“Sordi Senior will be grateful when we forgive his debts,” Daniel said. “Grateful enough to cut us in on his action. Maybe break the kid’s leg first. Clean break. Don’t need to cripple him or anything. That’ll make sure they receive our offer in a properly receptive state of mind. They’re going to need more trucks to handle the added volume. Winslow?”
Winslow was a scarecrow of a man, his bare chest draped in a black leather vest. The back bore the image of a skeletal eagle, bearing down with its talons out, and heraldry reading Blood Eagles MC—Las Vegas Original.
“On it,” he rasped. “Hell, we can snatch half of Donaghy’s trucks right out of the impound lot. Fresh coat of paint and some new plates, nobody’ll know the difference.”
Daniel snapped his fingers. “Good. The city will pay Sordi an advance to get him up and running right away, and we’ll sell him the trucks at a deep discount. Which, considering we’re getting them for free, is a nice extra chunk of profit.”
His phone buzzed against his hip. He tugged it out, sliding his chair back an inch to glance under the table. It was a text message from a blocked number, with a simple command attached: Leave the room. Now.
He riffled through the possibilities like a dealer with a fresh deck of cards. No shortage of people who wanted to take a shot at him, but nobody would dare do it within earshot of a Commission meeting, and this was a weird way of setting up a hit. Jennifer had sent him under-the-table texts plenty of times, using his influence to help sway the rest of the board one way or another, but her empty hands were on the table.
He ran through every possibility and came up empty. Nothing to do but follow the string and see where it led. He stood up and gave his phone an apologetic finger tap. “Gotta take this call, excuse me. I’ll be right back.”
He pushed open the conference-room doors and crossed a hundred miles in a single step.
The room was gone. The hotel was gone. He stood upon a floor of rough, rust-red stone, in a cavern lit by candlelight.
“Aw, come on,” he breathed, tasting the bone-dry desert air. “Not this shit again.”
The Mourner, draped in her ivory veils and long satin gloves, sat at an ironwork table with place settings for two. Flickering tea lights and low white candles circled the cavern floor in concentric rings. The circles of light bulged and bent here and there, their curves off-balance and out of proportion in a way that felt laden with strange meaning. Hieroglyphs he couldn’t decipher.
“Join me for tea,” she said. Her voice was a serpentine hiss.
He thought about asking if he had a choice. He decided he already knew the answer and stepped carefully over the rings of candlelight. She poured from a delicate china teapot. Amber waters cascaded into a pair of flowery cups, and steam smelling of hyssop and honey kissed the cavern’s stagnant air.
“Last time we got together, I ended up at a restaurant for Hollywood cannibals.” He raised his teacup. “Cheers. Oh, and I got stabbed. Did I mention I got stabbed? Because it hurt. A lot.”
Her gloved fingers—impossibly long and twisting in ways bones were never meant to bend—raised her cup in kind.
“The reward for good work, as the saying goes, is more work.”
“I have never heard that saying.”
She lifted her cup to her veils, her face hidden from sight as she slurped her tea.
“And yet,” she said, “here you are. You brought me a Cutting Knife. Now I want you to bring me the woman who will wield it, and her companion.”
Her other hand curled around the lid of the teapot. She lifted it, and the pot belched a cloud of white steam into the air between them. With a twirl of her sea-anemone fingers and a chant Daniel could barely make out—a sound that rasped at his eardrums like shards of broken glass—the steam took on shape and proportion. He stared up at two women, their faces carved from white marble.
“Vanessa Roth—though she’s using her maiden name, Fieri, at the moment—and Marie Reinhart. Mark their faces. Their survival may depend on you.”
Daniel squinted at the dark, dour woman on the left. “This one…she looks familiar. Could swear I’ve seen her somewhere before. So what’s their damage?”
“It may clarify if I call them the Witch and her Knight.”
He took a long, slow sip of his tea. The taste of honey lingered on his tongue.
“Always figured there were more out there. You know I met the Prophet once? Back when I was stuck behind bars.”
“So you know the stakes,” she said.
