Death's Rival

through, the man collapsed on the floor, pulling his hands up to shoulder height. They looked awful, but I thought they would be okay. Tying up someone’s hands that tight can result in permanent damage from something called compartment syndrome. I’d seen it before and it wasn’t pretty. “See a doctor,” I said shortly, not letting my relief sound in my voice.

I cleaned his blood from the blade by wiping it on his pants and put it away in a sheath not easy to hand. I didn’t want to draw it again until it had some attention. I should question him again. Hard and thoroughly. Just because he had been trussed up at a crime scene like a young calf didn’t mean he hadn’t been culpable on some level. Maybe he let the bad guys in. Maybe he did something else. But I wouldn’t interrogate him. I would take the coward’s way out and vanish. I stood and said, “Is there video surveillance of the attackers?”

Using one purpled palm, he pushed up and rolled over, looking at the destroyed computer and electronic equipment. He laughed, a pained chuffing sound. “I doubt it. Looks like they shot up the whole works.”

“I need transportation.”

“I have a Yamaha Super Ténéré bike beside the building out front. Can you ride?”

“I’m a Harley girl. Yeah.”

“Keys in my pocket.” He tried to move his fingers and hissed through his teeth at the pain.

“Give me ten minutes before you call the cops,” I said. “Mr. Pellissier will make it worth your time.” I fished for the keys and left through the front door. The bike was in the shadows at the side of the building, hidden from the parking lot, helmet on the back. It was a sleek, sporty street bike, all black, built for speed and comfort. I stored my weapons and clothes in the aluminum side cases and strapped the Benelli to the bike along my knee. The weight and balance were different from Bitsa, and it used a key start, which I had always thought was a wussy way to start a bike, but I wasn’t complaining. I keyed it on and it had the nice steady purr of a well-kept engine. The last thing I did before leaving the airport was to throw the new cell phone as far as I could and let my braids down from the crown to put on the helmet. It smelled of the air traffic controller but wasn’t too horrible. I’d been around worse smells today. I tucked the braids into my collar and was on the road in seconds, heading toward the city lights.

Popular wisdom says it’s supposed to rain all the time in Seattle, but it was dry and balmy for November, in the high seventies, even this late. Scudding clouds were advancing across the sky, and the night was black with buffeting winds and unfamiliar scents, mostly fecund earth and dense greenery, exposed rock, still warm from the sun. I shifted gears and climbed a hill, gaining speed. Putting the past behind me. Right now no one knew where I was. No one could contact me. If I wanted, I could take off and just disappear. Start over.

Beast does not run away, she growled softly.

But I could. If I wanted. A large part of me did want to head for the hills. Every time I blinked I saw the man I had left in the Learjet. Black road. Blink. Bloody body hanging on the jet’s bulkhead wall. Open eyes. The man I had left alone, unprotected, to be tortured by vamps. Black road. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes. Black road. The hanging, bloody man had been familiar, part of an old memory, a memory from my Cherokee past. Familiar, but fading. Already the vision of the man in the past had merged with the dead man of tonight. The familiar, hanging pose. The distant memory tumbling into the present, yet not quite sliding into place. I had seen such a thing when I was a young child. I was nearly certain. Nearly.

For months, little bits and pieces of my current life had fallen away or were ripped from me, much like the man’s flesh had been flayed off. But my grief had all been internal—not overt—and therefore easily pushed away, shunted aside in favor of more immediately important matters. Ignored. But at the sight of the tortured flyboy, and the half-recalled memory, the enormity of my life changes had socked me in the face like some dark demon risen from hell.

Black road. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes. Black road. Grip bike. Apply more speed. Bend into the turn. Wind beating at me. My breath was hot under the faceplate, almost panting. Almost a sob.

I’d lost my best friend, Molly, when I killed her sister. I could still feel the eighteen inches of vamp-killer-blade sliding into Evangelina. Her demon-heated blood, pumping across my hand.

