Broken (11 page)

Clay turned and looked at him, and the man’s mouth snapped shut. I leaned out to see why the line wasn’t moving.

“You okay?” Clay whispered.

I swept a glance around. “Just…claustrophobic.”

He nodded, but didn’t comment. He didn’t need to. Clay hated crowds, always had, and I’d always faulted him for it, chalking it up to his dislike of humans. But now, looking into his eyes and seeing my own response reflected back—discomfort not distaste—I knew I’d never again snipe at him about avoiding a crowded mall or packed movie theater.

He shifted over, his hip brushing mine. “Go on outside. Get some air.”

“I’m—”

He bumped me with his hip, causing his stack of junk food to sway. “Go. Stretch your legs. There’s a field out back, isn’t there? Behind the building?”

“I think so.”

“Find a picnic spot then. Grab Jeremy and I’ll meet you there.”

“Thanks.”

Jeremy was just outside the doors, eying one of those new SUV hybrids.

“Looking for a trade-up on the Explorer?” I asked.

“I was thinking of you.”

“I have a car.”

“Which is half dead, has no air bags, no child restraints, and is definitely not baby-friendly.” He waved at the SUV wannabe. “This is cute.”

“Cute? It looks like a minihearse. Yes, I know I’ll need something new. But not that. And if you mention minivan—”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

I told him Clay’s picnic plan.

“That’s fine,” Jeremy said. “I need to use the restroom. You can wait for me or, if Clay comes out first, I’ll meet you both out back.”

He started to walk past me, then stopped to watch a vehicle pull in a few spots down. A Mercedes SUV.

“Perhaps something like that,” he said. “It’s a luxury vehicle, sure to have all the top safety features, plus be quite reliable in bad weather, but not as big and unwieldy as the Explorer. I’m sure you’d find it quite peppy.”

“Peppy? That’s almost as bad as ‘cute.’ ”

“It would be the perfect vehicle for a—”

“Suburban soccer mom.”

A slight furrow of the brows.

“Never mind. Just…” I waved at the car. “Not me. Not now. Not ever. I’ll find something. But not—” I looked at the Mercedes and shivered. “That.”

He shook his head and walked toward the building.

I followed the walkway along the north side of the service center. Behind the building, the path cut on a diagonal to the southwest truckers’ lot.

The whir of the huge air-conditioning unit and the distant rumble of idling trucks blocked out the roar of the highway to the north. To my right was a white storage silo. Beyond that was a swamp.

I thought the swamp was what I’d smelled when I first picked up the scent of something heavy and overripe. But the smell came on the south wind, blowing toward the swamp, not from it. The scent carried other notes too, all human—the smell of an unwashed body and unwashed clothes, male, seemingly healthy, but underlain with that faint scent of overripeness. Of…rot.

It was the same scent I’d smelled on the man in the bowler yesterday. Not sickness but rot, so faint I had to get a noseful before I was sure. I realized it was the same thing I’d smelled walking back from the restaurant after breakfast.

I dismissed it. No one—and nothing—could track us like that. We were 185 miles from Cabbagetown. Even I would’ve lost the trail the moment we’d driven away last night. If this guy came from where I thought he did—nineteenth-century London—well, let’s just say he couldn’t hop into a car and give chase.

So it was impossible. Even when I glimpsed a figure darting between the rigs in the southwest lot, and caught another whiff of that distinctive scent, I knew it couldn’t—shouldn’t—be him. But follow logic too far and it can lead right into the jaws of folly.

Jeremy had asked me to wait for him or Clay, and I hadn’t meant to ignore him. But after fifteen years of being able to walk through deserted parking lots without a spark of fear, I was ill-accustomed to needing an escort.

Someone was following me, possibly hoping to cut me off when I was far enough from the service center, and from my male companions. At the very least, I should stop and wait for Jeremy and Clay.

