Desolate Mantle

by L. K. Hill

  “But the lab guy realized the cross opened, and only then did he find the phrase. He almost missed it.”

  Gabe shook his head, eyes still on Eltern. “It’s the only cross that opens, and our lab guys are good. They did find it. When I first heard the phrase, I remembered it. Even if we’d missed it, I would have remembered it when Eltern said it too. There’s no way this would have ended with him coming up behind me. It wouldn’t have happened that way.” He cleared his throat. “Besides, this has to be at least a partial lie. He reached for that scythe. He had no intention of letting me bring him in.”

  Gabe did glance over, then. Cora was nodding thoughtfully, though Tyke still looked disturbed. Rightly so. In a matter of days, Dillon’s case went from cold to bizarre, skipping the ‘active’ phase all together. It had entered a whole new plane of existence. One Gabe couldn’t begin to fathom.

  Chapter 21

  “I haven’t seen him for days. Supra? You listening to me?”

  Kyra shook herself. She almost ran her hand through her hair for the third time in fifteen minutes, but stopped short, covering by scratching her ear instead. She actually could run her hand through the short, spiky wig, but doing it too often might push it askew, so she tried not to. “Sorry, Sadie. Who haven’t you seen for days?”

  “Big Johnny. When I realized I hadn’t seen him lately, I started asking around. No one seems to have seen him in a week or more.”

  Kyra shrugged. “You know Big Johnny. He always resurfaces. Something’s just got him distracted.”

  Sadie shook her red hair, looking worried. “It’s not like him to disappear for so long. Even if he’s in a different part of the Mire, someone should have heard something from him.”

  Kyra nodded. “You’re right. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for him. Let you know if I see him.”

  The worry didn’t leave Sadie’s face, but she nodded. “Thanks Kyra.” The two of them surveyed the street for a few minutes before Kyra realized Sadie was throwing side-long glances her way.

  “What?”

  “What’s going on with you, girl?”

  “Nothing. Just a little distracted is all.”

  “A little distracted?” Sadie put her cigarette out on the light post. “Girl, you’re full-on spacing out. And you’re limping. What happened to you? Some guy work you over?”

  Kyra chuckled in spite of herself. She really shouldn’t be in the Mire tonight. She’d not yet fully recovered from the bullet she’d taken to the foot a week before and, while she’d truly felt well enough to go out, after only a couple of hours, her brain began to fog. At first, it felt good to exercise. True, it was still healing, but after days in bed, it became stiff to the point of cramping. Now it throbbed like a migraine. Her eyes burned like she hadn’t slept in days—though in reality it was all she’d done since leaving the hospital six days earlier—and she couldn’t keep her mind on the Mire. Not the safest way to wander through any part of Abstreuse.

  Realizing Sadie had asked her a question, Kyra cleared her throat. “Course not,” she said. “Just a work accident.”

  Sadie stared at her skeptically for a minute before shrugging. “You should rest up, then. Stop working yourself so hard.”

  Kyra smiled. “You know, you may be right. I can’t seem to focus. Maybe I’ll go find a place to lie low for the rest of the night.”

  “Need my couch?” Sadie asked, as another hooker walked up beside them. Candy, Kyra thought her name was. Probably not her real name. She conversed with Sadie often on street corners. Plain, medium brown hair she rarely dressed up framed her face. Tonight she wore an off-the-shoulder t-shirt, cut to bare her midriff. Skin-tight faux leather pants and ridiculously high heels completed her look.

  “No thanks,” Kyra said regretfully. “Gotta go see one more person first, on the other side of town.” She always used this excuse because it was the one Sadie accepted most readily.

  Sure enough, Sadie shrugged. “Suit yourself. Get better, okay?”

  Kyra nodded, then smiled at Candy, who immediately launched into an explanation of the obnoxious behavior her last john engaged in, to which Sadie fully sympathized. Kyra bid them both good luck and to be safe before ducking into the alley behind them.

  She actually wouldn’t have minded staying at Sadie’s tonight—for the company, as well as the gossip—but given that she’d have to change a potentially disgusting bandage on her foot, it was better to go back to her hotel.

