Sacrifice

by Dakota Banks

  “Dr. Saltz! I’m here to help you.” She approached him but he turned and ran.

  “Go away!” he said. “I don’t need any help.”

  She caught up to him, dove at his feet like a runner stealing a base, and slid into a couple of chairs before coming to a halt with him on the ground. Maliha was getting battered on this break-in, and so far she had nothing to show for it but three dead guards.

  She got to her feet and pulled Saltz up with her, holding him against the wall with an arm across his neck. “Don’t run, okay? I’m not going to hurt you. We have to get out of here right now.”

  “I can’t go. They’ll kill my family.” He began struggling to get away.

  She slapped him in the face. “Listen to me. Your son is dead. Jamie and Betty Sue are dead. They’ve already killed your family. You don’t have anything left to lose.”

  “You’re lying. They don’t know what I’ve got on them. I have to…”

  Maliha knocked him unconscious. Checking his pockets, she retrieved the jump drive he’d been so eager to run away with, and turned to leave. She had no idea how she was going to get out but didn’t think it would be back through that deadly tunnel. She took a few steps away and stopped. She couldn’t leave Saltz. She had enough of his family’s blood on her hands.

  She heard shouts out in the hall. Alone, she might be able to mow the guards down and escape.

  With him, not a chance.

  Maliha picked up Saltz and moved deeper into the lab, through several interconnected rooms. When the shouts faded a little, she had a few seconds’ time to act.

  Maliha propped him up in a corner. From her bag she took a coil of C–4 that she’d rolled out before coming to the Keltner Building. Quickly placing it in a circle on the floor, she inserted a detonator and played out the cord. She dragged Saltz back out of the room, found what shelter she could for the two of them behind a counter, and detonated the C–4. The floor shook with the force of the explosion.

  With smoke hanging in the air, she went back into the room, lowered Saltz down through the hole in the floor, and jumped down after him. She had just left the top floor and was now in the main portion of the Keltner Building, the ordinary portion with elevators and stairs. The freight elevator took her down to the first level and she went out a loading door.

  She was a block away from the building when she saw it—a streak of black that nearly melted into the night. It was heading toward her so fast she knew the Ageless person must be way out in front of it.

  Mogue. Or Lucius?

  She dropped Saltz against a brick wall and moved in front of him, sensing that he was the target. The Ageless one zipped by her, followed by the black streak, and it wasn’t until after both passages that she felt the pain. It was Mogue, all right, and he’d been trying to get to Saltz with a knife. Instead, she’d taken it in the chest.

  Chapter Eighteen

  When her awareness returned, Maliha was in a dead-end alley. Large buildings lined the alley, with their loading docks jutting out. It seemed like she’d blacked out for a short time, because she couldn’t remember getting both of them into a place of relative safety.

  Saltz was awake and staring at her as though she’d grown another pair of eyes. He’d been out cold during the time she’d displayed any supernatural abilities, so it didn’t make sense that he’d be so wary of her. After all, she had gotten him out of his imprisonment alive.

  The knife!

  Her hands flew to where she’d last felt Mogue’s knife, but it was gone. In its place, there was a tight cloth wrapped around her chest. It felt damp with blood, but at least she wasn’t bleeding uncontrollably. She pressed her hand against the bandage and felt the reassuring beat of her heart. Without the healing ability she retained from her Ageless days, she could be lying in the street dead. With the blade gone, the pain was lessened, but she winced as she shifted her position. There were broken ribs involved. With this added to all the insults her body had experienced since she went to rescue Glass in Africa, she was feeling a major strain in healing.

  I could use a month without so much as a paper cut.

  “Did you do this?” she asked Saltz, with her hand pressed against the bandage.

  What a stupid question. He must have. Mogue certainly didn’t.

  “No. It was that guy at the end of the alley. He won’t let me out.”

