Hell's Teeth (Phoebe Harkness Book 1) (5 page)

My three inquisitors exchanged silent glances. “Are you aware of your supervisor being … mixed up … in any GO business?” Harrison asked me, choosing his words carefully.

This seemed the most outlandish statement so far. “My supervisor isn’t really the caring-sharing type, sir,” I said, quite truthfully. “We don’t really talk much about any interests outside of work. In fact, I’d be surprised to hear she had any interests at all outside of her job spec, but I’m fairly certain she would be the last person to be on friendly terms with an GO. From what I gather she’s very much a … humans … person.”

I didn’t want to say flat out that Trevelyan hated GOs and considered them all dangerous freaks, which was what I had always assumed from her demeanour. Cabal themselves are fiercely Human First, but they have political red tape to dance around, and would never openly admit dislike of the GOs. I was swimming in very murky waters here.

Completely forgetting I had been instructed not to ask questions, I asked. “You don’t think Trevelyan has gone AWOL with a secret vampire lover, do you?” It was a joke. I make poor jokes in serious situations. It’s a bad survival instinct. I’m the sort of person who gets nervous giggles at funerals.

“Vyvienne Trevelyan is not missing.”

The large man had spoken for the first time. His voice was like gravel, his words a little slurred. I wondered if maybe he’d suffered a stroke in the past. He sounded like the godfather. “She was … until this morning. She’s next door now.”

I was now deeply confused. “Then why on earth are you talking to me? Why not just ask her yourself?”

Harrison crossed the room and opened an adjoining door, which evidently led into the next suite. “Please come through, Dr Harkness, and you will see that your suggestion is quite impossible.”

With no small amount of trepidation, I followed Harrison into the adjacent room. Cloves followed at my heels. Nameless godfather guy stayed where he was behind his desk with his chubby fingers laced together in front of him – either too important to join in whatever version of show and tell was happening here, or else simply too damn lazy to get up.

The room beyond was not another office. It was brushed stainless steel, steel sinks, tiled floor with drains inset. One whole wall had a plethora of small rectangular doors, like oversized gym lockers. Interesting. This level may not have any labs, but it did, apparently, have a morgue.

“What the hell?” I asked.

Harrison crossed to a locker and opened the door at chest height. My blood ran suddenly cold, and I was convinced the sliding drawer was about to reveal the corpse of my supervisor, exiting the wall on a smooth gurney like a pizza out of a stone bake oven.

There was indeed a gurney rattling noisily from the drawer, but to my surprise, there was no body on it, no sheet. Wisps of cool dry ice curled out from the dark opening, suggesting that this was refrigerated storage of the highest order, but all that was on the shining metal slab was an incongruous and opaque Tupperware box, as though someone had a very morbid place to keep their lunch.

“I must remind you, Dr Harkness, of the security level clearance you have been temporarily granted, and the implications once more of revealing to the outside world what is discussed down here today,” Servant Harrison said in a calm and measured voice as he donned a pair of bright blue surgical gloves.

The implication, as far as I could gather, was that I would end up in one of the freezers here.

He prized the lid from the medical grade Tupperware box, and beckoned for me to approach, which I reluctantly did, not sure what to expect.

“This morning, we received an anonymous package by mail,” he explained. “Within the package, there was a DataStream message clip, and these items. We find this worrying.”

I peered into the box as the last of the dry ice dissipated. I’m not sure what I had braced myself for, but it certainly wasn’t what I saw. A cluster of small white pellets, jumbled together like mints. It took me a moment to recognise what I was peering at.

“Teeth?” I glanced up. Harrison regarded me steadily, his expression unreadable. Cloves stood behind me, uncomfortably close, her arms folded.

“Thirty two teeth to be precise,” she said coldly. “It’s all we have found of her … so far.”

Her
? I blinked and stared back into the suddenly macabre box. “These are…” I faltered.

“They belong to your supervisor,” Harrison said bluntly. “We have dental records, and much more, of every employee of Blue Lab. At 6am this morning, just before sunrise, someone delivered the entire contents of Vyvienne Trevelyan mouth to us, neatly packaged, if rather … crudely extracted. I imagine the experience was not a pleasant one for her.”

My hand covered my mouth involuntarily. I felt sick. “Oh my God. What … what the hell?” My boss was never going to win my nomination for hero of the month, but I wouldn’t wish dental torture even on her. “Who did this? Why?”

“We were hoping
you
would be able to assist us with these questions, Dr Harkness,” Veronica Cloves said close to my ear, making me jump. “Someone has kidnapped, tortured and mutilated a member of Blue Lab One, and has now sent a rather enigmatic ransom note along with some of her body parts to us. Needless to say … this does not sit well with Cabal.”

I turned to face her, as much to not have to look at the box full of teeth as to confront the woman. “This is unbelievable,” I managed. “Good God, poor Trevelyan. Jesus.”

I’m articulate in a crisis, I know.

I shook my head, trying to clear it. The teeth glittered up at me obscenely. “But … I don’t understand why … I mean, I’m a blood doctor, I didn’t exactly swap Christmas cards with my boss, we hardly got on like a house on fire. I don’t know how you’d think I could shed any light on something like this?”