  Staying with Sadie could actually yield some excellent information. When she asked Sadie anything point blank, the woman often couldn’t come up with an answer. Kyra eventually came to realize it was because she put Sadie on the spot. On the other hand, if Kyra simply asked something general like, “So what’s the word on the street tonight?” Sadie would launch into all the gossip she’d heard while working. The tidbits and general mood of the Mire she gathered from such talks with Sadie were surprisingly useful.

  Thankfully, she didn’t have anyone else to go and see. She couldn’t wait to get back, take a hot shower—though it would probably be painful for her foot wound—and slip between the sheets. She felt a stab of annoyance about the fact that her doctors—and Gabe—had been right about staying off her foot for a week.

  Gabe. Thinking of him brought a pang of guilt. She’d cried for two days straight after he left her hospital room. And it wasn’t all for him. Though, she admitted to herself grudgingly, most of it was. There was also the terrible pain in her foot, the frustration over not getting on with Josie, the lack of leads in finding Manny. So much heaviness she couldn’t shake.

  But with Gabe, she’d hurt him and she knew it. Desperately wishing she hadn’t, she now regretted what she’d said, even if the reasons—the necessity—of saying it hadn’t changed. She pushed away the sadness. It was for the best. The more attached to her Gabe became, the more he worried, the more he’d want to be involved in her search. Wouldn’t it be the cherry on the cake if she not only got herself killed without finding Manny, but took a good cop—and thoroughly decent man—with her? No, it was better this way. So why did she have to remind herself of that fact whenever she thought of him?

  She crossed into another, less dangerous part of the city. These alleys were quiet ones, only a few layers deep, where bums went to sleep and stray animals dug through dumpsters. The temperature seemed to be dropping by the minute, and Kyra shivered. Though she doubted it was much past midnight, she wanted to be back safe in her hotel.

  She tried to quicken her step, but her foot throbbed every time she put weight on it. It would be a long walk back. To keep her mind off the pain, she thought about what her next task should be. In truth, she had no idea. With the Josie thing not working out, she’d returned to square one. She’d debated coming out at all tonight, because she simply didn’t have any plans. She still had no idea who Jerome Dellaire was, and she didn’t have anyone in particular to meet. Still, she was glad she’d ventured out, even if only to make a brief appearance and talk to a few people. Half the difficulty of her task was getting the people of the Mire used to her presence. If she disappeared for more than a week, people would ask, “Hey, where you been?” and she didn’t relish that kind of attention. Besides—

  Kyra gasped and jumped back as a black vehicle drove directly into her path, nearly running over her toes. Where had that come from? She took in the car—really took it in—and realized something was wrong. Cars were almost unheard of in these quiet passages to begin with, and this wasn’t just any car, but a sleek, black SUV. The full-sized, gas-guzzling, ridiculously expensive kind. Kyra had never observed such a vehicle in the Slip Mire before.

  All four doors opened simultaneously and four of the biggest men she’d ever seen in real life stepped out. Eyes wide, she turned to stride away. She should have known that would be too easy. The one nearest her grabbed her wrist, yanking her back. He had a grip like an iron manacle, just not as cold. One of his buddies came up behind her. She gasped when his fingers dug into he
r waist, before realizing he was only frisking her.

  “Who are you?” she asked. She kept her husky, Supra voice, but didn’t bother to keep her eyes down or try to show nervousness, as she normally would, glaring instead at the man holding onto her. Her bravado was spoiled every time she gasped or grunted because the man behind her roughly—at times almost indecently—patted her down. To her chagrin, he found all her weapons easily. First, the handgun nestled in its holster under her arm, then the two knives at her ankles, and finally the one strapped to her thigh. He even dug the two extra magazines out of her back pocket.

  The man gripping her arm towered over her. A full head of wavy dark hair matched his dark eyes. In the gloom of the Mire, she couldn’t tell much more about his nationality. He was either well-tanned, or perhaps Mediterranean.

