Irregulars: Stories by Nicole Kimberling, Josh Lanyon, Ginn Hale and Astrid Amara (42 page)

“
Lord Jaguar was a worthy adversary,
” Fight Arm said quietly. Deven didn’t miss the insult in his own name’s omission, but he didn’t feel it. He was suddenly too grateful to be sitting with someone who knew Lord Jaguar, even if it was in the role of antagonist.

Deven’s heart hurt as he realized he had more in common with the opponent he’d been at war with since his childhood than any of the passersby in the park. Loneliness and regret filled him.

“
The more you tell me how to defeat Night Axe, the more likely my chances I’ll succeed
,”
Deven said.

Fight Arm hesitated.

Deven sighed. “
I’m your enemy, offering to risk my life to defeat a greater threat. Helping me helps you. How did the lords defeat Night Axe and send him to the realm of light
?”

“
They poisoned him,
” Fight Arm said.

“
How
?”

“
Night Axe needs sacrificial human blood to fuel his manipulations. Without it he can no longer transform. If you poison the blood he uses, he will weaken enough that you can destroy him.
”

“
What kind of poison
?”

“
It was a concoction Lord Crane  created. That is all I know
.”

Deven felt a surge of hope. NIAD’s advanced technology had to be able to recreate whatever concoction the lords had created thousands of years ago.

“
I’ll find out what I can about the poison and how they administered it and report back to you. In exchange for your house power
.”

Deven shook his head. “
I give it to you, the rebels will have it within weeks, and it will be broken, just like your lord’s staff
.”

“
These destructions are terrible crimes.
” Fight Arm made a fist. “
We have lost time, our history. There is nothing of meaning in Aztaw anymore
.”

Deven felt a strange bond to Fight Arm. They were both soldiers of an older war, a time forgotten by the fighters of newer battles. They were remnants of a culture that no longer existed.

“
Lord Jaguar’s palace...”
Deven hesitated.
“Is it still standing
?”

“
Yes. Despite the war, your lord’s house is still intact.
”

Relief flooded Deven as well as a sudden, aching desire to return. But then he noted the dark look in his enemy’s eyes.

“
And Lord Knife’s palace
?” Deven asked.

“
Destroyed, like the others
,” Fight Arm said. “
Curious, isn’t it
?”

Not really
, Deven thought. The rebels only had interest in lords that were still alive. Lord Jaguar’s palace was a mausoleum now, an empty shell harboring the memories of a dead lord and a missing house power.

“
I miss the old war
,” Fight Arm said, echoing Deven’s earlier sentiment.

Deven nodded. “
But there’s no point dwelling on the past. If we can’t stop Night Axe, Aztaw has a very ugly future
.”

Fight Arm glanced around. “
He’s more powerful in darkness and will detect my presence. I’ll meet you at the fast gate tomorrow at dawn and tell you what I’ve learned
.”

“
Thank you
.”

Fight Arm grimaced. “
Don’t thank me, repulsive human. As soon as Night Axe is gone, you’re next.
”

“
Of course
.” Deven smiled, however, knowing the chances of Fight Arm outwitting him, especially here, were slim.

Deven watched Fight Arm attempt and fail to orient himself in the strange day-lit city. He looked for the hotel but seemed unwilling to admit being lost to his foe.

Deven moved to the paved sidewalk and started drawing with his pen. Weakness shuddered through him as he wrote each glyph, and the pen lightened and grew colder. Several passing pedestrians gathered to watch, as if he were an artist, but moved on once they had dismissed his simplistic, scrawled imagery.

He finished all but the last icon of the gate. Fight Arm stepped inside. He tilted his head slightly.

“
You could write me anywhere
.”

“
Yes
.”
Deven had his pen poised to draw the last image. “
But I need your help, almost as much as you need mine
.”

“
I’ll return at dawn, at the fast gate.
”
Fight Arm hesitated for a moment, then jutted out his jawbone in a soldier’s salute. It looked oddly informal when gestured by someone in a hoodie and corduroys, but its implication was still powerful. Despite years of animosity, the damage Deven had done to Fight Arm’s family, or the four-inch scar on Deven’s back from Fight Arm’s blade, there was a temporary peace between them.

“
Age well,
” Deven said. He drew the last symbol, a spear. Light seared upwards from the ground. A couple walking by gasped and stared, but then Fight Arm was gone, dropping in his ancient form into the underworld from which he came.

Chapter Thirteen

Returning to the safe house took longer than Deven had intended. Although he’d learned Spanish from his mother, his reading skills were paltry at best and he spoke at the level of a child. He misdirected his taxi driver and ended up being dropped off at the Tecnología Educativa Galileo instead of Galileo Street, in a different part of town. His phone had long since died without recharging and he didn’t have the local Irregulars’ office number anywhere else.

He couldn’t find another empty taxi so he started walking, asking after Calle Galileo and being directed in a vague, northerly direction.

The endless traffic, colorful buildings, graffiti, and billboards merged with the noises and subway smells to make a chaos that gave him a headache and hurt his eyes even through the sunglas-ses. The walk was the second long trek of the day and nearly five miles. He felt exhausted from the simple effort of distinguishing street signs from advertisements.

A sense of displacement filled him as he walked, worse even than those first disorienting weeks on San Juan Island. Fight Arm was part of a life he’d left, and the fact that Deven had spoken with him and would see him again filled him with a nervous grief that summed up his suffering since leaving Aztaw.

