Dead Radiance (31 page)

He woke after midnight to the metallic tune of the alarm on his cellphone. Guess he had the forethought to set an alarm. He cleared his throat. "We’d better see about a car, then."

"So how do we get—" I started to say. Then an idea struck me. One that filled me with guilt, but ultimately it was our best option. The thought of doing something illegal appalled me, but this did count as desperate times.

"Bryn?" Aidan nudged me.

"Lots of kids in the area have cars or bikes they don't use too often."

He chuckled. "My, my, Bryn. That's not the most legal thought you've ever had, is it?"

I flushed, still shocked and now embarrassed. Hugin shifted his feet, as if sharing my unease.

"Not a bad idea though," Aidan said. "It might be our ticket out of Craven."

"Or we could ask Ms. Custer for her car?" I backed away from the thought of stealing a vehicle, wishing I'd never even mentioned it.

"No, they'd be watching her car. We want to avoid drawing any attention to Ms. Custer. Wait here. Watch for me." He pointed down at the roadside.

I knew he was going to jack a car. It had been my idea, and though I was relieved he wanted to spare me the experience, I couldn't let him go alone. This was my burden to bear and he was just caught up in Freya's little power play.

I called after him, whispering as loud as I could, "Wait. Aidan, hold on."

He turned and watched me catch up with a frown furrowing his clean brow. A memory of the bullet wound that had blasted his forehead open and marred that perfect skin triggered a shudder.

"I'm coming with you," I said. "This is my problem too."

"Be my guest. I just thought I'd save you the trouble."

I got you into this mess, no way am I letting you shoulder all the responsibility.

We fell into step beside each other and walked back to the suburb, silence hanging over us. Voices traveled farther at night, and we couldn't trust that we were passing through the area unobserved. Two a.m. in the morning and the homes were all dark. Aidan made a move to walk down the first driveway.

"No. That's Mr. Ralston's property," I whispered. "He's got one of those really vicious dogs. Rottweiler or something."

"Good thing you came along, then." He smiled. "So who doesn't have vicious, man-eating dogs?"

I nodded at a house across the road. Pete's house. Certainly would be fitting if it were his vehicle we jacked. We crept round back, keeping to the shadows again. Thankfully, huge, leafy trees filled Pete's garden and yard. The garage door was unlocked. I eased it open, and a strip of moonlight lit the inside of the garage, reaching silvery fingers as far as the driver's side of Pete's classic Lincoln Continental. Most of the kids in Craven had classics, probably handed down through the decades.

But my thoughts weren't on the beautiful car. My mind raced back among the shadows on the frozen path, with my cheek on fire and my abdomen in agony. My jaw was rigid. Images of Pete's attack ran through my head. All I could think about was lashing out at something, and the car seemed the most suitable option.

Aidan's voice and a soft squawk from Hugin broke the trance.

"You okay? You look upset. And about to punch something." His words held a smile, which oddly enough didn't anger me. It lightened my mood a bit. I unclenched my fist and leaned into the open window, scrabbling around the ignition for keys. Nothing.

"Looking for this?" Aidan indicated a rack of keys. He fished through them and withdrew one. I hoped it was the right one. We'd rather not wake Pete's family, so we'd have to roll the car out onto the drive and then onto the road before starting the engine.

The garage door was an ancient one: two large doors, which opened wide. I hadn't thought about what we'd do if it had been an automatic door. Way too noisy. We would have had to look for an easier car to steal.

I unhitched the door and eased one side open, going slowly and hoping it didn't creak. It didn't. Relieved, I kicked a brick in front of it and did the same with the other door.

Aidan got in, set the gear to neutral and got back out, holding onto the door, ready to push. "Get behind," he whispered.

I wondered who died and made Aidan the boss. Then I wanted to giggle.
He'd
died and I'd made him the boss. The joke was on me.

I did as he asked, and pushed.

The car rolled smoothly forward. We steered to the end of the drive, turned into the road and pushed it all the way to the corner, three houses from Pete's.

I thought about the garage door standing wide open like a gaping jaw. Pete was in for a surprise tomorrow morning. I'd never pegged myself as vindictive, and my little trip to Asgard had almost made me forget Pete's attack. But back here in Craven, staring at his car, the memory of that day seeped into my mind, crawling all the way into my bones. Shivers rippled through me. I jumped into the car.

Hugin flapped wildly, in such a crazed frenzy that I was afraid he'd either peck out my eye or scratch me with his sharp little talons. I let him fly out and watched as he ascended and circled above the car. Shaking my head, I shut the door as quietly as I could. The click of the lock echoed up and down the empty street. I shuddered, sure the cops would be on our tail in the next ten seconds.

Aidan jumped in and stabbed the key into the ignition. I held a breath and sent a prayer up to Odin. I breathed again only when the engine turned. It growled loudly and then settled into a low purr, waiting for Aidan to set it in motion. We drove off, leaving the sleeping neighborhood behind while I enjoyed imagining Pete's reaction when he discovered his car was gone.

Chapter 33

"So what's the plan? Where are we going?" The cracked blue leather squeaked with every move we made. Pete didn't take good care of his leather seats. The interior of the Lincoln was otherwise immaculate, even though it was probably made in the late sixties. They made cars well in the old days.

"Washington," said Aidan, tracing the soft blue leather of the huge steering wheel.

"State or DC?" I asked the dumb question even though it was clear we were on the old Route 66, heading east.

He raised an eyebrow. "DC. Rockville, Maryland, to be specific. The national hub of human gene research. We need to make a quick stop at the institute on the way to New York."

"The institute?"

My unhappy expression elicited a gravelly laugh. "Marlowe Institute of Genetic Science," he said.