  “The question you should be asking,” the man’s voice was cold and hard, “is who we work for.”

  Kyra almost rolled her eyes. Instead she took a discreet breath to calm herself. “Fine. Who do you work for?”

  The man gave her a mirthless grin. “He wants to talk to you.” He nodded to the open car door.

  Kyra thought quickly, weighing her options. “Do you work for Josie?” she asked.

  The man still clutching her wrist had a face that might have been chiseled from stone for all the emotion it betrayed. “Who’s Josie?” His voice was flat, not even curious.

  That brought Kyra up short. If these men worked for Josie, they would have no reason to deny it. Side step the question, or flat out refuse to answer, perhaps, but not deny it. They weren’t Josie’s thugs. Too well dressed anyway. So whose were they?

  Kyra glanced around the alley. Four huge guys, all focused on her and all obviously armed, stared back. Even if she could get away from the man anchoring her to the spot—not likely—she still had little to no chance of getting away from them. Other than the four of them and their monstrous SUV, the alley was utterly empty.

  Knowing she’d have to completely dispel the brain fog and ignore the pain in her foot if she wanted to survive this, and praying they didn’t put a bullet in the back of her head as soon as she got out into the car, she ducked inside.

  The men tied a black blindfold securely over her eyes, so she had no idea where they’d taken her. She’d felt the car turn a handful of times, and tried to gauge direction, but it all became too backwards to her. The car wasn’t moving particularly fast, though. They couldn’t possibly have gone beyond the city limits. After a roughly twenty-minute drive, the car stopped.

  Two men pulled her from the SUV, each guiding her along with one of her upper arms securely in his grasp. She stepped up onto what she was sure was a sidewalk. So they weren’t in the Slip Mire any longer. There weren’t any sidewalks there, even on the more functional streets. Just paved alleys.

  She could tell they’d gone from outside to in, both by the way the men on either side of her turned sideways—all three of them were probably too wide to fit through a normal door—and by the way the feel of the air changed. Whatever building they’d entered, the air felt humid, and the smell of food permeated it. Having been a caterer for many years, Kyra knew food. It smelled Italian. Cheeses and breads and pastries. A bakery or restaurant of some kind.

  The warmth and smells faded as they moved away. They went through more doorways, and at one point she thought they were outside again. In the next five minutes, they guided her through so many twists and turns, she couldn’t have kept them straight even if she wasn’t blind folded.

  Finally, after turning sideways yet again, they came to a halt in a room that felt…very still. The man on her right let go of her, while the one on her left moved around behind her, taking one of her arms in each of his hands. He guided her forward and in a somewhat circular motion, as if around some object. His hands moved to the tops of her shoulders and shoved her down into a hard chair. Her blindfold was unceremoniously yanked off.

  Something slammed into her face, and everything turned to white light. It faded quickly. She’d been slapped across the face. Hard.

  She blinked rapidly, momentarily blind. The room wasn’t bright—quite the opposite—but after the complete darkness of the blindfold and then the disorientation of the slap, it took her some time to adjust. The room around her was…nondescript was the only word that came to mind. It was two to three times the size of her hotel room. The lack of light made it impossible to tell what color the floor and walls were. Other than the chair she sat on, the only piece of furniture sat directly in front of her: a huge, polished mahogany desk. A green-shaded lamp sat on one corner and gave the only illumination in the entire room, like being on stage with a single spotlight on you. The corners of the room sat in darkness. No colors, no textures, no smells revealed anything more about the space.

  The man sitting behind it stared at Kyra with a calm, discerning intelligence that unnerved her instantly. She had a hard time putting an exact age to him. He bordered on elderly. Snow white, close cut hair framed a face so angular as to be skeletal. His cheekbones poked out at severe angles, his skin pulled so tightly over them, he looked snake-like. His eyes were hawkish. A deep, pale blue that flashed when the light caught them. Eyes that, Kyra suspected, never missed anything.

  Her four body guards took up positions around the room. The one who’d pushed her roughly into her seat still stood at her elbow. Kyra took a deep and, what she hoped was discreet, breath. Okay, Roberts. How are you going to handle this?

