The Killing Season (23 page)

“Storm probably moved faster than they thought, but the more important question,” Coldcrow said, drawing our focus, “is if they have enough firepower to make it through the night.”

“You think the ’swangs will attack?” Sunny’s eyes roved between me and Coldcrow, her question hanging in the air between all of us.

Finally, Coldcrow said, “I think they’re lucky they didn’t fly to God’s Forgotten like Killian had originally planned.”

I blew out a frustrated breath. “What the hell is in those woods?”

Nyny peeled her eyes away from her computer screens and looked back at us. Coldcrow ran a hand through his beard before he met my gaze. “They have many names, but their Filipino name is kapre. When the aswangs came up from the Philippines a very long time ago, some kapres followed and set up small clusters of colonies in the treetops. You know one’s close when you smell tobacco.”

“How do we not know about this?” Sunny asked, eyes wide.

“Another university secret,” I snarled. “Another lie to keep the students from getting too scared when they learn the woods have more teeth than they thought.”

Coldcrow held up his hands in surrender. “Now, wait. Kapres don’t migrate to mate and their numbers are much lower than the ’swangs. We don’t fight them often, because they’re not as combative as the aswangs. But they have established a small, pretty aggressive colony up in God’s Forgotten.”

“I believe this particular colony is more aggressive, because the woods closely resemble the kapres’ native banyan tree habitat.” Nyny shrugged. “They want to protect it.”

I shook my head and shoved down my anger. “You’re right. At least they’re not out there right now. So can we do anything to help?” I glanced back to the cameras, my eyes searching for the feeds outside the base. “Snowmobile out to them or something?”

Nyny was already shaking her head. “We’re pretty solidly screwed in that regard. The windchill makes snowmobiles unmanageable, and only Killian has the key to the snowcat. Even if we could go, there’s no one here to make the trip with all the other hunters stationed in Barrow for the storm.” She turned around in her chair and looked at us. “It’s just us here tonight. And Abigail.”

I raked my hand through my hair. “We need to find her. Let her know what’s going on. Is there any protocol in place for when this happens?” I asked Coldcrow.

“Yeah.” He snorted. “Don’t get caught in the fucking storm.”

“Fantastic. Nyny, will you keep watching the feeds? See if they try to communicate again?”

“Sure thing, boss lady.”

I decided to not take offense to her tone and turned to Coldcrow. “Sunny and I will go look for Abigail.”

His brows spiked, like he just thought of something. “Killian has a HAM radio in his office. It’s archaic, but all the safehouses are equipped with them. I could try to get in touch with the guys that way. Then I can run back up to my room and grab my sat phone in case they find one and try to get in touch,” he said.

“I should have one around here somewhere too,” Nyny added, her eyes casting into the cluttered, shadowed corners of her office.

“Good.” I nodded. “Okay. Let’s do this. No one freak out.”

“Too late,” Sunny said, mumbling the words under her breath.

I towed her out of the room, her hand clenched in mine. Back out in the entry, the wind rattled the sealed doors and fake stained-glass window. Sunny and I rushed up the stairs, hand in hand, and started down the hall. As we drew farther away from the stairs and closer to Abigail’s room, we sped up until we were running. By the time we reached her door, our breaths hitched out of our mouths in a frantic rhythm. I pounded on the door, but when she didn’t answer, I tried the knob.

The door swung open to a dark room. The bed was still made, curtains drawn tight. Leaving Sunny at the door, I crossed the room and checked the bathroom. Abigail wasn’t there.

“Where do you think she could be?” Sunny asked, biting her lip.

I hurried back to her and took her hand again because she’d started to shake. “We’ll find her. But Hatter and Luke will be fine, okay? Maybe Abigail will know another way to reach them.”

She just nodded, eyes wide. We closed the door and headed back down the hall. I turned us toward the fourth floor, to the greenhouse. It was the only other place I could think of. The higher we ascended the main staircase that wrapped up through the center of the house like a coiling snake, the quieter it became. On the fourth floor, a musty dampness hung in the air, caused by the moisture created in the greenhouse.

