City Under the Moon Read online

  Kenzie nodded, her eyes still coming to focus.

  Richard reached for the muzzle on her face.

  “What are you doing?” Jessica snapped.

  “Relax,” he said, undoing the clasps.

  “Thank you,” Kenzie said, closing her eyes as the air reached her cheeks.

  “Dr. Kenzie, can I call you Melissa?” Richard asked.

  “Yes, of course.” Her tongue was thick. Richard held a cup of water to her lips. “Oh praise the Lord, thank you.”

  Kenzie winced as a nurse stuck her arm, filling the first of a half-dozen empty vials with her blood. The techs moved silently, making no eye contact as they clipped her fingernails and scraped her feet. All the while, Richard kept her focused and calm.

  “That’s nothing to worry about,” he said. “It’s all precautionary. Can you tell us what you remember about your accident?”

  “I was in the hospital. It was crowded. We had a VIP. The police were interfering. They were rude. There was a woman officer. We were talking. And then… I can’t remember.” Her eyes went distant, as if there were other memories, ones she didn’t want to speak of, and then she whispered, “Nightmares.”

  “Yes, well, you were injured, but you’re going to be okay. We’re taking care of you,” Richard gently answered. “Can you tell us what the nightmares were about?”

  “I… It was dark. I was in a forest, I think. I was chasing something.”

  “What where you chasing, Melissa?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember. I think I was hungry.”

  The nurse pulled the first vial off her syringe. Richard’s curious eyes followed as a tech took the blood sample and beelined out of the room. Jessica nudged him to return his attention to their patient—she knew Kenzie was a doctor herself, and dangerously privy to the Tanners’ unspoken communications.

  “Dissociative amnesia?” Kenzie asked, self-diagnosing. “Fugue state?”

  “May be, Melissa,” Richard reassured her with his prescription wink. “You’re a good doctor, but let us take care of you now. Your only job is to relax while we run some tests.”

  “Why tests?”

  “Nothing to worry about. We’ll take good care of you, I promise.”

  “I have to call my mother,” Kenzie pleaded. “She lives by herself—“

  “We’ve contacted your mother; she knows you’re okay,” Richard said, so adept with a casual lie. “More water?” Richard held the cup toward Kenzie’s lips.

  She winced as she tilted forward. “Neck. My neck.”

  A massive blister sat in the pit of her left collarbone. It was immediately clear to Jessica that it wasn’t an infected laceration. This was a contact reaction, perhaps dermatitis or urticaria. Richard shifted Kenzie’s necklace aside and prodded the wound through his rubber gloves.

  “You have some inflammation here, nothing to be concerned about.”

  “It burns,” she rasped.

  And the lesion was spreading. A new patch of red grew before their eyes. Richard moved the necklace again, to examine the new—

  The necklace.

  “This is silver?” Jessica asked as she pulled it over Kenzie’s head.

  “Please don’t. It was a gift from my mother.”

  “I’ll put it right here, Melissa. It’ll be safe,” Jessica said, laying the necklace on the bedside tray. The pendant rattled on the metal, calling everyone’s attention to her shaking hands. “This is sterling silver, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Jessica tilted Kenzie’s head for a better look. The spread had stopped.

  Any child knew that werewolves were supposed to be allergic to silver—at least, any child who watched their creature double features. But in the real world, silver is antimicrobial. We use it as a disinfectant. We eat off of it.

  Silver should not cause lesions.

  Richard’s eyes silently warned her to stay calm.

  Six

  United Nations Plaza

  New York

  December 31

  8:58 a.m.

  FBI Special Agent Brianna Tildascow was deep in the spellbinding throes of a perfect meatball sandwich: silken ground beef cut with a perfect balance of bread crumbs and Parmesan, dripping with spicy meat-infused tomato gravy, draped in thick mozzarella and nestled in a crispy, chewy Italian roll. The masterpiece steamed off a robust bouquet in the twelve-degree morning air.

