Publish and Perish Read online

  “And when was that?” I asked faintly.

  “Calendars change, you know, so I’m going to have to guess a bit, but probably around 2567 … B.C.”

  I went tottering off to a chair and collapsed into it. “You’re … you’re … you’re…”

  “Over four thousand years old. Yeah, I get that a lot.” She sounded like a chirpy college kid.

  John was staring at her with an almost frightening intensity. “How do you do it? I dread the coming years, and my lifespan is peanuts compared to yours,” he said referring to the Álfar lifespan, which was much longer than a human’s but not virtually immortal like a vampire’s.

  “Stay connected. We can talk more about it later. Right now we’ve got a lot of problems to solve.”

  I raised my aching head, which I had been cradling in my hands. “Starting with Jolly. I’ve caught on that I made the wrong assumption, but if you didn’t attack him, who did?”

  “The Black Masons.”

  “Oh, of course. Has to be the masons. Yeah, right,” Syd snorted. “You know that’s like a cliché for every crazy conspiracy nut on the planet. And by the way, I’m a mason. I suppose I should just be grateful it’s not the Jews this time.”

  “Well, there are Masons, and then there are Masons.” Hettie pinned Syd with a look. “As Shriners are to you guys, so you are to us. Among our members and the black lodge’s members there are actually … well, let’s call them wizards for lack of a better word, and they have mystic powers. I’m a member of the White Masons—”

  “We don’t take women,” Syd interrupted.

  John spoke up. “That’s true. My captain down in Philly was one. I dated his daughter. She was like a Daughter of the Nile or something.”

  “Well, whether you believe it or not, I really am a member of a Masonic lodge,” Hettie said.

  “So did it really start in Egypt or was it medieval bullshit?” Syd asked.

  “Oh it really started with us—”

  Anger, fear, and resentment were a toxic mix roiling in my chest. Bolting out of the chair, I balled my fists at my sides and screamed out, “STOP IT! Why are we having this inane conversation? Who cares about any of this? I’m some kind of Typhoid Linnet, and I’ve got a thing inside me. I’ve been all brave and noble, but this damn well needs to start being about me now.”

  Syd looked embarrassed. John had his pissed-off-camel look. Hettie’s look was pure compassion. She crossed to me and gathered me in a hug. The chill off her undead body didn’t make it all that comforting.

  “You’re scared and rightly so. If the vampires or the werewolves find out, they’ll kill you and the Black Masons are searching for you, and if they have to they’ll kill all your friends to get to you. They will. Then they’ll keep you prisoner until they can trigger the predator.”

  “What does this thing do?” I whispered.

  “Well, I don’t exactly know. None of us do. Obviously this thing has never really gotten rolling or I and my fellow Spooks wouldn’t be here.” She paused and added thoughtfully, “Though it came close once and destroyed the Hittite Empire, but they managed to kill the woman and all those affected before it could spread. That’s when the prohibition against women was put in place.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “I’m probably the last woman ever Made.” She waved it off. “But that’s all ancient history. Anyway, that hasn’t stopped the Black Masons from continuing to try, and if they manage to trigger this thing all the vampires and werewolves die.”

  “So Jolly knew that I … well, about the predator?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that why he came to the States and got close to Linnet?” John asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What alerted you guys?” Syd asked and then added, “Assuming any of this is true.”

  “You’ve just established it’s true and very nearly got her killed in the process, but to answer your question, we had word that a predator had been nursed to the point of implantation. We knew it was one of a handful of girls.” Hettie looked back at me. “Then there was the murder at the firm and your escape and it was pretty clear it was you. We sent Jolly to keep watch and to verify. We probably should have acted before you went off to California. After the events out there … well, all doubt was removed.”

  “And Jolly was going to tell me?”

  “Yes.”

  John, seated behind his desk, beat out a tattoo on the surface with a ballpoint pen. “So why all the aliases?”

  Hettie frowned at him. “You shouldn’t have been able to find those.”

