Dark Time: Mortal Path (33 page)

“How did you find me?”

“Magazine subscription.”

“Damn. That was a weak thing to do. Are you here to kill me?”

Her words echoed what Maliha had just been thinking about a few minutes earlier.

An easy impression to get, considering the weapons I’m carrying.

She stood up and removed her waist pack, the throwing knives sheathed on her calves, the Glock from her shoulder holster, and the double-edged sword strapped on her back, and placed them all on a small table by the door.

“I’m a Boy Scout by nature. I like to be prepared. Is that better?”

Yolanda nodded.

“Let’s talk about the Shale Technology Services building, outside Chicago. I know you drew up the original plans. Did you also design the alterations that created a self-contained wing?”

Yolanda hesitated for a long time, glancing at the weapons on the table. She may have been trying to figure out if she could get to the table before Maliha. Maliha said nothing and let the woman stew about her situation.

“My family is at risk.”

“I can protect your family from Shale.”

From Shale, positively. From Subedei, maybe.

Yolanda snorted. “It isn’t that fool of a man I’m worried about. It’s that bodyguard of his.”

Maliha nodded. No sense holding back. “Very perceptive. He is the greater threat of the two.”

“Told me I had to disappear and that if I said anything he’d rip the heads of my grandchildren off in front of me.” Yolanda shuddered. “I think he meant it literally.”

I
know
he meant it literally.

“Why are you talking to me now, then?”

Yolanda looked over at the weapons on the table. “In spite of the fact that you came in here packing 110 z 138

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all kinds of nasty weapons, I have a feeling about you. I don’t think you’re working for that bodyguard. In fact, I think maybe you had a run-in with him yourself.”

“How did you know that?” Maliha wondered if Yolanda was reading her aura.

“I’m not blind. I saw you flinch when I mentioned him.”

“I did?” She looked over at Yolanda, who nodded.

Well, hell. I’m supposed to be inscrutable.

“I figure anybody who’s carrying all those weapons and has reason not to like that bodyguard is somebody I ought to cozy up to. I’d like to see my grandchildren again. With their heads on.”

“Then I’ll tell you I intend to kill the bodyguard, and Shale, too.”

“More hot chocolate, friend?”

“Sure. I’ll make it this time.” Maliha got up to make the hot drinks.

“What can you tell me about the private area of the Shale building?” Maliha asked from the kitchen area.

“Shale called it the enclave, even though that’s not an architectural term. He meant it in the sense of a group that operates inside a larger community. He paid me generously to do the project, which I took on as a professional challenge. I thought it was a secure place to keep development safe from corporate spying. He had something a lot more sinister in mind, I think. Why else would he need a secret escape tunnel for himself?”

Maliha’s heart skipped a beat, but this time she revealed nothing on the outside. She needed that kind of information, and she had to keep Yolanda talking.

“So what use did he have in mind for the enclave?”

“I have no idea. Once the construction was nearly complete, I wasn’t needed anymore. It didn’t occur to me that when the enclave area was completed, my knowledge of its details was a threat to him. I mean, look at me. Do I look like a corporate spy? I’m a grandmother, for heaven’s sake. I’ve often wondered what happened to the construction bosses, but I don’t have the nerve to check up on them.

Anyway, that’s the kind of stuff that happens in books.”

“Why did he let you live?”

“In case he needed more modifications in the future. He didn’t want to have to bring in somebody new and multiply the risk. And he had that bodyguard to keep me in line.”

“Do you know anything at all about what Shale did in the enclave?”

“No. I do know that the power requirements he specified were extraordinary, and he’s got a fantastic computer area in there. Had to have special cooling, fire considerations, and extra space for cabling.

Everything had to be self-contained. There were only two connections to the rest of the building. There was a door from his office that was like stepping through the looking-glass into another world. And there was the elevator, a heavily guarded shaft on the north end of the building, accessible through a secure corridor.”

“You mentioned an escape tunnel.”

“Yes, that. Strangest thing I ever designed. We had to go through solid rock, sideways, lay track, utilities, air circulation considerations, everything. Like in a James Bond movie. Shale had a flare for the dramatic. He was very secretive about the whole thing. One member of his staff knew about it. His security chief, a genuinely nasty man.”

“Chief Clark?”

Her eyes widened. “You do know the score.”

“What did you mean by laying track?”

“For the high-speed escape pod. Holds one person. Like I said, James Bond stuff.”

“Where does this tunnel come out?”

“On the ShaleTech property, in a building I designed to look like it’s been there half a century instead of ten years. Looks natural in the countryside.”

The realization smacked into Maliha. “A barn?”

Yolanda nodded. “You’ve seen it?”

“I’ve been in it.”

“I was right about you. You are going to do something to help me. I’ll bet you didn’t find the hidden door.” Her chin was raised and there was a note of pride in her voice.

The two women talked until dawn.

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S
ubedei was housecleaning. His home was on the third floor of an old hotel that had been converted to rooms for single men. He could live in a better place. He had plenty of gold, but this place suited him.

It had become so cluttered he couldn’t walk around easily. In his sleeping corner, the furs had grown odorous after years of continuous use. They should have been shaken and left to air in a fresh, steady wind, tossed over a rope between two tents. He’d tried that once, by draping the furs over the fire escape, but had to take them down because a neighbor complained about the smell. He would have liked to plunge his fist into the neighbor’s chest and rip out his heart, but Master Rabishu had instructed him to live quietly and not draw attention to himself, so that he could stay near Shale.

To him, that summed up everything that was wrong with living in Chicago: living quietly. He couldn’t air out his furs and he couldn’t build a fire on his floor to roast meat. For that matter, what meat was there? Bloodless hunks wrapped in plastic? He understood the strategy of this “living quietly”

business, but it chafed.

