Cold Spectrum

by Craig Schaefer

  Then he got a good look at my face. His gun slapped from his holster, wavering in his shaky hands.

  “You’re—you’re them! From the television! On your knees, now—hands where I can see ’em, both of you!”

  Crohn’s lips curled in a hungry smile. “You should do as the officer says, Agents. Please, take them into custody.”

  “That is already being handled,” said a voice at his back, laden with a thick Russian accent.

  Nadine had gotten the message from Senator Roth, all right. I guess she was busy elsewhere at the moment.

  She’d sent Nyx instead.

  Nadine’s daughter, in her human guise, looked like a Nordic goddess. A long ponytail, blonde and braided, draped down to the waist of her black leather jacket. With a pair of men in dark suits and mirrored glasses at her back, both of them sporting holster bulges under their suit coats, she flashed laminated credentials.

  “Svetlana Tkachenko,” she said. “Federal Bureau of Investigation. We will be taking the fugitives now.”

  Crohn furrowed his brow. “That badge is a cheap fake.”

  “How would you know?” Nyx asked.

  “I have a bit of professional experience. You have no idea who I am, do you?”

  The park cop was still aiming at Jessie and me, his gun shaking hard and his finger tight on the trigger.

  “This one does not care who you are. This one will be taking them, regardless,” Nyx said.

  Mikki blinked at her. “Which one?”

  “This one,” Nyx said, giving her a frustrated grimace.

  I glanced to the park officer. “You don’t want to be in the middle of this, trust me—”

  “S-shut up,” he stammered. The muzzle of the gun swung my way. “I said, on your knees! Now!”

  Linder, trapped between the warring camps, let his guard down for one fleeting second. A second was all I needed to grab his wrist in one hand and draw my nine-millimeter with the other. I spun him around and yanked him close, pressing the barrel of the gun to the side of his head. Jessie grabbed the cop’s pistol and ripped it from his hand before he could pull the trigger. “Run,” she growled at him.

  Mikki laughed, delighted, and pulled her own gun. So did the two men flanking Nyx, their aim swinging wildly, not sure whom to cover. I patted Linder down fast with one arm around his hip, searching for his bottled demon. Nothing on him but a wallet and a phone.

  “Oh, shit,” Mikki crowed, “it’s popping off now!”

  “Please stop talking,” Crohn told her.

  Mikki aimed at me, squinting one eye.

  “Hey, if I accidentally shoot Linder in the face while I’m trying to kill Harmony, do I get in trouble for that? I’d feel so bad if I mistakenly shot him. So bad.”

  “Director,” Linder said through gritted teeth. He held his hands up and open.

  “Don’t you dare pull that trigger,” Crohn said in a low voice. “Not until we find out where April is.”

  Nyx stepped up to him. “No triggers will be pulled at all. This one will be taking Black and Temple. Alive.”

  Crohn inched closer to her. His nose wrinkled as he leaned in. Sniffing.

  “I don’t know who you are,” he murmured, “but you’re a long way from home. Go back where you came from. Before you get hurt.”

  Nyx smiled. Her lips parted, revealing a mouth lined with shark teeth.

  “Hurt,” she said, “is this one’s favorite word.”

  Earth, air, water, fire, I thought, the trigger phrase calling to my magic. Garb me in your raiment, arm me with your weapons.

  I knew every move everyone in that chamber would make. The cop, cowering with his back to the wall since Jessie had grabbed his gun, was out of the fight: he’d run, I hoped. Nyx was about to tear Director Crohn into bite-size pieces. Good riddance. Mikki, not knowing Nyx was an incarnate demon, would be taken by surprise. She’d hesitate, and one of Nyx’s gunmen would take her out. She was powerful, not bulletproof. We’d need to move fast, skirting the pack, summoning a shield of air to hold off the gunfire and get us down the steps. Once we were out of the memorial and on the street, it’d all depend on whether Nyx wanted to risk a public confrontation—

  I was still planning the battle when everything went wrong.

  Crohn’s hand shot out, and his fingers clamped around Nyx’s throat.

  “I agree,” he said, his voice effortless, casual. And Nyx let out a strangled gasp as he hoisted her a foot off the ground, his arm outstretched, lifting her up by the neck as if she was weightless.

