Blood Revealed (17 page)

She didn’t have to paint a picture for him. He already had it.

“Isn’t it unusual for a woman to hold a combat position?”

“The average woman just isn’t strong enough for combat. Pit a two hundred pound man against a hundred and thirty pound woman and it’s no competition. I stepped into command sideways. The division’s C.O. and sergeant both died in the same explosion. I was the most senior officer after that.”

She cleared her throat. Her gaze kept quartering ahead relentlessly. “As I said, I held command for eighteen days. Then there was a thing that happened and then I returned to civilian life.” As she spoke her mind was throwing up resistance that bloomed gray and thick. It wasn’t that she didn’t want him to know, it was simply a subject she didn’t want to deal with. Dominic wasn’t even sure she knew how resistant she was to probing in that area.

“You’re from Chile aren’t you?” she asked abruptly.

“I was born in Viña del Mar. I grew up in Santiago.”

“So how did you end up in Argentina in a bar fight?”

“There was a thing that happened,” he said, deliberately borrowing her phrase. “And after that I spent a few years floating around South America and making my way slowly up to Mexico, then into the States. I was travelling on a fake ID, with no way to draw on money from home. That tends to drive people into the unsavory side of life. Back then, I didn’t mind. It was a relief to have something to focus on.”

“The need to survive does sharpen the attention,” she said easily.

They turned the corner. This was a busier street, a thoroughfare. There were not as many cars parked along the sides of the street and far more passing through.

“Not that I know anything at all,” he said, “It seems to me that the Summanus would nest during the day as far away from human centers of population as possible. Shouldn’t we be looking where there are no people?”

“That’s probably where we going to find them,” she agreed. “I also want to measure how sensitive you are to them.”

“You mean you want to know from how far away I can sense them.”

“So we are going to make a big circle around the neighborhood, then gradually move inward.”

He considered that. “That implies that you have a general idea of where you think they are.”

“I’ve made a guess or two.”

“So why not go straight there?”

“Because I’m guessing. Better to systematically cover the whole neighborhood. That way if I’m wrong, I don’t miss them.” The tension was back in her voice and her shoulders.

He should move off the subject, but there was still a glaring inconsistency he had to answer first. “What if they aren’t in this neighborhood it all?”

“Then tomorrow, we do another one.” This time the sharpness in her voice was unmistakable.

“Did I say something, Lieutenant?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Blythe.”

Her jaw flexed as she held her teeth together.

“Something is pissing you off,” he pointed out. “I’m pretty sure it’s not me. I might have said something. Unintentionally, of course.”

She shook her head. “I can’t stop thinking about my kids. About how close it was.”

And from her mind, he got a flash of an image. A black Summani standing between her and a boy who he assumed was her son. She couldn’t get to him. She couldn’t reach her son.

Her helplessness and her rage at that helplessness was strong.

“I understand now,” Dominic said.

At this time her sigh was gusty. Some of the tension went out of her shoulders. “That mind reading is useful.”

“It drives Patrick insane. With him I can’t help it.” He grinned. “Most of the time, anyway.”

Her surprise was as clear as a shout. She said nothing. She kept her attention ahead, endlessly scanning. Then she frowned. “That’s odd,” she said softly.

“What?”

“No birds. Not even a single pain in the ass seagull shitting on everything.”

“You said this was a busy road.”

“There’s a dumpster on the other side of that convenience store across the road. The seagulls usually fight it out with the crows over the scraps, yet there isn’t a bird in sight.”

She halted, then turned on her heels in a complete semicircle, looking from one end of the street to the other, for as far as they both could see. “No dogs, either.”

“This is Los Angeles,” he said. “Wouldn’t all the dogs be at home waiting for their master to take them for a walk on a leash?”

“This is San Bernardino,” she said. “There are plenty of strays here. They’re all hiding, too.”

“The heat?”

“Maybe.”

They started walking again. This time Blythe did not talk. Dominic stayed silent. The route took them over the top of the culvert, with chain-link fencing separating them from the drop to the concrete below.

