Red Knight Falling (7 page)

ELEVEN

“Whoa!” Cody said, holding up his open hands. “It’s me, okay? Nobody shoot me.”

I lowered my weapon. April and Jessie did the same.

“Hell of a way to say hello,” he told us, flashing an easy smile.

He looked just how I’d left him in Talbot Cove. High cheekbones, broad shoulders, and a certain cowboy swagger that barely faded, even with three guns pointing in his face. As he stepped closer, I could make out the thin white lines on his throat, the scars he’d earned from his encounter with the demoness Nyx.

I had scars like those—on my arms, my back, my stomach, my legs. I assumed everyone else on the team did, too. Scars came with the job. Your body becomes a graven monument to the missions you’ve survived.

Calling Cody had felt like a burst of inspiration. We’d needed an asset with his skills, so I’d roped him in, just like that. Sure, I’d warned him about the danger. Sure, he’d seen the evil lurking under the surface of the world, up close and in the flesh; it wasn’t like I pulled a civilian in off the street and clued him in the hard way. Even so, all it took was that smile to make me regret it.

Back in Vegas I’d worked with a man named Lars, a veteran DEA agent. Rugged, tough, headstrong. I thought Lars could handle anything, right up until the night he got possessed by the spirit of a serial killer. We got the creature out of him, but Lars was never quite the same after that. He was still quick with a grin and a joke, but the humor never reached his eyes. He wasn’t okay. Last I’d heard, Lars had gone on disability leave. And he wouldn’t return any of my phone calls. I didn’t blame him.

And here I was, dragging Cody in deeper. I forced myself to take a deep breath, burying my fears behind an unconvincing smile.

Cody patted the old canvas messenger bag at his side, the duffel faded from years of wear. “Somebody call for a laptop and a little astrophysics?”

“Right over here.” Kevin held up a hand. “Though we might have to head back to civilization to get online. This isn’t exactly a great spot for Wi-Fi.”

Cody slid a bulky black brick of a laptop from the bag as he walked. “Well, good thing I’ve got a satellite modem then, isn’t it? Heck, you know what the Internet service is like in Talbot Cove? This was pretty much a mandatory purchase.”

I almost reached for him as he walked by. Just to touch his arm, some kind of contact. I clenched my arm muscles until the urge passed. What I wanted just then, more than anything, was to tell him it was all a mistake. To turn him around and send him away before he could collect any more scars.

But we needed him. For the mission. And the mission was all that mattered.

Cody sat down next to Kevin on an unfurled sleeping bag. The laptop balanced on one crooked knee, scuffed heel of his weathered brown boot digging into the dirt. While they talked data, I thought logistics. Anything to distract me from myself.

Unless Caine had been on a recruiting spree—unlikely, with a federal warrant on his head—he could only field around twenty men. Twenty men with military expertise and high-end assault rifles, but there was still a lot of forest to canvass. If I was him, I’d break them up into two-man teams and coordinate a search grid, like we do for a missing-persons hunt. There’d be plenty of room to slip between those teams. Lots of wilderness to hide in.

I told Jessie and April what I was thinking. “Problem is,” Jessie said, “they’ve got one hell of a head start—and the slower we move, the more likely it is that we’ll be the last ones at the finish line. I think we need to get ahead of them.”

“How?” I asked.

“The lodge had ATV rentals, right? It’s not too far from here. I say we hoof it on over, break in, and help ourselves. We can tear this forest up, and if these Xerxes guys are on foot, let ’em hear us. We’ll be long gone before they catch up.”

“I don’t like it,” April said. “Too risky. The lodge will be evacuated, but that doesn’t mean these mercenaries haven’t moved in and made themselves at home in the owners’ absence.”

Jessie grinned. Her turquoise eyes shimmered in the gathering dark.

“Fine by me. Means we can take a few of ’em out while we’re there.”

“Are you kidding me?” Kevin said, behind us. He’d borrowed Cody’s laptop, typing away with rapid-fire precision. “This is faster than my rig!”

Cody chuckled. “Yeah, not much to spend my paycheck on back home. So everything gets saved for a rainy day, or goes into this baby.”

Kevin handed the laptop back to Cody. “Okay, you’ve got all the leaked telemetry. Can you do anything with it?”

He paused, reading the screen carefully, occasionally tapping a key as he thought it over.

“Sure,” he said. “Math. Give me ten minutes and I’ll have a pretty decent crash window.”

We broke out the kerosene lamps as the sky faded to royal blue and blossomed with stars. I kept catching myself looking up. Wondering if one of those countless pinpricks of light was our satellite, coming down for its last blaze of glory, and drawing that gigantic apparition down with it.

