Vultures Read online

  “Don’t feel bad for ol’ Jimmy!”

  Gabby’s eyes flash with manic glee.

  Miriam gasps, pushing herself backward, tumbling off the bed, the sheets tangled in the closed scissor of her legs. Her head cracks hard against the floor, but she takes no time to get her bearings—already she’s launching herself unsteadily to her feet, hands clenched into fists.

  There sits Gabby, blinking wearily. One eyebrow up in total bewilderment. “Wha? What are you doing?”

  “I . . . Gabby?”

  “Yyyyyeah.”

  Miriam lets out a breath.

  “Sorry, I . . .” She winces. “Just had a bad dream.”

  But she knows it wasn’t. It was no dream. It was real.

  It was a warning. The Trespasser: letting her know what’s to come. Letting her know that he can flex his powers over her, and worse, over Gabby. Maybe not all the way. Maybe not yet. But soon.

  “Come back to bed,” Gabby says.

  And Miriam does.

  But she does not sleep.

  PART SIX

  * * *

  BLOOD MAKES THE VINES GROW

  FORTY-TWO

  The Falcon and the Field Mouse

  NOW.

  Miriam runs through the vineyard. Her leg is aching. Her collarbone, too, pulses with hot fire every time she takes a rough and ragged step. She winds her way through gnarled vines, each as thick as her arm, twisted and bulging with fat grapes. At the end of each row is a mystery: roses planted in a half a barrel, red as cartoon blood, thrust up in an ostentatious spray.

  She has no time to dwell on why one would plant roses here in the vineyard, away from the eyes who would see and appreciate.

  All she can do—all she must do—is run.

  Like a shark: swim forward or die.

  It occurs to her how often this is the life she has led: on the run from bona fide fucking maniacs. This is what her curse and the Trespasser have done to her time and time again: running from Harriet and Frankie at the behest of Ingersoll; running from the Mockingbird killer again and again, not realizing that the Mockingbird was not one killer but rather a whole family of them; running from Ashley Gaynes, who knew her every move; fleeing the Coming Storm’s militia camp in the sun-fucked desert; again escaping the resurrected Harriet as the seemingly unstoppable witch-bitch pursued her doggedly.

  But that last one, that one was different, wasn’t it?

  Because at the end of things, Miriam stopped running.

  Miriam started hunting.

  She pursued Harriet. Caught her. Cut out her heart and ate it like a raw filet. And from there, it seemed that some of Harriet’s voodoo passed to Miriam now. Reigniting her candle, so to speak, by healing her womb and letting her once again become pregnant. And letting her heal whatever damage came her way. She did not know how much of that carried to the child in her belly—the kid wasn’t necessarily afforded that same preternatural protection—but it did mean she could take a beating.

  Even now, as she limps—

  She feels the leg straighten.

  The soreness in her shoulder and collarbone—she hears a click as something moves back into place of its own volition.

  The pain moves from being a sharp needle to a dull, prodding throb.

  She winds her way past the roses, to the line of trees above them, and there she stops and scans the horizon. She spies no pursuer.

  Time, then, to change the game. No longer the field mouse, she will now be the falcon. Or maybe the hawk. Because that is what she finds there, soaring above her: the humble red-tailed hawk, one of North America’s ubiquitous raptors. Not as fancy as a peregrine or osprey, not as beloved as the sky-raccoon known as the bald eagle, the red-tailed hawk is a utility player, a common bird with unparalleled skill. It’s a bird you find everywhere, wheeling in the sky above, or perched on a telephone pole waiting to grab a vole and fuck back off into the blue. Miriam crouches there by the trees, dipping her chin to her chest and—

  The rush hits her. The feeling of being up, up, up, and away: a swift lateral wind hits her as the heat from below buoys her like a lifting hand. She’s up there now. In the hawk. Her talons contain wretched, alarming power—two are so large, so hooked, that she can use them to grab struggling prey and secure it firmly as she carries it away. But she also knows that their power is used in mating, too—a gentler use, two birds crashing together, talons grasping one another as they cease flying and fall toward earth, fucking and screaming and spiraling ever downward, and Miriam thinks, Like Louis and me, or maybe Like Gabby, too, except then for a moment, she doesn’t know who Louis is, or Gabby, or even Miriam—

  But this is not new to her. She knows what it is to be lost there in the sky, in the hunt. Miriam exerts her will. She forces her identity forward, thrusting her presence into the present. I am me. I am not this bird.

