Chapter Eight.

Dain called Cyd on his comm from the helicopter pad. He waited back at ground level in front of Du-mont Towers for about fifteen minutes more until she finally drove up. Without giving it a second thought, she relinquished the driver's seat and settled into the pa.s.senger side.

She looked tense and withdrawn, her relatively sunny mood of earlier gone.

"Like I said, you don't have to go with me to the base," Dain said.

"They start asking questions when I'm not behaving in a partnerlike manner. Let's just go."

He nodded. "Fine. If you start... if you start... getting-"

"Weird?"

He heaved a sigh. "Yeah, if you start getting 'weird,' just give me the say-so and we'll figure something out."

She turned her face away and that was clearly an end to the discussion. That was as much as they ever spoke about it.

Dain hit the road and they took the freeway out of the center of the city, driving in their usual companionable silence. It gave him time to think about Fleur Dumont. Dain didn't get too worked up about keeping personal things personal and business business. Life just wasn't that black and white. Personal relationships were what made business work much of the time.

Of course, that was generally the case when two humans were involved. If you started talking about having a personal relationship with a vampire or a werewolf, things weren't so clear cut. Cyd had it half-right. It wasn't that he couldn't have Fleur Dumont that added to her mystique; it was that he shouldn't.

As if on cue, Cyd muttered a string of obscenities under her breath as they pulled into the parking lot by the front gate of the base. In contrast to the dark, vertical gloom of the inner city, the base sparkled almost obscenely clean and bright. It had an aura of daylight, even at night, and was of course calculated to have that effect, being a sort of intentional psychological statement about the inherent differences between Crimson City's species.

Yes, the place was a ma.s.s of gla.s.s and white stucco, washed over and over to maintain its pristine appearance. It wasn't as if the night species would have trouble locating the place in the dark, so the idea seemed to be flaunting brightness in a kind of power play. During emergencies when the citywide UV lights went on, the white buildings of the base shone like neon beacons through the night, and what looked at first glance like decorative metal piping was actually tubing filled with liquid silver. A web of red security lasers completed the picture.

It was a glittering, gleaming, blinking ma.s.s of human will built up out of the wasteland of the California desert surrounding the LAX airport. Dain hadn't been to Vegas lately, but he'd heard the newest casino was a warped facsimile of this place, c.o.c.ktail waitresses in camouflage miniskirts and drinks named after the different divisions.

Dain and Cyd alike blinked in the blazing light. He might be human, but when one spent as much time riding around in the darkness as they did, it was not an easy adjustment to make. And as they went through a plethora of security checks at the front gate, Cyd seemed to be having trouble adjusting to anything. She was taking deep, calming breaths, but there was nothing else calm about her. He didn't dare make the mistake of asking if she was okay.

It was funny. He didn't feel the way Cyd did about visiting the base. Dain actually felt a sense of comfort here, of order, of things being under control. Sometimes having parameters was a good thing, and the base had those in spades: parameters for behavior on and off the job, parameters for interacting with others, parameters for handling other species. Of course, he chose to ignore half of them under the construct that knowing the rules meant you could figure out how to effectively break them. And really, though he wouldn't have admitted it to anyone, Dain had the sense that joining the security team had saved his life, maybe even his soul. Having a framework kept him in check, for his past was becoming more and more of a blur.

It had always seemed odd that he'd managed to climb as high as he had in his current job with such a shady past. They'd certainly discussed that past during the interview process. He was impressed with what they'd managed to dig up, and by the time he'd finished, he was sure they'd only recruit him as a bruiser, someone to pummel confessions out of reluctant criminals or to delete those without good enough information to trade. But somehow they'd seen his potential. And for that he was truly grateful. It was why he still clocked in on time every night- and why he made a point to visit the base every so often, even without any official business.

What he couldn't explain was why he hadn't just up and signed with Internal Ops out here. They'd offered for him. More money. Even better housing. But he knew that no suit, no fancy house, and no money could really make him fit in. Having a purpose, having parameters, having responsibility... these things "took." But he'd never be like the white knights out here in Internal Ops. And he wished he could figure out why.

Why hadn't he been able to completely shake the darkness that he'd been slowly erasing from his memory over the last decade? It seemed that there was a certain amount of acc.u.mulated darkness in a person that just would never go away. And that was something with which, frankly, Dain had not yet come to terms.

In the reception area, Cyd fixated on Bridget Rothschild's face. Perfect white teeth, flawless ivory skin.

