by Kyoko M
“Ah,” Jack said, licking his lips and trying desperately to keep eye contact. “Maybe you should put on a shirt if you want me to actually pay attention to the conversation.”
“I like watching you squirm. It’s funny.”
“Hardy-har. What’s on your mind, Dr. Anjali?”
She ran her fingertips lightly over his shoulders and chest, her gaze tracing over the features of his face in the lamplight. “This relationship is very new. I would like to keep it to ourselves for a while until we figure out where we stand. Do you agree?”
Jack caught her hand and kissed her fingertips, his voice gentle. “Yeah, no sweat.”
“We keep things honest between us.” She narrowed her eyes slightly. “I am still a bit miffed that you didn’t tell me how you felt for a whole year. Even if I hadn’t been ready to respond properly, I don’t like that you had to hold that in. I’m an adult and so are you. If we run into problems, we talk them out. We don’t lie. We don’t omit details. Agreed?”
“Yes ma’am.”
She made a little X over his heart. “Promise?”
“Stick a needle in my eye.”
“I’ll hold you to that, Dr. Jackson. Do you have anything to add?”
He slid his fingers over her hips, his gaze softening on her. “I know it’s too early for you to say the big three words. I don’t want you to feel like you have to. Don’t fake it. If you don’t feel that way about me, it’s okay.”
“Useless pagal,” she whispered, brushing a stray dark hair away from his forehead. “You know exactly how I feel about you.”
She cleared her throat. “But you are right. I won’t force it. You have my word.”
“Thank you. I can get clingy sometimes. Just give me a good smack and I’ll knock it off. I may have abandonment issues. I promise I’ll try to keep a lid on it.”
“As long as you trust me, you have nothing to fear. Do you trust me, Jack?”
He brought one hand up and pressed hers over his heart, smiling up at her.
“Always.”
She leaned down and kissed him. He hummed out a little happy sound and shifted underneath her. Kamala made a noise and arched an eyebrow at him.
“Again? Already? Did that oyster sauce get to you?”
Jack grinned. “Sorry.”
She pursed her lips. “I don’t believe you.”
“Because you’re a smart woman. I told you to put a shirt on.”
She shook her head. “I feel as if dating you is going to be detrimental to my health.”
“Probably is. Maybe you can stave off the inevitable if you tell me more about yourself. What’s your number?”
She frowned, confused. “You don’t have my phone number memorized?”
“Ah, right,” he muttered. “So there’s this thing new couples sometimes do where they ask each other how many…partners they’ve had previously.”
“That sounds hazardous.”
Jack shrugged. “It can be, but you know me better than that. Not the jealous type. I’m just curious.”
She eyed him. “Are you trying to research me, Jack?”
“Would I do a thing like that?”
She swatted him lightly before settling over him, crossing her arms and laying her chin on them, mulling the request over before answering. “My first boyfriend was senior year of high school. Daniel. My parents forbade me to date until college, so naturally I went behind their backs and started seeing him to understand what all the fuss was about.”
“And did you?”
“Somewhat. He was sweet. Understanding. We parted ways amicably after graduation.”
She started drawing patterns over his left pectoral. “Freshman year, I met Kumar. At that time, I was still a virgin, as Daniel and I never went past kissing. Kumar was my first. I admit that it was mostly physical. I experimented a lot with him and we didn’t really like each other, per se. More a mutual attraction. Once we both got out of the interaction what we needed, we broke up.”
Jack brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “Early college is like that for a lot of people. I’ve always said you don’t really go for the education; you go to find out who you are.”
“That’s fair to say.” She licked her lips, her brow furrowing. Jack touched the delicate, wrinkled skin with his thumb.
“What?”
She sighed. “This part won’t be easy for you, but here it goes. I was…engaged once.”
Jack’s eyes widened. “Wow.”
