Shadows Fall (37 page)

“Cool,” I said lamely. “You said you were on your way to another job? What else do you do?”

He shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets, upsetting the hoodie he had tied around his hips and causing it to fall to the floor. He bent to pick it up before answering me. “More slides and microscopes, different lab. I like working with the M.E. the best because it has a lot more variety. I’m kind of a floater.” Something flashed in his eyes, hardening them, so briefly that I thought I probably imagined it.

I ‘mmm-hmm’d’ because I had nothing to add to a conversation about labs and autopsies. The steaming liquid had reached the top of his cup, so I wiped the rim with a napkin and put a lid on it before handing it to him. “Here you go. I think there’s still enough stuff left on the condiment bar for you to doctor it up. Let me know if there’s something missing.”

He shook his head and took a tentative sip. “Nah, black’s fine. It’s good.”

“Thanks. It’s a new blend—Hawaiian.”

“Nice. I’ll have to remember to ask for this next time. Well, I better head off before I’m late. Good to see you again.”

I waved absently, my mind already on locking up and heading over to Charlie’s. “Yeah, same. You be careful out there.”

David paused at the door and looked at me over his shoulder, piercing me with dark brown eyes. “You too, Titus. I hear there’s a killer on the loose,” he said with a wry smile that just looked odd with the sudden intensity on the rest of his face. Then he was gone, disappearing into the night, getting lost in a crowd of weekend warriors.

“Creepy little fucker, aren’t ya, David?” I mused to the empty room as I finished closing up shop.

* * * *

I locked up the front door and then headed out the back through the break room. My shop was in one of the older blocks of buildings in Charlotte. The block was freestanding rather than having the shops insinuated around the fringes of one of the bigger hotels or towers. Because of this, my business and the other three had back doors that fed out into the alley between the business and one of the massive skyscrapers.

It was convenient when I needed to escape without getting caught up in a throng of revelers. Besides, if I was closing up shop by myself, I’d rather not make my departure in front of god knows who. I hadn’t been robbed yet, but I preferred not to tempt fate.

Swinging the heavy metal door open and allowing it to slam shut behind me, I turned to lock it. Even in the middle of the night, the humidity immediately had my Uptown polo clinging to my skin. I pulled it off, leaving only a black tank and my clammy skin for the damp southern heat to cling to.

I tucked the shirt underneath my arm and checked the locks one more time. Once I was sure everything was secure, I hitched up my backpack and squeezed through the tight space between the dumpster and the car belonging to the guy who owned the pub next door.
Fucking Larry
. Looked like I was going to have to have another talk with him about blocking my goddamn exit. Not only was it a fire hazard, but it was annoying as shit.

A hand suddenly clamped down on my left shoulder, squeezing painfully. As I reflexively turned my head toward the pain, I felt a sharp sting in my neck on the opposite side. Thinking it must have been a bee, I started to reach up my hand to slap it away, but it just sort of flopped uselessly at my side.

My lips tingled as my face started to go slack and when I moved, it felt like my body had been submerged in molasses. With my arms no better than wet noodles dangling from my shoulders, my backpack slowly slipped off and fell to the ground along with my polo. I kept trying to send signals to my brain that something was
wrong
, I needed to
run
, but nothing was happening.

It felt like that sensation I sometimes got when I was trying to run somewhere in a dream; the more the desperation consumed me, the more I felt like I was wading through quicksand.
What’s happening to me?
I thought I was saying it out loud, yet the only sound that came out was a pitiful moan. Some light chuckling sounded behind me, off to my right. I tried to turn my head to follow the noise but it just lolled pathetically on my shoulders. The movement upset my balance, my knees buckled—by that time they were as useless as my arms—and I went down like a sack of potatoes.

When I collapsed, I cracked my head on the pavement with enough force to send sparks shooting behind my eyelids. Pain exploded from the base of my skull, my vision narrowed to a pinpoint and dimmed. Though I was fighting a losing battle with unconsciousness, I sighted my shirt and pack through my pinhole-camera view.

