Blood Hunt (24 page)

I dialed Hermes, but the phone just rang and rang. I hung up before it got to voicemail.

“No answer.”

“He might be busy,” Apollo said.

“Might be.”

“But you don't think so.”

“I don't know what to think,” I said. “This precognition didn't come with a training manual. But I guess you're right. They'd call. Hermes might even drop in. We stick to the plan. I guess. But I feel like a mama whose teenage daughter missed their meet-up at the mall. Or blew curfew by a huge margin. Something's wrong.”

“Danger doesn't mean destruction.”

“Doesn't it?” That had certainly been my experience.

“Right!” I said suddenly, as the road started to veer left and the needle on the blood dial swung pointedly in the other direction.

“Highway entrance coming up. Should we ignore the dial momentarily and get on the highway, since it heads that way?”

“Yes.” I didn't even have to think about it. Both Nick's map of mayhem and my flying canvas had indicated that the brothers had fled somewhere outside the city.

At the highway entrance, the dial pointed us distinctly northbound and then seemed fairly happy with our progress until we were right on top of an exit. All the while my gut was churning, no longer sure which way the danger lay—forward or back. Now that we were getting close to our quarry, it was clear that not all the trouble was behind us back at the museum.

A few more hairpin twists and turns and one long stretch where we blew past anything commercial and even the real residential areas. Houses grew farther and farther apart. More isolated, more run-down. Finally the dial pointed us not toward another turn but toward a house standing off all by itself. It was an old Mexicali style one story that had seen better days. A great golden-orange wall of crumbling stucco with the crumbled parts still lying in the overgrown grass blocked the view of the house except through an arched entrance into the courtyard. It looked like a home time had forgotten.

Apollo and I shared a look. “Doesn't seem like the kind of place you'd find the Roland heirs,” I said.

“The police would have investigated any property linked to them.”

“Do you think—”
that the owner was one of their victims
, I thought but didn't finish. We'd find out soon enough. “Nevermind. Let's go.”

The nearest neighboring house was probably a quarter to a half mile away and there was no one strolling the street. No reason to wear the jacket any longer to hide my weapon and risk it getting in the way. I left it behind as I got out of the car, took firm hold of the xiphos and slid the dagger into my waistband at the small of my back, hoping not to stab myself before anyone else. I wanted my dagger hand free to open doors or hold back cobwebs. I didn't absolutely know we'd be faced with the latter, but from the state of the house, I couldn't rule it out either, and with both hands bearing weapons, I was in danger of slashing myself if something multi-legged dropped on me from above.

I'd gotten better about heights. Spiders were
never
going to give me the warm fuzzies. Especially not after Arachne and her minions had scarred me for life.

“Watch yourself,” Apollo said as we approached the arch. “It could be warded.”

“Can you tell?”

He edged a little closer and went very still, sensing. “I don't think so, but there's something off here. I can feel it.”

I felt it too. I waved my xiphos through the archway first, figuring that if anything was going to trigger, better on the blade than on us, but nothing happened, so I let it lead the way, following it onto a cracked walkway with grass growing up through the fractures. The yard itself was more weeds than grass, all overgrown, almost to the point of swallowing a child's three-wheel bike that tilted up against a large palm with drooping fronds. If it hadn't been bright blue, it would have blended right in. Two big, colorful pots of agave plants stood as prickly sentinels to either side of the doorway—a smaller stucco arch over a staunch wooden door. Bright blue and gold tiles inset over the doorbell to the left labeled the house number 207, which seemed odd, since there were less than a dozen houses on the whole street.

My precog kicked me again.
Inside
, it insisted. As if we didn't know.

“How do you want to handle this?” I asked quietly. “You want the front and I'll take the back? Vice versa?”

He looked around at all the high grass and higher weeds. “I'll take the back,” he said. “Give me a thirty-count.”

I knew he was being chivalrous, thinking of what might be lurking in and among all the growth. Spiders, fire ants, sharp, rusty pieces of metal. Tetanus I could handle, but the rest… I didn't argue.

