The Devil's Elixir (36 page)

R
icky Torres didn’t know what the hell was happening to him. He’d been duct-taped like a mummy and held in some room somewhere for what felt like forever. His wound had been treated and stitched shut, but it still hurt like hell. Then a little while ago, he’d felt a prick in his arm—some kind of antibiotic, no doubt—then, still with a duct tape blindfold over his eyes, he’d been untied, dragged to his feet, thrown into a car, and driven away.

And then this.

Thrown out of the car onto hard asphalt before his captors screeched away.

Had they let him go?

Hesitantly, he stood up and tore the tape off his eyes. The sun assaulted his vision instantly, and it took him a long moment before he could make things out clearly. When he did, he realized they’d dumped him in Mission Valley, right by the main parking lot of the Westfield Mall. He felt drowsy and disorientated, and found himself staring curiously at the Hooters across the road. His face contorted into an odd smile as a weird thought dropped into his mind. Right now, a few beers in the company of some scantily clad hotties would really help him forget everything that had happened to him in the past—how long was it? Forty-eight hours? More?

He didn’t know.

He stood there for a moment, still unsure as to why the bastards had let him go. During the drive over, he’d asked himself whether they were taking him somewhere isolated so they could kill him there and dump his body. Clearly, that wasn’t the case. But he felt like crap. His head was throbbing, his eyes felt like they weren’t focusing properly, and although the pain in his shoulder had eased off after they’d stitched him up, it was now back with a vengeance. Although he’d felt the bullet being removed, he now found himself wondering if his wound was infected. He knew from his days fighting in Iraq that infections to bullet wounds were often more lethal than the bullet that made the hole.

He needed to get it checked. Fast.

But a quick beer sure sounded good.

He took a couple of uncertain steps into the street—then heard a loud blast from a horn that stopped him in his tracks. He spun around to find that he was looking directly at the driver of a truck that was screeching to a halt, only narrowly avoiding hitting him. The guy was gesticulating and swearing loudly in what sounded like Spanish, but Torres couldn’t be sure. The sound reaching his ears was distorted, and there was a disconnect between what he was hearing and the movement of the guy’s mouth. There was also something
odd
about the driver. Torres squinted and tried to focus against the sun. Then he saw it.

The guy had yellow eyes.

Torres blinked, shaking his head before taking another look. The eyes were still yellow. Not only that, but fangs were now protruding from beneath the guy’s upper lip, and his skin was shimmering like the skin of a snake.

What the
—?

Torres staggered back onto the sidewalk, violently shaking his head as he retreated, unable to tear his eyes off the horrific sight. The driver swore at him and hissed through his sharp fangs as the truck rumbled off. Torres watched it go in total confusion, wondering what the hell had happened just then. He’d barely slept since he’d been nabbed and was clearly starting to hallucinate, but he needed to hold it together and get his head straight if he was going to have any chance of staying clear of the cops. He decided that the last thing he needed right now was wasting precious time on boilermakers and trying to get into the pants of some buxom waitress.

He turned to head the other way when he felt it. A weight, tugging against his belt. He glanced down and pulled back the Windbreaker they’d put him into and saw it: an automatic handgun, tucked into his belt.

His jaw dropped, and he quickly covered the gun up again. He glanced around nervously, hoping no one had spotted him, and noticed that he was facing a CVS, which took up most of the first floor of the building in front of him. What he really needed were some kick-ass painkillers. Something to take the edge off the throbbing pain in his shoulder so he could get somewhere safe and figure out his next move. Yes, that was the right move. For sure.

He set off across the parking lot and headed for the pharmacy. But as he made his way along the parked cars, he heard the unmistakable sound of a magazine being clicked into the body of an AK-47.

He spun around, his hand instinctively slipping under his jacket to grip the gun. A woman was loading shopping bags into the trunk of her car while her kid screamed that he didn’t want to go home. As she leaned into the car’s open tailgate, Torres realized that she must have hidden her weapon inside the car so he couldn’t see it. He thought about going over to the woman and demanding that she give him her weapon, but the sound of the kid’s screaming suddenly spiraled to an unbearable level, piercing his skull like a battery of bayonets.

He covered his ears as he turned and ran into the mall.

People seemed to avoid him as he staggered into the building. As he passed the Macy’s, he looked down at his shirt and noticed that he was drenched in sweat. Or was it blood? Maybe he’d been hit and the pain from his shoulder had stopped him feeling it? He wiped his fingers across his face then looked at them. No, it was just sweat. His mouth felt horribly dry. He needed water. And those painkillers. He set off again, but a searing pain ripped through his abdomen, causing him to double over. He leaned against a wall and retched several times. He felt like he wanted to throw up, but he didn’t think there was anything in his stomach. The pain was so bad he leaned his back against the wall, and although he was desperately trying to stay on his feet, after a moment he had to just let himself slide to the floor.

Something was wrong. Inside him. Something was seriously, seriously wrong, he knew it. And it was starting to scare him.

He raised his head and saw an older woman staring at him with a concerned look on her face. That’s how the suicide bombers got you. He knew that. They pretended to be a friend and then they took you to hell. He had lost three friends that way, blown to bits in the middle of a crowded street as his unit went door-to-door, trying to flush out insurgents. A woman had offered to show his sergeant a house in which some of them were hiding. He’d stayed behind to cover the street, and seconds later, there were pieces of his buddies scattered across the road.

He wasn’t going to let them get him that way.

