He could smell fresh air and hear the sound of a diesel truck. “Adric!” the man at his feet shouted, grunting from his weight. “Hold up. One more for you.”
“Look, I already told Rob. This is my last stop. I don’t have time for the paperwork.”
“Then we’re all in luck,” the man holding Daniel’s feet said, and Daniel tensed as they began swinging him back and forth as if to throw him. “This guy,” he said between swings, “doesn’t . . . have . . . any!”
They let go on the last word, and Daniel shuddered when his stomach dropped and he fell on the squishy, firm feeling of a person. They were treating him like a chunk of wood, and he gritted his teeth, eyes closed as he heard a tarp pulled over them all.
“Just take him to the park with the rest, will you?” someone said. “One more body isn’t going to kill anyone.”
“He’s not even in a bag,” the driver of the truck said, but the voices dropped in volume, and before long, the truck revved its engine and they jostled into motion.
Daniel shifted, rolling to get off the person under him and to the edge, where he could look out through the open slats. The road changed and their speed picked up. He sucked in the new air, relishing the coolness even as his sock feet became cold. He wouldn’t look behind him at the bodies, the uniform black bags doing little to ease the horror of what they contained. “Orchid!” he whispered, but there was nothing.
He was alone in Chicago, in the back of a morgue truck, but he would find Trisk if it was the last thing he did.
30
Shocks squeaking, the morgue truck trundled through the streets of Chicago. There was no traffic, and no one stopped them. Daniel began to shiver, and he wondered if the driver would have a heart attack if he banged on the panel between them and asked if he could ride up front.
Fortunately, they kept to the surface streets, and Daniel tensed as he saw the sign directing traffic to the Adams Street police department. At the next red light, he slipped to the back of the truck’s bed, climbing over the gate and rolling out under the tarp. It was a long drop to the pavement, and he hit awkwardly, his breath hissing in when his ankle gave a twinge. Adrenaline rising, he lurched to the curb, tucking in behind a mailbox on the corner when the light changed and the driver smoothly shifted gears and drove away.
His back against the cold metal box, Daniel sat on the sidewalk and fumbled to put his glasses on. He felt naked without his shoes, cold without a coat. There was no traffic, no TV blaring, no voices raised in anger or conversation, no heels clicking or low men’s voices rumbling in the dark. The curfew or plague had silenced it all.
“Orchid!” he whispered, his relief shocking when the pixy dropped down, her dust looking like fog in the dim streetlight over the intersection.
“Nice drop and roll,” she said, hovering before him with a scrap of candy bar wrapper around her as if it was a shawl. “I told you I could get you out.”
“That you did,” he said, even as he knew the memory of hitching a ride out with the dead would stay with him forever. “You want to warm up in my pocket?” he asked as he reached behind his sweater-vest to pull his shirt pocket open, and she dropped in to settle like a little mouse. “I think we’re just a few blocks from the station,” he added, surprised at the need to protect her. Sock feet cold on the sidewalk, he shook his head ruefully and started walking. “I should’ve thought this through a little more. I have no idea how I’m going to get in and out of there with Trisk.”
“Leave that to me,” Orchid said, her voice rising from his pocket.
But Daniel hesitated at the sharp bark of a dog and the sudden sound of feet and a clanging pipe. Damn it to hell, he thought, knowing it was too late to hide when a group of eight men and two dogs walked boldly down the street. He couldn’t take his eyes off the dogs, unleashed and roaming free. They were huge, looking more so next to the men, who were all kind of . . . short. “Orchid?” he questioned, and she poked her head out of his pocket, swearing prettily.
“Bluff it out,” she said, dropping back down.
Bluff it out? he thought. Easy for you to say. But knowing she was with him, even if all she could do was dust different colors, he was able to pull himself together, waving at them to try to be both unassuming and in charge at the same time—in stocking feet.