  The vendor had just plugged in his street cart when she arrived. He was the kind of Italian who’d bleed tomato gravy if you cut him, and Tildascow was contemplating doing just that if he hadn’t canned it with the breakfast talk and made her a meatball special. His eyebrows furrowed with dirty thoughts as she demanded extra extra cheese.

  Most women—especially young ones—felt uncomfortable when they sensed a man sizing them up. Tildascow took it as a compliment. Hell, she took pleasure in it. The way she saw it, men always got the ass end of society’s sexual hang-ups. If it was a crime for a middle-aged man to see a 14 year-old pop starlet as a sex object, why was it okay for those girls to dress like whores? What, exactly, did they expect?

  She was careful not to lead anyone on, of course. And she knew how to handle herself if a guy took it too far. But when handled properly, the art of flirting was the same as interrogation: Read your target, give them as much as they need, take as much as you want, and hope you were graceful enough to improve their day. A little validation could go a very long way.

  She bit into the sandwich and cooed heartily for the vendor’s delight. Yummmmm. A hundred percent in the tip jar, and then she headed east across First Avenue.

  “Happy new year!” he called with a wave.

  “You too,” she replied. It sounded like “oofoo” through her stuffed mouth, but what the guy really wanted was the wink and the toss of her curly blond hair. Better than the tip, and it cost her nothing. Leverage everywhere.

  Tildascow climbed the wide concrete stairs to the elevated promenade of the United Nations Headquarters, which was just across the street from the scene of Holly Cooke’s attack. Dealing with the UN was always a pain in the—

  A series of honks turned her attention back toward First Avenue.

  Cars had swerved to avoid a woman who’d stumbled into the heavy morning traffic. She was soaked head to toe in blood, her tattered hospital gown exposing all the bits and pieces.

  Tildascow drew her weapon and raced back down the stairs and into the street, holding up a hand to traffic. “FBI!” she called out to the woman. “Put your hands in the air and move to the sidewalk!”

  But the woman didn’t acknowledge her. She continued across First Avenue, heading west toward 44th, shambling like some kind of zombie, oblivious to the growing shouts, honks, and camera phones. Tildascow stayed with her, keeping her 1911 trained. “Ma’am. Can you hear me?”

  The Jane Doe was in her late 50’s. Face coated in bloody grime and raked with tear streaks. Her right eye had been beaten glassy; right shoulder hung at the wrong angle from a broken collarbone. More injuries beneath the gown, but nothing inhibiting mobility. With each step, her bloodstained feet peeled from the asphalt.

  “Get out of the way!” Tildascow yelled at the clustering onlookers. She kept pace with the woman as they crossed onto 44th Street, moving west and away from UN Plaza.

  Sirens blared in the distance. As long as this woman remained calm, Tildascow would wait for the police and their stun guns. She wasn’t posing any kind of threat.

  “My… my…” she mumbled deliriously. “Where… where is my…”

  “What’s your name, ma’am?” Tildascow yelled.

  No acknowledgment. More onlookers crossed the street, pacing in front of the two of them, laughing and taking pictures. Fucking idiots. “FBI. Step across the street and get out of the way!”

  It was about to get worse: A news crew had been reporting from in front of the Millennium Hotel. Probably an update on—

  Ohmigod.

  “Where is he?” the
woman whimpered, her drained eyes wandering in every direction. “Where is he?”

  The woman was Holly Cooke.

  “Where’s my baby?”

  Seven

  CDC Headquarters

  Diagnostic Study Laboratory

  Atlanta, Georgia

  December 31

  9:42 a.m.

  “She definitely has something,” Jessica Tanner said.

  “But what is it?” Richard mumbled.

  Sure enough, an unidentified virus had been located in Melissa Kenzie’s blood. Jessica examined an analytical presentation of the pathogen, spread across several flat-screen monitors, as Richard and half a dozen members of his virology team peered over her shoulders. It was as if they were waiting for her to conjure some kind of magical diagnosis.