I’d lost my boyfriend Rick LaFleur when he was attacked by werewolves and were-cats, and I had been unsuccessful in helping him with his shift-to-furry problem. I had been forced to say good-bye to him while he went to a special training camp outside Quantico for agents of Big Brother—PsyLED—the Psychometry Law Enforcement Division of Homeland Security.

I was, for the first time in my adult life, essentially homeless, friendless, empty, and alone. Just as I had been at age twelve when I wandered out of the forest after being stuck in Beast form for decades. But this time, I remembered some of my past, and the memories left me flayed just as the pilot had been. Just as the man had been in the old memory. Had he? I remembered blood. I think. But the distant past was shifting and changing and drifting away. Black road. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes. Black road. My own bleeding was all internal.

I was stupid and pathetic and spineless. Everything I’d done, every decision I’d made, had taken me to a place I had never intended to go—working long-term for the vamps instead of just beheading the crazy ones. Learning that some of them were thinking, feeling creatures. Not human—but not worthy of death just because of their vamp-nature. Black road. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes. Black road.

Tears started to fall behind the face-shield, caught by the air currents sweeping up underneath like mini tornadoes, cool and damp across my face and into my hair. I deserved losing my best friend because I’d killed her sister. I had blood on my hands and on my soul and I’d added to the toll tonight—it was my fault that the men in the jet were dead, because I hadn’t considered that someone would come after me, because I hadn’t taken precautions. I didn’t recognize myself anymore in the killing machine I was becoming.

Jane is killer. Only killer, Beast murmured.

“Go away,” I shouted into the teeth of the wind. She growled and went silent. I gave the engine gas, speeding into the dark, passing headlights that left smears on my retinas. Bent low over the bike, leaning into the turns, taking chances that would have been deadly to anyone with human reflexes. Black road. Blink. Bloody pilot. Bloody bearded man. Nails. Antlers. Open eyes. Black road. The bloody body was a nightmare memory brought forward in time. Was the man from my past someone I had cared for? A white man? How would that be possible? And I’d never know, not for sure.

Lost. They were all lost. Everyone I knew from my first life. Etsi, my mother, Edoda, my father, Elisi, my grandmother. All gone. All dead. Decades and decades ago. And now everyone I truly loved and truly trusted from my current life, Molly and Rick, were gone. I screamed out my grief, in long, hoarse sobs as the miles and black pavement raced beneath me, and wind buffeted the misery that dogged me. I screamed until there was only the wind against my clothes and the road beneath my tires. Black road. Blink. Bloody pilot. Open eyes. Black road.

When the tears finally stopped, my voice was hoarse and my throat was raw. I was empty and purposeless and useless. Jane is killer only, Beast thought at me.

“Shut up,” I whispered. “I didn’t kill the man with the antlers through his body.”

Jane is killer only.

In a small town outside Seattle, I passed a bank with a well-lit ATM and pulled over. If I had to go to ground, I needed money. I inserted my card and punched in the special PIN that allowed me a onetime withdrawal of an unlimited amount of cash. I removed five thousand dollars and added it to the wad of money Bruiser had given me for this gig. I wasn’t sure why I might need to go into hiding, but the imperative was there. Take money. Stock up. Be prepared. Now I had to get back to New Orleans, which meant flying commercial, so I had to get rid of my weapons.

Two blocks over, in a brand-new strip mall, I found a one-stop shopping spot, most stores still open. In a high-end luggage store I paid cash for two hard-bodied cases used for shipping electronic musical equipment. Outside, I took my weapons apart so they couldn’t fire, packaging the pieces in separate shipping containers, so that if someone stole one case, there weren’t enough parts to make a whole weapon. It isn’t easy to ship firearms and I didn’t want any problems. In a UPS franchise store that was trying to close, I purchased a third container and shipping materials for the bladed weapons. The fifty I tipped the manager ensured that he stopped making noises about needing to close the store and got helpful, handing me padding and foam and layers of cardboard to keep the knives from shifting in transit. I kept only two weapons—two wooden stakes that I could use as hair sticks. If I got stopped by airport security, I wouldn’t mind tossing them, and I’d feel safer if I had something on hand to defend myself.