Hunted Dreams (33 page)

Seconds later, she’d dredged up enough breath to ask, “Why didn’t you come back to kill me years ago?”

“No use after you gave your description to the authorities. It was a pretty vague one, I was gratified to note. Apparently, children are notoriously bad witnesses. Later, I decided you were my project, you see? You and me, always a team. There’s something so gratifying about knowing someone out there in the world has been shaped so profoundly by me. I never had any children, but I wonder if this isn’t what parents feel.

“It wasn’t my idea to bring you here, Katrina. Quina hates loose ends: two birds, one stone, and all. I wanted to keep you alive for as long as possible, out there in the world, living a life so reflective of me. We’re like mirrors of one another, you and me.”

Katana’s heart stuttered in her chest. Next to her, Paul shivered. “But then Quina told you today to come kill me, right?” she whispered. “Before Reed and the Clan members come back here.”

In her peripheral vision, she saw his head nod very slightly. “It’s not right, little Kat.” He sighed. “I knew we’d meet again, looked forward to it, but not so soon and not like this. I’ll derive no pleasure from killing you. Well, not strictly true, but metaphorically speaking.”

“Then don’t,” she whispered.

He shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re a beautiful woman. You’ve made me proud of you, of me. I’ll honor you in my way, keep the memory of a delicious young woman alive.”

Paul leaned over her, hands not yet flexed, lips descending to her cheek. Slowly, as if in a dream, Katana brought her hands out from under the blankets. Before his eyes could even widen, she jammed a mirror shard into his neck under his left ear. Warmth splashed her face and trickled down her hand as she yanked it as far to the left as she could.

She grunted and, with her left hand, jammed an even longer shard into his upper abdomen.

Paul’s roar quickly turned into a horrible gurgle that reminded her of bathwater swirling round the drain. He reared back before she could cut him any further. She leapt from the bed, wiping a syrupy liquid from her eyes.

Before her, Paul stood in horror and fury, blood burbling out of his neck and down his neck, arms, and chest. His abdominal wound bled more sluggishly. The shiv had fallen from his neck, but the one in his stomach protruded obscenely, its washcloth-and-dental-floss-wrapped handle bobbing merrily with his movements.

Katana kept her bloodied hand pressed against her mouth. Paul, face contorted, staggered toward her, and she danced backward. She’d lost her homemade knives, but she grabbed the ceramic lamp, the one she’d unplugged not an hour earlier, from the bedside table and swung it from its cord.

So much blood. How could he bleed so much and still remain on his feet? Chest convulsing with fear, sobs, or regret, she swung the lamp faster, building up momentum.

Paul slipped in a pool of his own blood and fell face first onto the tiled floor. The fall must have shoved the second shiv in even farther. He twitched and bubbled and clawed tracks in the blood. Katana let the lamp thump to the floor.

In her fantasies, she’d always ended this moment with some clever comment, something to show she’d won, that she’d freed herself, that she was far too cool and heroic to feel horrified by killing a killer. In reality, she shuddered and heaved and swallowed continually to keep herself from vomiting.

Applause crashed through the room when Alexio’s long-winded speech finally ended. Reed felt pretty sure they, like him, were more enthusiastic about its conclusion than content. Lord, he’d never imagined someone so dour could be so damned chatty.

“The food will be out shortly,” Quina announced with a smile once Alexio had seated himself.

Next to him, Mari struck up a conversation with the Hunter, a woman named Callie. Hunter and Leech, sworn enemies who built their entire lives around killing one another, debated the journalistic merits of a local radio program.

Looking at the fifty-something human sitting to his left, Reed wondered if he knew what was happening. Was he a pawn of the Leeches? The Clan? An innocent, human philanthropist who’d landed himself a date with a pretty woman half his age?

The door crashed inward, and Alberto halted at the threshold, breathing in short gasps. Eyes wide enough for the whites to frame his brown irises, Alberto rushed to Paul, slipped in the blood, and checked the older man for a pulse.

He looked up at her, his eyes hot and wild. “You killed him!” he shrieked, and launched himself at her.

