Skinshift Read online

  SKINSHIFT

  Lisa von Biela

  First Edition

  Skinshift © 2015 by Lisa von Biela

  All Rights Reserved.

  A DarkFuse Release

  www.darkfuse.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  Other Books by Author

  Ash and Bone

  Blockbuster

  The Genesis Code

  The Janus Legacy

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  For David, with love

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to everyone at DarkFuse for believing in my work, for your continuing dedication to producing the finest dark fiction around, and for being the absolute best in the business to work with. Thank you to my readers for your support and appreciation—and a special shout out to the DarkFuse community of Book Club members and fellow authors for your very special brand of camaraderie.

  1

  Dominic Donato didn’t need to open his eyes to know he was in a world of trouble.

  A brutal sun scorched his battered body. Its angry heat amplified the drumming of his pulse into a torrent that hammered through him, pounding at his wounds and bruises. Hot, sharp gravel and vicious burrs dug into the exposed flesh of his face and hands as he lay prone upon the ground. Pain in all its forms consumed him.

  He raised his head a couple of inches, spat sand and congealed blood from his mouth, and groaned. Even that small motion took enormous effort. He forced himself to sneeze out the sand and dried blood that clogged his nose, then hung his head and just breathed as he tried to gather his strength. Only the cry of a passing hawk pierced through the steady ringing in his ears.

  Dominic shifted his limbs to prepare to sit up. His muscles, stiff from the trauma of countless blows, defied his will. He took a deep breath, pushed the pain to a distant corner of his consciousness, and forced himself to a sitting position.

  Head bowed, he opened his swollen eyes and squinted against the sun’s glare. He licked his cracked lips, tasting the blood that had dried there. He examined his hands, first palms up, then palms down, noting the gravel scrapes and bruises on his knuckles. From what he could see, he’d put up one hell of a fight.

  Dominic glanced at his surroundings. Cactus, scrub brush, and Joshua trees. Sand, lots of it. The tangy smell of sage hung heavy in the air. He breathed it in, the aroma triggering a vague feeling of hunger.

  Then he noticed he was sitting in something that somewhat resembled a road. Actually, something more like a way-off-the-beaten-path gravel trail. The only visible set of tire tracks betrayed a hastily executed U-turn where the wheels had dug through the gravel and torn into the dirt beneath.

  He sighed and reached into his shirt pocket for his cell. A cold bolt of panic shot through his stomach—the pocket was empty. His heart pounded and his breathing hitched when he discovered all his pockets were empty and none of his stuff was on the ground beside him. No phone, no wallet, no nothing.

  And no water.

  Panting, Dominic quickly rose on unsteady legs and turned in a circle, his arms half-raised at his sides, palms up. He searched for something familiar, something helpful. Anything. But those bastards had left him with nothing.

  Judging from the sun’s angle, the hills in the distance stood to the west. Slashed and butchered by mining, they looked as brutalized as he felt. About ten yards away in the direction of the hills, a line of green brush meandered as far as Dominic could see from right to left. Hoping to find water, he started toward it, the shifting sand beneath his sneakers making the walk all the more strenuous in the oppressive heat.

  Gasping, he reached the edge of the brush, relieved to hear the trickle of water amid the vast desert silence. He pushed his way through, heedless of the thorns, and bent down. The tiny stream had an amber cast, but it would have to do. He cupped his hands and dipped them into the lukewarm water.

  An eternity seemed to pass before he was able to satisfy his thirst, given the shallowness of the stream and the inefficient, leaky vessel formed by his hands. The water tasted both metallic and oily, and was likely toxic from some old mining operation, but it was all he had. Dominic splashed his face to rinse off the caked blood and sand, then sat back on his heels and drew a deep breath.

  Now what? Without a phone, he couldn’t call for help, and he wasn’t sure where he was anyway. He gazed out past the stream, toward the wounded hills, as the lowering sun painted them with a rosy glow.

  Rage boiled within him, displacing the pain. Dominic raised his right fist in the air.

  “I will kill you!” His words tore their way out of his throat and echoed back at him from the poisoned hills.

  Blood oozed from the cracks in his lips. He didn’t yet know how he would get revenge, but he would do everything in his power to make them pay for all they had done to him.

  Everything.

  2

  Dex Lennox broke the silence, finally trusting himself enough to speak without exploding into a rage. “Glad that’s over. Damned well better not make the same mistake next time.”

  Marco Tidwell’s tremulous voice betrayed a complete loss of whatever wits he may have had. “Sorry, Dex. I thought—”

  Dex checked his rearview and squinted into the late-day glare. Seeing no other cars, he cut the wheel of the ’99 Dodge Durango sharply to the right and braked to a jolting stop in the dirt beside the desert highway.

  “You thought. Don’t try that again.”

  “But—”

  “Just shut up and throw his stuff out there. Throw it far.”

  His hands trembling, Marco opened the glove box and took out a cell phone, a wallet, and a handgun. He set the phone and gun in his lap, opened the wallet, and fumbled through the compartments before retrieving several hundreds.

