“You look nice, too,” he said to her, just above a whisper. Such simple words, yet they thrilled her to her core. Maybe he’d wanted to kiss her after all. She was glad he couldn’t see her blushing.
Together they walked toward huge ornate oak doors. An army of servants in white masks wordlessly ushered them into the building and through a series of rooms that became darker as they went in, like descending into the bowels of a dungeon. Val walked with her head high and shoulders back, striking a pose of confidence for any potential observers. Secretly she clung to Max’s arm for support, warm and strong beneath the expensive fabric of his suit. Finally, they came to their destination—a dimly lit function hall, opulent in burgundy and dark woods, a small and high stage in the center like something used for intimate concerts. About a hundred people surrounded the stage, all in tuxedoes and ball gowns, all sporting unique animal masks. They whispered with their partners but didn’t mingle with anyone else. They were waiting, Val realized.
A waiter approached Max and Val and offered them a tray of crystal goblets filled with a clear liquid. They each took one out of politeness, then sniffed the contents after the waiter disappeared. Val dipped her finger in and touched it to the tip of her tongue before Max could stop her. He scolded her with his gaze, pissed she’d take the risk of sampling an unknown substance after what he went through at the last Blue Serpent party.
“Water,” she told him.
He frowned and eyed his glass with suspicion anyway. Val looked around again; everyone who held a drink had water. No one had food. She would’ve made a joke to Max about this being the lamest party she’d ever been to, but a bong like an ancient grandfather clock interrupted her. She knew that sound.
Val grabbed Max’s arm again. “That’s it—the noise I heard in my vision, when Ginger talked to Lucien. He’s coming—”
The lights dimmed even further until they stood in almost complete darkness. No one spoke as the bonging filled the room. Val found herself holding her breath, the tension as thick as the blackness that surrounded them. She flinched when an overhead light flooded the stage. A single man stood in the center, black robes flowing down his body, a long beak like a scythe and glass eyes covering his face—a plague mask.
“God is cruel,” he said, his voice replacing the sound of the grandfather clock as the only thing Val could hear besides the pounding of her heart. His slight French accent confirmed what she already knew, based on her vision and his ancient medical costume—the man was Lucien. “You have worked for the finer things in life, you have worked for luxury. You have earned your status. But God has cursed you. God will rip from your grasp all the spoils you have worked for. You have everything, and yet you are helpless.”
Val felt Max tense. This speech was meant for people like him—the rich, the entitled, the damned. His “curse” was what made him wealthy and ruined his life at the same time.
“But I am merciful. I will give back what God has taken from you.” He held his hands out to the crowd. “Bring me your sorrows and be cleansed.”
The crowd held up their hands to Lucien. Did they know it was Lucien? “Cleanse us, Blue Serpent,” they said as one.
Like the picture of Death choosing a victim, Lucien pointed to a woman in the crowd. “Come to me and be cleansed.”
Bodies parted and made a path for the woman up to the base of the stage. She struggled up the steps, tubes trailing from beneath her panther mask to an oxygen tank a man carried behind her. One of her arms was crooked at an odd angle, a symptom of some crippling ailment. She reached Lucien and stood before him, rasping to catch her breath. The man with the oxygen tank—probably her husband—clutched her good arm to keep her steady. Her frail body trembled like she might collapse at any moment. Lucien took the woman’s arm and motioned for her husband to back away; he did so, tentatively.
In one smooth motion, Lucien ripped the tubes from the woman’s nose. She cried out. The crowd gasped, including Val. He spun her around, manipulating her like a rag doll, his robes nearly engulfing her entire body.
Then he seized her face in his white-knuckled hand. “Do you believe in me?”
“Yes,” the woman choked out.
“Will you accept from me that which God has cruelly withheld?”
“Yes!”
“Then be cleansed.”
