CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ten months later…
The icy bite of the night wind chased Miriya into the lobby of Hotel Washington. The revolving doors did not so much usher her gracefully into the subtle warmth of a temperature-controlled room as hit her in the face with a wall of heat.
She tugged off her scarf, unbuttoned her long coat, and hoped her nose would not start dripping. Damn, she hated winter.
A uniformed doorman inclined his head. “Welcome to the Hotel Washington.”
She smiled at him. “I’m here for the party.”
“Of course. Please take the elevators to the eleventh floor. Someone there will take your coat.” He waved his hand at a wall of elevator doors. “And Merry Christmas.”
“Thank you.” She reached into his mind and snatched the time. Eight fifteen. Not as late as she had feared. Jake had warned her that arriving late at the Mutant Affairs Council annual Christmas party would be a faux pas—if only because all the good alcohol would be gone.
Perched on four-inch heels, she walked through the hotel lobby, past the white and black leather furniture and red centerpieces. The Hotel Washington was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but the ultra-modern lobby offered no hints of it.
The elevators—absurdly tiny and ridiculously slow—did.
She chafed against the antique technology, but the man and woman sharing the elevator with her either did not notice or were not bothered. The tuxedoed man seemed young, scarcely out of high school. The woman with whom he clasped hands and nuzzled noses looked two decades older, though her red gown showed off a trim figure.
They were headed to the party too, and for that reason alone, Miriya resisted the urge to be a telepathic busybody. It would be embarrassing, not to mention rude, to collide into someone else’s psychic shields, especially if they were stronger.
The elevator doors opened onto the eleventh floor. The couple stepped out, and Miriya followed them to the rooftop bar. Classical music piped through unseen speakers, and the scent of cinnamon and cider filled the air. Candles complemented the blue and red mood lighting, but the view of the Washington Monument drew her attention. The spotlights that drenched its base faded into a pale glow by the time the light reached its apex.
Someone’s arm slipped around her waist. “You can see the Treasury building and the White House from this other window.”
Miriya turned and smiled. “Hello, Jake.” She eased out of her coat and handed it to a waiting hostess.
He grinned at her. “You look awesome. Green always did look good on you. Cool earrings.” Jake swiped the dangling jewelry with a finger, causing it to brush against her shoulders. He turned slightly to look at the couple who had been in the elevator with Miriya. They were at the bar, the man’s hand resting against the small of the woman’s back. “I see you met Andrea and John.”
“Who?” Miriya asked. They walked across the Italian marble floors toward the other set of large windows overlooking the Treasury building.
“Andrea Hunter and John Pendleton. Council-trained alpha telepath and alpha telekinetic.”
Miriya’s brow furrowed. “Aren’t we all council-trained?”
Jake shook his head. “It’s just a technical term. Most of us got our psychic powers at puberty, but not the council-trained. They were born with their mutant powers and were, for the most part, raised by the council.”
“Hmm. Are there many of them?”
“Just four. No, five. I always forget to count Danyael because he doesn’t work for the council. Mutant powers gained too early are troublesome. Most don’t survive it.” He gestured at the window. “Check it out.”
The White House looked pristine in the distance, its white paint pearlescent against the dark blue of the night. Miriya smiled. “Very nice.”
“A heck of a photo-op if not for all the crazy people at its gates.”
“What? Are they protesting a war that I don’t know we’re fighting?”
Jake rolled his eyes. “It’s December twenty-second.”
Miriya stared at him for a moment. “Oh, Galahad.” She looked at the mob clamoring outside the White House. “Are they still at it?”
“It is the twenty-fifth anniversary of Galahad’s creation.”
“Precisely. Twenty-five years. Time to move on, people. Find something else to obsess about.”
“How can they when Purest Humanity is always adding fuel to the fire?” Jake’s tone changed to mimic the deep baritone of Jason Rakehell, the president of the largest pro-humanist organization in the world. “‘The clones and in vitros are taking up your spots in elite private schools and colleges. They’re stealing your jobs. They’re the reason you’re working for minimum wage at a fast food joint instead raking in the big bucks at Goldman Sachs.’”
Miriya chuckled.
Jake went on. “‘The mutants are conspiring to take over the government. They are setting up elite military units—’”
“Yeah? Where’s the hazard pay?”
