The Firebird Deception

by Dermody, Cate

  A flashlight played on the stairs above her, light bouncing down in a warning that came before the sound of soft-soled shoes on the stone steps. Focused dread sent a cold wave through Alisha’s stomach, tightening the muscle there, and she jumped silently to the bottom of the stairs, abandoning any hope of listening to Brandon’s conversation as she searched for a hiding place. The hall bent back, a cubby beside the round stairs, or went forward, descending farther into the ground. Alisha cursed again, silently, and took a few long steps into the cubby, pressing herself against the cool stone wall. Darkness might hide her, especially if the newcomers were intent on reaching their destination.

  Please, God, let this not be another false wall behind me. That would be the price of arrogance, discovering that her hiding place was the very door that the men above her wanted to enter. Alisha banished the thought, then inhaled one last soft deep breath and went utterly still, letting the centering she’d learned in yoga relax her and make her as one with her surroundings as possible. Even her gaze was half lidded, disguising the whites of her eyes as she watched the men coming down the stairs.

  There were four of them, the two in the lead so blond their hair almost glowed in the flashlight’s bounced-back aura of light. The fourth was small and dark, the sort of man whose thin frame often hid wiry strength.

  The third was the tallest of them, lean and black haired, the stairway’s dim lighting making warm sheens on the soft leather of his coat. He swung around the final steps with an easy, long stride, glancing over his shoulder toward the cubby that Alisha hid in.

  Nothing in his expression changed, not even a flicker of surprise to betray her presence as Frank Reichart met Alisha’s eyes. A lump of dismay held in Alisha’s stomach, before Reichart looked away again. For the briefest moment she thought perhaps he hadn’t seen her.

  And then he did a double take, so deliberately she could all but see the thought that commanded his head to turn. His eyes widened, just enough to suggest surprise, and the shock in his voice was unforced, as if there was no guile to it at all: “Alisha!”

  Oh, yeah. Getting out was going to be a problem.

  Chapter 7

  You absolute son of a bitch.

  Alisha didn’t think she’d said the words out loud, but a thinness came into Reichart’s smile. Not apology, and not surprise, but some regretful cousin to both of those things. The expression held long and clear in her mind, much longer than the instant in which it flickered across Reichart’s face and was gone. He took a single step back, breaking the moment, and sound that had gone unnoticed, muffled by the intensity of meeting Reichart’s gaze, shattered into Alisha’s awareness.

  A warning lingered on the air: “We’ve been compromised. Get Phoenix out of here.” Spoken by the small wiry man, Alisha thought; he was the one coiled and ready to spring, watching her predatorily. The first of the two blondes was already gone, presumably acting on the smaller man’s order. The other moved up to fill the space Reichart had vacated, an enormous pale shadow to the wiry man.

  “All right,” Alisha breathed. “Who wants to get his ass handed to him first?” The wall was at her back, an advantage she had no intention of giving up. Thought filtered down slowly, like dust in sunlight: the Sicarii had to be disabled and Reichart neutralized before Brandon was killed. It was no longer a question of compromise. Alisha had no doubt that if Phoenix believed that Brandon had double-crossed her, she would execute him without hesitation.

  The wiry man lunged, a feint meant to see how she’d react. Alisha barely flinched, and he gave her a snarling smile that showed crooked teeth. Neither of the men had drawn weapons: a good sign. It probably meant they wanted her alive, whereas she had little compunction in terminating them.

  Terminating. Another euphemism to help compartmentalize the duties of the job from the person doing them.

  Then time stretched and slowed, leaving no room for individual thoughts, only action. She could hear her own heartbeat, slow and steady, and between the long breaks between beats, the harsh breathing of the men approaching her.

  The blonde was to her left, large and clumsy-looking to Alisha’s combat-heightened senses. She could see the muscles twitch in his arms, widening his grasp in precursor to action; could see the tension in his legs as he prepared to spring forward. He would grab her in a bear hug, crushing her arms to her sides and squeezing the air from her lungs. That, for the moment, was the real danger the two men presented: she had an equal reach on the smaller one, but couldn’t possibly match the bigger man’s advantage.

