Brighter Than the Sun

by Darynda Jones

  A few seconds later, I am crouched on the table. Every face staring at me is stunned. The guard who was calling for backup still has the mic at his mouth. His jaw is hanging open.

  I straighten. Step down. Grab my tray and move to another table. An old man is gazing at me. He’s not scared of me, though. And he doesn’t want to fuck me or make me his bitch. So I instantly like him.

  He chuckles. “You certainly know how to make an impression.”

  I wink and eat what I can before the guards take me down. The food’s not as bad as I’d expected. I’ve had worse.

  The place goes into lockdown. Everyone is on the ground when four guards rush me. I let them. They’re just doing their jobs. So I’m facedown again, being restrained by men with guns and, worse, Tasers. Those fuckers hurt.

  The guard who first noticed the three Syndicates coming at me backs me during the investigation. I am, of course, in AdSeg, but I get a personal interview with the warden. There is a full-scale investigation, and I think the only reason I’m not charged is because of that first guard. His name is Gossett. He is … intrigued by me. Wary. Pisses a little when I look in his direction. He could come in handy one day.

  I’m visited by a group of men from the state. They tell me how smart I am. Say my IQ is what is known as “immeasurable.” They want to run more tests.

  “I’m in prison,” I tell them. “How smart can I be?”

  I refuse the tests and they leave with their tails tucked between their legs.

  After I’m released back into gen pop, I get used to the thug life pretty easily. For the most part, no one messes with me. Not often, anyway. There’s always one or two trying to make a name for themselves. I’ve become the ultimate challenge.

  And then there are the nations. The organizations that work inside, and outside, the system. A couple of them try to recruit me, but after I make it clear that I won’t be recruited by any of them, they calm down a bit. They know I won’t be out to get them based on the order of an enemy shot caller. It’s all about politics and survival.

  The day-to-day life in prison is part boredom, part survival, and part bullshit. Every once in a while, a guard gets a tad too full of himself. Or a shot caller orders a hit. Or a random fight breaks out. In here, however, fights are lethal and taken very seriously.

  I decide to use my time wisely. I continue what I started with the night classes, studying law, while also learning about computers. Mainly how to hack them. One of the first things I do is hack into my alma matter, where I spent three months learning about stuff I already knew, and assign myself a high school diploma. Then I earn an online degree in law.

  I also become the local computer nerd. The administration brings me in to fix all the computers.

  I create viruses to invade at a specific day and time. They call me in, and I eradicate my own virus, only to plant another one to go into effect a couple months later. They ask me why I can’t just fix the computers once and for all. I tell them to quit going to porn sites and it will stay fixed. That shuts them up every time.

  * * *

  So all that keeps me busy for a couple of years when Dutch isn’t in some sort of mortal danger. I’ve come to realize things are thrown in her path because of who she is. They have to be. No one could get into that much trouble without a little supernatural help.

  Historically, reapers have never lived very long. They die young, then serve their term ferrying souls across dimensions.

  How do I know all this? I’m learning a lot. Remembering a lot. Like who I am. Where I’m from. It’s as though a piece of glass that had shattered is being put back together. Slowly. Painfully. Each razor like shard fitting into the next one as images flood my memory.

  Visions of hell fill my nights. Of inhuman armies and epic battles. That’s the part that surprises me the most, because I realize they were right about me. All the whispers, all the rumors and innuendos about my being the breath of the devil. I’m not human. I don’t know what I am exactly, but I do know there is a part of me that is no more human than Dutch is.

  I’m also learning a lot, thanks to my abilities to venture into the world unchecked. It’s not like the bars of a prison can hold me. I can go anywhere. Once I realized Dutch was real, that I was literally leaving my body to see her, to seek her out, I realized I could go anywhere.

  They think I’m having seizures. They do tests, but they will do only so much on the state’s dime. Probably a good thing, since I don’t think they’re really seizures. Not in the medical sense.

