Basilisk (The Korsak Brothers #2)(47)

In the SUV, I sulked and nursed my wounded pride. The bruise on my shin from the woman’s shoe would be faded already and on the verge of disappearing altogether, but my temper remained dark. The little monster deserved tonsillitis. Too bad. I should’ve left well enough alone. Saul was yukking it up in the backseat while Stefan tried and failed to look sympathetic behind the wheel. “Why did she do that?” I mumbled around a mouthful of chili cheese fries. “I didn’t do anything wrong.” I’d actually done something right. I’d saved Damien from an unnecessary surgery. I missed my movies, but thanks to that kid there was one I wouldn’t miss. All that boy needed was a tricycle, because he already had Satan in his corner.

“You called her sweet little baby boy a demon from Hell. Worse yet, a shit. Moms don’t like that.” Stefan swallowed his laughter in to the most unconvincing cough I’d ever heard.

“I did not.” Okay, yes, I did call him a shit, but not a demon. “I said he screamed like a demon from Hell. I didn’t say he was a demon from Hell. He’s Satan at least. I was assaulted by the Omen and you have no pity at all, do you?” I frowned.

“You faced down the Russian mob and the Institute and you can’t handle a toddler?” Stefan grinned. “How much pity do you think you deserve?”

Finishing the fries and with the tacos long gone, I decided now was a good time to talk to someone less judgmental, in addition to one with no knowledge of the attack of the evil taco thief. What was I anyway? Meals on Wheels? His mother had money and taco-buying ability. Obviously she had no foresight or spirit of preparation in the face of the purely sinister demands of her own child, but it wasn’t as if anyone could hold me accountable for that.

If Ariel wasn’t online, I’d see if there was any suspicious rash of deaths in Laramie, other than the ones I’d already found dated last week. There hadn’t been any more yet, but with Peter and the others there, and according to the Institute’s GPS tracker they were, it was only a matter of time. I grabbed my laptop and opened it as I tipped back the cup for the last swallow of Mountain Dew. I loved caffeine almost as much as grease and sugar. Stefan took in the sight and drawled, “Greek Gods live on Mount Olympus. Geek Gods live on Mountain Dew.”

“Drug dealer, pilot, ex-assassin-in-training, genius, geek, and hot.” I didn’t bother to gift him with a glance. “Can you claim that many talents?” I started typing and hacked into the nearest secure WiFi. The free, unsecured kind didn’t last past the parking lot of the coffee shop or bookstore that hosted it.

“That is damn talented,” Saul said from behind. “Maybe I should think of hiring you as a subcontractor. God knows I make no moral judgments. I make money. That’s it. Things are much simpler that way.”

“Simple in the way you assisted Stefan in liberating me from a heavily guarded, virtual fort at the risk of your blindingly horrific neon shirt?” I asked as I zipped through a firewall, typing on. God knew I couldn’t forget that shirt.

“It was a lot of mon—You liked that shirt?” I turned my head to see him give a pleased grin and then change it into a scowl as he finished his excuse. “It was a lot of money. It had nothing to do with saving your polysyllabic ass. It was only about the money. It’s never about anything but the money, you brat.”

I dismissed him, saying, “You’re lying. Your voice is half a pitch higher, pupils slightly dilated, you touched your collar twice, and you said never—never means at least once if not always. I could go on. Would you like me to?” Saul had a soft spot to have done what he did, one beyond his friendship with Stefan. I wondered what it was. I didn’t ask, but I wondered.

I also didn’t give him a chance to reply. Instilling fear in your subject at first opportunity ensures better behavior faster. In this case, better behavior would be Saul no longer annoying me. “Besides your refusal to admit morality, we could talk about your extreme womanizing. Overcompensation and denial so blatant it should require little comment, except to you perhaps.” I studied him intensely. “Psychology is a hobby of mine. I could produce some notes for you to study. They might assist in your personal development. Except for your love of spandex. I can’t comment on that. It’s too horrifying.”

“He’s shitting me, right?” Saul directed the question to Stefan with more than a little desperation.

“Oh, I very well could and you would never know it,” I answered placidly, before Stefan had a chance, and returned to my computer. “I could give you an Oedipal complex in less than three minutes if you want to put it to the test. In six minutes I could turn you into an agoraphobic germophobe with profound hoarding proclivities. Those last two aren’t easily combined, but I have faith I could pull it off. It’s up to you.”

“Yeah, thanks, but I’ll pass,” Saul muttered; then, more softly, in hopes I couldn’t hear, he added, “Brat.”

“Grown men can’t be brats.” I sent Ariel an IM. “We can be bastards, though. Do you like your hair, Saul? And your ability to semi-please women with your equally semi-erections? Do you want to keep those?”

Ahhh, and there it was.

Silence.

The next hour remained blessedly quiet. Ariel wasn’t around and Laramie hadn’t suffered any clusters of peculiar if natural-appearing deaths for eight days, the same as when I’d looked into it yesterday. Five heart attacks, six aneurysms, and four people who abruptly fell over dead with no cause determined. It had all happened last Wednesday and it reeked of Institute tactics. Leave no sign behind . . . unless your owner wanted to send a message. Peter and the others were following training, but they’d stop soon. Where was the satisfaction in having all that power if you couldn’t get the recognition—the fear—it deserved? There would be more deaths and they would become more and more bizarre and obviously unnatural. There would be more wings of blood when Wendy cut loose—flocks and flocks of them. She, without any help at all, was perfectly capable of wiping Laramie off the face of the map. There would be red, red wings as far as the eye could see.