They were in her Durango, and Jackie could not get comfortable riding shotgun in her own car. On a casual drive, perhaps, but they were heading toward a confrontation with something more and less than human, and not being behind the wheel tugged on the strings of control. The closer they got, the more nervous she became, which was very unlike her. When did she ever get nervous chasing down the bad guys? She never even thought about it, but now it began weighing on her with each passing second. This was no ordinary bad guy. The guy could take them out quicker than she could down three shots.
“Why a church?” she wondered. “Crosses and holy water are yet another myth, I take it?”
“And we like garlic, too. Go figure,” Nick said with a smile.
“Smart-ass.”
He shrugged, whipped around a pair of cars using the emergency lane, and clocked her Durango up to a hundred on an open stretch of freeway. A light rain was falling, and Jackie swore they were going to hydroplane at any moment. “That goes without saying, I suppose.”
Gamble called back a moment later and began to run through a list of possible churches in the area. On the fourth one, Nick stopped her.
“That one. That’s it,” he said. “Has to be.”
“I’ll call you back when we verify,” she said to Gamble and clicked off. “You sure?”
“That was the name of his church back in 1934. He was a minister back then, too. Easy access to victims.”
“God, that’s sick.”
He shrugged. “Practical if you are looking for easy prey.”
Prey. One little word, and Jackie was reminded that Nick was not quite what he appeared, a dying man in need of blood to stay alive. “Did you ever get used to…”
“No, Jackie. I hate it. It’s a very difficult thing to live with,” he said plainly.
“Shelby says… said it’s very addictive.”
“It is, but for all the power it gives, it makes you weak.”
“Ah. I think I see.” Jackie had not really thought of it like that. Of course, when did she ever think about such things? But Nick was right. You had to take the life from people in order to get the strength, and no matter how you sliced that pie, it was bad. “Can we kill him?”
“Sure,” Nick said, nodding once. “Drake’s powerful, but not invincible. He can bleed like everyone else, but the power can heal with amazing speed, as Shelby showed you.”
Jackie could not argue with that, but she was not sure she would do it again knowing how it affected a person.
“If you see him, you don’t think or ask questions. You just shoot. Got it?”
Jackie snorted. “That’s about as ass-backward an order as you can give, Sheriff, but I got no problem with that, unless he’s holding that little girl.”
“Fair enough, but shoot him a lot. There is no such thing as overkill with this guy. A nice shot to the temple will likely just have him spitting the bullet back at you.”
“Christ, Nick. Seriously?”
“I’m not joking. With real blood, the control over the body is phenomenal. If we get him, you empty that gun of yours into him, and you shoot for damage, not to kill. Blow his goddamn head apart if you can, take a leg off. Concentrate your shots and put the biggest fucking hole in him you can. Feel free to take out any and all anger.”
They were cruising by downtown, the first vestiges of light encroaching on the charcoal sky. The skyline was an eerie sight, a dark and ragged maw of teeth filled with leery, weeping eyes. Soulless concrete, glass, and steel. Some found it full of life, exciting, vigorous, a life unto itself, but Jackie could never quite get that feeling from the city. Why do I even live here? At the moment, it felt filled with an inexplicable taint. Death, it seemed, was everywhere, and they were now going after its master.
“Jackie? You okay?”
“I just have a bad feeling about this, is all.”
“I’d be worried if you weren’t scared,” he replied.
“Did I say I was scared?”
“You didn’t have to,” Nick said. “I could see it in the way you were looking out the window just then.”
“Well, pay more attention to the road then, damnit.” He was exasperating. It was almost like having… Laurel in the car. “Sorry. You’re right. I’m a bit worried about this, and I’m still not used to doing anything without Laur around. It’s just… strange.”
“I know. Nothing will be the same around here without Shelby either. She kept me on my toes. I will truly miss her.”
“Let’s deal with Drake first. This is dragging me down.”
“Agreed. Sorry.”
The Durango smoked its tires suddenly as Nick took them through a red light and pulled a hard right against the oncoming traffic. The sound of crunching metal and exploding glass could be heard behind them, but Jackie was too busy bracing herself in the seat. “What the hell?”
