by Dakota Banks
Maliha’s heart beat faster at the prospect of some action. She prowled the alleys. For the next hour, she saw nothing except some couples who’d slipped into the entranceways to make boozy love. Heavy clouds moved in, followed by a brief downpour. People on the streets ran for cover and did their best to crowd into the clubs, leaving the sidewalks less crowded. Maliha waited out the storm in the shelter of a recessed doorway. Rivulets of water ran down the alley, sending the filth down another block. Two condoms and a banana peel floated by near her feet. The storm ended as suddenly as it started, but colder weather had come in behind it. Maliha considered going home. With the sidewalks less crowded, the likelihood of finding someone in trouble decreased.
I’ll give it a little while, but it’s not exactly a starlit stroll anymore.
As she rounded the corner of a new alley, suddenly a motion-activated spotlight came on about halfway down. Two men stumbled into the light. One pinned the other up against the wall, and she saw the glint of a knife in the light.
“Stop!” She ran toward the men, racing the movement of the knife. She yanked the man’s knife hand back sharply and twisted it, hearing bones in his arm break. She banged his head into the brick wall and stepped out of his way as he fell to the ground unconscious. Damage had already been done by the attacker. The victim slid down the wall, bleeding heavily from a wound to the abdomen.
Maliha searched the victim’s pockets, found a cell phone, and called 911. After the call, she put pressure on the injured man’s wound. She’d have to stay until an ambulance arrived, not an ideal situation, but the knifed man’s only chance.
She heard a whimpering noise from outside the lighted area and turned her head to check. Just as she did, a man came hurtling out of the dark at her.
“What did you do to my brother, bitch!”
He collided with her. She was on her knees in the wet alley, bent over the man who was bleeding, and his impact sent her sprawling. Then he was on top of her and punched her in the side with his fist.
“I’m going to kill you!” he screamed in her face.
She brought her elbows up and hit him sharply on both sides of his head. She pushed him off her and scrambled to her feet.
“I don’t have time for this,” she said, dragging him over to the wall. “Sit still and shut up.” A quick punch to the face ensured that he did just that. Maliha went back to compressing the blood flow from the man she was trying to save.
The whimpering got louder.
“Is there someone else out there? An ambulance will be here soon. If you can come over here into the light, do it.”
The wounded man opened his eyes, half slits filled with pain. “My wife . . .” Blood dripped from the corners of his mouth.
Maliha heard a dragging noise and then saw a woman, mouth gagged, wrists tied, bone projecting from an open break at her ankle, trying to wriggle across the ground.
“Your wife’s fine,” Maliha said. “She’s here with me. Hang in there. Help’s coming.”
Maliha pulled the woman over close to her, removed the gag, and cut through the plastic ties.
“Oh my God! Is Steve dead? Is my husband dead? Oh my God!”
“Calm down. He’s not dead. What’s your name?”
“Belle.”
“Belle, do you think you can press here,” Maliha said, indicating the bleeding wound, “if I move you closer?”
“I think so . . .” Belle slipped into unconsciousness.
Maliha heard two sirens approaching.
Time to get out of here. She ripped off a strip of the shirt of the man she’d told to shut up, folded it into a square, and pressed it on Steve’s wound. It was saturated with blood by the time she unwound the scarf from her head. She ran the scarf under his body and tied it over the cloth square as the sirens grew louder. The delicate silk and soaked cloth didn’t provide enough compression. She squatted next to Steve. If she didn’t keep manual pressure on, he would bleed out. Maliha glanced at Belle, wishing she hadn’t lost consciousness.
I’ll bet they’re tourists. She comes to Chicago happily married and goes home a widow. Not if I can stop it.
Headlights turned in at the end of the alley, reflecting in the puddles and giving the impression of four headlights staring her down. The police car was first, followed by the ambulance. The muscles in Maliha’s legs ached to do what she’d always done—run away, keep her secret.
