The air grew damper as we descended, the colorful carpets and rich woods of the back rooms giving way to the musty smell of basement air. I kept quiet as I followed Karthik down, his black hair vanishing in the dim light. I squinted my eyes to see if it might improve my vision, but I realized that there were few light sources visible from where I was standing. Egress windows were sunk down the sides of the basement, which was a massive space spanning the entire footprint of the church. I looked down the concrete pillars and realized that there were shapes huddled on the floor, unmoving.
Karthik stopped and I bumped into him; a clumsy move for me. His strength was enough to stop us both from tumbling down, however, and I managed to keep my balance after our collision. I stopped on the bottom step, looking out over the vast concrete basement.
“Well,” Bastet said behind me, her voice a choked sound, like she had swallowed ash, “I suppose that answers the question of where the villagers went.”
The smell was heavy here, the first stages of decomposition hanging in the air, along with the other odors that presented themselves when someone died. The floor was covered with them, corpses, all packed tightly together—women, children, men and old folks. I could see them with my waking eyes, but it was almost as though it were a dream. There were easily fifty of them, and I wondered if they were all metas, or if there were humans mixed in with them as well. Not one of them moved.
Chapter 13
“Water?” Karthik asked me as I sat on the ledge of the chopper, watching Janus and Bast talk to the cops who were still holding their perimeter around the village. I looked up to Karthik’s warm features, and he offered me a bottle that I immediately accepted, taking a long drink that reinvigorated the dry mouth I didn’t even know I had. I finished it in two long gulps and he smiled at me. “I had a feeling you might be thirsty after our flight.” His face fell a degree. “And … everything else, of course.”
“I could stand to eat, too,” I said, looking at the empty village ahead. “Is that strange? That I could see a spectacle like that,” I waved my hand at the church in the distance, “and still be hungry afterward?”
Karthik gave me a light shrug as he sat down beside me. “I suppose it just means you’ve seen enough death that it doesn’t bother you like it used to.”
“It should,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like that. Those people were innocent. There were children in there.” A shudder ran through me.
“Our enemy is a merciless one,” he said, and drank from his own bottle of water. “They don’t spare a thought to who they might kill in their mad quest to wipe us all out.”
“So you’re a meta too, huh?” I gave him the sidelong look. “What’s your power?”
“Rather mundane, actually,” he said with a smile. “I’m very low level for my specialty, but I match up well on physical strength and dexterity, so I’ve managed to prove myself useful.”
I eyed him carefully. “And your power is …”
He shrugged. “I’m a Rakshasa.”
“I don’t know what that is,” I admitted.
“No one ever does,” he said with a smile. “There are very few of us left. I can, uh … well. Perhaps I’ll show you at some point, when there’s an actual need for what I do.”
“Sure,” I said with an almost dismissive nod. “This isn’t the first of these sites you’ve been to?”
“Not at all,” he admitted. “I’ve been to the ones in Greece and Turkey, and more recently Germany and France. It’s getting bad out there. Almost all the metas in Europe live in cloisters. It’s making it all the easier to wipe us out.”
“What’s Omega doing to stop it?” I asked, genuinely wondering.
“Everything we can,” Karthik said, clenching his fist at his side. “The problem is that while we’ve always wielded considerable power, it’s not total power by any means.”
“You mean you don’t normally go dropping into these cloisters and tell people how to run things?” I wore a faint smile as I asked.
Karthik smiled back. “We really don’t. These are independent cloisters. Omega recruits from them, trying to find young and disaffected metas looking for something outside their quiet village life but as a rule, we focus our efforts on things that matter to us—exerting power in the places it most benefits us.”
“So you don’t spend all your time hunting down metas like me?” I let my bare palms rest on the edge of the chopper floor, felt the cool metal against them along with the pressure of the edge.
“Very little of it,” Karthik said. “The thing you have to understand is that in the ‘old world,’ as it were—not the Americas—cloisters are everything. They’re tightly knit communities, they police themselves, they mostly retain their own offspring and keep them in the same villages. You don’t see as many of these wildfire metas here as you do in America. You know, the ones who don’t know what they are, that manifest and then suddenly get crazed with power and go on a crime spree?”
I felt my lips curl. “Met a few of those, yeah.”
Karthik shrugged. “They happen here sometimes too, usually from a meta father impregnating a human woman and not sticking around. The child has no idea what to expect when they come into their own abilities. We deal with those occasionally, on contract and under the table for the EU, but generally we’re focused on our own activities. Growing our influence, our power.” He didn’t blush but looked almost ashamed for a moment. “Our wealth.”
“So you’re telling me that Omega is just a moneymaking organization?” If I had baked any more skepticism into that question, it would have exploded over everything.
“Not only but primarily,” Karthik said. “It’s why I joined. They promise wealth, and they’ve consistently delivered. It’s how they recruit disaffected kids out of villages. You do your term of service, and a portion of your pay goes into Omega’s investment portfolio. By the time you retire, you’re bloody wealthy.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “How exactly does Omega make that money?”
Karthik laughed under his breath. “By using our powers to gain unfair advantages in the world of commerce, of course.”
