by Kelly Meding
“Technically, it’s closer to one hundred percent,” I said. Both of them turned to look at me; I shrugged one shoulder. “Most Hunters die within three years. You don’t get past the mortality thing.”
“Unless you’re you,” Milo said.
“Hey, I still technically died. The girl who went through hell here is long gone, ashes scattered to the wind. I didn’t ask to be brought back, and I’m done fucking apologizing for it.”
An uneasy silence settled over the car. The next time I looked, Bastian was gone, probably off to drag more uninformed teenagers into a new, brief, pain-filled life. Recruits we desperately needed, as our cache of trained Hunters was diminishing at an alarming rate.
Just as the air in the SUV started reaching unbearable stuffiness, the building door swung open. Kismet emerged first, Wyatt right behind her with a lunch bag of some sort in his hands. Blue nylon, square, nondescript. Had to have our bargaining chips in it. They were in the middle of a conversation that abruptly stopped when they yanked on their door handles.
“Took long enough,” I said as Wyatt fell into the seat beside me.
He settled the bag on his lap, color high in his cheeks. “Took some time to convince Erickson to let us have what we needed.”
“Erickson?”
“The guy who runs R&D.” He said it as if I should know exactly who Erickson was. I replied with a blank stare that finally registered. Hunters were forbidden from entering that building, and no one told us what exactly went on in there under the broad label of Research and Development. Or who worked there. He leaned close until his cheek brushed mine and whispered, “It’s where they developed the anticoag and fragging rounds we use, among other things.”
Aha. Grateful for the info—and additionally curious about what else Erickson and his pals were cooking up within those walls—I turned my attention back to the rest of the van. Milo looked away too sharply; he’d been listening, probably just as curious, and annoyed that I’d gotten an answer he hadn’t. Wyatt had already broken one rule by bringing an unbound fugitive onto the premises, so what was one more?
“We’ve still got two hours before Thackery’s supposed to call,” David said. “What’s our next move?”
“We meet Felix at his apartment,” Kismet said. “Then we sit tight until Thackery calls and we know what we’re dealing with.”
“We sit tight?” I echoed. “All of us?”
She didn’t stop driving, even as she met my gaze in the rearview mirror, steely determination in her eyes. “Yes, all of us, because until I have some damned clue what to tell the brass about all this, I’m not letting you two out of my sight.”
I made a rude noise but didn’t argue further. Admittedly, it was better than reporting me right away, or telling Milo to shoot me in the head. I resigned myself to being babysat by Kismet and her team, and settled back for the long ride into the city.
The apartment Kismet’s Triad shared was on the opposite side of Mercy’s Lot from mine, closer to downtown and the Anjean tributary. Other low-rent apartment buildings surrounded theirs, all made of the same brick façade and cheap plaster that had sprung up fifty-odd years ago. Tiny terraces barely large enough for two people to stand on, security bars on most of the windows, untended flower boxes, and postage-stamp grassy areas for kids to play.
No one paid much attention to the six of us as we followed Milo through a space-numbered parking lot toward one of the five-story buildings. The bricks looked power-washed and the sidewalks neatly swept. No graffiti, no hookers or homeless wandering around. Definitely a step up from the place I’d once called home. Into an echoing lobby/stairwell and past a row of metal mailboxes, we marched up to the third floor, our footsteps reverberating hollowly.
Milo produced a key, but the door swung open before he could use it. The apartment seemed to face the parking lot, so Felix must have seen us coming. Kismet was behind me and the last to go inside.
The front room was an impressive disaster—clothes strewn around on the sofa and two overstuffed chairs, a trash can overflowing with takeout bags marking the entrance to the kitchen, and empty cola bottles and cans littering other available surfaces. More impressive than the disaster, though, was the enormous—and ten years outdated—television shoved into the far corner, surrounded by gaming devices. Men.
Wyatt wrinkled his nose as he looked around. Milo headed straight for one of the back bedrooms while Kismet perched on the corner of the sofa. Felix leaned against the wall near the front door, arms crossed over his chest, daring any of us to comment.
