by Dark, Raven
I knew I wasn’t being fair to him, but I couldn’t accept that we’d all let this happen again. When I didn’t back down, he put his face right in mine.
“We all agreed to take any action we could to see Setora safe. None of us could have known that fuck was going to take her. Unless you want me to lay you out here and now, back the fuck off.”
“Sheriff?” Doc rushed in before I could respond, looking around and then focusing on the General. “T-Man said Doctor Olan has Setora?”
I glanced at Sheriff, who gave me a look that said, I’ll deal with you later. Then he rubbed the back of his neck and paced.
“He does, Doc,” Hawk answered for him, his words running together. “She’s gone.”
“How?” Doc looked angry and shocked. He crossed his arms and dropped his head for a moment before returning his livid gaze to Sheriff. “There were three men watching her, Sheriff. “How—”
“With these. Doc, look at this.” Sheriff handed him the broken dart.
Doc brought the dart’s needle to his nose and sniffed. “It’s Propalane. A heavy sedative. It’s harmless, other than that it puts you out for hours, even a small dose. He got all three of you, Hawk?” He went to Beast’s side and Sinister backed up, letting Doc examine him.
“That assistant of his did,” Hawk said, his fists tight. “I never saw it coming. Greeger knocked on the door, said Olan wanted to see me. As soon as I opened it, he put one of those darts in my chest. I didn’t know Beast was already out, so Greeger must have got right up behind him before he shot him. He got Steel right after me. I heard Steel go down before I passed out.”
“Yeah,” Steel said. “As soon as I saw Hawk drop, I was out of bed, but I didn’t even make it to the door before he shot me. I heard Setora get out of bed and try to run. Then it was lights out.”
Doc checked Beast’s vitals and thumbed open his eyes, then sat up. “He’ll be fine,” he told Sinister, Reaper and Savage. “He’ll be out for a few hours, but otherwise he’ll be right as rain.” Doc moved to Steel and looked him over next.
“I’m good, Doc, stop fussing. You’re worse than an old woman.”
Finishing up with Steel and ignoring his complaint, Doc moved over to Hawk, lifting his head and studying his eyes with the biolight taken from inside his cut.
“How the hell are you even awake, Hawk? That dart looks like it had enough Propalane to put out a manatore. I know, I know,” he added when Hawk opened his mouth to reply. “It’s a Yantu thing. I wish you’d show me how you do that.” He patted him on the back. “You’re high as a kite, but otherwise you’re fine. Amazingly.”
“And what happened there?” Sheriff asked the room at large, gesturing to the smashed pitcher.
“Savage thought Beast did it,” Sinister said. “But apparently it was Setora.”
“It was,” Steel said. “I heard her try to run, heard that thing smash, and then…yeah.”
“He drugged her with one of those darts?” I turned, and since Doctor Olan wasn’t there for me to beat the shit out of, I kicked over the chair sitting by the bed.
“Sheriff,” T-Man said, sticking his head into the room and bringing my focus to him. “Eagle Eye and I checked over the area where Doctor Olan’s carriage was being kept. It’s gone, but there’s no evidence of where he took Setora. Eagle Eye says it looks like he took the South Gate out of here about three hours ago.”
Sheriff scrubbed his face with his hands. “Fuck.”
“That makes sense,” Hawk slurred. “It’s the closest exit from here out of the Hold.”
“But that gate is supposed to be guarded,” Sheriff snapped. “Mayhem has two men on it at all times!”
In answer, T-Man handed Sheriff two tranquilizer darts. “Eagle Eye found both men passed out at the gates with the gate still wide open. He’s with Mayhem, checking to make sure the Hold is secure now.”
“That means Olan has a three-hour head start on us.” Sheriff turned around and slammed both of his palms into the table, causing it to shake.
“This is on me, Sheriff,” Doc said quietly. “I knew I didn’t like that man, but I thought it was just because he’s such a know-it-all, like Setora said. I should have seen this coming.”
“Doc, don’t blame yourself,” Hawk rasped. “I should have been able to stop him before he got close to her.”
