Rangers Page 2

  She swallowed and she turned to Jason, a slow smile spreading across her face. Sam wondered if that was what the moment of possession looked like. She took her sunglasses off.

  “You should let me go with you. Best decision you’ll ever make. No downside. I get myself killed, fine, I had it coming. You regret bringing me along once - for a second - you cut me loose. No hard feelings.”

  “I regret it already,” Jason said, opening the driver’s side door. “Get in, Sam.” She cocked her head and he frowned. “Not you.”

  Samantha glanced at Sam, then stepped closer to Jason, looking up at him with a new, particular intensity. Her mouth was open, but now it was with the promise of speech. Sam suddenly realized that without yesterday’s ball cap, with clean hair and what could very easily have been makeup, she was quite pretty. Jason stared, at the boundary between skeptical and enthralled.

  “I can take care of myself,” she said, her voice silky and even. She blinked slowly. “And you’re interesting.” She blinked again. “And you think I’m interesting, even if you can’t figure out why.”

  “That jedi mind crap doesn’t work on me, Sweetheart.”

  She smiled, her mouth opening as the smile crept sideways. Jason shook his head. She nodded. Picked up her bags. Put them in the back. Got into the back seat.

  Sam stared at Jason. Jason shook himself, then got into the car.

  “We’ll give you a ride to Macon, but you split when we get there,” he said. Sam stood by the hood for a full minute staring at Jason then, shaking his head slowly, got into the passenger side. Samantha was hanging over the back of the bench seat digging through her bag. She produced a laptop and settled contentedly against the door.

  “Did she say we didn’t do important things?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jason said out of the side of his mouth. Sam looked over his shoulder again, but Samantha ignored him.

  “You don’t eat souls, do you?” Sam asked.

  “Only on Tuesdays. Is it Tuesday?”

  “Are you a witch?”

  She looked up at him, sunglasses masking her expression.

  “What an odd question.”

  She shook her head and returned to her laptop.

  Sam and Jason looked at each other for a minute, then Jason shrugged and started the car.

  “What the hell, man,” he said. Sam nodded.

  “What the hell.”

  They made it to Macon around midnight.

  “We have lodgings?” Jason asked, glancing over his shoulder at the still-silent Samantha.

  “Not here,” Sam said, glancing up from his cell phone. “Motel roulette.”

  “What are we going to do with her?” Jason asked, pulling off the interstate. Sam shrugged.

  “Dunno.”

  “I vote we dump her at the first gas station and get on with it,” Jason said.

  “You know I can hear you, right?” Samantha asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sam said, stretching and glancing back at her again.

  “What? She’s self-sufficient, and she doesn’t belong with us. We wouldn’t be leaving her any worse off than she was when we met her.”

  “I don’t know,” Sam said. “Don’t like the idea of ditching her.”

  “You want to adopt her like a pet?” Jason asked. “Or like a mascot? You want to leave out a bowl of milk at night, or put her on our battle flag?”

  Sam grunted.

  “I know. Just.”

  “I’m going where you’re going,” Samantha said.

  “Just what? What’s the option here, Sam?”

  “I’m going where you’re going,” Samantha said.

  “Not you,” Jason said.

  “You can hear me.”

  “I don’t know. Put her back where she goes, maybe?” Sam said

  “And where’s that?”

  “Here,” Samantha said.

  “We could ask,” Sam said.

  “Good luck with that,” Jason said. “You like the look of that one?”

  Sam grunted and shrugged.

  “It’ll work.”

  Jason pulled into the parking lot of a brand-name, low-price motel and got out.

  “You leave with my stuff in the back, you’re a bad person,” Samantha said, getting out to follow. Sam waved at her absently.

  What exactly did he expect to do about her? Why did it matter? He rested his head against the window and waited for Jason to get back with room keys. He and Samantha came out of the motel office at the same time, jostling as Jason tried to get a lead on her back to the car. She was yelling something. He pushed her and she shoved him into the hood of the car, scurrying to pull open the back door and jumping in before he could get back into the driver’s seat.

