Man Made Murder (Blood Road Trilogy Book 1) (3 page)

Wet heat trickled under his collar. Blood. Had to be. His cheeks went cold. His forehead popped clammy sweat. Bile surged to his throat as he hauled himself another half inch closer, pushing the toes of his sneakers hard into the dirt.

For a second, something beyond the glint of broken glass came into focus, and he had to swallow back dinner. His lips—numbly tingling—peeled back. A fresh wash of cold sickness rolled through him.

The biker’s teeth clamped down harder, trying to drag him back.

Once he’d seen the chewed-up woman’s hand, with its silver ring hanging loose on sun-dried muscle and bone, he couldn’t not see it. He dragged his eyes to his fingers, watched them just reach the jagged piece of glass. Gasping, he coaxed it toward him until he could get it in his grip.

With a good hold on it, he leaned his weight to one side and swung his arm back, fast and hard—crying out at the twist of pain in the muscles of his other arm, still bent up his backside.

The glass shard slid against leather, doing nothing except digging into his own palm.

Hissing, he gripped it harder. Leaning his weight, he brought the shard right over his shoulder, hoping to get the biker in the eye—anything that would get his mouth the fuck off his neck.

The shard of glass hit flesh, but it wasn’t like the movies. It sank slightly and jolted to a stop when it hit bone. His own hot blood ran down his palm.

The biker growled and grabbed Dean’s wrist without lifting his head.

He slammed Dean’s arm against the ground. Dean’s stomach clenched, his fingertips cold, but he held on to that piece of glass.

The dog yipped and barked.

“Asshole,” the biker said, inches from Dean’s cheek. He let go of his grip on Dean’s other arm and pushed up to sitting, his weight on Dean’s thighs.

Blood burbled from the gash in Dean’s neck, the air cool against it. He needed to get out while he still could. His scalp was prickling and his lips had gone completely numb—he had no idea if it was too late for “still could,” but he wasn’t going to lie down and die yet. With the shard clutched in his hand, he dug his elbow and knee into the ground and wrestled himself onto his side.

The biker’s eyes gleamed. His lips were black with blood. A thick bead of it shone in his whiskers. His arm came up—

Dean whipped the hand with the glass upward, giving it everything he had.

It struck just below the biker’s eye.

With a shout, the biker punched him in the side of the head.

Dean’s temple banged the dirt, rattling his head. But he still had the shard of glass. His blood and the biker’s ran between his fingers.

The biker’s bloody lip drew back, pain turning into a smile, sharp teeth smeared dark.

Dean’s breath guttered.

The biker closed his hand around the hilt of his knife.

Dean dug his heels into the dirt, shoving backward, gritting his teeth.

The knife
snicked
softly from its sheath. The blade flashed.

Dean hauled his upper body up. He arced the glass through the air. It lodged in the biker’s neck.

A laugh huffed out of the biker. He swung the knife upward.

The dog jumped around them, barking.

“Yeah, this is all yours after,” the biker said to it, grinning at Dean. “Don’t worry.”

Dean scrambled back.

The biker grabbed his knee.

High-voltage adrenaline coursed. Dean kicked out, catching the biker in the chin. Yanking his other leg free, he rolled to his feet, which didn’t want to work right. He stumbled a step, like he was dragging his foot—his body on fire with the sense and sounds of the biker getting up behind him. He still had the glass, embedded in his cut-up palm, and he turned on his one cooperating foot, swinging the shard blindly. It sank deep in the biker’s face, lodging there.

Dean shoved the biker with his other arm. It was just luck that the dog was in the way. The biker’s heel caught it and he went over backward, sprawling in the dirt. The dog panting and barking excitedly jumped on him.

Dean started running, wobbly at first, then getting the hang of it as the biker yelled at the dog. He caught the corner of the building with one hand, using it to push himself around. Skidding on what gravel was left in the dirt drive, he caught hold of the door handle on his truck to pull himself to a stop.

He yanked the door open as the biker broke around the corner.

Dean clambered into the truck. Jammed his key in the ignition—amazed that he got it on the first try. Amazed that he’d even, out of habit, managed to get it into his hand in the first place.

