by Lia Black
“I can understand now why you pulled over to talk to me the other day. You’re terribly inattentive when you’re besotted.”
Derek glanced over quickly and saw the smirk pulling at the corner of Kayle’s mouth. Eyes back on the road, he smiled at the jab. It was an accurate assessment. He was besotted with his Variant partner…lover. The term had always seemed reserved for a pining paramour, kept on the leash of a fictional cold-hearted rich woman. That man was her lover, because he would do anything to prove his love for her. It was probably Derek’s cop-brain that organized it that way. He’d seen enough crimes of passion between jilted exes and their objects of their obsession. But now the term took on a much simpler, more personal meaning. Lover meant someone he actually made love to, rather than just fucked between shifts. The edge of a dark cloud crept over Derek’s warm, fuzzy thoughts. As soon as this case was solved, Kayle would be leaving, going back to Apex.
Derek wouldn’t be going with him.
Derek let that darkness mix with the light until everything in his head became its usual, neutral gray. All right. Back to business.
“Would there be a reason to spike blood with those supplements? Could something like that be distilled for human use? Could it be used by Clan as an illicit drug?”
“I suppose it’s possible…”
“Could Cal be an incubus? Part incubus?”
“No,” Kayle shook his head. “My pheromones would have made him sick. Instead he…”
Derek waited for Kayle to finish, but it seemed like he wasn’t going to.
“He what?”
“When you brought me in that night… Cal knew instantly what I was. He offered to let me feed from him before you came to take me home. I turned him down. Maybe I shouldn’t have?”
“What?” Derek snapped his head towards Kayle quickly, jerking the wheel a little to the right before realizing it and putting them back on the road.
“I meant, maybe if I had gotten close to him, I might have found some kind of clue.”
“Or you could be dead,” Derek said, his voice unsteady but hard. trying to get control of the bitter jealously that he’d had no right to feel. Not back then, anyway.
“I turned him down because of you,” Kayle said softly, turning his head to look out his passenger’s window.
Derek glanced over at him quickly, feeling his heart stagger through a beat.
“Because of me?”
“That night after you dropped me off. I was upset, and I was hurt, but I didn’t know how to feel it safely. I made you angry, and that made things worse. I’d hoped… “Kayle sighed, his shoulders raising then lowering. “Part of me had thought that it was you, coming back to talk to me about it.”
“You don’t know how hard it was not to turn around and do that. But I was stubborn and insecure, and not wanting to head down a road I knew I was at risk of barreling down.”
“And driving off onto the shoulder.” Kayle teased lightly.
“Yeah. That too.”
“But you did come back.”
“Almost too late.” Derek still hadn’t forgiven himself for letting his pride get in front of intellect. As long as he lived, he didn’t think he’d get over turning to look at Kayle in the passenger seat and seeing Marc bleeding out. He shuddered as a chill moved through him, clamping around his ribs, making it hard to exhale. The fingers of his right hand moved up to his breast pocket, feeling for a pack of cigarettes he knew wasn’t there.
Kayle brushed a warm hand across his thigh. “Cold?”
Derek smiled. “A little.” He wasn’t really, but it felt so nice to have someone around who actually cared enough to ask. A twinge of something bittersweet tugged at his chest when he realized what this felt like. It felt a lot like he was falling in love.
Kayle moved his hand, and Derek was almost grateful. He wanted to pull over and kiss him. He wanted to tell him everything that was on his mind, but there was no time.
“The western transport leaves in less than two hours,” Derek said, as though he’d been sharing his thoughts out loud.
A brief stretch of silence passed and Derek could feel Kayle’s eyes upon him from the other side of the car. He didn’t dare look at him and run them off the road again. Finally, Kayle said,
“You know this young man well?”
“I thought I did.” Derek felt himself deflate. “I mean, what if he’s just really desperate? What if he’s not running from us, but from somebody else? Somebody he thought he was covering for?”
“You do think he’s running, then.”
