Guilty by Association (Judah Black Novels) (36 page)

“And Leo Garcia?”

“Who?”

“Marian Summers? Sara Greenlee? The children you kidnapped. What are you going to do with them?”

LeDuc swirled the lemonade as if it were wine and passed it under his nose. “That's not your concern.”

I looked down at Ed in the wheelbarrow who had passed out again and was snoring gently. “I can't do that.”

LeDuc sighed. “You don't seem to understand. My terms are non-negotiable. Take your boy and leave. Don't make me kill you.”

I took a quick glance around the room. There were a lot of things in there that could potentially be weapons: chairs, silverware, even the walls themselves. But I'd put three silver bullets in LeDuc's head. If that didn't kill him... “How's your head?”

He laughed at that. “I’m doing much better than Chanter. Don't get me wrong, Black. It was never my intention that the old man get hurt. He was never part of the equation. That was Zoe's doing. She has a rather deep running distaste for him, with the way he handled her dead child and all.”

I stepped out from behind the wheelbarrow. “Sal told me she miscarried.”

He looked up and shook his head. “Late term ones are always so messy. He should have let her hold it at least. Let the poor woman grieve. She had to dig up the body.”

“Why did you turn her?”

He smiled and offered me the seat again. This time, I took it. “It used to be easy, finding food. Pose as a kindly old doctor and people practically throw their dead and dying at you. They don't bat an eye when a liver or a stomach goes missing, either. Nobody notices. But it was never enough.” He licked his lips. “Zoe and I met on the internet. I arranged for the body of her child be brought to me for a thorough examination alongside her to see what went wrong. She was desperate. Not for him. Not because she loved him. Because if she wasn't going to be a mother, what else was there? For the price of the one dead child, I promised she would birth a nation.”

“And the gig in Toronto?”

“All an elaborate ruse. Her now ex-husband was too busy wallowing in his own drunken misery to even know that I was stealing his wife from under him. The poor woman was so desperate to be comforted, to be loved and touched that I was able to bed her that very first night.”

I shook my head. “You took advantage of a broken woman. That’s sick.”

He leaned forward and jabbed a finger into the table with a sneer. “I survived. When all the rest of my kind had died, I persevered. Through colonization, the loss of ancestral hunting grounds, smallpox, civil war, influenza… Survival isn’t about ethics, Judah. It’s about living at all costs, even at the expense of other, less deserving life forms. When the world was wild and untamed, I was the perfect hunter but even I cannot match the ferocity of your government’s eradication. No experiment in eugenics has been so great as the one carried out and conducted by the United States government against the Native Americans.”

“Why the hell do you even care about it?” I asked.

“The same reason the Great Plains Indians cared about the near extinction of the American Buffalo, Judah. The same reason the mountain ape rages when humans come to cut down his trees. When your government came and claimed the land, you did more than just destroy centuries of tradition and dozens of ways of life. You eradicated my kind. Or so you thought.”

He rose and began to pace the room. “For nearly three hundred and fifty years, we have been forced to live on the very fringes of society, always on the brink of starvation, minds ever occupied with the growing problem of securing our next meal. Imagine my delight when I was approached with a proposition: agree to participate in some research trials and never go hungry again. I was ecstatic…Until that freak of nature, Doctor Han, brought me my first meal. Synthesized meat, artificially grown organs tacked onto the backs of rodents for development. I refused to honor the bargain and, in return, I was tortured. The experiments were…brutal. But necessary. I see that now. Before, I was a crawling, mindless worm of a creature. My brain worked at half the capacity it does now. Under Doctor Han’s tutelage, my IQ tripled. I passed every test and earned his trust until one day he discovered that I had surpassed him in intelligence. You see, I knew the thing that had been eluding Doctor Han, the answer he so desperately sought. And do you know what he did to me when he found out I had all the answers?”

I gripped the table tightly, fingers inching toward a spoon he had carelessly left on the table. “No,” I said trying not to draw too much attention to my movement.

“He lured me into this very cave which he had wired with explosives. I survived the detonation but only barely. And I have come here to finish the work that Doctor Han could not and I’m going to be filthy rich by the end of it.”

