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marysuevirusTitle: The Mary Sue Virus: Before Death - The Hunted
Fandom: Anita Blake universe
Rating: 18 and up
Warnings: graphic sex and violence, language, anything else i can toss in.
Disclaimer: the recognizable characters and places contained herein are the property of LKH. i'm merely borrowing for the sake of entertainment. no money is being made from this venture. Aedan belongs to ladydeathfaerie. the concept and title of The Mary Sue Virus are used with permission from Dazzledfirestar.
Author's Notes: this is a short set in the Beyond Death universe. it takes place sometime after "First Hunt" but i don't know exactly when. this was an idea that came to me as something completely different. and it ended up as... whatever this is. i hope its not too terribly incoherent or out of character or anything. please don't hurt me. i can't stop or help the things my brain does.
The Mary Sue Virus: Beyond Death - the shorts
The chime of his cell brought him out of sleep, saw him wide awake even before his head lifted from the pillow. Because this wasn't his work cell. This was the cell he used to receive calls from Katherine's school. The one he called the school on. The one that, on the rare occasion, Katherine used to call him. The clock on the bedside table told him it was still early, barely seven-thirty. He retrieved the phone from the tabletop and thumbed it to take the call. "Hello?" Edward made sure Ted Forrester's slow drawl was present in his voice.
"Good morning, Mister Forrester," a woman's voice said. He recognized it as Sharon Baker, the principal at Katherine's school. She sounded professional enough, but he thought he detected a note of concern in her tone. "I hope I'm not disturbing you."
Edward sat up and ran a hand through his hair, then climbed from the bed and made for his kitchen. He was going to need coffee. And fast. Because he was certain nothing good would come from this call. "Not at all, Miss Baker. What can I do for you?"
"I'm calling about Katie," she began. But she stopped there and he could sense the hesitance coming from her across the phone line. There was definitely something wrong, prompting him to go back for one of his other cell phones.
"Is something the matter, Miss Baker?" he asked in an effort to move the conversation along. Even as he did so, he was texting a friend using the other phone, already in the process of making arrangements through a series of short messages. Said friend would have no trouble understanding what he needed.
"I'm not entirely certain, Mister Forrester. Have... Have you heard from Katie in the past few days?" she asked. It sounded like she hadn't really wanted to ask that question. He changed course from the kitchen and turned for his bedroom, intent on grabbing a bag from the closet into which he could pack clothes and other supplies. Coffee would have to wait because he had a feeling he would be heading out sooner rather than later.
"No, Miss Baker. I have not," he replied, tone kept level and easy-going. It was a carefully constructed lie. The last thing he felt was level or easygoing. There was a thin layer of panic spreading across his heart. An odd occurrence, to say the least, as he very rarely panicked. But Katherine had somehow found a way into his cold, black heart and had made a home for herself there. And Miss Baker's reluctance to tell him what was going on was doing a number on his normally cool, professional bounty hunter demeanor.
The silence stretched between them as he waited for her to say something. Or maybe do something. But it was as if the woman's tongue was stuck and she couldn't find a way to make it work well enough to bring forth words. "What's happened to Katie, Miss Baker?" he asked, trying his best to be gentle. A difficult task, to be sure, when he wanted nothing more than to let the good old boy act slip and put a bit of Death into his voice.
"Well, you see, I..." the woman began, then faltered. She let go a soft sigh of frustration and Edward could picture her shaking her head. "Katie hasn't been to classes in a couple of days. Her roommate assured me that nothing of Katie's was missing. And she also assured me that Katie didn't seem to be out of sorts or anything of the like in the last week. At first, I thought she needed a day to deal with personal issues or feelings. I imagine her mother's birthday was difficult for her, given all that's happened. But when she failed to show up for class yesterday and then again this morning, I worried that something much worse than personal issues had come up. I was hoping that she'd come to see you and had simply failed to inform me of her decision."
"I'm sorry, Miss Baker. I haven't heard from Katie. Nor have I seen her," he told her. The part of his brain that kept him alert in the face of danger, that helped him be very good at his job, was practically screaming at him that there was something very wrong.
"I see," the woman said. There was fear in her voice. Most people wouldn't have heard it. But he wasn't most people. He generally knew what to look for. Or listen for. And he could hear it. The thing that confused him was that there seemed to be an abnormal amount of fear in the face of Katherine going missing. He was beyond certain that there was something else going on. "I'm so sorry to have called you like this, Mister Forrester. I wasn't certain what to do. I'd considered calling the police but I thought you might know something. Or know how to find her. Or something."
"You sound far more desperate than Katie's disappearance would seem to warrant, Miss Baker," he said, making the observation sound less frightening than he might usually have. Edward could have added to the statement by telling her to tell him what was going on. But he left the statement alone, leaving it as it was in the hopes that she would take it for an invitation.
Miss Baker sighed again, this time long and loud. It was a deep sigh, one filled with regret and anger and a plethora of emotions he didn't have time to wade through at the moment. Which meant there was definitely something wrong and it wasn't just Katherine's disappearance. "I shouldn't be telling you this, Mister Forrester, as it doesn't directly involve you. But I think it involves Katie. And something tells me you can help. So we'll pretend that I'm not about the bend the school's privacy rules."
"I understand, Miss Baker. I won't breathe a word of what we talk about to anyone else," Edward assured her.
"There have been a string of disappearances around the community lately," Miss Baker informed him. Edward closed his eyes and took a breath. Because he had an idea where this was heading. "Young girls. Teenaged girls. The police have been looking into it, of course. But they don't seem to have found anything. And then, just last week, one of our students went missing. There's been an ongoing search, but no one has found a trace of her. Marissa was a quiet girl and she didn't have many friends."
"Katie was one of those few friends." It was not a question and he did not need an affirmation. Miss Baker provided it anyway.
"She was. She and Marissa seemed to click together well enough. Marissa had only been here for a little more than a month. When she disappeared, Katie didn't really react. I was afraid that perhaps I'd read the situation wrong. But now I'm not certain what to believe."
"You think Katie went looking for Marissa?" he asked, though he was pretty sure he already knew the answer.
"I do. I'm afraid that Katie has gotten herself into trouble. I was really hoping she'd come to find you," Miss Baker said quietly. Edward could hear the guilt in the woman's voice. He gave consideration to assuring Miss Baker that she had nothing to feel guilty for, but he knew it would be useless to try. One of the things he'd come to realize about Sharon Baker was that she cared very deeply about her students and she would take something like this very seriously. He could tell her that she wasn't to blame all he wanted, but it would do absolutely no good at all. The best way he could help her was to go find Katherine and take her back to the school. Safe and sound.
"I understand your worries, Miss Baker," he said, his packing nearly complete. All he needed to gather up were the supplies he'd need to hunt. Because he had no doubt that he would be hunting. He'd be hunting for Katie, though that would be simple enough once he got close to the school. He was pretty certain he'd also be hunting something else. He didn't care if it was a member of the preternatural community or a member of the normal community. If they had so much as laid a finger on Katie, he would make their life a living hell. For as long as he chose to let their heart remain in their chest.
The state in which he found Katherine would determine that length of time.
He tucked the last of his supplies into his bag and zipped it shut. If there was anything else he needed, he had connections that could get it for him when he got to St. Louis. His mind was taking a trip down a dark and not so fun lane when he heard the chime of his other cell phone, letting him know it was time to get moving.
"Miss Baker," Edward said, letting the good old boy voice slip away. In its place was the cold, emotionless, precise voice of Death. "I don't want you to worry about Katie. I am going to find her. And I will bring her back."
There was silence from the other end of the line for several long moments. Edward allowed her to parse what he'd said to her. How he'd said it to her. Finally, there was a soft sigh and he swore he could feel the tension slide off her shoulders. "I... Thank you, Mister Forrester. I don't know who you are. I don't know what you are. But I believe you'll do exactly as you've said. Thank you."
"You're welcome," he responded. He ended the call before she did, then slipped the phone into his pocket. He hefted his bag and shouldered it, then headed for the door. The keys to his car were grabbed as he passed the kitchen table, fished out of the bowl he left in the center for just that purpose. The time it took to lock his door behind himself was spent considering what he was going to do with Katherine when he found her. She couldn't go off half-cocked every time something went wrong. She'd never get her education and he'd never get any peace.
Just like he was going to make sure whoever was responsible for this mess didn't get any peace for the rest of their very short lives. The click of the deadbolt sliding home reminded him very much of the sound of a gunshot in the stillness of the early morning,
That noise felt like an omen of things to come. And Edward welcomed it.
~*~*~*~*~
It was a nondescript house. Just one of many houses on the block. As with the others, it sat on a lot that was longer than it was wide. The lawn hadn't been mowed in some time, allowing tufts of scraggly grass to grow tall in some areas while patches of brown grass hugged the ground in other areas. Several bushes edged the front of the house, all of them grown tall and wild so that the tops were uneven. Three trees stood silent guard in the front yard. Another six peppered the backyard behind a greyed and warped privacy fence that looked like it would blow over with the next gentle breeze.
The building itself was a single-level home in the shape of a square with a low, sloping roof. There was one door set into the side and another at the front. There were a handful of windows on each wall to allow lots of light in during the daylight hours. And it looked exactly like all the other houses around it. He knew this from his daytime surveillance. He also knew from his daytime surveillance that the exterior of this particular home was a shade of off-white that appeared to be more dirt than paint choice.
To differentiate it from the other houses on the street, trim had been installed around the windows and doors in dark brown. The door facing the front had been painted a deep forest green while the side door was in a lighter shade of green. The windows were covered by curtains. Curtains that had stayed over the windows during the daylight hours. Since he couldn't see much light leaking through presently, he surmised they were blackout curtains. Some people might not find it odd that the whole house was more or less blacked out like that, but he did. Because even the kitchen windows were dark, allowing light to neither shine out nor shine in.
He knew there were people inside. He'd seen them come and go in the daylight hours, when he'd been parked down the street in order to watch the house without seeming obtrusive. It was amazing how often he could simply park on a street and watch a place without a single neighbor taking notice. It was especially amazing when the house he'd been watching had been lousy with activity. The people he'd seen had come and gone in a flurry of activity that made the rest of the neighborhood seem sleepy by comparison. Which said something when nearly every yard for six houses down on either side of the target house and more than a dozen more across the street had children's toys in them.
Of course he'd waited until it had gotten dark before putting his plan in motion. Most houses along the block had drawn curtains across their windows, the light shining from inside muted by the cloth panels. The street was cloaked in the silence that comes to suburbia in the evenings, with the plaintive bark of a dog a few streets over playing counterpart to the soft hum of traffic from the main road a few blocks away. He was pretty sure he'd be able to do what it was he'd come to do with minimal interruption. Which was to go in and shoot everything that moved that wasn't Katherine.
It was a simple plan, as far as things went. But he'd often found that simple worked best.
After glancing up and down the street one last time to ensure that he was alone, Edward slipped from the car and made his way along the sidewalk toward the target house. He'd parked some distance from the building in order to keep people taking note of it if they happened to look outside when shit was going down. And shit was going to go down.
It had been several days since Principal Baker's call had come. Several days of searching and doing reconnaissance. Several days of nothing but a sore ass from all of the sitting on it he'd been forced to do. Several days of trying to ignore the odd, tight sensation forming in the pit of his stomach. Several days pretending there wasn't a similar feeling lodged somewhere near the hole in his chest where his heart was rumored to rest. He didn't like the feeling much and chose not to study it too hard. He had an inkling as to what was going on, But there was no way in hell he was going to acknowledge or even think about it.
Stomping those thoughts down, he slipped into the shadows and made his approach to the house. The side door was his best bet. It was hidden from view by the darkness, which made it the best option for entry. His actions screamed of caution as he eased the screen door open, doing so slowly to ensure that it didn't make any noise. One gloved hand took hold of his gun while the other took hold of the knob. It turned with ease, making him question the intelligence of the people inside.
