by Nancy Holder
“Now I do.” Che took a deep breath and tapped the table. He shifted his weight. He was scared. “So what else? What I got to do to get straight with you?”
“Someone said my sister is missing. Salma. You heard that?”
Che looked solemn. “That’s what I hear. I don’t know where she is, man. I swear it.”
“I’m going to find her,” Nicky vowed. “If I need your help, will you be there?”
“I’ll be there,” Che assured him. “We all will be.”
“All right. Take the price off my head. I need to be able to move around without watching my back, until I find her.”
“Done,” Che promised.
“One more thing,” Nicky said. “I took this gun off Billy Cruz. I don’t want him hurt.”
Che hesitated. “Uhh, too late for that, chico. We heard you escaped with his gun, we punished him.”
“Punished how?”
“Let’s just say he won’t be losing any more guns, where he is. Unless it’s to a fish.”
Nicky blew out a breath and swore softly. The urge to ask Che about Rosalie rose up in him, to see if the Echo Park boss knew anything about what had happened to her back in Sunnydale. But he pushed it back down. Chances were, Che had never heard of Rosalie—the Latin Cobras were basically small time compared to the Echo Park Band, at least until Nicky had taken out Del DeSola’s oil field during his Night of the Long Knives. And a dead gang girl wouldn’t mean much to him.
Che must have noticed his hesitation. “Sí, hombre?”
“No,” Nicky said, blowing out a sigh. “I feel okay having you in front of me, Che,” he said. “But I sure don’t want you at my back.”
Chapter 14
AS SALMA STEPPED OUT INTO THE TUNNEL ITSELF, SHE realized that things were very different down here. The walls and floor and ceiling were smooth rock, as if worn by the erosion of water or wind over a period of centuries. No torches or lights burned here, but the surfaces glowed with a kind of blue phosphorescence. And when she felt the walls, she found them slick to the touch. Same with the floor and, she presumed, the ceiling, though try as she might, she couldn’t reach it. Walking on the slippery surface was difficult, and she often had to balance herself with a hand on the unpleasantly slimy wall. The tunnel smelled damply organic, like freshly-turned earth, but with an undercurrent of something else, something sour and decayed.
The drug was beginning to wear off. As she continued to go forward, through the blue-lit maze of tunnels, her hands shook and despair welled inside. She broke into a run at one point, from one tunnel into a branching one, and then around another corner. But all the tunnels looked the same; she might be back in the original one or she might have traveled for miles. And running was dangerous when the footing was so awkward—she had fallen a couple of times already, skinning her knees and the palms of her hands.
The tears came again. Salma stood, hunched over, hands on her knees, and sobbed as they rolled off her cheeks to splash on the gloopy stones. The sobs racked her body, wrenching her again and again until her ribs ached and her throat burned. Finally, she sat down in the slime, determined to just stay here until someone came along or she died of starvation.
And in the sudden silence after she stopped crying, she heard it. A rushing noise, like water moving through a pipe. But it wasn’t water, it was something more solid. It seemed to travel at subway speed, and from the sound of it, it passed through one tunnel after another after another, all around her. At one point, the glow from a cross tunnel ahead seemed to dim, and Salma pressed herself flat against a wall, heart pounding so loud she thought it would give away her location.
Something—she could not put a name to it, nor would she want to try—flashed through that tunnel, passing in front of the opening to her own tunnel so fast she could not even get a real sense of it, except to know that it was enormous.
And it seemed to be hunting. . . .
Sunnydale
Buffy and Riley stood to the side with the rest of the spectators. Flashing lights from the ambulances and police cars parked helter-skelter on the street and driveway around the Cobras’ ruined headquarters strobed the surrounding houses and bathed the watchers in alternating red and blue and yellow. A pack of about fifty people, kept at bay by yellow police tape and a couple of officers, watched the process. Paramedics brought bodies, zipped into black bags, out on gurneys and deposited them into the waiting ambulances. As soon as the ambulances were a block away from the crowd—even though they were still in view— the lights and siren were cut. Speed meant nothing to these people now.
A separate clutch of reporters stood on another part of the block, watching or speaking into microphones with the blasted house as a telling backdrop. The assault on the quiet suburban house—though everyone had known gang members lived there—was big news locally. Buffy had even overheard one neighbor telling a reporter that the gangsters there kept the neighborhood safe—that they didn’t cause trouble so close to their headquarters, and as long as they stayed, no other troublemakers dared to venture in.
But trouble had come, and, unlike the supernatural type that Buffy confronted on a regular basis, this kind, born of flame and lead, was fair game for public speculation. Everyone saw the news from Los Angeles, of course, and knew that war had broken out between the Russian and Hispanic gangs in that city. It required no great intellectual leap to postulate that, since the Latin Cobras had an association with L.A. gangs, the Russians had staged this attack as a response to events that had transpired there. Reporters solemnly intoned this theory into the TV cameras.
After they watched for a while, Buffy turned to Riley, who stood close by, hands in his pockets. “Do we have anything to gain by sticking around?” she asked him. “Think there’s anything we can learn here that’ll help us deal with things?”
