Feeding Frenzy (The Summoner Sisters Book 1) (10 page)

“You okay, girl?” the tied man asks me, obviously not recognizing me.

“Been better,” I reply.  “But I’m in the biz, myself.  If we can hang on to the sleazy bastard a minute, I’ll have his dad come pick him up.”

“I’ll do what I can,” he mutters, a sheen of sweat indicating that he himself has had healthier days than this one.  “Got a blade?  I’m a little limited as is.”  He begins thrashing at the incubus, attempting to trap the monster’s legs with all of his limbs tied.

I don’t have the energy to respond, but instead get up and quickly cut the zip-ties off of his hands.  I hand him the knife to finish the job.  I will feel bad later that the man whose life I cut short is helping me to save mine, but right now, I’m too tired to waste the energy.

Gregor taps into the fight, taking over the physical exertion part while I return to my ritual.

“Where was I?” I ask myself.  “Oh, right.”  I switch back into ancient Greek.

“We offer unto Zeus these gifts.”  I add a little of my dwindling supply of goat blood, and light a match.  The incubus becomes frantic, twisting its back like it’s severed its spine.  As I drop the match, the thing crawls free of the large man’s grasp.  Gregor grabs for it again and misses, his hands closing on air.

“No!  Get it!” I yell as the incubus disappears into the hallway.  Just then I hear a car door.  I turn over my shoulder to the broken window.  Heedless of the glass, I prop myself up on the ledge and see my sister below.

“Lia!  It’s getting away!  Stop it!”

From above, I see my sister drop into a fighting stance just as the front door flies open.  She moves to trip him and to bind his arms, but he grabs her ungloved hand, causing her to lose focus for just an instant.

“No!” I scream again.  “It can’t get away!  We’re so close!  It can’t….”  I’ve apparently reached the upward limit of my stamina for the moment.  Warm darkness rushes up to greet me, and I fade to black.

I come to on the ground with a goat licking my face and the sounds of an argument pressing on my ears.

“I don’t care if you’re the fucking patron saint of fluffy puppies, you sit your ass down or I’ll blow it away!” Lia snarls.  So, I can’t have been out long, then.  It looks like even when my body is the one who calls the fight, I still can’t stay unconscious for a normal amount of time.

“Miss, I’m not the bad guy.  I swear to you, I don’t know my own self what’s goin’ on here.”

“Lia…”  I call out.  Wow.  I sound awful!  Apparently I’m a pretty big baby about getting shot.

“You just sit there.  No sudden movements,” she directs the man as she walks back to me, her eyes never leaving Gregor.

“No movements at all,” he agrees, stretching out his injured leg.  “Dang if I know how the heck I got lead in me.”

“Summer?  You gonna make it?”

“Doing my best.  Did we get the incubus?”

My sister clenches her jaw.  “No.  Slimy fucker got away.  But it’s not a total loss,” she goes on quickly.  “The kids are all at the local hospital, and the doctor says they’ll probably pull through just fine.”

“I’m sorry, Lia.  I fucked it all up.”

“No, don’t say stuff like that!  We almost had it.  We took away its pantry.  It can’t get far.  We’ll fix it.”

I want to tell her how much more it is than that, but I’m getting woozy again.  First things first, then.

“Gregor’s not a threat.  I took care of that.”

“What does that mean?  How?”

I shake my head feebly.  “Lia, I’m runnin’ on fumes.  Let’s get to the car, we can call the paramedics for him on the way.  I need to recoup.  Soon.”

She nods worriedly.  I pass out again as she lifts me into a fireman’s carry.

When I wake up next, I’m back at the motel, lying down on one of our blankets over the tarp on my bed.  Lia is leaning over me, every light in the room moved as close to us as possible while she finishes retying my bandage.

“You,” she starts accusingly, “are a magnet of bad luck and also the luckiest person in the world.  No significant arterial damage.  Bullet stopped before it got too far in, so it’ll hurt like hell but isn’t technically broken.  I didn’t find any shards, even.  Stay off it for a few weeks, should be as good as used.  Thank God you were in armor—I think you have a broken rib, and you’ll have some
impressive
bruises, but the only other injury of note is what appears to be a mild concussion.”

“You know, I feel pretty lucky.  This is clearly a sign I am Chosen,” I joke back feebly.

“First, we need to get you some blood back.  You’ll be on a diet of oatmeal cookies and orange juice until your face looks tan again.”  She cleans up the makeshift operating theatre and stores it all back in our first aid kit.

“So...you in a place you can catch me up?” my sister asks as she returns to sit next to me.

I’m dreading this.  It won’t do to wait any longer, though.  Maybe I’ll pass out before she gets really upset, and she won’t have the heart to stay mad.

