Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  A moment later the dark figure flowed past the mouth of the alley, so quickly and quietly that Kella almost missed him, but she stepped out into the street and just managed to tap him on the shoulder.

  The man in the black cloak whirled about, and though his face remained shadowed by his hood, the gun in his hand gleamed brightly. Kella grabbed the long barrel of the revolver in her left hand and then dealt the man a vicious punch to the throat with her fist wrapped around her folded knife. The man gasped and stumbled, but did not release the gun, and Kella felt the cylinder begin to turn beneath her fingers. She snapped the gun up and toward him, wrenching it free of his grip and then stepped back, brandishing both her unfolded knife and the gun. “Don’t move.”

  The man fell still except for the one hand still massaging his throat. Then he broke into a run and vanished down the next alley. Kella sprinted after him, darting down the alley around discarded bits of broken furniture and piles of rags and wide dark puddles. Ahead, she saw the stranger reach the end of the alley and dash to the left down the street. Kella passed the corner a moment later, ducking as the man in black lunged at her, swinging his fist level with where the detective’s head should have been. Instead, his arm whirled through empty space and his wrist connected with the brick corner of the building, and he cried out. Kella snapped up from her crouch and threw two punches to the man’s stomach, and then kicked his legs out from beneath him.

  The man fell to the ground on his rear, not so much moaning as growling through clenched teeth as he squeezed his injured wrist with his other hand. Kella knelt down beside him, leaning her knee against the man’s leg, pinning him in place. She shoved the gun in his face as she unfolded her knife blade. “I said don’t move.”

  “I can see why she picked you. Even if you are old.” The man’s voice was strained as he tried not to make any more pained noises. “You’re pretty tough.”

  “That makes one of us.” Kella pushed back the man’s hood with the tip of the open knife. An unremarkable male face stared up at her in the lamplight. An adult, but of any age. Neither handsome nor ugly. Nothing memorable about him at all. The perfect agent. “Do you have a name?”

  “Not when I’m working.”

  “Well, you’re not working anymore. Possession of a firearm and assaulting a police officer. You’re under arrest now, and probably will be for some time.” Kella poked inside the man’s coat with the barrel of the gun, but found no other weapons. “You were going to shoot me? In the street? Seems like a good way to attract a lot of attention. Not very assassin-like. You’d wake people up, they’d coming running to see what the fuss was about. You’d only have a few moments to get away or hide.”

  “My orders were very specific.”

  “Orders? From Lady Sade?” Kella frowned and nodded to herself. “So were you just lurking around the house waiting for someone to kill, or did she have to send out for you?”

  The man merely winced as he continued rubbing his wrist.

  “No, I didn’t think you’d want to talk about her.” Kella straightened up and glanced around the empty street. “Not to worry. That’s what cells are for.”

  The man managed a wheezy laugh. “I won’t talk in a cell, either.”

  “Then you can just rot in one. Either way works for me. Come on, up on your feet.” The detective pulled the man up, wrapped her fingers around the sturdy fabric of his collar, and shoved the muzzle of the gun into the small of his back. “All right, let’s take a walk.”

  They set out down the street in single file. The man in black tilted his head back with a raised eyebrow. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in making some sort of deal?”

  “Only if you and all of your little friends feel like testifying against Sade before a high court.”

  The man snorted. “I was thinking of a different sort of deal. As in, you let me go and I tell you where another of my little friends is right now.”

  Kella jerked her prisoner to a halt under a streetlamp. “Where?”

  “Let me go first.”

  Kella slammed the man into the lamppost. “Where?”

  He grunted. “I don’t think you have time to play guessing games. We already wasted a lot of time meandering through this neighborhood. My little friend has quite a head start on you, and she’s very motivated to make a good showing tonight. So let me go and I’ll tell you who the target is.”

  Kella shoved the man away, turning him so they stood face to face, and then she shoved the gun into his cheek. “Who is it?”

