Davis: Blood Brotherhood (8 page)

Ward pointed out that they’d done the same thing. “I know what you mean, however. He was and still is so single-minded about his plans. It was as if he knew that soon we’d be turning our backs on him. Do you suppose at any time he figured it out? Or was this all lucky guesses on his part?”

“I’ve no idea.” Ward got up to get him a drink. It was getting harder and harder to get help these days. And he was suspicious about the amount of deaths being reported to him daily. But if they weren’t really dead, where were they? Not in town. The place was eerily quiet nowadays. Store fronts were closed up. There were no children at the schools. And very few of the people employed even showed up to work anymore. He had been reduced to making his own bed. If not dead, then if he found them, they would wish that they were.

“Back to Benton.” Ward sat down while Dolin continued. “He said that one of the women hurt him. And while I know that he’s injured, what do you suppose really happened? Do you think that Rembrandt has gotten smarter and got the jump on him?”

“Did you see the wound?” Ward shivered when he thought of what it had looked like. “I thought for sure that we were going to see his backbone, the wound was so deep. And it looked as if he’d been burned. The gunshot wounds on his body were bad enough, but that looked like someone had touched him with some sort of hot fire or magic. Who would have that much power to hurt him like that?”

No one that he knew of. Rembrandt certainly couldn’t, not that he was aware of. But things were going on that they were not privy to, and that irked him more than the books and hidden things in Hector’s house. Things he’d not even told Dolin about.

After the other man left, Ward made his way to Mary’s place. He’d had it made especially for him. Of course, her body was not here; they didn’t bury their dead like some species did, but burned them in a crematory. Things were better that way, he had thought at the time, but now…now he would give anything to be able to go to where she might be resting and talk to her.

“I love Dolin to no end, but there are times when I would simply like to hit him.” He laughed because it was something he’d said to her countless times. “Things are not going as we had planned. Rembrandt is out of control. Not just because he killed you, but because of the way things are going on that realm. He is killing more of the creatures than we can create. I don’t think he’s aware of that yet, but when he figures it out, he’ll be relentless in his efforts to end what we’ve started. And at this rate, we will have less of them than we need to take over the world. That would be costly to us all.”

The flowers that he’d planted himself were blooming now. Things on this realm did better than any other place he’d been. Flowers, such as this one, would bloom for months on end, then go dormant for a few weeks only to rise up and be twice as big. It was perfect for his little garden.

“The things that I told you about the other day, I’m still no closer to figuring out what the use of them are than I was before. If only I could read the books.” He sighed heavily. “I know that the answers are there, but what they are alludes me. Do you suppose he made it up on his own and there will never be any hope of us figuring it out without him?”

A woman walked by his little cove, but he said nothing. It wasn’t like him to be unfriendly, but of late he’d not wanted anything to do with anyone. Even Dolin seemed to get on his last nerve. And Ward found himself out here more often than not. He was no longer happy.

Losing Mary had taken a great toll on him. He’d loved her, yes, but she’d been his friend too. And Dolin’s. Ward had used Mary to bounce ideas off of; her plans, at times, were better than his, and when she took him to her bed, not often but enough, he felt as if he were king of the world already, and would bask in her love making long after he was sent home.

“The turquoise is something important. I’m not sure what, but there you have it. I know that it’s important somehow, but not sure what. And Benton is hurt again. The man has served his purpose to us. As I have told you before, it’s time to get rid of him. But how is the big question. Perhaps if we leave him there on that earth, Rembrandt will finish him off for us.” He looked at the small picture of Mary that he’d put out here several days ago, imagined her smiling at him with that look in her eyes. “You were right. Is that what you wanted to hear? You knew from the start that he was going to be our downfall, and we should have listened. Oh, to be back to the beginning and know what we do now. I would have done so many things as you suggested.”

