by Jenn Stark
There was too much I didn’t know, too much I needed to know. I needed to be able to combat the darkness that seemed to be rushing ever closer to me, threatening my friends, my people…
A darkness I had no idea how to fight.
And in the entire world, I had only one person I could truly turn to, one infernal teacher more than willing to teach me—if only I asked for his help.
I was asking for it now.
The barriers to my mind were thicker than I remembered them, knotted snarls of defiance that took longer than I expected to loosen. But when the first knot finally gave, he was there. The way he was always there, his assured arrogance palpable despite the distance between us.
“Miss Wilde,” Armaeus said into my mind, his voice dripping with condescension. “For what you truly want, I need you here. Here and ready to do all that I ask, exactly as I ask. Unless and until you tap the power you need to survive, you will not win this battle. Once or evermore.”
Chapter Twenty
It took another full day before Nikki’s doctors consented for her to leave the hospital in Amboise, but I suspected that had more to do with the moony expression on the face of her head physician than any lingering complications of her injuries. She left with shopping bags full of French lingerie and a promise to return, sashaying out the front doors of the hospital in a jaw-dropping nurse costume that ended well north of her knees.
We kept the conversation light until we boarded the plane—this one sent by the Council, over Nigel’s protestations. But at this point, I wasn’t going to fool around with mortal protection schemes. The Council would get Nikki back to Vegas safely. What happened after that was a problem for a different day. And Nikki was taking full advantage of her pain medication, barely staying conscious until we strapped her into her seat.
We were cruising at twelve thousand feet when Nigel finally swung his chair to me. “You’ve avoided the question of your succession for too long. It will be waiting for you once we land.”
“There’s no real question,” I said, absently drawing my finger over the hilt of the Honjo Masamune. “I’ll go through the ceremony with whatever generals I need to convince, and one of them can fight over who wins. The houses, the money—I don’t care about that.” I pulled my hand away, resolutely ignoring the flare of heat along my fingertips. “The House needs someone who can run it—independently. And all the Houses need to feel secure. Not hiding in the shadows, afraid of the Council or Gamon or anyone else.”
Nigel unbuckled his seat belt and stood. From her captain’s chair, Nikki didn’t lift a lash. I envied her medicated state.
“Come on, then,” he said, extending a hand. “Your Council saw fit to give us an airplane wide enough to stage a rock concert. Let’s see how we can orchestrate your sword fight with the generals so you don’t do harm to yourself.”
“Nigel, you don’t need to practice with me.” Still, I got up a little too quickly. I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of the generals, for all that I knew I would lose.
“Have you ever fought seriously with the blade?” he asked, shucking his jacket. His compact frame bristled with muscles.
Despite Nikki’s drugged condition, I’d swear that she swiveled her seat slightly to get a better view.
“I try not to fight seriously, period.” I pulled off my hoodie and slid the Honjo Masamune out of its scabbard. The sword glinted in the artificial light, so heartbreakingly beautiful, it made my soul ache. “What are you going to use?”
“I brought a practice sword.” Nigel moved over to the side of the cabin and slid open a bin, unearthing a bundle of cloth. What he unwrapped was a sword surprisingly similar to mine in size and heft. “This is a Muramasa blade. It will cut you if I’m not careful. I get the impression that would not go over well with your employers, so I’ll endeavor to be careful.”
“Yeah, you’ll endeavor not to be embarrassed, anyway.” I held up the sword like a baseball bat, knowing it was wrong, but before Nigel could correct me, the sword dipped heavily in my grip, aligning itself to a more natural position.
Nigel lifted his brows. “Defend,” he said and moved in toward me, slashing his blade in a vicious arc.
My arms moved with a jolt of energy I couldn’t explain, thrusting up to meet his blade squarely so that his sword bounced back from mine. Nigel was taller than me, and stronger, but I met each of his attacks. Blocked every thrust. My arms and hands and core and legs moved in concert as if born to the art of sword fighting, and I shifted in perfect symmetry to combat the British operative, strike for strike.
