Cold Spectrum

by Craig Schaefer

I held up the rolled pages. Puzzle side in and mostly shielded by my arm, so they’d just look like a flood of tight, small-font print.

  “Once you took the contracts from Prospero’s safe, zero chance you’d go anywhere without them. Your life literally depends on it. So while April was keeping you distracted, Jessie and I were hunting them down. Now, I don’t do a lot with elemental flame, but using my magic to ignite a few pieces of paper isn’t much of a chore for me. Surrender. Now.”

  Crohn barked out an incredulous laugh.

  “Are . . . are you kidding me?” He laughed again, shaking his head. “No, really, are you kidding me right now? That’s your ruse? Your final move? Your life-or-death gambit? A stupid bluff?”

  He reached into the breast pocket of his suit jacket, turning his jackal smile on April.

  “Your student is right. Those contracts are irreplaceable, which is why I would never let them out of my sight.”

  Behind us, a pair of troopers moved closer. Their rifles, aimed and ready, cast long shadows across the concrete under the standing lights. Crohn slid a glossy black envelope from his inside pocket and showed it to us.

  “I keep them right here. Always. I have no idea what those papers are, Agent Black, but they’re nothing to do with me.”

  I was close enough to hear April breathe two words—“Thank you”—as a faint, defiant smile rose to her lips.

  She rested her thin hands in her lap and cracked her knuckles.

  FORTY-FOUR

  “We done?” Mikki asked, standing across the concrete lip of the pool. “Do I get to have some fun now, or what? Who dies first?”

  Before Crohn could respond, April spoke up.

  “Before you kill me, Mikki, one question. Just to satisfy my curiosity. What was your exit strategy? I mean, you know Ben is planning to murder you, right? You’d have to know that.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  Crohn rolled his eyes. “Ignore her, Mikki. It’s a desperate and facile attempt to throw a wedge between us. In fact, I was going to save April for last, but I’m finding her voice increasingly shrill. Burn her.”

  “Given that you’re still here,” April said, “and the men of Panic Cell are still aiming their guns at us instead of him, that tells me that you really don’t know whose side you’re on. You know he’s defecting from the eastern coalition, but to where? Did he tell you he’d been taken in by the western courts of hell? That they’d offered him—and all of you—safe harbor? Because that’s a lie.”

  “The Court of Jade Tears is opening their arms to us,” Crohn said.

  “That’s funny,” Jessie said. “We had a sit-down with their hound, and she said different. Hey, Mikki, know who’s really coming to the rescue? Bobby Diehl.”

  Mikki’s gaze shifted between Jessie and Crohn, uncertain.

  “That’s right,” I said. “Your old employer. You know, the man who abandoned you after the Red Knight incident? After you and Roman Steranko risked your lives doing his dirty work? The man who never made a single rescue attempt after we took you into custody? He never bothered. Did he even pay you?”

  “No,” she snarled. She turned her full attention on Crohn. “They had better be fucking lying. Bobby Diehl left me twisting in the wind and stiffed me on my fee. I don’t give second chances.”

  April pointed at the hostages in the pool. Their heads bowed, still coughing, spitting as the spilled gasoline stained the concrete beneath them.

  “Why would the western courts want video proof of Vigilant’s entire directorate being murdered? Why would they care? With Ben out of the picture and his old authority broken, the eastern coalition has no control over Vigilant Lock. When it comes to the cold war between the courts, Vigilant is no longer a viable weapon.”

  “Revenge,” Crohn snapped.

  “For what? Most of these people didn’t even know until today that they worked for the courts of hell. They aren’t the ones who perpetrated this fraud. They aren’t the ones who used human operatives as a deniable front for cold-war rivalry.”

  April turned to Crohn.

  “You did,” she said. “So we’re meant to believe that your new employer wants these people dead, but they’re welcoming you, the man who really committed the offense, with open arms? No. Makes no sense. The only person nursing a grudge against Vigilant—the one who knows he’s being targeted, square in our sights—is Bobby Diehl.”

  “Sir?” One of the soldiers behind us spoke up. “Is this true, sir?”

  “No, it is—it is not true.” Crohn gritted his teeth, backpedaling. “Kill her, damn it! Kill them all.”

