Unawakened

by R. J. Blain

  “They’ll really help?”

  “Analise, you sound like a broken record. I’m helping. Think it through. Take her home, get some sleep, and have that list ready for me by ten tomorrow night. We have work to do. Pull your weight or get out of the way.”

  The woman trembled, retreating in the direction of the door. “Tomorrow night, then.”

  “Good girl. I’ll see you tomorrow, Alexa.”

  I saluted Sullivan. “Good night, Sullivan.”

  With Analise in a daze, it was trivial to manipulate the direction she walked. When I was certain we were out of the vampire’s hearing range, I said, “One more stop before we head home. I want to see Minangi.”

  Minangi’s restaurant was closed, but he answered the door after my second knock. “Come in.”

  I slipped inside the restaurant. While Analise hesitated, she trailed after me, her right hand twitching near the zipper of her coat. Would a gun work against a portal dae? I doubted it.

  Did Minangi even count as a portal dae if he didn’t leave Earth?

  Colby stuck close to my side, bumping against the back of my legs as though worried Minangi would notice it. If my roommate wanted to be shy, I wouldn’t draw attention to it.

  “I was wondering when you’d find your way back to me. You worried us, little one.” Minangi reached his hand out, and I recoiled from his touch, dodging away from Analise.

  Intercepting Minangi’s shake, Analise smiled. “I don’t have her allergy medicine with me, so please forgive our rudeness.”

  I flushed. “Analise!”

  “It’s true. Once he’s found, Mr. Lucrage will hold me accountable for every single one of your bumps, scrapes, and rashes.”

  “I see you’re one of his employees. It is a pleasure to meet you. I am Minangi. Come, we must talk.” Minangi met my gaze before looking me over as though seeing me for the first time. “It seems I have misunderstood my wayward child. You’re far more precious than I thought.”

  I fell in step behind Minangi, following him down to the basement restaurant. Shoving her hands in her jacket pockets, Analise kept close, twitching at every sound. “Minangi isn’t going to do anything, Analise. Relax. Rob trusts him.”

  “For some things,” Minangi corrected. “We were worried. We heard the explosion and were certain you had perished. You could have, if the culprit hadn’t used a crowd-controlling incendiary. It didn’t take us long to get onto the street, but Rob was gone before we arrived. Whoever it is was waiting for you.”

  Minangi let us into the restaurant, and Analise gasped. “What is this place?”

  “A jewel of China. My wayward child comes here when he needs something—or desires an escape from the mortal world for a while. I thought you would come, Miss Alexa. Please forgive the absence of my daughters. They are out searching. They, too, worry. Do you know anything?”

  “Nothing. I heard the bang, and the next thing I knew, I was in an elite hospital.”

  “I ordered them to take you there and paid for it myself. You were under my care, both of you, and it is not our way to ignore a debt. The box. Is it safe?”

  “It’s at Rob’s place.”

  “Good. Have you opened it?”

  I shook my head.

  “Do so when you get home. You are armed?”

  I wouldn’t open the box. The box was precious, and I didn’t want to see whatever was inside without Rob being there. “I have a gun. I have a sword, too.”

  “You use a sword?”

  I blushed. “Use is a strong word.”

  Analise grinned. “She killed a vampire with it. Rob was so pleased with her, although he didn’t want her to know it. He brags whenever she surprises him.”

  “He must brag about her all of the time.”

  “Something like that. Have you found anything out?”

  Sighing, Minangi shook his head. “Nothing of use. I believe a fire breather was involved, but there are so many of them it’s impossible to know which one was responsible. I’m fairly confident the individual behind the wish for those tracking discs is involved with Rob’s disappearance, however. When I reached the street, you were alone. The discs were gone. We had not yet dealt with them permanently—or removed the new ones from your clothing.”

  “They used me to get him. That’s what you’re saying.”

  “That’s what I believe. Is it the truth? I cannot know for certain.”

