Infinite Risk

by Ann Aguirre

  “Slow down. What’s the plan?”

  “Damn, I don’t know. You’re not panicking?”

  “First, we need to get the power on. Where’s the breaker box?”

  “In here. That’s part of why I came back.” He went over to it, flipped some switches, but nothing happened. “Damn. What the hell is going on anyway? The generator should be running after five minutes or so. My dad has it on a timer, so it doesn’t start right away in case of a brief fluctuation in the grid.” Talking seemed to calm him down; he was breathing better now.

  So I asked, “Is he a survivalist or something?”

  “Nah, he just doesn’t want his steaks to spoil.”

  “Rich-people problems,” I mumbled.

  When we had blackouts in Boston, we always ate the ice cream first. The memory came at me hard like a tackle, but I held steady as Jake took Kian from me. He had no trouble with the fireman’s carry I had been attempting; I led him out the back as the others had gone. Nathan and Amanda were ten feet ahead of us, slip-running down the drive toward the van. When Jake put Kian down outside the minivan, he was stirring vaguely, and I nearly fainted with relief. Devon and Elton hauled him in; then Amanda and Nathan jumped in after.

  “What’re you waiting for?” Devon asked.

  Vonna revved the engine in emphasis; she was more than ready to take off. “Hurry up.”

  “One favor, Devon. Kian’s got the same issue as Carmen, but … maybe worse. If you send them home like this, we’re all in deep shit.”

  “How long before they recover?” Vonna asked.

  “For me, it was about four hours. I think Kian got more, though, so it might take longer. Would you mind taking them home with you? If they’re not better in the morning, take them to the hospital.”

  “We should go now,” Amanda muttered.

  I could tell Vonna and Devon were weighing the risks of trusting me. Then she nodded. “If Carmen’s not talking sense in a few hours, I’ll call her mom and drive her to the ER.”

  “I’ll give Kian until morning,” Devon added. “He can stay at my place tonight. My mom should be asleep when I get home anyway.”

  “Get in already,” either Elton or Nathan called from the back.

  I stepped away from the minivan. “Take off without me. I promised Jake I’d help get things in order here. I can find my own way back.”

  Vonna didn’t wait. The door slid shut, and she backed down the drive, eager to get away. Damn if I wasn’t lucky all the people who had come with me were leaving in one piece. I won’t be so reckless again. I can’t afford to wreak havoc in this timeline. Jake was already pulling me toward the house. As we raced up the slick path, the generator kicked on, illuminating the windows to golden rectangles. That would help in driving off the shadows. Anything that lingered might take on human form, though, like the Harbinger as Colin.

  Lara had everyone gathered in the living room, and like half the guests had bruises on their necks. “Why don’t you just admit you did this to scare us, Jake?”

  At that accusation, he stopped in the doorway. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re always looking for ways to make your parties memorable. I’m guessing you dosed everyone, turned out the lights, and waited to see what would happen. Have you heard what people are saying? Monsters, demon shadows; I mean, seriously. It’s obvious you gave us something. Maybe you rimmed the red cups you passed out at the start?” She peered at the Solo cup in her hand suspiciously.

  I had to admit, it was plausible. “If that’s what you think, take the cup to be tested. Get a full checkup while you’re at it. Then bring back the proof.”

  “Why are you encouraging her?” Jake demanded.

  “It’s not like you can prove you didn’t do anything wrong, but science will.”

  He relaxed a little. “True. Has anyone seen Tanya?”

  “I think she was passed out in your sister’s room,” someone volunteered.

  “Then I need to check. Can you clear these assholes out?”

  I wondered how he expected me to accomplish that, but the words started an exodus with people muttering, “Like we want to stick around” and “Worst party ever.” The ones who seemed too dazed to drive, I found someone willing to take their keys and make sure they got home okay. Fifteen minutes later, the property was mostly clear. Jake came down carrying Tanya, who had two bruises, one on each side of her neck. It was odd, though, because Jake’s neck was marked all the way around, different than what I knew of their feeding habits.

