by C. J. Lyons
The Tahoe bounced over ruts gouged into the snow and gravel—it wasn’t the first vehicle up this road since the snow had stopped last night.
Ryder thought about what Devon had told him about the infected children. They’d all had symptoms for months, about as long as Rossi had. Which meant they were all infected around the same time, sometime over the summer had been Rossi’s best guess. Which also meant that whoever was behind this was playing a very, very long game.
“What if they blew up their lab because they didn’t need it any longer? What if the attack has already begun?”
Grey straightened at that. “Then I guess we better hope we find them and can get them to talk. Before it’s too late.”
Chapter 13
DANIEL’S FIRST QUESTION surprised me. “Tell me about your father’s family. Did you ever meet them?”
The sea below us threw up more whitecaps, taller, faster as they stormed the rocks only to surrender and return back to where they came from. A never-ending circle of destruction, stunning in its ravenous energy.
“No. They died before I was born.”
Why did my answer make his lips quirk as if suppressing a smile? “And your father? What was he like?”
My father was the sun and the moon and every star adorning the heavens. He taught me to laugh without fear, to always run as fast as I could, to be kind—even to my bratty little sister—to sing and dance and play my fiddle with not just my hands and feet but my heart and soul.
None of which I would share with Daniel. But he nodded as if somehow he already knew. “The day he died. Tell me about that day.”
“And you’ll tell me what you know about Almanac?”
“And I’ll tell you what I know about Almanac Care.” He said the name as if it was important not to shorten it.
I didn’t have time to wonder about that as I tried to wring words from the heartache that was my father’s death. “It was my fault. That’s what you want to know, right?”
There, that was the hard part over with. At least I thought so until he said, “No. I want it all. Everything that happened. Don’t leave a single second out.”
Lightning flashed through the sky in the distance. I stared out to sea and saw a wall of churning black clouds dancing across the horizon. My doing or his? He was getting what he wanted; this sudden storm had to come from me. I drew in a breath, feeling as if that raging storm was trapped inside my chest, and began.
“The nuns gave me detention. Again. I don’t even remember why—usually, it was for arguing with a teacher.” I shrugged. Wind whipped my hair against my face. It stung, but nothing compared to the pain the memory brought. “When no one came to get me after school and detention ended, I decided to walk home alone.”
“It was raining, a storm?”
Suddenly, the clouds overhead darkened and rumbled with thunder. Rain sluiced down, plastering me—although, not three feet away, Daniel stood in a patch of sunshine, warm and dry. He’d grown taller... No. I’d grown smaller, back to the skinny twelve-year-old I had been twenty-two years ago. I shivered with the wet and cold and hugged my arms around my chest.
“Yes. But I’d have been just as drenched waiting outside the school as on the road home, so I started to walk. Back then we lived outside of town, up the mountain, a few miles from school. I almost made it.”
“In other words, you were a stubborn child. Why does that not surprise me?”
I ignored him, wanting to get this over with. “Patsy, my mom, was home with my little sister, and I thought I’d make it there before Dad got home from work. Had some childish fantasy of somehow proving I was right—as if walking home alone in the rain and dark would win an argument my mother wasn’t even there for.”
I shrugged, the memory of those childish feelings rankling inside me. Maybe because even twenty-two years later I still sometimes clung to them. “It’s just how I felt back then. Like I had to prove myself to everyone.”
“Including your father?”
“Everyone except him.” I trailed off, hoping the admission would satisfy his appetite for pain.
“Go on. You were almost home. It was dark, storming. What happened next?”
“I was halfway up the mountain. It was a blind curve, steep. He didn’t see me, not until it was too late. He hit his brakes, swerved, crashed through the guardrail and into a tree.” The words caught in my throat. I couldn’t even swallow around them.
“Did he go through the windshield? Was there blood? But he was still alive, still conscious, wasn’t he?”
I shook my head violently, protesting his callous words as much as the memory that filled my every sense. The sound of the storm changed; the smell of sea air vanished along with the crash of breaking waves. It grew darker, trees suddenly crowded around me as I stood on the muddy berm at the side of a narrow blacktop road. Red taillights spiked through the night, canted at an unnatural angle, aimed high at the sky while the car they clung to faced down the side of the mountain.
It was silent. Even the raindrops thudding against the blacktop grew distant. The only noise I could hear was the drumming of my heart and the shriek of agony that tore my soul in half. Because I’d seen his face, in that instant before everything was too late, I’d seen him, blurred by rain and windshield wipers and headlights, but it was him.
“Daddy!” I blinked, and my hearing returned, everything too loud: the rain and wind and blare of a horn giving a single, never-ending bleat, the creak of the trees, the grind of metal.
The guardrail was twisted and torn. I grabbed on to it like a lifeline, my palms sliced bloody by the sharp metal, half climbed, half slipped through the mud and dead leaves and fallen tree branches to make it to the driver’s side of the car.
The door was open, its chiming adding to the cacophony. The interior light made the blood appear black.
“No, he didn’t go through the windshield,” Daniel said, and I realized he was there with me, walking around the crash, observing it all with a clinical appraisal. “Had his seat belt on.” He made a clucking noise with his tongue. “No air bags, though.”