  Dex snatched the bills out of his hand and stuffed them into his shirt-front pocket. “Don’t fuck around. Get that shit and throw it way out there, into the scrub. We can’t sit here and risk being seen.” He took another look in the rearview.

  Marco opened his door, bolted out and ran about twenty yards on long, gangly legs toward a cluster of low, thorny-looking brush. He flung the items into the thicket, turned and ran back to the Durango.

  At least he’s fast on his feet—but not much else. Dex wondered again how they’d wound up as a team. He deserved a better partner than that moron. But he would have to do for now. It was hard to find smart partners who chose to or needed to resort to his sort of business. He shrugged. Maybe he was being a little too hard on the guy. He did take orders pretty well, and he had an innocent air about him that almost always fooled potential victims.

  And Marco knew when to keep his damned gun in his pants.

  “Nobody’ll find the stuff in that brush. It’s plenty thick.” Marco shut his door and tried to smile, but only managed a sort of dog-about-to-be-whipped look. His large brown eyes and tousled, curly brown hair only heightened the effect.

  Dex took another quick
look in the rearview and gunned the Durango back onto the road. The rear end shimmied as the tires spun in the loose sand before biting into the pavement.

  “Good. We’re going to have to lay low for a while because of this.” He sighed as he played the morning’s events over in his mind. “Shit, we have a lot of damage control to take care of. Probably even have to get rid of this car—I’m worried someone saw it before we got out of there. Can’t take that chance.”

  “I’m really sorry. I had no idea.”

  “That makes two of us. I think it’ll be a cold day in hell before we try a new partner again.”

  “I explained everything to him ahead of time, how we do our jobs on the sly-like, and how we only bring out our guns if a worst-case scenario happens.”

  “Well, he sure didn’t take any of that to heart. You know, I saw the look in his eye when he shot that woman. Jesus, just standing there with her little kid, and he caps her.” Dex shook his head. “But that look in his eye. Never seen anything that cold, and I’ve seen plenty. He scared me—and that’s saying something.”

  Marco stared down at his bruised knuckles. “I didn’t like what we had to do, but I guess we had no choice. It was him or us, wasn’t it?”

  Dex glanced at his own hands where they rested on the steering wheel. His knuckles looked like they’d been through a grinder. Not only was the guy mean, he’d been hard to put down—especially before he could get to his gun. Just another reason to lay low—their knuckles were a dead giveaway they’d been in some serious hand-to-hand action. And he sure as hell didn’t want to have to explain how and why that had happened.

  He checked his rearview again. No cars behind him. He was grateful for the lack of traffic on the highway. Gave him time to think about what to do next.

  3

  His throat raw and parched from screaming out his rage to the empty desert, Dominic bent down and drank more from the stream. The humidity was so low that the oven-like heat had dehydrated him without a trace of sweat. Between that and the blood loss from various cuts and wounds, he felt a little light-headed. He had no choice but to drink the vile-tasting water and hope it wasn’t toxic enough to kill him.

  And that only stoked his anger, that he’d been put in the position to have to bend over like a damned dog and drink this poison shit water in the middle of some endless fucking sandpit.

  Dominic took a closer look at his injuries. Although he had more bruises than he could count, nothing seemed broken. All the wounds and cuts had stopped bleeding and none seemed too deep. They had beaten him pretty thoroughly, but apparently hadn’t decided to stab or shoot him. Somehow, they’d managed to grab his gun early in the melee or the situation right now would be far different. They’d be out here, feeding the scavengers with their corpses, and he’d be back in town having a nice drink somewhere—and maybe a high-buck whore for good measure.

  The rose tint on the hills progressed to a deeper salmon tone as the sun dipped below the horizon. With no flashlight, no supplies, no nothing, Dominic decided he’d better start looking for the best spot to spend the night.

  If he stayed right by the sole water source, he might have some unwelcome visitors in the night, so he started walking toward the hills. Usually where there’d been mining, there were at least shacks or sheds. Might be in a pretty shitty state, but might also be better than nothing.

  He trudged ahead, the only sound the soft shifting of the sand beneath his sneakers. Dominic couldn’t decide if the isolation made him feel more vulnerable—or safer. His stomach growled, the clarity of the sound jarring in the utter silence around him. He didn’t know what he was going to do about food. Nothing tonight, that much was certain.

  Dominic’s hands clenched with anger, seemingly on their own volition, as he continued toward the hills. Fury and hate overwhelmed any feelings of self-pity and fear. What idiots those two were. Did they really think they could pull their brand of sleight-of-hand pickpocket jobs outside the seedier casinos without creating any witnesses? And just what did they think would happen if there was a witness?

  He did them a favor, capping that bitch. She was the only one outside the casino who had been at all aware of her surroundings. She’d have ID’d them for sure. And what did they do? They freaked out, panicked, and fled like scared rabbits.

  And then they’d beaten him and disposed of him like so much trash. Did they think he’d let them get away with something like that? No way in hell. He’d find a way to make them regret they ever met him, no matter what it took.

