Sicarius Soul

by Jade Kerrion

“It shouldn’t take much to make people happy.” For the first time that morning, he smiled at her.

  “Maybe you just have low standards.”

  “Maybe I’ve seen how low life can get.” His gaze flicked across the desert views. “Maybe I know how lucky and blessed I am to be where I am today, all those setbacks notwithstanding. I have a job I enjoy, a home where I can be safe and at peace through the night, and a daughter I love. How many people can lay claim to that much?”

  No mention of the constant pain, the unending exhaustion, the bone-deep fatigue she saw in the weary slump of his shoulders.

  No mention of traitorous friends and untenable choices.

  No mention of working six and a half days a week. No mention of his struggles to pay the rent and all his bills from his slave-labor wages, or the discomfort of a tiny apartment that was too hot in summer and too cold in winter. No mention of waking up before dawn to travel by metro and bus from Anacostia to Georgetown to spend a few hours on Sunday with Laura before returning to work.

  No mention of the fact that he seemed more tired each time she saw him.

  Danyael Sabre cherished life, but it was determined to drag him down.

  And the idiot refused help.

  Because help has always cost too much.

  And he has nothing left in him to pay it.

  But when she looked at him, that wasn’t what she saw. She saw a man who looked out at the world with clear eyes—grateful for what moments of joy he could still find, not dwelling on all he had lost. “How do you do it?” she asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Keep hoping.”

  “I don’t.” The answer surprised her. “I just try to enjoy what I have. Maybe you’re right.” A cynical smile twisted his lips. “Maybe I’m content only because I’ve learned never to expect much. But people find happiness in whatever way they can, and this way works for me.”

  “I’ve always wanted more.”

  “And the world needs people of ambition. People with vision. People like you.”

  “The world needs people like you, too.”

  The honest surprise in his eyes was like a stab to her heart. Her jaw tightened. “We better keep going or we’ll be at this all day.”

  He nodded, turned his back on her, and continued slowly up the steep path to the Masada plateau. His slow progress was hampered further by the sand and gravel-encrusted path. It would have been a challenge enough for a fit person wearing great hiking boots.

  For a man on a crutch, it was hell.

  Danyael said nothing, though, pushing on until she called for a halt. She saw the gratefulness in his dark-eyed gaze and the relief on his face when he leaned against the rock wall and massaged both his legs.

  She hadn’t thought about it before, but his body had to be aching all over as it compensated for the strain he was putting on his left leg. Even his healthy muscles were overstraining in unintended ways. How much longer before his right leg gave out? How much longer before all the pressure he was putting on his injured left leg damaged it beyond repair?

  “I can give you the money.”

  He looked up at her, his expression genuinely confused.

  “For surgery,” she explained. “I can give you the money for surgery.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can’t see you hobbling around like that.”

  “I’ll make it a point not to climb Masada every day, then.”

  “It isn’t funny. Why won’t you accept my help?”

  He said nothing. To her surprise, he pushed away from the wall without another word, and kept on climbing.

  Why won’t you accept my help?

  She made it sound so simple, so obvious.

  Why wouldn’t he accept help from Zara Itani?

  Probably because he wasn’t in the mood to be stabbed in the back for the third time. It was easier, safer, to remind himself of where he stood with her. It was best to keep his distance and remind himself of what they both knew for a fact.

  They weren’t right for each other.

  Zara respected strength, courage. She could only love what she respected—someone who could be her equal.

  Someone like Galahad.

  Not Danyael. She had already made it clear how much she loathed his reclusiveness. He could not even walk without pain, never mind keep up with her.

  She doesn’t want me, and I don’t need her. End of story.

  And he had enough real issues to deal with. Just focus.

  Danyael set one leg in front of him, and then the other. The muscles in his right leg and his body contracted, pulling his injured leg along the steep terrain. The strain shot up his back, spasms of pain that promised a night of utter hell. He did not even know how he was to avert the merciless cramps.