David let loose with a low whistle. “Goddamn, man, you ever heard of housekeeping?”
“Wasn’t expecting houseguests today,” Felix replied.
One face was conspicuously missing. “Tybalt home?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Felix jacked his thumb toward the rear of the apartment. “He promised not to shoot you if you went back.”
To a stranger on the street, that might sound odd, but it made me smile. I didn’t wait for anyone else’s permission. The door at the end of the short hall was half-open. Milo’s low voice drifted out. I tapped my knuckles on the frame and waited.
Milo appeared in front of me, familiar sour expression back in place. “Don’t tire him out,” he whispered, then brushed past me.
I rolled my eyes, slipping through the half-open door and into a dimly lit bedroom. Curtains were drawn, casting a brown glow on the room. Two twin beds opposite each other, a single closet and dresser with clothes spilling out. I didn’t see Tybalt until he stepped from the corner of the room, pulling his tall, lean frame out of a deep shadow. I scooted sideways, startled. His left arm was in a sling, the canvas flat just below his elbow—where his forearm would have been.
“Someone should nickname you the Cat Lady,” he said. “You’ve got nine fucking lives, don’t you?” There was no derision, no sarcasm. Just measured sincerity and something very close to awe. He tilted his head; I understood and closed the door.
“We were wrong, Evy.”
His words struck like iron, heavy and forceful. I stared dumbfounded as he sat on one of the beds. He shuffled like an old man, aged and beaten. Seeing him like that, a warrior I’d not have wanted to go toe to toe with in the past, broke my heart a little.
“We’ve all been wrong about a lot of things,” I said.
“We should have trusted you, though, when you asked for more time at the factory. Should have given you until noon like you asked.”
“You thought I was a traitor, Tybalt, and you weren’t wrong. I knew going after the brass would hang a Neutralize order around my neck, but I was so sure.…” I found a spot on the floor that was a lot more interesting to stare at than him.
“If we’d listened to you, maybe those people wouldn’t have died at Parker’s Palace.”
My head snapped up. He was on the self-pity train after all. “Listen up, pal,” I said, stalking toward him. “You cannot change the fact that those people died. Getting blown up in a potato chip factory hurt like fucking hell, but I lived. I still figured it out in time, and we saved a lot of lives that night.”
“You could have figured it out sooner if we hadn’t—”
“Snap out of it!” My voice was louder than I intended. “We did our jobs, you and me. You were ordered to stop me because I was a threat. I don’t like it, but I accept it, and if you need to hear it, I forgive you. I did my job by not dying, and by stopping the asshole who set up the benefit attack in the first place. Three hundred people could have died that night instead of sixty-four. Weigh it.”
He looked up, searching my face, and in his I saw just how scared he was. Scared of being kicked out of the Triads because of his injury. Scared of losing the only career he knew, the family he’d built, and the life he’d fought so hard for. I didn’t know Tybalt Monahan well—hardly at all before the last few weeks—but I swore to myself I’d do what I could for him.
“You know,” he said, “you sound like a Handler sometimes. Sure you aren�
�t bucking for a promotion?”
I snorted. “Not on your life, pal. I’m grateful to the Triads for my training and my knowledge, but after this is all settled, I’m out of here.” The words came out before I realized I’d made that decision. To get away from all this shit and try to be normal, even if only for a little while.
As if. Unless we found another city with a tap into the Break, we couldn’t stay away long. Chalice, my host body’s former owner, had been away for years, and the loss of her tap had driven her to depression, which later resulted in her suicide. I had no desire to fall into that pit, or see Wyatt do the same. We’d both died enough for a lifetime.
“Do you really think they’ll let you quit?”
The question hung between us for a moment. It wasn’t mocking or sarcastic, and it was a damned good question. I’d tried once, right after defeating Tovin. Letting everyone think I’d died in the factory fire had been attempt number two, and that wasn’t working, either.
