Heroines and Hellions: a Limited Edition Urban Fantasy Collection

by Margo Bond Collins

  Xin stiffened. “What drug?”

  “The kids on the streets call it shuang kuangxi. Translated literally, it means double ecstasy. Twice the hit. Twice the fun.”

  Ecstasy… Danyael had told her about the drug while they were still in Washington, D.C. Neither had realized then exactly what it meant. “This designer drug, where did it come from?”

  “No idea. It’s rampant in Zhengzhou, and it is starting to spread through Henan district. By the end of the year, all the kids in China will probably be on it.”

  “And it started about six months ago?”

  Yu Long nodded.

  Damn it. Xin turned her attention back to her tablets hooked up to the mainframe. The research records had to be somewhere.

  “What are you looking for?” Yu Long asked.

  “The murder rate started spiking six months ago, almost perfectly timed with the release of the drug.”

  Yu Long shook his head. “Shuang kuangxi isn’t responsible.”

  “Have you tried it?”

  “No, of course not, but I’ve seen kids on shuang kuangxi. They’re so zoned out in some fantasy world that they’re practically comatose. Most of them can barely lift a finger. The violent rage that spurs those murders? Those drugged-out kids aren’t capable of it, let alone the subtlety of not getting caught. The timing’s just a coincidence.”

  “I’ve never liked coincidences. The effects from the live transfusion of Danyael’s blood include heightened senses and awareness that the world is more colorful, more beautiful than ever imagined.”

  Yu Long tensed.

  “Starting to sound like the effects of shuang kuangxi? Exactly,” Xin snapped.

  “But Danyael’s blood was stolen long before that.”

  “Research takes time,” Xin murmured. Sir Brandon Richards had said as much. Her hands stilled on the tablet, and her gaze raced across the screen, leapfrogging words to glean the gist of a research report she had dug out of the hidden archives. Project Illuminate…Danyael Sabre…Blood sample…Serum…Negative reactions… She bit down on her lower lip. “They’ve had all the time they’ve needed.”

  Which means that we’re out of time…

  12

  Yu Long asked, “What does it—?”

  Motion flickered on the screen of her smartphone, and their gazes flashed to the device as the camera displayed Kimberly Hawkes and Dr. Shen walking through the door of the unmonitored section of the laboratory.

  Where was Danyael?

  Xin and Yu Long exchanged concerned glances.

  Footsteps passed outside the door of Network Operations before fading.

  How much trouble could Danyael get into in a few minutes?

  A ton. Xin grimaced. His instinctive compassion seemed to have a compass pointing straight into trouble.

  Yu Long scrambled to his feet. “Unlock the door to the annex. I’ll find him.”

  “No, wait.” Xin held up a hand as footsteps approached. Several seconds later, Dr. Shen appeared across the screen. Kimberly was not with her.

  Xin looked up at Yu Long. “I’d like to talk to her.”

  Yu Long nodded. He went to the door and flung it open. A muffled gasp rose in the corridor, and Dr. Shen, her face pale, shuffled into Xin’s view. Yu Long stood behind her, his face grim.

  Xin smiled from her comfortable spot on the floor and waved a hand. “Hey, have a seat,” she said as if it wasn’t past midnight and she hadn’t sneaked into a secured facility and wasn’t happily camped out in the server room, wires trailing from her tablets into the servers.

  The firm hand Yu Long set on Dr. Shen’s shoulder was far more effective in persuading Dr. Shen to lower herself to her knees. Her chest heaved as she sucked in a deep breath. “What are you doing here?”

  “Checking out the research you had the sense to maintain on private servers. Tell me, what is Project Illuminate?”

  Dr. Shen jerked sharply. She stared at Xin; her lips moved but no sound emerged.

  “Come on. I’m getting tired of your deer-in-headlights look. You sowed the wind; now you’re reaping the whirlwind. What is Project Illuminate?”

  Dr. Shen said nothing.

  Xin’s tone gentled. “It’s not something you’re proud of.”