She’d told them both, countless times, to get rid of Hector. And to have someone watching over him at all times taking notes and learning the process. Mary had also suggested that they have someone training with him, someone to take over in the event that something happened to Hector. Well, nothing had happened, but there were more problems than he was sure Mary would have thought of too.

Ward sat there for several hours, mostly talking to his friend but resting too. His energy level was low of late. He’d even taken to only eating things he’d cooked himself, having some idea that it was his food that was making him so ill. But it turned out that he was still weak and that nothing seemed to help. Not even taking several naps during the day and going to bed early at night had helped him. There was something wrong with him, and he was very careful with everything until he figured out what it could be.

Standing up, he looked down at the little spot. There were stains in the dirt, wet ones. Going into his house, he stripped down and saw the blood on his legs and thighs. He knew what this was, knew that someone was poisoning him. Going to the door, he was going to confront Dolin, demand that he confess, but the man was already there, his own hands covered in blood.

“Someone is poisoning me. Is it you?” Ward shook his head and showed him the blood on himself. “What is this? We’ve been so careful all this time. What’s happening that we’re sick as well?”

“We didn’t put the poison in the water. And even if we did, I never drink it.” Dolin said that he didn’t either. He was afraid of it. “The food I care for myself. And there is no help here in my house. I don’t know what to think. We’re not going to die, Dolin. We’re going to figure this out.”

“We’re being poisoned. Someone wants us dead. But why?” Ward could think of any number of reasons why, but voiced none of them. Dolin had to be aware of the things they’d done, the people that they’d killed. “Who would do this? Who?”

As Dolin paced, Ward tried to think. The only thing that the two of them had done lately was go to the earth, about a week ago, to see to the other man. This man was trying to find a connection to the compound that he could use. Someone that could get in without being traced back to them. So far the only luck they’d had was an ex-husband of one of the household staff, who just happened to be Mary’s sister. And they’d not heard from him in days.

“I think it’s the earth.” Ward looked at Dolin when he spoke. “Remember when that guy offered us that wine when we were there? It was nasty as crap, but we drank it. I think it was that. I think he gave us something to poison us.”

“We had two glasses, if I remember. He told us that it would be a way to seal the deal. I don’t remember…did he have food for us as well?” Dolin said that he didn’t know. “Well, we can get better so long as we don’t eat or drink any more of the poison. How he got any of it is beyond me.”

The stone he’d found in the house kept circling around in his head. What had it been used for? Why did Hector even have it? Was it part of the formula that he’d been working on? It was in his pocket, he realized, and pulled it out. When he sat it on the table, Dolin pulled a similar piece and laid it there as well. He asked him where he’d gotten it.

“That man, Wainwright, gave it to me. He said it was a good luck charm.” They both stared at the two stones. “You don’t think that’s making us sick, do you?”

Ward did. In fact, he was sure of it. He had no idea why, but he was nearly as positive as he was about his love for Mary that this thing had been the reason they were sick. He didn’t touch the pieces, but shoved them into the trash bin next to his table. Picking it up, he threw the entire thing in the larger can in his kitchen. Whatever it was, whatever properties the stones had in them, Ward was sure they were never coming into contact with any part of him again.

“Go home. Drink lots of clean water. Boil it first so that there are no impurities in it. Eat only your own food that you cook and prepare. Don’t let anyone give you anything that you don’t know for sure is safe. And for the love of everything, stay away from earth. There are things going on there that we cannot control.” Dolin stood up and nodded. He hesitated at the door before leaving.

“I thought it was you.” Ward didn’t say that he’d thought the same thing. He wanted to be the better man in this, even if he was sick too. “I’m sorry for that now. I was so afraid that I just knew it was you.”

“We’ll beat this. We just have to trust one another. From now on, we only trust each other.” Dolin left him and Ward went to bathe. The blood had slowed now that he’d removed the small stone, and that reinforced his idea that that was what had caused it.

