Forests of the Night

  "Nothing much." Manny sounded like it was pretty major. "We'd just started to catalog amino acids and the display keeps coming up backward."

  Once Manny had disappeared back into the lab Nohar waved at his redheaded agent, who still looked a little queasy. "You heard. Doctor's orders—shower."

  As Nohar limped toward the showers, he tried to talk to his agent. "So, what do you think of Agent Isham?"

  He answered in a voice as colorless as he was. "She's a good agent."

  Talk about your stock answers. "So where is she now?"

  "I've been encouraged not to speculate."

  "Loosen up. You sound like the voice over for a hemorrhoid commercial."

  That got him. Nohar could swear he got a ghost of a smile from the guy. He looked down at the agent who was afraid of needles. "You bothered by guarding a morey?"

  The agent shook his head. "I've worked with moreaus before. It's what our division is trained for."

  Nohar stopped in front of the doors to the changing area. "That's not what I asked you."

  Now there was a smile. A small one. "I suppose not. Perhaps I'm bothered, a little. This is my first assignment, and all the moreaus I’ve trained with were federal recruits. Mostly Latin American—"

  "Never prepared you for a tiger?"

  "They can't train you to deal with everything. I apologize if I've seemed remote. You're an important witness, not a suspect—"

  "My name's Nohar Rajasthan. What do I call you?"

  The agent held out his hand. "Agen—Patrick Shaunassy."

  Nohar gripped it and decided there was hope for him. "Pleased to meet you."

  Shaunassy gave Nohar's hand a healthy shake. "Ditto. You're going to be taking a shower here?"

  "Like I said, doctor's orders . . ."

  Shaunassy opened the door. "Well, once I secure the area why don't I go back to the vending machines and get us some coffee?"

  Nohar usually detested coffee, but he was feeling the lack of sleep catching up with him. "Do that, I could use a few cups."

  They entered the changing area and Shaunassy stopped him at the door. Shaunassy made an economical search of the room and the shower stalls as he spoke. "Sugar, cream?"

  "Both."

  He checked the toilet stalls. "Anything to eat?"

  "Hate hospital food."

  He returned to the door and made sure it had a lock. "Lock this until I come back. Shouldn't be more than ten minutes. If you're in the shower, I'll wait."

  Shaunassy left and Nohar locked the door as requested. Amazing, scratch an FBI agent and there might be a person underneath.

  The changing area was a study in white. White plastic lockers with recessed keypads, white fiberglass squares in the ceiling, white tile on the floor, white fluorescents—the only things in the room that weren't white were the greens Manny had left folded on the bench, and the chromed fixtures in the showers. The glare was irritating, so Nohar killed the lights, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness.

  The disinfectant was bad here. It was killing his sense of smell. He wished there was a window in here he could open.

  He breathed through his mouth as he removed the latest set of clothes he had destroyed.

  He got into a shower, turned on a blast of cold water, and let the mud melt off his body. He found himself thinking, not of the FBI or the whole MLI business, but of Stephie. All he wanted, right now, was to be in that motel room in Georgia. He was exhausted and had had enough of this bullshit. He just wanted to hold somebody—her—and get some sleep.

  There was thirty grand in his account. He wondered if it was worth it.

  He killed the shower and stood there, dripping, listening to the drain gurgle and wondering why he had taken the case in the first place. Did he really, subconsciously, want to go to California after Maria? Did he just want enough money to leave this burg? And where was that coffee?

  He stepped over to the dryer—he was going to be done before Shaunassy got back—and slapped the large button with the back of his hand. He was enveloped in a nearly silent column of warm air. His abused muscles appreciated it.

  Nohar nodded off a bit.

  He slipped against the cold tiles and woke up. He shook the sleep from his head and walked out to the changing room. He spared a glance out the little rectangular windows into the hall. He hoped Shaunassy didn't see the lights off and assume he'd left already. He decided he wasn't going to wait behind a locked door just for Shaunassy to get back. The disinfectant smell in here was getting to him.

  He unfolded the bottom of the greens and pulled them on. They fit around his waist, and they came down to a dozen centimeters past his knees. Nohar still had to split the seam on the bottom of the right leg to fit around the swelling.

