reasons Cole would make an excellent agent. It took me quite a while. I finished with the two items I knew Pete couldn’t resist. “He currently knows seven languages and can pick up new ones in a snap because of his Sensitivity. Plus he’s an ace shooter. He started competing in high school. Still does when he can. And he rarely loses.”
“I thought you told me he was a private investigator. Isn’t there enough supernatural crime in Miami to keep him busy?”
“He doesn’t want to be a PI anymore. I tried to talk him out of this decision and realized he’s made it for all the right reasons. You know, Amanda Abn-Assan was a childhood friend of his. He said after losing her, he just can’t sit on the sidelines while somebody else chases down scumbags like her husband.”
Cole had just completed his first course of training when this mission came up. Since he spoke Chinese—and we didn’t—Pete figured he could help us out while we gave him some on-the-job experience. Vayl hadn’t seen it that way. I’d made some very intelligent, convincing arguments, none of which he’d bought. In the end I’d promised to personally drop off and pick up his dry-cleaning for a month, since he suspected the new delivery boy was rifling through his mail, and we had a deal.
I wondered idly if the shirt Vayl currently wore was a dry-clean-only model as he said, “I am not sure what kind of
We all moved into the living area to check with her. But with so little data to give the
“My books may have something,” Cassandra said. “I’ll check them.”
“Thank you,” Vayl said graciously. He pulled a bag of blood out of the refrigerator and poured it into a mug. In our time together I’d learned that he liked to let it slowly warm to room temperature. He said nuking it burned away most of the flavor. And while I thought my skin should’ve crawled at learning those kinds of details, it didn’t, because it implied a trust I felt honored to have earned.
Our noise had awakened Bergman, who sat rubbing his eyes on the couch I had decided to dub Mary-Kate. Cassandra sat across from him on its twin, Ashley, already leafing through a heavy old tome whose pages were thick as postal paper. Cole grabbed a piece of gum from a green bowl on the table beside her couch (um, Ashley) and dropped down beside her.
“I’m researching,” she told him sternly. “No funny comments about the pictures.”
“But look at that guy! He’s clearly constipated.”
“He eats people’s brains!”
“Exactly!”
I took a seat beside Bergman and gave him the once-over. His nap hadn’t done him much good. Though he shouldn’t, he reminded me of a bereaved parent. He dreamed, incubated, birthed his inventions, and was very choosy about where he let them go to work. Knowing some lunatic currently wore his baby, and that the Raptor was circling overhead, waiting to swoop in and hook it, probably made him feel desperately helpless.
Vayl, still standing in the kitchen, leaned his elbows on the counter that backed the banquette. He didn’t even clear his throat and suddenly we all snapped to attention. He said, “Before we leave for the festival site, I want to complete your briefing on Bergman’s armor. I will ask him to explain the details of its workings in a moment. As he said, it is an incredibly advanced piece of biotechnology that physically binds with its carrier. Once they are united, the only ways you can separate the suit from its wearer are to kill him, or administer a chemical bath that fools the suit into thinking he is dead.”
“I take it Mr. Bubble isn’t manufacturing that particular brand of bath additive just yet?” asked Cole.
Bergman sat up, then laid his head against the back of Mary-Kate despondently. “That’s what the experiments at White Sands were about. They were trying to target which chemicals administered in which way would throw the suit into death response.”
“But they haven’t had any luck yet?” I asked.
Bergman shook his head.
“Is it that big of a deal?” Cole inquired. “We’re going to kill the guy anyway.”
“You can try,” moaned Bergman.
Vayl nodded. “Go on,” he urged as he took a sip from his mug.
Bergman looked at each of us in turn, shook his head, and ran a hand across the reddish brown grizzle that had appeared on his jaw sometime in the past twenty-two hours. As he spoke, he gazed out the window at the glaring lights of Moe’s gas station and the city beyond. “The armor will repel every kind of projectile in existence. It’s impervious to fire, can’t be shredded, and can withstand pressures equal to those found in the deepest parts of the ocean.”
“What about cold?” I asked, feeling a rush of pleasure as Vayl looked at me proudly. Maybe his greatest power was the ability to leech heat from an area so fast people had frozen to death inside his circle of influence.
But Bergman shook his head again. “Cold will slow it down, but not destroy it.”
“Water?” Cole ventured.
“When the hood is closed, the armor becomes self-contained. It has its own internal breathing system that functions just fine when it’s immersed.”
“Tell us more about this hood,” I said.
“It activates automatically when it perceives the wearer’s in danger. It’s the only part of the armor that can be deactivated at will. The rest is permanent.”
Cassandra stirred. “You’ve begun at the end when the most important details may be at the beginning. What does this armor look like?”
Bergman shrugged. “We’ve had it on all kinds of animals, including fish, cats, and monkeys. It’s looked different on each one, probably because it binds differently to each depending on body chemistry, physical size, species type—”
