Текст книги "Irregulars "

Автор книги: Astrid Amara

Соавторы: Nicole Kimberling,Ginn Hale,Josh lanyon
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

“I thought Aztaws just saw humans as sources of blood.”

“They do.” Deven frowned. “They did. But I was different. I had a job.”

August glanced at him with a smirk. “You worked in Aztaw?”

“What do you think, I just laid around, feeling sorry for myself?”

August smiled and looked back at his screen. “With your looks you could have made a great gigolo.”

Deven flushed. “Fuck you.”

“So my first guess was correct,” August continued. “You worked doing something violent.”

“I was Lord Jaguar’s bodyguard.”

“Did you leave Lord Jaguar’s side to kill others?”

“...Of course.”

“That’s not bodyguard. That’s assassin. There’s a difference, kiddo.” August made a face. “Assassins are the worst.”

“You have no idea what life was like down there.”

“No, and it sounds miserable, so I’m glad for it.” August finished his text and eyed Deven. “If it was so awful, why do you miss it?”

“I don’t—”

“The report I got from headquarters cautioned there was a likelihood you wouldn’t leave Mexico City once you got here. They suspect you’re going to try and go back to Aztaw.”

Deven felt sick thinking about the possibility. Returning to Aztaw wasn’t as easy as August made it out to be. Still, if he was going to go back, this was the place to leave from. Calendars turned quickly here and allowed more options of reentry.

Just the idea of returning set his heart racing. But Lord Jaguar was dead and Deven had made a promise to him. He longed to return with suicidal hunger, but nothing remained for him in Aztaw anymore.

August looked at him, clearly waiting for an answer. But Deven didn’t want the agent to know that much about him. Deven was never one to hide his feelings, but he had too much emotion wrapped up in Aztaw to explain to someone who clearly didn’t give a shit.

“I asked you a question,” August said.

“I don’t work for you,” Deven replied. “I’m paid to give you advice on Aztaw culture and magic. That doesn’t mean I have to answer personal questions.”

August’s expression darkened. “Look here, pretty boy. As long as you’re working on an investigation I’m in charge of, you’ll answer any question I ask. It’s what you’re getting paid for. So—”

A knock at the door startled both of them into silence. August stood quickly and warily opened the door. “What?”

A nervous-looking boy in an oversized football jersey placed something on the ground. “A present for you,” he said, his words strongly accented, before fleeing down the corridor.

August glanced down at the object. “What the fuck? Maybe it’s a bomb.” This idea seemed to amuse him and he snorted.

“Don’t touch it,” Deven cautioned.

August rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t going to.”

Deven moved closer. At first glimpse it resembled a cheap knockoff souvenir of a Maya clay statue—the kind he’d seen in the airport gift shop. The figure wore a traditional grass skirt and was draped in jaguar skin.

Deven picked it up to examine it more closely.

The figure held a bundle of knives in one hand and a broken mirror in another. There was a pen in his hair. The eyes were closed on the face, but Deven recognized his own nose and the slit across the statue’s throat.

Adrenaline and fear rushed through him.

“What is it?” August asked. “You’ve gone white as a ghost.”

Deven thrust the figurine into August’s hands and charged after the delivery boy at a run.

Chapter Four

“Deven! Wait, God damn it!”

Deven heard Agent August’s footsteps behind him, but he didn’t stop. He figured the boy had used the staircase because the elevator flashed that it was still on the tenth floor. Deven jumped the last set of stairs and raced out the door into the lobby, catching a glimpse of the boy as he barreled out the front door of the hotel.

Deven charged after him, knife in his right hand. It was dark, but the city lights were bright enough to still cause discomfort. He charged after the figure, not stopping for anyone or paying attention to what was going on around him. He heard shouts and the charging load of a mage pistol behind him, which he assumed to be Agent August arming himself.

The delivery boy darted down a side alley and Deven followed. It felt good to run this hard, even though the mixture of adrenaline and nausea was familiar in terrible ways. The boy glanced behind him with a look of fear before charging forward at a faster pace.

He heard August curse somewhere behind and turned briefly to look back. August was right on his tail, keeping up, although sweat glistened on his face and his shirt was pulled from his trousers.

