The Forever Drug (20 page)
His answer surprised me. It turned out that Xavier wasn't a "who." It was a "what."
"The Xavier Foundation ... collected ... spike babies," Galdenistal answered. His teeth were chattering, which was a good sign. He hadn't gone hypothermic yet. But he was close. "Mareth'riel helped ... Laverty to ... study ... why they had expressed ... before the... Awakening."
I decided not to betray my ignorance by asking what a spike baby was or how a baby could "express." Instead I just asked: "Why?"
"Research into ... magic spikes ... early examples of ... activation of ... stopwatch complex. Mareth'riel..."
I heard a wrench of metal above us as the door was finally forced open. Ice-cold seawater crashed down onto my back, sending a shiver through to my bones. A flashlight beam spiked down into the shaft as the female combat mage peered down at me, her visor flipped up to reveal her face.
"Romulus!" she shouted. "Let's go. The corridor is filling up." Then the flashlight beam caught Galdenistal's face. It was white as death, and his gold-streaked hair floated around him. He was shivering so violently now that his entire body was rigid.
"Who the frig is that?" the mage above us asked.
I knew there was no way Lone Star could arrest the elf, even though he'd shot and killed two of the smugglers. The Tír government would be all over Lone Star if we even
tried
to charge him with murder.
"He's a civilian," I shouted back. "And he's injured."
I heard the mage using her commlink. Then she climbed into the shaft. "I know some healing spells," she said. "I'll get him stabilized and ready for transport."
I sighed softly as she climbed down the ladder. That was it for asking Galdenistal any questions. I'd have to figure out what the frig he'd been talking about on my own.
"I guess you're out of here," I whispered to him. But then I touched the wound on my side and added in a low growl, "But if we cross paths again and you try to frig with me a second time, you'll be no more than a memory."
The elf's eyes were closed. I wasn't sure whether he'd heard me or not.
"Four days standard pay as an auxiliary?" I asked incredulously. "Is that it? Aren't you at least going to credit me for the two days we spent on standby in Yarmouth during the stakeout?"
Sergeant Raymond stared impassively at the bright orange credstick in my hand that payroll had issued me. He raised a cigarette to his mouth and sucked smoke deep into his lungs. Then he blew a stream of blue smoke up toward my nostrils. I wrinkled my nose at the noxious odor and wondered how anyone could enjoy breathing it in. Especially when they knew that the tobacco drug was a fatal one. Humans were so perverse, sometimes...
The sergeant's cold blue eyes bored into mine. "Sticking around in Yarmouth was your choice," he said.
"Detective Mchawi approved me as a member of the team," I countered. "The other members of the Magical Task Force were paid for those two days."
"They're cops. You're a—"
"A what?" I growled. "Dumb animal?" I usually don't bare my teeth at the sergeant, but he was really getting under my fur this time. Maybe it had something to do with what Lone Star had done to Jane—they'd frigged her over as thoroughly as the residential school had done to me, and it was stirring up old memories. Or maybe I was starting to lose respect for the alphas of my pack. Maybe I
didn't
want to be a cop, after all...
Raymond ignored my outburst. "You're an irregular asset. You only get paid for the work you do— you're not paid to loaf around and scratch fleas."
I could feel my ears straining to flatten against my head in anger—which of course they wouldn't do, not in human form. I don't like slurs against my personal hygiene. I keep my beard groomed and my bedding clean...
A voice called mockingly from down the hall: "What's he want now, a biscuit?" Laughter followed.
That did it. I didn't even bother to ask the sergeant if there were any more assignments. I stormed out of Raymond's office. I'd expected a commendation for confronting the corpselights in the hold of the freighter and saving the life of an important Tír national, and I hadn't even gotten a pat on the head for my troubles.
There had been no sign of the corpselights, of course, by the time the Magical Task Force entered the cargo hold. Just empty wicker cages. The corpselights must have fled into astral space, gone back to their native domain. I suspected that, even if the corpselights had still been in the hold, I wouldn't have been paid for their containment. The combat mages would have gotten all the credit.
Nor was I pleased with the fact that Galdenistal had disappeared as completely as the corpselights. It turned out that the elf had taken out a platinum contract with DocWagon before coming to the UCAS. After we were rescued from the hold of the freighter, an ambulance that was waiting up top whisked him away to a private clinic in Halifax. And that was the last anyone saw of him. Even Dass had been denied permission to question the elf.
I slunk down the corridors of the police station, looking for Dass. At least things were going right for her. She'd been flying pretty high for the past two days, ever since the bust. She'd stopped the souped-up lobster boat and arrested the smugglers without any harm coming to the four Merlin hawks. She'd even managed to arrest the shaman who'd caged the hawks, by assensing the area for his astral signature and tracking him down.
The Lone Star public relations people had given Dass and the three combat mages all of the credit for finding the freighter, which tridcasters were referring to as "the ark." Normally, I would have just told myself that they left me out of it because they didn't want to compromise my value as an irregular asset— they wouldn't have allowed trid of an undercover cop, either. But they could have given me a mention, at least—that wouldn't have compromised me. Was it that Lone Star didn't want to admit to having a shifter on the force, even as an irregular asset?
With all of the hype surrounding this latest success of the Magical Task Force, Dass had been pretty busy. My only chance to talk to her had been when she took my statement about what went down on board the freighter. I had impressed upon her the need to ask the smugglers about Jane. But I didn't know yet if she'd had the chance to follow through.
The delays were driving me crazy—all that time spent staking out the freighter and taking down the bad guys, and I was still no closer to finding Jane. I thought I'd been hot on her scent, but it had turned out to be a dead end. Unless the smugglers we'd arrested had told Dass what they'd done with her...
