Shadow Flare (The Ruby Callaway Trilogy Book 2)

by D. N. Erikson

  “I gave you your own fucking cube, Ruby.” I could practically feel the heat of his anger coming through the phone’s circuitry. “You could’ve just asked.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “That’s the line you’re going with?” In the background, I heard chatter. “You really want to head down this road?”

  “You sound busy.”

  “Janssen’s dead.” More voices, many frantic and responding to crisis. “Well, you gonna say anything?”

  “I know.”

  “Fantastic.” His fist slammed against the table. “I need allies now more than ever.”

  “I’m on your side.”

  “Really? Because it seems to me like you’re a loose cannon.”

  “I took the cube for a reason,” I said.

  A sharp breath on the other side of the line. “I need it back. Now.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Goddamnit, Ruby, don’t make me send someone after you.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “The Supervisor can do whatever he wants.”

  “What happened to MagiTekk liaison?” I tried to sound surprised.

  “Dual position until a more official decision comes down.” Someone spoke with Roark in the background, and he gave hasty instructions. “I need the cube back, Ruby. We have a situation. Power’s going down across the city.”

  Well, then I needed to work fast.

  I swiped the login screen aside for a moment, pulling up a press release announcing his new position.

  “Read the news story to me,” I said.

  “I don’t have time for this shit, Ruby.”

  “Come on, humor me. Partner.”

  “You’re a piece of work.” Roark sighed and adjusted something in the background.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “I don’t have time for this,” Roark said. “Rolling blackouts. People are scared shitless.”

  “It’s a ruse.”

  “Goddamnit, you think I don’t know that?” Roark pounded his fist in frustration. Clearly his new managerial role was already testing the limits of his cool. Well, that and my little bit of thievery.

  The buzz in the background of his office sounded like a hive of angry bees. Lots of exciting developments at FBI HQ today—none of them good, unfortunately.

  “Come on. Just read me the press release.” I glanced out the window, at the magnificent skyscraper metropolis.

  “Fine.” He cleared his throat as I put the phone on speaker. “Special Agent Colton Roark…”

  I didn’t hear the rest. The FBI login screen disappeared in a sea of digital bits, activated by his voiceprint. The AI welcomed him to the fold.

  On the other side of the line, I heard, “Goddamnit, Ruby.”

  “Sorry,” I said, heading into his equities account. He had a nice little government nest egg.

  That I would be placing into MagiTekk options. Puts, more specifically, with a low strike. When the stock price went down, I’d have Tinyr’s fifteen million.

  I set the proceeds to transfer to the dragon’s account.

  “And I’m revoking your FBI clearance. Don’t come back.”

  “What happened to partners?”

  “Partners don’t steal from one another, Ruby. They ask.”

  The line went dead without a goodbye. I stared up at the skyscraper city, chest burning as the trade went through. 10,000 puts bought on margin.

  All alone in a brave new world.

  Well, not quite.

  There was a tap on the window. Tinyr blew a cloud of smoke to indicate that everything was done. I flipped on the news. A warehouse was burning, but its owner hadn’t been identified.

  The clock flipped over to zero, and a sharp pain burned in my arm.

  But there was still work to be done.

  44

  After the build-up and epic struggle to find the elf dragon, the payoff had almost been a letdown. I found the serum sample in the alley outside. Trading on MagiTekk’s options had already picked up substantially as soon as the warehouse owner had been identified, despite it being well after market hours.

  The low-key rollout, it seemed, had been far less low-key than the bland corporate press releases had originally suggested. Numbers like billions of dollars in product were thrown out in the preliminary reports.

  Clutching the bag of needles as I took the elevator back upstairs to my apartment, I called Silvia.

  “Turn on the news,” I said.

  “You still have my serum. And the information I seek.”

  I glanced at Roark’s cube. “Let the girl go and I’ll come to you at noon.”

  “That’s not how this works.”