“I was almost done with the ritual.  Gregor had it pinned down, but apparently not well enough.  The damn thing slipped through our fingers as I was reaching for the dagger.”

“I should have stuck around,” Lia says, blaming herself.

“No...we’ve saved five kids so far.  Not bad for one and a half people.”  We reflect in silence for a second.  We’re both sure it is our fault that today ended like this.

“We’ll get it,” I tell her, pushing her a little with my right hand.

“Yeah.  So, why did Gregor change tunes?”

My heart starts thumping uncomfortably.  I don’t want to lie to her, but “I used your tormentor to help break a deal with a Greek god in a misplaced effort to protect us, but then I let it escape, so sleep with one eye open” doesn’t sound like something I want to say, either.  Even as I think it, I feel Gregor’s fear of Hades like a shadow on my conscience.  I am pained with my own behavior.  I’m not even sure that I’ll get points for honesty when I confess it all to her.  Is it worth it?

“I did something that I’m...not proud of.”  I glance at her nervously.  She doesn’t say anything, knowing from long experience that I will talk more readily if I’m not pushed.

“I didn’t want to kill him, and I couldn’t let him leave.  He’d been helping the incubus—he was its keeper.  Apparently, he had a deal with Hades, which is gonna be fun when we go to banish it.”

Lia squeaks nervously, but still doesn’t say anything.

“I know.  We’ll have to figure that out.  But on his watch seven kids got nabbed, you were threatened, I was shot, and someone’s dead.  Gregor’d already gone this far, so I thought that it was likely he’d take our meddling out on mom and dad.  I had to do something.”  I look at her, imploring her to understand.  She regards me anxiously, but she nods understanding at my line of thinking.

“I used a boon, Lia.”  She looks at me like I just told her told her that I’d killed the family dog, and I feel about as worthless as someone who would do that.  “I know.  I’m a piece of shit.  But it seemed the best alternative, as long as one day you don’t hate me.”

“How could you think...we agreed!  What the fuck, Summer?  I need a minute.”  She stands up and goes to leave.

“Wait.  Let me tell you the rest so you can be mad at me all at once.”  She hesitates with her hand on the doorknob.  “She got away in the fight.  I tripped over the circle.”  Without a word or a look back, my sister leaves, storming out into the night.

I try to stay up and wait for her.  Every minute feels like an hour, and I spend the time berating myself.  Of course she’s mad at me.  I basically asked her arch enemy to go to a party with me. 
I’m
mad at me for betraying my sister.  No one does that and gets away with it.  Thinking these cheerful thoughts, eventually I fall into fitful sleep.  When you’ve bruised, broken, or bled from every side of you, finding a comfortable position to sleep in is really hard.  I doze in and out as the night grows darker.  And darker.  My dreams replay the night that I first realized that Lia was in actual trouble, and the night I ended it, almost three years later.  I’m telling her it will be okay, that she’s safe.  But it’s a lie now, like it was then.  I wake every time I say it, the pit in my stomach growing. 
I
hurt her, this time.  And like before, I don’t think I can ever make it quite right.

In that part of the night that is coldest and deepest, I wake again to find Lia fussing with my saline drip.

“You’re back,” I say.  She glances down at me.  From the set of her face I can tell that she’s still angry.

“Damn fuckin’ right I’m back.  You needed a new bag.  Can’t just fuckin’ disappear.”

“Lia, I’m so sor—”

“Shut up.”  This catches me off guard.  We don’t say things like that to each other in any seriousness.  This job wants so badly to tear us down, we try really hard not to do the same.

I shut up.

“Summer, I know you’re hurt.  But I’m not okay right now.  I know why you did it.  If you’d asked and I’d had time to think about it I might have agreed to it.  But right now, all I’ve got is anger.  We fucking
agreed
.  Those boons were no boons to us.  We made it nine years.  One more year, and I could officially close that chapter.  And now that bitch is loose.”

I nod when she stops.  It’s an unflattering picture perhaps, but it’s not wrong.

“So we’re gonna find the son of a bitch that’s taking kids, and we’re gonna find the other bitch, and I’m sending her back with a permanent boot print on her tiny, purple ass.  And then?” she pauses, getting aggressively close to me.  “We don’t.  Ever.  See her again. 
Comprende
?”

I nod again.  “No need for the speech.  I tried to think of anything else, Lia.  She shouldn’t have gotten away.  That was an accident in a day designed to be full of accidents.  I’m with you.  Boot prints, walls of silence, all of it.  But please don’t stay mad.  I’ll fix it.  I didn’t want to hurt you.  If I could go back I…”

“You wouldn’t change it,” Lia says softly.  “It was the best of a shitty situation.  I’m mad, and scared, but I know you didn’t do it to hurt me.  So.  We stick to the plan I just outlined, you just...sit there for a bit and I think it’ll work out.”

