Stone arrived at the base shortly after sunset, after driving halfway to San Jose and back just to eliminate the threat of being followed. He barely looked at Blade, merely walked in, face clouded, eyes downcast, slamming the door behind him so loud that Abby was sure Zoe could have heard him in the basement. She groaned, inwardly; she didn't need his attitude now, too. Alyssa had been rabbitty since they'd returned, Blade's reappearance in her life a jarring reminder of things best forgotten. Fox had gotten herself abducted, King was still incommunicado, and Zoe was pissed at her.
The little girl had stamped her feet, pleaded with Blade to let her stay among the adults, to which he'd absolved himself of responsibility by pointing out he wasn't her father. Which Zoe then turned around on her, saying Abby wasn't her mother. Stricken but determined not to show it, Abby had pulled rank and banished a snuffling Zoe to the shooting range downstairs.
Away from the tantrum of a seven-year-old, they brought Blade up to speed. Currently, Alyssa was filling in the details about finding the Leung woman and her son. Abby snapped herself out of her depressive funk, prepared to elaborate if necessary.
"Abby found a hospital bracelet belonging to the older boy. He wasn't in the house."
"I got your numbers, by the way," Gidge called, present, as ever, only digitally through a secure video broadcast. "The bracelet numbers match hospital protocols for identification, and the date coincides with the emergency room visit the older kid had for his fainting spell a few months ago."
"Which was for anemia," Blade repeated, absorbing the information with his singular air of disbelief.
"Uh, yes, sir." Gidge was being absurdly polite and solicitous of the hybrid hunter; when she and Alyssa arrived, the two had been talking - Gidge had been talking, quite effusively, and Blade merely suffering through the stream of consciousness - about his sword. Turns out Gidge knew a guy who knew the guy who made it, which was as close to cool as Gidge got, apparently.
"Why a Biomedica bracelet, Gidge?"
"He's got a medic alert tag."
Stone snorted derisively. "For a fucking teenager?"
"Mom is--was protective," Gidge wagged a finger at Eli. "She lost too many kids to sudden deaths, Stone. I don't begrudge her a little medical paranoia." Under his breath, he muttered, "especially as she was right..."
"But why was Biomedica tagging him, Gidge?" Caulder frowned, tugging at his whiskers. "They're a research firm, not an insurance company."
"Doesn't say. They're the first response agent listed on his charts, though." Gidge put a hand over his heart. "God bless digital medical records."
"They picked him up?"
"Yeah. They got him from his school, took him to the emergency room, and they've got a doctor on Biomedica's staff looking out for him. His name's attached to the orders for the blood work that came up with anemia."
Blade, who until that point had been silent, interrupted the pointless, circling Q-and-A.
"If the doctor is on their payroll, the lab results will be fake."
"Then why wait so long?" All heads turned towards Alyssa, who, for the first time, met Blade's gaze through his sunglasses. "They've taken all the other children as infants. Why wait on this one?"
"Hormones," Blade intoned humorlessly, and Alyssa's defiance crumbled into horror once more. "It has to do with physiology."
"Ugh," Gidge stuck his tongue out. "Gross. They want to eat him because he's going through puberty? If ever I needed more proof vampires are bunch of sick fuckers…"
"It makes sense," Abby shrugged. "Most of their abductees tend to be lured through sex." Vampire prostitutes taking in Johns; feeding groups luring unsuspecting happy-go-lucky partiers into vampire clubs; Danica allowing King to take her home; most victims went willingly and more than a little aroused. Better flavor.
"Which means your partner might be in trouble there, Whistler," Stone grumped.
She ignored Blade's amused grin at this pronouncement, refusing to allow the conversation to veer any more off topic.
"What about the note?"
"Oh, right," Alyssa fished the flimsy piece of paper from her handbag and passed it around for the others to read. Blade scrutinized it silently for a long while and handed it to Stone who did a double-take.
"Isaac?"
"That mean something to you, Eli?"
"The guy I was following today was named Isaac. Isaac Hobbes."
"A familiar?" Blade's interested tone was tinged with dark intent.
"Yeah, he's been fishing for his master's food. They're taking women out of the bay. Boarders of all types, pretty healthy stock. Damn," he swore, crumpling the note in his fist. "I forgot. I think I might know where our plant is."