I rolled my eyes. “Specifically?”
“Oh, think about it. You place a telepath in a position to be around very powerful men and women, and then make investments in companies based on the information they bring back to you.” His smile crinkled lines around his eyes. “I know it sounds nefarious, and it’s certainly illegal in some jurisdictions, but it’s hardly the most odious scheme going.”
I shook my head at him. “Sorry, no. Don’t buy it.”
He raised his hands to either side as if to absolve himself of having to prove it to me. “I know you’d like to believe we’re some shadowy, dark organization—”
“Because you are.”
“—but it’s never as simple as it appears on the surface.” He met my gaze and didn’t look away. “Most of us are here for the money. It’s honest work and good pay.”
“Which part of the ‘honest work’ involves sending guys like Wolfe after girls like me?” I asked with a wicked grin. I probably shouldn’t have delighted in taking the air out of him like that, but … I did.
Karthik deflated. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I think our business is concluded here,” Janus said, returning to us with Bast a step behind him.
“Really?” I asked coldly. “What fortuitous timing.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Bast said with narrowed eyes. “We don’t worry ourselves about your conversations.”
“Except to have Janus tell you that we’re having one that might be concerning?” I asked as Janus cringed and cast an accusatory glance at Bast.
“Not concerning,” Janus said with aplomb. “Barely worthy of counterargument.”
“I see,” I said. “So, Karthik … did they tell you about the time they set loose a couple vampires on me?” I watched his expression fade as mine grew immensely satisfied. “They shot down a heli
copter and ate the throats out of the pilots.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Karthik asked, almost confused.
“Or how about the time they had one of their operatives—an incubus—try to seduce me?” Janus clenched his jaw slightly. “He almost gutted me.” I took a deep breath. “Which reminds me of Wolfe.” I caught a momentary exchange between Janus and Bast, one in which he looked mildly annoyed. “What’s the matter? This listing of sins past isn’t bothering you, is it?”
“I would have done all that and more to bring you back to us if the Primus asked it of me,” Bastet said with an edge to her voice that left me in no doubt that she meant every word of it. “What we are playing at is the entire future of our race—”
“What was your excuse for what you did to Andromeda?” I asked, and watched her expression deteriorate into mild surprise. “Locking a girl away, doing some sort of experiments on her? This … Sovereign guy, this Century group, they weren’t on the warpath when you did … whatever it is you did to her, were they?”
“I don’t have the faintest idea what anyone is talking about here,” Karthik said quietly.
“It’s above your pay grade,” Bastet snapped.
I looked to Janus and he was quiet, still, concentrating on me. “Don’t go trying to implant any suggestions in my head right now. Just because you don’t want your lower levels to smell your dirty laundry doesn’t mean I have any problem bringing it right out front and center—”
Janus made a motion with his hand as if to wave me off. “All of this is information he would eventually learn anyway, should Karthik continue to advance.” He gave Karthik a reassuring look. “And I have no doubt he will. However, you must understand why it is not widely advertised.”
“Because it’s dirty laundry, not clean laundry,” I replied. “If you had the whitest sheets, you wouldn’t care if everyone saw them hanging on the line.”
“What interesting imagery,” Bast said, “since you’re the one who is presently soiling our linens.”
“I’m sorry,” I said with mock apology, “is all this truth just a little too much for you?”
“This is quite enough,” Janus said. “Yes, you have been wronged by us. I have admitted it. In one of her more charitable moments, perhaps under the influence of alcohol, Bast would admit it as well—” There was a look of pure, silent, unadulterated fury from her that told me differently. “No one is disputing that.” He cast a look sideways at Bast. “Well, no one but Bastet is disputing that. But we have our reasons, for you, for …” he paused, “ … Andromeda, for all that we do. You may choose to believe that, or you may remain skeptical and continue to build the case in your head that we are an all-consuming evil that is merely trying to hoodwink you. Whichever you choose, at the end of our tenure here, I will give you the location of Erich Winter, and you will be able to decide whether you wish to go murder him at that point, in cold blood—no pun intended—or continue to help us advance the cause of protecting our people from extermination.” He shrugged. “Either way, it is on you, and no amount of past sins—yours, mine, ours—will stop me from doing all that I can to ensure the survival of our race.” He pointed to himself. “That is my aim. What is yours?”
Without another word, he calmly stepped past me and into the helicopter. Bast gave me a self-satisfied smile as she boarded. I exchanged a last look with Karthik, one marked by embarrassment from him, before I stood to get into my seat. The helicopter’s blades were already spinning as I fastened myself in. I didn’t look in at the three of them as we began to take off, as though by looking away, I could forget that I was in a foreign land, with people I couldn’t trust, whose aims I didn’t truly know.
As we lifted off, it occurred to me that that was exactly where I stood with the entire rest of the world as well. I didn’t know whether to be upset at the thought or not, so I just ignored it and held on, letting the rattle of the flight settle into my uneasy bones, and I tried to remember that, if I were to be honest about it, this was as close to feeling normal as I could expect at this point in my life.
