Death's Avatar (The Descent Series) (10 page)

Elise paused by the Ramirezes’ gate. She
glanced up at Lucinde’s window, half-covered in a heavy drape. As
she watched, a hand came up to jerk it closed.

“You’re welcome,” she muttered. Elise turned
on her car, cranked the radio, and pulled out of the
cul-de-sac.

In the bushes between the Ramirezes’ house
and their neighbor’s, an earless gray creature crouched in the
shadow of the tree watching Elise's car pull away. A small tongue
darted out of its mouth to lick its leathery lips.

It blinked, dedicating Elise's face to
memory, and vanished.

An excerpt from
DREAMS OF GRAY
by Maurice
Lawless

Waking up naked was
usually
a
good
thing for me. It meant I'd had a
particularly nice night dancing at the club, followed by a little
horizontal dancing with a cute guy (or girl, if I’m
really
drunk). I usually wake up content, warm, and relatively unharmed.
So maybe I'd have to pluck my bra off the ceiling fan and sneak out
without waking up my friend-for-an-evening. It was all par for the
course.

But waking up cold, wet, and dirty was new.
I’d never had to pick leaves and mud out of my hair before, and
this was the first time I had to wander aimlessly through a damp
forest for most of the day before I figured out where I was. I ran
barefoot and bare-assed from bushes to trees to random parked cars
and climbed into my apartment through the bedroom window to avoid
being caught without a stitch to my name.

It was one hell of a way to start the
week.

I skipped work that day—big surprise, right?
Something about waking up naked in the woods two miles from my
place really makes me drag. It took me a solid hour to scrub off
the caked mud and leaves, and that wasn't mentioning the freak-out
that followed realizing I'd joined the ranks of the heavily
inked.

I sure as
hell
should've remembered
how I got that tattoo. It took up my entire goddamn back! It looked
like some weird cross between runes and a tribal armband a meathead
might get on a date, and it ran from the tops of my shoulders to
the small of my back.

It didn’t make sense. I'd never liked
needles. They had to pretty much sedate me growing up whenever I
needed a shot. Sedative before the sedative in some cases. What
could I say? I was a biter. I’d never set foot inside a tattoo
parlor, much less sat through the hours—no, days—it would take to
get that amount of ink put on. It didn’t even feel tender, and I’m
pretty sure I wasn’t unconscious for a month while it healed.

After my shower, I took another look at my
back. There were six runes, staggered in two rows of three. The
intricate patterns surrounding the runes looked more like something
you’d see on a Scottish coat of arms.

Looking too closely made me shiver, and I
was sickened to see the tattoo shiver with me. This was a part of
my skin now. It would take months of painful laser treatments—and
permanent scars—to get it off, and I couldn’t even remember how it
got there.

I covered the evidence with a towel and
retreated to my bedroom. I don’t remember much after that. I
must've fallen asleep because my phone woke me up. The ring was
"Highway to Hell”, which meant it was my only friend at work: Peggy
Jane Mackenzie, or PJ, as she preferred.

I reached for my phone, still mostly asleep.
It took a few tries to hit the answer button.

“Hello?”

“This is your 7:30 wake up call. You coming
over or what?”

I looked at my clock radio. “Oh crap. Sorry.
Yeah, just let me get dressed.”

“Someone over there I should know
about?”

PJ was very open about her sex life.
Too
open. She expected the same amount of details from me
and was constantly disappointed.

“No. I was just more tired than I thought.
Nodded off.”

“Well, get dressed and get over here. Or
skip the first part. Might make the drive more interesting.”

“Whatever. See you in a bit.”

I rolled over and looked at the ceiling,
then down at myself. I was still naked. Save the occasional weekend
delight, I generally slept in something. I get cold easily.

Not only was I less shocked than I should've
been with everything in the open, I was actually warm. I pulled on
panties, jeans, and a top, and when I went to check the thermostat,
it read what it always did: 75. It felt ten degrees above that. I
made a mental note to call the office and get the dial fixed.