  Something about the way the man eyed her made her hesitant to affect her Supra persona. She didn’t know how or why, but something told her he already knew more about her than she’d be comfortable with. She wouldn’t volunteer any information, but a soft whisper of warning rustled down her spine. Men like these appreciated honesty, even if their system of morality was warped, and often killed for dishonesty. Despite being decked out in her Supra get-up, her real personality might keep her alive for longer.

  Kyra straightened her spine, leaned back against her chair, and crossed her knees.

  The man behind the desk slid his eyes down her body, taking in her changed posture. He gave her an amused look. “At last,” he said. “I’ve wanted to see your eyes for a good while, now.” His voice was deeper than she would have expected from so thin a man, and rich with confidence. Confidence in his own authority. “We’ve been watching you for some time.”

  Kyra didn’t answer right away. She met his gaze, making deductions. They’d been watching her for ‘some time’ but something made them pick her up now. “So what’s changed?” she asked.

  He raised an eyebrow at her. Leaning forward, he rested his hands on the desk, voice neutral. The stony planes of his face gave nothing away. “I grew tired of not understanding who you are. And what you’re trying to accomplish. Who are you, my dear? What are you doing in my city?”

  Kyra did look away, then. What did she tell him? She did not want him knowing the whole truth. She had long known the Sons of Ares were tied to organized crime. The Carmichael case drove that fact home. She just didn’t know what the nature or extent of those ties were. This man could tell the gang who she was, keep her from ever infiltrating their ranks, and she had no other place to even begin looking for Manny.

  “You don’t want to tell me.” His face remained unreadable, but his voice sounded displeased.

  Kyra made her voice as sincere as she knew how. “Something tells me, Sir, that you already know my name. As for the rest, please don’t take it personally. No one knows what I’m doing here. Not even my relatives or closest friends.”

  “Fair enough,” the man sat back, his hawkish eyes boring into her. “Or it would be, but you’re on my turf. On my ground. I will have an answer.”

  A soft, high-pitched sound came from one darkened corner of the room. It was so quiet, Kyra wasn’t sure she’d actually heard it. Like a cat mewling softly.

  She focused on the man behind the desk. “I mean no disrespect,” Kyra said quietly. “No threat, to you
or any of your…businesses. That’s not why I’m here.”

  His eyebrow jumped again, flattening out again a second later. “Well,” he spread his hands and glanced at the man beside him. “It seems Jerome was correct. You are more than what you appear to be.”

  Kyra glanced at the man standing beside the desk and did a double take, her eyes widening. She couldn’t help it. Beside Boss stood the man with the pony tail who’d been following her around the city for the past few weeks. The one who saved her from the Prowler. This was Jerome?

  What have you learned about Jerome Dellaire?

  She quickly glanced away, hoping the old man hadn’t seen her reaction. Evidently he had.

  “You recognize him, it seems,” the old man said.

  Kyra slowly shook her head. “I don’t know who he is, but I’ve seen him. He’s been following me. I didn’t know why.” She shifted her gaze from the old man to the one with the aquiline nose. “Jerome…Dellaire?”

  Both he and the old man glared at her, obviously wanting more explanation. She dropped her eyes. “I’ve…heard your name spoken in the Mire, but haven’t had a face to link it to. Until now.” She raised her eyes to the white-haired man. “And is there something I can address you by?”

  The old man studied her for what must have been a full minute, eyes weighing and calculating.

  Kyra was in control. She was. A drop of sweat trickled down the back of one knee. The hair at the nape of her neck became damp.

  Finally the old man sat back, taking on a haughty expression. “I am simply, Boss.”

  Sarcasm flared in Kyra’s mind and she nearly asked whether it was a first name or a last, but she figured it would only get her abused at the hands of her guards, so she kept silent.

  Another soft noise from the corner, though this one was louder than before. More like a puppy whimpering. No way she’d imagined that. If Jerome or Boss heard it, they completely ignored it.