Dead on Delivery (10 page)

I patted her on her bony back and went to check on Ted, who was sprawled on our futon couch, clutching the remote and flipping through channels. “How you doing, big guy?” I touched his forehead and was relieved to find it back to a close-to-normal temperature.

“Fine. I think if I keep my sleeve pulled down, no one will even see the bandage tomorrow.” He smiled up at me. Unbelievable. I manage to get the guy bitten by a Mexican demon dog and he still smiles at me. Let’s not forget: he loves me. He actually said it. Out loud. Maybe we didn’t get to finish the conversation, what with the whole attack of the demon dog and everything, but I wasn’t going to forget what he’d said anytime soon. It would make a wonderful story to tell our children.

Children? Egad! What was I thinking? Next thing you knew I was going to be doodling my name as
Mrs. Ted Goodnight
on my notebook and mooning over bridal magazines.

“When do you have to be at work?” I asked, instead. Stay focused on the here and now. Be pragmatic.

“Not until seven tomorrow morning. How about you?”

“I’ve got to go in tonight.” A thought occurred to me. “Hey. How did you end up in Elmville anyway? I thought you had to work.”

He looked up at me and smiled. “I traded with Jimmy. He was looking for a way to get out of going to his wife’s cousin’s wedding anyway. Call it a mutual favor.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you were there.” I sat down on the couch next to him and searched those pretty blue eyes for an answer.

“I told you. I don’t like coincidences.” He looked back at the television. The Kings were getting spanked by the Lakers. It wasn’t that interesting. I shut off the TV.

“Hey!” he protested. “I was watching that.”

“No, you weren’t. You were avoiding me.”

He turned the full force of his gaze on me and I shivered a little. “I knew you weren’t telling me something, so I wanted to check it out myself. I figured the kid’s memorial service would be a good place to start. I’m guessing you were doing the same thing. Now can I watch the game?”

“Not here. I have to work. I’ll give you a ride home on my way to the hospital.”

I STILL WORKED TWO OR THREE NIGHT SHIFTS A WEEK AT Sacramento County Hospital as a receiving clerk in the Emergency Department. I wasn’t quite ready to put all my eggs in the dojo basket, plus I got a pretty groovy array of benefits, even as a part-timer.

The work was boring and repetitive. It brought me into contact with some of the most outrageous elements of the underbelly of the city—the truly crazy and dispossessed wander through big city emergency rooms in the wee hours of the morning. The hours were brutal and my coworkers were often surly. Is it any wonder I couldn’t bring myself to quit? It was my kind of place.

Tonight was relatively quiet. Sundays often were. Most of the city got their yayas out on Friday and Saturday night. Still, we had one guy who’d been picked up drunk as a skunk while waving a broken bottle around and threatening anyone who came near him, a guy who’d been stabbed in the neck with a fork by his girlfriend while they made dinner plus a little old lady with chest pains. I desperately wanted to know what the guy did to get his girlfriend to stab him with a fork, but no one seemed to know and he wasn’t talking. I’d see if Ted had heard anything later.

Around two A.M., I ran into Alex in the hallway. He handed me the keys to Ted’s truck. “Everything’s delivered, safe and sound.”

“Thanks. Who helped drive?”

“Paul. I figured Ted would trust him with his truck.”

I nodded. “So I guess Paul was glad to see you, then.”

Alex raised one eyebrow. “Any particular reason?”

I shrugged. “I’m not sure. He made some comment about you not coming around McClannigan’s lately when Ted and I were in there the other night. He seemed unhappy about it.” Actually he’d seemed worried, but I wasn’t sure if Alex would want to hear that.

“Is our faithful puppy dog lonely?” Alex made a face.

“You know he hates it when you refer to him as a dog.” I walked through the door and back toward my cubicle.

Alex chuckled. “That’s why I do it.”