He gave the answer she expected. “No,” he said. “They’re just bringing out bodies. They’ll work over the house, but all they’ll find are bullets that can’t be traced from guns that can’t be traced, and the fingerprints of the guys who lived there. If there were any witnesses, they’ll keep quiet, or they’ll say they saw men they’ve never seen before or since get out of a car, shoot the place up, and get back into the car. No one’s going to identify the shooters.”
“You sound so certain,” Buffy said.
“That’s how these things work,” Riley replied. “That’s how the cycle continues. Eventually someone will talk, word will get back to any remaining Cobras or their families or friends, and the same thing will happen to a Russian gang headquarters somewhere. They’ll think of it as taking care of their own problems, when really it’s just extending the violence over more time.”
He sounded tired. “It’s the Hatfields and the McCoys all over again, only instead of happening in Appalachia somewhere, it’s the southern California version.”
They turned away from the spectacle and walked down the block, beyond the range of the spinning lights. They were quiet for a moment. Riley put his left arm around Buffy’s shoulders and she pressed up against him, sliding her right around his waist and holding him close. Their hips bumped as they walked.
“You’re pretty smart,” she said after a block or so. “I wish so much of what you knew didn’t have to do with violence, but I still like that you know it.”
“I could say the same about you,” he responded. “The knowing part, and the violence part.”
She stopped, and Riley stopped with her. She turned to face him, still holding onto his waist. She put her other hand on his other side, and he brought his left hand up and put it on her right shoulder. She looked into his blue eyes, though in the dark under the overhanging trees she couldn’t make out the color.
“They say cops and soldiers have a hard time making relationships work,” she said. “Too much time away from home, too much danger, too much stress. High divorce rates. Do you think that’s true?”
“That’s what they say,” Riley agreed.
He
r eyes were huge. Her nervousness, huger. “Then we—do we stand a chance? Should we even be trying?”
“Buffy, I—you have to try. If you don’t, you’re defeated before you even start, right?”
And there was that smile, that Riley, dimpled smile that was so kind, and so understanding, and so strong. She relaxed into it, and loved him for it.
“Makes sense.” She smiled. “Maybe I just needed to hear you say it.”
“I don’t like losing,” Riley said frankly. “And I don’t like being beaten. So you can be certain that anything I try, I have a pretty good feeling I’m going to succeed at.” The smile was there again. Riley smiled at her a lot.
He smiles more in a day than Angel did in all the time I loved him. . . .
She moved against him, encircling him with her arms, enjoying the sensation of his arms wrapping around her. She pressed her face to his sweater-clad chest.
“Optimism,” she murmured. “That’s something else I like about you.”
What she left unspoken, though she understood it, was that optimism had never been one of her strong points. She thought of herself as a realist—a common trait, she acknowledged in moments like this, of pronounced self-honesty, among pessimists.
Riley seemed to pick up on it without her saying anything. He pressed his lips to her hair. “Optimistic enough for both of us,” he said softly.
You’ll have to be, Buffy thought. But she kept quiet and relished the feeling of his comforting bulk against her, and found herself wishing she would never have to let go.
Los Angeles
“What is it?” Alina called out. She used her high, little-girlish voice to full effect, speaking in a singsong tone and drawing out the words. “It’s your father,” Alexis Vishnikoff’s gruff voice spoke from the other side of the door. “Unlock this door at once.”
Mischa had already crossed to the curtains, thrown them open, and slid up the window. Angel helped Cordelia, then Wesley, out and to the ground. He hesitated before going out himself. Alina watched as she headed for the door.
“You sure I shouldn’t stay?” Angel whispered.
“No, go,” Mischa said. He patted the pocket where he had put the business card that Cordelia had given him on her way out, with the old address and phone number crossed out and her apartment information written in by hand. “We’ll find you.”
Angel dropped to the ground as Mischa pulled the curtains closed. Alina heard him land softly outside, and then she flicked the knob lock and opened the door for her father.
Even though he was a gifted psychic, her father could not guard his own thoughts at all times from his more talented daughter. She had seen into his innermost being many times. She knew that his physical appearance— gray and lined, with a sparse beard and sad eyes—did not match the way he thought of himself. He still pictured himself as the young man he had been back in the USSR, when he and his bride worked around the clock on the People’s Project and set aside everything else in life in deference to the importance of their task. Those had been his favorite days, full of young love and intellectual challenge, feeling like he contributed something worthwhile to the party and the State.
As he stormed into the room, rage purpling his face, Alina knew that she resented her own knowledge. Her father’s favorite times, she thought, should include his only child. He remembered fondly the days of her infancy, when he doted on her. But as she grew older, as her psychic skills matched, then exceeded, his own, he had changed. It was as if her coming along had somehow precipitated the end of things, rather than being a new beginning. Alina believed he was jealous because she had been able to make the Tracer work where he couldn’t—that he accepted her powers because they enabled him to continue his precious work, but otherwise would just as soon not have a daughter at all.
“You are never to lock this door,” he sputtered. “And you—” he pointed to Mischa, “—what are you doing in here with her?”
