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“That’s her,” Dylan said, pointing to the woman with the maternal smile and sheltering arms. “Sister Margaret.”
“And she is?” Je
Dylan glanced over at her. “Right now, assuming she’s still alive, this woman is possibly our best bet for finding out more about the Breedmates who have gone missing or ended up dead at Dragos’s hands.”
Je
“Some of the women he’s killed—and probably many that he’s still holding prisoner now—came from runaway shelters,” Dylan said. “See, it’s not unusual for Breedmates to feel confused and out of place in mortal society. Most of us have no idea just how different we are, let alone why. Besides our common birthmark and shared biology, we’ve all got some kind of unique extrasensory ability, too.”
“Not the stuff you see on TV talk shows or commercials for psychic hotlines,” Sava
Dylan nodded. “Sometimes those talents are a blessing, but a lot of times they’re a curse. My own talent was a curse for most of my life, but fortunately I had a mother who loved me. Because I had her, no matter how confused and scared I got, I always had the security of home.”
“But not everyone is that fortunate,” Renata added. “It was a string of Montreal orphanages for Mira and me. And, from time to time, we called the street home.”
Je
“So, you believe that Dragos is preying on young women who end up in these kinds of shelters?” she asked.
“We know he is,” Dylan said. “My mom used to work at a runaway shelter in New York. It’s a long story, one for another time, but basically it turned out that the shelter she worked at was being funded and directed by none other than Dragos himself.”
“Oh, my God,” Je
“He’d been hiding behind an alias, calling himself Gordon Fasso when he moved within human social circles, so no one had any idea who he truly was … until it was too late.” Dylan drew in what seemed to be a fortifying breath. “He killed my mom after he realized he’d been unmasked and the Order was closing in on him.”
“I’m sorry,” Je
The words drifted off as something cold and fierce bubbled deep inside her. As a former police officer, she knew the bitter taste of injustice and the need to right the scales. But she tamped the feelings down, telling herself the Order’s fight against their enemy, Dragos, didn’t belong to her. She had battles of her own to face.
“I’m sure Dragos will get what’s coming to him in the end,” she said.
It was a lame sentiment, knowingly offered from an emotional arm’s length. But she hoped she would be proved right. Sitting with these women now, having gotten to know them all a bit better in the short time she’d been at the compound, Je
She picked up the image printout and glanced at the warm expression of the nun who stood like a good shepherd next to her vulnerable flock. “How do you expect this woman—Sister Margaret—might be able to help you?”
“Staff turnover is high at youth shelters,” Dylan explained. “The one where my mom worked was no exception. A friend of hers who used to work with her there just gave me Sister Margaret’s name and that photograph. She says the sister retired a few years ago, but she’d been volunteering in several New York shelters since around the 1970s, which is just the kind of person we need to talk to.”
“Someone who’s been around the shelters for a long time and might be able to identify past residents from a basic sketch,” Sava
Je
“Those sketches,” Alex said from beside Je
“You mean they’re still alive?”
“They were a couple of months ago.” Renata’s voice was grim. “A friend of the Order’s, Claire Reichen, used her Breedmate talent for dreamwalking to locate Dragos’s headquarters. She saw the captives—upward of twenty of them—locked in prison cells in his laboratory. Although Dragos relocated his operations before we could save them, Claire has been working with a sketch artist to document the faces she saw.”
“In fact, that’s where Claire is right now, she and Elise both,” Alex said. “Elise has a lot of friends in the Breed civilian community here in Boston. She and Claire have been working on a couple of new sketches, based on what Claire saw that day in Dragos’s lair.”
“Once we have faces of the captives,” Dylan said, “we can start looking for names and possible family members. Anything that can help bring us closer to who these women are.”
“What about databases for missing persons?” Je
“We did, and we’ve come up empty everywhere,” Dylan said. “A lot of these women and girls in the shelters are runaways and orphans. A lot of them are throwaways. Some of them are walkaways, who deliberately cut all ties with family and friends. The end result is the same: They have no one to look for them or miss them, so there were no reports filed.”
Renata grunted softly in acknowledgment and seemed to speak from some experience. “When you have no one and nothing, you can vanish and it’s like you never existed in the first place.”
From her years in Alaska law enforcement, Je
“Once we have enough of a personal link to even one of them,” Sava
Je
“For her talent to work, she needs some kind of emotional or personal link to whomever she’s attempting to find in the dream state,” Dylan answered. “Her link before wasn’t to Dragos but to someone else.”
“Her former mate, Wilhelm Roth,” Renata put in, all but spitting the name like a curse. “He was a vile individual, but next to Dragos, his cruelty was nothing. No way could we ever let Claire try to tap into Dragos personally. It would be suicide.”
“Okay. So, where does that leave us?” Je