Blood Hunt (13 page)

“What about Ian?” she asked, trying for answers before she lost him entirely. It was a brave but dangerous thing. “Where is he? If you turn yourselves in there won't be a need for any kind of bullets. You can tell the police everything. Richie, I'm worried.”

His face went through another contortion, and I watched him fight it.

“What I know, he knows,” Richie said through gritted teeth. “Remember that. And, stay away. If I contact you again… Just…”

He jerked, and suddenly he was up out of his seat with the edge of the table in hand, upending it along with the remains of the coffee, which tipped and splashed at Jessica. She screamed and knocked her chair over in her haste to escape. I'd been coiled to attack, and now threw myself across the room, but not in time to pull her away before the fallen chair tripped her up and the table came crashing down on top of them both. Her legs would have been crushed if she'd still been sitting, but as it was, the table caught on the legs of the chair, holding it off of her.

“Richie!” I yelled, trying to get his attention so I could hit him with the gorgon glare before he could do any more damage, but he was no longer answering to that name…or to the siren song of sanity. Not based on the crazed look in his eyes as he turned for the woman behind the counter.

I jumped between them, suddenly right up in his face. I yelled “Freeze!” as he lifted a fist to smash in my face.

For a second I thought it was going to work. He froze, fist half cocked. Then all of the sudden a muscle ticked in his jaw and I had only that much warning before the fist was flying. I leapt back, smashing my spine up against the counter, but the fist only struck me a glancing blow.

But the other one, the one I wasn't watching, smashed into my ribs, cracking at least one. Jessica had never mentioned her brother being a prize fighter. I staggered to the side, and he roared, coming after me.

Now that I had his full attention, I yelled to Jessica and the counter-lady to run, but I couldn't spare the attention to see that they did.

Richie charged me like he was some kind of rhino, but I used the counter behind me to grab on to as I kicked out with both my feet, catching him in the soft part of his stomach. He doubled over and staggered back, but not far. Not far enough.

I pushed myself off the counter, not wanting to be trapped against it with no way out. They no sooner had room than my wings were out, bursting from my back and waking muscles that protested their disuse. I didn't remember calling them, but maybe they had minds of their own, like my crazy curls that refused to be tamed.

Richie stared, his eyes widened, momentarily awed…and then it passed as quickly as it came. He roared and came for me, and I flew at him, catching his blows on my forearms, which went painfully numb on contact, like they were all-over funny-bones. As soon as I knocked his punches away, I threw the heel of one hand straight for his nose, pulling the punch at the last second. I didn't want to drive the tiny bit of bone there up into his brain. I just wanted to make him see stars…and bloody him a bit.

His head bounced back at the contact, and I heard the crunch of bone. I was afraid for a second I'd gone too far, didn't know my own strength, but then he was up, glaring at me through watery, hate-filled eyes slitted with pain. “This isn't over, bitch. Whatever you are,” he hissed, “we're coming for you.”

I let him stagger for the door, hoping Apollo had gotten Jessica to safety, along with the woman from the shop and whoever had been working in the back. I prayed Neith was in place to follow him as planned.

It was then that I realized I had his blood on my hands. Literally. It had gushed out of his nose, and I'd caught some of it. It was the fresh red of roses, and before I fully realized what I meant to do, I had it raised to my lips. My tongue came through them to lap at the blood, and it was like I sat back and watched myself, horrified and not all at the same time.

The same instinct had gripped me when I'd battled Hecate, my transformation bringing with it the squicky new skill of being able to track blood back to the person from whom it had come, like calling to like. Who needed Ichnaea or hellhounds when I had the bad guy's bloody nose?

My stomach roiled at the thought and I gagged, nearly sick. I forced myself to swallow it down. The blood was the only chance we had of tracking the brothers if Neith lost Richie, and self-disgust seemed a small price to pay to catch a killer. I could think of worse things. Cats licked their own bungholes; puppies ate poo; and monkeys picked lice off each other and ate them. I was downright sanitary in comparison.

Apollo came up as I got myself over it and headed for the door. “You okay?” he asked.

I looked up at him, realizing that he would have felt my horror, would have known or guessed the cause. I certainly wouldn't be kissing him any time soon. Not without absurd amounts of mouthwash.

“Yeah,” I said. “Sure. Quickly, to the car.”