  “You cheat,” Jason said.

  “You cheated first,” she told him. Sam turned around in his seat.

  “Where do you belong?” he asked Samantha. Samantha sighed.

  “Nowhere. Everywhere. Anywhere.” She paused and looked at him meaningfully. “Here.”

  “That was helpful, Sam. Good work.”

  Sam glared at Jason, then looked back at Samantha.

  “We need to drop you somewhere. We’ve got stuff we need to do, here, but if we don’t have anything after that, we can take you anywhere you need to go. Where’s home?”

  Her face softened and she smiled. She considered for a minute before she answered.

  “You know what casting lots is?”

  “’S how you figure out who to kill,” Jason said, pulling the parking brake. She snorted.

  “Among other things. It’s a token of faith. The right thing is going to happen if you intentionally leave it up to chance.”

  Sam shrugged.

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll tell you the most preposterous place I can think of for you to take me, and if you manage to find time between important work to take me there, I’ll get out and you’ll never see me again. Otherwise, I’m supposed to be here, and you tolerate me.”

  “Deal,” Sam said.

  “No deal,” Jason said simultaneously. “Are you kidding, man? She’s going to tell us to drive her to Hawaii. She’s cracked. I’m not playing her game.”

  “New York City,” Samantha said.

  “Deal,” Sam said, then looked at Jason. “It’s a three-day drive from anywhere in the country, and we’re always on the east coast, anyway. We’re only talking about one day off.”

  Jason turned in his seat and glared at Samantha.

  “I figure out you’re conning us at all, even a little bit, I will personally put a bullet in your brain,” he said. “Sam plays nice. I don’t.”

  “And here I was just getting to like you,” Samantha said. She shrugged. “That seems fair, anyway. What time are we getting up in the morning?”

  “Oh, no, sweetheart, you aren’t coming with us. I’ll let Sam’s bleeding heart tote you around the country, but I’m not letting you get yourself in the way when we need to be focused.”

  “Like with the gremlin,” she said. Sam grinned.

  “Stop agreeing with her,” Jason said. “She can’t come with us and you know it.”

  Sam shrugged.

  “He’s right. It could be dangerous.”

  She sighed.

  “Fine. I’ll just be here waiting in the morning.”

  She opened the car door and slid off the bench seat down to the asphalt.

  “Good night.”

  Jason glared at Sam once more, then got out. Sam followed.

  “By the way,” Samantha called from the door to her room. “I don’t either.”

  “You don’t what?” Sam asked.

  “Play nice.”

  <><><>

  Sam booted up his laptop once they got settled and sat on his bed to check e-mail.

  “Simon cracked the coroner’s files,” he said.

  “Good,” Jason said, sitting down in front of the television and putting his feet up.

  “One
human male, no skin,” Sam said. “Says the skin was a single-sheet cut.”

  “Awesome. Only about a hundred things someone could do with that. He get anything else?”

  Sam paged down through the news pieces Simon had attached. He sighed.

  “It’s a Night Hag.”

  Samantha was waiting at the Cruiser for them when they walked out of the room the next morning.

  “No,” Jason said, unlocking the front door. She reached around him as he opened it and found the power locks before he had a chance to shove her out of the way, and had the back door open before he could relock them. She had reflexes like a cat. Sam grinned as he waited for Jason to open the doors again.

  “No,” Jason said again as she shoveled her backpack into the back seat ahead of her and got in.

  “Come on, man, we’re just going for recon today,” Sam said.

  “I don’t want her getting used to the idea that she can just tag along any time she wants. I draw the line here. Deal or no deal.”

  Samantha sat staring at him.

  “I’m serious.”

  She shrugged.

  “We need to go,” Sam said. “Just leave it.”

  “Where are we going?” Samantha asked.

