Queen Of Blood Part 14

But he was still alive.

Still breathing.

A blood-red snot bubble welled from the end of a crushed nostril and popped. Dream stared at the man's ruined face and felt the same numb disconnect she always experienced in the immediate aftermath of her violent outbursts. The pillow cus.h.i.+oning the man's head was flecked with blood. More dark red droplets dotted the backs of his flabby arms. His hands had gone limp, the metal handcuff bracelets having slid down to a spot directly behind the crown of his skull. Looking at him triggered the same muted repulsion she sometimes felt when watching an especially gruesome horror flick. Then the numbness was gone, completely, and she owned this again, this twisted reality that was sicker by far than any cheap bit of celluloid exploitation.

Now you finish it, she thought. This guy's an a.s.shole, but he's a human being. End his suffering.

The strip of duct tape had loosened during the beating. She pressed it down and pinched the man's nostrils shut again. It didn't take long. He regained consciousness for a brief moment. His hands jerked once against the bra.s.s headboard slats. Then he went still. His eyes glazed over and he was gone.

Dream's shoulders slumped and her chin dipped toward her chest. And here was the next necessary stage she'd come to expect. This abrupt agony of remorse. The tears came, hot and plentiful, spilling in rivulets down her cheeks to moisten the collar of her T-s.h.i.+rt. No one said anything. They were used to this by now. Her friends. She'd started out hating them all. Not anymore. She belonged with them. They understood her. Accepted her. She'd told Ellen she thought of them as family. And it was true enough. Sort of an all-girl version of the Manson family, yes, but family nonetheless.

She sighed and the tears abruptly stopped. The remorse was gone. And now the dead man beneath her was just a slab of meat. A thing to be dealt with, no more significant than a bag of garbage.

She swiped moisture from her nose. "Let's get this bag of s.h.i.+t out of here."

Alicia leaned across the bed and unlocked the cuffs. She removed them from the dead man's limp wrists and tossed them onto the table. Dream climbed off the bed, slid her arms beneath the big body, and lifted him as easily as she'd lift a small child. There was a distant ache in her knuckles as she turned and carried him toward the bathroom. The slight pain was nothing. A normal person's knuckles would be broken and useless.

Ellen raced ahead of her and threw the bathroom door open. Dream turned sideways and moved through the opening. Ellen followed her in and opened the shower's sliding gla.s.s door. Dream dumped the body inside. It landed awkwardly on the gleaming white tile, one leg tucked beneath a fat b.u.t.tock, the other splayed across the edge of the tub. The strip of duct tape had come off again and his plump lower lip looked like a rancid sausage. Dream closed the gla.s.s door and turned away from the ugliness.

Ellen continued to stare at the dead man. "Look at him. Pathetic. He deserved that."

Dream shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not. I don't really give a s.h.i.+t."

Ellen followed her back out to the main room, skipping across the beige carpet like a child on a playground. Dream shot her a look of mild rebuke, but the girl didn't notice. She was bouncing off the walls. That d.a.m.n cocaine. And now Marcy was chopping fresh lines on the back of the Gideon Bible. The sisters took turns kneeling over the table, inhaling white lines through a clipped fast-food straw. Ellen did the last line and tossed her head back, loosing a manic shriek of exultation.

Dream frowned. "Too loud."

"You need to loosen up, Dream." Marcy shook the last bit of white powder from the Baggie and went to work with the razor blade again. "Little Miss Gloomy all the time." She grinned. "Haven't you had enough of feeling on the verge of doom every waking moment? I know I have."

"Yeah!" Ellen leaped into the air and clapped her hands. Then she dashed over to the nightstand next to the bed and started fiddling with the little alarm clock radio. "Let's have a f.u.c.king party!"

The radio's tinny speaker emitted a long buzz of static as the red dial indicator moved all the way to the left before at last hitting a surprisingly strong signal that turned out to be a college radio station. A student DJ spoke in a monotone before introducing a Violent Femmes song. Ellen shrieked again as the first herky-jerky notes of "Blister In The Sun" rattled the little speaker. Then she leapt up on the bed and began a manic dance that made her look like a person having an extraordinarily violent seizure. Marcy hopped up on the bed and mimic ked her sister's spastic moves. The mattress springs squeaked in loud protest and the headboard slammed against the wall over and over.

Dream shook her head. "You guys weren't even born when that song came out."

