by Eric Flint
“Are you pausing for effect, Ed?” Jasper folded his arms.
Ed stared at the vial. “This blood is missing, to put it quite simply, all of its red blood cells.”
“You’re saying this is human blood, drained of all its red blood cells.” Jasper’s tone was flat and one of disbelief. “You know, the medical examiner determined the same during the autopsies earlier this morning. Next you’re going to say some jacked-up vampire—”
“No, a chupacabra.” Ed said the words, but a smile crept on to his face.
“A goddamned chupacabra—”
Temple glared at Jasper.
“Ed, you can’t be—wait, did Vance put you up to this? What a funny guy.”
“But seriously,” Jasper said, “tell me this isn’t some vampire thing, please. I’m sick of vampires and zombies on TV and books. It’s all nonsense.”
“But you’re okay with aliens, huh? And the demons Temple’s tossing about.”
“No. I’m not.” Jasper’s ire rose. “I think we’re dealing with a group of assholes running around as part of some bullshit cult, hurting innocent people.”
“That was certainly frank.” Greg rocked back and forth on his squeaky chair. “A cult, huh? A cult devoted to brane cosmology, but they aren’t aware of the scientific points, only the fantastical version where the other side leaks over into ours and we’re leaking into the other side.”
“How is that different from Temple believing in demons rather than the scientific explanation?” Jasper arched an eyebrow.
“I want to smack you when you do that,” Temple said.
“What?” Jasper spread his hands.
“You smirk with your eyebrow, yeah, like that!” She pointed at his face. “What you don’t understand, farm boy, is that the two aren’t mutually exclusive—God and demons and science can all coexist.”
Jasper took a deep breath and blew it out. “Okay, fine. I can’t argue with logic that abstract—but I can tell you this. I’m still betting on the Kool-Aid drinking asshole cult.”
“Hypothetically,” Temple asked, “what would a creature from another universe look like? How would such a creature live in our universe? If they come from a completely different universe, everything about them—their biology, chemistry, you name it—would be different. They might—they probably must—be made of different elements altogether, right?”
Ed shrugged. “What do you think, Greg? Vance?”
Greg’s eyes scrunched shut; he stretched his arms up over his head and yawned. Vance adopted a thousand-yard stare.
“Wow, a regular brain trust.” Jasper grinned. “You three are like those see-no-evil monkey guys.”
Temple snickered. “See-no-evil monkey guys, a new name for the scientific triumvirate.”
Greg frowned. “They could appear as anything your imagination might conjure. They might live on hemoglobin, or have an affinity for iron, that make sense?” He glanced at Ed, who shrugged.
“Maybe they can’t live in our universe at all,” Vance added.
“I’m gonna go with that one,” Jasper said. “You watch. After all this, the cult of assholes will be the culprit.”
Temple’s eyes lost their fire and appeared to succumb to Jasper’s opinion, but he suspected she merely lost her energy—finally.
Ed coughed again. “I’ll end with this, because it’s getting late, and we’re all tired, but here it is,” he paused, as if lecturing to a room full of students, “No creature I’m aware of is capable of filtering blood in this manner, and also, combined with the way the bodies were mutilated, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen or heard or read about.”
The office was silent for ten seconds, but felt like ten minutes.
Ed broke the silence with a single, forceful clap. “Now, who wants some food and some drink?”
Chapter 24
Wayland Precision went dark once a blonde woman, and later an older, grizzled man, departed. Only two lights remained on—both outside, one out front and one in the back.
Lali decided against using khâu for this part of the plan. Rao would brook no failure now, there had been too many disasters. Rao would never admit to it, but Lali felt his power waning, and his desire to touch the other side, cross over and absorb the powers provided by the nâga, increasing.
She’d ditched her car, a beat-up Yaris, down Summer a ways, and mostly out of sight near a copse of trees. Few cars or trucks traveled down this road after eight in the evening, so she’d crept toward the building with ease, and without fear of being seen by chance. The closer she crept to the building, the more the hot August night smothered her. The clouds pressed down as if sealing her at this location on Summer Street.
