by R. J. Blain
A quick check of the display confirmed she’d called Bradley. “While it’s true I have a cheap frying pan and a pot about to make my mother cry, my kitchen does have limited space. Don’t encourage her too much.”
Bradley chuckled. “I’m a whole five blocks away, and the store that I’m at has pots and pans. It’s no problem to pick something up to make your mother happy. I’ve been around your mother often enough to know she’ll go on a rampage if left unsatisfied. There’s a grocery store across the street, so I can replace your milk and get anything else you need for dinner. I can even come back after Ren drags me to this damned dealership we have an appointment at later.”
“I could go for a roast and vegetables that normally go with roasts, and whatever the hell spices go with a roast.”
“I can do that. You know what? I’ll just call the dealership and pay for whatever the hell vehicle Ren is making me buy and pick it up in the morning. That’ll save me that errand. Anything you want while I’m at the grocery?”
The thought of Bradley going to a grocery store stunned me, and I spluttered. While I floundered, my father took my mother’s phone out of my hand. “My daughter seems to be having difficulty coming to terms with the situation. What was your question? Ah. I see. Use your best judgment, and we’ll text you if we need any specific ingredients. You can restore Janette’s sense of normality discussing the realistic ways to kill people through exsanguination when you get here. It’ll make her feel useful. All right. Be careful, and we’ll see you soon.” My father set my mother’s phone on the coffee table. “Roast is on the menu, the boy is going to check recipes online to make sure he has everything, and you will substitute the butter for something that won’t try to kill him.”
“I can work with that.” My mother returned to the couch. “Be honest with us, Janette. Do you think you can catch this killer?”
“Well, I’m certainly going to try. I don’t know. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to get my shooting skills back up to the level needed to qualify. I used to be good, but I’m out of practice now. I haven’t touched a gun since the accident.”
“While we won’t be a direct part of the cell, we’ve volunteered to support your team. Our house makes a good place to host meetings, and we have a good security system installed. Mr. Hampton insisted on it, and he uses our property line for exercises with his security teams. One team tries to infiltrate our property while the other team tries to stop them.”
I frowned. “But why? Mr. Hampton doesn’t work in securities.”
“He does now. He wants to train entire teams of people like you were trained to guard Bradley. That will allow him to work the private security sector, which is a pretty hot market, especially with the killings. He doubts even the Secret Service could have stopped Senator Godrin’s death, but if there’s a way, he wants to find it. He might ask you to help with the training. You can tag people without hurting them—or them noticing.”
I grimaced. I’d developed a way of forming unique blood blisters to mark someone in a non-lethal fashion. The blisters, which I could place in any shape, could serve as definitive proof of presence at the scene of a crime. As far as I knew, I was one of the very few who had the finesse required to leave such a mark without also doing permanent damage to my target. “My brands.”
“Yes.”
“Not without a lot of practice first. I’m too rusty for that, Mom.”
“But if they can catch you branding them, they might be able to prevent another murder. That’s the ultimate goal with this, right? To prevent more killings.”
“And find out who did it and why. That’s also important. We don’t know anything yet.”
“We know enough.”
“We do?”
My mother’s smile had a cold edge to it. “We do. We know that whoever is behind this wants people to know they are willing to kill for their cause. We know the victims are all associated with a rather unpleasant bill being pushed by select politicians. That gives three realistic options.”
Since when had my mother been the kind to speculate about such brutal murders? “You never thought I’d done it, had you?”
“Of course not, baby.” My mother’s smile turned sad. “Don’t get me wrong. You’ve killed. You’ll kill again. But you’re not the kind to kill without fully accepting responsibility for the life you’ve taken. I saw you after the first time you killed to protect him. You knew what you’d become, and it changed you. It was only a few weekends after that you started sneaking off to volunteer at the hospital. To you, saving lives could almost undo the ones you ended in the line of duty. I might be an old woman, but I’m not blind. You have a chance to stop more death, so you’ll do everything you can. We can’t help you as much as we’d like. We just don’t have the skills or magic, but there are things we can do, and we’ll do that. Our home should be safe enough for you to work. We can listen. And when the rest forget you’re human, we’ll remember.”