“I know. I try to keep it to myself, as it’s still an intense sore spot for my parents. His name was Tahir. I met him while I was in medical school. We went out for a year and a half. He proposed at our graduation ceremony and I said yes.”
“Christ,” Jack murmured. “Is that part of what made you quit being a doctor?”
“It was a factor, yes. He was going to be a cardiologist. He was amazingly smart, but he was also very sheltered. He knew nothing about hardship and poverty. He had a lack of compassion that became more apparent as time went on. When we started planning the wedding, I came to the realization that I was dreading it and dreading being on his arm. His ego would be the main focus of the marriage and I would need to temper myself to deal with it, and I wasn’t willing to do that.”
“Your father’s resentment makes a lot more sense that way,” Jack said sagely. “You were all set up for life with your career and your future husband and you walked away from it all. To him, it probably seemed out of nowhere.”
Kamala nodded. “In the end, my mother understood that I was unhappy, but she’s always been more familiar with the complexities of my personality. My father is a very black-or-white kind of person. He thinks everything has an explanation.”
“I’m sorry.”
She smiled. “You have nothing to be sorry for, you silly man. I made my choices. I walk my own path. I am content with what I have chosen.”
“Good to know.” He bit his lip. “So I suppose you’ll want to know mine?”
“Nonsense. I already know it.”
He blinked. “Uh. How?”
“Fujioka.”
He gaped. “Seriously? She told you everything?”
“Yes. Why does that matter?”
“Oh, no reason,” he scoffed, running a hand through his hair. “She just rattled off all my failed relationships to the woman I was trying to date.”
“Does it make you feel better that it painted you in a more flattering light?”
“Which part? The part where I got dumped in high school or the part where the only serious girlfriend I had dumped me for my roommate?”
Kamala smiled slowly. “The ‘valedictorian of cunnilingus’ part.”
Jack blushed. “Ah. Well. Okay, that’s different.”
“She wouldn’t hang you out to dry completely.”
“Yeah, not until she needs to blackmail me.”
“How could she stand to do a thing like that,” Kamala said, lowering herself enough to kiss him. “When you’re so bloody adorable?”
Jack chuckled. “Did the oyster sauce get to you too?”
“Maybe.”
“Only one way to find out.”
Ice cold water hit Jack’s face.
He jerked awake, gasping from the shock of sensation, only to realize something horrible.
He couldn’t move.
He felt the bark of a tree scraping his skull behind him. His arms were pulled tight around its trunk and tied with something that felt like a tether. It was also looped around his chest a few times, and as soon as he regained consciousness, the lancing pain of his cracked ribs demanded his attention. His legs lay sprawled awkwardly in front of him, and as his blurry vision cleared, he found himself staring up at a tall, willowy Japanese woman with her hair in a ponytail. She wore all black, complete with a bulletproof vest and a utility belt with several items strapped to
it, including a .38 Heckler and Koch. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties and her features were so plain she could have been mistaken for several different women, but he knew her face. He’d seen it in his nightmares a few times.
“Konbanwa, Jackson-sensei,” the woman said in a sotto voice.
“Aisaka Tomoda,” Jack replied, pronouncing every word with the utmost spite. “Really hoped I’d never see you again.”
A thin smile touched the woman’s lips as she answered in Japanese. “Why is that?”
Jack matched her smile and replied in Japanese. “I’ve pictured doing some very not-nice things to you after you shot me in the arm a month ago.”
She squatted in front of him. “What kind of things?”
“A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell.” He glanced around and winced as he realized he didn’t recognize the clearing. She’d moved him. “Just you?”
“For now,” she said. “My men are in the tunnels hunting the dragon.”
“Someone’s optimistic,” he said with a snort. “How do you know I won’t pull a Jon Voight on you?”
Aisaka raised a thin eyebrow. Jack smirked. “That’s an Anaconda reference. I was thinking about throwing my legs around your neck and snapping it. I may or may not also throw on a godawful South African accent while I do it.”