A nearby building provided cover for her as she’d watched the building, waiting for the people within to leave. The burnt odor dissipated, or she’d grown accustomed to the ever-present acridness, but her mouth fouled and coated her tongue. She’d considered bailing out, but gathering information on Wayland Precision and the people working there was important. Rao needed a sacrifice, and in turn, Lali would benefit from the sacrifice—Rao had promised.
The low-cut grass at the front of the building pricked her bare feet. She loved walking around without shoes and socks, but the dryness created needles out of the grass, and she winced with each step. The light around back flared out.
Luck? No. Motion sensors likely controlled the lights.
No one walked the streets in this area, and no headlights poked through in either direction. No residences, either. She scaled the chain link fence, the thin metal clinking and rattling. Snipping the metal would have been easier, but she hadn’t thought to bring a bolt cutter or heavy metal snips.
Lali approached the back steps slowly and swiveling her head at every little noise. The light remained dark. Rather than use the steps, she opted for the concrete ramp leading up the side. Hopefully movement up the ramp wouldn’t trigger the motion sensor, and she’d escape detection.
She took a few steps, nothing happened. No alarms, no lights.
“Hmm. The break-in might be easier than I thought.”
Another step.
She smiled.
Another—
A light blared, projecting into the parking lot.
“Shit.”
She padded up the ramp and dug a ring of keys from her bag. Dumb luck, this part. When she’d dated Carlos, she’d made copies of all of his keys. She hadn’t known then she’d be using them to break into Wayland, if in fact, any of these keys worked. The first key she tried slid into the lock, but didn’t budge the cylinder.
The yellow light blared, but she hoped it’d go out after a few minutes—if she kept movements to a minimum and only worked keys with the lock, and did not move her body or arms too much. How sensitive were motion sensors, anyway? She’d chosen flat black tights and a thin black jacket for the entry. Her hair was already black and she’d even painted her toenails and fingernails black, but she wasn’t Goth, not by any stretch. An image of her younger brother playing one of his silly video games flashed in her mind—Lali’s attire and actions like one of the women in the current batch of stealth games and urban fantasy novels.
She poked key after key into the door. Her hands shook from excitement and nervousness, which didn’t help with the last few keys. Her eyes darted back and forth almost involuntarily, futilely scanning for headlights. None of the keys worked in the door. None. Zero. Good thing she didn’t break her arm patting herself on the back over copying Carlos’s keys.
A rusted box protruded from the brick wall. She tugged open the tiny door, revealing a keypad. So, did the lock on the big door function or did an electronic system control the entire building? Circumventing alarms and electronic security systems was beyond her.
Lali sighed.
She dug into her bag and withdrew a leather case containing a lock pick set. During the wild days of her youth, she’d made a hobby of picking locks. Nothing major. Nothing serious like safes or ba
nk vaults, but padlocks and a few doors. Easy stuff, but her lock-picking days were in high school, long past, and her skills had eroded. At least the floodlight meant she wouldn’t have to risk chipping her teeth from jamming a small flashlight in her mouth. The first pick eased into the cylinder—
A mechanized rattle, like a gate being pulled by a chain, echoed off the buildings behind Wayland Precision.
Her center of gravity lowered in response. The second pick slipped from her fingers, clinking against the cement.
Was the gate Wayland’s? From her position, the building obscured the gate situated near the front of the building on the western side.
Lali slid from the ramp, her tights and jacket hissing and scraping against the concrete. She crouched inside a deep shadow, and waited.
The rattling ceased a few seconds later, but no vehicle appeared in the lot adjacent to her hiding spot next to the entry ramp. After a few minutes, the floodlight above the rear entrance clicked off, the bulb’s red glow lingered a moment before fading. Good. Her eyes adjusted, but painfully slowly. She closed her eyes and waited—hoping another option would present itself.
