Dead Man Stalking (Blood and Bone Book 1) Page 10

  The Hunter choked out a ragged laugh as he painfully straightened up and balanced precariously on one foot. Blood dripped from his shredded boot and puddled on the pavement.

  “Better than handing myself in to VINE,” he said with jagged bravado. “At least death is clean. I won’t end up infected with your disease.”

  He clumsily tried to lift the muzzle from where it threatened the pavement. Took curled his finger around the trigger of his gun, ready to take the shot if he needed to.

  “There are rules against turning the unwilling,” Madoc interrupted as he straightened up and limped forward. He spat onto the ground, a splatter of black lost on the charred concrete, and bared his fangs at the man. “But a corpse has no rights. You might Rise, you might not. We’ll still have our way with you.”

  The Hunter spluttered out a curse and waved the rifle in a wild arc. He stumbled back toward the car, his ruined foot barely able to touch the ground. His eyes, white rimmed in the letterbox view of his balaclava, cut down the road as a black Eclipse screeched up.

  “We’re done here anyhow,” he said. “Fuck you, Dead Man.”

  He lurched backward toward the open door of the car. Took spat a curse through clenched teeth and took the shot. The bullet hit the Hunter in the ribs and threw him sideways off his precarious balance. He grabbed the door, arm hooked through the open window, and the car peeled away with him half-in and half-out. The bloody ruin of his foot bounced and dragged along the tarmac as the loose door battered and jarred the dangled man. He managed to pull himself in as they reached the end of the road, and the door slammed shut as the driver swung sharply around the corner.

  Took swore in frustration. “They’ll find him dead tomorrow,” he predicted sourly. “Idiot.”

  “If he were smart, he’d have gotten into a different line of work,” Madoc said. He dropped to his knees on the cracked pavement and doubled over, his hand pressed to the tender scars that pocked his lean stomach and chest. “I forgot how much this hurts.”

  Took shoved the gun into his waistband and limped over to him. He put his hand on Madoc’s shoulder and tried not to lean on him. Worry picked at him with cold fingers.

  “Don’t do it again, then,” he said. Despite his best intentions, he slid his hand around to cup the back of Madoc’s neck. He could feel the delicate ridge of Madoc’s spine and the heavy clench of muscle under soft, fire-warm skin. “Do you need someone to call Pally?”

  Madoc retched and spat up a sour goo of black bile and shredded tissue. It splattered over his knees and the ground. A stray bullet that had gotten caught somehow, instead of punched straight through his body like the rest, hit the ground with a dull chink. It glittered in the vomit, silver-alloy bright as the ichor clotted and scabbed around it.

  “If I can answer that question,” he said as he straightened up, fists braced on his slimed knees. “You don’t need to ask it.”

  Lawrence scrambled out of the Eclipse, gun in hand and VINE-issue body armor half fastened around her torso. The ID sprayed across the front—a stenciled white BTR-27—had been Took’s the last time he looked. It was just the code for human, so the other Biter agents could factor that info into tactical decisions, but it still flicked Took’s ego on the raw. He looked away from her as she paused in the middle of the road, her eyes focused toward the end of the road as she barked orders into a radio.

  “Bennett,” Madoc said as he grabbed Took’s wrist. He broke off as he gagged and had to spit again, with a choked curse mixed in the bile. His fingers tightened hard enough to hurt as he cleared his throat of obstruction. “Luke! Stop the tanker before they hook it up.”

  The use of his real name caught Took off guard. It had been years since that had felt like him, but apparently some habits were ingrained deeper than identity. The urgency in Madoc’s order pushed Took into motion. He loped down the street toward the fire truck, hand raised to flag down the tall, soft-faced woman in the chief’s jacket.

  “VINE!” At least this time he had some sort of actual authority behind him. “Don’t hook the tanker up.”

  The chief pushed the visor of her helmet up and glared at him. She had a soft, round face, but her eyes were hard and impatient. “Water’s off,” she said. One gloved finger jabbed toward the still-flaming house. “Without the tanker, we gotta spit the fire out. So get out of my way and let me do my job.”

