by Nancy Holder
He blurred until he was pacing the car. It was going very slowly. They had to be looking for cops or maybe DeMarco security. Or maybe even renegade FBI agents out for a private payday.
The car turned right. Alarm bells clanged. Every time he had to cross the street, he was taking another risk of exposure. There could be sentries posted on rooftops. If only they had some idea of the size of the operation that had snatched Angelo. His soldier’s reflexes and training served him well as he wove through the deep shadows, and a part of his subconscious traveled back in time to wartime Afghanistan, when he had been turned into a beast. The wilding had come over him and the men and women he served with; they had lost all sense of strategy and coordinated tactical maneuvers and became ravening monsters, like superhuman versions of horror movie zombies.
Only much, much worse.
He zigzagged, a boot crunching down on a can, crushing it. The pop of escaping air sounded like a gunshot and his adrenaline spiked. He morphed and the world was doused in a white glow. He heard dripping water and a low-level electrical hum. It was possible they were jamming cell phone transmissions. He couldn’t check his phone now; his eyes were on the car.
The vehicle glided like a shark toward an enormous brick building topped with a four crenelated towers like castle turrets. Angling down, it slid aloud into what had to be a garage, and Vincent raced toward it. Then something tripped him—a thin wire stretched parallel the length of the building down the last one-fifth of the street.
I can’t believe I didn’t see it! he thought angrily as he went flying. As he hurtled through the air he fully beasted out. With a roar he stuck a landing. His ankles screamed but he did not crumble.
Suddenly the car picked up speed and a gate began to zoom down behind it. Still beasted, Vincent roared again and ran full-tilt to make it beneath the plummeting metal.
He was a second too late.
Thousands of volts of electricity rocketed through him. Brain, skull, eyes, groin, toes… heart. Everything was seized and shaken by savage, man-made lightning. Vincent broke into a seizure, completely helpless as continued contact with the gate jetted fresh pulses of electricity through his agonized, fully stressed body.
Then something fell over him—a wire mesh net sizzled and burned him. His body no longer responded to the stimulus. He lay inert, quivering. His mind was gone. The world became one tiny pinprick of platinum light.
And then light was gone too.
* * *
Slicing.
Through his shoulders.
Muscle tearing. Searing pain.
The coppery tang of blood. The acrid odor of sweat.
Ice water hit Vincent in the face and he didn’t so much come to as become slightly less unconscious. The very first word that formed in his mind was Catherine.
He kept his eyes closed and tried to take a breath.
He couldn’t.
His arms were stretched outward and slightly behind his torso, so that his chest was already over-expanded. He was unable to inhale. As he began to suffocate, he opened his eyes.
He saw nothing. Something was covering his eyes. Blindfold. Fabric grazed the deep wounds in shoulders. Hood.
A protesting sound struggled from the upper quadrant of his chest cavity. Then something crashed into him like a bolt of lightning and his body contracted, hard. His spine folded back on itself and bones cracked.
With a mighty animal shriek he became the weapon Reynolds had fashioned him to be. His right arm was suddenly free; then he landed with bare feet onto white-hot coals. Pain seared through him and juiced him with adrenaline. He sprang forward, but the restraint around his left arm swung back onto the coals. The stench of his own burning flesh dosed him with more adrenaline.
“Run! Run!” someone yelled. “He’s loose!”
His left arm pulled free and he hurled himself forward, blind. Somewhere in his brain his human intelligence walked Beast-Vincent through the required motions to rip the hood off from his head.
Dungeon, came the word.
He had been locked in a dungeon before. Imprisoned.
His mind conjured the sight of an unconscious, alabaster-white woman with brilliant-red hair. A dead woman, in a dungeon cell with him.
Tori, came her name.
Then Beast-Vincent lost purchase on language and the language of his existence was Kill. Mayhem, chaos, destruction: he had zero human awareness as three figures cowered together, then forced open a thick door and disappeared through it. The door closed with a ringing clang.
