Hang on a second. Hold the phone for just one goddamn minute here.
“Fairfax?” I hazarded, not lowering my guns. Every hair on my body stood on end, quivering, scouring the air currents for the next weird happenstance. Wait a minute. I thought I killed you. But I just said blond, and Irene…
Caught assuming. Again. Goddammit. And Irene had looked relieved when I insisted the blond was hellbreed—I hadn’t said Trader.
The Trader froze. His eyes, blue under the flat shine of the dusted, half-opened. “Nobody… here,” he gasped, and took in a huge sucking breath. “Just the… the subjects. And me.”
“Jill?” Leon was getting nervous.
That made two of us.
“Subjects?” The hammer on the gun pointing at the Trader clicked up. “And how the fuck do you know Irene?”
“The subjects!” He whisper-screamed it, losing air. “She’s my wife, goddammit!”
I holstered a gun and hauled him up from the crumbling dirt by his lapels, dragged him toward the blown-out door, his body in front of mine like a shield. “Move.” I prodded him, both guns back out. “Inside. And if there’s someone in there, you die first.”
“They say you help—” He stumbled. He was losing a lot of claret through that hole in his side. When Rosita talks, she’s not to be taken lightly. “Help… people.”
They certainly say that. What they don’t say is that I’m a right bitch. “Sometimes.” I stepped in front of the open door, prodded him again. He stumbled, took two steps inside, and dropped down in a heap, his eyes rolling up inside his head.
The smell boiled out and hit me. Candied, foul, rotting sweetness. My hackles rose, adrenaline dumping into my bloodstream like pollution into a river.
“Jill?” Leon, getting even more nervous.
I scanned the inside of the building. “Jesus,” I whispered. “Jesus Christ.” Then, over my shoulder, “Come on, Leon!”
And I plunged into the smell, stepping over the unconscious Trader. I didn’t even cuff him. He was losing blood too fast to need it.
Chapter Twenty-seven
The tanks were huge glassy cylinders of greenish liquid. In each clear tube, a scurf floated, in varying stages of maturity. The smell was enough to make my eyes run even with the door blasted open and sunlight scouring a rectangle of yellow linoleum.
There were two rows of the green tubes, each lit with ghostly non-UV light. There were dissection tables, and a long bookcase along one wall, stacked with reference works and binders.
Leon helped me drag the Trader to a table and bandage him. Leon also snapped silver cuffs on him, just in case. Meanwhile, I stared at the closest tube full of green viscous stuff, and the scurf floating, eyes closed. “They’re preserved.” My gorge rose, hot and hard at the back of my tongue. “Jesus.”
Leon gave them barely half a glance and turned an interesting shade of pale. His amulets clinked. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Check the books.” I tipped my head at the bookcases and holstered a gun, then set about trying to wake the Trader up. It was hard—he’d lost a lot of blood, but he was tougher than the average human. Then again, it didn’t look like he’d Traded for anything good, like superstrength or invulnerability.
But then, there were those teeth. And his hands looked funny, bonelessly flopping and too delicate. Strangler’s hands.
“Virology. Chemical composition of antidepressants. The Anarchist’s Cookbook, even.” Leon snagged that one, it vanished into his coat pocket. “Looks like a first edition too.”
“Kleptomaniac.” One whole wall of the trailer/hangar was taken up with chem-lab equipment. They’d been cooking something up, out here in the desert. The Trader started to come around, his eyes rolling back down in his head. He shifted uneasily, the silver cuffs clanking, and cringed when he caught sight of me. “He’s waking up. Check that stuff over there, will you? Didn’t you take chemistry?”
“Once in m’benighted youth, darlin’. Left as soon as I figured out how to make beer and fertilizer explosives.”
“Now there’s a combination.” Both of us took care not to turn our backs to the door. The scurf floated eerily in their green tubes. They didn’t look dead, just… sleeping, caught in a moment of rare immobility, like during daylight when they pack themselves together like sardines.