She'd once been that young, that fresh... that clean. While Dain signed them in and plugged the security chips into their comm packs, Cyd's mind started to wander down memory lane, a place she visited too often for her taste. Funny how things worked out. Dain would have given just about anything to remember his past; she would have given just about anything to erase her own. It wasn't clear which one of them had it better.

"Cyd? I know you haven't eaten breakfast. Do you want me to meet you in the cafeteria when I'm done?" Dain asked. He saw she was going "weird" and was giving her an out as usual. It was a miracle he hadn't gotten in trouble over her by now.

"Yeah. That would be great."

Bridget smiled and Cyd had to suppress the urge to tell her to wipe the smile off her face. She felt ugly and hard next to the girl, though they couldn't have been that far apart in age. She remembered sitting in that chair on rotation, fresh out of college. That's how it was. You worked the front desk and the commissary and basically a bunch of s.h.i.t jobs while you studied for placement exams and received training.

Cyd also remembered sharing a pleasant little apartment with a couple of other trainees. And she remembered putting makeup on in the morning, carefully choosing which shoes to wear with her outfit, and curling the ends of her hair, anxious to make as good an impression in person as she did on paper. She'd finished training at the top of her cla.s.s. She'd earned the right to choose her career slot before everyone else.

She would have been better off partying with the underachievers.

A tiny furrow of confusion appeared on Bridget's brow as Cyd continued to stare at her. "Do you want me to show you where the cafeteria is?" she asked hesitantly.

Cyd managed a chuckle. Sometimes it was kind of fun being known as half off her rocker; there was a certain power that went along with it. "Thanks, Bridget. But I remember."

She'd managed to avoid this place for eight months. And prior to that she'd squeaked by with just one meeting in the large conference room adjacent to the entry. She hadn't been this far inside since the day she'd transferred out of Internal Ops. At the end of the hallway was a planter filled with genetically engineered miniature palm trees. They smelled like suntan lotion, fresh air, and the beach. The engineers were getting better-there was a lack of the chemical after-scent that had attended the versions she'd seen before.

The cafeteria was to the right. And though every fiber of her being wanted to go there, to simply turn right and get a cup of coffee and wait the visit out, Cyd found that she couldn't help but turn left instead.

In the hall, she pa.s.sed a couple of people she didn't recognize. Their eyes pa.s.sed over her street attire and then flicked down to the comm device clipped to her waist before flashing her a tight, polite professional smile and continuing on. If the light's blue, let 'em through. If it's red, shoot 'em dead. That's what they used to say.

Her light was blue, of course. And even if one of the trainees in the security booth recognized her face, they probably wouldn't know enough about her story to know that it was a strange thing for Cydney Brighton to intentionally walk back through the double doors of the Department of Paranormal Research & Development down the hall to a faded black door labeled "cleaning supplies," through that closet, and out the back into the lab for demon research.

It was absolutely empty, a far cry from the bustle and wonder and excitement that had filled the small lab when she'd worked there. A layer of dust covered the books in the small library, some of which were still open. A row of Bunsen burners, chemical testers, and forensics equipment were still plugged in. Monitors, digital equipment. Broken gla.s.s from test tubes that had rolled off the counter crunched under Cyd's feet. It surprised her that no one had either cleaned out or barricaded the place. It just looked like the entire team had gotten up to go to lunch one day and never come back.

Her own desk was still there-some of her old things, too. Sweating, her heart suddenly racing as the memories came flooding back, Cyd approached her old work s.p.a.ce. She sat down on the chair and slowly, slowly pulled open the top desk drawer.

And that was all it took to trigger a full-blown panic attack. Her hand shaking and her nose running, Cyd managed to reach into the cargo pocket at her thigh. She pulled out a small capsule, popped the top, and clamped the point into the crook of her arm. Only then was she able to handle looking through the past.

Chapter Nine.

Dain hopped in one of the smartcars parked in the narrow slots by the side door; the mech facility wasn't far but time would be sucked up by the many required security clearances. As he drove down the paved path, the pristine white of the central building faded to a dull olive. The materials here were less sophisticated, though the security was higher. Lasers and metal bars crisscrossed every window, every doorway.

Three retinal scans, two blood p.r.i.c.ks, and a DNA mouth swab later, Dain was finally granted entrance to the barracks. He had no idea how many mechs there were here. Even the task force charged with determining when and how to use the things weren't given such information. He looked down the rows of the buildings but couldn't tell how many were actually used. He looked down at the card handed to him by the clerk at the fourth line of security, and headed for Barracks C, Bunk 14.

