by Mercedes Lackey; Cody Martin; Dennis Lee; Veronica Giguere
“Keep dancing, darlin’, we’re working on something.”
In the office camera feed—which was, of course, also starting to snow out—she could see one of the men hitting his security monitor with the flat of his hand.
“You can’t take the chance that Doppelgaenger will recognize you, Bull,” Djinni was saying.
The monitor feeds went to pure static.
“If you’re gonna go, go now!” she urged. “The cams are down, but if they’re smart, they’ll have it fixed in a second. The fire exit’s a mechanical alarm, I can’t shut it off.”
“Split up?” suggested Bulwark. “You take the girl, I’ll make the noise.”
Djinni nodded. “Roof. You get the car if you can. See you back at the airport.”
Bulwark headed for the bathrooms. Djinni pushed Kara off his lap and climbed onto the chair. The buttonhole cam got confused, then dark, then there was dim light as Djinni popped the roof hatch. Bulwark’s cam was more straightforward; in through the door marked “Dames,” he did something and an invisible force punched the window, frame and all, out of the wall. Then he was out and running down the dark alley, heading for the parking lot and the car.
Djinni wasn’t wasting time with finesse or niceties. He sprinted to the edge of the roof, tossed the girl down into a dumpster, followed her, tossed her over the side to the ground and tumbled out himself. Djinni glanced down, noted Barbara’s elaborate stiletto heels with more straps than a racing harness holding them to her feet. He grunted, threw her over his shoulder and sprinted down the alley.
The monitors in the club all came back to life. The men in the office were just now realizing that the men and the girl were gone from the room. Doppelgaenger was shoving his way towards the back; he must have heard Bulwark punching out the window.
“You’re going to get pursuit in a few seconds,” she warned. Meanwhile she was calling up everything she could for both men. “Bulwark, your car’s been ’jacked. City bus is approaching the lot, get on it. They’ll never look for you there.”
In Bulwark’s cam, she could see the bus; no one would think twice about a man running to catch it. The driver must have had a modicum of heart; he stopped and waited. Bull got on, dropped change into the fare box until it beeped and threw himself into the nearest seat. The bus pulled out. Vickie switched her attention to Djinni.
“Next right,” she said, just as the monitor showed Doppelgaenger in the private room. He looked up, his face contorted in a snarl. He leapt like a cat, presumably caught the edge of the open trap, and pulled himself out of sight. “Left. Doppelgaenger is on your tail.” She tried to remember what the file said on Doppelgaenger. From what she’d seen, he was fast. Very fast. No way of telling if he had some enhanced-senses way of tracking Djinni but best to assume he could. Above all, he was ruthless, cold and brutally efficient and if he caught them . . . “Left again.”
She had them on the map; with a sudden burst of inspiration, she called up the utilities map and layered it underneath. Yes! There—
“Left and left again.”
“Where’re you—”
“Stop!”
Vickie grabbed Djinni’s packet to connect herself and him, gathered power—
—and the earth opened beneath his feet and swallowed Red and the girl whole.
* * *
Djinni had wrapped the girl in his coat; it didn’t cover much, but it was better than just a g-string in the storm sewer that Vickie had dumped them into. He was muttering under his breath.
Vickie was exhausted. It took a lot of power to operate at that much of a distance. That power had to come from somewhere; in this case, since she’d had no time to prepare, it had come from her.
“Next right,” she said. “Then go up the ladder. The manhole is in the alley behind the Triumph Tower. Bulwark is waiting right at it with a car.”
She hadn’t just dumped them the twenty feet down into the sewer; she’d made sure to give them a ramp. And it was a storm sewer, not a sewage outlet . . .
She’d closed the earth up after them, too. Fifteen feet of dirt should be enough to confuse even the keenest of meta-senses. And she’d been watching their trail in aboveground cams the whole way; there’d been no sign of Doppelgaenger. Bulwark had been able to get another car without a lot of trouble, and she’d given him directions to the nearest place she could bring Djinni and the girl out.
“We’re here, Bull.”
Bulwark pried up the manhole cover.
