“That’s what they all say.”
“I’m so not like everyone else.”
“They say that too.”
“Whatever. I have to go.”
I went to the door and she followed me back to the living room.
“Wow,” Hunter said as we stepped out. “You two could be sisters.”
“I was going for twins, but I’ll take what I can get,” I answered wryly. “You ready?”
He stood, and I suddenly realized that he’d been sitting on the poisoned couch. Of course, it had been cleaned by crime scene pros at federal expense, and anyway, he was human, so the holy water wouldn’t have hurt him, but it made me realize that leaving Mina here wasn’t a simple bait and switch. I was putting her in danger. There were watchdogs out front, and I could hope the killer kids had done enough damage for one night, but—
“Hold on a minute.”
I went into the kitchen and chose the biggest knife I could out of the butcher block. I supposed that if I cooked I’d actually know what it was for, but anyway it looked big enough to butcher a pig … or a person. I came back and tucked it between two of the couch cushions.
“Just in case,” I told her.
“In case of what?”
“Murderers, thieves, things that go bump in the night … Anyone who comes through that door who isn’t us.”
“You really know how to put your guests at ease.”
“I don’t want you at ease. I want you on guard. Um, enjoy.”
She looked at me doubtfully, and I couldn’t blame her. I wasn’t even sure I had cable. I took Hunter’s arm and we went on our way, but not without a worried glance back. Mina, however, already seemed to have forgotten her concerns and sat back against the couch cushions to prop her feet up on my coffee table, TV remote in hand.
I was careful as we left to keep my face in shadow, turned almost into Hunter’s neck as I pretended to talk his ear off, stretching myself to be as tall as possible. Hunter helped by leaning in to listen to my pretend monologue. It was a relief to get to his car without incident. He started it and took off, slowly to avoid suspicion.
“You brought the spare clothes?” I asked.
“In the back.”
I kicked off Mina’s shoes and dove for the back seat.
“So, what’s this all about, and where am I taking you?” he asked, only keeping his eyes on the road every few seconds. The rest of the time he spent watching the rearview mirror.
“I told you I can’t tell you that.”
“I thought that was just for Mina. As your human
servant … ”
“You’re not my human servant.”
“But I could be.”
I hated to burst his bubble, especially when his fondest wish was to be my minion, so I left it alone.
“Anyway,” he added, “you’ll at least have to tell me where we’re going so I can get us there.”
“You know the old clinic on Mercer?”
“The one that’s half burnt out?”
“I’m guessing that’s the one.”
“But why? It’s deserted.”
I gave him a look.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, ‘then you’d have to kill me,’” he said. “But if you need backup—”
“I don’t.”
“Whatever.”
I smiled. That was my line. While we’d been talking, I’d pulled out the clothes I’d asked for, which were way more appropriate to night-stalking—black jeans, black long-sleeved T-shirt, tennies.
“You’re lucky my little sister just went through a goth phase,” Hunter said, his gaze temporarily on the road. “If you’d wanted, I could have gotten you all the leather and chains you could handle.”
I wrinkled my nose. Been there, done that, wasn’t allowed to keep the T-shirt. I wasn’t a big fan of message tees, but Bite Me was right for so many occasions.
“Thanks anyway. Creaking and clanking really aren’t my style.”
“I figured.”
We turned onto Mercer ten minutes later. I was all suited up in cat-burglar chic.
“That gas station over there,” I said, nodding to the right about a block up the road. “Is it close to the clinic?”
“Maybe half a mile.”
“Good, you can wait for me there.”
“But—”
“I was told to come alone, and that’s what I plan to do.”
Okay, so sneakers have their uses. For one, they have the word “sneak” right in them, so they put you straight into stealth mode. For another, they’re not nearly as cute as wedges or boots or stilettos, so you’re less concerned about getting blood all over them. You don’t want to be thinking about your footwear replacement costs in the midst of battle. It’s a distraction that can get you killed.
