by Ben Zackheim
This time was no different.
At least that’s what I kept telling myself.
But the pressure of knowing that Rebel was up against a pro made it tough to calm myself.
“Back off, bitch,” Rebel shouted. I knew she could dodge the first round. She was good at picking up on where that would land. But I got the feeling that this woman could get off the second shot in record time.
“Give me the sword,” the stranger said. Her tone was direct and no-nonsense. She was here for her mission and would go through everyone she needed to go through. Shooting me was a great way to get me out of the way but it was also a clear message that she was not to be taken lightly.
“Who are you?” Rebel asked, stalling. We could only hope Scarlett heard the shot.
“Insignificant.”
“Insig… What, are you a robot? I’m Rebel. This is Scarlett.” My partner pointed to me.
At first I was confused. Then I grinned. On the inside.
I knew what Rebel was up to.
“I’m Miller. I know you’re Rebel. The person I shot is not Scarlett. He’s Kane. Kane Arkwright.”
“No, Kane is still down below,” Rebel said, pointing to the open hatch. “I’m sure he heard your cheap shot and he’s either going to come out with guns blazing or he’ll sneak up behind you.”
“Back away from him,” Miller said.
“Screw off.”
She fired at Rebel who, as expected, was able to relegate the wound to a graze across her hip. The next shot would probably hit.
Rebel backed off, arms up. “Okay, okay. What an asshole.” She watched Miller cautiously walk up the hill.
Miller stood over me. I still couldn’t see her very well, but her confused body language was easy to spot. “This is impossible. I shot Kane. Where is he?” Her voice was stressed as if we’d surprised her.
Good.
Rebel had used a spell while I was bleeding all over China. Face Peel, I think it’s called. She’d made my face look like Scarlett’s. It’s a clever trick, usually used for practical jokes and Halloween. The only problem was I had to keep my mouth shut. My manly, alpha male baritone coming out of Scarlett’s mouth would give us away.
The only problem was I didn’t like to keep my mouth shut.
“I told you, already,” Rebel said. “Kane is still down that hatch. I’d be careful if I were you.”
“Shut up, bitch.” Miller slid carefully toward the hatch.
“You hear that Scarlett? Miller sneaks up on us, shoots you and calls me a bitch?”
Miller yelled down the hatch. “Arkwright! Hand me the sword through the hatch and I’ll let these two live!”
“Wait,” Rebel said. “I know you.” She was lying, of course. She didn’t know her. She was just biding time. But that’s the only weapon we had at the moment. Plus, whatever Scarlett was working on. At least I hoped she was working on something. She also could have slipped out another hatch and run.
“Shut up!” Our attacker was losing whatever cool she had left.
“Yeah, yeah, I know you. You work for Cannon.”
“What did you say?” Miller asked with a cold tone in her voice. Rebel was getting into her head.
“Yeah, in Beijing,” she lied. She was gambling with that little detail. But if Miller had ever been to Beijing, she’d begin to think too much. Maybe we could use that as an edge. “Training, right?” Okay, now Rebel was really pushing her luck. Too much detail would make it easier for Miller to spot the lie. My partner always had to overdo everything, even her lies.
Miller took two big steps toward Rebel. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You are coming with me.”
Rebel raised her hands high. “Okay, okay, but you’ll find I’m not very good company.”
As they walked past me, Miller gave me a kick in the side. “You. Tell Kane I have his woman.”
I watched them walk down the hill, Rebel ten paces ahead with her hands on her head. All I could do was wait for Scarlett to emerge and get me patched up. Then I’d get Rebel back.
I bent my knees and somehow got my feet flat on the ground. I pushed my legs hard to carry me up the hill. After three scraping steps I felt dizzy. Not good. But I had to get Scarlett’s attention. If the gunshot and chatter hadn’t alerted her, then I was Rebel’s last hope.
Two more scoots and I was close enough to toss a stone into the lab opening. It took all my strength but it was a bullseye. The rock clanked down the chute, making a delightfully boisterous racket.
It hit the lab floor with a thud.
That’s when the car at the bottom of the hill exploded.
Chapter 34
No.
All I could think was, no.
I managed to stand. Then I managed to fall on my face and roll down the hill. I could feel the heat of the flame hit my skin. Even fifty feet away from the husk of the car, it was hard to take.
“Kane!” a voice entered my head like a bullet. I squinted from the pain.
It was Scarlett. I was seeing the world through a black tunnel. Everything around me was a pinprick of light. It wasn’t the bullet wound. I didn’t even feel it anymore. It wasn’t the blood loss. I had that under control. It was the fact that my world had just ended. The life I’d known had gone away.
I never thought it would last long. But I never wanted it to end like that.
I never wanted Rebel to be the one to go first.
She couldn’t be dead.
I could feel that she was gone.
I stumbled to my feet and somehow got the strength to walk. Scarlett tried to stop me. I shoved her aside but I didn’t have control of my body. I couldn’t think in a way that made any sense. I was dangerous. I hoped Scarlett would see that and keep her distance.
No such luck.
