Older than I thought he’d be, the tech had the appearance of a grumpy old man who probably yelled at people to get off his lawn on weekends, and seemed irritated he’d been called to run a machine no one else could run. “Lacey, what kind of emergency is this anyway?”
Peter stepped in behind him and the sound of tearing metal ripped through the air. The tech turned and looked at Peter as the Magelore held out a handful of wires. “Consider it permanently parked.”
“Block the stairs,” I said as I turned toward the tech, touching his chest with the tip of Dinah’s muzzle. “Name?”
He looked down at the gun and then back up at me, his eyes narrowing. “Carlos.”
“Well, Carlos, today is your lucky day. You get to run three full body X-rays faster than you ever have before. Just for shits and giggles.”
I moved him with a flick of Dinah, and for his age, he stepped fast. Perhaps it was the gun.
Worry that someone was listening to my thoughts, my words, itched at the back of my neck like an errant bug intent on burrowing under my skin, but I shook it off. “Cowboy, you first. Pete, watch the nurse at the front.”
Pete gave me a nod and stayed out of the room.
“He needs to be naked,” Carlos said as he set up the machine. “It’ll go faster that way.”
I stood between the two men as Cowboy stripped down to his boxers.
“Leave those,” Carlos said, not an ounce of fear in him. Interesting. Very interesting.
I stood behind the screen, watching as X-ray after X-ray was taken. Five in all. Carlos was efficient, I’d give him that.
“You aren’t afraid of us,” I said as he started to pull the images up on his computer.
Carlos glanced at me. “You are abnormals, yes?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
He blinked a few times, then wiped his face. “My daughter went missing six months ago. She moved like you, like a predator always on the hunt. Except the people she hunted were those who preyed on the weak, and she worked with the police. She would not just leave the way the police say she did.”
The images flickered to life and he tapped the screen. “What are you looking for?”
“A small tracking device. More than one, likely,” I said.
Carlos found the first one. “There. In the back of his left knee. A strange place.”
“Hard to get out,” I said. “It’s inside the joint.”
The other one was not so easy to pinpoint. “There, is that one in the soft tissue behind his right ear?” I touched the screen and the image magnified with one touch.
“Yes, that one could be removed easily.” Carlos nodded. “You all have them?”
“No idea,” I said.
I stripped off my clothes as Cowboy stepped into the room with Carlos. I handed Dinah to Cowboy. “Don’t shoot Carlos. He’s got a daughter like us.”
Cowboy grunted and I made my way out to the padded table and lay down. Carlos moved around me, setting up the X-ray and the machine whirred to life. Click, click, click.
“Pictures are done,” Carlos called out.
I sat up and went to the smaller room, scooped Dinah from Cowboy, and made my way back to the receptionist desk as I pulled my clothing back on. Peter sat at the desk, the nurse sprawled in his arms, blood running down her neck.
“Really? I said watch her, not eat her.”
He grunted and rolled his eyes to me, eyes that widened as they took in my semi-bare-ass state. “You or her. Haven’t eaten in a long time. Not properly. I’ll be honest, you taste like honey.”
“You hear that noise?”
“Hmm. Someone is banging on the door.” He bent his head over her neck and she let out a long moan.
“Dude, this is not the time!” Dinah snapped.
“Don’t kill her,” I said as I strode by the desk toward the stairwell. The frosted glass in the door showed movement beyond it.
“X-ray machine, now!” I growled at Peter. “Or I leave you behind.”
“Fuck,” he growled, but he set the nurse on the floor and ran to the back room. I moved around the desk and did a quick search. The light blinked rapidly on the phone and I scooped up the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Lacey, what the hell is going on down there?”
“Well, we seem to have a stuck door and a stuck elevator. But we’re all good. No patients down here, just me and Carlos.” Lacey and Carlos, sitting in a tree . . .
“Jesus, we couldn’t get through, we thought . . . there was a breakout at Clearview Rehabilitation Center, and they said three of the inmates were headed this general direction. It’s all over the emergency alert channels on everyone’s phones even so it’s a doozy.”
I sat in the chair, kept my voice smooth. “Oh, well, we’re good. Just fix the elevator. I don’t fancy doing stairs for the rest of my shift. I’m not as young as I used to be, you know.”
The guy on the other end of the phone barked a laugh and hung up, but not before I heard him say, “They’re all good. Just the usual shit with the maintenance on this place.”
I’d noticed a TV behind the nurse’s desk earlier, and a quick search produced a remote. When I flicked on the TV, Cowboy showed up next to me. “Find a news channel,” I said.
He went through a few stations before he landed on something worthy of the word “news.” An aerial shot of a chunk of forest panned over until it picked up a massive gray stone building, the same color as the walls I’d stared at for the last year.
“Turn it up.”
A woman broadcaster’s voice filled the room.
“According to officials, three inmates broke out of the maximum-security facility earlier tonight. Two deaths are being reported, one guard and one of the counselors.”
Two pictures popped up on the screen, one of George smiling, holding up a drink with a hand he no longer had, and one of what must have been Eligor, though he was tagged as Dr. Ernest Snathy and looked completely different. Just a tallish man with a receding hairline and glasses.