  And I am looking for someone.

  She is looking for the Starfucker. The man in the shining mask: a cheap black balaclava studded with sequins—a gaudy façade, a visage made perhaps to mock those the Starfucker kills, or maybe just because the Starfucker like shiny things. Whatever the reason, it makes him all the easier to see, and the gleam of sunlight on those hundreds of little sequins is like light on a solar array. The bird sees it easily, gleaming. He’s on the other side of the vineyard now. Approaching the line of trees but at the opposing side of this field. He must’ve thought Miriam went that way.

  Soon, he’ll come around.

  He’ll find her.

  But she has found him first.

  She resists letting the hawk scream—red-tailed hawks have an amazing, sky-piercing shriek. Everyone thinks it’s the bald eagle that screams that way, so majestic is their vision of the bald eagle. But the bald eagle is a scavenger half the time. It doesn’t shriek. It simpers and coos. The scream belongs to the hawk, and it is a power move, a black-metal bird-cry, but she doesn’t want to alert her prey to what’s about to happen.

  The hawk descends.

  Relatively speaking, the hawk descends slower than its other raptor ilk: a kestrel is like a bullet, while the red-tailed’s descent is almost slow, almost lazy. And yet, at the same time, it is inevitable. The talons tighten into something resembling bird fists. The bird does not plunge so much as it settles ineluctably downward, like a plane landing on a short runway. Then, as it closes in—nearing the man in the shining mask—its feet thrust out and down. Its talons open, hooked and ready—

  “¿Quién eres?”

  Miriam gasps, jostled. She experiences a hard deceleration, a sudden release of pressure—she nearly falls over, pulled out of the mind of the hawk. Someone stands near her, over her: a migrant worker, an older man, his face carved with so many lines and crevices, his skin carries the look of sunbaked driftwood. He has a knee-high sprayer tank plonked next to him in the grass. He looks upon Miriam with some concern.

  “¿Estás bien?” he asks.

  “I don’t—I don’t speak—” She swallows hard, lurching to her feet. “Where are we?”

  “¿Qué?”

  God, I need to learn to speak some fucking Spanish.

  “Where are we? What city? What state?” Frustrated, she hisses: “What. Planet. Is. This.” New tactic, she thinks. She holds her hand up to her ear, miming a phone call. “Do you have a phone? A phone. Cell phone. Cellular, mobile.” Fuck fuck fuck what is the word for phone in Spanish? Then it hits her, the word floating up out of the ether. “Teléfono!”

  He hesitates, so she barks the word again at him, putting as much of a heartfelt plea into it as she can without seeming like a crazy lady.

  The field worker looks down at his hip and reaches around to his back pocket—and there he pulls out a cell phone. An old one, a flip phone.

  He hands it to her.

  Soon as it touches her hand—

  Bang.

  A gunshot.

  Blood flecks her face. His eye is gone. His mouth hangs open, as if confused. And then he falls face-forwa
rd—she has to juggle her feet backward to avoid what is now the man’s corpse.

  There, stalking toward her, from a hundred feet away—

  Black mask. Shining face. Silver suit.

  Knife in one hand, and now a gun in the other.

  He raises the gun and fires again.

  FORTY-THREE

  NOW I HAVE A CELL PHONE, HO HO HO

  She staggers, her heel caught on a root—

  The air around her feels alive, hot, as something cuts the air by her cheek, like a pebble thrown at a thousand feet per second.

  A tickle at the base of her brain, firing her synapses—

  The masked man stalks toward her, the gun still up—

  About to fire—

  Miriam closes her eyes, finds the cause of that brain-base tickle, and then her mind is filled with the flutter of wings and the startled coos as she sends a turtledove flapping down from a nearby tree—

  Right into the man’s hand. The gun fires, but its aim is knocked off center—the bullet thrashes through the old, gnarled vines as the bird flies up in his face, fluttering there as he swats at it.