Maybe the odd nature of Paul and Alex’s friendship made it take the form of a lot of poking at each other’s sore spots. Or maybe that was just a guy thing. I’d certainly watched my brother and his friends trade insults the way girls traded compliments. I was hard-pressed to say whether I didn’t understand their relationship because of their supernatural statuses or simply because they had penises.

My friendship with either one of them? Way beyond improbable. They were both good-looking strong men, with the added bonus that they knew what and who I was. That made them very attractive. The domination and control thing? Very difficult for me to take on my best days and I don’t have all that many best days.

I sat down at my desk and Alex settled on my desk. “He asked after you, said you hadn’t been around lately. Found a new and fresher hunting ground?”

Alex made a show of inspecting his fingernails. I wasn’t buying it. Alex was the cleanest vampire I knew. I don’t know what it is about drinking blood that makes someone think they no longer have to wash their hair, but based on purely anecdotal evidence, they did precisely that. Not Alex, though. His hair is never greasy, although he did look a little paler than usual. Anyway, he’d more likely have a heartbeat than grime under his nails. “I wouldn’t say that. I’m trying something new, though.”

“Care to share?” I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that.

“Nope.” He didn’t meet my eyes.

“Well, okay then.” I knew when I’d been dismissed.

He started to get up and then settled back down on my desk. “What’s your next step?”

It was an excellent question. I thought about the box that I’d found under Neil Bossard’s bed. I wasn’t exactly sure what it was or who might have made it, but I knew someone who might be able to help. “Research,” I said.

He slid a lock of my hair back behind my ear, leaving a cool tingle in the trail of his fingertips. “Good. How much trouble can you get into doing research?”

 

 

I FELL INTO BED THE SECOND I GOT HOME, BARELY GRUNTING at Norah as I walked past her in the kitchen. She was brewing tea and humming. It seemed like progress, but I was too damned tired to bother to investigate it.

At around ten thirty, I woke. I looked at the clock and groaned. The alarm wasn’t set to go off until noon. I don’t need much sleep—a boon of being a Messenger—but I did need some. I lay back on my pillow and shut my eyes, willing sleep to come swallow me up again.

As I stilled my breathing and began to drift, I heard a faint scratching sound in the living room. I stiffened, then tried to relax again. Maybe it had just been a branch scraping against a window or the sound of something on the street.

No. There it was again. A definite scratching noise accompanied by a snuffling. Whatever was making the noise was breathing and I was pretty sure it was in my living room.

Slowly, slowly, slowly I sat up in my bed and slid from beneath the covers. Without a noise, I stood. I can be very quiet when I want to be and I wanted to be super-silent now. I waited a few seconds, letting my breathing still. There wasn’t much I could do about the fluttering of my heart. Adrenaline does that. I didn’t know for sure that I was under attack yet, but sneaky sounds in my living room did not bode well.

I wasn’t crazy about meeting whatever was waiting out there while wearing nothing but a pair of panties and a camisole top, but I wasn’t going to stop and get dressed either. I looked around the room for a handy weapon. My eyes lit on my kendo stick. It was light, maneuverable. A good choice when you didn’t know what you were facing. I sniffed the air and caught a slight animal smell. I didn’t think that whatever was out there was human, yet I didn’t have the tingling in my skin that I should have felt if it was supernatural either.

Luckily, I hadn’t shut the door to my room all the way and was able to ease it open without a telltale click of tongue and latch. I stayed tucked behind it, back against the wall, looking over my shoulder into the hallway.

Nothing. I stayed still and listened. Was that the sound of a claw clicking against our hardwood floors?

Once I entered the hallway, I’d be exposed. I wasn’t thrilled about that, but I didn’t see that I had much choice. I wasn’t going to spend the morning pressed up against the walls of my room, waiting for whatever was in my living room to head this way. I didn’t have that much patience.

I eased into the hallway. I didn’t want to linger there. I wouldn’t have much room to fight if whatever it was attacked me in that space. I certainly wouldn’t be able to swing my kendo stick with full movement, making it an even less effective weapon. Nor did I want to rush the living room without a little more information, either.