  Soak in a hot bath, except—

  He was afraid of water, conditioned by the electric collar he had once worn, to expect pain each time he touched water.

  Hot compress, perhaps.

  But that involved water, too.

  Sleeping aids. Sleep through the pain.

  Except that he knew it did not work. Sleeping tablets made it worse, made it harder to rouse himself. They kept him trapped in a fogged state, unable to escape the pain suffocating him.

  Painkillers.

  Lots of it.

  He eased the backpack off his shoulder and dug a pill container out from the bottom of bag. He swallowed two pills then washed it down with a sip of water.

  “Are you okay?” Zara asked.

  He nodded, too tired to talk. His gaze traveled up the path to Masada.

  At best, they were a quarter of the way up.

  Not too late to turn back.

  He grimaced as he adjusted the backpack on his shoulders. His right leg tightened in protest as he shifted his weight in preparation for the hike. “Let’s keep going.”

  The hike up Masada which would have taken an average person anywhere from four to six hours, and Zara three, took Danyael almost twelve hours.

  Danyael leaned against a large rock, his legs trembling beneath him. He wriggled the stiff fingers of his left hand, blistered from gripping the crutch.

  Zara, on the other hand, looked fresh and energetic enough to climb another Masada. “Why don’t you rest here? I’m going to have a look around.”

  The wind whipped through the buildings, some partially restored, others not. The ruins of the northern complex and palace lay to his right. The western palace dominated the far side of the courtyard. The view from the rock plateau was unparalleled—the Judean desert on one side and the Dead Sea on the other.

  He caught brief glimpses of Zara as she strode through the ruins. Her actions puzzled him, but at that moment, he was too tired to dig too deeply into exactly why. His back ached. His legs hurt, and his heart was pounding too quickly to be good for him.

  It was taking longer for him to bounce back—

  He chuckled. Actually, it had been a long time since he had bounced back from anything. Each time, it was a laborious uphill battle, and each time, he never regained all the ground he had lost.

  Just keep moving…

  Danyael straightened slowly, his breath catching when his left leg cramped painfully. He adjusted the crutch beneath his arm and hobbled toward Zara.

  “Anything?”

  Zara did not look up at him. “Hints of passage, but nothing specific that I can pin down on Maya. Why would she come back here?”

  “To look for answers, much like we are.”

  “And you think she found her employer here?”

  “That’s one of the questions,” Danyael said.

  “And what’s the other?”

  “Why she’s a psychic ghost?”

  Zara rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

  “It doesn’t matter to you because you don’t use your psychic abilities to sense others, but for those who do, Maya’s a fascinating and dangerous anomaly. There has to be an explanation as to why she has no psychic presence. Perhaps,
more importantly, are there others like her?”

  “And you think the answer is here at Masada?” Zara scowled. “Do you feel anything?” she asked.

  “Like ghosts?” Danyael laughed. “No, I don’t. There’s no one here.”

  “And if Maya were here, you wouldn’t sense her either.”

  “Not easily. Not well.”

  She muttered under her breath. It almost sounded like “the blind leading the blind.”

  They wandered through the ruins. The uneven ground was especially treacherous for Danyael, but Zara remained close enough to steady him. They passed next to a steep set of whitewashed steps—an archaeologist’s recreation of what the bath might have looked like.

  Something—not quite an emotion—brushed against his empathic senses. Danyael paused. “This way.”

  “Down there?” Zara frowned. “Stay here. I’ll check it out.” She drew her weapon and walked down the steps. Out of the darkness, he saw the gleam of her flashlight. “There’s nothing here…wait.” A moment’s silence, then a muttered curse. “There’s something here, behind the wall.”

