by M. R. Forbes
"Conor... I..."
"Whatever is happening here, Jin, it's not a straight up power play. I think you already know that. When I look at you, I don't see a cold-hearted bitch who thinks watching ghosts die is fun. What I see is a young woman who's in deep shit and doesn't know how to get out of it. You can either be the person that Amos thinks you are, or you can be the person I think you are. You don't get to be both."
She looked out the window. The light caught her face, and I saw a tear in her eye. "I already told you about my aunt, and the situation she was in. No children, no users to carry on the family name and to maintain the House. Without a wizard at our head we're doomed to be consumed by the others, if not through violence, then by attrition. Either way, House Red falls." She looked at the ground and laughed. "An empath can't pass as a wizard."
"I don't understand."
She licked her lips. "Did you know that Mr. Black and Mrs. Red were having an affair?"
The statement shocked me, but that was the only power it had. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"It has to do with everything. Black knew that our House was in trouble. He helped my aunt find a way to get out of it."
"A way out. The stone?"
"Black spends millions of dollars on historical research and archaeological digs. There is a race among the Houses to find as many of the old artifacts as possible, with the hope that they will discover something to give them an edge. So many of these things... they were inert for thousands of years, longer than most written history. Anyway, his people were at a dig on Moutohora Island, near New Zealand. From what my aunt told me, they found the stone there."
"So they took the stone to Black, and Black gave it to Red?"
"Yes."
"What does this have to do with Tarakona?"
"That first night after they found it, the archaeology team is camped out, with armed guards keeping watch, and a team en route to take the stone and bring it back to Black so he could test its properties. When they get to the site, they find all of the guards and all of the archaeologists dead except for one. He told them that they were attacked by the biggest wolves he had ever seen. He had taken the stone and hidden under a tarp in one of the dig pits. He thought the smell of the dirt disguised his scent enough that they didn't know he was there.
"The team took the archaeologist and the stone off the island. Black gave my aunt the artifact, and told her the story of what had happened. In the beginning, they believed the attack on the camp was random, carried out by a wild pack of dire wolves. Except..."
Her voice trailed off, and she looked towards the front window. I could see the pain dance across her face.
"I lied to you about my parents. They didn't die in a plane crash. They were at home in Japan when they were attacked. When their bodies were discovered... they had been torn apart, the same way the scientists had, and the word 'Tarakona' was written in their blood on the wall next to them."
It was the second time she had surprised me in a less than a minute. That's what she'd been keeping from me. She had known from square one who was after her.
"Why didn't you tell me the truth? Why keep that from me, and send me on a wild goose chase to figure out who was behind your aunt's death? Damn it, Jin, Dannie never had to go in the fucking Machine." She'd still be alive, here with us now.
"Don't you think I know that?" She shook her head. "I didn't know it was Tarakona, not for certain. He isn't House Red's only enemy. I was afraid that it was. That their death was related to my aunt's. That the same person killed them, and Natsumi. But I don't know who he is, Conor. I don't know what he wants."
For whatever reason, Tarakona wanted the stone, and he organized this whole thing in order to claim it. He even used Black's money to pay for the fake job, which I doubted was a coincidence. I could only assume he'd done it to throw it in Black's face.
"I don't know who he is either, but I know what he wants. The stone, and you. He has the stone. Why does he want you?"
"I don't know."
I looked at her, searching for any hint of deception. "Are you sure?"
"Conor, I don't know. What I can tell you is that my aunt never had armed guards in her home before my parents were killed. She was a powerful wizard on her own, she didn't need them. Then they died, and she changed. She began to worry about the safety of the people around her, the people she cared about, as though she had no way to protect any of us. It's the same reason I had a panic room in my closet. She was always afraid they would come for Natsumi and me. I don't think she ever expected that he would get to her directly."
He had gotten to her through the guards, who had only been hired because of her fear. She had known them, and trusted them enough to let her guard down. Whoever Tarakona was, he was playing the long game to perfection.
Or at least he had been, until I had made the mistake of getting involved.
"Dannie's contact in the Machine, he called Tarakona 'the future'. It didn't make any sense to me, until those things attacked us. There's plenty of mythology that says werewolves can change forms, but I've never heard of it actually happening before."
"You think he created them somehow?"
"Could he? I don't know, but he does have some measure of control over ferals, and those things took a dozen bullets and didn't even flinch. I don't think he's a full-frequency wizard, but he has some kind of power. In any case, knowing that this Tarakona is behind your aunt's death only gets us so far. There are still a lot of questions we need answered. How did he even know about you in the first place? How does he have enough clout to get a Machine admin to help him? Where the hell can I find him so I can shake his hand?" I sat down on the couch next to her. "As far as I'm concerned, he killed Dannie, just as surely as if he'd pulled the trigger himself. I don't give a fuck who he is. You want bold? I can do better than that."
"How? We don't even know where to find him."
"No. I think I know someone who does." I wasn't sure if I would be able to get in touch with him, but I was going to try.
