Pack of Lies [2]

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “That about sums it up,” Nifty said.

  “Hypocritical bastards.” I didn’t mean to say it out loud; it just slipped, and Sharon laughed. “Welcome to the lonejack mindset, Torres.”

  I was not amused. J had raised me to have some respect for the Council as a whole, even when he railed against individual members. But for them to sit quiet about this…

  Maybe they wouldn’t. J said people were already talking about this at his levels. If we brought them evidence, they could go after the bastards before it got out of hand. But we needed evidence, first.

  It always came back to the evidence.

  “Lawrence, lead us through the dance,” Stosser said.

  Nifty got up and walked to the far wall, which had been painted over with chalkboard paint so we could work things out without wasting reams of paper—one of Nick’s occasionally brilliant ideas. He picked up chalk, and started to do his thing—diagramming the problem like it was one of his college games.

  “Day one. Girl and fatae out clubbing, two human Talent out for an early-morning cigarette. Intersection.”

  Neatly swooping chalk lines, one white and one green, joined on the board.

  “Result, one dead Talent, two injured Talent, one male and one female, and one fatae, unharmed but bloody.”

  So far, purely the facts, just the way Stosser liked it.

  Nifty drew a dual-colored line down a few inches, then split them off again. “Day two. Stories diverge. He said, she said.” A third chalk stick appeared in his hand, and he managed to draw a red line without dropping the first two chalks still between his fingers. “Day three. Third story appears—threat against injured female to force her to drop charges.”

  “Alleged threat,” Sharon said. “I believed her, but they’re not verified.”

  Nifty nodded. “Alleged threat. But you both were threatened by a force that appears connected.” A fourth chalk appeared, and a blue line echoed the red one. At this point he had all four chalk sticks clutched in his hand, and I was totally distracted wondering how he managed that. My own hand flexed, and I remembered that Nifty was twice my size—he could probably handle an entire crayon box in one paw.

  “Do we want to put in the antifatae group as a sideline, if we’re going to include a threat that might have come from them, or as a main line, if they’re an instigator?” Nick asked. We all looked at Stosser, who nodded—reluctantly, I thought. “Main line.”

  A fifth chalk, and a purple line appeared, parallel to our investigation. He was going to run out of colors, soon. “So that’s—”

  It was the magical equivalent of an air-raid siren going off next to your ear, and I fell off my chair from the blast—literally. Current was swirling up from my core, ready to be shaped into defensive or offensive charges as needed, by the time I scrambled to my feet. I scanned the room to see where the threat came from, and realized that nobody else had responded the same way—except Sharon, who was standing, her chair tipped over behind her, current haloing her like St. Elmo’s fire.

  Her gaze met mine, and realization flooded us both. Mercy.

  There was a rush and a swirl, and before I could ready myself, Sharon had Translocated us both back to Astoria.

  ten

  Being Translocated by someone else is a different feeling from doing it yourself—the difference between launching yourself from a swing and being tossed from a well-aimed catapult. Sharon had the skills, and a good touch, but she didn’t know me anywhere near as well as J did, so I landed dizzy and disoriented, which is exactly how you don’t want to be when arriving in the middle of a fight.

  I ducked under a roundhouse and came up with my head into the guy’s rib cage, butting like a nanny goat. My dad’s girlfriend taught me that one, when I was still a teenager, along with the “never be afraid to get your thumb into someone’s eyeball” rule. I missed Claire. I wondered what happened to her, after my dad died….

  “Bitch!”

  “True,” I said sweetly, instinctively blocking a sizzling lash of current with a wall of my own. God, was he kidding me? Fighting with current like that was kid stuff; normally you outgrew it by the time you were fourteen—at least for girls. Boys seemed to take a while longer to learn that an unspecified flailing, even with current, was neither macho nor particularly effective. I went down, hooking my arm around my attacker’s knee, and used his body’s own motion to yank him facedown onto the ground. His concentration shot, the current-lash sizzled and flared out. I rolled over and planted my elbow in the small of his back, then pulled a sharp splinter of current up through it, touching right at the base of his spine.

