looking forward to his little adventure. It was a
chance to test his skills against the rest of the team
and against the accidental test subjects that were
surely still lurching around not to mention, of
Spencer himself. And if he pulled it off, he was going
to be a very rich man.
This might actually turn out to be fun.
NINE
CAW!
Jill whipped her Beretta toward the sound, the
mournful shriek echoing all around as the door
slipped closed behind her. Then she saw the source of
the noise and relaxed, smiling nervously.
What the hell are they doing in here?
She was still in the back part of the house, and had
decided to check out a few of the other rooms before
heading back to the main hall. The first door she'd
tried had been locked, a carving of a helmet on the
key plate. Her picks had been useless, the lock a type
she'd never encountered, so she'd decided to try her
luck on the door across the hall. It had opened easily
enough, and she'd gone in ready for anything,
though about the last thing she'd expected to see was a
flock of crows, perched along the support bar for the
track lighting that ran the length of the room.
Another of the large black birds let out its morose
shriek, and Jill shivered at the sound. There were at
least a dozen of them, ruffling their shiny feathers and
watching her with bright, beady eyes as she quickly
surveyed the room for threats; it was clear.
The U-shaped chamber she'd entered was as cold as
the rest of the house, perhaps colder, and empty of
furniture. It was a viewing hall, nothing but portraits
and paintings lining the inner wall. Black feathers lay
scattered across the worn wooden floor amidst dried
mounds of bird droppings, and Jill wondered again
how the crows had gotten inside, and how long they'd
been there. There was definitely something strange
about their appearance; they seemed much larger
than normal crows, and they studied her with an
intensity that seemed almost unnatural.
Jill shivered again, turning back toward the door.
There wasn't anything important in the room, and the
birds were giving her the creeps. Time to move on.
She glanced at a few of the paintings on her way
out, mostly portraits, noticing that there were
switches beneath the heavy frames - she assumed
they were for the track lighting, though she couldn't
imagine why anyone had bothered setting up such
an elaborate gallery for such mediocre art. A baby, a
young man . . . the paintings weren't awful, but
they weren't exactly inspired, either.
She stopped as she touched the cold metal handle of
the door, frowning. There was a small, inset control
panel set at eye level to the right of the door, labeled
"spots." She punched one of the buttons and the room dimmed as a single directional light went out.
Several of the crows barked their disapproval, flutter-
ing ebony wings, and Jill turned the light back on,
thinking.
So if these are the light switches, what are the
controls beneath the paintings for?
Perhaps there was more to the room than she'd
thought. She walked to the first picture across from
the door, a large painting of flying angels and clouds
shot with sunbeams. The title was, From Cradle to
Grave. There wasn't a switch below it, and Jill moved
to the next.
It was a portrait of a middle-aged man, his lined
features sagging with exhaustion, standing next to an
elaborate fireplace. From the cut of his suit and his
slicked back hair, it looked to have been painted in
the late 1940s or early '50s. There was a simple on/off
switch underneath, unlabeled. Jill flicked it from left
to right and heard an electrical snap and behind her,
the crows exploded into screaming motion,
rising as one from their brooding perch.
All she could hear was the beat of their dark wings
and the sudden, manic ferocity of their cries as they
swarmed toward her and Jill ran,
the door seeming a million miles
away, her heart pounding. The first of the crows
reached her as she grabbed for the handle, its claws
finding the soft skin at the back of her neck. There was
a sharp stab of pain just behind her right ear and Jill
flailed at the rustling feathers that brushed her cheeks,
moaning as the furious shrieks enveloped her. She
slapped at the air behind her and was rewarded with a
startled squawk of surprise. The bird let go of her,
reeling away.
-too many, out out OUT-
She jerked the door open and fell into the hallway,
kicking the door closed even as she hit the floor. She
lay there a moment, catching her breath, relishing the
cool silence of the corridor in spite of the zombie
stench. None of the crows had gotten out.
As her heartbeat returned to something approach-
ing normal, she sat up and carefully touched the
wound behind her ear. Her fingers came away wet, but
it wasn't too bad, the blood was already clotting; she'd
been lucky. When she thought of what could have
happened if she'd tripped and fallen . . .
Why had they attacked, what had the control switch
done? She remembered the snap of electricity when
she'd flipped it, the sound of a spark-
-the perch!
She felt a sudden rush of grudging admiration for whoever had set up the simple trap. When she'd hit
the switch, she must have sent a current through the
metal bar they'd been perched on. She'd never heard
of attack-trained crows, but could think of no other
explanation-which meant that someone had gone
through a lot of trouble to keep whatever was in that
room a secret. To get to the answer, she'd have to go
back in.
I can stand in the doorway, take them out one at a
time. . . She didn't much like the idea, she didn't trust her aim and would certainly waste a lot of
ammunition.
Only fools accept the obvious and go no further; use
your brain, Jilly.
Jill smiled a little; it was her father talking, remind-
ing her of the training she'd had before the S.T.A.R.S.
One of her earliest memories was of hiding in the
bushes outside the rickety old house in Massachusetts
that her father had rented for them, studying the dark,
empty windows as he explained how to properly "case
a prospect." Dick had made it into a game, teaching
her over the next ten years all the finer points of
breaking and entering, everything from how to re-
move panes of glass without damaging them to walk-
ing on stairs so they didn't creak and he'd also
taught her, again and again, that every riddle had
more than one answer.
Killing the birds was too obvious. She closed her
eyes, concentrating.
Switches and portraits ... a little boy, a toddler, a
young man, a middle-aged man . . .
"From Cradle to Grave." Cradle to grave . . .
Once the solution occurred to her, she was almost
embarrassed by the simplicity of it. She stood up and
dusted herself off, wondering how long it would take
for the crows to return to their roost. Once they were
settled, she shouldn't have any more problems uncov-
ering the secret.
She cracked the door open and listened to the
whispering beat of wings, promising herself to be
more careful this time. Pushing the wrong button in
this house could be deadly.
"Rebecca? Let me in, it's Chris."
There was the sound of something heavy sliding
against the wall and the door to the storage room
creaked opened. Rebecca stepped away from the
entrance as he hurried inside, already pulling the
diary out of his vest.
"I found this journal in one of the rooms," he said. "It looks like there was some kind of research going on here, I don't know what kind but..."
"Virology," Rebecca interrupted, and held up a stack of papers, grinning. "You were right about there being something useful in here."
Chris took the papers from her and skimmed the
first page. As far as he could tell, it was in a foreign
language made out of numbers and letters.
"What is all this stuff? DH5a-MCR . . ."
"You're looking at a strain chart," Rebecca said brightly. "That one's a host for generating genomic libraries containing methylated cytosine or adenine
residues, depending."
Chris cocked an eyebrow at her. "Let's pretend that I have no idea what you're talking about and try
