Ghost Soldiers (5 page)

Xiesha had set up tables and workbenches in one corner where she did all her gunsmithing, silverwork and handloading for the wildcat cartridges she made for their weapons. Maria's black Mercedes-Benz sat beneath a tarp. Karl didn't seem to drive much, but undead or not, Maria wasn't about to give up her Benz.

Xiesha followed behind her across the catwalk, silent as mist. “You suspected things would proceed this way.”

“Yeah, but it still sucks hearing everyone hates you.” Maria paused with her hand on the knob of the office door and looked back at Xiesha. “Anything from Karl?”

“No. I've scried over and over again. There's just too much area to search, and too many creatures in Eastern Europe throwing off waves in the etherscape. Besides, the Thorn guards against it. There is danger the Watchers might sense my gaze. Karl isn't destroyed, but more than that…where he is, what he's doing, I cannot tell.”

Maria nodded and pulled the door open. The office they'd converted had a main living area, a smaller interior room, a storage room and no exterior windows. Minimal décor, secondhand furniture. Her father had owned the warehouse in South Boston through a holding company. He'd leased it to a shipping company warehousing Chinese toys that had gone belly-up right before things had caught fire with the Lucattis, so Maria had ripped off the padlocks and moved herself in. She needed to be closer to downtown than any of Karl's remaining safe houses allowed, which made this place home for the foreseeable future.

Maria headed to the couch and sat on the edge of the cushions. A pile of books sat on a table near her, but she was far too restless to read. She should be back out there doing something, for God's sake. If the FBI had started closing in, shouldn't she try hampering the investigation? Historically, cops and Feds were off limits—start a war like that with the government and they'd bring down the hammer. Besides, it would turn the media and the public against
Cosa Nostra
. But, if it meant killing agents in a way that couldn't be traced…

God, what the fuck was she thinking? She rubbed her temples, trying to drive away the sick feeling that washed through her. All her life she never would've thought something like that. Cops were off limits. You could buy them off if you could swing it, but the straight ones you had to learn to work around. It was part of the code that went back to the founding of the American syndicates. Hell, when the Jewish gangster Dutch Schultz had plotted to have a straight-arrow guy like Thomas Dewey shot in the head for investigating him, the Commission had ordered
Schultz's
death instead of the special prosecutor's. Schultz had gone down hard in a men's bathroom, and too fucking bad, so sorry, but don't break the rules. She
knew
that, and still here she was thinking about using her vampire powers to murder a few just to take the heat off.

She clenched her jaw muscles, grinding her teeth together. She was turning into a monster. Like Delgado, God help her.

No. God couldn't help her.

Maria leaned forward and put her head in her hands. “I goddamn hate to feel weak, but damn do I wish Karl was here right now.”

Xiesha came around the couch, moving with her easy grace, and sat in a worn armchair. “I miss him as well.”

Maria glanced at her. Xiesha had guarded Karl for a long time, just how long she didn't know, but she'd never really revealed much of their relationship. Maria knew he'd saved Xiesha from the Order of the Thorn, and that Xiesha seemed bound to him, not by romantic love—not as far as Maria could tell anyway, and she'd been sensitive enough about it at first—but out of some kind of loyalty like a knight held for a liege lord.

“When I was trapped with Delgado,” Maria said, “I didn't dare hope Karl would come after me. I had to keep my mind blank of him or Delgado would make me suffer. But he came.” She stared down at her hands, at her fingertips where her claws pushed out when she was angry or threatened. “That night, the fight at Lucatti's house, when both of you came to save me…at first I thought I wouldn't survive. When we won, when Karl had me shove that knife through Delgado…I started to think everything would be okay. That I could have a…I don't know…a happy ending with Karl.”

A long span of silence stretched between them.

“It was a lie,” Maria finally said. “I'm becoming just like Delgado. I can feel it.”

“Delgado was a monster, born of hundreds of years of cruelty and murder and hatred for Karl. You are not like him.”

“Not yet.” She sat back against the cushions. Not yet, but there were times when it felt as if her old Master slipped along behind her, living inside her shadow. Laughing. Urging her to take her feeding to the next level, to kill and kill again. Whispering how it was better to be feared than loved.

