James quietly closed the cell. He’d try again later. He picked up his mug and took a sip of tea. He considered calling Annie. She should be at Heather’s by now, provided she’d followed his instructions. With Annie, he never knew. She swung hot, then cold. Just like her mother.
Ask her to stop, Annie. Your mother never gave a damn about you kids.
Neither did you. You were always gone. Heather was always there for us.
I was trying to keep a roof over our heads. Food in your tummies.
What if she won’t quit?
Then we’ll never be a family again. Do whatever you need to—I’ll back you up.
The fucking doctor wants to change my meds. He wants me to stay longer.
I’ll take care of all that, sweetie. You don’t need meds. You’re my good girl.
Annie’s face had lit for a moment, hope burning distrust from her expression like sunshine through mist, and he’d felt cold and ill, felt like he’d stood in the shadows far too long.
James studied the framed photo on his desk of him and Heather—both in white lab coats, grinning and holding microscopes. Heather was thirteen, skinny and just filling out, her long, red hair in a thick braid to her waist, her smile wide and happy, uninhibited.
Another photo showed him and Heather in grease-stained jeans and tees, posing in front of the classic Mustang they’d rebuilt together. Tendrils of dark red hair fluttered in front of Heather’s smudged face as she squinted in the sunshine, her smile, at fifteen, a little more reserved.
Indebted to her father’s quick thinking, a grateful daughter just might put aside an investigation into a cold case best left undisturbed.
Of course, if Prejean had transformed Heather into someone other than the girl in the photos on his desk, someone no longer 100 percent human, then the merciful thing, and the thing Heather herself would want, would be to remain silent and allow nature in the form of Caterina Cortini to take its course.
But before that happened, he needed to find out the truth. And there was one person who would know—if anyone did—what Prejean might’ve done to Heather while saving her life.
Placing the mug back on the warmer, James swiveled in his seat and turned on the computer. While the Dell ran through its startup, he composed in his mind the message he would send.
Has my daughter’s humanity been compromised?
9 INSIDE THE MONSTER’S HEART
Damascus, OR
March 22
DR. ROBERT WELLS FILLED a final syringe with a fatal dose of atropine, then tucked it out of sight on the lintel above the bedroom door. He’d hidden other syringes throughout the house in drawers, cupboards, under furniture, even under his wife’s pillow.
All fatal doses, yes—for mortals. If the assassins were vampire, the atropine dose would either knock them to the floor for an unplanned snooze or, depending on age, slow them down enough to afford him a slim chance at escape.
Wells suspected it was just a matter of rapidly passing time before the Bureau—no, let’s be accurate, the Shadow Branch puppeteering the Bureau heads—sent someone to kill him. All because of Bronlee’s theft.
Unless he acted first.
“How long, do you think?” Gloria asked, her voice dry and paper thin.
“They could already be on the way. Or it could be weeks.” Stepping away from the door, Wells returned to his wife’s hospital-style bed and adjusted the flow rate on her morphine drip. “It is the government, after all,” he added with a wry smile.
Gloria’s eyes shuttered closed and the lines pain had chiseled beside her mouth eased. A sigh escaped her lips, a soft sound, almost wistful. “No time to waste,” she whispered. “Send Alexander to Seattle.”
“Those plans are underway, honey. Don’t worry.”
The room smelled of ammonia and bleach, but all the disinfectants in the world couldn’t hide the lingering stink of decay.
Of failure.
Wells went to the window and cracked it open. Cool air fragrant and sweet with pine and early tulips breezed into the room. He sat on the bed beside his wife and wrapped his hands around hers, tried to rub warmth back into her fingers.
She was only fifty-seven years old, but cancer and chemo had stolen all youth from her, erased all traces of the woman he’d carried, laughing and tipsy on champagne, across the threshold of their first house thirty-five years ago.
Gloria’s head turned to one side and her lips parted. Her breathing deepened, slowed, as the morphine stole her away like Hades carrying Persephone into the underworld.