The door opened into the kitchen, ablaze with lights. There were fast food bags scattered across the countertops and pizza boxes sat piled up in the corner. It looked like a frat house's kitchen. Smelled like one, too. He could hear cheering and laughter from somewhere deeper in the home. Sounded like it was time to get to work.
A door to his left drew his attention. It was closed, a shiny new padlock hanging from a hasp lock secured at eye level. The lock wouldn't be a problem. He withdrew a leather case from an inner pocket on his coat and withdrew a pair of tools. It didn't take long to work the lock pick tools on the padlock. It clicked open almost laughably easily, which told him that it was there to dissuade people from going into the basement. Or leaving it.
Pocketing the lock, he turned the knob and eased the door open. There was a light burning over the stairs, giving him a view of the small space at the bottom where they ended. He listened for a moment or two, waiting to see if some sound carried up the stairs from the level below. But he heard nothing beyond painful silence.
Each step was made with care, with each foot put down close to the edge of the step so that he didn't find one that squeaked and betrayed his approach. When he hit the last step, he paused and listened. There was still nothing to indicate there was anything in the basement to worry about. That only made him more cautious. Putting his back to the wall, he leaned out just far enough to see around the corner.
There was a small semi-circle of light at the base of the steps. It didn't extend into the darkness of the basement very far, showing him just a small patch of bare concrete and nothing else. He kept hold of his weapon with one hand and used the other to reach for the flashlight in his pocket. It flicked on with a soft click. Slowly, he eased off the last step and into the basement proper.
He panned the light around the room. The ice that flowed in his veins gave way to a simmering rage. The basement floor was crowded with cheap metal cots, at least two dozen of them. And most of them were filled with young women. No, girls. They barely looked old enough to be out of high school. He could see the glint of silver at their wrists, telling him they'd been handcuffed to the bed. Most looked like they were sleeping, though the way their chests rose and fell suggested their slumber was troubled. Others had eyes open, but they seemed to be staring off into space almost mindlessly. He felt certain it was because they'd all been drugged.
One set of eyes, glassy even in the beam of his flashlight, found him and the girl started whimpering. She inched back against the head of her cot, doing her best to curl into a small ball and hide her face. As if doing so would make it impossible to see her. That action told him more than he wanted to know. He lifted a gloved finger to his lips and made the universal gesture for quiet. "I'm not here to hurt you. I'm here to help. I'm going to make sure you get out of here."
His tone was far from gentle, but his words were soft and exactly what the girl seemed to need to hear. The whimpering faded and some of the tension left her shoulders. She eyed him warily, as if she still didn't quite trust him, but she was quiet. "I need you to hang on for just a little longer. I have to go deal with the men upstairs. When I'm done, I'll come back and uncuff you. I promise."
The girl stared at him, brown eyes wide and blown out from whatever they'd used to drug her. But he saw a flicker of hope there. She nodded her head a few seconds later and settled back against the cot. Edward pretended he didn't see the scratches and bites that marred her bare shoulders. But he didn't ignore the way she cringed and curled up on herself when loud laughter echoed from above their heads.
He offered the girl a smile. "I'll be back. I promise. But first, I'm going to go deal with that problem." He indicated the ceiling with the barrel of his gun. Her gaze flicked up to the ceiling above her head before coming back to his weapon. She read his intent and returned his smile with one of her own. If hers was as stiff as his own, he said nothing. She took it for the comforting measure it was meant to be. He waited until she settled back down into the cot before he turned and retraced his steps to the upper level.
He paused a moment once he reached the top of the stairs. A quick glance at all of those cots had told him that Katherine wasn't to be found in this house. The tracking device he'd hidden in her cell phone was what had led him to this house. Which meant that she'd been here at some point in the past few days, But she wasn't there now. That told him that either she'd been moved or she was...
He refused to let his mind linger on the second possibility. Which he found slightly odd, because he'd never had a hard time thinking about the people around him meeting an untimely end at the hands of some crazed individual. Hell, he'd never had a hard time thinking about himself meeting an untimely end at the hands of some crazed individual. Why he couldn't do it where she was concerned was something he didn't want to dig into much. Or at all. He didn't like what it could mean.
Putting thoughts of Katherine and whether or not she was alive, why he cared whether or not she was alive, aside, he returned his focus to the sounds of laughter coming from somewhere inside the house. The best way to find out what was going on was to ask. And he was sure that the owners of that laughter would be more than happy to answer his questions. Even if he had to torture the answers out of them.
Placing his feet carefully, he made his way silently across the kitchen floor. An open doorway on one wall let him into a dining room. He made sure to check out his surroundings before stepping foot into the other room. The front door was to his left. A moderately sized window, hidden by a set of curtains, was on the wall directly across from him. There was a small, square table placed in the center of the room. It was made of scarred wood and the chairs were mismatched. The table top was piled high with more fast food wrappers. There was little else in the room. No spare dining room furniture. No paintings, photos, or posters on the wall. Nothing to give the room a sense of personality. As if wasn't a place to live, just a place to exist in.
Well, that didn't feel like some kind of portent or omen. Did it?
Edward turned to the right and followed the sounds coming from the far side of the house, everything but his reason for being there cleared from his mind. There was no doubt, no worry, no guilt, no emotion. Just deadly intent as he eased up against the wall that divided one room from another, then took a look around the corner to see what he was up against.
It was a living room, though there was little in it to suggest as much. He placed it as the living area based on the size of the room more than anything. There were two windows in the room, one on each outside wall, while the other two walls backed up to the dining room and a short hallway that had a pair of doors on it. No doubt they led to the bathroom and the bedroom. There was an old, sagging sofa in the middle of the room. It faced the far wall, showing him the backs of the two men that sat on it. Their attention was focused on a brand new television set on the other wall. It had a large screen and the image on it told him the two men were playing some video game. Edward smiled. It was time to get this party started.
He stepped into full view of the door and pointed his gun at the men. "Excuse me, gentlemen. I'd like to ask you a couple of questions."
The moment his voice broke across their laughter, both men were on their feet and turned so that they could stare at him. Their movements were so swift and so smooth that he knew he was dealing with preternaturals of some kind. He suspected they were shifters, because vampires would never have allowed him to get that close to them. They'd have sensed his presence the moment he'd entered the house. The shifters should have sensed his presence and he didn't know why they hadn't. Not that he cared. It worked to his advantage.
"Who are you, man? What the fuck are you doing here?" the bigger of the two asked him.
"I'm looking for a girl," he began. The smile he gave them was known to freeze vampires in place. The smaller shifter looked uncomfortable. The one who had spoken sneered at him.
"Go find a hooker," the bigger guy snarled. There was a growl in his voice that said he was definitely a shifter. If Edward had to guess, he'd say wolf. They seemed to be the largest of the shifter groups. The growl also said that the bigger guy was more likely to attack than talk. Edward gave his attention to the smaller of the two men.
"Let me tell you how this is going to work. I'm going to show you a picture. You're going to tell me where the girl in the picture is. If you cooperate, I let you live." It was a blatant lie but he was hoping they didn't know that. "If you jerk me around, I shoot you between the eyes and call it a day. Your choice."
"Don't tell him shit," the first guy said. He didn't take his eyes off Edward when he spoke. The growl in his voice had deepened. No doubt he thought Edward was going to start quaking in his boots at any moment. "You got five seconds to get the fuck out of here, buddy. After that, I'm going to rip you apart. So I suggest you get moving."
The growl told him that the big guy planned on shifting forms. Edward gave his unimpressed face. "Gentlemen, allow me to introduce myself." He steadied the gun on the bigger guy while his gaze sought out the smaller one. "You might have heard of me. Your kind calls me Death."
The smaller guy went white as a sheet and actually shrank back. The bigger guy snorted at that, then let go a laugh. "Death? You sure about that, little man? You don't look so tough."
He brought his arctic expression around so he could look the big guy in the eye when he next spoke. "Allow me to prove it to you." It was a statement and a warning all rolled up in one. The big guy started moving in the same instant that Edward's finger tapped the trigger. Once, then a second and a third time. The sound of the gun going off was loud in the room. The echoes of the explosions still rang in the air when the bigger shifter's body landed on the floor with a thud.
His gaze, as cold as the arctic, found the smaller shifter. So did the muzzle of his gun, the unseeing eye at the end of the barrel pointed dead center of the man's head. The smaller shifter looked from him to the body of his buddy, now without a head, then back again. Horror and fear were crowding his gaze as realization struck home. The man knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Death had come for him. Edward smiled, a not so very nice smile. Death came for everyone. Eventually.
"Now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's have a chat, you and I," Edward said. His free hand reached into a pocket located on the inside of his jacket. It came back out with a photo caught between his fingers. He stepped closer, holding the photo out to show to the other man. He knew what the man would see. A young woman staring silently at the camera. Long red hair hung around a pale face, while blue eyes stared out of the image with little emotion in them. "Tell me where I can find the girl."
"She isn't here, man," the shifter proclaimed, the sharpness of fear coloring his words. Edward liked that. It was good he was afraid. He was going to die here and they both knew it. The question was, would the shifter die quick and easy like his friend? Or would he die slowly, painfully? Because if it came down to it, Edward would torture the information he needed out of the other man.
"I am aware," Edward replied steadily. He cocked the trigger back, even though it was unnecessary. "As I said, tell me where to find the girl."
"I don't know where she is," the man said. Edward dropped the gun and fired, taking the man's knee out with a single shot. He went down hard and heavy. The shifter howled with pain, hands grasping the shattered knee while he rolled on the floor in agony.
"Tell me where I can find her," Edward said again. He closed the distance between the two of them. "I know you can feel the burn of silver in your system. Want me to add to it? The more silver I put into you, the less likely you'll be able to heal the wounds without help. You can avoid that by telling me what I want to know."
"I swear to you. I don't know where the girl is!" the man exclaimed.
"But she was here." It wasn't a question. The guy nodded his head vigorously anyway.
"She was. For a couple days. They moved her yesterday morning."
Edward digested that. He didn't like what the comment suggested. "Who moved her? And why?"
"A couple guys came and took her away. In the early hours, before the sun rose." There was a strident note in the man's voice that said he was telling the truth. "I don't know who they were. I don't know where they took her. They just came and took her. Said the boss had a buyer lined up, but they wanted to see her first."
Edward could tell that the ice had deepened in his gaze, that it had crept over his face, because the man shrank back into the floor. He raised hands painted bright red with blood in supplication. He was begging to be believed. To be spared. Edward was inclined to believe the man's words. There was too much pain and fear in his voice to allow for lies. Edward wasn't, however, inclined to spare him. The drugged girls on cots in the basement argued against leniency. Katherine being sold to someone screamed against leniency.
His finger tapped the trigger again. This shot took out the man's other knee, brought a keening cry of burning pain from his throat. "Tell me everything I need to know and I'll end your suffering quickly enough. Where do I find the girl? Where do I find your boss? What kind of supply and demand trade is your boss engaging in?"
"Humans. Girls. For sale," the man got out, tears leaking from his eyes as he cradled the newly destroyed knee in his hands. He was curled around himself, on his side on the floor. A pool of blood steadily grew around him.
"To?" Edward prompted. He repositioned his gun, the barrel now aimed in the approximate location of the main's groin. When the shifter looked at him, his face paled even further. Considering the blood loss and pain, it was something of an accomplishment.
"I don't know, man. I swear, I don't know. I just know they came in, jacked her up on some serious drugs, and hauled her out before the sun rose." The man had his hands out in supplication again, in the hopes that his answers would spare his life. Edward wasn't feeling that generous. Not after hearing whoever had taken Katherine had used drugs to make her amenable to their actions. No doubt she'd fought like a hellcat in order to stop them from taking her.
