Blood Bonds (21 page)

“No, sir.” There was a long pause. “It’s just...”

“Then what?” He shook himself dry, arranged his shorts and carried the phone back to the bed. When Reynolds didn’t answer him he said, “You’d better start talking, because you do not want me to find out from someone else.”

“Yes, sir. I understand, sir. It’s just that, there seems to be a problem with this batch of synth-H.” They sold five specific varieties, synth-H, C, H2, E, and X. H gave the wyrms a heroine-type high.

“I’m listening, so keep talking.”

“We injected it into the subjects, just like always, but something went wrong. Bad wrong. Nine of them died.”

Dobson rubbed a hand over his short gray brush cut. Most of his hair had decided to retreat on him to the back of his skull. Didn’t matter. Hair was overrated anyhow.

“You lost nine total, or nine that you kept?” To keep suspicions down, they only took samples from the few they invited to stay around. Giving them the preferred customer treatment. Once they were high as a kite they could do whatever. Take marrow, take blood, hell they could cut their God-damned cocks off and they wouldn’t know. Fuckers could grow back an arm unless you used Alchemy.

When they woke up they’d just wander off. If any of them remembered getting collected, who were they going to tell? The cops? And if they did, who was going to believe them?

If there was anything more useless than a junkie, it was a Kin junkie.

“Nine out of the ten we kept. We think the last one’s on his way out, too.”

Dobson stood up, tried to pace, and pulled the phone off onto the floor. “What the fuck happened? Can you tell me that? Can you at least fucking tell me what the hell went wrong? It’s synth-H, for fuck’s sake. We’ve been selling that shit for the past seven years and it’s never killed anyone. So either Kin have suddenly developed some sort of biological reaction to it, which we know I’d have a greater chance of shitting the Virgin Mary out of my ass than that happening, or something happened.” He waited for Reynolds to answer him.

“Erica thought there might have been a cross contamination.”

“A what?” Spit flecked his lips and it felt like there were thunderbolts shooting against the back of his skull. “Do not...” He dragged the phone base with him and sat back down on the bed. It made sad little ding-ding noises along the way. “Do not fuck with me. Get her on the phone. I want her to tell me herself that there has been a cross contamination in my lab.” It could undo everything. If his virus got out, the Center for Disease Control could get their hands on a sample and it wouldn’t take long to figure out what the virus was being designed for. And if anyone happened to compare it to his little Beijing speed bump there could be hell to pay.

His hell and his pay.

“I can’t, sir, Erica’s dead. One of our usuals walked in talking about getting stiffed on the deal we’d made with him a few days back. We’d just lost the last one and number ten wasn’t looking so hot. She had a few vials from an old batch and thought if we ran both of them through him we could figure out what was different between them.” Erica was smart that way. Brutal. “We let him shoot up to make sure it was good. When he went down, we strapped him in. He must have metabolized it faster than we expected, or maybe Erica gave him a smaller dose just to make sure the synth-H didn’t kill him ... who knows? He went ballistic. Erica had just gotten done getting the control samples and went to stick him. He broke her neck.”

“And you have this son of a bitch, right?”

Silence. It told Dobson exactly what he did not want to hear.

“Fuck. I pay you enough money to buy you all the booze, fast cars and fresh ass your dick could ever dream of, and you’re telling me you can’t kill a fucking strung out Kin.” God, he wanted to kill something. Anything.

“Martin says he recognized him.”
Hallelujah, it’s fucking Christmas!
“He says they took him into the PD Monday, talked to that Kin Agent they have there. Made some deal with Bauer, so they let him out last night. He came here because he was looking for a score.”

“Jesus Christ, you must be fucking retarded.” Dobson could not believe what he was hearing. “Do you enjoy fucking me up the ass, Reynolds? Because you are seriously fucking me up the ass right now.” He got up, sat down, and scrubbed the back of his skull for a few more rounds. “Looking for a score? You actually believed that the son of a bitch was just looking for a score? What the fuck do you think that cunt’s job is, Reynolds? Obviously you don’t know, don’t care, or are too fucking stupid ... did they fry your brain along with your soul when you crossed over to the Dark Side?” This was proof positive that just because you were an Alchemist, it didn’t make you a genius.

