Beyond the Pale: A fantasy anthology (17 page)

“She’s been up
to something,” Andy said. He might have been reading my mind. “Makes you wonder
why she wanted me back, don’t it?”

I dipped up a
cup of the potion, sniffed it again, and tilted it this way and that in the
mug. “I don’t trust this,” I said. “It doesn’t feel right, Andy. I just—”

He held up a
hand to silence me.

“What?” I
whispered.

“I think maybe
someone’s here,” he said.

I sealed up the
jar and hefted it. We’d take it with us. It’d have to serve until I could brew
my own.

Andy turned his
eyes back toward me, and there was something dawning in his expression,
something grim and terrible.

He lifted the
mug I’d filled and poured it into the sink.

“What are you
doing?”

“Somebody’s
been studying up.” Andy didn’t bother to keep his voice down. “Used this same
trick myself, long ago. Made up a batch of poisoned brew, left it for the
revenants to drink when they came looking. Did for quite a few that way, back
in the wars.”

Poison.
I looked down at the jar and let
it slide out of my hands back to the counter.

“Come out,”
Andy said. “Face to face. You want us dead, you do it barefaced.”

 
“All right,” said a smoke-strained,
whisky-rough voice from the hall, and a big, red-headed man stepped into the
light. There was a gun in his hand, pointed not at Andy, but at me. “How’s
this?”

Sam Twist.
I’m just the dispatcher.
“Sam—” I
wet my lips. Andy stepped between me and the gun, and I heard three loud pops
in quick succession.

Andy just stood
there and took the bullets, shook himself, and said in a voice I didn’t even
recognize, “You all done, Irish, or you want to reload?”

I slid slowly
along the counter, angling for a view of Sam. He was calmly holding the gun at
his side.

“No need,” he
said. “I was just softening you up a little. No question, you’re one hell of an
opponent. That’s why I tried to get Holly to take a pass on bringing you back
again.”

“Mine,” scraped
another voice, and the thing that shuffled into view next to Sam... if it had
been born human, it hadn’t stayed that way. Misshapen, malformed as a dropped
lump of clay, but roped with muscle. Dead gray eyes. Pointed teeth displayed by
lips that had been cut or ripped away. Sam was a big man, and this—creature—topped
him by a foot or more. Its shoulders were broader than the doorway.

I remembered
the photographs of the cops. Beaten to death. Necks snapped.

Andy had never
looked fragile to me until that moment.

If he was
worried, or even startled, it didn’t show. He bounced lightly on the balls of
his feet, eyes fixed on Sam’s monster. “Well, ain’t you pretty?” he said, cool
and quiet. “Your momma must be real proud.”

The thing
swayed, but didn’t move. Its blind-looking gaze strayed from Andy... to me.

A low growl
started in its throat, a diesel engine running rough, and I felt Andy’s whole
body tense. “Get behind me,” he said. “Holly, dammit, do that right now.”

I did, but not
before I got a glimpse at the blood soaking the front of his shirt, and the
tattered flesh beneath. Dead men could die, and they could feel pain, and no
matter how focused and tough Andy was, he couldn’t overcome this monster.

Not alone.

“Who is he?” I
whispered. Sam couldn’t have brought this creature back, not on his own.

“He was my
brother Donal,” Sam Twist said. “Before Lottie got hold of him.”

He was
Lottie’s.
But Lottie was dead. Wasn’t
she? “She—brought him back?”

“He got knifed
in a bar fight,” Sam said. “Strongest man I ever knew. I begged her to help,
and she did. She brought him back. But I didn’t know what she’d
do
with him.”

Sam moved over
to the side, edging to where he could once again see my face, and line up a
clear shot. Andy didn’t move. He clearly thought it was better to stand between
me and Donal.

“What did she
do?” I was acutely aware now of the blood pooling at Andy’s feet, of the waves
of darkness vibrating the air between us. Death was coming, and coming no
matter how hard he pushed against it.

