Blood on the Bayou (32 page)

“Well, you’d better hurry.” Cane slides his gun back into his holster. “When I came to, Agent Rideau was gone. So was his map.”

“Dammit!” What the hell is Hitch thinking?

And why didn’t he come looking for me? He had to have heard the gunfire and the shouting. But he just . . . left me. Decided I was a necessary loss and moved forward with his true goal—doing whatever it takes to save Stephanie and the baby, with no regard for how much havoc he wreaks in the lives of others. Or how many people he kills.

“We have to go.” I lay a hand on Marcy’s arm. “Hitch is going to blow up the lab. Maybe with people inside if he thinks he has to.”

Marcy’s brow furrows. “Why would he—”

“He’s being blackmailed. But I saw the map and I remember the location of the first lab stop.” I start down the hall. “I’ll explain in the truck.” We’re going to have to take the Land Rover and hope we make it through the acid-spewing fairies still teeming outside.

“I think we should try the tunnel,” Cane says, making me turn back around. “I’m not sure we’ll make it through the swarm without armor.”

“What tunnel?” I ask.

“There’s a tunnel system under this building,” Cane says. “One arm leads to the old docks. That’s why I was here. The guy bringing Amity upriver said
the FCC agents would take me through the tunnels for a price. He said it was safer than driving a cop car so close to the water. There’s been a lot of pirate activity the past few months. They shoot cops on sight. I found the tunnel entrance at the back of the kitchen. I was going in when I heard you and Hitch coming down the stairs.”

“But the first lab stop is on the other side of the river.” I hesitate. “All the way up by Donaldsonville. Do the tunnels—”

“According to the guy I talked to, they run up to Donaldsonville and on to Baton Rouge in one direction and New Orleans in the other.”

“But that’s
hundreds
of miles. Through marshland. How in the—”

“It makes sense,” Marcy says. “The people who designed the lab have been out here a long time. And they have the technology.”

“How long have they been here?” I wonder if Hitch’s hunch is correct, if Robusto Oil played a part in the fairy mutations. “You said the eighties?”

Marcy nods. “That’s when I was assigned to Donaldsonville.”

“Because of the oil company? Robusto Oil?” She nods again. “But Hitch’s information said the company only starting digging out here about sixteen years ago.”

“That’s when they started digging for oil,” Marcy says. “They started buying up land in 1984.”

“Plenty of time to dig tunnels,” Cane says.

Tunnels they might have thought they needed
to survive. They must have known making the Fey larger would make them deadly, but they might
not
have known about the fairies’ allergy to iron. They might have thought going underground was the only way to protect themselves.

“Before the emergence, the company owned a good chunk of riverbank land.” Marcy starts down the hall behind Cane, giving me no choice but to follow. “The government came in and bought them out a few years later, but Robusto could have owned this parcel originally. I think it’s worth a try. We were waiting downriver when the swarm came in,” she says, tone sobering. “I’ve never seen so many fairies. And they look different, don’t they? I know my eyes aren’t what they—”

“They are different.” I drag my feet as Cane gets closer to the stairs. “They also spray a corrosive liquid. Hitch and I took out a few in the garage, but I couldn’t collect a sample. Their bodies disintegrate after death. Hey y’all, wait—” Marcy and Cane turn back to me with identical looks of frustration. I’m slowing things down, I get that. But I’m also attempting to be the voice of reason. A new role for me, but surely they can see this isn’t the best plan. “Even if we find a tunnel going in the right direction,” I say. “It’s going to take hours to walk back to Donaldson-ville. We’ll never make it to the first lab stop before Hitch.”

“They had a couple of scooters down there,” Cane says. “They’re small, but you and I can ride one, and Marcy can take the other.”

“Okay. Sure . . . okay.” But what I mean is No. Not sure. Not okay.

A pair of scooters versus a speeding police car with a crazy man behind the wheel. We’ll never get to the cave in time. Even if we figure out where the hell we’re going while zipping around in the dark with no compass and nothing but our guts to keep us going in the right direction, we’ll be too late. But if I insist on taking the truck, Cane’s and Marcy’s lives will be in danger. I’m pretty sure the fairies are after me, and I can’t guarantee the safety of anyone in my company.

There’s only one answer.

I wait until Cane and Marcy step into the stairwell before running as quickly and quietly as I can down the hall in the other direction. I’m halfway back to the garage—leaping over Billy’s fallen form like a spastic gazelle—when Cane calls my name.

I land and look back—long enough for him to hopefully see how much I wish this could go differently—and then sprint for the exit. I hear his footsteps pounding down the hall behind me. He’s fast, but after his Tasering, it seems I’m faster. I keep my head start.

By the time he makes the jump over Billy, I’m already at the door leading into the garage, hurling it open and slamming and locking it behind me. I jab a few buttons, and finally find the one that lifts the garage door. As it slides open, I run for the truck. I’ve got no way to close the door after I drive out, but hopefully the fairies will follow me across the bridge and leave Cane and Marcy alone. Surely Cane will
have the sense not to come after me, even if he finds a way to bust the dead bolt.

I turn the keys still dangling in the ignition and slam down the gas, zooming out the door into the fairy swarm as the clouds break and a merciless summer rain begins to fall.

R
ain batters the windshield, so hard and fast the wipers can’t hope to keep up. When I hit the bridge going sixty—as fast as I dare given the sudden lack of visibility—I can barely see the road two feet in front of me.

The good news is that the fairies are following me, moving away from the FCC building in a swirling, undulating mass. The better news is that they don’t seem to care for the rain. As I zip down the bridge, lightning flashes and Fey sputter and fall to the ground on both sides of the truck without any help from my mind powers.

Thank the wrath of Zeus.