When Reynolds spoke there was ice in his tone. “With all due respect, sir, I worked Vice in Texas. We didn’t put the wyrms on the pay roll. Whatever that Female does here, I wouldn’t know about it except for what I hear from you and Martin.”

“And what’s Martin’s excuse?”

“He wasn’t here when it went down.” Short and clipped.

“So, how did he know who the Kin was?”

“He dropped his wallet. Martin made a call, got the details. He told them the wyrm is wanted in connection with a deal gone bad. If he shows up, they’ll hold him. We have the bodies, might as well put one or two to good use.”

“Incinerate the others,” Dobson said. This fuck up might actually work out to be a good thing. He needed an excuse to access the Center’s GPS data base, her email or anything he could use as evidence that Haley Night had gone into the Dens against orders from upstairs. If Dobson played his cards right, he could own her scaly ass by Friday. Maybe sooner.

An ambulance sitting in front of the CFKR was not what Haley would consider a good start to the day. She parked Garrett’s sedan in the front, and went in the main entrance.

She passed a team of EMS workers in the lobby and waded into a group of cops, all of whom had their side arms drawn and were looking down the hall as if the devil himself was about to come stomping up the nap carpet.

“What’s going on?” It seemed like a perfectly logical question until Taylor grabbed her arm and shoved her back towards the door.

“Get back! The last thing we need is another one of you down there!”

“What the hell?”

“Fuck you!” That from Manuel. She didn’t know either of them very well because she only saw them when they walked suspects back and forth for questioning. One thing for sure, they were throwing off a whole lot of I-wanna-put-a-cap-in-your-ass.

The front doors burst open and two teams of Alchemists in full riot gear went storming down the hall. There was only one reason they called in an Alchemist team. Something had gone bad in the Tank.

Haley went down the other hall and took the service elevator in the back. She came out into a corridor clogged with Cops facing off with Alchemists. She slipped around the mass of blue and found more of them blocking the doorway to the Tank. They stared down the hall, faces grim.

“What’s going on?”

Angry cop eyes gave her some up and down. “Get her out of here.” That from the guy with the blond brush cut. Considering no one did any push and shove, it meant either they really didn’t want her to go, or they were too scared to touch her.

Haley was betting on scared.

It was Jenna, the only detective in the bunch, who bothered to answer her. “Your junkie in there has Bauer, McKinney, and Jones holed up in an interrogation room with him.”

“My junkie?” Haley looked around at all of them. “How the hell did I get pegged with this?”

“Was asking for you the minute his scaly ass came into the building.” Haley didn’t know him, but his name tag said Tomlin.

“A lot of Kin ask for me when they come in here. They know I’m the only one that won’t shoot first and ask questions later.” They bowed up on her, voices rising, and juicy curses spilling out of clenched teeth. “Why don’t you get out of my way and let me go down there and see if I can’t stop this before it gets any worse?.”

“Too late.” John Tate had been on the force for a while and was a few years short of retirement. He didn’t show it, though. Except for a little gray around his temples, he looked like a rookie.

“Let me go in there.”

John Tate glared. “What part of ‘too late’ do you not understand?”

Haley leaned into him. “Well, it looks to me like you have a choice. You can tell your comrades to get out of the way and let the Alchemists have at it, then go in and scrape up any pieces that might be left over, or you can let me go in and try to calm him down.

Jenna shook her head and her eyes went back through the door where the Alchemists were demanding entry. “He’s been shooting up with something nasty, Haley. I don’t think there’s going to be much we can do but scrape up whatever’s left.”

“Let me try.” Haley looked at them. “Damn it, what have you got to lose? You don’t even know if any of them are still alive.” They still didn’t get out of the way, but when she went forward they didn’t stop her.

Half way down the hallway, Haley slowed down from a jog to a cautious crawl. She tilted her head and listened with her dragon hearing. Hearts pounded, breathing came quick, and there was a small whimper ... Human Male.

A quick glance back up the hall told her the cops had stopped parrying for position with the Alchemists. They were all standing silent, just watching.

“Creyal?” Haley called. Silence was the only reply.

