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The creature.
Isabela grunted her thanks and waited, not drinking any of the beer. Subterfuge was one thing, but she wasn’t risking catching whatever contagious stupidity was circulating around this bar.
She sat on a stool and waited, keeping an eye on the cooler. After about five minutes, the door squealed open and a tall man wearing a black duster emerged. The man was bald, a complicated spiderweb tattooed across his skull. The woman outside had been being literal.
Darryl said something to the guards, then headed down the hall, into one of the smelly bathrooms. Casually, Isabela got up from her stool, walked past the two guards and followed him in.
Two stalls and two urinals, a sink with a cracked mirror, mold and mildew all over the broken floor tiles. Isabela paused just inside the doorway, observing it all. There was a Harvester at a urinal. Darryl stood at the sink, washing blood off his hands. Isabela checked the bathroom door. It had a dead bolt.
None of the men looked at each other. Isabela went to the other urinal and set her mug of beer on top of the cracked porcelain. She pretended to pee while waiting for the other Harvester to leave. He didn’t wash his hands.
As soon as he walked out, she used her telekinesis to lock the bathroom’s dead bolt. She turned around to look at Darryl.
“Heard you got one of those abominations,” she said.
Darryl glanced over his shoulder and grunted. He continued scrubbing his hands. “Got the thing’s blood on me. Don’t want to catch some extraterrestrial plague.”
“She still alive?”
“Of course. We going to burn the sin out of her proper, like Jimbo would’ve wanted.” Darryl half turned, surprised to find Isabela standing right behind him. “Who are—?”
Isabela smashed her beer mug across his face.
Darryl reeled but didn’t go down. Blood streamed down the side of his face, into one of his eyes. He took a swing at her, but Isabela ducked with agility that must have seemed supernatural for a fat biker. She thrust out with her telekinesis and slammed Darryl’s face into the bathroom mirror.
He slumped over the sink, breathing heavily but not yet unconscious. Isabela leaped onto his back. She clenched her legs around his torso and looped her arm around his neck. Squeezed. She’d learned the chokehold at a self-defense class before she even came to the Academy.
Darryl’s legs gave way. Isabela rode him to the floor, pleased with the sound his face made when it smacked against the tiles. He was out.
With her telekinesis, Isabela hoisted Darryl’s body and shoved it into one of the empty stalls. She sat him on the toilet and studied his busted face.
Then, she shape-shifted into him.
Isabela stepped out of the stall and telekinetically locked it from the other side. She looked at her new appearance in the cracked bathroom mirror. Gross, but accurate.
Just then, someone tried to enter the bathroom, found it locked and pounded on the door.
Isabela as Darryl yanked the door open. She stared down at one of the boys from outside. He took an uneasy step back.
“What’re . . . you looking at?” she asked, not meaning to pause so much. Isabela hesitated because she hadn’t heard Darryl talk enough to perfectly mimic his voice. With the loud music, she hoped it wouldn’t matter.
“Sorry, Darryl,” the guy muttered.
Isabela shouldered by him.
She approached the freezer. The two guards stepped aside for her.
“Boys say the snake is ready,” one of them said. “You want help bringing her outside?”
A fuzzy feeling came over Isabela as she tried to answer. For some reason, she was really struggling with Darryl’s voice. This hadn’t happened to her before. Nerves?
“I want . . . more minutes . . . ,” Isabela grunted. “I’ll bring her out . . . quick.”
The guards eyed her, but they didn’t make any move to stop her. They probably just assumed that Darryl had chugged some grain alcohol like all the other drunks in this freak show. Isabela unlatched the freezer, yanked open the door and stepped into the cold. She slammed the door behind her.
Isabela immediately had to swallow back a scream. A gutted deer carcass hung from a hook right in front of her. She carefully stepped around the animal, her breath misting in front of her.
The girl from the road, the one with the headscarves, hung by the arms behind the deer. Her headscarves were gone, her raven hair loose and greasy, blood clumping the curls together. The girl had been beaten savagely—her face was swollen, lips split, her clothes bloody tatters. Isabela’s stomach turned over. Yes, this girl had made an enemy of her, but no one deserved this disgusting brutality.
