“Then I can tell you how to save her, but if you tell anyone about vampires or witches—”
“Or pixies?” Johnny interrupted, looking at Orchid.
“Or pixies, or fairies, or werewolves, or anything, the magic won’t work and she will die. Do we have a deal?” Daniel said, holding out his hand.
Johnny’s eyes were wide as too many emotions for one small boy fought to take precedence. Nodding, he spit in his hand and held it out. Surprised, Daniel spit in his own, and they shook, Johnny’s hand feeling tiny in his. Orchid had to get in on it, dropping down to spit on both their hands and dust a bright silver to seal the deal.
Smiling, Daniel leaned in. “You tell your mother that the sickness is in tomatoes. You can tell everyone you want. Don’t eat tomatoes. Even ketchup. No tomato soup, no pizza, nothing. Even out of a can. Understand?”
“Okay,” he said softly.
Daniel stood, feeling tall beside him. “I have to go to the police and get a lady there who knows how to make the tomatoes safe again so no one gets sick. Can you get home all right?”
Johnny looked at the top of the alley. “I live real close.”
“Great, so you be good and tell your mom that Dr. Plank said no tomatoes.”
“I will,” he said, walking backward to the street, his eyes on Orchid as if he would never see her again. He probably wouldn’t.
“Go on,” Orchid prompted. “And don’t get caught by the big bad wolf.”
Grinning, Johnny waved at them. Upon reaching the street, he turned and ran. Daniel listened to the sound of his feet go distant. Tired, he wiped the spit off his hand and rubbed his fingers into his temple. “I sure hope that works.”
“Me too,” Orchid said as she tucked back into his pocket.
31
Trisk stared at the ceiling, her thoughts on Quen as she pulled her necklace back and forth along the gold chain. Her still-damp hair pressed into her arm behind her head as she lay on the couch of a man who was probably dead. It was nearing midnight, and her box of takeout sat in the trash bin, making the room smell like sweet-and-sour chicken. She’d fallen out of a human’s sleep schedule the past couple of days, and after a hot shower thanks to Officer Tex standing guard at the station’s facilities, the urge to take a four-hour nap was hard upon her. Hand protectively on her middle, she turned toward the slow scuffing in the hall; Captain Pelhan’s footsteps, by the sound of them.
But he continued on, and she winced at the pictures on the file cabinet behind the desk. A nice-looking man in a suit posed with a woman with big hair and a baby. The man and woman were smiling, but the baby stared blankly at something off camera. Sighing, she wondered if any of them were still alive. The baby, probably. Who feeds their toddler tomatoes?
The urge to leave to find Daniel fought with her need to stay and speak to Sa’han Ulbrine. Tired, she sat up and swung her feet to the floor to slip her shoes back on. Her stomach hurt, and she tried to imagine herself with a child and how she was going to keep it a secret. There was so much genetic tweaking going on that elves’ genomes were almost public information. Six months after her baby’s first prenatal checkup, the elven community would know he or she was heir to the Kalamacks’ failing bloodline. Corroborating it was the fact that she’d only been in contact with three elves in the last year, and one of them was Sa’han Ulbrine.
Who is out in the hall talking to Pelhan, she suddenly wondered as she recognized the small man’s slow drawl.
Finally, she thought as she stood, brushing at her travel-weary sweater coat before taking it off and leaving it on the couch. Breathless, she tucked the stray strands of hair that escaped her braid behind an ear. She couldn’t make herself any more presentable, and still feeling grungy, she opened the office door and peeked out into the hall.
It was Ulbrine, looking tired in his trim black suit and tie, a leather briefcase on the floor beside his shiny dress shoes and a dusty overcoat over his arm. The coat was burned about the hem, and her thoughts went to Detroit, wiped off the map. They’d blame the deaths on the plague, no doubt.
Ulbrine’s voice was even in conversation, and being unnoticed, she opened her second sight to look at his aura. If he had indeed been a part of the annihilation, there’d be evidence.
