by Jenn Stark
So caught up was I in the wonder of the healing, I almost missed the moment when Gamon started feeling more like her old self again.
Almost.
Chapter Ten
“Sara!”
I could feel the pain in my hands as whatever it was I was clutching caught on fire, the sensation of stabbing agony strong enough to pierce me even in my phantom state. Around me, Gamon shifted, and the pressure I’d felt before was now magnified a thousand times, bitter and twisting and furious at any display of weakness, any fault, any flaw. And that Gamon’s healing had come from me was the highest insult of all, forcing the fierce warrior to bow and scrape and lick and gibber and—
“Ah!” I felt the wrenching tear of my palms, as if someone had taken a flaying knife to them, and the white-hot fury of that pain propelled me out of Gamon’s body with the force of a baseball bat. I cartwheeled back, thudding through the surgical tent, the walls, and finally the bedrock of the ground surrounding the clinic. I stayed in Sells’s domain for one long, blessed moment, before another surge of pain ripped me upward again, and I burst into the open sky, so close to my own body that it was the merest blink of an eye to return me home. I slammed forcibly into the conference room, the sudden reappropriation of my physical form no longer the queasy nightmare I always feared at the end of an astral journey, but something far, far worse.
“What happened!” I gasped as I flung my arms wide. Nikki and Ma-Singh weren’t beside me anymore in their chairs, they were flat against the walls, pinned by some terrible force.
A terrible force apparently emanating from my scorched hands. Or what was left of them.
“Sweet…Christmas…” I breathed, focusing on my hands. The pain was far more intense now that I was actually occupying my body, and I peered in horror at the blistered, dripping skin. Fresh from my spine-deep healing journey inside Gamon, I didn’t even make a conscious decision to turn the healing surge I’d been wielding on myself. I no longer drew from whatever had been in Gamon’s pouch but from the wellspring of energy Armaeus had opened within me hours earlier. That current of healing power lifted up from my core to flow along my skin, suffusing my torso, my shoulders, cascading down my arms to wash over my hands.
At its first touch, I sagged in real relief, hearing a shuffling thud to either side of me. In some dim portion of my mind, I understood that Ma-Singh and Nikki had peeled themselves off the wall, but I was mesmerized by the shocking transformation of my own hands. The bones that had been blasted away reformed as I stared, energy pouring over them. My third eye snapped open, then shifted and shuddered as a maze of electricity burst into action. Tissue grew and swarmed around the bones, blood vessels formed and started pulsing with blue and red surges. The fat reformed and the skin restitched itself over the entire mass, weaving over and around until my hands lay before me, solid once more, cocooned in pale mittens of light.
Slowly, so slowly, that light ebbed, and as it did, I finally felt the presence of Nikki and Ma-Singh looming over me.
“So. The Tower,” the Mongolian said.
“Dollface.” Nikki’s voice was more strangled, and it was to her I looked now, frowning as I took in her appearance. Her face was gaunt, haggard, and her bright-white starched nurse’s outfit was blackened, a huge swath of red cutting across it. I stared at it for a long moment.
“Do I want to know?”
Nikki’s throat worked, but it was Ma-Singh who spoke. “The contents of the bag—I suspect it wasn’t entirely made up of Gamon’s tissue, but also an incendiary—caught fire. We tried to pry your hands apart, and when we did, the objects detonated. Your hands flew apart and energy poured forth from you, pinning us to the wall.” He pursed his lips, then continued. “You should have kept a closer watch, it would seem, as the cards directed you.”
I nodded, my gaze holding Nikki’s now, while her throat worked convulsively.
“It’s okay, Nikki. You couldn’t have known.”
“Your hands,” she whispered. “Your mind…Gamon’s mind.” She was visibly shaking now, and she closed her eyes even as mine sharpened on hers.
“What do you mean, Gamon’s mind? Did you see into it? Were you connected?” I looked again at the gore splattered across her shirt. Her shirt and her neck, I realized. Skin-to-skin contact was all that Nikki needed to effect her mental lock on a target…apparently charred remains included. At least some of what had been in that bag must have come from Gamon.
