Second Skin Page 9

  Whatever was behind me made barely more than a whisper of air and fog against my back, but I could feel it, hear it panting as I ran flat-out.

  Hours passed, or seemed to, and my side began to cramp as my breaths got shorter and shorter. Even with my extra lung capacity and my dense muscles I was fading fast, and the thing behind me didn’t seem to be tiring at all.

  I chanced a look over my shoulder and saw nothing but shadow play on light. The branches of the fir trees began to ripple as something passed between them, faster than the eye could see. I saw eyes, silver and pupil-less, and a maw open wide with teeth that gleamed like they were made of mercury. The body was nothing but smoke.

  Pain streaked across my cheek and my left arm followed by blood and I fell through a tangle of blackberry brambles and rolled to a stop in a clearing full of some kind of tiny, fragrant white flowers.

  From behind me, the thing let out a howl. It wasn’t a wolf’s howl, or a sound of pain. It sounded like a human scream wrapped up in something ancient, the kind of sound you’d hear in nightmares that you mercifully didn’t remember upon waking.

  I wiped the blood off my face and out of my eyes from the dozens of tiny scrapes. They would heal, but I had put my blood into the wind and by the crashing of undergrowth the thing had abandoned stealth. It knew it had me.

  “Shit,” I muttered. “Shit, shit, shit.” What erudite last words I was turning out to have.

  The mist swirled and parted and a dark shape, at least as high as a horse, began to fade in. All my attempts to breathe and stay calm evaporated. It wasn’t a were or a witch, or any daemon I had ever seen.

  “Leave me alone!” I screamed, picking up a rock and hurling it at the shape from my prone position. It passed harmlessly through the great outline and thudded away into the darkness.

  The fog rolled away as the thing came closer and I caught a flash of a face, of milky silver eyes in the indistinct shadow.

  Eyes, and teeth. Too many teeth for one mouth. Too many teeth to be anything but a nightmare-thing . . .

  Feeling my body throb and my lungs saw with pain after my sprint, I knew that there was no way I was going anywhere but to my death under the toothy shadow’s fangs. It was a monster and I was one were. What could I do?

  The clear sky sent a spasm through my lower back, and without even consciously making the decision I rolled to my left, landing on my back, exposed, directly in the shaft of moonlight.

  The phase gripped me, sending clear bell tones of pain and pleasure through my skin and nerves and bone. I smiled up at the thing, my teeth already fangs and my eyes turning molten. “Hex you,” I snarled.

  And then I changed.

  I’ve only given myself over willingly to the phase once before, and that ended with me ripping out a man’s throat. This time I felt my limbs give a violent twitch, then another. My back arched as if the most powerful orgasm of my life hand gripped me, and I flipped over onto all fours.

  When I didn’t try to hold the phase back, it came fast, and hard, like an express train coming around a curve when your car stalls on the tracks.

  My fingers and toes curled, sprouted claws, and I felt my jaw dislocate and my spine lengthen and ripple as my body settled into its form of a black wolf.

  The pain passed and I had the momentary sensory overload that always comes with a phase, the smells and sounds magnified to levels excruciating for the small scrap of human consciousness that rode on the back of the were.

  I could smell the earth, the dampness of the fog, the evergreens winding through everything, and underneath all that something cold and wet like rusted iron, something that didn’t belong in the cacophony of the forest.

  Whatever time I’d bought myself phasing had run out, and I took off again, now fully able to navigate with the eyes of a wolf. I didn’t look back again, just ran and ran. My body still hurt, but my feet were tougher now and I slowly began not to care as the were came to the forefront and my human side subsumed. I would run, escape, hunt, feed . . .

  The Thing gave chase and I snarled at it but did not slow my pace. It wanted to take my territory, to hunt me like I was something less than dominant, and while I could not let myself be caught, I couldn’t show I was afraid.

  Thinking of what it would do to me, how I would deal with prey were our situations reversed, made me taste metal on my tongue from fear and a desire to hunt my own kill. It would rake at my flanks, tear my neck, feast on the meat of my ribs, and break my bones between teeth the size of my snout.