Her brow furrowed and she bit her bottom lip. Ulbrine’s aura was as ragged as the hem of his coat, the purple haze singed about the edges and thin, held tighter to his body than normal as he tried to heal the damage of channeling too much ley line energy into destruction. She’d seen her classmates with similar auras after finals, but never this thin or . . . fatigued, perhaps.
She must have made a noise because Ulbrine turned. “Trisk,” he said, smiling as he and Pelhan shifted to make room for her. “One of the people I wanted to see.”
“Sa’han Ulbrine.” Trisk came forward, nervously touching her damp hair and thinking herself untidy in the same jeans and casual shirt she’d put on to pack up her life. “I’m so glad to see you.” She glanced up at Pelhan and away. It still felt funny using the elven honorific in public, and the worry of the last few days rose up anew. People were dying, but with Ulbrine here, everything would get sorted out and her proposed action would move forward.
Still smiling, Ulbrine touched her shoulder familiarly in greeting. But there was a hesitancy lurking at the fringes of his unspoken thought. It merged with his fond, slightly domineering smile to take her back to being a student and standing on the presentation floor with the shattered protection chandelier strewn at her feet.
Slowly the fear of having done wrong seeped out of the cracks of her resolve. “I heard about Detroit,” she said as she pushed the sensation away. “Are you okay?”
His hand dropped from her. “Is there somewhere we can talk?” Ulbrine asked. His smile was gone, and her worry deepened.
“My office.” Pelhan’s expression was guarded as he watched the play of emotions between her and Ulbrine. “This way,” he added, gesturing deeper into the building.
Three abreast with her in the middle, they went down the hall, Ulbrine moving even slower as his stress and the late hour began to show. Most of the few officers still about were dozing at their desks, but those actually working seemed to have a new industry, a show of hope and camaraderie that had crossed the species barrier with an ease she’d never seen before. It was almost as if the lack of humans had reminded them of their shared incongruities, that they were not alone, and that together they were more than the sum of their differences.
“Trisk, I have to thank you,” Pelhan said as his gaze rose from his people as well. “Under your counsel, I’ve been able to bring more of my men back in. We’ve also had far fewer vamp confrontations once we took your advice to send a ley line witch out with each squad.”
“You’re very welcome,” she said, returning his relieved expression.
“Advice?” Ulbrine said, but Trisk could hear his irritation that she’d voiced her opinion in matters he clearly thought were out of her span of knowledge.
“Our basic assumptions were wrong.” Pelhan gestured for them to enter a large office at the end of the hall. There was a secretary desk outside it, but it was unmanned and looked as if it had been for some time. “Without exception, vampires quiet right down at a hint of magic. Their masters have cultivated them to be docile when facing a superior force, but six armed men aren’t a threat the way a single witch tapped into a ley line is. That, coupled with uncertainty of what said witch might do, pushed them out of fight mode and into a weird compliant state.” Pelhan smiled at her, his gratitude obvious. “They come right in and settle down in the cell with their master. Our biggest problem now is keeping them supplied with the wine they prefer.”
“We’ve always been proud of how Trisk sees a problem and devises a solution,” Ulbrine said, but the praise struck Trisk as demeaning somehow. Her name was Dr. Cambri, and the university had never been proud of her for anything. If Ulbrine was publicly acknowledging her, something was wrong, and her
foreboding grew as she was escorted into Pelhan’s office.
“Let me get that for you,” Pelhan said, swooping in past her to take the file box off the room’s only visitor chair and putting it on the floor. Trisk gingerly sat. Pelhan’s office was a mess, but the clutter looked new. There was a bulky intercom next to a phone on the desk. A typewriter was dead center behind the chair, sitting on a stack of paper and probably taken from his secretary’s desk. Three mugs with varying amounts of cold coffee sat in a cluster to the side.
“These are master vampire files,” Pelhan said as he leaned out of his office and snagged one of the hall chairs for Ulbrine. “I’ve been reviewing them when I get an odd hour here and there. You’d be surprised at how structured they are. Very family oriented.”
“That’s been my experience as well.” Ulbrine said as he sat down.