He gave the man a completely emotionless look and asked his next question. "Where do I find your boss?"
"There's a phone. In the kitchen. In a drawer. It has a number programmed into it," the man told him. There was a faint whine in his voice, as if he knew his time was limited. As if he thought that by telling Edward everything he wanted to know, he could survive this encounter. Sadly, there was no way that would happen. His life had ended the moment he'd laid a hand on the first young girl put into his tender care. "That's how we talk to the boss. Never in person. Never face to face. Just over the phone. I swear to you, I don't know where to find that girl. I don't know where to find the boss. I don't know anything. This is just a stopover and I just..."
The man's voice trailed off, ending on a sob that told Edward that he knew his time was up. Edward offered him the cold, heartless smile of Death
"You forfeited your life the moment you got involved in this," Edward told him, His finger tapped the trigger one last time. This round took the man in the head. And it took the back of his skull off as it went through. A puddle of blood and brains smeared the floor behind him.
He turned for the kitchen, both dead men forgotten. The photo went back into his pocket and his gun found its way back into its holster. He pulled open drawers until he found the one that held the cell phone. Edward checked the call log and discovered that there was a single number in the history. Perfect. All he needed to do was make a call...
~*~*~*~*~
The sun was just starting to edge up over the horizon when he finally brought the car to a halt in front of a different house. This one was on the other side of the city, nestled in the midst of a decent-sized copse of trees at the end of a dirt road. It was set off by itself, in the middle of nowhere. The perfect location for buying and selling young girls into slavery. The perfect location for him to leave a message to those that thought they could get away with such things in the future.
It had taken far too long for him to get the girls in the basement freed and into hands better suited to dealing with them. He'd been unable to burn the place to the ground without first taking them out one at a time. And so he'd settled on freeing them all and sending the girl he'd spoken to over to one of the neighbors to have them call for help. He'd been forced to leave the bodies where they were and hope that the girl had been too drugged to clearly recall what she'd seen and heard.
He'd already called in a favor before he'd even gotten into the driver's seat of his rental, contacting an old acquaintance to ask them to find out where he could find the owner of that lone phone number programmed into the shifters' cell phone. It had taken that acquaintance most of the rest of the evening to work their magic and get him an answer. Every minute wasted waiting had seen more heaviness drip into his chest. Had seen more fear and worry tighten their hold on his heart.
He'd been relieved to get the call that brought him the information he'd needed. And he'd barely taken the time to thank his acquaintance and promise payment before he'd torn off down the street in pursuit of a troublesome teenager and the people who had dared take her.
Staring at the house, one he was certain had once been a farmhouse, he felt that same tightness take hold of his heart again, the same heaviness settle on his chest and make it feel impossible to draw a full breath. He refused to give name to what he was feeling because that would be ludicrous. Ridiculous. He was Death. He didn't feel anything. For anyone. Not anymore. He shoved all that nonsense aside and focused on why he was there.
He was there to find a missing girl. To find the people responsible for taking her. And to make them regret ever doing so. That was all he was there for. Nothing more. Certainly not because he was worried about what might happen to a girl he was mentoring.
The car door closed with a soft click. He was some distance from the house, so he felt it was a safe bet no one had heard it. Standing in the shadows of the trees, he settled the strap of the holster across his shoulder to make sure the butt of the shotgun was easily within reach. He drew his handgun from its holster and tested the weight of it in his hand. It was familiar and comforting. A known quantity. Casting a glance to the sky and the spreading fingers of gold that were turning the blanket of darkness into bright blue, Edward drew a breath and cleared his mind. He had a job to do.
No time for thoughts save two. Find the girl and rescue her. And lay waste to those who dared take her.
The trek across the open ground between the trees and his car was slow going. He wanted to be sure he wasn't seen before he was ready. So it felt like an age had passed by the time he reached the front door. A quick test with his hand told him the door was locked. He could either smash a window and risk being discovered or he could pick the lock and hope that he got it done before he was discovered. Great choices.
In the end, he went with the lock picks. It took longer than smashing a window, but made less noise. When the lock picks were secured in his pocket once more and the trusty weight of his gun rested against the palm of his hand, he let himself into the house.
The light flicked on almost as soon as he closed the door behind him. Well, shit.
"Welcome to the party, hunter." The words were delivered by a smiling young woman with plump cheeks and corkscrew curls of glossy black. She had no weapon in hand, but then, he was pretty sure she didn't need one. He was sure that she, like her goons at the other house, was a wolf. As were the men ranged behind her. "I'm surprised you found this place."
"I wouldn't be much of a hunter if I couldn't find my prey," he responded lightly. His mind was already turning the situation over, trying to figure out the best way to get out of this without doing something stupid like dying. The odds were stacked pretty much against him. But he'd been in tighter situations before.
The young woman sent a sweet smile his way, as if she found him funny. "Well, hunter. You found me. A shame, really. Now I'm going to have to kill you. Or, rather, these brawny young men will have to kill you. I'll sit here and watch. Blood always turns me on."
"Does it?" he asked lightly. "Then you're going to love our encounter. Because there's going to be a lot of blood shed here tonight. Theirs. And yours. I will kill you. After you tell me where Katherine is, of course."
Moss green eyes went wide. "You're here looking for Katie?" The room echoed with her laughter, as if he had somehow found a way to entertain her.
"I'm here to take Katie home," he corrected.
The young woman stood up, her actions all grace. She wasn't much taller than Katherine, but there was a look of hunger and lust in her eyes that didn't belong on the face of someone Katherine's age. Then again, she wasn't Katherine's age. "I'm afraid I can't let you do that, hunter. Katie is going to a very powerful client. One who will enjoy her unique talents."
"That's where you're wrong, Marissa. Katherine is going home with me. I'm afraid your client is going to be disappointed."
"I'm sorry. Do we know one another?" Marissa asked, her voice lowering with a sudden growl.
Edward gave her a smile. "Did I forget to introduce myself? Forgive my manners. I don't have much call to use them. Not in my line of work anyway. Most people end up dead before we get to the introduction stage."
"So arrogant for a hunter," Marissa replied.
"I like to think I have reason to be arrogant. After all, I have no doubt you and your puppies have heard of me," he responded, then gave them a smile that lacked both emotion and warmth.
"And why would that be?" Marissa questioned, her voice sounding haughty. As if there wasn't any possible way he could be anyone of note. "The only hunter our kind has heard of is Death and you..."
Her voice trailed off as it clicked for her. Moss green eyes went wide once again, this time in recognition. In acknowledgement. Perhaps in a little bit of fear. The eyes of the half dozen men standing behind her did the same. Edward's smile got colder. "I what, Marissa? I can't possibly be Death?"
She grasped his question with both hands, laughing in near-hysterical relief. "How could you possibly be Death? I mean... Look at you!" she said, motioning toward him with one hand. He took no affront by her words. But the laughter stopped when she saw the gun in his hand, the one he was presently pointing at her chest.
"I assure you, Marissa. I am Death. And I'm here to claim what is mine."
"You're claiming Katherine as yours? Aren't you a little old to be diddling a teenager?" she asked. The face she made let him know what she thought of the idea. "That's gross. Creep."
"Not that my relationship with her is any of your business, but Katherine is blood," he replied without commenting on her lurid thoughts. He didn't care if she believed him or not. "And I think you might consider keeping insults to yourself, considering you've been masquerading as a teenaged girl in order to find victims for your human trafficking ring."
"You think you're so smart," she sneered, dropping the sweet act. Her eyes darkened with predatory glee and he watched as she took a step toward him. Instinct told him she was going to try to charge him. He didn't think she was powerful enough to change in mid-step, but he couldn't be certain. Not about her and not about the others. "Too bad that knowledge will die here today. And your precious Katherine will soon belong to a rather sadistic vampire who will take great pleasure in breaking her. Physically and mentally."
"Like I said. I'm here to claim what's mine. Katherine. And your soul." His voice was calm, his hand steady as it held the gun on her.
"My soul?" she repeated, a questioning lilt in her voice. Then she laughed, clearly thinking he was delusional. "You are but one man. We are half a dozen wolves. We're stronger and we're faster. You won't be able to shoot fast enough to stop all of us."
"That's true," he replied. Then he let his smile grow, let the cold darkness gather in it. "But I don't need to be fast enough to shoot you all. I just need to be fast enough to shoot one of you."
The weapon in his hand exploded as he tapped the trigger. In the blink of an eye, one of the men behind her was down, the top of his head splattered against the wall behind him. And Edward's other hand produced a canister from his coat pocket. He tugged the pin with his teeth and tossed it only a moment after pulling the trigger. Even as the grenade landed at their feet, he was ducking out the door.
There was a loud bang, accompanied by a bright flash of light. Yelps of pain followed the grenade's detonation. Edward was back inside a moment later, his gun a softer explosion after the power of the flashbang. Marissa's backup went down, one by one. When she was the only one remaining, he holstered his handgun and drew the shotgun off his back. When she managed to look up at him, it was to find the double barrels directly in her face.
"Mother fucker!" she snarled at him, her voice growling and deep with her wolf. Her eyes, watery after the bright flash of light, glared at him in defiance. "I'm going to rip your fucking head off."
"Oh, I don't think so, Marissa," he said. There was a touch of malicious glee in his words. "I think this is where you're going to finally meet your end. But first, I want to make sure you understand why it is I'm going to blow your head off today."
"Because I dared touch Katherine! I know!" she snapped.
"Yes. Because you dared touch Katherine," he agreed. But then he pinned her with a look. "In part. There's also because you've been doing this all over the country. Because I did my research before coming after you, Marissa. Because I don't like people like you, who prey on the innocent and the weak, simply because you think you can. How many girls died because you sold them to people without any morals? How many girls died because you're a cold, uncaring bitch?"
She stared at him, eyes wide, mouth working silently as she tried to find words.
"This is about Katherine. But its also about all of the girls who didn't get away from you. Its about the girls who didn't have someone come for them. Its about parents who sit at home, waiting for the day there's a knock on their door. Its about the parents who have already gotten that knock and the ones that never will," Edward told her quietly. "Its about the fact that I detest predators. All kinds. And its about the fact that I refuse to let someone like you live."
"Go fuck yourself, asshole," she growled at him. The wolf was close to the surface.
"After you tell me where Katherine is."
Marissa sneered at him. "I'd rather die."
"Oh, that's going to happen. It won't happen quite as quickly if you hold out on me, though."
"Fucking kill me. Or I swear to God, I'll rip your fucking head off."
"Such language," he admonished. Then he pulled the trigger. The sound of the shotgun going off was loud. So was Marissa's scream when her hand exploded in a spray of flesh and blood and bone. She gripped the stub of her wrist with her other hand, eyes glaring daggers at him.
"I'm going to rip your heart out of your chest and eat it!" she promised him.
"Good luck with that." His second shot took her other hand, leaving her writhing on the floor in agony. Edward closed the distance and put the mouth of the shotgun against her foot. "Care to tell me where Katherine is?" he asked quietly.
"Eat shit and die!"
"I can see you want to do this the hard way. If you insist." Edward sighed and shook his head. They always wanted to do it the hard way. Then he let her see the emptiness in his eyes. The coldness in his smile. And he took perverse pleasure in the fear that crowded her gaze.
~*~*~*~*~
The soft groan brought his head around to find that Katherine was finally stirring. She'd been unconscious since he'd found her just shortly after dawn that morning. Since he'd brought her to the nearest hospital for treatment. The sun was presently going down, casting shadows across her room that the light over her bed had trouble holding back. Edward stared at her, taking stock once more.
