A Shadow in the Flames (The New Aeneid Cycle)

by Michael G. Munz

  Diomedes cursed. The four men stood together in the black room.

  "So what now?" Flynn asked.

  Gideon looked at the young man as if he'd been waiting for the question.

  Some time later, Felix stepped into the chill of the night air. Somehow it felt like a morning darkness: dead, or at least asleep. It was the hour before dawn when everything was intrinsically hushed. He checked his watch. Okay, so it was only one thirty and his internal clock was off. Or maybe the time spent with the vigilante seemed longer than it truly had been.

  Or maybe it was the guilt. He hadn't yet called Caitlin to let her know that he'd found Diomedes in time. Just in time. Though if he felt guilty for that, shouldn't he have thought less time passed? Felix sighed. He was tired. He took out his phone.

  He pulled Caitlin's number up on his phone. His enhanced memory had recorded it as soon as she'd said it, yet he'd felt the need to put it in there anyway. He dialed the number and reminded himself that there hadn't been any opportunity to call before now. He still felt sorry for having to leave her in the dark.

  It went into voice mail without ringing. Either she was on the line or her phone was off. "Hullo, you've reached 326-3827. I can't answer just now. Leave a message at the beep." Felix chuckled. Over half a century since answering machines and voice mail were wide spread, and still people left instructions, himself included.

  "Caitlin, it's Felix. Sorry I've not gotten hold of you 'til now, but I've been with him for most of the time since. Dio found him about the same time I did. Right now things are stable, but I'd like to talk to you. Give me a call when you can."

  He hung up and glanced about the street. It remained quiet for the moment. Music drifted faintly from various sources. Somewhere far off two lovers were enjoying each other. Cars rumbled intermittently from the nearby highway. "Quiet" was a term whose meaning depended on where in the city you applied it.

  Diomedes and Flynn were nowhere to be seen. They had left before he had while Felix stayed behind and spoke to the vigilante a bit more. He had an agreement to uphold—and an opportunity to teach someone the value of trust and patience. And, okay, maybe to feel a little smug, too. Felix stood awhile, breathing in the night air and watching the area. His day had been stressful, and fatigue was beginning to settle about him like a welcome cloak. It would feel good to sleep.

  Felix stood awhile longer to watch for any stir of movement. Unless he were wrong, he'd probably catch sight of the reporter soon. He started walking. Someone lay on the bench inside a bus shelter down the street. Felix couldn't tell who it was or if the person was sleeping or hiding, but it didn't matter. Felix wasn't in the mood and didn't see any reason for sneaking.

  He strolled around the shelter with casual caution and stopped when he could see the entire prostrate figure. He did turn out to be hiding.

  "Hi, Brian," Felix said.

  The reporter looked quite uncomfortable as he slowly pulled himself into a sitting position, and Felix wondered how long he'd been staked out there. "Ah, hi." Brian glanced about nervously without actually taking his eyes off Felix. "Where're the others?"

  "Others?"

  "Diomedes, Flynn, Gideon. That woman. Anyone else you might have been hiding around here."

  Felix shook his head at Brian's suspicions. Maybe he should just leave right then? Not just yet. "Just me. Dio and Flynn left a bit ago."

  "Ah."

  "Waiting for a bus?"

  Brian rolled his eyes. "Yeah. I'm waiting for a bus."

  "How long have you been sitting here?"

  "Since before you all went inside. I got here first, you found him before I could."

  "You'd have been with me if you'd waited."

  "I'm the one that found the news footage—and the one who found out about the theft! You wouldn't be this far without me."

  Felix rubbed his temples. He was too tired for this himself. "You're not exactly making me want to help you, you know. And I could point out that neither of us would've gotten this far without help."

  "Sure."

  "Apartment 7-F. I told him you'd like to have a few words with him, so he's expecting you." The shock on the reporter's face was priceless. Felix would have taken more pleasure in surprising the untrusting man if he weren't thinking about sleep so much.

  The reporter's surprise turned into suspicion. "What's the catch?" By the look in his eyes, Brian had stopped a breath short of asking if it was a trick.

