Dead of Night (Ghosts & Magic #1)

by M. R. Forbes

  "Dannie?"

  I reached up and gripped both sides of the helmet, lifting it off my head. I looked over at the chair next to me. She was still there, her helmet still on.

  That was strange.

  "Dannie?"

  I slid off the chair and put my helmet down on it. She had died in the Machine, hadn't she? Maybe that hadn't been her? It was possible she had a mod to make her look like someone else, and make someone else look like her. Could it be that Azeban had known about it, and that's why he had saved me?

  I needed to wake her up. Was it as simple as just taking the cap off? It seemed like it should be. I leaned over her and put my hands on it.

  That was when I saw the blood.

  "Let go of the fucking helmet and turn around," Tony said.

  I was panicking for real now, and fearing the worst. I wanted to take the helmet off, to make sure she was okay. I took a deep breath, and turned around.

  The goblin was holding the gun that Amos had given me. "Don't you try anything."

  He was shaking, nervous.

  "What did you do?"

  He looked past me, at Danelle. I could see it in his eyes.

  "What the fuck did you do?" I screamed, moving towards him.

  "Don't move," he yelled back, pushing the gun forward. "I told her not to move. I told her to just sit there. She didn't fucking listen. She thought she was so tough." His voice was cracking as he spoke. "One of the admins called me. They said to keep an eye on you. If you woke up, not to let you leave. Twenty thousand, to not let you leave."

  I turned around again, and reached for the helmet.

  "Don't."

  I lifted it up.

  "Twenty thousand, just don't let you leave. All she had to do was sit there. Why wouldn't she just sit there?"

  Tony was a good shot. The bullet had gone into her head, right between the eyes. It was armor piercing, I bet it was buried in the soundproofing behind us somewhere.

  I looked into her eyes. Her dead eyes. My entire body went numb.

  "Turn around." His voice was desperate. He was scared.

  He was right to be.

  I turned, throwing the long coat out around me and shifting to the side. The goblin was a good shot against someone with no legs. The bullet made a nice hole in my new-to-you trench, but it didn't even come close to hitting me.

  One hand took the gun, the other wrapped around his narrow throat. I didn't think about the consequences, and I didn't care. I heard the fields, and I took the power in.

  "Please. I'm sorry. Please, please, it was an accident." He was begging for his life. I watched his neck begin to turn grey, and then black.

  "She has no fucking legs," I screamed into his pathetic face. "She couldn't hurt you." She probably called him to help wake me up, or to get her to her chair.

  "Please." His voice was getting more raspy. The flesh was flaking away beneath my hand, the disease spreading.

  My anger went quiet. "Stop whining. It's too late."

  I let him go.

  He fell to the ground, coughing and choking. I returned the gun to my holster, and went back to Dannie. This was wrong. This was all so wrong. I was the one who was dying. I was the one who should have been dead. If I had died five years ago like I wanted to, she could never have saved me. She'd still have her legs, and her life.

  Tony died behind me, but I didn't even notice. I leaned over Dannie, the anger washing away and the pain filling the space. My eyes filled with tears, and I leaned over and put my forehead to hers. I gave myself a minute to cry, to bawl. Then I gave myself a minute to tear apart the small room, ripping at the chairs and the wires. I took my helmet and threw it at the window. It was hardened, and it just bounced off.

  "No, no, no, no, no, no, no." I stroked her hair. "I love you. I'm sorry."

  This was all my fault. From beginning to end, I had caused this. I had been delusional to think I could handle the job, insane to think it wasn't a trap from the start.

  "I'm sorry, Dannie. Fuck. I'm so sorry."

  I'd blown it, and she had died sitting in a chair.

  For twenty thousand dollars.

  Getting killed was a risk every ghost took. If you ran as a team, or if you had a partner, having to watch them die bore the same risk. It was part of the job description, and you had to come to terms with it if you wanted to survive and succeed. It was just part of the business, and anyone who had ever had the same career would have told me not to make it personal.

