Hunters (Out of the Box Book 15) Page 3
Was that really necessary? Zack asked.
“Good question,” I said, wondering about it myself. “Are we talking about me immolating the board or Charlie the robber?”
Both, Zack said. Just because you’re here, just because you’re…I dunno, isolated, alone—
“Let me stop you there before you go digging for more adjectives,” I said, “because either way…I don’t have an answer for you. I do what I do. I give it some thought, but when it gets past a certain point…I just act. Charlie lasers me, I respond lethally. Some kid pisses me off with his rudeness, I don’t call the front desk and whine about it, I fix the problem—”
Permanently.
“But not lethally, in skater boy’s case,” I said. “And hopefully he won’t get another board until he’s safely back in the US and not on a major urban thoroughfare in the middle of the night, skating where people are trying to sleep.” I rubbed my face against the rough surface of the bedspread. “I dunno. I gravitate toward order, and where it falls apart…”
You’re a hunter, Wolfe said. Others are prey. If they cross your path—
“You can stop, too,” I said, turning my attention to the door. Right in front of the exit lay a shadowy piece of paper on the faux wood floor. I stood, an effort unto itself, and went to examine it. It had my name on it—my real name, not the assumed one I’d checked in under—and I opened the envelope to find a small note waiting.
Alistair Wexford requests the pleasure of your company at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning.
An address followed for a place that seemed to be outside London. I looked back at the door and realized I must have stepped over the invitation while I was standing at the door, waiting to see if someone was going to ambush me. “Looks like I’ve got a meeting tomorrow.”
Feel the delicate tug of your string? Harmon asked, and I could almost hear him crowing. No free lunch.
“I pay for my lunches, thanks,” I said. And pay and pay and pay, I didn’t say, and tried not to think it, as I climbed into bed. I wanted the hours to pass so I could get to the meeting, but I ended up staying awake until nearly dawn locally…
…Which was roughly the time I would have gone to bed had I been back home.
5.
“So good of you to join us, Sienna,” Alistair Wexford said, extending a hand as I walked, guided, into what looked like a laboratory. The address in question had been on the outskirts of London, and I’d taken the Underground in an effort not to wear out my cover by constantly flying everywhere. It was slow and boring and the carriage smelled a little funny, but it got me within walking distance and I didn’t murder anyone, so it was kind of a win.
I shook his hand quickly, not daring to hold on for very long. Wexford, a telepath, caught the meaning behind my short gesture just as I suspected the symbolism behind his willingness to shake with me, a soul-stealing succubus—he was trying to reassure me that he wasn’t scared shitless of being vacuumed up into my head like a loose hair. Or that he respected my control. Or maybe that he was just so set in his gentlemanly ways that he couldn’t pass up a good handshake. Any way I sliced it, I took it as him being willing to continue our mutually beneficial partnership, and replied accordingly.
“Well, my social calendar was clear, so I appreciate you boys inviting me down and giving me something to do,” I said, taking in the second man in the room. “A girl can only eat lunch so many times by herself before she starts to wonder if her sparkling personality is actually broken glass and not diamonds.”
Wexford gave me the courtesy of a good-natured chortle. “I appreciate your discretion in handling that little matter of the robbers. It threatened to spiral out of control, as these sort of meta matters tend to, so your intervention was well-timed. I’m afraid that Charlie lad was quite headed into trouble from what I can gather. The shopkeeper is going to be in the hospital for quite some time, sorry to say.”
He didn’t even call me out on slaughtering poor Charlie. Not that he needed to, but sometimes I felt like I’d lost all perspective. What most people might have called justifiable homicide (because Charlie’s blazing laser could have killed me if he’d hit me in the head with it) was no longer a black and white thing for me. I questioned myself constantly about this sort of thing now, probably the result of my own government having cast a few suspicions on me for other conduct.
And, uh…some genuinely bad things I’d done in the past.
