Helix: Plague of Ghouls (24 page)

“Take Dep with you.”

“Dep’s in no condition to leave Varco Lake,” Ferox said. “Angie, Ishmael told me you were behind his capture and quarantine. Hell, you were the one that captured
me
, when Jay failed! You shot me! In the head! A lot! And now you’re telling me to leave and breech our agreement with Wyrd?”

“Go talk to Gil if you don’t trust me, ’cause I know—I know—I never gave you one reason to believe a word I say. All’s I can say is: I . . . effed . . . up.” She swished the air with both hands, cancelling that line of thought. “Never mind. Go talk to Gil. He’ll give y’all what you need. Then you get your tiny little ass in a truck, call your Pack, and haul them all away with you, because in a couple of hours, this place is going to blow up.”

“The house?”

“Wyrd,” Angie said. “I’ll stay behind to keep Jay busy.”

And as quickly as she’d started, Angie stopped talking. In the silence, a bird sang its coarse song from a nearby pine.

“What the hell, Angie!” Ferox rasped. “That was Jay you were talking to last night?”

“I been posing as his ally for years, ever since Moldova,” Angie explained. “He went on this mission a few months before Dr. Grey started his experiments on you folk. Him and Ishmael. Between the two of them, they killed and dismembered three hundred brand new lycanthropes. Just devastating,
sickening
, the amount of bloodshed. We took those two men and turned them into
monsters
.”

“Holy shit . . .”

“That’s one of the reasons why we created quarantine for when you guys started appearing. We couldn’t ask any more agents to do what Jay and Ishmael did. There were just too many of you. Besides that . . . So many of you dying before we even found you, the rest of you were in pain, terrified, infecting your whole family . . . Chloe begged for a little compassion this time around. So . . . Wyndham Farms.”

At first, Ferox couldn’t imagine suave and sexy Ishmael mowing down an army of lycanthropes. Then she remembered the afternoon when he up-cycled, bit into Bug-Eye’s throat, and held on until Bug-Eye fell down, dead. She remembered the way Ishmael purred when he licked the gore from his paws.

“When Jay came back, he shut himself up in his room for days. Refused to talk to anybody. When you folk started popping up, I had no choice. I had to put him back on active duty. Jay started making bad judgment calls, blowing his cover, shapeshifting within sight of civilization . . . Then Gil told me he was making strange requests—research, results, IP addresses. He knew Jay was up to something, so he flagged it to me. I needed to work my way into Jay’s confidence in order to find out what he was up to.”

“That’s why you threw Ishmael into quarantine? To stay in Jay’s good books?”

“That’s why I had to
investigate
Ishmael. Jay said ‘look for evidence that proves Ishmael’s up to no good’, and damned if I didn’t find it! First, funds embezzled from Wyrd, then, video proof that he’s got his own secret harem of cat-women. That’s why I couldn’t have turned a blind eye and let Ishmael go free. Harvey sent the video to me
and
to the whole damned Executive Council.”

“Couldn’t he have been framed?”

“Ishmael’s the only one of his kind, and like forbear, like offspring. If Jay infected those women, they’ll all turn out like him—wolfish. The only person who could have passed on a feline infection is Ishmael. And Wyrd doesn’t take kindly to unauthorized infections, because that’s how outbreaks happen, like the one in Moldova. I swear, I thought I was doing the right thing. Hell—it was my idea to execute Ishmael, not send him to quarantine, and the Council agreed with me! If it hadn’t been for Gil making one
hell
of a threat, Ishmael’s bones would be anchored to the bottom of Varco Lake. It was Gil’s idea to send him to quarantine.” She heaved a sigh. “And meanwhile, it was Jay we should have worried about.”

“And now Jay is up to . . . what?”

“I don’t know. He was about to tell me, but I musta said something unguarded, you must have spooked him, I don’t know. All of a sudden he clammed up and shut me out. Look, skip it, all right? We’ll figure it out later. All y’all are gonna go ahead, get in a truck, and get the hell away from Varco Lake. I’ll cover. You just get the hell out, and take your people with you. But go find Gil first. He says he has something you need to deliver.”

