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“I can’t keep you on the cult case. It’s a conflict of interest.”
“Then you’d better lock me up.” I clenched the fist of my damaged hand, surprised at how hard it was to move at all. “They took Jude from me. Rigged some sort of death curse that he sacrificed himself to save our entire team from. I’m not setting it aside no matter what you demand. I’m not walking away.” I met her gaze. “I’m not afraid of following him.”
Hanna sighed. “I don’t want to put your team at risk while you play blaze of glory.”
“I would never risk my team.”
“And if I assign them on rotation to keep an eye on you?”
I shrugged, feeling like I was already a bug in a jar. “Can’t promise you’ll like everything you hear.”
“You used to be my best Agent, Mao.”
And she’d been the one to get Jude transferred to our team. “Second best. Jude put together pieces before I could open the puzzle. You wanted that for our team.”
“Bad luck follows bad decisions, Mao. Right now, you’re making both. And my bad luck is you’re still the best I’ve got.”
17
JUDE
The stench of antiseptic and formaldehyde clawed up my throat, bringing a wave of nausea that left me lightheaded. I clenched my jaw, fighting back bile as my head throbbed, a deep, pounding ache behind my eyes. My arm throbbed with it.
Several long breaths passed as I tried not to upchuck my liver. I focused on the physical. Anchored myself to it.
A vague white noise of buzzing fluorescent lights, layered over a deeper hum that reminded me of a refrigerator. A compressor kicking on. Off. On. The solid, hard surface beneath me was cold and metallic against my bare shoulder. The chill seeped through my shirt, raising goosebumps. And a biting pain in my left wrist, sharp and insistent, drew my focus. Like something pinching too tightly, skin pulled, bone grinding against metal.
I blinked into too-bright lights, winced, and tried to place where I was.
For a long stretch of too-fast heartbeats, I stared up at what I thought was a hospital ceiling. White tiles with the little holes, the fluorescent fixtures buzzing overhead. But the room was too large and quiet for a hospital.
Then the metal wall of body coolers registered.
What the hell? Was I in the morgue?
A half dozen feet away, another table lay parallel to mine. Also occupied.
The body on it stared at me, mouth gaping. Jaw unhinged in a silent scream.
For a few seconds, I thought it was another person like me. Someone waking up in the morgue for no explainable reason, confused and terrified.
Then I saw, below the gaping maw of its jaw, a nasty spread of torn flesh that laid open the muscle and bone beneath. Its head was nearly severed, hanging at a wrong angle, held on by little more than sinew and spite.
And it was moving. Writhing on the table. Reaching for me, its eyes rolling loose in their sockets—untethered, unfocused, somehow still looking.
I gasped. Jolted. Half-fell off the metal slab, and realized in the same breath that it was an autopsy table.
Pain tore through my left wrist. I was cuffed to the table, the metal biting into bone and twisting as I tried to escape the nightmare lunging toward me. I ripped at the cuff, desperate to break free, and felt blood slick my wrist as I kept pulling.
“Help!” The plea tore from my throat, half-garbled with terror, as cold fingers closed around my free wrist in a clammy grip.
I yelped. Another body stood behind me—this one with the telltale Y-incision on its chest, stitched shut with dark thread. It snarled at me, holding my wrist in an iron grip.
Whatever sound came from its throat was unintelligible, a strangled growl, more animal than human. I screamed, trying to yank myself out of its grip, but it held firm.
The first body scrambled off the table. Its head lolled to the side, flopping like it couldn’t hold the weight anymore, the wound in its throat gaping wider with every movement.
A low rattle began behind me, a vibration at first that built into insistent thuds. The wall of body coolers shook and pounded. Handles clicked. Steel doors bulged as if something inside was throwing itself against them.
