by Liz Braswell
If I ran Firebird, I would do something cool with this, Chloe thought. The possibilities were endless—really great apartments, an awesome bar, maybe even a theater again. For repertory movies and local theater, or maybe her own version of the coffeehouse in Smallville. Hey, Lana was like sixteen and she ran it—Chloe was sixteen, leader of her people and a cat person besides. She should have no trouble with just managing a coffee shop.
“Chloe.”
She jumped; even without actively paying attention with her improved Mai hearing, Chloe should have been able to hear him walking up. Sergei was fairly square and … heavy and tended to wear shoes that clicked when he walked. But there he was, barely two feet away, a light smile on his face, hands behind his back.
He was dressed more casually than usual, and Chloe had to admit that it immediately made him a lot more likable. Even in just his polo shirt and khakis he looked less imposing, more human.
“I can’t believe I startled you,” he said, chuckling. “You’ve been living with humans for too long.”
“Yeah, funny,” Chloe said, instantly on the defensive again.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the older man said, instantly sighing and putting his hand to his face. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not funny. I just meant it as a joke, to lighten the tension.”
Chloe relaxed a little. “I’m kind of sensitive about my mom these days.”
“Completely understandable. Here, shall we go inside as we talk?” Sergei gestured for her to go first, getting a big ring of keys out of his pocket. “The fool owner couldn’t meet us here; he had another prospective client for a penthouse restaurant, and this is small potatoes compared.”
“That’s kind of rude.” Chloe was dying to know what Sergei found out about where her dad was or what he was up to, but she reminded herself to remain patient.
Sergei shrugged. “It’s business. You have to learn, Chloe, that often nothing is personal. You can’t take it to heart. You’ll get ulcers. Ah, here.” He found a big old-fashioned key and put it first to the locked metal bar that went through all of the metal door handles in the front. Then he took a smaller, bronze key out and opened the farthest door to the left.
“It’s like a video game,” Chloe ventured.
“You know, I’ve never played one—here, let me go first in case there’s anyone in here squatting or something,” he said, as if people like that were rats. He pushed his way in and shouted, “Hellloooooo,” then waited to hear if there was any movement or scuttling. He nodded. “Just a whole lot of roaches. It’s safe.”
Chloe realized with distaste that she could hear the bugs, too, dozens of them, little feet making little noises as they rushed away from the light. She noticed with amusement that Sergei didn’t do the thing they did in the movies, or on TV, or in real life: he didn’t take out a flashlight and wave it around in the darkness, swinging its pale yellow beam over walls and doors and floors. He just walked in, waiting a moment for his eyes to adjust to almost complete darkness. If he were facing her, Chloe knew she would have seen his eyes become slits and then wide, like a cat’s eyes in the dark, barely any iris showing.
The lobby didn’t look all that derelict; once her own eyes adjusted, Chloe saw that the red carpet was only dusty and worn, not ripped up and moldering away. The concession counters had their glass smashed in a couple of places, and the popcorn machines were gone. A pity—she always wanted one. It would have been a fun thing to take home. There was still one napkin dispenser with napkins in it and a fake crystal chandelier that was missing some of its glass festoons and garlands.
“What are you going to do with this place?” Chloe asked, already redecorating it in her mind.
“Haven’t decided yet,” Sergei said, shrugging. “I know this may disappoint you, but unless the structure is really intact and we can find something to do with it, we may just raze the whole thing. The plot of land it’s on is worth more for apartments. Or a parking garage—that’s where the real money is.”
Chloe sighed. Weren’t Russians—okay, he was Abkhazian—supposed to be better educated and more artistic and intellectual than Americans? How could he miss all the decaying grandeur, the shabby beauty of this place?
“So how are you and Kim getting along with learning Mai?” he asked sort of casually, peeking over one of the counters to peer at what remained of the slushy machines.
