Indelible Ink (21 page)

57

In the little town square, Deena stood near a bed of beautifully arranged flowers and waved the agents off. She’d stopped heaving and convulsing after a few minutes and walked away from Garrett and Pel. Her stomach was under control, but not the rest of her body, not her mind. All these years of practicing magic that wasn’t magic. Thinking she’d figured out some kind of key to casting her own limited spells and guiding some tremendous power, when deep inside there was a creature feeding off of her. Her body was wracked with revulsion. She looked at the blotch on her arm. It looked like an ordinary blemish at the moment and she wanted it out. Deena tore at it with her nails; slicing, scraping, she began to draw blood almost immediately. But it was nothing but blood, no black fluid or whatever it was.

“Jesus, Deena stop,” Garrett said. He’d moved up next to her without her noticing.

“I want it out.” Deena was angry with herself and whatever it was inside of her. She should have been able to figure out that she was being used all that time. “I need it out of me, now.”

Pel was at Deena’s side as well. “They’re working on how to remove these things. They just aren’t quite sure how to go about it yet.”

“But tearing it out of your arm with your fingernails certainly isn’t going to work.” Garrett grabbed her by the wrist and held it firmly.

Deena was aware the agents knew what they were talking about, but it didn’t lessen her dread of the thing insider her. And as she calmed down, the blood spilling over her wrist began to come out black. Instead of dripping down onto the bricks of the sidewalk, it turned to a tar-like substance before reversing itself and pulling back into the wound. In less than a minute, there was just a trio of scratch lines down Deena’s forearm. Worms. Snakes. Spiders seemed to be running just under her skin. She couldn’t let herself panic again, as much as she wanted to. She took deep breaths and closed her eyes as tight as she could. Her sister was still in danger, and Deena had ignored Harper for far too long. “Can we get out of here and get on with it? Let’s get going.” She could see the uncertainty in the eyes of both agents. “I’ll be OK. Let me get something in my stomach while we drive the last bit and I’ll be fine. My sister is waiting.”

“We’ll call our superiors at the Index and outline what we want to do and the ideas we have for you,” Garrett said. “You need to pay attention and this call needs to go well.”

“Let us do most of the talking.” Pel still looked worried that Deena was going to implode at any minute. The agent helped Deena to the car. Deena let herself melt into the backseat. As they hit the road, Pel dialed her phone and put it on speaker. They had a conversation with two other agents called Rivers and Rice. It was all a little fuzzy and Deena felt slightly drunk as she identified herself and said yes at what seemed like all the right moments.

It was a short conversation that included some moments where Garrett took it off speaker and talked to the men on the other end semi-privately. She tried to keep her eyes open, but it was impossible. She was still exhausted, coffee or no coffee. As the call came to an end, Deena fell asleep again. It was like her mind just shut off.

Twenty minutes later, Deena woke up in the back of the car, with the agents talking about whether this was a good idea.

“Let’s just go,” Deena said. She stepped out of the car and walked around to the back bumper. The license plate, “WERKIT,” failed to inspire her.

The three of them stared at the building as they sat in the car. Deena had been in the building numerous times and had never given it a second thought. Now, it seemed like a dark tower that reached into the clouds. Somewhere inside, Harper was probably sitting with a gun to her head. “Let’s just get moving,” Deena said. “Let’s go find my sister.”

“All right,” Garrett said. “We can go in the loading dock, where they make deliveries. Probably less security. From there we can take the back stairs, all the way up. I doubt anyone would even blink if they saw us.”

“You want to run up thirty-two flights of stairs and hope no one notices us?” Pel asked. “That’s a hell of a lot of walking.”

“I don’t want to risk taking the elevator. We could easily get locked in there, or have the doors open onto a floor full of gunmen. The stairs are the best way of doing it without getting trapped so easily.”

“Yes,” Deena said. “You’re absolutely right. You guys should take the stairs. I’ll walk in the front door and take the main elevator up. They’ll focus on me and ignore you. There’s no way they could anticipate me showing up with the FBI.”

“‘E’. FEI.” Garrett was becoming paranoid about the name. “The Index actually has a nicer ring to it.”

Deena glared at the man.

The passenger door opened and Deena stepped onto the sidewalk. “I’ll go in first and draw everyone’s attention to me. You guys circle around to the loading docks and stay out of sight as much as you can.”

“We’ll meet you on Marsh’s floor? What’s to stop him from killing you on sight?” Pel opened her door and took a step out. “You know that’s his plan here, right?”

