Death Knell

by Hailey Edwards

  “Long time, no see.” The grin she shot Wu was infectious. “And you’ve brought a friend. Hi there. I’m Kimora. Who might you be?”

  “This is Anonymous,” he answered for me, but not unkindly. “We seek asylum.”

  “Nice to meet you, Kimora.” I finger-combed the windblown hair from my eyes. “Sorry about the mess.”

  “That’s what hosepipes are for, right?” Fire sprang to life in her palm, and she wove the tendrils between her fingers. “I picked up on your heat signatures and came to investigate. That explains why one of them was so short. You were hunched over.”

  “Kimora,” Wu warned, his eyes taking in her display. “Don’t give away your secrets for free.”

  “The girl was climbing you like ivy, man.” Kimora huffed. “I saw you come in for a landing on the security monitors. You’re telling me she doesn’t know who we are?”

  “All I know is Wu flipped his lid, dragged me through a forest, then flew me wherever-the-hell this is.”

  “Dang it.” She stomped her foot. “Do not mention the Firestarter routine to Knox. He’ll ground me for a month.”

  The woman was early twenties by my estimation. “Knox is your . . . ?”

  “Overbearing ogre of a father.”

  Father. I pinned Wu with a stare that rolled off him and splatted on the asphalt below.

  “We’re too exposed up here.” Wu searched the sky. “We should get inside before we attract attention from the sentries.”

  “He’s right. Let’s shake our tail feathers.” Kimora swooped in to loop her arm through mine, but I snapped out my hand and caught her wrist. Her incandescent eyes widened. “You’re wicked fast.”

  “Reflex,” I mumbled as I released her with an apologetic smile. “I don’t do touching.”

  “Uh-huh.” Calling me on my no-touching policy, she smirked first at Wu and then me. “If you say so.”

  Heat marched up my nape, a thousand fire ants in tight formation, stinging all the way to my hairline.

  Wu had introduced me as Anonymous. Anything I said about how the coterie was the exception would give me away. All I could do was bite my tongue and hope Wu had a damn good explanation for all this.

  “Welcome to the enclave.” Kimora shoved through the access door and hit the metal stairs. “Hope you’re good with heights.”

  Nowhere she led us could be higher than the level of this roof, so I figured I had this leg of our adventure in the bag. Wu indicated I should follow her while he brought up the rear. The configuration suited me fine. Between the two of them my odds of fainting and tumbling to my doom decreased exponentially.

  The air inside the building was warm enough for me to regret wearing my blazer, and that was before Kimora put me through a workout climbing down six flights of metal stairs suspended from the ceiling with chains, screws, and prayers. As the space opened around us, the sensation of descending into nothingness increased.

  Curious as I was about our surroundings, I kept my eyes glued to my feet, my focus narrowed to the next step. Not until we hit the concrete floor and my knees solidified did I relax enough to appreciate what I was seeing. Though soaking in the converted living space with my own eyes didn’t help me make sense of what I was looking at exactly.

  Catwalks crisscrossed the ceiling, so narrow I doubted the beams were thicker than the width of my feet if I stood ankle to ankle. Beds in varying sizes hung from chains at different heights, their sheets rumpled and used. Chairs dangled in singles and doubles, with small tables affixed to their sides, creating seating areas suspended midair. An industrial kitchen, multiple bathrooms, and a laundry facility filled the bottom floor.

  The sound of hushed voices carried through the cavernous building. “Who lives here?”

  Wu shook his head once, and Kimora clammed up for the first time since I’d met her.

  Drywall framed in a long room near the kitchen, and Wu guided me in that direction. A long table occupied its center, with molded stools tucked under the overhanging lip. Unoccupied except for a short man with a brush cut who used his prosthetic hand, a gleaming silver contraption, to thumb through a folder. He lifted a finger to acknowledge our arrival, his lips moving over the passage he was reading, then he slapped the file shut and rose.

  “Well, old man, you’ve got yourself in a pickle I see.” Knox, I assumed, clasped hands with Wu, his grin exposing a mouthful of metallic teeth. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have delivered this fair maiden into my evil clutches.”

