by Mark Henwick
Well, it was time to take the covers off.
“Ms. Farrell? You there?”
“Sorry. Yeah, Agent Ingram, we are good to go. The hammer is on the junction of 14th and Welton, right in front of the convention center. I’m transmitting a photo to you now. This is…” the breath caught in my throat, “this is Sergeant Keith Alverson, of a covert special operations battalion called Ops 4-10.” I stopped, staring blankly at nothing, realization coursing through me.
Shit. I’d just breached it. I’d pulled off the covers.
“Ms. Farrell?”
“Sorry. The anvil, well, I told you, these guys are good, I haven’t got any confirmed spots, but there are three or four locations where I’d put a team.”
“Yup. I’m looking at a map. ’Cross the street, in the center, the café and hotel. Hold on.”
I could hear him moving teams around. “Green,” someone called out. “Green on teams one, two and four. Red on three. Nine minutes.”
“Nine minutes and counting, Ms. Farrell. We’ll move in.”
“I’ll run a distraction,” I said. The misery clenched in my stomach. Keith. For God’s sake, Keith.
“Yeah, a phone call will be good.”
“I’m going down there.”
“No—”
I cut the connection and slung everything into the backpack.
Coming up to nine minutes, I was walking towards him. He saw me and turned, his hair ruffling. I couldn’t read the expression on his face. I wondered what he saw on mine.
“You never did tell me who the ring was for, Keith,” I called out by way of a greeting.
He looked startled. “Yeah, I guess not. Julie. Remember her?”
I did. She was all right, Julie. He could have done much worse. “I do. Does she know where you are?”
“I’m not here to break up my marriage.” He started to sound edgy. “What’s the problem, Amber?”
“So she doesn’t know where you are.”
“What’s the problem?” he said again.
The gap closed. This was stupid. I’d said I would run a distraction, not land myself in the middle of an FBI operation. Ingram would chew me out for this, and I’d deserve it. But I couldn’t stop myself.
“This is nothing to do with the colonel, is it? Julie doesn’t know where you are because you’re under SOP. She doesn’t know what you’re doing, but if she did, do you think she would agree with it?”
“What are you talking about, Amber?” He hadn’t lied, because he hadn’t answered, but there was guilt written all over his face, laced through his scent and in the speeding of his heart.
“You can’t lie to me, you never could and you sure as hell can’t now. Who’s calling the shots on this op, Keith? Who sanctioned it? Do you know who you’re really working for today?”
A couple of trucks moved down the road. One slowed and turned to block the line of sight from the parking garage, the other pulled up in front of the café.
Keith knew. We’d run ops together, he was trained as well as I was—maybe he was better now, since he was current. His eyes darted left and right. I’d have been running already, but then again, I’d never done an op on American soil. The rules would change.
“Don’t run,” I whispered. I didn’t know what their rules of engagement were, but the FBI were hot for this.
“What the—”
“FBI. If you’re legit, you’ve got nothing to worry about.” I turned before he could see I was crying. “Goodbye, Keith,” I said.
“Amber! Amber,” he called out. Armed agents in Kevlar vests were sprinting towards us. I half-turned. His hands were held out at his side. He wasn’t going to be stupid. The look on his face…I might have thought there was relief, but I just didn’t believe in him anymore.
“Amber,” he said again, and I did turn, I had to. That’s how I am. An agent jostled me as he passed. I barely noticed it. Keith’s face was twisted, as if in pain. They’d wrestled him down on the ground. “What did they do to you?” he called out, as the agents started the process of cuffing and searching.
Nothing. I turned and started to walk away. More agents jostled me till I felt like I was in a pinball machine. I looked back once more, but he was hidden behind the dark jackets. Nothing.
They did nothing to me. I started to trot, bouncing off people. Someone was calling me, far away. I broke into a sprint, breaking away. Across the road. Car horns blaring at me. They did nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Chapter 40
I don’t know how many bars there were laid out that way in Denver, but I found too many.
