Eve of Destruction

by C. E. Stalbaum

  “What now?” she hissed.

  “Has anything changed?” he asked.

  “Little. I’d guess they’re running out of leads. Soon they will make an attempt at the journal and probably get themselves killed.”

  “Then it’s time for you to act. Get the journal as quickly as possible, and then reveal yourself. Ally with the others and try to help Eve make sense of whatever it says.”

  He could almost visualize the bemused expression on her pale face. “That seems especially desperate. I’m guessing the Enclave upped the stakes?”

  “We’re running out of time, Shaedra,” he said gravely. “We need answers, and we need hope.”

  “So let me take him. You should have sent me months ago.”

  Maltus shook his head even though she couldn’t see it. “No. Get the book, but don’t kill him. And try to be subtle. Wait until tonight if you can.”

  “That won’t be easy. He’ll be well protected.”

  “They can’t stop you.”

  She remained silent for a long moment. “The Council wants me to kill her, don’t they?”

  “Some have always wanted that, but it’s not going to happen.”

  “I never imagined it would,” she said smugly. “You’re not a killer.”

  “But you are,” he reminded her. “I’ll be out of contact for few days. I need to speak with Jean and I can’t afford to take the stone with me. I don’t want the Enclave tracking me. I’ll contact you as soon as I can.”

  “Another friend who will abandon you?”

  “I hope not,” he whispered. “Just get it done, Shaedra.”

  “So be it.”

  ***

  Sitting crouched atop a five-story building at the center of Cadotheia, Shaedra Nafal couldn’t help but thirst for the sweet taste of Selerius—or any other eastern city, for that matter. But as much as the hunger inside her begged to be sated, she found it surprising how the emptiness of this ruined city had actually focused her mind. Here she had nothing to whet her palette or stir her senses; all she had was the mission. It was liberating, in a perverse kind of way.

  “So your friends really think the girl will be safe here?”

  She twisted her head around to see Alex standing behind her, peering down on the street below. He’d been mercifully silent for the entire trip, and she’d eventually started to wonder if he might find it difficult to manifest here. The Fane was stretched thin in this city, and she thought—or perhaps hoped—that the wayward ghost would have trouble following her.

  Apparently not.

  “They’re not my friends,” she murmured.

  “Ah, of course,” he said stiffly, turning to face her. “I forgot you don’t have any of those. Even when you were human you were never very good at making them.”

  “I lacked your ability to coddle people’s egos.”

  “In other words, social graces,” Alex said, smiling thinly. “It’s rather amazing you weren’t cast out of the nobility.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she glanced back down beneath them. “I don’t know why Danev chose this place. A hotel is far too obvious a hideout, especially for a man with his background.”

  “Perhaps he wishes to ‘hide in plain sight’, as it were.”

  “Or he’s relying on me to protect them if Chaval’s goons show up,” she said.

  “If he trusted you that much, he would have tried to make contact already,” Alex pointed out. “It’s all very curious, this game you’re playing. It seems as though the lot of you could have simply pooled your resources by now.”

  “Maltus didn’t want that,” Shaedra said. “He wanted to be patient.”

  He grunted. “Yes, and I forgot you always do what he says. But you still never told me why—or why you care even the slightest bit for this DeShane girl.”

  “You’re right, I didn’t,” she replied flatly. “And I don’t have to. It’s time for me to get to work.”

  “Yes, the hunt,” Alex murmured. “To think you used to spend days rotting away inside your tower pouring over musty books and ancient treatise. Perhaps you were wasting your true talents all along—or perhaps your curse has just turned you into an animal.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “Stay here and talk with yourself if you want. I have a job to do.”

  With a hollow grunt, Shaedra leapt from her perch. The pavement buckled beneath her on impact, and a series of sickening cracks echoed down the alley as the bone in her knees and ankles snapped. She stifled the yelp with practiced ease and held herself in a mangled crouch as she mentally clawed around the alley for the energy to sustain her.

  It wasn’t an easy task. Precious few plants grew between the cracks in the cobblestone and brick streets, and she preferred not to drain humans if she could avoid it. It wasn’t as much a moral consideration as a practical one; a corpse brought a lot more unwanted attention than a few wilted plants, after all. Spreading panic amidst the back alleys would only slow her down in the end.

  She bit down on her lip and continued her search for sustenance. Eventually she felt the skittering presence of vermin and carrion gnawing their way through discarded trash and dead animals, and she pulled what she needed from them. A nearby rat squeaked as it tried to flee from her invisible grip, but it barely made it a meter before falling over, blood streaming from its eyes.

  Its death opened a gateway into the Fane, and she drew what she needed from the invisible rift. Her bones and muscles slowly repaired themselves just as they had a thousand times before, and within moments she was able to pull herself fully upright. Her regeneration was slower and more deliberate than she was used to, but that was all right. It would still be more than sufficient to get the job done.

