DESTINY
THE GIRL IN THE BOX
BOOK NINE
Robert J. Crane
DESTINY
THE GIRL IN THE BOX
BOOK NINE
Copyright © 2014 Reikonos Press
All Rights Reserved.
1st Edition
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Other Works by Robert J. Crane
Acknowledgments
RNS
This book is dedicated to Nicholas J. Ambrose, who was my editor, cover artist and formatter before he was my friend, and who helped me build the confidence that publishing was easy until I was in too deep to know better. Without him, my career would not be nearly so far along as it is.
Chapter 1
CHARLIE
Charlie screamed as she got cut; a long, searing slice up her belly that felt like someone squirted lighter fluid into it, lit a match and tossed it in. The slash shredded her blouse and she staggered back from her attacker, gasping.
He was big. The kind of big that would stand out on any street. Any street but this one, maybe.
Charlie turned and ran without a thought. When it came to fight or flight, her choice was always easy. The warm, dry desert air of the Las Vegas night hit her cheeks. Searing pain ran through her abdomen, and she could feel the blood running down to her jeans.
She was on the Strip, the heavy heat of day gone hours ago, disappearing after nightfall. With every step she ran, she felt the pain of the open wound. The nearby neon display of the Mirage Casino flashed at her as her feet pounded against the concrete.
Charlie tossed a look back over her shoulder. She hadn’t seen the guy coming. She’d been staggering under one of the footbridges near Caesar’s Palace, embracing the swirling feel of having a good drunk on. Her head was light from the booze some guy had bought her to get her pants off and from the feeling of his soul swimming around inside her after she’d let him think he’d get his way.
Just another mark. Just another night.
Charlie sprinted up the strip. It was the wee hours of the morning, five or so, and day was about to break over the horizon. All that sweet euphoria from the grifted alcohol and the stolen soul had evaporated when that big guy had come at her. She hadn’t even noticed him until it was too late. Hadn’t even seen the knife.
All she knew was that it hurt.
The Mirage had flown past on her left and now she was crossing in front of Treasure Island. The taste of that heavy martini was still lingering on her tongue. She could smell a Starbucks ahead, could feel the burn on her stomach. She’d gotten attacked back at the edge of the Caesar’s Palace property. She’d run far, and fast. Meta speed. Hadn’t even cared if anyone had seen her.
She slowed, looking over her shoulder. There was nothing; just the normal street wanderers, drunks and vagrants asking for weed money, beer money, or gambling money. And few enough of them at this hour. Even the bachelor parties had ended by this point, surely.
Charlie tried to catch her breath. It was coming in hard gasps, the sound blotting out everything going on around her. She ran a hand over her injury. She kept walking fast and dodged around the next footbridge before she stopped.
Charlie leaned back against the grey, two-story concrete footbridge. Escalators ran up and down, ferrying passengers to the top so they could cross the road in peace and continue spending their gambling and drinking dollars without a trip to the emergency room from getting run over by one of Vegas’s crazed taxi drivers. Charlie liked the footbridges. They were a great place to brush past people, touching them as she went.
Charlie looked down. The blood had soaked her front, had run all the way down and darkened the denim of her jeans. Her blouse had already been red; now it bore a darker stain starting just underneath her right breast. She ran a finger through the hole where it had been shredded open. Pain greeted her.
This would heal, probably before the end of the day. Her breathing started to slow. It wasn’t about the wound. This was minor. It was an inconvenience.
It was really about the fact that someone had dared to come at her. Who would do that?
Vegas was her town. Had been—on and off—for years. Whenever the heat got too high anywhere else, this was the place Charlie knew she could go. She’d had to dye her hair once or twice, change her look, but mostly Vegas was her safe ground.
Someone attacking her here? And worse, some human with a knife?
Charlie felt her breath turn hot. She felt a seething anger come, along with her searing pain.
Nobody did this to her. Not to her.
She slapped a bloody palm against the grey footbridge wall as she leaned against it.
The fury was growing inside her. She’d jumped at something minor. Jackrabbited when she should have grabbed the knife out of that big bastard’s hand and then showed him what happened to people who messed with her. It could have been slow, dragging. She could have teased his soul out of him for hours that would feel like an eternity.
Charlie called it foreplay. Whatever other succubi called it (she’d never really talked it over with her sister—that stick in the mud—or her pathetic daughter), it was damned fun.
When she caught up with the big guy, she was going to have a hell of a lot of foreplay.
She could drag him back to her hotel room. It wasn’t that far, just a mile or so off the Strip. She liked the motels off the strip. Less security. Fewer cameras.