  I ran faster, still scenting the metal smell of the Thing, its complete Other-ness to my were senses.

  The animal terror of the pursuit dogged me until I burst from the forest onto a plain of scrub brush and high desert rock, my tongue lolling as I scraped up the last reserves of energy, most of it gone to my weak human form before I had become my strong self, my real self that could run and run for hours. The timer had run down.

  I crawled under a scrub sagebrush bush to hide, knowing that in the shadows I could watch, be the hunter and not hunted, conceal myself from the Thing and the Terror that wanted to challenge my dominance.

  At the edge of the forest I saw the shape, just a blotty outline even to my eyes. It flowed along the tree line, snarling and prowling as it searched for me.

  A howl of rage and frustration floated toward me and then with a flash of silver from its eyes and its open, hungry mouth the Thing turned and disappeared back into the forest.

  I panted, head on my front paws, listening and alert as I could be after the chase, until the moon had gone down and dawn began to burn away the smoky blue-gray darkness of the night sky along the horizon. Exhausted, I curled into a ball and fell asleep.

  I woke up at dawn, when the sun crested the skyline and I was human again, rocks and twigs poking me in the back and . . . sort of everywhere.

  Covered in healing scratches and scrapes, I found deeper cuts on my arms and a painful gash on the sole of my right foot that was still bleeding. I felt as if I’d been dragged behind a stagecoach for maybe four or five days and then gotten really drunk and hit my head repeatedly against a rock.

  “Bright lady,” I muttered when I tried to sit up and was treated to a display of vertigo and lights spinning in front of my eyes. I made it to my feet and took stock of my sad situation. I was still sans clothes, utterly and completely lost—who knew how far I’d run phased?

  On the bright side, I was conscious, most of my minor injuries had healed when I was a were, and Hex it, I was alive.

  I started to walk across the open plain, away from the sun. Nocturne City was west—eventually I’d hit ocean, or civilization. Preferably a civilization with some clothes.

  As things got hotter and I started to realize just how banged up I was, and how thirsty and hungry and exhausted, I wondered if I’d even seen the thing that had chased me. I was drugged—I remembered that, if nothing else. Had I hallucinated, running blindly through some wild place, and ended up here?

  “Does it matter?” I demanded. The sun was almost overhead now, and I could feel a burn starting on my shoulders and back. I crested a hill and almost cried when I saw a small silver Airstream trailer below me, nestled into the desert ravine. A road led away across the rocks, and far away, just visible to my eyes I could see the ink ribbon of a freeway.

  I half slid down the hill to the trailer, and crept up on the side with no windows. There was no vehicle outside and no sounds or smells from within, but some laundry hung limply on the line, a man’s black work shirt and dungarees.

  They were far too big for me, and still damp, and smelled like cheap detergent, but I put them on like they were fine vintage Valentino and began the painful, barefoot walk to the road.

  CHAPTER 8

  The third truck I tried to flag down pulled over for me. The driver looked me over and shook his head, chewing reflectively on the end of a jerky stick. “Hex me, lady. You sure got put through a wringer.”

  “That’s the nicest po
ssible way of saying it,” I muttered. “You going to Nocturne City?”

  “Close to it,” he said. “Doing a long haul from the other side of the mountains. DVD players. Thought you might be lookin’ to hijack me at first.”

  “If I was planning to jack you I would have put on shoes.” I sighed. Once I’d collapsed back into the sweaty, weed-scented seat it was hard to keep my eyes open. The sun heated up the cab and made me sweat a little, and I felt all the cuts and scrapes of the night before sting.

  “Guess you would have at that,” said the truck driver. “Where you from?”

  “The city.”

  He paused to mumble something into his CB radio. “Got any family?”

  “Look, sir, much as I appreciate the lift I’m not in much of a talking mood.”

  “Hey, now,” he said. “I’m just tryin’ to make sure that whoever worked you over ain’t gonna find you again.”

