He pulled out the book with all of Carmine’s contacts and transactions, as well as a record of the money he spent and made. There was roughly thirty-thousand in U.S. cash wrapped in cellophane, a half-pound of cocaine, and a cheap pistol. Ponce shook his head. Neither the coke nor the pistol would be destroyed by the self clean cycle, Carmine would know that which meant the idiot didn’t understand he was supposed to destroy the evidence if he were caught.
“Carmine, you jackass,” he muttered. It was late enough in the day that the sun dipped behind the mountains and twilight descended on the area. After making sure nothing else was in the hiding spot he put the plate back on, closed the oven, stood up and brushed off his knees.
When he returned to the living room he froze.
A black woman in a leather jacket, pants, and boots, with a red scarf over her mouth, waited for him. Her hands were at her side like some kind of old west gunfighter. Ponce didn’t see any weapons or guns...
“You’re trespassing,” he said in his thick accent.
As the last of the light vanished outside her eyes went from brown to a softly glowing blue... and then Ponce knew who he was dealing with. His throat closed up and his mouth went as dry as the desert.
“You’re in prison,” he said.
She didn’t respond.
“I saw it on the news… you’re in prison...” he repeated. Fear ran through him like a river. He almost lost control of his bladder. This was The Wraith, and the horror of what she did to the people she murdered was legendary.
He had no choice. He turned as if to put the package he carried down, and went for his gun— the bolt of blue energy crashed into his shoulder, followed by another into his chest, sending him sprawling across the living room to slam face-first into the wall.
The last thing he saw before consciousness fled him were those glowing blue eyes.
✽ ✽ ✽
“Wakey-wakey,” a gravely voice said to him. Ponce opened his eyes and shrieked. He was upside down, hanging by his ankles wearing nothing but his boxers. Kneeling in front of him was the Wraith; her blue eyes burned with a fire he found difficult to look away from.
“What do you want from me?” he asked her. “I’ve done nothing wrong—” she smashed a rock-hard fist into his stomach, collapsing his lungs and making it impossible for him to scream.
“Lesson one: don’t lie to me. I can tell. I can always tell. The sins of your soul are like ink-stains on white cotton. You can’t hide them. Lie, and you die. If you’re honest with me, you might... might just live through this.” As she spoke she pulled out a long, curved blade Ponce vaguely knew of as a Kukri. The black tang contrasted with the polished metal cutting edge as she waved the wicked knife in front of him.
“Anything. Please, I have a family,” he said.
“Better, but still a lie,” she said hitting him in the stomach again. After he’d vomited and cleared his airway he spoke again.
“Stop, please stop. What do you want?”
“I want you and your kind gone. Exterminated. Removed from the gene pool. I want to kill every single one of you until there are no more to kill,” she said with a voice like falling rocks. He went white from fear as the words seeped into him. She could, too, kill them all, and he knew it.
“Please,” he whispered again, unable to keep from looking at her knife while she spoke.
“I’ll settle for knowing where Mr. Axiom is,” she said.
Axiom? “I don’t know who that is,” he said. He was telling the truth, but he winced all the same as he expected a punch to come. After all, she couldn’t possibly know if he was telling the truth or not, not really?
“Your boss, Acosar, does. Where is he?”
“Acosar? Are you mad? He lives in a reinforced compound, surrounded by a hundred guards. You can’t get to him and he will let me die before he tells you anything.”
She punched him again, harder. He felt a rib break and screamed in pain as soon as his breath came back to him. “I didn’t lie!” he yelled.
“Yes, you did. You said I couldn’t get to him... Now, where is his compound?” she asked.
He told her. He told her everything. He went into great detail about everything he knew, even down to where they bought the dogs and trained them. He left nothing out.
After thirty minutes of his nonstop monologue about his boss and the cartel, he stopped.
“Please, that’s everything I know,” he said, his voice raw from speaking.
“I know. We’re done,” the Wraith replied.
“Are you going to let me go?” he said. He dared to let hope build in him. Perhaps he could get out of this alive after all.
“If it were up to me, you would die. But I’m feeling generous. Listen to me, Ponce. If you don’t go from here to the nearest police station and confess all your crimes and demand to be locked up, I will find you and I will skin you alive and make you eat your own intestine.”
She leaned down and he could feel the heat from her breath. “And then I will really start the torture,” she said in a whisper... then she was gone, vanished into the shadows as if she were one.
“Oh God, protect me,” he gushed in a sudden surge of tears and rekindled faith. Suddenly the rope went slakc, dropping him on the ground. He fumbled with the knot for a moment before freeing his feet. Without looking for his clothes or untying his hands he ran for the door. The blackness of midnight greeted him and he looked frantically around.
It was a city district of some kind, so he ran. He ran until he saw a police car. Waving them down like a madman, he hit the hood with his hands. “Please, arrest me, I’m a murderer,” he yelled. Then he started confessing; every single crime he ever committed... and some he hadn’t.
✽ ✽ ✽
“Holy crap,” Amelia said to me as we stood on the roof three blocks away. She heard the man confess his crimes through some directional parabolic mic she had built into her suit. She wore her armor, but her helmet was down and I had to say, the suit was damned impressive. It made her thicker, taller, and more serious. When she did have her helmet on... it was cool as hell.
