Knile turned onto Elk Parade, his destination now only a few seconds away. He spotted number thirteen and cut straight across the avenue, taking the most direct route. An Auto headed in the opposite direction came to a sudden halt, its tyres gripping and squealing on the burnished flooring, and the occupant yelled something incoherent in Knile’s direction.
Then Knile made it across to the other side.
He reached the door and thumped loudly, unable to restrain himself. His cool facade had been dissolved by the panic that was gnawing at his insides.
“Mr. Rojas isn’t taking visitors,” someone said nearby. Knile turned to see a large man in a dark suit sitting in an alcove that was built into the exterior of the dwelling. The man was watching something on a terminal and had not even bothered to look in Knile’s direction.
“There’s a gas leak in there,” Knile said. “We need to get–”
“I said get the hell out of here,” the man said.
Knile tried the handle on the door and, finding it locked, reached for his lock picks. Before he could put them to use, something struck him like a cannonball from the side and he went sprawling on the ground.
He looked up to see the man in the dark suit looming over him.
“Now we’ve got a problem,” the man said.
14
Vincent Rojas knelt before the little shrine, where the photograph of his mother sat nestled between two small black candles. As far as photographs went, it was not the best. It was blurry and the shot poorly framed, the sunlight streaming over his mother’s shoulder, rendering her features indistinct on one side. It had also become scuffed over the years and was starting to fade noticeably.
Still, it was the way he liked to remember her. She was smiling, happy. Young and pretty. A girl who was blissfully unaware of the terrible future that awaited her.
Rojas looked up at the mirror above the shrine and saw his own face. He was pleased at the calmness and serenity he projected. The control. He had his mother’s olive complexion, her dark blonde hair. His eyes were green and hers had been blue, but despite that he felt that they were closer to twins than mother and son, two petals from the same flower that had been plucked twenty-two years apart.
“May the spirits guide me,” he said. These were words he had spoken many times before. It was the phrase with which he liked to conclude his ritual, a superstitious utterance, and even though the spirits had left him somewhat disillusioned of late, he wasn’t about to change things up now.
He clasped his hands together before his face, then slowly rose to his feet.
He left the alcove and proceeded out through the bedroom, taking a towel from the bureau and lightly mopping his brow. Padding down the softly carpeted corridor, he paused at the edge of the living room to gather his thoughts.
He hadn’t always lived in such opulent surrounds. He’d been born into a poor home and done it tough for many years, scratching together whatever he could, creating his own opportunities through hard work and diligence. He was a self-made man, never asking others for help, and he knew that this was something his mother had always viewed with intense pride.
Until the day she had been beaten to death by his stepfather, Ciro.
How many times did I tell you to leave him, Mother? he thought bitterly. How many times?
Rojas stepped across to the kitchen and plucked his gold watch from the counter, securing it to his wrist. He pinched the face between thumb and forefinger and regarded it patiently, knowing that his pulse was thumping despite his attempts to remain calm.
Go forth now and confront him.
Rojas began to walk toward the room where he hoped the demon was waiting for him.
His palms were sweaty. They always were when he was this close to the moment of truth, the moment when all would be revealed to him. The anticipation was both awful and exhilarating, and no matter how many times he went through it, he could not get used to it.
“May the spirits guide me,” he said again, his voice shaky. “Mother guide me.”
When Ciro had left his mother battered, bloody and lifeless in her own bed, Rojas had been little more than a pimply adolescent. He had not possessed the physical strength, or the confidence to take down a monster like Ciro. But Vincent Rojas had bided his time, drawing plans together to claim his revenge. For three years he had waited for his chance, watching Ciro and learning his routines, his weaknesses, all the while devising a method of death that would draw out the pain for the longest time possible.
Ciro would come to regret the things he had done.
And then, suddenly, Ciro had been killed in the most unsatisfying way possible. He had been involved in a simple bar room fight, his neck cut by jagged glass. He had bled out on the ale-soaked floor, just as any number of drunk commoners had done before him.
Rojas had been devastated when he’d found out. It was such an easy, meaningless death, and one that had deprived Rojas of his vengeance.
But Rojas knew that this was not the end. As his mother had taught him, life was not simply a straight line with a start and a finish. No, it was far more complex than that. Life was more like a system of concentric circles, a network of existences that were loosely tethered by the gossamer strands of the spirits themselves.
Death was not the end, it was merely the means through which a soul transferred from one circle to the next.
When Ciro’s soul had left his body on that bar room floor, it had not dissolved into nothingness. It had moved on. Somewhere out there, at that very moment, a child had been born with Ciro’s life force within it. It was the empty vessel for his corrupt being.
Now, after a decade and a half of hunting for him, Rojas felt that his long search was coming to an end. He was getting closer to his target. Closer to exacting his revenge on the monster who had robbed him of his happiness.
Of course, Rojas’ mother’s spirit was not coming back. She had been a pure spirit, one very close to the centre of the circle. When she’d died she had become one with the Greatness.
One day Rojas would see her again when he too reached that inner plane of existence. That thought gave him some comfort, at least.
