by Kelly Meding
“If there was another lab,” I said, “then who turned Token loose?” A chill niggled its way down my spine. “A third partner?”
“Possibly. We know that Tovin was the brains of the operation, and we know that Leonard Call provided the muscle to get it all done.”
“But neither one of them were scientists, capable of combining and manipulating the DNA of such disparate species.” I tried to recall my conversation (if it could be termed that) with Call the night I’d put him into a coma. He’d admitted to working with Tovin, to providing brawn in the form of cooperative goblins and Halfies, in return for Tovin’s help in his own personal quest for vengeance. Vengeance against Wyatt specifically, and humanity in general, for the murder of Call’s lover.
Motives that I understood but couldn’t support—for obvious reasons.
“Following that train of thought,” Wyatt said, “we could also assume that whoever organized the attack on Boot Camp wants their science projects back.”
I closed my eyes and thought about the creatures we’d found at Olsmill. I’d only gotten a good look at three of them. One had been a teenage boy. Half his body was stone, as though he’d been split down the middle and sprayed with cement coating. At the time, I had assumed some sort of cross with a gargoyle. Now I wasn’t so sure. This mysterious third party had creatures who could attack via the ground, moving through the earth as easily as trolls. That was bad on so many new levels.…
Wyatt’s face remained annoyingly neutral when I shared my thoughts. “I can see the goblin queens donating a few of their weaker warriors to experimentation if it meant gaining an advantage,” he said.
“Some advantage. The goblins have all but disappeared since we kicked their asses at Olsmill.” I said it lightly, but the truth of my statement was worrisome. Goblins were a matriarchal society, and while we’d killed one of their rare queens, she wasn’t the only one they had. The fact that most of the goblins had withdrawn from the city, or were at least hiding underground where we couldn’t find them, hinted at something big on the horizon. And I hated surprises.
“Yeah,” Wyatt said. “Which means they probably have a plan we won’t see coming.”
So what else is new?
“We need concrete information to give to the Triads,” he continued. “Something they can look into that’s more tangible than our leaps of logic.”
“I know.” I shot him a determined look. “So let’s get it.”
Chapter Four
I rummaged around in one of the drawers until I found a butter knife and a barbecue lighter, then returned to Token. He’d stopped crying. Blood still dripped from his wounded hand. He watched me squat in front of him, flick on the lighter, and heat the tip of the knife.
“Do you hurt?” I asked, choosing the simplest words I could manage.
“Yes,” Token replied. “Hurt.”
“Do you like to hurt?”
“No. Hate … to hurt.”
“Who’s your master?” Silence. I held up the heated knife. “Do you think this will hurt?” His too-human eyes flickered to the blade. Like a child who doesn’t understand about a hot stove, he just stared.
I swallowed, then pressed the tip to the skin on the back of his broken hand. He screamed. I jerked out of reach, wincing. Cruel, perhaps, but now he understood my threat.
“Hurts,” he said, betrayal in his eyes. “Why?”
“Who is your master?” After another pained, sulky glare, I started heating the blade again. “I will keep hurting you until you tell me. Do you want me to hurt you again?”
“No.” Such a human whine; it turned my stomach.
“Who is your master?”
He fidgeted, wriggled, whined, did everything except answer my question. I had no real desire to torture the thing further, but I needed this answer.
“Ask him differently,” Wyatt said. “I don’t think he understands what you want.”
Okay, fine. I waved the heated knife in front of him. “Token, what is your master’s name?”
Understanding dawned. “The … cur … ee,” he said, forcing out each sound.
I looked up at Wyatt; he shrugged, not recognizing the combination, either. To Token, I repeated it back. “The cur ee. This is your master’s name?”
“All name.”
“Come again?” No response. “What the hell does—?”
“Thackery,” Wyatt said. “Walter Thackery.”
“Yes,” Token said.
“Who’s he?” I asked.
“Master.”
“Not you.” I stood up and abandoned the knife and lighter on the back of the sofa. “Wyatt, who’s Walter Thackery?”
