The elevator doors were open. Red lights blinked in the hallway. An alarm blared, its horn screeching and echoing.
I didn’t see any stairs or another way out, other than the elevator. The exits out of the building were below me, and the guards would assume that the only way to escape would be down.
The elevator was all I had and I got in, trap or no trap. Cameras stared at me from opposite upper corners in the compartment. I swung my fists and knocked the cameras from their mounts. Let the guards work to find me.
I jumped and hooked my talons into the elevator ceiling. I tore at the ceiling panels and made a hole big enough to slide through.
Standing atop the elevator, I saw that I was on the second floor. I grasped the girders supporting the elevator and climbed to the third floor.
I set my toes and hands against the doors for the elevator and clung with supernatural sticky force. I ran my fingers between the doors and pulled them apart.
I faced an empty hall and paused for a second to get my bearings. No alarm sounded on this floor, but I could still hear the one shrieking downstairs.
Men shouted to my left.
I dodged right down the hall, turned the corner, and came face-to-face with a human guard armed with a shotgun. He stood before a metal door that looked like the hatch on a ship.
His eyes gaped at me. I didn’t have time to zap the guard; instead I knocked him out with a punch across the jaw.
The door was milled from thick steel and fastened to the wall with heavy bolts. The door lock had a slot for swiping a badge.
The guard carried an ID badge clipped to a shirt pocket. I took the badge and swiped it through the lock.
A screen above the lock flashed: BEGIN RETINAL SCAN.
What now?
An arrow on the screen pointed to a lens above the door lock.
I lifted the guard by his hair and pulled his left eyelid open. I wasn’t sure if this would work.
I pressed his face against the wall with his eye centered over the lens.
The screen showed an image of the guard’s retina. A line scrolled top to bottom across the screen.
The screen flashed: RETINAL SCAN COMPLETE.
A light on the door lock pulsed from red to green, and a latch inside the door clicked.
I dropped the guard and turned the handle of the door. I stepped over the threshold into a long, darkened room.
The only illumination in the room came from small desk lamps and the blank faces of computer monitors. I could see well enough.
I pushed the door closed. All the outside noise hushed. I spun the door handle until it stopped, then gave it an extra twist to jam the mechanism.
The room took up most of this floor, about fifty feet wide and a hundred and twenty feet to the far wall. Computer servers sat in bookcases, blinking spasmodically, sharing shelf space with stacks of notebooks and binders. A laboratory of some type?
Two rows of strange metal cylinders, each with a soft, bluish luster and big enough to hold a coffin, rested on wheeled dollies in the middle of the room. Each row had four cylinders, for a total of eight.
Four more cylinders stood along the circumference of a pedestal in the middle of the floor. The circular pedestal was about fifteen feet wide and rose above the floor about a step’s height. Two more rows of cylinders lay on dollies on the opposite side of the room.
The door of a freight elevator stood on the north side of the wall, directly above a door similar to that I’d seen in Clayborn’s suite. This elevator must be how they moved the cylinders from floor to floor in the annex.
I approached the closest cylinder. It held a large glass capsule. Inside the capsule lay a woman in a white medical gown, resting on her back against a white cushion, hands to her sides, her expression serene, as if in peaceful sleep. This woman’s complexion was the color of milk chocolate. Given her skin tone, her nose, and the oval shape of her face, she looked like the photo I’d seen before of Vanessa Tico. I turned to the next cylinder.
Inside rested a blonde. Janice Wyndersook, Vanessa’s fellow passenger on the doomed flight.
I dashed between the rows of cylinders, hoping that I’d find Carmen. Another woman, whom I didn’t recognize, lay in one of the cylinders. The rest were empty.
I approached the pedestal. Each of these cylinders stood on parallel grooves that pointed to an indentation in the center of the pedestal. The glass capsules of the cylinders faced the indentation.
Hesitantly, I put a foot on the pedestal-it looked made of polished steel-and stepped up to see inside the cylinders.
The first one contained Carmen.
