Sacrifice

by Dakota Banks

  She’d been going about 120 miles per hour, a romp in the park for the McLaren. At that speed, she’d be a very tough target. If she’d been the shooter, she would have waited for a better opportunity.

  When her dizziness began to ease, she left through an open window and moved away into the brush, leaving no trace of her passage. She felt like a giant walking bruise, but at least the feeling had come back in her left arm. From thirty feet away, she examined the wreck by moonlight. Her car had come to rest against a tree, its roll cage badly dented but still intact. Every extra safety measure she’d installed in her car had come into play. The McLaren had given its all. She blew it a kiss.

  If I were the sniper, I’d verify my kill, so I’d be on my way down here right now.

  Some of her weapons were in the car and irretrievable. She had only those she regularly concealed on her body, a small knife strapped to each calf, a few throwing stars and darts in a leather pouch inside her waistband, and her whip sword, flexible bands of sharpened metal that curled inside a sheath at her waist. It was more than enough. In the mood she was in, it would be rewarding to throttle the shooter with her hands.

  Twigs snapped uphill from her.

  Too confident of a kill. Unprofessional.

  Maliha ignored the complaints streaming in from all parts of her body and silently climbed a tree. While waiting for the shooter to arrive, she snapped off a handful of twigs. She plotted his route easily after listening—he was heading straight for the wreck. When she saw his shape in the moonlight, she let go of the twigs, making a noise like a footstep right below her. He altered his path, moving to investigate the sound.

  She dropped on him, slashed the arm that held the rifle, and put a knife to his throat. The motions came from deep in her memory, carried out without thought. She was trained for this and she’d shed blood. Any threat to her life should be met in kind. He yelped in surprise, as if he were in the grip of a ghost, and he wasn’t far wrong. As an Ageless assassin in the service of a Sumerian demon, she had gone by the name of the Black Ghost.

  She kicked the rifle out of reach. Wrapping one of her legs around his, she effortlessly took him down. With one leg clamped over his lower body and his slashed arm twisted tightly behind him, she secured him. With the point of her knife delicately resting on his carotid artery, she could feel his pulse hammering. Before she killed him, she wanted information.

  “Who hired you?” It was the Black Ghost’s voice. There was no answer. She drew a drop of blood from his throat. “Don’t make me ask again.”

  “Nobody hired me. I’m here on my own. You killed my great-grandfather.” He’d managed to put some defiance in it, and given his position, that earned him some points with her. She loosened his bleeding arm to relieve a little of the pain.

  “Explain.”

  “You mean you don’t know? Your family kills so many people they lose track?”

  My family? “Humor me.”

  “Loon Lake, 1910. Ring any bells?”

  The mention of Loon Lake brought back vivid memories. She’d taken a life that day working for Rabishu, the demon who’d controlled her then, but saved another life. It had been the start of the awakening of her conscience, questioning whether her Ageless life was worth it if bought with so much death. “What does something that happened a century ago have to do with me?”

  “With you, nothing. But one of your ancestors stabbed J. H. Sawyer to death the night my grandfather was born. His wife, Lucy, saw the whole thing. She swore to get vengeance.”

  He means me. He just doesn’t know I was around then. “What’s your name?”

  “John Sawyer.”

  “How did you find me?” The Black Ghost had slipped away. This wasn’t the time for a killing machine. She needed reasoning and judgment.

  “Lucy wanted to find the killer. She kept records of all the guests at the Loon Lake Resort. Only one turned out to be using a false name. That name turned up somewhere else, on the deed to a plot of land in Massachusetts, and it kept turning up there. Property transfers. Inheritance. Sales.”

  Shit. So much for sentimentality.

  “You have no idea what went on back then.”

  “And you do?”

  “We have our family stories, too. Did Lucy ever tell what really happened that night? She was in labor and the baby had the cord wrapped around his neck. The killer stayed and saved the baby, your grandfather. If not for the killer, you wouldn’t be here. A life for a life. The score was settled long ago.”