  The top that went with the pants—came short above the waistline and both arms—looked just plain silly. Nohar left it. While the boots he had been wearing were still intact, he left them. His feet needed to air out and it felt good to give the claws on his feet a chance to stretch.

  Still no coffee, damn it.

  Nohar opened the door and was no longer immersed in the disinfectant smell. Now he could smell fresh coffee, the same synthetic-smelling stuff Harsk drank.

  Nohar also smelled blood.

  He grabbed his Vind from the pile of his clothes and ran—limped, really, the drug Manny had shot into him was keeping him from feeling his knee, but didn't make it work any better—down toward the vending machines, the waiting area, the labs. The first corner he rounded brought him to the vending machines—

  Shaunassy was dead.

  He had slid halfway down the wall between the micro and the coffee dispenser. His right hand had knocked over a brown plastic tray, scattering small bulbs of cream and packets of sugar into the widening pool of blood. Three cups of coffee had spilled on the linoleum tile floor. The edges of the spill mixed with Shaunassy's blood, pulling swirls of red to mix with the tan—

  Nohar's heartbeat was thudding dully in his ears.

  Nohar pulled him away from the wall. Shaunassy hit the ground with a boneless splat. His throat hung open and his shirt was drenched with red. He was still warm.

  The canine's musk hung in the air.

  Hassan had done this. Probably with a straight razor.

  Nohar kept up his limping run to the genetics lab, his breath a furnace in his throat. Why? Why was Hassan doing this?

  The hall smelled like an abattoir. The smell of blood seemed to adhere to the back of Nohar's sinuses.

  Nohar passed another agent. This one was crumpled in the middle of the hall. Hassan had sawed through the windpipe and had held the throat open. Blood had splattered halfway up the walls. Nohar stepped over the body, and his left foot slipped in the agent's blood. He ignored it and kept running, his foot making little tearing sounds each time he pulled it away from the linoleum.

  He took the safety off the Vind and cocked it. The blood smell was getting worse. There was no question in Nohar's mind that Hassan was heading for the lab.

  Nohar took in a deep breath, sucking in the smell of blood. His heart hammered in his ears, his head, and neck. Nohar raised his left hand to his mouth and tasted Shaunassy's blood.

  For the first time, Nohar willingly invited The Beast into his soul.

  The Beast came out and sniffed the air. Blood, it smelled human blood from at least five different people. It smelled die discharge of someone's gun. It smelled an excited canine. It smelled blood from a morey—

  From Manny.

  Nohar would have roared, but he was stalking now. Hassan didn't know he was here. The canine had passed by the changing area and the room had looked empty, the disinfectant had covered Nohar's smell. Nohar closed on the lab. It formed a T-intersection at the end of the hall. Ahead were a pair of fire doors, an agent crumpled against them, one arm hooked through one of the crash bars. To Nohar's right was the lounge. An agent was sprawled across the table.

  To Nohar's left were the swinging doors to the genet
ic lab. He could hear someone moving in there. He could smell Manny's blood.

  Things slowed down as the adrenaline kicked in. One of the doors was half open. And this time Nohar recognized the smell of gasoline-He crept up on the open door and listened, smelled the air. Hassan was in the rear of the room, to his right-He burst through the door. Hassan turned, very quickly. Not quickly enough. Nohar's first shot hit him. Hassan's right shoulder exploded into a shower of blood. The canine dropped the package he was carrying and spun off to the left. Nohar, still moving toward the rear of the room, followed with another shot. That one missed and hit a large piece of equipment— probably the chemical analyzer—the impact exploded a picture tube and caused the body of a dead tech to roll off it and hit the floor.

  The third shot followed Hassan, missed again, and slammed into a stainless steel sink. Water shot up in a mini-geyser.

  Nohar was moving slowly, dreamlike. Hassan took cover behind a large, stainless steel object, an oven or an autoclave. Hassan was drawing a gun. Apparently the need for the stealth of a razor was over. Hassan took too long to aim, and Nohar's fourth shot hit his cover. A white jet of steam blew from the side of the machine, hitting his gun arm. Hassan's wild shot hit the ceiling, taking out a light fixture, and his gun sailed into the middle of the room.

