the floor of the truck cab. He waved and gunned the cranky motor even before the door closed. He was color-blind and hadn't noticed the blood; I'd been lucky. Not so much with the pilot - the pilot I was halfway convinced had told someone where I'd be today.
Dan - which I hadn't remembered from his name tag - studied me as he walked over, not missing the dirt, dried blood, or my general state of mess. "You're late."
I lifted a shoulder as if to say, Sue me, but I said nothing.
"This way," he said. "Stay close so no one sees the blood." Personable, talkative fellow. He should be on radio. I buttoned my jacket and held the tote over my bloody shirt. The flyboy avoided the metal detectors, leading me through the back of the terminal where only VIPs and flight personnel go, to the Learjet. I stopped at the base of the stairs as the pilot climbed up.
The blood had been washed off the pavement. There was no crime scene tape. No indication that I had fought for my life and Tory had been injured. "Is Tory okay?" I asked.
"He'll live." Flyboy didn't turn around.
"Chatty, aren't you?"
He didn't reply. "See you in Seattle, then," I told him. I climbed the stairs, grabbed my luggage, and went straight to the shower, where I took a long hot one before we taxied out. And then I pulled on sweats, hid my bloody clothes, stuffed the vial of dirt and blood and the blue-eyed blood-servant's pocket watch into my duffel. I stuffed the duffel under a bunk and studied the door. I wasn't happy about sleeping in a small confined space with a possible enemy only feet away, and I figured that if vamps slept here by day, they would have a mechanism to lock the door. They did. I slammed home two steel braces that were built into the door, arranged so they would lock into the steel frame of the jamb. Nice. Secure, I strapped myself into a bed in the sleeping cabin, fumbled for the Lear phone, and called Bruiser.
He answered with "Details." He didn't sound happy. I had called him on the old geezer's cell and reported that I was alive, but that the fancy cell Leo had provided was dead. Bruiser had been gratifyingly relieved to hear my voice, and irritated when I wouldn't use up Geezer's minutes on a full report. I had taken his time by sharing my concerns about the pilot instead. Bruiser was a step ahead of me and had already launched a full-scale, deep background investigation into Flyboy Dan, his finances, lifestyle, and love life. Because he was a part-time contract guy, the original background search hadn't been as intense as the one for the regular pilot had been. Now his life was getting the fine-tooth-comb deal.
Safe in the Lear, I gave the demanded detailed report, leaving out any mention of Beast, of course, filling in the time between the crash and the call on Geezer's phone with being knocked unconscious. Though I'm sure they had their suspicions, Leo and his people didn't really know what I was. Bruiser had tried to find me, but the GPS on the phone and the GPS on the car both went out with the accident. Though there had been flyovers by helicopters in the general vicinity, which was news to me; no one had spotted the wreck. Bruiser had called every hospital and law enforcement agency in a hundred miles of Sedona and discovered that one man had come in with "self-inflicted, accidental" GSW - gunshot wound. Yeah. Right. The man had gone into surgery and then disappeared from the recovery room. Like, literally disappeared. He didn't even show up on security cameras. He just vanished. Poof. But at least there wouldn't be any pesky cop questions.
"Get some sleep," Bruiser said when I was done. He clicked off. If I had been hoping for some sweet chat or pillow talk, I was disappointed. I rolled over, tucked the phone in its little nook, and closed my eyes. I was aware when we landed, the rising roar of the engines and the bump of touchdown, but I didn't wake. I slept until just before four p.m.
And woke to the smell/sizzle of steak wafting under the door. I got up, dressed in clean clothes, black jeans this time with a black velvet jacket, black silk shirt, braided hair, and holstered guns. I'm not girlie, so dressing didn't take long. The weapons, however, did.
I wasn't satisfied with the weapons I'd carried last night. I wanted more than just a nine-millimeter loaded with silver shot. I hadn't had enough firepower to stop the bad guys at the crash site - who had been human, not vamp. I wanted everything I had and I wanted every possible bad guy to know I carried it. Walk softly and carry a big stick. Or stomp loudly and carry enough firepower to start a small war. Whatever worked.
