Ghost Soldiers (33 page)

“Right or wrong, she views Bailey as a threat.”

“Did she tell you this?”

“She didn't have to. I could read it in her eyes.”

There were times when Xiesha didn't seem to understand humanity, but there were also times when her insights were sword sharp. On more than one occasion he'd wondered if her lack of understanding was simply feigned. A way of luring those around her into letting their guard down. “She's the only thing that kept me going.”

“Then why don't you tell her?”

His mind filled with an image of him and Maria locked together, her blood on his lips. “I shouldn't have to.”

“You always have to.” Her voice held a note of gentle reproof. “For some things, a woman's heart is diamond. Smash it with a sledgehammer and it will not break.
Cannot
break. For other things, a woman's heart is nothing more than glass. Break it at your peril.”

He nodded, not trusting himself to answer. Xiesha turned back to her work. “Bailey was a Thorn knight. Tell me what happened.”

He told her everything. From the grueling sniper training with the Thorn in Serbia, to the battle with Cojocaru on the Constanta docks.

“So she did not fear becoming a vampire…” Xiesha stared down at the scarred workbench.

“She doesn't believe she's a monster.”

“Perhaps she's right.”

“Let her kill a hundred men. A thousand. Then let her tell me she's not a monster.”

“Does it always come back to that?”

“Of course it does.”

She picked up a silver bullet from the racks on the bench and turned it in her fingers. “You are a good man, Karl. Maybe someday you'll accept it.”

“I kill for a living.”

“You kill evil men. Some might say the world is improved by their absence.”

“Making the world a better place, one murder at a time.”

Xiesha shrugged. “This world is full of predators. But even predators need predators. The sheep finally have a wolf on their side.”

Easy to find solace in her words, but justifications came cheap. A dead man could never repent, never make restitution for his crimes. “I steal away their hope of redemption when I kill them.”

“Such is the executioner's lament.” She peered along the sword blade and ran one finger down the fuller near the hilt.

“Bailey said I misunderstood God. Said one's actions determine whether a creature is evil or good or neither.”

“You want to believe her.”

“Yes.”

“Then do so.”

“What about the holy symbols which stand for what is good and true and just? If not evil, then what of those?” His mouth twisted into a snarl. “I can't even look at them. Bailey had an answer, but it seemed too simple, too trite…”

“I know that always bothered you, and yet you've always refused to accept the explanations. Human religions are like a huge battery. They store up the hopes and faith and prayers and the…karmic implications of every good deed. That magic—for want of a better word—hurts you. What does it matter? You act with honor regardless. You saved me once from humans who would've slaughtered me—humans who wield those same holy symbols to kill.”

Xiesha walked to him. She reached out, took his wounded hand and turned it over so they could both see the silver damage there. She traced the wounds delicately with her finger. He expected pain, but her touch felt only like a cool tingle, a blade of grass tickling across his skin.

“Karl, you make things too difficult. You saved Maria. You saved me. You kept Bailey safe when destroying her might have been easiest. I defy you to find a god or goddess of any shape or creed laying claim to sovereign goodness who would smite you down.”

“I bet I can find one.”

She smirked. “Regardless, I think we understand one another, Master. There are people here who love you. Who need you. Perhaps it's time to close the door on the past.”

He said nothing for a very long time. Too easy. It felt too easy—but maybe that was simply because he wanted it to be hard. Did he love the despair so much?

“I think you're right,” he finally answered.

She smiled at him, and he found himself smiling back.

“Now go find your female and tell her how much you love her.” She smiled wider. “Master.”

Chapter Thirty-Four: Back to the Wall

Xiesha had given advice Karl intended to take, but he only made it to the bottom of the metal staircase before Bailey burst out of the office so fast the door banged off the sheetrock. Her eyes were wild. “We got problems.”

“What problems?” He started up the stairs toward her, keeping his pace slow and even because he could feel her thoughts ping-ponging in her mind. Xiesha set down her tools and picked up her shotgun, sliding fresh shells into the magazine.

