Totes would back me up. He didn’t want any extra attention. Anyone checking too closely on his personal life might flag his obsession with buying dolls and stripping them naked. That might be awkward for a highly regarded, upwardly mobile tech guy. Totes earned three times as much as I did for sitting on his butt all day.
Sound like sour grapes? Not really. I loved what I did. And I didn’t mind Totes most of the time. But Dad had bought me up not to trust anyone, least of all the people close to you. It probably explained why I lived alone, and preferred it that way.
That circle of thoughts brought me back to Marshall Sixkiller. I wanted to be down in the foyer before him, so I grabbed fresh jeans and a collared shirt. As a concession to going out to eat with someone else, I pulled on my casual narrow-toed dress boots and took a moment to comb my hair in front of the mirror.
The face that looked back should have pleased me. Honestly, I was reasonably good to look at – brunette all the way with thick arched eyebrows and a straight nose. I didn’t carry any extra weight on account of my lifestyle and my jaw is defined and (I liked to think) strong. Not the kind of face you’d find on a commercial but not one you’d run away from either.
I usually only thought about my appearance once a year when I had to frock-up for the company ball and I wasn’t changing that routine for a visiting cowboy. So I pulled a face at the mirror, grabbed my wallet and phone and headed for the lift.
My girl, Caro, called me just after I hit the lobby button.
“I’m getting in the lift, signal is crap,” I said.
“Hi Ginny.” She was the only person in the world who could call me that. “You want to go for a drink?”
“Can’t. Working tonight. New guy in town and I have to look after him.”
“Him?”
I sighed. Caro had been obsessing over my single status since I turned twenty-nine a few months ago. I would have preferred that she worried about her own but she maintained it was because she didn’t want to be stuck with me in old age.
“Work,” I said.
She let it pass, though I could sense her storing it away for a future conversation. She was an investigative journalist. Her kind never let anything go. “Tomorrow then?”
“Yeah.”
“Ginny?”
“Yeah?”
“At least be nice to him.”
I was still smiling over her plea as I entered the lobby.
“Something funny?”asked Sixkiller. He was leaning against the wall mirror dressed in a thin T-shirt and denims. He could have been a local except for the narrow, high-heeled, embroidered boots and the Stetson. The local boys favoured RM Williams, and Akubras were the only hat to wear.
“Yeah,” I said noncommittally.
He studied my face for a moment and then straightened, leaving faint smudges of his body heat on the mirror.
I blinked, uncomfortable under his scrutiny. “So... I can show you a place where the steak is so big it comes on a tray.”
“I prefer vegetarian.”Suddenly the cowboy drawl had gone and he was all New York urbane.
“Oh?” Shit. “Sure.”
I led the way to the food hall, in the building adjacent to the Cloisters, figuring that would cover all food bases.
Sixkiller stopped at the soup and salad stall while I went for All You Can Eat Meat & Noodles.
We reconvened at a slightly sticky Formica table overlooking the elevator well.
Sixkiller swept his gaze across the table surface and picked up the soup bowl, taking slow sips from a plastic spoon. The eatery was busy, even for a Friday night; people brushing past us, leaving the waft of their body scent. In most cases it was tolerable but I noticed my visitor tensing from time to time as if he didn’t find it always so.
Neither of us seemed to know where to kick the conversation off, so silence went on longer than it should.
“How did you get your neck wound?” he asked eventually. Not a man for small-talk it seemed, which was a small tick in his favour.
“You don’t start until tomorrow – you want to wait until then to talk about work?”
“Wait for what?”He gave me that steady stare again. His eyes were dark enough to be black, though his personnel file described them as dark brown. “What’s the point of that?”
I shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe you’re not ready to get into all that tonight; new country, jet lag – all that.”
He put his soup plate down and leaned back, folding his arms. “I’m here to work, ma’am. Not socialize.”
Well kick a girl for being considerate! “Fine.”
