I wanted to sleep, but I had to stop the bleeding. After removing the soaking oxford slowly—feeling every small bump in my right shoulder—I slit the fabric into three strips. I used the cleanest as a bandage, wrapping it tightly around the bullet holes.
I could feel the entry and exit wounds in my shoulder. No arteries, a clean shot. Didn’t make me want to forgive or trust Roark, though. I used the two remaining strips to secure the bandage. The tight binding made my right arm largely immobile, but that was fine. The pain was too great for it to be very useful, and the compression would slow the bleeding.
In a vain effort to stave off sleep, I tried to work things through. What was Roark’s plan? Why hadn’t he simply jumped with me, and avoided nearly killing me in the process?
It made no sense. And I didn’t think it was just my tired brain.
But even the burning resentment of seemingly yet another betrayal couldn’t keep me awake. Slowly, my eyes fastened themselves shut, and I drifted off to sleep in a forest where no creature had slept in over 70,000 years.
27
Instincts die hard—even when you’re sleeping and half-dead. And all those training sessions in the forest—all those sparring sessions beneath a blazing sun—had been for this. Maybe Pearl had foreseen me in this very forest, alone, scared, soaked in blood like an animal that had narrowly escaped the slaughterhouse’s guillotine.
Because without even realizing it, I was gripping the knife and swinging it through the air. Thrust awake by a massive shot of primal adrenaline, I felt the blade clip fabric.
The conscious realization came next: someone had found me.
The punch came last, a gloved hand hitting me center mass, right in the stomach. I flexed and turned a second late, deflecting part of the blow. But it still sent me crashing to the soft forest floor.
I rolled in the dense flora, trying to find my attacker in the blind dead of night.
“Who are you?” I asked, talking to shadows. “What do you want?”
“I have my orders, ma’am,” came the reply from the darkness. I flipped over, ducking just in time to avoid another explosive punch. “It isn’t personal.”
Ghosts. Polite. And totally lethal.
“It’s personal when you’re trying to kill me.” As my eyes adjusted to the nocturnal world, I finally saw my adversary. His rippling musculature glowed like the ocean’s waves beneath the form-fitting suit. A visor shielded his face, making the Ghost inscrutable.
And the magical aura, broadcasting that they weren’t totally human—but weren’t any creature I’d come across.
“What are you?”
“A biosynthetic magical organism,” the man replied. “Created from the mana wellsprings.”
“Thanks for the history lesson.”
“You’re welcome, ma’am.” A lightning bolt erupted by my head, charring the leaves.
“You’re the proof of concept,” I said, the pieces of the MagiTekk puzzle finally coming together. “With the Tributary, they could create—”
“An organism that will make us all obsolete.”
I didn’t know whether he meant the Ghosts or humanity in general. It could go either way. I wasn’t sticking around to find out. Charging forward, I slashed at him with the knife. Quick as a leopard, he sidestepped and launched a crushing blow into my wounded shoulder. I tumbled to the dirt, the knife clattering out of my grasp.
Slightly stunned from the pain, I crawled away.
I heard a pistol ratchet behind me. “I will make it a headshot.”
The wisps, in a last ditch effort to keep me alive, finally decided to show up—fatigue be damned. They danced in the night, just beyond where my left hand sat planted in the cool dirt. I clawed at the shadows, my fingers finding a smooth rock.
I clutched it tight, listening for the Ghost’s footsteps. Timing it perfectly, I swung my arm back just as I heard him level his gun, hitting him square in the forehead. Bone cracked in the darkness as he pitched forward into the brush.
I leaped to my feet, rock raised for another strike.
But his still body told me that this Ghost was quite dead.
I stared at the suit. By now, the Tributary was crawling with MagiTekk’s goons—and probably whatever nasties Odessa brought to the party, as well. Storming back to the city alone, running on empty, was a recipe for suicide rather than heroism.
This Ghost—or, rather, his suit—was my ticket out of the Tributary.
