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The entity that emerged from the coniferous shadows was made of silver moonlight and mountain mist, though there was none of the former… or the latter, for that matter. The apparition seemed female in nature, though he wasn’t sure that applied; it was more an energy source, floating above the raw earth, yet causing sound as if there was weight upon the feet. Certainly its face was that of an old woman, and her long gray-and-white hair cascaded down her shoulders to dissolve into a translucent, glowing aura of light. For clothing, a buckskin skirt and beautiful beaded shawl hearkened back to the First Nations tradition, and he smelled a fragrance of meadow flowers and fresh water.
“What are you,” he blurted.
“Good evening to you,” the entity said, in a voice that reminded him of a birdcall melody.
Had the wolves stopped? He could not tell. She consumed his focus.
As he lowered the gun, he was not sure whether he was choosing to, or if she was willing his arm down. “And to you as well,” he mumbled.
His knee-jerk polite response struck him as ridiculous. Whatever the purpose of this appearance, he was not mistaking it as wholly benign. As asymphath, his first instinct was always to assess risk, and the way he did so was to read the grid of whoever was before him.
This “harmless old woman” had no grid.
There was nothing to read.
As Daniel parked the SUV back in its garage berth, he waited where he was behind the wheel as the panels descended. He supposed it was overkill, the whole driving off and talking down by the river. Especially given the threat that was out there. But with all the monitoring equipment around Phalen’s castle, there was no way the call wouldn’t have been recorded.
Nobody needed to know about Rubik.
When things were locked in place, he popped his door open and there was little difference in temperature between the roasty-toasty inside of the Suburban and what he stepped down into. Then again, Phalen had an expensive stable of vehicles.
Nobody wanted their Aventador to get a chill.
Walking by the other Suburbans, then the fleet of Mercedes—and finally that Lamborghini—he stopped when he got to his Harley. Reaching out, he ran his fingertips over the handlebars, and as he closed his eyes, he remembered Lydia leaning back on them and staring up at him… hungry. For him—
An odd pressure at the front of his hips made him look down. But it wasn’t any kind of phoenix-from-the-boxers shit. His hand had moved over his dick and was sitting on the thing like his palm was expecting some kind of high five in return—and God knew that wasn’t going to happen…
But didn’t they have medications for this kind of problem?
It was hard to say when the idle passing thought transformed into action, but the next thing he knew he was underground and walking down the connector to the main house—and when security cleared him to enter the mansion’s basement, he went to the elevator.
He didn’t go up to the living areas. He went down even deeper, into the earth.
When things hit bottom and the doors were retracted by the monitoring folks, he stepped out into a bald white corridor hung with double mirror’d panels. As he plugged his cane into the floor and started forward, he noted the drains that were setevery fifteen feet or so—and he imagined the stern-faced men on the other side of the glass, all of whom were training their gun muzzles on him like his ass had a target tattooed on it.
Clearly, the holes in the floor had been installed to make cleanup easier. In case things got bloody.
At the far end, he was cleared one more time, and then he finally got access into the lab. A vault-thick partition slid to the side, and there it was, the open area with all the workstations, the boardroom with its soundproof glass walls off to the left. No reception desk. If you needed someone to help you find your way, you didn’t belong here, and if you didn’t belong here, you wouldn’t have made it this far.
As he headed for the way back, most of the staff was gone, just a couple of researchers staying late, their backs hunched as they arched over microscopes or laptops. He didn’t mean to stop halfway along, but he did. There were five rows of eight workstations, so forty large steel tables were bolted into the concrete floor, the collection of lab stuff like microscopes, test tubes, and monitor screens varying—no doubt depending on what they were working on. A couple even had beakers on hot plates like in some eighties high school movie.
They had produced that Vita-12b here. The miracle drug that might, or might not, save thousands of lives.
And he was supposed to have been the first patient.
Squeezing the head of his cane, he recognized he was using it as a crutch—figuratively, that was. He’d been alarmed at how his energy had faded after the bike ride to Gus’s place, and he’d picked the thing up again on a just-in-case. Fortunately, he was feeling not as shitty now. As Gus had said he would. Immunotherapy was not a benign treatment when it came to side effects—for Daniel, at any rate. And though his cancer was now being allowed to progress at its own pace, the ancillary issues he’d had with the failed treatment were backing off—and it was like leaving a suck-ass destination, driving away.
Save for that collapse after what was for him a Herculean task with that bike on the highway, his strength was coming back, and he was being reminded of who he’d been. Mentally sharp. Physically strong(er). Healthy(er)…
Of course, the resurrection wasn’t going to last.
And that was why he’d come down here, wasn’t it.
Getting back with the walking, he pivoted on one foot and restarted for the patient rooms. Things were going well… until he came up to a closed door that he told himself he should not open.
Did he really want to ask a man in Gus’s kind of shape anything other than “How are you feeling, my guy?” or maybe “What can I get for you?”
So what the fuck was he doing, showing up on the doorstep, looking for—
