Helix: Plague of Ghouls (13 page)

But then he noticed one of the email folders was highlighted in bold. There’d been no indication in his main inbox, but there was a notice in his junk folders. Marked as spam, there was an email from
bumbulum1962
. He opened it. It had been sent only a couple of minutes before seven.

“Checking dent rec now, but may have an ID on vic 2,” it read. “XRef recent missing persons, public domain. Expand your search S & W. Vic may not be local. Same morph’y as b4. Big belt, few remains. Pls tell me u have a theory.”

Two-Trees did have a theory, but it wasn’t one he could share with anyone outside of Wyrd. And since he had no idea who bum-bum-u-lum was, he decided it was better not to respond.

Then his phone signalled a missed text. He checked it. This one wasn’t from Gil. It was from a local exchange, sent almost half an hour before Gil’s text came through, and Two-Trees had slept right through the notification. He checked the origination number against his received call list and confirmed it was from DS Buckle.

<
n. Latin. Flatus, flatulence.>

“The hell?” Two-Trees muttered.

The email had been sent only seconds before the text message came through. So Two-Trees ran a search on the word
bumbumulum
, which returned no results. He checked the spelling and tried again. Bumbulum—or bombulum—in Latin meant flatulence, or farting. He got the message. Buckle was reaching out to him by unofficial means, probably because Palmer knew Two-Trees was in town and wanted to cut him out of the investigation. Two-Trees texted back: <
msg recd, 10-4. Boogidi1965.
>. Then he deleted both the received and sent messages.

Two-Trees then replied to the email, sending it to
bumbulum1962
from
boogidi1965,
a new, private, non-Wyrd email address. “Any ID on those animal tracks yet?” he wrote. “Heat signature? FLIR?” He sent the email and started dressing.

He hadn’t finished shaving when the reply came in.

“Wildlife angle out as primary,” Buckle had written. “Forensic testing backlog (the usual). But prelims show human saliva. We are dealing with one very sick bastard. ”

“Not necessarily,” Two-Trees grumbled aloud. “Werewolves test positive for human saliva.”

He hoped to God there wouldn’t be a third crime scene by the time Bridget arrived. He ran his fingers over the missing persons pictures. One had been gone for less than a week, and he had a bad,
bad
feeling she’d turn up soon.

Then he tilted his head and looked at the photograph more closely. Sydney Mission, the notice said, seventeen years old, brown hair, brown eyes, five foot three, last seen in Elmbury, Ontario. No fixed address. The teenaged girl’s face was far too narrow to fit the skull he’d scanned, and yet, the features seemed familiar. He couldn’t place it, but he knew her from somewhere.

ON THURSDAY MORNING
at 5:45, Ishmael stumbled out of the main house with an extra-large coffee and a takeout breakfast. He’d packed all his things in the truck the night before. He was surprised to see Bridget, the Padre, and Holly all waiting for him. Upon spotting Ishmael, Bridget and the Padre both called shotgun, then made like they were going to punch each other in the teeth before resorting to paper-rocks-scissors. He settled the dispute by reminding Bridget that she had shit-for-night-vision, while he was a nocturnal animal, so she should take the wheel first; and as for the Padre—being presumed dead for the last six years—he had no ID and so couldn’t legally drive. For that matter, the Padre didn’t even have a legal name, though he’d settled on Paul Rhodes as an alias for now. The name didn’t fit the face. He was simply “the Padre”, and Ishmael couldn’t wait for him to be officially ordained so he could keep the honorific. Bridget muttered, the Padre crowed about his little victory, and Ishmael climbed into the very back row of seats, leaving the middle bench to Holly.

They left Varco Lake, Manitoba, with a full tank. Around noon, they stopped in Dryden, Ontario, for food, gas, and to change drivers, because Bridget’s knees were aching, everyone was starving, and the truck was running on fumes. They had to hit two restaurants, a gas station, and a Tim Hortons drive-thru, because the inestimable appetite of one lycanthrope alone is enough to raise eyebrows. The four of them around one table would close a buffet and draw press coverage. By ordering takeout from multiple restaurants at once, locals wouldn’t notice anything amiss.