His blistered feet oozed as he stumbled after them, fists slamming down the on the metal. The muscles in his shoulders clutched. Blood poured down his chest and back. The door held fast. He pounded on it again. Again.
He whirled in a circle, raging, roaring, seeking other prey. He was in a large room illuminated by electric camping lanterns. The bed of coals had been spread beneath a configuration of dangling meat hooks and heavy chains, each of the links an inch in diameter. Supported by the chains, he had been hung from the hooks.
A cattle prod lay on the blood-smeared concrete floor. As Beast-Vincent attempt to pick it up, overwhelming pain and weakness conquered him and he fell to his knees. He began to lose his edge and he became just Vincent again, battered, burned, beaten.
He grabbed the cattle prod as he panted. Despite all the pain, the sensation of breathing freely was what he focused on, rejoiced in.
They’ ll come back, he told himself. Move, soldier.
But he was so hurt, debilitated. He didn’t know if he could stand, much less take on any adversaries. He tried to beast out, but instead he only fell forward, landing on the cattle prod as his face hit the concrete.
Get up, get up. If you don’t get up you will die.
But Vincent couldn’t get up. He could only lie utterly still.
And pass out again.
* * *
Gabe couldn’t believe his luck.
The snapping sound behind him had only been the sound of ice cracking on a tree limb, but faced with an instinctual fight-or-flight reaction, Gabe had chosen to flee—toward the motel, just as chatter from a radiophone covered the noise. He flattened himself against the wall, trying to catch his breath. All his life, until less than two years ago, he had been strong, and agile, and never short of breath.
I chose the wrong path.
I can fix that.
The sentry said something into his radiophone and walked away from the door. He kept talking, turning back around once, then moving on.
Gabe put his hand around the door. Locked. He could shoot the lock but he didn’t dare. He didn’t know how many people were traveling with Reynolds. He didn’t know what their agenda was—why they were restraining the ex-agent, why they had captured him in the first place.
He ran around the other side of the building, to discover that there was a window minus storm shutters. The drapes were pulled back and he could see Reynolds.
And as he turned his head, Reynolds could see him. His eyes widened, and then he smiled very oddly. He mouthed, Raise the window.
Gabe was confused. Reynolds moved his head toward the bottom of the sill and Gabe felt along it. He understood: the window was not quite shut. Possibly it had been opened to allow in a little fresh air.
Gabe slid his fingers into the space and pulled upward. He was able to raise the window maybe six inches, and then it stopped, stuck. Gabe applied more pressure; he was so tired.
Another inch.
He heard the squawk of the radiophone. The sentry was returning. He had two choices: retreat and wait for another opportunity, or risk it all.
He risked it.
The window slid up. There was a screen, no doubt left over from last summer. He pushed it in. It clattered and he winced. So did Reynolds.
Then he climbed in, grabbed the screen, thrust it under the bed, and closed the window.
The door began to open and as Reynolds watched, Gabe rolled under the bed, on top of the screen, an
d sucked in his breath.
* * *
“Here’s our Easy Pickin’s report,” Cat said. She handed him a hard copy. She felt like a student who had been given detention. Captain Ward paged through it at an infuriatingly slow pace, then gave her a nod.
“Tell Vargas I want her to give me a rundown on this C.I. tomorrow,” he said. “I need to make sure some of my detectives keep me a little more in the loop.”
That would be all your detectives, she thought, but did not say.
“Yes, sir.” She remembered the days when they called Captain Bishop “Joe” and “boss” and missed him. She didn’t miss his devotion to the cause of bringing in the Vigilante but, pre-Vincent, he had been a good captain. Except for the part about messing around with Tess.
She called Tess now, to ask after J.T. He’d been jumped on his way to teach a class, shortly after the handoff of Nico to Captain Ward. In New York City it was difficult to know if you had been mugged for a reason or mugged just because. While he was shaken and he had some bumps and bruises, he was basically all right. But she could tell that Tess didn’t want to leave him. And, given that it was possible that J.T.’s attackers might try again, this time invading his home, Catherine told her to stay put.