“Hey, hi,” he said, uncomfortable when they circled him. They didn’t look like a gang, even if all of them had conspicuous tattoos, some sharing the same design though they were not on the same patch of skin. Their hair was long and their clothes worn, and he’d say that they were hippies except something didn’t fit—the wide range of ages, perhaps. There was no show of weapons other than that pipe the smallest was dragging, and the two dogs were not overtly aggressive even as they sniffed him. It was obvious who was in charge: the older man wearing a fisherman hat and sporting a grizzled beard. The younger men surrounding him jostled one another and cracked jokes about early trick-or-treating.
“You’re breaking curfew,” the old man said, and Daniel held up a hand, ducking his head as if it were all a big joke. He was the tallest man here, and it felt odd.
“I know. I’m sorry. My wife is pregnant, and you know, when the lady wants pickles, she wants pickles.” He stiffened when one of the dogs made a weird, chortling laugh and trotted off. No one called the dog back, and when he spotted the same eagle tattoo in the dog’s ear, he realized they were werewolves. All of them.
Fear spiked through him, and he quashed it, forcing a smile when the remaining dog cocked his head at him in question. These were not the werewolves of the horror stories, he told himself. They wouldn’t kill him or bite him to make him one of their own. They’d been quietly living in Chicago since the city had been founded, most likely, and probably had as much to do with its success as the humans living beside them.
“He’s got the blisters,” the kid with the pipe said, and Daniel’s hand rose to cover them.
“This? No. That’s razor burn,” he said, and the old man in the hat sighed.
“Mister, we can do this easy or hard, but you’re going to the hospital. It’s your choice if it’s on your two feet or carried between us.”
“Really, I’m okay,” Daniel insisted, not liking how they were circling behind him. “I wouldn’t even be out here but I have to get to the police department.”
“You said you were getting pickles,” the man next to the remaining dog said, and Daniel’s anger spiked. He didn’t like lying, less getting caught at it.
“What I’m doing is none of your business,” he said, a hand over his pocket to keep Orchid safe. Someone grabbed his arm, yanking it free of his chest. “Hey!” he shouted in affront, but they all froze at an attention-getting yip.
The sound of cans rolling into the street echoed, and they all turned to a boy, scared as he tried to put the cans back into a paper bag and skirt back into the shadows.
With a curt gesture, the alpha male sent three of his men to get him. “Is he yours?” the man asked.
Daniel’s eyes narrowed. “They’re all mine,” he said, and then kneed the man holding his arm—right in the groin.
He was free. The Were fell to kneel on the pavement with a pained, whining yip of a groan. “You stinky, flea-bitten hippies!” Daniel shouted, then turned to run.
“What are you doing!” Orchid shrilled.
“Making this up as I go along,” Daniel said, a weird, delusional smile growing as he pounded toward the police station, all the Weres in tow. The kid, at least, would get away.
“Well, make it up faster,” she said as she scrambled out of his pocket and flew up and out of sight. It was none too soon, either, as with an aggressive bark of warning, one of the dogs ran right in front of him, tripping him.
Gasping, Daniel went down, rolling and bruising his shoulder. He panicked when sharp teeth clamped onto his arm, and he curled into a ball, hiding his face. “Uncle! Uncle!” he yelled, praying it really was a person under all that fur. “You got me!”
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“Son of a bitch!” someone said, and Daniel clenched, waiting for the expected kick in the ribs, but it never came. “Alvin, get off him!”
Daniel took a grateful breath when the dog let go, an odd guffaw coming from it as it sat back and looked for all the world as if it was laughing.
“That was stupid,” the old man said as he hauled Daniel to his feet, letting him go with a little shove when the rest of them arrived. “Get in the truck,” he said, pushing him again. “Now.”
Daniel stumbled, his sock feet cold on the hard pavement. “You’re making a mistake,” he said, thinking Quen should have stayed with Trisk and he should’ve gone into the desert to die.
“Hey!” Orchid shrilled, dropping down to make everyone gasp and back off. “Get your hands off my person, you mangy mutts!”
“Holy shit!” the youngest Were exclaimed. “Is that a pixy?”
