Wrong Side of Dead dc-4

by Kelly Meding

  “Everyone but Evy stay inside the van,” Baylor said.

  I got out first, and was struck by the familiar and nauseatingly gross odor of gremlin piss. It smelled like too-sweet liquor left to warm in the sun—or in the baking factory, in this case. Maybe gremlins liked heat, I don’t know, but summertime and the lack of working air-conditioning combined to make sweat break out across my face and neck.

  The noise came last. Thousands of scurrying feet and raspy, high-pitched voices speaking a foreign language of their own design. It was raucous, and it echoed in the cavern that was their new home. I wanted out—now!—but held my ground.

  Baylor and I unloaded six boxes from the back of the van—four cheesecakes and two boxes of jelly-filled do-nuts. Gremlins lived on an entirely sugar-based diet, and providing sweets was the best way to curry a favor. We placed the boxes in a row near the three-foot hole that tunneled through the city-dump wall. It had to be their front door. There was no other way past the barrier.

  Long, hot minutes passed. Sweat trickled down my back, and I longed for the air-conditioned comfort of the van. Finally, a gremlin emerged from the hole. Twenty inches or so tall, the creature had long, spindly arms, knobby knees, and wrinkled yellowish skin. Green fur tufted from its long, rabbitlike ears and covered its round head. Its red eyes moved from the food, to us, to the van, then back to the food. This gremlin wasn’t as old as the first one I’d met, but that gremlin was long dead. Their life spans were about eight days.

  “New,” it said to Baylor.

  “Yes, we have not met. But your people have met my companion.”

  It eyeballed me, then pointed one clawed hand at the bakery boxes. “For what?”

  “Payment for a favor,” I said.

  “Ask.”

  “I need information on a human male named Walter Thackery. He consorts with half-Bloods, humans who have been bitten by vampires. He also consorts with men who shift into wolves. Lupa.”

  The gremlin nodded.

  “We have to find Thackery. He’s hurting people, and he’s our enemy. If any of your people have heard talk, or seen these creatures congregating anywhere in the city, will you tell me?”

  “Yes, will tell.” It licked drool from its wide lips, displaying two rows of tiny, pointed teeth. “Eat. Learn.

  Tell.”

  Okay, this was promising. The gremlins were small, gross, and decidedly inhuman, but their intel was always accurate. Deception wasn’t something they understood. They needed food; they traded favors for food. Sweet and simple. “When shall I return for this information?”

  “Meet. Old home. Three hours.”

  “All right. Thank you.”

  It made a noise in its throat. Half a dozen gremlins swarmed from the hole, grabbed the boxes of treats, and disappeared just as quickly as they had come. The gremlin who greeted us waited until the last one was gone, then followed it inside. Summary dismissal.

  “Do you trust them to do what they say?” Paul asked once we were outside the factory gates and had explained the plan to him.

  I twisted around in my seat and leveled him with a glare. “The gremlins have never betrayed me.”

  He made a sour face.

  The phone I forgot I had on me buzzed in my back pocket. Damn thing was small. I pulled it out, not surprised to see Kismet’s name on the I.D. My heart skipped a beat anyway. “Stone.”

  “What’s your status?” she asked.

  “Leaving the factory. If the gremlins know anything, they’ll tell us in three hours. Anything new on your end?”

  “So far no new illnesses among the vampires. We’re talking to them, trying to find a common connection between the ones who are sick and the ones who aren’t.”

  I repeated that for the group in the van. “Nothing on the missing Therians?”

  “Not yet, no. Speaking of, Astrid chewed me out for letting you off the premises during an unofficial quarantine.”

  Oops. “What did you say to her?”

  “I threw the word ‘unofficial’ back in her face and said, ‘Thanks to Evy there are two fewer werewolves in the world.’ It shut her up.”

  Laughter bubbled up inside, but I kept it down. A well-oiled machine we were not.