“I know that when all the characters of the story end up on the same world, at the same time, it usually means lights out for the entire planet. That’s the pattern, right?”
“It does appear to be a law of the multiverse,” she replied. He felt her smiling behind her veils. “Do you respect the law, Daniel?”
“Not even a little bit. One problem: I can’t exactly travel at the moment. Some asshole killed a dozen people out in Texas and made it look like my handiwork. I’ve got to lie low until this blows over. If it blows over.”
“We don’t have the luxury of delay. They’re being pursued by an organization you’re quite familiar with. The Order of Chainmen.”
Daniel set his cup down.
“The Chainmen. Hell’s bounty hunters.” He tilted his head up at the floating image. The faces were beginning to dissolve, the steam losing its cohesion wisp by fluffy wisp. “They only go after people who break infernal law. Who’d they cross?”
“A certain senator of your acquaintance, in good standing with the fallen powers.”
Daniel jabbed a finger at Vanessa’s face as the name clicked.
“Roth,” he said. “Alton Roth. His kid?”
“Daughter-in-law. His son is recently deceased. You can do the math from there, I trust.”
It wasn’t hard to add up. He slumped back in his chair.
“They’re good and screwed, then. Nobody gets away from the Chainmen. Once they’re on the hunt, the person who called in the contract can’t even cancel it if they want to.”
“You escaped them once, which makes you the perfect man for this task.”
“That was luck.” He glanced at his teacup. “And I cheated. A lot. But it was mostly luck.”
“Vanessa and Marie are out in the wilderness, and don’t even fully understand what they are yet. They could use a little of your vaunted luck.”
“Aren’t you overcomplicating this a little? If you want them to have the knife, give it back to me and I’ll hand-deliver it to ’em. What’s the point of going…wherever they are and bringing them all the way back here?”
“All will be understood when the time is right,” she hissed. “If it helps, think of yourself as a specially chosen instrument in a divine plan.”
“It does not help.” He picked up his cup again and stared at her over the rim. “It does not help even a little bit. So, give me a clue about where to start looking?”
“At this moment, they are on their way to Bloomington, in the hopes of finding Carolyn Saunders. I believe you’ve met.”
His breath blew a ripple across the amber sea in his cup. A gust of steam rose up to join the faded sculpture. The two women were phantoms now, eyeless, their features washed out under a mist of blurry gauze.
“The Scribe. Yeah. We’ve met. She wrote me into her stupid fantasy books.”
“Many would be flattered by that.”
“Have you read her books?” he asked. “Okay, good, at least she’ll take care of them until I get there.”
“It will not be that simple.”
“But you’re not going to tell me why.”
The Mourner slipped her cup under her veils. Her only response was one long, slow slurp. Daniel lifted his open hand in surrender.
“Gotcha. Fine. I suppose this is the same deal as last time? No friends, no backup, can’t tell anybody where I’m going or who I’m working for?”
“Actually…no,” she replied. “You will travel alone, but s
hould you need to, should things turn dire, you may seek what allies you must. Do whatever needs to be done to ensure Vanessa and Marie reach the desert. Be swift. Be ruthless. And do not delay. The Witch and her Knight believe only mortal hunters are on their trail. I fear they’re about to endure a rude awakening.”
Twelve
They were an hour outside Columbus, riding along a forested strip of back-road highway, when the red and blue lights strobed in the rearview mirror.
Marie’s hands clenched the wheel in a death grip as her stomach turned into a knot of razor wire. Her instincts scrambled, scurried, a rat in a trap. Stepping on the gas wasn’t an option: the Eldorado was a tank, and she wasn’t going to outrun a police cruiser. Off-roading it wasn’t an option either: even if the big boat of a sedan was built for it, and it wasn’t, they’d get ten feet off the road before getting caught in a morass of tangled maples and muck. The next off-ramp was miles away.
“Were you speeding?” Nessa was bolt upright, straining against her seatbelt as she craned her neck to look behind them.
“No.” Marie stared at the speedometer. Making sure. “No. Damn it, he said these plates would hold up!”