A sign on the barracks door said, "Disable all elec-tronic devices." Some of the mechs had delicate wireless instruments imbedded in their bodies. This was a precaution against interference from other signals. Dain switched off his comm and opened the door.

An eerie silence greeted him, though the room was full of mechs readying themselves for some kind of workout. He nodded in greeting, careful not to reflect the too-cheerful mode probably adopted by most bureaucrats who came through on a look-see. He didn't want that kind of a.s.sociation. Sure, the mechs wouldn't care. They were carefully programmed and, if it were even possible, any thoughts, feelings or memories they'd acc.u.mulate over the course of a month, maybe even a week, were surely removed. But somehow, while Dain didn't think of himself as the touchy-feely sort, the possibility that these man-machines might understand somewhere deep inside and be more aware than most people believed-well, somehow that haunted him.

Maybe it seemed likely because they weren't all the same. They weren't identical, and from a visual point of view looked as though they could each have a distinct personality. The mechanical enhancements weren't the same for every mech, either. Some had faceplates, some had weaponry built into their arms and legs, some had panels with circuitry built into their backs, and some had hands so tricked out with metal they looked like gloves. And Dain figured that if you couldn't guarantee identical and consistent duplication of something, you couldn't be sure of what you were creating.

He headed to bunk fourteen. The cot was perfectly made... as were they all. Dain turned to the mech changing into gym shorts at bunk fifteen and gestured to the bank of lockers. "This the missing mech's stuff?"

The mech came to attention and stared straight ahead, a dead, vacant look in his eyes. "Sir, I cannot respond to questions without an a.s.sociated case number, sir!"

Dain looked at the mech, surveyed the chiseled appearance of his face and body. Must have had a female designer. He glanced around the barracks. Each mech had a different but equally impressive body.

He nodded slowly. "As you were," he commanded. The mech fell out of stance and finished changing.

Though there were at least forty mechs in the room changing, complete and total silence fell. "I'm going to have a look at the locker," Dain said to no one in particular. He took out his small forensics kit and painted his hands with sterilized liquid latex. Then he dusted the surface area of the missing mech's innocuous dull metal locker, tucking swab samples into his kit for later review. Someone had been here already. He looked back over his shoulder. Not one of the mechs was watching or showing any sign of interest.

He finished on the outside and opened the locker. It was completely empty. He dusted up and swabbed the inside, then examined the locker's structure. Nothing. Looking over his shoulder, he watched some of the mechs silently file out of the barracks. The one at bunk sixteen was still tying up what looked like specialized boxing shoes. The metal embedded in his thighs and lower legs glinting in the dimly lit room.

Dain closed the locker and moved back to bunk fourteen. "Uh... I'm going to have to take this apart," he said gently, nonplussed by the amount of sympathy he was feeling for something he knew had no trace of human nature left. The mech from bunk sixteen froze and looked at Dain as if it were running a program to process if his statement was some kind of new command.

"As you were," Dain said, as the mech started to stand. "I'm just gonna... Right." He turned back to bed fourteen and took fiber samples of what was clearly pristine bedding. Then he noticed the hairline fracture in one of the bed posts. He removed the top of the bedpost and looked into the hollow tube. It was packed, absolutely packed, with sc.r.a.ps of paper. Sc.r.a.ps of blank, white paper. Dain fought off a strange sense of vertigo; he obviously hadn't been getting enough sleep. He emptied the paper into a plastic bag and stuffed it into his kit.

After one last look around, he exited the barracks and hopped back into the smartcar. While driving, he switched his comm back on, doing a double take at the number of messages that had suddenly cropped up. He immediately dialed in. "B-Ops, this is Dain. What's going on?"

JB's voice came on the line. "Things are getting pretty hairy here, man. We've got dead vamps turning up all over the place... and one very, very beautiful vampire girl trying to reach you."

"Is she at the station?"

"No, she asked you to meet her at-hey, can someone turn the screen a little? Thanks. Okay, the coordinates are 45 degrees south, 16 north-northwest. Strata zero."

Dain whistled. "That's human territory."

"Yeah. It's gettin' hot in here, 'cause that's not all. After the girl called, we started getting reports in from all over the Westside. The fangs may have retaliated."

"You're kidding. You're talking humans? The vamps have started killing humans out in the open?"

"I don't know any of the details, but that's what it looks like. Fair is fair, I guess. I mean, if we're killing them out in the open..."