“Got it,” Cody said. He stood up, stretching. “If those numbers are right, I’ve narrowed the crash zone down to a box about two miles across. It’ll be pretty far from here—maybe sixty miles north—up in the foothills of Mount Bachelor.”

Jessie drew both of her Glocks, one for each eager hand.

“That settles it,” she said, “we’re stealing—I mean, commandeering—some ATVs. April, Kevin, you hold down the fort here and get in touch if you hear anything. Cody, can Kevin borrow your laptop?”

“Of course,” he said, stepping up to join us.

“No,” I said, “Cody’s staying here.”

He shook his head, puzzled. “But I came to help.”

“And you did help. And I’m grateful. But there’s a big difference between intelligence support and actual fieldwork. I’m not letting you risk your—”

“Agent?” April said. “A brief word?”

She beckoned me over. I leaned in, and she craned her neck to murmur softly.

“He’s police trained,” she said, “skilled with small arms, and cool under fire. You and Jessie are about to go up against multiple opposing forces. You’re outnumbered and outgunned. Cody is a useful asset. So use him.”

“Calling him out to help triangulate the satellite was one thing,” I said. “I thought we’d keep him more or less safe behind the lines, with you and Kevin. I am not bringing a civilian onto a black op.”

She pushed her bifocals down on her nose, glaring at me over the rims.

“He ceased being a civilian the moment Nyx got her claws around his throat, and you know it. You’re letting your affection cloud your judgment.”

I felt my cheeks go warm. “It is not affection,” I whispered.

April sat back in her chair. Her gaze felt like a surgical laser, probing me to the core.

“One question,” she said.

I nodded.

“You’re about to head into mortal danger. You’re not hesitant. Why not?”

“My life doesn’t matter.” I said the words before I thought them, rising unbidden to my lips, like an automated response from a computer program.

“Why?” April asked.

“We all saw the pictures of that thing—whatever it is—in outer space. If it follows the Red Knight down, if it gets loose on Earth, there’s no telling what might happen. It needs to be stopped. We’re the only ones who can stop it.”

“What matters right now?”

“Nothing matters but the mission,” I said.

“Correct. You’ve accepted this charge, this burden, of your own free will. And so has he.” April leaned closer. “Allow him.”

I straightened up. All out of arguments. I wanted April to be wrong. I knew she was right. There was nothing left to do but give her a firm nod and turn to face Jessie and Cody.

“Let’s go,” I said.

I could feel the sand running down the hourglass as the three of us navigated through the shadowed wood. Jessie took point, sweeping the gnarled trees with her flashlight. She’d cup the beam with her hand at the slightest sound, freezing, crouched in the dark, and we froze with her.

We skirted the main road for a while, and when it seemed close to safe—with nothing but darkness at either end of the closed-off highway and no sound but the night birds—we made a mad dash to the other side. Once we were back in cover, I leaned my palm against a stony tree trunk, catching my breath, my lungs sore.

We spoke only with our hands. Jessie got her bearings and pointed, waving for us to follow. The trees broke on the edge of the lodge’s parking lot. Pale pools of yellow light washed over parked Humvees and a second truck draped in olive tarp. A single soldier stood guard duty, shuffling around the lot and kicking a pinecone ahead of him. We went the long way around.

Moving in a low crouch, we passed an open window. I froze at the sound of voices, two men walking down the hallway together on the other side of the glass.

“—don’t know why we didn’t evacuate them with the others.”

“Better safe than sorry. If the real army shows up, or the cops start nosing around, trust me: we’re gonna want hostages.”

We held still until their voices faded away. Then Jessie cupped her hands together and nodded my way. I put my boot in her hand, letting her boost me up, and grabbed the windowsill. I wriggled my way up and over, landing with a soft thump on the pine tree–patterned rug on the other side. Jessie came next, then Cody, and I helped pull both of them inside.

We were in one of the back corridors, somewhere between the lobby and the café. I drew my pistol. Jessie drew both of hers.

Cody gave her an expectant look. She shrugged, uncomprehending. Then he wiggled his open hands at her. With a barely audible sigh, she handed over one of her guns.

The voices had been heading left, so we went right. The corridor curled around the lodge, looping back to meet up with the lobby. The cluster of card tables still stood, draped with plastic and piled high with the remnants of the morning’s breakfast, gathering flies in the silence.

Jessie held up her hand, waving us back. Then she held up a single finger and pointed across the lobby. One sentry. I heard him, not long after: “Aw, quit your whinin’,” he snapped at somebody whose voice I couldn’t make out. “It’ll all be over soon.”