The first four doors were empty, pale fluorescents flickering. Haley scented the air and tasted Bauer’s familiar scent. The other two she wasn’t sure of, but one of them was a woman and she was pregnant.

“Creyal? The boys upstairs said you were looking for me.”

Haley came to the edge of the door. It was the same one she’d interviewed him in. She peeked through the gap and caught sight of Bauer, sitting in a corner with his head down, arms on his knees. His eyes were closed, his face calm. He looked like a man that’d come to the realization he was going to die and the only thing left to do was wait. The right sleeve of his white button up was crimson, and bits of his flesh and muscle were flapping out of the hole.

“Creyal? Talk to me please?” She stole another look. The woman was on the floor, curled up beside the overturned table. When she saw Haley, she shook her head and her eyes moved to the wall out of Haley’s line of sight. Her eyes told Haley terrible things were about to happen in that corner. Things that no one ever wanted to see.

“Creyal, I’m walking in alone. Please don’t do anything that both of us will regret.” Haley stepped inside and understood immediately why they were all freaked out. Creyal no longer looked Human. The partial shift left him with a scaled body, a human shaped torso, a massive Draconian head and hands that were nothing but black gleaming Ginsu knives.

The third cop lay crumpled and bloody at Creyal’s feet, his side arm beside his mangled arm.

Creyal’s head swung in her direction. Haley walked up to him, her hands out. He roared and little streams of dust trickled down from cracks in the ceiling. Both the woman cop and Bauer jumped.

“Shhh.” Haley touched his muzzle, ran her fingers along his jaw and his cheek. Spiny points of horn protruded from the back of his skull.

He shuddered under her hand. His feather-like scales rustled. Creyal’s silver eyes rolled in the direction of Bauer, then the woman.

“They’re going to get up and go now, okay?” Creyal clicked and chirped, and his wings rattled. “I’m here now, you don’t need them. Let them go, Creyal. I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.” His eyes rolled back to her. The pupils contracted, turning into slits. Bits of orange blossomed, like drops of paint, in the depths of his irises.

“Bauer?” Haley didn’t look at him, because she wanted to keep her attention on the feral.

“Yeah.” He sounded weak.

“Do you think you can walk out of here?”

“I’ll dance out if you like.”

She smiled. “That’s not necessary. Officer?”

“I can walk,” McKinney said. “What about Jones?”

Haley pulled Creyal’s head against her. His cheek slid from her hip to her shoulder. He repeated the gesture from the other side.

“What about Jones? Creyal? Will you let them pull him out of here?”

Creyal’s taloned hand came down on the man, pinning him.

Two was better than zero. Haley said, “Jones is staying right now. You two get out.” Bauer got up, staggered, but made it to the door. “Your turn, McKinney.” The woman didn’t move.

“McKinney!” Bauer’s voice boomed and the woman got her legs going. Haley heard the door shut behind her, and then lock. Bauer was no dummy.

Creyal roared and lurched to the center of the room. His massive head smashed the door and his claws laid into the metal. He flashed his teeth at Haley and snapped at the air near her face. She didn’t blink.

Creyal shuddered and thick streams of saliva dripped from his gaping mouth. His tail whipped and smashed against the table, splintering it. He sat back on his haunches, looking weak. The muscles in his thigh danced as he leaned against the wall.

Haley approached him again and leaned into him, putting her face against his neck. His scales fluttered and his scent rose. It wasn’t right.

She petted him, a slow up and down from his elbow to his neck. “You need to shift back, Creyal. This far changed, they have every right to use deadly force. I’m here now. Let me help you. Talk to me.”

Joints popped, scales fluttered and a moment later he was leaning against her, his knees failing. Haley helped him to the floor and sat with his face cradled against her neck. His vacant stare was dark against his way-too-pale skin. The track marks on his one arm seeped thin lines of green ichor. He wasn’t healing, and that was a very bad sign.

Haley pushed his hair back out of his face. He’d lost the tie that he used to hold it back, along with every scrap of clothing, which was on the floor in useless shreds. Creyal stared at her with a sadness she didn’t understand. Her thumb traced his brow. He caught her hand and brought her palm to his lips. His tongue rasped her skin.