Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, & Magic

by SM Reine

  It was like being buried alive.

  Depression tried to steal over him, to blank out his mind. He couldn’t breathe. The space closed, thick and heavy. A man’s voice whispers in his mind...Uncle.

  Wasted hands, holding a red-tipped dart.

  This is your enemy, Nenzi. Not the guns, this.

  Merenje stands over him, mashing the gun to his temple, an old revolver from the early colonials. The human clicks through chambers, telling him to disarm, yelling at him to disarm.

  You little fuck...you think he’ll let you live if you don’t? What about your girlfriend? How many of us do you think it would take to break her?

  A sob came to Revik’s throat, a sick, dying feeling. He is there again, trapped. Faces swim past, fear washing through his skin like a tangible force. He remembers getting so hungry he ate dirt, hands locked to his feet so he stank of his own urine, woke to insects and animals crawling on him, screaming at first, eventually so hungry he tried to trap them...

  This is what humans do. What I teach you can save you.

  The gun clicks by his ear, louder with each turn.

  Disarm, you fuck! Disarm or I’ll blow your head off...!

  A bright light flared behind him. He remembered Allie and a part of him fought back. The Rooks were fucking with him, trying to break his mind. He’d fix it. Allie would help him. Allie would find a way.

  Irrational, the thought repeated.

  He felt an opening in the corridor ahead, and a faint hope reached him. They weren’t desperate enough to gun him down in a crowd of human tourists. No matter how many they pushed, they couldn’t be that desperate to bring him down. Besides, if they wanted him dead, they could have done it by now.

  They were trying to bring him in.

  He would have put the gun in his mouth already if it wasn’t for his wife.

  The thought echoes, paralyzing him.

  He feels another sting, this one on his chest. He yanks at the source and stares at the dart, half-blind with pain as he understands.

  He’d been wrong. They did want him dead. They were going to kill him quietly, where the tourists would see him collapse. They could explain it any way they liked...the blood-drenched seer, terrorism threat averted, SCARB coming to the rescue...

  The helicopter that takes off in the night, holding Allie. Taking her.

  They didn’t want him.

  The world tilts into darkness as he fights to focus his eyes, and once more he finds himself in the cave, alone. Silver clouds mass overhead, metallic wardens to his prison in the dark. They watch, biding their time.

  They left him there. They left him to die.

  Sound jerks him out...back into his body, into another darkened corridor that moves lightly beneath his feet. He feels them, behind him, stalking him.

  But it is the rumbling sound that gets his feet moving.

  When a flash lights up the pastel walls, Revik breaks into a run.

  20

  SURPRISE

  I aimed for the seer segment of the ship.

  I knew the basics of where that was, even before I’d left the cabin. All of the cabins of the Seven stood at roughly mid-port, decks seven through nine, although none of us used any but deck eight, sandwiched between two empty rows of cabins and cut off by bulkheads on both sides, but for the entrances and exits guarded by Chandre’s people.

  I couldn’t reach Chandre, Revik or Eliah through the private channels they drilled me on.

  I considered a public kiosk, but a fire alarm had gone off on deck five and I heard disjointed thoughts about gunshots in the crew. Given that no announcements had gone out, damage control on one or both sides must already be in play. Anyway, since no one in the Seven would likely be hanging out in their cabin, watching pay-per-view, a public kiosk would be useless. No one in the Guard even wore headsets.

  I considered heading for the fire alarm itself.

  But even if Revik was there, I wasn’t sure what I could do. I was alone, unarmed and pretty much useless in terms of the seer stuff.

  My other option was to find someone in the Seven on foot...or go to the humans for help. Since the latter would probably get me tranked and stowed in the brig, I chose the former. The Rooks were likely controlling the human crew by now anyway.

  I rounded a corner on a family of humans as I thought it, and found myself watching them as if they were wildlife from the Serengeti in their tennis shoes and baseball hats, holding shopping bags and soft drinks. Glitter speckled the hair of one of the little boys. His father brushed it off absently, still talking to the woman, who laughed at something he said.

  Then I saw them.