  “I never heard that. You’re sure?”

  “What reason do I have to lie? Don’t live out someone else’s obsession. Drop this and get on with your life. Come near me again, I’ll have to kill you.” She stood up, shoving him away from her as she did. He nodded, but was that enough?

  Will I have to keep looking over my shoulder for this guy?

  There was still time to kill him. He could carry on his vendetta and get better at it, even pass it on to his children. Every twenty or thirty years a new Sawyer family member could be looking for her, and she wasn’t about to give up owning or visiting her Massachusetts land. She focused on a point beyond him on the hillside and let her eyes relax. His aura, the luminous radiation surrounding his body, came into view. It was mostly yellow and orange swirled together, which she interpreted as intelligence and the desire for a successful life. Overlaying these basic pieces of John’s personality were his feelings of the moment, long tendrils of black and red that flicked like small whips—anger and hatred at what she represented—feelings imposed by Lucy, long in her grave. As she watched, she could see these tendrils begin to fade. It was a promising sign.

  But there’s too much at stake here. John could have put an end to everything for me over this. I haven’t earned back my soul yet and my quest to eliminate all the Sumerian demons left on Earth is far from complete. All because of Lucy. I should have let her baby die back then!

  John was walking up the hillside toward the road. Maliha fingered her knife, undecided, and then drew back her arm and launched it toward John’s receding back.

  No!

  The instant the blade left her hand, she changed her mind. She raced the knife up the hill, using a burst of speed far beyond human capabilities. Before the knife could strike John’s back, she deflected it with the back of her hand. The knife missed him and struck a tree nearby. The skin on Maliha’s left hand was torn open where the blade had skittered along it.

  He deserves a chance to come to terms with the new version of his family history. I think he’s a good man who grew up in Lucy’s very long shadow. I’ll take the risk.

  When John finished his climb, he turned around and called back to her. “Sorry about your car.”

  It wasn’t until later, when Maliha was walking along the edge of the highway, that she realized he had apologized for wrecking her rare and expensive car but not for shooting at her head.

  Men.

  Chapter Three

  Three days later

  Maliha Crayne didn’t have a clear view of the terrain rolling by beneath her, so she put her foot on the copter’s skid and leaned out the door. The hot downdraft from the whirling blades overhead buffeted her.

  “Hey!”

  She felt Hound’s sizable hand grab the back of her waistband.

  “What the fuck. Don’t scare me like that. You don’t have a safety line or anything.”

  “I have good balance. Do you want me to find her or not?”

  She looked back over her shoulder at him. Every inch of his body language screamed Hell yes!

  She leaned farther out, trusting him. There was some muttered profanity behind her, but no more complaints.

  Then Hound moved close behind her in what in other circumstances would have been a lover’s ardent clasp, especially with his hand taking liberties on her ass. He clipped an anchored lanyard to the D-ring on the back of her full body harness and let go of her.

  “Lean all you want. Fall out, I don’t giv
e a shit.”

  She knew that wasn’t true. She and Hound had known each for a long time. He was upset and angry at the world in general because his partner, Glass, was down there somewhere in the dark, kidnapped by a mostly Arab militia in Darfur. He and Glass had been together for years but recently things had heated up between the two of them and Hound had finally forced the M word out of his mouth.

  Glass delivered medical supplies for the World Health Organization. Her last known location was in the Darfur region of Sudan, near a town named Duraysah. The village she’d been assigned to had been discovered burned to the ground. Glass’s engagement ring was pressed into the dust on the path out of the village. It wasn’t accidental. The ring lay within a hastily drawn letter “G,” establishing hope that Glass had left the village alive.

  The theory was that Glass had been taken by the Janjaweed, the militia members responsible for attacking and burning the village. They routinely raped their female victims, mutilated men, women, and children with machetes, and then killed them or left them to fend for themselves, bleeding from severe wounds. The Janjaweed members didn’t have the latest military equipment. Bullets and rifles cost, but one terrorist weapon every militiaman possessed was a prick. Raped women underwent terrible social stigma, most of them becoming outcasts, disowned even by their husbands. Rape as a terrorist tactic demoralized both sexes and tore gaping holes in the Darfur social fabric.

