by Nya Rawlyns
“My husband is, was, a Marine, a gunnery sergeant stationed at Quantico for much of his military career. When he retired he took up with certain unsavory elements in the precincts of Baltimore, strictly on a civilian consultant basis.”
Trey interjected, “I don’t understand. Consulting for what?”
“Arms—weapons, handguns, and semi-automatics, mostly. He was, uh, what he called ‘non-denominational’, sold his services to the highest bidder.” The woman wrung her hands and leaned forward. “That went on for a few years. Jake was tolerated and protected by his own unique skills and the backing of a few of his friends. We all were getting quite financially secure. But...”
Eirik said, “But what?”
“Time. Time is the enemy, always. Jake and his cohorts got old, tired. Some died and some retired. Eventually Jake figured he’d gone to the well once too often and pulled out. He helped a younger man take over the business, taught him everything he knew.” She sighed audibly. “But it wasn’t enough. There was a new game in town, where he was stationed in Reistertown, with good neighborhoods and an aging population, plus they had something to sell, something no one else could offer.”
“And that was?”
“The usual crap, something for nothing and a chance to make the dollars stretch by playing on the fears of the elderly.” She rose from the sofa and paced about the room. “You have to understand. Three years ago, there were more than thirty gangs in the city of Baltimore alone. When this new group hit town, all but a few of the nationally based groups simply disappeared. They are well funded and well connected. They now control most of the drug, white slavery and money laundering trade, with a few of these more innovative enterprises on the side.”
Trey listened with half an ear, his gut telling him something wasn’t quite right. Too much of the woman’s delivery seemed canned, well-rehearsed.
Eirik echoed what he was thinking, “None of this is exactly news, Mrs. O’Brien. What do you have that would,” he paused for effect, “blow a breeze up my skirt?” Trey snorted at his uncle’s unexpected snide remark.
“That breeze is more on the order of a gale, because the man who replaced my husband...”
The woman strangled a gasp as Trey bore her to the ground and covered her with his body. The air above them erupted in flame as the shields on the plate glass windows disintegrated under a barrage of fire from a helicopter hovering within meters of the building.
Trey shouted in the woman’s ear, “Follow him,” and pointed to his uncle crawling across the floor toward the safe room that he’d keyed open from a remote control implant. He waited to see that both of them made it safely through the doorway and then rolled to a crouch and bolted for the opening, skidding over glass shards as the room around him erupted in flames. He wondered, furious at the turn of events, why the automatic sprinkler system wasn’t engaging as he took aim with his Sig Sauer and laid a pattern along the bow of the AJ-6H Little Bird gunship. The pilot swerved up and out of range, but he could hear a second gunship approaching from the southeast quadrant. Time to go.
He raced for the open door just as the second chopper opened up with a missile barrage that took out the entire back wall of the apartment. He pulled the heavy metal door shut, preparing to engage the locking system, but paused and looked at his uncle who was wiping blood from his face with his shirt-sleeve. The woman stood calmly in the center of the small room, her eyes shifting from one man to the other.
His uncle shouted, “The locks!” but Trey waved him off. Instead, he approached the woman and placed his Sig Sauer against her left temple and growled, “How did they know?”
Eirik shouted, “Boy, what are you talking about?”
“Think about it, Gothi. This is the one place in this dimension that we assumed was secure. How did they find out about it?”
He poked the barrel against her skin and marvelled that she could keep the glamour going under such stress. “Where the hell is it? Tell me or I will blow your fucking head clean off. And then I will go after the rest of your family, their friends, neighbors, and their acquaintances.”
“Boy, are you sure?” Eirik asked, unwilling to allow anyone to harm a gifted when so much rode on the woman’s special abilities. She was possibly the first and only shape-shifter they had encountered in over fifteen hundred years of monitoring human potential. They needed more than just her DNA sequence and tissue samples for further study, because a fully functional shifter was a prize beyond measure.
Trey snarled, “Where is it?” The woman rubbed the back of her neck. “Gothi, watch her.” He slid the Sig Sauer into the waistband of his jeans and pulled a thin stiletto from a holster on his belt with his left hand. He wrapped the woman’s long black hair in his right hand and pulled it away from her neck. A pale splotch of red indicated where the microchip had been recently inserted. He flicked the tip of the blade along the axis of the small scar, ignoring the gasp of pain, and dug mercilessly until the blade contacted the chip. With a deft movement, he flicked it out and onto the floor, then stomped it into tiny shards.
His uncle angled closer to the woman, his gun steady, face set in grim lines. Trey replaced the stiletto in the holster and walked over to the control panel and set the locking system manually, using an over-ride program he’d developed just in case the primaries were compromised. He had to assume that was the case.
Recessed metal walls and a secondary secured door clicked into place. He punched a few more buttons and the room began to move sideways and then down. They would exit into a sub-basement that he prayed remained off their attackers’ radar, otherwise they were royally screwed. He was glad no one bothered to ask for further explanations. He was in the mood to kill something and right then it was a toss-up who it would be.
