“Her favorite, I know.” Janine squinted. “What about it?”
“I need you to retrieve it and bring it to me in Las Vegas as quickly as possible, on the next available flight.”
“Uh, mind telling me why?”
“You wouldn’t believe me,” Nessa said.
“Try me. I believe a lot of things.”
“All right,” Nessa replied. “Marie is lost on a parallel Earth. The book is a sympathetic link to her spirit, and an ancient witch in the form of a knife is going to use that link to carve a doorway between worlds.”
“What did she say?” Tony asked.
Janine pressed the phone to her chest. She stayed like that for a moment, starry-eyed and searching for words.
“She said that life is awesome. And we’re going to Las Vegas. Please don’t ask me why or we’re going to get in a really big argument.” Janine put the phone back to her ear. “You wouldn’t lie to me, right?”
“If I felt like it, of course I would,” Nessa said. “But at the moment I’m telling the truth. Marie’s life may depend on you retrieving that book. Are you up to the task?”
“For Marie?” Janine said. “Anything. We’re ready.”
“Good. I’m going to give you directions to the club—”
Janine pantomimed writing notes on an invisible pad of paper. Tony swung the back of the SUV open and unzipped his duffel bag, rummaging fast.
“This is where things may become complicated,” Nessa continued. “These directions will get you close to the club, but they won’t take you all the way. From there, you’re going to have to keep your eyes open. This is going to sound odd, but…watch for a suspicious crow. If you see it, follow it.”
“A crow,” Janine replied. “That’s not a metaphor, right?”
“Not a metaphor.”
Two minutes later they were on the road. Janine took the wheel, eyes high as the SUV cruised beneath the shadow of the elevated train tracks. Tony navigated from the crumpled scrap of notepaper in his hand.
“Nothing about this isn’t crazy,” he said. “You know that, right?”
Janine took a left at the next light, breaking away from the train tracks, gazing up at the overcast sky. Brackish clouds left a soiled, hazy smear across the afternoon sun.
“Embrace the crazy,” Janine said.
“And what’s with these instructions? ‘Look for a friendly crow’? Like, a sign with a crow on it?”
Up ahead, black feathers ruffled. A row of birds perched along a laundromat’s dirty yellow awning. Six pairs of glittering onyx eyes turned as one, watching the SUV as it stopped at the red light on the corner.
One plump specimen, its coat faded with age, shoved itself from the awning and took flight. Then it plunged down, landing on the hood with a thump of rough claws. It stared at Janine through the windshield, tilting its head. She stared back and tilted hers. It shook one wing, then the other.
“What. The,” Tony breathed.
“That,” Janine said, “is not normal bird behavior.”
The light turned green. The crow launched itself into the air, catching the breeze as it winged in a slow, beckoning circle above the rooftops just ahead. Tony and Janine shared a glance.
“Embrace the crazy.” Tony sank into his seat with a sigh of resignation. “Right. Follow that crow.”
Twelve
Marie slid across the skin of the world next door in the back seat of an armored taxicab. Stiff springs dug into her back as she bounced on the vinyl bench, transmission squealing over every jagged pothole. She had a million questions she couldn’t ask. She kept an eye on the glowing blue meter and compared it to the spread of rumpled bills in her hand. The money was a reassuringly familiar green, but all the presidents were wrong—Dixon, Mulraney, Clinton, the latter a doe-eyed black woman encircled by laurel wreaths—and instead of ones, fives, and tens she had threes, nines, and fifteens. At least the painkillers had kicked in, muting the ache in her ribs to a dull throb.
The cabbie was a talker. She tried to keep up with his stream of patter, injecting murmurs of assent and empty words to make it sound like she understood. Their shared language was a lie; the invisible barrier between them was the grind and assumptions of average, everyday life. As an out-of-towner, she could ask him about local events. But when he said his sister-in-law got her hair done last week and everyone agreed she’d been blue-carded, his tone made it clear that everyone—everyone—knew exactly what that meant. The question stayed frozen on her tongue, threatening to betray her.
