by Paul Neuhaus
When they got back to the reception area, Terry Truitt was still hanging in his net made of ice. Henaghan raised her index finger and pointed directly at the doctor’s eye. At first, Molly thought Quinn was going to chastise the man but then a long spike of hard ice grew from the redhead’s fingertip. It was millimeters from the surface of Truitt’s cornea. “Where did she go? Nisha. Where?”
Dr. Terry shrunk away as best he could, but the net was tight. He was frantic. “I don’t know,” he said. “Why would she tell me? She’s got no reason to tell me. I don’t need to know.”
Henaghan jabbed her finger a bit closer and deepened her voice. Her tone was commanding. “Don’t bullshit me,” she said. “Where the fuck did she go?!”
Truitt clawed at the wood paneling behind him in a vain effort to go through it. He was crying. “I don’t know. I swear to God I don’t know.”
“I don’t think he knows, Quinn,” Molly said quietly from just behind her girlfriend.
The redhead changed tacks. “Liam’s back there still. He’s liquifying. Why?”
The doctor’s breathing was rapid, but he sensed he was out of danger. “Nisha created Caress. The addicts come here. I keep them addicted until she’s ready for them. The drug… It breaks down their tissues and she… digests them. Absorbs their essences. Takes their power.”
Quinn recoiled. “She eats them?”
“Yes. Yes. Absorbs their power. Gets a temporary boost.”
“The drug. Where does it come from?”
“There’s a small factory. In Calabasas. It’s under a cloak. It comes out of there.”
Henaghan nodded and took a step back. The icicle on her fingertip retreated. “Don’t go anywhere,” she said to the doctor, then she spun and went back to the parking lot. After a moment’s confusion, Molly followed.
“What now?” the brunette said.
“I dunno,” Quinn said. “For now, we drive again.”
They got into the Cooper and Blank put the car in gear. As they pulled out, the brunette said, “Wow, you really were like Batman back there.”
As they got underway, Quinn tried a trick she’d seen Patrick Ferley do. It worked.
At the Celestial Pictures Ranch a “hologram” of Henaghan appeared above David Olkin. He was so startled he stumbled sideways. “David,” she said, her voice echoing. “It’s time to drop the baby games. We’ve got a crisis situation on our hands.”
Olkin’s first reaction was to bristle at the term “baby games”. “Now hold on a minute—”
The redhead cut him off. “We’re all being played like a bunch of assholes. There’s a Deva, David. She’s made it her sole mission to wipe out all the human Channelers on earth. She’s been at it for hundreds of years. She’s the reason Adam Johns rose to power. She’s the reason you’re fighting that stupid war. Caress is her creation. She’s been trying to wipe us out on multiple fronts.”
Olkin’s eyes went wider and his jaw slack. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
“Do I look like I’m kidding? David, she’s got Josie.”
Henaghan’s former boss stiffened and his expression went hard. “Tell me where you need me to be,” he said.
“I need you to rally whatever support you can at the Ranch. I don’t even care what side they’re on. If they care about staying alive, I want them.”
“I’m on it,” David said, completely resolved.
“You’ll hear from me soon. And I mean soon.” Quinn dropped back down into her own body in Molly’s car.
“What now?” Blank said.
“Keep us heading toward Calabasas,” the younger woman said. “I gotta do some recon.”
Quinn again sent her essence high into the air. Again, it tracked with the car she rode in. She looked down on the Valley and, almost immediately, she saw a weird smudge on the terrain in Calabasas. But she expected that smudge. The truth is, she hoped to see two anomalies. When she found only one, she was disappointed but not shocked. Nisha could’ve gone anywhere in the world, and, as such, tracking her would be difficult. Henaghan held out hope both the Deva and her niece might actually be in the Caress factory, but she wasn’t optimistic. If nothing else, maybe she’s find a clue at the facility as to where to look next.
When she came back to herself, she told Molly exactly where to go.