“He lied. Or the authorities followed us to New Jersey and he talked. Either way…” Nessa faced forward and folded her arms across her chest. “Pull over. I’ll handle it.”
She didn’t have a choice. Marie’s foot hit the brake like a hangman’s hand on the gallows rope, preparing for an execution. The car swung onto the shoulder and eased to a dead stop.
“Don’t kill him,” she said.
She put the car into park and killed the ignition.
“He’s not taking you in,” Nessa replied. “If he takes you in, it’s all over.”
The cruiser sat behind them. The colored lights whirled, flashing off the trees, the long and empty highway, painting the night in shades of blood and arctic ice.
“Nessa, listen to me. He’s a cop. He’s not a bad guy, all right? He’s doing his job. Don’t kill him.”
Marie stared into the side mirror. He was still in the cruiser. Please don’t call for backup, she prayed, not sure who she was praying to. Please don’t call for backup—
“If he takes you in,” Nessa said, “that’s the end, you understand? You’ll be railroaded, you’ll be sentenced, and you’ll die in prison. Alton will make certain of that. I won’t allow it.”
The cruiser door opened. A shadow emerged, walking with a gunfighter’s swagger and one hand perched on his belt as he slowly approached. Marie’s throat tightened like a hand was squeezing it shut.
“Nessa, listen to me. Do you know how many traffic stops I did before I made detective? This man is just like me. He’s innocent. He probably has a family. We’ll find another way out. Promise me you won’t kill him.” She turned, eyes wide and pleading. “Promise me.”
Nessa bared her teeth. She didn’t promise. She didn’t argue either.
The trooper bellied up to the driver-side window, his eyes shrouded under the wide brim of his hat. “Evening, ma’am. License and registration, please.”
She wouldn’t be able to bluff him. She knew this because she’d been the one standing in his shoes a hundred times. She knew every response, every trick, every game that guilty people played and she knew why they wouldn’t work. All she could do was delay the inevitable. Meanwhile, on her right, Nessa sat perfectly still with her hands cradled in her lap. A bomb waiting to explode.
She had to save this man’s life. Then she had to save theirs. She didn’t see a way to do both.
But maybe that’s what a knight does, she thought, digging out her wallet. A knight finds a way.
She gave him her license, not worried he’d recognize her name on sight. She was a fugitive in New York State, and he’d find that out if he checked in, but she doubted there was a coast-to-coast manhunt in full swing. Alton had pull, but not that much. Her best bet, her only bet, was to play this as straight as she could.
“This actually isn’t my car,” she told him. “I borrowed it from a friend while mine’s in the shop.”
The trooper rapped his fingers against the laminated face on her license.
“Jersey plates,” he said. “Your friend know you’re off on a road trip?”
“Yes, actually. My aunt Carolyn lives in Illinois, and she’s sick. This…this might be the last chance I get to see her before…you know.” Marie turned her face down, swallowing hard, wishing she was a good enough actress to cry on cue.
“All right,” he said, slow and easy. “Why don’t you step on out of the car for me. We’ll have you back on the road in just a few minutes, no big deal.”
And if she’d been telling the truth, he might have been right. Marie watched Nessa’s fingers clench on her lap. The witch sat silent, still, keeping the promise she hadn’t made out loud. For now. Marie locked eyes with her one last time. Then she got out of the car.
The trooper walked her around to the back of the Eldorado and turned her to face the trunk. She tried not to flinch as the first cuff locked snug around her wrist. He was good at his job, gentle but firm, and snared her other hand behind her back with one smooth motion.
“You’re not under arrest, okay? Just detaining you while I sort this out. You got anything in your pockets that might hurt me? Needles, knives, anything like that?”
“No,” she said. She knew the drill. He patted her down like a pro, setting her wallet on the trunk, coming up empty for contraband. Not that it would matter; the second he ran a check on her license, he’d know he had a fugitive on his hands.
Nessa’s words echoed in her mind. The choice between being good and being right. She wanted, needed to be both. And there was no way killing an innocent cop was good or right. But if it came down to survival, if it was his life or theirs…
No, she thought. No easy answers, no shortcuts. I’ll figure it out.
