She latched onto Alec's shoulder with a hand that was nowhere near as gentle as his had been. “Toughen up, girls! . . . Ames White's going to want proof of what happened here. That it was the Familiars who betrayed him, not us!”
“You mean, the boy . . . his body . . . is evidence,” Mole said, picking up his cigar.
“You're goddamn right he's evidence!” a wild-eyed Alec said as the sirens grew more insistent. “You're gonna put two corpses in our car, what, in the trunk?”
“That's the idea,” Max said.
“And if we get stopped by the cops,” Alec said, “how do we explain that?”
“Firmly,” she said. “Mole, Alec—do it . . . or bail. If you're not prepared to follow my lead, right now—bail.”
Alec swallowed and sighed . . . and nodded his commitment. Mole was already heading back into the bedroom, to prepare the small sad package.
And Max was no longer a distraught young woman, nor was Joshua an upset oversize teddy bear—all four of the transgenics made up a highly trained combat team again (Thank you, Colonel Lydecker, Max thought, for small favors), and nothing the Familiars and/or Ames White had to throw at them was going to stop them.
They were out of the Gulliver house in less than a minute, and—with the two bodies, the boy's sheet-wrapped, tucked in the trunk of Logan Cale's car—they took off, but carefully, Mole scrupulously obeying the speed limit. Though the sirens increased, Max and her unlikely teammates never even saw a squad car.
When they hit the edge of town without being stopped, Mole sped up a little, but he kept within a few miles of the limit.
“Where to?” the driver asked at last. “Or are we just gonna cruise around with our passengers until they start gettin' ripe?”
“Three Tree Point,” Max said.
Mole shot her a look.
She gave him a sharp glance back. “Do I stutter?”
“Why in the hell?”
“Someone we need to talk to.”
Alec leaned forward from the backseat. “You need to talk to somebody on Lyman Cale's estate, right?”
She half turned. “Not bad, Alec.”
Mole, not taking his eyes off the road, said, “What?”
Alec explained. “There's no other reason to go to Three Tree Point than to steal a boat and head for the Cale mansion.”
Max smiled grimly. “See, Alec? You're not just a pretty face.”
“And you really do have a plan that doesn't suck,” he said with his own grim smile.
Catching up with them, Mole said, “So, then . . . the guy in the trunk who needs a chiro—he's from Cale's, right?”
She nodded, and quickly filled them in.
“So,” Mole said, “since Joshua killed Tweedledee, and since Tweedledum got away from us . . . they're probably gonna be waitin' for us.”
“With bells on,” Max said.
A grin creased Mole's reptilian features. “Just think how sick they're gonna look when we kick their asses, anyway.”
With the exception of Joshua, they all smiled at Mole's bravado. Max only hoped it wasn't misplaced.
She had fought Familiars before and was amazed at how much pain they absorbed with seemingly no response. She had seen Ames White shoot himself in the arm and not even flinch. Two of them had ganged up on her when she tried to free Ray the first time, and no matter how hard she'd fought, they hadn't even seemed to notice her efforts.
She also had no idea how much of the security staff on Sunrise Island belonged to the Familiars. The burly boys, Otto and Franz, were obvious snake cult candidates. But Familiars didn't always look like top physical specimens fresh from the gym. White himself was of rather average build, and yet in combat against him, she'd had plenty of trouble.
Granted, she and Joshua and other transgenics had scored a victory over White's snake-cult SWAT team that time at Jam Pony; but every fight with the Familiars had proven to be arduous, to say the least—you had to beat them into unconsciousness or cripple them or kill them to take them out.
She wondered what the four of them could manage if the Familiars seriously outnumbered them on Lyman Cale's private island.
“Let's pull over,” she said when she felt they were safely out of town, “and get Joshua patched up before we do anything else.”
“Joshua is fine,” Joshua said, the knife hilt sticking out of him like a slot-machine handle.
“Shut-up, Joshua,” Max said.
“Shut-up?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, Max.”
