Authors: Marjorie M. Liu
Within the Flames (14 page)
“Ten years?” she said dryly.
“—a long time,” he finished.
Her expression turned disgruntled. “I have friends.”
“I know,” Eddie said, suddenly regretting saying so much.
He never talked like this. He never asked this many questions. Like her, he minded his own business, except for when it involved his friends. A [is thnd even then, he preferred to stay silent, to hang back and observe. To be the man everyone could depend on—without their needing to ask.
That had been all he needed . . . until now.
Lyssa stopped at a pay phone near the intersection of West Fourth Street and MacDougal, on the southern tip of Washington Square Park. Beside them was a clean brick building covered in ivy and bordered by a tall wrought-iron fence. Eddie was pretty certain it was part of the NYU campus, given the university banners hanging from a similar-looking building across the street.
“Are you calling Estefan?” he asked, with dread.
“Yes,” she said, searching through her backpack for change. “Did you ever talk with him?”
“No. All I saw were forwarded e-mails.”
“E-mail is how we usually communicate.”
“How did you meet?”
Lyssa suddenly looked uncomfortable. “It’s a complicated story. I’m sure you’re getting sick of hearing me use that word.”
“You’re a complicated woman. That’s not something I mind.”
She looked at him like maybe he was teasing her, but he was serious—and seriously dreading telling her about Estefan. He had to, though. Right now.
“Lyssa,” he began, but her gaze sharpened, and she turned to stare at the park across the street. Eddie turned with her, on guard. His right hand twitched, fire at the tips of his fingers.
He studied the people at the intersection, but all he saw were several Asian girls wearing backpacks, and a man in a suit carrying a briefcase. A biker zipped past, and so did a man on rollerblades . . . but that was it. No one watched them. No sign of Betty or Nikola.
But if they were witches, not seeing them probably didn’t mean much, anyway.
“What is it?” he asked quietly.
Lyssa tilted her head, and closed her eyes. “A scent. I smell . . .”
She stopped, and her eyes flew open, stark with surprise. Without [ris" align="j another word, she started running.
“Dammit,” Eddie muttered, chasing her.
Lyssa was fast, graceful, her feet barely touching the ground as she flew across the street, nearly getting clipped by a cab that swerved into another lane and laid on the horn. Eddie followed, heart in his throat, trying to keep track of everyone around them—anyone near
her
who could m
ean her harm.
She didn’t run far. Just down the sidewalk that led into the park, then across the grass—straight to a slim woman resting on a blanket near some bushes.
Eddie thought at first she was sleeping, curled on her side. He saw a pierced brow and nose, and tight brown curls. Her dark skin held an ashen undertone, and the hollows under her eyes and in her cheeks were so deep she might have been a cadaver.
Maybe she was, Eddie realized.
The blanket beneath her was stained red with blood.
I
f the wind had been blowing in another direction, Lyssa would never have smelled the blood.
But she did, and because it was blood she paid attention—and smelled someone familiar.
Mandy. One of the women Jimmy had said was missing.
Lyssa didn’t know her well. A crazy, loud girl, who liked to dance in the middle of Grand Central, and hold signs advertising
FREE HUGS
. She and her girlfriend, Flo, were inseparable—homeless, sometimes-prostitutes—addicted to heroin.
She dropped to her knees, trying not to panic—and reached out to touch the young woman’s face. Her skin was cool, but she was breathing.
The blood was on her clothes. Mandy wore a green army jacket that was three sizes too large, and her clothes beneath were all black. Lyssa had to lean in to see the bloodstains that covered her chest, and reached carefully beneath the girl’s jacket to give them an experimental touch. Some of the blood had dried, hardening the sweater.
But most of the blood was wet. The blanket beneath, soaked through and stained. That metallic scent washed over her, making sweat break out against ^theher back and between her breasts. When she swallowed, her throat burned. When she breathed, her lungs were hot.
“Mandy,” she whispered harshly.
Eyelids fluttered. Cracked lips moved. Lyssa listened hard, but all she heard was a quiet hiss of breath.
There was no way to know how long Mandy had been here, but it was long enough to come close to death—without anyone’s noticing.
No one ever noticed. No one ever looked. It was why Lyssa had come to this city.
But I don’t want to die alone
.
Alone, in a crowd.
Invisible.
Eddie crouched beside her, already on his cell phone. She listened to him speak with a 911 operator, his words less important than the fact that he was there, with her.
