by Liz Braswell
“There is good and evil, us and you,” the Rogue said, circling to where she was, keeping his eyes locked on her.
“No, there is sane and fucking nuts,” Chloe corrected. “Or in your case, fucking nuts and really fucking nuts.”
At some point he had pulled out a second knife to replace the one he had thrown; Chloe was dismayed to realize she hadn’t noticed it. He had also managed to force her away from the doors so they were behind her—she was now at the worst-possible angle to escape.
“And what about Brian?” she pushed, continuing clockwise around Sergei’s body. His head pointed at the doors. “Was it ’good’ what the Order did to him?”
The Rogue frowned. “What Richard did was inexcusable, treating a human and one of our own like that. There would have been other ways to deal with Whitney’s son.
His hands moved so fast they blurred and suddenly there were daggers spinning toward her.
Chloe hissed and threw herself up into the air and backward.
Her claws extended and she grasped the back of a seat, knowing it would be there. Her legs came down and her foot claws came out, grabbing a seat in the next row. Suddenly she was terrified and powerful, hunted but in control.
She knelt on the narrow seat back, barely using her claw tips to balance.
“Ah, the animal comes out. This makes it easier,” Alexander said, grinning. He threw a screaming silver dagger at her. He, too, was as he should be: the hunter.
Chloe turned and sprang from seat back to seat back, down to the front of the theater.
Keep it under control, she told herself. But it felt so good to be moving.
“Your sister was hard to kill,” the Rogue taunted, running down the aisle to keep up with her.
My sister.
By the time Chloe found out she even had one, the girl was already dead. Thanks to Sergei. And the Rogue.
Rage exploded in her heart, burning her limbs. She took a last wild leap from the first row to the proscenium, twisting in the air so she landed facing the Rogue. Now she had higher ground: a distinct advantage.
“One last question,” she growled. “Was it you following me all this time?”
“Unless there was someone else, yes,” he said, jumping from the floor to the first row of seats. He ran along their backs as nimbly as a Mai. “But you’re almost always surrounded by humans. We had to get you alone.”
The Rogue launched himself forward, vaulting up onto the stage and landing neatly in a crouch.
Chloe threw herself at him before he was completely down, growling. It took all of her effort to resist instinct, which told her to just get him in the chest or the stomach, disemboweling him the way a cat would. But she could see that under his neoprene he had Kevlar armor rippling over his arms and chest.
She reached out with her claws, aiming for his throat, right above his matte black armor, his only exposed and vulnerable place.
The Rogue brought his arms together and up, holding a dagger diagonally down against his wrist to protect his throat. Her left claws clanged against metal, sending shivers up her arm like a nail bent backward. But her right claws got something; as she pushed herself off him there was blood, but she couldn’t tell if it was on his hand or ear. The Rogue didn’t scream; he just sucked in a choking lungful of air.
She flipped backward twice and landed fifteen feet away. Her hands came up, protecting her own throat, and she waited for him to react. If she turned her back and tried to run, even for a second, Chloe knew she’d have a dagger between her vertebrae.
This theater could easily become her mausoleum.
And she would wake up with him leaning over her, waiting, and he would take his little silver dagger and drag it across her throat. Seven times. Until she didn’t wake up again.
Chloe panicked for a moment, filled with memories that weren’t hers. A girl, running through the dark. A city at night. An alley. The dream she had—a tattoo on an arm. Sodalitas Gladii Decimi. Her sister.
The Rogue stood up, a little shakily, but he already had a shuriken in the hand that didn’t have the dagger.
She had lost her concentration.
“FREEZE!”
Both of them turned.
The doors of the theater crashed open and a policeman stood there, his .45 drawn and aimed. It was hard to tell which one of them it was aimed at. It didn’t matter; another appeared by his side and also clicked her safety off. A third came forward, saw the body, and ran forward to kneel by him.
