by Wen Spencer
Rennie helped Ukiah out to the garage, pausing on their way through the kitchen long enough to empty the emergency stash of power bars. Rennie got Ukiah into the passenger side of the Cherokee, and slid in behind the wheel. The car smelled of baby powder.
The Pack raced out in front of them, their minds linking together into one great hunting beast. Bear had tracked Sam on foot through a zigzag course; apparently the kidnappers had tried to lose her by turning at every possible corner, hampered by the rush-hour traffic. Abandoning that strategy, the kidnappers then turned down Morewood Avenue to Baum Boulevard.
“She’s cut her left foot on a piece of metal,” Bear reported at the distant intersection as Rennie hit Baum half a mile down. “She’s leaving a blood trail.”
Rennie slid down the windows, and under the smell of hot pavement and exhaust, they caught the scent of blood. “We’re on it.”
Thus they beat Max to Sam.
Baum Boulevard cut a rare straight line along well-to-do Shadyside and into the poor neighborhood of East Liberty. At the end, Baum collided with Penn Circle, changing names and continuing straight another block before ending, as Penn Avenue took traffic on a dogleg turn before shooting off toward Wilkinsburg. Sam’s trail led down Penn as far as the busway, and then suddenly veered across the street and into a bar called Aces and Eights.
Rennie slammed the Cherokee to a stop in front of the bar, sprang out of the SUV, and went snarling through the door. Ukiah stumbled along in his wake. The bar was a narrow, dark, smoky cave of a room, inexplicably crowded, a shock to Ukiah’s senses. A wall-size menu of beers explained the countless varieties of smells that hit him. Pirates baseball played on the TV screen, generating roars from the men packed around the bar and milling between the crammed tables. In the back corner was a doorway, leading to a dining room.
Sam’s voice came from a back room, loud and hoarse. “If you haven’t noticed, this is a fully loaded, semiautomatic nine-millimeter pistol and I’m very pissed off. Unless you want your balls blown into the next county, fuck off!”
Rennie had checked just inside the door, orienting himself. He exploded into movement now. Ukiah had never seen Pack fight normal men before. It was like watching a wolf tear through a display of rag dolls. Heavily muscled men swung at Rennie, only to strike at thin air. Rennie struck back, iron hard, lightning fast, and deadly accurate. Those that didn’t get out of his way fast enough were flung through the air, landing behind the bar, through the window, behind tables. After Rennie mauled through the bar patrons, the rest of the Dog Warriors poured through the shattered windows and pinned the hapless prone men, making sure they stayed down.
The last man already had his hands up in the air, surrendering to an armed and pissed off Sam.
Rennie stalked forward, drawing his knife, murder on his mind.
“Rennie! No!”
Sam fired at Rennie’s feet, the crack of her bullet making the Dog Warriors tuck themselves behind hard cover, pulling weapons out.
“I’m on the phone!” Sam snapped, her pistol still aimed at the Pack leader. “Keep the noise down!”
“Damn it, woman, that’s a good way to get shot,” Rennie growled.
Sam just glared at him and told the person on the phone, “Yes, that was gunfire! No, I’m not in danger. I told you to get on your fucking radio and call it in! They’re getting away! They took the baby down a limited access road just across the street from where I’m standing. No! I don’t know the name of the road!”
“It’s the busway,” Ukiah told her, pushing past Rennie. The Pack leader was already directing scouts out to scour the limited access road.
She made a surprised, choked sound and dropped the phone to reach out to Ukiah. “Kid! Oh, shit!” She pulled him into a painful hug. “I thought you were dead—again—oh, damn, I forgot about your weirdness.”
“It’s okay,” Ukiah said. “I’m fine. They went down the busway? What kind of car was it?”
“Yeah. Where the buses were coming up.” Sam freed Ukiah to slump against the bar’s back wall, the fight draining out of her. “A Ford Taurus, white, fairly new. The license plate was CBC 3002. I put a bullet into the back window. I didn’t see the kidnappers themselves, except for one guy’s back.”