“We were talking, Father,” Alina said. Mischa stood by silently. “Just looking for a moment of privacy to talk about things, that’s all.”
“You have no privacy,” he declared. “You are not an individual, you are a component of the People’s Project and a servant of the Soviet Union.”
“I am a sixteen-year-old girl,” Alina argued. “And sometimes I need privacy.”
Alexis stomped around the room, drawing back the curtain, looking into the corners. “I thought I heard other voices in here,” he said.
“Only Mischa and me,” Alina replied steadily.
Alexis stopped and stood still for a moment, as if contemplating that answer. “And your work?” he asked.
“It’s very late, Father,” she said. “I’m tired. I want to stop for the night.”
Alexis Vishnikoff glared at her. “You stop when I say you can stop. Your mother and I didn’t work our fingers to the bone for decades so that you could quit whenever you’re a little weary.”
She frowned back. “It’s not working right. We know that now. It’s taking people we don’t mean it to. And it’s backfiring, letting things in. I don’t know why or how, but it’s creating portals in other places. I’ve been hearing things—”
“You’re not to pay attention to any of that.” He whirled on Mischa. “Have you been filling her head with this nonsense?” he demanded.
“Alina doesn’t need anyone to fill her head,” Mischa replied. “She is quite capable of accumulating information all on her own.”
“I suppose so,” Alexis Vishnikoff said. His fury had ebbed, but the gruffness remained in his speech and his combative stance. “We cannot afford to quit now,” he urged. “We have come so far, we are so close to victory.”
Alina crossed her arms and took a step away from her father. “I’m afraid. I feel like I’m losing control of it. And if that happens—”
“If it happens, it happens,” her father said bluntly. “The Americans should have never demanded that we disband our Union.”
“It won’t affect just America if things go really wrong,” she ventured. “Even Russia—”
“A chance we’ll have to take,” Alexis said, dismissing the subject with the imperiousness of a czar. He went to the door and turned the knob a couple of times. “Never lock this door unless your mother or I are in here with you,” he instructed. “Never.”
He stomped out and shut the door behind him.
Alina turned to Mischa. “He’s going to check the security video,” she whispered in a rush. “He didn’t believe us, about there being no one else here. He thought he heard unfamiliar voices.”
“What do we do?” Mischa asked frantically. “Cordelia and Angel and Wesley are certainly on the tape. I could have explained just Cordelia, but not us going out and getting the others and bringing them all in here.”
“Why did you?” Alina asked him. She made a conscious effort not to go prying into Mischa’s head, as the best friend—really, the only one—she had, she felt she owed him that courtesy.
“They said they could help,” Mischa explained, sounding earnest and uneasy. “They seemed to know a lot— that I’m hooked up with the Mafiya, and that your father is as well. That I am in some kind of trouble.”
That caught her attention. “What trouble?” she asked.
“Not my own trouble,” he said. “But yours. I know you’ve been worried about the Tracer malfunctioning, and I’ve been worried about you. Terribly worried. About what might happen to you, or . . . or what you might do.”
“You mean, that I might commit suicide as a way to shut it down?” she asked.
Mischa’s cheeks reddened and he looked away.
“I would never,” Alina assured him. “I have considered it, and decided it’s not worth it. Better I learn to control it more effectively.”
“Thank you,” he mumbled.
“But I’m touched by your concern, Mischa.” She put her hand on his shoulder and flashed him a quick smile. Then she let her hand drop and clenched her hands in
front of herself, like a double fist. “That doesn’t help us with the immediate problem, though. My father will look at the tape, and when he does, he’ll be back in here for you.”
“Then I should leave?” he asked, heading for the window.
“I think so,” she said. She held out a hand to him. “For that matter—we both should.”
“Do you mean it?” Mischa asked. “You would run away?”
“I can’t stay here,” Alina said. She slumped and pressed her fingertips against her temples. Her lips quivered. “I can’t continue to work at their whim. What they’re doing—it’s just wrong. I can’t be part of it any longer.”
He reached for her. “We’ll go together, then.”
“Not together,” Alina said. “Not yet, anyway.”
Mischa’s face fell. “Why not?”
“My parents are both powerful psychics,” Alina reminded him. “If we go together, they’ll be scanning for us and we’ll be easy to find. If we split up for a while, we’ll both be more difficult to locate, and we’ll stand a better chance of reuniting after a little while.”
“We need to pick a meeting spot, then,” he ventured. “Someplace safe, where they’ll never find us.”
“I know just the place,” Alina said. She brightened, filled for the moment with a kind of insane hope that they might both actually survive what was to come. “It’s called the Grand Canyon.”
Chapter 15
Los Angeles
“YOU HAVE TO FIND HER, GRANDMOTHER,” NICKY SAID. Doña Pilar sat on a sofa in the house’s big living room, where everyone had gathered upon Nicky’s return. Her feet didn’t quite reach the ground. Nicky had pulled up to the house driving Che’s Boxter. The clan had gathered for an impromptu celebration, complete with lots of hugs and kisses from family and household staff, but spirits were still muted by the fact of Salma’s absence. Now, Nicky was left alone with Doña Pilar and Willow.