Djinni helped the girl start up the ladder, then stopped. “Private mode,” he growled.
Too tired to question or argue, she switched.
“That was magic,” he said, in a very flat tone of voice.
“Yes.” She matched his tone.
The string of curses that followed left her wilting in her chair. “If you ever do something like that to me again . . .” He paused, then left the sentence unfinished.
“You coming, or sightseeing?” Bulwark called down the hole.
Without another word, Djinni climbed up.
He didn’t say another word to Vickie after that. Not when Kara (or Barbara) thanked her, not when Bulwark said in a warm tone of congratulations, “Good work, Operative Victrix,” not when she cued up more music for him for the return trip. He talked to the girl, he even talked to Bulwark, but he ignored Vic’s presence as if she didn’t exist. Just after touchdown, he got up and moved out of sight. When he came back out, he was wearing his wrappings, and he had the throat mike and earpiece in his hand. He dropped both in Bulwark’s lap, detached the button cam from his coat, added that, and walked out.
“Terminating link now,” said Vickie. She shut the rig down, took the spell packets and filed them in a box of others, and left the room, turning off the lights.
She was too tired to get any further than the living room. Bulwark would definitely green-light this. Djinni could sit and rotate; his opinion wouldn’t count.
But now it hit her: those girls—
She sat down hard on the sofa and cried bitterly, her face in her gloved hands, crying until the gloves were soaked and her eyes were sore. Not one of those girls, could they see what she really looked like, would trade their lives for hers. The handful of people who had seen had been unable to control their revulsion. She would never again have the things that they took so much for granted that they didn’t even think about it; people looking at them with pleasure, men wanting to touch them without a second thought, or indeed, any thought at all. Sun on their bare skin. Beautiful, unmarred skin. Feeling where they were touched . . .
It took a tremendous effort of will, once she had stopped weeping, to get up off the sofa, to go into the dark bathroom, strip off the gloves, bathe her face in cold water, and find another pair of gloves and pull them on again. But will was what a magician was all about; regardless of what she was, she had skills that were needed.
She went back into her Overwatch room and fired everything back up again, checking the time. Not a moment too soon; she switched to an entirely different set of comm frequencies.
“Reading me, Bella?” she asked, pleased that her voice was not too hoarse.
“Five by five,” came the cheerful voice. “Video input coming online now.”
A room in CCCP HQ appeared in the live-cam monitor. A room that was, in comparison to the one she sat in, what the radio room of the Titanic was to the comm room of the average supertanker. But it was what the CCCP had, and there was her counterpart, looking frail and wide-eyed, the tall, storklike Gamayun, just now putting on a headset of her own.
“Vi menia slishite, tovarish?” Vickie asked.
The woman nodded her head, a dark forelock falling into one eye. “Slishu vas gromko e chetko, tovarish Victoria,” Gamayun replied.
“I think we’re ready to rock and roll.” Bella moved and the camera viewpoint proceeded down a hall, around a corner, and into Red Saviour’s office.
“Shto?” Saviour asked, the essence of impatience. “
What silly toy you are having to show me now that Echo thinks we are needing?”
“Not a toy, and not Echo, Comrade Commissar,” Bella replied. “A little something Comrade Victrix cooked up that I’m going to demonstrate for you. Ready, Vic?”
Vickie’s gloved fingers flew over the keys of her computer. Once again, it was magic time.
* * *
Doppelgaenger had faith in the universe. It was a perfect machine. Things ran as they should. For everything, there was balance. Harmony. His brethren believed in contingencies and fail-safes. In strategy. They had their place in the way of things, yes. He saw the strength one could attain simply by planning ahead. But when all else failed he believed in the simple waxing and waning of order and chaos. When plans failed, when strategy couldn’t hope to predict your opponent, the universe would provide. One simply needed to look hard enough.
Take the video feed, for example. His quarry had vanished. There was no trace. Aerial support had reported no changes in the spectrum above the establishment. No one, cloaked or otherwise, had taken to flight. Where there were three, became two, then none. The ignorant security of the club had lost the first man. No matter. It was the girl who had been important. But where her and her rescuer’s footsteps went cold, so had their trail. Detailed readings of the location revealed nothing. As for the in-house surveillance logs, they had been replaced with hours of footage from the Kill Bill films.