When he turned back toward the woman he steeled himself, but still the shock of seeing her without the glamour shook him to the core. She was still attractive but her hair was now silver white and lines about her eyes and mouth etched deep into parchment-thin skin. She still towered over him and he feared she would be a liability for what he suspected they might face when they finally exited the building.
Eirik interrupted his thoughts. “Ranulf? The others?”
“Dead. They wouldn’t have gotten to us otherwise.”
“Damn it, woman! You got men, good men, killed. I hope to hell you are worth it.” Eirik barked at his enforcer, “You know what to do, boy.”
The elevator swished to a halt. Trey punched in the code and hung back as the inner safety door eased along its track. “Against the wall,” he ordered, then cautiously swung the outer door open and peered right, then left, into the dimly lit space. He heard nothing but the sound of his own lungs sucking air and the blood pounding in his ears. He waved his group forward.
Trey motioned for his uncle to leave the woman with him, fully expecting an argument, but Eirik merely nodded and made his way to a hidden door leading to a staircase that exited through a small shopping mall on the ground floor of the apartment building. His uncle tipped a finger to his nose and disappeared through a door against the far wall, leaving Trey pondering what he was going to do with an old woman in tow. He doubted she was in shape to keep up if he took his planned escape route that involved, he hated to admit, a lot of running his ass off through the Upper East Side.
“What are you going to do with me?”
He admired her control but took note of the small catch of fear in her voice. He actually had no answer to her question; but the more he thought on it, the more he realized his choices had suddenly collapsed to a single, dangerous option.
“Lady, I wish I knew. Can you keep up if we have to walk a fair distance?”
She gulped, “How far is ‘fair’?”
“Fourteen blocks.”
“Shit, can’t you get a cab?”
“Yeah, Lady, and the first one that pulls up will have an Uzi aimed right for our damned heads. They didn’t exactly give you the full memo, did they?”
She shook her head and muttered, “All right, but where are we going?”
“I’ll tell you when we get there. Can you glamour at all; maybe hair color or something?”
“I’ll try. What about you? You aren’t exactly the ninety pound weakling.”
“Don’t worry about me. Come on, Eirik’s had enough time. We’ll use his bolt hole as they’ll be following him now and not expecting us to use the same exit point.”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t.”
Trey yanked the door open and swept the stairs with his Sig Sauer but nothing moved. He crouched and took the stairs two at a time to the first landing, then waited impatiently as the woman huffed to join him. He had a bad feeling that he would end up carrying her to their destination. He repeated the maneuvre up four additional flights, each flight taking a greater toll on the woman. At least she kept her mouth shut and followed orders. It was probably the best he could expect for now. They exited into a crowded green grocer store and barrelled through onto East 72nd, turned right, then right again onto First Avenue.
Trey kept a punishing pace as he half-lifted, half-propelled the older woman forward. At the street light on 83rd he paused and reconsidered. He’d been remote scanning since they’d left the building, but so far it looked as if they’d made a clean escape. Somehow he doubted that was the case. The woman was breathing hard but otherwise holding up better than expected. He took her elbow and spun right, heading toward the East River. He stopped when she gasped, “Wait, please.”
“What?”
“My shoes.”
Trey looked down at her three-inch heels and swore under his breath.
“It’s all right. I’ll take them off.”
“You can’t walk barefoot...”
She spat, “Watch me, sonny,” and marched off, swinging her heels in her left hand.
He thought, tough old broad, then did a mental head slap when she shot back, “I heard that.” He smiled and took her elbow once again but slowed the pace so they looked like old friends out for an afternoon stroll. At East End Avenue they turned left and walked past the Gracie Mansion Conservancy and the Chapin School. Their pace had slowed almost to a crawl and he knew the woman was out of gas and fading fast.
“Two more blocks, sweetheart. Take your time. Almost there.”
“Who’re you calling ‘sweetheart’, asshole?” He grinned up at her as she still topped him by two inches, even without the heels.
He guided her across the street at 85th and pulled her over to the wrought iron fence as if to admire the cherry trees and flower plantings.
He explained, “Here’s what we’re going to do. I have a Portal to the right of the main gates, down the first path past the concrete planters, then up a set of stairs. It’ll be at the top. I’ll need for you to trust me. Will you do that?”
“Trust you? Why should I trust you?”
“Because I’m the one who’s gonna make this right. Now come on. We don’t have much time.”
He yanked on her arm and they sped through the entrance to Carl Schultz Park. A few people strolled about the grounds and in the distance the din of screeching children at the playground, and the nearby whine of traffic off FDR Drive, drowned out most other sounds.
They approached a cross path and off to the right, the stairway beckoned. Trey pointed in that direction, then stopped abruptly at the telltale click of a safety being released, but he couldn’t pinpoint the exact location. He grabbed the woman’s arm and urged, “Run!”
They took the narrow stairs two at a time, while Trey frantically encoded the sequence to open the gate. He felt rather than heard the pounding of at least four men behind them. Two more steps and they would be home free.
The woman gasped, “I can’t...” as shots rang out. He grabbed her about the waist and hurtled through the gate.
