My head began to clear as we walked toward the ruined structure. Holes in the wooden stairs revealed the two story row home’s crumbling foundation. Wisps of light raced around the busted screen door, trailing away and looping back toward the car.
Before Roark’s boot hit the first step, I said, “Wait.”
“Again?”
“It’s not right.”
I listened, beyond the howls and distant gunshots, trying to sense what lay inside. A Realmfarer’s intuition was imperfect, mere suggestions and probabilities, like reading Tarot cards that weren’t total bullshit. But if you pressed up against the edges, sometimes you could catch a glimpse.
A vision of what was likely to come.
My head suddenly felt like it was caught in a vise-grip, and my eyesight blacked out. Screaming from the pain, I heard Roark start to come back for me. But then, above my own raw yells, I heard the growls.
Wolves.
Tears streamed down my cheeks as light seeped into the corner of my retinas. Even in the dim, unlit streets, it was like someone had shone a flashlight straight into my eyes and held the lids open.
Roark’s weapon barked, wood splintering as a wolf—a young one, from the sound of his yipping bark—tumbled through the broken screen. It whined as it rolled down the steps with crashing thuds.
My peripheral vision returned first. I tried to turn sideways to see what was going on. But everything was a blur of gray colors, punctuated by blood. A roar deep enough to rattle the house’s foundations came from within.
“Your contact’s not a wolf, is she?” I yelled, trying to stifle the urge to sob.
“No.” Roark didn’t have time for further explanation.
Fucking visions. It was stupid to even try, given how long it’d been. Pearl and I had only just been working on them, after all these years.
The thought of her murder made my senses recover faster. It was a drunken kind of blur, but that was like finding muddy water in the desert.
Goddamn heaven.
I brought the shotgun up, aiming down the mounted crosshairs. Moment of truth. A wolf crashed through a window, glass studding his blue-brown coat. His yellow eyes looked as manic as if there had been a full moon.
“Let’s find out how good your shit really is, MagiTekk,” I muttered as I pulled the trigger. The shotgun responded with a familiar kick against my shoulder, the anti-supernatural shell screaming out of the barrel.
I didn’t have to wait long. The house got a new paint job, the wolf’s head shorn clean off at the neck. It made me feel slightly sick to the stomach as I racked the slide, spent shell tumbling to the cracked pavement. Not the guts, but the truth.
The world had left the supernatural by the wayside.
And it was only a matter of time before it swallowed us whole.
11
I blinked twice, trying to center my senses. The motion blur was dissipating, but the roars inside the house weren’t. The wolves had learned from their two dead buddies, though, and no one was making a suicide run outside.
Head still throbbing, I walked cautiously toward the stairs, where Roark was giving me a funny look. My mask beeped, numbers floating in front of my nose. Fifty minutes of safe haven from the radiation left.
Glancing at the wolves’ bodies, I wondered how they survived without masks. Maybe it was something in the water.
As for us, we’d have to beat it back to the safe confines of Roark’s cruiser when our masks stopped working. Not a problem; the house wasn’t large. But his expression of immense skepticism didn’t suggest that we were heading inside.
I nodded toward the broken door frame. “Are we going—”
Roark’s hand snapped against my elbow, causing the shotgun to slip from fingers. With a swift kick, he sent the weapon flying into what passed for grass next to the house. A moment later, I found myself on my ass, wondering how the hell I’d gotten there.
“How’d that bastard find her?” The abyss of his pistol loomed where the mask’s countdown had floated seconds before.
“I don’t know!”
“But you knew something was inside.” His eyes narrowed, gun steady.
“I warned you!”
“Two feet from the fucking door,” Roark said.
“If you know so much about Realmfarers, you’d understand we can sense things.” I glared at him indignantly. “But not for goddamn miles.”
The pistol didn’t move. “Are you working for the necromancer?”
Admittedly, it all looked suspicious. I was the only one who knew we were going to Alice Conway’s. We show up, there’s a welcoming party. Convincing him that I didn’t know a damn thing about the Fallout Zone, or where she lived, was going to be tough with all the growling in the background.
“You came looking for me, remember?”
“I heard you asked.” The pistol came closer to my head. “One good reason, Ruby.”
I wanted to come up with something snappy, but my throat was suddenly very dry. Roark thought I’d somehow led the necromancer’s minions to us. But I hadn’t. And even though I kind of knew that dying would just reboot the cycle, it didn’t feel that way. What if the loop stopped?
I sure as hell didn’t want to return to the Weald of Centurions. Not that I could, anyway. That realm had collapsed entirely. I gritted my teeth, thinking about what that collapse had cost me. Where would they send me when I died for real? Most creatures just drifted into blackness, not even getting the dubious afterlife offered in the Underworld. After all the trouble I’d caused above ground, my fate would probably be nothing but darkness.
I gave a sad cough, looking for sympathy. But Roark was having none of it.
“Three.”
“I swear I don’t know how he found us.” The growls inside had morphed into muted, curious chatter—like when a dog witnesses something confusing. This certainly qualified. One second we’re charging in guns blazing. Next thing, the big bad FBI agent is ready to paint the sidewalk with his partner’s brains.
