by Dakota Banks
“Each guest area is equipped with a locking safe.”
“Into which I will put my pocket change. The hotel safe, please.”
“Yes, of course. I’ll have to get a key made for you.”
She had been counting on his cooperation, and he came through. He took Maliha into a small room where she had her fingerprint scanned and her photo taken. A few minutes later, a guard handed her a key, then gave her a slip of paper with her safe box number on it. She memorized it and he threw the paper into a shredder.
“No one else can use this except you. Let’s go try it out.” They went to the vault room, where there was an armed guard posted.
“I’m impressed with the security here,” Maliha said. Mr. Eliades beamed.
I hope I don’t have to kill him. He may be a creep, but he’s been a useful creep.
She inserted the new key into a slot near the door and pressed her finger on the pad. Up popped her photo and a positive identification. The guard swung open the thick vault door.
I’m in.
She considered the situation for the worst-case scenario. She’d have to take out the armed guard first. Mr. Eliades was next. Last, she’d have to go back to the room where her key was made and kill the guard while Amaro removed her information from the hotel’s computer.
Three possible deaths for this one shard. Deaths of people who aren’t killers. Wonder what Anu would think of that, if it all goes wrong.
Amaro remained by the door, talking to the guard and Mr. Eliades. He was creative with small talk, and kept their attention focused.
Maliha removed Lucius’s key from her handbag. The box number was encrypted in the microengraving, but Amaro had deciphered it. She went to that box and opened it with Lucius’s key. Inside were a letter and a diamond shard. She tucked the letter into her bag, but stared in dismay at the shard. It was roughly rectangular, about two inches by twelve inches. There was no way it was going to fit into her small evening bag. It was also a shock because it meant that the lens was bigger than she thought. From the pieces she’d already retrieved, she thought it was about seven inches in diameter.
There must be some whopper pieces out there. Makes sense, since the Tablet of the Overlord is a foot high. I had this shard in my hands once before, but didn’t remember the size. Too busy trying to get out of the sucking sand pool.
Like the other shards, this one was a quarter of an inch thick. It had a glossy surface and underneath there were thousands of facets reflecting light, as though it had been carved from the inside.
“Sweetie, would you come over here? I could use your help.”
Amaro excused himself and came into the vault, blocking the view from the doorway with his body. She pointed at the shard and he saw the problem right away. He picked it up, tucked it under his vest, and slid it into an area covered by the jacket. Maliha quietly pushed the box closed and removed the key.
Then they moved a few steps away and inserted Maliha’s key in her numbered safe box. Amaro unfastened the diamond pendant and bracelet Maliha was wearing and put them in the box. The two men near the vault door were now watching.
“Your selection of jewelry shows a perceptive eye, Ms. Winters. The shopkeeper asked me to convey his appreciation of your taste,” Mr. Eliades said.
“Thank you. These pieces are already among my favorites.”
She and Amaro walked out together, Amaro with a little less grace than usual, one arm pinned to his side.
Amazing. Body count 0.
Chapter Eleven
Maliha stayed at the Royal Dawn Hotel for three more days, making certain that there wasn’t the slightest suspicion that she’d raided a safe box that didn’t belong to her.
Technically, it did, because Lucius gave me the key willingly. Proving it would be tough, though.
Amaro stayed with her in her villa, arrangements any romantically inclined couple would make. Most of the day he spent working from her living room, but was on call for making appearances around the hotel with her. They had one very public kiss for authenticity, and there was a lot of touching of arms, shoulders, waists.
When she’d rescued him he was sixteen years old, and he spent a lot of time around her. Predictably, he developed a crush. After all, despite her true age, she appeared only a few years older than he was. When his sister Rosie married young and moved out of Maliha’s care, she pushed Amaro out on his own, too. No way was she going to become the ultimate cougar, three hundred years older than her inexperienced prey. Amaro discovered girls his own age, and the crush faded. Maliha thought he still had feelings for her, though, at his age of thirty-four.
