Dead of Night (Ghosts & Magic #1) (38 page)

The tires complained while I whipped the car to the left, cutting off the guy in the Mazda's lane and forcing him to slam on the brakes. The ghost in the Mazda was good, and she broke left into oncoming traffic, somehow avoiding getting hit. Prithi smacked her shoulder into the door and cried out in pain.

"Put your belt on," Amos said. He looked out the back. Our tail was still attached. The passenger leaned out, opening fire on the rear of the car. I didn't hear many hits. She was aiming low, trying to wreck the tires.

 
I cut the car right, passed a Fiat, and came back left. Where the hell were the cops when you needed them? It wasn't typical for a ghost to be so blatant about an attack. We kept to the shadows and underground, to avoid hurting innocents.
 

"Do you even know where you're going?" Amos asked.
 

I rounded another car. The light ahead of us turned yellow, and the cars on our side started slowing to stop, leaving us with no clean way through. I moved into the wrong lane and sped up, running nose to nose with an oncoming SUV. The driver cut the wheel and got out of the way just in time, his face pale and eyes wide with terror as we passed within precious inches of one another.
 

The light was red now, and I hit the accelerator, hoping to get out in front of the vertical traffic and squeeze through the vanishing empty space. I heard horns and screaming tires as I tore past, somehow finding a few feet of space to not get slammed from the side. We reached the far side of the road in one piece, and I made it back over to the right lane.
 

Glancing up in the mirror, I could see the Mazda had also made it across.

"Amos, you need to take them out. This is the cleanest shot you're going to get."

The red light had paused the traffic behind us, leaving an open space on our side that carried only us and them. Amos put his window down and turned, trying to angle his mass so he could aim the Mark Six.
 

Thunk!
 

He pulled the trigger, and something launched from the gun, the rear end of it flaring to life once it was clear. I heard the high-pitched scream again, and the roadway exploded next to our tail.

"Tax payers ain't going to like that," Amos said.
 

The Mazda returned fire, bullets catching the rear glass and working their way towards the passenger side. Amos brought his meaty arm back in right before the side mirror vanished, ripped away by the assault.

We were almost back on top of the traffic flow, bearing down hard on a Subaru at the rear end.
 

"One more shot. Don't miss."

Amos grunted and shifted his bulk again, putting his arm out the window.

Thunk!

Another missile launched from the weapon, again going wide, hitting the ground away from the car.
 

"Fuck!"

"We're out of time." I was almost on top of the Subaru, ready to weave around him.
 

"Screw this," Amos said. He used his free hand to draw his pistol, and fired into the back of the car. The glass was hardened from one side. Taking hits from both caused it to shatter.
 

The gunfire from the Mazda began climbing the trunk, bullets bouncing off and threatening to hit us, sinking into the leather seats and padding. Prithi rolled down to the floor, and Amos leaned back with his arm extended, able to sight the weapon with the better angle.

Thunk!

I could feel the heat of the bullet's exhaust when the motor activated and it whined its way out of the car. I followed its contrail in the mirror, guiding it with my eyes into the grill of the Mazda.
 

The car exploded.

I cut tight around the Subaru and accelerated, at the same time Amos whooped his pleasure next to me.

"You see that shit? Fuckin' ghosts. Nobody shoots at Amos and gets away with it."

Prithi lifted herself up from between the seats, settling back and putting on her belt.
 

"I liked all this stuff better before it was real."

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

No, really. Know your enemy.

We ditched the Ford. We didn't have a choice. There was just no way to ignore a shootout like that, or an exploding car. I knew word of it would get back to Black pretty fast, and I wondered what he would think of it.

He wouldn't be happy. We were supposed to stay out of the spotlight, not cause trouble. Trouble was for thugs. So was public violence.
 

We didn't have a choice in that either.
 

