BlindHeat (27 page)

“Face blindness and to some degree a co-symptom, called
topographic agnosia, a navigational disconnect. I knew Marie seemed to lack an
inner compass, but she compensated for the face blindness well enough that I
didn’t suspect until I saw her test score.”

“How bad?”

“She got thirty percent.”

Marcus wasn’t surprised. It matched his own score, but he
didn’t say so.

“I want to propose two other possibilities,” Adam said.

“Go ahead.”

“Either there is another tribe of therianthropes, a
subspecies we haven’t encountered, or there is someone conducting genetic
experiments that have produced the two we’ve come across.”

“I’d say the first is more plausible than the second.”

“When you take into account the brain damage of the two
females—”

“Brain damage!” Maya chimed in with Marie on that one.

“They have obvious perceptual disabilities,” Ean said
gently.

Gentleness didn’t fly with Marie. She pushed back from the
table and stood. “Disabilities?”

Marcus wasn’t fond of those labels either. “I’d say
differences is a better word than disabilities. Wouldn’t you?”

He didn’t think either Ean or Adam agreed, but they’d
stepped on some tails and had enough sense not to keep going.

“Right. Differences. That’s a better word. Thank you,
Magus.”

As many times as he’d heard his son address him by his
formal title, it still stung, that public display of the distance between them.
No one else seemed to notice.

Adam steered the conversation back to safer territory.
“Human genetic technology has not advanced to a level that would allow them to
create shifters. It certainly hadn’t advanced enough at the time these two were
conceived. I’ve checked every possible source and Jake has worn his fingers to
nubs hacking research data.”

“Not all data is hackable,” Marie said.

“What data isn’t hackable?” Ben asked, flexing his fingers
and cracking his knuckles.

“The kind written down on paper,” Maya said.

“We have a lot of theories,” Marcus concluded. “To choose
the correct hypothesis we need more data. Ben, your team is the best at getting
into and out of those places where unhackable data may be stored. Seth, we
found two females in this area without even looking. I say we start looking. If
there is another subspecies we’ll find them. If someone is manufacturing
therianthropes, I doubt we miraculously stumbled on the only two.”

“Aren’t the hybrids you find therianthropes?” Marie asked.
Around the table Pantherians froze. She’d done the equivalent of ask what was
the difference between a Pantherian and a human without realizing. The
comparison didn’t sit well with the True Children, the superior race.

“The lab hybrids aren’t shifters,” Adam explained. “They’re
chimera, parts of them are human and parts of them are beast. Pantherians are
two complete species and can shift between the two at will. Both the human and
beast side of a Pantherian is superior to non-Pantherian humans and beasts.”

Marie was digesting that. To Marcus it looked as if she
might be headed for a case of indigestion, but the others didn’t notice.

Ben pulled his chair closer to the table. “We need a
strategic plan. Maps. Background checks on genetics research facilities, lists
of traits to look for, a good strategy session to nail down just what we’re looking
for and where to find it.”

Strategy was Ben’s strength. His independent, paramilitary
special ops team would take over mission planning and setting objectives.

“So let’s start a shopping list of traits we have
discovered,” Adam said, “what to look for in a wildling.” Ben retrieved a
notepad and pen from the kitchen counter, straddled his chair and said, “Go.”

Adam ticked off the traits. “Shifting before puberty,
genetic coloring outside the Pantherian norm, an immunity to the wasting, no
inner compass, face blindness.” Marcus sipped his coffee, only half listening.
The drug-induced fog was clearing. If Allie didn’t return soon, he was going
after her.

* * * * *

The old neighborhood looked smaller and rattier than Allie
remembered. But she’d had nothing to compare it to before now. Greyville with
its freshly painted shops and flower boxes in the windows, with machines that
made rounds to sweep and wash the streets and crackless sidewalks, had once
been a place where she felt nervous. A ragged girl, she’d fretted she wasn’t
clean enough to walk on their sidewalks, or sit with diners in a tiny café with
starched curtains.

But grit and exhaust were no longer embedded in her skin, or
her soul. Looking at this world with fresh eyes, she realized she’d never really
belonged here either. An alien species in Greyville and Slumville. Last night
she’d come to terms with the fact she wasn’t human. Most people she knew would
say Eddie wasn’t human either, but Allie didn’t doubt, at least in the genetic
sense, that he was. Which meant it was time to get some answers.

