Black_Tide (28 page)

"Seems normal enough," the coroner said. "Let's see what it weighs."

As he worked the brain out, a thousand or more black fibers held it in, and he grunted at the effort necessary to pull the organ away from the skull. They came away like hair, black and wiry, all attached to a tiny bundle at the base of the brain stem.

Sakura leaned in and clicked on a small, hand-held flashlight. "Processor."

Over her shoulder Matt saw the truth of it: the bundle of artificial nerves terminated at a clear box, inside of which a series of small microchips lay on a bright green circuit board.

"Fascinating," the coroner said. He turned to them, bloody gloves raised in the air, and gave a quick nod toward the door. "I'm going to wash up and call in someone who might know what this is, who built it, and how it got into our fighting friend, here."

"Can you trust him?"

He nodded without hesitation. "She and I have worked together on many sensitive issues. We'll get you a report as soon as we have one to issue."

"Thanks."

Twelve hours of surveillance via satellite and county PD told them enough to go in without weapons: Murdock Yardley's mother lived alone on her seventeen-acre farm and employed neighborhood boys to keep the yards mowed and the cows fed. She'd upgraded fourteen years earlier, after her son had made his first million dollars as a prize fighter, well before he'd volunteered to join ICAP. He held the house in his name, but had never lived there.

They drove up the winding, pothole-filled dirt driveway to the modern McMansion completely out of place in the middle of the Maryland pasture. The brick facade and vinyl siding encased enormous windows revealing an open floor plan with all the amenities—a fake fireplace, marble countertops, bar, Jacuzzi. Sakura stayed with the car by choice, so Matt walked up the porch and rang the bell.

Anita Yardley smiled when she opened the door in a chaotic broomstick dress to make any hippie proud. Her gray hair hung in curls almost to her waist, and Matt couldn't help but admire her beauty. Approaching sixty, she didn't look a day over forty, and the kind of forty that makes boys appreciate women as opposed to girls. "Well, if it isn't Matt Rowley. What brings a gentleman like you down a country road like this?"

If she saw Sakura leaning against the car, she made no comment of it. Instead she stepped back and offered him a drink—which he refused—and a plate of cookies, which he accepted. "You look . . . fantastic. Miraculous. Skin grafts can't do that."

"No ma'am, they can't."

"So . . . ?"

He shrugged. "I can't explain it."

After they'd settled in her immaculate living room, in front of the gas fire, she took a sip of tea and set it down. "So what brings you here?"

"I'm looking for Murdock. I haven't seen or heard anything from him since that day you and I met, when things went south last year." Like so many bonks, Yardley had collapsed under the weight of his own body when his augmentations had failed. Matt had spent far too much time visiting former colleagues in hospitals. He'd met Anita Yardley at her son's bedside when Murdock still languished in a coma and Matt had been covered with burn scars.

"Is this a social call?"

"No, ma'am, it's not."

She waited, so he continued.

"He's either causing trouble or someone's using his name to do it. Either way, I'd like to speak to him about some friends of his who seem to have a vendetta against me."

She took another sip, pinning him over the top of her cup. "Well, he said you really showed him something in some fight or another last year, before, you know, before. He didn't have many nice things to say once he woke up."

Matt remembered it well enough. Yardley had been called in to kill Matt and Sakura and didn't give a damn when Matt proved they hadn't bonked out by trying to have a conversation with him. He'd only stopped crushing Matt to death when Sakura had torn out most of his spine and emptied half a magazine up into his abdomen.

Yardley liked killing people and didn't much care who, how, or why.

"We didn't really know each other except by reputation. He was following orders, I was doing my job, we ran afoul of each other. Wasn't his fault, wasn't mine. Either way, he's not in the hospital and he's not here. Can you tell me where he is?"

She shrugged. "Lying in a bed somewhere with a machine keeping him alive. Other than that, I'm not sure I'm comfortable ratting out my son to the police. Or whatever you are. Do you have a title anymore? Jurisdiction?"

"My credentials are what they need to be. Where is he, please?"

"I don't know."

"Can you get a hold of him?"

