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I tried to be pleased, but I was still ry that I’d had to create such a scene in the first place I nodded toward Julian’s hand on my elbow "Yeah, well, thanks for the top-up"

"No proble everyone’s face when you did that esos are weak"

"Well, I think I overdid it a bit," I admitted

"Nah" He shook his head "It was spot on You’ve got to prove yourself in our society And power is the only thing that’s respected Just try not to let your elus… At times I envied the Alfar their preternatural cal a coriped frolare My fellow halfling droppedtohere the others waited

"Yes, sir," Julian replied, agreeably, as I resisted the te to our cars, I wondered if I’d finally gotten a taste of the "real" Ryu

Which left me a little worried at how much I preferred the fantasy

Caleb parked the SUV on a quiet side street lined by slightly shabby aparts Bits of fa picnic tables, brightly colored plastic toys, and the like--ashed up on the front lawns like litter on a beach It seee place to have a secret laboratory devoted to studying the supernatural, and I said so

"Good ca It was the first time he’d spoken to me since we’d left the house, and he still wasn’tfor us on the corner, underneath a streetlight, stood Caether, we all walked toward Conleth’s forht once have looked ie One side of the glass doors had been shattered, but the other side was intact That door was en: FOCUS ON FAMILY: SPECIALISTS IN IN-VITRO, GIFT, AND ZIFT I stared at the sign, narrowing my eyes as my brain started to fire off possible connections

"The laboratory was a fertility clinic?"

"Well, it operated under the auspices of a fertility clinic," Ryu said "And it seeave hiain, knowing I was suggesting a link between this clinic’s stated purpose, Conleth’s identity as a halfling, and the fertility proble the supernatural community

Basically, as it had been explained tobabies with each other They could do it, but it took tremendous amounts of concentration and resources I had h I hadn’t shared theic kept us healthy and relatively i, I hadn’t had a cold or a hangover or even a pireat, but I couldn’t help but think that the purgative qualities of ourto do with the supernatural fertility problehts, I followed the others as theyWhen it was ently wrapped his hands around lass still lining the bottom of the door When he putto ate the tension between us After a esture

The front of the building wasn’t too badly da what had happened there Besides the broken front door, and water da out the fire, the entry room to the facility must have nificant Conleth-related dae were the doors that led to the rest of the lab, which had been blown entirely off their hinges, and what must have been the receptionist’s station, which looked like it had been blasted with blowtorches at five paces

"The secretary survived the initial attack by hiding, but Conleth took quite a bit of ti away at her station, as if to scare her, before ht up with her a few days later--killed her and her boyfriend" Ryu dug around in the file he was carrying, snapping toward Daoud at the same time The hawk-nosed man walked forward, and this tis: Daoud reached into the front of his tight black jeans and pulled out a large flashlight He handed the flashlight to Ryu, who nodded appreciatively Daoud then pulled three hts out of his pants: One he passed to Caleb, one he stuck under his own ar, and one he passed to , too shocked to do otherwise, until I remembered where it had come from and scootched my shirt sleeve down to cover eneral store in his underwear, when I was cut to the chase by Ryu’s showingbehind a birthday cake and the other of two crispified corpses The receptionist and her boyfriend, my brain reminded me as my body responded with a wave of nausea I told my stomach, quite firmly, to settle It obeyed with a petulant ruh the blasted doorways and into the rest of the laboratory There were still thick stalactites ofoff where the doorfra Daliesque shapes testimony both to Conleth’s enor been a prison As we progressed farther toward the back of the facility, the dae increased, as did the body count The first rooms were relatively body-free, except for the nurse’s break room, which had been broken into In the pictures Ryu had shown me, the two "nurses" ere killed in that room looked more like the type of bouncers who are fired fro too violent In their "after" pictures, both had been roasted like chestnuts<ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>