Contagious

“It’s not them,” Perry said. “It’s... something else.”

“What?”

“I think Chelsea Jewell was talking to me. Talking to me through the triangles.”

Dew longed for the days when he could hear something like that and say, You’re f.u.c.king crazy. But Perry Dawsey wasn’t crazy. This was just another facet in his waking nightmare.

“What makes you think it was Chelsea?”

“I’m taking a guess,” Perry said. “It was a little girl’s voice. Chelsea and her family got out, she’s a little girl, I’m making the connection.”

“You’re a regular Columbo,” Dew said.

Perry stared, then smiled a strange smile. “That’s more of a compliment than you can know.”

There was probably a story behind that, but now wasn’t the time. “So you had Chelsea Jewell in your head. Tell me why that scares you so bad.”

Perry leaned back a little and stared up at the black winter night.

“Power,” Perry said. “It wasn’t like when the triangles talk to me. This is something different. I don’t know, Dew, not all of these things have easy definitions, but she wanted... never mind what she wanted. She’s got power, Dew. Big-time. Whatever she is, it’s nothing I’ve felt before.”

“What about her parents? You get anything from them?”

Perry shook his head. “No, just her. We need to find her. Deal with her.

Before she gets stronger.”

“We’re working on that, kid. We’ve got an APB out on Clan Jewell. Every cop in ten states has their pictures. Now, come on, we have to get the gate location. We have no maps this time—it’s Bernadette Smith or bust. Let’s get back in the trailer and ask some more questions.”

“I’m not going back in,” Perry said.

“Don’t be a p.u.s.s.y,” Dew said.

Perry’s eyes widened, and the corners of his mouth turned up in a slight smile. He pointed a finger at Dew. “Don’t. Push. Me.”

Perry turned and walked into the darkness.

Dew let him go. There was a time to lead, a time to follow and a time to get the f.u.c.k out of the way. He’d seen that look on Perry’s face once before—when the kid had been coming right at him, smiling, wide-eyed, naked and covered in blood, hopping on one foot with his severed c.o.c.k flopping in his clenched fist.

Yep, definitely the time to get the f.u.c.k out of the way.

The Orbital couldn’t understand it. It

Chelsea, I told you not to talk to the destroyer.

I know you did.

So she hadn’t forgotten. She remembered the order, yet she had disobeyed anyway.

If you knew it was for bidden, why did you do it?

I dunno.

The Orbital tried to process the response. Tried, and failed.

What do you mean, you do not know?

I dunno.

Do not disobey me, Chelsea. You will bring the destroyer if you talk to him. You must never, ever connect to him again.

I already told you once, Chauncey. You’re not the boss of me.

The Orbital felt the connection end. Chelsea had broken it. The Orbital hadn’t known that was possible.

Clearly, it had to make additional changes. Now it would have to divert yet another part of its processing to making sure Chelsea could not speak to the destroyer again.

She was already more powerful than projected, and that power would only increase as she connected to become more and more converted.

MURRAY AND VANESSA, BFF

The president of the United States of America sat in his Oval Office chair, holding a gla.s.s of sixty-year-old Macallan on the rocks. Vanessa Col-burn sat in a chair near the desk. She didn’t drink, Murray had heard. Except, maybe, for the blood of her victims. Or of random orphans. Or maybe a kitten.

The Macallan was an Inauguration Day gift from the Scottish amba.s.sador. It was rumored to cost upwards of thirty thousand dollars a bottle. You didn’t exactly give the president of the United States a bottle of Chivas Regal as a present. That gla.s.s alone was probably worth more than Murray made in a week. He would have loved to let Gutierrez savor the scotch, but now wasn’t a time for slow sipping.

“Mister President, we need an answer,” Murray said. “Doctor Montoya wants to operate on Bernadette Smith immediately.”

“So operate,” Vanessa said. “Ogden’s men got you the live host you wanted, but Dawsey won’t talk to the triangles. Kind of shoots the whole plan right out of the sky.”

In one sentence she managed to combine the success of her idea to send Ogden with the failure of Murray’s team to capitalize on it. Okay, so it was actually a compound sentence—that didn’t change how effortlessly Vanessa Colburn could make you look like an idiot.

“Montoya can still dissect a triangle before it decomposes,” Vanessa said. “We’re further ahead than we were before, even though Dawsey failed to communicate, so what’s the problem?”

“The problem, Miss Colburn, is that for three months we’ve also been trying to capture a live hatchling. Now we can achieve that objective.”

Vanessa stared at him. “Achieve that objective? What the h.e.l.l are you saying, Murray? That we should just let this woman die so we can capture a hatchling?”

“It’s an option that’s on the table.”

“It’s an option if you’re a f.u.c.king vampire,” she said.

She was calling him a vampire? Priceless. “We need information. Wars aren’t won with guns. They’re won with intel.”

She shook her head. “This isn’t a war, Murray.”

He’d had just about all he could take from her. This woman had the president’s ear? This woman was part of deciding the fate of the free world?

“Not a war?” Murray said. “What would you call it, then?”

“It’s a crisis situation,” Vanessa snapped. “No one in his right mind would call this a war.”