I don’t want to use the only weapon at my disposal unless I absolutely have to. I don’t know what I’ll encounter at the cave, but I’m sure supernatural mojo will prove helpful and I don’t know how much I have left. I seem to have recovered a certain degree of power after the worst of my hangover passed this morning, but I can’t afford to risk burning out before I reach Hitch.

Hitch.
What an idiot. Guess I’m an idiot, too, but I’m doing this to keep Cane and Marcy safe. There’s no sense in all of us getting killed. Maybe Hitch is thinking the same thing, but that doesn’t explain why he left Cane and me to the mercy of what he had to assume were deadly criminals. He’s never met Marcy, and even if he had, she and her partner were certainly acting like threats to our well-being.

“Not a nice person,” I say out loud, testing the words. “Maybe he’s just not a nice person.” I punch the gas, sending the Land Rover leaping forward, hurtling off the end of the bridge, landing on the gravel road with a wet crunch and a whirl of dirt.

New Hitch is a lot different than the old Hitch—I realized that the day he arrived in Donaldsonville—but deep down I thought the basic components were the same. Hitch may be an arrogant bastard at times, but at his core he’s always been a lover and protector of humanity. He worked tirelessly at the hospital, driven by the need to heal, not score a paycheck or social status or follow in Daddy’s footsteps like some of the other residents. He risked his life after Katrina, going out in a borrowed iron suit and pulling people from the wreckage, helping the immune teams get to hundreds before they were infected by the fairies swarming through the hurricane-damaged gates.

The old Hitch would never have so easily defended one life over another. Being caught between saving his wife and child and hurting other people would have ripped him apart.

But now . . . maybe that’s not the case. Maybe he’s decided other people don’t matter as much as
his
people. Just like my parents and their wealthy neighbors, who erected their own iron gate around our Garden District neighborhood in the days after the emergence. They hired steelworkers to build the barrier and bribed armed guards with safety for their families if they promised to keep everyone else out.

When the refugees started crowding in from downtown, the gunmen were told either to shoot the people trying to break through the gate or be kicked outside themselves to join the defenseless. My father and his buddies walked our iron-protected roof with shotguns and cold mint juleps, watching as people were shot or bitten. They refused to let anyone in. Even though there was room for more people, room for a hundred in our house alone.

I wanted to say something, to beg my parents to stop the insanity, but I didn’t. I was too messed up. Caroline’s body was in the deep freeze in the garage, waiting for the world to settle down enough for us to bury her. I was sixteen and I’d killed my sister. Her death was my fault and my parents weren’t speaking to me and the guilt was eating me alive and all I could do when the guns started firing was huddle in the back of my closet and cry. I felt helpless to do more.

Maybe Hitch feels helpless, too, but does that matter? Can I ever respect him again after—

A fairy smacks into my windshield and explodes
in a burst of green. Within a few moments, the glass begins to smoke. The rain and the wipers take care of the corrosive blood before it can bore a hole, but it has the necessary effect on my focus.

I don’t have the luxury of dwelling on whether Hitch is “nice” or “not nice,” or whether I can respect him again. I need to drive and find a way to get rid of the fairies before I reach the first location. If the lab is at station one, I won’t be able to sneak in behind Hitch and help clear the building if I’m being following by acid-spewing fairies.

“You’re worse than the Slake,” I mutter beneath my breath, wishing I could understand what the freaks are hissing at me as they bounce off the windshield and spiral through the air to land in the swamp below. If Tucker was telling the truth about the location of the Big Man’s compound—and I can’t imagine why he’d lie, about
that,
at least—then Grandpa Slake is full of shit, but I’ve learned a lot from him.

But then . . . maybe these fairies have, too. Maybe the old man has been spreading tales, figuring he’d cover his bases in case the Big Man didn’t shoot me. Maybe stories of my fairy-controlling, Gentryesque evil were enough to lure this new species out of hiding.

They must have been hiding, being careful to stay off humanity’s radar. Either that, or they’re a recent arrival on the mutation scene. Considering their numbers and the variety in their age and development, however, that doesn’t seem likely. They must have been around for a while, which hopefully means that
they don’t feed on human blood. If they did, surely humans would have known about them.

The realization gives me hope, but it doesn’t help as far as ditching my tail is concerned. There are hundreds—maybe thousands—fewer fairies following me than when I first left the docks, but that still leaves a thousand too many. They buzz around the truck, slamming against the windows, leaving acid streaks that would eat through the glass if the rain weren’t falling with such force.

The rain. They don’t like the rain. Which I’m guessing means they don’t like water, either? Maybe?

It seems strange for creatures that live in the bayou not to care for water, but then again, the Slake can’t swim. They lay their eggs in stagnant water and need a hot, humid climate to survive, but they can’t swim or stay submerged for more than a few seconds without suffocating. They simply can’t hold their breath that long. So maybe . . . if I wait until I’m only a half mile or so from the cave before I drive the truck into the water . . .

“This is a really stupid idea,” I assure myself.

Even if I manage to pick the perfect place to drive off the road—one with water deep enough to cover the Land Rover and clear of maiden cane and arrowhead and other masses of floating vegetation—get out of the driver’s seat before I drown, swim far enough to emerge somewhere the fairies aren’t expecting, and reach the cave on foot without being spotted or sprayed with acid or shot by people guarding the lab, then what?

I’ll be soaking wet and poorly prepared for a stealth mission. And that’s if I’m not eaten by gators or bitten by a cottonmouth.

But what other choice do I have? I push the pedal to the floor, roaring down the road at a speed that’s unwise, praying I’ll come up with a better idea before I get to the cave.

Thirty minutes later, I weave off the main road and down a scrawny dirt trail that—from what I remember of the plans—I
think
is leading me in the right direction, I’m pretty certain it’s the direction Hitch took, at least, since the low-hanging branches over the road are freshly broken.