  Five men whose faces fit together like differently shaped puzzle pieces were coming up fast from behind the family of humans. The men all looked young, late twenties to early thirties, yet their expressions were older, their eyes sharper.

  One saw me. Within a heartbeat, all five were staring.

  Turning so fast I wrenched my back, I bolted down the hall, back the way I’d come.

  I hit a fork and turned. I turned again...and again.

  I began trying doors. They all needed card keys. I pounded on one. When I turned, I found myself face to face with two humans.

  The man blinked at me with watery blue eyes, clutching a woman’s hand tight enough that it whitened her skin dimpled around his tan fingers. In his other hand, he held a card key.

  “What are you doing?” he sputtered. “That’s our room!”

  His wife gaped at me, as if expecting me to launch into a speech a la confessional television. Then I felt the seers. I couldn’t tell where they were exactly, but I knew they were on their way, not far behind me. Looking for me. Hunting me.

  I raised my hand to a gun-like position.

  The woman’s eyes bugged out further. The man grew very still and pale, his eyes on what he saw as a black muzzle.

  I showed him an image of Ivy’s Baby Eagle.

  “Open the door,” I said, motioning towards the door.

  Both pairs of eyes went blank.

  “I’m not here,” I said. “Open the door.”

  The man’s face calmed. He smiled at his wife, waggling his eyebrows at her suggestively. She laughed, squeezing his hand. They kissed, then he slid the key card into the lock to the right of the door handle.

  It opened with a click. I followed them in and stood inside while they shut the stateroom door, pushing the man to flip the dead bolt lock. Stepping around the woman as the man trundled over to turn on the television, I walked to the balcony, drawing back the curtains with a sharp yank as the woman disappeared into the bathroom. I glanced back as the man straightened his crotch, adjusting his seat in the round-backed chair facing the main monitor.

  Another ripple of warning touched my light.

  They were coming.

  Pushing my way through the opening in the glass door, I ran to the balcony railing, peering around the etched-glass partitions on either side. A line of lit windows greeted me on one side as I looked out past the wind barriers that sandwiched the balcony where I stood. On the other, a twenty foot span separated me from the next set of balconies.

  Damn. I’d assumed it would be like our section of staterooms on the eighth deck, where all the balconies were attached.

  I felt my breath start to come in short pants. They must know where I was, after my stunt with those humans in the corridor. Now it turned out I’d picked the wrong couple to hijack.

  Gripping the railing, I swung myself up on top of it. Even in the dark, I could make out white balconies stretched below me in a long row, separated by those glass dividing walls. The balcony directly below me was ten or twelve feet down. If I hung from this one, the railing itself would only be about six or seven more feet to my toes—but there was no way to jump and not kill myself when I tried to land.

  I would have to swing inward enough to land on the balcony itself.

  Something pushed at my light again, bringing a fresh shot of adrenali
ne to my blood. Realizing the heavy sweatshirt restricted my movement, I ripped it off my arms and threw it over the rail. It flew sideways with the motion of the ship and got stuck on one of the lifeboats. It remained there, flapping in the wind.

  Fuck.

  Nothing I could do about it now. Before I let myself think, I climbed down to the lower rail and dropped my weight so I was hanging from my hands.

  Almost immediately, this felt like a mistake.

  My hand slipped, barely holding on. The other throbbed, bruised and bloodied from the fight with Ivy. I stared down between my combat boots at the railing below. If I let go right now, I’d probably hit my head and end up in the water. I would have to get some momentum...and try and remember to tuck my head. This was starting to feel like a really stupid plan, but I’d just negated all my other options.

  Pushing off from the wall with the toes of my boots, I started to swing, lightly at first, testing my grip, then more vigorously, using my legs as a pendulum. In a few seconds, I was getting as much height as the range of motion allowed. Reaching the bottom of the arc, I let go, using my arms to propel me down and back towards the ship.

  It happened fast. I remembered to tuck my head...but not my arms.

  My elbows smacked the railing hard, throwing my upper body forward. My arms wouldn’t rise to shield my head. Something dark approached.