Nick wove in and out of the early morning traffic, thankfully light. Doing eighty in a thirty-five could get you in trouble. His hands were clenched on the steering wheel as he focused on the road ahead, mouth set in a grim and furious line. “He’s feeding.”
“On the little girl? Now?” Jackie had the image of a young girl with strawberry-blond hair zip-tied to a stainless-steel table under the intensity of a fluorescent light, a bright tube of red flowing out of her arm, an innocent life draining away into another. “Shit, Nick. Drive faster.”
The First Hope Church of Christ had lights on when they pulled into the parking lot. The clock on the Durango read 5:47 AM. Nick had a sinking feeling that the “sister” mentioned in the earlier phone call might likely be inside. A sign hanging over the main double doors read FIRST HOPE DAY CARE. A SAFE AND LOVING ENVIRONMENT FOR YOUR CHILD. SIGN UP NOW! Around the corner of the parking lot loomed a dark, converted Victorian home. The placard hanging between two posts in the small yard had the words TANENBAUM’S FUNERAL HOME in elegant, gold script.
The sense of Drake permeated the air so heavily Nick could not decide where exactly it was coming from.
“Should we really be parking right out front?” Jackie said, leaning forward and staring out the front window at the church and then over at the funeral home.
The edge of fear in her voice had faded. It was resolute, determined now in spite of the fear he knew lay beneath. It was a good sign. He could count on her. “Doesn’t matter. He knows we’re here.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Where would you go if you wanted to drain a body of blood?” he asked her, getting out of the Durango and walking toward the funeral home.
Jackie caught up to him a moment later, Glock held firmly in one hand. “Funeral home would be my bet, too. Maybe we should split-”
“No,” he said, insistent. “We stay together, or you stay in the car. No choice this time, Jackie.
“What, you going to cuff me to the steering wheel?”
“If that’s what it takes. You can’t face this guy alone, Jackie. No.”
She was passed arguing the point. “Okay, we stay together. You better be right.”
Nick hoped so as well. He drew a six-shooter from its holster and held it loosely but ready at his side as they approached the house. The inside was black as pitch and was beginning to feel about as thick with the sense of the dead. He could sense ghosts in the area. It had to be the place. “I really wish you would stay back at the car,” he told her.
“There’s a girl dying in there, Nick. Let’s go.” At the foot of the front steps she paused. “Maybe we should go around back?”
Nick shook his head. He knew they were running dangerously low on time. They could only be so careful now if the girl was going to be saved. “Last chance, Jackie. Please go back and wait.”
She jabbed a finger at his ribs. “Do you want to get this guy or not?” Jackie reached for the handle and jiggled the door. “Shit, locked.”
The door was a framed stained-glass window depicting some religious symbolism Nick paid little attention to as he flicked the barrel of his revolver through, sending shards of glass tumbling inward to the floor. He reached in and opened the door. “No, it’s not.”
Jackie leaned up against the door frame, gun held up between both hands, ready to go in. Nick swung the door in and stepped inside, scanning the entry along the barrel of his gun. Jackie turned and bolted over to the archway leading into the living room on the right side of the house. Once inside, it was not as dark as it had appeared. The growing light outside provided enough to see inside, and the front of the home was empty. She peered in and then stepped into the former living room, which now appeared to be an elegant seating room filled with Victorian furnishings. Stairs in front of them went up to the second floor, while the doorway to the left opened into what looked to be the front office. Above, a delicate chandelier of gold and glass hung high up over their heads.
The smell was unsettlingly sterile.
Jackie motioned at him and pointed up the stairs and then toward the floor. Where would they have the embalming equipment? Basement was the logical choice. Nick pointed at the floor, and Jackie nodded agreement, walking across the entry toward him. From above, Nick heard a soft creak and groan, as though perhaps someone were walking directly overhead. The sound was followed by the short, sharp sound of a fizzle.
Short-circuited wiring. Nick leaped forward, shoving Jackie back toward the sitting room, and the chandelier crashed to the center of the floor, showering Nick in tiny shards of glass.
“Son of a bitch!” Jackie muttered, climbing back to her feet.
“All right?” Nick kicked off the mangled light and stood up, shaking the glass off his coat.
