Illusive (25 page)

“Go to sleep,”
the man says.

Silently, Guntram falls. He hits the ground in a boneless heap and sprawls there, unmoving. He’s either been knocked unconscious or is dead. From this distance, Ciere can’t tell.

She feels frozen, her breath coming so hard that she can feel it scraping her lungs raw. The man steps over Guntram’s body and begins a slow, almost lazy approach.

In the fading sunlight, Ciere can just make out that the man has sharp features, short black hair, and large eyes. She is struck by a horrible familiarity. She has seen this man on a night just like this one. During a raid in a town just outside of Baltimore. She remembers Magnus breathing the name.

Aristeus.

T
he world slows down to a few infinite seconds.

Ciere stands on the dock, staring at the man who just destroyed her one chance at survival. She can still hear the distant sounds of the fight, of metal impacting metal, of shattering glass and screaming sirens.

Aristeus continues his advance. The distant flashes of red and blue lights make it look like he is walking in slow motion, giving his movements an eerie grace. Behind Aristeus is another man, a younger man with brown hair and a crooked nose. It’s Daniel.

A wave of exhaustion sweeps over Ciere, loosening her muscles until she feels unsteady on her feet. The last few hours—the last few
days
—seem to weigh down on her shoulders, impossibly heavy, and she can no longer hold herself up.
It’s too much. Too many flights, too many scares, too many moments of utter terror chased by the relief of survival.

She watches Aristeus approach with a feeling of detachment. It hasn’t sunk in yet. Part of her is still waiting for Guntram to get up and win this battle for her. She was counting on him; he was her pocket ace. But Guntram isn’t moving. He hasn’t even twitched. He’s either dead or incapacitated, and at this point, it doesn’t matter which. He is out of the game. And judging from the wild sound of gunfire coming from Guntram’s car, it is only a matter of time until Conrad is taken, too.

Ciere played her hand and it simply wasn’t good enough. She lost.

Alan drags her backward. She stumbles, barely manages to keep her feet, and then finds herself running. Her body is quicker on the uptake than her mind. She sprints ahead, dashing toward the boat. She remembers Guntram’s advice to hide there. Plenty of nooks and crannies for them to burrow into. And with her talent, they might have a chance at surviving this. Maybe.

Getting onto the boat is a matter of scurrying up a wooden plank. It looks old, nearly rotted through, and it wobbles beneath her as she clambers up on hands and knees. Splinters dig into her skin, and the scent of the river wafts up and over her—damp, somehow salty—but Ciere doesn’t take any time to notice it. She is uncomfortably aware of how easy a target
she is, out in the open like this. When her fingers touch the rough metal of the boat’s railing, she pulls herself up and over with a huff of relief. Alan follows a second later. He reaches down to nudge the plank out of the way, maybe thinking to prevent anyone else from boarding, but the plank has all but molded itself to the surface of the boat. There’s no budging it.

Ciere tries to get her bearings. The barge isn’t too big—it’s mostly a long, flat surface meant to hold cargo. Several hatches look like they lead to a lower level, but each one is bolted shut, and she dismisses them. At the end of the boat, what looks like a tiny shack juts up from the flat deck. It’s got a door and four walls, and it’s the most defensible place she can find. “Come on,” she says.

They run the length of the barge to the door. The hinges are rusted and the paint is all but gone, worn down by age. She reaches out and grabs the handle. The door starts to pull open—

And then slams to a halt as soon as the chain looped through the handle reaches its limit. Ciere stares down at the padlock. It’s just a normal lock. She can open it.

She tosses her backpack to the floor and begins frantically digging through it. Her lock-picking kit is in there somewhere. She scrabbles through clothes, a water bottle, her mask, the canister of gasoline. In her haste, she leaves most of her possessions scattered along the floor. The clothes fall
lightly, while the gasoline canister hits the metal floor and cracks wide open, sending fluid gushing over the deck. Ciere slips in it as she kneels hastily next to the pile, her hands darting through the mess. The kit, the kit—where the hell is the kit? Her heart hammers in her chest.

She can’t find it.

“Ciere,” Alan says urgently. She glances up at him. “There’s no way off this boat, is there?”

She shakes her head. She reaches up into her hair—she always has a bobby pin stuck behind her ear to keep her blonde curls in place. As soon as she has the metal between her fingers, she falls to her knees in front of the door and jams the two hooks into the padlock.