At least those had been somewhat entertaining.
Still, all visual record of the infiltrators had been irrevocably lost.
And then, and here Doppelgaenger had to smile, the universe had stepped in. Was it chance that brought these men here last night? Had the girl gotten word out somehow? Had she sensed danger? If so, they were men on a mission. Echo men, there was little doubt. The heroes of Echo, doing their good deed. And they had been careful, oh yes. They had erased all evidence of their passing . . .
. . . save, of course, for the base, desperate actions of lesser men.
Doppelgaenger motioned, and the frightened man played the tape again. His name was Douglas. His last name didn’t matter. A regular at the Silver Corral, Douglas’ favorite pastime was sneaking in a small, portable camcorder and capturing, to be watched over and over again, his little slice of heaven. A small, sad little man, who had been tolerated because he did bring money to a club in desperate need of it. He had been caught once, and now paid hefty bribes to one of the club’s bouncers. When Doppelgaenger had expressed his displeasure that the security footage was missing, the bouncer had been quick to remember Douglas and his hobby.
Doppelgaenger watched the scene play over again. The girl, those men . . . they had been men of Echo, he was sure of that now. He recognized one of them. He had, in fact, studied the face and mannerisms of this Bulwark several times. It had been enough. The huge man would barely waggle his brow, much less make any sustaining expression. And the other . . . ?
“Kindred,” Doppelgaenger whispered. He recognized the talent, having so much more of it himself. “You see it, small man? You see what this man does not do?”
Douglas stared at Djinni, and back at Doppelgaenger. He shook uncontrollably. Any word could mean his death. And probably a very painful one. He risked a glance sideways and flinched away. The remains of his wife were still twitching.
“Nn-nnnn-no—” Douglas stammered finally. “What do you mean?”
“His skin,” Doppelgaenger purred. “It doesn’t . . . it doesn’t breathe right.” He fixed Douglas with an encouraging smile. “Look closer; don’t you see it now?”
Douglas stared back at Djinni’s boyish grin, and looked helplessly back at his captor.
“Look closer!” Doppelgaenger roared, and smashed Douglas’ head into the television, an old-fashioned cathode ray tube. The screen exploded. Douglas screamed, jagged glass shards slicing his weak flesh, his screams becoming gurgles. His body shook a few times from the current, then fell still, smoke bellowing from the debris.
Doppelgaenger rolled his eyes.
“Wunderbar. American electronics are scheisse. Someone find me a good German television set.”
Behind him, a soldier saluted smartly, turned on his heels, and made as if to leave.
“Wait!” Doppelgaenger barked. “On second thought, we will return to base.” He reached down and picked up the blood-spattered camcorder lovingly. His fingers moved with a surgeon’s grace as he plucked out the cables.
His grin was beatific as he glided away.
“Finally, I get to play.”
CHAPTER FIVE
__________
Keeping Up Appearances
VERONICA GIGUERE
It’s really odd, looking back on all this, to see how people who would be vital to us were folks we never would have sought out, or who would even have passed anywhere on our radar. Like . . . one ex-Special Forces bartender in New Orleans.
THREE FOR ONE, or so the sign in the window proclaimed amidst a jumble of neon and gaudy metal plates that advertised the joys of both domestic and imported refreshment. Water stains rose three feet up the wall, the peeling wallpaper and discolored linoleum proof of rough times. The chairs were secondhand, the tables pitted and stained, but the bar along the west wall gleamed with a shine that said maybe, just maybe, things were starting to turn around. Old pictures in new frames hung on the walls, fresh signatures and messages from tourists and regulars were scribbled between the yellow water stains. Everything was in transition, from bad to better, in the bar on Bourbon Street. Everything, including the woman picking glass out of her hand.
She gritted her teeth and dug deeper with ragged fingernails, ignoring the mess she made. Someone had been careless enough to leave a broken glass behind the clean ones, and she had discovered the mistake seconds too late. Melisandre Gautier shot a dirty look towards the back office, knowing full well who was really responsible and who would avoid any blame. The bartender for the early shift was an airheaded little thing who couldn’t tell rum from vodka, but the boss kept her on for morale.
