She pulled the clutch in, then hit the front brake. Her body rocked forward as the back of the bike lifted. She felt the sweet spot—the balance point—as Lonnie and his buddy zoomed past her. Jamming her knees into the gas tank, she let the bike roll forward, balanced on its front wheel, and fired off two rounds left-handed. Both hybrids and their rides slid an impressive distance as she dropped the back tire to the pavement.
Three down, one to go.
She circled around to face the final biker. He’d stopped in the middle of the street, jaw hanging as he stared at the speed bumps his friends had become. She pushed up her visor. “You want some?”
His eyes ping-ponged between her and his fallen buddies. “Screw this!”
He burned rubber turning his bike around to head back toward the DMZ—and crashed into the grill of a huge black SUV with blackout windows that couldn’t have been more conspicuous if its license plate read FEDS. Except it wasn’t the FBI.
The SUV’s passenger’s and driver’s doors opened simultaneously and two tall men in suits exited onto the street. The Gilead Commission’s version of the Men in Black. They even wore sunglasses although it had to be after midnight and the streetlighting didn’t exactly cause a glare. It made her wonder if there were souls specifically destined for bureaucracy or if it was payment for wrongdoing in a previous life.
They paid no attention to the biker, now attached to the front of their vehicle, as they walked toward Kira.
She pulled back her extrasense as the suits stopped in front of her. “Took you long enough.”
They ignored the barb, just as they always did. Ah, the camaraderie of working for Gilead, Kira thought. It must have been a little like the love between beat cops and detectives or the navy and marines. Yeah, right.
“Chaser Solomon,” the nondescript blond said, “the section chief would like to see you.”
The section chief, one Estrella Sanchez, wasn’t exactly a card-carrying member of the Kira Fan Club. The feeling was mutual. “I’m working.”
“It’s not a request.”
“Didn’t think it was.” Sanchez was the epitome of everything Kira disliked about Gilead in general and the East Coast division of Gilead America in particular: bureaucracy, paperwork, and a fanatical devotion to policies and procedures. Like Adepts and Avatars gave a damn. “Where does the Grand Poobah want to meet?”
The suits frowned. Kira rolled her eyes. Were there any bureaucratic goons who had a sense of humor, in any organization?
“The gardens at the Carter Center.” They finally looked at their new hood ornament. “What about your . . . friends?”
She rolled closer, then pushed the halfling off the hood with one booted foot. He slid to the pavement with a groan. “Don’t worry. They’re down, not out. They’ll be fine in a couple of minutes. Besides, it’s not like we can send them back to Shadow for being stupid.” She dropped her visor, then gestured them on.
Leaving Lonnie and his buddies curbside, she followed the SUV for a couple of blocks to Freedom Parkway
and on to the Carter Center. The Presidential Library and Museum nestled in the thirty-seven-acre bowl of the Center’s grounds flanked by the lanes of the parkway. Several buildings there could host a variety of events and weddings, but what impressed Kira the most were the gardens. More than once—when the concrete jungle was getting to her—she’d come out to the gardens, walked the stepping stones to the center of the koi pond, and talked to the fish. Sometimes they even answered.
A matching SUV waited in the main parking lot when they arrived, complete with its own set of matching suits. Kira knew Gilead had impressive skills; she’d seen plenty of the results firsthand. As far as she knew, Gilead hadn’t perfected cloning—either magical or scientific—but seeing all the nearly identical agents might lead her to wonder if they had.
She allowed a tendril of extrasense to seep out as she switched off her bike and pulled off her helmet. The natural earth energy greeted her, a steady hum that still held remnants of what had transpired during the day. She could feel the cool force of the koi pond and the larger lake, the subtle power of the verdant growing things slowing into autumn. Beyond that she felt the bland oatmeal sameness of the Commission agents and a peppery spice that had to be Estrella Sanchez.
No Shadow Avatars or Chaos magic waiting. Good.