“Liz,” breathed the young woman. “S’you?”
Hearing Mandy’s voice filled Lyssa with terrible relief, though it was short-lived. “It’s me.”
She let out a strained, shaky, sigh. “God, Flo.”
“Flo isn’t here.”
“No. Gotta get to . . . Flo. ’Fore they kill her.” Her face crumpled, tears sliding down her cheeks. “They took me . . . away from her. I tried to . . . to fight. Didn’t wan’ ’em to make me . . . leave.”
Lyssa leaned back, Mandy’s grief tearing into her like a knife. She had thought similar words over the past ten years.
I should have stayed and fought.
I shouldn’t have run.
Heat exploded behind her eyes, but it’s wasn’t fire. Just tears. Lyssa felt twelve years old again, dying of guilt. She would never forgive herself for that night. Never.
She touched Mandy’s hand, wanting to comfort her.
A connection formed, unexpected and instantaneous: a split-second bond, electric hot, tossing her into a mindscape that resembled a frenzied dance floor crowded with memories, fragmented and frozen between rapid pulses of li c putossing heght.
Flo.
Flo, with her ruddy skin and wild blond hair . . . those lips she puckers to blow kisses, everywhere, at anyone
. . .
Flo.
Smiling.
Flo.
Screaming.
Chains.
Blood.
Sobs.
A knife glints. Wicked blade.
Black blade.
Curved.
Obsidian.
Etched with runes.
Pain seared: a lick of fire in her head, above her heart. Sharp as a stab.
The connection snapped.
Lyssa tilted, breathless. Floating, flying, falling. Part of her was still in Mandy’s mind, listening to Flo scream. Staring at the blade.
She slumped forward, clutching her chest. Blinking hard. Heart pounding with frightening irregularity. The grass came back into view, but it was blurry. Lyssa blinked, and tears spilled from her eyes. She hardly noticed. All she could think about was the obsidian blade.
The weapon of a
Cruor Venator.
Someone touched her shoulders. Lyssa recoiled, but it was only Eddie. His scent washed over her: a mix of woodsmoke and sandalwood.
It had a strange effect on her. His scent reminded her too much of warm winter nights in front of a fire. Nights holding hot chocolate and listening to music. Nights that had been home, long ago and far away.
Lyssa rubbed a shaking hand over her mouth, but the scent of blood was so strong on her fingers that she reeled. Eddie immediately pulled her against his chest, and the contact was warm in the most healing way possible, safe and solid, and more real than the grass beneath her.
“Breathe,” he w cath="0em">
She shivered. “Don’t worry about me. Just Mandy.”
Eddie’s hand tightened. “You know this woman.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “She went missing. A lot of homeless women have been disappearing.”
“Was it the
Cruor Venator
who hurt her?”
An obsidian knife flashed through her memories. Mandy’s memory . . . and her own, ten years old and still fresh in mind.
Lyssa nodded, as more tears slid down her cheeks. Embarrassed, she tried scrubbing her face with the back of her hand, but it did no good. More tears took their place. It was horrifying.
“Hold on,” Eddie said, and reached into his backpack. He pulled out a rumpled tissue and held it out to her. “Here. It’s clean.”
Lyssa was more surprised by the thoughtfulness of the offer than the possibility the tissue might be dirty. She looked at him, and the kindness in his eyes stole her breath away. No pity. Just compassion and concern.
He pushed the tissue into her hand, and she pressed it to her nose.
“Thank you,” she whispered, unable to tear her gaze from his. “Is an ambulance coming?”
“Listen,” he said, and just like that, she heard the wail of a siren.
She looked around the park. Mandy lay ten feet off the sidewalk, just one more homeless woman amongst thousands—making her invisible. No magic needed to hide a dying woman in plain sight.
Some people walking down the sidewalk were watching them now, but no one stopped. Their scents filled her nose—body odor and perfume, pizza grease, halitosis. Nothing slick or dangerous.
Her skin prickled, though. As a child, she’d watched a mountain lion stalk a young elk, and that poor nervous creature had sensed the blow long before it happened. It just hadn’t known from what direction it would come.
I’ve been waiting ten years for the knife to fall.
Lyssa should have already been running. This was a trap. Or a message. A homeless drug addict was not the type of person a
Cruor Venator
would choose to kill. And there was no way Mandy could have escaped the witch . . . unless she was let go on purpose.
But I hardly know her.
Why would she be a target?
What did that mean for Jimmy and his mother?