  “One pinprick, and you’re in a chair for the rest of your life,” I told him. “And that’s manual power for you, not electric.”

  I wanted him to fight back. I really did. I guess he heard that in my voice, because he went limp like a bearskin rug. Damn.

  Keeping that point of current nailed to his spine, I risked looking around. Sharon and Mercy had squared off against three guys, all of whom looked like they could pass in a crowd at a society fund-raiser, if you dressed them up better. Not your average goon squad. Two of them looked like they’d been roughed up; the third, the one hanging back slightly, was unmussed. Either the coward of the bunch, or their ringleader. Or both.

  The current in the apartment was dangerously over the top—and even as I thought that, the overhead lights shorted out with a magnificent fall of sparks, and the immediately recognizable sound of a computer giving up the final ugly ghost came from the other room. In seconds, the entire building went silent, the way only a Talent can hear. No electricity at all. We’d killed it.

  Lack of an immediate power sourcing didn’t seem to be stopping the trio of baddies, though, and my side seemed to be outnumbered, if not outgunned. I changed the point of current to a net, pinning my guy to the ground, and went to join the fray. He might be able to work free, but it would take him a few minutes. J taught me that trick—although it was supposed to be used on would-be muggers. Close enough.

  Unlike my first guy, these three were making a very nasty attack. They were trying to pull current from Mercy—and now Sharon—so that their cores would be weakened, making them easy prey for a physical attack. Mercy was bleeding out of her nose—not a good sign; she was way overextended. Looked like she’d put up a damn good fight before calling for help, though, from the way the guys were sweating.

  Draining someone was nasty but still basic. Using current as a true offensive weapon isn’t something most Talent learn. Defensive, yeah—like the current-splinter I’d used on the first guy, and a few more tricks that would scare off a Null, but that was it.

  Most Talent don’t get trained by the Big Dogs.

  “Get down,” I said to Mercy, shoving her a little on the shoulder. She went to her knees without resisting—I got the feeling she was used to following orders. Or maybe she was just too drained to think straight.

  I took her place standing next to Sharon. I bet I didn’t look too imposing—skinny blonde chick in black, with too many silver hoops in her ear—next to Sharon’s Corporate Woman skirt and hose, but they were in for a surprise.

  Sharon didn’t even look at me, busy holding off all three by herself. I could see the faint echoes of her current, straining to keep the others at bay. I was guessing that she was using a variant of the firewall we’d been working on in training…but that wasn’t meant to be worked by one person alone.

  *ready?* I asked her.

  *ready*

  These guys might be working together, but that didn’t mean they were working in tandem. And that, thanks to Venec’s endless drills, was where we had a kick-ass advantage.

  The three guys facing us had expected one lo-res girl, already scared and traumatized. What they got was two women, full-power and trained to act. And pissed.

  My current, cold and blue like a winter sky, met Sharon’s hotter, more staticky flare, and twined like serpents on a caduceus. Only it wasn’t in a h
ealing mode.

  *tiger strike?*

  A wave of agreement flowed from me in response to Sharon’s prompt, and our current struck like a gigantic cat’s paw, starting to the left and sweeping across them, at exactly neck level—adjusted in motion, since they weren’t the same height. We’d practiced on each other, though, for exactly that scenario.

  Unlike practices, the claws here weren’t sheathed. Current curved and sharpened, taking near-physical form, and the first goon on the left cried out and clutched at his throat in pain. His pull on Sharon and Mercy faltered, and I came with another swipe of my own, cutting through the pull and throwing it back on the source, the way a cat would bat at a mouse. Visualizing it that way made it stronger, more “real” in the physical world, and the shock of it knocked him out of the attack.

  The third guy had figured out what was going on, and tried to form a defense, raising a wall of current of his own. It protected him—but also stopped his attack.

