Ruby Callaway- The Complete Collection

by D. N. Erikson

  One nice thing about population density.

  It was easy to blend in and simply disappear.

  The roofs were mismatched, the one I’d chosen slightly shorter than its neighbor. This provided cover and a vantage point.

  The rat-a-tat of the automatic weapons fire subsided.

  “You brought backup?” The voice was accusatory.

  “She must’ve followed me.” Clearly Nicolette, judging from the passionate strains I’d heard filtering from upstairs a few loops ago.

  “Goddamnit, Xeno.” His voice bore an executive’s disdain—a distinct annoyance that he was even here, subjecting himself to the filth that was the world. Probably would burn his thousand-dollar shoes when he got back. “This wasn’t even hard.”

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job.” It seemed Nicolette wasn’t Nicolette after all.

  Things just got interesting.

  Almost interesting enough to get shot at over.

  “You’ve been shorting me,” Xeno said.

  “You’re well compensated for results.” There was a long sigh, as if the man was talking to a child. “There haven’t been any.”

  I snuck a look into the street to get a better view of the players. Four suited men—the muscle, obviously—stood in a diamond formation around a gray-haired fellow standing ramrod straight. He reminded me of someone, even though I couldn’t see his face.

  “I need to pick the right time,” Xeno said. “I can’t just kill him.”

  “I think you’re stalling.” A derisive snort. “Perhaps you have feelings for this wolf.”

  “I’m a professional.”

  “I’m beginning to doubt that.” Long pause. “You understand the stakes.”

  “If you think you can hire someone better—”

  “Don’t make idle threats, Xeno. We’re not to be fucked with. The wolf is asking questions about the trial. About what happened to him. The sterilization treatment is almost ready. I don’t believe you understand what your delays are costing us.”

  There was a tense silence. The kind where a double-crossing witch might consider doing something rash. But whoever this silver-haired jackass was, he probably had a satellite sniper drone hovering thirty thousand feet up, ready to blow her brains out if she sneezed wrong.

  That probably wasn’t a thing.

  Point was, those four guys were just the tip of the assault iceberg.

  “I’ll kill Aaron,” Xeno said, sounding sullen. “I’ll make it look like an accident.”

  “Yes, you certainly will.” I heard a well-heeled shoe squish into the muddy slop. “And when we extract you, there won’t be any extra visitors.”

  I wouldn’t be so sure, asshole.

  “I won’t let you down, sir.”

  “You always were our best agent, Xeno.” There was just the slightest hint of condescension. Like the man owned her. She was a tool, like a hammer, meant to perform a task.

  And be discarded if necessary.

  Then he said the words, “But there are always others waiting in the wings.”

  I could’ve sworn I heard her howl, but that might’ve just been the car.

  My mind raced. This was the proof I needed. Tell Aaron he was knocking boots with someone planning his demise. That had to be worth an old shitty pamphlet on the nature of time.

  About to move, I felt a cold hand grasp my ankle.

  A scream rose in my throat, but it was frozen halfway.

  I fell to the muddy grass floor, seeing a familiar ski-masked face staring back at me. The amber eye glared, clearly annoyed.

  “You have been avoiding me, strange one.” His silver hair swished back and forth. “I miss your intensity.”

  “I don’t…know you.”

  Solomon Marshall’s shoulders loosened, hair tumbling down his shirt. “Of course not. That would be silly.”

  His hand reached back for the curved blade. Through trembling lips, I said, “Wait.”

  “You’re a disappointing adversary.” He knelt, feeling for my arm. The wrist where the chip was. “Only thinking about yourself.”

  “I…I don’t understand.”

  “You and Colton are to be a team.” He fished inside his pocket, extracting a gleaming chip. Strong magic danced around it, more powerful than I expected. I could barely track its aura with my eyes as the fingernail-sized sliver quickly disappeared out of sight. Paralyzed, most of my body unfeeling, I didn’t know whether he’d slipped it beneath my skin. “Now you are.”

