Shadow Flare (The Ruby Callaway Trilogy Book 2)

by D. N. Erikson

  I took her glasses off and folded them in my pocket.

  “I can’t see without those!”

  “You’ll figure it out.” We narrowly missed clipping a mailbox, but she righted the truck soon enough. “There a comb in here somewhere?”

  “Don’t touch that—”

  Too late. I opened the glovebox, and a laptop computer and a bunch of wires tumbled out.

  “This stuff is older than you,” I said.

  “I like old tech.”

  “You’re more hopeless than I thought,” I said. “New rule.”

  “I don’t want any more rules.”

  “Rules are what keep you alive,” I said. “But you know that already.”

  After all, the mouse had survived in the Fallout Zone for nineteen years. That took chops.

  The truck engine choked as we made another turn. We were now only a few hundred yards away from the gate. Mess up, and I knew the Elite Guard would cut us down in a blaze of turreted gunfire.

  Better impart this lesson quickly.

  “Now or never, Ruby,” Alice said, a jitter in her voice as the gate swallowed up the horizon.

  “Play to your strengths.” I licked my thumb and put it through her eyebrows, streamlining the stray hairs. Not a wax, but it would do to the stimulant-addled brain of an Elite guard. She shook me off like a dog trying to get out of a bath.

  “But being myself—”

  “Not the same thing,” I said. “You can be interested in the tech, know about it, but it can’t be your identity. The tech doesn’t own you. The hacking doesn’t own you.” Pearl’s words channeled through me, through the sands of time. “You own it.”

  “You’re weird,” Alice said.

  “And you’re going to charm the hell out of this motherfucker,” I said, although the words felt empty. Then again, I had no playbook for getting past the Fallout Zone’s gate. Desperate times, desperate measures.

  Although this was like betting your entire stack on a 2 and a 7. Not the best of hands, but you played the cards you were dealt.

  “What if I mess up?”

  “Then duck.” I nudged the shotgun beneath the seat. If this old beater had one advantage, it was the ample leg room. “Ready?”

  “I played something like this in VR once—”

  “Yeah, don’t start with that.”

  The engine idled as we waited. After a few minutes, the Elite Guard lumbered out, realizing that our old junker didn’t have a holographic nav console with which he could communicate wirelessly.

  The Elite Guard’s metal exoskeleton scraped against the rough asphalt. Alice rolled down the window, giving me a nervous glance. I nodded, indicating I was ready.

  “You can’t come through here.” His black visor dissolved into a clear pane, displaying his pinned, crazed eyes. I wondered if they just pumped the stimulant straight into his neck. “Turn around.”

  “I, uh…” Alice scratched her leg, words failing her.

  “You bitches listening to me or I gotta spell it out in lead?”

  “I like your suit,” she said, almost swallowing the words.

  There was nothing for a second, then the guy burst out laughing. “What the hell are you talking about? Is that supposed to be flirting?”

  “It’s very shiny.”

  I scratched my head. Two days of recovery hadn’t been nearly enough, seeing as how I’d thought this was a reasonable plan. There must’ve been morphine in this anti-radiation cocktail. Or I’d overexerted myself in the psych ward.

  The Elite Guard let out a massive laugh.

  I heard Alice’s stubby fangs click out.

  Fuck. Time for Plan B, which, if we were being honest, had really been Plan A all along.

  “Duck!” I screamed, pushing her down with one hand as I reached for the shotgun with the other.

  I racked it with one arm, and then, against my better judgment, fired. The gun bucked against my chest like an enraged bull, slamming against my shoulder and knocking the IV drip loose. The wind knocked out of me, I groaned.

  The reeling Elite Guard staggered away from the window.

  Now or never, Ruby.

  Summoning all my will, I placed my other hand on the slide and racked it, ejecting the spent shell. Then I aimed it at the torn-up window, straight at the guard’s visor, and pulled the trigger. Rack, pull, rack, pull, rack, pull.

  The Elite Guard’s heavy exoskeleton crashed to the pitted asphalt in a huge cloud of dust.

