Sacrifice

by Dakota Banks

  Taking a quick look, she was horrified at the scene.

  Bright lights flooded the lab. She blinked and tried to adjust her eyes rapidly. There were two men dressed in black, but they were blocky and moved with no grace. They were not trained martial artists. She dismissed them, but not the guns they held. Even the hired muscle could get lucky.

  Claire was tied in a chair in the center of the lab, her head slumped forward so her chin rested on her chest. Ty was on the ground, clutching his belly and groaning. There was broken equipment all around. A tall, thin man stood next to Claire. His hair hung in greasy lanks and he wore a long, heavy robe. One of the pockets of the robe had a bulge that she figured was the canteen. He turned his face toward Maliha and for the briefest moment their eyes met. His were deep blue but flat and emotionless.

  The tall man reacted faster than either of the thugs. He was across the room in no time and slammed Maliha in the belly with his fist. She’d had only enough time to tighten her muscles in anticipation, not to move out of the way. The powerful blow knocked the wind out of her. He didn’t press his advantage. By the time the spasm faded, he had disappeared back into the lab. Just as she ducked into the shelter of the lab bench, she saw him pick up a piece of broken glass from the floor.

  Maliha knew his intent as though their minds were one.

  She rolled out from behind the bench and planted a star in the wrist of the nearest gunman. He screamed and dropped the gun. As she passed by him, she finished him with a blow to the throat, then turned her attention back to the real danger in the room. She launched a throwing knife at the tall man. He was in motion as she threw, and instead of skewering his heart, the knife landed in his arm. It didn’t stop him from carrying through the action he’d started. He yanked Claire’s head back and slit her throat with the piece of glass.

  No!

  Claire’s frightened, wildly beating heart pumped sprays of blood across the room. Then the flow slowed to cover Claire’s chest in blood. Maliha knew her friend was gone.

  The other gunman got off a few shots in Maliha’s direction. She spun and threw her second knife at him and he fell, the knife buried in his chest. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the thin man toss the bloody piece of glass on the floor and yank the knife out of his arm. His wrist moved back and she knew what he was about to do. He flipped the knife, spinning it toward Ty, who was still in anguish on the floor. One of her throwing stars deflected it, and the knife hit the floor and slid away harmlessly.

  He started running toward the back end of the lab. Maliha didn’t know if there was a door there. She hoped he’d be trapped in a storage area. She started after him and then froze.

  She’d spotted a bomb stuck underneath the edge of a lab counter. A timer was counting down. Sixteen seconds, fifteen. She automatically started the count in her head. She turned and saw Ty move slightly. He was still alive. Abandoning her pursuit of the tall man, she went to Ty, quickly picked him up in a fireman’s carry, and raced out into the hall.

  Eleven.

  She felt Ty’s blood soaking the cloth covering her shoulder, but there was no time to worry about whether she was doing any more damage to him. If she didn’t get out of there, they’d both be in as many pieces as the broken glass on the floor.

  Eight.

  Out in the hallway, she accelerated to her full speed, beyond human capabilities. Every bit of her energy focused on the exit door, the one she’d bypassed because of the electronic lock system. She had no choice this time but to attack it with everything she had.

  Six. Five.

  She threw herself at the door. For the first breathless moment she thought the door was going to hold, but then it broke loose and fell, obstructing her path. Tightening her grip on Ty, she leaped over it and kept going at full speed.

  The brilliant orange sphere of the explosion lighted her way and cast shadows in front of her. Flames from the blast snapped at her heels, and then the force of it flattened her into the grass. She shielded Ty as much as she could when she fell.

  Running her fingers over Ty’s chest and abdomen, she found a hole into which her fist could nearly disappear. It was worse than she’d thought. It was amazing that he was still alive. Help would be coming soon, in response to the blast.

  If he’s lived through it so far, maybe he can make it.

  It was false comfort and deep down she knew that. Hunched over on the grass, she held him. His eyes fluttered open.

  “Claire…” he said.

  “She made it. She’s just a few feet away.”

  A lie to the dying is only comfort.

