Sweet Legacy (Sweet Venom) (22 page)

At the next stop, I walk casually off the bus. As I step onto the concrete, I have that feeling again. I’m being watched. Kneeling down, I pretend to retie the laces on my Keds while watching to see if anyone else gets off with me.

The bus pulls away, and I’m alone on the sidewalk.

I stand, sucking in a deep breath. Whoever is sending the texts must be toying with me.

Luckily, I’m not far from the Lombard Gate entrance to the Presidio. As I walk toward the lush, wooded park, I decide that as soon as I find Thane—and convince him not to be a self-punishing moron—I will call my sisters and tell them about the texts.

Suddenly, being all alone in the city is a very scary thing.

CHAPTER 26
G
RETCHEN

F
rom the peak of Buena Vista Park, I can see and smell the entire Bay Area. If I want to get in a good sniff test to pinpoint the boss’s location in the city, I need the high elevation and the clear view. If he’s still in the area, I’ll be able to smell him from up here.

I only hope he is and that Nick is still with him.

I stand on my perch on the hill, close my eyes, and draw a deep breath in through my nostrils. I can smell Grace next to me. I never really noticed, but we have a bit of a distinctive smell, too. It’s not disgusting like the monsters—she doesn’t smell like burning flesh or sulfur or moldy bread—but something sweet, sugary, like the venom that runs through our fangs.

That fact might be useful in the future, in case I need to find my sisters. It’s like a built-in compass.

I can smell Sillus, too. He doesn’t smell nearly as sweet; more like sawdust and stale buttered popcorn.

Inhaling again, I smell beyond the immediate area. I seek out the boss’s unique scent. Drawing on olfactory memory, I can remember his odor perfectly—maybe too well: a repulsive mix of wet dog and decaying fish. I’ve never smelled anything like it before, so it shouldn’t be too hard to pick it out of the spectrum of smells that San Francisco has to offer.

Turning in a circle, I do a counterclockwise three-sixty sniff, covering every sector of the city. Not in Fisherman’s Wharf. Not in the Marina or the Presidio. Not in Golden Gate Park, Potrero Hill, or the Mission. I’m closing up the circle, sniffing over SoMa, heading for the financial district, when I catch the scent.

I open my eyes and find myself staring at the old harbor, a string of abandoned and abandoned-looking warehouse piers that used to manage most of the Bay Area imports before Oakland became the primary port.

“There,” I say, pointing across the city. “The boss is in there.”

Sillus claps.

“Okay,” Grace says. “Let’s go get him.”

“You can’t just burst inside,” Grace insists, wrapping a hand around my forearm as I start for the door of the rusty old building that is the source of the boss’s smell. “Trust me.”

With a determined look, she pulls me around to the side of the warehouse.

I shake my head and let her. She’s not usually this bossy, so I figure she must have a reason. When she starts up a stack of crates beneath a filthy window, I ask, “Grace, what are you—”

“Shhh!” She gives me a shut-the-heck-up look—I don’t think Grace is capable of swearing—and then waves me up the crate mountain.

When I get to the top, she points at the window and whispers, “Look.”

Why is she being so cryptic? I scowl at her before leaning forward to look inside.

“Bad,” Sillus says. “Big bad.”

“What the hell?”

The inside of the warehouse is wall-to-wall people and monsters and piles of stuff. The crates and boxes are covered with dust, and they look like they’ve been there for a decade or two. They’re probably not stockpiles of weapons, but anything is possible.

Besides the run-of-the-mill ranks of beasts—butt-ugly giants, dragons, hybrids, and every other creature in the bestiary—there is an absolute army of humans. They stand stock-still, utterly frozen in the middle of the room. There are so many of them that they have only a few inches of personal space in any direction. They are literally packed in like sardines.

“Greer and I came here when we were trying to capture a monster,” she whispers after scowling at me for my outburst. “We think they’re hypnotizing humans.”

“Obviously,” I say as I stare at row after row of zombie-like people. “There are so many.”

She nods. “I know. And there are even more now than before.”

“There must be hundreds.”