"Plant?" Blade's sneer deepened. "Another 'harvest facility.'"
"We think so," Abby mitigated, looking at Caulder and Gidge. They'd had a chance to scrutinize the plans better than she had.
"There are some differences," Gidge admitted reluctantly. "This one doesn't seem to be as big as the one you guys described before. But," he added, his attempt at cheer coming out as pathetic, naive optimism, "I might have the address."
"The SUV that picked up Hobbes had a plate that matched to an address in Marin County. It's a long shot, but it might just be where they're stashing the bodies."
"Then that's where we go." Blade stepped back from the table and went for the door.
"Wait," she barked, stern and angry. "Wait a goddamned minute, Blade." The vampire hunter didn't turn around, though he stopped. She had precisely ten seconds to justify that command, and she didn't waste them. "We're spread out way too thin here, and the vampires know that we're around. This isn't like last time. We need a plan."
"Plans," Blade snarled, cocking his head to show off his impressively sharp teeth, "won't get rid of the vampires."
"Nor will wandering around half in the dark. Something's not right here." Deja vu, she shivered. The last time she'd felt so out of place, three of her friends had died. "We have two leads right now. One is the familiar, and two is an address. The address and the building that belongs to it aren't going anywhere. I say we talk to Hobbes and make sure what we're storming before we do."
"You think this is a trap," Blade rumbled. His attitude shifted, the resistance fading into wary belief as he about-faced and walked back to the table.
"I'm not sure what it is," she confessed. "But we're down two people and I don't want to go out hunting in the dark and find the vampires waiting for us because Fox told them."
"She wouldn't!" Stone banged his fist onto the table. "She hates that woman like you wouldn't believe. She'd die first."
"Fine, whatever," Abby brushed off his outcry; they didn't have time for his guilty defense of his missing partner. "Where is Fox, Gidge?"
"I can't give you floors, mind, but her signal's right on top of your partner's, Whistler. She's at the Ritz, probably with the vampire."
"She's alive then."
"Yeah, so's he, if you were wondering." She hadn't been and was unaffected by Gidge's reproach. King was competent enough to look out for himself, he knew the game, and he had a fool's luck. His chances were better than Fox's for sure.
"So what do we do?" Eli groused, looking at the table but directing the question at her.
"We talk to Hobbes," she declared confidently. Alyssa and Caulder shared a worried, whispered exchange, and Eli raised an eyebrow, but no one challenged her. "He might know more about the plant and the conference. And if we're blown, it can't hurt to take out the human support for this conference anyway."
"I'm in for some of that," Stone said, leaning back in his chair and cracking his knuckles. "I got no problems putting the hurt on Hobbes. Or anyone else for that matter."
"Where should we pick him up?"
"We could try the mooring where he docks his boat. He left it when he hauled off his latest. He probably won't move it until after dark. If not, Gidge has his address from his license."
"You bet," Gidge affirmed. "If you can't find him, I could put out a hit on the SUV and monitor police frequencies."
"Right. We'll get something from him, and we'll make plans from there."
"And what about Henri and I?" Alyssa asked, folding her arms over her chest.
"I want you to work over the conference hall blueprints with Gidge. Gidge, you hear me?"
"Roger, boss lady. I'm on that, too."
"We'll need to know all the entrances and exits, public, private, maintenance, emergency, everything."
"I'll focus on possible delivery routes for Daystar," Alyssa nodded, agreeing. "Gidge, you map security choke points."
"Yep."
"Caulder."
"Yes?"
"You've got Daystar detail from here until Thursday."
"We might have a problem."
"Why?"
Caulder sighed, rubbing his forehead. "I've been replicating the virus, but I don't know if there will be enough for more than a handful of vampires. I lost a significant amount in my last purification round."
Stone swore something long and complicated in Spanish, Alyssa gasped, Gidge buried his head in his arms, and even Blade raised an eyebrow.
"How much did you lose?"
"Enough," Caulder shook his head, not bothering to go into details that none of them would understand. "And Fox and I were using half of what I had before that to work on alternative vectors for delivery. I can't use what she altered."
"Why not?"
"I don't know if it's safe, for one, and it might not work at all. Better to stick to what I know."
