Chameleon's Challenge (Chameleon Assassin Series Book 3) Read online

  “Does your mother know?” I didn’t know why I was shocked, but Mr. and Mrs. Renard seemed like a happy couple.

  “Oh, yeah, she knows. Her father had a mistress, and her grandfather. You know, her dad worked for Entertaincorp. As Nellie said, it’s part of the corporate culture. Just like all the entertainers have groupies.”

  “Do you know Tremaine’s mistress?” I asked.

  “She comes in here occasionally,” Paul said, “but I wouldn’t call her a regular like some of the others.”

  “I know her,” Nellie said, “but we don’t hang out. She’s kind of a standoffish bitch and we don’t get along.”

  “Do you know where she lives?”

  Paul shook his head, but Nellie said, “I think she lives up in York. I got the impression she has a house up there.”

  “Her house? She owns it?” I asked.

  “Please.” Nellie gave me a look that said I was slow. “Of course she doesn’t own it. Tremaine does. She’s from a small town out on the plains somewhere, and I think the city freaks her out a little. Heard her talking about her lawn and her roses once.”

  I hauled out my tablet and started a search of property records. I didn’t even need to hack into the database since those records were public.

  “What are you thinking?” Mike asked as he leaned close to look over my shoulder.

  “Tremaine and his family have Entertaincorp security, but unless Tremaine did what Richard did, the mistress is unprotected. Tremaine is the logical next target. I’m surprised he wasn’t the first one.”

  “Her name is Sandra,” Nellie said. “Sandra Jorgenson. Tall, blonde, Nordic type. Corn-fed country girl.”

  “Looks a little like you, Libby,” Paul said, “but with bigger boobs.”

  Nellie nodded. “Definitely more curvy. Like a girl.”

  I glanced up at them and saw the twinkle in their eyes. For some reason, all my friends seemed to enjoy pulling my chain.

  “You’re prettier, though,” Paul said and winked at me.

  The tablet beeped and I looked at a list of properties owned by John Tremaine. One of them was a residential property in York.

  “What are you planning to do?” Mike asked.

  “Go check on her.”

  “Alone?”

  I bit my lip. “Well, who would I take? We can’t leave Nellie alone.”

  Paul ducked his head and spoke into the mic pinned to his collar. “I’ll just have Tom shadow her. That will be okay, won’t it?”

  “He’s armed?” Mike asked.

  Nellie chuckled. “Since he was about twelve years old.”

  “Let’s take the car,” Mike said. I knew he didn’t like riding on the back of my bike.

  York was about five or six miles from the bar, so we drove out there and found the house without any problem. It was a one-story bungalow with a garage and a small front lawn. Several rooms had lights on. We drove past it and parked. I blurred my form and walked up to the house while Mike found a place in some bushes across the street.

  I crept up to a window on the side near the front of the house and tried to peer inside. The curtains were open, but a set of sheers made it difficult to see anything.

  That’s when I heard a strange noise. At first, I couldn’t figure out what it was, but then it dawned on me that it was a muffled scream.

  Unblurring my form, I yelled, “Mike, come on!” and ran toward the front door. It was locked.

  Mike bounded up on the porch, and I stood back. “Break it down.”

  He kicked the doorknob, and with his vampire strength, shattered the doorframe. I drew my pistol as I lunged into the house and saw blood splatters all over the small living room.

  “Don’t shoot me,” I said as I blurred my form and headed down the hall toward the back of the house. The doors to all the rooms were open, but only one had light showing from inside.

  A woman that I assumed was Sandra lay on the bed with her hands and feet tied to the corner posts, and with some kind of cloth in her mouth. A large man leaned over her, and from the blood all over the place, I didn’t think their game was consensual.

  He moved as I shot him, and the bullet hit him in the back of the shoulder. It spun him around, and I caught a glimpse of his face. He had a large head, black hair, and a five-o’clock shadow. Definitely not my idea of handsome. A large knife fell from his hand onto Sandra’s stomach.