“They are driving a dark blue truck, stolen from the Clearview Rehabilitation Center, and are considered extremely dangerous. If you see this truck,” a perfect image of the truck we’d been driving flashed on the screen, “do not approach them. Call 9-1-1 immediately and stay as far away from them as possible.”
“Fuck,” Cowboy said. “We need to change vehicles.”
“We would have anyway,” I said.
Carlos and Peter came back into the room. Carlos stared hard at Lacey. “Is she alive?”
“Yes, but she’ll have a real hangover tomorrow,” Peter said.
Carlos flipped printouts of the X-rays onto the desk. “You two gringos, your cases are simple. Two tracers in you that I can see.” He tapped the knee and neck on the X-rays of what I assumed were the two men. “You, though,” he gave me a look and pulled my X-rays out, spreading them across the desk. “I have never seen so many.”
“Holy shit.” Peter leaned over the image. “Just in this one shot I can see twenty, maybe twenty-five.”
Carlos nodded. “All her images are like this. You have one large one behind your ear like the other two, but that is a decoy, I think.” Smart man. I agreed with him.
We had to fry the tracers, and we had to do it fast. There would be no getting the ones out of our knees. No way to get all of them out of me, assuming we even managed to start.
“Let me think.” I stepped away from the desk, tapping Dinah against my leg as I walked down the hall away from the three men. “Dinah.”
“Yeah?”
“Any ideas?”
She was quiet a moment. “If Killian were here, I’d say have him run you through with a bolt of electricity. But he’s not, and the breakers . . .”
“They’ll switch off before we get hit with enough juice to do the job. The EMP that Cowboy can produce is a possibility.” I turned to look at Cowboy. “Think you can pulse enough juice through us to fry the tracers?”
He swallowed. “I can try. But I’m . . . it’s like I’m blocked.” He closed his eyes and after a tense minute that felt a hell of a lot longer where nothing happened, he shook his head. “I got nothing.”
Damn.
I turned and paced toward the reception desk, past the dark rooms of what was essentially the guts of the hospital. The X-ray machine likely didn’t bother the tracers.
A sign caught my eye and I stopped in front of it. Remove all metal piercings and jewelry. Alert technician to any metal pins you have.
I pointed at the sign. “Magnetic Radio Imaging. Would that work?”
Carlos hurried toward me. “This is a new machine, very powerful. We have not tested it on any RFIDs.”
Cowboy looked at him. “What?”
“Radio frequency identification,” I said, then looked at Carlos. “You test on them?”
He shrugged. “To make sure that the people tagged with them are safe when they go through. But that was the old machines. This one is higher tech and can give details the others couldn’t.”
“Magnetic interference could disrupt the guts of the tracers though, couldn’t it?” I was nodding even as I asked the question.
Carlos puckered his face. “Yes, I believe this machine would do that. We have to keep all cell phones far from it. The few that have gone in the room by accident had their computers completely fried.”
“Are you sure?” Cowboy pushed up beside me.
It was a childish question, and I refused to answer it. But I also refused to consider the possibility this wouldn’t work. If it didn’t . . . well, if it didn’t, Dinah was going to have only a few last shots in her.
“Who is first?” Peter said. “I can handle pain, but if it’s not going to work, I’m not doing it.”
“Me first,” I said. “You two next. Dinah, hang with Cowboy a bit,” I said, handing her over.
“Only if he tucks me in his waistband. I’m betting on a tattoo on his ass,” she snickered. I pushed the door open and they followed me in.
One way or another, we were stopping those bastards from the facility from following us.
9
Eligor floated in a state of semi-consciousness. He’d been dragged out of the little body that had been his vessel for the last ten years as they’d prepped to deal with the abnormals. Not that he was surprised it had been taken from him. That was what he got for turning on his own kind.
What a fool he’d been to think one of those monsters was not a monster. She’d fooled him, and . . . that was that. He’d believed she was kind and thoughtful, and he’d believed her lies. Maybe he should’ve been more like Susan. Maybe he should’ve been harder on them.
If he’d had a body, he would have groaned at that thought. He didn’t want to be like Susan. No. That was not his way. He would never let it be his way. Better to be a trusting fool than to be cruel. No doubt, he’d be bottled up in Gardreel’s storage room for the rest of eternity, stuck.
So certain was he that he’d be terminated, it came as a bit of a shock when a sound slipped out of him. He blinked and slowly lifted his head, opened his eyes, and stared at what was in front of him.
Glasses slid down his nose and he lifted a hand to push them back up. “What . . . is happening?”
The person who stood in front of him was as much of a shock as the noise he’d made. Her red hair was twisted off to one side, showing off a freshly shaved portion of her head. Green eyes locked on him as she lifted what at first he thought was a stick, and pointed it at him. No, not a stick.
“That wand was broken when you were brought in,” he whispered.
“Ah, yes, so it was.” She ran a hand over it, up and down in a way that he didn’t understand but knew was supposed to be provocative. “But I fixed it.”
His eyes widened and he searched the room. “What is happening?”
“Oh, well, I’ve been given a job,” she said. “And you’re going to help me.”