  April cupped one hand to her ear, serene. I heard what she heard: the distant flutter of a helicopter’s rotors.

  “I can prove it,” April said. “The Concierge, a covert transport specialist, has been sent with an exfiltration vehicle. There to take you all to safe harbor, your reward for a job well done.”

  “Sure,” Mikki said, squinting at her. “That’s the plan.”

  “Mikki, dear, I can’t see the eastern windows from here, but you’re closer. Would you take a look, please?”

  Mikki strode to the line of shattered windows. She flung out a hand, pointing at us.

  “Cover them,” she said. “All of them. Crohn, you stay right where you are until I figure this out.”

  “Mikki—” he said.

  “No. Shut up. I’m trying to think.” She leaned out the window and into the dark, looking out across the icy grass and broken concrete.

  “I’m not an aviation expert,” April said, still holding her hand to her ear, “but that’s definitely a helicopter. Doesn’t sound like a big one, though. Not a troop transport, not a roomy executive model, either. Mikki, let me know if my guess is correct, if you’d be so kind. Is that . . . a two-seater?”

  The sound of rotors died as the helicopter touched down on the lawn. Mikki turned from the window, toward us again. Her pale, rain-spattered face was a mask of frozen fury.

  “Yes,” she growled. “Yes, it is.”

  April blinked, feigning surprise. “Goodness me. So, a seat for the pilot, a seat for Ben . . . what about you and these other gentlemen? Looks like you weren’t invited, after all. Which means, after you did his killing for him and cleaned up all his messes, the next item on his agenda would be silencing you.”

  Mikki didn’t respond with words. She responded with fireflies. Pinpricks of magical light danced in a swirl around the black envelope in Crohn’s hand. He yelped, turning his back and jamming the envelope into his pocket, desperate to break her line of sight. He drew his pistol with his other hand. His coattails flared as he whirled around again and shot at her. Mikki threw herself flat to the concrete. The bullets whined over her head, blowing out chunks of rotten plywood.

  The two men behind us had gotten too close and too distracted. Jessie spun, grabbed one rifle by the barrel and ripped it from the gunman’s grip. She flipped it around and fired two short bursts. One trooper dropped, then the other, writhing on the lip of the pool with bullet-riddled chests. Another gunman, over by the generator, toggled his rifle to full auto and opened fire on us. I flung out my hand, calling to my magic, and the hail of gunfire sank into a wall of hardened air. A flick of my fingers and the bullets veered left, turning in midair like a derailed train.

  Crohn was on the run. Frantic, hands over his head, he barreled through a pair of double doors and out into the rainy night. Jessie squeezed her trigger, and the third gunman’s skull collapsed, his lifeless corpse slamming against the generator and leaving a slug trail of blood on his way to the floor. She spent the rest of her rounds aiming for Crohn’s back, shots going wild as he vanished into the dark.

  “I’m going after him,” she growled. “Get Mikki.”

  She broke into a loping, feral run. April spun her wheels and rolled the other way around the pool. I only had eyes for Mikki. I hadn’t fed the gnawing hunger at the pit of my stomach, the curse Nadine had left me, since Atlantic City. Coasting on f
umes now, and just pulling the power to block those bullets, left my stomach in knotted cramps.

  No choice. If I failed, none of us would make it home alive.

  Another Panic Cell gunman emerged on the balcony. I turned just in time to see him sighting me down the barrel, his aim perfect—then a single bullet drilled through his forehead and out the back of his skull, painting the wall scarlet behind him.

  April, with a fallen gun snatched up and held high at her shoulder, gave me a grim nod from the other side of the pool. She laid the rifle across her lap and kept rolling.

  I stood in Mikki’s path. She came to a dead stop, five feet between us. Both of us standing on the lip of a concrete pit, the air thick with gasoline fumes, and the bound hostages below one heartbeat from death by inferno.

  Her lips twisted into an eager smile.

  “Look at this,” she said, her voice a singsong taunt. “No sprinklers to short-circuit my powers this time around. We’re inside, so no convenient thunderstorm to call down. What now, huh? Come on, let’s do this shit! Show me what you got.”

