Chapter 23
Worst game of hide and seek ever. Layla crouched in a pocket of deep shadow, listening to distant thunder and the frantic call of emergency sirens, her ribs flickering as she gasped. As soon as she evaded one group of biters another appeared, and the only thing saving her was Max’s advice.
Listen to your body, it will save you.
She had help. It wasn’t so much the way she could streak across open spaces, her braid nearly snapping like a whip as she burst into motion, or the sudden turns and leaps she was now capable of.
The real, true friend was a tingle of instinct at her nape, the sense of unfriendly, invisible watchers lurking on an otherwise deserted street, the sudden clear no don’t move freezing her solid or the go, go now, go NOW sending her into places she never would have glanced at as a regular old human.
Time to move, the little voice said. She burst into motion, streaking across four lanes of momentarily deserted highway and catching the top of a chain-link fence.
A rattle, a lunging effort, and she was in darkness again—a waste lot choked with weeds, ancient railroad tracks turning to rust, and the backside of a strip mall behind another fence.
O’Shaughnassey and his crew had trained Dan’s group in the art of finding cover, always knowing where the next alley was, never looking at a building without thinking about the exits, all the little paranoid habits which were actually kind of fun if made into a game.
Dodging surveillance cameras, working angles, sensing which neighborhoods were likely to be deserted during certain hours and which had nosy eyes at every window day or night—she was no more than an assiduous amateur, really, but it was a lot easier with eyesight turning the darkness to bright noon and hearing jacked up into hearing separate heartbeats inside houses, cars backfiring several blocks away as if they were right next to her, howling sirens and smaller cries of surprise, the bumbling passage of raccoons and other wildlife taking advantage of darkness to scavenge in corners and trash bins.
Layla found she could scramble up downspouts by the simple expedient of throwing her body at a wall, simply letting it find purchase with burning, scrabbling fingertips and boot-toes.
Her wrists ached; she was sure she left scratches on brick or paint, and those faint traces might look very much like biter claw-marks to an experienced hunter.
Or to her pursuers, who had to see just as well as she did, hear just as well—the wild pounding of her heart somehow didn’t give her away, if she lurked near enough to traffic or occupied buildings active at this hour.
She even had allies, sort of. The animals knew, and their scuttling for cover—cats stray or well-fed, armadillos, rats she shuddered upon hearing the tail-drag scrape of, dogs and slinking coyotes, even a few snakes desperate to avoid contact with anything possessing legs, a whole-ass petting zoo—warned her of the shadow-blurs, sanguinant using their semi-invisibility trick to whistle along at freeway speed.
There were strange shimmers she didn’t like hanging about streetlamps or lurking in shadowed places; feeling a disembodied gaze ooze or slice past was a matter of instinct as well, judging by goosebump and the stiffening of fine hairs.
She was a bundle of exposed nerves, a shrinking animal scuttling between walls, cutting through backyards, scaling fences, slipping along back alleys choked with junked cars or dumpsters half-open amid drifts of reeking refuse, avoiding clusters of human and biter activity alike.
No plan to her wandering meant she could not quite be anticipated—or so she hoped as she simply reacted, moving when any kind of notice drew close, often freezing in the smallest, darkest spot she could find when pursuit temporarily drew away.
Culverts were good, for her and for nocturnal critters. The furry, scaled, or feathered evinced little desire to bite, rattle, or hiss; she returned the favor.
In fact, she thought she was doing pretty okay, except for the goddamn dry spot at the back of her throat.
It grew a little larger anytime she made an extreme physical effort, and though the sensation sharpened her hearing and sight it also made her skin sensitive as hell, filled her mouth with a strange numbing almost like monster blood, and worse of all, gave her the shakes when she heard human heartbeats.
Even the tiny skittering pulses of ’dillos or cats woke a dozy trickle of interest from that rough thirst. She could very easily imagine the sensation getting worse, and worse, and overwhelming as the thought of water, coffee, juice, booze, or any other liquid caused faint nausea and an intensifying throb in her throat.
She knew what it wanted.
