“No way to do this easily then,” I said, pressing two fingers into the side of her neck and hitting a spot where the ki centers of her aura intersected. I was never happier to be a student of Vibrating Palm martial arts.
Ashley crumbled to the ground unconscious. It was a good thing she was surprised by my thoughts; otherwise she would have been able to order me to stop or blab out everything I’d been told downstairs.
“Man, she is going to be pissed when she wakes up,” I muttered, throwing her over my shoulder and heading to the window.
Chapter Ten
I’m not sure what it says about the Red Room that, in a mansion of super spies, not a single person noticed me climbing out a window on the side of the house with an unconscious woman over my shoulders. Of course, the way my father talked, most of them probably knew I was supposed to kill Ashley. That thought smothered any remaining loyalty I felt to my employers. Once you started doubting the motives of the people controlling you, you couldn’t stop, and it became an avalanche of suspicions and recriminations.
Carrying Ashley to a grey Cadillac CTS I’d bought that year, I opened the door and slipped her in the side passenger’s door before shutting it and getting in on the other side. It was a cool night, and the stars were visible over the Massachusetts estate.
Pulling out my cellphone, I debated who I could trust in this sort of situation. I wasn’t going to kill Ashley—I’d rather die—but trying to fool the Red Room was near unthinkable. They had hundreds of agents, every bit as talented as I was, and an entire army of scientists whose job was to make sure no detail escaped them.
Not to mention magic.
My first thought was to ditch the whole “fake her death” plan and try to make a run for it. There were a few places in the world where the Red Room didn’t have any power. They were in countries where you didn’t want to settle down, but they existed. There was also the option for full-scale treason and seeking refuge with one of the major factions who opposed the House. I dismissed that last idea, since not only was I not a traitor, but I’d also done plenty of missions to find these individuals and kill them.
I was the weak link in all this. My father was a new member of the Committee, possessed of more resources than the president. If I betrayed the Red Room, he’d track us down across the globe not just to protect his own position, but also to defend his other children. He had several other kids by various mistresses, and while he tended to favor Penny and me, I didn’t doubt his love for them. Nor did I doubt the Red Room’s willingness to take their revenge on my family if I betrayed them. How had I ever deluded myself into believing the House had any kind of moral superiority?
“Derek?” Penny said, opening the driver’s side backdoor and sliding on in behind me.
“Ah!” I said, almost jumping out of my seat. I hadn’t yet developed the kind of ice-cold emotional control that would make me a great agent.
Turning my head around, I saw the purple-haired figure of my sister. Her lip, nose, and ear were pierced, while her eyes were enchanted to appear a bright shade of purple. Penny Hawthorne had never left her high school goth phase, and tonight she was dressed in a black corset with nothing over it and a black ballerina’s dress, complete with tights. It was her way of rebelling against the stuffiness of her upbringing. Beside her was a twisted white oak staff covered in Iroquois symbols, Penny’s first attempt to create an enhancer.
“What the hell are you doing here?!” I asked, overreacting to the situation.
“Hoping my brother’s girlfriend just had one too many,” Penny said, staring at me. “However, I know you’re panicking, which is disturbing since you’ve killed like a dozen people without any significant reaction. Have you considered seeing a psychologist?”
“Monsters aren’t people,” I said, my hands shaking. “Nor are the humans who serve them.”
How wrong I was. There were beings like Dracula who could kill entire countries without feeling an ounce of remorse, and entities whose moral superiority shamed the saintliest humans. It wasn’t their species which determined such, though. No, the monster that lay in all of us was made visible only by fangs and claws. After all, many supernaturals used stories of me to scare each other.
“What’s wrong?” Penny asked, shaking me from my fugue. “I’m picking up a galaxy-level freak-out from you.”
I frowned at her. “Don’t read my mind, sis.”
“We’re twins, Derek. The Son and Daughter of the Dragon. You may not choose to express your magical potential, but that doesn’t mean it’s nonexistent. When you stub your toe, I get a sense of it.”