He held up his index finger in a “wait” gesture, dashed into my bedroom, and returned moments later with my laptop already open and booting up. He put it on the scarred table that served as our eating area. As soon as it was ready, he opened an Internet search engine and typed in the name.
“Thackery was a molecular biologist who worked and taught at the university, up until five years ago,” he said as news articles began to scroll across the computer screen. “He wasn’t even on the Triads’ radar until August of that year. Three days before classes were to resume, he cashed out all his stocks, liquidated his assets, issued his resignation, then disappeared with his wife and a boatload of cash. At the same time, the labs at the university were broken into and ransacked. A quarter-million dollars in equipment was stolen. The regular police never connected the two, but we did.”
“Why?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know.
“Six months after the disappearance, Morgan’s team found Thackery’s wife in an alley, sucking a teenage boy dry, and killed them both.”
“His wife was a Halfie?”
“There was no way to know for how long, but Morgan reported she had a completely developed set of fangs, so she wasn’t new. Probably turned right before Thackery quit and dropped off the radar. We had no luck tracking him down.”
I reached around Wyatt, keenly aware of the slim pocket of air between us, and fingered the mouse pad. I clicked on a photo from a university benefit; the date put it at a few weeks before the disappearance. In the image, a beaming couple radiated their love for each other. Walter Thackery was tall, lean, with close-cut dark hair and dark eyes, a sharply chiseled jaw, and ear-to-ear grin. His wife (the caption named her Anne) glowed, even in the black-and-white image. Her dress was tasteful, her makeup and jewelry simple. She held one arm loosely around her tuxedo-clad husband’s waist. The other hand was draped across her flat belly, almost protectively. Poor woman.
“So that’s our bad guy?” I poked the screen right above Thackery’s too-handsome face. “Doesn’t really look like the sort to turn humans into goblins, does he?”
“Few people seem capable of murder until they actually pull the trigger. As far as I know, he’s been completely off the grid since his disappearance, but given those circumstances, and his scientific background, he’s a damned likely candidate.”
“Not to mention the admission of our hostage over there.” I fought against quick acceptance of this information. It was too easy, having the name of the bad guy in front of me, along with an identifying photograph. I was used to struggling for info, getting frustrated when I didn’t get it, and using that frustration to drive me even harder. This was weird.
“Thackery had the money and the means, not to mention the professional experience, to set up his own lab.” Wyatt shifted, facing me more directly. His eyebrows were furrowed, but he seemed more determined than annoyed. “This is something we can give the Triads.”
“But Rhys Willemy’s been researching Olsmill since we found it. Wouldn’t someone have made the connection by now?”
“Not necessarily. Memory’s a tricky thing, and like I said, no one’s had contact with Thackery for five years. The file probably hasn’t been looked at since his wife was neutralized. I might never have thought of it without Token.”
“Which brings us
to problem number one with telling the Triads anything. How are you going to explain Jaron and Token to them?” I did not want to be the one to tell Amalie her personal bodyguard was dead, and that the killer was stuck to my wall.
“Lying by omission, I suppose. Amalie knows you’re alive, but I don’t have to tell them that’s why Jaron came to us. And I’m not exactly helpless, so they’ll believe that I subdued Token by myself.”
I grinned and poked him in the ribs. “They’ll probably be amazed you didn’t kill him yet, Mr. Not Helpless.”
“Part of me’s amazed you haven’t killed him yet.”
That sobered me right up. “He was human, Wyatt. He’s a killer and I want to put him out of his misery, but I can’t. He’s being helpful.” The last was tacked on to avoid expressing just what I was feeling—sympathy. Sympathy for his being manipulated against his will. I knew exactly how that felt.
“He was, but the Triads will want him for questioning.”
I nodded. They’d do a lot worse than a tiny burn on his hand. In the past, I would have done much worse myself, and with sharper instruments. “Then let’s call them and get this thing started.”
Wyatt reached for his phone.