When the two women were in sight of the plant where Caress was made, Quinn told Molly to stop. “Park here,” she said. “The cloaking field starts at the edge of the parking lot.” They got out of Blank’s car and surveyed their next target. A sign outside proclaimed, “Albtraum Pharmaceuticals - A Division of Tricolore”. Quinn shook her head. “Subtle,” she said.
“What’s subtle?”
“Nisha owns Tricolore. Albtraum means ‘nightmare’ in German. I almost coulda found this place on my own.”
“Are we going in?”
“Not yet,” Quinn said. “Gimme a minute…” She closed her eyes and again projected her essence to David Olkin at the Ranch. “Can you see me?” she said to him.
“I can see you,” he said. He was surrounded by six others. All people Quinn recognized. All Tilted. “Come to me. I’m at the factory.”
She didn’t wait for a reply. Instead, she snapped back into her own body on the empty road in Calabasas. After a moment, the redhead’s former boss appeared with his cohorts. They looked around, getting their bearings. All of them were exhausted and a few were still green around the gills from Quinn’s recent misadventure with the deamhan. David read the sign in front of the facility. “Subtle,” he said.
“I know. Listen, I need a couple of volunteers. There’re some patients back at Truitt’s clinic and they’re in a bad way. Do any of you guys have any medical training?”
A handsome black guy Henaghan didn’t know raised his hand. “My name’s Rick. I’m an EMT,” he said.
“Perfect! Can anyone give him a hand?”
A skinny white guy with freckles said, “I can.”
“Listen,” Quinn said. “I wanna warn you guys: What you’re gonna see ain’t pretty. Just do whatever you can for the people there. Also, you’re gonna find a dude pinned to a wall. You can leave him there to rot if you want.” The two men nodded and Henaghan teleported them both to the clinic in Sylmar. She turned back to the others. Raising her hand, palm up, she conjured an image of Wesley Tzu’s cloaking device. “This little machine can hide Channelers and Channeling from view. It can be spotted if you know how to do it. Something you may all have to learn soon. For right now, our job is to get into this place, destroy all the manufacturing equipment, destroy anything that looks like what I just showed you and maybe fight a Deva. I doubt she’s here, but it’s possible. If she is here, I’ll do the heavy lifting and the rest of you will lend support. Also, and I can’t stress this enough, she’s got my niece. She looks like a sixteen-year-old girl. Five foot four. Shortish blond hair. Don’t do anything at all to endanger her if you see her. Does all that make sense?”
The men all said that it did.
“Hold up,” David said. “If you can spot this cloaking device doing its cloaking can you focus enough to home in on it from out here? If we can take out the devices first, we’ll be able to see whoever’s in there who’s a Channeler. Josie in particular should be pretty easy to pick out.” He turned to his followers. “Josie’s a Changeling. She’s hard to miss.”
Henaghan grinned. “That kind of thinking’s why you get the big dollars.” She gave the five men a brief overview of how to spot a cloaking field.
One man, a muscular fellow in a Patagonia jacket and waterproof pants rose into the air. “Let me take a crack at it,” he said.
“That’s Mason,” David said to Quinn. “He’s wicked sensitive.”
Mason was only in the air for a few moments before three small explosions rang out within the Albtraum compound. He looked down. “Three cloakers, three boom-booms.”
All the people on the ground grinned. As she rose up herself, Quinn said. “Mason’s
getting a little something extra in his envelope this week.” All five of the Channelers were soon in the air and pointed toward the pharmaceuticals plant. The redhead closed her eyes and scanned the whole compound. There were several Channelers there (they were probably integral to the process of making Caress), but she did not detect either Nisha or Josie’s unique signatures. “Fuck,” she said. “They’re not here. Okay,” she said to the others. “Be very discriminating. Take out the manufacturing capability but leave the computers and any paper you find intact. I’m hoping we’ll find some clues.”
As a single unit, all six magic-users drifted toward Albtraum. From the ground came an annoyed voice. “Hey! Aren’t you forgetting something?!”