The weapons harnesses were problematic, having to be strapped on separately, yet align themselves to give me freedom of movement. I wore two matching, scarlet-gripped Walther PK380s; the one under my arm was loaded with nonstandard, hollow-point ammo; the one at the small of my back was the Walther's twin, loaded with silver for vamp and were-animal - just in case. The semiautomatic handguns were lightweight, ambidextrous, with bloodred polymer grips, and reengineered so the safety block wouldn't break off. I had practiced with them enough that I knew how they fired, how likely they were to jam in rapid-fire situations, and how they reacted to various kinds of ammo. I'm not a shooter, not a sniper, not into techno-porn. But I liked guns, and if I'd had all mine on me last night, I'd have finished the goon without effort. Or at least without dying. Into my boot holster went a six-round Kahr P380, a small semiautomatic with a matte black finish. It was loaded with standard ammo. Under my right arm, low on my chest, I wore my H&K nine-millimeter, loaded with nonsilver hollow-point rounds that would explode on impact. If I missed a center-mass kill shot, I'd maim an attacker, even a vamp. I inspected the weapon. I hadn't cleaned it, which was stupid, but I'd only emptied one clip, so the guilt wasn't particularly intense. Extra clips went onto my belt, under the velvet jacket.
My shotgun, a Benelli M4 Super 90, was slung over my back, belted on top of my jacket, the grip within easy reach over my shoulder. It was loaded for vamp with hand-packed silver-flechette rounds that would work on human antagonists too. I carried one silver cross in my belt, hidden under my jacket, and stakes, secured in loops at my jeans-clad thighs. My braided hair was twisted around my head in a crown that would be hard to grab. Hip-length hair was a handle in a fight, and I had been advised to cut it long ago. It was the only suggestion by all of my senseis that I had ever ignored. I shoved silver stakes into the crown and stepped from the sleeping quarters just as a stranger placed a two-pound steak on the small table.
He froze when he saw me. He was wearing the white shirt and black pants of the company Leo used for his part-timers, the patches on his shirt naming him Chris, the new first mate. Lovely. Now I had a flyboy pilot who might be an enemy and a first mate who might be his partner. I didn't think Leo was trying to kill me anymore, but one never knew. He swallowed before he asked, "M-M-Miss Yellowrock?"
I slid in front of the steak and dropped the napkin across my lap, picked up the knife and fork, and closed my eyes. The prayer lasted half a heartbeat. I wasn't leaving my eyes closed for any reason. I cut into the steak and chewed, and then broke my own rule with a groan and a gourmand's closed eyes. Holy crap, it was good. Three bites later I looked up and remembered the first mate had spoken. Around a mouthful of steak I said, "Hi, Chris. I'm Jane. Good steak. I may have to marry you."
He swallowed and turned back to the kitchen, but I heard him murmur, "It'd be like sleeping with a scorpion." Which I thought was very funny, and almost told him so, but he was bringing me tea, and the steak was so good that I wanted to be nice. I ate the whole thing, plus the sauteed mushrooms and grilled zucchini he set on the side. Delicious. Ten minutes after I finished the meal, I was on my way, without ever seeing Flyboy Dan.
* * *
It was still an hour before sunset when I got to the clan home of the Master of the City of Seattle. The house - okay, it was a mansion, but my standards had changed the longer I worked in close proximity to vamps - now I called it a house and didn't feel like an impostor when the driver pulled up out front. The clan home was a hundred years old, three stories, brick, stucco, and wood on an acre of land, lakefront. It had heavily landscaped grounds and a circular drive off Lake Washington Boulevard, and all the houses near it were mansions too. I had no idea about property values, but I was guessing two mil easy. I gathered my things and stopped, dragging my eyes back to the Seattle Clan Home. Something wasn't -  The lack jumped out at me. No security, no armed blood-servants patrolling. Not even a gardener on the grounds. The place looked deserted. My shoulders tightened as I got out, slung the blood-collecting bag over one shoulder, and closed the door. "You're waiting, right?" I said to the taxi driver.
"You're not a hit man, right?"
"Right. Just a bodyguard, applying for a job." Liar, liar, pants on fire.
"I'll wait unless I hear gunfire. Then I'm outta here."
"Fair enough. Thanks for the phone," I said, tucking it in my pocket. He had brought me a new one - no bells or whistles, but at least in one piece and functioning - on the orders of Leo. Having learned my lesson, I had another in my back pocket.
I spun on a heel and walked to the front door. It was a double door, wavery panes of leaded glass in the doors and side lights. One door hung open.
A Walther was in my hand in an instant, the Benelli sliding from the back sheath. From inside, I smelled a familiar sickly-sweet scent, heard raspy breathing and an irregular moaning. Using a toe, I pushed open the door.
The foyer looked immaculate, twelve-foot-tall ceilings, walls a pale cream, wainscoting a muted beige, and the millwork at ceiling and floor in a yellow the color of twenty-four-karat gold in candlelight. I slid inside and to my left into the formal room. Hardwood floors, Oriental rugs, marble fireplace surrounded by massive millwork. Cloth upholstery on couches and chairs, which was weird. Vamps liked leather; the feel of skin against theirs appealed to their predatory instincts. But I saw no leather anywhere. And even more odd, the shutters were open. Sunlight poured into the front room.
