“A new recruit from another Boss’s turf,” Sammael said. His voice held an unmistakable note of authority that strongly discouraged further questions. But the Scrappers were tough, and even Sammael couldn’t deter them.
“Rumor says the one the Squeezers are after is a govrat looking for a way out of the city,” said an older man, his body hunched with years of hard labor.
“Like many others, Elder,” Sammael said, holding the man’s stare.
Glances were exchanged in heavy silence. Phoenix felt no fear of what they might do to her, only a deep pity and shame that was becoming all too familiar.
“This govrat they’re looking for,” a man with a gravelly voice said, “we heard she found you during a parlay with The Preacher.”
“She did,” Sammael said. “She ran before I could speak to her.”
“No one knows where she is now,” the first woman said. “As long as the Squeezers are here, none of us get any peace.”
“You know if we find her,” the boy said, displaying a gap-toothed grin, “we’ll give her to the Squeezers.”
“We don’t want you in no trouble,” the gravel-voiced man said. “You help us, we help you. The way it’s always been.” He kicked at the Enforcer’s boot. “Give him to us. They’ll never find out what happened to him, but maybe they’ll remember it ain’t safe to come to our neighborhood unless they have a whole army with them.”
Phoenix was painfully aware of a taut sense of eagerness in the crowd, the primal anticipation of the persecuted waiting for a chance to punish one who had taken part in their persecution. This was no sudden whim, but a deep, long-standing resentment. She had no doubt that they would kill the young man...eventually.
The truly frightening thing was that Sammael was obviously considering their offer. His eyes were harder than she’d ever seen them.
Maybe he agreed with the Scrappers. Maybe he didn’t think whatever he’d learn by questioning the boy was worth the effort and the potential danger to him and his crew.
He began to lift the young man by the collar again, pushing him toward the Scrappers, but Phoenix moved to stand between him and the mob.
“Wait!” she said.
Everyone stared at her. The young Enforcer began to stir again.
Moving faster than she ever had, Phoenix tore off her headlamp, snatched the young man’s collar from Sammael’s loose grip and ran, half-dragging, half-carrying the Enforcer away from the Scrappers. There were shouts behind her, quickly muffled. Sunrise wasn’t far away, and once it was light she doubted either Sammael or the Scrappers would try to catch the Enforcer in a place where his fellow cops might see them.
She’d been placed in an impossible position. If she took the young man to the nearest Enforcer, she’d lose any chance to continue her mission. She’d have to return to Aegis in defeat.
But Sammael might very well kill the patrolman anyway, even if he’d never intended to give him over to the Scrappers. She couldn’t let that happen.
Casting her senses wide, she began searching for one of the hidden Enforcer teams. She heard and smelled a man and a woman a little to the north and set out at a run, the patrolman slung over her shoulder. She’d gone about half the distance when Brita ran right into her path.
“What are you doing out here?” the lieutenant asked, panting a little.
“I could ask you the same question,” Phoenix said, changing course toward the nearest abandoned building as if she’d been headed that way all along. She eased the young man to the ground just inside the open doorway and straightened to face Brita.
“Where’s Sammael?” the other woman said, catching up to her.
“We went out so I could show him the value of the information I promised.”
“Why in hell didn’t he tell anyone?” Brita asked. “How could he go out there with you alone?”
“Why did you tell me my information had already checked out?” Phoenix countered.
Brita’s expression made clear she wasn’t about to answer. She stared down at the man. “Where did he come from?”
“Sammael caught him following us,” Phoenix said, whispering a swift prayer of thanks that Brita didn’t seem to recognize the patrolman, either. “He’s...been drawing this guy’s friends away so we could—”
“What is he thinking? What can he gain by doing this?”
“He said he wanted to question him about the Enforcers’ intentions,” Phoenix said.
“We know what their intentions are, if you’ve been telling the truth,” Brita said, taking a menacing step toward Phoenix.
“Maybe Sammael has some other idea he didn’t share with me.”
“And now you’re alone out here without protection, and so is Sammael. After I told you what nearly happened to him before.”
Brita was so very good at pretending to believe that Sammael was merely a vulnerable human, Phoenix thought, without an Opir’s means of defending himself. “It wasn’t my choice,” she said.
Sammael’s lieutenant glanced from Phoenix to the young Enforcer at her feet. “Something about this stinks to high heaven, and—”
Phoenix lifted her hand, suddenly aware of unfamiliar scents and the scuffling of feet not far away. “Someone’s coming,” she said.
Brita’s nostrils flared. “Damn. I know who it is. They all smell the same.”
“Who?”
“The Preacher’s men. And they’re headed this way.”
“Maybe they followed you,” Phoenix said.
“Not possible,” Brita said, though her attention remained focused on the street. “I don’t know why they’re here, but I’d say there are about ten of them, and they know where we are.”
“So we’ll have to fight,” Phoenix said.