  Alice looked up at me from the truck’s pedals, blinking.

  I handed her the glasses.

  “New rule,” I said as I got out of the car, each step painful after firing the shotgun one handed.

  “You killed him.”

  “Just do your own thing.” I dragged myself to the Elite guard. He wasn’t moving, but I knew better—from experience. “Because you’re never going to be a killer.”

  And I wasn’t going to be a mentor.

  But hey, half-dead or not, I was still a hell of a shot. I nudged the metal foot, and the guard moved, visored head rolling over.

  “You…bitch.” His pinned eyes stared unblinkingly back at me. Probably a double dose of stimulants running through the suit trying to get him back in the fight.

  “That’s not nice.” His gun arm tried to come up. I pinned it to the ground with my boot.

  “You can’t kill me.”

  “Always double-tap an Elite Guard,” I said. “It might’ve been you who told me that.”

  “You’re crazy.” He coughed, blood spattering the inside of his helmet. “They’ll be here in a couple minutes. You’re dead, bitch.”

  “I doubt that,” I said. “We’re good at what we do.”

  So long as everyone played to their strengths.

  Then I put the shotgun beneath his chin and pulled the trigger, painting the inside of the visor red.

  29

  Sticking to your strengths was a good life strategy.

  Learning things on the fly, with a gun to your head, was not.

  Which is why Alice’s presence ultimately proved critical in getting us through the gate. Because, using the mess of old equipment that had tumbled from the glovebox, she wiped our little indiscretion from the security network.

  Like it had been perpetrated by ghosts.

  “They’ll check the cameras,” Alice said. “But they won’t find much.”

  “You sound like someone who’s done this before.”

  “Sometimes you need to get to the other side of the wall.”

  “And here I thought you said it couldn’t be done.”

  “I can lie, too, Ruby.”

  “I’m beginning to understand that.” I smiled. She wasn’t hopeless at all.

  Then again, I wasn’t sure I’d ever believed that. Pressing buttons, remember? Sometimes you just had to get what you needed.

  Alice finished tapping keys in the cramped guard tower. The gate lurched open, shaking the walls.

  “Are the cameras out on the other side?”

  “I’m not a kid, you know,” Alice said, packing her equipment.

  “I can see that now.”

  She ran her hands through her messy hair. “But maybe you’re not all wrong.”

  I smirked as we walked to the beat-up truck. Glancing back at the Elite Guard’s twisted metal exoskeleton, I said, “So do we just leave him?”

  “There’ll be a replacement soon enough. Better tech.” Alice got in the driver’s seat and fired up the engine. Not wanting to spend any more time in the Fallout Zone than necessary, I hurried to get in. “That’s how it goes.”

  “So it’s like a beta test.” MagiTekk’s little testing ground.

  Alice rubbed dust off her glasses. “I’m shocked you know what that is.”

  “I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know,” I said. “Punch it.”

  The longer we waited, the more chance of Roark’s ass being on fire.

  I watched Alice call him on her neural, again recei
ving no answer.

  Wellsprings.

  They brought no damn good to this world.

  But first we needed to make a stop. Because it would be useless to roll up in the desert and be cut down in a blaze of gunfire—or, worse, get our asses captured by MagiTekk or the Crusaders.

  No, this was an operation that demanded forethought.

  Which necessitated a trip to the medicine man to heal what ailed me.

  30

  In a past life, I’d been a supernatural apothecary, inheriting the mantle after my father’s death. I’d treated all of one client in my illustriously brief career. Turns out healing wasn’t my calling.

  Maybe I didn’t play well with others. That could be why mentorship didn’t work out, either.

  The ancient truck grumbled over a pothole, bouncing drunkenly down the Old Phoenix streets. The digital clock read 4:32 PM.

  Roark still hadn’t answered, which tempted me to give the finger to my own wellbeing. But I was starting to feel like I was two-hundred years old, which wouldn’t fly in a heated gunfight. I might have been tough, but even I had limits.

