Red Knight Falling (9 page)

FIFTEEN

“I’m the total package,” Mikki told us, ignoring the inferno raging at our backs as the hotel slowly caved in on itself. “Beyond being an off-the-charts fucking
winner
pyrokinetic—probably the best in the world, but who’s keeping score—I’ve got clandestine-ops training and a decided moral flexibility. Let’s face it, Temple. In our line of work, clinical psychopathy is an asset.”

“Your point?” Jessie asked.

“Point being, it’d be crazy for Vigilant not to want me back. And Linder will agree.”

“You want to come back? After you faked your death to get
away
from us?”

Mikki curled her lip. “To get away from
you
. You and that damned chemical time bomb they put inside me. No. I won’t be owned—but I can be rented. Tell Linder that my services are available for hire, prices negotiated per job, as an outside consultant. He needs people with my skills, and I need to keep up with the payments on my new Ferrari. A match made in heaven.”

Jessie didn’t answer. She took a step back, eyes down, calculating.

“Clock’s ticking, Temple. Either we make a deal or we throw down here and now.” Mikki turned, flashing a gleaming smile and giving a big wave. Over in the parking lot—out of earshot but not out of sight—Kevin waved back. “Your choice. And bear in mind, I’ve got a lifestyle to maintain. If I’m not working with Vigilant Lock, I
will
be working against you.”

“Fine,” Jessie snapped. She slashed the air with the side of her hand. “
Fine.
Get the hell out of here. And you will
never
contact Kevin again. I don’t care what kind of side deal you cut with Linder: you don’t go near my people, period.”

“You’re not his mother.”

Jessie closed the space between them, going toe to toe. Her voice dropped to a growl.

“I’m the closest thing to a mom he’s got,” Jessie told her. “And you
don’t
want to find out how far I’ll go to protect my family.”

Mikki’s eyes narrowed. Then she shrugged and turned away, strolling around the back of the Ferrari.

“Fine, whatever. I don’t even care, was getting bored with him anyway. Tell Linder I’ll be in touch.” She swung open the cherry-red door, throwing up her middle finger as she slipped into the driver’s seat. “Arrivederci, bitches.”

As the sports car roared to life, I looked over at Jessie. “Are we really letting her go?”

Jessie stared at the car. If looks could kill, the Ferrari would have burst into flames. Instead, it rolled past us, up the drive and away from the roiling inferno at our backs. She kept staring until it was nothing but a pair of distant brake lights.

“Catch and release,” Jessie said, her voice soft. “She’s right: she’ll either be on our side or someone else’s, and there’s a chance Linder can use her. If not? We set up a fake meet, put a bag over her head, and give her a one-way flight to permanent detention. One way or another, we’ll deal with Mikki. Just not tonight.”

Jessie didn’t move. She just kept staring into the distance.

“You okay?” I asked.

She gave a tiny shake of her head.

“Kevin made contact with her last night. Maybe before that. He knew she was alive.”

“And he didn’t tell you.”

She put her hands on her hips, looking back to the parking lot. Cody and Kevin were sitting on the asphalt with the Xerxes laptops spread out around them, typing up a storm and comparing notes.

“Part of me is furious. Part of me can’t be. You saw how he looked at her. Those hooks are in deep. I just hoped . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“That he’d be more loyal to you than he is to her?”

“I feel like I can’t trust him now. And the worst thing about that?” She looked my way. “That’s one hundred percent my own goddamn fault. Because I
let
her get her claws that deep into him. Because I thought I knew what was happening on my own damn team, and she was working him like a puppet right under my nose. Then I took us all on a wild-goose chase looking for Roman Steranko, when he was just a patsy for her.”

“Hey,” I said, “that’s not exactly a waste of our time. Steranko still needs to go down for the crimes he
has
committed.”

“Not the point.” Her shoulders sagged. “Harmony, I’ve been played in just about every way I could
get
played. That’s not leadership. There’s a weak link on this team—and you’re looking right at her.”

I put my hand on her arm and gave it a squeeze. Another wave of oven-hot air washed over us on a breeze, while the flames from the collapsing hotel rose up to the night sky like a sacrificial bonfire.

