Lightning Blade (Ruby Callaway Book 1)

by D. N. Erikson

  This had to be bigger than a call. Lockdowns weren’t for single threats.

  Perhaps Marshall had created a bigger fire elsewhere, one that required all hands on deck. As far as I could tell, that was about the only thing that could draw Captain Stevens away from an opportunity to throw me in the dark room.

  He didn’t turn those down lightly.

  I finally stopped flailing at the door. Kneeling, I pressed my ear up against the jamb. Still nothing—no alarms, no sirens, no explosions. Slumping down to the ground, I briefly considered giving up. The game was ending before it began.

  It’s hopeless, my mind whispered. You’ll never win, even if you escape. You’re not crazy enough.

  No, I wasn’t crazy enough to blow myself up like him. It was hard to even stomach the thought of jamming the pen into my own neck to reset matters and try again tomorrow. But Marshall’s unconventional strategy sparked a thought.

  Instead of trying to break out, I would invite them in.

  Why had Captain Stevens come for me in the first place?

  Because I’d made trouble. Big trouble: I’d killed one of the Administrator’s prized lieutenants. But, right now, I was no threat during a lockdown. I would stay in my little cage until Stevens put out the fire and finally came to retrieve me.

  That timeline didn’t work for me.

  So I needed to create a fire in here.

  Head down, I marched to the bunk across from mine.

  “Jamie.”

  “Go to sleep, bitch.”

  I punched the Fae right in the mouth, drawing blood on the first strike. She yelped in surprise, and responded by flailing her arms. It wasn’t much of a fight. I dragged her from the bed, kicked her in the ribs and pushed her down.

  That would’ve been it, normally.

  But I went to the next bed. Attacked Mariah. And Becky. By the time I reached Sierra, the entire cabin was on high alert, everyone awake. There was a crazy person on the loose, attacking people in their sleep.

  And they weren’t going to be the next victim.

  I retreated to my bed, picking up the fallen pen. Brandishing it like a sword, I kept the surging throng of pissed off creatures at bay.

  Jabbing the pen at them to provoke them further, I said with a snarl, “Come on, you scared?”

  “Get her!”

  “Won’t even tell anyone her name.”

  “You’ve been a frosty bitch since the day you got here.”

  “Fair enough,” I said.

  I smiled at the mob. As a dwarf rushed forward, I heard the door blow off the hinges. I cracked the stout woman in the face, sending her to the ground as the containment team stormed in. Metal canisters clinked against the floor, tear gas streaming out into the air.

  Choking, I fell to my knees. Rough fingers zip tied my wrists. I managed a pained grin as we fell into a familiar rhythm.

  That’s right, assholes. Arrest me.

  “Goddamnit,” a voice that wasn’t Stevens’s said. “Someone hacks the supply bay and causes a damn fire, and you gotta start this shit.”

  My knees bumped against the floor as the man dragged me out.

  Coughing in the night, I managed to rasp out, “Back pocket.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Special Agent Colton Roark.” I coughed again. “I’ll tell him everything about the necromancer.”

  “Like hell you will.”

  “You don’t, and the supply bay isn’t going to be the only thing on fire.”

  Whoever had come to get me didn’t answer for a long time. Finally, he said, “You making a threat?”

  “Just make the call,” I said, throat rough. “And tell him the dog’s drunk, and mom doesn’t care.”

  “The fuck you talking about?”

  But as I slumped to the ground, I heard him make the call.

  Solomon Marshall wouldn’t win.

  At least not in the first five minutes.

  35

  Roark met me in the lobby this time, cutting off the procession as we crossed the well-polished granite. I had a far more robust armed accompaniment than on the previous days. Between killing Dewitt and almost starting a riot in my bunk, the camp officials had decided I was high risk.

  Judging from his expression, Roark didn’t share their concerns. His boots tapped impatiently against the Federal Supernatural Corrections logo on the floor.

  “This woman is now under my custody,” he said, flashing his FBI credentials.

  The man who wasn’t Captain Stevens said, “I’ll have to check with Administrator Warren, sir.”

  “You do that while we get her things.” Roark grabbed me by the arm, not roughly, steering me away from my prison escort.

  When we got out of earshot, he said in a low voice, “How the hell did you know about that?”

  “You told me,” I said.

  “I’ve never met you.” His sad blue eyes scanned me for an answer. “Only my—”

  “Sam. You used to say it to one another.” I glanced over my shoulder, at the group of guards. “We shouldn’t talk here.”

  “No better time than the present.”

  “Trust me.”

  “That’s the thing,” Roark said as we approached the receptionist’s desk, “I don’t.”

  But I could tell he was lying.

  And I’d be lying if that didn’t make me feel at least a little warm and fuzzy.

  He requested my personal effects from the old woman behind the counter. Then he crossed his arms, muscles tensing in expectant patience. So I whispered in his ear all I knew, soft enough so that anyone or anything listening couldn’t hear. I began with his personal information before leading into the time loop and bits about the necromancer’s true identity as Solomon Marshall. Then the bits about MagiTekk, which, while still hazy, seemed to all lead back to money.

