"That is why you're coming," he told me.
My face drooped and I glared at him. "Thanks. Makes me feel so special, but I'm still not going." I held up the ring on my finger. "Unless this thing gives me the ability to make roads into slip-n-slides then there isn't any way you're getting-ah!" Vincent wrapped an arm around my waist and pressed me against him. I blushed and squirmed, and generally did a whole bunch of useless actions that tried to get me out of this trouble. Yeah, it all failed. "Let go! Damn it, I don't want to go!" The truck was fast approaching us.
"Not even for Tim?" he wondered.
I froze, and my eyes narrowed as I glanced up at him. "I hate you."
"Focus on that hatred and use it to stay alive."
"So I can what? Join the darksieee!" Vincent jumped out when the truck passed and pulled me onto his chest.
I clung to his coat as he slid down onto the road ten yards from the path of the truck. Our momentum sped us along and I closed my eyes when I saw we were headed toward the front passenger wheel. We avoided that squishy fate by a few inches and slid between the front and rear wheels. Vincent reached out and grabbed the muffler pipe, but the damn thing must have been made in China because it disintegrated in his hand. Fortunately, he latched onto another one of the doohickeys beneath the truck that I had no idea what it did, and that held. He lifted his legs and jammed them between the rear axle so I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
This was not fun. The road was bumpy, rocks and litter littered the street, and the ground zoomed below me like a spinning top of death. I clutched onto Vincent's chest and cursed his cursed existence. "This is not one of your better ideas," I yelled over the noise of the truck.
"So long as it works," he countered.
"That doesn't make it good," I quipped.
The truck took the first right and drove down the driveway to the gate on the Island of Doom. It stopped for inspection at the gate. I held my breath and Vincent had the good fortune not to need to breathe as heavy boots walked around the truck. There were a few words exchanged and the truck lurched forward into the compound. It drove around the far side of the building to the docks and stopped.
Vincent dropped quietly to the ground and wrapped his arms around me so we were stuck face-to-face. This would have been romantic with the promise of a dinner and a movie afterward, but I expected shootouts and chases to ensue once we got inside. There was another problem we had to deal with before this rescue-corpse operation really got underway. The driver jumped out of the truck and his heavy boots crunched against the gravel. Other boots joined his from the direction of the docks, and they unloaded the vehicle.
One of the guys was clumsy and dropped part of the shipment. A wooden crate fell to the ground and broke open beside the truck. Vincent and I got a good look at the contents, and it wasn't drugs and guns. Instead what fell out was books. Thick, hardcover books with strange symbols on the covers. I noticed Vincent's eyes narrow and his lips pursed together.
"Watch what you're doing! Those things are dangerous!" one of the men yelled.
I saw a man's hand come into view and grab at one of the open books. A dark light sprang from the pages along with a slithery, slimy tentacle. It grabbed the man's hand and yanked him down into the pages. I got a good look at his terrified face and couldn't clap my hands over my ears hard enough to block out the terrible scream he cried before he was sucked into the book. Knowledge was not only powerful, it was terrifyingly strong and ugly.
"That's why ya gotta be careful!" shouted the first man.
The rest of the books were shut and picked up, but we still had other problems to deal with than possessed papers. Vincent scooted along beneath the truck toward the side of the building. I noticed a door along the wall, but it was closed and probably locked. I prayed for some way to get out from beneath this truck, and lo and behold but the door opened and a man in a gray business suit stepped out. The man was shorter than me, about fifty years old, and had on a pair of spectacles. I felt Vincent stiffen beneath me, but he didn't move. The strange man propped the door open with a heavy metal stapler and strode around the truck to speak with the work mules.
Vincent waited for the men to be occupied on the right side of the vehicle before he rolled us both out from beneath the truck. He pulled me against him and sprinted over to the door. I hung there like a limp doll praying none of the guards would see us. Again we were successful, and I was starting to think this praying stuff really worked for me.