His throat tightened. Gloria was now the cancer’s bride and he couldn’t rescue her, no matter how much he tried, no matter how much he yearned, no matter how much he sacrificed. The battle had been lost. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her cold fingers.
If he continued to prolong her suffering, then his love for her had warped into something small and selfish. If he truly loved her, he’d release her.
Truth was rarely kind. And rarely what you hoped for.
All he needed to do was increase her morphine until she went with grace to the great below. Simple and easily done.
Wells remained hunched on the bed, Gloria’s fingers against his lips. He would wait until she was awake again so he could speak to her, tell her good night one last time.
His iPhone beeped. Kissing Gloria’s fingers once more, he laid her hand across her blanketed waist. He pulled the iPhone from the pocket of his sweater and clicked open a red-flagged message in his e-mail inbox.
What he read trip-hammered his pulse and reignited hope.
James Wallace of the FBI’s Portland forensics division, a man Wells knew only by reputation, had a problem.
My daughter claims that Dante Prejean saved her life. But he didn’t feed her his blood, didn’t turn her. He breathed blue fire and music into her. I don’t claim to understand that. I don’t even claim to know if such a thing is possible. But, if it is, what are the long-term effects? Has her humanity been compromised?
Wells texted: Good question. I’ll look into it. Study her medical records. Maybe it was a hallucination caused by pain and blood loss.
Thank you.
Have you mentioned this to anyone else? Anyone at all?
No, of course not. I only contacted you because you’ve studied Prejean.
Good. Keep quiet about this and I’ll get back to you….
Wells slipped the iPhone back into his pocket feeling champagne giddy.
First the security cam footage. Now this.
Right after the incident at the center, Wells had been contacted and interrogated about Johanna, Bad Seed, and S. He’d also been asked, almost offhandedly, if Johanna had been working on a project that included vampire genetic material. He’d replied that he hadn’t been involved with Johanna’s work since he’d retired.
At the time, he had wondered what had prompted that question, but now, after viewing the pilfered footage Bronlee had mailed to him and seeing the puddle of liquid on the floor that had once been a living being, Wells suspected he knew.
The cleanup team and their handlers believed they’d found a spilled experiment. It had never occurred to them that they’d found the woman they sought. Or, rather, all that remained of her.
Johanna wasn’t missing, no. She’d never left the center.
S had made sure of that.
Poor Johanna had had no idea—right up until the end—of what S truly was. Of what their little night-bred beauty had become. Or what he was capable of.
Truth be told, neither had Wells. Until the disk from Bronlee had arrived in the mail.
S had kept a secret from them both.
But Wells had kept one as well. From Johanna. From the Bureau. From S.
A secret he planned to unveil very soon.
Leaning over, Wells kissed his wife’s pale cheek, then straightened and stood. He padded out of the room, leaving Gloria in Morpheus’s narcotic embrace.
If S could unmake one woman and he
al another, Wells felt confident the boy could cure Gloria. All he needed to do was bend a god—a young and damaged god, one he’d delivered himself—to his will.
And all it would take would be one whispered word.
But before Wells used S to heal Gloria, the threat against his own life needed to be neutralized. Perhaps it was time to begin shifting power from the Shadow Branch puppeteers and into his own hands. His and Alexander’s—a new order, a new reign.
In the living room, moonlight filtered through the skylights in the high-peaked ceiling, filling the room with pale light. He looked out the window and into the woods.
Alexander, dressed in jeans and a gray hoodie, walked across the pine-tree shadowed yard toward the main house, a leather satchel slung over his shoulder, a shotgun in one hand. Moonlight gilded his hair silver, and an inner light seemed to radiate from him as if he truly were the embodiment of the Macedonian conqueror-god he was named for.
In that moment, his son was unutterably beautiful, Apollo’s true heir.
Wells heard the front door open, then heard it click shut again. Reaching into the front pocket of his trousers, he clicked on the psi-block emitter that would shield his thoughts from his son’s telepathic mind.
