As Lie the Dead

Chapter Four

9:16 A.M.

A white curtain was drawn around his bed, offering privacy from anyone passing by in the corridor. My shoes squeaked on the shiny linoleum floor, announcing my presence long before I reached the edge of the curtain. Wyatt had agreed to let me go in alone.

Rufus lay with his head tilted toward the room’s single window and a view of the Anjean River’s dark, slow-moving water. His shoulder and chest were still bandaged from the old gunshot wounds. New bandages covered his right hand and forearm. Ointment glistened on his neck and left cheek, a protective coating for the angry, blistered burns there.

His head listed toward me. He blinked several times—his only show of surprise at my presence. “Gina said you were alive,” he said, hoarse. “Don’t know why I didn’t believe her until now.”

“Because you’re the kind of guy who believes only what’s in front of him,” I said.

“Am I that transparent?”

“It’s a pretty common trait among Handlers.”

He waved his left hand above his chest, trailing an IV tube and several other wires. “So, how do I look?”

“Like a guy who’s really hard to kill,” I said.

“I’m sure the Assembly will be more creative in their methods.”

I grunted.

He noticed. “I guess you’ve talked to Gina.”

“Yeah, to Gina and Amalie and that Jenner guy,” I said. “What the hell is he anyway?”

“Probably a lawyer.”

I snorted. “I meant socially. He seems like a were, which makes sense if he speaks for the Assembly, but I don’t think he’s from any of the Clans I know.”

“You think were-sharks exist this far from the ocean?”

“I doubt it,” I replied, smiling.

He inhaled, held it several seconds, then blew hard through his mouth. “I guess I deserve this.”

I bristled and took a few steps closer to the bed. “How do you figure?”

“I’ve done some amazingly shitty things in my lifetime, Evy. You’d never believe it. Feels like it’s finally my time to pay up, is all.”

“What gives the Assembly the right to tell you what the price is?”

He shrugged his right shoulder, winced. “If not them, then someone else. You know, when we first started out, Wyatt and I hated each other? Despised, as a matter of fact. We couldn’t agree on anything, much less how the Triads should be run.”

“So what changed?”

“You mean he likes me?” Rufus asked, completely deadpan.

It earned him another smile. “I think he tolerates you like he tolerates me.”

“He loves you.”

“Christ, will people stop saying that like I don’t know?” I paced to the other side of the bed near the window. A flock of birds, too far away to identify, flew in formation down the length of the river. Free. “Do you know how much easier things would be if he didn’t?”

“Sure,” he said. “For one thing, you’d be dead.”

“See? Easy.”

“Since when do you like to do things the easy way?”

The birds changed direction without warning, swooping a hard left and disappearing into the trees that lined the east bank of the river. I watched, but they didn’t emerge. Rufus was right, and that annoyed me no end. Not that I wanted to corner the market on enigmas; I just wasn’t used to being read so well and so often by people I’d had little contact with until the very recent past.

“Is Wyatt with you?” Rufus asked, probably tired of my silence.

“Down the hall,” I said, turning to face him. “I wanted a minute.”

“You’ve had at least five, and I need my rest. No sense in being tired and unhealthy for my own execution.”

“About that.” I crossed to the side of the bed; he watched warily. “I’m working on an angle that might get you a pardon.”

“Why?”

I blinked. “Don’t you mean, ‘Wow, Evy, thanks for doing everything you can to save my life’?”

“I don’t want you to save me, Evy.”

“Well, tough shit. I’ve managed to let a hell of a lot of my friends die over the last week or so, and if there’s something I can do to save one, I’m damned well going to do it.”

He looked away, turning his head to the right, cheek flat against the stark white pillow. It made him look pale, almost pasty. Sweat beaded on his upper lip. His breaths had become shallower, shorter. He might not want me to save him, but he damned sure didn’t seem to want to die.

“Look, Rufus, I’m sorry about your apartment—”

“It was a shit apartment.”

Okay, true. “It was your home.”

