Victoria Nelson - Blood Lines Part 25

"Hey, buddy, can you spare a..."

Who dared? He turned.

"Holy Mary, Mother of G.o.d." Under stubble and dirt, the drunk paled. His nightmares often wore that expression. One filthy arm raised to cover his eyes, he staggered away, muttering, "Forget it, man. Forget me."

He was already forgotten.

Henry had no time to spare on thoughts of mortals. He wanted Tawfik.

He could feel the Nightwalker's anger. The brilliance of his ka was aflame with it.

Find me! He stood at the window and stared down at the street. Although the angle of the hotel cut through his line of sight, he knew exactly where young Richmond waited. His pa.s.sion thrust his ka forward with such force that Tawfik barely had to reach out to touch it. Surface thoughts were still all that were open to him, but those thoughts boiled with enough raw emotion that, for tonight, the surface was entertaining enough.

"Such a small city this turns out to be," he murmured, lightly touching the gla.s.s. "So you know my lord's playthingand the police officer who sent her to find me-who appears to be giving my hunting dogs a good run." Tawfik suddenly remembered the doors he had been maneuvered past on his walk through the chosen one's mind and he smiled. Two of the doors had just given up their secrets. How n.o.ble that she had tried to protect those close to her. "I imagine all these little interconnections have twisted her up far worse than I ever could. My lord must be pleased." If his lord even noticed; very often subtleties were ignored in favor of blind gorging. Tawfik sighed. He had realized long, long ago that he had sworn himself to a G.o.d without grandeur.

FIND ME!.

"You can rant and rave all you like, Nightwalker. I am not going down there. You're not thinking right now, you're only reacting. Thoughts can be twisted. Reactions, especially from one with your physical power, should be avoided."

The Nightwalker, he was amused to note, had not grown beyond the possibility of love. How foolish, to love those who were fed upon. Like a mortal declaring himself for a cow or a chicken...

He took one last look at the burning, brilliant ka that he so desired and then closed his mind to it, removing temptation. "We'll straighten things out later," he promised softly. "We have the time, you and I.".

"Graham. What?"

"Any word on Vicki?"

Dave Graham raised himself up on his elbow and peered at the illuminated numbers of the clock. "Jesus Christ, Mike," he hissed, "it's two o'clock in the f.u.c.king morning.' Can't it wait?"

"What about Vicki?"

Curling around the receiver so as not to wake his wife, Dave surrendered. "There's no warrant in the system. No one's got orders to pick her up. They're keeping an eye on her place, but they're watching for you."

"Then they've already got her."

"They who? Cantree?"

"That's who he seems to be using."

"He?"

"Never mind."

Dave sighed. "Look, maybe she's got nothing to do with this. Maybe she just went to Kingston to visither mother."

"We were working on the same case."

"A police case?" Dave took the long silence that followed his question as an answer and sighed again.

"Mike, Vicki's not on the force anymore. You're not supposed to do that."

"Have you talked to Cantree?"

"Yeah, right after I talked to you this morning."

"And?"

"And like I said in my message, nothing's changed. He still wants you. I don't know why. He said it had something to do with internal security, that I wasn't to ask questions, and all would be made clear later on. He's got me doing scut work out in Rexdale."

"Did he seem strange?"

"f.u.c.k, Mike, this whole thing is strange. Maybe you should just come in and straighten it out. Cantree'll listen."

The bark of laughter held little humor. "The only hope the whole city, maybe the whole world has is that I don't get picked up and I don't go anywhere near Frank Can-tree."

"Right." It was two o'clock in the morning; he had no intention of getting into conspiracy theories. "I'll keep ears and eyes open, but there's not much I can do."

"Anything you see or hear..."

"I'll leave a message. Not that I'm likely to see or hear anything out west of G.o.d's country, I mean, we're talking Rexdale here. You'd better get going in case they've got a trace on this call... Mike? I was joking.

