Gryphon, Lennox and I have split up, each moving towards one of the three addresses Mystery Man gave me. I check my watch. Another two minutes until I can strike. We're going to do it simultaneously so that there's absolutely no chance of them contacting each other. This needs to be quick and efficient. Interrogate them, kill them, then find additional clues about their plans. Dare I hope that one of them keeps a detailed diary with all his evil plans written down? That would make my day. No more searching for the needle in a murderous haystack. Just simple, straightforward answers.
Could life be boring for once? Just this time?
One more minute. I move closer to the edge of the roof, all my senses on full alert. There are two people in the house beneath me; one sleeping, one moving around on the ground floor. I don't know which of them is the important one, or if both of them are worth interrogating, so I'm going to have to knock one out without alerting the second. Usually, not all that difficult, but this entire case has been so full of twists and turns that by now I always expect the worse.
There's a small balcony on the floor below, my way into the house. I'm not stupid enough to walk through the front door. Now that I know it wasn't the Healers themselves who killed Winston Kindler, they must be on high alert, knowing that someone is out there who knows what's going on. On the one hand, I want to blame Gryphon for acting rashly, especially with killing Caitlin, but he was trying to stop more people from getting poisoned. Who could have known about the clause in Mr Kinder's will that said that all his remaining sweets were to be given to children for free? We don't know yet if all those sweets were poisoned, but let's expect the worst.
Midnight. Time to strike. I drop down onto the balcony, landing on all fours without making a sound. I get to work on the balcony doors, unlocking them within seconds. Someone didn't think of people entering this way. How pathetic.
I walk into the quiet house, knives at the ready in case someone surprises me. But that's unlikely. I've still got my senses focused on the two people, one below me, one straight ahead. A faint snoring is coming from nearby. That will make things even easier. I slowly prowl along the corridor towards the bedroom. I don't tiptoe like they do on television. That just makes you unsteady and more likely to trip.
The door to the bedroom is closed, but I'm well versed in opening a wooden door without it creaking. This one is old, but it's no match for me. I push it with just enough pressure to move it, but not make a sound. It's something I learned as a toddler. There's a certain seventh sense to it, a feeling that tells you when to stop and when to put your hands lower or higher to avoid a creak. It's hard to explain.
All the while, the snoring continues along with regular deep breaths. The man is fast asleep. From my pocket, I pull a tiny vial and empty it onto a cotton handkerchief. I stop breathing, not wanting to feel the effects of the drug myself. I crouch low and move towards the bed, staying low enough that even if the man suddenly opens his eyes, I won't be in his line of sight. As soon as I reach him, I hold the handkerchief above his face. Only after he's taken a few more breaths do I press it hard on his nose and mouth. By now, he's already so deep asleep that he won't be able to react. I take his wrist and measure his pulse while waiting for him to become unconscious enough for me to move him. When his heartbeat has slowed down enough, I remove the handkerchief and place it in a sealed bag before stuffing it into my pocket.
The other person is moving around on the ground floor, and there's no time to waste. I stuff a cloth into the man's mouth and bind his hands and legs. I doubt he'll wake up in the next hour or so, but better safe than sorry.
Time for the second human to be subdued. This one will be a little harder because he's awake. I leave the bedroom, quietly closing the door again to hide my tracks.
Heading towards the staircase, I keep my focus on the other person. Now that I'm getting closer, I sniff the air. It's a woman. Interesting. So far, everyone involved in this has been male, except Caitlin but she was just a small fish in a pond full of sharks.
She is moving around from room to room. What the hell is she doing? She's either an insomniac who's trying to get some exercise by pacing back and forth, or she's looking for something. Maybe she's not connected to the man I just drugged? Perhaps she's a thief - but no, for that, she's very loud and careless. Even a novice would know better than to make such a racket.
With so many unknowns, I decide to take a page out of Gryphon's book. Remembering how he surprised me, I grin and launch myself into the air. The chandelier on the ceiling above the stairwell swings violently when I grab hold of it, but it carries my weight. Good. I wasn't entirely sure it would be strong enough. Reckless but fun.
I wait until the chandelier has stopped moving, then clear my throat, making my voice as deep as possible.
"Help!" I rasp. Of course, I have no idea what the man in the bed sounds like, but I've made it muffled enough that it should be believable. People in danger rarely sound like they usually do.
Immediately, the sounds below stop. One breath. Two. She's trying to figure out what to do. Then she starts running towards the staircase. I can't help but smile when she comes into view. She's a big woman, twice as wide as me but a tiny bit shorter. She's wearing a pink suit that reminds me of a sausage skin and hair that would make an excellent bird's nest. Not what I expected.
She runs up the stairs, huffing and puffing. This is going to be an easy one.
"Philip?" she calls out when she reaches the top step.
I don't let her get any further. I drop down right behind her and have a knife pressed against her throat before she can even turn.
"Don't make a sound," I hiss.
She freezes.
"Good. Now walk with me towards that wall. Very nice. Stretch up your arms and put your palms against the wall."
With one practised hand, I tie her wrists together while keeping the knife so close to her skin that it's a constant reminder of what might happen if she struggles.