“Cojocaru.” Bailey bared her fangs. “That bastard
followed
us.”

He bounded up the stairs four at a time. Maria was still out there somewhere alone. “Where?”

“Across the channel, past the dry docks at one of the ship terminals. From the roof—”

A pulse of magic flared supernova bright, and all their heads turned toward the south, though from the upper stairs he could barely see out of the grimy, wire-reinforced row of windows near the roof. An explosion rumbled in the distance.

He glanced at Xie. “We're about to find out just how good your wards are.”

“They'll not find us.”

Her confidence was reassuring, but she'd been wrong before. “Maria's not back yet. Grab some weapons and let's go.”

 

He hurried up the iron pull-down ladder, climbed through the square hatch and onto the warehouse roof. He crouched beside the opening and unslung the Browning Automatic Rifle from his shoulder. The yellow and orange-red blaze of fire shimmered to the south. Black smoke billowed upward to meet the low cloud ceiling. Xiesha followed him and then Bailey, who had the sense to bring along the pair of Zeiss binoculars he kept in his weapons locker. The wrenching shriek of tearing metal sounded in the distance.

They crouched low and ran to the raised edge of the warehouse roof, dodging around vents and exhaust fans. They took cover behind it and peered across the empty dry dock, across the quays and the narrow channel to the shipyard terminal. The MCS
Talos
burned at its berth, half its bridge blown out. He set the rifle down as Bailey handed him the binoculars, and he scanned the chaos across the harbor.

Workers jumped from the deck into the Bay or fled in terror up the concrete docks. Four ghouls had flipped over a forklift and crawled across it, tearing at the screaming man inside the roll cage. One of the acolytes levitated a shipping container and hurled it at a security cart, crushing the cart and the guard. Shadowlings bounded across the dock and ship deck, ripping people and equipment apart. He sighted in on the succubus, Naoimy, striding along the aft end of the containership. One of her smoke-like wings was still missing where he'd severed it with the sword—the reason why she wasn't flying. Sorin Cojocaru emerged from the ship's burning bridge, his full dress military uniform immaculate, not showing a streak of soot. His Incendiu Pisica trailed along behind him like a puppy.

Cojocaru spoke to some of his acolytes descending into the cargo holds. He glanced at the sailors and dockworkers in the water and then seemed to dismiss them. Slowly, he turned in Karl's direction, looking across the dry dock and quays. Karl dropped below the ledge, and Xie and Bailey did the same. “The wards?”

“My wards are good,” Xiesha answered. “Will your shielding keep you undetected against a sorcerer at this range?”

“It should.”

A tense moment later he raised his head enough to peer over the ledge with the binoculars again. Fast movement on the docks caught his eye. A black SUV raced up the corridor between stacked shipping containers and screeched to a halt, white smoke curling from the tires. The doors flew open and heavily armed soldiers swarmed out. He focused on one. Tactical gear, an M4, but also a long sword, body armor and a surcoat. Thorn knights—five of them. They opened fire on the ghouls. From this distance the gunfire was a tinny rattle. One of the knights smashed down a Nassid with a war hammer, crushing its skull with blow after blow.

More of Cojocaru's minions descended upon them, and the air suddenly thrummed with drawn magic. A grenade exploded. Someone screamed. Something else—something inhuman—began to wail in a high keening shriek.

Bailey hugged herself. “God…”

“Brave,” Xiesha said.

He turned his head. “We have to find Maria. If she comes back without realizing Cojocaru's here—”

Another explosion thundered across the water. The freighter shook as part of its hull at the waterline blew outward in a spray of foam and metal and smoke. The massive containership began to list. Sirens wailed in the distance. More gunfire cracked, and the night filled with the chop of approaching rotor blades. Police helicopters.

“We have to get off the roof,” he said. “Hurry.”

They crawled back from the ledge, then crouched and ran back to the trap door. Bailey went down first. He scanned the sky to the south, his thoughts on Maria. He never should've let her go off alone—

Maria's head poked up over the side of the ledge on the north face of the warehouse where she'd scaled the cinderblock wall. “I miss the party?”