The car pulled up close, adding its lights to the alley spotlight. Two officers got out, weapons drawn, and remained behind their open car doors. Maliha kept her face down.
“Move away and get down on your knees!”
Looking at it from their point of view, she knew it looked bad. Here she was armed, bloody-handed, with four bodies on the ground.
“I’ll move as soon as the paramedics take over. Four people are alive, this man is critical,” she said.
“Medics will move in as soon as you’re down on your knees. Do it now!”
Reluctantly Maliha moved away several feet. She knew the next step was to be handcuffed and taken in for questioning, and she couldn’t allow that. Every second of delay meant more of Steve’s blood where it didn’t belong, on the outside of his body.
Nothing else to do.
She turned and ran at Ageless speed toward the empty end of the alley. The human eyes watching saw her vanish.
Shit! The camera in that patrol car doesn’t have human eyes.
Several blocks away, after her scale rebalanced for two lives saved, she considered going back and destroying the camera in the patrol car.
Too late now. It’s up to Amaro to save my skin.
Chapter Four
“Are you out of your mind?” Amaro said. It was 3 A.M. He was tapping away at his computer, trying to hack into the Chicago Police Department’s files, looking for the digital images of Maliha’s retreat. “How do you know there was a camera in the squad car? Do they upload wirelessly?”
The edge in his voice triggered a low, dangerous tone in hers.
“I stopped to help people in trouble. I do that. The man was injured and his wife was going to be raped. They would probably have been killed. Sound familiar? I didn’t hear any complaints when I saved Rosie.”
Amaro grunted. “Do all of the squad cars have dash cams?”
“I don’t know. I think so. The PODs are wireless, so maybe the dash cams are too. That’s your area, not mine.”
PODs, or police observation devices, were surveillance cameras in public areas throughout Chicago, ranging from obvious ones the size of mailboxes with flashing lights to micro-PODs, unobtrusive cameras mounted on rooftops or light poles.
“I have to get the POD stuff too?”
“No. I’m sure I’ve shown up there dozens of times, but I know where they are and I never show my face uncovered while wearing this.” She had not changed out of her leathers and Steve’s blood was starting to dry on her. “So I’m just another freak running around this city.”
“You know what,” Hound said, “I think you just got restless and went out looking for trouble. Now we’re going to see your lovely ass frame-by-frame on YouTube. You know, we’ve all broken the law for you. You get caught, so do we.”
“Why, do you think I’ll break under questioning and turn you all in for a few lollipops? You’re missing the point here. What do you think would happen if the military got hold of me? I’m a readymade super soldier, and they’re not going to listen to any crap about demons. I’d be drugged and experimented on to find out how I work. Wait till they find out I live a long time, too. They could pass me down from one generation of scientists to the next.”
She pictured herself strapped to a table, a group of scientists clustered around, and sharp instruments gleaming within reach.
My own death by a thousand cuts.
“You think I don’t fear the same thing?” Yanmeng said. “China, Russia, and America have studied remote viewers as intelligence tools. My only advantage if I’m caught is tha
t I’m already halfway into the grave.”
“Hey, don’t talk like that,” Amaro said. “You’re gonna be around when I have great-grandkids.” The conversation veered into Amaro’s lack of a wife to get the whole great-grandkids thing going.
“I’m going to go get cleaned up,” Maliha said. Her friends were back to being themselves.
As she headed for her room, Maliha wondered why no one had asked about what seemed to be her most glaring failure of the night.
Why didn’t I get rid of the camera as soon as I saw the headlights of the patrol car? Speed to the car, blast the camera, and speed away. The second mugger shouldn’t have caught me by surprise, either. Losing my edge?
Maliha cringed at the thought of having been sent sprawling by such an unworthy opponent. It was so unsettling she hadn’t mentioned it.