He stopped outside the door of the room and listened. The one he’d tied up inside was quiet. It wasn’t screaming like many of the others did.
Perhaps that was a good sign. Perhaps this was the demon. Finally, the one he sought.
He opened the door and went inside. The raven-haired youth was lying silently on the bed, his arms and legs tied with ropes in the same position in which Rojas had left him several hours ago.
Rojas felt a moment of panic. The boy was so still. Rojas couldn’t even see his chest move, didn’t even know if he was still breathing.
You gave him the wrong dose, he berated himself.
Rojas walked forward and pressed his fingers to the boy’s neck. The pulse was still there, still strong. He lifted his hand and pried open one of the boy’s eyelids.
There they are. Those cruel blue eyes, just like Ciro’s. Is it really you?
The pupils were fixed and dilated, showing no response to the increased light. Rojas moved back to the table where he’d left the syringe, wondering where he’d gone wrong.
He should be awake by now.
The boy moaned, and Rojas returned to his side. He pried the boy’s eyelids open, one at a time, then gave him a firm slap on the cheek.
The boy gave a little whimper.
“Wake up, Ciro. Wake up and look at me.”
Rojas had taken possession of over a dozen children from Hoyer Honeybul in the last year. They had all been around fifteen years of age, the age that Ciro would be in his reincarnated form, and this one was no different. He was a handsome boy with a certain innocence about his features, but that did not necessarily mean he did not have the demon within him. Ciro was devious, a deceiver. He would take whatever form allowed him to carry out his evil deeds most effectively.
Rojas always found judging the children by the
photographs alone a difficult task. There was only so much one could tell from pixels on a screen. To effectively discern the true nature of the child, Rojas had to see them in person. He had to take his time, look upon them when they were vulnerable. That way Ciro, the demon, could not so easily mask his presence.
The boy lifted his heavy eyelids, bleary-eyed and confused.
“Where am I?” he said, his voice thick.
“Look at me, Ciro,” Rojas said, his anticipation growing. “You can’t hide forever.”
“What happened to me?” the boy said. “Where’s Mr. Honeybul?”
Rojas gripped the boy’s jaw and firmly turned his head so that he could look at him directly.
“Let me see you, Ciro.”
“That’s not my name,” the boy said, finally opening his eyes fully and staring at Rojas. “I’m Roman.”
“Is that so?” Rojas said doubtfully. “Has that always been so?”
“What are you talking about?” Roman said, dazed.
“Do you remember me, boy? Have you seen me before?”
“No.”
“Are you lying to me?”
“No. Stop, that hurts.”
Rojas realised he was squeezing the boy’s jaw hard enough to make his cheeks red. He released his grip, leaving ghostly white finger marks on the boy’s face.
“You’re weak,” Rojas said distastefully. “Pathetic.”
“I don’t understand…”
Perhaps too weak.
Rojas felt his excitement begin to wane. There was no spark, no menace in this one’s eyes. The real Ciro would not have lain there like a limp turd. Even through the drug haze, Rojas could see that he had been wrong to think that this could be the one. The demon was not lurking inside.
It was another dead end.
He sighed and turned away, deflated. All of his hopes had come to nothing once again. He picked up his holophone from the table and pressed a button.
“Yefim, it’s not him. It’s not the one. We’ll need to perform another disposal. Make the arrangements.” He waited for a response, but there was nothing. “Yefim?”
Rojas cursed and put the phone back in his pocket, then opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.
If that bastard is watching naked women again–
Someone bashed loudly on the front door and Rojas stopped suddenly in the living room, frowning. What was going on? Yefim had been explicitly told that there were to be no interruptions.
Something was wrong.
Rojas turned and hastened back toward the boy’s room. As he reached the door, something blurred toward him and he felt a tremendous blow across his jaw, rocking him backward and making him stumble. There was another blow to his cheekbone that made the world spin, and then he was on the floor.
The boy. It’s the boy.
As he hit the carpet, Roman’s weight was upon him. Rojas looked up to see the boy hunkering over him, all traces of the drug stupor gone from his eyes. Those blue eyes were now clear and full of intent.
“You move and this goes through your eyeball,” Roman snarled, holding the syringe just above Rojas’ face.
“Yes,” Rojas said, nodding obediently. “I understand.”
“Now listen carefully, asshole. You’re going to roll over. Slowly. Then I’m going to tie you up, just like you did to me.”
“Very well.”
“And if you don’t do everything I ask, and I mean everything, I’m going to severely fuck you up.”
“Yes. I’ll do as you say.”
Roman gripped him by the shoulder and turned him over. He took a rope that he’d stuffed under his arm and began to tie Rojas’ wrists behind his back, making no attempt to be gentle.
“How did you slip your bonds?” Rojas said, wincing as Roman pulled sharply on the rope.
“I’m good with knots,” Roman said. “I can tie a hundred of them. Untie them, too.”
“And you pretended to be asleep.”
Roman moved down to Rojas’ ankles. “Yeah. You’re catching up.”
“Very clever. You deceived me, no doubt.”