“Partly because we believe this crime was committed by a GO,” Harrison said behind me. “And they seem to have suddenly taken an interest in you.” I didn’t like that comment one little bit. It sounded like a trap, or an accusation. Or both.

“But primarily…” Cloves said, her voice like an icy razor, reaching into her suit jacket and withdrawing a DataStream clip, a kind of slim USB, which she brandished like evidence in front of me, “… because the message which came with the teeth, the message sent by who or whatever has taken and tortured our staff member … is addressed to
you
.”

10

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a vet. Well, originally I wanted to be a ballerina, then there was a fire-fighter phase I went through, but it turns out I was neither coordinated nor inflammable, so time and again I returned to my main theme of vet. I pictured myself wandering around healing sick animals, the occasional bit of horse dentistry, birthing a cow, splinting the legs of cats. I was an animal lover, you see.

Of course, things don’t ever work out quite as we plan them. Fate and fortune led me down a very different and more specialised path. My father was a scientist once, before the wars, long before I was born. He was a medic later on. Trying to save the dying human population. I kind of followed in his footsteps after he died. I still, some would say, work with animals, if you could regard the genetically engineered rabid killing machines we call the Pale as such, but I would point out that it’s hardly the same thing trying to undo the Faustian meddling of the last generation. It’s a long way from caring for sick puppies. The only interaction with actual animals of the small and fluffy variety I get these days is with rats, and I tend to kill them – not always entirely by accident.

My point is that we never really know, no matter how sure we are of ourselves and our place in the world when we set out, exactly where it is we are going to end up. For example, even after accepting my fate as a lab drone, I had never expected to now be sitting in a subterranean office complex with three extremely important government Servants, corralled on all sides and wedged into a high backed and expertly leather-worked office chair, watching a DataStream clip which appeared to implicate me not only in extreme fraternisation with Genetic Others, but also with kidnappers and torturers. It was not what I would call comfortable viewing.

The visual on the clip, which Cloves had inserted into Fat Godfather’s monitor, was grainy and shaky. Handheld footage. Too old-fashioned to be any kind of cranial implant, which is what a lot of the news crews were using these days. It was hard to make out much other than a featureless, grey room, I was guessing a basement or storage locker. The walls were old blocks of stone, damp-looking. Like a crypt. The only thing on screen was my supervisor, tied to a run of the mill four-legged chair with generous amounts of duct tape. Her clothes were those I had last seen her in, though crumpled and dirty. Dusty looking, as though she had been dragged along the floor, the coat of her blazer torn. Her hair was in disarray, falling forward over her face, and her mouth was obscured behind yet more silver duct tape. She was missing a shoe. For some reason this detail stuck with me, a distressing sight. I had never considered my boss as a vulnerable person. She would have survived a direct nuclear hit, but the sight of her stockinged foot, bent at an odd angle to the chair leg, made her seem like a small child.

She was clearly out of it, either drugged or beaten senseless. It was hard to see. The light was so poor and the camera kept jiggling, like one of those annoying found footage horror movies which always give me headaches.

It lingered on her a moment or two, blurring and refocusing, and then a voice, so low and guttural it was almost a growl, echoed from the monitor’s speakers.

“Familiar sight, eh?” the voice spat. There was a burst of static, interference. “Used to seeing test subjects? Makes for an interesting science project. You humans are so fond of those.” The voice sounded furious, lip-biting, blood-spitting angry. “Well, it’s your turn now! How many killed? How many for the sins of mankind? This is only the beginning! I promise you.”

The picture was lost for a second. More static, a high squeal, and then it was back. A hand had entered the frame. “You think you are untouchable! Cabal, the new order. You think you own the world! But we remember what was done! And there will be payment, an eye for an eye…” The hand raised up in front of the camera; it was gloved and gripping a pair of large and unpleasant pliers. “And a tooth for a tooth! Five sinners, five will pay!”

The camera became too shaky to make much out, the cameraman was shuffling toward the chair, towards Trevelyan, pliers held aloft. She was beginning to stir, groggily. The cameraman chuckled, a noise that chilled me, in the midst of all the anger and the shouting, a bubbling wet chuckle which sounded utterly unhinged. “Five will pay, and the sun will rise!” it spat. “Harkness, Harkness, poor poor Vyvienne needs your help … the sun
will
rise!”

The screen went to full static-hissing snow.

I sat frozen. Servant Leon Harrison turned the monitor off and silence descended.

All three Cabal members were looking at me closely. Cloves and Harrison with calculating looks. The minister, or whatever he was, gazing at me emptily through heavy lidded eyes. I stared at the blank screen, mute with horror. That thing doing the talking, the kidnapper, whoever, whatever it was, so angry, so utterly bat-shit crazy and dangerous, had just sang my own name out of the screen at me.

“Now perhaps you understand why we are hoping for your cooperation, Dr Harkness,” Veronica Cloves said. She sounded roughly two minutes away from fetching thumbscrews and starting her own fun home video interrogation.