  “You got what you wanted.”

  “Not quite,” Silvia said.

  “Then you’ll have to be patient.”

  I hung up the phone, her threats be damned. If she wanted to kill me—or Alice—right after I’d delivered the first part of the bargain, that was her prerogative. I grabbed the leather jacket from the chair, scrounged up a few shells from the drawers and took stock of the apartment as I hung in the doorway.

  It’d probably be the last time I ever saw the place.

  Because, whether Roark—and MagiTekk—liked it or not, I was headed to the Cathedral of St. Peter.

  To end this thing.

  45

  Downtown Phoenix was eerily silent and dark as I hurried toward the cathedral. The autocabs were out, which made running my only option. My breath was ragged. The anti-radiation meds had run out hours ago, which meant that I had to stop every few blocks to unleash a deadly cough.

  But I couldn’t let the Crusaders’ patience pay off.

  A hundred years was a long time to wait. Then again, the Crusaders had waited a couple thousand for their shot at Paradise. In context, a century of planning—first from the haunted, narrow hallways of the Greater Phoenix Psychiatric Palliative Care Ward for the Supernatural, more recently, with shadowy backroom deals involving MagiTekk—was nothing.

  Donovan Martin had been right: he could outwait me.

  But I had been right, too: he’d never met a ghost quite like me.

  Namely because he hadn’t managed to make me one.

  Chest heaving, I made it to Old Phoenix without dying, which I considered a small win.

  A truck rumbled away outside of the Cathedral of St. Peter. Unlike the rest of the city, the cathedral was lit up, the streetlights still functioning outside. Janssen had been right—all that power was being drawn here. The spindly shamble of a man who had summarily dismissed Roark and I four days earlier toted a box up the stairs, flanked by two guards.

  The large, wooden double doors had guards stationed on either side.

  Wicking sweat off my brow, I loosened another button from my shirt. I was really starting to feel the side effects—or, as Silvia had called it, the volatile nature—of the exhaustion displacement potion.

  Fingers shaking, I steadied the shotgun on a van’s rusted hood. The shamble of a man and his guards disappeared within the cathedral, leaving behind the doormen.

  External security was lax—but then, the whole idea was to maintain an incognito façade. Dozens of armed guards would draw attention. While the majority of FBI forces—who were in the dark about the Bureau’s true involvement—were off tending to the blackout paper tigers conjured by Donovan Martin, the real work was going on here.

  Alice’s phone chimed. It was actually Alice herself, pinging the device via her neural.

  Apparently Silvia had released her.

  Things were looking up already.

  Keeping to the shadows of the night, I hunched my shoulders as I darted across the street. With very few streetlights, my movements were well cloaked from the guards at the front steps. Instead of heading for the main entrance, I took a circuitous route around the cathedral’s side.

  Pushing over the crumbling chest-high wall, I tumbled into a courtyard. Tufts of greenish
grass spotted the dirt. Hands unsteady, I grabbed the shotgun from the dust and looked up.

  My gaze met a guard’s thirty yards away.

  Security was tighter than I expected.

  In one of those brief moments of stunned silence, we both stared at one another without moving.

  Then, taking initiative, I dove forward and fired a shot. The boom erupted through the night, generating shouts from the front, back and other side of the building—even the roof. I hit the ground just as the blue bolt of energy turned the guard’s torso into bloody ash.

  Heart pounding, the last of my adrenaline spurring me forward, I clawed through the courtyard. I yanked the wrought iron key from my jacket as I sprinted for the cellar. Gunshots exploded at my heels, painting the dirt with lead.

  The key dropped from my fingers, and I didn’t stop. Instead, I aimed the shotgun straight at the cellar door, and turned the heavy wood into cinders. Not stopping to check if there was a ladder, I jumped straight into the dark hole.

  I hit the ground about eight feet down.

  Gasping, fatigue and sickness overtaking me, I crawled through the cellar. Guards yelled instructions above about a potential security breach. Stealth was never my calling card.

