“No. I ain’t sure about nothin’,” I said. “Except there’s blood, at least three or four gallons of it, and not a drop in a body. That I know for sure.”
Over a cell connection, from the airport, Tandy said, “I should have been with you. I might have picked up something from the werewolf on the surface. Or his humans.”
“More likely you would have gotten overwhelmed by Occam and me,” I said, thinking about my exhaustion and the bad feel of the lab and the disembodied blood.
“Proximity and all that,” Occam added, agreeing.
Rick said, “There’s no point in stressing any of your gifts. So why would werewolves stay in a cage they could tear through in a heartbeat?”
“I don’t get it,” Occam snarled. “I got away from my cage the first second I could. Took me twenty years, but I did it.”
I carefully didn’t look at Occam. The werecat never talked in detail about his years in captivity or his escape. Just unadorned statements of basic fact. There were rumors. There was scuttlebutt. There had to be files stored somewhere on Occam and the details of his background. But nothing was verified. I realized I knew next to nothing about Occam. How was I supposed to date him if I didn’t know anything about him? Unless that was the purpose of dating, to learn.
I looked down at my hands, one holding a slice of pizza, the other gripping a mug handle. My own experience had similar captivity overtones, and I too had gotten away the first moment I could, yet not all my sisters wanted freedom. I said, “They might want to stay, like a caged bird not wanting to fly into the wild. Maybe they feel safer there. Maybe to them it isn’t a prison after all.” I took a sip of tea, feeling all sorts of unnamed things flowing through me. “Maybe they’ve been tamed, like a dog to the hand. Maybe they’re being given vampire blood to drink and it does something to them. Maybe having something done to their genes, research, like the two employees, Candace and Mary, said. Or maybe it’s just something that makes the weres believe they have to or want to stay.” Like my sister Priss. Like Esther. But not like Mud.
Occam said softly, “Like you, thinking about going back into your cage.”
A protest flashed through me. But until today, he had a point. “Programming can be hardwired into a body,” I said, not looking up. “It’s something that has to be fought, day in and day out, forever. Like an addiction one hates, has defeated, yet still has to battle.” I took a bite of pizza and chewed. It tasted spoiled, as if the pepperoni had gone bad. I swallowed and set the remaining slice down on the paper plate in front of me.
“We’re sorry, Nell,” Tandy said, his voice tinny over the cellular connection, maybe picking up on my emotions, despite the distance between us.
“No,” I said. “You aren’t sorry. You all seem to think you need to push and prod and remind me constantly what I was and what I came from.” Tandy let out a sharp breath, startled. A barb of anger speared up in me, hot and sharp. I was mad, not spitting mad, or throwing-things mad, but some other kind of mad, and I was holding it in like a . . . like a good churchwoman?
At that thought the anger burned hotter for a moment, struggling to blaze free. My anger would never be a churchwoman’s anger, something chaste and controlled, or pot-throwing mad. My very own anger was different from all others I knew. Because when I stood up for myself, people died and were fed into the earth. I was a killer with too little control. I didn’t get to let loose and howl.
I was both a victim of my past and a victimizer through my gift. That thought stopped me.
Turning my lips in and back out, thinking, feeling the winter-chapped skin chafing on itself, I nodded. Yeah. I had good reasons for not getting mad when others might, not fighting back or arguing as a human might. Because I knew how easy it was to lose myself to the bloodlust. So very, very easy. And there was all that blood on DNAKeys’ compound. I was overreacting because I wanted—no—because Soulwood wanted that blood.
I said, “I want you all to stop pushing me. I have a right to work through things on my own terms, in my own time.” I lifted my chin, knowing it was a confrontational gesture. “And if you don’t grant me that time and space, I’m gonna get . . .” Furious? “. . . unhappy. I don’t like who I become when I’m in a bad mood. I don’t think you will like me in a bad mood.” I looked up at Rick, who had an inkling just how dangerous I could be. “Understood?”
Rick inclined his head. Occam was watching us, his eyes shifting back and forth.
Softly, Tandy asked, “When you’re in a bad mood, is Soulwood in a bad mood?”
Sometimes Tandy was too dang discerning. I stood. “You all going in to DNAKeys’ compound and checking out that blood or not?”
“We’re going in,” Rick said softly. “You have blood on-site. We have two reports of prisoners on-site. The county tactical team is on the way. I want Nell, Occam, T. Laine. Vests. Service weapons only. SWAT will carry the big guns. Let’s ride.”
? ? ?
We took Unit Eighteen’s van to the site, up the mountain and then down into the holler, riding the bumper of the county SWAT team, moving fast so DNAKeys’ security cameras wouldn’t have time to warn the employees. We flew past the site where I’d parked recently. Then the drive where we’d parked before, then an empty parking lot. Closer to the lights of DNAKeys. The pavement developed speed bumps that Unit Eighteen’s van was not equipped to handle. I held on to the grab handles, what the others called the “oh, shit” handles, feeling the van roof brush my head on one particularly high-speed bump.
And then the van doors slid open and things got confused.
The guards at the front of the compound were taken out by SWAT. The werewolf was shot with a beanbag that knocked him down. His handler was hit too. No blood. Thankfully, no blood.
The door went down, no match for the battering ram wielded by the team.
Occam muttered, “Dumb-asses.”
It took a moment, but then I realized the steel door had been held in place with wood strips. I might never use the word dumb-ass, but I had to agree it was poor security. Someone screamed, “Flashbang!” Instantly a flashbang went off inside. Light and noise and smoke. Then another. And a third. Smoke bombs filled the entrance with gray-white smoke.
Then I was inside. Fighting my way through the low light and the smoke. As probationary agent I was near the back of the personnel entering the building. The SWAT guy pulling the six position pushed me with his weapon. Probably not standard behavior, but then I wasn’t standard-issue either. I sped up and nearly ran into the SWAT woman in front of me. The team cleared the first floor. I followed the woman and tried to take it all in, but it was a jumble of smoke and flashbangs and lights going off and coming on and DNAKeys’ employees screaming. That was the worst.
Vampires screaming. That awful, high-pitched wail of fear and death.