Shallow Veins (The Obscured Book 1) (26 page)

The hand-creature has other plans.

Butcher yelps and drops the hand, the skin of which is now covered in porcupine barbs, sharp spikes pushed out of human pores. It jumps from his lap and onto the dashboard with its body in strike position.

"You're not trying that again," Butcher warns. He retrieves his gun from the seat and fires at the hand, forgetting how strong the gunshot would be. The windows shatter all at once, glass exploding outward. The inside of the hearse fills with deafening sound. He shakes his head and bangs it with his fist until his senses return.

When they do, he finds himself alone in the car.

Butcher looks around to find telltale fingers or spots of black blood, until he sees it- out of the car and down the road a bit, scuttling once again toward town, the first buildings visible just ahead.

Butcher pulls the dead legs from his ears, wipes the shards of glass out of his way and guns the gas.

**

On the outskirts of town, where the first stores pop up like mushrooms of brick and light, Butcher pulls the hearse over. He jumps out and leans on the hood, watching the Self-hand slip between feet, into the crowd and out of sight.

The Halloween parade. Once a year the people of Shallow Creek put on the scariest costumes they can find and cram themselves into the sidewalks of Main Street. Standing shoulder-to-fake-bloodied-shoulder, they drink from plastic cups and watch the procession of the dead pass them by- grotesque floats, undead little league teams, dancing ghosts, even a lightly-clothed fire-breather from three towns over. The kids trick-or-treat in the stores while their parents get good and sloshed, because other than New Year's Eve it's the one day police look the other way.

Up until a few days ago, Butcher had planned to be right there with them. But plans have changed slightly.

“Cool car,” a werewolf shouts, patting him on the back a little too hard. Butcher has half a mind to knock the wolf on his drunk ass, but instead he leans into the hearse and pockets the keys.

“Watch it for me,” he says, and walks into the crowd.

The mob is thick with the smell of beer sweat and costume glue. Butcher gets more than a few annoyed looks as he pushes through the crowd, eyes on the ground scanning the cigarette butts and empty cups for signs of prey. He keeps one hand on his holster in case some sloshed partyer decides it would be hilarious to grab a cop’s gun.

Someone shoves him from behind. The mass of people in front stops him from falling to the sidewalk, not without a few annoyed grunts and shouts. He spins to see who pushed him but he’s met with a wall of strange looks, as if he’s the problem here.

There are two conclusions he can come to: one, that someone realized too late they just assaulted a police officer, or two, they knew who he was, knew he was a cop, and attacked him anyway.

He hasn’t forgotten the faces of the Self-people who chased him from the Robins house and across that field trying to kill him, the same he saw around town the next day as if everything was normal, as if they weren’t doppelgangers from another world. Butcher inspects the crowd for those faces but all he can see are emotionless masks. Villains and terrors, frozen in time. All at once he understands how vulnerable a position he’s put himself in.

No back-up. No eyes from above. No plan.

Alone in a crowd.

A little girl screams further up the street. It’s the kind of freaked-out reaction Butcher had been hoping for, the kind no one would pay attention to in the middle of a Halloween celebration. It isn’t much to go on but it’s all he has. He forgets about the shove for the time being and locks in on the girl. He finds her with her face buried in her father’s pant leg, a young, Indian man alongside his pretty wife, tourists judging by their clothes.

“Is she hurt,” Butcher asks.

The man looks frightened by the uniform. “There’s no problem, officer.”

“But did she see something?”

“I think she’s overwhelmed by all the noise.”

“Did she see which way it went?”

“Really, it’s no problem.”

“Which way did it go,” Butcher raises his voice. The man stares back at him, but then a tiny voice rises up from below the crowd.

“It was a spider,” the girl says. She points up the street to the empty block beyond the barricade.

Butcher takes off in that direction, shoving again through the crowd, now even more determined to find the hand and crush it under his boot.

Behind him he hears a woman reassuring the girl. “Don't you worry, Officer Butcher will catch that mean, old spider.” He glances back to see Meredith Maycomb, all in black, smiling at him.

Butcher leaves the woman behind, telling himself he’ll have to pay her another visit in the near future. He continues through the crowd, through the oohs and ahhs and drunken hollering until he reaches the police barricade at the other end, which he slips under and into the empty street. No one in the crowd bothers to notice, focused either on the parade or on the bottom of their plastic cups.

A wind picks up that smells of ozone, the fresh, pregnant air of a coming rain. Then, he spots it. One block up, lit by streetlight, the Self-hand scuttles around the corner and makes a right onto Jackson Street.

Butcher is thankful for the lucky break- Jackson Street is a dead-end, blocked at the end by the Shallow Creek Municipal Court building. With all the stores closed there will be no witnesses, no bystanders. He'll have a clear shot to take the thing out before it reaches the others.

Butcher draws his gun and checks how many rounds he has left: twelve bullets. More than enough to kill a hand.

He picks up the pace and rounds the corner to find his prey in the middle of the street, turned around to face him. The heavy-breathing hand moves up and down on bug-legs, watches him approach with its finger-eyes.

A few yards separate them, too far for a clear shot at such a small target. Around them garbage blows in the growing wind- man-made tumbleweeds in a twisted joke of a Western. Butcher could almost enjoy the moment if his brain weren't pounding inside his skull.

"There's nowhere to go, you little bastard." He raises his gun and the hand tenses.

"Thatt was the idea, Officer Butcher." A woman steps out of one of the cars parked along Jackson Street. She’s familiar, one of the faces from the Robins party. As she walks toward him, another car door opens. This time a man steps out.

"It takes the simplest of planns to catch a human," he says.

Another car, another Self. "Of all the worlds yourrs is the weakest."

This time behind him. "We will easily ttake itt from you."