“Angie,” Ferox said. “We can stand together and fight this.”

Angie widened her eyes and shook her head. “Oh honey, I don’t care how many there are in your Pack. I don’t care how many Packs in your Alliance. Ain’t nobody can fight Jay and his bonewalkers.”

Ferox began to protest and demand answers, but Angie pushed her into a run toward the lab. “Don’t you worry about Mary Anne. Ask Gil. He’ll tell you. And when you see Bridget next,” she shouted after Ferox, “you ask her why Abram hasn’t been seen in his fur pyjamas in the last eight years.”

ISHMAEL WENT TO
the far side of the rack. He was hoping to find some hooded jackets for the Padre, partly to help screen his side profile, but mainly because the forecast called for sub-zero temperatures overnight, and Ishmael had plans of sneaking about after hours.

“You have to take it easy,” Holly was telling the Padre, who was shoving hangers from one side of the rack to the other without actually looking at any of the clothes hanging from them.

Ishmael’s phone bleeped. He ignored it.

“Take it easy,” the Padre snorted. He was making an effort to disguise his voice, but now he was at risk of out-Batmanning Christian Bale. “You saw what was on the news.”

“The resemblance could just be a coincidence,” Holly remarked.

“Even
I
recognized the similarities. I mean, for God’s sake, look at me.”

“Yeah, you look no older than she does,” Holly said. “And eighteen-year-old girls don’t have twenty-year-old fathers. You have to relax.”

“I don’t look twenty.”

They still hadn’t told him about his other connection to Elmbury. Hours earlier, Ishmael had decided it would be better to come out and tell the Padre that he was wanted in the town for murder. He hoped the truth would convince the Padre to exercise more discretion. But a crowded Goodwill second-hand shop wasn’t the best place for full disclosure.

Ishmael laid a size medium green hoodie on the top of the circular rack for the Padre to try on. While he was there, Ishmael went looking for a darker-coloured hoodie for himself, because under the right circumstances, Ishmael could “pass” too. His phone bleeped and he ignored it again. Bridget could wait a second. They had to make their purchases and get out, fast, because the store had the same acrid smell as at the Howard Johnson downtown, and Ishmael’s upper lip was itching.

“Holly, think about it for a second here,” the Padre said, softly. “What if she’s related to me? What if . . .” He shrugged. “What if
I
did something?”

“She’s not even been missing a week. I seriously doubt you did anything.”

“There are kids that are dead and eaten. Like what a pack of Lost Ones would do. What if I
did
something to her, and now she’s Lost?”

“And still alive after six years?” Ishmael asked.

Holly quickly held up a wide shirt, screening the Padre from the suddenly curious girl at the cash register. “Do we have to do this right now? Can’t this wait until we’re back at the hotel?”

“What if we
are
related?” the Padre finally asked, in a flurry of gestures and hushed words.

Ishmael sighed. “What about it?”

“Well . . .
how
?” the Padre asked. “There were two of us. Twins. She’s the right age—what if she was his daughter, or mine? How in the
hell
would I ever know if I was her father?”

Holly dropped the oversized t-shirt. “DNA testing.” Then she closed her eyes. “No, you’re right, it wouldn’t work.”

“My brother and I have—we would have had—identical DNA. And I don’t know which one I am, Holly. I don’t know who I am, and for all I know, my own
daughter
might be missing.”

Holly desperately made a sign for the Padre to lower his voice. His eyes were wide and full of desperate wrath.

“Except there’s one thing we do know about you,” Ishmael said. He found a black hoodie with some white stitching. With the right tools, the decal could come off easily enough. He put it on top of the hoodie he’d found for the Padre. “You’re not exactly the fathering type.”

“You don’t know that,” the Padre said.

“You told me you’re gay.”

“He could be bi,” Holly said. “Besides, gay doesn’t imply infertile.”