  Alisha stepped into him, barely moving away from the wall, but gaining momentum and preparing the weight of her body to flow through the punch she threw. She was inside the blonde’s space before he knew she was attacking, slow surprise darting across his face. Either he didn’t expect aggressiveness from a woman, or he lacked training: the block he flung up was clumsy and slow, Alisha’s hit already slamming home before he reacted. The heel of her hand drove hard into the xiphoid process, the tiny spur of bone at the bottom of the breastbone. It was a shot she liked, though it could easily be fatal. Not this time: she didn’t hear the pop of bone breaking, or feel the give of it squishing back into his diaphragm.

  He wheezed out a breath too harsh to have surprise in it, the air knocked from his gut. The threatening bear hug collapsed as he dropped to his knees, arms dangling uselessly as he curled over, trying to suck oxygen back into too-empty lungs. It would be at least thirty seconds before he recovered. The fight would be over in that time, one way or another. She could leave him to gasp and face his companion—but even as the idea was born, combat instincts brought her into a vertical leaping kick that ended with her heel cracking into his jaw. His head snapped back and he followed it, crashing to the floor with a trail of blood creeping from the corner of his mouth.

  Time resumed its normal speed for an instant, thought intruding on her actions: two hits: me hittin’ you, you hitting the floor. It was the rule of genuine combat; rarely did a real fight last more than a few seconds. Alisha turned to face her second opponent, who flanked her now, his position greatly improved in the moments it had taken her to bring down his partner. Neither of them spoke or feinted, both watching for weakness or a sign of readiness to act. The wiry man held his right hand as if he was accustomed to carrying a knife in it, fingers curled too loosely to make a fist.

  But his lunge came from the left, when he made it. His left, Alisha’s right, and her weaker side. A shot of admiration crashed through her, warmth in the midst of cold combat. He was good, maybe as good as she was, able to learn from two blows thrown at another combatant where her strengths and weaknesses were. Alisha flung herself to her left, throwing herself into a dive that nearly tangled her in the prone blonde’s legs. She caught herself on her arms, surging through the dive on pure adrenaline and strength, and rolled out of it ten inches from Frank Reichart, who looked down at her without expression. The urge to spit “You could help” made her tongue feel stiff and ugly in her mouth, but he’d betrayed her presence. There would be no support from that quarter. If she was lucky, there’d be no hindrance, either.

  Alisha drove the heel of her hand forward again, hoping to catch him off guard, but there was no chance of it with Reichart. He knocked her hit to the side easily, then moved back into the hall that the voices had echoed from, removing himself from the fighting zone. Alisha curled a lip and turned on her heel, crouched and prepared to face the wiry man again.

  He was already in action, making a low, lean line of himself as he rushed her. His right hand was still curled, and though there was no knife blade curving away from his fingers, the attitude made Alisha that much more cautious. She dove to the side again, less for distance than the opportunity to come in low with a sweeping side kick. He hurdled it and twisted to face her again as he landed. Alisha rotated her weight onto her arms and spun another kick out, feeling dirt grind into her hands even through the gloves she wore.

  The kick connected with
his knee. Alisha felt ligament slide and pop out of place, the kneecap suddenly no longer where it was meant to be. The wiry man went down with a gagged grunt of pain. Alisha came out of her spin in a jump, intending to bring her full weight down on the man’s torso.

  Silver glittered in the stairway lights, arching up from the wiry man’s right hand. A curved blade fit against his forearm, his fingers wrapped easily around the hilt. Irritation sliced through Alisha’s belly, a pang of admission that came nowhere near the alarm she might have felt outside of combat. She had expected the knife, and had still opened an opportunity for him to use it. With her weight already off the ground, Alisha could only go forward, landing knee-first in his abdomen. He was prepared for her, muscles knotted in expectation of her weight, and while air grunted from him, he wasn’t knocked breathless.

  She flinched back as she landed, quadriceps taking the strain of her weight as the knife skinned past her thigh-hip-stomach, leaving a thin line of pain behind. Experience told her the cut was superficial: bloody, painful and messy, but not debilitating. Tension tightened the skin around the wiry man’s eyes and nose as he completed the knife’s arc and reversed it into a straight-armed back-blow that would gut her if it landed.

