Cloak Games: Hammer Break

by Jonathan Moeller

  We were building an excellent tapestry of lies, and all our forged documents and credentials were superb. Yet all it would take was one too-curious person pulling too hard on a loose thread, and the whole thing would collapse. At best, we would have to flee, and Nicholas would have to think up another plan. At worst, we would all be killed.

  I spent a lot of time breaking into places, planting documents, stealing documents, and helping Morelli and Murdo produce falsified documentation. We rarely saw Corbisher, which was pleasant, since he was busy with the fake catering company. Food service was a lot of work – in the unlikely event I lived long enough that Morvilind finished curing Russell and I had to go find a real job, I wasn’t going into food service. Nicholas and Lorenz were busy handling various other aspects of the “enterprise” so I didn’t see them often, either.

  That suited me just fine. Of everyone in Nicholas’s crew, Murdo was the only one I liked. He had had every opportunity to betray me, and he had kept faith with me so far. Despite the conflicting stories that Murdo and Nicholas had told me, I had come to suspect that Nicholas had gotten Murdo into the Rebels through coercion or blackmail.

  Or maybe Murdo was an Inquisition agent and would kill us all at some point.

  I didn’t like Morelli, but we could work together without getting on each other’s nerves. If I had been forced to work with Corbisher and Lorenz, we likely would have killed each other at some point. One of Nicholas’s talents was that he really was a good manager, even if he sometimes shot his employees in the head. His crew would have torn itself apart without him.

  But he still was still a ruthless man.

  I was reminded of that a week before the day of the gala.

  It was about 11 PM, and I returned to the base exhausted. Nicholas had dug up a helicopter pilot from somewhere, a guy named Geoffrey Turner, and Turner needed documents so he could be inserted into the staff of the Governor of New York, who would be flying to Washington DC via helicopter from Albany. I had forged the necessary documents, gotten up at 5 AM, driven in one of Nicholas’s vehicles to Albany, broken into a few offices, and handed off the documents to Turner, who turned out to be a nervous-looking man who smiled a lot while refusing to make eye contact. I really hoped he kept his cool when the time came for action.

  Breaking into the offices wasn’t hard, and I turned around and drove back to Washington. It was a long drive, and I was tired, and I wanted to sleep once I got back to base. No one stopped me as I walked up the stairs, down the hall, and I opened my door.

  I took one step into my room and froze.

  The first thing that hit me was the smell. It was a mixture of sweat and other bodily fluids.

  Then I saw the clothes scattered across the floor, along with both a man’s and a woman’s undergarments.

  Right after that, I saw Hailey Adams.

  She was stark naked, and she was on her hands and knees atop my bed. Her face was a rapturous mask, red-faced and sweating, and her mouth hung open as she moaned. Nicholas was just as naked, and he was kneeling behind Hailey.

  For an instant, pure astonishment froze my brain. I had done a lot of strange things in my life, but I had never actually walked in on a couple in the middle of the act. My surprised mind noted all sorts of little details – the way Hailey’s arms were trembling with fatigue, how the muscles in Nicholas’s legs and back kept flexing, the fact that if Nicholas had ever tried to sleep with me in that position while we had been together, I would have lost my temper.

  Then rage overruled shock.

  “What the hell?” I shouted. “My bed!”

  Hailey’s eyes popped open with near-comical surprise. She let out a little shriek and tried to pull away from Nicholas, but his hands were already wrapped around her hips, and he yanked her back against him.

  Nicholas met my eye, smirked, and kept at it.

  Disgust mixed with my anger.

  “For God’s sake!” I snarled. I grabbed my backpack, stalked out of the room, and slammed the door behind me. I strode down the hallway, not caring where I was going, just so long as it was away. I stomped down the stairs, pushed open a door, and wound up in Nicholas’s workshop. I looked at the tables of computer equipment and electronics, and decided to push them over and break whatever was he was working on…

  I stopped myself.

