by L. A. Banks
“Now, don’t you worry your purty little head none,” Buchanan said, leaning on the door frame. “Both of those boys are going down at midnight, anyway. They clans ain’t got no evidence. They both got the contagion. And the way I see it, you’re still gonna wind up the North American prom queen, but without the messy business of having to bed one of them foreign fellas.” He opened up his arms and gave her a sly smile the moment the corner of her mouth gave way to one of her own.
“See, your daddy knows what he’s doing—now come on over here and gimme some sugah, like family is supposed ta do.”
“Why?” Ethan said in an angry whisper, holding a coffee cup so tightly in his hands that it shook.
Dugan leaned forward and looked over his shoulder nervously. “I didn’t do anything. The gossip and speculation about me—”
“Stop it,” Ethan hissed, sitting forward angrily. “The Witch networks have the story, the Fairies are abuzz, the wolves all know . . . I have a wife and children—”
“Like no one else has anythin’ at stake, laddie?” Dugan slammed his cup down hard, but kept his voice a low murmur in the back of his establishment. “How long do you think it’ll be, man, before the Vampires come back to you for testifying against them at the UCE? Did you ever think of that before you opened your big yap?” Dugan nodded when Ethan blanched. “Aye. Now it’s all sinking in slowly.”
“We have protection, guaranteed by—”
“Who, the wolves?” Dugan cocked his head to the side and pulled a small flask of brandy out of his breast pocket, adding some of the dark, aromatic liquor to his coffee. “You were out in the bayou. You saw the state of their affairs. Those sworn to protect you have serious problems of their own, laddie . . . and what’s more, the local wolves . . .”
Dugan shook his head as he capped his flask and then took a deep swig from his spiked coffee, triumphant. “Have you seen the leadership that will step in once the two superpowers fall?” He waited a beat as Ethan’s nervous gaze sought a window.
“Ethan McGregor, my boy, it’s a new day after the flood. Casinos are being rebuilt by the cartel . . . New Orleans has to be rebuilt by those with power, money, and vision, and it will be. Out with the old, in with the new. The little people and poor could be swept away; Katrina showed us just how easy that would be. Only a few houses, in the grand scheme, will be built from charitable concerns—but the primo real estate and the real lasting power will be with you know who. So, while I admit to nothing, a thinking man must be realistic about his options. If you haven’t considered that, then take a look around and after you do so, you can ask me that very naive question again, old friend.”
“The minute we clear the drawbridge and path,” Sir Rodney warned, “and reenter the bayou, we’ve got to run like the wind.” He cast a worried gaze toward Doc. “I’ll have archers in the trees covering us until we reach the edge of the wooded area, and from there one of our men will have a vehicle—but the darkness of the boggy areas . . .”
“I understand,” Sasha said, clasping Doc’s hand. “I’ll flank him. I won’t leave him. Just give me back my confiscated weapons.”
Tension had kept Clarissa’s body ramrod-straight all night as she and Winters sat hunched over computer systems. Bradley had set every conceivable supernatural barrier, while Woods, Fisher, Bear, and Crow provided constant guard duty. The general paced into the small work cell every few hours, asking on a status update that couldn’t be given. The blown truck with invaluable equipment right after a firefight at Tulane had bases on lockdown and Homeland Security alerts at red levels. The only good thing was, Bear and Crow didn’t have to be explained—they simply were a part of the shadow force the general didn’t need to know about.
The moment her feet hit the spongy ground cover beyond the cobbled Fae path, she smelled it. Demon-wolf was on the move in the underbrush. A full-moon cycle had opened the door; the creature could never shift back to human anyway. But it could maim and kill in the darkness of the bayou depths.
Sasha clasped Doc’s hand tightly, and their eyes met. Instinct propelled him forward. The Fae captain of the guards moved between trees in a blur of motion like the very wind itself.
Breaking branches and deep, feral growls followed them; Sasha’s heart was pounding as Sir Rodney turned. Instant reflex brought her body down to cover Doc’s in a hard fall as her hand gripped the silver dagger and released it. A savage howl echoed. Momentum carried a massive form over her head. A glint of silver caught sunlight dappling through the thick canopy. Arrows rained a curtain of protection as she and Sir Rodney quickly helped Doc up.
