Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(158)

She was the one. The sureness of it steadied her, made her strong. He would see it in the end. She knew he would. He had to.

They belonged to each other. Forever.





34


So many rooms. Lily fumbled, inserting key after key, all unmarked, all perfectly similar. Room after room, some crowded with rotting furniture, some empty. The last three doors had not opened at all.

Click. Finally, one opened, and light floode





d out. Lily peered in and realized why the three doors had not opened. They’d been boarded shut, since a block of rooms had been remodeled into one long room, pure and clean and starkly white. Crowded with blinking, gleaming medical equipment—and beds. The beds were not empty.

She scanned them. Sixteen beds, ten occupied. She tiptoed in with a sense of dread, swiftly ascertained that Bruno was not there.

These were young people. That boy couldn’t be more than fourteen. The girl next to him looked even younger. What in the hell? They were strapped down. Leather restraints, webbing. Hands, feet, chests, heads. They wore goggles, earphones. They were covered with sensors, wires. They twitched and moaned.

She stood there, shivering. Bruno was not here. She had no business poking her nose into the filthy secret doings of these people. But something prodded her deeper into the room.

A couple of them seemed about twelve. She stopped at one who looked like she might be dying. A girl, Asian. Her body arched against her bonds, her head thrashed, her feet drummed. Her wrists were welted from her frantic struggling. The sounds coming out of her sounded like pleading, as if she were being beaten.

Bruno’s dreams. Oh, God. That was what the girl was experiencing. It came to her like a splash of ice water. The experiments that had been done on Bruno. Happening, in real time, to these kids.

Lily was tempted to unhook the girl, but then what? Would she scream? Would she see Lily as another opponent and attack her?

No. She couldn’t. The girl in the last bed, a blonde, was in the same condition as the Asian girl, thrashing and gurgling. The others just twitched and moaned, like dogs having running dreams.

Lily backed toward the door, murmuring a silent apology to them.

Bruno. Keep your mind on Bruno. No more distractions.

She peed out into the corridor, unnerved to find the coast still clear. What the hell were they all up to? She was too insignificant for them to bother with, maybe? Great. She darted to the next door. The next. The corridor made an L-curve, revealed another hall, just as long.

She worked her way doggedly down the hall. On the last door, the key clicked and turned and admitted her into a dim room, shrouded by heavy velvet drapes. A suite. She had to check connecting rooms. All this effort would be in vain if she missed Bruno out of sheer sloppiness.

The place felt deserted. The connecting room was a bathroom, with a door on either end. She peeked into the next room and saw two cribs in the light filtering through the narrow strip between the drapes.

She moved closer. Children were in them. Babies. They were very still. Pale. Oh, God. She crept closer, hung over the first crib, her hand clamped to her shaking mouth. Please. Don’t let them be dead.

They appeared to be alive. She touched a cheek. Cool, not cold. Toddlers, not babies. She wasn’t much of a judge, but she figured this one was about two. So was the other.

Two plastic travel bucket seats, with clips for fastening into a car, were perched by the wall. They had webbing restraints. No machines were hooked up to the babies, thank God. Then she saw the needles on the table. Sterile physiological solution, a clutter of powder-encrusted drug vials. A baby monitor. She spotted the vidcam. Someone could be watching. Sounding the alarm. Bells ringing, feet pounding.

She reached into a crib, held her hand in front of the child’s nose, wishing she had a mirror. She could barely feel hot moisture, blooming with each exhalation. So slight, but they were alive.

It reminded her of the times she’d tried to find Howard’s pulse, Howard’s breath, amid a litter of hypodermics and other junkie trash. A sick, stomach-clenching memory.

Babies. God help her. She could afford to help these little ones even less than the teenagers. They were twenty-five to thirty pounds each, and fast asleep. If they did wake up, they’d scream the house down.

If she could find Bruno, maybe she could carry one, and he could carry the other. The authorities would have to help save the other kids. She closed the door quietly and continued with the doors. Empty . . . empty . . . empty.

Then a key caught, turned . . . and the door creaked as she shoved it open. She practically fell inside.

Bruno lay on the floor, tied hand and foot, his dark eyes open but strangely empty, as if he didn’t recognize her. His face was white. Lip swollen and split, nostrils encrusted with blood. His eyes were hollow, shadowed.

But it was Bruno, and he was alive.





“Oh, thank God. Thank God.” She ran to him, sobbing like an idiot, fumbling to separate the little knife on the key chain of her bunch of keys. She was babbling, incoherent. She sawed at the hard plastic cuffs that cut deeply into his empurpled wrists. Then the ankles.

He rolled up onto his side, sucking in air, a wheezing gasp of pain. She helped him sit up and hugged him, like she’d been dreaming of doing ever since she woke up in her cell. But he was stiff in her arms, like a block of wood. All his vibrant, buzzing vitality gone.

A horrified notion occurred to her. “Oh, God, are you injured? Your shoulders? Or your back? Did I hurt you when I cut the cuffs?”