  Danyael leaned heavily against the wall and made his way down the steps. Each step jarred pain through his spine. He had bitten the inside of his mouth bloody by the time he made it to the lowest step. The faint light of Zara’s flashlight grew brighter. Moments later, she stepped out from what seemed to be merely shadows on a wall. “It conceals a small entrance. The steps continue down for a good ways into an extremely large underground chamber. There’s no one there. Nothing. Just an empty room.”

  “I want to see it.”

  “I don’t think you can make it. The steps are treacherous the farther down you go.”

  “Something feels…wrong.”

  Zara’s eyes narrowed. “All the more reason not to be trapped underground when that feeling becomes more than just a feeling.”

  “I have to see what’s down there.”

  She growled. “You should get your leg stronger if you intend to wade into the thick of things.”

  “I don’t really,” Danyael murmured. “Trouble just keeps finding me.” Their eyes met. “I don’t ask to be a target.”

  “I can’t imagine why you thought you wouldn’t be. Alpha empath? Galahad’s template?”

  “I try to keep a low profile.”

  “Obviously not working.” She extended her hand to him. “Watch your step here.”

  He could not have made it down the steps without her help. His heart pounded each time his crutch slipped on the sand-covered stones. Once, he missed his footing, and his left leg crumpled beneath him. His lower back hit the stone step. The impact ripped a sharp gasp from him. His vision flashed white with raw pain.

  “Damn it,” Zara hissed. She slipped her arm around his shoulders. “Can you stand?”

  “Need a minute,” he whispered.

  Zara eased Danyael’s backpack off his shoulders and gently pressed the palm of her hand against the small of his back.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. His hands curled into fists.

  “It’s all right. Keep breathing,” she instructed.

  The steady pressure of her hand against his back helped smooth the spikes of pain into tolerable spasms. “Better?” she asked after several minutes passed.

  He nodded.

  “We’re closer to the top than the bottom. Turn around?”

  “No.” Danyael was grateful that his voice did not tremble. “I can make it.”

  “God, you’re stubborn.” Zara sighed. Her tone of amused frustration, however, took the sting out of the words. “Here, give me your crutch.” She grabbed it and tossed it all the way to the bottom of the steps. “It’s a greater hazard to you. Lean on me. It’s all right,” she added when he hesitated. “I’m strong enough for you.”

  Just then, it was easier not to argue. What little energy he possessed, he needed to preserve for the rest of the way down. One step at a time. One breath at a time. He did not try to count the steps or the moments. Don’t dread the future you can’t control.

  Just focus on the next step.

  Zara steadied him. Her grip was the only thing between him and an uncontrolled fall that would break his bones. A stray memory, long in the past, flicked through his mind. Once, he had been sick, so sick his world blended into nauseous shades of sickly yellow. She had supported him then, navigating him through the streets of New York. Another time, while moving together through a Mutant Assault Group barracks devastated by a terrorist attack, his crutch had slipped on tiles slick with blood. She had caught him and helped him. Both times, she had been strong enough for them both.

  For the third time, she, too was strong enough, even though it seemed like forever before they made it down to the bottom of the stairs.

  The air deep underground was cool and stale. Zara lifted her flashlight and shone it over the low-ceilinged room as large as an airplane hangar. It probably ran the entire length of the palace. “Tunnels, of some sort, except that there doesn’t seem to be an exit,” Zara said. The light glistened on the packed sand and dirt.

  “She’s here,” Danyael murmured.

  “Maya?” Zara’s grip tightened on her handgun.

  “Not quite, but there’s an echo.”

  “Like the empathic echo clones create when they’re together.”

  “Not quite.”

  “What is it, then?” Zara snarled. “This whole psychic energy thing feels as scientific as magic.”

  “Psychic energy, as a science, is only five decades old. As sciences go, it hasn’t even begun to sprout pimples and acne yet. We’re making it up as we go.”

  “So what are you making up this time?”

  “It feels like an empathic echo, but less defined. Unanchored.”

  “The next thing you’ll tell me is that there are ghosts.”