“We’re looking into giving a few some power on the street as we’ve done with the Weres.” Pelhan moved the bulk of his clutter to the floor before sitting behind his desk with a heavy sigh. “In the sudden dearth of humans, we think they’ll do better policing themselves than us trying to enforce the law. My only question is if it would be better to give the task to a young, rising family or one of the older, more established ones.”
“I’d say the older,” Trisk said, and Ulbrine’s eyes widened, his affront that she had an opinion obvious.
“Why is that?” Ulbrine asked, and she forced herself not to react in kind.
“If you give something to the younger master, the older will only covet it, and you will have a hidden turf war in three days, dead vampires in four. The undead masters are even more afraid, more volatile than their living children. But if you give them power, they’ll follow the rules. That’s all the undead have. Rules. The longer-lived undead follow them better than most. That’s why they’re still undead.”
“That makes sense.” Pelhan tapped the table in thought.
Ulbrine stifled a frown, clearly not liking where the conversation was going. “Captain,” he said pleasantly, “could I trouble you for a coffee? Black. No sugar?”
Clearly reading between the lines, Pelhan looked between him and Trisk, hesitating only briefly before rising. “Of course,” he said, just as pleasantly and accommodating. “Trisk. Herbal tea for you?”
“Thank you, I’d appreciate that,” she said, her stomach tightening. Ulbrine was getting rid of him, and they all knew it. She’d crossed two thousand plague-torn miles to talk to Ulbrine, and she wasn’t sure anymore that she wanted this conversation.
Silent, Pelhan gathered his old coffee mugs and left, closing the door softly behind him.
Trisk’s lip curled, her outrage at the unfairness of the world rising thick. “Have you found Kal yet? He’s loose somewhere in Chicago.”
Ulbrine sighed. “You have no idea of the forces I’m trying to keep in balance.”
She uncrossed her legs and set both feet firmly on the floor. “You’re going to let him walk, aren’t you,” she said, making it more of a statement than a question. “Kal modified Daniel’s virus to infect my tomato. He’s the only one with the skill and motivation, and you’re going to let him walk. Unbelievable.”
Ulbrine looked up from the floor. “What would you say his motivation was?”
“To destroy my reputation,” Trisk said. “Steal my work, maybe. I’m sure the plague was an accident, the idiot not knowing what he was doing.”
Ulbrine ran a hand across his stubbled chin, his dexterous fingers rising to push into his temples as if he was getting a headache. He might have one, with that tattered aura of his. “Kal didn’t modify your tomato or Dr. Plank’s virus. We think he created a bridge between the two.”
“Semantics—” she said, taking a quick breath to continue when Ulbrine raised a tired hand. “He’s responsible. You can’t just slap him on the wrist and let him go as if he cheated on a spelling test,” she said, pointing at the hallway. “He intentionally bridged the two species without doing the research to find out what might happen, that with a carrier, the virus could pool itself until the toxin levels were high enough to kill. He’s a hack!”
“Trisk,” Ulbrine cajoled, but she stood, her body demanding she do something.
“You’re too late to cover this up,” she said, fingers tapping her arm in frustration. “They’re already figuring it out, and once the general populace realizes eating a tomato can kill you, it won’t be long before they put two and two together and get escaped virus.”
“Which is why the enclave decided that Dr. Plank will be responsible,” Ulbrine said.
Trisk felt her face go slack. “Daniel?” she said as her arms fell from about her middle, but the man didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed. “You can’t blame Daniel. It was Kal.”
“The virus originated in a human lab,” Ulbrine said, his voice coaxing but his eyes hard. “Even with that TV broadcast about your tomato, very few people, elves included, will know you’re an elf. Promoting that the problem is with the virus, not the tomato, won’t be hard.”
“But that’s not what happened,” she said, the feeling of betrayal hardening in her.
“What happened is what we say happened,” Ulbrine said tightly. “We cannot allow the elves to be the source of the plague.” He took a breath, his mood shifting. “We’re already on a knife’s edge, and if the rest of Inderland knew we were behind the plague—definitively knew—they would hound us into extinction.”
