Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, & Magic

by SM Reine

  It didn’t help that at least half of my rage came from confusion, an almost cloying inability to understand him. Why had he told me that stuff about his childhood? Why the chess, for that matter? And why had he been so sure I’d want to know about him and Kat? What had he even meant by it, anyway? Did saying he hadn’t fucked her mean intercourse only? Because that left a pretty wide range of inbetweens that my imagination was more than happy to supply with images...especially since he hadn’t minded getting a dick massage and shoving his tongue down her throat right in front of me.

  And why the hell did I care about this again?

  I heard a snap and sigh of plastic and air, then the sound of him drinking. The backpack rustled, followed by his leather-covered shoulders meeting the cement wall. I closed my eyes, opening them when I remembered I couldn’t sleep.

  “Can I please go outside?” I said.

  He shook his head, clicking softly. “No.”

  “Then talk. Tell me something.”

  “What?”

  “Anything,” I said. “Who was your real father?”

  He sighed, moving so that the leather crinkled again. “My biological parents were killed by humans when I was very young. I do not remember them.”

  I closed my eyes, cursing myself silently, then turned to look at him.

  “Revik. I’m sorry—”

  “I raised the subject,” he said. “It’s fine, Allie.”

  I watched his face as his mind seemed to go somewhere else.

  “Were you really a Nazi?” I said.

  His eyes turned slowly in my direction.

  “Yes,” he said. “...In the way you mean it. In the strictest sense...meaning politically...no.”

  I wasn’t sure how to follow on that.

  “So,” I said. “Did you leave after? When you—”

  “I don’t want to talk about that.” Averting his eyes, he shrugged. “I don’t remember most of that time, anyway.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t remember?”

  He sighed, clicking his tongue. “It was a condition of my coming back. A portion of my memory was forfeit. I believe it was partly mechanical...I lost some simply by being separated from the network. Some was a bargain Vash made for my life. With the Rooks.” His eyes remained on his laced fingers. “I imagine I knew things. Things the Rooks needed me to forget.”

  Realizing my mouth hung open, I closed it.

  “Forfeit?” I said. “How much is gone?”

  His eyes grew a touch colder. “I don’t know. I can guess, by piecing together dates with what I remember.” His face smoothed to neutral as he cleared his throat. “...It is very strange that you saw any of it. No one else ever has. Perhaps it has something to do with who you are.” He glanced at me, his eyes and voice casual.

  “May I ask...how much did you see?”

  Great. I’d just walked into another potential minefield. I tried to be reassuring.

  “Not much. You and your wife—” He flinched visibly. “...I saw you in jail, and that guy, Terian. I also saw you in Russia, I think. Something about tanks being stuck in the mud. You seemed unhappy about the way the war was going...” I trailed, figuring that last part was safe at least. “You and some guy talked about who would lead that part of the front.”

  His eyes grew calm as he rested his chin on his hands.

  “How old are you?” I said, when he didn’t break the silence. “You and that guy Terian...you look exactly the same.”

  He laced his fingers together. For a moment, I saw him thinking again, as if considering possible responses. Finally, he shrugged.

  “I am young for a seer,” he said.

  After a lengthier pause, he leaned his head against the wall.

  It wasn’t until another minute or so had passed that I realized that was all the answer I was going to get.

  15

  MURDER

  The date was May 12th.

  I recycled that piece of information from a dropped comment by Revik about our flights, when we would arrive in Tai Pei versus when we left the airport in Vancouver, BC. I didn’t really hear him when he said it; the fact hit me such that I stopped my hand in mid-motion before the white, triangle-shaped skirt of the woman symbol on the bathroom door of the diner where we’d stopped to eat breakfast.

  I stood there, frozen, for more than one heartbeat.

  I thought of my mom. My eyes lit on a pay phone bolted inside a shadowed alcove to my right. I blinked at it, nearly hallucinating with fatigue, then glanced behind me, watching Revik’s back as he slumped into a red vinyl booth.