  Staggering to the entrance door, I took out Janssen’s well-worn keycard and swiped it through the reader.

  The light glowed green, and the automatic door slid open, inviting me inside the cathedral’s secret sub-basement. Unlike the unfinished cellar, this area was paved in shiny, unblemished marble, the walls newly plastered, everything trimmed in the stainless steel of a research facility.

  I dragged the shotgun over the threshold, blood streaming from my nose.

  Fucking radiation.

  Stumbling through the halls, past lab tables and administrative offices, I took in the glory that was the Cathedral of St. Peter’s secret lair.

  Until I heard a familiar shambling man’s soft voice say behind me, “I’m afraid this is the end of the line for you, Miss Callaway.”

  “You can’t just throw me out this time,” I said, without turning around.

  “No,” the man said. “But I can eliminate the problem entirely.”

  I didn’t hear the footsteps.

  I just felt the punch in my gut hit me like a freight train before I crumpled to the ground.

  46

  Bright lights flashed in my eyes, jarring me awake. The throaty growl of drills churning through rock rumbled off the walls of a cavern. Power coursed through the air, like a massive static charge. Eyesight blurring back into focus, I found myself dangling over a pit.

  Jerking suddenly, I felt rough strands of rope dig into my wrists.

  “It is appropriate that you came tonight, Realmfarer.” Donovan Martin’s kind voice cut over the whir of the drills.

  Against my better judgment, I looked down into the abyss. The visage of a frozen god stared up at me, preserved in mana.

  “Why do I always have to be right,” I said with a groan.

  “Pan will be with us again. And he shall return the Earth to its former glory.”

  “And what, I’m his first meal?”

  “You catch on quickly.” Donovan Martin’s head gleamed in the bright spotlight. “Brooker has worked tirelessly on this project since we met.”

  The shambling wisp of a man waved at me from the controls. Tied up as I was, all I could do was growl like a cornered animal.

  “My friends are coming to burn this place down,” I said. “You can get out now.”

  “Lies, just like the last time.” Donovan’s robes shuffled as he walked around the edge of the abyss. “And no dragons will save you this time.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

  I saw Brooker adjust a switch. The ropes lowered me a little into the pit, sending my heart into my throat. That freaky dead god’s blank stare wasn’t doing me any favors. Even if Pan had been benevolent 70,000 years ago—which was doubtful—I didn’t want to meet the zombified, resurrected version.

  “You can’t revive him,” I said, boots dangling over nothingness. “It’s pointless.”

  “He will live on in all of us.” Donovan stared up at the ceiling, arms outstretched. “And we will create a new tomorrow.”

  My eyes swung around the cavern. I counted dozens of drills, all hammering away at the walls and floors.

  Fuck.

  I’d been wrong.

  They weren’t digging this guy out and defribrilating him back to life.

  All this juice was about extracting the mana and then transforming it into something that the Crusaders could imbibe.

  They weren’t resurrecting gods.

  They were just drinking his power.

  And that was much, much worse. I’d seen the power the wellsprings had afforded Donovan Martin. How his foul curse had glowed, even near the Fallout Zone gate.

  Multiply that by a hundred or a thousand, and yeah, MagiTekk would have tipped the scales of the war.

  Too far in the wrong direction.

  Which left me with one play.

  I closed my eyes.

  “Are you listening, Realmfarer?” Donovan Martin sounded concerned. Yes, a hundred years had made him Zen.

  Except when it came to the person who had shot him and left him for dead.

  Hard to forgive those people.

  I knew the feeling.

  Channeling energy through my temples, I began to feel the burn. A vision would be stressful and difficult under the best of circumstances, but I had no intention of divining the future.

  My arms began to shake, the cumulative effects of the potion and the last week taking its toll. My eyelids blinked rapidly as my mind started to go blank. The rope swung back and forth as my muscles convulsed.