This was a problem, and it was one she couldn't fix. Amounts of virus weren't calculations she made, but they were ones she relied upon. The changes and mutations that made them virulent or harmless were completely out of her realm of knowledge. This sort of thing she had trusted Sommer to figure out, and Sommer, as if she had to keep reminding herself, was dead.
"Is there something wrong with your stock?"
"Not as far as I can tell, but it's possible that the virus is unstable outside of a host. It may break down over time in stasis. I'm not a virologist like Sommerfield. There may be something I'm missing."
Damnit, that was a serious problem. "Keep on it. If we can't use it at the conference, we'll stick to silver and garlic."
"Don't forget EDTA." Blade produced a vial from his coat. It was in a blue container attached to a gas-depression projectile dart. He tossed it to Caulder.
"Yes," Caulder said, absently, fingering the weapon.
"What's that?" Stone asked.
"EDTA," Abby explained, "is part of the treatment we use when we cure someone. You can only give a small amount of it to someone who's been bitten because it's explosive when it reacts to vampire blood. But the retro-virus we use in the cure works better and faster in EDTA. It slows down and destroys vampire blood outright while the virus works to rescue human cells."
"So, a reverse Daystar."
She smiled. "Of course. That's where we got the idea." She looked at the dart in Caulder's hands and then at Blade. "Those might come in handy. You have any more?"
"Not many. EDTA is harder to come by than silver."
That was true. Their own supplies had always come through Sommerfield. EDTA had to be ordered through supply companies - there just wasn't a black market for biological chemicals that had no application for terrorist activity. Nitroglycerin you could get off the back of the truck, but an anti-coagulant? Hardly anywhere. It was why they didn't use it as a weapon. Just too many hoops to jump through, unless they wanted to raid Sigma-Aldrich.
"We'll have to plan on a fight at the conference then." Not a big deal. They'd already have to fight the familiars.
"What about the vampires arriving at SFO?" Alyssa threw down a list of chartered flights. "It's risky to try anything at an airport, but if we're moving in the open now, we could just hit a lot of them there."
"It's a question of timing," she said, frowning. "It's easier to hit them all at once."
"More dangerous, too." Stone shrugged. "We either hit them individually and face increased resistance with each target and maybe miss a few but get each one we go after..."
"Or we hit them all at once and maybe get killed doing it," she finished for him. "Yeah, I know. If Daystar has even a chance of working, we have to do it at the conference."
"There's the welcome dinner Thursday night," Alyssa read off the itinerary. "Leung is supposed to make a toast and it's a private party thrown by Biomedica for their shareholders and guests. The doctors and academics will be out of the way, so minimal human casualties. That's our best time."
"Agreed. The lower the body count, the better."
"Did King say what kind of familiars we'd be running into?"
Gidge answered before she could. "Big fellas, mostly. We know vampires tend to attract all sorts, but he said it looked like they were making an effort to have meatheads on staff."
Blade grunted derisively at this, unimpressed. "The bigger they are."
"We'll need to confirm the type of security the vampires bring with them. You wanted to check out the arrivals, so. Alyssa, you head to SFO tomorrow unless things change."
Over the stunted protest of her husband, Alyssa said, firmly, "Okay." She flashed Caulder a sympathetic look. She wasn't keen on sending Alyssa into danger either, but she had a cool head and a proficiency for deception and espionage. Besides, there was no one else.
Still, she admonished Alyssa, "You watch them, who gets off the plane and how many, but you do not make contact."
"I'll get her some tickets," Gidge offered, disappearing from the video connection to do that.
"We're set then. Let me get my gear, and we'll head out. See if we can't find Stone's familiar."
"Fox's familiar," he corrected her as he rose to retrieve his own weapons.
"Speaking of, what about Fox?" Gidge reminded them.
"Keep an eye on her tracker and King's. Notify us if either one of them moves away from the Ritz and follow the signal the whole way."
"You got it."
Stone emerged from his room, tucking two .45 caliber handguns into holsters at the back of his pants. A machete in a leather pouch was in his hand; he sat back at the table and proceeded to strap it around his calf over his pant leg. When he was finished, he patted the sheath lovingly.
