Shoot to thrill, p.2
Shoot to Thrill, page 2
part #5 of Midnight Rider Series
“Shut up!” The girl squealed suddenly. “He did not say that, oh my god! Trent has such a fine ass...yeah, I know he’s with Tori but still...I know. Like that’s going to last...Hey, have you started that paper for Wilson’s class? Me either….I can’t tonight. I have to run the store until my mom gets here. Not like there’s a point, this neighborhood is dead. Maybe after?”
I turned the back doorknob and opened it slowly, praying it wouldn’t squeak. Once it was open wide enough for us to slip out, I pushed Noah out ahead of me and closed it softly behind us. We didn’t talk until we were two blocks down and coming out of the alley right across from Lucy.
“Well, that was a good use of our time,” Noah grumbled.
“I think there’s another supernatural gate crashing this hunt,” I muttered, unlocking Lucy’s driver side door. I slid in and popped the lock for Noah to get in.
“What makes you think that?” Noah asked. All of the sarcasm was gone from his voice.
“Just a feeling,” I said. “Teen-bopper Barbie in there said ‘Portage Park’. Let’s do a cruise by.”
“Bane,” Noah said. “What about the black clothes? The undercover mission? The vampire coven or whatever? The reason for the hunt?”
“Colony,” I said. “Not coven. And this is just a detour. I just need to see.”
“See what?” Noah asked.
I wasn’t sure, so I didn’t answer him. It took us about twenty minutes to get to Portage Park. It was a huge park, but luckily there were some official-looking vehicles double-parked along one of the roadways that wound through it. The decals on the vehicles and the crime scene tape told us we were in the right place.
“Bane,” Noah was saying. “What are you expecting to find?”
I pulled Lucy into a small parking lot next to a glorified set of port-a-potties for public restroom use and climbed out. Noah just looked at me.
“Well,” I said. “Are you coming?”
Noah sighed and got out. We followed a jogging path back towards the official vehicles and ducked into a wooded area on one side so that we could get closer to the cordoned-off scene.
“Shit,” Noah said in a low voice. “They aren’t messing around.” There were about ten people in blue jackets with FORENSICS printed on the backs. They were digging through garbage cans, dropping orange markers, taking pictures, and walking a perimeter. At the edge of the wooded area on the far side of the clearing, two uniforms were walking a couple of K-9 unit hounds. The yellow markers were scattered across the grass in the taped-off area. The spread and the quantity of the markers looked about right for arterial spray. I took a few steps closer, moving behind a stand of trees at the edge of the scene.
“Bane,” Noah warned. “If we get caught, this is going to be a hell of a lot worse than if we’d been caught at that second-hand store. We’re both covered in blood and dirt. They’ll haul us downtown and throw us in with the Holding Cell Howdies. They’ll take our clothes away while they check it to see if it’s that girl’s blood…”
I’d tuned Noah out. There was something on the tree, two to my left, that had caught my attention. I moved towards it, trying to make out what it was in the shadows cast by the surrounding trees. I stepped on a twig and heard it snap beneath me. Noah grabbed me by the back of the shirt and started tugging.
“Let’s go,” he hissed. But I couldn’t move. The tree’s bark had been peeled away in a circle, blood-smeared the smooth surface, faint as if the person who’d peeled the bark away had had blood on their hands when they did it. In the center of the smooth oval, was a bloody, smiley face.
2
“Bane, they’re coming!” Noah said.
I tore my eyes away from the smiley face in time to see that the cops with the dogs were heading around the tree line, right towards us. Noah and I backtracked, deeper into the wooded area. As soon as the crime scene was out of view, Noah started griping again about us getting caught.
“Shut it,” I grunted. I was still trying to process what I’d just seen as we stumbled on fallen brush and rocks as we made our way back to the jogging path. Sister Smile. The cannibals were here. “They’ve been here,” I muttered. Who “they” was at this point was a little unnerving. Up until this moment, I had assumed Sister Smile was alone. But ripping throats out wasn’t really her style as far as I knew. The memory of Mastick ripping his underling’s throat out in St. Louis made the Peeps and Taco Bell in my stomach start to churn. There was always the possibility that she’d recruit more members, but I hadn’t wanted to believe it before now.