I finally located Dass. She was coming out of the corridor that led to the sending room—a specialized area of the police station used for ritual magic. I've never seen the place myself—it's off limits to anyone but DPI members, and even cops from other divisions aren't allowed past the magical and mundane security systems that guard that part of the police station. I hear the room is filled with hermetic circles studded with precious gems, and fetishes that date back several centuries, and all kinds of weird drek...
Dass looked tired but pumped as the door clicked shut behind her—she was enjoying every minute of this investigation. She was in an animated conversation with two male detectives—presumably also from DPI, since they had been in the sending room with Dass. I'd never seen them before, but one sounded like he was from Boston and the other one spoke with a thick French accent. The investigation into paranormal animal smuggling was obviously expanding, if detectives from other jurisdictions were getting involved. From their body language, I could tell they were deferring to Dass in the investigation. She was clearly moving up in the hierarchy of the Lone Star pack.
I thought I saw a flash of irritation cross Dass's face as she spotted me in the corridor. But her greeting seemed warm enough and she smelled friendly.
"
Salamu
, Rom. How's it going?"
Except that she didn't wait for my answer. Only when I caught her arm did she pause.
"What about the smugglers?" I hissed. "Did they tell you anything about Jane?"
Dass glanced at her fellow mage detectives, who had stopped to wait for her. "Go on ahead," she called to them. "I'll catch up with you at the evidence room."
She seemed reluctant as she watched them leave, but she answered my question.
"Sorry, Rom," she said. "The smugglers didn't say anything about her."
"Did you mind probe them?" I asked. "What did they think about when you asked them about Jane?"
"I was using a mind probe, yes. But all I got were brief flashes of a small coastal village. I could see it clearly, but I didn't recognize it. There was no landmark—nothing to make it stand out from the thousands of other towns that dot the coast."
I let out a small growl of frustration. Dass was my friend—pretty much the only one I had at Lone Star—and yet I sensed that she hadn't made much of an effort. She was too distracted by her case, by the recognition she was receiving.
"Where do the smugglers live?" I asked. "What address did they give as their place of residence?"
"You know I can't give you that information, Rom. It's part of an ongoing DPI investigation.
Ndivyo
ilivyo
—that's how it is. You're not part of ..." Then she stopped. Whatever she'd been about to say, she thought better of it. She pulled her arm away from my hand.
"Sorry, Rom," she said firmly. "
Omba
radhi
."
I winced. I felt like a puppy who'd just been smacked across the nose.
"Dass," I said slowly. "Is it because Lone Star doesn't want Jane back in circulation after what they did to her? Is that why you won't give me anything that will help me find her?"
Dass's dark eyes stared at me for what felt like a full minute. Then her voice dropped.
"I don't want to get involved with that, Rom," she said quietly. "I don't know what is going on there— and I don't care to know. I have to focus all of my attention on the smuggling investigation right now."
She sighed. "But I can tell you this much. The smugglers listed an apartment in the North End as their place of residence. We've already checked it out, and we didn't turn up anything there that would help you find Jane."
"Give me more, Dass," I urged. "I want to find her."
"Why, Rom? Why not just let her go?"
I couldn't answer that. The reasons were all snarled up, like a tangle of fur. Jane had been frigged over and needed help—and if the data we'd scanned on her under the name Mareth'riel was correct, she didn't have any next of kin to take care of her. Meanwhile, people kept kidnapping her: first Galdenistal, then the smugglers. The only one who'd tried to stand in their way was me. And I'd failed. Spirits only knew where the frig the smugglers had taken Jane, what they were doing to her ...
I couldn't sort out my natural instincts to guard and protect Jane from my physical attraction to her. And I was still dealing with the fact that Lone Star— the people I regarded as my pack—had been the ones to damage Jane's mind. I somehow felt that it was my obligation to make up for that, to put things right.
I just stared at Dass. "I can't let it go," I said at last. "
I
have to help her."
"You could be getting into some deep drek, Rom," Dass cautioned. "I wouldn't want to see Lone Star lose its finest tracker—to see you get hurt. But I can tell you're going to keep trying to track her down, no matter what. You might as well not do it blindly. I'll give you what I've got."
I gave her a wolfish grin. "Thanks, Dass."
She nodded. Then she motioned for me to follow her. Only when we were safely inside her office did she give me the rest of what she had.
The smugglers turned out to come from a long line of criminals—families that had been in the drug-running business for decades. One of them—the fellow with the webbed razor implants who I'd tangled with earlier—had a great-great-great grandfather who'd been a rumrunner during the Prohibition era, back in the early days of the last century.
They were all Mi'kmaq Indians, and went by names from that tribe's mythology. The big, blubbery guy with the cyberware was Kluskapewit—Mi'kmaq for "shark." The skinny male was Wowkwis—"Fox Boy." He was the one the Weeds had said sold Halo in the Old Burial Grounds in Halifax. The woman would only give us the English translation of her name: Otter.
I wondered, given the animal names, if any of them were shifters. The big guy's scent had smelled slightly off-human, as if there had been a shifter somewhere in his family tree. But Dass surely would have mentioned any paras in the group. After thinking about the webbed implants that "Shark" had, I decided they were probably just shifter wannabes.
There had been no sign of the rigger who'd driven the speedboat on the night Jane had been kidnapped. He hadn't been on board the lobster boat on the night we made the bust, and Dass had turned up no sign of him at the apartment the shifters had rented. According to what Dass had been able to piece together from her interviews with the smugglers, he'd only been hired help.
And that was all Dass was able to give me. None of it told me why the smugglers had been so keen on kidnapping Jane. She didn't seem to have any connection with them. I wondered if they might have been selling the "drug" Halo to the New Dawn Corporation. It didn't seem likely, though.