She could not believe this. Not trusting her legs to hold her, she sat down.
“Yes, Kal made an error,” Ulbrine said, his voice softer as he probably took her abrupt move to sit as compliance. “If it’s any consolation, he will not be allowed in a lab ever again.”
Her eyes flicked up to Ulbrine’s. “You fired him. That’s it? Told him to go to his room and spend his parents’ money? He’s killing an entire species. One we need. One we all need. And you want to blame it on humans and walk away?”
Ulbrine’s jaw clenched. “You will go along with this, Trisk, or you will be banned from working in a lab and someone else will develop your universal donor virus.”
Trisk’s lips parted. She couldn’t breathe as everything fell into place. “Give me a lab, Ulbrine,” she said, no longer able to grace him with the elven honorific he deserved. “I am more than willing to do my job, but I’m not going to let a sniveling, copycat, no-talent hack get the credit simply because he has a Y chromosome and all you men feel more comfortable with a blond god saving you than a dark elf from a small family of no note.”
“Trisk, it’s not like that,” Ulbrine said.
“My name is Doctor Cambri,” she said tightly. “And it is exactly like that, or I would have been awarded a place at NASA three years ago and next year’s children would be free of every last genetic defect the demon curse has afflicted us with. Look me in the eye and tell me I’m lying, Ulbrine.”
But he couldn’t, and they would never understand why she didn’t meekly let someone else get the credit for her work. By their reasoning, the world would be saved either way, and she was a petty, spoiled brat for not stepping aside to let another take the credit for it when so many of their people suffered. She should be proud to make that sacrifice, satisfied to be the modest assistant. Bullshit. Assistant, my ass.
Neither of them spoke. There was no feeling of vindication in Trisk, only a bitter betrayal that the society she once respected and tried to fit into would reject her over saving themselves.
“I just helped facilitate the deaths of a million people, Trisk,” Ulbrine said as he looked at his hands. “Some Inderlanders heeded the church bells and got out, but the old, the young, and the uninformed all died with Detroit’s vampire and human populations.” His eyes were haunted. “I willingly helped end their lives to preserve the secret of all the Inderland races. I admire you and your work, but have no doubt that I’ll do what needs to be done to protect our species.”
Her mouth went dry, and she tried to swallow
, failing. Did he just threaten to kill me if I don’t go along with his plan to frame Daniel for the death of the world?
“If you want to be a part of your research, I’ll do everything in my power to see that it happens,” he said, and she stiffened, seeing the trap he had made for her, baiting it with her pride and desire. “But in return, we require that you publicly state and uphold that Kal had no part in the mishap. Furthermore, you’ll agree that it was a developer error that caused the accidental linkage between your tomato and the human-created virus.”
Stiff, she stared at him. Developer error? They were throwing Daniel under the bus.
“Be smart about this, Trisk,” Ulbrine said as she struggled with her outrage. “I can’t give you anything more than that. It is, after all, your tomato that’s killing humans.”
“You son of a bitch,” she whispered, and he grimaced, knowing he deserved it. If she said no, they’d privately blame her for everything. Even without a child, she’d never work in a lab again. She’d never work anywhere again. Her father would be ridiculed. Kal would get credit for her research, and she would be, as he predicted, shelving research materials for old elven men.
Furious, she stared at her hands, clasped in her lap. “Can I think about it?” she said, having no intention of remaining in this room after he left, no intention of staying in Chicago. She would run, go somewhere the council didn’t have sway, and then . . . then she would reveal the truth. DC. I’ve got to get to the capital. The dewar will help me even if the enclave won’t. That’s why we have two ruling bodies to begin with.
“Of course.” Ulbrine rose, taking his briefcase with him. “You’re a smart woman, Trisk. Don’t take too long to decide. People are dying.”
Her jaw trembled, and she didn’t trust herself to look up. People were dying? How dare he put that onus on her. But the threat was well taken. He wouldn’t broadcast the truth about the tomato carrying the virus until she agreed to put the blame on Daniel.