If I found Malcolm Roark, I could cut the head off the snake.
Then the body would die.
After half an hour—trying to get the tight suit on with a useless shoulder was nothing short of a nightmare—my disguise was complete. I put on the visor, taking in one last glimpse of the serene forest.
“Here goes nothing, Ruby.” I walked gingerly out of the trees, into the brilliantly moonlit night.
And straight into MagiTekk’s jaws.
28
MagiTekk’s gate security barely gave me a second glance as I walked right through the portal. Ghosts weren’t asked many questions, apparently, which suited me just fine. Traversing from the idyllic paradise back to the nano-built metropolis of Phoenix was a jarring contrast. It was as simple as walking from one block to the next—if one housed million-dollar mansions, the next a series of bombed out foundations.
But I didn’t have time to be wowed by the marvels of modern magic or lament the downfalls of technology. Problems were heaped upon my plate like overdue bills, and the creditors were howling at the proverbial gates.
Maybe not so proverbial. A well-heeled man in a suit approached me as I tried to exit the plaza and disappear into the city.
“It’s all hands on deck, soldier.”
I didn’t answer. I hoped my taciturn demeanor and stiff posture would convey just how little I wanted to be fucked with.
“You are to report to the bottom level of that goddamn city immediately. Secure it, make sure there’s no one inside.” I heard his expensive leather shoe tap on the pavement. Glancing up at MagiTekk’s HQ, which stretched farther than the eye could see, I waited for him to leave.
But he didn’t. Instead, the man put his hand on my wounded shoulder—roughly, without respect.
“Are you goddamn listening to me? Your ass needs to be—”
With a swift, single motion, I took the knife from my belt and jammed it in his throat. He clawed at my face, knocking the visor loose. The fear of death spread across his face like a virus as he crumpled to his knees. In a fit of poetic justice, he died right where the MagiTekk logo had been painstakingly laid out in the brickwork. Blood seeped between the cracks, staining it dark crimson.
Across the plaza, near the gate, I heard someone yell, “She killed the CFO!”
I jerked the knife loose from the dead man’s throat. What was one more sprint when you were almost dead already?
The pursuit was half-hearted. Most of MagiTekk’s personnel were on the other side of the portal, combing the Tributary for threats and opportunities. They hadn’t left their crack squad behind in Phoenix. A few assorted Peacekeepers and low-level FBI agents. Even at half-speed, I managed to lose them before I even hit Downtown.
But I didn’t stop running.
Because, quite frankly, I didn’t know what else to do.
Where does one run when they have no place to call home? Alice Conway was out of the question—I had no way of getting through the Fallout Zone’s gates. Serenity Cole was too far away—and taking an autocab was out of the question.
So I stumbled through the doors of Kendrick’s midtown bar. The patrons glanced up at me from their drinks in a drunken stupor, nearly falling off their chairs at the sight of the Ghost gear.
Kendrick said, “Ya take a wrong turn there, eh? Company bars are a little farther up the road?”
No one laughed. I replied in a hoarse whisper, “It’s me. Roark’s friend.” I brushed my sweaty hair from my face and stumbled a few steps inside the doorway.
“We don’t forget a pretty face.” Kendrick scratched his shaggy mountain of white hair and rubbed his ruddy cheeks. “You joined the other side, lass?”
Staggering toward the bar, I said, “I killed one and stole their suit.”
Kendrick gave me a funny look and then broke into a rowdy cheer. “Then drinks are on me tonight, boys. Old Colton has himself a real winner here.”
The rest of the patrons murmured their assent. But as Kendrick poured my whiskey, I didn’t share their enthusiasm.
I said, “I need a doctor. And a way to meet with Malcolm Roark.”
“And you thought this is the place to find either of those things?”
“No.” My eyes were half closed. “But you’re the best I can do right now.”
Then I fell asleep on the bar.
Because that’s just what you do after you make a statement like that.