He backed the truck up with the door hanging open, spitting gravel and dirt as he swung around. The truck jolted as it hit the parked motorcycle with its front corner. The bike crashed to the dirt.

He wrenched the truck into drive and floored it, tires spinning until, catching, they jerked him against the seat. His door banged shut. His headlights lit the trees. He swerved to keep from hitting them.

Heart hammering.

Warm trickles sliding down his back, under his shirt.

His rearview mirror went pitch-black. A
whomp-whomp
like huge wings came at the truck from behind.

A thud shook the seat at his back.

He sat forward, his blood-soaked shirt peeling off the seatback.

A hundred yards up, the driveway opened onto the main road.

Sharp things scrabbled above his head. He glanced up—saw nothing but the truck’s dark ceiling and put his eyes back on the road. There was nothing he could do about something on the roof except keep fucking driving. He swallowed hard, his breaths fast, his chest aching.

His heart a bomb ticking toward explosion.

He pressed the gas, flicking his eyes toward the rearview.

Darkness. Trees.

A foot came down beside him, the toe of a boot resting on the open window.

The truck swerved and corrected as Dean elbowed it out of the way. He scrabbled for the window crank.

A car swept past the mouth of the driveway, as though just over the line, where dirt met hardtop, the normal world existed. Reality. He had a crazy thought that the front end of his truck would crash into an invisible barrier, that he was trapped in this fucked up alternate dimension where nightmares lived.

The biker’s boot jammed down hard on the window before he managed to get it up more than a few inches.

Dean pried at it, keeping an eye on the road that was coming up way too fast. He couldn’t risk slowing down. He needed to get the fuck out of there. Wind buffeted the open wound in his neck, the pain sharp as he shifted and twisted his arm to force the boot out again.

The leg kicked in at him, its sole shoving, gritty, against his cheek. He slammed on the brake and grabbed it around the ankle. But it just kept pushing in.

The other boot dropped down, getting its footing on the window.

Fuck this. Just
fuck
this.

He jammed his foot on the gas. The tires spun. The truck shot forward, knocking him back. He peeled onto the road, cranking the wheel hard. A horn blared. Headlights swerved. The truck’s tires caught the far shoulder, bumping the guitar off the seat. He floored it again. Dirt spit. His tires caught pavement, and the truck shot forward.

The other boot tried to come in.

Dean cranked the wheel.

The truck’s back end fishtailed on the pavement.

His lips were numb, his back and neck hot.

He grabbed the biker’s foot by the heel and forced it back out—as soon he let go, it swung back in, getting him at the top of his ear, making it smart.

He stepped on the gas again. Caught the wheel with one hand while using the other to knock the boot back out the window.

The biker couldn’t be holding on to much on the roof.

He took the truck up to forty, trying to roll the window up again. He made it halfway before the boot stepped down on it again.

He stomped the brakes hard enough to throw himself against the steering wheel.

Put it in reverse and peeled around.

The weight on the roof shifted backward. Boots kicked for purchase against the side of the cab.

Sweat dripped off Dean’s hair, trickling down the side of his nose.

His scalp prickled tightly.

Back in drive, he floored the gas until the truck shuddered—sixty, seventy, eighty on the curving back road.

A fist banged the window.

He flinched with every thud.

Gravity pulled on the truck as he rounded a curve going too fast. Two of his tires lifted off the pavement. The body on the roof shifted toward the inside of the curve.

He slammed on the brakes.

The truck juddered as it landed back on four wheels, making Dean’s teeth click together.

The body on the roof tumbled down the windshield.

Dean pressed back in his seat, hands braced on the steering wheel.

The biker banged to a stop on the hood. One arm reached back, leather-gloved fingers feeling for something to hold onto.

The biker’s face turned toward him, his mouth distorted, black with blood. But still grinning. Eyes feverish and sparkling.

Dean jerked the shifter into reverse and tore backward.

The biker bumped down the hood and spilled over its edge, boots flying into the air, then gone.

Dean forced the gearshift back to drive and gave it all the gas he could.

The truck bumped hard, its front tires riding over the body. A split second later, the back tires bumped over it. All four wheels hit pavement again, the truck speeding away.

