I waited for the ding that would tell me I had a new voicemail, but instead my phone rang—Sofia again. I sighed, dialed down my pettiness, and answered.
“Angel, I need your help!” she gasped. “Oh my god, I don’t know who else to turn to. I can’t reach Marcus, and there’s someone outside of my house and—”
“Whoa, wait! Sofia, slow down. Marcus is in Lafayette. What the hell is going on?”
I heard her take a shuddering breath. “I think I’m in danger. I keep hearing sounds outside my house.”
“Have you called the cops?” I asked.
“Yes!” she wailed. “I called them, and two cops came and they checked around the house and they said they didn’t see anything. But ten minutes after they left I started hearing it again. I…I think someone is maybe just trying to scare me.” She gulped. “And they’re succeeding. I know we barely know each other, but is there any way you could…come over here?”
You have got to be kidding me, I thought with unchecked annoyance.
“Please,” she said, voice cracking. “I know it’s stupid, but I’d feel so much safer if…if you could come by for a bit. The cops won’t stay but…”
But I’m a zombie and hard to kill and could actually offer a bit of security. I sighed. “Okay.” Shit. When did I become so nice? “Where do you live?”
“Oh my god, thank you thank you! I live in Breckenridge Estates. I’ll text you the address.”
I racked my brain for where the hell that was. Oh yeah, it was a new subdivision out off Highway 1790. “Okay, I’m probably only about ten minutes away.”
“I’ll be watching for you. Honk when you pull up, okay?” she said. “I don’t even want to peek out the window at this point.”
I bit back a frustrated sigh. “Sure. See you soon.” And then I disconnected before I could be pulled into more paranoid angst.
But is it really paranoia? I had to wonder. There was definitely some weird shit going on. And if I had to be honest with myself, my dislike of her stemmed mostly from our encounter at Pietro’s…and, if I really had to continue being honest with myself, from my jealousy of her and her friendship with Marcus, even though I didn’t believe for a second that the two were anything more than friends. Didn’t matter. I envied their closeness, however platonic it was.
I mused on this as I drove—easy enough to do since there wasn’t much else to occupy my attention out here. Highway 1790 ran from one end of the parish to the other, with a big stretch in the middle through woods and swamp that I affectionately called Bum-Fuck Nowhere. Back in my don’t-give-a-shit days, I used to come out here and get whatever car I was driving to its top speed—which was awesome when I was in a Camaro that Randy had been fixing up, but was pretty damn lame in my Honda.
I didn’t stick strictly to the speed limit, but I did my best not to go more than ten miles per hour over. Which was probably a damn good thing when I saw something shimmering in the road ahead of me. Unfortunately I was still almost on top of it before I saw the glint of spikes.
I slammed on the brakes out of pure instinct, but I was already too close for that to do any good. A second later the road spikes ripped through my front tires with a bang that I felt as much as heard, quickly replaced by the shriek of metal on pavement and the thump of rubber slapping the side of my car.
I fought the steering wheel and pulled the car over to the side of the road, gasping raggedly in reaction. What the fuck? Why would police spikes be out here with no cop car in sight? No cop car means it’s not cops, I told myself. I was on a straight and empty stretch of road with at least fifty feet of knee-high grass on either side before it turned into scrub marsh and scattered trees. A perfect ambush spot. I needed to get the hell out of there, and my only option was to run for it and hope to lose whoever was after me in the marsh. Gators. Giant Squid. Oh, man, this is gonna suck.
My purse was god-only-knew-where on the floor, along with my phone. I automatically reached for the water bottle of brain smoothie, cursing as I remembered that I’d finished it off after punching Clive and hadn’t replaced it. I was still pretty tanked up, but it sure would have been nice to have some extra on hand. ’Cause I had a feeling I was about to burn up a whole lot.
Bolting out of the car, I took off at a sprint for the woods on the other side of the highway. I heard a gunshot and bit back a screech of panic as I increased my speed. But the next gunshot came with a searing pain in my left calf that sent me sprawling into an awkward tumble on the asphalt.