I inched forward. One gunman in fatigues, assault rifle slung over his shoulder, idled behind the check-in counter on the other side of the lobby. There were sixty, maybe seventy feet of open floor between us. In the time it’d take to rush him head-on, he could probably empty his magazine, reload, and empty it again for good measure. We could open fire, too, but the sound of a single bullet would bring every mercenary in the lodge down on our heads. I didn’t want a gunfight, not now, especially if there were hostages nearby.

We’d have to take him down quickly, quietly, and safely. Problem was, from where I was standing, the best we could manage was two out of three. The gunman paced behind the counter, drumming his fingers on the rustic wood, boredom getting the better of vigilance. Good. I slipped off my boots. I waited until he turned, giving me about three seconds of room, and sprinted from the doorway to the breakfast tables.

TWELVE

I ran, slid, ducked down behind the white plastic sheet. My heart pounded bracing for a shout or the crack of a gunshot.

Neither came.

Now I couldn’t see him without sticking my head out of cover. I could see my partners, though, watching from the doorway’s edge. Jessie held up a warning hand, signaling for me to hold up. Cody bit his bottom lip, tense and trying not to show it. I got into a sprinter’s crouch. My stockinged feet were cold against the varnished wooden planks.

“Go,”
mouthed Jessie, waving me on. I shot across another ten feet of open floor, taking cover behind another table. Another frozen moment, another heartbeat of pure dread. Then nothing. I was still in the clear.

Next came the tricky part.

There was just too much open ground between the last table and the check-in desk. I’d gotten close, but not close enough. I needed to bring the gunman to me. I looked back, making eye contact with Cody, and tapped my wrist. He held up his own wrist and pointed to his steel-banded watch with a question in his eyes. I nodded, and pantomimed an overhanded throw.

He got the idea. Watching the desk, waiting for the gunman to turn, he slipped off his watch and pulled his arm back like a major-league pitcher. Then he let it fly, sending it across the lobby in a gleaming arc to land with a metallic clatter on the ground right next to my table.

“Huh?” said the gunman. I heard a rasping slither as he unslung his rifle, and the thump of his boots as he slowly approached my hiding place. “Somebody over here?”

Hunkered down, peeking under the folds of the plastic tablecloth, I could see his feet approaching me. Cautious footsteps. Quiet as a mouse, I inched sideways, keeping the table between us.

I was still circling around when he crouched, bending down to pick up the watch.

I lunged from behind, one hand clamping over his mouth and yanking his head back. The other grabbed his wrist, the rifle clattering to the floor as I twisted his arm into a joint lock behind his back. Jessie came at us like a runaway train, blazing across the lobby floor. The gunman had a heartbeat to inhale, trying to scream, just before she drove a chisel-fisted punch into his throat.

I dropped his body to the floor. Unconscious or dead, I wasn’t sure and wasn’t inclined to waste time checking. My attention was focused on the front desk and the soft, panicked whimpers I could hear on the other side.

Pistol drawn, I edged around the side of the desk. Three civilians—the desk clerk and two of the housekeepers—looked up at me with terrified eyes. They were bound and gagged with strips of duct tape, shoved together on the floor like sacks of laundry.

“It’s all right,” I said softly, crouching down and pulling the tape from the clerk’s mouth. “We’re the police. Just stay real quiet for me, okay?”

He winced as the tape tore at his stubble. “Be careful! These men, they’re not really soldiers.”

“Yeah. We’re aware of that. Turn around so I can get this tape off your wrists.”

With Jessie and Cody’s help, I cut the three of them loose. One of the housekeepers threw her arms around me, tears in her eyes, and I gently wriggled my way free.

“It’s okay,” I said, “we’re going to get you out of here. First, though: there’s an ATV rental on the lodge grounds, right?”

The clerk nodded, fumbling with a metal lockbox behind the counter. “S-sure, we keep the keys up front. Here. The ATVs are in the garage. If you go out the front door and hang a right, it’s just off the parking lot.”

His shaking hands thrust a bundle of keys with garishly bright plastic tags toward me. I pocketed them and waved for the hostages to follow.

“Stay behind us,” I told them, “and
keep quiet
.”

I tugged my boots back on, lacing them up fast, while Jessie scooped up the fallen gunman’s rifle. We led the hostages back the way we came, padding down empty halls, aiming for the back of the lodge. We’d just reached the open window and everything was going fine until the café doors swung open at the far end of the hall and we found ourselves face-to-face with a pack of mercenaries.

Time stopped between heartbeats. The four gunmen, coming out of the café, froze in their tracks. I jumped between them and the hostages, my conscious mind going blank as my training kicked in.

