Another Kind of Dead Page 5

  “I thought you needed line of sight to summon something.”

  He blinked. “I always have before,” he said slowly, speaking while turning the realization over in his mind. “But it was just under the skin. Practically line of sight.”

  Neither one of us said it, but we had to both be thinking it—had Wyatt’s death and resurrection-via-magic last week altered his Gift?

  “Guess this master likes to keep track of his toys,” I said, dragging the conversation back to our prisoner.

  “Looks that way.”

  Still out of reach, I squatted eye level with the sobbing creature. It seemed to know it had lost its last advantage. “So,” I said, drawing the single syllable out into three, “now that backup isn’t going to find you, how about you make a choice? Long, slow death, or fast and mostly painless?” Part of me begged it to say long and slow.

  Too-human eyes gazed at me, full of very human tears. How did a goblin get eyes so human, ears so much like mine? Its skin was smooth, unmarred by age, almost young. Colored oddly, but not slick and oily like a goblin’s normally was.

  My stomach twisted as a frightening idea burrowed into my brain and didn’t let go. This hybrid was not, as I first assumed, a goblin with human traits. Worse than that, it had once been human, and a very young human, given its size. I was certain of it, and grew more certain as the seconds passed—so certain I nearly vomited. I did drop the knife.

  “Evy?” Wyatt was beside me instantly. I couldn’t look away from the creature, but he must have seen something in my expression. “Evy, what is it?”

  Ignoring him, I pierced the hybrid with a stare. “You were human once.”

  The creature cocked its head, a picture of perfect agony. It wetted its lips with a pink tongue—not the thin sandpaper strip of a goblin. “Toe … kin,” it said. Raised its broken hand toward its chest. “Token.”

  “Your name is Token?” Wyatt asked.

  No, no, no. I didn’t want to know the thing’s name. Not when I was about to put it out of its misery. We weren’t friends, or allies. It was an abomination of nature. A creature that had no business existing, much less having a name.

  “Name,” it tried out the word. “Yes.”

  “Okay, great,” I said, snarl indicating it was anything but. “So, Token, what’s your master’s name?”

  Token crunched up his face. “Token … good.”

  I snorted. “Good? You murdered a man!”

  Wyatt wrapped his hand around my forearm, a silent comfort and an attempt to control me. My temper was spiking, and he knew it.

  “Master told … me.”

  “Your master was wrong.”

  Token’s face reflected utter disbelief. He’d stopped crying, but a river of clear snot trailed from nose to chin. He looked like a chastised child who’d been told Santa Claus was dead. “Can’t be,” he said. “Is master.”

  “Even masters can fuck up.”

  Wyatt made a sound—something between a grunt and a snort. We knew all too well how people in charge could make blind, dumbass decisions that got people under them killed. Me, for example.

  Token stared at me, long seconds ticking away while his childlike mind tried to puzzle things out. Something sparked in his brown eyes. I braced for an attack. He surprised me with “You … master?”

  I shuddered. “No, I’m no one’s master.”

  “Token’s master.”

  “Fuck you, you piece of shit.” I shot to my feet too damned fast and my left knee buckled. Wyatt caught me before I fell. I pushed him away, harder than I intended, and he almost tipped backward over the sofa.

  I wheeled around and stormed into the kitchenette, hands fisted, fuming. Angrier for the uncontrolled outburst than at Token’s actual statement. “Hate” wasn’t a strong enough word for how I felt about goblins. Experience had taught me everything that training hadn’t, and I’d put all that information to good use over the last four years, hunting and killing any I could find. Enjoying it when I knew they’d broken the law and harmed a human. And I’d done my job well.

  If I’d done it too well, I had paid for it and more ten days ago, when a goblin queen had kidnapped me and tortured me to death. She’d enjoyed it, returning every injury I’d inflicted on her kind and then some over the course of two and a half days. I’d hated goblins before that; now my gut desire (right or wrong) was to see the entire race wiped off the face of the Earth.

  Genocide wouldn’t make the pain go away, but the illusion did tend to brighten my day.