"Not for you, I don't think so." She smiled a sad smile and patted his hand. "He's never been a good boy, but he's still my son."

Matt closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The whispers shrieked and laughed as he tore the flesh from her face and stuffed it into her screaming mouth. He opened them. "He has
my
son, my baby boy. I just want my son back, that's all."

She stood, smoothed her dress down, walked to the door and opened it. "As do I, Matt. As do I. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a book that won't read itself. Good day."

Matt stalked out, fuming. Sakura waited until they got back to the hotel to ask what had happened.

*   *   *

The heat of the caves helped strip the cold from Murdock Yardley's bones. Ever since his Augs had failed, he couldn't get warm, no matter how many blankets he wore. They said the nerve bundles would help, and maybe they did, but not enough. Not nearly enough. Sweat streamed down his face from the heat radiating through the wall, the fifty-year-old fire on the other side bathing the whole area in blessed warmth.

The phone rang twice in his head. Murdock answered it with a thought, the graphine-coated gold tendrils interfacing his brain and the mechanical suit taking care of the connection with no effort on his part.

"Hi, Mom." His voice reverberated through the natural chamber two octaves lower than a normal man's.

"Hey, baby-cakes. Matt Rowley came looking for you today. Says you've done all sorts of terrible things."

Servos whined as the hydraulic pumps actuated the metal cages that held his legs, carrying him across the room in a lumbering parody of human walking. "How could I do terrible things, Mom? I can't even stand."

"I said as much, but he didn't listen. Made up some story about you being a kidnapper. Just figured you'd want to know."

"Thanks."

"I love you, pookums. Be good."

"Love you, too, Ma."

He killed the connection, picked up a boulder the size of a basketball in mechanical hands that almost mimicked the feeling of human nerves, and tossed it up a few times like a boy with a softball. Murdock looked down at the little man in a suit in front of him. "You're sure they traced the call?"

"My office set it up." Special Agent In-Charge Shane Keene smiled. "Remember the deal—we need Sakura alive."

"As long as I get to kill Rowley, you can have your plaything."

He closed his fist. The sandstone cracked, then crumbled.

Murdock Yardley smiled for the first time in a year.

*   *   *

Monica met him at the door, her face a mask of I-don't-want-to-tell-you-what's-wrong.

"Hey, baby." He held her and kissed her hair, kicking the door shut with his boot before Ted could sneak out to chase squirrels he'd never, ever catch. "We know he's alive, we know where he is. We're almost there."

"Where is he?"

He thought about what to tell her and landed on owing her the truth. Most of the truth. "Do you remember Murdock Yardley?"

"The agent who attacked us when I was in the hospital."

"Yeah. Sounds like he's got a vendetta against me, blames me for being in the shape he's in."

Monica squeezed him. "You are to blame for the shape he's in."

"True. If I hadn't destroyed Gerstner's machine he'd have—" He caught himself before using "bonked out" in front of his wife. "He'd have had a psychotic break by now and would have been put down."

"There's that." She held him a moment. "So Yardley took our son?"

"Looks like he paid some people to do it, yeah."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to get him back, and I'm going to kill Yardley and everyone who's helping him."

She shook her head against his chest. "No, don't do it like that. Let him live. Let him live in that bloated body for as long as God lets him. Let him suffer."

He pulled back to look her in the eyes. "Baby, that's not the person you want to be. Sometimes people have to die, but they never have to suffer, not if you can avoid it."

Again her eyes screamed at him while her voice said nothing.

"What aren't you telling me?"

She looked down, screwed her toe into the floorboards. "Jason came here the other night." She held a finger to his lips to keep him from interrupting. "Babbling all crazy-like about fallen angels and how Gerstner's setting you up. He told me not to tell you, said telling you's the way to screw it all up. But I trust you, baby, and I want you to know what he said."

He pulled her close again. "Okay. What did he say?"

"He said you're going to kill someone and it's going to push you over the edge."

Matt thought about the people he'd killed early that morning and felt nothing but righteousness. They'd taken his son, raped his wife, planned to do more. They'd courted death and gotten what they deserved. "I'm okay, baby. I'll be okay."