She drew in a ragged breath and her body went rigid. Then she began to shake and writhe in his grasp. Her crippled arm flailed at her side. She shrieked when her forearm snapped away from her body, then her wrist popped into line with her forearm. The woman’s whole twisted arm unfolded one sharp crack at a time until it fell at her side, a mirror image of her good arm. Her strained rasps became strong breaths, and she relaxed as whatever agony she’d experienced ebbed. Lucien let her go and stepped back. She stood at the foot of the stage, no longer struggling to support herself or nursing a crippled limb. Val heard sobs beneath the panther mask. Her husband dropped the oxygen tank and rushed to embrace her, sobbing along with his newly healthy wife.
“Oh my God,” Val whispered. Shocked murmurs that echoed her own ran through the crowd. “That can’t be real.” She looked at Max. He still gaped at the couple. “It must have been staged, right?”
He blinked as if snapping out of a trance. “I have no idea. I think the man she’s with is Marty Paul, a hedge funds manager. I heard through the grapevine his wife was seriously ill, but…I don’t know what just happened.”
“Blue Serpent, heal me!” a man in the crowd yelled.
“Heal me!” someone else’s desperate voice echoed. Soon a cacophony of pleading filled the room. Val could only guess at the net worth of all these people, but they literally begged at Lucien’s feet for a scrap of something money couldn’t buy. He was right—they had everything, yet were helpless before him.
Lucien held up his arms and the lights dimmed again, though his grotesque outline remained visible, like a massive vulture. Val guessed he was warming up for his second act. Morbid curiosity urged her to stay, but her obligation to Margaret won out.
“Let’s go,” she whispered to Max. With the lights dim and room filled with frenzied voices, she guessed they wouldn’t get a better chance to sneak away and search the bowels of the building for Margaret or some clue to where she could be.
With a slight nod he took her arm again, and they slipped back to the room’s entrance.
“Bathroom?” Max asked a white-masked servant opening the door for them.
Without speaking, the servant pointed down a hallway to his left. Val assumed there was a man with a life behind the mask, despite the blank, foreboding figure he cut. She wouldn’t be surprised if their contracts required them to be as creepy as possible. Fear and desperation were the major themes of Blue Serpent events, she realized. Sex, drugs, and promises of miracle cures were the ploys that got people in the door.
They walked in the direction the servant sent them until they were out of his sight. Then Val cut left and pulled Max down a hallway perpendicular to the bathroom.
“There’s a stairwell down here that will take us to the basement,” she whispered. “If Margaret’s in the building, that’s where she’ll be.”
“And you know this…how?”
“I looked up the floor plans on my phone while you drove.”
“Oh.”
“It’s not like you were making great conversation.”
“I had things on my mind.”
“I know, Max. It’s a permanent state you’re in.” She glanced at him and grinned.
He rolled his eyes. “One of us has to think before leaping into danger.”
“I could’ve planned better if you’d told me where we were going beforehand.”
“If I had, you’d have gone without me, guns blazing, and you know it.”
“No. Okay yes, but—” A flash of movement caught her eye. A man emerged from around the corner about fifty feet away—a security guard with a gun on his hip. She threw herself into Max and shoved
them together into the recessed nook of another room’s entrance a mere second before the man turned to look at the spot they’d just been in. Val squished her chest flat against Max’s in the small nook, held her breath, and prayed the guard hadn’t been close enough to hear them talking. After what felt like an eternity, she heard receding footfalls, then silence. She risked a peek down the hallway; empty.
“Shit, that was close,” she whispered, and breathed a sigh of relief. She shouldn’t have. Max’s scent flooded her lungs: his natural musk, his cologne, his bay rum aftershave. Paired with the warmth and strength of his body pressed against hers, and his arms wrapped around her body, she felt dizzy, nearly overpowered by his essence. She lifted her head and met his white-hot gaze. His eyes searched hers, traced the outline of her lips. He was going to kiss her this time, she knew it. She wanted him to. She needed him to. Her mouth parted and she lifted her chin—
He pushed past her and stepped back into the hallway. “Can we hurry up and get the hell out of here, please?” he said, his voice breathless and strained.
“Uh…yeah.” Val cleared her throat and forced herself back to reality. “Follow me.”