Celluci? Christ..." He stared down at the receiver for a moment, then shook his head, hung up and wrapped himself around the soft, warm curves of his wife.

"Who was that?" she murmured.

"Celluci."

"What time is it?"

"Just after two."

"Oh, G.o.d..." She burrowed deeper under the covers. "They catch him yet?"

"Not yet."

"Pity."

By breakfast, Vicki had regained most of her muscle control; arms and legs moved when and where she wanted them to although the fine-tuning still needed work. Attempting to use her fingers for more thanbasic gripping of utensils was chancy and stringing more than two or three words together tied her tongue in knots. Thinking beyond her present situation, trying to a.n.a.lyze or plan, continued to wrap her brain in cotton, and thinkingabout her present situation did no good at all.

Without her gla.s.ses, breakfast was a heap of yellow and brown at the end of a fuzzy tunnel. It tasted pretty much exactly the way it looked.

She couldn't avoid eating sandwiched between her two cell mates, nor could she miss noticing how the other women on the range steered well clear of them, allowing them to move to the front of the food line as well as claim an entire pitcher of coffee. Natalie's strength combined with Lambert's viciousness placed them firmly on the top of the pecking order. The more coherent of the other inmates regarded Vicki with something close to relief, their expressions proclaiming not so muchbetter you than me as at least when it's you it isn't me .

Protecting her food as well as herself turned out to be more than Vicki was capable of. Egged on by Lambert, Natalie lifted most of Vicki's breakfast and, under the cover of the rickety picnic table-that tilted alarmingly under every shift in weight-pinched her thigh black and blue. Natalie thought the whole thing was pretty funny. Vicki didn't, but the attacks came in from the side and she couldn't fight what she couldn't see. The meal became a painful and humiliating lesson in helplessness.

Locked back in the cell during cleanup, she kept her back against the wall and tried to force her eyes to function. Unfortunately, it didn't take Lambert long to map the limits of her vision. Trying to duck away from the wet end of a towel dipped in the toilet, Vicki felt a sudden kinship with those kids in school yards whom everyone picked on just because they could.

When they were let back out into the range, she groped her way past the row of tables and tried to talk to the guard. She knew where the duty desk should be even though she couldn't actually see it.

"Hey?"

"Hey what?" The guard's voice offered nothing.

"Ine..."

"No. No! NO! NOINO.' NO! NOOOOOO!"

Natalie. Standing right behind her. Although she knew what the result would be, Vicki tried again. "You go..."

"NO!NO!NO! NOOOOOO!".

She didn't think of this on her own. Lambert put her up to it. Teeth clenched so tightly her jaw ached, Vicki was willing to bet that the noise would go on indefinitely.

"Look!" she finally screamed, as she shoved impotently at the woman bellowing a hundred and twenty decibel accompaniment to everything she said. "I don' belon' he'!"

All at once iron rods slammed up against Vicki's face as Natalie shoved her, and for an instant the guard loomed into focus. It wasn't d.i.c.kson. It wasn't anyone Vicki knew.

"So tell the shrink," she suggested. Her expression teetered between boredom and annoyance. "Andback away from those bars."

"Mine for two days," Lambert told her as Natalie led Vicki back to her side.

They spent the morning watching game shows. Vicki sat in a kind of stupor, thankful, given what she could hear over the noise of forty women in an area designed for eighteen, that she couldn't see the televisions. Middle America rejoicing in the glory of frost free refrigerators would've pushed her over the edge.

Lunch was a repeat of breakfast, although Natalie moved to her other side and therefore pinched her other thigh. A woman with a bad case of the d.t.''sthrew her plate against the bars and two others began screaming random profanity. Someone began to howl. Vicki kept her gaze locked firmly on her plate.

Misery seasoned every mouthful.

After lunch, things quieted down as the soap operas came on. Lambert sat enthroned by the best of the four televisions with Natalie enforcing at least a localized silence.

