Second Skin Part 16

"Back off," I warned Jin. He purred at me, and I swear he smiled around his awful teeth, a long blood-red tongue snaking out to wash his jaws and chin with spittle.

"Fine," I gritted. "Be that way." I tossed the alcohol, splashing Jin square in the face, then I grabbed the Bunsen burner sitting on the lab table and spun the valve all the way open.

A jet of flame leapt the s.p.a.ce between Jin and me and set him ablaze, his skin puckering like a sausage under a broiler. He screamed and staggered backward into another table, sliding down to the floor as he bucked and convulsed underneath the sheet of fire.

I just stood and watched, and as I did Jin began to ash, his limbs blackening and sloughing away. He made feeble sounds of pain.

I just held my injured arm against my stomach and closed my nostrils against the scent of smoke and overcooked meat that filled the lab. Jin stopped moving, slowly but surely the ashy rot creeping up his body until he was nothing but a skeleton, and then not even that.

It wasn't until I got outside to Kronen and the fleet of police and fire vehicles that I realized Bertrand Lautrec had gotten away.

CHAPTER 12.

Bryson shoved his way through a knot of emergency personnel and spread his hands in disbelief. "What the Hex happened?"

"Hold still!" the EMT bandaging my arm ordered as I swung to face David.

"We've got a major problem."

Bryson craned to look into the morgue. "Like what?"

"Bertrand Lautrec," I said. The EMT jabbed me with a hypo of painkillers and released me with a glare.

"Christ, check out those two on the stretchers . . . they look chewed." Bryson turned back to me as Orris and his commander were wheeled by. "Lautrec's dead."

"Yeah . . . not so much," I murmured. Bryson shut his eyes and pressed his hands over his face.

"Tell me the painkillers are making you loopy, Wilder. Please. Please."

"He got up, along with the three other vics, and they did all of this," I said. "Except Lautrec. He took off."

"a.s.suming that a gunshot victim has any sort of brains left," Bryson said, yanking on his tie in a defeated fashion, "where would he go?"

I turned and walked away from the cordon, just to be going somewhere. Then an iron fist wrapped my gut, and I stopped. "Laurel."

Bryson paled. "Oh, Hex me."

I beat him to his Taurus, even with the sling and the painkillers slowing me down. Bryson slapped the flasher on his dashboard and violated a dozen traffic laws to make it to Laurel's apartment.

"What's the move?" he asked as we crossed the lobby. "Shoot 'im in the head? Holy water?"

"Guns don't do c.r.a.p from what I've seen," I said. If a bone saw didn't dent Priscilla, I didn't think bullets would have any luck. "Fire's the only way."

"Great. Let me pull out my handy napalm tank," Bryson muttered. We rode the elevator, feeling the air vibrate around us. "What the h.e.l.l is taking backup so long?" he said.

"Most of them are still cleaning up after the quake," I said. "Tac-3's been on forty-eight straight hours of calls." I was chattering to fill the silence, so my thoughts wouldn't run to YouWhre willingly going to confront a guy who already died once and was no prize in life. YouWhre willingly going to confront a guy who already died once and was no prize in life.

The elevator stopped, and I indicated that Bryson should get out first. I held my pistol one-handed and slid along the wall, covering him as we approached Laurel's door. My heart began to thud as I caught that cold metal stench.

"He's here," I hissed at Bryson. He didn't respond, just swallowed and tightened his grip on his Sig Sauer. I could hear Bryson's heartbeat, too fast, and smell his sweat-pure fear. I gotta say, he hid it like a trooper.

"Laurel?" I called as Bryson kicked open her door. The latch was broken, and it creaked feebly as the door hit the wall.

Something hissed from within the dark apartment. Bryson raised his sidearm, then yelped as Laurel's cat shot past us and disappeared down the hall.

"Jesus," Bryson said, leaning against the wall. I tried the light, and a floor lamp responded, tilted on its side. It sent up a red glow from the blood pool it was lying in. Bryson said, leaning against the wall. I tried the light, and a floor lamp responded, tilted on its side. It sent up a red glow from the blood pool it was lying in.

Laurel Hicks was on her back, her eyes open and her face bloodless. She wasn't marked except for a row of punctures across her cheeks, as if someone had held her head in place. Tried to make her look at them, understand what was happening. The blood from her body was across her sitting room, like someone had spilled it out of a jug. Her heart, I could only a.s.sume, was with Lautrec.

