Shadow Touch

by Marjorie M. Liu

  “Of course,” said Graves, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “It is a question of power, Mr. Loginov. Mine, at the moment, is greater than yours.”

  “Power,” Artur scoffed. “Your power is an illusion. You crave it like a drug, but it is meaningless. You do these things because you need to be perceived as something more than what you are. A fatal weakness in your ego. It is very … sad.”

  She almost killed him. He saw it in her eyes, that lethal sweep of gray. “I think you want to die. I think you want a clean, quick end, something sweet and merciless. That is the only reason anyone would act so stupid.” She leaned close. “I am not going to give it to you.”

  Which was what Artur had counted on. It was nice knowing he could insult someone without repercussion. Or at least, a repercussion he did not already expect.

  Someone knocked on the door. The man with the bloodstained pants peered into the room. His face was very pale.

  “She’s in the facility,” he said.

  Graves’s demeanor completely changed. Her shoulders relaxed; a deep breath escaped her body. She looked down at Artur, and her smile, loose and genuine, made his skin crawl.

  “Lovely,” Graves said. “Is she coming here now, or going to her other project?”

  “Here,” he said, and looked ready to run. The man glanced down the hall behind him. Artur heard wheels.

  Graves walked to the door and pulled it all the way open. The man stumbled back from her; she gave him a hard look and he turned and walked quickly away. Escape, escape—Artur did not blame him.

  She walked into the hall. Artur listened to the wheels, and as he did a memory from Charles Darling surfaced—a face framed by blond curls—and he knew, he knew what was coming, the spider creeping down her black thread web….

  Graves stepped aside as a diminutive figure in a wheelchair rolled into the doorway. Artur did not need to touch her. He knew the truth when she entered the room and stopped, staring at him with black, pitiless eyes that were unnatural, strange—full obsidian bleeding into white, until all Artur saw when he looked into her face was a deep, abiding darkness that sucked at the edges of his mind.

  He barely noticed the rest of her: the thin body set in a gleaming wheelchair, the black suit with diamond glinting in the buttons. She was not young, but she was not old, either. She was timeless.

  “Mr. Loginov,” Graves said softly. “Please meet my associate, Ms. Beatrix Weave.”

  “I believe we have already met,” Artur said.

  Ms. Weave smiled.

  Chapter Eight

  Endless and undying.

  “Leave us,” said Ms. Weave. Graves said nothing; she backed away like the perfect sycophant, and it was clear to Artur that despite Graves’s appearance of power, she was just another tool, a means to an end. Ultimately inconsequential to the woman in the wheelchair.

  As Graves shut the door, she met Artur’s gaze. There was no triumph in her eyes—just calm certainty, as though the end had already come, the outcome of his life decided. Artur felt as though it was Graves who should be careful. In organizations like this, outliving usefulness was one of the highest causes of mortality among otherwise fine, upstanding individuals. Artur had no such illusions about himself.

  Silence rested heavy. Artur, strapped naked to the table with those dark clothes still jumbled in his lap, listened to Ms. Weave breathe. Listened, too, for Elena. Marilyn wept.

  Ms. Weave studied him. Artur could not look away from her inhuman eyes. When she smiled it was ghastly because it was beautiful, breathtaking, the most perfect horror, and when she spoke her voice rasped like a dozen dull chimes. “I thought I would make the first foray with you. I can see now that was a mistake. Your mind is too strong, the safeguards around your secrets built too well. I commend its maker, whoever he is.” Her accent was faint, but distinctly French.

  Artur breathed deep; he smelled lilacs. His throat still hurt. “You are the boss, the leader of this Consortium, yes?”

  “I am.”

  “Then I ask you, why? Why go to all this trouble? If you wanted to know us, you could simply have knocked on our doors. Talked. Asked questions. We might have answered them all.”

  “And received the same information we already have. Names, addresses, histories, public records documenting the cases your agency has solved—the ones people actually know about. No. That would be a waste of time, and besides, there are barriers to that, as well. The situation is complex, Mr. Loginov. Far more complex than anyone knows, including Ms. Graves.”