“You can be the backup to my backup,” Cat said.
Then she got in her car and followed her phone’s driving directions to the street address of the Santangelo Meat Packing Plant, texting Vincent all the way, receiving no response.
“C’mon, c’mon,” she murmured, becoming more and more worried. The sun was down and it was dark. The buildings all around her were like a set for a disaster movie. A total war zone of blasted-out brick buildings, decay, abandonment.
She called Tess. “Have you heard from Vincent?”
“Cat, you’re breaking up,” Tess said. “Where are you?”
Then she saw the ruins of the packing plant. It was a big hulking wreck against a blackening sky. A handful of windows revealed light like yellowed teeth. Wary of rolling right into a trap, she pulled onto a side street and got out of her car. She put on her coat, hat, and gloves, shut the door quietly, and drew her service weapon.
“Tess, I’m going into the meat packing plant,” she said into her phone.
Her answer was static.
“Tess.”
Call failed.
She placed her phone into her coat pocket. Then as quietly as possible, she shuffled through the snow. This situation had turned on a dime. Suddenly this didn’t feel like it was about rescuing Angelo DeMarco.
Vincent’s in trouble, she thought. She didn’t know how she knew it, or even if she did know it. Maybe she only feared it. But she could feel her cop brain making connections of which she was as yet consciously unaware. Her mind had been trained to piece together sensations, discoveries, suspicions, revelations until the puzzle was complete. Awareness was building, and soon would become answers.
Then the roar of a beast echoed over the destroyed landscape, raging, crazed, inhuman. It rattled her bones and took away her breath.
Vincent.
He had beasted. Why? What was happening?
There was another roar, and another. They were coming from the factory. Cat broke into a run, skirting snowdrifts and piles of rusted chains and machinery. She sucked in icy air and kept going. The snow muffled her footfalls and the darkness cloaked her.
Another roar.
She stopped across the street and took in the large building. There was an open, illuminated loading bay with a gate stretched across it. The light spilled onto a door and beside it, a broken window.
She checked her weapon. Locked and loaded.
Then, as she began to cross the street, someone came up from behind her. She turned, preparing to fire.
But Officer Lizzani of the 123rd precinct brought his gun butt down hard on the crown of her head, and Cat collapsed to the ground.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
FISHERMAN’S INN
The sentry came in with a cup of coffee and a bowl of soup. The group had commandeered the living quarters of the motel’s manager—the man they had shot—and three more men and one woman entered Reynolds’ room. He was untied and moved to the bed, where he dangled his right foot over the edge, possibly so Gabe would have a reference point… or maybe because he could almost be seen. Reynolds was hiding him, protecting him, and Gabe wasn’t sure why.
“We’re going to move across the border tomorrow morning,” said the woman. “We need to know if you’re with us, Reynolds.”
Reynolds laughed hollowly. “The way I see it, I don’t really have a choice.”
“You do,” she said. “We’ll leave you here with food, water, and a phone. We’ll be across the border by the time anyone comes.”
Gabe listened hard.
“No need,” Reynolds said. “I’m with you. You’re right. I am eminently suited for the position you’re offering me.”
“We don’t want another Andrew Martin incident. We want to make absolutely positive that there are no more beasts anywhere. They need to be wiped from the face of the earth.”
“That’s obvious,” Reynolds said.
“Unbelievably, there are some among us who disagree,” said the woman. “They want to make more beasts. Of course, their leader’s dead. And we’re pretty sure we got Celeste Ellison, too.”
They must have been watching her. Maybe Bruce Fox is a plant. She doesn’t trust him. Gabe spared a thought for her, which was the closest he could come to a prayer. He was with Sam Landon: he couldn’t believe in a god who would permit the injustices he had seen. When beastly men died, would such a god allow them into heaven? He doubted it.
“Well, I’m in. The Muirfield Project was an unmitigated disaster and I’m sorry I was ever involved,” Reynolds said. “As you know, I programmed Vincent Keller to exterminate his own kind, but he thwarted me.”