The sisters didn't hear her. They sang along loudly, the combined volume of their voices overwhelming the meager capability of the radio-clock speaker. Dream experienced a reflexive bit of annoyance, but it felt halfhearted. The beginnings of a smile tugged at the edges of her mouth. How strange. Circ.u.mstances dictated the exercising of caution at every turn. Otherwise they could wind up cornered by half the cops in Ohio, the last moments of their wild spree playing out on television screens across the country, providing vicarious entertainment for millions of disapproving good citizens in safe suburban homes.

But as Dream watched the sisters some of their enthusiasm began to infect her. "Blister In The Sun" ended and a more modern tune she didn't recognize began. The girls evidently recognized it, as they let out identical shrieks and continued to torture the mattress springs.

She moved to the table and sat down. She pulled the Bible close and stared at the little mound of powder.

Alicia chuckled. "Go ahead. Have a toot."

Dream picked up the clipped straw. "I've never done this before."

Alicia braced her elbows on the edge of the table and leaned toward her. "Dream, you just killed a man. That's five motherf.u.c.kers you've knocked off since we hit the road. Every John Law in the whole G.o.dd.a.m.ned country is looking for your a.s.s. Most people would be s.h.i.+tting themselves just about now, maybe be ready to swallow a bullet rather than face the music. But not you. Uh-uh." She made a clucking sound and shook her head, grinning broadly. "Because you've got these super freaky powers. On some level you feel invincible. Am I right?"

A corner of Dream's mouth turned up. "Could be."

"d.a.m.n straight." Alicia slapped the table and laughed. "Ain't n.o.body takin' you down and you know it. You're the baddest b.i.t.c.h ever lived, bar none. And you're telling me you're afraid of a little powder." She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms beneath her ample b.r.e.a.s.t.s, shaking her head. "Well, s.h.i.+t."

Dream sighed. "Okay. Stop giving me static."

She picked up the razor blade--another thing pilfered from the dead man's belongings--and sc.r.a.ped the powder into a thin white line. Then she wedged the straw into her right nostril, pressed the other nostril shut with a finger, and bent toward the cocaine. She inhaled hard. The stuff hit her nasal pa.s.sage and she almost sneezed. She didn't care for the physical sensation at all. But she inhaled again and finished off the line.

She dropped the straw and rubbed at her nose. "G.o.dd.a.m.n."

Alicia cackled. "Kinda grabs you by the short and curlies, don't it?"

Ellen shrieked and pointed at Dream. "OhmiG.o.d! OhmiG.o.d!" She grabbed a still-bouncing Marcy by the shoulder and made her look at Dream. "Dream's gone crazy! She's got white-line fever!"

The girl flopped onto her back, making the bed springs squeal again. Then she rolled onto her side and pressed her face into the pillow, kicking her feet and convulsing with hysterical laughter. Marcy hopped off the bed and made a beeline for Dream. There was a wild gleam in her eyes, a hint of something wicked. She slid onto Dream's lap and pushed her tongue between her lips. Dream's initial reaction was shock bordering on revulsion. This wasn't her thing at all. But the cocaine was working on her now. She felt wild and up for anything. So she let Marcy kiss her, even started kissing her back.

Then she heard something.

A click.

She broke the liplock with Marcy and turned her gaze to the hotel room's front door. The bra.s.s doork.n.o.b moved. The motion was slight, careful. She heard another click and knew someone was breaking in. She pushed Marcy off her lap and got to her feet as the door swung open and two men rushed into the room. One was a middle-aged man in a cheap suit. The other was a wiry, black-clad kid with scraggly hair that hung in his face. The older man had a .38 clutched in a beefy fist. The kid brandished a large and quite lethal-looking knife.

The older one kicked the door shut with the heel of his shoe and leered at them. He dropped a lockpicking tool into a suit poc ket. "Party's over, b.i.t.c.hes."

Dream opened her mouth to tell the intruders they were messing with the wrong people. But the words never made it past the tip of her tongue. Things started happening. She saw it develop like a slow-motion scene from a cheesy '70s cop movie. But the impression was a false one. It was happening fast. Too fast. She felt a hot surge of panic as Ellen rolled off the bed and made a grab for Marcy's Glock, which was on the nightstand now. The wiry kid flipped the blade in his hand and snapped his arm back. His arm came forward as Ellen brought the gun around. A scream filled the room. Marcy. The knife was a blur as it spun through the air. The blade buried itself in Ellen's side. Her finger jerked on the Glock's trigger, squeezing off a reflexive shot that sent a bullet whizzing by Dream's head. The bullet punched a hole through the television and Ellen dropped to the floor.

