Only Ashes Remain

by Rebecca Schaeffer

  Kovit was quiet a moment, before he said, “I won’t torture people where you can hear, unless you ask me to. And I’ll try not to hurt people that would bother you. I know the INHUP agent bothered you. And the dolphin girl. So I’ll try and find more natural sources of pain, and keep my . . . habits to people you can brush aside more easily.”

  Nita swallowed, throat choking up. “I’d appreciate that. It would mean a lot to me.”

  Kovit nodded, then looked to the floor. Nita looked down at her own folded hands, not sure what she was supposed to do now. The silence stretched, not in a broken way, but in a way like they were both waiting for the other to do something.

  Nita raised a hand and leaned toward him, heart pounding, but there was a sudden click and a rattle at the door.

  Nita shot to her feet, and raised her gun. Kovit flicked his switchblade out, body already sliding away from hers and into the ready position. The door swung open.

  Fabricio walked in.

  Fifty

  FABRICIO STOPPED in the doorway and looked between Nita and Kovit. His blue eyes were huge, and the blood drained from his face, making it look gray, almost like Mirella’s skin.

  He spun around and ran.

  Nita raised her gun, but with the hall door open, the room wasn’t soundproof and she might get them in trouble. She lowered it and darted after him.

  Her feet slid on the polished floor as she barreled down the hallway after Fabricio, who was stalled at the elevator, desperately pushing the button.

  Swearing, he tore himself away from the elevator banks, eyes skimming the hallway, probably for stairwells.

  Nita slammed into him, and both of them went tumbling to the ground. She smacked her elbow on the floor, pain shooting up her arm and spiraling through her bones.

  Fabricio opened his mouth to scream, and Nita clapped her hand over it. He bit her.

  Snarling, Nita grabbed him by his hair and smashed his head into the ground.

  Fabricio gasped, his nose broken at an odd angle, blood dripping down his face.

  Kovit was there a moment later, body shivering with their pain. He helped Nita haul Fabricio to his feet and drag him back into their soundproofed recording studio.

  Fabricio tried to scream as they dragged him, and Kovit jabbed his throat with two fingers, sending Fabricio into a gasping, coughing fit. He only regained his voice when they had already dragged him into the second recording studio and started duct-taping him to a chair. Finally, he began to scream.

  “This place is soundproofed, you know,” Nita told him.

  “Let him scream.” Kovit ripped off another piece of duct tape. “I like screams. They usually mean something fun will happen soon.”

  Nita paused and stared at Kovit, wondering if he’d actually been trained like Pavlov’s dogs to love the sound of screams or if he was just saying that to terrify Fabricio. There was no way to tell from the creepy smile that crossed his face or the hungry look in his eyes.

  Fabricio swallowed and stared at them both, the blood running down his face from his nose. “Please, Nita.”

  “Don’t you dare ‘please, Nita,’ me. You hired Henry to kill me.”

  “You poisoned me! And kidnapped me!”

  Nita’s eyes were cold. “I’m not listening to your excuses again, Fabricio.” Nita waved her hand at Kovit. “You’ve met my friend here, the zannie I met in the market. I’m going to ask you some questions. If you don’t answer, Kovit will make you answer.”

  Fabricio’s eyes turned to Kovit, dread lurking in their depths. “You’re going to do that anyway, aren’t you?”

  “No. If you answer all my questions, Kovit won’t hurt you.”

  Fabricio looked at her, his eyes flat and dead. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Well, you can answer my questions and take a chance on whether you’ll get hurt after.” Nita shrugged. “Or you can just get hurt.”

  Fabricio’s head fell, and he stared at the floor. “What do you want to know?”

  Nita considered, then started with a softball. “Your father’s name?”

  “Alberto Tácunan.”

  “And he runs Tácunan Law.”

  “Yes.”

  Nita licked her lips. “Do you know the law firm well?”