He still faced away, his profile stony. “It was a place I slept.”

“I’m sorry about Nadia,” I said, switching tactics. His Triad had to mean more to him than the hole he’d chosen to live in—even if I didn’t understand why he’d lived there or why he seemed so ready to give in to the Assembly’s judgment. And I didn’t have time to pick his brain.

I had to get through to him, though. “And I’m sorry about Tully and Wormer. Truly sorry, Rufus, but we lost even more people last night. If humans are going to stay on top of whatever shit storm is still coming, we need every advantage we can get. And right now, that’s you. You’re an experienced Handler, and you’ve trained a lot of Hunters. You are not expendable. Not like this.”

Seconds passed, marked by the squealing of wheels on a cart and the beeping of someone’s monitor across the hall. Sunlight dimmed outside, probably a passing cloud. He turned his head back to me, met my gaze. His hazel eyes were determined and brimmed with … admiration? Nah, couldn’t be.

“You should have been a combat general,” he said.

I smiled. “Sometimes I feel like one.”

“So what’s this grand plan to save my life?”

“Let’s just say things are going to change higher up the food chain than most people will expect.”

His lips parted, eyes widening. “You’re going after the brass?”

“Now if I said yes, you’d probably be duty bound to report me, so I’m not saying anything. Just that I’ve got a time limit on this, so I can’t hang around to chat much longer.” I touched his wrist, the only unbandaged part of his arm. “I just wanted you to know. I owe you that.”

“Something tells me when this is all over, I’m going to be owing you.”

“We’ll see.”

“So how exactly are you not going to go about not tracking down people whose identities I don’t know, so you cannot bring them in for punishment by the Assembly? If I may not ask?”

“To be honest, I don’t have a fucking clue.” I winked. “Which means I should get started, because time’s wasting.”

“Good luck.”

“Thanks. And if you have any helpful epiphanies in the next couple of days …”

“I’ll contact you.”

“Okay, then.”

We didn’t say good-bye. Didn’t seem important. As I strode across the room, toward the hall, something from the start of our conversation popped back into the forefront of my mind. The comment that he and Wyatt had hated each other at the start of their careers with the Triads, disagreed over how the teams should be run. I didn’t know the exact history of the Triads, only that they’d been around for the last ten years or so. We didn’t exactly have a Batcave or headquarters, or a special place to record and read up on our citywide antics. I’m sure the brass had records up the wazoo, and more and more, I itched to get my hands on them.

Something told me they’d be a fascinating read.

I almost made it to the elevators unnoticed. Almost.

“Evy, wait,” Wyatt shouted.

Damn. I pressed the call button anyway, then turned around. Wyatt and Kismet sprinted down the corridor wearing identical expressions of confusion. The elevator still hadn’t come by the time they reached me.

“Where are you going?” Kismet asked.

“I have some things that need to get done,” I said. “And, as usual, my time is somewhat crunched.”

“You weren’t going to wait?” Wyatt asked. The unsaid “for me” hung in the air, put there by the genuine hurt in his voice.

“Rufus is one of ours,” Kismet said. “Whatever you’re planning, we want to help.”

“Not if you want to keep your jobs, you don’t,” I said.

Wyatt narrowed his eyes. “What did you say to Phineas?”

“We made a little side deal. If I keep my end up, Rufus avoids their punishment.”

“And if you don’t?”

“I get one more notch in my belt of people I’ve failed.”

Kismet said, “There’s got to be something we can do, Stone.”

“There is. Do you trust your Hunters?”

“With my life.” Not a second’s hesitation—good.

“I need one of them to go back to my apartment with Wyatt.”

“Screw that, Evy,” Wyatt said. “I’m staying with you.”

“Wyatt—”

“No.” He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at me, in full intimidation mode. He’d made up his mind. Damn the consequences and full steam ahead.

“Fine,” I snapped. “Look, Kismet, I need one of your people to watch my apartment. I’ve got some precious goods hiding there for a while, and I can’t babysit and do this at the same time.”

