Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (3 page)

“Down, hunter,” I said. “He’s the victim here, remember?”

“Is he?” Batten breathed down the back of my neck. “Maybe the driver will tell a different story.”

“He’s got half a body, Kill-Notch. I’m pretty sure he’s not going to lunge out from under the truck and eat our faces, so back down, fuck-knuckle.”

Hood crouched with us. “What’s going on?”

“Vic’s a revenant. If you pull him out before sundown, you’ll dust him
.
”

“But he’s dead,” Hood said.

“He’s not, or he’d already be ash,” I pointed out, adding the mental facepalm I’d earned for not recognizing the pattern the little details made immediately: the faintest scent of burning molasses, the greenish organs, the finger of light blue nectar trickling from opened, blood-fattened veins. Some preternatural expert I was. “He’s got a chance. He’s grounded by the sun now, but once it’s fully dark, we can pull him out and help him. Maybe.”

Batten did a double-take but said nothing. His scrunched
eyebrows said it for him.

I offered, “He may be able to regenerate this much damage. We
don’t know how old he is.” Ancient revenants could, with just an infusion of fresh blood, revive from years of desiccated torpor and
recover their superhuman strength almost immediately. Harry, at four hundred and change, could be up and dancing not long after having his throat
slit. On the other hand, my brother, Wesley, had taken a flask of holy water to the kisser mere months after turning, and was still
attempting
to mend the scars. I'd stopped calling him Harvey Dent after he'd
developed an altogether too-good ability to laugh like The Joker at his most deranged.

“Organs?” Hood asked me.

“Don’t know. If the gastrosanguinem is intact, he might have a chance. It must be partially present or he'd already be gone.”

“Bone?” Hood boggled. “It’s all gone below the waist.” There
was a definite waft of discomfort coming from Hood, and as the Blue Sense did a metaphysical yawn-and-stretch, my empathy offered a glimpse of his uneasiness. I wouldn't have expected him to be rock solid in the face of a frankly gruesome torture-and-hate buffet like we had here, but there was something deep in him that was quailing at the notion of being permanently disabled. I supposed I understood; he was healthy and active and had to be to do his job, but this was deeper than that.

“If it can’t regenerate?” Batten asked, ignoring a beep from his cell phone.

I heard the
“
it” but let it go. When my cell phone buzzed in my back pocket to indicate a text, I ignored mine, too.

“If he can’t regenerate, we might have to put him down,” I acknowledged, “as a kindness.”

“Like when a dog is hit by a car,” Batten said.

I stared him down, hoping my displeasure would make him look away. He didn’t even blink.

“No,” I said. “Not at all like a dog hit by a car. This is a man.” I gave him space to be a jerk, but he didn’t take it. Instead, he seemed to be assessing whatever was showing on my face. “Immortal, yes, but still a man. He should be given the opportunity to try to recover. Darkness, blood, time. If we can get an ID, we could contact his DaySitter, if he has one.”

“He can’t live, not like that. He’s …” Hood lost words, and a lick of hopeless despair hit me. I didn’t blame him. It was hard to
imagine anything walking away from that kind of trauma. Especially without legs. That would definitely make the walking part tricky.

“Give him a shot at it,” I said firmly, “or at least let him end with some dignity, cast no shadow on his own terms.”

“Mars—“

“This is me, refusing to back down,” I told them, wriggling a
gloved
finger at my Serious Business face. “If he can’t manage it, and he
asks, I’ll stake him myself.”

Batten made a low, unhappy noise and rubbed the back of his neck. “No, you won’t.”

“I can,” I said, knowing damn well I probably couldn’t.

“Did you bring a cookie jar to keep the ashes in?” Batten said
knowingly, ignoring another beep on his phone.

My temper had finally had enough. “Don't take this the wrong way, but go fuck yourself with a turnip.”

There was movement in the shade of the truck, and Batten and I shut up abruptly in unison.

The head rolled slightly to face us, if you can “face” someone without much of a face to speak of. Sandpapered cheekbone showed in rough patches through bright flesh speckled with road grit. Light, inky blue nectar rushed visibly through exposed veins and filled one eyeball almost completely; the revenant had apparently fed well before going to rest. Under mangled strips of what had once been his lips, broken shards of teeth were like half-eaten Chiclets. I tried not to stare; it was harder than it should have been, considering I didn’t want to look.