  The doctor expelled a soft sigh. “It…escalated. About two years ago, Dr. Seth Copper came to us and described his research on live blood transfusions and the advances he had made on preserving the potency of blood once it was drawn.”

  “The potency of live blood without the inconvenience of transfusing it immediately,” Xin said.

  Dr. Shen nodded. “He planned to get a supply of blood for his experiments, but he said he would require funding and a secure place to work, so we set up a separate research wing for him here in Zhengzhou. He never showed up. We found out later that he had been killed by the assassin Zara Itani.”

  “For stealing Danyael’s blood, nearly murdering him in the process,” Xin supplied Yu Long with a few more facts. “Danyael’s blood showed up here, though.”

  “Yes. Dr. Copper had apparently arranged to ship it before he was killed. And based on his notes, we continued his experiments. Sir Brandon insisted.”

  “Despite the fact that live blood transfusions have been banned by the IGEC?”

  Dr. Shen shook her head. The tendrils of hair that had come loose from her bun swayed with the motion. “These weren’t live blood transfusions. We used the new blood preservative Dr. Copper had developed, blended it with Danyael’s blood, and processed it into a serum, which preserved much of the potency of Danyael’s blood.”

  “So you followed the letter of the law and still managed to defy the spirit of the law,” Xin said sardonically. “What happened then?”

  “We tested the serum. It didn’t do what we expected.”

  “Which was what, exactly? Create empaths? Mini-Danyaels?” The questions had been sardonic, but the sudden alertness in Dr. Shen’s expression made Xin’s jaw drop. “That’s what you were trying to do? Are you crazy? The world can’t afford another Danyael.” Especially not one who had not been trained to flawlessly control his emotions.

  “It didn’t matter. It didn’t work.”

  “But something else happened.”

  Dr. Shen’s jaw twitched. “Yes. The large majority of the people exposed to the serum got happily lost in an imaginary world, content to drift undisturbed by reality.”

  “Shuang kuangxi,” Yu Long murmured. “So it was developed here.”

  The doctor nodded.

  Xin’s eyes narrowed. “And what happened to a tiny minority?”

  “Apparently, the serum amplifies sensation and emotion, and for a few people, it’s too much to take. It transforms them, and their mind snaps.”

  Yu Long paled. “It transforms them? The murders Danyael insisted were non-human creatures—they’re the result of the drug, this serum concocted from Danyael’s blood?”

  Dr. Shen nodded.

  “What are they like? These monsters?” he asked.

  “They don’t change physically, but they’re irrationally violent. They lose their ability to speak, to think coherently. They’re driven by emotion.” Dr. Shen spat the word out with distaste.

  “What exactly did you expect when you infected them with blood serum from an alpha empath?” Xin asked. “Do you have any theories as to why some are affected and others aren’t?”

  “The ones affected are minor psychics.”

  “They are what?”

  “They’re mutants. Not alphas or even betas. Those are usually identified early in life and are taught to avoid drugs because of the hypersensitivity of their minds. But many minor psychics are virtually indistinguishable from other humans. They may take drugs. They may even realize that their reaction to amphetamines and barbiturates is greater than that of their peers, but neither heroin nor cocaine will make their minds snap. This serum will, though, and it does.”

  “So theoretically, it could also affect the alphas a
nd betas if they decided to indulge in shuang kuangxi.”

  Dr. Shen drew a deep breath. “Theoretically, yes.”

  “So, instead of untrained psychics losing their minds and attacking with human strength, we could have trained psychics—alpha telepaths, telekinetics, and empaths—losing their minds and attacking innocents with their mutant powers.”

  “But only if their minds snap.”

  Xin glared at the doctor. “Have you seen anyone’s mind not snap?”

  Dr. Shen’s silence was answer enough.

  Yu Long’s expression was taut as he paced next to the servers. “Danyael said the person who was attacked was transforming. This serum…it’s infectious, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, the blood of those afflicted by shuang kuangxi is highly and immediately infectious. Fortunately, those affected attack with such extreme violence that they kill their victim before the infection can completely take hold.”