“I'm not certain I can set your fears at ease,” Xiesha said. “But I suggest you have more faith in yourself. Karl has faith in you.”

Maria didn't reply.

“Every creature on this side of the light must confront these kinds of thoughts, Maria.”

“Do you?”

Xiesha gave her a smile that was at once wistful and sad. “No.”

Maria snorted. “Stick with the shotgun and don't take up the shrink's chair. That's my career advice to you.”

“Nonetheless. Karl became involved with the criminal underworld when he vowed not to prey upon the innocent. Yet the criminals prey upon the innocent. Karl kills them, but he needs them to exist. He's trapped in a larger system that is dark and violent and embodies things he abhors. You're part of that too. Take an unflinching look. Realize your place in all that has happened. Go forth with your eyes unclouded.”

Maria looked away, over at the stacked books. “Everything's slipping away from me. I thought I'd won, but that was a joke. And killing is getting easier.”

Xiesha tilted her head. “You fear losing your humanity.”

“Losing? It's already gone.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I just want somebody to tell me it isn't true.”

“Is that why you want Karl back?”

Maria shot her a furious look. “No, I want Karl back for a thousand reasons. I just want to fucking touch him again.”

“I think maybe you don't have to fear for your humanity too much, then.”

“I keep dreaming of him,” Maria said. “Dark dreams, full of bad things. Karl chased through some nightmare forest…and wolves howling. Karl on trial by those Thorn bastards. Scary stuff.”

Xiesha frowned. “Karl told me the sleep of vampires is dreamless.”

“I dreamed all through the time Delgado had me. I've never stopped dreaming. Always weird, trippy shit.” She shook her head. “I can't stand this, not knowing if he's safe. Search for him, Xiesha.” She scooted to the very edge of the cushion, hope blossoming inside her. “Scry for him. Right now. It's gonna work this time. I got a feeling.”

Xiesha stared at her as if weighing the risks. “Very well. I'll try another scrying approach, less subtle, more force.” She sighed and closed her eyes for a long moment, then stood. “Allow me some time to set everything up.”

 

“Something's wrong.” Xiesha stared down at the white sand spread across the glass end table. She'd poured out a small desert on the surface and mixed it with tiny metal shavings and other powders Maria couldn't identify. Then she'd spoken words in a strange musical language and the sands had begun to swirl as if caught in a whirlpool.

“What?” A cold spring of tension wound tighter in Maria's guts. “Is he okay?”

The feel of the energy coursing through the sand lifted the hairs on the back of Maria's arms. The white sand, metal and other crystals churned and roiled across the glass surface, forming symbols and strange pictures she couldn't interpret. Yet they seemed to
almost
mean something, important but fading, like the significance of dreams after waking when she'd still been human and dreams had meant nothing to her.

“He's not destroyed, but he stands at the center of a growing storm.”

“Gimme a break, Xiesha, of course he does. It's
Karl
. What the hell else would he be doing?” Worry lent a half-hysterical edge to her voice. “I can get better fortune-telling from cookies.”

Xiesha cast a sidelong glance at her and scowled. “I don't understand about the cookies. Do you read them like divination? Chicken intestines? I have never had luck with guts. The tricks of the charlatans.” She finished the sentence with a strange liquid word that managed to sound simultaneously disgusting and intriguing. Some day Maria was going to have to get that girl to teach her how to swear in her native language. It sounded even better than cursing in Sicilian.

“
Fuck
the cookies! Just tell me about Karl.”

“Watch.” Xiesha leaned over the sand, pressed her hands together and began to move them through a series of fast shapes and contortions, as if she were playing with a cat's cradle or engaged in some kind of mirrored sign language duel. Maria felt the energy flowing out of her and into the sand, though she could see nothing.

The sand swirled around with a soft sigh. It made waves, undulating in small ripples across the glass.

“Mountains,” Xiesha said. “He's in very old mountains far to the east. I can't pinpoint him. The sense of him is blurred. Guarded.”

