Beyond These Walls (16 page)

Lovely.

Tony gestured for me to sit on top of a plastic milk crate. I graciously declined. “So what’s this about Quinn?”

“He came by a couple of nights ago.” Tony snatched the pipe from the woman’s hands and offered it to me. Again, I shook my head and waited for him to continue. He did, but only after sucking in a plumb of smoke. “Quinn said he had something heavy going down, and he needed lots of guns.”

Son-of-a-bitch.

“Please tell me you didn’t give’em to him.” Bad enough to have to worry about Quinn and a vaccine, but Quinn armed to the pearly whites and a mutant erasing vaccine was another matter.

Tony laughed. “Indy, you know better than anyone. I never give anything away.” He paused. “For free.”

“So you sold him some weapons.” I scratched my head, either a reaction from the filth around me or flea-lice. Glancing around I decided either option seemed plausible. “How many guns did he buy?”

“Ten .50 caliber Tac’s.” He blinked a few times. “A couple of explosives too. A few timers. You know, the standard order.” For taking over a small country. What the hell was Quinn up to? Was he and the rest of Resden gearing up for a hostile mutant takeover? I had to warn Jake.

“Listen Tony.” I reached for his arm, dropping it quickly when I noticed the oozing abscesses and scabs covering his flesh. “Quinn’s working for Resden.”

Tony’s brow wrinkled as if I’d spoken in a foreign language. “No, no. Quinn’s a friend. One of us. A rebel, baby.”

I shook my head, anger at his denial burned in my gut. “So why’d he shoot me? And why does he live in the human world? Quinn’s a traitor. You gave guns to a traitor.”

“I didn’t know,” Tony whispered. His bloodshot eyes filled with blood red tears. Guilt rose inside me. Blood sucking mutant-rock addicted Feys didn’t have many mutants to call friend. Neither did gun totting, smart-mouthed Stannums for that matter.

I patted his wing. “It’s okay. I won’t let Quinn hurt us. But I need your help.”

“Whatever you need.” He nodded his head, a wide fanged smile crossing his face. I shivered at the sight of his red stained teeth, but forced myself to smile back. The things I do to save the world, I thought, taking his hand in mine and slipping him Quinn’s Gold card.

Chapter 33

Freshly armed with a twin pair of nine-millimeters and enough bullets to destroy a hundred agents, I waved to Tony and jogged up the street. My boots pounded to the beat of a basketball on pavement. As I ran up the asphalt the kids paused their game long enough to decide I wouldn’t be an easy treat. When I reached the center of Fey town, I stopped to catch my breath. Even the hungriest of Fey-suckers wouldn’t dare snatch me from the center of the street in broad daylight.

Or not.

A Fey-sucker dressed in a dark business suit sniffed the air next to me. “Something smells good,” he said, his fangs growing with each word.

“Thanks,” I murmured, flagging down a passing cab and launching myself inside. I gave the cabbie, a half-breed Fey-sucker with one wing, the address of the HELLO MUTANT-KITTY factory and settled back against the worn seat.

My cell phone vibrated. I pulled it from my pocket and checked the caller ID. It read London West and a number I didn’t recognize. I debated sending the call to voice mail. It was probably a mutant-marketer trying to sell me the latest in Direct Mutated TV. But something stopped me. “Hello?”

“Indeara?” Nobody’s voice crackled through the phone. I could barely hear him over the static. Again with the bad reception. Did Mutant T & T have some kind of vendetta against me?

“Where’ve you been?” I yelled into the mouthpiece. “I’ve left twenty messages on your mobile.”

“Twenty-three to be exact,” Nobody’s drawl echoed in my ear. “But that’s not why I called.”

“How ominous.”

Nobody chuckled, but tensely, as if talking to me caused him pain. “Indeara, I’ve got some news. Someone told the HOA where to find Quinn. They’re on their way to arrest him.”

Arrest Quinn? “But he’s one of them.”

“No,” Nobody said. “David West is one of them. According to the HOA Quinn Daniels is the leader of the Resistance. Once he’s captured they’ll kill him.”

I felt sick. Whatever I felt about Quinn I didn’t want him dead. Okay, I wanted him dead, but by my own hand, not the victim of an HOA bullet.

“Where’s Jake?” The urgency in Nobody’s tone gained my attention. He sounded near panic, something I rarely heard in his voice.

