Deliverance

by Dakota Banks

  Deliverance

  Mortal Path Book Three

  Dakota Banks

  Dedication

  To someone who’s always there

  for me, through joy and heartache:

  my husband Dennis.

  Love you, sweetie.

  Epigraph

  About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

  —ERNEST HEMINGWAY,

  Death in the Afternoon

  Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Author's Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  High praise for Dakota Bank’s MORTAL PATH

  By Dakota Banks

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Author’s Note

  Deliverance, the third adventure of Maliha Crayne and her friends, is an intensely personal book, digging into Maliha’s mind and her relationships with her friends and lovers (past and present). She realizes she’s not an independent force anymore, and has to open the door further to allow for her friends’ participation in her life. You’ll find that this book offers the same rich experience of action, paranormal elements, and drama as the previous two books, in addition to Maliha’s growth in relationships and personal understanding. Maliha’s caught in moral dilemmas at nearly every turn as she is forced to challenge long-standing ways in which she thinks and operates. She must adapt or die. Writing the book was an emotionally draining experience for both Maliha and for me.

  Visit me at www.dakota-banks.com for more information about the Mortal Path series, including its mythological background. Send me an email via the website, and you’ll get a prompt, personal reply. I’d love to hear from you!

  D. B.

  Chapter One

  Maliha Crayne placed her feet carefully on the old clay-tiled roof. Freezing rain made the passage treacherous. Xietai, the man she was chasing, seemed as sure-footed as a gazelle. She had already sent a tile sliding to the street six stories below.

  It was three in the morning, and although New York never sleeps, the residents of this neighborhood did. Most of them, anyway. As another tile clattered to the sidewalk, a window was flung open and a woman’s head appeared, her neck twisted to look up at the roof.

  “What’s goin’ on up there? Think yer goddamn Santa Claus or somethin’? Get the fuck off my roof!”

  With flat roofs all around, he has to choose one with tiles. Should have gone around and picked up his trail on the other side. Maliha—0, Xietai—1.

  Xietai had been in her sights twice before, and he’d eluded her. He ran a human trafficking ring, bringing Asian girls to America, and then sending American girls to Asia. Round-trip profits. Complicating matters was that Xietai was the son of one of Maliha’s dearest friends, Xia Yanmeng. Maliha planned to bring Xietai to justice, but with his record of confrontation, it was possible she’d have to kill him.

  Kill Yanmeng’s son. Not sure how he’d feel about that, even though the two of them are estranged. If my daughter, Constanta, had survived her birth and grown up evil, would I be hunting her?

  Maliha came to the end of the tiled roof and paused briefly. Xietai’s footprints led her on into the moonless night. Using her ability to view auras, she could see the outline of his footsteps and the tendrils of red and black twining together, rising from them. Normally she used her aural vision for a few seconds at a time, a quick check to see if someone was lying or to make sure she faced a truly evil person before plunging her sword into him. Constant viewing, as she was doing now to track Xietai, was draining. His aural footprints were clear, but her surroundings were a little out of focus. As long as Xietai kept out of her normal sight, he had an advantage.

  Maliha felt a touch on her shoulder, as soft as if she’d been brushed by a bird’s wing. Yanmeng was a remote viewer, and he was signaling her that he was viewing her now. He’d been trying to increase his remote presence to the point where he could move objects. He’d made some progress but it was erratic. She could extend her arm and make an L-shape with her fingers, the sign they’d agreed upon for him to withdraw, and he would immediately stop remote viewing her. At least, she trusted that he would.

  She didn’t make the withdrawal sign.

  It’s his son. Yanmeng’s not going to like this, but it’s not right to hide it from him.

  She swung over the edge of the roof, hung briefly by one hand, and dropped down to an adjacent flat roof. Landing with a forward roll to break the momentum of the fall, she put out a hand to avoid sliding on the patchy ice. She scraped the side of her hand raw on the rough roofing material. She wasn’t an accomplished traceuse—tracer—so her hands weren’t calloused. The man ahead of her was a highly skilled practitioner of parkour, a method of crossing obstacles in the most efficient way and shortest time.

  She ran barefoot, with loose black shorts, a black T-shirt, a belly bag with a few throwing stars secured inside so they couldn’t shift and hurt her, knives strapped to her thighs, and her thick black hair flowing behind her. It was late November, and an icy rain pelted her face and other exposed skin. Maliha wasn’t prepared for this pursuit, but when Xietai crossed her path, she had to try it.

  Maliha jumped to a building a dozen feet away. She rolled, then ran and dropped to the fire escape.

  Could he be Ageless?