With an increased sense of caution and no more chatter, she led Max to the stairwell. She slipped off her high heels and raced down the stairs, Max close behind. At the bottom they peeked through the door into the basement area, ensured the coast was clear, then skulked through a finished hallway with connecting rooms for storage and office space.
Val stopped in front of a room with a cypher lock. “In my vision, I saw Lucien come out of this room and talk to Ginger, right before the show.”
She guessed Ginger lurked nearby, probably in the crowd with the other sick rich people. She couldn’t wait to get her hands on him, as soon as Max gave the okay. She tried the door; locked, as expected. Val jiggled the handle, testing the strength of the lock, then shoved her shoulder into it. When the door didn’t budge, she reared her leg back to try kicking it in, alarm be damned.
Max put a hand on her arm. “Don’t.” He stepped forward, stared hard at the cypher lock as he chewed his thumb, then punched in an eight-digit number. The lock clicked open.
“Someone did prep work of his own,” she said. “Hopefully not on the drive over.”
He snickered. “You’ll never know for sure.” His rare smile fell into a frown. “You know it’s unlikely Margaret’s in here, right? He wouldn’t keep her in a semi-public place.”
“I know that, Max. I’m not stupid.”
Knowing the odds was one thing; hoping anyway was another. When he pushed the door open, Val barreled past him into the dark room, praying to a God she had little faith in that Margaret would be there, alive and still in one piece. She held her breath and flicked the light on.
Yet again, God did her no favors. She and Max stood alone in an upscale if generic office, a mahogany desk and executive leather chair set up for the use of guests. Val took a moment to push back a lump in her throat. She surveyed the room and shook off her disappointment. Margaret remained missing, but they’d found the next best thing—Lucien’s temporary office space. A laptop sat on the desk. An odd silver suitcase leaned against the opposite wall, next to a rolling tote.
“You look through the computer,” she told Max. “I’ll take the suitcase.” She would’ve preferred to just grab the computer and run, but they’d almost certainly be caught trying to sneak anything large out of the building if they intended to keep up their ruse and leave the way they came in.
Max pulled off his mask and dropped it on the desk as he concentrated on the laptop. Val pushed her own mask off her face but didn’t remove it completely, fearing she wouldn’t be able to get it back on without messing up her wig. As she knew he’d done with the cypher lock, Max used information he’d gleaned from earlier visions to crack open password-protected files while Val searched the suitcase. She unsnapped a couple of latches on the side and lifted the top. Black foam surrounded a collection of what looked like medical equipment. She recognized a jet injector, but not a palm-sized gadget next to the injector with three wires and a plastic tube sticking out of a triangle-shaped body.
Val held up the triangular gizmo for Max. “What is this?”
He glanced up from the laptop for half a second. “I don’t know. I’m not a doctor.”
She couldn’t believe he hadn’t at least read about how to be a doctor, with all the books he devoured. Val put the gizmo back and eyed another mysterious object, this one a series of seven tiny glass flasks connected with a strange red metallic tubing. None of the odd objects had serial numbers or brand names on them. She popped the lid off a thermos embedded in the foam. Vials of different colored liquids sat inside its cool interior; no labels.
“I think Lucien made a lot of this stuff himself,” she said.
Max didn’t take his eyes off the computer. “Could be. He’s got hundreds of diagrams for strange devices in here, some of them scanned copies of very old plans, going back decades.”
She remembered the almost one-hundred-year-old photograph of someone who looked suspiciously like Lucien. Maybe her initial speculation about Lucien’s immortality wasn’t so crazy after all. “Why would Lucien host wild, drug-fueled orgies and elaborate faith-healing performances, all under the same Blue Serpent moniker? What do those two things have in common?”
Max looked up, seemed to think about it for a moment, then frowned. “One to spread sexually transmitted diseases, the other to cure them.”
“Stacey told me a few of the escorts she talked to reported missing time, then later some of them got sick. Maybe Lucien’s using high-end prostitutes to spread illnesses through wealthy communities, then charging them for the cure.”
