The Blood Key (The Wander Series Book 1) Page 21

  Moses, the youngest brother, wasn’t included. I hoped to hell they didn’t figure on him taking Destiny’s place.

  Dobbins waited until the police rushed toward the three newly released hostages and startled everyone by yelling out, “I think I’ve shown enough good faith…considering I’m a man down and all. Now you, Ms. Skala.”

  Chopra took a step in my direction, shaking his head.

  I backed up as I clenched the box with the Dalah inside against my abdomen until the corners felt like they’d break skin. Bright sun beat on the top of my head. Perspiration made my clothes stick in odd places and to top it all off I realized my underwear had crept into my butt crack. All of these small discomforts reminded me I’d rather live than die.

  My voice came out stronger than it had before, “I wanna see the boy next to Izzy. If I come in, you let them out.”

  Dobbins appeared. Moses was in the crook of his left arm. No gun to his head. Izzy was a sufficient deterrent.

  Chopra and some of the other policeman gasped. One of them even shouted, “Steve?”

  He’d just given himself away again. Now Dobbins couldn’t use his cover as a Detective because this persona was ruined. What was the end game here? These men had worked side by side with him on other cases. If the real Dobbins was dead, then I was heartily sorry for the twisted false legacy left behind by the alien playing him now and the one who had before Cyril sliced his neck open in our kitchen.

  Dobbins ignored the query and crooked a finger at me.

  For a moment I wasn’t sure my legs would move. Then my ears gave an altitude-changing pop and the floating head from earlier bobbed ahead of me. I flinched in reaction before I could stop myself and then trained my gaze anywhere but at it.

  A slow grin spread across Dobbins’ goatee framed lips. I followed the direction of his eyes and realized he could see the head too. We locked on one another and his amusement faded.

  “Hurry, Ms. Skala. I’m not a patient man.”

  Moses sniffled and hiccuped but his crying was barely audible on the wind. Birds still sang and bugs still buzzed. Far off traffic made a constant background hum as tires rolled fast and furious over small sections of cobblestone mixed in with the more modern asphalt.

  Chopra tried to command me, “Don’t, Skala!”

  My attention pricked to an alert state. The subtle difference in the way the two men had said my name sparked something inside me. Dobbins’ way of addressing me was disturbingly familiar. Much like Fletcher had the day he picked me up from the institution. But Fletcher hadn’t been Fletcher then either. Just the way Dobbins wasn’t Dobbins today. What really clenched it in my mind came after I made it onto the porch. The distinctive soft hum of “Hickory Dickory Dock” began in my head.

  Izzy ground out a breathless, “Z.”

  Dobbins rolled his big gray eyes in reaction then put an index fingers over his lips. The nursery rhyme serenade in my mind ceased. He gave me a cautious glance to make sure I’d picked up his meaning and then nodded to the other goon with the gun.

  Message received.

  I would not rat out my father.

  42 CALLING BULLSHIT

  Blood rushed to my head. I blinked once then twice but my eyes still burned from the stress.

  Dobbins’ cocked his head at the lackey holding a gun to Izzy’s temple as he set down the tearful young boy and shoved him further into the apartment. “When she gives me the Dalah you take it and go. I’ll finish up here. Tell the others my cover is blown.”

  The man was still out of my line of sight, but his voice was scary enough—a deep scratched bass that promised bad things, “I’m sure they know. Look at the cameras out there. I’ll be reporting your many failings along with Torrino’s death.”

  Torrinno must have been the name of the man in the weeds. I did my best to pretend his body wasn’t right next to the cracked concrete stoop. I caught Izzy looking at the dead man and couldn’t see any remorse in her expression. Couldn’t blame her really. Not with what they’d put her family through.

  Cyril as ‘Dobbins’ snapped out a low whisper, “I did what I needed to do. Torrinno should never have tried to shoot a child in front of witnesses. Especially the police. And what does it matter if we have the Dalah? I’m the one left to clean up this mess, not you!”

  The other man’s grip tightened on the gun, showing that in his mind this argument was far from over.

  “What now?” I asked.

  My father jerked his head. “Come inside.”

