Incubus (15 page)

“The Alchemist doesn't make servants out of vermin; he dines on them.”

Hicks curled his lip up at Meical and swaggered closer—close enough for Meical to see the glint in the little snake's eyes. The flushed face, the gleaming gaze, the bounce in Hicks's tread…he nearly floated off the ground with every step he took. But it couldn't be possible.

How many centuries had come and gone since the Alchemist had created a revenant? His staunch determination to guard the power in his veins was the one reassurance the vampire community had that he was still sane, unlike others who had lived longer than a millennium. Like every revenant, Hicks was now a dangerous weapon against vampires, a deadly hybrid with a human's imperviousness to the sun and whatever power and abilities his maker had bequeathed him. Even if Neshi had withheld most of his power from Hicks, it was madness to choose such a vessel for that kind of treasure.

Or was it?

Neshi never did anything without a reason. Hicks was somehow part of his endgame, here to serve a purpose in Neshi's plans for Meical, a purpose he could only serve as a revenant.

When the realization hit him, Meical smothered a
bitter laugh. This was Neshi's plan B. He'd said that pure human blood would kill Meical, but the blood of a new revenant was both human and that of his vampire creator. With that potent mix, Meical could survive to save Caroline.

But only until sunrise. This was what the succubus had meant when she said his second choice would mean his death. The Alchemist's fail-safe would be inescapable. But at least he would die as he lived. As a vampire.

It was just like Neshi to leave his wayward lab rat a morsel, something to tempt him to gnaw and claw his way out of his cage, even though it could end only in one way. It was no less than the proverbial “gentleman's way out”—a loaded pistol that provided an honorable death.

Hicks, then, was his loaded pistol.

He followed the revenant with his eyes. “I see you've been recruited. Congratulations. You have a stunning, if brief, existence to look forward to.”

Hicks pounded his chest with his fist. “No way. I'm going to live forever. He said so.”

Meical watched the beads of sweat on Hicks's face glint under the lantern light. “He lied.”

Hicks's face contorted with rage. “He wouldn't lie to me! He needs me. And after I'm finished helping him, I'll help myself—to anything I want. Nobody can stop me. Things are going to change around here.”

Meical gave his chains a subtle pull. He could feel them give way a little. At least some of his strength had
returned, thanks to the succubus's kiss. “If Neshi needed you, he would have made you an incubus like me.”

Hicks looked petulant. “He refused to.”

“That's because you're not cut out to replace me. But you make a useful slave.”

Grumbling to himself, Hicks came nearer. There was too much caution in his face, for Meical's comfort. He sank down on his haunches and leaned in close—but not close enough—and his face flushed red-blue with a sheen of new sweat. “I don't have to wait on him to give me what I want, freak. I can do whatever I want.”

“Except make an incubus out of yourself.”

Hicks eyed him with less confidence.

Meical closed his eyes and said no more. At the moment, the only thing keeping Hicks's greed in check was his spinelessness. That wouldn't last long. A revenant's natural inclination to test his limits would lead the idiot right over the edge.

 

“Ouch!”

Caroline gasped as she hit the hardwood floor. Rolling onto her back, she stared up at the shadowy vaulted ceiling of the living room in Millie's old family home.

She sat up with a wince and scowled at her prosthetic leg. One screwup like this while facing off with Burke, and she'd be dead. Her only hope was to stay out of his reach long enough to use his fear against him. And she couldn't do that on crutches.

The attic. That was her only high ground. She eyed the long stairway that rose from the living room upward
to the second story. There was a third story above that. And then the attic.

The last time she'd climbed stairs, she'd had both legs.

She'd have to slow Burke down, weaken him somehow, if those stairs were going to be as hard for him as they were for her.

Dragging herself to her feet, she held her hands out in front of herself and took a few careful steps, trying to ignore the pain in her swelling half-leg. It felt so weird to trust her weight to a foot she couldn't feel.

The sound of her cell phone ringing nearly made her fall again. So soon? She needed more time.

She plucked her phone from the table by the couch and answered it. “I'm here.”

“I must say,” Burke murmured, “you've chosen a strange place for us to do this. I'd have thought you'd want to spare your friends the heartache.”