“Bullshit. Two.”
I racked my brain for anything usable. “I’m telling you the truth, Roark.”
“You haven’t really told me anything.” The gun came closer. “One.”
The pinch. I had felt something like that in my wrist, just before the necromancer had stabbed me in the heart. What had that silver-haired psycho said?
I will be watching you both. Do not disappoint me.
Practically screaming, I said, “He’s fucking tracking us.”
I jabbed at my wrist like a crazy person. Roark’s expression didn’t change. I wondered if this was the kind of countdown where he said zero, just to give me an extra opportunity to come clean.
“I thought this was a time loop.”
“Give me your knife,” I said.
Roark didn’t seem eager to do that, and the gun didn’t move.
“For fuck’s sake, back up if you need to, just give me the knife.” I tapped the inset of my wrist again. “They’re gonna kill us both if you keep standing there with your hand on your dick.”
Roark took a step back and reached along his hip. A shimmering blade emerged, buzzing with blue energy.
“Fancy.” It clattered to the ground, and I jumped on it like a dog after scraps. An electrified hum ran around the point. A small dial at the hilt allowed me to turn that feature off, so I didn’t taser myself.
The blue glow died.
Roark glanced toward the broken window, where my wolf had charged through. Without taking his gaze off me, he fired two shots into the woodwork. A pained groan answered, followed by plenty of thrashing and crashing.
No other enterprising wolves tried to do surveillance after that.
Lucky me. I got the full benefit of Special Agent Colton Roark’s attention. Not that I agreed with the receptionist at the ca
mp, but all sorts of nice girls would’ve killed for that. But I wasn’t nice, and they’d probably think a lot different if his pistol was in their face. His eyes burned with a frightening intensity, focused on my actions.
The tip of the knife hovered over my skin. My pounding head was trying to work ahead to what games I could pull, the stories I could tell on the next round when this didn’t pan out. So that he didn’t leave me behind.
So that Roark trusted me.
“I’ll do it.” It wasn’t a threat. More an offer of kindness.
“I got this.”
With a deep breath, I plunged the blade into my skin. The point tore through the flesh like a surgeon’s scalpel. I pushed deeper, pain roaring through my nerve endings.
How much further?
I needn’t have worried.
Another quarter inch, and I felt a metallic clink.
Barely believing it myself, I dug my fingers into the small wound and grasped at the foreign object.
And, in the dim light of the wasteland, I pulled out a tracking chip.
But as the wisps hovered around it, telling tales that I couldn’t quite determine, I realized it represented a far bigger problem. Dread surged through me as I wiped off my bloody fingers.
Because anyone capable of tracking us through a time loop was far more powerful I could imagine.
12
The house rattled with activity, and I realized the scent of my blood—sweet, exotic and delicious—had sent the remaining wolves into a frenzy. They were desperately trying to resist their baser instincts, but that was a fool’s errand.
They might as well have willed themselves to stop breathing.
“Now or never,” I said, holding the glinting chip and knife up toward Roark.
He wasn’t an idiot. Which was refreshing. Smoothly, he grabbed the knife. He nodded at the shotgun, and then sprinted toward the car, trying to create as wide a birth as possible from the house. It would’ve looked like cowardice, had he not been such a dead-eye shot.
That, and cross angles would allow us to get more coverage on the entrance.
I slipped the chip in my pocket and stumbled toward the shotgun, knees scraping against the rough concrete. Reaching the lifeline, I saw the first wolf burst outside, but not through the door, or any of the windows. Instead, he charged right through the thin, damaged wall—appearing in a cloud of plaster dust in the grass beside me.
I pressed the trigger, heard an ominous click, cursed myself for only loading one shell as a test, and then dug into my pockets for the rest.
The wolf, hair standing on end, loped forward, looking like Scarface with all the white powder clinging to his fur. His claws slashed at my leg, closing the gap before I could get the shell inside. The round clattered away from the chamber into the short grass as I thrashed and landed a kick in the beast’s muzzle.
A wolf bite was not on today’s agenda. Had happened once before. Never again.
A gunshot rang out, and the werewolf dropped into a heap, dust billowing up from his body. But the reprieve was short lived. I managed to load the shotgun with a few shells, only to find a werewolf leaping through the air, bursting from the attic like a suicide jumper.
I raised the shotgun skyward, closed my eyes, and I pulled the trigger. Entrails rained down as the weighty beast landed only inches away. Heat radiated off its fur, rage and bloodlust still simmering even in death.
Pushing myself up, I heard the pistol bark twice. My gaze swung across the sidewalk, toward three wolves closing in on the car like a pincer. One of them was the alpha, bigger and brawnier than the rest. Another pistol shot blasted a mangy gray wolf’s heart into mulch before I heard that awful sound again.
Click.
But not from my gun.
I pumped the shotgun and fired from the hip, blowing one of the wolves’ legs clean off. He careened off the car, slamming against the passenger door with a sturdy thud.
But it was the sound on the driver’s side that made my blood curdle.
A pained roar, more wild and angry than any wolf’s.
