Rob Thurman - Basilisk

“Sometimes you get lucky,” I said darkly, jerking the steering wheel and spinning the SUV in a tight circle at the end of the road—a dead end. Why was life so damn appropriate when you least wanted it to be? I headed back the way we’d come, weaving around the pieces of roof and wall in the road.

“If Peter wants you to catch up with him, why is he trying to kill you?” Stefan finally put on his seat belt after I smacked his arm repeatedly and pointed at it.

“Because if these minor problems stop me, then I’m not deserving enough to find or join them.” I steered around a flaming piece of drywall.

“That was minor? You’re kidding, right? Two explosions and not-quite-good-enough chlorine gas is minor?” Saul sat up in the back and rubbed his chest as if it should ache. He took his hand away and frowned as if surprised that it didn’t.

“Chimeras can kill with a touch, but other people, nonchimeras”—humans, in other words—“kill in other ways. The Institute taught us all the ways there are to accomplish that, to be on our guard against the weaker . . . I mean, normal people.” Chasing daily after those genetically the same as me, if not mentally, made it easy to forget who was normal and who was not. “They didn’t get into specifics on how to make those types of weapons. We didn’t need to make them—we just had to know what we might be up against. But give one of us chimeras the Internet and we don’t have to be in the same state to kill you. We specialize in assassinations that look like natural deaths. Peter isn’t interested in whether they look natural or not now. He’s free. They all are. Free to kill in any way they like.”

“Like a buffet.” Stefan exhaled, leaning back in his seat. “They’ve found new toys to play with and after a virtual lifetime of solitary confinement, why wouldn’t they want the different and the new? If it weren’t for the trying-to-kill-us part of all this, it would be hard to blame them.” His eyes flicked to the rearview mirror to watch the burning foundation of what was left of the house behind us. “You said you had a way to find them despite their removing their chips. I don’t doubt your genius, kiddo, but how?”

“There were only twelve chips in that mug.” I took a hand off the steering wheel and for the first time in my life ruffled his hair, wavy and thick as a dog’s undercoat, in mockery of what he’d done to me more than a time or two when I was younger. Turnabout was fair play. I wanted to see how he liked it. “I’ll teach you about counting sometime. I might get you up to twenty if we try really, really hard.”

“I’d call you a shit again, but it’s not helping with your behavior, so it’s a waste of breath I could use. And both hands on the wheel.” He didn’t swat my hand, though, which was considerate in view of how many times I’d swatted him. “Are you telling me, in your own thoughtful way, that one of them kept a chip? Why?”

“I think Peter is curious about me. With my escape—with me went Jericho. That will make him more curious. Jericho was our creator. It’s almost unbelievable he could die. Peter wants a look at me, to see if the outside world has changed me to make me more like him.” I turned off the gravel road onto a paved one. It was empty except for us. “That doesn’t mean the chip is in one of them—one of them could be carrying it in a pocket for all I know. They could be rid of it in seconds. They might’ve split up, too, although I don’t think that’s likely. Peter’s charisma, his ‘family’ brainwashing, and his intelligence are vital to keep them all from going wild and getting noticed. They want to kill and they will kill, as often as possible, but they don’t want to be revealed for what they are for the first time ever and possibly put down. They need guidance. Peter is doing that.”

“Sounds like a fun guy.” Saul had his phone in hand in the back. “I’d better call nine-one-one before that shit burns down all of Wyoming.”

I ignored him. He could save Wyoming, which made him the good citizen of the hour. However, I had other things on my mind. “This is a guess, Stefan. All of it. Keep that in mind, okay? I can’t predict Peter. He’s not the same as other chimeras and not the same as me. He’s—what do they say?—a mystery. He’s a mystery.”

“A goddamn, arson-loving mystery,” Stefan corrected.

“That too,” I agreed.

“And same as you said, nothing like you,” he added.

“I know.” Or I hoped, and hope was the best you could do sometimes.

I drove for an hour after talking Stefan through recalculating the tracker to focus from a mass of chips to only one—it had Wendy’s ID code because the universe sucked that way—before I noticed the cop behind us. He was far back but closing fast. With the explosions, I’d avoided the interstate in case of the state police, Hazmat, or fire trucks. What had happened at the house would bring in the federal responders on top of the state and city ones. It was best to stay out of sight. But it turned out a deputy had better sight and intelligence than I’d given the locals credit for.

Instead of joining the circus that had to be surrounding what would be left of the house and building by now, he was out trolling the local country roads for any suspicious vehicles. And with our stolen Utah license plate, we were out of place, off Laramie’s beaten tourist track, and that definitely was worth investigating.

“He’s sniffed us out.” Stefan had swiveled in his seat when he saw my quick look at the rearview mirror. “Smart cops can screw your shit up, especially when you don’t have the Family’s money looking out for you. Damn.”

“Your boss paid off policemen?” I asked. “Like in the movies? As in The Godfather ?” The same as the movies—it shouldn’t have left a type of celebrity tingle down my spine, but I forgave myself. I was going through serious movie withdrawal these past two days.

“In his day, he paid off policemen, police chiefs, judges, senators.” Stefan turned a forbidding look on me. “Do not be getting any ideas, Misha. You’re already full of enough of them to be Lex Luthor. Now pull over and let’s deal with this guy. Saul, don’t kill him.”

“What am I? An idiot?” came the answer from the backseat. “It’s hard to run a business from death row. No, thanks.”

I pulled the SUV over just as the sheriff’s department car turned on its light and sirens. When the deputy climbed out of the car, his face was blank, but I could see a twitch of displeasure in his jaw. He hadn’t gotten to play with his toy car nearly as much as he would’ve liked to. I already had my fake license in hand. . . . The registration and insurance from the glove compartment wouldn’t match, but I expected to take care of our cop problem before it came to that. Or so I thought.

The deputy had drawn his gun and had run from his car to ours, shouting, “Get out of the car! Get out of the vehicle, all of you, hands behind your head, and lie flat on the ground! Do it now!”

“Fuck,” Stefan muttered, and, cop or not, he slid his hand inside his jacket for his gun. He’d have good intentions; that was my brother—following those good intentions all the way to an internal Hell, though those intentions had saved me. He’d doubtlessly try for a leg shot, but you never knew what would happen when you were trying not to kill someone and you were both armed.

I had planned to touch the deputy’s hand when he took my license and put him to sleep. I’d say it was now time to improvise, but chimeras didn’t improvise. We moved to plan four. Plans two and three were based on a less aggressive and less intelligent deputy—balls and brains, irritating. I’d already rolled down the window and had to keep my voice low as to not be heard by the Law Enforcer of the Year outside. “Stefan, I have diabetes.” I didn’t ask if he got it or understood. My brother was smart too.