“I brought extra shells for the shotgun,” Alexander said as he sauntered into the living room. “Did you pick up a Taser?”
Wells nodded. “It’s in the kitchen. I’ve made other preparations, as well.”
“I’ve double-checked the security system. All green.”
Ah, so have I. And, my ambitious son, I changed the codes, Wells thought, but said instead, “Good.”
“I’ll finish securing the cottage tonight,” Alexander said. “I’ll make sure Athena’s safe and occupied before I head out for Seattle tomorrow.”
“I think we’re as ready as we’re going to be.”
Alexander perched on the edge of the leather easy chair beside the sofa and shrugged the satchel off his shoulder. He cracked open the shotgun barrel. “If it weren’t for Mother, you could go underground until things were settled.” He looked up at Wells through thick blond lashes. “A lethal dose spiked into her IV. You’d be doing her a favor.”
“A few minutes ago, I would’ve agreed with you.”
Alexander reached into the satchel and withdrew a handful of shells. “What’s changed?”
“I’ve just learned that S can heal.”
“Any vampire can heal if they offer up enough blood.” Alexander slotted shells into the shotgun, then snapped the barrel shut. “Of course, that usually means the person healed turns into a bloodsucker.” He lifted his gaze to Wells’s. “So how’s this different?”
“S healed a mortally wounded agent without using his blood. Since my source happens to be the agent’s father, I have no reason to doubt his veracity.”
Alexander frowned, his brows angling down. “Mortally wounded…do you mean Heather Wallace? The agent in the med-unit footage?”
“The very same. And where is the disk, by the way?”
“Thena’s watching it again. She enjoys it.”
Wells couldn’t blame Athena for that; the footage was fascinating. Revelatory. A dark thought curled through his mind. And inspiring? “Make sure she keeps it safe.”
“Of course,” Alexander murmured.
“I plan to get ahold of Wallace’s medical records,” Wells said, crossing the room to the dark mahogany bar at its other end. “Ideally, I’d really like to get hold of her, run a few tests. See what S has done.” He selected the bottle of Courvoisier, lifted it for his son to see. Alexander shook his head, so Wells poured one snifter of cognac.
“Maybe that’s possible,” Alexander said carefully. “I’d bet good money she’ll be at Prejean’s gigs in Seattle, especially if he saved her life. I could alter our plan to include her—”
“No, Wallace would be a distraction. You’ll need to remain focused. S will kill you if you make a mistake. He’s fast and unpredictable. Dangerous.”
“Singing to the choir, Father,” Alexander sighed. “We watched the footage too.”
Wells took a swallow of the amber liquor. The Courvoisier burned down his throat, tasting of oak and vanilla. “Give S the encoded MP3 player or, better, leave it for him; keep at a safe distance. Once he’s finished with his task, sedate him and bring him home.”
Alexander propped the shotgun against the easy chair and rose to his feet. “Bring him home to heal Athena,” he said, his gaze steady.
“And Mother,” Wells said. “Listen to me carefully and keep this thought forefront: Only I have a map to the labyrinth within S’s head, a labyrinth I created.”
“Do I hear an amen?” Alexander said, a cynical smile twisting across his lips. “I understand, Father. But I need you to understand this—Athena first.”
“Athena first, agreed,” Wells said, lying with a sincerity learned from decades of work within the Bureau. A pang of regret bit deep into him. Athena was Alexander’s twin. He feared his son might never be the same without her, and that was the reason he hadn’t already ended her life.
But as Athena descended deeper into madness, he feared that her insanity would seep into Alexander through their indefinable bond, the womb link of twins. Feared it was seeping into him even now, threading delusion through his veins.
“Agreed then.” The cynical smile vanished from Alexander’s lips. He crossed the carpet to where Wells stood in front of the mahogany bar and bowed his head.
Wells stepped forward and kissed the top of Alexander’s golden head, bestowing paternal blessing with a touch of his lips.