“Wings?” he reminded me.

I cursed and then muttered the incantation I'd been taught to transform them back into their tattooed form.

Apollo had already stashed Jessica safely back in the car, so we only had to worry about ourselves. There were sirens in the distance coming on fast. Maybe the lady from the restaurant had called them or maybe Nick had gotten Apollo's message but decided against stealth. Either way, we didn't have time to stand around answering questions.

I pulled out the second our car doors had closed, before there was even time for seatbelts, and headed in the direction I felt the pull. Richie's blood tugged at me like a puppy tugging on the end of a toy, trying to win it away. It felt like Richie was trying to outrun my reach, though it could as easily be Neith he was trying to outpace. He might have spotted her tail.

“My cell phone,” I told Apollo. “Press the Bluetooth setting?”

He toggled it, while I fumbled blindly at the cupholder for my earpiece.

“And enable voice commands,” I said.

He did that too. Or at least, I presumed he did, because when I said, “Call Neith Sais,” the phone rang in my ear through the speaker there.

“What?” she snapped in answer. “Kind of busy here.”

“You've got him?”

“Yeah. We're headed for the freeway.”

Damn and double damn. If he hit the freeway and it was actually moving, we could lose him. I had no idea the range on my strange power. It was something I had yet to test between crises. The urge to laugh maniacally at that bubbled up, but I squashed it down.

“We're right behind you. A couple of minutes at most.”

I turned onto Broadway and just as quickly felt a pull to the left. Richie was taking evasive maneuvers. The backend of the car fishtailed a little as he took a quick left turn and came out immediately behind another car.

“Neith, that you?”

But she'd either thrown the phone down or was too busy to answer. In the next instant, I saw the El Camino skid into a last-second turn onto a new street. I had a flashback to the Dynastic Studios crime scene with the one car through the storefront and another crushing a cameraman to the ground. My precog was hammering at me now, as if I didn't know the danger of a high speed car chase through L.A. streets.

The El Cam blasted through a light at the next cross street, only to come up short behind a car going way under the speed limit, occupants probably gawking at something.

I was about to tell Neith to back off before someone got killed when it sped up rather than slowed, ramming the back of the car in front of it.

The slam-bang-crunch of metal carried through the windows, and the car in front of Richie went up on the curb and straight into a light pole. The front hood crumpled, but the passenger compartment seemed intact. Not that Richie waited to see. He blew right past the crash, Neith hard on his tail.

“Neith,” I yelled into my headset, hoping we were still connected. No time or attention to spare to check. “Back off. He's made you. We'll get him another way.”

As if I had to tell her she'd been made. Richie was never going to lead us to Ian while he was being followed.

There was a light up ahead just turning red as Richie got to it. He hit the gas, bursting through it like the final ribbon at a race. Neith gunned her engine as well and hit the intersection but wasn't nearly as lucky. A car cruising through its legitimately green light hit her dead-on from the right, T-boning her, caving in the passenger side of the car and pushing the whole thing several feet before they stopped.

I just missed them both by yanking my wheel hard and skidding behind them. Jessica was sobbing hysterically as I pulled the car over, and there were more sirens in the distance. I hoped they were headed our way, drawn by the other accident or reports of reckless driving.

I jumped out of the car, Apollo right behind me. He raced to Neith while I ran around to the driver's side of the car that had hit her. The driver was an older man, whose head was almost buried by the now-deflating airbag. At my knock, he jumped and such a look of pain crossed his face that I was immediately sorry to have startled him.

“Are you okay?” I yelled through the window.

His eyes were glassy and lacked understanding. It didn't bode well. Shock, I hoped, and nothing worse. The front of his car had caved as it was meant to, to absorb the impact, but it didn't look like it had done all it should.

Neith stumbled out of her rental cursing a blue streak. At least, I presumed from the sound of things that she was cursing. None of it was in English.

“Is the driver all right?” she asked when she'd finished.

“Dazed, but no blood that I can see,” I called back to her.

The driver looked past me, toward the sound of the siren that seemed about to crash into us at any point.

A police car pulled up, lights whirling, though the siren shut off as she cruised to the side of the street. I could see her hit the dash cam before she got out.

“Anyone hurt?” she asked, which seemed a silly question to me, given that both cars looked about totaled, but I supposed she had to ask.

