Fury’s Kiss (6 page)

Follow
, freaky-me urged inside my head. Again, she startled me, and I jerked up straight in my seat, managing to smash my funny bone painfully against the door. I stifled a moan and wished Alex and Rachel were there to back me up. Alex would tell me to follow the guy, no question. Rachel, though, would look at the situation rationally and point out that following the truck could only make things worse. That confronting this guy would do nothing but remind him of what I looked like and reinforce his memory of the night before.

The voice spoke again.
FOLLOW
. Demanding now, not persuading.

I thought of the leer the guy had given the two teenage girls he’d just passed and gritted my teeth. Whether I wanted to or not, I couldn’t go back to the way things had been. The voice in my head was proof of that. And what if what was happening to me wasn’t such a bad thing? Maybe Nora was right, maybe there wasn’t enough justice in the world.

Maybe this was happening to me because I was supposed to stop guys like Miller and his friend.

My knee bounced rapidly and butterflies fluttered in my stomach. I took quick, shallow breaths and put the car in drive quickly so I wouldn’t have time to chicken out. As I pulled out behind the truck, I eased off the gas to keep some space between us. I didn’t know if the slimeball behind the wheel would recognize me if he looked back, but there was no sense drawing attention to myself.

My hands clenched so tightly on the wheel my fingernails turned white, and I exhaled in heavy relief when the truck signaled a right and pulled into the parking lot of the Stardust, a cheap motel where you could rent a room by the day, week, or month. The truck stopped in front of room number five and I continued on past the motel to park at the neighboring grocery store.

I watched as my quarry let himself into his room, then felt around in my purse for the pepper spray Alex had pressed on me before I left the house. I twisted my long hair up into a bun and grabbed an elastic from the jumble of hair ties and bobby pins I kept in one of the cup holders. There was a ball cap on the backseat, so I jammed it on my head and pulled the bun out through the hole in the back. Sherlock Holmes, I wasn’t, but my makeshift disguise was the best I could do.

I reached for the door handle, but paused before exiting the car. Was I really going to go through with this? Follow a strange man into his motel room and confront him? My intention to do so went against every ounce of caution and self-protective instinct I’d had drilled into me by my mother, Oprah, and every man who’d ever catcalled me on a public street where I should have felt safe.

Then I remembered how I’d felt the night before, when this man had called me a bitch simply because I’d walked away from him. And how his friend had felt entitled to take what he wanted from me just because I was a young woman out alone at night. Nora’s words about protecting Ruby rang in my ears and I knew that yes, I
would
follow this man into his motel room. And yes, I would do whatever it took to protect myself.

I would not be a victim again.

Costume in place, I got out of the car and tried to look like any other shopper picking up a few groceries on a Saturday afternoon. My heart was pumping adrenaline through my veins as fast as it could, and I hoped my nervousness wasn’t apparent to anyone who looked my way. I walked over to the motel and took a quick scan of my surroundings to make sure no one was paying any particular attention. I didn’t see anyone, so I kept my head down and knocked on the door marked with a five. I heard movement inside. After what seemed like hours, the chain rattled and the door opened about six inches.

“Yeah?”

“Hiiii.” I drew out my vowels and tried to sound as perky as possible. “I’m awfully sorry to bother you, but I was hoping I could use your phone. The phone in my room’s not working and there’s no one in the office.” I gave the guy my best dumb-blonde smile. “It’s kind of an emergency. My sister took the car to get a few things, but I forgot to tell her there’s no gas in the tank. And the gauge is broken, so there’s no way for her to tell.”

As cover stories went, it wasn’t much, but I hoped I was cute enough and he was dumb enough not to think about it too hard. If I’d learned anything from Alex over the years, it was that you could get away with just about anything if you sounded like you believed your own story.