The sand rushed upward, building into a column, shifting and tumbling and smoothing over until it formed a perfect image of Karl's face in white, speckled with flecks of metal. Maria gasped and her hand reached for his face on its own.

“Do not touch,” Xiesha warned. “Wait.”

The sand sculpture of Karl's face contorted in sudden agony, and the sand in his eyes turned jet black and streamed down his cheeks, spreading across his mouth and jaw. The sculpture began to decay, losing form as it crumbled back into loose piles. The sand, free of the sculpture, turned white once again.

Maria stared at the now unmoving sand. “What does that mean?”

“I am not sure. The black sand—it often is the mark of someone hunted…” Xiesha made a curious sweeping gesture with one hand, her palm flat and parallel with the surface of the table. “Or it may mean he's in danger of becoming corrupted.”

“Your fucking sandbox doesn't come with a user's manual?” Maria snarled. “If he's in danger, we have to find him.
Now
. I don't care what it takes.”

“We cannot help him now,” Xiesha said, and her syllables seemed to vibrate with a subtle musical tone, something minor key and ominous. “He is too far to reach, and we may put him in more danger if we blindly run to him without knowing the situation.”

“Isn't there anything else you can do? Any other magic. To find him? To
talk
to him?”

“The Thorn is keeping him hidden. They have agents in the astral plane and moving through the Dreaming—”

“Have mercy on the accountant vampire.” Maria spoke through clenched teeth. “Use
English
. And small words, dammit.”

“An infinite reality parallel to this pocket of space-time, more disconnected than the astral plane, a spiritual place where arc-streams of mystigen weave beneath all the warps and curves of space-time. Some believe it's the place where spirits are truly born and seeded throughout the universes.”

“So you missed the part about small words.” She rubbed her temple. “What does this have to do with helping Karl?”

Xiesha began to brush the sand back into a pouch. The pouch appeared made of suede, with black string ties and a strange, golden symbol-like clasp. “I can work an energy matrix that will blaze across the astral plane like fire burning off frost. The spell sculpture will allow me to find him, or where he is at that given moment—but every creature with the least bit of talent and every Watcher will know exactly where I am. Other, darker things as well…”

“What things? The weird creature that came after you in Karl's apartment?”

Xiesha nodded. “Threshers…and others. I am hunted as well, do not forget. And the Thorn may decide we aren't abiding by the terms of our amnesty and might move against Karl, perhaps when he is most vulnerable. If we gamble, and he doesn't need our help, or we can't reach him in time to do anything of use, we'll have thrown him and ourselves into danger for nothing.”

“Fuck.” She closed her eyes. “I don't know what to do.”

“Karl asked me to keep you safe,” Xiesha said softly. “I know you worry for him. So do I, now more than ever. But we must honor his request. He has looked after himself for a long, long time, Maria. He shall return to us.”

“Then we wait,” Maria told her, and hated herself for saying it.

Chapter Six: Contract Work

“Our orders to terminate Sorin Cojocaru still stand,” Bailey said. She spun back to her station of three flat-panel monitors and the dizzying array of electronic equipment in the rear of the converted truck. “I just confirmed it with Command. This mission remains green-lighted.”

Karl watched her, saying nothing. If Cojocaru had uncovered the Thorn spy early, he might've used him to feed Bailey bad information—the GPS location and time, for instance—before killing the infiltrator. The Thorn wanted them to press ahead, despite the high likelihood the mission had been compromised, and that meant they viewed Karl as expendable. Not surprising.

Bailey flapped her hand at him, motioning him closer. Karl leaned over her shoulder to look at the monitors, only a foot or so from the smooth skin of her neck. Had he been a younger vampire, or one with less control, the scent of her warm blood might've proved an irresistible distraction.

As it was, the thing that impressed him most was how Bailey didn't shy away from him as he expected, though perhaps some of that had to do with her intense focus on the screens. She was a puzzle to him in many ways. An anomaly, and yet he sensed no duplicity from her. She wore only one silver crucifix hidden beneath her white coat and T-shirt, no armor, her sword sheathed and forgotten—all risks he suspected her superiors would find unacceptable if they knew, but she seemed to be all about doing her own thing, no matter the hazards.