Noah stopped walking. I kept going and turned to look at him.
“Who’s been here?” he asked, his eyes growing wider.
“Sister Smile,” I said. I nodded back towards the trees. “And some new recruits or maybe some old tribe members that we missed at the Sicily Showdown.”
“You’re sure?” Noah breathed.
“Bloody smiley face on that tree back there. That’s the H.A.N.D. tribe’s call sign.”
“Fuck,” Noah said on a whoosh of air. “Wait, they found a body. I thought you said…”
I nodded. “Yeah, leaving evidence isn’t really their style. Maybe they were interrupted mid-kill and couldn’t get the body out of the park?” A cold numbness settled into my limbs as the other possibility came to mind. I decided to keep it to myself for the moment rather than scare the shit out of Noah with it. This might have been an initiation into the tribe she was reforming. Why here though? Why Chicago? Was it a coincidence? That felt far-fetched.
“So cannibals. And vampires. In Chicago, at the same time?” Noah asked. He turned to look at me, disbelief on his pale face. I nodded. “This city doesn’t stand a chance,” he said. We made it onto the jogging path and headed back to Lucy.
I shrugged. “You’d be surprised. I was in Austin once, at the same time as a lunar eclipse and you should have seen how many different kinds of beasties showed up for that one. I was busy getting my ass kicked by a couple of werewolves on one side of town. But on the there side, there was a bit of a ruckus when some rougarous and minos got into it and decided to burn down one of the upscale neighborhoods. Luckily, nobody died, and with the insurance money from the ‘bad wiring’ that the innocents say caused the fire, they probably all got free remodels.”
“Silver lining,” Noah grunted.
“To the mall?” I asked in my best Valley-girl voice when we climbed back into the truck.
Noah cut his eyes to me. “I have a feeling your sarcasm floodgates are in danger of rupturing.”
I blew out a sigh. “I don’t know. Malls were something new to me when I got back. I’ve never really gotten used to them. They’re like a whole town, but inside. Climate-controlled and artificial nature. Kind of claustrophobic.”
It took us a while to find the Crestwood Mall. It was a sprawling monster sleeping on a sea of Macadam pavement. We slid into a parking spot in the four hundredth row back from the front entrance.
“Keys!” Noah said again as we got out. I held up a hand, dangling them in Noah’s face and he sighed. When we got to the sidewalk in front of the front entrance door, I glanced back to look at Lucy, but I couldn’t see her.
“How the hell are we supposed to remember where exactly we parked?” I asked.
“The eternal struggle,” Noah said.
“Speaking of sarcasm floodgates,” I said. “Why are you so cranky?”
Noah turned to glare at me. “I don’t know, maybe my neck has a crick in it from sleeping in a sitting position for the last four nights or maybe it’s because we’ve only eaten one meal today and I’m hungry...or maybe…”
“Maybe you need your diaper changed,” I snorted. “Noah, that’s the life of a hunter. I tried to send you home, but you decided to be a crazy s.o.b. and stick it out.”
Noah was quiet after that. The mall was daunting. High ceilings on the stores, but even higher ceilings overhead. And so many people. Kids screaming and crying, people laughing and a steady roar of chatter. Not to mention Madonna booming down at us from the clouds and blue sky painted on the ceiling, asking us “what we were gonna do for her love”, like a true deity. I could feel my heart starting to pound in my chest.
“Hey,” Noah said. I was fully prepared for him to start making fun of me for being on the verge of a panic attack, but when I looked at him, I saw he was pointing at a free standing sign with a map printed on it. I followed him over to study it.
“That girl said the goths-that-go-bite-in-the-night hung out by the empty stores,” I said. There was a short wing off of the main pathway of the mall. On the map, it had four rectangular stores marked on it. Three of them currently had paper labels that read, “VACANT”, taped over the old store names. I tapped the map. “Shall we start there?”