  There was a reason Madoc was in command. Took could follow a twisted mind down whatever broken path it took, but strategy and tactics weren’t his strength. He’d only just put the pieces together.

  “Tanker’s compromised,” he spat out between his fangs. “You want to use it? Tap it first.”

  She frowned dubiously at him. “I don’t know your face,” she said. “I know the local VINE boys.”

  “You know me?” Madoc asked from behind Took. He braced his elbow on Took’s shoulder and put his weight on it. His body still felt hot, almost alive, and the sour-sweet tang of ichor on his clothes made Took’s throat ache. The flash of surprise on the chief’s face was enough of an answer. “Tap the tanker.”

  It took a moment, but she finally grimaced and gave in. “Fine,” she grumbled. “But any extra property damage? That’s on VINE.”

  She turned around and broke into a jog as she barked orders at the crew by the tanker. Whatever doubts she had about their request, she didn’t appreciate being questioned in turn. She cut short the frustrated queries from the other firefighters and scrambled up the welded-on ladder to crack the seal on the tanker herself.

  The liquid that she dipped out in the palm of her hand looked like water. From the sudden blankness that settled over the chief’s face, she didn’t agree. She lifted wet fingers to her nose and grimaced at whatever she smelled.

  “Back it up!” She scrambled a few steps down the ladder and jumped the rest of her way to the ground. The other firefighters hesitated as she stripped her gloves off. Her hands were latticed with old scars, pink against her dark skin, and she spun her finger in a “get a move on” gesture. “Get it the fuck off this street. Right now!”

  “What is it?” Madoc asked as he finally took his weight off Took’s shoulder.

  The chief shot him a black, angry look. It probably wasn’t aimed at them, but Took didn’t envy whoever she was angry at. She wiped her hands on her pants and checked her sleeves.

  “Contaminated,” she said. “Ethanol. We sprayed that on the fire, we’d have all been dead. Just like whatever shithead did this when I find him.”

  She gave her crew a bleak, furious once-over and then stalked away. “Move your asses! Get this goddamn thing out of here. Tap the sewers. Better that shit than this shit.” She smacked her hand against the side of the tanker to underline her point as it started to roll. “Move it!”

  As the crew scrambled to get the tanker moved and the neighbors started to spill out onto the street now the gunman was gone, Took sagged and sat down on the curb. His hands were still raw and blistered, but they’d start to heal soon enough.

  Lawrence jogged over to join them. The thin leather soles of her brogues were deformed from the heat, and chunks of tar stuck to the sides where the tarmac had gone soft.

  “What happened here?” she demanded. “Who was in that car, and why did they want to burn this street?”

  An hour ago Took would have been confident he could give her at least an outline of an answer. Now he ignored her.

  “I missed something,” he said. Unsaid, pinched between the teeth that he still couldn’t push back down, was that he wouldn’t have before. He waited for Madoc to realize it, to finally see that Took was just the taped-together bits of who he’d been, able to function for a while, but then the sharp edges would start to cut through the tape that held him in.

  “Good,” Madoc said. “Now we’re even.”

  The strung-wire tension in Took’s spine loosened at the dry jibe. They’d never been nice to each either. Once Madoc was kind to him, Took would know he’d seen the shabby joi
ns. Not yet, apparently.

  “They set fire to a house,” Lawrence said. “We all missed something. Obviously.”

  Took wasn’t sure if he appreciated the fact that she could see that too, or resented the we from someone wearing his tag on her vest. It was stupid to be jealous that she’d taken his place, someone would have had to, but it didn’t stop him. The fire truck finally got the pumps to work, and the crew sprayed the Aron house with water that stank of shit and old grease.

  “Come on,” Madoc said. He grabbed Took’s wrist and pulled him to his feet. “Let’s get this over with. Then I can get you home and you can show me this evidence we missed.”

  Took supposed that answered the question of whether Madoc knew where he lived. He’d worry about that later.

  Chapter Eight

  THE STAKE was a thing of murderous intent and well-crafted beauty—blood-cured cherry wood carved and smoothed in a tapered spear the length of his forearm, shod with steel at one end and a barbed electrum tip at the other. Tally lines were burned into the side, a charred baker’s dozen of deaths someone had doled out with this.