29
Two Weeks Later
Two weeks doesn’t sound like a long time. And really, in a normal life, it’s nothing. What can you accomplish in fourteen days? You might not even have to visit the grocery store more than once. Could stay inside the whole time, if you felt like it.
Or you could go out and change the world.
Because fourteen days was an eternity—if you had the power of the Tributary on your side. Malcolm Roark’s first two weeks of pseudo-dictatorship proved eventful—although not in a way that benefited anyone other than himself or MagiTekk.
Indeed, MagiTekk’s illustrious mad scientists managed to stabilize the rift between the Tributary and Earth. Enough, in fact, to start pillaging the formerly lost Realm of its resources. MagiTekk had apparently sorted out the logistics years ago, for they had quickly started diverting the river back to Earth.
They’d even opened another rift, this one near Malcolm Roark’s desert estate. The water flowed out of the Tributary, into a deep, wide moat on his property. I could watch it live, the newscasters complaining in cowardly, toothless awe about the ramifications.
But they wouldn’t fix the problem. It would be up to me to launch an operation against a corporate behemoth from Kendrick’s cramped back room.
Meanwhile, recovery had been slow. I still moved like I’d broken a hip—or almost died from radiation poisoning, then been shot twice in the shoulder. There had been no word from Roark. No explanation why I should trust him about anything. Whether he was alive or dead remained a mystery. His final words gnawed at the edges of my soul, turning my thoughts bitter.
Trust him?
He hadn’t saved shit. He’d pissed all over it and lit it ablaze.
There was a knock at the refrigerator door that covered the back room. With a heavy grunt, I rose from the red cushions that doubled as my bed and slid open the secret entrance. Alice Conway stood outside, looking nervous.
“Please tell me you found a way in.” Thus far, getting an audience with Malcolm Roark was proving difficult. The silver-haired bastard was a popular and busy man these days, it seemed.
“Not so much.” Alice took one step into the cramped room.
“Then why are you here?” I waited impatiently for her to step out of the door’s way. Finally, I yanked her inside and then immediately locked up.
“Paranoid much?”
“You’re not paranoid when everyone’s actually trying to kill you.” I limped back to the red cushions and settled in with a sigh. Through half-closed eyes I watched Alice take in the place. This was her first visit. Getting past the Fallout Zone gate wasn’t exactly easy. “Not to your tastes?”
“You need to go outside or something, Ruby.” She sniffed the air and made a face.
“That’s funny, coming from a half-vampire.”
“I walked in the sun all the way here.” Her little stubby fangs clicked out. With some measure of embarrassment, she brushed her bangs away from her glasses and bit her lip. “Anyway, I’m just saying.”
“Yeah, we’ve all seen better days.” I gestured for her to sit down. She set her bag down on a nearby cushion, components rattling within the canvas. “Kendrick didn’t tell me you were coming.”
“I didn’t want to tell you over the phone,” Alice said.
“Now who’s paranoid?”
“Colton is alive.” She waited for that piece of information to sink in. When my expression didn’t change, she gave me a frown. “Aren’t you excited?”
“Hard to get excited about the guy who shot you.”
“He must’ve had a reason.”
“I think jumping from the ledge would’ve sufficed.”
“But it wouldn’t have been as cool of a story,” Alice said, then looked embarrassed.
“Who doesn’t get out enough now?” I sat up stiffly, trying to hide a wince. It was no use. Booster shots, adrenaline overdrive potions—they couldn’t help me now. Nothing but rest could save me from the abyss.
And that was brutal. Partially because, with each passing moment, MagiTekk grew stronger. Mostly because it wasn’t in my nature to sit still. A Realmfarer was nomadic, consumed by wanderlust.
That was the real reason I’d traveled from city to city, job to job for two hundred years. The call of the wild—the pull of the next town. It was like a whistle to a hunting dog: only I could hear its song, but I came running whenever it flitted through the air.
