Touch of Madness (2 page)

Which is why you are here—and why they fear you.

I somehow doubted the Thrall feared me—or much of anything else. Although things had certainly changed in the past few months. The Thrall had always been a fact of life, existing mostly in the shadows, in the larger cities. The nests and herds had generally been kept small and secret enough that most people had considered them to be yet another

“urban legend.” The previous queen of Denver had changed all that. She’d increased the size of both the nest and the herd, and had chosen prominent, highly placed people. The plan had worked to a point. Under her “rule” herd members lived longer, healthier lives. The nest, too, had prospered. But she’d made two major mistakes. Ignoring her own mortality, she left off breeding her replacement queen until almost too late. As her host body weakened so had her hold on her nest, so that a few of the strongest and most desperate had gone against the orders of the queens and attacked me directly.

Her second mistake was to choose me as the replacement host. It had been touch and go, but with the help of my friends and family I’d managed to kill the eggs and hatchlings—causing the death of the Denver nest and most of its herd. I gave an involuntary shiver and pulled my jacket tight around me to fight a chill that had nothing to do with the breeze blowing down from the air-conditioning duct.

Did you notice, all of us here are from the Western nations? Do you know why? Henri’s voice in my mind was pleasant, almost amused.

I hadn’t noticed until he mentioned it. I shook my head no, ever so slightly, while fighting to keep my eyes on Dr. Greeley at the front of the room.

When you destroyed the nest the pictures were shown all over the world. In those countries less sensitive to human rights issues anyone even suspected of being host or herd was hunted down, executed. I snorted lightly and took a sip of water to cover it. Bet quite a few political dissidents were accidentally eliminated in the process.

No doubt. But the queens, they are afraid now. They were few, now fewer. They fear extinction. Aw damn. Wouldn’t that just break my heart?

I saw Henri’s shoulders shake with silent laughter. Brooks might not be psychic enough to have heard the conversation, but he’s observant as hell. He noticed the old man’s mirth and gave me a warning look just as Dr. Greeley turned to glare at me.

I didn’t wilt. Then again, I never do. I went to Catholic schools for twelve years. Far as I’ve been able to determine nobody, and I do mean nobody, can give you a worse glare than a pissed-off nun.

“Now that everyone is here,” she said the word to have double meaning, “I’ll begin the presentation.”

I gave her my brightest smile. It wasn’t sincere, but it was sweet enough to rot the teeth out of her head. It didn’t take a psychic gift to know I had thrown her off her game. “Mason, get the lights…and hurry it up.”

I turned to see the young black man step from behind the tripod long enough to turn off three of the four rows of overhead lights. She hadn’t introduced him, and the condescension in her voice when issuing the order had been enough to raise my hackles. Mason didn’t appear offended: his entire being seemed focused on his work. Brooks’s eyes, however, had narrowed significantly, and I could see the tension spread in his massive shoulders. Dr. Greeley hit a button on her laptop and a PowerPoint slide appeared on the screen on the far wall. It depicted the life cycle of a Thrall in sterile, clinical detail. She began speaking to us, using a voice polished from frequent public speaking. “The Heterotroph hippocratia are a highly developed species with a unique culture and highly evolved hive society. Until very recently, the exceptionally short life span of the host/heterotroph symbiont—” she prompted the next slide to appear, as she continued unabated—“created a fundamental conflict between the two primary intelligent species of our planet.”

I saw her glance discreetly around the room to see if she’d lost us yet. While none of the audience appeared particularly riveted, nobody’s attention seemed to be wandering…except for Rikki. But she was no more unfocused than she’d been when I’d walked in, so I was betting it wasn’t the lecture.

“Recently, however, a particularly intelligent heterotroph queen discovered a means of significantly extending the life span of a symbiont. By working with this queen we were able to obtain a number of eggs, which were cryogenically preserved until funding could be obtained for the full project.”

There was no hiding the admiration in her voice. I sat dumbstruck. The queen she was referring to was the late Queen Monica, and a nastier piece of work you’ve never seen.

