Chimera (31 page)

“I’m fine. Just tired.” He made an aggrieved face. “And cold. It was never cold at the Institute.” He was waxing nostalgic for his prison; that couldn’t be a positive sign.

“Yeah, I hear that place was like a Caribbean resort.” I pulled his hood back into place and hefted the plastic bag with a leaden grip. “Buck up. We’re almost there.”

“Almost where?”

I shifted and pointed across the street at the nearest possibility, a house that huddled as an amorphous shape in the storm. The porch light twinkled dimly in the murk, hopefully advertising that no one was at home. “There.”

His hand latched on to the duffel strap across my back. “Why there?” He was trying so desperately not to lean against me that I made up my mind. The possibility was now a dead certainty. We had come as far as we could go. If we were lucky, the place would be empty. And if we weren’t lucky, it wasn’t as if it would be the first time that day. I would deal with it.

“Because it’s the closest.” I started across the street, keeping the pace slow and easy.

“With logic like that . . . how can we go wrong?” Breathing heavily, Michael plodded at my side, lacking the strength for the sarcasm that the statement deserved. I switched the bag to my other hand and grasped his arm with a supportive grip. I expected him to be mulish as always and protest that he didn’t need any help, but he didn’t. I was beginning to suspect his improved healing ability used up a considerable amount of energy when it was in full swing, as it was now. “If it’s the closest,” he murmured, stumbling a bit, “why doesn’t it feel that way?”

“Bitch. Bitch. Bitch,” I said with grimly determined cheer as I steadied him and kept us both moving. “I’m showing you a winter wonderland and this is the thanks I get.” Dropping my hand from his sleeve, I wrapped my arm around his shoulders and took the majority of his weight. “You liked it fine when we were building snowmen at the motel.”

“I’ve changed my mind.” He leaned heavily against me, his legs beginning to shake. “Snowmen suck.”

My lips curled despite our situation. Cursing, pornography, and obstinacy; under that shockingly mature façade the teenager just kept breaking out, bit by bit. “I guess maybe they do,” I said placatingly as we reached the front of the house. Two-storied and sprawling, it was separated from the others on the street by a large lot and a literal wall of trash. Old tires seemed to make the majority of the divider, but I was only guessing by the shapes under the snow. The house itself was old and in a better neighborhood would’ve been considered a historical treasure. Here it was one more pile of crap two or three years away from being condemned, razed, and replaced with a parking garage.

Warped and uneven, the ancient wood of the stoop was as rippled as the incoming tide. But it was somewhat protected from the icy onslaught by a shingled overhang. That left the surface clear enough that Michael breathed a sigh of relief to be on more or less solid ground. Knocking sharply on the door, I kept an eye on him as he rested against the wall of the house. “Don’t lean too hard,” I advised. “You might take the wall down.”

“There was a crooked house. . . .” His smile was equally as crooked as he began to regain his breath. “A lady was reading nursery rhymes to the children at that bookstore.”

“Clowns and nursery rhymes, the two creepiest memories of any childhood.” I knocked again in case some elderly person as decrepit as their house was meandering their slow way down from the top floor. When that didn’t happen, I stripped off my gloves, pulled out a card from the wallet I’d taken from Pavel before we’d left the mansion, and went to work. I wished I had something more high-tech than that asshole’s credit card.

The card, despite being maligned, did the job. A few jiggles had the old lock giving way with a rusty creak and then we were in. Closing the door behind us, I sneezed immediately. The dust was thick in the air—dust and something far worse for my sinuses. I sneezed three more times and didn’t have to rely on the winding motion around my ankles to identify the type of fur floating in the flickering lamplight. Cat.

“Ah, damn it.” I rubbed at my stinging nose with the back of my hand.

“What’s wrong?” Snow was sliding off Michael and melting into a puddle on the wood floor. There were so many other stains—cat urine from the smell—that I didn’t think we needed to worry about one more.

“I’m allergic to cats.” I carefully nudged away the one now gnawing at my shoe. It was gray with black stripes, a huge puffball of long hair, pumpkin orange eyes, and rampant feline dander. Another one, white with a lashing tail, sat at the bottom of the stairs curving up to the second floor. The third was yellow, hugely obese, and curled around the base of a lamp. The lamp sat on a table that rested against a wall covered with patterned paper. With roses, roses, and more roses under the yellow film of age, cats, and paper flowers, this place had old lady written all over it. I wondered where she was. Maybe she was staying with her kids until the storm blew over.