He must have tailed her from John and Millie's cabin. Of course. He wouldn't risk losing her by letting her out of his sight for even a minute.

Time to sharpen her ax.

“No one comes out here,” she coaxed. “There will be no interference. Nothing to mar our moment. You've scanned the area by now. So you know I haven't got anyone watching for your arrival. No tricks. No surprises. Just you and me, Burke. One. On. One.”

Caroline was quick to pick up on the fleeting trace of fear in him. What chord had she struck? Was it the thought of being alone with her?

She tested him. “You aren't walking into an ambush.”

His fear morphed into icy rage, and his whisper sliced through her. “Better not be.”

Was that what he was afraid of? An ambush? She dug deep, absorbing the sickening fear that drenched him. She could practically feel him sweating. Trauma, old and deep, provoked the rage in him. She followed it to its source, to a memory from a time before Burke saw himself as someone powerful.

A little boy ran through a jungle, dodging rubber bullets. Faces covered with camouflage paint peered at him through the bushes as he ran past them. Guns rang out. A bullet nicked his ankle, and he screamed but ran on.

Caroline let the boy's terror suck her into the memory just long enough to catch a panted whisper of his thoughts, and then she recoiled from the scene as quickly as she could claw her way out of it.

She had a way to fight him now. “Trying to ambush you would be a mistake.”

“One you'd pay for.”

“Just like they made you pay for
your
mistakes.”

His silence was both scary and satisfying.

She pushed him. “Little boys who made mistakes were used for target practice, weren't they, Burke? You were fast enough to survive, so they let you live. Then they made you a killer.”

He was close to exploding, barely hanging on to his balance. “They made me a warrior, strong enough to deserve the right to live.”

“But you aren't strong. You depend on guns.
I don't.
I'm going to beat you my way.”

He recovered his composure way too quickly. “I don't know how you know these things about me, Caroline. You really understand me. I won't enjoy killing you.”

“But you never enjoy the killing. You have a panic attack seconds before you pull the trigger. Panic, pleasure and pain. Yours. Your victim's. It doesn't matter. It feels the same to you, and you crave it. But as much as you want to be powerful, you're not. You're just scared and angry.”

“You have until sundown. To show you how lenient I am and how fair I can be, I won't wear my night gear.”

“I tried to warn you. I won't kill you because I'm not like you. But I'm going to make you wish you were dead.”

Even as he laughed, Caroline felt the tendrils of fear twisting around his throat. She pressed the phone closer to her mouth and shoved her anger at him, “I'll be waiting for you.”

She slammed her cell phone down.

Sundown. What did that give her? Three hours? Maybe four? She glanced out a window and then at the mantel clock and eyed the stairs with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

She had to slow him down and make him feel vulnerable. That was the only way to make him susceptible to his fear.

She began by raiding the kitchen.

The pantry yielded a few canned vegetables, a cracked
glass vase and an empty fire extinguisher. The cabinets revealed two place settings of chipped china and some plastic forks. She rifled through the silverware drawers, hoping to find a carving knife. No luck.

But she did find a screwdriver, along with a rusty, Y-shaped cheese cutter missing its cutting wire, and a huge rubber band that still had some stretch to it.

Caroline dragged her finds into a heap in the kitchen floor. There was a garage out back. What would she find there?

Still wobbly, she half hopped, half stepped her way out the kitchen door and into the garage. The stench of old grease and rusty car parts assailed her nose, too similar to her memory of the basement where she'd nearly died.

Caroline fought for her control, shoving past the traumatic memories that flew at her. If she couldn't control her own emotions, how could she expect to control her adversary's? She had to keep her head, or she'd be paralyzed by fear.

She stepped into the smelly darkness and felt for a light switch on the wall. One bare bulb in the ceiling. Way too much like that basement had been. She slammed it off and clung to the wall, willing herself to breathe.

When she was sure of herself again, she explored, keeping her hands in front of her as she went along. A little sunlight shone in through greasy windows in the weathered double doors. This place was more like an old carriage house than a garage.

There was one car and a boat. She spent one precious hour going through them and returned to the kitchen
with her treasures: a pulley, a sizable coil of rope and a very dull ax. She eyed the ax blade for a long moment. The obvious possibilities ran through her mind.

