Bad Hair Day, page 12
part #2 of Kate Grable Series
“It’s a deal.”
We exchanged contact information. When he handed me his card, our fingers brushed. His were cold and waxy. I didn’t want to contemplate the possible explanations for that. I snatched the paper away and practically ran for the door.
I wanted antibac gel. Badly. It probably wouldn’t deactivate nanobots, but it was the best I could do. Jonah must have felt the same way, because we practically raced each other to the parking lot.
He saw the car first. He’d pulled ahead in the mad dash for automotive safety, and I ran into his back when he stopped in shock. I twisted my ankle and nearly fell, which didn’t exactly make me happy.
“What the heck are you doing?” I snapped.
Then I saw what he was looking at. His cute little sports car was covered in gore. Red streaks smeared the windows, dripping with gobs of material I couldn’t identify and didn’t want to. Bits of fluff and half-decayed leaves stuck to the glistening streaks of blood. Across the hood, jagged letters spelled GO A-WAY.
Jonah looked like he wanted to cry. I couldn’t decide whether to throw up or make snarky comments about Sebastian’s use of random hyphens, because who else could it be? Then I realized that he was probably close by. Probably watching us. I crouched to look under the car. Nothing. Craned my neck to check the vacant lot next door. More nothing. It didn’t make me feel much better.
“Is that …” Jonah gulped. “Is that human blood?”
I moved closer, looking at the clumps of flesh strewn all over the car. “I don’t think so. It looks like an animal to me. There’s bits of fur all over.…”
“Well, how am I supposed to get it off my car?” he wailed.
“I’d suggest washing it before it freezes on there, you idiot.” It wasn’t my most sympathetic moment, but I couldn’t help myself. My car had once been covered in zombie puke, and you hadn’t seen me crying like a little girl over it. Funny how Jonah could man up in the face of outside threats but turned into a total wuss whenever we were alone.
“But how will I see to get to the car wash?”
“Have you heard of this handy new invention? It’s called a windshield wiper. Turn them on and let’s go.”
I opened the door with one finger, careful not to get any of the yuck on me. From inside, the car looked like a bordello, all the light tinted red. And now I really needed antibac wipes. Too bad the container in Jonah’s glove compartment was totally empty.
We had to take the car through the wash twice before all the goop came off. The windows were still a little pink-tinged afterward, but it would have to do. We were wasting time, and I didn’t like that. Not when Sebastian was on the loose. He had some serious explaining to do. I was so not cool with his wolfing out and killing people.
After we’d gotten the car cleaned, Jonah went to his computer lair to try to track down Sebastian’s address. I decided it was time to warn Rocky since school was almost out. I didn’t want her to go to the hospital for a visit, discover that Bryan was missing, and totally panic. Or even worse, run into him and get hurt.
She had independent voice study this period, and I knew sometimes she kept her phone in the booth with her while she practiced. So I texted her and waited impatiently, drumming my fingers on the table. I wasn’t being unreasonable. Rocky was known for her speedy text replies. Sometimes I honestly suspected she might be a cyborg; I didn’t understand how else she could text so fast.
After fifteen minutes with no response, I dialed her number with shaking hands. At this point, any delay was cause for panic.
The call went to voice mail.
Now I was flipping out. Experience had taught me that when Rocky doesn’t answer me, bad things are happening. Or she was in the shower, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t the case today.
Still, I couldn’t panic just yet. Maybe she was actually singing during vocal study. Her voice could crack glass, so it wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t hear the phone. I dialed again.
“Bayview Senior High, this is Phyllis.”
“Good afternoon, Phyllis.” I tried to pitch my voice a little lower so I might actually sound mature. I ended up sounding more like I had a bad head cold. “This is Amy from the Intensive Care Unit at Bayview Hospital. I urgently need to speak to Roxanne Micucci. Can you help me?”
“Oh, is this about her boyfriend?” Phyllis asked. “He was one of our office helpers as a student; I hope he’s okay.”