And then we were sidelined as another police car arrived and shortly thereafter an ambulance. As soon as one of the officers pulled us to the side to question us about the accident, Apollo stepped up. “We'll tell you anything you want to know, but first, you might want to call Detectives Armani and Reyes. We were chasing one of their suspects when the accident occurred.”

That made it a whole other kettle of fish. We were still questioned, but a lot more closely and for probably twice as long as we would have been otherwise. Jessica's sobs slowed to a stop somewhere in the first five minutes.

All the time, I could feel Richie's trace growing fainter and fainter until it faded altogether. It might be that I would need Ichnaea after all. Or that I could talk Sigyn into creating some kind of rune or spell that would bump up my range, like my own psychic hot spot. Or maybe, given something of his, she'd be able to scrye him. If Nick wouldn't let us take anything away from the Roland house, at least I had his blood. I'd wiped the excess off on my jeans, not having anything else handy.

Chapter Thirteen

Nick was
not happy
when he met us at the Roland crime scene once we'd finally been released and tow trucks had arrived for the smashed-up vehicles. He was, in fact, spitting mad, which put me in mind of the Tasmanian Devil spitting and whirling and taking down everything in his path.

I had to stifle a smile at the thought, lest that path of destruction include me.

“Why the hell didn't you call,” he asked as he wound down, looking from me to Apollo to Neith. He didn't turn that laser-like glance on Jessica, apparently afraid she'd crack. She looked that fragile.

“We did,” Apollo said, calmly. “Check your messages.”

“I didn't get
any messages,” he said. And just at that moment, we all heard his phone give a bleep. He yanked the phone off the holster at his hip to check and then looked up at us strangely. “It
just
came in.”

Apollo and I exchanged a look. “Sunspots?” I asked.

“Chaos,” he said, more ominously.

“Oh, come on,” Nick said. “These things happen.”

“Okay, so it's a coincidence,” Apollo said with a shrug, not because he believed it but because disagreeing wouldn't change a thing. “Either way, we called.”

“When I didn't answer, you could have tried 911,” he grumbled.

“We could have. We didn't. A patrol car might have scared him off.”

“So you took care of it yourselves?”

“No, we didn't,” Jessica spoke up quietly, but the surprise of it shut everyone else down. “Richie…changed. He was trying to tell me something—that he and Ian were being controlled or something and that all this wasn't their fault. He wanted me to tell you to use rubber bullets or something when you come after them. He doesn't want to die. And he warned me not to trust him. Or Ian. He won't get in touch again. If he does, I should run.”

“So one brother slipped away from the other?” Nick asked, watching Jessica's face. “They're at odds?”

“Yes. No. I mean…yes, he slipped away, but… Gah, you explain,” she said, looking to the rest of us. I don't think she much cared who answered her plea.

“Look,” I said, “She's right about Richie changing. One minute he was her brother. The next he was…someone else. Darker. Bigger. More deadly. It was like watching Doctor Jekyll turn into Mr. Hyde. Or watching David Banner turn into the Incredible Hulk. And once he did, there was no stopping him. We didn't really try. The plan was to follow him back to Ian. You know how that turned out.”

“You still think,” he shot a glance at Jessica and seemed to revise his chosen words, “this is something more than just multiple personality disorder?”

Jessica jumped back in before I could answer. “He doesn't have any history of it. Anyway, what would send both my brothers into a psychotic break at the same time? We weren't abused. We weren't…” The tears started again, but silently this time, and she waved her hand as if to say we should continue without her while she went a short distance away for the illusion of privacy.

“It's happened before,” Nick said quietly. “It's called a folie à deux, a delusion shared by two. It's rare, but…they might have come across some crazy cult or a bad drug or something that put it into their heads that it's them against the world. People could suddenly have become aliens to them. Or demons. They may be fighting out of some delusion of paranoia or self-preservation.”

“And how would they have infected Viktor?” Neith asked, hands going to her hips.

“Ah, that's harder,” he admitted. He started leading us toward the house, ducking under the crime scene tape and holding it for us to do the same.

“I'll…wait out here,” Jessica said, when Nick called to see if she'd be joining us. “I can't. I just…can't.”

“I understand, but I don't like leaving you alone out here.”

“I'll be fine.”