  I slapped my open palms flat against the counter, frustrated at my inability to control myself. My former partners, Jesse and Ash, had taught me what Boot Camp never could—how to put a safety on my hair-trigger temper. How and when to unleash that anger upon the Dregs I hunted. All that training had been destroyed by my first death, and I was constantly struggling to keep it in check. I’d be ineffective if every goblin I stumbled across set me off into a rage.

  Wyatt appeared on the opposite side of the counter. He slid his hands over mine. I looked up, into warm black eyes. No sympathy, no annoyance—just understanding, colored with an unspoken command to get ahold of myself.

  “We should have suspected this,” he said.

  I quirked an eyebrow. “What? Me blowing up?”

  “No.” The corner of his mouth pulled into a half smile. “We should have expected more hybrids. The lab we found at Olsmill probably wasn’t the only one. It was just the only one we found.”

  The horror movie laboratory I’d discovered in the basement of a defunct nature preserve had held monsters from nightmares—genetic mutations of all sorts, caged in cinder block and steel. Things that shouldn’t have existed, much like the boy-monster impaled to my apartment wall.

  “If there was another lab,” I said, “then who turned Token loose?” A chill niggled its way down my spine. “A third partner?”

  “Possibly. We know that Tovin was the brains of the operation, and we know that Leonard Call provided the muscle to get it all done.”

  “But neither one of them were scientists, capable of combining and manipulating the DNA of such disparate species.” I tried to recall my conversation (if it could be termed that) with Call the night I’d put him into a coma. He’d admitted to working with Tovin, to providing brawn in the form of cooperative goblins and Halfies, in return for Tovin’s help in his own personal quest for vengeance. Vengeance against Wyatt specifically, and humanity in general, for the murder of Call’s lover.

  Motives that I understood but couldn’t support—for obvious reasons.

  “Following that train of thought,” Wyatt said, “we could also assume that whoever organized the attack on Boot Camp wants their science projects back.”

  I closed my eyes and thought about the creatures we’d found at Olsmill. I’d only gotten a good look at three of them. One had been a teenage boy. Half his body was stone, as though he’d been split down the middle and sprayed with cement coating. At the time, I had assumed some sort of cross with a gargoyle. Now I wasn’t so sure. This mysterious third party had creatures who could attack via the ground, moving through the earth as easily as trolls. That was bad on so many new levels.…

  Wyatt’s face remained annoyingly neutral when I shared my thoughts. “I can see the goblin queens donating a few of their weaker warriors to experimentation if it meant gaining an advantage,” he said.

  “Some advantage. The goblins have all but disappeared since we kicked their asses at Olsmill.” I said it lightly, but the truth of my statement was worrisome. Goblins were a matriarchal society, and while we’d killed one of their rare queens, she wasn’t the only one they had. The fact that most of the goblins had withdrawn from the city, or were at least hiding underground where we couldn’t find them, hinted at something big on the horizon. And I hated surprises.

  “Yeah,” Wyatt said. “Which means they probably have a plan we won’t see coming.”

  So what else is new?

  “We need
concrete information to give to the Triads,” he continued. “Something they can look into that’s more tangible than our leaps of logic.”

  “I know.” I shot him a determined look. “So let’s get it.”

  Chapter Four

  I rummaged around in one of the drawers until I found a butter knife and a barbecue lighter, then returned to Token. He’d stopped crying. Blood still dripped from his wounded hand. He watched me squat in front of him, flick on the lighter, and heat the tip of the knife.

  “Do you hurt?” I asked, choosing the simplest words I could manage.

  “Yes,” Token replied. “Hurt.”

  “Do you like to hurt?”

  “No. Hate … to hurt.”

  “Who’s your master?” Silence. I held up the heated knife. “Do you think this will hurt?” His too-human eyes flickered to the blade. Like a child who doesn’t understand about a hot stove, he just stared.

  I swallowed, then pressed the tip to the skin on the back of his broken hand. He screamed. I jerked out of reach, wincing. Cruel, perhaps, but now he understood my threat.

