“Jesus Christ,” I rasped. “And you got dosed with a lot more than a drop.”
“Aye.”
I gave an involuntary shudder. Now I really didn’t blame him for hating Reun. I’d seen how he reacted to the smallest cut with mandrake in his system, and I’d been extremely careful getting the bullet out. I couldn’t even imagine how more serious injuries would feel—like the ones that left those scars on his back.
“You can heal from this stuff, right?” I said. “I mean, not to be an alarmist or anything, but you really don’t seem like you’re getting better.”
“I’ll improve, once the moon rises.”
“I hope so.” I slowed the Jeep to a crawl and babied it over a series of deep ruts, gritting my teeth against the jostling. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be much longer until we found the nutcase. This was agony for Taeral, and I was still feeling the effects of the werewolf beating. They were damned strong—and it made me glad I’d never actually fought Sadie. I had a feeling she’d win. “How does that work, anyway?” I said. “The moon thing. I get werewolves and the moon, I guess…but what does it have to do with the Fae?”
A distant expression crossed Taeral’s face. “In Arcadia, the moon is far brighter than its reflection in this realm,” he said. “And it is eternal.”
“Um. Eternal how?”
“There is no sun in Arcadia. Only the moon, always.”
“So it’s permanent night there.”
“It is. But never as dark and dreary as the nights in this human shade of existence.” He closed his eyes again. “The Fae spark is tied to the moon, and so in our realm, magic is also eternal,” he said. “But here, there are limitations. That is the advantage of the moonstone… it allows you to access magic, even when the moon is not present to restore your spark.”
That made sense, at least. I knew the pendant acted like a moonlight-powered battery, storing a charge I could use any time. But I had a spark, a limit to how much magic I could use, just like Taeral. And if that ran out, the moonstone wouldn’t do me any good.
It didn’t create magic. Just enhanced it.
I was about to pester Taeral with more questions about magic and Arcadia, when I rounded a curve in the access road and found Chester Rigby’s place.
The sheriff was right. It was impossible to miss.
At first glance, it looked like a junkyard. The dirt path ended ahead, petering out to a sprawling spread of rusted vehicles and assorted machinery—from vacuum cleaners and kitchen appliances to TVs, monitors, and computer components. Something that looked like an entire studio soundboard leaned against the shell of an El Camino. A refrigerator propped open with a cement block contained a stack of stereo speakers. There was a compact car resting on its roof, tires pointing to the sky, with what looked like a layer of CDs glued shiny-side-up to the undercarriage. A few roughly built sheds sprang up here and there among the junk, and a two-story barn stood at the back of the property, in the shadow of the King.
But the centerpiece of the place was a vehicle I hated instinctively—a silver Airstream camper.
At least it didn’t look much like Orville and Reba Valentine’s traveling house of misery. If I wasn’t familiar with the model, I wouldn’t have recognized the Airstream under the reinforced steel siding, the metal plates bolted over the windows, and the hardware bristling from the roof. I counted ten satellite dishes and at least twenty-five antennae of varying shapes and sizes.
I pulled off the access road at an angle, pointing the nose of the Jeep toward the camper. With a place like this, I would’ve expected a truckload of posted notices and No Trespassing signs, but I hadn’t seen any.
I realized why when a hinged hatch in the middle of the camper door lifted, and a double-barreled shotgun poked out.
CHAPTER 21
“I know what you are,” a voice shouted from behind the shotgun. “And you’re not taking me back to your ship!”
Before I could say what ship, the gun went off.
The shot plowed the ground a few feet in front of the Jeep, spraying dirt on the windshield and kicking up a cloud of dust. “Go on! Get out of here, aliens!” the voice yelled. “And tell your friends if anybody comes back here, I’ll blow ’em to pieces!”
I nudged Taeral and raised my arms over my head. With a deep frown, he did the same, and I called, “We’re not—”
“Cyborg aliens!” The shotgun drew back inside.