One after the other, Self-people emerge from every car until Butcher and the hand are surrounded, a wide circle of doppelgangers cutting off every exit. A gust of wind blows through them, giving Butcher a nose full of their stink.

In the distance, on the bronze structure that tops the court building, a man rises into view. He holds the building’s antenna to steady himself in the wind. Lightning flashes here and there in the dark clouds beyond.

Butcher’s eyes burn in their sockets. “Kevin,” he mutters.

“That’s not who he is anymore.” One more joins the circle.

“Just like you’re not Banks?”

The large man’s smile crawls with black tendons. "The memory of his flesh remains, enough that we know how little he thought of you."

"Trust me, the feeling's mutual. And now that he's part of you freaks, let's just say his stock isn't going up."

The two men circle each other at the center of the Self trap, thunderclaps crackle-booming over their heads. Back on Main Street, the sound of a disappointed crowd dispersing rises up into the sky.

"You had a chance to be a part of us, old blood, ppart of The Joining.” The others echo the word. “Now all we want is to ttear you apart, one piece at a time."

The Self-people around them link arms, the limbs twisting and melting together to form a solid wall.

"We will enjoy your suffering as wwe will enjoy your deathh." Banks holds his hand out to Butcher, letting him see the fingers grow into long, blackened claws. "The Self will be the end of all mmankind, but first, it will be the end of you."

"One small step for man,” Butcher shrugs.

Banks rushes at him a locomotive of shifting skin, feet pounding the street, mouth stretched and screaming, a rage that doesn't find its way into his dead eyes. Butcher fires off two searing rounds. One burns into Banks' chest while the other grazes the man's neck and tears off a chunk of skin and muscle. Neither are enough to stop him and he drives into Butcher at full force, knocks him off his feet and takes him down to the hard blacktop. The force of the impact knocks the gun from Butcher's grip and it tumbles out of reach.

The two wrestle on the ground, exchanging blows. Banks doesn't use his claw hand, preferring to toy with Butcher, hurt him with Banks' human hand. It's enough to convince Butcher that at least some part of the real Banks is still in there somewhere, enjoying this.

His gun. It's close enough to reach. He goes for it. Banks knocks it away and then, with his human hand, holds Butcher down by the neck. With the other he slashes Butcher across the face.

Blood sprays the street. Five, deep cuts open on Butcher's face, the pain so excruciating Butcher doesn't hear himself scream. Satisfaction creeps into Banks' cold eyes, long teeth twisted into smile formation.

Something happens in Butcher. It's a change at the cellular level, brought on by pain and risk of death. His mind fills with images, snapshots of Banks before and after death; a bulk download, as if all of Banks funnels down through the skin. He feels a rush of blood in his neck where Banks' hand crushes his throat, and he's never felt this before- a transfer, no, a transfusion of energy. He drinks it in, pulls it inside, feels it warm him.

The bleeding cuts on Butcher's face, all five gushing wounds, become alive with growth. Scabs stitch him. New flesh grows. The slashes shrink until they close up completely, only blood left behind.

Butcher sees it all happen through Banks' eyes, taking the memory as it happens. It's so surreal he doubts whether it even happens, but the look of shock on Banks' crooked face tells him otherwise.

"Ahh, here it is," Butcher says through the blood. Banks looks down to find the man's gun stuck up in his gut.

Before Banks can move his heart-brain, Butcher fires.

Banks' stomach explodes in a burst of black blood, the heart-brain with it. The wall of Self roars at the kill. It's not a loss the way humans know it; it insults them to see a member of their hive killed.

As his face goes blank, Banks' skin turns from pink to gray then wilts to nothing, the way sped up footage of dying flowers looks, all shrinking and drying, until the man crumbles into dust. Officer Banks becomes nothing more than ash carried on the rising wind.

The empty uniform falls into Butcher's lap. He tosses it aside as he gets to his feet, gun in hand. Meanwhile the angry wall presses in. Their arms entwine closer, tighter, and the circle becomes smaller around Butcher. Their wretched faces shrink and expand, prepared to attack, a drawing back before the wave.

"Come on, guys, let's not bring emotions into this. You're above that."

They jump on him. The circle closes in a mass of spinning and shrieking. The chaotic mixture of muscle makes the group indiscernible from one another. Butcher is a man lost in the shuffle; drowning in flesh.

A glowing red spot forms on one side of the chaos, veins visible like a child holding a flashlight under their hand, and then the glow becomes an explosion of Self-meat mixed with oily black. Butcher jumps out and free of the mass before it closes up. As he moves away it’s already ripping and separating into individuals again, though individuals missing a few pieces, their clothes reduced to rags.

Eight bullets left.

Butcher scans the street for the little bastard hand as thunder growls and crackles above. The hand runs on its bug-legs toward the court building, making ground. The only things standing between he and it: the shrieking Self-people intent on his skin.

So, a lot.

Butcher flanks left around them and fires on the outermost Self-man, aimed low. The molten shot sheers off his leg at the knee. He crumples to the blacktop. Butcher jumps over him, using the back of his head for footing, his cockeyed face complaining as it's crushed into the street.

As Butcher steps off its head, a Self-woman grabs for him with muddy red pincer-arms. He dodges the arms but stumbles, knocked off-center, and almost doesn't stick the landing. The thing grabs for him again and he fires off a wild shot but misses his mark.

“Hey, stay still,” Butcher tells her.

Over the Self's shoulder, the entire ragged crowd grins at Butcher with serrated smiles and tongues with faces.

He frowns. “Or, I could run.”

The pincered Self lunges for him. He shoots her in the chest, sending her backward and into the crowd, buying him a second to run for it, which he does, weaving around lampposts and mailboxes. The Self-people trail behind, some of them spread out to cut him off. He jumps over the hood of the next car, slides over it.