  “Then why is it spreading?”

  “Because shuang kuangxi is spreading. People are getting infected every day—a small number, to be sure, but over time, even small numbers grow into large numbers.”

  “But how did the drug get out of your lab?” Yu Long asked.

  “The formula was stolen by an employee who saw it as a quick get-rich scheme.”

  “How can a quick get-rich scheme be based on a steady supply of Danyael’s blood?” Xin asked.

  “It isn’t,” Dr. Shen said. “Not anymore. The employee reverse-engineered the chemical structure of the serum. It is now entirely possible to recreate it with basic supplies from a chemistry store. Shuang kuangxi is now brewed in hundreds, maybe thousands of kitchens in Zhengzhou, and sold all through Henan.”

  Yu Long cursed under his breath. “You were right. Danyael was right. Damn it!”

  “It isn’t always fun to be right,” Xin murmured. “Where’s Danyael?”

  Dr. Shen looked confused. “What do you mean, where’s Danyael?”

  “He entered the secured section of the laboratory a few minutes after you and Kimberly. Where is he?”

  That time, the horrified expression on Dr. Shen’s face was too vivid to be false. “I don’t know. I never saw him in there.”

  Xin jabbed a finger at the screen, which still displayed the secured door. “Is this the only exit from the lab?”

  Dr. Shen shook her head. “No, it’s not. There’s another exit from the morgue. I use it to dispose of the children who expire during the blood donation process for our degenerative disease research.”

  Donation? Xin wanted to take issue with Dr. Shen’s choice of words, but the nitpicking would have to wait. “And do you use Danyael’s blood for your degenerative disease research, too?”

  “No, just blood from children, infused with the preservative Dr. Copper developed.” Dr. Shen’s expression tightened. “We do not conduct live transfusions on children.”

  “Semantics.”

  Dr. Shen did not react to Xin’s sarcastic tone. “Our research on degenerative disease is entirely legal.”

  “How can it be when all these children are dying?”

  “They’re dying of other causes. The autopsy—”

  “Which you conducted didn’t find anything attributable to blood loss, I suppose. You said you leave the children’s corpses outside the door? What happens then?”

  “They take them.”

  “Who takes them?”

  “The infected mutants. The jiangshi.”

  13

  Danyael stared down the length of the florescent-lit corridor flanked by doors on both sides. His eyes narrowed; if his empathic powers passed through inorganic surfaces, he might have known which door Kimberly and Dr. Shen had entered. As it was, he was down to no better than a wild guess. Picking a door at random, he let himself into the room and quietly shut the door behind him.

  He turned around; his gaze flicked over the room. Unconscious children lay next to blood transfusion machines pumping blood from their small bodies.

  He squeezed his eyes shut against the swell of rage. Control…I can’t act on my emotions.

  However much I want to.

  His breath caught in his aching chest as he turned his attention to the terminal on the closest machine. It had been programmed to extract a pint of blood from the child and to infuse a pint of blood from the supply of blood pre-loaded in the machine. Technically, it was not a live blood transfusion; neither was it intended to kill the blood donor.

  Technicalities, however, mattered little in the face of reality.

  He knelt to open the panel on the machine. Two small vials attached to the machine dribbled their contents into the extracted blood. The deep crimson color blurred into transparency upon contact with the liquid from the vials, before darkening once more. He carefully twisted the vial around to read the label—a derivative of citrate-phosphate-dextrose with adenine, a blood preservative, but it had been altered—to do what?

  Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside. Danyael shot to his feet, pressed against the door, and peered out through the narrow glass panel as Kimberly Hawkes and Dr. Shen walked past the room. They exited together through the secured door at the end of the corridor.

  He had a few minutes, likely no more, to examine the rest of the laboratory.

  Most of the other rooms were set up like the first one he had seen, although only two of the many beds were occupied, most likely by the two children who had just been brought in. Danyael tried to wake them, but they did not rouse. Like the children in the first room, they had probably been drugged.

