Page 8 of Act of Brotherhood
He’d smelled it before. He was sure of it.
Rurik neared, and then paused, sniffing the air. “What is that smell? It’s sweet but it smells a bit like tar.”
Auberi handed a small blond-haired child off to Rurik. “Take him to Blaise in the back. He’ll be fine. He needs fluids. Have Blaise start an IV on him.”
Rurik did as he was asked but looked uncomfortable holding the child. The kid appeared as uneasy about it all as the Russian.
Auberi set about assessing another child.
“Why are they so quiet?” asked Gram. “They’re wee ones. Wee ones fuss. These children make nearly no noise. What’s wrong with them?”
Gram was right. The children were very quiet. With as many as there were and the state of neglect they’d been left in, there should have been noise coming from them. There wasn’t.
Garth’s insides twisted at the thought the children had no doubt run out of tears at some point. They’d probably learned at their young age that crying got them nowhere in their situation.
The need to smash in the face of every person involved in the barbaric treatment of the children was nearly overpowering. His attention returned to the little girl Landros was still holding.
She looked even paler than she had only moments before.
Gram shook his head and wiped the back of his hand past his nose. “What in the bloody hell is that smell?”
It was Hans who answered. “It’s a toxic mix of a variety of lethal ingredients. My guess would be phenol possibly combined with something else—not that it needs to be. It has this smell. It’s what the Nazis used in the T4 Euthanasia Program.”
Garth fought to keep from being sick. The T4 Program had been a policy that basically sanctioned murder. It gave the green light to doctors to kill their own patients if they thought the patient had a life that, in their opinion, was not worth living. Garth had been right when he’d thought of the facility he’d raided during the war.
Hans ran a hand out and over the steel of one of the empty cribs. “Whatever the children have been given smells much like that did. It’s a scent that is seared into my brain. I will go to my grave always remembering it. Those outside of the T4 Program weren’t spared exposure to this drug and toxic compounds. The scientists took something that was created to help others and twisted it, using it to harm, to control, to kill.”
Auberi met Garth’s gaze and nodded, backing up what Hans was saying. “Given in extremely high doses, phenol is lethal.”
Hans continued to touch the crib. “They worked hard to perfect just the right ratio of it mixed with other things to be able to control supernaturals. To keep us unable to fight back but alert and aware enough to function on some level. If the people who orchestrated this are anything like the ones from my past, they intended to hide the evidence of what they’d done here the minute we showed up.”
Gram recoiled in horror. “Och, yer nae tellin’ me they were tryin’ to kill the wee ones when we arrived, are you?”
“That isexactlywhat I am telling you,” returned Hans, his words clipped. He didn’t take his gaze from the crib. It was as if it was the only thing grounding him to the here and now and not letting him slip fully into remembered pain of the past. “They will stop at nothing to keep their secrets buried and their work private. The children are not children to them. They are not seen as human or lives that are special. They see them as lab rats. Nothing more. Something to advance their cause.”
The wolf in Garth wanted to be free. It would show every one of the people attached to whatever the hell this was exactly what he thought of their lab rat approach. He spun and punched an empty crib, sending it flying into the wall with such a force that it bent partially in on itself. Still, the act didn’t help to lessen the fury Garth felt. The burning need to kill someone with his bare hands and make them pay for all of this.
“Captain,” Hans said, seeming eerily calm. “Throwing things around won’t fix anything. It will just scare the children more.”
Scare the children?
With a gasp, Garth twisted to find the little girl with Landros watching him with wide eyes and a frightened look on her face. Garth sighed. “I’m sorry, beauty. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
The tension eased from her face.
Gram brushed by Garth on his way to a crib with another child in it. “The wee ones are all precious. Look at them. They’d nae hurt a fly. How could someone do this to another person? How could they look at these lil’ ones and nae see the gift they are?”
Auberi’s jaw set. “As Hans said, those who did this don’t see the children as anything more than test subjects.”
“Bastards,” whispered Gram, standing before a crib that held a child who couldn’t have been more than six or seven months old. Garth wasn’t sure if the child was male or female. The giant of a man reached in and lifted the baby in the gentlest of ways. For a split second, Garth could almost picture his best friend as a father. Gram, while wild and rowdy, would one day make an amazing parent. He’d be fierce, yet compassionate. “The wee bairn is soaked through and hungry. I do nae think she’s been given too much of the drugs. I smell them on her, but they’re faint. Still, she’s been neglected. Where are the men who were here? I wish to havewordswith them.”
“Me too,” added Rurik, his face ashen as he reappeared from the back.
“Jannick and two others took them into the back lab, away from the children,” said Hans, his jaw jutting out. “If I know my brother, the men suffered greatly before death was granted. They maystillbe suffering if he’s delayed their deaths.”
“Guid,” added Gram as he held the baby close to him as if he moonlighted as a nanny.
“I can smell the chemical on some of the children more than others,” said Landros, still holding the little girl. She reached up and patted the man’s stubble-covered jawline. He stared down at her, his face a wash of emotions.