  My face slammed into what felt like rock.

  I lay there, unable to move. My mind repeated, like a skipped record.

  I couldn’t sleep. He’d told me a hundred times I couldn’t sleep...

  Even so, I think I lost some time. However much it was, as soon as it was over, I jerked where I lay, my nerves jacked up.

  I opened my eyes with an effort. My legs were splayed. One arm lay bent under my chest, throbbing. When I raised my head, it seemed to unstick from the deck.

  I stared at the dark stain where my cheek had been, then raised a hand to touch my face. I bit my lip to stifle a cry as I tried to move my legs. My right knee screamed, enveloped in a fire-like pain.

  I could only lay there at first, feeling like a broken toy.

  Creeping in like a bad smell, that urgency came at me again, and I moved my limbs gingerly, testing as I went. My cheek had already started to swell. From what I could tell, I’d been lying there closer to a minute than an hour...maybe seconds before my consciousness switch flipped back to on. My left arm felt like ligaments had been ripped out of the elbow and shoulder joints with pliers.

  I forced myself to a sitting position. Then, gripping the wall, I sucked in a breath and lurched to my feet. I stood there, trying to focus my eyes, when I heard voices on the balcony above. I froze.

  “Here?”

  A silence. I didn’t move, didn’t breathe.

  “Could she jump that far?”

  I heard a faint clicking sound, carried by wind.

  “She was in and out too fast to pinpoint.” The male voice paused, grunting. “Whatever she did, she hurt herself.”

  “Check the deck. I don’t see evidence of a fall.”

  There was another silence. I stood there, still not breathing, focusing on my body like Revik taught me so I wouldn’t inadvertently fall into the Barrier in reflex. He said it was normal for a seer to go to the Barrier when threatened. He said that sometimes the hardest thing for a seer to do was to stay out.

  I pressed my back to the glass door, hoping I was out of their line of sight, when the second Rook cursed.

  I heard the crackle of a radio.

  “She jumped. Confirm, she jumped. Looks like she hit the lifeboat on the way down...but she might have landed there, too. Bring the boat around, have them check the water on the port side. And if anyone’s close, have them check deck...” He must have been counting. “...Four. If she made it onto the lifeboat, she would have tried to get back in there.” A pause. “No, there’s no blood. She might have bounced right into the water.”

  Seconds later, the balcony door above me closed.

  I was still standing there, fighting to keep from passing out, when the light came on in the room behind me. I turned my head, terrified out of my mind.

  A little old lady stared at me, her wrinkled mouth ajar as she gaped at a face I could barely see reflected in the glass. She clutched a pearl handbag, still holding the drapery cord she must have pulled to get a view of the night sky out her west-facing balcony. I had what looked like two blackening eyes, a swollen cheek, cut and bleeding lips. I touched my forehead, forgetting her briefly as I focused on my reflection. My hairline was bleeding too.

  I contemplated a story to get her to let me in, then simply turned, limping for the opposite balcony wall. Gripping the glass divider, I climbed, fighting not to cry out as I put part of my weight on my swollen knee to boost myself up.

  Gripping the glass divider, I slid around it with one leg, then eased down until my butt rested on the railing of the next balcony over. I placed my feet on the terrace floor and staggered to the glass door. After trying the handle and finding it locked, I walked the length of that balcony and did the same on the other side.

  I repeated this again seven more times.

  Finally, I had to rest. I leaned on a glass door leading into a darkened stateroom...worried I could pass out from the pain in my knee.

  As soon as I’d regained my breath, I yanked myself up, teeth gritted, shielding my light more thoroughly than I could remember doing.

  It occurred to me that I hadn’t tried the door yet.

  I gave it a tug. The glass slid smoothly on its track, unlocked.

  My brief elation flattened as I thought through my options once I was back inside the ship. I had no way to get off, short of trying to drop one of the lifeboats, which didn’t seem like a realistic option. Whether I left the cabin or stayed, I ran the risk of being caught by roving bands of infiltrators...or clubbed to death by Frank and Norma Jean from Great Falls once the Rooks convinced them I’d tortured and killed their pet poodle, Mr. Bigglesworth.