“Both of you knock it off,” Sheriff ordered. “It’s no one’s fault except that fucking quack.” He sighed and ran his hand though his hair. “All right. Pretty Boy, Doc, Sinister, Savage, I want you four to tear Olan’s rooms apart. Greeger’s room as well. There has to be something there to tell us where they took Setora and what they plan to do with her. Reaper, T-Man, you two go over the area where his carriage was and look for the same.”
“We already did, Sheriff,” T-Man said. “There’s nothing—”
“Do it again!” he roared.
T-Man’s shoulders dropped. “Sir.”
While T-Man and Reaper departed, Hawk started to get up, pushing with unlikely heaviness to his feet. “I’ll go with them, Sheriff.”
“Sit your ass down, Hawk. You can barely stand.”
“General, I’m fine. I’m not going to sit here on my ass while—”
“Hawk, just do as he says for once.” I pushed him back into the seat. It took all my strength, but the fact that I was able to keep him down at all proved Sheriff’s point.
Hawk growled at me but slumped and stayed put.
“Come on, Doc. Sinister, Savage.” The three of them followed me to the doors to carry out Sheriff’s orders. If there was anything in Olan’s or his assistant’s room that would tell us where he’d taken Setora, we’d find it. And when I found him, I’d tear his limbs off and Greeger’s as well.
“Wait, Doc.” Sheriff stopped us at the doors. “With Olan having such a head start on us, I don’t want to delay going after him longer than necessary. How long before Hawk and Steel are good to travel?”
“They’ll be fine in a few hours. But they need at least that long before they should be driving.”
“Fine. We’ll spend the time finding out everything about Olan and what he plans to do with Setora. Doc, if Olan was capable of taking Setora, do you think he was lying about the virus? If so, that would mean…”
“Julian is real,” Doc said carefully.
“Was he lying?” I demanded.
“Without having his research in my hands, I couldn’t tell you. He told me he has a lot of notes on the information on Violets gathered from the Reach. He showed me some of it, and it looked legit, but I’m sure he took it with him.” Doc let out a long sigh. “Sheriff, for all we know, he may not even be a real doctor. Or he could be taking her to the Reach.”
He might not even be a real doctor. How that could be, I couldn’t imagine. Protective anger for Setora and rage with Olan poured through my veins, making my fists clench until my fingers threatened to break. If he was a fake, then we’d all been played for fools, and we’d put Setora in his hands. We’d put her in danger. I was going to fuck him up so badly his ancestors would feel it. Then I realized the last thing Doc had said.
“The Reach?” I asked. “Why would he do that? Isn’t it supposed to be some world-renowned guild of medical geeks?”
Sheriff’s expression seemed to ask the same question.
“Look, let me explain after,” Doc said. “There’s no point in speculating until I can find something. If I find something.”
“Right.” Sheriff nodded to Doc and me. “Go. And get Stitch to help you if you need, Doc. I’m going to talk to Mayhem and find out everything he knows about Olan and Greeger. Meanwhile, the four of you turn those rooms inside out and bring anything you find back to me. The smallest thing could be the key to finding her and bringing her back safely.”
All the way to Olan’s rooms, I shoved aside my worry for Setora and my anger with the doctor. I needed to focus on the task at hand, and I couldn’t do that with every part of me raging to tear him
to shreds. But that only left me thinking about what Doc said, about Olan possibly taking her to the Reach. My mind spun with all the possible reasons Olan would have done such a thing.
“Doc, why the fuck would he take her to the Reach?” I asked.
When we stopped at the entrance to Olan’s rooms, Doc gave me a somber look. At first, I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but he must have seen something in my face that compelled him to.
“Don’t misunderstand me, Pretty Boy. The Reach is made up of the best doctors from around the world. It’s as legitimate as they come. It’s like Delta is to us, but for medical professionals and without the secrecy. But the medical field hasn’t been properly overseen by a government since the fall of the Old World. It has a council, but the Reach is world-wide, so they can only manage their members so well. And as with any large organization like that, not every member is honorable. There is big money in medical science, especially in fields surrounding anything that pushes the boundaries of what we know.”