“Uh, we haven’t really started yet,” Chloe admitted. “But I’ve just finished all my makeup work and I’m a pretty fast learner.” Well, okay, that wasn’t really true about languages—but she was pretty sure it was just going to be memorization. She didn’t have time to learn all the conjugations or whatever ancient Egyptian she’d have to know for tomorrow.
“Just remember your audience,” Sergei said, suggesting more than chastising. Chloe wished her mom was a little more like that sometimes. “You’re kind of like a second coming to them—so you’d better not disappoint.”
Chloe sighed again. Here it came. The second unavoidable conversation of the day. She leapt up onto the ticket taker’s podium and sat there balancing on its four-inch-wide top, an impossible position for any human except maybe Jackie Chan or Jet Li.
“Sergei, I never wanted this,” she admitted with all of her heart behind it. “I think I wanted to finish high school, go to college, and maybe start my own retail clothing empire. Nothing I ever wished for involved claws, paws, or leading the Mai.”
“But you are who you are,” Sergei said, pausing in his inspections to fix her with his slit eyes. He cocked his head like a cat. “You cannot change anything.”
“What I meant was”—Chloe took a deep breath—“I don’t want to take the Pride from you.” Unless of course it turns out that you really did send people to kill my mom. But then Chloe would have chosen anyone else to lead besides her. Igor or Olga or someone.
“Chloe, that’s very sweet,” Sergei said, meaning it. “But you’re not really taking it from me. You are the One, anyway—that is your right.”
“Isn’t it,” Chloe said hesitantly, “isn’t it a little weird in this day and age to have inherited leaders? I mean, just because I was born with certain abilities, does that really make me fit to rule?”
“It is archaic, I agree—even if no one else does. It’s not exactly a merit-based position. I built Firebird from the ground up and love running it, but that counts for nothing. Our previous Pride Leader, everything else aside, really tried to do something. Her goal was to unite all of the scattered Mai in Eastern Europe, and she worked very hard to accomplish that.”
Everything else aside? What did that mean?
“But Eastern Europe was—still is—a very dangerous place to be and our time there was over. Too many wars, too much prejudice, too much random violence. It was always my goal to get us out of there. To go west. Run ahead of ourselves, start over in new land. Maybe escape the old curse,” he said, a little sadly. “I worked very hard to bring them here, to build Firebird, to make a safe place for all of us to live. Don’t you think that makes me a leader?”
“Sure,” Chloe said, not sure what else to say.
Sergei sighed. “Too bad no one else agrees with you. I wonder if there’s anything actually left in the main theater—usually they tear out all the seats and sell them in auctions. After you.” He opened the door for her and gave a little bow as she went in.
The darkness inside was absolute, but Chloe could feel the vastness of space around her. A good place to be scared in. She felt all floaty, like she was going to start drifting into the air.
“Hey, where are the lights?” Chloe asked.
“I’m sorry we don’t have our little discussions anymore,” Sergei said, his voice suddenly coming a dozen feet from her, completely unplaceable in the shadows. “And our chess games, too.”
“Me too,” Chloe also admitted. “Is the power out or something?” She put her hands out to find the closest wall, suddenly nervous.
“I’m going to miss hav
ing lunch with you.”
“They don’t have to stop just because I’m not living there anymore.” Was she just being a wimp in the dark, or was there something ominous about the way he said that?
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” the older man said with regret. “Not because you’re the One or anything …”
Suddenly all the houselights came on, full power. The theater was flooded with bright yellow light and Chloe was blinded, throwing her arms over her face a second too late.
“… but because you’ll be dead.”
Chloe forced her eyes open, blinking painfully as the muscles in them contracted her pupil faster and smaller than they ever had.
Before her stood the Rogue.
Twelve
The first thing she thought was, Oh my God, he’s alive.
Alexander Smith, aka the Rogue, the psycho assassin of the Order of the Tenth Blade, should have been dead.