I shuddered. Leon was all white now, pale even under the fishbelly of “night-walking hunter.” His eyeliner had turned garish against the new pallor. From the cold feeling in my cheeks, I probably wasn’t far behind.
The smell was incredible. Fresh tears trickled down my cheeks—and the scar puckered itself up into a tiny mouth, a thrill of painful heat running up the branching channels of my nerves.
“Irene…” the Trader moaned. He woke up all the way and blinked at me, like a six-year-old coming out of a nightmare.
This is goddamn ridiculous. “Hey, Sleeping Beauty. Start talking.”
“You’re her.” He gasped in breath again. He really did sound awful, but then he’d taken a load of silver in the side from Rosita. I wouldn’t be too peppy myself under those circumstances. “Kismet. You’re actually her.”
“No shit.” Who else would be doing this? “The question is, who the fuck are you? But that can wait. Is there anyone else here? Anyone at all?”
“J-just the subjects.” He winced and the cuffs clanked, blue sparks running just under their surface, responding to the contamination of hellbreed on him. As Traders went he was a lightweight. “They’re in the east building, two down. It’s not due in the s-south building for another week—”
Another week? “What’s in another week?”
Blond stubble covered his cheeks. He looked like a watered-down version of Hutch, weak-eyed as a mole. The lab coat covered a frame that wasn’t even wiry-strong, just wiry.
Still, he knocked me over. Must be something in there. Looks can be deceiving, especially when it comes to Traders. And what’s the story with him and Irene?
“The Summoning,” he whispered. “They’re not due for another week. When the moon’s dark. Then they… they—”
Oh shit. A summoning? “They what?” I had a sneaking suspicion I knew.
Argoth. Or other seriously bad news.
“They won’t tell me.” He cringed against the surgical table we’d laid him on, instruments rattling. It took me a moment to figure out why he looked familiar—there was the same ratty little gleam in his eyes as in Irene’s, a gleam I wasn’t sure I liked. “Only that he is coming, and he wants this place. I keep my ears open, so does Irene. When he comes… they have the formula, they’ll make as much of it as they want—”
“Formula for what?” And why do I have this sinking feeling like I know who “he” is?
“For the sickness.” He cringed again as I loomed over him, even though I hadn’t moved. “For Dream.”
I frowned. “What sickness?”
He made a short sketching motion, arrested when I twitched, a hair away from breaking his arm. “Bioweapon. They came to me with samples. I thought they were from the government. They said, what can you do with this? It was a good job, I took it—and then they took Irene. Said I had to start working, and working quick, or Irene would be dead before—”
Bioweapon? Oh Christ Jesus. “Samples?” Keep him on track, Jill.
“From—” His eyes flicked nervously to one of the green tubes. But his face had lit up, just like a mad scientist talking about his monster. “From them. They got live ones from somewhere, a lot of them. Finally figured out to put ’em in the xarocaine and the cellular burn stops, they die but don’t rot. It’s a preservative. Used the same process for—”
“There’s some Day-Glo purple powder over here, Jill.” Leon’s tone cut through the Trader’s babble. “All in little Ziplocs. Looks ready for shipment.”
The Trader nodded jerkily, his hair flopping. “It is ready. It starts changing on the first hit, you can deliver it through the water supply; it could possibly go ai
rborne if I had enough time. But I can’t figure out how to stop the replication yet. The side effects—”
Dear God. The smell was worse now, because drafts of fresh air were spilling in the open door. A fresh gout of stench hit each time the wind shifted, and the breaths of not-so-bad air only served to underscore the reek. “Side effects?” It was like questioning a waterfall, hard to keep him on one topic, words spilling out past those sharklike teeth.
Oh yeah. Definitely Dr. Frankenstein material.
“These things, whatever they are… the viral replication is just endless, it remodels the genetic code and eats up hemoglobin like nobody’s business. So the Dream—that’s what I call it—hits hard and fast like a Mack truck, but the side effects, they can’t go out in the sun, their pupils get all dilated, and they get thirsty. They tear each other up, and when one of them starts to bleed—” His shudder echoed mine. “It’s in the blood. I could engineer the effect for just a quick death and stop the mutation if they would give me more time. But they said—I thought they were from the government. Who else would want something like this?”