"We're too late," I said softly. Bryson slumped, holstering his weapon.

"No-" I started and then Lautrec sprang from out of the darkness. He hit Bryson in the chest and knocked him back, the stocky detective denting the thin wall of Laurel's apartment.

Lautrec landed on the linoleum and hissed at me, sc.r.a.ping his claws together in a h.e.l.lish screech.

I darted around him, slapping at the k.n.o.bs on Laurel's old stove. The hiss and stench were welcome, considering the night I was having.

"Feed . . . me . . . ," Lautrec groaned, scrabbling at his own stomach as he bared his fangs and snapped at me. I grabbed a box of kitchen matches and dropped under his swipe, sliding on my b.u.t.t across the linoleum, as far from the stove as I could get.

"Bryson, cover!" I yelled, and I struck a handful of matches.

The explosion wasn't big, as far as explosions go, but it took out all the windows in the apartment and fried Lautrec where he stood. He screamed and disintegrated, still trying to claw at me.

Bryson helped me up, grunting when I bled on him from my freshly opened arm. "c.r.a.p. I hate this s.h.i.t, Wilder. I loathe it." His tie and cuffs were singed-and a little bit melted-but he looked none the worse for wear. Even his hair was still in place.

While Bryson wielded a fire extinguisher over the blackened kitchen, I bent down and closed Laurel's eyes with my good hand. Her skin was ice to my touch, like she'd been dead for days. "I hope it was fast," I whispered.

In the hallway, backup units had started to arrive and uniforms crowded in the doorway. I pushed through them and kept walking until a wall cropped up, and then I leaned my forehead against it. The world spun slowly beneath my feet.

A charm against evil. If what I'd seen tonight wasn't evil, then my perception of the world was hopeless. And I'd stolen it, because I didn't believe real evil could be fended off . . .

"Hey, Wilder?" Bryson said as the elevator opened to reveal a CSU team.

I swiped at my eyes with my thumb before I looked at him. "Yeah, David?"

He was holding Laurel's cat, and she growled at me. "Shh," Bryson told her, and sneezed. "Look, I'm sorry about what I said before."

"Oh?" I muttered.

"Yeah. You are far far from the biggest freak in this city." from the biggest freak in this city."

I looked back at the sad, dim little apartment that had contained Laurel's life, and now her ghost. "This was my fault."

"What?" Bryson started shaking his head. "That's crazy, Wilder. Your blood loss is talkin' for you."

"I took her charm," I said. "I took away what was keeping her safe. She knew, David. She knew something bad had happened to Lautrec and I got too wrapped up in figuring out how."

"Okay," said Bryson. "Number one, I don't believe in that hoodoo c.r.a.p, and number two, I think you need to go to the hospital."

"I'm fine," I said, shutting my eyes on the tableau of Laurel's body. Bryson could say whatever he wanted-the dead woman in the apartment was my fault, my shame.

"You're pumping red stuff pretty good," said Bryson, in a tone approaching gentle. I looked down and saw a scatter of droplets on the linoleum at my feet. My arm, I realized, felt like h.e.l.l.

"Go," said Bryson. "I'll mop up here and let you know what the move is."

"The move is we catch these sons of b.i.t.c.hes," I said. "Before they do this to anyone else."

Bryson sighed. "Yeah, Wilder. I'm working on it."

That night in the hospital, I slept better than I had in over a year. Before Alistair Duncan started killing girls in my precinct, before Joshua and Dmitri had both wandered into my life.

But my nightmares were the worst they'd ever been. Laurel dead, Laurel alive, Wendigo tearing me apart, every murder victim I'd ever worked asking me why, why, why I didn't save them. And I knew all the time that their deaths were on my hands.

Finally, I dreamed that I smelled Dmitri's distinctive mix of cloves and were and himself, spicy and heady like some open-air bazaar in another part of the world, and I knew he was gone, and that the scent of him was all that remained.

When my eyes flicked open under the persistent sunlight, I saw I wasn't dreaming, at least not wholly.

"Hey, darlin'," Dmitri said from the chair across the room. "You've looked better."

"Felt better," I said.

"Thought you were going to go kick down the Wendigo's door."

"I got sidetracked," I muttered, reaching for a pitcher of water left by the bed and not managing it.