“That’s…creepy,” I said, really hoping she was joking.
“Think how I feel when you’re having sex,” Penny said. “But no, I just saw you come out here holding Ashley and figured something had gone sideways.”
I grimaced. “Too much information.” I closed my eyes, on the verge of tears. It was a sign of weakness I never would have shown normally. “Dad—no, Committee member Hawthorne—has ordered that Ashley be killed. I’m trying to figure out how to save her.”
Penny took a second to respond. “Jesus.”
“I know,” I snapped.
Penny stretched her hand out and placed it on my shoulder. “I know what to do.”
“Do you?”
Penny nodded. “I do. There’s a man who does what you want to do for Ashley. He’s good enough to fool the Blue Room.”
I raised an eyebrow. “It sounds like a trap. You know, let people know there’s a way out of the Red Room only to shoot them when they try.”
Again, I was self-deluded about the Red Room. In retrospect, it was amazing it took me this long to realize we weren’t the forces of justice and nobility my superiors claimed us to be.
“It’s legitimate,” Penny said. “I can confirm it.”
“How?” I asked, looking at her with desperation in my eyes.
Penny bit her lip. There were no secrets between us. I’d die before betraying her, and I knew the feeling was mutual. The only thing we’d ever disagreed upon in our lives was her decision to go looking for our mother.
“Because I’ve helped other agents, or would-be agents, leave the House,” Penny said, admitting to treason almost as bad as Ashley’s.
“Excuse me?” I said, staring at her.
Penny shook her head. “I’m an instructor at the Black Room, Derek. I teach kids, sixteen-year-olds, and sometimes younger, how to be soldiers in an eternal war against monsters. I know the ones who aren’t going to pass. Some of them can be sent for retraining, but others are just not capable of shouldering the burden the House puts on them. Do you think I just mark them for death?”
I stared at my sister, wondering how long she’d held these views and why I hadn’t picked up on them. “Penny, do you know what kind of danger you’re—”
Penny raised an eyebrow, an identical gesture to my own signature look.
“Okay, point taken,” I said, looking over at Ashley. She was still sleeping, the ki strike I’d hit her with working better than chloroform. “People in glass towers shouldn’t use rocket launchers.”
“Do you love her?” Penny asked, causing me to do a double take.
“What?”
“I’m about to help my obsessive brother go against every principle he’s spouted since the day he graduated. Predictably, it’s over a woman, so I figured I’d ask if he loved her or if this was just because you knocked boots after Cassandra dumped you. A quality, I would remind you, she shares with half the female staff of Division One including the Madison—”
“I love her,” I interrupted. “She’s the only genuinely good person I know.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You know what I mean,” I said, sighing. “I’ve done a lot of things for the greater good over the years. Questionable things. The problem is, I’m starting to realize the lesser evil might still be evil. There’s no Diet Coke when it comes to what we do.”
Later, I’d find out the Commi
ttee lied about a lot of my mission details. Why tell an agent the person they’re going to assassinate is just going to do an exposé on Red Room corruption of Capital Hill politicians when you can say he’s a magically enhanced pedophile serial killer wearing the skin of a previous victim? Even then, though, it wasn’t always possible to reconcile the decisions I made in the field. Innocents died, good men’s lives were ruined, and the bad guys were sometimes allowed to continue operating if it meant they were now your bad guys.
I took a deep breath. “On one of our first cases together, we were called to upstate New York to deal with a Carrie.”
A Carrie was a psychic or magician—the difference was academic, really—with little to no control over their abilities.
I continued. “He was a fourteen-year-old boy not so dissimilar to Ashley when we first met, only younger and a lot more traumatized. He’d already killed his abusive stepfather, mother, and a couple of neighbors with his powers. The boy had telekinesis, pyrokinesis, and a couple of other kineses capable of tearing through a small town like it was wet tissue paper. Our orders were to defuse the situation, but it was pretty clear the reason we were given leeway to take him alive was for the possibility of weaponization.”