Marcy screamed again and rushed to her sister's side. The man in the suit aimed his gun at her back. He was going to kill her. Dream understood this in a flash. Anyone close to the Glock was a threat. She saw his finger begin to exert pressure on the trigger. A thought formed in her head. Heat. The gun glowed red. The man's flesh started to sizzle. He yelped and dropped the gun. It hit the floor and the carpet ignited. Dream looked at it and another thought filled her mind. Ice. The temperature in the room plummeted and the incipient fire fizzled. Dream felt a mixture of astonishment and exhilaration. She'd never so precisely controlled and directed the power inside her. She felt capable of anything. The feeling was at least partially attributable to the cocaine rush, but a larger factor was this sudden epiphany--the impression that she had at last become the thing she was meant to be from the beginning. Not a human being, but a thing. A supernatural monster of some sort, just as the Master had been. And Alicia's words rang truer now--she did feel invincible.

The man in the suit edged close to the door and reached for the doork.n.o.b. Dream focused her will again and the doork.n.o.b turned hot in the man's hand. He shrieked and let go. The scraggly-haired boy's fingers were moving toward another concealed weapon, something tucked in the waistband of his pants. The grasping hand was missing two fingers. It was the same hand that had sent the knife on its lethal trajectory toward Ellen. A grin that hinted at madness spread across the boy's face as his fingers slipped beneath the dangling tail of his s.h.i.+rt and emerged with another knife.

The switchblade snapped open.

Dream looked into his eyes and felt his pain. He'd suffered immensely in the past. But any good he might once have harbored had been eradicated through torture and brutalization. This impression formed in less than the s.p.a.ce of a second. She knew, then, that the interlopers were no ordinary predators.

Another wail of anguish spiraled out of Marcy's tortured lungs.

Dream rushed the boy and seized him by the wrist. She pried the knife from his fingers with ease. And she thought of Ellen as she slammed the blade into his abdomen. Poor Ellen. The girl she'd once victimized and whom she'd come to regard as a friend. She'd blossomed in the two months they'd spent on the road, becoming stronger and more confident. And now she was crumpled on the floor. Maybe already dead.

The boy's only reaction to the pain was a wince. His grin remained in place as the fingers of his other hand came around to claw at her face, grasping for the soft tissue of her eyes. Dream swatted the hand away and slammed him against the dresser, rattling the mirror mounted on the wall behind it. She yanked the knife out of his stomach and punched it in again. And again. The mirror's reflection showed her a black-haired, wild eyed woman in the grip of a murderous frenzy. A woman who had embraced madness and had no desire to turn back. Not anymore.

She threw the boy to the ground and straddled him. His eyes turned gla.s.sy. But still there was no fear reflected there. He grinned. A soft burble of laughter emerged between pale pink lips.

The man in the suit made another move toward the door, but Alicia intercepted him. The gun he'd discarded was in her hand now. She whipped it across the man's face and blood leaped from his smashed nose. She dragged him further into the room and threw him down at the foot of the bed.

Dream s.h.i.+fted her attention back to the boy. His grin broadened and he even stuck his tongue out at her. Dream forced his mouth open and plunged the knife inside. The pain at last took its toll on the boy. He tried to jerk his head out of her grip, but he failed to budge her at all. Blood bubbled from his mouth, along with a mewling, inarticulate plea. Dream turned his head carefully to one side, allowing the blood to flow out rather than letting him choke on it. Then she pushed the blade into each of his eyes, penetrating just enough to blind him. More mewling. More inarticulate pleas. She worked on him with the knife for a long time, molten rage driving her to mutilate the body of her friend's murderer in the most obscene ways possible.

And finally he was dead.

Dream stood up and looked at her reflection again. Her thrift-store clothes were covered with blood. Blood was everywhere. She turned away from her reflection and saw Marcy sitting on the floor against the side of the bed, her sister's motionless body cradled in her arms. She looked up at Dream, her face s.h.i.+ny with tears.

Marcy's anguish melted some of the hardness that had seized her soul.

"Is she--"

Marcy nodded and sniffed. "Yes."

Dream felt her own anguish rising up, but she clamped it down. A member of her adopted family was dead and there would be real grief to deal with, but for the moment there were more pressing matters at hand. She yanked the man in the suit to his feet and leaned in close, their faces separated by no more than an inch.

"Who sent you?" Her voice was low, her tone even, but the ruthlessness beneath came through clear as a bell. "Was it Ms. Wickman? It was, wasn't it? I saw it in that boy's eyes before I blinded him."

The man swallowed with difficulty. His bloodshot eyes danced in their sockets. His breath reeked of cheap beer and cheaper cigarettes. He licked blood from lis lower lip and swallowed again. He sensed her implacable determination and understood there was no room for anything but the truth.

