Crazy in the Blood (Latter-Day Olympians) (21 page)

He looked miserable. His eyes were bloodshot, and the bags under them were certainly not designer.

I put a hand on top of one of his where it cupped his mug. The heat radiated up through his hand to mine.

“What do the doctors say?”

“They’re baffled. I’m working nearly around the clock to pay for her care. She’s got shit insurance. I can’t pay for no kind of private lab to analyze their food and see what’s what.”

“Maybe you don’t have to.” I pressed on his hand and then took mine back. “Would you be willing to talk to a few friends of mine? They’re federal agents.”
Friends
might be pushing it, but they’d at least accept my calls, mostly, I was sure, because they still considered me to be a person of interest.

“FDA?” he asked.

“Homeland Security.”

He didn’t look like he thought too much of that, but he said, “I’ll do anything. She’s my baby sister.” The tears were there in his voice, but he never let them flow.

I dialed Rosen. “I have someone here you might want to talk to,” I said when he picked up. I put him on speaker and sat the phone down on the counter.

“Oh?”

“His name is Alonzo Rayez. His sister is sick. He blames Back to Earth.”

“Evidence?” Rosen asked.

“Maybe in her medical records. Look, do you want to talk to him or not?”

“What about
her
?”

I looked to Alonzo, who said, “I can meet him at the hospital. She’s a little tough to understand right now. They had to intubate her for a while until they could get enough nutrition into her.”

“I’ll manage,” Rosen said.

I let them work out the details and checked my watch. It was already almost half past eleven. Good little cultists ought to be snug in their beds, particularly if they kept farmer’s hours. It was time.

I dug through my purse to find money for Alonzo, but he tried to push it back at me. “I should never have agreed to that. You’re helping us. I can’t take your money for that.”

“Relax, I have a client,” I said. It wasn’t completely untrue. Hades
had
asked…ordered…me to look into the disappearance of his wife. He agreed to an exchange of services—he’d do his job if I did mine. He never said anything about expenses, but I’d deal with that bridge if I lived long enough to cross it.

Alonzo looked relieved. He needed that money, even though he’d been prepared to relinquish it. “I meant what I said in the cab…if you ever need anything…”

“You’ve already done a lot, trust me. If the agents can talk to your sister and find other people with her symptoms, maybe they can start building a case. We can take Back to Earth down.”

Now there was a tear, but I didn’t comment. Alonzo insisted on walking me to my car. I’d swear I could feel eyes on me the whole time. There was something about the way my spine itched. I stopped just before we hit my Camaro and took a good look around.
 

Nobody and nothin’. But Hades, I remembered, was rumored to have a helmet of invisibility the way Zeus had his lightning bolt and Poseidon his trident, so the lack of a visual proved nothing.
 

I gave the night a one-fingered salute, just in case. Alonzo looked at me funny, to which I responded, “Don’t ask.”

He didn’t.

Just like earlier that day, I parked my car on the outskirts of the Back to Earth property. Only this time I risked my suspension by driving it off road and parking it on the far side of that stacked stone wall to keep anyone from becoming too interested. In case anyone was paying attention, I thought it might be a wee bit suspicious to run out of gas twice in one day in the same spot.

I crept again through the orchard, the gnarled arms of the trees making it look like the Forbidden Forest or something equally imposing. I paralleled but never stepped onto the road. Once free of the trees, I was faced with a high, wire mesh fence. The whole no carbon footprint thing led me to suspect it wouldn’t be electrified, but I tested my theory by tossing a twig at it. Both fence and twig were summarily unimpressed with the exercise. So I laced my fingers through the mesh and gave the fence a good tug to make sure it was tough enough to climb. The cacophonous sound of jangling bells met the motion. I froze.
Really?
I thought. It was the equivalent of putting pots and pans underneath windows as a low tech alarm. Like something out of
Home Alone
.

But if the voices heading my way were any indication, it was pretty effective.