I studied the people around us as we moved through the crowds. Most cut us a wide berth. It was probably because of how dirty we were, but it could have been because of Noah’s raccoon eyes. I was smelling the air as we went, trying to smell past the popcorn, new plastic, salted pretzel, perfume haze. I was hoping I wouldn’t smell the coppery rot of a fresh kill lingering on anyone we passed. If there was any kind of deity watching over us poor saps, Madonna or otherwise, I hoped that they would prevent the cannibals from finding the mall. I hadn’t brought any weapons in with me. Vix had been right about the sword. After Messina, I’d worn it non-stop for four days, but I had to take it off when I realized how weak my arms were starting to feel. After I took it off, I started to feel normal again. Since this was a shopping trip, I’d left it under the truck’s seat. Now, I was starting to regret that decision as I felt the muscles around my lungs start to clench as my heart rate sped up.
“Man what is it with these supernaturals biting people,” Noah muttered. “It’s downright unsanitary.”
“Yeah,” I said, attempting to focus on Noah and not the feeling that the shops and noisy crowds were closing in on me. “Not to mention eating them or drinking their blood. I mean come on, there’s a nutrition store right there,” I nodded to a tiny store to our right bathed in fluorescent light. “And look, they’re having a sale on protein powder. Maybe if we find these clowns we can get them hooked on whey instead of blood and sinew.”
“I don’t know whether to laugh or cringe,” Noah said.
We were almost to the end of the corridor when we saw the kids. Eight of them, all dressed in black with chains dangling from shoulders and wide-legged jeans pockets. Most of them looked young. Maybe fourteen and fifteen. Some of them had white makeup on their faces, others looked like the paleness was natural, and they all had black eyeliner rings around their eyes. In the back of the herd was a man and a woman, a head taller than the other six. I let out a sigh. They weren’t wearing make-up. I grabbed Noah by the arm and pulled him into a greeting card shop and behind a display.
“You’ve got to stop dragging me places,” Noah muttered. The group was gliding more than walking towards us. “Why don’t we just follow them now? Or...kill them now?”
I sighed, making the cards on the display flutter. “A couple of reasons. One, we don’t have any weapons on us. Two, even if we did have weapons, having a showdown at high noon in a mall full of people isn’t a best practice. Three, even if we did follow them, we would lose them when we tried to go back for Lucy. We know the neighborhood some of the kids hang out in, but it won’t do us any good if they don’t take you into their creepy, angsty fold. So clothes first, then infiltration and ‘de-head-ization’.”
“That’s not a word,” Noah muttered. We were quiet as the group passed the entrance to the shop. When they were two stores down, Noah spoke up. “Who do those two in the back think they’re fooling? They have to be at least as old as you.”
I raised an eyebrow at Noah. “Considering those were the Regalis, they’re probably much older than me. Are you trying to piss me off?”
“Always,” Noah said as we left the shop and watched them disappear into the rest of the crowd. “What are Regalis?”
“The head honchos of a colony. They weren’t wearing make-up. That pale is real, girlfriend,” I said.
Noah looked creeped out. “I don’t know which is worse, the thought of vampires sucking on teens, cannibals in city parks, or you in a mall. Let’s just get some black clothes and get the hell out of here. At least then I think the universe might right itself and I’ll only have to choose between vamps and cannibals to be terrified of.”
There was an “edgy” clothing shop two doors down with a strobe light and some form of shouting music pouring out of it. I reached back for my wallet and I felt the familiar heat in my back pocket followed by the painful digging sensation in my gut. I tugged my wallet out of my back pocket and pulled out a hundred dollar bill.
“Don’t spend it all in one place,” I wheezed. I handed it over to Noah. He didn’t move.
“Are you ok?” He asked.