I knew that monsterkind was hypnotizing people in preparation for overrunning me and my sisters when we finally opened the door. I didn’t imagine they had accumulated quite so many.

And who knows if this is their entire collection of hypno-drones? They might have more hiding in other warehouses, on other piers. This is bad.

“We don’t have time for this right now,” I mutter. “We need to get in, get Nick”—if he’s here—“and get gone.”

Not bothering to scan the crowd below—Nick’s immune to my hypno powers, so I assume he’s immune to monster control, too—I search the perimeter of the space. The damn place is so cluttered, I wouldn’t see a bright orange Hummer if it was parked down there.

“Look,” Grace gasps, pointing inside at an elevated room at the top of a spiral staircase in the back of the warehouse. It looks like an office.

I squint to make out what’s inside. Through the open door, I see Nick tied to a chair. His body looks slumped, like he’s unconscious. My muscles tense and I feel the urge for a fight. It was one thing when
I
tied Nick to a chair and knocked him unconscious. But for anyone else—especially the monster freaks—to do the same? That just pisses me off.

I quickly evaluate the logistics of the interior. There are no entrances immediately around the office, which means gaining access will take me straight through the middle of the hypno-horde and the monsters guarding them.

“How am I going to get him?”

“Huntress no go,” Sillus says. “Too many.”

“I’ll go,” Grace volunteers.

Is she crazy? “Um, no.”

“Not like that,” she says, giving me a stern look. “I can autoport in, grab Nick, and pop back out.”

“Pop, pop,” Sillus says.

I study Grace. She looks determined, like she’s excited to be able to do this, to use her powers this way. “You’re sure you can do this?”

“Yes.”

“Fine.” I glance inside at the ugly horde. “Get in, get out.”

Closing her eyes, she scrunches up her face in concentration. I’ve seen her do this before, but it’s still amazing to watch. One instant she’s here, and the next . . . she’s still here.

“Problem?” I ask.

Her eyes flash open. “I’m trying,” she says, looking around helplessly. “I’m focusing on the room, but it’s just not working.”

“Big magic.” Sillus presses his palm to the window, sending a ripple of glowing green waves across the glass. “Keep huntress out.”

Grace deflates. “Shoot.”

“Looks like we’re doing this the old-fashioned way.”

If only I knew how. I can book it with the best of them, but here I need to make it through the crowd of creatures and back again—with a Nick-sized dead weight over my shoulder. Maybe there’s another way in.

Dipping down, I look up at the ceiling: nope, no skylights. I won’t be rappelling down into the warehouse. There goes that possibility.

“If I can distract them,” Grace muses, her voice distant, “how fast can you get to him and get out?”

I don’t question how she intends to distract them. After a quick mental calculation—seven seconds to run across the floor and three up the stairs, five to cut Nick loose, and twenty-five to carry his limp body down the stairs and back across the floor—I say, “Forty seconds, give or take.”

Grace nods. “If we can find the electrical panel, I can give them something else to think about for a minute or two.”

“Good,” I reply. “Let’s find it, then.”

Sillus climbs back to ground level ahead of us.

“Oh, one other thing,” Grace says as she follows me down the stack of crates. “You might have to do it in the dark.”

No problem. If Nick’s life depends on it, I could do it blindfolded, with both hands tied behind my back and an Indos Worm wrapped around my ankles. I guess that sums up how I feel about him.

Now I just have to rescue him so I can tell him—in slightly more straightforward terms.

“Now, there might be a few sparks,” Grace says as she pulls open the electrical panel near a side door to the warehouse. She smiles at me. “That’ll be your cue to go.”

I nod and, just because I feel the urge, give her a quick hug.

“Thanks,” I say.

She squeezes me back. “You’d do the same for me.”

She’s right; I would. In a heartbeat.

“Go,” she says. “Get ready.”

I move into position next to the door. A twist of the handle confirms my suspicion that it would be locked. I give Grace the agreed-upon hand signal, and she nods, waiting for me to deal with the lock before proceeding with her distraction.