“Yeah. I think he forged Dr. Ray’s name, expecting we’d find the mark that wasn’t in the reports. Maybe to put the attention on her long enough that he could make a clean getaway from whoever might really be after him.” At this point, Derek didn’t trust anybody but Kayle. It was conceivable that the killer was actually one of the men who’d come after Kayle, or someone who had set them up to take the fall. “Cal is from Briggs Colony. People who come from there don’t come with money—certainly not enough money to put themselves through med school. He probably borrowed some and couldn’t pay it back; maybe got involved in a few less legal activities to try and do so.” Derek knew he was all over the map with his speculations but he didn’t want all of this to lead to Cal. If it was Cal, Derek would be the first one to slap him into cuffs and make him face justice, but Cal was a kid. He was a smart kid, and Derek wanted to believe, a good kid. Cal wanted to open a free clinic in the Variant ghetto ferchrissakes. He wanted to help people, not hurt them.
“Are we getting closer?” Kayle asked, his face twisted into a frown as they hit the more decrepit, abandoned industrial parts of Shorebank.
Derek glanced at the address Dr. Ray had jotted down. Her handwriting was impeccable, so he couldn’t have misread what she’d written. Yet they were now in a part of town where it was obvious nobody lived.
“There.” Derek stopped across the street, pointing to an old, one-story brick building perpendicular to where they’d parked. The windows were boarded up and he could see a square metal lump—probably a padlock— on the outside of the building’s rusted door.
“Shit. Looks like he gave Dr. Ray a false address.” Derek said, deflating. It was either relief or disappointment, or maybe a little of both. He felt like they were getting closer to solving this, yet every time he thought the maze of this case was ready to break wide open, he’d find another blind alley.
“Let me have your phone, please,” Kayle said, holding out his hand.
Derek pulled it out of his inside pocket and handed it to Kayle. His glamour receded on the hand that touched it. He watched Kayle punch in some numbers, and when he held the phone up to his face, one side of it became golden, patterned skin. Inky black flooded across the white sclera of his eye, its red iris floated like a crimson moon.
“Apex Lieutenant Investigator Perrine,” Kayle said into the receiver. “Novem daleth tres septum zayin teth, Royal Sovereign Guard. I need to speak with Director Toussant immediately.”
Derek had to file away how sexy Kayle was when he was being authoritative; now was not the time to mention it. Hopefully he’d get a chance to explore this side of him later, when all of this was over and they got back home.
“Director Toussant, I need you to put a temporary hold on all transports leaving the settlement. I am also invoking my right as Sovereign investigator to be granted unrestricted access to all enclosed spaces. There may be some property damage.” Kayle paused for a moment then nodded at Derek.
“Thank you for your assistance, Director. I will be providing a full report to the Sovereign authority.” Kayle disconnected and handed the phone back to Derek, his glamour flooding back into place as he did.
“I think we should check it out.” Kayle said. “Nothing will be leaving the settlement for a little while.”
Derek chuckled. The weight of his phone tugged his coat as he dropped it into his pocket. “You know, sometimes I forget that you’re an o
pen license to do pretty much anything.”
“Believe me, this is something I’d rather not do, but if it gives us answers, I’ll use whatever privileges I have.”
They got out and walked across the street to the building sandwiched between a couple of taller, sheet-metal sided factories. Derek checked the padlock on the door.
“Rusted pretty solid. Nobody’s been in through here for a while.”
“Let’s check around the back; or maybe one of the buildings snugged up against it. There could be a hidden entrance.” Kayle said.
“Or we could just have been led down to a dead-end,” Derek sighed. He stepped back from the front door and looked at the buildings on either side. They were almost identical in their size, shape, and patterns of decay.
“Tell you what,” Derek said, following Kayle around the side of one of the warehouses. “If we find a back door, we hold off and check for another entrance. If this turns out to be a chem lab, it’ll be rigged with point-of-entry traps.”