"Let's go and have a chat," I whisper menacingly and push her into the room closest to us. It's an office with two large desks and matching high-back chairs. Every wall is lined with bookshelves, all of them filled with folders, notebooks and cardboard boxes.
"Sit."
I shove the woman towards an expensive leather chair, and she obediently sits down, breathing hard. The smell of sweat fills my nostrils, and I relax my cat senses a little to return to my human sense of smell.
"What do you want?" she asks with a high-pitched, shaky voice.
I ignore her and bind her legs to the chair, then wrap another rope around her ample waist. I attach her wrists to the arms of the chair, nice and exposed for my future plans. By the time I've got her secured, she's become a little less scared and is glaring at me.
"You have no idea who you're dealing with, girl. You better let me go, and I might stay quiet about what you've just done."
I laugh. Did she just call me 'girl'? I'm going to show her that I'm nothing remotely as innocent as that. I scratch my nose with one of my knives, and she immediately shuts up. Nice to know she's quick in understanding a well-placed hint.
"I'm asking the questions," I state. "And we can do this the quick and easy, or the painful and drawn-out way. You're going to tell me everything eventually. It's your decision on how much it's going to hurt."
She blanches a little but stays quiet.
"Oh, and I'm going to interrogate the other guy too," I say as an afterthought. "If your statements don't match, I'm going to have to be more... persuasive." I smile at her.
Her eyelids flicker and a tear runs down her cheek. Pathetic.
"Please don't hurt me," she whimpers. "I don't know anything."
I don't believe her for a second. Besides, her heartbeat tells me all I need to know.
I drag another chair over and sit down so close to her that our knees are touching. Invading her personal space results in her leaning back, but there's nowhere for her to move.
"Let's s
tart with the easy questions," I purr. "What's your name?"
"Elizabeth," she says far too quickly.
"You're lying." I take my biggest knife and casually lay it across my thighs. "Tell me your name."
"Constance Green."
This time, her heartbeat doesn't increase. Good. Seems like we're getting somewhere.
"Why are you here, Constance?"
"This is my home."
Truth.
"And what were you doing down there? It sounded like you were rather busy."
She hesitates for a moment. "I was looking for my glasses. I keep losing them."
I can't help it, I have to laugh. "A world of excuses and you came up with that one? Come on, Constance, you're starting to make this difficult for yourself."
"They're going to kill me if I tell you anything," she whispers. "You don't know how dangerous they are."
I look at her unimpressed. "Trust me, I do. And I couldn't care less. Tell me what you were doing."
She purses her lips, her scared expression making way for determination. "I was looking for my glasses."
Seriously? I sigh and get up, pulling a needle from my collar. I hold it up in front of her so she can see.
"Do you know what they used to do to witches? They pricked them with needles to see if they had a devil's mark beneath their skin. It may not sound very frightening, but this needle is dipped in poison. Every prick will feel like a cut with a knife. Without the blood. Handy, isn't it?"
Without warning, I jab the needle into her cheek. She screams, flinging her head from side to side, but there's no escaping the pain. I know how much it hurts. They didn't just do this to witches. The Pack uses the same technique to force children to shift.
I give her half a minute to recover, then I repeat my question for the third time.
"What were you doing? What are you hiding?"
She glares at me. "I'm not going to tell you."
Her cheek has turned red and is starting to swell. The effect won't last; she'll be good as new in an hour or so.
"Do you know what happens if don't remove the needle immediately after the prick?" I ask her sweetly. "Do you want to find out?"
She shakes her head, but I ignore her. This time, I pierce her thigh. It doesn't have to be deep, just enough to break the skin and release the poison. Constance screams in agony, fighting against her bonds. She's stronger than I expected, but I'm confident her bonds will hold. Ropework is one of my lesser known talents.
"This time I took it out," I tell her while waiting for her to stop trembling. "But next time, I might leave it in for a bit. Maybe I could leave you here while I talk to the other guy. How does that sound?"
She shoots me a hateful glare. "Go to hell, bitch."
First girl, then bitch. That woman really doesn't have any manners. I shrug and take out a second needle. The first one will have very little poison on it by now, but it's still enough to be effective one more time. I poke them both into her knees. Most people don't know this, but knees are one of the places where a lot of nerves lie unprotected, waiting to be stimulated.
"Last chance," I whisper into her ear. "Next time, they're staying."
She opens her mouth and spits at me. A splotch of saliva hits my collar bone. Alright, she doesn't want to be cooperative. I can stop playing nice. This time, I opt for the tips of her fingers. It's an amazingly effective spot. A papercut can make a grown man cry, and my poisoned needles hurt a lot more than a papercut.
She howls in pain, struggling so hard that she's making the chair sway from side to side. I get up and look down at her in satisfaction. With both her wrists tied to the chair's arms, she has no way of removing the needles.
"I'll leave you to it," I say lightly and move to leave the room. "Remember, I gave you the chance to do this the painless way. You were too stupid to take it."
She flings a string of insults at me, but I simply close the door behind me and ignore her. She's going to be a lot more pliable when I return.