And the Dog Warriors surged away en masse, relaying her information to the forerunners. Ukiah wavered in place, wanting to go, but reluctant to leave Sam hurt and alone. Max appeared, pushing his way into the bar against the sudden outflow of Dog Warriors.
“Max, can you take care of Sam?” Ukiah pointed at the bloody footprints on the bar’s industrial tile floor. “She’s hurt!”
“And you’re not?” Sam snarled.
“How bad are you cut?” Max asked her.
“I don’t know.” Sam lifted her left foot and displayed a bloody, grit-filled wound. She swore at the sight.
“I’ll take care of her,” Max said. “Ukiah, get out of here before the police come or they’ll be dragging you to the hospital too.”
“I can take care of myself,” Sam said.
“You’re hurt. You’re half-naked.” Max put an arm around her, encouraging her to lean on him so he could get her out to the Hummer and its first-aid kit. “You’ve got a gun but no carry permit or ID. And there’s the trashed bar complete with unconscious men. Even if you weren’t hurt, I wouldn’t walk away and leave you to deal with that alone.”
Sam deflated. “Add totally lost and you’ve hit it pretty good.”
“I’ll call you if we find anything.” Ukiah started for the Cherokee.
“Wait!” Max caught Ukiah by the arm, and tucked a tracer into his pants pocket. “Okay. Go. Find Kitt. And keep yourself safe.”
“I’ll keep him safe,” Rennie promised. “Anyone trying for him will have to go through me first.”
“Let’s go,” Ukiah said.
“The busway goes downtown or out to Wilkinsburg.” Rennie half carried Ukiah back to the Cherokee. “Which way do we go?”
Downtown would have dropped the kidnappers beside I-279 or I-376, rushing away from Pittsburgh in two and three lanes of express traffic. Nearby Wilkinsburg was one of the poorer neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, providing countless nooks and crannies to dive into. The Pack had the advantage, though, that if they got close enough to Kittanning, they would sense his presence.
“Downtown,” Ukiah decided. If the kidnappers had buried themselves in Wilkinsburg, then the Pack would dig them out. But if the kidnappers had headed downtown, every second made it less likely he would find Kittanning.
So he and Rennie followed the busway toward downtown, the walls of the road rising up, crowned with chain-linked fencing, guaranteeing that the kidnapper hadn’t veered off it, nor abandoned his car.
Ukiah shared two of the power bars out to his hungry mice. He was too hurt to take the mice back; the lost blood cells had expended all their stored energy taking mouse form, and at the moment, the effort of merging the cells back into his body would kill him. He’d have to wait, building up both his own and the mice’s strength before he could take them back and discover what he’d forgotten. The mice took their share of the food and scrambled to the dashboard to stare out the window shield, looking for their lost brother.
“Do you think that the Ontongard might have finally gotten smart enough to use a human to take Kittanning?” Ukiah asked.
“Hex would never trust a human.”
Hex wouldn’t, but Hex was dead.
Nine of the Pack roared through downtown, bullying their way through the heavy rush-hour traffic, looking for any sign of Kittanning or the Taurus. Their reports trickled in even as Rennie reached the end of the busway and nosed out into the stalled traffic.
“There’s an accident in the Liberty Tunnels; no one’s getting out of the city that way.” Hellena made a U-turn at the mouth of the tunnels to work her way back into town. “The parkway looks like a parking lot.”
Confirmation came from Smack working his way through the parkway conge
stion, riding the centerline since there was no berm.
“Everything’s crawling as far as Greentree on two-seventy-nine south,” Heathyr reported, nearly a whisper, at the limits of the Pack’s telepathic range. Unfortunately, that range depended on number of body cells; Kittanning’s smaller size meant his reach was much shorter.
“North Side, South Side, West End,” Rennie named the possible directions that the kidnapper could have gone as the Dog Warrior narrowed down possibilities. “Two-seventy-nine north.”
“Two-seventy-nine,” Ukiah decided after a moment. “A quick run as far as the turnpike in Cranberry. If we don’t pick up Kitt’s trail, we’ll double back and start combing the suburbs.”
The food kicked in and Ukiah slept without warning.