  Fuck that. It was personal.

  I wiped my eyes on the trench and checked my watch. I had twenty minutes to get Jin out of the Greens, before this Tarakona's kill team showed up to finish this thing. I would have loved to take them all on at once, but I couldn't get my revenge if I was dead. Instead, I leaned over and scooped Dannie up, holding her corpse across my shoulder and heading for the door. It hurt like hell to use my arm like this, but she wasn't very heavy, and I was too pissed to care.

  I got the door to the room open and ducked out into the hallway, sweeping left and right with the gun. It was clear. I walked fast towards the elevator, doing my best to keep my mind focused. I was guilty, sad, frightened, angry... more angry than anything else.

  The elevator was waiting. I got in and directed it back down to the lobby. It occurred to me the guards wouldn't react too well to me carrying around a dead body and brandishing a weapon. I put Danelle down and returned the gun to its holster, and then removed the hoodie and put it on her, using it to cover her head. Then I picked her back up and re-slung her. She was drunk, I was taking her back to our hotel... It was as good an excuse as any.

  I kept to the corner of the elevator as it hit the lobby and the doors slid open. I was glad I did. The place had been nearly emptied, with the exception of six of the armored leathers, who had Jin and Amos cuffed near the front desk. Amos was cursing and complaining about the whole thing being bullshit, and in this case I was grateful for his big mouth. They hadn't noticed the elevator's arrival.

  I didn't have much time. I found the dice in my pocket, brought them up to my lips and whispered into them. "Six souls, leather and strong. A good meal."

  I felt them grow warm to the suggestion. I don't think I ever enjoyed feeding them more.

  I peeked around the corner, and ducked my head back before I could be spotted. The doors started to close, but I slammed my fist onto the open button. I didn't look into the lobby again. I didn't need to. I knew where the desk was. I stood in the corner and threw the dice backwards out of the opening. Then I pulled the gun.

  I counted. One... two... three... I swung across the open doorway. I couldn't see my roll, but I saw the effects. Fire, and Daggers. It had to be. The guards were standing still, their weapons dropped from paralyzed fingers, their eyes wide with fear and confusion. I didn't shoot at them, not yet. The paralysis would spread, inward until it reached their hearts.

  Then they would die.

  The problem was that I couldn't collect the dice until they did. If the second cast had been Daggers, that could mean a couple of minutes. If we were ready to go before then, I'd have to shoot them anyway.

  I walked out of the elevator. Jin and Amos saw me, and they looked relieved. They couldn't have known Dannie was dead. They would have thought I was just carrying her.

  "What did you do?" the lead guard whined at me as I approached. He wouldn't be able to speak for much longer. The cuffs were fingerprint activated. I grabbed his hand and lifted it.

  "Come on. We need to get out of here." I looked at Jin. "There's a kill team incoming."

  "What happened?"

  "Yeah," Amos said. "These assholes came up to us and said we were under arrest for illegal use of the Machine. We were just fucking standing here. Seriously. You're gonna make up some bullshit, at least make it somewhat believable. Just like these fucking dirty pricks. Too stupid to even lie right."

  He moved so I could put the cuffs against the orc's finger. They unclasped and dropped to the ground. Ji
n followed after, and then Amos clocked the leather in the head. Helmet or not, he dropped like a sack of crap.

  "They cleared out the rest of the people in the building," Jin said. "It was only five or six minutes after you went up. Tony got a call, and then the guards came over. All the feeds went off."

  "They have an admin helping them. Said they made me as soon as I booted in, thanks to being the only necro on the grid. He probably told them the Machine was compromised. They almost had me inside, but a friend of Dannie's helped me get out." I wished I knew why. It had to be for a better reason than because they had messed around a couple of times.

  Amos ran a fat hand through his hair. "This is totally fucked up. Hey, Dannie, you okay? It's not like you to be so quiet."

  I looked at him.

  He looked at me.

  I saw the muscles in his jaw clench.

