Eternal Void (Isabella Espinoza Book 2)

by K Hanson

  They might not be coming after me with intent to harm, but now my curiosity was getting the better of me. Who would be following me through the night like this? Earlier, I thought it might have been Amari. Would she really be foolish enough to keep following me?

  I turned toward the sound, and it stopped, but I had heard where it was coming from. I strode down the alley, surveying my surroundings for any sign of life.

  Maybe they were holding their breath. I could wait.

  I stood there, scanning the alley. I had to be close to this person.

  After a minute, a soft huff of breath just around the next corner. I dashed toward it. As I turned, a figure darted away from me. I grabbed them by the shoulder and turned them around, pressing them against the wall.

  And I found myself looking right into Amari’s face.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

  She held her head up, her eyes wide as they gazed into mine. “I just wanted to help you. I know you told me to stay behind, but I can make a difference. Besides, I can heal and come back from the dead, right? What could go wrong?”

  I sighed, relaxing my grip on her shoulder. “I told you to stay behind because you don’t have the kind of training to face the dangers of the Void. And you came back from the dead once. There’s no way we can know you’ll do it again.”

  I tried to push her back down the alley.

  She stood firm, not letting me move her.

  “Then let me use this second life to do something.” She leaned her face closer, studying my eyes and cheeks. “Wait, have you been crying? What’s going on?”

  I had almost not even noticed, but tears had been streaming down my face ever since I had left Jack behind. I rubbed them off my cheeks. “Guess you can see about as well in the dark as I can.”

  “I suppose coming back to life has its advantages. Must have left something behind in me that lets me see.” She shrugged. “What happened?”

  “It’s hard to explain.” I let out a heavy breath. “You know the guy who showed up with his crew to help out with the night stalkers?”

  Amari arched an eyebrow at me. “Oh, the dude you spent the night with?”

  “You noticed that?”

  “It wasn’t exactly hard. You left with a key to get some beer, then I saw you talking with a man, and you two disappeared together.” She gave me a sly smile. “It’s not exactly tough to piece together what happened.”

  “I suppose not.” I glanced down at the ground as I kicked a small rock aside, and then looked back up at Amari. “Well, he seemed pretty great, but I just found out he’s been delivering shipments to some shitty people. He just took some product from the person who was responsible for the death of Rose’s dad and delivered them to this Necromancer’s camp in the park.”

  “Oh, crap. So the guy you hooked up with is helping the guys who killed me?”

  I nodded. “He dropped off more of those things to control night stalkers. He claims he didn’t know who he was dealing with, or what he was carrying, but I don’t think that’s an excuse.”

  Amari’s eyes widened.

  “Oh, God,” she said, “do you think the Necromancer wants to do more of those attacks?”

  I slumped against the wall next to her. We both sat down on the pavement. It felt like I was letting a huge weight off me just by sitting down. I guess I needed the break.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I hope not, but he wouldn’t have gotten those, especially not in that quantity, if he didn’t intend on doing something with them. Maybe he just wants to scare people into following him. I don’t know.”

  “Still, I can see why you’d be mad at this person. Have you seen him much before this?”

  “Oh, yeah. Jack and I go back before all of this happened. He was a car thief, and I was the cop who caught and arrested him. Busted up a whole ring he was running. One of the biggest larceny cases I ever did.”

  The handle of my knife was digging into my side as I sat, so I pulled it out and picked off bits of dirt and grime from the blade.

  “Then,” I continued, “after the darkness began, he apparently started a smuggling organization, taking stuff to and from communities through less than official means. Of course, I also thought he was hot, so I hooked up with him a couple of times. It didn’t mean much to me at the time, I just wanted a warm body to keep me company in bed. But he’s helped me a few times, including going to get you out of that enslaver camp. After that, and how he helped at Cathedral Hill, I thought maybe he could be different. Maybe he had changed into someone better who wanted to help people. But I guess I was wrong.” As I kept going, my heart sank yet again, and I leaned my head back against the wall. “Someone waved enough cash in his face that he apparently didn’t care what might happen because of what he was hauling. He might not have known what he was doing, but he made the choice not to know and take the job anyway. He’s still partially responsible for anything the Necromancer does with those control devices.”

  “Man, these things get so complicated... You have a crazy life. Anybody ever tell you that?”

  I had to laugh a little. “Amari, I think that about myself all the time. Hopefully, yours gets a little less crazy.”

  She pulled her legs up toward her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “I’m not sure that’s a possibility anymore. I feel like I need to make use of what was given to me after getting brought back from the dead. I can’t just pretend that didn’t happen.”

  “What about Sarah? You want to go back to her, right?”

  “Of course. I definitely want that, but we have some things to figure out about what we want to do. I can’t just go back to being a survivor, cowering behind walls. I want to help.”

  “You can have both, if you want. I’ll do what I can to help you.” I tilted my head a little closer to hers. “I think a part of why I thought I could have something special with Jack was that I saw you and Sarah looking so happy in your New Year’s pic. The way you just had this uninhibited love for each other. It really showed in the picture, then it was still fresh in my mind when I saw Jack just a little bit later. I guess that was naïve of me. I felt like a schoolgirl.”