  The small room at the end of the corridor, the temperature scarcely above freezing, served as a morgue. Danyael tugged open the sliding drawers. Three children, their faces as white as the sheets that covered them, lay in those drawers. His throat tight, he looked through the stack of handwritten notes in the folder he had found in a tray by the wall.

  Hypovolemic shock…Unexpected cardiac failure...Hemorrhagic shock… Body disposed per norm…Corpse to be disposed in usual way…

  The usual way? Out through the building, past the other normal functions of Excelsior’s laboratories?

  Unlikely.

  Danyael’s gaze flicked to the door on the far wall of the morgue and back to the series of six numbers scribbled on the front of the folder.

  The numeric code unlocked the back door. Slowly, he swung it open to a dense wall of trees, the heat of Zhengzhou’s summer nights, and the subtle scent of organic decay. He glanced around, not really expecting to find corpses of children. It would have made no sense for Dr. Shen to dump the bodies this close to the crime scene.

  Something brushed against the edge of his awareness—soundless, invisible. Emotions hung on the air, trembling between confusion and fear.

  “I know you’re out there,” he murmured. “Who are you?” What are you?

  Confusion flashed into pain, and fear to explosive fury. A dark shape launched itself out of the woods. Its visage bared in a snarl, and its hands—clawlike—reached for Danyael’s throat.

  Danyael twisted aside. Momentum hurled the creature past him. It crashed into the open door, slamming it shut, the click of the automatic lock inaudible beneath the gasp of pain.

  He caught a glimpse of a young woman’s face beneath a tangled nest of black hair. Her wide eyes were glazed, her expression frozen in shock.

  That, more than anything else, held his hand as she spun around. Blood trickled from her clenched fists where her nails cut into her own flesh. The stink of sweat and human waste rose from her skin. Spittle dribbled from the side of her mouth as her upper lip curled to reveal brown-stained teeth.

  To another person, the motion might have looked like the prelude to an attack.

  Danyael saw a grimace of agony.

  “I can help you,” he said quietly.

  Her gaze darted to his mouth before dropping to his throat. Pain seared her eyes, and she leaped at him.

  His empathic powers blasted out. Terror, as unyielding a
s a wall, dropped her to her knees. Fear kept her there.

  “It’s all right,” Danyael continued in that quiet tone.

  She jerked as if struck and shuddered in pain.

  My words. My voice.

  It hurts her.

  Danyael stepped forward, closing the distance.

  She winced at the tiny sound of his shoes crackling against the dry leaves on the pavement.

  Sound hurts her.

  Danyael paused several feet in front of her and knelt to meet her eyes. They locked on his face, yet seemed vacant and confused, as if she could not bring his face into focus. They could have been the eyes of an extremely drunk person, except that she was not drunk.

  She was mad.

  What happened to you?

  She flinched, as if she could hear his thoughts, but for a moment, awareness seeped into her tormented eyes. The expression on her face pleaded for help, for mercy.

  He reached out his hand.

  She trembled, her eyes wild like a wolf dog bracing for an attack yet oddly compelled to stay. A shiver ran through her body when he touched her cheek. Peace, as infinite as the water in the ocean, flowed from him to her. It suffused her, washing away the animal-like tension from her body.

  Her eyes closed, she turned into his touch, resting her dirty cheek upon the palm of his hand. The dreamy smile of rediscovering what she thought forever lost spread over her face. Her chest rose and fell with the deep breath she inhaled and expelled, and several moments passed in silence before her eyes opened.

  Madness still lurked in their depths, but a thin veneer of rationality layered over it. She closed both her hands around his wrists, like a child afraid to let go, before pulling her face away from his touch and rising to her feet. He stood with her and followed her as she led him away from Excelsior.

  Their path led through the heavily wooded parkland surrounding Excelsior. She flinched and jerked at the slightest sound and waved her hand in front of her face as if to push away things only she could see. The stray light of the moon shining through the tree leaves caused her to recoil. The scarcely perceptible whisper of the breeze made her shudder as if struck by Arctic winds.