A Shadow in the Flames (The New Aeneid Cycle)

by Michael G. Munz

  They traveled a short distance through the trees, following a silent, dark path until breaking out into the open. Diomedes kept a swift pace ahead in the direction they had come. Were they just going to wander the area on foot and hope they got lucky? In the floater it made more sense; without it, such a thing seemed futile.

  Diomedes continued to lead him along the silent, empty buildings.

  Then again, did they have much choice? Sometimes persistence paid off. They had followed the vigilante this far. To stop now would be to throw away the fortune they'd had in finding him. Yet they'd already lost him again.

  For the first time, his head was suddenly clear enough to realize that they should have seen Felix at the floater. He had been planning to meet them, hadn't he? He tried to remember what the man said when he and the reporter had left, but Romulus couldn't recall specifically. The reporter was going to tell Felix some of what he'd found. Was it something that caused them to miss meeting at the floater? Maybe something that spoke to Felix's doubts about Wraith really being the arsonist? Where had he gone?

  Romulus began to worry, both that Felix knew something vital and also for the man's general safety.

  They left the campus, turned onto Twelfth Street, and then crossed it. Diomedes's pace began to slow. Romulus closed the distance to walk beside him and tried to figure out how best to breach the other's mood. For a moment he couldn't bring himself to say anything. They stepped onto the sidewalk and continued on. Romulus opened his mouth but merely cleared his throat. Diomedes turned his head to scrutinize him.

  "Uh," started Romulus, looking forward, "shouldn't we call Felix?"

  "Why?" Diomedes turned his gaze away to scan the area.

  "Well, he was going to meet us, wasn't he? At the floater?"

  "He can take care of himself. We don't need him now. We haven't lost the mark yet."

  Romulus looked around as they walked, keeping his eyes from Diomedes. "Maybe he found something else out."

  "Don't be stupid. We stop to call Hiatt, we lose the mark."

  Romulus felt his initiative weakening. But what if Felix had gotten jumped again? "Let me use the phone to call him while you look," Romulus tried quickly so as not to be cut off. "He said this guy might not be the arsonist, maybe he found some other evidence—"

  Diomedes turned and glared, his voice a harsh whisper. "We don't get paid to get evidence! We get paid to—"

  A nearby burst of gunfire cut Diomedes off.

  The echo of the nearby burst reached Felix's ears just after he stepped from the cab that had taken him to Fortieth and Twelfth. For a moment he paused, listening. There was no more gunfire, but the sounds of wicked laughter followed in the distance.

  There was also no sign of Diomedes's floater. He stopped and listened again.

  Minutes later, Romulus galloped up the poorly lit apartment stairwell. An obviously broken lock on a door had let him inside seconds earlier, and now he rushed up towards the roof like Diomedes had told him. They'd found the vigilante in another fight, and Diomedes did not want to be stunned again. His old roommate was at that same moment rushing to the top of another building. Romulus didn't know exactly what he planned, only that it was Romulus's job to cover him.

  Romulus had reacted to Diomedes's instructions in the sudden chaos after the gunshots without thinking. Things were moving too fast again, and it looked like everything was going to end a bit sooner than he was ready for.

  The roof door was unlocked from the inside. A moment later he was out and vaulting the barrier that divided the small rooftop deck from the rest of the roof, landing on the other side with one foot smashing down six inches into the fragile surface. For a moment he paused, fearful of dropping through to the level below. When it was apparent he would not, he gingerly withdrew his foot from the hole and crept the rest of the way to the edge.

  Two L-shaped buildings framed a parking lot between them. Four stories below was the chaos of a fight. Two gangers already lay on the ground near where the vigilante stood fighting another three. A short distance from them, their backs to parked cars, stood two more gangers holding a man and woman hostage. All of the gangers had grotesquely painted faces, and the two with hostages shouted taunts and cackled in a way that made Romulus shudder in remembrance of the howlers in The Dirge.

  Diomedes was nowhere to be seen. The far rooftop was empty.