“Until heterotrophs merge with their human hosts and enter the symbiont stage, they are only able to communicate telepathically. Since telepathy is a very rare gift among the human population, early communication has never previously been attempted.” She hit the button and a slide showing a new hatchling appeared. I gave an involuntary shudder. Only a few months ago I’d had one of those slimy little maggots trying to climb into my mouth to take over my mind and my body. The mental wound was too new, too raw, for me not to react. Dr. Greeley was droning on. “Until recently, becoming a host meant a severely shortened life span, along with the loss of free will. The goal of this study is to cut off the original bond to the heterotroph collective and create a conduit of communication between the heterotroph eggs and psychically gifted humans so that both species can work together to find a way to live a full cooperative life span with joint awareness and control of the shared body.” She turned, looking at each of us in turn, her smile bright and shiny as a newly minted coin, while a weight, heavy as lead, began to form in my stomach.

“We hope that by working together we can come up with solutions to so many of the issues that try our peoples, where telepathy could play a significant and helpful role. The possibilities are nearly endless, but some examples would be the ability to communicate with coma patients, the possibility of reviving Eden zombies, and so very much more.”

I understood now why Joe had been so insistent—and how Miles had “hooked” him on the idea. My baby brother Bryan is a former Eden zombie. The only good thing that had come from my confrontation with Monica was that he’d had what the doctors were referring to as a “partial recovery.” Now instead of being a total zombie, he had the mind of a four-year-old child. Since not one single Eden zombie had ever recovered even that much of their ability, physicians from around the world were flying in to study my brother to see if there was any way to duplicate the effect. Drug abuse, in general, was up in all the developed countries. But Eden was the worst. Not only was it the most addicting—but one single misstep in the preparation would result in anyone who used the “bad” drugs becoming empty shells with no mind or will of their own. Hope for a cure was no doubt the lure Greeley had used to obtain her funding.

While my mind had been wandering Greeley kept talking. I missed some of it, and would have missed more if I hadn’t heard Henri gasp inside my mind.

“You what?” Brooks’s voice was a controlled roar and I fought my way back to reality to figure out what was happening.

Greeley gave him a steely glare. “We have incubated one hundred of the eggs provided by Queen Monica—”

I stared at her, horrified. “Where?” I kept my voice controlled, despite the panic that was tightening my chest. I asked, though I was very much afraid I knew the answer. Suddenly the buzz that had been in the back of my mind from the time I’d entered the hospital had a logical explanation.

“The eggs are being maintained in a safe, sterile—”

“WHERE?”

She placed hands on her hips, which caused the wireless remote in her hand to flip to the next slide—and a picture of what must be an incubation chamber appeared twice real-life size. “Really, Ms. Reilly! There’s no need to shout!”

It took every ounce of my self-control not to rise from my seat, grab her by the lapels, and shake the information out of her. Instead, I gripped the edge of the conference table, my nails digging little half-moon shapes into the blond wood.

“Oh my God.” I heard a whisper from the far side of the table. The teenager in the letter jacket was staring at the screen. She’d paled until her skin was the color of bleached paper. “Mom, we need to go NOW.” She turned to face her mother, white showing all around the irises of her eyes. “She has them here!”

Mrs. Webster didn’t need to be told twice. She rose to her feet abruptly enough to send her chair clattering backward onto the floor. “Dr. Greeley, you’ll receive our check returning your money within the week.”

“Antonia, Mrs. Webster, there’s no need—” Dr. Greeley’s protests were nearly inaudible over the sound of chairs scraping back from the table as most of the meeting participants prepared to leave.

“Ladies and gentlemen…if you’ll just—”

It was no good, and she knew it. I could see it in the thinning of her lips, the angry set to her shoulders as she watched her hopes dwindle as the others walked out. Frankly, I didn’t give a damn about her feelings. I was much more worried about what was in the incubator. I knew how powerful the mind control of a hatchling was. I’d had one in my mind once, and to this day didn’t remember everything that happened that night. All it would take was one susceptible human walking by and opening the lid for all hell to break loose. I shuddered at the thought. Only Henri, Brooks, the videographer, and I remained.

“Well, aren’t you going?” Her acid-tinged words were directed at me. “This is your fault after all. They were fine until you started a wholly unnecessary panic.”