The joy at finding her ran through me like electricity. I got close to the cylinder and placed my hands against the cool glass.
Restraining bands across her torso, middle, and arms held her upright. Like the other women, Carmen wore white. Her eyes were closed.
Her aura shimmered softly, the visual equivalent of a soft hum. She was in a deep sleep.
How had they captured her? Drugs? A paralysis ray? A mechanical restraint?
I had to get her out of the capsule. I raked my talons across the glass. Didn’t even scratch it.
I tore the metal leg from a nearby table. I smacked the capsule again and again. Carmen remained in her slumber.
A circular contraption the diameter of the pedestal hung from the ceiling directly over us. The contraption was a concave disk dimpled with ridges radiating from a thick glass rod pointing to the indentation of the pedestal.
The capsules must be slid down the tracks to the indentation, and then what? Was this a scanner? To measure psychic energy? A diagnostic tool? What?
In any case, it didn’t look good.
I beat my hands against the glass and shouted: “Carmen. Carmen.” I wanted her to wake up and shine her tapetum lucidum.
Desperation choked me. I roiled with anger. I tried to tear the cylinder from the tracks but it remained fixed in place.
Okay, acting like a gorilla wouldn’t solve anything. I calmed myself and examined the outside of the cylinder. There had to be a way of opening these things. I found a rectangular indentation on the right side beyond the glass front. The indentation was at hip height, low for me but right for someone of Clayborn’s stature.
The indentation protected a series of slots and female connectors. This was where external devices or cables were attached. What devices? What cables?
Heavy steps rushed to the door.
Hurry, Felix.
I looked around for anything that would seem to fit the connections. A collection of devices, small boxes with cables, sat on the closest desk. I ran to the desk, scooped all the devices in my arms, and hustled back to the cylinder.
The front door began to squeal as if it was being twisted apart. The guards would soon make their way in.
I grabbed one device, ran my fingers over the cable to the end plug, and hunted for the correct connection. I turned the plug until it seated square, and pressed it tight.
The device, a blue plastic rectangle the size of a wallet, suddenly flashed a row of blinking lights. I fumbled with the device, trying to make it work. Nothing.
I dropped the device and picked up another. Its plug fit into a slot. This device, the size of a paperback book, had a screen that lit up. I tapped, then pounded on the buttons along its side. Again, nothing.
The front door clicked, the sound of metal snapping.
I rested my cheek against the cold metal of the cylinder. Carmen, I was so close. Please hear me.
Suddenly, there was silence. The guards in the hall had quit moving.
They were about to charge in. I had no choice but to escape. I couldn’t fight them forever. With every passing moment, the guards would gather more reinforcements and greater firepower.
I felt like a coward abandoning Carmen, but if I stayed I’d be overwhelmed and either dead or inside one of these cylinders myself. In a final gesture of desperation, I kicked the pile of devices and cables an
d scattered them across the floor.
I pressed my hands against the glass. “Carmen, I’ll come back and get you.” I wanted her eyes to flutter, her mouth to twitch, anything, but her expression remained distant and serene.
Escape. That’s what mattered now.
I chose an empty cylinder closest to the door the guards tried to open. I tripped the brake on the dolly. I wheeled the cylinder to point one end toward the door.
The door opened with a groan.
I shoved the cylinder and raced behind it.
Ramming speed.
Gunfire started and bullets pinged off the cylinder in front of me.
Men shouted, “Get back.”
The cylinder rolled to the doorway and smashed into the center of the group. Two men tumbled past me. A half dozen more scrambled to get away. I leaped over the cylinder toward the open door of a stairwell beyond. I levitated over the steps and was out of sight before the guards could yell a warning.
At the bottom of the stairwell, six more men stood, barking orders into their radios. They jumped in astonishment and clutched their weapons.
I ran through the center of the group. I grasped the largest guy by his equipment harness and swung him in a circle to knock the others down like nine pins.
I let him go and sprinted at vampire speed down the corridor. A steel blast door lowered and I dove under it, sprang to my feet, and raced out the basement door, up the incline, and out onto the grass.