Staying with him under these conditions, she was afraid his interest would be renewed. He was no longer a naïve boy, but a handsome, worldly, and well-built man.
Charming and sexy. Looking more irresistible by the hour. Damn, I haven’t been laid in a long time. But he’s the baby of the team. Hands off. I’ve got enough trouble in my love life. One man in hell and another one who maybe belongs there. What am I going to say to Jake when we finally get together?
So they staged a pretend breakup. Amaro moved out and took his own accommodations. She told him to stay two or three weeks and enjoy himself. She’d seen the way the women eyed him and figured he’d have his hands full as soon as the word of the breakup got around. She really did owe him something for breaking up his cruise with Trixy.
Maliha called Hound. He said Yanmeng had checked in from Sri Lanka, where he was staying with Buddhist monks. His wife, Eliu, was in Hawaii working on a freelance story. Maliha told him about Amaro’s situation.
“One thing that’s still up in the air is Arnie Henshaw,” Hound said. “No living relatives, no girlfriends that I’ve been able to find. He’s dropped off the grid; so far he didn’t even leave a shadow behind. Sure you don’t want me to go to Antigua?”
“Keep looking locally. I have a very bad feeling about this. I don’t think Arnie’s sipping drinks on the beach.”
“Okay, but it’s going to have to be a backburner job. I have a high-priority case.”
Hound’s work as a private investigator included secret work that he did for the government. She’d found out about that not long ago. Hound liked to joke that he got the job through Affirmative Action. For all she knew, it was true. After all, he was an African-American veteran.
“I hope they’re paying you well,” she said.
“More than I earn from you.” He hung up before she could respond. She didn’t pay the members of her team. They survived on perks like the credit cards, some cash bonuses, access to her condo, and her support anywhere they needed to travel. Amaro and Hound had their own outside incomes. Yanmeng didn’t, but his wife still worked.
By choice or necessity? I’d better make sure it’s by choice. Why aren’t I paying these people for their time? Just because they’re my friends doesn’t mean they should lose money by helping me out.
Maliha made a dignified exit from the scene, before Amaro could start playing around with the other female guests. She retrieved her jewelry from the vault, and had to suffer through Mr. Eliades’s exuberant sympathy for her romantic spat.
He’s mourning the fact that I cut my visit—and my spending—short.
She joined a charter tour to Beijing and paid the guide to let her go off on her own and explain to the others that she’d taken ill and was in a medical facility. She took buses on roads that grew less maintained, and finally walked the last fifty miles to her destination, the XiChan Monastery. She hadn’t been to the area since she was twenty-six years old, yet the surroundings looked familiar. Maliha wasn’t interested in the landmark monastery.
After pausing to set aside her warm clothing, she started up a nearby mountainside wearing thin white pants and a matching shirt, barefoot. She followed a trail that few could perceive. It was snowing by the time she neared the top.
Maliha saw a figure standing up ahead, obscured by the snowfall. The mark on her left arm, the Chinese
character shou, meaning long life, began to heat up and glow, just as it had on the day it was branded into her skin. It was the mark of her martial arts school, and it had never healed like other wounds to her Ageless body. She stopped a few feet from Master Liu. She could see him clearly now, a young bare-chested man wearing white pants as she did, in prime condition. He had a bucket in one hand. He’d been picking berries from bushes where only a few remained this late into winter.
Maliha dropped to her knees and bowed her head.
“Grandfather,” she said.
“My child.”
When she looked up, Master Liu was clothed in heavy robes. His face was wrinkled and wisps of white hair stood up from his head. His white, rheumy eyes fixed her with a blind stare. One of Master Liu’s abilities as an Ageless was to change his appearance. She believed she was looking at the true version now.
“Master, I seek your wisdom,” she said.
“Come in out of the wind,” he said. “It’s good to see you.” He held out his arm to her and she took him by the elbow as if she were supporting a frail old man.