As they stepped onto the elevated roadway to cross the culvert, the smell met them.

“Oh my God!” Blythe breathed. She made gagging sounds. It was the first time that Dominic had noticed the delicate, feminine side of her. He grinned.

“It’s very bad,” he agreed. In fact it was worse than bad. The stench was acrid, catching at the back of his throat and making him feel that if he had breathe it in for much longer, the consequences would be sickly. As he took another shallow breath, his stomach rumbled uneasily.

Blythe picked up the pace and they were almost jogging by the time they reached the other side of the culvert and had moved back into the residential area of the street.

Fresh air never tasted so good. He took deep breaths of it.

“It’s highly localized,” she said and glanced over her shoulder, back toward the culvert.

“Do you think something died down there?”

“That wasn’t a rotting carcass smell,” she said flatly.

“You speak from experience?”

“Uh-huh.”

He rolled his eyes at his own denseness. For a short moment he had forgotten who he was talking to.

“Should someone report it?”

“I’m pretty sure somebody already has. That stench is hard to ignore. I think the city has better things to investigate than a bad smell.”

They started walking again. At the next major intersection Blythe turned left again. Dominic realized they were indeed walking the borders of the neighborhood. The street they turned into was tree-lined and shady, quite unlike most of the suburbs of LA.

Blythe was quiet and preoccupied. Dominic left her alone. He didn’t dip into her mind either. Instead he simply walked and enjoyed the morning air before the real heat of the day kicked in.

“There was something about a smell that I remember. Someone sent me an email…” She was frowning now. Then she gave a short laugh. “Australia. Tourists in a cave in Australia all fled because of the smell. Some people vomited, it was so bad. No one could find the source.”

“Do you think it’s related?”

“I won’t make assumptions. There’s not enough data yet.”

Dominic thought of the way his stomach had protested, but said nothing.

* * * * *

They made it all the way around the big circle Blythe had drawn on the map that morning and were on the first inner circle lap when Dominic’s pace slowed.

Blythe turned back to look at him.

His eyes were almost closed. His chin was up as if he was smelling the air, although he wasn’t sniffing. “I think….”

She moved closer. Her heart was running harder. “Where?”

His head turned as he tried to pin down the direction. “It’s very faint.”

“Give me a direction, she told him. “Then we can get closer and it will be stronger.”

She realized she was gripping the edges of her cell phone compulsively. She made her fingers let go and stretched them. Nothing had changed, she reminded herself. He’d caught the faintest whiff, that was all.

Dominic turned in a circle, his eyes closed. A minivan went by slowly and the woman driver bent to appear through the side window at them. Blythe ignored her.

“Take a guess,” she told Dominic. “It doesn’t matter if you’re wrong. If we head in that direction and it doesn’t grow stronger, we’ll just try a different direction.”

He opened his eyes and looked at her. “It’s very hard to explain this to someone. There’s not an actual direction. It’s just there. Like sunlight. It’s just all around you.”

“Light comes from the sun,” she said patiently. “Whatever it is you’re experiencing, it’s coming from the Summanus. So there is a direction. You just have to figure it out.”

She flexed her fingers, stretching them and trying to loosen them. If her suspicions were right and the Summanus were where she thought they were, then it would be easy to point him in that direction. She wanted him to figure it out for himself. She wanted to see if he could.

Dominic turned on his heel one last time. Then he pointed south. “That way… I think.”

That was the direction of the substation. Her heart gave another kick against the inside of her chest. “Then let’s go south,” she said. Her voice sounded strained even to her.

“You’re sure?” He was studying her and there was a small crease between his brows.

“That’s what we’re out here for. Come on.”

She turned and headed back to the side street they had just passed. That street led south. The substation was just over half a mile away, squeezed between two apartment blocks.

Halfway down the street, they passed an elderly man walking his Chihuahua. Except that he wasn’t walking it, exactly. The tiny dog was hauling back on his leash, wining piteously. Then it would take a few steps as the owner’s tug on the leash almost lifted it off its feet. Then it would dig its feet back in and haul backward.