  It wasn’t eating … it was just killing him. Since Wedderburn couldn’t ruin Kian’s life the other way, he tried a new method. How long can I possibly keep it from happening?

  Maybe … it’s inevitable?

  Not in the sense of fate, which I firmly thought was bullshit. But in the sense that the winter king just had too much power for me to block all the avenues. Frustration, fear, and despair united to weigh me down. It was all I could do to meet Jake halfway and check on Tanya.

  “How’s she doing?”

  “I wish I knew. Nothing that happened here makes any sense, especially you killing that balloon smoke thing with a sword.”

  “That didn’t happen,” I said.

  He stared at me, one brow arched. “Excuse me?”

  “Somebody was choking you when I came in. I shoved him, and he ran off. I’m not sure how it happened, I’m not saying you did it, but somebody passed out some bad shit tonight.”

  Don’t argue. Don’t question. This is for your protection. Trust me, the less you know about this, the less you wonder, the better off you’ll be.

  “Then what if Lara gets her cup tested and it comes back with something? You know I’ll take the blame.”

  “They can’t find drugs you don’t have,” I pointed out.

  “But … my reputation…”

  I shrugged. “Nothing I can do about that. The people who believe in you won’t care what everyone is saying.”

  “You’re a bucket full of charm.”

  “Isn’t she?” The Harbinger stepped into the great room wearing a smile that was all fondness and anticipation. “I’ll thank you for an interesting night and take my lovely girl off your hands now that it’s done.”

  Tanya stirred then, distracting Jake. “You’re here. I had the strangest dream…”

  “Is it safe?” I whispered.

  He nodded, which I took to mean he’d made sure the house didn’t harbor any supernatural surprises. I waved to the other two and followed the Harbinger out into winter’s chill. He tucked me beneath one arm, and we vanished in a swirl of snow.

  THIRD-EYE BLINDSIDED

  The morning after, my cell woke me up with multiple text messages. Last night, it was so hard to turn Kian over to relative strangers, but I couldn’t let myself be his everything. Each time I walked away, it felt like the conflict between must and want would break me. When the Harbinger took me home, I hadn’t expected to fall asleep, and there was an abrupt break in my memory, a conversation with him that I couldn’t retrieve no matter how hard I tried. Rubbing the grit from my eyes, I picked up the flip phone to see what was so urgent.

  Unknown, 1:00 a.m.: This is Devon. K woke up for like 5 min, drank some water & passed out. If he’s not OK in the AM, I’m kicking ur ass.

  Unknown, 2:23 a.m.: Carmen is fine, thought you’d wanna know. V.

  I saved Devon’s and Vonna’s numbers and kept reading. There were more updates from Devon, the latest time-stamped five minutes ago. This one read: K just got on a bus. He’s a little shaky & doesn’t remember shit but an ER visit would’ve been OTT.

  I sent back, Glad to hear it. That was crazy, huh?

  Devon: Note to self, avoid rich-people parties.

  A few more texts, one to Vonna and another to Kian, checking in, then I hopped in the shower. I’d told José I likely wouldn’t be in this weekend, but the store needed some work. Just then, I didn’t need groceries, but they had been so good to me that I wanted to cle
ar out the back room as a way of saying a silent thank-you. This dump was paid for several months, long enough to get me by, but food would be a serious issue without the bodega and the kindness of strangers.

  Though my heart ached with bittersweet, it was good that Kian had spent the night with somebody besides me. Devon probably considered him a friend now, which would help after I was gone. I swung out of the Baltimore, trying to convince myself of all the reasons why I shouldn’t call Kian to make sure he was fine. He’s probably sleeping that off. From my own encounter, he’d feel loopy and exhausted until his natural energy built back up. So preoccupied, I didn’t notice anything wrong until I took the blow to the back of the head. My vision cut out, feet sliding on the icy sidewalk, and someone grabbed me. I tried to fight, but it hurt so much. Another hit, and I knew nothing else.

  It was dark when I woke, full-on countryside darkness, or maybe we were underground. Panic stirred inside me like a thousand butterflies set free at the same time. A light flashed on, shining directly into my eyes so I couldn’t get my bearings, discern any details, or recognize my captors later. That gave me a little hope, just a smidge. Jerking back and forth, I discovered no play in the bonds that secured my hands behind me. My shoulders burned with a low-grade but deep discomfort, suggesting I had been out for a while.

