by Mark Henwick
If I went rogue and killed Forsythe, no one was going to blame me. Except me.
We could change to wolf, and I could depend on Alex’s dominance to keep me from going rogue again. But that would mean losing the use of the P90s strapped to our backs. We might need them.
Instead, I tried to lose myself in sensations—the scent, the rhythm of our running, the sounds we made. It was easier to avoid thinking about what had happened today and all the reasons that I was chasing Forsythe. All the reasons I had for killing him.
I had to treat it like an Ops 4-10 mission. Overhaul his group. Take them prisoner. Hand them over to Ingram. End.
Hunt, kill, said the wolf.
Forty minutes later, I could almost taste the men ahead. They’d found a side road that they could follow up to the highway.
They were still hurrying, but they might be starting to think they were home free.
We ran after them and we picked up the pace; in the cathedral quiet of the night our wolfy hearing could make out the distant sound of the occasional car on the Angeles Forest highway.
We were a hundred yards behind as they came to the junction with the highway.
I could hear them arguing how to make sure the next car stopped. Up in the hills, at this time of night, there weren’t many.
We slowed. Alex and I slipped off the road and started to come around uphill of them, hidden by the bend in the side road and the pine scrub. Yelena went downhill.
I could hear them panting and arguing long before I saw them.
“Just wait here. Next car comes, we stand in the road and stop it.”
We crept closer until we could see them.
One of them was peering back along the way they’d come. “We have to keep moving. We’re being followed,” he said. “I know it.”
“They’d need dogs to track us. I don’t hear nothing.”
“We should walk, put more distance behind us.”
“I can’t.” That was Forsythe, slumped down on the raised wall of a storm drain, head in his hands.
“That much commitment to take out the auction doesn’t just let us walk away. Who the fuck are they, anyway?”
Forsythe just shook his head. “Some gang wants the business,” he said, but even he didn’t sound convinced.
“They got choppers, for fuck’s sake, they’ll have night vision. They could be overhead any time. If we stay here, we can hide where the cover’s good. If we walk, we might get caught out in the open.”
Alex and I had made our way directly above them, flicking the safeties off the P90s and checking we had single round selected.
Our wolf eyes could see them clearly, glowing with the heat of their exertions.
They could barely see each other. They certainly couldn’t see us.
I could make out Yelena as well. She stopped out of our line of fire.
I nodded at Alex. His voice would make more of an impact on them. Not that I expected that to do any good, but I wanted them alive for Ingram.
“Put your guns on the road and lie down,” he called out.
Good or bad, dumb or desperate—they reacted.
Two went for handguns in shoulder holsters. Two of the others flat out sprinted along the highway in different directions.
Alex and I fired at the same time, the rounds knocking over the guys who’d gone for their guns.
With a couple of jumps we were down onto the road.
The guy still standing took a swing at me. I got a glint of a blade as my only warning.
I ducked inside his arc. He hadn’t been expecting that. He probably wasn’t expecting me to break his ribs with my fist. Or dislocate his shoulder as I took the knife off him.
I slammed him face down onto the asphalt.
The two we’d shot weren’t going anywhere and there was a startled cry as Yelena brought down the one who’d run in her direction.
Alex sprinted up the road after the last of the bodyguards. That wouldn’t take long.
Forsythe?
He’d taken the opportunity of the confusion to run. Where?
Down the slope. I could have followed him on the noise alone.
I retrieved the bodyguards’ guns first. Not good to come back to a nasty surprise.
I vaulted the storm drain.
My wolfy eyes could see where I was going. Forsythe didn’t stand a chance, but he was running with all the desperation of fear, even when there was a steep drop right in front of him.
I grabbed his jacket to jerk him back. A rock twisted underneath my foot. We both went over.
Chapter 69
Tumbling down a hill in the dark doesn’t favor anyone.
I collected two hard thumps to my head before the slope leveled off. Forsythe got off lightly, and I’d had to let him go to protect my head.
He jumped up, lashing out wildly all around him.
I was in about as much danger from his swinging arms as I was from getting sunburn in the middle of the night.
I took him by his shirt and slammed him back against a tall boulder.
But something changed. All of a sudden, there was less fear from him. A sense of relief, as if somehow he felt he’d done something clever.
Which might have been something to do with the hypodermic syringe sticking out of my side.
I grabbed the first thing that came to hand. It turned out to be the knife I’d taken from his bodyguard. I shoved it under his jaw and pushed up until he was standing on the tips of his toes.
“So, this was a little something you had for the auction?”
“Farrell?” he said, his voice squeaking.
“A muscle relaxant? Something to take the fight out of her, but leave a woman able to sense what’s happening to her?”
I pressed harder.
“Wait, wait.”
“Oh, I’m waiting,” I said. “Thing is, these drugs don’t affect me the same as they used to. So, two things can happen. I start to feel weak, in which case I slide this blade up through your jaw and into your brain. Or I don’t, and we just have a talk, you and me, while it wears off.”
The fear was back. His whole body was shaking.