I could remember that mission as vividly as my past self. Ashley was still uncomfortable with me, having just finished six months of retraining her powers, and more than a little repulsed by our organization’s draconian methods. The two of us couldn’t have been more different. Whereas she saw a scared and lost little boy, I saw the charred and burned bodies that would only multiply as the local authorities antagonized something they didn’t understand.
“So, what happened?” Penny asked, probably wondering why I hadn’t shared this story before.
“Ashley found a way to talk him down. Even better, she helped the boy remove the worst of the pain from his mind. His powers even shifted to healing and biomancy. It wasn’t the last time Ashley found a peaceful solution when my training told me to shoot first.”
“You’re not the kind of guy who kills kids, Derek.”
“The Red Room wants me to be.”
Penny looked down. “Are you going with her?”
“Yeah, are you?” Ashley said, waking up.
“Ah crap,” I said, shaking my head. “I am sucking at my job tonight.”
Ashley stared at me. “Yes, yes you are. So the real question is whether I should alter your brain to become obsessed with the works of Liberace.”
“Touch my brother’s brains and I swear I will find a way to damn your soul to the furthest reaches of hell.” My sister narrowed her eyes and lowered her voice an octave.
Ashley didn’t react well to threats. “You’d have to cast a spell before I wiped—”
I raised my hands in the air as if surrendering. “Let’s remember who the enemy is here, people. Me.”
“You’ll never be my enemy, Derek,” Ashley said, staring at me. “Even if I want to telekinetically hurl a car at you right now.”
“Can she do that?” Penny asked, surprised.
I shrugged, not caring to satiate my sister’s curiosity about Ashley’s power level. “Magicians can do more, psychics hit harder. That’s what I learned in the academy.”
“Except for our father, who can hit harder and do more than anybody,” Penny said, defending the family’s honor. “Not that I suspect you’re in the mood to defend our father right now. Also, Comic Con cosplayer is not the best look for escaping the House.”
“Look who’s talking, Carmilla.”
I put my face in my hands, counting to ten. “So, you heard everything we were talking about.”
“Yeah, I did,” Ashley said, turning to stare out into the night. “You didn’t answer my question, though.”
It was a harder question than she imagined. I loved Ashley, more than any other woman I’d ever met. I had trained my entire life to be an agent of the Red Room, and despite all the ethical questions I’d faced, I still believed it was a necessary evil. Without the House to stand between humanity and the forces of the supernatural, the world would eat itself within weeks.
That didn’t require me, though.
Really, the choice was simple. Did I value my continued service to a group that would ask me to kill someone I loved more than I valued the person I loved? If I said yes, then I couldn’t claim to love that person at all. Love was something you either possessed absolutely or not at all. My mother abandoned both my sister and me, leaving behind my father. I didn’t think she loved us. If she did, she never would have left.
And I wasn’t my mother.
“I want to come with you,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I want it more than anything.”
Ashley looked at me, probably not too pleased with the amount of doubt she’d sensed within me. “Derek—”
“You realize, we’re never going to see each other again if you leave, right?” Penny said in the back. Her voice was quivering. I don’t think she expected me to choose Ashley over her. I wished I could reassure her I wasn’t.
But I was.
I lowered my head, unable to respond to my twin. Strange. For a decision that was supposed to be romantic, I felt sickened.
“Your brother loves you, Penelope. He’s—” Ashley started speaking for me, reaching over to put her hand on my shoulder.
Penny cut her off. “I don’t need you to tell me what my brother thinks of me. I’ll make the phone call. He was going to be coming here anyway.”
I looked back at her. “Why?”
Penny didn’t answer. Only later did I have the sense to realize she’d been intending to leave too.