“—see the way he fawned all over her? I’m telling you—” a female voice was saying.

“I know, you’ve
been
telling me,” another answered. “But what’s one bacchae more or less? It doesn’t diminish you.”

“I’m telling you, this one’s different.”

“Can we focus here? The alarm bells sounded.”

“Probably those cheeky raccoons again.”

I faded back into the trees and watched as two women holding LED flashlights stepped up to examine the fence. One I recognized right away—Casey Olivieri. The other was a mystery. Luckily, their lights didn’t penetrate the tree line, although they shined them my way.

“Nothing,” announced the one who wasn’t Casey.

“Better organize a perimeter check, just to be sure.”

“That’s another thing,” not-Casey was saying, “these patrols. I don’t get it. What do we have to steal?”

By the corona of their lights, I saw Casey roll her eyes. “Only our freedom. Remember when Moss’s mother sent that cult reconditioner or whatever to kidnap her?”

“Or when your mother sent that PI?”

So they
knew
about Uncle Christos? I’d expected as much when he’d contacted Detective Beverly and then dropped off the face of the earth, but the confirmation after what I’d seen in the morgue was chilling. I willed them to say more, but Casey was silent for a moment. Guilt over whatever had become of him? My heart clenched.

“Yeah, or him. Not everyone understands. When you withdraw from the world there’s always going to be someone who wants to drag you back into it. Acknowledging that our way of life is valid means admitting theirs might be flawed. We threaten them and their comfortable consumerism.”

“You sound just like him,” the other girl commented.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Casey said, something ominous in her tone.

I hoped the other girl realized it before something happened to
her
.
 

“No,” she answered quickly. “It’s just…thank you for clarifying, sister.”

Casey studied her in the darkness. “We have enough enemies from without. We can’t afford them from within.”

“Of course not. I’ll get the others.”

“Have them bring the dogs.”

The other girl nodded and ran off.

Dogs!
I hadn’t seen any dogs when I was about earlier. I did carry emergency doggie treats in my go bag, but trained canines wouldn’t be swayed by them.

But Uncle Christos’s life could be at stake, assuming I wasn’t already too late to save him. I couldn’t call things off.
 

It was now or never. One lone bacchae. No dogs…yet. I dug deep, trying to access whatever strength the ambrosia and my gorgon ancestress might have left me and leapt for the fence. Casey called out as she saw me, but I was noisily up and over the fence and diving down at her before anyone had the chance to come to her aid. Her hands formed into claws—not in a shape-shiftery way, but more like a veteran cat-fighter—and she lashed out at my face with one set of spiky nails while the other pierced my scalp as she raked my hair to hold me in place. I stared down into her crazed eyes and said with force, “Freeze!”

Power flashed through me, and the gorgon glare held her still. Petrified. It wouldn’t last but long enough for me to get away. From the not-so-distant depths of the compound dogs began baying in a way that suggested they couldn’t wait to get at me. I pushed myself off the fallen girl and raced for the nearest building. I was on the wrong side of the compound from the area I’d pinpointed earlier as the likely center of operations.

There were shouts now too as I was spotted, not just by dogs but by their handlers. A cacophony split the night, loud enough to wake the dead. I reached a door on the closest building and ripped it right off one hinge. It slumped toward me, and I shoved it out of the way. I found myself in the midst of a dorm of sleeping people, some half awakened by the noise. I ran. The place was built like a longhouse. If there wasn’t another exit at the other end, I’d have to make my own.

The dogs burst through the door I’d left off-kilter. I made the mistake of looking back to gauge how much lead I had, only to see the handlers release them. It cost me a second, long enough that roused sleepers were able to grab at me. One had me by the sleeve and was yanking me in for a better grip, but I tore myself out of her grasp, hearing the shirt sleeve rip. I aimed myself at the second door and kicked it with a great crack of wood and answering pain, which reverberated up my shin to my knee. The door popped open, and I was through. There were more cultists waiting for me on the other side—one man and two women, but they were surprised by the flying splinters and just a second too slow to stop me, though not to pursue.

