Shadowlight (15 page)

“You’re not going anywhere,” Rowan assured her.

“I’m eighty-seven years old, my dear,” the old lady said. “We both know I’m not long for this world. I want to leave you the house and everything we have, but our lawyer tells me to do that I must give him your full name and Social Security number.” She studied Rowan’s face. “If we do that, they’ll find you, won’t they?”

Rowan started to deny it, and then sighed. “Yeah, they would. I’d explain but you wouldn’t believe me.”

“I already know,” Deborah said, looking a little ashamed now. “You talk in your sleep. The first couple of weeks you were with us, Annette and I would take turns listening.”

“You know everything?”

Deborah nodded. “I won’t allow you to be in danger again, so I must sell the house before I go. We’ll put the money in traveler’s checks.”

Rowan shook her head. “Even if you did that—and I wouldn’t let you—I couldn’t cash them.” She touched the old lady’s frail hand. “Leave everything to the church, the way you and Annette planned to. I’m working now, and when the time comes I’ll find a place. I’ll be all right.”

“What about your past?”

“It’s dead and buried.” Rowan plucked at the edge of her sleeve, tugging it down over the new black dragon tattoo she’d just gotten to cover the other mark. There was one question that remained unanswered, and it was one she had to ask. She glanced up at Deborah. “Why did you take me in?”

The old lady looked uncomfortable. “You know why. We needed a housekeeper. You needed a home.”

“That’s nice, but I know what I did to you the day we met.” Rowan took a deep breath. “What was her name? The girl you loved?”

Deborah put a hand to her throat, and then her face crumpled like an old tissue. “Mary Margaret O’Brien. She never … I never told her.” Regret dulled her eyes. “She wasn’t like me, so there was no point. She married very young, and died in childbirth. It broke my heart.”

“I didn’t mean to do it,” Rowan told her. “I was just so hungry. I didn’t even realize what I had done until later, and I should have gone. But you and Annette were so nice, and I was lonely and afraid …” It was her turn to be swamped by shame. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She gave her a wistful smile. “It was a lovely moment for me, to see her face again. I didn’t understand what had happened until Annette and I began to eavesdrop on your sleep. Rowan, can you … do that … for everyone?”

“No. Only for men.” She grimaced. “I mean, only for someone who’s been in love with a woman. I can only be a woman.”

Deborah held out her hand. “Then would you do an old lady one last favor?”

Rowan slowly gripped her hand and closed her eyes. She had never used her ability in front of another person who knew about it; not even when she had been screamed at, threatened, and then beaten. She held her breath as she felt the skin on her face stretch and shift as the shape of it gradually changed. Her short, dark hair became a cap of thick ginger curls, and when she opened her eyes and looked at Deborah, she did so through the grass green eyes of Mary Margaret O’Brien—just as she had for a moment when she’d first met Deborah at the shelter.

“Just as I remember her,” the old lady said, and lifted Rowan’s hand to press a gentle kiss on the back. “Thank you, my dear.”

Deborah contracted pneumonia that winter, and never really recovered. A few months later she died as her sister had: peacefully, in her sleep. When Rowan came back to the house after the funeral to pack up her things, she found an envelope tucked away in her bureau, and in it a note from Deborah along with enough cash to pay the rent on a small apartment for a year.

The church didn’t need our old jewelry,
Deborah had written.
Thank you for being so good to us, and remember us in your prayers. We love you, Rowan.

At least someone had loved her once in her life, Rowan thought as she went to the fridge and surveyed the contents. At least she’d had that much.

Queenie’s dossier didn’t specify her eating habits, but since Rowan went along with Matthias’s vegetarian diet, they didn’t keep any meat on hand. Italian would just have to do, she decided as she took out a basket of plum tomatoes and a couple of sweet yellow onions. Her hands flew as she took out her frustrations on the ingredients; ten minutes later she had a pot of marinara sauce bubbling on the stove and went to work on hand-making the pasta.

She didn’t have to go to all this trouble—she’d personally seen to it that the pantry was stocked with enough non-perishable supplies to see them through an ice age—but she’d bet good money that Queenie couldn’t boil an egg. Maybe if she reminded Matthias more often that she could do a lot more than simply clean up and whip his ass at pool, he’d start realizing how important she was to him. Maybe he’d finally figure out why she’d followed him around like a goddamn groupie ever since she’d first laid eyes on him.

Yeah, and if he ever does, he’ll just pat me on the head and tell me I’m sweet and he’s too old for me and I’ll grow out of it someday. Then I will take a pool cue to the blind son of a bitch’s thick skull.

“Rowan.”

She whirled, her dough knife in her hand. “What? Fuck.” She drove the tip of the knife into her cutting board and kept her back toward Matthias until she could compose herself. “Sorry. You scared me.” She looked around him. “Where’s Dazed and Confused?”