Two scuffed black steel-toe boots stepped into my line of sight—I assumed they belonged to the chuckler, whom I should probably have already started to think of as my attacker. I saw his hand come down and pick up my bag. He missed the shirt; it was partially obscured by the corner of the dumpster. Hopefully it would be a clue for the police…for Charlie.

My heart constricted when I thought about him finding me, or not finding me, in whatever state this guy left me in. He’d blame himself for sure. I don’t know how I knew I’d just been attacked by the Queen City Slayer, but I was certain of it. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the quickly fading apparition of Brandon Meyers was crouched in front of the rusty blue dumpster, watching me sadly and shaking his head as my world slipped into the dark.

* * * *

I awoke to find myself in an obscure vibrating void, with nothing but the occasional crunch and rattle of traffic going by and all-encompassing darkness to keep me company. Somewhere after the umpteenth teeth-jarring jolt, I lost consciousness again, less from the injury than from the overwhelming need to be outside of myself.

* * * *

A bright light pierced my retinas and I made an effort to force my lids to close against the assault, but something held them open. I tried to shake my head to dislodge whatever it was, to avoid the offending beam, but nothing happened. I couldn’t move. Was I strapped down?

My whole body felt leaden, as I’d been covered by a stack of wet blankets, yet I felt nothing there. I sighed in relief when the light disappeared, but it came out as a strange gurgle.
What the fuck is wrong with me? And while I’m asking questions, where am I?

Once the spots faded, I was able to get a look around, only using my eyes since I couldn’t move my head. I was somewhere dark, with only a dull glow emanating from beyond my periphery. Water rushed nearby and dripped even closer, near my head. I seemed to be inside some kind of dank tunnel made out of…what almost looked like cobblestone, and I was laying on a tarp.

“W-what is this p-place?” The creaky, slurred sound of my own voice startled me, because up until now I hadn’t even been able to form words. Hell, I didn’t even know who I was talking to. The rats? Then I heard it, that same wicked chuckle that I’d heard before, and a long, rangy shadow stepped into my field of vision. “You?” I whispered.

David Sever ignored my second question in favor of answering the first. He spread out his hands and cast his eyes heavenward. “Welcome to the Underground, Mr. McGinty. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“The Underground?”

“Oh yes. Didn’t you know that Charlotte was built on top of old gold mines and natural storm water channels? There’s a veritable labyrinth of tunnels and shafts down here. I can get anywhere I want to in the city without ever being seen.”

Christ
. I hadn’t known that. I’d heard rumors of underground bank vaults and other urban legends, but here I was faced with the reality of his words. “So what… are we under now?”

David looked up again and bit his lip, almost as if he were suppressing a smile. When he let it break free, it was more of a gloating sneer than a smile. “Starbucks.”

“Traitor,” I ground out, unable to help the hysterical banter in the middle of the absurd situation.

He shrugged. “Sorry. I’m afraid we won’t have time for coffee. I have some already, remember? You made it for me.” With a genuine smirk that time, he lifted the cup to his lips and drank deep. Then he crumpled it and tossed it further down the tunnel. “Cold.”

I was getting tired of chit-chatting with a goddamn serial killer. If I was going to get carved up like a thanksgiving turkey, I at least wanted some answers. “What have you…done to me?”

“Oh, I just gave you a little something to keep you relaxed.”

“
Relaxed?
” I blurted. “I can’t fucking move!” The shout ended on a choking cough because my throat muscles tightened painfully. The tingling was back in my face, and I could barely even blink anymore.

“That’s the idea. It’s a mixture I created myself, a blend of curare, monkshood, and a dab of tetrodotoxin—pufferfish venom for the layman. I engineered it specifically to paralyze my…guests, but allow them to be able to see, hear, and speak. Don’t get any ideas about screaming though. All I have to do is up the dosage, and I can paralyze your vocal cords.”