Kira drew back her extrasense, then set off, following the phosphorescent lamps illuminating the walkway. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust the section chief. She didn’t, but she could count on one hand the number of people she trusted, and she’d just lost one. If Bernie, her surrogate father, could betray her, Kira certainly wasn’t going to add Sanchez as a friend on her Facebook page.
The section chief waited for her near the lake in a pool of light from a tall wrought-iron lamp. Sanchez was dressed in tailored business trousers with pointed-toed high heels peeking beneath the hems. Maybe not typical attire for a post-midnight garden stroll, but perfectly suitable for the diminutive woman, considering, as Kira knew from experience, Sanchez had the attitude of a driven executive who considered The Art of War her personal bible.
“Chaser Solomon. My condolences on the loss of your handler.”
Sanchez said the words politely enough, but they still grated and goaded. Kira bunched her shoulders as the sentiments found their mark, bringing back every brutal moment of loss and betrayal and anger. She bit her tongue against the urge to lash out at the easy target Sanchez presented, something the section chief no doubt wanted her to do. She wouldn’t give Sanchez the satisfaction or the excuse. Giving free rein to her sorrow and rage would have to wait until she was alone.
Squaring her shoulders, Kira prepared to give the chief an official briefing. “Report. Bernard Comstock, age sixty-seven. Antiques dealer and part-time curator at the British Museum, Magical Artifacts Department. Time of death sometime after nineteen-hundred.”
“And the cause?”
“Cause of death: self-inflicted poison, followed by evisceration by a seeker demon.”
“A seeker?” A breeze filtered through the trees around them, almost a whispered warning. Even Sanchez shivered in her expensive clothes. “Are you sure about this?”
“I touched his blood, read the scene myself. I’m sure.”
“A team recovered the body in an alley not far from his hotel,” Sanchez said. “We also found the pieces of your mobile. How did you know to look for him there?”
Kira frowned. She expected censure, but not the insinuation. What the hell did Sanchez mean by that? Something was off.
She continued her debrief with a careful mix of words and as little emotion as she could manage. “Comstock and I were supposed to meet for dinner. He said he had something he wanted to show me. He was late. He’s never late. I went looking for him and found the alley near the hotel blocked by Chaos magic. I used my Lightblade to open it and that’s when I found him. I couldn’t find traces of the seeker demon’s trail, so decided to tap various sources for information. End report.”
Sanchez remained silent for a moment. “Why would someone send a seeker demon after a handler posing as a curator?”
“He wasn’t posing.” Kira ground out the words. “Dr. Comstock was an expert in pre-Dynastic Egyptian civilizations for the Petrie Museum, a professor at University College London, outstanding in his field, much respected and well-liked. His job was his passion, his life. So you’re asking the wrong question.”
“Oh? And just what is the right question?”
“Who in Gilead thought it wise to turn a university professor and museum curator into a handler?”
Sanchez folded her arms across her chest. “Regardless of what questions you think should or shouldn’t be asked, someone with the ability to control a seeker demon is running around town. Who is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“I sent a team to Comstock’s hotel room, but they didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Did you recover anything at the scene?”
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“No.”
That didn’t make the section chief happy. “What could Comstock have that would be of interest to someone capable of controlling a seeker?”
Kira mimicked the section chief, folding her arms across her chest. “Shouldn’t Gilead know more about that than I do? I mean, no one even bothered to tell me that I had been assigned a handler after Nico’s death. Obviously I’m not kept in the loop.”
“So what exactly do you know, Solomon?”
“About this? Precious damned little.” Her anger flared. “I was in the middle of looking for leads when someone decided to call a meeting.”
“You were playing tag with a couple of hybrids in the middle of a major thoroughfare.” Sanchez took a step forward. “This after going to a club with questionable clientele. Not exactly the actions of a competent Shadowchaser looking for leads or grieving a loss.”
It was so tempting to wrap her hand around Sanchez’s severe bun and yank the life out of her. Not kill her exactly, but put a hurting on her and find out exactly what the woman had against her. Oh yeah, Kira thought, I could do that, could drop the section chief before the goon quartet even realized what had happened.