I was going to suggest getting some rest, until my stomach convulsed and I turned away from her, leaning over and casting bile all over the floor. I clutched at my chest as I heaved, coughing and vomiting until my mouth began dripping blood all over the new carpet.
"Conor?" I felt her hand on my back. She started rubbing it.
"I'll be all right. It's been a tough couple of days. I just need to get some rest, and it'll pass. It's all part of the pleasure of being me."
I coughed a few more times.
"You're going to get worse before you ever get better. I know how necromancers are made."
There was nothing I could do about it. "Unless you happen to have my meds in your pocket, there's no way to avoid it. This so-called life doesn't come cheap or easy."
My head was aimed at the floor, my eyes on the disgusting mess of phlegm and blood I had left there. I felt her shift behind me, and then she took my hand. She put something in it.
"Did you know that Parity Limited makes anti-cancer medication?"
I looked in my hand. A vial. I held it up so I could see through the bottom. Two round balls sat there. "Is this?"
"Yes. I'm sorry I could only get you two."
I shifted so I could see her face. "How?"
"While you were sleeping. I went to our hospital in the Greens. I have access. It was easy enough to grab a lab coat and convince the techs I worked there, especially since I was in a restricted area. I questioned them about the treatments. They're banned, you know. They didn't pass field trials. Ninety-five percent of the people who took them turned."
"Turned? Into what?"
"You don't want to know. You aren't in the ninety-five percent."
Shit. Did Dannie know what a risk she had taken to introduce me to the drugs? Had Dalton? Why the hell didn't anyone tell me? At least now I knew why I had to pay up front.
"They had a few hundred before a break-in last month. This was all they had le
ft. Two capsules dropped on the floor."
"A break-in? More like an inside job, maybe a ghost hit. These things go for thousands on the market, even if they might be killing most of the people who buy them. How did you get them to give them to you?"
"I'm Miss Red."
"You told them?"
"No. I put my access codes into the terminal to sign them out."
My eyes went back to the meds. They would keep me alive, but at what cost? There was no way to know if the hospital network had been secure. "What happened to not trusting anybody?"
"I know. I had to. I couldn't let you die. You saved my life, and no matter what that racist asshole thinks, I don't like seeing anyone die."
I started coughing again. Now she was going to save my life.
"I know he's a bigot, and he doesn't know when to shut his mouth, but try to cut him a little slack. He told me he knew Dannie since she was a kid. He feels like he lost his daughter."
She bit down on her lip. "I didn't know."
"I know." I put my free hand on hers. "Now you do."
Our eyes met, and we sat like that for a dozen heartbeats. The moment was interrupted by another round of hacking. I held the vial up again. This was as good a time as any.
"Did they give you an injector, too?"
"Yes. I put it in Danelle's bag."
"Can you go and get it? Unless you want me to ask Amos to do it?"
"I'll do it. Take off your shirt." She got up and disappeared, going back outside to the car and retrieving the injector.
I tried to act confident while I took off the trench and my shirt. The aim had to be perfect, or either the treatment wouldn't last, or I would die. It had taken me multiple visits to fully trust Dalton with the procedure, and he knew what he was doing.
Jin came back with the gun in a black plastic box.
"It needs compressed air."
"It's already loaded." She took it out and opened the back to show me. "I had them show me how it all worked. I told them I was following up on an alternate treatment path that was based on the initial research. They were excited about the chance to revisit the work."
I was impressed. It was a tight lie.
"We don't have anything to stitch it with when we're done," Jin said.
"We'll have to cauterize. Go wash your hands as best you can."
She took off her jacket and padded down a hallway to where I assumed the bathroom was. She was gone for a good five minutes, doing as thorough a cleaning job as possible. She brought a few damp hand towels back with her.
"For the blood."
She took up a position on her knees at my side, while I shifted so I was laying across the couch, my wound exposed.
She picked up the vial and uncapped it, and dumped one of the balls into her hand. She opened the door of the injector and stuck it in.
"Are you ready, Conor?"
I felt my stomach clench. I would never be ready. I nodded and closed my eyes. She put the needle up to the wound.
"How far does it need to go?"
"Far enough, but not too far."
She pressed down, sinking the needle into my skin. My hands gripped the cushions, and I stifled every desire to scream. Once the needle was buried, she put her finger to the trigger.
"Hold on." I tried to remember the angle of the gun. It was different from this position, looking down on it like this. I reached up and took her hand in mind, shifting her target ever so slightly. She looked up at me, our eyes meeting.
"What if we do it wrong?"
"I'll die. Let's not do it wrong." I kept my hand on hers and took a deep breath. "Pull the trigger."
She did. The capsule fired into me, and I held my breath, waiting to feel more than the normal pain. When a minute passed and I was still alive, I squeezed her hand on top of the injector.
"Nothing to worry about."
"How do we close it?"
I looked down. Blood was running out through the wide hole the needle had made. I reached down, grabbed one of the towels, and put pressure on the wound.
"There's a knife in my boot. Take it out and bring it to the kitchen. Heat up the tip on the stove."
She nodded, found the shiv I had taken from Amos, and carried it away. The seconds passed as hours, my stomach beginning to throb and my head starting to spin. Maybe the aim had been off after all.
