Anita Blake 22 - Affliction (29 page)

‘What do you want to do?’ I asked.

His answer was to pad toward the body, delicately, as if he were afraid to smear the evidence. He crouched close to the body and snarled. He rose up and looked … puzzled, as if he didn’t understand what he was scenting.

‘What’s wrong, Nathaniel?’

He looked at me mutely. I could have dropped shields and felt more of what he was feeling, but after last time I wasn’t sure it was a good idea.

‘Are you going to ask him if Timmy is down the well?’ Horton asked.

I frowned at him.

‘It’s just you don’t seem to be able to understand him much better than I can.’

‘I understood him fine earlier, but the psychic contact was too intense; that’s why we ran ahead like we did. I need more control than that.’

‘If you can track this monster back to its lair, then we need you to stay close to us,’ Al said. ‘No racing ahead, okay?’

‘I don’t know what did this, but I do know that I don’t want to take Nathaniel into the middle of it without as much police backup as I can get.’

Al smiled. ‘Fair enough. Just don’t get carried away with all the psychic stuff again.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ I said. I turned to Nathaniel. ‘Do you have the scent?’

His answer was to walk away from Nicky and me to stand in front of Ares. He gazed up at the tall, blond man. I knew they had no psychic connection, but Ares seemed to understand, because he said, ‘He wants me to take his leash so we can track together.’

‘You with your eyes and him with his nose,’ I said.

Ares nodded.

I sighed and went to Nicky. I took the leash from him and then I knelt in front of the big leopard. I held his face between my hands and gave serious eye contact, trying to ‘see’ Nathaniel in there.

‘I love you,’ I whispered.

He purred and rubbed along the side of my face so hard it almost tipped me over. I threw my arms around his furred neck and hugged him, then pulled away and said, ‘Be careful.’

He rubbed into my shoulder and wound himself around my kneeling body in an almost perfect circle, purring the whole time. I think it was leopard for
I’ll be careful, you be careful, too, and I love you
, or maybe he was just scent-marking me. Calling ‘mine’ so that all the other wereanimals would know, or maybe it was all the above?

I gave the leash to Ares.

‘Thank you for trusting me.’

‘I trust you both,’ I said.

He smiled and then turned around to lead Nathaniel to the edge of the clearing where he had lost the tracks. Nathaniel crouched, sniffing the ground, pulling his lips back so he could ‘taste’ the smell, too. Nicky put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Nathaniel can do this, Anita.’

I nodded, because I didn’t trust my voice.

Nathaniel snarled again and then moved purposefully into the trees. ‘I think he’s got it,’ I said. I moved forward with Nicky at my side. Al and Horton followed us, and most of the other police. They’d leave only enough people behind to secure the crime scene; the rest would go with us hoping to have a Crawford to rescue instead of bury.

I prayed that we’d get there in time and that Nathaniel didn’t get hurt. Ares, Nicky, and I took our chances with our jobs. Nathaniel stripped for a living. The worst danger he routinely faced was overzealous fans trying to rip his G-string on stage or stalk him off stage. Helping us hunt the things that had eaten Henry Crawford’s face off was so not in my sweetie’s job description.

The leopard tracked, and Ares found actual tracks periodically, or branches broken, or moss disturbed. He was all very Indian scout, which was probably the
scout
part of
scout sniper
, but it was all impressive and surreal in the dark on the mountain with the big leopard padding at his side. We moved slowly, because Ares was trying to gauge how many zombies, or people, or whatever, lay ahead of us. I just wanted it over. The tension between my shoulder blades was tight and tighter. I’d suggested to Al that we call for SWAT, but we were in the middle of nowhere, and technically the small municipality had no SWAT. Unofficially they could call Boulder for help, or even the FBI hostage rescue team (HRT), but in reality we were it.

Was it Nathaniel being here like this that was making me nervous? Maybe, but I didn’t like not knowing what had killed Crawford senior. If it was just humans gone crazy, then we’d be fine, but what if it was something else? The only flesh-eating zombie that I’d had to track down before had damn near killed me. But it had been like a disorganized killer, slaughtering wildly and eating more of the bodies. The bites on Crawford’s body had been neat compared to that. How had they kidnapped the two men within yards of the rest? We had too many questions and no answers, but if we could save the son … if we could get there in time to save Little Henry …

I stumbled, and Nicky had to catch my arm or I’d have fallen.

