I felt the door close beside me with a little puff of air. Standing just inside, I slid to my right, along the wall. If I’d had a pelt, it would have bristled. Something was very wrong here.
The terminal was silent except for the hum of electronics and the whir of an overhead fan. The air was permeated with an acrid sting of overheated electronics and dissipated gun smoke. I breathed in, scenting for traces of blood, urine, feces—the body fluids that escape when humans die. The terminal didn’t seem to contain any dead humans; nor did it smell like it had when I left. Beneath the reek of smoke, it stank of fear and blood-servant and the now-familiar vamp. And the burned powder of fired weapons.
A soft scrape like skin on something smooth sounded from the office door. I moved silently around the room, my back to the walls where possible, knowing that I was a sitting duck to anyone outside, hidden by the darkness. My reflection moved with a catlike effortlessness, and seeing myself in the windows gave me a weird feeling of déjà vu I couldn’t specify but that felt like being tracked by another predator. My weapons swept the room. I used the windows to check behind the counter. Nothing. No one. But that soft scrape sounded again.
I ducked my head into the office and back out. Letting the image of the room resolve itself in my mind. Cheap metal folding table. Chairs. Papers scattered on the floor. Barrage of busted electronics still leaking smoke. Bullet holes in the equipment, walls, computers.
A bundle of body on the floor. Human. Tied up. Lying on his belly, hands secured behind his back, feet tied together, and then the ties laced through the binding on his hands and tightened, pulling him into an uncomfortable squashed C shape. Hog-tied.
There was a ball of something in his mouth. I edged into the doorway, forced to turn my back to the windows, which I hated. The man on the floor was wide-eyed, bobbing his head emphatically. His hands were dark purple, and I guessed that he had been tied up for at least twenty minutes. I moved in fast, looked behind the door, stepped to the side, and opened the closet, securing the room. It was clear.
I knelt beside the man and set the handgun on the floor, so I could work the wad out of his mouth. It was wet and gooey with blood and saliva and was wedged in tightly. Nothing is ever as easy in real life as it is on TV. As I worked, I whispered to him, “When this comes free, talk softly. Tell me three things. How many? Were you alone? And where are the people who did this? If you shout or talk too loudly, I’ll stuff it back in. Understand?”
He grunted what might have been an affirmative. When the mushy cloth plopped out he said, “Three. One a fanghead. I was alone, but Beatrice will be back any minute with supper. They went back to the aircraft. I heard screaming. A lot of screaming. Then they drove off without walking back through here. Which is crazy because the fencing is twelve feet high with razor wire at the top and they didn’t have time to cut—”
“Shut up,” I said. He did, gasping for breath. “You’re bound with plastic and it’ll take time to free you. I don’t have that time. I’ll be back.” I stood and breathed in and out, hard, pulling on Beast-speed. She wasn’t talking to me much, but I could still access her traits. I raced out of the room and through the back terminal doors. Outside. Slammed my back against the wall. Took a quick look around as I ran into the shadows that would make me a less-easy target. Beast-vision made everything green and silvery and bright. No one was here.
Up the stairs of the Learjet. The smell of blood hit me hard. Fresh blood is not a smell humans can detect. But I can. Wet, sweet, and a lot of it. Blood in massive quantities aerated by arterial spraying.
I stopped just inside the hatch.
I share my soul with a predator, a big-cat who doesn’t mind if her prey is still struggling when she starts to feed, who likes to play blood-games with her food. I’m used to death. But this blood-game had been played with a human. And it was bad.
CHAPTER FIVE
Deer Antlers Piercing Through His Shoulders
The carpet was soaked scarlet. The walls had been spray painted crimson. The leather chairs had been painted. The rounded roof ran with red rivulets. A naked body had been tacked beside the entrance of the sleeping quarters. The body was bluish white skin everywhere except for the raw, gaping wounds, still leaking. His limbs spread in a grotesque X. Nails, huge six-inch-long nails, held him in place on the bulkhead wall. Steel nails though his wrists and above his ankles. Crucified.
It was the part-timer, Flyboy Dan.
My scalp tingled. My vision telescoped down to the bloody man hanging on the wall. The vision of the nailed man triggered something deep inside, in some dark and shadowy place in my soul, some memory of fear and pain. It was like a tight, scarlet bud, the flower of some unseen, unremembered horror still concealed in bloody, deadly petals.
Crucified. But not like the Christ. Like something else.
I smelled blood and the stink of bowels released in death. Heard the soft, wet sound of a drop of blood falling to the saturated carpet. I took a slow, deep breath and the darkness receded, the flower of old pain softened and blurred, losing its power over my mind.
But in some tiny, logical place of my brain that was still functioning, I thought, It isn’t like the suckheads to let blood go to waste.