Chapter Fifteen
One year and six months ago...
Caldwell’s back alleys were just as Beth remembered them, run with grime, scattered with trash, and dark in the way that made you look over your shoulder even with all the ambient glow from the Financial District.
The lightning that kept flashing overhead didn’t help the danger vibe, and every time her shadow wheeled around on the cracked pavement at her feet, she felt like it was trying to get away from her.
She had two weapons. A gun that was in her hand on the right, the nine-millimeter autoloader fully loaded and ready to fire, and a dagger that was holstered at the small of her back under her loose jacket.
As she walked along, she kept things toe-heel so that she made no noise, but there was no one anywhere around to hear.
That she knew of.
Up ahead, at the terminus of the alley she was going down, cars passed by one at a time, with long breaks in between. Then again, it was three a.m. on a Wednesday—it was Wednesday, wasn’t it? God, she didn’t know what day it was. Maybe it was Tuesday.
Who the hell knew.
She stopped. Glanced behind herself—
The wind changed, and the sickly-sweet scent of dead meat wafted into her nose. As she tightened her grip on the gun, sweat broke out beneath her clothes, gathering under her arms and across her chest. What the hell was she doing out here?
Oh. Dumpster.
Not a lesser.
As she kept going, her eyes lingered on the boat-sized bin. Its top was cracked, the garbage overflowing. With the July sun baking everything during the day, and the temperatures not going down much at night, there was more than enough heat to ferment things, and the stench was god-awful.
Not quite sweet enough, though. And that baby powder whiff was missing.
When she came to the narrow lane’s end, she hesitated. Every five nights, the Audience House closed to give the staff time off, and since April, she had started using those hours to scour the field. But she hadn’t caught L.W. yet.
He was fighting, though. Back over the winter, she’d found bloody bandages under his bed, the scent mostly contained by the Rubbermaid container he’d sealed them up in.
She hadn’t liked snooping through his room, but given how shifty he was and the safety concerns?
Fine, she’d violate his privacy. And naturally, when she’d confronted him, he’d said it was just an injury he’d sustained while sparring.
Then why hide it, she’d demanded.
I knew you’d worry, he’d tossed back.
Yeah, well, when she’d asked Tohr about any kind of workout schedule, the Brother had had no idea who L.W. was even exercising with. He hadn’t been to the training center in months.
After that? There had been no more hidden bandages, but the injuries had continued. A limp. A scratch—or worse, a deep cut or concussion. And when pressed, always a ready explanation: Trail running. Bike riding. Skateboarding.
In February? In upstate New York?
No more sparring bullcrap, though, because clearly, Tohr had circled back and talked to him.
So holy shit, she was terrified. Her son had been taught the basics of self-defense and weapons handling by the Brothers, but all of that had been just going through the motions. He was not supposed to be out in the field—
A blinding light made her cringe back like a vampire—natch—and then a blaring horn had her jumping to the side as the car that had screeched into the alley tore past her. As it blasted by, the old beater splashed filthy water on her legs, and wasn’t that perfect.
The awful moist flush was just registering as she cocked her head.
Turned and looked out across Market Street.
When her precise location sunk in, she thought, oh…
wow. She was back in her old haunts, and she instantly recast everything.
Instead of the AI server companies and the data processing businesses that were taking up space in the squat buildings, she saw what had been there some thirty years ago.
Ruben’s. McGrider’s. Screamer’s. The tattooists and the local restaurants.
And farther down the street, the old Caldwell Courier Journal offices.
Which had been closed for a good twenty-five years.
Making a right, she went along the sidewalk at a slower pace. Until she came up to one of the few restaurant fronts left.
Tootsie’s Southern BBQ.
It had been a Chinese place years ago…where one night, she had phoned in her beef with broccoli order, and when she’d headed over to pick up the dinner, she’d crossed paths with Billy Riddle.
That attack by him had been the start of everything.
She’d been living in that ground-floor studio, with the glass door that opened out into the courtyard with the picnic table.
When she’d gotten home, bruised, shaken, with a split lip…
Wrath had come and found her for the first time.