“Oh, you’ve dealt with them before, I see.” Kayle glanced at him out of the corner of one eye.
“Unfortunately, yes. The secret is low and slow, and watch for tripwires.”
Derek kept his eyes down as they made their way around to the back of the buildings. The dried stems of long-dead vegetation turned to powder as they brushed against his pant legs. The ground was too barren for trip-wires or any discrete traps. Derek’s own reflection going past a darkened window had him ready to pull his gun until he realized what it was.
At the back of the smaller brick building, they found a door, which wasn’t padlocked. That seemed a little too welcoming to Derek, so he turned his attention to finding another way in.
Derek pointed to the left warehouse abutting the building. “Check the south building,” He told Kayle. “I’ve got the north. Don’t consider anything obvious like the door, look for loose sheeting on the side or something.”
Derek and Kayle parted ways to see if they could find another way inside. Derek was just getting ready to move along to the other side of the building when he heard Kayle call to him.
“I think I found it.”
Kayle had found a loose piece of sheeting that led right into the open warehouse. Derek did a quick visual sweep for any possible booby-traps before he crawled through the opening. He took out his gun—just in case— as Kayle came in behind him.
“Keep low, like I said,” Derek said, keeping his voice almost a whisper. This could all have been a ruse just to buy Cal some time, or it could be the real deal, in which case they could be in for a nasty surprise if they weren’t careful. Derek preferred to err on the side of caution. He pulled out a small flashlight to look for the telltale shimmer of mono-filament and fish-hooks suspended from the ceiling. Nothing quite so amateur or obvious here.
“Over there,” Kayle pointed across to a dark square in the floor on the other side of the building, where it looked like there were a set of stairs heading down.
“Yeah, I’ll bet that’s it.”
Getting to the stairs was deceptively simple, which was making Derek even more uncomfortable. He prayed that the only thing they would find when they popped open the door was an empty building, but his luck had never been that good.
“Stand back,” Derek said as he picked the lock. Once he heard the tumblers engage, he stood as far to the side of the door as he could and shoved it open with one hand.
His heart was bucking against his ribs, but there was no flash, no discharge of a gun, nothing to indicate that the door had been rigged. If this space was being used, then this was the way the owner got in and out. Traps didn’t tend to discriminate, so rigging something at your only point of entry would be foolish.
With no light bright enough to filter in from the warehouse, the interior was completely black. Derek didn’t dare feel for a light switch. Instead, he used his flashlight to shine around the space, and discovered it was being used as a bedroom. For a room in a cellar, it almost looked livable. It was very tidy and sparsely furnished. A bed, made of a mattresses kept off the floor with cinderblocks and wooden planks, sat off to the left, against a concrete wall. The linens looked clean and neatly spread over it. There was an old dresser with a mirror propped on it, and milk-crate shelves piled with books. The floor had a piece of carpet laid across it to keep the owner from having to walk across cold concrete. There was even a small radiant heater, and the space was warm enough that it had likely been very recently used.
If Cal was a poor medical student, it would make sense that he tried to save money anyplace that he could. Many abandoned buildings became squatters’ residences. Derek had seen a few fairly impressive setups over the years as people did what they could to make their spaces feel like home. Because it was so far away from where Cal worked, it seemed an odd location, as well as the fact that it was in an area where few people choose to live. It didn’t make him a criminal, though. Maybe he liked the solitude. Maybe he was trying to remain inconspicuous. Maybe he’d just made a bad choice somewhere and needed some help to get out of the situation. If he was a chemist or a killer, he certainly wasn’t doing it down here.
“We should check upstairs,” Kayle said. He pointed to a recessed area that looked like an open closet. Derek moved his flashlight beam, illuminating a step ladder propped against the back wall below a wooden hatch in the ceiling.
“Yeah. No sense poking around down here too much.” Derek looked around for something to use to push open the hatch. He wasn’t about to stick his head up and come face to face with a shotgun blast. He found a wooden bat under the bed, and climbed up on the stepladder to reach the door. He looked down at Kayle looking up at him, and gave him a reassuring smile.