The room was deep enough to be difficult to see in and there was a mirror on the far wall behind the bar, so I could sit with my back to the door and keep one eye open, on the remote chance that whoever was following me found me by accident.
I was pleased that I was so responsible, because I was also drunk.
It had been at least ten minutes since the last drink, and I was thirsty and running short of cash, so I got a couple of Blue Moons. The bartender tried the joke with the slice of orange on the glass and I growled at him. He retreated to the other end where his regulars sat, far away from the bag lady with the crazy eyes and the bruises.
I hadn’t gotten drunk like this since ’05. We’d lost six of the platoon in a night ambush. One of them was the lieutenant we were supposed to be looking after. I was a corporal at the time, and went drinking with the other three squad leaders. Including Keith.
Keith had been here, in Denver, only a week ago, warning me about changes in the unit. He’d said that none of the people I knew in 4-10 would take a mission to come after me, and yet he’d been there this afternoon. What had changed in a week?
Was I missing something? Did I deserve to be back in that isolation cell? What had so upset me this afternoon that I’d gone on a bender? Every time I thought back to my reaction to Keith’s last words, it flowed away, as if I was trying to grab smoke.
Booze is okay for questions, but I’ve never found it’s good for answers. And I couldn’t afford to drink any more. I certainly didn’t need to drink any more.
I looked in the mirror. One drunk, scruffy, five-ten, sharp-nosed, auburn-haired mix of Irish and Arapaho looked back. I didn’t look evil. At least I could see myself in the mirror. Vampires aren’t supposed to be visible in mirrors. How would that work? I laughed.
“It works because vampires don’t exist, so that’s why you can’t see them in the mirror. Perfectly logical,” I muttered.
The bartender looked at me laughing and shifted uncomfortably. He might be working up to refusing me another, if I was asking. I wasn’t.
I drained the last beer and he edged over. I stared at him.
Go on, tell me I’ve had enough, punk.
“You want me to call a cab?” he said.
I shook my head, feeling a bit ashamed. “I’ll walk it off.”
Jeez. All the way to Haven. Not likely. Maybe I’d need to call for a lift. I could see that going down almost as well as my failure to get to Haven as soon as possible.
“Not a good idea to be wandering around at this time of night,” he mumbled.
I thanked him and swiveled on the seat. He was right, and he’d done his job. I’d clear my head first and then take it from there.
It’d gotten cold outside. At least I had the jacket, and my pack kept my back warm. I was still wearing drafty jeans held together with a safety pin, though. I shook my head again and started walking. I had a long way to go to get back to the car and yeah, I needed to get there for the octopus, so I could make a call, so I could get taken to Haven and get chewed out by Skylur. Better that than either Jen or Alex seeing me in this state.
Dumb.
I took a short cut. Even dumber.
I was still wrapped up in a cheerful, oblivious haze, wondering why the bracelet felt a bit itchy, when the first hiss of warning came out of the night.
“Hey, chica. Hey, hey, over here.” Someon
e made kissing noises and they laughed. At least a dozen of them by the sound of it.
I stopped and turned around. A couple of them strolled from the shadows, followed by others.
“Shit. Not so little, eh? Mamacita, aqui, aqui. Come here. I’ll look after you. I’ll make you so-o-o happy.” Big mouth.
They were part of the street gangs that come and go. All taken in with the drag-ass jeans and silly hand sign glamor. Tattoos and testosterone. One of them had half his head shaved. For all their Mexican slang, they were as random a mix as these streets could throw up. And they were plenty old enough for this to get ugly.
If I’d have been sober, I would have come up with a comment and kept walking. The alley wasn’t that long.
There were a dozen of them. Some would be armed. I was alone and drunk. The HK was in the pack and sudden moves to reach for it would be like blowing a starting whistle.
