Leave No Stone Unturned

by Michelle O'Leary

  When that moment came, he reached out for the grate, pulling the springed latches inward and lowering the covering to the floor of the room with quiet efficiency. Sliding out of the vent with the barest whisper of sound, he crouched by the wall and drew the knife from his waistband. Pausing, he listened again, tilting his head towards the door and then back to the sleepers. All quiet, all good.

  Straightening, he padded towards the bed on silent, bare feet, the knife held low and ready. But when he reached his prey, he paused, uncertain. The girl wouldn't be a threat—she was facing the wall, curled into a ball with her back to him. Claw lay sprawled on the bed, limbs relaxed, head turned away and exposing his throat as he snored.

  As if he was asking to die.

  Seth knew how he should kill him, had pictured it in his mind as he squirmed his way through the vents to this place, the darkness, the threat of discovery, the kill. In his mind, he'd seen Claw as an imminent danger, maybe feigning sleep or at least looking like he was ready to commit murder even with his eyes closed. He'd never imagine the man would look so peaceful, so defenseless.

  But if he turned away now and went back, Mag would break his neck without a second thought. He'd run out of choices the minute he'd called Mag's attention to himself. Do or die. It was that simple.

  Still, he hesitated, biting his lip and tasting blood. Then the girl whimpered in her sleep, kicking his heart into overdrive with fear, his body thrumming with it until he realized that she was still out. But she might wake up at any moment.

  Just a fat rat, he thought, and fixed in his mind the image of the man falling on the girl like a rabid animal. Feeling cold anger steady his hand, he lifted the knife, stepped forward smoothly, and thrust.

  He wasn't prepared for the blood. It spouted from the man like a fountain, spraying Seth in a hot, metallic mist. He also wasn't prepared for Claw's reaction. The man jerked and thrashed, his limbs flailing wildly as he gurgled on his last breaths. He never touched Seth, but the surprise of it, the shock of blood and violent movement, sent him over backwards onto his rump, the knife clattering out of his fist.

  Stunned, he stared with his mouth open as the mountain of flesh convulsed above him, the sounds of the man choking on his own blood a gruesome counterpoint to the thundering of his heart.

  Then the girl's face appeared, rising over the dying man like an apparition. Her face was too swollen and bruised to show much expression, but her mouth was open as she stared at the blood and shuddering flesh. Then she caught sight of Seth.

  At first, she simply blinked at him, eyes blank. Then comprehension swept over her battered face, widening her eyes and stretching her skin taut. She took a deep breath and let out a shriek that bounced wildly off the walls.

  Seth scrambled on hands and knees towards the vent as her screams echoed around him. Without grace or a thought for silence, he flopped himself down and wiggled backwards into the small passage, grabbing the grate and snapping it into place. Like a desperate animal, he squirmed and thrust himself backwards, listening to the girl screaming and to the huff and wheeze of his own panicked breathing.

  The response to her cry of alarm was swift and brutal. Seth heard them burst into the room, terror flooding his mind and wiping out all thought. He continued to wriggle, the instinct to survive too strong to freeze his muscles, but his heart nearly exploded with the sure knowledge that he was caught, caught, caught. With a moan, he ducked his head away from the light that came into the vent, as if they wouldn't see him if he couldn't see them.

  He expected the rough, raised voices, the sounds of violence and shouts for vengeance. What he didn't expect was the girl's shriek of agony and despair. His mind was still a blank of terror, but instinct made him slow, his motions taking on a careful stealth.

  Then he remembered.

  The knife.

  They'd swarmed into the room, had seen their dead leader, the screaming girl, the knife—and no one else. They hadn't asked her or hadn't believed her when she'd told them what had happened. Her death cry was their judgment.

  Seth had killed a man, and the girl had taken the blame for it.

  Scrambling away from the light and sound, Seth made his way into safer passages, pausing only when he was sure there was no danger. Then he huddled in on himself, the blood of his kill sticky on his skin. The heavy stench of it rose around him, the taste sinking like bile to the back of his throat. He was still for a long moment.

  Then he vomited, heaving until he passed out.

  * * * *

  Mag trained him. He learned fast, and he learned well. By the time he'd grown too large to fit in the vents, he'd added nearly a dozen to Mag's list of dead enemies. And he didn't stop there.

  The pack leaders had been amused by his first cut job and by that pack's mistaken identity of the killer.

  They started calling him ghost, for how he seemed to walk through walls and escaped detection. At first, they used the nickname with a sneer of amused contempt, but as he grew in size and skill, the sneers disappeared and the name gained a ring of respect. By the time he reached adulthood and Mag had taken over two thirds of the tunnel territory, the respect was joined by a large dose of fear, and ghost was something they whispered behind his back in sullen awe. And that wasn't the only thing they whispered.

