And it wasn't where Atticus was heading .

***

Using the hotel phone, he called Indigo.

"Tell me that you're still safe with your brother," she commanded.

"Well, not quite." Ukiah explained the situation while he searched through his brother's luggage, looking for anything to use as a weapon. He found a twenty-dollar bill still tucked into the pants pockets of the jeans Atticus wore the day before, but nothing else of use.

"Either way, this is bad," Indigo said when he finished. "The coast guard found the Nautilusdrifting in the harbor. It appears that the Ontongard caught up with the cult. The boat is riddled with bullets and there's blood everywhere."

"Ice and the others?"

"We've got one John Doe—we think it's Boolean—and that's it."

"There were ten people on the Nautilus."

"There's no sign of them."

He sat on the end of Atticus's bed, stunned by the news. "When . . . when did it happen?"

"Around noon."

Ukiah glanced out the window at the rain-dark night. Hours ago. Any of the cultists taken alive by the Ontongard would have already been infected. Ice and the others were all gone.

Noon, though, would have given the cult time to set up Loo-ae. It could be somewhere even now, slowly filling the air with poison.

"I think I know where they intended to set up Loo-ae." He described the aerial photo and the street map. "Have the Dogs meet me there."

"Be careful. The Ontongard might already be there."

"I know. Tell the Dogs to hurry. I'd wait for them, but I'm not sure there's time."

***

He used Atticus's twenty-dollar bill to take a taxi to the empty corner of Fish Pier and Seaport Boulevard, a few blocks from the target building.

"Here?" The cabbie swept his hand to take in the deserted pier, the empty parking lots, and a tangle of highways disappearing into a tunnel entrance. Obviously an industrial area—there were no apartments or open businesses in sight.

Ukiah hushed him and scanned the surroundings for Ontongard. If he pushed, he could sense a small group of them distantly, moving invisibly in the darkness beyond. He pulled back into himself. Being only one person, he'd be harder to detect, but it was possible that the Ontongard would sense him if he continued to blindly reach out. "Yes, here."

"There's nothing here."

"Yeah, that's good." Ukiah handed forward the twenty, which the cabbie took warily. "Do you know what that building up there is?"

The cabbie gave it a quick glance. "It's one of the ventilation buildings for the Big Dig. They blow air down into the tunnels with big fans to keep the fumes from killing drivers. There's, like, ten of them, all over the city."

Big fans? Ukiah shuddered at the thought of Loo-ae tied to such things, distributing the airborne poison. He'd hoped the cult would have the machine in an enclosed space, where there was a slim hope of containing the viral biotoxin.

Ukiah paid the fare and slid out of the safety of the cab.

In Pittsburgh, there would have been hillsides and deep weeds anyplace that wasn't paved over, but here there was just a flat wasteland of cement and plowed earth. A storm wind was blowing off the black ocean, scouring up dusty ghosts of demolished buildings and roadways. Water slapped against stone, a restless murmur.

"You sure you've got the address right, kid?" The cabbie seemed suddenly friendlier, and Ukiah realized the man had thought Ukiah planned to rob him in this empty place.

"Yeah, this is the place. I'm meeting some friends here." Ukiah waved toward a dark boat moored to the pier. "They get off at midnight. Thanks!"

The cabbie eyed the boat and shrugged. He put the cab into gear and drove away, leaving Ukiah alone.

At least with the oncoming storm, the sky was cloaked and the shadows deep.

Avoiding the pools of light thrown by the overhead streetlights, Ukiah moved wolf-silent toward Ventilation Building Six. It was larger than he had expected—on the photo it had been a small square smudge beside a rectangle of water. In truth, it was built on a giant's scale, several stories high with truck-sized doors. Despite its utilitarian function, an effort had been made to make it pretty. The air shafts rising like chimneys from the roof had been stylized into wedges and tipped with something that gleamed with reflected light.

He sensed something wrong with the building and stilled. He stood downwind, in a heavy flow of hot fumes, as if one huge engine were pouring out its exhaust, and caught the scent of blood. Stalking forward, smothering down a growl, he found a human-sized door ajar. Leads bypassed the security sensors in the door's sill, and just inside a night watchman was sprawled out dead—the source of the blood.

The cult was already in the building.

They'd left the guard's gun in its holster. Ukiah crept forward and slid it out.

At the slight noise, the prickle of Ontongard brushed over him.

"What are you doing here?" a voice asked, coming out of the darkness.

Ukiah recognized Ice's voice, though it sounded raspy and hoarse. He reached out and felt Ice, his scent mixed with sickness and Hex's reek. Parts of Ice were still human, but the rest pushed against Ukiah's senses like sandpaper. Ice was becoming a Get.

Ukiah growled low.

"What are you doing here?" Ice asked again. He staggered down the passage, hand on the wall, sweat pouring from him. "You haven't come to stop it?"

"You're infected."

"Yes." Ice licked his lips. "Evil is inside of me, crowding me out. I'm barely here. I'm barely me."

Ukiah could sense the Ontongard presence growing inside of Ice's body, a coil of hate. "I know."

"You must have power over the evil. I can feel how much he hates you. Can you save me?"

"No." There was a machine that could reverse the process, but it was on the West Coast; Ice would be a Get long before they could bring him to it. "Where is Hu-ae?"

"We sold it to John Daggit—the philistine—for access keys to this building." Ice dismissed Daggit with a wave of his hand. "He's making arrangements to move it and what's left of our inventory out of our warehouse on Summer Street. God rest his soul."

"He's dead?"

"Hmm." Ice pursed his lips together, thinking. "By now, probably. I had to use him as a distraction for the evil. We'd set up Loo-ae on a remote, so we'd have a chance to be clear of it when it started up. A running start. The demons—the Ontongard—caught us at the docks. Everyone else is dead, some with cleaner deaths than others. They knew we stole the Ae." He pressed fingertips to his forehead. "They started to rummage through my mind, trying to discover what we'd done with the Ae, so I gave them Daggit and Hu-ae to save Loo-ae." He laughed softly. "Hu-ae. Loo-ae. Listen to me. I'm using their real names."

Ice had made a small gesture to the shadows beside him. Ukiah looked and with a start recognized Loo-ae beside the huge bulk of a giant ventilation fan. A hole had been arc-welded into the metal sheeting of the ductwork, and the Loo-ae's exit chute was duct-taped into the air shaft.

"You can't use Loo-ae to stop them."

"I rekeyed it." He lifted his left hand and showed off the bloody stump of a pinkie, already trying to grow back. "I managed to slice off some of the evil and used Loo-ae to change it from your genetic key."

So they had taken one of his mice to program Loo-ae.