“Both of you. PUT YOUR WEAPONS DOWN,” the first policeman shouted.
For a split second Chloe and the Rogue shared a moment, looking at each other. Then at the same time—without a signal—they both began running in opposite directions. Chloe made for the emergency exit on the right side of the screen.
“I SAID FREEZE!” the policeman bellowed again.
She leapt forward off the stage, putting all of her strength into her arms and crouching into a cannonball. She crashed into the door, forcing it open as the first shot went off. It was loud. Louder than she could have believed from TV.
Chloe barreled through the door and rolled onto the pavement outside, just ducking and pulling her legs in before it swung hard shut behind her. Her knuckles were bloody and raw from protecting the top of her head.
She took off, running and leaping and jumping from hydrant to awning to fire escape to roof, grabbing and swinging until she was back on the skyline, where she could travel quickly and safely, where she belonged.
Fourteen
What now?
Chloe kept running but forced herself to think—something her cat instincts didn’t like.
She had spent the last several weeks at home, recovering from a previous attempt on her life, integrating the relatively sudden manifestation of her new abilities, two death-resurrections, and the Order of the Tenth Blade, the Mai, and their relationship for the past thousand years into her normal teenage life.
But what hadn’t she done?
“Prepare, make a safe room, dig out a Cat Cave,” Chloe answered to the night air as she leapt across the gaps between buildings, ignoring the hundred-foot drops below. “Actually train myself in fighting. Come up with some sort of defensive strategy. Initiate an emergency or panic routine for me, Amy, and Paul to follow. And Kim. And Alyec. COME UP WITH A PLAN.”
She cursed herself for not having done it sooner. Complete denial mode does not save lives, Chloe thought.
“A little late, Chlo,” she muttered.
At least the Rogue probably wasn’t following her. As strong and skilled as he was, Alexander was still human and couldn’t make the sort of jumps or move at the pace she could. For a moment Chloe allowed herself to picture him in a Rogue-mobile, with an evil grinning face on the front like a blond Joker. Even if he did have a car, he was probably driving it as fast as possible away from the police without any regard for her.
“Thank God for the police,” Chloe muttered, for once without irony. How did they know what was going on? How did they know that anyone was there?
She made for the tallest point on the local horizon before her, a large satellite dish that was screwed solidly but inexpertly to the top of a chimney. If anyone was coming after her—the police or the Rogue or whomever—she would see them coming.
Once carefully balanced on top, one claw wrapped around the rim of the dish, she pulled out the one weapon she had available to her.
Her cell phone.
First she dialed Firebird.
“’Allo, Firebird LLC,” the receptionist’s voice came over. Someone should really tell her to cut the Russian accent on outside calls, Chloe thought. She knew Alexandra could speak almost perfect English; at this point anything else was an affectation.
“It’s Chloe. Get me Olga.”
“She’s out at the moment—can I take a message?”
“No. Get me Igor.”
“Honored One, he is in a meeting,” she responded deferentially but promptly.
“Get him out,” Chloe said, rolling her eyes at the strange incongruity of the other woman’s words. “It’s very important.”
“Yes, Honored One,” Alexandra said, putting her on hold. Chloe was still amazed; the other girl obviously hadn’t liked her from the beginning, and now she did whatever Chloe asked without hesitation and only a little sarcasm.
After a surprisingly short wait, Igor got on.
“Hello?” He sounded a little irritated and snappish. Not so much into the whole spiritual leader thing. Which was going to make what she had to say next that much worse.
“Igor, Sergei’s dead.”
There was a pause, as if he was wondering if he had heard right. Igor’s English wasn’t perfect, so that was understandable. “What are you talking about?” he finally said.
“The Rogue just killed Sergei. I was with him at the theater you guys are looking at.” Later she would burden him with the details about how she was there so that Sergei could have her killed; for now she just wanted the news out.
“Wait, wait. The Rogue is still alive? I thought you killed him.”