“Hardly,” Brooks corrected. “If it’s anyone’s fault it’s yours for getting us here under false pretenses.”

“No one was lied to.”

Henri and Brooks snorted in unison at her feeble protest. By their own rules they couldn’t/wouldn’t lie to the Not Prey, but the Thrall were champions of misdirection and omission. I was used to it. That wasn’t the problem to my mind. But it occurred to me, and probably to the others as well, how much her logic was like that of the Thrall collective. Just to be safe, I opened my senses, searching for any parasite inside the good doctor. There was none, but I couldn’t guarantee that she wasn’t herd—one of their meals and, thereby, under the control of a queen. Henri gave a curt nod to me, and said, “You two do as you will, I will go find Dr. MacDougal. It was at his request that I am here, and I want an explanation and assurances that the situation is not as bad as we believe it to be.” Eyes blazing with a dark anger, he strode out of the room.

I wasn’t leaving until I was satisfied about the safety of the public. The critical issue was that there were one hundred parasite eggs close to hatching in a public building. It was a recipe for disaster. I stood slowly. It was taking every ounce of my self-control not to throttle the stupid little bitch. I forced myself to speak softly, enunciating each word with exquisite care. “Where…is…the…incubator?”

Her eyes shifted from me to Brooks. You could almost see the gears shifting behind those beautiful baby blues.

“Fine. Give me five minutes to get things set up in the other room, then you can come see for yourself the protocols that have been instituted to protect both the eggs and the public.”

“Five minutes,” Brooks agreed, but his voice was heavy with controlled anger. “But know this. If the three of us don’t agree that your ‘protocols’ are adequate to protect the public, you will be shut down.”

Greeley’s voice was cold. “I’m not intimidated by your threats, Detective Brooks.”

“That wasn’t a threat, Dr. Greeley. It’s a promise.”

She didn’t have a reply for that, so she turned to Mason. “Bring the video equipment,” she snapped, then left, her heels beating an angry tattoo on the linoleum. He hurried after her, awkwardly juggling his camera and tripod.

I hate waiting. I’m not good at it. As the second hand crawled around the face of the wall clock I found myself twitching in my seat. My stomach was in knots, and I desperately wished that I had stayed home, or gone for an early morning run with Tom. I’d rather be anywhere than here, in this hospital right now. I lurched to my feet as a male shriek rent the air. Brooks beat me out the door and into the hall, his gun drawn. The sound was cut off abruptly, with a wet gurgle that I recognized from past experience. Apparently Brooks did, too, because his face paled and set into stony lines. He gestured for me to follow behind him. I had a knife drawn, and didn’t remember pulling it.

I looked down the hall, wondering where the reinforcements were. People had to have heard that scream. But there were no running footsteps, no Code Blue pages on the intercom, just an eerie silence so complete that I could hear every rasping breath, hear my own pulse pounding in my ears. Keeping his back against the wall, Brooks turned the knob and flung open the door.

It was a scene from one of the lower levels of hell. Samantha Greeley knelt on the floor next to Mason, the videographer. He lay on the ground, his throat torn out. Blood pumped from the severed arteries in his neck, spraying against the wall as a living blanket of squirming, writhing maggots swarmed up the clear plastic walls of the opened incubation tank and up Greeley’s arms. She reared back at the sound of the door slamming against the wall. The front of her clothing was so soaked with blood it clung wet and impossibly red against the milk white of her blood-splattered skin.

She hissed, lips pulling back to expose brand-new, bloodied fangs.

“Shit!” Brooks swore.

I couldn’t hear him, even though I saw his lips move. The collective mind of the hatchlings crashed into mine like a sledgehammer blow between my eyes. Instead of the many voices of the hive it was one voice—one being with a hundred bodies.

I AM FREE.

2

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The district courthouse in Denver is an elegant old building. The front has huge columns that flank a main entrance that faces the state capitol across Civic Center Park. It was winter, so the view from the top of the steps wasn’t as impressive as it would be once the spring flowers were planted. But it was still worth seeing. Once you come inside the building the marble, polished dark wood, and ornately decorated ceilings with gold-foiled relief are meant to impress, even awe.