Violet swallowed. “I don’t believe you.” She couldn’t. She
wouldn’t.
Daxus stared at her implacably. Didn’t anything ever bring up a reaction in this bastard? “Just bring him to me, Violet. If you don’t, the antigen will die with him and neither will be any good to anybody.”
Violet’s hands curled into helpless fists, the fingernails digging brutally into her own flesh. “You said you were his
father,
for God’s sake!”
Before Daxus could answer—and she doubted she would have liked what he had to say, anyway—another voice cut across the room. “No, Violet.” When she whirled, Violet saw Six standing shakily in the doorway. All the color had washed out of his face and one hand gripped the woodwork as he tried to steady himself. “I don’t have a father,” he said. She could tell from his voice that he was trying to be tough, and strong, and all the things that a boy of his age
should
be. All the things with which he had absolutely no experience. He sure was a fighter.
“No?” Daxus’s 3-D gaze cut to the boy and now he sounded even more amused, like he might break out in a chuckle at any moment. As Six wobbled forward to stand by Violet, without giving any hint about what he was going to do, Daxus reached two fingers under his chin and pulled a piece of white material up from his shirt collar. As she and Six watched, Violet realized it was a sterile surgical mask, the kind typically worn by everyone nowadays. In another moment, the man had it covering the lower half of his face so that only his dark, glittering eyes showed.
Standing beside her now, Violet saw the child shrink back from the anonymous-looking image a few feet in front of him. The boy’s eyes widened in fear and his hand came up and covered his mouth before he could cry out. The gesture made Daxus grin—Violet could tell what his expression was by the way the mask pulled tightly across the sides of his broad, square jaw. When Daxus pulled the mask back down, she saw that she hadn’t been wrong. “More precisely,” Daxus said smugly, “he’s my
clone.
Number six in a series of eight.”
Oh, if only Daxus were in the room with her so she could wipe that smirk off his face. Instead, she could only snarl helplessly. “What the fuck
difference
does it make? He’s a child, you monster!”
Now Daxus laughed outright. “Monster?” he repeated mockingly. “And what are
you?
More to the point—what is
he
to you? Some sort of bizarre surrogate?”
Violet’s mouth worked but she couldn’t reply, and Daxus’s mouth stretched into a scornful smile—he knew he’d hit a nerve. “A vampire and a dying human child—what a pathetic picture.” His expression relaxed, the leer melting once more into his polished businessman facade. That was instantly replaced by an expression much more sly. “I’ll make you another just like him, Violet,” he offered. “One that’s not . . .
broken.
You won’t even be able to tell the difference, I promise.” Amazingly, his voice softened to a tone that might have held a tinge of sympathy. “I might even be able to help you with that problem you have in your own blood.”
She was so furious that her pulse was pounding in her temple—
thud
thud
thud
—nearly loud enough to block out the words coming through the phone’s microphone. Quick as a snake, her fingers reached up and snapped on a button on her mouth-mic, then she snatched up the telephone and snapped its connection into place. “Trace!”
Again, Daxus’s image laughed at her, this time with undisguised entertainment. “Why track the call, Violet? I’ll
tell
you where I am. I
want
you to bring me the boy.”
But Violet only looked at him from beneath half-closed eyelids. Her voice was low and very, very dangerous. “I’m going to bring you a lot more than that, you
fuck.
”
His lips tightened—finally some reaction. Perhaps there was a bit of human left in him after all, some little part of him that rightfully still knew how to feel fear. “I have seven hundred soldiers here with me,” he told her rigidly. “What do you really think you can do against that many men?”
Violet’s lips stretched over her teeth as she stood perfectly still in front of the Daxus 3-D, but her expression wasn’t even close to a smile. “I can kill them,” she said flatly.
The complete confidence in her voice must have registered somewhere in Daxus’s brain, because she could see his cheeks go pale, the loss of coloring even more apparent beneath the crown of his nearly black hair. He leaned forward quickly on his invisible chair, obviously reaching for his phone, but it was too late—a schematic of the city flashed on the screen of Violet’s cell, a small, blinking red blip indicating the origin of the call. Violet tilted her head and glared at Daxus. “The ArchMinistry,” she said. She didn’t need to say anything else, so she just killed the call and watched Daxus’s suddenly terrified image wink into nothingness.
