Heart of Knives (The Complex Book 0)

by LV Lewis

  Despite her views, Corilynn still loves a challenge. Reaching her office feels just like being home. It’s comfortable, easy to get re-acquainted, and she knows what needs to be done. At her desk, there’s a note that takes away from the familiarity.

  Corilynn, come into my office immediately upon arrival. -- Doug Sied.

  Doug Sied is a goblin and Corilynn’s boss. This is the first time he’s left a note for her to come see him. Any other time, he’d come to her desk. Suddenly worried that something happened to him, she lifts into the air and goes straight to his office as ordered.

  The door to Doug’s office is closed, but Corilynn can hear a heated discussion taking place inside. The walls are soundproof enough that she’s only catching mumbles. The mumbling pitch rises, then the office door flies open, nearly smashing the glass surrounding it. Luke Abbey huffs out with a red face and enough testosterone to drown somebody. Corilynn makes sure to skirt his path to avoid being foot-smashed or hand-tossed.

  “You’re gonna be held responsible, Abbey!” comes from within the office.

  Corilynn gently knocks on the door before entering.

  “I . . . can come back later if . . . ”

  “No, Corilynn. Thank Gibhron’s Ghost you’re here. There was an accident. At Uni Ama Security last night. Lots of magic thrown around, lots of explosions, and severe damage to the building’s infrastructure. Go down there, and see if magic can fix the problem. If not, we’ve gotta get the Human crew up and running before an even bigger problem develops in the surrounding structures.”

  Corilynn knows that is Amarie’s bodyguard’s security firm. Did something happen to the princess? Doug gives her a quizzical look, but she shakes her head and smiles.

  “You got it, Boss. I’ll look everything over and determine what needs to be done.”

  “Good. Just message me over your communicator when you know what’s what.”

  Corilynn nods, noting that she flies a little too fast out the door to avoid looking conspicuous. Doesn’t matter, she won’t be able to focus on the job anyway until she knows Princess Amarie is not lying dead underneath a building. Nobody is going to shame her for being worried about her friend. Anybody who attempts to slow her down to do so will discover how big a bitch a sprite can be.

  ***

  Uni Ama Security looks fine from the outside on a structural level. No obvious cracks show the signs of damage from below. Auto-tuned to recognize such things, this is good news, in the fact that surrounding structures are most likely not in immediate danger, at least not at the moment.

  Buzzing through the air, she does her best not to see the Intra officers covering the area, nor the yellow tape that pretends to hold out intruders. She flies over the tape and ignores several cries to stop. Reaching the morning shadow of the building, Corilynn stops long enough to cast an invisibility spell on herself. It won’t last long, but enough to get her under the building and away from suspicious officers attempting to keep her out.

  Hurriedly, Corilynn flies through the front doors and begins searching for a way downstairs. It’s not difficult. There are enough bodies in the building to make her think of flies covering something sticky . . . or dead. No, don’t think that way. Not yet. All she must do is follow the trail of too many people. This leads her through the oversized lobby, down a long corridor where the walls were blown open and inward on both sides. In front of her, a savagely beaten steel door remains half-standing, and a mess of wires hangs down from within the next room. Getting through here proves slightly tricky with such tight quarters, and more Intra officers moving clumsily past each other, but she makes it with athleticism and a little patience.

  A crate sits open and empty, and the primary focus of the official flies buzzing about. Corilynn thinks they should be paying far more attention to the blasted hole in the floor, and who might be underneath the rubble. Flying up to the ceiling, Corilynn cancels her invisibility spell, then circles her way back down. Unsurprisingly, nobody asks her where she came from or to what arm of Ama Seldova she belongs.

  Unable to help herself, she stops to look at the edges of the floor hole. Not completely clean, but not broken enough to be caused by an explosive blast, Corilynn can tell magic was used to make the cuts. What spells were used, she is unable to decipher, but it’s clear this place was, in fact, attacked last night. Corilynn hangs her head; this means Princess Amarie was attacked. What will she find underneath the rubble?