Marie gradually realized, lobbing the ball of conversation back and forth through the scarred plastic divider, that her life in the NYPD had prepared her for this. Interrogation was a skill. She was good at it. Most people, even people looking down the barrel of a prison sentence, didn’t need much encouragement to talk. The right gaps of silence, the right prodding, and they’d offer up answers to their own questions without even realizing it.
“So where you from, anyway?” the cabbie asked.
“Well, I’m applying for a job at Talon Armaments,” she said. “I’ll give you three guesses.”
“Brixton?” He squinted at her in the rearview. “Nah. St. Lancier. All you brainy engineering chicks come outta Saints University.”
She flashed a smile and conceded his victory, safe in the lie he wove for her.
The cab took a right turn into a wasteland. Towers of skeletal steel wore shrouds of glazing and tape over their shattered faces, the sidewalks glittering with constellations of broken glass. Polished granite walls bore scorched moon-crater scars. Construction crews were out in full force, and men in lime-green vests waved traffic to the far left side of the roadway to make room for cranes and lumbering two-story machines—baby cousins to the giant construction robot Marie had seen on the television—ferrying supplies and men to the heart of the damage.
“Fuckin’ Fivers,” the cabbie muttered. He gestured up at the sky. A dark zeppelin sailed between spires tall enough to slice the grimy brown smog. “It’s gonna be fine. You see all those eyes up there?”
“Sure,” Marie said. “There aren’t usually that many?”
“Nah. Means somebody big is coming to town. Revolutionary Council, maybe.” He kissed his fingers and touched the sun-visor again, that reflexive gesture of prayer. He dropped his voice, conspiratorial. “My brother over at the con-con says he saw a black VTOL touching down at Narragan. You know what that means.”
She had no idea, but she rode his tone and mirrored it back at him. “Better be careful.”
“Damn right. Still, don’t wanna worry you none. You might get looked at a little hard, being new in town, but you’ll be fine as long as your papers are orderly. And the Fivers aren’t gonna start any trouble with all these eyes around. They know better.”
Papers she didn’t have. She doubted her New York State ID would pass muster around here. The cab rattled to a stop at the curb. One side of the street was a construction yard, wood fencing around the looming spire of a brand-new skyscraper, bare girders stretching for the grimy clouds. On the other side, a tower of purple-tinted glass and chrome, wet from the rain. Marie leaned toward the window and craned her neck to read the vast letters T-A-G, struggling to shine under the light of a muffled sun.
The meter stopped at fifty-two dollars. She wasn’t sure if people tipped on this planet, and it was one of the questions she couldn’t ask. She took a chance, handed the driver a few Dixons and told him to keep the change. He broke into a dirty-toothed smile.
“Hey, thanks! And good luck in there. Make us all proud.”
Marie adjusted her surgical mask on the sidewalk, making sure it covered as much of her face as it could. She wasn’t alone. On the far side of the revolving doors, the lobby of the TAG building—floored in sandstone polished to a mirror sheen—churned with workers and visitors. A good three-quarters of them were wearing masks, most in jet black and emblazoned with a tiny copper TAG logo in one corner. Marie wasn’t sure if they
were showing company loyalty or if the office just handed them out for free. It didn’t matter, so long as she blended in and didn’t have to show her face.
She waited in line at the reception desk, shuffling forward a couple of feet at a time. Displays ringed the lobby, a mini-museum of small video screens, posters, and glass display cases, depicting the dizzying span of Talon’s achievements. Androids and vast machines, pure science fiction to Marie’s eyes, but the locals barely seemed to notice. Eventually she reached the front of the line, and a receptionist in a blue plastic dress gave her a two-second glance before turning back to her computer screen.
“Purpose of your visit?” she asked.
“I need to see Ezra Talon,” Marie replied.
Now she got a longer look. And a colder one.
“No one ‘sees’ Mr. Talon, honey. If you’re press, pass your inquiry through the media office and they’ll send you his response, if he responds, within a week or so. Next?”