  “Then she made the quarantine official,” Kismet said. “Everyone who’s in the field now is all we have until she, Dr. Vansis, and the vampire Fathers are convinced the infection won’t spread.”

  “Terrific.”

  I repeated that, too, to a chorus of soft groans from the other passengers. Backup, weapons, technology—so many things now completely inaccessible to us. That sucked big-time.

  “How’s Wyatt?” I asked. Her silence sent tremors through my stomach. “Gina?”

  “He got worse fast, Evy. His temperature shot up two degrees, and his blood pressure spiked. Dr. Vansis induced a coma a few minutes ago.”

  A dull roar filled my ears. I pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the passenger window and closed my eyes. Nothing felt real. “Why?” was all I could manage to squeak out.

  Kismet’s own voice was tight when she replied. “The Assembly’s information was pretty useless. No one did viral analysis five hundred years ago, but his symptoms match what’s been noted. Dr. Vansis explained it with bigger words—”

  “Use your own words.”

  “He said before that the virus seems to work similarly to the rabies virus. He did some research and there have been successful rabies treatments using induced coma and various drugs, but since this isn’t actually rabies, it’s just a shot in the dark. But he hopes that the coma will at least reduce, um, brain damage—”

  I flinched and bit hard on my tongue to stop a spew of angry cussing.

  “—from the fever.”

  “What are his chances?” I asked after a moment of silence.

  “Not great. And if he does survive, the chances of him being the same person are …”

  “Not great.”

  “Yeah. I’m so sorry, Evy. I wish I had better news.”

  “Me, too.”

  I fought the instinct to demand Baylor drive me back to the Watchtower so I could be with Wyatt. Be there to do what, though? Watch him sleep? Hold his hand while he was unconscious, as he’d done for me so many times in the recent past? Yes, definitely. The part of me that still loved Wyatt—had never really stopped loving him—insisted I be with him. He’d been there when I died. I’d been there when he died, and if he died again today, there was no gnome healing crystal to bring him back to me.

  Logic tied me in knots. The Watchtower was on lockdown. The gremlins would have information for me in three hours. If I went back, I might not be able to leave, and that was not acceptable. Not with so many other lives depending on us finding Walter Thackery and his Merry Band of Werewolves. Duty above self.

  Fuck!

  Someone in the van made a noise. Guess I’d said that out loud.

  “You can’t do anything here,” Kismet said. She might as well have read my mind. I didn’t know all the details of her nine-year friendship with Wyatt. Just that they were close, and this had to be hurting her, too. I hated sharing my misery with others, and at the same time I was glad she was there.

  “I know.”

  “He won’t be alone. I promise.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I don’t—hold on a sec.” I concentrated on the muffled voices on her end so I didn’t have to think about the way my life was slowly spiraling down, down to its very lowest point. First Aurora and Ava, now Wyatt. There wasn’t—

  “Stone?”

  “Still here,” I said.

  “We got a call from James Reilly. He has some information to pass along to you guys, if you can meet him.”

  Reilly. His was a name I hadn’t consciously thought about in weeks. He was a private investigator who showed up in the city a few days after my resurrection, asking questions about Chalice Frost and Alex Forrester. He ended up having an agenda (seriously, does anyone not?) and knew more a
bout vampires than any outsider had a right to.

  I’d pressed the issue with Kismet once, and she’d given me the bullet points. Decorated West Coast police detective who stumbled onto a crime scene involving two half-Bloods and the full-Blood vampire who executed them. The case disappeared, along with all the files, but Reilly never forgot what he saw. His obsession with vampires grew, and after a nasty divorce he quit the force, got his PI license, then hit the road.

  Reilly had definitely made an impression on the Triads when he showed up in the city. He was detained none too politely, questioned, and then put on our payroll. With the brass dead and our insight into the Police Department cut off, having a PI with his own connections had proved valuable. His specific connections had become “need to know” as well, so I didn’t press the subject. I knew the value of protecting your sources, and as long as Reilly handed us good information, I’d play nice. I just couldn’t help wondering if his motives for assisting us were really as selfless as they sounded, or if he had hidden reasons.