  He reached for the knife with his good hand, and then his image rippled and blurred. I could still see where he was because he was moving, and I knew what to look for, so I squeezed off another shot. And then he hit me, running full speed, and bowled me over.

  Twisting to try to get away from him and regain my balance, I saw the ripple moving away from me down the hall. Past the blurred image, I saw Mike’s face.

  “Mike,” I yelled, “he’s got a knife.”

  The vampire had worked with me before, and knew what I looked like when I invoked my talent, but we’d never fought each other. Vampires are faster and stronger than normal humans, so I hoped Mike would be able to handle the chameleon.

  I saw Mike dodge to the side, but unfortunately it was the side with the knife. Mike flinched and spun away, then raised his pistol and fired. He fired two more shots, the last one while standing in the front doorway and aiming outside.

  A moan from behind me took my attention back to Sandra. I approached the bed and was horrified at her condition. Reaching out, I pulled the cloth out of her mouth. She screamed.

  Realizing I was still partially invisible, I unblurred my form. “It’s all right. He’s gone,” I said, trying to make my voice calm and soothing. “We won’t let him hurt you anymore.”

  I pulled out a knife and she screamed again, but subsided when I cut the rope holding her nearest hand and let her go. Then she started sobbing.

  Going around the bed, I cut the rest of the ropes holding her. Mike came into the room, took one look, and said, “I’ll call the cops and an ambulance,” then he backed out.

  I grabbed a blouse out of the closet, folded it up, and began putting pressure on Sandra’s worst injury, hoping to slow the bleeding. Thinking of what he’d done to Olga and Victoria, I knew our torturer was just getting started.

  I stood outside and watched the paramedics wheel Sandra out of her house on a gurney. Cops wandered around, and the forensics guys bustled in and out taking samples of everything.

  “You okay?” I asked Mike. He’d tied a handkerchief around his forearm, and it was soaked in blood.

  “Yeah, it’ll heal.”

  “You might take advantage of the paramedics being here and ask one of them to sew you up,” I suggested. “If you can look faint enough, you might even talk them into a pint of blood.”

  He perked up. “Might be worth a shot. Did you hit him?”

  “Yeah, at least once. Upper back between his right shoulder and his neck. Then he blurred his image. You?”

  “I don’t know.” Mike led me over to the sidewalk past the porch. “That blood trail would be about right for one wound.” Drops of blood led from the house and then veered across the lawn.

  “Couldn’t you follow him?” I asked. A vampire on a blood trail was better than a hound.

  Mike shook his head. “He jumped into that car parked in front of the neighbor’s house and took off. I got the license plate.”

  Donofrio strolled over. “I thought I was supposed to meet you at The Pinnacle.”

  “I had an idea.”

  He glanced over at the paramedics loading Sandra in an ambulance. “Good thing for her that you did. Who is she?”

  “Sandra Jorgenson, I think. Mistress of John Tremaine, Entertaincorp VP. He’s the one who fired Peter Grenier.”

  “Did you get a look at him?”

  “Yeah. I winged him, and got a good look before he disappeared.”

  Donofrio raised an eyebrow.

  I nodded. “I think he’s a chameleon, or something. He sort of turned invisible, but not really. T
here was a ripple or distortion like we saw on that vid, but in the shape of a man.”

  The inspector motioned toward the blood drops.

  “Uh huh. Mike said that was the guy I shot. He got away in a car.”

  Mike gave him the description of the car and the license number. Donofrio spoke into his comm and then turned it toward me so I could see the screen. “Is this him?”

  Dressed in a suit, but definitely the same guy. “Yeah, that’s him.” His black hair was shorter in the picture. But even longer as it was when I saw him, it still stood straight out from his head, like the bristles of a brush. His head appeared too big for his body, and his face was lopsided.

  “Well,” Donofrio said, “we’ll put out the word and send his picture to all the hospitals and clinics in the metro area. He can’t continue to lose blood at that rate. The blood splashes are larger over there.” He motioned toward the street where the car had been parked.

  Mike and I shared a glance.