  “Our different philosophies, perhaps.” Artur felt chilled. “We help others. It is clear you help only yourselves.”

  Her teeth flashed—bright like the gems in her buttons, cold and hard and sharp. “Aren’t those two the same? Help one, help the other, help goes all around? Good tidings into good karma? I do not think you know me well enough to condemn what I do with my energies, Mr. Loginov.”

  “I know you keep a serial killer as a pet. I know you let him loose to play. I know you are not above a little pain and torture. Tell me, Ms. Weave, if that is not an excellent indicator of one’s … energy.”

  She shrugged, graceful. “My focus is different, as are my goals. Each of us must accomplish our tasks in different ways. Mine, I suppose, are unique—but not terribly so. In fact, I would guess that our two organizations have quite a lot in common.”

  “No,” Artur said. “That is—”

  “Impossible?” She smiled. “Did Nancy Dirk ever explain why she and her husband created their agency?”

  Her interruption, her question, left him silent, stunned. He said nothing, and she nodded. “Of course she never explained. No one on our side ever explained either. It was just the way. Old history. I don’t know why I expected anything different. You’re not even family. Perhaps I should have been bolder. Risked it all and gone for her grandchildren, Max and Dela.”

  Artur swallowed hard. “You talk as though you have known of us for much longer than just a year.”

  “Oh,” she said. “A lifetime at the very least.”

  Ms. Weave pushed a switch on the armrest of her wheelchair and rolled so close that her arm rubbed up against the table. Artur struggled for calm, strength, as her hand slowly flexed toward his exposed wrist. She had only enough movement left in her body for that one motion.

  “I am going to touch you,” she said. “Are you ready, Mr. Loginov? I am going to try something a little different, but it will not be gentle.”

  “I know that,” Artur said. “I do not believe you are a woman who cares for gentle touches.”

  “Too true,” she whispered, and her pinkie grazed his skin.

  It was like drowning in hot tar. All he saw inside his head was a thick darkness that glistened wet, coating his brain, latching onto his surface thoughts with greasy abandon. He could not think. He could not fight. His lungs worked, but that did not matter; she stole the oxygen from his brain, snuffing him out, thought by thought. He felt a sharp pain at the base of his skull, digging, and he tried to scream—

  You must breathe, she said as she suffocated his mind. If you want to breathe, you will let me in.

  Artur glimpsed a vision of himself, resting on the bed of the red room, with this woman’s hand on his temple, birthing a worm to steal the secrets from his head. The house was distant; it was her home, it was her—

  Stop, she said.

  No, he said. Get out.

  She tightened her hold upon his mind, plunging deeper, and for the first time since joining the agency, Artur felt keenly aware of Roland’s barrier, the fail-safe, the black wall he had put inside Artur’s head, which kept secret every memory pertaining to Dirk & Steele. He could not imagine what Ms. Weave wanted; it seemed to him she already had everything she needed, and more—more than even Artur knew.

  But if she could not get Artur’s permission to enter, it appeared she was going to take him by force—drown him, weaken him, kill him—thread him into her web,
the spider with her hands in his head. He tried to fight, to break through the darkness tarring his mind, but she was too strong. She fought him down, and all he could do was struggle, crying out—crying with his heart….

  A heart that held a presence, burning bright and clean. Elena. Sweet Elena.

  The darkness coating his mind shattered. Ms. Weave cried out, and visions flooded him: three old women sitting around a long conference table in a high-rise, saying—No, no, it is wrong, you cannot—and—There is a covenant, my dear, a trust we cannot break—Sisters, blood, you must understand what we have promised—and then a dark room with snow falling beyond a tall window, and Ms. Weave, Beatrix, staring at her hands, her naked legs, at the naked man tied to the floor at her feet, a young man with brown hair and cold green eyes—Charles Darling, I think I want you for my own—and then another man, dark-skinned, kneeling in a circle of sand, green eyes glowing—another prize, another—darkness, absolute, words said wrong, and—I am just like my greatgrandfather—just like—magic—him—the stories are true—immortal—daughters, so many daughters, so much power lost—so much power to gain, so much—the Russians will help us; we almost have the syndicates now, and after them the Japanese, the Yakuza, and after that—

  Ms. Weave gasped, her hand flexing away from him. Her eyes were large, black all the way through, like those of an animal.

