Deathbringer, p.16
Deathbringer, page 16
“Now, then.” Melinda straightened up and stood before Erin with her arms folded beneath her breasts. “I’m gonna get the boys situated. I want you to be quiet while I’m doing this. If I hear one word from you, I’ll cut your tongue out.” Now she leaned forward and laid her hands on Erin’s trembling shoulders. “Do you believe me?”
Erin’s head tilted upward. Her mouth opened, then snapped shut. She nodded.
Melinda smiled. “Good.”
She planted a light kiss on Erin’s mouth and stood erect again. A jolt of terror snapped her body rigid as she heard Mike groan. She couldn’t afford to let him come to, not yet. She retrieved the discarded baseball bat and delivered a solid tap to the back of his head. Mike didn’t move, nor did he groan again. Concerned that the relatively light blow might have finished him off, Melinda listened for the sound of his breathing. When she heard it—low, barely audible—she started looking for something she could use to bind him. The coaxial cables didn’t seem to be as effective as she’d imagined they’d be, so she needed something else.
A trip through the living room produced results. On the coffee table, next to that weird black book, was the belt formerly worn by the police officer Mike had chopped into little pieces. She removed a set of handcuffs from the belt and returned to the kitchen, where she knelt next to Mike’s prone form and pulled his hands behind his back. She snapped the cuffs around his wrists, then rolled him onto his back. She hooked her hands under his armpits and dragged him to the table. Getting him up into a chair turned out to be a miserable chore. He was big and muscled, and weighed maybe seventy-five pounds more than she did. By the time she managed to get it done, she was drenched in sweat.
And Mike was groaning again. Rather than belting him into unconsciousness again, she returned to the living room and pulled the television, stereo, and VCR out of the entertainment center. The electronic components crashed to the floor. The TV’s screen shattered and emitted sparks.
Melinda returned to the kitchen with a fresh set of cables and cords, with which she went to work binding Mike to his chair. There was just one more thing to take care of, then the party could really begin.
She left the kitchen and went to Hannah’s study to fetch Avery.
Chapter Twenty-seven
The Corvette came roaring around a sharp curve in the road. Its driver saw the obstruction ahead and jammed the brake pedal to the floor. The car went into a spin and slid off the road into a ditch, coming to rest on its side amid a cloud of smoke and dust.
Hannah, who had not been wearing a seat belt, cried out as she fell against the crumpled driver’s side door. She’d finally discovered a drawback to being a resurrected person—even in death, or rather this perversion of death, there was still pain. The slide and crash had whipped her about the car’s interior like a rag doll in a dryer. After taking a moment to get her bearings and verify that all her parts remained unbroken, she stood and hauled herself out through the passenger-side window. She sat on the side of the car and regarded the road blockage with a mixture of rage and contempt. Someone had positioned a garbage truck so that it was blocking both lanes of traffic on the narrow road. But the truck was empty and there was no sign of whomever had done this thing. Which was a shame, because she was in a mood to tear someone apart.
With a sigh, she pushed herself off the Corvette and landed on the road’s shoulder. She stood there a moment, listening for any indication of human activity. Her other senses were alert as well, working to detect the faintest pulse of warm blood. But she only heard the scritching of cicadas and various clicking, ratcheting sounds from the Corvette’s engine. The strongest smell was that of sizzling rubber on asphalt.
She was alone. And yet something didn’t feel right. She had a sense of being watched, but from which direction she couldn’t discern. Remaining where she was, she turned in a slow circle, straining to make out any lurking shape in the dense and dark stands of trees lining both sides of the road. She saw nothing. But the feeling of being watched failed to diminish. For the first time since clawing her way out of her grave, she felt something close to fear. It was disconcerting. Up until now, and even during her encounter with the strange dark man and his army of dead, she’d had a sense of invulnerability. She was dead, after all, and there was no longer any reason to be afraid. So how to account for this slowly dawning feeling of dread or for this ripple of fear shimmering through her body?