It’s Ed. My thoughts whirled frantically as I stumbled back to my feet and started running again. He’s finally come back to finish me off.I could hear footsteps behind me, the loping pace of someone who knows that they don’t need to run their prey down. Something hard hit me in my lower back, and I fell again, landing heavily on my hands and knees in the gravel of the highway shoulder. Pain flared briefly, but then it faded to a dull sense of pressure even as everything around me shifted to a greyscale monotone. I could still see and hear and smell, but it was as if everything was abruptly dialed back to the absolute basics. This gunshot wound was obviously a lot worse, and my body was abandoning all those extra resources right now. I wanted to scream at it that it needed to put all the energy into my legs, because once my head got chopped off it wouldn’t make a difference.
I managed to get to my feet again and resumed my race to the woods in what was now an awkward shambling jog.
“Oh, please don’t make me chase you down,” my pursuer called out.
That’s not Ed, I realized in cold shock, though I didn’t slow down. That was McKinney. What the hell?
“I have no intention of killing you,” he continued. I risked a glance back. He was a good fifty feet from me, still on the other side of the highway. He’d probably been hiding in the grass. And now I could see a dark car parked a distance away, almost invisible in the gloom. “Right now I’m simply trying to slow you down and weaken you,” he said. “If you resist, I’ll have to keep shooting you, so I suggest you stop and come along quietly.”
Like that was going to happen, I thought grimly, then jerked as something punched me in the back again. I stumbled to my knees, breath coming in a rasping growl. I looked back at him as he stepped onto the highway. Hunger snarled and flailed as what I now knew was my parasite clamored for resources to repair the damage. Could I take him? How many more bullets would he be able to pump into me before I reached him? Too many. No, my instinct breathed, let him come to you. Then I could put everything into one last attack…I could smell his brain. That’s what I needed to survive this.
The sudden roar of a car engine and the sound of more gunshots slashed through my grotesque plotting. McKinney jerked and collapsed as time seemed to slow—or maybe it was my perceptions that were completely screwed. It felt like I only had time to blink once as a black Dodge Charger screeched to a stop between McKinney and me. The driver darted out, and I barely had time to grunt in surprise before he scooped me up, threw me over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, then dumped me into the backseat of his car. In the next instant he was back in the driver’s seat and flooring the gas pedal. I thought I could hear some more gunshots, but at the speed my unexpected savior was going, I knew we wouldn’t be in range for long.
I curled up on the back seat to stay out of the line of fire, but also to give me a few seconds to fight back the hunger. I could smell my rescuer’s brain, but there was still enough of Me in control to know I was better off letting him live. As soon as I was fairly sure that I wasn’t going to attack the driver, I struggled upright. I looked behind us, but I couldn’t even see my car anymore.
“I don’t know who you are, but you saved my ass back there,” I rasped. God, my voice sounded like hell. I peered at the back of the driver’s head. “So, who the hell are you, and how did you know my ass needed saving?”
The driver let out a low sigh. “Hi, Angel. Long time no see.”
If I’d been able to feel anything, I’m sure I would have felt as if ice had been poured over me. The man who’d just saved me from whatever fate McKinney had in store for me was Ed.
Great. If this isn’t out of the frying pan and into the fire, I don’t know what is.
I was pretty sure I could survive jumping out of a car going at—I glanced at the speedometer—ninety-three miles an hour. It would suck giant donkey balls, but with enough brains I’d recover. But I’m already in bad shape.
“Please don’t jump out of the car, Angel,” Ed said, obviously knowing what my reaction to seeing him would be. “I’m not going to kill you, I swear.”
I paused in my reach for the handle. “Why the hell should I believe you?” Or better yet, why shouldn’t I let the hunger have its way?
He slowed to make a turn, then sped up again, carefully checking his rearview mirror. “I need to talk to you.”
“About what?” I asked, distrust thick in my voice.
He licked his lips. “About…you, and Marcus…and Marianne.” He looked at me in the mirror. “I didn’t kill her, Angel. I swear I didn’t.”
“I know,” I said without thinking. “I mean…I had a hard time believing you did. It didn’t make sense for you to kill her.” I ran a hand over my torso. There were two wounds on my stomach where the bullets had exited, but I wasn’t bleeding anymore. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Especially since I was extremely aware that there was a nice healthy brain in the car with me. “Ed, you need to let me go. I’ve been shot.”
“I need to talk to you,” he repeated. “I’m taking you someplace safe.”
I tried to swallow, but it was getting difficult. “You don’t understand. It won’t be safe for you. I need to eat.”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel briefly. “Ah. You mean brains.”