I pulled the syringe out. The plunger had been pushed all the way in.
I felt fine. A bit light-headed. Muzzy. Battered from the tumble. Post-adrenaline kicking in.
The blade twitched in my hand.
Fear. That sweet, sweet taste. Flooding my senses.
I had to focus. I was not going to go down the Basilikos route. It wasn’t anything to do with what he deserved, it was everything to do with the choices I made for myself.
Focus.
I said the first thing that came into my head. “What did you do to Fay?”
“Uh?”
I eased the blade back a little.
He was bleeding. Not a deep cut. Still, I wanted to pinch my nose so I couldn’t smell it. The blood was calling to me.
“Fay,” I said. “Fay Daniels. Your lawyer. What did you do to her? How did you make her go along with your sick fantasies?”
“No! She…” his voice cut off.
He couldn’t speak. I eased off a fraction more.
“You’ve got it wrong. She’s the one you want,” he said.
I pressed again, the blade drawing more blood.
“She came up with it!” he screamed, his feet scrabbling back to try and lift his chin away from the knife. “You’ve got to believe me. All of it. It was her idea. When you made fun of her. She couldn’t take that. She got the drugs. She told us to film it.”
What? Is he lying?
I wasn’t an Adept Truth Sensor. I could hear if a person was lying from the changes in their heart rate and the scent of the body.
Forsythe’s heart rate was one step from him blacking out and he stank of fear. And blood.
I pushed closer, glaring into his eyes.
If my eukori worked, would I be able to tell if he was lying? What would his eukori feel like? Would I ever get the stench of it
out of my head?
The drugs were making me trippy. I couldn’t handle this shit now.
His face. Gleaming with sweat. Eyes manic.
Shouting. Close up! Close up!
She’s a whore! Fuck her. Fuck her.
This is the man who raped me. Who got his friends to rape me.
And he stinks of fear now.
Just like Amaral down in New Mexico when my wolf jaws closed on his throat.
I blinked.
Forsythe’s face blurred with Amaral.
I was sweating. The temperature was dropping. Shivers broke out. The drug was getting to me. I could feel it slowly sucking me down.
Can’t let him go. Rather kill him. But Ingram wants him. Needs him alive. Where’s Alex? Yelena?
Forsythe was babbling.
“You want revenge. You have every right.”
It isn’t about revenge, is it? Resolution? Redemption?
What do I want to do?
I wanted to lie down.
He was still babbling. “I’m as much of a victim. She’s screwed my head, Farrell. I’ve never been right. It’s her you want.”
Lies. Half a truth, maybe. Both of them sick, sick, sick. Both of them.
I just wanted it to stop. All of it. Just let it all go.
The knife felt clumsy in my hand. Slippery. Heavy.
His feet weren’t scrabbling any more. His voice was slowing down.
“You don’t want this on your conscience. I’m unarmed. I’m not the one you want anyway.”
Something’s wrong.
His smell was changing. Or my senses were changing. I was losing the wolf.
I wasn’t getting all the richness of the night in my nose.
His face seemed to darken, lose definition. He just smelled human and sweaty. My whole body was shivering.
Kill him now.
It felt like I was wading through molasses. Everything went slow.
He grabbed one of the bodyguards’ guns I’d picked up. I’d just shoved them in my jacket pocket, and one was hanging out after my fall down the slope.
It pulled free easily. He wasn’t even hurrying.
I just wanted it to stop.
He smiled. A wide, easy smile. Confident. Just the way he used to smile at South High.
Elethesine exploded into my system. The Athanate equivalent of adrenaline, turbo-charged. Burned out the drugs.
I trapped his arm, kicked his feet out from under him and drove his body into the ground, using his own weight to snap his elbow.
He was screaming as I lifted him back up and smashed him back against the rock.
“That was fun, shithead,” I yelled in his face. “Try the other pocket now.”
The knife was against his face now.
I worked it back and forth, weaving the tip in front of his eyes, pulling the sharp edge down along his cheek. And it was sharp.
“Damn. Broke the skin there,” I said, as blood started to drip. “Man, that drug is strong. I’m really not in control here.”
I wasn’t.
He was terrified again.
The feeling of fear was like a bad drinking session. Just one drink. Just another. I deserve it. A little more won’t hurt.
I ran the tip down his shirt. It caught, sliced through. More blood.
“Oops,” I slurred.
The blade twisted, hissed over the shirt fabric, down his chest, past his belt. Down.
He was whimpering.
Fear. Like Amaral. Like Amaral; breath and blood bubbling through his throat while I bit and bit and felt the ebbing of his strength.
So sweet, that fear, that fear of the long night finally falling. So sweet to feed on it.
I reversed the course, brought the blade back up into his groin. Pressed it hard. Felt the fabric of his pants part. Nothing but flesh beneath. Felt the skin bleeding already. His desperate attempt to keep still, to keep the blade away from him just a moment more.
He pissed himself.
Like Amaral, when he knew.
His face blurred with Amaral. The man whose plans had killed Diana. And Kaothos.
