Queen Of Blood

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Back outside, now.

It wasn’t yet noon, which didn’t seem possible. Allyson felt as if a lifetime had passed since they’d gone charging into the strange house. So much had happened. So many people had died. It didn’t seem right that a space of little more than an hour could encompass the extinguishing of all those lives. But it had. The sun was obscured by clouds and the air was tinged with winter’s chill. But Allyson didn’t mind that. It was a clean chill. Natural. She remembered her glimpse of that black room and shuddered.

The girl called Giselle had been loaded into the minivan parked behind the package truck. She was in the rear, her wrist stumps bound with a thick layering of silver duct tape. The girl looked numb, her eyes staring at something beyond this place. The young Asian man was sitting beside her. He sensed Allyson’s scrutiny and his head swiveled slowly in her direction. A very small smile darkened the edges of his cruel mouth. Allyson turned away and moved to the Jeep.

Chad and Jim were there, arguing in low voices. Chad was doing most of the arguing, though. Jim kept his head down and stared at the ground as he listened to his friend rant.

“Jim, you just can’t do this. You can’t go with them. It’s insane.”

Jim sighed—an immensely tired sound—and at last lifted his head to look Chad in the eye. “Perhaps. Regardless, I am going.” He looked at Allyson and managed a tired smile. “Hello, Allyson. I want you to know how proud I am of you.”

Allyson flushed with embarrassment. She smiled and abruptly threw her arms around the old singer. He laughed and after a moment returned the embrace. Then she broke the embrace and stepped back, saw that he was smiling, too. It transformed his haggard features, making him look decades younger. For a flickering moment, she glimpsed the rock god of old, the impossibly good-looking and intelligent young lion who had taken the world by storm.

She swiped tears from her eyes with the base of a palm. “Chad’s right, you know. You should go with us. There’s nothing you can do for that girl.”

Jim’s smile slipped some, but didn’t fade entirely. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that.” He glanced at the minivan and the last of his smile evaporated as he looked at the frail form of the girl huddled against the door. “Giselle has made mistakes. She’s done bad things. Unforgivable things. But there was a time when she did amazing things. A time when we worked toward a common goal. She was incredibly brave then, and her actions ultimately saved the lives of thousands. Including—” He indicated Chad with a tilt of his chin. “—your man here. For that alone, I owe her my company for what’s left of her journey. I owe her whatever comfort I can give her, meager though that may be.”

Chad made an exasperated sound and shook his head. “Look, I get what you’re saying, okay? I understand it. But you’re putting your life on the line here.”

Jim’s smile this time was smaller, sadder. “It won’t be the first time.”

Chad opened his mouth to respond to this, but hesitated at the sound of the minivan’s front passenger door slamming shut. The old Asian man was ensconced in the shotgun seat now. Bai was standing outside the open side door, watching them expectantly.

“Leaving now!” she called to them.

Jim shuffled a few steps in that direction. Then he turned toward Chad and Allyson, addressing them one last time as he walked backward. “I wish you both the best of luck with whatever the future holds. You can be happy, but you should stay underground.”

He reached the minivan and turned away from them.

He slipped into the rear compartment and settled into the space between the younger Asian man and Giselle. Bai threw the door shut and moved to the other side of the van. She slipped behind the wheel and pulled the driver’s-side door shut. She didn’t so much as glance Chad’s way. There was something dismissive about this. He was already a part of the past for her. A toy she’d amused herself with for a time and was now discarding. The lack of even token acknowledgment made Allyson hate the bitch more than ever.

The minivan’s brake lights came on and the engine purred to life. It was a well-maintained car, easily the best-running vehicle in their meager fleet, so of course Bai had commandeered it for the drive up here. But Allyson’s resentment on that count faded as she watched Bai quickly execute a three-point turn and start down the hill. The sooner the Order people were gone from her sight the better.