At the greenhouse door, I punched in the code I’d seen Nyny use and prayed she hadn’t changed it. The keypad chirped and a lock clanged back. Together, Sunny and I heaved the heavy door open. When we stepped inside, it was like stepping from an arctic tundra onto a tropical island. My breath caught stickily in my throat, and I had to gasp a little to breathe. Beads of moisture instantly coated my body and clothes, and I practically swam through the air as I stepped forward, pulling Sunny behind me. The lights were dim, mimicking nighttime for the flowers, and I suddenly wished like hell we’d brought a flashlight. I headed toward the center of the room, where a sterile fluorescent bulb burned brightly above the resting purple bane like a moon in the sky.

We stuck to the middle of the arrow-straight aisles, careful to not let our clothes or bare hands touch the flowers. Nerves danced through my stomach, and I felt Sunny’s sweaty palms slicken against my own. This place was a death trap.

No sooner had the thought flitted through my mind than we came to the center of the room. There, before the fake moon, amidst the thousands of blooming wolf’s bane, lay Abigail.

Sunny gasped.

I took a halting step forward.

She lay on a bed of bane, like a fairy maiden laid to rest. The blooms caressed her cheek, weaving like a vine through her silver-blonde hair. Petals spread across her bare legs and arms, exposed in her flimsy night gown. Her hands were folded across her chest.

A single blooming flower lay atop her closed mouth, like it was growing between her lips.

Movement caught my eye, and I searched for the source, taking another step closer.

Abigail’s hand twitched again.

“Oh my gosh,” Sunny gasped. “She’s alive!”

As Sunny lunged toward the bed of death, I tightened my hold on her hand and jerked her back. “Careful!” I hissed. “We need something to wrap her in. Don’t touch the flowers.”

“Right,” Sunny said, nodding with determination though her hands quaked even harder.

Looking around at the workbenches, we quickly found a tarp and wrapped the edges around Abigail’s bare ankles. Together, we pulled, her slight form easily sliding off the petals and sending them tumbling toward us. We jumped out of the way, our grip still tight on Abigail, until we’d dragged her free of the poisonous flowers.

“Her skin will be toxic too,” Sunny said, reaching for a pair of gloves from the workbench beside her. Once they were in place, she crouched beside Luke’s mother and felt for a pulse. As she concentrated, Sunny transformed. Her eyes closed, blue veins stretching across her twitching eyelids. She softly counted out Abigail’s heartbeats, her motions assured as she moved on in her examination.

“What can I do?” I asked, feeling useless as Sunny checked Abigail’s mouth and pupil response. A white crust coated the side of her mouth where she’d vomited.

“We have to clean the poison out of her blood,” Sunny answered without looking up from her work. “Possibly using hemoperfusion. The infirmary is equipped for bane poisoning, but I don’t think we should move her. I’ll have to do everything up here, but we need to call the hospital.” Finally she turned her attention to me. “How did this happen? Did she do this to herself?”

“I don’t know,” I said, my voice hushed. “But we’re going to take care of her, okay? I can get Nyny to help you. What else do you need?”

“A portable charcoal hemoperfusion machine and rechargeable cardiac and blood pressure monitor. Hopefully that will stabilize her until the paramedics get here.”

“Got it. I’ll find Nyny and have her bring you what you need. Coldcrow has a satellite phone, so I’ll have him call the hospital. Will that work?”

Sunny just nodded, lost in her work on Abigail. I turned to run off, my mind racing with where to find Coldcrow, if he was still in Killian’s office or somewhere else.

“Ollie!”

I skidded to a stop and turned around. Sunny looked so small beside Abigail, surrounded by death. I shuddered. “Yeah?”

Sunny swallowed heavily. “I don’t know how long she’s been like this . . . If she’s been up here a couple of hours before we found her then it’s not good, you know? You need to let Luke know.”

My stomach twisted, but I managed to nod before turning back around. I shoved out of the sealed door and stumbled toward the stairs. Luke couldn’t lose his mom. But if I told him, he might try to make a run for it through a snowstorm and dark tundra filled with ’swangs and no satellite phone to call for help.