Jake resumed his normal tone. “I know, right?” He shook his head. “I can’t believe they buy into this crap. Neanderthals were smarter than these idiots, though those leaders at Purest Humanity aren’t stupid. They know Galahad’s the ideal incendiary point. The genetically created perfect human being? Play it up. It’s the best way to make people feel even more insecure about their position in the grand hierarchy of life.”
“Jeez. It’s still stuck in that lab where it was created. No one even knows what it looks like. We ran out of interesting things to say or speculate about Galahad two decades ago. It really is time to find a new obsession.”
“No kidding. Here, let me get you a drink from the bar. What do you want?”
“A Riesling, if they have it, or any other white.”
“Coming right up.”
Jake returned several minutes later with a glass of wine, by which time Miriya had a chance to greet the other enforcers she had met over her seven-month tenure with the Mutant Affairs Council. He had to wade through the crowd gathered around her.
“You’re quite the popular chick,” Jake remarked, offering her the wine.
Miriya shrugged. “New blood. More interesting than the stodgy old folks around here.”
“Or maybe it has something to do with your reputation as a rule-breaker who gets things done.”
She grinned at him over the rim of her glass. “Hard to follow rules if you don’t know what they are.”
Jake smirked. “That excuse might have worked if you weren’t an alpha telepath.”
A buzz of conversation erupted by the bar. Voices spiked, terse and anxious.
An undercurrent of urgency surged through her. Her smile faded. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t know,” Jake said, but he too sounded tense.
Everyone in the room turned toward the large television behind the bar. Images resolved into an inferno consuming a large octagonal building. People shouted over the loud crackle of flames, and the flashing lights of emergency vehicles lit the screen as uniformed policemen, firemen, and EMTs scurried around injured people.
Words scrolled across the bottom of the screen. “Pioneer Laboratories attacked by Purest Humanity supporters.”
Miriya’s eyes widened. “Galahad…”
Jake grimaced. “Not good. They’re going to kill it.”
A soot-stained reporter appeared on the screen, the microphone held close to his lips. “Intense heat is preventing fire crews from entering Pioneer Labs. It is believed that at least a hundred people, most of them from Purest Humanity, and Galahad, are still in the building.”
The camera swung away from his face and zoomed in on six vaguely humanoid shapes emerging from the burning ruins of the lab. Bulky torsos. Elongated limbs. Misshapen bodies. Grotesque faces.
The creatures broke formation, and without hesitation threw themselves at the humans—cops, ambulance workers, news reporters—and savaged them, tearing and smashing. Screams shrilled through the open micro
phones, punctuated by scattered gunfire. Through it all, Miriya heard the vicious growls and snarls of the abominations, a guttural series of moans that sounded like incoherent words.
The attack lasted no more than a minute, but the massacre seemed eternal, until an abomination hurled the body of a cop directly into the camera. The screen went black. There was a brief flicker, and then the news anchor, comfortable and safe in the newsroom, reappeared on the screen. His face was pale, his speech stuttering as he tried to explain the madness captured by the final moments of his news crew.
“Oh crap,” Jake muttered.
That, in Miriya’s opinion, was a hell of an understatement.
Alex Saunders’s voice cut through the low buzz of conversation filling the rooftop bar. “Andrea, John, Jessica, get over to the lab. Find those creatures and stop them. Erin, I need—” He broke off, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a smartphone. The short conversation concluded with a “Yes, sir.”
He disconnected the call. “The mob in front of the White House is out of control. The head of security needs our help to disperse them. Jake, you and your team are on it. No casualties.”
“No,” Jake muttered under his breath. “But there are lots of ways to fill a hospital ward without killing anyone. Damn, those pro-humanists are crazy. Attacking Pioneer Labs and the White House?”
Miriya shook her head. “They’re furious. I would be too if my friends just got torn up by monsters created in a lab.”
Alex continued. “The metro police are reporting scattered incidents of fighting between humans and derivatives, and it’s likely to escalate. I want all mutants off the streets, especially alphas. Pro-humanists have been spoiling for a fight for too long. I’m not going to give them a chance to go after mutants.”
“Aren’t we going to defend the derivatives, sir?” Jake asked.
“We’re going to stop the fighting without taking sides, even if all of you think the pro-humanists started it and have had it coming. Kimberly—” He looked at his executive assistant. “—will coordinate an orderly extraction of all mutants from Washington, D.C. We’ll need everyone’s help to clear the city. The party’s over, folks.”