“Fine, just the same ‘put it on my tab’ bite that downstairs loves to send me. Go goth up.” I said, trying to reassure him. With a look that said he wasn’t sure if he believed me, he turned and headed into the shop. I leaned against the wall and tried to catch my breath. I’d never tell Noah, but the pain was getting worse. It had to be because my time was getting shorter. Hell’s little way of taunting me, most likely. I glanced around the semi-deserted mall wing to the empty stores on my left. There was one occupied store space between the three empty stalls. The sign above the door read Of the Cult and Occult. Sounded promising. I pushed off the wall and wandered over. There was no open or closed sign, but a dim light burned inside. There was no door. I glanced up and saw a garage-style roll-up door overhead. I might as well entertain myself while Noah played dress-up.
The front display windows had the normal touristy things- crystals, dyed altar cloths, and framed black and whites of movie stars. I moved past a rack of used DVDs in beat-up cases and a display case that was missing the glass and displaying various amulets that looked amateur-made. The store was silent, except for a faint rustling of paper somewhere in the back. I found the source behind several pressboard bookcases tilting precariously, weighed down with moldy looking tomes.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to see but it wasn’t a bald guy with a pop can resting on his beer gut, reading a sea kayaking magazine. He glanced up at me and heaved a weary sigh. He groaned as he maneuvered his feet off the desk and sat up.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. We just stared at each other for a moment, waiting for the other to make the first move.
“What do you want?” He asked, still clearly irritated that any person would have the balls to come in and be a potential customer.
“I was wondering if you happened to carry any dead man’s blood?” I asked. If he was the real deal, he’d know what I was talking about. If he wasn’t, he’d probably call mall security. I was pretty sure I could outrun a mall cop, so I decided it was a chance worth taking.
The guy studied me and set down the magazine and pop can. “You a hunter?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I hear there’s a tick infestation around here.”
He snorted. “You can say that again. Damn goth-bots. They find them young, turn them, and then use them to make more. It’s like a friggin’ Ponzi scheme.” He studied me for a minute. “You been at this long?”
I shrugged. “Long enough.”
He snorted. “And you don’t have any dead man’s blood?”
“I just seem to run through it so fast. Dead man’s blood and TP. Can’t keep them in stock.”
He rolled his eyes and pulled open the top drawer of the desk. He flicked through a brass letter opener that I recognized as a potions knife and some paper clips before he fished out a key. He burped and stood up, scratching his stomach with his free hand. He turned his back to me and disappeared behind a bookcase. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to follow him or not, so I did. It turns out he was just going to a filing cabinet tucked behind the bookcase and when he stopped short, I ran into him.
He turned to glare at me. “You mind?” I took a step back and he pulled open the top drawer. He shuffled through a few things and came up with an old Fireball whiskey bottle, filled with the dark, murky-brown substance that I recognized as dead man’s blood.
“What is it with you people storing blood in whiskey bottles?” I asked, thinking of the one that Rosetta had given me, and Stacks had broken.
“It’s sterile,” he said. He reached back and scratched his ass. “Well, relatively sterile. And it’s what was handy.”
“More column b than column a,” I muttered, noticing the overflowing trash can of liquor bottles beside the filing cabinet.
“Huh?” He asked, a sharp edge to his voice. A shiver ran down my spine, remembering an edge like that in my dad’s voice when he’d down a bottle.
“How much do you want for it?” I asked, reaching for my wallet.
“Sixty-five,” he said.
I snorted and handed the bottle back to him. “I can pick a funeral home lock cheaper than that.”
“Convenience fee,” he said. “But if you’ll get rid of those ticks so I don’t have to look at them and watch them suck in any more innocents, I’ll give it to you for twenty-five.”
I pulled out my wallet, the pain in my gut forcing the air out of me. I flipped it open and pulled out two bills. “You ever think of just taking care of the problem yourself?”
“What, me?” he said. “I’m not a hunter. I’m just a purveyor.”
I shook my head. “You know thinking like that is the reason this shit goes on for so long. Take some initiative, man.”
“Knocking forty bucks off the price is taking some pretty heavy initiative I’d say. Now go squash those bugs,” he said, leaning back in his chair and picking up his magazine.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” I grunted. I didn’t want to walk around the mall with a liquor bottle full of blood in my hand, so I looked around for something to put it in. My gaze fell on yet another overflowing trashcan next to the desk. There was a McDonald’s bag crumpled on top.