He left her standing at the trunk and walked around the other side of the car. Nessa got out on command. She walked ahead of him, toward his cruiser, and met Marie’s gaze in passing. Her lips moved without sound, and Marie saw the words she mouthed.
Your way. For now.
Behind her, Marie heard a second pair of handcuffs click shut, a mechanical rattle like the seal of a coffin lid. Nessa had done just what she asked. Now Marie wondered if she’d just doomed them both.
From where she was standing, she had a good view of Nessa in the Eldorado’s side mirror. The trooper left her standing next to his cruiser at the roadside, cuffed, pensive, her downturned face glowing in the strobing lights. He didn’t get in and run Marie’s license, like she expected. Instead, he walked around the back of the cruiser, circling the car, and rummaged around under the passenger seat. Marie squinted, leaning to one side to get a better look in the mirror.
This wasn’t right.
He’d left Nessa standing between his car and the highway, where she’d be in danger from any car passing too close to the shoulder. He should have either moved her around to the trunk, like he had with Marie, or sat her down away from traffic. This was basic academy training, even a rookie knew that, and she didn’t think the rules were any different in Ohio.
He stood up again, apparently finding whatever he was looking for, and left the passenger door open as he walked back around his cruiser. For one moment, he stood perfectly framed in the Eldorado’s side mirror: hat slung low, his badge glowing like molten metal in the sweep of the cruiser’s crimson light, and a syringe in his hand.
Marie spun around. “Nessa! Look out!”
He lunged in, plunging the needle down like a dagger. Nessa’s eyes flashed as she turned and drove her foot square between his legs. He doubled over, air bursting from his lungs. Nessa stumbled back, off-balance and almost falling, and her hip thumped against the cruiser’s hood as she caught herself.
Marie dropped to the pavement. The asphalt slammed against her shoulders, wrenching her arms and sending a streak of white-hot pain down her spine, but she d
idn’t have time to be gentle. She squeezed her knees up against her chest, tight as she could, and strained to bring her cuffed wrists over her feet. She saw Nessa run, fleeing for the tree line. The syringe clattered to the pavement; he’d given up on killing them quietly. The trooper’s revolver slapped free from its holster and barked once, twice, muzzle flare lighting the darkness as he fired at Nessa’s back.
Marie didn’t know if Nessa had been hit. Didn’t know if she was dead or alive. Her wrists flipped down and over her shoes, still cuffed, but in front of her now. She leaped to her feet and charged. The cruiser’s scarlet light caught her in the eyes and danced with the blood screaming in her ears. She was screaming, too, as she plowed into the assassin at full speed. Her fists drove into the small of his back. She brought him down to the pavement under her weight and slipped her cuffs over his head, digging a knee into his spine to keep him down.
Then she pulled, hard, her cuffs turning into a garrote that chewed into the man’s throat. He kicked and writhed, bucking under her knee, the revolver useless while he was trapped on his belly. He fired two more shots at nothing, his finger convulsively squeezing the trigger, and the muzzle flash left streaks of lightning in Marie’s vision.
Dark blood spattered the asphalt as he rattled out his final breath. She kept the pressure on, feeling his windpipe buckle and break, until she was sure he was dead. Then she leaned over him, slipping her hands free, panting for breath as her shoulders sagged.
Nessa stumbled up, looking blindsided, twigs in her hair and a clump of muddy grass clinging to one shoulder from where she’d rolled for cover. No blood, no bullet holes. They looked each other over, making sure. No words. They didn’t need them right now. Marie fumbled at the dead man’s belt until she found his handcuff keys, and Nessa turned around. She unlocked Nessa’s cuffs, her hands shaky from adrenaline; then Nessa took the keys and did the same for her.
Marie plucked the twigs from Nessa’s hair and brushed her shoulder off.
“Trunk,” Nessa said.
She got into the driver’s seat of the cruiser while Marie grabbed the dead man by his shoulders, dragging him around to the back. Nessa popped the trunk. She stood beside Marie, lifted the lid, and tilted her head.
Detonation Boulevard Page 8