“Does Honeybul know about this?” Roman said. “Is he in on it?”
Rojas only smiled over his shoulder at him, saying nothing.
Just then the front door slammed open, and Roman hastily finished the knot before getting to his feet. A man appeared in the living room, but it was not Yefim. He was slim with dark hair and a bloodied face, dressed in maintenance gear.
His eyes fell upon the boy and a look of intense joy and relief came across his face.
“Roman!” he exclaimed. “Thank god.”
Roman seemed utterly dumbfounded to see the newcomer. He stood there disbelieving.
“Knile?” Roman said. “What are you doing here? And what happened to your face?”
“I had a disagreement with the guy outside the door.” Knile glanced over at Rojas. “The rest I’ll explain later.” He reached the boy and gave him a tremendous hug, lifting him off the ground in his enthusiasm. The boy awkwardly returned the gesture, seemingly embarrassed by the show of affection.
“What about him?” Roman said as Knile released him. He turned to look at Rojas.
“Looks like you’ve already taken care of that,” Knile said. “Let’s get out of here. The Enforcers won’t be far away.”
The two of them headed for the door without further delay, leaving Rojas lying there on the floor, immobilised, battered and bruised.
But Rojas was still smiling.
He had found the demon after all.
15
Talia thumped on the door for the third time, her fist stinging from the force with which she had struck it. She cast a fearful glance over her shoulder, expecting to see the men behind her again, but out on the street she could see nothing but anonymous faces in the crowd as people meandered past.
“Bagley, open up!” she shouted. “It’s Talia.”
She thumped once more, then let out a sigh of exasperation. She wasn’t getting anywhere. Either Bagley wasn’t here, or he had no intention of letting her in. Either way there was no point waiting around.
She half turned, and then there was a shuffling sound on the other side of the door, and finally the slot in the entrance slid open. Bagley’s eyes appeared through the narrow opening, flitting left and right to check the surroundings before settling on Talia’s face. His brows were knitted crossly as he regarded her.
“What the fuck do you want?” he spat.
“You’re angry, I can see that, but just listen.” She took a deep breath. “I need help. There are people after me.”
“And why the hell would I care?”
“Look, I know I missed the deadline–”
“You’re damn right you missed the fuckin’ deadline.”
“–but I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
Bagley made an irritated huffing sound. “I needed those ballonets delivered this morning.” He glared at her. “You do know that we can’t complete the dirigible without them, right?”
“Are you listening to me, Bagley? There are lowlifes after me. I was kidnapped, for fuck’s sake. How was I supposed to get the ballonets to you when I was strapped to a damn–?”
“Is that my problem? You’ve got a job to do. You didn’t do it. End of story.”
“A job that I’ve never failed to complete until now,” she said. She glanced over her shoulder again. “Have I? Tell me the last time I didn’t make a shipment on time.”
“You cost me a lot of money, Talia. The deal fell through because of you.”
“I’ll make it up to you–”
“No,” Bagley said, his eyes narrowing further. “You won’t. We’re done, Talia.”
She stared at him, astonished. “What?”
“You heard me. Our arrangement ends here.”
“Look, if you’d let me in, we can talk about this. I’m sure we can–”
“I don’t know what you think this is, whether I’m runnin
g some sort of charity here. We aren’t friends, you and me. We’re in business together. When you screw up, that costs me money, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t personally have a lot of spare creds to throw away.”
“I know that, but just because I–”
The slot slammed home and Talia was left with her mouth gaping open, alone on the doorstep once again. She drew her lips back against her teeth and clenched her fist.
“Asshole!” she shouted, giving the door one last thump. She was fuming now, stunned that Bagley could dismiss her so easily after she’d known him for so long. When she thought about it, however, it shouldn’t have been such a great surprise. The man had been lowering his payments for some time, obviously feeling the squeeze financially, and Talia had wondered how long it would take before he found someone else to build the ballonets, someone who was cheaper and probably far less skilled than Talia.
It didn’t matter now. The decision had been made and there was nothing she could do about it.
She turned away from the door, and as she looked out across the street she saw the man in the cowl coming through the crowd again. The man who, underneath that mediocre disguise, looked a lot like Crumb.
And now there were three other men following on his heels.
“Shit.”
Talia hastened away from Bagley’s door, stepping in amongst the crowd in an attempt to hide her passage.
She’d been trying to shake these guys for hours, ever since she’d escaped the factory, but so far she’d been unsuccessful. Crumb and his men were street smart – they’d lived here just as long as she had, and they knew their way around. They weren’t going away anytime soon.
And now with Bagley’s door receding behind her, she had one less option for finding somewhere safe to stay.
“Ungrateful bastard,” she muttered, still seething that Bagley had turned her away. “Go and find someone else to build you cheap ballonets, see how long the floaters stay in the air.”
Forget about Bagley. Find another option.
She took another deep breath and weighed up her situation. She’d considered returning home and locking herself inside her house, but she knew that wouldn’t do. Crumb knew where she lived. He and his buddies would kick her door in without a second thought, and then she’d be back at square one.
Landfall (The Reach, Book 2) Page 10