  Miriam pulls herself back to herself, and then takes a hard left into the tree line. Head down, she ducks through the brush, thorns snagging her arm and raking across her like little talons. The tree line is thin, so in half a minute, she’s back out among another vineyard, this one with vines that are newer, thinner, the plants bulging with fat, green grapes. She skids to a halt in front of a barrel-trunked tree. Miriam drops to the ground, scooting to the far side of it to hide.

  There, she pulls out the cell phone.

  Which, miracle of miracles, she’s still holding and it has power and it isn’t locked by any kind of password, thank whatever gods exist. She flips it open, is about to call 911 and—

  No. She can’t. Last time she met a cop, he was possessed by the Trespasser and killed himself. And she’s gone rogue from Guerrero. No. She has to call someone she trusts.

  Shit.

  What the fuck is Gabby’s number?

  Miriam has zero memory of any phone number right now. Really, does she know any phone numbers? They’re always . . . what? Programmed into her phone. She doesn’t conjure them from memory. Christ, does anybody remember fucking phone numbers anymore? If only she can conjure one, just one, from the ether. . . .

  Wait.

  She slides the flat of her hand into her pocket.

  There, crumpled up, is a business card.

  Steve Wiebe.

  Gritting her teeth, she fumbles with the phone—every number she pushes makes an obnoxious boop, which she’s pretty sure is loud enough that someone could hear it on the surface of Mars, and that’s confirmed when she hears the crackle of brush headed her way.

  She punches in the number and dials it—

  C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.

  Ring.

  Ring.

  Fucking hell, answer the phone, Steve.

  Ring.

  Ring.

  The footsteps close in.

  Ring.

  Ring.

  Voicemail.

  Shit.

  Steve’s voicemail message plays: “Hey, this is Steve. If you’re getting this, I’m either busy or I don’t want to talk to you. Love you!”

  Beep.

  Miriam winces before breaking from cover, sprinting toward the next field, toward the vines. As she runs, she breathlessly yells into the phone: “Steve, it’s me, Miriam, I don’t know where the fuck I am, but I’m being chased by a killer, there are vines and shit and—”

  Bang.

  A gunshot digs a spray of grass and dirt up at her feet.

  “And I need you to contact Gabby and—”

  Bang.

  Another gunshot cracks through the vineyard brush—grapes hop off the vine in a little spray of juice.

  “And tell her—”

  Bang.

  Her hand jerks away from her ear as a lancing pain scorches through the meat of her bicep. The phone spirals away, disappearing under a tangle of grapevines. Miriam cries out, her right hand moving to her left arm as she stumbles forward, the hand coming away wet with red.

  She hits the ground where the phone disappeared, pawing the underbrush for it but not finding it—she finds stones, pebbles, roots. Ants crawl on her hand as blood snakes down her arm. She looks over her shoulder, and here comes the man with the shining mask, the Starfucker, the glitterface killa. She closes her eyes and tries to feel for any birds nearby—even a single fucking nuthatch would give her a beak to stick in this fucker’s neck, but there’s nary a single winged thing within her mind’s reach.

  “Hey! Who are you?”

  What? It’s an absurd question, and at first, she thinks the Starfucker is calling to her—but the shining-faced bastard turns away from her, in the other direction. She sees someone there. Another worker, dark-skinned, a migrant working the field. Younger. Jeans, a sweaty T-shirt. This one speaks English.

  His eyes go wide when he sees the mask, the gun.

  Starfucker points and shoots.

  Miriam doesn’t stick around to see what happens. She springs to her feet, ducking under one set of vines, then the next, then the row after. Onward she goes, up an aisle, then underneath, then up another. She winds her way to another tree line, and into another field, and to another line of trees beyond that. Forget being the predator. Being prey is all she can be right now, with her only choice to run, rabbit, run.

  FORTY-FOUR

  THE SAFE HOUSE

  Time has lost meaning.

  That happens, when you’re on the run. The adrenaline chews through her like locusts. It rends any mooring she has to place and time. The best she can do is move. Not stop to think. Not stop to consider. Just move.

  (And bleed.)