I made my way down the hall, pressed up against the wall as quickly and silently as I could. As I got closer, the animal smell got stronger. I breathed shallowly through my mouth.

I glanced quickly into the living room and drew back. Damn. A cadejo. This time, a real one, with goat-like cloven hooves and a chain draped around it. It would be harder to kill than the animal/ demon hybrid that Ted had taken out the day before, but it could still be done.

I glanced into the living room again, peeking quickly around the corner. The cadejo’s head was up and alert. I wondered if it was here to avenge the death of the other dog. Perhaps this was the demonic father of the one we’d already killed. Fantastic. Mexican demon dogs bent on revenge. Just what I needed.

It still seemed unaware of my presence. Perhaps I could use the element of surprise to my advantage. If I could quickly jam the kendo stick into its mouth and then use the same maneuver Ted had to break its neck, maybe I could have this thing polished off before it even fully registered I was in the room. Not to brag, but I am that fast. When you’re getting ready to fight a demon dog in your living room, it is not the time for false modesty.

I turned the stick so it was horizontally across my chest and hurled myself into the room. I rushed the cadejo. Its head came up and its jaws opened. I jammed the stick deep into the creases of its mouth, screaming as I went.

I pushed down and back, but the cadejo bunched its hindquarters and leapt, sending me flying backwards. I hit the ground on my shoulders and did a quick back somersault onto my feet, kendo stick still in front of me.

The cadejo and I circled each other, each looking for an opening. I didn’t like the intelligence I could see sparking in its eyes. This was no dumb dog. This animal had cunning.

It leapt at me, snarling, saliva dripping from its fangs. I swung the stick and knocked the cadejo away. I kept the stick twirling, smacking the dog on its sensitive snout and ears as I advanced on it. It backed away, trying to get enough distance to launch another attack at my throat. I kept crowding it so it wouldn’t have the space.

Finally, I had it backed into the corner. Luckily, not the one where we kept the television. I rammed the stick down into its mouth again and lunged forward.

Behind me, the door to the apartment opened. “Melina!” Sophie screamed.

I couldn’t turn, but my focus flickered. The cadejo pushed forward and then . . . disappeared.

I sprang backward. Where had it gone?

I whirled. Sophie stood in the doorway, Ben behind her. Both of them stared at me, their eyes wide and their jaws a bit slack.

“Where did it go?” I demanded. “Did you see where it went?” Just because I couldn’t see the threat didn’t mean it wasn’t still there. That was a lesson I’d had to learn a few times before it sunk all the way in. I whirled again. The living room wasn’t that big. There weren’t that many places to hide. It had to be here somewhere.

“Where what went?” Sophie took a step into the apartment. “What are you talking about?”

“The cadejo,” I said, then realized she might not know what that was. “The big dog-like thing I was fighting. Did you see where it went?”

Ben took a few steps into the apartment now, too. “There wasn’t a big dog-like thing, Melina. There wasn’t anything.”

“Very funny, wise guy.” I continued to turn, trying to use all my senses to relocate the cadejo. I’d never heard of one vanishing like that, but it wasn’t like I was a total cadejo expert or anything.

“He’s not making a joke,” Sophie said. “There wasn’t anything here. There was just you with the kendo stick in the corner.”

“No big dog with goat hooves?” I turned now to look at Sophie, right in her big hazel eyes.

“No big dog. No goat hooves.” She looked me right back in the eyes and answered with no hesitation.

“Just me in the corner with the kendo stick looking like a lunatic in my underwear?” I was beginning to understand the total looks of horror on both their faces.

“Pretty much.” Ben bobbed his head.

“And you’re not in school right now because . . . ?” I’d heard asking leading questions was a good technique with teens.

“Of a teacher in-service day,” they said in unison.

Whatever the hell that meant.

“And you guys showed up because . . . ?”

Ben sat down on the edge of the couch. “We heard yelling and crashing and thought you might need help.”

Well, wasn’t that just the understatement of the day.