  Flying into the hole, Corilynn also notes how what should be a mostly whole slab of flooring is instead in hundreds of hundreds of much smaller pieces. How would the floor fall then blow up? Not expecting much, Corilynn allows her mind to immerse itself in the Beam, channeling it to search for magic down here. She does not find the princess’ particular magic signature, but she does find at least a dozen bodies gleaming with magical residue. She also sees traces of unspent potential energy and several zones of spent kinetic energy that wasn’t magic. The engineer in her mind jumps up and down like a caffeinated gnome that discovered a shiny object. The floor was blown up by explosives of some kind.

  Her mind settled that Princess Amarie is not dead, Corilynn decides to show the other flies where the bodies, and possibly some answers, are hidden from plain sight.

  ***

  Hours later, Corilynn is exhausted. Dealing with the red tape that is Climintra, slogging through miles of flooring and pipes to examine any and all damage, and keeping in constant contact with updates for Doug leaves her wings and body feeling limp. Turns out the Human refortification teams will be working overtime for a while. Fortunately for Corilynn, there is only one more stretch of piping to follow, and she can call it a day.

  Being underground may not be super comfortable, but there’s no question about the quiet. A sprite can get lost in her thoughts down here where nothing but the hum of the above world and unobtrusive slap of water flowing through the pipes interferes. Corilynn thinks on what brought her to the Complex.

  The war tore chunks out of every race’s soul, population, and dream of a future. For Corilynn, the Humans are the worst of all. Sprites existed on Earth before its condemnation at the hands of Humans. She wasn’t there herself, nor were her parents, but sprites share a vivid collective memory. In that memory, Humans polluted the planet, overburdened her resources, and refused to give back anything taken. When it got to the point that the Humans needed the world as much as she needed them, they attempted to fix things. It was far too late. Earth could no longer carry the burden, so the Humans left her to die. They didn’t even have the honor to die with her.

  Sprites were able to hide on their spaceships, but did so with every intent of dying. Back then, it was believed that sprites needed the energy of Earth to survive, that she alone provided the Beam. It did not take long for them to realize they would survive, for the Beam was still there in the vacuum of space, on every planet the Humans colonized, and in every crevice of the universe discovered afterward.

  This memory of Humans never leaves Corilynn’s mind. Even the knowledge that Temera probably sacrificed herself to save Princess Amarie does little to change her mind. So why join the mission of the Complex? The honest answer is one Corilynn can’t admit to herself, never mind her friends: Corilynn wants to find a reason to forgive them. She wants to be able to accept Humans now that they have survived the war with all the other Metas. They aren’t going to suddenly disappear, they’ve made that as clear as day. However, her reason to forgive humans hasn’t materialized yet.

  A vulgar buzzing interrupts Corilynn and brings her back to the now. Taking a close look at the pipes, she finds nothing out of place other than the scritches of rats. Listening closer, she begins to suspect the direction of the sound is originating about a mile west. Well, she thinks, this is definitely in the realm of abnormal. Better go check it out.

  Making her way underground, attempting to follow a sound through passes that are no better than pipes, proves challenging for Corilynn. There comes the point where sh
e no longer knows for sure where she is, and the map she brought is no help. Strange, because it almost seems she is being hypnotized and released in regular intervals to purposefully confuse her. Why would somebody want to do that?

  Regardless of the reason, she finds herself getting closer to the sound’s origin. The closer she gets, the more scared she becomes. Corilynn knows this sound. The buzzing is becoming more distinct, less jumbled as she makes her way to it. Turning around what seems like the hundredth corner, the buzzing becomes less buzz saw and more . . . no.

  It’s the noise she dreamed of last night. What was a buzzing is now the horrible gnashing of metal teeth. Turning one last time, Corilynn comes face to face with a horror beyond imagining.

