Shadow Flare (The Ruby Callaway Trilogy Book 2)

by D. N. Erikson

  After all, I had my intuition to guide me in the physical world.

  Why not a little digital intelligence to help me out in the world of 1s and 0s?

  “All right, Hiro,” I said. “Let’s say you’re right about this—”

  “I’m right. This is bullshit. My programming is impeccable.”

  “Did Alice program you to be pedantic?”

  “I’m not programmed any more than you are.”

  I rubbed my temples, not in the mood for contradictions. “You know what I meant.”

  “I’m perfectly fine only working with Alice.” His image began to disappear into the ether, leaving me with only the glass table and the neon skyscape.

  “Wait!”

  “Oh, now you need me. How convenient.”

  “Is there a way to retrieve the hidden data on the cathedral?” I asked, staring the little figure directly in the eye.

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “If you come in here, I’m sure I can show you.” He raised his eyebrow somewhat lecherously.

  “I thought samurai were supposed to be noble.” My history might’ve been rusty, but I was damn sure at least that was true.

  “Rules are boring,” Hiro said, twirling the sword. “You can see for yourself.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “You’re missing out.”

  “I doubt that,” I said. “Because you’re being pretty useless.”

  His posture stiffened, and he pointed the sword my way. “Do not call me that.”

  “Then give me something to work with,” I said, and crossed my arms. Hopefully that communicated that I was sick of the banter. Not that I had anything better to do.

  But Hiro didn’t need to know that.

  The little samurai ground his teeth, twirling the blade in faux-nonchalance. Finally, he said, “I might be able to recover a little piece of the data.”

  “Where’d the rest of it go?”

  “MagiTekk encryption.”

  Of course the cathedral led back to MagiTekk. Everything that stunk like hell and smelled like shit led back to those bastards.

  “Which is?”

  “A combined 512-bit dual digital-magical encryption algorithm.” Hiro nodded severely.

  “I have no idea what that means.”

  “Imagine Fort Knox.” Hiro carved a square through the air with his sword. “Then imagine it buried within a bunker. Then imagine that bunker has the wards of a hundred of the best sorceresses on the planet surrounding it. Then imagine that this secret bunker protected by wards is in another dimension that humans can’t see.” He stopped drawing, giving an emphatic jab to drive home his point. “And then imagine something a hundred times harder to crack.”

  “You’re not giving me much to work with.”

  “Even Alice couldn’t get that data back.”

  “So let’s talk about this little crumb you can retrieve,” I said, standing to stretch my legs. “How long’s it gonna take?”

  Hiro gave me a wide smile and raised his eyebrow again. “We could spend the time together.”

  “Not even a little tempting.”

  “Goddamn, you know how hard it is to get laid in here?”

  “I’m sure Alice could make you a buddy.”

  “They all come out dumber than rocks.” Hiro looked sad for a moment. “I’m all alone.”

  “Yeah, I really feel for you.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Language.”

  “Because you’re a saint.” Hiro shrugged lamely, and the image of the Cathedral of St. Peter disappeared, replaced by the remaining digital shards of my file. “Or not so much, Ruby Callaway.”

  “I was kidding,” I said, examining the fragments with a wary eye. Anything that touched digital hyperspace was never gone. Something to remember: my time on this earth was limited so long as MagiTekk stood.

  “Declan Burrows.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s the only fragment I can scrape from the Cathedral of St. Peter’s file.” Hiro didn’t look at me, still sad about his forced celibacy. “Says he works there as an archaeologist. You want his address?”

  “Send it to my phone.”

  “I live to serve.” I heard a chime in my pocket. A quick check indicated that Declan Burrows didn’t live far. Perfect for a nighttime visit. I went to pick up the data cube, but Hiro cleared his throat.

  “Yes?”

  “Be careful.”

  “Didn’t know you cared.”

  “If you get caught, then you’ll lead them to Alice. And me.” I noticed him shake a little bit. “MagiTekk isn’t to be fucked with. And they clearly don’t want this fellow found.”