I moved on to the left, into the music room/library. A baby grand piano stood in the middle of the room, and couches and bookshelves lined the walls. The lower floor of the house was set up in a circular pattern for formal entertaining. I kept on circling to my left, into the breakfast room that looked out over the water and toward the Seattle cityscape, through the kitchen - lots of copper and brass, even on the walls and ceiling - and into the dining room, which had a table that would seat twelve. I hadn't seen anyone. No security cameras. Nothing. The sickly smells were all coming from upstairs.
I took the stairs to the second floor cautiously, the M4 pointed up, the handgun covering my backside. There were four bedrooms and ten sick blood-servants. Crap. There was no info anywhere on blood-servants getting sick. This was new, and not in a good way. The humans were sick like I had never seen anyone sick before, covered in pustules, many of them ruptured and seeping onto the bedding. The closest thing I could have guessed was smallpox. They were the source of the raspy breathing and moans.
I climbed the stairs to the third floor, which was empty, and then into the finished attic. The smell of rot about blew me away, and with Beast's experience, I can take a lot of decomposition. The upper floor was an apartment, and on the floor lay a woman. She had died by multiple gunshots. She had been beheaded, the way one would kill a vamp or were, to make certain of death. I kept the Benelli on the doorway to the stairs and slid the handgun into its holster. Avoiding the body fluids, I dropped to one knee at her side and reached into her mouth, feeling for fangs. Nothing. Human teeth. So why the beheading?
In the corner, something moved in the air currents. A bright blue feather, downy, fluffy. I swiveled on my knee and studied the rest of the floor. There were a lot of blue feathers, everywhere. But no bird or boa to explain why.
I drew a steel blade and pulled on Beast's vision to look at the woman. She still looked human. With the blade, I sliced down. Fast. Hard. And for an instant, I saw, not a woman, but a huge blue  -  and rosy-hued bird. "Crap," I whispered. The woman was an Anzu - a Mercy Blade. The supernatural species lived under a blanket of glamours that could be disrupted momentarily by the proper application of a steel blade. They were fierce fighters. If she was dead, then the clan home had been physically attacked as well as the vamps made sick. There was no sign of them here; they were likely hiding in their lairs.
I went back to the second floor and asked permission of the sick humans who were conscious, and took their blood, promising to call for ambulances. Oddly, they weren't panicked or worried, and even insisted that they were getting better, which sounded just plain weird, unless the disease affected their brains, like meningitis. The one I stuck last seemed the most lucid, and I asked, "What happened here? I thought your MOC had accepted a new master."
"Our Mercy Blade said we must fight, not accept the fist at our throats. She said we would win with her fighting at our sides. It was a mistake." Tears leaked from her eyes. "They killed her. They killed Mithrans, and then they . . . spent some time with us."
I had a feeling that "spent some time with us" had been really, really bad. "Did any of your vamps survive the attack? Are they in their lairs?"
"Some died true-dead. Some didn't," she whispered. "We killed four of theirs, though they were old and powerful. But when we were overwhelmed, I told my masters to run. I haven't seen them since then."
After I obtained her blood, I washed my hands thoroughly in the hall bath. Even with gloves, I wasn't taking chances. Like Ro, the humans had kept bleeding and I had to apply pressure bandages at the puncture sites.
Back downstairs, I found an Apple laptop and shoved it into my tote with the blood, grabbed up several cell phones, and added them in too. Maybe the call histories would tell us something. I also found a business card tacked to a corkboard near a rack of cell chargers. It was black, white, and red, with a stylized drawing of a neck with holes in it, bleeding fresh blood, like a blood-whore's calling card. The name on the card was Blood-Call, the number and address local. It was the only thing on the board, which was odd, so I pocketed the card. On a desk, I found several other business cards, most of them of local businessmen: lawyers, accountants, a PR firm, people who might conceivably want a vamp's business and money. I found another Blood-Call card, this one creased and folded as if it had been carried around for a while. I took all the cards.
Standing just inside the front door, breathing fresh air through the open crack, I dialed Leo's number and told his secundo to wake Bruiser. He did it without demur and when Bruiser came on, he sounded chipper and alert, even though it was his sleep schedule. I told him what I'd seen and done, everything but the part about Mercy Blade being Anzu. I wasn't sure that the vamps knew that part. "I have blood samples from four human individuals, and had a devil of a time getting them to stop bleeding.
"You have any idea why these guys are still sick when their master gave in to the vamp we're chasing?"