  “I’m good.”

  “I guess you are. I’m going to have to alert our security department. And yes, Jolly has had a lot of identities tracking the activities of our enemy.”

  “Those being these Black Masons who want to kill all the Powers?” Syd asked.

  “Those would be the ones.”

  “This just sounds crazy,” the lawyer muttered.

  Hettie grinned at him. “Crazier than the world we live in?”

  “Point.”

  I rubbed at my aching forehead. “So, Jolly was attacked to keep him from telling me that I had this … thing inside me?”

  “Yes.” She forced extra air into her lungs so she could sigh. “I arrived in time to keep him alive, but not fast enough to prevent the attack.”

  There was the clink of glass on glass as John poured himself another drink. “So where were the bodies of the bad guys? You’re a vampire. You could easily have smoked them all.”

  “We do try not to kill people. We like to think of ourselves as the good guys. I settled for driving them off. Also, I didn’t want to draw any more attention to Linnet. If another person closely associated with her fetched up dead it might have begun to penetrate that she should be looked at more closely.” She paused and studied me for a moment. “In some ways the events in California helped us. They pulled the attention away from you and onto the Álfar. And since my kind are suspicious of Álfar magic, and distrust the Álfar on general principles, it had them looking at the elves and not at you.”

  “So why didn’t the hounds twig when so many of them were getting croaked whenever they tried to attack her?” Syd asked.

  “It’s my kind that breeds the Hunters and has the potentially infinite lifespan. The werewolves are mutated so they’re stronger and tougher but not appreciably longer-lived than the average human, so they lack our sense of … perspective.”

  “And you’re secretive,” I said.

  “Knowledge is power.” Hettie grinned. “Vampires hoard both.”

  I gave her a hard look. “Why are you so concerned with protecting me? Isn’t your real interest keeping the vampires and werewolves, and bluntly, yourself, alive? Why not alert the vampires and let a Hunter kill me? Problem solved, right?”

  “We want to study the creature. Figure out how to either destroy the parasite or at least neutralize its effects. We need it alive and, by extension, we need you alive too.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “If it’s any comfort, it quickly became a lot more personal for Jolly. He likes you.”

  “Well, that’s nice.” I hoped I didn’t sound too sarcastic and ungrateful.

  “So are we done? May I take both you and Ken to a safe place where he can work and you can be studied?” Hettie asked.

  “There is one more thing,” I said. “Was it these Black Mason guys who stopped the train?”

  “No, that was one of ours. After you called the lodge in London we were able to make the trace. And by the way, what made you dump your phone? Jolly had paired to it so we could keep track of you.”

  “John did that.”

  She looked over at the Álfar. “Good call, though it made my job a whole lot harder.”

  “That was the idea. It was clear after the break-in at her apartment that somebody was after her.”

  Hettie turned back to me. “Anyway, your call to London put us back on your trail and that’s when we realized you were on
a train heading to Newport. We had to stop you. Fortunately, Fusashi was watching your father and was able to react in time.”

  “My father,” I said faintly. Outrage gathered in a burning pain behind my breastbone. “He is not part of this. How dare you even suggest—”

  “Yes, he is.”

  I gave another vehement head shake. “Bullshit! I don’t believe you!”

  Syd spoke up. “I think you ought to listen, Lynnie. You said yourself your dad was real upset at the idea they might bring in a Hunter after Chip was killed.”

  “No.” I couldn’t muster up anything else. I just clung to stubborn negation as if it were a floating spar and I was a shipwreck survivor.

  “I’m sorry, but lying to yourself really isn’t the best plan,” the vampire said.

  I stormed away and threw back, “I wish David had managed to cut your damn head off!”

  “Killing the messenger also doesn’t change the facts,” John said.

