Alexander Death (The Paranormals, Book 3) (17 page)

She found herself gazing up at him, as if hypnotized by his dark amber eyes. She didn't move when he leaned his face close, or when his lips touched hers.

It was like an electric jolt—Jenny jumped, and had a sudden memory of Alexander in a different body, purple cape lashing around him in fierce wind, walking a battlefield by spotty moonlight. He picked among the fallen, touching one here and one there, and they raised up on their feet, wearing their bloody leather armor and broken helmets, and they hefted their shields and swords, undead warriors ready for another day in the grisly march of conquest.

Jenny opened her eyes and staggered back from him. “Wait,” she said.

“Too much for you?” He smiled.

“I don't feel like myself,” she said. “I feel like I'm losing control.”

“You're not. You're just remembering who you really are.”

Jenny took a deep breath as she looked out on the rows of workers scrambling to harvest every ripe coca leaf. Put a shovel in their hands and they could dig a ditch. Put a sword or a gun in their hands, and they became unstoppable killers.

She felt sick to her stomach, and a little dizzy. Jenny plucked a few of the coca leaves, shoved them in her mouth, and chewed on them. Alexander removed one of her gloves and took her hand in his, watching her. Soon, her head cleared and she began to feel better.

Seth walked through the Pioneer Square neighborhood in Seattle with a picture of Jenny in his pocket. The day was gray and overcast, the cool summer climate a definite change from the broiling humidity back home.

Jenny's father had received a postcard from Jenny, sent from Seattle just a couple of days ago. Her note had been short and shallow—
Doing great...Just felt the need to travel a little...Love it here...Hope you're doing well...
Not much information at all. And no mention of Seth, either.

The postcard confused Seth's earlier idea that Jenny must have been kidnapped by Ashleigh and the others. He'd immediately booked a flight to Seattle, and now found himself trudging through the arts district, stopping at cafes and at every pottery shop or gallery he saw, asking people if they'd seen Jenny. Nobody recognized her picture, though.

Seth could imagine Jenny enjoying this city, especially here in the arts district—the Victorian mansions built of aging brick, the old-timey streetlamps with their clusters of bulbs, the trees growing through the sidewalk, statues and public art everywhere you looked. He stopped to look at a sixty-foot totem pole, staring at the enormous eyes and hooked beak of some kind of bird.

He wished he was here with Jenny now. She'd always said she didn't like cities and was scared to travel to them, for fear of infecting people with her touch. For her to come here on her own, something must have radically changed her feelings about those things. It didn't make sense that someone terrified of a city as small as Charleston would run to a city of millions like this one.

Another thing that didn't quite fit for Seth: Jenny probably wouldn't have picked the Space Needle postcard that her dad had received. That was the one image everybody knew, from TV or the movies. Jenny would have chosen a more colorful and unexpected image, like a postcard featuring this huge totem pole in front of him. Or the giant stone troll under the George Washington Bridge. Or any of the statues of settlers, firemen, factory workers or Native Americans around town—Jenny, who enjoyed pottery and sculpture herself, would have picked any of these over something as bland as the Space Needle.

On the other hand, the postcard was exactly the sort of touch that Ashleigh would add, if she'd kidnapped Jenny and didn't want people looking for her. If that was the case, then Jenny was certainly not in Seattle, or anywhere close. She would be hundreds or thousands of miles from here.

Still, Seth didn't have any clues except for the postcard. He would continue asking around, and if nothing came up by tonight, he'd get a hotel room and start fresh in the morning. Seattle was a big city, with lots of little places to look.

He could only hope Jenny was safe. If she'd fallen into Ashleigh's hands, she would be in terrible danger. Seth couldn't stop worrying about her.

***

“Jennifer Morton's father received a postcard from her today. Postmarked Seattle,” said Chantella Williams, the investigator who was Heather's contact at Homeland Security.

Heather was currently working out of a borrowed office at the Medical University of South Carolina, keeping tabs on those patients who'd exhibited symptoms of Fallen Oak syndrome after the riot. She leaned back in her chair, listening to Williams on the phone.

“Seth Barrett left on a plane for Seattle this afternoon,” Williams continued.

“He went to join her?”

“We borrowed somebody from the Seattle office to tail him for a couple of hours. He was showing pictures of Jennifer to the locals, asking if they'd seen her.”

“So he really doesn't know where she is,” Heather said.

“Or they're going to a lot of trouble to make it look that way. He just made a hotel reservation from his phone, so it looks like he'll be staying overnight.”

“Any luck on Jenny herself?”

“Nothing there. She has no credit card, just a small checking account at the Fallen Oak Merchants and Farmers Bank, with less than forty dollars. That hasn't been touched. She's traveling with cash or someone's paying her way. We have her car's VIN and tag number flagged, so we'll hear from any police who might encounter it.”

“So that's it? We're just waiting?”

“We'll have our Seattle people check around some more. But until she does something to draw attention to herself...”

Heather sighed. “What about her father? What's he doing?” Neither Jenny nor her father had been home when Heather arrived with the Homeland Security people on Monday, so they had moved on to Seth's house. Later, they'd determined Darrell Morton had been hospitalized with some kind of nervous breakdown on Saturday night, checked in by his daughter Jenny. That was the end of Jenny's paper trail.

