Rob Thurman - Basilisk

Peter had thought of something else that I hadn’t during my escape. Stefan and Saul, not I, had figured out I’d been implanted with a GPS tracking chip. It hadn’t crossed my mind then, but it had crossed Peter’s. I tightened my lips and headed down the grass-spotted driveway toward the house. I managed two steps before Stefan moved in front of me—no surprise there. “When do I lead the way?”

“When you’re sixty, not nineteen, and I’m in the nursing home. And I’m hoping before then we can stop worrying about who goes where first.” Stefan had switched the tranq gun to his left hand and now carried his 9mm in his right.

Behind me, Saul said, “You can both go first. No skin off my nose.”

“You’re bringing up the rear, guarding my flank, aren’t you?” I demanded, for Stefan if not for me. It was hard to gain acceptance as being as efficiently dangerous as an ex-soldier, such as Saul, and an ex-soldier of a different sort, such as Stefan, without their seeing me in action. And while I did want their respect, hurting people to get it . . . That situation hadn’t come yet. I should hope it wouldn’t. Being a man and leaving childhood behind were damn challenging and equally damn confusing.

“I’m not interested in your rear or your flank,” came the breezy reply. “You’re not a woman into thigh-high boots, thongs, or getting the good parts vajazzled, are you?”

I’d been ready to detect his lie. I was not ready for “vajazzle.” I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t want to know what it meant. My suspicions alone were ghastly enough, and now was not the time to be distracted. Peter and the others were gone; I was ninety-five percent positive. But five percent could kill you the same as ninety-five. One percent could kill you.

If Wendy was inside, she could kill us all.

Stefan kicked down the front door. I had my own tranq gun up and ready to fire. As Stefan had said, aim for the torso and I’d be fine. And while real guns didn’t interest me, I had practiced once with the tranquilizer gun. My aim was more than adequate, and my hand/ eye coordination excellent, which was not a result of denying myself Sara from the coffeehouse’s company and keeping my own company while locked in the bathroom, as Stefan had suggested. That wouldn’t have given me good hand/eye coordination, only repetitive motion injury.

Stefan disappeared into the gloom of the house and I followed. My eyes adjusted quickly and I could see the signs of habitation in the here-and-there streams of sunlight finding their way through gaps in the musty-smelling curtains. Full garbage bags were stacked neatly against one faded green wall. The bags were white but transparent enough for an observer to see they held empty food containers. Pizza boxes, empty tubs of ice cream, microwaved potato skins and fried cheese; bag after bag from fast food hamburger places. There was more, but I looked away to continue visually searching the room. Knowing that Peter and the others were like me when it came to taste and appetite wasn’t helpful to the situation. Anyone locked in a prison where sugar was a concept, not a reality, would flip in the other direction with freedom. That didn’t make us the same, not even close.

Saul darted out from behind me and, moving in a crouch, checked out the rooms off the main one to the right. Stefan handled the one, a dining room, to the left as I made my way to the kitchen. I’d thought the house was abandoned, which was why Peter had chosen it. It wasn’t. The ancient refrigerator was humming noisily. The electricity was working and so was the water. I tested the tap—the water ran cold and clear. It would be with thirteen chimeras making use of it. There’d be no chance to get rusty and orange. The kitchen table was as scarred and rickety as ours had been in Cascade but with only one plastic chair. Whoever had lived here, and I was completely certain it was “lived” in the past tense, had lived here alone.

On the table was a chipped mug and in the mug was a pile of small pieces of metal—GPS chips. “They figured that out damn quick, didn’t they?” Stefan remarked grimly at my shoulder. “How’d they know where they were? And how’d they get them out? With a butcher knife?” He waved a hand at a butcher block knife holder on the counter. It and the knives were dusty with disuse. Our absent owner wasn’t into cooking. No, they hadn’t used those knives.

I put the gun on the table and pulled up my sleeve to absently trace a finger across my forearm. Beneath my touch a cut instantly opened. Chimeras, except for Wendy, were bred to block harm from other chimeras, but harming yourself was another story. You had only to open that internal door you kept locked from others like you. “That’s how. As for knowing the chips were planted at the base of the spine as mine had been, if you knew you had a chip, you could search and find it within yourself. I didn’t know, so I didn’t look. Peter’s smarter than I am, Stefan. Much smarter than I remember him being. You should know that. You should know that things have gotten more difficult.” I pulled my sleeve back down as the cut began to heal. “More . . . lethal. We should send Saul back to Miami.”

If Stefan had gone for it, I would’ve added that he should head somewhere far away too. Let a chimera deal with an impending chimera apocalypse. But that wasn’t going to happen. I knew my brother too well there.

“You really should’ve slept with that girl at the coffee shop.” Stefan had both hands full, but he had a free elbow to poke me lightly in the ribs. I didn’t know how an elbow could be reassuring, but it was.

“I really should have.” I sighed and reached past the mug for a cell phone resting there. There was one voice mail. I thought for a fraction of a second, then punched in the only password it could possibly be: Jericho. The father of us all. Bellucci had been nothing but the most distant of reflections, an ego with nothing to back it up. The phone pinged in my ear and I heard Peter’s voice, smooth and convincing as any lawyer on the TV commercials telling you he’d get you millions for your fender bender. “Michael, Michael, how can you be with your family when you can’t keep up? Can’t catch up? I thought you were better than that. You always lacked a love for the work, but I’d hoped the outside world had changed you. After all, our god chased after you and didn’t come home again. No one could have predicted that.”

No, no chimera could, and Peter couldn’t know I had nothing to do with Jericho’s death. Even that monster I couldn’t kill. There had been failures before me—chimeras who weren’t genetically perfect, not strong enough to kill. I had been the only one strong enough, but I had refused.

“We have things to do, Michael. Many things. Entertaining things. We can’t wait forever on you, but I’m not writing you off, brother. If you’re worthy, you’ll find us. Don’t forget you are one of us.”

The voice mail disconnected in my ear. Peter’s voice disappeared.

It wasn’t true. I wasn’t like them, not in the ways that counted.

And they were not my family.

“Are you all right?” Stefan’s elbow nudged me again. “I heard the voice. It was that kid Peter. What did the son of a bitch say?”

“That he wants me to find him, but I’m just not trying hard enough.” I wanted to throw the phone against the wall. I didn’t. When you could kill with the touch of a hand, when you were taught to want it and do it exceptionally well, you were also trained to not lose your temper. No one wanted to buy an assassin who got pissed off that he was served fish instead of chicken and would exterminate you instead of your enemies. Obedience was a must. The Institute had failed there with me and failed with Peter too. Peter’s disobedience had been more catastrophic than mine. I wondered how his temper training had taken.