“Jessa is using the computer.”

“We’re giving her access to our hardware?” She leaned back against the counter. “Want me to write down the main number for GenHance for her? Might help speed things up.”

“Jessa must know what Genaro has done to her. The computer will tell her everything.” He went over to the stove and lifted the cover on the sauce pot. “This smells very good.”

“It needs fifteen more minutes.” She took the cover from him and replaced it. “You want this on a tray, or will Her Highness be dining in?”

“We will eat here, as always.” He frowned. “Why are you angry with me?”

“I don’t know. I should go grab a couple of hot prospects, bring them down here, and give them the run of the place. Would liven up things considerably.” His blank expression made her hands curl into fists. “You left her alone, on a computer, an hour after she wakes up—and you don’t see anything wrong with that?”

“Jessa adjusts quickly. She will accept us as her friends.”

“In case you forgot, we don’t know Jessa. Jesus Christ, Matt.” She threw out her arms. “You have no fucking clue what’s going on inside her head right now. She could totally freak out, wreck the equipment, start running around and screaming for help—”

“I believe she is checking the balance in her bank accounts through the encrypted server,” he said mildly. “After that she plans to review the information we have on Genaro, and she will likely send a warning to her friends.”

“Sure. Okay. Terrific.” She went over to the counter, kicked up the linguine she’d hand-rolled and cut, and threw it into the boiling water. “Dinner will ready in thirty minutes.” She stiffened as his hand rested on her shoulder. “Don’t.”

“I have not disabled the security measures, so she cannot leave,” he assured her. “But if we are to gain her trust, she must believe that she can.”

Rowan exhaled. “She’s not stupid. She’ll try to go anyway.”

“I do not think so,” he said. “Not after she learns what Genaro has done. She is a good woman, Rowan. We will persuade her to help us.“ He gave her shoulder a fond squeeze before he left the kitchen.

A good woman. One who could be trusted. Of course she was.

Steam from the pot heated Rowan’s face but she didn’t move. A year ago she had gone into Matthias’s bedroom one night, a small mirror in her hand, and she’d sat by his bedside and held it, watching as she touched him and let herself change. Her ability allowed her to assume the image of any man’s ideal woman, the woman he would ultimately fall in love with. She’d desperately wanted to know whom Matthias could love, but she hadn’t recognized the beautiful, regal face in the mirror. All she found out was that his ideal woman looked nothing like her.

Later she saw that face two more times: first when she had uploaded the driver’s license photo of Minerva Starret, and then when she had seen Jessa Bellamy’s face.

His dream girl had arrived, and nothing would keep them apart now. Not even her love for him.

As Rowan watched the long strips of pasta dance around the bubbles, she let the tears slip down her cheeks and drip, one by one, into the boiling water.

Morning came like a rancid bitch with a rolling pin, pounding on his head and shrieking in his ears. He groped until he found the call button and thumbed it over and over. Another hatchet-faced twat in whites appeared, but this one wouldn’t give him the stuff. She told him he’d have to wait until the doctor made rounds.

He told her what he thought of her until she left, and then he waited. He hit the call button. The lazy slut of a nurse didn’t come, but spoke over an intercom in the wall. She said the doctor wasn’t in yet. They did that three more times, and then the stupid whore stopped answering the call signal. Like he was nothing—he was nobody.

Lawson saw an empty wheelchair sitting at the end of the bed, but when he tried to sit up his thigh stretched and the pain became a thousand snakes, crawling and biting their way up his chest. His heart thundering in his ears, he eased back on the pillows and tore two holes in the sheets with his clenched fists.

“What kind of hospital are you running here?” Bradford said as soon as the doctor came in. “I’ve been waiting on you for hours.”

“You’ve been waiting for thirty minutes, Mr. Lawson.” He picked up the chart hanging from the end of the bed and read the top page.

“Where’s the needle?” When the doctor didn’t answer, he added, “The nurse wouldn’t give me anything for the pain. She said you would. Where is it?”

“The amount of drugs still in your system makes it unwise to continue to administer IV morphine, and oral analgesics will only promote more bleeding.” The man barely glanced at him. “You’ll have to tough this one out for now, but in a few days the pain should begin to ease.”

He was in agony, and the shithead wasn’t going to give him anything at all. He’d have to get to his stash. “Just sew me back together and discharge me.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, either,” the doctor said. “The man who attacked you completely severed your semimembranosus, semitendinosus, and biceps femoris muscles. We’ll schedule the first surgery as soon as your condition stabilizes, but you will be hospitalized for several weeks, and then you’ll require extensive physical therapy to restore some function to your leg.”