  His voice was weak and he was beginning to shiver. “Marsha?”

  “I’m here. I’m right here. Hang on, Ty, help is coming.”

  “Not bio…” He coughed hard, bringing up blood.

  “Hang on, Ty, stay with me.”

  “Nan…” Another cough racked his body. “Tell Claire I love…” He shuddered and went limp in her arms.

  If I hadn’t taken the long way here they might still be alive. If I’d left before dark they would definitely be alive.

  So many years, so many decisions, small and large, had brought her to this place with Ty’s blood soaking her shirt.

  Maliha could hear sirens coming, and she had something left to do, the last thing she could do for Ty.

  She pushed his body to the side and stretched out in the exact spot where he’d died. Suddenly sounds faded and the light from the blaze dimmed even though her eyes were open. She let her muscles relax until it seemed like she’d been poured onto the grass.

  A violent death left a psychic imprint on the spot where it occurred, a ghostly recording of extreme emotion. Maliha knew that it was a remnant of the victim’s spirit that had been left behind instead of passing to its next destination. Most people would walk through the spot of the psychic scar and feel nothing. A few would feel a vague sense of unease, a very few a disturbing sensation that quickened their heartbeats and made them look around anxiously as though some danger existed.

  Maliha could fully experience the imprint. She could move into the lower level of the psychic plane, the state above the physical, just as she did briefly when she saw auras. Her friend Yanmeng had the same capability to shift, but his interpretation of the experience allowed him to do remote viewing.

  Ty left a fragment of his spirit behind and now it was drawn to Maliha. She slipped into the imprint, prepared to experience what Ty did in his last minutes of life. It was the only way to make his spirit whole, but to do so she had to experience his death. She had died over and over through the years, using her unique skill.

  She reached out for Ty’s ragged shred of spirit and let it coalesce around her.

  As Ty, she felt a knife penetrate her belly and reached to clutch it with her arms, but something was holding them. Something or someone. She couldn’t struggle free. The knife twisted in her belly and then tore upward toward her ribs. She nearly blacked out from the pain, then she felt her head being lifted. A hand under her chin was forcing her head up. With vision fading around the edges, she looked into the face of her killer. A man, thin face…she squeezed her eyes shut to deny him the satisfaction of seeing the light leave her eyes. The hand let go of her chin and her head fell forward, seeing nothing now. Whoever held her up by her arms let go, and she crumpled to the floor.

  There was pain, so much pain, there were thoughts of Claire and the certainty of her death, and the smallest relief that she did not see Claire die. Then a wave of pain wiped out all thought, followed by an impression of being off the ground and moving fast.

  She felt words coming out of her mouth, desperately wanting to say something, to explain, but there was no time and no breath to do it. Numbness. Her body was shutting down, her heart stopping, her brain dying after that. Finally the pain was gone.

  Maliha waited after Ty’s death. The fragment of his spirit grew stronger and brighter. Just before the spirit moved on, she felt something extraordinary. Anothe
r fragment had been drawn to her, or rather to Ty. It was Claire. The fragments gradually wrapped around each other, leaving her behind. The violent death imprint had been released, and wherever Ty and Claire went, they were together.

  Maliha walked away as emergency crews began their work. Hot tears of grief overflowed her eyes.

  I should have said no to Rabishu and died in the flames. What joy have I brought into the world since then? What can I point to with pride as my legacy on Earth? A trail of blood.

  Maliha had a sudden stabbing pain in her shoulder, the one that Rabishu had gripped with his claws long ago, leaving a scar that even her Ageless body had been unable to heal. She felt that Rabishu was gloating at her setback, at her personal grief, and he was letting her know that he expected to win and claim her soul forever.

  She was still coping with Rabishu’s gleeful reminder when she was struck with what felt like a flash of lightning across her midsection. Panting, her arms wrapped around her abdomen, she stumbled as far as she could and took shelter between the building and some low bushes. The rhythmic sound of sirens pounded into her ears. She hoped she would be able to move on before the police searched the area.