“Will he be all right?” I asked.
“He will,” Wexford said, guiding me farther into the sterile lab room and toward the other man, who I’d taken some notice of already in my usual threat-assessment sort of way. “As will the police constable that Charlie assaulted on the way out the door, though the man is still in some danger of losing that arm.” Wexford went a bit solemn for a moment, then changed gears quite naturally. “But enough of past business—Sienna, I’d very much like to introduce you to Dr. Marc Logan.”
Dr. Logan was a middle-aged fellow in a lab coat, wore glasses and had brown hair that went neatly to the back of his neck. It was unfettered, but styled, and his eyes were brown, with a very dulled look to them, as though he were taking in everything through a filter of British manners. His hands were clamped safely behind his back and he did not proffer them as he said in a quintessentially British way and with a great deal of reserve, “How do you do, Ms. Nealon?”
“Usually, I use fire,” I said, and he stared at me for a moment until I elaborated. “Sometimes, my bare hands. Weapons, occasionally.”
Dr. Logan bore the look of a man who’d missed something. “I’m sorry…?”
“You asked her how she did,” Wexford said with only the thinnest trace of amusement. For him, it was a lot. “She’s providing a basic accounting of how she does…what she does.”
“Technically, I was going through the methods I use most often to kill,” I said, wondering why I’d gone that dark with my joke. I was probably just in a mood. “Sorry. Black humor, I guess.”
“Oh, yes, I see,” Dr. Logan said, nodding. “Very droll.”
“You’re too kind. It wasn’t one of my better jokes,” I said, matching his posture by putting my hands unthreateningly behind my own back. I looked at the doctor, then at Wexford. “Well, gentlemen…I assume you didn’t summon me here for my somewhat flagging comedy skills.”
“Quite right,” Logan said, then seemed to realize that his words might give offense. He flashed a look of contrition and then moved on, which was probably a better move than getting caught in a very British cycle of apologizing. He waved us deeper into the lab and I followed, past a few rows of highly specialized equipment that probably had purposes well beyond my understanding. It was just that sort of place. “I suppose you recall making the acquaintance of a Dr. Ronald Sessions.”
That got me to raise an eyebrow. “There’s a name I haven’t heard in a few years. Yeah, I know Dr. Sessions—or knew him, before he died.” Wexford looked at me curiously, presumably because he wasn’t able to read my mind anymore, thanks to the presence of Harmon. “He was the research doctor at the Directorate, the place I worked when I first…entered the world of metahumans.” That was an oversimplification, but I went with it. “He studied metas at the Directorate, including me.”
“Indeed,” Dr. Logan said. “A few years ago, some relations of Dr. Sessions found a backup of a great many of his notes, his research into you, your powers, as well as those of other metahumans.” He kept walking, taking me into the very back of the lab, where a display screen was set up.
“I think I might have heard about that at the time,” I said. “He’d kept another outside of work just in case of catastrophe, proving once again that you should always back up the hard drive, especially when you’re working for an extragovernmental agency that’s in danger of being blown up.” They both stared at me, probably trying to figure out if they should politely laugh or just smile in pain. “This is not my best joke day ever. Guys, let’s just move on.”
I was trying to keep my eyes from glazing over. “Anything interesting in there?”
“Quite,” Dr. Logan said, with the subtle hint of a smile. “In the autopsy for the subject Wolfe, there was a peculiar trace along the skin—signs of—I don’t know how to say this in layman’s terms without making it sound immensely complicated, but…there was an aftereffect of the cell death, a sort of…abnormality we hadn’t seen before.”
I shrugged. “Wolfe was abnormal.” Wolfe growled again. You were, dumbass. And that could be a compliment, if you were willing to take it as one. You were nearly invulnerable, FFS.