“I don’t know. Why?” My heart slammed in my chest. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t have time to get into it.” He paused. “Just lay low and wait for my call.” When I didn’t answer, he added, “I mean it. For my sake don’t do anything stupid.”

Had anyone else said those words I would’ve shredded them into bits. But Nobody knew me better than anyone. Hell, at times, he knew me better than I knew myself. I agreed keeping my fingers crossed like a schoolgirl.

Nobody’s sigh echoed through the phone line. “Just be careful. And stay as far away from Jake as you can,” he said and hung up. Nobody’s final words seeped slowly into my brain. Stay away from Jake, he said, but why? What did Jake have to do with the HOA, and Quinn’s capture? Why wouldn’t anyone tell me what was going on?

In a flash, the word Umber popped into my head. Agent Umber to be precise. My mind pictured Jake and Agent Umber huddled together at the reptoe party, and the GPS chip Jake had embedded in my clothes. Is that why Jake had agreed to slip past the wall and help me find Nobody? Was he using me to find Quinn for the HOA?

Idiot.

I’d stupidly led Jake and the HOA right to Quinn. Guilt twisted my stomach into a large knot as I pictured Quinn locked inside a lab jar. Even after everything he’d done to me, to mutantity, he didn’t deserve whatever the HOA had in store for him. No one did.

Damn Jake.

“I’ll give you an extra twenty if you get me to the warehouse in ten minutes.” I plastered the cash against the bulletproof glass between the cabbie and me.

“You got it, sister,” he said, slamming his foot on the gas. I jerked back against the seat as the cab surged forward, eating up the distance between the traitorous leader of the Resistance and me. Make that, the soon to be bloody leader of the Resistance.

A few miles outside of Mutant City, a yellow fire truck filled with mutant volunteers appeared behind us, its sirens screaming like a reptoe in a blender. The cabbie yanked the wheel and we pulled to the side to let the fire truck pass. Clouds of smoke billowed from the next block. The same block as the HELLO MUTANT-KITTY warehouse. My stomach clenched, and in my heart, I knew the fire trucks final destination.

I was too late.

Much too fucking late.

Chapter 34

The ground under my feet heated, a side effect of the intense flames circling the HELLO MUTANT KITTY warehouse. Flames burned so brightly that the mutated firefighters, their flame retardant flesh blackened and burned, stayed far back. I watched helplessly as the building burned. Tears flowed freely down my cheeks from the thick smoke and heart breaking grief. I’d caused this. All of it.

“Looks like arson,” a fire-mutant said to the firefighter standing next to me. He held up an explosive device, its timer cracked from the heat of the fire.

“Any survivors?” I asked, my nails digging into the palm of my hand, leaving half-moon puncture wounds. The mutant shook his head. “I’m sorry, miss. The fire’s so hot it’s unlike we’ll recover any bodies. Poor bastard never had a chance.”

Bodies. Children really. I swallowed past the lump lodged in my throat and nodded, praying Caren hadn’t suffered.

But I knew she had. They all had.

“We did find the body of a hunter,” the fire-mutant said, waving in the direction of the warehouse. “But he died long before the fire got to him. Poor bastard took two bullets to the head.”

Jake.

In the end had he tried to destroy or save the Resistance? Did it matter either way? My heart ached for the dead children, and for the man I’d thought Jake was. A man trapped between worlds, a man so much more like me than I’d ever realized. With a final glance at the burned building I whispered a prayer. One Calvin had taught me long ago.
Now I lay me down to sleep…

But there’d be no rest for me.

Not now.

Not ever again.

******

Mindlessly I made my way from the burning wreckage of the Resistance to the wall. I felt completely numb. No thoughts or emotions broke through the coldness inside me. At the wall a line of mutants waited to cross over. But row of guards, all heavily armed, stood in front of the gate preventing the mutants travel.

“Please disperse.” The oldest of the guards, his face wrinkled with age and alcohol, waved his arms. “The wall is on lock down. No one gets past. Return to your homes.”

I smiled and stepped closer to the gate. I didn’t have a home or a family. Not anymore. Resden and the HOA had seen to that. My feet continued forward until I stood face to face with the armed guard. “Wanna see my passport?” I smiled, my face frozen. I would pass through the gate.

One way or another.

“We don’t want no trouble.” The old man held up his hand. “Step back, girl, before you get hurt.”