  The raw data from the pan-viral microarray analysis of RNA-Kenzie01 displayed as thousands of colored dots across a black matrix, each representing oligonucleotides, or features of the virus’ DNA. It resembled a nighttime cityscape, with all of its beauty and mystery.

  Data analysis suggested the pathogen was related to several disparate viruses at once. When the comparison fields were narrowed, the computer offered no codification whatsoever.

  “No homology,” Richard grumbled.

  She turned to the others: dumb faces across the board. “Can I see it?” she asked.

  The microarray analysis was replaced by an image of the virus itself, as seen on a low-temperature micrograph at 65,000 times magnification.

  “Look at the shape of the capsid,” Richard said. “So bizarre.”

  The capsid is the protein core containing the virus’ genetic material. They were usually shaped like helixes or twenty-sided polygons called icosahedrons. Variations weren’t unprecedented, but this particular shape had never been recorded. It looked like two flat pentagrams had been used to make a sandwich, and they’d been twisted to scrunch the filling.

  “It’s a pentagrammic crossed-antiprism,” explained one of the virologists.

  On its side, the capsid’s bookends resembled five-pointed stars. “Pentagrammic crossed-antiprism,” Jessica repeated.

  “It’s RNA-based, and enveloped,” said another of the virologists. Some viruses have protective envelopes, which are often created from stolen portions of the host cell’s membranes and used as disguise to facilitate further infiltration. Enveloped viruses tend to be fragile, so they don’t live on doorknobs or toilet seats, and they can’t spread through the air. Good news.

  And that was where the good news stopped.

  After her bizarre conversation with Rebekkah Luft, Jessica had assembled a team of physicists to match the spectral qualities of last night’s moonlight over New York. Using diffraction gratings and spectrophotometers (and guesswork to account for atmospheric scattering and other variables), her team adjusted the light’s frequency, polarity and phase to create a “moon lamp.”

  Werewolf, meet moon.

  The effect was… humbling.

  Photocatalytic reactions in the virus caused a cascade of effects, many of which they couldn’t yet track. The result, however, was profound: rapid shifts in the host’s DNA.

  The alterations were located in sequences known as “junk DNA,” so-called because they had no apparent function. Junk DNA were thought to be evolutionary artifacts, scars on the human genome caused by millions of factors over thousands of generations.

  Junk DNA sequences weren’t implicitly benign, however. Any of them might contain undiscovered homeoboxes, the master switches used by cells as instruction manuals to build the body. Flipping one of these switches might result in mutagenesis, or the creation of genetic mutations.

  Mutations could materialize as subtle inter-species discrepancies, like height, weight or skin color. Or, in theory, they could manifest major organism transformations. Applied mutagenesis might someday replace human parts with those of a bird or a plant… or even take leaps through the evolutionary chain. One team in Canada was attempting to devolve chickens into “Chickenosaursus Rex.”

  “I can’t wait to see what happens when the virus catalyzes inside her body,” Richard said.

  Jessica was at a loss for words. “This is—”

  “We don’t know what this is.”

  But at the same moment, someone behind him had a different answer: “Dangerous.”

  Eight

  FBI New York Division Headquarters

  Jacob K. Javits Federal Office Building

  26 Federal Plaza, Manhattan

  December 31

  10:42 a.m.

  TV crews had set up camp in front of 26 Fed. Turned out that a half-naked woman photobombing the morning news had caught the media’s attention.

  Tildascow hopped out of her taxi a block away from the office. Counterterrorism work necessitated anonymity, so media attention wouldn’t do.

  A couple of male reporters took notice as she approached an unmarked entrance. The blond curls tended to draw the eyes of men. But she was forgotten like a deflowered prom queen when an FDNY ambulance turned the corner, siren and lights blazing. The red and white truck slogged through the congregation and into the underground parking structure. Security staved off the press as they strained for a peek at the mystery passenger.

  That would be Tildascow’s appointment.