But she'd meant what she said to Burke. She wouldn't kill him. She wouldn't stoop to his level. The only thing that made the difference tonight, between the hunter and the hunted, was her refusal to cross a line he'd erased long ago.

As she piled all her defenses on the kitchen floor and set to work, a twinge of animosity, mixed with hope, made her face flush hot.

Look out, Goliath.

T
he sun had all but gone. Burke cocked his rifle and proceeded up the driveway toward the house. He passed through a green-black tangle of shrubs that closed in on the yard and shuddered. The memory of rubber bullets whizzing overhead and hard gazes watching him from the trees drove him on.

As he crossed the yard, he schooled his mind to focus on the job at hand, and only that. But the trees seemed to be alive tonight. Watching him.

He mounted the porch. The door stood slightly ajar, welcoming him. That was cocky of her. Noise poured out of the house. He listened. It sounded as if she'd turned on every radio, stereo and TV she could reach. Smart. Being less than nimble, she wouldn't be very quiet on foot; hence, the noise pollution to cover the
sounds of her movements. She would put up a delicious fight.

Not that it would last long.

He walked forward, gripped the doorknob in his gloved hand and pushed the door open slowly. In the instant between training his eye on the dark interior of the house and hearing a scraping noise above his head, Burke realized he had underestimated Caroline.

A heavy metal object crashed down on his head, crushing the light out of his eyes and jarring him with pain. He staggered across the threshold and caught himself on a wall that kept turning sideways. Seeing double, he felt for the bleeding lump on his head, scowled at the fallen fire extinguisher at his feet and tried to adjust to his double vision and pitching stomach.

“Very good, Caroline,” he called out in the emptiness. “You've struck the first blow.”

No pain. No sickness. Move. Move. Carry out the mission. Find the target. Terminate her.

Burke proceeded unsteadily into the noisy, shadowy room. The place was oppressive. His chest felt as heavy as his pounding skull did. He swallowed and wiped the sweat from his upper lip as senseless dread unfurled in the pit of his stomach, leaving his limbs icy and heavy and unresponsive.

He hadn't felt this way since…

The terror that had ruled his childhood erupted inside him, setting his heart pounding. The room stifled him with his boyhood horrors. He turned his face toward the window and tried to breathe, tried to separate himself from his emotions as he'd been taught to do.

A board creaked in the darkness behind him. He turned and lashed out, felt his fist connect with a sinewy arm, as something sharp skidded from his ribs all the way down to his thigh. A gouging pain in his leg tore the breath from his lungs. What had she skewered him with?

As he collapsed to his knees, he felt her lithe little body tumble past him in the gathering grayness. A scuffling noise could barely be heard above the roar in his ears, and a hard jerk on his shoulder thrust his forehead to the floor. His gun was gone. Fear shook him again. His prey was armed.

Burke clamped his eyes and teeth shut as nausea swept over him. He waited for the shower of bullets from his semiautomatic. When she didn't fire on him, he lifted his head and looked around. He saw no sign of her.

Cursing, he felt along his wounded thigh. His groping fingers found the handle of a screwdriver. The rest of it was buried in his flesh. He yanked it out and fought to stay conscious.

She should have shot him when she had the chance. Her determination to play by her own rules would lead her right into his hands.

Burke slid his belt off, wrapped it around his bleeding leg and pulled it tight. Reaching into his flack vest, he pulled out a loaded M9 and pushed himself to his feet with a groan.

The curtain in the window across from him billowed in the night breeze. Burke approached the window carefully, dragging his leg as he moved. He nudged the
curtains aside with the tip of his pistol, expecting to see a hobbling figure retreating to the woods.

A shard of something sharp pelted him from behind. Whipping around, he ducked as another sliced his forehead. Turning that fast on his feet made his head spin again, and his stomach gurgled and pitched. The room duplicated itself in a sickly swirl of black and white and flying glass.

With a roar, he emptied his pistol in all directions, until the humiliation of her attack stopped. Looking around him, he scrutinized the best hiding places in the room. There was only one. The sofa near the front door.

