Hellbent (20 page)

For no logical reason, I knew in the bottom of my stomach that I
had
to catch that bone. I knew that it couldn’t break, that I had to pick it up and take
very good care
of it until this spell, or enchantment, or whatever it was … had either dissipated or been undone.

The world heaved beneath me, or maybe only the roof did, I couldn’t tell. I tried to jump toward the escaping bone as it loped downward, but my next step dislodged a tile—sending it shooting off the roof and over into space. Forward I flopped, skidded, and flailed. Down I scooted, and the sound of clay grating against my pants, knees, and elbows was a pottery symphony … and although
it felt (and surely looked) like I’d lost all semblance of control, at the last second I stretched and lashed out—and grabbed the bone right as it toppled off the edge.

I toppled off the edge behind it, or rather underneath it. I shifted midair to put my body between that precious penis nub and the hard ground below, and I did a good job.

Flat on my back, I landed with a smack that cracked my skull and left me seeing stars before I saw nothing at all.

As I blacked out, a muddy procession of half-formed images and thoughts went sliding through my mind. The sky above, speckled and domed. A cheer of relief that the mission was only one story, and I hadn’t fallen any farther. The taste of powdered clay and sidewalk dust flavored with rubber sandal soles. And the brittle, unbroken bone cradled against my belly.

The world stopped moving, but if it was the whole world or just me, I couldn’t tell.

A
drian wanted something, but he could wait. It was dark and pleasant where I was lying, and nothing hurt. Except the back of my head. And my spine. And my ribs. On second thought, pretty much everything fucking hurt.

What the hell?

I opened my eyes and he was there above me, shaking me like a British nanny.

“Get up! Up, goddammit! We have to get out of here!”

“We have to … what?”

“Out of here,
now
,” he added for emphasis—and then he yanked me up off the ground in one smooth move that underscored how badly I had gotten hurt when I’d thrown myself from the roof.

I yelped, and he yanked again. “This is no time
for you to require babying,” he said and I tripped behind him in the dark, trying to get my thoughts together and my body upright of its own accord. Both tasks at once were more than I could swing with any real grace.

My legs alternately buckled beneath me and wobbled forward behind Adrian, who towed me through the darkness with considerably more confidence and determination than I, personally, possessed. But he hadn’t taken a header off a roof as recently as I had.

“Dude,” I gasped as my knee stuck in the “straight” position and pain went cavorting through my nervous system. “Slow down!”

“No way. We’re getting the fuck out of here,” he wheezed, “before this gets any worse!”

“This what?” I asked like an idiot.

This
was the earthquake that was getting a good shudder going, and
this
didn’t even remotely help my feeble ability to put one foot in front of the other right at that moment.

“I don’t know. The Big One?”

I couldn’t see where we were going. It was like I was wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night. Man, I’d really knocked myself good. “The Big One? Like LA falling into the ocean?”

“I don’t know. I’m a southern man, and I don’t do earthquakes.”

“I don’t think this one is very bad,” I told him.

He didn’t believe me. “Get a move on, Ray. The car’s still another few blocks that way.”

“We’re not going to … we won’t … we can’t … out
drive
an earthquake.”

“We’re going to give it a shot.”

“What about …,” I stammered. “The bones? Did you get them?”

“No. She went off the other side of the roof and took the bones with her.”

“But I caught one. I have one,” I mumbled, even though my fingers were spread wide, and wiggling like bait.

“She took it away from you.”

Because I was staring at my hands like an idiot, I tripped over a rock or something, did the stupid trying-to-find-my-balance dance, and found it in time to ask, “She took it away from me?”

“Yes.”

“If she went off the roof, we could go back and catch her.” I looked back over my shoulder, seeking some sign of another woman loping in the other direction.

He said, “I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“She didn’t casually
leave
the roof. She
flew
off it, swooped down and took the bone, and left you there. And you weren’t looking so good.”

The texture beneath our feet changed, and we were over a curb, onto a sidewalk, and running between two buildings. “Aw …,” I burbled. “And you came to check up on me?”