“Sounds good to me,” I say weakly.  The saline is helping my levels of consciousness, but the pain will only get worse for the next day or so.

The relief I feel at being forgiven allows me to sleep a little better, though of course I’ll feel remorse for some time to come.  I wake up the day after the fight, and she is gone.  I see her on the television before I see her in person over the course of the day.  The local news outlet is interviewing her.  Her makeup is carefully done so that she doesn’t really look like herself, in case anyone should pay attention longer than her fifteen minutes of fame lasts.  She comes in to sleep a little and to check on my health, but it’s clear that right now she needs some space, and I am prepared to give it to her.

In the evening, Lia changes to go to work at the bar—the bills don’t care that one of us just got tossed around like a Muppet by a Greek demigod.  I need to keep my mind busy, so I turn my thoughts to what the incubus could be planning now.  It’s keeping a girl.  That sounds like either Brittany was somewhere else when she perished, or she isn’t quite the same as the rest of the kids he was hoarding.  I am just beginning to work on the puzzle when Lia shoots me a text.

-U doin ok?

“Shit.”  I curse out loud, panic taking over.  Lia and I don’t often use code words.  It’s just too hard to remember all of them, and to pick words that you don’t use often, but won’t sound strange in tense situations.  So, we choose code behaviors instead.  We never send texts without the words spelled out.  If we abbreviate, it means company’s coming.

I quickly remove the needle for my saline drip, storing the bag under my pillow.  Next I leap out of bed, exhaling angrily as I jostle my ribs.  First things first.  I rip the surveillance equipment off of the door and shut out the video feed on my laptop.  Then, I run around, grabbing our guns and boxes of ammo, shoving them into the two duffels of dirty laundry we keep, carefully piling laundry over them.

A sharp knock on the door tells me it’s pretty much too late to change anything else.  Luckily, all that’s left is the goat, armor, my gunshot wound and the weirdness that is the rest of our human and supernatural protection program.  I’m sure that all of this will be easy to explain.  I send a quick prayer to the ether.

“Just a second,” I call out, trying to sound groggy.  My heart is pounding wildly.  I take a few fast breaths to psych myself up for the imminent pain I’m about to cause myself and force my arm through a hoodie sleeve, jamming it over my head.  My shoulder screams at me, and I almost throw up from the all-consuming agony sudden moves like that induce.  I think that I might have pulled a stitch.  In a last second fit of inspiration, I decide to play the hungover girl—I certainly look the part.

I answer the door slowly, blinking at the sudden light after a day in our curtained room.  Outside is a detective and a cop, looking bored.

“Ms. Watson?” the detective inquires, using the name of my decoy identification.  His face remains closed, but he notes my disheveled hair and rumpled clothing, lips pursing in momentary disapproval.

“Yeah?”

“I’m Detective Kline, and this is Officer Macgregor.  Mind if we come in a minute?  Wanted to ask you a few questions about the folks you and your sister helped save.”

“Think maybe we can stay out here?  Or that I could come to the station once I have a minute to clean myself up?”

He looks at me steadily, nothing in his features indicating friendliness.

“It’s just pretty rank in there right now.  Bad night.”  I can feel the sweat from nerves and excruciating pain beading on my bloodless face.  I try to smile and manage to seal the illusion I’ve thrown together by dry heaving, which causes me to fall back against the side of the motel as my broken ribs protest.  I am falling
apart
.

The detective remains impassive.  “Sorry, not really much of a drinker,” I tell him.  “I just…it took a lot out of me seeing all those kids kept like that, you know?”

At that moment, a noise comes from the bathroom, sounding awfully like the sound that cloven goat hooves would make if they were jumping into a bathtub.

Detective Kline angles his blank face to the side, a study in cold curiosity.

“Damn pipes,” I say with a small, nervous titter, my heart beating so loudly that I’m sure he can hear it.  He continues observing me like I’m a rat in his lab.  I’ve dealt with plenty of inhuman monsters, but even
they
usually offer some sort of emotion that I can read.  This guy is granite.  If he’s not buying it, they’ll find our arsenal, my wound, and lots of other incriminating things that will wipe us off the map for a good long time. 

“Of course,” the detective says after an uncertain minute.  “If you and your sister could join us tomorrow, say around eleven o’clock?”

“You bet,” I say, moving my mouth as little as possible.  I’m afraid that if I open it too wide, either my heart or my stomach contents will jump out.  The briefest of smiles ghosts over Kline’s features.