Dean fought the urge to ease up and look back. He hunched forward, blinking through sweat, clenching the wheel, focusing on the road.

He needed to get to a hospital.

His shirt clung to his back. The steering wheel was sticky with blood. He didn’t hurt—shock had taken him away from that. But he needed to get to a fucking hospital.

He checked the rearview. Nothing but darkness beyond the red glow of his lights.

All the blood in his shirt. His mouth flooded with saliva. A clamminess crawled his scalp, draining the heat from his cheeks.

His lips felt thin, numb. His fingers were thick and clumsy.

He glanced in the rearview.

Trees and empty road.

“Jesus,” he whispered. He tried to remember where the hospital was, what roads he needed to take to get there. He could picture the place—ugly sprawling white with a squared-off canopy over the front entrance—but the road leading to it was as black as the night behind him.

“Jesus.” He was shaking.

That thing had just killed him.

His blood was pumping out of his neck as fast as his heart could beat, and that thing had just fucking killed him.

Warmth slipped through him, a floating feeling of comfort. He fought his eyes back open, back to the reality of his situation. He tried to watch the road. Something familiar would come along. Something would snap into place.

His hands were like blocks of Styrofoam, useless and light, like they were going to float right off the wheel. He focused on them, on keeping hold of the wheel.

His speed slipped to forty.

He sent a signal down to his foot to put more pressure on the pedal, but lowering that foot was like asking it to climb a mountain with a ninety-pound weight tied to it. The speedometer wavered toward forty-five before starting to sink back.

He wanted to sink too.

Just sink into blackness and not worry about anything…

A crossroad came up. He turned without signaling, afraid to let the wheel go with either hand. He took another turn, wide, the truck ranging into the other lane. He came close to swiping a car parked on the street before correcting. Another turn—no idea where he was going, only that he wanted to be off the road he’d been on, to make it difficult for the biker to track him down.

He wasn’t willing to believe running over the guy had killed him.

Jesus
.

He saw a dog in the road suddenly—a Newfoundland so black it was only thanks to its eyes that it caught Dean’s attention. He swerved, feeling for a second like he wasn’t going to be able to get the truck back on the road, and then he had it, the dog disappearing behind him.

Two blocks later, he was drifting toward darkness again. Wanting so badly to just give in to it.

The truck crept to ten miles an hour.

His legs felt like lead. He was losing the fight to stay conscious.

He coasted into a dirt lot beside a disheveled concrete building, its windows boarded. The dirt in the lot was so dead, it didn’t even have weeds growing in it.

The truck rolled to a stop in the building’s shadow.

His fingers fumbled the keys until he got hold of them and turned the one in the ignition. The engine cut off.

He stared into the dark shapes of trees behind the building.

Fuzzy shadows swelled at the edge of his vision.

He made a sharp sound, a
chh
through his teeth. The skin behind his ears prickled as he strained to hear a bike, a dog barking—the
whomp whomp
of wings.

The engine ticked, cooling under the hood.

The urge to throw up tightened his stomach, but he was detached from it. His body couldn’t get itself together enough to carry half-digested food up his esophagus.

Air rushed in his ears, like the inside of a seashell—and the blackness came again.

The engine ticked.

Then there was silence.

C
arl Delacroix eased
his Cougar alongside the curb, engine idling. So far he’d only seen New Hampshire in the dark, and his impression was there were a lot of trees, most of them ashy black until the Cougar’s headlights washed them gray, but he’d seen trees that made him think of bones too, their bark white and peeling.

Colonial homes lined this street, silent and boxy and severe-looking, with either no shutters at all or narrow dark rectangles framing dark windows, hardly any roof overhang, which said to him that sun wasn’t the same thing here as it was in New Mexico. Short white fences edged the yards, collecting fallen oak leaves in their pickets.

He flipped the dome light on, unfolded the map he’d picked up at a Sunoco in Keene. It’d been a thirty-four-hour drive across the country, mile after mile of highway. He could have flown—probably should have, but then what? Pay for a rental on top of airfare? That was assuming anyone would even rent to a twenty-year-old.