His condition. Extensive therapy. Some function. Lawson’s gut knotted, but he wouldn’t give in to fear. Not when he had work to do. “Give me whatever papers I have to sign to get the fuck out of here.”

The doctor met his gaze. “Mr. Lawson, listen to me very carefully. The muscles that your attacker cut through are what allow you to bend your knee and extend your hip. If you leave this facility without proper treatment, and they heal as they are, you will never walk normally again, and it will be impossible for you to run, jump, or climb.”

“I’ll take care of it later.”

The doctor’s cold eyes remained pitiless. “Continuing to inject steroids and cocaine won’t help you, either. Aside from inducing the unacceptable levels of aggression and anger you’ve been displaying since you were admitted, your addiction has inflicted a considerable amount of damage to your liver and spleen.”

He slammed his arm into the aluminum bed railing. “I’m not a fucking addict.”

“I have the test results from the lab here in your chart. I understand you run a lab for Mr. Genaro.” The surgeon tossed the folder on the bed. “Read them for yourself.” He turned and left the room.

Lawson picked up the chart and threw it at the door, shouting after the doctor until his voice gave out, and then collapsed and covered his face with his shaking hands. They wouldn’t give him anything to help him cope, and now they were giving him this runaround about fixing his leg. But he didn’t blame the doctor. He might be as much a prick as Genaro, but he was just another workingman, trying to clean up after all the stupid fucking bitches of the world.

Like Jessa Bellamy, the cunt from hell who had done this to him.

Somehow she’d known the worst thing she could do to him was to have her asshole boyfriend cut him up and cripple him. And there was no way in the world Bradford Lawson was spending the rest of his life on crutches or in a wheelchair while that snotty little tramp danced off laughing at him. She was going to be sorry she’d ever thought of fucking with him.

Lawson had to get out of here, now.

His head felt as if it were going to split open, but he forced himself to calm down. He couldn’t risk any more injections; the doctor was probably right about the liver damage. Besides that, the steroids wouldn’t do anything to fix the problem with his leg. But Lawson needed something; he couldn’t stay here and let them fumble around with him, not when every minute he spent on his back was one that Jessa Bellamy didn’t deserve to breathe.

Genaro thought he was too messed up to go after the bitch, but Lawson knew better. He’d limp into hell if it meant he could drag that conniving slut back out and show her exactly how much damage a blade could do. He could call Genaro and find out if they had her yet, and demand he have the extreme pleasure of putting her down, but the old man wouldn’t keep her alive one second longer than he had to, not now.

All Lawson needed was a good leg, and something to knock back the pain. He could steal the morphine from the lab, but the leg …

He sat up, swearing as the sudden movement jolted his leg, and then panting out a laugh. He didn’t need to steal morphine, or anything. The answer to all his problems was back at the lab, locked up in secure storage and guarded around the clock.

A secure storage to which Lawson had the key code. Guarded by techs and security who worked for him.

He eyed the wheelchair, which had a metal frame, and then groped for the phone beside the bed. After getting the dumb twat at the switchboard to give him an outside call line, he phoned a car service he used for special appointments, and issued terse instructions for a car, a gun, and a driver who could keep his mouth shut.

Getting out of the hospital bed took the last of his strength, but every time his vision grayed Lawson imagined the Bellamy woman standing just out of reach and smiling. He managed to drag the wheelchair around the bed and hoist himself into it before he sagged over, trembling and covered in sweat.

The driver slipped into the room a half hour later and, after giving Lawson’s bloodstained bandages a troubled look, silently offered him a Glock, which he tucked out of sight by his hip. The driver then wheeled him out into the hall.

No one stopped them on the way out, but Lawson would have shot anyone who tried. The driver had to lift him from the chair into the back of the car, which nearly made him pass out again, and then drove him from the hospital to GenHance’s downtown headquarters.

Lawson sent the driver away as soon as he was back in the wheelchair outside the main entrance. Delaporte came out personally to open the doors for him.

“Mr. Lawson.” The chief of security wheeled him inside, taking him around the metal detector every employee had to pass through, just as Lawson had hoped. “Mr. Genaro will be out until morning.” His eyes dropped to the red-soaked bandage wrapped around Lawson’s thigh. “Shouldn’t you be back in the hospital?”

“One of my sources called me about Bellamy’s medical history,” he lied. “I have to pass the information along to Kirchner so he can avoid the same problems with the new acquisition.”

“If you’ll tell me, I can—”

“Jonah already thinks I’m washed-up, Don,” Lawson said, keeping his voice low and humble. “Please, let me do this much. It’ll prove to him that I can still be useful.”

Delaporte’s expression didn’t change, but his tone did. “All right. But once you’re through with Kirchner, you’ll let my guys take you back to the hospital.”

