Dark Time: Mortal Path (8 page)

A figure detached itself from the crowd and began moving across her skin. As the fiery, miniature person walked, each small step left a print that was raw and oozing blood. She gritted her teeth and watched, both fascinated and horrified. When the figure reached the other pan and climbed in, the change in the balance of the two pans wasn’t even perceptible.

The disk of water snapped out of existence. Susannah’s vision blurred, nausea gripped her, and she felt an odd shift, as though she’d been pulled forward while everything around her stood still.

You have taken these lives at my direction.
Susannah felt pressure on her raw skin on the full pan.

Rabishu was resting a sharp claw there. She gasped as pain radiated out from the pressure point.

This is what you have earned by saving the child’s life.
The pressure shifted to the other pan with the lone figure in it.

“I get it, okay? Get your paws off me.”

Did I mention that you will not age in the same way as mortals who measure their lives evenly in
the passage of years?

“No, I think you left that part out. Did I mention that you smell like shit?”

Every time you save a life, you grow a little older, but not always the same amount and not in
proportion to the number of lives you save. Nor will you be rewarded one for one for the lives you save.

Those decisions are for Anu to make. The only certainty is that the more you try to balance the scale, the
older you will get.

Freed of the demon’s unearthly weight, Susannah sat up and cradled her head with both hands, not knowing which part of her body to try to comfort first, her seared skin or her dizzy, throbbing head, which was reacting to being yanked through time, aging her in a second.

How much did I age? Weeks? Months? Maybe I should have gotten more details. I could be years
older with just one life saved, and I won’t stand a chance of balancing that scale before I die.

“Can I change my mind?”

The demon ignored her.

Your body will surrender to age or fatal injury before you achieve balance. Then you become…

“I know, your Torture-Me doll or something like that.” If she’d been tricked, she was going down fighting. “You won’t win. I swear you won’t.”

As she was speaking, she felt the transfer away from the Rabishu’s presence. She found herself sitting on the grass behind her home, watching as the guillotine completed its nearly instantaneous drop without her neck in the way.

Susannah got to her feet and pulled her tattered and bloody shirt around her, grimacing as the material touched the carving on her skin. In her immortal days, she would already be healing, the pain lessening with each passing minute. Now that she’d chosen the mortal path, she was vulnerable to dying from wounds that she would have shrugged off before. Vulnerable, too, to payments exacted by time on her appearance and health.

Rabishu had said something about her keeping some version of the powers he’d given her, the ones 26 z 138

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that gave her an advantage over humans. Only time would tell exactly what that meant. Right now, all she wanted was a cool shower, followed by as much sleep as she could manage.

Free!

M
aliha Crayne, set afire as the witch Susannah Layhem three hundred years ago, lay atop a thick towel on the blazing sand of a California beach. Other beachgoers danced rapidly across the sand and sank with relief into chairs shaded by large umbrellas. Maliha stretched full length in the sun, the prospect of sunburn or skin cancer tucked away at the back of her mind.

She’d needed a new name to go with her ambitious quest. She picked Maliha, an Indian name meaning “strong and beautiful.” She pronounced it Mah-LIE-hah, different from the standard pronunciation to claim it as her own. The stately sarus crane from the Indian marshlands, a gray bird with striking red markings, inspired her last name: Crayne.

Over time, she’d discovered what she’d lost when she became mortal. Her tremendous speed of movement had dwindled to the ability to have short bursts of Ageless-level speed. It had to be used with great care, because afterward she could be sluggish and vulnerable, depending on how long she’d sustained the burst. Her healing ability had greatly decreased. Wounds no longer healed as she watched.

Maliha could bleed to death like anyone else, and if she was severely injured, she would die before her slowed-down healing could catch up to the task. Her only hope would be to get away alive and recover in a safe place. Only one ability remained at its full Ageless strength: she could still see auras. She suspected that viewing auras was something she’d had from birth, and that Rabishu had only made her aware of it. It could account for her uncanny ability she’d shown as a healer, even if she didn’t know how to control it.