Quinn didn’t reply. Instead she drew Molly up into the air and kept her suspended the whole way in.
Quinn and her allies caught the workers completely unawares and none of them were particularly strong Channelers anyway. The production of Caress was mostly automated, and the spell casters were there to make sure the birthing process went smoothly. There were no human fatalities—only damage to infrastructure and machines. Quinn was not pressed to the point where she needed Molly to help her regulate the flow of maya through her body. Blank was reduced to the role of spectator.
While Olkin’s men watched over the Channelers they’d captured, he and the two girls convened in the main office to tear through whatever records they could find. David was very skeptical. “You said Terry Truitt didn’t know where Nisha’s holing up. I can’t imagine why any of these jokers would know.”
“Okay, fine,” Quinn said, right on the edge of testiness. “But I gotta leave here with something.”
“How about the fact, you just got Caress off the streets and probably saved a bunch of kids just like Josie?”
Henaghan pulled down another overstuffed manila folder and poured through it. “That’s good,” she said. “But it’s not good enough.”
“Um, guys, I think you better look at this.” It was Molly. She was sitting at the desk behind the foreman’s computer. Both David and Quinn came around to peer over her shoulders.
The document Blank was looking at was highly technical. It had equations and complex formulas. “I don’t understand,” the redhead said. “What is it?”
“I did an independent movie eight-nine years ago. I played a CSI. Not a bullshit TV CSI, but a real CSI. I did a ton of research then no one saw the movie. Anyway, unless I’m crazy, what we’re looking at here is the recipe for Caress.”
Henaghan shrugged. “Alright. So, we’ll hold onto this place until we can get someone in here to take a magnet to all the hard drives.”
“Didn’t Truitt say that Nisha created Caress?”
“He did.”
“Yeah, well, there’s a reason for that. Lookit this…”
Molly pointed at a formula on the screen and Quinn crossed her eyes. “Molly, honey, I shoulda told you this a while ago: I flunked chem class. I can’t tell the difference between an isotope and soap on a rope.”
“The prime ingredient in Caress—practically the only ingredient in Caress—comes directly from Nisha herself. It’s a biological component. Apparently, the Deva have like pheromones or something. This chemical… it’s a weird mix of love potion and digestive juice.”
Olkin sighed. “So, what you’re saying is, as long as you’ve got Nisha…”
“You’ve got Caress, yes.”
Both David and Henaghan stood up straight behind Molly. “Fuck,” Henaghan said.
Sam liked Donald Gilstrap. She really did. He was the new kid in the continuum of her caretakers, but he treated her with as much respect and kindness as their different stations allowed.
Sam liked Donald Gilstrap, but she knew killing him was necessary.
She wasn’t a Changeling. She couldn’t transmute matter, so she wouldn’t be able to simply disguise herself as Gilstrap. She needed his body. She needed to inhabit it if her plan was to work.
When the two of them were alone, looking out into the courtyard and listening to Brahms Violin Concerto in D major on a phonograph record, Sam reached leaned over and snapped Donald’s neck.
A trick she’d learned from one of her books.
She lowered him to the floor as gently as she could and watched as the light left his eyes. When the light was fully gone, she replaced it with her own. She stood, adjusted her tie and made sure her I.D. badge was affixed to her chest. Then she went out into the hall, locked the door to 7C behind her and causally left Arista Laboratories.
She was driven by an idea. A strong idea though it was not yet fully-formed. Somehow, she knew the woman made of light was responsible for all the misery she’d endured.
She and the woman made of light must have a chat.
In her head, the Brahms Concerto still played.
9
Control
As Molly and Quinn drove back to Burbank, Quinn was in a foul mood. Molly was just anxious. “What’re we gonna do?” the older woman said.
“I don’t know,” Quinn said. “I don’t even know where to start. David’s gonna go back to the Ranch. He’s gonna make sure everyone there knows just in case anyone’s got any bright ideas. He’s also gonna try again to broker a peace with the Resolute. Of course, that’d mean some of them are willing to listen to reason and I’m not so sure that’s gonna happen. If they’re too dumb to understand this threat affects all of us, I’m gonna say fuck ‘em.”