I rushed toward the car, shotgun ready to fire.
I needn’t have come prepared.
The alpha wolf lay on the uneven asphalt, a glowing blue blade sticking from its neck. It shuddered and groaned, vocal chords obliterated by the peerless knife. Beside him, Roark lay down, blue eyes staring at the hazy sky.
I sprinted over, tumbling to his side. A slight turn of the neck, the eyes focusing on me, told me he was alive.
But the blood flowing from the bite at the base of his throat told me that he wouldn’t be for long.
Voice rough from the wound, he said, “Don’t look so upset.” He shuddered, trying to breathe. “It’ll all repeat, over and over.”
“So now you believe me.”
“You’re…convincing.”
He blinked slowly. I envied his stoicism in death. Once upon a time, I’d been known for my calm and cool. But everything I’d ever done had been out of a will to survive. No better than a gutter rat, if you stripped away the legends and justifications.
It was strange, seeing my own truth reflected back to me in his eyes.
“There’s gotta be a pen, an—I don’t know, fuck, something in the trunk.” I made a motion to get up.
His hand brushed mine, and he said, “No time. Just listen.”
“I can fix this.”
“My brother…” Roark’s body convulsed, his head banging against the ground. His skin seemed to get paler. “He died.”
“I’m not a fucking idiot.”
A faint smile traced his lips. “You’re not listening.”
“You’re not dying.” When I blinked, the others flashed through my mind. Pearl. The bullet entering her mussed black hair, coming out the other end, barely any blood at all. Galleron. I could only imagine that, not even being in the Weald to see that daystrider slitting his throat.
After an eternity Roark said, “He was one of the first in supernatural ops.” Long, rattling breath. The light dimmed slightly in his luminescent blue eyes. “One of the best.”
“What happened?” I could see the weight lifting from his shoulders, even as he struggled to breathe.
“Standard mission. Cleanup, no containment. Feral vamps ruining a farmer’s land. Fall, before harvest time.” He laughed, lips creasing in pain. Dark blood oozed from the bite. “When people still lived outside the cities.”
Maybe the supernatural wasn’t losing as badly as I thought.
“But when they got there, it was a false alarm.”
“Trap?”
“The vamps were dead. Rotting. But their bodies were warm, like they’d been—”
“The necromancer.”
“He killed them all. Entire unit.” Roark’s weak fingers reached for his pocket. I slid my fingers inside and put the photo in his hand. “And then…”
His breath grew almost silent. My heart beat, worrying that I would lose the thread of the story.
But then he said, “I got this in the mail a week later with the knife. Sam carried it on every mission. Said the picture was his good…good…”
“Good luck charm.” I took the photograph and flipped to the yellowing back. There was a brief message, written in perfect cursive.
I’ll be watching you, Colton. Don’t disappoint me.
I glanced down, seeing Roark’s eyes were shut. “Roark?”
“Still here.” He smiled, like it was all a cosmic joke. “I signed up that day. Same day. Recruiter was…pissed because I came after hours and woke him up.”
The origin of Lightning Blade.
The smile stayed, and he didn’t say anything for a long time. His body was still enough that I thought he’d died. Lost in an unpleasant memory he couldn’t shake—living it over and over.
“
It’s been a long six years,” Roark said, his eyes suddenly bursting open. I understood.
Today wasn’t the only time loop.
“We’ll figure it out.” That was hard to believe, with the blood and ethereal smog drifting through the street like a plague. This was not a place where hope survived.
Roark didn’t answer.
I shook his arm and he said, “Tell me something about you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re the only one who knows me.” His breath was faint, and with a little effort, he said, “Come on.”
“Do I?”
His eyes flashed open, the only response he could now offer. What could I possibly tell him that he didn’t know?
That was worth telling?”
I said, “I wasn’t always like this.”
Colton Roark mouthed the words I know, no longer able to speak.
Then his body went slack, and he died in the middle of the radioactive wasteland.
13
I thought fast, pushing down the unpleasant feeling in my throat.
Don’t call it a lump. I carry a gun.
At least when I’m not in jail.
Rooting around in my pocket, I finally found the necromancer’s transceiver. It glinted with a hidden menace, darkness swirling around the circuit board. Someone had paid more than money to create an object that could survive a time loop’s reset.
Instead of crushing the chip, I tucked it back inside the small gash in my wrist. The instant I shut this off, the necromancer would become aware of my sentience. Otherwise he’d leave me alone, and tend to his other plans.
That might not be true. I shuddered, remembering why he’d set the trap for Roark: entertainment. But I had to believe that he had motives beyond creating his own sadistic, never-ending kill day.
I looked down at Roark’s still body, suddenly feeling bad for ribbing him about the shirt. Pale and frozen in death, he seemed like a little kid, endlessly chasing after his brother’s ghost. Only to die twenty-four times in the process. It was a small mercy he couldn’t remember.
My heart skipped a beat, feeling the phantom thrust of the necromancer’s curved blade. I grabbed Roark’s phone, the see-through digital display indicating that it was 3:26 AM. Fumbling with the breather, I managed to activate the countdown timer.
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