“Your level of caution makes me nervous,” Kayle said.
“Yeah, that’s good. I spent some time on the narcotics squad. You learn to become as paranoid as the criminals, otherwise you’ll end up with a head full of shrapnel.”
Derek gave a slow and steady push to the panel, listening for the characteristic click of a trap engaging. Except for the popping of the wood from the pressure, there was no indication that there was anything sinister waiting above. Derek stood up and peeked out of the opening, finding the upstairs as inky-black as the cellar. He shone his flashlight beam around, and noticed that the upper portion was divided into at least two rooms. This looked like storage of some kind. Tarps were draped over indistinct shapes that might be furniture, and Derek wanted to believe that’s what they were. Derek slid the panel over and cautiously pulled himself up and out of the cellar.
“Looks safe,” he told Kayle and reached down for his hand. He knew that Kayle was perfectly capable of getting himself up the ladder and into the room; probably a lot more capable than he was. He hoped Kayle saw it as chivalry rather than insult. Kayle took his hand and let Derek pull him up.
“Is there a window in the next room?” Kayle asked, looking around Derek.
“Maybe a sky-light.” He’d noticed it too, a faint, gray-blue light filling the shape of the open doorway. He stood up, dusting himself off, and looked around.
There was a makeshift kitchen to the left of the doorway with a hot plate and an industrial sink. A little further down on the same wall were a shower and toilet, separated by old office cubicles. Derek never failed to be impressed by the ingenuity of necessity. He carefully lifted the edge of the tarp covering something in the corner, expecting to find something mundane, but instead he found a mystery.
It was an old, claw-footed bathtub, with metal tanks, about the diameter of medical oxygen cylinders, welded to the back of it. Behind that, he found a small generator. The lingering scent of strong bleach assaulted his sinuses, and he dropped the tarp.
“What is it?” Kayle asked, unable to see around Derek.
“I’m not sure…but I have a bad feeling about it.” He had to see what was in the next room, as much as he dreaded doing so. He felt Kayle’s hand grip his shoulder, and he reached up, giving it
a squeeze before he let go and started for the open doorway. He didn’t have to get inside before his beam lit up a rustic-looking counter covered with glass tubes and vials. The last shreds of Derek’s optimism disintegrated, replaced by the cold weight of dread.
“What is that?” Kayle asked.
“Shit. It’s a chemistry station. The whole goddamn room is a chemistry station.” His beam reflected off of shiny glass and metal surfaces, large cabinets used for storing chemicals, and magnifying lamps clipped to the head and arms of a padded gurney. The gurney was chained to the floor to keep it from moving. Leather straps hung loose, some dark with what had to be blood.
Kayle took hold of Derek’s wrist and guided it to shine the flashlight beam on the wall opposite from where they stood. His heart sank. It was covered with scribbled notes, as though the wall was a giant white board. If he’d just glanced over it, he might have assumed it was a strange, but maybe effective way for a medical student to take notes. But he saw names, dates… the first name of the very first victim, followed by a series of letters and numbers that Derek recognized were often used for chemical compounds. He might not know what they all meant, but he’d spent enough time in narcotics to know that’s what they were. After that, a list of observations— things like heart rate, blood pressure, respiration. All of it was charted out in ink the same color used for the victim’s name. And there were other names, and more matching colored lines on the charts. The strings of chemicals changed slightly from each one. When he saw ‘Bentley, room 309’—Kayle’s room at that crap hotel— circled and connected with another mass of writing, he knew that there was no more hope for coincidence. Cal was not only the chemist they sought, but also their killer.
“It looks like he was experimenting on humans with different combinations of drugs,” Kayle said.
“Which could explain why he was emptying the bodies of blood.” Derek now understood that bathtub contraption. Those metal containers on the back were probably pumps, run by the generator, and he bet if he looked around, he’d find a long, hollow needle and some tubing someplace.