  “I don’t believe in ghosts, but extreme events—joy or trauma—release psychic energies, and sometimes, the events are so powerful, they linger.”

  “Is that what you’re sensing here?”

  “Maybe.”

  Zara’s jaw tensed. “The mass suicide at Masada…980 or more people—men, women, children.”

  “It’s one man’s story. There’s no historical evidence of a mass suicide. They never found bodies—not anywhere in those quantities.”

  “Unless they did, and never allowed the news to get out.” Zara released Danyael’s arm and walked away from him. Her gaze remained intent on the ground. “Could you fit 900…1,000 people in here?”

  Danyael inhaled sharply. “Are you saying that this is where the mass suicide happened?”

  “It certainly didn’t happen anywhere in the main palaces where the tourists tread. And to be perfectly clear, it wasn’t a mass suicide.” Zara’s strode back to Danyael. “It was mass murder. The Jewish religion prohibits suicide, so—as the story goes—men slew their wives and children, then each other. There was one person at the end who was responsible for making sure everyone was dead before killing himself. Only one person committed suicide.”

  “And what happened then?”

  “If you believe in religion, then that person’s soul would have been damned.”

  Danyael’s mind reeled from the impossibility of facts fitting together. “Maya…”

  “You said you didn’t believe in ghosts.”

  “I don’t. But I feel something that’s like her, yet not her. Two halves that don’t precisely fit.”

  “The remnants of a damned soul?”

  Danyael grimaced. “Do you believe in that?”

  Zara shrugged. “I hang out with a clone of an ancient Chinese queen, and with a man who can heal or kill with a touch. A soul, cleaved in two by suicide, isn’t as much of a stretch as you think.”

  He shook his head. “Atheq Laboratories processed the genetic remnants found at Masada, and one of them turned out different. Maybe the laboratory screwed up. It’s been known to happen.”

  “Or perhaps Maya doesn’t have a soul,
and that’s why she doesn’t have a psychic signature. Do we need a scientist or an exorcist?”

  Danyael shook his head. “I wouldn’t know, not without looking over Atheq’s records. Thirty years ago, genetic engineering was new enough that laboratories were still making mistakes.”

  “And now all those mistakes are old enough to make serious trouble. How does this information get us closer to finding Maya?”

  “I don’t know,” Danyael admitted. “But Xin might have a few ideas.”

  “Let’s get you out of here, then I’ll call her.”

  Danyael shook his head. “You go ahead. I want to look around a little longer.”

  Zara’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t like leaving you alone. You tend to get into trouble.”

  “There’s no trouble to get into down here.” Danyael sucked in an unsteady breath. “And I need some time. I’m not ready to handle the steps.”

  The irritated expression on Zara’s face softened, but her emotions were a tangled knot too complex to unravel. “I’ll come back for you.”

  Her footsteps and her presence faded.

  The silence and darkness closed in around him like a coffin.

  Danyael gritted his teeth. The last thing he needed was a sense of imagination. His empathic senses provided more than enough entertainment, even in a place like this, absent of any living being, but himself.

  That elusive Maya-like thing—presence was too concrete a word and emotion too limiting—drifted like a breath of scarcely perceptible wind trailing across his face. He turned in a circle, and stepped forward where the tug seemed strongest. Step by step, he worked his way across the cavernous space and into the far corner.

  Nothing distinguished that particular patch of trodden dirt from any other patch of dirt in the underground chamber, but somehow, it felt different. Danyael frowned as he tried to define it. Visually hazy, as if the air above it undulated, even though it did not. The temperature was fractionally warmer, as if someone had once huddled there, and had left behind fading clues of her presence. He set his crutch aside and bent down to brush aside the dirt, searching for any physical evidence of that odd, undefined psychic presence.

  “How did you know?” Maya’s voice asked from behind him.

  He turned to face the living, breathing assassin. The handgun in her right hand was aimed at his heart. “The EMTs from the hospital didn’t find you where we’d left you.”