“Do you think if we look through Josie’s room, we’ll find any clues?”
Henaghan sighed. “Nisha plays things pretty close to the vest. I don’t think there’ll be any clues about where to find her. We will find Caress, though. I can almost guarantee that. Obviously, we’ll burn that shit.” The redhead put her feet up on the dash and slipped into a serious funk. “However all this turns out, I want you to know I’m sorry.”
“Sorry about what?”
“About cheating on you.”
The brunette laughed. “I don’t think getting dream-raped qualifies as cheating.”
“Yeah, well, some of it was consensual.”
“Okay. Look, I’m gonna give you a pass on any affairs that take place in any world other than the real one. Although, given the circles you run in, I may live to regret that.”
“Still. I paraphrase Harvey Keitel from Reservoir Dogs: ‘If you cheat on me in a dream, you better wake up and apologize’. So, I’m apologizing.”
“I accept your apology. Not many people would say they were sorry for fucking an inter-dimensional being. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”
Quinn giggled, grateful for the little touch of levity. “Do me a favor: When we get home, you search Josie’s room. I need to brainstorm.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then, I guess we gotta—”
A strange voice cut through Quinn’s consciousness. Masculine and oily with a Mid-Atlantic accent. “Quinn Henaghan,” it said. Quinn dropped her feet from the dashboard and sat up straight, listening. The voice came again, inaudible to Molly as it cut through the redhead’s whole being. “Quinn Henaghan.” This time, the younger woman recognized the speaker. She turned to her girlfriend and said. “Keep driving. I’ll be right back.”
Quinn reappeared in the Astral Plane. Considering who she was going to meet, she should’ve brought Molly with her, but she didn’t want to put her girlfriend in danger on another plane of existence. It was a bridge too far.
Four black shapes waited for her, pulsing in the void. One of them was the owner of the summoning voice. Reginald Verbic. He didn’t look quite the same as he had when Henaghan had last seen him. He was diminished, weaker. That made sense since Quinn had “killed” him on the Physical Plane and now he was forced to reconstitute himself on the Astral. The four other Asura with him weren’t much stronger.
“I was surprised to hear from you,” the redhead said.
“Of that, I have no doubt. It was a business call,” he said. “I don’t see you and I so
cializing anytime soon.”
Quinn nodded, having anticipated such a statement. “Fine then. State your terms.”
The black swirl that was Verbic inflated, a gesture meant to denote importance. “I can help you find the Deva,” he said. “By their nature, Deva can stay hidden when they don’t want to be found. None of your gifts will help you because, you don’t have the aptitude. No human does. But Asura are another story. I see her now. I know exactly where she is. Her little tricks don’t impede my vision. I can help you find your niece.”
“And…?”
“And what?”
“You’ve only given me half of the equation. What do you want in return?”
The lead Asura said, with all the authority it could muster, “I want you to tear down the mesh keeping my people from returning to the Physical Plane.”
For a moment the offer hung in the air. Then Quinn threw back her head and laughed. “How stupid do you think I am? I’m not offering up thousands of lives in exchange for one lost girl. I’m not Aisling.”
All five Asura pulsed with anger but they held their ground. Verbic’s voice took on the quality of a shrug. “Fine. Have it your own way.”
Henaghan shook her head. She was too contemptuous to even say goodbye. When she dropped back down into Molly’s car, however, she was in an even greater funk.
“What happened?” Molly said.
“Nothing,” Quinn mumbled. “Wrong number.”
Sam held onto Donald Gilstrap’s body until she got to the edge of the Celestial Pictures Ranch then she surrendered it. She paused at the edge of the tree line and sniffed the air.
She could sense the woman made of light was close.
When they got back to the house in Burbank, they saw Mia’s car on the street and remembered they’d left the younger Henaghan behind. Quinn sighed. Molly said, “Do you want me to get rid of her?”