  “Impossible,” she murmured. “You had help.”

  Artur said nothing. He stamped down all his thoughts of Elena, all his joy that she was alive and still with him, still fighting—

  “No,” said Ms. Weave. “I thought I felt someone the first time you broke the link, but it did not make sense. The girl does not have that kind of gift.”

  Ms. Weave stopped rubbing her hand. She leaned close—so close Artur saw his face mirrored in the dark cradle of her impossible eyes. “I do not make the same mistakes twice, Mr. Loginov.” She paused, studying his face. “My sources were told you shake the hand of every person you are about to do business with. Skin-to-skin. You do it to keep yourself safe. Tell me, Mr. Loginov, did you ever shake Nancy Dirk’s hand?”

  “No,” he lied. “She would not let me.”

  Her expression never changed; Artur could not tell if she recognized his deceit. Her wheelchair whirred backward. “I will make you mine,” she said quietly. “No one has ever escaped me.”

  “The black thread,” he said.

  “My precious thread,” she said. “My special weave. My little web.” She shook her head. “I enjoyed my brief time inside you. Your nightmares are so very sweet. Better, almost, than Mr. Darling’s. I am quite sorry for the loss.”

  He could not help himself. “You cannot possibly be human.”

  “Oh.” She smiled, her teeth glittering. Some of them looked sharper than he remembered. “I was human once. But that was a long time ago.”

  Artur’s breath caught. Ms. Weave tilted her head.

  “I will have some men come and dress you, take you to a room so you can rest. We will be speaking again very soon, Mr. Loginov. But first, I think, I need to have a conversation with the girl who is living inside your heart.”

  Rictor escorted Elena to her next appointment with the doctor. He looked tired. Elena tried not to feel overly concerned for him. She had given him some trust—which was crazy enough, considering the situation—but anything else would just be stupid. He was the enemy. Sort of.

  “Yes,” Rictor said. “You shouldn’t trust me. I’m not safe.”

  “I believe you,” Elena said. “That doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.”

  He stopped walking and stared at her.

  “Okay,” she said. “You’re bad.”

  He started walking again. He looked troubled. “I should never have let it go this far.”

  “We already had this conversation. If you think I should be afraid—”

  “No. I was referring to something different.”

  “Like what?”

  When he remained silent—uncomfortably so—Elena said, “Does this have anything to do with Stockholm syndrome? Because that is so not happening. I’m just not into that whole captive-woman, strong-virile-captor, power-imbalanced love thing.”

  “Excuse me? Elena, I …” He seemed genuinely startled. “Did you just call me virile?”

  “Never mind,” she snapped, flushing red. “What were you trying to say?”

  He still stared. “Nothing. Forget it.”

  Of course. She wanted to hit him.

  “You’re not strong enough to hurt me,” he said.

  “You want me to give it a shot?” After dealing with Charles Darling, she could handle anything. Red Sonja could kiss her ass.

  Rictor ignored her. They arrived at the lab—the same room that Elena had been wheeled into that first day. The doctor was there, and on the table behind him she saw part of a man. For a moment she thought it was Artur and she almost made a sound—a gasp, a sigh—but she swallowed it down and tried to calm her racing heart.

  Artur. She called out to him, remembering those dark eyes, his gentle touch. Artur, please be all right.

  “Don’t worry,” Rictor murmured. “It’s not him.”

  “Thank you,” she breathed.

  “No,” he said, just as quiet. “Don’t.”

