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The first impression he got was that there was a single malformed organism, with multiple staring eyes, multiple clutching limbs. Then the mutant being resolved into a tight knot of dirty, terrified-looking kids.
They were scared into silence except for the smallest one, who squalled lustily in the arms of a tall young man. The guy was naked but for boxer shorts, his face battered and bloody.
The heavy fog of piss, vomit, unwashed bodies and rotten food made it hard to breathe. Nick let his gun hand drop to his side.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” he said quietly in Ukrainian.
A scrawny little kid who looked about ten tried to speak, and coughed. He tried again. His voice was hoarse and scratchy. “Where are Marina and Yuri?” he replied, in the same language.
“Outside,” Tam said from behind him. “The police will take them away and punish them. They can’t hurt you anymore.”
They stared at each other, at a loss. The children were paralyzed with shock. Nick was struck dumb by the squalor of the room.
The toddler wiggled in the guy’s arms. He put her gently down, and she toddled forward on dirty little legs, huge eyes locked onto Tam, who glittered under the fluorescent lights with supernatural brightness.
“Pretty,” the toddler lisped in Ukrainian. “Mama.”
Tam shrank back. “Oh, no. Not me,” she told the kid. “I’m not your mama, little one.”
The kid lifted up her thin arms. “Mama? Mama?”
Tam backed up. Nick had never seen Tam intimidated, or even at a disadvantage since he’d known her, but this two-year-old seemed to terrify her. “No,” she said, shaking her finger. “Not me. Not your mama.”
The tiny girl’s face crumpled with woe. She started to wail.
Tam began to swear viciously, in some thick, obscure language that Nick could not immediately place. “Hell,” she muttered. “Come here, then.” She picked the kid up.
Nick went in and looked them all over. Half-starved and pale but they were all on their feet. Except for one older girl slumped against the wall dressed in her underwear, who looked very weak and ill. The rest of the lot were smaller than the ten-year-old.
“Is Sveti all right?” asked the kid who’d spoken before.
“We got to her just in time,” Nick told him. “She’ll be fine.”
The kid put his hands over his eyes. His shoulders began to shake. From behind, he heard snippets of Tam’s conversation with the kid. “Stop that! Oh, God, don’t touch that, it’s filled with sulfuric acid!”
“Pretty,” the little girl gurgled. “Pretty.”
He looked at the stained mattresses, the wall lined with plastic bags stuffed with rotting trash that no one had bothered to haul out. “Holy shit,” he murmured softly. “Those filthy assholes.”
The tall young guy stepped forward. “Hey! You speak English, mister?”
Nick swung around, startled. “You’re an American?”
“Hell, yeah! Me and my sister Carrie. The rest of these kids are Ukrainian, I think. They dumped us in this room today. And there was this other girl, too, Sveti. They took her away a couple hours ago. Look, man, have you seen my sister Becca around here?”
Nick’s chest flash-froze. The world fell away, whirling and shifting, everything changing around that phrase. “Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m Josh Cattrell,” the guy said. “That fat guy, the mobster dude, I think he’s got my big sister Becca locked up someplace too. Maybe she’s here. You haven’t seen her around, have you?”
Nick stared at the kid’s wide-set green eyes. Just like Becca’s. So were the reddened eyes of the girl hugging her knees on the floor. Josh and Carrie. Holy fucking shit. What had he done?
He swallowed hard. “She’s not here.” His throat closed tight around the words, strangling them so they were barely audible.
“How do you know, if you don’t—hey.” The kid’s eyes narrowed to wary slits. “Wait a sec. You know Becca. Don’t you?”
“You could say that,” Nick said, his voice raw. “I thought I did.”
Suspicion dawned on the kid’s battered face. “Wait a freakin’ minute. You must be the thug,” he said. “Becca’s boy toy. The one Becca was having the hot affair with. You’re that guy I talked to on the phone, right?”