  Mystified at what felt like the action of her scale when she hadn’t saved any lives, she pulled up her top. There in the darkness two fiery figures made their way across her skin. Her eyes grew wide as she followed their path. They were going the wrong way!

  Anu blames me for the deaths of Ty and Claire. He’s punishing me, taking away lives I’ve already saved.

  The pull through time gripped her hard. She hoped she’d aged no more than a year. It could have been ten or twenty—or a hundred. Who knows what payment an angry Sumerian god would exact?

  When she could move, she slipped away from the growing knot of police cars and fire trucks. The thought of how she’d brought her unsuspecting friends into mortal danger by her careless actions—delivering the sample to them, spending her first nights at home going dancing with Randy and having an orgy with Jake, delaying checking up on the Rainiers until it was too late. Act after act of hers killed Ty and Claire as surely as if she’d sliced them apart herself.

  The only thing I can do now is swear I’ll bring their killer down or die trying.

  Chapter Nine

  Maliha made it home that night to find that Yanmeng had taken up residence in one of her guest rooms. Amaro was still in Africa, working with the group of women and girls who’d been abducted by the Janjaweed along with Glass. Hound was at Glass’s side, a circumstance that was probably beginning to wear on both of them. Hound, even with the best of intentions, was a man of action, and sitting around that long in the confines of a clinic was going to wear on him. Maliha figured Glass would be kicking him out soon.

  Yanmeng came in after she’d flopped on the couch, struggling with her grief for the Rainiers. He sat next to her and wrapped his arms around her. She settled in, leaning against his side, her head against his chest. Without a word, they remained together for an hour. Maliha felt some of her sorrow drain away as though Yanmeng had sponged it up.

  She pulled away and searched his eyes, looking for some sign that he’d assumed any of her burden. There was none. His face looked as composed as usual.

  Yanmeng tilted her head up toward his and turned it from side to side. “Is any of this blood yours? If so, I’d like to check your wounds.”

  The sound of his voice unlocked her story. She told him everything, including how Claire and Ty died and how she experienced the aftereffect of their deaths as their spirits gathered to her.

  “You’re a brave woman,” Yanmeng said. “I believe I could do what you describe, but I have yet to find the courage to experience someone else’s death and let them use me to move on.”

  Maliha made no comment. The experience of losing her friends was too fresh for his words to have any impact. She showered, slept for hours, and woke to the smell of her favorite coffee, a rare variety called Kopi Luwak.

  “Got some news for you,” Yanmeng said when she joined him at the table. “Something the three of us cooked up. Hound’s going to try to learn more about the tall, thin man.”

  “Glass kicked Hound out.”

  Yanmeng shrugged. “To hear his side of it, she needs peaceful rest and his presence is too distracting. So yes, she kicked him out.”

  “This tall man is very dangerous. I’m assuming he survived because he set the bomb and ran toward the back of the lab. He must have had an exit planned. Hound needs to research from a distance.”

  “Noted. Amaro will work on finding out if the Rainiers made any discoveries that they emailed or otherwise distributed before they died. I’m going to get into the burned-out lab to see if anything physical is left that could help us.”

  “I’m conspicuously absent from the task list,” Maliha said.

  Yanmeng nodded. “That’s because you’re taking a break. It’s what people do when friends die. They need some time to adapt. You’re off duty.”

  Hey, who’s in charge here? “I’m supposed to…”

  He waved off her comment. “We’re having a mutiny. Didn’t you say you wanted to make a desert trip this year?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “It’s settled then.”

  An hour after dawn, the punishing heat of the desert was already a burden on Maliha’s shoulders. She dropped her kit in the sand and sat on it, stretching her legs out in front of her. Drinking from the collapsible hydration pack strapped under her loose clothing, she savored the feel of the water in her dry mouth and throat.

  She was in the Taklimakan Desert, in northwestern China, a desolate place with a name that meant Go in and don’t come out. Six hundred miles long, two hundred and fifty wide, uninhabited except by a few wild camels and asses, it was a desert that shouldn’t be challenged on a whim.

