Demons are a Ghoul's Best Friend: Afterglow, Book 2 (9 page)

“Not as much as I’d hoped.” Karl’s gaze fell on Cheney. “Well hot damn. You brought me some real special goodies, Buck.” He grinned wickedly. “This one swing my way maybe? I’m not fussy about who gets the tongue treatment.”

Cheney resisted the urge to cover his genitals and back up about a mile or two. “
Buck
?” It wasn’t a squawk, but it came damn close.

“Karl, quit putting the moves on my friends. We’ve got some serious stuff to run by you.” Buck’s tone was brisk, and he glanced at Cheney. “Ignore him. He only does it to get attention.”

Karl sighed and shrugged his little shoulders. “What can I say? All work and no play makes me horny. But I guess I can just go jerk off after you’ve gone. Waste though.” He moved to a low chair, plopped down into it then hit a button, bringing himself up to the level of the desk. “Whatcha got for me, dudes and gorgeous dudette?”

“This.” Cheney reached into his pocket and produced the plastic bag containing the mucky dirt he’d scooped off Pandora’s kitchen floor.

“Hmm.” Karl prodded it. “You snort it, slurp it or mainline it?”

“It’s not a drug.” In terse sentences, Cheney filled him in on exactly what had happened, what he’d seen and the messy ending to the whole thing.

Karl listened intently while snapping on latex gloves and removing small amounts to put in various glass vials. “And this was in your kitchen?” He flicked a look at Pandora.

She nodded. “Yes, just as he said. Only I never saw the thing as other than a puppy. An ugly puppy and not a very even-tempered one, but that was it.”

“Describe it again.” Karl bent to his work.

“I can go one step better, I think.” Cheney wondered if he could recreate his trick with Buck and the plate. He tipped his head to a clean bare spot on Karl’s desk. “Look there.”

With a little focus and some intense concentration, he managed to reproduce a pretty good likeness of the creature in its native state.

Beside him, Pandora gasped. “Jesus. No wonder it felt wrong.”

Cheney cursed himself. He’d forgotten she hadn’t seen the real AG version. It wasn’t something he’d intended she know about, but it was too late now.

“Hey. Neat trick.” It was a passing comment from Karl, who was staring fixedly at the image, his mind clearly on what lay in front of him. “This is wrong.” He frowned.

“Tell me about it.” Cheney shuddered. “It was even worse when it exploded.”

“Whaddya think, Karl? Is there enough there to find out anything about it?”

There was silence as Karl put a couple of vials into a small slot and pushed buttons. The screen at the back of the table flickered to life with incomprehensible symbols, charts and figures.

Well, they were incomprehensible to Cheney, anyway. He did allow that they were impressive. But what they meant…

“I got DNA.” Karl sounded satisfied. “That’s a start. I can identify it for you, given a couple of hours.” He looked up. “You gonna wait?”

“Lian’s meeting me here, so yeah, I’ll wait.” Buck nodded. “These two don’t have to, though. No reason to stay unless they really want to watch you do your mad-scientist stuff.”

Cheney laughed. “I think we’ll let the genius here do his thing.”

“I’ll be in touch.” Karl was already bending over a microscope, lost in his work.

“He’ll be like that until he’s figured it out.” Buck walked to Cheney and Pandora. “Go home. Go do whatever. I’ll call you if and when we know anything more.”

Pandora touched Buck’s arm. “You think he can do it? Find out something?”

“If anyone can, he can. The man’s a genius when it comes to this stuff, he’s got resources we can’t even begin to fathom and he saved Lian’s life. There’s nobody else better qualified to work on this mystery, Pandora. Believe me.”

“Hey. Don’t forget I like to suck pussy, babe.” Karl’s voice echoed across his equipment.

Cheney rolled his eyes. “We’re gone.”

“Thank you, Karl,” Pandora called over her shoulder as Cheney urged her to the door. With a little more enthusiasm than he probably needed, but under the circumstances he was ready to get the hell out of there.

“You’re welcome, gorgeous.”

Buck escorted them back out of the lab and into the shop where they were spared any more outrageous comments since the rocking chair was empty of everything but a sleeping cat. There was a neatly wrapped parcel on the counter, however, with a large note leaning against it.

“For Fire Head woman.” Cheney read it aloud. “I guess this is for you, Pandora.” He lifted it and handed it to her.