  He moved so I could get by. I had a much clearer view of the raspy voiced man. His face and body were the exact opposite of frightening. Smooth cheeks, straight brown hair cut short, a square jaw and generally the impression of an out of work male model slumming it. I don’t know why I bothered because the chances were seriously slim that this was his true form. Even the voice could change. I might never know if I ran into this evil person on the street.

  Cyril ordered, “Go get Torrinno’s body. You’ll need to take it with you.” When the other man hesitated Cyril scowled, “Don’t be stupid, Demmons. They aren’t going to shoot you. We still have hostages.”

  Demmons’ expression went all around tight like he’d bit a lemon. “Fine, but you need to take control of this one.” He kicked Izzy’s hip hard. She flinched but kept quiet. Izzy only had eyes for the gun Demmons tucked into the back of his waistband. I had a feeling she was going to make a grab for it but then Moses whimpered.

  He was the only other sibling left on my mental checklist. Moses was wedged into the rectangular orange couch. Part of his tiny body was sunk into the small cavity between cushion, seatback and armrest. He could’ve been around four years old but I wasn’t certain. A tattered blanket was tangled in his slender legs. It wasn’t offering him much security at the moment.

  Izzy’s gaze was sticky on the gun like it didn’t want to release and then Moses started to cry in soft chuffs with the fingers of one hand lost to sight in his slobbering mouth.

  Demmons pointed a finger at Izzy’s nose. “Watch yourself, bitch. I see you thinking.”

  Cyril spoke into my head, “Get your friend before she acts the idiot and go sit with the child.”

  I thought, “What are you up to here, Cyril?”

  Dobbins’ gray eyes lit up from within, “You’ll see, young lady, you’ll see.”

  Demmons pulled a hood up to obscure his features and kept his face angled down as his arms went high to show the lack of weapon. He yelled to the ground but it carried to the tense tableau outside the apartment, “Don’t shoot! I want my friend’s body and then we’ll let the rest go!”

  Trees swayed and made whispering conspiratorial sounds into the silence that greeted Demmons announcement. I heard radio static again and the chatter of news reporters talking to audiences in front of cameras on live feeds. Well, I had no one to blame but myself since I’d invited them to the party. They’d have shown eventually.

  The box with the Dalah inside shifted in my grip. Strangely, I’d almost forgotten it. I gathered Izzy to stand. As soon as I released her upper arm she dashed to the couch and scooped Moses to her breasts crooning and clucking. His fingers withdrew from his mouth with a sucking pop as Moses cuddled into his sister’s embrace.

  Discombobulated and serene, the transparent head bobbed on invisible currents above us all. The glance I spared it was quick and furtive.

  I offered the Dalah to Cyril. Dobbins’ gray eyes went cold again as Demmons heaved Torrino’s flaccid corpse through the door by the ankles. All the while Demmons kept the back of his hood-shrouded head to the waiting police and cameras.

  Maybe Demmons liked this persona or intended to use the identity for something else at a later date. He certainly wasn’t acting like a man who wanted to be known.

  Cyril’s voice snaked into my thoughts, “Not to me. Offer it to him.”

  Two thunks as Torrinno’s heels hit the carpet. Demmons straightened and set his hands to his lower back like an expec
tant mother. When he was out of the open and behind a wall he drew the handgun from where he’d stashed it in his waistband and aimed it at my chin.

  Four blunt fingers bent in a fast curl before Demmons commanded, “I’ll take that.”

  I was left with an empty feeling after I let it go. The gun was still even with my chin. Not displaying any of the fear inside me wasn’t easy. Cyril had said I was hard to kill but not invincible. Torrinno hadn’t survived a headshot either. With the tip of my right index finger I plugged the barrel and angled the weapon away from anything living.

  Demmons let me, he was so absorbed with the box. Brilliance leaked through the cracks and around the latch and hinges. When had the Dalah started to glow?

  My floating head lowered itself to hover near Izzy and Moses. Somehow it made me feel more secure with it watching over them.

  Cyril as Dobbins sneered. “Take it and go.”

