Blood & Dust (6 page)

'I don't know what you people want. Sergeant, what do you people want?' his mother asked,
shuffling away from Mira.

'Yes,
sergeant
, tell these good citizens: what is it we want?'

'We just need to talk to your son, Mrs Matheson.'

'Mrs Matheson? It was Diana this afternoon.'

Mira looked at Hunter, amused. 'The night changes everything, does it not?'

'Mira!'

'They know you,
Hunter,
and now they know me.'

'We know nothin',' Kevin said.

'Oh, but I think you do, boy; because you don't look very well at all.'

'I'm all right.'

'You have no idea what you are.' Mira cocked her head, listening. 'Is that the Night Riders I
hear? Do you hear them, Hunter? Coming to clean up their loose ends.'

'Not necessary, Strigoi. These people-'

'The boy is officially dead-'

'The constable knows he isn't. And who else by now? You can't make the whole town go away.'

A frown. 'No, I suppose not.'

'Cut our losses, Strigoi. Take the Rogue and go.'

'I was thinking, cut and run.' A finger nail drew a thin line of blood down Kevin's mother's
cheek. She tried to pull away, but Mira held her firmly by the upper arm.

The smoke alarm sounded. Mira, flinching, told Hunter to take care of the pan. Smoke spiralled
over the stove as Hunter stepped toward the kitchen.

'Run, Meg, run!' Kevin pushed her out of the way and charged.

Mira shoved his mother. She smacked into the table and tumbled to the floor. He lashed out but
Mira side-stepped his clumsy, distracted punch and her stiff arm slammed into his chest like a
cricket bat. His feet flew out from under him and he hit the floor so hard his vision turned black,
lit by fireworks. When he could see again, the woman had him pinned under her boot, the chunky heel
grinding into his diaphragm, the evil snout of a pistol pointed directly at his face.

Hunter helped his mother up. Meg stood petrified, backed against the table. His mother found her
feet and yanked her arm from Hunter's grip. Blood smeared her face.

Kevin pawed at the boot holding him down, but Mira shook her head at him, the gun barrel
mirroring the action, and he forced himself to lie still, the anger seething inside him.

A squawk and Hunter stepped back to answer the two-way radio at his belt.

His mother grabbed the rifle. Worked the bolt and levelled it at Mira.

Hunter snapped his pistol to her forehead. Murmured into the two-way, 'Gimme a minute.'

Mira chuckled, shook her head ever so slowly. She lifted her foot, just a little, and in that
ease of pressure Kevin thought he was free. He began to sit up. Her boot pushed him down again, this
time grinding across his throat so hard he choked.

'Don't,' she told him, and her eyes flashed green behind the huge tunnel of the gun barrel.

'Step away,' Kevin's mother told her. 'Let him go.'

'Diana,' Hunter said, his voice so calm he might have been reading the news. 'They get up.
Remember? They get up.'

Near Kevin's ear, water dripped from the table to the lino, keeping time wet and slow, slower
than the clock on the wall, drip, drip, drip, puddling beside the dead rose on the floor. The smoke
alarm kept its own shrill time, barp, barp, barp. In the background burning meat hissed and popped.
The harsh stench of it made it even harder to breathe.

Above him, Mira's skirt hung open to reveal her leg above the rim of her knee-high boot, black
tights shrink-wrapped around her thigh. It might've been sexy if she hadn't been killing him.

'They get up,' Hunter repeated. He took his pistol away. Put the radio down. Reached for the
rifle.

'Who are you people?' Kevin's mother asked, her voice the barest of whispers. She let him take
the rifle. She stepped back, shaking, and Meg hugged her, pulling her into a knot of arms and
terrified expressions.

The radio squawked again and Hunter swapped the rifle for it. 'Go.'

He then stalked into the kitchen and took the pan off the stove. 'There's company coming.'

'Riders?' Mira asked.

'Probably.'

'How many?'

'Too many, would be my guess. Unless you got something a little extra tucked away under that
coat.'

'Then let us see what the newborn knows. Take the women out of the room while I
talk
to
him. Keep them quiet.'

'Mira-'

'I mentioned my sunburn, did I not?'

'Ladies.' He re-slung his radio. 'This way, please.' He motioned with his pistol.

'Don't hurt him,' Kevin's mother pleaded.

