Books by Maggie Shayne (168 page)

"Shit." She put her burned fingers to her lips, blew on them, drew them away and shook them in the air as she kept on walking. Her foot kicked something that rolled, and she looked down, frowning, looking closer. When she realized she was bending over a charred forearm and hand, she pulled back so suddenly she almost fell over. "Jesus!"

Her breathing quickened now, her lungs sucking in more smoke with every breath, but that couldn't be helped. She continued her search, spotting other evidence of human remains in the wreckage. More and more of it. Bodies. Parts of bodies. It was as if she had stepped into hell's dumping ground. Jesus, why hadn't anyone been able to get out alive? What the hell had happened here?

This was stupid. She had been a fool to come here. She started to turn, to go back, when movement caught her eye. Movement in the smoky distance. She went still, squinting, staring.

Gradually, the movement took shape. A man, his clothes burned, his skin so sooty she couldn't tell if he was black or white. He was hunched over, walking unevenly, bending and straightening over and over again. It looked as if he was picking things up, dragging himself away from the wreckage and picking things up as he went. She was about to offer to help him when she heard her name shouted from a distance.

The man heard Stormy's call, too, and he went stiff, jerking his head toward the voice. A tongue of flame leapt to life somewhere near him and illuminated his face for just an instant. His hair had been burned completely away from one side of his head, and the scalp and one side of his face was charred. Black, with pink showing through here and there. She tried to memorize his features, the rounded face, the shape of his chin. He tucked whatever he had been holding into his pockets and ran in a lumbering, uneven gait away from the voice and right toward Maxine.

She ducked down low, held her breath, willed herself not to move. She didn't know for sure that the man was dangerous, but if he were up to anything good, he wouldn't be running away. Maybe he was just a snoop, like she was. But probably not. He'd been inside that burning building. That much was obvious.

He limped past her, never even looking down at her as she sat there fighting not to shiver in fear. He moved so close she could smell his charred flesh, and it made her stomach clench reflexively.

Something fell from his jacket. Something—no,
two somethings
—dropped to the hot, rubble-strewn ground right at her feet. He never noticed, just kept going, dragging one leg, lunging with the other, until he vanished in the smoke.

Swallowing hard, Maxine reached for the items. One was a CD-ROM. The other, some kind of ID badge. She swore every nerve ending in her body tingled with electricity as she tucked the two still-warm items carefully into her pocket and, turning, ran back the way she had come. She refused to look again at the carnage. Refused to look behind her, even when she swore she felt the disfigured man's gaze burning into her back. She just hurried as fast as she could back to where she'd left her friends and fell to her knees near the shrub where they waited.

"God, thank God, you're back!" Storm said. She bent over Max, stroking her back. "Are you all right? What happened back there?"

"Did you find anything? What did you see?" Jason asked.

Maxine lifted her head, looked at them. "It's… there were… bodies."

"Oh, God," Storm said, closing her eyes.

Max gripped Jason's forearm, and he helped her to her feet. "Let's get the hell out of here, okay?" he suggested.

She nodded. They fell into step together, with Max in the center, her two friends flanking her almost protectively. They had made it almost all the way to the front gate when the sounds of rumbling motors flooded the night and vehicles came roaring along the street and into the drive. They ducked into the nearby pines, watching as camo-painted trucks and Jeeps with spotlights mounted on them bounded past. At least one vehicle had a machine gun mounted on a tripod in the back. Soldiers armed with weapons came spilling out of the trucks and fanned out onto the grounds.

Ten feet ahead of Max, a cop stood with his back to them, looking at the commotion with his head tilted to one side.
Her cop
, Maxine realized with a rush of relief.

Jason saw him at the same time, squeezed Max's arm, whispered, "Cop."

"It's okay. It's Lou Malone."

Jason sent her a frown.

"He teaches that women's self-defense course I take."

"You remember him, Jay," Storm put in. "He used to work our high school dances. He's the one Maxie always had a crush on."

"Oh, yeah. That one." He sent Max a look that asked if she still did, but she just rolled her eyes and looked away.