  Her bare feet landed lightly on the fire escape’s icy stairs, and at each landing, she vaulted the railing to the next run of stairs. She dropped the last ten feet to the ground. Thin red wisps spiraled eerily up from slushy puddle he’d passed through. She cleared the puddle in a small hop. Ahead a wall loomed. He’d taken her down a dead-end alley. Using the momentum of her run, she stepped up the brick wall to a balcony, used a spring from the rail to power another handful of steps, and reached the next balcony. Eight balconies later, she muscled up to the roof.

  No good. Blind corner . . .

  Anticipating a trap, Maliha threw one of her knives, then ducked and rolled as a sword swung powerfully where her neck should have been. She lashed out with her second knife, scored a deep gash in Xietai’s calf, and felt the splash of hot blood on her hand.

  That should slow him down a little.

  Xietai took off into the night, running away before she’d come fully out of her roll. She retrieved her thrown knife from where it had landed. Her op
ponent took them down to street level. She was gratified to see a blood trail in the pale cone of light from a streetlamp.

  He bleeds too much to be Ageless.

  Then she spotted Xietai on the roof of a run-down theater, standing next to the marquee with its hundreds of broken bulbs. His aura was blacker than the night sky washed by city lights, and the spidery electric red web of his anger had intensified since she’d wounded him.

  This is it.

  One of them was going to die.

  She sped toward an alley a few buildings away on the theater’s left, using a burst of superhuman speed, a remnant of the time she spent as an Ageless assassin beholden to the Sumerian demon Rabishu. When she was a demon’s slave, she could maintain that pace effortlessly. Now she would grow weaker as she used it and have to rest before speeding again.

  Melting into the alley’s entrance, Maliha hoped that Xietai hadn’t seen her. At roof level, she paused to make sure her target hadn’t joined her there, and then found a secure observation point on the roof. Xietai was still there, with impatience starting to work on him. The pursuit had changed from a fast traverse to stealthy tracking, and she didn’t have to use her aura vision.

  Finally, advantage: Maliha.

  Maliha checked the rooftops for possible launching points. The only thing that caught her eye was a dilapidated billboard sign on the roof where he waited. She did the gap jump followed by a drop, her bare feet moving as silently as a sigh, taking her right to the base of the billboard. She climbed a few feet up the cross timbers of rotten wood.

  Xietai had moved out onto the metal frame of the marquee, facedown on one of the supports, peering around at the ground. He must have thought she was down there on the street. There was a sword fastened tightly across one shoulder blade, slanting toward the small of his bare, muscular back. From where she was, the scabbard looked bent, as though it conformed to his skin, something that would allow him flexibility for parkour.

  Maliha had two throwing knives and three stars. She could plant five bladed weapons in his back before he had a chance to rise. She had her throwing knives in one hand and stars in the other when Xietai suddenly rotated onto his back.

  Their eyes met. He pulled the sword from its scabbard and it came out in loose sections. A flick of his wrist brought the sections into alignment as a formidable weapon, longer than its scabbard.

  I want one of those.

  He strode onto the roof. Maliha threw her three stars to distract him as she got down to roof level. She saw with dismay that he swatted away the stars with his sword, and had to remind herself that he wasn’t Ageless, just superbly trained. The cloth dripping with blood wrapped around his calf was proof he was mortal. If he was Ageless, blood would have stopped flowing from his wound and it would have healed by now, leaving no trace. She ran toward him faster than his human eyes could follow. Veering away just out of reach of his sword, she swung around him and slashed behind his knees, going for crippling blows. Neither knife connected.

  He’d spun around and blocked them.

  He heard the rush of the wind when I used Ageless speed. Can’t sneak up on him. I’m in deep shit.

  He began fighting with both the sword and a knife he’d pulled from somewhere. Soon Maliha’s bare legs and arms ran with blood.

  Retreat? Master Liu says that humility is the best way to handle being overmatched. But not yet . . .

  On her knees, Maliha saw a way for one of her knives to weave in close to the core of his body. Feinting with the other knife, she closed in. If he didn’t go for the feint, her head would be too close to his knife to think about.

  She felt her knife strike in his gut, twisted it, and shoved it upward as far as she could.

  She caught a glimpse of metal as his knife descended, aimed to slip between two vertebrae in her neck and sever her spinal cord. With the power of his evil and anger behind it, she knew she would suffer a mortal wound.

  Instead of striking her neck, the blade’s angle changed a little.

  Yanmeng!

  He must have exerted all of the new force he’d been working on to give the knife a shove and save her from a fatal blow. She managed to slip away from the continuing path of the blade, but not before it ripped across her back, dragging its cutting edge, and peeling back her shirt, skin, and flesh.

  Xietai slumped to his knees, and she saw him wide-eyed and slack-jawed, surprised at being stabbed. She yanked her knife from just below his sternum and gave him a shove. He fell heavily to the rooftop. Immediately she straddled him and severed his spinal cord for a quick death.