  Then again, I’m used to seeing conspiracies and deceit around every corner, so it was just as likely that I was being paranoid.

  “When and where does Reilly want to meet?” I asked.

  “Nine o’clock, Sally’s Coffee Shop on Church Street.”

  “I know it.” I checked the clock on the dash. We had about twenty minutes. Plenty of time from our current location. “We’ll be there.”

  “I’ll let him know.”

  “If anything develops—”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Thanks, Gina.” I put the phone away and filled Baylor in on our new meeting, realizing for the first time that he’d pulled over in the lot of a mini-mart.

  “Well, that’s something,” he said. “I’ve got a thought, too. Autumn, how good is your sense of smell?”

  “Better than yours,” she replied with a toss of her auburn hair. “What would you like me to ferret out?”

  Sandburg grunted.

  “Think you can pick up the werewolves’ scent from the old Sunset Terrace lot and track it to wherever they went afterward?”

  “I believe so. I got a good whiff of the bastards back at the construction site. I’ll have to track in my true form.”

  “Not a problem. We’ll drop you off. Take Sandburg and Carly to watch your back. Paul, Stone, and I are going to meet with James Reilly.”

  Sally’s Coffee Shop was a familiar, somewhat popular place for the Hunters who used to patrol in Mercy’s Lot. One of the few greasy spoons brave enough to stay open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, it was a good place to hit for a cheap plate of food and decent coffee. The patrons minded their own business, and the waitresses did the same.

  Reilly was already waiting in a back booth, leisurely eating a plate of syrup-laden pancakes. He looked like someone’s underpaid, overworked office manager in a rumpled suit and tie. He had flyaway curly hair and a simple, guileless charm that made me want to like him. He quirked an eyebrow at our numbers, then slid over to make room.

  I sat next to him, more for my own amusement than anything else. He’d been shocked as hell to learn my story, and the expression on his face was about the only enjoyable thing in my day so far. Baylor and Paul slid in across from us, and a waitress promptly appeared with mugs of coffee.

  “You folks need menus?” she asked.

  “They’ll have the pancakes,” Reilly said. “The pancakes are excellent here.”

  “That sounds fine,” Baylor said.

  The waitress nodded, then wandered off. I dumped sugar into my mug of coffee, unsure if I’d be able to do more than stare at my pancakes. I was hungry, but my stomach was tied up in so many worried knots that getting food into it would be an exercise in nausea control.

  “When it rains, it downpours, wouldn’t you agree?” Reilly asked.

  “I’d say that’s an understatement.”

  Reilly nodded, then pushed his half-finished plate aside. He produced a manila folder from the booth seat and handed it over the table to Baylor. “I’ve been chatting up a young lady in Animal Control about recent sightings of wild animals in the city. Wolves, in particular, and we may have a pattern.”

  Baylor withdrew a map of the city—easy enough to identify, even upside down, because of the way the Anjean and Black rivers intersected in the center to create one south-flowing river. A cluster of highlighter marks singled out one particular neighborhood, and it wasn’t Mercy’s Lot, which was traditionally where the majority of paranormal shit went down.

  “Uptown?” Paul said. His face scrunched up. “Seriously?”

  Reilly nodded. “It’s possible that wolf sightings in other areas were simply not reported, since odd occurrences are not abnormal in certain neighborhoods. But there have been sixteen separate reports of large, nondomestic dogs resembling wolves roaming wild through Uptown in the last three months. Forty-six over the last two years.”

  Uptown was the upscale business district of the city, home to a modern art museum, the Fourth Street Library, several large banks, expensive condos, office buildings, medical centers, restaurants that served food portions the size of silver dollars, and our state university satellite campus.

  The same fucking campus where Walter Thackery taught until five years ago, when his wife was turned into a Halfie and he began his long trek toward crazy.

  “Are you shitting me?” I said.

