Her Cold-Blooded Protector

by Lea Linnett

  The small window in the store’s front door was shuttered, and the larger glass panes flanking it were completely obscured by overcrowded displays. Mannequins were clustered behind the glass, each wearing a mix of the traditional, well-crafted clothes that Augusta actually made money on, and the sleek, high-end fashions that Ellie liked to copy from zines that were already two seasons behind.

  The room she shared with Ellie was upstairs, but Lena could see nothing through the thick drapes covering the window. No lights were on to cast the shadows of the house’s occupants, but that wasn’t entirely unheard of. Augusta was draconian when it came to saving electricity, which was fair when your household was as poor as theirs.

  She flexed one hand nervously as she regarded the door, trying to steel herself to open it. She stopped the movement almost immediately when she realized she must have picked up that particular tick from Kormak. Shaking her head, she approached the clothier’s.

  The door opened with a tired jangle, and Lena’s heart leapt to see Augusta sitting behind the rickety counter, a winter coat slung over her knee as she mended a gigantic rip in it.

  But as she stepped closer, she struggled to find something to say. Every option that ran through her head either felt overly dramatic or woefully underwhelming, and she found herself standing by the door with her mouth open and her feet frozen to the floor.

  In the end, she didn’t need to say anything, as Augusta’s eyes glanced up from her darning and flew comically wide when they recognized who she was.

  “L-Lena?”

  Her heart leaped, and her face crumpled, and then Lena shot forward around the counter to embrace the old woman in a hug before she could stop herself. “Augusta!”

  She held the woman close, and while there were a few pregnant seconds where she feared the hug wouldn’t be reciprocated, eventually she felt thin hands come up to lay on her shoulder blades. She felt giddy. She wouldn’t normally accost the older woman in this way, Augusta not being all that fond of displays of affection, but she couldn’t help herself.

  Soon, she felt the hands shift, coming up to pat her shoulders, gently pushing her away. She released the woman, stepping back and letting herself be surveyed. For the first time in days she felt clean, thanks to her shower the night before, and that helped her to bear Augusta’s scrutiny.

  Other memories of the previous night threatened to overtake her, but she stamped them down.

  “What are you doing here?” the elderly woman gasped, and when it finally registered that she was speaking in Yumin Tok, their home language, Lena’s heart soared.

  “I…” She hesitated, realizing that no matter the language, she still wasn’t entirely sure what she wanted to say. “I wanted to come home,” she finished lamely, feeling suddenly guilty.

  Augusta’s face didn’t soften, her brow angling with worry. “You were on the news monitor in the square—they showed your face next to a levekk. I thought…”

  “What, Augusta?”

  The woman’s hard face became drawn, making her look even older than her already advanced years. “I thought you’d been stolen away. That something awful had happened and…”

  She trailed off, her eyes saying everything she didn’t want to put into words, and Lena grasped her hand. It was strange, seeing Augusta be this open; it was as if someone was trying to tilt the ground beneath her. Augusta had been a stone-hard presence for almost half her life now, giving her the strength to keep toiling for Ellie’s sake, even when she felt like giving everything up.

  “Augusta, I’m so sorry,” she managed through the lump in her throat, squeezing the woman’s hand. “I’m fine! The levekk, he… he wasn’t so scary, in the end. He didn’t do anything to me.”

  Except break your heart, snapped a small voice in the back of her head. She forced a smile. “Are you okay? Where’s Ellie?”

  Augusta still looked unsure, as if Lena’s account was suspect, but at the mention of her sister, Augusta’s expression closed off a little, a shade of the woman Lena knew returning. “We’re fine. Ellie’s been helping me in the shop. She’s upstairs—I’ll go get her for you.”

  “No, I can just go up there, there’s no need—”

  “You stay put, make some coffee. I’ll get her.”

  The woman pushed her away then, hands gentle despite their calluses. She left Lena standing by the counter as she walked up the stairs at the back, her footsteps still quick and confident despite her age.