  Huffing radiation apparently being one of them.

  “Someone lives out here?” I asked. Half the buildings were missing their front steps, looking ready to be reclaimed by the desert at any moment. Weeds and small lichens crawled along the sides of the faded brick, inching their way across the townhomes. I doubted anyone had even visited this section of town for a good seven or eight years.

  It was amazing how quickly nature devoured humanity’s presence.

  “Danny is here,” Alice said. “Or he should be.”

  “That’s comforting,” I said as we seesawed through the silent streets. This section of town made Serenity’s clinic look like a bustling metropolis. I’d have headed there, but I needed a magical pick-me-up, not a few stitches and bed rest.

  One could argue I needed both. I wondered just how long I’d been exposed to the Fallout Zone inside that burning sedan. The way my lungs creaked when I breathed, it sure felt like days.

  I loaded my last few shells into the shotgun. We’d need to get a little more ammunition, too—although Old Phoenix wasn’t exactly teeming with official MagiTekk shops. If one opened in these parts, the locals would probably burn it down.

  Alice cut the engine next to an empty parking lot. Trash tumbled across the uneven asphalt.

  “There’s nothing here,” I said.

  “Just give me the laptop.”

  “No way this thing can get a Wi-Fi signal.”

  “It can when you’re me.” Alice’s demeanor oozed confidence. See: playing to strengths was what life was all about. Too bad this confidence only existed around metal, plastic and silicon.

  I handed her the ancient rig. She flipped the screen open, hands streaming across the keyboard.

  After a couple minutes she said, “Danny confirmed the signal.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He won’t blow us to bits.” Alice shoved the laptop into the glovebox.

  “Fantastic news.” I brought the shotgun along as I stepped outside. A dry summer heat crackled around the truck. “So which of these fine structures are we visiting?”

  “Nowhere you’ll need lip gloss.” Alice stuck out her tongue, heading toward the lot’s center. Her pale skin turned slightly pink from the broiling July sun.

  I followed and saw where she was looking.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Just try to keep fresh. Wouldn’t want all your charm to disappear.”

  “Sassy.” I placed my shotgun in the back holster and smiled. “But you should know something about me.”

  “You’re not very good at teaching?” Light, sizzling smoke came off Alice’s skin.

  “I’ve been to places worse than Hell. This is nothing.”

  A whining groan rumbled from the dark depths as I lifted the manhole cover off.

  The sewer didn’t scare me—but maybe it should have.

  Because it’s never the enemy you know that kills you.

  It’s the one you never see coming.

  31

  “You don’t have like, I don’t know, a light spell?”

  “I don’t see you wowing the world with magic, Merlin,” I retorted as I inched through the darkness. The sewer water trickled by the concrete walkways. “Or your phone.”

  “The handset’s battery died in the psych ward.”

  “Of course it did.”

  “I just thought a Realmfarer would be more impressive.”

  “Christ, Roark’s gonna tell everyone.”

  “He did it to save your life, you know.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind when I cold cock him later.”

  “It was sweet. He was concerned there might be a reaction with the anti-radiation meds.” Alice’s sneakers pounded against the ground, basically screaming come and get us. The growls I’d heard earlier occasionally punctuated the darkness. “Because you’re rare and all.”

  “So they keep telling me.”

  “What’s it like being unique?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I just don’t fit in.”

  “There you go.” My hand edged past the wall, plunging into the darkness. “Corner.” I cautiously made my way around the bend.

  “But you’re something cool.”

  “Everyone wants to be what they’re not,” I said.

  “I guess.”

  Before the conversation could turn to Alice’s dreams and aspirations, there was a guttural roar. This hadn’t been unusual during our brief jaunt through the sewers, except now I could feel hot, sticky breath on my skin.

  “I don’t suppose you’re Danny,” I said.

  The walls shook as the unidentified beast hissed. I whipped the shotgun off my back and fired. The blast about deafened me in the tight quarters, but the muzzle flash offered a glimpse of what I was shooting at.