“My God,” Bridget said, through a yawn, “what I wouldn’t do for a private plane.” She stretched until something popped, and she groaned. “It’s a nineteen hour drive between Varco and Wyndham Farms. You know how many times I’ve made that trip?” No one answered. No one wanted to remember. “And did Grey have the decency to keep all his victims in one major metropolitan area? No-ho-ho. Of course not. Do you have
any
idea how many times we drove back and forth across the prairies with a brand new lycanthrope raging through his false starts in the back? Prairies, man. It’s like driving on a treadmill. The faster you drive, the longer you stay in one place.” She went on and on about how many back roads she’d taken to avoid the cops, how many times the roads had been washed out, how many times she’d had to flush out urine and shit from the back of the truck. They’d used a specially modified vehicle then, with a tightly controlled, self-contained environment in the back, so if a prisoner up-cycled, he wouldn’t take Bridget with him. But that didn’t make the truck self-cleaning.

And just when they thought Bridget had run out of complaints and dropped off to sleep, she’d remember another horrible trip and spend the next twenty minutes bitching about it.

Ishmael drove on for another four hours, with Holly, Bridget, and the Padre taking turns playing card games with a deck they’d picked up from the Dryden gas station.

The plan was that if Two-Trees had made no progress, they would use Bridget’s Wyrd-issued credit cards to book a couple of hotel rooms and crash for the night. If something new had developed, they’d push on overnight for Halo County.

By the time they got to Thunder Bay, the sun had gone down, Bridget was snoring, and everyone was hungry again. But, most importantly, they’d regained cell phone reception, and Bridget was able to check her messages, once Ishmael had poked her awake.

“Nope, no overnight stops,” Bridget announced at the local pseudo-Greek restaurant, where the food was starchy, cold, overcooked, and clotted with orange grease.

“Bad news?” Ishmael asked.

Bridget turned the phone around. <
Body count 2, head count 1, both dead less than 36 h. Need a nose on possible suspect(s?)>
Two-Trees’ message said.

Ishmael broke into the crunchy roast beef, which was not a sound Ishmael liked to hear from beef. Nothing short of battery acid would help to tenderize the blackened meat now. “He works fast.”

“Who?” Bridget asked. “Two-Trees? Or the murderer?”

Ishmael replied with a disconcerted grunt. He gave up on the rest of his dinner. It was indigestible, even for a shape-shifter.

Once the Padre came back from the bathroom, Bridget laid her credit card on the bill, and the girl came by with a receipt to sign. After that, they left Thunder Bay by way of a truck stop gas station.

“Straight on to Halo County then?” Ishmael asked, as he buckled into the front passenger seat.

“Straight on ’til morning,” Bridget answered. “We can probably make it as far as Wawa before the next fill, especially if this tail wind keeps up.” She sipped her coffee. If it was bad, she didn’t complain about it.

“Stop when you need to,” Ishmael said. “I don’t mind. I can sleep in daylight.”

The cut of Bridget’s horseshoe jaw told him she was completely focused on the task at hand. She didn’t want to talk. She wanted to drive, and she wanted to listen to her music. Granted, her passengers could survive any crash injury up to decapitation, but walking the last 1300 kilometres to Halo County was an unappealing prospect, so she wanted to stay alert enough to navigate the roller coaster twists of the Trans-Canada Highway, especially now that those hairpin turns were only visible as far ahead as the high beams would shine. One-handed, she turned on her iPod and jammed in one headphone, either so she could play her music as loudly as possible without waking the others, or so she could tune out any snoring that might tempt her to drowse behind the wheel.

Ishmael reclined as far as the seat would go. The Padre was on the rear bench, stretched out with his feet on the back window. Holly was on the middle bench, curled up on her side with her hands and sweater under her cheek. She smiled at him.

“You should get some sleep,” Ishmael said, just loud enough to be heard over the road noise.