Chapter 11
Vincent hit the wall and used me as a cushion. My shoulder knocked into the hard concrete and I glared at him. He ignored my look of love and opened the door to slide us inside. Once safely inside the very unsafe place he dropped me and we looked around the place. We stood in a long, white hallway that was intersected by numerous perpendicular passages and dotted with countless doorways. It was a rat maze of white with our reward at the end being Tim's body.
That made it sort of like a tomb, but it wasn't quiet like one. Voices floated down all the halls and the place was a beehive of activity. High-heels and boots clacked along the tiled floors and
Vincent slunk along the hall with his black coat blending in like a brown thumb at a Garden Party. I slunk along with him until we hit the first hall, then he peeked around the corner to the front of the building. The new hall led to the lobby where we could just see the front desk with a bunch of people in police uniforms. One of them looked very familiar, and I growled when I recognized Officer Sutton. That guy hadn't lied about bringing me down to the Third Precinct, but he deceived me about everything else.
I didn't have much time to wallow in my grumblings before Vincent grabbed my hand and yanked me in the opposite direction. The building stretched into the distance, but the structure was cut in half by a large dividing wall. Our hall stopped there, and turned off to the left and right, but not forward. The right passage took us to a dead end, and the left led to the center of the building. For all the busyness in the bustling building the halls we walked down were surprisingly empty.
The plain white halls gave me a headache and I was already disoriented. Then again, I got lost in walk-in closets. "Any idea where they keep the bodies?" I whispered to Vincent.
"No, but I don't believe think we'll-" Vincent yanked me down the right hall, pulled me against him and clapped his cold hand over my mouth.
I was getting real tired of him doing that to me, but at least it was for a good reason. The short man from before strode up the hall behind us and took a left. He didn't look in our direction or he would have noticed us standing out in the open. The little man walked twenty yards and took a right, then disappeared out of sight. Vincent released me and hurried after him, and I hurried after him.
I misjudged my speed, probably because some ass didn't teach me how to control this newfound superpower, so when Vincent reached the corner I reached him just a split second later. We collided and fell onto the floor in a mass of legs, arms and, in my case, teeth. Vincent tried to roughly push me off and I bit his arm. He growled and smoothly slid out from beneath my flailing body. Somehow through all that madness nobody noticed us snooping around. I started to get the feeling that maybe this successful sneaking was a little too good to be true.
Vincent's pursed lips and narrow eyes told me something was up in his mind. I hated to do it, but I needed to find out what was going on in those rusted gears of his thoughts. "You get a bad feeling about this?" I whispered. He turned to me with a glare that silenced any more questions.
We heard a noise like a door latch, and both Vincent and I glanced down the hallway. The passage led into the other half of the building, and thirty yards down I noticed an open door on the left. Vincent hurried toward it and I followed behind him. We paused at the entrance and Vincent peeked his head inside. Vincent grabbed my arm and pulled me inside.
It turned out to be a coroner's office complete with silver-covered furniture and a door opposite the entrance that led to freezer
in the back. Vincent led us to the rear where we found metal drawers in a large wall. On the front of the square drawers were plates with words written on them. The temperature in the room was noticeably colder, and I shuddered and rubbed my arms to stay warm.
Vincent stepped forward and his eyes swept over the plates. He started from the right and reached the middle when he froze at a drawer that stood waist-high. I stepped up beside him, and read the name plate. "Timothy Hamilton." The color drained from my face, and I looked to Vincent. "You-you really think it's him?"
"Only one way to answer that question," he commented.
We stepped to either side and Vincent pulled the drawer open. It slid out and revealed a frosted, semi-transparent bag that held something with the outline of a body. Vincent pulled down the zipper at the top and the bag split open to show a corpse of a man. It was Tim. I covered my mouth and turned away. I felt light-hearted and the world spun around me. My back hit the freezer wall and I shuddered. "Oh my god. . ." I murmured. Vincent unzipped the rest of the bag and drew Tim's naked body out of the freezer drawer. "We're really taking him with us?" I choked out.
"Unless you have the ability to transport him to another place," Vincent countered.
