Stefan was driving now and he clicked the locks shut. “We’re too busy to kick some wannabe-carjacker’s ass right now,” he explained. “Dealt with that crap all the time in Miami. Wannabes. It gets real boring real fast kicking the baby fat off some fifteen-year-old gangbanger with an HK. You have any people working down here, Saul?”
He blew out a puff of air ripe with disgust. “Nope. I tried recruiting some locals a few times, but they kept getting whacked after a few weeks or months. A waste of time. This is a kill zone, pure and simple.”
Peter’s kind of place. I glanced down at the GPS tracker. “Turn left, then left again. They’re less than three blocks from here on the right.” I gave him the address. Discarding the tracker beside me, I pulled the case with the tranq guns out from under Saul’s seat and started unloading them.
“You know that if we park here and live to tell the tale of how we cured a horde of psychotic murdering kids, we’ll have to walk home. The SUV will be gone the instant we’re out of sight,” Saul said.
“That won’t be a problem.” I handed him one of the oversized tranquilizer guns and Stefan the other as he steered with one hand.
“No?” Saul questioned skeptically. “Why is that?”
“People know. Normal people too. They’re in that building up there.” I pointed at the windshield toward the corner ahead of us where a two-level pueblo-style building squatted in a precarious heap at the intersection of two streets. “And everyone in that building is dead. The people around here might not smell them yet or maybe they do, but either way, anyone who was in there is dead. The most oblivious person in the world couldn’t walk past it and not know. They’ll cross the street to avoid it. Instinct. It’s left over from a time when instinct was the only thing that kept early man from being eaten by a giant Canis dirus. No one will come near the building or bother the car.”
“A Canis what?” That would be Saul. Again.
“A dire wolf. A big-ass Pleistocene wolf. A three-hundred-pound people-eating puppy. Woof, woof.” I took a gun of my own out of the case and then closed it.
“Smart-ass.” Saul shifted the tranq gun to one hand while pulling his own gun with the other, once again prepared for any situation. “Why are we trying so hard to save these kids? They killed an entire building full of people. They kill and they love it. If they were normal people, we’d wait until they were old enough, slap ’em on death row, and give them their last booster shot. Jesus, Stefan, Michael, they’re too dangerous to let live. They’re too dangerous to try to cure. That Wendy kid killed the possibly salvageable ones; you said yourself. Why are we risking our lives for murderers without an ounce of remorse?”
“Because they weren’t just born that way. It wasn’t an accident of nature that produced a rare sociopath. Someone made them this way, through genetics and training and brainwashing. They’re monsters, but that’s because a monster mirrored his own ego in them. They deserve a chance, even if it’s not much of one or the monster wins. Jericho wins and that’s not acceptable.” I put my hand out, ready to open the car door. “Let me go first. It’s Wendy’s chip. If she’s there with them, Stefan, you need to stay outside until you hear me yell for you. Saul, you go around back in case a few try to escape.” I doubted sincerely that would happen, but I had to plan for all eventualities. Because of Wendy, I needed to go in first.
Wendy was a new kind of monster. We were all chimeras, a name from the creature of mythology—twoin-one—but Wendy was something else. Wendy was a chimera with a fucking cherry on top. She was another creature of legend.
Basilisk.
Mythology said if one saw you, you died. One look and your life was over. Wendy was that myth, born to reality and walking the earth for the first time.
“What makes you think you’re immune? You said it yourself; Wendy is the only chimera who can hurt other chimeras.” Stefan, like Saul, had his gun backing up the tranq one. He parked the SUV on the street two buildings down from our target. He and I got out and headed for the front of the squat box of a building while Saul headed around the back.
“Peter is running the show and Peter wants something from me. He won’t let Wendy kill me. And,” I muttered low and fast, “I’ve been practicing.”
“Practicing? What do you mean you’ve been—”