God help them, Doc was limping. That and his age were now life-threatening liabilities.
“Go!” Sir Rodney shouted, turning to meet the charging beast.
“No!” Sasha said, yanking her nine-millimeter out of her back waistband with one hand, pushing Doc off center with the other. She found that still place, aimed, and fired.
A last-second pivot sent a silver slug into the beast’s shoulder rather than its heart, making it rear on hind legs with a roar before it disappeared again into the underbrush. Where it was, only her strained senses could detect, but she was sure that she’d slowed it enough for her to grab Doc under his armpit with Rodney on the other side of him, and haul ass.
But try as they might to keep moving with the injured beast circling, Doc was going slower and slower. Sasha stopped, her gaze hard on Sir Rodney.
“Go take to the trees with the other Fae and get off the ground. I’ll meet you at the vehicle, you’ve gotta trust me.”
“No, you’ll be—”
“Go, man!” Sasha yelled, and pointed up to the other archers safe above. “He’s part Shadow—my father . . . I’ll take him through the shadow lands and we’ll exit at the vehicle meeting place.”
Snarls made Sasha start pulling Doc, despite his resistance.
“No, Sasha,” Doc said his eyes and voice frantic, “if she follows—”
There was no time to explain or argue. A thunderous crash sent Sir Rodney into the trees with fellow archers; Sasha was pure motion, her hand a tight grasp on Doc’s weathered palm, her amulet blazing. Shadow land, shadow time, the scent was wrong; something old and evil had followed them in just as Doc had warned.
Sasha spun, protectively circling Doc, trying to get a bead on the danger in the mist. A lunging form came out of nowhere. She fired, but only the empty sound of dead clicks echoed. Doc’s horrified gaze was the last thing she saw as he fell back swallowed by the mist and the beast kept coming. Her wolf broke free, smaller, outmatched in weight and size, but not by insanity. Then just as suddenly a larger black wolf met the predator midair. She knew the phantom couldn’t hurt the real, live threat, but it could disorient it, give it the panicked illusion of being attacked by one of its own, and buy them escape time. She took it.
Doc rolled away. Her human self returned and immediately swept up her clothes in a single deft move, running, amulet swinging, pushing Doc forward as scores of fallen Shadow Wolf spirits descended on the creature.
Sunlight smacked her face. Sir Rodney caught Doc as they came out of the shadows where his silver SUV sat on the emergency shoulder. He looked them both over for signs of demon contagion and then smiled at Sasha, appraising her naked body.
“I do so love how you do that, lassie,” he crooned, opening the car door for her and Doc. “I just wish you weren’t always under such duress when your lady-self comes back.”
She was driving and dressed; Doc was still breathing hard and nursing a sprained ankle when they got to the base. Sir Rodney was long gone. An armed escort in to meet up with her human squad at NAS felt real comfortable, given where they’d just been.
General Westford was waiting in a pure huff when they got to the administration building. He gave her a disapproving glare as he studied her silk-and-leather outfit. The base was tense, seeming prepared for a foreign war to hit American soil at any moment—she could see it in the eyes of every armed s
oldier who stood at the ready near the general.
Nonplussed, Sasha saluted the brass and helped Doc out of the vehicle. She didn’t have time for this crap.
“Blending in with friendlies, sir,” she said to address his unspoken question while trying not to sound annoyed. “We’ve got a man injured,” she added in a matter-of-fact tone. “Only a sprained ankle while on the run, no cause for alarm. We tracked a target as far as we could to be sure none of our samples got taken, sir. We need to get what we did acquire back to the labs at NORAD, ASAP, for security and eval.”
“Well, I damned sure don’t want that creature hazmat crap here,” the general bellowed. “Take it to the boys up north in Colorado.”
She never in her wildest dreams would have thought that going underground beneath two thousand feet of pure granite and being locked behind twenty-five-ton steel doors while surrounded by very nervous men carrying very big guns would be comforting . . . but it was. After what they’d all experienced, she didn’t care that they had to do retina scans, match fingerprints, give code words, or say Mother may I, as long as she got Doc and her team into a safe place.