I took a head-clearing breath and looked at the darkness where they’d stepped from. My Athanate eyes saw clearly, now I was looking. There was another one there, seated, watching. El Jefé, the boss man, the one with the agenda to own a patch of turf, to get respect on the back of his crew. He wanted them blooded, outside of society and bound to him. The weak parallel with the Athanate made me snort, even as I realized there wasn’t a way out of this.
“Hey!” Half-head sneered when I just stood there as they got closer. “Marimacha! Es’ chavala tiene cojones.”
“Why should she run away when she’s found what she wants?”
“Eh-ya, la putita con buen culito. I liked it better when she was looking the other way,” Big-mouth said.
“Shit, y’always do, nigga.”
The gang laughed and jostled each other as they crowded in. Oh, that was so funny.
The lookout at the far end started walking in, wanting to be part of it too. Mistake.
I stopped listening. My street Spanish wasn’t that good anyway. It was good enough to hear ‘little girl’ and ‘hot babe’ give way to ‘butch’ and ‘whore’ quickly. Hard on the heels came the gang insider jokes about anal rape. I hadn’t even said anything back to them, but they didn’t care about that. They didn’t want to think of me as a person; they wanted me to be a mindless thing, in their power, terrified and in pain.
And the boss watched from the shadows. The code was blood in, blood out—murder to get into the gang and execution if you tried to get out. Rape would do as a trigger for blood in. Once you’ve done it, you gotta kill the whore, don’t you? You owe it to your homies.
This was the side of humanity that fueled Basilikos. I would do well to remember that.
But I learned something else as I stood there. The elethesine hormone that fires up an Athanate boils off alcohol like spit in a furnace.
Half-head leaned and pointed. “Lookit the cute pin. She been pricked already, hey?”
Suddenly sober or not, my head was fresh out of words and what came out of my throat was a growl.
“Shit!” One of the gang with his tattoos still scabbed took a couple of steps back. “What the fuck?” A couple of them looked nervous.
“Ha!” Big-mouth spat. “Cut’s growling, must be hungry.” He grabbed his crotch. “Shame. Not your—”
Down where I’d turned in to walk up the alley, a man came around the corner. He interrupted Big-mouth, running up the alley and shouting. I loved him for it, but Agent Ingram really should have been waving his gun to come steaming in against these odds.
“Shut that motherfucker up,” Big-mouth said, shoving a couple of the others.
He turned back, wiped his mouth. Half-head reached out for my safety pin, teasingly slow.
I grabbed his wrist.
“Eh?” he looked bewildered. I was supposed to be cringing or trying to run away. This wasn’t how it had gone before. What had he done wrong?
He’d picked on one angry Athanate.
I slammed the heel of my hand up into his nose, breaking it. When he reeled back, I twisted and threw his body, face down, onto the ground. Then I pinned his arm with my boot and broke his elbow like a rotten branch. He screamed.
Big-mouth should have grabbed me; he had time. He went for his knife instead.
I don’t like knives. There’s the old joke that the winner in the knife fight is the one who gets to go to the hospital, and it has some justification. I got in close, gripping his wrist. My other hand thudded into his groin, got a good crushing hold and I lifted him up and tossed him, squealing like a captured rat, into an open dumpster.
The fight seemed to have gone from the remainder. Ingram was down, but safe enough.
I leaped into the recess where el Jefé had watched his crew come apart and caught him as he was desperately trying to find a way to escape into the house backing onto his turf. Too slow.
I dragged him out into the alley by his throat. His hands were frantically scrabbling, trying to ease my grip on him. His eyes were bugged out as he realized he had seconds to live. I lifted him, flicked his feet back and planted him down on his knees. Hard. I could hear the cracks.
My fingers hooked deeper. In a second I would rip and tear and his blood would splatter down onto the dirt of the alley. I wouldn’t deign to feed from filth like this, but the wolf in me wanted to hear his last sucking breaths as he drowned in his own blood.
“Sergeant Farrell! Sergeant! Stop. Let him go!”
