When I was certain I couldn’t stand it if she didn’t move, she used the foot still on the edge of the tub to push up, and resettled the hand that gripped her ass, using it to both pull her closer against me and to slide her a tiny bit higher, so that as much as I was moving inside her, we were pulsing against each other, our soap-slicked bodies adding to the myriad of sensations flashing through me, one after another.
The tiny noises Lili made in her throat matched the rhythm we found, increasing until she threw her head back, her entire body convulsing around me as she called out my name. Her response sent me spinning out of control, holding onto her as I came, as if she were the only anchor in the universe that I could rely on to hold me steady.
As I returned to myself, I wondered at that thought. I knew, of course, that I found Lili Banta attractive, interesting, entertaining. Now I was beginning to think that maybe I felt more than that.
Only much later did I wonder what, exactly, she had been trying to tell me about being part of the problem—about how guilty she felt for the attacks against the women and children in her city. She didn’t bring it up again, and I didn’t ask. Not then.
I should have.
# # #
The four of us sat around a table in some sort of doctors’ break room: me, Lili, Will Manning, and Iverson. We had started in a waiting room labeled “Family Consultation Room,” but even the comparatively uncomfortable sofas and armchairs in there had seemed too informal for the discussion we were having. With a shake of his head, Manning had said, “This won’t work. Come with me.” Then he led us to this utilitarian room and locked the door behind us.
After a long silence, Iverson spoke. “I have absolutely no proof, but every instinct I have tells me that the murders and these sick kids are connected.”
“There is nothing physical or medical linking them,” Manning objected.
“They started at about the same time.” Lili tapped her fingers on the table.
Manning shook his head. “Coincidence does not imply causation.”
“We don’t have anything that implies causation.” The effort of trying to remain calm echoed through Lili’s voice. “Except, of course, that creepy monster Scott saw, and even that’s not certain.”
“And no connection between that monster and the murders,” Iverson added. “Unless you count the teeth marks Lili saw on the last body.”
“Do we have a post mortem on that victim yet?” I asked.
“Not as of this morning.” Iverson paused. “I don’t think we can rely on that information, anyway,” he said. “If these murders are anything like the ones in Dallas, we’ll have damned little evidence to go on.”
“So what do we do?” Realizing her fingers were still drumming against the table, Lili pulled both hands into her lap.
Iverson and I shared a glance. “Keep taking care of your patients,” I said to Lili. “I will see what I can find out by tracing out the route suggested by the sigil overlays.”
We all stood, and Iverson turned to me. “Want me to go with you?”
“No. You stay here with your family for a while. I’ll call if I find anything new.”
“I’ll let you know if anything new comes up here,” Lili said, giving my hand a quick squeeze under the table as we all pushed our chairs back.
Out in my SUV, I stared down at the two maps Lili and I had printed out the night before, each overlaid with one of the possible matching sigils. I had almost hoped that they would match the symbols in Dallas, but these two were specific to the Houston case.
Still, maybe if I looked at them long enough, something would come clear.
For once, my intuition was absolutely silent. With a shrug, I put the vehicle into reverse. When in doubt, check out the territory. I would trace both routes as closely as possible and see if anything—or any place, or anyone—along either path called to me.
And I would pay particularly careful attention to the places where the two routes overlapped.
Chapter 27
Lili
Why couldn’t I tell them what I suspected? I had tried to make the truth come out. The harder I worked to get the words out of me, the more they seemed to stick in my throat.
My agitation had shown in the way my fingers had drummed against the table, tapping and tapping, over and over.
Silence.
The voices in my head were adamant on this point. Apparently they could back up their order, too, as I found it impossible to override the command while I spoke to the other three people involved in this investigation.
Will chatted with me as we suited up and checked each other’s gear for leaks or problems. If he noticed I was quieter than usual, he didn’t mention it.
As we cycled through to the isolation unit and headed toward the patients’ rooms, we both grew silent. Neither of us had said as much, but if we didn’t figure something out soon, this disease was likely to start killing children.
Starting with Kenny, almost certainly.
If they died in the order of infection, Felicity would be next. That would devastate Detective Iverson and his family.
I had to do something to let the whole team know that I was connected to these illnesses. That I had been dreaming about these children right before they came in. And as much as I wished it were true, I wasn’t somehow clairvoyant. Even as I considered the idea, I heard a chorus of laughter in my head.
No. I had hurt these children, had somehow allowed them to become infected, had kept that knowledge from the team of people who could help find a way to cure them.
I was responsible.
If any of these children died, it would be on my head.
I didn’t think I could stand it.
I had some sort of psychic connection to the monster that Scott had seen. I could feel my bond to it, could feel it calling to me through those voices in my head.
We are aswang.