“I can reassign Felix to it,” she said. “How long?”

“Probably for the day, but I’ll get in touch with you.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’ll tell me what you’re up to next?”

I shook my head, and the elevator dinged its arrival. “Definitely better if you don’t know. What’s that term for it?”

“Plausible deniability,” Wyatt said.

“Yeah, that.”

“Anything else?” Kismet asked.

Six people exited the elevator, leaving it empty for entering passengers. Turned out to be just me and Wyatt. He stepped halfway inside and held the door.

“We need a car,” I said.

Kismet produced a key ring and tossed it to me. Two keys and a remote on a plastic fob. “It’s in the garage, third level.”

“Yours?”

“Nope.”

“Good.” I slipped into the elevator; Wyatt stepped back to join me. As the doors slid shut, I gave Kismet a sharp nod, which she returned.

“So do I get to know the plan?” Wyatt asked once we were alone.

“You’ll know it as soon as I know it,” I replied, pocketing the car keys.

He groaned. “At least tell me our objective.”

“Putting blame for the Owlkin massacre where it belongs.”

He turned his body sideways, not quite confrontational but definitely cornering me. “You’re going to hunt down the brass?”

“Yep.”

“And then what? Make them volunteer to take responsibility for the order? You’ll never get that close, Evy.”

“They’re not gods, Wyatt,” I said, frustrated. “They don’t sit in some temple, far beyond our reach. They are three human beings who work somewhere in this city, and someone has to know who they are. It’s about goddamn time they got their hands dirty, too.”

“That’s why we exist, Evy, so they don’t have to.”

“Well, things are changing, and I think it’s time we revised the system. If last night’s any indication, we won’t be able to hide the Dregs much longer, and what happens when that shit hits the fan? You want to rely on three nameless, faceless people to keep control of things when they aren’t even down here on the streets with us? Hurting and dying alongside us?”

“You say ‘we’ like you’re still a part of this,” Wyatt said softly. “I thought you were done with the Triads.”

“I don’t work for them anymore, but I’m still in this mess. We’re in this mess, and if doing a little sleuthing and exposing my old bosses helps me keep my word to Phineas, then so be it.”

“No matter the consequences?”

I rolled my eyes. “We’ve both died once already, Wyatt. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“You really just said that, didn’t you?” he asked with a groan.

The elevator stopped on level M, below the first floor and above the basement, and the doors opened to a wide, short corridor. Dank air tinged with the odors of oil and exhaust greeted us as we exited down the corridor to the lowest level of the parking garage.

Another elevator was on our left; I beelined for the stairs next to it. Wyatt followed behind me, in silence, to the third level. I dug the keys out of my pocket and surveyed the long rows of parked vehicles.

“Next time,” I said, “remind me to ask what the damned thing looks like.”

“What’s the make?” Wyatt asked.

I looked at the symbol on the keys. A shadow flickered in the corner of my vision. My stomach clenched, senses on immediate alert. A dozen vehicles were parked on our right, and a dozen more across from them. Low fluorescent light fixtures cast a sickly orange glow on the spotty cement floor. Nothing else moved.

“What?” he whispered.

“Hey, bitch!”

I fought off Chalice’s initial instinct to turn toward the snarling male voice—such a greeting is never indicative of a pleasant encounter—and went with my own first thought. I launched sideways into Wyatt and knocked us both to the cool cement floor just shy of the bumper of the first parked car. Dust and bits of stone exploded from the cement block wall near us as it was peppered with silenced gunfire.

The same male voice started swearing loudly and violently about things he wanted to do to my personal anatomy. It was familiar without being identifiable.

Wyatt looked up at me, and I down at him, and his eyebrows scrunched together. “I know that voice,” he mouthed.

I mouthed back, “Me, too,” and rolled off him, sideways on my knees next to the car. Sneakers squeaked nearby, echoing off the low ceiling and walls. Something thudded. Adrenaline surged and left a bitter taste in my mouth—Hunter’s training told me it was time for a fight. Ducking low next to a smear that stank of oil, I peered beneath the cars. No feet.

