by Dawn Steele
It pained him so much to look at her. At the shoal which was her belly, apparent under her thin blanket.
The doctor came out of the room. He stood there, and Rust knew what he was going to say.
The doctor said, “I need to discuss something with you.”
Rust’s chest was very heavy.
“Sure,” he said.
“It’s the baby. It’s taking too much from her. She might stand a better chance if we . . . terminate the pregnancy.”
A dagger pierced Rust’s chest. To think you didn’t want a baby with Shamilar before. And now it’s a part of you – like a limb you have to wrench off.
He had to say something fast . . . before he lost his nerve.
“Do whatever you can to save her, please,” he said quickly.
The doctor held up a pad with a form on it. “Are you sure, Professor O’Brien?”
“Yes.”
“Then sign the consent form here, please.”
Rust took the pad and the proffered pen. He scribbled his name on the dotted line. His hand shook badly.
He gave the form back to the doctor before he could change his mind.
“We’ll start the oxytocin now,” the doctor said. “It won’t be long.”
Rust nodded, his eyes suddenly blurry with tears.
“She’s young,” the doctor added. “She’s strong. She might have a chance to pull through.”
Unlike my parents, Rust thought.
He turned his face to the wall, afraid to show the doctor his helplessness and grief.
*
He finally fell asleep. He woke up to the sound of the bed being wheeled out of the operating theater.
Kate lay there, still assisted with a pump.
Rust scrambled to his feet. The two agents assigned to watch him got up too. Frankly, he didn’t know why he warranted armed guard. He wasn’t going to go anywhere or do anything as long as Kate was in a coma.
They wheeled Kate away and he could only watch helplessly. He knew she needed to get back on the ventilator. It was her only chance of survival till Alyssa got back.
But Kate looked so fragile. Her life was hanging by a thread. He watched them take her back to the intensive care unit which had become her home. He didn’t follow because there was something else he had to do.
The doctor came out, holding a little bundle wrapped up in green surgical cloth. He didn’t say anything.
Rust buried his face in his hands and wept.
*
It was another twenty-four hours before Alyssa returned. Rust was asleep outside the intensive care unit. His jaw was unshaven and he hadn’t had a shower in two days. No one disturbed him, except to bring him food and drink.
He felt the hand on his shoulder and he was startled awake.
Alyssa said, “I brought you this.”
In her gloved hand was a purple flower.
22
It was a time for answers.
Alyssa watched as Rust gave the scientists and researchers there the instructions to prepare the antidote.
“Crush the petals in the mortar . . . like that,” he said.
“Can we do a centrifuge?” asked a researcher.
Rust hesitated. “I’m not sure. I daren’t take the risk. I’ve never done it like that before.”
“You’ve done this before.” Alyssa watched Rust grind the petals of the purple flower in the stone mortar with a pestle.
“Yes. The flower is Carpelinium silopsis, a rare plant found only in the Caribbean, especially in the hills of Honduras.”
“I did my homework on the plane. It has anti-cancer properties as well and it’s being studied as a targeted agent by the R and D divisions of a major British pharmaceutical company.”
“Has it? Good to know.” Rust put in another bunch of flowers into the mortar and pounded it furiously. “I need alcohol.”
“What’s the poison? What are we dealing with?”
So far, the post-mortem had yielded nothing in the blood and exudates of Connor and Moira. Toxicology scans were running furiously around the clock for all known drugs and poisons to man.
But Connor and Moira were not human.
Rust said, “When my father was younger . . . we . . . he did some experiments in Bellevue using this flower, which he discovered had antitoxin properties.”
He paused, as though weighing what to say next.
Alyssa said softly, “They killed your parents, didn’t they?”
“You’ve been infiltrated.” His voice was harsh.
“And you can be sure we’re doing all we can to find the perpetrators. You have to level with us.” When he didn’t answer, she added, “You tried to protect them, and look what they did to you.”
Her pulse was racing. She was at a threshold here. The threshold of discovery. What she couldn’t make him and his parents reveal in weeks was about to be revealed now.
“But you can save Kate now.” As an afterthought, she said, “I’m sorry about the baby.”
He nodded. “I had to sign the consent form, you know . . . to save her.”
She didn’t badger him anymore, but let him finish his pounding. He mixed a few more chemicals and then gave the potion to a scientist.
“Now you can send it for centrifuge,” he said.
“What’s the poison, Rust? Why isn’t anything we’re giving her working?”
He raised his eyes to hers. There seemed some sort of calm acceptance in them.
He said, “The poison is called ‘wolfsbane’. We shifters have known of its existence for centuries. It is found in the Ural mountains. It’s a closely guarded European shifter secret. It’s deadly to shifters, in particular, but pretty toxic to humans too.”
She sucked in her breath.
“Shifters, you say,” she remarked. “Many of them.”
“Yes. As you have instinctively known, there are many of us living among you. For centuries.”
It was all spilling out now.
