Rob Thurman - Basilisk

If anything, he was more bemused than before. “You believe that?”

“No, I know that. I’ve known her for two years now. It doesn’t matter if it was on the Internet or with video cams. With my psychological and profile training, I would know her—genuinely know her, her personality, what she would do, what she wouldn’t do, everything that makes her her. I would know all of that even if we’d only written letters once a month. She will do the smart thing and that is to not be with us, near us, or anyone we might think we could trust with her. Trust me on this, Stefan. Just . . . trust me.” I gave him a light shove toward the restaurant. I’d said all I could say for now. “And I’ll see Ariel again someday. I can guarantee it. One hundred percent.” It wasn’t a lie. I believed it wholeheartedly. I knew it as I knew her.

“Pancakes and biscuits and gravy,” I ordered to get him moving. “Oh, and hash browns. Four of them. And I know they don’t make milkshakes this early, but maybe could you bribe the manager? Chocolate?”

He narrowed his eyes but started walking. He knew I wasn’t lying. I liked Ariel too much to lie about that. It was embarrassingly plain to see. But he also suspected I wasn’t sharing everything. He let it go, though, and did what I asked him. He trusted me. “You are one weird kid, Misha.”

“I’m not a kid, remember?” And for the first time since I’d been complaining about the term, I knew it was true—I knew it for an absolute fact. I wasn’t a kid, not compared to my twenty-seven-year-old ex -Mafiya bodyguard brother, not compared to the ancient Saul, not compared to anyone. I wasn’t a kid. I would never be one again. I also knew now you shouldn’t wish your youth and pseudo-innocence away.

You’d never get it back.

We found Peter in Tucson.

He was waiting for us. If he was losing confidence that we’d catch up, I didn’t question the logic. But we had other things come up and they would come up again. Raynor couldn’t track me . . . or Godzilla, being in the dark there about ferret chipping, but he had to have an Institute tracker of his own. He would be following Wendy’s chip the same as we were. Peter and the rest of the chimeras, us, and a government sociopath—it was a parade no one wanted to see.

Outside the SUV’s window, I could see the city. I didn’t need a map to know we were in South Tucson. I’d already memorized the map I’d Googled on the computer. It wasn’t Cascade—not a coffeehouse or bakery in sight. There were crumbling buildings and cold, hard faces. I knew why Peter had chosen this particular place in the city. The old man they’d killed in Laramie hadn’t been a challenge. Now Peter was looking for one, or at least more entertainment value.

Stefan was driving now and he clicked the locks shut. “We’re too busy to kick some wannabe-carjacker’s ass right now,” he explained. “Dealt with that crap all the time in Miami. Wannabes. It gets real boring real fast kicking the baby fat off some fifteen-year-old gang-banger with an HK. You have any people working down here, Saul?”

He blew out a puff of air ripe with disgust. “Nope. I tried recruiting some locals a few times, but they kept getting whacked after a few weeks or months. A waste of time. This is a kill zone, pure and simple.”

Peter’s kind of place. I glanced down at the GPS tracker. “Turn left, then left again. They’re less than three blocks from here on the right.” I gave him the address. Discarding the tracker beside me, I pulled the case with the tranq guns out from under Saul’s seat and started unloading them.

“You know that if we park here and live to tell the tale of how we cured a horde of psychotic murdering kids, we’ll have to walk home. The SUV will be gone the instant we’re out of sight,” Saul said.

“That won’t be a problem.” I handed him one of the oversized tranquilizer guns and Stefan the other as he steered with one hand.

“No?” Saul questioned skeptically. “Why is that?”

“People know. Normal people too. They’re in that building up there.” I pointed at the windshield toward the corner ahead of us where a two-level pueblo-style building squatted in a precarious heap at the intersection of two streets. “And everyone in that building is dead. The people around here might not smell them yet or maybe they do, but either way, anyone who was in there is dead. The most oblivious person in the world couldn’t walk past it and not know. They’ll cross the street to avoid it. Instinct. It’s left over from a time when instinct was the only thing that kept early man from being eaten by a giant Canis dirus . No one will come near the building or bother the car.”

“A Canis what?” That would be Saul. Again.

“A dire wolf. A big-ass Pleistocene wolf. A three-hundred-pound people-eating puppy. Woof, woof.” I took a gun of my own out of the case and then closed it.

“Smart-ass.” Saul shifted the tranq gun to one hand while pulling his own gun with the other, once again prepared for any situation. “Why are we trying so hard to save these kids? They killed an entire building full of people. They kill and they love it. If they were normal people, we’d wait until they were old enough, slap ’em on death row, and give them their last booster shot. Jesus, Stefan, Michael, they’re too dangerous to let live. They’re too dangerous to try to cure. That Wendy kid killed the possibly salvageable ones; you said yourself. Why are we risking our lives for murderers without an ounce of remorse?”

“Because they weren’t just born that way. It wasn’t an accident of nature that produced a rare sociopath. Someone made them this way, through genetics and training and brainwashing. They’re monsters, but that’s because a monster mirrored his own ego in them. They deserve a chance, even if it’s not much of one or the monster wins. Jericho wins and that’s not acceptable.” I put my hand out, ready to open the car door. “Let me go first. It’s Wendy’s chip. If she’s there with them, Stefan, you need to stay outside until you hear me yell for you. Saul, you go around back in case a few try to escape.” I doubted sincerely that would happen, but I had to plan for all eventualities. Because of Wendy, I needed to go in first.

Wendy was a new kind of monster. We were all chimeras, a name from the creature of mythology—twoin-one—but Wendy was something else. Wendy was a chimera with a fucking cherry on top. She was another creature of legend.

Basilisk.

Mythology said if one saw you, you died. One look and your life was over. Wendy was that myth, born to reality and walking the earth for the first time.

“What makes you think you’re immune? You said it yourself; Wendy is the only chimera who can hurt other chimeras.” Stefan, like Saul, had his gun backing up the tranq one. He parked the SUV on the street two buildings down from our target. He and I got out and headed for the front of the squat box of a building while Saul headed around the back.

“Peter is running the show and Peter wants something from me. He won’t let Wendy kill me. And,” I muttered low and fast, “I’ve been practicing.”

“Practicing? What do you mean you’ve been—”

The door to what had once been a pawnshop, but was most likely a meth lab now, slammed shut behind me. I’d been quick, because I was that much quicker now—quicker than any human. The door cut off Stefan’s voice and I concentrated. Inside it was quiet. The walls and floor were covered with years of dust and grime. There were bars on the windows, the glass itself covered with newspaper to hide the interior from prying eyes. There were cots all over the one big room. The bodies of several Hispanic men lay dead on them—not because they died peacefully in their sleep, but because there was so little space between them they couldn’t fall to the floor. There were some exceptions where a few cots had been turned or tipped over by death convulsions. Most had guns or knives in their hands or laying by them. They had all, to a man, gone the Basement way. Not one had died easily.