Mishandled that man’s wound, too. He was just bleeding, damn it. A loss of focus? Maybe I should go back to Master Liu’s for more training. Too ashamed to tell him the reason, though. Her cheeks burned at the thought of facing him.
By the time she came back to join the conversation, Maliha had made a decision.
“Hey, got some results,” Amaro said as soon as she entered the room.
“Tell me the bad news.”
“I found the digital upload on the department’s servers and squashed it. I wrote over it with some military-grade static. The segment was still on the hard drive in the squad car, so I deleted it and gave it the static treatment. No one’s going to recover anything from it.”
“Great. Amaro to the rescue!”
He frowned. “Not exactly. The video segment was viewed before I erased it. We could still be okay, unless the viewer made a copy on something like a flash drive I can’t reach.”
“Oh.”
There was silence that stretched out uncomfortably.
“I think we should all get the hell out of here,” Hound said. “Scatter.”
“I second that motion,” Amaro said.
“Third,” Yanmeng said.
“Let’s do it,” Maliha said. It was the decision she’d come to earlier, but she was pleased that they’d come up with it by themselves.
Chapter Five
Elizabeth put her face close to the window of the Nine Lives Pub in Washington, D.C., looking in. It was a rainy Wednesday evening and only 8 P.M., a time more suited for dinner at one of the many restaurants in the Adams Morgan neighborhood rather than staking out territory in a bar. Pub crawls didn’t build up until later at night. There were a few customers at scattered cocktail tables, their heads close together, their eyes displaying the shine of alcohol and desire.
Couples stopping for a drink or two before heading home to make love. They’re already paired and don’t need to join the flesh parade later on.
She breathed on the window and drew a heart on the fogged area with a blood red fingernail filed to a point. Pulling open the heavy wooden door, she stepped inside. The air smelled of cheese dip and salsa. There were bowls on each small table, along with a basket of chips. The walls hadn’t been painted for years, and since the place was formerly a smoking establishment, they were coated with a smoke film that looked substantial enough to support the ceiling all on its own.
She flipped back the hood of her raincoat, revealing blonde hair that fell in loose curls to her shoulders. Her skin, which she prized above all, was as white as if the sun had never kissed it, and free of imperfections. Elizabeth slowly unbuttoned her coat, shook it out, and hung it on a peg on a rack near the door. By the time her stunning figure, in a sheath dress the same color as her fingernails and lips, had been displayed fore and aft, she could have her pick of men in the room. But that wasn’t why she was here tonight. When she did prowl, it wouldn’t be in a bar with congealed cheese dip on the tables.
Elizabeth sat at the bar. The bartender, trying to be nonchalant, finished wiping a section of the bar before he came over to take her order.
“What can I get you to drink, honey?”
She waved away the prospect of a drink order with a small gesture of her hand. “I’m here for a meeting in the back room.”
The bartender went to a curtained doorway and spoke to someone behind the curtain. He waved Elizabeth over with a nod of his head.
Behind the curtain were three security guards. One grabbed Elizabeth’s arms and raised them over her head. Another searched her with a metal detector wand followed by a lingering, manual search. She pursed her lips and put up with it.
If my demon Tirid hadn’t ordered me to do this, I’d . . .
She allowed herself images of her pale skin streaked with the guards’ blood and their brains splattered against the walls, but it wasn’t as satisfying as the real thing.
“Passport,” the oldest of the guards said.
“Sorry, didn’t bring it. Doesn’t go with my outfit,” she said.
The guard tensed and drew back his hand as if to strike her. His face reddened.
Let the fun begin.
Her nostrils widened and she noticed a fresh scratch on the man’s arm. She could smell his blood. Her eyes dilated with pleasure. Come to me, Red.
One of the other guards pushed Red away. “No damage to the package.”
Red’s shoulders drooped in disappointment. He had no idea what had just been averted. The three huddled around a computer monitor, looking at her and then back at the screen. They had to be satisfied with the visual match to whatever grainy photo they had of her on the screen. Red motioned her forward, and she walked with him down a short hallway. At the end was a steel door with a retinal security scanner and an intercom. Red pressed the intercom switch.