Here’s the only problem … they’re no protection against a hungry gator. But then, what is? I only hoped I didn’t meet up with one. There was a patch of grass along the side of the road, maybe two or three feet wide, and then an overgrown mess of weedy forest that looked like it could reach out and grab the unwary. Trees dripped with Spanish moss; prickly thorn bushes camouflaged themselves with pretty little flowers. I wasn’t going to think about the wildlife they might be hiding in there. Spiders and snakes and … Nope, those thoughts were going into the psychic shredder, along with all the other things I couldn’t bear to face, like Kelly Swinter’s fate. Someday my pent-up paranoias would explode on me. I just hoped I wasn’t doing anything life threatening when it happened.
But for now, I’d brave the wild growth. It was the only way to sneak up on the clinic and get the lay of the land before committing. It felt like some kind of cosmic justice for what I’d done to Kelly each time a thorn gashed my arm or I stepped into a swamp—which totally described, like, half the state of Florida. Yeah, because the universe punished murder with petty torment. Or, maybe not so petty if any of the stingers or fangs I feared got ahold of me.
This was me, not thinking about it.
I had to circle around behind a small strip mall complex and then, finally, the clinic. I assumed so, anyway, based on Hunter’s description of it as half-burnt. Huge wooden walls were erected around the building, half hiding it from view. I’d seen the same thing on umpteen construction projects in my life, but never before topped with razor-wire. In the yard hemmed in by the fence, a crane stood silent against the night. That was about all I could see from my position. As I’d known all along, I was just going to have to go in.
I heard something move in the growth behind me, and that helped get me moving. I pictured huge venomous teeth … snake, gator, it hardly mattered. I was so out of there. I slid out of the woods and began to circle the wooden wall at a decent distance, in case there were any proximity alarms or the like. The wall was solid. No knots or warps in the wood to peek through. Three quarters of the way around there was a parking lot, mostly hidden from the road by the bulk of the clinic. There were four cars in it, which seemed odd in an abandoned building with the construction stopped for the night. There was also a door in the wall—padlocked, of course—leading from the lot to the clinic yard.
The heebie-jeebies danced across my skin. I didn’t know what this place was yet, but something about it freaked me out worse than the possible snakes in the grass. There was definitely something unnatural about the place. I didn’t know what gave it away—maybe the razor wire or wall-mounted video cameras. Both made me very curious what someone was so determined to protect.
“You made it,” a voice said out of the darkness.
I whipped my head around to the right and saw a man standing there, just, I thought, out of camera range, looking all absent-minded professor. Eric Ricci—my mystery texter?
“The Feds have been looking for you,” I said, hushed, since I didn’t know what other security the clinic might have in place … guards, dogs, whatever.
“Everybody has,” he answered. “But I’m only interested in one person … my nephew.”
<
br /> Wow, I so didn’t know how to break it to him. “Um, you do know he’s wanted by the police, right? For murder.”
He was shaking his head in denial before my sentence had fully formed. “That’s not him.”
“It sure looks like him. He’s been positively identified.”
“Not him,” Eric insisted. “Someone’s wearing Nelson’s face and body, but the boy I knew is gone. I want you to find him.”
“I don’t mean to sound dense, but … huh?”
“I raised that boy from a toddler. I know him. Whoever that is, isn’t him. And the worst is, it’s all my fault.”
“You’ve totally lost me.”
Ever have one of those nightmares where you’re onstage, spotlight on you, and even though everyone else knows their lines, you don’t even know what part you’re playing? This felt just like that.
He huffed. “The machine taken from the pawnshop … it transfers energy.”
“Okay, I’m with you so far.”
“There was another machine, a companion piece if you will, that transfers consciousness—like a brain transplant without the risky surgery and chance of organ rejection. Just imagine the potential for psychology, politics, negotiation … Someone could literally walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. But they used Nelson to get it. And, I’m afraid, as their first test subject.”