He had been scanning the cars they passed, and then he was asleep. The deep echoing horns of tugboats woke him. Ukiah opened his eyes to find himself reclined nearly flat in the bucket seat. Headlights from an oncoming car cut through the dark Cherokee’s interior. For a minute he lay confused. Where was he? A faint scrabbling noise caught his attention, and he turned his head to look into five pairs of tiny anxious black eyes.
Kittanning.
He levered himself up, feeling guilty, herding his mice into his lap. “Any sign?”
“None,” Rennie murmured.
They were running along one of the rivers on a desolate stretch of road that Ukiah didn’t recognize. Ukiah glanced at the mileage counter and noted that they had put several hundred miles on the Cherokee, endlessly driving through the side roads and back alleys, working their way through the dozens of Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods. “This random looking isn’t working. We missed the chance while I was dead, and now we’re running like a chicken with its head cut off.”
Rennie growled softly. “What else is there? Hex has had since June to lay his plans, and the humans can sense neither his Gets nor Kittanning.”
“There were several kidnappings in the area while you and I were in Oregon.” Ukiah’s stomach rumbled with hunger, emptied by his body’s frantic healing of itself. “The MO on Kitt’s kidnapping is nearly the same: two people working together grab a kid out of his home and run. Indigo is the agent assigned to the case. She can tell us details on the other cases and maybe that will give us a lead.”
Grudgingly, Rennie considered possibilities other than the Ontongard. “What about that federal agent?”
“Hutchinson?” Ukiah thought about what the federal agent had said, and what he hadn’t said. “He said this cult of religious lunatics called the Temple of New Reason had photographs of me, implying that they had some interest in me. The Temple’s Web site was full of biblical verses about the second coming. Hutchinson is looking for the cult; they’ve gone into deep cover for some reason.”
Reluctantly, Rennie conceded. “But you can’t go back to your offices looking like that.” Rennie turned the Cherokee in a tight U-turn. “With the bloody mess you left behind, any cops you run into will probably want to see what you look like under the jacket. You need to clean up first.”
Neville Island was a few miles downriver of Pittsburgh, a long strip of land in the center of the Ohio River, home to numerous industrial sites. Storage tanks that dwarfed many Pittsburgh skyscrapers sat at the head of the island, and I-79 leapfrogged across the river at its center. The ethereal flame that burned over Neville Island licked the night sky.
The Pack had taken over the office area of an abandoned Dravo Barge dry docks, replacing a padlock on the chain-link gate with one of their own. Rennie had sent Smack on ahead, so the gate was open when they reached it.
“He needs to be bandaged,” Rennie told Smack as the Dog Warrior helped Ukiah out of the Cherokee. “The less noticeable his wounds, the better. I’ll be back.”
Whoever had pulled den duty had swept out the offices and pinned up the tapestry dividers, but the futons still sat stacked by the door. Ukiah wandered about the empty space, wanting to sit down before trying to take off his bloody clothes. Smack produced a folding chair, and then worked at setting up a washbasin with hot water. Ukiah carefully lowered himself onto the chair. Trembling, he plucked at his shirt; there didn’t seem to be a method of getting it off that didn’t involve flexing in some painful way, and parts of it were stuck to him.
“Here. That’s past saving.” Smack pulled out his boot knife and cut off the T-shirt in sections, leaving what was stuck to the healing wounds. The blade sliced through the blood-crusted fabric like tissue paper. “We’ll have to soak the scabs to get the rest off. You don’t have a knife or gun on you?” Smack slipped the blade back into its sheath and then pulled the sheath from his boot. “Take this one. I’ll pick up another one tomorrow.”
Ukiah didn’t argue; if he had been armed, perhaps he could have stopped the kidnapper.
Rennie returned as they washed the last of the dead blood cells out of Ukiah’s hair; all of Ukiah’s clothes except his boots had been reduced down to strips of bloody cloth lying on the wet floor around him. The Pack leader growled at the damage done to Ukiah and held out a bag of McDonald’s food. “Eat, and then take back your mice. See what they can tell you about the kidnapping. We’ll find your little one,” Rennie promised darkly. “And we’ll make this man sorry he ever thought to lift a hand against either of you.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Dravo Barge Dry Docks, Neville Island, Pennsylvania
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
After Ukiah had eaten, absorbed his mice, and given both Rennie and Smack a full replay of the shooting, he climbed painfully into the Cherokee. Rennie slid behind the wheel to drive Ukiah back to the office, while Smack locked up the gate behind them.