  Behind us, Kimora snorted. “He was clutching her all right.”

  “Sly dog.” Knox slapped him on the back. “I didn’t know you still had it in you.”

  “That’s what she said,” Kimora snarked from behind me. Her father leveled a bored stare on her. “What? It’s a classic. You don’t move on past the classics.”

  “Ignore her.” Knox pinched the bridge of his nose. “I do.”

  “I’m heading back to control, where me and my sense of humor are appreciated.” Kimora saluted her old man then winked at me. “After I rinse off the roof, that is.” On her way past Wu, she patted his shoulder. “Don’t be a stranger.” The smile she shot me was as warm as her hair. “I hope we meet again, Anon.”

  “Same,” I said, and I meant it.

  Kimora bolted out the door and closed it behind her, locking us in with her father.

  “You have a lovely daughter,” I told him just to have something polite to say.

  “Do me a favor?” He stared after her. “Forget you ever saw her.”

  Forget I ever saw this place too. That was the wish lingering in his eyes. He regretted me being here. He wanted me gone, but the damage had already been done. Now he was visibly weighing the harm in letting me stay against what damage I might inflict if forced to leave.

  Whatever his relationship to Wu, this guy was in the loop. One look at the pinched skin around his eyes, and I had no doubt he was aware of who stood before him. He must trust Wu a great deal to have allowed his daughter contact with me, and access to his home and the people I had yet to see.

  “I can do that.” I tried on a smile, but he wasn’t buying what I was selling. “Thanks for your hospitality.”

  “Adam brought you here. He must have his reasons.” His questioning stare begged to know what those were . . . in great detail. “This is as much his home as it is mine.” I got the feeling that was a warning aimed at me, a gamble that I cared enough about Wu to protect his interests. “That said, his presence is rarely a good sign. You being here . . . That’s even worse.”

  With nothing to say to each other, we both looked to Wu for an explanation.

  “I took Luce in for her exam today,” Wu began. “Cadre pheromones are drugging in the right doses, and the direction of their influence depends on the foremost emotion when they’re emitted.”

  “He means if you’re pissed, and you start throwing that around, that you can cause a riot,” Knox explained to me. “We’ve seen it before, and it’s ugly.”

  “You’re saying the reason the coterie was so affected during the raid on War’s nests was because I was throwing off sex vibes?” I stared down at my uterus like it was to blame. “What the actual hell?”

  Silver lining? The Wu thing—It might have been a heat-of-the-moment confession.

  Amped up hormones would also explain why he thought his manly joystick of manliness empowered him to grant me his blessing where Cole and I were concerned when—fun fact—our relationship was none of his business.

  “The IUD will help,” Wu promised. “In addition to releasing progestin to prevent pregnancy, it will also secrete minute traces of a synthetic charun hormone given to females who wish to forego their heat cycle.”

  “You’re telling me I’m going into heat?” Legs wobbling, I sank into a chair beside Knox. “Broadcasting sex vibes was bad enough. I don’t want to project an open invitation to fertilization.”

  “Your body is essentially human, so no. The closest you would come to a true h
eat is ovulation, but Conquest holds enough sway with your biology that you’re throwing off mating pheromones.” He hesitated over his phrasing. “There’s a reason Otillians breed like rabbits. Their pheromones stimulate their partners, and they’re a fertile species to begin with.”

  A thread of salvation occurred to me, and I grabbed that sucker with both hands. “Does this have anything to do with how War is basically a coterie incubator?”

  Knox smothered a cough with the back of his hand. “The others recruit when specific skills are needed, but those additions are often killed prior to a breach. The rest of her soldiers are usually homegrown if you catch my drift. War, in particular, tends to favor numbers over strategy when backed into a corner.”

  Sweet, sweet vindication swept through me, and I could have kissed Knox on the mouth.

  Don’t get me wrong—Cole got me all hot and bothered. But the fallout was always so humiliating.

  Learning Otillian biology had been conspiring against me this whole time, kicking out pheromones to tempt Cole, to begin the cycle of strengthening my coterie by adding members the old-fashioned way, exonerated me in a way I hadn’t known I craved.