“What did they always tell us at Boot Camp?” I asked. “The job ends when we’re dead. Seems to me I’ve been given the pink slip, but shit keeps happening to bring me back in to consult. The person they trained, beat the crap out of, and forced to kill another person in order to graduate? She’s dead. I think Kismet and the brass just need to get their fucking heads around that concept.”
His face hardened as a high flush rose in his cheeks. “Your body died, yeah, but not the things you know. Look at it from our side, Stone. It’s like having a how-to manual floating around out there, full of every method of defeating the Triads and revealing Dregs to the unsuspecting world, and we can’t keep track of it. When you threatened to expose the brass last week? That was cutting our legs out from under us, and you know it. You didn’t give us a goddamned choice about neutralizing you.”
“You’re right,” I said.
He stared for several long seconds, mouth flapping open, words not coming. He hadn’t expected me to agree so readily.
“I’ve had that conversation with myself half a dozen times, Tybalt. I was looking for any possible way to save Rufus’s life, and I latched onto a really bad idea. You didn’t have a choice, and I get that. I also get that I have a lot of knowledge in my head, but after this mess is sorted, I meant what I said. I’m through being a hired gun for the Triads. At least, as they stand now, because if Leonard Call said anything to me I believed, it was that change is coming. We worked for ten years, but we won’t work like this much longer. Especially not at the rate we’re losing people.”
If possible, his expression became even stonier. “Yeah, Felix told me about Willemy.”
“The rookie we lost at the theater,” I went on. “The six Hunters we lost at Olsmill, not to mention Rufus’s entire Triad and mine. And we’re another Handler down until he’s fully recovered. We’re bleeding out right now.”
“You have some useful alternatives?” The corners of his mouth twitched. “Something more practical than resurrecting our lost friends and giving them superpowers?”
I heaved a tolerant sigh. “Not really, no. But you want to know something tragic, Tybalt? I seem to be the person all the city’s shit storms center around, but there’s really nothing so special about me. It’s random, blind bad luck that I’ve got these weird abilities now.”
Entirely coincidence that I’d died at all the first time. The night I was kidnapped by goblins, I’d gone to meet a gargoyle informant named Max, hoping to get any information he might have on why my Triad was set up and my partners killed. Max had always come through for me before; that night, he stepped back and let the goblins take me. If I’d arrived a few minutes later or earlier, or if Max had done something to interfere … No. I couldn’t change it, and I was stuck with this freaky new body.
“Tovin picked me as his target for no other reason than because he knew Wyatt loved me enough to agree to that spell,” I said, completing my spiel.
“No other reason?” His high forehead wrinkled as both eyebrows arched. “Stone, someone loves you enough to trade his freedom—hell, his soul—to give you a chance to live. Most of us would kill—no pun intended—to have someone love us that much.”
I felt a blush coming on and tried to redirect. “Your team loves you. It takes a hell of a friend to hack off your hand rather than let you die a monster.”
“Yeah, I love ’em, too, but I’m not about to go around kissing Milo for saving my life.” He didn’t smile, but I saw the humor in his eyes. It flickered a moment, then died as the fierce hardness returned. “Besides, they’ll have to replace me sooner or later.”
“Why? Kismet said you were trying to get back—”
“Into Boot Camp?” He snorted. “That’s a long shot at best. I have one fucking arm, Stone. They’d put me back in as a trainee, and I’d be dead by the end of the first three months. The shit they put us through, the obstacle course … I’m good, but I can’t manage that anymore.”
The idea of lumping a nearly four-year veteran back in with wet-nosed trainees infuriated me. Not giving him latitude because of an on-the-job disability, basically saying he was no longer worthwhile. I relaxed my hands before my fingernails broke skin. “How about we get through this current crisis?” I said. “Then we chat about alternative career options?”
He frowned. “You starting up your own freelance Triad operation?”
“Not at all, but I’m sure Milo didn’t save your life just so you could be tossed out on your ass. So?”
He nodded. Figuring the conversation had run its course, I started for the door. Halfway there, the oddest thought struck. Something I’d wondered in the past but never had the conversational opportunity to question. “Okay, I have to ask just one more thing.”