She managed a hiccupping laugh. “I wouldn’t say connected, not in the usual way,” she said, lifting her own hand to her eyes. “There’s too much madness on the other side, or there was. But—there was a link between us. A link I don’t want to think too much about, frankly. It was…” She shook her head, shuddering again. “It wasn’t good.”
“Your hands.” Ma-Singh grunted and bent toward the table, but I couldn’t move my hands away from his gaze, couldn’t do much of anything for the moment. My hands rested palms up on the table, so heavy I suspected it would take both Nikki and Ma-Singh to lift either arm. I tried to warn the general not to get too close, but he merely peered intently, his face screwed up in a squint as he surveyed the right hand, then the left, then back to the right. “Interesting,” he muttered.
“Oh, sweet baby Jesus on a tricycle, the smell.” Nikki suddenly gawked down at her own chest, as if suddenly realizing the carnage on her uniform. She lifted her hands, but they hovered in front of her as if she didn’t know what of the goo she could actually flick off. “I can’t even.”
“Go,” I said, for the first time feeling a shred of normalcy return. Even the glow started to dim around my hands. “Get cleaned up. We’ll be here for a while, I’m thinking.”
“Save what you can of…that,” Ma-Singh said. He pointed to Nikki’s uniform, his voice deceptively close to amusement now that the danger had apparently passed. “We’ll want it examined for chemical makeup.”
“I can’t even,” Nikki groaned again, but she turned on her heel and exited the conference room, her head down as she tried to determine how she could get out of the dress without touching anything. “Scissors,” her voice floated back to us triumphantly, and I returned my attention to Ma-Singh.
To my surprise, the general had an entirely different expression on his face than he’d had since…since I couldn’t remember when. He looked…almost happy. Certainly relieved, as if he’d suddenly received fantastic and unexpected news.
“What?” I said warily.
Instead of answering right away, Ma-Singh wheeled away from me and stalked up the side of the conference room.
“A fair amount of information came in this afternoon while you were with Jiao Peng. I elected to wait on the discussion in light of your efforts with Gamon.” He turned back, his face once again grave. “I should have asked. Was your healing of Gamon successful? She clearly had enough awareness restored to attack you.”
I nodded, and successfully managed to shift my hands, pulling them closer to me. Not far, but a little. They only weighed about two hundred pounds now, I decided. Progress.
“She’s healed, I think. Mostly, anyway. I don’t know if she turned on me intentionally, though. She asked for my help, which seemed to be a big deal for her. She let me in. The rest…could have been a basic survival instinct.”
Ma-Singh leveled a shrewd glance on my hands. My fingers twitched in remembered agony. “Okay, an exceptionally strong survival instinct. But still.”
“Sells will let us know her status?”
“Sells…” I grimaced, my gaze meeting his. “I have no idea. I need to contact her, if she’s not okay—”
Ma-Singh dismissed my concern with a wave, his mood seeming to steadily improve. He even smiled a little as he continued. “The doctor is operating her facility with the full resources of the Magician of the Arcana Council at her disposal. If she’s not well, he can readily assist her.”
I opened my mouth to speak, then shut it. He was right.
There was nothing I could do to help Sells that Armaeus couldn’t do better. I watched Ma-Singh as he turned to the controls of the main computer console, the center screen flickering to life. A weird noise, half hiss, half warble, emanated from his corner of the room, and I realized after a second that the Mongolian was whistling.
Whistling?
“You mind telling me what’s got you in such a good mood?”
“A very…unexpected development.” He said nothing further, continuing to type away, so I fixated on my hands. With another tug, I brought them a full inch closer to my body. More progress. I was sweating, however, so I didn’t feel the urge to keep trying. If things didn’t change soon, though, I really would be giving the term “knuckle dragger” a run for its money.
Finally, the screen snapped fully to life, and I blinked up to see a familiar map of the world’s surface. The outline of all the major countries and continents was picked out in neon green, and small blue triangles blinked cheerfully throughout the land masses. The triangles, I knew from past observation, were locations of Sword generals.