  Eyes opaque, Demmons stared at his cohort in silence. It took him precious time but he came to some decision. I could see it in the vertical line between his eyebrows and the flutter of his eyelids. The gun swung fast in Cyril’s direction.

  “I knew you weren’t him. I’ve known this whole time. Dobbins was obsessed with the Dalah. He never would’ve let me turn it in. Never.”

  Cyril answered with Dobbins’ flat voice, “Finally, I was beginning to doubt your intelligence.”

  Demmons’ hand was steady as he squatted next to Torrinno’s splayed legs. He had the box balanced carefully across his thighs. Things were happening in the interior. Brighter and brighter illumination in pulses threatened to blind the person looking directly into the light. A strobe effect of sorts, but it felt akin to a countdown.

  Police loudspeaker blared. “Release the hostage and come out with your hands up.”

  Quick and cat-like, Demmons smiled. “I will, however, take you up on your offer to clean up this mess. I assume the real Dobbins is dead?”

  Cyril bobbed Dobbins’ head in answer then shrugged. “He forced it or I wouldn’t have.”

  A boom shattered my ears.

  Part of the room had dissolved into a fluctuating oval. Dark lights danced inside it before the center coalesced into an image. Tall buildings. Dirt and debris. Blowing trash. Where was this? Urban digs somewhere, but not many clues beyond the obvious.

  One moment Demmons and Torrinno were in front of me and the next they were gone.

  Nails scraped my ankle. I jerked away and looked down. Fear turned to horror as green blood spread out from the area of Dobbins’ sternum. The boom. Demmons had shot Cyril in the chest!

  Noodle limp, I collapsed. “What do I do, Cyril?”

  Moses was crying louder now. Izzy clutched him as tightly as she could while he kicked and screamed with his hands over his ears. The officer with the loudspeaker was asking for an answer after the obvious sound of a gunshot.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  43 AND NOW FOR MY NEXT TRICK!

  Footsteps on carpet. Cyril’s blood spurted like warm mint colored jelly. Someone touched my hair. True blue eyes were above me. My father gasped in pain with a strange man’s mouth.

  Chris’s voice came soft, “Move, Bozena. We planned for this.”

  “Chris?” Where had he come from?

  Warmth lifted my shoulders as I was set aside. Chris bowed his blond head over Cyril. He opened a new box. This one was nearly identical to the one the Dalah had been stored in. Implements were inside. Long, short, thin and fat tools with tubes and things.

  Chris glanced at Izzy. “Go out and distract the police. They need proof of life.”

  Izzy dodged a flailing arm from Moses as she asked, “What do I tell them?” She scrunched her nose in disbelief. “Is that really Cyril?”

  Chris didn’t bother to answer. Instead he ripped the shirt around Cyril’s wound to get a clearer view of the bullet hole. This was an entirely different side of my brother. He was sure and unhesitating. More a man of action than of his beloved books.

  I answered for him, “Say one bad guy shot the other bad guy and now we’re down to one armed man.”

  The floating head followed them to the door. Izzy looked back once and then ran with Moses clutched in her arms.

  Cyril narrowed Dobbins’ gray eyes at the ghostly oval. “About time you did your part.”

  All the pieces that make up a normal face were missing when the head rotated in midair. Vibrations made my knees itch against the nubby carpet. It was communicating but not on a wavelength I could discern. Cyril inhaled then closed Dobbins’ eyes.

  Chris sighed in frustration. “Stop talking, Cyril. You’re moving too much.”

  Everything about the peeled away skin and exposed flesh and bone should have disgusted or frightened me. Maybe it didn’t feel real because his blood wasn’t red. I could fool my brain into thinking this was a special effect, like in the movies. Or better yet, Halloween trickery in the heat of summer.

  “Is he going to live, Chris?”

  My brother made a non-committal noise as he probed for the bullet. “We’ll see.”

  Cyril half groaned half chuckled but didn’t elaborate.

  Chris grabbed one of my hands and placed it on the grip of the tool he’d been using. It was a clamp of some kind. The ends were pinching a hollow spaghetti noodle vein together.

  “Hold that.”

  Something made me search for the head. I thought in its direction, “Can’t you help him?”