“How’s the ankle?” Sasha finally said, bringing Doc a cup of coffee.
“All right,” he said, clearly peeved at himself. “I coulda gotten you killed back there.” His gaze softened. “But seeing you in action was . . . maybe the proudest moment in my very frightened life.”
She didn’t care if the walls had ears and eyes. A simple hug conveyed all she’d wanted to say. Doc took up his pen and scribbled a quick, cryptic note: Thank you for allowing me to see my father. Their eyes met for a moment, and she knew that Wolf Shadow had been there with the others, as had Shogun’s and Hunter’s father, attacking the demon and giving them time to escape. Sasha nodded and Doc slid the paper into his white lab coat.
“Clarissa,” he said, taking command of his domain. “Let’s go to work.”
Hours passed, but you couldn’t rush science. To her it was like watching a pot of water boil; maddening. Winters and Bradley, on the other hand, gave her something constructive to wrap her mind around—setting traps and collecting evidence.
Winters held out his hand, drawing Sasha, Bradley, Woods, and Fisher near. “You know how they use gold solder on most microchips?” he said with a wide smile. “How about if we silver-solder this sucker . . . then maybe the Vamps won’t be able to so easily go in and wipe evidence off your flash drive.”
“Yeah, but if we stick it in a laptop or a handheld DVD player or any electronic device to show the video of what happened that night over at Tulane, those guys can distort the image that goes to the screen, can’t they?”
Winters wagged a finger at Sasha. “My kung fu is strong, Captain. They can only distort the screen of its plain old liquid crystal, but I’m gonna add a little colloidal silver in there—basically dust the inside of the whole damned unit. Then old Bradley here is gonna say some prayers over it, give it proper anointing, and it oughta hold up in court.”
“Good man,” Sasha said, shaking her head. “Have you been able to break down the electronic voice phenomena from those screaming Fairies yet, Woods?”
“Got it lovely,” Woods said, copying digital sound and video files over to NORAD systems, then burning disks, flash drives, and Winters’s hard drive before uploading it to NORAD’s secure servers. “EVPs coming through loud and clear, Captain. Like the man said, can’t have too many copies in backup.”
“I like the idea of sewing wolfsbane right into the lining of uniforms, along with silver threading, then adding a sprinkle of brick dust into the soles of your shoes—this way, where you step a demon couldn’t, maybe? At the very least, you need a pocketful of that to draw a quick circle around yourself while in a camouflage blind,” Bradley said with a droll smile. “But then, that would only work if Trudeau could manage to keep her gear on long enough.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” she said flatly, walking by Bradley to punch his shoulder and grin.
The team kept the banter up, but within coded limits to make sure nothing they said alerted the hierarchy to what they really knew, any more than was necessary. But she still needed a trap, a foolproof way to lure the demon out in full view of UCE witnesses—either that or some pretty compelling evidence to get the Vampires’ asses caught in a sling. That solution would come, she hoped, once her mind relaxed. Improvised explosive devices were always a last-minute eureka for her.
“Sasha,” Doc said, straining to quickly hop toward her on a crutch from the other end of the lab. Clarissa was on his heels trying to help him, but in his excitement he pressed forward, causing everyone to look up as Sasha ran to him. “Come see something I never saw before!”
The excitement that shone in his eyes seemed to make his hands shake. Aware of the cameras and surveillance, he spoke to her and Clarissa in code.
“The sample you gave me has the same taint to it as Lou Zang Chen’s blood,” he said breathlessly. “It’s different from the taint in yours, or in my normal human blood.”
Sasha held her breath, so did Clarissa. Doc was talking for the cameras, but they understood him completely. Shogun and Lou Zang Chen both had uninfected Werewolf blood prior to their attacks. Obviously, for all these years, without a comparison sample, Doc hadn’t been able to tell the difference between normal Shadow Wolf blood and normal, uninfected Werewolf blood, because they were such close cousins.
