Basilisk c-2

by Rob Thurman

  “To the vending machine outside. I need more parts.” I shrugged off my backpack—great for hiding said parts—and pulled out a heavy roll of cash. I waved it at him reassuringly. “I’ll leave money inside what’s left of it when I’m done to reimburse them. I’m not a thief.” I was everything else under the sun, but not a thief.

  That had Stefan’s eyes opening wider. “Jesus, Misha, how much do you have there?”

  “Oh,” I shrugged, “a couple of hundred thousand. It’s escape cash I kept tucking away every few weeks from the offshore account. If we’re on the run, we can’t always rely on finding a bank that accepts wire transfers from the Cayman Islands. You have to think about these things.”

  He stared at me as if not certain he wasn’t dreaming . . . or having a nightmare; it was a difficult thing to interpret which of the two when it was someone else doing the wondering. He then sat up and jammed the clip home in his gun. “Okay then, Mr. Prepared. Let’s go defile that vending machine.”

  “I don’t need a bodyguard. I’m the Grim Reaper walking, remember?” I stuffed the cash back into my bag. No sense in paying until I saw approximately how much I was going to rip out of the machine.

  “Yeah, a pacifist Grim Reaper who uses his sickle to hang wet laundry on. Scary shit. I think I’ll go along for the ride anyway.” He swung his legs over and stood. “And bring the rat with you.”

  Godzilla? “Why?”

  “Because when you’re not around, he pisses on my bed. Why do you think I keep my bedroom door closed at home? To keep him from sneaking in to read my Playboys? Take the damn rat.”

  Picky, picky, picky. I scooped up Zilla and draped him around my neck, and the three of us spent the next fifteen minutes cannibalizing the vending machine for parts and Ho Hos. The parking lot was empty except for cars, and all the windows were dark. No one saw us. Back in the room, I finished the microwave gun while Stefan sacked out again.

  When it was done, I had a fleeting wish I was home and had access to some nice paint that would go over metal—metallic blue or candy apple red. But it was functional and that would have to do the trick. I peeled off the necessary cash to pay for the vending machine and started back outside. I paused at Stefan’s bed where he lay flat on his stomach, buried in the deep sleep he needed more than I needed a bodyguard. I touched the back of his calf with the lightest graze of a fingertip. It would keep him sleeping through the noise of my opening the door. Looking over my shoulder, I whistled lightly and Godzilla bounded off my bed, climbed my leg, and curled up in the pocket of my jacket. Stefan wouldn’t be happy when he did wake up if he had ferret urine soaking his sweatpants.

  I opened the door, stepped outside, and walked the fifteen feet down to the vending machine. I was considering more sugar—candy bars this time. I reached a hand into the guts of the machine and then . . . nothing.

  The night gobbled me up and took me away.

  All those monster movies had been right. You shouldn’t go into the dark alone.

  I woke up instantly, not in fits and stages. Once I healed, I returned to fighting form immediately. Jericho would’ve been proud of how I’d managed to accelerate the process and how I’d perfected what he’d begun. The thought left a bad taste in my mouth and when I opened my eyes, that bad taste went straight into an extremely bad mood as my pupils adjusted to the low light.

  “Raynor,” I said flatly. He was the government’s dog panting at the end of the Institute’s leash. He’d tortured and murdered Anatoly, ruined Cascade—our home—and yet, after we assumed we were free of him after Saul had killed him in the mall parking lot, he was back for more. “Even death doesn’t want your malevolent ass.”

  I recognized him from the sliver of profile I could see from where I was slumped against the door behind the passenger seat of a car humming smoothly over concrete. The pictures I’d taken of him off the Internet had been crystal clear and his threatening to shoot me in the mall parking lot even more so. He turned enough to reveal the short dark hair brushed forward, a faint pallor under his skin, and his impeccable suit’s collar open to show a half-inch tracheostomy tube in his throat. The tube was covered with a small, clear Passy-Muir valve that let people with trachs talk. Raynor tapped it. “Thanks to your friend, I’ll be needing this bugger for a while.” His voice was perfectly understandable, if hoarse. “My bad luck. Your bad luck happened to be an eager-beaver doctor with a penknife in that parking lot. Your extremely bad luck indeed.” He shifted his attention back to the road. “Did I mention that an impromptu tracheotomy whilst not under anesthesia isn’t particularly pleasant? No? Perhaps we’ll discuss it more later.”

