Age of Blood

45

Jen spent the next ten minutes in the bathroom, staring into the mirror, her hands trembling as she splashed cold water on her face. She couldn’t get out of her mind the insanity in YaYa’s eyes as he’d fired his pistol point blank into Pete Musso’s stomach. Why had Pete tried to save them? He’d never showed any sense of valor before. Not that in suburban San Diego he’d had the chance, but Pete was an analyst. Her eyes filled with tears again as she relived the moment over and over, the worst part being the agony and fear on Pete’s face as he’d fallen to the deck of the plane, his hands clutching at his stomach as blood pulsed out of him.

She shook her head to get rid of the image. Dwelling on this wasn’t helping. Maybe Walker had been right. Maybe she should never have come. Maybe analysts weren’t needed on the scene.

She gave herself five minutes, then wiped her face, washed her hands, and left the bathroom. She passed Goran and Patrick, who had set up their systems and settled on the sofa by the window. Alexis Billings was already sitting there, too, leaning on her left side, her hand supporting her head. She stared off into space.

After a few moments, Alexis spoke. “It’s not your fault.”

“I know,” Jen said a little too hastily. “I mean, I understand what you’re saying, but I’m the one who brought him down here.”

“You had no control over what happened,” Alexis said in a monotone.

“It doesn’t mean I’m not responsible,” Jen said.

Billings sighed.

Jen looked at the other woman, who was now staring at the floor.

“Do you want to know who’s responsible?” Alexis asked, her voice rough with emotion and barely above a whisper. “I’m responsible. This whole mess. Me. I’m the one.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on yourself?” Jen asked.

Alexis chuckled hoarsely. “If only. The bottom line is that I chose them.”

“Who’d you choose?”

“The SEALs. YaYa, Holmes, Walker—all of them. I knew what we were getting into. The senator told me more than once I was playing with fire and I didn’t listen to him.”

Jen didn’t know where Alexis was going with this, but her curiosity was piqued. “What did you do?”

Alexis shrugged. She reached up and released her long hair, shaking it out. “I did what I was supposed to do. I chose these SEALs for a reason, you know. I knew we had to have someone special. I knew we had to develop a more modern mechanism to recruit SEALs into our unit.” She turned to Jen and held her with wide eyes. “Do you know how they used to do it before? They held séances. They read Tarot. They even threw bones, for God’s sake. They’d have entire rooms full of these ‘magic’ people doing juju over files and pictures of our best U.S. Navy SEALs.” She laughed again, this time tilting on the edge of her own craziness. “When I took over I changed all that. I turned the magic into a science. We now have PhDs in game science, neurology, and statistics at the core of our team. Psychologists interact with each recruit prior to attending SEAL training, so we can establish a database of supernumerological scores for each and every recruit. We rack and stack these based on their statistically manifested abilities and keep them ready, like they’re weapons in an arms room.”

Jen shook her head. “I don’t get it. What do you mean?”

Alexis gave her a stern look. “Do you think for one minute that Navarre coming at the last minute with our equipment was by chance?”

Jen thought it was odd that Alexis would have used that particular phrase—“by chance.” She didn’t know where this was going, but she wanted to find out. “I thought it was lucky, if that’s what you mean.”

“Exactly!” Alexis snapped her fingers. “Luck. Holmes was tested and he was found to be extraordinarily lucky through our game-design tests. In fact, did you know that he’s not allowed to set foot on the gaming floors of Vegas casinos? The word was out on him long before he became a SEAL. He was raised in Vegas and can’t even go into a casino. They think it’s because he counts cards.”

“Are you saying Holmes was chosen because of his luck?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. During game play, whether it was cards, board games, video role-playing games, first-person shooters, or even MMORPGs, he showed an unexplainable ability to not only not die, but to win in the end. On a consistent basis he accomplished the statistically impossible. Which is one reason he’s been in charge of Triple Six for so long.”

“Then I shouldn’t worry—they won’t die?” Jen asked, still trying to get a handle on what Alexis was saying. While the information was beyond interesting, its relevance to the present seemed tenuous at best.

“You’d better worry. His luck is his luck. He has a better chance of surviving alone than he does on a team. His luck might extend to the others, but it is his talent.” She got up and grabbed a soda from the counter and popped the top. “Of course, he could run into a null. We had one of those before, during the Roosevelt presidency.” She sat back down, then added, “The first Roosevelt, that is.” She drank deeply.

“When you say a null, you mean—”

“Someone who takes away luck. Like a cooler. Casinos employ them. There are those who can make people unlucky. Say someone’s having a run at a table, then the casino will have this cooler touch or bump the person and watch how much they lose after that.”

“Alexis,” Jen said, “this all sounds a little far-fetched.”

“You’d think so, right? And just in case you don’t know, but this is strictly a special access program, so you can’t share it with anyone.”

Jen leaned back and crossed her arms. “Great, thanks. But what does this have to do with blame?”

Alexis crossed her arms, holding the soda in her right hand. “I chose YaYa, too. I chose him because he’s a font.” Seeing the look on Jen’s face, she explained. “Some people call them polymaths, although that’s not the right term either. Ever meet someone who seems to fit in perfectly wherever they go? If you watch them closely, they’ll take on the speech and demeanor of the group they’re trying to fit in with. They don’t do it consciously. It comes naturally. What we’ve discovered is that the same is true for the supernatural. They are drawn to it and it is drawn to them. So we call them fonts. But instead of providing something, fonts provide a space for something, like holy water fonts at the entrance to Catholic churches.”

“So you knew this was going to happen?”

“Of course not. How could I have—”

Jen shook her head, cutting Alexis off. “I mean that he could be inhabited.”

“The term is possessed,” Alexis said without any sense of humor.

“Possessed then. Did you know?”

“We knew. We counted on it.”

Jen’s mouth dropped open.

“Now do you see what I mean? This is absolutely my fault. The idea about a font is that we could capture an entity, then use it somehow, study it perhaps.”

“And did YaYa sign on for this? Does he know that this is his special talent, to go out and unwittingly capture spirits?”

Alexis stared hard at Jen for a moment; then her face softened. “No. He doesn’t know. And neither does Yank. He doesn’t know his talent either.”

“Are you going to tell them?”

“No. And neither are you.”

Jen heard the unspoken addition if you want to keep your job loud and clear. She should shut up now, but she had one more question for which she needed an answer. “Was he going to get any training in his font ability?”

“Eventually. We were assessing him. He wasn’t ready yet.”

Now it was Jen’s turn to give a bitter smile. “What you mean is that you didn’t know how he’d react once he found out. Does that about sum it up?”

“It does.”

Jen stood and smoothed out the wrinkles in her slacks. She took a moment, then faced Alexis. “Listen, I don’t know how much of the blame you should really take. These are U.S. Navy SEALs who happened to have some talents which made them suitable for Triple Six. If YaYa is so wide open, it could have happened any time. It might have even happened before and we don’t know it.” She could see Alexis begin to appreciate her comments. Now it was time to bring her back down. “But you should let them know their talents. Otherwise it’s like giving a pistol to a three-year-old.” She shook her head. “If you want to blame yourself for something, blame yourself for that, because I know if you saw a three-year-old reaching for a pistol, you’d run into the room and do whatever you could to stop the inevitable.” Then she turned and walked out. She stepped into the other room in time to see Walker and Yank returning with two Pelican cases.

“Hey, gal. What’s up?” Walker asked.

Even with all the bullshit, she was glad to see him here and it made her heart warm.