Max cringed. “That’s disgusting. If he really can cure previously incurable diseases, why doesn’t he accept his Nobel Prize in medicine instead?”
“Because he’s a greedy piece of shit.” Val slammed the suitcase closed. “Still doesn’t explain where he’s getting the blueprints to make these magical cures.”
Max stared at the wall next to Val’s head for a long moment. “Maybe he’s like us.”
“What?”
“Arthur C. Clarke said, ‘Technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.’ What if he can see future medical technology?”
Val shook her head. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“It’s one possibility.”
“All the more reason for us to shut him down.” She opened the rolling tote and pulled out a stack of documents, some printed and some handwritten, all in French. “Shit,” she muttered. Max knew French, but he was busy with the laptop. She did her best to scan for Margaret’s name. The grandfather clock began to bong again. They were out of time.
She picked out a couple of memos addressed to Asclepius Inc., hoping they’d be useful in some way, folded them up, and shoved them into her bra. “We gotta go.”
Max stayed hunched over the laptop. “Wait. I found a couple dozen videos. If one features Margaret, that’s a smoking gun he’s involved in her disappearance. When did you say you saw her video online?”
Oh shit. “It was…uh…I don’t remember. Max, let’s go. Now. Come on.”
He squinted at the computer. “This one’s recent. It’s—” He froze.
Val’s heart raced. A cold sweat prickled up from her neck. “We should go. Please.”
The blood drained from his face. He gaped at the screen as utter horror twisted his features. Then his gaze cut to hers, crushed by what he’d seen and how it would affect her. She swallowed hard, and felt her own blood leave her cheeks.
Then he realized what her lack of surprise at his reaction meant. His horror turned to numb shock. “You knew about this?”
“I’m handling it.”
“You knew about this, and you didn’t tell me?”
“It’s not your problem.”
He stared at her.
“I didn’t want to bother you any mor
e than I had to.”
He kept staring.
“The whole world doesn’t need to know, okay? I’m not ashamed, I just don’t want to deal with people treating me differently. Like I’m damaged, or…or a freak. It’s bad enough with our condition.”
He said nothing. He didn’t have to. The devastation in his withering glare told her everything.
Tears crept into her eyes. “It’s not like you go around telling people what your father did—”
“I told you!”
She jumped. A sob rose in her throat. She put a hand over her mouth for a second to hold it back. “What would it have accomplished if I’d told you? It would’ve only made you upset, like you are now. It happened, and it can’t be undone.” Her voice grew small and weak. “I didn’t want to mess up your perfect life. You’re finally happy, and…and…”
She didn’t know what else to say. He wasn’t listening anyway. The blood had returned to his face in spades, and his whole body had stiffened like a spring pulled to its limit. In his eyes boiled a rage she’d never seen in him before—a pure, all-consuming anger he barely controlled. It was the rage that killed his father, she realized, so intense that just being in his presence sucked the air from her lungs.
With one lightning-fast movement, he picked up the laptop and slammed it into the ground. Val yelped as it exploded into a thousand pieces. Bits of electronics and hard plastic showered her feet. Then he stalked out of the room.
Val took a ragged breath, her whole body trembling. Why did he have to find out like this, in the worst possible way? She’d asked so much of him, and he’d done it all, despite the cost to himself. She should’ve told him. He’d trusted her with his most intimate secrets, but she hadn’t trusted him with hers. She’d never seen him so furious before. He would never hurt her, but Lucien…Hopefully Max would just go home, and not storm the stage to kill the man who’d orchestrated her rape.
With Lucien’s laptop shattered across the room’s floor, there was no covering their tracks now. She picked up pieces of what looked like the hard drive and wedged them inside her nylons, so they stayed put against her inner thighs. It felt uncomfortable, but if she stepped carefully, she could make her stride look natural. All she could do now was beat feet out of there, pretend to be Abby and make up some excuse about a lover’s spat, then ask for a cab. She wiped tears off her cheeks and slipped the mask back over her face. As seemed to always be the case, she would be finding her own way home.
Retribution Page 14