"Then at least find a sheet for him," I protested. His frozen parts were distracting me.
We found a white cloth close at hand and wrapped the corpse. Vincent hefted Tim's body over his shoulder, and the corpse lay stiffly against his back. I pushed off the wall and kept my distance from the grisly pair. We turned to the door, and found a new and frightening surprise.
The short, bespectacled guy stood in the doorway with a crooked grin on his face. "Good evening," he greeted us. His voice was soft, smooth, and creepy as hell. The man wasn't at all surprised to see us, and I realized why it'd been so easy to get into this place. So much for God's divine intervention.
Vincent's teeth ground together. "Get out of the way, Field," he ordered the short man.
"I'm afraid I can't do that, Vincent. Mr. Ruthven would like to speak with you." He glanced at me and I shuddered when those glassy eyes stared at me. "He especially wishes to meet you, miss."
"Ruthven will have to be disappointed," Vincent argued. He pulled Tim off his shoulder and tossed the corpse at our captor.
Field's eyes widened and he tried to move aside, but the body hit him in the side and they collapsed in a mess of stiff and squirming bodies. Vincent grabbed me and dashed to the doorway. He tossed me over the fallen men and punched Field in the face. The man's glasses broke, and by the sounds of it so did his jaw. Field dropped to the floor unconscious, and I stood over them in shock.
"You threw Tim!" I yelled at him.
"It was a necessity," Vincent countered while he picked up Tim.
"How could you just toss him like a heavy popsicle?" I protested.
"With strength, now move," he ordered as he shoved me toward the hall door.
I led the way out into the passage, but we skidded to a halt when we noticed a group of armed guards coming at us from the front of the building. They were dressed the same as the ones from the warehouse, and with them were a half dozen men who wore police uniforms. I saw Officer Sutton among them. He didn't look happy to see me, and I sure wasn't happy to see him. Vincent and I shot down the passage in the opposite direction and came to a four-path crossroad. I opted for the left, and Vincent took the right.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw half the officers take Vincent and the other half follow me. I also noticed those with the police uniforms tore out of their suits as their bodies expanded and fur sprouted from their skin. Their eyes turned that familiar shade of predatory orange and their faces stretched while their mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth. Pretty soon I was being chased by a pack of werewolves with the men in black right behind them.
Now the uniformed cops were much faster and a lot more agile. They bounded down the hallway and lunged for me, their pointed, glistening claws sprayed out to tear me to shreds. I yelped and shifted into superhuman overdrive. My feet flew across the linoleum floors and I had the benefit of traction. Their claws clacked against the floor and they wasted a lot of energy than if they'd used more pad and less claw.
More speed didn't mean I left them far behind, or behind at all. The men in black couldn't keep up, but a few of the werewolves reached and dove for me. I decided to steal home base and slid down so they grasped air and sailed over me. They hit the floor and skidded to a stop, or tried. Their claws tap-danced along the linoleum and the werewolves ended up slammed against the wall directly in front of me.
And that brings me to another problem I had. I was running out of hallway. There was one last intersecting hallway that ran from the front to the back of the building, but I spotted a door on the right past the perpendicular passage with a bright, beautiful sign above it that read red "Exit." A third problem I found was I had no idea how to put on the breaks with this superhuman speed. I'd always had a couch of Vincent to stop me, and I didn't think these werewolves would oblige. Then I noticed the knob on the door and with a little bit of skill I snatched the handle and managed to turn it. The door swung open and I leapt inside.
I found myself at the bottom of fire escape stairs, and to my left was the exit door. I shoved it open, tripped the alarm, heard the door behind me crash open thanks to the werewolves, and to top it all off standing in front of me was one of the perimeter patrol guards with not one but two attack dogs. This just wasn't my night. Things got worse when the patrol guard loosed his dogs and they jumped at me. I swung back inside and plastered myself against the wall to the side of the exit. The dogs raced past me and collided with the werewolves. That quickly turned into a mess of gnashing teeth and claws.