“You’re not much of an animal person, are you?” Michael pushed his hood back and bent over to give the tabby a pat on its head. “Nice kitty.”

Feeling another sneeze coming on, I buried the lower half of my face in the crook of my arm to muffle the wet explosion. “That nice kitty is suffocating me,” I said nasally before straightening. “Stay here. I’m going to check out the house and make sure we’re alone.”

I did a quick run-through of the place. Everything was old. The furniture, appliances, rugs—all dated to several decades before my birth. Even the quilts on the beds were faded and worn; the afghans raveled and covered with fuzz balls. It definitely belonged to an old lady. Two bedrooms, a bathroom with a claw-foot tub and cloudy mirror, and a sewing room made up the second floor. After a quick look around, I concentrated on scooping up two blankets, a quilt, and a pillow before heading back down the stairs.

Michael was sitting on the bottom step, leaning against the wall. He was fast asleep and he wasn’t alone. One of the cats had seized the opportunity to curl up in a convenient lap. Annoyed at the competition, Zilla had crawled out of the ski jacket and was currently racing up the banister. I let it go. If anyone was a match for three cats, it would be that damn ferret. “Misha.” I shook his shoulder lightly before shooing off the cat. “Come on.”

His eyes opened, just barely, and he allowed me to shepherd him to the couch in the living room. The cushions sagged from years and years of use, but he didn’t seem to mind as he dropped onto it. He could’ve used one of the beds upstairs, but if we had to make a sudden getaway, being on the ground floor would be best. As Michael slithered out of his jacket and with clumsy fingers worked on removing his gloves, I helped him with his shoes. The laces were too encrusted with ice and snow to untie and I didn’t even try, simply pulling them off. The socks went too, a sodden pile on the rug. “All right, kiddo. Down you go.”

He obeyed without argument, showing me how exhausted he truly was. Michael had shown that he wasn’t one to let me fuss over him, at least not without some self-deprecating or distancing remark. But now . . . he was like a tired five-year-old, obedient and docile. It brought back memories. God, did it. Lukas had been able to sleep anytime, anywhere. There had been many times I’d hauled him from an unconscious heap on the floor to lift him into his bed without waking him. His name had changed, but inside he was still Lukas. It was like they said. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

In the here and now I slid the pillow under his head and piled on the blankets. “Sleep for a few hours. I’ll keep an eye out.” His eyes closed, but his mouth twisted downward. A hand slipped out of the blankets to move his thumb back and forth across the rough texture of the worn cotton in a self-soothing motion. It wasn’t sleep. It wasn’t even a good imitation. I thumped his chin lightly with a finger. “I said sleep, not mope.”

With eyes still closed and a voice thick with a fatigue he couldn’t completely fight, he said softly, “I told myself I couldn’t get attached.”

Confused, I eased from a crouch to a sitting position on the floor. “Misha . . .”

He ignored me. “After John . . . I couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t. People go away; they die. I knew . . . know better than to get attached to anyone.” There was anger underscoring the words, anger and resignation. “Why did you make me?”

Ah. Damn. The kid could make me happy as hell and rip me up inside all in one fell swoop. Trust was a ridiculously hard step for even the well-adjusted. For the rest of us walking wounded, it was nearly impossible. But Michael had already demonstrated that impossible wasn’t a word that applied to him. That didn’t make the wonder any less for me. He was coming to accept me, to trust me. And because of that, he now was also terrified of me. The one person he remembered relying on had left him . . . had died. It was one thing to be deserted by someone you cared for; it was a completely different circle of Hell to be abandoned by your family . . . by your brother.

“I’m your family, Michael. I won’t leave you,” I promised. “And I won’t die. Not until I’m knee-deep in dentures and adult diapers.”

“You can’t know that.” His eyes opened, and the challenge in them was clear.

“No?” I rested my shoulder against the couch. “I knew I’d find you, didn’t I? I know lots of things. I knew you’d get me a god-awful ugly coat. Hell, I’m practically psychic.”