She flashed back to Hound’s description of Master Liu: He’s some ascetic hermit who counts snowflakes on a mountain in China and dips his balls in ice water for the hell of it. She almost giggled. Almost.
He took her inside the school, where a student maintained a small fire. It didn’t do much to warm the large room. Master Liu taught tolerance to the elements and humility in the face of nature, which is why Maliha had worn only thin clothing.
“Student, bring a warm robe for my guest. She is a disciple of this school.”
Maliha raised her eyebrows in surprise.
Master Liu shrugged. “I’m mellowing in my old age,” he said.
The student, a boy of about sixteen, returned with a heavy robe and slippers for Maliha. She wondered who his demon was, since Master Liu only taught the Ageless.
He was the oldest Ageless Maliha knew, at least five thousand years old. He had been a priest of Anu’s in Sumerian times. He didn’t want to turn against his demon, even though he hated the evil works he participated in by training assassins, because he wanted to remain immortal. He was convinced that Anu would return to Earth someday, and wanted to be alive at that glorious moment so he would once again be Anu’s priest. Although he wouldn’t turn rogue, he supported Maliha by taking no action against her. They both knew that if his demon ever ordered him to kill her, he would do it.
“I’ve come here because I . . .”
“You’ve come because you are soft,” he interrupted. “I felt it in the way you moved when you walked next to me. Did you think I needed your arm to steady me? Your first task will be to join the advanced students.”
I have missed a few workouts, and when I was fighting Xietai, he had a few moves I hadn’t anticipated and should have.
“When you are no longer soft, we’ll talk.”
Maliha returned to her white-uniformed student days of training, discipline, and humble work at the school. He was right—she was soft. After three weeks of hard training, she knew the refresher had been good for her.
She talked to Master Liu about the recent events in her life, everything from the tide of deaths in her last case to killing Yanmeng’s son to Abiyram’s death and her suspicions about Jake. His answers left more questions in her mind—he told her she was walking the mortal path, something she will eventually see clearly in her mind, as clearly as the lines created by the Nazca people in the plateaus of southern Peru.
Images floated into Maliha’s mind of huge forms in the sand that made sense only when viewed from above. The lines were made by removing the pebbles that covered the plateaus to reveal white or pink sand underneath. Intricate hummingbird, spider, and lizard patterns, among others, might have been sacred paths for people to walk as they prayed for fertility or rain in the near-desert climate. At least, that was one theory. Others involved alien landings at Nazca, with some lines serving as landing strips and the multitude of glyphs as welcoming sights for aliens to see from above.
“I recommend the Condor for you,” he said. “You must walk it without rest and without water. It’s a complex glyph and a challenge, but there are times you will see with wonderful clarity. Your feet may tread upon sand but your mind will not remain on this plane of consciousness.”
“You talk as if from experience.”
“The Nazca people were contemporaries of mine. The rest you must discover on your own.”
He’s not much for practical guidance. Looks like I’ll have to walk the Condor in the future.
“Tell me about Jake,” she said. “He came here for training, yet you didn’t accept him into your school. He doesn’t carry the shou.” She touched the symbol on her arm, which remained warm—sometimes hot—whenever she was with Master Liu.
“You took a pledge the night you got that symbol.”
“Come here, student.”
She hesitated, not sure Master Liu was talking to her. No one else moved, so she walked forward and knelt.
“You have proven yourself worthy. Today you become a disciple of this school. My other disciples,”—he indicated the line of people standing behind her with a nod in their direction—“have gathered from around the world to witness this ceremony. Let me hear your pledge.”
Pledge? I don’t know any . . .
Her mouth opened anyway and words tumbled out. “I swear to honor you as my grandfather, to do nothing to bring shame to you or the school, and to never stray from the teachings of this school.”
The senior disciple, standing next to Master Liu, approached her, and suddenly she saw that he had a glowing branding iron in his hand.
