by Ben Zackheim
“Japan?” Ronin asked. “What were you doing in Japan?”
“What are they doing in Japan? That’s the real question. How do you zoom this thing?” I reached over Ronin’s shoulder, and she slapped my hand away.
“Hands off the equipment, Kane.”
Rebel smiled. “He has a hard time keeping his hands off the equipment.”
I laid my best fuck-you glare on my partner. She kept smiling. “You have to swing at everything these days, don’t you? Okay, fine Ronin, then zoom in there. Look at all that movement.”
Rebel leaned in, and squinted. “They’re all over the area around the temple now. Did we just miss them? They weren’t there before.”
“Maybe they followed us.”
Rebel crossed her arms, and pouted. “All this running around is pissing me off.”
“Stop whining. You just want to re-kill undead.”
“Bet your ass I do! Better than having them shadow our asses. What happens when they catch up and surprise us? I like to be the one to catch up and surprise.”
“I didn’t know you liked catch-up with your surprise,” Ronin said.
Ouch.
“Do not do that,” Rebel said, pointing at Ronin.
“Ever again,” I added quickly.
Ronin shrugged. “I thought it was funny.”
“Colorado HQ is pretty active, too,” I said, changing the subject. I pointed at another monitor that covered the western United States.
Ronin leaned closer to the screen. “My guess is vamps. They were on our tail all the way to California.”
I leaned back in my chair. “We’ll need someone here to take out the vampires that we swap with. Is there anyone who can help you, Ronin?”
My ex-boss’ face went sour. “Hell with that. I’m going with you.”
Rebel tensed. “Over Kane’s dead body.”
“If you want access to these satellites, I’m going with you.” She held up her phone, and smirked. “With your space junk to back us up, we could cover the globe, Arkwright.”
We stared each other down.
I gave in first.
“I don’t trust you,” I said.
“Trust doesn’t enter into it.” She leaned forward, and flicked a switch on the control panel. A door across the room slid open. Rebel and I glanced at each other, and peeked in.
An arsenal for the gods lined the walls. BR18, SIG MCX, and even a selection of Glocks that matched mine.
I stepped into the room and pulled Rebel in with me. Ronin smirked. It was a knowing smirk. It was an ‘I won’ smirk. “You have two minutes to make up your mind and then the offer is off the table.”
I slid the door shut behind us. Rebel and I locked eyes. Decision time. “What do you think?”
She answered quickly. “I think we take what we can hold and swap to Colorado right now.”
“I heard that!” Ronin yelled from the other side of the door.
“You were meant to!” Rebel yelled back. I opened the door again. It wasn’t going to give us any privacy. If these two needed to have it out, then it was as good a time as any.
“Can you… Will you two please… Just tell me the downside of letting her come with us, Rebel.”
“I don’t trust her, but she’d be the least of our worries if we actually found Cassidy and Rose.”
“What’s that mean?”
“They’re pissed off at us, remember, Kane? We abandoned them! How are you going to convince them we’re on their side?”
“I’ll be me,” I said with a smile. Rebel rolled her eyes.
“I’m still not sure why you two are looking for them,” Ronin said. “They escaped on their own. They know that changing is bad for them. They’re probably better off. I mean, Rose can sniff out treasures. So you probably want her for that. And Cassidy is the size of a tank. That can’t hurt in a pinch.”
I answered her with a frown. She responded with a smirk. Rebel tapped her fingernails together. The sound was meant to make her sister shut up. Didn’t work.
Ronin leaned against the wall, arms crossed, and inspected us. “I can’t figure out why you two would be the ones to look for them, though. Why not one of your new friends you’ve been running around with? The twins must have something else you want.” Ronin was deep in thought.
I shook my head. For a genius, she could be a fucking idiot. I could tell she was scouring her memory for any clues about what the twins might have that we wanted. One glance at Rebel and I could tell she was equally flabbergasted by her sister.
Ronin kept on thinking out loud. “The wendigo. His eyes glowed. Was he possessed? Maybe by a demon. So you’re triangulating the demon faction by capturing Cassidy. Then you find a way to trap the possessing demon. Boom. Leverage.”
“Yeah,” Rebel said. She rolled her eyes. “Close. Real close. Keep going.”
I covered my face with my hands. “Keep going right out the front door, preferably.”
“Something with the girl, then? Did she take something of yours, Rebel? Maybe a spell? Or maybe she took something from you, Kane. Like one of your relics. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“We never could hide anything from you,” I said. I just wanted her to shut up.
“Okay, they were in our custody for…”
“What do you mean, custody?” Rebel asked. She stood up and took two dangerous-looking steps toward her sister. “They were your patients!”
“Slip of the tongue, sister. Settle down. We had them in the high security hospital ward. They were our patients but we also had to respect their power.” Rebel turned in circles like an animal who still wanted to attack but knew better. She sat back down, and looked at me as if I could explain her sister to her.
“Okay,” Ronin continued. “So both twins were with…”
I knew she’d keep on guessing for an eternity if I let her. I’d had enough.
