“Trisk?” came a low voice from the receiver, and she exhaled in relief.
“Thank God,” she whispered, and then louder, “Sa’han Ulbrine. I think someone tampered with Daniel’s virus. It’s latched onto my tomato and gone rogue. If you can get on the news and tell everyone to burn the Angel tomato fields, we might be able to stop this. From what little I can tell, the tomato is condensing the toxins to a lethal level in humans.”
Ulbrine swore. “Your tomato? Are you sure?”
Trisk nodded, not caring that he couldn’t see the motion. “My lab assistant went from not feeling well to dead in less than twenty-four hours.” A sudden lump filled her throat, and Trisk gasped, blinking fast as she walled the grief off. “She might have been exposed to a more massive dose than the general populace,” she whispered. “But I don’t—”
“Where are you?” Ulbrine interrupted, and Trisk looked at her truck under the garage’s flickering streetlight. Quen was keeping Daniel busy and away from the phone under the excuse of checking the oil. Across the street, the Were family still sat in the wagon. The wind blew in off the desert, warm as it lifted her hair with the scent of dust and undisturbed eons.
“A gas station outside of Carson City,” she said, eyes roving over the dark street. “Ah . . . Fallon, I think,” she added, seeing FALLON LANES over the bowling alley. “We’re trying to get to Detroit. If you can get us lab access, we can prove the tomato is the carrier.”
“You don’t know for sure?” Ulbrine asked, and she thought she could hear the scratching of a pen and the ripping of paper.
Trisk’s jaw clenched. “I made that tomato perfectly, and my seed field is a black decayed mess. The emergency room was filling up with symptoms of Daniel’s virus when we left. It’s hitting people with no lab access. Kids. Entire families.” Oh, God, that family. . . “I think Kal did it,” she whispered, and Ulbrine grunted in surprise.
“I know you dislike him, but you can’t blame Kal without proof. He’s there doing a job.”
“Yes, I can,” she said, hunched over the receiver. “And I do. He’s the only one who had access to both organisms.” Why the hell did I ever sleep with him?
“Rick has access,” Ulbrine said, and she pressed her fingers into her forehead.
“Rick is dead,” she said. “Someone set fire to my seed field. He was in it at the time.”
“That would explain the call I got a few hours ago from his camarilla,” he said. “Damn. I was hoping it was just a rumor. But dead isn’t always dead when it comes to vampires. His passing could be a way to push the blame for this on you or the elves in general. Vampires say they want everything to stay the same, but if there’s an easy way to take out the humans and leave vampires as the apex predator, some uppity dead vamp might try in order to be king of the universe.”
Trisk said nothing, the same thought having occurred to her. But it was Kal. She knew it.
“This is what I want you to do,” Ulbrine said into the new silence. “Go to Detroit. I’ll hop a plane tomorrow and meet you there with Kal. We’ll look at it together, and if your tomato is the carrier, we’ll make the announcement then.”
“Kal? No.” Pulling her hair into a ponytail, she let it go. “And why do we need proof before we start warning people?” she asked, her thoughts on Sacramento’s emergency room.
“I will not start a panic that points fingers at the elves,” Ulbrine said, and she swallowed her next complaint. “If it’s the T4 Angel tomato, then of course we’ll tell people, but not until we know for sure.”
“Sa’han—” she said, unwilling to wait.
“Felecia, no,” Ulbrine said, cutting her off. “If we announce that your tomato is the carrier, and then find out it isn’t, the rest of Inderland will never believe it wasn’t us. I don’t want to go down as the species that exterminated the humans, do you?”
He thinks it might kill them all? “No,” she said. “But we have to say something. It’s fast, Sa’han. I don’t understand how it’s moving so quickly. Even a day is going to make a difference. I’m seeing evidence of it right now, in this little town, and we just got here!”
But her anger mutated to fear when a long black car pulled behind her truck, brakes squealing. Another boxed the truck in at the front. Big men started getting out as a third, smaller car slowly parked at the outskirts. “I have to go,” she said, interrupting Ulbrine’s demand that she keep her mouth shut until they knew for sure. “I’ll see you in Detroit,” she added as she hung up. Pace fast, she almost jogged back to the truck. “Quen!”