“You mean like Violets.”
“Yes. When there’s that much money involved, and the possibility of huge discoveries—career-defining, name-making discoveries—less than reputable groups tend to spring up, looking for ways to advance the medical field with practices that are…well…less than ethical.”
I shook my head. “You lost me, Doc. Groups? Doing what? And what do you mean, unethical?”
He sighed again and seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “By groups, I mean secret ones that operate within legitimate organizations. And by unethical, I mean experimentation. No one really fully understands Violets, and that kind of mystery breeds unethical practices. I’ve heard stories of doctors—unsubstantiated ones—who use women like Setora for their own purposes. The way some would use animals, like monkeys or rats.”
The blood drained out of my face. “Tell. Me. You’re joking.”
He shook his head slowly.
“Would they do that? Turn her into some sort of lab rat? Doc, if that’s what she’s headed for, we can’t waste time—”
He put his hands on my shoulders swiftly, as if to keep me from running off after Setora right then. “Pretty Boy, stop. We aren’t there yet. There are other reasons he might have taken her. Let’s wait until we see what we find in his rooms before we lose our heads, okay?”
Except the only other reason I could think Olan had for taking her was to sell her, and that didn’t make me feel any better. I blew out a breath and headed for the room.
“Fine.” My own voice was unrecognizable. “Let’s get to work then. The sooner we figure out where he took her, the sooner we can bring her back and I can kill him.”
In less than a minute, we were tearing into the rooms, Doc and I upending Olan’s suite, while Sinister and Savage worked on the adjoining suite Greeger had been given. Stitch joined Doc and me.
Eventually, Doc found Olan’s bags, two large cases he’d left in the closet. We tore them open and went through the clothes in one bag, Doc and Stitch rifling through the stacks of medical papers and research notes in the other.
I upended drawers, looking for anything that might tell us where Olan had taken Setora or why. When I found nothing there, I flipped up the mattress, inspecting it for any place to hide papers or other items that might look like clues. I cut open pillows, flipped up the couch in the living room area, looked on the underside of tables and chairs, and inside every nook and cranny the rooms had, all while Doc and Stitch sat at a table in the bedroom pouring over stacks of medical papers. In the adjoining room, I heard Sinister and his brother upending furniture, tearing into Greeger’s clothes and bags. Other than a few mutters between the doctors talking over what they found, no one said much, and I had a feeling we were all too pissed for chit chat.
I wasn’t a man for prayer, but I found myself praying Olan wasn’t taking her to the Reach, as Doc feared. Only, I didn’t want him to sell her at some auction, either. If he was three hours ahead of us, he could’ve been at a number of them by now.
What had to be about an hour into the search, I heard Doc call from the bedroom. “Guys? Guys, get in here.”
But before we even started moving, Doc and Stitch came into the living-room area, apparently too worked up over what they’d found to wait for us to come to them. Sinister and Savage entered behind them.
“What did you find, Doc?” I hoped he and Stitch had better luck than the rest of us, since we hadn’t found shit.
Doc held up a large stack of papers as he sat on the couch. “Okay, so. Here’s the thing. These look legitimate. They’re mostly medical findings on Violets that go back twenty years. Lucky for us, the good doctor is obsessive about his notes. There are a few papers on Setora and D in here, blood test results from D, and notes, not only on Setora, but information gathered on other Violets.”
“So? What are you getting at, Doc?”
“Well, for one thing, it answers one question I had. I was starting to think he was a fraud. But looking through most of this, he’s definitely what he claimed to be.”
“We’re not sure if that makes things better or worse, though,” Stitch added.
“How so?” Sinister asked behind him.
Stitch looked at him and held up his own papers, coming to stand behind Doc. “On one hand, it means he isn’t likely to sell her.”
Doc put his papers down on the coffee table in front of him. “But on the other hand, it means his purpose with her is more likely to be medical-based—”
“So he’s more likely taking her to the Reach.” I yanked on my ponytail.