She scanned the darkness and found that no one had entered Wayland’s yard, but instead a building on the western side. Fluorescent lights flickered on in the building, obscured by trees and overgrown bushes.
Lali turned and faced the ramp. She reached up, but a window at the base of the building caught her eye—a window likely leading to the basement. Breaking the window would not be a big deal—not compared with the destruction she’d render once inside Wayland. She grinned.
The grass behind Wayland, what little grass grew, remained damp and quite a bit longer than its front yard counterparts. She slid along the slick grass, back against the wall until her fingers found the edge of the window. She puffed a little laugh—the window was open a smidge. For all the security, someone forgot to close and lock the window.
Lali tucked the lock pick kit back into her satchel and lifted the window. She’d be able to squeeze through, but she removed her jacket, laying it near the open window.
She leaned inside the window frame for a quick look.
Darkness. Complete. No flashing red lights signaling some sort of electronic equipment. No hum. Nothing. They must also turn off the air-conditioning at night, for she didn’t hear any unit outside causing a racket.
Lali reached for her flashlight and flicked it on once she’d thrust her hand into the opening. The thought of her hand wading into the strange darkness creeped her out a little.
Smell. The scent within the building wrinkled her nose. It wasn’t unpleasant, but a little off, like some sort of metallic garden salad.
She swept the cone of light back and forth, and took in a large office area, filled with filing cabinets, desks, chairs, tables, paper, and—aquariums. Inside a supposed machine shop? Strange people.
Entry didn’t prove difficult. She slid inside and grabbed her jacket as she eased to the floor. Tile.
Her heart rate blipped up a notch and her hands jittered. Adrenaline. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. Inside enemy territory, and so far, nothing bad happened. No one saw her.
She focused on the desk nearest the entry point and studied the contents. Papers. A lot of papers. A ledger. A few notebooks. A woman’s handwriting on almost all of the letters on the desk. She opened the ledger—a bunch of numbers. Nothing. She flipped through the notebooks. Formulas and equations, but nothing noteworthy, and in her opinion, nothing Rao might desire. Ah, but this was something—
A stack of paper with the name Völundr’s Hammer with a hammer drawn beneath. A log of their activity. Stainless steel of various grades featured prominently in the most recent entries. She tucked the stack inside her satchel.
Penny Stahlberg. Steve Stahlberg.
A husband and wife team? Mother and son? Father and daughter? Brother and sister?
She twitched her wrist and the flashlight’s beam found a photo, an eight by ten labeled Wayland Precision and the current year underneath. Her eyes found Carlos in the photo, and her heart clenched inside her chest. Why did she still have feelings for the lying, cheating asshole? He was married, and had a kid. Lali fell for him and his lies. Dirt bag.
The blonde woman and grizzly man in the photo must be the Stahlbergs, and likely father and daughter, unless they had one of those, the phrase escaped her—fall-summer romance? A December—oh who cared? All the others in the photo were typical for the area—though predominantly white. The photo joined the papers she’d already shoved into the satchel.
The Câ Tsang had just gained a new batch of targets.
The other desk must have been the old man’s, Steve’s. A stack of bills rested there, but little else other than a nasty coffee mug with an image of a hammer and an anvil on the side. Boy, were these people single-minded. She peeked into the envelopes. A different address—Steve’s home address. She opened another—Penny’s home address. The other correspondences were all either Steve’s or Penny’s. She searched for payroll information—payroll would contain all the data she’d need. She poked around the third desk, but found little of use. The filing cabinets gave up the payroll information—all of their personal identifying information, actually. The perpetual smile on her face since entering widened. They, she and Rao, could seriously fuck with these people, with the information she’d obtained.
She bit down on her desire to pat herself on her back.