She snorted. “You are a very strange man, Jackson-sensei.”
Jack tried to shrug. It didn’t work. It just hurt. A lot. “I do what I can.”
He licked his dry lips and fixed her with a gimlet stare. “So you gonna kill me now or what?”
Aisaka offered him that humorless smile again. “No.”
“Goody gumdrops. Are you into the kinky stuff? Why’d you tie me up?”
“Your crime was severe. Simply putting a bullet in your head is not punishment enough.”
“And what crime was that?”
The smile dropped away, leaving her features empty and lifeless like a doll. “You hurt my master.”
“Okegawa?” Jack asked, incredulous. “He murdered a detective in broad daylight. He stole my dragon, threatened the woman I love, and made my life a living hell. You’re goddamn right I hurt him. You’re lucky I didn’t get my hands on him, because I’d have strangled him myself.”
“That I would have preferred,” Aisaka murmured. “Instead, you crippled him. He lies in a hospital bed now, hanging between life and death, because of your actions.”
“And you dragged your skinny ass out into this hellhole just for that? For loyalty to a scum-sucking criminal?”
She snarled and gripped his throat, squeezing. “That criminal showed me more kindness than anyone else in all of Japan. I would be dead if not for him. Even after I failed him, he showed mercy. He could have killed me, but he didn’t.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, directing his gaze towards the missing pinky on her left hand. “What a standup guy.”
She squeezed harder. “You know nothing. And you will know nothing, because you are going to die here, Jackson-sensei. Slowly. Alone. In much pain.”
He felt a slight tremble in her grip as she spoke the next words. “Just like him.”
She let go of his throat and drew a flask from her belt. “No, I will not kill you. I will let the forest kill you instead.”
She pinched his nose shut. Jack struggled, throwing his body weight against his restraints, wriggling, trying to get his arms loose. In only a minute, his lungs were screaming for air. His vision blurred again and black crept in at the edges. At two minutes, his brain forced his mouth to open. Aisaka dumped the contents of the flask into it without hesitation. Jack growled and spat out as much as he could, but he could feel some of it drip down his throat and into his nostrils. It tasted foul and bitter.
She let the flask drop into his lap. “Goodbye, Jackson-sensei. Die well.”
Then Aisaka turned and left him there.
CHAPTER NINE
CRUCIBLE
Kamala’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Absently, she wiped at her mouth again; the taste of vomit still lingered. She probably needed to rinse it out with water from the flask clipped to her belt, but she couldn’t summon the will to care about it in the wake of watching a man’s skull explode before her eyes. She couldn’t stop seeing the meaty void where his features had been. Nor could she stop wondering if she would have been able to stop Fry from pulling the trigger if she had been fast enough. Would it have made a difference? Would the man still be alive? What was his name? Did he have family? Was he a father?
“The cavern up ahead is showing a heat signature,” Fry said quietly. “Not moving. Looks to be about a twenty-foot drop. Get your head on straight and follow me.”
Kamala’s bloodshot, tear-stained eyes shot to his back. Before, the cold cave air had gotten to her and made her feel numb. A hot flash of anger spilled through her small form. He had the gall to snap at her to get her head on straight after witnessing a CIA agent blow a man’s brains to spaghetti? In spite of all that she had been experiencing in the last several moments, something solid in her gut clicked into place. She had made a decision, although the choice hadn’t presented itself yet.
Kamala wiped her cool, wet cheeks clean and spat to one side, ridding herself of the foul taste on her tongue and gripped her cold gun. She made sure her steps were light as they approached the open archway of the cavern. Strangely, the tightness in her gut hadn’t worsened simply because she had seen the chalk marks Jack made. He’d definitely been this way. She focused intensely on the thought that he was still alive in the cave system somewhere. He was too damned stubborn to die. He had to still be here. He had no other choice. He’d never leave her to raise their little one alone.