The man nodded a greeting as they passed, his rheumy eyes troubled.

“It’s the heat,” Dominic said as he passed.

“Frodo has never done that before, not in ten years,” the man said. “Every single day we walk this way. I just don’t understand.”

Blythe stopped to look at him and the dog. “Maybe you should give Frodo a break,” she said. “He clearly doesn’t want to walk today.”

The man looked down at the quivering Chihuahua. “You might be right. I wonder if he’s coming down with something?” Then, showing a surprising agility for a man of his age, he bent down and picked the dog up. “Shall we go home Frodo?” He asked softly.

The dog whined softly and licked his chin.

The man shook his head. “I guess we’re going home then. I don’t know….” He nodded at them both then turned and headed north.

Blythe watched them go. The little drama bothered her for reasons she couldn’t explain.

“Your gut talking to you?” Dominic’s voice was just as quiet as the old man’s had been. Everything was hushed, even human speech.

Hushed and waiting.

She realized she was massaging her chest between her breasts, as if that would alleviate the tension. She dropped her hand. “Let’s just get this done.” She turned and started walking quickly, at a speed that was just under the point where they would have to break out and start jogging. Dominic kept up with her easily. He was tall for a Latino and had long legs, so this pace was nothing for him.

Two minutes passed in silence. Then she glanced at him. “Is the whatever it is getting stronger?”

He nodded.

“Tell me where we need to change directions.”

“‘kay.”

They fell back into silence again. Both of them began to breathe harder although Blythe kept up the unforgiving pace.

“Over there,” Dominic said. He was pointing at the apartment block.

Blythe’s heart gave out a squeeze so hard it hurt. “Okay.” She angled her direction toward the apartments. They crossed the road.

“Just beyond the building,” he said.

“You’re sure?” She glanced at him.

He was frowning heavily. “Very sure. It is unmistakable.”

They moved past the corner of the building, so that the clear area between the two apartment blocks opened up and was fully visible.

Dominic halted. He pointed. “There. I’m certain of it.”

He was pointing at the dark green corrugated iron fence that surrounded the substation. Blythe walked up to it and peered between the fence and the gate, which was locked and bolted with a chain. There were big warning signs on the fence and the gate itself about high voltages. “Los Angeles Department of power and water” was written in fine letters at the bottom. Twenty years ago the building would have sprouted heavy wires and coils from the top of the roof. Everything was underground these days. However, there was still a low hum that seemed to emerge from the concrete itself. The flat-roofed building was three quarters buried in the earth, with concrete steps leading down to the heavy door. Another warning sign was riveted to the door. There were no windows.

There was nothing around the building except concrete, which rose to within a foot of the roof.

“Los Angeles doesn’t have basements or caves,” Dominic said. “Around here, that’s as close as you would come to being underground without burying yourself in the earth.”

Blythe turned away and plucked her cell phone from the belt carrier. She thumbed the quick dial and listened. When Peter answered, she said, “It is the substation, just as we thought.”

“We’re on the way.” He disconnected.

She put the phone away. “It should only take a few minutes for them to get here. We’ll wait.”

Dominic was peering through the space in the fence. “We’re going to break in there?”

“Peter’s got pretty good at picking locks. We shouldn’t have to break anything.” She grinned. “We always lock back up after, anyway.”

“Very considerate burglars,” Dominic murmured.

“Relax,” she told him. “You’ll burn up all your energy before you need it, if you don’t.”

“You should take your own advice.” He turned away from the gap in the fence and leaned against it, crossing his arms. “Look at you. You’re pacing.”

Blythe halted. She
had
been pacing.

Dominic looked over her shoulder. “This could be a problem, no?”

She wheeled around. Pulling into the driveway was a city maintenance truck, with high enclosed sides and padlocks on the hatches. Two men sat in the cab and they were staring at them.

“Shit,” Blythe said forcefully.