“That’s right, puppy.” Orchid poked the kid in the nose with a tiny sword, darting back when he tried to smack her away. “And if I’m with him, then you know he’s not a human, and therefore not getting in that truck.” With a clatter of wings, she landed on Daniel’s shoulder, shivering from the cold. “Go away. Bad dog.”
“I told you I smelled pixy,” the youngest man said in excitement, never taking his eyes off her. “Didn’t I say I smelled pixy?”
“Yeah, you did.” The old man pushed past him, standing with his hands on his hips.
“I’m not sick,” Daniel said again. “I have to get to the police station. Please.”
“You’re blistered,” the Were he’d kneed said, and Orchid shivered her wings, shedding a thin green dust that spilled down Daniel’s front to pool on the pavement.
“He’s blistered because I pixed him,” the tiny woman said, clearly proud of it. “It was the only way to get him out of the pen they put the humans in.”
“I need to get to the police station,” Daniel said as they all cringed at the word human. “They need to know that eating tomatoes causes the plague. As far as I know, there’ve been no vampire or Were deaths from the pox, and even humans won’t get sick if they don’t eat anything with tomatoes in it.”
They exchanged nervous glances as he threw their secret around so casually, not even hearing what he was saying about the source of the plague.
“Keep it up,” Orchid whispered in his ear. “They know you’re not a witch, vamp, or Were, but you’re acting like an Inderlander, and they don’t know what you are.”
“It’s in the tomatoes,” he tried again, desperate to get them listening. “Vampires who eat them get sick, but we won’t die like humans do. Just stop eating tomatoes.”
“You’re kidding,” one of them said, absently touching the second dog as it trotted up and sat beside him, and Daniel felt his shoulders ease.
“And how come you know this and no one else does?” the alpha male asked suspiciously.
“Because I’ve been stuck in a cage, that’s why,” Daniel said belligerently. “You’re the first people I’ve seen since rolling out of that morgue truck.”
The dog whined and pawed at his nose, and Daniel stiffened when the man he’d kneed leaned close, his eyes narrowed as he took a big sniff. “He smells human to me,” he said.
“Duh.” Orchid pressed against his neck, clearly cold. “Did you not just hear him say he was in a truck full of dead humans?” But they weren’t going for it, and Orchid took to the air. “Do you really think I’d be seen with a human? He’s an elf, and he’s helping me find a buck. Have any of you seen one? Just one?”
Her plaintive question brought a smile to the older man’s eyes, and seeing it, the rest of them relaxed as well. “No, little warrior. More’s the pity,” he said, and Daniel heaved a slow, hidden sigh of relief. “Fine, you can go,” the man added, and the circle around him broke up. “But be more careful. Especially with that pixy rash. We heard about what happened in Detroit, and we’re not letting it happen here. If any other pack finds you, they might not listen.”
“I will,” Daniel said, his mood brightening when one of them handed him a pair of shoes with peace signs drawn on them. He smiled his thanks at the werewolf in fur who nuzzled him to put them on. “What happened in Detroit?”
No one said anything, and Daniel looked up from slipping the shoes on to see haunted expressions. One by one, the men fell back into the dark until only the old guy and one of the dogs were left. “I haven’t heard a radio broadcast or read a paper in days,” he said, suddenly uneasy. “What happened in Detroit? I was supposed to meet someone there.”
The alpha male grimaced, his eyes on his pack as they gathered under a nearby light. “The vampires freaked out. Started taking witches. The witches used magic to fight back. Detroit was wiped out to preserve the silence.”
“My God,” Daniel whispered. “Are you sure?”
“That’s why we’re keeping the streets clear,” the old Were said. “Living vampires breaking curfew go to the police to be locked up with their masters, humans to the hospital, morgue, or containment area. I don’t know what to do with elves.”
Daniel would have said the Were was exaggerating—you couldn’t just destroy an entire city—but Orchid’s dust had turned a dismal blue. And then he wondered at the many other societies that had vanished suddenly and without explanation. Maybe there was a reason after all.
Daniel’s pulse quickened, and he scuffed his feet more firmly into his borrowed shoes. “I’ll be careful,” Daniel said, and the man nodded.