  Maliha took a deep breath and savored her victory. She picked up Xietai’s sword, which was unresponsive in her hands. She couldn’t get it to collapse to the way she’d seen it hugging his back. Satisfied that the weapon died with its owner, she left the hilt cradled in his hand. She did take his knife, though, the one that had inflicted the painful tear on her back. Handling it reminded her that Yanmeng had faced a terrible decision—loyalty to her or to his own flesh and blood.

  Maliha used her ragged T-shirt and torn bra to bind her back wound. It left her in only a band of cloth across her breasts, black shorts and an empty belly bag, but that would have to do. The chase had taken her far away from her hotel, into an area where cabs weren’t swarming the streets, especially in the middle of the night. She would have to make it back on foot, keeping out of sight.

  She took a few steps experimentally. With her wound bound, she wasn’t losing much blood. Her back hurt like hell, but her feet were steady enough. She could do it, especially knowing that her wound would cease to bleed along the way.

  She thought about calling her editor, Jefferson Leewood, who knew her only as the fabulously successful novelist named Marsha Winters. She’d stopped in New York for a meeting with him yesterday, a meeting that now seemed far away in time and place.

  Jeff’s nice, but he’d insist on picking me up himself, and then he’d freak out when he got a look at me. He’s better off with his last view of me leaving his office, looking like a bankable author.

  On the sidewalk in front of the theater, Maliha gasped and staggered back against the brick wall. She slid down the wall, scraping her already torn back against the bricks, but barely noticed the pain.

  Chapter Two

  Maliha’s scale was in motion.

  She carried on her body a depiction of a balance patterned after the scales of justice, carved into her flesh by the fiery claw of her demon Rabishu. One pan of the scale held tiny images representing people she’d killed while serving as his assassin. The other pan held images of people whose lives she’d saved since she defied the demon and went rogue. The pans were seriously out of balance. Maliha was a long way from saving as many people as she’d killed, which was the only way she could reclaim her soul from Rabishu.

  As she sat transfixed by pain on the sidewalk, small figures left the “lives taken” pan and walked across her belly, leaving a trail of small footprints burned across her belly, like a splash of acid. The miniatures climbed into the “lives saved” pan, and the scale swung through a small arc on her skin to reach a new balance point. The reward for stopping Xietai’s slavery operation had been generous.

  Then came the aging. Whenever her scale rebalanced, she aged a little. The amount wasn’t always in proportion to lives saved, so she never knew what to expect. It was Anu, the main Sumerian god, pulling the string that tugged her through time. She judged by the strength of the pull that she’d aged only a month, if that.

  She gathered her legs under her and stood, now aware of the pain of her back, wounded by Xietai and freshly scraped by bricks. If any challenge presented itself on her way home, she wouldn’t be able to give a full-force response. There was no hurry to leave the area. It wasn’t likely that Xietai’s body on the defunct theater roof would be discovered until it began decomposing. Maliha moved into an alley and found that she had company, a homeless man snoring in a makeshift tent. Maliha didn’t cringe from the
homeless, as some did, because she’d been in similar situations herself during her more than three centuries of life. She was no stranger to living alone or living off the land when it served her purpose.

  Easing her body down to the ground at the entrance to his tent, she decided that she’d stay a few hours to recuperate. Scooting backward, she ended up just inside the filthy, torn fabric that served as the tent’s flaps. The odor assaulted her, the unwashed man, the alcohol, the tent that could have been a corpse winding, and the smell of urine. She tugged one of his blankets over to cover her cold legs and feet.

  Not too bad. Smells better than a demon, anyway. A lot better.

  She synchronized her breathing to the old man’s snoring first, then gradually slowed it and entered a healing meditation she learned from Master Liu. Giving her body the task of healing her back, she let her mind walk the loops of the glowing, golden infinity symbol she used as a meditation aid. As her mind filled with the radiant glow, what healing ability she had left from the time she’d been Ageless went to work, stopping the bleeding on her back and starting to knit together the edges of jagged tears in her skin.

  Coming out of the trance later, she stood and stretched. Her back made it clear to her that healing was nowhere near complete, but she could start back to her hotel with confidence without needing a cab. There was a bottle of water in the makeshift tent, and after she assured herself that the contents weren’t anything else questionable, she cleaned the blood from her limbs and face as best she could. The tent didn’t have a closet full of clothes, but she managed to find a ripe, rumpled T-shirt that she pulled on.

  She felt like a reverse Robin Hood, taking from the poor and giving to the rich, but made plans to return the next night. She hoped that he’d still be here, so that she could bring blankets, clothing, and some money. He’d slept through her entire intrusion.