The Tenth Legion (Book 6, Progeny of Evolution) (4 page)

“If he’s not
available, how do we get it done?”

“We can work
through his staff. There are several assistants who might be
helpful. Give me a day or two to see what I can come up with.”

After
Jerry left, in the company of the same enthralled volunteer, Lorna
decided to learn about vampires. Meyra Ogger’s bestselling
book,
Vampires Are Romulans; Lycans Are
Klingons
, provided her
main reference. The title summed up what she’d learned from the
book.

On the home
screen, she touched the tab titled “Preemergent Care”. Out of
curiosity, she wondered whether things had changed in her old home.
The corporation-administered institute where Lorna had grown up
boarded equal numbers of lycans and vampires. All pre-emergents,
they didn’t walk until they were three or speak until five. Caring
for such children posed a burden on any family, which is why so
many, like her, ended up there.

Then the
search passed to Ed White, CEO of Coven International.

The portraits
accompanying his corporation biography captured her attention. The
man’s beauty staggered her. An aura of pride accompanied by supreme
confidence emanated from the rugged, square face in the frontal
shot. Thick, burnt sienna-colored hair scrolled above as well as
around the face with its two green eyes like jade lamps. Wide,
prominent cheekbones form fitted the flesh to the jawbone. A
straight nose with the slightest of upturns added a pleasing
triangle to the profile picture, augmenting the brooding brow and
jutting chin. Two wide thin lips, like an expert butcher’s cut,
showed firmness and conveyed the demeanor of a man well used to
getting what he wanted. In profile, their slight downturn suggested
something deeper brooded underneath all the good looks.

Studying the
face, Lorna experienced an inexplicable sense of recognition and
connection. Had they met before? Maybe so. She recalled the dream
conversations of her youth with a kind, dark haired woman. Those
stopped after emergence. Then, recently, the woman returned, well
sort of. All Lorna remembered after waking was being a spectator.
No other details stuck, including any association with the head of
Coven International. She dismissed the idea of prior acquaintance,
conceding he would at least be interesting to meet. Then she
chuckled at the ridiculous thought. There was about as much chance
of crossing paths with him as of touching the hem of an archangel’s
robe. She chalked the déjà vu moments up to having seen him on
cable news or the Internet stream. The handsome marmoreal face with
the tense, sculpted topography belonging to the man who could well
be the most powerful being on earth stared back from the laptop
screen, saying nothing.

The Board of
Directors of Coven International, Inc. listed several members of
the White family. Ed’s older half-brother and sister served in
something called Special Operations. Three of his sons were listed
farther down in the pecking order, project managers of various
kinds. More of the board may have been relatives under different
surnames. Females still practiced the tradition of giving up their
family name and taking their husband’s when they married.

* * * *

A week passed
with no word from Jerry. When he didn’t return her calls, she vowed
to kick his ass to the curb the next time he came sniffing around
for a booty call. Meanwhile, fingerprints proved the Gomez victims
were ordinary humans. A few days later, the body of the son turned
up in a culvert, minus several organs. He too turned out to be
human—unlucky for the victim, but ordinary, nevertheless. Lorna
ruled out conflict between covens of The Others, although the
theory of an urban feral stayed in play.

A detail about
the case still nagged in the back of her mind. The emblem they
found in the boy’s room—a black shield with the Roman numeral “ten”
inscribed in white. The symbol of The Tenth Legion, an organization
named for Julius Caesar’s most loyal legion, it represented to The
Others what the KKK had to African-Americans. The group had
remained quiet for years, but no telling what cooked within the
clandestine, network that crossed regions, and even borders, of the
old nation-states. Every so often they reminded the world they were
still around with a demonstration, or when authorities broke up a
plot brewed by one of their cells.