  “I dunno what you mean by that. Are you talking about the legal stuff? Because that’s all over my head.”

  “No. The layout of the building.”

  Fabricio blinked, and a frown crossed his features. “Yes.”

  “Do you know how to get into the building?”

  “Obviously.” He blinked. “Oh, do you mean, could I get someone else in?” He considered. “Maybe?”

  “And do you know where all the files are stored on the clients there?”

  He nodded slowly. “It’s electronic. The computers in the offices are all on a closed network, so any terminal would do, but you’d need the right password to access certain details.”

  “I assume people like your father can access everything.”

  “Yes.”

  Nita’s eyes narrowed. “Do you know your father’s password?”

  Fabricio’s body slumped. “You won’t believe me if I say no, will you?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Look, you can’t break in there.”

  Nita crossed her arms. “Why not?”

  “It’s . . .” Fabricio struggled for a moment. “It’s just a bad idea. You’ll die.”

  “That’s my business.”

  “The building is a labyrinth. You’d need me to guide you and key in all the security codes.”

  “Then I suppose you’d have to come with us.”

  “Then it’s my business too.”

  Nita leaned forward. “Fabricio. You have a choice right now. You can do what I want, and live a while longer. Or Kovit here can slowly torture and murder you. Which will you pick?”

  Fabricio’s body trembled, and his eyes flicked to Kovit, then quickly away. “Why do you want this information?”

  “Because it’s protection.” Adair had given her the idea, with all his talk of using information to bribe himself off the Dangerous Unnaturals List. It made her think of how untouchable Tácunan was, how powerful he was.

  Nita had been going about building her reputation all the wrong way. She wanted people to fear her, to not want to risk attacking her for fear of the consequences. But she’d tried to do it with violence—and no one on the market feared violence. They were too accustomed to it, too desensitized to it.

  Violence was a tool, an important one. But it wasn’t going to make her feared.

  If she really wanted to keep the powerful people away from her and protect herself, she needed something far more frightening. She needed their secrets.

  She needed the information contained in Tácunan Law.

  Fabricio was staring at the floor, his blood dripping silently onto the beige carpet from his chin. He finally whispered, “Okay. I’ll help you.”

  “You mean you’ll play along until you have a chance to escape, and then you’ll run for the hills.” Nita pulled out her phone. “Don’t worry—I prepared for that.”

  All her time in Toronto, Nita hadn’t been thinking enough moves ahead. Nita didn’t play chess, but she imagined it was like a chess game—she couldn’t act based on the immediate result. She needed to think of how her opponent would respond, and how she’d respond to that and so on, imagining as far as possible into the game. She needed to be thinking dozens of moves ahead, to try and predict what ripples each of her actions would cause other people to do.

  She could never imagine all the ripples, because she didn’t know all her enemies. The whole market was after her, nebulous and unknown, and she wasn’t sure what any group was doing at any given time. But she could guess, and she could plan based on the people she knew were after her.

  She was going to start with Fabricio.

  “You see,” Nita continued, “I’ve been taking screenshots and compiling informati
on against you.” Nita showed him the folder on her phone, pictures of his conversations with Henry, his demands to kill Nita. “I’ve been recording this conversation too. I’ll blur my own voice, but you’ve confessed to plenty. If you try and run off, I’ll just release all that info.”

  “You leak me to INHUP, I leak you.” His voice was cold.

  “Oh, I never said I’d leak it to INHUP.” She smiled. “I’ll leak it to the black market. I’m sure a lot of people will be interested in you. And your knowledge.” She winked. “I can’t be the only one thinking how easy it would be to rob Tácunan Law using you.”

  He paled. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . . Because that was what happened to you! Would you really do that to another person?”

  “To you?” Nita leaned forward, her voice lowering into a hiss. “Fabricio, there is no torment in the world I wouldn’t inflict on you.”

  He stared at her, eyes wide and frightened, breathing short and sharp.

