Chapter 23

 

The stolen cruiser’s engine was still warm when the woman in the bug-eye sunglasses arrived at the Frine Mountain rest stop.

She’d run as best she could from the asylum, leaped into one of the remaining cruisers with two of the drooling, staggering officers, but it was all too late. The Archer woman and her friend had already vanished into the rain, and the drones waiting outside were milling, rain wriggling down the lenses of their sunglasses, beading on their mute lips.

Commissioner Snow wasn’t with them. She was glad for that, but she didn’t know why. The thought of the big lunk crushed beneath the wheels of a car made her shiver. Not that he was growing on her, but it was nice to have someone familiar to swear at when things got complicated.

And the situation was more than complicated. It was fucked.

She’d kept the pedal to the floor, but another carload of drone officers had beat her there by a handful of minutes. Abandoned their cruiser and run off up the slope without waiting for her commands. Poor discipline. She’d have to reeducate them once Archer was captured. She circled the abandoned cruiser, peering through the windows, tracing the spiderweb cracks left in the windshield by her dead officer’s face. Keys in the ignition, trunk open, shotgun gone.

The Archer woman was clever, yes. Resourceful. Driven. But a hunter? Maybe her companion...

Either way, they had to be careful.

“You, and you.” She waved the two police-puppets up the mountainside. “Find them. The woman has to be brought back alive, you understand? Whatever you have to do, so long as she comes back breathing.”

The two officers nodded and trudged into the trees, boots making wet squelching noises. The rain had turned the dirt to slurry and sent half the hill sliding away into the valley below. Further up the mountainside, where the trees grew thicker, the ground would be more stable.

The Archer woman and her companion would be on the hiking paths, she figured. Easy enough to catch them so long as her puppets went straight up the hillside... if they were still together, of course. Hard to believe they’d be best pals after what that maniac had done to the two women. Unless he had Archer indoctrinated? Hooked by blackmail? No way to tell.

Her servants wouldn’t tire when the mud rose up around their ankles. Good little servants, clawing their way to the prize. And then, yes, she’d have a brief revenge. The Queen wanted Archer alive, and she was a loyal soldier. She’d deliver Archer kicking and wailing and being a general pain in the ass. But she’d take her time. Drag the woman to the ground, gag her with dirt. Let her know how it felt to be cut open by degrees.

I hope you are just a puppet. Gull says what comes next is gonna hurt, and I don’t want that. I don’t even know if you feel pain, but...

Sorry.

Oh, there’d be apologies. She didn’t care if Archer had been an equal victim of her moustachioed companion. Blood was repaid in blood, and she’d whisper sorry to Kimberly as she eased a claw through her sternum...

She snapped around as a a footstep crunched on the gravel behind her. A man with a military high-and-tight had appeared at the edge of the dirt lot, hunched away from the rain, his plaid button-down shirt soaked through beneath his sports jacket. He stared straight ahead, not looking at her or the cruisers but at the horizon beyond the mountains.

“The hell are you?” She circled the stranger, breathing him in, tasting the stink of sweat and dirt. He’d been walking a long time without rest: his eyes were dark and pouched, sunken into his skull, and his right hand was buried deep in his coat pocket. It twitched beneath the fabric.

His deep-set eyes were unfocused, like he was caught in a dream. And yet, he turned to follow her. A strange energy crackled off his skin like static.

She smelled the Queen on him. No, not the fresh, simmering scent of the New Queen, her sovereign and mother. It was the earthy musk that came from being touched by the original ruler of Rustwood, the Old Queen herself. An observer? An emissary, like that monster in the black rainslicker? “Who are you?”

The man blinked slowly. His left hand came up, reaching for her, and she danced back on the tips of her toes. “Don’t even try it, kid.” Skin parted wetly inside her sleeves as her bone blades slid free. The stab of pain was nothing compared to the thrill of adrenaline that came with the blood running off her fingertips. “I said, who are you?”

His mouth opened and closed slackly. “I don’t know...” he whispered. “Think I’m lost. They say...” He blinked rain from his eyes. “Say there’s a bigfoot out here.”

“Are you fucking with me?” She glanced over her shoulder, wary of a whole platoon of the Old Queen’s followers storming after her up the mountainside. “Who sent you?”

“I just went to take the garbage out,” he said. The words tumbled numbly off his tongue. “Catch a cold out in the rain...” Then he stiffened, his right hand flexing against the weave of his jacket pocket. “I don’t... who... aaaaah.”

The last syllable was an exhalation, like the stranger had been pulled taut on a rack and finally been allowed to relax. He turned, neck juddering by degrees. Sweat ran down his cheeks and mingled with the rain, beading off the end of his chin.

“Why did she send you?” the man asked.

The woman in the bug-eye sunglasses flinched back. It was the man’s voice, but not his words. Like something had climbed behind his eyes and taken over his tongue. “Who? The Queen?”

“She must know... you doubt her.”