At length, he directed me to attack, and I was more tentative. The blade never got close to nicking Nigel’s skin or presenting him with a serious threat, even when he urged me to strike more actively. Time after time, I feinted away, artfully moving around him rather than cause him real danger.
“What are you doing?” he growled at length, and I held the blade up, pacing evenly to match his steps.
“Nigel, you’re hysterical if you’re thinking I’m doing any of this at all. The sword is not your enemy; therefore, I am not your enemy.”
As soon as I spoke those words, I stopped, frozen in place. Nigel stopped as well. He straightened, and I followed his lead, lowering the Honjo Masamune. When he bowed, it was the most natural thing in the world for me to bow as well. We had come to an understanding, he and I. And an understanding of the sword I held.
“The honorable blade,” he said, his eyes wide with surprise. Across the cabin, a now fully alert Nikki was leaning forward in her seat.
“Meaning what, exactly?” she barked. “It’s a sword that won’t cut anyone? Because news flash, that’s not a super useful attribute when you’re in the middle of a sword fight.”
I held the blade out in front of me, and it gleamed in the soft cabin light, the dance of stones embedded in the base of the sword evoking the brilliance of the night sky. “It strikes down its enemy cleanly, or it doesn’t kill at all,” I said. “I read that somewhere. A samurai was attacked by a man wielding this blade. It cleaved his helmet in two—but didn’t harm a hair on his head. The samurai eventually bested the guy who attacked him and took the sword. I thought that was weird at the time but didn’t realize…” I shook my head. “I don’t know how successful it was after that. I still can’t believe its owners simply gave it away to some random American guy.”
“Well, that’s the story that was put out, certainly,” Nigel said. He watched me as I moved the sword back and forth in the light. “But who’s to know the truth? Perhaps the family who owned the sword wanted it kept far out of allied hands, while appearing to be following the path of the righteous. I wouldn’t have thought to look for the blade in Angkor Wat, and I doubt many American servicemen were that familiar with the spot in the nineteen forties. It could have all been an elaborate ruse.”
“I guess.” I slid the sword back in its scabbard and rested my hand lightly on it. “Who among Soo’s generals are Connected, do you know?”
“Haven’t a clue,” Nigel said. “They have a tendency to die before that becomes an issue.” He laughed as my mouth turned down at the corners. “Relax. These men and women are not stupid. They will put forth as their champion the best of their number, and as we have proven here, you’ll face that champion honorably. After that, the fate of the Honjo and the House will be in the hands of the best candidate. It is all you can do.”
I nodded as the twin pendants of jade fired along my collarbone, one cold, one hot. I didn’t know what Soo would think of any of this, but Soo wasn’t here. She’d never told me of her plans for the House, or even that she’d led the House of Swords, until her dying breath. Had her reticence been purposeful?
I turned my gaze out the window, staring into the darkness beyond the airplane’s wings. What truly had been Soo’s thinking, to assign her House to me when there were so many better choices in her ranks? In doing so, she’d painted a target on my back—mine and those closest to me. Granted, sh
e’d also stopped an immediate crisis among her generals, making them stop and assess her choice of their leader before discounting it out of hand, forcing them into the established protocol of succession. She had further denied Gamon a win of the highest order by not allowing her House to die with her.
So where was Soo now? Hopefully not roaming through Hell, with nothing but the shadows of her mother’s bedchamber and my own lost spirit to guide her. Hopefully she was somewhere far beyond that desolate plane.
Hopefully.
We landed at McCarran International Airport before dawn, the lights of Sin City still shining despite the hour. I gazed at the bright towers of the Council, somehow feeling a million times older than I’d been when I’d left the city days earlier. My gaze roamed farther afield, toward Lake Las Vegas and the home Soo had built on its banks, safe within its surrounding trees and fountains, hidden from the harsh realities of the desert.