  “Colton?” Hopefully my acting was convincing.

  “Yes,” the necromancer said. I had to resist thinking of him as Marshall, lest he realize I knew far more than I was letting on. “You are bound at the hip now.” His eye flashed open in maniacal craziness. “Inseparable.”

  I was hoping that maybe Xeno would come and put a stop to this, but that didn’t seem to be likely. Disturbances in the shantytown were more common than food or water. A woman with a shotgun could simply disappear with a truncated scream, and no one would venture out to investigate.

  Lucky me.

  Breath shallow, I said, “I don’t want to be bound.”

  “You die, he dies.” His eye flashed wide, the scarred socket where the bullet had entered looking hideous. “Wander too far away, you both die.”

  “But I don’t know who he is.”

  “You will feel the calling in your bones, strange one. As will Colton.”

  His shoulders straightened, like he was pleased with himself. I heard the blade schwing through the air.

  “Tell me why you’re disappointed,” I said before the blade hit, choking the words out, mud oozing into my hair.

  The sword bit through my neck.

  Marshall planted the blade in the grass and knelt, eye almost apologetic as he watched me bleed out, unable to even whimper. “Because you cannot stop me.”

  A few seconds later, everything went black.

  24

  Day 25

  My fingers tightened around the pen, covered in red ink, my life at a crossroads. Time slowed down, and seconds became years, decisions long-percolating coming together in a lightning bolt of realization.

  Today was the day.

  People say those words like you can instantly turn over a new leaf. Flip the page. Reboot.

  Whatever shitty metaphor you wanted to use, starting over was hard. Your brain doesn’t want to cooperate. Letting go of who you once were is a process akin to death. Because who are we really left with when all our flaws are gone?

  Think about it for a second.

  All I had was time, after all.

  But our flaws define us. We’re all battling a white whale. And the whale slashes us in the throat, over and over, but we can never get the spear at the right angle to lick it for good. Because, deep down, we don’t want to.

  Without our flaws, we have no identity.

  If I wasn’t a hunter, interested only in survival, then who did that make me?

  Exactly.

  But maybe change wasn’t necessary. Solomon Marshall was gunning for revenge against whoever wronged him eight years ago. A big plan, requiring a hidey-hole in a time loop to orchestrate. That wasn’t odd—or, rather, it wasn’t the oddest part.

  Marshall needed us to stop him.

  Wanted us to stop him from doing what he couldn’t walk away from.

  As a killer, I could oblige that request.

  I just needed to play the game. Follow the trail of clues. It all started with the money. Who stood to profit from his demise? Roark and I could figure that out.

  We were partners. There was a deep longing stirring through my bones, like a wolf away from its pack. I had to find him.

  There really was no choice.

  I stood still, red pen dripping, wondering where the blood ended and the ink began. A thought seized me, and I knew what I had to do. I dug the sharp point of the pen into my wrist, feeling the skin tear. Reaching in, I grasped the chip and tried to rip it out.

  But
unlike last time, it didn’t release. Instead, a surge of electricity rushed through my fingertips, sending me to the dirty tile.

  I screamed, and someone in the bunk told me to shut up. My bloodied arm shook, as I realized that the lock on my cage had clicked shut. And I had wasted all my free days on frivolous, impermanent quests for revenge.

  Wherever I went, the necromancer would be watching.

  Wherever we went, rather. Because I felt a pull toward Roark, a tug.

  The pen slipped from my fingers as Captain Stevens blew down the door. He rushed in and loomed over me with that self-satisfied smile. I could only hope that, somewhere, the residual effects of all those revenge killings were hidden dormant in his brain. Me shoving that pen through his cheekbone. Lurking in his subconscious, waiting to wake him in nightmares.

  It was a futile hope. But then, vengeance is founded on such follies. A desperate wish that killing the person who hurt you would make everything whole. But all revenge did was drive a person to a place of madness worse than the dark room.