“No, in fact, I tried to save—oh, never mind.” Chloe sighed. Someday she would straighten that story out, too. “Apparently he did not die falling from the Golden Gate Bridge. Somehow he lived. And he just killed Sergei at the theater.”
“What theater?” Igor demanded, his voice rising.
“The theater you guys were thinking about buying and tearing down for apartments or something or other,” Chloe said, exasperated he had chosen to fix on that particular point.
“We weren’t about to buy any theater…. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Chloe sat back on the rim of the dish, stunned. It was bad enough that Sergei had been trying to kill her, but the lengths he had gone to plan it … Having keys to a property that no one at Firebird knew about just to have a convenient place for Chloe to be killed. Having Olga look for Chloe’s dad to give her a reason to meet them there. Was there anything Sergei didn’t lie about—or anyone in the Pride he didn’t lie to?
“Where is this theater?” Igor prodded. “I’ll get there right away—”
“No,” Chloe cut him off. “The place is crawling with police. They showed up right after the Rogue and I began going at it. Stay away—tell everyone to stay away, even the kizekh. We can’t risk the exposure.”
She couldn’t believe she was talking like this.
“Are you sure he’s dead?” Igor said in almost a whisper.
“I’m pretty sure, Igor,” she said as gently as she could. “If there’s any chance he’s alive, they’ll bring him to a hospital. But he looked pretty gone. I’m sorry.”
There was a long pause.
“Did you kill the Rogue?” Igor finally asked with a deadly calm to his voice.
“What? No,” Chloe said, knowing it was a mistake as the words came out of her mouth. “In front of all those police?”
“Did you pursue him at all?”
“No, Igor, I fled the scene. Did I mention the cops? With the guns?” She tried to sound equally calm and directed, not cowardly, like he probably thought she was. “Listen, I’ll explain it all to you later, okay? There is a lot to explain. I’ll come over tonight. But I have to go now.” She hung up. Why couldn’t it have been Olga? She was terrified, adrenalized, and now she felt like cowardly shit just because of Mr. Sergei’s ultratestosterone Padawan.
Who was out there who would sympathize with her? Not accuse or question?
As she dialed, a police car sped by a hundred feet below her, its siren howling. Chloe turned to watch, but it didn’t stop.
“Chloe!” Amy chirped on the other end. “What’s up?”
“Remember Sergei? The old guy who was trading insults with the other old guy at the Presidio …?”
“The leader of your Pride, yeah,” her friend answered. Sounding smug that she knew all that.
“He’s dead. Killed by that assassin who tried to kill me on the bridge.”
“Oh my God!”
“But he was actually trying to have me killed by the Rogue; it was kind of a setup—”
“Holy shit,” Amy interrupted. “What are you going to do?”
“I think …” Chloe thought about it. She had no desire to go over to Firebird immediately; it was probably a mess. And in the interest of full disclosure—since she was probably going to see it on the news anyway—it was probably best to come clean to her mother. “I think I’m actually going to go home. If anything weird is going to happen, I want to be able to protect her.”
“Good thinking. Paul and I will go over, too. We might as well be all together since everyone already knows about us.”
“I—okay, yeah, good idea.”
“Absolutely. See you in a little while.”
And now the last call. It was even set for speed dial.
“Hello?”
“Alyec.” She took a deep breath. “Sergei’s dead. The Rogue killed him.”
“Oh my God! Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m going home to make sure Mom’s okay and everything. Don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
“Do you need me? I’m kind of in the middle of band practice—but I’ll drop everything and come if you want. …”
“No.” Chloe smiled and shook her head, forgetting he couldn’t see it. “I’m fine. Call me when you’re out.”
“Okay. Be safe, Chloe.”
“I will.”
Chloe clicked her phone off and shoved it back in her pocket. When she first was hunted by the Rogue and had developed her powers, she always took circuitous routes home to confuse anyone who might be following her. Since her mom’s kidnapping it was obvious that everyone knew where she lived—now it was just important that she get there first. She took one last long look around, enjoying the view and the moment’s respite from the horrors of what was to come next.