“Wow. Yes, she said she’d give it to me.” Cradling the package in her arms, Pandora smiled. “I’m so grateful. Buck, will you tell her how happy I am?”

“You betcha.” He opened the front door. “I meant it. I’ll call you as soon as Karl’s got anything definitive. He can do stuff in two hours that our boys would take a week and a half to complete and even then they’d only have a fraction of Karl’s information.”

Cheney nodded his approval. “Can’t argue with that.”

The sun was still shining as they stepped out between the Foo Dogs.

And Buck suddenly froze. “Wait. Stop.”

Cheney saw his partner’s eyes drift out of focus. He knew what was happening—Buck’s cognitive senses had just clicked in. He did as he was told and found himself holding Pandora’s arm to keep her still.

“There’s something out here. Something—watching.”

“Where?” Cheney breathed the word, hoping they looked like friends saying goodbye to each other, not statues as still as the Foo Dogs.

“Across the street. In a car. A red car.”

Casually, Cheney glanced around. Sure enough there was a small red car parked in a space not far from where they stood. There was quite a bit of foot traffic now, pedestrians walking up and down, people shopping and doing ordinary Saturday things.

“I see it.” A parked car would normally attract little or no attention, slotted in as it was amongst all the other parked cars.

But Cheney knew his partner’s talent very well indeed.

Buck was never wrong.

Chapter Eight

“Pandora, here’s what I want you to do.” Cheney spoke softly but with such emphasis she knew it was serious. “Walk to the car, open the door and get in to the passenger seat. Make a big deal out of your package. I want everyone to think we’ve been shopping, okay?”

“Got it.” This was one occasion where doing what she was told seemed like the best idea in the world. If Buck had spotted someone watching them, it was time to let the men take over and do their jobs. They were cops, after all.

She slid into the seat, making sure her parcel was perched clearly on her knees as she did so, and slammed the door.

Just as casually, Buck and Cheney punched each other’s shoulders on the top step of the shop, grinned and parted, Buck going back inside. An observer wouldn’t think a damn thing about it.

Except that Cheney didn’t stop at their car, he kept going across the street, dodging traffic and ending up bending to the driver’s window of a small red sedan.

She could see a woman’s head, but couldn’t hope to hear the conversation.

A few long minutes passed, during which she watched his back. Literally. She couldn’t explain it, even to herself, but she could clearly tell that he wasn’t at ease, that this wasn’t a simple ordinary conversation.

Heaven knew how, but she seemed to be able to get a read on this man, something she’d never experienced before with any of her dates.

Not that she was
dating
Cheney—far from it. One erotic dream did not a boyfriend make. Not in a million years. Even if they’d shared it, which she doubted. Things like that just didn’t happen, even in a world peopled with AGs.

Eventually he straightened away from the red car and retraced his steps, getting in beside Pandora with a thoughtful expression on his face.

“So?” The questions trembled on her lips.

“Wait.” He steered the vehicle through the Saturday crowds, no mean feat given the narrow streets through which they drove. It wasn’t until they hit a wider road that he relaxed. “That was an exercise in futility.”

“Tell me.” She barked out the order, feeling she’d earned an explanation for actually managing to keep her mouth shut all this time.

“Let’s grab some coffee. This place makes the best.” He slipped into a spot in front of a modest shop advertising pastries and a variety of caffeine-enhanced beverages.

Gritting her teeth, she followed him, still clutching the dragon in its cheerful red and gold tissue wrapping paper. For some reason she was not about to leave it anywhere. It was hers now, and that was that.

It was a full five minutes later that she found herself across a small table with a cup of fragrant coffee in front of her. “I can’t stand this. Tell me what the hell’s going on before I explode like that damn critter.”

“Sorry.” He didn’t look apologetic, just thoughtful. “I’m trying to figure a bunch of shit out.” He glanced up. “Sorry again.”

“Cut that out. Just spill it.”

“Okay.” He took a sip of coffee. “The woman in the car wasn’t watching me.”

“But—”

He raised his hand. “Wait. Let me tell it my way.”

She subsided, biting her lip in frustration. “Then just do it, damn it.”

“When I got there, she was confused and worried about her baby in the car seat behind her. Apparently she’d dozed off. At least that’s what she thought. A perfectly normal person.”