The boy tripped over a pile of garbage bags and darted to the right, slowing his pace. Deven gained on him. As they passed under a street light the image of the boy rippled, and for a moment, he looked like an Aztaw—glowing spine and skull visible under a thin layer of translucent skin, teeth gnashing—but as they passed back into darkness he once again appeared as a panicked, out-of-breath Mexican child.

The boy burst into a crowded intersection and Deven had to dodge to avoid being hit by a taxi. Car horns blared all around him. He bolted across the street and was clipped by the side mirror of another car. Pain burst across his hip and he spun to the pavement, a moment of agony searing through everything.

“God damn it!”he heard August roar. August leaned over him, offering a hand. “Are you all right?”

“Hurry!” Deven cried, using August’s hand to pull himself up. The first few limps jarred his hip, but he regained his pace, blocking out the pain.

He’d lost valuable time but managed to catch sight of his target darting into a night club. Deven pushed through a crowd of revelers awaiting entrance. He charged into the club.

And instantly froze.

He covered his ears, choking on a cry of fear. The noise was unbearable. A thumping beat reverberated through the two-story dance hall so loudly he could feel it in his chest like a second, frantic heartbeat. The room writhed with wall-to-wall people, arms in the air as they danced, their faces bright and then disappearing in the constant churning glitter of a disco ball, lasers shooting green and red beams of light over the crowd.

Deven stood stock-still, unable to process what this was or understand what to do. Seeing a crowded club like this on television could not have prepared him for the chaos of being inside one. If he couldn’t think with such an unrelenting noise beating in his ears, how on earth was he supposed to see?

 “Up there, on the balcony,” a voice said in his ear. Agent August grabbed Deven’s arm, just for a second. “By the DJ.”

“Where?” Deven had to shout to be heard. He blinked and tried to focus, but everything was chaos, shooting lights and flashes of skin and sparkling clothing.

“This way.” August pulled him to the right. Deven blindly followed, his heart racing. His throat had gone dry in the terror of the moment, but now he forced himself to calm down. The room swarmed with people.

A black metal catwalk formed a square above the dance floor and this was where a man sat behind two massive thumping speakers. Dozens more people crowded the metal walkways and stared down at the revelers. Deven followed August up a black flight of stairs, pushing past women in short skirts and men who reeked of cologne. Deven’s arm brushed loose someone’s drink and the person shouted at him in Spanish, but he didn’t stop. At the top walkway it wasn’t any easier to see, but August’s body tensed and he threw himself forward. Deven kept up.

At last Deven spotted the boy. August pushed Deven to the left and he went to the right. Deven forced his way through a crush of sweaty bodies.

The boy saw them flanking him on either side and must have realized he was trapped. He grabbed the banister of the walkway and swung himself over, making as if to jump twenty feet down into the crowd below.

Deven would never be able to find such a small kid in that seething mass. He threw his knife before he had a chance to reconsider. The knife embedded itself deep into the boy’s throat. If he gagged, the sound was lost to the pump of the music. The boy fell backward off the balcony and landed on the dance floor below with a muffled thump.

Chapter Five

Deven thought the night club had been packed before, when it had been full of young dancing couples. But now the place swarmed with Federales, embassy staff, and NIAD agents. With all the lights on, the flashing, colored lasers were less of a distraction and he could see just what level of chaos he’d created by killing the delivery boy.

Outside the club, dozens of kicked-out revelers complained, along with the club owners. He saw them through the entrance window but couldn’t hear them since no one had figured out how to silence the stereo system and blaring techno rhythms continued to blast through the club.

“What the hell did you think you were doing!”

Agent August was furious. He glared at Deven over the dead body.

Deven realized he was still in a state of shock. He felt lost in time and space.

A growing sickness filled the pit of his stomach. He should have never agreed to do this job. What the fuck did he think he was doing, pretending to be a normal person?

In the chaos of the crime scene, Deven waited until few were looking their way and bent down to reclaim his knife.

August looked ready to strangle Deven. “What were you thinking, you idiot? You aren’t a fucking assassin anymore. You can’t just kill people here.”

