“I can’t tell if you’re joking.”
“I get that a lot,” he said.
“What do you write about?”
“People at the end of their rope.”
Her eyes danced at that. “True stories?”
“Depends on your definition. They’re not always factual. But they’re all true.”
“Tell me the names of your books. I might know them.”
“I doubt it.”
“Try me.”
“The Reaper’s Last Mark. No, no one read that. The House of Man Was Built with Bones was the last one.”
She tapped a finger against her lips. “You know, that rings a bell. It’s one of the dimes, right? Those aren’t the full titles. You always have two titles. Like: The House of Man Was Built with Bones; or, The Fires of New Calypso.”
“Looks like I was mistaken. I apologise for doubting you.”
“Don’t act like you’re not pleased with yourself. I can see you trying to hide it.”
“Maybe I’m a little pleased.”
“I always wondered,” she said. “Why the two titles?”
“I can never get it right the first time.”
He drained the last of his beer and tossed a few of the dead kid’s notes on the counter.
“You’re going?” Meryl asked.
“Places to be.” He slipped the silver chip into his pocket.
She bit her lip with calculated precision. “If you have an hour to spare, perhaps we could spend a little more time together.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I have a room.” She paused. “Why are you smiling?”
He checked the time on his tab. “This city. Nowhere else in the system can a man get so much excitement within a couple of hours of leaving his ship.”
“It’s because everyone is here for the same thing,” she said. “I’m staying for a week. I’m planning to spend the days at the casinos and the nights visiting the brothels. The male prostitutes on Temperance are all hand-picked from across the system.”
“You’re liable to break something if you don’t pace yourself with all that,” Eddie said.
She smiled. “I thought maybe you could help me warm up.”
He grinned back and shook his head. “This city. Christ, I’m going to miss it when it’s gone. Thanks for the tip about the chip.” He slipped a 1000 vin bill across to her. “Your next drink’s on me.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather drink it with me? Last chance.”
He stood and waved. “Make sure you stretch before you hit those brothels. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
He was still chuckling to himself as he crossed the bar and pushed open the door to the stairs. What a girl. He might’ve been interested if he hadn’t just had to shoot a man. He’d head to the Crimson Curtain and stake the place out. If it’d been Roy Williams sending a clumsy hitman after him, the casino seemed a good a place as any to investigate. And if it wasn’t Williams, well, Eddie wanted to find out why the hell he’d had to leave that damn kid lying in an alley with a hole clean through his neck.
He rolled the chip between his thumb and forefinger in his pocket as he descended the stairs.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw one of the vid screens flicker to a new advertisement. He went two more steps, then froze. No. It wasn’t. That’s not possible.
He licked his lips, staring straight ahead at the door at the bottom of the stairs. No point looking. He was mistaken. He hadn’t seen what he thought he’d seen. And even if he had—which he hadn’t, because it was impossible—what did it matter? He had enough on his plate. That was the last thing he needed. No need to dig into the past. Not now. Not ever. So keep walking.
But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Not until he was sure. He turned and looked at the vid screen.
Grime had gathered around the edges of the screen, bordering the garish rainbow background of the image. The words Lady Luck Gentlemen’s Club scrolled along the bottom of the picture. In the centre of the screen, three bare-chested women waved enticingly at him from between the busted pixels. The image was grainy and the figures jittered as they moved, the old vid file long corrupted. Two of the women meant nothing to him. Just tits and vacant smiles. But the third woman, the third woman was different.
Eddie leaned close to the screen, straining his eyes to study the woman. Rust-brown hair fell in curls around her narrow face. Longer than she’d ever worn it when Eddie knew her. Her nose was upturned and her eyes were half-closed and smeared with makeup, but he could see the flash of green in a couple of pixels. She was older, she’d filled out a little, become a woman. But it was her.
The screen labelled her Daisy. That was a lie. Her name was Cassandra Diaz. And she was supposed to be dead.