He steeled his eyes and looked at the woman and went for his gun, but his hand froze as he stared at her face and saw it start to bend and change, her gentle gray eyes turning black and threatening, her nose morphing into the sharp beak of a bird. He tried to move, but the pain in his gut was too severe. The woman’s arms were now covered in black feathers, and her hands had been replaced by razor-sharp talons. And she was edging slowly toward him, her claws outstretched.

With a huge effort he pulled the SIG out from under his jacket and waved it at the harpy-like beast.

“Get back! Get away from me!”

The beast didn’t need telling twice. It turned and skittered away.

Torres couldn’t understand what was happening. He stuck the gun back under his belt, hauled himself to his feet, and slipped around the corner toward the entrance of the CVS. It was only a couple of hundred yards away and he was sure he could make it as long as he didn’t stop again.

He was halfway there when he heard a voice behind him.

“Sir? Sir? Are you all right? Do you need any help?”

Torres ignored the voice and kept going. It was a trick. A trick to keep him from getting the help he needed.

“Sir?” The voice turned into a rasp. “I’m going to need you to stop so I can talk to you.”

Torres spun around—much faster than he meant to, considering the agonizing pain in his abdomen—and found himself looking at another goddamn insurgent. The man had his hand resting on a sidearm that was hanging from his belt. Torres couldn’t exactly make out what uniform the towelhead bastard was wearing, but whatever it was, he’d probably taken it from the body of a dead American soldier.

It
was
a trap.

They were going to take him hostage, torture him, and cut off his head. That’s what these sickos did. Torres’s eyes darted around. Thirty yards away—too great a distance for him to do anything other than shoot him—a younger man was holding a cell phone that was pointed straight at him. They were already filming their hostage video. He wanted to shoot the bastard, but his captain had told him not to use his weapon unless his life was in immediate danger. Or was it someone else who had said that? He couldn’t remember. But he knew he should obey his orders if he could.

He felt another presence and turned around. Another man—this one disguised in jeans, tennis shoes, and a polo shirt—was walking toward him. Jesus. They had sent a whole team for him.

He had to do something or he was screwed.

He put out one hand, palm upward, in a gesture of surrender, but at the same time took two steps to the left. Then, as the man in the polo shirt drew level, he grabbed him by the neck, pulled out his gun and pressed it against the insurgent’s head.

“Stay away,” he yelled. “Everyone stay the fuck away from me.”

The insurgent in the fake uniform had already pulled his sidearm and was pointing it at him, but Torres had the upper hand now. He backed away, toward the CVS, dragging his hostage with him, moving faster with every yard despite the pounding pain in his head and the burn in his gut. As he shot another look toward the insurgent— who was staying put for now—he saw the bastard’s eyes turn yellow and horns sprout from his head. He blinked and shook his head, but when he opened his eyes, the horns were still there, gleaming like black obsidian, sharp and menacing. Sweat was now streaming down his own face and he screamed, “No,” before shoving his hostage away. The man scurried off, but not before giving Torres a sideways glance—he too had yellow eyes and horns, only his mouth widened to reveal a horrific set of fangs and an angry, forked tongue.

Torres felt a surge of terror as he realized something was allowing him to see the motherfuckers for what they really were. Demons, agents of Satan, soldiers of the antichrist. He’d always known they were evil; he’d just never seen them show their true forms before. He needed to survive, to tell everyone about this. People needed to know. But first he had to deal with the agony ripping through his stomach.

He reached the CVS’s entrance, where another insurgent came out of the store and tried to grab him. Torres swung his elbow into the guy’s face, then kicked a boot right through his shin bone. The demon collapsed to the ground. He crouched down beside his groaning victim and grabbed his gun, then he spun around with a weapon in each hand, one pointed at the insurgent on the ground, the other one at the guy in the fake uniform, who was now standing twenty yards from the store entrance. He saw that more of them had appeared, a horde of snarling, clawing beasts closing in on him.

He felt light-headed, and his vision was swaying in and out of focus as he yelled to the fighter he’d just overpowered.

“Shut the doors. Now!”

At least if he were locked inside, they couldn’t get him. And maybe he could get the painkillers he was now really desperate for.

The store’s security guard got up, scurried over to the main doors—two big glass panels with chrome handles—and proceeded to close and lock them.

“Where’s the pharmacy?” Torres shouted.

The guy gestured into the back of the store.

“Give me the keys.”

The guard handed them over.

“And your radio.”

He complied.

Torres stuffed the keys into his pocket, then dropped the radio to the ground and smashed it under his boot. He looked around him. Several customers—or were they two-faced enemy combatants?—were backing away from him with their hands up, some of them crying and whimpering. For a moment he wondered what the hell he was doing. Wasn’t he supposed to be getting out of town? Away from the cops? How had he got himself locked into a mall? It didn’t matter right now. At least he was still alive. Yes, the fuckers hadn’t managed to get him. Not like the rest of his unit, who’d been blown to smithereens by that towelhead bitch. It was just him now. And he wasn’t going to let them fuck with him.

He needed a plan.

Step one: Deal with the pain.

Step two: Talk to the ranking officer and make a deal.

He knew something they needed to hear about. Maybe he was the
only one
who knew.

Covering the store with both guns, he crept slowly toward the pharmacy.

I
was already halfway out of the SUV before Villaverde had thrown it into park. There were at least ten black-and-whites scattered across the main lot, plus a SWAT truck and two incident response vehicles parked off to one side. A couple of uniforms had already thrown up a tape barrier about fifty yards from the mall’s main entrance. On the other side of the lot were four local news trucks. A fifth pulled in as I jogged over to the command-and-control truck, Villaverde a few paces behind me.