Holly pulled her gun out of the waistband holster and went to the door of the bedroom. She could hear them out there talking, two males. She inhaled deep and let it out slowly. She made sure her gun was charged, checked the readings, glanced back at Charly and Odeon, who were both watching her. They nodded at her as though they knew what she was going to do. She wasn’t sure they knew. But Holly didn’t need someone else to tell her what to do this time. This time she knew.
She flipped off her mic, but kept her earpiece in. She left the room and closed the door softly behind her. It wouldn’t drown out all the noise, but it would take care of some of it. The boy had already been traumatized. Kidnapping? How did a kid recover from that? It was so fucked up.
This time perhaps it would help him, to know that he was worth the battle.
THIRTY-NINE
“HEY, what the fuck?” One of the men said as Holly walked out of the hallway into the room, her gun aimed between them. They pulled their own guns out and pointed them at her as they got up from the stools at the kitchen counter. One of the thugs was a Constie with the startling reflective shards in his skin like fired-porcelain, and pale green hair. The other thug was a tall human with a square, muscular jaw and small nose. Both were large, wearing the Shadow Coalition black attire, and sporting the cephalopods of Joopa tattoos on their necks.
“You tell me.” Holly kept her gun pointed at them. “Looks like you boys are doing some terrible shit with kids. Do I have that right?”
They exchanged a look with each other. The Constie shrugged and then spoke with a soft accent. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. There are no children here.”
She laughed, coldly. “You’re a terrible liar. You did see which room I just came from? I don’t think human trafficking goes over well with the Centau. Hell, it doesn’t go over well with me, and I’m just a corrupt human.”
Neither of them said anything. The Constie seemed to be in charge and answered her again. “They wouldn’t like murder either. Let me show you how much I care about that.” He lowered his stance and adjusted his aether gun in preparation to shoot at her.
Holly ducked behind one of the sofas for cover. Where she’d been standing, three balls of aether energy exploded against the shelves lining the wall, eating away the framework and the curios upon it. The remaining pieces of the display crashed to the floor in a cloud of dust and flying shrapnel.
“I agree. I don’t care either,” she shouted above the ruckus. “My turn!”
A warning seemed fair. After all, she wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer. Her back was against the sofa, so she turned and peeked over the top, pulling the trigger in their direction. It was a warning shot. But perhaps she’d get lucky and hit one of the men. Both of them ducked for cover, scattering, the human diving behind the kitchen counter and the Constie overturning the dining table and crouching behind it.
Holly lowered herself back down. She crawled on her hands and knees away from where she’d been hiding. They would shoot where they’d seen her—she had to get away fast. Aether weapons turned objects into dust in one or two hits.
As she moved she could hear the thugs whispering, and then in a cascade of aether gunfire, her former protection disintegrated behind her. The sound of the sofa crackling and sizzling pushed her faster to the armchair. It barely concealed her. She knew she only had moments before the thugs figured out that this was where she had gone.
Her arms burned and her knees ached from the beating they’d just taken against the hard tile flooring where the rugs didn’t reach. Her fingers still pulsed with the faint pain of having been smashed during her tumble with the guard in the hallway.
She held her breath to collect her thoughts. How many shots had the Coalition thugs fired? She should have been counting. They must be reloading, she realized, because neither of them had taken another shot after they destroyed the sofa.
How long could this stand off last? Holly only had the aether cartridge in her gun. She wasn’t even equipped to reload. So she either had to take them both out with one cartridge or have a way to get one of the thug’s guns after she killed him.
She was going to kill them? Was that what she was doing here? Had she already decided that?
Oh my god, she thought, a hollow feeling growing in her gut. She was going to be sick. She was sincerely contemplating killing. Again.
Her mind flashed back to that fateful night with Graf.
This wasn’t the time to rehash what had happened.
She had to focus.
But she couldn’t.
It only took a split second, a moment, and everything that had transpired that night with Graf came flooding into her mind. How she’d arrived home later than usual. Excited about some breakthrough with one of her students. Something she wanted to share with Graf. But the moment she saw him—the shades of anger on his face, the hunted look in his eyes that transformed into hostility toward her—she knew it would be a bad night. These mood-swings were so familiar, though unpredictable.
Her mistake? Holly had forgotten to tell him she’d be late.
For thirty minutes she remembered tiptoeing around the subject of her “selfish mistake.” She had apologized profusely. Reassured him that it was just the regular thing she did as a teacher: meeting with parents. It was nothing.
He didn’t believe her. She was cheating on him. She was with someone else. He knew it. He wanted to go through all her communication. He wanted that truth.
She begged. Let me throw a dinner together. We can have a nice time. Some Druiviin champagne.
He hit her and hit her. His fist felt like a club against her body. She fought back. That didn’t end well. He broke her down quickly. Her slender frame, already hurt, was like a feather against a hurricane.
It wasn’t unusual, the hitting. What was unusual this time was that he struck her in the face. Several times. That was when she realized he wasn’t turning back. He would finish the job.
She heard it in his mad murmurings to himself as she tried to crawl across the floor, away from him. Her primal mind had flipped on. She sought shelter somewhere. Beneath the table. Down the hall. Anywhere.