“I know.” Deven swallowed. “It was instinct. I didn’t think.”

“And because you didn’t think, a fucking child who might have had information for us is dead!” He paused suddenly, glancing over the body. His eyebrows came together and he knelt by the corpse’s head.

“I’m sorry.” Deven meant it. He believed in doing what he was told and now he’d failed. He’d been employed by the Irregulars for less than twenty-four hours and he’d already broken a cardinal rule.

He didn’t know how punishments were carried out in NIAD. In Aztaw the penalty for failure was swift and brutal. But he deserved it in this instance, so he steadied his resolve.

“I apologize.” Deven swallowed. “However I can amend—”

“Shut up.” August fumbled for something in his inner jacket pocket. “No blood.”

“What?”

“No blood on the body. You stabbed him in the neck and he’s not bleeding.” August pulled out his utility knife and split it open, turning the ends and reattaching them in a configuration that made the device resemble a flashlight. August turned several rings around a small bulb at the base of the knife, and as he adjusted the rings, the light shifted until it was very bright white.

He shone the flashlight over the dead boy, making slow sweeps from head to toe.

“Under a street lamp, I thought he looked Aztaw for a moment,” Deven told him. “But I don’t know how that would even be possible.”

“Masking spell,” August answered. “It conceals the true form of those from other realms by transforming their outward appearance. It’s a way to make them look human. We often use them in the division.” He kept fiddling with the flashlight settings. As he moved the light back over the corpse’s face, instead of skin and hair, Deven saw the faint glimpse of an Aztaw skull.

Deven tensed. August made small adjustments to the rings around the light. Now the part of the body under the beam of light was clearly Aztaw.

August seemed to sigh out in relief, and he glanced up at Deven with a small smile. “Lucky for you, kiddo. Aztaws don’t investigate deaths of their own here.”

“Stop calling me kiddo. I’m only a few years younger than you.”

August’s eyebrow quirked up, but he didn’t respond. Instead he shone the light back in the corpse’s eyes. “Aztaw indeed.”

“What does that light do?”

“Every type of being has a unique visual spectrum, and this light cuts through transformations and masking spells. I’ve never seen an Aztaw before, but now with this calibration I’ll be able to detect one anytime.” August cocked his head and turned the light on Deven, fiddling with the rings until the light burned bright as he shone it on Deven’s face.

Deven covered his eyes with his hands, wincing. “Asshole.”

“Yep, human.” August’s mouth quirked up. “Barely.”

The music kept thumping, a quick-paced drumbeat that rattled Deven’s teeth. His hip hurt badly.

Horrid electrical pulsing screeches emanated from the speakers and someone chanted a word over and over and Deven felt like he would drown in lights and sound. He crouched down, eyes pressed shut, hands over his ears.

Through the noise he heard August bellow, “Somebody cut the goddamn A/V system!” Then after a pause, August’s voice again. “Just find the damn plug and kick it out of the wall.”

Seconds later the music blissfully stopped. Slowly, Deven uncurled and stood upright.

August was on his phone again. “...at the Cazador,” August said. He hunched over the body protectively, other hand covering his exposed ear to hear the phone better. “Most only saw the fall, not the knife!”

August finished his call and frowned. “The director said she hopes he isn’t some sort of dignitary in Aztaw that might further sour relations between us and their underworld.” He rubbed his hand over his face.

“Do dignitaries often make hotel deliveries?” Deven asked.

August snorted. “Not usually, but when it comes to Aztaws, I’m out of my depth.” He stared at Deven for a moment. “I have to stay until the cleanup crew arrives and takes over.”

“All right.” Deven grit his teeth.

“You wait outside.”

“Thank you.” Deven gratefully rushed out the doors and pushed his way through the frustrated crowd of spectators.

Outside, the air was still warm, but a light breeze wafted down the street. He leaned against a dirty wall and realized how tired he was. Adrenaline still coursed through his body from the chase, but as soon as that ran out he knew he would crash.

