Nightstruck (24 page)

I no longer cared about the humanity of the homeless guy who had formed a human shield in front of Piper.

I pulled the trigger, but my eyes were blurry with tears and my hands were far from steady. My dad had told me once that even the best-trained, most experienced police officers miss more often than they hit, in the heat of battle. Your body's fight-or-flight response shuts down your fine motor skills and makes it physically impossible for most people to shoot straight. I was no exception to that rule.

My first shot went completely wild, and I was so panicky I immediately squeezed off a second that was even wilder. Piper kept smirking, and the rest of the Nightstruck were completely unintimidated.

My higher reasoning kicked in and reminded me there were more Nightstruck out there than I had ammo for, and that they weren't going to give me time to get another mag and reload. I had to make every shot count.

The goat rammed my dad again, this time in the opposite shoulder. His scream almost made me pull the trigger again by reflex, but I fought the need, fought to steady my hands and to breathe evenly. It was a fight I was doomed to lose.

My third shot was better, winging the homeless guy in the shoulder. His only reaction to the hit was a mild flinch, and he remained parked exactly where he was.

The goat backed up and took yet another shot at my dad, this time at his exposed leg. There was no scream this time, just a groan. Blood soaked both his shirt and his pants and pooled in the gutter. If I didn't stop this soon, he wasn't going to make it.

“I have to go down there,” I said. “I have to be able to move to get a clear shot.”

“No way,” Luke said, looming behind me. “That's exactly what they want.”

Intellectually, I knew that. And I knew giving them what they wanted was a terrible idea. But I couldn't just stand there and do nothing while they killed my father.

“Come on, Becks,” Piper called. “It doesn't have to be like this. Just come out and talk to me. I won't hurt you. I promise.”

Like the promise of this stranger meant anything!

I tore my eyes away from the horror outside my window and turned my most imploring look on Luke. “You have to let me go out there. I can't stop them from here.”

I tried to step around him, but he moved to block me, grabbing my shoulders and giving them a little shake. His eyes were glassy, and his every muscle was clenched with strain. But he didn't budge.

“You can't stop them out there, either,” he said hoarsely. “I'm not going to let you throw your life away.”

There was a horrible, cracking sound of impact, and I whirled around to look out the window once more. The goat had taken another shot at my dad's exposed leg, which now lay bent at a crooked angle.

Dad wasn't moving, and Luke wasn't about to let me go outside. Even if I could convince him to let me go, by the time I talked him into it, ran downstairs, got all the locks open, and went outside, the goat and the Nightstruck would have finished Dad off.

There was nothing constructive I could do. And so I started shooting again, even though it was hopeless.

I finally took down the homeless guy with a shot that was aimed for his torso but that hit him in the neck. His blood splashed all over Piper, streaking her too-blond hair, and he fell to the pavement, clutching his throat as blood spilled out from between his fingers.

Another of the Nightstruck stepped forward to shield Piper.

I emptied my clip as the goat continued to brutalize my dad, until his entire body was bloody and torn and broken and there was no way he was still alive.

With my eight shots, I managed to kill one Nightstruck and wound two more, which is better shooting than it sounds like. But it wasn't enough.

When the bullets ran out, the Nightstruck calmly collected the unconscious—or maybe even dead—girl they'd been tormenting earlier. It took two of them to extract my dad's body from the drain. I fell to my knees and made some horrible choking sound when I realized they were going to take him away. Luke knelt beside me and wrapped his arms around me. He tried to turn my face away from the window, but I resisted. I didn't want to see, and yet I couldn't stop myself from looking.

Piper continued to stare at me the whole time, and there was no hint of regret or apology on her face.

“Come with me, and all the pain will go away,” she called, but she didn't sound like she expected me to take her up on it. She shook her head. “We'll talk again when you've had time to think about the situation.”

My whole body shook with a sob, and though I knew the gun was empty, I kept pulling the trigger anyway, over and over again, as the Nightstruck took my father's body away.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY

I don't want to talk about the next few days. I don't remember them all that well anyway, which is a blessing. There was a lot of crying involved, of course, interspersed with periods of dull numbness and disbelief. The worst part was having to tell my mom and my sister what had happened. I knew none of it was my fault, and yet it was hard to remember that, when I listened to them cry. The what-if games had begun in my mind, and no amount of logic could stop them.

Thanks to the quarantine, I couldn't go live with my surviving family, none of whom lived in the Philly area. Dad's second in command came over to the house and talked over my options with me. In ordinary circumstances, a girl like me with no family to take her in would move into the foster care system, but thanks to the situation, the foster care system was strained to the breaking point and needed all its resources for the many younger kids who couldn't get by without an adult guardian. At seventeen, I was capable of taking care of myself.

Luke's mom offered to serve as my unofficial guardian, and with my okay, that was more than enough for the authorities. My own mother wasn't so okay with it, and she was pursuing legal action in hopes of forcing the government to either let me out of the quarantine area or let her in.

Yeah, good luck with that, Mom.

Luke and his mom were great, and were the only reason I stayed reasonably sane during those first few awful days. Despite the hospital's desperate need, she stayed home from work for several nights, treating me like the broken thing I was. She moved me into their guest room and even took Bob in, despite being allergic to dogs.

Neither my mom nor my dad was the coddling type, both believing in self-sufficiency above all else, but Luke's mom was a more nurturing sort, a natural-born caregiver. She never once told me not to cry, nor would she let me do anything for myself. I wasn't allowed to cook, or help her and Luke with the housework, or even run to the grocery store for a quick errand, at least not for the first few days. Which I'm sure was just as well. If I'd gone to the store for milk, I probably would have stood in front of the dairy case for hours in an agony of indecision over whether to pick whole or two percent. I just wasn't all that functional.