  Completing the motion of my hand, I entered the restroom.

  On my way out, minutes later, I spotted a black plastic tray covered in Canadian coins on an empty table. Scooping it up, I dumped the change into my palm and left the tray on the bar without breaking stride. My fellow-waitress code brought me a twinge of guilt, but I shook it off.

  I slid into the creaking booth across from Revik.

  “You got me coffee?” I said.

  He nodded. I saw him tracking faces and sighed, relieved when I realized he’d barely noticed my absence.

  I drank coffee and he used his to warm his hands. Our waitress came back, topped off both of our cups, then lingered, smiling at Revik.

  “Know what you want to eat yet, honey?”

  He frowned, picking up the menu. “No. Go away.”

  The woman froze, her mouth open. I stared at him too, equally surprised, but more amused than our waitress. Snapping her mouth shut, she turned and walked away, taking her coffee pot with her.

  I watched her go, then noted Revik’s eyes on mine. I followed his gaze to my hands, which were methodically shredding a paper napkin. I pushed the napkin away.

  “They can’t help it,” he said. He seemed to mean his words to be reassuring. “We’ll both distract people for awhile. Humans, too.”

  “Distract people?” I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged, lifting his coffee mug to his lips. He took a sip of the dark brown fluid, then grimaced, lowering the mug back to the table.

  I smiled. “What? Did you forget you didn’t like it?”

  He fingered the mug’s ceramic handle, frowning at me slightly.

  Glancing at the bar counter, I said, “Well, you’d better not order anything now. They spit in the food sometimes, you know.” When he didn’t look over, I tried again.

  “How will we know Ullysa’s people?”

  “They’ll know me. I’ll likely know some of them.”

  I nodded, reacting slightly to his words. I didn’t know what triggered my reaction at first. Then my eyes followed a man outside, watching him stare at a woman in a skin-tight miniskirt standing across the street. She smiled at him, her mouth a dark red slash, and I found my thoughts drifting to Seattle.

  “So we just get on the plane?” I said evenly.

  “Yes.” Watching my face, he added, softer, “There is nothing to worry about, Allie.”

  Hearing the second meaning under his words, I pretended I hadn’t...which wasn’t hard, since I had only the vaguest idea what it was about.

  I tried to think instead about where we’d be in the next two days. In the course of our awkward “talk” the night before, Revik said the part of Russia where we’d be going remained nearly wild, almost untouched. Bears roamed the tundra and woods, along with wolves, eagles, foxes. I thought about my mom’s fascination with wolves and smiled...then frowned, glancing over my shoulder at the bathroom door.

  “Okay.” I looked at him. “I have to go again. I think it’s the coffee.”

  I watched his eyes focus out the window, coming to rest on the same woman I’d been looking at seconds before.

  His gaze sharpened and flickered down, appraising.

  “Okay,” I repeated. I planted my hands on the table and stood. “I’ll be back.”

  He didn’t look up as I left.

  When I glanced back, he was still looking ou
t the window. He took another sip of lukewarm coffee as I watched, and grimaced.

  I slid onto the wooden bench under the pay phone and lifted the receiver, throwing all the coins I had into the slot. I found myself relieved they even had coin phones in Canada; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen one in SF. I punched in the familiar number, shifting so that my back faced the corridor.

  The phone rang.

  After a pause, it rang again.

  “Come on,” I murmured. “Pick up.”

  A click startled my ears. My heart lifted...

  But only in the pause before my mother’s antique answering machine switched on, playing a message so old I’d memorized it before high school.

  “...We’re not at home right now.” Mom’s voice sang out the words like small bells. “...So pleeease leave a message after the tone...BEEP!” She laughed. “Ha ha, just kidding! Here it comes!”

  “Dork,” I muttered, out of habit.

  The message machine beeped.

  Terian gazed in fascination at the metallic box on the tile counter.