He closed the door to unhook the chain, then opened it again and stepped back to let me enter. He pointed out the phone with a grunt as I stepped inside and looked around. In addition to the nightstand on which the phone sat, there was a double bed that took up the middle of the room and a dresser, TV, and cable box. A closed door led to what I knew would be a small, basic washroom. The room was clean and had nothing obviously wrong with it, but there was something off, just the same. A sick knot of anxiety twisted in my stomach and I wished I hadn’t followed him, after all. But it was too late to turn back now.

I picked up the phone and dialed Alex’s number. She answered after a few rings and I turned my back to the guy. “Hey, sis,” I said into the receiver. “I forgot to tell you the car’s almost out of gas, so you should definitely stop and get some.”

“What? Tara, is that you? What are you talking about?”

“Yeah, I think I saw a gas station right up the street from the motel.”

“You’re at a
motel
? Doing what? With who?” She paused, trying to come up with a reason for my random phone call. “Is Jackson there with you?”

Yeah, right. I wished.

“No, the phone’s still not working. I’m using our neighbor’s.” I could hear Rachel in the background, demanding answers.

“Do you need help?” Alex asked. “Is this a code? Are you talking like this because you’re with someone?”

“No, no, and yes.” I tried to keep her questions straight. “You know you’re not supposed to talk and drive, though, so I’ll let you go.”

“Tara, do not hang up this phone,” Alex ordered. Her voice was firm, but I ignored it.

“OK, you too. See you soon. Bye.” I hung up. Rachel would want to reverse dial the call right away, but Alex wouldn’t let her. She would be just as worried and curious as Rachel was, but she had enough common sense to realize that if I was calling with some story about a motel and a neighbor’s phone, calling back would just cause more trouble than I might already be in.

“Thanks sooo much.” I turned back to the sleazebag in the motel room with me. “I was just so worried about my sister breaking down somewhere, you know? There are, like, a lot of really crazy people out there. Like that Slasher guy? So scary, right?”

“Uh-huh. You gotta be careful.” He kept it short, clearly trying to get rid of me.

“And, like, that body they just found at that bar? Spyder’s? Sooo crazy, right?”

That got his attention. “They found a body at Spyder’s?” I watched him, trying to gauge the sincerity of his reaction. Something wasn’t adding up, but I couldn’t figure out what.

Then it came to me—I’d seen him buying a newspaper at the gas station. He had to know something had happened to Miller. It had been front-page news.

I took another quick glance around the small room. The bag of Doritos lay over by the television, but no newspaper. Why was he pretending not to know what had happened?

“Ohmigod, it sounded sooo creepy,” I gushed, staying in character as I tried to pump him for more information. “It was in the paper this morning and it was, like, really mysterious.”

“I was just at that place last night with my buddy Clint, but he ditched me for some chick. Man, she was a
bitch
, too.” He laughed, but his eyes stared, cold and watchful, like he was trying to provoke a reaction from me.

Sticks and stones, Walker. Don’t let him upset you.
The last thing I needed right now was to get angry and end up with another dead body on my hands.

Unfortunately, the voice in my head wasn’t talking things quite so calmly.
Let us show him our true face,
she hissed.
Would he then be so eager to jest?

Was that the ancient goddess version of ‘come over here and say that to my face’? And what was up with this ‘our’ stuff, anyway? As far as I was concerned, ‘we’ only had one face and it belonged to me.
Just stay cool, Freaky,
I thought at the Fury.

I am Alecto,
she hissed,
not ‘Freaky’.

OK. So freaky-me was giving herself a name now. Did that mean she intended to stick around inside my head? Taking her on this visit to the Stardust was one thing, but that didn’t mean I had any permanent vacancies that needed filling.

She spoke up again.
He is deserving. We must have our vengeance.

Was she going where I thought she was going with this? Because I was so not interested. The first guy we’d taken out had deserved what he’d gotten, true. But this guy? The jury was still out on him. It was a fact that my life would be easier if he didn’t mention me to the cops, but I couldn’t just go around killing people because it was convenient.