The man behind her was already trying to push ahead, expecting Marie to stand aside. She held her ground. Talon—this world’s version of Talon—was the only person who could send her home. Her only chance at finding her way back to Nessa and her friends. She couldn’t fail now. Marie thought fast. She took what she’d picked up from the news broadcast on the street video wall, from her cabbie’s running patter, and wove it into a story as she leaned across the counter.
“Listen to me.” She pitched her voice like she was still on the force, backing up her words with authority and a badge. “I have information about a planned Fiver attack on the Slepneir construction facility in New Amsterdam.”
The receptionist blinked at her. “This isn’t—I mean, you should really be speaking to the authorities—”
“No time. All I need you to do is pass a message to Talon. If you do, I’ll provide all the information. If you don’t, the facility will be destroyed—possibly in the next two hours. And he’s going to know, everyone is going to know, that you could have stopped it from happening. A black VTOL landed at Narragan this morning. Do you think that’s a coincidence? Do you?”
The receptionist slid back in her chair. “A message,” she echoed.
“Tell him, and use these exact words, that the Knight—with a capital K—is here and she needs help getting home. She was sent here by a different Salesman, with a capital S. One he helped out a long time ago.”
Marie watched the receptionist write it down and checked it over.
“I don’t understand—”
“You don’t have to,” Marie said. “He will. I expect you’ll be hearing from him very quickly, and he’ll be very grateful to you. I’ll wait.”
As Marie walked away from the front desk, a riot of emotions swirled in her stomach. Once this world’s Talon found out another character from the first story was in town—one who knew another of Ezra’s own incarnations, no less—she had to imagine he’d want to meet her. And that depended on him getting the message. Marie knew her limitations. She was a bad liar, always had been, but she was good at authority. Hopefully she’d worried the receptionist badly enough that her story would hold up.
Nothing she could do now but wait. Marie browsed the exhibits along the lobby walls. Her feet carried her to the far corner of the room, to a display the other visitors avoided like a bubble of reverse magnetism was pushing them away.
A suit of black armor stood in a display case. It was the dark twin to the powered suit that had brought her across the wheel of worlds, sleek and hard and cold as an arctic drift. That suit had been a clunky prototype; this was the real thing, refined, venomous-spider elegant. A scarlet cloak rested across its broad shoulders, joined by a golden braid that made Marie think of Roman emperors.
A dusty placard at its plated boots read: REPLICA of custom Valkyrie armor designed by Ezra Talon for Lady Martika (requiescat in pace).
A video screen beside the case invited the touch of her finger. The panel rippled to life with a patriotic anthem and a strange flag, American stars and stripes tinged with green and the wrong numbers of each. Then Marie stared at her own ghost. The woman on the screen had Egyptian swoops of black mascara at the corners of her eyes and a jagged scar along one cheek, but it was her face, her voice echoing from the speakers.
“There are barbarians at the gates,” she said. “And a barbarian only understands one thing. War. The second war of revolution has become the war of purification. Degenerates, radicals, foreigners, and traitors seek to undermine our way of life, the values we hold dear, and we must do more than hold the line. We must win. And how do we measure our victory? By the depths of the graves we force our enemies to dig.”
She punched a steel-jacketed fist into her armored palm. Marie swallowed down a wave of nausea as her stomach battled her eyes and ears. This isn’t real, she thought. That isn’t me—
“But success does not rise from righteousness alone. It rises from the gifts of Talon Armaments Group. From the new generation of Valkyrie armor to the Odin sky-carrier, TAG forges the tools of next-generation warfare for the armies of New America. Discipline. Obedience. Purity. These are the virtues that define our nation. This is our battle. And Talon leads the way.”
The music swelled, then faded to silence as the image dissolved into a company logo. Marie took a step back on wobbly legs. She turned and stared across the lobby.
This place, Jesus, what did I— She bit her bottom lip. No. That wasn’t me. This is a trick, a mistake, it’s not what it looks like. That wasn’t me.
