Rob Thurman - Basilisk

“Give us at least a week to come back for him,” I warned, putting a finger through the bars to rub his small head. He promptly bit me and I smiled. It was two predators bonding, not a good-bye, because that was what I chose to believe.

Once again we were supplied with an SUV. I didn’t have anything against the environment, but when you hauled around as many weapons as Stefan and Saul needed to feel comfortable, you required a roomy vehicle. “I’ll drive,” Stefan said.

I claimed the passenger seat. Saul could sit in the back all but buckled into an infant’s car seat for once. “His sister rescues animals and he sells guns to anyone with the cash. People are strange,” I said, slamming the door behind me as Stefan began to navigate our way out of the airport parking garage.

“Says the genetic superman riding around with an ex-mobster brother and an international criminal mastermind,” Saul pointed out.

I didn’t know about the mastermind part, but the rest was true enough. It didn’t change the fact that people were strange. In our case I liked to think it was a good kind of strange.

It was an hour and a half from Portland to Cascade and in that time I told them my plan, which, compared to all the other plans I’d engineered in the past years, was beyond simple. We went to the bridge, I did my best to stop Wendy from killing us, we shot the chimeras with the tranq guns, everyone was cured, and we went back to another nice hotel. And if Raynor showed up, he could simultaneously distract the chimeras while we shot them, again with the tranq guns, and Stefan could beat him to a pulp afterward.

“Sad to say, that’s my plan too,” Stefan admitted. “But it’s a crappy plan. We’re on a bridge with no place to hide or set up an ambush, although since I imagine they’ll be waiting for us, that’s a point in our favor. At least they can’t ambush us either. If they were ordinary people, weak, puny, and not too bright like Saul and me”—he punched me casually in the arm—“I’d say our chances were good. Saul kicked ass in the military, I kicked ass on the streets, and you are the self-proclaimed Einstein of our times.”

“I’d say that’s an accurate description,” I agreed without a hint of a smirk, although I’d seen couples at night cross the street if they saw Stefan coming. Hell, I’d seen three or four men cross the street. Weak and puny he was not. He looked not like what he was all the time, but like what he was capable of being anytime—a wolf in human skin.

“A suicide run with a couple of smart-asses,” Saul mumbled. “I hate my life.”

Stefan continued. “But they’re not like Saul and me. They’re like you, Misha. They’re fast and strong and smart as fucking hell. And Peter has them doing whatever he says, which makes him something even more than them.”

“Except for Peter and maybe Wendy, they shouldn’t be as fast and strong as I am. That comes with maturity, and the rest of the chimeras are years younger than Peter.” Except one. “And Raynor is smart as well. In a different way and in this case it might be a better way,” I said. “We’re trained to take out targets, usually one—maybe two or three. We didn’t need to worry about defensive tactics, because no one would suspect us. Someone falls over because of a natural death and a cute sixteen-year-old waitress who was serving him dinner goes into hysterics. Who’s going to blame the waitress for a heart attack because her hand brushed his when she handed him his glass of water? No one. When Raynor kills people, chances are everyone in the area is going to know it and Raynor is vulnerable. He can be killed much more easily than a chimera. Don’t think he doesn’t know that and that he doesn’t value himself very highly.”

Stefan nodded. “I wondered if you’d see that. You know, then. Raynor won’t be coming alone.”

“You were testing me?” I scoffed. “The fully trained assassin?”

“You said it yourself. Chimera warfare is different than human warfare. You’re like a single bullet, elegant and deadly. Humans are like ten thousand NASCAR fans, each one with his own tank. If our lives are at stake, we are bringing all we have, all we can borrow, and all we can steal. Raynor is definitely not coming alone. Whoever he brings won’t know a damn thing about chimeras. That’s Raynor’s secret. But they’ll be shooters and the kind that don’t mind mowing down a kid or two to get the rest to cooperate. Not to mention Tasers, the rubber bullets like Raynor used on you.” He tapped a finger on my head. “Not as hard as it seems. Who knew? Raynor goddamn knew, Misha. So if something happens to me or Saul, remember that. Raynor is more than a distraction to be used. He’s a genuine threat.”

He was. He was human, but I couldn’t dismiss that he’d caught me and had me chained in his car. ’“I’ll remember, but nothing is going to happen to you.”

“Hello? I’m along for the ride too. How about nothing is going to happen to me?” Saul complained.

Stefan ignored him to say, “And Saul and I might not have USDA-grade assassin stamped on our asses, but between the two of us we’ve killed a shitload more people than you care to know about. So don’t be so quick to jump between me and a bullet this time. If you can keep Wendy from doing her creepy thing, I can take care of myself. Okay?” He waited until I confirmed it.

“All right.”

“If we’re lucky, we’ll all get out of this in one piece,” he finished. Then he gave me a hell-on-wheels grin and quoted my favorite word: “Theoretically.”

I tried to grin back, but I didn’t feel it. I planned on this working, but I thought that Butch and Sundance had planned on eventually leaving Bolivia in one piece too. I wished now I hadn’t given us their names while we’d lived in Cascade.

As omens went, it wasn’t a good one.

It shouldn’t have felt like coming home with Peter and the others waiting to punish me, and if “punish” wasn’t to kill slowly and painfully, then my imagination wasn’t all that I knew it was. It did though—it felt like coming home. We’d been gone only a few days, but I’d missed it. It didn’t stretch my mind, make me learn faster, soak up more knowledge, instinctively fit in better as the adrenaline rush of being on the run did, but it was a nice place all the same. It felt the same as when I watched one of my favorite movies for the fifth or tenth time. I knew every line of dialogue, every explosion, every wave that crashed against a sinking ship, every gunshot, but it was as good as the very first time I watched it . . . better almost. It was warm, familiar, and safe. I’d not had a moment of that in the Institute. I learned the value of it when I’d escaped.

The Bridge to the Heavens was blocked off on Cascade’s end by the sheriff’s car. Sheriff Simmons was dead on the road beside it, and I saw Jess Quillino, his deputy, her legs showing beyond the bumper from the other side of the car. Other than that, there were no other people around—none alive. The bridge over the dam didn’t go anywhere too important, definitely not to an infinity of heavens. If you crossed it and drove about forty miles on a single-lane road, you’d get to a town small enough that it made Cascade seem like New York City. Hardly anyone made the trip from this direction and if they were coming from the other direction, that end of the bridge was blocked by the Institute bus, long GPS disabled; I was certain.

I passed out the tranq guns, tightened my lips, and went with one hope—that I didn’t get us all killed. “Stoipah, Saul, just remember one thing. They’re not kids. They never were. If something goes wrong, they’ll kill you and they’ll laugh while they do it. If it goes bad, use your guns, not the tranq ones. And be sure to shoot them in the head. So—” I inhaled, exhaled hard, and opened the car door. “Let’s go.”