  Nice guys. I hope to meet them very soon.

  Maliha’s hand strayed down to the throwing knives strapped to her thighs and then to a belt slung low on her hips that had a knife for close-up work and a holstered Glock machine pistol along with several spare extended thirty-three-round magazines. She brushed the thin, flat handle of the whip sword that curled around her waist. In use, its two flexible blades snapped through the air like whips, with a buzz-saw effect on the target. Her skin was protected from the blades in a sheath made of intricately carved yak leather, three times as strong as ordinary leather, lined inside with metal.

  She’d been trained with edged weapons three hundred years ago, and the first-learned lessons stuck with her the most.

  She brought the eyepiece of her handheld night vision monocular to her right eye. The full moon and the washed-out field of stars provided enough light for the device to gather and amplify.

  The copter came over a rise, and there it was—the sign Maliha was looking for. Cooking fires. Half a dozen at least. The Janjaweed operated hand-in-hand with the Sudanese government. There was isolated resistance to the militia, but in this region they had little reason to be cautious. They made camp, cooked dinner, got drunk, and turned to their captives for the night’s entertainment.

  “Back off. We’re too close.” Maliha gestured at Hound, emphasizing the urgency. The campsite was about half a mile away. The monocular had picked up the bright fires.

  Hound relayed the message. The copter made a wide swing away from the camp. She and Hound would be going in on foot.

  “I hope they didn’t hear us,” Hound said.

  “We were close enough to hear. The Sudanese government uses Russian MI–24s to support some Janjaweed raids, so the sound of an isolated helicopter might not alarm them. They’d just think their buddies are flying over.”

  “Did you find Glass down there?”

  “Not a chance. Too far away.”

  In the moonlit interior of the copter, she could see Hound’s face well enough to tell that his eyes were closed. She didn’t know what was going on behind those eyelids, but she didn’t think it was benevolent thoughts about the Janjaweed.

  Odds are Glass is already dead.

  If she was alive, they might rescue her in time to prevent gang rape, but if Hound didn’t already know about that, this wasn’t the time to tell him.

  She reached over and took Hound’s hand. He squeezed hers back, and she took it as a call to action.

  “Better watch out, motherfuckers,” Hound said, his words catching in his throat. “We’re coming.”

  By the time they reached the drop site, Maliha was streaking her upper face with black and brown camo paint. Although he was black, Hound still needed the paint on puckered pink scar tissue on one side of his face. Maliha tucked her black hair, worn in a long braid down her back, under the collar of her shirt and then pulled on a dark mesh hood that left her eyes exposed.

  Maliha went first, locking a carabiner on the attachment point on the front of her harness and adding the descender and static rope. The spotter, a friend of Hound’s, told her to use three tugs, and she stepped out into the night.

  She enjoyed roping off a copter or parachuting at night, but the seriousness of this mission wiped away all thoughts of fun. The layer of heat she encountered on her way down promised discomfort to come, between the tactical clothing she was wearing and the equipment that went with it. She’d never seen Hound show an outward reaction to any sort of weather condition.

  On the ground, she unfastened her line and tugged three times on it. As her rope was disappearing skyward, pulled up by the spotter, Hound landed beside her.

  “I hate this shit. Reminds me of in-country.”

  There was only one “in-country” for Hound: Vietnam. He’d been a medic, and had come home broken in body and soul. He was a private investigator now and didn’t do fieldwork like this often. At least, she thought he didn’t. He did some government work she didn’t know anything about.

  Maliha drew her thumb and index fingers across her lips, signaling silence. Hound nodded. He had the GPS unit, so he took the lead. The GPS device wore a mesh hood, too, to shield the light from its screen.