  Why? Why did I care? I didn’t love Nicholas. I had been powerfully attracted to him once, but the knowledge of his merciless nature had killed that attraction, and the thought of being in Hailey’s place made my skin crawl. Truth be told, if I could have found a way to kill Nicholas, I would have done it, and I had already done my best to get him killed in Los Angeles three years (or a hundred and sixty-one years) ago.

  No. It was the petty cruelty of it that upset me. Hailey loved Nicholas. I had seen into her thoughts with the mindtouch spell on the day we had met, and she adored Nicholas. She loved him more than I had once loved him, and she all but worshiped the ground he walked on. And to Nicholas, I knew, Hailey was nothing more than a toy, a means of enjoyable physical release. If necessary, he would kill her as quickly as he had killed Vass.

  Hailey adored him, would do anything for him…and Nicholas had used that love to irritate me by making her sleep with him in my bed. Just to annoy me, he had been willing to force a woman who adored him into a humiliating situation.

  Still. I was irritated with myself for reacting that way. I should have hit Nicholas’s naked backside with a blast of magical ice. He deserved that and worse. Though that might have triggered the fight to the death that we were going to have one of these days.

  And I still had to find a damned place to sleep for the night.

  I shook my head and walked to the table. Maybe I ought to throw it over just from sheer irritation. Or, at the very least, go through his files. But the computers were all locked, and knowing Nicholas, he had the hard drives secured with encryption. Instead, I looked at the various disassembled electronic components. Some of them looked ancient. Like pre-Conquest ancient. Just what was he trying to…

  The door opened, and Nicholas stepped into the room.

  He had gotten dressed again and wore an untucked button-down shirt over jeans. His hair was mussed, and there was a satisfied smile on his face.

  I glared at him, and he smiled back.

  “I’m surprised to see you down here, Kat,” said Nicholas. “Are you volunteering for round two? Well, I’ll need a little while to recover first, but once I do, I promise you that I will be up for…”

  “For God’s sake,” I said. “You just slept with your girlfriend, and now you’re propositioning me? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing,” said Nicholas. He walked to the table and sat down, picking up a piece of old electronics.

  “She loves you,” I said, folding my arms. “She loves you, and…it was your idea to use my bed, wasn’t it? Just to annoy me?”

  “Well,” said Nicholas. “You do seem annoyed. I would say it worked.”

  “She loves you, and you treat her like this?”

  Nicholas looked up at me, amused. “Two weeks ago, you saw me shoot Vass in the head, and you’re concerned about where I sleep with Hailey? Your sense of priority is certainly skewed, Kat.”

  “Vass wasn’t in love with you,” I said.

  “I should certainly hope not. He really wasn’t my type.”

  I shook my head in disgust. “Vass thought he was acting in your best interests, I’ll bet, and you still shot him. Hailey loves you. I wonder what you’ll do to people you hate.”

  I turned to go, picking up my bag. I wondered where I would sleep tonight. I sure as hell wasn’t going to sleep in my room again. Maybe the car I had used for my trip to Albany?

  “Kat.”

  I stopped and looked back at Nicholas.

  He leaned back in his chair and looked up at me.

  “A question.”

  “If you proposition me again,” I said, “that fight you keep saying we’
re going to have? It’s happening right now.”

  He laughed. “No. A serious question.”

  “Fine. Ask.”

  He tapped his fingers against his leg for a moment. “Why do you hate the Revolution so much?”

  I paused. “What do you mean?”

  “I know you’re lying to me,” said Nicholas. “Your story about your Elven noblewoman and your husband and your child…I know that most of the story is false, even if some of it is true. But I know you are the shadow agent of an Elven noble, and I know the Elven noble has treated you badly. So. Why not join us? Why not fight for your freedom?”

  “Because,” I said, “if I do, my husband and son die.”

  “If you help us,” said Nicholas, “then perhaps we can free your husband and son. Perhaps one day you can stand with your foot upon your former Elven master’s throat.”

  “Or maybe we’ll all be dead,” I said. “And I’m already helping you.”