  “Look, I know you’re an honest officer. Make the right call. Let me go. After all, I haven’t hurt anyone, and I’m unarmed. You saw to that.”

  “Who is the target?”

  The man squinted and pursed his lips. “Third district. Some sort of medical machine shop. One of the employees. A girl called Amadi.”

  I never mentioned her name. Sade must have a list of the doctor’s employees. Kella tightened her grip on him. “It’s the middle of the night. She won’t be at the shop.”

  “No.” The man smiled and took a small step back from the gun. “So my friend is no doubt running around town at this moment, trying to find where she lives. I got the easy job, killing you. I hate research. Questions. Talking. Boring.”

  Kella grabbed the man’s shirt and yanked him forward, and brought the butt of the gun down on the top of his head. The assassin slumped against her, unconscious. She pulled out her manacles and hastily shackled the limp body to the lamppost, and dashed away into the city. All the way back to the third district! Kella glared at the road flying by underfoot. At least she knew the target’s name, the whole name. Jedira Amadi. But she didn’t have an address. Yet.

  She pounded up block after block through the fifth district, darting around corners, narrowly avoiding two collisions with young couples walking arm in arm in the dark. As she crossed the avenue that marked the edge of the third district, Kella bent her course east, angling not toward the prosthetics shop but toward the police station. She burst through the heavy doors, drawing stares from the handful of officers still leaning over the papers on their desks, and ran to the records room. The narrow room was little more than a long path for walking between two rows of massive filing cabinets that stretched from floor to ceiling. The detective scanned the drawer labels, then yanked open the city directory. Amadi, Amadi… Jedira Amadi. The address. Five blocks away.

  Kella strode back into the main room and pointed at the officers at their desks. “You over there, get down to High Street in the fifth district. You’ll find a man shackled to a lamppost near Carter’s Square. Bring him in. Attempted murder with a firearm. The rest of you need to sweep the streets right now for a lone killer, female, possibly armed with a revolver. Stop and search anyone you find out there. Usem, you’re with me.”

  The room leapt to life as officers grabbed their jackets and clubs and lanterns and rushed out into the street. The one officer loped away to the right and Kella led the others to the left into the third district. They jogged through the darkness and puddles of light around the lampposts, crossing streets and squares and alleys. In ones and twos, the officers dashed away in every direction until only Usem was still with her. Finally, Kella pointed out the small door next to a bakery bearing Amadi’s address. The door was locked.

  “Jedira Amadi!” Kella pounded on the door. “This is Detective Massi, from earlier. Jedira! Miss Amadi! Open up! Hello? Hello!”

  The detective paused as a distant strain of music caught her ear. Someone was whistling a single clear melody echoing faintly down the street. She turned and saw a figure in a white coat in the middle of the road sauntering toward them. A woman, she guessed by the way she walked, and as the seconds passed she saw that the woman was staring at them. The tune warbling out of her pursed lips was a nursery rhyme, a lullaby that had the oddly disturbing sort of lyrics typical of all lullabies, softly bribing the child to be quiet and go to sleep, or else a monster might appear. Kella hated lullabies.
She knocked on the door again, but kept her eyes on the woman in white.

  The stranger angled toward them. Her whistling grew louder, rising and falling in time with her footsteps, and her hands remained in her pockets.

  Kella beat on the door again. “Miss Amadi?”

  The whistling broke off, and the detective saw that the woman was smiling, her gait suddenly breaking into a swinging sort of swagger, a lazy swaying accompanied by a cruel grin. “Thank you, for that. The name. It’s always good to confirm the target’s identity through a third party.”

  Kella pulled the gun from her pocket and pointed it at the stranger. “Stop right there. Hands where I can see them. Right now, hands up.” Usem pulled out his club.

  The woman, still grinning, slowly raised her empty hands. “Hm. The gray coat says police, but the gun says not-police. So one of them must not be yours, and I’m betting it’s the gun. Where’d you get it? Hm? It doesn’t look like standard army-issue. Did you swipe it from a crime scene?”

  “Something like that.”