They parked behind the old club. At nine a.m. the streets
were empty except for a garbage truck making haphazard rounds.

Atka was at the wheel. When Jake shut the side door, the van
disappeared. “That’s excellent,” he said. I have to get Ben’s pack to whip one
of these up for me.

Allie shivered. Disappearing vans. Referring to guys as the
pack. What happened to the normal life she’d been working so hard to find?
Marcus’ world made Eddie’s look ordinary. She recalled the sound of wolves
howling by the river when she’d gone to take the garden pictures. She headed
for the back of the club, asking Jake as they went, “So not all Pantherians are
leopards?”

Jake started to say something and then snapped his mouth shut.

He shook his head, studied her a minute and then said,
“There are eight tribes, or phyla, some with several subspecies among them.”

“But what? There’s something more, Jake, something you were
going to say.”

“There are no leopards. Or not that we knew of until now.”

“What about Marcus?”

“That’s a long story, something his little granddaughter
did. You can get the details from him later.”

“Sheesh, a granddaughter? He’s that old?”

Jake winced at the comment. She should have thought before
she said that. Jake was probably close to Marcus’ age. But trying to smooth
comments like that over usually made things worse and Jake seemed eager to
leave the topic of age anyway.

“We’re here to find out about you, remember? We’ll fill in
all the details about Marcus later.”

Allie nodded and led Jake to the back door. Head was at the
door to greet them. Allie wondered if he ever slept. He’d been as much a
fixture in her life as Eddie, always there, silent but ready to lay low the
slightest threat. His bald head was so shiny she wondered if he polished it.
The edges of tattoos, gleaming blue-black swirls, showed beneath the cuffs on
his suit jacket and at the neckline of the t-shirt he wore under the jacket.
“’Bout time you got your ass back where you belong,” Head grumbled. He held up
a fist and Allie made one too, bumping his knuckles in greeting. “Your old
man’s been sick, doesn’t look like he used to.”

“Is he asleep? Should I come back tonight?”

“No, he doesn’t sleep much anymore. He’s in his office.”

Allie stepped into the semi-dark club and the guard moved to
keep Jake from following.

“Wait, Allie. She doesn’t go anywhere without me,” Jake
said. He straightened to full height, dwarfing Head.

Allie hoped Head would win this argument. She didn’t want
Jake in past the front door. The walls were hung with erotic paintings. The
room itself was arranged like a parlor, sofas and tables scattered about, and a
small bar in one corner where the customers waited for the lady they’d
purchased for the evening.

Odd, that when she lived here she didn’t really see any of
this. Yes it was there, but she’d paid about as much attention to it as she
might pay to the cracked sidewalk out front or the color of the carpet. Now she
saw it, knew it was not the sort of place normal people would expose a child
to. What assumptions would Jake make? What judgments? It was one of the reasons
she’d chosen to come while Marcus was still sleeping off the tranquilizers.
That and Eddie’s previous violent reactions to the idea of her having a love
life.

Curtains parted on the other side of the room and Eddie
settled the dispute. “It’s okay, Head, let him by.” Eddie didn’t acknowledge
Allie’s presence before he disappeared behind the curtains again.

Jake followed Allie across the “parlor” and behind the
curtains. “Black velvet and pink marble,” he muttered. “Classy.”

“Ssh, Jake.”

Heavy drapes blocked any outdoor light that might filter
into Eddie’s office through tall windows, but a small lamp illuminated his
desk, casting light in a circle around Eddie. Eddie was in a black robe and
black pajama bottoms. Allie couldn’t remember him ever using a robe or pajamas
before. He was thin, his skin hanging on a frame that seemed to have shrunk.
The whites of his eyes had a yellowish cast.

“You finally decide to come home,” he said. There was a
bottle of whiskey and a half-full tumbler on the desk. The scent of it burned
her nostrils. Eddie rarely drank and then not enough to get a buzz. He said
staying sharp was staying alive.

“I decided to find out where home really is,” she said. “Can
you help me figure that out?”