Luckily, it took less than ten minutes for the Irregulars’s mortuary team to arrive. They came dressed as a local ambulance crew, but Deven saw the warped, refracted images as they flashed their badges and knew they were more than they appeared to be. Deven remained outside, too afraid of the dance club to return indoors, despite his curiosity. A few minutes later, the dead Aztaw was wheeled out to a waiting ambulance on a stretcher and August followed behind. He didn’t look much better than Deven felt.

“All cleaned up?” Deven asked.

August nodded. “Yeah, no thanks to you.”

Deven took a deep breath. “What will my penance be?”

August shot him a glance. “What?”

Deven motioned toward the ambulance. “I have failed you.”

August rolled his eyes. “Christ. Just don’t throw the knife next time, all right?”

Deven nodded. “I promise to do better.”

August sighed. He gave Deven a thorough looking over. “When was the last time you ate?”

“I don’t remember. This morning? Maybe yesterday.”

August grabbed Deven’s arm. “Come on. We both need to recuperate somewhere normal.”

***

The Barracuda Diner was Mexico City’s best approximation of an American diner, according to August. And there Deven found himself, at eleven o’clock at night, considering various burger options.

August probably assumed Deven would feel comforted by the familiar food of the American menu. The agent was clearly in his element, a small smile softening his features. But burgers and milkshakes weren’t any more common in Aztaw or Friday Harbor than tacos.

Still, if the place relaxed Agent August, Deven was happy to be there.

Besides, it felt good to sit down. Deven’s hip protested painfully, but he grit his teeth and soldiered on.

August slid onto the turquoise faux-leather bench seat across from Deven. In the harsh bright lights of the diner his blue eyes appeared ghostly in contrast to the dark curl of hair falling on his forehead. He slumped against the back of the bench seat and glared at Deven. “We need to get you a different weapon of choice.”

“I’m good with knives,” Deven said.

“I didn’t ask your opinion.” August frowned. “If your instinct is to defend yourself without thinking, then you need something less deadly than a blade.” He cocked his head. “Have you ever used a freeze ball?”

“No.” Deven studied the menu, unsure of what to pick. All the choices sounded equally baffling.

“You’d like it. You can throw it, but it instinctively targets living beings and paralyzes them. Works on all but the revenants, of course, and buzz bugs, since they aren’t much more than pinpricks of light.”

“I’ll try it, I guess,” Deven said, privately thinking that he would never get rid of all his knives.

“There are other resources we have that are less pointy. I’ll show them to you in the armory.”

“Okay.”

“We’ll have to go tomorrow though. The pixie in charge of the armory is particular about odors and you smell.”

Deven knew he blushed. He studied the menu intently, but out of the corner of his eyes could see August smirking, missing nothing, taking in the red color on Deven’s cheeks without a word.

“Aren’t you going to look at the menu?” Deven asked, hoping to distract from his own humiliation.

“I already know what I’m eating.” The waitress approached, and August glanced up at her. “Mushroom Swiss, no pickles, fries, Corona.”

The waitress wrote this all down.

Deven glanced quickly down at the menu. “I’ll have uh...the chicken ranch burger.”

“Bad choice,” August said.

“It’s my dinner,” Deven snapped. “And a chocolate milkshake,” he added, on a whim. He’d never had one but had seen one advertised on television the other day.

August shrugged, turning to watch the patrons of the restaurant through the mirror on the wall beside them. “So tell me what that was all about.”

“What?”

“You freaked because the Aztaw left us a statue. Why?”

“It was a death threat. In Aztaw, soldiers are cremated and their ashes stored in clay funerary figures. The figure resembles the Aztaw soldier and there’s a cavity in the back of the skull of the statue to store their ashes. That statue was of me. It was a threat against my life and I had to act.”

“I wonder why he threatened only you.”

“It may not be related to this case,” Deven suggested. “It may be personal.”

August’s eyebrow raised.

“I told you I don’t get along with Aztaw lords,” Deven said.

“Enough that they’d actively pursue you if they knew you were here?”

“Perhaps.” Deven shifted in his seat. He wasn’t sure how much he wanted to tell Agent August.

August scowled. “You knew there’s a chance you’d be hunted if you took this job, and you returned here anyway?”

Deven shrugged. “I need something to do now that I’m back in the natural world. It’s a worthwhile cause.”