“Do you think he’ll come?” asked the woman. “We have to go. We’ve taken too much time as it is.”
“Oh, he’ll come. I threw down the gauntlet with that bloody T-shirt. He wants to kill me. He’ll risk everything to make that happen.”
But Gabe detected the uncertainty in Reynolds’ voice. He wasn’t so sure of his beasts any more.
And I’m not about to enlighten him.
* * *
Cat woke up lying on her back on an old mattress that had been covered with a sheet. There was an icepack on her forehead and as she squinted, a figure loomed over her holding a flare of light.
It was Angelo DeMarco with a lantern in his hand, scowling down at her.
“…been looking for you everywhere,” she slurred. She looked around. There were stacks of moldy paperback books in a half-circle around the mattress. This was the setting for the photograph of Angelo and Tori.
“Yeah, and you weren’t too good at it. We had to plant the most obvious evidence on the freakin’ planet for you guys to figure it out.”
A shape came up beside Angelo. Piercings, dark hair.
“Paul. Dickinson,” she managed.
Angelo blinked and frowned at Paul. “You moron.”
“Whatever.” Paul huffed and turned away.
“He wasn’t supposed to go to the drop,” Angelo said to Cat. “Minute I heard he actually went, and took my family’s stuff…” He shook his head. “What an idiot.”
“It actually worked out,” Cat said slowly. “We weren’t getting anywhere. It was Lizzani and Bailey Hart, right? Inside?”
He preened. “Pretty impressive for twenty years old, don’t you think?”
“You’re almost twenty-one. You’re going to be really rich. So why did you do this?” she asked.
“Help her up,” Angelo said.
Officer Lizzani came forward. He bent over Cat and put his hands under her arms, raising her to a sitting position. She was so dizzy that her head fell back. Then he jerked her to her feet. She swayed.
I’ve seen their faces, she thought. Would Angelo actually kill me?
Lizzani clamped his beefy hands around one arm and Paul took the other. She shuffled forward. Her clothes were wet and she was shivering. Angelo carried the lantern.
Then Angelo turned to her and for a moment, she saw the same frightened look she had seen on Hallie DeMarco’s face—frightened, drowning. Then it was gone, replaced by his sneer.
He opened the door.
What she saw made her knees buckle.
They were in a black pit, its filthy floor grooved with channels. Coals glowed in a rectangle. There were hooks overhead. Lanterns blazed light on an unholy image:
Vincent was chained to the floor, wrists shackled and pulled through loops, a beast collar around his neck. His face was bruised and cut. He was shirtless and there were horrible, deep wounds in the tops of his shoulders and bruises all along his arms and across his chest. The soles of his feet looked burned. She sucked in her breath and the room spun. She didn’t know how he could withstand such terrible damage. It was mutilation, pure and simple.
Then her gaze moved from his feet to his amber-colored eyes. He was staring at her as if she was the only thing he saw. Half-dead, beaten… and focused on her.
We make each other stronger, she thought. Her panic didn’t disappear, but she was able to control it.
“He killed her,” Angelo said. “He killed Tori.”
What was she to you? Why are you connected to the Windsors?
“No,” Cat said. “Why would you think that?”
“I don’t think it. I know it!” he shouted. He nodded at Lizzani. The dirty cop picked up a cattle pod and pressed it into the wound in Vincent’s shoulder. A bellow tore out of Vincent’s throat, echoing through plant. Someone hear him, Cat pleaded. Hear him like I did.
Then there was a gun at her temple, pushing so hard into her skin that she imagined it drilling a hold through her skull.
Angelo was holding the gun.
“Vincent didn’t cause her death,” she said again. Even if her captor pulled the trigger, Cat would not be silent.
“Yes! Yes, he did!” Angelo shouted. “He turned her into the monster that he is and killed her!”
“No,” Vincent said. He sounded utterly human… and in terrible agony.