*   *   *

Naked, Janet held the cat to her breast, stroking its head to calm it. The pentagram glowed in the candlelight, the chalk a ruddy mix of red and brown. She lifted the heavy creature by the scruff, held it over her head, and inserted the knife just below its throat. It kicked and writhed, shredding her wrist with its claws, but with one fluid motion she drew the knife down. Blood and entrails spilled from the dying creature, drenching her face and hair, running down her spine and between her breasts.

The blood sizzled where it touched the Jade Cross tattooed across her back, filling the room with the delicious and nauseating smells of cooking meat and boiling blood.

She swallowed everything that fell into her mouth, choking down the hot viscera while chewing as little as possible. Gagging, she dropped to her knees. The cat twitched on the floor, eyes wide, chest heaving, trying to scream with ruined lungs.

Blood streamed from her nose, eyes, and mouth.

IT ISN'T ENOUGH
. Her brother's voice battered through her skull, rending sense and sanity, both less and more than it had ever been.

She shook her head. "It's all you'll get, D. I'm not sacrificing children, not even for you."

I can't remain with what you give me. It isn't enough.

"Then take it," she snarled. "Rowley's a walking breach, an open door you just have to step through. I can see the conduits, white and jade. Pick a path and take it."

SHE IS THERE.

Blood leaked from her ears, black and thick like motor oil used too long. In the window the sun went out and wind howled through the room. Struggling to hold on to any vestige of herself, Janet latched onto what defined her relationship with her brother.

With equal parts love and scorn, she laughed. "I never took you for a coward."

You don't understand.

"I understand all too well, D. You're afraid. Well, so be it. Fade to nothing. Give up everything you've fought for. Surrender to the Pit, let Gerstner have you after all these years, consume your frightened little soul to free another of her precious egregoroi. Wither and fade, give up and die, end life as you began it, naked and screaming and helpless."

The wind died to a whisper.

Sister, why are you so cruel?

"I've given you more than you've ever had a right to. And I will bring you back but not by whatever it takes. I will not kill children to give you the strength. We'll find another way."

*   *   *

The dark brown motel off Route 61 looked like a mountain cabin had gotten out of hand. A massive gray chimney rose out of the kitchen, offering the broken promise of brick-oven food. It also happened to be the only thing breaking up the flat brown of the roof, siding, and trim. The parking lot smelled like fry oil and diesel exhaust.

"Home sweet home," Matt said.

Agent Keene threw up his hands. "Hey, man, don't blame me. This is the closest place to Centralia with public lodging."

Centralia, Pennsylvania's, only claim to fame consisted of an underground fire in a coal mine that had started in 1962 and spread uncontrollably through hundreds of acres of tunnels, burning ever since. Sinkholes, toxic levels of carbon monoxide, and basements heated to a hundred-plus degrees had persuaded all but a few diehards to take a 1984 government buyout and leave town.

Matt wondered how much Yardley knew, to choose a flaming pit for his hideout.

The sign out front boasted, "Hells Mouth Nacho's $3.99!" and "Seafood Wednesday's are ON!" and "Mt. Carmel Cake with real carmel!"

"This place is disgusting." Sakura wiped a sheen of grease off the chimney on the way by.

"Yelp gave it almost two stars," Keene said. "Compared to some of the dives I've had to crash in, this is paradise."

"That's unfortunate." Matt followed Sakura, desperately happy it wasn't Wednesday.

The inside had little enough to offer. At three o'clock on a Friday, a half-dozen people sat at the bar, and a young couple occupied a booth in the gloomy, dated dining room. As they walked in, everyone looked at them and then turned back to their food and drinks.

Matt scanned the crowd for anyone from Salomon's dossiers while Sakura ran license plates on her tablet.

They paid for adjacent rooms, one for Matt and Keene, and one for Sakura—the same one used by Anita Yardley on the three occasions she'd stayed there. Matt entered his room and admired the sad, flat pillows, threadbare comforter, and chairs with foam bursting out their seams. At least it didn't smell like cat pee.