“It was either that or chase the flying crazy lady, and I thought you’d be less trouble. It might’ve been a judgment error on my part, but there you go.”

My bearings were gradually returning to me as I healed on the run, but the process wasn’t swift or comfortable. I should’ve just been grateful to heal up from such a crash with so little downtime, sure, but it was hard to feel any gratitude when my head was spinning like a dryer and my semi-ghoul was dragging me toward a car I couldn’t remember having parked. I sure hoped he knew where it was. And I hoped he had the keys, too, because I had no idea where they were.

“Slow down!”

“No, we’re almost there!” He was right. I hit the car with a smack as he tossed me up against it and spun me around by my
shoulders. “Keys?” he asked as he patted me down like a convict. “Where did you put them?”

“Pocket?” I guessed.

Yes, I could feel the lump of them as he swatted at them. “Got ’em.”

Rifling around in my pants in a rather personal fashion produced these keys, and he abandoned me to let himself into the driver’s side. Momentarily, I heard the power locks click and I floundered for the door latch—but not fast enough to get the thing open before he opened it from the inside.

“Get in!” he commanded.

“Working on it,” I groused, climbing into the passenger’s seat—one of my least favorite places ever, might I add—and I reached back behind my shoulder for the seat belt. I don’t always worry about buckling up, but if there was one thing I didn’t need tonight, it was another set of life-threatening injuries. Or injuries that would have been life-threatening if I’d been alive in any proper sense.

As it was, everything throbbed when Adrian threw the car into gear and pulled out onto the road. If I closed my eyes, I could feel the tiny spider cracks in my skull knitting back together; it tingled and tickled, but not in a good way. It felt like a very strong man giving me a very deep tattoo. On my cranium.

But like Daddy always said, the sting means it’s working. Or that’s what I told myself as we peeled out of our improvised parking spot and headed back through town. We couldn’t peel out through town, though Adrian gave it a good effort: The quake had drawn all the sensible people out of their homes—and some of the less sensible of those sensible people were loitering in the street, or perilously close to it.

Riding along while the road was shaking was peculiar, but not altogether different from driving around in a car with terrible
shocks. And before long, right as we got outside the town’s city limits, things smoothed back down to usual and the stars quit buzzing up above.

Adrian was visibly shaken, if you’ll pardon the expression. I guess he wasn’t kidding about being a southern man, and ill prepared to feel the earth move. He looked as bad as I felt.

“You okay?” I asked him.

He didn’t take his eyes off the road. “I’ll live. How about you?”

“My head hurts.” I left out the bit about my shoulders, spine, and pelvis. All of it had been rattled, but the head was the worst.

“How long will it take you to heal?”

I said, “I don’t know,” which was true. Depending on my injuries, a couple of nights. Or a couple of hours if I could score a snack. I wasn’t sure how probable this was, and I didn’t feel like bringing it up, so I fibbed. “I’ll be fine by the end of the night. Tomorrow’s dusk, at latest.” It wasn’t a huge fib. Not my worst by far, considering that, within this time frame, I’d undoubtedly be able to fake it.

“Ray?”

“Yeah, Adrian?”

“That was some fucked-up shit.”

“Tell me about it. She really … she
flew
off the building?”

He nodded. “Not like Superman flying. More like Magneto. She drifted, and then soared. I couldn’t have caught her if I tried.” Then he paused before asking, “What happened back there? That was … it was magic, wasn’t it?”

“Either magic, or that woman is so crazy she can
fly.
”

“Ray …”

“Magic, yes. It’s magic. Wizards, magicians, sorcerers … all those guys use it. And gals. But I’ve never been inclined to associate with them.”

“You don’t like people who fling magic around?”

“It’d be more accurate to say that there just aren’t very many of them. And yes, I’m uncomfortable with it. I don’t like hanging out with people who can do things I can’t.” I rubbed at the back of my head and felt little plates of bone crinkle beneath my fingers. Wincing, I leaned forward so I didn’t knock against the headrest or the window. I put my face in my hands. They were the only cushion I had.

“That’s good. That there aren’t too many of them, I mean.”