“His truck was too old,” I answered in my grown-up voice, although I was somehow still trapped inside the body of twelve-year-old me, scared spitless, howling at her father to open his eyes. Please, Daddy, open your eyes...
And he did. Trapped with the steering wheel caving in his chest, face bloodied, skull already swelling where he’d cracked it on the dashboard, he opened his eyes. Saw me. And his face, his face—I’d never seen him look at anything, at anyone, at me like that before.
“Go away,” he shouted, waving me off with his one good hand. “Don’t come any closer.”
How could I obey when he needed my help? I slid along the side of the truck, reached out to him. “Daddy—”
He cringed. Pulled back, tried to slam the door shut between me and him. It refused to move, but that was little comfort to me when his face filled with horror.
“Daddy!” I screamed into the night.
“Don’t touch me!” He screamed back. “Don’t you touch me!”
The last words I ever heard from him.
“And you didn’t touch him, did you?” Daniel prodded the psychic wounds I’d ripped open.
“No. I went to get help.”
“He lived another three days. In a coma.”
I nodded.
“But you never saw him again. Never touched him.”
“They didn’t let children into the ICU. And Patsy—”
“His wife. She didn’t want you there, did she?”
“No. I went to live with my aunt and uncle after that. I looked too much like him. Every time she laid eyes on me, it was like seeing him die all over again.”
“He knew,” Daniel murmured. “I wonder if she did as well.”
I barely heard him over the sounds of my memory. I drew in a deep breath and forced another memory to take its place: me and Daddy dancing, my feet on his, my mother laughing as she spun wit
h my baby sister in her arms, happy, everyone so very happy...
The moment burst like a bubble spun on air and hope. We were back on the cliff, the sea roaring below us, the sky above cloudless. Daniel smirked, and I knew he’d brought us back here, yanking me away from my memory.
“Your father had fatal insomnia, right?”
“Yes. We didn’t know it back then, of course. But Louise tested his DNA from a sample I gave her. It’s autosomal dominant, so my sister and I each had a fifty-fifty chance of inheriting it. Guess who won that coin toss?” Actually, I was happy my little sister had been spared—despite the distance between my mother and me, I couldn’t imagine her suffering the loss of both of us.
“I don’t think your sister ever had a chance of inheriting your father’s affliction. Just as I don’t think you ever had a chance of not inheriting it.”
I frowned at him. “What are you saying?”
“Your mother, Patsy, she told you that you look just like him, your father?”
“Yes.”
“She’s only half right. You look just like your mother. Your real mother.”
Chapter 14
FRANCESCA HAD ORIGINALLY planned to spend the night at the Danieli but changed her mind once the vote didn’t go her way. Or rather, Marco changed it for her. After the vote condemning her and her people to a life of exile on their island, she’d left the dining room and found a trio of armed men waiting for her.
Marco appeared behind her. The restaurant lobby was empty except for them, the hostess vanished, the wait staff behind mahogany doors that Francesca was certain would be locked if she tried them. She stood, ignoring the three men with their designer suit coats open to reveal the menacing pistols in their shoulder holsters, and focused on her brother.
“Is this how it begins, little brother?” she asked, ice in her voice. “With my murder? The first of many.”
He shook his head sadly but didn’t bother to hide his smirk. “I’m sorry, but the family has spoken. It’s time for a new era. One without the encumbrance that you and the others pose. In these economic times, it’s essential to prune away any non-profitable branches of the family tree. For the good of the family.”
Francesca rarely indulged her emotions. Fifty-seven years of living with a death sentence threatening her every hope and dream had stripped her of sentimentality. She could be ruthless, heartless, even with the lives of her own children if they threatened her plans. But this... “It has nothing to do with economics or the good of the family,” she spat at her brother. “This is about power. You are afraid of what you cannot control. Our power.”
“It’s been decades since you’ve wielded any power. When the last Vessel died, so did your last chance. It’s only through Father’s sentimentality that you’ve lived this long. But Father’s gone, and the time has come, Francesca.” He stretched his arms wide as if embracing the future. “And the family will live on, free of fear. Healthy and more powerful than ever.”
“No, dear brother. It won’t. You’re making a mistake. The Lazaretto power comes not from the strength of our healthy members but rather from those of us with the Scourge. We decide each and every day to face our fears, to conquer them. We dare to live, knowing the horror that awaits us in death. That is true strength. Without us, the family will shrivel and wither away to nothing. Dust scattered in the wind. The Lazaretto name—your name—forgotten, forever.”
“You always had such an imagination, Francesca. Must come of those fever-dreams your people suffer. What do you call them? Your fugues?” He shook his head as if scolding a toddler. “Fantasies wrought of brains deranged by the Scourge. No one is here to kill you. We’re here to watch over and protect you. You will return to your island and recall your people so that they can join you.”
He nodded to the men, and they surrounded Francesca, two taking her arms as if leading a doddering old woman who’d had too much to drink. “In a week’s time, after the holiday, I’ll send more men to dismantle your lab. All that fancy equipment, such an expense for the family. Hopefully, we’ll recoup some of its value.”