Clearly, Ma-Singh was going to update me on something with the House, but I was happy for the distraction. He apparently was too.
“This is the current representation of Sword points of contact,” Ma-Singh said, verifying my recollection. Another keystroke, and new triangles, these in shades of mostly yellow but a few red, appeared in a vaguely discernible path amid the blues. “These are the drug-traffic checkpoints. Those in red have experienced distress. I have already given the orders for their reinforcement, based on our conversation earlier today, so we can expect to see those shift in color over the coming weeks.”
“Good.” I wasn’t happy to see how many yellow and red triangles there were, particularly clustered in Eastern Europe and northern Africa. The drug trade would continue whether the House of Swords was a part of it or not. I agreed with Ma-Singh on that. And keeping a hand in would also allow me to control it.
But still…there were so many checkpoints, and these were likely just the main commercial routes. How was it that the market for technoceuticals was so intense?
Ma-Singh wasn’t watching me, however. He was back at the console. “Based on our conversations with the House of Cups, these are the known outposts for their operations.” One white triangle, in Mexico City.
“One,” I said. “I’m not buying that. They’re linked up with the Vatican, and they’ve got no outpost in Rome? No way.”
“This location is what we have confirmed,” Ma-Singh clarified. “As we learn more, we’ll update the grid. We remain unaware of any House of Wands outposts, so there are no markers for them on the map.” A small orange triangle that had been designated for Wands appeared to the lower right of the map, lonely and bereft in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean. “But given their complete anonymity and lack of activity, there are three options to consider with the House of Wands. They no longer exist, they are not actively in the drug trade, or they’re not pursuing any significant economic activity.”
“That last one is a leap,” I countered. “They could be buried in a series of shell companies. Or, they could be about as magical as this conference table. God knows Mercault isn’t highly Connected.”
“Which takes us to my next update. These are Mercault’s outposts—not all of them, but we estimate eighty percent.” Another keystroke, and purple triangles blinked up on the map.
I whistled. “He’s been busy.”
“He’s been very busy. In fact, Monsieur Mercault’s network is probably the only reason he’s still alive. Gamon could easily have overpowered him after she failed in her gambit to usurp the House of Swords. She didn’t. Instead, she struck an alliance with Mercault. She believed, correctly so, that he was more useful working his network than dead in a ditch. That said, Mercault is no fool, or at least he doesn’t remain one for long. As you mentioned earlier, correctly, he’s come to better understand the nature of his past alliance with Gamon, and he has reached out for protection.”
I snapped my gaze to him. “Protection from what? Gamon?”
Ma-Singh shrugged. “He was not specific, but you’ll notice…” He gestured to the screen, and I understood immediately what he meant. Mercault’s purple triangles popped up in lockstep to the red and green triangles of the House of Swords. Whether Soo followed him or he was following a trail Soo had blazed, anyone looking at this map would assume we were already working together.
“I don’t like the idea of working that closely with him. He’s a rat bastard.”
“A rat bastard who is currently cowed. We should take this opportunity to infiltrate his chain of command against a future betrayal.”
I nodded. “Do it.”
Ma-Singh turned to another computer, and there it was again. The hiss-warble. “This is what’s making you happy?” I asked him. “Betraying Mercault?”
“That would always make me happy, but no. We have received another disturbing piece of information that can be handled a bit more easily now.”
Ma-Singh straightened, and I blinked at the screen. A flyer now appeared, with a familiar face on it. My face.
“What’s that?”
“It appeared through international law enforcement channels briefly last night, then was taken down. While it was live, however, we were made aware of its existence. It is a draft of a Blue Notice from Interpol. It’s your face, but not your name. It also contains fingerprints and biological detail, but very general. Female. Caucasian. No significant visible scars. Height, weight.”
I scowled. “If you took away my photo, that could be anyone. Maybe it was a mistake.”
