Eye of Heaven

by Marjorie M. Liu

  Blue met Iris halfway, slamming up hard against her lean, long side, one hand on her furred back as he tried to provide cover against the hail of tranquilizer darts ricocheting off the ground near their feet. His aim was good; he listened to the hearts inside his head, and the darkness was no cover for that.

  “Fuck is this?” Daniel shouted, still running—away, now, back to the ridge—and Blue glanced over his shoulder at the stalled cars. Too late. No way to go back for them.

  “It’s a trap,” he snapped, pushing against Iris’s shoulder, trying to get her to run faster. She stayed with him, growling, even when her mother pulled ahead for a brief moment, looking at her daughter with a snap in her eyes that was nothing less than, Ditch these losers and follow me. Blue could not agree more.

  “Go!” he raged at Iris, trying to run faster, moving on nothing but pure desperation. If she got hurt because of him—

  Too late. A dart hit her side. Iris stumbled, managed to keep going another few steps before crumpling against the rocks. Serena was there in an instant, golden light sweeping over her like a storm, and Blue heard her whisper, “Shift. Shift, Iris. Hurry.”

  She did—a slide from leopard to woman that her mother matched, guiding her with yet more words that Blue could not hear, but that sounded like a song.

  “Mom,” Iris murmured, but that was all. Her eyes fluttered shut. Serena yanked out the dart and began to lift her daughter. Like hell. Blue pushed her out of the way and slung Iris over his shoulder; one great heave, stifling a tremendous groan. Oh, God. His knee.

  Serena did not revert to the cat. Only partially human—the lower half of her body covered in fur—she held her daughter’s hand, steadying her as they began to run again. Blue felt their pursuers leave the rocks, join up with the other men. The headlights still bounced in the distance, in range now, and Blue shut off the engines with a thought.

  “We’re not going to make it to the ridge,” Daniel said, pausing for a moment to sweep his hands through the air. A wall of dirt and rock kicked up behind them, a cloud that masked their movements from the pursuing men. It was only a brief comfort, though; darts still whistled, cutting far too close, and Daniel aimed blindly over his shoulder, firing his gun. Blue gritted his teeth and gave his weapon to Serena. She took it wordlessly, turned on her heel, and unloaded the clip into the cloud. Blue heard shouts, cries of pain … and a dart thudded into her leg.

  She ripped it out, but too late—swaying, swaying, she went down hard on one knee. Daniel tried to help her, but she pushed him away, snarling. He tried again and she grabbed a rock, slinging it at his crotch. Her aim was bad; it bounced off his hip, but Blue understood her reaction, could taste her fear and desperation as she tore her gaze from Daniel and stared helplessly at her daughter.

  “Iris,” she begged. “Please. Get her away.”

  “Serena,” Blue protested, but she shook her head, crashing hard on her side. Her head lolled, the light in her eyes fading to ash, but her mouth still moved, and he heard her whisper her daughter’s name like a prayer.

  Daniel hesitated, bent over her … and grunted. There came a bad sound—low, wet—and it seemed to Blue that the dust cloud thinned and time slowed down as his brother reached for his side and yanked out a tufted dart.

  “Shit,” he muttered, and Blue leaned forward as his brother staggered. Unfortunately, Iris was a deadweight on Blue’s shoulder, and trying to bear up Daniel’s body without collapsing was a losing battle. He let him slide to the ground.

  He heard shouts, the sounds of rock crunching beneath boots. In Blue’s mind, three hundred yards and closing.

  “Sorry,” Daniel muttered weakly.

  “Don’t,” Blue said, voice thick. “Don’t, Daniel. I’ll get you out of here.”

  “No time, no way. You need to go, Blue. You’re right. They want us alive. You go, you get help. Take Iris.”

  “Iris,” Serena murmured.

  Blue’s eyes burned. Tears or anger or the goddamn dust, but he was done and desperate and fucking tired of running.

  So kill them. Do it and end this. Now.

  He reached out with his mind. The men pursuing them were close enough; he found one running hard across the moonlit desert flatland. He focused, centered himself.