And then Jessie swung up her rifle and let it blast, firing off a hornet swarm of bullets on full auto.

One of the mercs dropped, his fatigues blossoming with puffs of red mist, and the others scrambled back behind the doorway for cover. My Glock barked twice, throwing down more suppressing fire as I waved the hostages back.

“Out the window, go,
now
!” I shouted. Jessie squeezed off another three-round burst as the mercs tried to return fire, one snaking his rifle around the doorway and shooting blind. Bullets crashed through window glass and chewed into the walls all around us as we evacuated the hostages. I was the last one out, my pistol’s hammer slapping down on an empty chamber before I tumbled out the window. I landed hard on the grass, rolling on my shoulder, moving as soon as I came back up again.

Jessie grabbed the closest hostage and pointed her toward the forest. “You three—go that way. Follow the road south, but stay
behind
the tree line. Don’t stop moving until the sun comes up, got it?”

They got it. They ran one way and we ran the other, racing for the garage. Every light in the lodge blazed to life, parking-lot lamps flickering on, pushing back the darkness in a white sodium glare.

“No civilians left,” Jessie panted, shooting me a look. I caught her meaning—time to take the gloves off.

“Cody,” I said, running alongside him, “you might see something weird in a minute. I need you to just roll with it, okay?”

“Weird like Talbot Cove weird?”

Earth, air, water, fire,
I thought, feeling rippling pinpricks wash over my sweaty skin like a blanket of static electricity,
garb me in your raiment. Arm me with your weapons.

The garage stood on the edge of the parking lot, its big rolling door open to the night. We weren’t alone. Two mercenaries burst from the doorway while another rounded the back corner, pinning us in a cross fire. The lone merc shouldered his rifle and let off a three-round burst as I flung out my hand, streamers of wind rippling from my fingertips in a pearly heat-mirage sheen. The air hardened, thickening, catching the bullets in a gelatin net and freezing them in midflight. Then I
pushed
, shoving my other palm forward, and the hardened air became a rubber band stretched to the breaking point. The bullets whipped back the way they came at supersonic speed, slamming into the gunman’s chest and tossing his corpse to the asphalt like a rag doll.

The other two never got a chance to pull the trigger. Jessie pounced like a feral wolf, faster than any human could move. She backhanded one of the mercs hard enough to break his teeth, tearing his rifle away and spinning on one heel, swinging the butt up to shatter his partner’s jaw. Then she flipped it in her grip and held the trigger down, riddling both of them with bullets at point-blank range.

Cody froze, blinking, looking between us. “What . . . what just happened here?”

I didn’t have time to explain, and the sudden surge of cramping pain in my guts wouldn’t give me the breath to talk. That stunt with the bullets made me siphon too much energy, too fast, and my body had to pay the price. I shoved a key into his hands and limped into the garage, just behind Jessie.

A quartet of shiny, candy-colored four-wheelers waited for us, matching the garishly bright tags on their keys. They were Honda TRX models, outfitted with all-sport tires and built for action. I just hoped the lodge kept them fueled between rentals. I saddled up, groaning as my weight shifted, feeling like a heavyweight boxer had punched me square in the gut.

“Hey,” Cody said, looking back at me as he swung one leg over the lead ATV. “You okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” I croaked, revving the engine and leaning into the handlebars. “Just drive.”

We burst from the garage to the tune of screeching tires and crackling gunfire. Mercs streamed from the lodge’s front doors like wasps from a hive, muzzles flashing bright white against the shadows as they took wild shots at us. Cody kept one hand on the handlebars and the other on his gun, eyes squinting as he snapped off a few quick shots. One merc went down with a yelp, clutching his shoulder, while the others dived for cover.

We headed north.

As we rumbled onto an old hiking trail, a suggestion of a line in dirt carved through the wood, our headlights cut through the gloom like white-hot knives. Brambles and boughs reached in from either side, a wall of lunging spears, and I hunched low against the machine as the engine whined. Every bump and loose stone in the road felt like a mule kick, but we couldn’t risk slowing down, not for a second.

I heard a new sound. A high-pitched thrumming, like a counterpoint to the shrill hum of our engines. Taking my eyes off the road was reckless at this speed, but I had to risk a split-second glimpse over my shoulder.

Now I understood why so many of the Xerxes mercenaries were holing up at the lodge instead of going out and combing the forest. They were hunting their prize the modern way. And now, as a steel body topped with four screaming blades winged down from the treetops like a blender from hell, they were hunting us, too.

“Jessie,” I shouted.
“Drones!”