“Yes,” Deena said. “I have to guess he wouldn’t do it here. And he wouldn’t do it himself.” Deena thought about it for a second and hoped her logic was correct. “And if he does, then you guys should have a solid case against him. Right?”

Neither of the agents seemed happy with that explanation.

“So, I guess you better get up there before that happens, right?”

“You don’t think he’s going to just hug you and let the whole thing slide, do you? I know you’re joking, but the potential danger here is very real,” Garrett said.

Deena finished getting out and leaned in the open window. “
Potential danger
. We’re talking about Marsh here; you can drop the ‘potential’ part. I know what’s happening here.” They had discussed the plan, such as it was, and other contingencies on the ride to L.A. but Deena had left out a few things. She’d left out the part of Marsh’s call where he said he’d let Harper go if Deena came back and worked for him. She was sure it was bullshit, but if it turned out to be the only way to get Harper out, she’d have to seriously consider it. “I’ll take my time, but I think you’d better move it, if you plan on getting up those stairs.” She slammed the car door and bounded across the street while the traffic was clear, just before the onrush of cars, so she couldn’t hear if anyone responded.

She’d really never come through the front doors much, only when she took taxis or a car service. Usually, she came in through the underground parking garage and took the private elevator, but she’d used the front entrance enough to be able to get a nod of recognition from the large dark-haired man in the navy jacket at the front security desk and another from the almost identical man that stood near the bank of elevators with his hands behind his back. She continued past the elevators, followed the signs for the lobby restrooms and shoved the door to the ladies’ room open. She took a moment to walk up and down the restroom stalls, making sure she was alone. The water from the sink was tepid, but she still splashed some on her face to wake up. She was right back where she’d been after the airplane job: feeling sick to her stomach in a strange bathroom. Her body still ached, her stomach was a mess and she still felt like an idiot teenager. The big difference was that she didn’t really appear like one anymore. She looked in the mirror and watched the water drip off of her nose. The face was pretty close to normal for her correct age anyway. She felt thicker, slower, more aware of herself and her physique. At least she had that going for her.

There was another difference that cropped up in the last few hours. The magic that she’d guided and worked to control and employed to do her bidding was not actually magic. It was some sort of living thing feeding off her. The reality was, it had controlled her. It had taken her conscience, taken her will to choose her own path, destroyed her ability to tell between right and wrong, sucked her soul dry. Her power had been using her, not the other way around. Maybe she shouldn’t have called it Shadow Energy, but a Shadow Entity instead. She stared at herself in the mirror and wanted to cut deep into her body with a steak knife and scrape around until she found it.

She looked at her arm and saw the blemish had become a squiggly line that looked like a black wave. She stared at it and thought of the beach. Slowly the wave started to roll, like water onto the shore. She wasn’t cutting into herself until she got her sister out.

Deena left the restroom and walked back to the elevator bank, thinking she’d given Marsh’s men enough time to be made aware of her arrival and react appropriately. She approached the elevators, seeing two burly men standing there, looking up at the numbers as if they were waiting for the next car. She assumed they were there to make sure she got to Marsh’s floor without incident. Deena confidently punched the up button and then stared at the numbers over the three elevators as well, to see which one was going to arrive first. One of the men grunted after thirty seconds of waiting and began jabbing the already-lit button repeatedly with his forefinger.

“You saw me push that, right?” Deena asked.

The man was startled that she had talked to him. “Yeah.”

“You know that once it’s pushed, you’re done? Pushing it again doesn’t speed things up.”

The man scowled and began pushing the button faster, staring at Deena all the while.

“Mature.” Deena began scanning the red numbers that were slowly changing over the doors. The click-click of the man’s button-pushing annoyed her and Deena reached out and batted his hand away from the button.

“Bitch, what do you…” He was cut off by the ding of the elevator arriving.

Deena was never so happy to see the doors slide open in her life. “Thanks for your help. I don’t know how we ever would have flagged one of these things down without you. Nice work.”

“Fuck you.”

They all stepped into the waiting elevator car and when it closed, Deena stared at their reflections in the silvery surface of the doors. They stood a foot or two behind her and sized her up, their heads scanning her body, possibly checking out her ass. Either way, she could handle them. She pushed the button for thirty-two. “What floor?” she asked the men.

“Thirty-four,” the button-pusher said.

Deena knew that floor was empty, with most of the rooms being renovated. They were definitely here for her. “Got it.”

The elevator stopped on the second floor and three more men got on. They all needed to go to thirty-four, but none of them seemed to know each other, and they all stood behind her.

