Blood on the Bayou (8 page)

No, not the world. The truck. They’re lifting a
two-ton
truck off its wheels. They’re trying to tip me over.

I whip my head toward the other window to see water rising all the way to the side of the road. The bayou’s deep here. If the truck flips, it’s going to sink until it’s submerged. Then I’ll have two choices: stay in the cab until it fills with water and I drown, or get out and make a run for the iron gate.

I’ll never make it. There’s no way. It’s like I was thinking in my dream last night. If enough of this swarm decides to bite me, I’ll bleed to death and immunity won’t matter.

“It was just a dream,” I shout as I hit the gas pedal. The truck rolls forward on its two right wheels, but the fairies don’t miss a beat. They fly alongside, pushing hard enough that the Rover’s center of gravity begins to shift. I slam on the brakes, surprising enough of the Fey that the left side dips back toward the ground.

Last night might have been a dream, but this is real. I’m not hallucinating the two tons of steel shifting
and rocking around me. There’s no way the truck could be moving except—

“Me!” I shout, hope exploding in my chest like a firework. I can move things with my mind. I must be doing this. I must be hallucinating the fairies and—

The Land Rover lurches to the right and the fairies scream in anticipation of their victory and there’s no more time left for coming to logical conclusions. I force fear away and lash out. The part of my brain I’ve come to associate with supernatural phenomenon sparks to life, humming and sizzling, making the place where brain meets spinal cord hot enough for sweat to break out on the back of my neck.

I imagine the wheels moving back toward the ground, the truck righting itself, and for a second, I think it’s going to work. I’m moving in the right direction, I’m taking control. But then I see him—the old fairy, hovering behind the rest, his angry raisin face barely visible through the crush of wings and tiny fingers pressed tight to the glass. He lifts his arms and let’s out a series of barks that summon a round of howls from his army.

Suddenly I
know
this isn’t a hallucination. That old geezer is real. So is his army, and so is the death waiting for me as soon as the truck rolls over.

The fairies surge forward with renewed strength and the truck is going, going, going, and I know there’s no way I’m going to stop it and I’m already bracing myself for the impact with the water when the thought whips through my head.

The fairies. If you can’t move the truck, stop the fairies.

I talked Stephanie’s lungs back together. If I can heal; I can also hurt.

I lean into the window, pressing my hands against the glass, feeling the heat from all those burning Fey fingers against mine, and send everything I have out into the swarm. I imagine my energy spreading like poison gas, seeping into their bones, turning them to jelly. Visions of limp, useless arms and wings shoot from my mind, and before I have time to wonder if my last-ditch effort is going to be good enough, they’re dropping like feral, toothy flies.

Screeches become squeals of pain and the hands glued to the glass fall away.

Plop. Plop, plop, plop-plop-popalop-plop.

Dozens hit the dirt and the shoving comes to an abrupt stop as the fairies still left alive flee into the bayou. Still, for a moment, it seems my reprieve has come too late. The Rover teeters on two wheels—caught between upright and up and over—while my heart leaps in my throat and my thoughts jerk from the fairies back to the vehicle just in time.

Down! Down!

The truck slams back to the ground with enough force to send me bouncing into the ceiling. My head hits with a crack and my teeth knock together and I taste blood, but it tastes amazing because I’m alive and whole and then my hands are on the wheel and my foot is on the accelerator and I’m peeling down the gravel road so fast that by the time I get up the
guts to look in the rearview mirror, I can’t see anything but my own dust.

But I’d be able to see the fairy glow through the haze. If they were following me, I’d know about it. I’m safe. For now.

As safe as any person can be whose nightmares are coming true.

T
he bridge over the muddy Mississippi is the first smooth stretch of road. I hit the graying pavement and the rattle inside the truck becomes a high-pitched whine that threatens to kick my migraine into skull-shattering territory.

I know fairies can’t follow me onto a bridge made entirely of iron, but I don’t pull over. I grit my teeth and ignore the pain like I’ve ignored every terror-filled thought that’s raced through my mind since I left the turn in the road past Donaldsonville. I can’t think about how close I came to dying. I have to focus and get the information Hitch needs.

Then
I can start stressing about an army of fairies out to kill me and the insanity of dreaming something that came true and the throat-clutching fear that grips me every time I think about having to drive back the way I came.

I’ll have to. There’s no other way back to D’Ville. The only other bridge close by was blown up three years ago. The self-declared cotton baron of Louisiana—an immune man who took over several plantations
and the historic mansions on them after their owners died in the fairy emergence—destroyed it to get a leg up on his competition. Now, the only way to get cotton out of this part of Louisiana is via the river dock on Baron von Greedy’s property.

“Greed, greed, and more greed,” I mutter, narrowing my eyes as the dock’s main building comes into view.

The structure crouches in the shadow of a long vacant petrochemical plant and has a charming view of the barbed-wire fence the FCC installed on both sides of the river last year in hopes of deterring pirate attacks on the barges. But if you ignore the post-apocalyptic scenery, the facility is downright swanky. It’s about four thousand square feet, a three-story iron building with glass walls that sparkle in the sun. It’s big enough for half the town of Donaldsonville to live in, but houses only two men. I know the dudes who man the dock work long hours—punching in the commands for the robots who do all the loading and unloading of the ships that pass through—but do they deserve this kind of luxury? Simply because they won the immunity lottery?

It doesn’t seem right. But if the government didn’t pay the immune well, most of us would quit working for Uncle Sam and find someone willing to pay a better wage. There are independently owned companies doing business in the Delta, too, and they always need immune employees, especially ones who are qualified to do more than not get infected.

