The Tenth Legion (Book 6, Progeny of Evolution) (14 page)

Then there was
the other Ed, the simple creature residing inside of the other—the
one who believed in true love, retaining hope of finding what he
innocently called, “The One”. Shadow Ed, Lorna decided, she could
fall in love with. While the two versions remained so far apart,
the contraption of a relationship the three of them shared misfired
and pinged like a poorly tuned engine. As Chairman Ed became more
like Shadow Ed, the engine would settle out, until they coincided,
and the only sound became a smooth purr of synchronous harmony,
turning a silent frictionless crankshaft.

Like that
would ever happen without a class “A” miracle!

CHAPTER NINE

“
J
esus Christ,”
Mike growled when Lorna appeared on her first day back at work.
“Nice of you to show up.” His comment represented the only verbal
acknowledgement, official or otherwise, made of her absence, which
included another two days after arrival authorized by Assistant
Chief Durning, himself. Acclimation time, he called it.

When she
passed his office door, Captain Gregg recorded her arrival time in
the more customary way, made subtler by leaving out the banter. A
picture of him slipping on his own bodily fluids in the excitement
to report her absence on the first day, to be deflated when Watch
Commander Bell said she was covered, hung in the happy place of her
mind like a treasured family portrait.

With a sigh,
she began to open the mail.

After lunch in
the quaint little harbor, Ed had put her on the corporate jet.
Ethan accompanied her to Orlando. Two employees loaded trunks full
of clothes and makeup in the baggage compartment.

“Of course
they’re yours.” Ed laughed before they left the mansion. In the
vanity area, a maid packed up the items provided for her when she
arrived. “They won’t fit me,” Shadow Ed said.

Lorna
calculated she wouldn’t need to buy cosmetics for several years.
“Some of the outfits I haven’t worn. Can’t you return them?”

“The clothiers
we deal with do not take returns,” Ed, the Chairman answered.

Ed—she wasn’t
sure which one—kissed her on the mouth when she boarded the plane.
The backwash from the engines stirred up a gust of wind, plastering
trousers and silk shirt hard against his handsome frame.

“Farewell,
Aliff,” she muttered, the name now etched in her consciousness.

She slept for
most of the flight. When she stirred, Ethan stood over her,
presenting a snack tray. “Forgive me,” he said. “I didn’t mean to
startle you.”

With an
insipid hand wave, she declined the food, but a need to explain her
sound sleep lingered. “I usually nap in the afternoons. I work four
a.m. to one p.m.”

“
That’s a
tough schedule.”

What would you
know, boss’s son?

His kind
expression didn’t change. “You’re thinking what do I know about
tough schedules since I’m the boss’s son. ESP research candidate,
remember? Father didn’t let any of us slide. I spent a year on Mars
and another in the Congo, doing charity work.”

“
I’m sorry.
I didn’t know.”

Beaming down
on her in a way that brought Ed’s image to mind, he continued. “My
father cares a great deal for you, but the CEO part of him is
afraid to let anyone get too close. Be patient. It will work
out.”

A hand nudged
her on the shoulder. “Ms. Winters,” said the flight attendant.
“Wake up, Ms. Winters. We’re landing in thirty minutes. You have
time for a comfort break before we have to put on seat belts.”

Lorna snapped
her head back and forth, disoriented before realizing the previous
episode with Ethan had been a dream. Seated at the front, he, also,
stirred from a nap. Rising to his feet, his eyes engaged hers, and
he nodded pleasantly...

Returning to
the present in the midst of early shift bustle, Lorna paused in the
repetitive, almost robotic, process of dealing with mail. After
flipping through half the stack, she stopped. An envelope with the
corporation’s return address topped the remaining pile, addressed
to her personally. Inside, she found a letter from Ed, thanking her
for their time together and listing various contact numbers. Among
them, the number of the director of the DNA laboratory in Miami
stood out.

A phone call
later, the samples taken from the Gomez murder site headed south.
Two days after that, the names of a pair of lycans, Michel and
Grace Felder, crossed Lorna’s desk. They lived in East Orlando.

“I have hits
on the DNA from the Gomez case,” Lorna said, walking into Captain
Gregg’s office. “I’d like to send S.W.A.T. to check it out.”

