Darkness Becomes Her (3 page)

Damn it, he’s gonna make me do it.

The blade swung down. I fired.

The sound cracked through the night air like a bomb, and the slight kickback vibrated through my body as the bullet thunked into his thigh.

He flinched, paused for a second, and then continued stalking toward me.

My eyes went wide and my mouth went dry. Oh yeah, he was jacked up, high on something. Had to be.

He raised the long dagger again. My pulse pounded loud and slow in my ears. It seemed like that second lasted forever before his arm came down with so much force that it made him grunt. I could barely feel my hand as I leveled the gun and pulled the trigger again. The bullet hit him in the right shoulder. It wouldn’t kill him, but it should make him drop the damn mini-sword.

He stopped, arm halfway into his blow, and glanced at the blood blooming outward from his wound. Then his crazy eyes met mine. He grinned.

Oh shit.

He took two steps and swung downward. I caught his arm, hoping the wound and my own strength would be enough to hold him off. His face was inches from mine, close enough for me to see the purpose-filled light in his eyes. Sweat trickled down his left temple. Through clenched teeth, he cursed at me in that odd language. His other fist swung up, but I blocked it with my elbow, steeling myself against the pain, and immediately kneed him in the groin with enough strength to dent the hood of a car. He dropped back and doubled over.

The blade clattered to the ground.

About time.

My senses kicked in. I darted past him, grabbing the blade off the ground without breaking stride, my hair coming undone and falling into my eyes. I made for the side street that led to the front of the hotel, but just as I rounded the corner, he caught up with me. His hand snaked out and hooked my ankle. I shrieked in surprise. My arms pinwheeled.
Oh no.
I braced for impact.

My elbows hit the ground first, a fraction of a second before my forehead cracked hard on the blacktop and sent the gun and blade clattering.

Pain burst in all directions, running along every inch of my skull and blinding me in the process.

Jesus Christ!
Everywhere there was searing white light.

My limbs went numb, my pulse thundering too fast, too chaotic. I was on the verge of panic, the kind that would completely destroy my ability to fight if I didn’t get my act together.
If you’re down, you swing at anything! You do whatever it takes to get back up!
Bruce’s voice shouted in my head.

Biting back the panic, I flipped over and kicked out blindly, connecting with something. My hand brushed over the hilt of the blade lying above my head. I grabbed it, sat up, and shoved it in front of me with all my strength, hoping to hell it hit something.

The sword caught. I pushed.

My heartbeat drummed so loud in my ears, I could barely hear. Slowly my vision returned.

The man knelt between my legs, both hands holding a small portion of the blade near the hilt, the rest embedded deep in his chest. His eyes were wide and surprised, as though the idea of failure had never occurred to him.

Time passed. Our gazes stayed locked. At some point, his expression shifted to regret. One hand reached out and lifted a strand of my hair. “So beautiful,” he whispered in English. He rubbed it between his bloody finger and thumb. Then he muttered in that same strange language before a cough overtook him. He grimaced, closing his eyelids tightly. My hair trailed through his fingers as he fell back, his body sliding off the blade.

The frogs and crickets continued their night song. The sounds of traffic came back to life. But all those sounds, those sounds that had no idea what had just happened, were muted by my loud, ragged breaths.

My throat grew thick and dry. Tears stung my eyes as I stared at the guy in front of me. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. Healthy. Good-looking. He could’ve had a decent life. Met a cute girl. Gotten married. Had babies.

Oh, God.
I’d just killed a man—my fingers flexed on the hilt of the blade—with a goddamn miniature sword.

Family time with the Sandersons never covered this.

I swiped the back of one shaking hand over my wet eyes, still gripping the dagger with the other even though my knuckles were white and my fingers were cramping. I couldn’t seem to move, couldn’t seem to recover from the shock. The shock of being attacked by a stranger. Of fighting for my life. Of killing him …
Get the cell phone. Call 911. Get off your ass, you know what to do.
Yes. I knew what to do. With a few deep breaths to calm my racing heart, I rolled onto one hip to push up, but the man’s body suddenly twitched.