After all, when he’d first left, he’d fled for his life. But within a hesitant truce between himself and Lord Knife lurked the possibility of return, as mad as the idea was. He knew it’d still be dangerous—even if he managed to ally himself with Lord Knife’s dynasty, there were rebels to fight and other lords to conquer—but the comfort of the known tugged at his gut, an unpleasant but undeniable urge, destructive and powerful in nature.

In the daily hour of television prescribed to him by his therapist, Deven once watched a show on addicts, fascinated and confused by why a person would consistently and consensually take something that made them violently ill and ruined their life. But how was that different than this urge? Aztaw was a living hell, he was friendless there, and still he longed for its hot familiarity. He wanted to be back where things were logical—where his eyes didn’t hurt all the time, where people didn’t expect him to say the right thing. Back where he had a purpose and had known how to do it.

Who was he kidding, anyway? Replacing his knives for freeze balls wouldn’t change Deven’s nature. He’d been raised to kill the enemies of those he was allied with. That was all he knew. How could anyone expect someone as fucked up as him to grow accustomed to a peaceful life? It was hopeless. And Deven only disappointed those around him by allowing them to cling to the belief he could someday be retrained into a proper human being.

By the time he approached the well-enforced gates of the safe house he’d made up his mind. He would help August and kill Night Axe, secure Lord Jaguar’s house power somewhere here in the natural world where it would remain protected from Aztaw revolutionaries, and return home. It would leave him more vulnerable—once again he would be a guardian without a house power, a target for Aztaw soldiers. But he would also no longer be the threat the other lords perceived him to be with his easily fueled house power and he would be keeping the promise he had made to his lord. He would never betray that promise—but he could no longer pretend to be normal.

The safe house blended in with the well-fortified luxury mansions and embassies that lined the shady streets of the Polanco neighborhood, but there was a definite air of impenetrability to the structure. The guard at the house carefully examined Deven’s identification before allowing him past the first gate.

At a second gate he was examined with a strobe light he imagined was similar to August’s flashlight. After passing that test, he waited as the burly guard dismantled wards and magical shields. By the time the guard finally unbolted the front door and Deven stepped into the light and spacious living room, he was emotionally and physically spent. His feet ached; his heart felt like a gaping wound in his chest.

“You okay?”

Deven spun, shocked he’d been taken by surprise. Agent August’s ability to sneak up on him was another sign of his exhaustion.

August’s naturally pale coloring was white as death and the dark bruise on his right eye looked nearly black against his skin. He was clearly sicker than he’d been when Deven had left. Still, his expression lifted a little as he offered Deven a tired smile.

“You can take the glasses off,” August told him. “They have a disk at the front and Night Axe will be spotted if he tries to enter.”

Deven folded the glasses and put them carefully in his pocket. “You look tired.”

August shrugged. “It’s hard to sleep when you feel like part of you is being sucked away.”

Deven didn’t like the anxious look in August’s eyes so he changed the subject. “Did the local agents find other sacrifices?”

August nodded. “Ortega and Zardo located twenty-nine people so far who’re attached to Night Axe.”

“Why don’t they trace the network to Night Axe and drop a bomb on his lair?”

August snorted. “Nice idea. Unfortunately there’s this thing about innocent casualties that the agency tends to frown upon.”

“Right, simply killing him would be too easy, wouldn’t it?” Deven heard the fatigue in his own voice. Obviously so did August. He gripped Deven’s arm and led him to a plush cream-colored sofa and urged him to sit down. Deven collapsed back, sighing as his body sank into the cushions. August sat close beside him.

The room was expansive, the ceiling two floors up with wood fans lazily stirring the air. The room and all its furnishings were exclusively white, the only color coming from the bright red area rug under a white, glass-topped coffee table.

Deven leaned his head back, staring up at the fans. Only the occasional chirp of the security system broke the silence of the house.

“Is anyone else staying here?” he asked.

“Other than night staff, no. You’re free to molest me without witnesses.” August smirked at his innuendo, but the obvious exhaustion in the agent’s eyes belayed any hope that he might have been serious.

“What did you find out from the Aztaw?” August asked.

“He’ll discover what he can about Night Axe’s vulnerabilities and meet me at dawn. He’s confident we can poison him, making him weak enough to subdue.”

“Good.” August nodded. “I’m coming with you.”

Deven frowned. “You don’t look up to it.”

“I’ll be fine. I slept a little and dinner will revive me. Speaking of which, I went ahead and ordered something for you.”

“What a surprise.” Deven sank lower into the couch and closed his eyes. August said nothing for a bit and Deven had nearly drifted off to sleep when he felt August’s fingers touch his shoulder.

“What did he say to you?”

“Who?”

“Your contact.”

“I told you.” Deven kept his eyes clamped shut, afraid his tumultuous thoughts would show, so close to the surface.

“He said something that’s upset you. You’re tense and unhappy.”

Deven cracked open an eyelid. “I’m hunting the Aztaw bogeyman armed with two knives and aided by an injured asshole of an Irregulars agent. Why should I be happy?”

August snorted. “I’m not that much of an asshole.”

“Yes you are.”

“You like me anyway.” August closed his own eyes and slid down to match Deven’s height on the couch. His long legs sprawled out in front of him, limp.