A Final Touch: The Complete Series, page 60
God, that was a distinct possibility. The compound was down. Lord knows how much that had cost the pack. Maybe they had a few more cars left. But they’d have to be circumspect about how they used them. Jace certainly wouldn’t want to use company property to do more crimes, anyway.
I hoped like hell he wouldn’t get in trouble for this.
Though I kept wanting to ask about Virginia, I screwed my lips shut instead. Jace was concentrating. He was a lot more discreet about scenting people than I was. He didn’t come right up into their space and smell them, but I knew Jace was creating a perfect 3D map of the city as he was moving around it. He was so freaking methodical. I’d have a lot to learn from him.
In about five more minutes, we reached the right block. Jace didn’t walk up to the labs. They were well-defended, for one. Even from here, though my eyesight was still crappy, I could see the gates around the front. “How are we gonna get in?” I whispered.
“The back. There’s a tall building that will help us to jump onto the roof.”
I blinked quickly. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but—”
He twisted, took a step back while facing me, and said, “You’ll be jumping in my arms.”
Where I belonged, my stupid brain said.
I tried to hide my grin.
Jace had access to the nearby building. By that I meant he whispered a quick spell at the back door that did something. It unlocked, and we slunk inside. Jace was way better at subterfuge than I was. I don’t know how, but the werewolf could make himself sound like a tiny little kitten. There wasn’t even a creak on the stairs as we climbed them. He soon got to the roof. Then as promised, he whisked me up. It felt so stupidly, wildly natural. It was like my brain thought Jace had been carrying me his entire life.
Jace went to immediately run and jump, but he stopped. “Your heartbeat dropped.”
Embarrassment started to climb my cheeks in a flush. “Oh, never mind.”
“It’s an autonomic reaction,” he added, having a one-sided conversation with himself.
“Sorry?” I whispered, knowing I had to say something.
“Don’t be.”
He didn’t explain himself. It wasn’t like we had a hell of a lot of time.
He grunted and ran. Like the wind, mind you. God, there was a lot of power in those legs. He simply thrust forward, and he was like a skater gliding across the ice. Then he reached the high lip of the brick roof and propelled himself off it.
I could have screamed. Why bother? My body knew it was safe here.
With a grunt, but not a loud one, he landed on the opposite roof. He didn’t even need to pitch forward and roll to break the fall. That would have required throwing me, anyway. Somehow that big, powerful body took the drop. Then he straightened. Only after several steps did he remember to put me down.
I slid down the side of his body, my blouse dragging across his arm. I went to say he didn’t notice, but I caught sight of his pupils. They looked like two squeezed fists.
“Oh… how do we get in?” I demanded, breathing quick, too awkward to apologize.
If indeed that’s what he wanted.
Jace pushed his thumb into the joint of his jaw then slid it forward over his lips. Only after several taps did he grunt, “This way.”
He must have thought about this. Maybe for a lot longer than a few mere hours. Perhaps Jace had planned to break in here for a while.
… How much did I actually know about the old Alpha and his operations? What I read about in the news? I’d already realized most of that was wrong.
And while it seemed on the surface as if Jace was another head who played their games, from what I knew of his personality, he couldn’t sit still.
And his smooth, well-planned operation proved that.
He knew how to get through the magical enchantments on the roof. And soon we were inside the building. The first thing that struck me was the clinical smell. I guess scent really was becoming one of my most powerful senses. My eyes started to water, and my nose clogged up. “That’s—” I went to say disinfectants. My head ticked to the left. “It’s almost like something magical is trying to hide the smells in here.”
“Well done,” he snapped quickly. Then he waved a hand in front of his face. “That’s no ordinary smell. You can sense that it has strange overtones and undertones. It’s masking what’s underneath, perfectly programmed to sit on top of it and obscure it.”
I blinked quickly. “How the heck are they doing that?”
“A powerful continuous air spell. And an expensive one, too. I noticed it the first day I walked in here.”
“So any other wolf would be able to notice it, too?”
“I have trained my entire life to ensure my sense of smell is extraordinary. I knew from the beginning it would be necessary to rise to the top.” Jace revealed another important clue about his past and his personality.
“Do you ever relax?”
“Does this city ever relax?” he countered.
“I guess not. It sounds exhausting being you.”
“I do it because I need to. Because I want to. Because there’s no other way.”
This was meant to be a powerful story. But I saw the guy beneath. The one who couldn’t escape this mangled, complicated situation. The one I desperately wanted to reach out to and soothe.
But Jace walked down wide, white stairs. While my eyes kept watering, he seemed fine. He also scented the air a little more. “Can you detect that slight fizzling, almost electric scent between everything? That’s what they’re trying to hide. You can only detect it every couple of seconds. I think the scent spell in the air pulses, as if it has a kind of current.”
I closed my eyes. Which was kind of stupid on stairs, but I had a hand on the railing. Slowly, I breathed in. But I couldn’t smell anything. Until I got the faintest sense like a far-off storm. My eyes burst open.
Jace smiled. “You’re a quick study.”
