by Jenn Stark
The Magician had confused me, with his talk of how powerful I was becoming as I struggled to master my emerging psychic abilities, his warnings that he might be the one who’d have to stop me if I became too strong. I’d confused myself too, by trying to reconcile my conflicting emotions about Armaeus with my conflicting emotions about my skills, my responsibilities, my true role in the war on magic. There’d been a whole lot of confusion, and not a lot of answers.
But in the two months since I’d last seen the Magician’s challenging, enigmatic smile, that’d changed. Nothing like enforced isolation to really make you reassess your priorities. Now I was ready to see him again…wanted to, in fact. Needed to, maybe, though not for all the usual reasons. Now I was far readier for a lot of things.
That man beside me leaned forward, mistaking my introspection with hesitation over meeting his two-bit boss. “You’ll want this job, trust me,” he leered. “Otherwise, we’ll be seeing eye to eye before you know it.”
“Dream on, asswipe.” I stood, then glanced down at the counter. My blood still pooled on the counter in bright relief, still stained the bartender’s knife. “Can’t leave that lying around—especially not in this place. Daredevil over here’ll be licking the bar.”
I lifted a finger. A razor-thin bolt of fire darted out, illuminating the bartender’s blade. Startled, he dropped the knife, then he and Mr. Creeper beside me stared as the flame swept over my spilled blood, superheating the viscous fluid until it all burned away.
Without another word, I swept my cards into a compact deck, pocketed them, and moved toward the open door.
Chapter Two
Waiting for me on the other side were a dozen or so men…all men. I noticed that right up front because I’m observant that way. An all-male bad-guy revue didn’t necessarily mean much in the realm of Connecteds—evil came in all shapes, sizes, and genders. But it did usually amp up the necessity for chest beating among the locals.
My point was made almost immediately as the guard from the door shoved me forward the last step. To make the man feel better, I stumbled with credible awkwardness, using the flail to assess the room. Kingpin Cyrus was seated at the desk positioned in the corner of two walls of windows. The other two walls contained doors, the one I’d entered and another that presumably was where the last few applicants had exited. Flanking Cyrus were what appeared to be his top generals, beefy-looking men in suits who stared at me with a little too much curiosity for a group of guys who’d been interviewing psychics all day.
“Your most recent reputation precedes you, Sara Wilde,” Cyrus said gruffly.
I shrugged. When I’d run from the police in London two months earlier, I’d quickly had to make a decision: go completely underground and undercover, or simply keep one step ahead of the authorities. I’d decided on the latter, for two reasons. One, I needed to make some inroads into the Connected community, know who my friends and enemies were. Two, I was lazy. I didn’t want to split my attention between finding the information I needed to learn and making sure my fake eyebrows were on straight.
“So has yours. This little corner of paradise is the number one supplier of the newest technoceutical that’s currently stripping the coffers of well-heeled Connecteds throughout the world. But there are no production plants here, and no one seems to know where it’s being created. You also have enough blood in the water downstairs to supply the Red Cross. Care to fill me in on what’s going on?”
Cyrus narrowed his eyes at me. “Why should I? It’s been a long time since you’ve done any work that mattered to me. Last I heard, you had Interpol breathing down your neck, not to mention the governments of fifteen different countries.”
“Sixteen.” I held up a finger. “Pakistan jumped on the bandwagon last week.”
“You should be hiding, but you are not. Instead, you have come here.” He waved a hand. “Come here under the guise of filling a need for me, in fact, when I could simply have you killed—or released to the authorities.”
He said the words with perfect confidence, but if my reputation really had preceded me, it was unfounded confidence.
I smiled, settling back on my heels. I’d had this identical conversation with so many Connected tough guys over these past several weeks, I knew my spiel almost in my sleep. “You could, maybe. But that’d be a bad move.” It was my turn to gesture expansively. “I’ll be blunt. You’re Connected. Not high level, not on your own, though you have more shooting through your system than you used to.”