Unsure of how things stood with Indigo, Max, and Sam, Ukiah checked the company’s voice-mail system. Max had guessed that the Pack would feed Ukiah and let him sleep; instead of calling Ukiah directly, he’d left a series of messages in a tight, harassed-sounding voice.
Sam’s wound proved to be deep enough for stitches. The police, though, had arrived, responding to Sam’s 911 call, and needed to be dealt with first. Luckily there was no one conscious to connect the private investigators to the “untimely coincidence” of the Pack’s trashing of the bar.
After giving statements on Kittanning’s kidnapping, Max and Sam drove back to the office for Sam’s clothes and ID. There, they ran into a second mess. Neighbors had reported Sam’s single gunshot and police found an empty house with a foyer full of bullet holes and blood. With a lack of a gunshot victim, the questioning grew decidedly hostile. Then Indigo arrived with her FBI team, full of icy rage, and found a volunteer to focus her frustrations on.
“One of the cops made the mistake of asking if she was ‘the F-B-I’ and smirking.” The police had used the initials to nickname Indigo “the Famous Bitch of Ice” in reference to her glacial calm. “You’d think by now the cops would know not to piss her off. It was like watching a surgeon work as she took him apart—very quiet and precise. Sam’s impressed, and I think a little afraid of Indigo now.” Max summed up the meeting of the two women.
Like the Pack, Indigo stayed only long enough to get the make and model of the car; she left to personally lead the search. Agent Joan Fisher remained behind to get a full statement and fight skirmishes over jurisdictions.
During everything, Max and Sam kept to the edited version of the truth; someone had shot “at” Ukiah and taken Kittanning. No, they didn’t know how badly Ukiah had been hurt, but he had left in the Cherokee to find his missing son. Max neglected to mention that Ukiah had his phone on him; Max didn’t want the police pestering Ukiah while he was sleeping. “At least that’s what I’m hoping you’re doing right now.”
Finally, Max drove Sam to the hospital to be stitched up, given a tetanus shot, and released. At the hospital, Max had thought to call Ukiah’s moms and had given them an edited version of what had happened. “I left out the part about you being shot. I figured it would only worry them.”
“We’re
heading back to the office,” Max said in the last message. “Give me a call soon. I’m getting worried about you. If I don’t hear from you soon, I’m heading out to look for you. I’ve called Chino to hold down the offices while Sam is sleeping.”
Ukiah glanced at the dashboard clock as the voice mail gave the timestamp of nine-thirty; he had been listening to the messages when Max recorded the last one. He and Rennie were already downtown, meaning they would hit the office just minutes after Max and Sam returned.
Of Indigo, though, there was no word, so he called her.
She answered with a curt “Special Agent Zheng.”
“It’s me.”
“Any good news?”
“No.”
“I can’t talk now. Have you gotten your mice back?”
“Yes, but there’s not much to tell. I answered the door and got shot.”
“Where are you?”
“Passing through downtown. We’ve just swung onto the Tenth Street Bypass. We’re heading to the office.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
The Hummer, its engine still ticking, was in its place in the garage when Rennie pulled into the second bay.
Rennie cocked his head, catching the murmur of voices from the mansion. “Your partner has company.”
“Stay here,” Ukiah said, in case it was the police.
The back door of the mansion was unlocked and opened to the smell of old blood, gunpowder, and spilt milk. The kitchen was dark. Like a cave opening to daylight, the unlit hallway led to the brightly lit living room, which doubled as the office’s reception area. Sam sat in the wing chair by the fireplace, her bandaged bare foot propped on the ottoman, talking to someone standing out of sight. Max paced the room, wrapped in anger. Ukiah paused in the dark kitchen, nostrils flaring to catch the stranger’s scent.