He downed the last of the whiskey. “No.”

“You aren’t my father, are you?”

He rolled the empty glass between his palms, staring into
the bottom as if the answer were hidden there somewhere. Eddie’s eyes finally
met hers, burned with the same dominating intensity they always had.

“I told you once, when you were about five, that other
little girls called their fathers Daddy or Papa. I asked how come you never
did. Do you remember what you told me?”

Allie shook her head.

“You said that wasn’t my name. You knew the answer to that
question then, kitten, don’t play stupid now.”

Allie flinched at the name. He called her kitten and
everyone else used kitty. It came to her that the name had always caused an
inward flinch, had never felt as if it belonged to her. When she ran away she
changed it, a name chosen from available identities she could slip into. She
wanted to tell Eddie to use her new name, but she needed his cooperation and
fighting over a name would only get his back up. “I don’t remember much from
back then,” she said instead.

“Yeah? I guess that’s why you forgot who took you in and
protected you, made sure no one ever laid a hand on you. You didn’t remember
that well enough to ever give a fucking god damn about whether I was worried
about you.”

“I was afraid.”

“Afraid? You name me once, once in your entire life— And
don’t think you never gave me reason. You name just once when I ever laid a
hand on you.”

“You shot Jason.”

“If I meant to kill the stinkin’ little bastard he’d be
dead. And don’t think if you hadn’t been there watchin’ that he wouldn’t be
dead. Him, he had plenty of reason to be afraid of me. You didn’t.”

She wandered to the pool table at the far end of his office.
Jake stayed near Eddie. Allie picked up the cue ball. Eddie couldn’t be pushed
into telling her anything. With patience he might be coaxed. “You been doing
okay?”

“I been great.”

A lie. She could smell disease, a foulness like the stench
of bad cabbage. She looked over her shoulder. Jake had positioned himself so
that he was between her and Eddie, ready to leap to defend her if needed. He
wouldn’t be needed. Allie had learned one thing last night—she didn’t have to
be afraid anymore. She didn’t have to be afraid of whatever truth Eddie might
share with her either. She turned back to the table, sent the cue ball
ricocheting back and forth across the woolen green.

“Tell me where I’m from, Eddie.”

“You don’t want to know, kitten. There’s worse things than
being my daughter.”

“I want the truth, Eddie. Don’t pretend you’re protecting
me.”

“Well here’s a news flash for you, baby girl.” He got up and
moved around the desk. Jake stirred behind her, but Allie held up a hand to
warn him back. Eddie jabbed at her chest with his finger as he said each word.
“I haven’t done much right, but I have always protected you. I always watched
over you. No pretense needed.”

She blinked hard against the burn in her eyes and met his
stare.

“Why? I don’t get why, Eddie. What am I to you?”

He stepped back, deflated, pain shimmered in his eyes and
Allie realized it wasn’t physical pain. It never occurred to her, until now,
that it was possible to hurt Eddie.

“Why do you think?” he asked and turned. Moved away.

“Eddie, please?”

“Just go,” he said.

“I can’t. Not like this.”

He whirled around. “Christ, Allie, what the fuck do you want
from me?”

“Some truth. Start at the beginning. How did you wind up
with me? What about my mother? You never talk about her.”

“Don’t go asking questions you can’t handle the answers to.”

“I have to know, Eddie. Whether I can handle them or not, I
need to know the answers if I’m ever going to figure out how I came to be this
thing that I am. And then I have to figure out a way to live with myself.”

He stalked back to her, grabbed her shoulders. “Don’t you
ever talk about yourself like that.” He gave her a little shake. “You are not a
thing. I don’t care who made you. I don’t care what anyone tells you. You’re
not a freak. You are perfect. You got that?”

Allie sniffed. She swallowed against a tightness in her
throat and looked down at the pool balls. She picked up a red one.

Eddie took it away and sent it rolling across the green,
offered his fist. She made a fist and bumped. Eddie didn’t stop at their limit
of touching, boundaries for affection set between them long ago. He brushed his
knuckles lightly over her cheek, and then ruffled her hair. “You were never the
cuddly sort. Never could tolerate a lot of petting. I liked that about you,
that aloof feline way you have.”