Prison was too good for them. Amaral and Forsythe.
I held his life in my hands. He knew it. I fed on his fear.
But the message that my wolf was trying to tell me finally got through.
My wolf had hunted him down. Now it was my Athanate’s turn.
I refused to let Forsythe have power over me.
He has no power. No power.
He can’t make me do anything.
Not one single thing.
Not even to make me kill him.
I choose my path.
My eukori stuttered and flowed. Touched his mind. Felt it squirming. He sensed something. Too late.
This is what it’s like, Forsythe.
This is what it’s like to be injected with drugs so you can’t fight but you can still feel.
You can still scream.
The smell of the basement. The stink of lust.
The noise. The shouting.
The touch of tongues. Hands.
All their hands. Clutching and tearing and pushing. Invading.
This is what it’s like to be powerless. Weak. Defenseless.
The pain goes on and on.
This is what it’s like to trust and be betrayed.
What it’s like to be drugged and held down.
What it’s like to be raped.
This is what it feels like when you beg them and scream until your throat is raw, and they still continue.
This is what it feels like. Feel it now.
And this is what it’s like when it comes to haunt you. When you think you’ve got it beaten and it comes back, again and again, and you can’t stop it. When you can’t sleep, because you wake screaming at nightmares you can never defeat.
This is what your life will be like until you die.
You will never be able to sleep normally again.
You will cooperate with the law, because anything, anything is better than trying to sleep without sedation, and unless you do what they ask, they will withhold it.
This is the rest of your life, Forsythe.
“Amber?”
Alex. Quiet as a fox. Strong as a wolf. His strength and love flowed into me.
“Yeah,” I said.
I let Forsythe go, and he slid down the rock and crumpled into a heap, his face blank with horror.
We dragged him up the slope and threw him onto the road with his former bodyguards.
He lay there, sobbing.
“You’re pathetic,” I said, not caring whether he heard me or not. “I’m finished with you. I’m free of you.”
Yelena’s hand rested on my shoulder.
“Victor’s coming,” she said. “We’ll make two loads for the Gazelle and ferry them back to the studios for Altau to handle them. I’ve called Tarez and told him.”
I nodded.
“Take a picture of him like that, please,” I said. My voice felt odd, light. “Send it to Tove Johansen. Tell her he’s going to be helping the FBI. That the truth will come out. People will believe her now. Tell her we’ll take her home to Clearbrook. Or she can go anywhere she wants, and we’ll pay the airfare. Or she can come live with us. Whatever she wants. Tell her it’s over. It’s finally over.”
Chapter 70
I felt numb. Maybe it was the trailing edge of the drug Forsythe had injected into me. Or the accumulation of everything that had happened during the day.
Tarez security had taken Forsythe away as soon as we landed, to be held with all the other bidders and guards until Ingram collected them.
The studios seemed empty, apart from guards on the door. The Sikorskys were gone. The vans were gone. No representatives. No bustle in the corridors.
Ominous.
“All the representatives have been sent home, House,” was all the guard was able to tell me. “Most of them escorted to the airport. Anyone not on escort duty, Athanate or Were associate,
got involved in a sweep of the entire city to clear out the last of the Basilikos.”
“Except those who pulled guard duty, hey?”
He grimaced and laughed.
Tarez had left a message for us to wait for him. We took over one of the empty side rooms that had comfortable couches.
Alex organized burgers to be delivered from the nearest In-N-Out.
And Tarez arrived just in time to share.
The man looked as if he’d gone a dozen rounds in the boxing ring.
“The rest of your House are fine,” he said immediately. “I spoke to them while you were flying back. They’ll be coming in to join you here once the police have finished with them and we can spare an escort.”
As we sat and ate, he got us to report what had happened in the San Gabriel Mountains after the auction.
“Good,” he said when I finished. “Very good. Skylur’s explicit instruction was that you had carte blanche, but your restraint will go down well with Ingram. We need him to look good in front of his bosses while we puzzle out how we’re going to work with the FBI on Emergence.”
“How did it go in…” I started.
“Las Vegas was a complete success. Your hunch turned out to be exactly right. They found a gold mine of information in an isolated farmhouse that Forsythe and Spiegler own through a trail of foreign companies. A gold mine. Forsythe records everything and he keeps it all.”
I twitched, but Tarez didn’t notice.
“Forsythe’s power in this trafficking network has been based on his ability to blackmail so many people. Ingram’s not speaking to me of course, but the Vegas House managed to stay involved right up to the takedown of the farm Spiegler had been heading to. The place is an Aladdin’s cave of recordings.”
He chewed thoughtfully for a moment, looking off into space as if planning ahead.
“Ingram and Project Anthracite will be tied up for months,” he said.
I dropped my burger back into the bag, my appetite gone.
I chose my way.
Forsythe has no power over me.
Not even if there are twelve-year-old recordings of him raping me.
“What’s happened here?” Alex asked Tarez.
He sighed. “Skylur lost the vote of confidence. He’s no longer President of the Assembly. House Correia has taken that position.”