Below the
Tenth Legion, or X-10 symbol, sat the one that got her interest—a
crude glyph of some kind, etched into a table top. Two serpents,
each shaped like an “S” at right angles in a curving sort of
swastika, made up one part. Whoever drew it had superimposed a
female outline on the serpents. Lorna had seen it before,
remembered from the depths of the pre-emergent dreams featuring the
dark haired woman. Someone had painted it on a candle-lit stone
wall of a windowless room. From this chamber, since earliest
childhood, the lady in the dreams spoke to her with kind
encouragement. Afterward, Lorna recalled no details, other than a
sense of someone being in her corner of the boxing ring called
life. For certain, her parents never were.

Lorna sighed
as she closed the folder, relegating it to Cold Case, disappointed
at having lost the reason for meeting with a certain intriguing
chief executive of CI.

Talk about
shooting for the Moon!

With no word
from or sight of Jerry, Lorna took matters into her own hands. She
assumed he hit a brick wall with the corporation and didn’t want to
face her. Normally, they didn’t visit one another at home
unannounced, but by day ten, another element, an element of worry
regarding his well-being entered the picture. Besides, she missed
him.

After shift,
she hopped the crosstown bus to his neighborhood. From frequent use
of the line since meeting Jerry, she’d become friends with the
regular bus driver, a loquacious black woman who saved her the jump
seat near a smashed-out window at the front that provided minimal
ventilation. On this day, however, another driver hefted the large
steering wheel. He folded the jump seat away, peevishly making it
clear only bus line employees could use it. A single open seat lay
in the rear. With a sigh, Lorna accepted her fate. For the rest of
the trip, she endured the humid grime, the smells of previous
passengers, and the hard wooden benches in the stifle of this
moving Black Hole of Calcutta.

Passing
another long queue outside of a store selling a meager stock of
house wares, she thought how almost all progress she’d seen in her
lifetime had come in the area of electronic surveillance, spurred
by the anti-terrorist wars. The advances had spilled over into
computers, and information technology. For the average person, food
or goods were in short supply, but the cornucopia of news,
entertainment, and electronic application overflowed in its
bounty.

The bus
approached a steel gate that controlled entry to the community
where Jerry lived, the only way in or out. Two armed and unfriendly
guards checked IDs. At the sight of Lorna’s gold shield, their
demeanor softened. A substantial brick wall covered the rest of the
perimeter. Barbed wire laced with razors coiled along the top.
Behind the barrier, the streets were lined with mature live oaks.
Elegant tile-roofed houses sat back off the streets, surrounded by
clumps of tropical-colored plants. For over sixty years, anyone who
could afford it had retreated into these enclaves. When younger,
such acts had offended Lorna’s egalitarian sensibilities, but over
time, she realized the security bars backed up by double deadbolts
on the points of ingress to her apartment were the same thing.

After clearing
the gate, the bus coasted down the street. It jostled over a speed
bump, and turned onto another street with a row of yellow-sided
apartment townhomes. Their white trim seemed a little worn in
spots—mold-covered parts with a sad, dark gray patina. Lorna then
realized she’d never visited Jerry in the daytime, taking an extra
minute to remember the location of his unit on the row. A sign hung
in the window of the rental management company office for Jerry’s
complex. In small print were the words “A subsidiary of CI.” The
words were too small to read, even for lycan eyes, but she knew
what they said because of the wolf’s head accompanying them, the
corporation trademark. A couple of weeks ago, she’d never noticed
the presence of the corporation, and now it seemed to be
everywhere.

The mailbox on
the ground floor landing confirmed the location of the
apartment.

It must be convenient to have mail delivery.
Lorna trudged seven blocks to a
postal box.

The door to
Jerry’s apartment, like all the others, showed a clean, glossy
brown. The first on the right held a brass plaque with his name
engraved on it, a special feature of the complex. Hammering on the
door with her best authoritative cop knock, a prelude to possible
future role playing, she expected a prompt answer.

Something felt
awry. The loud knocking, which should have jarred the dead awake,
met a long silence. Then, from the other side of the door, her
enhanced hearing detected bursts of whispered conversation,
together with hurried, scurrying noises. At least two people were
in the apartment.

“Jerry,” she
called out. “It’s me, Lorna. Is everything okay in there?”