With a cry, Katana lunged for the lamp cord, but Alberto tackled her before she could grab it. She landed hard on her backside, and Alberto used his weight to slam her torso to the ground. The breath whooshed out of her lungs as her head cracked against the tile.

“He was going to kill me,” she tried to say, but with Alberto straddling her, her lungs simply couldn’t draw enough breath.

He drew his arm back and struck her in the face. The pain exploded in her cheek, jarring the sight from her eyes and the breath from her mouth. She existed for a moment in an orange-tinted haze of pain.

She heard another voice, a female’s, and then Alberto’s weight lifted from her body. A moment later, sight returned to her right eye, and she breathed out in a sob of relief. Six or seven feet from her, a tall, thin young woman, skin milk pale and hair short and blue, held Alberto back while muttering words into his ears.

Katana opened her mouth to say something, but a slicing pain in her cheek kept her silent.

“She’s human, Berto. You can’t fight her,” the woman said. Her enormous blue eyes hammered their gaze into Katana’s.

The struggle lasted no more than a minute, but it was an endlessly long one. Finally, Alberto sank to the ground, sobbing. Tears of pain and, freakishly, of sympathy, leaked from Katana’s eyes as well.

“You’re Katana?” the woman asked quietly, mouth pursed.

Careful to keep her face from moving too much, she nodded.

“Why . . .?”

Her lips parted very slightly, and she finally managed to whisper the phrase that had been burning her mouth. “He was going to kill me.”

“It was Paul!” Alberto spat from the ground, as if that said everything that needed saying.

The woman closed her eyes briefly. “This is what I was trying to tell you outside, Berto. I heard my dad and Quina talking about getting rid of her today. I didn’t know . . . It’s why I’m here.”

With a spasm of sheer agony in her back, head, and especially her throbbing face, Katana pushed herself to her knees. “Cor?” she whispered.

The woman nodded.

Slowly, painfully, gritting her teeth and almost falling flat from the pain, Katana rose to her feet. No one offered to help. “You need to take me to the fundraiser party.”

Cor stared at her.

The room tilted, and she stumbled. After regaining her balance, she sought out the blue-haired girl, found her, and tried to focus. “They’re going to trap Clan members and turn them into sleeping batteries like they did me.”

Silent and closed, Cor licked her lips.

With everything at stake, she played dirty. “I don’t know what they’ll do to Reed. Please help me help him.”

The meal started with a basket of warm, buttered rolls. Reed glanced around the room and found the other Leeches sharing the rolls from common baskets. Mari grinned at him and bit delicately into her own.

Next to him, the human asked him what he did for a living. He seemed less than impressed with Reed’s unemployed status. Although he couldn’t muster a modicum of concern, Reed reciprocated the question. The man, owner of a chain of health-food stores, launched into an enthusiastic discussion of the restorative powers of organic superfoods.

All the while, Reed glanced toward the kitchen door, waiting for the arrival of the main course.

Katana found walking a bit more challenging than she’d last remembered it. Cor helped her to one of the Daleth’s cars before climbing into the driver’s seat.

“I don’t exactly have my license per se,” she confessed, starting the engine and backing out of the garage. “I’m a believer in public transportation. But you’re hardly fit for the Metro Gold Line.”

Her words barely registered with Katana. She wasn’t sure what a concussion felt like, but she thought she might have one of those. Or maybe something else made the world ripple as if she swam underwater. Her face throbbed, her left eye had swollen closed, and her head felt as though aliens had taken up residence.

The dark scenery flashed by as they drove. Minutes passed, or maybe longer. All of a sudden, Katana realized they had pulled off onto a dark side road.

“We’re almost there,” Cor said. “Before I let you go, I have to tell you something.”

Katana leaned her head against the headrest and listened.

A few minutes after servers had cleared away the salad plates, and during a fascinating discussion with Reed’s human dinner companion about the nutritional benefits of a raw vegan diet, the waitstaff brought out covered dishes and placed one before each diner.

Reed’s hands clenched beneath the table. He stared at the shiny dome covering of the dish, waiting for the worst.