  I looked down to see handcuffs around my wrists and a chain securing them to the metal bracing under the passenger seat in front of me. I had four to five inches’ slack at the most. I was strong, but not strong enough to shatter metal. And Raynor, more careful now than before, had also shackled my ankles. I could dislocate both of my thumbs and slip the cuffs, but there was nothing I could do about the restraints holding down my feet. I looked back up to see the car clock reading 4:23 a.m. Stefan would still be asleep. He wouldn’t know I was gone. If Raynor had used a silencer, and I knew he had, neither would Saul.

  “Speaking of pain, how’s your head? I was a good ways down the parking lot when I made that shot, but a rubber bullet would fracture the skull of anyone normal—anyone human. Kill them outright most likely. But I know how you chimeras heal and I crossed my fingers for you, although you were out for a few hours. When I dragged you into the car, I gave it a feel. And there it was—a nice fracture down the back of your skull. Not a hairline one either. A definite kill shot, again, for anyone normal. Yet here you are. You didn’t disappoint, Michael. I have to give you that.”

  If I’d been out for two hours, he had come close to killing me. It was a hard thing to do, but not impossible and the brain was a delicate organ in a human or a chimera. I didn’t have enough reach to lift my hands and feet, so I bent my head low and ran fingers through my hair. It was spiky with dried blood. He wasn’t lying. He’d shot me while I’d been contemplating Milky Ways over Three Musketeers, damn it. He’d shot me right in front of the vending machine. . . .

  God.

  He’d shot me while I stood fifteen feet from our room where I’d left Stefan asleep—where I’d made sure he would stay asleep, unguarded and unconscious, an easy target. I hadn’t locked the door on my way out because I was only fifteen goddamn feet away. “Stefan,” I demanded. The blood in my hair was dry, but the tinfoil taste of it in my mouth was fresh. Invisible blood for a not-so-invisible desperation. “Where’s Stefan?”

  “Ah, Stefan Korsak, your brother.” The way he said “brother” told me he knew something.

  Knew too much.

  “I killed him,” he went on matter-of-factly. “Real bullets this time. I’d say it was painless, but I don’t think it was. I shot him five times in the gut. You’ve not seen true pain until you see someone die of that. The trauma. The shredding of the intestines. The acid pouring from the stomach and eating away at everything it touches. But unfortunately my time was short. I let him suffer in excruciating agony for a moment or two, then finished him with one to the head. Like putting a lame horse out of its misery. I do occasionally have my kinder moments. You may thank me at your convenience.” I turned away from him, away from it all, and rested my forehead against the window glass.

  Stefan.

  Thank God.

  Thank fucking God.

  Raynor was lying. Unless he’d rolled Stefan over in his sleep to shoot him, that whole story was, as Saul would say, bullshit with a side order of day-old crap for flavor. The story didn’t matter, though. I would’ve known he was lying without it. He’d taken psychology classes with the best and the brightest of the CIA, but he was just a human. Institute training trumped CIA training and chimera trumped human. The most minute of facial expressions, pupil dilation, the heart rate I could sense speeding up slightly . . . I didn’t c
are. I didn’t care how I knew, only that I did know. My brother was alive. Through sheer luck or Raynor’s need to make his escape with me quickly, Stefan was alive.

  No thanks to me.

  I’d thought I’d known best. I’d thought I was doing him a favor by helping him rest. I should’ve thought I was a dangerous idiot with the skills and a lifetime of training but not the experience, because that was what I was. The glass was cool under my forehead and I closed my eyes. But now Stefan would wake up and I would be gone. He’d search for me, but Raynor had proved, for a human, he was a formidable and cunning opponent. I had no idea how Stefan could hope to find me now. That might kill him the same as Raynor’s imaginary bullets. And it would be my fault the same as if there had been a gun and I’d been the one pulling the trigger. I had done this to my brother. Raynor didn’t matter. It had been me.