Damn.

Laughter, low and chilling, reverberated around the room like some awful B-movie effect. It bounced off the shot-peppered wall behind us. Not entirely as helpful as sonar.

“See him?” Wyatt asked, his voice so low it was barely audible.

“Nothing,” I replied.

“Guess you can’t teleport?”

I snorted, a little too loudly. “I don’t know where he is or where I’d end up.” I looked again, hoping I’d just missed him among the patterns of shadows and oil spots dotting the cement floor. “Can you summon his gun?”

“I can try, but I need him in the open first, so I can see the gun.”

“Then you’ll have to be fast, before he starts taking potshots at civilians.”

“How’s your throwing arm?”

I slipped my blade from its ankle sheath, tested the weight in my palm. Months of precision practice at Boot Camp had died with my old body. All this one knew was the technique, the stance, the constant drone of the instructor who taught us. “It’s been better,” I said.

Wyatt quirked one eyebrow, seemingly unconcerned that he was about to risk his life for a maneuver I wasn’t sure I could pull off. “He’s no marksman, or we’d be dead already. Just don’t miss.”

I nodded and shifted to a squatting position at the end of the car. Wyatt shuffled backward a few feet, giving himself some space. Every moment that passed brought expectations of interruption—a car coming around the row or the elevator doors dinging open. Anything to put a crimp in this silly standoff and/or offer our attacker his choice of hostages.

I turned the knife, blade loose in my first three fingertips, and stretched my left hand out behind me, fisted. Took a breath. Exhaled.

The shooter laughed again—a sound like nails on a chalkboard with a shadow of lunacy—much closer than before. Shit. I flared the fingers of my left hand.

Wyatt stood up, both hands stretched out at his sides, eyes scanning the dozens of parked cars in front of him. The air around him crackled with energy and warmed me from the outside through my own connection to the Break. I stood, heart beating so hard I thought my chest might explode, and sought my target.

He stood in the bed of a parked, late-model pickup truck, about thirty feet away, aiming a handgun at his target. A handgun that began to shimmer, even from a distance, black to a glimmering silver. He shrieked and squeezed off a wild shot. It pinged the cement floor by Wyatt’s foot. Wyatt didn’t move, merely closed his right hand around the gun that suddenly appeared there.

I lined the shooter up, drew back to throw, and in that moment he saw me. Recognition slapped me in the gut, and I loosed the knife as he pulled a second gun from the back of his jeans. The knife arched down at the last second and pierced his gut a few inches above the groin. He fell, screaming as he went. But he managed another wild shot that pinged twice before it hit. Agonizing heat seared my right forearm.

I raced toward the shrieking shooter, ignoring my wound. I had to shut him up before he caused a scene we couldn’t explain. I vaulted over the tailgate with less ease than I’d hoped—damned longer legs—and landed in a puddle of strangely colored blood. Halfie. Dead giveaway, even before I got a look at his mottled white-black hair and opalescent eyes.

He growled and tried to kick my ankles, survival instinct firmly in place, all the while holding one hand over the oozing wound in his abdomen. He’d landed on his other hand and trapped it beneath his left side. There was no sign of the knife. He bared his measly attempt at fangs—recently infected. Halfies that managed not to go bat shit from a vampire’s infectious bite didn’t manage a set of impressive fangs for a good two weeks. My attacker’s nubs put him around five days.

Past the fangs, I saw the face. One I’d seen two days before, in a cellar prison. I’d coined the name Jock Guy for him. Same clothes, same cocky expression. Only this time I wasn’t behind bars.

“Miss me?” I asked, and planted my foot flat on his sternum. He hissed and snarled but was in too much pain to put up a real fuss. “Maybe you missed the memo, but Tovin’s dead. Your boss lost.”

Even through the pain he had to be experiencing, Jock Guy sneered and then had the gall to laugh. The same maniacal laughter that had made my skin crawl earlier, as if he were enjoying a private joke at my expense. I ground my foot harder against his sternum. He squealed, still laughing.