“Not necessarily. I was going to say, that or he’s got some other purpose in mind.” He turned on the couch and took the papers Stitch handed him, then set them down and spread them out for me to see. Not that they meant anything to me. “See, his medical notes look legit, but there’s a problem. There’s a lot of crap about this virus he mentioned, but most of it looks like gibberish.”
“How so?” Sinister asked before I could. “I saw some of the notes. They made sense to me.”
Doc nodded. “I know. Initially, they did to me, too. But the notes are very carefully worded. There’s just enough explanation of this A-V-One virus that, to even an experienced doctor, it sounds authentic. But some of it makes me curious. Looking deeper, I can see something is off, but I can’t put my finger on it.”
Doc pointed at the paper and continued. “He’s made notes on all the symptoms. The dreams Setora, D, and other Violets, including Serena have had. The seizures, the super strength…” He scratched his head. “What he says about the symptoms all line up with what Setora and D have said but… I don’t know. Give Stitch and me a few minutes to look over this. Something’s just not right.”
I sat opposite Doc and looked at the papers on the table, trying to think. This whole thing was such a mess, and my thoughts were starting to jumble. Worry for Setora wouldn’t let me see straight.
“I don’t understand why he would leave all those notes behind,” Sinister said, looking over the papers and drawing me from my own thoughts. “If his work with Violets is legitimate, he wouldn’t leave his research.”
“Well, he left his clothes behind,” I said. “So did Greeger. Why would they do that?”
Savage tapped his brother on the shoulder and Sinister glanced at him. When Savage started signing, Sinister nodded.
“Right.” He looked between Savage and us, interpreting. “‘Olan must have wanted to avoid attracting attention when he took Setora out of here. For someone who was supposed to be staying here another week, he and that assistant couldn’t allow themselves to be seen carrying their bags to their carriage or it would have sparked questions.’”
I stood up, more to relieve pent up energy than anything else. “It also probably means, wherever he was going, it was close to here. No more than a day or two’s travel. If he was intending a long trip, he would have risked taking his belongings.”
“Right,” Doc agreed. “It may narro
w the field as to where we need to look for him. But there’s one more thing—” Doc began, picking up a few of the papers again.
“Boys.” Sheriff entered the suite with Mayhem, walking into the room until he reached the couch. He looked tired and worn.
“Sheriff.” I gestured for him to join us and took my seat. He didn’t seem to notice. “General Mayhem, how’s Setora’s mother?”
“D’s asleep and will stay that way for now.” Mayhem sat on the arm of the couch beside Doc, looking suddenly ten years older. “I don’t want her finding out about Setora just yet. Seeing her daughter after all these years of searching for her… If D found out about this, it would crush her. She’s been through enough.”
“She won’t be happy when she wakes up and realizes you didn’t tell her, General.” Stitch’s eyes held a muted sort of amusement, and I thought, fondness for her.
“I don’t care. And you aren’t to say anything, either, am I clear?”
“Oh, yeah. I agree. Not a word.”
“Report, Pretty Boy.” Sheriff said. “Did you find anything?”
“Doc did.” I nodded to Doc. “Nothing about where Olan took Setora, though.”
Doc and Stitch filled Sheriff and Mayhem in about everything they’d found on Olan. Doc also relayed the concerns he’d told me about regarding the Reach before we’d started the search.
Sheriff put his head back and closed his eyes. I could all but see him trying not to think about the notion of what Setora might be facing if she was taken to some underhanded offshoot of the Reach. Sheriff came over and sat down beside me, dropping heavily, as if the weight of all that had happened was finally taking its toll on him.
Suddenly I felt like a sack of shit for blaming him. As he’d said, no one could have predicted that asshole specialist would take off with Setora, I’d have to apologize to Sheriff later.
“Sheriff, there’s something else I was going to tell the others before you came in.” Doc held up the papers in his hand. “Some of the files we found have pages missing. It looks like whole files are missing, too.”
“Missing?” I asked. “Do you think that’s why something seemed off?”