Fry and Kamala sank into crouches and then peeked over the edge of the outcropping.
“Ah,” Fry said. “Well, there you go. I can scratch ‘see a mound of dragon shit the size of Shaquille O’Neal’ off the Bucket List.”
“Can we make that jump?”
“Theoretically, yes. However, it’s a bad idea. Land wrong and you’ll break your legs.”
“Look!” she pointed.
He followed her finger to see several dark, damp footprints in the cave floor leading away from the droppings. “You gotta be shitting me.”
He paused. “Pun very much intended. Looks like your baby daddy’s still alive or at least he was recently.”
Kamala aimed her infrared scanner towards the footprints. “There’s still some heat signature in them. He can’t be that far ahead of us.”
“Which means the dragon isn’t either.” Fry checked the diagram of the cave system on his phone again. “Alright, since we’re not making that jump, we have to double back and find the tunnel that’ll lead us down there. Any sign of her?”
“Not in the nearby tunnels, no.”
“Thank God for small miracles. Let’s go.”
They returned to a fork in the tunnels and took the other one, which lead further down. The temperature took a significant drop and they turned on the heating system in their suits. The tunnel looped around and connected with a path that had Jack’s footprints.
“Goddess,” Kamala whispered, kneeling and examining the deep furrows Baba Yaga’s claws had scratched into the earth. “She was chasing him.”
“Makes sense. She’s territorial. Judging by the size of the steaming pile she left, she’s probably going to be hungry soon, too. If that’s the case, she’ll go topside to look for food. Might give us an advantage.”
They followed Jack’s footprints until they reached the long passageway that led out to the forest. Kamala stopped dead.
Heaps of rock and dirt had crumbled down into the path. Smoke from the burnt wood and immolated stone choked the air even through her mask. Large, crooked cracks ran up through the cavern walls. Dirt spilled from above where the dragon’s massive body had damaged the ceiling. There were only smoldering a
shes at the end of the passageway as evidence of what had been the wooden staircase.
Kamala didn’t realize she had raced over to the heap of cinders until Fry called out to her. She blinked several times and came around to see that she had knelt by a particularly large mound, her arms buried in the ash up to her elbows. It slipped through her fingers, sooty and fine. Nothing indicating a human being had been in them. Her heart shuddered with relief.
“He’s not here,” Fry said in a steady tone from behind her. “Calm down, Dr. Anjali.”
Was she not calm? Kamala tried to assess herself. No, she was shaking all over. Probably some mild form of shock. She shut her eyes and drew her will power into her chest as a large, warm ball of control. She asserted logic over the situation. Fry was right. Jack wasn’t here. She wasn’t holding the remains of his body in her hands, just ash. They had to keep looking.
Slowly, the shaking ceased. The air was thick with smoke, but she forced herself to breathe deep into the mask until each breath came out even. She unfurled her fingers and let the ash fall away as she stood up. “Is it possible Baba Yaga escaped out through this opening?”
Fry scrutinized it. “Not unless she’s got shrinking capabilities. She’s every bit of twelve feet tall. Her wings wouldn’t fit through, forget the rest of her. She must have gone elsewhere. With the stairs gone, we’re back to square one. My guess is Dr. Jackson escaped as she smashed the stairs.”
“Then let’s get up there and find him.”
They turned to go back the way they came.
Fry swore and threw Kamala to the ground, covering her small body as gunshots ripped through the air.
Two men stood at the end of the passageway firing assault rifles at them. Fry drew the assault rifle that had been strapped to his back and returned fire. The men scattered. He analyzed their surroundings and spoke over the thunderous bark of the gunshots.
“Get to that pile of debris!” he jerked his head towards their left, where a craggy section of the ceiling that was about the size of an oversized beanbag chair had fallen. “I’ll cover you.”
Kamala crawled on her belly to the debris. Fry darted over after her just as his clip went empty. He loaded a second one and cocked it, peering through the scope.