  4

  Marco wanted to talk to release some tension, but was afraid to start a conversation. Dex had nothing good to say to him after the day’s events, and his silence somehow felt just as accusatory. He glanced over at Dex as he drove. His hard, lean face and taut, erect posture gave him the look of ex-military. But he wasn’t. Ex-prison, more like it. He’d been hustling one way or another all his life, and usually did pretty well at it. One stint in the gray-bar hotel early in his career had taught him all he needed to know about doing the job and getting away with it. Besides, his brush-cut blond hair and ice-blue eyes caught people off-guard. He didn’t look the part of the thug.

  In contrast, what Marco didn’t know about hustling would fill a book—and a thick one at that. But he had a disarming baby-faced look about him. Between the two of them, they could move around in a crowd without attracting undue attention while quietly lifting wallets from unsuspecting—and often drunken—amateur gamblers in the crappy end of town.

  If he’d given enough thought to why they were successful, he would have realized that Dominic made a poor addition to the team. His wiry frame—his very bearing—gave off sparks like a high-tension power cable. He even looked somewhat demonic with his jet-black hair brushed back, falling nearly to his shoulders.

  But it was his eyes that were the worst. Dark, calculating, and mean. Pupils always dilated, whether from drugs or adrenaline, Marco didn’t know and it didn’t matter. His eyes could burn right through you, and there was no soul in them. Almost like he wasn’t even human.

  Marco sighed and gazed through the grimy windshield at the approaching edge of a tiny desert town, silhouetted against the dusky sky. A dive bar with a windowless front and an orange neon sign that alternately blinked BEER and COCKTAILS beckoned on the right. Without a word, Dex pulled into its poorly lit parking lot, much to Marco’s relief.

  Like a protective cloak, a deeper gloom awaited them inside the bar. Just the thing for a couple guys who’d done what they did today and needed a drink to lay on some calm.

  Dex led them to the booth back in the farthest, darkest corner of the place. They sat down on black vinyl bench seats with filthy stuffing protruding from great unpatched rips.

  “Want whiskey?” Dex finally broke the silence between them.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Marco glanced around as Dex went up to the bar to get their drinks. Not many customers, and the few there seemed interested only in the bottoms of their glasses. Good choice of a place for a much-needed drink.

  Several minutes later, Dex returned with a pint of some off-brand whiskey and two shot glasses. He sat, then poured them each a drink.

  Marco raised his glass as if to toast, then hastily retracted his hand. While they had managed to get away with the cash from today’s mark, there was nothing else good about the job, and plenty bad.

  They each downed their shot, then Dex poured another round, sat back in the murky booth, and stared down into his glass as he spoke in a barely audible whisper.

  “I was thinking while we were driving. Let’s lay low, like I said, and keep an eye on the news. I don’t want to do anything rash. Maybe in all the confusion, no one got a look at the car. After all, it was around the corner. I’d like to avoid swapping out cars if we can.” He tossed back half his shot. “And maybe they remember him, not us. He was the one who pulled the gun. We were more in the background, I think. We might be okay after all.”

  Marco rea
lized he shouldn’t have gulped his drink. A slight buzz already softened the edges of his brain. “Maybe you’re right. And after…” He looked around the dark, smoky room, fearing someone would overhear him and send the police at any moment. “Well, after you know, I don’t think anyone will be seeing him around. It’s the boonies out there, and he ain’t walking back to town.”

  “You may be right. I’d rather have made sure he was dead, but let the desert do the dirty work.” Dex gulped the rest of his shot, grimaced, and poured another.

  Marco shivered.

  5

  Salmon pink deepened to bloodred, then bloodred darkened to black. Ominous, angry clouds had gathered from nowhere, seeming to chase the last of the sun away. They blocked what stars there might have been, and the moon was nowhere to be found. Dominic cursed the utter darkness around him.

  He’d only gotten partway to the hills before he lost the light entirely. He stopped, neither here nor there, sweat soaking his shirt and jeans. A wave of heavy humidity rolled in and weighed him down. The stifling air brought with it a sudden unexplained sense of dread that enveloped him and made it hard to breathe.

  Dominic stood, the darkness and silence around him so vast it threatened to swallow him. He felt his eyes open wide, wider, as if to gather even the most minute particles of light to help him see. But to no avail.

  He couldn’t just stand there until the sun rose—and he didn’t dare keep walking in the dark. Too great a chance of stepping into a hole or some other hazard. The last thing he needed was a twisted ankle, or to disturb some venomous creature. There would be no shelter tonight, and he might as well prepare himself. So he bent down, then sat cross-legged on the ground.

  A bolt of lightning tore a jagged white streak through the inky sky, blinding Dominic with its intensity. He clamped his hands over his eyes.

  Crack!

  Thunder, like a shotgun firing right next to his ear, jarred the air around him. The storm’s violent center swirled above. Dominic curled up in the fetal position, his arms over his head and ears. He had no other way to protect himself.