“Yes. I don’t get it, though. If ordinary werewolves couldn’t detect it, then what am I—”
“We’ll find out one day,” he said quickly, not wanting me to distract myself.
I knew why. I had been too busy snoozing and eating, but it was time for me to address what I learned in the library.
What if I really was some crazy ancient creature capable of killing everybody?
“I told you not to think about it,” Jace said as if he was right there, embedded in my mind, listening to all of the crap filtering around my head.
“Easy for you to say. You know exactly what kind of creature you are.”
“And do you think it honestly matters what kind of creature you are?”
That was a hell of a thing to say. It flew in the face of everything. Because honestly, yes. I didn’t know what I could do, where I came from, who I was aligned with. In a city like this, that meant everything.
But Jace had his own point, and the werewolf intended to make it.
We reached the base of the stairs. A short, white, featureless corridor led to a steel door and a magical lock.
I knew Jace could get through. He was unhurried. So he turned around and made distinct eye contact as he said, “It doesn’t matter what you are. The only true thing that counts is what you can do. Who you’ll protect, why you’ll act. That’s how you will distinguish yourself from your enemies.”
As I slowly took that in, I realized he was right.
I’d managed to navigate through this crazy situation without knowing much about myself. Who said I couldn’t reach the end without the full facts? And Jace was right. The most important thing was knowing how to protect and what not to do.
Jace swiftly turned and opened the door. The wolf had a hell of a lot of embodied magic. I wondered if he had the right security enchantments, though.
“How many times have you come to this lab? Who does it belong to? And what about the security cameras?” I asked.
“There are cameras. But they’re linked into the door system. I’m overcoming them with the same spell.”
“How did you get it?”
Jace paused.
I arched an eyebrow. “Jace?”
“Technically, the vampires own this lab.”
“And what… you asked for it from Olivia?” My voice shot up.
Jace didn’t like the intonation. “No. I stole it from her.”
Wow. Okay. Jace was turning out to be that bad boy, after all. “How?”
“Olivia can be quite see-through. Pretend to give her what she wants, and she’ll turn to putty in your hands.”
… Had Jace slept with her and stolen it from her purse or something?
He was being seriously tight-lipped, but his defensive snap from before confirmed he wouldn’t have done anything untoward.
Maybe Jace knew how to play the heads’ game better than me.
As promised, Jace cut through the security spell easily. The door opened. More of that masked smell struck me right in the middle of the face. And yeah, I detected the faint electric tinge beyond it. In fact, Jace and I scented the air in the exact same way at the exact same time.
“Sorry,” I grunted. “It’s almost like we’re twins.”
It was a throwaway comment. But Jace looked far too interested in it.
Feeling awkward, I waited for him to move on.
Then I kicked myself. If there really were no security cameras here, I could ask him about Virginia.
But Jace presumably hadn’t slept in two days. Once this was done, he could go back to his new compound and… presumably sleep in the same bed as Virginia. It would lead to permanent insomnia.
We reached the real rooms. Even without the smell, I’d know something was up here. It felt wrong. I didn’t believe too much in vibes, likely because I wasn’t a practicing witch. But the second I walked in, I clammed up, my skin getting all cold, a tacky sensation sliding down my back as if somebody had mixed sugar with ice.
“Exactly who owns this lab again?”
“A consortium of vampires. Some of the most powerful in the city.”
“And what does it do?”
“Technically, it’s a medical lab. It runs analysis on blood, tissues, that kind of thing.”
“And experiments?” I asked carefully. Oh, vampire labs were pretty notorious, considering M-Day. But I wouldn’t have known this place was owned by vampires if Jace hadn’t pointed it out.
The vamps had revamped the way they did things in the last 20 years. Rather than own things outright, they did it through consortiums. That way they could have a controlling hand without the public knowing it was them.
“Not officially,” Jace said. A kick in his voice told me he was suspicious about this, too.
He seemed to know where to go. Jace went further into the lab, and deeper down. From the outside, the building had three floors. We traveled down five. It got that distinctive feeling that we were underground. It felt like there were secrets mounting up all around us.
Jace walked into a large lab with several genetic sequencers at the back. They were on, continually beeping softly. The overhead lights were motion-activated, and they flickered above us.
I stared at eight glimmering stainless-steel benches with all sorts of equipment, assays, and computers arranged neatly on them. Jace straight over to the central bench. From the determined quality of his footsteps, I assumed he knew the eye droppers would be there.
They weren’t.
He grasped a laptop instead, turning it around and opening it. While he had the security enchantment to get into the building, I doubted he could hack the laptop. Indeed, it was locked by biometric access.
“What are we gonna do?” I asked.
But I’d misread Jace’s movements. He pushed his nose down against the laptop. He smelled the little fingerprint scanner.
By now I knew Jace’s tricks, and I didn’t interrupt.
He soon moved around the lab methodically. He smelled the knobs first, then the edges of metal benches, then the wall. It took until he reached the genetic sequencer for him to find anything. An excited grin pressed across his lips.
There was a shiny little metal plate on the sequencer.
