“Why did the goons have to know about it?”
“They are not goons, Ms. King. They are highly trained warriors.” He and his adoptive daughter locked eyes for a moment. Then he sighed. “It is not about an employee, you are right. It is about a member of the Order of the Tenth Blade we have to try to eliminate. I am not just the leader of a company that employees my people, Chloe: I am also pride leader of the Mai. There are ugly and distasteful things that go along with such responsibilities.”
Chloe nodded, but her mind raced. She had never seen a female member of the Order. That didn’t mean there weren’t any, and she had certainly never seen any of its leaders, so maybe she was someone in charge. But usually someone used the term liability—at least in the movies—to mean someone on the home team. Like someone who has some good points who still has to be gotten rid of.
Not me, right? The thought flashed through her brain, and Chloe tried to hide her concern.
Chloe did present extra danger to the Mai, especially with her stupid stunt the other night. But no, there were too few of them left for the pride leader to just randomly go around and have them murdered.
“These are tough decisions,” he went on, “things that hopefuls like Alyec don’t understand. Things that make a man old before his time.”
“Alyec?”
Sergei chuckled. “He is one of the ones ‘in line’ should something happen to me. Or at least that’s what he thinks.”
“Why not Igor? Hey … do you have any Sprites?”
“Perhaps Igor. There are many good qualities about him,” Sergei said, reaching into the mini-fridge by his desk and taking out a couple of cans. He passed one to Chloe. “He is responsible and serious—but he is going to be married soon. Some would say he lacks a certain, ah, aggression. He is more of a president than a CEO, if you know what I mean.”
Chloe nodded, concentrating on opening her can and making a Twizzler into a straw. There was too much new information to think about.
“I’m feeling a little hungry—what do you think about half sausage, half pepper?” he asked, punching the number for the pizza place on his phone. Chloe nodded again. Then he noticed her inserting the Twizzler into her Sprite. “Chloe, whatever are you doing?”
Sergei had enjoyed learning how to bite off both ends of a Twizzler to make it into a straw and laughed heartily about how you were really supposed to do it with cheap champagne. They’d had a nice game of chess—he’d beat her roundly, of course, but gently—and he’d told her all about growing up in the Communist Soviet Union, both the food lines and the amazing education and intellectualism that Chloe had only read about.
When they left, he gave her a bear hug good night, but as soon as she began heading back to her room, the uneasiness she’d had about the meeting she’d interrupted came back. For the first time ever, the term cult came to her mind. Not that there weren’t actual reasons in this case: they were a different race, completely set apart. But that didn’t change the suffocating totality of the Pride; even when Chloe was allowed to do normal things, like going to the movies, it was with other Mai. She was completely cut off from the rest of the world.
When she got back to her room, Chloe opened her phone and dialed. She had left too many people on the outside worried for too long. It was time to see her family and friends. But she would do it differently this time, intelligently. Far from her home and the watching eyes of the Tenth Bladers.
“Brian? I have to see you….”
The next day Chloe was still thinking about her mom, Paul and Amy, even Brian.
“Hey.” Chloe knocked on the temple door as she walked in. As expected, Kim was there in the corner, meditating or reading a book or something. Kim must have detected something in her tone, because when she looked up, one of her eyebrows was already cocked and suspicious.
“Can you do me a favor? I want to go out and meet a friend—a human one. Would you mind providing an alibi? I’ll tell Sergei you’re, like, instructing me in the way of the Mai or our history or the twin goddesses or something.” She tried to make it sound as casual as possible. “That way the goo—uh, kizekh won’t follow me.”
“You want me to cover for you,” Kim said in her even, toneless voice.
“Yeah,” Chloe said uncertainly; she had no idea what the other girl was feeling.
“All right,” Kim agreed just as tonelessly; she flicked her ears once and went back to her book.
“Hey, thanks! I owe you one.”
The other girl just grunted, not looking up again.
Chloe turned to go, not sure what to do, feeling like the interview was over.
“I really enjoyed last night,” Kim suddenly said unexpectedly, eyes still glued to whatever she was reading. “Thank you for inviting me.”
This was about as much joy as she was ever going to get out of Kim, Chloe realized. She smiled. “No problem. We should totally do it again.”
She turned to go but couldn’t. Chloe realized she had already asked way too much of Kim, but the question had been gnawing at her since the possibility had been raised.
“So, uh … did you find out any more? About my parents? If my mom, was, uh, the previous Pride leader? Because, you know …” Chloe trailed off.
That caused Kim to look up. She fixed Chloe with her eyes and closed her book.
“Your biological parents, whoever they were, are probably dead.”
Chloe jumped at the harshness of these words; while they were most likely true, they were spoken completely emotionlessly. It was like she had been slapped.
“You should worry about your human parents now, Chloe. They are alive. And they are probably being watched and probably in danger.”
Chloe thought about the Tenth Bladers who’d caught her when she’d tried to go home. Home was a trap. They were expecting her to return home at some point. But what about her mom, the bait?
“Okay, chill,” Chloe said, getting angry. She didn’t even feel like pointing out how she only had one “human” parent. Was Kim acting all pissy because she’d never had any real family at all and was jealous of her? “I just want to know, all right? Who gave birth to me?”