He’d mourned her. He’d almost forgotten her. Except those occasions, maybe once every couple of months. Those times when she’d stray into his head, linger for a moment, and leave, as if she’d never been there.
But none of that mattered now. As soon as he saw that vid, all the feelings came rushing back. She was alive. She’d escaped. She was on Temperance.
A city that was about to die.
His mind was racing so fast he didn’t hear the footsteps coming down the stairs after him.
“Oh, you’re still here,” the voice said.
He blinked and turned and found Meryl watching him, her handbag dangling from her shoulder. A stray lock of hair had fallen across the corner of her left eye.
Her eyes rounded. “What is it?” she asked.
He took two steps back up the stairs, wrapped his hands around her cheeks, and pressed his lips against hers in a bruising kiss.
For half a second, she was stiff. Then she melted into him and he pressed her against the stairway wall and tasted her lips and dragged his hands down her side and sank his teeth into the soft flesh of her shoulder while Cassandra Diaz’s face flickered on the vid screens around him.
He broke the kiss. “Your room. Where’s your room?”
She took his hand and dragged him onto the street and into the hotel opposite. As they rode the elevator up she told him exactly what she needed, every movement and sigh and sweet hurt. And when they got to her room he did it all, and more.
Afterwards, when he untied the necktie that bound her wrists to the bedpost and massaged the glowing pink handprints from the flesh of her bottom, she traced the scratch marks on his chest with her lips and asked him what had changed his mind.
And he began to tell her about Cassandra Diaz.
5
Dom aimed down the sights of her submachine gun as the three figures stepped into the chapel.
“Lookie here,” the front man said as he emerged into the light. His face was criss-crossed with a perfect grid of deep scars. “Ben’s got himself a girlfriend. And look at the size of her.”
The other two grinned. One was a woman, small and spry. Two scars ran across her right eye and turned it milky white. The other was a bruiser of a man clad in a heavy coat. His bald head shone, reflecting the overhead light.
“Hands, all of you,” Dom shouted. “I won’t ask twice.”
The front man raised his arms. His left ended in a stump at the wrist. “You heard the lady. Show her we mean no harm. Go on.”
The other two smirked and raised their hands. The woman gave a fake tremble and stared at Dom with wild eyes.
“Kill them,” Reverend Bollard hissed next to her. “Kill them now, child.”
“Shut up,” Dom said. She raised her voice. “That’s close enough, ladies and gentlemen. Who are you?”
“Will you listen to that?” The man with the criss-cross scars laughed. “Ladies and gentlemen. When was the last time you were called a lady, Daz?”
The woman grinned. “Six and a half years ago. My fiance said it. I remember, because I cut his tongue out later that week. He didn’t say much after that.”
“Ouch,” the front man said. “Daz has a few issues. But don’t m
ind her. This big fella is Greg. And I’m Bones. On account of this.” He waved his stump back and forth. “Spend enough time in solitary and it gets to a man. It’s the boredom. I was a gambler, home-grown Temperance lad, in fact. So when I was eight months into my solitary stretch, I had a thought. To keep myself occupied I’d shoot some craps. Only I didn’t have any dice. And that’s when I got the idea, you see. One of the guards smuggled me in a knife, and I started cutting. Right here.” He pointed to his stump. “There’s still a few scars from where I cut the wrong place. You can’t imagine how much it hurt. How much it bled. But I got the hand off in the end. And then I started skinning it, stripping all the flesh off, right back to the bone. It was hard, trying to do it with one arm. But I got better. And when I had the bones, I started carving them. Whittling them down. And pretty soon I had a whole collection of dice to play with. Handmade, so to speak.”
He laughed, a crooked, uneven laugh. The back of Dom’s neck went cold.
“You know the funniest thing?” he said when his laugh subsided. “The very next day they let me out of solitary. And they took my dice. One of the guards, he laughed his fucking arse off when he saw what I’d done. I watched him take my dice and toss them into the trash chute to be shot out into space. Laughing the whole time. Laughing, laughing. I very much enjoyed dislocating his shoulders so he’d fit in the trash chute all those months later.” He licked his lips and stared at Dom. “There, now we’re all introduced. Best friends now. So why don’t you tell us why you’re trying to get poor little Ben to tell you about Roy Williams?”
