by Nina D'Aleo
I understood how she felt—it sucked loving someone who had zero interest in you—and it was hard to move on if they were always around. Add in that they can read your thoughts and it would be a complete nightmare. “I’m so sorry,” I said to her.
She gave a shaky smile and wiped her eyes. “Sometimes I feel like I’m still in high school.”
She flinched and I guessed we were getting the call from the man himself. Time to face the music. Willow helped me up and we left the bathroom and walked back toward the Shaman gathering near the center of the hall. I noticed then that there seemed to be even more rebels than before. Good news, I supposed. I stopped at the back of the group beside Marco. Willow pressed further in, taking up her place. Rocco stood at the front with Omen. I avoided eye contact with him. I didn’t want any more trouble with Morningstar. A catfight over a boy was the last thing I needed
Omen starting speaking—his voice loud in the silence, drenched in mocking sarcasm as always, “Unfortunately even though our good friend Agent Silver managed to locate the List, we have been unable to recover the data.”
I shut my eyes and yelled a curse in my mind.
“However,” he continued. “We did find a marking stamp that ran throughout the document, and we’ve determined that this stamp gives location coordinates—the place of original production. It tells us where to go to recover the List where it is primarily stored. It is a C11 facility on Dunbar Road. Do you know this place, Silver?” Omen spoke to me and everyone turned to stare.
“As far as I know it’s a low level storage facility,” I said.
“Low level?” Omen raised his eyebrows. He stepped to one side and pointed to his laptop screen. It showed footage from surveillance outside the Dunbar facility. A high fence encircled the entire perimeter of the building with a boom gate to allow entry and exit. Considering it was C11, this level of security wasn’t surprising, but there were also armed guards stationed all around the grounds.
“Shaman?” I whispered to Marco.
“Human.” Omen was the one to answer. “But hardly low level. The List is here,” he spoke again to the group. “And we’re going to get it by—”
A sharp beeping sound came from Omen’s open laptop. The Shaman leader moved quickly in front of his machine. He tapped on the keyboard and the sound cut off. The group stood in complete silence as Omen typed for several minutes. There was a strong sense of anticipation among the rebels, but I didn’t know what we were waiting for. Finally Omen announced, “The Horseman is ready to attack. The time for hiding and covert action is over. We need to move now—first on the facility to gain the List, and then immediately into the field. The more Shaman we can safely wake up and recruit before the Horseman’s first strike, the better chance we have,” Omen said. He turned to Rocco, who took the floor. He went into military mode, giving terse, direct orders on who was to do what during the break in at the facility.
“First strike?” I asked Marco. “What does he mean?”
“Omen thinks the Horseman is going to make humans turn against each other,” he whispered back.
“How?”
“Pheromones and directed ultrasound,” Marco said. “You can’t see it, or even feel it. They’ll have no idea what’s happening to them.”
A chill ran over my skin. This was biological warfare of a whole new kind.
Under Rocco’s instructions, everyone started breaking up into groups and leaving the building. I cut through the crowd, and headed straight for Omen, who was packing up his laptop.
“Omen,” I said behind him. “I did what you asked. Now I need to get my partner clear of the hospital and somewhere safe.”
“Your partner?” Omen said glancing over his shoulder as if it was the first he’d heard of it.
“Dark,” I said, trying to keep my fury and frustration from volcanoing.
Omen narrowed his eyes in thought, leaving me hanging. I gritted my teeth.
“Actually,” Omen said. “We still don’t have the List. After we do I’ll let you know about Dark. I suggest you don’t run away—as yet.”
He snapped his briefcase shut and sidestepped me. He headed for the door, where Rocco stood directing people. He and Omen left together. I saw Marco glance back at me, then he was gone as well. I looked around for Willow and couldn’t spot her.
What was I supposed to do? What had Omen meant? Did I have to go with them? Did I have to stay here?
“Silver.” Someone touched me lightly on the arm.
I turned to find Morningstar standing in front of me. Her face was flushed and she looked slightly embarrassed.
“Listen,” she said. “I’m sorry about before. I cleared things up with Rocco and everything’s okay.”
“Good,” I said, cautiously.
“So—he asked me to drive you to the Dunbar Road facility. He and Omen are busy leading. My car is around the side …” She gave me a reassuring smile.
And I should have realized what was happening when I felt suddenly drawn to her, my guard dropping, but whether it was exhaustion or confusion, I didn’t pick up on it.
Right then, to me, she seemed genuinely sorry and I didn’t seem to have directions from anyone else.
We got into her car and she drove through the streets, with the top 40s playing on the radio and her window down, the cold night air blowing around our hair. We didn’t speak until she slowed outside a closed pizza store on the outskirts of the city.
“This is one of our safe houses,” she explained. “Omen wants me to pick up something. Just wait here. I’ll be back in a second.”
She left the car and I grabbed out my cell to check Dark’s location. The tracker signal was still corrupted.
The door opened again, sooner than I’d expected. I looked up. A strange man scooped in to sit behind the wheel. The barrel of a gun pressed against the back of my head. I looked into the rear-vision mirror, into Annrais Pope’s dead eyes. Another girl sat beside her, also with a gun trained on my back.