I shoveled the last forkful of noodles into my mouth and pushed the plate away. “The park has an evening curfew. I’m usually the last person out. Tonight, I was leaving just on dark and I heard two people near the Interchange gate – arguing.”
“So you weren’t the last person to leave.”
“Well, I’d done my sweep and the scans verified the south east sector was empty. I should have been the last person there,” I said patiently.
“Your scans don’t sound reliable.”
“Our scans are perfectly reliable. Something strange happened there tonight. As I said, I heard them arguing and snuck up to have a look.”
“They didn’t see you? My understanding is the park is quite barren.”
I hesitated, he was being kind of irritating and I wasn’t going to tell him I’d stayed there after dark. “It was close to sunset. The shadows were long and they were standing beyond a ring of palm trees. I planned to listen in first, but one of them drew a pistol so I had to intervene…”I had his full attention but I didn’t know how to tell the rest of it so I glanced out into the crowded plaza.
Something on the escalator barrier made me freeze. Perched only a few feet away was a large wedge-tailed eagle.
My hands became instantly clammy. Occasionally we still got snakes in suburbia, and there were plenty of rats and seagulls near the coast, but wedge-tails had been extinct for fifty years.
Besides, this one was different. And the way everyone was going about their eating confirmed it. The eagle was Aquila. At least that’s the name I’d given her when she first appeared to me. I hadn’t seen her since I was fifteen, long enough for me to think her presence was just a manifestation of my angsty adolescence.
Seeing her now in the food plaza, under the glaring fluorescent lights, I didn’t know what to think.
“Ma’am?”
I bit my lip and sprayed Sixkiller with belligerence. “My name is Virgin Jackson. Or Ranger Jackson if you prefer. But if you call me ma’am again I’m likely to break your face.”
An over the top reaction considering how polite I’d been acting, but Aquila’s appearance kinda tore the ring top off my good will. I wiped my damp palms on my jeans and wrenched my gaze back to my companion.
He glanced over his shoulder to where I’d been staring and then back to me. His face was quite expressionless. “Then please call me Nate. Or Sixkiller. Or…”
He let it hang and I didn’t want to know what he’d left unfinished. I gulped down my lemon soda and felt the rush of sweet fluid fuel my edginess.
“Virgin, what attacked you in the park?” he asked carefully.
“A… A bird.” I glanced briefly at Aquila again. Her eyes were gleaming and she stretched her wings as if ready to fly. “A crow, I thought at the time. But I couldn’t see it. It… was… getting dark,” I finished with a whisper.
“A crow?” His brow creased. “You mean a raven?”
“If that’s what you call it,” I said. “Look I’m going to have to go. Been a long day. Can you find your way back to the apartment?”
He nodded. “I’ll escort you, ma… Virgin.”
Aquila lifted from her perch and alighted right next to us. There was a trace of bloody meat trapped and hanging from the corner ofher beak.
“No!” I jumped up from the table. “I’m fine. See you in the morning. I’ll come by around 7.”
&nb
sp; I turned and ran down the escalator not really caring how weird my behaviour seemed.
By the time I reached the lobby of the Cloisters, I was drenched in sweat and shivering. The mirrors showed me the disturbed expression on my face, and that my hair was plastered to my head, so I took some deep breaths before stepping into the lift.
Aquila hadn’t reappeared and I began to calm but when the lift door opened on my floor, she was back, perched on the light shade outside my room.
“What do you want?” I said aloud.
The wedge-tail stared at me as solemnly as she used to when I was a teen.
“What?” I said, a little louder.
A door opened as I walked the corridor and a neighbour ventured out. I nodded congenially, forcing my mouth into the shape of a smile. I knew the guy by sight but we’d never spoken. We didn’t break our habit. After a quick acknowledgement he passed on, head down.
Aquila stayed on the light fitting as I keyed the lock and pushed the door open. But as I stepped inside, the eagle left her perch and swooped, talons first. I ducked on instinct, and felt the movement of air.