  Despite it taking weeks to accumulate all the information, it was remarkably simple to condense the points into a five minute summary.

  After I finished, he gave a wary glance at the lead guard, who was still talking into his neural link in the center of the cavernous lobby.

  His first words were, “A year.”

  “That’s what the necromancer told me.”

  “Goddamn.”

  “And now you’re saying he’s changed the game.” His sad blue eyes didn’t question me.

  “Looks that way,” I said.

  “Then we need to get the hell out of here.”

  “Wait.”

  “According to you, we have no time,” Roark said.

  “You need to call everyone in your list of CIs.” I had a duty to Serenity and the others, even if they couldn’t remember. “Warn them that the necromancer is gunning for them.”

  “I’m a goddamn idiot,” Roark said, shaking his head. “Leading that bastard straight to them.”

  “If you could see the loop, you would’ve done things differently.” I patted him on the shoulder.

  Look at me, developing a reasonable bedside manner.

  His lips pursed together, then he nodded. In a low voice, he recorded a message telling everyone that their positions were compromised and that the Feds were coming to bust them. Then he sent it via text message to them all.

  Reading my quizzical expression, Roark said, “They’ll run from the cops. They might try to dig in and fight him.”

  “Good thinking.” Seeing what Marshall was capable of, a standoff wouldn’t end well.

  I knew that from experience.

  After that, Roark put in a formal call about a credible threat to the MagiTekk R & D building. They might have been bastards, but a hundred thousand people going up in smoke wouldn’t help our cause. And allowing Marshall’s plans to unfold without intervention invariably tilted the odds in his favor.

  The gray-
haired reception finally returned—empty-handed.

  “I’m sorry, Agent Roark, but her belongings are gone.” She held my clothes, so clearly that didn’t mean everything.

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  The woman glared at me for deigning to speak, placing the jeans, oxford and ankle boots on the counter. Addressing Roark, she said, “I’ll check the system.”

  A holographic display flitted into the air. Angry footsteps pounded behind us as she worked. I didn’t need to turn to identify their owner, but I did anyway.

  Captain Stevens, mustache twitching, marched across the lobby, headed straight for us. Administrator Warren was nowhere to be seen.

  Color me surprised.

  “You can have the girl,” he said.

  I blinked twice and said, “What?”

  Not acknowledging my presence, Stevens said, “Just get out her the hell out of my camp.”

  The receptionist at the counter said, “The system says they were lost in a flood—”

  She cut herself off after Stevens shot her a look.

  Heat flooded my cheeks, and I yelled, “You son of a bitch.”

  I felt Roark pull gently on my shoulder as Stevens leered. The bastard didn’t even bother to respond. He knew that he’d won. Another anonymous call from Marshall. Telling him of extraordinary objects just sitting with the inmate’s personal effects.

  Swallowing my anger, I stood up straight and grabbed my clothes from the counter.

  “I guess these were waterproof,” I said, eyes glowing with an unspoken threat.

  “Enjoy your time outside the gate,” Steven said. The implication being that it wouldn’t be for long.

  Roark’s hand gently rested on my back, pushing me forward toward the entrance.

  “What was in the there?” he asked in a low voice, when we were out of earshot.

  And I said, “Everything I had.”

  36

  Roark looked at me intensely from the driver’s seat as the cruiser picked up speed, leaving the Tempe Supernatural Internment Camp behind.

  “We’ll get your things back.”

  “That bastard.” My teeth ground together, thinking of the shotgun. The Realmpiece. The last remaining links to a past life and an origin story that, by the day, seemed more and more like a dream.

  I closed my eyes, hand tracing through the air, feeling the familiar etching in the shotgun’s stock.

  Carry this weapon well, Realmfarer. Escape and live in the light, with the mortals.

  Love, Galleron

  But when I opened my eyes, I saw nothing but rusted tin shacks and uneven roads.

  “I promise, whatever it is.” Roark’s gaze told me he trusted me fully, without hesitation. That was a nice change of pace. Only took three weeks to get there. I couldn’t help but wonder if Marshall’s binding spell had something to do with that.

  The chips were gone, but maybe it still lingered.

  “First, we kill the bastard.” But I didn’t know if that was possible. Marshall had a year’s head start on us, and I had no idea how to find him. He’d always come to us.

  “I like where this is going.” Roark slotted the data cube into the cruiser, bringing up a holographic stream of information. His hands passed through the files as the car churned through the sloppy soil. “We just need a starting point.”

  “The Arcana of Temporal Manipulation.”

  “What now?” Roark’s brow furrowed, his data giving him no results.

  “It won’t be in there,” I said. “Aaron Daniels.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of this guy.”

  “Real charmer.”

  “Kind of a Robin Hood thing going on.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind when I’m cutting out his entrails,” I said. Roark shot me a funny look, making me realize that I wasn’t doing a real good job of keeping this vengeance thing under control.

  Old habits.

  They die hard.

  Unless they kill you first.

  “He owns pretty much everything around here.”

  “What, so you’re scared?” I gave him a glance. He didn’t take the bait.