  Yes, I wanted him. Yes, I’m sure that was easy to smell. But this? It explained why a few dirty thoughts here or there made my coterie wrinkle their noses at me like I was a teenage boy packing a can of body spray.

  “Conquest is a collector.” I recalled Cole telling me that once. “None of my coterie is related.”

  Point in her favor. She hadn’t birthed a legion to do her bidding.

  “No blood ties,” Knox confirmed then shared a look with Wu, who shook his head.

  “What am I missing here?” Temper sparking, I flicked my glare between them. “They’re each a different species, and they each come from a different world. There’s no way they’re connected except through me.”

  And Conquest hadn’t used her mojo to entice them to breed an army either.

  “She’s piecing it together,” Knox murmured out of the side of his mouth.

  “Her ears aren’t that poor,” Wu chastised. “She can hear you.”

  A lightning strike of understanding zapped my skull and jumpstarted my brain.

  “Cole.” Sitting wasn’t working for me anymore. I had to stand. I had to move. I paced the room from end to end. “He’s . . . ” I swallowed when my voice cracked and tried again. “He’s . . . ”

  Her mate.

  “Otillians mate once in their lives,” Wu confirmed. “They choose their partners with care since that form is the one they will wear for the rest of their lives. Affection has little to do with it in most cases. It’s a strategic decision, one of the first they make after leaving Otilla.”

  Losing all my steam, I sank back into my chair with a slouch. “He didn’t tell me.”

  “Can you blame him?” Knox chortled. “You owned him. For centuries. He was given a second chance when you caught amnesia. Why the hell would he own up to being yours when he could buy himself more time while you figured it all out?”

  “Knox,” Wu warned.

  “What?” His metal teeth flashed in a grimace. “It’s the truth.”

  Wu cut him a flat look I had been on the receiving end of too many times from my dad. It made me wonder at their relationship.

  Knox chuckled under his breath. “Why are you here, Adam?”

  “Father wants to meet Luce.” Now it was Wu’s turn to pace. “I’m sure you can see why I thought that was a bad idea.”

  Knox ducked his head, unable to look at me, and Wu wasn’t faring much better.

  Ah. Meeting was code for execution. Or worse.

  “He’s not usually lucid until after Death breaches.” Knox echoed Wu’s earlier sentiments. “The oldest of our kind can set alarms in their brains for lack of a better explanation. Some are triggered by the passage of time. Others get pinged by fluctuations in magic. Ascension magic is a specific occurrence. It affects the atmospheric conditions of an entire world. Odds are good he would have sensed it and risen even if he hadn’t trained himself to scan for global disturbances.” Knox eyed me thoughtfully. “Do you think he knows you brought her here?”

  “We’re not dead,” Wu said dryly, “so no.”

  Knox chuckled, proving they shared a sense of humor.

  “There’s one more thing.” Wu plucked at his upper lip, a sure sign the magnitude of the favor he was about to ask sat uneasy with him. “Thomas Ford has been injured. He needs a safe place to heal.”

  “I heard about what happened.” A grimness twisted his lips. “Hell of a thing. For him or any of us.”

  Nausea swirled through my gut as the memory of his wing ripping free whirled in a loop through my head. “Is that a yes?”

  “She’ll be able to focus better if she’s not worried about Thom,” Wu said to sweeten the pot. “He means a lot to her.”

  “All right, all right,” Knox grumped. “He can stay.”

  “Thank you.” I didn’t recognize my voice when I pinned Knox down with my gaze. “But be forewarned, if you hurt him—directly or indirectly through neglect—it will be the last thing you ever do.”

  Wu bristled. “Luce.”

  “No, let her get it out of her system.” Knox flapped a hand at me like I was a precocious child who had done something inappropriate but amusing all the same. “It’s good that she’s protective of them. The others would let their injured die or kill them outright. She’s invested. That’s a good thing.”

  “Good how?” Something in his tone, in the way his mind shifted behind his eyes, had me baring my teeth. “Thom is not leverage.”