“What does it
look
like she did, you bitch?” Sam spat,
and the sudden raw fury in him exploded like nitro. “She
used him.
My own brother. She told me she put him back to sleep,
but she didn’t. She set him to fighting other dead men like some trained bear,
and brought him back, kept dragging him back until there was nothing left. She
took
bets
.” Sam swallowed hard. “But
he remembered. He heard my voice on the phone, and he remembered.”

Sam’s face was
red, distorted with anguish, and his eyes were glittering with tears. I
swallowed hard to clear the lump from my throat. “He came to find you,” I said.
“Oh, Sam, I’m sorry.”

He sneered at
me. There was no more sanity in his eyes now than in his brother’s. “Keep your
pity,” he said. “I don’t want it. I’m putting you down, bitch. I’m putting all
of you
down.
”

Lottie wasn’t
dead. Lottie couldn’t be dead, if Donal was still alive. Sam had her somewhere,
under lock and key, maybe drugged or worse, but still breathing.

She was Donal’s
only vulnerability.

I was still
partly blocked from Sam’s view. With my right hand, I dug my cell phone from my
pocket, flipped it open, and hit and held the speed dial number I’d assigned to
Detective Prieto. I had to hope he’d answer, or at worst, that his voicemail
would give him the clues he needed after the fact to put it all together. “You
kept Lottie alive,” I said. “Right, Sam? To suffer.”

“Damn
straight,” he said. “When I’m done with you, I’ll take out Annika, and we can
move on to the next town. You have to be stopped, all of you.”

“You’re using
Donal just as much as Lottie did,” I said. “Let him go, Sam. God—please,
let him
go!
”

“No,” he
snapped. “Not until every single one of you is dead. Don’t move, Holly. I want
you to watch what happens next.”

He knew. He
knew about Andrew; he’d heard how traumatized I was when I’d lost him before.

He wanted me to
watch him die again.

~

Donal was fast,
but Andy was faster. Even wounded, he was as lithe as a cat. He dodged Donal’s roaring
charge, tripped the twisted giant, and bashed Donal’s skull hard into the
marble counter. I backed away, dodged behind the fighting men, and screamed
into the phone, “Prieto, it’s Sam Twist, find Lottie, Lottie’s the key—”

Donal’s hand
slapped the phone away from me, and it bounced and broke into scattered pieces
against the far wall. A bone snapped in my hand, and I choked back a scream,
then another as I felt Andy’s torment surge stronger. He was feeling my pain,
too.

He’d do
anything to stop it, and that was so dangerous.

I needed the
gun Sam held.

I settled for
grabbing a cleaver from the block next to the stove. Lottie, like all good
cooks and witches, kept her tools in order; the cleaver had a wicked fine edge,
a silky deadliness that vibrated the air.

I kept Donal
between me and Sam as he sought for a clear shot. Andy slipped in his own
blood; his strike at Donal’s massive throat lost its strength, and Donal’s huge
gray hands closed on his shoulders.

I felt Andy’s
arm being wrenched out of its socket. I screamed. He grunted and pulled halfway
free, but Donal bunched up a fist and drew back—

I threw myself
to the floor and swiped the cleaver through Donal’s Achilles tendons, and he
toppled, howling, like a tree. The table collapsed under his impact. Andy
squirmed free, panting, and I felt the tide coming faster, deeper, all that
darkness swirling and clouding the air between us as he tried to get to me...

Sam fired
twice. One shot hit Donal’s flailing arm and kicked a fist-sized chunk of flesh
out of it. The second shot....

The second shot
took Andy in the chest as he lunged to cover me.

“No!” I
shrieked, and took his weight in my arms as he collapsed against me.

There was no
fighting the emptiness that rolled over me now, the call of endless peace, and
I felt Andy slipping away.

I felt him find
some small, impossible anchor in that tide, and his body shuddered against
mine, holding me tight against him.
He
can’t. He can’t make it.
Even the dead had to die.

But Andy
refused to go.

