Dark Time: Mortal Path (26 page)

Samantha and Karen were worth it.

B
ack in Chicago, Maliha was wearing white out of season. She told herself, though, that any season was okay for a wedding gown.

She’d carried it in a duffel bag and taken a taxi to an all-night restaurant within a mile of her destination. She ran the rest of the way with the bag slung over her back, moving along in the still hours before dawn.

Outside the home of Edward Rupert, CFO of ShaleTech, she disengaged the alarm and went in a back window. Amaro’s information was accurate. Edward went to bed—alone—at 10 P.M. on weeknights. On the weekends, he was a man about town, enjoying his bachelor status and drawing women with a display of free spending.

Edward was also, according to anecdotes, a man who believed in the supernatural. Maliha was about 86 z 138

2009-08-25 02:50

to take a page from
A Christmas Carol
and visit him as a ghost.

Edward had been engaged to a woman named Caroline Martin. His third marriage, her first. She was twenty-five years old and a teller at the bank he frequented. The ring was bought, the date was set.

Caroline began to feel tired, weak, and bruise easily. A skin rash and an odd shortness of breath sent her to the doctor. The diagnosis was AML, acute myeloid leukemia. Caroline didn’t respond to aggressive treatment and died four months after her first visit to the doctor. It would have been a tragic love story, the kind that sends women reaching for the tissue box, except that Edward had taken back his ring and turned his back on her. Caroline, a woman with no living family, had died holding a nurse’s hand instead of her beloved’s.

He couldn’t spare a mere four months of his life to see her through to the end.

Maliha put on the wedding gown and slipped a two-carat diamond solitaire on her left ring finger.

Edward’s bedroom was on the first floor. His snores greeted her as she pushed open the door. She unplugged the lamp by his bed, then went up to him and whispered in his ear.

“Edward, darling, why did you do it?”

He brushed at his ear and turned over. She went around to the other side of the bed, stroked his arm, and repeated her question a little louder. He sat up suddenly, but Maliha was across the room by then, standing in front of a window. The moonlight streaming in outlined her body and kept her face in the shadows.

Edward saw Caroline standing there in a wedding gown.

“Mother of God. It can’t be!” He reached over to turn on the lamp.

Gotcha.

Maliha glided away from the window. “When’s the wedding, Edward?” she murmured. “Isn’t it almost time?”

“Keep away from me!”

Maliha shined a pale light downward, illuminating her gown in an eerie way, with deep shadows on the full skirt. Then she flicked off the light, moved faster than a human could to the other side of the room, and turned the flashlight on again.

Edward’s head swiveled to follow her. To him, it looked like she disappeared from one spot and reappeared in another. She waved her hand in the beam of the light, so he could see the diamond ring.

“You made me give it back to you. That wasn’t nice. It made me feel bad and I was already sick. I came back for my ring.”

She moved again. Edward’s face, lit by the moonlight, was a mask of fear.

“And I came back to ask why you left me, Edward,” she said.

“I…I…” His voice was nowhere to be found.

She moved close and brushed the edge of the bed with her gown. He cowered back from her against the headboard, holding the blanket up in front of him.

She had him going now. She took a running leap toward the bed, let her foot drag across the covers and landed soundlessly on the other side.

A wordless moan rose from Edward’s shaking mass. It was time to get tough.

She threw back her head and screamed for all she was worth. When the sound died away, she spoke.

“I was scared when you left me, but you didn’t care.”

“I cared. I still care.” It was a small, frightened voice, a child talking about the monsters under the bed, a nightmare come to life in his own bedroom.

“I don’t believe that.” She appeared on the other side of the room.

“Yes, yes, I care. I shouldn’t have left you. That was wrong of me.”

“Then why did you do it? It must have been what happened at work. It was too much stress for you, my poor Edward.”

He seized on the idea. “That’s it. It was problems at work. I never would have left you if it wasn’t for problems at work.”

“Poor thing. What problems? Why didn’t you let me help?”

