By the time we got to the last two layers of the complex, the fire damage made almost everything unidentifiable. The roof was entirely missing, walls were crumbling, and everything was sooty and blackened. The smell was horrible: ash and smoke compounded by the smell of mold and rot. I did my best to breathe out of my mouth.
The majority of people killed that night had died in these last few rooms. On duty the evening Conleth escaped were two “scientists,” although I wondered what kind of doctor would participate in this sort of experiment. Both had bit the big one, courtesy of their lab rat. Besides the two nurses killed in their break room, another two had died in front of the room in which Conleth had been kept. Just like the other two nurses, these were also bulky and unpleasant and most assuredly not people I would trust with inserting catheters or IVs.
“Conleth's motivation for killing his nurses and doctors is obvious; they were his keepers, his torturers, his enemies. And we see from where some of the bodies were found—the scientist holed up in the john, the nurses in their station—that he went looking for them to kill. But he seems to have done the same thing with the janitor and the parking lot security guard.”
I stared down at the pictures Ryu held in his hand. I could understand why Conleth would blast his way out of the place that had held him. I could even understand his desire for revenge. I hadn't shed any tears when Ryu told me he'd killed Jimmu, who had murdered so many and would gladly have added Ryu and me to his list had he gotten the chance. But a lust for vengeance so strong as to send Conleth out of his way to kill someone hiding, someone difficult to get to, despite the fact that he wasn't yet free himself… that I couldn't understand.
We continued, entering a final, blasted doorway. It stood at the very back of the compound and was where Ryu and the others believed Conleth had actually been held. But it was so blackened that I couldn't make out anything of the layout. All I could see was more evidence of Conleth's strength and rage.
“We keep finding people too late; they get linked to the investigation because they're already dead. Which makes them useless to question, obviously. We can't link this lab to anyone or anything bigger, even though it had to have a network of funding, etcetera. It's like this place didn't exist. Hell, I would doubt its reality if we weren't standing here in the middle of it.”
“Do you have anything at all?” I asked.
Ryu grunted. “We've only got one real lead. There'd been a head scientist in charge of everything, a Dr. Silver, who signed all the bills and had been in charge from the beginning, when this clinic was probably legit. He'd gotten fired about two years ago, though, for reasons unknown. Luckily for us, Silver was on vacation when the attack occurred. He must have recognized the threat, and he went into hiding. He hasn't been seen or heard from since. Julian had a trace on him moving across Europe, but we promptly lost him before we could mobilize an extraction unit. He's been MIA ever since. For all we know, Conleth has already gotten to him.”
“So you've got nothing,” I said, indulging in a moment of brutal honesty.
“Pretty much,” Ryu conceded, staring down at the photos in his hand as if he'd like to tear them in half. I moved closer to him, wanting to comfort him even though I was, admittedly, still a little pissed. I put a hand on the small of his back.
“You'll find him, Ryu,” I said. “I know you will.”
“Thanks, baby.” Hesitantly, he leaned forward to kiss me, letting his lips linger when I didn't pull away. “I'm glad you're here. I shouldn't be, but I am.” He swore lightly under his breath, and then closed and tucked the file under his arm. Turning to me, Ryu put his hands on my hips to draw me close.
“Jane,” he began. “I know it's selfish, but I miss you. More than you seem to realize. Having you here, it's like—”
But before he could conclude his speech, the stinking air around us began to swirl. From where they'd been scattered at various ends of the huge room, Ryu's deputies sprang into action. They all moved in toward us as Camille moved protectively closer to her son, shielding him with her body, even as Julian joined Daoud and Caleb to flank Ryu in front of me.