  The gun slid and came to rest next to the corpse of another FBI agent, sprawled facedown in a pool of blood in the center of the room. Nohar looked up and Hassan was hidden behind something—a cabinet, the chromed oven, or the other lab-tech, who was slumped over a cart, giving some cover. Nohar covered the door and backed toward the corner where Hassan had started. His foot stepped on something soft—

  Manny.

  Manny was facedown on the ground. The slashing wounds on his throat were multiple, violent.

  Nohar roared. He screamed rage as he advanced on Hassan's cover—

  "Cat—"

  Where did that voice come from? Behind the lab cart?

  Nohar pumped four shots at Hassan, through the corpse of the lab-tech. Blood sprayed the white lab coat and the cart rolled across the floor with the impact, bottles rattling. There was scrambling, perhaps the smell of canine blood.

  Nohar walked up and kicked over the cart. The tech thudded on the ground and the glass bottles shattered. The smell of alcohol filled the room. Hassan had moved behind a counter, closer to the exit. "Cat, thirty seconds and the place goes up. We both go. Still time to leave."

  Nohar replied by pumping a shot into the base of the counter. Cabinet doors under the sink splintered.

  The canine bolted for the door. Nohar bolted after him, firing. He missed and hit the light switch. The fluorescents winked out as a few anemic sparks leapt from the wall. Next shot was an almost. He could see the shell slam into Hassan's back, pushing him through the door— But the bastard wore a vest. The third shot slammed into the door, blowing a perfectly circular hole in it.

  Nohar slammed through the door after the canine. Hassan was still picking himself up from the impact in his back. He had rolled into the lounge. Three shots in rapid succession—

  Hassan would be dead if the gun wasn't empty.

  Hassan stood up and backed toward a window. He started to open it. "Ten seconds, cat. You can make it down the hall—"

  Hassan warded off Nohar with a blood-soaked straight razor in his left hand. His right was trying to rumble open the window in time . . .

  The Beast didn't give up that easily, and Nohar wasn't going to stop it this time.

  Nohar shifted the weight off his bad knee and leapt at Hassan, claws extended, roaring. Hassan cocked back with the razor to slash at Nohar's neck, but he was wounded, using his off-hand, and he was trying to do too many things at once. In peak condition, he might have hit Nohar. Instead, his forearm hit ineffectively against Nohar's right shoulder. Nohar grabbed Hassan's neck with his teeth as the window gave way before his weight.

  Hassan's blood was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted.

  The lab exploded.

  Chapter 24

  The window was blown apart by the explosion. They fell onto the top floor of the adjoining parking garage.

  Hassan's back slammed into a car below them. The fiberglass underneath them gave and Nohar felt his knee sink into Hassan's chest. Something inside it broke. The canine coughed up blood.

  Hassan cocked back with the razor again. Nohar responded with a backhand slash. The fully-extended claws of his right hand hit Hassan's left arm, slicing open Hassan's wrist. The razor went tumbling into the darkness.

  Nohar's teeth were still buried in the flesh of Hassan's neck and canine blood spilled into his mouth.

  Hassan jerked underneath him. The canine's flesh ripped out of his mouth, and Nohar heard a collarbone snap. Hassan spilled out on the concrete drive and backed away, toward the other end of the garage.

  Somewhere a pink screamed.

  Debris from above began to rain down on them.

  "... cat." Hassan spat a gob of bloody phlegm at the pavement. He seemed to be laboring to breathe and his voice had a breathy, bubbling quality to it. Nohar thought a rib must have punctured a lung. "Too bad, you didn't go ..."

  Hassan paused to get his breath as Nohar jumped from the car and advanced, ' 'To Georgia with everyone else ..."

  Nohar was barely a meter from the canine and Hassan actually smiled. How—no, he couldn't have. There wasn't enough time.

  But where had the Zipheads been when Smith got hit at Lakeview? Where were they now?

  Hassan had backed all the way to the railing. Behind him was only space.