In the process
of reaching for her key, she stopped when the door cracked open. A
flushed Jerry peeked out from the minimal aperture. His expression
suggested, not too well, that she caught him unprepared for a
surprise visit. The behavior raised Lorna’s cop suspicions.
Moreover, he didn’t reckon on a lycan’s sense of smell.

A scent of
sexual activity wafted out the slim door opening.

Lorna tensed
and stood erect. With building anger, she peered beyond him into
the apartment, glimpsing a female figure crossing the open doorway
of a bedroom.

“What the
hell’s going on?” Over his protests that she had no right to barge
in to his apartment, Lorna pushed the door open. Storming into the
bedroom, she encountered the auxiliary volunteer who escorted him
the day he visited. The young woman knelt on the mattress, naked
except for a white thong. When she saw Lorna, she rocked back on a
pair of trim heels to arch her back, presenting two pert and erect
breasts in the full flush of youth, wearing the expression of
supreme confidence common to the young and foolish. Simpering lips
curled on the cherubic face. She pushed a stray lock of
corn-colored hair back into place. The vaporous artifacts of their
mingled scents saturated the room.

For a second,
the urge to make a blood kill swept through Lorna. Lycans didn’t
take betrayal well. She’d been faithful to him during their time
together, and she’d expected the same from him. At some level, the
idea of morphing, tearing them to shreds, and feeding on their
livers held appeal. But then she’d spend the rest of her life on
the run. With the whole world against them, ferals, in particular
the loners, didn’t last long. Besides, neither the climate of Tibet
nor the Upper Amazon held much appeal.

With a snap of
her head–the same kind she used to reset a wayward bang - she put
away the dark urges and settled on a more rational course of
action. “You’re out of here, sister.” She crossed the room, picking
up the auxiliary volunteer by the waistband of the thong, and
giving her the wedgie of a lifetime. With Lorna’s help, the younger
woman did a tip-toed, butt-in-the-air sort of quick step in the
direction of the door.

“Do something,
Jerry!” she screamed in a petulant prom queen soprano whine that in
most cases got what it wanted, but at the moment it wasn’t working
so well. Jerry remained wide-eyed and immobile at the other end of
the room.

With a free
hand, Lorna swept up, in reverse order as they went, her rival’s
clothes, abandoned on the way to the bedroom. After opening the
front door, she tossed the girl, along with her garments, on the
landing in an undignified pile of knees, skirt, elbows, camisole,
and tan thigh.

Lorna slammed
the door, cutting off a last whimpered request for Jerry to help.
Then she turned to face him. “Why?” she demanded.

“I can’t do it
anymore. You have no idea what it feels like to love someone who
never ages. At first it seemed like a perfect deal for me, until I
realized how twenty years from now, you’ll be the same, while I’ll
be middle-aged with thin hair and a gut. I’m familiar with the
situation between you and Mike Geurin. You’re–what–five years apart
in age? You could pass for his daughter. How tough is it for him to
see you every day, remembering how it used to be?”

Jerry had it
all wrong. In all likelihood, she and Mike would still be together
if he hadn’t filled up with anger and booze, leaving nothing for
her. “That’s not why we broke up,” she started to say, but he spoke
first. What he said stopped her cold.

“Your kind
live so long, while our lives are so short. It’s not fair.”

All of the
fight went out of her. “You’re right. It’s time for me to go.”
Taking a utility ring from her belt, she detached the key to his
apartment and tossed it on the mattress between them. “Be well,
Jerry.” She turned around sharply, and walked out.

On the
landing, the auxiliary volunteer had finished dressing. At Lorna’s
approach, she backed away in fear. “Peace,” Lorna said quietly.
“He’s all yours.” And she headed for the bus line.

It’s not fair
…
She turned the words over in her mind. The exact same thing her mom
had said the day she dropped her at the orphanage. Lorna’s dad and
brother, hybrids like Mom, waited in the car they’d borrowed from a
relative.

“Your kind
live so long, while our lives are so short. It’s not fair,” Mom had
complained to the intake staff. “In forty years, we’ll be old,
while she’ll be beautiful. We have too little time left to waste
fifteen of our precious years tending to a pre-emergent.”