He gave a disbelieving snort, pulled the blanket back over his shoulder, and rolled over to present his back to me, physically. It was too late to accomplish the same emotionally. I rearranged the blankets over his shoulder and received a brisk smack of my hand for my troubles. Sighing, I sat back and took my own jacket and shoes off. As I worked, I said firmly, “I moved Heaven and Earth to find you, Misha, and I’m not giving you up. If I have to live forever to prove that to you, so be it. If Dick Clark can do it, so can I.”

Under the quilt his shoulders relaxed. It was probably from an approaching sleep that couldn’t be denied, but I took it as a positive sign nonetheless. I stood and looked down at him. “A couple of years and you’ll be sick of the sight of me. You’ll change the locks while I’m at the store. I’ll be homeless.”

He didn’t hear me. Breaths deep and even ruffled the threads of the fraying patchwork cloth by his mouth. With the lightest of touches I brushed his hair aside. The wound was half healed. By morning the skin of his forehead would be smooth and untouched. It made me wonder. I’d made the sincere if unrealistic promise to stick around until the end of time, but how long would he live? Would he age at the same rate as your average human or would the ravages of time be wiped away by Jericho’s genetic tampering? For that matter, if he had children, would he pass on to them his heritage? Would they be like Michael?

Questions for another time, I thought, as the yellow cat appeared to wind around my ankles. This time was spent on more important things . . . such as watching over my brother as he slept.

And sneezing.

Unfortunately, Michael found his own fur ball before we left. There we were . . . one big happy family again—Stinky, Sneezy, and Country Joe. I looked over as Michael gazed dreamily out of the window, his lips shaping the words of a song we’d already heard three times in the last two hours. “Why country, kid?” I asked with a nearly physical pain. “Seriously, why?”

“You mean you don’t like it?” He unwrapped a candy bar and inhaled the scent of chocolate as if it were a fine wine. “It’s great. Every song is a story and in every story the singer has worse luck than we do. How can you not appreciate that?”

There was something to be said for that, but I’d suffered enough twanging in the past few hours to last me for the rest of my life. “I don’t know. Maybe my bleeding ears are the problem.” I switched the station and then sneezed. “Goddamnit.” We’d left the cats behind, but they hadn’t left us. The upholstery was covered liberally in a layer of white, gray, and yellow hair, and I hadn’t stopped sneezing since Boston.

A froth of tissue was automatically passed my way. “We should’ve bought another box.” Michael returned to his candy bar. “Or five, although I’m not sure it would help. The mucous river cannot be dammed. See the villagers flee in fear.”

I kept one steady hand on the wheel and blew my nose. “Smart-ass.”

“Smart as they come,” he confirmed with haughty cheer around a mouthful of nougat and chocolate.

My comeback was buried in my next sneeze and Michael used the opportunity to ask a question. “Do you think this man will know anything about Jericho? Anything that can help us?”

It had been his idea to begin with, but we all needed some reassurance once in a while. “I don’t know. I’m hoping. From what you said, this Bellucci has a real hard-on for sticking it to Jericho and his theories.” At his mystified expression, I clarified. “He hates him.” I wadded up the tissue and dropped it in the cup holder. “The funny thing is that friends may come and go, but people tend to keep track of their enemies. It’s screwed up, but there it is.”

The rain continued to beat in a lulling rhythm on the roof of the car as Michael contemplated my rough and ready wisdom. Apparently it called for the fortification of another candy bar. I let him get halfway through it before saying, “I have a question of my own.”

Michael shrugged lightly in permission, but there was a hint of uneasiness in the gesture. He knew I was bound to continue in the same vein and Jericho was far and away not his favorite topic. I couldn’t blame him. The thought of being strapped to the table in that bastardized excuse for a medical room was horrifying enough. But picturing Jericho bending over me with gleaming teeth rivaled by the glitter of the metal instruments in his hand stitched my bowels with a needle and thread of ice. Worse than that, though, would be not knowing when or where your moments in the basement would come.

Michael had said it hadn’t hurt that much, that he’d been sedated for the majority of it. Did that matter? Hell, no. It might be that loss of control made the experience more unbearable. You couldn’t prepare and you couldn’t resist. It would be like falling, falling, and never having a chance to grab on to anything. Michael had forgotten a lot of things in his life. It didn’t surprise me he’d as soon forget this as well. I only wished our situation could have allowed him that luxury.

“You said Jericho was grooming you and the other kids to be assassins,” I started. “That he was going to sell you.”