Fourteen
Do the bonus points earn me anything special?
With some help from Bradley, my mother made roast and fed me enough I barely made it to bed despite still having company over. I managed to take the medications prescribed by Bradley’s doctor, and the combination did me in. I only survived through sleeping in thanks to somebody making use of my spare key and feeding my cat. Ajani’s purrs could wake the dead, which meant someone brushed the fluffy demoness in my living room. I burrowed under my pillow and mumbled curses.
“I can hear you,” Bradley said. “I have blood in a cooler out here for you. You need to get up and practice with it. I’ve been told you should move it between cups for a minimum of twenty minutes while keeping it from coagulating. After you do that, you’re to practice shaping it and controlling the rate of coagulation. If you last through an hour of that, your abilities likely haven’t been impaired through disuse. You get bonus points if you can keep the blood from coagulating for an hour.”
“Do the bonus points earn me anything special?”
“A trip to the bookstore.”
“I see you have learned one of my secrets.”
“I’ve been informed you are motivated by new books, and that you might be a practitioner of tsundoku.”
“I might be a what?”
“Someone who collects books and allows them to pile up without actually reading them. It’s a Japanese word. I just happened to hear it from Beatrice, as she sees you with books all of the time but isn’t sure you actually read them.”
“I read them. I don’t have any books I haven’t read yet,” I confessed.
“That’s a problem. Obviously, I must bring over more books for you until you have more books than you can read. It’s one book per visitation day, right?”
“For my cat.”
“I find I enjoy visiting your cat, but I’m concerned with her obsession with the brush.”
I rolled out of bed, disgusted I’d gone to sleep in my clothes without changing. I dug through my dresser for something clean and hobbled to my bathroom. “I need a bath or I’ll be stinking you out of here.”
Bradley sat on my couch with Ren and my cat. “You don’t have any bandages or anything with your foot, do you? I was told the blood should be good for two hours before it coagulates in the bag. That gives you an hour with which to bathe. You don’t need anything, do you?”
“No. I’ve already healed from the last round of surgery. I can bathe without assistance, I assure you. And I’m sure I can correct the blood if it coagulates on me. If I can’t, I certainly won’t be able to move it between cups.” Restoring blood from a coagulated state would be a solid test of my skills. If I could restore it to its fully liquid state, everything else was a matter of practicing. I shut the door, regretted its lack of a lock, and went through my morning routine. In some ways, I missed being able to take a shower. Without my boot on, I couldn’t handle standing for more than a few minutes at a time before the pain became intolerable.
One day.<
br />
Yesterday and the day before sent me a bill, added interest, and left me with the problem of a swollen foot I couldn’t cram back into the damned medical boot. Having Bradley in my living room would be the nail in the coffin on my physical state. For any hope of getting my foot back into a usable state would require me getting out the ice packs, elevating it, and waiting for the swelling to go down. Only then could I get my boot back on and resume life as normal.
With my luck, I’d need my crutches, which lurked beneath my bed.
Someone had foreseen the trouble, leaving my cane in the bathroom, making my task of getting to the kitchen possible.
I owed someone thanks for that. After some experimentation, I figured out I had an easier time getting dressed while seated on the tub’s ledge, as I could prop my foot on the toilet and wiggle into my clothes while using the towel rack to help balance. It took time, but I squirmed into my jeans and tossed on a shirt before hopping on one foot to my cane.
The medical boot would just have to stay in the bathroom for a while.
With the help of the cane, I made the journey to my freezer, dug out my freezer packs, and flung them in the direction of my couch. They thumped to the cushion closer to Bradley than I’d meant, and my cat hissed at them, although she stayed on his lap.
Bradley kept brushing my fluffy goddess while raising a brow. “Did you miss?”