But as instructed, I did wait, none too patiently. My precog didn't understand caution. It understood danger, and whether I chose fight or flight, it wanted me to give some indication I'd gotten the damned message already. Passivity was not an option.

My thirty-count might have been a little fast. I might have rushed my
Mississippis
. Still, on thirty I tried the knob, which—no surprise—did not conveniently turn in my hand. On thirty-one-and-a-half, I backed off far enough for momentum and kicked the door in with a great, huge blow right above the knob where I'd found it did the most good.

The door bucked and gave, and in the next instant, I heard glass break from the back of the house. Anyone inside would know they were being invaded.

I entered cautiously, xiphos prepared to slash. The front entrance was crowded with shoes—sneakers, sandals, flip-flops from kid-sized to adult. Enough to trip over. I brushed them aside with my foot and kept going. The foyer opened immediately onto a small living room covered in laundry, as though someone had been folding and sorting when they'd been interrupted.

Apollo met me a second later, coming from the back of the house, the kitchen entrance. He shook his head as our eyes met to let me know there was no one back there. Together we stopped and listened to the rest of the house. All was eerily silent, but my precog insisted that to be misleading.

At least we didn't have much to search. There was only one way to go. Off the living room was a hallway lined with closed doors. Four of them. Two on one side, one on the other and a door at the end which was probably the master bedroom.

I took the lead. The first door I came to was on the left. I opened it quickly, poised with my xiphos in case anything jumped out, but it was just a bathroom…with a patina of red staining the sink and suspicious dark stains on the towels tossed to the side of the sink and onto the floor. The incongruously cheerful ducky shower curtain was yanked back and half off its rings, so it was clear no one was hiding behind it.

I didn't venture any farther. The police forensic team would want to sweep it for clues, evidence to wrap their murder cases up with neat little bows. I was interested in saving the survivors.

Apollo looked over my shoulder, saw that there was nothing to see and moved on to the next room. I closed the door behind me to maintain the scene the best I could and waited to one side of the next door while he stood to the other side. My precog was going crazy as he turned the knob, but there was no need to say a word. His senses were even more developed than mine and we couldn't be any more ready than we already were.

He thrust the door open as soon as the catch released. The sight that greeted us was horrendous. Inside what was clearly meant to be a kids' room—red with auto-racing details everywhere from the race-car runner to the checkered and yellow flags crossed decoratively on the walls—were twin beds sporting material that would definitely be disturbing to younger viewers. Bodies. Two of them. Both female. One with golden curls falling over the pillow and onto the floor like abandoned party streamers. The other with scads of dark hair that glistened wet with blood.

Both had their chests laid bare. Not in the sense of clothing pulled back or ripped off, but in the sense of
flesh
rolled back like sod to reveal what was underneath—only I couldn't see what that might be through all the blood. The sternum…the heart…I couldn't tell what was still there and what wasn't. Bile rose, and a vision started to rise up. I fought it down. My precog was still going insane, alarm bells now ringing loud enough to rattle my brain. I couldn't afford to be distracted or out of time in my own little blood-slicked world.

Apollo stepped toward the beds. One step, then another. My alarm bells were deafening.

“Don't,” I called, not sure why. Surely neither of these women—Sulis of the golden curls and perhaps Aphrodite's missing nymph with the darker hair—were in any condition to harm him, but as he reached them, something whipped out from beneath the one bed and grabbed Apollo around both ankles, yanking his feet out from under him.

He cried out as he toppled toward the other bed, about to, literally, fall on his sword. I lurched forward to catch him, knowing I'd be too late, when a shriek from behind warned me of my own danger. I whirled, instinctively raising my xiphos to ward off an on-rushing blow. A cartoonishly large kitchen knife caught on the cross guard of my blade just before it would have buried itself in my neck.

I forced my gaze past it and looked beyond…straight into the crazed eyes of my client.

“Jessica!” I cried, shocked.