  “No, not we,” Jason said. Sam turned in his seat.

  “I’ve got a list of elementary schools in town. We’ll take one this morning, one for the rest of the day to cover recess, and another at the end of the day. After that, we hit the parks.”

  “Sam, I’m warning you.”

  “What?” they both answered.

  “Not you,” Jason said, making a sharp hand motion at Samantha. “Sam, no more.”

  Sam considered for a minute, then grinned.

  “She rubs you the wrong way. I like her.” He turned back to Samantha.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  “Hag marks.”

  “Hag marks,” Samantha repeated.

  Jason started the car and peeled out of the parking spot in reverse, slamming it into drive and jolting them across the parking lot.

  “Hag marks,” Sam said. “Most people wouldn’t know what they are.”

  Jason said something that Sam didn’t catch.

  “What are they?”

  “They’re the marks a Night Hag leaves on someone when she sucks the breath of them.”

  Samantha sat silently for a moment.

  “Night Hag.”

  “Yeah. It’s an immortal creature that sucks life out of kids by stealing their breath while they sleep,” Sam said.

  “And they’re strong and they’re mean and you really shouldn’t be here,” Jason said.

  Samantha shook her head.

  “How long have you guys been doing this?” she asked.

  “Since we were sixteen,” Sam said.

  “Since I was eight,” Jason muttered.

  “And how old are you now?” Samantha asked.

  “Twenty-five,” Sam said. Samantha waited.

  “Both of you?”

  “We’re twins,” Jason said. Samantha frowned.

  “Fraternal,” Sam said. She nodded, then shook her head, returning to her previous thought.

  “And… Night Hags… have you killed one before? I assume that is what you plan on doing, here.”

  Sam shrugged.

  “Sure.”

  Samantha watched him for a minute, then shook her head.

  “I guess.”

  Sam navigated to the first school and they found an unobtrusive spot to park the car. Sam and Jason pulled out binoculars and settled down into their seats.

  “You do know how creepy you look right now, right?” Samantha asked.

  “Shut up,” Jason said.

  She watched for a minute.

  “So, do you guys wear anything for protection?” she asked.

  “That’s a little personal, don’t you think?” Jason answered. She ignored him.

  “Anything, like, magic, or anything?”

  Sam looked at her.

  “Look, you asked if I was a witch. I assume you believe in magic.”

  “Do you?”

  “I do.”

  Sam sighed, then shrugged. He resumed watching the school, but rooted around in the pocket of his jacket for something. He handed her a pendant on a chain, and she inspected it for a minute.

  “This is nice. Where did you get it?”

  “A friend left it to me when he retired,” Sam said. Samantha handed it back and looked at Jason.

  “And you?”

  “If you’re talking to me, I’m not answering you on purpose.”

  “Oh, come on, just show it to her. We’ve got a long day ahead of us. We can at least pretend to be friendly about it,” Sam said. Jason grunted and dug in his pants pocket.

  Samantha took the amulet and spun it in front of her.

  “This?” she asked. “This…” She paused. “This is what you use to protect yourself from the powers of darkness? I mean, even if you got a skilled artisan to plate it in pure gold for you, even then…”

  “It’s always worked for me,” Jason said, holding his hand out over the seat without looking. “I don’t care if you like it or not.”

  Samantha sighed.

  “Fine. That’s nice. Where did you get it?”

  The metal touched his skin and he snatched it. Sam snorted.

  “What?”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Jason said.

  “He bought it at a carnival,” Sam said.

  “Dammit Sam,” Jason said. Samantha closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “This is unbelievable,” she said.

  “Free to go any time you like,” Jason said. “Door’s right beside you.”

  <><><>

  “There,” Jason said, pointing. Sam sat forward, scanning the kids playing on the swings where Jason indicated.

  Samantha leaned over the front seats as well.

  “What does a hag mark look like?” she asked.

  “Kind of hard to tell from a cold sore and routine child abuse,” Jason said. “If you’ve got the eye.”

