Flames of Hope

by Cassandra L Shaw

  “What if they’re in trouble? Innocents caught in something they don’t know how to get out of.”

  “And that would be why they have the blasters. Whatever they got themselves into, they can get themselves out of. We have other problems.”

  “Callous.”

  “Fact.”

  She turned, her eyes slightly squinted in disgust, her hand on her hip. “I think we should break in, have a good look around, just in case.”

  He tapped his link. “No time. We’re busy.”

  “It’s not up to you. I’m my own agent.”

  Their eyes met, hers heated with far more than this conversation.

  “I don’t give a toss about two strangers.”

  “The kidnapped Eli and Crea are strangers. What makes our neighbors different?”

  “They might not be innocent.”

  “We won’t know unless we check out their place.”

  “For all we know, they are spies put in place by the traitor in the FBPI or Katoom’s clan. They could be Mule dealers, which is why they were so paranoid and keeping an eye on us.”

  “They could be many things, but they might not be anything.”

  “The place has so many vid recorders watching the outside world, the dots make the woodwork look like they have some sort of wood eating bug problem. You go in there, you blow your cover.”

  It was strange, though, that they hadn’t returned. And those blasters on the table indicated they were into something dangerous. It might affect both him and Jaz if they didn’t check the place out, but putting her in jeopardy didn’t make sense when they had no reason other than curiosity.

  She pulled out her personal link. “I’ll get FBPI backup.”

  “And let FBPI agents know our whereabouts and our covers? You’re meant to be at Katoom, soaking up some clan vibes and relaxing.”

  Her jaw hardened.

  Stupid, stubborn woman. “Fine. We’ll check. But we do it my way.”

  She arched an eyebrow at him. “Your way?”

  He grinned. She could make any word sound like she really said go eat shit. “My way. Early evening, full blackout outfit. You leave dressed casual, park up the road, return via back of property. Fully wired, packing gear, or you’re not going in.”

  “Please, I train preternatural recruits in the agency. I know all the drills and how to protect myself.”

  “You’re also not stupid. Geared up, as I say, or I’ll call Kaid and have you pulled off the entire mission.”

  “Bull-shiiit.”

  “Try me.”

  She gave him the finger and he grinned back at her evilly. Woman was damn near perfect.

  #

  Jasmine parked the car, peeled off the light blue top she’d put over her black one, rolled down the black sleeves, quickly bundled her hair into a tight bun, and made her way from the car toward the back of the duplex. At the back, behind the high wood fence, and hidden under a bush, she pulled on her elasto gloves, which left no mark or detectable residue of any sort, and pulled down the thin cotton knit of a full-face ski mask.

  Luckily when she’d left on sabbatical she’d decided to take her full FBPI kit with her.

  Wearing elasto ballet slippers, she jumped the fence, jogged through the small yard, and edged toward the back door of the duplex. She pulled the cotton cover off her slippers, so no debris from her feet would be left behind, slipping them into her pocket and zipping it tight so no evidence could be accidently left behind.

  “I’m here,” she said softly to Xylvar through her wire. Seconds later the remote-control fly he was in charge of, buzzed at her shoulder so he could see what she did.

  A quick spray of anti-static and stick meant no sole would show when she entered the duplex unit.

  She passed a scanner over the back lock and ran the results through an FPBI owned decoder Xylvar somehow possessed. Seconds later a coded key-card popped out. She checked behind her once again, slid the card through the slot. Click, another click, then a third louder click, signaled the releasing of the tri-bolting mechanism. She sighed. “Gotta love top-grade equipment. Stolen or not.”

  She pulled out a small can of elasto fog—also government issue, but who was complaining—and sprayed herself with the light blue mist. It would hide her body shape from any recording device with a lens.

  Small blaster in one hand, a knife in the other, she opened the door and surveyed the interior. A quick movement slipped her knife into her thigh holster before she pulled out another spray can, this one of lens off. With a quick step and spin, she stood inside the back door, and sprayed the corner where she assumed there’d be a recording device. As the red on light faded from view, she smiled. Bullseye in one.