“Usually, it’s neither here nor there. From everything I know about it, magic isn’t much better than useless. It takes a lifetime to master the basics, and longer than that to learn anything more complicated than levitating quarters. I don’t know how this woman got so good, so fast …”

“Was she helped by the bones?”

I pondered this. “Horace says they work like amplifiers, and I’ve never heard of a magician who could blow up houses with lightning, much less start The Big One on a whim. But she has some
serious
skill, even without them. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s been studying for decades. She was what, maybe in her fifties? If she got started as a teenager, and if she had some natural ability …” The prospect wasn’t helping my headache.

Adrian pondered my pondering. “So what about vampires?”

“What about them?” I asked, because I’m stupid.

“Vampires have decades and decades. Centuries, some of them. Are there any vampire magicians?”

“Christ, no. And thank God. Something about being dead makes magic a no-go for vampires. Only the living can practice it. Don’t ask me why,” I said quickly, since that was the next thing on the verge of shooting out of his mouth. “I have no idea. But that’s why I’m not an expert on magical mysteries: I’ve never performed any, and I don’t know anyone who
has
. However …”

“However … what?”

“However, I have a sneaking suspicion that Horace is a dabbler. It might be time to call him up and quiz the shit out of him. This woman is dangerous.”

“Dangerous enough to leave alone from here on out?”

I shook my head, slowly. “Nah. If there’s time I’ll take another stab at her, once Horace gets a good lead on her credit cards again. Maybe when we get back from Atlanta.”

“Are you
insane
?”

“Clinically so, I’m rather certain of it.”

“How droll.”

“Honey.” I was too tired and achy to baby him, any more than he’d been able to baby me a few minutes earlier. “It’s a
lot
of money. And this is my job. Besides, next time I’ll know what to expect.”

“Oh really? Are we going by the process of elimination, here? First time you meet, she tries to kill you with a lightning bolt, and then the second time she tries to create the island nation of Los Angeles. Next up, what do you see happening, eh? A hurricane?”

“Look, I don’t know for certain what she’s going to do, no. But I’ve seen her. I’ve met her. I’ve watched her work. She caught me off guard this time, but it won’t happen again.”

“Here’s hoping.”

“You’re such a fucking optimist,” I accused. “Just get us to the hotel.”

We fumed in silence for another few miles, until finally he asked, “How bad are you hurt, anyway? I’ve never seen you get hurt.”

“Bad enough to complain. Not bad enough to worry.”

“I thought you were invincible or something.”

“Think again,” I told him. “I take damage as easily as you do. I’m just better at avoiding it, and I recover faster. Earlier this
evening I did a back-flop off a roof, onto a sidewalk. I’ve got some cracks, okay? But it’ll be all right.”

“When?”

“Soon,”
I promised.

We dragged ourselves to the hotel room and crashed. Maybe
crashed
isn’t exactly the best verb I could use. I’d done plenty of crashing already. At least this round was pleasant.

When I awoke the next evening, Adrian wasn’t there.

He’d left a note on the television saying he’d gone out to find food and he’d be back soon, which left me with some alone time. I removed the note and turned on the television for company—settling on a Discovery Channel documentary, something about great engineering disasters of the seventies.

I needed something interesting enough that it didn’t annoy me, but not so interesting that it was distracting.

I ran myself a hot bath and came out of it feeling a lot better, if not great. So I’d hardly lied after all, which was nice, I suppose. But when I stood naked before the full-length mirror on the closet door … ugh. It wasn’t pretty. When I twisted my neck to get the full view, I could see my shoulder blades, hips, and lower spine showing through my skin in a shadow play of conspicuous bruising.

I looked like an X-ray in reverse.

I prodded myself gently, even the back of my tender noggin. Nothing was broken anymore, and the painful smashed spot had filled itself out while I slept. As far as hangovers went, I’d had worse.

From the back of the bathroom door, I grabbed a robe and put it on. I didn’t want to look at myself, if for no other reason than that it reminded me how I was getting hungry from all this healing, and looking at those bruises got me thinking about how a good meal would fix them up right quick.