Chad sighed and slumped against the side of the Jeep, watching with numb resignation as the minivan quickly made its way down the winding dirt path. “I can’t believe he’s going with them. How could—”

The explosion made Allyson stagger backward. Chad dropped to his knees and screamed. The minivan’s interior was on fire. The roof had been blown out, its mangled remains a soot-gray mess. A column of black smoke rose into the air. Allyson’s mind reeled. She couldn’t begin to process what had happened. And then the fire ignited the gas tank and a second explosion demolished much of what was left of the minivan. Allyson’s knees went weak and she clutched the Jeep’s side mirror to remain upright.

Chad got to his feet and rushed down the hill. He was screaming something. Useless words of denial. Allyson watched him stumble and fall, banging his knees on the hard ground. And then he was on his feet again, charging full-out toward the smoldering wreck of the minivan. Allyson regained her composure and shoved herself away from the Jeep, hurrying down the hill after him.

Chad stopped a dozen yards from the burning van. The heat was too intense to get any closer. He was on his knees again and sobbing by the time Allyson reached him. She dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around him, forcing his head away from the awful sight. He buried his face against her breasts and wailed. Allyson stroked his back and cooed to him. Nonsensical things. The things a mother might whisper in a baby’s ear. She felt useless and stupid. She looked over his shoulder and was able to make out smoking remains in the minivan’s seats. A scent of burning meat permeated the air. Allyson’s stomach did a slow roll.

She gripped Chad by the hand and stood up, pulling him upright against his will. He looked at the minivan again, a stricken look contorting his features. Allyson turned him away from it and they began a grim march back up the hill. They reached the Jeep and Allyson helped Chad into the passenger seat. He was pliant, now, acquiescing to her every instruction without resisting.

Allyson climbed behind the wheel, dug the Jeep’s keys out of her pocket, and twisted them in the ignition. The engine sputtered a few times, then came to reluctant life. She goosed the gas pedal a few times, and when the Jeep was running more smoothly, she put it in gear and started down the hill.

They gave the ruin of the minivan a wide berth.

They drove in silence for miles, leaving the house on the hill far behind.

Chad spoke up when they at last left the rural road behind and started down a much busier state route. “Jim planned that, didn’t he?”

Allyson hesitated a moment before replying. She’d been working toward the same conclusion, but it was nonetheless a hard thing to admit. “Yeah,” she said at last, “I think he did.”

Chad slumped in his seat and stared blankly at the road ahead. “Hell. It makes sense, in a really fucked up way. He couldn’t take out the Order people in a direct confrontation. So he waited until he had them where he wanted. He sacrificed himself to avenge the deaths of his friends and to save Giselle from whatever sick thing they had planned for her.” He laughed, a short, sharp, bitter sound. “I’ve got to hand it to him, I guess. I’ll bet those arrogant assholes never saw it coming.”

Allyson frowned. “Okay. But how did he do it?”

Chad looked at her. “You saw that big jacket he had on, right? There was a lot of ordnance in that truck. I bet he helped himself to some grenades before we went into the house. Hid them deep in that jacket. It must have been so easy to just reach in his jacket and slip the pin out of one of those grenades. All he had to do then was wait a few seconds.”

Allyson’s eyes misted. “That…shit, that really took some guts.”

Chad nodded and said, “Yeah.”

They drove in silence for several more miles. Traffic thickened as they neared the exit that would carry them back to the interstate. Allyson thought of something as she hit the turn signal. “He said we should stay underground. “Why do you think he said that?”

Chad shook his head. “Jim spent most of his life underground. Probably he just thinks…thought it would be the smart thing to do.”

“Or maybe he thought we might still be in danger somehow. Either from the Order or…whoever’s in charge now at that house we just shot up.”

Chad shrugged. “Could be.”

Allyson steered the Jeep along the curving interstate ramp. “So what do you think we should do?”

“Right now?” Chad grunted. “Let’s just keep driving and figure it out later. All I want at the moment is to get to a hotel somewhere, preferably one at least a hundred miles from here, then shower, have sex with you, and sleep for a day.”

Allyson smiled. “Sounds good.”

The Jeep hit the interstate and Allyson put the pedal down.