There was a stunning bruise on one side of her face, that ran from her temple to her jaw, and had turned deep black and livid purple. One of her arms was in a cast and laid on the bed beside her. Of course there were other injuries, injuries kept hidden by the bedding and her hospital gown, and the drugs they'd dosed her with had not been good ones. The doctor that had treated her upon admittance had informed Edward that she was lucky to be alive and it wouldn't be until she woke up if they knew if those drugs had had any adverse effects on her. He'd also found out she'd been malnourished and dehydrated.
She looked like hell and she shouldn't have been alive and seeing her rouse loosened up the tightness that had lived in his chest for the past week. Once again shoving thoughts revolving around that tightness to the back of his mind, he headed toward her bed.
By the time Katherine managed to pry open her eyes, he was standing beside the bed. Her gaze wasn't quite focused, pupils blown wide, but she managed to settle it on him anyway. It took her a second or two, then she opened her mouth and tried to say something. There were no words, though, just a vague movement of her lips that told him she was talking. "Take it easy, Katherine. You're safe now. You're in the hospital. Do you remember what happened?"
She stared at him a few moments, then gave a faint nod of her head. He watched as she licked her lips, the action slow and clumsy. "Marissa."
He saw the look in her eyes, saw the question and the knowledge that lurked there despite the drugs that were in her system. He knew what she was asking him. Edward paused, considering what to say. He finally settled on the truth. "She's dead. No more girls will go missing because of her."
In the end, Marissa begged. Edward made sure of it. He'd brought plenty of ammunition for the shotgun with him, and he'd taken it into the house when he'd gone inside. He used every last bit of it on Marissa in his quest to force her to answer his one and only question. Each time she denied him, each time she told him to go fuck himself, he used that shotgun to remove a little more of one of her limbs.
By the time she finally begged him to end it, he'd taken her legs off up past her knees. One of her arms to the shoulder while he'd only gone up to the elbow of the other one. Marissa had been swimming in a pool of her own blood, shards of shattered bone and shreds of torn flesh creating little islands in the ever-widening sea of red. He was sure she was in a lot of pain. She begged him to end it. Begged him to put her out of her misery. So he asked her one last time where she'd stashed Katherine. And, when she finally him the information he'd been asking her for, he used that shotgun to put an end to her human trafficking days.
He left her sprawled across a blood-stained floor, the top half of her head painting the floor behind her. Her brain was matter smeared across the wall. Her goons were all dead, their corpses scattered around her, gaping holes in their chests and heads because he'd made sure that there was no way they'd get back up again. It was the very least they deserved for sending teen girls to what was very probably their deaths. Maybe, if he hadn't had an urgent agenda, he'd have taken his time torturing them properly. In the end, he left them all without a second thought and went off in search of Katherine. Because finding her and taking her back was the only thing that mattered to him.
"Good." Her voice brought him out of his thoughts to find that her eyes had closed. He could see the strain of talking etched on her face. He hoped that she would sleep again. But her eyelids fluttered up once again and pinned him with a stare that told him sleep was the furthest thing from her mind just then. She paused to swallow, to lick her lips again. Then she stared at him. "How?"
Her voice was hoarse and cracked. It almost sounded as if her throat was raw He wasn't sure if it was from disuse or screaming. He didn't care. He wasn't fond of the sound. Reaching out, he took a plastic cup off the rolling table and adjusted the straw in it, then held it low so she could roll take a drink simply by rolling her head to the side. When she released the straw, he returned the cup to the table.
"Principal Baker called me. She was worried. She thought you were trying to find Marissa's kidnappers," he explained. Katherine closed her eyes and sighed. Her actions told him what he needed to know. "You knew Marissa was the one taking the girls."
Katherine nodded, not bothering to open her eyes this time. He couldn't say he blamed her. The hospital room was boring. Just a darkened television screen, an unremarkable painting, and himself to look at. He'd close his eyes, too. The sudden urge to stroke her hair back and convince her to go back to sleep rose up within him and he ruthlessly quashed it. He had no business feeling such things. He had no place in his life for a fiery, ill-tempered young woman. He wasn't capable of being what she needed. So, in order to turn his thoughts away from such idiotic thoughts, he focused on Katherine's actions.
He wasn't surprised she'd figured out that Marissa was involved in several young girls going missing. Katherine was smart as hell and he'd have been surprised if she hadn't figured it out. In fact, he was damn proud of her. But she'd taken risks that she shouldn't have taken. She'd chased after someone much stronger than her without a clear plan or backup. She should have called him to tell him what was going on. To ask him for help. Finding out she'd gone off on her own, without the proper equipment or backup, without an idea as to what trouble she might possibly end up in, had scared the piss out of him and he didn't think he wanted to live through that again.
Again, he found his thoughts going in directions they had no right going. Edward tamped down on the urge to let his worry run free. He had no business worrying about the girl. She was a tool. Nothing more. Nothing less. In an effort to turn his thoughts away from such troubling territory, he decided to question her on her actions.
"How'd you know Marissa was responsible?" he asked her.
"She didn't feel right," Katherine replied. There wasn't much strength to her voice, but she'd gotten the entire sentence out.
Edward considered what she'd said for a moment or two because he had the feeling that she didn't mean she got a sense that Marissa was in some kind of trouble. He thought she might mean something else entirely, so he put forth his question. "How do you mean?"
"Energy," Katherine said. She closed her eyes again, swallowed once more.
"You mean sensed her energy?" he asked. She nodded.
"Interesting," he replied. And it was. It wasn't a trick that many people had. Maybe it had to do with her necromancy. He'd have to remember to ask Anita Blake, if he got the chance. Putting that notion aside for the moment, he reached out and stroked a bit of hair away from her face. She was in need of a bath or shower. There were still a few smudges of dirt on her temple that the nurses had missed when they'd attempted to clean her up earlier. He drew his hand back soon enough, chastising himself for allowing that weakness. Some part of him couldn't help it, though. In a world full of frightening things that didn't scare him at all anymore, she'd scared him so much.
The outbuilding was exactly where Marissa had said, nestled in the dense trees some distance from the back of the main house. There was a shiny new padlock on the door that fell victim to his lockpicks in short order, and it was left forgotten on the forest floor as he pushed the door to the building open.
The first thing he took note of was that it was very dark inside. And it wasn't that the small building didn't have windows. It did. But someone had put sheets of plywood up over the windows to cut any scrap of light that might make it through the trees, leaving the interior cast in a deep gloom. The second thing he took note of was the smell wafting out through the open door. It was a mixture of age and disuse with sweat, dirt, waste, and fear combined. He didn't care much for that smell because it told him a great deal about what he would find in that darkness.
The flashlight came out of his pocket and the sound of it clicking on was loud in the silence of the trees. Shining it through the open door showed him a pile of broken wood and trash in the corner nearest the door. There were dead leaves scattered across the floor, old and brown from age. Tatters of rotting, dirt-stained cloth hung over the boarded-up window directly across from the door. Further in, the light gleamed as it passed over the bars of a brand new cage.
It wasn't a large cage. It stood about four feet high, with the width and depth equal to that same height. A padlock kept the door closed, securing the lone inhabitant within the confines of the cage. Considering the fact that someone had put manacles on that inhabitant with the chain caught against the bars so that there was no way to get out if the door happened to be out, he thought it was overkill. Another set of manacles, again threaded around the bars, kept the prisoner from doing any moving at all.
White hot rage boiled up in his chest, threatening to make him lose his cool control. Marissa and her lackeys had trussed Katherine up like she was little more than an animal and left her incapable of moving positions. He took a breath to steady himself. Then he took another. And another. Until the rage receded. Until he was left capable of rational thought. Until he didn't want to have someone raise Marissa again so that he could kill her once more.
The lock on the cage was no more a challenge than the lock on the outer door. Edward picked it and tossed it to the floor, ignoring the loud clatter of metal on wood. His focus was entirely on Katherine, who had not yet stirred. He didn't like that she hadn't moved. In point of fact, he could barely see her chest rising and falling with each breath. He liked that even less than her lack of movement.
His hands went to work on the manacles. They were new, crafter of shining steel, and had obviously been made by hand. The locks were made to accept small keys, and it took far longer than he liked to pick them open. He estimated it took him more than fifteen minutes to pick all four locks. And in that time, Katherine hadn't stirred once. A pair of fingers pressed to her throat told him that her pulse was thready and far too slow. Her skin was cold to the touch, caked with dirt and filth. Peeling her eyelids apart showed him a pupil that was wide and unresponsive to the light. "Katherine," he said, putting emphasis on her name.
She didn't so much as twitch at the sound of her voice. He tapped her cheek, gentle enough to avoid leaving redness behind but hard enough to make a noise that echoed around in the darkness. That got him nothing.
"Katie!" he snapped, this time slapping her cheek hard enough to make his palm tingle. Still no response. His anger returned, brought about by the fact that she'd been bound in such a way that made it impossible to move. That she'd been heavily drugged. That she'd been abused, because he could see the bruise on her face under the layer of dirt that covered it. That she'd been treated like she was little more than a piece of meat. With that anger came fear. Because when he gathered her up, she didn't make a sound. Even when, as he adjusted her arms, he saw the bruising and swelling on one and realized that it had been broken.
If he could kill Marissa over and over again, he would gladly spend the rest of his life doing it. Just for what she'd done to Katherine.
Putting that thought aside, pushing his anger and his fear into a dark corner of his mind, he scoped Katherine up and hurried out of the hut. All he wanted to do was get her to a hospital. He'd need that anger later. Because he was going to dig deeper. And he was going to make sure anyone who had been involved in Marissa's human trafficking ring, from the people who lured the girls away to the ones that bought them, paid for every crime they committed. Every last one of them.
"I'm sorry." The apology was unexpected. He crawled out of his memories for the second time that night to find that Katherine was staring at him with a little more sense in her eyes. And there was an expression on her face that he swore felt familiar, though he couldn't recall ever seeing her make it before. "I shouldn't have gone alone. I should have called you. I should have..." She trailed off, her eyes slipping shut. Exhaustion lingered in her words, letting him know she wasn't going to be awake much longer.
"Yes. You should have," he reminded her, voice stern. "You could have been killed. Marissa was going to sell you to a vampire."
"Won't happen again." Her voice was a murmur in the silence of the room. She'd barely finished speaking when she slid back into the depths of slumber.
Edward took a moment to stroke her hair back from her face once more. Took a moment to memorize the softness of her face at rest. The youth that he never saw when she was awake. His chest tightened with emotion he refused to acknowledge as he studied the girl she should have been.
"No, Katherine. It won't happen again. I won't let it," he said softly, promise made in the growing silence of her hospital room. For reasons he wasn't going to bother to sort out, he swore to himself then and there that he would spend the rest of his life doing whatever it took to ensure that Katherine never fell victim to someone like Marissa again.
Snorting with disgust, he turned and stalked from the room. He was a goddamn fool. And he had a job to do.
Fandom: Anita Blake universe
Rating: 18 and up
Warnings: graphic sex and violence, language, anything else i can toss in.
Disclaimer: the recognizable characters and places contained herein are the property of LKH. i'm merely borrowing for the sake of entertainment. no money is being made from this venture. Aedan belongs to ladydeathfaerie. the concept and title of The Mary Sue Virus are used with permission from Dazzledfirestar.
Author's Notes: this is a short set in the Beyond Death universe. it takes place sometime after "First Hunt" but i don't know exactly when. this was an idea that came to me as something completely different. and it ended up as... whatever this is. i hope its not too terribly incoherent or out of character or anything. please don't hurt me. i can't stop or help the things my brain does.
The Mary Sue Virus: Beyond Death - the shorts
The chime of his cell brought him out of sleep, saw him wide awake even before his head lifted from the pillow. Because this wasn't his work cell. This was the cell he used to receive calls from Katherine's school. The one he called the school on. The one that, on the rare occasion, Katherine used to call him. The clock on the bedside table told him it was still early, barely seven-thirty. He retrieved the phone from the tabletop and thumbed it to take the call. "Hello?" Edward made sure Ted Forrester's slow drawl was present in his voice.