Cyrus hissed and leaned forward, resting his beefy arms on the desk.
I didn’t care. “Fortunately, you don’t have to be. Being Connected isn’t what got you where you are today, which is the head of a multinational drug distribution pipeline. You’re making a lot of money doing what you’re doing; you’re maybe killing a lot of people. And you’re keeping out of the way of the powers that be. But that’s not who you should be worried about.”
“And I should be worried about you?” he sneered boldly, though I could see the flinch in his eyes.
“Nope. I’ve got my own organization to manage, and we have our share of questionable practices.” I’d used this line easily thirty times in the last several weeks, and never once had anyone blinked. I would have enjoyed having at least one black market lowlife protest and explain how squeaky clean my House of Swords people were. So far, there hadn’t been any takers. “But there are groups gunning for you. Interpol, obviously. They’re only now catching on to the pervasiveness of the technoceutical industry and its connection to the psychic community, but they’re not going to take much longer to figure out how to make your life very difficult. Then there’s SANCTUS.”
“Please,” Cyrus scoffed. “They were gutted months ago.”
“They were.” I nodded. SANCTUS, the quasi-religious, quasi-military, wholly unstable group of nutters with a hotline to the Pope and an avowed distaste for anything magical, had recently made a resurgence in their attacks on the Connected community, on top of everyone else taking aim. When it rained crazy, it poured. “But they’ve been funded again. By someone—I don’t know who. Just like Interpol and governments around the world are being funded by someone to divert at least a small amount of their resources to chasing me all over hell’s half acre. But whether they catch me or they don’t catch me, it doesn’t much matter, considering where I’ve been. And believe me, I’ve left a trail, for those looking to find it. A trail that now starts with you.”
“Interpol is following you.” He glowered. “You intentionally led them here.”
I shrugged. “That’s one way to look at it. There are enough breadcrumbs that they could figure out everyone I’ve spoken with, if they had the headspace to do that. I don’t intend to give them that headspace. But I will, if it means you’re up to your ass in agents and not standing in my way. Your call.”
“Why are you here?”
I smiled, willing to let him sweat for another minute. “You know, I didn’t expect to hear a petition for Connected help when I came to South Africa, but if I can help you achieve your goals, and you can help me achieve mine, then so much the better.” I leaned forward slightly. “But if you think for a minute that that asshat at the bar is going to get my eyeballs, think again. You haven’t heard of me in more than whispers, Cyrus, and that’s on purpose. Unless you want the next guy on my list to hear of me because of your screams, I’d be very careful.”
To his credit, Cyrus didn’t back down. “What is it you want?” he asked again.
I wanted his entire operation blown off the map, but that would have to wait. For now, I had bigger fish to fry. “Your help, when I call. And I don’t mean for you to put in a good word at the local chamber of commerce for me. I couldn’t give a crap what you say about me in public or in the back alleys with your buddies. But you support me to your people, and you support me with your people. There’s a war coming, and it’s going to be fought on multiple fronts.”
“Over drugs?” He curled his
lip. “We’ve fought that fight before.”
“Not with the money the enemies of the Connected community have behind them now, you haven’t. And you may not know who’s behind it, but if you learn that, it’ll be worth your while to tell me. But it’s not just Interpol, I’m telling you. SANCTUS is back in play. Several independent governments. A few shadow alliances that haven’t quite coalesced yet. And bigger players.”
“The Arcana Council,” he said, and I looked at him sharply. That was an unexpected name for the riffraff to pull out. The Council was based in Vegas, with a mission to maintain the balance of magic on earth. Unfortunately, the current seated members of the Council weren’t unified in how to achieve that mission, which was causing a lot of problems for me—professionally and personally. Most of the Connected community weren’t fans of the Council, if they knew of them at all. Those Connecteds who knew the Council well felt even more strongly. I’d learned the hard way when I’d become the head of the House of Swords that the other Houses of Magic—Cups, Wands, and Pents—loathed the Council outright, almost as much as we disdained each other.