  Knife fights were dangerous on a level different from any other kind of battle, tending to bring out caution in the combatants. Attempts to avoid surface injuries frequently led to the opportunity for the opponent to strike a killing blow. Winning a knife fight wasn’t about walking away unhurt, and the only way to do it was to override the body’s instinctive wish to avoid danger. Alisha reached inside the attack, moving too quickly to allow herself thought or fear even as she felt skin part again, a score struck along the soft skin of her upper inner arm. This strike was deeper: she could sense the need to give in to a shriek of shock and pain.

  Instead she wrapped her arm around his, bloody triceps pressed against his forearm so his hand and weapon were half captured between her arm and body, his momentum stopped. She seized his triceps with clawed fingers and forced his arm up, locking his elbow.

  Grounding herself took no effort, the floor beneath her knees offering her a sensation of physical sturdiness that went far beyond even her own considerable strength. As always, the midst of combat seemed an odd place to most fully appreciate and feel the centeredness of yoga that made the universe seem to flow and ebb around and through her. Odd, but appreciated.

  Alisha slammed the heel of her left hand up into the man’s locked elbow, using power that felt like it was taken from the earth itself. Bone shattered, muscle and sinew popping upward at a horrible wrong angle. The man let out an aborted scream and turned ashy gray before Alisha curled her fingers in his shirt and pulled him up far enough to smash her fist into his jaw, rendering him unconscious.

  Pain flooded through her as she dropped him again. The jab in her arm had caught muscle, though not deeply enough to render her arm useless. Alisha peeled the edges of her jacket away from the wound, giving it an investigative glance; it was clean, bleeding freely, with no obvious fibers caught in it. A field dressing would help, but would also waste precious time, and she had none to spare. She came to her feet, fingers exploring the cut that sliced over her hip and abdomen. The waistband of her pants had caught the knife’s brunt, leaving the rest of the injury shallow. You were lucky, Leesh.

  Reichart was gone, disappeared in the eternal seconds it had taken to disable the wiry man. Alisha closed her hand over the cut in her shirt and belly, then crouched and picked up the knife the wiry man had carried. Reichart would have to wait. Alisha sprinted down the hall, concern lending strength to her run. Brandon had proved himself an able fighter once upon a time, but she’d sent him into the disintegrating mess that now surrounded him, and trust aside, she wasn’t going to lose a man on her watch.

  She wasn’t going to lose Greg Parker’s son, no matter what the cost might be.

  The room she burst into had a sick familiarity to it, the stone walls scarred and crumbled in the corners. Stone, Alisha thought distantly. Not concrete, like she’d thought when she was held here. Then again, she’d been drugged out of her mind. And there were old stains in the floor, brownish red residue from blood never properly cleaned. Maybe her own blood.

  No: there had been a hall behind her then, short, with a sharp corner at its end. She hadn’t found the room they’d held her in. Alisha shook off the memory, letting awareness of the situation in front of her roll over her. Five people, all men; the woman Parker’d been talking to was missing. Three hung back, watching—

  —watching Frank Reichart strangle Brandon Parker. Brandon’s eyes bulged as Reichart snapped him against the wall, cracking his skull against stone. Brandon sagged, the grip he held on Reichart’s wrists loosening as he lost strength. Alisha reversed the knife in her hand, holding it in her fingertips by the blade. Its weight was wrong for throwing: too much curve to the blade and the handle too heavy, but it would do.

  It thunked into the meat of Reichart’s hamstring like God had called it home. He howled and dropped Brandon, who gagged in a single breath before smashing his fist into Reichart’s face as Reichart fumbled for the knife in his thigh. The dark-haired man toppled and Brandon kicked him in the ribs.

  Alisha went down under the weight of three men and for a few long moments saw nothing but muscle and fists, heard little more than the sound of her own heartbeat and the labored breathing of the men she fought. She bit down on something—a wrist, a cheek; she wasn’t sure what—hard enough to tear flesh, earning a gratifying scream of outrage and pain for her efforts.