“She’s here, sir. She’s uncooperative and wouldn’t show any ID. I recommend you not see her.”
There was a slight pause, and a smile began to spread across Red’s face.
“Send her in.”
Red grumbled under his breath, but moved his eye up to the retinal scanner. Elizabeth was thinking along the lines of poking out his eye and holding it up to the scanner herself if he wasted any more of her time.
It’d work as long as the eye is fresh. After a while, the vitreous clouds up so the scanner can’t read the retina through the murky gel. I wonder if the dead eye could be refilled with fresh fluid. After all, they do it on live people. I’ll have to experiment with that sometime.
The steel door slid back. Red grabbed Elizabeth’s arm and tugged her inside. She reached out with her other hand and drew her fingernail across the back of his hand. Blood welled and he let her go, startled. He pushed her ahead of him instead.
The room was sparsely furnished with a conference table, soft lights that circled the ceiling, gleaming steel walls, and a small but well-equipped bar in a far corner. One man sat at the table. There was none of the dinginess of the Nine Lives Pub that fronted this place.
“That’ll be all,” the man at the table said.
“But . . .” Red started. The man’s raised eyebrows convinced him to close his mouth and leave.
Elizabeth sighed.
“Sorry to put you through that, Elizabeth. Do you have a last name?”
“Yes.”
When the name wasn’t forthcoming, the man said. “You can call me Fred. Fred Smith.”
She knew exactly who he was, and his name was not Fred Smith. She’d worked hard to find the channels that led to this meeting, and she would have walked out on anyone else.
No harm in playing along with this little identity game for now.
Elizabeth walked over to the bar, poured herself a double Chivas Regal, neat, and sat opposite Fred at the table. A chill rode up her spine, a very enjoyable one.
This is a place where deals are made, where power oozes out of the walls, where lives are built up or torn down.
“A Scotch drinker, eh? You should have asked. I would have gotten out the good stuff.”
Elizabeth shrugged. She wasn’t picky about her drink and had just taken something to appear companionable.
She was going to be spending a lot of time in this man’s company.
He poured himself the same drink, came over to her side of the table, and perched on the edge of it. They toasted to friendship. He looked down her dress while she checked out his flat stomach and broad shoulders.
Not bad. At least the sex should be tolerable.
Elizabeth put her hand on his knee, answering the unspoken question. She wanted Fred relaxed and confident that he’d already charmed his visitor.
“I have something to offer you,” she said. “A secret weapon to use against your opponents.”
“What makes you think I need a secret weapon? My relationships with my enemies are all civil. We manage.”
“Then why did you use the term enemies?”
“It’s a common . . . what are you selling, some new type of armament?”
“In a way.”
“Get to the point, or I’ll get the guard back in here to soften you up. Come to think of it, it might be fun to do it myself.” Fred shifted positions enough to show that he was wearing a shoulder holster underneath his jacket. She’d already spotted it, but having it in view made her next move easier. She rose from the table, snatched the gun, and pointed it at him. It all happened so fast that he didn’t even feel the touch of her hand slipping into his jacket. When he got the picture, he put his drink on the table and raised his hands.
“That wouldn’t be wise,” she said, “for you or the guard. I can take care of myself.”
Her voice was calm but devoid of warmth, and carried the utter certainty that she would follow through.
She put the gun on the table. Fred went back to his chair and sat down. She was pleased to see that he was cautious but not overly intimidated. He wasn’t so much yielding to her as wanting her out of his space. When he sat down, he reached for the gun. Her hand shot out and claimed it, but then she let him take it back, knowing he was doing so with her permission. She glared at him across the table for a moment and then continued as if nothing had happened. He picked up his drink and sipped it, reevaluating her over the rim of the glass.
