She said all this so matter-of-factly that it took a few seconds for Jaz to process the horror of it. Brood mares? My God. It seemed obvious that she saw Jaz no differently than she did her future progeny. Little more than breeding stock. It was sick. And sickening. Jaz wanted to climb off the cot, crawl over to her, and vomit on her dainty black slippers.
Instead she just stared. “What, no vain protests? No screams of rage? No threats of violence against me or the warriors I send to you? I must admit, I'm rather disappointed. I expected more from you. Ah, but I suppose I should be grateful that you won't prove to be a problem.
"Eat well. The food is specifically tailored to your metabolism to make you as healthy as possible during your pregnancies. You can expect your first visitor within the next day or so."
She turned around and walked out. The door slid closed, but not before another meal tray was shoved inside.
Jaz clambered slowly off the bed and staggered to the tray, dropping to her knees and shoveling the filling but tasteless glop into her mouth with her fingers. Keep thinking I'm weak, bitch. I'll take everything you can throw at me, I'll survive, and someday I'll slit your fucking throat. You won't even know it's coming until I sink my claws into you.
Mark my words, bitch.
Had Hecate been able to see the murderous glare Jaz laid upon the image in her mind's eye, she might've reconsidered her initial assessment. But the space directly in front of the door was the only portion of the cell not watched via remote camera, so the look in her eye went unnoticed.
* * * *
"You have to do something about him,” growled Nemesis Breed, Tacoma's Police Chief. The tall blonde woman glared down at Athena with real anger showing in her gunmetal gray eyes. “He's gone fucking berserk."
"What do you want me to do, Nemesis?” Athena returned her best friend's glare in equal measure. “He's goddam indestructible, can teleport or go ethereal at will, and is immune to just about any sort of magic we can throw at him. What the fuck to you suggest?"
"Find Jasmine Tashae!” the Police Chief snapped. “Isn't it goddam obvious?"
"You think we haven't tried? It's been a week and we've done everything in our power. He can't find her and Loki, Thoth, and Chaz are completely mystified. It's obvious she's been taken into another universe, but there are literally thousands—if not millions—of universes to choose from. We wouldn't even know where to start looking."
"That damn imp is tearing our city apart. He's out of control. He's gone crazy with super glue. He glued two of my patrol officers together yesterday. Imagine two tough macho cops walking into the ER at Tacoma General with their hands glued together, looking like a couple of lovebirds."
Athena couldn't help herself. A snicker escaped her lips. “That sounds pretty minor."
"It's actually kinda amusing, considering those two are the most homophobic cops we have on the force right now. But still ... we can't let him get away with this sort of thing. He's running amuck."
Athena nodded. “I'm doing everything I can to find her—but it's a mystery. And, in checking around, she's not the only parahuman who has disappeared recently. It's a bit hard to track them—a lot harder than tracking metas, for example, but we've been able to zero in on a handful of cases where people we believe to be paras have disappeared."
"You're kidding me."
Athena shook her head. “Nope. Wish I was. Someone's systematically kidnapping paras and—apparently—taking them out of this universe. We don't know why, or where."
"Anything else they have in common?"
"They're all women."
Breed flinched. “Rachel Flynn?"
"We've already warned her. And now I'm warning you. Both of you could be on the target list."
"Shit. Does Raven know?” As Rachel Flynn's son, the vampiric Commander of the PAC's Preternatural Action Response Division, he had a right to know his mother was might be in danger. Neither woman could have said how much contact he'd had with his mother since he'd resurfaced.
"He knows. If he's going to do anything about it...” She let her voice trail off and shrugged. “Not that there's much he can do, unless he plans to send an ops team down to keep an eye on her."
"Oh, I'm sure she'll love that."
"No doubt,” Athena replied dryly. “What I'm telling you only maybe a dozen people already know. If we could afford the manpower we'd put someone on every para out there—but only a ‘thrope would be any use at all. And, as you know, we've only got about thirty five of them in service."
"You could always make more,” Breed suggested.