  “Against your will,” said Nicholas. “Just think of how much more you could do if you helped us voluntarily.”

  I laughed. “I’m not that powerful, Nicholas.”

  He leaned forward, those blue eyes suddenly intense. “But you are, though.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  An uneasy feeling fluttered through my stomach. I had reflected before that a long time ago, when I had been young, I had wanted power more than anything. I had the idea that if I had become strong enough, that if I had become powerful enough, I could save Russell and make sure that no one would ever harm us again.

  I recognized that it had been an adolescent fantasy because now I had power. In all probability, I was likely one of the strongest human wizards on Earth. And what had it gained me? To obtain that power, I had been tortured for a century and a half. I had nearly been eaten by a myothar, and I had been shot four times. It had brought me no more security. All the magical power had done was to let me play at a higher level, where the stakes were so much bigger.

  I didn’t know what Nicholas wanted, not yet, but I was willing to bet the stakes involved hundreds of millions of lives.

  “No, I’m not,” I said in a quiet voice.

  “Don’t lie to yourself, Kat,” said Nicholas. “Lie to me all you wish, but don’t lie to yourself. You can Cloak at will and move about undetected. No human wizard has that power. Many Elven wizards do not! You can call firestorms and volleys of lightning globes, and if you had felt like it, you could have killed Lorenz with a thought when he provoked you.”

  I didn’t say anything. He was right, and I didn’t like it.

  “And you didn’t use to have that kind of magical power,” said Nicholas. “Not in Los Angeles. Not when we first met. In the three years since something happened to give you that power.” He leaned back again. “And I bet it was something terrible, and something that the Elves did to you.”

  “You don’t…” My voice cracked, and I made myself calm down. “You don’t know anything about it.”

  “No, but I can guess,” said Nicholas, “and I think my guesses come close to the mark, don’t they? What did they do to you, Kat? What made you like this?”

  We started at each other for a while. Contradictory emotions fought for control inside my head. I hated him, and he disgusted me. But there was something else. I still had never spoken to anyone about the Eternity Crucible. (Well, Morvilind, but he didn’t count.) And who could I talk to about it? Who could possibly understand? I had endured things that the human mind was not equipped to handle.

  And I was so tired.

  “Hell,” I said. “I was in hell, Nicholas. You think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. Have you ever seen someone rip open your chest and pull out your heart?”

  “No.”

  “I have,” I said. “Not once, but many, many times. I’ve known just about every kind of physical torment it is possible for someone to experience. That’s what happened to me. That’s where the power came from.”

  He leaned forward again. “So. The Elves did that to you. Why do you hate us instead of them?”

  Suddenly I didn’t have an answer for him.

  A wave of black loathing went through me, but not for Nicholas. It was aimed at Arvalaeon, who had made me into the creature that I was now. Morvilind, who had taken a little girl and made her into a cold and cynical thief. The High Queen, who had been willing to nuke Milwaukee to stop the Archons. Maybe without them, I would have been someone else, someone better. Someone like Alexandra Ross, happy and content, with a husband who loved me and a baby on the way.

  Nicholas’s words blazed like lightning inside of my head.

  My foot on Morvilind’s throat…

  God, wouldn’t that be sweet? To repay them for all they had done to me?

  Then other memories rose in my churning mind.

  Standing with Arvalaeon outside that restaurant in downtown La Crosse, the Lord Inquisitor pointing out the children in the restaurant and describing how they would have died if I hadn’t killed Castomyr.

  All the pregnant women and children that Sergei Rogomil’s troops had killed at the Ducal Mall in Milwaukee.

  The horror I had felt when I had realized what Nicholas intended to do in Los Angeles, how he had been planning to bomb that stadium to kill Duke Wraithmyr. There would have been fifty thousand people in that stadium, maybe as many as a hundred thousand. And the stadium had been running a family discount for that game. There would have been thousands of children there.

  Nicholas would have killed them all.

  “I don’t like the Elves,” I said. Nicholas inclined his head. “They’re cruel and aloof and don’t care what happens to us. But if we killed all the Elves, people like you would take over, and that would be worse.”