I licked my lips, tasting the flavor of soot and ash. “I suggest you step aside.” Pressing my finger into the guard’s chest, I added, “Before you get hurt.”

He jerked his weapon up, but before he fired, I jammed my thumb between the firing pin. The hammer smashed into the bones of my digit, crushing them into a mutated mulch. The pain stole my breath but I just smiled.

The guard’s eyes widened, which gave me enough time to slip one of my nine-millimeters from its holster and blow a six-inch hole in his forehead. He flew backwards, taking his weapon and my thumb with him. Blood shot from my hand, but the pain wasn’t too bad. More like ripping off a bandage, a really big bandage, one glued on with superglue. It had happened so fast the other guards had no chance to react. They scrambled for their guns, flipping off the safeties and aiming in one motion.

Fuck it.

Rather than battle it out, I shoved the smallest of the guards from the gate, shot the lock, and pushed my way through. I ran as fast as I could in my pink combat boots and twenty pounds of armament.

Bullets slammed into my back, nearly knocking me from my feet, but somehow I managed to stay upright. Blood, almost pinkish in color, dripped between my shoulder blades from a bullet wound that nearly severed my spine. But still I kept running.

Just when pain and blood loss reached unbearable, I found sanctuary behind a mutant trash truck. My teeth started to chatter as if a blanket of coldness had wrapped itself around me. For a brief minute my vision turned hazy and grey. My stomach rolled seconds before blood and bile shot up my esophagus. I puked into the gutter spilling the lining of my intestines.

Get up or die here, my mind screamed.

Somehow I found the strength to stagger the few blocks to Quinn’s loft. Just my luck, the elevator wasn’t in working order, and the steps looked like Mt. Everest.

I hated the human world.

By the fourth floor landing the blood leaking from my multitude of gunshot wounds stopped. Bloody slugs dropped from my body, landing with tinny clinks against the stairs. My thumb had also grown back, a little bit shorter and crooked, but functional. I smiled, thanking evolution for kicking ass one more time.

After fifteen grueling minutes on hell’s Stairmaster, also known as a four-story walk up, I reached Quinn’s loft. My body had regenerated to the point survival seemed possible, even if breathing didn’t.

I had to warn Quinn and stop the HOA before they nabbed him. If I helped him I might be able to convince him to destroy the vaccine. All of mutantity depended on it.

Too late, my mind whispered as I reached Quinn’s loft.

The front door stood wide open. Furniture lay broken and scattered around the once spotless room. The white leather couch bled bits of fluffy fabric like tuffs of sheared sheep-hogs. I expected to find Quinn’s bloodied corpse somewhere in the mess. Prepared myself for it. But the closest I came to a corpse was the shredded skin of David West.

Empty, of course.

I picked my way through the shattered pieces of Quinn’s borrowed life, stooping to pick up a battered, well-read copy of
The Iliad
, and a photograph of David West, his arm around a blonde woman.

Blonde woman.

I looked closer at the picture.

Shit.

The woman in the photograph was the same woman with Nobody at the reptoe party. The same woman who’d attacked Quinn the night I’d stolen his ID. Who was she and what did she have to do with this mess? I needed to find out and soon. Nobody’s life depended on it. Not to mention Quinn’s and maybe my own. I set the photograph down. There was only one way to find out. I checked the magazine of both nine-millimeters, and stood.

From the doorway, the sound of a bullet entering the chamber reverberated in the silent room. “Hello Indeara.”

Chapter 35

“We haven’t been properly introduced,” the blonde woman said, the gun in her hand pointed at my heart. She looked like a beauty queen in her prime, except for her cold smile and the gun, of course. “I’m London West.”

“West?” My forehead arched. Had Quinn left me for this woman? Did he marry her? I could see why. She surpassed all definitions of beautiful. From the top of her glossy hair to the tips of her Prada shoes she screamed young, rich, powerful, and sexy.

London smiled, showing off even, gleaming teeth. Could I hate her more? “Yes, David West was my husband,” she said.

“Was?” Damn, I sounded like a parrot.

She nodded. “Yes, was. As much as it pains me to admit it, it’s true. I married David five years ago.”

“Congratulations.” I tilted my head to the side, my fingers brushing the outline of my PM40 tucked under my shirt. “Sorry I missed the wedding.” At least she’d answered the Quinn question. He’d only livid in David West for the past three years. So what was Quinn and her relationship? Did she know he livid inside the body of her husband?