My premed degree has earned me cushy job offers
from several private research facilities. I’ve turned them all down. I’m too lazy for the long hours, and the salaries were scandalous. I didn’t see how anything I’d be doing would be worth millions of dollars per year. Most people don’t have that problem. I’m definitely in the minority when it comes to feeling bad about scarfing down more than my fair share simply because I can get away with it.

It’s too easy to get away with it these days. With so many people dead and 95 percent of the fairy-infested states living in mortal fear, the immune can get away with murder.

Maybe even literally, in this case.

I wonder if the dock workers know that their black-market dealings led to at least one person’s death. I wonder if they would care if they did. After all, isn’t one life an acceptable price to pay when it comes to getting rich and living large?

“One life.” My foot eases off the gas and inspiration strikes like a Zeus-hurled lightning bolt to my brain.

Hitch’s friend wasn’t some random murder. He was killed because he knew too much. He was a threat that had to be eliminated for the safety of whatever shady business is going down in the cave, a threat serious enough for the high-ranking FBI traitor in charge to risk exposure to take him out.

To date, scientific observations of the Fey have shown them to be nonverbal, antisocial creatures incapable of complex thought. But what if that’s a smoke screen? What if the little bastards are way
smarter than we’ve given them credit for? What if they’ve been hiding in plain sight, using the fact that we underestimate them to their advantage, secretly planning some kind of fairy uprising?

If so, what humans don’t understand about them would be the fairies’ biggest strength. They wouldn’t tip their hand unless they had a very good reason, a serious threat that had to be eliminated.

Like, say, an immune woman with the ability to take them out with a thought.

Holy shit.
I’ve been so busy trying not to think, I’ve missed the single most important aspect of what went down on the road.

The fairies lost. I beat them, with a highly effective, nontoxic weapon that might be able to succeed where chemical companies have failed. So far, the only pesticides capable of killing the Fey are deadly to everything else—humans, animals, even plants and trees. The Fey are crazy hard to kill, damned near indestructible.

But maybe they’re not. And maybe they know it.

And maybe they’re willing to risk revealing their true intelligence in the name of eliminating a person who could maybe—just maybe—take care of the Delta’s fairy problem once and for all.

Holy crapping shit crap.

Could I? Could I really? The fairies by the truck looked dead when they fell, but even if they weren’t, they were definitely incapacitated. I could have gathered them up in an iron box while they were passed out. I could go out into the bayou and keep stunning
and gathering until they’re gone. All of them. Until every adult is captured or killed and every egg sac collected. Until, someday, it might finally be safe for people to walk outside the iron gates again.

Hope hits me in the gut, so fierce it’s painful.

We’ve all spent so many years thinking there’s no going back, that we have to live with the constant undercurrent of terror because there’s nothing that can be done. But maybe there is, maybe—

“Stop the truck!” An amplified voice shouts. I look up to see a man with a megaphone. And a mean-looking rifle. “I’ll shoot!”

I’m so wrapped up in my thoughts that—by the time I spot him—I’m almost on top of him. I slam on the brakes, but I don’t know if it’s going to make a difference. He might still decide to shoot me. I can read the temptation in the twitchy eye peering down the barrel of his gun.

Jin-Sang, my boss at FCC headquarters in Baton Rogue, is a douche canoe. He’s also a religious fanatic, a control freak, a tight-ass teetotaler, suffers from a severe case of OCD, a superiority complex, and misuses the English language in a fashion that should be criminal in someone who thinks he’s so much better than everyone else.

In addition to his many faults, he’s also responsible for my monthlong suspension from work, despite the fact that Stephanie—Hitch’s fiancée and the FBI agent in charge of my review—recommended I be reinstated with a warning.

To put it mildly, Jin-Sang and I are not best buddies. In fact, I think I could come to
hate
Jin-Sang if I had the energy to walk around hating people I don’t see every day. So to say that I’m surprised to hear him reaming the dock agent who held the gun on me via speakerphone is an understatement.

“This is unacceptable! Agent Lee is a valuable association of our team. Disrespect her further, and there will be the supreme high price for your payment. Supreme!” There’s enough heat in his tone to make the agent slumping behind the desk flinch.

A little.

Ferret Face, as I’ve dubbed him—because his pointy nose, rodent teeth, and shaggy brown hair are ferretlike, and because he didn’t bother telling me his name before shoving me through an oversized garage and into his second-floor office with the business end of his rifle—isn’t super responsive to stimuli. Judging from the glassy eyes and slightly slurred speech when he demanded I call my boss and prove I’m FCC, I’m guessing he’s stoned.

Which is
really
comforting in someone who’s pointing a gun at your forehead.

“He’s still got the gun, Jin-Sang.” I try to sound as bored as Ferret Face looks. I’ve met his type before. With a man like him, apathy is power.

“Down your weapon quick time! Super quick time!” Jin-Sang’s English is deteriorating rapidly. It’s as if he actually
cares
whether or not I get killed.

Aw.

“Don’t bust a nut.” Ferret Face tips back in his chair,
summoning a groan from the springs as he leans the rifle against the bookcases behind him. “Sorry.”

His expression couldn’t be more flagrantly unapologetic. So much for finding a desperate, horny man willing to spill secrets in hopes of scoring with the first woman he’s seen in weeks. I’ll just have to hope the other guy shows up soon, and is in more of a welcoming mood.

“Sorry is inadequate,” Jin-Sang says. “You threatened Ms. Lee with a loaded weapon.”

“I never chambered a round.” FF yawns, showcasing a mouth full of yellow teeth. No wonder this guy is okay with living almost alone in the middle of nowhere. He’s repulsive.