  “Thanks for the memo. I got this.”

  “Yes, I suppose you do.”

  Hiro and the files disappeared into a digital stream of bits as I picked up the cube. Reflecting on my strange conversation as I returned it to the drawer, it almost didn’t register when a voice said, “Hello, Ruby.”

  For a split second, I wondered if Hiro could communicate without the table, or had somehow copied himself inside my phone. Then again, that wouldn’t make sense, because this voice was higher-pitched and female.

  And when I turned around, I found myself eye-to-eye with an unwelcome visitor.

  A sorceress who I believed dead.

  A reasonable expectation, since I had all but killed her.

  There was a lot of that going around today.

  Lucky me.

  13

  “Sit,” Silvia said, her eyes burning bright in the shadows of the dim apartment. I pulled the chair away from the glass table and did as I was told, watching her emerge from the doorway. The sorceress geneticist I’d met in the time loop—who had cut me open on a lab table—slunk like a panther into the kitchen.

  She leaned up against the island. Her sleeves were rolled up, displaying pink chemical burns.

  Technically, we’d never met—at least from her perspective, since the loop had reset. But it was hard for me to forget being dissected alive. Even in the name of science and defeating one of MagiTekk’s evil plans.

  Thus, when the opportunity had presented itself, I had served her and her immoral associates up to Malcolm Roark. MagiTekk’s Chief of Security. The operation had been a success.

  Or so I’d thought, until now.

  Because the sorceress had returned.

  “Do I know you?” I asked.

  “Place your knife on the table.”

  With reluctance, I removed the energy charged blade. Silvia made no move to retrieve it.

  “You’re difficult to find, Ruby.”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure.” She scratched her burned arm, the flesh still raw. I imagined what Malcolm Roark’s squadron of Ghosts had done, and then stopped. Going down that road was going to bum me out.

  Not that I regretted it. Without playing that chip, Roark and I wouldn’t have nailed Solomon Marshall. Life was a series of trade-offs and sacrifices. People paid a bounty hunter to make the tough calls. The ones that other people couldn’t make.

  Roark’s own words echoed in my ears, salving my conscience.

  Catching bad people requires doing bad things.

  Silvia extracted a small, tattered volume from her pocket. “Ever experienced déjà vu?”

  “I’m not the nostalgic type,” I said, eyes scanning the apartment. My shotgun was in the bedroom. Which left me with only my fists against a vengeful sorceress.

  I didn’t like those odds.

  “It’s a strange feeling,” Silvia said. “Especially when it’s so vivid.” Without warning, she tossed me the book. I half-expected it to be hot as a bunch of stoked goals, but she hadn’t cast any sort of spell on it. “They say it can be brought on by trauma. Loss. Sadness.”

  Brushing a layer of dust off the worn cover, I found myself face-to-face with a familiar volume. The original, it would seem: The Arcana of Temporal Manipulat
ion.

  “I’m not who you’re looking for.”

  “Don’t bother lying, Ruby. I know about the loop.”

  My blood chilled into ice water. “Fuck.”

  “Indeed.” Silvia pushed herself off the island with the heel of her flat and strode toward me. The white lab coat that I remembered well spread around her like a cape. Pain and anger danced in her eyes, the wisps above her head screaming revenge.

  She’d had an associate—more than that—in the lab. A drop-dead gorgeous blonde woman who was some sort of systems tech but looked straight out of the middle of a centerfold.

  Up close, I could see the scorched patches of Silvia’s short brown punkish hair. She’d done her best to cover them up with dye and comb-overs.

  I swallowed the urge to punch her in the face. It’s best to know when you’re outgunned. Without a weapon, I was screwed against a magic user of this caliber. Didn’t matter. I’d survived worse and more powerful.

  I tried to believe that, but death consumed her eyes.

  “You’re not curious how I discovered the loop, Ruby?”

  “Not really,” I said, still holding the book. “Maybe you can read. Drew crop circles. I could give a shit.”