Gregg peered
over a set of thin glasses. “What’s wrong with a patrol car or two?
Isn’t that their job?”

Thinking of
Ed’s suggestion that they were dealing with a ring selling human
organs rather than a bunch of ferals, she said, “The operation
might be bigger than we think. I don’t want uniforms scaring them
off.”

“Do you have
something to suggest it’s more than ferals?”

“Not
specifically, just a hunch.”

Gregg had been
filling out a report the whole time they were talking. He stopped,
looking up. “Hunches don’t count. Evidence does.”

“Okay, let me
take Mike Geurin for a drive-by.”

He appraised
the proposal with a skeptical frown “Just watching them? Nothing
else?”

“Nothing else,
I promise. We won’t do anything without backup.”

“Okay,
remember don’t get killed. The paperwork is a bitch.”

Lorna left
behind a stink-eye for him to ponder. Upon clearing Gregg’s
doorway, she bellowed, “Geurin, you’re with me.”

“Right away,
boss.” The volume of the reply, diluted by the distance across the
room, still bore familiar nicotine-scarred hoarseness. A yellow,
plaid coat flung around the shoulders of a shirt with sweat-stained
armpits and neck, Mike shuffled toward the elevator, pushed the
button for the ground floor, and waited for Lorna.

“Just like old
times, eh?”

Lorna put a
full clip in her firearm. “Yeah, Mike. Just like old times.”

Mike checked
the car from the motor pool, which meant he got to drive—again,
just like old times. Lorna didn’t care. Her mind dwelt on the case,
together with what they might find at the destination.

“Remember, no
hot-dogging. We’re supposed to check the place out. If we see
something, call in the Marines.” A favorite expression, she often
used it. The allusion was to an elite military force noted for
valor, but abolished when the United States combined the military
branches sometime before the Dissolution.

“Got it,
Princess.”

Lorna rolled
an unserious, reproachful eye at him, like the expression a teacher
would use on an incorrigible but charming child.

On the ride
over, Lorna consulted the OPD search engine for information about
their destination.

“East Orlando
was once a fashionable area, but the hard times, exacerbated by
population decline, left large numbers of abandoned homes and
commercial buildings.” She read aloud from the information on the
monitor. “Many slid into ruin, of no use to anyone, but others
became gang hideouts or drug labs.”

And if Ed’s
hypothesis is correct, a lot worse.

The address
yielded an abandoned private storage facility, hundreds of
cinder-block-walled cubicles in long rows. Each sported a
corrugated metal door in various conditions of repair. “They could
be anywhere,” Mike said.

“Ya
think?”

They made a
drive by. Nothing moved inside. Mike swung back, parking behind the
abandoned hulk of a truck cab. They couldn’t be seen from the
storage units.

“If they’re
home, they’ll be stirring soon. Let’s just sit here and be cool,”
Lorna said.

From
experience, Lorna knew Mike got fidgety on stakeouts. When they
were partners, he’d made the coffee and food runs, anything to keep
busy.

After leafing
through a handbook on firearm regulations, followed by a fashion
magazine wedged under a seat, he ran out of things to do. “Did I
show you my new piece? It’s a Magnum. I can stop a grizzly in its
tracks.”

The
long-barreled, dull-gray weapon hung suspended in Mike’s grip.

“Very
impressive, have you fired the damn thing yet?” That question would
engage him for a while.

Twenty minutes
later and halfway through a dissertation on the grain count of the
Magnum’s ammunition, a light went on in the storefront of a unit. A
door opened. A person exited, talking on a cell phone.

Mike started
to go.

“Wait,” Lorna
said. “Let’s see what’s up.”

A set of
headlights belonging to an eighteen-wheeler flashed at the
intersection behind them. The tractor-trailer rounded the corner.
Morning rush hour, what there was in these lean times, didn’t crank
up for another hour, making the large vehicle stand out in the
sparse traffic. It turned into the storage facility, stopping in
front of the illuminated unit. From inside, someone raised a
jointed metal door, flooding the paved area in front with light.
Six or eight people swarmed around. One of them opened the back
door of the trailer.

“That’s a
refrigerated unit,” Mike said.