  A gunshot shattered the air, echoing and rebounding endlessly off the stone walls. Everyone scattered, Alisha scrambling to her feet to find Brandon standing over Reichart’s prone body.

  Fire sank inward from the slice across her belly, a burning sickness that lifted hairs all over her body as she fought back bile. Her ears rang with the sound of the gunshot, leaving no room in her hearing for her own heartbeat. She thought it might have stopped entirely, suspended for all time between one beat and the next. Her chest hurt, a throb that she finally recognized as the ache of lungs gone too long unfilled. Alisha dragged in a breath, harsh and cold and filled with dust drifting from the ceiling. It was the dust, nothing more, that turned her vision misty and obscure.

  Brandon stepped away from Reichart, bringing the gun around to the remaining Sicarii. “Hands up. Against the wall. Do it! Alisha, go. I’m with you.”

  Alisha cast one more look at where Reichart lay, then ran for the door, Brandon on her heels.

  Chapter 8

  Wet cobblestones gleamed in the streetlights, ten stories below. Raindrops made ballerina patterns in the puddles, visible even from the height. Alisha tightened the blanket she’d dragged from the hotel suite’s bed around her arms, keeping it well away from her torso. She’d applied a butterfly bandage and taped the long, shallow slice that ran across her hip and belly. Even the smallest movements made the edges twinge with discomfort, and she hadn’t put a shirt on over the injury, not wanting to feel the constant brush of fabric against raw skin.

  The puncture in her arm was deeper than she’d thought at first. It could probably use stitches, though for now it had simply been cleaned and bound with what had once been part of a blouse. The pressure from the blanket wrapped against the wound both ached and felt good.

  At least it felt. Her body was cold to the touch; she knew it intellectually, but the chill didn’t seem to matter. Goose bumps stood up over her ribs and made prickles of discomfort along the cut on her stomach, warnings of worse things to come. A thin bra and low-cut jeans were nothing to be wearing as she stood barefoot on the rain-spattered balcony. Warmth would be better for her.

  But warmth might play up the cold blankness that had settled inside her, a dullness that defied emotion. It was better to be numb outside and tell herself that it caused the emptiness inside than to remember Frank Reichart’s still form lying on the stone floor.

  She’d le
ft Brandon outside the Sicarii stronghold, their paths diverging to mislead anyone who might follow. Her injuries had driven her back to the hotel room sooner than she might have otherwise chosen. There were supplies there to patch herself up with, more discreet than staggering wet, bleeding and clad in snugly fitted clandestine wear into a drugstore or market that might carry bandages and disinfectant. Now dampness clung to her hair as she watched the quiet street below, the genuine wetness long since dried in the hours since she’d returned to the hotel room. Bells somewhere in the city had announced the passing of the three-o’clock hour, dawn closer now than sunset.

  A wash of warm air through the open balcony doors heralded Brandon’s sodden arrival as the suite’s main door opened and closed. He paused long enough to take off his shoes, then squelched across the carpet in wet socks. “You made it.” His voice was rough and sore sounding, the aftereffects of strangulation.

  Alisha turned her head toward him, watching his shadow catch in the reflection of the glass balcony doors as he came to stand in their frame. “So did you. I was beginning to be concerned.” She couldn’t taste the truth in her own words, didn’t know if they were honest or not. Concern seemed remote, as far away and unattainable as any other emotion.

  “Beginning to be.” Brandon squeezed water out of his hair between his fingers, sending rivulets down his cheekbones. “I’m glad my welfare is of such concern to you. What the hell were you doing there?”

  Alisha looked back at the street. “Spying on you.” There should have been guilt in the admission, she thought, but she felt none.

  “Jesus, Alisha. You nearly got us both killed.”

  “And I did get Reichart killed.” The words could have been spoken by someone else, so distant did they sound. “Not that he didn’t deserve it, I suppose. The son of a bitch.” Neither heat nor pain in the insult. Alisha closed her eyes, drawing in a breath that did nothing to center her. It was nearly inconceivable to her, that Reichart was dead. Betrayal after betrayal, Alisha thought, and still she expected that somehow he would prove to be one of the good guys.