“I will let you know as soon as Olga’s people have found something,” Kim said, opening her book again. The conversation was officially over.
Chloe left, still confused by the other girl’s seeming animosity. Maybe it wasn’t jealousy—maybe Kim, the one friend she had actually made since coming here, was now keeping her distance because of the danger surrounding Chloe. The thought only fueled Chloe to get out of Firebird. Now.
On the roof of the Sony Metreon, lying on her back and looking up at the sky, Chloe felt freer than she had in months. Thick clumps of gray clouds sped across the heavens like dumplings until they massed into a heavy blanket on the far eastern horizon. As they passed over the downtown area, they glowed orange from below, only regaining more natural shadows and sky colors as they headed out over the bay away from streetlights, neon signs, and other illuminating pollution.
She thought about how easy it would be just to run from rooftop to rooftop, never returning to the Mai, never returning to her school, and never returning home. Just living in the night. Not a street person … a skyline person, like Batman without his cave or his mansion. She could probably survive with her Mai abilities—heck, she knew how to run down a deer now. How hard would it be to steal something from a convenience store?
A lone figure came walking across the roof toward her. She didn’t move; she could tell by his walk, sounds, and smells that it was Brian. He almost tripped over her, she was so black and still, blending in with the harsh shadows of the buildings.
He was perfect, like a vampire, his dark hair and eyes barely distinguishable against the night sky. The wind picked up and played with his hair a little, and he turned his head to look out at San Francisco. Chloe got a perfect view of his profile, from shadowed brow to bitten lips. A scarf waved behind him like the tattered cape of a worn-out super
hero.
He lay down next to her, also looking up at the sky.
“Beautiful night,” he observed. “Feels like a storm is coming.”
“I want to run into it,” Chloe said. “I want to run away.”
Brian didn’t say anything.
“I have everything I ever wanted. A father figure. A rich father figure,” she added with a chuckle. “A family. Being told, once and for all, that I really am special.”
“I wish I was special,” Brian said with a smile, quoting Radiohead. “You’re so fucking special.”
Chloe grinned sadly and sat up. She looked back down at him. The scarf that framed his head was soft chocolate brown and cashmere, knitted with intricate little cream diamonds in the pattern.
“You made this, didn’t you?” she said, feeling the unbelievably downy ends and thinking about what had first brought them together, his funny homemade knit hat with the kitty cat ears.
“Yep. Had a lot of recent angst I needed to get out.” He smiled ruefully. “You can always tell how upset I am by how crazy intricate the patterns are.”
“You haven’t … seen my mom, have you?” Chloe asked wistfully.
“No. My movements are kind of circumscribed these days. I got into a load of trouble after the whole bridge incident.”
“Oh.” She didn’t say she was sorry. Chloe wasn’t sure exactly what she did feel. An overwhelming sadness. A sense of loss or of having too much. “The Pride … I think it’s like a cult.”
There. She’d said it.
“Welcome to my world.” Brian sighed, also sitting up. “You never hear the term used around the house, but there really is no line between ‘cult’ and certain ‘secret orders’.”
“Hey, you’ve got freckles,” Chloe suddenly noticed, reaching over to touch his cheek. They were brown and added a lightheartedness to his features that wasn’t normally there, without making him look too cute.
“I’ve been outside during the day a lot more recently. Since being, uh, dropped from your case. It’s been kind of nice. I’ve been shadowing your friends some, making sure that they’re okay, but it doesn’t seem like either side is interested in them.” He took her hand. “Thanks for trusting me, Chloe. For meeting me here. It means a lot to me.”
“I’m beginning to think that no one’s innocent of anything,” Chloe answered with a lopsided smile. “But at least I think I know where you stand.”
They were quiet for a moment. He didn’t let go of her hand. She cuddled into him and looked up at the sky again. She thought about their first real date, when they’d gone to the zoo, and she’d bought him a stuffed monkey, and they’d talked about all sorts of important things.
“How did your mother die?” she asked softly.
Brian squeezed her hand and then dropped it. He played with some pebbles on the roof before answering. “My father’s family has been in the Order since … well, since it was documented. All the way back to the Mayflower and England. Before that, actually. One time we were barons or princes or something in Italy. Royalty.” Chloe could tell that he was being modest and knew exactly what they were and wasn’t saying. “Italy … Christendom … knights … the Crusades … I don’t want to bore you with a history lesson.
“My mother’s family comes from Klamath Falls, Oregon,” he said with a smile. “My grandparents own a berry orchard.
“I guess like with any secret club, there are those who marry and don’t tell their husbands and wives about it and those who marry and do tell their husbands and wives about it. But my father went beyond all that. He encouraged my mom to become a part of it with him.
“I don’t think she really wanted to, but that may be my own subjective memory of it. I don’t remember her getting involved much when I was little; I do remember her disappearing off with Dad later on, for long meetings and trips away, and practicing in the weapons room.”
He threw a pebble down and stared at his empty hand. “She was killed on a mission. When I was twelve. They were raiding a Mai hideout in LA. She was shot in the head. Her face … It was a closed-casket funeral.”