  While I trusted Sullivan more than I did most others, Rob trusted Minangi. Half a year ago, I never would have considered asking for help, not without having a payment plan in place.

  Steadying myself with a slow, long inhale, I stared into the old man’s eyes. “I went to see a portal dae tonight. He agreed to help me—for a price.”

  Minangi narrowed his eyes, circling me before gesturing to one of the tables. “Come, sit. I will make us tea. But first, what price?”

  “A vial of my blood.”

  Analise hissed at me. “Rob is not going to like that.”

  “I don’t care if he likes it, Analise. He isn’t here to stop me, now is he? Bargain made.”

  “You believe in this portal dae’s sincerity?”

  “It’s not the first time he’s taken some of my blood and kept his end of the bargain. He’s as close as I get to having a friend.” While true, admitting it left a sour taste in my mouth.

  “Who is he?”

  “He calls himself Sullivan.”

  “Munkar. He’s Munkar,” Analise blurted. “He’s a vampire.”

  “You have interesting friends, Alexa. You’ve chosen an interesting ally.”

  I snorted. “He has sided with Rob, not me, Minangi.”

  “That’s even more interesting. My wayward child means much to you, then, to compel you to join forces with such a dae?”

  Analise fidgeted, sitting down beside me. I followed her lead, clasping my hands on my lap. Once I was settled, Colby plopped onto my feet. “I wasn’t forced. I very purposefully sought him out. I even dumped my tracking cards. Unfortunately for me, Analise is clever.”

  “Colby is clever,” Analise corrected. “I followed it.”

  “Colby? How can a cheese be clever?”

  “Uh, when the Dawn of Dae happened, it came out of my refrigerator,” I admitted, my cheeks burning from my embarrassment.

  “And its name is Colby?”

  Wiggling my feet out from beneath my macaroni and cheese casserole, I scooted my chair back and pointed. “This is Colby.”

  Colby plopped to hide under my chair.

  “Colby’s a bit shy.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, Colby.”

  “Food,” my roommate mumbled.

  “Rob’s pretty good at understanding what Colby wants; it only knows two words, which can make communication difficult. Colby’s a good listener, though.”

  “You truly do have interesting friends. Please forgive my rudeness. I will bring tea.” Minangi left, leaving me with Colby and Analise.

  The silence stretched on, and I struggled not to fidget in my seat.

  “We’re in way over our heads,” Analise mumbled.

  I laughed. “When am I not?”

  20

  My worst-case scenario scared me.

  Operating on less than three hours of sleep wasn’t new for me, and I went through the day on autopilot. The police returned both of my tracking cards before I left for classes, which went by in a dazed blur.

  Exhaustion served me well in one unexpected way. When I had to work for Dean Lewis, I couldn’t muster the energy to despise him for possible crimes. I did what I was told, jumped as high as he ordered, and somehow managed to avoid his scrutiny.

  The work he gave me was suitable for any primary student, but I didn’t complain at sorting through the mountain of student records I needed to reorganize. Students known to have died during the Dawn of Dae were entered into one database while those still enrolled went into another. A final database contained the unknowns, those who weren’t conf
irmed dead but hadn’t shown up for classes.

  In total, almost half of the student body was either missing or dead, and the number stunned me into silence. Logically, I had known there had been deaths. I’d witnessed the dae killing and eating each other—and their bonded—during the immediate aftermath of the Dawn.

  If the number of missing and dead students reflected the global situation, half of humanity had vanished in a single morning. The similarities to the Bible’s rapture both awed and terrified me.

  It took me longer than I liked to realize the presence of the externalized dae gave the illusion of little population change. They hid the truth with their existence.

  Half of the world had died, and no one really cared. Life went on. To all appearances, those lost had been completely forgotten, ignored in the face of so much change.

  While I worked, I took the time to skim over the gallery of student photographs. None of them matched the women from Terry Moore’s videos, which didn’t surprise me. Targeting students would put Dean Lewis under scrutiny, and Kenneth’s point about the victims being from the middle castes made a lot of sense to me.