“This really isn’t healthy, Truman,” Gina Kismet said.
Wyatt snorted but didn’t reply.
I didn’t need to see him to know he was glaring. After hiding all traces of my existence in the oven—my meager collection of clothing, a photograph, and a handful of books was sort of pathetic when lumped together—I’d taken refuge in the dark bathroom. Even with the door slightly ajar, I had a minuscule view into the living room. Just a slice of the sofa, far enough out to see Jaron’s foot and the opposite wall near the door. Wyatt and Kismet were somewhere on my right, near the kitchenette. She’d brought over two of her Hunters, Milo Gant and Felix Diggory. The third member of her Triad, Tybalt Monahan, had lost half his forearm a week ago, but she’d yet to replace him with a rookie from Boot Camp.
Kismet had been commenting on Wyatt’s choice to live in this particular apartment. I was amazed she would get within twenty feet of Wyatt, considering she still thought she’d killed me. The tiny part of me that liked and respected Gina Kismet, the only female Handler in the Triads, hated that I hadn’t yet come out of the closet (or the bathroom, in this case) and told her the truth.
My logic and her inability to be flexible and give someone the benefit of the doubt kept me silent and still.
“How did Jaron know you were here?” she asked.
“Because I met her while she was in her true sprite form,” he explained. “Apparently, sprites can sense auras of those people, so she was able to track me down.”
“But why you? Jaron knew how to contact the Triads.”
“I don’t know. Protection from that thing, maybe?” I imagined him jacking a thumb at Token, still knifed to the wall where I’d left him with firm instructions to tell no one about me. He’d seemed to understand the order. “I checked the avatar’s license, and he lived only a few blocks from here.”
“I wonder if Amalie knows.”
“You haven’t heard anything from her yet?”
“No, and nothing’s been communicated to me by the brass, if she’s contacted them at all.”
“Has anyone checked on her avatar?” Wyatt asked exactly what was on my mind.
“No one knows where she lives, remember?” She exhaled hard. “I frigging hate not knowing what’s going on.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Three of us,” Felix said, piping up close to the bathroom door. “So did you get anything useful from that thing?”
“Just that it was sent to kill Jaron by its master, and what I told you about its possible connection to Walter Thackery.” The only thing we’d agreed to keep to ourselves was Jaron’s dying declaration of betrayal. We didn’t know who had been betrayed, or if someone was going to be betrayed, or who any of the players were. It was a lead we could follow better on our own. We weren’t strangers to betrayal, and it was easier to work with someone you knew wouldn’t betray you than with people you just weren’t sure about.
“We’ll have to do a little old-fashioned detective work on that,” Kismet said. “Looking into who’s been ordering lab supplies, renting space, getting large shipments of unusual product. Anything like that is bound to leave a paper trail.”
“Do you have an inventory of everything that was taken from Olsmill and stored at Boot Camp?”
“Of course.”
“I’d like to get a look at it.”
“Why?”
“Because if the perimeter was tested because of what’s stored there, I want to know what’s so valuable he’d send creatures to attack an impenetrable fortress in broad daylight.”
“I’ll get it to you.”
“Thank you.” After a moment’s pause, he asked,
“How’s Tybalt?”
“Out of the hospital and researching prosthetics. He’s already talking about going back to Boot Camp and learning how to fight with one good hand. He won’t quit.”
“Good.” Feet shuffled, and when Wyatt spoke again, his voice was closer. “It takes balls of brass to cut off a friend’s arm when he asks you.”
“He didn’t want to die,” Milo said, a small tremor in his voice. “And he sure as hell didn’t want to turn. He would have done the same for any of us.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
I could only imagine the volley of meaningful glances being thrown around the room. Felix had tried to kidnap me. Milo and Tybalt were with Kismet when she “killed” me. And yet they had all acted with the best interests of humanity at heart. That made it impossible to hate them, but I bet Wyatt’s outward calm in their presence had the trio thoroughly flummoxed. Probably a tiny bit terrified.