"Good morning, Mister Forrester," a woman's voice said. He recognized it as Sharon Baker, the principal at Katherine's school. She sounded professional enough, but he thought he detected a note of concern in her tone. "I hope I'm not disturbing you."
Edward sat up and ran a hand through his hair, then climbed from the bed and made for his kitchen. He was going to need coffee. And fast. Because he was certain nothing good would come from this call. "Not at all, Miss Baker. What can I do for you?"
"I'm calling about Katie," she began. But she stopped there and he could sense the hesitance coming from her across the phone line. There was definitely something wrong, prompting him to go back for one of his other cell phones.
"Is something the matter, Miss Baker?" he asked in an effort to move the conversation along. Even as he did so, he was texting a friend using the other phone, already in the process of making arrangements through a series of short messages. Said friend would have no trouble understanding what he needed.
"I'm not entirely certain, Mister Forrester. Have... Have you heard from Katie in the past few days?" she asked. It sounded like she hadn't really wanted to ask that question. He changed course from the kitchen and turned for his bedroom, intent on grabbing a bag from the closet into which he could pack clothes and other supplies. Coffee would have to wait because he had a feeling he would be heading out sooner rather than later.
"No, Miss Baker. I have not," he replied, tone kept level and easy-going. It was a carefully constructed lie. The last thing he felt was level or easygoing. There was a thin layer of panic spreading across his heart. An odd occurrence, to say the least, as he very rarely panicked. But Katherine had somehow found a way into his cold, black heart and had made a home for herself there. And Miss Baker's reluctance to tell him what was going on was doing a number on his normally cool, professional bounty hunter demeanor.
The silence stretched between them as he waited for her to say something. Or maybe do something. But it was as if the woman's tongue was stuck and she couldn't find a way to make it work well enough to bring forth words. "What's happened to Katie, Miss Baker?" he asked, trying his best to be gentle. A difficult task, to be sure, when he wanted nothing more than to let the good old boy act slip and put a bit of Death into his voice.
"Well, you see, I..." the woman began, then faltered. She let go a soft sigh of frustration and Edward could picture her shaking her head. "Katie hasn't been to classes in a couple of days. Her roommate assured me that nothing of Katie's was missing. And she also assured me that Katie didn't seem to be out of sorts or anything of the like in the last week. At first, I thought she needed a day to deal with personal issues or feelings. I imagine her mother's birthday was difficult for her, given all that's happened. But when she failed to show up for class yesterday and then again this morning, I worried that something much worse than personal issues had come up. I was hoping that she'd come to see you and had simply failed to inform me of her decision."
"I'm sorry, Miss Baker. I haven't heard from Katie. Nor have I seen her," he told her. The part of his brain that kept him alert in the face of danger, that helped him be very good at his job, was practically screaming at him that there was something very wrong.
"I see," the woman said. There was fear in her voice. Most people wouldn't have heard it. But he wasn't most people. He generally knew what to look for. Or listen for. And he could hear it. The thing that confused him was that there seemed to be an abnormal amount of fear in the face of Katherine going missing. He was beyond certain that there was something else going on. "I'm so sorry to have called you like this, Mister Forrester. I wasn't certain what to do. I'd considered calling the police but I thought you might know something. Or know how to find her. Or something."
"You sound far more desperate than Katie's disappearance would seem to warrant, Miss Baker," he said, making the observation sound less frightening than he might usually have. Edward could have added to the statement by telling her to tell him what was going on. But he left the statement alone, leaving it as it was in the hopes that she would take it for an invitation.
Miss Baker sighed again, this time long and loud. It was a deep sigh, one filled with regret and anger and a plethora of emotions he didn't have time to wade through at the moment. Which meant there was definitely something wrong and it wasn't just Katherine's disappearance. "I shouldn't be telling you this, Mister Forrester, as it doesn't directly involve you. But I think it involves Katie. And something tells me you can help. So we'll pretend that I'm not about the bend the school's privacy rules."
"I understand, Miss Baker. I won't breathe a word of what we talk about to anyone else," Edward assured her.
"There have been a string of disappearances around the community lately," Miss Baker informed him. Edward closed his eyes and took a breath. Because he had an idea where this was heading. "Young girls. Teenaged girls. The police have been looking into it, of course. But they don't seem to have found anything. And then, just last week, one of our students went missing. There's been an ongoing search, but no one has found a trace of her. Marissa was a quiet girl and she didn't have many friends."
"Katie was one of those few friends." It was not a question and he did not need an affirmation. Miss Baker provided it anyway.
"She was. She and Marissa seemed to click together well enough. Marissa had only been here for a little more than a month. When she disappeared, Katie didn't really react. I was afraid that perhaps I'd read the situation wrong. But now I'm not certain what to believe."
"You think Katie went looking for Marissa?" he asked, though he was pretty sure he already knew the answer.
"I do. I'm afraid that Katie has gotten herself into trouble. I was really hoping she'd come to find you," Miss Baker said quietly. Edward could hear the guilt in the woman's voice. He gave consideration to assuring Miss Baker that she had nothing to feel guilty for, but he knew it would be useless to try. One of the things he'd come to realize about Sharon Baker was that she cared very deeply about her students and she would take something like this very seriously. He could tell her that she wasn't to blame all he wanted, but it would do absolutely no good at all. The best way he could help her was to go find Katherine and take her back to the school. Safe and sound.
"I understand your worries, Miss Baker," he said, his packing nearly complete. All he needed to gather up were the supplies he'd need to hunt. Because he had no doubt that he would be hunting. He'd be hunting for Katie, though that would be simple enough once he got close to the school. He was pretty certain he'd also be hunting something else. He didn't care if it was a member of the preternatural community or a member of the normal community. If they had so much as laid a finger on Katie, he would make their life a living hell. For as long as he chose to let their heart remain in their chest.
The state in which he found Katherine would determine that length of time.
He tucked the last of his supplies into his bag and zipped it shut. If there was anything else he needed, he had connections that could get it for him when he got to St. Louis. His mind was taking a trip down a dark and not so fun lane when he heard the chime of his other cell phone, letting him know it was time to get moving.
"Miss Baker," Edward said, letting the good old boy voice slip away. In its place was the cold, emotionless, precise voice of Death. "I don't want you to worry about Katie. I am going to find her. And I will bring her back."
There was silence from the other end of the line for several long moments. Edward allowed her to parse what he'd said to her. How he'd said it to her. Finally, there was a soft sigh and he swore he could feel the tension slide off her shoulders. "I... Thank you, Mister Forrester. I don't know who you are. I don't know what you are. But I believe you'll do exactly as you've said. Thank you."
"You're welcome," he responded. He ended the call before she did, then slipped the phone into his pocket. He hefted his bag and shouldered it, then headed for the door. The keys to his car were grabbed as he passed the kitchen table, fished out of the bowl he left in the center for just that purpose. The time it took to lock his door behind himself was spent considering what he was going to do with Katherine when he found her. She couldn't go off half-cocked every time something went wrong. She'd never get her education and he'd never get any peace.
Just like he was going to make sure whoever was responsible for this mess didn't get any peace for the rest of their very short lives. The click of the deadbolt sliding home reminded him very much of the sound of a gunshot in the stillness of the early morning,
That noise felt like an omen of things to come. And Edward welcomed it.
~*~*~*~*~
It was a nondescript house. Just one of many houses on the block. As with the others, it sat on a lot that was longer than it was wide. The lawn hadn't been mowed in some time, allowing tufts of scraggly grass to grow tall in some areas while patches of brown grass hugged the ground in other areas. Several bushes edged the front of the house, all of them grown tall and wild so that the tops were uneven. Three trees stood silent guard in the front yard. Another six peppered the backyard behind a greyed and warped privacy fence that looked like it would blow over with the next gentle breeze.
The building itself was a single-level home in the shape of a square with a low, sloping roof. There was one door set into the side and another at the front. There were a handful of windows on each wall to allow lots of light in during the daylight hours. And it looked exactly like all the other houses around it. He knew this from his daytime surveillance. He also knew from his daytime surveillance that the exterior of this particular home was a shade of off-white that appeared to be more dirt than paint choice.
To differentiate it from the other houses on the street, trim had been installed around the windows and doors in dark brown. The door facing the front had been painted a deep forest green while the side door was in a lighter shade of green. The windows were covered by curtains. Curtains that had stayed over the windows during the daylight hours. Since he couldn't see much light leaking through presently, he surmised they were blackout curtains. Some people might not find it odd that the whole house was more or less blacked out like that, but he did. Because even the kitchen windows were dark, allowing light to neither shine out nor shine in.
He knew there were people inside. He'd seen them come and go in the daylight hours, when he'd been parked down the street in order to watch the house without seeming obtrusive. It was amazing how often he could simply park on a street and watch a place without a single neighbor taking notice. It was especially amazing when the house he'd been watching had been lousy with activity. The people he'd seen had come and gone in a flurry of activity that made the rest of the neighborhood seem sleepy by comparison. Which said something when nearly every yard for six houses down on either side of the target house and more than a dozen more across the street had children's toys in them.
Of course he'd waited until it had gotten dark before putting his plan in motion. Most houses along the block had drawn curtains across their windows, the light shining from inside muted by the cloth panels. The street was cloaked in the silence that comes to suburbia in the evenings, with the plaintive bark of a dog a few streets over playing counterpart to the soft hum of traffic from the main road a few blocks away. He was pretty sure he'd be able to do what it was he'd come to do with minimal interruption. Which was to go in and shoot everything that moved that wasn't Katherine.
It was a simple plan, as far as things went. But he'd often found that simple worked best.
After glancing up and down the street one last time to ensure that he was alone, Edward slipped from the car and made his way along the sidewalk toward the target house. He'd parked some distance from the building in order to keep people taking note of it if they happened to look outside when shit was going down. And shit was going to go down.
It had been several days since Principal Baker's call had come. Several days of searching and doing reconnaissance. Several days of nothing but a sore ass from all of the sitting on it he'd been forced to do. Several days of trying to ignore the odd, tight sensation forming in the pit of his stomach. Several days pretending there wasn't a similar feeling lodged somewhere near the hole in his chest where his heart was rumored to rest. He didn't like the feeling much and chose not to study it too hard. He had an inkling as to what was going on, But there was no way in hell he was going to acknowledge or even think about it.
Stomping those thoughts down, he slipped into the shadows and made his approach to the house. The side door was his best bet. It was hidden from view by the darkness, which made it the best option for entry. His actions screamed of caution as he eased the screen door open, doing so slowly to ensure that it didn't make any noise. One gloved hand took hold of his gun while the other took hold of the knob. It turned with ease, making him question the intelligence of the people inside.
The door opened into the kitchen, ablaze with lights. There were fast food bags scattered across the countertops and pizza boxes sat piled up in the corner. It looked like a frat house's kitchen. Smelled like one, too. He could hear cheering and laughter from somewhere deeper in the home. Sounded like it was time to get to work.
A door to his left drew his attention. It was closed, a shiny new padlock hanging from a hasp lock secured at eye level. The lock wouldn't be a problem. He withdrew a leather case from an inner pocket on his coat and withdrew a pair of tools. It didn't take long to work the lock pick tools on the padlock. It clicked open almost laughably easily, which told him that it was there to dissuade people from going into the basement. Or leaving it.
Pocketing the lock, he turned the knob and eased the door open. There was a light burning over the stairs, giving him a view of the small space at the bottom where they ended. He listened for a moment or two, waiting to see if some sound carried up the stairs from the level below. But he heard nothing beyond painful silence.
Each step was made with care, with each foot put down close to the edge of the step so that he didn't find one that squeaked and betrayed his approach. When he hit the last step, he paused and listened. There was still nothing to indicate there was anything in the basement to worry about. That only made him more cautious. Putting his back to the wall, he leaned out just far enough to see around the corner.