“None of you are my concern,” Dom said. Her hands were steady on her gun. “If you’re fugitives from the Bolt, your records are lost. Maybe some stalker out there wants your head. Not me. I will shoot all three of you down if I have to and the Federation will thank me. But I have no desire to do so.”
“Ain’t that magnanimous of her?” Bones took a step forward, arms still raised. “You wouldn’t think of killing us in God’s house, would you?”
“I’m looking for Roy Williams. That’s all. Where is he?”
Bones shrugged. “What makes you think we’d know where the old bastard is?”
“You broke out of the Bolt together. You hijacked a shuttle and station-hopped to Temperance with him. You know where he is.”
The preacher edged close to her. “Please kill them, child. Now. Now, before they kill us both.”
“What’s that, Ben?” Bones said. “You’re not asking her to shoot us down, are you? I don’t think we’d be very happy about that. Not after we’ve had so much fun together, robbing the poor bastards who came in here looking for God.” He turned his smile back to Dom. “Do you know much about Ben? He does pull off the preacher act quite well, I’ll give him that. Tell her when you found your precious Luminary, Ben.”
“We have to go,” the preacher hissed.
“Shut the hell up,” she said, keeping her eyes on Bones. The scarred convict was still edging forward. His comrades blocked the only exit she could see.
“Fine, I’ll tell her,” Bones said. “Ben here, he’s been looking for the Luminary his whole life, or so I hear. What’s the principle of the Luminary? Purity. And what’s the purest thing in the universe? Any guesses?” He held his arms out. “Why, it’s children, of course. So Ben went looking for the Luminary in children. How many counts of rape were you convicted of in the end, Ben? Forty? Fifty? That was only the ones they could prove, of course. I bet it didn’t even scratch the surface.”
“Stop moving,” Dom demanded. “One more step and I shoot.”
Bones stopped and his smile dropped from his face. “I’m trying to explain things to you. Why do you have to be so fucking rude, huh? I’m trying to explain things. I’m trying to explain that you’ve got one chance to leave this chapel, stalker. You put down that gun, empty your pockets, and then you walk out of here and leave Temperance. One little chance. Or Ben’s precious Luminary is going to get a blood sacrifice.”
“I’m not leaving this chapel without the whereabouts of Roy Williams, sir.”
He shook his head. “A shame. A real shame.” He brightened suddenly, his grin slipping back into place. “What am I saying? It’s always fun seeing a Fed dog die. Ben, I’m very disappointed in you. But I’m also a very forgiving man. If you want to live, well, you know what to do.”
A knife sang behind Dom. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a flash of silver.
“Shit,” she said, pulling her gun around as the preacher launched himself at her, a heavy knife slashing towards her face.
She squeezed the trigger. The Marauder submachine gun bucked and roared and screamed in her hands. Red flowers blossomed across the preacher’s chest. His face caved in. The stink of gunsmoke filled her nostrils.
A round screeched past her, close enough to tug at her duster coat as it passed through. She dived away from the toppling preacher behind a row of seats as the three convicts fired the guns they’d pulled. Bullets pinged off the metal chairs, ricocheting around her.
The roar of gunfire in the closed space rang in her ears. She crawled along the ground as shots punctured the air around her.
Fucking Eddie. He should’ve been here to back her up.
Under the rows of seats she saw feet hurrying down the centre aisle. Dom rolled herself over and squeezed off a burst of gunfire. The ankles were ripped apart in a cloud of red mist. The figure toppled with a scream. The female convict’s face dropped into view, twisted up in pain. Dom fired another burst and put her out of her misery.
Bones was shouting over the gunfire, but the words were muddy in Dom’s ears. She scrambled onto all fours and dived aside as a burst of fire came crashing through the chairs, slamming into the ground where she’d been lying.