But there was no hiding for me anymore, I knew.
“You’ll be safe?” Nigel asked, scowling as I helped Nikki into the back of a limo—one I would be driving for a change. The empty car had been waiting at the Jetway when we’d landed, and I’d felt strangely comforted by its presence.
“We’ll be safe. We’re getting Nikki some clothes—”
“And a shower. Trust me, this is a good thing,” Nikki piped up, but I could hear the strain in her voice.
“Clothes and a shower. Then I’ll be out to Soo’s house. If you’ve got generals coming out your ears, cool them down. Try to figure out where else we’ve been hit, if we have, and where we might be hit next.”
Nigel eyed me oddly, and I waved him off. “Go. And let me know if I should lie low. I could put off the Battle of the Bros for at least another decade, and happily.”
He smiled, shaking his head. “You’ll comport yourself honorably,” he said. “You can count on the Honjo for that.”
The Honjo was currently in the backseat with Nikki, keeping her as honorable as she was ever going to get. “Noted.”
We watched him head off to wrangle with customs, but no one stopped us as we left the tarmac and headed into the city. “I always wondered what it’d feel like to sit alone in the backseat,” Nikki said. “I’m not so much a fan.”
I shifted my gaze to the rearview mirror. “Would it help if I wore a hat?”
She snorted. The trip to her condo was short, and as we turned into the development, I realized that in all the past several months of living in Vegas, I’d never once been here. Nikki had told me only briefly about her place—about a picture I should ask about, if I ever visited. But we hadn’t had time. Nikki had been staying at the Palazzo, and I’d been traveling to Israel. But now, as I made tight turns down residential streets, it was almost surreal to imagine her living a life among these pink-and-white stucco tract houses, each more faceless than the last.
“Brody didn’t say one of Soo’s Vegas houses had been leveled, did he?” I asked out of the blue, stirring Nikki in the backseat.
She blinked at me beneath her Chicago PD ball cap, then shook her head. “Nah. It was the warehouse—the occupied one. Caused a bit of a stir, because apparently Soo was stockpiling guns there, always what you want to find out when you report up through Homeland Security. But he was mostly still pissed he hit the building thirty seconds before the bombs went off. Had he been a minute earlier, he’d have missed the blast site. A minute later, and he at least wouldn’t have been knocked into the opposite wall.”
I winced. “What does Dixie have to say?”
Nikki’s laugh was wry. “She’s about to fall apart with joy at having someone to fuss over. Brody better hope he stays injured on a regular basis, because that girl has found her calling.”
I couldn’t help but smile too as we made the final turn to her street, and I parked in front of the third house down and to the left. I stared at it. “You live in a duplex?”
“Hey, a little respect,” Nikki protested. “We refer to it as a Gemini. Much classier that way.”
“A twin.” I got out of the car as Nikki unbent herself from the backseat, handing me the Honjo sword. “Yeah, I can see that.”
The duplex—and it was a duplex—was small and nondescript, the exact opposite of anything that seemed appropriate for Nikki Dawes. But I kept my silence as she strode up the front walk, clearly still a little ginger as the stitches tugged in her thigh and hip. In deference to her injury, her heels were only three inches tall, but her freshly painted toes stuck out proudly from her gladiator sandals. French manicured, of course.
“In we go,” Nikki said, and if she was self-conscious about opening her home to me, she didn’t show it.
Inside, I swept the room with a quick gaze, again struck by the ordinariness of it all. The main living area was done over in IKEA and knockoff Pottery Barn, cool and neutral to combat the infernal heat outside. The carpet was springy beneath my feet, and the walls were painted a buttery taupe.
“You don’t have a cat or anything I need to guard against, right?” I asked, and Nikki chortled, throwing her bag on the couch and checking the stack of mail on the end table.