  Sam found the kid.

  “Got him.”

  “Now what?” Samantha asked.

  “We follow him home, break into the house after everyone goes to bed, and then just hope the Night Hag hasn’t moved on yet,” Sam said.

  “You what?”

  “You heard the man,” Jason said.

  “Why don’t you just wait for the hag to come out? Wouldn’t that be less dangerous?”

  “Less dangerous, sure, for us. Not for the kid,” Jason said.

  “How is that?”

  “The Night Hag puts the parents and any siblings into a deep sleep - they won’t hear a thing - but the kid, she leaves alone,” Jason said.

  “Theory is, there’s more life in his breath that way,” Sam said.

  “If the kid wakes up, she kills him. He dies screaming with his parents in the next room over, and no one comes to help.”

  “And that’s worth jail time to you, if you get caught?” Samantha asked. Jason looked over his shoulder at her.

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “That’s how we knew it was a Night Hag,” Sam said. “There are two kids here in town that died in locked homes in the last couple of weeks. She took a skin then started preying on local kids.”

  “She took a skin,” Samantha repeated, sinking back into her seat.

  “That’s what they do. Night Hags don’t have skin of their own, so they wear someone else’s until it wears out,” Jason said. “And we think that some of them just like killing kids for the hell of it.”

  “Are you okay?” Sam asked. Samantha nodded.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.”

  Jason glanced at her in the rearview.

  “Look, this isn’t a job anyone can do,” he said. “We’ll drop you off at the motel once we know where the kid lives.”

  Samantha laughed softly.

  “No,
you aren’t getting away that easily. I want to see how this turns out in person.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Sam watched Samantha out of the corner of his eye as he tracked the kid - now moving from the swings to the slide. She saw him and smiled.

  “So, under normal-people circumstances, you’d say I can take care of myself better than most?” Samantha asked. Jason shrugged.

  “Sure.”

  “And there’s going to be a kid in the middle of all of this?”

  “Yeah,” Jason said slowly.

  “Then let him be my problem.”

  The car was silent for a minute.

  “She’s got a point,” Sam said.

  “I know she has. You don’t have to say it out loud, though.”

  Sam grinned.

  “Fine, you can come with, but if anything goes bad, you take the kid and you bail.”

  “You’ve got it,” Samantha said, digging through her bag for a minute. When Sam looked back again, she was laying across the back seat under a blanket with a sawed-off shotgun laying across her chest, reading a book.

  <><><>

  Jason resented Samantha’s logic mind-games that had convinced him to let her come. He resented that Sam was going along with it. Mostly, though, he just resented her being around. He liked chicks. They were catty and sassy and sexy. Spunky was good. He didn’t like being trapped with one. But that really wasn’t the real problem. He knew every move Sam was going to make before he made it, and Sam knew the same of Jason. Everything Jason had learned as a kid, he had taught Sam, and they had done most of their real growing up on the road, training with one Ranger or another, but always together. A third person was just a bad fit.

  He glanced up at her, standing aloofly at the corner of the back porch as he picked the lock on the back door. She was still carrying that damned backpack. If it rattled or creaked once, even once, he was sending her back to the car to wait for them. The lock tumblers clicked and he torqued the bolt out of place.

  “Set?” he asked softly. Sam put a cloth over the end of his flashlight and snapped it on.

  “Set.”

  “You stay with him, and stay quiet,” he said to Samantha, opening the door. He scanned the back wall for an alarm - none - then nodded to Sam. They split into the two rooms leading off of the kitchen and met back up in a living room off of the front room. Jason pointed down - had Sam found a door to a basement? Sam shook his head. Just upstairs. Good. They got to the foot of the stairs and Samantha abruptly took off her backpack and handed it to Sam, who staggered a bit. Jason frowned and motioned a quick ‘no’ but she put her finger to her lips and turned to go up the stairs. He pulled her back.