Chapter Twenty
Turns out the man is more cooperative than the woman. After a bit of tying up, needle pricking and a lot of threats, his tongue loosens immensely.
“Those abominations need to be exterminated.”
I only listen with one ear, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of having an audience for his craziness.
“One day, if we don’t do anything now, they’ll take over. They’ll subjugate us humans and make us work for them.”
“Like they now work for you as part of the Pack?” I can’t help but interject. He just glares at me, but it’s clear that he knows I’m right. The Pack is built on enslaving shifters, turning them into thugs and killers to earn money for their owners.
“They’re too violent to be left running free. They’d kill us all.”
I sigh. “We kill because humans train us to. It’s kill or be killed. Which option would you choose?”
“We?” he cries. “You’re one of them?”
For a second, I let my panther take over, knowing that my eyes will change colour. He gasps and tries to move away from me, but he’s tied to the bed, unable to do anything more than wriggle.
“Let’s talk about the poison,” I say, speeding up the conversation a little. “What does it do exactly?”
He frowns at me. “You don’t know.”
“It doesn’t matter what I know or don’t,” I snap. “Answer my question.”
To emphasise my words, I pull another needle from my hidden stash sewn into my collar. His eyes widen and his heart rate increases. Good. He’s learned his lesson.
“It’s supposed to suppress the shift,” he whispers. “Make them human.”
“Supposed to?”
“We didn’t get it to work as intended in time. We had a deadline and we didn’t meet it, so we gave out the half-finished version instead.”
“Who gave you that deadline?”
“If I tell you that, I’m dead.”
I grin. “If you don’t, you’re dead too. You basically have to decide how quickly you want to die. Today or at some unknown day in the future?”
His expression turns more and more defeated. “Some very powerful people. That’s all I can tell you. I never even talked to them myself. I’m not one of the leaders, I just head up the lab. You need to ask Constance about that.”
Oh, so the woman is higher up in the hierarchy than him? Good to know.
“The current poison, the unfinished version, what does it do?” I ask, dreading the answer.
“Kill them, I think. All the test subjects died. We managed to keep them alive for longer, but in the end, none of them survived. There weren’t enough to come to a final conclusion, but the probability that the current substance is still lethal is high. Now that it’s been given to hundreds of shifters, there’s a chance that some of them may survive, but nobody knows for sure. It will be interesting to see.”
I’m stunned. He’s talking about children dying without even realising it. For him, it’s science, medical experiments, something he believes in. I’m going to enjoy killing him.
“Is there an antidote?” I ask sharply.
He smiles, surprising me. “I’m not going to tell you that. You’re not going to destroy all of our work. In the end, it doesn’t matter if they can’t shift or if they die. The result is the same. No more shifters. Even with the unfinished product, we’ve still succeeded.”
“Yes, you’re going to tell me. One way or another.”
He clamps his jaws and glares at me, making it clear that he has no intention of doing so.
I rummage in my pockets until I find a small yellow vial.
“You’re a scientist, so I assume you know what Bishop’s Mantle is?”
He blanches visibly but doesn’t reply.
“It’s a plant that produces a very intense nerve poison,” I continue. “It starts acting slow, paralysing your extremities, then slowly moving through your body, shutting down your organs one by one. All whi
le giving you terrible pain. The heart and lungs are the last organs to still work. You’ll be conscious the entire time, realising that you’re dying, but are unable to move, unable to do anything about it. You won’t even be able to scream. I’m told the pain is unimaginable by the time your heart is affected. It can take hours to die, even up to a day. Do you really want this? Is it worth it?”
His heartbeat is racing, and sweat is pearling on his forehead. I can smell his fear even with my human senses.
When he still doesn’t respond, I flick open the vial and sit down on the bed beside him.
“Last chance,” I whisper, holding the little flask close to his mouth.
His eyes have turned white with panic. He’s about to break. Just a tiny bit closer… the vial touches his bottom lip and he cries out.
“There is!”
I sit back a little but keep the poison in his line of sight.
“Tell me more,” I encourage him, smiling despite his hateful glare.
“It only works within the first two days of the shifter poison being administered, after that, it has no effect,” he says hastily, his eyes never leaving the vial. “That’s why it was of no use to us. We needed the shifters to be further into the transformation, but they always died before they could get to the stage where they would no longer be able to shift. There’s a stockpile near the lab, unless someone’s thrown it away. As I said, we didn’t have a use for it, we just produced one batch of it just in case we’d need it later on.”
“One batch? How many doses?”
“A hundred at most. If it’s still there.”
We can save one hundred children. If there are that many left. Two days. How long has it been since Caitlin gave all those sweets away for free? Was that even in Mr Kindler’s will or did she make that up since she was working for the Healers herself?
The flicker of hope I’d just felt dwindles down. Unless some of the shifter children waited with eating the sweets, or unless not all of the sweets were laced with poison, it’s too late for all of them.
This is going to be a big problem. For each and every child, we need to know whether they’re a shifter and how long ago they ate the sweets. Then decide whether it’s worth giving them the antidote or not. How many children are there in this town? I don’t even want to begin to guess. And what if he’s lying? What if the antidote works no matter how long it’s been? Are we going to let children die by believing him?
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