“That would be negative. Dottie next door brings in my mail and makes sure my plants are watered. I don’t have the heart to tell her they’re plastic.” She grinned at me and pointed to a picture of her with a septuagenarian wearing huge cat-eye sunglasses and grinning ear to ear. “She reminds me of my grandma who pretty much raised me, south side of Chicago. They both would do anything for a laugh.”
Nikki entered the kitchen, and I followed helplessly behind, amazed at the number of photographs on her walls. Most of them were from Vegas—Nikki posing with burlesque dancers and sequin-covered singers, magicians, and fortune tellers, all of them looking happy to be alive. There were a few pictures from her childhood, her family apparently a big fan of the 90s plaid revolution and boot-cut jeans, but none of her parents. On the refrigerator was a picture of a woman with on-purpose blue hair, a grinning childhood Nikki beside her staring with wide eyes.
“Gram Betty,” Nikki said, tapping the photo. “She dyed her hair that color the summer I moved in with her for good, my parents having long since given up on me.”
“The summer you…” I squinted at the picture. “You look all of twelve.”
She shrugged, an ocean full of water sliding under a bridge somewhere. “I was a trying child. But Gram Betty never minded. She called it the way it was, at a time when being different wasn’t always a good place to be. And she protected me until her dying breath.”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “How long ago was that?”
“Long time.” Nikki’s smile was far away. “The year I got married.” She shook my head as I gaped at her. “I know, right? All that drama.”
She turned and headed out of the kitchen again, her voice floating back to me as I stepped into the narrow hallway. “I need stuff for—what, a couple of days?”
“Maybe longer,” I managed, trailing behind her. The longer I stayed in this home, the more I realized it actually did fit Nikki, or at least a part of her I’d never glimpsed before. More pictures lined the wall to her bedroom/office, and I blinked at the narrow bed and enormous desk, crammed with enough electronics to make Brody blush.
“You like keeping up with the news, I see.”
She grinned at the collection of monitors and scanners, reaching over to turn one of the dials. “White noise. Keeps me company. I’ll just be a jiff.”
My gaze raked the desktop as she busied herself in her closet—which was actually the entire second bedroom. But what I wanted to see was in plain sight on the edge of her desk. A picture of a tall, proud Nikki, not a curve to her frame—dressed in a police officer’s uniform. The face was more angular, the hair nowhere near fabulous, but the eyes were hers. The smile was hers.
And so were the three children with her, two of them grabbing her legs, and one, the smallest, hanging from her neck. She’d told me about this picture, told me to ask
about it, but I couldn’t think of anything but how beautiful and alive these small souls seemed to be, even in a fading picture.
“They’re perfect, aren’t they?” I didn’t put the frame down as Nikki came up behind me, and it was her hand on my shoulder, comforting me, when it should have been the other way around. “Three beautiful babies that I’d do anything for. I told you, remember? To ask me about them.”
She glanced at me and I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “Eventually, I couldn’t be what they needed me to be. So I became what I had to be for myself. When they’re ready, if they’re ever ready, they’ll find me again. And I’ll be waiting for them when they do.”
She stopped and took the picture frame out of my trembling hands, her voice gentle with concern. “Aww, it’s okay, sweetie,” she murmured, turning me toward her. “It’s okay.”
I buried myself in her embrace and cried tears I didn’t know I had in me.
Chapter Twenty-One
By the time we reached Soo’s house in the brushy foothills of the Lake Las Vegas area, it was clear the cavalry had been summoned. A dozen rental SUVs lined the expansive parking deck, each bigger and burlier than the last.
“I’d make a joke about overcompensating, but it’s too easy,” Nikki drawled. She was back in her customary seat in the front of the vehicle. I sat beside her, my nerves too jacked for playing our usual roles. She apparently felt something of my nerves too. Rather than her usual eye-popping ensemble, Nikki’s hair was once more tucked beneath her CPD ball cap, her uniform positively staid—a gray technical T-shirt and deep charcoal cargo pants, with reinforced gray Chucks beneath. She looked like she was ready to rumble.