The Killing Season (22 page)

He held up his hand. “I’m not saying she’s your mom. I don’t have proof yet, but I’m working on it.”

“How?” I perched on the edge of the seat across from him, ready for anything. “Luke told me he was looking into the name, Olesya Volkova, because he’d seen it in Dean’s file on me, but the lead dead-ended because Irena disappeared in 1985.”

“True. She did disappear. Most assumed she’d died out in the field. Irena Volkova is the same to us as Hex is to the aswangs. She was a legend. It’s no surprise her body wasn’t found. The ’swangs probably took it as a trophy.”

“She was that good?” I leaned over to get a better look at the books Coldcrow had between us.

“Her talent has always been unmatched, even by the Aultstrivers. She could take out an entire pack of ’swangs with her sting whip.” Coldcrow ran a hand through his beard to work out the tangles. “I remember seeing her once. She came up here for a Killing Season. She moved as fast as her whip, a body of solid steel, but built like a dream. She had the prettiest blue eyes and blonde hair.” He saw my narrowed glance and added, “but those features are common enough.”

“I knew my mother,” I said. “She was frail and sick all the time. There was nothing special about her besides her cold heart.”

Coldcrow nodded, allowing me the point. “So the fact remains that Dean still had the Volkova name in your file, and we have the mystery of how your
parentage
happened.”

“Right,” I said grudgingly.

“The most important question then is what exactly happened to Irena Volkova?”

“So it would seem,” I said. This Volkova woman set my teeth on edge. Maybe it was because everyone tried so hard to link us together, but I couldn’t help feeling pushed away from her, like two positive ends of a magnet. I reached forward and picked up a book. Turning it over in my hands, I realized it was a collection of scientific essays from the seventies. “What are these?” I asked.

“Did you know,” Coldcrow said, pulling out a can of chewing tobacco and tucking a pinch on the inside of his lip, “that Dean was a scientist before he became president of the university?”

I frowned. “No. I didn’t.”

“He was.” He capped the can but the smell of green apples lingered in the air. “The work you’re holding in your hands is the reason he found himself sitting in that fine office up in Fear University.”

“Let me guess,” I said, flipping the book over in my hands to read the title, “it has something to do with brains. Maybe some rat studies too.”

Coldcrow chuckled. “I take it you broke into the morgue.”

I sniffed, not giving anything away.

“Well, you’re right. He studied the difference between our brains and an aswang’s. Very interesting stuff if you find yourself having a hard time sleeping. That shit will knock you out cold. I don’t know how the ol’ bastard did it.”

“So what does this have to do with Volkova?”

“Possibly everything. Are you ready for a conspiracy theory?”

“I would prefer the truth.”

“Wouldn’t we all?” He snorted, causing his beard to twitch and his thick eyebrows to dance. “Back in the day, rumor was Irena captured live subjects for Dean’s experiments down there in the west wing lab.” My stomach flipped. I knew about those captures. I’d been on one with Luke and Hatter when the hunt had gone incredibly wrong and Luke had almost died. “She was catching ’swangs right up to the day she disappeared, which meant she most likely had access to Dean’s work. Knew what he knew. What he was discovering.”

“What was he looking for exactly?”

Coldcrow smiled slowly. “A fear switch.”

I laughed until I realized he was serious. “What the hell is that?”

“Dean believed—believes—he can alter a person’s brain in a way that fear can be turned off with a physical or verbal trigger. Without fear, pain is irrelevant. I mean, look at you. You’re the prime example. Sure the pain will still hurt, but without fearing pain, the aswangs have no control over us. Dean was working on developing a switch in the day-form aswangs that came in, since he wasn’t cleared for human studies yet. Irena was helping him, which means she might have known what he knew about the fear switch.”

“That’s a bit of a stretch.”

“But not a leap of faith. It’s possible Dean included her in the findings since she was risking her neck to bring him test subjects to lobotomize.” I cringed at the thought. Even a ’swang didn’t deserve that sort of torture. “So here’s a very skilled hunter, with precious information in that pretty head of hers, just walking around in the woods calling ‘here, kitty kitty.’ What do you think happened?”

I raised my brows. Conspiracy theory was right. “You’re saying the ’swangs took her instead of killing her?”

“It’s possible. Some believe while Dean was cooking up all his neurological research, the aswangs were doing their own studies on the human form.”

“On brains?”

Coldcrow grimaced. “Of a more intimate variety.”

“Not following,” I said, watching his expression turn reluctant for the first time since I’d knocked on his door. He didn’t like whatever he was about to tell me.

“They were studying if humans and aswangs could breed to produce a half-human, half-aswang.”

I blinked. “You’re joking.”

“Sadly, no—”

“Why would they do that?” I interrupted, feeling sick. I knew where this was going. “How would creating someone like me help them? I’m their greatest fear. I take their power away from them. Without pain and fear, they have nothing on us.”

“But you don’t change forms at night. You can walk among the humans, live among them, like a normal young woman.”

His words triggered my thoughts back to discovering Thad was the university’s leak yesterday. How many people like Thad did the ’swangs have in place? Just one was dangerous enough, but I couldn’t give Thad up without giving myself up to the entire base as well. I held back the truth and asked instead, “Is this more of your conspiracy theory?”

Coldcrow blew out a long breath that smelled of apple-flavored tobacco. “Sadly, yes. We know the aswangs were working on something at the same time as Dean. I’m trying to figure out the truth of it all. What really happened back then and the reasons for Irena’s disappearance.”

“How do you find the truth? Dean?”