  “Nothing wrong with giving yourself over to a bit of a crush.” She gave me a sympathetic smile. “I wished it had worked out better for you.”

  “When was the moment you and Sarah knew you wanted to date?”

  Amari pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

  “Well, we had been flirting quietly for most of our college trip, along with during the classes that we had leading up to it. We would find opportunities to slip away and talk to each other, but neither of us made a really serious move. But I think she decided before I did.” Amari smiled a beautiful, uninhibited smile that glowed with the warmth of her memory. “We were at the top of the Eiffel Tower, and she pulled out a flower and asked me out there, and we shared our first kiss. I know it sounds like something out of a cheesy romantic movie, but it really told me she cared. I still think about that moment when things feel like they won’t get better. At least I’ll always have that memory of a perfect day in Paris.”

  A warmth wrapped around my heart as Amari shared her story, but also a bit of sadness that I had never experienced something like that myself. I could take down bad guys, and I’d made a great life of doing that, but actually forging meaningful connections with people wasn’t exactly my strength.

  Still, even if Jack was a smuggling bastard, I could maybe find someone out there. It couldn’t be David; he was definitely a friend. We’d never had any of that kind of chemistry.

  “Well,” I said, “I suppose I should get going again if I want to take down this fucker and let you get back to Sarah. But I’m going to ask you to head back. What would I tell Sarah if something were to happen to you?”

  Amari shook her head. “I hoped you would stop asking me to head back to Cathedral Hill. I’m not going back until we’re done. Yes, we. I know you’re strong enough to
carry me and bring me back whether I want to or not, but that Necromancer is working up to attacking that settlement or maybe another again. We can’t afford to wait. And if something happens to me, tell Sarah that I was doing it to make her and everyone else safer. I can’t make this just about me. I didn’t choose to get killed and brought back with these new weird abilities. But neither did you, and you’re doing something worthwhile with them. Let me do the same.”

  I glanced up the hill toward Cathedral Hill, and then back north to Falls Park. Amari was right. I’d made my case, and if she didn’t want to go back, I couldn’t force her. Well, I could, but I wouldn’t. She was a grown-ass woman and could make her own decisions.

  “Fine, then let’s roll out,” I said, standing up. I dusted off my clothes. “Do you have any weapons or anything on you?”

  Amari gave me a sheepish look as she stood. “Well, not really. I did take this steak knife from the supplies at the settlement, though.”

  She held up a dinner knife.

  Shit, she wasn’t even properly prepared. I didn’t want to say that and discourage her, though. It would create a bad team dynamic. If we survived this, I’d spend some real time teaching her some things. For the time being, though, I handed my knife to her, handle first.

  “Take care of this. You need a real weapon, so I’m lending it to you until we can steal you one. It goes back to my days on the force, so I’m counting on you treating it well.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Isabella will work just fine.”

  I led the way as we neared the Falls, the river roaring nearby. A soft patter of rain started coming down. It seemed strange when it rained out in the Dusk and especially the Void. Something as mundane as regular weather still drifted through the atmosphere, ignoring the crazy shit that was happening down below.

  We came down the slight slope toward the camp just as alarms started, and shouts went up.

  “Intruder! There’s been an intruder! They knocked out Chad. Search the entire camp!” The bangs of doors slamming open and clicks of people preparing their weapons sounded up to my sensitive ears. Out front, five guards rushed out, followed by a second patrol. They went in opposite directions around the perimeter of the wall.

  Shit, they had finally found the guard I had taken out. It was about to get a lot more exciting trying to get back into that compound. And now I had to do it with a relatively untrained civilian.

  Screw me sideways.

  CHAPTER 20

  Amari and I crouched behind a tree, gazing down the slope at the Necromancer’s compound, where at least two dozen additional armed people had taken up positions in the towers and outside the walls. We had to somehow get inside to where the signal on the tablet was coming from. I couldn’t take on that many people with guns at once, and I just had Amari as back up. She had plenty of spirit but wouldn’t be up for that kind of fight. Even if she was, two versus thirty or more wasn’t exactly great odds.

  Maybe there was another way inside, though. None of them had actually seen me. I had hit the guard from behind when I knocked him unconscious, so it wasn’t like they would know what I looked like.

  That gave me an idea. I could definitely get inside, if I had the right ticket. And she was with me and willing to help.

  “Amari, I have something you can do,” I whispered. “We’re going to pretend that I’m bringing you to the Necromancer as part of this bounty or whatever he’s put out on you.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly. She sounded reluctant. I couldn’t blame her. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I’m going to carry you, so you just pretend you’re unconscious or something, and I’ll take you in.”

  Amari’s brow furrowed as she looked at the guards. “You think this will work? They look pretty amped up. I hope they don’t shoot us as we walk up because we’re something moving in the darkness.”

  She wasn’t wrong. But if I approached in a calm way, they would hopefully keep their shit together long enough for me to make my case for why they should let us in. If they were really working for the Necromancer, they would be eager to get back the person he was putting all this effort into finding.