Less for the police to work with when a body turned up in a dumpster.
She slapped her palm against the footbridge again. This bastard was gonna pay when she caught him. Slow and fun, that’s how she’d make it.
Charlie tensed her abdomen, tested the pain. It was manageable. She gritted her teeth and breathed out again. Yeah. Sh
e could do this.
She started to push off the wall, ready to turn the corner and run back down the Strip toward Caesar’s when a hand caught her around the throat. It wore a leather glove that she could feel against the skin of her neck, and slammed her into the concrete wall of the footbridge with enough force to snap her head back.
“This is her, right?” came a voice from the shadowed face above her. Charlie’s head was swimming, and not just from the booze and soul now. A trickle of blood ran down the back of her head, tickling her neck.
“Yeah.” The answering voice was even deeper than the first. Charlie’s eyes were so blurry she couldn’t see the man who had her, let alone the one behind him that answered. “Charlene Nealon.”
“Who are you?” Charlie’s question dribbled out. She was dimly aware that something was wrong, really wrong.
“You fractured her skull,” the shadow in back said.
“I know,” the guy in front replied. “It was fun. Better than that little scratch you gave her.”
Charlie raised a hand, tried to land it on the guy’s wrist. She felt leather, warm, like a biker jacket. Her fingers kneaded the material, trying to rip through it. The pressure increased around her throat.
“Think I’ll just choke her out,” the guy in front said. He was so shadowed she couldn’t see anything other than he was clean-shaven. Charlie’s fingers probed near his hand, trying to find the gap between his glove and jacket. If I can just …
“I wouldn’t give her the chance if I were you,” the guy in back said. He sounded … gruffer, somehow. Through blurred eyes she could see red hair framing his face.
“Right.” The man in shadow slammed her head into the concrete again and Charlie’s hand dropped. Her eyes were blurrier now. Something warm and wet was sliding down the back of her neck now. Her mouth twitched.
“Again,” Red said. This time Charlie barely felt it as her head hit the footbridge again. The sound it made was loud, though, and she felt something wet hit her cheek. “You’re taking it awfully easy on her,” Red said from behind Shadow. “Three hits and you’ve yet to splatter her brains all over the place.”
“I like to take it slow,” Shadow said. “Really make them suffer.”
“Sounds familiar,” Red said, and he didn’t sound impressed. “Just get it over with already. We’ve got business in Minneapolis.”
“Fine,” Shadow said, and his irritation was not lost even on Charlie. Her eyes could barely make out his silhouette anymore. She couldn’t breathe, but she couldn’t fight against him, either. Her body was not in her control, not anymore. “Say goodnight, Charlie.”
She wanted to laugh. It was like that old George Burns joke. She felt the corner of her mouth creep up in a smile.
Her head swayed forward one last time then was thrown back into the concrete, and everything went dark.
Chapter 2
SIENNA
I stared out my office window across the campus of the Metahuman Policing and Threat Response Task Force. It was an awkward mouthful to say all that, so like everyone else around here I’d just taken to calling it “the Agency.” The moon was rising outside my window, shedding a dull glow over the dormitory building in the distance. Beyond that, floodlights glowed around the construction site that had been our future science building. I could see figures moving around next to the concrete walls like ants swarming out of an anthill.
I wished I was one of them. Small enough to escape notice, small enough to be able to leave my office and have no one realize I was even gone. I could just follow the next ant in line in front of me and not even worry about where I was going. It would be freedom. I could disappear into the tall trees of the forest beyond, never to be seen again. Not that the other ants would notice me anyway.
My head was heavy on the leather chair back. My eyes shut themselves part way of their own accord, and the scent of leather from my furniture was in the air. This was my office. My responsibilities were as present as the smell of leather.
And silence reigned all around me.
“So …” the voice of my brother, Reed Treston, filled the air. “Is anyone gonna say anything?”
I swiveled slowly around, leaving the window and its picturesque view behind me. The office was cramped by comparison. Reed was standing by the door, but he was hardly alone. Ariadne Fraser sat in the chair in front of me, her pale face and red hair in marked contrast to each other. My mother, Sierra Nealon, waited on the wall opposite Reed nearest the door, her arms folded and her head back against the wall in much the same way I suspected my head had been against the chair only a moment earlier.
Agent Li of the FBI, my liaison with the US government, was in the chair next to Ariadne. He was watching me through half-lidded eyes, and I couldn’t tell whether he was skeptical or suspicious. Directly behind him was Scott Byerly—blond-haired, tall, muscular. I may have let my eyes linger on him just a second longer than necessary before moving on.