“Yes, it is. But there’s no need to panic.” I tried to sound soothing and actually croaked instead. Like bullfrog croaked.
“Well, I’m sorry to tell you this, but Roxanne didn’t show up today. I assumed she was at the hospital, but we hadn’t gotten a call. I never thought of her as the type who would skip. Strange.”
“Rocky would—” The words came out in my normal voice, and I hurriedly forced a cough to cover it up. “She was here a while ago; perhaps she went home to sleep. Thanks so much for your time.”
“You’re welcome, Amy, and—”
I hung up on her. When I put my phone down, it rattled against the table. I was shaking that hard.
“Jonah!” I ran to the basement door and stuck my head down the stairs. “Are you done yet?”
“Quit rushing me!” he yelled. “Be patient, damn it!”
“I’m going to look for Rocky. She’s missing.”
“Hurry back. I’m hoping to be done in the next half hour or so.”
“Gotcha.”
“Oh, and Kate?” I paused to listen. “Don’t get eaten.”
My brother could be such a bastard sometimes.
Back at the hospital yet again, I checked the lobby. No Rocky, although I did attract a lot of attention from the woman behind the information desk. She looked like she was about to pee herself, and at first I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. Then I realized I was puffy-faced, bruised, still vaguely bluish, and muttering to myself. She probably thought … well, I had no idea what she thought, because there wasn’t any rational explanation that would account for my appearance.
I was heading for the cafeteria when I realized I was going about this all wrong. I approached the lady at the desk and tried to calm her with a smile, but the whole right side of my face had gradually swollen up over the past half hour or so. I was certain that I looked like Frankenstein’s geeky younger sister. From her expression, she expected me to try to eat her.
“I’ve lost my friend,” I said as clearly as I could manage. “Can you page her for me?”
“I’m sorry,” she squeaked, practically cowering behind the desk. “We’re not allowed to page visitors.”
It was so tempting to explain to her that I wasn’t a psychotic killer like some people I knew, and that my dilapidated appearance was the result of a face-first encounter with a wall, but I didn’t think it would do any good. With my luck, I’d end up getting myself thrown out of the hospital again, so I just walked away.
I took a detour through the cafeteria, and there was Rocky, watching some random talk show and eating pudding. I probably would have yelled at her for scaring me if I hadn’t been so happy to see her. Evidently, she didn’t share the sentiment. I ran toward her with my arms outstretched, because after all that had happened I could have really used a hug. She took one look at me and shrieked.
“Kate!” she exclaimed. “Oh my god! What happened?”
“Don’t you know?” I grabbed her spoon and took a bite. Vanilla. “What happened to you? I nearly had a cardiovascular event when I tried to find you at school and they said you hadn’t called in.”
“Oh.” She blinked. “I must have forgotten to ask my mom to call. What day is it again?”
I let out a long, slow breath and tried to resist the urge to throttle her. “Have you seen Bryan lately?”
“They took him for more tests a couple of hours ago, so I went home to take a shower. I was just on my way to grab a coffee and head back up. Why?” she said, her voice rising. “Is there something wrong? What happened to your face? Why are you blue?”
“Well,” I said, “Bryan’s gone.” She screeched again, throwing up her hands and flinging pudding all over the place. I tried to dodge the droplets, but I had about as much luck as I’d had dodging Bryan’s whatever-he-hit-me-with.
“Gone?” she said. “What do you mean, gone? Like … he’s dead?”
She dissolved into tears, dropping her face into her hands. Yep, now I felt like an insensitive ass.
“No!” I grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to look at me. “Gone as in got up and left the hospital. He’s fine. Ish.”
My lips twitched. I couldn’t keep them under control, because I was such a horrible liar. But Rocky wasn’t looking at me, not really. She was having a hard time focusing through the tears.
“So he’s okay?” She took in a hitching breath, and then her voice hardened. “He left without me?”
“It’s not his fault. He’s …” I didn’t want to say this out loud, but Rocky of all people deserved to know what was going on. “I think he’s got nanobots.”