  Baylor scrutinized the map. “The university?”

  “He’s hiding them in plain sight. He probably assumed we’d never think him dumb enough to go back to his old stomping grounds.”

  “He was obviously right,” Reilly said.

  “So the other Lupa are living somewhere on or around the campus?” Baylor asked.

  “That’s certainly one interpretation.”

  “How else would you interpret it?”

  “He could want you on that side of town when he does something elsewhere.”

  “No.” I shook my head, positive this wasn’t just some long con on Thackery’s part. “These sightings took place over the last two years, long before everything started coming undone. He’s damned smart, but even he couldn’t have thought two years ahead.”

  “You think the wolves are there,” Baylor said.

  “I think they live somewhere in the direct vicinity of the university, yes. Doesn’t mean that’s where Thackery is, though.”

  “Because that would be too easy,” Paul deadpanned.

  The waitress returned and plopped down three plates of pancakes, each topped with a mound of melting butter and whipped cream on the side. I stared at mine, debating the intelligence of testing a bite or two. Baylor reached for one of the syrup pitchers and poured blue goo all over his.

  “They look like kids, not old enough for college so they can’t be living in the dorms.” I punctuated the thought by ripping a piece of butter-free pancake off the mound. “What else is close by?”

  Paul took the map and squinted at the streets of Uptown. “Couple of condominiums, a neighborhood of historic homes, and two apartment complexes are all within a few blocks.”

  “Apartments and condos offer less security, more visibility. The historic neighborhood is a good place to start. Trees, backyards, things like that.” I popped the piece of fried batter into my mouth. It was moderately sweet, done as well as a pancake could be, and went down easily. Not bad.

  “I thought you might say that.” Reilly tapped the pages remaining in the manila folder. “I did some digging on your behalf. Two of the homes are registered landmarks, one is a highly regarded bed and breakfast, and eighteen of them haven’t changed family hands in decades. Twelve are possibilities.”

  I grabbed the pages and shuffled through the lists of addresses. Some had photos, printed in black and white, and all had been on the market in the last six years. “I don’t suppose we could be lucky enough that Thackery took out a mortgage in his own name.”

  “Unfortunately not. No leases, either
.”

  “This is a good head start, though. Thank you.”

  Reilly smiled over the rim of his coffee mug. “You’re welcome, Ms. Stone.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  10:15 A.M.

  Twelve houses didn’t seem like a lot to investigate at first. After twenty minutes sitting in the van listening to Autumn and Sandburg pretending to be a lost couple looking for grandma’s house, I was ready to climb out of my skin. Even Baylor, normally the picture of burly calm, seemed agitated by the slow going and lack of results.

  We’d picked up Sandburg, Autumn, and Carly after they followed the Lupa scent trail from the vacant lot to eight blocks away where it ended in a public parking lot with no video surveillance. A dead end, and Phin still hadn’t seen movement on the construction site. So we had Autumn and Sandburg and their heightened senses of smell walking around the historic residential district of Uptown, which they both declared carried the faint odors of Lupa and money.

  The money I could agree with. The stained glass windows in some of those homes probably cost more than I’d have made in six months with the Triads (which wasn’t a lot to begin with, but still …).

  “House number seven,” Autumn said, obviously bored even over the earbud she wore. “You do the talking this time.”

  Sandburg muttered something unintelligible. The van was parked a block away under a majestic old oak tree, idling quietly while they did their thing. Our next stop was several blocks farther, if this house didn’t turn up anything useful. We had about forty-five minutes until I had to leave to meet the gremlin across town.

  I shifted in the hard bucket seat. Two squirrels darted into the street, ran in circles, and then dashed up a nearby tree.

  A doorbell gonged faintly. Hinges squealed.

  “Hi, I’m so sorry to bother you this early,” Sandburg said, affecting a perfect (and hilarious) southern accent. “Um, my girlfriend and I were looking for 756 Cherryvale Lane. An old roommate of mine is getting married, but I don’t think you’re him.”