Dain hoped that wasn't the case. He hoped this wasn't the beginning of an actual war. Had Fleur decided humans were to blame for her brothers' deaths? Had her people attacked? "s.h.i.t. Tell the station clerk I'm heading out to the Westside first, and I'll go meet Dumont after."

"You got it."

Dain disconnected and sped toward the main building where he dumped the smartcar and hightailed it on foot. A quick tour of the cafeteria produced no Cyd, but he found her at the front desk, where Bridget was paging his comm in a frantic voice, even as he headed up.

"Your station's been trying to reach you," she said. "And Cyd's... right here."

"No worries. I got the message. Thanks."

He took one look at Cyd, standing there covered in dust with a suspiciously vacant look in her eyes, put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a little shove toward the exit.

Bridget was staring wide-eyed at the two of them.

"Aw, don't worry about it. She hates this place." He gave her a wink and added, "You have a good lunch, Bridge."

Bridget Rothschild watched the B-Ops team head out to their transport. Lucky Cyd; Dain Reston had a really great a.s.s. She pushed her gla.s.ses up the bridge of her nose with one carefully manicured fingernail, then went back to double-checking the output the boss had entered by voice transcription. Software wasn't perfect, but it was getting there. The mistakes were probably due more to the fact that her boss had sloppy enunciation.

The comm beeped and she picked up the receiver, thankful for the respite.

"Look under your trash can."

Bridget glanced carefully around the room, making a point not to look at the video cameras mounted high in the corners. "Colonel Billings is unavailable to take your call. May I take a message?" She used her elbow to knock the pencil off her desk, then bent over and took advantage of the opportunity to reach under the trash can. A small package of grenade bullets, highly explosive ammunition clearly designed for the gun that had shown up in her lunch pail last week, was taped to the bottom. She detached the bundle and slid it into the gym bag at her feet before sitting upright again.

"Uh-huh, I got it," she said in her best a.s.sistant singsong voice. "I should let you know that it may be a while before the blueprints for the new employee cafeteria will be discussed. We've gone on high alert today."

The voice on the phone, clearly scrambled and now resembling some sort of demonlike cartoon caricature, said softly, "Further instructions to follow." With a click he hung up.

As the all-clear tone pulsed in her ear, Bridget calmly faked the rest of the call, hung up, grabbed her so-called gym bag, and clocked out for a long lunch. She smiled pleasantly to everyone as she headed for the door. She'd be too busy to actually sit down and eat now; she'd have to grab a sandwich to scarf down on the wav back.

Chapter Ten.

In the dank alley, Fleur bent down next to the vampire corpse. It was dessicating quickly and its blood was congealing on the pavement beneath. He wasn't a Dumont, and she didn't know him personally. Not that it mattered.

She checked his hands, the family ring slipping off his finger into her palm. The signet crest was of the Giannini family. "Well, brother, don't you worry. I'm not going to let this pa.s.s." Somebody in the Giannini family would be crying tonight. Fleur knew all about that.

She stepped away from the corpse and let her forensics specialists do their job, pulling potential evidence, snapping pictures. "Fleur, look."

She stared down at the fingernail the technician held up between tweezers. "Werewolf?"

"Looks like it to me," the technician said, slipping the evidence into an envelope. "I'll find out if there's any UV in the claw."

"A werewolf. The dogs. That's just not really what I expected."

"Then you're just not really going to expect this either. There's more. I'm actually pulling human, werewolf, and vampire DNA here."

"Vampire? As in rogue vampire?"

The technician shrugged. "Couldn't say, but it's not this guy's."

Fleur frowned. "This sounds like an evidence dump. Like someone purposely is trying to obscure what species is responsible." She tucked her comm earpiece more snugly against her head and dialed Marius.

A click, then: "I'm here, Fleur."

"What do you have for me?"

"We've been chasing through the city. Two down here. We haven't gotten to any of them in time."

Marius sighed. "With the one you're checking out, that's three of our kind slain."

Fleur shook her head sadly. "All right. Well, please make a concerted effort to round up any evidence we can bring to the humans-or to the dogs, if it comes to that. I've got a lot of mixed evidence here. I'm not sure who's behind this."

"Will do, Fleur." Marius paused. "By the way, one of these guys was Roddy."

Roddy? He was one of the old party crowd and Paulina's old flame, to boot. Fleur licked her lips and did her best to keep her voice steady. "Thanks, Marius. I'll see you in the war room."

From the alleyway she could see Dain Reston pull up in a transport. What were the humans up to? Or were they being set up, like Reston seemed to think?