Tears sprang to my eyes, though I wasn’t entirely certain why.
Will turned around when he realized that I had stopped in the middle of the hallway. “You coming with me?”
Again, I tried to force the words out, to tell him about the battle going on in my mind. When I couldn’t, I sighed. “Yeah. I’m coming.”
I trudged after him, hoping to find a way to explain my growing belief that this was all my fault—the children’s infections, the ritualistic deaths, everything. And the horror that went with it, too.
Shrill laughter seemed to echo through the helmet of my hazmat suit as I took a deep breath and headed into Kenny’s room to check on the patient.
Chapter 28
Scott
The hospital was definitely at the center of all this paranormal activity. The two different maps in front of me confirmed it. Both patterns—the two symbols that might show a route fitting both the murders and the children’s sicknesses when overlaid on the map—had the hospital at the center.
My gaze flickered back and forth between them as I tried to decide which route to follow first, which one was the right option.
I was still trying to decide when a new idea struck me with such force that I couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me sooner.
What if both patterns were right?
What if whatever was going on here required both symbols?
For a moment, I wished to have all the FBI’s resources behind me. I could have called in any number of cryptographers to work on deciphering this puzzle. Hell, for all I knew, the FBI had already decoded all of the patterns we had found in Dallas.
All it would take would be one phone call, and I could have the answers I needed.
And then I’d be yanked from the case, perhaps even fired.
I would never get my position back, never be able to be an agent again.
I wasn’t willing to risk that.
Not yet.
Not when I was so close to coming to some sort of breakthrough in the case. I could feel it. I could almost taste it, the answer to this puzzle was so
close.
Once I had that answer, I could take back my place in the Bureau.
That’s what I wanted more than anything.
Wasn’t it?
# # #
In the end, I stopped by the hotel for more supplies and several more copies of the maps, marked with all possible combinations of the two symbols, the killings, and the children’s illnesses.
I couldn’t prove it yet, but I was certain I was right. There were two patterns being traced out here, both required for this particular blood magic. I drove the routes every way I could determine, moving slowly up and down residential streets.
It was still early in the day, many people away from their homes for work. I paid particular attention to those houses with children’s toys littering the yards, making note of the addresses, but I knew that there were almost certainly as many homes with children that didn’t advertise the fact in any way.
I was on my third version of the route—one that covered what I thought was the most likely overlap between the murdered adults and infected children—when an ambulance turned the corner behind me, lights flashing and siren blaring. I pulled over long enough to let it pass then followed behind it until it stopped at a house about halfway down the long street.
I parked across the street and watched as a distraught woman in her late twenties met the paramedics at the door, gesticulating wildly, then following them inside.
Wishing I had my badge with me, I stepped out of my car and moved onto the lawn next door to the woman’s house, keeping far enough back to stay out of the way when the EMTs exited.
As I was waiting to see what would happen next, something caught my eye—a slash of dark color against a windowsill on the side of the house. Taking a step closer, then another, I realized that it wasn’t one line, but several—and those lines intersected to create one of the symbols I had been staring at for days.
Watching the symbol as if it might disappear if I took my eyes off it, I pulled up my camera phone and took several pictures.
Then I forwarded them to Iverson, just to be sure.
I was already back in my car and dialing when the paramedics wheeled a tiny figure out on a gurney.
“Hey, Lili? You’ve got another kid coming in via ambulance. I’ll be right behind them.”
Then I called Iverson.
Chapter 29
Lili
After Scott hung up, I called down to admitting and made sure the paramedics brought the child directly to the isolation suite, where Will ran the blood test he had developed.
It was positive. Of course.
Then, despite the fact that we were almost certain the illness was not actually contagious, but rather administered by the creature Scott had seen, I made sure the two EMTs and their ambulance went through decontamination. The paramedics would have to remain sequestered for twenty-four hours. At that point, we would run a blood test and let them go, if they were clean.
While I directed the EMTs through decon and waited for Scott to gear up and cycle through the scrub-in room, Will and Susan Yi admitted the child—three-year-old Benjamin McKee.
My stomach clenched as I pulled up his file.
He was a baby.
Something tickled at the back of my mind.
A small child. Boy. Dark hair, pale skin, blue light shining in the moonlight.
No. The voices hissing in the back of my mind cut off the image, as quickly as if clicking a remote to shut down a television screen.
Dammit. What had I almost remembered?
It was gone now.
I shook my head to clear it, and then smiled as Scott made his way into the hallway, bulky and awkward in his protective suit.
“How’s the kid?” he asked as soon as he was close enough for us to hear one another.
I clicked the mouse and typed on the keyboard in front of me. “Will’s getting him settled into a room in the same hall as Kenny and Felicia.” I tilted my head toward the rooms. “Let’s go see him.”