His nod was hesitant and wary, a far cry from the indifferent reaction he’d shown the last time this topic had come up. Trust; it was all about trust. Unconsciously or not, he was now letting me see flashes of what churned inside him.

“How’d that happen? How did they go about it?” There had to be some way to obtain more obvious evidence that the government was turning a blind eye to Jericho’s setup. Saul had thought it obvious, but I still wanted to be sure. “Did people come in and”—Jesus Christ. I gritted my teeth to finish the disturbing question—“pick you out?” Like a stray dog at the shelter or a ripe melon at the grocery.

They did.

But from what Michael said, the children never saw the “shoppers.” The ones near graduation were shepherded into a room with mirrored walls to be looked over by invisible eyes and then sent back to class. The next day one of the students would be gone. It wouldn’t be based all on appearances, I was sure. Blending in to a certain population might be necessary, but obedience and temperament would be considered as well. And that last one would be the reason Michael had only heard about the inside of those rooms, not seen them. Michael may have been obedient on the surface, but his temperament wasn’t that of a killer. As he’d said before, it was a toss-up as to whether he would’ve seen graduation.

The only thing I was accomplishing was to stir up bad memories for Michael, and I gave up on the subject for the moment. Proof might not exist in either direction. If it didn’t, we would probably spend the rest of our lives on the run. Jericho we could evade, with luck, but the government was a different matter. Then again, Elvis had been doing it for more than thirty years.

We stopped at a gas station to check the phone book for Dr. Marcos Bellucci’s address and buy a street guide. He lived in a fairly ritzy area, not quite up to Uncle Lev’s standards, but nice enough. There were quiet streets and trees that would cast wide pools of shade in the summer. Now they bowed morosely under the drizzle. Michael shared their opinion of the weather. As I parked the car on the street, he made a face at the rain spattering against his window. “We should’ve bought an umbrella when we stopped for the map.”

He was such a cat with his distaste of the cold and wet. “Manly men like us don’t use umbrellas,” I instructed, switching off the car.

“We don’t?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?” he asked curiously.

“I don’t know, kid. It’s an unwritten law. Kind of like the one that says we don’t wear shirts with Einstein on them,” I drawled.

I could see he was contemplating throwing the rest of his candy bar at my head, but at the last moment he decided it was too precious to waste on the likes of me. Folding the wrapper carefully around it, he stored it in the glove compartment. “Next store we come to, I’m getting an umbrella,” he said firmly.

“Afraid to get wet, Misha? Think you’ll melt?” I teased.

“That’s not what I want to use it for,” he shot back.

Either he wanted to hit me over the head or insert it in places rain gear simply wasn’t meant to go. Both choices caused mental images that had me wincing. Pocketing the keys, I climbed out of the car and was instantly soaked. The houses on this street were all close to the curb. The majority of them were prewar and two and a half stories high with elaborate lacy moldings and stained glass. They were nearly as pristine as they must have been when they were new. With a definite pride of ownership, the neighborhood was the type that would abound with professors, artists, overgrown houseplants, and a thousand flavors of tea.

Resting a hand on the wrought-iron railing, I walked up the stairs that led to the sidewalk. “Get a move on, kiddo.”

With coat pulled over his head and a scowl darker than the lowered sky, Michael followed. When we both stood on the porch, I rang the bell. I could hear the faint ripple of musical notes through the front door. I heard a murmur at my shoulder. “What are we going to tell him?”

I glanced over to see an annoyingly dry brother, his hair and face untouched by the rain. But was he manly like me? I didn’t think so. “We? I thought the resident genius would come up with a good story.”

He barely had time to flash me a vexed look when the door opened to reveal a wiry man in a charcoal gray sweater and black pants. Equally black eyes took measure of us from behind rimless glasses. “Can I help you?”

I held out my hand and gave my best professional smile. From the blanching of his skin, apparently it was a shade too much of my old profession. I tried to tone it down, from wolflike to that of a friendly German shepherd. “Dr. Bellucci? I’m Peter Melina, freelance journalist. I was wondering if I could have a few minutes of your time.”

He shook my hand cautiously. “Ah . . . perhaps you should’ve called first. What’s this about?”

“An article I’m writing regarding the ethics of genetic manipulation,” I responded smoothly. “Specifically the ethics of a certain Dr. John Jericho Hooker.”