  I needed to put some thought into why Kenneth Smith wanted Dean Lewis to fall—and what he gained from his destruction.

  The death of a fringe rat went mostly unnoticed. Someone from the middle caste would make a little stir, especially if she were still a brothel worker. A retired brothel worker, however, wouldn’t draw much attention.

  The student files didn’t bring me any closer to learning what my quarries were up to, why Terry Moore had murdered those women, and how Kenneth Smith really factored into the whole mess.

  After his reaction to my threat, I easily believed my drug-lord boss was involved somehow.

  I’d have to think about it when I wasn’t so tired and had Rob back. My eyes widened, and I sat straighter in my chair.

  Smith had plenty of motive to want Rob to disappear, and he had been ready to bargain with me. All I had done was prove the existence of the videos; if he weren’t involved, he wouldn’t have had any reason to strike a deal with me.

  One thing I had learned over the years was Smith stayed behind the scenes. He had others move for him. Smith had the resources to kidnap Rob, he had the motive, and plenty of reasons to leave me alive and able to continue working with the police.

  If I assumed Smith was the one who had ordered Rob kidnapped, who would he use? Who could Smith trust to bring about Rob’s fall?

  Once I figured that out, everything else would fall into place.

  One of Rob’s employees picked me up from the college. To my credit, I didn’t run away screaming despite being in close quarters with a fire breather. I hid my unease behind a smile, staring out the window to watch the dae walking on the sidewalk.

  With every passing day, it felt like the dae were more and more willing to cast away their human shells, reminding me of what Rob had said about the dae and their strengths.

  The powerful and the weak shared the same shape, leaving those in between clinging to vestige remnants of their heritage. Werewolves remained among the most common, and not all of them opted to retain two feet.

  Before the Dawn of Dae, wolves had existed in stories and photographs and wisely avoided the cities. The few times I had left Baltimore, I had not seen one, although on rare nights, I had heard their howled song in the distance.

  Vampires came in a close second, though most of the ones I caught glimpses of fluttered through the dusk gloom as bats. Pinpricks of firelight marked the eyes of the fire breathers, and while most of them retained their human shape, their skin had turned dark as though exposed to soot.

  The dragons lorded over the streets from the rooftops and the sky. When I stared up at the moon, the silhouette of a winged human rose above them all.

  I wondered if the angel was the one I had seen in the department store before Rob’s kidnapping. Did solitude affect the dae as it did me? If there were other unawakened in Baltimore, I hadn’t found them. They had to exist somewhere, but I had no idea where to start searching, or if I wanted to find them in the first place.

  Then again, dae like Arthur Hasling existed. I didn’t want to know what would happen if someone like him became an elite with real power.

  When I reached home, all I wanted was to step through the door and find Rob waiting for me despite knowing it was an impossibility. I clenched my hands into fists and made my way to the top floor, letting myself in.

  When I stepped through the door, Marlene, Analise, and Colby were seated around the kitchen island.

  “Long day?” Analise asked, and in her tone, I heard her pity.

  Not ready to deal with anyone’s pity or sympathy, I decided to focus on the oddity of the day. “I saw an angel on the way home.”

  Narrowing her eyes, Analise watched me dump my purse on the couch. “That’s different. Where did you see this angel?”

  “I saw her flying over the city.”

  “You have a good eye, then. What makes you think the angel is a woman, though?”

  “I saw one when Rob took me to a store. She’s the only one I’ve seen. Do you think there are more of them out there?”

  “I’m sure there are, although like you, they’re rare.”

  Analise patted the stool beside her in invitation. “We have an hour before we head to Sullivan’s. We’ve made a list of our own, but do you have any idea who might be behind his kidnapping?”