  EIGHTEEN

  Nyx’s body ignited. She kicked and flailed against Crohn’s iron grip as the flames licked along her skin, but he didn’t let go. Mikki backpedaled with her eyes wide. The cop had the right idea: he broke and ran like all hell was on his heels.

  “I didn’t do that,” Mikki said. “Who the—who set her on fire?”

  “She did it to herself,” I said.

  Nyx’s human guise melted like candle wax. Skin knitted and hardened to plates of black insect chitin, the armor of an infernal knight. She wore the face of a desiccated corpse, her black lips pulled back in a permanent grimace, and a barbed tail like a razor-lined bullwhip uncoiled from the base of her spine. Blue flames licked at Crohn’s hand, but he simply held her aloft, effortless, and stared her down as she clawed at his wrist.

  We’d seen Nyx punch holes in a car with her bare fists. Crohn barely flinched.

  Her men opened fire. Bullets shredded Crohn’s shirt, knocking one shoulder back as the rounds chewed into him. His hand spasmed, and he dropped Nyx. Her hooves hit the floor, and she spun fast, lashing out with a brutal kick to his stomach that sent him flying as her tail whipped the air. His back hit the wall with a crack of marble and bone.

  “Oh, fuck this,” Mikki hissed. She put her fingers to her forehead, a vein pulsing in her temple as fireflies of light danced around one of the gunmen. I rammed my pistol into the small of Linder’s back and gave him a hard shove, Jessie racing just ahead of us, making for the exit. The gunman screamed as he ignited, his body engulfed in broiling flame. The second turned his aim onto Mikki, but he was a split second too late: she had her own pistol out, and she emptied her clip into his chest.

  As I looked over my shoulder, Crohn was pushing himself away from the wall. Chunks of splintered marble fell to the floor at his back. He tilted his head, his neck cracking, and closed in on Nyx with his fists clenched.

  We burst through the chamber arch, fleeing for the steps under Lincoln’s silent gaze as the battle raged behind us.

  I held Linder close and tried to conceal my pistol as we wove through crowds of confused tourists and upraised cell phones. If they hadn’t heard the fire alarm, they’d certainly heard the gunfire. Park cops held the throng back, arms upraised, calling in for emergency backup. Sirens wailed in the distance, fire and police closing in fast.

  Jessie tapped her earpiece. “Aunt April? You maybe forget to tell us something?”

  “Meaning?” her voice crackled.

  “Your ex-boyfriend’s a goddamn incarnate demon.”

  “That . . . that can’t be,” she said. “I assure you, Benjamin Crohn is quite human.”

  “Really? Because he’s in there trading punches with Nyx, and it looks like he might be winning—”

  I cut her off. No time for arguments. “Kevin, we’ve got the package, and we’re on the move. Where’s the limo?”

  “Still circling the Mall,” he said, “coming close to Henry Bacon Drive. Hard left from where you’re standing—head toward the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.”

  I made sure Linder could feel the muzzle of the gun against his spine. “Get out your phone. Call your driver—tell him you’re ready to be picked up. No tricks. We want you alive, but pulling this trigger is just fine by me.”

  He reached into his breast pocket, slow and easy, taking out his phone with two fingers.

  “How cold-blooded of you.” He tapped the speed dial. “A shame it took a sit
uation like this to bring out your best qualities.”

  He made the call, his voice calm as glass. I listened for any signal words, code phrases to hint at trouble, but the entire point of a good signal word is that it’s undetectable. If he’d secretly told his driver to flee the scene, we’d have to improvise.

  “There.” Jessie pointed up ahead. The jet-black stretch limo had pulled up to the curb and out of the sluggish flow of traffic. The driver sat behind smoked glass, impassive. Jessie ran ahead of us. She grabbed the handle for the back door, pulled it—and froze, petrified, as fifty thousand volts coursed through her body. She collapsed to the sidewalk, twitching and stunned.

  The driver-side door burst open. Linder’s chauffeur leaped out, clenched hand held high. I turned, keeping my grip on Linder as the driver hurled his weapon to the pavement: a slender glass vial that shattered as it hit the stone, spilling a rancid cloud of black gas. The cloud rippled and swirled like a mass of angry hornets. Then it streaked right toward my face.