Hiding herself in this room had been a serious error on her part. He had her trapped now. There was no way she could get past him. Let her have time to realize he'd pinned her down. For ordinary people, the shock alone usually immobilized them. No need to hurry now. She was his. He kept his gaze on the sofa while he reloaded and picked as much of the glass out of his back and shoulders as he could reach.

“You know, Caroline, usually when my target gives me this much trouble, even though I admire their stamina, I make them suffer for it when I catch up with them. But not you.” He took a breath, reveling in the power over her that his next words gave him. “If you give yourself up now, I can keep a promise I made to your father. I told him your death would be painless.”

Burke stalked to the sofa, thinking he'd find her huddling behind it, ready to beg for her life. He shoved it aside. She wasn't there. He staggered in a circle. There
were only three directions she could have gone. Out the front door, into the kitchen and up the stairs to the second floor.

He had never made the mistake of hemming himself in like that. If he had, they'd have hurt him for it.

The dread he had felt moments ago budded inside him again. For a moment the wallpaper on the walls seemed to resemble eyes watching him from forest greenery. It woke every ounce of caution he had. He wouldn't underestimate her again.

He scarcely heard the chopping noise and soft whir of movement over the sound of the blaring radio nearby. He turned in time to see Caroline rising into the darkness like an angel. He leaped toward her, but missed. She'd taken the high ground. Panic seized him. He'd expected a tearful, pleading Caroline to come forward and give herself up to him to save her father's life. Nothing moved above him. He couldn't hear her. He couldn't see her. He waited, holding his breath.

The sound of a cell phone ringing behind him nearly made him waste more of his ammunition. He answered it.

Her voice was icy. “You lied to me. You wanted this to be between you and me. You said none of my loved ones would be hurt if I gave you a good hunt. But now you've involved my father. A real warrior accomplishes his objective without using hostages.
We're playing by my rules now.
”

She hung up.

An instant later, something careened out of the
darkness, nicking his shoulder before it hit the floorboards behind him with a thunk.

He turned. An ax was lodged in the floor.

He threw the cell phone down and waited, gun ready. She could have killed him anytime. Why hadn't she?

Something swung out of the darkness and slammed into his chest, knocking him backward. He ricocheted against the wall and landed facedown on the floor. He came to his feet, firing at the ceiling. Another magazine spent. Another loaded.

A rope dangled in front of him. He caught it, bleary-eyed and feeling sick, just as he heard the same whirring sound as before. This time he ducked and covered his head. He caught the sound of a bare foot hitting the second-floor landing only yards above him and fired toward the sound.

She yelped and clamored down the hallway, just ahead of his next barrage of bullets.

She was definitely wounded. Burke began his slow ascent.

 

Watching Hicks pace was enough to drive Meical mad.

Suddenly the revenant halted, squeaked out a laugh and turned to Meical with a gloating smile. “I've got Neshi's blood in my veins. There's nothing you have that can make me stronger than I am now.”

Meical gathered his composure, his desperate thoughts all for Caroline. “Yeah. Right.”

The revenant looked at him more closely.
Really
studied him. Meical shielded his intentions, just in case Hicks could read him better than he thought.

Hicks crept closer and leaned against the wall, just out of reach. Meical could almost taste the revenant's blood now. He yearned for it. The thought woke an ache in his gums. This time, he welcomed the pain.

“He didn't give you his blood,” said Hicks. “That's not how he made you an incubus. So what did he give you?”

Meical answered offhandedly. “Some kind of herbal crap.”

“I could get some if I wanted it, freak.”

“No, he has to give it to you. And he didn't. And he won't.”

Meical watched Hicks seethe.

“Where does he keep it?” asked Hicks.

“You think I'd tell you? I'd rather rip out your spinal cord and strangle you with it.”

Hicks's eyes reddened and glowed. He slipped a knife out of his boot and held it up in the lantern light. “I bet you'll tell me if I bleed you a little.”

Meical bade his entire body to relax, while underneath, he gathered his energy. “Bad idea, Hicks. Don't do this.”

The pain caught him by surprise, but another pain, very familiar, followed swiftly on its heels. When Meical opened his eyes, the knife was buried in the palm of his manacled hand and a new set of fangs had emerged from his gums.

