Kelly Meding - Wrong Side of Dead

Wyatt insisted I not go alone or without weapons, so it was a good ten minutes later before we were in a Jeep and driving north. It was less than an hour until dawn, the streets quiet and thick with summer heat. We’d taken a real Jeep with the removable plastic roof and windows, and the hot air blasted us. I twisted my hair around one hand, wishing I’d thought to grab a rubber band or something.

We were crossing the Lincoln Street Bridge toward downtown when Wyatt asked, “Did you get to ask your question?”

“Huh?”

“Felix. You said you had to ask him something.”

“Oh, no. I didn’t.” The conversation had abruptly changed when he brought Thackery into it. The kidnapped Therians and the Halfie army had to be connected somehow, and knowing Thackery’s hatred of vampires and penchant for scientific experimentation, it probably wasn’t good. We also knew that Thackery had been threatening Felix’s loved ones to ensure his cooperation. In some ways, that spoke to Felix’s level of sanity and control, but there had to be more.

“What was the question?”

I almost commented on curiosity and cats, but it would have been funny only if Marcus was around. Still, talking was better than awkward silences. “Back on the roof of the rave, I asked Felix how he was able to maintain his sanity, despite the infection.”

“And?”

“He said he just did, but that’s bullshit. There’s something else, and I want to know what.”

Wyatt turned onto Atlantic Avenue, which would take us north into the heart of Mercy’s Lot. Our ultimate destination was just a bit farther south, on the border of the Lot and the rest of downtown. A place I used to know very, very well.

“Shit,” Wyatt suddenly said.

I gave him a sharp look, but he didn’t seem alarmed. “What is it?”

He glanced at me, a peculiar expression on his face. “What if Thackery developed some sort of serum that helps half-Bloods maintain their sanity? Like a Halfie Prozac or something? What if that’s the other thing he’s holding over Felix?”

A chill wrapped around my heart and squeezed. “If Thackery did that, he’d have loyal and sane Halfies at his disposal.” And it made a horrific kind of sense, considering Thackery’s need to be crowned World’s Maddest Mad Scientist. “But why the body dumps?”

“Maybe they’re failed experiments. Maybe the serum didn’t work, so he killed them. We didn’t collect samples from those body dumps. We’ll never know if there was anything unusual in their physiology.” He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. “It’s also possible that some of them refused to enlist in Thackery’s private army, serum or not, so he had them disposed of.”

“That’s an awful lot of maybes and ifs, Wyatt.”

“You know, that’s usually my line.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” He reached out with his right hand and squeezed my arm. “The idea of it scares the shit out of me, too, Evy, but we both know what Thackery is capable of scientifically. We can’t disregard the possibility.”

I hated that he knew me so well. Walter Thackery and his experiments had been haunting my afterlife since the first time I ran into one of his hounds. His fingerprints covered every major event since my resurrection, and he’d been as difficult to capture as an eel in an oil slick. We were no match for him intellectually, and so far he’d had all kinds of hybrid monsters doing his physical dirty work. The Halfies were just another in a long line of victims.

Just like Wolf Boy had been. Discovering that an actual werewolf had been alive and well and moving freely in the city had thrown the Assembly into a tizzy. As a Clan, werewolves had supposedly gone extinct in the early sixteenth century. No one would tell me why (“It’s Clan business, Stone, and it’s need to know” was a favorite statement from Michael Jenner); they’d say only that werewolves had been bloodthirsty, nasty creatures with no desire to adapt and live among humans. They preferred wolf form, preferred the hunt, and offered no mercy to their prey.

That Thackery had one in his employ until I killed the kid during the destruction of Boot Camp … Well, it had the Assembly on the alert for signs of others popping up. So far, none had. But that didn’t mean Wolf Boy was the only one Thackery knew about. Thackery never showed all his cards at once.

Wolf Boy, the hounds, the hybrids, his never-ending experiments—all served to remind me that Thackery was little more than a sociopath. And that he terrified me on the most basic of levels.

I squared my shoulders, more for me than Wyatt, because he couldn’t really see it anyway. “I’m not disregarding the theory. Hiding from something until it goes away isn’t my style, Wyatt.”

“I know that. Just making sure you didn’t forget.”

The temptation to knuckle him in the arm was almost too strong to resist. Childish, maybe, but dammit, he still knew how to bring that out in me. He knew my buttons better than anyone. “So Thackery knows how to make Halfies less crazy, and he’s now recruiting an army of them to do what?”

“The last six years of his life have been dedicated to curing vampirism in humans. He thought your blood would help.”

“Yeah, I was there, thanks,” I deadpanned.

He slowed for a left turn. “But it didn’t, is my point. What if Thackery got to a place where he decided if you can’t beat them, join them?”

“Fight fire with fire?”

“Whichever metaphor you want, yes. He could theoretically use those Halfies to attack the vampires. Look at how those Halfies fought for Tovin at Olsmill. They almost match full-Blood vampires in strength and speed. Their biggest flaw was being mostly bat shit insane.”

“Which Thackery has taken care of.”

“Exactly.”

I dropped my face into the palms of my hands, mind racing. This was bad on so many levels. Granted, it was all fucking theory, but it was a damned good theory. All of the pieces fit, and it did make an awful kind of sense.

Wyatt’s hand slid up my arm to squeeze my shoulder. “We’re almost there.”

I sat up. Familiar row homes and middle-class apartment buildings lined the rolling streets of this small slice of city halfway between the bustle of downtown and the desperate poverty of Mercy’s Lot. Wyatt parked near a familiar telephone booth, within view of my destination.

“Hang here while I go look,” I said.

He nodded, surprising me with his lack of protest at my wanting to go alone. “I’ll call Astrid and let her in on our new theory.”

“Okay.”

I grabbed a spare pair of sweatpants from the backseat and climbed out. I walked up the inclined sidewalk toward an empty lot half a block long and nearly as deep. The last time I was here, the blackened rubble of a major apartment building fire still lay scattered in heaps and piles. In the intervening months, someone had cleared the lot of debris, leaving behind a cement foundation and an asphalt parking lot. All other evidence of the Sunset Terrace Apartments was gone, bulldozed away. Forgotten.

But not by everyone.

A familiar figure was sitting cross-legged a few dozen yards away, back to me, easy to spot even in the gloom of faraway streetlights. I approached slowly, taking noisy steps, allowing the gentle breeze to carry my scent to him. Phin turned his head when I closed in to less than ten feet, then looked away. It wasn’t an invitation. It also wasn’t a “get the hell away from me,” so I took it as permission to come closer.

I sat next to him on the warm concrete, noting the knife-shaped object in his lap.

“Rufus called you,” Phineas said.

“Yes.”

“He’s concerned.”

“We all are, Phin. You left without telling anyone where you were going, and right now, we can’t afford to let you out of our sight.”