  Once she could walk again, she quickly set off towards the great golden dome in the city plaza. Chaval called it the Hall of Innovation, and she couldn’t help but roll her eyes anytime the name was mentioned. She’d never met the man, but it was obvious that he, like so many others in positions of wealth and power, was driven almost entirely by his ego. It made her want to kill him even more. It wouldn’t even be difficult—his guards would have no way to stop her, and she would have loved to see the look on his presidential face when she grabbed him by the throat and forced him to beg for his life.

  But no, Maltus still felt constrained by the Enclave’s wishes. The Council feared turning Chaval into a martyr, but eventually they would realize it was the least of two evils. They weren’t actually going to let him come to power—or if they did, they certainly weren’t going to let him wield it. No, some day in the not-so-distant future she or another of their pet assassins would return to this place and finish the job.

  She shook her head in disgust as she dashed silently through the nighttime streets. It was tempting to liberate someone’s horse to increase her speed, but it wasn’t worth the extra attention. Most animals reacted violently to the presence of a Vakari. In many ways they were more attuned to the Fane than humans; the people she passed on the streets saw her only as a tall, sexless figure in a dark coat. Beasts, on the other hand, could sense her for the huntress she was.

  All told, it took her just over thirty minutes to reach her destination. The bottom floors of the Hall were open to the public all day, but it was late enough that the entrances were locked and guarded. The journal, if it was even here, would almost certainly be in the upper floors where Chaval ran his political machine. It was entirely conceivable that he kept it on his person at all times—a part of her hoped that was the case. Once she was close enough to take it, the temptation to finish the job would have been that much stronger…

  Shaedra took a calming breath and studied the building. A wall encircled the entire structure except for a wide staircase in the front, and there was no obvious way in aside from climbing a smooth, ten meter chunk of stone. For most thieves, it would be an impassable barrier.

  For a mage, it was hardly even a nuisance.

  She once again stretched out to find enough near
by vermin to open a gateway into the Fane. She strode purposefully towards the outer wall, being mindful to lurk within the shadows. Once she drew close, she called to mind an old technique and wove the spell. The invisible hand of gravity holding her to the ground reversed, vaulting her straight up into the air and over the wall.

  Three centuries ago, she had been a master of the technique. Sadly, entropy had taken its toll on her skills, and she missed the target rather badly. She bounced off the top of the wall and then crunched awkwardly to the ground on the other side. Nothing broke this time, but it still hurt—and more importantly, it made noise. She flipped up into a crouch and held still, listening to see if anyone had heard.

  Her Vakari senses flared, and Shaedra could sense the life energy of three separate guards stationed near the building. None of them seemed to have noticed her fall, however, and she slowly brought herself to her feet. Two of the men were lounging on the front steps, speaking in hushed tones, their rifles slung lazily over their shoulders. The third, however, was wandering back and forth across the entire property, and he at least seemed mildly alert.

  She slid a hand underneath her jacket and pulled free one of her many knives. The temptation to kill—the temptation to feed—was overpowering. The city continued to starve her, and it would have been so easy to slip around through the shadows and kill these men. The door guards she’d have to deal with before they could scream, but the patroller…she could easily take him alone and feast on him without anyone being the wiser.

  Shaedra bit down hard enough on her lip to draw blood and slowly pulled her hand from her baldric. No, she didn’t need to kill them. For one, they were probably just poor kreel forced into working for Chaval to put food on the table, and for two, their deaths were unnecessary. She could get in without seriously hurting them. Besides, there was no point in leaving any evidence she was here if she didn’t have to.

  She waited in the shadows until the patroller had made it to the other side of the property then slowly crept towards the door. Another spell coalesced in her mind, this one an old favorite that hadn’t grown nearly as rusty as her gravity manipulation technique. She twisted and pulled at the shadows in front of the building, and the two chatting guards immediately noticed the odd movement and grabbed their weapons. A few seconds later, she repeated the illusion twenty meters away, and now the guards were fixated on what they undoubtedly assumed was someone trying to sneak up to the building. One of them grabbed a lamp as the other called out a warning, and they dashed over to investigate.

  Shaedra gave them ten seconds before she sprinted over to the Hall’s wide double doors. They were padlocked at this hour, of course, but that was hardly an impediment. She could have ripped the lock apart with her bare hands if she’d wanted to, but that would alert the guards the moment they returned. Instead it was time for another subtle spell.

  She wove Fane energy into the lock, gently pushing at its mechanical pieces with magic rather than her fingers. It was the same trick a lazy mage might use to fetch herself a glass of wine across the room, and in this case she knew the mechanism well enough to manipulate it without seeing it. A few seconds later it clicked open, and she quickly spun inside.

  The interior was dimly lit, and Shaedra didn’t see or sense anyone nearby. She quickly repeated the spell and latched the lock closed again on the other side, then made her way deeper inside the building. By the time she reached the first stairwell, she started to sense the flickering lives of other people in the floors above. She had no way of knowing if they were awake or asleep—or if they were pitiful aides or armed soldiers—but it didn’t really matter. The book was up there somewhere, and she probably had enough tricks up her sleeve to avoid them. Chaval, on the other hand…

  She wasn’t going to kill him, either. If she did this right, she wasn’t going to end up killing anyone at all. She would get the book, and then she would present it to Danev and the girl and see what happened. And despite this glorious opportunity to feed, she would still be hungry.