“Actually, I think it might be closer to us than that. Back in the seventies, Killian was in the running to be the next university president, but Dean’s work was so impressive and so ground-breaking he was voted into the position instead. As you can imagine, that didn’t go over well with the Aultstrivers and all the old families who supported them. Killian and the others like him didn’t approve of the research Dean conducted. They said it fouled the line between our sacred duty and the outside world.”

“The outside world? What do you mean? Dean wanted to bring in civilians?”

“No, not civvies. The United States government approached Dean about weaponizing his research. About buying the fear switch research.”

My stomach bottomed out, like I was free-falling from a great height, but I kept my face blank. Coldcrow couldn’t know how badly his words scared me. How the thought of being experimented on sent me spiraling into flashbacks of the Tabers’ basement. “That sounds exactly like something Killian would hate,” I said, managing to keep my voice even.

“Oh, he did. Very much so. So much and so loudly that Dean sent him up here. Killian was doing everything in his power to stop Dean’s research.”

“So that’s the reason,” I said under my breath. That, at least, explained his exile. I hated the tiny grateful part inside of me that appreciated Killian’s revolt against Dean’s research. “So why would Killian have the information we need?”

“Killian is resourceful, and he hasn’t wasted his time up here. I believe he’s been collecting information on the aswang breeding research to present to the university’s board. He wants to show everyone the horrors of what can happen when the lines get blurred.”

“The horrors,” I said, brows raised. “Like me.”

Coldcrow shrugged. “No offense.”

“None taken.” I stood up and crossed my arms. “So in a nutshell, you think I’m Irena’s daughter and the product of aswang mad scientists, even though it sounds crazy. So I want to know why you care. Why are you looking into this? What’s it to you?”

“Peg—”

I held up my hand. “I know there’s more to it than protecting your niece, and I want to know the real reason. The reasons that could possibly align you against Killian and get you missing your head.”

“You don’t cut anyone any slack, do you?” Coldcrow picked up a bottle from the table and spit a stream of tobacco into it.

“No.”

“Right then. It might surprise you, but family means something up here. It might not to you, but to the rest of us, it does. And before you fire back with something, you should also know if Dean has even the slightest idea of who you are and what you represent to his research then you’re in a lot of danger. And not just of being lobotomized, but also from Killian and anyone who stands with the Aultstrivers.”

“You expect me to believe you’re doing all this to keep me safe?”

“No, I’m doing this to protect Peg. My niece, my
only
family, is lying in a hospital bed at Fear University. No one’s protecting her back. This is a world where everyone has money and power, so you want to know the best currency to trade in? Secrets. I’m accumulating secrets to keep Peg safe.”

He was using me. To him, my past represented a stepping stone to keep him and his family out of the rising water for a little longer. I had no doubt he would turn me over to Dean or Killian in a matter of seconds if it meant Peg would be safe. But it was a reason I understood. A reason I actually believed. I just had to hope I never got between Coldcrow and Peg’s safety.

“Fine,” I said. “How do you plan to get into Killian’s office? Trust me, he keeps it locked up tight.”

Coldcrow spit more tobacco and grinned at me, black bits of chew dotting his teeth. “Then it’s a good thing I made a copy of his key while he was raging out on saliva two nights ago.”

I couldn’t help but feel impressed and a little jealous I hadn’t thought of that. “He went with the hunters today, right? So we can go check it out now?”

“He went with them. I need to make sure no one sees me go in there, so I could use a lookout.”

A knock sounded on the door. I shot a quick glance at Coldcrow, who was already scooping up the books and crossing to the still-open closet door. Only when I heard the pocket door shut did I open his apartment door.

Sunny stood on the other side. Her normally golden skin was pale, her lips pressed tightly together. “Oh my gosh, Ollie,” she said, gasping around the words, like she’d been running. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

“What’s wrong?”

“You need to come see this.
Now
.”

F O U R T E E N

Ollie

“W
hat is it?”

Without answering, Sunny gave me a grim look that spoke volumes. Whatever had happened, it wasn’t good. She glanced over my shoulder and said to Coldcrow, “You should come too.”

We followed her down to the first level, to Nyny’s lab. Our hurried steps rang off the floor. The howling wind clawed at the walls harder than it had this morning. As we followed Sunny, we passed none of the housekeeping staff, which meant they’d all gone home early, ahead of the storm. “Where is everyone?” I asked. “Did the storm move in early? Are the hunters back yet?”

“That’s what I need to show you,” Sunny said, shooting me a worried glance over her shoulder as we hurried down the stairs. I tried to swallow down the anxiety twisting in my stomach.

Finally we reached Nyny’s lab. She sat before her bank of camera feeds, absently chewing on the ends of her lavender hair and passing an unlit cigarette back and forth over her knuckles. She didn’t look back as we gathered around her.

“What—”

“There,” Sunny interrupted Coldcrow, pointing a shaking finger at one screen in the middle of Nyny’s feed.

I leaned over Nyny’s chair, squinting at the screen. It was an outside camera, along one of the larger lakes in the tundra. The snow and wind blustered against the lens, making it nearly impossible to see the note written on a scrap of wood with red paint stapled to a sign, right in the middle of the camera’s view. The snow spiraled up in a great gust and then stilled in a temporary quiet moment that allowed me to read the letter.

Stuck in storm. @ safehouse. NO sat phones.

I leaned back as Coldcrow let out a string of curses. Nyny nodded in agreement, her hair hanging from her mouth, fingers flying madly over her keyboard.

“Where the hell are their phones?” I demanded. Along with their weapons, the satellite phones each hunter carried were their most valued equipment.

“No clue,” Nyny said. “They should have had them, especially in this storm. But I tracked them to the safehouse by Ikroavik Lake. Or at least I saw their footprints before the storm covered them. So we know they’re safe.”

“Why weren’t they back in time?” I asked, crossing my arms.