  But he could not do it. He could not kill, not like that. Not another body and soul to add to all those memories of death, all those years and corpses left behind in the dirt when being close to him was like asking for death, and even his mother—his mother—had caught the brunt.

  Hypocrite. You defend yourself with bullets.

  But this was different. It had always been different.

  A dart flew past his leg; another whispered against his ear. Hard choices, and he could not make them. Son of a bitch.

  “Go,” Daniel whispered, flopping his arm over Serena’s still back. “Go, Blue.”

  Your friends or your family, or how about both? Whom do you betray? Who means more?

  Blue felt Iris’s breath on his back. He felt her heart inside his head. He felt her body on his body, in his hands, and he thought about Santoso touching her, hurting her, making her do terrible things.

  Blue did not say good-bye. He did not look back. He ran and his body screamed, but he did not listen to the pain as he charged toward the ridge, scrambling to keep his footing as his knee threatened to give. He heard shouts, cries, but though he expected to feel the prick of something sharp, no more darts followed. He reached the base of the ridge and kept going, up and up, fighting the land and his own growing weakness.

  Halfway to the top he stopped, glancing over his shoulder.

  The men no longer pursued him. He saw them gathered around Daniel and Serena. No cars, no way to contact the facility in the distance, but he figured that would be remedied soon enough.

  One of the men separated himself from the others and walked slowly toward the ridge. Even at his considerable distance, Blue could see the moonlight reflecting off blond hair, and he felt a dark gaze fix upon him, deeper shadows than the night. A quiet stare. One that tickled his shields.

  Cold ran up his arms. Blue hefted Iris higher on his aching shoulder. He kept running.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  No dream, only memory. Iris awakened to a vision of violence and sex, moonlight running cold on desert rock, and her mother—her mother alive and fighting—her mother at her side, gunshots ringing, with the taste of blood so hot in her mouth, and Blue … Blue …

  Iris opened her eyes. Above her, rock. Below, the same. The ground she lay on was hard, uneven. Something sharp poked her shoulder. She carefully inhaled; the air smelled dry, hot, with a hint of electricity. Thunder.

  Iris turned her head. Blue lay beside her. Based on the position of his legs, she thought he might have started out sitting up, and had fallen so deeply unconscious that he simply tipped over like a rag doll, complete with bruised eyes, hollow cheeks, and a gun cradled against his chest.

  She almost touched him, woke him up, but at the last moment she pulled away her hand and watched him sleep. He looked like a running man, a hunted man, and she remembered his eyes in the night, his gaze cutting right through her, staring at the leopard and calling her name.

  She remembered blood. She touched her lips, which were caked in it.

  Iris dragged in a long breath. She was naked, with only a thin sheet of some warm, shining material wrapped around her body. No extra clothes, either. A water bottle poked from the backpack beside her; she pulled it out, broke the seal, and took a long drink. She splashed water on her face and scrubbed her mouth.

  She tried not to think about her mother, about why Serena was not with them, why there was no trace of her scent. Tried not to think about it because she knew the truth, deep in her gut, and she could not handle the idea of her mother being gone again. Alive and with Santoso. Alive and hurting. Alive and being ripped apart. Because her mother had not been careful. All those men had seen her shift. The truth was out.

  Blue sti
rred. Slowly, at first, until his eyes snapped open. He did not move, simply stared at her. Iris said nothing. No words, no thoughts, nothing but instinct—to run, hide. Only it was too late for that. Too late for everything. Blue knew. He knew.

  Iris held out the water bottle. Blue lay very still.

  “Are you okay?” His voice was hoarse, raw, a sandpaper whisper that cut straight to her heart.

  “No,” she rasped softly. “But I’m going to fix that.”

  His jaw tightened, his eyes going dark, hard. Iris wanted to smile when she saw the shift; it was the perfect compliment to the rage inside her own heart.

  I am going to kill Santoso, Iris thought. I am going to eat him and shit him and dump his bones in the desert. I am going to wipe his existence from this planet.