Lawson nodded. “Absolutely.” He reached for the wheels and propelled himself to the elevators, gritting his teeth against the fresh burst of pain that erupted from his thigh. Once inside the elevator, he wrapped his hand around the gun, but Delaporte didn’t follow him inside.

On the top floor, Lawson wheeled out, checked the hall, and then rolled down toward the main lab. He knew Kirchner spent every waking hour working on the new acquisition, so he didn’t worry about being discovered.

Only one tech remained on duty at night, and he opened the door for Lawson as soon as he saw him through the window.

“Sir, we just heard this evening what happened to you.” Carl Linder’s eyes widened as he took in Lawson’s appearance. “Jesus, I mean, sir—are you okay?”

“It looks worse than it is. Close the door, Carl.” While the tech did that, Lawson shifted the Glock and tucked it under a front fold of his patient’s gown. “Would you take me back to the storage area? The old man wants a quick count on the transerum.”

“Sure.” Carl pushed his wheelchair back through the lab and stopped by the keypad, where Lawson input the code. It didn’t release the locking mechanism. “Here, let me—they just changed all the codes today.”

If Genaro had changed the codes, it meant someone with access to the lab had fucked up royally and was due for termination—and there was no one else as fucked-up as Bradford Lawson.

His rage swelled as he thought of how the old man had looked at him in the hospital. What he’d read as pity had been contempt.

Lawson waited until the tech input the correct code and opened the massive reinforced steel door before he wheeled himself inside. The chilly interior of the storage unit smelled sharply of the alcohol and formalin used to preserve the various tissue and bone samples collected from previous subjects. But Lawson had eyes for only one case containing four shelves of glass vials, each filled with colorless liquid.

“Do you want me to get you an inventory form, Mr. Lawson?” Carl asked.

“Who put this in the case?” Lawson demanded, pointing at the middle shelf.

Carl wandered over and peered in. “I don’t see what—” He stopped as he felt the muzzle of the Glock touch his ear. “Mr. Lawson, don’t kill me, please. I’ll do whatever you want.”

“Take this.” Lawson shoved a syringe into Carl’s hand. “Fill it with the transerum.”

Carl fumbled a little, but after a moment he had the needle ready. “Now what?”

“Inject me in the left thigh.” Lawson kept the pistol against the younger man’s head, and when he didn’t move, he shouted, “Now.”

“You can’t take this stuff,” Carl pleaded. “We haven’t tested it on the brain-dead guy’s wound yet. You don’t know what it’ll do to you.”

“Inject me,” Lawson said calmly as he pulled back the edge of the gown to expose the bandaged surface of his leg, “or I’m going to make you his twin brother.”

Carl’s hand shook, but he managed to plant the needle in the muscle, and slowly depressed the plunger. The transerum felt hot as it poured into Lawson’s tissues and spread out with a beautiful glow.

“Yeah,” he breathed as the pain diminished. “That’s it. That’s what I need.” The heat grew more intense as it wrapped around his leg. “Fuck, that burns.”

“Let me call Dr. Kirchner,” Carl suggested. “He’ll know what to do. He can give you something, you know, to make you more comfortable.”

“Comfortable.” Lawson looked at him through half-closed eyes, smiling a little. “Do you know what this will do to me? What this will make me?” He laughed as the burning sensations tightened around the huge stitched gash in his flesh. “I’m gonna be like a god. They’ll all crawl to me now. Every one of those sluts.”

“Sure, Mr. Lawson.” Carl began backing toward the door. “I’ll get some clothes for you, huh?” He turned, and then crumpled forward as Lawson shot him three times in the back.

The heat became the world for a time as the transerum worked quickly up through his torso and down his arm. But Lawson endured the burning sensations, knowing that this was his trial by fire, and that with each passing moment every weakness, every flaw in his body was being systematically destroyed. He could feel the residual glow the transerum left behind, swelling in his muscles as they regained their perfection, knitting together every fiber and sinew that had been damaged. The center of his chest blazed, and he laughed helplessly as he realized that even his damaged liver was being regenerated.

Finally the blaze inside died, and his senses expanded, bringing the world to him in infinitely minute detail. The rush of the air through the ceiling vent, the faint whir of the centrifuge in the next room, the dripping of the blood still oozing from Carl’s wounds—his hearing had become so sensitive he could probably hear a pin drop from a mile away now.

Slowly Lawson got up from the wheelchair and felt the bloody bandage stretch across his newly healed muscles. He reached down and ripped it away, running his palm over the unmarked surface on the back of his thigh.

“Better than new,” he murmured, and did the same to the bandage on his wrist. The transerum had erased everything, leaving nothing behind, not even a scar. When he took a step, power spread through his limbs, eager and limitless, as if every muscle in his body had been changed into coiled steel. On a whim he jumped over Carl’s body and landed on the other side of the door.