And who would stop the
Cruor Venator
and her women this time?
Who,
she said to herself, dreading what she already knew.
Who else?
“You know something,” said Eddie.
She shook her head, but only because panic and anger had lodged in her throat, cutting off her voice. The ambulance sirens were closer, and she struggled to her feet—the fire inside her so hot, her skin prickled.
“I need to get out of here,” she muttered, staring at Mandy’s ashen face. The woman was barely conscious, making soft moaning sounds as her fingers twitched. Blood seeped beneath her on the blanket, inviting Lyssa to make another, different connection.
She backed away. Eddie stood with her. “We need to wait for the ambulance.”
A frustrated growl left her throat—followed by the tremendous urge to swing her fists at a stationary target. “I can’t. I barely knew this woman, but if they got to
her . . .”
Mandy was a small target. The next one? Closer, more important.
“There’s a little boy,” Lyssa whispered to Eddie. “The one who was with me earlier today.”
He stared at her for one second, then looked away at the sidewalk. Coiled, intense, his eyes focusing on a power-walking woman in yoga gear, with a tight face, glossy hair, and lips that were plumper than her breasts.
“Ma’am!” he shouted, with a hard authority that Lyssa had only ever associated with the police. The woman responded immediately, teetering to a stop and giving him a startled look.
Eddie didn’t give her time to ask a question. Lyssa watched, impressed, as he strode to her and pointed at Mandy.
Her expression crumpled with uncertainty. “I don’t—”
“Ma’am,” Eddie interrupted. “Do it. Now.”
She blinked at him, then crossed the grass to Mandy, rubbing her palms over her thighs—uneasy, still startled, acting on automatic pilot. Lyssa crouched again beside Mandy, whose breathing was shallow, her eyes closed tight.
“You’re safe,” she told her, hoping that was true. “It’ll be okay.”
“Lyssa,” Eddie said, tugging gently on her shoulder.
The power walker didn’t watch them go. She kept rubbing her hands, standing beside Mandy and staring down at all that blood with horror and consternation.
Sirens wailed with ear-screeching strength. The ambulance had arrived. Eddie and Lyssa jogged to the intersection and met one of the EMTs: a burly man with a beard, and a tattoo on his neck.
“What happened?” he barked, slinging gear over his shoulder.
“I think a woman was stabbed.” Lyssa pointed at the pathway into the park. “Someone is with her now.”
The EMT grunted and helped his partner, a young woman, grab a stretcher from the back of the ambulance. More sirens filled the air. The police would be next.
Lyssa and Eddie looked at each other and started walking.
“Y
ou mentioned that other homeless women have been disappearing,” Eddie said, as a police cruiser sped past them, lights blazing. “For how long?”
It took Lyssa a moment to find her voice. “Couple weeks. I only found out today. I didn’t even know Mandy was gone. Like I said, we’re not close.”
“Then they weren’t targeted because of you.”
Lyssa touched her scarf, pained. “How do you know?”
He had a point, but it didn’t make her feel any better. “Finding Mandy in that park was not a coincidence.”
“So they carry an injured women with them
all the time,
just waiting for the right moment to spring her on you?”
Lyssa blew out her breath, frustrated. “I don’t know.”
“They must have a van,” he muttered to himself. “Especially if they’re kidnapping women off the street.”
“That part doesn’t make sense,” she admitted. “Mandy is a heroin addict. Not the kind of person the
Cruor Venator
would kill.”
“She only goes for doctors and lawyers?” A hint of sarcasm touched his voice.
Lyssa shrugged and nodded. “Something along those lines, yes. And kidnapping? Not her style, either. She likes to play games and pretend she’s dignified. She’ll lure the victim—or stalk, attack, and murder on-site. But throwing girls into a van . . . is beneath her ego.”
Eddie stared. Lyssa’s cheeks warmed. She had said too much, again. And the way he looked at her . . .
She couldn’t hide from his eyes. First in her dreams, and now here in broad daylight. If running from the
Cruor Venator
had been difficult all these years . . . running from this man’s gaze would be impossible.
No doubt, too, he was going to ask,
again
, why she knew so many details about a race of witches that hardly existed anymore. What was she going to tell him this time? Too complicated? Shut up? Go away?
Go away,
she thought.
That would be the smart thing.
But the idea of speaking those words out loud filled her with a shocking amount of pain—as though part of her heart would be ripped to pieces. How the hell had that happened? Why him?