“That’s how you reform people,” I said with a smile. “It doesn’t always work, but I seriously doubt he will ever get out of prison. Even if he has to commit another crime—”
There it was. The cops thought he was a lunatic, so he grabbed one of their guns and hit the officer with it, then he threw the gun down and started sobbing, thanking them for arresting him before they even had him in cuffs.
“If only supervillains were so easy to scare. Everyone who has powers seems to think they are the next ruler of humanity,” she said.
“It’s gonna take me a couple of days to get to Durango, where Ponce said his boss is. I usually drive the back roads so maybe a little longer. Meet you there?”
She turned and smiled at me with elation. “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”
I rolled my eyes and opened my mouth to comment on her pop culture nonsense when I felt a presence and heard the whine of engines. A black jet the size of a large limousine appeared out of thin air a dozen feet above us and just hovered.
“I could get used to this,” I said with a grin.
CHAPTER 10
The inside of the jet was like no private aircraft I had ever flown on—and I had flown on a lot of them. Not that I liked it very much. Flying wasn’t my favorite thing... it was the opposite of that. I hated how it made me feel. Weak, powerless, unable to control anything.
Despite the smooth travel, no turbulence, and super comfortable chairs, I was sitting with my hands clenched on the armrests.
“It’s okay, Madi, really. There is no world where this plane crashes,” Amelia said to me from across the aisle.
“You don’t know that,” I said through clenched teeth. The plane luxury grade, there was also a massive screen on the front of the passenger compartment for entertainment. Up until that moment, it was off. Then words appeared on it; all white on a
black background and easy for me to read.
Do no fear, Ms. Dumas. This the most advanced aircraft in the world, the Emjet’s engines are a unique design with no moving parts. Our only concern is heat build up, however at our current low speed of eight hundred miles per hour, that is not a concern.
I looked at the screen, then back to Amelia, then the screen again. “Is that... your AI?”
She grinned, the little dimples in her cheeks stood out. “Yup. Madisun, this is Epic. He doesn’t have a speaking voice—he uses screens to communicate. I have one built-in,” she said pointing at her eyes. “He’s also our pilot,” she said.
“So a computer is flying the plane?” I asked.
“It’s slightly more complicated than that. Epic?”
I am the worlds first, true artificial intelligence. I have moved well beyond my original program and am capable of constructing my own hardware to increase my capacity, much like you can create new neural pathways to learn skills.
“Right... You’re not a computer, then?”
Amelia laughed, putting her hand over her mouth to stifle the noise. “No, he is. But, only in the sense that his mind is housed on quantum particles called computronium built inside my suit.”
I shook my head. “I’ll take your word for it. I have a friend who would love to talk to you… Epic? Did I say that right?” I asked, not sure if I should look at Amelia or the screen while speaking to him.
If you are referring to Ms. Swahili, I have waited to make her acquaintance until I had your permission to do so. I did not want to scare her.
“Ha, I’d like to see that. She walks where angels fear to tread.”
She also has a very unique power. Of the thousands of powers registered in the national database, we have never encountered anyone who could enter technology with their mind. It makes her unique, and quite powerful.
“Like an AI who can hack government databases in a hot second without them even knowing they’ve been hacked!” Amelia said with a fist pump.
Quite. Would you also like to tell your new friend of all the crimes you have committed? I have a list if it helps.
“Quiet, you,” she said.
It was my turn to laugh. “You two have quite the relationship. How long have you had him?” I asked. It was calming to talk about something, anything, to take my mind off the ground hurtling beneath us.
“I started working on him after my accident,” she said, gesturing at her legs. “He’s been with me ever since. Until I met Carlos, and then Kate, he was my only real friend.”
I was amazed at how completely I had misread this woman. Sure, she may not have suffered like me, but she was still incredibly resilient and had overcome a lot. I’d just assumed she was a spoiled rich kid using her wealth to play superhero.
“Sounds lonely,” I said, looking out the virtual window at the moon high above the earth. Lonely was something I understood.
“Madi, the pubic records say your family was killed in a fire, but I gather that’s not the whole truth, is it?” she said softly. She reached over and placed a hand on mine. I tensed at first, then relaxed.
I shook my head, not trusting words. I had still not really grieved over them and I didn’t want to until the mission was complete.
“I’m not a murderer— well, actually, yes I am but only by the legal definition, not the moral one.”
“You make a distinction?” she asked. Not belligerently, but curiously.
I nodded. A quick sharp move. I felt my muscles tensing up and I had to remind my self to loosen up. Partnerships are built on trust. If I didn’t open up to her a little bit then she would always doubt me—and that could get us both killed.
“I have to. Joseph, the wonderful man who mentored me, he quit doing this because he was tired of the constant killing. Spice, the entity in me, she is always pushing for more death, more killing. I’m not a killer, Amelia, not really. I don’t enjoy it and I don’t look for it... but it also doesn’t bother me in the slightest.” The last part had me worried. I didn’t want to look at her because I would see horror reflected in her eyes. I steeled myself for it and looked at her. All I saw was understanding and wonder in her brown eyes.