“Nanobots?”
“Teeny little robots. They make him very strong, and very fast and very … uh … hairy. I know how crazy it sounds, but I’m pretty sure I’m right. Did he have any superfluous hair when you left the room?”
“Superfluous what?” She took a deep, calming breath. “He looked normal to me.”
“Well, then there are a few things you need to know.” I tried to wipe the pudding off my shirt and just succeeded in smearing it around. “He grew a bunch of extra hair. Fur, really. Like, all over his body.”
“So he’s like a werewolf?”
“Kind of, but not exactly. I think if we can get rid of the bots, he’ll be back to normal.”
“He can’t be a werewolf!”
“It’ll be okay, Rock. I’m sure we can help him; I’ve just got to figure out how.”
“You don’t understand,” she wailed. “I’m Team Edward!”
Rocky and I sat idling in my driveway for two whole minutes before I got impatient. Still no Jonah. I honked the horn, long and loud. He probably couldn’t even hear it down in the basement. If he was flirting with one of his groupies in the Roargan Kross chat rooms, I was going to duct-tape him to a chair and let the werewolves have him.
I dialed the house, but he didn’t answer. Then I tried his cell.
“Did he pick up?” Rocky was as tense as I was. She gnawed on a fingernail, even though there was nothing left for her to chew.
“Voice mail.” My voice came out terse.
Now I was a little scared, and that made me mad. If he was just dorking around with me, I’d kill him with my bare hands. I stomped to the front door, prepared to yell. Practical jokes were fine in nonemergency situations; I’d played a few on him myself. Part of the whole sibling deal. But scaring me for real? Totally uncool.
My feet crunched through the snow Jonah was supposed to shovel but hadn’t because he’d been too busy geeking it up. I’d left my boots at home, and snow got into my socks. As if I wasn’t pissed enough already.
The front door stood halfway open, and I opened my mouth to yell at my stupid brother for letting all the heat out, when I noticed the splintered remains of the jamb. It looked like someone had kicked the door in.
The panic hit me so hard it honestly hurt. My chest constricted, the muscles knotting themselves into little knots of holy crap. I croaked his name. No answer. Not surprised.
Rocky came up the walk behind me, casual and unaware. I shooed her away without looking at her, because I didn’t want something to sneak up on me and use me as a chew toy.
“Go call Detective Despain,” I said quietly. “And lock yourself in the car.”
“But …” She started to back away even as she protested.
“Now.”
She ran off.
I entered the house alone. Better that way, really. I didn’t have to worry about Rocky now, and I needed all my wits about me. They were the only real weapon I had.
The foyer was empty except for a piece of mail on the floor. I picked it up automatically and almost put it into the wicker mail bin so it wouldn’t get lost. But then I realized it wasn’t mail at all. It was Sebastian’s address, scrawled across the back of an envelope in Jonah’s cockeyed handwriting. I put it in my pocket.
Something crashed downstairs, so loud it shook the floorboards beneath my feet. It took me about a half a second to get to the basement, or at least that was what it felt like. I’d never run so fast before.
Jonah was belly-down on the puke-colored practice mats.
I lunged forward, tripped over my own foot, and skidded to a stop next to my brother’s motionless body. When I flipped him over, the first thing I noticed was a syringe waggling obscenely from the skin of his neck. The plunger wasn’t pressed; I pulled it out of his neck before I accidentally injected him with whatever mystery substance was inside.
Someone hit me from behind. My teeth clicked together, and my jaw slammed against the floor as I went down. The pain was huge. My attacker leapt onto me, pressing my body into the mats with his weight. I felt his panting breath, hot on my cheek. I tried to heave him off, but he shoved his hips forward, pinning me more securely. It became a struggle to breathe. Black spots danced behind my eyes.
I was going to die. Or maybe something worse.
He snatched the syringe from my hand. Moments later, my neck stung as he jabbed it with the needle. I whipped my head back and forth and shrieked, as if that were going to do any good.