  The woman laughed a husky, condescending laugh. She had an enormous hawk-beak nose set between eyes and lips that seemed sculpted to convey only cruel amusement. A thick mass of limp black hair disappeared beneath the collar of her white coat. “That’s Merin’s revolver, isn’t it? The idiot. Using a gun. I told him not to be taken in by all the flashy toys you people have, to stick to the old ways, but no, he had to go and steal a gun. Stupid, even for a Persian. I always knew he’d die young.”

  “He’s not dead.”

  “Then you’re as stupid as he is.” The woman’s hands drooped below shoulder level. “Very important, very powerful, people have hired me. These people like things done and done properly. On time, as instructed. Merin understands that, so as long as he’s alive, he’s a danger to you.”

  Kella heard soft, uneven footsteps behind the apartment door. “And I suppose as long you’re alive, you’re also a danger to me?”

  The woman’s hands fell a bit farther and she resumed walking forward. “Very much so, but only for the next few moments.”

  “I said don’t move.” Kella strode away from the door into the street. “No one listens to me, no one ever listens to me.” She pointed the gun at the woman’s feet and pulled the trigger.

  The cylinder rotated slightly, then clicked back again.

  The stranger smiled. “I told Merin not to carry a gun. I also broke the stupid thing when he wasn’t looking to teach him a little lesson. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to actually be here when it failed. You’re not Merin, but you’ll do. The look on your face is precious.” She dashed forward across the small space between them and collided with the detective with two fists and one steel-toed boot all at once.

  Kella staggered back and fell to one knee, stunned and gasping, unable to focus on the pains in her chest, stomach, and leg. The woman moved in a swirl of white cloth and blurry limbs, all flying and snapping into position as though God had decreed that her fists and feet belonged in the detective’s flesh and bones at that precise instant, and nothing in creation could prevent them from striking. Amid the flurry, Kella glimpsed a bloody bandage around the woman’s hand.

  Usem brought his club down on the woman from behind, but she leapt back against him, inside the sweep of his arm. The detective gasped and dropped his club, and when the woman stepped away Kella saw the knife buried in Usem’s chest.

  Kella heard a woman cry out and looked over in time to see the bakery door open for a brief instant to reveal Jedira’s terrified stare, and then the door slammed shut again. The detective refocused on the woman in white and staggered upright just as Usem collapsed to the street, still gasping, one hand gripping the handle of the knife.

  Damn it. I can’t help Usem and protect the house at the same time. As she stared down at him, she saw the detective’s hand fall from the knife and he slumped back to the ground. Damn it, Usem. I’m sorry.

  She cleared her throat and tried to focus on the woman in white, only barely able to ignore the fresh bruises all over her chest and arms. “You have a strange accent. I would have said eastern, but you don’t seem to like Persians.” Kella shifted, placing herself between the woman and the door.

  “Most Samaritans don’t.” The woman surged forward again, fists flying in tightly controlled jabs too fast to count.

  Kella took a dozen blows to the head and stomach before she could even raise her arms to shield herself. She barely heard the faint sigh of a blade slipping free of its sheath, and the detective hurled her body to the ground and rolled away.

  “Oh no,” the woman said calmly. She held up a long thin knife. “Look. I just chipped the tip against the wall here. I’ve had this knife a very long time. I liked this knife. And I’m running out of knives as it is.”

  Kella stood up, this time with her own fat knife unfolded in her hand, its wide blade bright and shiny in the gas-lit haze of the street. “You talk a lot for a killer.”

  “I’ve heard that before.” The Samaritan tossed her thin blade aside and quickly produced another identical one from inside her white coat. “But not everyone hides in the shadows, stalking their prey like Merin does. I often work in broad daylight, in public, with more witnesses than you might believe.”

  “Oh, I believe you.” Kella wheezed, her chest aching and her head ringing from the last blitzing. A curious green and purple blot drifted across her vision.

  “Thank you, for that.”