“You would be surprised how many times Epic and I have had this conversation.
“Listen, Madi, I don’t think your methods are sustainable, but I killed an entire species. It was the only way to stop them. And while it does bother me, especially late at night when I’ve had too little sleep and too much caffeine, I won’t ever regret having done it, only that they left me no choice,” she said.
I nodded. “I get it, I really do. The people I kill, they’re all bad, Amelia. I don’t mean they are liars and thieves—they are— but I mean they’re the worst scum humanity has ever produced. I shed no tears for them. I have no problem whatsoever killing them. I take no pleasure from it, I have no regrets. Spic says that makes me special. I think it just makes me a sociopath.”
A sociopath would lie, manipulate, and eagerly betray anyone and everything, even if they knew the behavior was self-destructive just because they could. You have exhibited no signs of such behavior. If you wish, I could investigate your family’s death and maybe point the authorities in the right direction about what happened to you. Perhaps it would help you to know they received some form of justice.
I was having trouble seeing all of a sudden. My heart thumped loudly and I wanted to breathe but couldn’t. I couldn’t talk, so I bit my lip and shook my head. It was a sweet gesture, but ultimately too late. After a moment to restore my control I was able to speak.
“Thank you, both of you, but that won’t be necessary,” I said.
It would be no trouble.
“I’m sure. But it isn’t necessary because, with the exception of one person, everyone responsible is already dead.”
I saw the shock in her eyes. She shook her head and closed her mouth.
“Uh, you work fast,” she said in a whisper.
“Speed is life. I can’t give them time to see me coming. It’s one of the strategies. Hit your enemy before they are ready to hit you,” I said with a shrug.
ETA is twenty minutes. You may want to ready your plan.
“Okay,” Amelia said pointing at the big TV. A satellite image of the compound popped up on it. “This is what I think we should do—”
CHAPTER 11
They dropped me off on the mountain top north of the com-ound while Epic took the impressive jet south to land and let Amelia out. Our plan was pretty simple; I would infiltrate from the top and work my way down and Amelia would circle above and provide air support and overwatch—since she had more sensors than a military-grade spy plane.
“If you need force called in, make sure you’re clear before I let loose. Some of my weapons aren’t very discriminatory,” she said through the earpiece I wore.
“Right, I’ll let you know,” I replied in a whisper.
“Finally. I was really hoping for more killing by teaming up with her but she’s turning out to be a big disappointment,” Spice said from behind me. Despite myself, I jumped a little and sighed.
I was kneeling on a boulder, about one hundred feet above the roof of a ranch-style villa. It was built into the side of a mountain, with walls and multiple levels extending down like a castle.
I checked the time; it was three AM. The moon was out, but half-mast casting only pale shadows instead of illuminating the desert landscape. It was an easy forty-five-degree grade down to the highest level of the house. It wasn’t built into the mountain for defense but for looks. Otherwise they would have built to the top.
“Thanks, I needed the adrenaline spike,” I said to Spice without looking at her.
“Don’t get all complacent on me, Madi. I don’t want your new friend inspiring a sudden desire for peace...”
“Ha, don’t worry about that.” I had the IP pistol she gave me, but that was tucked into a holster on my back. I’d use it if I needed it. otherwise... it was the swor
d or the silenced pistol. I would have brought more if I was by myself, but I figured with Arsenal circling above I’d be okay.
I pulled the 1911 and press checked, I knew it was loaded, but knowing and seeing are two different things. Once I was ready, I slowly made my way down the incline, careful not to dislodge any rocks to alert the enemy that I was coming.
“I’m showing over forty targets on the infrared. This guy takes his security seriously,” Amelia said.
I didn’t acknowledge her. No need to make extra noise. The top level of the compound was nestled into the rock wall. Even here they had a seven-foot-high wall that the hacienda was butted up against. I ran at the wall, kicked off of it and scrambled up to the top to land in a crouch. I adjusted my red scarf making sure it was in position as I scanned the area.
This was a small rooftop garden, a bench to sit on while you watched the birds eat out of the feeder and the ducks play in the pond.
I wanted to puke from how sickeningly normal it was. As if this monster deserved some form of normalcy after all the lives his family ruined. I focused my eyes and called on the Wraith-sight that allowed me to see all living things. My senses went into overdrive; I heard every bird, grouse, and snail slither across the ground. It was a little overwhelming at first, but then I pulled it back, letting it settle until I saw the larger blooms of life as they walked around in the open below me.
Two guards joked quietly on the far side of the garden by the archway that framed the stairs that led down to the next level. I didn’t see any doors or entrances to the level below me through the garden.
I ran swiftly and silently across the wall until I was a few feet from the guards and leaped, drawing my sword while in the air. My feet hit the first guard in the chest, my entire mass crumpling him to the ground, blasting the air out of his lungs. I spun and stabbed the thin black sword through the other’s throat and out the back of his head. Whipping the blade free while he fell, I slashed it across the one I was kneeling on, severing his throat. They were both dead before the second body hit the ground.
The Wraith: Danger Close (Superhero by Night Book 4) Page 7