  “So, you’ll help me break into your father’s offices and steal the information. Won’t you?”

  He nodded, eyes never leaving her. “Yes.”

  Nita clapped her hands together. “Excellent.”

  Fabricio swallowed. “Will you let me go now?”

  “Oh, no. I still have more questions.”

  He slumped.

  Nita licked her lips. “Does your family have a vampire on the payroll?”

  Fabricio considered. “Not directly, no. But there are vampire clients. I suppose it’s possible my father could ask them to do things for him.”

  Nita scratched off a piece of dried blood from her chin as she thought. “Do you know what these vampires look like?”

  “No. I’ve never met a vampire.”

  It hadn’t been much of a hope. The more she thought about it, the more sure she was that Zebra-stripes wasn’t directly connected to Fabricio’s father. It didn’t make sense. If they were working together, why would Reyes have turned him away at the market?

  No. Nita suspected that Zebra-stripes was another faction somewhere in this mess, and something that had happened around the time of Fabricio’s kidnapping—perhaps the reason for Fabricio’s kidnapping?—had led Zebra-stripes to her father.

  Nita crossed her arms and asked him the last question, the one Adair had told her she should focus on. “Fabricio?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why didn’t you go home after I set you free?”

  He froze. “Personal reasons.”

  “Tell me.”

  “No.” His voice was soft.

  Nita raised an eyebrow. “Kovit is still here, ready and eager to torture you.”

  He glared at her. “I’ll never help you get to my father’s files if you let that monster hurt me.”

  Nita shrugged. “Sure you will. It’s that or death. I’ll ask Kovit not to do anything too permanent.”

  Fabricio stared at her, his blue-gray eyes wide. “You’re a monster.”

  Nita leaned forward, so she was nose to nose with Fabricio. “I became what I had to become to get out of the market you sold me to.”

  Fabricio flinched and looked away.

  “So tell me, Fabricio. What are you running from? What’s so bad back home that you felt the need to sell off the person who saved you and go into hiding?”

  Fabricio’s eyes squeezed shut and small tears leaked out. He shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”

  “Can’t and won’t are different things.” Nita shook her head slowly. “And since your mouth seems to work, and your brain seems to work, I think you should be saying ‘I won’t tell you.’”

  He bowed his head and began to cry. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. I’m sorry I couldn’t find another way to get the money I needed to run away.”

  Nita sighed. “You didn’t need the money. You were going to INHUP.”

  “I couldn’t stay there. It wasn’t safe. I knew I only had a short window before I was recognized.”

  “By someone in INHUP?”

  He nodded tightly. “They’d sell me the way they sold you.”

  Nita stilled. “Pardon?”

  He swallowed. “Like how they sold your location online.”

  Nita’s mind raced. “I thought that was you.”

  Fabricio frowned, confused. “Why would I sell your phone GPS and hire Henry? They’d just get in each other’s way. I only hired Henry. Besides”—he shrugged—“how would I have even got access to your phone to bug it, anyway?”

  He couldn’t have. INHUP had sold her location online. How had Nita not seen it before? She’d been so focused on Fabricio, so laser set on him, that she’d ignored the fact that INHUP had always been the only one who could have planted the bug.

  She gritted her teeth and thought of Quispe starting what Nita had assumed would be a fruitless hunt. How foolish she’d been—even Quispe had realized it had to be her own organization.

  Nita had more enemies to hunt down and eliminate.

  She let out a breath. Later. She’d deal with INHUP later.

  “So, Fabricio.” She raised an eyebrow. “If INHUP is so corrupt, why did you even go there in the first place?”

  “I just needed a doctor from INHUP and a place to hide out while I had my own fake documents made.” His eyes beseeched her. “I knew I couldn’t use any fake documents they gave me—too easily compromised. I needed money to escape, and selling you was the only thing I could think of for fast cash.” He swallowed. “I really thought your mother would kill the dealers. If it makes any difference. I never thought they’d actually succeed.”