“Good.”
“Max?”
“Yes, Joshua?”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No, Joshua.”
“Because you said ‘shut-up,' and Joshua thought—”
“Shut-up, Joshua.”
“Yes, Max.”
Hunkered over the wheel, Mole said, “I know a place not far from here. Nice and private.”
Max didn't even want to know how Mole knew about places between Appleton and Seattle. Sometimes she had to remind herself that the transgenics hadn't all moved directly from Manticore to Terminal City.
After pulling off the highway and onto a ramp, then onto a two-lane road from there, Mole took them a good mile from the four-lane before he turned into a field on a tractor-access lane and stopped the car behind a stand of apple trees, ravaged by the recent cold spell; the skeletal trees remained thick enough to block any view of them from the highway, and one of them gave Max a place to sit Joshua down and prop him up, while she did a quick triage.
“Mole, you got your lighter?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Gonna need it. Got a knife?”
Another nod.
Alec shook his head and said to Mole, “What if she'd asked you for a ham sandwich?”
“How do you know I don't have one in my back pocket?” Mole asked the X5. “Anyway, Manticore did share their motto with the Boy Scouts, 'member.” He gave Alec a little three-fingered salute. “Be prepared.”
Alec gave Mole a one-fingered salute.
“Heat the knife blade,” Max said. “When I pull this thing out, I'm gonna want to cauterize the wound.”
Alec smirked. “You can take the girl out of Manticore, but you can't take Manticore out of the girl.”
Joshua looked a little dubious, sitting there with his back against an apple tree, the moon illuminating his canine features with a lovely ivory cast. The temperature seemed to be slowly rising. Mole moved the flame over the blade of his knife, and Max could see Joshua staring at it, his eyes growing wider with each passing second.
When the blade glowed red, Max went to work.
She started with the knife in Joshua's shoulder. “You ready, Big Fella?”
He gulped and said, “Ready, Little Fella,” and Max jerked the knife out of his shoulder. Joshua let out a piteous howl, his eyes growing wide, and he unconsciously started shaking his head as she dropped one knife and held out her hand for Mole to give her the heated one.
His eyes glued to the glowing blade, Joshua whimpered like a puppy.
“Hey,” she said, “who loves you?”
“Y-Y-You d-do?”
“That's right, Big Fella.”
“Joshua loves Max, too, Little Fella.”
And with his eyes on hers, she grinned, he grinned, then she pressed the hot blade into his wound, and the werewolf howl that roared from deep within him reminded Max of Joshua's brother Isaac and the screams of pain he elicited when in the throes of his homicidal rage. Surprisingly, the two brothers didn't sound all that different . . . which was enough to give Max a little shiver.
She withdrew the knife and, under the flame from Mole's lighter, inspected her work.
“Looking good,” she said.
Joshua gave her a frown that said he wasn't as impressed, and that pulling the “Little Fella” limb from limb may have crossed his mind. “Max hurt Joshua.”
“Max had to . . . for your own good, Big Fella. Hey, it's
going to be all right now. Rest for a little while. I'll be right here.”
He eyed the knife warily until she handed it back to Mole.
“Rest, I said,” she scolded.
Leaving the beast man to sleep against the tree, the others moved off a little ways and found places to sit on the ground.
Max looked up at a million stars. It was a different sky out here, somehow—more stars, brighter moon, reminding her of the night the twelve of them had escaped from Manticore. It had been a long trip since then, her only goal to find a home, to settle down. Now, in Terminal City, she had a home, all right; but being out here, on the run again, reminded her of how claustrophobic the city had become.
Mole yanked an automatic pistol fitted with a silencer out of his belt and set it on the ground in front of him.
“Where did you pull that out of?” she asked.
Alec smirked. “Are you sure you wanna know?”
Mole tilted his head in the direction of Appleton. “From the Gulliver house. Belonged to our no-neck passenger, in the car.”