Lock picking usually takes a certain amount of finesse and control, but her trembling hands and gasping breaths make it a matter of trial and error. She fumbles with the chain, trying to untangle it from the lock and the door handle. Rusty edges bite into her skin, but she doesn’t feel it. Ablaze with adrenaline and panic, she doesn’t register the pain.

Alan’s hand falls on her shoulder. “Illusion me,” he says.

“What?”

“You’re not getting through that.” Alan glances from the lock to her bloodied fingers. “This is our chance—we can’t run. So we’ll fight. Illusion me. Make me invisible.”

His words don’t make sense at first. She isn’t a fighter—Kit
hasn’t even taught her to fire a gun. Crooks carrying deadly weapons get harsher sentences than those who don’t. There’s also the fact that anyone can carry a weapon; anyone can be a thug; anyone can demand a purse at gunpoint. Physical confrontations mean you’re not good enough to think yourself out of a situation. Kit once said the moment you raise your hand to a mark, you’ve already lost the game.

She scrambles to her feet and takes a breath. She doesn’t need the physical action, but it centers her.

She reaches for the illusion and feels that resistance. Her immunity is inside her and shouldn’t be shared, shouldn’t be seen—her mother told her that. She feels like she’s being told to paint a person in her own blood—there’s only so much of it, and it belongs inside her.

“Damn,” she breathes. “It’s not happening.”

“Ciere, look at me,” Alan says quickly, holding out a hand. She skitters to one side, feeling nausea roll through her stomach. All at once, it’s too much. Being on this boat, the fumes of gasoline, the adrenaline and panic. She’s sure she’s going to either throw up or throw herself over the edge, when Alan’s fingers lock around her upper arms, holding her in place.

“Look at me,” he says again. “Ciere, just breathe. Your immunity—it’s part of you. You can’t access it if you’re fighting it.”

Slowly, Ciere feels some of her panic recede. A bit of her
control comes back and she grasps at it, desperately clings to it. When she opens her eyes, she realizes she’s already illusioned herself into nothing. She reaches down, finds her backpack, and instinctively picks up her mask. Technically, she doesn’t need it right now. There are no cameras. But she feels better wearing it—she can pretend this is just another job. Just another illusion. She slips on the mask, and Alan doesn’t say a word.

She extends her hand and presses it to Alan’s chest, feels the skin and ribs and muscle, and tries to envelop all of that with her illusion. Darkness. There’s so much darkness here that a little more won’t draw attention. She takes hold of the night and pulls it around Alan. Pressure swells in her temples, and she tries to ignore it.

With the illusion in place, Ciere casts about, trying to find anything she could use as a weapon. There’s some rotting wood, a few nails, half of a collapsed crate and—there. A rusty chain loops along the deck. She scrambles to pick it up. She has no idea what Alan is doing—he’s invisible, just like she is.

A hand appears—pale and long-fingered—grasping at the railing. A moment later, Aristeus heaves himself up and swings one leg over the railing.

Ciere swings the chain at his face.

It’s a good blow, and it might have sent Aristeus falling back over the railing if his reactions weren’t so quick. While
Ciere is invisible, she doesn’t have time to vanish the chain, too. Aristeus rolls over the railing and drops onto the deck in a crouch, his gaze locked on the chain. It must look like it’s floating in midair.

A grin darts across his face, and he straightens. “Illus—” he starts to say, but that’s when a long piece of rotten wood slams into the back of his knees. The wood shatters, sending Aristeus crashing to the deck.

Daniel appears, pulling himself up and over the railing. He freezes, taking in the odd situation. “The hell?” he says, seeing the airborne chain.

Ciere whirls, ready to strike at the newcomer, but she hesitates. This is Daniel. He’s one of her crew, part of her adopted family. They’re not supposed to be on opposing sides.

“Daniel,” Aristeus says.
“Defend me.”

Daniel goes rigid, his eyelids falling half-closed as he inhales. Ciere knows what he’s doing; he’s drawing on his immunity. While an eludere’s powers are usually used for evasion, their increased intuition can serve other purposes—like knowing where a threat lurks.

Daniel twists and rushes Ciere, reaching out and grabbing the chain. He wrestles the improvised weapon from her grasp and she stumbles, her knees hitting the wooden deck.

She feels the illusion shatter.

Daniel stands over her, and in the pale light she sees his
face. She stares up into his green eyes and swallows hard. “Daniel,” she whispers.