Then she leapt down to the rooftop and hurried home through alleys and back ways, invisible to everyone—including the police.
When she heard her mom jingling her keys at the door, she opened it but forgot to retract her claws and Anna started at the sight. Chloe had spent the hour before her mom got home from work patrolling the house, making sure the windows and doors were locked, and listening for the sounds of an intruder. Amy sat in front of the TV, flipping between CNN Headline News and local channels (and reruns of Invader Zim). Paul wasn’t there yet.
“Not dipping into the catnip, are you?” Anna King asked a little nervously as she came in and put her attaché case on the counter.
“Not exactly,” Chloe said with a wry smile.
“Hey—it’s on again!” Amy called from the couch.
Mother and daughter moved farther into the living room. A grim-faced young newsman talked while the words Local Businessman Murdered lit up the corner of the screen in red, yellow, and blue.
“Local real estate magnate Sergei Shaddar was found dead today in an abandoned theater. Connie Brammeier in Inner Sunset has the story.”
The camera switched to a female reporter, younger and serious, on the scene. Things were going on behind her, but it was hard to tell what exactly. There were policemen, a tired-looking detective who frowned over her clipboard, and flashes going off.
“Earlier today police were alerted by a local about suspicious activity in the condemned building. Inside they found the body of Sergei Shaddar, owner of Firebird Properties LLC, gruesomely—and possibly ritually—covered in stab wounds.”
“Covered? There was only one,” Chloe said before she stopped herself.
“… his throat also cut. Whether this was some sort of gang-related activity or a random attack remains unknown. Shaddar was a reclusive but popular businessman who donated ten thousand dollars every Christmas to local charities.”
That’s news to me, Chloe thought. Like inverse variables and people who liked Avril Lavigne, it was hard to wrap her mind around someone who was so absolutely evil�
��and gave to the poor.
“Investigators say there is no trace of the two suspects who fled the scene, but police are looking into it. Anyone with information on this crime is encouraged to call the number at the bottom of the screen. All tips are kept anonymous. Bob?”
“Why do I get the feeling that one of the ’suspects’ is you, Chloe?” her mom asked in what was dangerously close to a growl. Amy turned down the volume.
Chloe took a deep breath. “Sergei told me to meet him at that theater because he had information on Dad.” Her mom’s eyes widened. “He was setting me up to be killed by the Rogue, who was also there waiting for me.”
“I thought that person—the Rogue—fell from the bridge,” her mother said slowly.
“Two percent of suicides survive the fall every year,” Amy said, not tearing her eyes from the television.
“Anyway, he’s still alive,” Chloe continued as her mom frowned. “He and Sergei were working together to kill any potential ’Chosen Ones’—for different reasons, obviously. They’re the ones who killed my biological sister a few months ago. But the Rogue turned on Sergei and killed him before attacking me—just another Mai he wanted dead.”
Anna King looked at her daughter for a long moment, unblinking, just like Kim. Her eyes were much harder and flintier than the cat girl’s, and her blond hair wasn’t as wispy as she usually kept it. When she finally spoke, it was as calmly as Igor.
“That’s it. We’re moving.”
Chloe had to replay what she said several times before accepting it.
“What?”
“We’re moving. San Francisco is way too dangerous. It’s ridiculous.” Anna King took her glasses off and turned away, getting a notepad. “I shouldn’t have any trouble finding a job in Seattle or New York. …”
“Mom, what are you talking about?” Chloe followed her around. Amy sort of wilted back onto the couch, just peeping over the top.
“In the last few months, there have been two attempts on your life.” Her mother ticked things off on her fingers. “I’ve been held hostage, you’ve been basically held hostage, I have personally witnessed a gang war, no matter what you want to call it.”