“What problem?” My fingers crept toward the spoon only to have LeDuc come and sweep it back out of reach. I glared at him.

“The cure, of course,” he said and sat back down. “Once I sell my cure to your government, the entire country will be eating out of
my
hand for a change.” He grinned. “The world will be my oyster and I its savior. America will be the first supernatural free nation in the world. In one fell swoop, I will eliminate from the gene pool all of my potential competition in the food chain. Once again, I will be the apex predator, unkillable, unstoppable.”

I shook my head. “I don't care how you look at this, LeDuc. It's ethnic cleansing and you're not going to get away with it, no matter how much money and science you have behind you.”

“You can't stop me,” he spat back at me. “Marcus Kelley and his hack staff geneticist couldn't stop me. I cannot be killed. Soon, there will be breakthroughs in that area, too, all of it based on what I'm doing here.” He spread his arms wide. “You humans, you will become my perfect flock, free of illness, age and death, able to regrow lost limbs and organs. You will become a self-sustaining food supply for me and my kind.”

“And what about Zoe?” I asked. “How does she figure into this?”

LeDuc smirked. “How can I rebuild my species without a female? You see, Judah Black, I am this planet’s new God, creating an Eden in my perfect image.”

“You're not a God. You're a wendigo, an ancient, flesh eating monster and all you've done is turn Zoe into one just like you. You forced her to ritually cannibalize her own child. And in return for her company, you promised her living children. I bet that child of hers isn't even anything special. You're just blowing off ego steam.”

“Oh,” said LeDuc with a chuckle. “I don't need to prove anything to you.”

“What about the kids you’ve been taking? How do they figure into all of this?”

“Can’t make an omelet without cracking a few eggs,” he said with a shrug. “I need living tissue to synthesize the cure from. Young children with their ability to heal and adjust provide the best, most viable tissue samples. Besides that, they just taste so damn good.”

“You’re sick,” I repeated and turned away.

LeDuc crossed his arms. “This is the last time I'm going to make this offer. Yes or no, Agent Black? Live or die? The choice is yours.”

I narrowed my eyes and stared at LeDuc, the same way I'd stared down Reed in the church, focusing straight on his eyes. LeDuc didn't turn his gaze away but I did see something interesting. The corner of his eye was bleeding. “I want to see him first to verify that he's unhurt.”

“You'll have to take me on my word here, Black. No deal, no boy.”

A hidden door opened, just to the left of the door he'd come through, and Zoe entered, wiping what looked like blood from her fingers onto a towel.

I rose from my seat. “Hunter!”

“Sit down,” said LeDuc, pushing me back into my chair. “I swear on my own body that he is unhurt. Now, do we deal or no?”

I looked back at Ed, lying unconscious in the wheelbarrow. With his fever raging and his body in shock, I knew I shouldn't have pushed him so far. If he didn't get emergency medical care soon, he was going to die. And Hunter was probably somewhere within earshot. LeDuc was offering me the chance to take my son and go. Wasn't that what I wanted? Isn't that why I'd put Ed and everyone through hell the last day or so? No one else had to die. We could all walk away right now.

Everyone, that is, except for the children of Paint Rock.

I swallowed a deep breath, turned back to LeDuc and nodded. “We deal.”

LeDuc smiled. He had the type of smile that could fool you into believing just about anything he said, all white and straight. But those teeth were curtains that hid the lies his tongue would tell. He had no intention of letting me and Ed live, not once we'd been inside his lair. We knew too much. LeDuc was smart enough to know that we were a threat.

I looked around the room again, stealing quick glances where I might. In the time that we had been talking, a few of his men had filed into the room. They were your typical para-military henchmen types, dressed in fatigues and armed with both knives and SMGs. I had a snowballs' chance in hell at taking the room by force, even if I'd had help. My only option was to try and get LeDuc by himself.

“Someone get me Ozzie,” said LeDuc, sipping at his sweating glass of lemonade.

Zoe's gave me a warning glance. “Ozzie's indisposed.”

The chair creaked as LeDuc twisted in it to look at Zoe. “Indisposed? Speak plain, woman. Where is he?”

She looked at me, her expression still blank. “Lying down with a splitting headache.”