  “Hurts,” he said, betrayal in his eyes. “Why?”

  “Who is your master?” After another pained, sulky glare, I started heating the blade again. “I will keep hurting you until you tell me. Do you want me to hurt you again?”

  “No.” Such a human whine; it turned my stomach.

  “Who is your master?”

  He fidgeted, wriggled, whined, did everything except answer my question. I had no real desire to torture the thing further, but I needed this answer.

  “Ask him differently,” Wyatt said. “I don’t think he understands what you want.”

  Okay, fine. I waved the heated knife in front of him. “Token, what is your master’s name?”

  Understanding dawned. “The … cur … ee,” he said, forcing out each sound.

  I looked up at Wyatt; he shrugged, not recognizing the combination, either. To Token, I repeated it back. “The cur ee. This is your master’s name?”

  “All name.”

  “Come again?” No response. “What the hell does—?”

  “Thackery,” Wyatt said. “Walter Thackery.”

  “Yes,” Token said.

  “Who’s he?” I asked.

  “Master.”

  “Not you.” I stood up and abandoned the knife and lighter on the back of the sofa. “Wyatt, who’s Walter Thackery?”

  He held up his index finger in a “wait” gesture, dashed into my bedroom, and returned moments later with my laptop already open and booting up. He put it on the scarred table that served as our eating area. As soon as it was ready, he opened an Internet search engine and typed in the name.

  “Thackery was a molecular biologist who worked and taught at the university, up until five years ago,” he said as news articles began to scroll across the computer screen. “He wasn’t even on the Triads’ radar until August of that year. Three days before classes were to resume, he cashed out all his stocks, liquidated his assets, issued his resignation, then disappeared with his wife and a boatload of cash. At the same time, the labs at the university were broken into and ransacked. A quarter-million dollars in equipment was stolen. The regular police never connected the two, but we did.”

  “Why?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know.

  “Six months after the disappearance, Morgan’s team found Thackery’s wife in an alley, sucking a teenage boy dry, and killed them both.”

  “His wife was a Halfie?”

  “There was no way to know for how long, but Morgan reported she had a completely developed set of fangs, so she wasn’t new. Probably turned right before Thackery quit and dropped off the radar. We had no luck tracking him down.”

  I reached around Wyatt, keenly aware of the slim pocket of air between us, and fingered the mouse pad. I clicked on a photo from a university benefit; the date put it at a few weeks before the disappearance. In the image, a beaming couple radiated their love for each other. Walter Thackery was tall, lean, with close-cut dark hair and dark eyes, a sharply chiseled jaw, and ear-to-ear grin. His wife (the caption named her Anne) glowed, even in the black-and-white image. Her dress was tasteful, her makeup and jewelry simple. She held one arm loosely around her tuxedo-clad husband’s waist. The other hand was draped across her flat belly, almost protectively. Poor woman.

  “So that’s our bad guy?” I poked the screen right above Thackery’s too-handsome face. “Doesn’t really look like the sort to turn humans into goblins, does he?”

  “Few people seem capable of murder until they actually pull the trigger. As far as I know, he’s been completely off the grid since his disappearance, but given those circumstances, and his scientific background, he’s a damned likely candidate.”

  “Not to mention the admission of our hostage over there.” I fought against quick acceptance of this information. It was too easy, having the name of the bad guy in front of me, along with an identifying photograph. I was used to struggling for info, getting frustrated when I didn’t get it, and using that frustration to drive me even harder. This was weird.

  “Thackery had the money and the means, not to mention the professional experience, to set up his own lab.” Wyatt shifted, facing me more directly. His eyebrows were furrowed, but he seemed more determined than annoyed. “This is something we can give the Triads.”

  “But Rhys Willemy’s been researching Olsmill since we found it. Wouldn’t someone have made the connection by now?”

  “Not necessarily. Memory’s a tricky thing, and like I said, no one’s had contact with Thackery for five years. The file probably hasn’t been looked at since his wife was neutralized. I might never have thought of it without Token.”