  She took the discretionary stairs to the lobby, where flustered NYPD plainclothes were grousing at a liaison. The Holly Cooke case had a stratospheric profile after it was advertised on live TV, so politically, the cops had to fight for access even if they knew it wouldn’t come. Tildascow would’ve liked to include them, but she had no time for diplomacy.

  She ignored the escalating argument and swiped her access card at an unmarked door. It unlocked with a buzz, letting her into a sterile hallway that served as an access point to sensitive facilities. On her left was “the cage,” where confiscated materials were catalogued and stored. Across the hall was the server station, a massive temperature-regulated facility housing backups for the regional government virtual private network servers. She’d spent a week in this room reconstructing the tracks of a deft Taliban hacker. Farther down the hall was a vault containing the most substantial armory in Manhattan.

  A door with a keypad lock led to a security portal granting access to the holding cells. She descended into the humid sub-basement, taupe tile under sickly seventies-era lights, and arrived at an iron-on-brick gate where she displayed her badge to a camera.

  Beyond the bars, she could see a flurry of CDC EIS officers in banana-colored biohazard suits. Seemed like overkill, but that was probably smarter than underkill. She was greeted at the gate by a guard and a banana, who insisted she wear one herself.

  Arguing would just slow things down. The alcohol-and-plastic stench of the thing wasn’t as bad as the fact that it weighed a ton.

  An EIS Officer escorted her onto the medical wing of the cell block, where all six infirmary cells were occupied by victims of last night’s animal attacks. A few were up, alert and scared. Others lay in gurneys, mummified in bandages.

  Tildascow’s escort directed her to the last cell on the left, where CDC techs were hurriedly prepping monitors around their star patient.

  Holly Cooke was strapped to an upright gurney. Thin-skinned, anemic, and covered in bruises, her 52 years had finally caught up with her.

  EIS had cleaned her up and documented her contusions, breaks, and sprains. They found eight gunshot wounds matching the shots Tildascow had put into that animal last night, but they looked like they’d undergone a month’s worth of healing. She also had a nasty fracture to her right orbital socket, which could have happened when she (it?) hit the window.

  When Cooke saw her in the suit, one more faceless stormtrooper, she dropped her head and continued sobbing. Tildascow fought the gasmask until she was free of its plastic choke. The hall’s stench of bleach made her eyes water.

  “Holly,” she called through the cell bars. “Holly Cooke?”

  Cooke’s
eyes flickered, but she didn’t have the strength to respond.

  “My name is Brianna Tildascow. I’m with the FBI. I know this is scary, but these people are going to take good care of you. You’re going to be okay, your husband is flying in.”

  “My son,” she rasped.

  “That’s what I’m here for. I’m going to find him. I need your help.”

  Cooke winced as an EIS guy pricked her arm with a ferocious needle.

  “Could you hold off on that for a second?” Tildascow asked him.

  He searched for a word to summarize his incredulity, finally settling on a venomous “No.”

  Game, set and match to that guy.

  “I just want my son,” Cooke whimpered. “Please.” Her head wobbled as she tried to see Tildascow through her good left eye.

  “We’ll find him, I promise. I just have to understand what happened to you. Do you remember the attack, or anything from the hospital last night?”

  “I…” She took a deep, sobbing breath. “I want to go home.”

  “We’ll get you home as soon as possible, Holly. I promise. But I need you to help me try to find your son. Can you remember the attack at all? Or anything from last night?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I want to go home.”

  Her words lingered as Tildascow squinted.

  Boy, she dropped the concern for her son pretty quick. Now she’s focused on going home?

  “Do you remember what happened last night, Holly? At the hospital?”

  “I… don’t.”

  Cooke didn’t look like she was stumped. Not if Tildascow’s read was good. She looked like she’d been shut up, like a lawyer had covered her mic and whispered into her ear.

  “Try, Holly. It’s very important.”

  Cooke gazed down and to the right. Her profile said she was right-handed, so casting her eyes in that direction suggested internal dialogue. But Tildascow’s interrogation training was hardly necessary to read this sham.

  Cooke was inventing a story.