Sitting in a glorified closet, trying to piece together a way to meet Malcolm Roark, reminded me of my twenty years in the internment camp. The lust for revenge had distracted me then from the painful urge to roam. But now, without that vengeful haze clouding my vision, I couldn’t ignore it.
I sat still, clamping my seesawing knee down. “Please tell me you have something else.”
“Colton has his old job back?” Alice framed the statement like a question, hopeful that it qualified as big. “Like, he’s Supervisor of the Phoenix Field Office. That old job.”
“I know what job he had, Alice.”
“He just switched a couple times, so I figured—”
“I got it.” An awkward silence descended upon the tight space. “Sorry. I need to find out what to do about Malcolm before—well, you know.”
“MagiTekk spreads its slimy corporate tentacles throughout all the Realms, choking the life from them?” Alice gave me a shrug and pushed up her glasses. “It’d be overdramatic if it wasn’t true.”
“Not really helping.”
“Kind of like your fashion tips,” Alice said.
“My fashion is fine,” I said, blocking the thought of the little black dress out of my mind. It was funny how, out of all my grievances, that still reigned supreme. He’d promised to show up and he hadn’t. I hope he’d found the answers he wanted. Because I still wasn’t going to forgive him.
I brushed crumbs off my sweatpants and loose t-shirt. Despite the disheveled appearance, I’d been working hard over the past two weeks. But MagiTekk was like a hydra, constantly sprouting new heads. Pretty soon, the beast would be unstoppable.
Alice reached into her bag and pulled out a cube. “This was in Colton’s office.”
I narrowed my eyes in suspicion, recalling his phone call: two weeks. He’d hidden something in his office two weeks before, locking me out until then.
“Tell me you didn’t go to his office.”
“I didn’t go to his office,” Alice said, blinking like a dog caught in a rainstorm.
“You’re an awful liar.”
“I met Colton on the way here,” Alice said. “He used MagiTekk’s 512-bit magical-digital encryption to lock things up. So today was the first time he could actually get into his office.”
“So what does this little cube do?”
“It’s a back door into the FBI’s secure network. Everything. Way better than the cracked one I gave you before. And, I think it includes a little message from him. An explanation.”
“This ought to be good,” I said, snatching the cube from her outstretched hand.
“You want me to leave or something? Give you a minute?”
“What’s the worst he could say?”
Famous last words.
30
It’s more what went unsaid. Sorry for ditching you. Sorry for not calling you. Sorry for shooting you—even though the message was recorded over a half-day before that happened.
Instead, it was a very basic, “I know you’re going to be pissed about me not showing up, Ruby. You have every right to be. I think my father brought Solomon Marshall back from the Underworld. Encouraged it to happen, at least. Wanted him to spread fear among the population. Guess what? Look around you.” The camera shifted outside, to the towering monoliths that we called a city. “It worked. He created the bogeyman. MagiTekk grew. But the bogeyman killed Sam. And I need proof. Need to know it down to my soul. Before I can…”
The video cut off before Roark could say the words. Yeah, putting a bullet in your father’s brain was a hard decision. It was the type of thing you had to be absolutely certain about. I got that. And maybe the type of decision you didn’t want to put off.
So, with a little coaxing from Harcourt Leblanc, off Roark went on his ill-fated solo adventure. I’m not sure what the fantasy had been: back before breakfast, with a handful of roses, an apology, and an almost decade-long weight off his shoulders.
Things always looked good on paper.
But the reality was, he’d burned our relationship and almost died before even reaching the Fae Plains.
I swatted the image out of the air. The table kicked back to the main menu.
“So you and Colton were gonna finally do the deed, huh?” Alice said, adjusting her tight, torn shirt. “I knew you were into him.”
“What tipped you off?” I replied glumly, slumping back into the red cushions. There was no extra message from Roark—explaining why, perhaps, he’d chosen to shoot me.
“One time, a guy invited me on a date, and I waited at the restaurant for two hours. And then I found him laughing outside with his four friends.”
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