  "Mother fuckers." He kicked the guard in the head again, and then turned to the others. He lifted the firepower from two of them, and then knocked them down. He tossed one of the guns to Jin.

  "Baron? Danelle... she..." She had tears in her eyes.

  "Not now. We need to get out."

  We were ready to go. The dice weren't. The guards we hadn't dropped fell on their own, deep moans pouring from their mouths. If they could have moved, they might have screamed or begged or something.

  "Waiting for an invitation?" Amos asked.

  "Hold on." I walked back to where the dice were laying. I had been right. Fire and Daggers.

  "What? Shit, Co... Baron we need to get the fuck out of here."

  "We have to wait." I looked at my watch. "Ten seconds. We can wait ten seconds." It would have taken longer than that to get the helmets off to shoot them in the head.

  The black energy started drifting from the dice, towards the targets. I felt the coldness of it, and it brought me satisfaction. Dannie had always loved the dice, the mystery of their creation and the power of the creature that embodied them.

  I didn't love them, I was afraid of them. I had been since they'd called out to me. It wasn't something I liked to think about. It wasn't something I liked to admit.

  I hadn't found the dice, the dice had found me.

  The energy wrapped around each of the leathers in turn, collecting their souls and dragging them back into the small bone cubes. Jin watched with familiar fascination. Amos turned completely white, and looked away. A moment later, it was done.

  I scooped them up and put them back in my pocket.

  "Where did you leave the van?"

  "At the Amore. I didn't think we'd get into this much shit an hour after you finished your beauty sleep, which, by the way, didn't help you at all."

  "Just give me the keys and take Dannie."

  He only considered being horrified to take her dead body for a split second before he reached into his pocket and found the keys. I cradled her in front of me, leaned down and kissed her cold cheek, and passed her over.

  "Get somewhere safe. I'll be back in five minutes."

  "Yeah right. In case you hadn't noticed Einstein, there is nowhere safe."

  I turned towards the front door. There were a pair of guards standing outside, facing the other way and keeping the crowds back. They hadn't heard any commotion from inside, and none of the assholes in here had time to call for help.

  "There has to be an emergency exit."

  "They'll have guards there, too," Jin said.

  "I know, but not as many onlookers." I turned around, finding the glowing exit sign near the back corner. "Amos, you have a knife?"

  He shifted Danelle on his shoulder and leaned down, pulling a four inch shiv from his boot. He handed it to me.

  "Five minutes. If they notice the guards are down, hide behind the desk and keep them pinned."

  I took off towards the door at a full run.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Three little pigs.

  I wouldn't have been able to tickle an orc in a straight-out fight. Slipping through a door without being noticed? That I could do.

  I jumped on the leather's back and jabbed the shiv into his neck, riding him to the ground and doing my best to keep his fall quiet. Fortunately, he was the only guard out in the alley, positioned to keep people out, not to keep us in.

  I needed to get over a couple of blocks and up another without being completely obvious. The hardest part was going to be getting out of the alley unnoticed. Looking towards the mouth, I could see some of the onlookers that were bleeding over from the front of the Machinery, waiting to see when they would be allowed back in.

  I had given myself five minutes to get the van and get back. That wasn't much time, and I was starting to feel the drain of the power I'd used on Tony. There was no choice but to make a run for it. I exchanged the knife for my gun, keeping my arm under the trench, and walked towards the crowd.

  There was a dumpster near the end of the alley, and I ducked behind it for a few seconds, surveying the scene. There were a couple hundred assorted people standing behind the line the guards had made. Some were just standing there waiting, while others had found ways to entertain themselves: messing with their phones, messing with each other, or whatever.

  Nobody was looking at the alley, and I slipped out along the wall off the adjacent building, walked a couple dozen feet, and then started to run.