  She checked the remote-control fly made it in before easing the back door shut and walking slowly, blaster aimed forward, ready for any surprises, watching for anyone lurking, or other recording devices she’d need to block.

  Behind the first door was the main bedroom, as she imagined it would be, since Vanessa, or the woman playing Vanessa, said it was there. The door was partially open, so she peeked into the room before carefully pushing it fully open. A double bed stood in the middle of the room, unmade, the pillows on the floor.

  Jasmine dropped down and looked underneath, spotting some sort of box toward the middle. She grabbed the side of the box and pulled it out, sitting up to release the clip on the thick, cardboard, blue and white lid. Inside she found a series of passports and other identification, and a good assortment of electronic surveillance devices.

  She blew out a breath. Vanessa and James, real names unknown, were into some heavy shit. She flicked open a passport, and waited for the halo of Vanessa to appear. Through the halo she read the name Cintra Jane Paulo.

  “The equipment is high-end and so’s the fake ID.” Not what you’d find in stores, not even cyber ones. She pulled out a listening device. “This is government-supplied. Almost the same as the ones the FBPI provides. The web grows stickier.” Or they had the same backwater contacts as Xylvar.

  “So it seems.” Xylvar’s voice came through dark and little foreboding.

  In the small closest, one on top of the other, were two large canvas cargo bags. Inside one she found clothes for a woman, inside the other clothes for a man. “Tropical weight stuff.”

  In the living room she stopped, eyeing the takeout containers, the clothes all dumped on the floor and couches. “Wow, they live like teens.”

  “Top right corner.” She spun, spotting the tiny red light of a vid feed, and hurried to spray it.

  In the kitchen, coffee cups sat on a table with milky, sour-smelling, lumpy messes inside.

  “No time for cleaning. They left in a bigger hurry than we realized.” Next to the cups sat the small assortment of blasters they’d seen the edges of earlier. “You getting a better view of this?”

  “I see them.”

  And then it hit her. Dried blood, lots of it. “I smell blood.” She must have been too focused to smell it before. She headed toward the second bedroom door, kicked it open—and came to an abrupt halt.

  “Holy shit.” On the floor next to the built-in closet lay a man. A dead man with a large pool of dry blood surrounding him. “Sweet hell, the dead bastard’s been gutted.”

  “Get out.” Xylvar voice was nothing more than a growl, but it came to her loud and clear.

  “Getting…” A whoosh. She started to spin, something cracked on the back of her head. As she fell, her beast threw out its claws, shooting them through her gloves, and she lashed at the person, scored something solid before everything went black.

  #

  A hand appeared in front of the fly.

  The screen went black. Schschzzzzzzzz came through the sound feed.

  Xylvar dropped the remote, heart pounding in a solid beat of adrenaline, as he flicked the auto switch on his chair.

  In the bedroom, he grabbed his two favorite blasters, feeling the security of the knives already concealed on his
body.

  Heart a dark glacier, mind set for bloody murder, he left through the front door as he sent an emergency beacon to all allied Katoom Crea and Eli clan members in Bozeman.

  The moon was high and bright as he pulled out the card for the neighbor’s front door he’d precoded that afternoon, and slid it into the lock.

  His chair a battering ram, he hit the door, slamming it open.

  29

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Inside the neighbor’s unit, something clanged from a room the right. Wheelchair running on voice commands and shoulder shifts, blaster in one hand, throwing knife balanced and ready in the other, Xylvar whirled toward the sound.

  A man, blaster raised, raced out of a room toward Xylvar. He saw Xylvar, slowed, and lowered his weapon a fraction.

  Hah. Fool. Xylvar twitched a shoulder, spinning his chair to the right as he blasted the man in his upper arm. The man’s blaster clattered to the floor. In a smooth move Xylvar appreciated for its skill, the man palmed a second blaster in his left hand.

  Don’t think so, asshole. Another finger twitch lasered a hole into the man’s left shoulder. The man let out a strangled scream as blood bloomed on his dark jacket. A metallic clank as the second blaster hit the floor.