  Seth knew what they said, knew why they watched him with such wary eyes. Part of it was his deliberate separation from them, the fact that he didn't join in on their laughter or conversations that weren't pack business. His position kept him apart, Mag's right hand man, the leader's assassin. He'd learned that his survival depended on getting the job done, and every one of his fellow pack members was a potential target—no sense becoming friendly with his prey. But a larger part of why they watched his every move was that they expected him to take over the

  pack, to murder Mag and assume leadership.

  But he wouldn't. He wanted something else from Mag. He wanted his freedom.

  One frigid night, not long after Mag had begun his training, the leader had led him to the surface. There, bundled and shuddering with deadly, bitter cold, he saw his future. Mag had pushed him into a lee of stone and pointed across the wasteland, the rock and sand that was fire by day and ice by night. Blinking wind-tears from his eyes,

  Seth looked—and stopped breathing. The stars had fallen, clustering in bright points of light in the cup of the mountains, like the palm of a hand. They lit the sky, some blinking off and on, some dancing, some changing colors in a festival of brilliance.

  "Wh-what is it?” he asked in awe and gratitude. He'd never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

  "Space port,” Mag growled, and dragged him back inside before they died of the cold. Of course, he then had to explain what those words meant, since Seth had no notion of space or what a port might be. His world was the tunnels, and nothing else had existed for him—until then.

  "I'm gonna take it someday,"

  Mag had told him with such confidence that Seth had believed him utterly.

  "Soon's I get a pack big enough."

  The idea was staggering and compelling. He became as obsessed as Mag with it, especially after he was allowed to join Mag when the leader met with the port authorities. The exchange was always the same—Mag would take a small group to the surface, where they'd be allowed to enter a vessel of such shining cleanliness that it made Seth's eyes burn and his head ache. Mag and the official would trade insults, then threats, and then they'd get down to making a deal. Mag wanted weapons, supplies, information. The official wanted to keep the tunnelers as far away

  from his port as possible, to keep them from defiling their pristine existence.

  It didn't take long for

  Seth's obsession to change, when he saw and heard what wonders could be had at the port and beyond. The most tantalizing of these was freedom. Freedom to find some place that he didn't have to watch his back even in his sleep, a place without tunnels or packs, a place where he could be anyone but Mag's assas
sin.

  He began dreaming about escaping the tunnels, but the port citizens would know he was a tunneler on sight—and smell—and he didn't have the first clue how to survive such an alien society. He didn't know the rules or the technology.

  Mag discovered his obsession and used it, promising Seth a ship and crew to take him anywhere in the galaxy, to teach him the rules, if he would help Mag conquer the tunnels and space port. So conquer they did.

  Until Nass, backed by the other pack leaders, slaughtered Mag in a public display of such brutality that it cowed even the fiercest pack member. Seth stood by and watched. He could do nothing else.

  Always choose you. Words to live by.

  * * * *

  The end of his life in the tunnels came with surprising abruptness. Seth knew Nass wouldn't trust him, that he'd want him out of the picture. He just never expected Nass to offer him everything he could ever want.

  After Mag's death, the pack leaders hadn't left him alone for a moment, nor had they dropped their guard for a second. Always escorted by at least five heavily armed leaders, Seth hadn't found his chance to escape yet, before he was brought before the new head of the pack.

  "Figure you know why you're here,” Nass barked as he looked Seth up and down from his position in Mag's iron chair.

  There was a wariness in his eyes that gave Seth a moment of grim satisfaction, followed by a sense of hopelessness. Nass wouldn't lead for long—he wasn't fearless enough, and he knew it. He'd never be able to hold this large of a pack together. It would break into a dozen, maybe two dozen groups, and Mag's dream of leading a conquering force into the space port would die.

  "Gonna kill me, I suppose,"

  Seth mused, keeping his tone and expression free of all emotion.

  Nass's eyes flickered, but he snorted and gestured as if waving the thought away. “And lose a first-rate cut man? Naw,” he scoffed.

  Seth knew it for a lie, even if Nass didn't mean to kill him today. He stared the man in the eye and didn't move, didn't blink. Nass shifted on the hard seat and glanced around at Seth's wardens with feigned casualness.

  "Gotta job for you. But maybe you still feel loyal to Mag, since you got his name and all. Still Mag's man, Terrik?"

  "I'm the pack leader's man.

  Mag didn't ask if I wanted that name."

  Nass grinned, its edges sharp, but it couldn't match the hunger of his old leader's rabid smile. Nope, he wouldn't last. “So you won't be lookin’ for a little payback?"

  It was Seth's turn to snort.

  "For what? For not holdin’ his own? Mag was gettin’ old.” He shrugged. “Bound to happen sooner or later."

  He spoke only the truth—there hadn't been any real bond between him and Mag, except a mutual respect and determination to survive. But he couldn't tell if Nass believed him. Didn't matter. Nass expected him to try for head of pack no matter what he said.

  "Won't mind doin’ a little cut work for me then, wouldja,” Nass stated rather than asked. “Got me a new deal with them port pissers. Seems they got somebody they wanna get rid of.

  Lucky me, I gotta ghost to send em."