'Only a fraction more than he finds pleasurable, I assure you, little mother,' Mira told her.
When the women had been shut in the nearest room, Hunter standing watch in the hall, she holstered
the gun and hauled Kevin to his feet. He pedalled backward as she bulldozed him into the wall. His
vision burst with a new set of flashing lights.

'Kevin?' his mother yelled, and Meg shouted too, a fearful 'Kev!', and Hunter kicked the door.

'He's okay. Just stay where you are.'

Mira held Kevin tightly by the throat, her face next to his. 'I understand you've had an intimate
meeting with Taipan. Is that right?'

'What?' he croaked.

'I just need to make a blood test. It will hurt, but I promise you, you will like it.' She bit
his neck and he cried out, the sound a strangled, pathetic hiccup under her carpet-snake grip. She
sucked on the wound in his throat. The room spun, as though she was the centre of a whirlpool and he
was a leaf caught in the swirling current.

'You getting anything?' Hunter asked.

'He's too weak. Barely had enough to get him across the line.'

Hunter sounded resigned when he asked, 'Cut and run, then?'

'Plan B,' she said, her gaze fixed on Kevin as though he was some new kind of bug and she was
trying to identify him. 'How far out is that Night Rider?'

He talked into the walkie-talkie. 'A couple of minutes. Taking it real careful, Felicity says.'

'Enough time to put in a trace.'

'They'll find it.'

'Only if they taste him, in which case, they'll finish him off for us. But maybe we'll find out
where they are. I don't see a downside.'

Mira pushed Kevin to the floor and pinned his arms with her knees. She was incredibly strong;
like an anvil sitting on his chest. 'You like the view, boy?' Her tongue, so pink against her sharp
white teeth, her lips glinting. She reached back to his cock and squeezed until he groaned. 'You
do
like it. Here, taste me.'

She bit her left wrist and he heard the flesh tear, smelled the blood flow, thick and metallic.
He turned his mouth away, but she bled on him, splattering his lips, and he tasted her, steaming
hot, and he was licking and gulping and trying to lift his head from the floor toward her, and
finally she laughed and lowered her wrist till he could suck her down. A voice in the back of his
head was screaming NO but the blood drowned it, drowned it completely as what felt like an electric
current ran through him. Such delicious electrocution.

'Careful, don't make a mess. We don't want to leave tell-tale stains, do we? Your girlfriend
might not like that.'

Romanian, he realised. Her name was Mira and she was Romanian, but that had been a long, long
time ago. And the cop - Taipan had been right: he was no cop. Hunter wasn't even his name; it was
his
rank
.

She held up her wrist, marked by two pink scars circling it down low, close to her hand. As he
watched, fascinated and horrified, a bright scarlet earthworm burrowed under her skin until it
circled her wrist like a bracelet, then solidified into a third ring of weird scar tissue. His eyes
must've been playing tricks, because he thought he could see something moving inside the scars, like
an eel in a mud puddle. And her eyes
- her eyes glazed so deeply red they were almost purple.

'Got you,' she said, and kissed him, lapping at his lips and cheeks. She sat up and closed her
eyes as though tuning out to a song only she could hear, and her forehead creased with
concentration, little bubbles of rose-coloured sweat glistening. On her blouse, a circle of blood
blossomed over her heart, and some kind of pattern grew inside it, rapidly blotching but looking
vaguely star-shaped. She smiled at him then, like a prefect who'd just come head of the class, and
said, 'But you
- you do not have me.' The childish glee vanished. Her eyes snapped to green and then back to deep
brown, almost black. Mira gripped his chin, forcing him to look at her. Her fingernails were long,
glinting, sharp at the edge of his vision.

'If you tell Taipan what we've just done, you and me, he'll kill you. Do you understand? He will
kill you and your mother and your girlfriend. All of you.'

He glared at her, wishing both she and Hunter were dead.

'If he tastes so much as a drop of your blood, you are a dead man. Understand?' She made him nod,
his jaw aching from her pincered hold. 'Good boy.' She patted his cheek. 'You play your cards right,
we might get to party later. Do you like the sound of that?' She crushed his balls once more, making
him sob.

'Time, Mira.' Hunter had moved to the back door where he could look over the rear paddocks.

Mira uncurled, like a cat stretching, rising to her feet in one graceful movement. Kevin half
expected her to raise her hands over her head, stand on her toes like a ballet dancer.

'The women?' Hunter asked.

'Let nature take its course,' Mira said. 'A boy has to eat.'