“This is the character shou, meaning long life,” the senior disciple said. “It is the symbol of this ancient and proud school.” He pulled up her left sleeve and pressed the iron high on the outside of her shoulder. Pain shrieked through her, but she didn’t cry out or move. Her Ageless skin didn’t heal the branding mark, nor was her pain diminished after the brand was removed. There was a price to becoming a disciple of Master Liu. She knelt, dry-eyed, as wisps of smoke rose from her flesh.
“I accept you as my daughter,” Grandfather said.
“I remember,” Maliha said.
“Jake Stackman did not take the pledge.”
Maliha felt as though she’d been stabbed through the heart by an icicle.
There is nothing in that pledge that he should object to. . . .
“Why not?”
“I cannot say.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“The subject is closed.”
“Did he kill Abiyram Heber? Should I stay away from Jake?”
Master Liu closed his blind eyes. It was a signal of dismissal.
“May I ask a different question?”
His eyes opened. She was free to continue.
Thinking ahead to a time when she might have all of the shards assembled into the Great Lens, she asked Master Liu what would happen if all seven of the demons were destroyed. She was thinking primarily of Lucius, trapped in his demon’s hell, but the question was bigger than that: What is the future of humanity without the chaotic and deadly hindrance of the Utukki, the demon offspring of Anu?
“Will all the inhabitants of a demon’s hell die with him?”
“They are all already dead. You are asking if they will all be brought back from death. My question to you is what would happen if the population of the Great Above suddenly surged by billions of people, most of whom knew nothing of the modern world and were barbaric in nature? How could we cope? The Underground is not a physical location in a cave somewhere. It has an unlimited capacity for damned souls. To absorb them back into the Great Above would be the end of things.”
He’s right. It would be a bloodbath.
“Anu could put them somewhere.”
“Now you are presuming to tell a god what to do. Learn humility, my daughter. It is enough that Anu has given you the Great Lens an
d the tablet, the means to free the world from the demons’ evil work. Look to the future, not the past.”
Maliha hung her head. It was the clearest answer to the fate of Lucius that she’d heard so far, and even worse, it made sense.
Master Liu reached out and touched her hand. “I have news to give you. My disciple Daniel Harper possesses a shard. You will have to pry it from his hands if you are to retrieve it. He will be difficult to overcome, but if you approach him as a woman rather than a rogue you may have better luck.”
“Thank you for your advice and help, Grandfather.” A tear slipped down Maliha’s cheek
“Come, daughter,” he said, gently wiping away the tear, “let’s spar. Movement and discipline will keep your mind focused.”
She walked to the training room, to find him already there, in his guise of the young bare-chested man. His earthy appeal made warmth blossom in her center.
When I get my hands on Jake! I don’t care what kind of bad stuff he’s been doing—at least not until I’ve worn him out. I’m ready for that challenge.
“You must have been a real lady-killer in your time, Master,” she said.
“A stain on my spirit.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, he was swinging a sword at her.
He thought I meant that literally.
After a dogged three hours of sparring as a final test, Master Liu was satisfied that Maliha was no longer “soft.” He pushed her back into the world by telling her that his school was not to be used as a tourist hotel. She took the good-natured hint, bundled the few items she’d brought with her in a backpack, and headed out on foot across China in the middle of the night.
Chapter Twelve
Back in Chicago, Maliha went to her haven, the second condo she owned in the building, on the forty-eighth floor.
The lock to the room used retinal identification. Maliha put her eye to the reader and the door slid open. Bright spotlights came on inside, bright enough to blind Maliha if she hadn’t prepared by closing her eyes and covering them with her free hand. Letting a minimal amount of light in through her fingers and opening her eyes in slits, she sprang across a steel-lined foyer and tapped a code into a panel on the opposite wall at lightning speed. That disabled a shower of darts propelled from the ceiling.
