SILVER: Acheron (A River of Pain) (The SILVER Series) (19 page)

By the time she realizes she needs help, the situation has already escalated well beyond her control. She pages Luka as the fight moves upstairs and the blood really starts spilling.

Checking her invisible watch at every opportunity, first five minutes pass, then ten. Still no Luka. He got her message, but he was at the other end of town, busting a Jade for drowning her baby in a street puddle. By the time he makes it out to her location the worst is over, and the house has fallen silent.

The blood trail begins in the hallway, and carries on up the stairs. There’s just a few droplets at first … nothing life threatening. Luka follows them up to the second floor and draws his weapon at the sight of a human tooth, lying in a pool of blood.

Arterial blood is spattered up the moldy walls, preserving the perfectly silhouetted image of an adult female handprint, fingerprint whorls and all. A bullet lodged in the flaking wood of a doorframe is, at Luka’s estimation, about head height for a five-ten female.

Adrenalin courses through him.

Stepping into the room, he almost slips on a chunk of brain matter. The blood beginning to congeal, the bite-size brain morsel clings to the tip of his shoe when he tries to kick it away. It hangs on for dear life as he waggles his foot in the air, attempting to be rid of it.

Finally, it slips off and flip-flops across the floor, landing in a steaming gut puddle. Stomach contents, intestines, bile … basically the entire human digestive tract, all splayed out in one big, oozing heap. Beyond it, there’s something that resembles a corpse.

Head blown all apart, what’s left of it is a gaping pink hole filled with teeth and tongue and a little bit of protruding bone. The entire floor is saturated with human blood, and Luka has to step carefully.

Thunk.

Solid metal hits floorboards.

He pivots, gun in hand, toward the sound of the noise.

Silver.

Her faithful HK USP, the clip empty, lands on the floor by her feet, next to a double-barrel shotgun. Sitting with her back against the wall, she’s barely recognizable. Blonde hair is matted with blood, her clothing is sopping wet with the same, and her shaking hands are still dripping with Dodger remnants.

Luka’s never seen her this way. Covered in blood, sure. Exhausted, post kill, many times. There’s something about the sight of her victorious that makes his heart swell. Perhaps it’s her raw strength or the spark in her eyes, but whatever it is, it’s absent today.

The image of Silver in front of him is broken and deeply traumatized, staring blankly at the bloody mess around her. He holsters his weapon and waits for her to break the silence.

“He started it,” she whispers.

Luka, not in the least bit shocked by that, plants his hands on his hips and surveys the aftermath of a few poor decisions. He knows this routine well.

 “Suicide by law enforcement. It’s not uncommon.”

“I’m not law enforcement.”

“Close enough.”

“I can think of a hundred different ways that would’ve been easier than this,” she mutters. “Less … painful.”

She watches a rat scurry out from a hole in the wall and start poking around the still warm, fresh feast of Dodger.

Luka shakes his head. “Nah, they wouldn’t go out like that—too much pride. This is glory to them.” He points down at the Dodger. “You sort of did him a favor.”

“A favor? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“He was going to get shot anyway. This way, he didn’t give Omega the privilege.”

“And that’s enough for you? To make this okay?”

“It has to be. I’ve dealt with this shit a thousand times already. For every five arrests I make, I swear, at least one of them ends up this way.”

“Those are some pretty shitty odds.”

“Look around. It’s a pretty shitty neighborhood.”

Silence, again.

Luka pulls a small device out of his pocket and crouches beside the corpse. Taking the Dodger’s left wrist delicately between this thumb and forefinger, Luka raises it just enough so that it can be scanned by the device—a portable tag reader.

Beep.

Done.

Luka drops the man’s wrist and completes the job, logging ‘DECEASED’ on the tag’s data record. “Okay, we’re done here.”

“Just like that?”

“No bells, no whistles. It happens, just like that.”

Silver doesn’t move a muscle.

“I don’t kill humans,” she mumbles, mostly to herself.

Now in full Police Division mode, Luka has lost his soft edge and turns to her with a Maydevine-esque manner of patented matter-of-factness.

“You do now.”
           

Caesared

Who knew the Police Division had safe houses tucked away all over the Fringe District?

Silver didn’t.

Luka takes more than a little pride in showing off one of his Division’s best kept secrets, and also hopes that something about this experience will perk up her mood.