A flash of blue caught her attention, reminding her she hadn’t put her gloves back on. She took a mental step back. Gilead had taught her better than that. She was a Shadowchaser first, last, and always. Going off on Sanchez would make her feel better for all of a few minutes, maybe even an hour. But it wouldn’t bring Bernie back. It wouldn’t help her find his killer. That was the most important thing to her.
“You wanna know what I know? Fine, I’ll tell you. Seeker demons are brought through the Veil for one thing only—to find something for the person who calls them over. They’re mindless, nasty, acid-dripping creatures that go through anything and everything until they find their target. When they find it, they’re freed from the spell that brought them over. Every Shadow Adept that’s summoned a seeker demon has been mauled to death and eaten. If they were lucky.”
She stepped closer. Sanchez took a healthy step back before recovering. Kira hid a smile. “I didn’t detect a flameout, so I think it’s safe to assume that the seeker demon is still out there. Given the fact that any Adept who’s tried to control one ended up being its snack after it found what it wanted, I’d also have to say that whatever’s controlling this seeker is a Shadow Avatar for one of the Fallen.”
“Fallen? Are you sure about that?” Even under the pale lights around them, Kira could see that Sanchez had gotten a little ill at the news. She couldn’t fault the other woman—it meant her job had just become that much harder.
“Pretty damned sure.” One of the first lessons Kira had learned at Gilead was that every human myth had a basis in reality, and the term “demon” was given to a variety of otherworldly beings with distinctly nonhuman capabilities.
Some were on the side of Light; some served Shadow. A large population lived in between, intermingling with the Children of Man and spawning hybrid offspring that had given rise to enduring tales of vampires, werefolk, merpeople, and others.
The Fallen, though . . . they were the heavy hitters of Shadow, the sons and daughters of Chaos and Darkness. Eons before humanity was a gleam in the primordial ooze, an epic interdimensional battle had been fought that threatened the very fabric of the Universe. Some of those belonging to Shadow had attempted to escape by opening a rift in the Veil—but in passing through had lost their ability to take corporeal form. The only way they could hide from the Light and interact on this plane was to inhabit a host body—an Avatar—and human bodies were easy to inhabit.
“The alley reeked of Chaos magic,” Kira said. “And the construct on the barrier was in a pattern I haven’t seen before, like someone making lace out of barbed wire. Shadow Adepts are good, but I’ve never seen one use that combination of artistry and brute strength. I certainly haven’t seen one strong enough to funnel Chaos magic into anything other than a weapon. Only one thing’s got that kind of power and that’s Fallen.”
Sanchez smoothed a hand over her bun. “If we have one of the Fallen here, looking for something your handler had in his possession . . . ”
The section chief thought so hard that Kira could almost smell the gears burning in her brain. Ambition warred with the need for self-preservation.
“Things are about to get real nasty, Chief. Why don’t you let me take this one?” Not that she had any choice. Fallen were Shadowchaser quarry.
“You?”
Kira didn’t know how a woman four inches shorter than she, even in heels, could look down at her, but Sanchez managed it. “If you think you and your Men in Black clones can handle a Fallen, go ahead. But you better make sure your affairs are in order, because you will die. Quickly, if you’re blessed. You and I both know that a Shadowchaser’s the only one with any chance of going up against one of the Fallen. It’s what Gilead developed us for, isn’t it?”
“Being angry with the Commission’s decisions isn’t going to help you find out who did this to Comstock or why,” Sanchez retorted. “It certainly isn’t going to bring him back.”
Kira refused to rise to Sanchez’s bait. She knew the woman wanted her to go off like a Roman candle, just so she could file a complaint with Gilead. Staying calm would stick in Sanchez’s craw and give her nothing to fill out forms about. The thought of really spoiling the chief’s day that way was the first pleasant thing to pass through Kira’s brain in hours. Keeping herself out of bureaucratic hot water was an added bonus.
