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“It’s not what it looks like,” she said briskly.
“You’re going to tell me he’s changing a light bulb in there?”
C.P. went around her desk and sat down. “Something like that.”
“With his pants off?” Gus put the full glass down on the bar. “Never mind. It’s not my business. And hey, tonight your study door was closed and I did barge in. Now I know why and I know better.”
For some stupid reason, she noted that he was wearing a Talking Heads t-shirt. Which seemed a little too recent for his normal tastes. When had “Burning Down the House” come out? Certainly not during the decade of peace and love.
“Were you about to say something?” he murmured. “?’Cuz by all means, I’m dying to hear it.”
Closing her eyes, she exhaled. “Gus—”
“Actually, better that you spare us both.” He headed for the exit. “Daniel doesn’t want to wait. We’re going to do a checkup on him tomorrow and start administering Vita as early as the afternoon. I’ll keep you posted—and ask you again to hold until we see what we’ve gotin vivo—”
“I never said I was selling,” she cut in sharply.
“You’re going to want to wait.” He glanced back at her. “If the results are shit, you can bury them and still make a profit. But if our baby does what I think she will? You’re going to make a boatload more cash, and we know how happy that’ll get you. You can buy a hundred of those blond fuckboys—”
“He is a fully trained militia soldier.”
“Is that what they’re calling them now? I’m so behind the times.” Gus tipped his head as if he were wearing a formal hat. “My bad.”
And justlikethat, he was gone.
There was no click behind him, though.
She did learn that he had, in fact, closed the door, however, when she left about ten minutes later.
He’d just managed to shut her out in silence.
EIGHT
Tuttle, Pennsylvania
NO, I’M GOINGto kill you.”
As Blade, half-bredsymphath, full-blown psychopath, spoke the words to the human, he drawled them out because all parts of this experience were to be enjoyed. By him. Then he briefly closed his eyes and breathed in. Talk about an aftershave. The bouquet of terror-sweat was laced with Arrid Extra Dry, Bounce fabric softener, and—was it Paul Mitchell shampoo?
Fancy for a scientist.
“W-w-w-why are you—”
He put the forefinger of his free hand on the male’s lips as a rush of arousal thickened his cock. “Shhhhh.”
The other side of all his ambidextrous was locked on the hilt of a solid-gold knife that he had fashioned himself from a bar that was 10K—so the deadly length was good and hard. Pure gold, like an innocent soul, was far too soft to be of any use as a weapon.
And the tip of his proverbial spear was restingright on the belly button of the human. To the point where a little red spot had bloomed at the contact, the stain spreading through the fibers of the blue scrubs like an infection on skin.
Blade and his next kill were standing in a stark hallway that was located thirty-five feet below a cornfield, ten miles away from the nearest town, fifty miles away from the nearest city, and a hundred and fifty million light-years away from the likes of Philadelphia. Above them, a vent was blowing warm air, and stretching down the corridor, fluorescent ceiling lights glowed like little cloud banks that were tethered in place.
Off in the distance, voices were in volley, the back-and-forths dimmed by closed portals, the exchange of syllables the kind of thing that humans couldn’t track. As asymphath, though, he heard everything. And he saw things, too.
The pasty little groundhog of a man in front of him was north of forty—going by the receding hairline and the paunch—but not by a lot, and his emotional grid was lit up like a Christmas tree: Thanks to Blade’s bad side, he could burrow into the secret, private places of almost anybody, visualizing both their nitty and their gritty. And because of what he was, he never failed to draw off the negative emotions, the upset, the paranoia, the fear, all of which were represented to him in a three-dimensional, CAD-drawing-like effect.
Like the balloon in a comic strip, bobbing over their head.
As a mewing sound burbled up between them, Blade catalogued his prey. The scientist in the white coat had sweat running down his bloated face and bubbling over his upper lip, and his heart wasn’t so much beating as flickering, the pulse at the carotid artery a tremble that was oh-so-close to the very thin skin of the throat. The features of the face didn’t register very clearly; then again, there were other details that were a tastier meal for his mind.