“Darrell Morton was released from the county hospital on Monday evening with a recommendation to seek psychiatric care,” Williams said. “Given the state of his insurance, though, I doubt he'll follow up.”

“Has he made any unusual phone calls? Or purchases?”

“If he had, I would be telling you about them, Dr. Reynard. I obviously don't have time to fill you in on everything that
didn't
happen.”

“Okay, sorry, Jesus,” Heather said. Williams was snappy today.

“Don't swear in my ear.”

“
Fine
. What else do you have? Any luck with the hospital footage?”

“We ran it through our best image-matching software, but there wasn't much to work with. The security camera was low-resolution, he had sunglasses and hair covering most of his face, no distinguishing marks—”

“Did you find anything or not?” Heather asked.

“Nothing so far. They're still trying.”

“So we don't have any idea where to find them.”

“There are still a lot of cracks in the world where people can disappear, Dr. Reynard. Now, Assistant Director Lansing wants me to get an update from your end.”

“The update is that it's over,” Heather said. “All symptoms of Fallen Oak syndrome faded from those rioters in a few days. No infections, no scarring, and of course no pathogen. We're keeping up with them on an outpatient basis. Maybe something will crop up.”

“But there is no remaining evidence that anything unusual happened in Charleston?”

“Just those videos from the hospital. And your people took them into evidence.” Heather sighed. “You can tell Nelson Artleby that there's no threat to the President's poll ratings on national security.”

“I don't report to Nelson Artleby.”

“But he sees your reports on this situation.”

“That's over my pay grade, Dr. Reynard. Do you have any further information for us?”

“Nope, just a complete regression of all symptoms.”

“Okay.” Williams hung up on her.

Heather resumed sifting through the megabytes of data on her laptop, everything she was allowed to know about the events in Fallen Oak and in Charleston. It looked like an endless pile of useless information, but somewhere in there could be a clue that tied together Jenny Morton, the riot in Charleston, and the mysterious young man who could apparently raise the dead.

She had no idea what that clue might look like, though.

About an hour later, her cell phone rang. It was her husband Liam, calling from Atlanta. Heather felt very jittery about answering the call. She'd managed to push her personal fears away while in her professional working mode, but now they came shoving back.

Her daughter, Tricia, had been suffering a fever and swollen glands. Liam took the four-year-old to her pediatrician, who went on to order a CBC, though he'd assured Liam that it was only a precaution.

Now, here was the call, the one where she learned whether Tricia had any abnormal blood cells.

She answered before it could ring a second time.

“How is she?” Heather asked.

“We're moving on to a lymph node biopsy,” Liam said.

“Oh, God. What did he say?”

“It looks like...he said there's a very high probability...”

Heather nodded. Liam was avoiding the word
leukemia.

“You might want to come home,” he said. “If your work's not too important.”

Heather felt her heart clench. She looked at her laptop, all the little folders containing medical histories and police reports. The threat of Jenny creating a massive outbreak, somewhere in the world. The investigation that led only to dead ends.

“No, my work's not important,” Heather whispered, seeing Tricia's face in her mind. She was already fighting the urge to cry, but she managed to hold her voice steady. “I'm coming home.”

Jenny and Kisa walked through a
tianguis
, an open-air market crowded with venders selling wares from rugs and tents. They were in Comitán de Domínguez, the closest city. Manuel had driven them more than two hours from Alexander's house, at high speed, barely touching the brakes the entire time they wove through the narrow, potholed mountain roads. Alexander himself was away in Tijuana, visiting with Papa Calderon himself, to give a report on their progress with the crop.

Over the past few weeks, Jenny and Alexander had traveled to one coca patch after another, to check on his zombies and to fire them up with Jenny Pox. They had greatly accelerated the harvest, and Alexander expected his boss to be pleased.

Jenny still struggled with her feelings about Alexander. She was deeply attracted to him, in a way that made her physically ache. Sometimes the thought of his dark eyes and his suntanned face kept her up at night. His hand on her skin intoxicated her. She managed to resist her feelings most of the time, though she'd broken down and kissed him more than once.

Though Alexander had been kind and taken good care of her, she found her emotions too overwhelming and dangerous. She still thought about Seth, how perfectly innocent and sweet their time together had seemed, until things went sour. She missed him, but she was angry at him.

Alexander was a lot of things, but innocent and sweet were not among them.

“Look!” Kisa said. She took Jenny's hand and drew her toward a shaded table where a man fried a pot of full of tamales. They smelled like chiles and saffron. “Are you hungry?”

Jenny's stomach was growling, so she nodded. “Good idea.”

Kisa spoke with the cook in Mayan, and he served them each a tamale. Jenny bit into the fried corn crust, and the spicy pork and salsa filling spilled into her mouth.

“Yum, that's so good!” Jenny said to Kisa. She nodded to the man who'd cooked them.
“Muy buena
.”

The Mayan cook scowled at her a little.

“Spanish is language of
los conquistadors
,” Kisa whispered. “I don't think he likes to hear it.”

“Oh!' Jenny said. “I mean,
hatsutz
. Very good.”

Now the man smiled again. He poured a cloudy fluid into two small porcelain cups and offered these to the girls.

“
Yum botic
,” Kisa said, thanking him. Then she held her cup toward Jenny and grinned. “Cheers.”