“You can bet some of them will go straight for this Enforcer, but they probably won’t bother holding him hostage.”
Like the angry Scrappers, Phoenix thought. “You’d let him be killed?”
“I’d throw him to a pack of starving wolves to keep them off my tail,” Brita said. But she glanced again at the young Enforcer, a deep frown between her eyes.
“You’re right,” she said. “I wouldn’t let them have my worst enemy. I’ll get him to the Hold.”
Phoenix’s mind raced. She had no reason to believe Brita would treat this man better than The Preacher’s crew, or the Scrappers. But the alternative was to see the patrolman die here and now.
“Sammael said he wasn’t to be harmed,” she said, holding Brita’s gaze. “Will you leave him alone?”
“I’m sure that’s exactly what you want,” Brita said. “But Sammael’s still my Boss. I’ll wait.”
“Then you take him. I’ll hold these guys off as long as I can.”
“You never did tell me what you are,” Brita said as she bent to grab the Enforcer.
“As I recall, you avoided the same question.”
Brita barked a laugh, lifted the Enforcer in a fireman’s carry and hurried away, vanishing into the mist that had settled over the Fringe. Phoenix crouched just inside the doorway of the building, watching as The Preacher’s men emerged out of the low-lying fog and advanced, some breaking off from the larger group and circling to either side of the building.
Ten. Using both her Aegis training and half-dhampir strength and speed, she could probably take five of them down in quick succession. But the others would be coming at her at the same time.
If Sammael were with her, they could do it together. But she wanted him well away from this. After what she’d done, he might simply choose to let The Preacher have her.
Never, she thought. But now that she knew she might die at his enemies’ hands, her thoughts drifted to the impossible what-ifs: What if she and Sammael had been born on the same side of the war? What if they could have b
een true lovers? Not just for sex, but—
Her foolish dreams ended when the first three Fringers ran straight for her, wielding highly illegal burners, knives and rebar welded into clubs. The burners were the most dangerous, and Phoenix let the advance guard think they had her before she feinted to one side, darted in and grabbed one of the weapons, smashing the trigger and tossing it aside.
Immediately the other man with the burner fired at her, and Phoenix barely got out of the way, rolling and springing to her feet just in time to avoid another blast. She charged the man, struck him hard in the face and wrenched the burner out of his hand. She turned it on the third man, who was almost on top of her. He stopped, staring at the deadly weapon in her grip.
By then, another five of The Preacher’s men were coming at her, fortunately armed only with hand weapons more easily countered. Phoenix torched the ground in front of them, and they fell back, their faces contorted with rage and the uninhibited desire to do any number of terrible, ugly things to her before they killed her.
“If you’re after the Enforcer,” she called, “he’s gone.”
“Because you let him go!” one of her opponents shouted back at her. “We know why you’re here! If you give yourself up, we may decide just to sell you back to the Squeezers instead of...” He grinned, showing a mouthful of black and missing teeth.
He said they knew why she was here, Phoenix thought as she weighed her next move. But did they mean they knew she wanted out of the city, which must be common knowledge by now, or that she was working for the Enforcers, or Aegis?
They couldn’t know that she was part dhampir, or they would have been more cautious in attacking her. Checking the burner again, Phoenix realized that the magazine was nearly empty. It wouldn’t be good much longer. And she could hear the men who had split off from the group moving behind her. Two of them were coming through the building, one around the side. She might avoid them, but she had six still-viable fighters facing her.
She decided again on the direct approach and ran straight at the closest man, grabbing his arm and twisting it until he was forced to drop his club. She swung the club at the next nearest opponent, hitting him square in the jaw. Bone snapped, and he fell back with a scream. Two other men came at her, and she felled one with a roundhouse kick but narrowly missed another, who was nimble enough to dodge out of her way.
But the other three were still behind her, and she had to divert her attention long enough to take one of them out. A sudden light caught her eyes, and for a moment she was blind. Something struck her hard on the shoulder, leaving her numb on one side and utterly unable to defend herself.
She blinked as the two men who had been behind her were lifted off the ground, feet dangling, collars twisted into their necks by hands stronger than any human’s. Sammael knocked the men together and tossed them to the side like torn sacks of Fringe garbage.
The few men still standing took one look at Sammael and stumbled away. The sun broke through the mist, glinting over the tops of the low buildings to the east. The Preacher’s crew ran without looking back. Phoenix let them go, and Sammael made no move to follow.
Instead, he backed away, head bent, until he was inside the building’s doorway. Phoenix followed quickly. She knew at once that he was hurt in some way, though his clothing seemed intact and unbloodied. His headlamp was gone.
The moment she was inside he leaned against the nearest wall, gripping his arm. He looked up and met her gaze.
His face was red and blistered, but it was his expression that stopped her cold.
“What are you?” he asked, his voice hoarse and rough. “I saw you fight. You shouldn’t have been able to see well enough in the dark to get here, or stay ahead of me.” He blinked, his eyes watering through the puffiness of his eyelids. “Dhampir?” He breathed in sharply and winced. “No. The eyes are wrong.”