Chloe sucked in her breath. It explained a lot about Brian.
“One of …” What did she say? Us? The Mai? Them? “She was killed by a Mai?”
Brian laughed angrily. “That’s what I thought for years. You’ve been living with them for a while now, Chloe. Have you ever seen someone with a weapon?”
She thought about the kizekh Ellen and Dmitri. She couldn’t really remember what they carried.
“The Mai don’t use guns” Brian hissed. “They almost never use any weapon with a blade, even. I didn’t realize this; I mean I knew it, but I didn’t put two and two together until a couple of years ago. My father let me believe it for years…. I finally found out the truth. She was killed by a random gang kid. He saw her gun, thought she was undercover or something, and let her have it.”
Chloe shuddered. There were no clouds above at that moment, just a hazy sky with a few brave stars cutting through like diamond-tipped blades.
“She was killed for a cause she didn’t even really believe in,” Brian finished. “By someone who wasn’t even involved.”
Chloe struggled, looking for something to say. “Why did your father want her to join so much?”
“Because he’s the head of the Order, Chloe.”
A thousand things made sense now. Why Brian hated his dad. Why Brian, though he questioned and didn’t approve of things the Order did, was still in it. He had been raised in the Order! It was all he had known his entire life…. Trying to leave it would be like Chloe leaving her mom and her friends and living an entirely new life, with new ideas and rules and people.
Yep. Exactly.
Chloe laughed quietly, a little crazily. Brian looked up at her, alarmed.
“My ‘adoptive’ father is the head of the Pride.”
Brian blinked at her for a moment, then laughed himself.
“Great. Just perfect,” he said. He put his arm around her and hugged her close to his side, a comforting gesture.
“Did you mean it before? On the phone?” Chloe asked softly. “Did you really mean you … ?”
“Yes.” Brian closed his eyes, frowning. “I love you, Chloe.” It was obviously hard for him to say, for a million different reasons. “Absolutely.”
No one had ever said it to her before. Not outside of jokes, or out of friendship, or stupid grade school crushes. Not even Alyec; there was always humor around the word when he used it, like “love of my life”; inflated, expressive, hyperbolic, and not really serious at all.
It made her giddy.
But how did she feel?
She didn’t want to think about it right then. It might spoil the moment.
“But we can’t—”
“Your lips are poison, Chloe,” he said with a smile, knowing exactly how dramatic it sounded. “Your tears, your tongue, your saliva, your sweat … they would all kill me with extended contact.”
Chloe leaned back, putting her head on his shoulder and his arms around her waist. Surely that was safe.
“We should go soon,” he whispered in her ear, not quite touching it. She shivered at the feeling. “If we want to meet your friends on time.”
“‘We’?”
“I’m not leaving you alone until you’re by yourself on the way home again. Your friends … They mean well, but they leave a trail as wide as the Grand Canyon.” Chloe smiled, thinking of Amy and Paul trying to be stealthy. “Amy even found my e-mail address somehow. I told her to stay away, that it was all dangerous for them.”
“She won’t listen,” Chloe said dreamily, pushing herself up against him more. She kissed his shoulder. “Let’s just stay another minute or two?” she pleaded. “It’s such a pretty night out. This is … perfect.”
Brian opened his mouth to say something: that there were a thousand reasons why this wasn’t perfect, starting with the fact that she was being hunted and ending with the fact that their rela
tionship was ultimately doomed. But he swallowed whatever he was about to say.
“All right,” he said, holding her more tightly. When she shivered, he took the scarf from around his neck and wrapped it around hers.
Chloe smiled and closed her eyes, but a single tear leaked out down her cheek.
She was supposed to meet Amy and Paul in the street behind Café Eland, private but close enough to the public where there couldn’t be an attack. Brian kept assuring Chloe that the Order of the Tenth Blade would never hurt a human, that they took oaths to protect them, but Chloe only knew one thing: These days, wherever she went, trouble followed.
Brian shadowed her silently. She only heard or saw evidence of his presence once or twice along the way: a scuffed pebble in an alley, a shadow above. He was almost as adept at hiding as the Mai, and Chloe had the sneaking suspicion that the few times she thought she detected him, he was letting her.
She quickly checked out the coffee shop: 10:05, the back door was just swinging shut. In the summer the café put a couple of chairs out on the delivery dock in the back for its regular customers who knew they were there. Chloe scaled the fire escape of a building nearby and looked down.
Amy and Paul were there, Amy underdressed for the weather as always, stomping her feet, with her arms wrapped around some gigantic pink puffy coat that looked like it should be warm but obviously wasn’t. Paul was looking around, a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, nervously tapping ashes onto the pavement below.
Something pulled inside Chloe, seeing her two friends from above. It was like in a book: she was apart, beyond them, not part of their story and lives. Before she could think any more along those lines, she dropped down neatly out of the sky in front of them.
“Holy shit” Paul said. Chloe was gratified to see that he was actually capable of losing his cool: half of his hot chocolate went flying.
“Chloe!” Amy shrieked. Both Paul and Chloe gave her looks. “I mean, Chloe!” she whispered, then threw her arms around her friend.
The Stolen Page 11