“Which is what?” He inclined his head, interested.
“What were your parents thinking when they named you Tybalt?”
Blankness hung on his face for a split second, then he smiled. “I chose it out of a book of Shakespeare when I was eleven. I liked that he was the Prince of Cats.”
“You changed your name when you were eleven?” Why not? I knew nothing about his past. Hell, he knew nothing about mine, either. It was just the way things had always been—Triads were not supposed to fraternize.
“No, I picked my name. I didn’t have one before.”
My lips parted. “What were you raised by? Wolves?”
“Something like that.”
I had every intention of getting more details out of him, but a soft knock preceded the door swinging open. Milo poked his head inside. “Lunchtime, kids.”
Tybalt groaned. “I’m not—”
“Gina said if you don’t get your ass out here and eat something, she’ll tie you up, blend it, and force it down your throat with a turkey baster.”
I tried to hide my laughter under a cough; Tybalt glared at me. The three of us rejoined the others. The dining table held two loaves of bread—one rye, the other wheat—a jar of mayo, lettuce, and several plastic containers of deli meat and cheese. Wyatt and Felix sat at opposite ends of the sofa, already munching on sandwiches.
Kismet handed a plate to Tybalt. On it was a neatly made sandwich, cut into four triangles, each section held together with a toothpick. The motherly way she buzzed around her injured Hunter was nothing like the ballsy, bellowing Handler she played in the field.
“I don’t get a sandwich, too?” Milo asked.
“You’ve got two hands,” Kismet shot back.
Milo looked mortified. Tybalt laughed, elbowed his friend in the ribs, and wandered toward the sofa with his lunch. I reached for the rye bread. Might as well eat something before all this went down.
Five minutes or so before the call was expected, I was in the bathroom, hands braced on either side of the porcelain sink bowl, glaring at myself in the mirror. A wave of nerves had hit, leaving me completely unsettled. I’d walked into unknown situations before, faced unknown enemies alone, and even tackled one particularly nasty hostage situation involving my late p
artner Ash and three Halfies. I had no reason to be so scared of this phone call.
No, that wasn’t true. Thackery had something that, if released, could be truly devastating to this city. He wanted us to give him two unknown vials of liquid, for his own unknown purposes. In an unknown location, with a very uncertain outcome.
I hated the word “unknown.”
I splashed cool water on my face and patted dry on a frayed towel. Compared to the rest of their apartment, the bathroom was oddly tidy. I guess they had some standards of cleanliness when it came to their throne. Even the mirror lacked water spots or toothpaste spray. I had a clear view of my face. The tension bracketing both brown eyes, lips pursed so tightly they were almost gone. Familiar and foreign—mine and hers. Sometimes I still glanced in a mirror and expected my old face—blond hair cut short and uneven, wide blue eyes, pale skin. Not the dark-haired, curvy, freckled-nose woman I’d been for nearly two weeks.
The door opened and shut. “You okay?” Wyatt asked. He shuffled behind me, and our gazes met in the mirror’s reflection.
“If I say yes, will you believe me?”
“Not while you’re hunched over the sink like you want to vomit.”
“What happens if we don’t get the crystal back?”
“We deal with it.”
“Deal with it?” I rounded in the tiny space, long hair whipping across my face. “I saw that entity in Tovin’s body, Wyatt. I have never been so terrified as when I looked into its face and knew it could snap me in half before I could blink. It was the ugliest, most evil thing I’ve ever seen. We can’t just deal with it.”
Warm palms framed my cheeks. I wrapped my hands around his wrists. His outward calm helped, even though I imagined his insides quaked as hard as mine. No one else had seen the Tainted elf; my description could never do the terror justice. He couldn’t understand.
“We. Will. Deal. With. It.” Each word from him fell like a promise, driven home by the gentle crackle of energy around us. I tried to believe in that promise.
Then the damned cell phone rang, and my stomach clenched. We parted. I fished the phone out of my jeans pocket as I led the way back into the living room. Five expectant faces watched me.