The car wound up hidden in some brush and trees in a conservation area. We switched over to a brown Econoline van that Amos bought after I dropped him at a used car dealer, reconnecting later once he secured a ride. He'd paid a premium to get it off the lot without spending time filling out paperwork, and he made sure to let me know he expected to get his money back. He also made sure to let me know how comfy the seats were.

Prithi nearly fainted when we transferred Dannie from the trunk of the Ford. I had tried to keep her from seeing it, and in the end had failed. After she recovered from her shock, she sat in the back row of seats and stared at Danelle's lifeless face with tears in her eyes.
 

"I guess that's why she liked the Machine so much," she said, motioning towards Dannie's legs.

We were on I-84, headed west towards Poughkeepsie. It turned out that the yard Prithi had pointed us towards had been abandoned six months earlier, the 'patients' transferred to other facilities after an undercover expose had revealed some pretty shitty conditions there. Overcrowding, malnutrition, and a crooked director had combined to make a great news story, and to conveniently give Tarakona a base of operations that was close to his targets, but far enough away to go unnoticed.

I wasn't dumb enough to think there was anything convenient about it.
 

We were a three hour drive away from what I expected would be a showdown between Matwau, Tarakona, Veronica's brother, and any number of skinwalkers and other ferals they had supporting them. It was obvious charging in was going to be a stupid thing to do, and given any kind of choice I wouldn't have gone near the place at all.
 

Going was most likely suicide.

Not going was definitely suicide.

Mr. Black would see to that.

I still owed them for Dannie, and I let that feeling of revenge and anger help fight against my sense of desperate dread and hopelessness. Even so, it was a tough attitude to master.

I was sitting in the front row of bench seats, laying across them and trying to think. I glanced back at Prithi. "She liked it a lot more after, yeah, but she never let her disability get in the way. She could always take care of herself. And me."

"I got that impression. I wish I could have known her... outside I mean."

It was hard for me to come to grips with the fact that Prithi and Dannie had a relationship of sorts, even if it had been limited to the Machine. It had nothing to do with Prithi's gender, and everything to do with the fact that Dannie never told me about it until she had to. We were best friends, and she thought I would be jealous or something?

"Dannie wasn't into girls."

She smiled. "We could have just been friends. What happens in the Machine stays in the Machine."

Right. I didn't really want to talk about Danelle.

"Tell me more about Black's son."

"I didn't get as much as I could have with more time. From what I did get, it seems like whatever is going down has been in the planning stages for years. Have you ever heard of Moutohora?"

The look I gave her caused her to shrink back against the seat.
 

"What about it?"

"It came up in the indexing a few times. That must be where Tarakona and Matwau met. The phrase around it was 'back on Moutohora' or something like that. It stood out because I'd never seen the word before. There was also mention of '12 years'."

If Jin was here, I would have asked her if she knew who led the team that had picked up the archaeologist with the stone. Without her here, I was pretty certain I could guess.

"Moutohora is a volcanic island off New Zealand. Black sent a team there to recover an artifact, which I can only assume belongs to Tarakona. Or at least, Tarakona believes it belongs to him. Black takes it, he gets pissed and wants it back. I can understand that. What I don't get is why he would be hanging out there in the first place? What is he, a hermit, or a castaway or something?"

"A wizard," Amos said. He'd been oddly quiet until then. "Maybe he didn't want to deal with the House bullshit, so he exiled himself or something. You know, thanks but no thanks, stay off my lawn. Except Black doesn't give a shit what anybody else wants."

I could buy into that line of thinking. "He knows House Red doesn't have a wizard, and he knows there's this magic rock that has some kind of power that's good enough to keep Red from being gobbled up by the other Houses. He wants to help because he's got the hots for Mrs. Red."

"He also doesn't want to lose an ally," Prithi said. "I've been trading information with the different Houses for years inside the Machine. They have all kinds of secret alliances and treaties, and half of them contradict one another. A good sexual relationship is probably the best way to keep a truce going."

"Mr. Black is powerful-"

She shook her head. "Many of the Houses fear him, yes. He's still only one person. The most powerful one-on-one. Against the combined weight of the rest of the Houses..."