  “If they do,” I said, “they’ll also find the business end of my service weapon.” Right now, tired and sore and still shaky from being abducted and drugged, I knew for a certain fact that if I ever saw any of the men who kidnapped me again, I’d kill them. There wouldn’t be any discussion or internal debate. One shot, right between the eyes, like the person who killed Bertrand and the other weres.

  Justice.

  “You in the army or something?” said the truck driver. “Doesn’t look like you’ve got a gun under there.”

  “I used to have one,” I said. “Before I was kidnapped from my parking lot, drugged, stripped naked, and thrown into the nature preserve to die. Is that enough information for us to ride the rest of the way in silence?”

  The trucker blinked once, long and slow. “Yeah. Sure. So you’re not some kind of assassin?”

  “I’m a SWAT officer,” I said. “And I’m very tired.”

  He shut up and let me be, and I fell asleep, only waking up when we pulled into a gas station on Highway 21.

  “Far as I go before my turnoff,” said the trucker. He fished in the ashtray amid the roach butts and pressed two dollars in quarters into my palm. “You got someone you can call for a ride?”

  “Yes, yes,” I said impatiently. “Thanks for the lift. You can call the SWAT Division of the Nocturne City PD if you need to be reimbursed for your mileage.”

  “Shit, don’t mention it,” he said as I dismounted the cab. “Always happy to help a lady in distress.”

  “All men should be like you,” I muttered, and picked my way across the blacktop to the bank of pay phones. My foot had stopped bleeding at least.

  I hesitated after I fed the phone my quarters. I could call the cottage, where Dmitri would surely have worked himself into high dudgeon over my being gone with no explanation. Did I have enough change to convince him that I’d been abducted by crazies rather than out having a torrid affair?

  That would only end in screaming with the mood I was in. I dialed Sunny’s number instead.

  “Luna!” she shrieked when I identified myself. I held the phone away from my head, shaking it to dispel the feedback.

  “Sunny, what’s wrong?”

  “You’re what’s wrong!” she shouted. “Are you okay? Your team said you didn’t show up and Dmitri came home and didn’t know where you were . . . everyone’s in an uproar. But you’re all right!”

  “Well I was, right up until you ruptured my ear-drum,” I said. “Sunny, I need you to do me a favor and tell Bryson to come pick me up.”

  “Not me?” She sounded confused. “Not Dmitri?”

  “Definitely not Dmitri,” I said.

  “Luna, he’s been going crazy.”

  Great, now I felt like a world-class bitch in addition to crap. “Sunny, I was kidnapped.”

  That started another litany of shrieking and rapid chatter. “Calm down!” I finally yelled. “I’m okay!” How close I had come to not being okay, my cousin would never know.

  “I’m . . . I just . . .” She breathed in and out a few times. “There have been so many times when I thought it’d be the last time I saw you, Luna.”

  “Not this time,” I said, trying to be conciliatory. Normally I’m not very good at it, and right then I flat-out sucked. “But the fact remains that I’m a kidnap victim and Bryson needs to take my statement as soon as possible and collect any evidence that might be on me.”

  “Okay,” said Sunny. “I’ll call the Twenty-fourth. What’s the number there?”

  I gave it to her and hung up, watching the traffic swoop past on the highway and trying not to think about the previous hours.

  Bryson showed up in an hour or so and said, “Jesus juggling flaming swords, Wilder. You look like a hermit.”

  “Thanks, David. That suit you’ve got on makes you look dead.”

  He touched the lapels of his powder-blue number protectively. “Don’t gotta get all pissy.”

  “I just spent a night naked in the woods,” I said. “Trust me, now is not the time for rebuking.”

  He opened the car door for me, at least, and made sure I was buckled in before heading back to the city.

  “So what happened?” said Bryson.

  “I . . .” I saw the men’s faces, blurred under the street lamps, and felt the needle prick my neck. After that, until I’d woken up under the bush, there was so little I remembered that wasn’t blurred with fear . . . “I don’t wanna talk about it until I have to.”

  “One thing,” said Bryson. “D’you think it’s the same people that offed the other four?”

  The men had let me see their faces, unconcerned. Methodical. They hadn’t expected me to still be alive.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think so.”