Kira settled her hands on her hips. “Rumor has it that a few Shadowchasers have passed through town, and yet none of them have stopped by to say hello. Are you trying to replace me? That almost hurts my feelings.”
Sanchez pursed her lips. “It pays to have contingency plans, Solomon, especially where you’re concerned.”
“What’s your deal? Not that I care; I’m just curious.”
“Gilead indulges you to its own detriment. You are a loose cannon, an undisciplined child with too much power. First Nico, now Comstock—”
Kira fisted her hands against the unbidden welling of her power. “Don’t ever say their names again. You don’t have the right.”
Sanchez didn’t flinch. “You’re twenty-five. You’ve had two handlers since you left Santa Costa and they’ve both died violently.”
“No one told me that Comstock was my handler, did they? Not you, not Gilead, not Comstock himself. Given that we were a few thousand miles apart at any given time and have never spoken about the Commission, why in the world would I think of him as my handler?”
“The fact that your handler didn’t confide in you is even more troubling. People are starting to wonder.”
“Like I give a crap. People have been wondering about me since my parents dumped me on Gilead’s doorstep. So what?”
“There have been some who’ve questioned your loyalty, wondering who you really serve.”
“Are you kidding me?” Kira laughed. “Obviously some people have too much time on their hands and need to get a life.”
Sanchez didn’t like that one, if the twist to her lips was any indication. “I don’t know who you think you are—”
“I know who I am! I’m a Shadowchaser, raised by Balm herself. That woman’s work ethic and ideas of discipline make Roman legions look like Boy Scouts. Gilead has been my world for half my life. I have used my training and my extrasense to serve the Light to the best of my ability despite losing Nico, despite what you people did to Comstock. I’ve seen more and done more than you and most of you suits on the Commission and yet I still serve the Light. I’m going to find Bernie’s killer and send him back to Shadow no matter what it takes, and when I’m done, I’ll still be holding my Lightblade.”
Her skin glowed a pale neon blue. “I live and breathe the Light, more than I can say for many on the Gilead Commission. And you want to question my loyalty?” She turned on her heel, needing to leave before she really gave them a reason to doub
t her.
“Chaser Solomon—”
“If you had more than idle speculation, I’d be talking to a Commissioner or to Balm herself, not a section chief. Quit wasting my time and let me do my job. We both know I’m the only one who can go up against whatever’s controlling a seeker demon.”
“You probably don’t want to know what I think, Chaser Solomon. Still, Gilead seems to think you should take the lead on this. You’ll be given access to Comstock’s reports and activities for the last six months. You’ll also have the support of the section office.”
Translation: Sanchez would have her own teams, led by the Men in Black, no doubt, combing the streets looking for clues. Gilead had an amazing network of humans, hybrids, and Light Adepts at their disposal, all capable investigators when dealing with mundane matters and low-level magical police work. Letting them hit the streets to search out a Shadow Avatar and a seeker demon was only asking for trouble. If Sanchez wanted to risk her people, the results would be on her head, not Kira’s.
“Fine. I’ll contact Gilead for access. Now tell your suits to get out of my way. I have a job to do.”
The clone brothers stepped aside, giving her a wide berth as she stalked back up the path to her bike. She was spoiling for a fight, which meant she really needed to be alone. Light help whatever or whomever tried to get in her way.
It didn’t matter that she’d spent more than half her life in the Commission’s main holding. She knew how they worked. No one on the Commission would lie, but they were experts at the miserly dissemination of information. And she still couldn’t forgive them for Nico . . . and now Bernie. Serving the Light was one thing; working through Gilead to do it was another.
If there was one bright spot in this shitcan of a night, it was that Gilead didn’t seem to know why Comstock had come to her. They didn’t know about the blade. If they had, Sanchez would have demanded she surrender it, which wouldn’t have happened and that would have made a bad situation even worse.
Shadow Blade Page 5