“I don’t hear anybody demanding perfection,” I told her. “Nobody but you. You made mistakes. So own it, dust yourself off, and get back in the game.
That’s
what being a leader means.”

“You still trust me?” she asked.

“It’s going to take a lot more than that for you to lose my trust. And tomorrow night we can talk it all out over a bottle of wine, but right now? We’ve got a satellite to catch. So get it together, and let’s turn this mess into a win.”

She took a deep breath and nodded, hard, with a determined glint in her eyes. She clasped my hand.

“All right,” she said. “Off to the rescue. Let’s do this.”

I followed in her wake as she marched toward Cody and Kevin. Kevin stood up, taking a step back, his shoulders hunched and head ducked down.

“Look, Jessie, I know you’re mad, but—”

She silenced him with a sharp wave of her hand.

“We’re not talking about that right now. And I don’t want it hanging over our heads while we’re getting shit done tonight, so listen: when it comes to Mikki, consider it a dead topic. We can discuss it
if
you want,
after
the mission. Now gimme a sitrep.”

“Two of the laptops are locked down with major encryption—I can crack ’em, but not here and not fast. Looks like all four were all just used for drone control for the most part—no e-mail, nothing incriminating. I pulled the drone flight logs. Going by where they stopped moving, that gives us the exact longitude and latitude of the satellite crash.”

“They said they couldn’t get their truck to the site, though,” Cody said. “So they’ll have to take the debris and drag it over by hand. That might buy us some time.”

Jessie glanced over to the rented Ford, the car sitting empty. “Where’s April?”

“Back at the campsite,” Kevin said. “When Mikki showed up looking for me, April almost shot her. It, uh, wasn’t a friendly reunion.”

“Get her on the phone and bring her up to speed. Put your heads together and figure out how to get eyes on that truck.”

“Well, we’ve got the drone-control software, right?” Cody said. “They sent those drones after us, and fair’s fair: let’s give ’em a taste of their own medicine.”

“One of the modems is FUBAR, though, so we can only get one drone airborne. I think the smoke fritzed out the—” Kevin paused. Then he snapped his fingers. “Hold on. I’ve got this.”

He tugged out his phone and dialed fast, sitting cross-legged with one of the computers propped on his lap.

“Hey, Doc, it’s Kevin. We’re all at the lodge, everything’s . . . well, not
fine
, actually nothing is fine, and we kinda burned the hotel down, but I’ll tell you about it later. Do me a favor: grab Cody’s laptop—it should be on top of my sleeping bag. Great, now boot it up, and type exactly what I tell you. You’re gonna hijack a drone.”

While they talked, Jessie laid out our weapons on the asphalt, popping magazines and counting bullets. I walked over to Cody.

“You hanging in there?” I asked.

He flashed a confident smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“A-OK.” He paused. “Not really. Little weirded out, to be honest. Is this . . . is this what you do? I mean, is this a normal night for you?”

I shrugged. Timbers groaned and snapped as another chunk of the hotel’s roof caved in.

“Not with this much property damage,” I said. “Usually.”

He reached out and touched my fingers. He didn’t try to hold my hand. Just a glancing touch, like I was made of glass. Or razor blades.

“Harmony, in the last four hours we’ve been shot at, hunted, damn near executed—how are you not freaking out right now?”

I shrugged. “It’s the job. You just learn to not think about it until you’re home safe again.”

“I saw you freeze bullets in midair.”

That. I was wondering when we’d have to talk about that.

“I’m, well, there’s, you know, a perfectly reasonable explanation for that.”

He arched an eyebrow. “And that is?”

“I’m a witch.” I winced, holding up an awkward hand and wriggling my fingers at him. “Hi. Nice to meet you.”

Cody glanced past me, nodding over at Jessie as he dropped his voice low. “And, uh . . . what is
she
?”

I followed his gaze and thought about how to answer that. I took a deep breath.

“She’s one of a kind,” I said. “Let’s just leave it at that right now.”

Jessie strode back over to us and held out one of the Glocks to Cody.