'Shit, Mira.' Hunter turned away as Mira rested the toe of her boot on Kevin's chin, making sure
she had his attention.

'You tell your women, Grease Monkey. You make them understand.' She held up a warning finger. 'If
one word of this gets out - just one little word - the Night Riders will come for your women. They
will kill them all. And if they don't, I will. You want to survive this you keep your mouth shut and
your veins to yourself.
Verstehen?
'

Did he understand? Loud and clear.

The two-way fuzzed. 'One coming in, from the back,' Hunter reported. 'We are out of time.'

'Let's go. Oh, Grease Monkey - we'll be just outside. Watching. Listening.' She held up her
finger to her lips, then opened her hand to blow him a kiss.

And then she and Hunter were gone, leaving Kevin with the awareness that he was very lucky to
still be alive. They all were. The room smelled of burnt meat but the alarm had quit, sometime.
Then, as his mother ran toward him, and Meg stood in the hall with her knuckles to her mouth, he
realised he wasn't actually alive at all.

It replays as though he's on a carousel ride:

His mother picking up the rifle and working the bolt - clack, clack, like bony jaws slamming shut
- and running to the front door. Meg, there, right
there
, where only an eye blink ago Mira
was crouching, licking his face. Meg, cradling his face and staring into his eyes; asking him if
he's all right and what has happened. Her eyes are so very wide and glistening with tears, and the
concern he sees there is acid in his heart. He pulls her to him and he bites into her shoulder, that
point where her neck joins, and the skin is soft and steaming and opens like freshly baked bread and
the rush of blood is simply the most intense - he comes explosively and she groans, her fist beating
moth-like against his chest…

Screaming. Stereo, surround sound. It vibrates through him, into his chest, into his blood; his
heart races, trying to match that tune. He's screaming, too, down deep where the red flood doesn't
reach…

Meg, torn away. Her flesh tears under his teeth. Her shirt rips as he claws to hold her. She
sprawls on her arse and screams as she sees her blood for the first time. The scarlet leaches
through her ragged T-shirt…

A girl, young, his age maybe, skin the colour of strong coffee, an unnerving glimmer of red in
her eyes exactly the same as he saw in Hunter's, reefing him to his feet… He's drunk on his
feet and his muscles are dough…

His mother, shouting, crying his name, over and over again, and his arm around the stranger, his
feet dragging, and he realises, distantly through the crimson haze, that the girl's a lot stronger
than she appears…

From the back door, looking over his shoulder and seeing Meg, horrified and staring as she holds
her bloodied hands in front of her, and he's mumbling her name and thinking she won't want to stay
with him now. His mother shrieks at him, 'Kevin', a long wailing siren that turns into an animal's
anguished howl…

Stumbling across the yard and over the fence and across a paddock that feels as wide as the
Simpson fucking desert, and it's hot underfoot, the earth still radiating daytime heat though the
sun's well down…

A rubber bat dangling from the rear-vision mirror, and Deep Purple's
Black Night
blasting
the cabin, the girl winking at him, her eyes the colour of red-gold honey in the dashboard glow and
he thinks she doesn't look that dangerous…

The girl, asking, 'How are we?' and it takes a moment to realise she isn't talking to him, but a
walkie-talkie. 'Lucky,' she says, and Kevin wants to scream 'bullshit', and she says, 'Thanks
Hippie, see you back at the ranch', and then tells Kevin it looks as if they've made a clean
getaway, but he doesn't feel clean, not at all…

Him asking, pushing the word out through the fog, 'Who…?' She says her name is Kala and
tells him that everything is going to be all right and he laughs, a bitter choking sound, and closes
his eyes as they speed away into the night because it's easier to swallow lies with your eyes
shut…

The ride goes round, and round, and round.

The grain elevator sat like a rusting rocket ship next to the train tracks, the
towering silos spotted black with missing panels, a skeletal gantry tacked to one side, broken
windows staring out from the long cabin capping the tubes. There was nothing but dirt and mallee
trees for miles; the lights of Barlow's Siding made a faint corona on the horizon. The site had been
abandoned back before Kevin had left school, relegated to being a place to sink booze and get laid
and drag race. The council had erected a mesh fence, as if none of the country kids could use wire
cutters, and the sheds and silos were covered in graffiti and littered with the remains of camp
fires, beer bottles and used condoms. It was a Thursday night, school had just started for the year,
and he hoped to Christ that no-one was out here half cut and with their pants down. No-one other
than him, anyway.