And suddenly I had a thought. “Jessica, turn out your pockets and hand over your purse.”

She clutched it tighter. “What?”

Neith started to pat her down, and Jessica yanked herself away indignantly. “Explain.”

Neith and I exchanged a look. Apparently, she'd gotten the idea. “When your brothers visited Viktor, they left something behind, a kind of coin right in the middle of his forehead.”

“You mean like you'd see in gangster movies?” she asked.

“I think that would be on top of the eyelids,” Apollo put in.

“Then I don't get it.”

“It's probably nothing,” I said, not sure how to explain without sounding like a lunatic and probably having her terminate my contract. “But I wondered if he'd planted anything like that on you. I'm sorry I was so abrupt. It's just…if the coin had anything to do with Viktor's break with reality, I wanted to get it away from you as soon as possible.”

She dropped the purse like it was on fire.

Neith picked it up and brought it over to the front of Nick's car. “Do you have a cloth we can spread this out on?” she asked. “And maybe some gloves?”

He didn't have a cloth, but he did dip into his car and come out with a large evidence sleeve and a few sets of gloves. He handed one to Neith, who removed Jessica's wallet and cell phone before dumping the rest out onto the plastic sleeve. Loose change, receipts, gum, a couple of used tissues, a ChapStick and single cough drop tumbled out. Neith rooted among the change.

“Nothing,” she said disappointed.

I was too. But no, of course things couldn't be that easy. We couldn't possibly have two out of the six Set coins accounted for. Which meant we still had two known killers on the list and five potentials.

“I should have known,” I said. “Probably it would have had to contact the skin. Slipping it into her purse or pockets wouldn't have done any good.”

“Until she reached into them,” Apollo said, hand going to my back and rubbing.

Nick didn't miss the movement. His lips compressed, but he didn't say anything while Neith gathered up Jessica's things and gave her back her purse. She took it tentatively, as though it still posed some danger.

“If you're sure you'd rather wait outside, maybe you should do it in here,” Nick said, indicating his car. “You'll be close to the radio and you can honk like mad if anything happens.”

“I'm sure,” she said. “And…thank you.”

Nick nodded and opened the passenger side door for Jessica. When it was closed behind her, he turned for the house, asking over his shoulder, “What do you expect to find?”

Neith quickened her steps to be beside him, leaving Apollo and I behind.

“I guess the other artifacts would be too much to ask,” she said.

“I'd guess.”

“Anything,” I said from two steps behind. “Richie broke loose of his…dark passenger or whatever…once. Maybe it wasn't the first time. He could have left us some kind of message here in the house.”

“You really think so?”

I shrugged, but he couldn't see it.

“I wonder what let him break free last night.”

“In ancient Egypt, people kept cats, which were not only sacred, they were protectors. They kept away evil spirits as well as vermin. Have you ever seen a cat watching something you can't see? Shadowboxing? Now you know why.” Her delivery was absolutely deadpan.

Nick gave her a sidelong glance. “Seriously?”

Apollo snorted, and I echoed Nick. “
Seriously?
You've fought zombies and a fire-breathing dragon and you draw the line at cats?”

His lips quirked. “Okay, fine. So you think a cat scared the bejeebers out of him…literally.”

“And temporarily,” Neith said. “Anyway, it's a theory.”

“So all we have to do is pin the brothers down, surround them with cats and tell them to come out with their hands up?”

“You're mocking me,” Neith said.

“A little bit,” he admitted.

“Why don't we wager on the outcome?” she asked slyly. “If I win, I buy you dinner.”

“And if
I
win?” he asked.

“You buy me dinner,” she said.

We'd reached the front door of the Roland mansion, but Nick paused on the porch. “Hmm, hardly fair. I'm a pizza and beer kind of guy.”

“You can order a porterhouse steak for all I care. You won't win.”

They stood toe to toe and chest to chest, chins out, pugnacious as all hell. Nick was fighting a smile, but not for long. “You're on. Hell, if we bring these two in, I'll even buy dinner for the cats.”

He put on a pair of the gloves he'd gotten out for rifling through Jessica's things and opened the door, stopping just inside to grab paper booties from a box on the floor and handing us each a pair to go over our shoes.

“Don't touch anything,” he ordered. “And stay in sight.”

