by Rose O'Brien
He’d heard the blast a few minutes ago and it froze his blood. Had the ones he’d been watching been responsible for this?
He reached the top of the four story building a block over from the blast site and crawled on his belly so as not to be seen by anyone below. Reaching the raised edge of the roof, he pulled out his binoculars and started scanning the crowd.
Wounded were being loaded up in ambulances. Police were putting up barricades. All normal.
No sign of his targets. Good news there. He breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe they hadn’t been behind this particular act of murder and mayhem.
Wait a second.
He zeroed in on the woman standing amidst the debris. She stuck out like a hipster at a biker rally. Her long black hair hung in a braid down her back and she wore no head covering. Her slender form was clad in khaki pants and a plain T-shirt. Not exactly the normal fashion for women in this part of the world. Either she was clueless or she gave zero fucks what anyone thought.
Most interestingly, though, she was talking to herself. He focused in on her face, but he couldn’t make out the words.
He zoomed the binocs out and looked again.
Hold up.
She wasn’t talking to herself. The body language was all wrong for that. She was focused on the space about three feet in front of her, and though she was trying hard to minimize the gestures, they were still there.
She was talking to someone no one else could see. He jerked the binocs away from his face as surprise speared through him.
Holy shit. Could it be?
He looked through the lenses again. She’d stopped talking and was heading over to where a body lay draped with a sheet. Her back was to him and her bag was blocking his view, but he was almost certain she’d retrieved something from the corpse. He’d bet dollars to doughnuts that was a seer down there.
As she rose to her feet, he focused the binocs on her face, maxed out the magnification and pushed a button on the side, activating the device’s recording feature.
He’d never seen a seer before. None of his kind had for almost a hundred years. He’d been taught what to look for, though, just in case he ran across one in his wide travels.
She didn’t look all that special. When you found the Holy Grail, you kind of expected it to sparkle.
As a ranger of the Mage Corps, it was his job to tag and flag unusual entities that could become assets of the Council. The woman was talking to people, writing things down in a notebook and snapping pictures. A reporter, then. Shouldn’t be too difficult to track her.
The Council, the representatives of the five magical races in the Earthly Realms, would be extremely interested in a seer.
He was officially in Baghdad to find the group that had murdered half the team of mages in Damascus. He’d tracked his suspects here and now, he had a sneaking suspicion that they had something to do with this bombing. The brass had warned him that something was brewing in the region. The seer, while interesting, could be flagged for a later pick up. Once he’d eliminated his targets and uncovered whatever nefarious plot they were up to, maybe he could snag her on his way out of town and turn her over his superiors.
As Theron tracked her movement across the pavement, he zoomed the binocs out and froze, every muscle in his body setting like concrete.
One of the targets he’d been tracking for weeks was watching from the crowd that had started to gather at the barricades. His gaze was locked on that seer.
***
As Jen pulled her scooter up and parked it in the shadow of one of the towering cement T-walls on the edge of the slum near the Amil neighborhood, she took a deep breath. She was nervous about going into the slum, but she was more nervous about speaking with Rukia’s family. There was no telling how they would react when she told them the news of her death. It was very likely police hadn’t identified her body yet, much less located her family. So, she would be the one to deliver the devastating news.
She planned to hand over the medicine and leave as quickly as possible and hoped no one asked too many questions.
The T-wall towered twenty feet over the squat little houses and shacks of the slum. The walls had cropped up all over the city to funnel traffic to the security checkpoints and to protect some of the larger development projects that were beginning to spring up around the city now that the war was over.
Jen knew—thanks to her reporting—that the T-walls were also used to separate slums from the areas that were targeted for revitalization. It outraged her, but the stories had been buried inside publications back in the US and hardly noticed.
People in the west had stopped caring about Iraq when the majority of the US troops had left a couple years ago. Her stories on the Iraqi government and the rebuilding effort sold, but they didn’t make the front page anymore. There was more demand for her magazine profiles these days. Except for her reporting on ISIS and the offshoot groups that were rising to take its place. Those stories always made a splash.
Jen walked along the cracked pavement and stopped an elderly woman who was sweeping her doorstep. The shack was made of plywood and corrugated metal that reflected the brutal sun, causing Jen’s skin to shrivel a bit.
“Can you tell me where to find Rukia’s house?” she asked the woman.
The woman gave her some serious side-eye. Jen knew she didn’t look or dress like most of the women in Baghdad. Her features, a gift from her Chinese-American parents, clearly marked her as a foreigner, though, and that usually earned her a pass.
“A woman with that name lives up the hill. Look for the white door.”
The old woman turned her back on Jen, signaling that the conversation was over, and went back to sweeping.
As she moved deeper into the slum, the smell became stronger. The sewers were problematic in the best parts of the city. In the slums, they were nonexistent. Most people used communal latrines in this area, and garbage was piled periodically along what passed for a main drag in this neighborhood.
Men in long white tunics sat outside their doors, trying to escape the heat and catch the breeze that came dancing down the dusty street. Their eyes followed her. Most were wary, others curious, but a few were narrowed with hostility. Those gazes she met dead on.