At that, his caution disappeared and a crusading light blossomed as red patches high on his knife-sharp cheekbones. “That bastard. He’s done as much to sully the name of the field as Mengele.” Pulling off his glasses, he used them to wave us in. “Come in.” After looking me up and down, he added, “I’ll get you a towel.”

I closed the door behind us and waited obediently on the small hooked rug as Bellucci disappeared down a hall. Beside me Michael was entangled in the vines of an amorous potted plant. Pushing them aside with exasperation, he whispered to me, “If you’re a journalist, then who am I?”

“An eager-to-learn high school intern,” I replied absently as I looked the place over, taking in the polished wood, high ceilings, painted ceramic tile, and the lush quiet that came from an empty house or really thick walls.

“Clever,” he said. “You’re a good liar.”

“And I didn’t even have to take a class.” Lying well wasn’t a talent most boasted of, but there were times it did come in handy. The fact that Michael probably had in all actuality suffered through such a class only made me want to put Jericho in the ground all the more.

Bellucci returned with a thick towel and handed it to me. Thanking him, I dried my face and scrubbed at my hair to blot up the water. “We can talk in the study,” he offered, and led the way, sliding paneled doors open to reveal what looked more like a sunroom than a study. The walls were only a framework to support the many windows. In fair weather the room would be awash with bright sun. It was nice. I could picture lying on the large leather couch and taking a nap in that bright spill of light.

Instead I sat on it and took a small notebook from my pocket to rest on my knee. I’d bought it with the map at the gas station, having already formed a vague idea of the story I was going to feed the scientist.

“Dr. Bellucci, this is Daniel,” I said in introduction as Michael settled on the arm of a nearby chair. “He’s an intern. Actually, he’s my sister’s kid, but he is on his high school paper. I had my arm twisted to let him tag along.” I gave a sheepish shrug of my shoulders. “Family. What can you do?”

“Helping your nephew is admirable,” he said, but it was obvious neither his heart nor brain was behind the statement. The entirety of his attention was on Jericho. He was Bellucci’s bête noire, as a distant junior high school English teacher of mine would’ve pompously labeled him. Our good friend Fisher Thieving Lee would no doubt have called him the stick in his craw. Whatever you wanted to call him, from the moment I mentioned the name Jericho, he was all Bellucci could think about.

“What brought you to me?” He carded his fingers through wiry salt-and-pepper hair with an energy that seemed less nerves and more the fire of a man with a cause. “Outside certain academic circles you don’t hear Hooker’s name much anymore. He’s been a forgotten man since he dropped out of the public eye.” Setting his mouth grimly, he amended, “Forgotten except by me.”

I leaned back, sprawling with casual comfort in my best imitation of a seasoned journalist. “I read a whole stack of books. Well, skimmed them—most were thicker than the phone book. Some had articles that quoted your opinion on your former colleague. He was quite the bad boy of genetics, according to you. It seemed like a good look back, what with all the cloning brouhaha being pretty much over now and the stem-cell matter being the new target.” Michael had donned his glasses again, but I could see the humor in his eyes. I would bet he thought he would never see a pretentious word like brouhaha pass my lips—junior high detention had been proctored by our librarian. As for taking credit for his research, I was sure I’d pay for that later on.

“Colleague.” Bellucci tasted the word and found it bitter from the twist of his lips. “Try friend. The son of a bitch was my friend.”

“And what changed that?” I opened the notebook and fixed him with an expectant and sympathetic gaze. From the feel of the contortion that sent my face into, as with my smile, I should’ve practiced the expression in a mirror first.

“Two words. Human experimentation.” He enunciated the last so clearly, I could hear the pause between each syllable.

“He experimented on people?” I didn’t have to fake outrage. It wasn’t precisely news, but my fury hadn’t faded since day one of discovering what that maniac was up to at the Institute.

“It wasn’t quite as simple as that,” Bellucci denied, beating a tattoo with his fingers on the arm of the chair he’d chosen. “He started on himself. You’re familiar with his rare genetic makeup? That he’s a chimera?” At my nod, he continued. “He wanted to prove something that simply wasn’t true. And when he couldn’t, he decided to make it true.” Sighing, he got to his feet and paced across a rug brilliant with a jungle print. Candy-colored birds and cheetahs peeked from emerald green foliage. “But he couldn’t. Chimeras are nothing more than people with a little extra DNA. He wouldn’t accept that, though, and that’s when he started with the pregnant girls.”