She said, “There have been . . . legends. And the fact you and your parents didn’t probably spring from immaculate conception.”
“Some are legends, most are the truth.” His steady eyes held hers.
“Can you tell us everything . . . from the beginning?”
“Yes, I can. But it will be my story. My terms.”
“What are your terms?”
“I need protection for Kate and myself. Possibly for the rest of our lives.” He was very grim when he said this.
“I can arrange that.”
“And – ” He paused.
“Yes?”
“You’re going to help me nail the bastards who did this to us. They are going to be sorry they didn’t get to kill me too.”
23
Alyssa thought Rust looked very handsome, and apparently, she wasn’t the only one too. The makeup artist who was adding powder to take the shine off his face was openly admiring him.
“You look totally human,” she said.
“Thank you for the compliment,” he replied, tongue-in-cheek.
Alyssa said, “Remember what we rehearsed.”
“No mention of my parents’ murders. No mention of Kate and the baby,” he said. “Yeah, yeah. Just because your Director hasn’t got the guts to go public with the truth.”
“Not yet. The word is ‘yet’. We still have a lot of investigation to do. And Kate is not out of the woods yet.”
Dan came in. “You’re on in five minutes.”
Alyssa said, “You go on stage after the Director. Remember, we have not maltreated you in any way.”
“Yes, your hospitality was astounding.”
“Rust . . . we made a deal.”
“Sure. I say good things about the FBI and the government in general, and the IRS waives my taxes.”
She looked deadpan at him.
He grinned at her. “Don’t worry. I’ve rehearsed my lines like a good little shifter boy.”
“Good. Then say them. Perfectly. By rote.
And we’ll do everything we can to bring those people who did this to you to justice.”
He stood up from the makeup chair. He was so tall.
“When have I ever let you down?” he said with a gleam in his eye.
She was glad he had recovered his spirits after all that had happened. At the same time, she could not help feeling apprehensive.
*
The Director stood in front of the room full of gathered press. Alyssa could see them from the sidelines of the podium. CNN. FOX. The peacock logo of NBC. Al-Jazeera. The print journalists from the New York Times, USA Today, the LA Times. They all were here.
Foremost among them was Rita Cunningham, who wore a stunning red jacket. She sat right in front, and her hand was constantly up.
The Director was speaking to the adjourned press people, fielding questions, especially from Rita Cunningham.
“Is is true that it took a direct order from the President for you to hold this press conference today, Director?”
“No comment.”
“There have been stories circulating about the shifters. Is it true that at least one of them has died from tissue harvesting?”
“That is not true. Next, please.” He pointed to Rita Cunningham.
Rita said, “Kate Penney, Rust O’Brien’s girlfriend and the would-be mother of his child, is in your custody. Are you performing experiments on the unborn child?”
“We have not performed any unwarranted tests on Kate Penney’s unborn child that she has not consented to.” The Director smiled pleasantly. “Contrary to what you write, Ms. Cunningham, we are not a bureau of unethical savages.”
There were some scattered chuckles.
The Director stepped off the podium to a barrage of further questions and groans. The spokesman stepped up again.
He held up his hands for silence. There was a wave of sudden anticipation in the room.
“We present to you . . . Rust O’Brien.”
A chorus of anticipation and cheers greeted this.
Rust entered the room, calm and confident. He was indeed much thinner than when he first entered the facility, Alyssa noted, and that was why they had to get him a new suit. Armani, no less. He looked impossibly good and at ease as he stepped up onto the podium with the microphones trained at his face.
The room erupted. Rita beamed. Rust had become quite a celebrity in the time he was out of the public eye and it was mostly due to her public relations machinery. A tweet here, a Facebook page there, and the whole thing just went viral on its own, like an ALS ice bucket challenge.
Rust did not move but waited till everyone quietened down. He was quite the consummate performer, Alyssa thought, and some part of her felt terribly proud. But of course, he was a university professor. He must be used to being on a lectern and commanding the attention of his students.
Her heart stirred, and she was arrested by her overwhelming emotion for him. Could it be that she was in love with him?
Rust said into the microphones, “As you can tell, rumors of my early demise are greatly unfounded.”
Laughter.
“And I have to say, in defense of the FBI – who get a bad rap, along with the CIA, the IRS and every other government agency in our land of the brave and free – that they not do anything to me that I did not consent to.”
Alyssa beamed. He was following the script so far, with a few embellishments.
“Yes, I did consent to having my teeth pulled out, along with pieces of my spleen, liver and scrotum.”
Alyssa froze.
“Nothing a little anesthetic didn’t take care of. It’s not as if the FBI is paying me for my tissue harvest, like some unscrupulous black market doctors I know from a third world country. I’m unfortunately and still woefully unemployed.”
More laughter. No one could tell if he was serious or not. The atmosphere in the room was very tense.
The spokesman came to the podium.
“That’s all we have for today, I’m afraid. Professor O’Brien is unfortunately not feeling well – ”
Rust held up a hand. “But I haven’t finished.”