“Bring S home,” Wells murmured. “And I’ll teach you how to wield him.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
“As you should.”
Wells stepped back and Alexander lifted his head. He looked at Wells for a long moment, the Aegean depths of his eyes unfathomable. “I’ve always wondered why you hide your thoughts from me when you’re the one who made me telepathic.”
Wells chuckled. “To build character. To give you grief. To keep you guessing. Take your pick.”
The cynical smile returned to Alexander’s lips. With a flipped half-salute, he turned and walked from the room.
“Alexander,” Wells called. His son’s tread stopped. “Keep in mind that the MP3 player is designed to play the message only once. Preview it, and you’ll be giving S nothing but static to listen to.”
The front door creaked open, then shut again.
Wells drained the snifter in a second long swallow. Sweat popped up along his hairline. Heat flushed his face. He poured a second drink. Sliding his fingers around the snifter’s stem and cupping the bowl in his palm, he carried the glass, along with the bottle of cognac, down the hall to his office.
Mortal Wells might be, but the fires of creation burned within his mind. Genetics was his hammer. Human flesh his metal. His son was the proof of that—his daughter his only shame.
“Do what needs to be done, Bobby.” Gloria rubs her hands over her still-flat belly. “Maybe that’s why I’m carrying twins. Maybe that’s why we have one of each gender.” A small, knowing smile curves her lips. “And maybe that’s why I chose you.”
With those words, Wells had finally seen beyond the self-sacrificing madonna to the calculating mother-goddess. Through her, the path to divinity unfurled beneath his feet. Father to a new age. Creator of gods.
But Athena…He still didn’t know what had gone wrong, how he’d made a mistake. The twins had been designed with the utmost care, their genetics altered and enhanced as they curled together within Gloria’s womb, all flaws deleted.
Or so he’d believed. Until Athena’s mind had quietly, slowly, and irrevocably unwound. Paranoid schizophrenia. A flaw unforeseen.
Settling into his comfortable and well-broken-in leather chair, Wells set the cognac bottle down on his desk and picked up a copy of the disk his daughter was watching at this very moment.
Thena is watching it again. Sh
e enjoys it.
Athena wasn’t alone in that; Wells had watched it many times as well. But he didn’t enjoy it; that wasn’t the word he’d use. No. A better, a more accurate word would be scared. It scared and exhilarated him. But he didn’t enjoy it. He slipped the disk into the drive.
Taking another sip of the cognac, Wells clicked PLAY. A corridor appeared on the monitor, the dim lighting tinted night-vision green. A figure moved into view—waist-length black hair snaking into the air like night-blackened seaweed caught in a current. His wings, black and smooth, arched up behind him, half-folded, as he knelt on the floor and reached for one of two figures crumpled together on the tile.
A voice curled from the computer’s speakers, low and deep, with a trace of a European accent. But, just like the first time he’d heard them, the words trailed a finger of ice down his spine.
‘’Avenge your mother. And yourself.”
And S rises from the speaker’s arms, rises up from the floor, bathed in dim red emergency light, his body tight and coiled, blood smeared across his breathtaking face. Rises up like a god from the ashes, a burning, beautiful, terrifying god.
Wells hit PAUSE and poured himself another drink. Until he’d viewed the disk, he’d considered the late Elroy Jordan—sociopath, sexual sadist, and serial killer—to have been Bad Seed’s greatest success. No longer.
The beautiful boy who’d risen from the floor on the monitor had eclipsed Jordan.
Smiling, Wells poured another drink.
10 WHISPERS
Damascus, OR
March 22
“IS THE DISEASED OLD cow still breathing?” Athena asked. She sat cross-legged on the sofa, her gaze on the laptop cradled in her lap. The lab smock she wore over her jeans was smeared and spattered with blood and other fluids.
“Mother’s still breathing, yes,” Alex replied, kicking the door shut behind him. He set his sister’s tray of night meds on the cluttered coffee table.
“Good. I don’t want her dying before I can kill her.”