Two dark shapes swooped overhead, veiled by the shadows thrown off the city-lit night sky, as powerful wings sent dirt and grime skittering through the air into our faces. Ryu and I threw up our shields, but not before I got an eyeful of grit. Blinking my tearing eyes, I watched as the dark shapes made their descent. Talons scraped loudly against blackened concrete as two sets of brown-and-gray-mottled legs thudded to the ground. As my vision cleared, I got quite an eyeful. From their thighs down, the beings' skin was the scaly texture of bird's legs, but the strange gray-brown flesh morphed into a normal human hue that covered the rest of their bodies. Except for their arms, which were elongated into sweeping, elegant wings covered in feathers that shaded from dark brown to light gray at the tips. They wore no clothes, but they were so slender as to be almost sexless. Only their lack of visible male plumbing told me they were female. From above their small, sharp noses, two sets of eerie, jet-black eyes peered with the concentration of raptors searching for prey. I shivered as their beady gaze raked over me.
“Kaya. Kaori,” Ryu said, stiffly, in acknowledgment. “To what do we owe this honor?”
“Your own ineptitude, Investigator,” said a cold voice from behind me.
Ryu and Daoud whirled around, the former pulling me behind him as Caleb stayed in position, keeping the bird women in sight and guarding our backs.
Before us stood a tiny woman—as short as me—with olive skin and a bald pate. If she hadn't been dressed in black leather and carrying dozens of visible weapons, she would have looked like a child in a commercial for a cancer charity. Her huge eyes were shadowed, but they stared at Ryu with a cold intensity that made me shudder. Alfar, my brain whispered, recognizing her curious stillness and the power that, even now, I could feel crackling around her.
She stepped forward from where she was partially concealed in the blasted doorway, followed by two more beings.
One was obviously a spriggan. He was huge, towering well above Caleb, his gray skin covering muscles so massive they would have made the bodybuilders on Venice Beach give up and go home to take up scrapbooking. But otherwise he had exactly the same aura as the “nurses” who had guarded Conleth; he radiated stupidity, viciousness, and cruelty in equal measure.
The final being, however, surprised me. He looked like an angel, an Apollo. Long, elegantly muscled limbs were topped off by a perfectly symmetrical face that was an ideal melding of cherubic and masculine. Huge blue eyes blinked in the darkness, brushed by the soft golden curls that crowned his perfect features. Ryu's hand enveloped mine an instant before the beautiful man stopped looking over Camille, clearly undressing her with his eyes, and then turned to me.
A wave of incubus juju crashed against my shields but it felt wrong. Instead of that heady mixture of lust and the promise of pleasure that I was so used to from my time spent with Iris, this being's magic promised something altogether darker. Something based on pain, on cruelty, on bodies being taken to the edge of control and then thrown over that edge. I shivered as beautiful blue eyes latched onto my tits and the being leered.
Evil and a tit starer, I thought. Quite the combination…
“Phaedra.” Ryu said the word as if he were spitting. “You're keeping interesting company these days. I hadn't realized you'd been released, Graeme.”
The beautiful blond man wrenched his gaze away from my breasts to meet Ryu's cold stare with a smirk.
“All a misunderstanding, Ryu. Nothing more. You know how fragile humans are. I didn't mean to hurt that girl and I certainly didn't do anything to her she didn't ask for.” The incubus's eyes found my boobs again. “She wanted pain… I graciously obliged.”
I blanched as I finally put together one plus one regarding Graeme's having been “released,” realizing that he must have been one of the Alfar's exceptions to execution. Which meant he was protected by someone powerful.
“And the others?” Ryu asked, his voice furious.
“What others?” the incubus replied, his voice as light and innocent as whipped cream, but the eyes he raised to meet mine were charged with a promise so cruel I clutched Ryu's hand convulsively.
“Enough,” the Alfar, Phaedra, announced, putting an end to Ryu and the rapist incubus's pissing contest. “You've gone back to the beginning, Ryu, which means you are lost. Still, months have passed since you were assigned to this investigation. And yet, here you are, at the beginning.”
The small woman strode forward, all squeaking leather and clinking weaponry. She skirted our little group to join the two bird women. Graeme and the spriggan followed.
“Harpies,” Daoud leaned over to whisper in my ear. My eyes widened; they weren't what I would have expected. “Kaya and Kaori. The spriggan is Fugwat; he's a brute. Avoid Graeme at all costs—”
“Quiet, djinn,” Phaedra commanded. “Do not speak in my presence unless granted permission to do so.”