Worse than exile. Without the lab, she was helpless to finish her work. “No. Why? We can still contribute. My people are expert scientists. You won’t find any more dedicated. You can’t take their life’s work from them like this.”
“Not me. You, Francesca. Did you really think I wouldn’t learn about those monstrosities you call your children, what they’re doing? They’re risking exposing the family. They’re dangerous. Any of them who aren’t safely locked away on the island by dawn of the New Year will be hunted down and killed.” He waved a hand in dismissal, and the guards tugged her forward.
“You’ll regret this, Marco,” Francesca called over her shoulder.
His laughter accompanied her down the hallway, echoing from the marble floor and walls.
<<<>>>
I WONDERED IF I was wrong about lies being impossible when I met someone via their mind. Because what Daniel was saying about my parents—it could not be true.
“What do you mean, my ‘real’ mother? Do you think I don’t know who my own mother is?” Maybe Patsy and I didn’t always get along, but she was my mother, that much I was certain of.
Daniel merely shrugged. “Maybe all I meant was she could be your mother, you look so much alike.”
“This woman, who is she?” None of this made any sense.
Then I relaxed. Of course none of it made sense. His mind had been damaged by the stroke—unlike the other people I’d visited, Daniel’s brain was already ravaged, riddled with areas of dead tissue. I couldn’t take anything he said or showed me literally. Yet, he seemed so deliberate. A form of confabulation? Maybe, given his supersize ego and narcissism, he couldn’t admit to himself that his mental functions were impaired?
“You’re trying to sidetrack me,” I told him. “You think that if you can distract me with innuendoes about my family, you can hide the truth from me.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Is that what I’m doing? Or is this my way of unveiling the truth?”
“I told you about my father’s death. Now tell me what I need to know to save the children Tommaso infected with fatal insomnia.”
“Are you certain it was him? Maybe he stumbled onto this so-called epidemic of yours and was studying it.” He began walking inland, away from the rocky coast. Trees and shrubs appeared, at first ragged and wild, then gradually becoming more cultivated.
“No. He and his men killed Jacob to test my abilities. They had an entire lab set up where they could study prions. A lab funded by Almanac Care and filled with equipment from Kingston Enterprises.”
“We sell state-of-the-art medical equipment all over the world. Why do you expect me to remember one random client?”
“Not so random. Not when your son was also working for them. Tell me, did Leo create a way for them to infect us with the prions? Was it his doing?”
The more agitated I became, the calmer his demeanor. Infuriating. The boxwood hedges around us now stretched higher than my head, casting shadows on our path. They closed in, separated by a mere arm’s width. Daniel had led me into a maze.
“Leo was a genius. But he wasn’t the one who developed the artificial prions—that was another brilliant mind. One obsessed with fatal insomnia.”
“You said you’d never heard of fatal insomnia.”
“Maybe I didn’t. At least not by that name. Not until I learned about it from your memories.” He turned to grin at me. “After all, this is a meeting of the minds, Dr. Rossi. What you know, I know.”
Except I wasn’t learning what I needed from him. He’d hidden his truth under layers of misdirection—and I’d helped by playing his twisted game, telling him about my father’s death.
In the distance, from beyond the maze, I heard a woman’s laugh, followed by the sound of horses galloping.
“Who is this mysterious woman you keep mentioning? The one you say I look like. She’s the brilliant mind you’re tal
king about, right?”
“Her name would be meaningless to you.”
“Then don’t tell me her name. Tell me about her. Her work with fatal insomnia.”
“Her name is Francesca,” he answered, zigging to my zag, avoiding answering me with the information I needed. “And she was the love of my life.”
Chapter 15
BACK WHEN HE worked for the Russians, Devon had learned the necessity of playing offense and defense simultaneously. You had to grow your turf while also protecting against encroachment from rivals.
But back then, he’d known the players and their playbook. They weren’t nameless, faceless, ruthless Machiavellian assholes who targeted children. They didn’t have a six-month head start—Angela’s best guess as to when she and the children had been infected. And they single-mindedly pursued their goals, making it easy for Devon to play them against themselves.
These guys? Almanac? He didn’t even know what the hell they wanted.
No matter. They’d made a lethal mistake, coming here, targeting his daughter. Bastards were already dead, they just didn’t know it.
He led Ozzie through the tunnels to the entrance at Good Sam’s basement. They took the stairs up to the ER, Ozzie’s nails click-clacking against the linoleum floor.
The ER was its usual flavor of mayhem: raucous noise echoing through the halls, the stench of bleach and blood mingling to leave a metallic taste behind, the lights of an approaching ambulance washing the tile walls in neon.
He turned away from the cacophony and sidled down the back corridor to the doors of the Advocacy Center. The lights were off, which he took as a good sign that at least on Christmas night there was no need for the center’s services to perform sexual assault or abuse examinations. Sad to say, he was certain that wouldn’t be the case come tomorrow. Nature of the beast.
He and Ozzie continued through empty hallways to the main wing, where they took an elevator up to the third floor.