With both doors blocked, I shot up the stairs with several patrol guards close behind. They were too slow to keep up, but the werewolves extracted themselves from their canine brethren and raced after us. I didn't get a chance to take a detour onto another floor and so found myself at the top of the stairs with nowhere to go but through the roof door. I flung myself out into the fresh night air with the werewolves in close pursuit.
Chapter 12
I ran over to the edge of the roof and leaned over the three-foot tall border. The drop was seventy feet down onto the hard ground, and even if the water had been close enough I probably would have killed myself in that tall a dive. The werewolves burst through the door and whipped heads around.
They spotted me, so I did the only sane thing I could think of. I climbed onto the roof border and turned to my pursuers. "Don't come any closer!" I warned. They skidded to a halt and snarled at me, and I shuffled a little closer to the edge. "I'll jump, I swear!" Yeah, that was my plan. Pretend to be an aspiring suicide and hope they wanted me more alive than dead so they'd give in to my demands to leave safely.
The werewolves glanced at one another and evidently didn't take me seriously because they smirked and crept toward me. I cringed and glanced over my shoulder. It was a long way down, and I wasn't sure if I hated the long drop or the sudden stop.
Jump. I nearly fell off when that word erupted in my head.
"What?" I yelled at my brain. The werewolves paused, unsure whether they wanted to munch on someone who yelled at herself.
Jump! That voice sounded familiar in an annoying sort of way.
"A moment, gentleman," a smooth voice spoke up. The werewolves whimpered and parted, and through their midst strode a man.
He wasn't any ordinary man, he was drop-dead gorgeous. The stranger stood a little over six feet tall and wore an impeccable black suit. His long black hair was tied back and accentuated his pale skin. He had a dazzling smile and a pair of blue eyes that shone like a fresh, clean lake, but were a little icy from the mountain runoff. His face was thin, his nose just the right amount of sharpness, and he had long, well-manicured fingernails.
"I don't think you really want to jump, Miss-?" the man asked me.
"Cognito. I.N. Cognito," I quipped.
&nbs
p; The man chuckled. "It's a pleasure to meet Nobody, but allow me to introduce myself. I am Lord William Ruthven." He gallantly swept his arm in front of him and bowed at the waist. I cringed back and nearly slipped. That was the name of the guy four-eyes wanted to take us to. He raised his head and glanced at me left hand. A smooth grin swept across his lips. "I see you're the new partner for our mutual friend, Vincent. By the way, where is that interesting gentleman hiding? My men seem to have lost him in the bowels of my building."
"Maybe he was flushed out with all the other crap," I suggested.
Lord Ruthven chuckled and slowly strode toward me. I eyed him wearily, and he held out his hands as a show of good faith. "You're very amusing, much like Tim. Perhaps you and I can have a short chat inside?" He was five yards away. Four. Three.
Jump now!
I glanced over my shoulder at the fall, and his Lordship didn't like that. Out of the corner of my eye his appearance changed. His face twisted with fury and he lunged for me. I dodged his hand, and in doing so my feet slipped and I dove over the edge. I fell end-over-end with the world around me spinning in wild, uncontrollable circles. The ground ran at me and I shut my eyes a few seconds before I hit. Only I didn't hit.
A strong and familiar pair of hands wrapped around me and plucked me out of the air. I snapped open my eyes and found myself hugged against a dark coat. My savior landed us on the ground, and I looked up to find myself staring into Vincent's dark eyes. I'd never been so relieved, or relieved at all, to see that pair of eyes, but now I grinned from ear-to-ear and hugged him. He stiffened and extracted me from his waist.
"Stop wasting time. We haven't escaped yet," he reminded me.
Indeed we still stood beside the Building of Doom inside the Compound of Death with the Big Bad guy staring down at us from the roof. Our position in the Compound of Death was on the far side of the building close to the docks. I whipped my head around and noticed a couple of stacked bodies in the shadows of the building. They were the patrol guards and their dogs, and they weren't moving. I didn't see Tim's body.