46

San Diego, California

Maybe it was the time she spent with her sister, or maybe it was the fact that the inevitable trip was finally underway and there was nothing else to plan or prepare for, but Zoey passed out cold the minute she sank into the Gulfstream’s comfy leather seat. She didn’t wake until the wheels touched down and she heard Boris the Destroyer meowing inside the cat carrier, probably from the change in pressure.

Now they’re taxiing across a small private airfield that looks similar to the one she took off from in Tulsa. Three Chevy Suburbans with heavily tinted windows are waiting for her like she’s the president or something. She doesn’t recognize any of the people standing next to the cars. There are a few security types who look and are dressed similar to the guys on board with her. But these guys are younger. The one standing in front has really thick sandy-blond hair, and he’s dressed in ratty jeans and a T-shirt for some band that looks like it hasn’t put out an album in years. His face seems vaguely familiar, but she can’t quite place him.

The stairs descend, and the guards gesture for her to go first, one of them taking her suitcase. Before she reaches the bottom, the kid in the T-shirt is coming toward her, taking the cat carrier out of her hands.

“Hey, I’m Bailey. Is there a cat in here?”

“Yes.”

“I’m allergic, but I’ll carry him anyway because you’re probably kind of freaked out right now.”

“I’m glad someone said it.”

“Excited about your new job?”

“I wasn’t really looking for a new job, but they gave me some options and this sounded like the best one.”

“Yeah, that seems like their style. By the way, Luke’s my brother. The guy who helped rescue you.”

He must be referring to the guy who was waiting for her and Charley back on the ranch. Now she realizes why the guy before her looks familiar. “I remember him. So this is, like, a family business?”

“Sort of. Maybe. I mean, sure.”

They reach the first Suburban and Bailey places the cat carrier in the cargo bay. The guards follow suit with her bags. Well, at least she’s being treated well. But Bailey’s stopped with his hand on the door handle to the back seat, studying her closely. She’s about to break the silence by asking him if she’d said something wrong when he says, “Have they told you what you’re going to be doing?”

“Basically, yeah.”

“It’s disturbing. Like really disturbing, especially considering what you just went through. I mean, I can go basically anywhere on the internet I want. I have to go to dark places and I collect massive amounts of data, but I can’t go through it all myself, and sometimes we need actual human intelligence to interpret it. That’s what you’d be doing if you go this route.”

“If I can do anything to stop someone else from going through what I went through, I’ll do it.” They’re unrehearsed, these words, and come out of her with a strength that convinces her that maybe she really did pick the best option. Maybe this is the best way to let her new employers ensure she remain silent about every impossible thing she’s witnessed.

Bailey nods, then smiles. “All right, then. Let’s hunt some monsters.”

As she steps into the Suburban, Zoey wonders for the first time if the inevitable result of mortgaging your life to write books about magic is that you’ll eventually cross paths with someone who seems to practice it.

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

ZYPRAXON. An experimental drug invented by Dr. Noah Turlington that produces bursts of incredible physical strength and nearly instantaneous healing in animal test subjects, but only when the drug is triggered by a stimulus that terrifies the subject. All attempts to replicate the results of animal tests in human subjects caused the human subject’s swift and gruesome death. With one notable exception—Charlotte Rowe.

PARADRENALINE. Partially resembling a hormone, paradrenaline is believed responsible for the bursts of incredible strength and rapid healing Zypraxon causes. It is a never-before-seen chemical compound found only in the bodies of those in whom Zypraxon has been triggered. For paradrenaline to remain active and extractable from the subject, the subject must survive well after the trigger event. The medical implications of paradrenaline are vast and extend far beyond its connection to Zypraxon.

TRIGGER EVENT. An event or stimulus of any kind that produces an acute sense of panic and terror on the part of the human subject. Only events of this magnitude are capable of causing Zypraxon to trigger the synthesis of paradrenaline in the subject’s bloodstream. Typically, subjects must feel as if their lives are in immediate and mortal jeopardy or experience intense and almost debilitating physical pain.

TRIGGER WINDOW. Following a trigger event, the subject experiences incredible physical strength and nearly instantaneous healing for a period of three hours. The window is slightly shorter in nonhuman subjects.

THE CONSORTIUM. An alliance of several defense industry contractors and the CEO of Graydon Pharmaceuticals. It has been convened only twice. Once, when Dr. Noah Turlington, then an employee of Graydon Pharmaceuticals, first brought Zypraxon’s implications to the attention of its CEO, Cole Graydon. And second, after a covert and unsanctioned field test determined Charlotte Rowe was the only human test subject in which Zypraxon functioned effectively. The Consortium’s goal is to ensure absolute secrecy around all tests of both Zypraxon and paradrenaline, while also providing the vast funding required for the experiments in a manner that does not raise red flags on the accounting ledgers of their individual companies. In exchange, members are allowed to exploit the benefits of Zypraxon and paradrenaline that prove relevant to their specific industries.

PROJECT BLUEBIRD 1.0. First initiated to discover if Zypraxon could be used in humans, it was hastily terminated by Cole Graydon after all four volunteer test subjects went lycan. The test subjects were all male with backgrounds in military special operations.

GOING LYCAN. The phrase used to describe the gruesome acts of self-mutilation the majority of human test subjects performed when Zypraxon was triggered in their bloodstream. The majority of these acts culminate in the human subject targeting their own head in a fatally destructive manner.

PROJECT BLUEBIRD 2.0. Initiated after it was discovered that Charlotte Rowe was the only human in whom Zypraxon seemed to work properly. In exchange for the opportunity to conduct field tests that generate extractable paradrenaline in Rowe’s bloodstream, The Consortium finances and provides the logistical support for Rowe to hunt serial killers, posing as a potential victim to ensure abduction to their kill sites so that she might use the resulting trigger events to overpower them and leave them exposed to the arrival of law enforcement.

THE HUNT LIST. A database listing individuals worldwide who regularly purchase chemicals that can be used to aid the rapid decomposition or complete destruction of a human body and who have no legitimate personal or professional reason to do so. This database is compiled through a sophisticated series of computer hacks of both public and private records that are arguably unethical and entirely illegal. The fifteen individuals on the list who make qualifying purchases most frequently occupy what is called “The Red Tier.”