Cause of Death: Unnatural (The Cause of Death Series) (13 page)

Em screamed and felt the human side of her
boil with pain. Breathlessly she scrabbled around re-gathering her energy, and
as Raeisa raised her hands for a second strike, Em dissolved into smoke and flew
out of her grasp.

The pain in her head was so great she was
forced to take human form again within moments and she reappeared a few meters
behind Raeisa.

The lizard looked confused for a moment as
her prey disappeared beneath her talons, but she turned around with a haughty
smile and began to walk slowly towards Em again.

"Nice trick, vampire," Raeisa
purred. "Don't think it's going to save you though."

Em sucked in air and blinked madly as if it
could help clear the pain behind her eyes. She couldn't believe she'd forgotten
about the headache. She couldn't believe she hadn't seen what was right in
front of her all along. Raeisa had been there every time this headache had
become unbearable. And like an idiot Em had flown to her best friend's rescue without
even thinking that Raeisa would be waiting for her.

Her eyes flicked to Jennifer lying on the
pavement behind Raeisa. In a second she bundled up the pain she had taken from
Jennifer just before she died. It took far more concentration than it should
have. The throbbing agony in her mind was making even breathing difficult. Em
knew she had to stop this headache or she would never be able to fight back
properly. Her human form was useless, her dark energy hampered by whatever
power Raeisa was wielding.
 

Raeisa was standing in front of her now, a
look of triumph on her face, her hand raised, claws outstretched. This was it,
thought Em.

Em drew in every atom of strength she
possessed and threw the tightly wound ball of Jennifer's pain at Raeisa. She staggered
as it left her. She stumbled forward, held out a hand to catch
herself
and with the other hand still clamped to her
forehead could only hope that it had worked.

Above her Raeisa groaned, and a second later
the pain in Em's head flickered out like a candle.

Em's eyes snapped open. It was like drinking
in pure oxygen, ice cold water flowing through her veins, white hot power
cursing up her spine. Instantly, Em's dark energy pulsed out like an explosion
and sucked in power from every solid thing around her. Utterly recharged and
rippling with energy, Em grinned.

Slowly, Em stood up straight and raised her
eyes to meet Raeisa's.

The lizard girl stared back for a moment, her
green eyes still defiant. Then way, way too late, Raeisa read the dangerous
message written in Em's eyes. Her face changed as is someone had slapped her.
The smugness fell away and was replaced by an empty kind of horror. She
whimpered.

"Bites, doesn't it?" said Em,
softly.

The girl took a few steps backwards, panic
beginning to build in her body. She
stumbled,
her
hands flapped at her sides, her head shook from side to side as if she didn't
want to believe what she was seeing.

"Run," breathed Em.

Raeisa lunged away from Em in terror, but Em
slipped into dark matter and encircled the lizard girl in exactly the same
moment. It was like squashing a bug, thought Em, as she wrapped her dark energy
tighter and tighter around the squealing girl.

Part of Em watched Raeisa's struggles
dispassionately. She intensified the layer of dark energy around the lizard
girl, pushing all the fear and pain she could into the net that entrapped her.
Raeisa was howling, spinning and twisting in agonized horror, her own
supernatural energy beginning to glow under the torture that Em was forcing on
her. Em dragged her energy deep into Raeisa's being and ripped and tore her way
through to the girl's core. There was her soul at last, an ugly black thing
pulsing at the
center
of Raeisa's existence. Em
gathered her power and sharpened it ready to attack. She wanted Raeisa to feel
every single one of the gashes that had rent her friend Jennifer's body.

Jennifer.

Suddenly Em stopped. She looked at the being
that twisted in pain in front of her, and she looked at the body of her friend
lying in the damp blackness of the road.

Em sighed,
then
snorted wryly. Look what you've done to me, Jennifer, she thought.
You, and Nick, and Robert.
Humans, in
general.
What am I doing? I'm a monster.

In a moment, all the lethal, vicious revenge
dissolved inside Em. Sure, the hatred was still there, and she was still going
to waste this psychopathic lizard hybrid in front of her, but the fun suddenly
went out of it. Em realized she was tired. Tired of all the death she'd seen
lately, all the pointless, stupid deaths. She'd been dealing in death for
nearly a thousand years, and it had taken a bunch of mortal human friends to
teach her that life was more important.
More ... enjoyable.
More ... meaningful.

Did that make her human? Em wondered. Is this
what my mother felt? Is this why her father had loved her human mother? Is this
why Em was even alive in the first place? Em stopped at that thought. That was
way too much to deal with right now. But the thought warmed her. I'm becoming
more human, she thought. I like it.

Em dropped Raeisa onto the road, reached into
her chest and pulled her heart out.

Em watched Raeisa's blood ooze slowly down the road
tracing a crack in the old bitumen. She drew in a long, slow breath, shut her
eyes and tilted her head back. Raeisa's life force, or what passed for her
soul, was still hanging around her flesh. Em's dark energy sniffed at it. It
really was as hideous as Raeisa had been in life. She thought about devouring
it, and then found she couldn't. She didn't eat junk food.

She had a better idea.

Em spread out a net of dark energy, a web of
black smoke and snagged the monster's soul as it tried to pass. Raeisa's
essence rippled and fought against the net, but Em hauled it tighter and
tighter until the thrashing soul was compacted down to a sphere about the size
of Em's fist.

Em held out her hand and the soul sphere
dropped into it. Green and silver streaks of
color
swirled around inside it. There was
a malevolence
about it still, but Em frowned at it and the sphere hardened into a shining
ball of black glass.

