Chaos Unbound (The Metis Files Book 2) Read online

  There was no longer any movement coming from the pile, but I could still hear the wheezing and gurgling from under the debris. In the darkness, I couldn’t see anything through the rubble. Part of me wanted to see what the hell the thing was up close, but the rational part wanted to get underway again since I had no idea where the other one was. I hopped down to the ground along the west side of the building. The site office trailer was about a hundred feet away, with a car parked in front of it. I waited silently for a moment, just in case the other creature was still around, but nothing moved.

  Hunched over with the rebar at the ready, I loped over to the car, intending to steal it. The owner of the car was nowhere to be found. Something about that was wrong. I couldn’t believe that the noise that thing made bringing down two floors of wood, metal, and who knew what else wouldn’t have roused a security guard from the middle of even the deepest sleep.

  As I worked my way toward the driver’s door of the beat-up old Chevette, something dark and shiny in the scant ambient light on the ground in front of it caught my eye. And that’s when the smell hit me—a sweet metallic odor mixed with the slight tang of sewage. Unfortunately, I’d smelled it often enough in my long life to recognize it instantly—a disemboweled body.

  I used my free hand to cover my mouth and nose in a pathetic attempt to stifle some of the smell. Once I got all the way around the car, I discovered the body—or bodies. There was simply too much carnage to belong to only one person. Finding the vehicle unlocked, I opened the door and switched on the car’s headlights. The illuminated scene was straight out of a Hollywood slasher movie. The two security guards had been totally ripped to pieces. They were little more than a big mound of ground beef with the random piece of gray or black cloth and bone sticking out of it. While I stared at the bloodbath, shaking my head, knowing that their deaths were partly my fault, one of the torsos began to wiggle a little.

  My first reaction was that the guy was still alive, but that was not possible. I shifted the rebar in my hands then decided it might be more prudent to get in the car and get the hell out of there. I kept glancing at the quivering mass while I fumbled through the vehicle’s interior, trying to find the keys. I checked the overstuffed glove box, above the visor, in the armrest, along the grungy, disgusting floor, and anywhere else I could think of—because I had no earthly clue how to hotwire a vehicle. After a few moments, I realized the keys were more than likely on one of the two bodies. Talk about a disgusting egg hunt. The gruesome task made me think about heading back to the condos next door to ask for help, but the sight of the two mutilated guards reinforced my instincts to draw everything chasing me away from humanity.

  So I started to poke around the horrific mess with the length of rebar. The first thing I jabbed was the quivering torso. Just as I touched it, an explosion of carnage burst from the ground underneath it. The surprise, more than the force, caused me to stagger back into the hood of the car. The car lights illuminated the other fur-covered clawed beast, its long black fur matted and caked with blood and gore.

  “You’re coming with us,” the creature said in impossibly perfect diction through a mouth like an angry red gash flanked by two enormous tusks and cutter teeth that were big enough to come from a five-hundred-pound Russian boar. I couldn’t see any eyes on its shaggy stump of a head.

  “Not a chance,” I replied, getting my feet back under me. I held the rebar in front of me with both hands like a staff rather than a sword. “Besides, if by ‘us,’ you mean you and that other furball you came with, you probably ought to know that he might be a little flatter than you remember.” I jerked my head back in the direction of the collapse without taking my eyes off the creature.

  “My Queen prefers you alive, Diomedes, but she will still reward me if you are dead.” The creature’s wide mouth became even wider, in a grotesque attempt at a grin. Stepping to its right, it started to circle, crouching as it progressed.

  I turned to keep myself as square to the beast as I could. For some reason—maybe the rebar—it kept its distance, bobbing slightly from side to side as it hunched, its arms down at its sides. Its long, curved claws dragged in the dirt.

  “Back off and let me go, or this is gonna get ugly,” I said. “And tell Mab whatever she thinks I did, I didn’t. Um, why does she think I did it?”

  The creature made a throaty, gurgling laugh, then it lunged. I stepped backward and dodged to my left, narrowly avoiding its reach. I quickly sprang forward, driving the rebar hard across the monster’s chest, sending it staggering backward and eliciting a howl of pain as the steel touched its skin. Recoiling, the creature doubled over, hissing and drooling on the ground. I pressed the attack, swinging the rebar around overhead to my left, to bring it down in an arc like a club. Thanks to the combination of the awkward weapon and the creature’s incredible speed and agility, it landed a glancing blow, sending shockwaves through my arms and jarring my teeth as the rebar hit the ground.

  The beast backhanded me while I was off balance, striking me across my right shoulder and upper back, knocking me to one knee. I used the momentum to tuck into a roll that brought me along the shaggy fae’s right side. As I got to my knees, I thrust the rebar upward into the creature’s gut. It screeched a piercing, high-pitched shriek and brought one of its clawed hands down sharply across the rod, cutting the rebar cleanly in half with another howl. The reduction in weight and length threw me off balance enough to cause me to tip forward.

  I managed to catch myself with one hand before I pulled a full face-plant while the creature hobbled off into the darkness faster than I expected, groaning as it wrenched the steel bar from its abdomen. Honestly, using iron against a fairy was almost cheating, but I was in a pinch. Besides, all’s fair in war.