“Okay, pretend I’m not riding the crazy train with you,” I said, resisting the urge to back away slowly. “I hate to say it, but, um, your inventions don’t work. You couldn’t have had anything to do with whatever’s happened to Nelson. I’ve been to your place and seen the letters—”
“Lies!” he cried, going from mild-mannered professor to psycho in zero to sixty. His eyes flamed supernova and his body language went suddenly aggressive, as if he’d like to grab me by my shoulders and shake sense into me—hard. “Those idiots at the Patent Office. They can’t see the genius, the vision. Just because they can’t make them work … or so they say. Anyway, someone recognized my genius. Someone close enough to make a play for the consciousness transfer device.”
“What makes you think Nelson had anything to do with it?”
“He started acting strangely … just before. Cockier, more furtive—not himself, but not in the way he’s not himself now. One day, just like any other, we were home alone. I was working on my machines. I heard the door open behind me, and then, suddenly, I was out like a light.”
“Inner or outer door?”
“What? I don’t know. I was lucky to remember my own name. I woke up somewhere strange, disoriented like I’d been drugged or my brain was boggled. Somehow, I escaped. I barely remember getting home, but when I did, both Nelson and the consciousness transference device were gone. I grabbed what I could and ran.”
Wow, so many questions, so little time. “Was anything else missing besides your nephew and your brain-swap thingie?”
He looked furtively left and right, as if to make sure the trees weren’t listening in. “That came later. I decided to pawn the energy transference machine and kind of put the word out on the street. I thought that whoever had the first device might come for the second. I thought I could flush out whoever it was Nelson was mixed up with, and track them to him.”
“And?”
He grabbed my arm, trying to convey his need. The touch made my skin prickle. At first I thought it was goose bumps, but then I realized it was power. Every time Bobby used his telekinesis or other mental mojo, and when Brent had “read” the vault, I’d felt a similar tingle. But Eric’s power was different from either of theirs—unfocused, almost raw and wild. Not like a wave, more like a live wire. I wondered if he was aware of it.
Speaking of focus, I had to get back on track. Daylight would come far too soon. “So, you think someone else is walking around in Nelson’s shoes?” This I could identify with.
“I know it. I’ve been staking out that club he always disappeared to, as well as the pawnshop, but there’s only one of me. I can’t be in two places at once; I have to sleep sometime.”
All very interesting, edging on cuckoo-bananas, but I didn’t see how any of that put us in the middle of the woods just a couple of hours before dawn.
“And this place?”
He released my gaze long enough to look at the burnt-out clinic and back.
“You have to promise me something first,” he said.
“What?”
“I found this for you. You have to find him for me.”
I so wished someone would hand me a script. “Great, you found it. I didn’t know it was lost. But what is it ?”
“You know animal testing—cosmetics, cancer cures, sugar substitutes?”
I nodded. I had a conscience. I might get some of my beauty out of a bottle, but not one with products first tested on cute fuzzy bunnies.
“Well, this”—he lowered his voice and looked around stealthily, even though we’d already have been caught if anyone were listening—“is a supernatural testing facility.”
My mind was officially blown. “Come again? And how do you know any of this?”
“I found it when I was looking for my nephew. I figured that if someone was walking around in Nelson’s skin, Nelson had to be somewhere else. He was in so tight with the vampires—”
“Humans pretending to be vampires,” I cut in, hoping to keep the secret.
He gave me a look that said he wasn’t stupid, but the jury was still out on me. “I thought that too, at first. Now I know better. Anyway, I knew that if anyone had Nelson, it was them,” he continued. “I put a watch on the Tower, but I wasn’t the only one watching. One day, I saw one of the young vamps kidnapped. I followed his trace here.”
“Kidnapped by who?”
“I think you know.”
Well, crap on a crispy, crumbly, craptastic cracker. The Feds?
“This,” I said very clearly, just to be sure, “is a facility where testing is done on vampires?”
“Not just vampires.”