The victim grimaced, or I think that’s what he did. It was hard to tell.

“Can I get a moment of privacy here, gentlemen?” I said over my
shoulder, but didn’t wait for them to back away before I started
inching further under the truck. Hood crunched away. Batten didn’t budge.

Surrounded by metal and blood and a fresh spark of burnt
sugar, I fought a moment of dizziness under the truck, not at all reassured by
the stubborn presence of Kill-Notch Batten, super-pro vampire
hunter.
For a moment, I had a perfectly reasonable vision of this revenant striking like a cobra and tearing out my throat before Batten could
flinch.

“Hail, glorious Elder,” I said softly, conscious of the fact that the damage to his head may be causing extraordinary pain. “Death Rejoices, cherished master of the grave, keeper of the gift of immortality.”

Recognition flickered through the eye that wasn’t shot-through
with inky swirls. “Hail, honored DaySitter,” he rasped with grateful formality,
his accent an interesting blend of New York City and something redolent of eastern Europe; maybe Czech or Romanian. “Centuries
untold celebrate your gift of submission.”

“Yeah, well, don’t celebrate my submission too soon, sweetheart. You’re in no fuckin’ condition to get your feed on.”

“Bold are you with your words,” he said. “Unfettered is your tongue.”

Batten chuckled knowingly behind me.
Jerk. Sexy jerky-jerkface
. I filed that chuckle away for future personal use, because my libido is a jerk, too.

“I’m not a fetters kinda girl.”
Oh, you are
such
a liar
, Harry's
voice coiled up from my crowded libido's repertoire, and I heard the clank of iron and the whisper of silk and—
Nope! Faceless revenant under a
truck, Marnie
.
Focus.
“I spit the bit. Say, why are you chained up
under a truck? Did you hurt the nice little werewolf?”

His face peeled back in a horror-trope snarl that cold-cocked me right in the fear nodes. It took me a second to realize that he was smiling. “I made love with his wife.”

Batten muttered, “Should’ve hit it and quit it before Wolf Boy got home.”

I shot Kill-Notch a glare over my shoulder, then asked the
revenant, “How did a lycanthrope get you into chains? You could have easily overpowered him.”

“I slept.”

“Was she worth it?” I asked, pure curiosity. “Could anyone be worth this?”

The revenant closed his eyelids and let out a long sigh. It was full of bliss, and was as good an answer as any. I wondered if I’d risk being dragged to death for a chance at boffing Batten one more time. The warm quiver of lust in my belly warned that I couldn’t handle the answer, so I shut my brain up, resolved to see a sex therapist, snapped my elastic, and crept back out from under the truck. When I got to my feet, Hood returned, de Cabrera following him. I reminded myself to get on Elian's ass about punctuality, because my car wasn't that fucking far away, and I'd been under the truck, crawling in revenant scrapings, twice already.

Batten was standing too close and staring too hard. I side-
stepped closer to Hood and stuffed my hands in my pockets, avoiding his gaze by studying my Keds and taking my Tyvek bunny suit and neoprene gloves from de Cabrera with a scowl.

Hood crossed his arms across his chest and asked us. “Guidance?”

I shook my head sadly. “Messy. Legally, revenants are dead; in
this country the living dead have no rights under current laws.
Lycanthropes are humans with a disability as far as the courts are concerned, and trump revenants on all legal matters. If the driver claims that this revenant assaulted him first, he won’t even have to prove it; the revenant has to be staked. Has he said anything of the sort?”

Hood grimaced thoughtfully to keep from letting an
unprofessional grin slip through. “He hasn’t said a thing. I’m not sure his mouth is completely re-grown.”

Blerg.
“The best you can do, besides the weapons charges, is cite
the guy for driving around with a corpse under his truck.
Transporting a biohazard or something. Gotta be at least littering, right?”