She nodded. “Yeah, thanks. I-”
“Oh, good show. The sheriff saves the poor damsel in distress.” Drake’s voice was hollow, echoing from out of the ventilation ducts.
Nick glanced around and caught the faint, wispy glow of a ghost drifting back through the wall in the rear of the sitting room. “The show is just starting, Drake!” Nick shouted into the room. “I won’t miss this time.”
“Well, he’s in here at least,” Jackie said, sounding a bit more like her usual pissed-off self.
“Waiting and ready,” Nick added. So far, so bad, Nick figured. Cornelius had it all choreographed, and it was up to Nick to figure out a way to alter the game plan in their favor, but so far, nothing brilliant was coming to mind. He pointed toward the office, and Jackie nodded. They approached, guns out and ready.
The room was empty of the living or dead, with a doorway leading down a short hallway toward the back of the house. Likely the former kitchen, and that meant the entry to the basement.
Nick shouldered up to Jackie to whisper in her ear. “If he’s feeding when we find the girl, I’ll try to grab her. You put as many holes in Drake as you can, and whatever you do, do not look him in the eye. There should be a back door here close by. We’ll get out that way if we can.” Jackie nodded once and kept her gaze focused on the hall.
The hall had a small bathroom on one side and an oversize closet that was floor-to-ceiling coffin samples, dozens of doll-sized miniatures to pretend your loved ones were getting buried in. Past that was the kitchen, beyond which a door in the back led to what was likely the former mud room. A door led out, and another led down. Next to the door, a small electric lift sat waiting where the dumb-waiter likely was.
Drake’s hollow, distant voice came drifting up through the vents once again. “Dear boy, you are dallying. This cute little thing is getting droopy-eyed. I would think for your last effort you would be giving it that one hundred and ten percent. Agatha deserved no less. I would have done the same for my boy, were he alive today, but, alas, he is not.”
Nick reached over and grabbed the mudroom door’s handle. “Be wary. We’re walking into a trap.” She nodded, and Nick opened the door. At that moment, the ringing thrum of Deadworld began to abate. “Damnit. He’s stopped feeding.”
The heavy, metal basement door was unlocked, and Nick shoved it open and leaped down to the landing. Jackie tried to run after.
Summoning up the bit of extra strength he could, Nick braced himself for the landing so he would keep from slamming into the opposite wall. He had both guns out pointing out across the basement floor when his feet touched down.
A single fluorescent light burned in the middle of the room, an all-too-familiar setup. Its blue-white glare cast a ghostly cone of light down on the cadaver’s table, upon which the Agatha lookalike lay. She was still clad in Winnie the Pooh pajamas, and her listless arm hung over the side of the table, fresh blood dripping from the small puncture in her arm.
Of Drake, there was no immediate sign. Guns held out before him, Nick leaped the last six stairs to the floor. Behind him, Jackie stopped on the landing, crouched down on the balls of her feet, Glock scanning across the room.
“Cover me,” he said and ran over to the little girl. Be alive! Please, just be alive! Nick picked up the dangling arm, his fingers clamped across her wrist, and he found a faint pulse. “She’s alive!”
“Where the hell is he?” Jackie said in a hushed voice.
Nick dug in his pocket for his pocketknife. The girl’s other wrist and ankles were bound with the familiar zip-ties. “I don’t…” He stopped after taking a single step. Above them, at the top of the stairs, the basement door slammed shut. It was followed by the loud and unmistakable sound of a dead bolt being slid into place. And then the light went out. “Shit.”
Jackie squeezed off two quick shots. “Fuck! Nick, it’s a solid steel door. What the hell?”
“Call Gamble now, Jackie.” The trap had been sprung. The question was just how tightly were they being held?
“Gamble? Get them here. Now. Fire, ambulance, everyone. We’re locked in the basement of Tanenbaum’s Funeral Home.”
In the pitch blackness, Nick fumbled around for the girl’s hands and feet, hoping he did not cut her skin getting her free.
“Nick? You smell something?”
He did the moment she said it. Smoke. “Yeah. Something’s burning.”
The dim light of her cell phone came back on. “Gamble! Tell them the building is likely on fire, so the sooner the better. No. The power is out down here, I have no fucking idea how we’re getting out. Yes, I tried! It’s a metal fucking door. Just get them over here!”