She sighed. “Just move, girl. Take your dead ass on down the road.” She spoke in a whisper, as if concerned some unseen entity would hear her. “You have places to go and people to kill, so get it in gear.”
So she began to move forward, progressing slowly at first, with great caution. She was close enough to the truck now to confirm that it was empty. She gave the front of the truck a wide berth, placing herself in a spot midway between the truck and the line of trees to her left. Her gaze tracked smoothly left to right the whole time as she strove to remain on guard for any potential assault. And then she was on the other side of the truck and could see that there was no one lying in wait for her there, either.
Hannah released a big breath she hadn’t been cognizant of holding. Whoever was responsible for this act of irritating fuckery, he or she was gone. The realization triggered conflicting feelings. On the one hand, it was nice to shake that odd feeling of being watched and preyed upon. On the other, it sucked that there was no one around she could punish for causing a wreck that would’ve killed her had she not already been dead.
The neighborhood where she’d shared a home with Mike wasn’t terribly far away. Or at least it wasn’t by car—it would, however, be a hike of some significance on foot. She turned and appraised the empty truck again. Indecision held her in place another moment; then she went to the truck and peered through a window. The vehicle’s key, a thin sliver of silver that glinted in the light of the full moon, was in the ignition.
Hannah frowned. She again turned her head to the left and right and searched for the presence of others. The result was the same as before—she was alone. She remained where she was another moment and thought things over.
This was such an odd and inexplicable thing. The way the truck was positioned, it was clear it had been placed here to block access in and out of town. But what didn’t make sense was the presence of the key. Why deliberately block the road and yet provide anyone who happened along with the means to remove the obstruction? It troubled Hannah, because she could almost believe this had been done with some design, some specific purpose, in mind—something aimed at her.
Which was crazy and paranoid. Except that those words no longer quite possessed their former meaning. The rational world she’d known prior to her death had given way to an inverted, bizarro realm in which even the wildest conspiracy theories could have a hitherto unimagined degree of plausibility.
But, hell, she couldn’t stand here all night thinking about it. She needed to get to Mike soon. She wasn’t sure why (though the seemingly non sequitur word “prime” kept coming to mind), but why didn’t matter. Not yet, anyway. All she knew was the dark man wanted her there—for a purpose that would be revealed later on. So her predicament boiled down to a simple dilemma: get in the truck and be there within ten minutes or proceed on foot and maybe miss the big party.
She sighed. There was no real choice.
She moved to the other side of the truck, opened the door, and slid into the driver’s seat. Her hand went to the key and gave it a twist. She heard the rumble of the diesel engine coming to life and caught a whiff of something that smelled like burning powder. Then flame engulfed her and an explosion propelled her through the windshield. For a moment she was airborne and aflame. Then she dropped like a rock tossed into a well, struck the pavement, and skidded across the road’s rough surface. She surged to her feet and stared in horror at her burning arms. Memories embedded in her subconscious since childhood came to the surface and sent her running into the woods, where she dropped to the ground and rolled back and forth to smother the flames. Soon she was no longer on fire, though patches of her hair and clothing continued to smolder. She touched her face to check for burn blisters and found only grime. Her hands were another matter—though still functional, the tops of them had been scorched. They were black and pebbled with blisters.
She bent forward and felt something twisting in her guts. She glanced down and saw a piece of shrapnel protruding through a hole in her abdomen. The flesh around the piece of twisted metal had a puckered, cooked texture. She gripped the hot bit of metal and pulled it free of her flesh. It slithered loose, trailing a mass of stretched-out tissue and intestine; she thought of gooey cheese dripping from a fresh piece of pizza. She twisted the foreign object free of her flesh, chucked the scorched hunk of metal over a shoulder, and stuffed the bits of her that should be inside back through the hole. It hurt and was yucky in the extreme.
But she didn’t care. Her beautiful face was unmarred, that was the important thing. Thinking it almost made her laugh. Should a dead person still feel vain? Wasn’t her appearance irrelevant now? She was surprised to discover that it was not. She’d always been proud of her looks and death had not changed that. Besides, she wanted to look good for Mike when they were reunited.