“They’re our friends,” I said, simply.
“Excuse me?” Ronin asked. Rebel chuckled at her sister’s cluelessness. Even when she was given the answer, Ronin couldn’t register it.
“They’re our friends, Ronin,” I repeated, a little slower.
I watched the realization cross her face. Then the embarrassment.
She shut up, but she also did something I never thought possible.
She made me feel bad for her.
Chapter 21
The three of us swapped onto the top of a van on Highway 115.
Colorado was beautiful, even during the apocalypse. Hundreds of abandoned cars ruined the view, making a mess of a line into a horizon stacked high with mountains that reached the black purple sky. A few vamps floated above. They spotted the three of us, and hissed. My Glocks hissed back, and the undeads’ lower jaws twirled through the air. Rebel stopped the enemy from escaping with a spell that burned them from the inside out.
I brushed myself off. Rebel cleared her throat. We high-fived, and turned to find Ronin staring at us.
“What are you looking at?” Rebel asked her.
Ronin shook her head until she blinked. She hadn’t seen us in action before. It’s one thing to send your soldiers out into battle. It’s another thing to see what they have to do when they get there.
The silence that settled on us that night had a heavy feeling. Like something needed to happen for time to continue. But it wasn’t the undead that made me uneasy. It was the sisters. I couldn't do anything about it. If they needed to duke it out, so be it. It was as good a night as any to watch a family break apart.
I could feel the tension in the air for hours. There was some chatting, but it was brittle. There were moments of silence with a dead chill, and an extra dose of stillness.
“How about them Yankees?” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
Rebel and Ronin grumbled, and went back to eating their stale jerky. The last of the supplies.
“We need to stock up on food,” I said. “One more breakfast of jerky and canned pineapple might kill us before the un
dead do.”
“Not sure how you can say that after that fight we just escaped.”
“That was no fight,” Rebel said. She was right.
“I can say it with a thing called a sense of humor,” Ronin said. I wasn’t sure why she was so determined to prove she could be amusing.
Rebel laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh. It was the kind of laugh that removes any humor from the joke, and targets the jugular.
“What are you laughing at?” Ronin asked.
The two of them locked eyes. I cleared my throat. No good. It was on.
“What’s on your mind, sister?” Rebel asked.
“Your lack of control. Your choice of partners. Your lack of control of your partner.”
“Hey,” I cut in, but Rebel drowned me out.
“I have plenty of control, Ronin. If you’re talking about how we handled the vamps, then get used to it. That’s how it’s done.”
“Because you’re the fighter in the family.”
“That’s right,” Rebel said. “I’m the fighter.”
“Some things never change.”
“We’re going to have this conversation again?” Rebel asked with a groan. “Didn’t we settle this when we were about 12?”
“Maybe you did. But I… ” Ronin realized I was listening to every word with intense curiosity, and clammed up. But her pursed lips were ready to explode with some unresolved history.
I tried to think of something to say. Something to stop the train wreck I could see coming.
“Okay. Explain.” Rebel said. She was trying to stay civil.
“I don’t need to explain a thing to you, and you know it. You and the parents worked it all out years ago. Now look where we are.” She threw her arms up and gestured to the world.
“You think this is my fault?” Rebel asked.
“She thinks what’s your fault?” I asked.
“Whose fault is it, then, Rebel? His?” Ronin pointed a thumb at me.
Rebel stuck a finger in her sister’s face. “If there’s any blame to throw around, it’s the way you ran Spirit.”
Shit.
There was no chance the night would end well. In fact, I’d have to work hard to stop blood from hitting the ground.
Ronin pointed back at Rebel. If she had an ounce of Magicist in her, she would have cast the explosive Diarrhea Spell.
“At least I tried,” Ronin managed to say through her fury.
“You should have tried harder then,” Rebel yelled. She was on a roll.
“Hey, come on,” I said. “Where the hell do you two think you’re taking this conversation?”
“It’s not a conversation, Kane,” Ronin said, not breaking her glare from her sister. “It’s a monologue. It’s always been a monologue.”
Rebel threw up her hands. “You made your choice, Ronin. You wanted to be in the background. How about you stop blaming the rest of the world for your own mistakes, and let us try to clean up the mess?”
“I have a better idea,” Ronin said in a whisper, as she walked toward Rebel. I stepped in between them. Not that that would have stopped either one of them from cutting through me, but I had to try. “You do what we agreed to, and you follow my fucking orders.”
I’d had enough. “Okay. How about we cut an hour of back-and-forth from the monologue then, and tell me what the fuck the two of you are talking about?”
“Just a friendly family spat,” Rebel growled.
It was my turn to point at Rebel. “Bullshit.”
“It is bullshit,” Ronin said. “And I’m done.”
She walked off, disappearing into the night. I thought of stopping her. It was dangerous out there, and she wasn’t known for being a soldier. She was tough as hell, but against a vampire horde, she’d be meat.
Rebel’s hand on my shoulder kept me quiet.