At least they hadn’t put her on a hook. Instead, the girl’s hands were secured by a pair of the heavy-duty handcuffs the Peacekeepers had used against the Garde. The magnetized cuffs were attached to the corrugated-metal ceiling. Isabela also noticed a couple of strange objects attached to the girl’s temples—triangular in shape, about the size of quarters, they looked like twin microchips. Some kind of Garde-fighting technology, surely, but not something she’d seen demonstrated back at the Academy.
Isabela approached the girl. Her breathing was ragged, her lips blue from spending so much time in the freezer. With a cautious glance over her shoulder, Isabela shape-shifted back into her normal form. She touched the girl gently on the chin, eliciting an exhausted moan.
“Please . . . ,” the girl said, followed by words Isabela didn’t understand.
“Stupid, open your eyes,” Isabela snapped.
The girl did open her eyes at the sound of Isabela’s voice. She gasped and strained against her bonds, babbling away in a language Isabela recognized but didn’t understand. Isabela shook her.
“Stop talking,” Isabela ordered, speaking quickly. “I will get you out of here, but only if you lead us to our friend who you kidnapped. Otherwise, you are useless and can stay here. They plan to set you on fire, so at least that will be a relief after this cold.”
The girl stared at her. “English?” she asked. “English, please?”
Isabela stared back at her, brow furrowed. “I am speaking English, you stupid . . .”
She paused. The fuzzy feeling she’d felt before. The difficulty finding the right words for Darryl. It wasn’t because she hadn’t heard him speak enough . . .
Isabela looked down at her wrist. The bracelet. She tugged at it, looking for the one bead that should be emitting a faint glow. Brought her face close, cupped her hand against her wrist to see . . .
When was the last time she’d visited Simon for a recharge?
Slowly, it dawned on Isabela that she’d been speaking to this girl in Portuguese.
The bracelet was dark. Useless jewelry.
Her English was gone. Behind her, the door to the freezer clanked. Someone was coming in.
“Merda,” Isabela said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
TAYLOR COOK
HOFN, ICELAND
AS TAYLOR CREPT BACK INTO THE HOUSE, SHE heard Einar’s raised voice coming from upstairs. He was yelling at someone.
She took the stairs quickly, but as quietly as she could. Freyja stayed in the living room, furtively peeking through the curtains at the men in the Jeep.
At the end of the upstairs hallway, Einar’s door was ajar. Taylor tiptoed forward. Through the crack, she saw Einar pacing back and forth, obviously agitated. The flat-screen TV on his wall was tuned to a video conference. Taylor could see only the lower-right corner of the screen—a woman, blond hair in a proper bob, a white dress shirt and pinstriped jacket, professional. Seeing only the woman’s mouth and shoulders wouldn’t be enough to identify her, if Taylor was ever able to get out of here. She inched closer.
“Please explain to me why there’s a team of Blackstone men parked outside my house,” Einar growled.
“You know why,” she replied with icy professionalism. Her accent was British. “There is concern your location is compromised.”
“Nonsense.”
“Rabiya knows how to get to you, does she not? You lost Rabiya. Therefore, your location is compromised. The Blackstone men are simply there as a precaution.”
“If you’d let me take them on the mission instead of those moronic Harvesters, this never would’ve happened,” Einar replied.
Taylor inched closer, trying to get a better look at the woman. A floorboard creaked under her foot.
“Now, Einar,” the woman said, drowning out Taylor’s misstep. “’Tis the poor craftsman who blames his tools. Rabiya is quite valuable to the Foundation. We’ve yet to catalog another Garde capable of producing Loralite.”
“For weeks all you could talk about was acquiring another goddamn healer,” Einar hissed. “I got her for you. If I hadn’t—if I hadn’t escaped when I did, all three of us would have been killed.”
“So you said in your report,” the woman replied dryly. “Nonetheless, it was sloppy work. Earth Garde is making inquiries. Thus, we are keeping the Blackstone men close by in the event we need to liquidate the Iceland side of our operation.”
Taylor didn’t like the sound of that. Creeping closer, she made out more details of the Foundation woman. A sharp blue eye, delicate wrinkles, maybe in her late forties or early fifties . . .
“Please, listen,” Einar said beseechingly, obviously not liking the connotation of “liquidate” any more than Taylor. “You don’t understand what it was like—”