‘You okay?’ he whispered.

I shook my head. ‘We don’t have enough information. I don’t know what we’re tracking.’

He kept his hand on my arm and leaned in to whisper. ‘If Nathaniel weren’t involved you’d be fine.’

I looked ahead of us to see Ares’ blond head almost ghostlike above the dark leather of his coat. The leopard was like a thicker piece of the shadows under the trees as it moved at his side. ‘It’s not just Nathaniel.’

‘Then what is it?’ he asked. He was leaned over me, close enough to kiss, and I realized I wanted to, that it would have made me feel better. Touching any of the animals that were part of my list of beasts was like touching a great big living comfort object, but I didn’t usually get this distracted in the middle of potential action. What was bothering me? Was it just Nathaniel being here? Was I so worried about him that it made a coward of me? No, the feeling between my shoulder blades was saying,
It’s more than that
.

I stopped walking and just stared up at Nicky. ‘Why leave the body on display? Why not hide it?’

‘They wanted us to find it,’ he said.

‘Why take two men and kill one of them so quickly?’

‘They may both be dead, Anita.’

‘I know that, but if they wanted us to find the body, why? What did it gain them?’

‘Zombies don’t plan things.’

‘I never said this was zombies. What did it gain them?’

‘We’re following them,’ he said.

‘Or they’re leading us.’

‘They couldn’t plan on us having Nathaniel or Ares with us.’

‘I’ve used shapeshifters to track killers before and it made the news.’

‘You’re saying it’s a trap.’

‘Maybe, or I’m overthinking it because of Nathaniel.’

‘Don’t doubt yourself; what does your gut tell you?’

‘The tightness between my shoulder blades tells me they’re leading us where they want us to go.’

‘If you’re right?’

‘It’s a trap.’

‘If you’re wrong?’

‘Then I could cost Little Henry his life.’ I looked up and couldn’t see Ares and Nathaniel anymore; that was unacceptable. I started to move, half-jogging through the trees, falling back into the woodcraft I’d learned as a child in the country. You let go of trying to see everything the way you did in daylight, and you sort of felt the trees, felt the ground. There was no undergrowth in these high pine forests; it was so much easier to run through them than it would have been in the eastern woods. I ran, half crouched over to avoid limbs. Nicky stayed at my side, though I wasn’t sure how the bigger man was missing the lower limbs, but it didn’t matter. We could live with some scrapes and bruises. I wasn’t sure I could live if something happened to Nathaniel.

The tightness in my shoulders eased with the run, and that let me know that I was doing the right thing. Horton saw us running and slowed to ask, ‘What’s wrong?’

I didn’t have time to stop and explain. I needed to see Nathaniel and Ares. I needed them in my line of sight; I’d worry about everything else later. The two of them must have started their own run to be this far ahead. Damn it!

The first scream echoed on the thin mountain air. I ran faster. Nicky pulled ahead of me; the nine inches of extra height meant I couldn’t keep up. He slowed down, and I said, ‘Protect Nathaniel, go!’

He was my Bride; he did what I told him to do, because he had to. I was left alone in the dark running as fast as I could toward the screams of men. The leopard’s snarling scream cut through the yells from human throats. Fear tore through me in a burst of adrenaline and I ran faster.

I swung the AR around on its tactical strap and kept running. My boots jarred against the ground, branches slapping at me, my chest struggling to breathe past my heartbeat and the thin air; all I could hear was the thundering of my blood in my head. I knew there were other police in the woods running in the same direction, trying to get there to back up the ones who’d gone ahead, but the other officers were just bleeps on my peripheral radar. I spared a second to know that if something wanted to jump me now I’d never hear it coming. I caught flashes of muzzle flare through the thinning trees. I found speed I didn’t know I had, willed myself faster, until my breath strangled in my throat and the world ran with spots of white, and I knew if I didn’t slow down soon I might pass out in the thin air. I forced myself to slow enough that I could breathe. The starbursts were almost gone from my vision when I saw figures through the tall trunks of the trees. I saw the Boulder PD uniform and a zombie behind him. He was firing at one in front of him. He didn’t see the one behind him.