  Second guy, a tall blond fellow, was either more determined or less smart than his companion, and kept pulling at Mercy. I heard her whimper and my mood, already sour, took another dive. She’d already been assaulted once; be damned if I’d let these bastards do it again.

  Without waiting for Sharon to catch up, I shoved the claw back at him, this time not swiping across, but digging in…not at chest level, but lower. Considerably lower.

  Let the punishment fit the crime.

  He howled and dropped, and I gave him a purely physical kick in the gut for good measure, the tip of my boot making a satisfying thwack on impact.

  At that point they realized they weren’t going to be able to manage whatever they’d come here for, and must have called for help. There was an external surge of current, and all four intruders popped out with the usual rush of ozone-scented air.

  I collapsed onto the floor next to Mercy, and let my current retreat from the caduceus. It didn’t go all the way back into my core, though: my nerves were still twitching, and my current reacted to that, settling like a second skin around me, cool and soothing.

  While I still had the stink of them, I gathered up our impressions of the guys, their signatures, their looks, even their smells, and did my best to transmit them directly to the office, reaching for whatever awareness was first available.

  *bonnie?*

  Venec, of course. He was startled—we’d never done a person-to-person translation like this, without warning or prep, and I wasn’t even sure how I was managing it—but he opened to me without hesitation.

  *attackers* I told him, pouring everything into that one thought, compressing as much as I dared, not sure how long I could hold the link open. A weight pushed against me, like a wave when I used to bodysurf as a kid; Venec, supporting me with his own current. I didn’t have time or energy to wonder how he was doing that. With an odd clicking sensation the sense of them left my head and went into his. There was a brief mental touch, almost a hesitant caress, and then he was gone.

  I leaned forward until my forehead touched the carpet, stomach-sick and dizzy.

  “You okay?”

  I wasn’t sure if Sharon was asking me or Mercy. I just nodded, too tired all of a sudden to even speak. It was one thing to use offensive current in practice, when you were ready and prepared. Getting pulled out of a meeting on a second’s notice, and facing off against four strangers, without the chance to load up beforehand, and then do whatever it was I’d just done…

  I could have eaten an entire porterhouse, at that moment, and gone back for dessert. And then taken a two-day nap.

  “Mercy? You okay? Who were those guys?” Even as I asked I knew the answer to both questions. They were the goons who had threatened us on the street earlier, or sent by the person who’d done it, and no, she wasn’t okay at all.

  Mercy curled on the floor like someone had just cut all her strings. She wrapped her arms around her knees, and wept silently, shuddering little-girl sobs that broke my heart and made me want to promise her that it would be okay, that it would all be okay. And I couldn’t. Because it wasn’t, and it wouldn’t be.

  “We need to take her somewhere,” Sharon said. “Somewhere safe, where…”

  Where someone could coddle her, was what Sharon wasn’t saying. Where they could talk her out of whatever semicata-tonic state we could already see creeping in. There had been too much, and she didn’t have the outlet of laughter—only sadness, and pain.

  I thought instinctively of J, but that didn’t feel right. J was too brusque—perfect for my preteen wise-ass self, but not this damaged girl.

  *mash* Distant, distracted, but still connected, somehow, enough to feel my quandary and come up with a solution.

  “We’ll take her to Mash’s,” I said.

  Mash was a legend in New York City. He had retired years ago, like my own mentor, but unlike J, Mash couldn’t say no…and didn’t try to. If you were a Talent between the ages of ten and twenty, his three-story brownstone was a perpetual open house; no questions asked, advice and sympathy—and the occasional ass-kicking—always on offer. Mercy was a little old for that, but I suspected that Venec was right; it was the best and maybe the only place for her right now. Mash not only took no shit from adults, but he also had the current to back it up.

  I suppose we could have asked for a Transloc from someone back in the office, but we’d both had enough being tossed around the city for one day. Personally, I’d had enough for a month: Translocation wasn’t one of my better skills— I’d learned it late, and under protest—and it took way too much out of me, even as a passenger. The thought of bundling Mercy into a subway car wasn’t appealing, either, even assuming she could have made it that far surrounded by strangers. Instead, we called for a hire-car, bundled her into the back, and settled in for the trip back to Manhattan.