My knees nearly buckled. What else was there? I mean, aside from telemetrics like Brent and people who could make books bleed, like my goth friend Bram from New York once said he’d seen … Crap, there was a whole magical world out there I’d never really thought about. I’d been so busy becoming a vamp and fighting for my un-life that I’d never really questioned things. Were there really such things as werewolves? Shifters? Fairies?
“And it’s run by the Feds?” I continued, my brain still unable to grasp what he was saying.
“Look for yourself. That’s why I’ve brought you here. First, you see what they’re up to. Then you go deeper. You find Nelson for me, and I’ll tell you anything you could possibly need to know.”
Need to know—it always came back to that.
Eric tapped his pocket in an oddly purposeful movement, then poof, he was gone. Again. Just like at the pawnshop. I whirled around, looking, listening, waiting to spot the tell-tale motion of tree branches swinging back into place or to hear the crash of footfalls, but there was nothing.
It was like someone had just ended his transmission. Had he really even been here, or had he been more like Princess Leia in the little robot guy’s memory? And yes, it scared me that I remembered more from that movie than Han in his tight pants and open-necked shirt. Either way, some of the mad scientist’s inventions clearly worked, because outside of a Vegas magic show, I’d never seen anyone vanish into thin air before.
11
There I stood, all alone in the dark night, about to break into a building that should be deserted but wasn’t. It might be fire-damaged or condemned. It was most certainly dangerous.
I debated waiting until tomorrow night when I could return with a man and a plan. Bobby’d proven himself a whiz kid at breaking and entering in the past; I could totally break, and probably enter, though not necessarily without getting caught. But I was becoming a little too reliant on my boy toy. I wasn’t in the market for dependence. No matter what the sales tag said or h
ow cute the packaging, dependence was like a lifetime subscription … you just paid and paid.
No, I needed to do this on my own, to prove I could totally own a solo and wasn’t just kept around for background beautification. This Everybody Wants Bobby thing was understandable. Hell, I wanted the boy. But the longer this mission went on, the more I realized that I was done with being bait, done with being dispensable and with playing entourage, the pawn of vampires and Feds. It was starting to make me forget who I was: Gina flippin’ Covello, Queen of the Glammed.
I could do this. Maybe. Probably. Definitely. Failure was not an option.
I took a deep breath and studied the wall in front of me. I had seen a chained and padlocked entrance onto the grounds near the parking lot, but no doubt that would be the most closely monitored. So it looked like I’d be going over the wall, razor wire and all. I thought for a minute about taking off my shirt and throwing it over the wire, but I was pretty sure the light of the moon reflecting off my lily-white skin would give me away to anyone walking the perimeter. Although the sight of a half-dressed girl nearly glowing in the moonlight might be distraction enough for me to find a way past.
I approached the wall, praying I wouldn’t set off any proximity alarms or disrupt any laser beams or whatever. Hopefully, with as much wildlife as they probably got out here, motion detectors and the like would be too much trouble. If I had tripped anything, I couldn’t hear it. With my luck, that probably only meant the alarms were silent.
Close now, I rapped on the wall with my knuckles, only to have a metallic sort of sound come back to me, like the wood was just a façade over sheet metal. I walked a few feet and tried again, in case I’d encountered a lone dumpster or something on the other side of the wall with my first knock. My second was no better. Darn, then. Climbing and razor wire it was. The surveillance cameras wouldn’t catch me, of course, but they’d totally spot any smooshing of the wire, so I had to be really, really careful.
And yet, I had to be fast. In, out, and back to my place before dawn fried me to a crisp. Nothing like a challenge.
I backed up several steps, did some stretches to limber up—my old gym teacher would have been so proud—took a deep breath out of habit, and ran at the wall. Two feet out, I gathered my tennies beneath me and leapt for all I was worth, aiming for the very top. What I really wanted was the ability to leap tall walls in a single bound, like some kind of super heroine—Fangtastic Girl or Chic Chick or something. The costume would come with some kick-ass boots for me. Maybe a bustier for Bobby’s enjoyment.
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