Skin Deep (4 page)

Blood. Fresh blood. A luscious odor, laced with tendrils of the familiar.

I moved closer, my mind warring with my emotions. This was no bundle of rags, or some stolen junk those thugs had thrown away, but a living being. The blood surely meant the person now lying on the sidewalk needed medical attention.

I stood over the bundle, the odor of the blood so cloying, filling my nostrils
until I felt the urge to gag. And in a moment of doubt and fear, I hesitated.

Now or never.

I took a deep breath and crouched beside the silent form. My hand quivered as I reached out and touched the scratchy, ragged fabric covering the shoulder of the silent figure. At first it resisted my tug, stiff against my touch, but one more gentle urging turned him toward me.

I gasped, my throat closing on the sound. My heel caught as I pulled away, and I staggered backward as hot horror burned through my veins. The face glistened, bloody and mangled. Raw muscles and ligaments lay exposed, bare. A low moan of horror echoed around me. Chills streaked up my spine when I realized the stricken sound had originated from my own throat. The familiar richness of him clouded my mind, clogging my throat and drugging my senses.

A Walker.

A feline from the scent of him. A Cougar to be specific.

My throat spasmed, silencing a shriek as he stared at me. His breath whispered—shallow, irregular, the sound ragged as he labored in his final moments. He gripped with desperation to the disappearing threads which held him to this mortal earth.

His face held my gaze, and somewhere behind ribs of ice my heart clenched, threatening to implode. My own face stared back at me, reflected from within eyes as blue as oceans. Eyes filled with excruciating pain and desperate fear. He didn't speak, just studied me for a few moments with those glorious eyes.

Recognition. Gratitude. Relief.

Then...release.

Life flickered and sputtered out of his beautiful eyes—eyes unable to close even after his soul departed his mortal body. Eyes stark and ghastly within a face flayed of every inch of skin.

Mere seconds had passed, although I would’ve sworn it had been hours. Screeching tires again interrupted my horror, and the sedan skidded beside me before I could do much more than scramble away from the body. The killers had managed to lose the cops, and now they'd returned to retrieve the body.

They hadn't bargained on having a witness.

The cold-cocking of guns set my body on fire.

It also did something worse. With mortal fear gripping me, my imminent Change refused to take second place anymore. My body churned the fear and my Panther grasped at the visceral power of the adrenalin in my veins.

I ran.

A gunshot echoed around the garden, the sound ping-ponging off the aging brick walls of the surrounding apartment buildings.

I gasped as a blast of searing pain slammed into me, as a bullet buried itself deep within my shoulder.

***

I crashed through the lot, leaving countless well-loved plants and flowers smashed in my wake. The Rehab Center backed onto a communal garden, through which I now ran headlong, desperate to get to the safety of my office.

I flinched as a bullet whizzed by, so close to my ear I could smell the heat of the spinning metal, could feel the scorched air move against my skin as it missed its mark. A second slug plummeted into a bed of chives inches behind me. Dashing through a line of wilting delphiniums, I dove for the safety of the shadows. The back wall of the Center simmered in pitch darkness, sufficient cover as I stumbled inelegantly up the short flight of stairs to the rear entrance.

No time or courage to look back.

When I reached into my hip pocket for the keys, pain coursed through my shoulder.
Damn
. I curled my right hand around my abdomen, struggling a little before I managed to fish my keys out without dropping them, a miracle in itself considering my shaking fingers.

Another bullet buried itself into the wall next to me, spewing a cloud of fine dust onto the stairs. I ducked too late, and grimaced. An inch to the right and I would've been pleading my case to the good Lady Ailuros, hoping for her kindest mercy.

My hands trembled from the spiking agony in my shoulder. Thick night plastered the building, hiding me from the shooters. As I bent to jiggle the key into the rusty lock I felt blood warm my back, thick and slick.

I wasn't scared.

Of course not. I'd just witnessed the death of a Walker, seen the result of his horrible torture. I'd also just been shot in the back by a couple of morons who couldn't shoot straight.

My fingers shook so much the key wouldn't slide into the damned lock.

Nope, not scared at all.

Visions of meeting an undignified end, splattered across the back door of the Center, teased the edges of my mind. I was way too young to die like this, not to mention way too smart to have gotten into a situation like this in the first place. Sure, I hunted the ruthless wraiths, and killed them too. But what use were my poisoned arrows and fighting fists against the blaze of bullets?

I gasped as another murderous metal missile struck a foot from the door. No use counting rounds—two shooters, and no idea how much firepower or ammo they packed.

Just move.

I groaned in relief when the door swung open. Slipping inside, I pulled it shut behind me, waited until the lock clicked, then raced up the dark stairwell at breakneck speed. My boots echoed on the concrete steps, disorienting and slightly disconcerting. Down the hall I fled, pain and my Panther fighting for priority.

My jelly knees quivered, and I made it only as far as the end of the
hallway. I bent over, holding onto the wall, waiting for my legs to behave, trying to catch my thunderous breath. The wall felt cool beneath my fingers, a stark reminder that my body burned, on fire with need. Agony spiked my wounds, fed my urge to change, fired my Panther's desire for release.

This wasn't the usual way my hunts ended. My conscience flicked me an admonition as my mind's eye drew an image of my dad, his scowl shadowed by his graying eyebrows. He wouldn't approve of my hunts any more than he approved of my leaving the colony. I'd passed from his guardianship to my grandmother's, still deemed a traitorous child in his eyes. He'd never spoken the words aloud, but the hardness in his eyes had been condemnation enough. No progeny of the Alpha should, or would, desert the sanctity of their Alpha family, especially not to live among the Humans.

But I'd kicked wraith-butt night after night, without the help of my judgmental father. I refused to allow him to affect my concentration, not when my life depended on my own reflexes.