“Okay, so between all three guns, we’re down to a grand total of five rounds, and all our extra ammo is back at the campsite. Which we don’t have time to go get, so you’d better make every shot count or get
really
good at bluffing. Here you go, cowboy: one in the chamber, two in the mag, knock yourself out. I’m keeping the other two rounds.”

She handed me an empty gun.

“Harmony, I know most of your magic is defensive, but I’ve seen you throw down when you have to. Tonight, you have to. Can you dig deep for me?”

“Count on me,” I told her.

“You’ve got visual?” Kevin said on the phone. “Great, so do I. Looks like we’re both connected. Hey, guys? You need to see this.”

He shifted the phone to his other hand and waved us over. I stood behind him, looking at the feed from his laptop screen. A night-vision cyclops eye, washing the world in luminous green, from a parked drone.

A shallow crater marred the forest floor, leaving deep, muddy furrows and scorched grass. A stark, empty gouge, like a carcass picked clean to the bone.

“No debris,” Kevin said. “They’re already on the move.”

Jessie clapped her hands together.

“All right,” she said, “ladies and gentlemen, the Red Knight is in enemy hands. And considering that thing is a homing beacon for something very big and potentially
very
nasty from outer space, those are not the hands it belongs in. Let’s go do what we do best: wreak a little havoc and save the day.”

SIXTEEN

Jessie jumped behind the Ford’s wheel and I rode shotgun, with Cody and Kevin in back. Their purpose fulfilled, Xerxes had abandoned their drones to the forest—or since they didn’t know Abrams was dead, maybe they expected him to fly them back to headquarters. Kevin got one airborne, tapping keys with the precision of a surgeon, and talked April through it on speakerphone.

“This is like trying to work needlepoint with mittens on,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” Kevin said. “Next time you tell me video games are a waste of time, I’ll remind you of this moment. Just fly yours straight up, about fifty feet over the tree line, and engage hover. All right, good, I see you on my camera. Now tilt down, about thirty degrees—perfect. If you do a slow pan, you should get a nice big view. Let me know if you spot movement, and I’ll zoom in to check it out.”

We hit the highway, heading northwest.

“I have movement east,” April’s voice crackled over the phone.

“Okay, one sec, doing a flyby,” Kevin said. “Oh. Oh, boy. Good news and bad news. Good news is, I found them. Bad news is, they’re already moving out, and they’ve got a convoy.”

“Define ‘convoy,’” Jessie said.

“That big truck they used for a roadblock, one Hummer out in front, two following behind.”

“Great,” Jessie said. “Multiple military vehicles. And we have five bullets.”

“Maybe not.” I craned my neck, looking back at Cody and Kevin. “How fast are they going? Can you tell?”

“Pretty fast for a back road,” Cody said.

I looked to Jessie. “Real military Humvees are up-armored, which means they’re not built for highway speed. They’re also damn hard to get for a bunch of disgraced, fugitive mercenaries. I’m betting Xerxes just bought or stole some civilian models and painted them in camo. Faster, but
not
bulletproof.”

“Great,” Jessie said. “I feel much more confident now. And we still have only five bullets.”

Kevin’s keyboard rattled. “Looks like . . . they’re coming this way. Yeah, they’re definitely making for the highway.”

Jessie pulled over to the shoulder, threw the car into park, and killed the headlights.

“We’ll wait,” she said.

We lurked in the dark, listening for their engines.

“All right, yeah,” Kevin said, “they’re on the highway and headed in our direction. Picking up speed, too. Look up. Can you see me?”

A gleam of moonlight on chrome shone above the trees up ahead. Kevin’s drone, winging our way.

“Everybody.” One of Jessie’s hands flexed against the steering wheel, her other on the gearshift. “Seat belts
on
.”

We heard them before we saw them, the groan of heavy diesel-burning V-8s shaking the forest before the strobe of their headlights washed across our windshield. The convoy came on fast, making their escape with their stolen prize, and the tiny Ford rocked on the shoulder of the road as the trucks barreled past us. Jessie let the last one pass, then she threw the car into drive and stomped on the gas pedal.