Punching his key code into a concealed pad behind a disused electrical box, he swipes his wrist across a hidden tag plate and beams a grin back at her over his shoulder.

“Hunter’s have got their toys, we’ve got ours.”

The entry system seems to like his credentials, and an inconspicuous cellar door clicks and pops on the inside as the locking mechanism swiftly retracts behind it. Lifting the lid on the place, Luka ushers Silver hastily down a steel step ladder into the bunker beneath.

 He’s right on her tail, and the door automatically reseals itself behind them—locking them in.

“What is this place?” Silver wonders.

“Nothing, so far as any civilians know. To them, there’s nothing down here but dirt. To us, it’s a covert safe house. It’s not finished yet, mind you.”

He’s not wrong.         

The floor is a mixture of concrete and loose wooden planks. The walls are bare drywall, waiting to be painted, and there aren’t any doors. Silver can see three rooms: a kitchen, bathroom and a small living and sleeping area.

“I could totally live here.”

“Not without company.” Luka nods to the CCTV monitoring system, wired in to every room. “It’s not hooked up in here yet, but it soon will be.”

Silver’s still stuck on one tiny detail. “A safe house for what? You’re planning on starting a witness protection program for all of your little snitches?”

Luka shrugs. “Once it’s fully operational, the safe house network should help us keep our assets alive just long enough to get what we need from them.”

Silver, who is, unquestionably, the Police Division’s best asset, develops furrows in her brow at his nonchalant disregard for the lives of the people they’re buying.

“And how long do you expect that to be, typically? I’m just wondering if I should cancel my gym membership.”

Her sarcasm alerts him to the taste of his own toes, but it’s too late to take it back properly. “You don’t count.”

“No? Why not?”

“You’re not like them.”

Covered in the blood of a man she just slaughtered, Silver would beg to differ.

“After what I did today, I reckon the only things left separating me from them are oral hygiene and clean undies.”

“Come on, Silver, it was self-defense.”

“The first shot, maybe. The second and third were questionable. The one that blew his face off? That one was pure anger.”

“Anybody would have done the same.”

“Good, then anybody can do this job—I quit.”

An empty threat if ever he heard one, Luka opts to let it go. Silver doesn’t even attempt to make it sound realistic.

“Why the hell did you bring me here?” she pouts.

“I thought you might appreciate a warm shower.” He nods toward the bathroom.

“I would.” Silver eyeballs the clear glass shower cubicle with a raised eyebrow, and glances quickly over at pre-cut notches in the wooden door frame where hinges should be attached. “That is, in my own home, where I have a bathroom door.”

“And what’re you gonna do with your clothes? Lick them clean?”

Fair point.

Any concerns she may have had over the lack of privacy are quickly overridden by the thought of the foul alternative: spending the rest of the day smelling like human soup.

“I’ll get your clothes re-acquainted with some laundry detergent while you get yourself cleaned up,” Luka urges.

Silver follows him into the bathroom and removes her weapons while he gathers up some fresh towels. Caked in coagulated blood, her clothes are heavy and stiff, and they make her feel disgusting. When Luka’s back is turned, she strips.

He hears her clothes drop to the floor but resists the urge to turn around. Ever the cavalier, he waits to hear the soft click of the shower door before he scoops up her clothing and makes his exit.

He only peeks once.

Bending to retrieve her jeans, he exploits his peripheral vision to catch sight of her naked form, lathered in soap. Her back turned, he gets a good shot of her rear end, but not much else.

Blood pooling at her feet, Silver wishes the water could wash away some of the guilt, too. Attempting this, she turns the water up to a temperature at least one or two degrees above comfortable. She soaks the blood out of her hair and off her skin, and lets the searing hot water beat down over her face.

It doesn’t help, though. The self-induced torture feels appropriate, to an extent, but the effect soon wears off. She leaves the shower cleaner, warmer, but just as miserable.

Her clothes not yet available, she slips on her underwear and keeps the towel wrapped around herself. Luka is waiting for her in the living area, trying not to pay attention to the fact that she appears in the doorway completely disrobed.

Hovering there, awkwardly, she hesitates to approach. “How much longer?”

Luka checks his watch. “Fifteen minutes?”

Silence.

Silver fidgets with the towel. “No offence, but this towel’s not exactly the height of luxury, is it? I mean, what’s it made out of? Rat hair?”