  A line of raw power surged along my spine as I thrust out my arm. It snapped along my elbow, curved and kept going, hardened air rippling and streaming from my clenched fist. The torrent smashed Mikki square in the face. Her lip split, blood drooling down her cheek, and she spat a broken tooth as she fell to the concrete.

  She grabbed her face and shrieked, “You fucking bitch!” from behind her clasped hands.

  I grabbed a weapon. A fallen chunk of wood, three feet long with a wicked, splintered edge, and I came at her like I was swinging for a home run. She scrambled back on her bloody hands, getting her focus back, and I felt her power home in on me like a sniper’s scope. The sudden torrent of heat stole my momentum and pushed me back a step, stumbling, as I struggled to hold her off. Fireflies danced around my body, a sheen of sweat glistening on my skin as the room became a sauna.

  I had a mixed bag of tricks, and I was reasonably good at a bunch of them. Mikki only had one—and when it came to pyrokinetics, she was the best in the world. She was a living cannon with one big nuclear-tipped shell, and it took everything I had to force it back down the barrel. My muscles clenched, pulse jackhammering in my ears, my flow of power like a fast-dying river feeding into the rage of a sun.

  My improvised weapon ignited. I threw it, away from the pool, trying to keep the hostages clear of the fight. It clattered across the concrete and hit the broken wall. The rotten wood erupted, smoke billowing in the corner of my vision as the flames spread wild and fast.

  “Old places like this are firetraps,” Mikki crowed. She put one hand to her temple, a vein at the side of her skull bulging as she slowly overwhelmed me. I couldn’t move, my muscles locked in place. I felt like I was trapped in a suit of steel armor, fire heating the metal red-hot. I didn’t give up. Couldn’t give up. If not for me, then for everyone who was counting on me. I pushed forward, inch by inch, standing in the path of the inferno.

  Then the torrent broke as a figure threw itself on Mikki’s back, clasping desperate hands over her eyes and breaking her line of sight. She screamed, raging, flailing around as the attacker clung to her like a rider on a rodeo bull.

  “Hey, Mikki,” Kevin shouted in her ear as he grappled with her, “heard you were looking for me!”

  She threw an elbow into his ribs, knocking the wind out of him, and flipped him over her shoulder. He landed on his back hard, grabbing his hip as he writhed in breathless pain. He’d bought me two seconds. I used one to sprint toward her, cocking my fist back, and the next to throw every last bit of my remaining strength into a roundhouse punch.

  Mikki sprawled as she thudded to the deck, out cold. I grabbed Kevin by the hand and helped him sit up.

  “Figured you could use some help,” he said, then winced, clutching his chest. “Sorry I didn’t stay in the—ow.”

  “You okay?”

  “I’m so not okay. I can move, though.”

  I pointed at Mikki. “Cuff her and find something to blindfold her with.”

  I patted down one of the dead troopers, then another, until I found a pair of handcuff keys. I jumped down into the pool bed and landed hard in a crouch. Flames raced along the walls now, roiling, devouring the old, dead wood like a horde of burning termites. A haze of black smoke flooded the hall, tickling my lungs.

  I got Linder’s cuffs off and handed him the key. “Get everybody out, now. Run ’em to the C-130. Aselia’s getting ready to fly. If we’re not there in ten minutes, tell her to take off without us.”

  The hostages looked like drowned rats and stank of kerosene. Linder herded them out into the rain, away from the hungry fire, while I helped Kevin with Mikki. He’d torn off a dead man’s sleeve and tied it over her eyes. I used Linder’s cuffs to bind her wrists and threw her over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. We were the last ones out the double doors as the resort burned at our backs.

  Jessie and Crohn were squaring off in a patch of icy grass. From their torn clothes, the smears of dirt on their hands and faces, they’d already been going at it tooth and nail.

  Her eyes flared like beacons of light as she growled under her breath. She and Crohn circled each other, shoulders hunched, and he beckoned. She leaped. Bounding in, her fists twin blurs as she unleashed a series of jackhammer-strong punches to his chest. I heard Crohn’s ribs snap like peanut brittle under her knuckles. He staggered back, stunned, and she dropped into a spinning kick that knocked his legs out from under him. He landed flat on his back in the icy grass.