For some reason when poison entered their systems, they bled out slowly from their main arteries in their thighs. Nowhere else did they bleed. And Ward was well aware that there were a few other places that held bigger, thicker veins. Why the legs, he had no clue. But he wrapped the wounds in soft gauze and then lay down. He was going to beat this or know the reason why.

Chapter 8

Davis moved up behind the first group of monsters and killed three before they were even aware that he was nearby. While keeping an eye on Vicki, he made his way to the big building and then inside. Jake had said that a large group of the malefactors was inside. Davis looked up at Remy when he came from the other side of the building.

“Skylar is taking Vicki to the other exit. I don’t think that these monsters are aware of the door as yet, but this whole thing might be a decoy. She is going to watch her.” Davis nodded. Since she’d killed Ann’s husband, Vicki had been extremely quiet. And she’d been spending a great deal of time out of doors, just sitting and staring off into space.

“I’m worried about her.” Remy said he was as well. “When she’s like that, it’s all I can do not to go and dig up Hathaway and kill him again.”

“I understand. Skylar said that she’d make sure that she got help. I have no idea what that might mean, but we’re working on it. And so you know, Ann is going to talk to her tonight. Tell her just how she feels about her ex being dead.”

That might help, Davis thought, but had no idea. When a man killed someone in the line of duty, they were put behind a desk. Then they saw a shrink for several weeks only to be put back on the job well before they were ready. He’d seen it countless times, and he was worried that Vicki being out here today was going to break her.

Leo came around the other side of the building covered in blood. Not his own, they could both see, but in the blue blood of the malefactors. He was another person that Davis was worried about. While he wasn’t as bitter as he’d seemed when he’d first gotten here, he was still moody. He, too, had been spending time outside, but his had been working with Ann and Margarita. He was teaching them some moves with a knife. Davis thought it was a wonderful idea.

“We go in together, then split up. I don’t want any of us to go to the next floor until we’re sure we’re all right.” Remy looked around the big warehouse that they’d just entered. “We’ll go through here killing what we can, then meet here when we’re done. The girls are going to watch the outside and let us know if there is a mass exodus. Got it?” Both he and Leo said they did, and they split into different directions.

It was an open plan of a building, but the view was blocked by large wooden crates. Davis would have broken a few of them open in his days as a cop, just to make sure that there were no drugs or bodies in them, but not now. It always amazed him what a person would do to get to money or things that didn’t belong to him, and the extreme measures he’d take to kill when someone tried to get it back.

Once, when he’d been a cop, Davis had come across a large container sitting by the side of the road. It had been tagged by someone a few days before as abandoned. Davis drove by it for three more days before he finally couldn’t stand it any longer and got of his cruiser to check it out. The smell of death nearly made him get into his car and drive away. But he called it in, then waited for someone to come and give him the okay to open it. By then, well before they arrived with the clippers, he knew that the people inside had died.

There were fifty-three adults and ten children in the container. Buckets at each end had been used as toilets. That alone was enough to make a person sick, after being in the closed up container for days in the heat. But the way those people had been packed inside made him wonder if there had been any way to use the buckets without shuffling herds of people around just to piss in one of them. But still they had managed somehow.

It had taken him a week of washing his uniform before he simply tossed it in the fire and burned it. The stench had been that bad. At times, when he got his holster or belt wet, he got a whiff of the smell, and his belly would roll with it.

Today he was a different sort of cop. He killed indiscriminately and did so daily. Some days he’d take out as many as two hundred of the malefactors without speaking to a one of them. Today, this job made him a protector, a different sort of serve-and-protect kind of cop. And Davis thought he was a better man for it. Certainly a better cop.

He could see Leo coming around one of the containers. Davis nearly called out his location to him when someone moved out in front of him. It took Davis several seconds to realize that it was Vicki’s brother. Focusing on the two of them, he listened in to what was being said.

“All you have to do is get me in the house. The rest will be all me. I need to see my sister. She and I have some things to talk about.” If Leo said anything, Davis didn’t hear it, but Randall continued as if he had. “I really don’t care how you do it. But I’m willing to pay you big time for your help. What’s you say?”