“Don’t leave town, now.  Roanoke is really counting on its new heroes to help us locate the remaining victim.”

“Ugh, definitely won’t be driving anywhere tonight,” I say honestly.  Even the thought of being in a car right now makes me motion sick.

“All right, then,” Detective Kline replies neutrally, handing me his card.

I wave feebly, and more or less collapse back into our room, relief and pain warring with my nervous system.

“Too close,” I whisper to the room.

-
I am fin
e
.
  I text Lia once I can stand up well enough to get back to my bed.  I should look at my shoulder, but that would mean moving more.  Sleep sounds better.  I don’t wake again until Lia comes back from work and turns the light on.

“Jesus,” she murmurs, concern written on her face.  “You’re bleeding again.”

“Yeah…had to hide the telltale bullet bandages,” I say drowsily.  I peek at my shoulder.  It’s only just bled through the sweatshirt, but it seems to have stopped again.  “Just need a new stitch,” I tell her.  “And maybe a little painkiller.”

She nods and sets to work, easing me out of the oversized sweatshirt, redoing the stitch that came out, and covering everything back up.

“It’s really not that bad, though, admittedly, pulling stitches out isn’t ideal for your recovery,” she says objectively.  “I think the blood loss and broken rib are really the things that are taking the wind out of your sails.”

“Ugh.  Curse you, ribs!”  I can feel a wave of nausea mounting.  “Dear, God.  It’s not fair that blood loss can make you nauseous.  Doesn’t the body know that losing
more
liquids right now would be the worst idea ever?”

“Hang in there.  Don’t puke.  Clyde pooped in the bathroom.  You should stay away from feces until your insides are fully separated from your outsides again.”

“Sage advice.”

She hooks a new saline drip up and crushes up some Tylenol for me to swallow.

“We gotta go to the police station tomorrow,” I tell her as I lean back.  I hand her the detective’s card.

“Gonna be up for that?”

“Gotta be.”  She nods, turns on the television and goes to bed without speaking to me again.

When we wake up, I’m feeling a little more human.  I unhook from the drip, and wait ten minutes to see if I’m still nauseous.  So far, so good.  I manage some water and a cereal bar while I take stock of myself.  The mirror is not my friend.  It’s coming up on forty-eight hours since I had my last shower and now the full array of my bruising is really coming to life.  People could take vacations to come see all of my fall colors.  My shoulder is very tender, but I can feel my fingers again which means that there isn’t any permanent nerve damage.

“How’s it going?” Lia asks sleepily from her bed.  I turn and look at her.

“I’ll be back on the monkey bars in no time.”

“Glad to hear it.”  She slumps out of bed and goes through her morning routine.

“What’s our play with the cops?”  I ask her.

She shrugs.  “They seemed on the up and up when I ran into them earlier.”

“And you trust that?  You don’t think Gregor has any more friends in the area?”

“That guy was a statie.  These are locals.  Totally different packs.”

“Which is why I think it’s likely he had an inside man on the force, too.”

Lia grudgingly goes along with my theory.  “So we’ll just be careful about how we tell our story.”

I give myself a quick sponge bath so that I feel acceptable to be out in public, at least.  “I think we need to initiate Operation: Normal,” I comment as I get dressed with painstaking effort.

“Really?  Think it’s that bad?”

“Let’s just say, I have a really strong hunch.”  Though I told her about Gregor’s connection to Hades, I have yet to find an opportune moment to inform her that I’m now in possession of several of his memories.  While I can’t work out yet how to use his recollections like I can conjure my own, I do have a vague sense of tension when I think of the Roanoke police.  I can’t tell if that’s because he didn’t like them, because I don’t, or because I
won’t
when I learn they’re buds with the guy who shot me.  No matter the cause, it sets me on edge.

“Well then, we should really get going, or we’ll be late.”

After a few quick stops to initiate Operation: Normal, we hit the police station, watching carefully to spot anyone following us.  It’s Tuesday, so the station is bustling with office drones and a steady stream of people being booked or released.  I hate precincts.  I always feel like I did something wrong.  Probably because I usually have, I reflect to myself.  That doesn’t seem right.  I just saved five people.  So what if I had to break into a house to do it?

“Summer and Ophelia Watson?”  An officer walks towards us.

“That’s us.”  Lia confirms.

“Detective Kline is ready to see you.”  We follow the cop back through the precinct to a conference room.  That makes me feel a little better.  If precincts in general are bad, interrogation rooms bring out my real contrarian.  I’ve got a history of telling cops things like “you can’t handle the truth,” and “I’ll die before I talk to you.”  I’ve made more than one public defender cry.  Good times.

“Feeling better today?” the detective asks me as he enters.