The gunfire ceased for a moment.
“Did you get her?” Bones yelled.
A grunt from the big one. Dom edged to the end of the aisle and peeked out.
A gun barrel stared at her from across the chapel. It flashed and she threw herself out of cover as the air was filled with the screams of gunfire once more. She fired back, blind, as she ducked into an alcove. Bullets chewed splinters out of the wall inches from her head.
The gunfire stopped again. The big one grunted and swore. Dom ducked and swung her Marauder out of cover. The bald bruiser struggled to hide himself behind a row of chairs as he slammed a new magazine into his assault rifle.
Dom lined him up and squeezed the trigger without a thought. He fell with a gurgling scream.
“Fucking hell!” Bones screamed from across the room. For a moment she couldn’t make him out through the smoke. Then there was a wisp of movement and a flash of a pistol shot.
It scraped the air alongside her arm. She squeezed off an instinctive burst as she pulled back into cover. Her magazine ran dry. But not before she heard Bones cry out. She tossed the submachine gun, drew her heavy revolver, and strode quickly out of cover.
Bones leaned panting against a chair, sweat pouring down his forehead and trickling through the scars on his face. Blood coated his right thigh. He glared at her with gritted teeth and shakily raised his pistol.
Dom fired and two of Bones’ fingers disappeared. He dropped the pistol with a scream, toppling onto the floor in a pool of his own blood.
“Fuck you,” he spat.
Dom planted her boot on his wrist and pointed her sidearm at his last three fingers. A groan bubbled out of his throat.
The air was thick with the stink of blood and smoke. It was almost choking. The gunfight had only lasted a few seconds. But she felt as exhausted as if she’d spent three days hauling crates around the Solitude’s cargo hold.
“Roy Williams,” she said. Her voice sounded thick in her ears. “Where is he?”
He snarled up at her. “You’re bleeding, bitch.”
She touched her shoulder. Her fingers came away streaked with blood. Only a scratch. She shrugged. “So are you. Roy Williams. Tell me now.”
“How the fuck should I know where the bastard is? He used our help to bring us to this dying shithole and then he went underground. He went underground with my fucking money!”
“You’re lying. You know where he is. The preacher knew.”
He gave a hacking laugh. “He’s not a goddamn preacher. I told you that. He’s a convict, just like us. And he knew shit. Little piss pot.”
“He contacted the Feds. Told them he had information.”
“You think a fugitive would be stupid enough to call up the Feds and tell them to send a stalker—” Something flashed behind his eyes. His jaw went stiff. “The augment.” His head rolled back in a delirious smile. “The fucking augment. I’ll kill him. I’ll….”
He went still.
Dom growled and booted him in the head to make sure he was really out. He didn’t make a sound. What augment was he talking about? If Bollard hadn’t called the Feds, then who in the name of Man had?
The smoke was slowly clearing. Dom stepped away from Bones and found the other convicts. She checked them, but it was obvious they were all dead. None carried identification, nothing but a pack of smokes on the woman and a collection of knives on Bollard. She’d been careless to turn her back on him. She knew better than to trust someone who called himself a preacher.
Something creaked. Dom froze over Bollard’s body, tuning her ears to the sound. It had come from the back of the church, to the left of the pulpit. There was silence for a moment. Then another creak. Footsteps. Footsteps trying hard not to be heard. She scanned the wall. Her eyes fell on a thick white curtain in the far corner. Just to the right of it she could see a crack in the wall panelling. A door. There was a mechanical chattering sound. Someone jimmying the electronic lock.
She slipped across the room as silently as she could and pressed herself into the alcove where she’d taken cover during the firefight. As the lock gave a quiet beep, she picked up her empty submachine gun and tugged the curtain closed around her.
Hinges whispered. The door opening. A long pause. Then scuffling footsteps. Someone light, small, like a rat. Dom pressed her revolver tight against her hip and held her breath.
Stalker's Luck (Solitude Saga Book 1) Page 4