  “Just curious what a slum lord is doing with time magic.”

  “You know what they say about curiosity.”

  “I’m the one driving, so all that matters is what I say about curiosity.”

  “Technically no one’s driving.”

  “All the same,” Roark said. He had a point. Charging in to get our asses shot off wouldn’t help anything.

  “We might not need the book itself,” I said, remember what Daniels had told me during our first encounter. “All we need is Xeno.”

  “I’m gonna need a little more than that.”

  “She works for MagiTekk. I think they’re keeping tabs on Daniels because he’s pissed about them suppressing his lupus genetic code.”

  “How do you know she works for MagiTekk?” Roark asked.

  “I saw her meet with this older guy. Gray hair. Straight posture. Kind of like…”

  A little piece clicked into place as I gazed up at Roark.

  “My turn.” Roark dissolved the files into thin air, followed by a heavily redacted personnel folder on MagiTekk operatives. With all the black marks running through the digital paper, I probably knew more about her than the average member of the FBI. He sorted through the information, his eyes carefully piecing together the little fragments left behind. Bread crumbs for him to follow.

  Then the data dissolved, replaced by a man with a somewhat familiar stare. Only more hardened and angry instead of sad.

  I blinked, doing a double-take.

  “Malcom Roark,” I said, reading the name aloud.

  “Prodigal son,” Roark said, his tone glumly ironic. “But he’ll be willing to do us a favor.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Nothing in this life is free.”

  I heard the resignation in his voice.

  “I think we have something to trade him,” I said.

  But time was running out.

  “You know who we’re dealing with, right?”

  And I just said, “We do what we gotta do,” and watched as the call went through.

  Praying for our souls could wait for later.

  37

  I listened for clues in Roark’s inflection. But the conversation was perfunctory and totally businesslike. Two men struggling to find common ground, cloaking their lack of connection in the lingua franca of professionalism.

  The call ended, the hologram displaying the call time dissolving into nothingness.

  Roark gripped the steering wheel, even though he wasn’t driving. The cruiser blurred through the Mud Belt so quickly that the houses were little more than patchworks of rust.

  “Time to make a decision,” I said as the car showed no sign of slowing down.

  “Decision’s already made.” He turned to me, his sad eyes filled with the depth of our choice. It wasn’t darkness that threatened to consume him, but repulsion. When your back’s up against the wall, you find out what you’re capable of.

  For Roark, this was something from his worst nightmare.

  “Cheer up,” I said. “You’re getting what you always wanted.”

  “You better have something good,” Roark said.

  “Oh, I think Malcolm will want to hear from me.”

  Roark’s knuckles turning white as the car slowed. If I hadn’t known better, I might’ve believed he was controlling the wheels through sheer force of will.

  But, like many things in life, that would be an illusion.

  I wondered how trying to pass an illusion off to Malcom Roark would end. I didn’t really have to wonder. I’d met enough men like him. But I didn’t need to find out for sure—because I had something the old man would want.r />
  Sylvia and Diana’s work in the Fallout Zone to crack MagiTekk’s code. The car came to a stop on the side of the road. It rocked back and forth slightly as the brakes engaged in the unstable mud. Then we were still and all was quiet.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked.

  “He’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”

  “They’re planning some sort of roll-out,” I said. “Wide.”

  “I don’t want to know why.” Roark checked his service pistol, racking the slide with a loud, ratcheting snap. “He deals with things his way and I deal with them mine.”

  “Why’s he work for MagiTekk?”

  “Because they pay,” Roark said, stepping into the brisk morning air. Things were beginning to heat up. Even though I’d felt the same day on my face for more than three weeks, even the weather seemed different.

  I followed Roark to the trunk, feeling naked without my shotgun. He checked his stainless steel wristwatch. The trunk popped open, and he handed me the leather jacket.

  “Fourteen minutes. Better hurry.”

  “I don’t need a countdown.” I took the jacket and grabbed the rifle. The weight felt funny in my arms, but it shot straight and would do.

  Roark shoved a box of ammo into my hand and shut the trunk. I loaded the clip and tested to make sure everything was smooth. The parts snapped and locked in perfect synchronicity. I shouldn’t have expected anything less than a well-oiled machine from Roark.

  He asked, “So, you know where we’re going?”

  I said, “What do you mean?”

  “They’re gonna wipe Daniels off the map,” Roark said. “Then we make the exchange. Your info for the book and whatever their agent knows.”

  “Just follow me.”

  I could’ve followed the wisps, but plenty of return trips through the slum had allowed me to memorize the landmarks. There was a hidden roadmap, signs of Aaron’s influence that wove through the Mud Belt.

  If you knew them, you could find his front door anywhere. It was an open invitation.

  Probably because anyone who fucked with him wound up in a body bag.

  Which is why I was keeping in the shadows, away from the prying eyes of his spotters.

  I threw the rifle over my shoulder and ducked inside the nearest narrow alley. Roark’s boots squished through the mud, following me without hesitation. We wound our way through the ruined homes and dented roofs, places that, twenty years ago, would’ve been demolished as unlivable.