  My worst-case scenario scared me, and if I delayed bringing it up for discussion, I feared my nerves would fray. “I’d put Kenneth Smith at the top of it, hiring someone to do the actual hit. However much I hate the idea, the first dae I’d think of who could pull it off would be Arthur Hasling.”

  Both of the women stared at me, their expressions guarded and neutral.

  “Why do you think Arthur Hasling would be capable of pulling this off?”

  What frightened me most of all was what Hasling might do to Rob for revenge—and what would happen if Kenneth Smith betrayed me and I ended up in Hasling’s hands once again.

  In all likelihood, if Hasling had Rob, it’d only be a matter of time before he was killed. If Smith was responsible for Rob’s disappearance, my best hope was Smith wanted my help enough to keep Rob alive.

  I sighed. “Look at what he did to the college. He hates the elite, and he’s not exactly the shining example of sanity. Realistically, if Hasling’s involved, Rob’s in trouble, and a lot of it. Smith was willing to bargain with me without hesitation. That tells me he likely knows where Rob is—and that he’s able to get him back.”

  Marlene sucked in a breath, pulled out a cell phone, and pressed a few buttons before holding it to her ear. “Get someone monitoring Kenneth Smith’s every move. If he takes a shit, I want to know about it. Find Smith, learn who he’s been working with, and put together a report.”

  After she hung up, I smiled. “What if I told you exactly how to access Kenneth Smith’s property, how you could hide so close you could hear everything he says in his private meeting room, and exactly how to infiltrate his operation?”

  Both women gaped at me. Colby bounced in place, its noodles squishing with its movement. “Food! Food!”

  Laughter bubbled out of Analise. “You’re serious. You’re really serious. You have Kenneth Smith infiltrated?”

  I smiled at the thought of sabotaging all the drug lord’s efforts. “He doesn’t even know I can access his place and bypass his security.”

  Analise twisted around and turned her full attention to Marlene. “I love this woman.”

  “It’s a pity Rob saw her first,” was Marlene’s amused reply. “We can kill several birds with one stone. How do we infiltrate Kenneth Smith’s operation, and how do you think we can benefit from it?”

  “There is a walkway paralleling the sewer system throughout the city. Smith knows where some of the entry points are but not all of them. I know of a few entry points he hasn’t charted yet. Access the tunnels while wearing blac
k paint. He uses security cameras, but they’re not infrared. He’s cheap. He doesn’t light the interior, either, so he uses the light from visiting elite to identify when people are in the passages. I can give you directions to his townhouse through the tunnels. You’ll have to be quiet, because they probably have sound recording enabled on the cameras, but the neighboring sewage pipes are pretty loud, as are the streets overhead.”

  “That’s insane. You can really access his place like that?”

  “I’ve done it before. There are a few spots near his property perfect for hiding in. Elite don’t think to check the cubbies, and Smith’s so egotistical he thinks his standard cameras will protect his operations. He probably has some infrared cameras on the common access points, but I don’t use those. I have maintained the illusion I know nothing about how his tunnels work. He’s aware I probably know of them, but not that I know how to access and use them.”

  Grabbing the pad of paper in front of Analise, I flipped to a clean sheet and began sketching out the tunnel system, careful to write out how to reach the Inner Harbor townhouse without passing one of the common entrances. I handed the sheet to Marlene. “Whoever you send in, send them armed. If Smith or one of his hounds find them, they’ll shoot to kill.”

  “They’re armed?”

  “Who do you think taught me to shoot, Marlene? Kenneth Smith deals in everything, not just drugs, and he teaches all his hounds how to use his inventory. The fringe rats of his pack fight with knives, too. We learned that on our own, though. Do or die.”

  Marlene looked over my map and notes, making thoughtful noises in her throat. “Let’s assume we find evidence Kenneth Smith is involved in the kidnapping. If we were to make a run at the townhouse, what can we expect?”

  “One or two bitches trained with guns, and they’ll have weapons at hand. I’d try to plan it for when Jacob is working with the police.”