  “That will only wear you out, Miss Brooks.” This voice … I’d heard it when the old zealot tried to recruit me.

  I’ve been taken by the Black Watch.

  Of all the complications I’d foreseen, this one never factored into my plans. But it should have. In hindsight, I realized the omission right away. I mean, Raoul had his orders as a double agent and the Black Watch had been planning his movements long before I jumped. They wanted Kian in extremis as much as Wedderburn, just for different reasons. While I might not be able to scheme like an immortal, I should’ve known humans could be just as awful. Historical precedent alone offered countless examples.

  Well, shit. At least they don’t know who I really am … or where I came from.

  The old man went on. “It’s odd, though. You don’t look much like the Chelsea Brooks who ran away from Pomona when she was fourteen.”

  Fortunately, the makeshift gag spared me the need to respond. People probably didn’t think that very often, huh? Thank God my mouth is duct-taped shut. Defiance would be wrong in this situation since I was still pretending to be a normal girl. So I remembered everything that had happened in the other timeline: my mother’s murder and Kian’s loss, the untimely death of so many Blackbriar students, all because of me, because I didn’t think before I made a wish on a monkey’s paw even though I thought I was so smart, too smart to be taken in by an obvious sucker bet. And the tears came, streaming down my cheeks in a way I’d rarely let them, pretty much only that night with the Harbinger.

  “There’s no point in pretending. We’ve been watching you, and we already know you’re involved in the game somehow. You’ll tell the truth. Eventually.”

  The lights went out, and his footsteps rang out over stone, impossible for me to tell if it was cement or natural. In the darkness, I heard other sounds, but none of them belonged to people. No rats, either. No, these were distant gears, machine noises, and the rumble of … something. We might be underground, but I didn’t think it was a cave, maybe a bunker. Noting these details occupied me for a couple of minutes, no more. I struggled until I was tired, but the chair was fastened to the floor somehow, and I only succeeded in making my wrists bleed. After that, I counted the seconds and got confused somewhere in the upper eight thousands, and then I had no sense at all of how long I sat alone in the cold, in the dark. At some point, I slept again, and I’d been bound long enough to piss myself. The smell drenched me in shame.

  My captor returned a little later, and he wasn’t alone. The interrogation lights switched on again. “Are you ready to communicate with us, Miss Brooks?”

  They hadn’t given me anything to drink, so when rough hands tore the tape off my mouth, my lips tore. Blood trickled from the cracks down my chin, but I couldn’t swipe it away. It dripped down onto my chest like a coppery portent of pain to come. His companion didn’t speak, merely looming to increase tension and dread.

  I wanted to spit the remaining blood and unleash every insult that occurred to me while counting the seconds, but it didn’t fit the profile. Instead, I wept some more. “What do you want? Is it sex? We can do it. I won’t tell anyone, just let me go after.”

  “That’s delightful,” the old man said, likely to his partner. “Funny, you seemed much stronger when you encountered our agent on the street.”

  “Huh? You mean the creepy meth head?”

  “See, you’re a clever little thing. Why act otherwise?”

  “Look, I didn’t realize you were stalking me. Anyone would act different on a public street than tied up in your sex dungeon.”

  “It’s not a sex dungeon.” The snappish tone told me I was getting to him, which was satisfying, until he growled, “Persuade her.”

  A fist slammed into my jaw so hard that it snapped whatever tethered me to the floor, tipping the chair over. Then a boot hauled back and caved in my pelvis. At least, that was how it felt. Red-hot pain radiated through me from top to bottom as the silent asshole worked me over. He was thorough and methodical until I couldn’t speak, drooling and sobbing through each blow. Tied to the chair, I couldn’t curl in on myself, but I tried, chafing my scabrous wrists and nearly dislocating my shoulder in the process.

  Finally, the old man said, “Stop.”