When Chloe fought him on the Golden Gate Bridge, she had seen him plummet to his death, or so she had thought. When the Tenth Blade found out, they sent an army of assassins to scour the city, looking for her to avenge his death. And the truth of the matter was, at the last minute she had extended her hand—to help save him, for reasons she could never really put into words more than “it seemed like the right thing to do.”
He was tall, muscled, maybe a little thinner than the last time she saw him, with the same dumb white-blond ponytail over his shoulder, the same crazy eyes, the same neopreneish black suit that no doubt held the same innumerable daggers, blades, shuriken, and other assorted traditional weapons of the Tenth Blade.
“Chloe King,” the Rogue said, with a bit of a smile.
“You’re looking well,” Chloe said before she could stop herself. Now was not the time to be funny. And it’s not like the Rogue really has a sense of humor. “What’s going on?” she demanded, swinging around to face Sergei.
“I’m … afraid … your time with us is over, Honored One,” Sergei said with a little mock bow. “Sorry you’ll miss the meeting tomorrow.”
“Why are you doing this?” Chloe asked, knowing the answer anyway.
“Weren’t you listening to anything I was saying?” Sergei said, exasperated. “The Pride is just going to toss me aside now that you’re here. Thirty years of hard work—of my life—gone, just like that. I am hardly going to let a teenage upstart who was brought up with humans take everything away from me, whatever her lineage may be.”
“Lineage …?” Chloe asked, confused.
“Your mother was our previous Pride Leader.” As Sergei spoke, the Rogue remained as still as a statue, only smiling occasionally at certain points. “Your sister could have been the next leader—she was older than you, you know, and required all nine blades. Had she lived, we would have had two ‘the Ones.’” He chuckled. “That hasn’t happened in a very long time.”
Chloe felt something in the pit of her stomach. Imagine—a sister who could also die and come back, who could take some of this burden from her, who had been actually raised Mai and could show her the way. Wait—two “the Ones”? What about the third, the brother Kim had suggested there might be? Sergei didn’t seem to know about him…. Chloe shoved that thought to the back of her head.
“This gentleman here”—Sergei twirled his hand at the Rogue—“took care of her. Poor girl, she shouldn’t have gone wandering city streets at night by herself. …”
Chloe had a flash of her recurring dream—the one about her sister’s death. She shuddered but refocused her attention on the present. Chloe still didn’t understand. She looked back and forth between the two of them. The Rogue was devoted to wiping out the Mai—it was his whole life. And he and Sergei, the head of this Pride, were working together?
“We had tried tracking you down for a while,” Sergei said, turning back to Chloe. “Finally we assumed you died in the violence between the Georgians and the Abkhazians. Imagine my surprise when you turned up here, right under my nose!”
“You two are working together to kill everyone who might be a real Pride Leader?”
“I really don’t like that phrase,” Sergei said with a pinched look. The Rogue just smiled. “But yes. For this one thing our purposes crossed paths—the Tenth Blade doesn’t want any mystic, powerful leaders of the Mai who could unite them and lead them to victory—or whatever it is they think you’re going to do—and I rather enjoy my current position.”
“You’re working with a man who wants to wipe us out,” Chloe said, the thing in her stomach becoming rage as her confusion dissipated. “With someone who has killed Mai! If you really love them so much, how can you murder them—us? You’ve told me how few there are left!” Chloe said desperately, trying to understand.
“Strange bedfellows, I know,” Sergei said, nodding. “The loss of you two girls is a shame genetically, but it’s a small sacrifice to prevent complete chaos in the Pride—which was working just fine before you came along, Miss King.”
Chloe opened her mouth but didn’t know what to say. The Rogue was still, but who knew how long it was going to be before he attacked? Her time was running out.
“Did you send people to kill my mother?” she finally asked quietly.
“Which one?”
Chloe’s eyes narrowed. “My adoptive one.” But now that she thought about it…
“Yes,” Sergei answered promptly. “But that was before we all found out you were ’the One.’ You were another Mai we welcomed into the fold, only you didn’t seem to be ready yet to leave your past behind. We were just hurrying that process up a little.”