“Based on the record, I have no doubt of that,” Dr. Logan said, “and without the actual tissue samples from said autopsy, which was apparently interrupted for some reason—”
“I believe the corpse was destroyed in the explosion of the science building,” I said, and waited a second. “Uh, the first explosion of the science building, not the one that killed Dr. Sessions.” They both just looked at me quietly. “Like I said, things exploded there a lot.”
“I would have been prepared to accept that this…signature, if you will…was a unique abnormality of Wolfe’s powers,” Dr. Logan said. He was kinda getting into it now, brushing his hair back from his ear. “However…in propagating this research out to colleagues of mine here in the UK, we’ve…run across it several times since.”
That caused my eyes to go wide like unbroken egg yolks on the hard fried eggs Brits eat for breakfast. “Wait, what? You’re telling me you’ve found more Wolfe-types out there? Or their corpses, at least?” That was cause for worry. The number of metahumans was definitely increasing right now, due to unnatural means, but the thought of more Wolfe-types—extremely tough, resistant to killing, stab them and they heal in ten seconds, skin adapting to absorb bullets—was unsettling to me to say the least. “Because their kind was basically wiped out. Or it was supposed to be.”
“No,” Dr. Logan said with something like triumph in his eyes. “I don’t believe that what we’ve found are Wolfe-types at all. I believe we have found subjects that have died in the exact same manner as Wolfe.”
“But Wolfe died of a succubus—of me—draining his soul,” I said, my mouth speaking faster than my brain could process the implications of this.
“Exactly,” Dr. Logan said with a flourish. “I believe we have located a sort of cellular signature for victims of succubi and possibly incubi, your male counterparts.”
I frowned, the full implications of what he was saying washing over me. “Wait. You said there were more victims? But…” I put a hand on my forehead, which felt like it was swelling. “There are no more incubi or succubi. I was the last…” I didn’t need to finish my sentence.
I was the last succubus, just like Wolfe was the last of his kind, and a dozen other kinds of metas that had vanished off the face of the planet now had a second chance at existence.
Because someone was making new metas with the help of modern chemistry.
“Shit,” I muttered. “There’s a new one out there? Killing people?”
“Indeed,” Wexford said, speaking up at last. “And this is why I’ve summoned you, because obviously this is a problem that you are uniquely suited to deal with—one of your very own, making the rounds, killing people.”
“Where?” I asked, my head spinning. “When?”
“Edinburgh,” Dr. Logan said, flipping a switch and turning on a projector screen. “Scotland. And as for when…well…” He looked sideways at the screen, and my eyes were drawn to the photo. “There have been a few. This one is the latest.”
There was a body in a graveyard, laid out. It could have been a man sleeping, but it wasn’t. I stared at him; the photo wasn’t of particularly good quality, but the open eyes and shocked look made it obvious he was dead.
“And as for the when,” Wexford said, “this one was found this very morning. I hadn’t anticipated having a new one to show you, but…alas, here it is: a fresh body.”
“Sonofa,” I muttered. “There…were more?”
“Oh, yes,” Dr. Logan said. “Dozens. Mysterious deaths, no cause obvious. They’ve been showing up in the Edinburgh morgue for months.”
“It would seem,” Wexford said, putting himself in front of the screen, the grisly footage of the dead body projecting over him as he adopted a serious look, “that we have ourselves a metahuman serial killer.”
6.
“What the hell?” I asked as I sat forward, trying to make sense out of what I was seeing and hearing. Bodies showing up all over the place in Scotland? An incubus or succubus on the loose? My mouth felt dry at contemplating that.
A meta serial killer with the powers I called my own. Well, some of them anyway, I thought as Wolfe growled in my head.
“It’s hard to say how long this has been going on,” Wexford said in that uptight, under control British manner of his. I doubted he’d have been so damned buttoned up about it if it had been one of his distant relations going out there and ripping the souls out of people, but there it was. The old metahumans being somewhat closely related (like my Uncle, Guy Friday the clown) adding an additional, darker cast on it. What if this wasn’t a new meta at all, but one of my second cousins or something, killing people? Or first cousin, once removed?