Yet, the moment they showed up, my pursuer would run. So I kept going slowly and concentrated on picking up some sense of Clay. No luck. I stopped to tie my shoes and scope out the playing field.

Swamp to the right. A good place to throw my pursuer off-kilter, but the stink and the water would make tracking difficult. The field in front of me was too open. Behind it was a forest, which screamed “pick me, pick me.” My ideal environment. But it was too far away, and I risked losing him on the trek across the open field. The parking lot had lots of places to hide, and that’s where he was now. But the noise, the stink of diesel fuel and the possibility of bystanders would complicate matters. The best choice was also the closest—that thirty-foot-wide storage silo to my right.

Rotten

I WALKED SLOWLY PAST THE SILO
,
STILL STRAINING FOR A
sense of Clay. When I reached the other side I felt that little twinge of relief and anticipation that told me he was nearby. As for where exactly he was, I had no idea. But he’d be looking for me.

With a half-dozen strides, I was close enough to touch the silo, and I started circling toward the back. Quick steps pattered over the pavement—someone running across the parking lot, footfalls too heavy to be Clay or Jeremy, the slightly awkward clomp of one unaccustomed to silent hunting.

I caught a whiff on the breeze, heavy with rot. On that same breeze came a more familiar—and certainly more pleasant—smell. Clay was getting closer. I smiled and picked up my pace to lure my pursuer farther behind the silo.

The clomping footsteps sped up, closing the gap. Closing in fast. Waiting for Clay wasn’t going to be an option.

I spun around and found myself a hairsbreadth from being skewered by a butcher’s knife. It was probably more like two feet away, but any time a knife that big is pointed at you it seems a whole lot closer.

I roundhouse kicked…and flew off my feet as my new center of gravity took over. My foot barely brushed my attacker. The ground sailed up to meet my stomach. My hands shot out to break my fall, but I managed to twist around and find my balance.

As I veered up, the man rushed me. I kicked again, this time low, snagging his calf and yanking. As he fell, the blade veered my way, but I skated out of the way—not nimbly or gracefully but unscathed. I pounced onto his back and he crumpled, arms flying out, knife pinging off the side of the silo and tumbling to the grass.

A shadow crossed over my head, but I stayed where I was, on all fours on the man’s back.

“You want me to take that for you, darling?”

“Please.”

Clay put his foot onto the man’s neck and pressed down until he let out a strangled grunt. I recovered the knife—the sort that graces gourmet home kitchens everywhere, and rarely carve anything more than takeout rotisserie chicken.

“Impressive.” I gave it a trial swing and made a face. “Unwieldy, though.”

I knelt beside the man. It was definitely him—though he’d gotten rid of the bowler hat. He’d shaved his whiskers and changed into modern dress—ill-fitting slacks and a golf shirt that looked expensive enough to have come from the same house as the knife.

He tried to stay facedown, but Clay booted the other side of the man’s head and kicked his face toward me. Then he pressed harder on the man’s neck so he couldn’t turn away again.

Sweat beaded on the man’s forehead, but he only curled his lip. I adjusted my grip, lifted the knife, then plunged it down a handbreadth from the man’s face. After a second, he opened his eyes. He stared at the knife, buried to the hilt in the ground.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He didn’t answer.

“Where’d you come from?”

His lips pulled back, showing blackened teeth and the missing incisor I’d noticed the night before. “From hell.”

“Good,” Clay said. “Then we’ll know where to send you.”

Jeremy rounded the silo, walking fast, then saw us and slowed.

We spent the next few minutes interrogating the man. Who was he? Where did he come from? How did he find us? Why did he come after us? He wasn’t talking. A more thorough “interrogation” was out of the question here, in midday. Finally, Jeremy eased back onto his haunches.

“Let’s see if we can get him someplace better.” He looked around, then nodded at the swamp. “Down there.”