  Romulus pulled his gun, unsure what to do. The fight below continued. The gangers laughed as their hostages struggled, their mouths muffled. His first instinct was to try to help them, but if he fired from here with just the auto-pistol. . .

  A crack echoed upward as another ganger went down. One of the remaining two fighting the vigilante lunged at him. Romulus could see he was off-balance even before the ganger knocked him back against a car. The other pulled a gun and started firing. In the commotion it was impossible to tell who was hit. Romulus felt himself watching, impotent, before movement straight ahead caught his eye. Diomedes crouched atop of the opposite building, working quickly to set something up behind the retaining wall.

  What should he do? Felix's words came back to him, arguing what they didn't know. Wraith was fighting again below. The ganger with the gun was out of bullets and backing up towards the hostages as the vigilante advanced. Diomedes hurried to assemble what Romulus saw to be a rifle. As the vigilante knocked the ganger aside. Diomedes began to take aim. Romulus was doing nothing. Just like at The Arena.

  With a flash of light from his palm, the vigilante stunned the last two gangers along with their hostages and then ran forward to catch the woman as she started to fall. Diomedes corrected his aim. He was about to fire. Miles away, Michael cried out in protest.

  A blur of movement came from behind Diomedes as the gun fired.

  Felix didn't have time to make more than a hasty assumption before he dove against Diomedes's rifle to defeat his aim. The bullet sounded like it hit a car, but there wasn't time to look. In a few brief seconds the freelancer shifted and pulled his auto-pistol, shoving Felix off his back and onto the rooftop before he aimed the gun at him.

  "Wait, dammit it's me!" Felix shouted.

  Diomedes's eyes blazed. He shifted his gun and fired.

  The bullet shot through the rooftop beside Felix and reflex alone darted his body further away. At that range, Diomedes had missed on purpose. Felix pushed himself to his feet, forcing himself to calmness and gambling that the shot was just a release of anger.

  "He's not the arsonist!" Felix told him.

  Diomedes paused, and for a moment the look the freelancer gave him was balanced between unreadable or uncaring. "He's the job," he stated finally, picking up the rifle. "Get in the way again and I'll kill you."

  Felix believed him. He took a chance. "Wallace hired you!"

  Diomedes stopped.

  "What?"

  Felix wasn't completely sure of it, but it made sense. It was also probably the one thing that might stop Diomedes. "He's playing you for a fool, using you to take out another enemy. Do you think he's going to pay you when you're done? Or is he going to finish you off when you come to collect from his lackey?" He hoped to God his instincts were right.

  Diomedes did not move. Felix fought the urge to find out what was happening below. His attention had to be focused on the freelancer. Where was Flynn?

  Diomedes screamed. He stood up, howling out a primal yell of fury as he rose. Still yelling with an intensity that paralyzed Felix, the freelancer spun around, swinging his rifle like a club and letting it go just before it would have hit Felix. It smashed against the door to the stairway behind him.

  Felix stood before the freelancer, watching him shake with rage and frustration. He honestly didn't know what to do. For an instant he thought he saw genuine pain in the freelancer's eyes. It was gone in the same instant.

  The vigilante was there a moment later. Felix figured he'd crawled up over the side of the building somehow, but Diomedes's body had blocked him from Felix's view such that he se
emed to just appear in the space behind him. Diomedes hadn't noticed. The vigilante made no further move.

  "Diomedes," the vigilante spoke. "Wallace wants us dead." His voice was calm and distant in a way that Felix found eerily soothing. "And I need your help."

  At first Diomedes didn't move, standing silently in near-mirror image to the masked figure behind him. And suddenly he was turned around, a hidden weapon drawn and pointed directly at the dark figure's head.

  "He wants us to kill each other," Gideon spoke.

  "He's telling the truth, Diomedes," Felix warned. It was like watching a lit match tumble towards a pile of gunpowder. "Let's hear what he has to say. You've caught him." Another long second crawled by. "You can always shoot him later."

  It was one of the stranger things he had said in his life. Felix tried to flash Gideon a helpful smile but his gaze was leveled straight at Diomedes.