  And then she was going to take care of that facility. Burn it all—and Broker—to the ground.

  Blue took the water. He sat up, wincing, and when he tried to raise the bottle to his lips his hand shook so badly Iris instinctively reached out. She did not look at his face—she was afraid to be so close to his eyes, those eyes that knew her—but she placed her hand under the warm skin of his strong wrist and held him, steadied him, watched the mouth of that bottle touch his lips and swing back, the water as it ran down his chin, the bob of his throat.

  “Thank you,” he said. Iris nodded, still looking down. She let go of him, began to lean away, but he encircled her hand, catching her, and whispered, “Look at me.”

  So she did. And his eyes were still impossibly warm, so warm she wanted to cry because she was sick of being afraid, sick of this nightmare, sick of being alone, and looking at him felt like the closest thing she had to home.

  Blue touched her chin, running his fingers down the line of her jaw to her throat. He did not speak, but his gaze was enough, and Iris did not pull away. This—this was the way a man should look at a woman, and it helped cleanse her mind of bad memories, of that room with Songbird and its other drugged women, of Santoso and his chains and that rape of her most secret identity, which still cut, which still made her angry and ashamed and so very afraid, because there was proof now—proof—and … and …

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Iris said to him.

  Blue dragged in his breath. Still silent, with that terrible gaze that was both hard and warm and infinitely weary. He began to move his arms, but Iris beat him to it, shifting close, rubbing hip-to-hip as she leaned into his body and laid her cheek against his. His beard rasped her skin, but she did not mind; for the first time in her life she was not afraid of being held, and she wanted it, needed it.

  “My mother,” she said softly.

  “She’s alive,” Blue said.

  “For now. When Santoso finds out what she is …” Iris hesitated. “You know the truth.”

  Blue pressed his lips against her shoulder. “I knew what you were the first time I saw you.”

  It was not what she’d been expecting to hear. Iris pulled away, staring. “How is that possible?”

  “Your eyes. Only shape-shifters have eyes that color.”

  Iris thought of Santoso, his your eyes give you away, you know. They are the gold of heaven, and her breath caught.

  “You’ve met others?”

  His smile was tired but genuine. “My friends.”

  Iris could not imagine. All this time, this man knowing—and for there to be others, more than one …

  Blue touched her cheek; his fingers were warm, his scent strong, wild. “We’ll get your mother back, Iris.”

  “He’ll kill her,” she said. “He had a camera in my dressing room, Blue. Maybe he was responsible for that camera in my home, too. He knew what I was.”

  Just like Blue did. Maybe Blue put a camera in your home. Maybe there’s more going on here than you think.

  Or maybe she was paranoid and this was more information than she could handle. Mother. Blue. That was all. Everything else would kill her.

  Blue frowned. “Santoso is a broker, Iris. You and your mother would be more valuable to him alive.”

  Alive. In that room, with his voice, his I have you, Iris, and I will have my dream. I will take my magic. I will take it all. She dug her nails into her palm, wanting the pain to take away the memory. Blue touched her wrist, but she did not stop. Just dug harder.

  “This goes beyond monetary value,” she told him, fighting to steady her voice. “He wants to become like us. He wants to be us. Able to shift. He made me bite him, because he thought that would infect him with my abilities.” Iris laughed, but it was an ugly sound. “I bit him. I wanted to fucking kill him. I spun him some lie about how it might take a while for the change to happen, but that wasn’t going to buy me any time. Not as much as I needed. He had a backup plan, you see. If the bite didn’t work, he was going to strip me of my … my vital organs. Put them in himself.”

  Blue’s fingers tightened around her wrist. “That makes no sense. Even if his body didn’t reject them outright—”

  “I know. And maybe it’s shit; maybe all he really wants is a lab rat. But either way, if he doesn’t have me, he’ll use her.” Iris closed her eyes, shaking her head. “She was gone for two years, Blue. Two fucking years. And the night she comes back all this goes down.”

  Blue said nothing. His was an odd silence—all of this, odd—but more so with him, because there was an element of weight to his quiet, a heaviness. As if he knew something.