  A baby sewer hydra, each of its three snake-like heads covered in brackish brown spots that looked like terminal lesions. The shell’s spread cut off two heads, but I knew from experience they’d grow back if I didn’t end this quickly.

  Unfortunately, the sewer corridor plunged back into darkness. The hydra caterwauled, its remaining head snapping. I ducked, anticipating the strike, but heard Alice shriek and get knocked into the water.

  Damnit. I couldn’t shoot blind, not knowing where Alice was.

  I dug the blade from its sheath, locating the electrical controls on the hilt. It buzzed as the charge ran through the sharpened edge, bathing the sewer in a white-blue glow.

  Should’ve thought of that before.

  A deeper growl brought my attention to the right.

  A second hydra knocked me off my feet, this one considerably bigger than the other—and still in possession of all three of its heads. The shotgun clattered from my grip, falling to the concrete walkway. I clung to the knife as I hit the ground, tailbone smarting from the impact.

  The beast snapped forward. I stabbed one of its eyes. Black blood splattered the low ceiling. At least this thing wasn’t mythical size. Those bastards were the size of a seven-figure Malibu pad. These hydras had been specially bred for the dark, tight corridors.

  I knew this because the hydra’s heads stared back at me blindly, all its eyes unseeing.

  “Don’t move, Alice. They track you by sound.”

  As if to confirm, the smaller hydra roared and trundled my way, its good head snapping at my leg. I kicked it in the forehead with my boot. It slammed against the opposite wall. With a quick leap across the chasm, I slit its remaining throat.

  It flopped into the sewer muck as I landed safely on the opposite walkway.

  I glanced back at Alice, who was covered in slime up to her ears.

  “Grab the shotgun and jam it down its throat,” I said.

  “What will that do?”

  The second hydra—its mother or leader—followed our voices and charged. But it didn’t go after me, clearly sensing
that I was the sole warrior. It mashed its dying brethren’s body into the fetid water as it steamrolled toward Alice.

  “Run!” With no other option, I leapt from the walkway, landing on the beast’s rough back. It roared, trying to buck me loose. Mythical creatures were not my bag. I’d killed a few in my day, but they were tenacious and had all sorts of annoying abilities.

  Like regeneration.

  Grasping the slick, spotted skin on the hydra’s tough hide, I used my free hand to hack at the closest head with the knife. After the fourth blow, the head flopped into the water, landing with an ominous splash.

  Besides some heaving groans, however, the larger hydra didn’t stop pursuing Alice.

  Seeing no alternative, I cauterized the stump with the edge of the lightning blade. The high voltage electricity sizzled as it closed the wound, ensuring that the hydra would never regain that head—or regrow two in its stead. Luckily for me, the surge didn’t course through its tough hide and fry me.

  Its skin was like mythical insulation.

  This searing got its attention, however, and it slammed its backside against the closest wall. I flew off, the wind blasted out of me as I slumped down to the walkway.

  “Ugh…” I said, trying to hear where Alice was. I staved off the intense desire to simply curl up and let darkness overtake me. Pushing myself up with the glowing blade, I listened for the hydra. In the distance, I could hear her splashing, footsteps mostly overshadowed by the beast’s thunderous steps.

  At least half-vampires could run pretty quick.

  I limped back to the gun and looked at the floating carcass in the middle of the sewer.

  This was a sleeping dog you couldn’t let lie.

  I hopped into the grime and jammed the shotgun down the raw throat. The blade glowed on the walkway, lighting the work. Bubbles rose from beneath the brackish water. Bastard was already regrowing one of its heads.

  “Not today.” I pulled the trigger, and its body exploded in a sea of bloody mist, staining the green-brown slime a foul shade of blackish red. Guts dripped from my leather coat as I dragged myself back onto the walkway.

  “Ruby!”

  My ears were ringing from the gunshot, but it sounded like Alice was coming back. I blinked, peering into the distance. The blade’s glow only had about a fifteen-foot radius, but I could feel the room shaking.