There was none.
She’d lain there, barely aware, half-listening to him muttering as the come-down replaced his anger. His demons exorcised upon her. Lucid, rational thought returned to him. Now he was clear-minded. And afraid. He would be found out.
He needed to finish the job. He needed to destroy the evidence.
Her.
He left.
When he came back, she was waiting. A broken and bruised, damaged woman. She could barely see out her own eyes, yet she saw well enough to discover that he carried supplies: a canvas sheet. Saws.
His police-issue aether gun was in Holly’s hands. She didn’t even care about the look of fear in his eyes. Holly had already cried for him over the years. And for herself. Her heart was a lump of rock at that point.
It was still so vivid in her head. Night in the city crept in outside their windows, a stifling air hung in their condo, wet and heavy and full of the smell of defeat. The ghosts of her being repeatedly broken at his hands, shadows of her former self, slinked into the dusk-filled corners and watched with fearful eyes.
What was Holly about to do?
She felt little for him as the aether projectiles ripped through his large, brutal body.
The memories of it washed over her in a tidal wave of bitterness, rage, fear, and that strange cold primitive sense of kill or be killed. That thing: it was cold iron instead of heart. A non-feeling, more a state of being. There was no judgment in it, simply the recognition that to live, there was something she would be forced to do, and that was destroy someone else. It chased away doubt and compassion. She knew that Graf’s life was littered with the castings of emotional abuse and violent beatings as a child—things no child should ever have to endure. That was why she had stayed so long with him: compassion. He’d been a victim himself.
And sh
e had once loved him.
The problem was that he’d never loved her. There was no way to love her. The only person he could love was himself. The capacity to love, she’d realized that night when he’d left her in a beaten, bloody mess on the floor of their condo, had been stripped from him as a boy. Holly was his tool. Holly made him feel good about himself. And that was how he used her: when she did what he wanted, he was happy. When she didn’t do what he wanted, he made her pay for it.
And what had been done to him as a child, that was the problem with the thugs. The traffickers—they were doing something that would create more Grafs. More adults who would hurt others.
They had to be stopped.
The reflection lasted as long as a nighttime lighting chain across the surface of Ixion, seen from Kota, witnessed in awe and respect. And she saw this past memory as though out-of-body.
Yes. She would be killing tonight. They were trying to kill her. They would create monsters and unleash them on the world.
She rose from her crouched position behind the armchair. She wanted to draw their fire. Wanted to walk the edge between sanity and insanity, to know that she only held onto her own life narrowly. The Constie peeked over the edge of the dining table and saw her. He took two shots, but Holly dove forward and rolled away. The shock of the collision with the ground was a distant nuisance. Her body hurt in multiple places, but she leapt back to her feet and quickly and fired twice at the dining table where the Constie hid. One bullet shredded a hole in the wood of the table, making way for the next projectile that connected with the Constie.
Holly flinched, knowing she’d hurt him.
Would he flinch knowing he’d hurt one of these children? she asked herself.
Her pulse raced. Her body felt like it wasn’t hers. This was all stranger than she’d ever thought it could be. She didn’t relish this. At all. In fact, she felt a bit sick. Had she just killed the Constie?
She was almost to the table just as the human thug popped up on the other side of the kitchen island and fired three times at her. The balls of purple fire came at her, she dropped, trying to get away from them. The projectiles missed by a fraction of an inch, and the orbs of energy whizzed by, crackling and fizzing as they passed over her, singeing her hair.
“Shit,” she muttered. She was now face to face with the Constie. His dark eyes stared unseeing at the dining room wall, where a large piece of artwork was hanging, made from melted and fused wine bottles. His gun was still clutched in his dead hand.
She’d done that. Her guts roiled. Hold onto your stomach. Hold on.
She closed her eyes and took deep breaths. I’m not going to be able to do this to the human. The Constie, well, maybe that was a bit easier. He wasn’t her kin. He was the other. He was far away from her relationally speaking.
It wasn’t fair to admit, either. But it was true.
The human. He was like a cousin. Closer to her than a Constie, a Druiviin, a Centau.
A scuffing sound. Her eyes flashed open and she saw the barrel of the human thug’s aether gun poking around the kitchen island where he was hiding.
Instinct kicked in. Holly ripped the Constie’s aether gun from his hand and fired the remaining rounds into the corner of the island until just a bit of it remained. She didn’t see the human. Maybe he’d gotten away. Or maybe he was dead.
Holly put the Constie’s gun down and grabbed her own off the ground and clenched it tightly in her hand. She only had two shots left, if she remembered right.
The human thug must have been calculating things himself, and decided that she had to reload after all the shooting she’d done, not counting on the fact that she’d used his companion’s gun. He suddenly stood and began shooting at her. Holly dove away, rolling madly, trying anything to dodge the projectiles. She felt a searing pain in her left arm. Grazed by a ball of aether energy. She sniffed and caught the odor of her slightly cooked clothes. As she skidded on her side across the tile floor, heading for the far wall under the wine bottle artwork, Holly took aim with her own aether gun and shot twice at the human thug.
