Maker's Song - In the Blood Part 9

Portland, OR March 22

HIS DAUGHTER WAS PROTECTING a vampire.

James Wallace poured hot water into a mug and over the tea bag nestled inside. As the tea steeped, the faint odor of blueberries steamed into the air. He carried the mug into his office and set it on the small cup warmer plugged into the wall. He sank into his chair, the leather creaking beneath his weight. He rubbed his hands back and forth over his head, his bristle-cut hair soft beneath his fingers.

Heather's reaction to his comment about Prejean saving her life told him everything he needed to know. She'd lied during her debriefing and in her official statement. Was still lying. She was protecting Dante Prejean, protecting a G.o.dd.a.m.ned bloodsucking vampire.

He didn't know which was worse, that or her investigation into Shannon's death.

On his drive home, several questions had circled endlessly through his mind: How could he protect his reputation and his stubborn daughter? What had been so important that Rutgers's a.s.sistant had felt compelled to interrupt the conference, even briefly? What the h.e.l.l had Dante Prejean done to Heather?

First thing he'd done when he'd walked in through the front door was get in touch with one of his contacts in D.C.

Keep this to yourself, Jim, but Caterina Cortini was here, paid Rutgers a visit, then left. Rutgers left shortly afterward too-looking p.i.s.sed as h.e.l.l.

That news had shaken James. Cortini answered only to the Shadow Branch-the arm of the federal government that'd been formed some time ago by a former vice president; a consortium rumored to be composed of CIA, DOD, FBI, and Homeland Security members, a branch that answered to no one and didn't exist officially.

Cortini was rumored to be one of the Shadow Branch's top wetwork experts, or problem solvers-for the more politically correct, one who permanently tied up loose ends.

Given the subject of his meeting with Rutgers and Rodriguez, James couldn't help but think that the subject of Cortini's meeting was the same: the possible exposure of Bad Seed and containment.

Containment would include Heather.

Scooping up his cell phone from the desk, James pulled up Heather's number and hit SEND. When her voice mail clicked on, he figured she'd IDed his call and was refusing to answer.

James quietly closed the cell. He'd try again later. He picked up his mug and took a sip of tea. He considered calling Annie.

She should be at Heather's by now, provided she'd followed his instructions. With Annie, he never knew. She swung hot, then cold. Just like her mother.

Ask her to stop, Annie. Your mother never gave a d.a.m.n about you kids.

Neither did you. You were always gone. Heather was always there for us.

I was trying to keep a roof over our heads. Food in your tummies.

What if she won't quit?

Then we'll never be a family again. Do whatever you need to-I'll back you up.

The f.u.c.king doctor wants to change my meds. He wants me to stay longer.

I'll take care of all that, sweetie. You don't need meds. You're my good girl.

Annie's face had lit for a moment, hope burning distrust from her expression like suns.h.i.+ne through mist, and he'd felt cold and ill, felt like he'd stood in the shadows far too long. James studied the framed photo on his desk of him and Heather-both in white lab coats, grinning and holding microscopes. Heather was thirteen, skinny and just filling out, her long, red hair in a thick braid to her waist, her smile wide and happy, uninhibited.

Another photo showed him and Heather in grease-stained jeans and tees, posing in front of the cla.s.sic Mustang they'd rebuilt together. Tendrils of dark red hair fluttered in front of Heather's smudged face as she squinted in the suns.h.i.+ne, her smile, at fifteen, a little more reserved.

Indebted to her father's quick thinking, a grateful daughter just might put aside an investigation into a cold case best left undisturbed.

Of course, if Prejean had transformed Heather into someone other than the girl in the photos on his desk, someone no longer 100 percent human, then the merciful thing, and the thing Heather herself would want, would be to remain silent and allow nature in the form of Caterina Cortini to take its course.

But before that happened, he needed to find out the truth. And there was one person who would know-if anyone did- what Prejean might've done to Heather while saving her life.

Placing the mug back on the warmer, James swiveled in his seat and turned on the computer. While the Dell ran through its startup, he composed in his mind the message he would send.