  I shoved Linder down, hard, brought up my open hand in a warding gesture, and hissed the first words of a banishing chant. The infernal smoke slammed against my hand, washing it in blistering heat and psychic poison, then bounced off and veered in the other direction.

  Straight toward the chauffeur, driving like a fist between his parted teeth. He screamed and clutched his mouth as Jessie pushed herself up to her hands and knees, still dazed. The chauffeur’s head jerked, spasming, then turned my way. Blood vessels burst behind his eyes, flooding them with blooming scarlet as his irises faded to frosty white. He shrieked as he lunged for me with his hands hooked into claws and going for my face.

  Linder was scrambling, on the move. Jessie latched on to his pants leg. “No, you fucking don’t,” she grunted, hauling him in. She grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and smacked his head against the limo door. The fight and the fireworks had drawn a crowd, some tourists watching from a distance, others running for help, shouting for the police.

  The driver threw himself onto me, still shrieking, a mindless vessel of hate. I put my pistol under his chin and pulled the trigger twice. The gunshots rang out over the screams of tourists, a full-on stampede now, fresh panic washing across the Mall, and sirens closing in. I dropped the body and holstered my gun. My face was wet, sticky. Ears ringing. All I smelled, when I breathed in, was copper and death stench.

  No time. I jumped behind the wheel as Jessie hauled Linder into the back.

  “We’re in,” she shouted through the open partition. “Go, go, go!”

  Horns squealed as I lurched into traffic, yanking the wheel hard and forcing the limo into the flow.

  “Where are you two?” Aselia said over my earpiece. “What’s taking so long?”

  “Asshole’s just full of surprises,” Jessie replied.

  “We’re on the move now,” I said. “ETA five minutes.”

  I glanced in the rearview. Jessie had Linder down on the limo’s floor, one knee on his stomach. Her tactical knife, unfolded and deadly sharp, gleamed as she held it under his chin.

  “Are you chipped?” she demanded.

  “What?”

  “Are you chipped? You’re hell’s pet bitch, Linder. Gotta figure they might have put a tracker under your skin, like any other dog.”

  “No.” He glowered at her. “They wanted to. I said no.”

  He seemed just sullen enough, insulted by the very idea, that I believed him. Jessie looked like she was on the fence. The knife swayed in her hand, but she didn’t start cutting. Yet.

  The limo swayed like a drunken rhino on a rampage. Swerving lanes, cutting through traffic, horns blasting all around us. A pair of black sedans was on our trail and closing in fast, and they didn’t have sirens or lights. A man in mirrored shades leaned out the passenger’s-side window, dark steel in his hand. The steel spat fire, and a three-round burst of bullets raked across the trunk of the limo, pinging like hail on a tin roof.

  I tapped my earpiece. “We’ve got pursuers. Not sure whether they’re Crohn’s people or Nadine’s, but they’re closing in fast.”

  “I’m ready,” Aselia said. “Just give me a ten-second warning, and make sure you get the distance right.”

  The limo veered hard, wheels thumping as we hit the corner of a curb and bounced. Its nose barely cleared a brick wall as we shot down a narrow side street. Rough, choppy gravel rumbled under the tires. The two sedans stayed right on our tail. Another burst of gunfire rattled against the back window, the reinforced glass crackling but holding fast.

  “Approaching now,” I told Aselia. “Lead chase car is about thirty feet behind us.”

  “Speed?”

  I glanced to the speedometer. “I’m doing forty-eight.”

  “Hold that speed.”

  I tapped the cruise control and gripped the wheel.

  We shot past the wide mouth of an alley, the other side of the street lined with flat brick walls: the back end of a strip mall. The sudden scream of an air horn rang out. A cement-mixer truck lunged from the alley right behind us, engine roaring as Aselia redlined it. It smashed into the first sedan, T-boning it, crushing it between the truck’s nose and the wall. The second sedan was following too close: the driver spun out, turning too hard and too fast, and slammed into the mixer. The shriek of tortured metal and shattered glass split the air, steam hissing from shattered transmissions, hoods crumpled and windshields streaked with blood spatter.