  I also didn’t care to mess with any night stalkers they might have inside. They had the ability to control them, and while I hadn’t seen any within the walls, it didn’t mean they weren’t hidden away. A horde of night stalkers wasn’t exactly what my night needed to have added it to it.

  I stepped next to her, looking down. “You ready?”

  “I guess…” She glanced back toward the camp. “Let’s do it.”

  With a single nod, I crouched down and picked her up across my shoulders, and then started down the hill. She lay limp as I held her, her head lolling toward the ground. She kept her breaths shallow and quiet.

  Even with the added weight of another person, I didn’t really notice the hike being more difficult. I neared the front gate and shook my head so my hair fell across my face. The red eyes would be a bit of a giveaway that I wasn’t quite normal.

  With one hand supporting Amari, I held the other high in the air so they could see it was empty.

  When I was almost within range of the spotlights, I raised my voice and called out, “Hello, I’m approaching your camp. I have no intention of harming you. I am here to turn in this person that you’re looking for.”

  The spotlights on the two front towers swiveled toward me, their beams hitting me right in the eyes. I tilted my head down to get away from the glare, and I had to resist the urge to scratch at the itchy sensation crawling across my face from the light. I heard a dozen guns shifting as the guards aimed them at me.

  One of the guards from out in front of the gate stepped forward, his pistol aimed straight at my head.

  “You came all the way out into the Void?” he asked. “How did you get here? We didn’t hear a vehicle or anything.”

  I shrugged, shifting Amari to a slightly more comfortable position. “Look, does it matter how I got here? I found that girl you wanted. The one who apparently can come back from the dead.”

  “I don’t recognize you,” the guard said, eying me up and down. “I’ve never met you before.”

  “Yeah, well, some of your crew ran into some trouble, but I picked up this tracker from them and used it to find her. You can see that she’s right here, on my back.”

  The guard glanced at the tablet mounted to my wrist, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the blinking dot. He stepped forward and brushed Amari’s hair away from her face with his left hand, looking her over. His right hand still had his gun aimed at me.

  “This is her, all right,” he said. “Matches what the boss gave us as a description, and she has the scar. Maybe you’re not full of bullshit. I need to get clearance from the boss to let you in, though.”

  He finally lowered his gun.

  “You just want me to hang out here, outside the walls?” I asked.

  He gave me a sharp nod. “Those are the orders we have.”

  “Looks like you’ve been having quite a night already.” I nodded toward the guard towers. “I saw you guys running around like mad when that alarm went off.”

  The main straightened his shoulders. “It looks like one of our guys was attacked. We take that seriously.”

  “Did you find who did it yet?” I asked, feigning concern.

  “No, but don’t worry, they’ll turn up. They couldn’t have gotten far, and there are only so many places to hide inside. Unless they went through the portal, but there’s only death there, so who cares if they get that far. It’s funny that you show up not long after our buddy got attacked, though.”

  I gave him a small smile, careful to keep my hair dangling in front of my eyes. “You think I somehow snuck into your camp, knocked a dude out, then left again for some reason only to come back with the girl? I mean, sometimes I get bored, but that’s a little much even for me. Just getting through the Void to get to this place gave me plenty of entertainment. Now, can you l
et me in? I’m in good shape, but she’s getting heavy.”

  I shifted her around a little bit, as if she weighed on me. If I didn’t struggle a bit, it would look odd.

  “Well, the boss told us we can’t let anyone else in. And we definitely can’t while someone is sneaking around here. I’ll tell you what, just give us your name, leave her with us, and we’ll look you up later.”

  I stepped back from the guard. “You think I’m an idiot? I’m not giving up my prize and hoping you pay me later. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll end up seeing a single dollar if I do that. Maybe I’d better leave.”

  He raised his gun again. “I wouldn’t do that. You try to take her away, we’ll kill you.”

  “And risk hitting her? I know she came back to life once, but are you going to risk spoiling the specimen your boss is going to such great lengths to get? Maybe I’ll be dead, but how long will you last once you tell him you let his best research sample get destroyed? And I’d definitely rather choose a bullet over getting fed to a night stalker.”

  The guard took a half a step back, lowering his gun a couple of inches.

  I almost had him convinced.

  “Look, if you let me inside,” I continued, “I can even help you find whoever knocked your guy out. I doubt they’re just going to run out the front door when you have twenty people here. Once we’re in, we can work together.”

  The guard’s brow furrowed. It didn’t seem like he was used to making tough decisions. Probably usually just did whatever this Necromancer told him to do. I never knew if it was easier to convince clever or foolish people.

  “Fine,” he said. “Come on in. But if you cause any problems, we won’t hesitate to kill you.”

  Oops, he figured out my secret plan to cause problems. I wasn’t exactly worried about his threat, though.

  They opened the gates for us, and I slipped through with Amari on my shoulders. She was doing a great job of keeping still. I didn’t know how she had the patience for it. I wouldn’t have been able to manage it for that long. Maybe she had something she could teach me later.