  Marooned in the middle of the store, Lena’s heartbeat quickened. It was as if she were a stranger in her own house, the house she’d lived in since she was fifteen. The layout was the same, the racks in all the same places and the chair behind the counter as threadbare as ever, but she now felt as if certain places were off-limits. She didn’t feel the blithe comfort of a home surrounding her. It was replaced instead by the queasiness of a stranger’s house, where you had to be careful not to touch anything.

  She didn’t go to the kitchen and make coffee. She was rooted to the spot, waiting for her family to come back down the stairs and terrified that something had happened to Ellie, something she needed to prepare herself for.

  Eventually, she heard feet on the stairs, rushing down in a furor of sound. Her sister appeared at the bottom, Augusta a few steps behind her, and when her huge blue eyes landed on Lena, Ellie let out a squeal of happiness. She bounded forward, not once bothering to restrain herself.

  “Lena!”

  The girl hit Lena as hard as a sack of vegetables when they collided, thin arms immediately wrapping around her torso and squeezing tightly. They were the same height, and Ellie tucked her chin over Lena’s shoulder, somehow managing to engulf her despite being the lither of the two.

  Lena could hear the smile in her sister’s voice when she said, “Lena, I was so freakin’ worried about you! Breaking out of prison, I mean—”

  She cut herself off, pushing away to hold Lena at arm’s length and beaming, despite the slightly anxious quirk of her eyebrow. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t say that so loudly. I—” she looked down at their feet, as if she were trying to gain control over her exuberance. “I missed you.”

  Lena’s heart thumped in her chest, unused to keeping up with her sister’s hyperactivity. It hadn’t seemed this overwhelming before, but after a week of quiet conversation with Kor—

  She shook the thought of him from her head.

  “I missed you too,” she said instead, pulling Ellie in for another hug and holding her as tightly as she could. Her sister was thin, but not waifish yet, and she’d always been a little ganglier-looking than Lena, despite their similar size.

  It was a relief to see her sister acting so lively. She’d feared that Ellie would have to go work at a factory with Lena gone, and that she’d come out of it jaded and dull. But she was fine—if anything, she seemed more energetic.

  That thought sent a shameful little shiver of unease through her. Ellie was okay without her. She’d almost expected the girl to be a wreck when she got back but from what she could see, everything was… fine.

  “So what happened?!” her sister was asking, looking like she might burst. “Your face was up there with a levekk—is he here? Did he leave you in the desert?”

  Lena’s skin prickled. He may not have abandoned her in the desert, but their parting that morning still stung. “He…” She flailed, lost for words.

  “Did you travel together?” Ellie pressed, and Lena looked past her to Augusta, silently pleading for help.

  The old woman caught on. “Give your sister a moment, Ellie. She’s only just back. Coffee, girls?”

  They nodded and Ellie mercifully backed off for a moment, still smiling excitedly. They moved over to the kitchen, Ellie talking about how weird it had been to see Lena’s face all blown up on the news, and Lena wondered how the hell she was going to explain everything to them.

  24

  It was well past sundown by the time Kormak reached his old haunt, a loose collection of city blo
cks backing up onto the river.

  From the outside, it looked much the same as it had the last time he was here. Music still poured out of every basement door; the streets still overflowed with people having a good time while the alleyways bustled with clandestine activity. For just a moment, Kormak felt at home, as if he were still Malcolm’s right-hand attack dog slinking along each street, protecting their turf.

  But things had changed. With his head down, no one whispered about him as he passed; his reputation no longer preceded him. The bouncers stationed outside each establishment weren’t the ones he’d once chatted to while he loitered. Large groups of sub-species still crawled along the alleys trying to look intimidating, but their make-up was different—corners that had once teemed with cicarians now seemed to be filled with pindar; a xylidian bolt-hole he used to frequent now had the shorthand marks of the Calideez martian language on its signs.