After forming
a single line, the group passed white Styrofoam boxes from one to
the other and into the open rear.

“Time to call
in the Marines.”

“Slow as that
asshole Gregg is, by the time they get here, the truck will be
gone. We need to stall them.” Mike itched to try out the new 44
Magnum.

Lorna assessed
the situation. “No, we wait. I’ll make the call for SWAT. Get your
Kevlar on.”

Another twenty
minutes found them still waiting.

The crew
sealed the truck. In minutes, they’d be barreling toward the
expressway. No matter, since she’d called in the license
number.

“If that truck
leavers, we’re giving up a big collar,” Mike said.

“Don’t worry.
There’ll be plenty of credit to go around.” She hoped the Highway
Patrol was waiting at the on ramp.

The large
vehicle turned out of the entrance and moved away, shrinking to an
arrangement of faded garnet lights hanging in the half-lit misty
dawn. Then, from the other direction, a pair of headlights grew
into a black panel van that pulled alongside Lorna and Mike. A side
door whooshed open. An officer in dark body armor poked his head
out.

“We have
another unit going to block off the entrance on the other side,” he
said. “We’ll cover this one. Is there any other way out?”

“Not according
to the city plans,” Lorna said.

A distant
whooping siren sound told Lorna the Highway Patrol had moved in on
the truck. She cinched up a final strap on her vest.

“Here, let
me,” she said to Mike, who had trouble with his. After a few quick
pulls, the nylon covered vest snugged against his chest and back
with the protective panels meeting at each side.

“Just like old
times, eh, Princess?” he muttered to her under his breath. There
was no mistaking the smell of adrenaline coursing through him. His
hand caressed the grip of the .44.

“Don’t do
anything stupid.”

“Ready?” The
Officer in Charge of the S.W.A.T. detail asked, and then tilted his
head to one side, muttering orders into a microphone clipped to a
collar. Almost immediately, a police car whipped around the corner
and skidded to a stop, blocking the entrance of the storage
units.

“Are you aware
there are lycans and possibly vampires involved?” Lorna asked as
they jogged over. For her, the pace hardly raised her heartbeat,
but the others showed reddened faces.

The S.W.A.T.
leader nodded yes between labored breaths.

They arrived
at the entrance. In the quiet, ten sets of lungs exchanged air.
Teams of three peeled off to cover escape routes within the
facility. Lorna and Mike, with the Team Leader in tow, headed for
the illuminated unit. The crew, who’d loaded the truck, scattered
when the police cruiser arrived at the entrance. Lorna heard the
rapid beating of their feet on the pavement abruptly stopping when
they ran into police teams coming from the other entrance. She
warmed with satisfaction at the sound of felons hitting the ground.
The barked directions of the boys in blue filled the air. Then,
someone inside the unit killed the lights.

“There are at
least four inside,” the Team Leader whispered, pointing at the
darkened storage unit. “We have the entrance and back exit
covered.”

Lorna sniffed
the air. “Two are lycans. I’m going to try to talk them out.”

“With all due
respect, lieutenant, those woofers aren’t going to listen to
anything humans have to say. If they can’t escape, they’ll go down,
and take as many of us as they can.”

Mike cringed
in anticipation of Lorna’s reaction to the “W” word, but she only
smiled. “Sergeant, I have some experience with woofers.” She
unstrapped her fire arm.

Stepping to
the entrance with hands raised, she shouted into the dark, “It
doesn’t have to end like this! No one has to die today!”

From inside,
the sounds of tense breathing, accompanied by nervous scurries
dribbled out. Their fear built toward terror. By now, enough
daylight entered the storage unit to outline the shapes of five or
six steel dissecting tables. Blood lay in thickening pools on the
floor around each one. Cutting tools were arranged on the tables or
hung in neat rows on pegboard. Slowly, from the aggregate of metal,
a form raised upright.

“You’re
lycan,” a voice said from inside.

“So are you,”
Lorna answered the female crouched ahead in the semi-light of the
storage unit. “Lay down your weapons. Let’s end this
peacefully.”

Lorna alerted
at the sound of ripping metal. The team at the back battered down
the service door of the fire exit. The first officer through met
the business end of a shot gun blast at point blank range that
flung him into the next one.