You’re a Fury,
I reminded the voice.
That means justice, not just killing people because they’re jerks.
I’d given her the benefit of the doubt and followed this guy, but going all Furious on him would be going way too far.
He hasn’t done anything to us,
I reminded the thing in my head.

He will,
she hissed back
. He lies. Can you not taste it?
I had a crazy urge to stick out my tongue and taste the air, but I sniffed discreetly instead. There
was
something unpleasant about the air in the motel room, now that she mentioned it. It was faint, but bitter.

No sooner had I detected the acrid scent than the man made a sudden movement, reaching for the small of his back to haul out a gun that had been hidden under the tail of his shirt. He grabbed up a pillow off the bed and Alecto screamed at me to move. I dodged to the side as he brought the gun up to fire through the pillow, and thanks to my newly developed reflexes, managed to dive to the left just in time to avoid serious injury. As it was, I felt a sting in my left arm, the one that had been hurt the night before, and looked down to see it dripping blood.

“Oh, you
asshole
!”
I exploded. “What is wrong with you? You can’t just shoot people!”

Alecto flexed in my head.
You see? He has hurt us. He would kill us. He must die.

I wasn’t sure I was on board with the killing part of her plan, but not dying sounded pretty good. And we sure as hell didn’t have time to argue about it, not while the guy still had a gun pointed at me.

I dove for the purse I’d dropped when I’d gone sideways and had my pepper spray out and pointed in his direction before he could track my movement with the gun. I pressed the spray nozzle before it occurred to me that spraying the stuff in a small, closed motel room would probably affect me as well as my target, but I caught myself in time to make sure the blast only lasted half a second. I narrowed my eyes, making them as small as I could, then dropped the can and took a few steps back to put as much distance between myself and the noxious spray as possible.

Though the peppery taste of the air was far from comfortable, the oily orange liquid landed squarely on my prey and didn’t contaminate the room unbearably. Still, I grabbed a T-shirt the guy had thrown over the back of a chair and raised it to cover my mouth and nose. When I took a tentative breath in, I almost dropped the shirt to take my chances with the pepper spray. The thing reeked of sweat, cigarette smoke, and cheap body spray. I forced myself to keep the cloth in place, but resolved to hold my breath for as long as was humanly possible before allowing myself to breathe through it again.

Unfortunately for my assailant, he had no similar protection. He’d sunk to his knees and was pawing around on the floor for the gun he’d dropped when I sprayed him, coughing and choking while tears ran through the bright orange mess covering his face. He didn’t look like much of a threat, but I knew I couldn’t let him get his hands on the gun again. I walked over to where he wheezed and scrabbled on the floor and spied the gun where it had fallen, half-hidden under the bed. I reached out with my foot and toed it toward me, then picked it up and pointed it at the guy.

“Don’t move,” I warned as I dripped blood all over the place. “I’ve got a gun pointed at you and I
will
shoot you if I have to.”

Alecto chuckled in my head.
Perhaps you will listen to me next time
, she suggested
.

Glad you think it’s so funny,
I thought at her.
How funny will it be when the cops find my blood all over the place?
That shut her up for a second. I hadn’t figured out yet how I’d ended up with my own live-in Fury, but I doubted she’d had to worry about CSI in the good old days of ancient Greece.

Maybe to pacify me, she offered up a helpful hint about my new anatomical features.
You need not hold that rag to your face. This toxin you have released will not hurt us.

Cautiously, I lowered the T-shirt and unclenched my eyes, waiting to see what would happen. A thin coating of something slid down from under my eyelids. My tear ducts were protected from the pepper spray lingering in the air, though the world was tinted with a milky, white filter, as though I wore colored contacts. There was no stinging, burning or watering, as I had expected. I tied the foul-smelling T-shirt around my arm to soak up the blood flowing from it, and hoped my healing abilities would fight off any germs the guy might have left behind.