"I'm going to assume that was a poorly thought-out joke.” Athena shifted in her chair, which squeaked in protest. “We can only identify a few paras. You're one of them. We can put someone on you—I'll be checking with Raven to see if he is going to send someone down to watch over his mother."
"I don't need a nursemaid,” the city's top cop hissed through clenched teeth.
"Never said you did. But you do need someone to watch your back—someone capable of dealing with supernormal attacks. Any supernormal attack."
Breed cast a grimace. “Who'd you have in mind?"
Athena's smile spread slowly. “Who can you think of who can take anything thrown at him and throw it right back."
"Oh, shit. Are you serious?” Breed's expression grew calculating.
"Uh-huh."
"Will he agree to it?"
"Who said I was giving him a choice? He volunteered to stand as a PAC auxiliary. It was the only way he could avoid me dropping the mess right back in his lap when he came back."
Breed laughed. “Well, then. Now that's a nursemaid I could handle."
"Thought as much.” Breed's interest in the ugly little immortal hadn't escaped Athena's notice. She figured the best way to make something come of it was to throw them together. It was underhanded, but she did underhanded very well.
"Chill.” The blonde cop's grin was infectious. “At least there's a upside to all of this."
"Such as it is."
* * * *
"How many times do I have to tell you—I'm doing everything I can, you little blue puke!” Chaz threw down the wrench with enough force that it bounced at least a foot off the concrete floor. He felt at least as frantic as the imp, but it was hard for him to hold onto his temper when Quickfingers was bugging him every couple of hours.
The imp wasn't impressed. For the first time he could remember, the little creature's face was somber, even serious. “What if it isn't enough? What if they're hurting her?"
Chaz didn't need the reminder of the very same line of thinking that had been chewing at his consciousness through every waking hour he'd suffered in the last two weeks. He didn't even want to think about the dreams that had been invading his sleep. Some of them were like a sadist's wet dream and they left him sick to his stomach when they jolted him awake.
Movement from behind the ‘gate module—the huge doorway surrounded by lattices of blue and green wiring—caught his eye. The front legs and head of a ten foot tarantula peeked around the machine, the multiple eyes as unreadable as always. “Is everything all right, Chaz?” the creature asked in whistle-speech.
"Yes, Bonedance. It's just this goddam imp again."
The oversized spider made a sound he'd long since determined was its equivalent of a laugh, even if it did sound like a cat being skinned. “Hello, Quickfingers."
"Hiya, Bonedance, you big multi-legged monster. Howzit going?"
"Slowly,” the tarantula answered earnestly. “As often as I tell this human, he can't seem to get it into his thick skull that I am not an engineer."
"You still know more about worldgates and worldgating than any of our people except Thoth—and he's not a lot of help. He did it all with magic alone. We're trying to create machines that can reproduce the effects exactly for everyone, even those who don't use magic."
"What are you trying to do?” Quickfingers asked. “Maybe I can help?"
The engineer gave him a look loaded with skepticism. He thought that unlikely, at best. “Well, we're trying to modify the gates to detect the presence of specific life forms—genetic signatures.” He didn't expect the imp to even come close to understanding what he was talking about.
He vastly underestimated the creature's intellect. “You have something with her DNA on it, right?"
Chaz nodded, a bit puzzled. “Sure."
"What about her PCD? I assume it's coded somehow."
The engineer blinked. “Uh ... yeah."
"Well, if you use both, you're a lot less likely to get false positives on the DNA reading. We are talking about multiple alternate universes here. Like Mandy—who's a genetic double for Amanda Dalmas-Keening—there are bound to be versions of Jaz who are genetically indistinguishable from our Jaz."
"Shit. I hadn't even thought of that."
"See—I've already been helpful,” the little creature responded with his characteristic grin. “Assuming that she's not still wearing her PCD, which I think is unlikely, it's still quite possible it's stored somewhere in that universe. So all you have to do is try to zero in on a universe that contains both her genetic fingerprint and the code transmission of her personal PCD."
"Wait a minute...” Chaz said with a frown. “The chances of running across another Jaz in another universe who's also a parahuman—which is, by the way—included in her DNA markers, would be terribly small."