  She got to her feet. Her broken ribs made her pay with pain for every movement. She breathed shallowly, but she had to check out their situation. She needed to know if Mogue was blocking them in. If he was, what did he want? She moved down the alleyway, trying to limber up, getting stabbing pains from her ribs for her efforts. She held one arm tightly against her chest, and that seemed to help. Her weapons bag was gone, leaving her with one small knife and her cunning.

  The figure at the end of the alley was outlined in moonlight.

  Not Mogue, unless he’s turned into a bodybuilder overnight.

  The man heard her nearly silent footsteps and turned.

  “Are you well?” Lucius said.

  “Better than I was before you came along. Thank you.”

  He saved my life again. Mogue could have circled back and killed Saltz and me, but he would have had to get past Lucius to do it.

  “Thank you for saving my life. Again.” She said it humbly and meant it. “And about on the island. I’m sorry I…”

  “Broke my neck? It was a warrior’s action. I bear no grudge.”

  “What is it you want from me, Lucius?”

  “I’ve had doubts.”

  Here it comes. “About what?”

  “Killing people. Killing in battle is one thing. Killing men for the advancement of strategy is acceptable. The slaughter of innocents is…is not honorable.”

  “And it took you how many years to figure this out?” Immediately she wished she hadn’t let sarcasm slip into her voice.

  Am I so different? It took me hundreds of years, so many lives.

  He turned away from her. “I’ve served Sidana without question. It was an oath I took. A blood oath should not be broken.”

  “You mean the contract you signed in blood?”

  He nodded. “I bear the mark of my demon.” He touched his chest in the same area where Rabishu had pierced her with a claw and taken her blood for the contract. “Don’t you?”

  “Not anymore.” She put her hand over the spot between her breasts. At long last it had nearly healed, but for centuries had pulsed with the power of Agelessness. The specter of death had left her body through that spot, making her immortal, and later, after she defied Rabishu, it had reentered there.

  Lucius was going through the same kind of questioning she’d experienced. Suddenly things crystallized for her. He was looking for a guide, someone who understood, someone who had already summoned the courage to reject a demon’s contract.

  Someone to push his decision over the edge.

  She reached out and touched his arm. “Join me. Renounce your contract and join me in my fight against the demons. If you know of the Great Lens, then you know what it can do.”

  “You aim to kill the seven offspring of Anu.”

  “I aim to shed the burden of the lives I’ve taken and kill the demons, both. I think only rogues can attempt this and I’m the only one now. If you join me, we could make a new world, Lucius. A world without the chaos the Utukki have inflicted on the human race. Let’s find out what humans can be without that great stone around our ankles holding us back. You know the story of our existence, don’t you?”

  “That we are created from clay mixed with the life essence of the Sumerian gods. Another thing I have doubts about.”

  “Assume it’s true, because just maybe it is. Follow what happens after that. From the essence, as you say. Translate that to terms now. We have their DNA. They travel among the stars. With no war and evil to keep us down, that’s our potential, too.”

  Moonlight glinted in his eyes. “There is something you forget. For
you, there is at least some chance you will reclaim your soul. I have been immortal over six times as long as you have, and have killed throughout that time for my demon. If I renounce my contract, I would never be able to balance a scale that lopsided before dying from aging or another reason. I know what my fate will be like. My demon has shown it to me.”

  “As did mine. I have to say it scared me off for a time.”

  “For you that fate in the demon’s hell is a possibility. For me, a certainty. By far the easier path is to remain as I am.”

  “I didn’t say the mortal path was the easier one. It is the right one, though, and in your heart you are coming to know that. Together we can find the shards, assemble the Great Lens, and kill the demons. I have the Tablet of the Overlord, Lucius. We can blow those motherfuckers off our world. Our world.”

  “I have much to think about.” He stepped forward, took her in his arms, and kissed her. He cradled her gently, aware of her injuries. This time she yielded to his embrace and put all of the passion she felt for her choices, for the mortal path, into the kiss. The kiss signaled her attraction to him, too. She felt him responding and it thrilled her deeply. When the kiss ended, he buried his face in the warmth of her neck and spoke in a whisper.