  Nita’s face was hard as stone. “If my mother had been there, it might’ve made a difference. But she wasn’t.”

  Fabricio wept. “I’m sorry.”

  “Then tell me what you’re running from.”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  Nita thought about Diana, and how she couldn’t get her vengeance because she kept thinking about what was going on in the head of the boy who killed her family.

  She thought about Adair and how he refused to get revenge because it caused more problems. About how Nita had let him go, had chosen to let him survive betraying her.

  She thought about how poisoning Fabricio out of vengeance had started a chain reaction that had led to more chaos and death than she’d ever wanted.

  And she thought about how she’d decided that her one rule would be not to hurt people simply for the pleasure of it.

  “Kovit?”

  He looked up at her over Fabricio’s head, his eyes a question. “Yes?”

  Nita met Fabricio’s huge blue-gray eyes, the tears falling from his cheeks and redampening the drying blood on his face, coloring his tears pink.

  Nita pocketed her gun and handed Kovit her scalpel.

  “Make him scream,” she hissed.

  Then she turned and left the room.

  Fifty-One

  NITA CLOSED THE DOOR behind her, just in time to hear the opening chords of Fabricio’s screams before they cut off.

  She leaned her back against the door and breathed out. She thought about what was happening on the other side of the doorway. She didn’t weep. She didn’t shake. She didn’t feel much of anything, except a slow, steady calm. People said vengeance was something you’d regret, that it would make you feel ugly inside, that the guilt would eat you up.

  But Nita had felt far worse when Kovit was torturing that INHUP man she didn’t know. Now she just felt . . . victorious.

  She didn’t care why Fabricio had betrayed her. She didn’t care about whatever sob story he came up with. He’d sold her out so he could survive, and she wasn’t going to forgive and forget.

  She would still use him, though.

  She walked away and marveled that she was the exact opposite of Kovit in many ways. He couldn’t hurt people he knew—only people he didn’t. She struggled hurting strangers, but could easily consign her enemies to eternal pain.

>   She wondered which one of them was more fucked up.

  She left Kovit and Fabricio behind and went back into the main reception room, then across to the other recording studio. She opened the door.

  The room was filled with hard suitcases, and two cots had been set up, blankets mussed. Gold sprawled on one of them, staring at the ceiling. She looked up when Nita entered.

  “Hey,” she whispered.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?” Nita asked.

  Gold snorted and rolled her eyes. “Yeah. This is me sleeping.”

  “Different definition of it than I have.”

  She shrugged. “Even if I did want to sleep, it’s not like I could. Kovit took my phone, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to sleep without an hour of scrolling aimlessly through social media first.”

  Nita snort-laughed. “I guess you’ll have to figure that out.”

  Because there was no way she was getting that phone back. Gold was too much of a wildcard. Kovit had been right to take her phone. Better to make sure she couldn’t call INHUP or anyone else in the Family.

  Though what they were going to do with Gold after this, Nita had no idea. And she was far too tired to think about it right now.

  Nita sighed to herself and looked around at the room, full of half-open suitcases and piles of dirty laundry. “All of this is—”

  “Our stuff. Mine and Daniel’s.” There was a slight pause as both of them remembered Nita cracking open his skull. Though Gold didn’t know about the dissection that came after. “Henry had a private room he rented with a bed next door, but Daniel and I had to sleep here.”

  Nita frowned. “So Henry’s stuff isn’t here.”

  “No.” Gold sat up with effort. “What are you looking for?”

  “His laptop. I want to find out where all that blackmail against Kovit is and destroy it.”

  Gold frowned. “Henry has everything backed up in the cloud. You’ll need to get all his stuff there too.”

  Nita rubbed her temples. “I suppose no one knows his password?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s not like he can get to it anymore.” She crossed her arms. “So I suppose we can just leave it there to gather dust.”