"Yeah,” the imp shot back, “but not impossible."
As much as he hated to admit it, the little pest had a point. “So why don't we try to home in on the PCD signal first, then use the DNA sig to focus in on her directly from there?"
"Sounds good to me. Glad I could help.” The imp vanished with an implosion of air.
Chaz sucked air through his teeth. “Little fucker is way smarter than he has any right to be,” he growled. “Considering he's nothing more than a construct of mana."
Bonedance gave him an inscrutable stare. “A good scientist shouldn't make those kinds of assumptions,” he said, deliberately quoting the engineer himself.
"Shut up, Bonedance.” Chaz sighed and squatted down next to the control panel, dragging a cord from his own wrist PCD to the input jack on the console. All he needed to do at this point was to download her PCD signature to the machine's mainframe. At least, he hoped it would be that simple.
* * * *
Deryk Shea, President and CEO of Shea Industries, and the most formidable hand-to-hand fighter in any known universe, turned away from the heavy bag and regarded Athena with the darkest look she'd ever witnessed from him. Sweat trickled down from the black skullcap of his sodden hair and he shook his head, casting sweat in a radiating arc. “What the hell were you thinking?"
"That you'd honor your obligation,” Athena retorted through tight lips. “Or are you going to tell me to fuck myself anyway?"
"Is this what you had in mind when you made that deal?” he asked tersely, grabbing a towel from a nearby bar and wiping his face. “I gotta tell you, I don't like it at all."
"No shit? Frankly, Deryk, I don't give a damn whether you like it or not. You're a listed PAC auxiliary and I need your help. Unless you're planning on going back on your word then I expect you to do as you agreed to do and serve where I—we—need you."
"You can stop tweaking my pride, Athena,” he growled, throwing the towel around his neck. “You know damn well I won't go back on my word. I simply have to wonder—” his grin was feral—"if you have another agenda for throwing me together with your blonde friend."
"Who, moi?"
"Oh, jeez. Don't bother, Athena. What I can't figure out is why you're trying to set me up with your best friend."
"Because you've been alone long enough."
"So what?” His scowl darkened. “She may be a parahuman, but she's still a mortal. In seventy-five, a hundred, or a hundred and fifty years, I'll be alone again. That's why I never bothered dallying with any human for more than a few hours at a time up until now. I lost my first family back home—I neither want nor need to experience that kind of pain again. Loki got lucky. So did you, for that matter. But I don't see any reason to get involved with a mortal—even a parahuman—just to go through the pain of watching her die in a century or so."
She ignored his not-so-subtle reference to her burgeoning relationship with Loki's erstwhile “child,” the mage-monster Fenris Wolf. She still wasn't all that comfortable with it, but she had to agree with his assessment that she'd gotten lucky. “And so you're going to spend the rest of eternity so self-involved that you never take another mate? Screw that, Deryk. It didn't stop you from adopting Jaz as a surrogate daughter. And you gotta know you're going to outlive her, too. So what difference can it possibly make?"
Mentioning Jaz was a calculated risk. Shea wasn't any happier about her disappearance than the rest of them, but he took it a lot more personally than most of them did. As she'd pointed out, he'd practically adopted the woman as a replacement for the daughter he'd lost back home. Shea's homely face pinched itself into an expression of disgust and he clearly resisted the urge to spit on the mat with a great deal of willpower. “Any luck on that front?” he asked, manifestly expecting no good news to come out of her.
She winced visibly. “Not a damn thing, though Chaz says he's getting closer to a way to track her through the multitude of universes out there."
"I'll believe that when I see it."
"I understand your skepticism, Deryk, but we're doing everything in our power to find her."
"Good. Now, unless you're planning on following me to the showers, I'm done with this conversation for now. We'll leave our little discussion about Nemesis Breed where it stands. I'm in no mood to continue it. I'll report to her office when I'm done here.
"But I'm warning you—and you can pass it along to her—I have no intention of getting involved with her on an emotional or physical level. Is that understood?"