He grabbed my head and ground my cheek into the floor. I could see him in my peripheral vision, or his hair, anyway. It was long and blond and covered most of his bulging, distorted face. At least I knew it wasn’t Bryan; he had brown hair. That would have really capped off the suck.
Sebastian was blond, though. I couldn’t be sure it was him without a better look, but it was the only logical conclusion.
“Welcome to the pack,” he growled.
His voice was rough and completely unrecognizable. I almost tried to reason with him, because it seemed like the thing to do. Like maybe if I could appeal to his logic, he’d get up and administer the antidote, and everything would be rainbows and fuzzy bunnies. But then I noticed a bunch of glass on the floor, spilling out the door of my laboratory.
I let out another shriek, but this time it was anger and not fear. I couldn’t see much, because my glasses were falling off and my distance vision wasn’t so great without them. But I could figure it out. That crash? All the contents of my workbench shattering because that hairy bastard had flipped it over.
I bucked once, as hard as I could. My legs pistoned out and my body rocketed off the floor. This time, he didn’t expect it. He didn’t go flying or anything, but he did release me. I fully expected him to pounce again, but he didn’t. He fled instead, sprinting up the stairs so fast I could barely track the movement.
It wasn’t smart to follow him, not without a way to cure or contain him. And I had to help my brother. I checked for a pulse. Thank god, he was alive, and respirating too. I quickly discovered a contusion on the back of his head; he’d been hit pretty hard. His eyelids fluttered when I touched the injury. He’d be conscious again soon, and probably regretting every second.
“Rocky,” I murmured.
I knew she had enough common sense not to confront an enraged werewolf, so I wasn’t too worried. Not about her. I was worried about Jonah, and what those nanobots were doing to me right now, and the fact that I was probably way over my daytime minutes and my parents were going to kill me. But not so much about Rocky.
Not until I got upstairs and saw the empty driveway. She was gone.
I ran to the end of the street, heavy breaths steaming the air. Rocky wasn’t anywhere in sight, so I called her. Someone picked up the phone for about two seconds. Just long enough for me to hear her yelling in the background.
“Let me go, you freak!”
Then it went dead. I called again and got voice mail.
I needed to tell Despain everything. My best friend had probably been kidnapped by a nanobotted boy with werewolf tendencies. Who knew where he’d gone? Or what he planned to do to her? The police needed to be involved, and Despain was one of the best detectives I’d met. And I’d met a lot.
I dialed her number and she answered after half a ring. “What’s up, Kate?”
“Someone just attacked my brother in our basement. We need help.”
“I’ll get an ambulance there right away. Where are you now?”
“In the driveway.”
“I’ll be there in a minute.”
“Thank you.” I paused on my way back to the house. “And Despain?”
“What?”
I’d intended to tell her about my Sebastian-related suspicions, but now I was having second thoughts. If she tried to arrest him, he’d probably kill her, too. And let’s say she got lucky and shot him. What if he was the only one who knew how to deactivate the nanobots? I’d be doomed to a life of superfluous hair and locked cages. No med school. No anything. I could deal with the hair, but the thought of losing control of my mind terrified me.
My best choice was to track him down, save Rocky, and make him tell me how to de-wolf myself. I probably had an hour or two before I started wolfing out.
Sebastian had welcomed me to the pack. I was going to take that welcome and shove it down his hairy throat.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just come quick, okay?”
The only answer was a click.
I had just a couple of minutes until she’d show up. Jonah’s car was gone. Mom and Dad were at a bed and breakfast for the night. It was only an hour away, but right now that felt like an eternity. The only car in the garage was my old, cruddy sedan. The crapmobile.
I sped away, breaking about five laws in the process. I didn’t care. My best friend was in danger. Heck, I didn’t even stop to put on my seat belt.
Sebastian’s address was the only lead I had, so that was where I started searching. The house was one of those borderline mansions with a pair of stone lions flanking the driveway. I’d always thought the concept of a stone lion as a status symbol was completely ridiculous. I mean, really. Nothing says success like a huge cat made out of concrete.