  That gained him some chuckles from the pack leaders surrounding Seth, but they sounded strained.

  Seth suddenly wondered if the tension in the room had anything to do with him at all. The port authority didn't usually work new deals.

  But the bait was too much for him to resist. Nass offered him a way out, the means to escape, to fulfill his dreams of freedom. The alternative was a bloodbath in which he did his best to kill all the major players in the pack or die trying. He was good, but there were a hell of a lot of them.

  "No problem,” he said immediately. Just don't expect me to come back.

  They gave him a map of the place, directions on where to go and who to target, weapons, and cold weather protection. They even led him to a dilapidated ground vehicle, which they showed him how to operate. They were very accommodating, one and all. It made him damned nervous. But this was the opportunity he'd been waiting for all his life. He couldn't turn away from it now, even if his hackles stood on end the entire trip across the waste to the port.

  He should have listened to his instincts. Trying to curb his awe at the new, the different, the erotic, clean beauty of it all, he stuck to the shadows and made his way across the port settlement to his prey's location. Using the information given to him, he snuck into the living space and hunted for his target.

  The man was already dead. So were the rest of the occupants, two women and two children. A second after seeing the blood and the bodies, Seth's instincts woke to screaming life across his nerves, beating run, run, run

  with the hammer of his heart. He never got the chance.

  They'd been waiting for him.

  They stunned him, then threw him down on top of one of the dead women, his body twitching spasmodically and smearing blood into his skin, his clothes. Then they placed a cruel, curved weapon in his hands, before placing it in a sealed container. After which they propped him on his feet and dragged him around the place, from body to body. He learned later that they were planting his DNA and heat signature in the correct pattern for the killings.

  He learned a lot of things later. He learned that the clean beauty of the port was an illusion, masking a brutality that Mag would have been proud of. He learned about court systems and the justice of the worlds beyond his own. He learned that there were places as bad as the tunnels.

  But he still survived. It was all he knew how to do.

  Prisons hadn't been able to keep him for long—he was a fast learner on any world and became an accomplished escape artist. Catching him again and finding a jail he couldn't break out of was a serious challenge. So they eventually dumped him at Malthat, a place so reminiscent of the tunnels that he nearly laughed when they threw him into the endless darkness. When he killed his fellow inmates, it'd felt damned near nostalgic.

  Home sweet home.

  * * * *

  Stone stopped speaking abruptly, frowning at the faint echoes of his voice in the room. Or maybe it was the echoes of his memories, rustling around him like hungry shadows, trying to draw him back there. Suppressing a shudder, he dared a quick glance at Regan and felt his stomach clench to see her chin down and brows pulled together, thin arms hugging knees to chest in a tight grip.

  With carefully suppressed dismay, he went back to assembling weapons and waited for her reaction. It wasn't long in coming, but it was unexpected all the same.

  "Let me get this straight,"

  she said in a clipped voice, her tone so similar to his wife at her most ferocious that he blinked and went still. “Those people put you away for five murders that you didn't even commit?"

  He turned his head, taking in her black scowl, flushed face, and tense form. “Well, yeah,” he said softly, trying to counter the rising fury in his daughter's dark eyes. “It's not like I

  wasn't gonna."

  "But you didn't!" she snarled and scrambled to her feet, hands fisted at her sides.

  "Uh, I think you're missin'

  the point here,” he tried, a little unnerved. He'd never seen Regan so fired up. “I don't even remember how many I've killed—"

  She cut off his words with a sharp gesture—again, so much like Mea—and snapped, “Screw that! If you didn't, you'd be dead! Like when I had to kill those slavers, to stay alive. But they framed you! That's not f-fair, when you had t-to do all those things, and your m-mom..."

  She pressed her lips together, and Stone panicked a little as her dark eyes began to gleam with tears. Then he panicked a lot when she sagged to her knees, covering her face with trembling fingers. He was not good with tears.

  He reached out and settled his hand on the back of her neck, feeling a strange pang of sorrow and fleeting sense of familiarity at the action. “Hey, cut that out, kid. It's old news."

  With a muffled sob, she threw herself at his chest and wrapped her arms around his neck in a strangle hold. He folded
his arms around her, cradling her gently as she sniffled and buried her face against his shoulder.

  "It's just not fair, Dad,"

  she whispered.

  "Life's not fair, kid,” he whispered back, feeling again that surge of protective warmth, magnified this time by an enormous relief. She didn't hate him, wasn't afraid of him.

  "Screw that, too,” she growled.

  This time, he heard himself in her voice. The shock jerked a chuckle out of him, which drew a giggle from

  Regan. Her humor pulled irresistibly at his, and his fed hers, until their laughter rang like music through the room, banishing shadows.

  About the Author

  Michelle O'Leary is the author of The Huntress, Angels and Ministers of Grace,

  and a growing collection of short stories. She is also a contributor to Clerestory, a windowed wall and The Insomniac Tales by Chaucer's Women.

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  Visit www.dlsijpress.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.