"Perfectly,” she sighed. “I guess all of us reserve the right to be some kind of jackass from time to time."
He ignored her parting shot as he strode from the gym through the locker room door. He was as immune to verbal barbs as he was to the physical kind. She would not get under his skin. And, no, he didn't find Nemesis Breed attractive.
He slammed the door shut behind him and snarled something vitriolic under his breath as he padded to the showers.
* * * *
Quickfingers materialized silently on a high shelf, watching the chemist bustling around the hidden underground laboratory with an almost obsessive efficiency. He'd gained a lot of information recently through the process humans called ‘eavesdropping,’ though he found himself wondering on more than one occasion exactly where the term had come from.
The street had been humming with reports of a brand new synthetic stimulant that made the average human at least the temporary equivalent of a parahuman. It had taken a lot of detective work, but the imp fancied himself something of an amateur gumshoe. If he didn't think it would look ridiculous he would've had a small trench coat and a slouch hat made. As it stood he settled for his natural, naked, bright blue appearance.
Now this young woman was the chemist in question, it seemed. It had taken him the better part of a week to track her down at Nemesis Breed's request. The drug she was manufacturing wasn't illegal, yet, but it was only a matter of time before it hit the DEA hit list. Breed wanted the woman firmly under the thumb of either the TPD or the PAC before that happened.
The way the imp figured it, the TPD had almost no chance to retain control of the woman if the Feds got involved. Only the PAC had any chance to trump most of the other government agencies. So, with that in mind, he waited until she took a few minutes away from the lab and hopped down and threaded his way across the counter, being as careful as possible to avoid disturbing any equipment. He produced a small linen sack and pulled out a pair of identical capsules.
He'd noticed she had a habit of chewing her fingernails while t
hinking, so he rubbed the contents of one of the capsules on the tower of the microscope she used most frequently. The other he smeared all over the outside of the container into which she'd been transferring the packets of finished product. It would be full within a few hours and then she'd be sure to move it out of her way.
The first capsule contained a variant of the SARS virus that could kill a human in a matter of a couple days. The other was an active culture of the nosferatu metavirus. Once she had both in her system, the SARS virus would take her immune system down to the point where the metavirus could take over. By his calculations, she'd be a vampire within five days.
Which put her directly under PAC jurisdiction. Grinning his characteristic grin, he tossed the capsules back in the bag and faded into immateriality, teleporting back out as soon as he knew he could do so in perfect silence.
Three
"Jasmine!"
She froze in place, an involuntary response that sent a wave of self disgust through her. The voice was that of Hecate's Master of the Guard, a hulking ape-like humanoid she'd since decided was obviously a member of the Neanderthal race. Not that it mattered. He was one of her foremost ‘breeding partners,’ or, to put a finer edge on it, the warrior who raped her most frequently. He had first dibs, apparently, and if he wasn't busy doing something on Hecate's orders, he felt it both a duty and a honor to be holding her down and shoving his filthy thing inside her while she writhed, screamed, and spat threats in his face.
She thought she could handle it, but the first time made it clear she couldn't. It had hurt terribly, and the subsequent sessions hadn't really been any better. She could only assume it would be different if they'd bothered to be decent about it—if they'd tried to seduce her rather than simply taking her by force—but the fact that these dirty bastards didn't even make an attempt at seduction left her with only the assumption and nothing to back it up.
She ached from the constant battering and turned slowly in order to keep her balance. She'd been allowed to totter around the ‘slave’ quarters pretty much at will since the first ‘breeding session’ as long as she did nothing to interfere with the other slaves or their own breeding regimen. She wanted to. Oh, she wanted to so badly she could taste it, but knew it would be worse than an exercise in futility. Hecate wasn't exaggerating when she said she wouldn't tolerate rebellion. The second day out she'd seen a young blonde woman trying to pull a warrior off what looked like a thirteen year old girl. The warrior had slapped her so hard that she'd bounced off the nearest wall and fallen to the floor. Before she could scramble back to her feet another warrior had intervened, striding across the floor and stomping her chest into so much mush with undisguised relish.
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