“Keep the cell on, Jackie. We can use the light to see with.”
She began to walk toward him, but a thunderous boom shook the house, knocking her down the last three steps to the floor.
Floating through the foul air, Drake’s voice quietly taunted. “Speed, dear boy. Once again, you have gone for the rescue over the kill. I’d hoped just this once you would give in on that choice, but it seems you will be stubborn to the end. I am still the gentleman, however, and have given you one last chance. Figure it out, and perhaps we shall dance again. You are too predictable, my friend. Good-bye. I shall see you on the other side.”
Drake’s laughter faded into the smoky darkness.
“There has to be another door out of here,” Jackie said.
There should be, and odds were it was securely sealed like the other one. “There should be windows though,” Nick answered. “Painted over, maybe. If they’re big enough we might be able to push the girl through.”
“Okay,” she said, moving over to a wall and stumbling over something metal on the floor. “Ow! Goddamnit.” Her voice had a tinge of panic to it, and Nick could hardly blame her for that one. Trapped in a burning building was not high on his choices of ways to go.
Smoke was beginning to thicken in the air. Another boom, and there came the sound of something crashing on the floor above. The second-floor ceiling perhaps? If they had looked upstairs first, they might have found whatever materials Drake had situated to take the house down.
Carrying the girl in one arm, Nick felt his way along the back wall, lined with stainless-steel counters and cupboards. There had been a full-sized door for something over on this end of the room.
“Hey, I found a window!” Jackie called out. “And it’s maybe six inches wide. We’ll never get her through this, Nick.”
“Okay,” he said, finally finding the door that had been to the left of the stairs and across the room from the foot of the cadaver table. “Office or storage room here. Maybe an extinguisher inside.” Not that it would do them a lot of good in the end. It might buy them a minute or two. Holding the girl, Nick kicked the door in and was greeted by a shimmering wall of heat and bright flame. He turned his back to the fire to protect the girl. “Christ. The ceiling is down in here.”
That meant the first floor was already engulfed in flames-likely began the moment they came downstairs. They needed that basement door opened. It was only a six-foot span across to the back door through the mudroom. Even with the house on fire, they could make that leap without dying. Probably. Jackie had the same thought.
“Gamble! We need that basement door unlocked, or you’re going to have a very crispy agent down here.” She coughed several times against the thickening smoke. “Yeah, I realize the place looks like an inferno, but we’re dead if it doesn’t get open. Got it?”
To emphasize her point, another explosion shook the house, and this time part of the ceiling did collapse, bringing down a pile of flaming furniture from the sitting room. It narrowly missed Jackie, and she jumped back, a short scream escaping her lips. “Oh, my God. Nick! Any brilliant ideas?”
The fire lit up the room, allowing them to see at least, and Nick saw one last door past the office. It was large and metallic, with a handle much like one might find on an upright freezer. “Come on. In here,” he said, pointing at the cadaver fridge. “It might buy us some time.”
“That’s crazy. We’ll cook in there.”
“The floor is going to fall on us out here, Jackie. Move it.”
Nick ran over to the door and pulled the handle open. Even with the power off, the room inside was still cool relative to the rest of the basement. Once inside, Jackie was hesitant to shut the door all the way.
“Jackie. It’s forty degrees in here. Close the door.”
“But… Nick, it’ll be a goddamn oven.”
“It will be, but it gives us the most time.”
“Shit.” She pulled the latch shut, and they were closed inside. “Let’s hope they put out the fire before it can cook us.”
Nick gently laid the girl down on the floor, squatting beside her. He took off his hat and set it down over the wide, staring, and empty eyes. “Yeah, let’s hope.”
“Oh, no. Damnit, no!”
He could see that courage and determination, the desire to rescue the girl, which had been driving Jackie past the fear of everything else, slowly evaporate from her gaze. Nick rubbed a hand over his scalp. “I wish you’d have stayed outside, Jackie.”
She did not respond. Jackie was staring over the top of his head at the back of the freezer. Nick turned and realized the open-mouthed silence had nothing to do with the death of the girl. Oozing her way through the small ventilation grate in back of the ceiling was the faded, distorted form of Laurel.