I was farther than I actually wanted to shoot, but he could be dead before I got within easy shooting range. I steadied my shoulder against the bare trunk of a tree, tucked the AR to my shoulder, set my cheek against the stock, tried to force my body to be still enough to make the shot, but the best I could do was hold my breath. My body was one big pulse from the running, but we were out of time. I sighted on the zombie’s head and squeezed the trigger. Most of the head vanished in a gout of blood and heavier things. If it had been human it would have been a kill shot, but it wasn’t human. The officer startled and turned so he could face both zombies. I pushed away from the tree and was running again, as the headless zombie stopped staggering and started walking toward him again. Headless didn’t mean shit to zombies. A finger would keep inching along until you burned it.

I cleared the trees with the AR snugged to my shoulder, a cheek wield between me and the stock, searching the clearing for targets. I’d already fallen into that bent-legged crouching walk that SWAT had taught me back home. It looked awkward, but it moved you along smoother and steadier for shooting than normal walking.

The clearing was bathed in starlight with the spiraling arcs of flashlights everywhere, as officers tried to keep light on their targets. Zombies were everywhere. There was one mound of them crouched on the ground near the only building visible near the middle of the clearing. The zombies were eating someone, I just couldn’t see who. I trusted Ares and Nicky, and Nathaniel’s leopard, not to end up as food this quickly. I had to believe that and fight my way around to the side of the clearing I couldn’t see past the building, because they had to be there. I had incendiary devices on me that would burn up zombies; trouble was, they’d do the same to people. There was no clear way to use anything but the guns.

The zombie I’d beheaded jumped onto the back of the officer. The zombie was twice his size and drove him to his knees. The officer yelled out. He kept firing point-blank at the other zombie looming in front of him. Unfortunately, he was firing into the middle body mass. If it had been a vampire he might have damaged the heart enough to ‘kill’ it, but the bullets weren’t doing more than make the zombie stumble. The zombie on his back was ramming its bloody stump into the back of the officer’s head as if it didn’t realize it didn’t have a mouth anymore, and was still trying to eat him. The officer was screaming as the zombie that still had a mouth leaned down, as his gun clicked empty.

I yelled, ‘Guard your eyes!’ but I didn’t have time to wait and make sure he heard me. I fired the AR almost point-blank into its head. It exploded in a shower of blood, brains, and bone fragments.

The officer was on all fours, blood covering his hair, and he was yelling, ‘Get it off of me! Get it off!’

I wasn’t sure if he was talking about the brains and blood or the zombie, but I went for the zombie. I put the AR against the zombie’s shoulder where the arm attaches to the torso and fired. It blew the arm off and rocked the zombie backward. The officer was able to scramble free of it and almost fell into the second zombie as it crawled around on the ground. It seemed more disoriented about the whole decapitation thing than the first one.

The officer was shoving at the air as if the zombies were spiders and he didn’t want them to touch him. I grabbed his arm and helped him get to his feet and move out from between the two zombies. Half his face was covered in zombie blood, but I still recognized him as Officer Bush, who had thrown up first at the crime scene. His eyes were huge, his breathing so rapid he was going to hyperventilate if he didn’t stop. I had to find my men, but damn it.

‘Bush, Bush, can you hear me?’ I shook him until I was sure he was actually focused on me. ‘Slow your breathing down, Officer Bush.’

He nodded a little too rapidly.’

‘Are you out of ammo?’ I asked.

‘It didn’t do any good. It didn’t stop them.’

‘Shoot the head,’ I said.

‘You shot their heads off and they didn’t die. They’re supposed to die if you take their heads.’

‘Only in the movies,’ I said.

He clutched at my arm. ‘How do we kill them?’

‘You can’t,’ I said.

‘What do we do then?’

‘Do you have ammo left?’

He nodded, his breathing even, and I watched his eyes fill back up with him and push back the fear. He popped out his empty magazine, reached for his equipment belt and a new magazine. He did the transfer automatically and smoothly. He was going to be okay.

‘Shoot their heads, take the mouth out, and then they can’t bite.’ In my head I added,
so they can’t give anyone else the rotting infection
.