Hood’s face crumpled like he had a mouthful of bad shellfish. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. Where is my coffee?” I glared at the men in front of me, and then gave up hope for caffeine before returning home, where I’d do things to my espresso maker that would make Mister Coffee blush. “We need to remove the chains from the revenant. My guess is they’ll have silver content and he won’t be able to touch them with
his bare hands. Er…” I thought of the evidence bags in Hood’s
Hummer. “Hand, singular.”

“Unchain him and then what?” Hood asked.

“Then someone will stay with him until sundown.” I slipped my
gloves off so I could call Harry.
“I’m guessing you’ll want that
someone
to be me, though I'm
positive
Agent de Cabrera could use the
experience.” He blanched visibly and faded back a step, but I wasn't letting him escape. “C'mon, Cuban. Golden took a zombie spider to the face; Batten's been pimp-slapped by ancient revenants; the least you can do is play blood-bag barista. Monster-wrangling builds character.” I
slapped him on the shoulder and favored him with the biggest,
fakest grin I could muster.

De Cabrera muttered something that probably wasn’t English and definitely wouldn’t fall under the umbrella of positive thinking, but nodded. Batten stepped away to finally answer his ever-beeping phone, his responses curt and clipped. Whatever the other person on the line was saying carved big worry lines in Batten’s forehead, and his grip on the phone tightened. I watched him with one eye while thumbing Harry’s number.

When my Cold Company’s ultra-polite message picked up, I said, “Harry, I’m just past Lambert’s Crossing outside Ten Springs at
a crime scene. There's a badly-injured but fairly civil and lucid revenant here. I need at least four pints of O-neg, thawed and toasty,
as soon as
possible after dusk.” I thought for a second. “And espresso. And a cookie. Please.” Then, to cover all my bases, “Thank you, your Lordship.”

Batten crammed his phone into his back pocket, grunted
something at Hood, and started away from us, head down, shoulders forward like a charging bull.

“Hey, whoa.” I pointed after him. “Where does
Weekend At
Bernie’s
think he’s going?”

Hood touched my shoulder with unexpected hesitancy. “Mars.”

I shook him off, not liking the sudden warning sign from the
circle of cops, the palpable shift in mood, from serious to downright grim. The Blue Sense stirred deep in my belly and caused a flush of anxiety
in my veins, coming from Hood. I moved to follow Batten to his
SUV, determined to catch him before he hit the gas, but Hood put his body in my path, squaring his shoulders at me.

He shook his head. “Don’t. Just let him go.”

“What’s going on?”

He turned his face up to the sky and sighed heavily. “Sorry,
Mars, you're off the case.”

“What? Why?” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “I just called in a take-out order for Sir Missenguts over there.”

“The FBI is suspending Gary Chapel and the PCU.”

“VACATION?” I SPUTTERED
into the phone. “Bossman, what are you even talking about? How can the entire preternatural crimes unit go on vacation?”

I had completely forgotten about my need for caffeine, or how good Batten had looked in his FBI jacket; funny, I never thought a conversation with Chapel could disperse thoughts of my favorite things. I was pacing back and forth in my home office, watching the first faint snowflakes of winter dust the dark window, blurring my
view of the moon above the aspens. My cat, Bob, laid in a proud
ginger and cream sprawl across the papers on my desk, a furry emperor on his divan waiting to be hand-fed, giving precisely zero fucks about
my agitation or its source. Chapel spoke calmly in my ear, but I
didn’t hear half of it; we were
all
being suspended, pending an
investigation of our conduct by the FBI’s Internal Affairs Division. It wasn’t the first time I’d been in trouble, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but it felt like shit all the same.

When wicked-looking headlights pierced the gloom at the road
and swung into my stone driveway, I sighed; Batten pulled his
Bugatti Veyron in behind my dusty Buick Enclave.

On the other end of the phone, SSA Chapel, as unflappable as always, said, “Geoff just wants us to shut down until Internal Affairs is done their inquiry.”

 Assistant Director Geoff Johnston was a major thorn in Chapel’s side, a bored paperpusher who apparently had nothing better to do
than keep us under his magnifying glass, and was a pernicious
stickler when it came to rules and regulations. I’d have bet my favorite frog-print undies that he alphabetized his socks by manufacturer, sorted his shirts by thread count, and got off watching C-SPAN.