  “Shit,” Bryson muttered, gripping the steering wheel hard. “Why does my life get so gods-damn complicated every time you show up, Wilder?”

  “Sorry,” I yawned. “Next time I’ll try harder not to get drugged and thrown in the back of a van.”

  We made it to the hospital and Bryson made me wait in the car while he went and got a pair of flip-flops for me to wear in. “David, you’re being nice and it’s really freaking me out,” I told him.

  “Don’t take it personal,” he said. “You’re a witness now. I need you in good shape to make a statement.”

  In the ER, people stared. Patients, doctors, and everyone gave me at least a startled glance. I felt my face heat. “Can I get a curtain, please?” I hissed at Bryson.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I called ahead. The CSU tech should be here any second.”

  The doors to Emergency hissed back and Pete Anderson appeared, carrying a steel case and looking harried.

  “Hey, Detective,” he called when he spotted us. Bryson and I both started to reply, then Pete really took a look at me and his eyes widened.

  “Officer Wilder, are you . . . ? I mean, what happened?”

  “I need you to do a collection on her clothes and anything else you might find,” said Bryson. Pete nodded, still looking at me. We’d met on the Duncan case, when he was an AV geek and I was suspended from the force. He’d gotten field-certified and shaved his head, and contact lenses made him almost look like an action hero.

  “Okay, Officer. I’m following you.”

  “She ain’t PD today, son,” said Bryson. “She’s a vic. Do your job.”

  “I’m showing respect,” said Pete. “If the situation were reversed, I doubt you’d take kindly to me ordering you to strip down.” Pete and Bryson had never gotten along, but I jabbed Bryson in the arm before he could say something that made Pete punch him. A nurse in pink scrubs decorated with flying hearts came and led me to an examination area, where she handed me a paper gown. I stripped behind the curtain and put my clothes into the paper bags that Pete had provided. He taped them up and initialed them, then combed the dirt and sticks in my hair into a bindle.

  He looked me over. “You had it rough, Luna.”

  “Pete, you have no idea.”

  “You catch the creeps that did this, I will be happy to personal
ly put a foot up their ass,” he said.

  “You’re gonna have to stand in line behind me and my cousin and my very large boyfriend,” I said.

  The nurse returned with a plastic box about the size of a Tupperware sandwich carrier. “Mr. Anderson, could I get you to step outside? I need to perform a rape kit on Miss Wilder.”

  “No,” I said, before Pete could react. “I wasn’t raped.”

  “Standard procedure,” she said, putting on gloves and beginning to arrange the swabs. “It won’t take long and it doesn’t hurt. Please lie back on the table.”

  Pete touched my shoulder and then made a hasty exit. “I wasn’t raped,” I said again, louder.

  “Miss Wilder, with all due respect,” said the nurse. “You were drugged for nearly a day. You don’t know what might have happened. We’ll give you the morning-after pill to be safe.”

  Inside me, down where the butterflies in your stomach usually live, everything went cold. My vision spun away from the sterile beige-and-blue examination room just for a second and I was fifteen again, scratchy carpet under my naked back, a heavy arm across my chest, and thick, drunken fingers tugging at the waistband of my cutoff shorts. Pain in my neck as he sank his teeth in . . .

  “Miss Wilder?” said the nurse. “Should I page Dr. Bradshaw?”

  “Just make this fast,” I said. I was here. Not in Joshua’s van. Not getting the bite. Here, thirty years old, in the hospital, in control. Joshua hadn’t gotten his chance to rape me. I wasn’t a victim.

  “If you’d feel more comfortable with a sedative . . .”

  “Look, lady, what part of ‘fast’ isn’t sinking in?” I snapped. “Can we do this without platitudes? I don’t need the post-trauma speech. I know it by heart already.”

  She did the rape kit and I kept my eyes on the fluorescent light above my head, staring until I saw stars in front of my vision.

  The nurse gave me extra scrubs to put on along with the flip-flops, and I swallowed the pill before I went back to Bryson, clenching and unclenching my fists to contain the claws that threatened to sprout inside.