“Drive,” Pope said to the guy.
He started the engine and took off.
Morningstar stood on the pavement, waving us off.
30
Few will argue—there is something irretrievably creepy about a person singing nursery rhymes when there aren’t any actual children around. I guess it didn’t help in this case that the singer was also sorting through torture implements and that I was strapped into an old-fashioned dentist’s chair in a dank and dimly lit basement with a steel reinforced door and soundproofed walls.
While Annrais Pope started in on the fourth round of the psycho’s rendition of “Incy Wincy Spider”, I lay immobilized, watching the light globe above me swinging on its wire, blown by the gusting air duct in the wall behind it. I’d completed a fair few resistance and interrogation exercises while I was in training to become an agent, but I’d never actually been tortured before. As I understood it, the contract had been to kill me, but I guessed I’d pissed Pope off big time by refusing to die.
My thoughts turned to the Shaman rebels. They would probably be closing in on the Dunbar facility about now. It was hard to know how that would go with someone as unstable as Omen in the lead, but one thing was for sure—I’d served my purpose as far as they were concerned and there was no one coming for me. So unless I could channel Houdini in the next few seconds, I was in major trouble. I struggled against the ankle and wrist restraints and searched the room for anything I could use—or anyone.
A scattering of Pope’s groupies lounged around the area. I doubted if any of them were genuine Undertakers like she was. Probably just lost souls on the wrong track. One of them was staring at me transfixed, another seemed to be praying, three were making out. It reminded me of something the General had told me—he’d said one of the biggest mistakes we can make in this life is assuming other people are thinking basically the same way we are. It’s the quickest path to getting hurt in a variety of ways. In reality, there are some seriously messed-up individuals w
andering this world.
Speaking of which: Pope turned toward me. She was wearing a heavy-duty butcher’s apron and held a cordless drill in one hand. Her hair and make-up were Cleopatra style and her zombie eyes stared into mine. Yes—I was in big trouble.
“Before you start,” I said, my voice a little shaky shrill, but not that bad considering. “Can you tell me who hired you?”
“The Devil,” Annrais said in her dead monotone.
“Great,” I said dryly. “Should have known it was that guy.”
She sneered and started coming toward me.
“Whatever he’s paying you I can double it if you let me go,” I said.
“I seriously doubt that,” she smirked. “I’ve seen where you live—with Mommy and Daddy.”
Just to add insult to injury.
“Well you of all people should understand not to judge a book by its cover. How do you think I’ve been able to afford so much protection?”
Annrais paused—the mercenary in her forcing her to consider. “No,” she said. “I’d do you for free.”
“Fuck you, you twisted bitch.” I swore at her some more, struggling hard against the restraints. Enraging the psycho—not one of my finest ideas.
Pope closed the distance between us fast. She pushed the drill to my hand and I screamed as metal tore my flesh to the bone and left me gasping. She laughed.
White lights danced across my sight and my head lolled to one side. She grabbed my face and said, “No sleeping, Princess—we have a long way to go.” She revved the drill in my face.
I shut my eyes, opened my mouth and let out a scream—louder and longer than I’d ever screamed before or thought was physically possible. It just seemed to go on and on; and as the sound blared around me, I saw a sudden flash of white light before my eyes. With a huge rush of adrenaline, I ripped out of my restraints and smashed Pope across the face. It was a massive hit that took her completely by surprise. Before I fully registered what I was doing, I’d leaped to my feet, standing on the chair, and grabbed the light cord above my head, using it to swing across to the air vent. I hit the metal with so much force it buckled in and I crashed into the pipe, skidding along it until I collided with a wall.
I managed to scramble around and crawl forward through the duct until I found another vent. I kicked it out and pushed myself through, falling into a room of the house. Footsteps echoed around me in the darkness and just as I was struggling to my feet, the door to the room smashed open, light spilling in. I lunged behind the couch as one of Pope’s assassins opened fire. Bullets peppered the couch and through to where I lay with my hands pressed over my head. They thudded into the wall behind me, narrowly missing my body. Another round and I wasn’t going to be so lucky. As soon as the firing stopped, I jumped up and charged the assassin, crashing into him as he was trying to reload. Somehow I managed to wrench the gun from his hand and slammed it into his face, knocking him out. More footsteps were thudding along the corridor and behind them I could hear Pope shouting, “I want her alive!”
I cursed and looked around the room, spotting a window. I ran to it and dragged it up, climbing out just as more assassins charged into the room. A spikey hedge broke my fall as I threw myself clear of the window and into the backyard of the house. I started moving, but then something hard struck me across the back of the head, jarring my senses. Pope’s steel-cap boot came down on my back and she dragged my arms backward painfully and I felt shackles closing around my wrists. I convulsed against her, trying to break free, but she was unnaturally strong and locked me down.
“Nice try, sister,” she hissed in my ear. “But I’m not done with you yet.”
She flipped me over onto my back so that I was staring up at her face. She had a gruesome injury from where I’d struck her. I pulled against the restraints, determined that she was not going to drag me back down there. I was not dying here.
“Pope!” one of her people standing on the porch behind us suddenly called out. “Look! Pope!”