  If I lived at all, how was I going to live with that?

  There was a stirring in my jacket pocket and I slivered my eyes to see Godzilla poke his nose out. He knew danger when he smelled it and had obviously stayed hidden while Raynor wrestled me into his car. I gave a low hiss of warning, inaudible except to ferret ears, and he instantly disappeared back into my pocket. If Raynor found him . . . I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to think about my failures, my screwups, my fuckups. I didn’t want to think about anything right then.

  I didn’t get my wish. Big surprise.

  “Ah, don’t be like that. It’ll make for a boring trip. We’ve had the Institute, which can be rebuilt as we have the day care to supply it. But you—you and the others are a problem we haven’t faced before. Therefore, a new place shall be created for you and them—what should we call it? Probation? Detention?—where naughty little assassins are taught their rightful place.” Raynor’s gravelly voice was far too cheerful for me.

  “But you look down in the mouth at that news.” He tsked, the sound odd through the trach valve. “I know—let’s bring your friend up. You’ll have company. That’ll put the pink in your cheeks. You might work up the curiosity to ask me precisely what they’ll do to you when I have the probationary program fully staffed. I hate it when I concoct devious plans and no one can be bothered to ask me about them. My ego becomes quite bruised. Since I’m going to stop, are you sure you don’t want some Tylenol for that formerly fractured head of yours?”

  “No, thanks,” I said without any emotion he’d be able to detect. “I’m not deficient. I’m not weak.”

  “Like me, you mean?” The car had pulled over into what had once been a rest stop. It was now a deserted, crumbling place except for us. “I suppose I should be offended by that, on my behalf and on humanity’s behalf as well, but, Michael. . . .” He put the car in park and smiled at me. It was full of gloat and triumph. “This deficient human has certainly put you in your place, now haven’t I?” He opened the driver door, but paused to gift me with a last few words before exiting. “Your place in the grand scheme of things is slave, chimera. An obedient, servile slave and I’ll make damn sure you never forget that again.”

  He slammed the door behind him. I didn’t bother to think about being a slave again, because I’d die before that happened. I did think about what he meant by bringing my friend up. What friend? Saul?

  I heard the thump of the trunk, muffled sounds of outrage, and then the other door to the backseat was flung open. I saw pale skin, a flash of long legs under a short purple, blue, and green filmy skirt, lavender sandals that had ties that crisscrossed up the calf to tie in a neat bow just under the knees, and toenails painted pink—cotton candy pink.

  The same as the girl’s hair.

  “Ariel?”

  “Yes, your Easter egg–colored girlfriend from New York.” Raynor tore away the duct tape that served as a gag, taking strands of pink hair stuck in the adhesive. “She was so worried about you that she showed up in Cascade Falls looking for someone who matched your description with the rather boring name of Bernie. Instead, she found one of my men. Mercenaries. You kill one, I simply hire another. I didn’t think you’d go back to the Falls, but you never know. And while I didn’t catch you, I did catch another little fish in my net, or rather one of my men did. She’s quite a loud fish too but a perfect way of keeping you in line, along with the chains.”

  Her wary and suspicious blue eyes focused on the finger he wagged in her face. “Now then, scream again, little fish, and I’ll hurt you. And trust me when I say that I’ll enjoy it. Might even make a hobby of it. So let’s use our inside voices, shall we?” He closed the door, the overhead light going dark again. Back behind the wheel, he hit the childproof locks and we were on the road again. “And do keep in mind, Michael, while I can’t do much to hurt you in the more permanent sense without losing a large profit, to her I can do anything I want. My imagination in that area is vast and impressive.”

  I didn’t face Ariel, not yet. I had a question first, the same question for both of them, but I asked Raynor first. “How did you find me?”

  “Oh, I have a tracker too. I found the house in Laramie the same as you, but as I flew, while suctioning out my new tracheotomy—quite pleasant, thank you—I beat you. I saw the discarded chips inside the house and I knew you wouldn’t be far behind. I waited out of sight and shot your ‘borrowed’ SUV with a magnetic tracking disc. Hands-on operation, that’s what I’m about. And I don’t care for my mercenaries to know too much about what I’m doing. Then I followed you and waited for a chance at you alone, without your rather shady companions. Lucky me, I stumbled across one fairly quickly.”