With a flourish, the servers whipped off the lids.

A seemingly ordinary, creamy main dish layered with phyllo dough and accompanied by a side of braised asparagus lay steaming beneath. Several of the party attendees sighed in appreciation.

When she got out of the car, Katana fell to the gravel, skinning her knees and palms. The pain was so jolting, so spiky and greasy, she threw up. A minute later, Cor helped her to her feet.

“Can you help me inside?” she whispered.

Cor sighed in annoyance. “Do you know the trouble I’ll be in?” she snapped.

“I’m sorry,” Katana breathed and swallowed several times to ward off around round of vomiting.

“Damnit,” Cor grated, and none-too-kindly put her arm around a very dirty, smelly Katana.

Katana didn’t bother tracking their movement. She only noticed the unsettling patterns of light and dark as they moved. It made her nausea even worse. Cor ceased to be anything but a force helping her stumble onward.

She tripped twice, and Cor gently helped her back to her feet and propelled her forward. Stopping sounded amazing—how many miles was this walk?—but she used all her strength to keep one foot scuffling ahead of the other.

Finally, they reached a large block of darkness. Katana closed her eyes, swaying, while Cor did something. The next thing she knew, Cor was pushing her down a dim hallway, muttering unflattering observations about her, Katana’s, competence. She even thought she heard something about wanting to beat her up, but that might have been a guilty projection.

At the end of the hallway, she took a final step and emerged into a room filled with tables and diners. They flickered before her like candlelight. After a moment, she saw Reed, sitting with that tramp, Maricruz. Katana’s mouth stretched into a smile before she could stop it, and she cried out in pain.

When her right eye cleared, she saw every single head turned toward her. The room strummed with silence. Reed had risen to his feet, eyes huge.

“I’m okay,” she told him, and then collapsed.

Years of training kept the Leeches from responding to the jolts of pain and misery sizzling through the room, but Reed watched Mari stiffen very slightly while taking a sip of her wine. A moment later, a brief, high-pitched cry rang out, and his head, like everyone else’s, snapped to the entryway.

The creature standing fifteen feet away looked like an escapee of a zombie flick. Her face was puffy and mottled and her dark, wet hair swung around her head as she swayed. Most frighteningly, she wore a thin blanket of red, drying on her face, clumping in her hair, turning her orange nightshirt dark brown and weighting it against her stomach and breasts.

It had taken him a few second to realize the creature was Katana. He’d risen to his feet when her right eye opened—her left appeared swollen shut—and she rasped, “I’m okay.” She stumbled and dropped to the ground.

Reed took a step toward her, and Mari’s hand clamped down on his wrist. Her face wore a mask equally as monstrous, if not as pitiful, as Katana’s as she hissed, “Don’t you dare.”

Growling at her, Reed used his other hand to knock hers away and run the few steps to Katana. He dropped down beside her and helped her lie flat on the ground.

“Where are you bleeding?” he snarled.

“I’m not,” Katana replied drowsily.

“Damnit, girl,” he snapped, but his voice shook.

“No, Reed,” someone murmured, and he looked up into Cor’s bright blue eyes. He hadn’t even seen her arrive. “She’s right. Most of the blood is Paul’s.”

He stared hard at her for a moment before demanding, “Then why . . .?” He nodded toward her face.

“Alberto,” Katana whispered.

Cor nodded. “Alberto attacked her when he saw . . . the scene.”

“Goddamnit,” he muttered fiercely and saw spittle spray from between his teeth. “Will she be okay?”

“I’m okay,” Katana repeated.

“Yeah,” Cor said.

“Watch her,” Reed commanded. He stood up, dark red blood staining his heretofore pristine white shirt. “Don’t eat anything!” he shouted to his rapt audience. “The Broschi know about the Clan’s appearance tonight and poisoned the food!”

Seconds leaked by, soaking the room in silence. Finally, Carnelian’s sweet, grandmotherly voice shouted, “You son-of-a-bitch!”, and she chose that very moment to stab her fork into the cheek of Orli, the older Hunter with a human companion.