  He hadn’t known such machines still existed. It was like looking at an old linotype machine, or a working trebuchet and its pile of stones, waiting to be flung over a castle wall. The phone stopped its high-pitched trill and shuddered to life. Silence wafted after the initial message, but from the static, Terian knew it hadn’t finished.

  “...Ha ha, just kidding! Here it comes...”

  The machine let out a loud, atonal bleep.

  Terian’s new body, still unfamiliar in passing glimpses on reflective surfaces, tensed in excitement. After all, he knew who wasn’t calling. The Seven as well as the Org watched the house and its single occupant, so they might even know he was inside by now, but Terian didn’t mind that, either.

  He wanted Dehgoies to know exactly where he was.

  The background sound of children’s voices rose, and he glanced at the television monitor. Small faces pressed close to the likely-illegal camera, laughing and screaming in delight as that cheerful tune began to sing-song out of bow-shaped lips smeared with white and blue frosting.

  “Happy biiiiirthday to you! Happy biiiirthday to you! Happy biiiirthday, dear Al—”

  “Mom?” A voice emerged, panicked but low. “Mom, are you there? Pick up! Please pick up! I don’t have much time!”

  Terian blinked. Voices came to him in this body sometimes. They sang to him, like the children in the metal box...but this voice sounded real.

  Could it be real?

  A little girl ran into the room even as Terian thought it, this one neither trapped behind glass nor a hallucination. Paint covered her small hands, and matted her dark hair in clumps. Her bare feet poked out from under a tattered purple dress, scratched and stained from play. A stuffed white rabbit dangled from her sticky fingers, and red had bled into the velvet fur.

  Terian waved at her to be silent as he pointed at the machine.

  “Mom?” the voice from the machine said.

  The girl froze, staring at the box on the counter.

  Excitement slid through Terian’s skin, a liquid heat, shared between himself and the girl. He wasn’t hallucinating the voice. She was right there, on the other side of the line. He could simply lift the receiver, speak with her...

  “Mom! Please...pick up!”

  A symphony lived in that voice. Physical imprints could be so endlessly fascinating, like motes of dust, each containing a singular world. Terian winked at the little girl, who took another step towards the machine.

  He held up a hand, warning her.

  “Crap,” the voice said dully. “Of all the times for you to actually be out of your cave.” Another silence came and went. “Mom, listen. I can’t tell you where I am. I’m not dead or in a ditch. And I’m not a freaking terrorist, okay? I’m with a friend. He’s helping me figure things out...”

  Terian’s smile widened.

  “...I’ll be home as soon as I can. Tell Jon and Cass...well, tell them I’m okay. And I miss them. I love you, Mom. Tell them that, too.”

  Terian grinned, hearing the ups and downs in her voice as her moods shifted from reassurance to fear and back again. She’d called to reassure her mother, but she’d also hoped to reassure herself. Terian chuckled again.

  Dehgoies didn’t know where she was, he was sure of it. Perhaps by now she’d learned more effective means of distracting him, too.

  From the wall, a moan redirected both Terians’ focus.

  Red lines and small handprints snaked across sun-faded wallpaper, running in places, like rusting metal. Whenever two of Terian’s bodies shared physical proximity they tended to share traits. The doc had said this personality configuration would be creative, and she hadn’t been wrong. At the foot of the same wall, another groan grew audible, meeting the voice still coming out of the answering machine.

  “...and Mom?” The voice hesitated. “Don’t let any strangers in the house, okay?”

  The little girl giggled. The stuffed white bunny bounced against her chest.

  “...There are some people after me, and...well, it would be better if you could just go to Grandma’s for awhile. Or Aunt Carol’s. Please? Just do what I—”

  There was a click. The voice abruptly cut off.

  Raising his eyebrows, Terian looked at the little girl. Seeing the blank look in her eyes, he smiled.

  “Are you finished?” he asked her kindly.

  She held up her hands, pinning the bunny to her chest with one short arm. He understood her without words.

  “No more paint?” he said sympathetically.