“I couldn’t tell you, Caroline. I couldn’t tell anyone.”

“You could tell me anything, you know that. You can tell me now. Was it about money?” She moved and ran her fingers across the blanket where his feet were. He pulled them up like a turtle retracting its feet into the shell. “That’s what you did for the company. Take care of all the money.”

87 z 138

2009-08-25 02:50

“The company was in trouble,” he blurted. “We were about to default on loans, and Shale wanted to hide it. So we could get more loans.”

“He made you do it, didn’t he? He’s the one who’s responsible.”

In the next few minutes, she found out the extent of the financial trouble ShaleTech was in, and the reason why Shale was eager to conceal the problems and fend off creditors for a little longer. He had a project, something called Caesar, spelled CESR. It was supposed to make the company whole again, with money beyond their dreams for new development, and no one would have been the wiser about the temporary double set of books.

Edward had come through with the goods, and she decided to let him off the hook a little. “I’m glad we had this talk. I feel better now.”

She made her way to the door.

“I did love you, Caroline honey. I really did. I was weak. I didn’t know what to do around a dying person.”

It had the ring of truth to it. She checked his aura. There was genuine sorrow, and deep shame for the way he’d acted.

“I loved you, Caroline.” The moonlight showed the gleam of tears on his cheeks. “Please forgive me.”

She came back over to the bed, caressed his cheek, and kissed him lightly on the forehead. She’d gotten what she needed, and in some measure, so had Edward.

Maliha stuffed the wedding gown back into the duffel bag, slipped on the clothing she’d worn to Edward’s house, and ran back to the restaurant. It had started to rain, and by the time she reached the place, she was tempted to go inside and pass the time until the rain let up. She thought she’d feel too out of place carrying the duffel bag, though, and she didn’t want to leave it outside in the rain to be ruined.

No telling when I’ll need a wedding gown again.

At the door to her building, Arnie accepted the duffel bag without comment. She told him there was a wedding gown in it that needed cleaning. He nodded and said he’d take care of it.

“You look a little tired, Ms. Winters. It must have been a very long walk this evening.”

“Very.” When he said it, she noticed that she
was
a little tired.

Feeling my age.

“You get some rest, and take care now. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to my favorite resident.”

She was in the elevator halfway up to her floor when she realized he’d meant it. She’d just processed the look in his eyes. He really did care about her.

For money or for real? You be the judge.

S
usannah traveled across China, taking time to perfect her knowledge of the language. Rabishu had ordered her to go to the Xichan Monastery to learn martial arts. She asked at the monastery for the teacher Rabishu mentioned, Master Liu. The abbot indicated that the master lived like a hermit on a mountain nearby.

She searched the mountain for days with no luck, until one afternoon she came across a naked man washing his robe in a stream. It was raining steadily, a cold rain that would freeze by nightfall, but he showed no sign of noticing. She couldn’t see him clearly through the rain, but had the impression he was emaciated, with wrinkled skin that draped loosely over his bones, and almost no hair. She called out to see if he would answer to the right name.

“Master Liu!”

The man continued to squat and rub his robe in the cold water.

A pang of concern struck her. She approached him, and he made no move. When she was within 88 z 138

2009-08-25 02:50

twenty feet of him, he sprang up and disappeared into the trees. Suddenly afraid of an attack from this mysterious person, she spun around and saw him standing behind her. At least, she thought it was him.

This man was in his mid-twenties, with shoulder-length black hair plastered to his skin by the rain, a handsome, unlined face, penetrating gray eyes, and a naked body in superb condition. She shook her head.

Her eyes must have been playing tricks on her about his age, with the rain and fog.

“Master Liu, I was sent to you by Rabishu.”

They stood silently, in the rain. Finally, Susannah pulled back her traveling robe’s hood so that he could see her clearly.

“A woman. The demon sends me a woman to train?” There was scorn in his voice.

Susannah was tired, wet, cold, and hungry. Having scorn heaped on her inflamed her anger, both at the man in front of her and at Rabishu, who had sent her to wander far from home.

