I recognized him immediately from the small tuft of hair under his lower lip. It was Ricky “Scrape” Torres, aka Soulpatch—the biker with the bullet wound in his shoulder who’d been yanked out of the dead deputy’s car.
In living, breathing color.
51
Ricky Torres didn’t know what the hell was happening to him. He’d been duct-taped like a mummy and held in some room somewhere for what felt like forever. His wound had been treated and stitched shut, but it still hurt like hell. Then a little while ago, he’d felt a prick in his arm—some kind of antibiotic, no doubt—then, still with a duct tape blindfold over his eyes, he’d been untied, dragged to his feet, thrown into a car, and driven away.
And then this.
Thrown out of the car onto hard asphalt before his captors screeched away.
Had they let him go?
Hesitantly, he stood up and tore the tape off his eyes. The sun assaulted his vision instantly, and it took him a long moment before he could make things out clearly. When he did, he realized they’d dumped him in Mission Valley, right by the main parking lot of the Westfield Mall. He felt drowsy and disorientated, and found himself staring curiously at the Hooters across the road. His face contorted into an odd smile as a weird thought dropped into his mind. Right now, a few beers in the company of some scantily clad hotties would really help him forget everything that had happened to him in the past—how long was it? Forty-eight hours? More?
He didn’t know.
He stood there for a moment, still unsure as to why the bastards had let him go. During the drive over, he’d asked himself whether they were taking him somewhere isolated so they could kill him there and dump his body. Clearly, that wasn’t the case. But he felt like crap. His head was throbbing, his eyes felt like they weren’t focusing properly, and although the pain in his shoulder had eased off after they’d stitched him up, it was now back with a vengeance. Although he’d felt the bullet being removed, he now found himself wondering if his wound was infected. He knew from his days fighting in Iraq that infections to bullet wounds were often more lethal than the bullet that made the hole.
He needed to get it checked. Fast.
But a quick beer sure sounded good.
He took a couple of uncertain steps into the street—then heard a loud blast from a horn that stopped him in his tracks. He spun around to find that he was looking directly at the driver of a truck that was screeching to a halt, only narrowly avoiding hitting him. The guy was gesticulating and swearing loudly in what sounded like Spanish, but Torres couldn’t be sure. The sound reaching his ears was distorted, and there was a disconnect between what he was hearing and the movement of the guy’s mouth. There was also something odd about the driver. Torres squinted and tried to focus against the sun. Then he saw it.
The guy had yellow eyes.
Torres blinked, shaking his head before taking another look. The eyes were still yellow. Not only that, but fangs were now protruding from beneath the guy’s upper lip, and his skin was shimmering like the skin of a snake.
What the—?
Torres staggered back onto the sidewalk, violently shaking his head as he retreated, unable to tear his eyes off the horrific sight. The driver swore at him and hissed through his sharp fangs as the truck rumbled off. Torres watched it go in total confusion, wondering what the hell had happened just then. He’d barely slept since he’d been nabbed and was clearly starting to hallucinate, but he needed to hold it together and get his head straight if he was going to have any chance of staying clear of the cops. He decided that the last thing he needed right now was wasting precious time on boilermakers and trying to get into the pants of some buxom waitress.
He turned to head the other way when he felt it. A weight, tugging against his belt. He glanced down and pulled back the Windbreaker they’d put him into and saw it: an automatic handgun, tucked into his belt.
His jaw dropped, and he quickly covered the gun up again. He glanced around nervously, hoping no one had spotted him, and noticed that he was facing a CVS, which took up most of the first floor of the building in front of him. What he really needed were some kick-ass painkillers. Something to take the edge off the throbbing pain in his shoulder so he could get somewhere safe and figure out his next move. Yes, that was the right move. For sure.
He set off across the parking lot and headed for the pharmacy. But as he made his way along the parked cars, he heard the unmistakable sound of a magazine being clicked into the body of an AK-47.
He spun around, his hand instinctively slipping under his jacket to grip the gun. A woman was loading shopping bags into the trunk of her car while her kid screamed that he didn’t want to go home. As she leaned into the car’s open tailgate, Torres realized that she must have hidden her weapon inside the car so he couldn’t see it. He thought about going over to the woman and demanding that she give him her weapon, but the sound of the kid’s screaming suddenly spiraled to an unbearable level, piercing his skull like a battery of bayonets.
He covered his ears as he turned and ran into the mall.
People seemed to avoid him as he staggered into the building. As he passed the Macy’s, he looked down at his shirt and noticed that he was drenched in sweat. Or was it blood? Maybe he’d been hit and the pain from his shoulder had stopped him feeling it? He wiped his fingers across his face then looked at them. No, it was just sweat. His mouth felt horribly dry. He needed water. And those painkillers. He set off again, but a searing pain ripped through his abdomen, causing him to double over. He leaned against a wall and retched several times. He felt like he wanted to throw up, but he didn’t think there was anything in his stomach. The pain was so bad he leaned his back against the wall, and although he was desperately trying to stay on his feet, after a moment he had to just let himself slide to the floor.
Something was wrong. Inside him. Something was seriously, seriously wrong, he knew it. And it was starting to scare him.
He raised his head and saw an older woman staring at him with a concerned look on her face. That’s how the suicide bombers got you. He knew that. They pretended to be a friend and then they took you to hell. He had lost three friends that way, blown to bits in the middle of a crowded street as his unit went door-to-door, trying to flush out insurgents. A woman had offered to show his sergeant a house in which some of them were hiding. He’d stayed behind to cover the street, and seconds later, there were pieces of his buddies scattered across the road.
He wasn’t going to let them get him that way.
He steeled his eyes and looked at the woman and went for his gun, but his hand froze as he stared at her face and saw it start to bend and change, her gentle gray eyes turning black and threatening, her nose morphing into the sharp beak of a bird. He tried to move, but the pain in his gut was too severe. The woman’s arms were now covered in black feathers, and her hands had been replaced by razor-sharp talons. And she was edging slowly toward him, her claws outstretched.
With a huge effort he pulled the SIG out from under his jacket and waved it at the harpy-like beast.
“Get back! Get away from me!”
The beast didn’t need telling twice. It turned and skittered away.
Torres couldn’t understand what was happening. He stuck the gun back under his belt, hauled himself to his feet, and slipped around the corner toward the entrance of the CVS. It was only a couple of hundred yards away and he was sure he could make it as long as he didn’t stop again.