  “Cut her down! Cut her down!” Donovan Martin sounded frantic. “The ritual cannot be disturbed!”

  I bit my tongue, stopping the vision trigger. I’d seen nothing into the future.

  Except one little sliver—which might have been little more than a wish.

  The rope slackened, a system of pulleys bringing me close to the edge. I kept my body limp, which wasn’t too hard, since everything was on fire. Sweat streamed down my neck, smelling of jasmine and vanilla.

  Well, if what I’d seen was wrong, at least I’d die smelling nice.

  I felt a hand on my leg coursing with magical energy.

  “The Realmfarer cannot die.” Donovan tugged my feet toward the ground, the tension coming off my shoulder tendons. The ropes loosened, and I slipped through the bonds.

  I opened one eye.

  His gaze caught mine as I swept my feet beneath his.

  “The righteous always prevail,” I said as he hit the ground.

  “Lift her back,” he screamed, but it was too late.

  The rope was already around his neck.

  And it snapped as Brooker jerked him skyward.

  So much for being immortal.

  Staggering to my feet, I caught the old man’s eye.

  He reached for a pistol in his waistband.

  The distance was too far to close.

  I shut my eyes, waiting for the shot.

  One rang out, followed by another.

  When I didn’t die, I peeked out.

  “Good to see you again,” Roark said, blue eyes shining brightly. “Partner.”

  47

  Turns out Roark had tracked my phone after our little conversation. But after I’d ended up disappearing near the Cathedral of St. Peter, he’d figured out what was going on—that the blackout was just a massive ruse.

  And he’d sent in the strike team.

  I’d given him back his data cube. I really had no intention of keeping it. The transfer to Tinyr was complete. MagiTekk’s stock was temporarily in the shitter, but I wasn’t sure anything was going to stick.

  The Crusaders thing was a big scandal, but these things had a habit of disappearing. Especially when you controlled the airwaves.

  I pushed myself up from t
he Emporium’s back exit, rubbing my nose to get the stench of the sewer out. Just like I’d promised, I’d dealt with Jack.

  At the end of my shotgun.

  Who knew being an entrepreneur was such a dangerous business?

  Checking the time, I found I even had half an hour to spare before I was supposed to meet Silvia.

  I put in a call to Malcolm Roark.

  “You have a lot of balls, Ruby.”

  “I didn’t burn down your warehouse.”

  “But I’m holding you responsible.”

  “Please,” I said. “Spare me the bullshit.”

  “I’m not an enemy you want,” Malcolm said, his tone strained.

  Recalling the magic shield that had rendered my bullets useless, I tended to agree.

  “I know who did it.”

  “And how would you know that if you weren’t involved?”

  “Because I’m a good investigator.” I looked up at the noon sun broiling down on the red dust of Old Phoenix. “You interested or not?”

  “Tell me who it was.”

  “The name Silvia ring a bell?”

  “My people killed her.”

  “That’s funny, because I’m not so sure.”

  “Do tell,” Malcolm said on the other end of the line.

  I walked up the street, taking a left up to Serenity Cole’s clinic. She’d been working on reverse-engineering the serum since I’d brought it to her last night.

  Turned out she was also a pretty good doctor. I wasn’t fully recovered, but the pills she had me on for radiation sickness were way more convenient than the IV drip.

  Hopefully she had something worked out. Because I’m sure MagiTekk had contingencies.

  “Are you still there?” Malcolm sounded almost desperate. This was an embarrassing defeat for the esteemed Chief of Security. I’m sure his quarterly bonus would reflect the earnings hit.

  I gave him the address in Midtown.

  “We’re even, now.”

  “I’ll tell you when we’re even.”

  “You stay the fuck away from me and Roark.”

  “Don’t forget I know your little secret. How you want to take us down.”

  “Better get out now, before the whole thing burns.”

  He laughed, confident and unbothered. “We’re too big to fail.”