The air moved within the office, and she realized how hot and close the basement was, but the air moved, why? Had someone entered the building? A silent alarm had triggered and one of the employees had entered, and would find her. No. A ridiculous notion—paranoia.
The odd scent returned, breaking her from thoughts of discovery. Metal and vegetal. She strode over to the aquariums. No fish. Coral? A sea thingy—an anemone? A cucumber? Whatever.
Before moving on to phase two of Rao’s plan, she’d poke around a little more.
A door barred her exit from the office. The knob wouldn’t turn, locked from the other side? Not too safe, really.
She picked a lighter from her satchel and turned back for the stacks of papers on the first desk. Rao wanted the building vandalized, well, more than vandalized, burned to the ground. But she entertained a different notion. Even if she paid the price by enduring the man’s twisted desires, she wouldn’t burn the building, not yet. Why be obvious when screwing with the people and torturing them presented itself? Burning the building would only send the Völundr’s Hammer guild into a rage.
No doubt Rao would desire Penny for sacrifice, but what if he desired Penny in other ways rather than sacrifice, the way he did Lali? Rao would never want a sworn enemy like that for a concubine, but would he force himself on her? She pushed the thought from her mind. The truth was, she didn’t really care either way. She only sought the power Rao promised, not Rao himself. She’d spent her whole life feeling powerless, and she was sick and tired of it.
For Lali, Carlos should suffer. She’d feel no guilt over his torture and sacrifice. What if she could talk Rao into sacrificing him to the nâga and allow her to touch the other side? Ambitious thinking. Dangerous thinking if Rao became angered over her decision.
One more circuit around the room revealed nothing of value. The strange scent remained unanswered. She shrugged and tossed her jacket and satchel through the open window, and glanced back one more time to make sure she’d left nothing behind. She pulled herself up and through.
The spotlight above the rear entrance remained off, and the night sky twinkled through wispy low-lying clouds. She stole into the black alongside the building, scaled the fence, and saw not a person or vehicle on the way to hers. Success. Of course, Steve and Penny would notice the missing items, which would cause them worry. Let them be paranoid, and perhaps they’d blame someone from within, Carlos perhaps.
Lali sat in her car for a few minutes watching the darkness—even the fluorescent light in the next bu
ilding over was no longer on. She hadn’t heard the gate rattle, but it had likely happened during her time inside, down in the basement.
A half hour passed. A few cars drove down the road, but no one stopped at Wayland Precision. Not a single vehicle even slowed down or so much as tapped their brakes as they passed the building. She started her engine and drove off, back to her apartment per Rao’s instructions, in case someone followed after her break-in.
Chapter 25
A phone call robbed Jasper of sleep once again. Since driving with his eyes practically glued shut wasn’t at all safe, he took a shower before leaving. But that wasn’t really much help. He’d stayed out very late the night before with Temple and Ed, eating and—mostly—drinking. Wisely, Vance and Greg had begged off.
Temple had dropped him off only a few hours ago, and now he was on his way to pick her up at the hotel in his bucar.
Damn.
He flipped the air conditioning on max and reached for the large black coffee he’d picked up at Starbucks as they opened. He needed the caffeine desperately. His tongue tingled after the scalding liquid burned all the way down his throat.
He reached for the sunglasses compartment built into the Charger’s overhead but discovered it was empty. He’d probably left them at home, since he hadn’t used the bucar yesterday and been off his typical routine when Temple picked him up, rather than the other way around.
He took another sip of coffee. The fog in his brain—no, the sandbag filling the entire cavity—eased up a bit. What made him think he’d achieve a full night of sleep, anyway? Any night out with Ed White usually ended the same way, with at least one of them hugging the commode and both of them with hangovers.
More coffee.
He popped open a bottle and dumped a couple of ibuprofen down his gullet.
* * *
The impetus that had dragged him out of bed at the literal crack of dawn was a frantic phone call from Carlos. “Come to Wayland Precision. This is serious. I think I know who did it.”