Phoenix knew she had to be honest with him now, as honest as she could. Some part of the truth would be so much more convincing than lies she couldn’t back up.
But it was very hard to think when she was looking straight into his badly burned face.
Chapter 10
“You’re right,” Phoenix said, calmly holding Sammael’s stare. “I’m not completely human. But I’m not a dhampir, either. They haven’t got a word yet for what I am. My father was a dhampir, sent on a suicide mission by Aegis. My mother was human, and she died soon after my father failed to return.”
Sammael laughed, the sound as raw as if he had swallowed fire. “I should have seen it. There were signs, if only I’d—”
Phoenix swept down before he could finish and grabbed him as he fell. She eased him to the floor.
“What happened to you?” she demanded, looking him over more carefully. “Your face, and your hands...”
“Burners...will do that,” he said, no longer looking at her.
“If one caught you in the face, you’re lucky to have your eyes or any of your features,” she said, thinking desperately of some way to treat his wounds. She knew the pain must be excruciating.
“Looks worse than it is,” he whispered hoarsely. “Just leave it alone.”
Phoenix didn’t even bother to respond. She had no ready source of water, no cold packs or bandages, nothing to help him.
But he was a Daysider. He would heal, certainly more quickly than a human. She didn’t know if he would scar, but she was simply grateful he was alive and in one piece.
“You weren’t burned when you saved my life,” she said.
His eyes, frigid with hostility, met hers again. “I wasn’t burned by those men. I got these while I was on my way to you.”
“More of The Preacher’s men?”
He grunted in answer.
She decided not to press for details. “How do you know so much about dhampires?” she asked.
“Who doesn’t?” he said with a curl of his lip. “I asked you before if you worked for Aegis. You denied it. But if you’re even part dhampir, you have to be with them. They don’t let non-humans run around the Enclave unsupervised.”
“No, they don’t,” Phoenix said, sitting beside him. “But I’m not good enough to serve as an agent. I did work in the lower levels of Aegis, and I did get unsupervised access to classified information. I intended to use it against the Agency somehow, but I never got the chance before they realized what had happened.”
“You intended to use it against them?”
“For what they did to my father and mother. Losing him killed her. The Agency raised me like some kind of estranged aunt who didn’t want the burden of a niece she’d never met. I didn’t belong anywhere. I have no reason to be loyal to them, and every reason to make them realize that dhampir agents aren’t just objects to be thrown away to keep humans safe.”
She stopped herself before she was tempted to embellish the story, which he was going to doubt, anyway. But there was something in his face that suggested he found her tale more plausible than the one she’d told him before. As if the idea of revenge made perfect sense to him.
“So you still want to escape the city?” he asked. “Then why did you turn on me?”
“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t let you throw that Enforcer to the Scrappers, even if they have every right to want to tear him to pieces.”
“You believed that was what I intended?”
“I couldn’t take the chance.”
“Where is he now?”
“I ran into Brita, literally. She took him back to the Hold.”
“Why would you think she wouldn’t just kill him?”
Sammael, of course, still had no idea that she knew what Brita was, but he also knew what any Opir was capable of.
“She’d probably give him a quicker death,” Phoenix said, “and I wasn’t going to run into the arms of the nearest Enforcers jus
t to save him.”
He stared at her, jaw set. “You’ve won him a reprieve,” he said, “but unless you leave immediately, I will be keeping you at the Hold indefinitely.”
She shrugged. “Thanks for the generous offer, but given the condition you seem to be in, you can’t very well keep me. I could get away anytime. But I don’t plan to leave until I have a sure way out.”
“I may decide never to help you escape.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
He shifted, the muscles under his seared skin contracting. “Why haven’t they sent Aegis after you?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It may simply be because they figure the Enforcers can handle me.”
“Have they seen you fight?”
“I never got the chance to show them.”
He clearly knew she was still holding something back, as she had so many times before. “So you’re an outcast after revenge,” he said, “but you still don’t want to hurt the ones hunting you.”
“Maybe revenge means killing to you. It doesn’t to me.”
He closed his eyes. “I know you can find your way back to the Hold. Go and take care of your Enforcer. I need...” He averted his damaged face. “I need to rest.”
“I can carry you back.”
“I don’t think so.” He took in another ragged breath. “Just leave me alone.”
He began to rise, gasped and thumped against the wall. Phoenix grabbed his arm and forced him to sit again, aware as she did so how violently he flinched at her touch.
She backed away and sat on the floor a safe distance away. “You’re not completely human, either, are you?” she asked, deciding she had nothing to lose by revealing her knowledge when he couldn’t hurt her.
And because she didn’t believe he would. Not even to protect himself and his mission. His face had swollen with the burns, but she couldn’t mistake the change in his expression. He was genuinely startled, as if he’d expected her to say something else entirely.
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