regrettable.
She was just getting started on her.
It was funny. This thing she was doing to this girl, some anonymous runaway she didn’t even know, was exactly what she’d planned for Dream back when she’d first recorporealized. But things had changed somewhere along the way. Being with Dream made her stronger and made all sorts of interesting things possible. The time she’d spent on the road with Dream and those kids had even been kind of fun. So she’d stuck with them, resisting the sometimes powerful urge to kill them all, and things had worked out just fine. She was in a perfect situation now, in just the right place for indulging the dark compulsions that were always lurking in the back of her mind.
Strange.
She’d never had impulses like these in her first life. The original Alicia Jackson had been just as tough and no-nonsense, but she’d also been a highly moralistic person. That conscience had not made the journey back from the other side of death with her. It bothered her a little, that some piece of her essence was missing, but not enough to matter.
There were three black-clad Apprentices in the room with her. Two young men and a slender girl about the same age as the runaway tied to the bed. The men were lounging in chairs. They looked bored. This wasn’t anything they hadn’t seen a thousand times by now. The girl, though, was sitting in a chair close to the bed, an avid expression on her face, her eyes glittering with a dark, eager hunger.
Alicia smiled again. “Sophie? Could you do me a favor?”
Sophie looked at her. “Yes, Mistress?”
“There’s a bottle of perfume over there.” She nodded at the vanity sitting against the wall behind Sophie. “Fetch it for me, would you?”
Sophie grinned. “Of course.”
She hopped up and bounced over to the vanity, displaying an adolescent enthusiasm Alicia found charming. She found the bottle and brought it over to Alicia. “Here ya go.”
“Thanks, Sophie. Now sit down again and watch. This will be fun.”
Sophie did as ordered and Alicia looked into the bound girl’s eyes again as she removed the stopper from the bottle. She moved the bottle into position over the long incision. “This is another thing that was done to me years ago. Let me tell you something, girl. You may think you’re hurting now, but-”
The blast of bludgeoning heavy metal riffery startled Alicia and the bottle slipped from her fingers. The music was very loud. Very close. She thought about it a moment and realized she’d been hearing another, lower sound prior to the intrusion of the music, a sound she now recognized as the rumble of engines.
Alicia stood and moved toward the bedroom door. “Just what the fuck is going on out there?”
She opened the door and stepped out onto the second-floor landing. She peeked down the stairs and saw a number of Black Brigade soldiers heading into the foyer. Curiosity got the better of her and she started down the stairs. The gunfire was already starting by the time she was halfway down. Then the first AT7 shell slammed through the door, passed through the foyer, and detonated when it struck the wall arch outside the living room. The explosion ripped apart bodies and rocked Alicia off her feet, sent her tumbling down the stairs.
She was just getting to her feet when the next shell came streaking in. The next explosion knocked her off her feet again and for a moment all she felt was a stunned confusion. She heard loud voices and bullets buzzing by everywhere. Then she felt an immense pain and lifted her head to look at her stomach. A piece of shrapnel had ripped through her abdomen, eviscerating her.
Then the black boot of a fleeing Black Brigade soldier came down on her face as she died a second time. In the last moment before she expired, she experienced a surprising-and intense-feeling of relief.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The invading force stormed through the demolished entrance to the house and spread out through the ground floor. The sound of gunfire was ceaseless, the stuttering eruptions blending into a cacophonous din.
Chad and Allyson were among the last through the entrance. They came in charging, then fought not to stumble over the strewn body parts and debris. The large foyer had been transformed. It was now a hellish slaughterhouse. Blood and pieces of bodies everywhere. Chad had seen the aftermath of brutal, violent death before, but never in such abundance, not even during that seemingly endless firefight through the tunnel to the Master’s house years ago.
He saw the body of a brown-skinned woman lying still in the middle of all the carnage. He frowned and moved closer. “It can’t be.”
The dead woman looked just like Alicia Jackson, Dream’s long-dead best friend. And it wasn’t just a strong resemblance. That wouldn’t have troubled him. No, this woman was a precise replica of the woman Chad remembered. He knew Alicia had no siblings-identical twin or otherwise-so he was unable to make sense of what he was seeing on any level. He stared at Alicia’s slack features and forgot his surroundings. The moment nearly cost him his life.