  And grant Solomon Marshall extra time I couldn’t afford.

  “Christ, you trying to kill yourself?” Stevens asked, the zip tie cuffs slipping over my wrists.

  “Look at the list,” I said.

  After the brief rustle of paper, I heard the familiar words. “The hell you been up to, little girl?”

  I kept preternaturally cool as we went through the motions. In the third-floor room, instead of spilling my guts about Marshall and being a Realmfarer, and anything else, I gestured for Roark to come over as soon as he stepped inside the red door.

  His sad blue eyes looked skeptical, handsome jaw set in stoic non-curiosity.

  “It’s about your brother.”

  His expression hardened. As we hunched together in a conspiratorial huddle, he said, “If this is a trick—”

  “They’re listening.” I nodded toward the darkened glass. “We can’t talk here.”

  “I need more than that.”

  I whispered into his ear. All he’d told me about Sam. I got no response.

  “Well?”

  “I feel like I can trust you,” Roark said. “But I don’t know why.”

  I whispered into his ear. “Because we’re bound together now. By the necromancer.”

  Immediately after, he nodded twice and said, “Let’s go.”

  Sometimes the easiest path forward is straight ahead.

  I’d have to remember that next time.

  25

  “Can they listen to us in here?” I searched for bugs or surveillance equipment inside the cruiser as it whipped through the Mud Belt’s slick streets. I sounded paranoid, considering I didn’t know who they even were. Who had pulled the strings behind the darkened glass that one day after I’d mentioned Marshall?

  I didn’t know.

  But I had every intention of finding out.

  The familiar slum streamed by, tin-sided doors only a few feet from my comfortable leather seat. I shivered, but not because I was cold.

  It was the nagging grip of fear, which I’d spent the better part of two centuries putting on ice.

  “You still haven’t told me anything other than your name,” Roark said, gaze focused on me.

  “Don’t pretend like you don’t already know.”

  He gave me a smirk. “If you say so.”

  “Are they listening?” I swung my head under the seat, hair cascading down to the clean floor. Nothing. When I sat up, I saw Roark looking on in bemused curiosity.

  The dashboard flashed red from an incoming call.

  Roark went to answer it.

  I said, “Don’t do that.”

  Roark said, “I have to respond.”

  “No,” I said, “you want to respond. There’s a difference.”

  His fingers lingered in the air. “You have a lot of demands.”

  “You answer, you die.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  I racked the shotgun’s slide and pointed the barrel straight at his head. “I don’t think so asshole.” When he gave me a funny look, I added, “Because you die, I die. And I’ve died plenty over the past three weeks.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Stop the goddamn car.”

  “This isn’t the move, Ruby.”

  “It’s the only move.”

  Binding only went so far, it seemed. Even the necromancer’s powers had met their match against my silver tongue.

  Or lack thereof.

  Roark reached into his pocket. Mildly paranoid after taking multiple bullets in the head and a knife to the throat over the past few days—all of which, it could be argued, were my own damn fault—I pressed the barrel into his firm chest to make sure he wouldn’t try anything funny.

  “Relax, would you?” Roark was disconcertingly nonchalant for someone with a gun pointed at him. His hand returned into view with the ignition key. The car’s engine shut down, the red glow from central dispatch dying with the engine. We coasted to a stop in the middle of the shantytown, surrounded only by leaking roofs and buckling one-story structures.

  If I squinted, I could see Phoenix in the glowing distance.

  Roark leaned back in the leather seat and said, “Okay.”

  “Get out.”

  “You’re carjacking me, huh?”

  “No, dumbass.” I nudged him with the shotgun. “I’m saving your life.”

  “That’s a new one.” Roark scratched his neat hair, bicep tensing. This was going to be a problem if he decided to fight back. Way stronger. Close quarters. That didn’t give me the advantage, unless I actually pulled the trigger. “I have a better idea.”