I closed my eyes and for a moment just concentrated on breathing in and out. It wasn’t a good time to panic. I didn’t have any hope that anyone would find me down here, but maybe I could keep him talking until the shit wore off, unless… “The drug. Will it kill me?”

David laughed harder this time, a rusty guffaw. “Oh, Titus,” he said as if we were old friends. “
I’m
going to kill you. The drug is a tool. I’ve engineered it specifically for flaccid muscle paralysis, to enable me to do my work without you ruining it.”

Nausea roiled in my gut and I realized that I wouldn’t be able to roll myself over if I had to puke. I’d die choking on my own vomit. Swell. My body was completely sedentary and yet my heart was pounding wildly. I wondered if it was just fear, or an effect of the poison.

I could hear the whirring of wheels on pavement above us, though the space around me seemed to exist in a world out of time—our own little slow motion vortex swirling inside that malodorous tunnel.

David knelt down beside me and began tying ropes around my wrists. I would have raised a brow at him, but moving my face muscles took too much energy. “I can barely even blink. Do you really need to tie me?”

His jaw tensed, and his dark eyes sharpened, narrowed. “I didn’t get this far by being careless. I’m not taking any chances with you. You’re not like the others. You know too much.”

“I don’t know anything,” I muttered by rote, even though it was a lie. I felt him stretch first one arm then my other out to the sides, like I was lying on a cross. Only then did I realize that while I was, in fact, lying on a tarp, the material covered some kind of narrow, raised block that kept me just a few inches off the ground. My arms were stretched out in midair.

I could barely see since I couldn’t move my head, but I noticed he tied the other end of the first rope to a drainage pipe on my left, and then tied the one from my right wrist to one of the metal rungs of the ladder that stretched to the top of the shaft. Even if I hadn’t been paralyzed, I would have been immobile—naked, bound, and spread-eagled, like some kind of unholy sacrifice to a vengeful god. But the thing that scared me the most was the
mule
. Instead of crowding around me like they always did, the few that were actually down in the tunnel with us seemed to press back against the walls, as if they themselves, were frightened of David. Not only that, but the five—
my
five—were suspiciously absent, when they hadn’t left me alone in weeks.

Underneath each of my arms, David placed a shallow rectangular bucket, and then he pulled a rolling toolbox over next to me. He placed a surgical drape over the box and started laying out what I could only imagine were instruments of torture. Then I realized why this all felt familiar. This had happened to me before, in the nightmare I shared with Brandon Meyers.

“I saw what you did to Brandon Meyers,” I croaked. “I know…what comes next.”

“Yes, yes, I know you came to the morgue. Now you’ll have a chance to experience a cleansing first hand.”

“No, I know what you did because I
saw
it. Brandon showed me how you tied him up and sliced his wrists, bleeding him dry into those buckets until there was nothing left for his heart to pump. I felt him die.”

I wasn’t at all prepared when David reared back and slapped me across the face.

“
Witchcraft!”

His guttural shout had taken on an edge of hysteria. The last thing I needed was for David to lose what little grip on sanity he had left; he’d probably filet me like the catch of the day. I had to deflect his attention away from me and my ‘special skill.’ Maybe I could keep him talking long enough for whatever he’d injected me with to filter out of my body.

My face was still stinging from his slap. I found that even though I couldn’t feel my body, I could certainly feel the pain that was inflicted upon it. I gave my best shot at distracting him. “I figured out your code, you know. It was genius, using binary to spell out your messages.”

“Don’t patronize me,” he murmured, but he didn’t seem as agitated as he was moments ago.

The clinking of metal drew my attention back to his hands, and I saw that he had picked up a scalpel and some forceps. Was I about to get tagged with his signature ones and zeros? Desperate to avoid the blade, I had to think fast. “Why them?” I asked.