Max hated guns. They all knew it; but she also was savvy enough, pragmatic enough, to know that a little firepower could make a difference tonight. And if Mole wanted to go that way, she had no right to try to stop him—not when she was asking him to follow her through the gates of Hell.
“With what we're about to do,” Mole said apologetically, “I thought it might come in handy.”
She nodded, looking away.
“You cool with it?” Mole asked.
“No.”
“You want me to toss it?”
“Do what you have to.”
“I hate to bring this up,” Alec said to her. “But what exactly is your plan?”
Mole grinned. “Step one, find these assholes; step two, kick their asses.”
“Max,” Alec said, “is that your plan?”
Cigar jutting threatening, Mole asked, “What part didn't you get? Step one, or step two?”
Max cut in. “This isn't about revenge, remember. It's about kidnapping.”
Obviously not sure he was following her, Alec asked, “Logan's kidnapping, you mean?”
“No. This time we're the kidnappers.”
Alec raised an eyebrow. “Well, I guess that's a step up from your last assignment—body-snatching.”
Max ignored that. “Our target is Lyman Cale's majordomo, Franklin Bostock. He's the key. Nothing happens within that compound without his approval. Stands to reason, he's either a Familiar or in their pocket—he very likely sent those two snake-cult goons to kill that child.”
“And his mother,” Alec said.
Max shook her head. “The mother was just collateral damage.”
Mole said, “What you're sayin' is, don't ice the Bostock dude.”
“Bingo,” Max said. “His sleazy self, we need alive.”
“You think?” Alec asked. “We're hauling two stiffs around, already—what's one more?”
Max didn't know whether to be irritated by Alec or amused—Alec, the guy who always cut corners, who always looked for the angle, was suddenly the conservative of the group. A squeaky-clean Alec was somehow a frightening thought. She was about to give him some good-natured hell about it when her cell phone chirped in her pocket.
She pulled it out and punched a button. “Go for Max.”
“Do you have my son yet?”
Ames White.
As always, that voice sent a chill through her.
“Working on it,” she said. “We know where he is.”
“Clock's ticking, 452. Only two days to go. You're going to do the right thing, aren't you?”
“Doing my best.”
“Not playing games? Why do I think you already have my son?”
“I'm not playing games. But I promise you, we will deliver him.”
Somehow, even though this was Ames White, it sickened her to lie to the boy's parent—not lie, really, like Original Cindy said . . . a sin of omission, not commission—when the child lay bundled in a white-sheet shroud in the trunk of a nearby car.
“I want Ray to wake up Christmas morning in a brand new world,” White's processed voice said confidently into her ear. “Make it happen, 452, and your friend Logan might live to see the new year, that brand new world . . . and we can put our differences behind us.”
What the hell did that mean, a “brand new world”?
“I'm cooperating, White. Working to make it happen.”
“I hope you are. Now, don't screw this up, 452—your friend is counting on you.”
“Let me talk to him.”
White laughed mirthlessly. “I will, when you let me talk to Ray.”
“Can't right now.”
“Puts us in the same boat, doesn't it? Well, then . . .”
Were they in the “same boat”? Was Logan dead—as dead as Ray White?
“If I don't talk to Logan,” she said, “no deal.”
“Do you really think you're in a position to negotiate, 452? I have to say, for all our differences, I do admire your confidence. You have a certain . . . presence.”
“Yeah, well. Girl's gotta try.”
“Try this, 452—like it or not, we're both going to have to show a little faith here.”
“Faith?”
“Not an attribute either of us would ever likely be accused of having in abundance . . . but in this situation, it would seem required. Comes down to this: you hold up your end, and I'll hold up mine.”
“Why is it I have trouble believing you'll hold up your end?”
“Ah. That's where the faith comes in.”
The phone clicked dead in her ear. She looked at it for a long moment, and resisted the urge to fling it against a tree.
“What was that about?” Alec asked.
“Just Ames White, busting my chops,” she said. “What else is new?”
“Does he know about Ray?”