Her satellite phone rang, a distraction from sunny bliss. It was Amaro Reese, one of three people bound to Maliha by deep friendship and one other reason. She’d saved each of their lives.

“You picked out your man on the beach yet?”

“I have my eye on a guy in a red Speedo. Matches my swimsuit. How’s Rosie?”

“She’s doing great. The doctor says any day now.”

His sister Rosie was approaching the due date for the birth of her third child. Rosie’s husband, Alex Sharp, had escaped on a business trip, leaving Amaro as the prime target of her wrath.

“How is she really?”

Amaro sighed. “She says she is about to burst like an overripe tomato, and if this baby does not come soon, she will take matters into her own hands. Cut herself open, drag out the baby, and sew herself up with a darning needle.”

“A lovely picture.”

“I’m going to have to talk to Alex about the convenient nature of his recent travel. How’s the work coming on your next writing project?” Amaro asked.

“The novel’s coming along fine. I’ve got thirty-five thousand words to go.”

“Title?”

“A Lust for Murder
.”

“Don’t wait until the week before the deadline to write it, like you did last time.”

“Don’t nag the artist. My editor does enough of that.”

Maliha wrote pulp crime novels, like the ones from the 1950s, complete with trashy covers, cheap thrills, and drab yellowish paper like the originals. She hadn’t planned on it being much of a success, just enough to lend credibility to certain aspects of her lifestyle. The books’ popularity had exploded, and even writing two a year, she wasn’t keeping up with the demand from readers.

Maliha took off her sunglasses. Speedo was looking her way. She made eye contact, and then stood up and slowly turned her virtually naked back to him to make sure he got both anterior and posterior 27 z 138

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views seared into his mind. The hawk tattoo on her back, its wings spread across her shoulder blades, moved sinuously when she stretched her arms overhead. She bent over to straighten her towel, offering a different view, then reclined on it again.

She knew Amaro hadn’t disturbed her on the beach to talk about the tomato aspect of his sister.

“What’s up?”

“A couple of code masters have turned up dead. Luis Fernando de Santos and Harry Borringer, aka Hairy. Nando worked regularly for me up until a couple of years ago, Harry filled in a few times on projects that were behind schedule. They were both executed in dark alleys in Atlanta. Hands tied behind their backs, two shots to the back of the head.”

Maliha imagined her finger closing on a trigger, feeling the kickback of the gun, firing again as the person began to fall. She’d done such things in another time, another place. Guilt swept over her because she had handed out the same kind of unfeeling death.

“The media’s calling it the Geek Murders. Rosie knew Nando too, and she’s going crazy. Not only because a man she knew was murdered, but if there’s somebody out there killing off hackers, I could be next. It’s no secret I’ve worked with these men. She is not going to let this drop.”

Neither would Amaro. The group of hackers that worked with Amaro knew each other well enough to be family. A dysfunctional family, but still.

“I’ll head for Atlanta. Be careful, and give my love to the tomato.”

Maliha stood up and brushed the remaining sand from her hips and legs. Earlier, she’d been the target of a sand bomb tossed by a couple of horny teens. She’d shown no response, pretending to be asleep behind her sunglasses. Disappointed—did they really expect her to get up and chase them, tits bobbing?—the two left to prowl another section of the beach.

A glance at Speedo showed that he was heading in her direction.

Too bad I have to leave. It would have been a fine afternoon.

I
nside a gaily striped beach cabana, a man held the canvas flaps just far enough apart to watch Maliha.

He was grateful for the shelter, but not because he avoided the sun. He was conspicuous on the beach, where his muscular body in a swimsuit would attract too much attention. He wasn’t the blend-in type.

Watcher followed the sweep of Maliha’s hand across her thigh as she brushed away sand. Sometime, when the other business was taken care of, it would be his hand on her thigh, and everywhere else on her unwilling body. Not that it mattered to him if she wouldn’t give herself willingly. Most of the women he lay with didn’t.

My right. My reward.