  Xylvar gave the man a dead-eyed stare. “Tsk, tsk, first rule in combat, never hesitate. Not even for old ladies and men in wheelchairs.” Xylvar moved forward, the man, eyes locked on Xylvar, stumbled back out of his way. Inside the room, Jasmine lay unmoving on the floor. His lungs deflated, iron bands of bleak despair, wrapping around his ribs.

  “Jaz.” The word. soft and strangled, stole his last bit of air.

  “She’s alive.” The man assured him in a rush.

  Jaz’s ribs expanded on a breath, loosening Xylvar’s chest. Nostrils flared, he drew in air. Not far from her lay a man. His pale, discolored complexion and dead man’s reek, telling Xylvar his death occurred well over a day ago.

  “You’re lucky to be alive.” Xylvar couldn’t stop the growl rumbling through is voice. His beast wanted to claw, to tear, to kill. To rip the man responsible for harming his Jaz. But his victim staying alive for the moment suited Xylvar. Dead men tell no tales, and he wanted the tale, the complete, unabridged story

  Blood running down his right arm and the left side of his chest, and lines of pain bracketing his mouth, the man staggered toward the single bed and sat on the white-covered edge.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  Xylvar peeled his lips back in a parody of a grin. “Pain.” Later, Pain might change to Death. Pain and death, an easy exchange.

  He refocused his blaster, aiming for the man’s sweat-slick forehead, Xylvar rolled toward Jaz. “If she’s dies…” He didn’t finish the sentence. The man knew. Even a bug would understand the undertone of murderous fury.

  “She’s fine. She’ll just have a headache. Call a medic van, I need assistance.”

  Xylvar gave the man six points for his bravado, but took one back for the man’s stink of fear. “Fuck you. You won’t die—for a while. I didn’t shoot you in an artery. Who are you, and who do you work for?”

  The man spat, the gob landing in front of Xylvar’s chair.

  He almost rolled his eyes at the cliché. “Why do dickheads always spit? Do scum go to spitting school?” Xylvar tipped the blaster and shot the man in the leg, the laser beam ripping through the side of his black pants, grazing his calf muscle deep enough to leave a permanent scar, before burning a neat, round hole in the bedspread.

  “Fuck.” The man dropped his head and stared at his leg.

  Xylvar lifted the blaster tip a fraction, made sure the red light of aim was on and his prey could see his intended target. “Next one will be your dick. Now, who do you work for?”

  “Screw you.”

  “Well maybe not your dick, but definitely a nut. So, your name.”

  “The tooth fairy.”

  “Great. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  Jasmine groaned. When Xylvar glanced over at her, the Tooth Fairy shifted right. Xylvar blasted him in his right shoulder. The man screamed, and before he could recover, Xylvar snaked a hand into the man’s hole-riddled, blood-soaked leather jacket and pulled out a knife.

  “Tsk, tsk.” He spun the weapon in his hand, weighing it for aim and quality. “Nice. I like it. Thanks, always after new weapons.” He tucked it into his chair’s side pocket. “Keep this shit up, Tooth Fairy, and you’ll bleed out. Kids around the world will be disappointed for eons because you’re a dickhead.”

  “Jesus, you fucking asshole, I need medical help.”

  “Better a live asshole than a dead asshole, a situation I can soon fix. Now, let’s start again. I have enough charge for several dozen blasts, plus several knives, yours included, and you only have so much flesh, and a lot less blood. Your choice.” He looked over at Jaz, who’d thrown her arm over the back of her head.

  “I need medical aid. I can’t move my arms.”

  Xylvar turned from Jazz to stare at the man. “Then answer my questions.”

  “Top left pocket, inside my jacket.”

  “And?”

  “My ID.”

  “Pull it out.”

  “My arms…”

  Xylvar cut him a cold gaze. “Those injuries are flesh.” He wasn’t dumb enough to get so close to the enemy again, not when the man knew he was coming.

  With a strangled cry of pain the man moved his right arm. Pale and sweating, he reached inside, pulled out a black wallet, and flicked it into Xylvar’s lap.

  Jaz rolled, cupping the back of her head. “Fucking fucker.” Xylvar grinned. Nothing wrong with her speech or pain response. He flicked open the wallet. On one side, a driver’s card sat inside a slot, the other side a FBPI agency card. Xylvar pulled out the agency card, tapped the halo chip. The man’s face appeared 3D, spinning on an invisible axis.