He looks wrecked, like he’s been ripped apart from the inside out. He opens his mouth, as if to say something, but then he squeezes his lips shut. Something moves behind him, and Ciere’s attention is drawn to Aristeus. She abruptly sees Alan standing there—he’s no longer invisible, either. He’s holding another piece of rotten wood, drawing it back as if to hit the man over the head. Aristeus whips around, and he rips Alan’s weapon from him.

Ciere tenses, expecting Aristeus to go for the gun he took from Guntram. But Aristeus just stands there. His head is slightly tilted to one side, as if in bewilderment. He looks so out of place in the midst of this rust and decay. His suit is too pristine, the whites too bright and the colors too rich. He turns around and his gaze slides over Alan. “Finally. I was getting tired of chasing after you.” He sounds like a babysitter whose charges have run away from him. He is mildly disapproving, but there is no hint of the violence he showed Guntram. Daniel falls behind Aristeus, his eyes fixed on Ciere.

Alan leans up against the barge’s railing, his hands locked around the rusted metal like he needs the support. Aristeus says, “You must be Alan Fiacre.”

Alan doesn’t reply; Daniel makes a surprised noise.

“And… I have no idea who you are,” Aristeus says, turning to Ciere. “Nice mask.”

Ciere is frozen in place, her knees digging into the hard deck. Aristeus is distracted, too caught up in his triumph to care about her. She forces herself to draw on her immunity. If she can use her illusions, she might be able to get the drop on him.

She begins to gather the darkness around her and prepares to fade into nothing. “Aristeus,” Daniel warns.

Aristeus’s sharp gaze snaps to Ciere and she finds herself fixed by his dark eyes.
“Stop that,”
he says, and his voice takes on a new tone.

Her burgeoning illusion vanishes.

That’s when the ramifications of his immunity truly sink in. He’s a dominus.

She is well and truly screwed.

“An illusionist,” Aristeus says. “Interesting.”

Ciere tries not to look at Daniel and fails. She expects that he’s already told Aristeus everything; he must have. But Daniel’s lips are tightly mashed together, like he’s holding something in his mouth. He shakes his head slightly, and Ciere understands that to mean that Daniel is still protecting her secrets, somehow.

Aristeus watches her. The distant sounds of fighting fade into nothing, and even the touch of the warm breeze seems to still. Her world has shrunk to the size of this barge, and at the center of it all is Aristeus’s astute gaze.

“Too bad I can’t see you, not with that mask on.
Show me
who you are
,” he says, and that voice is coiling around Ciere’s body, restricting her movements, and she cannot help it when her hands rise to her face. The words reverberate within her. She feels like she’s being pulled under, like she’s already fallen into the river and is fighting the current.

The words of her mother ring through her, as fresh as the day she first heard them:
Don’t let anyone see what you are, understand?

Show me who you are.

Her body struggles against itself. Her lungs hitch and her shoulders shake. Her body desperately wants to comply with his command, but doesn’t know what to do. He didn’t say, “Tell me who you are,” so her lips remain clamped shut. How is she supposed to show him?

The balaclava hits the deck, and Ciere finds herself staring at it.

Trembling, she looks up at Aristeus. He considers her, eyes sweeping over her face as if in surprise. “God, you’re young,” he says.

This cannot be happening. Nobody is supposed to know who she is or what she can do. But here he is—looking at her and seeing her for what she truly is.

Don’t let anyone see what you are, understand?

The world feels like it is coming apart. Every reality she has built her life upon is crumbling beneath her. Aristeus’s
level gaze strips it all away—every mask, every lie, every half truth.

Show me who you are
, was his command.

That would be a lot easier if she knew who she was.

She is a thief. A seventeen-year-old girl. An orphan. A survivor. She is someone who has scribbled out her own identity, given herself a new name, and all but forgotten her real one.

Don’t let anyone see what you are, understand?
The words come to her again, spoken in her mother’s voice, but they’re fighting against Aristeus’s command.

Show me who you are.

While Ciere struggles, Aristeus turns to face Alan. Alan stands several feet away, the railing pressed to his back. “Well,” Aristeus says, “we’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

“I was under the impression,” Alan says, still looking down, “that the world thought I was dead.”

“The world, yes. The upper levels of the US government, no.” Aristeus takes a step back, as if he needs some distance. He rubs a hand over his mouth, and Ciere hears the scritch of day-old stubble. He hasn’t shaved, and she is forcibly reminded of Carson, with his shadow of bristles.