I froze, mouth going slack as his body lifted off the ground and hovered for a few seconds before slowly turning to smoke, and then disappearing into some invisible updraft.

Dumbfounded, I sat back down and blinked. My grasp on
the sword went limp, the angle of the blade catching the streetlight and making the blood shine.

A sharp laugh escaped my open mouth. “Seriously?” My voice sounded small and weak in the quiet night. I tipped my head back and yelled at the hazy night sky. “Seriously!”

Was this someone’s idea of a mind game? Did I fall down the steps at Rocquemore? Bang my forehead too hard on the pavement?
Goddamn it!
Tears blurred my vision as I stared at the blade resting on the ground between my legs.

Blood. Blade.

Whatever had just happened, I knew one thing. It was real. I held the proof of it in my hands. My mother, as screwed up as it sounded, had been right.

A
N ENGINE’S DEEP RUMBLE AND THE BLARE OF MUSIC CLICKED
into my shocked senses. Bright lights blinded me. The whine of brakes. The smell of rubber burning on asphalt … It all reached me too late.

I threw an arm over my face and turned to roll, realizing I was sitting in the side street, in the path of an oncoming vehicle. I’d been caught off guard, distracted by what I’d just done and seen. Blood rushed through my system so fast, my limbs were numb and my head was cloudy.

The truck swerved and came to a rocking halt, the left front bumper so close that I could reach out and touch it. A puff of exhaust breezed over me, the smell turning my stomach. A small figure leaned out of the open driver’s side. I removed my arm
from over my head as the loud engine vibrated through me like a slow, continuous stream of electricity going for the ground.

“Hey, you okay?” a girl in overalls and a tweed cabbie hat asked.

I tried to respond, but couldn’t find my voice.

“You drunk or something?”

“No,” I croaked, rolling to my knees and flattening my palms on the asphalt to help push my weak body to its feet. Once I was steady, I brushed my hands on my jeans.

“’Kay. Well, you mind moving? I got mail to dump.”

I eyed the girl with her grease-stained overalls, white ribbed tank underneath, flannel shirt, and thin frame. Her brown hair was braided into two plaits, and she had shrewd green eyes, a splattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose, and a smudge of grease on her face. An old UPS logo peeked out from a thin layer of black spray paint on the truck’s side. “You’re from New 2. One of the mail runners.”

“So?”

I swallowed, knowing I was in shock and probably not in the best frame of mind to make a spur-of-the-moment decision, but I knew if I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity in front of me, I’d talk myself out of it. One day. All I needed was one day. “I’m looking for a ride into the city.”

The girl’s left eye squinted, sweeping over me from head to toe, and not shy about it either. “You one of those parrots?”

“Parrots?”

“Yeah, you know … paranormal tourists?” She flapped her elbows. “Squawk, squawk!”

“How old are you?”

“Almost thirteen.”

My brow lifted. “They let a twelve-year-old deliver the mail?”

The girl rolled her eyes, leaning her forearms on the large steering wheel. “You ain’t been to New 2 before, have you?” I shrugged. “Things don’t run down there the way they run outside The Rim.” Her eyes turned calculating. “You can get in, but it’ll cost you.”

“How much?”

“Twenty bucks.”

“Done. Just give me a sec.” I snagged the gun and blade from the ground, then hurried to the car to grab my mother’s box. I shoved the sword into my backpack, having to angle it so it’d fit, slid the gun into my waistband, and then locked the car.

“Just gotta dump my bags at the P.O. and then I’m done,” the girl said as I got in. Her gaze went briefly to the backpack, but she said nothing about the gun and blade. Instead she stuck out a greasy hand. “I’m Crank.”

I took the small hand. “Ari.”

Crank shoved the massive stick shift into gear and released
the clutch. The big truck rocked back and forth several times, making me snag the cold metal door handle as it finally lurched into motion.

No one had come out of the hotel when the gunshots were fired. Hadn’t they heard? A tingle of unease slid down my back as the sight of the hotel and back parking lot disappeared from view. Either the hotel staff or guests didn’t call the cops on purpose, or gunshots in the middle of the night were the norm near The Rim. That might also explain why Crank didn’t seem fazed by the weapons I’d brought onboard. But none of those thoughts made me feel any better.