“Not this time. You’re holding my cat, and I’d never intentionally smack her with an ice pack.”
“Having a problem with your foot this morning? Your boot is off, and I can’t help but notice your foot and ankle look rather unpleasant.”
I regarded my swollen mess of a foot with a sigh. “Welcome to my life. I get to elevate it for a while and hope I can cram it back into my boot. Sometimes it’s all right. Others? This is life. I guess my foot doesn’t like the medications.”
“I’ll call the doctor about it. Can I take a photo of your foot?”
What was one more doctor scolding me about my foot? “Sure. I’ll even give you my doctor’s contact information so your doctor can argue with mine about it.”
“There’s only one podiatrist within three blocks of here, which is what I’ve roughly determined your walking distance to be. I had my doctor call your doctor already about the prescriptions. Your doctor is much happier with me than with you right now. I’m sure the photographs will make it to your doctor. I’ve decided I’ll be heavily involved with your treatment plan.”
Right. Nothing I said would change his mind, especially as he rightly understood I’d done as I had for his sake. Accepting what I couldn’t change would make the rest of my life a lot easier. “Fine. I can work with the blood while my foot is on ice. Right now, my treatment plan is non-existent because I have three weeks to remember how to shoot well enough to qualify.”
“You can’t even stand without your cane, Janette.”
“You’ll be absolutely surprised to learn how long I can stand on one foot.”
“Janette.”
“What? It’s true. I have to for work. I can’t rest weight on it all day. I’d have no foot at all. Even with the boot, my left foot takes the brunt of my weight all day when I can’t sit. That’s just how it is. I’m going to have to be on it a lot, so don’t try to make the situation fit your comfort zone. It just won’t. I don’t have the luxury of time right now.” I hopped to the couch with the help of my cane and eased onto it. Before I could go through the hassle of figuring out how to get my leg elevated without killing myself, Bradley set Ajani aside, took hold of my calf, and eased my leg up. “Cushion, Ren?”
The bodyguard piled two of my throw pillows under my foot and gathered up the ice packs. “How do you situate this mess?”
I pointed at the top of my foot. “I usually just put a tea towel over my foot and plunk the ice packs on. It generally works.”
After a few minutes of experimenting, Bradley and Ren situated the ice packs to cover as much of my foot as possible. After they had everything situated to their liking, Ren retrieved a small white cooler from near the door and set it on the arm of the couch beside me.
“It’s drug-contaminated human blood. My doctor acquired it. It’s a full pint, and it was taken from someone who died from an overdose. I was asked if you could isolate the drug in the blood because there has been trouble with it in the labs. It’s not something they’ve seen before. If you can isolate the toxin, then it can be studied.”
I reached for the cooler, opened it, and peeked inside. The plastic bag of blood had a warning label marking it as contaminated, and a collection of sterilized tubes and a pack of lab gloves also waited inside. I grabbed the box, snapped on a pair of gloves, and lifted out the vials. “Bradley, there are masks in my bedroom on the top drawer of my dresser, right-hand side. Please bring three.”
“You want us wearing masks?” he asked, his brow furrowing. While he hesitated, Ren went into my bedroom and returned with my box of masks.
Ajani took that as her cue to get the hell out of Dodge, and she bolted for my bedroom. While I appreciated that I’d convinced her the gloves and masks meant it was time to hide, I couldn’t help but feel guilty.
I hated yelling at my cat, especially when she didn’t understand it was for her safety.
“If this toxin killed somebody and they don’t know what it is, I have no idea what will happen when it’s exposed to oxygen. Let’s not contaminate the samples, and let’s safeguard ourselves a little. Wear gloves, too. Mostly, the masks keep us from contaminating the samples. Since he sent this many vials, he probably wants a full sample set, which is a good way to test if my ability is working properly.” I grabbed a mask and put it on, making sure to adjust it over my nose and beneath my chin properly before helping Bradley and Ren put theirs on. “Here are the rules. Do not touch your mask or face. Yes, it’s hard to breathe in these. Inhale through your nose and exhale slowly from your mouth. Point your breath down if you can manage. That’ll help a little. This shouldn’t take long, but I’d rather we don’t get exposed to whatever killed this guy. Since the doctor sent it in a cooler rather than with a hazmat team, they don’t think it’s that toxic, but why take any unnecessary risks?”