“I don't think so. I suppose it's possible . . . evil bastard like White. But my reading of this is, he really does want his son back . . . may even ‘love' him, in his sicko Ames White way.”
“I wouldn't know much about parental love,” Alec said. “Hard to bond with a test tube.”
“I hear you,” she said. “But my gut says, White is a victim here, too—his son was murdered. And, dark as it may sound, that may be to our advantage.”
Mole chomped on the cigar, frowning. “How the hell . . . ?”
“If we can convince White that the Familiars killed his boy, and sold him out, then it maybe takes the heat off us, gets us Logan back, and turns White against the cult.”
Alec snorted a laugh. “Oh, yeah—that would be a nice bonus. Get Logan back, and take down the snake cult.”
“I'm just sayin'—he's been betrayed, and I don't think he knows it. White thinks we haven't gotten to Ray yet, and has no idea that his son's dead. On the other hand, if White finds out the boy's dead before we can convince him it wasn't our fault . . .”
Grim nods from both Alec and Mole completed the thought.
They got moving.
Mole stuffed the pistol back in his belt, Alec and Max helped a slightly groggy Joshua back into the car, and they made for Seattle, Max trying not to dwell on the bodies in the trunk.
At Three Tree Point, where security was lax, to say the least, they helped themselves to a motorboat—Max thought it might be the same one from her previous trip to Sunrise Island. The car with its trunkful of corpses was lying low in a dim corner of the parking lot. They would have the cover of darkness for their approach, but—true to the island's name—they would arrive just as the sun peeked over the horizon. That didn't make Max feel any better, but there was nothing to be done about it.
As they droned across Puget Sound, Max laid out a plan of action for taking the island. None of her crew questioned any of her strategy; no jokes, no doubts—a commando squad ready to serve their leader.
Again using a rubber raft, Max and her transgenic trio hit the beach just
as the sky lightened in the east. Max was mildly surprised that no one was waiting for them at the shore. Using hand signals, she communicated that they should spread out and approach the house in pairs.
As usual, Joshua went with her to the left, while Mole accompanied Alec to the right. She knew the security force numbered at least twenty, and she hoped her assumption that only a handful of them were Familiars was correct. Twenty ordinaries would barely raise a sweat for either pair of transgenics; the Familiars, though, they might be another story . . .
Again, that brutal battle against White's SWAT team on the second floor of Jam Pony popped into her mind, and she shook her head a little.
Twenty Familiars might be more than the four of them could handle.
She turned to glance at Joshua for reassurance as they made their way through the woods. The Big Fella held his nose in the air, sniffing. He pointed slightly ahead of them and to their left, then held up three fingers.
No sooner had Joshua made this gesture than a trio of Cale guards in their black TAC fatigues stepped into their path, automatic weapons leveled at the pair. No dogs tonight—except Joshua, of course. She noted that the three were paunchy, probable ordinaries.
Immediately, instinctively, she saw Bostock's plan.
The first wave would be ordinaries, the Familiars staying close, protecting their leader and his treasure, that valuable vegetable, Lyman Cale.
As per plan, Max and Joshua raised their hands, giving off an aura of surrender. Almost imperceptibly, their captors relaxed . . .
. . . and in the next instant Max moved forward, in a blur, disarming all three before they could start squeezing a trigger, much less fire a shot; and she tossed their weapons into the woods with twig-breaking thuds.
Simultaneously, Joshua had blurred forward himself, moving right behind her, cracking two side-by-side skulls together, knocking the guards out, while Max dispatched the third with a kick to the head that didn't quite kill the man, though when he awoke from this sleep, he'd likely have the worst hangover a man who hadn't been drinking ever had.
And the two transgenics pressed on.
On the other side of the island, Mole and Alec faced a similar challenge.
Mole had spotted the three guards early on, and signaled to Alec that they should get around the trio and come up behind them. His plan worked beautifully and the three guards were dispatched almost before they knew they were attacked.
After the Dark Page 14