  Nohar—The Beast—roared and swung his right hand. He aimed at the soft part of the skin under Hassan's lower jaw. The claws, and his fingers, dug in through the skin under Hassan's muzzle. Nohar's claws pierced the skin and crushed Hassan's tongue against the inside of the jaw. Hassan's eyes went wide with shock. Warm blood streamed out of the wound, soaking Nohar's arm.

  Nohar put his whole body into the follow-through. He grabbed hold of Hassan's jaw from inside the mouth and his arm continued the swing. Hassan's weight barely slowed it. The swing carried the canine out over the edge of the roof. He was actually thrown upward before he started falling. Hassan slid off of Nohar's hand and followed a near-perfect ballistic arc to the ground.

  Hassan crashed into an ambulance that was in the process of pulling out of the driveway below. The roof caved in with his weight, and the siren and flashers— for some reason—kicked in. The ambulance slowed to a stop and a pair of medics piled out to see what the hell had happened.

  The Beast retreated but didn't leave. Nohar was shaking as he ran through Metro General's parking garage. No one stopped him as he made his way down, even though his arm and his face were streaked with Hassan's blood—or perhaps because of it. Good thing. Nohar was in a dangerous state of mind. Even an innocent bystander who got in his way would find himself in trouble.

  Manny's van was still where they had parked it less than an hour ago. It cut diagonally across three parking spaces and was surrounded by a flock of dark-blue Haviers. One of the Haviers' doors hung open. The agents from it must have rounded the building to see Hassan's splat.

  Manny had never bothered to hide the van's combination from Nohar. Nohar punched it in, opened the door, and got in the driver's seat. The feed ripped out as he floored the van out of the Metro lot.

  He could still taste Hassan's blood and it didn't do a damn bit of good. Manny was dead, pointlessly.

  "WHY?"

  MLI was finished. It was all blown open. Why?

  Nohar smelled Manny off the driver's seat and he wished the Indian techs had made his strain able to cry.

  He was already pushing the van at one-twenty klicks an hour when he hit the I-90 on ramp. He was dodging slower moving cars when he remembered this van had a siren. He found the switch and turned it on. He stopped dodging. The other cars were pulling to the side.

  He maxed it out at one fifty as he shot through the exit on to the Midto
wn Corridor.

  Even blowing down the Corridor, going twice the speed limit, gave him time to think, time he didn't want. He didn't want to know Manny was dead. He wanted The Beast to handle it. That's what it was for, damnit.

  However, invoking his bioengineered combat-mode didn't help him a bit when it came to dealing with the death of the closest thing to a father he had ever had.

  He needed to hit Mayfield, and fuck the barriers. He put on the seat belt.

  He shot past the city end of Mayfield and took a right toward the Triangle parking garage. Between the bridge over Mayfield and the one over the driveway, there was a small hill that sloped toward the tracks. Nohar left the driveway and shot the van over the mostly dead lawn, up the hill, and over the dead tracks. A Dodge Electroline wasn't intended to take that kind of grade, but the velocity carried it over. The van started spilling over the other side of the hill, only going seventy now, headed for the side of an apartment building.

  Siren still going, Nohar skidded the van to the right. The rear left corner clipped the building as he bumped on to the crumbling Moreytown section of Mayfield. The van rolled to a near stop, scattering the nocturnal population off of the street.

  Nohar floored it again, feeling the uneven road in his kidneys.

  After the first block, he was going eighty.

  He passed the abandoned bus going a hundred.

  Third block, he was going one twenty—

  Three concrete pylons blocked the road ahead of him, each three meters tall. The hulk of the dead Subaru was still wrapped around the center pillar.

  He pulled the van all the way to the left, on to the sidewalk. On one side was now a concrete wall to Lakeview, and, coming up on the right, one of the pylons. Nohar hoped the gap was big enough.

  The front end screeched and the van bucked forward with a crunch-He was through.

  He'd made it. There was now a wobble on the front left tire, and he'd left both front fenders behind him. But now he was shooting east down Mayfield.

  He was back to going one fifty when he passed by Coventry. The cop on the riot watch only took three seconds to decide to give chase. Good for him. Nohar saw the first 322 marker when he passed the minumum-security prison. So far, the cop was the only shadow.