As Lie the Dead

Chapter Ten

Four Years Ago

“Stay behind me, goddammit.”

The ferocity of Ash’s whisper stops my forward movement, and I pause at the bottom step of the dank stairwell. It’s blazing hot in here—just another low-rent apartment building without air conditioning to stave off the stifling summer heat. The cement and metal stairwell reeks of sweat—and not just what’s rolling down my back.

Ash slips around in front of me and stands on the next step up. She’s almost at eye level now. I’ve worked with her for only two weeks, so can’t say I know her facial tics yet, but I do know this one—anger. Great; she’s pissed at me again. So what else is new? She’s disliked me since the moment I was assigned. I get that a friend of hers died to make room for me on the Triad, but seriously? I didn’t kill him. And the massive stick up her ass is getting to be a major pain in mine.

“Disobey me again and I will knock you into next week,” she growls.

I bristle, knowing full well she can and will carry out such a threat—holy God, I can only hope to ever be as good a martial artist as she is—only I don’t suffer threats well. Never have, never will. “You didn’t order me back,” I reply.

Her dark eyes flash. “You’re the rookie, Blondie. You know you take rear.”

I open my mouth to snap off a few choice—and really stupid—comments. Jesse nudges his way between us, his massive build a solid wall of muscle and annoyance. “Not now,” he says, always the peacemaker. His double-blade ax rests against his left shoulder. It’s his favorite weapon, and he wields it like a Mexican lumberjack. The sheer heft of it would drive me crazy. I prefer my knives.

Jesse has at least given me a chance, so I back off.

Ash turns and sprints up the stairs. Jesse follows. I hesitate, then go. Our destination is the third floor, apartment G. The assignment came in thirty minutes ago, with very few details and a terse “Be ready for anything” from our absentee Handler. Jesse said Wyatt had rushed to the hospital to help with some emergency. An emergency in someone else’s Triad.

Nice leader we have.

The third-floor hallway is quiet—unusual for a place with paper-thin walls and hundreds of residents. I hear no television sets blaring, no music blasting, not even the familiar ruckus of verbal arguments. The faux-wood floor is scuffed and cracked, plaster walls in severe need of new paint. I’ve seen worse. So where is everyone? Do they know?

People in this city have developed an uncanny sense of when to ignore something. Maybe because Dregs have been around for so long that strange activity is becoming commonplace. It’s easier to disregard the unusual than to try to make sense of it. Those of us who know the truth don’t sleep any easier than those who do not.

The silence raises my hackles. Each soft touch of my boot to the floor sounds gunshot-loud. My stomach twists. Whatever’s in apartment G is bad.

Ash stops in front of our target. The door is unremarkable—cheap wood, easy to shatter open with a well-placed kick. No need. The cops who responded to a neighbor’s nine-one-one call were ordered to leave the place unlocked. I imagine they were more than eager to turn the crime scene over to someone else. City cops don’t know about the Triads—not exactly.

Handlers carry badges identifying them as Special Cases officers—supposedly a deep-cover unit of the Metro Police Department that was harder to get into than a nun’s underpants. It gives Handlers the authority to take over Dreg-related crime scenes so we Hunters can go in and play, no questions asked. Kind of like on television shows, when FBI guys go in and take over from the local cops—it’s a jurisdiction thing, I think.

After all, cleaning up after Dregs is our job.

Ash turns the knob and pauses, sniffing the air. I can smell the blood as well. Thick and metallic, so pungent beyond the closed door I almost don’t want to see what awaits us. I’ve got a strong stomach, though, and curiosity won’t let me stay in the hall. She opens the door, and a wall of hot, blood-soaked air slams into us.

Ash gags. Jesse pales. I breathe through my mouth, waiting for my senior teammates to enter first.

I go over our sketchy info. The apartment belongs to a nursing student named Rebecca Trainor, who hasn’t attended classes in almost two weeks. One neighbor reported seeing her with a young man, probably a boyfriend, on and off for the last six months. No name for him, just a vague description. Same neighbor—a font of information, this one—also heard a lot of arguing and screaming the last two weeks, mostly Rebecca’s voice. It was the sound of a man screaming in terror that finally got someone to call the cops.

Adding all of that together with our being summoned equals a Dreg attack. Quite likely this Rebecca got bitten and infected, and her steadfast boyfriend didn’t know what to make of his Halfie girlfriend. Not until tonight, when she finally turned him into Boyfriend Tartare.

The interior of the apartment supports my theory, I realize, as we finally go inside. I shut the door from prying eyes, then turn and peer into hell.

Blood splatters every available surface—floors, walls, tables, chairs, curtains, even the light fixture over the dining space. Some splatters are thick crimson blobs; others are light sprays. More than the blood, though, is the gore. A foot and ankle stick out of a potted plant. Bits of skin are arranged on a cardboard chessboard like playing pieces. Shredded remains of internal organs litter the kitchen floor like macabre confetti. An arm and hand dangle over the back of the sofa, attached to nothing except torn muscle and ligaments.

I try to categorize it all, but my mind is shutting down. Forcing me to look away, at the floor, at anything except the remains of this person. Only I look in the wrong direction—at a candy dish on the kitchen counter. Nestled among whips of red licorice is something that makes dinner surge into my mouth—the dead man’s severed testicles.