  No answer. I didn’t even know why I’d tried. I mean, Cyril had spoken to it like it was alive. It did things without being asked and behaved in an intelligent way. But no answer for me.

  If SWAT decided to bust in here and interrupted our procedure, my father could die. I thought back to Torrinno’s dead body. He hadn’t bled much and what had come out of the hole in his forehead had been the usual and customary blood red. I’d have to ask Cyril about it if he survived this. Maybe that meant Torrinno’s base shape was human like mine and he’d been born after the defection to Earth. It was a sound guess.

  And how were we going to explain a miraculously reappeared Christophe Skala?

  This was a cluster fuck of the highest proportions.

  Cyril began to speak with his eyes still closed, “I know this doesn’t make any sense to you, Bozena. It’s okay, it will.” He paused to make a face in reaction to whatever Chris was doing. “When Neith took you from the ship I decided Chris and I should use the opportunity wisely.”

  Chris sucked in a breath and made a happy sound as he lifted a mangled bit of graphite colored metal free of Cyril’s chest. He took a tube from the box and plunked the hard blob inside. Green splattered the glass as the remains of the bullet settled with a happy tinkling sound.

  “You have to change form, Cyril.”

  He took the forceps from me. When they released, the flow of liquid green resumed inside the torn flesh. Wouldn’t Cyril bleed out?

  “He’s too weak,” I objected.

  Cyril started poking around the edges of his wound and said, “I’m much better now.” He gave a curt nod of thanks to Chris. It somehow managed to look regal even though Cyril was supine and pallid. “Metal substances do strange things to our physiology, Bozena.”

  He sat. Some color was already returning to Dobbins’ cheeks but Cyril still had a hole in his sternum. Now that I knew my father was inside Dobbins’ physical seeming I wanted his normal deep, dark eyes back and the cold gray ones to disappear. They didn’t belong.

  As I watched the skin began to ripple. Cracking sounds broke the quiet of the apartment, reminiscent of lions crunching into the bones of a kill. It brought to mind horror and death. Being chased and not running fast enough. Inevitable and inescapable forebodings of bad ends.

  I scooted a good foot away and peaked out the front door. Chopra was still out there.

  Feedback screeched through the air from the megaphone as his distorted voice asked, “Are you alright in there?”

  Taking a chance, I wave
d a thumbs up and hoped somebody caught sight of it. When I turned back around Cyril was Cyril again. This time he’d decided to look the part of my father. No Young Cyril. This version had silvered hair at the temples and a chest without any evidence of trauma.

  For some reason I started to cry. Soft silent tears that wouldn’t stop made puddles under my lower lashes. Chris finished packing up his medical kit and threw an arm over me for a quick squeeze.

  Cyril looked down his nose. “None of that, young lady. We still have work to do.”

  Chris pulled the remains of Cyril’s ruined shirt off and wadded it into a ball. He reached into the box and pulled out a square device with a bright red light on one end. When the light hit the green stained remains of Cyril’s shirt it became pure white ash. Once that was done Chris made sure everything was inside the box again and flipped the lid closed. He did something with the latch and the whole kit disappeared.

  He noticed my startlement and supplied, “Mini-portal.”

  Yeah, cause that totally explained everything. I sniffed, still trying to make my tears go back to where they’d come from. “Where were you, Chris?”

  He stood and offered me a hand. “In the attic.” Chris’s blue eyes rolled at Cyril. “Trying not to die of heatstroke.”

  His hair was plastered to the sides of his face. Beads of sweat sat in the fine white blond whiskers under his nose. Without a word, he moved to pull on a cord in the hallway that dangled from the ceiling. Foot-wide stairs telescoped downward.

  Cyril experimented with his recuperated state by swinging his arms like a boxer warming up to fight. His mouth went diagonally curled for a second and then he said, “You lived.” My father scratched at the new skin on his sternum, making it bright pink. “He’s just mad because I trusted you to deal with Neith. He thought we should go after you. I disagreed.”

  A shadow moved behind the eyeleted curtains hanging in the thin, high mounted window at the end of the hall. We were about to have company of the specially trained police variety.