Guards on the roof shouted and opened fire. The silencers on their weapons muffled the gunshots to fft, fft, fft.
I dodged left and right. I hurtled over the chain-link fence and landed beyond the hedge. I turned south and raced through the trees of the golf course.
A white SUV, lights flashing and siren blaring, charged onto the golf cart path after me.
I reached the resort boundary and vaulted a fence into the garden behind a row of condos. I kept going into the street. A panel truck pulled up to a stop sign.
I slid under the truck. Down here it smelled of hot metal and grease. I hooked my hands and feet into the frame and hugged the drive shaft. The truck rolled forward. The universal joint of the shaft spun inches from my crotch. I hoped the driver took it real slow over the speed bumps.
A quarter of a mile down the street, the truck halted. From this angle I couldn’t see much, except for the bottom halves of cars and the legs and shoes of people.
The baggy black trousers and boots of a guard came up to the driver’s side of the truck.
“We’re looking for a fugitive. About this tall, black hair. He’s wearing a red shirt.”
“Haven’t seen anything,” the driver replied.
“Get out anyway. We need to search your truck.”
The driver stepped out. He and the guard went to the back of the truck. The latch snapped open and the rear panels rattled.
“Nothing but furniture. Wanna look? Be my guest.”
The man in black climbed inside. His boots scuffed the floor above my face, and it sounded like boxes were being shoved around. He hopped out. The driver rattled the rear doors closed.
“If you see anything suspicious, call this number.”
“Why not 911?”
“No. It’ll be easier if you call the number on the card.”
So the hunt for me wasn’t about law enforcement. Surprise, surprise.
The driver got back in the truck. The guard returned to the SUV. The truck started up again and we drove to Highway 278, over the bridge, and into Bluffton. The odor of exhaust, especially the accumulated fart smell of catalytic converters, made me gag.
The truck passed a golf course and made a left off the highway. I craned my neck to see that no one followed. When the truck slowed at a corner to make another turn, I let go and dropped to the road. I kept myself as flat as possible, to let the differential pass and not conk me on the forehead.
The truck pulled away and the bright sunlight hit me full in the face. I jumped off the asphalt and hustled into the shade of an oak.
I was in an older residential section, mostly cottages with sagging fences and kudzu choking everything. The highway was to the north. The chalices’ mortuary should be south, between here and Buck Point.
I dug into my pocket for my contacts, which I put in. Goodman and that extraterrestrial hoodlum Clayborn were on to me. They had Carmen and they knew I’d be back to get her. Plus they knew I wasn’t human. Both of them assumed that I was another species of alien, which was fine. As long as they didn’t realize the truth, that the undead walked among them.
I had to get Carmen soon, as I didn’t know what plans Clayborn had for her. The familiar clammy hand of panic gripped me. I had to act.
Down the street I saw a carnecia and a shopping center catering to area Latinos. Piñatas dangled from the awning. Signs advertising phone cards and music CDs decorated the windows of a mercado. A truck from May River Commercial Laundry sat in the corner of the parking lot. I’d seen this truck before, at the Grand Atlantic.
A banner hung over the side of the truck facing the road: BUSCAMOS TRABAJADORES. PAGAMOS POR LA SEMANO. Looking for workers. We pay by the week.
A rescue plan started to gel. I’d return to the resort and I’d get in right under their noses. And I wouldn’t be alone.
Chapter
44
The sound of a big motorcycle engine chugged in front of the mortuary. Gravel crunched under the weight of the machine. The engine quit. They were here.
I fed a stack of e-mail printouts through a shredder in the kitchen. They were the replies my hacker had sent, Marissa Albert’s cell phone records from the day she had arrived at Key West. Her last calls had been with her home office voice mail, her sister, Carmen’s resort, and a listing for RKW. Who else could that have been but Goodman. He had set her up.
Heavy steps pounded up the wooden stairs onto the porch. I’d left the door unlocked because I knew they’d barge in.
The clock on the wall said 9:45 P.M. Less than six hours since I’d called.