  Closer, she saw the figure was elderly, a wrinkled, white-haired gentleman with skinny legs and a slack, bristled face. He was not tied down. His body was more machine than flesh: wires poked from his pale, blueveined arms. Electrodes covered his chest. His breathing was shallow. Elena did not have to touch him to know he was not long for the world.

  “You’re a psychopath,” she told the doctor. She was appalled, and yet grateful—horribly thankful—that the person resting before her was not a child. She suspected the doctor was that cold. He had studied her, knew her history, her weaknesses.

  “No, my dear,” he said. “The psychopath would be Mr. Darling.” He gestured at the unconscious man. “What is your diagnosis?”

  “Well, he’s old.”

  The doctor frowned. “I was looking for something more … in-depth.”

  Right. Heal first; be a smart-ass later. Her compassion had to be stronger than pride or fear. She could not allow this … this Consortium … to take that from her. She refused to let them harden her heart. Innocence lost could never be regained.

  That’s inevitable. If you ever want to escape these people, you’re going to have to do some nasty things. Maybe something truly irrevocable.

  She had already taken one long step down the hard slope. Murder was a cruel line to cross. A tough line to live with. Even if it was committed against someone like the Quiet Man. Charles Darling.

  I could have lived with myself if I had killed him. I wouldn’t have lost any sleep. And if he comes at me again, I’ll do the same. Feel the same.

  Which disturbed her. Not that she should defend herself, but that she could feel so cold about it.

  Then again, desperate times meant desperate measures. A little craziness was necessary to survive—and she did mean to come out of this alive and intact. No matter what.

  Elena touched the sleeping man’s shoulder. His skin was cold. “What’s his name?”

  The doctor glanced down at his clipboard. “John Burkles.”

  John. She wondered what in his life had brought him here. Rictor could probably tell her, magical mind-reader that he was. He stood by the door, his body half cast in shadow. She wondered what he would do if she tried to bash the doctor’s brains down to his toes. She wondered what he would do if she made the old man cry for his mommy. God. She would make road-kill look pretty in comparison. So much for compassion.

  Talk is cheap.

  Maybe, but Elena was feeling pretty cheap. Going from talk to action did not seem much of a stretch.

  Elena sank deep into the old man’s spirit, searching out the root of the decay she sensed within his body. She found it almost immediately. Cancer. A lump within his colon.

  M
ore, too … there was something wrong with his spine. Her own back hurt when she found it. Sympathy pains for paralysis. The break was recent—his legs had not yet atrophied—but Elena was unsure how to handle his disability. She knew how to fix it, but this was one area she had always stayed away from. The effects of such a healing were so extraordinarily noticeable. Not that it mattered now.

  She treated the cancer first. Held herself still and breathed in the image of health, coaxing and cajoling. He responded, as she thought he would. It was a rare man who did not fight for life when given the opportunity to do so.

  She moved on to his spine. Nerve regeneration was more difficult, but not impossible; scientists were doing it in rats, restoring spinal cords through a variety of treatments, some of which were electrical in nature. When nerves in the central nervous system were cut, they usually just stopped. Never grew back, like nerves did in other parts of the body. They switched off. At least, that was what all the science magazines and documentaries said. Self-education had its limits.

  Elena could turn them back on again. She did not know how; just that she wanted it, visualized it, and the body responded. It was not easy; the task required a soft touch, instinct, but she could do it. She could do it.

  And she did. John Burkles’s body listened, nerves itching free of their frozen bonds. Elena could make no guarantees, but over time—a long time, perhaps—he would find increased mobility in his legs. If old age did not kill him, he might find himself walking in those last days before the grave.

  “It’s done,” Elena said. It was a struggle to keep her words from slurring. She felt exhausted. She leaned on the table, her knees buckling.

  “The cancer is gone?” The doctor’s eyes were bright. “He’ll be able to walk again?”

  “No and maybe. You need to give it time. He’s heading into regression as we speak, and I stimulated his nerve fibers to grow. The cancer will disappear in a week or so. Regaining use of his legs will take much longer.”

  “I was under the impression that your results were more … immediate.” He sounded put out. Elena glared at him.