  Sometimes I’m lured away and I seize. It’s inconvenient. Seen as a weakness. When I’m in that state, anyone could come at me. I could be dead because a certain reaper with a penchant for getting into as much shit as she possibly can is about to be killed.

  It’s during one inopportune time that another realization hits me. One second, I’m on my bunk reading; the next, I’m in front of Dutch. She is on a college campus, UNM, and is being attacked. Naturally. Anger flashes inside me so hot and bright, I don’t even think before wielding my sword and severing his spine.

  That’s not the surprising part. She’d called me to her. She’d literally summoned me. Had she always done so? Have I been seeking her out all this time or was she summoning me?

  I figure it’s a toss-up. I brush my lips across her mouth before leaving her to deal with campus security. When I get back, I’m being stabbed by a Syndicate recruit. And here I thought we’d come to an accord. At the very least, a mutual understanding.

  I don’t kill the kid. I don’t want the hassle. But it does bring into glaring Technicolor how detrimental Dutch’s near-death experiences can be. For me. Not her.

  I rough up the kid a bit. Break his nose. Possibly his larynx. Then I hand deliver him to the Syndicate. Sadly, the hit wasn’t ordered. The kid acted on his own. An upstart wannabe out to make a name for himself. He died that night in a puddle of his own blood. A puddle that was not of my making.

  A little over two years in, I get a visit from Amador. He comes at least once a month, actually, but this visit is special. This visit will go down in the history books as the day I almost break my best friend’s neck.

  “I’ve been arrested for aggravated assault,” he tells me. “It’s pretty much a given I’ll go to prison.”

  I stare at him, astonished. He is about to get married. His fiancée is pregnant. He’s never been so happy.

  He clears his throat. Taps his fingers on the table.

  “Why?” I ask him.

  “Because I assaulted a police officer.”

  “No, why would you risk everything—?”

  “He’s a fucking cop, Rey. A human just like you and me.”

  He was wrong on that count.

  “Only this guy is an absolute piece of shit. He’s been stalking Bianca, and when she reports it—instead of telling me—he plants a stolen bottle of Oxy on her and has her arrested.”

  His hands curl into fists and his eyes water with emotion.

  I bite down, frustrated for him.

  “They think because they wear a fucking badge, they’re above the law. ¡Cabrones, hijos de puta! Policías como ellos deben morir en un baño de sangre.”

  While he vents in his native tongue, I can’t help but feel this is partly my fault. If Amador knew what I was capable of—really knew—he might have come to me instead of taking the matter into his own hands. I could certainly understand his desire for blood, though. I was feeling a little thirsty myself.

  “The only reason I was able to get in to see you today,” he says, calming down a bit, “is because all this just went down last night. It hasn’t hit their system yet. But I don’t think I’ll be able to come see you anymore. Not for a while.”

  That was the least of my concerns.

  “I don’t know where they’ll send me. Hopefully here,” he says with a bitter chuckle, aware of the irony of his hope to get sent to a specific maximum security prison.

  “I’ll take care of the cop,”
I say.

  “And how you gonna do that locked up in here?”

  A slow grin spreads across my face, so he shrugs and goes with it.

  “Just try to make sure you get sent here, if your lawyer has any say in the matter.”

  He nods and we leave our good-byes hanging in the air around us, not sure of when we’ll see each other again. He’s one of the good ones. If he weren’t, I would’ve seen it the minute I met him. He deserves retribution. Bianca even more so.

  That afternoon, I go to work. One of the deputy warden’s computers is acting up, and the guard set to watch me knows as much about computers as a squirrel. I hack into the cop’s computer and make it look like he is the head of a huge kiddie porn distribution center. I even set up a bank account with hundreds of small deposits from around the world.

  By the time Amador is sentenced and brought to the pen, the cop is facing several decades behind bars. Mostly because I decided to pad his résumé with a little drug trafficking and few nifty extortion charges.