A knock at the door drew their attention. Minutes later, Jed Peters had been carted away, his body headed for the Triads’ private morgue until we heard from Amalie. We knew nothing about the sprite’s chosen avatar. Did he have family? Friends? Was he alone? Was Jaron even still alive?
“We’ll take the goblin to Boot Camp,” Kismet said, once the other team was gone. “Interrogate it, then lock it away with its friends.”
I took small comfort that she hadn’t said they’d execute it once they were finished. Maybe she saw what I saw in its eyes. Though I did wonder at Token’s ability to switch loyalties—enough interrogation and Kismet would be looking for the woman who’d helped capture him.
“Do you need me to do anything?” Wyatt asked.
“You’ve already been a huge help, Truman.” Absolute sincerity colored her words. “When I have something you can do without leading a team, I’ll let you know. Bathroom’s in there, right?”
“Uh, yeah.”
It took my brain a few seconds to catch up. I leapt into the claw-foot tub, hoping to manage both quick and quiet, and gently drew the curtain the rest of the way closed. Light flooded the room; the door clicked shut. I tensed, breathing slow and deep. She had no reason to look in the tub.
I expected to hear a zipper and familiar tinkle of liquid. Instead, the faucet ran for a few seconds. Numerous small items rattled. I hazarded a peek through the curtain slit. Kismet palmed two blue capsules from a bottle I couldn’t see, then chased them down with tap water from a plastic cup. She gripped the sides of the sink and bowed her head. Tension thrummed from her slight frame, every toned muscle clenched and tight. Shoulder-length red hair curtained her face from me.
I backed away, ashamed at intruding on this private moment of weakness from the experienced Handler. I’d never seen Kismet as anything other than a woman in charge of her situation, barking orders, sure of herself and her command. We weren’t friends, and hadn’t been even before my deaths. I’d interacted with her more in the last ten days than I ever had in my old life, and we’d even come close to having a friendly conversation once. A conversation about relationships with coworkers and how they never panned out. She’d
spoken from experience and I’d been curious. I still was.
I harbored no illusions that my “not dead” status would remain a secret for long, so perhaps, one day, I’d get to ask her about it.
She took several deep breaths, working to get something under control. Migraine, maybe? Her phone rang—a shrill buzzing sound that hurt my ears.
“Kismet,” she said, all business. After a pause, she said, “I’m already with Truman.” She gave someone our street address. I tensed. “Yes, I’ll wait until you arrive. Five minutes.”
She snapped the phone shut, flicked off the light, and left. The door stayed wide open, a shaft of light hitting the floor near the tub. I couldn’t get out, but I could hear their voices clearly from the living room.
“Amalie is coming here,” Kismet announced. I wouldn’t have been more surprised if she’d said a meteor was going to crash into the city. “In about five minutes.”
“Does she know about Jaron’s avatar?” Wyatt asked.
“She didn’t mention it. She just said to stay put. She wants to talk to us, and it’s urgent.”
“Too urgent to say over the phone?”
“Apparently.”
The conversation waned. My legs ached from standing still. I shifted my weight but had little room in the small tub. Getting out would make a lot of noise, too noticeable with the door wide open. My trouble could be for naught anyway if Amalie showed up and mentioned me. I had a funny feeling all our work to keep my current “alive” state under wraps was about to be undone.
I stayed put anyway until a sharp crack on the apartment door preceded the familiar squeal of old hinges. Hazarding a peek through the curtain slit, I could see part of the sofa and the wall behind it. No one was in view.
“This is Deaem,” Amalie said, her voice clear as a bell. “She accompanies me now as my second.”
My stomach bottomed out as the simple statement confirmed my fear. Wyatt further clarified it by saying, “Jaron is really dead, then.”
If Amalie nodded, I couldn’t see it. “I do not understand.” The confusion in her words broke my heart. “The moment an avatar is wounded, the sprite returns. Instead, she chose to stay and so died trapped within the human host. I wish to know the reason for my loss.”