  Giving a dark kind of laugh, I eased through the gap in the balcony door.

  The room was empty.

  For a moment I just stared at the darkened space, fighting to catch my breath. Even if there was a way to do it safely, I couldn’t leave the ship. I needed to find Chan, or Eliah. I needed help.

  I’d take the stairs.

  If they already had Revik—

  But I couldn’t think about Revik yet.

  Terian stared at the VR shadow of the squad leader.

  “I am confused,” he said. “Please explain, ‘you lost her’...I am not following.”

  “Sir.” The squad leader grew audibly nervous. “We made visual contact and she rabbited. We tracked her to a stateroom—” He cut himself off, sensing the other’s impatience. “We’ll find her, sir. We’re doing thermal scans of the wake now, in the event she jumped or fell—”

  “Fell. As in, fell off the ship.” Terian’s lips twisted in puzzlement, replicated in painstaking accuracy by his virtual avatar. “Really. So that’s a possibility? The planet’s only living telekinetic seer may have accidentally ‘fallen off’ a moving vessel into freezing cold salt water...to be chopped into small pieces for the seals to eat? We are exploring that option, yes?”

  “Sir, I—”

  “Do you have any idea what I will do to you, if that scenario eventuates?”

  The infiltrator’s shadow fell silent.

  Terian said, “Yes. Good. Now, I would like you to explore options other than the ‘falling off’ one you seem so fond of...”

  “Yes, sir. Of course, we—”

  Terian terminated the link.

  As his physical vision cleared, he found himself staring around at a damaged segment of corridor on the fifth deck, illuminated only by the sickly glow of an organic yisso torch.

  It looked like what it was—the scene of a prolonged gunfight in a relatively tight space. They’d locked him down in one segment of corridor, but it took more than an hour to subdue
him from there. The pastel and gold ship’s interior was barely recognizable.

  As the torch panned, the swath of light illuminated holes in plaster walls. One still smoked, but they had finally gotten the last of the guns away from him, too.

  Terian’s extraction team stood in an uneven half circle now, staring down at a being that was finally on the ground, although still not fully unconscious. Two of the med techs hunched over him, trying to assess the damage to his nervous system, if any, from the third dart they’d finally hit him with.

  “He wasn’t to be killed,” Terian muttered. He looked at the leader of the extraction team. “He wasn’t to be killed, Varlan...I said two darts. No more.”

  “He was threatening to kill himself, sir,” Varlan replied. “It was a calculated risk.”

  “He threatened to kill himself...?” Terian stared at his lead infiltrator, fighting to incorporate the new piece of information. “Why? Why would he do that?”

  Varlan didn’t answer. Turning, he focused his eyes back on the downed seer.

  Terian watched as Dehgoies raised his head, groping for a med tech, his eyes glassy from the drug. The young seer blanched, backing off. All of them had been unnerved by Dehgoies’s apparent imperviousness to the darts.

  But Terian was familiar with his friend’s biological quirks.

  Impatient, he pushed his way forward, kneeling by the dark head. He listened briefly to his muttered words, then clicked his fingers at one of the seers in the back.

  “You...Legress. You are from Asia, yes? What language is this?”

  A different voice answered, from closer. “Magadhi Prakrit, sir.”

  Terian’s gaze swiveled. The male tech knelt behind the two working on Dehgoies’s abdomen. They lay a patch on his bare skin, trying to stop the bleeding.

  “Is that a human language?” Terian said.

  “Yes, sir. Old, though. Very old.”

  “From where?”

  “Nepal.” The Sark paused, seeing all eyes on him. “I recognize it from the camps, sir...they used some of the older languages as codes.” He smiled wryly. “That one was a particular favorite with the kneelers.” Seeing Terian’s gaze sharpen, the tech let his smile fade. “...It was supposedly the language the Buddha spoke. When he was alive.” He looked down at Dehgoies. “He must have learned it while he was imprisoned there. He’s about the right age.”