  “I doubt he’ll go somewhere like that. He’s more likely to go to someone in the mutie enclave,” I said. No medic in the ghetto would turn him in to the cops. “But speaking of blood, do you suppose one of your guys might stitch up my friend?”

  Donofrio looked at Mike’s arm and said, “I think someone can do that. He’s contaminating the crime scene.”

  We walked over to the ambulance, and one of the paramedics took care of Mike. She even gave him a pint of O positive to help the healing process. I made a mental note to pay more attention when Mike got hurt. I didn’t know if it was male ego, or vampire toughness, but the six-inch slash on his arm wasn’t something I considered minor.

  “Is the woman going to survive?” I asked the paramedic while she sewed up Mike’s arm.

  She glanced up at me. “Yeah, she’ll survive. She may not thank us, though.”

  “None of her wounds were life-threatening,” Donofrio said. “You got here in time. She’ll be fine.”

  Both the paramedic and I stared at him. Sandra was missing her eyelids, her ears, and her nose. I interrupted Grenier while he was cutting off one of her breasts. He’d done all of that to his other victims, and quite a bit more. At least he hadn’t started breaking her bones. But even with the best plastic surgery and psychiatric help in the world, I didn’t think Sandra would ever be ‘fine’.

  “He’s getting more active,” Mike said. “The Goldberg family this morning, and Sandra Jorgenson this evening. I imagine the bullet Libby put in him will slow him down for a while, but when he starts again, I bet he’ll be in a frenzy.”

  We drove over to the orphanage to speak with Amanda Rollins. Before we helped her move the orphanage to the abandoned school building, she took care of her kids in one of the worst areas in the mutant ghetto. It was all she could afford—in other words, it was free because no one else wanted it. No electricity or running water, no sanitary facilities other than an outhouse.

  Modern medical care was out of the question when you couldn’t afford basic necessities. But many of her kids had profound physical problems, so I knew she might be able to provide me with a lead as to where Grenier might go to have his wound tended.

  As we got out of the car, a voice sounded in my head. *Hello, Miz Libby. Who’s your friend?*

  Walter appeared through the school’s front door in his wheelchair.

  “Mike, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine. Mike, this is Walter. Walter, this is Mike, a friend of my father’s.”

  *Any friend of Libby and Mr. Bouchard is a friend of mine. Welcome!*

  Mike looked startled, which was a normal reaction.

  “Walter’s a telepath,” I said, “which is handy because he’s blind. He uses other people’s eyes. Walter, is that a new wheelchair?” Walter had been born blind, and his legs were little more than short flippers. But he was the strongest telepath I’d ever encountered.

  *Yes. Mr. Bouchard gave it to me.* Walter’s pleasure in the chair shone, both on his face and in his mental voice. *It’s electric! I don’t need someone to push me around anymore. I just plug it in while I’m asleep, and thanks to you, we have electricity.*

  My father and Walter had quickly become friends in spite of the fifty-year difference in their ages, not to mention Dad’s verbal cynicism about the orphanage. I had also noticed him flirting with Amanda a time or two.

  I smiled. “It’s a nice chair. Walter, we came to speak with Miz Amanda. Is she around?”

  *In the kitchen, cleaning up after dinner. We had soy dogs and bread with mustard and apple sauce! It’s Towana’s birthday.”

  I figured the meal was for something special, as Amanda usually fed her charges the tasteless yeast products that were nutritionally balanced and dirt cheap.

  We made our way through the school to the cafeteria and then to the kitchen. I stopped to wish Towana happy birthday. She was fourteen, a seven-foot tall girl with dusky skin who was obviously part troll.

  “I can tell you about a couple of medics who would remove a bullet,” Amanda said after we told her about our evening encounter. “Whether they’ll talk to you or not…” She shrugged. “Try Telly first. He may be able to direct you better. Tell him I sent you. If he can’t help you, Lady Vivien does that kind of trade, and she’d know others who do. Expect to pay her. She’d sell her own child for the right price.”

  On our way out, I had a thought and went looking for Walter again.