We were all one big, happy family.
For his part, Cyrus’s face was darker now, more intent. “The Council which you have colluded with. How do you explain that?”
The energy shifted subtly in the room, and I went up on my toes. “I don’t,” I said, my words curt. “You fight your battles your way, I fight mine my way. There are worse problems than the Council for us to worry about.”
No way was I going to explain that earth was on the verge of being invaded by ancient aliens—the gods pressing even now against the veil, desperate to reclaim their place on earth. I didn’t want to push Cyrus’s grasp on reality too far, especially with the technoceuticals raging through his bloodstream.
“Worse problems,” Cyrus grunted. He lifted an arm, and a guard stepped toward the second door, tapping it lightly. Within ten seconds, it opened again, and two figures came through—another beefy bodyguard, and a boy in his arms who was maybe sixteen years old, limp and unresponsive.
I stiffened. “What’s this?”
The guard moved forward to a wing-backed chair and placed the boy in it, draping him carefully against the cushions with a familiarity that showed he’d done this several times. Once he stepped away, I realized that the boy was awake. Or, at least, semiawake. His eyes were half-slitted. He was breathing. But his limbs were completely flaccid, and his mouth gaped open.
“This is my son, Henry,” Cyrus said, completely without inflection. “He’s had an irreversible reaction to a technoceutical. Maybe Life, maybe something else. No one can tell me. He was in the hospital for ten days, with no progress. I removed him. And burned the place down.”
“I heard about that.” I nodded coolly, but my guts twisted inside me, my hands clenching into fists. Whatever I’d thought Cyrus’s need for a high-level Connected was, this wasn’t it. He may have been an asshat of the highest order, but this was his son. And his son was...deeply damaged.
Cyrus grimaced. It wasn’t a good look. “I am not a patient man. I began asking members of my own community”—he said this word with a curled lip—“to assist. I expected someone would be able to. Instead, I got quacks and pill pushers and surgeons armed with nanodevices. Not healers. I want real ability. I want real healing.” He pointed at me almost accusingly. “Your hand.”
I didn’t bother glancing down. My hand had healed completely by now, but I didn’t feel the need to show off. Instead, I moved toward the boy. As I did, his head shifted, quick as a bird’s, his eyes fluttering open. When he saw me, an expression rushed over his face so quickly, I almost missed it. But it was there. It was something. It was…almost like recognition. But it was the merest flicker, and only I and maybe the guard closest to me noticed it.
Across the room, Cyrus most certainly hadn’t. “What’s wrong with him?” he demanded.
“You tell me.” At my voice, the boy gave another involuntary shudder, and I crouched down to stare up at his face. “What was he doing when you found him like this? Do you know what drugs he was using?”
“No. That’s the problem. There was some paraphernalia around him, but the drug residue was inconclusive. Nothing showed up on the tox screens that matched any known samples. It’s a new hybrid.”
I shot him a look. “Newer than Life?”
“Newer.” His face was rigid with rage, and something else. There was desperation there too, but there was also anticipation. Fear, but vindication. Something was going on here that I couldn’t quite track. I should have been alarmed, but I was only curious. That same curiosity that had pushed me halfway around the world, seeking answers. Someone was out to get me—had been for nearly a year—and they were using this constant evolution of new technoceuticals as a beacon that shone a painfully bright light in my direction. But who…and why?
Either way, it wasn’t this kid’s fault.
“Help him,” Cyrus said, his voice now seeming farther away.
I picked up the kid’s hand, bracing myself for him to give another jolt of recognition, but for some reason, he remained calm. I touched his wrist, felt the thready, rapid pulse, noted the sheen of perspiration. I gripped his hand more tightly, half shuttering my eyes, and I could see the matrix of energy that made up the boy, could see the frantically beating heart, the sputtering synapses and crisscrossing electrical pathways of his neural network. He was hot—way too hot—but dormant at the same time, as if he was having a reactor core meltdown without realizing it.