God help us, Alyssa thought.
“Let him finish!” shouted Rita Cunningham.
Everyone in the room echoed this.
“Let him finish!”
“If you haven’t tortured him, then you have nothing to hide.”
“We practice freedom of speech.”
“What do you have to hide?”
Alyssa groaned amid the cacophony. This was a mistake.
“Mr. Moriarty is right,” Rust said to both the spokesman and the gathered throng. “That’s your name, isn’t it? Moriarty? It says so on your nametag. You don’t happen to be a shifter in hiding, do you? Because one such shifter – and that is my suspicion – poisoned my mother and father and girlfriend. Right here on the FBI premises under surveillance.”
The room grew suddenly quiet.
“Yes, it’s true,” Rust said. “The poisoning occurred yesterday, when you were all making your flight arrangements to come to the bright state of New Mexico. My parents are dead, and my girlfriend’s life is in limbo.”
Audible gasps all round. Stirrings of unrest.
“It’s a poison called wolfsbane, known only to shifters. It’s deadly. When ingested, it causes a purple tongue upon death. You can imagine what a field day our shifter ancestors had with it. In fact, during a Gathering in the fifteenth century, a rival wolf clan poisoned the well of another wolf clan. The bodies were piled in stacks, and when they were burned, they emitted a sickly sweet smell . . . like flowers.”
Everyone was hanging on to his every word now.
“Yes, as you have probably guessed, there’s a whole world of us out there. Lions and tigers and bears. Wolves and cheetahs and panthers. Every order of mammal, in fact. If there are lizards, I haven’t heard of them, though they might be hiding out in the Mojave Desert.”
Nervous laughter.
Rust paused, his eyes glinting, and took in the room.
“And here we are all the while, living and breathing among you. We are your neighbors, your college professors, the woman who sits across from you at a PTA meeting, the doctor who tends to your asthmatic son at the ER. We have been living among you for centuries. And nothing has changed, really. We still live among you. We are you.
“Some of us are philanthropists. Some of us are murderers. Some of us are both philanthropists and murderers.”
He stopped and took stock again of his audience. You could hear a penny drop.
He’s going to reveal them, Alyssa knew. Reveal them publicly.
Rust said, “There’s a Council that governs us. A secret society. It comprises of shifters from around the world. It has its roots in England, but it’s practically virtual now.” He grinned. “We shifters keep up with the times.
“This shifter council is responsible for ordering the death strikes on my parents, Moira and Connor O’Brien, myself and my pregnant girlfriend, Kate Penney.”
Alyssa noted that he called them all by name so that the audience would identify them as real people.
“They poisoned us through our food. The wolfsbane was meant to kill all of us shifters and those who are carrying shifter babies. They succeeded . . . except for me, by some quirk of fate. Now Kate Penney, the mother of my child, lies in a coma. I had to make a very difficult decision to abort the baby – ”
His voice cracked, and Alyssa could see that this was not an act
“ – to save her life. Or at least, to buy her time until I could do something about the poison in her veins. Even now, her life hangs in balance. When I walk out of this room, I’m not sure whether or not she will live or die. There’s no certainty in our lives right now.”
He paused.
“That’s why the Shifter Council members must pay. I’m going to name the names of the suspected murderers here, and it’s up to the FBI . . . or CIA . . . or whatever government agency you decide you want this to fall under
. . . to decide how justice should be carried out.”
He looked straight at Alyssa.
“The first name in the Council is Aaron Mitchell. He is a CEO, entrepreneur, philanthropist . . . and the first suspect in my murder list.”
24
It took three days, but Kate gradually improved. Her vital signs held steady and her pallor and skin turgor got better. The doctors were able to wean her off the ventilator and she could breathe on her own – a major coup.
Rust was at her bedside when her eyes fluttered open.
He immediately bounded up. He clutched her hand.
“Kate?”
Her eyelids fluttered. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“Kate, it’s OK. Take your time. I’m right here.”
His eyes blurred with tears. He rarely cried as an adult, but he had cried plenty these past few days. He had lost so much and it had become almost unbearable.
Almost. Until now.
The only reason he was still going on now was because of Kate. Kate needed him, and he would never let her down. That, and the fact he had to take revenge on those who did this to her.
He couldn’t let go of Kate’s hand. He knew that the ventilator tube had left her throat sore and swollen and so she might have difficulty speaking. What if the wolfsbane did something to her mind, the way the Electroshock therapy did something to his? What if it erased her memories of him?
“Rust?” she whispered.
He was squeezing her fingers so hard he was sure it must have hurt her.
“I’m right here.”
“Wh-what happened?” Her voice was very weak.
“You were in a coma . . . but you’re all right now. Everything’s going to be all right.”
“The baby.”
Her other hand moved to her belly.
His heart sank. “No, Kate, don’t.”
He caught her other hand. Her skin was so very cold.