Whatever. It would be in my best interests to be once-removing them from the damned planet as soon as I could get to it.
“Well, okay then,” I said, and stood up straighter. Now I had a job, and it wasn’t just busting some assclown committing an ever-escalating series of petty crimes. This was serious stuff, an incubus or succubus absorbing the souls of victims who didn’t have any defense. My aunt Charlie had been this type of person, cold and crazy and addicted to the high of absorbing people. I didn’t have much stomach for it myself, as evidenced by the fact only seven souls were in residence in my skull, a very dinky percentage compared to how many killers I’d, uhm…killed.
“Do try and keep the fuss to a minimum, will you?” Wexford called after me. He was anchored to his spot, good-natured and filled with aplomb as ever.
“Why, I’m not going to fuss at all,” I said, looking back at him. “This killer? They might squawk a little as I take them out of the picture, though.”
Wexford seemed to favor me with a very chill look, probably something befitting a government minister in charge of lots of people and without much desire for chaos. “Very good, then,” he said as I cruised on out of there. “Best of luck.”
“Leaving things to luck is for suckers,” I said, making my way through all the fancy scientific equipment. I had a mission that didn’t involve bushwhacking pitiful robbers. Maybe a shot at a real, genuine villain at the end of this. And who knew how long it could take? I almost smiled, but didn’t, because it was kinda untoward to grin stupidly while contemplating the deaths of dozens of people.
You’ve got that bounce in your step again, Harmon said. Purpose at your back. Wind in your sails.
“Nice sailing metaphor, Lord Nelson.”
Before we go… Zack said, a little quietly, don’t you think maybe you ought to make that visit you’ve been putting off?
I sighed. He was right. There was a certain stop I’d been holding off on for months, and one I oughta get out of the way, especially before leaving on an open-ended investigation that could last…well, hopefully a while. “Sure,” I agreed finally. “One last stop and we’ll be on our way.” And I said it with a song in my heart, back to work—real work—at last.
7.
The old headquarters for Omega in London looked about like I remembered it. It was another brick building in a district filled with them, but the differe
nce between it and the ones around it was that this one had a well-cultivated look of being abandoned. Which I figured was a desired effect, since who wants to make your secret metahuman gangster headquarters the kind of locale that people are always popping into and out of, like a Walmart? Or Asda, I guess, over here.
I strolled up to the back door, pushing my way through into the abandoned entry. In spite of appearances, I didn’t for a minute believe that this place actually was abandoned. It was an old trick I’d learned about disused places—the floors were dirty, but not dirty enough to hide that they’d been walked on, and recently. There were security cameras up in the ceiling too, small, but present, in spite of the fact that some of the walls were torn open, wiring removed, graffiti spray-painted over the ones that didn’t have massive, gaping holes in them. The whole thing was a passive effect designed to inculcate the impression that this place was not worth wasting your looting time on, if that’s what you were here for.
I flipped the light switch in the entry, and the bulbs popped and hummed as they came on—well, two out of four, at least, in the central fixture. It was good enough, though honestly I could have seen just fine without it.
Making my way to steel elevator doors, I stared, wondering if they’d even work. I pushed the button and was rewarded with the hum of elevator cables springing to life, motors carrying a car toward me from somewhere above or below. It was hard to tell which. When I stepped inside, I pressed the button for the right floor from memory, wondering exactly when Omega’s security precautions were going to start coming into play, because so far I’d waltzed right through the front door with zero resistance.
Stepping out as the doors slid open, I found myself in an open space, a bunch of old, weathered cubicles stretched out over the floor ahead. The lights in here were dark, and a deathly silence pervaded the place, but it looked different than when last I’d been here. For one, it had been cleaned up since then, the image of an abandoned place left on the floor below. Here it was all office, cubicles and rows of ordered neatness, but the lights were out and silence was thick.