Would she eventually rip the cloth top off an old, well-maintained convertible to get at an insistent human pulse?
Would another man look at autopsy photos of his dead wife and silently swear vengeance on things that went bump in the night, or would the weird-ass murder be swept under the rug by cops unwilling or unable to investigate, some owned by big-time biters and others knowing all too well not to fuck with strange, inexplicable shit the entire world teemed with under a crust of normalcy?
She was slowing, and that was bad. Stopping to listen at certain houses where only a few pulses beat, scrambling away from buildings when doors opened and people stepped into the night for a smoke, an errand, an emergency call; parks where teenagers necked in cars, their proud galloping hearts announcing youth and pleasure to the night, streets where crowds gathered or worse, furtive hurried steps meant easy prey, easy prey…
One hand clapped over her mouth, where her teeth ached, ached, ached. She ran or hid, shrank into pools of darker shadow, heard a mutter of excitement and intensifying clamor as the dozing town noticed a false sunrise on the northwest horizon.
The oil fields were burning, maybe the holding tanks or a refinery as well. A big unholy mess, and she hoped it wouldn’t spread.
Layla had no time to worry about other people’s problems. Just as she thought she might be able to work down a long sagebrush-starred hill and make it to the freeway heading east—she’d been seeing signs for onramps in the distance for what felt like hours, though unable to even get close to one—she was caught.
A rattle, a crescendo of alarm from her instinctive warning system, and for a single heartstopping moment she thought it was Max, the crashing disappointment of being grabbed meeting a wave of oh thank God, that at least the devil she knew had appeared.
But it wasn’t him. The hands on her hurt, biting hard; she was thrown over something stonily muscular, and the world spun away underneath her.
Oh, fuck.
Being fireman-carried at high speed might have made her vomit as well, except her body simply refused.
Bouncing, jouncing, sharply changing direction at random intervals, she tried to look for landmarks or direction; her braid had come loose and her hair was a wind-whipped cloud, denying even the briefest glimpse and as a bonus, attempting to climb into her nose and mouth as well.
By the time all motion came to an abrupt, screeching halt and she was nearly tossed from her carrier’s shoulders, landing on her feet with an effort that seemed to take every last bit of starch from her legs, the thirst was a rage in her throat and her teeth were hot, sensitive razor edges.
A faint trace of metallic taste said she’d bitten the inside of her cheek, and the thin thread of coppery taste hit the back of her throat hard.
Jesus, please. Layla fetched up against something vertical, hard, and blessedly motionless—a wall sheathed in heavy dark wooden paneling. She clung to it gratefully, fingernails on her free hand driving in with a small splintering noise.
The cessation of windrush, heartbeats, crowd- and traffic-noise was almost as shocking as the sudden motionlessness.
Her pulse was hummingbird wings in her throat, her wrists, even her ankles and behind her knees; a single other drum was beating in this space, slow and terrible.
A quick shake to get hair out of her eyes, bumping the back of her skull against the wall, and the sense of being watched was dismally familiar and uncanny at once.
It wasn’t Max’s gaze, she could just tell. She peered through long dark strands, and a flat, quiet voice spoke.
“You reek of my son.” A dark, musical tenor, the syllables weighted oddly, bearing the imprint of another language through textbook English as well as a strange, stilted effort to enunciate.
Pretty much as Max had spoken at first, but somehow this guy sounded far more strained. Almost as if he could barely force the words through a janky translating app on a weak, wavering wifi connection.
A shadow snapped into focus—tall and lean, topped with a mess of gleaming dark curls, and though she knew it wasn’t Max hope sprang up wildly for the second time, filled her aching throat, and was just as quickly snuffed.
The figure’s shoulders weren’t quite so broad, and instead of Max’s eerie focused stillness, this guy almost vibrated in place, a flood of jittering force just barely held in check.
Her new instincts spoke again, loud and clear. This creature was old, far more ancient than Max. Strangely, though, he lacked the sense of leashed, smooth riptide strength Layla’s monster carried. So, old, but somehow not so… not as strong?
Plenty scary though. Oh, Lay, we are in the shit now.