LeDuc sighed and rubbed his temples. “Basque then.” Some of the henchmen shifted, looking at each other. One shrugged. “Who the hell is on watch?”

“Paul was,” started one of them but he swallowed his words when LeDuc stood.

“Never mind. I'll see to it myself.” He tucked his hands into his pockets and smirked at me. “I'll send the boy on out. Thomas, make certain our good friend Judah Black here and her boy make it to the front door.”

“I'll get the boy,” said Zoe stepping forward. LeDuc turned back to Zoe, working up a sneer on his face that said he didn't like being interrupted. “I'll take Thomas with me. We'll walk them out and go check on Ozzie and Basque before-”

His hand moved so fast I don't think I even saw it but I heard the smack of his knuckles making contact with Zoe's cheek. Her head jerked back and she fell to the floor, tears welling in her eyes. “Never challenge my orders in front of my men.” Zoe lowered her eyes and nodded. Tears fell but she didn't dare let him hear her cry. “Thomas, go with Zoe to the gate. She'll need help. Find Ozzie and Basque. We've got work to do.”

One of the flunkies from the wall, presumably Thomas, came forward and spun the Uzi down off his shoulder to point it at me. “You got it, boss.”

“Just one more thing, LeDuc,” I said, standing. “I'm taking Ed, too.”

“Of course,” he said with a smile. “If you want the lame wolf, he's yours.” I didn't excuse him but he left anyway, exiting through the same door Zoe had just come through. Not sixty seconds passed before the wall spun back around, revealing Hunter.

“Hunter!” I exclaimed and started forward to check him over.

Thomas stepped in front of me and waved his gun. “Get your wolf. Let's go.”

I glared at him, sidestepped him and went forward for Hunter first while Zoe was still picking herself up off the ground. She wiped blood from her lip and spat on the ground before looking up at me. The fury that burned in those eyes could have set the whole state of Texas on fire. “I'll take him,” I told her and grabbed Hunter by the hand, careful not to make any sudden moves. “If one of you will see to Ed?”

“Thomas?” said Zoe, looking at him expectantly.

“Don't look at me. I ain't your bitch, bitch. You want him so bad, you bring him.”

Zoe's face hardened back into the blank, emotionless state she'd shown before. She hiked up her sleeves and went to man the wheelbarrow without any further argument. “Let's just get this over with.”

I could have spent the whole walk wondering at what point they were going to stop and gun us down. I could have worried, memorized the layout so we could make it back easier. If I hadn't been so worried about my son, that's exactly what I would have done. We didn't even make it out of the big hall before I was checking him over. Other than a few bumps and bruises, he seemed fine but he hadn't said a word. “What's wrong with him?”

Zoe hesitated on our forward march but got going forward once again when Thomas waved the gun around a little. “Sedated. Andre doesn't take risks with werewolves. He'll come out of it by the time we've reached the front gate.”

We walked along in silence for a few more minutes, the only sound the echo of our shoes against damp rock as we walked. I tightened my grip on Hunter's hand, wishing he would squeeze back to let me know he was okay. He just walked wherever I led him, eyes glued straight forward. “Why children?”

This time, Zoe turned her head but didn't stop. “Excuse me?”

“Why did you take the children?”

“Andre's research is based on stem cells. Before the laboratory was destroyed in the explosion, he was able to use whatever they had in cold storage there. Since the United States has banned the harvest of embryonic stem cells for research purposes, he's been working with mature cells. Most of those were collected from donated umbilical cords. Andre theorized that any supernatural with advanced healing abilities would be an endless source of mature stem cells. So long as the host body was young and healthy, he could harvest the cells without killing the hosts.”

I turned to study her carefully. “Was he right?”

“Don't answer her,” said Thomas. “Keep walking.”

“I answer to Andre,” Zoe growled. “Not you. I'll answer whatever I please.” She took a deep breath before continuing. “His theory proved correct most of the time. For Andre, even a failed harvest was a win-win situation, though, as he got to eat the results.” I watched the corner of her lip turn up as if it were a joke.

“And you helped him steal the children why?”

“I don't see why it matters to you,” Zoe snapped back. “This isn't any of your concern anymore.”