J Duncan - Deadworld

Inside, the entryway was cloaked in darkness, except for the fading gray light coming in through the doorway. Shelby stood in the middle, her heavy breath quickly slowing. She held a 9mm Beretta in her hand. “Up,” she said simply. “Where’s the stairwell at?”

Right on cue, as if the heavens might actually be interested in their events, the sky belched forth a flash of lightning, and across the blowing, stirred-up refuse, a sign on the wall next to the elevator read STAIRS. Jackie pointed her Glock at the sign and followed behind Shelby. The agent part of her brain screamed for backup. They were rushing a lethally dangerous serial killer-an agent with two civilians, one of them armed. To be sure, there was more than one violation there. Rational agent Jackie Rutledge had been run over, however, by the stampeding fear and panic monster who guided her with sole, focused purpose. Laurel was dying. If she failed, it would all be over.

Up the stairs three at a time, Jackie kept wondering about blood. How much could you lose before you died? Were you just plain fucked after a certain point, or could transfusions save you?

“Jackie, be careful,” Nick said in a quiet rush from behind. “He’ll run, but he might try to take you or Shelby out along the way.”

She heard Nick say something behind her, but Jackie was not in a frame of mind to listen to him. Her heartbeat thumped in her ears, racing along at a frantic pace. Her hands were so eager to find Laurel, to assure she was alive, that they trembled. Holding the gun up in both hands and swinging around the third-floor doorjamb, Jackie aimed down a hall into darkness, the tipping of the gun bouncing around like an angry bee in a jar. There were no doors to be seen.

“Shit,” Shelby said in whisper. “She’s up here somewhere.” She darted down the hall to the left. “Go around the other way. Look for a door into the middle.”

Nick took off before Jackie could even react and was around the opposite corner before she could barely get going.

Before she was even halfway down the next section of hall leading around to the other side of the building, Shelby’s voice boomed across the whole floor. “Drake!” A quick burst of four gunshots followed.

And then there was laughter. Dark, rich, and utterly humorless.

“No.” Jackie ran as hard as she could, careening off the wall as she rounded the far corner. The hall was a gigantic square surrounding a room in the middle. The only door in had been on the opposite side. She watched Nick dart in without hesitation, and she quickly followed into singularly illuminated darkness.

The silence was all wrong. No running footsteps, no cries of “here he comes” or “look out.” Jackie swung her Glock back and forth, sweeping the room, but she could see nothing other than the center fluorescent light. “Where? Where is he?”

“Smiley fucker just stepped across, Nick. Just opened up a door and walked right through.” Shelby’s hands went up to her head then, the Beretta lying across the top. She began to walk toward the light. “Oh, goddamnit. Laurel.”

Jackie had noticed it upon entering the room, but her brain only just now let her really see the body that lay on the steel table in the middle of the room. Dark hair cascaded down over the side, along with a limp arm. The hair was all wrong. That could not be her. It wasn’t her! A momentary wave of relief washed over Jackie, and she walked forward to see, to verify the possibility that this was a big mistake. She watched Shelby pick the arm up and lay it gently by the body’s side.

“I’m sorry, Jackie.” The voice was Nick’s, coming from behind. He knew before Jackie got close enough to verify.

Thirty feet away, Jackie stopped, gun dropping to her side. Nick was right. She could see it in the features of the face. Drake had colored her hair. “She’s dead?” Her voice was soft, quiet, sounding like a young girl.

“A little blood, Nick. If you’d been on blood we would have been here sooner.” Shelby held up her hand and stomped toward him. “Five fucking minutes. Five!”

“Wouldn’t have mattered, Shel. He would have killed her anyway.”

“Maybe,” she said, and from behind her, Jackie heard the unmistakable thump of someone getting slugged in the gut, the grunt and coughing rush of air. “Maybe not.”

Jackie finally made her feet move, shuffling forward. She vaguely heard Nick drop to his knees in the fading background. The world narrowed the closer she came, as if she were approaching a precipice, beyond which lay nothing. The body lay upon the steel, clothed only from the waste up, her lower half covered in a familiar-looking quilt. On the left calf, Laurel’s familiar blue-and-green fairy no longer danced with a magical life of its own. Her face was serene, eyes closed, one corner of her mouth turned just the slightest bit up into a smile.

Rage. There should have been screaming rage, hurling furniture, the need for a straightjacket, but Jackie only stared, and the gun slowly slipped from her numb fingertips and fell to the floor. Her mouthed worked. There were words somewhere, something she wanted to say, but nothing worked. There under the bright fluorescent bulb, the world had died and now lay broken at her feet.

She took Laurel’s cold fingers in her hand and held them, wanting to say good-bye, but for the life of her, Jackie could not force the words out of her mouth. Instead the words built up and finally spilled down her cheeks. Somewhere in the background, the chaos of sound marking the rest of the FBI entered the room, as well as Shelby’s voice, far closer-next to her, even.

“Jackie. Come on, we should move out of their way.”

She shook her head, violently enough to fling tears off around her. She wanted to get those words out, whatever they were. Had to. Jackie squeezed Laurel’s hand in hers, hoping that even in death she might give the same strength and inspiration she gave off in life, but there was only failure.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, Laur.” Her knees buckled, and Jackie sagged against the table. The rest of the words vanished into tearful nonsense, buried under the bubbling gasps of sobs that, once started, didn’t want to stop.

Jackie clutched on to Laurel’s body, her head pressed to the unmoving chest, and wailed.

Nick sat on the hood of Jackie’s car watching the FBI help Shelby into the backseat of one of their cars. Her usually petulant mouth had drawn out into a thin, angry line. The flashing red and blue lights did little to accentuate the puffy eyes. They were taking her in on the assault, but he knew better. It would not stick. They just wanted a chance to get her downtown for questioning. Part of that anger was directed at him, the rest at Drake, and the tears were for Laurel Carpenter.

He said nothing to anyone, having been told to wait, which he reluctantly did. They had some questions, of course, beyond the usual documentation. The look from Jackie’s boss had held a thousand of them. So Nick sat and nursed the sore ribs where Shelby had sucker punched him. He had dropped like a stone on that one-had not seen it coming. Nearly had him puking on the floor, but felt like it anyway after watching Jackie fall apart. They had to drag her off Laurel’s body and she had fought to keep them from taking her away until somebody had knocked her up with some sedative. At that point, Nick had walked out and down to the street.

Guilt stung Nick down to the quick. It always came back to blood in the end, and, once again, the lack thereof had cost another life. Damn it all. He had warned them, but, then, who was going to reasonably listen to stories of vampires and a century-old tale of vengeance? Would it have even mattered? Something had happened. Drake had power Nick had never seen, an ability he did not realize they could do. The man had crossed over.