  “Someday Sidana may order me to kill you.”

  “I know. Do what your heart tells you.”

  They clung together a little longer, united for a moment against evil. Then in the space of a breath, he was gone.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Against his wishes, Saltz ended up traveling with Maliha back to Chicago. He was silent the entire way and she let him mourn his family. She was hurting, too, physically. Each breath brought pain from her broken ribs and the knife wound itself ached deeply. She was lucky she didn’t have a collapsed lung, too. With the force that Mogue could exert, he could easily have sent not only the blade through her body but his fist behind it.

  Maybe he has to do things in a certain order. Finishing Saltz was next on his list and when that didn’t work out, he pulled up on his attack.

  Maliha spent the flight time quietly doing what she could to speed her healing and answering Fynn Saltz’s questions. Maliha wished she’d known him in better times.

  Fynn wanted to go to his fiancée’s funeral, but Maliha refused. That’s exactly what Mogue would expect Fynn to do, and Fynn must have crucial information for them. She wanted to question him, but he was exhausted and depressed.

  She had some plans for the day, made before the recent events, before so many had died in Africa and before a comet’s tail of personal tragedy developed, following her everywhere.

  Yanmeng had a birthday coming and she brought everyone together for cake and a private party. Letting Fynn get the rest he needed, she tried to get into the mood for a celebration with friends.

  Hound was back from Niger and rattled off his story of collecting a soil sample at the oasis under fire. Nothing useful had come of it. The soil sample revealed no hitchhikers, or anything else suspicious, like a chemical residue. After that, talk of their ongoing work was banished from the room.

  Toward evening, both Yanmeng and the cake arrived. It was a masterpiece, slathered with a whipped-cream icing and artfully decorated and filled with strawberries. And, Maliha knew, the taste matched the appearance. She’d ordered devil’s food cake, Yanmeng’s favorite.

  Shortly after the cake delivery, Yanmeng’s wife, Eliu, arrived, having flown in from Seattle. Hound’s girlfriend, Glass, who’d returned to her Chicago home after being discharged from the Swiss clinic, was picked up in Maliha’s limo. Glass was in a wheelchair but was working hard with a physical therapist. Hound said that with her determination, she’d walk again, and Maliha believed it. Amaro preferred not to involve his sister Rosie in their gathering. Rosie had been told little, for her safety, but suspected a lot.

  It was apparent to all that Maliha had no special partner to invite. Jake was not an initiate into this group yet.

  Much hugging and happy conversation followed, although for Maliha there was a pall hanging over the activities in the form of Fynn, who slept in the second bedroom, and the deaths he represented.

  Yanmeng was thrilled with both the cake and the attention, but refused to confirm his age for the number of candles on the cake, and Eliu was mum about it. The group settled on seventy candles, even though they all knew that was a little low.

  With the lights dimmed and the candles arranged in rows on the cake, Maliha handed Yanmeng the mysterious package that had arrived shortly after the bakery delivery. Inside was her present, a jian, a Chinese double-edged straight sword about nine hundred years old. It was an extremely rare sword, museum quality, beautiful and mysterious in its ancient past, perhaps a sword of royalty. Its surface gleamed from the thorough cleaning and polishing Maliha had given it.

  Yanmeng was overwhelmed. His hands shook as he took the manta-ray–skin scabbard from her. When the candles were aglow, Yanmeng stepped up to the cake with the sword. The serious look on his face silenced the chatter.

  “I use this honorable blade to mark our love and friendship. May we never be parted in spirit, as I will never be parted from this sword.”

  Yanmeng repeatedly swung the sword, as fast as a blur, then changed position and cut quickly again. Yanmeng bowed, and everyone clapped in delight when they saw the neat squares of cake, the burning candles undisturbed. Yanmeng cleaned whipped cream and cake crumbs from his sword, and they all ate their fill and laughed and talked late into the night.