There was a small semi-circle of light at the base of the steps. It didn't extend into the darkness of the basement very far, showing him just a small patch of bare concrete and nothing else. He kept hold of his weapon with one hand and used the other to reach for the flashlight in his pocket. It flicked on with a soft click. Slowly, he eased off the last step and into the basement proper.
He panned the light around the room. The ice that flowed in his veins gave way to a simmering rage. The basement floor was crowded with cheap metal cots, at least two dozen of them. And most of them were filled with young women. No, girls. They barely looked old enough to be out of high school. He could see the glint of silver at their wrists, telling him they'd been handcuffed to the bed. Most looked like they were sleeping, though the way their chests rose and fell suggested their slumber was troubled. Others had eyes open, but they seemed to be staring off into space almost mindlessly. He felt certain it was because they'd all been drugged.
One set of eyes, glassy even in the beam of his flashlight, found him and the girl started whimpering. She inched back against the head of her cot, doing her best to curl into a small ball and hide her face. As if doing so would make it impossible to see her. That action told him more than he wanted to know. He lifted a gloved finger to his lips and made the universal gesture for quiet. "I'm not here to hurt you. I'm here to help. I'm going to make sure you get out of here."
His tone was far from gentle, but his words were soft and exactly what the girl seemed to need to hear. The whimpering faded and some of the tension left her shoulders. She eyed him warily, as if she still didn't quite trust him, but she was quiet. "I need you to hang on for just a little longer. I have to go deal with the men upstairs. When I'm done, I'll come back and uncuff you. I promise."
The girl stared at him, brown eyes wide and blown out from whatever they'd used to drug her. But he saw a flicker of hope there. She nodded her head a few seconds later and settled back against the cot. Edward pretended he didn't see the scratches and bites that marred her bare shoulders. But he didn't ignore the way she cringed and curled up on herself when loud laughter echoed from above their heads.
He offered the girl a smile. "I'll be back. I promise. But first, I'm going to go deal with that problem." He indicated the ceiling with the barrel of his gun. Her gaze flicked up to the ceiling above her head before coming back to his weapon. She read his intent and returned his smile with one of her own. If hers was as stiff as his own, he said nothing. She took it for the comforting measure it was meant to be. He waited until she settled back down into the cot before he turned and retraced his steps to the upper level.
He paused a moment once he reached the top of the stairs. A quick glance at all of those cots had told him that Katherine wasn't to be found in this house. The tracking device he'd hidden in her cell phone was what had led him to this house. Which meant that she'd been here at some point in the past few days, But she wasn't there now. That told him that either she'd been moved or she was...
He refused to let his mind linger on the second possibility. Which he found slightly odd, because he'd never had a hard time thinking about the people around him meeting an untimely end at the hands of some crazed individual. Hell, he'd never had a hard time thinking about himself meeting an untimely end at the hands of some crazed individual. Why he couldn't do it where she was concerned was something he didn't want to dig into much. Or at all. He didn't like what it could mean.
Putting thoughts of Katherine and whether or not she was alive, why he cared whether or not she was alive, aside, he returned his focus to the sounds of laughter coming from somewhere inside the house. The best way to find out what was going on was to ask. And he was sure that the owners of that laughter would be more than happy to answer his questions. Even if he had to torture the answers out of them.
Placing his feet carefully, he made his way silently across the kitchen floor. An open doorway on one wall let him into a dining room. He made sure to check out his surroundings before stepping foot into the other room. The front door was to his left. A moderately sized window, hidden by a set of curtains, was on the wall directly across from him. There was a small, square table placed in the center of the room. It was made of scarred wood and the chairs were mismatched. The table top was piled high with more fast food wrappers. There was little else in the room. No spare dining room furniture. No paintings, photos, or posters on the wall. Nothing to give the room a sense of personality. As if wasn't a place to live, just a place to exist in.
Well, that didn't feel like some kind of portent or omen. Did it?
Edward turned to the right and followed the sounds coming from the far side of the house, everything but his reason for being there cleared from his mind. There was no doubt, no worry, no guilt, no emotion. Just deadly intent as he eased up against the wall that divided one room from another, then took a look around the corner to see what he was up against.
It was a living room, though there was little in it to suggest as much. He placed it as the living area based on the size of the room more than anything. There were two windows in the room, one on each outside wall, while the other two walls backed up to the dining room and a short hallway that had a pair of doors on it. No doubt they led to the bathroom and the bedroom. There was an old, sagging sofa in the middle of the room. It faced the far wall, showing him the backs of the two men that sat on it. Their attention was focused on a brand new television set on the other wall. It had a large screen and the image on it told him the two men were playing some video game. Edward smiled. It was time to get this party started.
He stepped into full view of the door and pointed his gun at the men. "Excuse me, gentlemen. I'd like to ask you a couple of questions."
The moment his voice broke across their laughter, both men were on their feet and turned so that they could stare at him. Their movements were so swift and so smooth that he knew he was dealing with preternaturals of some kind. He suspected they were shifters, because vampires would never have allowed him to get that close to them. They'd have sensed his presence the moment he'd entered the house. The shifters should have sensed his presence and he didn't know why they hadn't. Not that he cared. It worked to his advantage.
"Who are you, man? What the fuck are you doing here?" the bigger of the two asked him.
"I'm looking for a girl," he began. The smile he gave them was known to freeze vampires in place. The smaller shifter looked uncomfortable. The one who had spoken sneered at him.
"Go find a hooker," the bigger guy snarled. There was a growl in his voice that said he was definitely a shifter. If Edward had to guess, he'd say wolf. They seemed to be the largest of the shifter groups. The growl also said that the bigger guy was more likely to attack than talk. Edward gave his attention to the smaller of the two men.
"Let me tell you how this is going to work. I'm going to show you a picture. You're going to tell me where the girl in the picture is. If you cooperate, I let you live." It was a blatant lie but he was hoping they didn't know that. "If you jerk me around, I shoot you between the eyes and call it a day. Your choice."
"Don't tell him shit," the first guy said. He didn't take his eyes off Edward when he spoke. The growl in his voice had deepened. No doubt he thought Edward was going to start quaking in his boots at any moment. "You got five seconds to get the fuck out of here, buddy. After that, I'm going to rip you apart. So I suggest you get moving."
The growl told him that the big guy planned on shifting forms. Edward gave his unimpressed face. "Gentlemen, allow me to introduce myself." He steadied the gun on the bigger guy while his gaze sought out the smaller one. "You might have heard of me. Your kind calls me Death."
The smaller guy went white as a sheet and actually shrank back. The bigger guy snorted at that, then let go a laugh. "Death? You sure about that, little man? You don't look so tough."
He brought his arctic expression around so he could look the big guy in the eye when he next spoke. "Allow me to prove it to you." It was a statement and a warning all rolled up in one. The big guy started moving in the same instant that Edward's finger tapped the trigger. Once, then a second and a third time. The sound of the gun going off was loud in the room. The echoes of the explosions still rang in the air when the bigger shifter's body landed on the floor with a thud.
His gaze, as cold as the arctic, found the smaller shifter. So did the muzzle of his gun, the unseeing eye at the end of the barrel pointed dead center of the man's head. The smaller shifter looked from him to the body of his buddy, now without a head, then back again. Horror and fear were crowding his gaze as realization struck home. The man knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Death had come for him. Edward smiled, a not so very nice smile. Death came for everyone. Eventually.
"Now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's have a chat, you and I," Edward said. His free hand reached into a pocket located on the inside of his jacket. It came back out with a photo caught between his fingers. He stepped closer, holding the photo out to show to the other man. He knew what the man would see. A young woman staring silently at the camera. Long red hair hung around a pale face, while blue eyes stared out of the image with little emotion in them. "Tell me where I can find the girl."
"She isn't here, man," the shifter proclaimed, the sharpness of fear coloring his words. Edward liked that. It was good he was afraid. He was going to die here and they both knew it. The question was, would the shifter die quick and easy like his friend? Or would he die slowly, painfully? Because if it came down to it, Edward would torture the information he needed out of the other man.
"I am aware," Edward replied steadily. He cocked the trigger back, even though it was unnecessary. "As I said, tell me where to find the girl."
"I don't know where she is," the man said. Edward dropped the gun and fired, taking the man's knee out with a single shot. He went down hard and heavy. The shifter howled with pain, hands grasping the shattered knee while he rolled on the floor in agony.
"Tell me where I can find her," Edward said again. He closed the distance between the two of them. "I know you can feel the burn of silver in your system. Want me to add to it? The more silver I put into you, the less likely you'll be able to heal the wounds without help. You can avoid that by telling me what I want to know."
"I swear to you. I don't know where the girl is!" the man exclaimed.
"But she was here." It wasn't a question. The guy nodded his head vigorously anyway.
"She was. For a couple days. They moved her yesterday morning."
Edward digested that. He didn't like what the comment suggested. "Who moved her? And why?"
"A couple guys came and took her away. In the early hours, before the sun rose." There was a strident note in the man's voice that said he was telling the truth. "I don't know who they were. I don't know where they took her. They just came and took her. Said the boss had a buyer lined up, but they wanted to see her first."
Edward could tell that the ice had deepened in his gaze, that it had crept over his face, because the man shrank back into the floor. He raised hands painted bright red with blood in supplication. He was begging to be believed. To be spared. Edward was inclined to believe the man's words. There was too much pain and fear in his voice to allow for lies. Edward wasn't, however, inclined to spare him. The drugged girls on cots in the basement argued against leniency. Katherine being sold to someone screamed against leniency.
His finger tapped the trigger again. This shot took out the man's other knee, brought a keening cry of burning pain from his throat. "Tell me everything I need to know and I'll end your suffering quickly enough. Where do I find the girl? Where do I find your boss? What kind of supply and demand trade is your boss engaging in?"
"Humans. Girls. For sale," the man got out, tears leaking from his eyes as he cradled the newly destroyed knee in his hands. He was curled around himself, on his side on the floor. A pool of blood steadily grew around him.
"To?" Edward prompted. He repositioned his gun, the barrel now aimed in the approximate location of the main's groin. When the shifter looked at him, his face paled even further. Considering the blood loss and pain, it was something of an accomplishment.
"I don't know, man. I swear, I don't know. I just know they came in, jacked her up on some serious drugs, and hauled her out before the sun rose." The man had his hands out in supplication again, in the hopes that his answers would spare his life. Edward wasn't feeling that generous. Not after hearing whoever had taken Katherine had used drugs to make her amenable to their actions. No doubt she'd fought like a hellcat in order to stop them from taking her.
He gave the man a completely emotionless look and asked his next question. "Where do I find your boss?"
"There's a phone. In the kitchen. In a drawer. It has a number programmed into it," the man told him. There was a faint whine in his voice, as if he knew his time was limited. As if he thought that by telling Edward everything he wanted to know, he could survive this encounter. Sadly, there was no way that would happen. His life had ended the moment he'd laid a hand on the first young girl put into his tender care. "That's how we talk to the boss. Never in person. Never face to face. Just over the phone. I swear to you, I don't know where to find that girl. I don't know where to find the boss. I don't know anything. This is just a stopover and I just..."
The man's voice trailed off, ending on a sob that told Edward that he knew his time was up. Edward offered him the cold, heartless smile of Death
"You forfeited your life the moment you got involved in this," Edward told him, His finger tapped the trigger one last time. This round took the man in the head. And it took the back of his skull off as it went through. A puddle of blood and brains smeared the floor behind him.
He turned for the kitchen, both dead men forgotten. The photo went back into his pocket and his gun found its way back into its holster. He pulled open drawers until he found the one that held the cell phone. Edward checked the call log and discovered that there was a single number in the history. Perfect. All he needed to do was make a call...