  Felix just shook his head. "I made an agreement with you, Brian. I keep my agreements." He turned to go. The reporter could wrestle with his suspicions by himself if he wanted. But after a few steps Felix stopped and turned, adding with an afterthought, "Trust someone."

  He turned again and left, wondering if he'd blown the man's mind.

  XXVII

  Don't shoot the messenger. It was a motto that Marette tried to take to heart when she could. At the moment, her heart pounded with frustration as her eyes glared at the monitor. At the moment, she was failing.

  "Christ! They are sending them now? What the hell are they thinking?" English may not have been her first language, but she did know at least a little about how to swear.

  "Chief, I can assure you that I only know what I've told you." The man looked calmly back at her from the monitor, waiting for her to respond. Higgins was his name. He was a gruff looking man, yet his bearded face struggled for gentleness as he listened. He didn't outrank her. He even had lower security clearance in ESA than she. But he had just told her that ESA was sending another team and relayed orders for her to take them back into the structure when they arrived.

  "So they want me to shovel bodies into that thing, like coal into a fire! No. I shall not do that! Hold them at Alpha Station. I will talk to Command."

  "I can't."

  "The hell you can't!" Marette hardened her gaze. "This is not a favor I am asking of you, Higgins. I am giving you an order!"

  Higgins just sighed. "Ma'am, even if I didn't have orders from Command that countermanded that order, I couldn't hold them. They've already left the station."

  She bit her tongue before she tried to order him to call them back. He had been ordered to get them to her. Merde.

  She closed her eyes and drew a long breath. "Do you have anything else to report?" No use wasting any more time on Higgins.

  "No, ma'am."

  "Clarion out." She clicked off the channel.

  She wasn't ready for another team. This one would be even better armed than the last, but Marette didn't know if that would help them. At least now they could safely assume that thing, whatever it was, to be hostile. Or dangerous, at the very least. Logically, she realized, no one knew its intentions or purpose. Emotionally, she felt it had attacked. She struggled to remain objective, but would objectivity get more people killed? Or was it her fault for not suspecting some sort of defense at all? Was it even a defense? She just did not know.

  They needed more information. They needed to study what had happened, but how to tell ESA that when the only data to be studied could not be shown to them? She had sent a copy to the AoA, but while they were scanning it, the Space Agency had no such copy to go on. It moved with an urgency that the AoA agents within had been apparently unable to halt.

  She could stall the team, of course—maybe buy a bit more time on her own—but it made things more difficult with the new team at the site instead of Alpha Station, and the AoA had to maintain a presence there. The AoA was the reason that anyone had found the place at all. She could not do anything to jeopardize her position, but she could still try to stall for time.

  Marette began recording a message for transmission to Earth. Perhaps an appeal would give their agents the chance they needed to stall ESA's zeal for further action.

  The AoA needed more information, and, Marette recalled, they needed to find the mole. Though of course finding him was not her responsibility, it was another thing she could not risk telling ESA herself. How could she alert them to a security leak sh
e could not possibly know about through resources she should not have been able to access? Yet someone had been planning to sell secrets about the site, and the AoA could not allow that. She needed to stall, not only to save the lives of the new team, but also to keep them from discovering anything for the mole to leak. Such a thing was blatantly unacceptable.

  It was not her area, Marette reminded herself again. She knew little beyond that the mole had been traced to—and lost in—the American city of Northgate. Other Agents would find him, but she needed to give her comrades time.

  So much was in jeopardy. So much uncertain.

  Normally, Marette loathed a bureaucracy. Maybe for once it could work to her advantage. It was time to stop up the works.

  XXVIII

  Felix had eaten too much. What was it about blueberry pancakes that made them expand in one's stomach minutes after eating them? Not that he'd paid any attention to that and stopped eating, of course. He always hated leaving food that he'd ordered on the plate, and the fact that they were particularly good wasn't helping. Besides, he had slept until nearly noon and awoke famished. So far he'd managed to down nearly two giant pancakes, a glass of orange juice, a side of eggs and, of course, a glass of water. He was mopping up syrup with the final bite when he looked up to see her.