There might be more elegant ways to defeat a locked door, but I only know one.

Once this war is over, I definitely need to acquire some lock-picking skills.

Pulling a dagger out of my boot, I slide it between the door and the jamb, moving it down the crack until it connects with the shaft of the bolt. I hold the blade steady with one hand, angling down into the door, and then slam my palm into the end of the hilt.

The dagger jolts down halfway. One more palm to the hilt and the blade swings free, the deadbolt shaft severed in half. There are some definite advantages to super strength.

I smirk at the thought that this door will never lock again. The monsters will have to either repair or relocate.

Turning to Grace, I give her the thumbs-up.

She turns her attention to the electrical panel. I resheathe my dagger and then wait, hand on the doorknob, for her next signal. Seconds later, she squeals as the panel erupts in a spray of sparks.

Inside, the fire alarm roars to life, pounding out an ear-splitting siren.

“Okay, go!” she shouts.

But I’m already gone.

Inside, the main lights are out, but the faint glow of emergency backups is more than enough to illuminate my path. Enough to see the hypnotized human army staying utterly—and creepily—still while the monsters around them erupt in chaos.

No one notices me as I sprint from the broken door, through the field of human statues, to the spiral staircase. I climb three steps at a time, making it to the top winded, but in three seconds—right on my estimate.

Pulse pounding, I scan the office as I run through the door, finding it empty except for Nick.

“Nick,” I bark as I spin his chair around and lift a dagger to the rope. “Wake up!”

He doesn’t even groan.

Sawing through the ropes takes several seconds more than I guessed. My heart races faster the longer I take. I’ve just cut through the last rope when the alarm stops.

I curse. “Nick, Nick, come on.”

I shove my dagger back into my boot as I haul him up out of the chair, ducking down so I can heft him onto my shoulder. Fine. I can do this.

I turn to leave.

“Going somewhere, huntress?” the boss asks, an ugly smirk on his ugly dog face.

The weapon in his flipper—what looks like a pistol that’s been modified so he can fire it without fingers—stops me more than the two Cacus bodyguards at his back.

“Thought I’d take this off your hands,” I say, nodding at Nick. “You have so much on your plate already, what with the plans for monster world takeover and everything. You should be thanking me.”

His face contorts with what I think is rage.

Odds are not in my favor. With Nick over my shoulder, I’m not agile or nimble. I can’t reach my daggers. I can’t get the smoke bombs from my left pocket or the flash bombs from the right. All I have is my wit, and that only seems to make him angry.

“Oh, I
do
thank you, huntress,” the dog boss says, “for walking right into my trap.”

I shrug one shoulder. “I do what I can.”

“Boys,” the boss says, nodding at his bodyguards.

They step around him, reaching for—

An explosion rocks the entire building. The boss stumbles back, and his bodyguards, caught off-balance, tumble to the ground.

I can only hope this is the second wave of Grace’s distraction plan.

I don’t hesitate.

Securing my arm around Nick’s waist, I leap over the guards and knock into the boss on my way to the staircase. I’m a third of the way down when I see the boss fall past me, landing on the concrete floor below with a sickening crunch.

Then I’m sprinting across the floor, toward the door that Grace is holding open. Sillus is sitting on her shoulders, waving at me to run faster.

“What
was
that?” I ask as I blow through.

“You were behind schedule,” she says, panting but keeping pace next to me as we sprint down the pier. “Figured you could use some help, so I blew the transformer.”

There’s no time to maneuver Nick into a car seat.

As I pop Moira’s trunk, I give Grace a grateful smile. “Thanks.”

Before she can answer, Sillus is in the back, Nick is secured, and Grace and I are speeding away from the warehouse. I watch in the rearview mirror as the boss’s bodyguards come chasing after us. I floor the gas and leave them breathing my exhaust.

With adrenaline filling my bloodstream, it’s no wonder I’m driving a bit wild. Grace is gripping her seat belt with both hands, knuckles white, with a frightened look on her face. I take a quick survey of our surroundings and realize that we’re on a direct path to the most tourist-dense part of town.