She stood up and walked out of the woods. She stood at the edge of the road and frowned at the still blazing interior of the truck’s cab.
A bomb.
She shook her head in astonishment. Why would anyone rig a truck with a bomb, then leave it like this? She thought again of the odd and frightening notion that it had been left here specifically for her. If true, there could be only one logical conclusion— that someone, or some force, hoped to prevent her from reaching her destination. And the next logical deduction was that whoever, or whatever, was responsible was working in opposition to the goals of the dark man. And if this theoretical opposing force had managed to arrange this failed assassination attempt, it would mean that they were nearly as powerful (and seemingly omniscient) as the dark man.
Whatever the case, Hannah was certain of one thing. She would not be deterred, regardless of whatever obstacles were placed in her way. Not because she believed fervently in the dark man’s cause— which was something she understood in only the vaguest way, anyway—but because the other side had just tried to kill her. She had died once already and had no desire to repeat the experience. So, then, the dark man’s enemies were now her enemies. Given the chance, she would eradicate them from the face of the earth.
There were, however, some basic problems with that. One, she had no clue who or what the opposing force was. Two, she hadn’t the faintest notion of where to look for them, or even who or what she would be looking for.
There was just one thing she could do.
So she did it—she turned away from the ruined vehicles and set off on foot down the road. She grinned. Her would-be assassins had only succeeded 209 209 DEATHBRINGER
in slowing her down. No matter. She would get where she was going one way or another. As she continued down the road, she entertained herself with vivid fantasies of what she would do to her new enemies should she ever have the chance to physically confront them.
Chapter Twenty-eight
The truck was nearing the outskirts of Dandridge when Hawthorne heard the low, almost inaudible trilling sound. He frowned and glanced at the somnambulistic driver, thinking perhaps he’d begun to come out of his trance and was whistling some odd tune. But the big man’s mouth was shut and his glassy eyes continued to stare at the road ahead. The noise continued, pulse after pulse, and Hawthorne at last realized he was hearing a cell phone, one of those tiny wireless contraptions that had become so ubiquitous during his time of semiseclusion with the Guardians.
He sat still a moment and held his breath, striving to make out the source of the sound. His gaze went to the glove compartment and stayed there while he waited to hear the sound again. The pulse came again and he knew he’d homed in on it. He opened the glove compartment, sifted through the stack of manuals, receipts, and paperwork until his hand closed around a small lump of plastic that fit into his palm like an egg. A small egg. He turned it over in his hand, looking for anything that resembled an instrument panel or mouthpiece, until he figured out that the thing flipped open like the communicators in an old sci-fi show he’d enjoyed as a teenager in the late 60s, way back in the last phase of what he still sometimes thought of as the end of his “normal” life.
He flipped the phone open, frowned again at the disconcertingly small miracle of modern technology, and put the flip-up part of the little phone to his ear and said, “Hello?”
Eldritch’s voice intoned: “It’s about time.”
Hawthorne grunted. “If you’d told me earlier where to look for this Lilliputian device, I could’ve answered much sooner. And anyway, why call? Why not just establish a link with the vessel again?”
Eldritch sighed. “Because our magical resources are stretched thin as it is. Do you imagine that communicating that way is as simple as dropping a few coins in a pay phone? Each connection of that sort requires a vast expenditure of magical energy that places tremendous strain on both the spell caster and the vessel. Overdo it, and you risk killing one or both.”
Hawthorne sighed. “Okay. Fine. I assume you know I’m arriving in Dandridge as we speak.”
“Of course.” Eldritch sounded a smidgeon too smug to Hawthorne’s ears, considering the man had intimated that his ability to affect events in Dandridge was nearing an end. “And there are some things you should know. Our energies have been further depleted by our endeavors in another area. We set a trap for the Prime. We were able to deduce her likely route away from the scene of her resurrection, and our guess proved correct.”