  “Knox,” Wu snapped. All he needed was a ruler to pop our hands for misbehaving. “Whatever you’re thinking—stop.” He looked at me when he said, “She would tear through this building, through these people, with her bare hands to get to one of her own. That’s her as she is now. Let her gain more control over her powers, and she will level this place and everyone inside to reach her people.”

  A calculating gleam lit Knox’s eyes right up until the moment Wu crossed to him and slapped him upside the head.

  “Hey,” Knox spluttered. “I can’t help my brain. It does its own thing, and I do mine.”

  I blinked at him like that might pull his comment into focus.

  “What he means is,” Wu explained, “I’ve trained him to always look for an angle. It’s how the enclave has survived this long. He’s not always aware he’s being devious, but it’s easy enough to spot if you’re looking at him. He has no poker face.”

  The scowl that cut Knox’s face made him ruthless, but truth was truth. The guy was a blunt force weapon, a solider. I was betting any diplomatic missions fell to Wu or perhaps Kimora. He was the guy you called in when playing nice didn’t work.

  I kept my gaze on Knox. “As long as we understand one another.”

  “Your people are welcome here, Luce Boudreau. The humans you claim as kin. They are family to you, not pawns, and that gives me hope Adam knows what the hell he’s doing.” Knox put it all out there, and for that I was grateful. It was a bigger offer than putting up a member of my coterie, who could fight for the enclave if it came down to it. He was welcoming civilians, humans. That was a bigger kindness than I expected or deserved. “Plenty of families here are mixed. Your people wouldn’t be alone.”

  Behind my eyes, I relived the burst of light as the shotgun blasted, the spread of blood across a faded shirt as pellets chewed up Uncle Harold’s stomach.

  Regret was gnawing me up on the inside over Cole, over the Rixtons, over the messed-up fate I had been dealt.

  “Thank you,” I rasped, grateful beyond words. “I’ll keep your offer in mind if things go south.”

  A shiver rippled the length of my spine when I sensed Wu’s eyes on me.

  Sometimes when he looked at me, I imagined he saw me as an urn full of ashes on his mantle. It made me wonder what my plaque would say. Maybe: Here lies Luce Boudreau. At least she tried.

&nbs
p; But this . . . This was an act of kindness bigger than I would have credited him.

  There was a price, there had to be, but I would pay it gladly.

  “The coterie will be worried,” I told Wu. “We should leave.”

  He took a long look around, like he was reluctant to go. “What’s next on our agenda?”

  “We’re going after Janardan.” I stood to put me closer to eye level with him. “We can’t let him keep murdering humans. We also have to stop the contagion from spreading.”

  “That’s quite a list,” Wu observed. “Is that all?”

  I smiled weakly. “I would also like to not die or take any of my friends with me.”

  Wu gestured toward the door, ready to escort me back the way we had come.

  “Adam?” Knox rose with a grunt then cracked his neck. “A word?”

  Taking the hint, I left the men to chat for a moment and explored the downstairs accommodations.

  “Hi,” a small voice said from nowhere in particular.

  “Hello?” I cranked my head left then right before it dawned on me. Up. Duh. A girl around the age of six hovered above me, suspended from what appeared to be a white silk cable.

  “Cheese and crackers,” I squeaked, reaching for her before my brain caught up with my hands. “Get down from there.”

  Giggling, she released the rope and dropped into my arms, a dead weight that buckled my knees.

  “You’re pretty.” She traced a pudgy finger over my brow, and I noticed she sported an origami ring similar to mine, this one made from a dollar bill. “Mr. Adam brought you here. Is he your friend too? Sometimes he brings me presents. One time he even let me—”

  “Lira.” Wu sighed the name over my shoulder. “You can’t dive-bomb guests.”

  “Mr. Adam,” she squealed, struggling against me until I passed her over to him. “I didn’t show her my wings. Promise. Momma said not to, and I didn’t, right?” She waited for me to nod then made grabby motions with her hands. “I used these.” She puffed out her chest. “Daddy says I’m half monkey. He tried to feed me a banana for dinner.” Her nose wrinkled. “I’m not a dirty old monkey. Monkeys can’t fly.”