“Right,” Bradley agreed. “What do you want us to do?”
“Watch. If I pass out, that’s probably a good time to call your doctor for medical advice. Other than that, let me do my job.” I leaned forward, set the vial stand on my coffee table, and examined the blood bag, nodding my approval over the line installed that’d allow me to control how blood left the bag without magic. I held the tubing up so gravity would keep the blood where it belonged and opened the line.
Easing my hold on my magic took work, but as I didn’t want the contaminated blood to overwhelm me, I took my time. Much like with Bradley’s mother, I detected the abnormality in the blood right away, although I’d never sensed anything like it, as though someone had mixed oil or gasoline into the blood. Somehow slick, somehow hot, and somehow greasy, the sensation made my skin crawl. “There’s definitely something in here, and it is not what I’d call pleasant.”
To test my general control, I separated a single drop of blood from the bag and worked it through the tubing. In some ways, my magic shared parallels with a telekinetic’s, as I could force blood to freeze and hover in the air. Unlike a telekinetic, I couldn’t do much more than that. I figured my control over blood was so absolute I could defy the laws of gravity and physics.
I directed the sample to the first vial, lowered it in, and concentrated, seeking to isolate the slick, hot, and greasy elements out of the blood. As though the blood found the substance as vile as I did, it separated with startling ease, leaving a gray-green liquid to splash into the vial. The color puzzled me, as I hadn’t noticed any discoloration to the victim’s blood.
I repeated the process with a larger sample of blood, transferring the cleaned blood to a different vial.
By the time I’d purified the pint of blood, six of my vials
contained the substance, which I capped as tightly as I could. I filled one vial with the pure blood before regarding the bag with narrowed eyes. I returned the rest of the blood to the bag and waited.
Within minutes, the slick, hot, and greasy sensation returned.
My eyes widened. “It’s replicating.”
At first, both men stared at me in silence. When I’d been in Bradley’s employ, he’d loved watching disaster films of all stripes, and as often as not, disaster began in a lab with contaminated samples of some sort.
Had it felt like a virus, I would’ve stopped working with it from the moment I’d detected the risk.
What sort of inorganic substances, like the one locked in the vials, replicated? What sort of vile magic fueled it? Was it magic at all?
“What do you mean by replicating?” Bradley asked.
“I mean I purified all the blood I removed from the bag, put it in the vials, and when I returned it to the contaminated bag, it infected the blood again. It doesn’t feel like a virus, but it’s definitely behaving like a virus. It’s replicating in the blood. Please tell me they’re handling these samples with a hazmat suit. I don’t know what this stuff is. I’ve never seen it before.” I’d worked with viruses and bacteria before, and the substance didn’t feel alive, not like viruses and bacteria did. “Maybe it’s replicating through some magical method? I can somewhat detect living organisms in the blood stream. I can pull white blood cells out of the red, and I can even isolate viruses and bacteria when I really want to. I used that same principle here, but this isn’t any type of virus or bacteria I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t feel like a living organism at all.”
“Magic?” Bradley asked, and he donned a pair of gloves and lifted one of the gray-green vials from the rack, holding it up for a better look. “Ah. It has a history.”
My eyes widened at the confirmation the substance wasn’t some form of living organism.
Bradley’s magic didn’t work on animate objects, nor did it work on many organic compounds. His magic played by complex rules, but I’d boiled it down to that. While his magic did work on corpses, it rarely told him anything useful. He could get more useful information from the sidewalk than from a body, although clothing tended to have a lot to tell about someone’s final moments.