Finally, on the couch next to my mother sat a couple. One of them looked young, like a little blond cheerleader pulled off the local JV team. She was thin, pretty and perky. Kat Forrest. The guy next to her could have been her grandfather, but he wasn’t. He was likely much older than any grandfather she might have had.
“Janus,” Ariadne said, glancing back at him.
“Ariadne Fraser,” Janus said with a nod to her. “It is a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance after many years of hearing about your skill and capability.” Janus’s words were characterized by a thick European accent that I’d never been able to place.
“I’m touched - and obviously unsurprised - that Omega was spying on me,” Ariadne said with a low voice, filled with loathing. “Can you tell us if Sienna can use her powers the way Sovereign does?”
“Ah,” Janus said, and his lips pursed in a pained way. “That is an excellent question. I believe she can. Hades was very capable of using the powers of the meta souls he absorbed, though how he did it is a bit of mystery.”
“Why is it so mysterious?” Scott asked. Every eye in the place was on Janus.
Janus looked around, still worn and tired-looking, with dark bags under his eyes. “Because we—the powerful, that is to say—the gods and then, later, Omega—did everything we could to make certain such knowledge was lost. Incubi and succubi were wiped out in large numbers following the death of Hades. They found themselves unwelcome in communities of metas.” He glanced at me. “Perhaps you have felt some of this stigma yourself?”
My mother grunted. “Succubi are outcasts? You don’t say.”
“It was all very deliberate,” Janus said, sparing only a look at her. “The old gods were certain that they never killed all the children of Hades. There were so many, after all. But very few of them ever demonstrated the ability to use the powers of other metas, so it was determined that we would kill when necessary and merely shun the rest. It is a method that has worked for several thousand years with only one unfortunate exception in that time.” He sighed deeply, his shoulders slumping. “It would appear that exception, however, is perhaps the most damning evidence that they should have persisted in wiping out the rest, as he seems hell-bent on repaying the favor on the rest of metakind with an abundance of gusto.”
“I can’t imagine why he’d be upset,” Reed said, arms folded over his leather jacket, ponytail tucked back behind him. “You bastards at Omega and your predecessors were only responsible for the suppression and partial extermination of his people.”
“To be fair, I had nothing to do with it,” Janus said, almost indifferent. “Although I think we can see now that there may have been some merit to the concern that an incubus or succubus who could freely combine the powers of the metas they absorb would be extraordinarily dangerous.”
“Because you made him dangerous,” Reed said with disgust. “You people have always been about protecting your own power. You couldn’t have an army of incubi and succubi out there absorbing other metas because if you did, you mig
ht lose control. It might eat into your profit margin, might start breaking that tight leash you had around our kind. This is all about power, about depriving people of it for your own purposes—”
“Reed,” my mother said, more gently than I would have given her credit for. “He’s right. Think of what that power could do in the wrong hands. Imagine Charlie with the power of … I don’t know, that flame-guy Sienna killed. Or the rock-head you used to have around here—”
“Who Sienna also killed,” Li muttered under his breath. Everyone heard him, but no one said anything.
“So,” Ariadne said, and I felt every eye in the place turn to her. It was almost like I could see their thoughts, as one, ratcheting around like gears in a clock, the hands clicking around to point at me. “Can you?”
I stared at her, feeling completely dull of wit. Could I? It was a valid question. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
I watched Reed turn to my mother. “What about you? Can you use another meta’s power?”
My mother took a breath, and her eyes got wide as I saw her think about it. “I can’t recall a time when I’ve even felt a hint of it. Of course, I’ve only absorbed a couple metas, and only in dire straits. I’m honestly not even sure what type one of them is; the other is a Selene-type, which is pretty rare, as I understand it.”
“What does a … Selene-type do?” Ariadne asked with a frown.
My mother gave a light shrug. “Named for the Greek goddess of the moon. Near as I could tell, basically … she could glow in the dark.” Scott snickered. “She was still wicked strong, but I’m guessing her power was of a lot more use before the invention of the incandescent bulb. Could have been helpful when an army was marching off to war in the darkness. Now?” Her eyes moved around the room. “Not so much.”
“Assuming you could tap into those powers,” Ariadne said, thin fingers on her chin in contemplation, “you’d be able to fill the air with a faint glow and … possibly do something else.” She sighed. “That’s not exactly going to win the war against the seemingly invulnerable Sovereign.”
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