  “Or how I found you?”

  “You didn’t strike me as a dumbass.”

  “So you do admit to meeting me.”

  “You carved me open for your little experiment,” I said, a little more hotly than anticipated. Experiencing your own death is disconcerting, even when you’re granted a mulligan.

  “I do not fully remember that.” Silvia shrugged. “But I know my beloved is gone.”

  “So sorry for your loss.”

  She slapped me. I fell out of the chair, more surprised by the strike than anything. Gathering my wits on the cool hardwood, I realized her powers were severely compromised by whatever Malcolm Roark and his Ghosts had done.

  Which tilted the odds in my favor.

  Toss her through the window, and maybe I’d get the chance to grill Declan Burrows about the cathedral tonight. That worked for me.

  But that plan was dashed when Silvia said, “I didn’t come here to kill you, Realmfarer.”

  “How do you know what I am?”

  “I do my homework.” She nudged me with her flat. I pushed her leg away and got up. Face to face, now, I saw the wisps changing color over her head. “I can manipulate my aura, so don’t bother with your cold reading.”

  Fantastic. My supernatural powers were useless against her. “What do you want, Silvia?”

  “I don’t suppose you watch the news.”

  “No time for fiction.”

  “I usually agree. Except in this case, it’s pertinent to us both.” She gestured toward the glass table. “May I?”

  “Make yourself at home.” My eyes glanced at the knife, but curiosity won out. This woman, who should’ve been my mortal enemy, was granting me a stay of execution. Stranger than her ability to uncover the time loop well after the fact was that whatever was on the news must’ve been bad enough for her to need my help.

  Overriding her desire to avenge her beloved.

  Silvia tapped the table’s edge, activating controls I didn’t know existed. Apparently the tech could display media without data cubes, because soon a news stream played back in ultra-high definition.

  “I apologize for the poor quality.”

  Looking at the image realer than reality, I said, “Oh yeah, don’t worry about it.”

  I watched the footage—a short press conference, the kind that often slipped past the traditional news cycle. But I realized this was a Rubicon moment. The point where everything would change.

  For me and the world.

  Because I’d read the transcript of this press conference earlier.

  MagiTekk’s essence suppression serum—the one Malcolm Roark had told me, in no uncertain terms, to protect from disruption.

  The bits disappeared, and Silvia said, “You see, Realmfarer, what I need from you.”

  “A lot of people need a lot of things these days.”

  “This is magical eugenics. Castration.”

  “I see your points,” I said. “But I have a good job already. With better benefits.”

  “Your bravado is hollow.” Silvia took her hand from her lab coat, fingers clutching a small needle. Without a word, she jabbed it into the crook of my arm and drew blood.

  “Ow.” When I tried to back away, she grabbed my wrist with a surprisingly firm grip.

  After completing the blood draw, she said, “Your blood has special properties.”

  I remembered. Her and her bombshell lover—Diane, that was her name—had been wowed by it. As they were dissecting me alive. But if I recalled correctly, my blood was only a piece of the puzzle. One that they were running out of time to solve a few weeks ago.

  Time was about out, now.

  “Glad I could help.” I rubbed my arm with a grimace.

  “And, of course, there are other uses for this as well.” Silvia walked toward the door, moving like a wraith. I needed to get the locks checked if she could just walk in without the alarm sounding. “You understand that what happened to Mr. Daniels could happen to us all.”

  Sure. I remembered the former werewolf, who, through the wonders of technology, had become a mere mortal. His essence drained by the very MagiTekk concoction set to hit the market on Friday. A watershed product release announced with a subdued press conference.

  I bit my lip hard enough to draw a little trickle of blood. “Not my problem.”

  “But you hate MagiTekk. I can smell it on you, Realmfarer.”

  “I don’t really care one way or another.”

  “Have you ever wondered why the Fallout Zone survives? With power quotas, and water?” Silvia asked.

  “Hospitality?”