Jolie shoved the door open. Her expression looked like she’d swallowed nitroglycerine and was about to explode. Her aura blazed as hot as the jet from a flamethrower. A raccoon mask outlined with grime set off her eyes. Goggles rested on her forehead, across a green do-rag cinched over her scalp. Her muscular, freckled arms jutted from a sleeveless denim vest. Grease-splattered cowboy boots showed under jeans and a pair of black leather chaps.
Antoine clomped in behind her. His aura undulated with alarm. He lifted the goggles from his face and the clean skin around his eyes made the rest of his grimy and bug-plastered face look gray by comparison. He brushed dirt from his goatee. “That’s from doing five hundred and forty miles in under six hours.”
“Big fucking deal,” Jolie replied. “We’d’ve been here sooner but the goddamn bike wouldn’t go any faster.”
Antoine peeled the leather helmet off his head. “Serves me right for not getting my helicopter fixed. That’s the last time I ride on the back of your bike.”
Jolie wore fingerless gloves and clasped and unclasped her hands. “Felix, what’s your plan to rescue Carmen? Mine would be to kamikaze my bike right down Goodman’s throat.”
“I feel the same way,” I said.
“So what’s the plan?”
I led Jolie and Antoine to the morgue. We gathered around the work table holding my coffin. I sat and readied my pen over maps that I’d drawn on a yellow writing pad.
The chalices, Leslie and Jack, came to the door.
I turned to Jolie and Antoine. “How about a bite to eat? It’ll get your mind right.”
Jolie eyed the chalices and shook her head. “No thanks. I’m too worked up. Put me close to a neck and I’m likely to do more than feed.”
“Antoine?”
He went to the sink and ran the water, holding his hand under the spout as he adjusted the temperature. “Sure. With coffee. I’ll hold off using my fangs for the serious work.” Antoine splashe
d water onto his face and scrubbed with a bar of soap.
I said to the chalices, “Coffee then. If you don’t mind, we have private business to discuss.”
“Of course,” Leslie replied. She and Jack left and closed the door.
Jolie paced about the room, still opening and closing her fists. “So what’s the plan?”
Antoine wiped his face and hands with a towel. He balled the towel and tossed it to Jolie. “Here, wash up. It’ll help you cool off.”
Jolie caught the towel and threw it back to Antoine. “I don’t want to cool off.”
“You need to. We all need to be thinking clearly.”
Jolie kept pacing. “I can think clearly enough.”
Earlier, I’d told Jolie what I knew about Carmen’s capture, Goodman, and Clayborn. I was sure she’d shared that with Antoine.
“Just get to the plan.” Jolie kept pacing.
Antoine pulled a chair and sat at the table beside me. I pointed to the map with the layout of the resort, the hotel, and the annex. “We sneak in.”
“Why?” Jolie’s aura burned with so much anger that if it were fire, the house would’ve gone up in flames. “I’d hit them hard in the gullet and plow through their defenses. We’d be in and out before they finished shitting their pants.”
“I like the way you think, Jolie,” I said. “But if we did that, we wouldn’t get close to Carmen, much less rescue her. They have a lot of firepower.”
I pointed to the maps. “My plan is that we sneak inside.”
Jolie clenched her teeth. “I don’t want to sneak.”
“Hear the man out.” Antoine clasped Jolie’s wrist. “After we get Carmen, then you can settle whatever scores you want.”
I nodded to Antoine, thanking him for helping calm Jolie. I smiled at her. “Don’t think of it as sneaking. We’re infiltrating.”
She pulled her arm free and went back to pacing by the table.
“When we trip the alarm, I want us to be here,” I tapped my pen against the drawing of the annex, “instead of here on the perimeter. That will buy us time. I’d rather that we infiltrate in and then fight our way out.”
Jolie stepped close and moved my pen to study the map. “Yeah, makes sense. That way we can recon their defenses on the way in. Plus their attention would be on keeping us out. When we have Carmen, we’ll be attacking security from their rear. That’s always a good tactic.”
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