"Not Ms. Wickman. She's gone. Dead." He licked his lips again and s.h.i.+vered. He was afraid of Dream, yes, but he also clearly feared whoever had sent him. "Another has taken her place. Mistress Giselle."

Alicia was on her feet again. "The b.i.t.c.h is dead? For real?"

The man nodded. "Yes. And she's worse than Ms. Wickman. The old broad sent her people after House of Blood survivors. I figured that'd be off with her dead, but no, the new Mistress wants you, too. I don't know why and that's the whole f.u.c.king truth."

Dream smiled. "I believe you. What's your name?"

The man coughed. "Harlan Dempsey. People call me Dempsey."

Dream heard sirens rising in the night. A lot of them. Drawing closer by the moment. Then a sound of tires squealing in the parking lot. She let go of the man's s.h.i.+rt and pushed him away. He stumbled over the edge of the bed and flopped down on the mattress. She heard voices in the parking lot. Shouts and commands. Flas.h.i.+ng red and blue strobe lights were visible at the edges of the window blinds.

Alicia shot her a worried look. "Dream?"

"It's okay, Alicia. I'll deal with it. And after I've taken care of things, Harlan here will take us to whatever pit of h.e.l.l this Giselle c.u.n.t is holed up in. Isn't that right, Harlan?"

Harlan's gaze flicked from the windows to Dream and back again. He swallowed hard and nodded. "Sure. Yeah. Whatever."

Dream looked at Alicia. "The quest isn't over. Ms. Wickman's dead, but we still have a destiny to meet, okay?"

Alicia nodded slowly. "Yeah. I hear you, Dream. And I'm with you all the way." She glanced at the front door. The level of frantic activity outside was increasing by the moment. "But are you sure you can get us out of this?"

Dream's eyes glittered. "Yes."

Marcy was on her feet now, the Glock in her hand again. "I'll help you."

Dream smiled at her. "Thank you. But that won't be necessary. Just stand back and watch the show."

She went to the front door and grasped the k.n.o.b, which had cooled again. Then she steeled herself with a deep breath and opened the door.

More shouts.

A voice squawked through a megaphone, issuing commands she ignored. Dream stepped outside and moved fearlessly toward the array of raised handguns and rifles. She smiled and spread her hands wide. Someone yelled at her to get down on the ground. Then there was a pop from behind her. Marcy at the door, firing the Glock and ignoring her instructions to hang back. Driven by rage over her sister's death to lash out at any enemy. Fire erupted from the barrels of the guns pointed at the motel room. Dream flexed her will and the bullets went astray.

Then the real fireworks began.

When it was over, the cops were all dead, their cars smoking ruins.

And Dream and her companions vanished into the night before reinforcements could arrive.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

The cabin in which Camp Whiskey's leaders conducted business was twice the size of the next largest cabin. Chad had jokingly referred to the large main room as an echo chamber. But now it felt too small, the air stale and the walls too close. The problem was all the extra people in the room--three Order of the Dragon representatives and several rifle-toting Camp Whiskey guards. The Order people sat at one end of the long wooden table that occupied the room's center. Jim sat alone at the opposite end of the table, his arms crossed over the front of a thick wool sweater. He and the old man who was the obvious leader of the Order delegation glared at each other across the length of the table. The tension between them made Chad jittery.

So he abandoned his front-row seat at the staredown of the ages, rising from the table to wander over to the fireplace at the rear of the cabin. A fire crackled in the stone recess, a small pile of logs s.h.i.+fting as the flickering orange flames consumed them. Logs Chad might well have cut himself. He examined his palms as he held his hands out to receive the fire's warmth. Calluses formed over the course of two and a half months of hard physical labor made them look like a stranger's hands. How strange now to look at these work-roughened hands and feel so good about the deceptively simple things he'd accomplished in his time at Camp Whiskey. He'd built new cabins with the other men, becoming skilled in the basics of construction and rudimentary plumbing. At some point he'd begun to genuinely enjoy the hard physical work, taking more pride in the things he'd built with his hands than he ever had in his ability to skillfully push around numbers in a cushy white-collar environment.

Which partly explained why he felt an instinctive hatred and distrust of the Order people. What they were proposing would mean an end to the new lifestyle he'd come to love. It also reeked of a suicide mission, with the people of Camp Whiskey serving as a kind of cannon fodder. Chad wasn't a coward. He had proven that during the House of Blood revolt. But the circ.u.mstances here were different. The people at Camp Whiskey didn't live each day at the mercy of brutal overlords. No one's life was being sacrificed in the name of obscure ancient deities. But now these mysterious emissaries from some arcane organization were working to convince them to give up the safety and comfort of the camp in favor of a headlong march into a lion's den. Essentially asking them to give up their lives to help avenge the death of a woman they had all despised.