~*~*~*~*~
The sun was just starting to edge up over the horizon when he finally brought the car to a halt in front of a different house. This one was on the other side of the city, nestled in the midst of a decent-sized copse of trees at the end of a dirt road. It was set off by itself, in the middle of nowhere. The perfect location for buying and selling young girls into slavery. The perfect location for him to leave a message to those that thought they could get away with such things in the future.
It had taken far too long for him to get the girls in the basement freed and into hands better suited to dealing with them. He'd been unable to burn the place to the ground without first taking them out one at a time. And so he'd settled on freeing them all and sending the girl he'd spoken to over to one of the neighbors to have them call for help. He'd been forced to leave the bodies where they were and hope that the girl had been too drugged to clearly recall what she'd seen and heard.
He'd already called in a favor before he'd even gotten into the driver's seat of his rental, contacting an old acquaintance to ask them to find out where he could find the owner of that lone phone number programmed into the shifters' cell phone. It had taken that acquaintance most of the rest of the evening to work their magic and get him an answer. Every minute wasted waiting had seen more heaviness drip into his chest. Had seen more fear and worry tighten their hold on his heart.
He'd been relieved to get the call that brought him the information he'd needed. And he'd barely taken the time to thank his acquaintance and promise payment before he'd torn off down the street in pursuit of a troublesome teenager and the people who had dared take her.
Staring at the house, one he was certain had once been a farmhouse, he felt that same tightness take hold of his heart again, the same heaviness settle on his chest and make it feel impossible to draw a full breath. He refused to give name to what he was feeling because that would be ludicrous. Ridiculous. He was Death. He didn't feel anything. For anyone. Not anymore. He shoved all that nonsense aside and focused on why he was there.
He was there to find a missing girl. To find the people responsible for taking her. And to make them regret ever doing so. That was all he was there for. Nothing more. Certainly not because he was worried about what might happen to a girl he was mentoring.
The car door closed with a soft click. He was some distance from the house, so he felt it was a safe bet no one had heard it. Standing in the shadows of the trees, he settled the strap of the holster across his shoulder to make sure the butt of the shotgun was easily within reach. He drew his handgun from its holster and tested the weight of it in his hand. It was familiar and comforting. A known quantity. Casting a glance to the sky and the spreading fingers of gold that were turning the blanket of darkness into bright blue, Edward drew a breath and cleared his mind. He had a job to do.
No time for thoughts save two. Find the girl and rescue her. And lay waste to those who dared take her.
The trek across the open ground between the trees and his car was slow going. He wanted to be sure he wasn't seen before he was ready. So it felt like an age had passed by the time he reached the front door. A quick test with his hand told him the door was locked. He could either smash a window and risk being discovered or he could pick the lock and hope that he got it done before he was discovered. Great choices.
In the end, he went with the lock picks. It took longer than smashing a window, but made less noise. When the lock picks were secured in his pocket once more and the trusty weight of his gun rested against the palm of his hand, he let himself into the house.
The light flicked on almost as soon as he closed the door behind him. Well, shit.
"Welcome to the party, hunter." The words were delivered by a smiling young woman with plump cheeks and corkscrew curls of glossy black. She had no weapon in hand, but then, he was pretty sure she didn't need one. He was sure that she, like her goons at the other house, was a wolf. As were the men ranged behind her. "I'm surprised you found this place."
"I wouldn't be much of a hunter if I couldn't find my prey," he responded lightly. His mind was already turning the situation over, trying to figure out the best way to get out of this without doing something stupid like dying. The odds were stacked pretty much against him. But he'd been in tighter situations before.
The young woman sent a sweet smile his way, as if she found him funny. "Well, hunter. You found me. A shame, really. Now I'm going to have to kill you. Or, rather, these brawny young men will have to kill you. I'll sit here and watch. Blood always turns me on."
"Does it?" he asked lightly. "Then you're going to love our encounter. Because there's going to be a lot of blood shed here tonight. Theirs. And yours. I will kill you. After you tell me where Katherine is, of course."
Moss green eyes went wide. "You're here looking for Katie?" The room echoed with her laughter, as if he had somehow found a way to entertain her.
"I'm here to take Katie home," he corrected.
The young woman stood up, her actions all grace. She wasn't much taller than Katherine, but there was a look of hunger and lust in her eyes that didn't belong on the face of someone Katherine's age. Then again, she wasn't Katherine's age. "I'm afraid I can't let you do that, hunter. Katie is going to a very powerful client. One who will enjoy her unique talents."
"That's where you're wrong, Marissa. Katherine is going home with me. I'm afraid your client is going to be disappointed."
"I'm sorry. Do we know one another?" Marissa asked, her voice lowering with a sudden growl.
Edward gave her a smile. "Did I forget to introduce myself? Forgive my manners. I don't have much call to use them. Not in my line of work anyway. Most people end up dead before we get to the introduction stage."
"So arrogant for a hunter," Marissa replied.
"I like to think I have reason to be arrogant. After all, I have no doubt you and your puppies have heard of me," he responded, then gave them a smile that lacked both emotion and warmth.
"And why would that be?" Marissa questioned, her voice sounding haughty. As if there wasn't any possible way he could be anyone of note. "The only hunter our kind has heard of is Death and you..."
Her voice trailed off as it clicked for her. Moss green eyes went wide once again, this time in recognition. In acknowledgement. Perhaps in a little bit of fear. The eyes of the half dozen men standing behind her did the same. Edward's smile got colder. "I what, Marissa? I can't possibly be Death?"
She grasped his question with both hands, laughing in near-hysterical relief. "How could you possibly be Death? I mean... Look at you!" she said, motioning toward him with one hand. He took no affront by her words. But the laughter stopped when she saw the gun in his hand, the one he was presently pointing at her chest.
"I assure you, Marissa. I am Death. And I'm here to claim what is mine."
"You're claiming Katherine as yours? Aren't you a little old to be diddling a teenager?" she asked. The face she made let him know what she thought of the idea. "That's gross. Creep."
"Not that my relationship with her is any of your business, but Katherine is blood," he replied without commenting on her lurid thoughts. He didn't care if she believed him or not. "And I think you might consider keeping insults to yourself, considering you've been masquerading as a teenaged girl in order to find victims for your human trafficking ring."
"You think you're so smart," she sneered, dropping the sweet act. Her eyes darkened with predatory glee and he watched as she took a step toward him. Instinct told him she was going to try to charge him. He didn't think she was powerful enough to change in mid-step, but he couldn't be certain. Not about her and not about the others. "Too bad that knowledge will die here today. And your precious Katherine will soon belong to a rather sadistic vampire who will take great pleasure in breaking her. Physically and mentally."
"Like I said. I'm here to claim what's mine. Katherine. And your soul." His voice was calm, his hand steady as it held the gun on her.
"My soul?" she repeated, a questioning lilt in her voice. Then she laughed, clearly thinking he was delusional. "You are but one man. We are half a dozen wolves. We're stronger and we're faster. You won't be able to shoot fast enough to stop all of us."
"That's true," he replied. Then he let his smile grow, let the cold darkness gather in it. "But I don't need to be fast enough to shoot you all. I just need to be fast enough to shoot one of you."
The weapon in his hand exploded as he tapped the trigger. In the blink of an eye, one of the men behind her was down, the top of his head splattered against the wall behind him. And Edward's other hand produced a canister from his coat pocket. He tugged the pin with his teeth and tossed it only a moment after pulling the trigger. Even as the grenade landed at their feet, he was ducking out the door.
There was a loud bang, accompanied by a bright flash of light. Yelps of pain followed the grenade's detonation. Edward was back inside a moment later, his gun a softer explosion after the power of the flashbang. Marissa's backup went down, one by one. When she was the only one remaining, he holstered his handgun and drew the shotgun off his back. When she managed to look up at him, it was to find the double barrels directly in her face.
"Mother fucker!" she snarled at him, her voice growling and deep with her wolf. Her eyes, watery after the bright flash of light, glared at him in defiance. "I'm going to rip your fucking head off."
"Oh, I don't think so, Marissa," he said. There was a touch of malicious glee in his words. "I think this is where you're going to finally meet your end. But first, I want to make sure you understand why it is I'm going to blow your head off today."
"Because I dared touch Katherine! I know!" she snapped.
"Yes. Because you dared touch Katherine," he agreed. But then he pinned her with a look. "In part. There's also because you've been doing this all over the country. Because I did my research before coming after you, Marissa. Because I don't like people like you, who prey on the innocent and the weak, simply because you think you can. How many girls died because you sold them to people without any morals? How many girls died because you're a cold, uncaring bitch?"
She stared at him, eyes wide, mouth working silently as she tried to find words.
"This is about Katherine. But its also about all of the girls who didn't get away from you. Its about the girls who didn't have someone come for them. Its about parents who sit at home, waiting for the day there's a knock on their door. Its about the parents who have already gotten that knock and the ones that never will," Edward told her quietly. "Its about the fact that I detest predators. All kinds. And its about the fact that I refuse to let someone like you live."
"Go fuck yourself, asshole," she growled at him. The wolf was close to the surface.
"After you tell me where Katherine is."
Marissa sneered at him. "I'd rather die."
"Oh, that's going to happen. It won't happen quite as quickly if you hold out on me, though."
"Fucking kill me. Or I swear to God, I'll rip your fucking head off."
"Such language," he admonished. Then he pulled the trigger. The sound of the shotgun going off was loud. So was Marissa's scream when her hand exploded in a spray of flesh and blood and bone. She gripped the stub of her wrist with her other hand, eyes glaring daggers at him.
"I'm going to rip your heart out of your chest and eat it!" she promised him.
"Good luck with that." His second shot took her other hand, leaving her writhing on the floor in agony. Edward closed the distance and put the mouth of the shotgun against her foot. "Care to tell me where Katherine is?" he asked quietly.
"Eat shit and die!"
"I can see you want to do this the hard way. If you insist." Edward sighed and shook his head. They always wanted to do it the hard way. Then he let her see the emptiness in his eyes. The coldness in his smile. And he took perverse pleasure in the fear that crowded her gaze.
~*~*~*~*~
The soft groan brought his head around to find that Katherine was finally stirring. She'd been unconscious since he'd found her just shortly after dawn that morning. Since he'd brought her to the nearest hospital for treatment. The sun was presently going down, casting shadows across her room that the light over her bed had trouble holding back. Edward stared at her, taking stock once more.
There was a stunning bruise on one side of her face, that ran from her temple to her jaw, and had turned deep black and livid purple. One of her arms was in a cast and laid on the bed beside her. Of course there were other injuries, injuries kept hidden by the bedding and her hospital gown, and the drugs they'd dosed her with had not been good ones. The doctor that had treated her upon admittance had informed Edward that she was lucky to be alive and it wouldn't be until she woke up if they knew if those drugs had had any adverse effects on her. He'd also found out she'd been malnourished and dehydrated.
She looked like hell and she shouldn't have been alive and seeing her rouse loosened up the tightness that had lived in his chest for the past week. Once again shoving thoughts revolving around that tightness to the back of his mind, he headed toward her bed.
By the time Katherine managed to pry open her eyes, he was standing beside the bed. Her gaze wasn't quite focused, pupils blown wide, but she managed to settle it on him anyway. It took her a second or two, then she opened her mouth and tried to say something. There were no words, though, just a vague movement of her lips that told him she was talking. "Take it easy, Katherine. You're safe now. You're in the hospital. Do you remember what happened?"
She stared at him a few moments, then gave a faint nod of her head. He watched as she licked her lips, the action slow and clumsy. "Marissa."
He saw the look in her eyes, saw the question and the knowledge that lurked there despite the drugs that were in her system. He knew what she was asking him. Edward paused, considering what to say. He finally settled on the truth. "She's dead. No more girls will go missing because of her."