This was taking too long. Marie felt exposed, an alien on hostile ground. And mask or not, too many people were staring at her. They’d turn away when she made eye contact, but she felt their gazes in her peripheral vision. The receptionist was on the phone, talking a mile a minute. She and the man leaning down next to her were watching Marie like a pair of hawks.
Outside the purple-tinted glass, a long black car swooped up to the curb. Men in dark suits and dark glasses stepped out, the rain-kissed wind pushing back their jackets and baring the guns on their hips.
Every muscle in Marie’s body told her to start running. She walked instead, breathing steady, chin high, trying to keep it casual as she made a beeline for the revolving doors. The receptionist called out behind her.
“Ma’am? Ma’am! Please, wait just a few more minutes. I have Mr. Talon on the phone. Ma’am?”
Security guards were closing in on her from both sides. One of the suits on the sidewalk was muttering into a walkie-talkie as they approached from outside the wall of glass. Marie pushed through the revolving doors.
Then she ran.
Horns blared and tires screeched to a stop. Marie dodged a truck’s bumper, inches from clipping her, as she sprinted across the pothole-littered street. The suits were fast on her heels. One held a badge high, its metal tinted crimson, as he followed in her wake.
“She’s running,” shouted the one with the walkie-talkie. “We need a cordon at 59th and Price, and get a grind-hound up here, fast!”
Marie bolted through an open gate and onto the construction site. Her shoes dug into wet dirt, kicking up mud as she sprinted around piles of rebar and rain-slick plastic pipe. A towering construction mech, squatting on four piston legs and stretching crane arms across the yard in all directions, thrummed loud as a jackhammer. One of the arms, sweeping low and swinging a ten-foot length of steel girder, was coming right for her. She heard the shouts from the workers as she threw herself onto her shoulder, hitting the mud and rolling under the girder’s shadow as it swung over her head.
Something pulled in her back, a sudden red-hot branding iron stealing her breath, and her injured ribs were like a spear digging into her chest. Marie scrambled on all fours, pushing herself to her feet in a clumsy sprinter’s start, fighting to keep her footing in the mud. She couldn’t stop now. Couldn’t give up. She jumped and landed on damp sheetrock in the skeleton shadow of the girders overhead. The first few floors were halfway done, a labyrinth of drywall, expose
d beams, and rough, naked wood. She dodged around a corner, running blind, just trying to put some distance between her and her pursuers. If she could make it out the other side, then get lost in the tangle of streets—
She jolted to a stop as two more suits loomed at the far end of a drywall corridor. They had a dog, or something that had been a dog once. It was a creature of black fur and soot-stained iron, with scarlet diode eyes and a saw-toothed jaw. It strained against its leash and let out grating electronic squawks as it jumped and gnashed at the air.
Marie broke left. Nothing ahead but a stone staircase, leading her up with no promise of a way back down, but she didn’t have a choice. She left muddy tracks as she took the stairs two at a time. Her legs were aching, every breath a gout of fire in her lungs. She turned left, right, up another flight of stairs.
The third floor was a vast and open gallery, no walls yet, nothing but pillars and slow progress. She spotted another stairway down on the opposite side and ran toward it, stopping short as the suits thundered up the steps. She doubled back. More on the other side, their dog-thing leading the way, desperate to slip its leash.
Marie backed up, panting for breath as she made her way toward the building’s edge.
“Give it up,” one of the men called out, brandishing his crimson metal badge. “You’ve got nowhere to go.”
That wasn’t true. She looked over her shoulder. It was a three-story drop to the construction yard. People had survived falls worse than that, hadn’t they? She’d read something about that once. She wished she could remember the odds. She wished for a lot of things. The men closed in, slow, and she took a step back for every step they took forward until her heel brushed the concrete lip and there was nothing but brown sky and mud and pain at her back.
The roar of an engine turned her around. She staggered back from the edge, pushed by a torrent of heat and the stench of burning diesel.
Bring the Fire (The Wisdom's Grave Trilogy Book 3) Page 10