“Great,” I muttered, putting my arms down. “This is going well.”
Taeral shook his head and lowered his arms. “Perhaps we should track them ourselves,” he said. “If we follow the shuttle path—”
The camper door burst open, and…something jumped out.
Chester Rigby wore a bright yellow hazmat suit, complete with hood and glass faceplate. Some kind of pack was strapped to his back. Aluminum accordion-style hoses connected the pack to a long metal tube that he aimed at us as he approached the Jeep.
“One blast with this’ll fry your circuits.” Chester’s voice was muffled by the suit. He reached awkwardly across his body with a gloved hand and flipped a switch on the pack.
It started humming. Blue-white sparks crackled inside the tube.
“Whoa. We’re not aliens,” I said. “We need your help. Our friend was, uh, kidnapped, and…someone told us you might know where we can find the kidnappers.”
He gestured with the tube. “Who told you that?”
“Um. The voices?”
“If you just came out here to make fun of me, I’m going back for the shotgun.”
“No, that’s not it. I’m sorry.” After a brief internal debate, I decided to go with the truth and hope for the best. “Sheriff Gormann said you could help us find the werewolves.”
Chester didn’t move for a long moment. At last, he lowered the tube, then reached over and turned the switch off. “She would say that,” he mumbled through the suit. “Well, if the werewolves took your friend, I guess you’d better come inside.”
He turned and clomped casually back to the camper. As if people came to ask him about werewolves every day.
“I’m not certain this is a good idea,” Taeral said.
“Tell me about it. But unless you’ve got a better one…”
He sighed. “I suppose I don’t.”
We got out of the Jeep, and followed Chester.
The inside of the camper was just as bizarre as the outside.
Half of it looked normal, more or less. The front end was a small living room with two tattered floral couches, grouped around a scuffed coffee table and facing a big-screen television. Which was hooked to a combo DVD/VCR, a stereo, a cable box, a computer tower, and a police scanner. There was a dining nook behind the living room—just a folding table with two bench seats—then a small kitchen with a sink, stove, dishwasher, three microwaves, and a huge steel safe. The lower cabinets had been replaced with filing cabinets. Loose boards served as countertops.
Everything beyond the kitchen was part security system, part monitoring station, and part mad scientist workshop. Multiple screens, computers and servers, tools and electronic parts and home-built gadgets—and stacks of paper, from standard sheets to newspapers to rolled blueprints.
A heavy black curtain hung across the back of the camper, hiding the last few feet of space. That was where Chester had gone.
Taeral and I sat on the longer of the couches. It wasn’t long before Chester returned, carrying a manila folder in one hand and a black fabric case in the other. Without the hazmat suit, he was a wiry man of average height in black cargo pants and a thermal camouflage shirt. Close to forty, with a buzz cut and a few days’ worth of dark scruff. His skin was tanned leather, the sign of a man who spent a lot of time outdoors.
He dropped the folder on the coffee table. “Take a look at that,” he said as he sat on the other couch. “I know right where they are. Hell, I know who they are. Names and everything. Keep telling the sheriff, but she won’t do anything about it. The last s
heriff wouldn’t either.” Shaking his head, he unzipped the case and pulled out a digital camera. “Name’s Chester, by the way. And you are?”
“Uh, Gideon. This is Taeral.”
“Huh.” He said the word like he was expecting different names from the ones I gave. “So, you’ve really seen them?” He glanced around, and then lowered his voice. “In the…er, animal state?”
I flashed a sardonic smile. “Yeah. Up close and personal.”
His eyes widened. “Were you bitten?” he said, leaning forward. “Do you have any unnatural cravings? Any urges to—”
“We are not werewolves.” Taeral sounded extremely insulted.
“All right.” Chester frowned and fiddled with the camera. “You know, you guys seem pretty calm for having a run-in with them. This isn’t your first time, is it?”