  18

  I get Amador assigned to my cell with a few simple clicks, and we spend four blissful years together before he is paroled. It’s a good thing. He has a beautiful wife and a gorgeous daughter waiting for him.

  He leaves the state pen knowing everything. I’ve left nothing to chance. But it was hard to tell him at first. He takes it really well, though. He suggests I seek counseling and get on some kind of drug therapy program. But it doesn’t take long for him to see the truth for himself.

  He’s there when a war is about to break out in the yard. When I walk through the crowd, touch the shoulders of the gang members about to fight. When they drop, one by one, crumpling to the ground like dominoes until I’m standing by the shot callers.

  He’s there when I seize because Dutch has decided to join the Peace Corps after she graduates from college and plants her ass right in the middle of a war zone between two tribes in Uganda.

  He’s there when she moves back to Albuquerque after a two-year stint in the Peace Corps. She has opened up an investigations business. Because how much trouble can she get into there? She gets drunk one night and tumbles down the stairs in her apartment building. I think she drunk-dials me. Her life isn’t in danger, but the pull is strong enough to yank me out of a deep sleep. I find her sprawled on the second-floor landing, where she orders me to take off my cloak. She wants to see what’s underneath. She wants to see what she’s been so afraid of. To face her demons.

  I lift her off the floor and lean her against me, but before I realize what she’s doing, she reaches up pushes back the hood. I go still. She stills. I reach to put it back on, but she stops me. She touches my face. Brushes a stand of hair out of my eyes. Draws the outline of my mouth with her fingertips. Then she rolls onto her toes and presses her mouth to mine.

  I don’t kiss back. Not at first. But she tilts her head to the side. Opens her mouth. Invites me in.

  With a growl of frustration, I wrap my arms around her and deepen the kiss. She melts into me. Dives her fingers into my hair with one hand. Reaches for my ass with the other. Just as I’m about to give in and take her right there, she goes completely limp in my arms. I continue to hold her. Struggling to get my breathing under control. Fighting the erection that wants to bury itself inside her.

  I hear someone on the stairs above us, so I lay her gently against the wall. She tilts over to sleep it off on the stairs. Her neck is going to kill her tomorrow. I wait around. Make sure the guys who find her help her to her bed and not to theirs.

  She was drunk off her ass. Literally. I doubt she will remember any of it.

  Amador’s there every time she summons me. Has my back. It’s kind of sad, though. There’s nothing like waking up to a shiv sliding between my ribs. He’s also there when the shot caller of the most notorious gang in prison asks for protection from his own men. They’ve turned on him and he is about to die a horrible death, until I step in. They leave him alone. He’s out of the gang. Out from under their protection. Yet no one bothers him.

  That, above all things, is the most startling to Amador. Apparently, the parting of the sea of gang members didn’t do the trick. But I’m glad he’s getting out. They have put their lives on hold long enough. She’s been waiting tables and taking night classes and raising her daughter with her mother’s help. Amador is almost salivating to be a dad. To actually live with his wife. They got married the night before he had to report to jail. It was not the best honeymoon.

  The good news is, he knows what I’m capable of now. And we come up with a plan. I need to do some more groundwork, but in the next few years, he will be set for life. I promise him that much.

  19

  Amador comes to see me a lot. He wants to come more often. I tell him not to. He has a family now. He and Bianca even bring the kids to see me. Ashlee and their baby, Stephen. Ashlee is as beautiful as her mother, and I tease Amador that I’m going to steal them from him when I get out. He isn’t too worried. Probably a good thing. Bianca is absolutely in love with him. She is one of the few people attracted to men who don’t fall into a state of crippling desire when they look at me. She has eyes for Amador and only Amador. That kind of devotion is rare. He probably had a witch put a spell on her.

  When he comes, he reports on Kim with every visit, making sure not to mention her name. She is doing well. Our plan is unfolding perfectly.

  One of the advantages of being able to leave my body and go anywhere I want is something I like to call insider trading. I know things long before the public does. I know when companies are going to fold. When they are about to go public. I learn about stocks and bonds and mutual funds.

