Cheat the Grave

“It’s like trying to escape an octopus. Mind, it’s pure defense, but it allows me to touch others without them ever touching me.”

“Awesome gift.” Minus the foot fungus.

“He’s fast, though.” Then he muttered to himself. “Can’t crush this one…”

“It’s the blade.”

Caine nodded. “Let me lead him away from the door. Then you can run for it. Mind, I can hold him the night, but no longer. And he won’t fall for the same trick twice.”

So I waited, marking Caine’s progress by the scrabbling of nails over the rooftop and the occasional blade piercing the rotted wood. I wanted to run when Mackie hit the apex-I wanted to pump the entire round of glowing ammo into his stomach, but Caine asked me to hold my fire until I was outside, and it was the least I could do. This was his home, and despite the sparse interior, I got the feeling he’d been here awhile.

Finally, Mackie was entrapped in the web of nails on the house’s side, Caine pulling him near, ostensibly so the new growth could reach Mackie quickly every time a nail was cut. The nearness to those long, strong fingertips also increased the likelihood of crushing the raging man. I began relaxing, readied by the doorway, when something unexpected happened.

“Ouch.”

For a moment I thought I’d misheard. But Caine’s face was black with wild and soundless shock, and I squinted at him warily. “Ouch?”

“He touched me.”

That was a severe understatement. Caine pulled his right hand-the higher one-back inside to reveal bloodied fingers…cleaved at the first knuckle. Blood poured down every digit, causing a macabre bracelet to appear on his wrist, but the nails continued to grow from their centers, black coils unfurling like licorice. Mackie, now close to his captor, had launched another, apparently new and untried assault.

“Never felt that before,” Caine said with a disturbing lack of concern. Then, inexplicably, he stuck his hand out the window again. Though anticipating the next blow, he jolted when Mackie struck, and I jumped with him.

“I-I could just run, you know.”

“Not yet.” He licked his lips, the slow swirl of his tongue at odds with the grunts coming from his throat. Mackie was relentless. “He’ll catch you.”

But these were like Tripp’s wounds. Something in that blade infected the agents Mackie struck, so while mortals died, agents were left wishing they had. “You have to cauterize it,” I said, remembering Tripp’s work at the jewelry shop.

Caine sniffed, nostrils going so wide it seemed he could take in every mote in the air. His nose was angled toward his outstretched arm, though, and after another moment-and three more strikes-he shook his head. “It won’t help.”

And yet he held his hands out there still. He even leaned closer, turning from me to press the front of his body against the wall. “I’ve never been touched in this way before.”

And suddenly I got it. He wasn’t offering protection from Mackie from purely altruistic purposes. No. He wanted to see what Mackie’s blade felt like. It had nothing to do with my fate, or our commonalities-few that they were. He didn’t feel a kinship with me beyond the here and now.

The bones atop his body seemed to sharpen with my realization, the full body bleed of tattoo work now making sense. So did the piercings along his ears and brows and spine. And the eyes. Oh my God. The eyes. This man had a love affair with pain.

“But what if I need you again?” I meant only to think it, but somehow whispered it aloud.

Caine’s head alone swiveled, ecstasy etched on his pained, pierced brow. “All you needed from me was imparted once you walked in the door. Walk out with it, and in a way, I will too.”

He knew he’d die here, hugging the wall in this crumbling shack, another victim of Mackie’s poisonous blade.

“I’m sorry.”

“Ah but it’s such a novelty to finally be touched.” And Mackie reached the digits on his other hand. Caine gasped, sewn eyes bulging, but when he’d finally regained breath, he rubbed his cheek against the splintered wall. “Do you understand? Being untouched is the price anyone in possession of strong defenses must pay.”

I raised a brow. He was imparting a life lesson? Now?

“One should feel the pain as it comes. Losses aren’t bad things in themselves. Not as long as you remain open to new sensation. Be careful,” he said, nodding at the forgotten treasure chest, “Or your defenses might wind up being your prisons.”

I wanted to say that only someone who’d never been touched could give such advice, but his sudden cry didn’t back me up. “Thanks for the weapons anyway.”

“Oh, those aren’t from me.”

“Then who-”

But before I could wonder about Arun, or voice my new suspicions about Tekla, he gasped. Mackie’s face appeared, sliced on the diagonal between the mismatched slats, and when his gaze landed on me, he opened his jaw wide and hissed. Caine turned his head to me, face etched in an orgasm of ecstasy and pain. “Go…” he moaned.

I lunged for the door. I avoided as many of the hacked nails as I could, stepping on and snapping the ones I couldn’t, then practically threw myself down the stairwell. Mackie screamed, and his guttural war engine cries chased me into the creosote-laden, moon-hung night.

10

I left the destroyed Bentley in Caine’s front lot. Let the scavengers drawn by Mackie’s cries take whatever remained. It was amazing how little value there was in something worth so much money. Because sometimes, I thought with a shudder, a person would simply rather be touched.

Mackie continued to wail behind me, his rage sailing like a disease through the night. When a second, agonized voice joined his, it set off a nearby car alarm, and had a woman in the apartments I was cutting through muttering, “What the fuck?” as she peered through her steel screen door. Hastening my steps, I hoped Caine’s restraints held.

I remained in the downtown area, mostly because I had no other safe place to go. That was okay, not all of it was bad. A revitalization project had been going on for years, more successful in some areas than others, depending on whether the locals got on board. I spotted an alcove next to a loading dock amidst a crosshatching of narrow streets, where young entrepreneurs competed for the title of hip-pest local bar. I’d appreciated the friendly rivalry in the past; it was always a novel thing to enter a place absent of the Vegas shuffle, but even those were too desensitizing and busy for my needs tonight. I wouldn’t be able to avoid propositions in there, never mind attacks.

So instead of burying myself in the rich scent of smoke and warring perfume, I camped out against a cold metal door, where spent fuel, dust, and the cracked blacktop ruled the night. Were it summer, the scents would be stronger and the ground would burn my ass and palms despite the deep night. The entire city soaked up the sun’s heat like it was hoarding it, but like any good desert rat, I preferred that to the cold. The only way I could get less comfortable on this winter night, I thought bleakly as a gust of wind whipped up the street, was to slip beneath the actual loading dock next to me.

Though it might not be such a bad place to hide if Mackie got away before the sun’s rise. I bent and peered underneath. There was a frantic scuffle at my approach, but the movement was too small to be a person. A cat, I realized, as it mustered courage to bolt. Watching it streak away-thinking of Luna-I tried not to take it personally. Though it was difficult not to imagine the hard flash I’d spotted in the feline eyes as somehow knowing. Like it sensed what happened to living beings when they got too close to me.

Yet somehow the damage done to Caine had calmed me. Nobody and nothing-not even an old, powerful Seer- could stand up to that blade. So while the reminder of Luna saddened me, I was no longer consumed with fear. In fact, I was getting pretty pissed off. I’d been driven from my home, was a fugitive in my own city, and anyone who