Has my daughter's humanity been compromised?

9 INSIDE THE MONSTER'S HEART.

Damascus, OR March 22

DR. ROBERT WELLS FILLED a final syringe with a fatal dose of atropine, then tucked it out of sight on the lintel above the bedroom door. He'd hidden other syringes throughout the house in drawers, cupboards, under furniture, even under his wife's pillow.

All fatal doses, yes-for mortals. If the a.s.sa.s.sins were vampire, the atropine dose would either knock them to the floor for an unplanned snooze or, depending on age, slow them down enough to afford him a slim chance at escape.

Wells suspected it was just a matter of rapidly pa.s.sing time before the Bureau-no, let's be accurate, the Shadow Branch puppeteering the Bureau heads-sent someone to kill him. All because of Bronlee's theft.

Unless he acted first.

"How long, do you think?" Gloria asked, her voice dry and paper thin.

"They could already be on the way. Or it could be weeks." Stepping away from the door, Wells returned to his wife's hospital-style bed and adjusted the flow rate on her morphine drip. "It is the government, after all," he added with a wry smile.

Gloria's eyes shuttered closed and the lines pain had chiseled beside her mouth eased. A sigh escaped her lips, a soft sound, almost wistful. "No time to waste," she whispered. "Send Alexander to Seattle."

"Those plans are underway, honey. Don't worry."

The room smelled of ammonia and bleach, but all the disinfectants in the world couldn't hide the lingering stink of decay.

Of failure.

Wells went to the window and cracked it open. Cool air fragrant and sweet with pine and early tulips breezed into the room. He sat on the bed beside his wife and wrapped his hands around hers, tried to rub warmth back into her fingers.

She was only fifty-seven years old, but cancer and chemo had stolen all youth from her, erased all traces of the woman he'd carried, laughing and tipsy on champagne, across the threshold of their first house thirty-five years ago.

Gloria's head turned to one side and her lips parted. Her breathing deepened, slowed, as the morphine stole her away like Hades carrying Persephone into the underworld.

His throat tightened. Gloria was now the cancer's bride and he couldn't rescue her, no matter how much he tried, no matter how much he yearned, no matter how much he sacrificed. The battle had been lost. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her cold fingers.

If he continued to prolong her suffering, then his love for her had warped into something small and selfish. If he truly loved her, he'd release her.

Truth was rarely kind. And rarely what you hoped for.All he needed to do was increase her morphine until she went with grace to the great below. Simple and easily done.

Wells remained hunched on the bed, Gloria's fingers against his lips. He would wait until she was awake again so he could speak to her, tell her good night one last time.

His iPhone beeped. Kissing Gloria's fingers once more, he laid her hand across her blanketed waist. He pulled the iPhone from the pocket of his sweater and clicked open a red-flagged message in his e-mail inbox.

What he read trip-hammered his pulse and reignited hope.

James Wallace of the FBI's Portland forensics division, a man Wells knew only by reputation, had a problem.

My daughter claims that Dante Prejean saved her life. But he didn't feed her his blood, didn't turn her. He breathed blue fire and music into her. I don't claim to understand that. I don't even claim to know if such a thing is possible. But, if it is, what are the long-term effects? Has her humanity been compromised?

Wells texted: Good question. I'll look into it. Study her medical records. Maybe it was a hallucination caused by pain and blood loss.

Thank you.

Have you mentioned this to anyone else? Anyone at all?

No, of course not. I only contacted you because you've studied Prejean.

Good. Keep quiet about this and I'll get back to you....

Wells slipped the iPhone back into his pocket feeling champagne giddy.

First the security cam footage. Now this.

Right after the incident at the center, Wells had been contacted and interrogated about Johanna, Bad Seed, and S. He'd also been asked, almost offhandedly, if Johanna had been working on a project that included vampire genetic material. He'd replied that he hadn't been involved with Johanna's work since he'd retired.

At the time, he had wondered what had prompted that question, but now, after viewing the pilfered footage Bronlee had mailed to him and seeing the puddle of liquid on the floor that had once been a living being, Wells suspected he knew.