He detected a blur of movement in his peripheral vision and looked to his right in time to see Allyson raise her weapon and send a burst of automatic fire at the second-floor landing. Red dots blossomed across the black shirts of two armed men. The men fell backward against more black-clad men behind them. Allyson hurried to the foot of the staircase and kept firing the whole time. More men in black fell dead before they could get a bead on Allyson with their own weapons, and in a moment the landing was clear, the surviving enemy combatants retreating to a safer position.
The sound of gunfire became more sporadic and eventually died down to the occasional pop. Allyson seized Chad’s arm and tried to tug him back toward the front entrance, leaning close to whisper into his ear.
Chad was numb. Part of it was the mystery of Alicia. The wall-to-wall gore was another part of it. But a bigger factor was this firsthand experience of Allyson’s total willingness to kill anyone in the way of what she wanted. She’d done it before, of course, starting with the men who’d broken into his house. Then again on the way up here, dispatching the men who’d been her traveling companions. But now he’d watched her mow down at least four more men, acting with deadly precision and concentration, not stopping until she was certain the threat was gone. In a flash, Chad realized no one had ever cared for him as intensely as Allyson did. No one had ever been so willing to step into harm’s way and sacrifice for him.
So he let himself be dragged toward the door. He would follow her anywhere now. They reached the door and would have stepped through it if not for the presence of the older Asian man and his younger male sidekick on the porch. The men regarded them with even, unreadable expressions. Each held an identical silver sword. Chad immediately understood that they had assumed this position to prevent the very thing he and Allyson were attempting.
“Fuck. We’re not going anywhere yet.”
Allyson started to raise her weapon. “Goddammit.”
Chad pushed the barrel down. “Don’t. You’d be dead before you could squeeze the trigger.”
Allyson made a sound of frustration and twisted away from him. “Fine. Fuck them. Let’s finish this thing.”
A number of the Camp Whiskey soldiers had filtered back into the foyer. Jim was among them. There was a bright splash of blood across the front of his shirt, but he did not appear to be wounded. Chad assumed he’d killed someone in close combat. Bai reappeared, too, her sword dripping blood. She pushed her way to the middle of the throng and rattled off a quick set of instructions. “The ground floor is clear. Now we advance. You. And you.” She pointed at two of the camo-attired men. “Up the stairs. Get close, but not close enough to draw fire. You know what to do.”
The two men nodded and wasted no time following her orders. They unclipped gas masks from their belts and slipped them on. Then they crept up the stairs one careful step at a time. They stopped at a point about halfway up and hunkered down. One man kept his weapon trained on the second-floor landing while another man unsnapped two stun grenades from his belt. He tossed one up to the landing. It landed with a loud thump on the hardwood floor and rolled down the hallway. The second one bounced off the wall beyond the landing and for one tense millisecond Chad was sure it would come tumbling back down the stairs. But the grenade caught a funny bounce as it hit the floor and went backward down the hallway. This all happened in the space of maybe five seconds. Terrified screams resounded in the second-floor hallway as several people saw the bouncing black objects and recognized them for what they were.
Then there came a loud, teeth-jarring BANG!
And another.
Then smoke was billowing from the hallway and a number of Camp Whiskey soldiers went racing up the staircase as Bai screamed at them:“UP! UP! UP! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!”
To Chad she seemed like a madwoman herding human cattle. Then she was at his back, the heel of her hand slamming between his shoulder blades, driving him forward. “GO! FIGHT!”
Chad’s feet found the staircase and he began to move up even as he heard gunfire erupt anew above him. He fumbled with his own gas mask and somehow managed to get it on. Then Allyson was racing up the staircase, hurrying past him to put herself between him and the bad guys yet again.
Chad ran after her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Marcy burst through the bedroom door into a hallway choked with black-clad Apprentices and a handful of Black Brigade soldiers who were attempting to herd the frightened sadists back into their rooms. She looked to her left and right and saw no immediate sign of Ellen. Shit. She went up on her toes and lifted her chin in an attempt to see above the heads of the babbling morons in her way. Sometimes it was a real pain in the ass being a short girl. Then she finally caught a glimpse of the bobbing head of a person weaving between the gathered Apprentices.
She was heading toward the staircase to the second floor. Toward the source of all that gunfire. Marcy shoved people aside with one hand and waved the Glock around with the other as she set off in desperate pursuit. She ignored the frequent shouts of protest and pushed her way forward with reckless abandon. One big male Apprentice glared at her and moved back into her path. He was opening his mouth to say something when she shot him between the eyes. She hopped over his falling