I scanned the silent hall. My frantic gasps seemed loud enough to rouse the dead, but it wasn't the dead I feared. Clem, the super, would be just down the hall, and I'd prefer not to disturb the man. He was creepy enough in the
day
time. Besides, how would I explain my bullet wound to the cantankerous codger, or what I was doing here so late at night?

I flipped my wrist and checked my watch: just after eleven. A siren wailed in the distance. A car door thunked in response, an engine revved viciously, and tires screeched as the sedan sped away.

In spite of my grip on the wall, the world around me—hall, walls and all—spun drunkenly. Was I passing out from the pain, from lack of blood? Or was my Panther emerging while my body flailed about in agony, unable to fend her off?

It didn't matter.

I'd rested plenty, and had not much farther to go—only one flight of stairs. Take one riser at a time. And don't forget to breathe.

Each step up made my head lighter. At the landing, I hung a left and shoved a key into a lock for the second time in a handful of minutes. The state of my hands and my heartbeat remained unchanged. So did the cold bite of the bullet wedged in my shoulder. Thank Ailuros it was steel and not silver. Though silver wouldn't kill me, the metal had the power to hamper a Walker's healing process.

Something to be said for small mercies, then.

I was strong, and hard. Had to be. Nobody would come charging to my rescue. My father?

Keep dreaming, Odel.

My brother, Iain, had submerged his head so deep in Clan work only my blood-drenched corpse would warrant his attention. Given my current condition, I could be seeing Iain soon enough. And Grandma Ivy? Well, she was off on some jaunt in the Sahara or some African desert region. Very mysterious stuff. She'd made me promise not to tell my father she was more of an absent guardian than he'd ever been. Seemed even his mother would rather avoid confrontation with him, so who was I to complain?

I crashed into the office and shut the door, sending a prayer to Ailuros to hold Clem in slumber a little longer. I leaned against the clouded glass window, taking a few deep breaths before maneuvering the gauntlet of chairs set up for the next morning's group session.

I stumbled to the closet a few feet to the right of the desk. These last few minutes had felt like days of agony and fear. My breath still came in hysterical hiccups. Where had the cool, calm wraith hunter gone?

Things changed when hunter became prey.

My fingers closed over the knob of the closet door as another wave of dizziness hit. This time it laced my throat with bitter bile. Hidden in the closet, in a hidey-hole behind a wall of shelves filled with detergents and stationery, were my weapons and ammunition, spare clothing, first aid stuff, anything I may need after my hunts. I'd constructed it and hidden it so well. Thankfully neither Clancy nor even the cleaners had noticed it.

The shelves loomed around me, as I pushed my way into the secret space behind them and collapsed on the floor, nearly comatose with pain. Even sitting down with my back to the wall, the world still tilted and turned. I swallowed hard. It felt as if I'd swallowed my tongue.

Just one more thing I had to do before I gave in to unconscious bliss.

I felt around in the bottom of my backpack for my mobile phone, not daring to remove my head from against the wall. Clutching the phone, I whispered Anjelo's name into the device. The darned thing promptly advised me to speak more clearly, its tone annoyingly authoritative, seeming to laugh at me.

Damned machine.

Clearing my throat, I spoke his name again, this time restraining the urge to shout at the piece-of-crap phone.

Dial tone. Thank Ailuros.

"Kailin? What time is it?" Anjelo grumbled, his voice thick with sleep, grumpy and perplexed. He loved sleep, even more than his widely known love affair with Italian pasta. Nothing the school cafeteria supplied would ever tempt his taste buds. Anjelo had gourmet taste.

All he would've heard was my grunt of pain as I slid further to the floor, the phone suddenly too heavy to hold to my ear.

"Kailin, you okay?" His voice gurgled as if I were underwater—hollow, strange.

I took a deep breath and gripped the phone, pulling on every last dreg of energy, and said, "Sure. Shot. Bleeding. But okay."

My voice cracked on each syllable, and I barely heard his urgent request for my location. I scowled at the phone, again so heavy it began to pull my hand to the floor, inch by inch.

Why was he shouting at me? I could hear him perfectly.

I spoke with a false calm. "I'm at the Center." Then I let the phone fall, unable to bear its incredible weight.

Sounds filtered to me through the phone. Scrambling. The low thudding of someone bumping into things in the dark. Muffled oaths, and then a slamming door.

Good. Anjelo's coming.

Anjelo Alvarez was my closest Walker friend. When it came to my Wraith-hunting secret, he'd been determined to stay out of it—typical Walker, raised on the old diet of prejudice against Humans. He'd turned sixteen a few months ago, and even though Walkers lived longer lives and aged slower than Humans, I refused to endanger him. Besides, he was no Alpha, didn't have the super-strength that came naturally for me. So I was happy to keep him as far away from the Wraith's as possible.

But calling Anjelo wasn't going to endanger him in any way. At least I hoped not. And I had nobody else to call. I sighed and the world spun.

Anjelo was coming. I just had to hold on.

The bullet deep within the muscle of my back moved slowly, one hairs-breadth at a time. Crushed bone within my shoulder began to knit together. Tiny shattered bone fragments disintegrated, absorbing back into my shoulder blade.

All Walkers could regenerate when injured. But Alphas, with their genetic advantage, were better at it. Those genes were awful nice despite their mutation. Now I hoped my mutated genes would make themselves useful and heal the wound, which burned through my shoulder with all the fury of a newborn volcano.

A half-moan, half-sob spilled from my lips as I leaned heavily against the cool comfort of the closet wall, my shoulder healing and expelling the bullet in a slow and excruciating process.

Darkness took over as I bled profusely onto my beautiful new leather pants.

***