  *on our way* I told Venec, who returned a noncommittal grunt that meant he’d heard me, but was otherwise preoccupied, probably with the stuff I’d sent him, and catching the others up on what had happened. With luck, they had enough to track those bastards down.

  It occurred to me suddenly that my pings to Venec were using actual words, not images or emotions. I didn’t know if it was because of all the training we were getting, using our current more, or…

  Or what. What the hell was going on between us, anyway, and why now, all of a sudden?

  I was too tired to follow that thought anymore, right now. I closed my eyes and let the hum of the car around me lull me into a light doze until we hit the East Village, and Mash’s brownstone.

  My credit card, naturally, was shot to hell after that little firefight, so we had the driver call the office to get someone there to authorize the payment. I flipped the bit of plastic between my fingers thoughtfully. More current, more usage…yeah, I could see that my days of being able to carry magnetic cards were nearly over. Damn.

  Mash met us at the door. He was ancient, and irascible, and scary as hell if you were an adult with bad intentions, but he took one look at Mercy and ushered us straight in, no questions asked, yelling to someone to bring chocolate and a cat, and a bottle of whiskey. Teenagers scattered to do his bidding, others quickly clearing a place at the huge wooden kitchen table, and setting up extra chairs.

  “Here you go, dearling, sit here, that’s right.” Mash took a red stripy kitten from someone and handed it to Mercy, who uncurled enough to cuddle it in her arms. The kitten, rather than scratching or wiggling to get away, settled in calmly and started to purr. Mash poured two shots of the whiskey, and broke off a chunk of dark chocolate that smelled awesome, coaxing Mercy into opening her mouth so that he could place it on her tongue.

  “She’ll be all right now,” Sharon said. “Come on, Bonnie. We’ve got to get back.”

  It took me a minute to remember what she was talking about. Back to the office. Right. Meeting. Roundup… That tickled something in my brain, and I took a second to chase it down.

  “I’m going to take another look at the site,” I said.
“Tell the boss.”

  Sharon wasn’t happy at being messenger girl, but she nodded, and while she went uptown, I took the crosstown bus to the meatpacking district, where the attack had taken place.

  As much as I wanted to go after the goons who had threatened Mercy, and us, we had to keep focused on the original crime. Stosser, damn him, was right about that. I’d written off the lack of any residue from the girl to her being lo-res, and all the looky-loos muddling the scene. But Mercy had put up a pretty good fight for an amateur before we got there today. So why hadn’t I found any trace of her on-site?

  Part of it might have been not knowing exactly what I was looking for. She’d been a cipher, a shadow on the gleaning, “the girl,” or “the victim.” Distance and lack of bias were all well and good, but they weren’t the only answer. But between the interview, the ping for help, and the trip to Mash’s, I had a firm hold of her signature now. If Mercy had done anything, felt anything strongly, I should be able to pick it up from the site, no matter how faded.

  And if there still wasn’t anything there? If there wasn’t any defensive current to find, from her, or the perps?

  Then that would tell us something, too.

  I got off the bus at 8th Avenue, and walked to the site. The sky was a clear blue, but the sun wasn’t very strong today, and I wished I’d worn a sweater over my long-sleeved T-shirt, since Translocation didn’t go via the coat closet to grab my jacket. Busy sidewalks, the usual weekday traffic, people in suits and jeans going to and from, intent on their business. It was easy to be anonymous in New York City—it was hard to stand out, in fact. And yet, I could feel eyes on me, watching me, following me. The weight of their attention had a strange, almost stale feel to it; familiar and totally alien at the same time. Nonhuman eyes.

  Fatae eyes.

  They knew who I was—or, more to the point, what I was. Either from the Gather, or Danny, or the fatae gossip lines, they knew. They were still here from this morning, when Sharon saw them, only now they were just watching, judging, and it was freaking me the hell out.