****
“Where are we?” the woman gasped.
“Huh, good question. Put pressure ... here.”
She winced but did as instructed. The bleeding had stopped for the moment, but he was sure the bullets had nicked an artery or vital organ. There was no exit wound so the metal lay somewhere in her innards.
“Are you in pain?”
The woman grunted, “Call me Kathleen. And no, but I can’t feel much below my waist.”
“I have to get those out and I don’t have any tools. Just this.” Trey held up his stiletto, then lowered it quickly at her panicked stare.
Eyes flicking from the stiletto to his face, the woman asked, “What do you want?”
Trey busied himself with clearing a spot on the forest floor. They’d landed in old growth forest, possibly somewhere in the American northwest. He’d done an ET-phone-home without using precise co-ordinates. They were lucky he hadn’t plopped them in the middle of an erupting volcano.
“Want?”
“Why did you bring me here?”
“Lady, what part of ‘I saved your ass’ don’t you appreciate?”
“You could have left me there.”
“Yeah, right, and they’d have been all over you for details of our layout. What do you think would have happened once they’d wrung every piece of information out of you? Come on. You’re smarter than that.”
She gasped as Trey pulled the piece of cloth away from the wounds. They were spaced close together, three holes, all angled toward her spine. He had a bad feeling he knew why there were no exit holes. Odds were good at least one or more bullets got lodged in her spine.
“How do my powers...” she sucked in air, frantically trying to stifle a cough; blood dribbling from the corner of her mouth.
“You are a shape shifter. Maybe not full blown, but good enough that your DNA would be of use to both us and Greyfalcon.” She arched her brows, unable to form the question. “That’s what they’re called, at least in our dimension.”
She gasped, “So you both want me for my glamour.”
“Basically, yeah; other things, too. But I’m not a scientist and I don’t really give a fuck about that stuff. I just do my job.”
“Which is?”
“I take out the trash.”
Kathleen considered his words carefully, her brows knit in understanding. She didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to know she was royally screwed. Neither side was going to let her loose, so other than him she had no allies.
He had to lean close as the woman whispered, “I went to Greyfalcon to bargain for my husband’s life. Offered myself in exchange.” She coughed up blood-tinged spittle. “They made the usual promises. I knew enough not to buy any of it but since they seemed willing to bargain, I figured I had nothing to lose.”
That had the ring of truth, but only a partial truth. The woman held something back.
“How did your husband get to be so important to...” he almost let slip ‘my father’ but choked it back in time. He had no idea how many people were privy to the particulars about what made up their clan’s internal structure.
Taking shallow breaths, clearly in pain, she rasped, “Jake ran the arms side. Made sense. It was what he did when he was...” A small moan escaped her throat. He clasped her hand, desperately tracing the neural pathways, seeking some means to send healing energy into her battered body. She continued each word punctuated with twitches of agony. “He got old and they took his position away. He couldn’t bear that. It wasn’t him. So they gave him something else ... lies, all lies. He bought it. It was wrong and he finally saw that...” her words petered out as he poured the last of his strength into her. She was running out of time.
“This is going to hurt and I haven’t got enough left to help you out.”
“Enough what?” she whispered, aware she’d been zoning out.
“Power. It took all I had to make the jump. Bite on this.” He slipped a narrow branch between her teeth.
The woman struggled, shaking her head violently.
“You have to. Kathleen. Listen to me. I can knock you out, okay?”
The woman bucked and thrashed until Trey took pity and removed the branch.
She spit out, “No!”
“Have it your way. Now be still. I can’t exactly see what I’m doing here.”
“No! Stop. I don’t want you to.”
“Kathleen, if I don’t, you will die. You might anyway.”
“I want to.”
“You want ... what?”
“I’m dead no matter what. I’ll never see my home again, my children, my husband. You. Them. It makes no difference. Whoever has me, has them. Do you understand? I don’t want that.”
Trey did understand, all too well. His life had been one of choices, choices that had shaped not just his future but his people’s too. She was right. His mission was to get her to their labs where she would spend what amounted to eternity in an alien space-time dimension being dissected and rebuilt until nothing remained of her humanity or sanity. He’d seen it too often over the centuries. Although he barely knew her, somehow this seemed wrong. His gut instinct told him there was another way. He didn’t like it and he would have to live with it. There would be consequences.
Reluctantly he said, “All right.”
“Thank you,” she said simply. She smiled softly as he tenderly wiped the blood away from the corner of her mouth. “I never got to tell you...”
“Don’t. The less I know the better.”
“This you need to know. The man my husband trained?” Swallowing with difficulty, she fought against the pain and rasped, “My son, it’s my son, Kieran.”
Trey stared at her intently. “Does he have powers?”
“Yesss,” she hissed and wretched, thrashing in agony. “Not mine. Not sure how to explain. Dangerous.”
Trey growled, “So am I.”
“They say you are...”
“I’m what?”
Kathleen gurgled, “A demon, the devil. A being without a soul.” She bit her lip, drawing more blood to add to the steady stream.
“Shh, lay back.”