“You would have had to kill more than my mom to get me into your fold completely,” Chloe said hotly. “You would have had to kill Paul and Amy and Brian. …”
“I do what needs to be done,” Sergei said, shrugging again. “Don’t flatter yourself in thinking you were the first Mai to be raised by humans. There are six billion of them and only a thousand of us, Chloe. They don’t need you. We do. Well,” he added apologetically, “not you, obviously, but in general.”
The Rogue finally seemed to be tensing a little, bored with the conversation.
“Did you even look for my dad at all?” But she already knew the answer.
Sergei put the big set of keys back in his pocket, getting ready to go. “I don’t know. Olga might have since I mentioned it in front of her. I really will miss our time together,” he said with a sigh. “In any other circumstances, I would be proud to be your father.”
“I’m tired of listening to this,” the Rogue finally growled. “Prepare to die, Mai whore.” He started to cross his arms over his chest, reaching under each sleeve for a blade.
“Don’t call her that,” Sergei snapped, annoyed. “Just do your job.”
“I’m tired of you too, Demon,” the Rogue said tonelessly, and neatly whipped a shuriken at him.
Before Chloe could react, the star ended its flight buried in Sergei’s throat. It stuck beneath his neat, short beard, neat, long, dark red ribbons streaming from it.
“You—,” Sergei gurgled, ripping the star out of his throat. His claws came out and he launched himself at the Rogue.
Alexander leapt easily out of the way, though not so far as to avoid one of Sergei’s fat, square paws raking five bloody troughs in his arm. He spun around and buried a long knife into Sergei’s back, causing him to let out something between a groan and a scream that was completely inhuman.
“You’re Mai, too, Sergei Shaddar,” the Rogue whispered as he held Sergei to drive the blade farther in. “You mean nothing to me.”
Sergei let out a last bubbling groan and died.
Thirteen
Chloe gaped at the scene in front of her. She felt disconnected, like it was all happening on TV. There was just too much to take in.
Sergei and the Rogue had been working together. And now the relationship seems to be, uh, over. Sergei had helped kill her sister and lead Chloe to this theater to have the Rogue kill her, too.
>
Who was the better person? The assassin or the traitor to his race?
Hey, Chloe. RUN.
She shook herself out of her thoughts just as Alexander let Sergei’s body drop to the floor with an ungraceful thump. And unlike Chloe, Sergei showed no signs of returning to life anytime soon.
“Well, what do you know,” the Rogue said with little surprise, “he really wasn’t the true Pride Leader.”
The assassin standing before her probably knew way more about the Mai than she did, Chloe realized.
“Even for a Mai, he was traitorous filth,” the Rogue continued, pulling out his blade and wiping it off. Then he turned to face her. “You, on the other hand …”
Should she stay and fight or run? The part of Chloe that had snapped her out of her thoughts before still urged the whole fleeing thing, but somehow she didn’t think that would be a wise move. No exposing the back—especially to someone who has range weapons.
“Me, on the other hand …?” she prompted, tensing, preparing herself to go into fight mode, sidestepping a few feet to the left.
“You would make a truly great leader; your false gods chose well. Too bad you’re not human.” He gave her a little bow. “Which is why,” he added apologetically, “I really have to do this.”
“You don’t really have to do anything,” Chloe pointed out. She moved so her back was to the theater door, Sergei’s head pointing at her feet. “I’ve never done anything to hurt anyone—for chrissake, I even tried to save you from falling.”
“I know.” For just a moment the Rogue’s cool expression broke and he looked puzzled. Then the moment was over and he gave her a grim smile, drawing out twin blades. One was still stained with Sergei’s blood. “Probably comes from being raised by humans. It would be an interesting experiment—if you weren’t the Chosen One, I mean—to see how you’d turn out. To see which side you’d choose.”
“There. Are. No. Sides.” Chloe leapt just as he threw one of his long daggers at her; she went straight up and it passed beneath her to bury itself in the velvet-covered wall behind.