“Holy shit.” I eyed him. Is this for real? “You’re kidding.”
“Once it’s perfected—”
“Shut up.” Men like you made the atom bomb, you waste. I didn’t need any help putting together the consequences. No wonder hellbreed were crawling all over this, it had all the things they like in a weapon. But what was the connection, where was the other half of the puzzle? The sense of a missing puzzle piece returned, nagging.
Was it just because it would cause enough death to feed a hungry high-class hellbreed just out of Hell? Something even worse than a talyn?
I hate those sorts of questions.
“I say we put a fuckin’ bullet in his head and burn this place to the ground.” Leon racked Rosita, but his eyes were steady.
The Trader squealed like a rabbit in a trap. “Nooo! Please, no don’t kill me, please—”
“For Christ’s sake.” I’d heard enough. “Shut the fuck up. I’m not going to kill you yet. You said something about subjects. What subjects?”
“The test subjects. Some of them just get addicted to the Dream, they don’t die. They exhibit side effects. They’re in the east building.” He flinched again, cowering, even though I hadn’t moved. “They had Irene, I had to do what they said, I had to!”
Fax might know, I don’t, I heard Irene say, in her flat little voice. Definitely more to this than what Mr. Skinny was telling me. On the other hand, Irene wasn’t the most dependable source either. So, two lies to choose from?
That’s not the issue, Jill. The issue is what we’re going to do now. Leon and I locked eyes for a long moment, weighing the situation. When he nodded, fractionally, I knew his mental calculus was the same as mine.
I stepped back from the surgical table. “Cover him. I’m going to check the other buildings.”
“Have fun.” Leon drew a Glock from a hip holster. “If I hear any ruckus, Doc-Boy here gets one in the cabeza.”
“I’m sure there won’t be anything.” I looked down at the Trader. “Am I right?”
As good-cop-bad-cop routines go, it was a good one. If Fax could have lost any more color without turning transparent, he would have. “Just the subjects,” he whispered. “They… you won’t believe it until you see it.”
Leon snorted. It was unintentionally funny, and I found myself wanting to smile too. Dispelled the urge. You have no idea what I might believe, kid. I turned on my heel, sharply, and headed for sunlight. The water on my cheeks dried as soon as I checked the angles and stepped out into the harsh glare of daylight. The fresh air was a balm after the reek of scurf, hellbreed, and lies.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Ten minutes later I stumbled back out into the glare and made it, then grabbed at the side of the building and retched, my eyes spouting water. Again, a tearing heave that came all the way from my toes. One last time before control clamped down, stomach cramping, aware I was making a low hurt sound and hating it.
Focus, goddammit! It wasn’t Mikhail’s voice in my head this time, it was my own, harsh as if I had a throatful of smoke. Get a handle, Jill. Any handle will do.
I made it to the laboratory. Leon barely glanced at me, did a double take. “Jill?” For once, all Texas bluster and drawl was erased from his voice.
I had to try twice to speak. “Get him in the car. Take him to Galina’s and chain him the fuck up.” I wiped at my cheeks. “I’m going to stay here and rip this fucking place apart.”
“We been havin’ a little chat in here.” Leon’s eyes were watering from the stink too, and he looked none-too-happy. “It’s worse than you think. Some guy named Harvill—”
My brain shuddered with what I had seen inside the south building. Dear God, their eyes… their arms, and the smell—
I lunged into the present. Harvill. The District Attorney. Big fat redhaired good ol’ boy. Ran last year on a tough-love, three-strikes ticket. You voted for the guy, remember? “The DA is in on this?” The H. in the file. A big-time cop, one of the witnesses said. But I didn’t think of the DA’s office. Jesus. It makes sense. It makes too much goddamn sense.
That’s the trouble with hellbreed. Sooner or later they find someone high-up to seduce. It never fails.