“Chuck, go with him.” The dog stood, ears pricked.
“Uh, thanks,” Daniel said as he moved Orchid to his shirt pocket, “but it’s just up the street.”
Orchid poked her head out. “I’m watching him, you mangy dog,” she said belligerently, and the man smiled, his hand on the top of the dog’s head.
“I bet you are.” With a final nod, he turned and walked away with Chuck, the dog who wasn’t a dog. Daniel watched as they rejoined the rest of the pack, and quicker than he would have believed possible, they were gone. He was alone.
“Maybe we should be more careful about you being seen,” he said. His shoes were a little tight, but he wasn’t going to complain.
“That might be a problem,” Orchid said, and he peeked in at her, huddled in his pocket.
“Just stop moving your wings. You don’t glow then,” he said, and she shook her head, looking up at him with a mournful expression.
“No, I mean that kid with the cans? He heard the entire thing and is following us.”
Daniel sighed, and Orchid pulled herself up, hanging half out of his pocket. “You have to take care of this,” she said. “I’m not going to be responsible for another Detroit.”
Daniel eyed the dark alleys between the buildings. “Maybe we can bribe him into silence,” he said, taking a slow right into one of the alleys.
“What’s your plan here?” Orchid asked as he put his back to the wall.
“Plan?” he whispered as he crouched to find a rock. “Shhh. I think I hear him.” Daniel’s pulse quickened as the silhouette of a small boy showed at the top of the alley. Daniel flicked the rock to clatter farther in, and convinced, the boy followed.
“Now!” Orchid called, and Daniel grabbed him, shocked at how small he was. Six? Seven?
“Let go! Let go!” the boy shouted, wiggling as Daniel wrapped his arms around him.
“Hold still,” he said, grunting when a little elbow hit his nose. “Hold still, or I’m going to do something you will not live to regret.”
“Oh, like that’s going to convince him,” Orchid said, glowing a bright yellow dust as she alighted on the top of a burn barrel.
Catching sight of her, the kid stopped, entranced. “You’re a fairy,” he whispered, and Daniel let go apart from an iron grip on his wrist.
“A pixy,” Orchid said, hovering before him. “And you’re in trouble, little man.”
Immediately the kid tried to jerk away, stomping on Daniel’s foot.
>
“Hey! Knock it off,” Daniel said, but the thrashing just got wilder. “I don’t know, Orchid,” he added, chin high as the kid hammered at his middle like a pint-sized boxer. “He doesn’t want to know how to stop the blisters.”
Immediately the boy lost all his fight, staring up at them with wide eyes. “I don’t want my mom to get sick,” he warbled, and Daniel’s heart just about broke.
Giving Daniel a dark look for making him cry, Orchid dropped down to hover before the boy, her glow shining on his tears. “What’s your name, kid?”
“Johnny,” he said, and Daniel eased his grip slightly.
“Okay, Johnny,” Orchid said. “My name is Orchid. We’ll tell you how to keep everyone you love from catching the plague, but you have to keep quiet about me.”
Johnny wiped his nose on his sleeve. “What about the werewolves and vampires?”
Orchid’s brow furrowed. “Have you seen any werewolves and vampires?”
“Just the werewolves.”
This wasn’t good, but Daniel was seeing an interesting pattern, and he let go of the kid and dropped down to kneel before him. Johnny was taking everything at face value. He was scared, but it was the kind of scared you were about the bogeyman under the bed, a fun scared that held no real fear. Maybe Inderlanders coming out wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
“Johnny, pixies and vampires and werewolves are a really big secret,” Daniel said, and the boy looked from Orchid to him. “And if you tell anyone, everyone you save is going to die anyway. Do you understand?”
Big, helpless tears rolled down his face, making Daniel feel like a jerk. “I don’t want my mom to die,” Johnny sobbed, and Daniel took him in a hug, feeling his tiny body shake.
“Does she have the blisters yet?” Daniel whispered, and Johnny pushed back as if suddenly remembering big boys didn’t cry.
“No,” he said, wiping his nose on his sleeve again, and Daniel smiled.