  Caitlin's rich accent greeted him as he met her eyes. "Enjoying your breakfast?" she asked, one eyebrow arched.

  Felix smiled and lowered his fork. "Probably a little too much, from what my stomach is saying." He offered her a seat. "Can I get you something?"

  She sat down across from him. "How is the tea here?"

  "Oh, I'd be the wrong person to ask on that," Felix apologized. "I can tell you they have tea, but as I've never really developed a taste for it, I doubt I'd be much more help than that."

  "Not a tea drinker? And you seemed like such an intelligent bloke." The Welshwoman gave him a teasing smile. A waiter approached before Felix had time to attempt a defense, and Caitlin ordered a cup of English Breakfast.

  Felix wasn't even going to bother to ask how she found him. Something told him that Caitlin probably wouldn't tell him anyway. "How'd you manage to find me?" he asked after a moment. He had to see if he was right, after all.

  "Well now, I can't tell you everything, can I?"

  Felix grinned. "Going for the air of mystery, are you?"

  "Would you do any different?" she asked in a friendly manner. Felix admitted silently that he wouldn't and realized that was probably the reason he hadn't expected her to. "I did receive your message," she continued, "but by then the situation seemed stable enough to wait until now."

  "I'm sorry I wasn't able to call you sooner. I didn't have a free moment without anyone else leaving."

  Caitlin nodded. "Was convincing your freelancer friend as difficult as you thought it might be?"

  Felix fought the urge to correct the "friend" part. Now was not the time to explain the dynamics of the relationship. "Depends on if you consider being thrown around and shot at 'difficult'."

  "Crikey."

  Felix chuckled. "Well, technically Dio did the hard part, I just let him throw me," he joked. "He burned all the calories." Caitlin raised her eyebrows as if she wasn't sure if she should laugh or not. Felix continued. "I had just ruined a rifle shot at Gideon. Dio was. . . irritated."

  "So he was planning to kill him."

  Felix nodded. "But when I got in his way it gave me his attention for long enough to start feeding him the facts. Gideon got there soon after and we managed to get him to listen." Felix told her about Wallace hiring Diomedes and his involvement with the arsons.

  "How did he take it?"

  "Not well," Felix said. "But it redirected his anger—just a little at first—enough for him to listen to more proof. Did you know Gideon had a bug in Wallace's limo?"

  Caitlin thanked the waiter as he brought her tea, and then shook her head at Felix. "Until a few moments ago I didn't even know about Wallace to begin with." She sipped the tea.

  "How is it?" Felix asked.

  "How is what?"

  "The tea."

  "What I expected," Caitlin said.

  "Is that bad or good?"

  She flashed an admonishing smile. "Do you want to listen to me talk about the tea, Felix, or are you going to tell me what happened next?"

  Felix felt a slight warmth rise to his cheeks. He wasn't actually blushing, was he? "Ah," he began. The amusement on the Welshwoman's face seemed to widen a little. "Most of the rest of the time there was spent plotting."

  "Plotting what?"

  Felix hesitated. "Ah, this isn't something that's going to find its way into common knowledge, is it?" Again, he felt he could trust her, but it didn't hurt to make himself clear.

  Caitlin shook her head. "Not if you don't want it to."

  "I'd rather it didn't."

  She nodded and another sip. "Alright."

  Felix told her about the meeting, elaborating on how Wallace had set them up to kill each other while he stole from his own company for unknown purposes, and about the plan that the vigilante and freelancer had developed to deal with it.

  "And you're involved in that somehow?"

  Felix nodded. "I want to keep an eye on Flynn." He told her of the young man and his worship of the older freelancer. "I don't want Wallace getting away with anything, either."

  "Now that I think of it, Gideon did mention once to another Scry about Wallace. I only half heard it at the time. I'd forgotten it until now."

  "So do you know why Gideon's got it out for Wallace so bad?"

  Caitlin shook her head. "He didn't tell you?"

