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thin cotton had the power to grant him the warmth he lacked. In a few moments more he would pass
directly before Urla's hiding place.
But the redcap's anticipated feast was not to be. Another great black chariot turned down the street,
its night lamps pinning the boy in their beams. Urla saw its prey stop, hopeful once more, as the car drew
level with him, and the door opened. The boy stepped forward, and a mortal tall, tall, with the stink of
Cold Iron about him rose up out of the car and grabbed Urla's prey, dragging him into the car as he
began, too late, to struggle and cry.
The door shut. The chariot moved away, more quickly now, belching foul gasses that made Urla
cough.
No! They will not have him! He is mine!
Snarling its disappointment, the redcap wrapped itself in shadows and began to trot after the black
chariot that had taken its prey.
"I said no alkies, goddammit! Which word don't you goons understand?"
The tall dark man with the sleepy eyes blinked at her. Jeanette wished she could kick him, but she
didn't dare, quite. She took a deep breath and tried again, marshalling her hard-won and inadequate
social skills.
"Look, Elkanah." Was the name on the tag first, last, or even his? Not her problem. "Most of these
people are fine. But you see that one in the corner?"
Jeanette gestured toward the monitor in the Security Room. It showed the space they called Large
Primate Containment a euphemism for the Black Labs and holding cells set up for human
experimentation. Just now it was dressed to look like a police holding cell an environment she was sure
all of her guests were more than familiar with. Junkies, rentboys, and hookers, the lot of them, and that
was fine with her.
Except for the man in the corner, the one in the tattered vomit-stained trenchcoat, his face
long-unshaven and caved in upon missing teeth and malnutrition. The others gave him a wide berth, and
she could imagine why. He probably stank to high heaven.
"That guy is a juicehead. I can't use him. His liver's already shot to hell drugs process through the
liver, Elkanah, did you know that? Alcohol's legal by the time a juicehead gets to the street he's
already a walking corpse; all his insides pickled and shot to hell. I told you guys when you went out: no
alkies, no crazy street people. Junkies and whores, that's what I told you to get."
The man in the uniform of Threshold Special Security blinked down at her, as impassive as a
cigar-store Indian, and for a moment Jeanette didn't think he'd heard her. Didn't any of Robert's
hardboys speak English, for God's sweet sake?
"So what do you want me to do with him, Ms. Campbell?" Elkanah finally said. His voice was slow
and deep and thoughtful, and despite her fury, Jeanette did not for one moment make the mistake of
thinking he was stupid. Stupid people did not rise to key positions in Threshold's Black Ops.
She took a deep breath.
"I don't care what you do with him. Throw him in the East River for all I care. But get rid of him
before lights out, because if he's still there tomorrow when my Judas Goat goes in to offer these losers a
trip out of this world, I am going to be seriously pissed. And when I'm pissed, Robert Lintel is pissed.
Are we communicating?"
"Yes, Ms. Campbell. I'm sorry about the confusion."
He wasn't sorry and there'd been no confusion. Jeanette knew that perfectly well. But she'd won,
and that was all that mattered.
"Okay," she said. "I'll be in my office if anyone needs me."
She turned away and walked quickly out of Security before this Elkanah person could guess how
scared she was. When she'd been running with the Sinner Saints, she could have eaten corporation
rent-muscle like Elkanah for breakfast, but it had been years since she'd had to face off anything but
chimps and wimp lab technicians, and, unlike riding a Harley, some skills didn't stay with you forever.
Security and personnel were Robert's problem. They always had been. She supplied the science.
He supplied the money and muscle. That was the deal. So why did she have to do everything around
Threshold herself?
She reached the safety of her own private lab and closed the airlock behind her gratefully, irritation
and a feeling of narrow escape both fading as she surveyed her private kingdom. Nobody would bother
her in here. Nobody would dare.
The room had been cleansed of all traces of the chimps' occupation, though they were still looking
for the one that had vanished. The two that had died instantly had been autopsied, and she'd found about
what she'd expected: massive stroke and brain hemorrhage, the inevitable side effect of chemical Russian
roulette.
The other two the ones that had manifested the bizarre powers had also died, but several hours
later and of something that looked surprisingly like starvation, though how the old female could have died
of starvation with all she'd eaten was an interesting question. She was the one who'd survived the longest,
and Jeanette was looking forward to seeing those autopsy results, but right now both bodies were in
freezers awaiting their turn. Ramchandra had better work fast, because in a day or so those chimps were
going to have a lot of company.
Jeanette fully expected that the people Robert had gotten for her off the New York streets would
die of the drug the same way the chimps had. That was what lab trials were for to find out what killed
them and to try to refine the next batch even more. She'd obviously found the right button to push, the
one she'd been looking for ever since she was a teenager.
Now all I have to do is keep their heads from exploding. A few more hours alone would clean
her test subjects out of whatever they'd been using, then another of Robert's goons would be thrown in
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