  Chapter 4

  I scrambled back to the bloody scene and began carefully but quickly poking at anything pocket-like, desperate to find the car keys. By the time I found them, I probably looked like one of the unfortunate extras in a Dario Argento movie. So be it. I had bigger problems to deal with.

  I hopped in the Chevette and floored it. Fortunately, the traffic on the roads had significantly cleared up. Reports on the radio were saying that the blackout extended from Riverside County to Ensenada and as far east as Arizona, but they still had no idea what had caused it or how long it would be before power was restored. The DJs were laughing about crazy reports of two large green wolves running wild through Mission Valley, and no one could identify the source of the numerous and destructive sonic booms. Fortunately, it sounded like the fairy glamour the Cu Sith emanated hid their true monstrous forms from innocent bystanders. I hadn’t perceived so much as a whimper from them in a while, but they would eventually find my scent. The only way to truly lose them would be by traveling through the Telluric Pathways.

  An entire contingent of Mab’s hunters was probably waiting at my house, and armed only with a chunk of rebar, I would be a fool to head there. So I just drove with the sole objective of remaining on the run for as long as I could. I was a little surprised Athena, my benefactor and the source of my inhuman strength and speed, hadn’t stepped in to help me, but the more I considered it, the more her indifference made sense. She would have assisted if she could. She was likely trying to negotiate and resolve the mess before things got out of hand, maybe trying to buy me time. For the moment, I was on my own.

  I flipped through radio stations, trying to find the football game, and it didn’t take me long to discover the Chargers were losing. Today is not turning out well for me.

  After meandering around several unnervingly quiet and dark neighborhoods, I found myself on an onramp for Highway 52, which was completely deserted, and decided to head east, hoping to find some open ground. I almost made it up the big hill at the edge of Mission Trails Park before the car began sputtering like water dumped into hot oil and spewing steam from under the hood. The car finally came to a stop
, and I actually had to let the piece of junk roll backward downhill to get it to the side of the road.

  Marine Corp Air Station Miramar took up all the land on the north side of the highway, while a state park occupied the land to the south with the nearest neighborhoods a few miles ahead or behind. I didn’t expect to encounter anyone, given the blackout. It was as good a place as any to hide, so I stayed in the car. At least if anything found me on the side of the highway, it was out of the way. I was surprised by how different things were without power. The vast majority of my life has been spent without any sort of electricity, yet I still couldn’t avoid the sense of utter isolation in the darkness even though I was only a few miles from several major shopping malls and neighborhoods.

  I didn’t even know if Athena could help me out of a mess with the Unseelie Court. The whole situation reminded me of how tired I was, running and hiding for the past few hours with no good plan of action and no real idea why I was running. I knew Mab supposedly wanted me for murdering her Warmaster, but I didn’t know why she believed I had done it. Clearly, I was going to have to figure out what had really happened and do it quietly and damn fast, before any other Unseelie uglies got a shot at me. And I needed to keep any confrontations as far away from people as possible, not only so they wouldn’t see it, but to protect them from becoming collateral damage. I had no idea if it was even possible—or even worthwhile—to plead directly to Mab. The fae system of justice always struck me as a kangaroo court—if a man wasn’t guilty, he wouldn’t be there. Besides, if someone was framing me, I had to know who and why. That was the only way to end this mess without dying.

  The next thing I knew, I woke up startled, blinded by the glare of a flashlight as someone tapped on the window. It was still dark, and while I shielded my eyes with one hand, I rolled the window down a bit. It dawned on me that I was driving a stolen car covered in the owner’s blood, but at the moment, blinded by a flashlight, I couldn’t even tell if the guy tapping on the window was human or not.

  “You okay, buddy?” a voice asked from the other side of the window. “You’re covered in blood… are you hurt?”

  “Ah, I’m fine,” I replied, trying to sound coherent. “Just bumped my head.”

  The window knocker lowered the flashlight beam, and I began to get enough vision back that flashing blue lights became evident in my rearview mirror. Either I was being abducted by aliens, or this was a cop.

  “You okay to step out of the car for me, Mister, or should I call an ambulance for you?” the voice behind the light asked.

  “No, no, I’m okay. I can get out.”

  This is going to be fun. At least it’s not aliens. I opened the car door slowly, trying to get a sense of the situation. One officer stood behind the door I was climbing out of while another stood at the car’s trunk, his hand on the gun at his hip.

  “You have any ID, sir?” the officer asked loudly but politely, acting as if I might be drunk.

  Oh well, what the hell?

  “Ah, I think I left it at the bar.” I patted my pockets then stumbled a bit, finally leaning on the open car door for support, playing into his suspicions.

  “What’s your name? Sir, can you tell me your name?” the cop asked as I bobbed and swiveled my head in every direction.

  “It’s… um… it’s… Frank.” I retched as if I were about to vomit. “’Scuse me. I think Immona be sick—” I began wobbling quickly around the back of the car, past the other cop, toward the side of the road.