  Again, thanks to me. Now I looked at Ariel. Despite the dark and with the help of the occasional passing headlights, I could see that her usually smooth pink bob was a tangled mess. The faint glitter of light purple eye shadow and mascara was smeared. Her standard pink lip gloss was gone, the same pink as her short fingernails that decorated the hands that sat in her lap. The hands didn’t have much choice. Her wrists were restrained with the same plastic ties the police used. She looked lost, confused, and vulnerable . . . right up until the moment she lifted her bound wrists and smacked me hard across the jaw with them. “Liar!” Then she leaned back far enough to plant one purple sandal in my left ribs. “You are such a filthy liar, Bernie! Or is it Parker? That’s what they were calling you in that tiny little town. And this maniac is calling you Michael. So which is it?”

  Strands of hair had fallen in her eyes and she blew them out of the way to gauge that perfect aim one more time. The sandal slammed me again. “When we get out of this, when I kick your brainiac ass, I want to know exactly what name to call you, and it damn sure won’t be Dr. Theoretical.”

  She was petite and slender, but she could kick like a mule. With four inches’ reach thanks to the chains, there wasn’t much I could do about it either. She kicked me one more time before giving up to glare at me. I seized the moment of silence to ask her what I’d asked Raynor. “How did you find me?” Or rather, how had she found out where I had been before going on the run again?

  “Oh, please. I’m every bit the genius you think you are and then some.” The tiny mermaid tattoo beside her eye seemed to flick its tail at me in displeasure. “You can bounce your Internet signal around the world a hundred times, but I can still trace it back to the source. It did take me six months. You were awfully thorough, but I have a brother who hacked the Pentagon when he was eleven.” She gave me a last disgusted glance, then used her fingers to awkwardly try to smooth out her hair. “I’ve known you didn’t live in Texas forever, but you seemed like such a good guy that I thought you might have your reasons to lie. And when you disappeared after a few weird e-mails and mentioned a family emergency, I started to worry.” She shifted shoulders under a sparkling top—I’d call it light green, but she’d probably call it sea foam. “So . . . I went for a surprise visit. Because I worried. Because I’m a good person.”

  “And, my, I’ll bet you were surprised, weren’t you, darlin’?”

  She lifted her
foot to kick the back of Raynor’s seat, but then thought better of it and paid him no attention instead. “I flew into Portland using up all my frequent flier miles, rented a car, and when I got to Cascade Falls, I found out there was no Bernie. I shouldn’t have been surprised, since you lied about where you lived.” She was back to glaring at me. “But some coffeehouse bimbo recognized your picture.” She blushed as pink as her nail polish. “One that I happened to have with me. No big deal. I have one of my pet rat too.” Her expression said I was about ten rungs below rat, and not a pet one either. “The bimbo said your name was Parker and you’re soooo sweet and such a doll and couldn’t be cuter and you worked at the coffeehouse.”

  The glare was white-hot now. It could’ve cut metal like an acetylene torch. “You’re watching movies with me every week while flirting with some brainless wonder serving up caffeine, lying about your name, lying about getting your PhD. Lying about everything. But I try . . . try to give you the benefit of the doubt. Fake name, fake job when you are smart enough to have two PhDs by now; you love the escape of movies because maybe that’s the only escape you have. You could be in the Witness Protection Program. I liked you so much, I was willing to turn off my own brain cells and go along with that ridiculous excuse.”

  This time she did kick the back of Raynor’s seat. “Until this asshole has some goon grab me, toss me into the trunk of his car, put me on a private plane, fly me out here, and throw me into another car trunk. That is not Witness Protection. Homeland Security, Gitmo, or plain criminals, that I can see, but not Witness Protection.”

  “You’re right about that, but kick the back of my seat again, girly, and I’ll but a bullet in that pretty little foot of yours,” Raynor warned.

  The threat didn’t intimidate her—I wasn’t sure anything would—but she used common sense and tucked her feet under her in an impossibly flexible move. “And now this dick says your name is Michael.” The fury faded from her eyes and transmuted into speculation. “Well?”