“Where is the rest of the ‘family’?” I asked in a detached tone, letting him know his trick, good or not, wasn’t working.
Calm. Cold. Being Jericho. The first naturally enhanced chimera, born with increased healing and strength. He couldn’t kill. That was his gift to us. Despite his genetic inability to dole out death, he had remained the ultimate chimera in his mind. He feared none of us . . . until the end. And at that he was far more proud of his Wendy creation than wary of her. Jericho had been living, breathing ice. I would be too.
“Here, there. Around.” He rocked back on his heels. “Dull and boring as things were waiting for you to slog along behind us, we thought we’d help you out and give you a chance to catch up. That pathetic bag of bones in Wyoming wasn’t worth our time, of course. So the next time we stopped, I thought it would be interesting to find something more spry. I love that word—‘spry.’ The definition of walking around when nature should’ve already taken you down. A very optimistic word. Before I killed her, I asked that nice, spry lady at the gas station when we came into town where the most dangerous people hung out.” He laughed, derisive and sated all in one. “And here they are—with their guns and their knives. They were like us in a way. They liked to kill too. Murder, rape, and they couldn’t wait to teach us some manners when we came knocking at the door.”
He reached down and picked up a gaudy red plastic rose I’d dismissed earlier as unimportant. He must have gotten it at the same gas station where he’d killed the woman who gave him directions. He tossed it over the rail to land on one of the bodies. “But these dangerous people were writing checks their antisocial tendencies couldn’t cash. They said they were, how’d they put it, ‘pure evil motherfuckers who were going to fuck up our baby-ass shit.’ ” He imitated a deeper, hate-filled, older man’s voice perfectly. “They give out the label sociopath so easily here in the real world. No one has to truly earn it. Isn’t that a shame? It devalues the meaning and the purpose . . . our meaning, our purpose.” He sighed, pulling on a pensive mask, but the glee leaked through. He took a step upward and then one more. “It won’t stay that way. Give us time and we will change the word and the world. Mass murder with a lollipop for these ignorant, oblivious wastes of genes. Are you up for that, Michael?”
At his first step I’d raised the tranquilizer gun. “No one is here but you, are they?”
“No,” he smiled. He pulled a black cord necklace out from under his shirt. Attached to it was a tiny cloth bag. It would hold Wendy’s chip perfectly.
“And you don’t want me for your Manson Mein Kampf family dream-come-true, do you?”
“He catches on.” He applauded once. “Want you? Hardly. You’ve changed, but not enough. And even if you had, this isn’t what it’s all about. We never wanted you, Michael. We want to punish you. You’ve done a very bad thing and you have to pay. And, Michael, you are going to fucking pay and pay and pay.” He was moving up again at a run, but Stefan, who’d had his gun up long ago, had already pulled the trigger. The cartridge hit Peter in the upper leg. He didn’t stagger, much less fall. My cartridge hit the wall he disappeared behind.
Damn, I was certain the dosage would be high enough to knock him out. I started after him, weaving between cots, and then skidded to a stop. Stefan heard it at the same time I did. Half a step behind me, he grabbed my arm and ran, yanking me along with him. He didn’t need to. I was as fast, and running over the top of bodies and their various crushed organs didn’t faze me. Stefan, despite his mob background, flinched slightly but didn’t let it slow him down either. We hit the right wall of the room simultaneously with the semitrailer that crashed through the front of the building. Stefan was knocked to the floor by a falling piece of ceiling. I was thrown forward by the slam of an upended cot against my back.
I’d known the building was structurally unsound by looking at it when we arrived, but I’d underestimated its instability. Perfect for an explosion, I’d thought, and it was a meth lab. I’d been on the alert for trip wires, any evidence that the lab upstairs would be blown. But that would’ve been a repeat of the last attempt on our lives—the establishing of a pattern. Patterns were to be avoided; they ignited suspicion in the authorities. Bought and paid-for indentured assassins were taught to avoid that. But I knew to listen and watch for other traps as well. I was facing down my own who’d received the same training as I had. The instant I heard the full-throttle roar of an engine, I knew. That Stefan knew too didn’t surprise me. The longer we were together, the more I saw how similar our lives had been in the things we’d been taught to do and the things we’d actually done.
It sucked for us both.
It sucked more when the building collapsed on top of us.
“Get away from him, you son of a bitch. Touch him again, and it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”