  From a distance, I heard myself crying. The light blazed everywhere, even under my eyelids when I tried to cower behind them. Visceral shudders wracked me until it felt like they might turn into seizures. People are doing this to me. People. That desperate thought echoed in my head like a rubber ball. This is another way to become a monster, pursuing a goal with such focus that you don’t care how you achieve it.

  “Should I get the knives, master?” The dispassionate tone frightened me almost as much as his name for the old man.

  “Give her some time to reflect. She’s human, so she won’t be able to hold out much longer. This one will break in another day, maybe two. She’ll tell us who she works for.”

  In parting, one of them dumped a bucket of icy water on me and left me lying in the puddle, still shivering, still on my side. Broken ribs, dislocated shoulder, fractured ankle … maybe. I couldn’t move my arms enough to tell how badly they were hurt. My face had to be a swamp of bruises, and my jaw … best not to think about it.

  “Aegis,” I whispered.

  Nothing happened. With my hands tied at this angle, I couldn’t touch the spot on my bracelet to activate it. Wishing I’d thought to request voice activation didn’t help now. What’s the chair made out of? I bounced and was rewarded with a streak of pure anguish and the clack of wood. Thank you, it’s not metal. Maybe I can work with this. Again and again, I threw myself against the floor, slamming sideways with all the power I could muster. The pain made me black out twice, and when I woke, I was still in that congealing puddle of piss, blood, and stagnant water. I can’t quit now. I can’t let them bring the knives.

  I went back at the chair, and with the fifth strike, I heard a telltale snap. Since it was so dark, I couldn’t see what I’d broken, but it was clearly not one of my bones. Twisting and rubbing around, I found a crack in the left arm, so I focused on it, rocking and knocking until it fell all the way off. That gave me enough wiggle to bring my arms around in front of me, though I had to swallow a thousand screams in the process. They had been smart enough to use multiple bonds, but this was a better angle and, with some gritting of teeth, I angled my thumb enough to tap my bracelet. This time when I said, “Aegis,” the sword came in a glimmer of gold, hungry enough to light up a circle five feet in diameter.

  With some judicious slashing, I got my hands and feet free and then struggled to my knees. There was no way I could fight my way out in this condition, and
I had no damn idea where I was or how many assholes were committed to my imprisonment. Still, even if escape was impossible, I had to try. Aegis lit my path as I stumbled in the direction I thought the other two had gone. Blood dripped into my eye from a cut on my forehead, and I smeared it away.

  I had gone twenty steps or so when the light barely prevented me from tripping over a pile of supplies covered by a tarp. Bracing myself, I leaned on what felt like a stack of trunks for a good thirty seconds before I had the fortitude to go on. This is a huge room. The floor was definitely cement, and as I crept toward the far wall, it seemed to be concrete block. Tremors ran through me on loop—pain, fear, exhaustion, hunger, thirst—but I couldn’t let my knees buckle.

  It took forever to circle looking for a way out, but at least I could lean and rest when I had to.

  Finally, I came to a military-grade metal door. Bad news, the lock was engaged, and it had all kinds of bells and whistles, including a control panel and analog dead bolt and chain, just in case of power failure. Damn. They’re taking no chances. Since I had only a sword that was good for killing cocky immortals and no security skills, I fought a wave of despair and leaned my head against the wall. Planning my next move seemed fruitless; it took nearly all my remaining strength to get out of the chair in the first place.

  As I pounded my fist on the wall, an alarm went off, muffled by the steel and concrete, but I still heard it. Impossible that I’d set it off, which meant some bad shit was going down at the Black Watch compound. Footsteps pounded down the corridor toward the warehouse/prison, and I positioned Aegis in a terrible attempt at readiness. The locks disengaged, and I sliced straight through the person stepping through the door.

  The master of the Black Watch stared at me in stupefaction as he slid to the floor. Hurting people bothered me, but they took me captive; it wasn’t like I’d invaded. He opened his mouth, and blood poured out as I stepped over his prone form. Quickly, I rifled through his pockets and took his wallet and his keys. If—no, when—I got out, I could commandeer his vehicle. That seemed like poetic justice, considering what they planned on doing to me.