I gritted through and thought of Danelle, of the last time I had seen her in the Machine. The anger carried me along.
Jin ran back with the knife, the tip a soft red from the heat. I pulled the towel away. "Put it against the incision."
She dropped to her knees and pressed it against my flesh. It hurt more than anything I'd ever experienced. It was searing agony, and for the first time made me question if being alive was worth it.
Then I remembered what Rayon had said.
Jin took the knife away and used the other towel to wipe away the remaining blood, doing her best to clean it from my stomach and from the couch. I just laid there, trying to fight through the pain. I turned my thoughts to Tarakona, and Veronica's brother, whoever the hell he was.
I'd never had an extra dose before. It meant I could do whatever the fuck I wanted to those two. It helped me through the pain.
"Conor?" Jin took my hand in hers and brought it to her lips, kissing it gently. "Conor?"
I didn't realize I looked dead. "I'm still here."
I opened my eyes. She had moved up so she was kneeling next to my head. She stroked my bald scalp with her free hand. I gave her a weak smile and closed my eyes again. Her hand in mine, the touch on my skull, it was a simple comfort I didn't realize I missed until I had it again.
Exhaustion took me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Mission impossible.
FOUR YEARS EARLIER...
"Are you ready?"
We were standing outside the Four Seasons Hotel in Chicago, in the back near the loading docks. We were pressed tight against the stone wall, covered in shadows, dressed in blacks.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm the rapid beating of my heart, and come to grips with what I was doing, and why I was doing it.
Danelle held my wrist in her hand and looked me in the eye. "Remember, get in, get out, don't get caught."
I nodded. Dannie looked totally different worked up for a job. Skintight black leggings and a long lycra turtleneck that covered ninety-percent of her body in darkness. Thin, tight, microfiber black gloves and a skull cap that held her hair close to her head did the other five that wasn't exposed. She also had on a black nylon jacket with her holstered guns underneath, and tall, soft-soled boots with a couple of painted knives hiding inside. Don't get caught. If she did, she'd spend the rest of her life in prison.
I was looking a little more casual. A black suit with a black shirt and black tie. I needed to be able to fit in, to be able to be seen. I was wearing a wig of curly black hair to cover my recent baldness. I wasn't carrying any weapons.
"Let's go."
She squeezed my arm and I followed her at a run, along the wall to the back door near the dock. The security guard that had just been standing near it had ducked inside to take a piss or something - the queue we had been waiting for.
She didn't even try to open the door. There was a small black pad next to it that required an RF key. Instead, I pulled a plain grey card with a small digital readout from my pocket, and put it up next to the reader. I didn't know how the thing worked, and didn't care. It took three seconds for it to decode the guard's signal and echo it back, unlocking the door. I had to fight myself not to look up the whole time. There was a camera hanging right above the door, aimed down on us. If Dannie's timing had been even a little off... we were done.
I trusted her. After that first night, I'd decided I wasn't quite so ready to die. She'd given me a couple of days to cry and rant and talk it out, and then she'd told me about her friend Dalton, and the treatments he could offer. She named the price, told me what I'd have to do to ea
rn that kind of money that fast, and a year's worth of training later - here we were.
She was holding a separate device up to the camera, and she kept it there as I pulled the door open and slipped inside, then reached back and tapped her hand. She swung herself through and pocketed the device again. If anyone had been watching the feed, they would have only seen two frames of blur, and nothing else out of the ordinary.
The guard was still in the can, and the rest of the workers were done for the night. The only thing we had to worry about were cameras, and they rotated on set schedules, leaving small blind spots at timed intervals. Dannie and I kept pace with them and each other, ducking out of the way as the lenses tracked past, and getting to the service elevator before Mr. Security finished his nightly crap.
It wasn't like we had just walked up to the hotel. Two months of planning had gone into the job for House Blue. We'd paid a guy to hack into the cameras and watch the guard. We'd paid a guy for the little devices that had gotten us in. We'd paid a guy for full schematics to the thirty-second floor. The cost of doing business, according to Danelle. We'd lost half our take before we'd even started.
What we lost in profit, we gained in safety. The information reduced our risk of getting caught, and as far as Dannie was concerned this work was as easy as it came. Perfect to get me started on the life of a ghost. It also paid better because it was a two man job.
We reached the thirty-second floor in silence. Just before the doors opened, Dannie leaned up and kissed me on the cheek. "Good luck."
I nodded, ducking out when the doors moved aside and stepping out into the hallway. Most people were asleep by now.
Danelle didn't join me. She took the freight up to the roof. Two person job. Her part was separate from mine. I felt a pang of concern for her, mixed with a measure of excitement. I was on my own.
I walked down the hallway, unconcerned about being seen. My part was the easy part. As I approached room 3270, I reached into my pocket and found a small scalpel and a pair of glasses. I put the glasses on and palmed the scalpel, also removing my cell from another pocket and looking down at it, like I had received an important message that required me to stand there and stare at it. I shifted the scalpel in my grip at the same time I glanced through the specs towards the door.