  Hettie came after me. Pushed into my personal space to the point we were almost nose to nose. “Listen to me! The parasites are fragile outside of a body. They have to be bred and nurtured, and they don’t come to maturity easily. When they do they have to be implanted in an infant. The members of the lodge that have raised the creature draw lots, or throw dice, or play some other game of chance to determine which of their members will offer up their infant daughter. This could not have been done without his knowledge and consent.”

  “My mother would never—” I began, but I broke off. I had always felt like children were just an accessory she had picked up. I could totally picture her paying no attention when my father said he wanted to take me for an evening. I raised another objection.

  “So, your group has actually witnessed this, and more to the point, didn’t try to stop it if you did?”

  “No, we’ve found it difficult to place agents inside their lodges. Our guys always get caught.”

  “Then you don’t know!”

  “But we do. We do get the occasional defector, a man who can’t bear to be part of this cabal any longer. We’re certain about this.”

  “If my dad had been involved he would never have let me be fostered! It would have been crazy to put me in a vampire household if I actually … well, I guess I do actually have it, so it was stupid and my father is anything but stupid, which proves he didn’t know.” It was a convoluted sentence, but Hettie seemed to follow my inchoate thoughts.

  “No, what it proves was they were ingenious. It was frankly brilliant, and a big change from their previous pattern. Before they had always tried to hide the predator in isolated spots. There was a pattern and the vampires exploited it, but someone in the Black lodge understood that normal vampires are disgusted by Hunters. That they don’t want them anywhere near them. The cabal decided to take the risk and go for the big throw, anticipating the vampires would never think someone would try something so ballsy as to hide you in plain sight.”

  My father’s face seemed to float in the air before me. Smiling, smoothing his mustache, the gold Masonic ring catching the light. She had just described my father. He had always been a risk taker and loved to gamble. I shivered.

  “My kind are rather risk adverse, to put it mildly, so such a move would never have occurred to them. And the ploy even fooled us in the White lodge. It wasn’t until the news of the murder at IMG and your escape surfaced that we realized a new Destroyer had arrived on the scene.”

  “But the vampires missed it,” John mused.

  “Pride. Pride can blind a person.” She cast a glance at me. “Just like love.”

  I sank down into a chair. We filled the room with silence for a long, long time.

  “What can I do to convince you?” she asked gently. “Or maybe I can’t. You don’t know me. Would you believe Jolly?”

  “What are you talking about? He’s in a coma,” I said.

  She gave me a flash of the fangs again. “I expect Jolly’s not just lying in the hospital waiting for the body to recover. I’m betting he put his consciousness in the horse.”

  I swallowed hard a few times. “The … horse. You mean Vento?”

  Hettie nodded. “That’d be the one.”

  “What, he’s like, fuckin’ Mr. Ed?” Syd broke in.

  “Sort of, though he can’t actually talk. Jolly is one of our masters and can place his mind, soul, spirit, whatever you want to call it, in the body of another creature. He and Vento are very closely bonded.”

  Heat suffused my face, and I banged my forehead several times on the edge of John’s desk. The idea that all those times I had been riding the Lusitano stallion Jolly had been riding along too, was really, really creepy. I thought about the way I used my seat to cue the horse, and the way my legs rested against his sides.

  “Uh, just how aware of me was Jolly while I was … uh, riding?”

  “Oh, completely.”

  I dropped my face into my hands and mumbled, “This is like some kind of Freudian nightmare.” Syd guffawed and even John showed a flicker of reaction.

  “He did save your life in California,” Hettie pointed out.

  “Yeah, true, but all the times I stroked him and hugged him and kissed him on the nose. The horse, I mean.” I shook off the embarrassment.

  “So, shall we go to the horse?” Hettie asked. “Get the answer and then get you someplace safe.”

  “Sure. He should be back from California by now, but let me call and make sure,” I added. “Oh, and there’s no way in hell I’m going anywhere alone with you. I want John to come with us.”

  “She can be taught,” he murmured more to himself than to the rest of us and stepped to my side.

  It was very easy for her to say they were the good guys, but aside from saving me from the Hunter I had no proof that that was actually true. What was abundantly clear was that I was just a pawn in everyone’s game, and I hated it.