As Hicks plucked the knife out of his hand, Meical
clamped his mouth shut to keep his canines out of sight and freed the beast inside him at last.

Hicks's gaze was fixed on the blood that ran down Meical's sleeve. Meical summoned his strength, ripped his hands free of the manacles and grabbed Hicks by the head. The revenant tried once to gouge him with the knife, but Meical caught his wrist and twisted it a half turn to the right. The knife clanged on the floor, and Hicks howled with pain.

Even as Hicks twitched and struggled, the might of Neshi's blood in his veins manifested in the unearthly speed of his healing. Before Meical's eyes, his twisted hand righted itself and knit together again.

Meical shook Hicks hard and jerked his head up to make him look him in the eyes. “Well, well, well. Here we are, two of Neshi's recent accomplishments. Abominations, both of us.”

Hicks screamed again. The scream ended in an animalistic squeal.

“If it's any consolation to you,” Meical growled, “I probably can't kill you, since Neshi created you.” He wrenched Hicks's head back. “Not that I won't try.”

Meical plunged his fangs into the translucent, scrawny throat and drank. The first three gulps went down like acid and came back up again. He managed to hold on to his squirming prey while he emptied his stomach. When he quit vomiting, he jerked Hicks upright and drank again. He had to make this work.

This time he tasted Neshi's blood. It went straight to his head. Yesssss…the red darkness slipped over him and finally…finally…euphoria.

The same thing that would finish him hours from now swept like a river through him now. Meical felt himself shatter beneath the weight of the sheer timelessness of Neshi's power until there was no more Meical.

The succubus had said he'd be unfit for Caroline. Surely this was what she had meant. Nothing left of him, not the man he'd been once so long ago…not the vampire he had become…

All that remained was the beast of appetite within him, a gift from Neshi's ancient, insatiable hunger.

He'd make it serve him well.

 

Caroline got as far as the last bedroom and slipped to the floor with her back against the wall. She could see the attic stairway just beyond the door. It was as good a place as any to make her last stand. Then let him find her. He'd regret it forever. No more running.

Focus. Focus. Where was Burke now?

She sought out the red-hot mass of rage and fear that filled the house and followed it to its epicenter. He was coming upstairs. His search for her below had bought her time. But now he knew she could only be somewhere up here. If she hesitated another minute, the only thing that would separate them was the length of the hallway. Move. Move now. Now, now, now…

Caroline dragged herself to her feet, wobbled on her prosthetic leg and leaned in the open doorway of the bedroom to take a look down the hallway. He was just coming into view as he topped the stairway, intent at the moment on managing those last few steps. By the
way he was struggling, it looked as if she'd made that climb harder on him that it had been for her.

She slipped into the hallway, keeping an eye on him as she moved, and made it to the short stairway to the attic. She took her gaze off him long enough to get to the narrow doorway and reached for the doorknob.

A bullet hit the wall just over her right shoulder, then another at her feet, and the stair beneath her seemed to explode. Suddenly she was on her knees, clinging to the doorknob. She twisted it in all directions. The next bullet wouldn't miss. The door flew open, and she rolled into the waiting darkness, slamming the door shut behind her with her good foot.

Her prosthetic leg was gone. He would pay for that. Pushing herself up from the floor on her knee, she felt and fumbled in the dark for a lock on the door, a sliding bolt, anything. She just needed time to recover her focus and work on him.

But there was nothing.

She could hear him just outside, kicking aside the debris from the attic steps, moving closer.

Caroline turned and eyed the warm, dark room. She just needed a little time and something to put between her and his gun. She lay down on her belly and dogpaddled over the floor to the back of the room, around and between an assortment of discarded furniture, until she found the back wall. Once she had a forest of inanimate objects around her, she rolled onto her back, scooted behind an old wardrobe and leaned against the wall for support.

She got a moment of blessed silence, a respite in
which she could just breathe and renew her grip on her runaway emotions, and then the door crashed open.

She clutched at the gunman's psychotic fear and stoked it like a fire. She sensed his inward flinching, his attempt to cast off the mounting terror she built inside him. She could almost feel him gripping his gun more tightly, turning this way and that, fighting the loss of control over his emotions.