“I don’t know what to say.” I looked up at them, still feeling nauseous. My forehead had broken out in a sickly sheen of sweat, I was deeply hoping they would recognise it as revulsion and not interpret it as guilt. “I don’t know … I don’t know why it said my name.”

The person who had made the DataStream clip, was almost certainly a
he
, but I couldn’t help thinking of it as an ‘it’. I’d never heard a voice like that. Almost animal.

“Voice pattern analysis suggests that the speaker, and, if we can assume, the kidnapper, is a Genetic Other,” Servant Harrison said. “Specifically of the type who deem themselves ‘vampires’. You met with a vampire only last night, the same night your supervisor went missing, and only hours before this DataStream was made and her teeth were returned to us here.”

After the initial shock, I was slowly regaining my equilibrium. “And what?” I asked. “Are you suggesting that this is a personal issue? Revenge on me for something, because I’ve had a few bad break ups, believe me, but none of my exs have been quite so gibberingly psychotic, and as far as I remember, they all had pulses.”

“We’re not suggesting that you were involved with the abduction, Dr Harkness,” Harrison countered.

“Really? Because that’s pretty much what it sounds like! Okay, yes, I met a vampire last night, but to put things in perspective, so did everyone else in that damn auditorium. The only reason he was speaking to me is because Trevelyan hadn’t shown up herself. If anything, it’s more likely it was her he wanted to speak with in the first place. She was certainly the speaker on the bill when he applied for his ticket.”

I mentally counted to five (I couldn’t make it all the way to ten) but it still managed to give me time to stop my voice becoming increasingly shrill. “And if you think I have some kind of involvement with the Genetic Others further than my work here at the lab, and that this is some kind of a warning to me or a punishment, trust me, any GO who knew me even slightly would know that if they wanted to get to me, taking Trevelyan out of all the people I know is a pretty unlikely call.”

This sounded mean, even to my own ears. I had only meant that if someone was sending me a personal message and wanted me to suffer, why wouldn’t they hurt Griff or Lucy? Someone I actually cared about on a day to day basis. Trevelyan was basically my archnemesis under usual circumstances.

“There is no doubt that the kidnapper is addressing you specifically, Dr Harkness,” Cloves pointed out helpfully. “Whoever has done this knows Trevelyan’s team. Knows you work here, and fully intended you to receive and view this … clip.”

“I wish I could tell you why,” I said, with absolute honesty. “I genuinely do.”

“You are certain…” Harrison said, “… that there is nothing you can think of. Nothing your supervisor shared with you, said to you, which could shed any light on these events?”

I was getting restless now. “I already told you, we were not best buddies. Vyvienne and I didn’t exactly braid each other’s hair. If she was talking to me, it was mainly to shout.” I had the feeling that these three were looking for a fall guy. That somehow they wanted to incriminate me, have me take the blame for these terrible events. My temper made me bolder than usual.

“Look, if you’re going to arrest me, just do it,” I said. “Because I honestly have no idea what’s going on here. I don’t know the first thing about my supervisor, I don’t know who the scary movie maker is, or why he’s so obsessed with the sun coming up. But if the police are going to be involved here, call them already, and maybe I can go and answer their questions in a nice cell downtown.” I was painfully aware that ‘downtown’ was an Americanism, but I was feeling understandably dramatic, given the circumstances.

The godfather spoke, looking directly at me for the first time since he had directed me into the morgue. He had the dead eyes of a fish. It made my skin crawl.

“You misunderstand, Dr Harkness,” he rumbled slowly. “You are not being arrested; you are Cabal’s only link to the world of the GOs. You’re our only agent who has any interaction with those we study outside of chemical testing.” He leaned forward across the desk toward me, his movements laborious. “Your encounter last night with the one who calls himself Allesandro. It may be essential to us. I mean for you to exploit it.”

I opened my mouth to reply, or protest, but he held up a stubby finger patiently.

“You are not being arrested or accused, Dr Harkness,” he said, and his small eyes glinted. “You are being promoted.”

“And if I don’t want the promotion?” I asked.

“Trevelyan’s influence was largely the only thing keeping funding flowing into Blue Lab, Doctor Harkness,” Servant Harrison said lightly behind me. “If she is not found, well, let’s just say it would be likely that certain areas of interest would need to be cut.”

“These are tough economic times,” Cloves agreed. “Your life’s work? The careers of your young team, those you care so much for, as you say.” She folded her arms. “Trevelyan threw a lot of weight at the Cabal Board to continue in her field. It would be a terrible shame for everything to fall apart without her.”

I’d never been threatened with a promotion before. Hold a gun to my head and you might get a stubborn smart-arse remark. Threaten to take away my research, disband my team? That’s different. A doctor without access to Blue Lab, without resources? I’d be selling snake oil in two weeks. No hope for my research, no future for my team.

The dead-eyed godfather smiled. “Congratulations, Dr Harkness. I’m sure you’ll be a most useful asset to us.”

I did the only thing I could. Mustering what dignity I had, I stood, chin up, and smeared my palm the full length of the desk.