  "Not directly, no. I don't really know if it's something specific that Wallace did to him or just the fact that he sees Wallace as adding to the chaos of the city. He's not a stable man, Caitlin. He's got enough hardware on him to give CPMC a heart attack and goes off on tirades about the 'filth that rapes the life of the city.' He's trying to do some good, but. . ."

  "You're not the only one who's spent a little time with him, Felix."

  "Right. I'm preaching to the choir, huh? What I mean is that Wallace works for a company that puts out guns. He's torched a few places. He may have just fallen across Gideon's sights."

  Caitlin nodded. "I think you may have a point." She sighed. "I'm afraid of him, but for how he's helped The Scry, I care about him, too. Is that silly?"

  Felix shook his head. "I don't think it's silly. Heart and mind seldom speak the same language."

  "I have compassion for him, but—" She hesitated. "I don't want him endangering us."

  Felix sat for a moment, just listening. Caitlin merely sipped her tea. He let a bit of silence pass, and then spoke. "Which reminds me of something else. I caught up with Dio after he found Gideon. Apparently they actually chased him across town through a subway tunnel."

  "I'd heard something about that," she said. "The police didn't know who it was. That was them?" Felix nodded. "Bloody barmy lot you run with."

  Felix grinned. "Makes life interesting. Though I'm just as glad I wasn't there. Ah, but anyway, what I'm getting at is that Gideon thinks that's how they made it to his place, by following him."

  Caitlin frowned. She already saw his point. "So he has no reason to suspect The Scry might have told."

  "Not a one," Felix said regretfully. "I'm sorry."

  She smiled, gently. It was a lovely sight. "Not your fault."

  "I just wished your idea had worked. You care about them a lot, don't you?"

  "The other Scry? Yes." She chuckled quietly. "Well, some of them."

  "If you come up with another idea I can help with. . ."

  "I should let you know?" she finished for him after a sip.

  "Ah, well, yes." Felix smiled back. "So you said you had the luxury of being in the city by choice. Does that mean you don't live here all the time?"

  "Not all the time, no. I rent a house a fair distance outside the city."

  "What brings you here, then?"

 
; "The Scry."

  "Oh? That's it? No job here or anything?"

  She raised an amused eyebrow. "Well, I can't tell you everything immediately now, can I? But even if I were just in the city for The Scry, that seems to surprise you?"

  Felix shrugged with a chuckle. "Maybe, but pleasantly so. It's not often I meet someone who shares my love of discovery, you know."

  She grinned. "You don't hang around with many Scry, do you?" It was a rhetorical question. "I do rather enjoy the hunt. Leaves me well-chuffed."

  "Chuffed," Felix repeated. "Been awhile since I've heard that word."

  "Ah. Well-pleased with myself, then," Caitlin explained.

  "Oh, I know what it means, just remarking on the fact that I hadn't heard it in awhile."

  "Aha." Caitlin smiled. "Do you do that often?"

  "Only when I'm comfortable," he remarked. "I get the feeling you may hear quite a few remarks." Felix paused for a moment to see if Caitlin would object to the implication. Her eyes met his but she said nothing. He continued on before the pause became awkward. "So then I suppose it begs the question of why you don't live here all the time?" It seemed foolish as soon as he'd uttered it.

  "You mean why leave this wonderful utopia we have here?" She winked and flashed a grin that quickly faded. "I need a break from it. I think if I lived in the city all the time. . ." She seemed content to let the melancholy in her tone finish the thought. "It's good to get away. Besides," she finished with a grin, "that's where the horses are."

  As she said "horses," a gleam sparked in her eyes. He asked the obvious question with a grin kindled by her own. "You ride?"

  She shook her head, still grinning. The gleam became a glow. "I fly."

  XXIX

  The sky was divided. Above the treetops that swayed in the wind, there stretched a stark expanse of separation. To the south, dark clouds muted the sky like a blanket, heavy with gray rain captured in billowing sheets. The mass formed a forbidding border along the open northern sky where blue and haze rallied to meet it. Shining somewhere behind the clouds, the sun's light spilled over the edges of their darkness with an eerie glow that painted gold the green of the evergreens and budding alder.