  She shook her head, bouncing her dark curls.

  Terian clucked his tongue, rising easily to his feet. Following her back into the other room, he lifted a paint brush from the edge of the television stand, using his fingers to wipe away stray hairs. He handed it to the little girl.

  “...Let’s see what we can do about that,” he murmured.

  Squatting fluidly, he examined the woman. No sound came from the area by his feet, but a single eye stared up, almost childlike in its attentiveness. The woman whimpered as Terian touched her skin. The eye closed, leaving the face featureless under hair and paint.

  He checked the belt he’d been using as a tourniquet.

  He considered loosening it, then pulled a flip knife from his back pocket instead, scanning options on the marred skin. Both arms had tourniquets already, both legs. The obvious choices had been tapped; to overuse any one would bring an end within heartbeats. He clasped a handful of her hair, speaking to her softly.

  She had already given so much.

  The little girl fidgeted. “Paint!” she shrieked. “Paint!”

  “Relax, dearest,” he murmured.

  The woman groaned when he sliced into her scalp. The eye flickered open and she fought to breathe as paint ran past her eyelashes, making her blink and gasp like a panicking child.

  “Shhhh,” he said. “Shhh...”

  The little girl jumped up and down.

  He straightened, watching as she pushed the metal brush into the fresh pool, using one chubby hand to balance on the woman’s forehead and then scraping the brush back and forth on the wall, leaving behind an sweep of broken red lines. Occasionally, she would look back at him, showing him one part of the drawing or another.

  “Good,” he said, approvingly. “Yes, very nice work, Melissa...very nice. Looks just like your bunny...yes.”

  The little girl beamed back at him, her eyes shining.

  I clutched the receiver. Something was wrong.

  I couldn’t breathe. This pain wasn’t like what I’d felt in Seattle...it wasn’t...

  Cold sweat broke out on my skin. A kind of liquid dread made it difficult to breathe...like someone treading in circles over a rotting corpse, crushing maggots...

  “...and Mom?” I fought to swallow. “Don't let any strangers in the house, okay? There are some people after me, and...well, it would be better if you could go to Grandma’s f
or awhile. Or Aunt Carol’s. Please? Just do what I—”

  A hand reached in front of my face, depressing the phone’s silver tongue.

  I glanced up and back, still holding the receiver.

  Revik stood there, his face blank until I saw his eyes.

  He motioned with his hand for me to get up. When I hesitated, he caught hold of my elbow, jerking me to my feet. He steered me down the corridor. The horrible feeling didn’t go away; if anything, it got worse, until I no longer cared whether Revik was angry or even if I’d done something...again...that might get us both killed.

  He took me through the glass front doors of the diner and to the street outside. The sun reflected coldly from the windows of high-rise buildings, but it only blinded me, making the sickness worse. I planted my feet when Revik stopped.

  Still holding my arm, he pulled out a mobile phone, hit a single key. His message to whoever picked up was brief.

  “Yes,” he said. “We’ll need it.”

  He clicked the phone shut and threw it at a nearby garbage container, hard enough for the bin to vibrate as the phone rattled against the insides before it came to rest. Jerking me closer by the arm, Revik turned to speak, then stopped, staring directly at my face.

  The anger in his eyes faltered.

  “What?” he said. “What is it?”

  I tried to answer.

  “What, Allie?” His voice sharpened, but he didn’t sound angry at me anymore. “What is going on? What’s wrong with you?”

  My stomach lurched. I turned away from him, throwing up coffee and part of a danish in a thick sluice on the sidewalk. A family was walking past us, aiming for the diner, and one of the kids gave a sharp cry of disgust.

  “Ewww! Mom, that lady’s barfing!”

  I heaved again, bent in half. I didn’t think about moving, not even to aim for the potted tree in the cement walk. Revik stood impassively, holding my arm, his eyes sweeping the street. I heaved a third time, gasping. When it started to feel like it might be over, I wiped my lips with the back of a hand.