I ran blindly for Killian’s office, praying Coldcrow was still there. There was no time to waste by tracking him down in this massive base.

When I stumbled to a stop against the office door, it easily swung open and I stepped inside. I barely made it a step before I came to an uncertain stop, the hairs on the back of neck standing on end. Coldcrow wasn’t inside, but a radio emitted a soft static in the corner of the room. Killian’s desk lamp was on, leaving the room in semi-darkness. Pages scattered across the surface of his desk. Checking every shadowy corner, I crossed the room, my footsteps silent, and sat down in Killian’s office chair, my eyes on the radio.

Pushing the odd state of the office to the back of my mind for the moment, I warred over if I should call Luke or not. He was fool-hardy enough to try and brave the dangers outside to get back to his mom. I could play down the poisoning, but if Abigail died, I would have stolen Luke’s final chance to see her. Carrying the radio to the greenhouse could work if I reached him and he was able to communicate on the safehouse’s radio.

As I rushed through the options, my eyes landed on the files strewn across Killian’s desk. A black-and-white scratchy, low-resolution picture snagged my attention.

A naked woman, skinny and pale, laid strapped to a metal table. Wires stuck to her skin, and an IV threaded out from the hollow of her arm. The picture was so grainy I couldn’t make out the woman’s face or any distinguishing features. I turned around in the chair and fully faced Killian’s desk. I spread my hands across the papers, sliding pages and more photos out across the surface, my eyes dancing over all of them.

More photos of the same woman, all with her face too blurry to make out. Some of them were of her strapped down in restraints. Others in a padded room that resembled a cage, her ragged body stretched out prone on a slab that might have been a bed. Beneath those were ultrasound images. It took me a moment to realize I was looking at a picture of a uterus. I set the image down and picked up the file folder the paperwork had come from. There on the tab was a name that sent chills down my spine.

Irena Volkova—Aswang Breeding Program Initiative—1986.

1986. The year
after
she disappeared.

I dropped the folder back onto the desk. My fingertips trembled. I had to choke back the bile at seeing what the aswangs had done to Irena, the torture and abuse. Raking a hand over my face, I let out a shaky breath. At least that solved the mystery of her disappearance. Even though I squinted at the pictures a little more, I couldn’t make out any details of her face, anything to tell me what she looked like. The thought that this woman could be my mother made me sick. Not because of what happened to her, but because if she was, then nearly my entire life had been built on a lie. A lie I created to hate and forget the woman who abandoned me.

I resumed my search of the desk and forced my thoughts along other lines. By my legs, a filing drawer sat slightly open. I pulled it out completely. Inside, crammed so tightly together I could barely wedge my fingers between them, were countless—hundreds, likely—of folders just like the one on Killian’s desk. I didn’t want to disturb the files by pulling them out and alerting Killian to what I’d found when he returned to the base, but I read the file tabs. They all contained female names. All with the “breeding program” dates after their name.

I sat back in the chair. What was I looking at here?

I rifled back through the pages on Killian’s desk, feeling the minutes since I’d left Sunny ticking by in my head. I didn’t need to shuffle far before my hand froze. I re-scanned the paragraph at the top of a random page of handwritten notes that had caught my attention.

Breeding program believed to have been started in early ‘80’s with human carriers. Irena Volkova’s disappearance in ‘85 suggests she might have been one of the early experiments with an Original, full-blooded hunter family. The success of their experiments on her are unknown.

Behind me, the radio’s static spiked.

I dropped the page and spun around in the chair. Only when I reached for the radio’s handheld microphone did I notice how badly my hands were shaking.

On the wall behind the radio was a list of channels. All the safehouses were listed out in addition to Barrow’s local police station and hospital. I tried radioing the hospital, but all I heard was endless, frustrating silence. I checked the frequency over and over, but got nothing on the other end. After having the same luck with the police station, I searched for the safehouse’s channel where Luke was at.