Once Crank drove around to the back of the post office and reversed to a loading dock, she climbed into the rear of the truck, opened the door, and dumped all the mail bags into three large bins. She snagged two bags marked for New 2 from the loading zone and tossed them inside, and then we headed toward Route 190.

Part of the southbound exit was barricaded, but three faded orange barrels had been moved to make a driving space.

We drove for what I guessed was ten miles or so before officially passing over The Rim. There was nothing to mark the occasion except an aging road sign that read:
UNITED STATES BORDER. DISASTER AREA AHEAD. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.
And then
another sign a few feet down:
PROPERTY OF THE NOVEM. PLEASE RESPECT OUR LAND. WELCOME TO NEW ORLEANS.

Besides the bumps and noise of the engine, the ride was long and full of silence—the kind of silence you see, not hear. A silence that stretched across the flat landscapes to the black silhouettes of ruined towns, abandoned fast-food restaurants, gas stations, and vehicles. The road became worse as we progressed, the cracked asphalt riddled with holes and large, random patches of weeds.

“Nothing much out there anymore,” Crank said, glancing over at me and following the direction of my gaze. “Most folks live in or around New 2.”

“Why would anyone stay?” I asked under my breath. The government had washed its hands of the city and the surrounding land after the devastation, declared it a disaster area, and moved everyone out who wanted to go. The entire city, state, and federal infrastructure in New Orleans collapsed along with its economy. If anyone stayed, it was with the knowledge that America didn’t exist there anymore.

Nine of the oldest families in New Orleans had formed an alliance, the Novem, and they bought the ruined city and surrounding counties in a landmark deal that seemed a win-win situation for everyone. The government didn’t have to deal with New Orleans. Some of the $8.2 billion the United States earned
from the sale went to all the displaced and affected people. And the Novem got something they obviously wanted—a city to call their own.

For a while, the media had been all over the Novem, lured by the intense speculation behind the group’s unexplained purchase of a wasteland, and attracted by their wealth and the power that came with owning and running an entire city. There was even a book written about the families and their long history in New Orleans. They gained a kind of celebrity status that grew into something of a legend. The odd characters dotting their family trees only added to the mystery—tales of witches and vampires and voodoo queens.

The Novem never confirmed or denied any rumors. They never gave interviews, never stepped into the spotlight except to make the purchase. And then they retreated into their ruined city, leaving the rest of the country to wonder. It wasn’t long before they joined the ranks of Area 51, Roswell, the Loch Ness monster, and all the other conspiracy theories and paranormal speculations out there. The undercover reporters and truth seekers who’d come out of the city later on with grainy photographs and accounts of monsters and murders only added to the speculation. And now, thirteen years later, a large percentage of the country believed New 2 was a sanctuary, a hot spot, for the paranormal.

Crank shrugged, her cheeks jiggling as the truck’s tires hit a succession of potholes. “New 2 is home,” she answered my quiet question. The springy seat bounced her entire body, drawing my attention to her feet, which rested on wooden blocks attached to the pedals so she could reach. “Some people didn’t have anywhere else to go, some were too dang stubborn to leave.”

“Which one are you?”

Crank let out a small laugh. “Both, I guess. My dad died in the flood. My uncle hid my brother and mom, like a lot of people did when the troops came through and ordered the city evacuated. I wasn’t born until after, though. Why are you going?”

I hugged the box a little tighter. “Trying to find out about my parents. I was born at Charity Hospital a few years before the hurricanes struck.”

“No shit, really?”

A small laugh bubbled in my throat. Crank was like a little adult trapped in a prepubescent body. “Really.”

“Well, maybe my brother can help you with that. He’s pretty good at finding things. You have a place to stay yet?”

Yeah … I hadn’t actually thought that far ahead when I decided to jump into the mail truck. “No, not yet.” All I needed was one day. One day to find the hospital and access my records. I wasn’t going to turn back now.

“Good. You can stay with us. Those tourist hotels, the ones in the French Quarter, they are
high
dollar.”