  “Are you in touch with other telepaths?” I asked him

  *Yes, there’s a network. I have a few friends, and each of them has a few friends.*

  I envisioned Grenier and let Walter pick the information out of my mind.

  *He’s not a nice man.* Walter pronounced.

  “Can you ask your friends to keep an eye out for him, or for anyone who exhibits chameleon talents?”

  Walter burst out laughing, and I realized what I’d said.

  *We’ll do better than using our eyes.* His mental voice conveyed amusement, but no offense or pain. The next thing he said had a consoling quality. *I can’t miss something I’ve never had, Miz Libby. I actually pity you and the rest of the head blind for what you’re missing.*

  Chapter 8

  The mutant enclave slept during the day and came alive at night. The two largest groups, vampires and lycans, were both nocturnal. Hanging out with Nellie and Mike all the time had sort of shifted me onto a nighttime schedule as well, so even though it was late, Mike and I went looking for Telly.

  Driving the car into the ghetto was an invitation to having it stolen, so we left it at the orphanage and took the bus to the edge of the civilized city. The last stop dropped us north of the sewage treatment plant. Making sure our weapons were loaded and handy, we walked through the border area and into the enclave.

  The poorest humans inhabited the neighborhoods between corporate Toronto and the enclave. A few independently owned stores occupied street corners, and people sat out on their front steps and chatted with neighbors. Some kids played cricket in the street with a ragged ball and a stick.

  Things changed when we entered the enclave. A person wouldn’t have thought living conditions could get worse, but they did. The enclave was a slum before all the troubles started two hundred years before, and had degenerated since. We strolled down the street like we belonged there. I was fairly well known, my height and blonde hair made me memorable, and anyone who knew me, knew enough to leave me alone. Being with a vamp didn’t hurt either.

  Telly was a vampire who had served a few years as a medic for a corporate security force. According to Amanda, he mostly provided herbal remedies, set broken bones, and sewed people’s wounds. He was almost a hundred years old and had contacts throughout the mutie communities.

  His home and clinic were in a rundown tenement building in the vampire ghetto. The first thing I noticed was that he had electricity. In that part of town, it meant he had an illegal hack into an electric line at least half a mile away. A dozen people, including three or four kids, sat on the fl
oor and a couple of rickety chairs in an outer room. One woman nodded toward a closed door. We settled down and waited with everyone else.

  Twenty minutes later, a woman and a little boy with a bandage on his arm came out. An older vamp with a stooped posture stood in the doorway and asked, “Who’s next?”

  Since none of the people there looked as though their problems were immediately life threatening, I said, “We are. We’ll be quick.” I saw the flare of resentment in several people’s eyes and postures, but people who lived in the enclave were pretty good at determining who was dangerous and who wasn’t. Mike and I carried ourselves in a way that screamed lethal.

  Telly gave us the once over and didn’t move out of the doorway.

  “Miz Amanda sent us,” I said.

  With that, he shuffled backward in an invitation to enter.

  Mike closed the door behind us and I said, “We’re looking for a butcher who took a bullet earlier this evening. Have you seen anyone like that?”

  “What was he butchering?” Telly asked.

  “Women and little girls.”

  He sized us up and spent a full minute staring at Mike’s face. “No. He hasn’t been here.”

  I glanced at Mike, then said, “Any ideas where else we might look? He’s killed three women and three girls so far. I stopped him from killing the fourth woman he attacked, but he got away.”

  “He’s a chameleon,” Mike said. “He’s slaughtering whole families.”

  Telly gave us names of three people and told us where to find them. One was Lady Vivien.

  “Thanks,” I said. “You have a credit card?”

  Warily, he nodded. I held out mine. “For your trouble, and for your patients.”

  He fished in his pocket and held out his card. I pressed mine against it and transferred five hundred credits. When Telly pulled his card back and looked at it, I saw his eyes widen.

  I held my tablet showing Grenier’s picture in front of him. “If you hear anything about the guy we’re looking for, send word to Miz Amanda. I’ll make sure you and the messenger are rewarded.”

  Telly nodded. “Thank you.” A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “You’re the one they call Miz Libby.”