As Clay yanked the man to his feet, I stood, brushed myself off and turned to walk around the silo. A shadow leapt behind me, splayed on the sunlit side of the tank. I wheeled to see the man in Clay’s grip, caught in midlunge, his gaze on Jeremy. I leapt forward to knock Jeremy out of the way, but Clay already had his forearm around the man’s neck.

“Try that again,” Clay hissed against his ear, “and I—”

The man wrenched forward, as if still trying to attack Jeremy, but so far away that Jeremy didn’t even move. Clay jerked the man back, more warning than genuine effort. A sensible man would have felt that iron grip, seen how far he was from his target and noticed he’d lost his chance at a surprise attack. But he kept struggling, kicking and swinging. When his fist swung a little too close to me, Clay jerked him back, hard. A dull snap, like the crunch of celery. The man went limp in Clay’s grip.

“Goddamn it!” Clay muttered, teeth clenched to keep his voice down. “I’m sorry, Jer. I didn’t mean—”

Jeremy waved off the apology and took the knife as Clay lowered the body to the ground.

“Standard self-defense advice,” I said. “Never let yourself be taken to the second location. He knew we weren’t taking him there for a pleasant chat.”

Jeremy nodded, then knelt and put his fingers to his neck.

“Dead?” I said.

“Presuming he had a pulse before.” As he backed up onto his haunches, his nose wrinkled.

“Smells pretty ripe, huh? Maybe it’s just me, but I swear it’s getting stronger.”

“It’s certainly not getting better.” Jeremy looked around. “We’ll need to dispose of the body…”

“Swamp’s best,” Clay said. “Unless you want him to take a little trip in the back of a transport.”

The man moved. I jumped forward instinctively, getting between Jeremy and danger. Clay stomped on the man’s neck. His foot passed clean through to the ground.

“What the—?”

The body jerked again and this time, we saw that the movement was the man’s body collapsing into itself like a rotting melon. There was a whispering crackle as the body stiffened and went hard. Then it just…disintegrated.

“Huh, guess that solves the disposal problem.” Clay watched the sprinkling of dust settle into the grass. “Wish all my corpses would do that.”

“Now is anyone still going to tell me he was just a normal guy?” I said.

“Doesn’t matter.” Clay waved at the grass. “Threat eliminated…or disintegrated.”

“That’s it? We just blow away the dust and go home?”

“Far as I’m concerned.”

I looked at Jeremy. He finished wiping off the knife, then whipped it. The knife flew about a hundred feet before landing in the swamp with a splash. Perfect aim, as always.

“Elena? I’d like you to follow his trail. Perhaps we can figure out how he got here…and make sure he came alone.”

That was easy. Not only did the taint of rot give it away, but his path went straight around the south side of the service center and into the front lot. He’d known exactly where I was.

The trail led to the nearly empty northeast corner. Only one car was there—a burgundy midsize with Ontario plates. As we drew closer, I could see red streaks on the driver-side window.

“Don’t slow down,” Jeremy murmured as the three of us continued our “stroll.” “When we walk alongside it, glance inside, but we’ll keep heading for the road.”

We knew what we’d see when we passed the car, and we weren’t wrong. A man’s body lay stretched over the front seats, pushed down out of sight, his wide eyes staring at the roof, throat gaping open.

“Keep going,” Jeremy murmured.

We walked to the road, then headed along the front of the service center.

“Chauffeured at knifepoint,” I said.

“So it would appear,” Jeremy said. “I was keeping a watch behind us, but I don’t recall seeing that vehicle—or seeing it for long enough to appear suspicious.”

“Meaning he followed at a distance.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Clay said. “He’s gone. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, time to go home.”

I turned back to Jeremy. “It must be the letter, right? We did something with that letter last night, and opened a time hole into the nineteenth century—”

Clay snorted.

I turned on him. “Oh, sorry, is my explanation a little too far-fetched for
you
? The guy who turns into a wolf a couple times a week?”

“I’m just saying—”