  Shaedra clenched her jaw and dashed up the stairs.

  ***

  “I’m still not sure I understand,” Amaya murmured to Chaval as their carriage drew closer to the Velding Hotel, one of the many similar upscale establishments he owned in Cadotheia. “Getting that book was worth murdering one of your old friends, and now you’re willing to just let her daughter walk away with it.”

  He smiled and ran a hand across the wide brim of his hat. “Most men in my position don’t appreciate bodyguards who ask so many questions.”

  “But you do,” she reminded him. “That’s part of the reason I cost so much.”

  He chuckled. “Indeed.”

  “So you aren’t going to tell me?”

  “There are certain things you won’t understand,” he said flippantly, “but as I mentioned before, the journal was very…illuminating.”

  “But how does it help for the girl to have it?”

  “I removed many of the pages before leaving it unattended. What remains should be just enough to whet her appetite.”

  Amaya frowned and she folded her arms across her chest. He was being especially patronizing tonight; he had been ever since she returned from her visit with Polard. She couldn’t believe it when he told her that the Vakari was going to take the journal from them tonight, and she was plainly aghast when he suggested they not even try to stop the monster.

  Clearly he’d read something in those pages that made him even more arrogant than usual. Had Tara DeShane saw all of this coming, even down to minute details? Was he so confident in this so-called Prophetess to believe her visions infallible?

  “They might suspect we let them have it,” she said. “No one would leave something so valuable unguarded.”

  “Maybe, though I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘unguarded,’” Chaval replied. “Besides, the journal was already tattered when it arrived. Tara might have previously torn out several pages herself. And in any event, it doesn’t particularly matter. Evelyn still won’t be able to ignore what is in there. She will see her future for what it is, and then…” He smiled as the streetlamps glinted off his eyes. “Well, as I told you before, the heart of a young girl is such a fragile thing.”

  “So you just want me to be patient.”

  “Yes, despite how difficult it seems to be for you,” he said snidely as the carriage stopped and let them out. He offered her his arm, and she took it as they walked inside the building.

  “It’s not impatience; it’s uncertainty,” she corrected when they reached the lift and started their ascent to the top floor. “It seems like you’re flirting with disaster for no particular reason.”

  “A disaster you control is called a weapon.”

  “And if you lose control?”

  The lift doors opened and he smiled broadly. Waiting outside one of the suites on his private floor were a half dozen women in dresses risqué enough to raise the eyebrows of a Sunoan harlot. He nodded towards them once and they came over to remove his coat.

  “You have to learn to trust me,” he told her as the women dragged him into the room. “I may not be a prophet, but I do have a vision.”

  Amaya remained silent as the door to his harem closed. A part of her had wanted to slide a note inside that journal, a warning to the girl about what Chaval was hoping she would become.

  But she hadn’t done it, of course. Instead she’d left it right where Chaval told her to. He’d promised her ten thousand bonus drakes when he was elected, and she had contented herself in reveries of what her family back home would be able to do with it. They wouldn’t have to know what she had done to earn it, and frankly, she knew they wouldn’t really care. As her mother had told her once, morality was a luxury a Talami could not afford.

  Amaya balled her hands into fists, then sighed and walked over to her own room. Chaval probably expected her to keep watch outside his room all night, but she would be damned if she was going to listen to his harem all night. Besides, the next
few days she was going to have to socialize with the “elite,” and that, she imagined, would be more draining than a fight with a Vakari. She needed to be ready for it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Looks even nicer than the Calio,” Zach commented softly as he leaned against the wall of the hotel lobby. “Do I even want to know how much a room here costs?”

  Aram might have shrugged, but it was hard to tell. “No.”

  “Ah,” Zach grunted, turning to Eve with a lop-sided smirk.

  She didn’t reply. She swiveled her eyes back down the hall to where Danev was speaking with a pair of businessmen. He insisted this place would be safe enough for them to stay the night, and he further claimed that tomorrow he would speak with some of his other contacts and figure out a way to get her mother’s journal back.

  Eve wasn’t sure she believed him. At this point, she wasn’t sure if she believed anyone.

  She bit down on her lip and tried to ignore the throbbing in her temples. A part of her could scarcely believe she was actually standing here in Cadotheia. It was ludicrous, to put it mildly. The most powerful man in the city wanted her dead, and here she was sitting right on his doorstep.

  Zach had been right earlier; this had all been a terrible idea. But she hadn’t listened. She never listened. Instead she put her head down and pushed forward, completely heedless of the consequences.

  If she had inherited that trait from her mother, it was one of a growing number of things she wished she could give back.

  “Still seems like a bad idea to stay at a hotel, no matter how many of them there are in the city,” Zach said after a few moments. “Isn’t this the first place Chaval will look?”

  “He’s not omniscient,” Aram replied pointedly. His eyes, too, never left his boss standing just ten meters away. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Zach grunted and shook his head. “We’re not kids, you know. You can tell us the truth.”

  “I am.”

  “Right. Never mind.”