  And really, what kind of coincidence is it that they were both there last night?

  What kind of wild dream, that she should enter the desert, pursued by Broker and his men, and find her mother, Blue, and Daniel on the other side of freedom? What kind of world was that? What kind of new normal, where talking about death and shape-shifters and men who wanted to rape and kill her was to be expected, accepted?

  Iris studied Blue’s face. He made no effort to hide his discomfort from her; she could see it in his gaze, smell it on his body.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “It’s not my story to tell. You need to hear it from her.”

  “But you know the truth? You, a stranger?”

  “I’m not a stranger to your mother,” he said quietly. “Not really. But that’s also part of the story I can’t share. Not until she has a chance to tell you first. It wouldn’t be right, Iris.”

  “Not right?” Iris wanted to hit him, strangle him, kiss him until he bled and then rattle his brains out his ears. “How long have you known my mother?”

  Blue hesitated. “Not long. I met her once, two weeks ago. But I didn’t know who she was until last night, when I encountered her again. I didn’t know she was your mother, Iris.”

  “That’s too much of a coincidence. You said you were a detective, that you were here investigating someone. I thought it was … was someone else, but was it me after all? Did she … did she send you?” Because why else would they have a connection? What else was there that could possibly bring two such disparate people together?

  And what the hell has my mother been doing for the past two years?

  Blue raked his fingers through his hair. “No,” he growled, rocking his head back, closing his eyes. “No, Iris. She didn’t hire me. And yes, this is all a coincidence, as remarkable as it might seem. I was here for someone else. My brother.” He took a deep breath. “Daniel.”

  Iris snorted. “Old news. You can’t surprise me with that.”

  She could have pulled a dead fish out of the air and slapped him upside the head with it, he looked so startled. “You know? How?”

  “Daniel told me. Just before he found that his—your—father died.”

  Blue closed his eyes. “He’s not. It’s a lie. The old man faked it all.”

  Truth. His body reeked of stress, but not deception. Nothing of the kind. Iris lay back down on the hard ground and gazed past him at the desert. Their patch of shade was wide, but outside, the rock and dirt gleamed bright amongst the tangled scrub and cacti. Even farther, mountains. Clear air, clear
scents.

  Breathe, she told herself. Just let it out.

  Or keep it in. She had questions—questions that would each launch a hundred more—but there was no time, no time for anything less essential than survival. Instead of entering the mess inside her head, instead of trying to solve the puzzle, she pushed it away—selective amnesia, be a friend—and said, “Where are we?”

  “I don’t know,” Blue said slowly, watching her like she might bite him. “Last night was a trap, Iris. Those men hunting you knew we were coming.”

  “They knew,” Iris echoed softly, and her expression hardened. “Son of a bitch. That’s why he did it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Iris shook her head. “Broker. Santoso’s right hand man. He let me go, Blue. Helped me escape. I thought it was because he wanted a chase, to make some kind of point, but maybe there was more at stake. You, Danny. My mother.”

  “Treating you like bait?” Blue’s expression darkened. “You know what that implies.”

  “Bad things,” she said. “Lots of bad things.”

  He stretched out beside her. Iris heard all sorts of interesting pops and cracks. “We had a car, Iris, a way out of here. But when I got close, I discovered people waiting with it. Another trap. I had to keep going, find a safe place. I walked until I couldn’t go any farther. I found this spot in the rocks by accident.” He turned his head and glanced out at the sky and sun. “I don’t think we’ve been here long. Dawn was coming when I stopped.”

  “So you carried me. All night.”

  “I didn’t drag you by the hair,” he said, exasperated. Iris bit back a smile.

  Too late. She knew he caught it because he smiled, too, and then laughed—a low, quiet rumble that was tired and sad, and that only made her want to touch him, hold him, rub away the wrinkles between his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry about all of this, Iris.”

  “I’m free and alive,” she replied firmly. “Confused as hell, and more than a little angry, but that’s all good. It’ll help me save my mother. And Danny.”

  Blue frowned. “I can’t imagine why Santoso would want him.”