"So Black takes the rock. You think he knew it was Tarakona's and didn't give a shit, or you think he only found out after?"
 

"It doesn't matter. There was no way once he had it he was ever going to give it back. I think in the beginning he figured Tarakona didn't have the balls to confront him. Except he did. He killed Jin's parents, to show both of them that he could do it right under their noses and they couldn't stop him. He also got to Black's son. Maybe even from day one, before the stone had even left the island."

"Power," Prithi said.

"What?"

"Matwau isn't Mr. Black's heir. His second son, Kotori, is. It could be that he felt slighted."

"Or it could be that he's just a dick," Amos said.

Kotori was the one in Dannie's old photo. I'd never met him, but she always used to talk about what a kind, gentle soul he had. Maybe that was why he'd tried to make an heir with science, because his other kids were failures of a different kind.

Prithi moved from the back seat to the front. I sat up straight so she could take her place next to me. "Either way, the treasure has power. Enough that Mr. Black believes it can save House Red. What if Tarakona offered Matwau even a portion of that power? What if he enticed him with House Black? There was a mention of something they called the 'bonded'. Do you know what that is?"

"No."

"Come on, Baldie, you don't know what bondage is?"

 
I shifted my gaze between both of them. "When I was with Black... I knew he could kill me with little more than a thought. Let's say Tarakona offered Matwau enough power to challenge Black. Maybe he already even gave him some of it, enough to convince guys like Carlyle and Campbell to join their cause."
 

I paused, because it hit me then, harder than my sickness ever had.
 

"Tarakona didn't kill Jin's parents. Matwau did."

"That's an awful giant leap off an awful short pier," Amos said with a snort.

It was a stretch. A big stretch. It also made sense. "Look, Black has been after this Tarakona for years, right? Mr. Fucking Black. Ten years since he killed Jin's parents, Red's sister, and he can't find him. The most powerful man on the planet, and he can't find him? How the hell does that happen?"

"He joins forces with Black's son, who does the dirty work?" Prithi asked.

"Yes. Black has a statue of himself and his children. He also kept an eye on Dannie even after he kicked her out. He told me how much he cares about his kids, and maybe some of that is bullshit, but I don't think all of it was. It could be he isn't paying attention to what Matwau is doing, or he's looking at the wrong things, and overlooking the fact that he's been planning a coup."

"Wait a second. Dannie is Mr. Black's daughter?" Prithi glanced back to where she was resting.

"She was. It's a long story. "

"Let's say you're right, Skeletor. Let's say Matwau has been taking his pops through the back door. He's got Jin. He's got the stone. He's got these big toothy bastards that shrug off bullets like they're spitballs. He's got whatever shit makes him think he can make his move and survive Black's reprisal." He turned his head so he could look me in the eye. "You get what I'm saying?"

Prithi's face paled. I met his eye and returned the stare until he put his attention back on the road.
 

He didn't want to say what we all knew was true.

We were going to die.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Nice evening for a stroll.

Somehow, the situation managed to go from impossible, to more impossible. I was counting on the element of surprise, of infiltrating the yard in the darkness, and sneaking my way through. I was planning to make use of Mr. Timms, on sending him out into the night to use his natural curiosity, hunger, and skittishness to find a clean path through the walls and into the area.
 

My plans fell right to shit. There was no cover around the yard. No trees, no buildings, no tall grass or shadows. There was a straight line of sight from two miles away in every direction. It was perfect for spotting escapees and mowing them down before they could disappear.
 

It worked the same way for anyone trying to get in.

"What the fuck are we gonna do?" Amos asked. He had pulled the van off the road a couple miles out, into one of the last runs of trees before it became a wide open space.

We couldn't see the yard from here. It was a suggestion on the horizon, the lights of the place casting a small volume of luminescence into a misty night sky. Rain was pattering on the hood, and trees were smacking their branches against the sides with regularity.