  “It’s the world’s biggest testing lab. Data. To build products. And make money.”

  “How Machiavellian.”

  “They’ll stop at nothing to make it,” Silvia said.

  “You’re really tugging at my heartstrings.”

  “MagiTekk begins distribution on Friday,” she said, hanging in the doorway like a bad cold. “If this blight is not fully destroyed by then, and the sole surviving sample in my hands, I will come for you.”

  Malcolm wanted me to protect it. And Silvia wanted me to destroy it.

  I was a lucky girl.

  “Or I could just come for you first,” I said.

  “But I will not kill you instantly, Ruby,” Silvia said, turning her gaze to meet mine, eyes filled with terminal sadness. The vial of my blood hung over the conversation as a terminal threat. “It will be Roark who suffers as he watches you fade into nothingness.”

  The door creaked shut, and I stifled the urge to scream.

  14

  Hands in my pockets, I walked down the neon-bathed street, mulling over recent events.

  What did Silvia need me to destroy? That was simple: MagiTekk, in their infinite wisdom, had spent over a decade developing an essence suppression serum. And the initial batch was waiting in a production warehouse. Just waiting to be torched.

  It was easy enough to understand why she wanted the serum gone. Once administered, it stripped away a creature’s supernatural traits, quickly reducing them to a mortal.

  Of course, nothing was that simple. There were side effects—Aaron Daniels had walked with a noticeable limp, and still possessed the faint lupine eyes of a werewolf—but maybe those glitches had been ironed out in the interim trials. After all, his dose had been one of the first, coming over ten years ago.

  MagiTekk’s press release indicated that the lupine suppression serum would be the first to roll off shelves. Soon enough, the entire supernatural kingdom would have their very own little deconstruction kit available. Catch a vampire? No need to throw her into jail—just plug her with a needle and she would revert to human form.

  And then MagiTekk would make a fortune cleaning up the holdouts. Nothing got
the cash register ringing like a dangerous fringe group warring against the status quo. Particularly when they all had fangs or could shoot fire from their fingertips.

  Our powers just made things extra easy to sell to a gullible and fear-stricken public.

  Why not just accept the inevitable? Because, for most creatures of essence, losing their supernatural identity was a fate far worse than death. A wolf was a goddamn wolf—nothing else. Remove that, and you were left with a broken and useless man.

  Daniels had recrafted himself as a crime lord, but even that drive had been stoked by a melancholy, futile longing to somehow regain what he’d lost. Silvia had sliced me open searching for a way to reverse the serum’s effects.

  Now she had my blood. Should’ve taken a shot at killing her. Maybe I was getting soft. Or maybe I was psyched out from trying to shoot Malcolm Roark earlier, only to be stymied by a magical shield.

  Speaking of Malcolm Roark.

  I was fucked.

  A few deep breaths later, and I’d shaken off the encounter as best I could. Right now, I needed to find out what the Crusaders of Paradisum had planned. They’d found at least one wellspring. There might’ve been others—maybe even enough to bring Pan, God of the fabled Arcadia, back to life. Which is when he’d lead them all to the promised land.

  Where that would leave the rest of us, I didn’t want to know.

  I also didn’t know how one went about resurrecting a dead god—or whether that was even possibly—but I had no intention of waiting around with my thumb up my ass.

  I dialed Roark, but his phone went straight to voicemail. Maybe he wanted to work the case on his own. Or he’d finally caught a few winks.

  Turning the corner, I found myself on another street of identical high-rises. My phone beeped, indicating that I’d reached my destination. Craning my neck upward, I saw the outline of a skywalk. Or maybe it was just the reflection of some ad playing tricks on me.

  Waiting for the doors to open, I wondered if my plan would work.

  I needn’t have wondered. Declan Burrows emerged wearing enough cologne to choke a small horse, a big smile on his lined face. Despite the best in whatever cosmetic surgery and hair plugs this new world had to offer, calling him attractive would be disingenuous. The modifications looked recent, judging by the way his skin reflected the light.