When Subedei lived in North America, he liked to live in Montana or the wide plains of Canada, places with lots of space where he could ride a horse and sleep in a tent or on the ground next to his cooking fire. No one bothered him and he would go for years that way, until his master summoned him for a killing. It was even better when he was allowed to live in Asia. He had trod on the Great Wall of China as a tourist. The wall was made to keep his ancestors, the Hun clans of Central Asia, out of China. It gave him great satisfaction to stomp on it.

All of these things were minor nuisances compared to the bounty granted to him by his master: unlimited life in the powerful body of his youth with all his lusts for women and blood sated, and ample chances to devise strategies for winning wars—even if the wars weren’t quite what he was used to.

All of it granted after he’d already been dead.

Having experienced both life and death, there was no doubt in Subedei’s mind which he preferred and to whom he owed total allegiance.

The years he’d been in the city grated on him, but his work required him to be near the human Shale on almost a daily basis, and before that another human, who had failed to do the job Master Rabishu desired. After the failure, when Subedei was freed from the order to protect that man, he’d ripped off both the man’s arms and watched him bleed to death. He wondered if the time would come when he would be able to do the same with Shale. He despised Shale for his pettiness and arrogance and weakness, but he kept him alive because his master wanted it that way. He also detected in Shale a sick cruelty much different from his own, albeit violent, approach to living. His killings were about retribution or pride or necessity, or done at the order of his master. As for Shale, Subedei had met up with that kind of sickness before, and the best thing to be done was to clean the air of foulness by killing the person. At least Subedei had his standards, and his code of conduct, whether they made sense in the twenty-first century or not.

Sometimes he found himself hoping that Project CESR—oh, yes, he knew all about it, even though Shale thought him ignorant—would fail. He mentally rehearsed various ways to dispose of Shale and found them all equally pleasing.

He and his demon master agreed on one thing. The renegade ex-Ageless woman would be his, and he’d have his way with her for a long time before turning her over to the demon. Subedei deeply understood betrayal, and she’d betrayed her master. That made her worthless in his eyes.

He’d have his way with her somewhere other than Chicago, though. Take her out to the high desert in the west, maybe, or the far north of Russia where the wind had some bite to it.

So the furs were the first things to go, stuffed into several plastic trash bags. Once he had a clear space on the floor, he could sort through other items, residue of past meals: bones, wrappers, greasy plates. More plastic bags were filled. When the room was clear except for Subedei’s statuary and weapons, he hauled all the trash away. He returned to set what he considered a prime invention of the modern world—the bug bomb.

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While his room was being cleared of pests that made him itch and ate his food, he left for a walk in the dark. Sometimes a mugger was foolish enough, or desperate enough, to accost him in spite of his bulk.

Subedei was allowed to defend himself, even when he was supposed to be living quietly, and he did so with relish.

This time he was swept from the dark streets into the presence of his master. As the fog swept toward him in the formless place and the smell reached him, he fell to his knees and bowed his head.

“What do you desire, Great One?”

Tell me of Shale.

The voice flowed softly into his head. Subedei had experienced anger in that voice once, when he’d killed a target’s family in addition to the target. Rabishu wanted the target’s child, a daughter, to survive, embittered about the loss of her father. Since then, Subedei had operated with more self-discipline.

“Everything is on schedule. You will be pleased.”

When all is done, I will reward you.

Subedei felt his master’s clawed hand descend on his head and shoulders and rest there almost lovingly.

For success, you may live wherever you please, take women, and hunt, and I shall not call upon you
for a hundred years.

Suddenly a claw extended into Subedei’s shoulder, piercing it like a knife. He grimaced but made no sound.

For failure, there will be consequences.

Reward and punishment were easily grasped by Subedei. “I understand. Can I ask a question, Great One?”

Yes.
The voice vibrated with something that could have been affection.

“The traitor Maliha—when can I have her?”

Soon. But not yet.

When he was back on the sidewalk in the dark, Subedei wondered why he couldn’t have the woman right away. Then he seized upon the reason, and nodded. His master was testing his discipline, after that time when he’d killed the daughter who was supposed to live.

Subedei shut away his lust for another time. He would pass the test.

M
aliha woke at dawn. Something had disturbed her, someone fanning air in her face, or a footstep deliberately creaking on the floor. She opened her eyes, sat up in bed, and then jumped from it, clearing the space to her door in one bound. Her heart pounding, her breath a leaden column in her chest, she opened the door and looked out.

They were all right. The two men had talked late into the night, and hadn’t made it out of the living room. Yanmeng slept in the chair, Amaro stretched out on his side on her sofa, his face away from her.

Both unbloodied. She swallowed, trying to break the block of fear that had appeared in her throat, fear for her friends.

Turning around, she confronted what had been her first image when she opened her eyes.

A sword was stuck into the second pillow on the bed, just inches from her head, and she recognized it as one she’d seen in Greg’s dojo. It had blood on the edge, not her friends’, she reassured herself. The sword was pinning a piece of paper with a single bold mark: the letter
S
.

Subedei had been in her home—again. It confirmed her feeling that he’d been in her bedroom before and put his hand on her. This time he’d stalked past her friends, entered her room, and arrogantly left her a message, a dare. And all of that in spite of the increased security and a motion detector inside the front door. She checked the security system’s control panel. The motion detector had been turned off.

The rush of air I felt. On the way in he crossed the room before the detector could activate.

It made her physically sick first, and then very, very angry.

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She yanked the sword from the pillow and crumpled the note. She wrapped the sword in the torn pillowcase and slid it under her bed.

How could I be so foolish, to allow Yanmeng and Amaro to be here, all of us together in a neat
killing package? Two flicks of a knife and they both would have been dead. In my home, under my care.