  The cop at the rear of the car backed up a few steps, avoiding my awkward gait. Once along the side of the road, I fell to my knees and began to heave. The cops kept their lights on me, but they also kept their distance. One of them said something to the other, then one of the lights trailed off as its owner headed back to their cruiser. I doubted the car had been reported stolen yet since its owner was dead, but I also knew that me being covered in blood in an undamaged car was suspicious.

  While I continued to fake-vomit, I tried to make out the terrain in front of me. It wasn’t great—all rocky hills covered in scrub brush with little cover. The familiar glow in the sky to the southwest, over what was undoubtedly downtown San Diego, told me the power must be back on. Silhouetted against the light noise, something on a hill about five hundred yards off caught my attention. I tried to focus on the area without staring directly at it, trying to pick up the movement rather than detail. I could only make out a large dark shape, crouched near the top of the hillock. From its size, I guessed it was either one of the Cu Sith from earlier or a grizzly bear—and unfortunately, grizzlies had been extinct in California for about a century.

  Oh boy.

  “Hey, Mister, did you hear what I said?” the cop behind me asked. “Why are you covered in blood?”

  I had two options. I could let the cops arrest me then deal with that mess, assuming the Cu Sith wouldn’t rip them to shreds first, or I could make a break for it and deal with the Cu Sith on my own, probably saving the cops a gruesome death. I’ve seen firsthand what the hounds were capable of, and I wouldn’t have wished that on my worst enemy. And since I’m supposed to protect humanity and all, I didn’t really have much of a choice.

  I bolted upright and faced the officer standing behind me. He was holding his flashlight about shoulder level, shining it at my chest, but his other hand was resting on his gun. His partner was sitting in the passenger side of the cruiser on the radio with the door open fifteen feet to my left.

  “I strongly suggest you and your partner get into your car and leave, quickly,” I said in a calm, even tone.

  “What?”

  “I said I strongly suggest you and your partner leave. Now,” I replied.

  “Sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but maybe it’s best if you put your hands behind your head and get down on your knees. You’ve been hurt, and you’re clearly intoxicated. For your own safety, we’re going to bring you in for the night.”

  His hand moved toward his handcuffs, and I could see his partner climbing out of the car, pointing a Taser at me from between the car door and the windshield. The Cu Sith disappeared in the dark valley below.

  I wasn’t sure what the safest play was, but it had nothing to do with keeping my back to a Cu Sith. Facing a Taser wasn’t giving me warm fuzzies, either.

  The cop pulled out his handcuffs and began cautiously making his way closer to me. Then a sharp thunderclap echoed from the hills behind me, startling the hell out of the two cops. In the blink of any eye, I stepped to the right and behind the cop with the handcuffs, grabbed him by the collar of his shirt with my right hand, and pulled his gun with my left. Lifting him so that only his toes touched the ground, I used the dangling cop to shield myself from his partner’s Taser. I really didn’t like doing it, but at the moment, it really did seem like the best way to save their lives.

  My sudden action caused the Taser-wielding cop to fire, hitting his partner square in the chest. When the guy went rigid, I didn’t so much drop him as let him go. Gravity did the rest. I fired well over the other cop’s head, causing him to duck behind his door, but the Cu Sith responded to the noise with an eerie baying howl that was answered by three booming short barks from another not-so-distant place.

  That makes the pair of them. Shit.

  I couldn’t miss the enormous fairy hound across the hilly field bounding in our direction at frightening speed, but I didn’t see the other one yet. I grabbed the cop who’d been Tased, threw him over one shoulder, then ran around to the driver’s side of the police car. I dumped the limp cop into the back, slammed the door, and climbed into the driver’s seat, still holding the cop’s gun in my right hand. I went to start the engine, and the other cop knelt down at the passenger-side door with his service revolver aimed at me.

  “Stop!” he said, stammering. “I’ll shoot!”

 
A thundering bark rattled the car and nearly broke the windows. I reached across the car’s interior, grabbed his wrist, and tried to pull him into the car. He smacked his head hard on the vertical riser between the front and rear doors, knocking himself unconscious, and I had to drag him into the car by his shirt. I floored it as the first Cu Sith made it to the road less than fifty feet behind us. The open doors slammed shut as the tires squealed on the pavement.

  It took the police cruiser about four seconds to get up to sixty miles an hour, but the damn fairy dog was already at full speed—which was apparently much faster than sixty. The giant dog came along the passenger side of the car and slammed into us, nearly causing me to lose control. The impact shattered the passenger-side windows and lifted the car slightly, but thanks to the police car’s beefy transmission, the collision actually jarred the one-ton dog, causing it to veer away. I kept the accelerator floored and, aiming the gun over the unconscious cop, took a bead on the hound’s flank as it closed in. I fired through the shattered window until the gun clicked empty. I had five shots left after the one I fired to scare the cop. But the lead in the bullets, though not a ferric metal, caused the giant dog to nosedive and cartwheel off the shoulder of the road as it howled in pain. The .38 rounds wouldn’t do much long-term damage to the hound. Neither would the crash, even at high speed. I checked the rearview mirror, which was empty at the moment, but I knew the other hound wasn’t far behind. At least I had time to put more distance between us.