“Let her go.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. There are vampires out there.”
“Yeah, and I’m here.” The danger in her voice threw me off.
“You don’t mean that.”
“You don’t think so? Try me. Go get her. See how much I don’t mean it. She’s better off taking her chances with the vampires right now.”
“What the hell are you two talking about anyway?”
“It’s just family shit.”
“Yeah? The way you two were talking, it sounded like world shit.”
“Our family always had a big ego.”
“What choices did you make?”
“Hm?”
“Don’t play stupid, Rebel. What choices did the two of you make that have you screaming at each other?”
She sighed, and looked up at me with an unreadable face. That was not like Rebel. She wore her heart, brain, and nervous system on her face.
“Is this another one of those things you already told me, and I don’t remember?”
She paused. She was deciding what she should tell me. She was deciding if she should lie to me.
“No,” she finally whispered. “This is something I kept from you.”
I sat down on a boulder. “Fine. Lay it all out.”
“You’re not pissed?”
“I don’t know. I guess it depends on what you tell me.”
“It’s not like you haven’t kept secrets from me.”
“Drop the victim mask, Rebel. It doesn’t look good on you.”
“You may not want to know it, when I’m done.”
“Try me, partner.”
She paused. I didn’t know if it was for effect. I certainly had never seen her behave like that. She sat down on a log near the dying campfire. The flame’s light danced across her face and her red hair.
She couldn’t find it in her to make eye contact with me, so she told the fire, “My family started Spirit.”
Chapter 22
“You are shitting me,” I said.
“I wish. My life would be a hell of a lot easier if I was.”
“Spirit has been around for thousands of years.”
“Tell me about it. I feel every fucking ancestor on my shoulders. All the time. Like spiritual cinder blocks.”
It was my turn to search for words. Rebel still wouldn’t look at me. I knew if I didn’t start cracking this discussion wide open, she’d find a way to wiggle out of it.
“But, okay, so, that’s news…” I had to do better than that. I sat down across from her, and tried to position myself into her field of vision. She did a damn good job focusing on the flame, and not me. “Why did you keep it a secret from me?”
“Because it was a secret from everyone, Kane. No one could know how deep my family’s connection is to Spirit. Was, I guess you can say now.”
“But who cares? So you have connections to Spirit that run deep. It’s not like that’s something to be ashamed of.”
“Really?” she asked, looking up at me for the first time. “You can’t think of any reasons why my family would want it to be on the down-low?”
I shrugged.
She sighed. “Sorry, Kane. I’ve been so deep in this shit for so long that it’s hard for me to see through someone else’s eyes.”
“Doesn’t help that I’m the first person you told.”
Her eyebrows rose up on her face like a couple of caterpillars stepping on fire ants. I could tell from her expression that I was not, in fact, the first person she’d told.
“Who else did you tell?” I asked.
“Technically, you are the first person I’ve told.”
“Rebel, who else knows this deep, dark, damn secret?”
“Fox. See? I knew I shouldn’t tell you!”
“You told Lancelot? Why the fuck would you tell him before me?”
“Wow, wait, you’re jealous?”
“Jealous? No.” Busted. “Confused.” Good thinking, maybe a millisecond too late. “I’m your partner.”
“So was he.”
“Wait…”
“Not working partners.”
“He
lanced your lot?”
“Good one.”
“He ran one through?”
“One more and I’ll run one through you, buddy.”
“So all I had to do to get you to be honest with me is sleep with you?”
Smooth.
Smooth, as in blood-running-down-my-face smooth. I thought she’d lose it. Instead, she grinned, and shrugged, and left it at that.
“I knew you two had a connection, especially after you ran off with the Holy Grail to save his undead ass. But I didn’t know it was serious.”
“It wasn’t. Not really. It had just been…”
“What?”
“It had just been a long time since I felt close to someone. He was there.”
“You slept with a vampire. And you gave me shit for Tabitha having dirty thoughts about me.”
“No, I gave you shit for having dirty thoughts about Tabitha. Why should both of us make the same stupid mistake?”
I tried to breathe through the mess of thoughts smacking at my brain. What would I ask if I had my head on straight?
“How did he take the news about Spirit?”
“He shrugged it off. That’s another reason I told him. He didn’t have any skin in the game.”
“No, his skin was in something else.” First I lost my memory, now I was losing my self control. What the hell was wrong with me?
“All right, don’t push your luck, Arkwright.”
“You keep throwing me softballs, I keep taking swings.”
“I’m throwing you the truth. If you need to bat it down to deal with it, then maybe I should stop.”
“Spirit.”
“Spirit. Fine. I could bore you with a billion details, but the bottom line is that Ronin and I didn’t get to decide anything about our lives. Not until we were 13.”
“Did you have a Vampire Bat Mitzvah?”
“Dammit, Kane!”
I’d heard enough to figure out the rest. Or so I thought. “So you got to decide what you wanted to do at the age of 13.”
She met my eyes, and then she dropped them to the floor.
“Basically.”
“Basically? What does that mean?”