I spun where I stood, dragging the gang leader around, and snarled at Ingram.
“It’s over. It’s over,” he said. “You don’t need to do that. Put him down.”
Ingram. FBI. Everything flooded back, dispersing the animal rage. I opened my hand and el Jefé pitched forward and stirred feebly in the dirt.
The rest of the gang were gone and the three that were still here weren’t going anywhere in a hurry.
I squatted down beside Ingram, trembling.
“You okay?” I said. My voice was hoarse.
“Yeah. Thanks.” He tried to regain a little composure. I offered him a hand up, the left one without all the blood, and pulled him back to his feet.
“Yeah, I am,” he repeated. “Thanks to you.”
“You wouldn’t have been out here if it wasn’t for me, so I guess it’s my responsibility, in a way,” I said. “You were chasing after me, weren’t you?”
“I prefer ‘shadowing,’” he said.
“Have it your way.” I held up my right hand and looked at it. Normal hand, no claws. I wiped the blood off on my jeans. “Ahh, were there any casualties this afternoon?”
He shook his head.
Thank goodness. Even if they were trying to trap me.
“They’re not talking and no one has popped out of the woodwork and claimed them yet, either. But they will, they will.”
I snorted. “Why’d you call me Sergeant back there?” I said. Stupid thing to ask.
“I called you a whole lot of things, Ms. Farrell. That was just what got through, it seems. What in hell was all that?” He made a vague gesture at everything that had gone on.
Another figure arrived at the mouth of the alley. Never got Tweedledum without Tweedledee, I guessed.
“I’m outa here,” I said, turning to walk the way I’d been going. It was a short cut.
Griffith called after me, but I ignored it. Ingram hushed him and I heard them calling an ambulance for the gangbangers.
What was all that, indeed? The feelings that had run through me like electricity hadn’t been what I was expecting from the Athanate side. My hand hadn’t just clawed at el Jefé’s throat, the nails had gone hard and sharp like daggers. I’d known that I could rip his throat out. I’d known it, not at an intellectual level, at a physical level. My body knew it could do that. I’d part-changed into a wolf.
Having Were and Athanate mixing in me felt dangerous. Were blood lust, if that’s what it had been, had seemed to be as close to Athanate rogue as I’d been warned. Maybe they would feed from one another, if I let them.
Just as I needed help f
rom Altau on my Athanate side, I was going to need help from the pack on my Were side. As Liu had said, that anger deep down inside wasn’t good for anyone. It needed better management. And having the Were come through while I was still learning the Athanate stuff made it all feel insanely volatile.
How would Top have put it? Use a flamethrower to shed a little light on what you got in the ammo store, why dontcha?
I was finished being dumb tonight. I reached the car and got in with a sigh. What if that’d been Matlal’s crew I ran into in the alley? Being so smart and picking bars with mirrors was pathetic. They could have just waited outside.
Instead of three injured gangbangers and Griffith hyperventilating about me walking off, I could have been delivered up to Matlal by now. Whatever he wanted would have been worse than the gang.
I slapped the visor down and slid the cover off the little vanity mirror.
“All the mirrors, in all the bars, in all of Denver, and now she wants to talk,” Tara said.
“Sorry, sis. Plain dumb, huh?”
“You said it.”
“You know anything about what happened when Keith…”
“Can’t see what you can’t see, sis. Get your ass to Haven, now.”
I got.
Chapter 41
Reception at the gatehouse was cool, formal. I guessed the appearance of unhappiness from Skylur had filtered down and everyone believed I was not the flavor of the month. The deception might be over, but the truth hadn’t been made available. Either that, or by not coming in immediately when he texted, I was genuinely back on the shit list.
Following directions, I made my way through the silent house to the room that David and Pia had been allocated. Late as it was, they were still out working. The room was large and luxurious, with a bed the size of a small swimming pool. Nice to know they were being looked after.