Violet stared hatefully at the spot where Daxus’s image had been, then inhaled sharply and turned back toward Six. “Let’s go meet your maker—”
The boy was lying on the floor in the doorway.
Unmoving.
Crossing the few yards to get to him was like moving through ancient, chilled amber—it took hours, days,
years.
All the muscles in her body tensed and Violet felt the uneven tile beneath the soles of her boots as she moved toward Six, but at the same time, she
didn’t
—every nerve ending in her body had gone suddenly, shockingly numb. She could walk and balance but she had to do it on autopilot, had to allow her body to lead the way and hope she didn’t fall, because if she did, the notion of putting out an arm to stop herself was unfathomable—her thoughts were far too focused on the boy for anything else to interfere.
Her knees bent, then thunked hard against the cold floor. She didn’t feel the pain of the impact. “Six?”
No response. She could see his chest still rising with each inhalation, but each movement was jerky and unevenly timed with barely an exhalation to push the used air from his body. If he heard her at all, it was clear he didn’t have enough strength to answer.
Violet didn’t have time to waste on being afraid or trying to help him when she had no medicine or tools—if she wanted to make any kind of a difference, she had to move and she had to move
now.
There was nothing she could do for him anyway short of CPR, and he wasn’t at that point yet. Violet bent and gathered Six in her arms, then stood and strode out of the abandoned building, trying to stretch each step out and gain as much distance as she could without actually running—bouncing his body up and down was the last kind of trauma he needed right now. To the outside world it was bad enough that she was carrying a child in her arms who was as limp as a dead body and clearly sick; running would
really
call attention to the two of them. All it would take was one call—someone on the street who wanted to be anonymous and was using a disposable cell phone—and she’d have the ArchMinistry’s security forces chasing down the two of them with nothing but extermination orders. At least if she could get him to the ArchMinistry there might be hope. Damned little of it, but still . . .
It was still overcast outside, cooler and a little dimmer now as the afternoon wore on and the sun went lower in the sky. She wished it were full dark—the night could be so forgiving of those in the world who were forced to hide from the rest of humanity. The neighborhood here was still empty and quiet, but a short couple of blocks would take the two of them back into the city proper, and then she could bet her little “package” would be noticed right away. No . . . she had to find another method of transport.
But that would be easy. After all, she was what she was, and the people walking around here?
They were only humans.
“Hi there.”
The guy looked up in surprise and his sale, a prostitute with a scarlet-colored wig and a strapless red velvet minidress, backed away and took off—but not before snatching a packet of something unidentifiable out of the guy’s hand. He glanced at Violet, then at the fleeing street girl, and gave a sign of disgust.
“What?” he said. “You a cop?”
He was a nice-looking guy and Violet could see how he made his way—once he drove that car of his, a black Viper Series XII, out of this ’hood and back to the New Gold Coast area, he’d look like just another one of the upscale young lawyers who lived, worked, and played up there. Apparently the legal field wasn’t quite cutting it, though—places like this held a little more bang for the buck as far as paying the law school loans.
Violet grinned at him, but it was anything but genuine. She’d left Six sitting propped up against a trash can around the corner, carefully concealed beneath an oversized piece of cardboard, a piece of an old appliance box. It was a degrading thing to do to him, but it was the best she could offer on short notice. Stumbling across this idiot and his extremely nice ride was a piece of luck that she wasn’t stupid enough to let pass them by. “Do I look like a cop?”
He eyed her warily and stepped back a little, moving to the inside of his still open driver’s side door. Not good—he probably had a gun in there, something small and easily concealed that he could slide into the map pocket of the door and hide behind a few papers. The authorities would have liked to have everyone believe that outlawing handguns centuries ago had “fixed” the handgun problem, but all it had done was stop Mr. and Mrs. Average from being able to find one. The criminals would always have their sources, and this man was nothing but a really pretty bad guy.
“You could be,” he said now. “They come in all shapes and sizes.”
“True enough,” she agreed. She tilted her head, trying to go for the innocent look. “But I’m not. I’m just looking to score.” To add to the effect, Violet glanced around nervously.