Then bird screams exploded in my head. I hit the light switch as I dived to the floor. A huge black crow fluttered above me with its beak open.
Aquila swooped in again, straight at the crow and they collided in a chaos of feathers and chilling screeches.
The sight of them paralysed me. Was I hallucinating or-
“Get up real slow and put your hands where I can see ’em.” The breath in my face was sweetened by alcohol so I did as the man-holding-the-gun-to-my-head bid, taking my time, picturing where I’d put my revolver and wondering if I could reach it. The birds tearing at each other above our heads mightn’t be real but I had no qualms that he was.
“What’s this about?” I said in a rusty whisper, as I got up off the floor. “You want money?”
He laughed. “You think I’d be robbing you if I wanted cash?”
“What then? I don’t know anybody; nobody knows me.”
“Seems you’re wrong there. Now stop your gabbin’ and listen.” He began patting me down as he spoke. “We’re going down in the lift and there’ll be a car waitin’ in the drive thru bay. You’re goin’ to get in it, nice and quiet, like a lamb, or I’ll paste your brains all over road.”
My pistol was in the drawer beside my bed. I had no chance of reaching it but there was no way in hell I was getting into a car with this guy. So I told him.
“No,” I said.
“Whadya mean ‘no’?”
I stayed silent.
He nudged me forward so I stumbled. “Move!”
I straightened up and shook my head. I was not about to be shot and killed at some lonely rubbish dump or in a derelict warehouse. “Fuck you.”
Reckless? Hell, yeah. I should be being more careful with my life, but an overwhelming stubbornness took me. I wasn’t going anywhere with this son-of-a-bitch.
He cocked the pistol and his breathing accelerated. Above me, the crow had broken away from Aquila and circled the room. Aquila hovered protectively in front of me like an avenging angel, eyes yellow with hate.
“Do you see them?” I said.
“See what?”
“The eagle and the crow?”
“What are you talking about you crazy bitch?”He grabbed my shoulder and shoved me so I hard, I sprawled through the partially open doorway, banging my shoulder on the door frame as I went down.
As I rolled, my chin hit a pair of tan boots smelling of saddle soap, and a slow drawl penetrated my rattling brain.
“Put the gun down, dirtbag. Step away from the lady.”
I didn’t know whether to get to my feet or stay put. Some strangely detached part of my brain recognized Nate Sixkiller’s voice and wanted to see what he would do, so I turned my head slightly so I could look up at him.
“Fuck off, cowboy,” said my intruder.
“I’m not partial to cussin’ in front of wimmen,” said Sixkiller. I saw his hand move towards his holster and instinctively covered my head.
The shots were brief. One from Sixkiller and a stray from the intruder that pinged off my metal door frame as he went down. Then a hand touched my shoulder.
“You can get up, Virgin.”
Of course I can get up, I wanted to say. I can take care of myself. I was just giving you a chance to prove yourself.
But that would have been hostile and not strictly true, so I bit my tongue and got upright as coolly as I could. I should have been grateful to him, but my stubborn streak just refused to allow it.
Then there was the shock. The intruder was on the floor, as dead-looking as the guy I’d seen in the park earlier in the evening. Two dead guys on a Friday; I was setting records.
I glanced up. The crow had vanished and Aquila had perched quietly on the top of my stereo speaker, beaking gently at her wounds.
“You’re hurt,” I said aloud.
“No,” replied Sixkiller.
“Not you… I mean... er... him.” I pointed limply at the dead guy. Death hadn’t improved his appeal; white belly bulging from beneath his faded black T-shirt, a blue tattoo of a bird –a crow –inside a circle just below his belly button.
“Hurt is one way to put it. I’m assuming you don’t know him.” His drawl had vanished again and he spoke in a crisp but soft tone.
“You’d be right on that.”
“What’s your protocol for such situations?”