  For a while, she’s felt alone. She’s crossed how many fields of grapevines now? A half-dozen at least. Probably more. Through the vines she wanders, ducking low and staying hidden. She thinks she’s lost the killer; she hasn’t heard any footsteps. No twigs breaking, no leaves rustling. No gunshots, either. And now she visits with a circling vulture above, a vulture whose eyes are keen and sharp (the better to see dead things with, my dear), and she does a quick scan of the vineyard—

  Nothing.

  Nobody.

  No one.

  Except: a house.

  A big house, too. Modern. Sprawling. A Range Rover parked outside. A small blue-tile fountain in the circular cobblestone drive.

  Someone lives there. The owner of these fields, she guesses. And now, some sense returns to her: I must be in wine country. That’s north of Los Angeles, right? Maybe even north of San Francisco? She wishes like hell she had the presence of mind to tell Steve that when she left a message on his voicemail.

  She does what she can do. She heads down the slope of well-manicured grass, toward the house ahead of her.

  Miriam stops for a moment by the Range Rover and looks at herself in the passenger-side mirror. Predictably, she looks like roadkill. She has a zombie-like vibe going on: she’s pale, crusted with blood, her shirt filthy, her clothes ragged. The swell of her pregnant belly only adds to the ghoulish veneer: preggo zombie lady here, don’t worry, she’s eating for two now!

  She knows that marching up to the house will not instill the homeowner with the finest impression, but what choice does she have? Not like she can spend time to freshen up.

  Staggering across the paver-stone driveway, she concocts her story, and as usual, cleaving to the truth is the easiest: I’ve been attacked; I need to use your phone. She won’t have to feign desperation and fear, because she’s got those in spades, baby. If they give her shit, she’ll push past. She’ll kick and scream. She’ll throat-punch. Let them call the police. Guerrero will straighten this all out.

  At the door, now. She thumbs the doorbell. She hears it, muffled, inside the house: not a bell but a simple, clean tone. Is it possible for a rich person to have a rich-person doorbell? This is that.
<
br />   From inside, gentle footfalls approach.

  A quick click of a lock, and a man opens the door. He’s older, maybe mid-sixties. Average in nearly every way: five-eight, balding, narrow shoulders, a slight-but-expected paunch. He’s white like balsa wood. Only thing not average about him is the moneyed haze that hovers around him like a miasma of tiny dollar signs. His cardigan looks tailored, soft yet crisply fitting. His eyeglasses are clear plastic. A smartwatch hangs on his wrist, smooth and black, shiny as chipped obsidian. He smells like sandalwood.

  (Miriam doesn’t even know what sandalwood smells like, only that he smells like it.)

  The man’s face wrinkles softly, like a tissue gently crumpled:

  “Miss. Are you all right?”

  She bites back the snarky answer of Do I look all right? Are you fucking daft? I’m bleeding from my arm. I look like I was thrown out of a car because, oh, just spitballing here, I was thrown out of a car. I am filthy and thorn-torn and leaf-strewn. That seem all right to you?

  Instead, she says, as politely as she can muster:

  “I’m hurt. Someone is chasing me. I need your phone.”

  “Come on, yes, of course, come in.”

  He ushers her inside a long foyer: inside is something best described as modern yet rustic, or rustic yet modern. Like somebody made a barn and a skyscraper fuck and have a house-baby. A flat waterfall gently eases over granite so dark, it eats the light. The floor is the opposite: pale, unfinished oak, blonder than a Nazi girl eating a sugar cookie. He eases past her, saying, “Come in, come in, please, let’s get you to a phone. Then we can see about that arm of yours, miss.”

  And she thinks: This guy is a fucking rube. People with money can be so deeply stupid sometimes. She could be here to rip him off. Or worse, kill him. This could be a con, a trap. And here he is, the goodness of his dumb, money-stuffed heart making him blind to the realities. Some rich people are vicious, venomous fuckers. Most of them are, because too much money becomes a drug that makes you do bad, bad shit—all in search of the next monetary high. But then you get the subset, like this guy: mooncalves, knock-kneed fawns, who buy expensive art and play the stock market but have literally no idea how bad the world really is.