The cleanup team and their handlers believed they'd found a spilled experiment. It had never occurred to them that they'd found the woman they sought. Or, rather, all that remained of her.

Johanna wasn't missing, no. She'd never left the center.

S had made sure of that.

Poor Johanna had had no idea-right up until the end-of what S truly was. Of what their little night-bred beauty had become. Or what he was capable of.

Truth be told, neither had Wells. Until the disk from Bronlee had arrived in the mail.

S had kept a secret from them both.

But Wells had kept one as well. From Johanna. From the Bureau. From S.

A secret he planned to unveil very soon.

Leaning over, Wells kissed his wife's pale cheek, then straightened and stood. He padded out of the room, leaving Gloria in Morpheus's narcotic embrace.

If S could unmake one woman and heal another, Wells felt confident the boy could cure Gloria. All he needed to do was bend a G.o.d-a young and damaged G.o.d, one he'd delivered himself-to his will.

And all it would take would be one whispered word.

But before Wells used S to heal Gloria, the threat against his own life needed to be neutralized. Perhaps it was time to begin s.h.i.+fting power from the Shadow Branch puppeteers and into his own hands. His and Alexander's-a new order, a new reign.

In the living room, moonlight filtered through the skylights in the high-peaked ceiling, filling the room with pale light. He looked out the window and into the woods.

Alexander, dressed in jeans and a gray hoodie, walked across the pine-tree shadowed yard toward the main house, a leather satchel slung over his shoulder, a shotgun in one hand. Moonlight gilded his hair silver, and an inner light seemed to radiate from him as if he truly were the embodiment of the Macedonian conqueror-G.o.d he was named for.

In that moment, his son was unutterably beautiful, Apollo's true heir.

Wells heard the front door open, then heard it click shut again. Reaching into the front pocket of his trousers, he clicked on the psi-block emitter that would s.h.i.+eld his thoughts from his son's telepathic mind.

"I brought extra sh.e.l.ls for the shotgun," Alexander said as he sauntered into the living room. "Did you pick up a Taser?"

Wells nodded. "It's in the kitchen. I've made other preparations, as well."

"I've double-checked the security system. All green."

Ah, so have I. And, my ambitious son, I changed the codes, Wells thought, but said instead, "Good."

"I'll finish securing the cottage tonight," Alexander said. "I'll make sure Athena's safe and occupied before I head out for Seattle tomorrow."

"I think we're as ready as we're going to be."

Alexander perched on the edge of the leather easy chair beside the sofa and shrugged the satchel off his shoulder. He cracked open the shotgun barrel. "If it weren't for Mother, you could go underground until things were settled." He looked up at Wells through thick blond lashes. "A lethal dose spiked into her IV. You'd be doing her a favor."

"A few minutes ago, I would've agreed with you."

Alexander reached into the satchel and withdrew a handful of sh.e.l.ls. "What's changed?"

"I've just learned that S can heal."

"Any vampire can heal if they offer up enough blood." Alexander slotted sh.e.l.ls into the shotgun, then snapped the barrel shut. "Of course, that usually means the person healed turns into a bloodsucker." He lifted his gaze to Wells's. "So how's this different?"

"S healed a mortally wounded agent without using his blood. Since my source happens to be the agent's father, I have no reason to doubt his veracity."

Alexander frowned, his brows angling down. "Mortally wounded...do you mean Heather Wallace? The agent in the med- unit footage?"

"The very same. And where is the disk, by the way?"

"Thena's watching it again. She enjoys it."

Wells couldn't blame Athena for that; the footage was fascinating. Revelatory. A dark thought curled through his mind. And inspiring? "Make sure she keeps it safe."

"Of course," Alexander murmured.

"I plan to get ahold of Wallace's medical records," Wells said, crossing the room to the dark mahogany bar at its other end. "Ideally, I'd really like to get hold of her, run a few tests. See what S has done." He selected the bottle of Courvoisier, lifted it for his son to see. Alexander shook his head, so Wells poured one snifter of cognac.