“What?” Annrais yelled, turning toward him.
“There’s something there—at the side of the house.”
The guy was pointing into the shadows.
“There’s something there,” another of her assassins echoed.
“It’s just the wind stirring the trees, you idiots,” Pope said. I squinted toward where they were pointing and caught sight of a shimmer of silver-blue, then something taking shape out of the shadows—a huge dark shape. A savage, rumbling growl reverberated around us.
Everyone froze as a creature that looked like a dog but bigger, much bigger, with jet-black fur and sabre-like teeth, slid into the light cast by the streetlamps behind the house. Gigantic paws padded silently on the ground. I’d never seen a canine that big in my life and I’d seen some pretty huge mountain dogs in Eastern Europe during agency training.
“What-the-fuck-is-that?” Annrais pronounced every word.
The hulking beast leaped without warning up onto the porch of the house, scattering Pope’s assassins. Some of them started shooting at the creature. I took the chance and kicked Pope’s legs out from underneath her. She reacted immediately and scrambled up and onto me before I could make a move. She grabbed a handful of my hair and shoved her gun against my forehead.
“Lights out,” she whispered and started to pull the trigger, but then her face contorted with pain and her hand involuntarily lifted the gun away from me. Then her whole body rose and flew across the yard, slamming into the house.
Rocco broke out of the shadows and hauled me to my feet. The shackles fell off my wrists. We locked eyes then the huge dog leaped down behind us, morphing as it did from beast to man—to Rocco’s brother, Marco.
He came forward and took my other arm. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you when my heart starts beating again,” I said.
He smiled a very canine smile, then bullets started skimming over our heads from assassins firing from inside the house. We ducked low and the two brothers helped me run to the side of the house and along a path to the front where Willow stood fending off another group of Pope’s people. I felt rushes of fear and pain, hot and cold and nausea as she messed with everyone’s pheromones, and sent out signals below human hearing. Some of the assassins dropped their weapons and ran—others kept coming, firing shots. One hit Willow in the shoulder. She reeled back, but kept her feet. The moon shadows crossed her face and I saw it change and stretch. A strange script appeared all over her skin.
I became aware that the yard was full of other figures: inhuman shapes, creatures of dreams and night terrors, with long, drawn faces, translucent white skin, blood-red eyes and fangs. The remaining assassins completely lost it and started firing on the creatures. They seemed completely impervious to the bullets. Rocco urged me forward and we ran to his car parked down on the street. I slid into the back seat with Marco, while Rocco and Willow jumped in the front. Pope burst out through the front door of the house and hoisted a rocket launcher onto her shoulder. Rocco gestured toward her and with a massive explosion of glass, shrieking metal and snapping wood, the entire house collapsed in on itself, forcing Pope to abandon her weapon and leap clear. She rolled across the lawn, but I didn’t see if she managed to escape the falling debris or not. Rocco was already driving, speeding us away. I stared out the back window and saw the strange creatures Willow had summoned vanishing into the mist.
“What were those things?” I breathed.
“Other beings,” Willow said from the front seat.
“As in …?” I prompted.
“Non-humans.”
I stared at her in shock.
Rocco looked back in the rear vision. “I told you some of us can see those who inhabit different levels of this world.”
‘Yeah—but I thought you meant different levels of this earth—like they could see—I don’t know—earthworms or something—not … whatever they were …” I could hear myself freaking out a bit so I took a deep breath a
nd calmed my voice. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
“You thought we’d just leave you to die,” Rocco said, his eyes meeting mine again in the mirror, guarded emotion in his stare.
“I didn’t think you’d even know I was gone,” I said.
“Willow read her,” Marco said. “Morningstar.”
Rocco clenched his jaw. Willow reached back and took my hand. She touched the injury. It didn’t heal it completely, but the wound shrank a little.
The three Shaman jolted violently—enough to make Rocco swerve.
“He’s waiting,” Willow said. She started biting her nails.
Rocco pressed his foot down on the accelerator and we flew toward Dunbar Road.
31
We pulled into the empty parking lot where the Shaman rebels had assembled in the night shadows. As soon as we got out, Omen was right there in Rocco’s face, with eyes of knives and a teeth-bared snarl. His voice was a savage whisper. “What part of I order—you obey is not completely clear to you?”
Rocco handled the abuse with his usual controlled silence and I noticed he wasn’t even looking at Omen: he was staring past him to Morningstar. She stood among the gathered rebels. Obviously I couldn’t read their minds, but the hard anger of his eyes and the devastation on her face made things pretty clear. I thought I felt a twitch of pity for her. Who knows what might have happened in her life to cause her personality to malfunction the way it had? But then I realized the twitch was actually blood running out of the drill hole in my hand and any notion of pity was gone. The psycho bitch had almost got me tortured to death; getting dumped seemed like light punishment. Omen noticed Rocco’s diverted attention as well and turned to stare at his sister.
After a second of assessing the situation, he said, “I told you she was not to be touched until after we had the List.”
I assumed “she” was me.
Morningstar tried to speak but Omen snapped his hand shut, snapping her mouth shut with the same gesture.