Xenofreak Nation (14 page)

He didn’t respond and she continued. “I meant what I said. I want my hair back. Everyone knows the Bestia Butcher keeps trophies from his patients. If he kept my—my scalp, I want it back.”

Scott shook his head. “Even if he did, it’s probably floating in a jar of formaldehyde. They won’t be able to reattach it.”

“I don’t care. I just don’t want him to have it. I don’t want it to be on display, like a—like a two-headed snake. Every time he looks at it, he remembers what he did to me.”

He couldn’t help it: an incredulous laugh escaped. “What do you expect me to do? Even if I knew where he was, I’d be a dead man if I told you.”

She lifted the gun. “Maybe you’re a dead man if you don’t.”

“A little advice, Bryn? Next time you threaten someone’s life, don’t use the word ‘maybe.’”

He saw her swallow nervously. She was arguing with herself internally; trying to work herself up to sound more convincing and having a hard time of it. He was ready to go for the gun, but if she tensed up and accidently squeezed the trigger, he didn’t want it to be pointing at him. What she said next nearly blew him away.

“I want to join the XBestias.”

Chapter Twenty-five

Bryn didn’t, really. She wanted to pretend to join so she could talk to Dr. Fournier and maybe take back some of her dignity. It was an impulsive decision, but the more she thought about it, the more it made a perverse kind of sense.

“It’s not a freaking social club,” Scott said. “Maybe you look like one of us now, but you’re not cut out for it, trust me. Most of us are ex-cons and technically homeless. It’s not the mafia, where there are rules. We’re more like a street gang with no honor code and a shitload of infighting. You’d have to protect yourself, and frankly, I could have disarmed you by now if I wanted.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

He half-stood suddenly and his hand jerked out to clamp down on her wrist, forcing her to point the gun away from him. He twisted sharply, claws grazing her skin, and with a gasp of pain, she let go. Carla’s gun thudded onto the carpet.

“Because I said I didn’t want to hurt you,” he said.

He was bent in a crouch facing her, but straightened up and pulled her to her feet. With only inches separating them, Bryn looked up into his face. He stared back, his blue eyes hard and bright as polished agate. Her breath came faster and she told herself it was the shock of him overpowering her so easily. The fact that her quills had gone flat against her skull meant nothing.

“I don’t have anywhere else to go.” She cursed the tearful sound of her voice but refused to break eye contact.

“Little girl, I am not your friend.”

She should be frightened. She should be trying to scratch his eyes out. Scott had helped kidnap her, had guarded her while she was held captive, and…he let them take her away. He said he wasn’t her friend and yet that very honesty was telling her something different. Her own father had betrayed her in the most devastating way imaginable. Right now, she should be seriously doubting her ability to judge anyone’s character, much less her former kidnapper. But all she wanted was to get closer to him, and when his eyes dropped to her lips, she thought she was about to get her wish.

Instead, he clenched his jaw and stepped away, bending to retrieve the gun. He lifted the back of his hoodie and tucked the gun into his waistband.

“My friend Carla is an XBestia,” Bryn said. “That’s her gun.”

“Okay,” he replied, like it made zero difference.

“She told me to meet her here. I ditched a bunch of XIA agents.”

That got his attention. “You? I doubt it. They’re probably outside right now, thanks a lot. You know they’re looking for me, right?”

“They’re looking for someone who looks like you. They’ve got the wrong mug shot.”

“Oh, yeah?”

He didn’t sound surprised, so Bryn figured he already knew. He probably saw it in the news and thought it was a great stroke of luck. But he also didn’t sound overly worried about the agents she had to agree probably were out there. He was, to use an old-fashioned phrase, an awfully cool customer for a man on the run.

A timid knock sounded on the door and they both froze. “Phaco? Are you in there?”

It was Carla. She looked around the edge of the door and instantly assessed the situation.

“What are you still doing here?” Her short legs got her across the room faster than Bryn might have expected. She went straight up to Scott and slapped him in the face. “You son-of-a-bitch! Look what you did to her!”