Chapter 14
There was someone waiting on the roof of Omega’s headquarters as we touched down, a familiar figure in a suit. For the briefest of moments I wondered if they’d somehow dragged Ariadne in to work with them, but as we began to descend I realized the woman’s hair was shorter and not red. The door swung open after we touched down and I recognized her as she gestured for me to get out. “Eleanor Madigan,” I said with a nod as I walked past her. “I almost didn’t recognize you without lightning spitting from your hands.”
“Based on what I’ve heard of your visit thus far, I’m certain you’ll be seeing that side of me before we’re all done,” she said in even tones, her light British accent reminding me of a flying nanny I’d seen in a movie a long time ago. “Sir,” she said to Janus with utmost respect.
“Eleanor,” Janus said as he stepped out of the helicopter. “We missed you on our excursion.”
“Ah,” Madigan said with a curt nod. “I’m afraid I was handling some business south of the Thames this morning and couldn’t get it concluded in time to reach you before you left. I do have a message from the Primus, however.”
“Oh?” Janus said, a thick, grey eyebrow raised in slight surprise. “Go on.”
“He requests the presence of your company immediately,” Madigan said, nodding sharply, almost as if she was bowing in deference to him. “He says the local police at the incident site have already had a preliminary finding from a local pathologist.”
“Indeed?” Janus said. “Well, then, without further ado, I suppose.” He turned to me. “Sienna, if you’d care to wait, you may, or if you’d prefer to go back to your hotel—”
“No, sir,” Madigan said. “The Primus requests her presence as well.”
“Requests it, does he?” I asked, feeling cheeky, as they’d say locally. “Well, in that case, let’s not disappoint your King Douche by keeping him waiting.”
Janus sighed audibly over the sound of the rotors finishing their last few turns. “I would ask you to try to be polite, but I know that would be fruitless, so I merely ask you try to restrain your desire to do violence until you may visit it upon someone who is fully deserving of your wrath—such as, say, Erich Winter.”
“You don’t want me getting into a rumble with your Big Cheese?” I asked, watching Janus register extreme discomfort and Bast’s face lock into irritation. “Fair enough. I’ll try not to needle him if he doesn’t needle me.”
“Dear God,” Janus said in seriousness as he turned away from me, “this will be the shortest meeting in the history of Omega.”
I didn’t ask what he meant as we descended back to the main floor, emerging from the same elevator bank as last time. There was a door on the wood-paneled far wall, the only one that wasn’t open to a glass-windowed room. I followed Janus through the quiet of the work floor, the cubicle dwellers keeping to themselves, heads down.
Janus paused and opened one of the double doors for me. With a last look that suggested something along the lines of Play nice, I stepped inside. Part of me wanted to ask Wolfe, Bjorn and Gavrikov what I should be expecting, but I didn’t want to have a conversation with myself as I was walking in to meet the man. Or woman. Not like I hadn’t met women who were totally psychotic beasts who ran over people with nary a thought. One of them was even in my head.
I was disabused of the notion that the Primus was a woman as soon as I walked in the door. The office was in a state of renovation. Half of it was covered in wood paneling reminiscent of everything I’ve ever imagined a country club would look like in the olden days. There were blank spaces on the walls where paintings had until recently been hanging, dirty outlines marking their removal. There were countless bookshelves as well, some of them emptied. From the accumulation of dust, I guessed that the cleanup had been recent.
The man behind the desk was younger than I expected. He didn’t stand to greet us but watched, his posture
lazy as he sat there, impeccably dressed in a suit that probably cost more than I made in a month when I was working for the Directorate. He had a leg up on the desk, resting it, and was tilted back in his chair. His hair was brown, his eyes were dark, and his features were sharp. I felt coldness radiate off him in waves. Not literally, like Winter, just a chill eye, like I was being surveyed by someone without any emotion. It decreased his attractiveness by a considerable margin, making him ugly to look at. He wore a little smile, and I would have sworn it was there just for me, but I got the feeling he’d been wearing it since before the door had opened.
As we walked in, heading toward the two aged wooden chairs sitting in front of the desk, he gave me the slightest incline of his head as he watched me. It made me feel a little dirty. He made a motion toward one of the chairs in front of him, and I sat, adopting a posture just as lazy as his. I realized with only mild surprise that Kat was sitting in the other chair, her nose still a little swollen but looking far better than when I’d last left her.
“Sienna,” Kat said reluctantly.
“Gutterslut,” I replied with a cordial nod.
There was a moment’s pause then Kat cracked a nervous smile. “Just like old times, huh? Sitting in front of Old Man Winter’s desk? Or Ariadne’s?”
“Do you even remember those days?” I didn’t look at her. Bast and Madigan took a seat on a couch about ten feet behind us, against one of the walls.
Kat paused, as though taken aback by the question. “Of course I remember those days. I haven’t forgotten everything, just—”
“Just the last guy you were sleeping with,” I said, looking back to see the Primus favoring me with a sly, almost malicious smile. I cast a look back at Janus and grinned. “I’m taking wagers—who do you think will forget the other first—you or her?”
Enemies: The Girl in the Box, Book Seven Page 9