“I don’t know who he is,” the Trader whined. “Just that he was a bigshot, he came in with—”
I found myself at the side of the table, the Glock out of its holster and pressed to his forehead. “Shut. Up.” He did this. Willing or not, he did this. He made those… things. Dear God. “I should kill you now, for what you did to those people.”
The weak blue eyes shimmered with tears. But under the gleam there was that hardness, the animal calculating how to survive. I’ve seen it too many times in Trader eyes—the little gleam that says everything is disposable to them, as long as they get what they want.
I’ve seen that gleam in ordinary people too. I grew up with that avid little light shining at me from the faces of people who should have loved and protected me. I hit the street to get away from it and found out it only got deeper. I hate that queer ratlike little shine in people’s eyes.
And sometimes I wonder if my own eyes hold that little gleam. When I’m considering murdering someone, Trader or criminal or hellbreed. When I’ve got my toes on the cliff edge and am staring down into the abyss.
Get a hold on yourself, Jill.
Tremors ran through my arms and legs. Don’t kill him. The voice of reason in my head was Saul’s, and I was grateful for it.
If it had been any other voice, I’d’ve spread his brain and bone all over that fucking table.
“Hellbreed,” I rasped. “Who came with Harvill? Which one of the motherfuckers is behind it? Who did you Trade with?” I think I already know. And if you lie to me, so help me God, I will send you to Hell right now.
Cringing and sobbing, he told me, and quite a few things fell into place. Don’t kill him, kitten, Saul’s voice repeated. You know what you have to do.
“Jill?” Leon asked again.
Daylight’s wasting. I had too much to do, not enough time to do it in. Story of my life.
“Those things in the east building. Are they vulnerable to UV light like—” I tipped my head back a little, indicating the scurf floating peacefully in their green tubes.
Oh Jesus. Jesus and Mother Mary. The urge to vomit rose hard and sharp under my breastbone again. I shoved it down.
“Y-yes—” He looked ready to plead for his life again, but something in the geography of my face changed. I felt it, skin moving on bones, from somewhere outside myself.
The Trader shut up. Wise of him.
“And this stuff, Dream, fire destroys it? It doesn’t become toxic in midair?” It better not. If it does, I don’t know what I’m going to do.
He nodded, a quick little jerk of his head. The movement ended with a flinch, because the gun’s blind mouth was still pressed against his forehead so har
d I felt the trembling running through him.
“One more question.” Every muscle in my body protested when I took the gun away from his head. They know it’s possible now. Some hellbreed somewhere is going to do something like this, unless I can cut it off at the root. “Is this all of it? All the weapon, the drug, whatever it is? Everything you’ve got onsite here? Is there a backup to your research?”
“Everything’s here—my work, all the computers. No backup, nothing. The first shipment is in planes in the hangars—”
That was all I needed to know. I dismissed him, looked up at Leon, who stood cradling Rosita. The bright spots of color still stood out on his cheeks, and his aura sparkled through my smart eye, the same sea-urchin shape as mine. A flicker of disgust crossed his face, and I was terribly, sadly grateful that it wasn’t me he was disgusted with.
My voice didn’t want to work properly. “Get him the fuck out of here. Now.”
He didn’t think much of the idea. “Jill—”
I was not in the mood. “If you don’t get him out of here, Leon, I am going to lose my temper.” Flat, quiet, just as if I was telling him what was for dinner. “Stay in touch with the Weres and keep my city together. If I’m not in town by dawn tomorrow—”
“What the fuck are you thinking of doing?” But Leon was already moving, racking Rosita, sweeping the Trader off the table and onto his feet with a gun pressed to his side. “Give me a vowel here, darlin’.”
“First, I’m burning down this building.” I have to erase every trace of this, or it’ll be used somewhere else. I holstered my gun with another one of those physical efforts that left me shaking, shook out my right hand, and drew on the scar. A hissing whisper filled my palm, and pale-orange, misshapen flame burst into being between my fingers.
I barely felt the burn against my skin, I was so cold under my leather and weight of weapons. It was the absolute chilling freeze beyond rage, beyond pain, and beyond fear.
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