Tires screamed as she hauled the wheel around, pulling a hard U-turn that shoved me against the door, then we sped off after them. “Kevin,” Jessie said, “we need to know which vehicle’s carrying the debris. Can you get eyes on the inside of that transport truck?”

Up ahead, Kevin’s drone dipped toward the back of the troop transport, nosing its camera at the open bed. One of the rear Hummers flashed its high beams and blared its horn.

“Well,” I said, “now they know we’re coming.”

Jessie bared her teeth in an eager grin. “They would’ve figured it out soon enough.”

“Got it,” Kevin said. “It’s the truck—yeah, they’ve got something big under tarps, and two guys with—”

Assault-rifle fire crackled, and the shadows erupted with muzzle flare. Kevin’s drone bounced back, then veered wildly to the right. It plowed into the shoulder of the road, striking sparks as it hit the asphalt rotors first, support arms snapping and sending it tumbling into the underbrush.

“Shit,” Kevin snapped, slapping his keyboard. “I’m down, I’m down!”

The second drone winged past us, dangerously close to our hood, streaking ahead of the truck. I could hear its engines whining, straining to keep up speed as it burned through what little fuel it had left.

“Think I’m getting the hang of this,” April’s voice said over the phone. “Where do you want me?”

I thought fast, trying to make the most of what we had. We needed to take out the three escorts—or at least drive them away—and immobilize that transport truck. And now they were alert and ready for us.

“April, hold your drone back for now. Just keep up with us. Jessie, can you run us alongside the first chase car? Cody, roll your window down.”

Her response was a push on the gas, the Ford’s engine starting to whine as she ran it into the red. We shot ahead of the first Hummer, running almost parallel with the second. Up ahead, in the truck, one of the guards spotted us and shouldered his rifle. Jessie veered hard, swinging out of his line of fire.

I cupped my palm, kindling a thread of magic and feeling desert heat against my skin. The car took on a soft orange glow.

Gunfire rang out. The rearmost Hummer’s driver leaned out his open window, taking wild shots with a pistol. Everyone ducked as a bullet slammed into the rear windshield, shattering it and showering Cody and Kevin with broken safety glass. A second shot blew a jagged hole in our bumper.

“Cody,” I shouted, my arm burning as I struggled to hold my concentration, “the first chase car: shoot the gas tank!”

His first bullet went wide. The second tore into the Hummer’s back panel. The truck bled diesel, spurting from the ragged hole.

I thrust out my arm and let my magic fly, a streak of white-hot fire that seared through the air and pierced the ruptured tank like a phosphorous lance. The gas tank erupted with the force of a grenade, the explosion leaving my ears ringing and scarring my vision with the blinding aftershock as the Hummer spun sideways. The truck behind it didn’t have time to get out of the way: it plowed straight into the inferno, hitting the burning wreckage head-on at seventy miles an hour.

The transport truck swerved to get in front of us. Both of the guards in back leveled their rifles and opened fire. I ducked down as bullets riddled the hood and blasted out a headlight. Jessie punched the gas again, swerving, snaking up ahead to run alongside the truck. Steam gushed up through the rents in our hood, and the engine whined like it was about to throw a rod.

“We
can’t
lose these guys,” Jessie said through gritted teeth.

“April,” I said, “can you fly up ahead of the first Hummer? Maybe slow him down somehow while we take him out?”

April’s drone zipped up ahead, spun as graceful as a ballerina, and came rocketing back at top speed. It hit the Hummer’s front windshield like a missile, its rotors turning the cabin into a high-speed blender. Blood splashed the driver’s-side window as the truck spun out hard. It lifted up off its side wheels and went into a roll, becoming a steel roadblock for the transport truck.

“Or you could do that,” Jessie said.

The truck fishtailed, brakes screaming, and came to a dead stop five feet shy of the wreck ahead. Nowhere to run.

Cody and Jessie were on the move the second our car screeched to a standstill. Cody ran up on the driver’s-side door, pistol raised in a two-handed shooter’s stance.
“Police!”
he roared. “Step out of the vehicle and show me your hands,
right now
!”