She tossed it once into the air and caught it
lightly. She'd give it to Jarek. Let him take it home to the Family and see
what they made of it. Let Jarek prize the soul back out again and tease
Raeisa's secrets from her. Perhaps she'd give away her masters then. Em knew
Jarek and her father could be very persuasive.

Footsteps suddenly echoed further up the
alleyway. Em sent out a flicker of energy to see who was coming, then sighed
and began drawing in the rest of her dark matter.

Robert and Nick both exploded around the
corner of the alleyway, and skidded to a stop a few meters from Em. Both men
had worn expressions of intense concern on their faces as they turned the
corner, but Em found herself almost amused by the speed at which those
expressions spun through concern, confusion, alarm, surprise, disbelief and
bewilderment as they took in Em and the body on the ground in front of her.

She smiled at them. "Hi boys," she
said lightly. She knew she was still trailing bits of dark energy, and she knew
she was covered in blood, but what did that matter when there was a dead
lizard-woman at her feet?

Nick's eyes were flicking from Raeisa to Em
and back down again, the frown on his face growing deeper and deeper.

"You're covered in blood," he said.

"Yeah.
I
know."

"What happened?"

"I stopped the killer," Em said
simply.

Nick's eyes went back down to the lizard at
her feet, and she saw his face crumple as his mind tried to accept what he saw
there. Poor Nick. This was a long way from his comfort zone, further even than
his girlfriend trying to drink his soul. It had been a rough few days for Nick.
She kind of felt sorry for him.

She turned her eyes to Robert. For some
reason Em found she was worried about what Robert might think. He'd managed to
get his expressions under control, and was looking at Em carefully, studying
her face, his eyes moving out to gaze at the air beside her head.

"You're ... bleeding," he said,
gesturing at the side of Em's head, though his eyes were focused on something
in the space next to her face.

"No, I'm not," said Em. "All
this blood is from her." She nudged the body with her toe.

"I don't mean blood," Robert said,
pointing again. "You're ... leaking."

Em put a hand up to the side of her face and
realized she'd been scratched. Not her physical body, but her dark matter had
been ripped. She could feel it now - a rent in her matter and form that she
hadn't noticed in the heat of the fight. She smothered a sudden giggle. The
gash in the side of her face was probably spilling black smoke and the stars
and darkness of the void. No wonder the two men looked so freaked out.

Her hand cupped the side of her face and
healed the wound. When she pulled her hand down the gash was gone. She saw the
surprise in both men’s expressions.

'It's fine," she said.

Robert took a step toward Raeisa. He was
bending down as he moved. Em could tell he was busting to examine the creature
and smiled to herself.

"No," she said, quietly.
"Sorry Robert." And with another nudge of her toe she disintegrated
Raeisa's body and scattered her atoms with a little kick. "Can you imagine
the paperwork?" she said.

Neither man returned her smile. Em sighed.
She didn't want to leave this little life she'd made for
herself
,
she'd been so comfortable here, but this was looking like a total disaster.
Even if she hadn't thoroughly offended both men this week, this scene was
likely to make them both run screaming. She ran a hand through her hair and
began gathering her energy. She'd have to re-write a few things in their
minds...

"So, what's a bit of paperwork?"
said Nick slowly. He was looking at Robert with one eyebrow raised. "We do
paperwork all the time.
Paperwork for this, paperwork for
that.
We could do a little more, couldn't we, Robert?"

Robert was still staring at Em, but he had
tilted his head toward Nick as he listened to him. There was the glimmer of a
smile around the corners of his lips. It was a wry smile, Em noticed, but it
was a start.

"My speciality, actually," said
Robert. "Though I'm not entirely sure any paperwork would be needed in a
situation like this."

"No paperwork?" asked Nick.

"Well, there's no body, is there?
There's a fair amount of blood of course, but if Em..."

He glanced down at the blood and then
meaningfully up at Em. She stared for a moment and then smiled broadly. With a
whisper of dark energy the blood on the road was gone. So was the blood on Em's
clothes.

"Oh, l must have been seeing things.
There's no blood after all." Robert paused for a moment and then took a
step closer to Em. "You have a bit of explaining to do Em, but maybe that
can wait for a while. That was your friend over there, wasn't it?" He nodded
toward Jennifer's body where it lay just outside the warehouse door.

Em felt a huge rush of emotion well up
somewhere between her throat and the back of her eyes. Yes, Jennifer had been
her friend. And Em was thoroughly ashamed of herself for underestimating Robert
and Nick. They had both just shown themselves to be stronger and truer than she
had imagined. This was the side of humanity Em found so difficult, but so
desirable.
Friendship and loyalty.
She'd worked hard
to earn both, trashed them in selfish moments of her own stupidity, and then
somehow won them back again by revealing her true self. It made no sense to
her. Humans! This was why she loved them. Perhaps she did have a home here
after all.

Robert put a hand on her shoulder.

"Go home, Em. Get some rest. Let Nick
and me do this. We'll talk about it all later." He paused.
"If you want to."

Em nodded. Wonderful Robert, she thought,
ever the gentleman. I don't deserve this.

"How did you find me?" she asked.

"You left your phone on in the lab,"
said Nick gently. "We traced your last call. When it pointed here we knew
something was wrong."

"Thanks," said Em.

"Now go!" Robert ordered.

Em grinned, spun herself into smoke and
laughed at the boys' expressions as she flew down the lane.

* * *

Jarek was waiting for her in the darkness
above the city.

"You could come back with me, you
know," he said with a tone that seemed to indicate he knew she wouldn't.

She didn't answer him. She took the black
glass sphere out of a pocket of time and space and gave it to Jarek. "Have
fun with that," she said. "When you find out where she came from, I
want to know."