“The last male subject we lost,” Doc said after a beat, giving them time to process what he said while eyeing them hard, “was a relative of an earlier test subject.”
Sasha rifled her fingers through her hair. The decoding was getting confusing, but she was pretty sure that she got that: Shogun was the most recent loss and was a half brother to Hunter. She nodded as clarity came. Doc and Clarissa nodded. Although communication under brass scrutiny was tough, no one had yet broken the code. It was all in the eyes.
They’d said what they needed to, but if the brass was listening, as they probably were, it would sound as though they were all referring back to the tragic loss of Captain Rod Butler. Fine. She’d still never forgive the brass for playing God with that man’s life.
“Okay,” Doc said, barely suppressing his enthusiasm, “just like it took you a brief recovery period to build immunity once scraped, Dr. Chen’s blood seems to also hold a key to immunity—like yours.”
Doc had avoided referring to his own blood for obvious reasons, but with the hard emphasis he’d put on the words, she knew he also meant like Hunter’s blood . . . which was half Shadow, half Werewolf.
“The others had been poisoned,” Doc said, excitement making him seem like might burst if he didn’t say what was on his mind in plain English.
Sasha nodded emphatically. Yeah, Hunter had been poisoned by nearly ODing on toxin, not antitoxin, thanks to a money-grubbing Elf, that fat-ass Dugan, and a couple of sinister Vampires carrying a grudge. “So what do you propose?”
“I want to make anti-toxin with a combo of agents from Chen and a new subject that shares lineage.” Doc smoothed a palm over his scalp. “I want to turn on that imprinted gene in a newly infected subject . . . try to get whatever switched it off in a test subject’s system to turn it back on. If it worked for Chen, who knows?”
“Sasha,” Clarissa said, biting her lip. “What we’re going to do is lift some of the research that is already happening at some of the top national civilian labs.”
“Synthetic DNA,” Doc breathed out in an ecstatic rush.
“What?” Sasha looked from one doctor to another. Clarissa was hugging herself and Doc was grasping his crutch so tightly she feared his palm might bleed.
“Scientists in Maryland have already created the world’s first entirely handcrafted chromosome. DuPont has made a microbe that replicates itself—a bacterium that creates a fabric polymer as its by-product. In San Carlos, California, the lab is already using E. coli bacteria that have been synthetically reprogrammed to produce alternative fuel from a diet of
corn syrup and sugarcane.”
“It works like this, Captain,” Clarissa said, squeezing Sasha’s arm for a moment, before remembering about the camera. “We composure a DNA sequence, right at the computer, that carries the cellular instructions for making a desired product—”
“In this case, untainted blood,” Doc said, cutting her off. “Then we run it through an SNA synthesizer that creates a digital code in a long strand of actual DNA.”
“Whoa, wait a minute,” Sasha said, raking her hair. “You can actually—”
“Play God,” Clarissa said, nodding.
“That’s some scary shit.” Sasha looked at them both.
“But in this case, Captain, very necessary.” Doc gave her a look that she picked up on right away.
“You have a synthesizer here?” Sasha glanced at both Doc and Clarissa.
“That was classified, until the tragic loss of General Wilkerson.” Doc’s look intensified. “We have clearance to continue his vaccine goals in the lab.”
Bingo. She got it. The Vamps were worried that if human technology made the breakthrough of creating synthetic DNA, who knew what vaccines or bioweapons could be created to make feeding on humans off-limits?
“You understand?” Doc asked. “Fully?”
“Oh, yeah,” Sasha said. “I get it.”
“Good,” Doc said with a curt nod. “Until I had a complete DNA string that I understood, I couldn’t replicate clean blood. I needed a full chromosome sequence to plagiarize. Up to this point I could only cobble together individual cells, a single gene or two, and loop them back into the strand, hoping to ward off the contagion . . . I was following the same process that the food industry uses to add one or two extra genes in the genetic spiral of corn DNA to make that living, edible plant impervious to certain insects, or improve its tolerance to drought. But I never had the entire string.” Doc briefly closed his eyes as though he’d been summoned to Nirvana.