Hawthorne’s pulse raced and he was unable to contain his excitement when he spoke: “So she’s dead?”
Eldritch groaned. “Of course. She’s been dead a week and a half.”
Hawthorne closed his eyes. “She got away, didn’t she?”
A pause. Then a reluctant, “Yes.”
Hawthorne sighed. “My God, Eldritch. You were able to cause someone to set a trap. Couldn’t this person, or persons, also have been made to detain the Prime once this trap failed to ensnare her?”
There was an edge to Eldritch’s voice when he said, “No. I don’t think you appreciate the extraordinary lengths we’ve gone to just to do what we’ve done. If you must know, one of our own, a member of the Guardians for nearly as long as I’ve been with the organization, volunteered for what amounted to suicide duty. His consciousness was sent through the ether and was temporarily installed in the body of a citizen of that village. He had twenty minutes to rig a crude incendiary device and plant it in the appropriate place. When that was done, he waited to see whether his efforts would succeed. The device was ignited, but it wasn’t powerful enough to destroy the Prime. Our agent saw this in the last moments before he took his own life.”
Hawthorne’s jaw dropped. “He killed himself? But … why?”
“Two reasons. The spell used to send him to Dandridge amounted to a one-way ticket. He could not return through the ether to his own body.” Eldritch’s flat tone made Hawthorne think of a newscaster matter-of-factly relating the details of a tragedy. “So he was doomed regardless. Moments before his consciousness would simply cease to exist, at least in a form valuable to us, he killed the body he was inhabiting.”
A grunt of disgust came from Hawthorne. “My God.”
“The agent had no choice. He didn’t know precisely how much time he had left and he couldn’t risk discovery by the Prime. So he sacrificed himself to the greater good.” Eldritch paused in a pointed way before continuing. “Which, as you well know, you may also have to do before the night is through.”
Hawthorne had not forgotten this grim fact, but having it verbalized in this blunt way made something twist inside him. He did not want to die. He would not be swayed from doing what needed doing, but he believed his cause would not be well served by failing to acknowledge his fear.
“I know, Eldritch. I won’t fail you. And I won’t fail the Guardians.”
“I know you won’t, old friend.” There was a note of sadness in Eldritch’s voice now, and hearing it made that knot of fear inside Hawthorne twist even tighter. “I would not have sent you on this mission had there been even the slightest doubt on that count.”
The truck’s driver downshifted, slowing the big truck as it moved toward an exit. The truck shuddered as it wound around the pale loop of road. Hawthorne saw an intersection ahead, replete with the usual attractions for highway travelers—a convenience store, a small hotel with a blinking neon sign, two fast-food restaurants, and a diner. The driver steered the truck through the intersection and continued down a narrow two-lane road. Less than a hundred yards down this road, Hawthorne got a look at the sign he’d been waiting all night to see.
WELCOME TO DANDRIDGE
He drew in a calming breath and said, “We’re here.”
“Good,” was Eldritch’s sole acknowledgement.
The driver shifted down through the gears again and brought the truck to a full stop alongside a tricked-out black 1970s Firebird parked on the road’s shoulder. Hawthorne looked at the vacant face of his chauffeur. He felt an absurd need to thank the man for delivering him to his destination. The man wouldn’t hear his words, nor would he remember them later when he was at the helm of his own body again. So Hawthorne just opened the door and stepped down out of the truck’s cab. He threw the door shut and the truck’s engine rumbled. Hawthorne moved to the shoulder of the road to stand next to the Firebird as he watched the semi roar away.
Then he put the phone to his ear again and said, “What now?”
“Now you call the man who contacted us. You will need to secure the copy of Invocations of the Reaper before the Prime can get to it. Tell this man his e-mail was received and that you were sent to help him. It is not necessary at this point for him to know anything else. In the glove compartment of the transportation we’ve arranged is a restaurant receipt with the man’s address and driving directions written on the back. Emphasize how important it is that the book not leave his possession. Call him now.”