I got the impression he'd said the full name just for effect. I shivered, remembering the Institute's emblem imprinted on the lab reports. The place where both our fathers had worked, competed and apparently hated each other enough for one of them to try to kill the other's daughter.

"I thought you said we have to stay under the radar? I'm not sure going into the lion's den is the best course of action when the point is to avoid said lion," I said drily, staring straight ahead to study the dark Missouri night. I tried to stick my elbow on the low armrest, unsuccessfully.

"They have important records stored in their system. We'll have to risk it."

"How will we get in?" I stretched out, enjoying the legroom and marveling at my lack of tiredness. The chainmail chinked as I moved, reminding me that we were still clothed in our Asgard getup.

"I have a security pass."

I snorted. "You've been dead for a while. Don't you think they'd have deactivated your card by now?"

"I have my father's card."

"Oh." I looked at him, unsettled by the deadness of his voice, by the shadow that crossed his face. He'd been doing his father's bidding when he came to Craven, but the coldness in his voice when he mentioned his father sent a creeping shudder up my spine. "Well, I guess that will help. So, he's a genetic scientist, huh? Small world, hey? What exactly does he do at the institute?"

"He's in charge. Took over your father's role when he passed away." Aidan threw me a quick, apologetic glance before concentrating on the road again. Not that he needed to concentrate all that much. The road ahead was easy, just point and drive.

"Hey," Aidan said, "can that bird of yours keep up with us?" He squinted up at the sky.

Way to go on the swift change of subject, Biker-Dude.
I rolled my eyes, shook my head didn't bother to force the issue. Not yet.

Leaning forward I peered up at Hugin as he swooped in a circle, high above the car. I caught a glimpse of the raven when he crossed in front of the white-faced moon, bemused at the simple beauty of the bird, backlit by the pale moon.

But Aidan had a point.
Could
Hugin keep up with a car? He was no ordinary bird; he belonged to Odin, after all. And he'd made it pretty clear that he wasn't particularly fond of the Lincoln; he couldn’t fly off fast enough. I shrugged. Nothing we could do now. We couldn't walk all the way to Maryland. Surely Hugin would keep up. We had to get to the institute, fast. Every minute wasted was a minute of Aidan's life gone, a minute closer to his last breath.

"So your dad's the boss now, huh?" I asked, determined to get my answers. "That's how he got his hands on those old reports."

"Yeah, he suspected your father was doing something odd right from the start."

I bristled, remembering that
I
was the thing he'd been suspicious of doing.

The road straightened, and Aidan gunned the engine. "After the DNA results came back negative, everything should have gone back to normal, but your father's investigations continued and my father became increasingly suspicious, so he looked at the files," he said. He paused, as if choosing his words carefully. "At that time, he couldn't find anything conclusive, but when your father passed away, he left a considerable amount of paperwork at the lab. Incriminating paperwork." A bitter tone laced Aidan's voice. "He'd done blood tests on you when you were born. To investigate the level of nonhuman DNA in your blood at different stages of your life. Only three of them were ever performed."

"I still don't see the need to go right into the institute," I protested, glaring at him. "What's so all-fired important to risk our lives to go there?" The ticking time bomb that was Aidan's life filled my mind.

Aidan's hands gripped the steering wheel, tension radiating from him. "There are still vials of your blood stored in the lab freezer. Those vials are evidence of your existence, and I intend to remove them. No way am I leaving them any ammunition to use against you again."

"Oh," I said quietly.

He looked at me, his eyes pools of blackness in the night's shadows. When I said nothing and turned to stare at the blacktop racing at us from up ahead, he continued. "My father looked for you for a long time. The problem was you disappeared into the system when your father died, and he didn't have the connections to find out where you were. And when he eventually found out, it was always after the fact. You moved often enough to keep him just one step behind you."

I nodded. That's why the pendant had taken so long to find me, too.

Gazing outside, I watched Hugin as he flew above us. Apparently he could keep up just fine. Our very own sentinel. Just his presence up there made me feel safe.

"I'd always been interested in Norse mythology and my father had arranged for me to go to summer digs around the world," Aidan said. "I've been to the dig site where Brunhilde was unearthed. There's nothing there now. Everything was taken to New York, to the Neilsson Museum of Ancient History. That's our next stop after the institute."

"Don't tell me you worked for them, too?" I asked dryly.

"Actually I still work there. Well, until I died anyway." A self-deprecating and sad smile curved on his lips. "It'll take a while to get used to the whole being-dead-but-not-really-dead thing."

I wasn't sure what to say to that. I guessed it would be a bad time to remind him that the whole walking dead thing also applied to zombies. I bit back a smile, silently admonishing myself for those insensitive thoughts, and gazed out the passenger-side window. The silence felt endless. How do you make someone feel better about being dead?

A mile marker sign whisked by on my right. Then another. When I couldn't take the silence anymore, I asked, "What were you doing for the museum?"

He rubbed his eyes, then returned his hand to the steering wheel. "I was transcribing, and translating. That book you found? Many old books were found at the dig site. The book I had was a copy of one written by a Scottish professor of archaeology who'd gotten quite far with his translations. I was trying to do more of them, using scripts taken from the dig site."

My thoughts flicked to the back seat where my bag sat. Buried inside was the topic of this discussion. And although Ms. Custer had returned it to me, I hadn't given it back to Aidan yet. I needed more time. I still felt connected to the book, perhaps because it held within it a painting of me. A painting done hundreds of years before I'd even been born.

Neither had I told him that I'd completed the translations. I didn't want to tell him. Not yet. I felt like I'd negate all his hard work by admitting it took me only a couple of days to translate the whole thing, and correct his translations where he'd gone wrong.