She was terrible with guns. Only one projectile hit him.
But one bullet was enough.
He crashed into the surrounding countertop and fell.
As Holly lay there, her ears ringing, the blood rushing in her head, she took stock of her own wounds and wondered if she’d done the right thing.
She exhaled sharply. The air in the condo was quiet except for the sound of crackling energy still burning itself out all over the room.
“Holly?” Charly’s voice came from the hallway.
She rose and stood over the human thug and shook her head.
“I’m here,” she said, quietly. Half the thug’s chest had been torn away from the gun. Sickness rose in throat, she turned away. For a moment she saw a flash of a memory, of Graf’s body singed and burned from the entire set of aether charges being unloaded into him. Here, she’d exercised control. This time the rage wasn’t personal.
“You OK? Odeon and I got worried.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t come out.”
“I would have, but the little boy was crying. He could hear the guns.”
“Thanks for taking care of him,” Holly said. She picked her way over the wreckage and joined Charly.
“You did it?” Charly asked in a hushed tone.
Holly nodded, then lurched, almost vomiting.
Charly wrapped her arms around Holly. “I get it.”
Holly softly pushed her friend away. “I think I’m OK. They tried to kill me first. It was . . . the whole thing reminded me of what happened with Graf.”
“You’re tough girl.”
They both fell silent. Holly avoided her friend’s gaze. Then they went back into the room, where the boy huddled on the chair, holding his ears. Odeon was still humming.
“Let’s get out of here. Before someone calls the police,” Holly said. “Did you guys get his name?”
Charly shook her head. “Not yet.”
“That’s OK. Xadrian will tell me. He probably doesn’t want to talk.”
On their way out of the room, Holly tried to shield the boy from seeing the dead bodies. Yes, it had been a war, but she didn’t want him to be more traumatized by the grisly scene of ravaged bodies.
“It’s OK, don’t look,” she said.
“You killed them?” he asked, his voice small and frightened.
“Do you think they deserved to live?” Charly asked. “After what they did to you?”
The boy didn’t answer.
“Adults are supposed to keep kids safe. These men weren’t keeping you safe.” Holly said. “An adult that hurts kids shouldn’t get to live in the same world as kids. Remember that. And also, they tried to kill me first.”
Holly pulled out her communicator and turned her mic back on as they left the suite and hurried to the elevator and down to the Spireway platform. She waited to call Xadrian, but she didn’t plan to wait long. Charly communicated with Darius and Shiro. As they left the building and ran across the walkways to the platform, Shiro suddenly stepped out from behind a pillar and joined them. Darius’s voice came over the comms that he’d secured a gondola and to just keep moving, cut through the line. He’d control it from back at the bird’s nest. Odeon let out his war cry, and the line of Centau and Druiviin ducked in reaction to the sound. Shiro led them to the front of the line and they boarded the gondola Darius had appropriated for them. Aboard the gondola, Holly got Xadrian on the communicator.
“We got the amulet.”
“Excellent,” Xadrian said. “Is that everything you got?”
“I suppose you mean the child?” Holly said, her voice quivering with suppressed irritation.
“Oh thank god,” Xadrian said.
“You mean, thank Holly Drake?”
“Whatever works for you,” Xadrian said. “Meet me at the Glassini bar. I’ll take both.”
“And give me my money?”
“Of course, HD.”
FORTY
“THANK you for returning my son,” the official said. He wore a black suit, a vest and a ruffled button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled, and a top-hat. He would have gotten along with Shiro, Holly thought as she watched him, warily.
“And the Eye.” Holly sipped the Helian whiskey.
“I don’t give a shit about the Eye,” he said, his voice dripping with disdain. “The bastards fucked with me. Taking my child.”
“What I hear in your voice there, that’s about how I feel about it.”
“Little Malcolm says you killed the men.”
“I have a reason for that,” she said. “I’m sorry if it disturbed him any more than necessary.”
“I’m glad you did it.”
“Well, alright then.” She thought about it, wrapping her fingers around the narrow glass of whiskey. “I recognized your son—I don’t think the others did. Everything clicked—you must be being blackmailed. You had done something to upset them. I could see the whole thing, or an idea of what I thought might have happened: they took your child, threatened you. If I killed them, I had a hunch that you’d take care of it, a hope really, because I couldn’t just walk away again and leave them alive, to do worse things. And maybe, if I was right, you’d pull some strings to keep any investigation away from me, for getting your son back to you.”
“I’d already pulled some strings. That’s why you got out of prison in the first place.”
“Wait, are you saying—“
“That I planned the whole thing?”
“Did you?”
“No. I only planned a part of it.” He laughed. “I would have used Detectives Bach and Wolfe, but the police need to be cleaned out before this shit gets any worse.”
“So you know about the mole?”
“Of course I do. And moles. There’s more than one.”
“Which parts, exactly, did you plan?”
“Look, Ms. Drake, you were unfairly sent to prison. You should never have been there in the first place. The evidence ‘disappeared.’ Meg found some of it. She brought it to me. I pulled the strings. If you were anything like Meg, I knew you’d do this job, but do it right. I banked on you not having anything left.”
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