The doors closed and the elevator slowly ascended, but came to a stop yet again on the third floor. This wasn’t looking quite as easy as Deena had hoped. The possibility of just walking out with her sister seemed more distant by the second. If burly thugs got on at every level, they might just smash her to death by sheer volume. She could overpower a lot of men, but she still didn’t know the extent of her power now. Knowing it might be a living thing inside her, she was even more reluctant to call upon it for help. And she was more than a little creeped out.

As the doors opened on the third floor, she was greeted by two people pointing guns in her face. She recognized them both. “Harper? Stanley? What the hell?” Her sister and Marsh’s assistant seemed rattled, but none the worse for wear.

“There they are,” the button pusher said. He grabbed Deena, shoved her back against the elevator wall and charged off the elevator with another goon, tackling a clearly conflicted Harper. Any shots she would have taken might have hit Deena as easily as they hit the other men in the elevator who now surrounded Deena.

The elevator doors slid shut as one of the men put his thick hands on her shoulder in an effort to pin Deena.

58

Stanley was just as astounded as Harper to see Deena in the elevator. They’d given up on waiting and he and Harper were making their way out of the building by moving from air ducts and supply closets to bathrooms and empty offices. Unfortunately, the building was so secure that cameras and alarms thwarted their efforts to hide in place and wait. Stanley blamed himself for insisting the building security be beefed up after his initial threat assessment for Mr. Marsh in the early days.

The street seemed like the best shot at escape for the duo. They could run out the loading area and down the alleyway to the next street. The hope would be that some passing citizens might report anything unusual if Harper and Stanley were stopped and hauled back in by Marsh’s employees.

Stanley looked above the elevator and watched as the number for the next floor up became red. “They’re heading up,” he said. The nearest man grabbed Stanley by the throat and shoved him against the wall, pinning him.

Harper punched the other man in the stomach and then again in the side. “That’s not helping us right now.”

The breath was quickly leaving Stanley’s lungs and with thick fingers wrapped around his windpipe, he couldn’t pull in more. He panicked and swung wildly at his attacker’s face, but he was too weak to be effective. It took two swings to realize that he still had a gun in his right hand. He felt it slipping out of his grasp as black spots began to appear in his field of vision. Too beat to raise the weapon, Stanley put all of his efforts into pulling the trigger.

The roar of the weapon lit up the hallway and Stanley’s attacker screamed as the bullet went through his foot. Stanley fell to the floor and felt the welcome rush of air fill his lungs. He coughed as he writhed next the larger man holding his foot and shouting.

As he recovered, Stanley looked over at Harper and her assailant. She was pounding the man, landing blow after blow, but it didn’t seem to be slowing him down any, just wearing her out. She was already obviously tired, moving from place to place, on high alert, waiting for the next people to discover her and force the duo to move on. She was still alert enough to dodge the man’s wild, uncoordinated punches, but it was hard to say for how long. As his strength came back, he raised his gun and pointed it at the man. “Hey.” Stanley immediately began coughing and Harper and her attacker kept fighting. When he stopped coughing, he tried again. “Hey. Stop.” He had to use short words to keep from starting another jag of hacking. “Now.”

The goon stopped and looked at Stanley, giving Harper an extra second to punch the man in the throat and then the nose. He went down wheezing worse than Stanley had, with the added bonus of having blood pouring out of his nose.

Harper sat down in the hall to catch her breath and Stanley joined her. The two men writhing and bleeding next to them made the atmosphere less than relaxing.

“We need to move,” Harper said.

“I’m tired.”

“Me too, but we have to move.” Harper didn’t sound too terribly motivated. “We couldn’t stay here if we wanted. There’ll be more of these idiots showing up soon.” She kicked the nearest of their assailants in the back of the head.

It was true, and Stanley knew it. There were still plenty of hired hands in the building that would be eager to get Harper. He looked over at the two sets of elevator doors. The one with Deena had gone all the way up to Marsh’s floor. The other was down at ground level. “Want me to press the button, or are we taking the stairs?”

“Fuck it. We’ll take the elevator.”

Stanley slowly nodded his head. “Should I push the up button or the down button?” He wanted to know if they were still making a run for it, or if they were going to try to help Harper’s sister. If he had a vote, it would be to run. Anyone in the building would probably be called up to fight Deena and it might be their best time to get out. If they went back up, there was no telling what mess they would be walking into.

“She fucked me over. If she hadn’t just run away, we could’ve gotten out together. She left me twisting in the wind,” Harper said.

“True.” Stanley stood and moved to push the down button on the elevator.

“But she is my sister.”

Stanley propped his head against the wall and let his finger hover over the down button.