"Someone rebelled after the fact, and the new master is teaching them a lesson." Which was totally something a vamp would do. Bruiser went on. "I'll find Gee DiMercy and tell him about the Mercy Blade. You get out of there and back here. I'll handle calling ambulances and alerting the authorities about the pla - the disease."
I hung up and stepped outside, still thinking about the word he had almost used for a disease that had attacked vamps and humans. Plague.
* * *
The stench clung to me, so bad even the patient driver's nose curled, so I tipped him two twenties when he dropped me off at the small, private airport in the boonies outside Seattle. The terminal was a single-story building with all the charm of a saltbox, but it lit up the early night like a beacon. This afternoon, I had passed through with a minimum of effort, even carrying the weapons, guessing that Leo's money had greased enough palms to make that happen. But there had been three people in the terminal. Now, as I stepped inside, there was no one.
My hackles rose. The car that brought me, and was the fastest way outta here, drove off, tires abrading on cement. I stepped to the right of the windowed door, wall at my back. I pulled the M4 and the Walther that was loaded with silver. It didn't have the stopping power of the H&K, but it was the weapon of choice when there was a likelihood of collateral damage - innocent humans who might get killed. The Benelli would take care of any vamps.
I felt the door close beside me with a little puff of air. Standing just inside, I slid to my right, along the wall. If I'd had a pelt, it would have bristled. Something was very wrong here.
The terminal was silent except for the hum of electronics and the whir of an overhead fan. The air was permeated with an acrid sting of overheated electronics and dissipated gun smoke. I breathed in, scenting for traces of blood, urine, feces - the body fluids that escape when humans die. The terminal didn't seem to contain any dead humans; nor did it smell like it had when I left. Beneath the reek of smoke, it stank of fear and blood-servant and the now-familiar vamp. And the burned powder of fired weapons.
A soft scrape like skin on something smooth sounded from the office door. I moved silently around the room, my back to the walls where possible, knowing that I was a sitting duck to anyone outside, hidden by the darkness. My reflection moved with a catlike effortlessness, and seeing myself in the windows gave me a weird feeling of deja vu I couldn't specify but that felt like being tracked by another predator. My weapons swept the room. I used the windows to check behind the counter. Nothing. No one. But that soft scrape sounded again.
I ducked my head into the office and back out. Letting the image of the room resolve itself in my mind. Cheap metal folding table. Chairs. Papers scattered on the floor. Barrage of busted electronics still leaking smoke. Bullet holes in the equipment, walls, computers.
A bundle of body on the floor. Human. Tied up. Lying on his belly, hands secured behind his back, feet tied together, and then the ties laced through the binding on his hands and tightened, pulling him into an uncomfortable squashed C shape. Hog-tied.
There was a ball of something in his mouth. I edged into the doorway, forced to turn my back to the windows, which I hated. The man on the floor was wide-eyed, bobbing his head emphatically. His hands were dark purple, and I guessed that he had been tied up for at least twenty minutes. I moved in fast, looked behind the door, stepped to the side, and opened the closet, securing the room. It was clear.
I knelt beside the man and set the handgun on the floor, so I could work the wad out of his mouth. It was wet and gooey with blood and saliva and was wedged in tightly. Nothing is ever as easy in real life as it is on TV. As I worked, I whispered to him, "When this comes free, talk softly. Tell me three things. How many? Were you alone? And where are the people who did this? If you shout or talk too loudly, I'll stuff it back in. Understand?"
He grunted what might have been an affirmative. When the mushy cloth plopped out he said, "Three. One a fanghead. I was alone, but Beatrice will be back any minute with supper. They went back to the aircraft. I heard screaming. A lot of screaming. Then they drove off without walking back through here. Which is crazy because the fencing is twelve feet high with razor wire at the top and they didn't have time to cut - "
"Shut up," I said. He did, gasping for breath. "You're bound with plastic and it'll take time to free you. I don't have that time. I'll be back." I stood and breathed in and out, hard, pulling on Beast-speed. She wasn't talking to me much, but I could still access her traits. I raced out of the room and through the back terminal doors. Outside. Slammed my back against the wall. Took a quick look around as I ran into the shadows that would make me a less-easy target. Beast-vision made everything green and silvery and bright. No one was here.
Up the stairs of the Learjet. The smell of blood hit me hard. Fresh blood is not a smell humans can detect. But I can. Wet, sweet, and a lot of it. Blood in massive quantities aerated by arterial spraying.
I stopped just inside the hatch.
I share my soul with a predator, a big-cat who doesn't mind if her prey is still struggling when she starts to feed, who likes to play blood-games with her food. I'm used to death. But this blood-game had been played with a human. And it was bad.