Vicki Pettersson - Cheat the Grave

I waited for Caine to get in front of me, but glanced over to find him peering back out the window instead.

“The problem is over here, Skelator.” I probably shouldn’t let my nerves-and thus my mouth-get the best of me when someone was actually trying to help, but what was he doing by the boarded-up window? He couldn’t even see the moon he was gazing up at!

“A lovely evening, really,” Caine said, like we were meeting for a midnight cocktail. He stuck his fingers through the slats, palms disappearing out the window, as if feeling for the night. “I can smell the spines on the yucca.”

A scrabbling on the floor, like Mackie was trying to sneak underneath. But when I whipped my gaze back, his blade was still actively sawing through the door’s center. “Caine?”

“I love the tarry wood scent of the creosote bush.”

“I don’t fucking care!” More scrabbling, more cutting. Caine was playing touchy-feely with the night sky and I was trapped inside a collapsible fire hazard across from someone who made him look sane!

Glancing at the floorboards as the sounds ran along the scarred planks, I wondered if Mackie was down there. For all I knew, the blade imbued with his soul energy could cut all on its own. I backed up, heard more scrabbling behind me, and altered direction. It was like playing hot potato with the floor, trying to avoid getting burned.

Until I tripped over something and fell on my ass. Pushing to my feet, my fingers slipped alongside something abrasive, like an exposed extension cord. Odd, I hadn’t seen it before. Usually hyperaware of my surroundings, especially in a battle, I knew my mortal eyes had failed me again.

Gaze and gun focused on the knife at the door, I used my foot to tap out the dark space on the floor. I found that strange ridge again, and followed it backward…all the way to Caine. More specifically, to his foot.

“Ew!” I jumped again. Mackie howled in the hallway. Caine continued to lean against the wall, breathing in the moonlight, hands outside. I bent, squinted, then my eyes widened as I held back a squeal. Caine’s talons had lengthened into black spears that cut shavings into the floor as they slithered all around the room. I followed the one I’d first encountered back to the room’s center, realizing it had cut a path around me on its way to the front door.

Caine was standing in front of me, I realized. At least, his toenails were. And what allowed all that forward extension? I lifted my gaze to find the tattoos on his body pulsing like individual hearts-two hundred and six of them, I bet-one for each bone in his freaky body. I also realized I was having trouble seeing, like the skeleton drawn atop that malleable skin was pulling in all the light. Opaquely, the tattoos burned.

A tremendous crash sounded at the door, then Mackie’s howl slid around the frame. I shook and fired off a round, wincing from the sound and in belated anticipation of losing a limb. Yet the conduit didn’t misfire, and after another cry from Mackie-this one steeped in pain-I knew my bullet had struck home. I aimed again.

“Please don’t put holes in my door,” Caine said calmly. “I’ve got it from here.”

And he did. His ten nails had made their way across the entire floor like roots, planted like they were born of the wood grain. By now they’d disappeared beneath the door’s frame, and whatever they were doing, Mackie didn’t like it. With a furious grunt, the knife disappeared, and then the pounding began. The building shook with each blow.

“He’s cutting them,” Caine said unnecessarily. I refrained from telling him I thought they could use a good trim. The lacquered bone-nails were the only thing keeping Mackie from this room. Caine leaned against the wall like he had a listening glass pressed there, and I heard a sinuous slide making its way over the roof and the building’s sides. “It’s okay. My fingernails are almost there.”

Mackie seconded that with an infuriated howl.

“Are you hurting him?” Not that the idea bothered me. But if those nails turned into spears, it was something I needed to know.

Caine angled his head once in negation. “They grow too slowly for that. I’ve often wished for a nice swift jab, an exact thrust. Alas, it’s not my gift.”

“So…you’re just holding him there?”

“No, he can move, but it takes effort. Every time he frees himself from one nail, two more replace it.”

Or nineteen I thought as the building shuddered over and over again.

“It’s like trying to escape an octopus. Mind, it’s pure defense, but it allows me to touch others without them ever touching me.”

“Awesome gift.” Minus the foot fungus.

“He’s fast, though.” Then he muttered to himself. “Can’t crush this one…”

“It’s the blade.”

Caine nodded. “Let me lead him away from the door. Then you can run for it. Mind, I can hold him the night, but no longer. And he won’t fall for the same trick twice.”

So I waited, marking Caine’s progress by the scrabbling of nails over the rooftop and the occasional blade piercing the rotted wood. I wanted to run when Mackie hit the apex-I wanted to pump the entire round of glowing ammo into his stomach, but Caine asked me to hold my fire until I was outside, and it was the least I could do. This was his home, and despite the sparse interior, I got the feeling he’d been here awhile.

Finally, Mackie was entrapped in the web of nails on the house’s side, Caine pulling him near, ostensibly so the new growth could reach Mackie quickly every time a nail was cut. The nearness to those long, strong fingertips also increased the likelihood of crushing the raging man. I began relaxing, readied by the doorway, when something unexpected happened.

“Ouch.”

For a moment I thought I’d misheard. But Caine’s face was black with wild and soundless shock, and I squinted at him warily. “Ouch?”

“He touched me.”

That was a severe understatement. Caine pulled his right hand-the higher one-back inside to reveal bloodied fingers…cleaved at the first knuckle. Blood poured down every digit, causing a macabre bracelet to appear on his wrist, but the nails continued to grow from their centers, black coils unfurling like licorice. Mackie, now close to his captor, had launched another, apparently new and untried assault.

“Never felt that before,” Caine said with a disturbing lack of concern. Then, inexplicably, he stuck his hand out the window again. Though anticipating the next blow, he jolted when Mackie struck, and I jumped with him.

“I-I could just run, you know.”

“Not yet.” He licked his lips, the slow swirl of his tongue at odds with the grunts coming from his throat. Mackie was relentless. “He’ll catch you.”

But these were like Tripp’s wounds. Something in that blade infected the agents Mackie struck, so while mortals died, agents were left wishing they had. “You have to cauterize it,” I said, remembering Tripp’s work at the jewelry shop.

Caine sniffed, nostrils going so wide it seemed he could take in every mote in the air. His nose was angled toward his outstretched arm, though, and after another moment-and three more strikes-he shook his head. “It won’t help.”

And yet he held his hands out there still. He even leaned closer, turning from me to press the front of his body against the wall. “I’ve never been touched in this way before.”

And suddenly I got it. He wasn’t offering protection from Mackie from purely altruistic purposes. No. He wanted to see what Mackie’s blade felt like. It had nothing to do with my fate, or our commonalities-few that they were. He didn’t feel a kinship with me beyond the here and now.

The bones atop his body seemed to sharpen with my realization, the full body bleed of tattoo work now making sense. So did the piercings along his ears and brows and spine. And the eyes. Oh my God. The eyes. This man had a love affair with pain.