  Madoc picked it up as he waited for Took to finish his shower, and turned it between his fingers. He’d grabbed a spare uniform from the back of Lawrence’s car before she left last night. It was just cotton and Kevlar instead of his preferred tailored, reinforced leather, but at least it didn’t stink of his own shredded guts. There was a pair of gloves tucked into the belt, but he ignored them and ran his bare fingers along the wood. It made his fingertips itch with a sharp sting that worked its way down into the meat, so it had been soaked in holy oil at some point.

  It was the sort of thing passed down in Hunter families like an heirloom or purchased by breathing politicians to mount behind glass—a mute reminder of what the alternative to their reasonable bigotry was. Took used it as a letter weight in his kitchen.

  The stairs creaked.

  “A trophy?” Madoc asked as he carefully set it back down on a letter from VINE’s human resources department.

  “A gift,” Took said as he padded down the stairs. The rasp of the fire was still etched into his throat. “From my mother.”

  “That would have gone over well in the office,” Madoc said dryly. “Sometimes I forget you’re from Cali, land of sun, salt, and stakes.”

  That wasn’t entirely true. Sometimes he wondered if all that old prickly wariness toward the Anakim was still there, and that Took had just gotten better at his mask.

  He brushed his hands together to shed the itch of cherry poison and the cobwebby question he didn’t have an answer to as he turned around to give Took a quick once-over. His eyes wanted to linger on damp, shower-dark curls and the way the threadbare academy T-shirt clung to broad shoulders and lean waist. It was tight enough that Madoc could pick out the web of old scars through it, but he focused on the fresh injuries. The smoke-cracked skin around Took’s mouth had softened and pinched back together into thin scars, and the raw blisters on his hands had dried up and faded down to pink. “Did you feed?”

  “You didn’t need to stay,” Took said as he slung a damp towel around his neck and leaned back against the door jamb. “I can still put myself to bed.”

  Madoc had tried, but there was only so far good intentions could take you. He let dark heat slide into his voice as he looked Took over.

  “If I’d put you to bed—” His scorched throat had healed hours ago, the rough note in his voice was for something else entirely. “—we’d still be there.”

  Took looked away uncomfortably. He rubbed the back of his neck and cleared his throat, a faded flush pink around his temples.

  “Don’t, ah,” he said awkwardly. Madoc cursed himself and tried to lock the old, cold shell back into place. It had never stopped any injury to his heart, but no one else got to see they’d drawn blood. Took glanced up at him and twitched the corner of his mouth up in a short-lived smile. “Don’t write checks that your, um, ass can’t cash.”

  Madoc blinked. If a judge had sworn him in right then, he couldn’t have testified to what the expression on his face was. Whatever it was made Took laugh harshly, from more than a scalded throat and push himself off the door. His cat slunk in from behind him, rubbed against his ankles, and then jumped up onto the counter in one smooth leap. It sat down on the stove and stared at Madoc with watery blue eyes while it licked its paws.

  “Sorry,” Took said as he went to the sink and flicked the tap on. Water spat out. That was apparently what the cat wanted. It abandoned the oven to stick its freshly cleaned paw into the stream and then lick the droplets off its toes—all the while with those watery, pink-blue eyes trained on Madoc. Took rubbed his finger along its head in a brief pet that made it twitch its pointed ears in irritation. “I guess I’m rusty. It’s been a while.”

  The hot ache of temptation settled in Madoc’s cock, heavy as a stone. He was tired of this careful dance. In the beginning he just wanted to press the newcomer, to test whether he’d brought more from the West Coast than a tan. He’d baited a trap—flirt and retreat, be sexual without any sex, provoke with no promises—and then fallen into it himself.

  He wanted to bend Took over the counter, bury his fingers in those damp-dark curls, and give him a refresher course on fucking. Except there was two years’ worth of silence behind them, and maybe—maybe—that moment of absolute confidence last night when he’d known Took had his back was all Madoc would ever get.

  It wasn’t everything he wanted—because he wanted everything—but it would be enough.