I looked at myself
in the mirror on the way out, and then I sighed and went back to
change my top. My usual ones showed too much of my neck. I wasn’t
ready to breech the subject of the ink with PJ. I settled on the
same top with a light jacket that had a collar. It would have to
do.

PJ answered the door
in
jean shorts and a halter top. Her curly red locks were
cinched up behind her head in a bundle that looked close to
bursting.

“Hey, ho.”

She’d already started the movie, and her
coffee table was cluttered with a wide array of snack foods. Most
were frozen dairy products, sweating sweet rings onto the bills and
junk mail beneath.

“Hit me, girl,” I said, and I settled onto
the couch.

She handed me a spoon like a surgical nurse
might pass a scalpel. I stabbed the nearest pint.

“You cold or something? I’m burning up
today. Cute jacket though.”

She noticed. Crap.

I tried to let it slide. It worked for about
half an hour, which is when my back tickled from a dripping bead of
sweat. I finally gave in to the urge to shuck the jacket.

PJ was enraptured by Russell Crowe on the
screen, feet tucked under her and hair (now free of the clip)
spilling out in a wild, bloody spray behind her. I sighed.
Hopefully, she’d be too drunk or tired to notice black vines
visible on the back of my neck.

PJ got up and shuffled forward to the
kitchen, and I stood up and stretched. She whistled a cat-call.

“You slut!”

I’d stretched facing away from the kitchen
and gave her a clear shot of the very thing I’d been hiding all
day. Smooth move, Ex-Lax. “What?”

“Don’t play coy with me, whore. I saw that
tramp stamp. When did you get it?”

My face probably matched her hair at this
point. PJ was already back in the living room, and seriously
invading my personal space.

“Come on, strip. I want to see.”

Before I knew it, she was hiking my shirt
up. My whole back was quickly bare to her scrutiny. I heard her
gasp. “Oh shit.”

I wrestled my shirt back down and retreated
to the far end of the couch. My eyes welled up, and my cheeks
heated to the point of boiling. But PJ wasn’t looking at me at all.
A strangely confused expression gave way to her sly smile.

“I had no idea you were such a freak, Dree.
That’s hot.”

I laughed in spite of myself, even as I
looked away so she wouldn’t see the warm stream of tears.

“When did you get it done?” she asked. “And
how the hell did you keep it a secret?”

I didn’t want to tell her. I didn’t want to
tell anyone. I wanted to quietly endure the pain and scars and get
it erased. Return to normalcy. She sat close to me, and her face
went serious.

“What’s wrong, Dree?”

I collapsed into her, and she wrapped her
arms around my shoulders. Somewhere between my sobs, I said, “I
don’t remember.”

That snapped PJ back to herself. “What the
fuck, Dree? That’s one holy fuck of a hangover if you don't
remember a back mural!”

I withdrew and rubbed my face dry. “Really,
PJ. I don’t remember how I got it.”

I recounted my morning to her. She smiled
faintly at my description of running back home naked, but at the
end, she was all business.

“We need to get you checked out. Do a rape
kit or something. Maybe they slipped you a roofie.”

“You really think so?”

“Fuck yeah I do. Whatever they knocked you
out with must have been pretty damn strong to take your memory
and
keep you from punching their lights out. I know how much
you hate needles.”

She was already up and milling around the
apartment looking for her keys.

“PJ, I—I’d rather just move on, you know? So
I had a bad bender of a weekend and woke up in the woods. I don’t
feel like I was raped or anything. I’m fine. Not a bruise.”

Saying that dumped a whole new set of
awkward questions into my head. Why
didn’t
I have any
bruises, or scratches, at least? I’d slogged through a forest naked
and broken into my apartment, for God’s sake. It’s a wonder I
didn’t look like a prize fighter.

“Bullshit, you’re coming, and I’ll have them
strap you down if necessary. We’re getting to the bottom of
this.”

She didn’t wait to hear my answer; she
snagged my arm and dragged me bodily all the way to the nearest
emergency clinic.

An hour later, I
sat
awkwardly in a gown on the exam table. The butcher paper
crinkled under my bare ass. I would have been mortified if I
weren’t convinced somewhere in my head that this was a bad dream,
and I’d wake up in my own bed with one motherfucker of a hangover
and a back as pale and unmarked as the day I was born.