“I said no thanks. And your sister? I have a feeling that she’s no more in a hurry to see you than I am.” As Leo tried to move around Randall, the younger man shoved him against the container. “I’m reasonably sure that you want to back the fuck off me about now. I’m in no mood to get into a pissing contest with you and more than that, I have no time to explain why I had to kill you to the people I’m working with. Piss off.”

Again Leo tried to move around him, but either Randall was on something or he was just that stupid. Both, Davis figured, when Randall got up in Leo’s face. Leo shoved him back so hard that he hit the container, a metal one this time, and it moved a good four or five inches across the floor. As Randall lay there unconscious, Davis walked toward him.

“He wants his sister.” Davis nodded and looked down at the man. “I’m assuming it’s Vicki and not Skylar. I wouldn’t fuck with either of them, but he seems to think that someone wants them not just for their mind. They’re pretty enough, but I have a feeling that either one of them could kick my ass even as buff as I am now.”

“Count on it.” Davis leaned down and reached into Randall’s pants. Removing his wallet, a stone fell out of his pocket. It was the roundest turquoise he’d ever seen. Putting it in his own pocket, he looked in the wallet. “Eleven dollars. No credit cards and no identification. What do you suppose that means? Just the other day I saw him with a guy who gave him a wad of cash. What do you suppose he’s done with it?”

Leo reached down and tore Randall’s sleeve without a word. There they were…track marks from his wrist to his elbow in a long line that followed his vein. And most of them were as fresh looking as today. So now he knew the reason for Randall’s lack of cash. But what he didn’t know was who the man was who’d paid him, or why he was buying Vicki.

Malefactors were moving into the warehouse in front of him. Remy was coming to them from the same direction, and Davis stood up with Leo. They watched them move. It looked as if they were being drained even as they shuffled across the floor. Two of them fell face first on the concrete, and the rest walked over the fallen ones as if they weren’t there. Davis pointed them out to Remy when he was standing next to him.

“Come look at this.” Remy led them around the malefactors. The beings ignored them completely, walking around in a daze, bumping into each other. “I was looking from room to room when I noticed this sound coming from this part of the building. I called in Skylar and Vicki because you two were dealing with the asshole over there, and I didn’t think it would be good if Vicki saw him.”

Davis wondered how Remy knew but said nothing for now. They’d told him about the exchange, but as far as he knew, Remy had no idea what the man looked like. But then Remy opened the door and they looked into the room where both Vicki and Skylar were.

“Christ. What the hell is that?” Remy walked around it with them as Leo spoke in hushed tones. “Is this some sort of battery?”

“Yeah, I think that might be what it is.” Remy walked to the back of it and pointed to a long wire coming from the back. “I’ve been tempted to pull this, just to see what it is, but I’m sort of afraid of it. I mean, for all we know, this might be the only reason there aren’t seven million of these things running around and not the several thousand that we’re dealing with.”

“Do you think Hector would know?” Vicki walked up to Davis and put her arms around him. After a quick kiss, she turned to Skylar. “How hard would it be to go and get him and bring him here? I mean, if you were to fly?”

“You can fly.” Davis still hadn’t gotten the hang of it, and was shaking his head even as Skylar pointed at him. “Yes you can. I’ve seen you do it.”

“You’ve seen me fumble with it a great deal. What if I drop him? Or worse yet, fall to the ground with him in my arms.” He shook his head again as he continued, “You go and get him, bring him here, and we’ll get this fixed. Then as soon as we get back to the compound, I’ll let you give me a lesson. Deal?”

Skylar looked at Remy, who was laughing. At his nod, Skylar went out of the building. Davis saw her shadow as she lifted from the ground. Davis knew he had to get the hang of this flying crap, and soon. So did Vicki. Though, to be honest, she was better at it than him.