“Protocol?” I looked at Aquila again. She had tucked her head under her wing, exhausted, like she was going to take a nap. I wanted to go over to her and stroke her head; thank her for trying to help me, except of course, she wasn’t real.
“She needs to rest. But she’s not badly injured,” said Sixkiller.
“Pardon me? Wha-at did you say?” I swung my stare around to him.
“Your disincarnate is not badly injured.”
“Y… You can see her?”
“The eagle. Yes,” he said. “She’s beautiful and you are fortunate to have her.”
“But she’s not real.”
“That depends, Virgin, on which reality you’re standing in.”
“Well, that’s a kind of weird thing to say?”
His mouth curved in an unexpected smile. “You’re as blunt as they said you were.”
“They?”
He walked past me into the room and looked around. “We should call your police.”
I nodded slowly. “Yes. We should–”
“Virgin! Virgin, you OK?” called a voice from just beyond the doorway.
“Totes?”
The skinny tech was peering in, eyes on stalks, holding a Taser out in front of him. He lived three floors down and had never visited me before. “How did you know…?”Then my eyes widened with comprehension. “You’ve got my apartment bugged?”
He blushed and the Taser-hand sagged. “Not bugged, exactly, just got some extra security up for you.”
“What kind of extra security?” I moved closer to him.
“I… No… Well just a… sound decoder.”
“What, in blazing balls, is a sound decoder?” I demanded.
“Picks up sound and sorts it into categories… you know… like you might be in trouble or somethin’… or like being shot at.” His glance flicked to Sixkiller. “Er… hi. I’m… er… They call me Total. Heard a lot about you. You’ve got some fearsome ancestors.”
Sixkiller holstered his pistol and stepped closer to proffer a handshake.
I stared at the pair of them for a moment, not sure what to say next. When nothing came, I pulled out my phone and dialed OOOShould this be 000 (digits) rather than OOO (letters)?.
Chapter Three
The whole police thing took up way too much of the evening. I called Hunt, and he called his boss to stop them locking Sixkiller in jail while they did a background and credentials check.
I also told him about the murder in the park.
“Why didn’t you cal
l it in right away?” he demanded.
I gave him my lame reasons.
“Jeesus, Virgin. Are you looking for trouble?”
“Like I said, I was late.”
He gave an epic sigh. “I’ll talk them out of keeping you in tonight but tomorrow you’ll have some explaining to do.”
Totes, Sixkiller, Caro and I ended up back at my apartment around midnight. I’d called Caro to pick us up from the Pol-Central. She didn’t sleep much, and anyway there was bound to be a story in it for her.
The moment she laid eyes on the Marshall, she began making suggestive faces at me behind his back. Considering the evening’s events, I wasn’t in the mood. But Caro lacked the sensitivity gene. That’s what made her good at her job. In the battle between sensibility and story – story always won.
The body had been removed, leaving only the fluorescent forensic outline around where he’d fallen. The cops had taken a bunch of visual recordings and samples and given me permission to return but not remove the markings.
Caro had a good poke around the scene and aired some theories while Totes and I hunkered over a pizza in my kitchenette. Sixkiller declined any food and announced he was going back to his own room.
I saw him to the lift and stood there feeling awkward. “I… er… should… thank you.”
He nodded. “You should have heeded your guide when it tried to warn you.”
“What do you mean ‘warn me’?”
Even though it was the small hours of his first day in a new country, after a twenty-six hour flight, killing someone, and then a stint getting to know the local constabulary, he remained as phlegmatic and calm as if he’d been meditating for a week. Only the hint of a dark shadow under his eyes suggested otherwise.
“When the eagle appeared in the eatery to warn you.”
“You saw it there?”
He stared at me as if I was acting crazy. “We talked about it. Remember.”
“Hey you two, stop canoodling at the door and come and entertain me,” Caro called down the corridor.
My skin warmed with embarrassment. “Probably not a good time for this conversation. I’ll come by around lunchtime, Hunt told us to take the morning off.”
ARC: Peacemaker Page 2