“Careful, Evy,” Wyatt said, his voice somewhere behind me. Still on the ground. I couldn’t turn to look.

A car engine rumbled nearby, drawing closer. Echoing in the cavern. I held my breath. My quarry was out of sight, but my right arm had oozed enough blood to make folks stand up and notice. Then again, we were in a hospital parking garage. Maybe it wouldn’t shock anyone.

The car moved away, up toward the next level. One close call too many. I leaned down, putting all my balance on my right foot and his chest. Rancid breath puffed into my face as he continued to giggle.

“So before I kill you,” I said, “you wanna tell me what’s so fucking funny?”

“You got strange ideas about who I work for, bitch,” he replied.

Alarm bells clanged in my head, quickly silenced by logic. He was a Halfie—not prone to reasoned thought or personal planning—therefore lying. No one else would have wanted to hold me and Wyatt captive in a dingy underground jail cell while my clock ran out.

Jock Guy’s laughing snarl morphed into a familiar leer. “Told ’em we should’ve fucked you when we had the chance.”

My cheeks blazed, and my hands trembled. My heart hammered in my ears and made it hard to hear. The world fuzzed out for just a second. Cold, oily skin and blinding pain fell like a theater curtain, heavy and suffocating. All over again.

I stood up, sensing the new elevation more than experiencing it, moved back, and slammed my right foot down on Jock Guy’s nose. Cartilage snapped and crackled. Blood spurted beneath my shoe. The laughter stopped.

I stumbled backward, hit my ankles on the wheel hub, and nearly fell out of the truck bed. I hit the edge instead and sat down hard, gripping the cold metal with both hands. Grounding me as I panted through the unexpected … what? Anxiety attack? So not what I needed.

The Halfie was dead, nose effectively driven up into his skull. Not the smartest move of my afterlife, but far from the dumbest. Blood pounded in my temples. My forearm throbbed, and I still hadn’t checked the wound. The bullet hadn’t exited; I was just lucky it hadn’t hit bone.

The truck bed bounced, then Wyatt was squatting in front of me. Warm hands covered my knees but didn’t squeeze. “Evy?”

“That was pretty stupid, huh?” I asked. Damn my voice for shaking. I’d killed a Halfie. So fucking what?

“We’ve both done dumb things when we lose control.”

Therein lay the problem. Too much was at stake to let myself lose control again. My emotional messes had to wait. I avoided looking at Wyatt. Didn’t want to see any pity or understanding in his eyes. Didn’t need that side of him then. No, I needed my Handler—the guy who’d tell me to shape up or just go kill myself and save the Dregs the trouble of doing it.

“We should check the body before it desiccates,” I said.

Wyatt stood up and backed away, careful to avoid the mass of oozing blood filling the cracks and lines of the truck bed. The Halfie’s skin was already paler than white, nearly translucent. I crouched and patted the pockets of his jeans—nothing. No pockets in his T-shirt, nothing to identify him or where he’d come from.

“Seems strange that a kid who can barely shoot would be given a .45,” Wyatt said, more to himself than to me.

“Big gun,” I agreed. Whoever sent him should have been smart enough give him a model easier to handle, especially for a novice. Jock Guy had missed us both—sort of, but my wound was more an accident—and died without much of a fight. Wasted foot soldier, if you asked me.

I grabbed at his left arm, the one stuck beneath his body. Needed to roll him sideways to check his other jeans pockets. Just to be sure he didn’t have—

The kid fell onto his back, releasing his hidden hand and a pinless hand grenade.

I stared. “You have got to be kidding—”

“Get down!”

Wyatt slammed into my midsection, knocking us both backward and over the edge of the truck bed. The fury of the exploding grenade propelled us to the hard ground in a wave of heat, sound, fire, and sizzling flesh. It was impossible to breathe.

I’m not ready to die again, my brain screamed. Images of Jesse and Ash flashed in my mind, waiting for me, and were quickly chased away by blackness.