  Diomedes stepped forward and put his gun to the man's head. "This is a bad place to talk."

  "Yes," Gideon spoke. "It is."

  Brian watched Felix and the freelancers follow the vigilante into the side door of the apartment. They had gotten to him first. Just his luck, thought Brian. He had been waiting just across the street in the dark of a bus shelter for the last twenty minutes. He had stayed put when he heard the gunfire, foolishly choosing to await the outcome rather than run into a firefight. It was the safe choice, and he should have known it was no time for playing it safe. Now he might be completely screwed. If he messed this up, his editor would have all the pull he needed to can him, no matter what strings his dad could pull.

  Then again, the vigilante was still alive. Felix could have been wrong about the freelancers' intentions. That would be a break, at least. . . unless Felix told the vigilante not to talk to Brian out of spite for ditching him. That's probably what he was doing right now. "Don't talk to the reporter," and Felix would have the information for himself. Brian was unsure what exactly that would accomplish, but he was willing to bet that Felix would try to get back at him.

  Brian watched as the door closed and tried to feel better by telling himself that he made the right choice under the circumstances. Unless it had all been a trick. Brian shook the thought out of his head.

  If he wasn't careful, he'd get paranoid.

  XXVI

  When Felix had been in college, an art student lived across the hall from him who had a special fascination with the color black. The vigilante might very well have paid her to be his decorator: Everything was black. A fire could have swept through the place and it would have looked no different. At least, Felix amended, the part they had seen so far, which consisted of a long room with a black curtain divider running the length of one wall. Only a single fluorescent lamp on the ceiling bathed the place in harsh light.

  What it lacked in color, it made up in dinginess. The room was made larger by its lack of any furniture save for a single black table and chair, a black bit of shelving beside them, and a black antique chest. The shelves contained numerous bits of cybernetic parts. The table supported a single laptop computer. The chest sat closed. If the room had any doors besides the exit, they were behind the curtain. No light came from beyond it. Felix searched Gideon's hard, silent eyes and wondered at the things the curtain hid.

  The four of them stood uncomfortably in the room as Flynn closed the door. Diomedes kept the gun leveled at Gideon's head. "So," the freelancer said. "Talk."

  "Put the gun down," Gideon spoke.

  "Fuck you."

  "I could take it from you." The masked man's voice was still calm and flowing smoothly.

  "Try it."

  "I thought we were here to talk," Felix tried.

  "Shut up, Hiatt," Diomedes hissed. "You don't need to be here."

  "Why?" Felix asked with more anger than he thought wise. "Because I'm the one who's been trying to tell you that you've been looking for the wrong guy?"

  "We were hired to find him."

  "By Ken Wallace," Gideon said.

  "You said that."

  "You didn't start the arsons, did you?" Flynn suddenly asked.

  The vigilante turned slowly, his eyes still on Diomedes, and walked to the computer. "There's something you should listen to." The screen blinked to life, and a moment later a conversation played. Felix didn't recognize the voices, but he could make a guess.

  "I don't like loose ends," began a man's voice. "They come back to haunt you. Speaking of which, how is Diomedes?"

  "Nothing certain yet," said the second voice, another man, "but he is looking. I understand that after I spoke with him, he hired a man named Felix Hiatt, so I do think he's taking our offer seriously."

  "Good. Who's Felix Hiatt?"

  "Someone with a knack for finding things out. Quite well, from what I understand." Felix couldn't help but smile. It was nice to be known, after all.

  "So they might have a chance."

  "Who will kill whom, I wonder? I do so enjoy no-lose situations."

  The vigilante stopped the playback. "Do you recognize the voices?"

  Diomedes nodded, his face twisted into a scowl. "Wallace."

  "And the guy from the 'Pyre," added Flynn.

  "There's more on the recording if you have any doubt."

  Diomedes shook his head but refused to lower his gun. "Where did you get this?"

  "A bug," Gideon spoke. "Inside his limousine."

  Felix blinked. "How did you manage that?"

  Gideon just smiled. It was a bit unnerving, and Felix reminded himself that this man was a killer. "There's more you should see."