  Well shit. What the fuck was going on?

  This man was from the same agency as Jasmine. Did the FBPI have an operation going on, right next door to Katoom’s undercover op? Jasmine groaned again, Xylvar cast her a brief glance, then brought his gaze back to the man. “FBPI?”

  “Undercover.” He gritted his teeth for a second, and more sweat trickled down his face. “Couple living here recruited known ex-Special Ops members for a vigilante group. The Criminal Justice Department has been watching them for a while.”

  Vigilante to what? And who’d they hoped to recruit? “Yet you work for the FBPI, not the CJD.”

  “Work together on some issues.”

  “Vigilantes?” Had Vanessa and James, or whoever they really were, known about Xylvar’s past? But then to know he’d be living in this duplex, they’d have to have Katoom clan contacts.

  “It’s what we believe they do. What’s your connection, and who’s the lady on the floor?”

  Jasmine pulled herself up until she sat leaning against the wall. She quickly glanced at the dead man, then focused her pissed-off glare on the alive but bleeding man.

  Phew, she did killer looks well. Xylvar flashed the ID to Jaz. “Nathan Carsen.”

  Carsen didn’t need to sweat about his balls being blasted to dust. Jasmine would squeeze them till they popped, then poach them for breakfast. “The lady on the floor is FBPI special agent Jasmine Pembroke, you piece of dead meat. I really hope you’re lower in rank, so I can kick your ass down to Florida, let the alligators feast on your useless flesh.” She used her hand to brace herself on the wall before coming to stand beside Xylvar. She wobbled, put her hand on his shoulder. “My block spray on the vids will be failing—we need to leave.”

  Carsen ground his teeth through another wave of pain and flicked a weak hand toward the body on the floor. “We have a murder to report, and I need medical help.”

  “We need to respray the vid feeds.” Jaz, a bit staggery, but not enough to stop her, headed out of the room, Xylvar assumed to spray the vid lenses.

  “Medic…”

  “When I’m read
y.”

  “Your concern warms my heart. I’m a fucking agent for a government agency.”

  “Nobody cares, Carsen.”

  Jaz came back into the room. “He knocked me out.” She picked up the broken fly from the floor. “Shit, and broke a very expensive piece of equipment.”

  “Put a new one on your case budget.”

  “Not an FPBI issue. I’m on a break.” She handed the fly’s remains to Xylvar. “Can you fix that?”

  He eyed the mangled piece of tech. The tiny internal chip broken into a dozen pieces. “Kidding, right?”

  “Too far gone?”

  He looked back at the dot in his hand. “Unless I can suddenly conjure miracles, I declare this officially dead.” He looked over at the dead guy, then back at Carsen. “Who’s our not-so-fresh-smelling friend?”

  “They call him Kabull, Savtos Kabull. Was an FBPI contract agent, worked sometimes for the Criminal Justice Department. I’ve been following him on the side for a while. I’m pretty sure he’s a double agent for someone who’s not government, but not sure who the other party he’s reporting to is.”

  “Someone knew, since he’s dead.”

  “Most I know is he was given a mission in Bozeman by one of the FBPI operative leaders.”

  “Who?”

  “Fernando Rich. But Rich doesn’t suspect the guy was sour.”

  Jaz scowled, but Xylvar shook his head. Rich was Jaz’s main operative coordinator in the agency. Jasmine walked over and looked closer at the dead man’s face, bent and rifled through his pockets. “No ID, and I’ve never seen him around, but then I’ve never seen you, either.” She nodded at Carsen.

  “As I said, he’s contract. Comes and goes.”

  She peeled open the dead man’s fingers and held up a reel of choke wire. “Our man was here for nefarious reasons. Wonder if Vanessa and James took him out?”

  “Got to be a setup, or they really felt they were in danger. As I said, they recruit ex-agents and Special Ops for someone. Doubt they were worth killing.”

  “Reckon Kabull disagrees.” Jaz turned to look toward the door as a car drove down the road. “We need to get out of here.”