He was only ten feet away. She lunged at him, using the speed Rabishu had granted her. Instead of grappling with him, Susannah found herself on the ground, looking up into the falling rain, blinking. She quickly rolled away, came to her feet, and tried again. This time she threw a knife at him.

He casually picked it out of the air and stuck the blade in his thigh. Blood poured down his leg, washed to the ground by the rain. He pulled out the knife and in a smooth motion sent it flying inches from her head to thunk deeply into a tree behind her. She saw that his wound was rapidly closing.

“You’re Ageless!”

The corner of his mouth curled up in another gesture of scorn. “Did you think you were the only one?”

“You must breathe!” Master Liu walked around her and adjusted her wrist, tucked her elbows in closer to her body, and stood back to watch.

“How many hours must I endure this?” she grumbled. “Hand out, twist wrist, pull back, tuck in. You are teaching me to wring the neck of a chicken, not fight a man!”

He said nothing, just widened her stance by inserting a fighting cane between her feet and whacking her ankles.

She stood from dawn until after dark in his school on the mountain, a large wooden pavilion open to the weather. A school for one, apparently, because she saw no other students. There had been snow overnight, but she wore only a thin training uniform.

“Your hands stray from your center line.” He stuck the cane insolently between her legs and traced a line upward to the base of her throat. “You must guard the center or you will never succeed. The demon must see a potential in you that I do not. You are not devoted to learning the ways of the assassin.”

“Is that all you are, a mindless thing to kill people?”

She stopped moving and faced him, regretting that she’d spoken her thoughts aloud. He did nothing, but his eyes, already hard to read, completely shuttered his thoughts. It was as though light tried to penetrate but died at the threshold instead. She suddenly saw herself from his point of view: an impudent, whining, unfocused student who had little respect for him or the art he was trying to pass to her. She bowed her head.

“I’m sorry, Master.”

A
year later, her body and mind were responding to the training. There was beauty in the motions, in the slow, rhythmic breathing that accompanied them, in the clarity of thought demanded.

Then the passage of years blurred in her mind. The spare living, the starkness of the mountaintop, the simple task of sweeping the pavilion daily, the intensity of her training—there was no room in her mind for anything else.

There was a time when pain was her constant companion, intentionally inflicted by Master Liu as part of her training. She learned to cope and keep moving, a mantra in her head:
Pain kills only if I allow
it. Pain kills only if I allow it.

More and more, Master Liu pursed his lips and nodded as he watched her do forms, or when she sparred with him. The throwing knives Master Liu had custom-made for her flew from her fingers like hawks striking prey in midair. When she mastered the technique, Master Liu tattooed a hawk across her back, its wings spread in flight. An exquisite artwork, it was also a sign of his growing respect for her.

89 z 138

2009-08-25 02:50

W
aking suddenly at the sound of a gong, Susannah leaped up for a lesson.

Instead she saw a line of people standing across the middle of the pavilion, people who must have arrived while she slept. That she hadn’t sensed and reacted to feet walking toward her on the bare wooden floor was disturbing. They were dressed in black killing outfits, and had black scarves wound around their faces. She had the distinct feeling they were there to kill her if she didn’t measure up, but to what, she didn’t know.

She turned around and saw Master Liu sitting in an ornate chair, as the hermit she’d seen years ago at the edge of the stream. He was an old man, impossibly old, arms and legs as thin and brittle as sticks, a few white hairs on his head. His face was as wrinkled as a dried lingonberry, though not the same color.

He was pale, like a person who’d lived indoors all the time, something Susannah knew was not the case.

Rheumy white eyes were locked in her direction, yet she realized that in this form he was blind. He was wearing a gown of gold cloth embroidered with red, far different from his usual training clothing. A man dressed in black with delicate lines of gold trim stood on his left.

“Come here, student.”

She hesitated, not sure he was talking to her. No one else moved, so she walked forward and knelt.