Her spine was straight, her gait loose, and her expression set on resting bitch face. Everything about her said, “Don’t fuck with me. I will straight up cut you.”
She found the house with the white door and knocked. A bearded man in his thirties answered the door, a little boy with huge dark eyes hiding behind his father’s hip and peeking at her.
“Are you Rukia’s husband?”
The man nodded, a look of confusion crossing his face at her appearance and, likely, her mastery of Arabic.
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this,” Jen started. “There was a car bomb at the market and your wife—she didn’t make it.”
A look of disbelief crossed his face, then white hot pain. He picked up the boy and put him on his hip, holding the skinny body against his chest.
“Before she died, she asked me to bring this to you,” Jen lied. It was a white lie and one the man would never know about.
Jen turned on her heel and started walking down the dirt road toward her scooter.
“Wait!”
Her heart pounding, she froze, but did not turn around.
“Did she suffer?”
The pain in his voice caused her throat to tighten. Damn it.
“I don’t—I don’t think so,” she said, her voice cracking a bit. “It was quick.”
Her feet started moving again and she didn’t dare look back.
“Thank you!” the man called to her. “Blessings upon you.”
Jen practically ran to her scooter, overwhelmed with emotions she thought she had left behind a long time ago. The look on that man’s face would haunt her. The sound of his voice was trapped in her ears.
HIs pain was like an echo of her own, blending with it in a kind of sicken
ing harmony.
The streets of Baghdad flowed by in a stream of grey and brown as Jen navigated on autopilot to her little apartment near the Green Zone. Her thoughts were as blank as she could make them as she shut off the scooter and unlocked the front door of the building.
There was a bottle of Blue Label scotch upstairs with her name on it, and she was probably going to kill it before the night was over. She trudged the three flights to her floor feeling a thousand years old. Her clothes stank of smoke from the blast site, she had that guy’s blood on her pants and that dead woman’s words bouncing around in her head.
She pushed the thoughts away as best she could. She’d certainly had a lot of practice over the past few years.
Her little building was one of the nicer ones in the neighborhood. It had an open stairwell running through the middle of the structure. Each floor held two apartments, each door at the end of a long landing.
Twisting her key in the lock, she pushed her door open and pulled the strap of the camera bag off. A blow to the back of her head staggered her, sending her crashing into the little side table in the front hall where she usually tossed her mail and keys.
The switchblade she kept in her pocket was in her hand in a second, the quiet snick of the blade sliding free a welcome sound.
She kept the blade in an underhand grip, hidden against her body. Her back was to her attacker. Footsteps sounded behind her, and she tried to gauge the distance. Wait for it. Wait for it.
She’d drawn the drapes before she’d left that morning, and the apartment was cast in deep shadows. Her attacker must have slipped in behind her from the kitchen, which opened to the left off her front hall.
Now. She lashed out with the blade and felt it slide into the flank of her attacker, earning a surprised grunt. He was tall, well-muscled. She couldn’t make out much more than that in the dark.
The blade slid free, and she stabbed again, once more. He screamed that time. She lashed out with a booted foot and knocked him back against her closed door. As she flipped the knife to an overhand grip and prepared to drive the blade into the juncture of his neck and shoulder, a hand clamped around her wrist and hauled her backwards.
An arm snaked around her middle, and the knife was wrenched from her hand. So there were two of them. At least.
Kicking out, a scream tore from her throat. It wasn’t like anyone would ride to the rescue, but it made her feel better. Maybe it would make her attackers’ ears ring while they killed her. She was dragged backwards and slammed face first on her bed. Bile and panic rose in her throat, a terrifying mix that threatened to choke her.
Her hands dug into the bedding and she tried to scramble away, but her attacker had her hips pinned against the foot of the bed.
Had her worst nightmare finally come to life? Was this how it was going to end? Were all the risks and all the mistakes she’d made catching up with her at last?
Hell if she was going down without a fight. They wanted her blood, they’d have to work for it.
Jen continued to struggle, trying every dirty trick in the book to get away. Her elbow strikes failed to land, she couldn’t find a body part to dig her nails in. Her kicks struck only empty air.
Another scream, ripped from her throat, this one of frustration. Another blow landed against the back of her head, silencing her and causing little dancing lights to appear in her vision. Damn, the guy was strong.
A crashing sound echoed through the tiny apartment from the direction of the front door. Her attacker’s weight shifted like he was trying to look out into the hall. He said something in a language that she didn’t recognize. A tiny alarm went off in her brain. There weren’t many languages she didn’t know enough of to identify. She knew all the local ones. These guys weren’t from around here, which spelled trouble. A new and terrifying kind of trouble. These weren’t local gangbangers.
Another crashing sound was accompanied by the sound of the first attacker, the one she’d stabbed, screaming. Did she smell smoke?
Her attacker shifted again, like he was digging in his pocket, and she took advantage of his momentary distraction to shift her weight, bring her right knee to her chest and plant a solid backwards kick right in the guy’s balls.