The relief flooded through him with so much force it left him weak. He wanted to run to her and drag her inside by the collar, then kiss the hell out of her. Instead, he said, “Get over here and get inside. Cojocaru's here.”

She didn't need to be told twice.

 

The darkness in the warehouse seethed when the police helicopter hovered overhead and swept its searchlight across the row of windows just below the girders. The rotor roar beat down every other sound, drowning everything in a pulsing tornado scream. Karl stood with his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his black cargo pants, leaning against the wall and safely out of view. Xiesha, Bailey and Maria kept still, each of them turning to track the sound of the helicopter as it circled and finally flew off. He listened until it was safely gone, remembering the night he'd killed Alejandro Delgado and saved Maria. The night of burning mansions and settled scores.

It had been nonstop like this since Cojocaru had attacked the containership they'd stowed away on. Police everywhere, SWAT teams, that damn helicopter. Less than twenty minutes ago a cruiser had crept by the warehouse, running its searchlights along the doors and upper windows and the loading dock. A foot patrol with tracking dogs had followed the cruiser. The dogs had whined and yipped and hadn't wanted to get close to the building. A uniform had checked each of the doors, found them all locked and moved on. If Karl looked south out one of the windows, he could see the dark mass of smoke against the night sky and the swirling lights of police cruisers, fire trucks and ambulances. There were even police boats out on the water, searching the channels and the docks with lights.

“Cojocaru chased us here,” Karl said. “So I'm going to kill him.”

“Didn't we try that once?” Bailey's look held challenge interwoven with dejection. The Thorn knights they'd seen hadn't survived their assault. “What's different now?”

He didn't answer right away, and no one else spoke. He felt the weight of their gazes heavy on him, weighing him down with expectation. Waiting for him to lead, so lead he would.

He looked at each of them in turn. Xiesha stood against the far wall, her shotgun on her shoulder. Bailey sat on the workbench stool idly running her fingers along her spirit wolf's head and making the smoke dance. Maria sat near him, leaning on the back of a sunshine-yellow kitchen chair turned around backward she'd brought down from the office.

She saw him looking at her and smiled, but the smile disappeared when she started to speak. “I was coming back through South Boston and I saw those Thorn knights. Near some empty warehouse a couple miles off, talking with this other guy, who, I swear to God, had a cloak on, tons of silver and some kind of cane.”

Erik Deor. Damn it all. “Did he see you?”

“Almost. I thought he had…but then all the shit went down at the dock. Big pulses of magic. Explosions. The SUV guys raced off. Mr. Cloak went on foot, a different way. I hauled ass out of there.”

“The Thorn has been all over Boston for some time now.” Xiesha stared at him, her gaze sharp. “Does this particular man hold significance?”

Bailey answered. “A vampire hunter. He nearly got us in Romania.”

“Karl, don't you ever make any friends?” Maria tipped her head back and closed her eyes. “All right, so we have vampire hunters on our trail and a crazy Romanian sorcerer chased you across the ocean with an army. The same asshole who wanted to run Beantown by proxy. It's not business anymore. It's personal.”

Outside, the helicopter circled close again before heading south over the dry docks and the water. Xiesha spoke when the rotor roar died off. “We could use some friends. Balance the odds.”

“Wiseguys won't do us any good,” Maria said. “How the hell would I explain I needed button men to go up against Cojocaru's freak show? They'd laugh their asses off. Never believe me.”

“Until they saw a few of those creepy-crawlies.” Bailey's hand paused on her wolf's head. The spirit wolf lifted its head, licked at her fingers with a black tongue.

Maria frowned. “We could run. Not to New York, that's dicey. But I have contacts in Providence. If we had to, we could keep moving west.”

“I'm done running,” he said. “I ran half the world and he still shadowed me. This ends.”

She met his gaze and nodded. “Then I agree with Xiesha. Allies would come in handy.”

He began to pace, staring down at the floor. “The Blackstone Wolf Clan. If we could get the pack to help us, it would go a long way.”