Morale. It was a tasteful way to say something baser, but it did keep Elliot from chasing her. For Mel, that was reason enough to just dig out the glass, wrap her hand in a towel, and get back to work. The afternoon was warm and humid, the beer was thankfully ice-cold, and the combination made for good business. Good business meant good tips, and good tips meant another week of paying the rent.
For now, the bar was dead, save for a few good ol’ boys knocking back longnecks as ESPN droned on. Yesterday at this time, she’d been treated to a visit by a pair of suits flashing Blacksnake IDs and waving a contract. The first “no” hadn’t made an impact, nor had the sixth and seventh. Echo might have deserted her, but Mel’s pride would not allow her to stoop so low as to become a weapon for hire. And so she told them that and more, reaching underneath the bar for the sawed-off shotgun that Elliot kept there for these sorts of emergencies . . .
And found a bottle opener. That damn dancer . . . A colorful stream of Cajun-laced invectives had filled the tiny space, and Mel brandished a double-barreled shotgun at the two operatives. They were surprised but not scared, and hadn’t made any motion to leave. That was, not until the door had opened and a third person had strolled in.
Bulwark’s presence had tipped the tide in Mel’s favor, and he had stood by calmly as the Blacksnake boys backpedaled and left the bar. The stoic man had even gone so far as to give Mel the courtesy of a lookout and an all-clear, which was when she caught the semblance of a smile as the shotgun dissolved to nothing more than a flimsy bit of metal hot-glued to a magnet. Two others had followed him inside, a frightened woman with a pretty face and a man whose face was obscured by a swath of red fabric. She had answered questions, offered them drinks, and then sent them on their collective merry way with the best information she had.
Had it been anyone else, she wouldn’t have said a damn thing. Echo had left her out in the cold years ago, but she didn’t hold it against Bull . . . much. Orde
rs had been orders, chain of command and all that, and she knew that he hadn’t made the decision to put her out to pasture. So, she didn’t hate him, and that was why she had pointed the three to the places that she had heard the Stone brothers frequented.
The glass was nearly out, blood running from wrist to elbow in a neat trickle from her attempts. Mel grimaced and reached for a clean rag, then contemplated the collection of liquors in front of her. “What says ‘don’t give a damn ’bout nothin’ these days’ . . .” She smirked, picked up the bottle of Jack Daniels, and wet the cloth. Gritting her teeth, Mel pressed the whiskey-soaked rag to her wounds and slowly began to clean herself up.
She wondered if Bull and his team would be back after their recon or if they would pack up and return to whatever HQ had sent them. For what it was worth, Mel told herself, she would be perfectly content to never see the Echo man again.
She’d been part of Echo, once upon a time. Mel Gautier—Reverie, according to the database—had been part of the Army’s 2nd Ranger Battalion from the day she had turned nineteen. Enlisted out of high school, her commanding officers had nearly wet themselves when they had discovered just what she could do in the field. Illusion was her forté, concealment and mind games her companion as she accompanied seasoned troops on covert operations. By twenty-one, Mel had been deployed in operations throughout Somalia, Egypt, and Iraq. By twenty-seven, she was sent back to New Orleans with medical discharge papers and a promise of rehab and recovery that never came.
It had happened outside of Fallujah, during a raid on a rogue cell that was keeping trucks from getting supplies to the area’s only makeshift hospital. When they’d left that morning, there were six of them. By that night, she was held in front of a video camera and made to recite from a script, the rest of her team held hostage to make her behave. It had taken the Echo boys and the Marines weeks to find her, even with one of their mindfraggers using his own specialized radar. Mel had hidden behind layers of her own imagination, projecting horror after horror on any who had dared to come near her, including the rescue ops who finally managed to knock her out. Sedated until they arrived in Germany, Mel was poked and prodded and questioned for days by Army and Echo psychologists alike. When the doctors had satisfied their curiosity, they had called in Bulwark to deliver the final verdict.