“Kane! Stop!” she yelled after me. I felt her hand on my shoulder. She was stronger than me. Hell, everyone was stronger than me at that moment. But I slapped her hand away and wrapped my fingers around her throat. Her eyes told me that she got the message.
I stumbled closer to the flame. It was dying down a little, letting me get a bit closer to the charred remains of the car.
And the charred remains of three humans. The driver, Miller, and…
They were black as coal and frozen in a pose of death — violently pushing themselves off the ground.
Rebel.
Was it her?
“I don’t know,” Scarlett whispered to me. Her voice seemed to carry on the wind. I didn’t even know I’d asked the question out loud. “The body closest to us might be her. Kane, I’m so sorry.”
My tunnel vision was clearing. I could hear the fire licking at the sky. I could hear the wind kicking up the dirt all around us, feeding the flame and carrying the smoke up.
But the only thing I could focus on was the charred body in front of me.
The body with long black fingernails.
“Take me to Liuzhou” I said through my dry throat. If Skyler was right and Cannon had spies there, I’d find them.
“Yeah,” Scarlett said. “Yeah, anything you want, Kane.”
Chapter 35
I was bleeding, depressed, hammered and armed.
It was a dangerous mix.
The whiskey chased the pain away just enough for me to act normal. Or, at least, my version of normal. Scarlett had bandaged up my wound and stopped the bleeding. The exit wound meant I wouldn’t have to dig around to get the slug out, but I’d need to clean it out later. I didn’t look forward to that.
I’d told Scarlett to go back to her house and bring Fox up to speed. They were both to stay the fuck away from the bar while I worked.
It was a random, small town dive. But when it came time to decide where Cannon’s people would hang out, it was our best bet.
I let the other drunks blabber at me. I let the women flirt. I even let one guy pick a fight. He won. The lower I was on the pecking order of that dive, the better. Americans think that China is a but
toned up productivity machine. But the bars are just like anywhere else in the world. Filled with desperate, sad, lonely, horny, mad men and women who collide and somehow don’t blow each other to hell.
Rebel.
Goddammit, Rebel.
Everything was without her. That bar over there had been made when she was alive. The bartender knew nothing about her. His loss. The whiskey was something she would have hated, too.
Everything was without Rebel.
If there was one thing I knew for sure, it was that Cannon had hired Miller. When Rebel guessed as much, I could just feel the bitch tense up. I didn’t know much about Cannon. Not many people did. But I suspected sending Miller wasn’t a serious attempt at getting the sword.
Cannon was testing us out.
I gave a shit about my mission one second, and then dropped off a cliff of despair the next. It was a confusing state to be in. Should I deliver Excalibur to Tibet, or hunt down Cannon? I was accustomed to being in control, even when it looked like I was out of it. I didn’t like the feeling, but I also knew there was zilch I could do about it.
The air was filled with smoke. It smelled good to me — the way America used to smell before we all got so precious with our lungs and thought that life was something we needed to squeeze like a fucking orange. As if getting every last second out of it would be better than a good smoke.
I wouldn’t have minded ending it all that night. But I knew I might feel different in the morning.
This roller coaster in my head went on for hours. And sometime in the middle of being sick of myself, I scavved a cig from a pretty girl and lit up. I coughed out the first drag. It had been awhile.
“You are a American,” the girl said with a thick Chinese accent. She thought the cigarette’s price of admission was worth a lesson in English. I wasn’t inclined to agree.
Until she kept talking.
“I know why you are here,” she said. Good English. All the words were there. Plus her smile, the one that knew she’d impressed me, was cute as hell.
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re Chinese.”
She smiled in that way that makes you think you have the upper hand. And then she beat me with, “No. I am from Tibet.”
“Oh. Sorry.” I put down my drink and took another puff. It tasted too good. I knew Rebel would kill me for smoking again. She was dead so she could go screw herself. “Yeah? What are you doing in Panzhihua?”
She shrugged and glanced into the bar mirror. “Business,” she said, as she wiped at some smudged makeup on the corner of her eye.
“What kind of business?” I asked. There was something about her tone that was different. Her voice had gone from sweet to rough in one breath.
“Weapons, mostly,” she said with a smile. She glanced over her shoulder. I followed her gaze and spotted a man at the end of the bar. He’d done a great job of hiding from me. It took me a second to focus my eyes on him. He used the shadows well. I knew the type. I was ready for trouble within a heartbeat.
I reached for my gun. She placed her hand gently in front of me on the bar, tapped her fingernails on the wood, and pursed her lips.
“Tsk, tsk, no need, handsome. You are not in danger.”
“Clearly you don’t know me,” I said.
“Alas, no. But he is not a enemy. Not a friend. But not danger. You understand?”
“Sure, I just don’t believe you.”
“Come,” she said. “He wishes to speak with you.”
“I’m good right here,” I said.
I was onto something.
Maybe the exact thing I’d been searching for.
But that didn’t mean I had to be stupid about it.
“Tell him to have a seat right here,” I said. “You’ve warmed it up for him.”