  More than thirty years ago she’d retrieved the Tablet of the Overlord from a cave deep in this desert. The tablet was a book-sized slab of stone, an artifact of tremendous power that when combined with a diamond lens would enable Maliha to read the words on the tablet. The writing on the tablet altered its form so quickly it was a blur of motion that couldn’t be slowed down by anything other than supernatural means. Comprehension was impossible without using the lens.

  In the decades since, she’d come to believe there was more to be revealed in the cave. There was an inscription on the back of the tablet, but it was carved so delicately that she’d needed a powerful microscope to decipher the ancient Sumerian cuneiform. The minuscule carving was so far beyond the capabilities of the time that a human couldn’t have written it. Maliha took it as a message through millennia from the Sumerian god Anu, the one who’d made the tablet. The inscription read GO TO SAND.

  This desert is the nastiest bunch of sand I’ve ever seen. Has to be the place.

  The last time Maliha was here, she’d come on a camel with local guides, Uygurs who lived in small villages on the fringes of the desert. Once close to the site of the cave she’d left the Uygurs in camp and gone the final distance on foot.

  This time she just drove in.

  The Chinese government built the Tarim Desert Highway to bisect the desert from north to south and provide a route for trucks. Maliha rented a Chinese car instead of a camel and drove to the way station closest to the cave.

  The car, a battered Chery Tiggo, had an overheated radiator when she pulled into the station. She overpaid the attendant to check out the problem and—although she never uttered the words, as to do so would have been to impugn his honor—make sure her car was still there when she returned from the desert trek.

  She stood up and shouldered her pack. She’d traveled through the night and expected to reach the cave by evening. There was no shade for shelter in the middle of the day. The surface of the sand could reach 120 degrees or more. Standing still, she could feel the heat penetrating the soles of her boots. It was best to keep on the move, keep drinking water, and plan to recuperate in the coolness of the cave
.

  Setting out at a comfortable, sustainable three-minutes-per-mile pace, Maliha measured time by the slow, steady beating of her heart and the passage of the sun across the sky. Covered from head to toe as desert dwellers dressed, Maliha had only a small slit to see through that protected her eyes from blowing sand and from the glare of the sun. There was little sound except the soft swish of her boots displacing loose sand, and sometimes the crunch of the mineral crust on stabilized portions of the sand dunes. Every now and then, she felt a faint touch on her shoulder, the sign that her friend Yanmeng was checking up on her by remote viewing.

  He’d had the right idea. This trip was good for her, letting her sweat her grief out under the sun and ponder her guilt under the stars.

  Pausing on top of one of the dunes as the sun was dipping toward the horizon, she spotted the rock outcropping that concealed the cave. She’d made good time. There were inviting evening shadows in the valleys between sand dunes. Making her way down into one, she decided to pause in the shade for a short break before tackling the last leg of the trip: crossing to the mountainous outcropping, climbing it, and locating the cave entrance.

  In the valley, she opened her pack and shook out a reflective blanket. Putting the blanket shiny side down on the sand, to trap as much heat as possible below her, she sat down. Maliha knew the “Cool Rule”: the surface of the sand kills—spend your time above it or below it. She couldn’t stay long, but she watched the swift descent of darkness. Stars came out overhead, and a quarter moon provided enough light for her to continue her journey. She packed the blanket away and left the valley.

  At the top of the next rise, she felt the wind blowing unusually hard. She turned around to check it out and found what no traveler wanted to see: a sandstorm blotting out the stars. The face of the great haboob was a tremendous wall of sand several miles high, coming straight at her.

  As she sped across the sand, wet, heavy drops of mud began to splatter her shoulders. Most of the time the rain evaporated before reaching ground level, but this time, the rain was severe and coated with dust and small rocks that the wind had kicked up. When she reached the rocky mountain, she decided to climb in spite of the pelting she was taking from the rain. Eyes closed, feeling her way up the mountain-side, she relied on memory to take her to the narrow opening that smelled of fresh air and clean water. She crawled in on all fours and collapsed inside the entry.