  His cock disagreed with a spiteful throb that clenched back to his ass, but it didn’t appreciate anything but broad shoulders and nice thighs. Madoc knew it was harder to find a good friend than a good fuck. Maybe one day he’d risk it and see if Took would be both, but not yet.

  “You rusty on debriefings as well?” he asked. “How did you connect Waring to Annabelle Franklin, and Annabelle Franklin to the Aron house?”

  There’d always been something guarded about Took. Years with the Biters had worn down his suspicion of the unbreathing, but unlike Lawrence, he never forgot that his friends and coworkers were predators. Even with Madoc, in those moments when Madoc could have sworn that Took had been about to give in to the tension between them, there’d always been something held back. A year spent being imprisoned and tortured hadn’t made him any easier to read. There were hints of that old, unguarded charm that lit his handsome face and Madoc treasured, but only sometimes, and it faded quickly.

  So the flicker of emotion that passed over Took’s face like a shadow could have been relief or disappointment. Even if Madoc had wanted to take the chance that it was the latter, it was gone before he had a chance.

  He left the water to run and gestured for Madoc to follow him through the house.

  “THE MODERN fascination with the lives of witty nobodies will prove the first grains of grave dirt on my head,” Madoc grumbled as Took slouched at his desk and flicked through a dozen thumbnails of Waring’s face. “It is senseless.”

  Took absently combed his wet hair back from his face with one hand. Water trickled down his neck and into his collar, and Madoc licked the imagined taste off his lips and looked away.

  “Says the man with a dog-eared first copy of The Letters of Pliny the Younger in his office,” Took said.

  “He was hardly a nobody,” Madoc countered. “Nor did he clown for paramilitaries in a search for fame.”

  Took clicked his tongue behind his teeth but didn’t argue. He pulled up two videos and nested them on the screen next to each other.

  “Look,” he said as pointed to one and sketched an area just behind Waring’s shoulder. It showed a stack of cardboard boxes with bright green lettering over the front. “Those are from Appleton.”

  Madoc reached over Took’s shoulder and enlarged the image with a flick of finger and thumb. Habit and a little worm of malice made him settle his weight on Took’s shoulder as he studied the screen. If he had to ache, then he sa
w no reason to make it too easy on Took.

  “Apple and Pear Aphr….” Madoc paused and raised his eyebrow skeptically. “Aphrodisiac tea?”

  “Alchemy has experienced a recent revival,” Took said in the learned-by-rote cadence that meant it was a quote from some journal or website. “Particularly in areas of rural deprivation, which Appleton qualifies for by a number of markers.” He paused, and his voice dropped into a drawl as he flicked the video off the screen. “For most of these people, the only magic they ever see are fangs in the night and dead children on the news.”

  Madoc grimaced at the turn of phrase, but he couldn’t argue. The Anakim had laws and morals, laid out in the Book of Enoch and evolved in the thousands of years since. Outside of war, most would never tap an unwilling throat or pitch a weighted corpse into the shallows so as not to alarm the rest of the herd. But, like any group, they had their outliers—the mad, the bad, and the lonely—and for a rogue, the easiest prey were the weakest in society.

  “They claim that God is on their side,” he pointed out. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Divine intervention tends to be assumed, not witnessed,” Took pointed out. “When someone does survive within the event radius, they rarely say what people want to hear. The sort of people we’re talking about most likely have set ideas about divinity, based on the teachings of their denomination. It doesn’t satisfy to hear that the human mind, however pious, tends to get the god stuff wrong 80 percent of the time. So they turn to ‘breathing’ magic, like alchemy and astrology—disciplines that don’t need to invoke the ‘other,’ that belong to them.”

  “And how is it connected to your case?”

  “Apples and Appleton,” Took said. “See the connection?”

  “That’s a reach.”

  Took snorted and leaned back in the seat as he hit Play on the other video. “Not really. The orchards are the town’s major agricultural export. Around here, if it has apples on it or in it, then it probably has something to do with Appleton. Like the company that makes these teas, a start-up cottage industry run out of Bernice Franklin’s kitchen.”