Jessie headed for the back. One of the guards was already clambering down, dizzy from the near crash, swinging his rifle around to fire. She dropped him with a single shot between the eyes.

I shoved my door open, moving dangerously slow as my guts twisted in knots, paying the bill for the energy I’d channeled through my body.

“You okay?” Kevin said, watching me from the backseat.

“Yeah,” I said, “got an empty gun, I’m peachy. Stay here.”

An empty gun can be as good as a loaded one when you’re using it as a threat. So I helped out in front, standing with Cody and covering the truck’s driver as he eased down from the cab with open, upraised hands. Jessie came around from the back with the second guard, dragging him by the hair and keeping her pistol pressed to his forehead. We shoved them down on their knees by the side of the road, patted them down and took their sidearms.

“Cody,” I said, “watch these guys while we check out the truck.”

“On it,” he said, in his natural element. Life as a small-town cop might not have been exciting, but compared to magic and monsters, armed criminals were something he knew how to handle.

“So,” Jessie told me as we climbed into the truck bed, “that went well. You keeping up?”

My entire body twitched. Muscles fluttered like feathers. And while the cramping slowly ebbed away, nausea and exhaustion rushed in to fill the empty spaces.

“Adrenaline hangover,” I said. “Think I might throw up in a minute, if that wouldn’t make us look too unprofessional.”

“Permission granted,” she said, looking like she knew the feeling. Shaky hands on her hips, she stood at the edge of a green oilcloth tarp. “So. You got a plan for destroying this thing?”

“What is this, a two-and-a-half-ton truck? So we’re sitting on about fifty gallons of diesel. Let’s check out the debris, take some pictures for posterity, and blow it straight to hell before it draws anything down here.”

We pulled back the tarp and gazed upon the Red Knight.

I hadn’t expected that much of it to survive, but there it was: about eight feet long, its flame-blackened hull battered and broken in spots but still showing its distinctive chess-piece curves. Whatever the satellite was made of, it wasn’t conventional steel: the hull was a brassy deep crimson, some alloy I’d never seen before.

Jessie circled the satellite, snapping pictures for Vigilant Lock’s archives with her phone. I studied it and reached out with my senses. There was something more here, something more than crumpled metal and circuitry. I slipped my hand into my jacket pocket, taking out an old and tarnished coin on a silver chain. My great-great-grandmother’s legacy. Allegedly the first coin paid to the first Oracle of Delphi—but then again, my great-great-grandmother was a bit of a huckster. All I knew for certain was that in areas touched by strong magic, where reality went thin, the coin gave off strange reactions.

Like now, as the coin rose up at the end of its chain, levitating. Straining toward the satellite as if it were a giant magnet. I slipped the coin back into my pocket and knelt down, tugging at a half-open hatch in the satellite’s belly.

“Let’s see what’s inside,” I grunted as I pulled back on the dented metal, “and maybe we can figure out why that thing in outer space is so attracted to it.”

The hatch groaned and popped as a warped hinge broke loose. Inside the satellite’s belly, past a tangle of frayed, snapped wiring and broken Bakelite circuit boards, something strange caught my eye. I reached in and tugged it free.

It was a tablet, about a foot square, forged from a sheet of black lead and icy cold to the touch. Engraved Greek letters and swirling, ornate glyphs covered the tablet’s face. I felt the crackle of static electricity under my fingertips as I cradled the tablet in my hands: residual magic, leaking into the atmosphere from an enchantment woven over sixty years ago.

Jessie leaned in over my shoulder, taking more pictures. “Is that some kind of occult talisman? Why would somebody want to launch that into space?”

I was working that out myself, my eyes tracing the symbols and seals. Recognizing familiar glyphs, piecing it together, my blood turned to ice as I realized what the tablet was for.

“Jessie,” I breathed, “we have a problem here.”

“And we’re about to solve it. I’ve got all the pictures we need, so let’s just hop out, light the gas tank, and have a barbecue.”

I looked back at her. “If I’m right about this,” I said, “that is the
last
thing we want to do. This situation just went from bad to apocalyptic.”