  I don’t think anyone but I noticed that he wished that we would never be parted in spirit. He didn’t say anything about our bodies. I’m going to have to ask him about that sometime.

  Maliha viewed Yanmeng’s aura, and found it just as soothing as when she’d rescued him from his prison cell during the Chinese Revolution. His aura was wide, swirling, and beautiful to see. Bright white mixed with yellow and blue, the aura revealed a man far along on his spiritual journey, a person who could be a great leader and teacher if he chose that path. Yellow was beginning to cluster near his head into a disk, and in the time she’d known him, it had gotten stronger. The disk, a floating aura of gold, was a common element in a number of belief systems, going back to the depiction of a glowing disk around the head of the Egyptian god Ra and later known as a halo. Painters and sculptors who drew and chiseled the disks may have been responding to what they were seeing in the auras of their subjects.

  As she watched him, he suddenly turned to look at her. Tendrils of yellow surrounded his head, and a moment later she felt his gentle touch on her cheek. He was remote viewing her, though they stood ten feet apart, to share a private moment with her. His touch was an intimate caress given with deep love. She rested her hand where his touch had been.

  How could the world ever lose such a magnificent man through aging and keep me, a flawed dealer in death, alive?

  If Yanmeng lived another thirty years, it would be a long life for him. For her, the time might fly by as she worked toward her redemption and her larger quest of eliminating the demons from the world. Optimistically, she would add a decade or less to her apparent age during that time, while Yanmeng, from her perspective, sped toward death.

  Could she love a mortal man as a husband and watch him age and die? How could she accept that? She didn’t think so. What right did she have even thinking about drawing a mortal man into such an unfair arrangement? Mortal men were out of consideration.

  Then there was Jake, the immortal. If she married him, her lifespan would be a small fragment of his. He loved her now, but his marriage wouldn’t be a lifetime commitment to her. It couldn’t be. He would go on to have many women after she died or ascended to Anu’s paradise, her reward if she balanced the scales.

  Get real. Nobody really expects a lifetime commitment today, anyway. That’s Susannah talking.

  She thought about Lucius. He was someone who understood the crisis of conscience that had caused her to give up her immortality because he wa
s on his way to that crisis himself. He knew the risks she took every day, understood the thin ice she walked, where one misstep, one errant knife throw, one kick that didn’t connect could send her plunging through to the depths of failure—he’d visited his demon’s hell. She was undeniably attracted to him, and from their last kiss, she knew he had feelings for her. If Lucius were to break his contract, she would have a rogue companion, a man to share all parts of her life.

  If there is such a thing as a true soul mate for me, that person might be Lucius, the man who might someday kill me. I am one screwed-up woman.

  She brought herself back to the moment, seeing the faces of her beloved friends by candlelight. Maliha’s eyes grew moist with the knowledge of Yanmeng’s future passing, however far away, as she kept up with the birthday banter. Hound, a man who had seen too much death in Vietnam, met her gaze and gave her a small nod of understanding. No one else noticed.

  With the bittersweet ceremony over, Maliha went in to see Fynn, and shook him gently awake. He was ready to talk. The others were still enjoying one another’s company in the living room, so she pulled up a chair to listen.

  “Do you still have the jump drive?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. That will back up what I’m going to say, because it’s going to sound like I’m making it up. A couple of months ago I went to meet Amalia Ritter at the Tellman Foundation. She’d read a monograph of my latest work and thought that the foundation might want to support my project with a grant.”

  “What exactly was your project?”

  He gave her an impatient look, as if she were a student who was trying to jump ahead before grasping the basics. “Are you familiar with nanites?”

  “Assume I am and go on from there.”

  She was treated to a skeptical look, but he did go on. “I’m working with nanites that build human hormones, specifically insulin. Insufficient insulin in the body results in type 1 diabetes, or type 2 can result when the body doesn’t respond well to the insulin it does have. Doyle was a type 1 diabetic with an insulin pump. Did he tell you that?”