  Nicholas looked amused. “In what way would I be worse, Kat?”

  “All those children, Nicholas,” I said. “All those children you would have murdered in Los Angeles. I don’t know what you’re working on now, but whatever this Operation Sky Hammer thing is you’re looking for, it will probably kill a lot of innocent people.”

  “Most likely,” said Nicholas, and then he laughed.

  “What the hell is so funny? You think this is funny?”

  “There is nothing funny about war,” said Nicholas. “But you are. I had no idea you had such…maternal stirrings. Just as well I broke up with you when I did. Else you would have shown up with a baby and demanded that I pay for it.”

  “Then you’re happy that your plan will kill a lot of innocent people?” I demanded.

  Nicholas shrugged. “I don’t worry about it one way or another. And I don’t see why you do, either. You’re hardly a saint, Kat.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said. “I’ve done all kinds of bad things. Maybe I’ll go to hell for it, I don’t know. But there are worse things than what I’ve done. There are lines I haven’t crossed and that I don’t want to cross. The mass murder of children is one of them.”

  “It’s not mass murder,” said Nicholas. “It’s war. There is collateral damage in war.”

  “That’s just a rationalization,” I said. “I know all about rationalizations, and I can smell their stink a mile away.”

  “This is total war, Kat,” said Nicholas, “and in a total war, every option is on the table. There are no neutrals, no rules, and no bystanders. Every single man, woman, and child in that stadium was an enemy collaborator. The soccer game had been held in honor of Duke Wraithmyr. Every spectator there was participating in a system of oppression, the system that makes the Elves into the ruling class and humanity into the ruled class, and by participating in that system, the spectators made themselves into legitimate targets of warfare.”

  “God damn it, Nicholas,” I said. “That’s monstrous.”

  “Monstrous?” said Nicholas. He raised his eyebrows. “As compared to remaining under the rule of the Elves? Would that not be more monstrous?”

  “Depending on the cost,” I said, “it might not be.”

 
Nicholas snorted. “A collaborationist mindset, Kat. We’re trying to build a new world. There are going to be costs…”

  “That you’re quite happy to have other people pay for you.”

  “You cannot build a new world,” said Nicholas, “without first tearing down the old one.”

  “Remember Sergei Rogomil?” I said. I felt the sudden urge to throw Rogomil’s death in Nicholas’s face, to tell him that I had been the one to kill him and capture the Cruciform Eye. Fortunately, I stopped myself. That would tell Nicholas I had been in Milwaukee during the Archon attack, and that might be the loose thread that would lead him to Russell.

  Nicholas’s lips thinned. “Yes.”

  “I heard him once tell you that if by killing ninety percent of humanity he could make sure the remaining ten percent lived free of the Elves, he would do it,” I said. “Do you still agree with that?”

  “With all my heart,” said Nicholas.

  I rolled my eyes. “Just so long as you get to rule over the remaining ten percent, of course.”

  His smile returned. “Someone has to guide humanity into its golden age.”

  “Goddamn it.” I sighed. “I don’t know why I’m talking to you. We won’t agree. We won’t ever agree. Once the deal is done, either I’m going to kill you, or you’re going to kill me.”

  “Most probably,” said Nicholas. “Though I do know why you’re talking to me.”

  “Just why is that?” I said.

  “Because you’re my equal.”

  I stared at him.

  “Of all the women I’ve slept with,” said Nicholas, “and there have been many, I will admit, you are the only one who is my equal.”

  “Don’t tell Hailey.”

  “Hailey isn’t all that bright,” said Nicholas. My mouth twisted at the insult. I didn’t like her, but she loved him. He ought to treat her with more respect. “You are. You are my intellectual equal, and even with my Dark One to enhance my abilities, you’re still my equal in magical power. Frankly, you’re one of the bravest people, man or woman, that I’ve ever met.” He shook his head. “It is a waste. If we could work together, think of all we could accomplish.”