  “You and Merin work together? Partners?” She blinked, trying to get the blot out of her sight. It looked too much like a rabbit.

  “Not precisely, no.” The woman ran a finger along her new knife’s edge. “But we run in the same circles. We’re contracted through the same broker.”

  “An assassin’s guild, then?” Kella massaged her chest and arms where she could feel bruises of all sizes forming deep in her skin. “Interesting. Tell me more.” Her head was clearing, but too slowly. I can’t beat her.

  The woman laughed. “You think you’re buying her time, don’t you?” She nodded at the closed door through which Jedira had momentarily appeared. “Letting her escape out the back door while you distract me?”

  Kella froze, a sharp frost blossoming in her gut. “Yes.”

  “Well, that might have worked, but I jammed the back door shut before I came around the front just now, so I’m guessing that, at this moment, she’s down in the basement, pressing up against that door, wondering why it won’t open. Alone, in a dead end. Incredibly convenient for me, really. It’s not the cleverest trick, but it does make the job easier.” The Samaritan spun her knife through the fingers of her uninjured hand, dexterously twirling it back and forth. “Speaking of the job, since Merin didn’t kill you, I suppose I’ll be making a bit extra tonight.”

  Kella exhaled slowly, raising her hands to meet the next assault.

  The woman assumed a similar fighting stance, then smiled and dashed away toward the baker’s door and kicked it in. The rusty lock popped free of the doorsill and the door swung open. A frightened shriek echoed from within. The Samaritan vanished into the dark opening in a flourish of white coattails.

  “Stop!” Kella leapt after her, plunging through the splintered remains of the door and gouging bits of skin from her hands and cheek as she did so. “Don’t touch her! Get back here!” She raced down the narrow hall, spun at the end, and dove down a rickety wooden stair into the cold of the basement where she could hear a lone and terrified voice stammering below. At the bottom, she turned the corner and saw the assassin standing in the center of the room and Jedira Amadi backed up against the cellar door that should have let her up into the alley behind the shop. Jedira’s eyes locked with Kella’s for a moment. Tears streamed down the young woman’s face and a wordless pleading babble tumbled from her pale lips.

  “Hey!” Kella lunged at the Samaritan’s back, but the killer whipped around and smashed a small bony fist into Kella’s throat. She stumbled back into the wall,
stunned, gasping for air, her brain unable to process the chaotic sensations of pain in her neck.

  “I just had a wonderful idea, officer.” The woman spun her long stiletto across her fingers. “What if I kill her and frame you for it? That’s much better than an unexplained body in a basement. There’ll be a scandal in the police department, everyone will lose faith in the government, and there will be fear and chaos in the streets. It’ll be fun.”

  “Never…happen,” Kella croaked as she shuffled forward, her eyes darting from the spinning stiletto to the killer’s eyes and back. “Now just listen. No one has to die. I…I’m willing to cut you a deal in exchange for your…testimony against her, against Lady Sade. You’ll have to do time for killing Usem, but we can work something out.” The sheer effort of talking around her throbbing throat was almost unbearable.

  The woman shrugged. “Or I could just kill her.”

  “No!” Kella dashed forward, only to have a steel-toed boot smash into her belly, slamming her back into the wall and blasting all of the air from her lungs. She fell to all fours, trembling, trying to force herself to inhale and breathe even as she tried to stand back up. Suddenly, she realized that she couldn’t hear Jedira crying anymore.

  The detective sat up just as the Samaritan stepped on her wrist and jerked Kella’s broad knife away. A fist drove her head back into the floor and the basement exploded in green and purple lights. In a daze, Kella watched as the woman in white plunged the thick blade into Jedira’s body lying spread-eagled on the steps below the cellar door.

  The killer paused. “You know, I’d love to leave your own knife in your arm or leg, but I’m afraid that wouldn’t make much sense to the police when they find you, and I would hate to confuse them.” She plunged the blade up into a thick wooden beam overhead. “This won’t make much sense either, but that will just add to the mystery of your raging bloodlust, won’t it?”