Before he could react, she ran to Bryn and made that aborted hug move Bryn was beginning to expect from everyone. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. Phaco said they’d be gone before morning. I was so worried when I didn’t see you outside! Did this bastard hurt you?”

Bryn looked over at Scott, who stood there with the pink imprint of Carla’s hand on his cheek. He made no move to retaliate and didn’t even look angry. If he were really as big a creep as he tried to make out, he’d be livid. The XBestia in general may be a heinous lot, but this XBestia in particular was an enigma. Like he’d gone bad out of necessity, as Bryn was contemplating doing.

“I’m okay, Carla. He’s been a perfect gentleman.”

A fleeting look of annoyance crossed Scott’s face.

Carla said, “Huh. You don’t have Stockholm syndrome, do you?”

“What?” Bryn asked.

“It’s where a captive falls in love with their captor.” Carla glared at Scott with tight lips and slitted eyes.

Bryn forced a laugh that even she had to admit sounded phony. “That’s ridiculous.”

Scott finally spoke up. “I wasn’t her captor. Like Bryn said before you got here, I’m just a lackey. You want to take the matter up with Lupus if you got complaints.”

“Maybe I’ll take it up with Fournier,” Carla snapped.

Scott snorted. “Oh, yeah. I’d like to see you find someone to carry that message.”

He was walking towards the door as he said it. With a sinking heart at her own foolishness, Bryn realized she might actually run after him if he crooked his furry finger. Pathetic. Carla’s words about Stockholm syndrome really hit home. Bryn knew it was bass-ackwards, but if she was honest with herself, she had to admit she was attracted to Scott. Maybe it was genetic; her mom picked a bad boy. Or maybe it had more to do with the way Scott looked at her. Instead of sneering in disgust at the porcupine quills, he was almost…admiring. All those despairing days thinking no one would ever love her seemed to melt away when he looked at her.

He opened the door, and with a pang of regret, Bryn resigned herself to never to seeing him again. He stopped short, though, when Carla said, “I’ll deliver the message myself.”

Chapter Twenty-six

Scott had to proceed very carefully here. If Bryn’s friend Carla, or Mouse the waitress, as he knew her, really did know how to get to Fournier, he’d be derelict in his duties if he didn’t follow that lead. However, along with the slap in the face that still stung, she’d set those drunken goons on him and Padme last night—it was obvious she was highly protective of Bryn. If he showed any interest in her alleged knowledge of Fournier’s whereabouts, it would either invite her suspicion or she’d clam up just to spite him. Plus, she had to know how dangerous the knowledge itself was, and was probably regretting her outburst at this very moment.

He thought fast. There was only one thing he could do to foster Mouse’s goodwill and possibly find out what she knew. Bryn may talk like she hated him, but her body language after he’d disarmed her said otherwise. She’d had no idea what she was saying when she’d asked to become an XBestia, but if she meant it she’d only go off and eventually get herself killed, or worse. At least this way, he could protect her while potentially benefitting at the same time.

She was standing next to Mouse with an almost forlorn look on her face. “You coming?” he asked, like it was his intention to take her with him all along.

“What?”

“You can stay here and wait for the XIA to make their move, or you can come with me.” He turned to Mouse. “You know where the Bungholes are?”

Warily, she nodded. After hurricane Poppy destroyed the stadium, the city installed prefabricated temporary housing on the baseball field for those among the displaced with nowhere decent to stay. The bungalows, or Bungholes, as they were nicknamed, were one-room structures with no electricity and no plumbing. It didn’t take long for the cheap, short-term solution to make a mockery of the word ‘decent.’ Separate sanitary facilities were inadequate to handle the volume of human waste, so many of the inhabitants resorted to make-shift toilets inside the structures. Rats and cockroaches took advantage of the lack of refrigeration and running water, creating an insurmountable infestation. The city eventually routed out everyone who hadn’t already abandoned the place and pasted condemned notices on each unit, after which the Bungholes became infested once more—with the XBestia.