The doctor came in and PJ laid into him.
“About fucking time you sauntered in!”

I shushed her with a wave, and she sat down,
but she continued to glare at him.

The doctor seemed more interested in my
clipboard than me.

“All right, Miss-“

“Dree. Call me Dree.”

“Okay, Dree. In a minute, I'll have a nurse
come in and examine you. We need to document everything, you
understand?”

“I do.” I turned to PJ. “I'll be okay. Could
you wait outside?”

She gave the doctor an appraising look that
told him she found him wanting, and then she left. The doctor sat
on a stool and finally looked me in the eyes.

“How far we go is completely up to you. We
can treat you for injuries and not do a kit. I would recommend you
get an STD panel, but anything more is entirely your choice.”

I seriously considered telling him I just
wanted to go home. Maybe take a sleeping pill or something. I’d had
a long day.

But what if PJ was right? What if they did
rape me?

“No,” I sighed, “it’s probably best to go
ahead and do it.”

“Okay. I’ll come back when it’s done and
check on you.”

I nodded. He left and was replaced by a
short Hispanic woman in scrubs She carried a tackle box in one
hand, and a small digital camera in the other.

There really wasn’t anything to document.
Aside from the ink, there wasn’t a mark on me. I told her about the
woods and my trip back to the apartment, but I left out the part
about the tattoo.

She seemed disappointed when I told her I’d
showered twice since then, but she tried to get something from my
fingernails and hair anyway. She probed a few other less pleasant
areas as well.

She treated me like a victim. I guess, in
her eyes, I was.

“Okay, Dree, we need to get some blood now
to do a few tests on it. Is that all right?”

My heart rate immediately sped up. “I’m—a
little jumpy around needles. You might want to restrain me before
you poke.”

She smiled indulgently. “No problem. Lie
back for me.”

As I lay on the table, she fiddled with
something on the side. An extension with a Velcro strap pulled out,
and she secured my arm on it.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Is there one on the other side?” I asked.
“I’ve decked people before. Nothing personal, understand. I can’t
really control it.”

She paused, gave it some thought, and ended
up securing my other arm on another extension. I lay there like a
crucifixion victim and stared at the ceiling.

“How strong are those straps?”

She laughed a little. “I’ve seen big, burly
men kick and scream and not get out. You’re probably fine.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath and looked
away.

She dabbed my arm with disinfectant, and I
shut my eyes. I tried to think of anything other than sharp, pointy
things going into my flesh. I failed miserably.

My vision went bright white the moment she
stuck the needle in. When the white faded, I was on the floor in
PJ’s lap. My arm was sore, and my gown was covered with blood.

“Wha—?”

“Jesus, Dree. You’re a hell of a fighter
with those needles. I would have come sooner, but I thought someone
had shot a dog. ”

I saw the nurse nearby, unconscious and
bleeding from her temple. Doctors and nurses rushed around the
cramped exam room. I felt an immediate and jarring sense of
responsibility and said a little too loudly, “I’m sorry! I told her
I don’t like needles.”

The rest of what I said was lost in sobs
against PJ’s chest. It was only then that I realized I wasn’t
moving right.

“Why can’t I move my arms?” I asked.

I heard a loud rip, followed by two heavy
metallic thumps, and my arms were free again.

Jesus, I’d ripped the extensions right off
the chair! How did that happen?

I pulled my arms in close to my chest, and
PJ ran her hands through my hair. She rocked me like a child.

“Shh…it’s gonna be fine, Dree. Just take
some deep breaths.”

PJ eventually coaxed me into the next exam
room and I was coherent enough to let them sedate me before they
took blood. It wasn’t what I’d call a unanimous decision.

“It’s necessary, David,” one doctor said.
“Just do it.”

“She’s barely a hundred pounds! Too much
could kill her,” the other protested.

They probably thought they were being
discreet, talking a good hundred feet from my room. I heard them
just fine. It didn’t seem strange at the time.