“One worth dying for?”

Deven paused. It hadn’t occurred to him that a person could engage in something without planning it to be one’s last act.

August shook his head. “Kiddo, there’s very little in this world worth risking your life for. If I were you I’d have stayed tucked up at home.”

“You know this job is dangerous, and yet you do it,” Deven pointed out.

“Yeah, dangerous, but not guaranteed deadly.” August frowned. “Nothing’s worth dying for, trust me. Life is all you got. You should take better care of it.”

“You should write poetry,” Deven mumbled, but August just laughed at him.

Their drinks arrived. Deven felt foolish ordering a massive, creamy brown milkshake, while Agent August cradled a beer. It made Deven feel less masculine.

August took a long pull of his beer. He sighed contentedly. “So why are these Aztaws after you?”

“Shortly before Lord Jaguar was murdered in the revolt, he gave me something of his. The revolutionaries, as well as the other lords, want it.”

“What were the revolutionaries fighting for? Power?”

“Aztaw soldiers and their families were tired of serving and expending such great resources to keep the lords housed in luxury. Besides, the cost and effort of hunting and keeping human beings to fuel the lords’ spells was a great burden on the soldiers, so they rebelled. In the process they killed not only the lords themselves but also the house powers of the lords. The magic was lost forever.”

“House powers?”

“Each dynasty had its own house power. It is sacred and unique to each lord. It represents the lord’s history, his dynasty and purpose in the universe. The power is tied to a physical object but is sustained with blood. If it is allowed to drain completely it will lose its power and break forever.”

August eyed Deven. “Lord Jaguar gave you his house power.”

Deven was surprised August figured it out so quickly, but he didn’t deny it. “Yes.”

“And that’s why they want you dead. They want your power.”

“More than that.” Deven stirred his milkshake. “A house power has never been given to a human being before. Lord Jaguar’s gesture upset the natural balance of things in Aztaw. It put me in a position that the other lords feared greatly.”

“Why?”

“I’m human, as your flashlight demonstrated. It means I don’t need any messy sacrifices to use a house power. I fuel my own spells.”

August blinked. “Christ, that makes you stronger than all of them.”

“Too strong,” Deven agreed. “Their life spans far exceed ours, but I could still rule them for the short length of my own life, so the lords were determined not to let me keep it. And after the revolution, the soldiers themselves wanted to see it destroyed, along with all the trappings of the lords’ rule. But I made a promise to Lord Jaguar before he died that I would protect his house power with my life. It represents his lineage, his eternal soul. I swore I would never see it destroyed. So after the revolution I fled.”

August stared at Deven quietly. Finally he pushed Deven’s shake closer. “Drink up.”

Deven had already forgotten the drink. Just recalling the story filled him with such a sense of loss he couldn’t ground himself. Everything he knew and cared for had disappeared the day he had given up and run like a coward.

But he’d kept his promise to Jaguar, he had to remind himself, and that was all that mattered. As long as he protected the Jaguar house power, he honored the memory of his great lord.

The ice cream was thick in the straw and Deven sucked hard to get it to move. His cheeks hollowed out and he noticed the way August watched him, almost predatorily, as he pulled the sweet drink into his mouth.

The burst of flavor stunned him. He’d not tried ice cream since he’d been a child back in Virginia and he’d forgotten how cold and creamy the texture was. It burned his tongue and burst onto his taste buds with sweetness. It was almost too sweet, but with each gulp the flavor grew on him.

“This is incredible!” Deven cried, when he stopped inhaling the drink for a breath. He pushed over the shake. “You’ve got to try this.”

August looked amused. “I know what a milkshake tastes like.”

“But this is insane!”

August rolled his eyes and grabbed the shake. He took a sip, then pushed it back. “Tastes like shit with beer.”

Their burgers arrived and Deven took a careful bite. The flavor overwhelmed him—it was too many things at once. At home he made rice, beans, corn, things he could relate to. This ranch-slathered fried chicken between bread business was too extreme for his untraveled palette; he found it difficult to process.

“Well?” August asked, watching him eat. “How’s your meal?”

“It’s a bit like the billboards,” Deven said after swallowing.