  The machinists were interested in the Machinery. There were plenty of other residents and visitors to the Greens that didn't give a shit about that kind of thing, and were still crowding the streets and going about their business as if nothing was wrong. I would have loved to blend in and take my time navigating through them to the hotel, but Amos and Jin were counting on me. I kept running, knowing it made me suspicious as hell, and winding up not very surprised when I blew past a guard leaning against the dark, inner side of a building, and drawing his unwelcome attention.

  "Hey buddy," he shouted.

  I didn't slow, but I did change direction, moving into the crowd. I twisted and shoved my way through, ignoring the curses behind me.

  "Fucking stop, asshole."

  He was chasing me. I cut diagonally across the street, and then up the block to the Amore. I was halfway across when another guard popped out in front of me, his assault rifle raised, the scope against his eye.

  "Stop!"

  I fell to my knees and let my hand come out from under the trench. My shots were wild, but they served to force him to lower his own weapon and take evasive action. I hopped back up, my knees skinned and bleeding, and kept running towards him. By the time he recovered I was in his face, and I smashed him in the jaw with the butt of my gun. He spun to the ground with a grunt.

  A shot echoed in the night, and chips of cement broke free of the building next to me, leaving me wishing I could run just a little bit faster. I reached the corner and saw the sign for the hotel, all done in pink script with the 'a' in 'More-a' shaped either like a heart, or a vagina. The ramp into the parking garage was on the far right side of the building, open and inviting.

  I turned back and took a couple of potshots at the guard following me. He didn't flinch at the bullets, sending his own volley back at me, the spray whizzing past and tearing up the ground on my left. I zigged that way, trying to catch him in between adjustments of aim, and was rewarded with a shot that grazed my calf and almost knocked me down.

  The parking garage was looming. I turned and emptied my clip, two of the shots smashing into his body armor, the armor piercing rounds digging far enough through that he cried out and toppled to the ground. I half-ran, half-limped down the steps. Where the hell was the van?

  The garage had three levels, but Amos was Amos, and he had parked in a handicapped spot near the elevator. I fumbled with the keys for a second, my entire body shaking from the shock and adrenaline, before getting the rear door open and climbing inside. I threw open Evan's cooler and reached down.

  "Come on, Evan. I need you." I sent the power into him, and then drew back my hand to cough.

>   "Damn. What now, asshole?" His head was at a bit of an odd angle, but he didn't seem to notice. "You look like shit."

  "Get up and get armed. Don't give me any shit, I'm not in the mood. Dannie is dead."

  For once, he didn't offer any lip. He got up out of the cooler and went over to the trunk and flung it open.

  "Where the fuck are the guns?"

  I looked over. They had understated how much they had needed to sell. The sawed-off was in there, along with a couple of .38s. Not the kind of firepower he was used to.

  "Make do." I punched the top of the van. "On the roof."

  I got behind the wheel and started it up, backing out of the spot at the same time Evan grabbed the shotgun and one of the pistols.

  "You have got to be kidding me."

  The noise of the gunfire in the garage made my ears hurt. Bullets pinged into the side of the van, puncturing the metal and thumping into Evan.

  I skidded to a stop. "You want better guns? Go take those fuckers out!"

  "Fine. Give me a ride." He jumped out of the van and moved to the front, hopping onto the snub nose. I peeled out, turning the wheel and heading straight for our attackers, a new pair of guards.

  The din continued. Bullets peppered Evan and the windshield, breaking it to pieces. I ducked behind the wheel, keeping it straight.

  "Brakes," Evan said.

  I slammed on them. He threw himself forward, letting his body roll with the momentum and coming up right in front of the leathers. He shoved the shotgun right into one's chest and fired, blowing through the armor. The other shot him point-blank, but he couldn't feel a thing. He brought the .38 up under the guard's chin and blew his brain into his helmet.

  I drove up slowly. He grabbed the two assault rifles and the extra clips they were carrying, and climbed into the van through the blasted windshield. He had bullets planted in his skull, and his clothes were shredded to almost nothing.

  "It's about time I got some action." He lifted a finger to one of the slugs in his head. "Better than a fucking tattoo."