Serpent's Sacrifice Page 32

  Phantasm leaned forward, the snout of the gas mask inches from Alice’s face, the faintest smell of jasmine clinging to it.

  “I told you, it’s a surprise.”

  “But, you really want to tell me, don’t you?”

  “What I want to do with you should be obvious, little snake.”

  Alice’s fingers circled around the baton.

  “So, I’m just part of your gardening?”

  A chill lanced through Alice as Phantasm spoke, the words laced with malice.

  “You? You’re not gardening — you are catharsis.”

  Phantasm tried to punch her again, but Alice swung the baton up and cracked it against Phantasm’s wrist, producing a screech of pain from her. Alice swung again, hitting the mask. It stunned Phantasm enough for Alice to twist out of the pin and elbow Phantasm in the side, knocking her to the floor.

  Alice jumped up, ready to drive her foot into Phantasm’s knee cap when a terrible sound echoed through the room: Lionel’s scream of rage. Her head snapped in his direction in time to see him lift a man overhead. She watched in horror as Lionel threw him.

  Phantasm cackled and said, “You better go help him, before he kills innocent bystanders.”

  “What did you do to him?”

  “I took off his mask. This is his true face. A monster, all of them are. It’s only a matter of time before everyone sees it. Even you.”

  Lionel roared again. His punch sending another man several feet in the air.

  Phantasm leapt to her feet and ran to a nearby exit, laughing hysterically, and then calling out to Alice, “Who’s it going to be? Him or me?”

  Alice took three steps to follow her when Lionel yelled again, and this time, gun shots rang out.

  “Damn it!”

  Once again, she used the furniture like stepping stones, shooting serpent bites at the three officers shooting at Lionel.

  ”Steel!” she said, running up to Lionel.

  He growled at her, same as last time. Spittle flew from his mouth and his eyes were wild. It was a stranger staring at her, an animal.

  “Shadow! Where are you?”

  “I’m...here,” Marco gasped. “I can’t...He’s...”

  Alice jammed a new clip of bites into her gauntlet and shot all of them into Lionel.

  He yelled as he charged at her, a bellowing sound that made Alice genuinely afraid of him for the first time in her life. But before he could reach her, he stumbled, a look of confusion on his face. His eyes cleared for a moment before falling hard onto a nearby desk, which collapsed under him.

  The minute he fell, the rest of the officers closed in with guns drawn.

  “Stand back!” Alice demanded. “Shadow and I will take it from here.”

  “I’m not sure I can allow that,” Garrick said.

  She frowned at him, stepping closer so only he could hear. “Phantasm dosed him with something, it’s not his fault.”

  “You expect me to just let him go? After he tossed two of my men like rag dolls?”

  Meeting his bullish gaze with equal strength, Alice squared her shoulders.

  “Yes.”

  “I helped you, because I thought you knew what was right and wrong, and could actually help this city. Now,” he glanced down at Lionel, “I’m not so sure.”

  “He’s like this, because he put himself in danger to protect you and everyone else. Now, you’re going to turn your back on him? Besides, do you really think you’ve got a cell that will hold him?”

  For the first time she could remember, Garrick looked afraid.

  “Look,” Alice said, realizing she’d made a mistake, “we can help him, but not if you lock him up.”

  He looked down, hands on his hips. “Fine. But if you can’t control him, he’s done.”

  Alice nodded.

  Garrick began to bark orders to the men, who stared at him with barely concealed fury. Alice could still hear soft cries all around the room, some murmurings, and even a few outright growls.

  Alice bent down next to Marco, who stared at Lionel, his long face slack.

  “I couldn’t help him,” he said.

  “But you can help these people, right?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Shadow? I need you to help these people.”

  When he still wouldn’t respond, Alice grabbed his face and pressed her forehead to his, taking one precious moment of closeness with him. He lingered there with her before touching her cheek and slowly pulling her hand away from his face.

  “I can help these people,” he said.

  Alice stood and began her own search, looking in every broom closet and office. The first one had a woman cowering in it. After getting someone to help her, Alice hurried to check the other rooms. Most were occupied, but not by Uncle Logan. When she finished with every place she could think of, she ran to look at every person the police were evacuating that remotely resembled him.

  A panic began to lay heavy on her chest as she saw the body bags being carried out.

  “He couldn’t...that...”

  She swallowed, trying hard to be brave, but before she got to the first bag, Marco stepped in front of her.

  “I’ve checked,” he said. “He’s not one of the dead.”

  She covered her face with her hands, relief breaking over her for the moment. But then, Garrick walked up, his face pale and pinched.

  “Al-Serpent...uh...kid..it’s not that simple.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He handed her a black envelope. She didn’t want to touch it, knowing who it was from. Her body trembled as she took out a single sheet of silver paper:

  Families are such fragile things.

  “Serpent?” Marco asked, taking the paper from her numb fingers.

  “I’ve tried calling—” Garrick began.

  Alice bolted from the room before he could finish.

  Leaping off the Lightning, not bothering to prop it up, Alice kicked in the door to her uncle’s house, batons smashing into the face of the man who lunged at her.