“Not even close,” I said. “We just don’t know our way around here. That’s why we need your help.”
“Where you from?”
“New York.”
“The city?”
I nodded.
“Makes sense, you’d find some there.” He stared off into the distance. “No one believes me, you know. Everyone around here—they know what’s happening. Dead cows. People gone missing. They see the signs, hear the howling. No one goes out when the moon’s full. But they still pretend not to notice.”
“Yeah,” I said. “They take the easy way out.”
He brightened. “Exactly! But…” His gaze fell on the folder. “I hate to say this. But if they took your friend, you might not get him back.”
“Her. And we will get her back.”
“Well, you look in there,” he said, nodding at the coffee table. “It might help.”
“Right. Thank you.”
I opened the folder. The first thing in it was a topographical map, roughly circular and completely unlabeled except for the latitude and longitude grid, and a small red X near the lower left of the shape.
“That’s the location of the den.” Chester nodded at the map. “I’ve got photos, too. I’ll hook up the camera so you can see the place.”
I nodded absently, turning the map over to the other side of the folder as Chester got up and headed for the television. The next item was a printed photo looking down into the canyon at the face of the bunker—an image eerily similar to the one Milus Dei had.
Trying not to show that I’d already seen the place, I flipped the image over to the other side of the folder. Beneath it was a short, handwritten list on lined paper: silver, mercury, wolfsbane (monkshood), belladonna, blue vervain (??). The last item, blessed crucifix, was crossed out twice—and scribbled beside it was just pisses them off.
Which suggested that Chester had actually tried using this stuff on werewolves. And somehow survived.
Maybe he wasn’t as crazy as the sheriff thought.
“Surveillance is a little easier now, with the drones.” Chester untangled a cord from the snarl of wires connecting the various devices and plugged it into the camera. “They don’t move much during the day. If you’re going up there, that’s when you should go.”
He pushed a button, and an image of the bunker appeared on the TV screen—the same one as the printout. “Mapped out most of the canyon,” he said, tapping the camera to cycle through shots of the bunker at various angles. Some of them showed a set of steps carved into the stone wall of the canyon, leading down. “There’s a back way in, too. Let me find it.”
As the pictures flashed on the screen, I looked at the next thing in the folder. It was a photo of a man, maybe 50 or so, dressed in what I thought of with lingering disgust as “hunter casual”—worn jeans, flannel shirt, filthy work boots. The camera had caught him glaring at something in the near distance. His hazel eyes were the same color as Sadie’s.
Scribbled at the bottom of the printout was Silas Balfour, leader/alpha.
It wasn’t a stretch to assume this was Sadie’s father.
I turned the photo over, and found a yellowed newspaper article cut out and mounted on a piece of thin cardboard. The headline was Family of Four Dies in Mysterious Blaze; Elk Heights Mourns.
The family name had been Nelson. Among its members was one eighteen-year-old Michael.
Sadie’s fiancé.
“I told them.” Chester was staring at the article, the camera forgotten in his hand. “One look at those bodies, those poor kids, and I knew the werewolves killed them. But Jeff Parsons, he was the sheriff then—well, the Nelsons were family. His cousins. He didn’t want to hear it, so he fired me.”
My brow went up. “You were a cop?”
“Deputy. I’d been in the Army a few years, until…” He trailed off and shook his head. “Anyway, I came back home and joined the sheriff’s department. But they didn’t listen any more than the Army.”
I kind of felt bad for him. He was right, about the Nelsons at least.
Chester turned back to the television. “Where’s that back entrance?” he said, clicking through more images of the canyon. “I swear it was on this camera.”
Suddenly the picture on the screen changed from the bunker, to something completely different. An aerial shot of a compound with two large, flat buildings, four smaller ones that looked like houses, and a circular structure like an arena or amphitheater. Dark blobs that were most likely people dotted the compound.
The image flashed off to another shot of the canyon.
“Wait. Go back,” I said. “What was that?”