A strangled sound escaped his throat as he cupped himself. A capped syringe fell from his fingers and clattered on the concrete floor. Shit, whatever was in that syringe was for her. She prepared to kick the guy in the face, but a figure appeared in her bedroom door, and she froze.
It wasn’t the first attacker she had been expecting. This guy had to be six and a half feet tall and built like a linebacker. Instead of the dark hair and dark skin she had glimpsed on her attackers, she could make out light hair and light skin in the dim light.
He was dressed head to foot in black clothes that looked vaguely like the tactical gear she’d seen on some of the soldiers.
And his hands were on fire.
Her brain slammed to a screeching halt at the sight. What the fuck?
Blue and yellow flames covered his clenched fists and licked up his forearms, but he didn’t appear to be in any pain. The light cast by the flames lit his face from below, throwing his features into terrifying relief. His eyes were a deep indigo and almost seemed to glow in that light.
With a movement that was almost too fast to track, his right hand shot forward, and a fireball hit her attacker square in the chest just as he was scrambling to his feet. The guy flew backward into her nightstand, turning the wood into splinters.
Whoever this guy was, he’d just taken out her attackers. But that didn’t make him an ally.
Jen suppressed another scream as the blonde stepped further into the room, but he ignored her. He pressed his attack, and Jen took that opportunity to slip past him and out the bedroom door.
She wasn’t about to stick around and find out how that guy’s portable flame thrower worked. As Jen scrambled into her front hall, she almost tripped on the body of her first attacker. There was a smoking hole where his throat used to be, and his sightless eyes were staring at the ceiling.
Bile rose in her throat again, but she pushed it down. Whoever the firestarter was, she wanted to be as far away from him as she could get. Now.
Jen had the presence of mind to scoop up her bag from the hallway floor where she’d dropped it and threw open her front door, heading for the stairs at a dead sprint.
“Wait!” she heard a male voice call behind her over the sound of her sawing breath.
Fat fucking chance.
Heart clawing its way out of her throat, she flew down the stairs, skipping treads and crashing into walls on the way down, her hands scrabbling against the chipped paint of the railings.
Jen was halfway down the street when she realized that she’d left her scooter behind. Fuck it. There was no way she was going back for it. Thighs burning, she slowed to a jog. Note to self, more cardio.
The next road over was a busy pedestrian thoroughfare. She hit the crowd and pulled a drab grey scarf from her bag. Twisting her long black braid on top of her head, she had the scarf tied like a hijab in seconds. An oversized pair of sunglasses helped further obscure her appearance.
Jen Jiang knew how to disappear.
Chapter 2
Three hours, two cab rides, and a bus ride later, Jen walked into the cool, dim lobby of the Palestine Hotel.
She approached the registration desk, recognizing the clerk from when she’d stayed in the hotel before. When she’d first come to Baghdad five years before, she’d lived in the Palestine for several months. Since then, she’d bounced into the hotel a few times when she was between places or just passing through Baghdad.
The place had been the height of luxury in the 1980s, but it hadn’t been updated much since then. The ruby carpet was threadbare, the wood paneling shabby, the furniture chipped and worn.
The hotel was a popular one with foreign journalists. When she’d first arrived during the height of the surge of American troops, it was common to s
ee broadcasters doing live spots in the lobby and on the balconies of the eighteen-story hotel. It was quiet now.
“Got any rooms, Hassan?” she asked the clerk.
“Welcome back to the Palestine, madame. Just let me check and see what we have available.”
Hassan flipped through a book behind the counter.
“I have a room on the twelfth floor. Is that acceptable?”
She nodded and passed him her credit card.
“Do you know how long you’ll be staying with us?”
“Charge me for the week and we’ll go from there,” she told him.
“Very well, madame. What name would you like the room under?”
“Ida B. Wells.”
She always used the name of the nineteenth century black journalist and anti-lynching activist when she was staying anywhere. Her editors and colleagues would be able to track her down if they needed to, although none of them were likely to get panicked and come looking for at least another three weeks, when she started missing deadlines.
The hallway on the twelfth floor was dark and dingy and the room was slightly shabby. It felt a little bit like home.
Jen put her bag on the bed. She fell, exhausted, next to the bag. Her face pressed into the threadbare bedspread. It smelled like cigarette smoke. Images from her apartment, the man on fire, flashed behind her eyelids.
She’d managed to focus on moving around the city, doubling back on her trail and losing any possible pursuit for the last few hours, keeping all those thoughts at bay. That asshole must have hit her harder than she’d thought. There was no way she could have seen what she’d thought she’d seen.
That guy hadn’t been on fire. She’d just had her bell rung and was seeing things, that’s all.
Her stomach clenched as she thought of her two attackers. She hadn’t imagined that syringe. Someone wanted her. Alive.
She’d known for years that her work could get her killed. Plenty of journalists had died over the past fifteen years covering conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria. A few had been captured and beheaded or shot on camera. It was a risk anyone reporting in this part of the world assumed when they took the job.