  She’d fought on high adrenaline before, but this was different. It was as if someone else was in control. Someone who didn’t care about killing or maiming, who was powerful and furious. It only took a few minutes, and when she was done there were three men lying on the floor with bloodied faces, not making a sound.

  A fourth man ran out of the kitchen, a blood-splattered butcher’s apron hugging his huge frame. He clutched a meat cleaver in one hand and swung at her. She jumped back and slammed her baton into his wrist as he tried to swing it again. He yelled in pain.

  Alice ran, jumped and wrapped her legs around him, the momentum forcing them both to the floor. Her fist crashed again and again into his boxy face. His eyes took on a feral rage and he grabbed her neck, squeezing. She couldn’t draw a breath, couldn’t pry the vise-like hands off.

  And she’d run out of serpent bites.

  She pressed her thumbs into the man’s eyes as the edges of her vision were starting to go black. The harder she pressed, the looser his hands became until she heard a sickening pop and a screech like the sound of a wild animal.

  Alice fell to the side, coughing and gasping for breath, her throat on fire. She felt the warmth of his blood through her gloves, and in the back of her mind, knew she’d just crossed a line.

  But then, she saw the blood on his apron.

  Her uncle’s blood.

  She grabbed a baton and hit him across the face once, twice, until he finally stopped screaming.

  Half-crawling, half-running, Alice fell into the kitchen. The floor was covered in a thick plastic that was liberally splattered with blood. The stove was on, a steak knife heated to a bright orange in the flames of the burner. In the middle of the room, tied to a dining room chair, was Uncle Logan.

  She stumbled to his side.

  “Oh god…Oh my god!”

  Burns and cuts at even, precise intervals covered his torso. His chest, stomach, and upper arms were bloody, his l
eft pants leg was gone and Alice could see that they had started on his thigh, blood oozing from the cuts and burns.

  His face wasn’t much better. Both eyes were swollen shut, his lip was split in two places, and it looked like he’d lost a tooth.

  When she went to untie him, the knots in the rope were wet with his blood, his fingers on one hand were at odd angles.

  “Uncle Logan,” she said, her voice hoarse. “It’s me. Please open your eyes. Please.

  Alice thought she heard a grunt, but couldn’t be sure.

  “I’m gonna get help.” She picked up the phone, but it was dead. She threw it, tears starting to fall behind her cowl.

  The sharp wail of sirens pierced the silence and Alice thought it was the best sound in the world.

  “I’ll be back.” She ran out onto the porch just as Garrick jumped out of the car.

  “He needs an ambulance, now!” she ordered.

  “Call it in!” Garrick barked, then eyed the three men laying in the door way. “Are they dead?”

  “I don’t think so,” she whispered.

  Garrick looked like he wanted to say something, but only shook his head and ordered his men to secure the house. She was about to run back to Uncle Logan when Garrick grabbed her arm.

  “You can’t. They’ll figure out...”

  She wanted to tell him to go to hell, that she didn’t give a damn, but the awful truth was she did.

  “I’ll call Gerald,” Garrick promised. “And I’ll personally escort him in. You go change and meet us at the hospital.”

  With one last backward glance, she straddled the Lightning and gunned it, the tires shredding the lawn.

  As she sped down the street, Alice couldn’t stop thinking of all that she’d lost. Aunt Diana’s brutal death. Lionel’s poisoning. Uncle Logan’s tortured body tied to a chair like a side of meat. Even Douglas, stabbed and poisoned, just for helping her.

  All of it ran in a loop through her mind until she burned with it, the flame kindling something hard and bitter in her soul. She realized that it had been there all along, lending strength to her when she needed it. But she’d ignored it, feared it.

  Not anymore.

  She embraced it now, letting the hardness spread through her, molding her resolve into a clear, bright point.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Alice didn’t even glance in a mirror before running out of her apartment and hailing a cab for the prison. If she could’ve gone as the Serpent she would have, but the last thing she needed was to be arrested trying to see Douglas.

  When she stepped inside the prison infirmary, Alice was stopped cold by Douglas’ appearance.

  She expected that he would look sick, but not this sick.

  Instead of gray, his skin had yellowed, the whites of his eyes even more so. His body was emaciated, as if he hadn’t eaten in months and when he breathed his chest gave a wet rattle. A sour, primal smell hung in the room. The books on his table had changed. Alice saw Asimov, HG Wells, even Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. A bolt of surprise shot through her and Alice ignored it. She wasn’t here to talk about books.

  Her face must’ve been truly terrible, because the minute Douglas saw her the smile on his chapped lips fled.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  She felt tears prick her eyes and pressed her lips in defiance of them.

  “Tell me how to hurt Phantasm.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you. What-?”

  “I need every detail, anything you know, no matter how small or insignificant you think it is.”

  “What happened?” he asked again.

  Alice swallowed, holding onto that hard bright piece of her soul.

  “Uncle Logan was tortured and the newspaper was attacked.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And now, you’re what? Going after Phantasm, no restraints?”

  “Can you help me or not?”

  “Yes, but I won’t.”

  “You selfish piece of shit!” She grabbed a book and threw it at him. “The only man who has ever been a father to me could be dead and you’re playing games?”