Eligor swallowed hard and pushed to his feet. Not four feet tall anymore. The world gave a nauseating lurch as he stumbled around on legs that were practically as long as he’d been tall previously.
“Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with you?” Easter snapped.
“Not Jesus Christ, about as far from that as possible. My name is Eligor.” He put a hand on the back of the chair he’d been reclined in. “How am I here? How am I not . . . finished?”
She quirked a bright red eyebrow up. “You have a connection to Phoenix, don’t you?”
“Well, yes and no—”
“Even without the token?”
“Yes, but—”
“And that means you can find her.”
“Not the way—”
She reached out and jabbed the point of her wand against his heart. “You can find her, or we’re both going back into that hell hole. Your mind stripped out of this body and cast into nothing, and my mind shattered by whatever torture they want to use on me.”
She adjusted herself, a flicker in her eyes that Eligor knew. Susan hadn’t let this one go, and even without the touchstone object, her mind was so broken she could be easily controlled. No, Susan hadn’t let her go, not in the least.
But Easter thought she was free.
His heart pounded. “So why do they need us? Those that escaped are loaded with tracers in their bodies. A guarantee of finding them.” That was how it was supposed to work. Then the Brutes would go after them.
He shuddered at the thought.
Easter looked him over. “Phoenix is smart. She fooled you for a year, didn’t she? You think tracers will slow her?”
Eligor didn’t so much as blink. Admitting he’d been fooled was such a dumb idea—even a dupe like him knew not to agree with it.
She smiled, a sharp, predatory smile that reached her eyes and made them gleam with a light that was rather unsettling. “Why do you think they unleashed me? Because of my good behavior? They kept my hatred of her alive for this very possibility.”
He shook his head. “I have no idea—”
“Because she has already managed to find a way to cut off all the tracers they put in her. Sixty-six of them, and they all deactivated at once.”
Eligor gaped. If he’d known that was possible, he would have gone with her. The reality was, he hadn’t thought they’d make it more than a few miles before being scooped up, and he had thought only to buy her a little more time.
“What about the other two with her?”
“Them too. All tracers gone. That is a very bad thing for this place, isn’t it? To have abnormals out there that know and understand, at least to some degree, what is happening here.” She looked like she was about to say something else, but her eyes blanked out and he knew he was talking to Susan.
Her smile was manufactured. “Eligor, you will go with this abnormal. You will help her find the Phoenix and her friends. You will kill the two men. And you will bring the Phoenix back here.”
He stared at Easter. “Wait, you don’t want her dead?”
“No.” Her voice was flat, monotone. “You will bring her back here. Easter will help you as she is the only one with skills that even come close to the Phoenix’s abilities.”
He found it interesting that the names the two abnormals had come in with were being used, not the names the handlers had given them, slip-ups just like he’d had. With difficulty, he kept his mouth shut and his throat from bobbing.
She stared at him. “You understand that your life will be in extreme danger while you hunt the Phoenix.”
“I am not a fighter. That’s what the Brutes are for,” he said.
“You will have this.” Easter held up a wristband and handed it to him. He took it and dangled it from one finger. She went on. “There is an emergency setting that will bring the Brutes to your aid when you manage to trap the Phoenix.”
Eligor put the wristband on and it tightened automatically around his rather thick wrist. “You speak about her as if she is—”
Easter
waved a hand at him and her eyes came back to life as Susan checked out. “Nix—Phoenix to you—is the most dangerous abnormal alive. She has been trained to kill since she was a child, and her kill count is in the thousands. She has killed demons, Magelores, and other abnormals no one else would dare even face. She has encyclopedic knowledge of weapons, explosives, guerrilla warfare tactics, body armor, and torture tactics as well as a strong connection to the mob world and the world of abnormal magic.”
His jaw flapped open. “I know that was on her papers when she came in, but I saw none of that in her head! None of it!”
“Exactly.” Easter slid her wand through a belt loop on her right side. “She is good enough that she fooled a mind reader. Or whatever the fuck you are.”
He didn’t realize he was shaking until the thumping of the chair legs on the floor made him look down. His grip on the back of the chair was white-knuckled and he couldn’t stop himself. “She was truly all those things?”
Easter laughed, her eyes lighting up. “She is all those things and more, Eligor. You want to know a secret?”
He wasn’t sure he wanted to know any more secrets. He couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that the woman he’d been helping this last year was . . . evil. Because if what Easter had said was true, there was no other word for it. Except he couldn’t shake his certain feeling that she’d genuinely wanted to help the other abnormals in the facility. He’d seen her soul, and it was dark, brilliantly dark, but not evil.
He couldn’t be fooled, not like that. Maybe she’d kept secrets from him, but her intentions had an undeniable purity to them. Slowly the shaking stopped. “Yes, tell me the secret.”
Easter smirked. “You’re going to be traveling with someone . . . Just. Like. Her.”
*_*_*
Carlisle Hospital faded in the rearview mirror as Carlos drove us slowly away, staying well within the speed limit. Behind us, the hospital was lit up like a Christmas tree, and a series of large trucks peeled toward the parking lot only minutes after we left.
A Savage Spell (The Nix Series Book 4) Page 8