Thanks, Holly. Great help.

“What if I was closeted for all my life, and didn’t admit I was gay until I lost my memory?” the Padre asked. “What if, post-change, I figured that staying in the closet wasn’t so damned important anymore?” He shrugged helplessly. Carefully, deliberately—and fortunately, quietly—he spoke again. “How do I know that I’m not that girl’s father?”

“Maybe it’s a coincidence that she looks like you,” Holly said. “Maybe she is related—but only as a great-niece or something. I don’t know. Barring that, we’ve no way to prove that she’s infected. Ishmael’s right. The numbers don’t add up.”

Ishmael handed the Padre the green hoodie to try on. It was an adequate fit. The Padre complained that it smelled like a second-hand store, which shouldn’t have been such a surprise to him.

“Maybe she is Lost,” Holly said. “Maybe she’s just another runaway. But I think our first priority should be in figuring out who died, how they died, and then figure out how to stop the killer.”

“Or killers,” Ishmael added, “and I agree with you wholeheartedly.” The black hoodie was a tight fit across the chest, even in his human form. The sleeves would be all right—his arms would lose length anyhow—but he needed something he could zip closed before he up-cycled. He checked the size again. It was an XL. “Bloody hell,” he complained. “I haven’t been eating that much, have I?”

Holly lowered her eyes demurely and smiled.

“You need anything else?” Ishmael asked. He pointed to the jeans the Padre had draped over his arm and completely forgotten about. “You tried them on already?”

“Yeah, they’re fine.”

“Did you find any tearaway pants?” Ishmael asked. “Like athletic pants. In case of emergency.”

“No,” the Padre spat. “I didn’t see any, because I didn’t look.”

“Maybe there’s a sporting goods store in the mall,” Holly said. “We can try there.” She took the various pants, shirts, and jackets and headed toward the cash register, leaving the two men behind.

“I want out of this town. The longer I stay here, the more I hate the place.” The Padre fidgeted and sucked his teeth. “There’s something about this place you’re not telling me, and it has something to do with that girl.”

Ishmael made a hand sign, asking for a little more patience and quiet. “We can leave when the mission’s done. Believe me, I don’t want to be here either. I’ve got eight brand new kittens to track down and deal with, and the last thing I want to be doing is chasing down any more Lost Ones. God, how I miss the old days when a werewolf was a werewolf, and
I
was the only exception to the rule . . .”

The Padre moved things around the rack as noisily as he could.

“There’s one sure-fire way of picking up a trail on the murderer—or murderers—and unfortunately, because of those kittens, we can’t capitalize on it,” Ishmael said.

“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned them, and you still haven’t explained.”

“Wyrd believes that I infected a bunch of women,” Ishmael murmured. “That’s why I ended up in Wyndham Farms in the first place. Somebody found a video that was supposed to prove that I’d turned them. Quarantine was supposed to be my prison, and you people were supposed to be my executioners.”

The Padre didn’t reply, but he seemed to be listening.

“And the guy who found the video is the same guy that we need right now. You remember asking how we used to find one of our own kind in a crowd?”

“Sure. You didn’t explain that either.”

“The best way to find a target is by sniffing him out. You and me, we have the equipment when we’re in-cycle, but we lack subtlety.”

“Unless you can pass for a dog,” the Padre said, wavering between distaste and understanding.

“Normally, dogs and us don’t get along. Dogs don’t trust us. They’re just as likely to tear our throats out as to look at us.”

They had to speak quickly now, because once again, people were staring. Ishmael wanted to turn his back on them, but that would only make him and the Padre look more like co-conspirators. So he made it look like they were assessing the impact of an upcoming NHL trade. “If you want to do a nice, controlled take-down, you need some way of identifying the target in a crowd, tag him somehow, and then follow him out to some unpopulated area. Harvey has raised a special breed of dog, acclimatized them to our scent, trained them to tag us by simply putting its paw on our leg and then walk away.”