“He tested positive for the illness, of course,” I added as we moved away from the computer. “What made you so certain he would?”
“Didn’t you see the image I sent you?” Scott’s voice was troubled. “The one I told you about?”
His words swirled through my mind, making me dizzy for a long moment. And then I did remember it: the symbol was a series of dark brown streaks against the white windowsill outside the child’s bedroom.
A sigil, drawn in blood.
“Yes,” I said, shaking my head. “Of course. Sorry. I’m a little distracted.”
But it was worse than that, and I knew it. For some amount of time—and I had no idea how long—whatever was going on with me, in me, had made me forget what I had seen.
And that raised the question: what else had I forgotten?
# # #
As soon as I saw Benjamin McKee, I knew the answer to at least part of that question. I might have forgotten the child, but all it took was one look and I remembered…something.
God. What was it?
My head spun again, and I staggered back from the bed. If Scott hadn’t been standing right next to me, ready to steady me as soon as I moved, I probably would have fallen over.
Several seconds passed before I could even hear clearly enough to realize that Scott and Will were both asking me questions.
“I’m fine.” I wasn’t, of course, but I didn’t want them to know that. Not yet. “I’m just tired. Sorry. Please, let’s continue.”
Scott’s glance let me know that he didn’t buy my excuse, even though he, too, had been awake for at least part of the night.
He had been awake, for example, when I had returned to the room from getting a soft drink—one that I had no memory of buying. Wearing scrubs I didn’t recall putting in my bag that day.
My stomach twisted and clenched as I did my best to present a calm face when Susan led Benjamin’s parents, now also clad in protective gear, into the room where their child—this tiny child, barely older than a baby—was fighting a disease that we had no way to cure.
I listened as Will gave them what was becoming our usual spiel, nodded when he introduced me, gave them a quick rundown of the treatments we would be giving Benjamin, treatments that could slow the progress of the disease.
A thought clicked through my brain.
Progress toward what?
Because diseases generally progressed in one of three ways: toward death, toward wellness, or toward an equilibrium that allowed the disease to exist within the body.
Sure, that was a gross oversimplification. But it covered most of the bases.
No one had died from this yet. Not this time around, anyway. But the infected children weren’t getting better, either.
So what if this strain of the illness was something new? Something that didn’t kill, didn’t get better, but instead, became a chronic illness.
I almost laughed, but managed to get myself under control. Wasn’t that what vampirism was, in a sense? A chronic illness that kept the body in equilibrium starting at the moment of death.
I didn’t know whether that insight might help us—if it were actually an insight at all, and not merely the ramblings of my overheated, overtired, overthinking brain.
I would present it to Will and Scott and Detective Iverson, anyway, I decided.
Just as soon as I finished my rounds.
And I would ignore the hissing voices in my head as they screamed, shoving them down and down and down, until they were barely a whisper.
No.
Chapter 30
Scott
Iverson was waiting for me in the main lobby of the hospital, pacing back and forth impatiently. “Another kid got brought in.”
“You need to see this.” I dropped my stack of photographs onto a low table and gestured for Iverson to take a seat. He scowled, but followed my unspoken direction.
Turning the pictures around to face him, I spread them out in order—shots from the Dallas crime scenes
lined up on one side, images from the Houston crime scenes on the other.
“None of these are the same, not from city to city.” I used my index finger to sweep across the photos, encompassing the majority of the various symbols. “The Dallas crime scenes all used the same signs, and the Houston murder vics have the same symbol.” I slid from one Dallas picture to the next, stopping at the matching symbols, repeating the process for the Houston pictures. “Except these.” I tapped hard on first one and then the other of the matching sigils, moving back and forth between the two photos, one from a Dallas crime scene, one from a Houston scene. “Take a close look at this, Henry.” Every victim had a single matching symbol.
Iverson bent toward the pictures, his narrowed eyes flickering back and forth from one image to the other. “Yep. They definitely match.” He stood up straight. “What do you make of that?”
The question wasn’t idle—I could tell from his tone that he had some idea of what it might mean, but didn’t want to corrupt my thought process with his own.
“I think you’re right. These are some sort of blood magic symbols, and they open up those damned portals. The ones from Dallas? They’re connected to the vampires.” I paused. “Somehow, the Houston symbols are connected to whatever is going on with those kids.”
“Why the single matching one?”
I took a deep breath. I had very little proof for this. Opening the photo on my phone from the latest kid’s house, I spun it around to show him.
The exact same sigil, slightly glowing with some internal blue light.
“I think that one opens the portals themselves,” I said. “The other symbols specify what gets called through the portal.”
Although we had been speaking in low tones the whole time, Iverson lowered his voice even more. “We haven’t had any sign of portals opening up in Houston.”
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