“Possible, given its rapid removal. But why are they compiling information attached to your face to begin with? That is more the concern. However, our course of response would be slightly more difficult, except for the trial you have just endured.”
I glanced to my hands. I was able to pull them all the way to the edge of the table now and even wiggle my fingers. “Yeah? How does that help us?”
“Look closely at your fingers, Madame Wilde.”
I did, admiring my, ah, handiwork. The skin was smooth, unblemished. The old scar on the heel of my hand? Gone. I wasn’t even sporting a hangnail.
“Closer still,” Ma-Singh urged.
I brought my palms up to my face, wincing with the effort, though at least I could move them now. The bright overhead light caught on the skin—and that was when I saw it.
“No way,” I breathed, staring at my hands. The skin on my fingertips was—blank. Perfectly smooth. Completely without fingerprints.
“Yes,” Ma-Singh said happily. “If Interpol does seek to follow you more closely, we will need to begin covering your tracks. That task is made infinitely easier since you no longer have any tracks to leave.”
Chapter Eleven
There were many things I could think of to be doing at ten p.m. in Las Vegas, having barely survived getting my hands blown off and learning I might or might not be about to become Interpol’s newest recruit to its Most Wanted list.
Hanging out at Club XS was not one of them. If it hadn’t been for Armaeus’s invite, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near the place.
The lounge was one of the current hot spots on the Strip—and by current, I meant simply that it had captured the attention of the glitterati for a nanosecond. By tomorrow, it could be old news; by next week, it could be closed. Such was life in Sin City. It was not for the faint of heart.
But for the moment, Club XS was a warren of sound and noise, all of it bathed in rippling purple light. Techno-pop pulsed on the loudspeakers, and a sea of people undulated below us on the dance floor, spilling over the stage to flow in and around the clusters of cocktail tables and VIP seating bays. I would be able to find nothing and no one in this place, I realized immediately. I also couldn’t hear.
“Dollface!” Beside me, Nikki tapped my shoulder—my bare shoulder—with one long glitter
-tipped nail, then pointed toward the stage. A pair of men stood there, barely visible above the crowd, but there was something distinctive about them. I could see why they attracted Nikki’s notice. They stood in a circle of open space which simply didn’t exist anywhere else in the club. “Gotta be Kreios and Armaeus,” she said.
I nodded. I was perversely keeping my mental barriers shut. Part of me recognized that I wanted to surprise Armaeus with my appearance, as ridiculous as that was. Part of me remained intimately aware that the Magician had a way of kicking the tires of my cerebellum when I didn’t want him to, and I was still a little raw from my little game of catch with Gamon. I flexed my fingers self-consciously, wondering if it was obvious that they were blank slates.
Nikki, apparently taking my hesitation for a self-consciousness of a different stripe, stepped back from me and gave me the once-over. She grinned, as happy as Ma-Singh had been. “Girl,” was all she said over the cacophony, but that and her thumbs-up gave me all the validation needed. Then she turned toward the stage.
We set off, Nikki’s glamazon figure leading the way, her red spangled micromini showing off acres of muscled leg. Her hair tonight was a swept-back yellow blonde that barely skated her shoulders, but, as she explained to me, this was club hair. There were a lot of handsy guys in clubs, and she didn’t want to give them anything to hold on to that wasn’t permanently attached.
Behind her, despite all she’d done to doll me up, I felt like the grubby kid sister. No fault of my dress. The sleeveless silver sheath was made up of large sequins the size of quarters, perfect for catching and reflecting the jittering light of the bar. My sequined pumps were tall but not idiotically tall, because, unlike Nikki, I did prefer to be prepared. If I needed to run my tail off later tonight, the longer I could do so without ripping off my shoes, the better. As it was, I wasn’t a huge fan of the pumps, wobbling ever so slightly as we threaded our way across the floor. My hair was no longer in its usual ponytail either. Nikki had teased, curled, and tormented it into something approaching ringlets, the carefree effect the result of easily a solid hour of work. Now it fell over my shoulders as if the wind had conveniently blown it that way.