  The two of them walked only a few minutes before the heat of the surroundings caught up to Maliha. Even though it was dark, in October the heat was oppressive near the equator. Her sweatband was soaked and a waterfall cascaded down her spine. She couldn’t stop her body from sweating—wouldn’t, even if she could, because she would overheat—but she shoved aside the sensation of walking on coals.

  In ancient times, when Sudan was known as Nubia, the lioness goddess Sekhmet inflicted her fiery breath on the land in the summer. In order to keep her from making their world uninhabitable, Nubians appeased her with elaborate rituals so the Nile floods would occur in the fall. Sometimes the appeasement was unsuccessful, and in those years of drought the bloody goddess took her toll in lives. Maliha was ready to make a sacrifice to Sekhmet now: a band of Janjaweed.

  Around them, bushes, islands of grass, and scraggly trees were mixed with stretches of bare rocky or sandy soil.

  Not much cover. Not the best for us, but not good for them hiding out either.

  She could see Hound’s body stiffening with tension the closer they got to the campsite. She closed the distance between them and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to face her. She indicated she wanted the GPS and that she would take the lead. His eyes, normally very expressive, swallowed the moonlight and didn’t acknowledge her right away. Then he blinked and handed over the device.

  I should have left him in the copter. Tied him down if I had to.

  “You don’t have to worry about me. Just help me get to her.”

  She said nothing about his whispered comment. It was as though he had read her mind.

  Checking the GPS, she found that they were only a hundred yards out. She suspected that security was a bit lax after the raid.

  The small grove of trees they were in, none of them more than eight feet high, seemed like a good place to stop and plan. She’d tried to discuss that with Hound in the helicopter, but his idea was to get in, grab Glass, and get out. Focused, but short on details. They had to know numbers, weapons, layout of the camp, sentry positions, and whether Glass was with this group or not.

  She turned around and signaled Hound that he was to stay put and she was going forward to reconnoiter. He shook his head, and kept shaking it as she repeated the command. She planted her hands firmly on his shoulders and pulled his face down to hers so that her lips we
re close to his ear.

  “If you don’t do this, I’ll cut you so you can’t go anywhere, and then you’ll be out of the action. We’re not charging in there without intel, Hound. If Glass is there, she could die.”

  He twisted out of her grasp, leaned against a tree and answered her in a voice that was more of a rumble than a whisper.

  “Fuck. You come back for me, you hear? Fuck.”

  She nodded.

  All in black, Maliha moved like a cat’s shadow across the land, heading for a high point she’d spotted a while back. Near the top of the rise, she stretched out on the rocky ground and inched forward until she could see into the valley on the other side.

  The campsite spread out below her. She rapidly assessed the opposition’s strength: about fifty men, mostly in one part of the camp, some sitting around the scattered fires. Thirty hobbled horses were in a makeshift corral just outside the camp. There were plenty of automatic weapons in view, probably AK–56s sold to the Sudanese government by China. Sudan had begun exporting oil to China and importing outdated Chinese automatic weapons. China was happy to unload them, especially for oil to fuel its emergence onto the world stage.

  Maliha had been in one place long enough. She retreated from the top of the hill, marked it in her mind as her six-o’clock position, and walked in a broad arc toward three o’clock.

  She heard the guard before she saw him. He was urinating. Drawing her knife, she approached, adjusting her path so she’d come up behind him. If Glass’s life weren’t on the line, had this man not been a member of the Janjaweed, Maliha might have knocked the guy out and gone on with the mission, hoping a scorpion would sting him on his exposed dick for picking the wrong side in the battle. She slit his throat and he fell to his knees in midstream. She lowered him quietly to the ground.

  Maliha searched for the other sentry, but the man she’d killed was working alone tonight. Still on the high ground, she got on her belly and peered over again for a look into the camp, letting her eyes relax into a soft focus this time. The campfires blurred into reddish-orange clouds. She stared at the closest person, an old man sitting cross-legged in front of a fire. Then she moved her gaze through him so that her focus was on a point beyond. His aura, the luminous energy that surrounded him and radiated outward from his body for a distance of about two feet, became visible to her.