“Okay. So nothing worth worrying about, right?”

“Wrong.” He frowned. “Buck’s talents are cognitive. He senses things, and he does it very well indeed. I’ve never seen him open those doors in his head and make a mistake. He sensed someone or something watching us. And I think whatever it was used that woman without her knowing about it.”

Pandora’s mouth opened but nothing came out. She was completely taken aback.

“I know. It sounds nuts. But here’s something else. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve had this itch on the back of my neck that tells me I’m being watched. I haven’t been able to pin anyone down, and believe me I know what to look for.”

“Shit.”

“Yes.” He lifted his gaze, his eyes direct and intense. “There’s something else you should know.”

“Okay.”

“Buck said he felt a sense of cold coming from the car.”

She tilted her head to one side, thinking about that statement. “Is that how his cognitive abilities manifest? A physical reaction or response?”

Cheney flashed her a quick smile. “I do love an intelligent woman.” Then he shook his head. “No, the temperature doesn’t usually change.” He shifted in his seat, moving a little closer. “I’m not sure if you remember that case that was in the news recently? The murdered Pleasure Pets?”

“Of course I do. We haven’t had a serial killer around in quite some time. Apparently the man was caught and killed right in the act. A man who thought he was some sort of dinosaur and high on chemicals at the same time.”

Cheney nodded. “That was the official story.”

Her eyebrow lifted. “Oh?” She managed to infuse the syllable with a wealth of expression.

“Unofficially, it was an AG. But he wasn’t exactly himself when he killed. And believe me, those killings set the benchmark for gruesome horror. I’ve never seen worse and with God’s help I’ll never see their like again.”

“
That
bad?” Pandora stilled, seeing the leftover scars from that case briefly flash across his expression.

“All that and more.” He shook it off. “However, that’s done with. The only reason I brought it up was because of Buck’s comment about cold. That was the very first thing he picked up at those crime scenes.”

Pandora sucked in a breath. “Wait a minute here. You’re telling me you and Buck brought down that killer?
You
were the cops who took him out?”

“In a way.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“I can’t respond to that, Counselor. Stop interrogating me. You know as well as I do that some things are best left in the shadows. I’m trusting you with a lot of privileged information as it is.”

“Okay.” She nodded. “I understand. And I’ll respect your confidence. You have my word on that.” Something made her reach across the table and rest her hand on his. “My word’s good, Cheney.”

He twisted his palm and linked their fingers together, a tight grip that she found oddly comforting. “I know.” For a second or two they remained silent, hands clasped. Then he sighed. “So when Buck mentioned the cold, we both leaped to a conclusion.” His gaze clashed into hers. “That killer was being controlled. We never found out by who or by what. I think he’s still out there. And wherever he pops up, there’s a chill that Buck can sense.”

“Fuck.” Pandora swallowed. “You think that thing in my house was connected in some way?”

“I don’t know. It’s probably nothing.”

“We wouldn’t be having this conversation if you thought it was nothing.”

He released her fingers. “Let me ask you something. You ever run into mention of the Svengali Project?”

Pandora searched her memory. “Wait…yes. I remember that. Required reading in law school. First year. That project got shut down in a hurry and within a year the AG amendment to the constitution was enacted. Something to do with experimentation, wasn’t it?”

He nodded. “It was bad, Pandora. Not many details were released, but some brilliantly warped eggheads decided that AGs could probably be used for a variety of things. They were doing experiments that would have put the Spanish Inquisition and the Nazis to shame.”

She shuddered. “God. And here I thought we were far beyond stuff like that.”

“Sadly, no. It was generally believed that Afterglow had released psychological forces, as well as the other stuff. There were rumors of Black Projects and so on. But Svengali was the worst. I can’t say I shed a tear when I found out the leaders were taken out and executed.”

“Without a trial?” The lawyer in her was horrified.

“If you’d seen some of those photos, you’d have pressed the switch yourself.”

She swallowed. “Okay. But that’s history. Taking a leap myself here, I’m going to guess that you and Buck think there’s somebody out there still doing that kind of thing. That he or it was behind the Pleasure Pet killings, and you’ve stumbled over something that makes you think he’s got you under surveillance and possibly me because of that damn puppy incident. Connection to the puppy yet to be established, and maybe dependent upon what Karl’s lab reveals.”