In ten minutes, Skylar returned. Hector was smiling until he looked at the device. Twice he walked around it before coming to stand near the cords that Remy had been tempted to pull. He reached down and pulled the plug out of the wall, and the response was immediate.

The malefactors seemed to come alive. Not just animated but literally alive. Their color went from the faded hue to real color, their clothing—which always included a tee-shirt with a single pocket—disappeared, and what was more than likely their own clothing before the change came into focus. But the biggest change was their faces. Not only did they not all look alike, they appeared lost and confused. One of them looked at him and spoke.

“Where am I?” Davis didn’t answer but watched the man’s face. “I was on my way to work. Something…I had an accident and…. Where am I?”

Davis told him. “This is a warehouse near the riverfront. I’m assuming that you had been hurt pretty badly to end up here. When did you have this accident? Do you remember the date?” The man said no. “I’m sorry, but for a while now, the monsters have been converting humans into killing machines.”

“Have I?” Davis told him more than likely. “I’m a good man. A husband, father. I would never do such a thing. Never.”

He started to fade again, but this time he looked like he was aware. If not totally, then enough to know that this was something he wasn’t going to live with. Walking to the wall, he looked at the machine and pulled open one of the panels on it. Before anyone could stop him, he put his hand inside of it and screamed.

The power that surged through the man was more than Davis had thought it would be. When he was dead, long before he let go of the wires, two more people came to do the same thing. When the power—or whatever had been stored in the machine—had diminished, they saw that the other malefactors were all down, apparently dead.

~~~

Vicki rode in the back of the car to the compound. There were ninety-three dead malefactors laying in the building, and all of them had been killed the moment that men—three in all—had pulled out the wiring harness and had set it to their chests. It had been a group hug, it seemed, to die together. They hadn’t just died but had blown apart right before their eyes. And the only reason that they knew how many had died was the head count. The heads had rolled away from each of the bodies as if they had wanted no part of the rest of them.

As soon as they entered the house, she asked Davis to come with her. She needed him. The bedroom door was barely closed when she was naked and kissing him. He pulled her back only long enough to pick her up and take her to the bed.

This wasn’t going to be love making—not even sex—but a fucking. She needed to be fucked—and hard. As soon as he flipped her over to her belly and pulled her ass up to his cock, she knew that he understood what she needed.

His cock filled her nearly as soon as she laid her head onto the bed. His fingers, usually so gentle and soft, gripped her hips hard enough that she knew that he was leaving marks. But it wasn’t enough. She needed more. As his hands moved up her back, trailing up her spine, she nearly cried out when his fingers curled into her hair and jerked her head back. The pain was incredible.

“Come and I’ll hurt you.” She knew he was going to anyway, but the thought of not being able to come when she wanted made her wetter, her body tighter for the release. “You think I’m kidding you? Come and you will hurt, Vicki.”

Her body reacted to his words like he’d told her to come. Her release was so powerful that she saw stars behind her eyelids, her heart felt twisted in her chest, and her pussy ached for more. When he leaned over her, tearing into her shoulder, she came again, tightening around him until he couldn’t move. Twice he bit down into her flesh, bringing her every time until she fell to the bed. But Davis only pulled from her and turned her over, bringing her legs up and wide while he buried his face over her pussy.

He devoured her. Eating her not with his lips and tongue but with his fangs, digging them into her over and over until she begged him to stop, no longer able to come and stay conscious. But he didn’t stop. He didn’t even slow in his all-consuming hunger for her. His fingers sliding into her ass made her scream out again as he ate her over and over. Still, he devoured her until he sat up on his knees and looked down at her.

When she sat up, his cock was thick with need, its crown so dark she wondered if he was close to exploding. She reached for him, but her hand was smacked away as he fisted his cock and held his balls. When he came, his cock squirting his juices all over her, Vicki rubbed it into her breasts, licked it from her lips, and moaned when he slid into her. This time he was the gentle man that she loved.