She frowned for the first time. She didn’t want to be the one to tell her boss that I was playing hardball with his invitation.
But she didn’t even need to tell him.
He sighed loudly, stood and walked slowly into the light and down the bar toward me.
He was a white guy. Overweight. Gray hair and square jaw. His beady eyes didn’t tell me a thing, but his charming smile told me he was used to getting away with a lot.
I didn’t like him.
And I could tell he didn’t like anyone. The bar got cold as he got closer. I pegged him for a vampire by the time he took a seat next to me.
“Cannon,” he said, reaching out his hand. He studied my eyes to see how I’d respond to this news. His grip was weak, clammy. He held power in his grasp so he didn’t think he needed to show me a firm grip. He knew he’d lose that battle. But we both knew he’d win everything else. “You know me.”
It was a statement.
I’d just met the devil himself.
“You know me,” I said to the devil.
Chapter 36
I probably shook a little from the chill.
Okay, I definitely shook from the chill. A lot.
In some circles, this guy was the ruler of the world. He played so many angles on so many power players that no one was sure how he’d survived as long as he had. His face showed it, too. He was haggard, hair everywhere, bloodshot eyes, pockmarked skin. I took a moment to soak in the creature in front of me.
This is what a relentless drive for solid power could do to a body.
I’d heard rumblings that Cannon was the one who found the lair of the vamps under Paris. The buzz was that he woke them up, and cleared the way for the massacre. It could never be proven by anyone in Spirit, though.
Maybe it was time to just end him. It would be so easy.
He slid into the seat next to mine and brought the stench of whiskey with him. “I assume from your face that you know all about me,” Cannon muttered, taking the last swig from his heavily fingerprinted cup.
“I know enough to be ready,” I said.
He chuckled into his glass and then looked up at me. All the charm was drained from his face. Now he was the monster.
I was ready to draw.
He’d be dead before he could finish his breath.
I thought about all of the people I’d save if I offed him right there.
“Stand down, Kane,” he said, calmly. “I’m not here to hurt you, unless you do something stupid.”
“I don’t know, asshole. I have nothing to lose.”
“Really? You really think that? After all you’ve seen. You don’t think there’s anything to lose?”
I leaned toward him. “Lose the smile, or I kill it.”
He shrugged and glanced back into his glass. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
I had no idea what he meant by that. He wasn’t a vampire. I knew that from our intel. His life had been tracked since he was a kid with dreams of being a writer. The rejections were what pushed him into his current line of business.
He was as human as I was.
But if he was a magicist then it was possible he had a humdinger Solo Spell. No one had ever had an Immortality before, though it had always been a legend.
“What do you want?” I asked.
He spit an ice cube back into his cup. “You’re the one who came to me.”
“I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“And I didn’t know you were coming. Yet here we are. I’m sorry about your partner, Kane.”
“You killed her.”
“You give me too much credit, my friend.”
I’m usually good at spotting a liar. I had no reason to trust him. But his answer made me doubt my determination. “I’m not your friend,” I said.
His face brightened with a smile that made him look like something resembling a decent person. “Ah, but I could be!”
“You don’t have friends.”
Cannon gestured for another drink. “So you do know me. Okay, Arkwright. Strategic partner, then.”
I was getting sick of the back-and-forth. But I knew I had to go along with it. It’s how people like Cannon work.
Bat
tles of wit.
One-up-manship.
Rebel. Damn it, Rebel.
“I’m not a politician,” I said.
He slid a fresh glass of whiskey in front of me. “No, I’d be the politician. You’d be the muscle.”
I wasn’t ready to shoot him with my Glock, but I could shoot him with my eyes. He didn’t look away. I slid the free drink back at him. “You underestimate me.”
“I do not underestimate you, Kane. I’m alive today because I know exactly how to estimate people like you.”
“Yeah, you’re a real genius,” I said. I placed my forearms on the bar. It was my way of getting my hand closer to my gun. It was almost time to end this thing. It would probably mean the end for me too. The end of Excalibur and all the other trinkets I carried around with me.
I counted nine guards in the bar. I was ready for every single person to spring into action at the slightest sign of trouble. Even the passed-out guy in the corner could have been acting.
“Give me the sword, Kane,” Cannon said under his breath. He was losing patience too.
“No,” I said, grabbing the free drink back and taking my first sip of whiskey ever that tasted like it came from a can.
Cannon stood up from his stool. “I see how this is going to go. My time is valuable. You and I both know we are after the same thing. My way will get us there faster. Say yes or no. Now.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” This jackass was trying to drive me nuts with his riddles. I didn’t know what he could do for me, except end my suffering in some creative and bloody way.
His sly smirk made my hands clench into fists. Maybe I could get a good hit in before I called out the Glocks. Cannon crossed his arms. “You really don’t know what you have, do you?”
I stared back at him with my best poker face. He smiled, took another swig and shook his head.
“I’m going to do you a big favor right now,” he continued. “What you’re carrying isn’t just any sword. It’s special. It’s…”
Did he really not realize that I knew I had Excalibur?