Chester pushed a button, and the sprawling compound reappeared. “This?”
“Yes. Is that on the mountain too?”
He nodded. “It’s the alien base,” he said. “Those big buildings are part of their ship. The rest is underground.”
“Aliens?” I glanced at Taeral, who was clearly thinking the same thing—maybe Chester was crazy after all. But I really didn’t like the look of that place, even if there was no way I’d believe they were aliens.
“Hold on. I’ll show you,” Chester said.
Before I could say anything, he put the camera down and went to the back of the camper. He was back fast with more folders—three of them, stuffed thick with papers and photos. “I’ve been monitoring these guys for years,” he said, dropping the stack on the coffee table with a heavy thump. “That’s their symbol.”
On the front of the top folder was the Milus Dei ankh and sword.
CHAPTER 22
Tens of thousands. It wasn’t a myth. There was a lot more to this cult than the group we’d already faced down.
I decided not to say ‘I told you so’ to Taeral.
Ignoring the stuff about aliens, most of Chester’s information seemed accurate. And terrifying. He had plenty of images of the compound, aerial and ground level, and photos of people with visible Milus Dei tattoos and scrawled notes identifying them as ‘aliens.’ A few of them, labeled training exercises, showed people wearing body armor and grouped in tight, military-style formations—led by Not-Agent Reese.
That was why he hadn’t recognized us. Reese wasn’t from New York.
Some of the documents touched on the history of the cult. There was a printout of an online article I’d seen before, in the links Viv had found for me when she researched Milus Dei. It talked about the Scrolls of Gideon—how they may or may not exist, were supposedly made of human skin and written in blood, and various theories about what they contained. Chester had circled the part about human skin and scribbled alien preservation techniques and create the perfect man.
There was also an old sepia-toned photo of the railroad car machine that Chief Foley had almost killed us with.
Chester had decided that we needed sustenance before we went up against the werewolves. He was currently in the kitchen, cooking something that smelled like rancid entrails with a dash of stale gym locker, while Taeral and I went through the folders.
I turned over a block-printed list of coordinates with no labels or notes, to find a photo of the Pentagon.
“Uh, Chester?” I said slowly. “Do you really think these guys are involved in the government?”
He glanced back from the steaming stove. “They have landing sites all over the world,” he said. “I’m pretty sure one of them’s in D.C. Who else but an alien would design a pentagon-shaped building?”
I frowned. “They’re not aliens. Really.”
“Of course they are. Didn’t you see their symbol? It’s Egyptian.”
“And that proves…what?”
He snorted. “Everyone knows aliens built the pyramids,” he said.
“Right. I forgot, everyone knows that,” I said with a sigh. Obviously, there was no talking Chester out of the alien theory. “But the Pentagon?”
“Look, I know they’ve infiltrated Washington.” Chester lifted a pot lid and stirred something, keeping his back turned. “My CO was one of them,” he said. “He had the mark. I tried to report him to the defense department. Brought them all the evidence. They seized it and court-martialed me. Discharged me for being ‘mentally unfit’.” He shook his head and stared at the ceiling. “I’m not crazy,” he added softly. “This is real. But people either don’t believe it, or they’re covering it up.”
The idea that Milus Dei was involved in the military chilled me. And now I really felt bad for Chester, too. Take away the fifty shades of alien, and he had most of it right—but to the average person, he just sounded like a raving lunatic. “Well, we believe you,” I said. “Right, Taeral?”
“Oh, yes. Certainly, aliens are taking over the world.”
“Taeral.”
He let out a frustrated breath. “Aye. We believe you.”
“Good, because I’ve got plenty more to tell you. But right now you need to eat.” Chester produced a tray and a stack of bowls from an upper cabinet. He ladled the stuff from the pot into the bowls, tossed a few plastic sleeves of saltine crackers on the tray, and brought it out to the coffee table.
Fields of Blood (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 2) Page 10