Something—some
one
hit me from behind, sliding down my body until he—she?—was hugging my butt, bringing me down to the ground in a flying tackle. I kicked out, caught something that gave, and the grip loosened but didn’t let up. Two more bodies fell on top of us, and all the air blew out of my lungs. I was suffocating.

Panicked, I thrashed and fought like a woman possessed, knowing that if I couldn’t fight off these three, it would soon be a whole army and all hope would be lost. I fumbled for the pack at my waist, taking the blows aimed at me as I dug for…ah ha, pepper spray! My Taser would have done just as well, but I was happy to take what I could get. I thumbed off the safety button and heaved to shift the weight on top of me enough to free that hand. I found my opening and sprayed indiscriminately around me.
 

Howls and hisses greeted me, drowning out the baying dogs, now close enough to split my head open with their triumphant sound. Bodies rolled away from me, and I got my own under me, bursting up from the ground for another dead run.

The dogs lunged for me. One caught something at my waistband and nearly pulled me over before it gave. I half whirled and let loose again with the pepper spray, feeling really badly about it. They were only doing their job. I
liked
dogs. But it was them or me.

I ran a mad dash, ignoring the closest building, heading for the hot spot. I’d lost the element of surprise. I was not going to lose out on possibly my one chance to find Uncle Christos. If they captured me, so be it. Maybe they’d throw us in the same pit and at least I’d have my answers. We could figure a way out together. Better still if we could fight our way free tonight. I wondered how many I could taze, spray or gorgon glare before they could take me down. Enough?

I couldn’t hear pursuit over the blood rushing in my own ears. Hopefully, I’d screwed up the dogs’ sense of smell with the pepper spray, but the cultists… I hadn’t gotten them all, not by a long shot.

I dodged behind a building, listening for pursuit before using it as cover to bolt for the next. Behind me, someone was calling for a building to building search.

If I ripped the door I wanted off the hinges, they’d know just where I was. I reached for my pack, for the lock picks I kept inside, only to find the pack gone. Suddenly, I knew what had given way beneath the guard dog’s razor-sharp teeth.

Zeus’s zits
. I hit the door and thought fast, but I had no gods-given gifts that would help me out of here.

A zing of forewarning had me leaping back from the door a bare instant before it opened, covering me.

Two women came out arguing.

“But,
Mother
, people are getting sick, even
dying
.”

I recognized the voice—Sinestra-slash-Persephone. I was torn between my need to grab the door and my need to listen. With no time to decide, I did both, getting my fingers smashed by the door and leaving myself totally exposed should they look back.

“Only the weak,” her mother answered. Demeter. It had to be. “When planting, you toss aside the bad seeds; when reaping, you sort the wheat from the chaff.”

“These are
people
.”

“I believe
people
call it Darwinism. They post videos and give out awards in homage. Some will fall, but the rest…we will be the Latter-Day Olympians. A new breed, dedicated to the earth and free of the petty squabbles of the old guard. Already, Zeus and Poseidon have been taken out. By a
mortal
girl. All that’s left is for Hades to fall.”

“Yes,” Persephone said faintly.

Pounding feet and raised voices let me know the building-to-building search was close. I couldn’t waste any more time.

I ducked inside the building they’d just left and eased the door closed behind me, which left me in pitch darkness. I didn’t dare risk turning on a light, but I had to chance
some
kind of illumination or go in blind. The trouble was, I’d lost my pack and my flashlight with it. I felt along the wooden walls, giving myself a splinter in the process. I hissed in pain, but continued on until I hit a desk. Elated, I began opening drawers and rooting through them for a light. The detritus of an office nipped at my fingers—loose staples, paperclips, pens, pencils and paper. But finally something rolled away from my questing fingers, then back again. I closed my hand on something cylindrical and found the on switch, aiming it down at the floor. Success meant a faint light. Perfect.