Jace fumbled in his pocket, brought out some kind of special laminated sticky paper, and placed it on the plate. He soon pulled it off, and after several tries, got a perfect thumbprint.
I blinked, confused. “… Are you seriously tracking your way to a perfect copy of that thumbprint… by smell alone?”
“I told you,” he said in a serious voice, “I spent most of my life refining my sense of smell.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to be the Alpha.”
That led to the next logical question, even though I sounded like a kid. “… Why?”
“Because I wanted to make up for the mistakes of the past, take the pack in a different direction, influence the city… make a change.”
I hadn’t thought he’d say it. Not like that. It was too raw and vulnerable. You might think Jace was giving a politician-quality response. Trying to pretend he was a good guy and all that. But he really was. His chest sucked in as he spoke.
Still seriously impressed that he smelled out a fingerprint, I waited for Jace to come back to the laptop.
He had a small device in his pocket. He pulled it out, pre-loaded the paper into it, and waited. Then he pressed it against the biometric scanner. He had to roll it forward. It had a kind of sticky, silicone-like pad at the front that mimicked the pressure of a thumb. It took two tries, but then he was into the laptop.
“Holy cow,” I whispered. “You’re like a little criminal, Jace.”
“I’m well over six feet.”
“Sorry,” I had to laugh. “A big criminal. But—”
“If you’re about to ask whether I crack out these skills often, the answer is no. And as for where I got them… it’s hard to survive a pack like Mythos. At least back under Patrick’s reign.”
A little pluck of fear chased up my back. I hadn’t spoken about Patrick to anyone. Kelsey had seemed to think he was a good guy. But the one who’d know the most about him was the one who’d replaced him.
Jace got into the laptop, all right, but he had to search for what he was after.
That allowed me to sidle closer, my hips sliding over the metal. “Jace, everyone seems to think Patrick was a great Alpha—”
“He was what he was. And he did a good job at the time.”
“You told me that it was hard to survive his pack.”
Jace’s fingers froze. “Patrick ruled with an iron fist. If he didn’t like what you were doing, he’d stop you.”
“By telling you to stop… or throwing you off a bridge encased in concrete?”
“He wasn’t a murderer.”
“People keep saying that. He must have been something.”
“We have no idea what the current Patrick is.”
“But you’ve already confirmed he smells like the old Patrick. I swear to God, it’s the same person.” Was I right? I’d never met the original Patrick. This was just a feeling.
“There must be more to what’s happening here,” Jace said.
“Why? Surely Barnaby proves there isn’t. He’s obviously come back alive.”
“Barnaby died over 100 years ago. The man you stripped the magic from cannot be the same person. It’s simply impossible. There’s a golden rule amongst vampires—”
“Yeah. I heard. Olivia said it. You can’t raise the dead. But somebody’s doing something. Jace, I know this sounds crazy, but I swear to you, Patrick is the same Alpha you worked under.”
Jace said nothing. He was concentrating.
I’d screwed up my attempt to find out more about Patrick. And I’d forced Jace into a corner. While I’m sure Patrick was terrible, Jace was ultimately loyal.
And super distracted. Because it took only a few more minutes for him to find what he needed. “Bingo,” he said in a soft voice.
I leaned closer. “What did you find?”
“It’s a report on the eye droppers.”
“I thought they were actually at the lab?”
“So did I. But according to this, they’ve already been destroyed.”
“Destroyed?” My voice shot up. “They were evidence in a case.”
Jace’s eyes flashed down the report. I leaned in close, but it was gibberish to me. Chemistry, biology, and some seriously obscuring formal language. I had to read one paragraph two times.
But Jace was in his element. “It’s some kind of accelerant,” he soon concluded.
It was my turn to hiss a quick, “Bingo. That’s the same stuff they gave Kelsey, I swear to you. I’ve encountered it too many times now.”
“They gave Kelsey something that destroyed her self-control.”
“But increased her magic—”
“If it had fully increased her magic, you would be dead.”
My mouth opened but slid closed. Maybe he was right. Kelsey hadn’t been in a great place, that said. Perhaps it had increased her magic, but her body had been too weak to account for the new force.
Jace drummed his fingers on the table. “There may be two drugs. An accelerant,” he nodded at the report, “and something to disinhibit people. It would give users more control of how to balance those two effects.”
I snorted. “Users? You mean abusers? The Kings are using this to control their little army.”
Jace’s fingers drummed a few more times. “I fear they’re doing more than that.”
A chill raced up my back. “What does that mean?”
“With two separate drugs, you could create two classes of people. One hooked on the accelerant – a powerful army who’ll do anything to get more of the drug.”
The penny dropped. “And crazed people who you could push out onto the street to create chaos. It’s the perfect means to start a war, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. And if you did it carefully, the battle wouldn’t last for long. Inject the right people with the berserker drug, and the general populace of Mythos would start looking for saviors. The Kings would rise from the sewers, clamp down on magic, and rule without anyone challenging them.”
I clapped my hand over my mouth and breathed. It wasn’t like a paper bag. And I wasn’t exactly having a panic attack. But at least it calmed me slightly until I could hiss, “We need an example of both of those drugs.”
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