He pulled back,
and his eyes were liquid silver, the color of the potion I’d dosed him with in
the morgue. His skin was as pale as paper. Most of his blood was poured out on
the floor, an offering to harsher gods than I could ever worship.

But he
stayed standing.

He took in a
deep breath, and closed his eyes. “Potion,” he whispered. “Give it to me.”

The jar behind
me on the counter.

Poisoned.

“No,” I said. “No,
Andy.”

Another shot
struck him. I screamed something at Sam, I don’t even know what, and he bared
his teeth in response. Donal was crawling toward us across the floor. He
couldn’t stand, but he wouldn’t give up. He wanted me dead as much as Sam.

Andy reached
behind me, fumbled the gallon jar of silver liquid, and looked at me with the
most heartbreaking plea. “Help,” he whispered. I felt the tide roaring in
again, stronger this time. He couldn’t resist that, not even for me.

I helped him
lift the jar.

One swallow.

Two.

Sam’s next
bullet hit the jar and exploded it into a shower of glass. The potion coated us
both and swirled in thick silvery streams in the blood on the floor.

But it worked.

I felt the
black surging inside of Andy fall away, and the sudden pulsebeat of life took
over. For just an instant, his eyes locked with mine, and I saw a promise
there.

An acceptance,
too.

Donal’s huge
hand swiped at his feet, but Andy sidestepped and waltzed me with him. He put
me gently out of the way, and turned to Sam Twist.

“You got plenty
of cause to hate,” Andy said. “Your brother’s been used hard. But you took it
too far, mister. You got no quarrel with Holly.”

“She’s a
witch.”

Andy’s smile
turned wolfish. “So am I, mister. And now you got a quarrel with me.”

Sam fired
again, and hit Andy. The bullet wounds didn’t seem to matter at all; with a
bellow of rage, Sam rushed forward, still firing. Andy moved like a
bullfighter, avoiding the attack, and swung his arm around Sam’s throat from
behind. He threw his weight into the motion. Sam’s feet slipped in the blood,
and his neck snapped with a muffled dry crackle. It happened too fast for me to
really take in, and then the life was leaving Sam’s blue eyes and his body
falling in that utterly empty way that only the dead can fall as Andy let him
go.

Donal howled,
and it hurt me to hear it. Andy turned toward me, and our gazes met again.

He’d taken two
steps toward me when Lottie’s poison took hold. Andy’s fearsome strength of
will might be able to deny bullet wounds, but this was different. Very
different.

His legs
folded, and he fell to his side, panting. His pupils grew huge, no longer
silver but black, black as the death that was coming for him.

“Next time,” he
whispered.

I dropped to my
knees beside him and put my hand on his forehead as he began to convulse.

I tasted poison
on his lips, and I wondered in a black, desolate fury if it would be enough to
finish me. It wasn’t.

The universe
wasn’t quite that merciful.

~

“Miss
Caldwell,” Detective Prieto said. I raised my head slowly, every muscle aching
and hot. Part of it was Lottie’s poisonous mixture; the other part was a
collection of injuries I hadn’t realized I’d accumulated until the heat of
battle was past. I was back in the hospital. They’d taken Donal away in a
massive steel prison truck, still fighting. They’d taken Andy away in a
coroner’s wagon, along with Sam. I’d screamed about the two of them riding
together, but the cops thought I was out of my mind.

Maybe I was.

I looked at
Detective Prieto wearily, too exhausted to care about the pity in his eyes. “Did
you find her?”

“We did,” he
said. “She was drugged. Chained up in a room underneath Sam Twist’s house.”

I nodded. “And
the others?”

He just looked
at me. Sam hadn’t needed the others, of course. He’d only needed Lottie to keep
Donal alive.

Perversely,
Lottie still lived, like the cockroach surviving nuclear winter. And so did
Donal, for all the good it did him.

“You okay?”
Prieto asked. It was my turn to stare, and he turned away from what he saw in
my expression. “Lottie’s down the hall, I hear. They say she’ll make a full
recovery.”