Someone spoke into a bullhorn, startling her so much that she jerked her gaze away from the back of Lou's head. "This is a government facility and therefore, a military operation. Local firefighters are to cease all activity at once. No one is to leave this site without clearance. Line up in an orderly fashion near the front gate and you'll be escorted off the premises. That is all."

"What the hell is going on, Max?" Storm whispered, clutching Maxine's arm. "They've got
guns
."

"They're not going to use them." Jason tried to sound confident and sure of himself but missed that goal by about a mile. "I mean, they're soldiers. They
have
to carry guns. Right?"

They watched from their pine-scented blind as the soldiers tugged firemen away from their hoses. Some of the firefighters obeyed, moving to form a straggling line by the gate. Those who didn't move fast enough were searched where they were, then escorted to the front gate and through it. More soldiers searched the fire trucks, and the vehicles in the street, as well.

"Well, I'll be dipped," Officer Malone said to himself. "What the hell is all this about?"

Licking her lips, Maxine stepped out of her cover, walked up to Lou and cleared her throat. He turned fast, then gaped at her in surprise. She loved him. Had since tenth grade. And it didn't matter that his face was hard and lined, or that he was eighteen years older than she was, or that he saw her as little more than a pain-in-the-ass kid with a big imagination.

"Well, if it isn't Mad Maxie Stuart, my favorite redhead," he said, shaking his head slowly. "Why the hell am I not surprised to see you here?"

"Hey, Lou. I just wanted to see the fire."

"Uh-huh." He glanced at her friends. "Don't you two know better than to let her drag you into her schemes?"

They shrugged, said nothing.

"Lou, I don't like this," Max said. "This whole soldier bit. They're searching everyone."

"Yeah, I see that."

"Just an excuse to grope the females," Stormy said. "If they think they're gonna run their hands all over my body, they'd better think again."

Maxine watched Lou's eyes slide to hers as Stormy spoke and knew her friend had fallen on the right tactic. "I don't relish the idea of them copping a feel of my ass, either, Storm." Even as she said it, a soldier slammed a firefighter who resisted him up against the guardhouse. Lou saw it and winced.

"I'm scared, Lou. I just want to get out of here," Max said.

Lou Malone pursed his lips in thought; then, finally, he nodded. "It's not like you kids are any threat to national security. These guys are a little overzealous, I think. Look, there's a break in the fence, just past those pines. See that tallest one? It's near that. Go on, get outta here. I never saw you."

"Thanks, Lou."

He gave Maxine a worried nod, and, impulsively, she leaned up and planted a kiss on his cheek.

"Get your ass straight home, Mad Max. No more screwing around with grown-up stuff, okay?"

"I promise," she said. Then she ran off in the direction he'd shown her.

Max waited until Jason and Storm had gone home. She told them nothing about the man she had seen gathering evidence from the rubble. Nothing about the trophies she had recovered. She didn't want to tell them anything that could put them in danger or make them accessories if what she had done turned out to be a crime. Late that night, very late, she gently wiped the soot from the partially melted plastic of the name badge.

There was a photograph of a man, and the words, "Frank W. Stiles. Security Level: Alpha. DPI."

She knew what "Security Level: Alpha" meant. She had learned that the first time she tried to uncover the truth about UFOs and government cover-ups. Alpha was the word used to indicate the top-level security clearances in certain agencies under the auspices of the CIA. But in all her years of research she had never once come across any reference to any agency or operation called DPI.

Jesus, what the hell had she stumbled upon?

She was nearly shaking when she washed the soot from the CD-ROM and slid it into her computer, praying the heat hadn't ruined it.

It hadn't.

When she clicked RUN, the driver whirred and the screen went black. Red letters lit up the screen.

TOP SECRET DOCUMENTS

of

THE DIVISION OF PARANORMAL INVESTIGATIONS

CASE FILES D145.9—H376.51

Continue?

The final word blinked its question at her, almost daring her to take it up on the challenge.

Stiffening her spine, she clicked on the word and brought up a table of contents. Names. They were simply names.