“We’ll be in number nine,” Scott said. He raised his eyebrows at Bryn. She took a hesitant step towards him, but Mouse said, “Wait.”

She went to the desk and retrieved a flashlight from one of the drawers. “If you walk out the front door, you might not get very far. I know a secret way out. Bluto said Fournier has them in all his buildings.”

Mouse went to the corner of the room and opened a closet door. She shoved a couple of hanging coats aside and kicked the back panel in the lower left corner. It magically swung open to reveal a dark space. “Follow me. Watch your step.”

Scott went last, squeezing into the narrow space and pulling the back of the closet into place behind him. The bodies of the two women blocked the flashlight’s beam, leaving very little for him to see by as he slowly moved ahead. The ground appeared to be bare concrete that slanted down for about six feet before becoming a steep staircase. He negotiated the steps sideways, his chest and back scraping the moist, rough walls as it led down into the ground. The air was dank and cold. At the bottom was a ninety-degree turn where the already low ceiling dropped two feet or so. He bent nearly double, but at least this part of the tunnel was wide enough for him to walk forward.

Directly in front of him, Bryn suddenly produced a series of short, sharp shrieks and shuffle-hopped backwards until he had to place his hands on her backside to keep her from crashing into him. Mouse turned the flashlight on her as she dropped to her knees and frantically slapped at the front of her jacket. “Is it on me?”

With the increase in illumination, Scott saw several webs lacing the walls, nests both abandoned and occupied. “Theridiidae,” he said. “Common house spider. It’s probably long gone.”

Bryn swiveled her head to glower up at him. “If you say it was more scared of me than I was of it…”

The words had been next in line to come out of his mouth.

“You’re tens of thousands of times bigger than it,” he said instead, trying to inject reason against her phobia. “Would you be scared of Godzilla?”

Mouse waved the flashlight around. “Come on. Suck it up, Brynnie. Xenos eat spiders for breakfast. It’s not far.”

Bryn got her feet under her, but he noticed her quills seemed to have puffed up around her head. He made an effort not to brush up against her.

The tunnel ended in a shaft with a tall aluminum ladder propped against the wall. At the top, Mouse crawled onto a slab and stood facing a panel similar to the one at Bluto’s end of the tunnel. Instead of kicking the lower corner, she banged a fist against the top left corner. A gap appeared, but whatever was inside the closet prevented it from opening inward. Mouse leaned against it and shoved until she was able to reach inside and do some rearranging of the crowded broom closet in order to get to the door handle. She opened it a crack and peered out before stepping over a janitor’s bucket into the space beyond.

Once they were all standing in the dark hallway of a building that looked vacant, Mouse aimed the flashlight to the left and whispered, “This way. Keep quiet; I’m not sure who’s squatting here, but they raid our dumpster and mug our clients on a regular basis.”

At the end of the hallway was a large open space that appeared to have once been a waiting room adjacent to the building’s reception area. The floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall had all been broken out at some point and were boarded up. Light from outside shone in through the gaps between boards, enough to see by. The front door had also been glass and was set in the center of that wall. Scott reached for the handle, but the door in its intact metal frame was locked.

He stepped back and eyed it. Someone had taken the trouble to bolt two-by-fours to the metal to hold composite wood planks in place. Those were only nailed on, however, so if they couldn’t find a better exit, he’d have to locate something to use as a lever to pry the boards off.

“Is this the only door?” he asked.

“Shhh!” Mouse said. “Trust me, we do not want to go wandering around in here. Just open it!”

“Yes, ma’am,” he muttered. He headed back down the hall to look in the broom closet. It would have been too lucky to find a pry bar or a tire iron, but there was a broom with a hollow metal handle. On the way back, he glanced through the reception ‘window.’ The room beyond was filled with what looked like coffins set in a row, five of them.