J Duncan - Deadworld

“For now.” Other than the horny, mortified woman in my spare room. I’ll try to call in the morning and see how you’re doing. If we get a break at all, I’ll come by and see you.”

“Okay.” Cyn sniffed and clicked off.

For a moment, he thought the evening could not end on a lower note, but then a short, sharp scream came from down the hall.

Pale and fanged, black cape swirling about his shoulders like a mist of raven’s feathers, Nick had begun to eat at Jackie. Beginning with her toes, he had taken them delicately into his mouth, breaking off each one like a little piece of hard candy. Then, with snakelike effectiveness, he gulped down each leg just short of the point where she really wanted those fangs to bite.

“Eat me, Nick. Oh, yes, eat me.” She repeated the absurd refrain over and over while he meticulously devoured her, until on the brink of that sweet bite, he stopped and turned to look over his shoulder. Jackie felt a wave of bone-piercing cold wash through her, and Nick’s smiling face froze and shattered into a million tiny pieces.

“Jackie.”

Laurel stood at the foot of the bed, her eyes ablaze with an icy fire. Jackie screamed, trying to scramble away, but, of course, her legs were gone, and she could go nowhere. She glared down at the legless bare body and shook her head.

“Jackie.”

“I’m sorry,” Jackie said, wiping at the tears streaming down her face. “I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry. Please, Laur, forgive me.”

“Jackie!”

She awoke finally, sitting bolt upright in the bed, the frightened scream dying as quickly as it had come out. The bedside lamp was still on. She had fallen asleep, lying there contemplating the inevitable conversation she would have to have with Nick. At the foot of the bed, shifting in and out of existence, was the gauzy shape of Laurel’s ghost.

Jackie clutched the blanket up to her chest and swallowed the tight ball of fear back down. Her voice, despite the effort, was barely audible. “Laur.”

Laurel smiled. Then her brow furrowed in concentration, and her image nearly faded out before growing brighter again. Her voice sounded like it came from the other end of a long corridor, hollow and distant. “Hi, hon. No time… talk.”

They both turned as the bedroom door swung open. Nick poked his head in, and his eyes grew wide in surprise. “Well, hello, Ms. Carpenter.”

“Shut up,” Jackie said in a harsh whisper.

Nick stepped in and said nothing. Laurel turned so she could see both of them. “Drake… North Shore,” she said, bring her hands up to her temples. “Sorry… hard. Shelby on the way. Go.”

“On the way?” Nick reached into his pocket for his cell, and it began to ring before he pulled it out. “Shel? What the hell… Yeah, she’s here now. Okay, I’m heading up now. I’ll call in a few.”

Jackie stared in silence at Laurel. Her brain had shut off. No words came to mind. She tried to blink away the tears filling up her eyes. Laurel did not seem the raging spirit some part of her mind had envisioned when Shelby had told her she would show up again. It was just her. Laurel. Jackie’s friend. And working the case while she slept it away in some stranger’s bed.

Laurel turned back to her as Nick pocketed the phone. She smiled. “Go… talk later.” She stepped forward into the bed, reaching out to Jackie, and then faded out completely.

Jackie reached up to grab her hand and found nothing but an icy-cold breath of air in her grasp. She wiped at the tear that had spilled down her cheek. “Shit.”

“I know you’ll shoot me if I leave you here, so let’s go.” Nick stood at the door, standing aside as though waiting for her to go ahead.

She took a deep breath, letting it out in a rush, and swung her legs out of bed. “Give me a sec to throw clothes on.”

He nodded. “I’ll have the car out front.”

A minute later, Jackie stepped out into the cool, misty night air and found herself staring at the open door of a dark purple Porsche 911. The vampire cowboy drove a purple Porsche. She walked over to the driveway and got in, the leather bucket seat snuggling up behind her. “You drive a purple Porsche?”

“It was my wife’s favorite color,” he said.

“Why don’t you drive this thing all the time?”

He shrugged. “Don’t generally need to.”

“So when do you generally need it?”

Nick backed out onto the road and gave her what she thought might actually be a sly look. “When I want to go really fast. Buckle up, Agent Rutledge.”

She just managed to get the strap across her body when her head was forced back into the seat, and the Porsche launched down the road toward North Shore.

Jackie stared straight ahead in silence while Nick had them weaving in and out of late-night freeway traffic doing about ninety. Gamble had everyone heading up into North Shore, but she knew it would be Shelby and Nick who found Drake. They just needed to be ready to pounce when they did.

Worse, though, was Nick’s silence. It made her unable to focus. What was he thinking about earlier? No big deal? Who the hell is this slut? Why had Shelby not mentioned the side effects of whatever she had done? Unless of course she wanted the result. Presumptuous bitch.

He downshifted onto an off ramp, slowing enough at a stoplight to make sure no traffic was coming, and turned the corner doing fifty. “About earlier,” he said.

Great. Here we go. “Do we have to talk about it now?” Or ever?

“No, but I just wanted to say you shouldn’t worry yourself over it. It was Shelby’s doing.”

She looked over at Nick, his features calm, mood unruffled, weaving them through traffic like it was a Sunday drive in the country. Was he truly so unflappable? He had responded to her, hadn’t he? Sure, he had stopped, but there had been some response. Or was it that he didn’t want to be bothered with the possibilities of what had happened? He was going to let her cop out for him.

“You don’t want to talk about it either, do you?”

The phone rang, and Nick slowed to answer. “Anything? What? Already?” The car picked up speed. “Where? Wellington. Got it. We’re five minutes away.”

“What’s going on?” Jackie grabbed the door handle to keep herself from slamming into Nick as he slid around a corner.

“Drake’s got her already,” Nick replied, mouth set in a grim line.

“What!” Jackie dug up her phone. “Where? I’ll call it in.”

“One-ninety-first and Wellington, heading south on Wellington. Black Cadillac Escalade.”

Jackie called up Gamble, who relayed the information out to everyone on patrol. “Maybe Laurel has him acting sooner than he wanted.”

“Maybe, but I doubt it,” Nick said. “He’s had this planned for a long time, and we aren’t really off his timetable. We just may have lucked out. Laurel might have seen what he was doing from the other side. I don’t know. And no,” he added, “I don’t really want to talk about what happened earlier.”

An unmarked car with a red flashing light on top went flying through an intersection, and Nick just missed clipping the rear bumper. Two lights farther down, he pulled a hard left, sliding onto the shoulder of the road. The Porsche fishtailed a bit getting back in line on the road.

Jackie glared at him. “Not going to help much if we’re dead before we can catch Drake.” After Nick failed to say anything, she added, “Don’t want to talk about it for my sake or because the whack job of a federal agent turned you on?”

He did look at her this time, and Jackie gave him an innocent, wide-eyed stare. “You aren’t a whack job, Jackie.”