He relaxed a little, but Violet could tell he was still a little hinky. She was still too far away to grab him before he could jump in the car and take off, and she needed that car desperately.
“Score what?” He had light brown hair, very clean-cut—that lawyer image again—and was dressed in very expensive, stylish clothes. Brown eyes, like his hair, but they were narrow and suspicious. He was probably a pretty successful drug dealer; at the very least he was smart enough to do his business elsewhere. The car was probably custom—it might even have reinforced doors to stop bullets. The thought made her want it even more.
“Look,” Violet said and pulled her hand out of her pocket. The yellow card she held up was pretty standard issue, another one of those single use credit cards recognized by everyone. The bracelet she’d given Six back at the vending machines was small time, a little thing meant for incidentals like groceries and fast food. This yellow piece of plastic was serious business; like her coat, it changed colors, darkening as the balance got lower. That cheerful yellow color said she was toting an available balance of somewhere between ten and twelve thousand credits. It was a nice chunk of change, and if he was thinking about robbing her, he’d wait, because the card would require her to press a pre-coded PIN number onto the micro-keypad built into the back of it. On the other hand, if he thought he was gaining a new customer who was on the rich side, he wouldn’t try for the thief route at all—it was much better to have a live one on the line than a dead one on the ground.
The dealer’s eyes lit up unmistakably—greed was guaranteed to do that. “All right,” he said. “I might be able to point you in the right direction.”
Violet’s grin got wider. She was only a few feet away from him now, and she stretched out her hand, offering the card in that universal
Charge it!
body language. “Maybe your direction includes Hot Ice?”
She was very close to him now, within a few feet. So close, in fact, that she saw his eyebrow shoot up. “Hot ice?” His gaze cut to the credit card still in her hand. “Not generally a pricey item.”
“I know, and I appreciate your honesty,” Violet said smoothly. “I’m looking to outfit a party.”
“Ah.” He nodded, then glanced back toward the trunk of his car. “Let me open—”
He never got to finish his sentence.
Violet despised drug dealers—next to Daxus, she thought they were the scum of the earth. Still, it wasn’t in her nature to kill a man for his car, even a nice ride like this. Instead, she left him lying in an unconscious puddle back on the bad side of the invisible line that divided the ’hood part of the city from the better part. So much for street smarts—how smart could he have been to lay it all down for a pretty face and a brightly-colored credit card? He’d been so easy to pick up on, and even easier to take down—the overconfident criminals always were.
This car . . . now it was something. The automobile had fabulous speed and pickup—especially once she’d lightened the car’s load by opening the trunk and dumping the twelve cases of various pills and sweets plus six hundred pounds of Chicago Black into an industrial Dumpster. Speed notwithstanding, Violet couldn’t help but wish for something a little less conspicuous. In the end, though, it didn’t matter what she was driving, because Violet had no intention of letting anyone, or anything, stop her.
The Viper’s souped-up engine thrummed with power, and although she was already racing through the streets at eighty-plus miles per hour, the vehicle jumped eagerly every time she tapped the accelerator. It was so responsive that it reminded Violet of a big, nervous cat being held back by a trainer, a creature that wanted nothing more than to be let loose and
go.
Too bad she wasn’t around a superhighway where she could enjoy it—there were too many people and too much traffic in front of her, and the city streets weren’t built for hammering on the speed. She was already leaving a trail of accidents and angry drivers behind her, and no doubt more than a few furious pedestrians had called in photo complaints on their cells. That poor—
not
—unconscious lawyer turned drug dealer would eventually have to sort it all out. What a pity.
Violet glanced over at Six to make sure he was all right, leaving the navigation to the car’s computer system. “All right” was a relative term—she’d leaned the seat back for him and he was splayed against its back like a limp, ill-used bundle of rags, a small, skinny scarecrow that had lost its infrastructure and was only a hair’s-breadth away from completely falling apart. It hadn’t helped to have him sitting on the chilly, damp sidewalk while she’d taken care of the dealer and done the car coup, despite the fact that it had only taken her five or six minutes, at the most, to pull it off. He was in such bad shape that the cold had settled into his flesh and turned his lips practically blue.