“The billboards?”

“Too much color. Can’t process what it really looks like.”

August chuckled. “Told you it was a bad choice.”

***

Back at the hotel, Deven’s funerary statue was still in the doorway when they entered the room.

Filled with sudden contempt, Deven booted the thing against the far wall. The clay shattered.

August hissed. “Messy.” He glared at Deven. “You need more than your weapons taken away, kiddo. You need anger management classes.”

“I told you to stop calling me kiddo.”

“You start acting like an adult, I may.” August unzipped one of his suitcases and removed two more small metal boxes. He stuck the first alongside the door and the second on the opposite wall. He flicked a small switch at the base and a green laser beam shot between the two boxes.

“What’s that?” Deven asked, yawning.

“Extra security.”

“Is it magical?”

August snorted. “No, just expensive. It’s a laser that triggers an alarm if the beam is interrupted. It’ll alert us if you receive more care packages.”

For some reason that seemed funny to Deven, and he laughed. He closed his eyes and leaned against the bathroom door.

“Let’s see your hip.”

Deven blinked for several seconds before he remembered he’d been injured. He was so used to ignoring pains in the hot, sterile environment of Aztaw.

“It’s fine.”

“You got hit by a car.” August went back to his suitcase and this time pulled out a small cloth bag. Deven wondered how heavy the suitcase was. August hadn’t been kidding about bringing his own equipment.

August stood close. He reached for Deven’s hip and Deven instinctively pulled back.

August’s expression instantly darkened. “Oh Christ. What did that son of a bitch Klakow say this time?” His hand clenched into a fist. “Whatever that asshole or anyone else told you, I’m not that much of a shit. I don’t fuck guys unless they want me to.”

Deven’s shock clearly showed before he had time to censure it. August turned away, face burning.

Deven quickly processed what August had admitted. He was still getting the hang of things around here, what was embarrassing and what wasn’t. He considered assuring the agent that his reluctance to be touched had more to do with years of living as an assassin than fear of being fondled. But something told him that conversation would go wrong.

Instead he unbuttoned his cargo pants, lowering them and his underwear to reveal his left hip bone. The skin was already mottled dark blue.

August wouldn’t face him.

“Well?” Deven asked.

August turned, his face still flushed. It took him a second to regain his composure, and when he did, he frowned at Deven’s hip. “Looks nasty. Does it feel like anything’s broken?”

“No. It’s just bruised.”

“Right.” August touched the swollen skin briefly, his fingers gentle and cool. Deven found his touch soothing, but before he could consider what that meant the touch was gone. August pulled a tin of something white and creamy from his bag and sank his fingers into the substance. “Don’t ask what this is. You’re better off not knowing.” He slathered the substance over Deven’s bruised joint and rubbed it in vigorously, hard enough to make Deven wince. He braced himself, holding his shirt out of the way.

He expected a mess. Instead the ointment melted into his skin and disappeared. He touched a spot where August had rubbed cream in and found his skin dry.

“Better off or not, what is that?” Deven asked.

August was still a little pink from his outburst, but the corner of his mouth quirked up. “Dead marda.”

“Who?”

“Marda. They live in the spiral realm. Their bodies have regenerative properties and they heal injuries well.”

Deven looked at the cream in the tin. “Are they...harvested?”

“God no, we’re not Nazis,” August said, sounding offended. “We buy their decomposed bodies legally from the families of the marda. We have trade deals with the spiral realm.” August studied Deven’s expression. “You don’t seem to have a good opinion of NIAD.”

“They abandoned the ten-year-old son of their insane employee in a dark underworld for thirteen years,” Deven said, wishing he sounded less bitter. “It wasn’t as though they kept their promise to see to my well-being.”

“I guess not.” August was still staring at him, his blue eyes sharp, calculating. He finally nodded. “You can pull your pants up now.”

Deven quickly buttoned his trousers, feeling his own cheeks flush red.

“Get some sleep. We’ve got a lot of work tomorrow.”

Deven dropped onto his bed and kicked off his boots, turning his back to the agent. He didn’t bother changing clothes—he removed the knives in his pockets that made sleeping difficult and closed his eyes.