"Give me five," she told him and headed for her room.
It was there she ran into a snag. While King's favorites were hanging up still in his abandoned thigh holsters, all she had was the crossbow and Lucky No.7. King's pistols were too bulky, and the rest of her weapons, including her bow, were down in the garage near the practice targets.
Where Zoe was.
But, the choice between confronting an angry little girl and going underarmed to a fight wasn't, in the end, a hard one. Mind made up, Abby spun on her heel and nearly collided with Blade, who stood just inside her doorway.
"You need a bell," she pointed a finger at him.
"You sound like your partner." His head turn left, then right, then back to her. "Got rid of him, finally." It was not a question. Blade might not be the type to show any concern normally, but she could make out a distinct absence of any type of distress over King's absence.
"He's undercover. He's in tight with the vampire we think is behind this."
"Good," he said with the same detachment, maybe even relief. If he thought one way or another about finding King's things conspicuously occupying space in a bedroom with her own, he made no comment, merely left as stealthily as he came. Abby followed as far as the stairs, descending to the garage level.
She heard the thick thwaps of a bowstring snapping and the dry impact of arrows. Zoe stood in the classic pose, her right hand holding back the considerable tensile strength of the bowstring around the butt of an arrow. She loosed it, her form perfect if not her aim; her elbow remained bent as she let fly her arrow, which buried into the outermost red of a target.
"Not bad," Abby announced herself. Zoe dropped her arm but did not otherwise acknowledge her. "Zoe?"
"Why won't you let me help?" The words were free of any trembling or doubt or anger. When she faced Abby at last, Zoe's face had resumed its singular expression of general intensity.
"You're not ready yet. Yet," she repeated, sitting on the bottom step, balancing her elbows on her thighs. "You might as well get used to this now, Zoe," she began, taking a deep breath. "People are going to tell you every step of the way that you're not ready." Hell, Blade had said as much to her not a month ago. "And you're not always going to be sure if you are ready or not." Some days, she still wasn't sure.
"When do you know?" Zoe betrayed neither pout of impatience nor flare of temper.
"You might not ever know," Abby answered honestly. "Your best bet is to listen to others with more experience. If they said you're not ready, you're not."
"What if they're just trying to protect me?" What if they're just trying to keep me away? That was the real question.
"Then you prove it." Abby cast a pointed glance at the arrows embedded in the target. Two had missed, three were in the white closest to the outside, and the last was in the red. "And you're going to have to do better than that to prove it to me."
Abby stood, dusting off her pants needlessly. Zoe regarded her with her lower lip trembling, which she bit to keep it still. It reminded Abby so much of herself her heart ached.
Zoe nodded to herself, as if having come to a decision. She walked to the wall and took down Abby's bow and quiver, bringing them over. Abby held out her hands, and Zoe pushed them towards her, not meeting her eyes. Batting the offering gently aside, Abby pulled the girl into a hug.
"This is the way it has to be, Zoe." She released her when it was clear the girl wasn't going to hug her back. "If you want in, it has to be like this. You won't always like it, but that's life."
Zoe raised her head. "I want in." She pursed her lips again, so hard they went white. "I want to kill anyone who hurts people."
"Not just anyone, Zoe. Vampires. Familiars. Bad people." Abby corrected, inanely, too stunned to immediately take in the import of what she had said. A seven-year-old girl wanted to kill. This was the future?
Her shock must have shown because suddenly Zoe was in her arms again, thumping her in the back with her gear as she clung to Abby.
"I'm sorry," she whimpered into Abby's chest.
"For what?"
"For what I said."
"Upstairs?" Zoe nodded against her, and Abby hugged her, hard. "Don't be. I'm not your mother, Zoe." It would be a discredit to Sommer for Zoe to forget that.
"You're my friend," Zoe said, rubbing her face into the front of Abby's shirt. "Mommy said you shouldn't be short with your friends."
"It's okay. Friends forgive you," Abby reassured her, patting her back. Zoe looked up at her, and Abby extended one hand. "Friends?" Zoe shifted the bow along her arm to shake her hand.
"Friends," she nodded and stood back, again offering the weapons. Abby took them, her mouth relaxing into a dazed half-grin. "Kill the bad guys, Abby."
"You got it."