She’d been scared to death of him.
But when he’d come back—
“It’s Tuesday,” she blurted. “Oh, God…it’s Tuesday.”
Even though there was no need to, she took out her phone and glanced at the date with a ringing shock. “I missed it…oh, my God. It was yesterday…it was Monday.”
She had missed their anniversary.
After however many years of dreading the night, and being relieved as soon as it passed, she’d actually forgotten it altogether.
“How did I not remember…” she whispered.
And go figure, the only thing worse than getting through their anniversary…was realizing she had spaced the date completely. The stinging guilt and ringing sadness was losing Wrath in an all-new way—
“What are you doing out here?”
Beth exhaled in a rush. And then just stared straight-ahead as she tried to compose herself. “I could ask you the same thing.”
When L.W. didn’t respond, she pivoted around—and oh, holy hell, her heart dropped.
He was dressed in black leather, and she didn’t need to see under his jacket to know that there were weapons on him.
Weapons…all over him. And with his tremendous height and the muscle he’d bulked on lifting weights and the cruel face that was set with aggression…
“God, you look just like your father,” she said hoarsely.
One of those black brows lifted. “Not a surprise.”
And yet it was, in such a bad way.
“This is not for you.” She shook her head while a horn honked somewhere off in the distance. “This life of fighting…you’re meant for something else.”
His eyes shifted off to the side, so he was looking over her shoulder instead of at her.
“L.W., please.” She closed the distance between them. “Listen to me, this is dangerous—”
“Go,” he snapped. “You gotta get—”
“—out here. And if you’re ready, you can take over the throne now. We’ll start the transition of power tonight, if you want—”
He grabbed her arm and yanked her behind him. “Go!”
“What are you talking about?”
That was when the restless summer wind came around again, and she caught the stink properly. Not just dead meat, but that telltale sweetness.
Looking behind herself, she saw the lesser. It was distracted, focused on something on its phone. But as a car passed, the headlights hit that pale hair so it glowed white as snow, and there was no mistaking the banked power in the undead’s lithe body.
L.W. hustled them in the direction she’d come from and then all but threw her into the alley she’d just walked out of. “Go!”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake.”
The ease with which he took out a gun chilled her to the bone, and then he was dragging her into a run.
When they were halfway down the cramped chute of bricks and pavement, he shoved her into an alcove and went back-flat against the building.
Then as if he’d been in this kind of danger a million times before, he trained his attention calmly toward Market, his eyes unblinking, his breathing slow and steady.
“I’ll take care of this,” her son said in a level voice that was so much more alarming than if he’d been flustered. “But you need to get the hell out of here.”
He really wasn’t scared at all.
Not even as the lesser stopped at the head of the lane, cranked its head in their direction, and gunned up so fast, it was clear that the undead had had serious fighting experience over the course of its life—
As the bullet whistled by her ear, she ducked. “Wrath!”
She hadn’t called him by his proper name since back when he’d been an infant in her arms, and it was as if he didn’t recognize the syllable or maybe even hear her at all: His arm swung up and he squeezed off three rounds—right into the slayer who started running right at them as if it didn’t have a thing to lose.
L.W.’s aim was target-practice good: The undead’s upper body jerked back at the impacts, and then down it went to the dirty asphalt, falling ass-first to join the broken bottles, the discarded trash, the random car parts.
Except the lesser didn’t stay down. The torso rose as if from the grave, and its crazy smile was lightning-lit from up above: Pale eyes, pale skin, evil radiating from its very pores. Meanwhile, black blood glistened on its mouth and dripped from wounds off-center on its chest—
The knife went flying before she saw its arm move with terrible coordination.
She put up her own gun. And for a split second, forgot how to fire it.
One bullet. She managed to squeeze off only a single bullet. Which was what happened when you’d only ever shot at a range before. And talk about amateur aim. A spark flared as it hit the wall five feet from the slayer. Which didn’t even flinch.
Something else flew by her—
A throwing star. Just like the ones her mate had used way back when.