  * * *

  Hettie pointed out that the vampires had seen my van and while I might have covered up the license plates, it was fairly distinctive with its bashed-in front end so we were going to take her car. It was a high-powered BMW with darkly tinted windows. It had been double-parked on a side street. An NYPD card on the dash meant it didn’t have a ticket or hadn’t been towed. I stopped and stared at it suspiciously. Once again, the vampire seemed telepathic.

  “Don’t worry. Different car. I dumped the other one.”

  “Money must not be an issue for you guys,” John remarked.

  “It’s not.” She pressed the starter, the car roared to life, and we pulled out into traffic. She gave me a sideways glance. “You must have questions, but you’re not saying much.”

  “I’m still trying to wrap my head around all of this.”

  “The if-I-don’t-talk-about-it-it-won’t-be-real approach?” Hettie suggested.

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “So what is going to happen to her?” John asked.

  “Well, hopefully we’re going to find a way to remove or at least neutralize the predator. That’s why we were hoping to fund Dr. Zhèng’s research.”

  “Yeah, ’cause that’s worked out so well in the past,” John said.

  “True.”

  “So, who kills the scientists? The vampires or these … these Black Masons?” I asked.

  “The vampires and the werewolves. They don’t want it widely known that there’s a way to destroy them.” She reacted to my expression. “I’ve shocked you. I’m sorry, but they’re not really all that nice.”

  “And does that go for you too? Makes me wonder if I can really trust you.”

  “I hope you do since I’m the only thing standing between you and certain death right now.”

  “Don’t discount my friends. I’m not alone in this,” I countered.

  “No, you’re not. And your capacity to inspire loyalty is admirable, but most of your allies are merely human.”

  “I’ve got a mess of Álfar on my side.” She gave me a wry look, one e
yebrow climbing toward her hairline. “Okay, so they’re not the most … focused of allies, but they’ve got powers too.”

  “And ADD.”

  John, in the backseat, gave a snort. “Ain’t that the truth.”

  Talking about Álfar raised an interesting question and another opportunity to avoid thinking about my father. I posed it. “I know this isn’t all that important in the grand scheme of things,” I said. “But do you think this predator parasite affects choices the Álfar make too?”

  “Hmm, interesting notion. I don’t know. Why? What are you thinking?”

  “Well, there have been legends of elvish abductions going back hundreds of years, but as I recall most of them were about men being stolen away.” I cranked around so I could look at John. “And the times I have been in Fey it seemed like most of the human servants were men. So why is that? Álfar can glamour anybody—”

  “Except you,” John said.

  “Yeah, good point.” I remembered Qwendar’s confusion when he had been unable to take control of my mind and force me to commit suicide. I also remembered how Ryan had tried to use vampire powers to mesmerize me the night I’d been stupid enough to go home with him. It hadn’t worked that time either. I shivered and hugged myself. We drove in silence for a few minutes then I asked, “So, why doesn’t the predator kill Álfar too?”

  “They’re a different species. Our best guess is that the predator targets the changes in human DNA when a person becomes a vampire or a werewolf and reacts to that.”

  John leaned forward and rested his folded arms on the back of my seat. “It just seems strange that if these Black Masons have a hard-on about the Powers, why aren’t they pissed at the Álfar too? Why wouldn’t they try to find a way to kill them … us too?”

  Hettie shrugged. “Maybe they are. As I said, we haven’t had a lot of luck infiltrating.”

  Something had been niggling at the back of my mind and it finally came into focus. “I get why you don’t want the parasite released—it’s personal for you. You’ll die along with all the male vampires but the rest of your group, they’re human. So why all the concern for the Spooks?”

  She glanced over at me. “Parasites don’t kill just for the hell of it. Like any other living creature their primary purpose is to survive and propagate. There aren’t a lot of vampires and werewolves. So what happens after the parasite has run its course and killed all the hosts?”