A man in a red swimming suit approached Maliha. Watcher frowned and lifted binoculars to his eyes. In the bright circles, he saw that the man was close to her, touching her hair and neck, fingers drawing near the strings that held the upper half of her swimsuit in place. Breathing deeply, he anticipated the untying of the strings, her breasts swaying loose, to be cupped by his large hands. With the front of his suit bulging, Watcher suddenly grew possessive. The man’s intentions toward his woman were clear. The hair on the nape of his neck rose and a growl emerged from Watcher’s throat. His eyes raked the man’s body, assessing the physical challenge he posed and dismissing it. Watcher could already hear the crack of the man’s spine across his knee.

After a lingering touch on her shoulder and down her arm, the red-suited man turned away. She’d rejected him. With a grunt of satisfaction, Watcher saw her fold up her towel and walk away. A couple of minutes later his erection had faded enough for him to be in public. Not that he cared, since his formidable equipment was a matter of pride, but he’d learned that it was easier to go along with the local taboos.

2009-08-25 02:50

M
aliha paid cash at Los Angeles International, waited impatiently to board the plane, and checked in at an Atlanta hotel by 7 P.M. The evening manager opened the business center for her and soon she had the autopsy photos and reports that Amaro had emailed to her spread out on a table in her suite.

There are prominent bloodstains on the front upper half of the undershirt and the right leg of the
shorts. No belt or jewelry is present. The hands are tied behind the back with white cord approximately
one-quarter inch in diameter using three successive square knots….

The crime scene in both cases was unremarkable. The victims were killed near their own cars, with the driver’s door open as if they’d been persuaded to step out before being trussed. The locations were a half dozen miles apart but had a creepy similarity: dead-end alleys with several large trash receptacles clustered at the end.

She went through the scene in her mind, focusing on Luis Fernando de Santos, the victim Amaro knew better. Not lovers of nightlife, these hackers turned pro typically would be home asleep, working, or gaming in the early morning hours. Nando lived in Tucson, though. He’d arrived in Atlanta less than a day before his death and stayed at a hotel near the airport.

The dry medical language of the autopsy report created a powerful image for Maliha. The right side of Nando’s face had been hit with tremendous force from the inside, blowing out everything from his eye to his jaw.

Maliha took a break, surprised to find it was already 11 P.M. She ordered dinner from room service, and while waiting for it, she sat quietly and looked out her window at the expansive view of downtown Atlanta. A two-day-old sliver of moon, a pale eyelash of light, rested on the orange pyramid atop the Bank of America tower. The stars were washed out near the horizon, brighter higher up, but nothing to compare to the spectacle overhead in the parts of the world far from the lights of modern cities. A sharp memory took her to the border between Mongolia and China, two hundred years ago.

Lying on the cold ground wrapped in furs, she’d watched, mesmerized, as the bowl of the sky
seemed to hover close over her, the stars floating inches from her face against a background as dark as
the inner rooms of a cave. It was as if all sense of distance was gone, and she could reach out and touch
the glimmering lights.

Not so in Atlanta in the twenty-first century.

Sighing, she turned from the window at the sound of a knock on her door. Dinner had arrived.

Later, well after midnight, it was time to visit the scenes of the victims’ last moments. She might be able to learn far more there than she could from an autopsy report. She decided to run the miles to the first alleyway, letting her muscles grow warm and her legs stretch from the confinement in the airplane and hotel room. Dressed in a form-fitting black outfit, her long black hair in a heavy braid down the center of her back, she walked across the lobby. She waved to the night-desk clerk, who eyed her in disbelief, as though a fantasy had sprung from his head. Once out on the sidewalk, there were few pedestrians to avoid in the early-morning hours. She had no weapons in sight. Keeping to a steady pace, she reveled in the simple human pleasure of running. Although her surroundings were mundane, the exultation in physical activity was the same as she’d felt when she was Ageless, swimming the Nile from Khartoum to the Mediterranean or pacing alongside wild horses in the pioneer days of the American West.