Chapter Eleven
We drove for about three hours until we reached a small village on the coast. I didn’t bother to learn its name, but it was the kind of place that didn’t lock its doors or believe in evolution. The buildings downtown were all one story, and the only major franchise I saw was a McDonalds that looked like it hadn’t been updated since the eighties.
All the lights were off, and the streets were empty, leaving me both relieved and unnerved. This was the place we were supposed to meet with Penny’s contact, a man she knew as the Cuckoo. Parking the car in front of an old-time department store, I turned the engine off and waited for him to show. I wasn’t sure I trusted Penny’s contact. This was all a bit too coincidental for my tastes, but our options were limited.
“I wish we had time to change clothes.” Ashley crossed her arms. “This is an awkward outfit to die in.”
“That’s assuming we’re going to die tonight. We may have to go into hiding for a while,” I said, thinking about the kind of preparations necessary to fake someone’s death well enough to fool the Red Room.
They boggled the mind.
You had to overcome magic, science, a veritable army of investigators, and a spy network larger than anything but the United States. Hell, they had access to the spy network of the United States, too. I’d spent months infiltrated into the CIA, copying all of the agency’s files on supernatural happenings, with no one the wiser. It made me wonder if I should try to do this on my own. I shook my head of the thought. I trusted Penny. If she said this person could be trusted, I believed her. Even if it was hard to do so.
“I’ve worked with the Cuckoo three times,” Penny interrupted, sensing my doubts. She’d been silent during the trip here. “He’s very effective at pulling off these missions and has ties to the Blue Room. If anyone is capable of getting you out of the House’s sights, it’s him.”
I wasn’t so sure and hated feeling that way, since Ashley would pick up on my emotional state. I’d spent my entire life training to be a part of the House’s elite, and the idea of leaving said life behind was difficult. I also knew what they were capable of. Even if we managed to get away, it’d be years before I stopped looking over my shoulder.
“We should go to India,” Ashley said, picking up on my distress. “A billion people is a large crowd to get lost in.”
“S
ays the neon-dressed white girl,” Penny rolled her eyes.
“Says the neon-dressed Jewish girl,” Ashley corrected. “If you’re going to poke holes in my suggestion, then at least do them right.”
“We’ll have to change our appearances,” I said, sighing. “Mannerisms, names, and habits. No use of credit cards, just cash, and it’ll be best if we avoided being out in the open as well. The Cuckoo will probably provide us existing identities, but I won’t feel comfortable until we disappear again after that.”
“If only one of us were trained as a covert operative of some kind,” Ashley said, staring out the window. “But where would we find someone with that sort of training? I mean, you’d have to be some sort of spy.”
I rolled my eyes. “Very funny.”
“I remind you, India is where Marie got killed in the Bourne Supremacy, so don’t get too comfortable.” Penny leaned over the side of Ashley’s seat to glare at her. “I’d rather my brother didn’t have to fish you out of some river after Karl Urban kills you. Not that I don’t think you’d deserved it.”
“That movie came out in 2004 and is hardly what I’d call a classic,” I said. “You should stick with better references.”
“Excuse me?” Ashley said, turning to her.
“It isn’t a classic?” I asked.
“I meant the ‘deserve it’ part,” Ashley said, slapping me across the shoulder.
Penny returned to her seat in the back. “I’m sorry. I love my brother and I’m not happy I’m about to be separated from him forever. I’d like to know just what the hell you did to warrant being killed by the Red Room.”
“Penny—” I started to say.
“Maybe I looked at someone the wrong way. People get killed for no reason in the Red Room.” Ashley could barely hold back the venom in her voice.
“The Red Room has done more good for this world than any other body in the history of ever. Do you like the idea of being born and raised in blood camps? Because that’s what would have happened if not for our parents and Uncle Talbot. It’s been doing it for millennium. Let me tell you about the Nephilim’s reign in the Pre-Babylonian Era which—” Penny started to speak before I raised my hand.
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