  Before her, a machine hovers in midair, blades coiling and whipping through the air and striking each other, making the awful sound that lured her here. Though not sentient, she can feel the heavy magic that went into its construction. Studying it more, Corilynn realizes something else both wonderful and absolutely terrifying about the machine. It is in touch with the Beam. It’s the answer to the energy crisis Corilynn herself is supposed to find. The Beam is infinite, and somebody tapped straight into it to power this machine, which in turn is using that energy for . . . what? Corilynn is unable to follow the Beam’s paths after entering the device, it insulates the Beam’s workings once inducted into the machine’s needs.

  “Oh. Fuck. Me.”

  “Don’t worry, Corilynn, it will feel much more like a lover’s caress than the rape of your abilities.”

  Corilynn turns around, and her face blanches.

  “You . . . ”

  “Shhhh.”

  Strangle Vines

  Princess Amarie’s breath is short but hushed as she lies underneath the blankets Gary provided her upon reaching the safehouse. They had not been pursued after exiting the underground tunnels, which Amarie thought meant they weren’t followed. Gary was not convinced. Because of this, he’s patrolling the building’s perimeter. Amarie’s claustrophobia is not absent under the blankets, but it’s not choking her, either.

  His paranoia of possibly missing something led to him demanding she stay under the blankets until he returned and used a safeword. So much safety language, yet she feels as far from safe as a fish on a fishing line outside of water. The door squeaks and Amarie’s fear spikes as footsteps echo off the concrete floor and the door closes with a muffled click.

  “Yesterday.”

  The safe word. Thank the mihres, it is Gary. His voice sounds flat, defeated. Amarie can’t even imagine the pain he’s experiencing. He just lost another sister-in-arms in another battle with Metas. She’s half-surprised he hasn’t left this Meta to her own devices. Worse yet, she has to tell him something, and it won’t make things between them any easier.

  Flipping the blankets off herself, Amarie looks at her bodyguard with soft, empathic eyes. He stares back at her with none of the same softness, but equal empathy. Guilt rises in the princess as she prepares herself for the inevitable backlash coming her way.

  “Gary, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m . . . sorry, Gary. I could’ve saved her. Temera. Except I couldn’t because I was too scared and you told me to run. So I did. I ran, and I didn’t save her. I’m sorry.”

  Tears slide down her cheeks; this is so much more complicated than she’d believed. There’s nothing she wishes more right now than to go back in time and make things right. Gary starts making sense of what she’d just told him, and his eyes go wild with fire. She can all but see the heat in his body rise, and she can see him go stiff in his legs and arms. Terrified at what the next few seconds hold, Amarie closes her eyes.

  “You,” Gary’s throat closes in on itself. “You could have saved her? From what, death? Being outnumbered at least seven to one? What could you have possibly done?”

  Gary’s eyes are hard, staring into, and through, the princess. She feels it, feels his calmness shrinking and his empathy going cold. She brought up Temera. She brought up his pain and feelings of uselessness. Amarie knows she cannot hide from his anger, she must face him. Opening her own eyes, she is forced to look away as he refocuses on her. Gods, he’s dangerous. Gary stalks up to her, squaring his soldier’s shoulders and staring her down.

  Suddenly angry, Amarie stares back at him as she stands. “Yes. I could have done something. And I’m trying really hard to apologize, but all you’re going to do is intimidate me for it? Fuck you, Mr. Locke. I am sorry. Sorry, I’m in need of protection. Sorry I was fucking threatened to begin with. Sorry you had to get the job. I’m fucking sorry for everything that has happened in your fucking life in the last twenty-four hours. Most of all though, I’m sorry for thinking you were anything close to an honorable man who wouldn’t dare bully someone so apparently weaker than himself.”

  Her anger spent, Amarie collapses back onto the blankets below her and openly weeps. No way is this Gary Locke. She saw into his soul, saw his darkest depths and brightest heights, and nowhere did she find any hint of a man who hated women. Metas yes, but not women, not females. Who then, is standing before her? A changeling? No, because the charm affecting the two of them would tell her if he was not the real Gary Locke. By the mihres, can she not stop crying so freely in front of him?

  “Is this what you want, Gary? I can’t stop . . . believing . . . that all of this is my fault.”