  “Which brings us to problem number one with telling the Triads anything. How are you going to explain Jaron and Token to them?” I did not want to be the one to tell Amalie her personal bodyguard was dead, and that the killer was stuck to my wall.

  “Lying by omission, I suppose. Amalie knows you’re alive, but I don’t have to tell them that’s why Jaron came to us. And I’m not exactly helpless, so they’ll believe that I subdued Token by myself.”

  I grinned and poked him in the ribs. “They’ll probably be amazed you didn’t kill him yet, Mr. Not Helpless.”

  “Part of me’s amazed you haven’t killed him yet.”

  That sobered me right up. “He was human, Wyatt. He’s a killer and I want to put him out of his misery, but I can’t. He’s being helpful.” The last was tacked on to avoid expressing just what I was feeling—sympathy. Sympathy for his being manipulated against his will. I knew exactly how that felt.

  “He was, but the Triads will want him for questioning.”

  I nodded. They’d do a lot worse than a tiny burn on his hand. In the past, I would have done much worse myself, and with sharper instruments. “Then let’s call them and get this thing started.”

  Wyatt reached for his phone.

  “This really isn’t healthy, Truman,” Gina Kismet said.

  Wyatt snorted but didn’t reply.

  I didn’t need to see him to know he was glaring. After hiding all traces of my existence in the oven—my meager collection of clothing, a photograph, and a handful of books was sort of pathetic when lumped together—I’d taken refuge in the dark bathroom. Even with the door slightly ajar, I had a minuscule view into the living room. Just a slice of the sofa, far enough out to see Jaron’s foot and the opposite wall near the door. Wyatt and Kismet were somewhere on my right, near the kitchenette. She’d brought over two of her Hunters, Milo Gant and Felix Diggory. The third member of her Triad, Tybalt Monahan, had lost half his forearm a week ago, but she’d yet to replace him with a rookie from Boot Camp.

  Kismet had been commenting on Wyatt’s choice to live in this particular apartment. I was amazed she would get within twenty feet of Wyatt, considering she still thought she’d killed me. The tiny part of me that liked and respected Gina Kismet, the only female Handler in the
Triads, hated that I hadn’t yet come out of the closet (or the bathroom, in this case) and told her the truth.

  My logic and her inability to be flexible and give someone the benefit of the doubt kept me silent and still.

  “How did Jaron know you were here?” she asked.

  “Because I met her while she was in her true sprite form,” he explained. “Apparently, sprites can sense auras of those people, so she was able to track me down.”

  “But why you? Jaron knew how to contact the Triads.”

  “I don’t know. Protection from that thing, maybe?” I imagined him jacking a thumb at Token, still knifed to the wall where I’d left him with firm instructions to tell no one about me. He’d seemed to understand the order. “I checked the avatar’s license, and he lived only a few blocks from here.”

  “I wonder if Amalie knows.”

  “You haven’t heard anything from her yet?”

  “No, and nothing’s been communicated to me by the brass, if she’s contacted them at all.”

  “Has anyone checked on her avatar?” Wyatt asked exactly what was on my mind.

  “No one knows where she lives, remember?” She exhaled hard. “I frigging hate not knowing what’s going on.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “Three of us,” Felix said, piping up close to the bathroom door. “So did you get anything useful from that thing?”

  “Just that it was sent to kill Jaron by its master, and what I told you about its possible connection to Walter Thackery.” The only thing we’d agreed to keep to ourselves was Jaron’s dying declaration of betrayal. We didn’t know who had been betrayed, or if someone was going to be betrayed, or who any of the players were. It was a lead we could follow better on our own. We weren’t strangers to betrayal, and it was easier to work with someone you knew wouldn’t betray you than with people you just weren’t sure about.

  “We’ll have to do a little old-fashioned detective work on that,” Kismet said. “Looking into who’s been ordering lab supplies, renting space, getting large shipments of unusual product. Anything like that is bound to leave a paper trail.”