The fire crackled and the silence lengthened. Chad picked up the fire poker and prodded the dwindling logs. The flames grew higher as he imagined sinking the hooked end of the poker through one of the Order leader's eyes.

The back of his neck tingled in a weird way and he turned away from the fire. The female Order representative was eyeing him closely. She was seated to the old man's left. Her eyes narrowed, projecting an intensity that made Chad gulp. She had very fine Asian features, with high cheekbones and a small, sensual mouth. Her hair was thick and dark, glossy like that of a model in a perfume ad. Unable to bear the withering stare a moment longer, Chad forced his eyes in another direction. He had the disturbing sense that she could see his thoughts and it made him want to bolt from the cabin.

Jack Paradise stalked the room like a caged beast. The big ex-marine's jaw was a tight line of tension. He circled the table with his hands clasped behind his back, as if he didn't trust what he might do with them if he didn't keep them there. Halfway through yet another circuit around the table, he came to an abrupt stop and his hands came away from the small of his back. He leveled an index finger at the old man.

"f.u.c.k this and f.u.c.k the lot of you. Your bulls.h.i.+t plan is a nonstarter on every level." He pounded a fist into an open palm. The palm an obvious subst.i.tute for the old man's face. "Basically we're the Northern Alliance and you're the U.S. Army. But this ain't Afghanistan, mother-f.u.c.ker. It ain't our grudge and it's not gonna be our f.u.c.king war. No way I'm getting ninety-plus percent of my people killed so you f.u.c.kers can prance in afterwards and take this b.i.t.c.h out."

Jack's jawline quivered. The big man was fighting to maintain any semblance of control. Chad had never seen the man in the grip of such fury. Jack Paradise had always seemed the embodiment of a Marine Corps lifer--a resolute and extremely self-disciplined hard-case, a man who wouldn't rattle easily, if ever. But he was rattled now and it was clear the Order people appreciated the full range of possibilities this implied. The woman pushed her chair backward several inches and placed a small hand on the hilt of her sword. The young man seated across from her did the same. The swords were in black scabbards, but Chad had a feeling they could be drawn and put to lethal use in the blink of an eye. The Camp Whiskey guards s.h.i.+fted their feet and repositioned their weapons, pointing in the general direction of the Order representatives.

Chad's heart felt ready to leap into his throat. Blood was in the air. But his people were the ones with the guns. Firepower trumped old-fas.h.i.+oned steel. Or did it? The Order people were an unusual lot. An understatement. They seemed from another world altogether, some place wholly alien, and whatever purpose or cause they served was as inscrutable as the face of G.o.d. They were dangerous and not to be underestimated.

Chad took a deliberate step backward. He wanted to feel the fireplace poker's solid heft in his hands again. It would be no match against Order steel, but it was better than nothing. The woman looked at him again and did something that made his b.a.l.l.s shrivel. She smiled. Her eyes remained cold, but the smile seemed to promise she would be coming for him if the tension in the room did escalate to actual conflict.

Jim's audible sigh defused some of the tension. He leaned forward and propped his elbows on the edge of the table. "There's no need for this. Jack, have your men leave the room."

Jack wheeled on him. "What? Have you gone insane? We can't trust these people. No. My men are staying put."

Jim stared into the old Asian man's eyes for another moment. Then he smiled and rose from his seat. "Pardon me. I'll be just a moment." He moved away from the table and headed for the front door, throwing a glance in Jack's direction on the way. "A word, please. Outside."

Jack glared at Jim's retreating back a moment longer.

Then he sighed and spoke to a black man positioned next to the door. "Keep things under control, G.o.ddammit. Anything hinky happens...you know what to do."

The guard nodded. "Yes, sir."

Then Jack was gone. The door flapped shut and Chad was alone with the guards and the Order people. He felt abandoned. The strange people in black sat silent and unmoving. To Chad they looked like incredibly precise and lifelike sculptures of human beings. The unsettling impression lasted until the woman again sensed his scrutiny and turned her head to observe him.

And she smiled in that utterly humorless way again. "You must convince your superiors of the wisdom of our plan."

Chad blinked in surprise. It was the first time any of them had spoken to him. "Um...ok ay, one, they're not my superiors. Two, I'm not personally convinced of the wisdom of your plan. In fact, I think it's pretty half-a.s.sed and want nothing to do with it."

The woman shrugged. "Your comments are fueled by emotion and not informed by rational thought. Our proposal is your only true path to salvation. In the end, you will set emotion aside and do as we say."