Dmitri got up and poured me a gla.s.s, then sat on the edge of the bed. "Sidetracked, you? By what?"

"The gnawing dead," I said, sinking back into the stiff pillows. I tried to growl but it came out more like a frustrated cough. I hurt in places I hadn't imagined existed the night before, and the painkillers had lost the battle against my were physiology and worn off.

"What are you doing here?" I asked Dmitri when he pushed my hair off my forehead.

"That Bryson guy," he said. "Called and told me that you had some serious trouble at the morgue and you were hurt."

"Did you come down to say I told you so I told you so?" I said. "If so, consider it said and let me suffer in peace, okay?"

"I came to say I'm sorry," Dmitri said. Of course, I couldn't just be beat up and have bad breath from hospital food. I had to seem like the world's b.i.t.c.hiest girlfriend on top of it.

"Oh" was what I said out loud. "Well. Um. Thanks."

"I shouldn't have pushed you," Dmitri said simply. "I want to give this another try. I didn't leave the Redbacks just to wander around this G.o.dd.a.m.n city, getting drunk by myself because I can't stop thinking about you, because I'm afraid of what the f.u.c.king daemon bite might do. I'm not gonna be afraid to stand by you."

I poked him on the arm, to cover the twist my stomach gave at his words. "Are you sure you're Dmitri? Switch bodies with a hopeless romantic lately?"

He grabbed my hand and pressed the fingers to his lips, then pulled me close and kissed me. I squealed when he pulled against what felt like a needlepoint design st.i.tched into my arm and shoulder. Dmitri winced. "Sorry!" He held up my forearm and examined the b.l.o.o.d.y swath of bandages and the many neat st.i.tches that decorated me like a map of railroad tracks. "Hex me, Luna. What got you?"

"I wish I knew, I really do," I growled. "Because I would find them and shove their heads up their mutant a.s.ses." I flopped back against the stiff stack of hospital pillows. "I got them, though. Even Lautrec. But I was . . ." I pressed my lips together. Responsible for an innocent woman's death. Responsible for an innocent woman's death.

Dmitri c.o.c.ked his left eyebrow. "Thought Lautrec was dead."

"Yeah, so did I."

He fluffed my pillow to prop me up. "The doctor said you could go home when you were ready. Need a lift?"

I bit my lip. I wanted Dmitri back. I was lonely, and life was hard and occasionally fraught with the walking dead. But how long before we got back on the merry-go-round of fighting over every G.o.ds-d.a.m.n thing?

h.e.l.l. I wasn't famous for making good decisions and I wasn't about to tarnish my reputation. "I'd love to go home," I said. Dmitri pulled me close and kissed the top of my head.

"No more fighting."

"Not for at least a good hour and a half," I said. "I think that's how long it will take for my st.i.tches to start itching. After that, all bets are off. Ask Sunny about the time I sliced my finger open with a pedicure file."

I got up and found my clothes on the small table under the window. I had just started to slip out of my back-less hospital robe when the door banged open and Bryson appeared, in a seersucker jacket and white pants, clutching a bouquet of daisies like a nightmarish, unshaven candy striper.

"Oh man!" he said when he saw me. "Sorry, Wilder! I'm averting my eyes!"

"I'm naked here, David!" I yelled at him.

"Yeah, I can see that."

"Get out," Dmitri snarled, showing his fangs. Bryson yelped and ducked back into the hall. Dmitri snarled, showing his fangs. Bryson yelped and ducked back into the hall.

"You decent?" he said.

"I am now," I said, pulling on my mostly shredded T-shirt and zipping my jacket over it.

Bryson came back in. "Sorry. I just wanted to come by and make sure you were still in mostly one piece." He stuck out his hand. "Yuri, right? I'm Dave Bryson."

"Dmitri," said Dmitri, not taking the proffered hand. "Luna's told me about you."

Bryson paled slightly. "Uh, listen. That stuff . . . uh . . . what she said I may have done . . . I'm very, very sorry."

Dmitri's eyes went to full black. "You better be. You caused her a lot of pain. I don't like you."

"Oh G.o.ds, G.o.ds," I said, putting myself between the two. "Lay off the testosterone, okay? David doesn't need any more body hair." I took the daisies out of Bryson's fist. "Thank you, Bryson. These were very thoughtful."

He gave me a weak smile. "Not the only reason I came down here."

"Oh?"