  His sunken, scruffy face hardened and for a moment she saw Douglas as he had been all those years ago. She jerked back a little, and then clenched her fists. He wasn’t going to hurt her, not anymore.

  “It’s not about him,” Douglas said, coughing. “It’s about you. If I give you what you want, you’ll go and ‘hurt him’. And then what? He hurts you and you hurt him, over and over. Until nothing is left but two beaten shells.”

  “If you’re trying to be a father now—”

  “You’re goddamned right I am!” A spasm of coughing shook his body and Alice swore she saw him wipe a little blood away with a bony finger. Taking a rattling breath, he continued. “Because, unlike Logan, I know where this leads. You see, kid, you’ve got a piece of me in there, somewhere, whether you want to admit it or not. It’s hard and doesn’t give a shit who it hurts, as long as it gets what it wants, which is to hurt someone, make them pay.”

  “And what was mama paying for? Or me?” She hadn’t intended to ask that, but realized that it had been trying to get out for a long time.

  “Being the two people in the world I loved most.”

  Alice shook her head.

  “You don’t beat someone you love!”

  “You do if you hate yourself so much that you can’t stand being in your own skin!” He coughed again, wiping away more blood.

  She stared at him, not knowing whether to believe him or not, and not knowing what to feel about it if she did.

  The image of Uncle Logan, his bloodied body hanging limp in the chair, stung her mind, and she felt that bright hard spot inside her begin to throb with anger.

  “You don’t want to help? Fine, don’t! You’re a useless sack of bones, anyway. The sooner you die the better!”

  She bolted down the hall. The faster she walked, the more her anger built, and the more distant her father’s words became. She was nothing like him, and never would be. The very thought made her shake with loathing. He’d made her life hell, and then walked out when she needed a father most. And now, at the end of his sorry life, now he was going to take up the reins?

  Alice scrubbed away the remnants of her tears.

  “I’m nothing like him.”

  Alice would’ve given anything not to have to go into the hospital just then. She needed movement, something to do.

  Someone to hit. I swear if I find her…

  The moment she stepped through the glass doors of the hospital, Alice was overwhelmed with chaos. Doctors and nurses rushed from rooms, their eyes on charts or on the patients that were streaming in. A cart of supplies toppled as a frantic nurse barreled into it, not stopping to see if she could help clean up.

  Alice walked to the front desk where a sweating woman sat with a phone balanced on her shoulder and someone talking in her other ear.

  She waited, but just as the woman got off the phone, someone else pulled her attention. Alice wanted to feel sympathy for how busy she was and why, but she just couldn’t.

  “Excuse me, hey! My uncle was brought in a few hours ago,” Alice said.

  The woman ignored her.

  Alice reached over the desk and pulled on her green sweater. The woman jumped and then glared at her.

  “Logan Miller’s room?” Alice asked, meeting the woman’s angry eyes with equal intensity.

  “You’re not the only one here you know,” she said.

  “I can see that, just tell me his room and I’ll leave you alone.”

  The woman huffed and looked at folder.

  “Room 17, hallway C.”

  Once she found the right hall, Alice took her time finding the room. A moment ago all she could think of was seeing Uncle Logan, making sure he was alright. But now she knew that she couldn’t see him broken and clinging to life. She hovered outside his hospital room, walking back and forth until Marco saw her
and came out.

  His eyes had deep dark circles under them and there was a purple bruise on his left cheekbone that she hadn’t noticed before. If she had expected sympathy, or a gentle embrace, she was wrong.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he asked, brown eyes blazing.

  “I went to see Douglas.”

  “That couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”

  “No, it couldn’t.” She took a deep breath, knowing he wasn’t going to like what she had to say. “We have to stop Phantasm before something else happens, and tonight is as good a time as any.”

  Marco stared at her, wrinkles appearing above the bridge of his long nose as he frowned.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I think I know how to find out where Phantasm—”

  “Alice, stop! Your uncle is in a coma.”

  She paced faster, shoving the words away. She’d deal with that after.

  “Did you hear me?” Marco asked, standing in front of her.

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “He can’t hear or see me. And while I stand there and cry, Phantasm is planning god knows what!”

  Lionel came out of the room, faint bruises on his neck where the serpent bites had been.

  “What’s going on?’

  “She wants to go out hunting Phantasm tonight.”

  Lionel’s jaw dropped. “Your uncle needs you.”

  “What do you think I can do in there?” she said, trying to convince herself as well as them. “Gerald is there, he has police protection, why do I need to be there?”

  “To help him wake up,” Marco said. “He can hear you—”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Does it matter? Alice, this isn’t you.”

  “Well, maybe it should be! Maybe I’ve been too soft and passive. I want to take the fight to her, and this is how we do that. We can cripple Phantasm if we can find the lab where she’s making all this stuff. Doesn’t that matter?”

  Marco crossed his arms.

  “If it’s for the right reasons, yes.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Is this about saving Jet City anymore? Is it about being a guardian for those that need one? Or is it about you getting revenge against Phantasm? About you somehow proving to yourself that you’re a hero?”