  He keyed in a quick sequence and an image appeared on screen that spun into a video. The image was shot through a barred window that looked into a warehouse. Low-light enhancement filtered the frame; it was night. The cameras zoomed in to a group of three men. Their heads were shaved and their ears shined with the glint of metal—no, there were four men; the three kibitzed around a fourth, who was setting a bomb of some kind. The picture did not linger long, and soon vaulted upward onto the roof. Felix guessed it was either a head mounted or direct optic camera. The image ran across the roof, swung down into a larger window and dashed across to the bomb. Felix recalled the freelancer's description of the video they'd seen and wondered if it had been shot at the same time.

  "Who are they?" Diomedes asked.

  "I think those are the guys who jumped me outside The Arena," Felix answered. "Or two of them were, anyway."

  "And the filth who burned your apartment," the vigilante whispered.

  "You know a lot for someone who didn't do it," Diomedes shot. His gun was still drawn.

  Felix had to stop himself from saying that the vigilante had used The Scry to look into things. He thought about Caitlin and wished there'd been time to call her.

  "They did it," Gideon repeated. His eyes remained calm behind his mask.

  "Prove it," Diomedes challenged.

  "I can give you as much proof as Wallace gave you on me."

  "I remember them," said Flynn suddenly. He looked to be trying to recall something. "When we were coming home that night—those howlers we dodged—I mean, that might have been them." Flynn glanced to Diomedes for confirmation.

  After a moment, the larger freelancer nodded. "Might have been." He put the gun down.

  "Wallace hired them as well."

  "I knew it," Felix grinned.

  "How did you know?" Diomedes shot. The freelancer moved to face the entire group.

  Felix winked. "It pays to have me around."

  The freelancer turned his glare on Gideon again. "I want to know what's going on. Everything."

  "Wallace is stealing from his own company. Stealing guns." A fire crept into the vigilante's eyes. "Weapons. Bullets! For the killers that stalk the streets and prey on the innocent. Guns that give power to the terror, terror that I fight every moment. . ."

  Felix took a tiny step back as the vigilante's tone grew into a tirade against gangers and the like. The man almost literall
y pulsed with wrath. ". . . murdering, kidnapping, violence that preys on the innocent. Cold heartless filthy subhuman dogs! They think they can do as they please? They think they will not know consequences! Not know justice!"

  Felix couldn't tell the source of the hatred, but it had a raw grip on Gideon. His eyes flamed. His breath grew ragged. Artificial hands clutched at artificial biceps and wrung his own body as if to tear himself apart, and still he went on.

  "Get to the point!" Diomedes yelled.

  The vigilante turned his anger on Diomedes for a split second, but before Felix could brace himself, Gideon had calmed like a switch had been flipped. A silence descended.

  "So he stole the guns to put them on the street?" Flynn asked after a few moments.

  "He's selling them," spoke the vigilante, lucid again. "I don't know who's buying. Wallace needs the money for something. I don't know what. Something he plans to buy into. Something evil, I know it."

  Felix raised an eyebrow. What might Wallace have done to this man to warrant him becoming such an enemy? Or was it anything at all beyond a manifestation of the man's own psychosis?

  "He stole the weapons somehow and hired the street trash to cover them with the fires," he continued. "Of the three fires, the first one was a test. They botched the second. The third was the real thing."

  "He burned my place, too," Diomedes growled.

  Gideon nodded. "To kill you."

  Felix smiled. "Hey, I guess as long as you've got a few pyromaniacs on your payroll, you may as well use them," he joked. He supposed he couldn't blame anyone for not smiling.

  "And where are the arsonists now?" Flynn asked.

  "Dead. Mostly Wallace's own doing. One was mine."

  "And then he hired Diomedes to take care of you, hoping that one would take out the other," Felix finished. Diomedes bristled as the vigilante nodded. "Everything he says meshes with what I know, by the way," Felix added as an afterthought. "I just recently found out that something was missing from the third site. And the lack of any alarms set off point to an inside job."