I knew I was starting to get a bit better the morning I offered to walk Bob—which Luke had taken on as his own personal chore—and Luke's mom actually let me. Luke came along, but he insisted it was just to keep me company, not to keep an eye on me in case I had a breakdown.

I had begun the long, slow recovery process. Dr. Gilliam told me gravely that I would never “get over” my dad's death. She had lost her mother ten years ago, and she said sometimes the pain of it would sneak up on her and take her by surprise, even now.

“But it does get easier,” she assured me with a sad smile. “Time can't fully heal the wound, but you'll figure out how to live with it. We all have to go through this at some point in our lives.”

It's not like I hadn't known I would in all likelihood outlive both of my parents. That was just the natural way of things. But I'd never let myself think about it, always thought it was some terribly distant eventuality. Even when my dad was still in the field, his life in potential danger every day, I'd never truly believed anything would happen to him, no matter how much my mom worried.

Reality could be one hell of a bitch.

*   *   *

It was four long days and three even longer nights after my dad's death when Dr. Gilliam decided she had to go back to work. I was still prone to sudden, unexpected crying jags, but I was at least getting to the point that I could occasionally think about something other than the horrible, aching loss. And the situation out in the city wasn't getting any better. There were casualties every single night, and every emergency room in the city was flooded the moment the sun set. It didn't help matters that the nights were still getting longer.

When Dr. Gilliam told me she was going back to work, I told her I wanted to go back to my house to spend the night. I appreciated her care more than I could say, but even though my home was only across the way from the Gilliam house, I was feeling homesick. I wanted to sleep in my own bed, in my own room, even though being in that empty house was sure to give me painful reminders of what I had lost.

I thought she might argue with me, but she didn't. I guess she understood. Luke and Bob came with me, of course, and if I closed off some shutters in my mind here and there I could almost convince myself Dad was off at work and would be back before the night was out.

The new routine became very much like the old one, with Luke and Bob and me staying at my house when his mom was at work and at his house when she was home. The only thing that was different—aside from my dad's absence—was that Piper and her friends no longer stopped by to torment me. I kept expecting that bone-chilling moment when my early warning system (aka Bob) went on alert, but for a little over a week after my dad's death nothing happened. No Nightstruck called to me, no metal goats rammed my door, no unseen, malevolent creatures tried my windows.

I wouldn't say either Luke or I had relaxed our guard much. I had found where Dad stashed the ammo for the SIG. I'd also found an old, worn ankle holster, so I didn't have to carry the gun around in my hand when I moved from room to room. It was designed for a bigger, male ankle, and even at its smallest size it was a little loose, but I preferred that slight discomfort to the risk of absently leaving the gun in one room and discovering I needed it in another. We checked the windows and the security of our impromptu bars over them every night, and we entered a state of heightened awareness as soon as the sun dipped below the horizon and what was now being called the Transition happened.

But even though we were nominally prepared for it, it still felt like a blow below the belt when one night, during dinner, Bob leaped to his feet and charged the front door. Both Luke and I pushed our chairs back from the table, and I grabbed the gun out of its holster and double-checked it. Piper had said she'd be back, had said we'd “talk later,” but the thought of seeing her again almost made me throw up.

Luke and I stood at the ready in the middle of the living room, though what exactly we were at the ready for, I don't know. There was a metallic squeak I recognized as the sound of the mail slot being pushed in, and that sick feeling in my stomach worsened exponentially.

“Bob, come here!” I shouted, with little hope that he would obey. As well trained as he was, I think the creatures of the night short-circuited all that training and threw him into the land of blind instinct. Maybe he would have obeyed if the command had come from my dad instead of from me.

I was already running toward the door, planning to physically haul Bob away from danger, but I wasn't fast enough. Bob let out a high-pitched yelp that practically made my heart stop beating. He scrambled backward away from the door, and I could see the tip of something sharp and pointy withdrawing through the mail slot. With a whimper of pain, he flopped down on the floor and started licking the top of his leg.

I was crying and so angry I was shaking as I approached my brave, heroic dog, terrified that he was about to die in the line of duty.

“Careful,” Luke warned, though he made no attempt to stop me. “Wounded animal.”

It's true that wounded animals can be unpredictable, but I couldn't be bothered to care about that. I knelt at Bob's side and shuddered in relief when I saw that the wound, though bloody, was in his shoulder, not his chest. It obviously hurt, but it didn't look life threatening.

The mail slot creaked again, and I saw a pair of brilliant green eyes watching me through the opening. Bob growled and tried to stand up, but I held on to his collar.

“Your dog will be fine,” said a male voice, and I finally realized those green eyes belonged to Aleric. “I was careful not to hurt him too much.”

Bob's growl deepened, and he lurched to his feet despite my effort to keep him down.

“Luke, will you get his leash, please?” I asked without looking. Blood trickled down Bob's leg, but even with the wound I was sure he was stronger than me—especially when I could only hold on with one hand because of the gun—and I couldn't let Aleric take another poke at him.

Apparently Luke was the proactive type, because before I'd finished the sentence he was there at my side, leash in hand. He clipped the leash on Bob's collar and gave a little tug.

“Come on, Bob,” Luke said, patting his leg encouragingly. “Let's go have a Milk-Bone, okay, buddy?” Luke leaned close so he didn't have to shout. “I'm going to take him upstairs. I'll be right back.”

I felt safer having Bob close by, but with him already hurt and me waving a gun around, Luke probably had the right idea. I nodded reluctantly, and Luke gave Bob's leash a tug.

Luke and Bob had definitely bonded during the time we'd spent together, and though Bob resisted being led away, he didn't resist as hard as he could have. I pointed my gun at the mail slot, but Aleric's eyes had disappeared and the metal flap was closed. I wished that meant he was gone, but of course I knew better.