Then he stepped inside, and Neith, before following him, shot me a triumphant grin. She'd gotten herself a date, win or lose. But then, I didn't get the sense Neith found herself on the losing side very often.

The smell hit me as soon as I entered the house, faint at first, because it hadn't happened right there in the foyer, but still, there was no mistaking the scent of violent death—blood, voided bowels, fear. Because fear had a smell—acidic, something like vinegar. It was a combination of sweat and the excess of hormones the body dumped into the bloodstream to deal with fright or flight. Animals could smell fear. Apparently now so could I.

The foyer itself was practically a work of art. A huge
Phantom of the Opera
-appropriate chandelier hung like the sword of Damocles over our heads, unlit at the moment but for the natural light streaming through a high vaulted window. The floor was tile. I couldn't have told you what kind, but it looked like stone. Alabaster, maybe. Something pale and likely expensive as all hells.

Nick led us up a sweeping grand staircase, dark wood with a scarlet runner that made it seem we were walking the red carpet. I supposed I'd have to get used to it if Apollo and I were going to make that premier tonight. As though he could read my thoughts and not just my mood, he sent me an amused glance and I answered by sticking out my tongue.

And then no one was smiling. Nick opened the door to one of the bedrooms, and the smell inside rushed out like it had been lying in wait. I nearly gagged. My donut threatened to come back up, made it half way there before I choked it back down. Inside…

The whole house seemed to go fuzzy around me and the floor was moving, rippling, doing the wave like Galloping Gertie just before it collapsed. Instinctively, my hand lashed out to grab on to something solid, trying to hold myself upright. I caught Apollo. I was pretty sure it was Apollo, and yet I couldn't really feel him or see him.

The room suddenly settled, and I saw…I saw…

I saw it all. Mr. and Mrs. Roland were being murdered right in front of me. One of the twins held Mr. Roland back while the other dragged his mother flailing and screaming from the bed. She grabbed frantically for the headboard, as though being anchored to the bed would be any kind of protection, but she missed. The bed sheets and blanket went with her to the floor, and she cried out as her butt bone landed hard.

The boy reached for the sheets to rip them away from her and she managed to get a kick in, but hampered as she was, it only connected as high as his knee and not with the force necessary to take him down. He laughed at her attempt, and she cringed back at the sound of it.

“Please,” she begged. “Richie, stop! Why are you doing this?”

Her husband begged him to stop as well. For Ian to let him go.

Mrs. Roland started a prayer, and Richie slapped her so hard across the face her neck cracked. She was slow to bring her head back around to face him, and when she did, there was blood on her lip and a huge red mark across her cheek. Richie enjoyed it so much, he did it again.

Ian had his father sitting up on the bed, arms pinned behind him, forcing him to watch.

“Cut her already!” Ian called to his brother.

Richie shot him a venomous look and pulled a knife from where he'd tucked it through his belt. It had to have been the biggest knife in the butcher block. His mother's eyes shone with fear, and she cried out at the sight.

His father lurched forward on the bed, straining toward his wife, desperation giving him the sudden preternatural strength to break free from Ian's grip. But not for long. Ian whipped a knife out of his own waistband and with a horrible sound slashed it down between his father's shoulder blades. Blood shot out, catching Ian in the face, and he laughed, licked at it. Feebly, his father was still trying to get to his wife, one arm reaching out as if to at least hold her hand as they died, only he couldn't reach that far.

And then the real bloodbath began…

I came to with Nick holding me up by one arm and Apollo the other. My stomach… I was going to lose that donut I'd eaten, all the caffeine and probably half my stomach lining as well.

“Bathroom?” I said, voice strangled as I fought to hold things down that long.

Nick pointed me down the hall, and I ran, my legs shaky and my whole body feeling a little unreal. When I hit the bathroom, I fell to my knees, bruising them on the cold, hard tile, and threw up hard. So hard it hurt. And a second time with barely a breath in between. I was gasping for air, tears in my eyes, my throat aching, when Neith appeared in the doorway.

“Chew this,” she said, holding out something that looked like a stone out of a rock garden.

I held out a hand to take it. Not a stone. Softer than that. Dried fruit?

“What is it?” I asked.

“Candied ginger. It'll calm your stomach and do something about your breath.”

I glared up at her. “You just carry it around in your pocket?”

“A whole bag of it,” she agreed. “I have issues.”