“Holy fuck,” Jesse says. He’s seen it. He backs up and steps on my foot. I yelp.

Something snuffles behind a closed door. We three tense, as instinctively as squinting against sunshine. We aren’t alone.

Using hand signals, Ash directs us. Knife in each hand, I dart around the mess and crouch on the left of the target. Ash does the same, coming around on the right, armed with her favorite katana—she named the damned thing Hex. Ax back and ready to swing, Jesse goes up the middle, straight at the door.

Sweat trickles down my jaw. Adrenaline surges and sets my heart pounding. We’re all ready to kill the monster who did this to a human being.

Jesse kicks open the door. Ash surges in, and he follows. I start forward, only to hit a barrier. He’s stopped just inside the room, as has Ash. Annoyed, I slip around to get a look at what has given them pause.

A woman sits in the middle of a blood-soaked bed, clutching a hollowed male torso in her arms. It has one arm and one leg attached, a bloody hole where his privates had once been, and very little holding his head on to his shoulders. The neck is chewed away, gaping in places, oozing in others. His mouth is open in a death shriek, eyes wide and unseeing.

She sobs as she holds him close. Blood covers her face and clothes. She doesn’t seem to care she’s cuddling a flayed corpse, and I realize why when she finally looks up. Fangs glitter in the dim light cast by a bedside lamp, its shade as bloodstained as the walls and carpet. She bares them at us, making no move to attack.

“I tried so hard,” she wails. Human grief paints her words, but she is no longer human. She’s a monster, nothing more. “He wouldn’t let them kill me, and I tried so hard for him, but I couldn’t control it.”

Ash circles to the right, Jesse left. I stay put, and we create a perimeter. She has nowhere to go now except Hell.

The Halfie lifts the dead man’s head and kisses his lips. Ash makes a choked sound. I glance at her, thinking it’s a noise of disgust. No. She’s gaping at the bed, pale, chin trembling. I look at Jesse. He wears a similar expression. I long to knock their heads together and demand to be told what they know. I wait, finding a rare reserve of patience.

“He loved me,” the Halfie says, more to herself than to her audience. “Loved me so much, and this is what I did to him. But his blood … Oh, his blood smells so sweet. It always has.”

Ash takes a step closer, katana at the ready. “Rebecca, when did you get infected?” she asks.

Wide, speckled eyes stare, surprised by the question. “I think two weeks.”

The timeline fit with the neighbor’s story. Rebecca gets infected, her boyfriend tries to help her through the physical and psychological changes in her life. Only she snaps and strews him around the apartment, as her new nature demands. Poor guy, blinded by love. Too bad he didn’t know Halfie infection is something no one recovers from.

“I didn’t want to hurt Bradford,” Rebecca sobs. “I really didn’t. I love him. Love him so much, and I wanted to make him part of me. Wanted to share this new experience, but he wouldn’t let me. Said he’d help me, but he’d never become what I was.”

I stare, confused now. How did Bradford know what she is? So many humans, guided by popular culture and misinformation, still think vampirism is cool. It’s all about immortality and hot sex and lusty things. No one ever guesses just how brutal the change is to a human being, or that true vampires are not human beings at all. Never were. Hell, learning all that during Boot Camp shocked the shit out of me.

“He should have known better,” Ash says. “He should have killed you the instant he found out you were infected.”

Okay, now I’m really confused. I start to ask, only the pieces are sinking into place. Recognition. Knowledge. Consequences. I look again at the dead man’s face, at how young he is. My age. What’s left of his body is toned to perfection, built for fighting. Like us.

“Holy Christ,” I say. “He’s a Hunter.”

As though my voice snaps her back, Ash slashes her blade down and neatly chops off Rebecca’s head. Thick purplish red blood sprays, and she jumps back. Bodies sink to the bed. Ash stalks past me, not fast enough to hide the tears in her eyes, and into the outer room.

“Stupid bastard,” Jesse says.

I can’t look away from the bed and the sprawled bodies of a man and woman who, quite literally, loved each other to death. “I don’t get it,” I say.

“He didn’t do his job and kill her when he found out she was infected. End of story.”

“No, I get that part.” Hot and nauseated and confused, I look at him. “I don’t get why he didn’t kill her. He knew she was a monster, and that she’d eventually turn on him. We’re Hunters. We’re taught to not fucking trust Dregs.”

He raises a shoulder in a half shrug. “Guess he didn’t see her as a Dreg, just as a woman he loved. Still fucking stupid, though.”

“No kidding.”

“It’s hard to kill someone you love.” Jesse squeezes my shoulder as he passes. “Even when you know it’s the kindest damned thing you can do for them.”

I chew my bottom lip. “Hey, Jesse?”

He turns, thick eyebrows slanting. “Yeah?”

“If I ever get bitten, promise you’ll be kind?”

“Promise.” He tugs a lock of my short blond hair. “Same for me. I don’t want to be one of those fucking things. Not ever.”

“Deal.”

I linger in the bedroom only a moment longer, then join my team in the other room. Time to report it and get the mess cleaned up. I don’t know whose Triad Bradford belonged to, and I don’t envy them the pain of discovering what he’d done. Or of his grisly demise. Horrifying as it is, it’s also an object lesson for every single Hunter policing the city.

Don’t trust a Dreg, and don’t ever fall in love with one—they’ll only stab you in the back.