She answered with a snarl that sounded anything but human, crushed my hand around my hilt with her free hand and ripped loose her kitchen knife, swinging her freed blade for my gut. I tried to leap back, but she held me there with that hand bruising mine, and I only managed to get enough distance to lessen the depth of the slash, but the sharp pain in my abdomen and the sudden heat of gushing blood shouted that I hadn't done enough. I whipped the dagger from my waistband, now doubly armed, and slashed it at her knife hand as she pulled back for another attack.

I felt my blade slice, and took instant advantage of her reaction by pressing my trapped hand and xiphos toward her. She was prepared for me to try to yank the blade free, not to swing for her and she wasn't able to adjust quickly enough. I twisted as I pushed so that if I hit her it would be with the blunt of the blade rather than the edge. She was
my client
and clearly not herself. I didn't want to kill her. It wouldn't do good things for my professional reputation or my conscience.

The blunt of the xiphos struck her dead center of the forehead, and her eyes seemed to roll up to look, but I hadn't hit her hard enough to knock her out. Not with her own hand still crushing my fingers to the hilt.

I didn't wait for her to recover, but jammed my foot down hard on her instep, whirled around, torquing to the side so her hand and body would have to move in unnatural ways that would put her off balance if she wanted to stay with me. She let go instead, which was what I'd been hoping for. I finished my spin, coming full circle and slashing the blade down toward her calves. Hoping for hamstrings or her Achilles' heel, willing to settle for anything that took her down.

But she wasn't where I'd expected her to be. She danced back and now held her knife in front of her like a street fighter, the look on her face just as feral.

“Jessica,” I said sharply, trying to break through her Set-induced fog. “Jessica, this is Tori. I'm here to help. Don't—”

She ran at me, stabbing with her knife, going for my center of mass. I jumped back, but there was no space to maneuver in the small room, and I didn't want to trip over Apollo, who was fighting his own battle, kicking and flailing, but seeming as reluctant as I was to use his blade. I thought I heard him call, “Thalia!” but I couldn't spare the attention to look. Anyway, it couldn't be.
Couldn't.

Dammit, there was not going to be any reasoning with Jessica. I waited for her crazed gaze to meet mine again and yelled, “Freeze!”

She stopped dead, not so much as a twitch to her snarl. I didn't wait to see if she'd shake herself out of it. If chaos could trump paralysis with her as it had with her brothers. I quickly stepped behind her and cold-cocked her with the hilt of my blade. She dropped like a stone and I whirled to help Apollo.

His upper body was still free, but some slasher film version of Thalia had climbed her way up his legs from the ankles she'd grabbed to his thighs, her face now level with some very sensitive spots.

Apollo had called on the force of the sun, which burned straight through the lowered shades of the room's solo window and were focused on Thalia's back as though she was an ant and someone outside held the mother of all magnifying glasses. I could see the smoke rising from her skin, but she didn't appear even to notice. Her hands were covered in blood, which made me wonder whether she'd opened the other women's chests with her bare hands…but then I noticed that her red carpet dress itself was laid open at the chest. Blood covered the skin and the fabric that now hung in shreds and yet…and yet, she still lived. Moved, anyway. But she, like Jessica, was not herself.

I walked over and brained her like I had Jessica, feeling terrible about it. I could only hope I hadn't given either of them a concussion, but at the moment, it seemed the least of their problems.

“My hero,” Apollo said with no discernible resentment at being rescued by a woman.

“It was my turn,” I said with a shrug.

I helped him roll Thalia off his body and then crouched down to study her. The huge gash in her chest was bloody, but no longer raw. Already the skin at the edges showed signs of reknitting, the scars pink and raised. But in the midst of the wound itself, something caught the bright stream of sunlight just as Apollo shut it down.

“Wait!” I said. “I mean, don't burn her, but can you kind of shine a beam right at her chest.”

I realized how that sounded the second it was out of my mouth, but neither of us made a joke of it. The light hit something again, and held there. I leaned in, careful not to overshadow her, and… I started to reach for the spot.