Damien, aka Namtar, Damien, aka Gilgamesh

Daniels, Matthew

Daniella

Dante

Devon, Josephina

Obviously alphabetical, the list began in the Ds and ended in the
Hs
. Some were first and last names, some only one name. There were maybe a hundred entries, as near as she could tell without counting. Clicking back to the top of the list, she began scrolling down it. Then she came to one that made her stop in her tracks.

Dracul, Vlad (See full bio for alias list.)

"What the hell?" Curious, she clicked on the name, and a graphic popped up. A drawing, not a photo, of a thoroughly modern-looking man, with long black hair and unusually full lips.

The most well known of the species, he was born in Carpathia and transformed, as nearly as we can tell, in his early twenties. Sired by an unknown enemy soldier, probably a Turk. Most recent sighting, May, 1992, Paris.

"Most
recent
sighting?" She blinked at the screen, her mind not quite digesting what she was seeing. "Ninety-two?"

Below the graphic, with its piercing eyes and pale skin, were more choices: Known Kills, Known Associates, Known Havens, Full Bio.

"What in the name of God
is
this shit?"

She hit the back button, clicked on another name in the list, and again was brought to a screen with an image of the person, this one an actual photograph labeled "taken before transformation" and a brief bio.

Josephina Devon. Born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1962. Transformed in the summer of her 30th year, June 1992. Sire: R-532 aka Rhiannon.

The vampire
"Vampire?"
was captured by DPI researchers in December of the same year. Held at DPI Headquarters in White Plains, NY, USA. Expired in captivity, 1995.

Again, the same choices were offered for further information, this time with one notable addition: "Tests Performed on the Subject & Results of Same."

This was not real.

This
could not
be real.

When she clicked on "full bio" she found a document more than a hundred pages long. With details that made her mind spin with the impossibility of it all. When she opened the file that referred to tests performed, she thought she was going to be ill. This person, this woman, had been a lab rat. Held and experimented upon in that very building. In her own town.

But no. It hadn't happened, because it wasn't real.

There were no such things as vampires. Much less a covert government agency devoted to researching them.

And yet, here was the proof that there were.

There
were
.

What the hell was she supposed to do now?

The next day, she still hadn't decided, when the doorbell rang and she answered it to find no one there. Just an unmarked manila envelope on the doorstep.

Her mother was already at work. Most days she left before Max was even out of bed. The odd delivery made Maxine curious, particularly after last night. She looked up and down the street. No strangers lurked anywhere. No suspicious vehicles with tinted windows slid past. The neighborhood was stirring to life. People opening their doors, picking up their morning papers.

Maxine picked up the envelope, looked at it, turned it over. Nothing. Not one word, not a label, not a stamp.

Frowning, she went back inside, closing and locking the door behind her. She took the envelope to the kitchen table, opening it as she walked, and she tipped it, dumping the contents out beside her bowl of corn flakes. Photos. What the hell? She frowned. Polaroids. Three of them. Then she blinked and snatched them up. That was Jason, sound asleep in his bed! She moved it to the back of the pile. The next shot was of Stormy, from the neck up, in her own shower. Maxine swore and looked at the third one. It was a shot of her mother, getting out of her car in the parking garage of the hospital where she worked as an R.N.

The telephone rang, and she damn near jumped out of her skin. Maxine clenched her teeth, dropped the photos on the table and went to pick up the phone.

"Do you like the photos, Maxine?"

The voice was a whisper so cold it sent a chill down her spine. "Who the hell is this?" Maxine reached for the answering machine on the table, jabbed the record button with her forefinger.

"Those shots were all taken in the past twelve hours, you know."

"Why?" Her hand was clenching the telephone so hard her knuckles were white. She wished it was this son of a bitch's neck. How dare he? God, he'd been in Jason's bedroom. In Storm's bathroom. And in that dark parking garage, alone with her mother.

"To show you how easy it is for me to learn everything about you, and how quickly and effortlessly I can get to the people you love. To shoot them. With a camera, this time, but—"