“What was he…” I began, and Cyrus left his chair and approached me, speaking quickly.
“He was playing on his laptop. Always on his laptop, him and his friends—friends, I don’t even know who they were. People online. I don’t even know what sites he was on. The computer had some sort of virus, destructed shortly after he did.”
“Encrypted,” I muttered, but Cyrus kept going.
“He—we thought Henry had passed out, but his eyes were open, his tongue lolling, he couldn’t talk, couldn’t eat. There was a syringe nearby, but it was all but empty. Injected it into his mouth, the doctor said. That was all he could give us.”
I nodded. I sent the first, tentative bolt of energy into Henry’s nervous system, remapping the broken connections. He jolted, and Cyrus did too.
“What are you doing?” he gasped.
At that point, however, I’d stopped giving a crap about Cyrus. Because with the perspective of my third eye, Henry was running, running, running. From me, I thought at first, but that wasn’t quite right. But certainly from my energy. And definitely with a purpose. I watched the shooting lights of his psychic energy flare along the remapped circuits, then veer off just as quickly, racing in ever-widening circles, splitting apart and coming back together again. The drug he’d consumed—if it was a drug—had stripped those networks, I realized, like putty spread over newsprint and lifted up, taking with it the topmost layer. But for what—why? I’d started to heal Henry, but even though he definitely had some Connected abilities, there was no way the kid was going to finish the job on his own. He’d never be strong enough.
Fortunately, I was.
I felt the men crowd closer around me, heard words I paid no attention to, as I chased Henry through the pathways of his pain and violation, healing and making whole the precious network of connections he’d built. He was definitely one of the most robust Connecteds his age I’d ever met. With each new layer of healing, I could feel him closer to the surface, but his panic never subsided, his outright, raw fear not at me, exactly, but having something to do with me. Not at his father, exactly, but at something that stood over his father’s shoulder, bearing down. It was like standing in a middle of a horror movie watching the reactions of the crowd, but not sure exactly what was causing them to scream.
It was actually the moment that Henry surged up with a great croaking cry that I realized something was…very wrong.
“Go!” roared Cyrus, and suddenly,
all the men who’d been gathered tightly around me seemed to leap in one movement, ripping me off Henry and hauling me back. I kicked and struggled in mounting fury, pulling them with me as I whirled around, but there were still ten—no, nine of them, and one of me. The tenth man stood back, a faintly sardonic smile on his face from the few brief glimpses I got of him as the men attacked.
A smile that looked…familiar.
“Ow!” My head cracked to the side as one of the men walloped me, and rage finally broke through my restraint. I’d worked very hard not to show my abilities to the kingpins I’d met before Cyrus, but up to this point, none of them had hit me. As it turned out, I was not a fan of being hit.
I also wasn’t a fan of the club Rift. Regardless of whether Cyrus was merely pushing the drug Life and not making it, he was definitely draining Connecteds and dumping their blood into designer drinks. Whether those Connecteds were getting paid for that or getting stuck against their will, I didn’t know and didn’t care. I wanted to save the boy, but as for the rest of this crappy operation…
Another crack across my face sent me reeling, and I kicked out, fury building higher within me. Screw this.
They were struggling with my hands. One of the men had gotten a cuff around my wrist, so I went limp for just a second, and the sudden cessation of movement allowed me to bring my hands sharply together. Fire ignited between my palms, and I threw it out in a fury, exploding the glass of one of the floor-to-ceiling banks of windows. The men fell away from me—all of them but one anyway, so I took an extra moment for another blast—this one angling back, away from the room and the boy, a jolt of electricity that exploded against the wall and sank deep into the circuits, frying everything in its wake.
I sent out another blast for good measure, taking out the second bank of windows and catching Cyrus’s furniture on fire. That sent the men sprawling away from me, even as Henry struggled upright in his chair and blinked at me with sudden and excited recognition.