Her smile faltered and died. “I’m afraid to.”

“I’ll be here. You’re safe. No nightmares this time,” he promised.

“Sleeping’s not the problem. It’s the waking up.”

He sneered mildly. “Come on. You’ve faced scarier things than this. Six years—”

“It’s not cannibals I’m afraid of,” she said. “There’s a mystery to be solved. And there’s nothing more she loves better than a mystery.”

Ishmael raised his forefinger against his lips. Discretion was the better part of valour, and he couldn’t completely trust Bridget. Like Angie Burley, Bridget had kept a hell of a lot secrets from Ishmael, including and especially the Wyndham Farms quarantine.

“There’s going to be a fight on our hands,” Ishmael said softly. “Lycanthropes versus Lost Ones, with thousands of lives at stake. And there’s nothing
Holly
Foster loves more than a good, healthy fight.”

Holly smiled at that.

“You’re safe here,” Ishmael said. “Get some sleep.”

With all his heart, he hoped she wouldn’t change, especially not in the car. He didn’t relish the idea of seeing Eva Foster again, and he certainly didn’t like the idea of her change pheromones flooding the cabin of the truck, or else there’d be one infuriated Foster hanging upside down in an overturned vehicle in the company of three angry and disoriented therianthropes.

Holly closed her eyes, snuggled into her balled-up sweater and tried to relax. Ishmael watched the ceiling of the van. He should have been sleeping, too. Instead, he was mentally reviewing that video, frame by frame, looking for tell-tale signs of digital manipulation. He closed his eyes for a good twenty minutes, settling into a state of deep physical relaxation, even though sleep remained out of reach. He gave up and checked the time. It wasn’t quite midnight yet. Holly was fast asleep, and the Padre snored a steady, rhythmic, high-pitched snore.

“Is there something you’d like to tell me?” Bridget asked. He could hear thin strains of music through her unused ear bud. She put the iPod on pause.

“Sure,” Ishmael said. His voice was thick, as if he’d been sleeping after all. “I’d like to tell you that, in my heart, you’ll always be my very first work-wife. Even though I have to divorce you now and hook up with a younger, hotter concubine, you’ll always be my number one.”

“Oh, you cad,” Claire Bambridge said, through Bridget’s unsmiling face. “About Holly.”

“Nothing I’d mention in polite society,” Ishmael said. He dropped his forearm over his eyes, pretending to be too tired to carry on a conversation.

“Ishmael,” she said. He was “Shmiley” when she needed something, “Ish” at nearly all other times, but when he was bad, she brought out his full name. It was akin to a mother using both first and middle names when her son was in deep trouble.

Ishmael lifted his arm. By the dim glow of the dashboard, he could see Holly was frowning and twitching in her sleep. “It’s complicated.”

“No shit. Do tell.”

“I mean that in the most scientific and biological manner possible,” he insisted.
And I don’t know how much I trust you.
“Besides, it’s not my secret to tell.”

You did save my ass, I’ll give you that. You literally went under fire to save me—to save us. But you were also deployed on Wyndham Farm missions for six years without telling me once about it. Hell, you hand-delivered me into Wyndham Farms yourself!

“I’ll bet that if you ask Holly directly, she’d give you an honest answer,” he added.
And if you asked Eva . . . well, then you’d have your answer.

“Dude, I love you like a brother, but I want to throat punch you. Did you cross-infect her too?”

“No,” he said. “She didn’t need it.”

“What? You mean, she didn’t turn out like Grey’s other victims? He perfected the treatment?”

“No, I mean, she was never one of his patients. She’s not second or third generation either.”

“Then what the hell is she?”

“All natural lycanthrope,” Ishmael said. “Wolf-type, bit bigger than Jay, big bushy tail. And she can talk when she’s in cycle, if you can believe it. Never seen anything like her.”

“She’s one of us?”

“She was never a member of Wyrd, if that’s what you mean. Hers is one gigantic case of mistaken identity.” Which was utterly and painfully true. It just wasn’t the full truth.