  I braked, hard, screeching to a stop. Aselia clambered out of the truck, cradling her sawed-off shotgun and wincing as she limped toward us.

  One of the gunmen wrenched his way from the twisted metal, his scalp torn and blood in his eyes, taking aim at her. She turned and gave him both barrels. The roar of the shotgun forced his head down long enough for her to shove herself into the back of the limo. She draped herself across the bucket seats, clutching her left knee, breathing hard.

  I hit the gas, one eye on the rearview as we left the carnage behind. “You okay?”

  “Had worse,” Aselia breathed. “Crashed a cargo helicopter once, and that wasn’t even on purpose. Oh, hey, Linder. Remember me?”

  Linder didn’t say a word.

  “Yeah,” she said. “You remember me. Got that poker face going, just like I remember. But I gotta tell you . . . if you’re not scared right now? You really, really should be.”

  I tapped my earpiece. “We’re coming in hot, and we’ve got Aselia. Is the switch car ready?”

  “Ready and waiting,” Kevin said.

  Two miles up, in the shadow of an overpass, a grime-streaked panel van sat with its engine purring. We’d stolen it from the same construction site as the mixer, rubbing a little fresh mud on the license plate. Not the greatest camouflage—by now, it had to have been reported stolen—but we only needed it to take us a little bit farther. Kevin threw open the back doors as we pulled up behind the van. Jessie marched Linder out at knifepoint, shoving his head down and throwing him in back. I helped Aselia out. She threw one arm around my shoulder, leaning on me and hobbling the distance.

  Ten seconds later we were off. Our trail clean and our prize in hand. I should have felt triumphant, but all I could see were the walls closing in around us. At least we’d captured a bargaining chip.

  Now we had to figure out how to use him. A choice that would make the difference between life and death for all of us.

  NINETEEN

  We left the city behind for the solitude of the suburbs. Marlow Heights, a quiet sprawl of strip malls and gas stations, stoplights dangling over empty four-lane roads. Kevin drove, steering us into the parking lot of a boarded-up Kmart. Then around back, to the loading docks.

  With the van out of sight, we jimmied open the back door. The store had been shuttered for months, the alarm system long gone and nothing left to steal. The stockroom was bare, only the skeletons of built-in shelves left behind. I poked my head out into the main floor: there, they hadn’t even left the shelves. A vast span of empty and yellow
ed tile floor, the only illumination seeping in from cracks at the edges of the covered windows. Dust danced on razor blades of light.

  Jessie grabbed a folding chair from the back of the van and slapped it dead center in the empty store. Then she sat Linder down and zip-tied his hands behind his back.

  “I shouldn’t have to tell you this,” Jessie said, “but we picked this spot for a reason. You can scream all you want. Nobody’s gonna hear you.”

  Linder stared at her, impassive. Then he let out a tiny, amused snort.

  “Empty threat, Agent Temple. You’re not going to torture me.”

  She took her glasses off so he could see her eyes softly glowing in the dark. Then she unfolded her knife. Her voice was a deadly soft murmur.

  “You know what kind of skills my father taught me,” she said. “You know what I’ve done and where I’ve been. You better think about that.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’d be quite happy to,” he replied. Then he looked my way. “But your partner has an excess of moral certitude. Isn’t that right, Agent Black? You’ve never tolerated the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. You’re not going to start now.”

  I weighed my options and then looked over at Kevin. “I think your drone took a little damage out there.”

  “What? No, it’s fine. It worked totally—”

  “No. You need to run some diagnostics.” I nodded to the stockroom door. “Take it out back.”

  He caught my meaning. Nodding slowly as he stepped outside.

  I looked to April next. She fixed me with her steely gaze.

  “April, I need to go over the mission plan with you.” I turned to Jessie and Aselia. “We’ll just be a bit. Maybe . . . ten, fifteen minutes. You can watch Linder while we’re gone, right?”

  Aselia’s lips slowly curled in a vicious smile. “Sure. We’ll be right here. With the man who murdered my friends. Don’t worry. We’ll be angels.”

  April and I were halfway to the door when Linder spoke up.