  He should have expected changes—especially in the transient underbelly of New Chicago—but seeing was another matter entirely. He used to have a life here, and in the few years he’d been gone, the remnants of it had already blown away like dust.

  It had taken him an entire day to get here—sneaking onto public transports for most of it, and sticking to dark alleyways and shadowy eaves for the rest. He remained leery of public security cameras, not believing for a second that he and Lena’s escape had been forgotten or ignored. He was thankful for the hood on his stolen jacket, which dipped low, covering his face.

  But as the moon rose up above and the throbbing nightlife turned to a dull roar behind him, Kormak finally arrived at the quietest corner of the docks, where Malcolm’s base rose up like a sentinel by the water.

  It was the oldest building in the area by far—a warehouse that produced human firearms during that interminable period between the levekk people’s arrival on Earth and their settlement of it. The blocks around it were ravaged by fire many years before Malcolm even existed, and it was the sub-species that came before him who built the area up from ashes into the bustling Quarter it was now.

  But the warehouse had been ignored. Ironically, it was the only building to survive the fires; the safeguards that had been intended to keep its explosive contents from catching alight had eventually helped it remain standing, and while its walls were blackened, its structure was sound. It was the perfect place for Malcolm to begin his ascendancy.

  Kormak could see it from where he stood just upriver. He’d circled around once he left the Quarter behind, approaching from the east, where the docks bustled with legal activity during the day and slept at night. But to his surprise, Malcolm’s building looked as dark and sleepy as the spot where he stood now. An uneasy feeling crept into his stomach, but he pressed on. He had a task to complete.

  He prepared for the worst despite the relative lifelessness of the building—a lack of light didn’t signify anything more than an unfortunate power outage. If Malcolm’s paranoid habits had remained unchanged, then his people would be everywhere.

  And Malcolm, of course, would be holed up at the very top. Kormak would have to sneak inside. Even he wasn’t brazen enough to think he could take on the hundred thugs that were inevitably standing between him and Malcolm.

  He turned over what he could remember of the floor plan in his mind. The lower levels had been empty and open, and due to the acrid stench of metal and fireworks that still clung to them, they were usually only used for training and storage. The upper floors had been re-purposed into a maze-like structure of rooms and offices, clean and well-maintained and featuring some places for sleeping and lounging and spending time unwisely.

  The top-most floor afforded a perfect view of the surrounding district, if you stood at its easternmost window you could see the blue climate-control domes of the city center arching up into the night. Malcolm’s rooms were up there, fitted with the luxury he’d always strived for.

  Kormak knew this place like he knew the weave of the scales across the back of his hand, having lived there for years in one of the communal bunk rooms and for a few years more in a room of his own, just one level down from Malcolm’s renovated penthouse.

  He’d spent hours standing guard outside Malcolm’s room, and hours lounging on the office levels, drinking and gambling and watching others smuggle prostitutes into their bunks. He’d spent hours more checking off goods on the ground floor or sparring with other bodyguards, holding his nose against the stink.

  So when he finally found himself at the foot of the towering warehouse, he knew to steal his way up the service ladder on the building next door and lean over to grasp the emergency staircase of Malcolm’s building, the bottom of which had been broken off specifically to discourage intruders. His greater height made the stretch an easy one, and soon he was pulling himself up onto the staircase.

  He moved low and fast up the stairs, taking care not to scrape his claws over the weather-beaten metal. He peered in windows from time to time, looking for guards or any sign of life inside. When he found none, his unease deepened, but it wasn’t enough to stamp out the growing throb of adrenaline in his blood.

  He was lighting up now, his nostrils flaring as he climbed around the building like a dragon clawing its way up a castle’s stone battlements. He could feel excitement coiling in his belly, his nerves singing and his blood coursing with a fire that he hadn’t felt in months.