  He yanked the shotgun straight from my hands and gave me a stern look.

  It dawned on me, suddenly, that he’d been playing along the whole time.

  The fucking gun wasn’t loaded.

  Goddamnit. It was difficult to keep all this straight. The mind wasn’t meant to deal with a bunch of events that hadn’t really happened, but fully felt like they did. Ever confuse dreams with reality?

  Imagine confusing reality with reality.

  Roark set the gun down on the floor and crossed his arms. The fabric of the short-sleeved polo bunched up.

  “Didn’t you say, I die, you die?”

  Shit. There was that, too. I gave him a sullen look, more embarrassed at my stupidity than the awkward situation in the car.

  “It was a short-notice plan,” I muttered. Not my best work. I could hear Pearl screaming in my head, what the fuck are you doing, you idiot? To be perfectly honest, I didn’t know. Getting killed will throw you off your game.

  Waking up afterward is even more disconcerting.

  “You know, you could just talk with me next time.” Roark stretched his legs out and raised his eyebrows.

  “Because that’s worked so well in the past.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.” His sad blue eyes homed in on me.

  “That makes two of us.”

  “How’d you know so much about Sam?”

  “You told me about your brother.”

  “What else did I tell you?” Surprisingly, the words didn’t sound sarcastic.

  “Oh, everything.” I nodded sagely. “You won’t shut up, once I get you talking.”

  Roark looked unconvinced. But he handed me the shotgun.

  “You gonna let me keep driving?”

  “Is it—”

  “It’s not bugged.”

  Roark’s attention remained on me. Without the car’s humming engine, sounds of life drifted through the windows. Laughter, tears, people fucking and arguing. Punches, meals. The whole spectrum of life, in one tiny corner of the universe.

  Roark finally blinked once and said, “Talk.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  And talk I did, covering everything I could. The necromancer’s time loop. Solomon Marshall’s assassination, eight years prior to this very day. His obsession with killing Roark. The subdermal chips, both binding and tr
acking us. Explained that, before, I could dig the chip out, but now it had some sort of safeguard. How strangely the scene had shifted upon mentioning Marshall in the Tempe Camp’s command center, with Stevens marching me off and driving knives and nails through me for the next twenty hours.

  How Marshall seemed intent on tracking down and killing all of Roark’s CIs and contacts. Alice’s hacking into the internment camps’ server rooms.

  Little things. His call sign—Lightning Blade. His position within the FBI, both official—Supernatural Capture & Containment Task Force—and unofficial—the Bureau’s preeminent unidentified creatures expert.

  The Realmpiece, and how everything led back to money and greed, with LC2 at the center.

  And finally, Alice’s little note: about gathering power within a time loop, and then emerging unstoppable.

  It took him no longer than three seconds to say, “I’ve got it figured out.”

  “You do?” I asked, watching him press the ignition button, the car roaring to life. “Where the hell are we going?”

  “Only place that makes sense,” Roark said. “The city.”

  “Why?”

  “MagiTekk.” The word bore a cryptic resonance.

  “You know someone at MagiTekk?”

  “You could say that,” he replied, his eyes far away.

  “It’s kind of a yes-or-no question.”

  “Yes, then.”

  “Who?”

  Roark grimaced, and the wisps circling his head darkened the color of the night. He exhaled heavily and looked at me.

  “My father.”

  26

  The cruiser pulled into a twenty-four-hour lot. Roark hadn’t mentioned his father since, and I didn’t press the issue.

  Look at me. Tactful. Restrained.

  Just like old times.

  “We’re heading to MagiTekk?” I asked as we stepped out. The words came out with a little bloodthirstiness. Yeah, it made sense; if I’d known anything about the world, I’d have put it all together much earlier.

  Corporate conglomerate kills rival over a threat to market share. LC2’s stock craters without its visionary CEO, the place closes up shop, and MagiTekk waltzes into a monopoly.