  Then he smiled.

  As he pushed himself up, his crushed chest crackled and flexed under his dress shirt. His bones were knitting themselves back together. “My turn,” he told her.

  This time he was ready for her, turning her fists with his, blocking every swing. The two of them moved like dancers on a film set to fast-forward, a deadly tango of stone-shattering punches and bloody knuckles kissing the air as they dodged and wove around each other. Then Jessie misjudged her timing, off by a fraction of a second, and Crohn’s fist plowed into her gut. He pressed in, outmatching her supernatural speed and taking advantage of the moment, treating her like a boxer working a speed bag.

  Jessie hit the ground. She rolled, groaning, just as his foot slammed down where her face had been a heartbeat ago. She scrambled to her feet, bleeding, battered, looking like she could barely stay standing.

  Crohn wasn’t going to give her a choice in the matter. He moved in for the kill.

  FORTY-FIVE

  I dropped Mikki to the grass. “Watch her,” I told Kevin and shoved my sleeves up.

  Jessie looked my way. Wavering, she shook her head. Then she spat a gobbet of blood onto the dirt.

  “Stay back,” she said, her voice a broken rasp. “He’s too strong.”

  Crohn chuckled and glanced my way. “Oh, the more, the merrier. Your friend here isn’t even making me break a sweat. I’d be happy to—”

  She took advantage of the distraction. Jessie lunged in, throwing a punch that could splinter wood straight into Crohn’s chin. He grunted, staggering back, and grabbed her by the shoulders. He spun her around, and she latched on to one lapel of his coat, trying to wrench his arm back. The thud of his fist against her face sounded like a boxer punching a slab of beef.

  April was off to my right, sighting them down the rifle, but she didn’t take the shot. Too much risk of friendly fire, and besides, we’d seen Nyx throw Crohn halfway into a marble wall. Bullets probably weren’t going to help here. I called to my magic. My stomach knotted, and Halloween-orange sparks guttered from my fingertips. I didn’t have anything left.

  Nothing but me, anyway. I took a deep breath, feeling a raw twinge in my side, and charged. I threw myself at him. I hit Crohn’s leg in a running tackle, wrapping my arms around him and trying to buckle his knee. He stumbled. Jessie pressed the advantage, still wrestling with his jacket, tugging it partway down one shoulder and tangling his arm up. He shrugged the jacket o
ff, tossing it to the grass behind him, and batted her away with his freed arm. His other hand locked around my throat.

  Crohn hoisted me up off my feet. His fingers squeezed tight, choking the air from my lungs and turning the world hazy gray. Then he tossed me aside. I hit the wet turf hard on my shoulder, rolling, thumping to a stop with my back against a pile of jagged concrete rubble. Jessie made her move, darting in from his left, but even her ferocious speed just wasn’t enough: he caught her wrist, yanked it down, and drove two sledgehammer punches into her stomach. She doubled over, and he backhanded her hard enough to send her sprawling at his feet.

  He stood over us. The flames of the resort rose up at his back, a bonfire to light the midnight sky.

  “Disappointment after disappointment,” he told Jessie. He punctuated his words with a vicious kick, slamming his heel against her rib cage. She grabbed her chest and groaned, rolling to one side, scrambling to get away from him. He followed. Slow, relentless, toying with his prey.

  “I thought you wolf-bloods were supposed to be tough,” he said. “Was that the best you could manage? You really thought you could beat me?”

  Jessie looked up at him. Even with her face battered, blood trickling down a cracked lip, she smiled.

  “Nope,” she said.

  “Ah. That old indomitable human spirit. You had to give it your all in the face of certain doom, and go boldly to your death with your chin held high, is that it?”

  “Nah,” Jessie said, still catching her breath. She nodded my way. “Optimism is my partner’s thing. I’m all about the dirty tricks. See, I didn’t have to beat you. I just had to get your jacket off, then distract you for about thirty seconds.”

  Crohn stopped. He stared at her. Then he looked behind him.

  April sat behind him, at the edge of the bonfire. His discarded jacket lay draped across her lap. And the glossy black envelope, holding his infernal contracts, held firmly in her upraised hand.

  “Teamwork,” I breathed, forcing myself to sit up.