  “No,” he answers, far more quickly than Amarie expects. “This is not what I want. I just lost my only friend in this place. The idea that she could still be here caught me off guard. I’d almost accepted her being gone. I’m sorry, too.”

  Amarie does not look up, but watches as his boots slide away from her personal space. Getting to her knees on top of the blankets, she convinces herself to look at Gary. His shoulders are slumped, even more defeated than before. His back is to her, but she can see the ghost of his face as he stares out the one window available. Tears are running down his face now. He makes a fist and slams it into the wall. Once. Twice. Three times. The fist falls to his side, then uncurls to show bloodied knuckles. The concrete wall remains unchanged.

  A man in sorrow is one of life’s most gut-wrenching scenes. Men who are supposed to be strong, meant to be leaders, are even harder to witness. Most of the time, these men will wait until there is nobody to see the sadness coursing through them before letting it out. Gary could have left again but decided to stay, to allow Amarie to see his despair as openly as she had let him see her anger. No, not her anger. Her hopelessness in the face of failing a person who needed her to be strong.

  Her heart breaks many times over watching him cry. The strings binding their souls together twinge ever harder deep within her chest, until she too is crying. Not for failing to save Temera, but for the simple loss of somebody dear. Reaching this point, a part of her lets go of the willpower keeping her distant from Gary. She stands, almost decides against her own judgment, then steps lightly over to Gary and wraps both arms around him, snuggling her face into the crease between his shoulders.

  Gary’s throat catches between sobs, but he does not attempt to move away. Amarie slowly moves her hands down from Gary’s chest to his waist. Her inner voice screams to stop, to back away from this man before her willpower ultimately fails. Her fingers trace the muscles underneath cloth as she argues internally, quietly, happy Gary cannot see her face. Worry plagues her, but the emotional bond is becoming too intense for her to deny. One by one, she decries each worried thought. One by one, she cuts the maze of vines she grew in her mind to block out her feelings for Gary.

  Erihstoll enters her mind at last, and Amarie can feel all that she is resisting against cutting that last vine that tethers her to him. This is the final decision. If she denies Erihstoll now, she is ending the relationship they have built together. Years of emotions, promises, and plans sit precariously balanced on a precipice. She can’t decide; she wants both, and neither. Her fingers grip Gary’s
shirt, then release, then grip again. She places her lips on the back of his shirt, wanting his skin so much she’s shaking. Why you, Gary Locke? Are you really what I need? Are you all I need? These questions are re-growing the vines she’s just cut down. Second by second, she’s losing Gary to Erihstoll. Is that what she wants?

  Gary turns slowly around, careful to keep her arms around him. He tilts her head up, staring into green eyes moistened by fear, hope, terror, sadness, and questions. Amarie finds none of the anger left in his gray eyes. Instead, they are quizzical, searching, and most of all empathic. She feels his arms slip around her, his hands respectfully resting just above the arch in her back. She feels the heat in his groin despite her own. His scent invades her nostrils, and she welcomes the sweat and fear, but also the anger and sorrow nestled into his natural odor. All you have to do is kiss me, Gary Locke, and there will be nothing left within me to resist you.

  Gary leans in, skin brushing skin. Amarie feels the full brunt of his mustache tickling her face. By the barest of measurements, their lips finally touch, and Amarie turns her head away. Her blush is beyond red, and she tries to step away in order to hide. Gary’s arms remain locked around her.

  “No ma’am. Let me see you blush,” Gary whispers.

  The demand shocks her and sends her vision spinning, but she does as he asks. This causes her blush to deepen. Her cheeks must be purple by now. Still, her vision settles and finds Gary smiling wickedly at her. Amarie can’t decide whether or not he’s mocking her, and thus cannot decide whether to be angry or turned on. Well, the latter is a definitive, damn him.

  “That’s better, I like that,” Gary says.

  He releases her from his iron grip, allowing her to step away if she wishes. Still stunned, Amarie stays in place.

  “You kissed me,” she whispers.

  “You’re undecided. It’s not fun if both people aren’t all in,” Gary replies.

  “I’m a great kisser.”