"That's my husband, you know. That's my husband," an elderly woman called pointing at the screen.

"We have thirteen children and a dog and two..." A squawk of pain cut off the litany.

For the moment, Vicki appeared to have been forgotten. Moving carefully, she headed for the showers.

Maybe if she scrubbed the stink of the place off she'd feel less wretched.

The concrete barricade that separated the showers from the common area rose from the floor to waist height and dropped from the ceiling to just above her shoulders. Everything in between was exposed to inmates and guards.

No one's going to be looking at your t.i.ts, Vicki, she told herself running one hand along the damp cement.You're just another piece of meat. No one cares .

A number of the stalls near the entrance were already full. In one, the flesh-colored blur separated itself out into two people. Anything that happened below the level of the barricades happened in as close to privacy as was available.

Stripping off shoes and pants and underwear wasn't so bad, but the flesh on Vicki's back crawled as she shrugged out of the shirt, and pulling the T-shirt up over her head left her feeling more exposed and vulnerable than she ever had in her life. She hurried in under the minimal protection the water offered.

Lost in the heat and the pounding of the spray, she almost convinced herself that she was safe at home and just for that moment things didn't seem so hopeless.

"Good idea, Nelson, but you shouldn't be by yourself. You're still unsteady on your pins and sometimes people fall in the shower. Terrible place. So easy to get hurt."

Lambert. And, as usual, not alone.

Vicki tried to twist her arm out of Natalie's grip. Natalie's answering twist nearly dislocated her elbow.

The pain shot scarlet flames up behind her eyes and burned the fog away. Despair turned suddenly to anger.

She didn't stand a chance. She didn't care. It didn't last long.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on in there?"

"Nothing, boss," Lambert purred. "My buddy fell down." Below the guard's line of sight, her foot pressed lightly on Vicki's throat.

"She okay?"

"Fine, boss."

"Then pick her up and get out of there."

Natalie giggled, reached down, and pinched Vicki's stomach. Hard.

Vicki flinched but ignored it. Her head still rang from its violent contact with the tiles, but for the first time in what seemed like centuries, she was thinking clearly. Lambert and Wills were minor annoyances, no more. Her enemy was a three-thousand-year-old mummy who'd taken the law and twisted it and trapped her in the spiral he'd created. He was going to pay for that. She didn't know who he'd hurt to find her, Henry or Celluci, but he was going to pay for that, too. In order to make him pay, she had to be free and if the system wouldn't free her, then she'd have to do it herself.

"Thank you," she muttered absently, as Natalie dragged her upright.

People had broken out of detention centers before.

"Another beautiful day in the Metro West Detention Center. Thanks, guys, we can take her from here."

The young woman fought against the shackles, hissing and spitting like a large cat. The guards ignored her, hooked their hands under her arms and dragged her away.

"f.u.c.king pigs!" she shrieked. "You're nothing but f.u.c.king pigs and I hope I f.u.c.king knocked your G.o.dd.a.m.ned tooth out!"

Dave Graham sighed and turned to face his temporary partner. "Did she?"

"Nah," Detective Carter Aiken dabbed at the corner of his mouth and winced as his palm came away covered in blood, "but she split my lip."

"Not a bad right cross."

Aiken snorted. "Easier to appreciate it from your angle. There's a c.r.a.pper at the end of the hall, I'll be right back."

"What're you going to do, stick your head in the toilet?"

"Who said anything about my head?" Aiken sucked the blood off his teeth and his brows rose dramatically. "I've had to p.i.s.s since we left division." Dave laughed as the other man disappeared around the corner and leaned back against the wall. He liked Aiken. He wished they'd met under better circ.u.mstances. He wished he knew what the h.e.l.l was going on.

"Well, h.e.l.lo, stranger."

He straightened and turned. The Auxiliary Sergeant with her arms full of computer printout looked familiar but... "Hania? Hania Wojotowicz? Hot d.a.m.n! When did you make sergeant?"