  Because Amador and Bianca have followed my instructions to the letter, both they and Kim become millionaires overnight. I do as well, but I can’t touch my money until I’m paroled. That could be another decade or two.

  “Has she touched it?” I ask him, wondering if Kim is using any of the funds she has.

  He shakes his head. “She refuses. Says she’s saving it for you.”

  I grind my teeth. The whole point of this was to get her set up so she never has to work again. Instead, she’s working odd jobs and barely scraping by when she could live anywhere in style.

  I go to see her sometimes. She’s not like Dutch. She can’t see me, but when I move a picture or knock over a vase, she knows I’m there. She talks to me for hours. I’m beginning to think I’m more hindrance than help. She lost her last job because she sat and talked to me instead of going to work.

  “She needs to move on,” I tell Amador. “Tell her—” I breathe in to strengthen my resolve. “Tell her I’m not going to go see her anymore. Tell her it’s too dangerous for me. Tell her to take the money and see the world.”

  I know she won’t. She’s waiting for me. She’ll die waiting for me if I can’t figure out how to get her to detach.

  Instead of dwelling on Kim, I focus on Dutch. On Amador, Bianca, and the kids. We invest in several companies that skyrocket the minute they go public, and soon we are all millionaires dozens of times over.

  Amador keeps pouring money into Kim’s account. An offshore account that’s not actually in her name, but one she has access to 24/7.

  It does little good. She barely takes out enough to live on, but at least she’s dipping into it now. At least there’s that.

  20

  My eighth year of incarceration turns out to be one of the more exciting. There is a riot. Almost. More like the beginnings of a riot, but it could’ve ended as badly as the one from the ’80s if the inmates had commandeered a control room like they planned. New Mexico has a history of violence that few states can rival, and the energy in the old prison was volatile because of it. Toxic. Too much had happened there over the centuries. Too many deaths. Too many massacres.

  The land on which the new prison was built doesn’t have the violent history of the last one. It helps. But once a potential riot gets out of hand, it’s difficult to gain control agai
n.

  But me? I’m Sweden. I’m nonpartisan. I’m neutral territory. I read in my bunk while my new cellmate goes out to party. He never takes me anywhere.

  I do my best to stay out of it. I really do. But when a guard—one of the good ones, not the douche bags who think they walk on water—is taken hostage, I have no choice but to step in. Either that or live with myself, and God knows that’s hard enough as it is.

  I step out to see three men dragging O’Connell, the guard, toward the control room. He’s bleeding at the temple and mouth and struggling for air. Partly because of his injuries and partly because of the pepper balls that have been shot into the dayroom. Tears are streaming down all their faces, and I’m starting to feel the effects of the pepper spray as well.

  One inmate holds a shiv at O’Connell’s throat. The second is wielding a wrench he stole when the rioters invaded the shop. And the third is telling him how he is going to decapitate him and use his dismembered body as a toilet. Only his words are, “I’m going to saw your head off and shit down your throat.” I was paraphrasing.

  O’Connell is terrified, and for good reason. These things rarely end well. I cross the catwalk through a ticker tape parade of toilet paper, trash, shredded bedding, and the occasional mattress.

  The inmates at the end of the walk grow wary. The closer I get, the more nervous they become, but adrenaline has flooded every cell in their bodies. They’ll be hard to stop. Well, harder than normal.

  I lower my head as I walk forward. Glare from underneath my lashes.

  They get more fidgety. The one with the shiv turns, positioning O’Connell between him and me. I curse under my breath when I realize O’Connell’s been stabbed. At least twice. Nothing that can’t be fixed, but he needs medical attention fast. I’ve learned that human bodies are much more fragile than my own. While his wounds would hardly faze me, they could be fatal to a mere mortal.

  “Back off, Farrow,” the shiv wielder says, holding it out proudly like a peacock displaying his feathers.