  He imagined Malcolm, sitting in his high-backed office chair—looking more like a king on his throne than a human in his office. The emergency staircase only went up so far, so when Kormak entered the penthouse, it would be through the front door. It would be quick work to knock Malcolm’s inner circle out of his way, and then there’d be nothing left between him and the scrawny little human except his own claws.

  He might pull a gun on Kormak, but it would be simple to rush him, knocking the weapon from his fingers and pinning Malcolm to the throne, trapping him.

  Kormak would wrap his fingers around the human’s neck and watch his tanned skin turn purple beneath them. He might even draw some blood; make it seem like he hadn’t quite figured out Malcolm’s fate yet and watch the man agonize over Kormak’s decision.

  Then he could wring the life out of the little waste of space, and turn to await the flood of heavies that would storm in just a few seconds too late. He could die then. He could die content.

  His mind was awhirl with these thoughts of revenge when he eventually slid through the window at the top of the emergency staircase, coming out only two floors down from Malcolm’s penthouse.

  The hallway was empty and silent. Something in Kormak’s gut stuttered nervously, but he powered through it, moving quickly and quietly down the hall. The communal lounge for Malcolm’s rotation of bodyguards was empty when he passed by, as were the couple of bunks he poked his head in to inspect.

  He located the inner staircase, rocketing up to the next floor. He allowed himself to be louder now, almost asking for someone to come find him so he could get started on relieving this hatred that flowed through him like a river left unchecked.

  But as he crossed to the last staircase, there was nothing—no sound, no movement, not even any lights turned on. His rage faltered now, his skin prickling uncomfortably as he eyed the deserted office space. His old room should be along here, occupied now by the next-biggest heavy in Malcolm’s employ after Kormak’s ejection. But there were no thunderous footsteps or the far-off click of a gun cocking. He was alone, and the realization filled him with dread as he finally put his foot on the final staircase, ignoring the elevator that he now suspected might not even be working.

  There were no guards waiting for him on the penthouse floor. He raced up the short corridor, his feet thudding on the carpet, and paused before a pair of wide double doors, embellished with gold paint and dark wood. He reached out to grasp the handle, feeling sick to his stomach.

  When he finally entered the huge front room of Malcolm’s penthouse, his stomach rolled at what he saw. The desk was overturned, one
window smashed, but otherwise it was almost completely how Kormak remembered it. It was also absolutely devoid of life, and Kormak swung his head around wildly, searching for any sign that Malcolm might have been attacked by some other crew.

  But there were no bodies. No blood. The room was clean, apart from the obvious points of disarray, and when Kormak stormed through to Malcolm’s bedroom and bathroom in turn, he found nothing out of place.

  The warehouse was truly abandoned, for the first time in over a decade.

  Kormak’s heart thumped in his chest, a chill running through him and dousing whatever fire his anger had stoked. Suddenly, standing in the middle of Malcolm’s large and opulent quarters, he felt very small.

  Maybe they’d moved, he thought, mind grasping the option with clammy fingers. Maybe a deal had gone especially bad and they’d had to set up shop somewhere else. But as he looked around, he knew it wasn’t true. A lot of Malcolm’s artifacts were missing—stolen vases, liberated paintings, and the like—but much had also been left where it was. Odd things, like Malcolm’s chair, which Kormak sometimes thought the human loved more than people and which would never have been left behind.

  And when Kormak crossed to the safe tucked in a wall compartment behind Malcolm’s desk, concealed completely unless you knew it was there, he found it locked. He knew the code. He’d been entrusted with it years ago and knew Malcolm was too frightened to change it. He’d always been strangely concerned about his memory, despite his sharpness in other areas. The safe popped open when he turned the antique dial, revealing a password-protected credit drive, a mound of jewelry, and a stack of paper account files. In his shock, Kormak marveled at just how old-fashioned Malcolm could be, but it was soon eclipsed by horror.

  There wasn’t the slightest chance that Malcolm would have abandoned this treasure trove, and he felt his heart sink like a stone into his stomach. What could have made the entire building’s occupants pack up and leave without taking their valuables?