In the end, Marissa begged. Edward made sure of it. He'd brought plenty of ammunition for the shotgun with him, and he'd taken it into the house when he'd gone inside. He used every last bit of it on Marissa in his quest to force her to answer his one and only question. Each time she denied him, each time she told him to go fuck himself, he used that shotgun to remove a little more of one of her limbs.
By the time she finally begged him to end it, he'd taken her legs off up past her knees. One of her arms to the shoulder while he'd only gone up to the elbow of the other one. Marissa had been swimming in a pool of her own blood, shards of shattered bone and shreds of torn flesh creating little islands in the ever-widening sea of red. He was sure she was in a lot of pain. She begged him to end it. Begged him to put her out of her misery. So he asked her one last time where she'd stashed Katherine. And, when she finally him the information he'd been asking her for, he used that shotgun to put an end to her human trafficking days.
He left her sprawled across a blood-stained floor, the top half of her head painting the floor behind her. Her brain was matter smeared across the wall. Her goons were all dead, their corpses scattered around her, gaping holes in their chests and heads because he'd made sure that there was no way they'd get back up again. It was the very least they deserved for sending teen girls to what was very probably their deaths. Maybe, if he hadn't had an urgent agenda, he'd have taken his time torturing them properly. In the end, he left them all without a second thought and went off in search of Katherine. Because finding her and taking her back was the only thing that mattered to him.
"Good." Her voice brought him out of his thoughts to find that her eyes had closed. He could see the strain of talking etched on her face. He hoped that she would sleep again. But her eyelids fluttered up once again and pinned him with a stare that told him sleep was the furthest thing from her mind just then. She paused to swallow, to lick her lips again. Then she stared at him. "How?"
Her voice was hoarse and cracked. It almost sounded as if her throat was raw He wasn't sure if it was from disuse or screaming. He didn't care. He wasn't fond of the sound. Reaching out, he took a plastic cup off the rolling table and adjusted the straw in it, then held it low so she could roll take a drink simply by rolling her head to the side. When she released the straw, he returned the cup to the table.
"Principal Baker called me. She was worried. She thought you were trying to find Marissa's kidnappers," he explained. Katherine closed her eyes and sighed. Her actions told him what he needed to know. "You knew Marissa was the one taking the girls."
Katherine nodded, not bothering to open her eyes this time. He couldn't say he blamed her. The hospital room was boring. Just a darkened television screen, an unremarkable painting, and himself to look at. He'd close his eyes, too. The sudden urge to stroke her hair back and convince her to go back to sleep rose up within him and he ruthlessly quashed it. He had no business feeling such things. He had no place in his life for a fiery, ill-tempered young woman. He wasn't capable of being what she needed. So, in order to turn his thoughts away from such idiotic thoughts, he focused on Katherine's actions.
He wasn't surprised she'd figured out that Marissa was involved in several young girls going missing. Katherine was smart as hell and he'd have been surprised if she hadn't figured it out. In fact, he was damn proud of her. But she'd taken risks that she shouldn't have taken. She'd chased after someone much stronger than her without a clear plan or backup. She should have called him to tell him what was going on. To ask him for help. Finding out she'd gone off on her own, without the proper equipment or backup, without an idea as to what trouble she might possibly end up in, had scared the piss out of him and he didn't think he wanted to live through that again.
Again, he found his thoughts going in directions they had no right going. Edward tamped down on the urge to let his worry run free. He had no business worrying about the girl. She was a tool. Nothing more. Nothing less. In an effort to turn his thoughts away from such troubling territory, he decided to question her on her actions.
"How'd you know Marissa was responsible?" he asked her.
"She didn't feel right," Katherine replied. There wasn't much strength to her voice, but she'd gotten the entire sentence out.
Edward considered what she'd said for a moment or two because he had the feeling that she didn't mean she got a sense that Marissa was in some kind of trouble. He thought she might mean something else entirely, so he put forth his question. "How do you mean?"
"Energy," Katherine said. She closed her eyes again, swallowed once more.
"You mean sensed her energy?" he asked. She nodded.
"Interesting," he replied. And it was. It wasn't a trick that many people had. Maybe it had to do with her necromancy. He'd have to remember to ask Anita Blake, if he got the chance. Putting that notion aside for the moment, he reached out and stroked a bit of hair away from her face. She was in need of a bath or shower. There were still a few smudges of dirt on her temple that the nurses had missed when they'd attempted to clean her up earlier. He drew his hand back soon enough, chastising himself for allowing that weakness. Some part of him couldn't help it, though. In a world full of frightening things that didn't scare him at all anymore, she'd scared him so much.
The outbuilding was exactly where Marissa had said, nestled in the dense trees some distance from the back of the main house. There was a shiny new padlock on the door that fell victim to his lockpicks in short order, and it was left forgotten on the forest floor as he pushed the door to the building open.
The first thing he took note of was that it was very dark inside. And it wasn't that the small building didn't have windows. It did. But someone had put sheets of plywood up over the windows to cut any scrap of light that might make it through the trees, leaving the interior cast in a deep gloom. The second thing he took note of was the smell wafting out through the open door. It was a mixture of age and disuse with sweat, dirt, waste, and fear combined. He didn't care much for that smell because it told him a great deal about what he would find in that darkness.
The flashlight came out of his pocket and the sound of it clicking on was loud in the silence of the trees. Shining it through the open door showed him a pile of broken wood and trash in the corner nearest the door. There were dead leaves scattered across the floor, old and brown from age. Tatters of rotting, dirt-stained cloth hung over the boarded-up window directly across from the door. Further in, the light gleamed as it passed over the bars of a brand new cage.
It wasn't a large cage. It stood about four feet high, with the width and depth equal to that same height. A padlock kept the door closed, securing the lone inhabitant within the confines of the cage. Considering the fact that someone had put manacles on that inhabitant with the chain caught against the bars so that there was no way to get out if the door happened to be out, he thought it was overkill. Another set of manacles, again threaded around the bars, kept the prisoner from doing any moving at all.
White hot rage boiled up in his chest, threatening to make him lose his cool control. Marissa and her lackeys had trussed Katherine up like she was little more than an animal and left her incapable of moving positions. He took a breath to steady himself. Then he took another. And another. Until the rage receded. Until he was left capable of rational thought. Until he didn't want to have someone raise Marissa again so that he could kill her once more.
The lock on the cage was no more a challenge than the lock on the outer door. Edward picked it and tossed it to the floor, ignoring the loud clatter of metal on wood. His focus was entirely on Katherine, who had not yet stirred. He didn't like that she hadn't moved. In point of fact, he could barely see her chest rising and falling with each breath. He liked that even less than her lack of movement.
His hands went to work on the manacles. They were new, crafter of shining steel, and had obviously been made by hand. The locks were made to accept small keys, and it took far longer than he liked to pick them open. He estimated it took him more than fifteen minutes to pick all four locks. And in that time, Katherine hadn't stirred once. A pair of fingers pressed to her throat told him that her pulse was thready and far too slow. Her skin was cold to the touch, caked with dirt and filth. Peeling her eyelids apart showed him a pupil that was wide and unresponsive to the light. "Katherine," he said, putting emphasis on her name.
She didn't so much as twitch at the sound of her voice. He tapped her cheek, gentle enough to avoid leaving redness behind but hard enough to make a noise that echoed around in the darkness. That got him nothing.
"Katie!" he snapped, this time slapping her cheek hard enough to make his palm tingle. Still no response. His anger returned, brought about by the fact that she'd been bound in such a way that made it impossible to move. That she'd been heavily drugged. That she'd been abused, because he could see the bruise on her face under the layer of dirt that covered it. That she'd been treated like she was little more than a piece of meat. With that anger came fear. Because when he gathered her up, she didn't make a sound. Even when, as he adjusted her arms, he saw the bruising and swelling on one and realized that it had been broken.
If he could kill Marissa over and over again, he would gladly spend the rest of his life doing it. Just for what she'd done to Katherine.
Putting that thought aside, pushing his anger and his fear into a dark corner of his mind, he scoped Katherine up and hurried out of the hut. All he wanted to do was get her to a hospital. He'd need that anger later. Because he was going to dig deeper. And he was going to make sure anyone who had been involved in Marissa's human trafficking ring, from the people who lured the girls away to the ones that bought them, paid for every crime they committed. Every last one of them.
"I'm sorry." The apology was unexpected. He crawled out of his memories for the second time that night to find that Katherine was staring at him with a little more sense in her eyes. And there was an expression on her face that he swore felt familiar, though he couldn't recall ever seeing her make it before. "I shouldn't have gone alone. I should have called you. I should have..." She trailed off, her eyes slipping shut. Exhaustion lingered in her words, letting him know she wasn't going to be awake much longer.
"Yes. You should have," he reminded her, voice stern. "You could have been killed. Marissa was going to sell you to a vampire."
"Won't happen again." Her voice was a murmur in the silence of the room. She'd barely finished speaking when she slid back into the depths of slumber.
Edward took a moment to stroke her hair back from her face once more. Took a moment to memorize the softness of her face at rest. The youth that he never saw when she was awake. His chest tightened with emotion he refused to acknowledge as he studied the girl she should have been.
"No, Katherine. It won't happen again. I won't let it," he said softly, promise made in the growing silence of her hospital room. For reasons he wasn't going to bother to sort out, he swore to himself then and there that he would spend the rest of his life doing whatever it took to ensure that Katherine never fell victim to someone like Marissa again.
Snorting with disgust, he turned and stalked from the room. He was a goddamn fool. And he had a job to do.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-09-16 12:37 am (UTC)LOVE THIS UNIVERSE!!! (Particularly when you're let loose in it. LOL )
Ahem....so needless to say, I rather enjoyed this pleasant surprise today. SO glad the fic deities were smiling down upon you because then the reading ones shine upon me! ;) (It's all about me, you see.) Seriously though, great work as usual.I think you should write the AB books instead of LKH, you do the characters far more justice.
Love it!!!
xxxooo!
(no subject)
Date: 2022-09-16 04:58 pm (UTC)i have loved Edward since his first appearance in the first book and nothing has changed that over the years. that might be one of the reasons why i spend so much time in this universe. also, i really love it, too.
i see your personal bias is still going strong, so i won't comment on any of the extra stuff and just say i'm glad you enjoyed my offering. thanks for reading it. and thanks for leaving me a comment.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-09-17 12:33 am (UTC)Yes, yes he does.
Marissa - totally called it. Go me. lol
Feelings are scary. Very scary. Poor Edward.
Great last line, bb.
Yay, I finally got back to this and finished it. I do so love it when you play with Edward and let him do what he does best. Kill things. Also, man, do I fell bad for young Aedan/Katherine. I mean worse. She just can't catch a break, can she? I'd like to say that I hope she learned her lesson about going after the bad guys all alone, but we all know better don't we? *SIGH*
Great job, bb! Glad you were able to get it finished.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-09-19 12:19 am (UTC)i really loved that line. cos he was definitely on a mission and he knew, at the start, that people were going to die.
Marissa didn't start out to be the baddie in this. believe it or not, this was totally not how this fic was originally going to go. i had a very vague idea of Aedan going after a vampire and Edward going after Aedan. and that was literally it. it just kind of... morphed on me when i wasn't looking. oops?
i do like that line. so very in line with how i feel he would view his emotions.
i'll be honest. Edward has been one of my favorites almost from the very first. just.. i don't know what it is about him. but here we are. but i do love letting him have his way. him getting to kill things always brings a smile to my face. i think its safe to say that Aedan won't stop running headlong into situations without stopping to really think it all the way through. i think her desire to protect people stems from not being able to keep her father from doing anything. dunno. one of these days, her recklessness will get her killed. oh. wait...
glad you enjoyed it, sweetie. thanks for commenting. comments give me life!