The rage was white-hot, searing in her gut. She swung before she knew what was happing, stabbing out with the bone-razors, aiming to open the man’s throat across the wet earth.

Her hand froze in mid-air.

She couldn’t move. Her joints were jammed. The rain splashed off her wrist, pearled along the ragged tang of the blades. It mixed with the blood still running along the underside of her arm, dribbling from her elbow, soaking into the earth.

The stranger shuffled his feet. The tip of her blade was less than an inch from his throat but he didn’t seem to care. “Who are you?” she whispered. “Last chance, or I’ll take that pretty head right off.”

The man sighed again, like his lungs were being pressed on by great hands, forcing the air out of him unnaturally. “I was sent to watch. Have to take care of them.”

“Who? Me, or Archer?”

“So much you haven’t been told.” The stranger’s hand twitched in his pocket. “They are important. More important than your Queen. We have to watch. All of us.”

She drew her hand back, prepared to swing. “I’m tired of this. Gotta run-”

For someone who seemed drugged, the stranger moved fast. He whipped his right hand out of his coat pocket, and the woman reeled back at the sight of the thing wrapped around his wrist. It pulsed like a tumour, proboscis sunk deep into flesh turned bloodless and white, staring with countless amber eyes.

“There could be a peace.” He slurred his words like his tongue was swollen. The thing in his pocket wasn’t in his mind; it was pulling his nerves, making him walk, flapping his tongue, working his jaw like a crude marionette. “Rustwood could live. No need for war.”

The words were blasphemy. “There’s always been war.”

“Not like this. Not if we watch over them. Fitch is safe, but the Archer woman, she is at risk. She could bring this whole world to an end.”

“What are you? An emissary? A negotiator?” She raised her blade again, trying not to look at the creature suckling at the stranger’s palm. It didn’t disgust her - she’d seen worse in her time, birthed worse - but its eyes shimmered dangerously. There was something beguiling in those eyes. Something that could take control of a person, make them dance and crawl and plead.

“Neither,” the man said. “I was sent to keep the balance.”

An engine grumbled behind her. Another cruiser coming up the hill, sirens off. She expected to see another of her puppet police-officers behind the wheel, but the guy driving...

Detective Goodwell. And in the back seat, Detective Chan and the vagrant, Fitch.

“You brought them, didn’t you?” she growled. “This was a setup. You tell your Old Queen she can rot in-”

“Fitch is safe. Archer is not. I must go.”

Gravel crunched. She turned, but the stranger was already gone.

She swore under her breath. No matter. She had her blades, still bared and quivering in the morning air. Goodwell and Fitch would be dead in two pieces before they’d stepped out of the car.

The cruiser slewed to a stop. Goodwell stared at her over the rim of the wheel, eyes narrowed. Fearless. He whispered something to his companions and stepped out into the rain.

She hesitated as she saw the pistol in Goodwell’s hand, the steel in his jaw. Her strength was coming back, but not fast enough. She was weak compared to her own puppets, and Goodwell was supposed to be afraid. Why wasn’t he afraid?

“You!” Goodwell aimed the pistol over the lip of the car door, squinting down the sights. “On the ground, hands behind your head, fingers laced together. Don’t take a step!”

“Oh, please.” She tried to sound nonchalant, but it was hard to keep a note of uncertainty creeping into her voice. She’d killed better men than Goodwell before, and Fitch had been thirty seconds from disembowelment when that thing in the coastal caves had chopped her in half. As for Goodwell’s partner... Chan had come meekly before. No fight in her eyes.

And yet, she was afraid.

“Where is she?” Goodwell’s aim didn’t waver. “Where’s Kim?”

“Mrs Archer isn’t here.” The woman in bug-eye sunglasses looked over her shoulder, like she was expecting the Archer woman to have reappeared from between the trees. “I was just taking a walk, enjoying the air. Coincidence, meeting you here.”

Fitch was out of the car now, lank hair plastered to his cheeks. “Didn’t think I’d see you ‘round these parts again. Last I saw you, you were-”

“Let’s not reminisce, dear.” When she clenched her fists the bone blades flexed, rain sparkling along the ragged tang. “Hands on my head, you said?”

The gunfire crack was muted by the rain. She didn’t feel the impact - no spark, no pain - just a sensation of loss as her legs gave out beneath her.

She fell on her face, her left leg kicking out, carving a trench from the mud. “Fucker!” She rolled on to her back and ran her hands down her chest, trying to find the hole. There, just above her belly button. A raw-meat opening just wide enough to slide two fingers inside. She probed the wound, grimacing as soft flesh gave wetly against her fingertips.

At least there wasn’t much mess. She’d never been much of a bleeder. “You think this’ll stop me? You think-”

Goodwell wasn’t listening. He brought Chan up to the hood of the patrol car, handed her the pistol and whispered in her ear. Then, to Fitch: “Split up or stick together?”

“Better together. Bad stuff waitin’ up there.” He glared down at the woman in bug-eye glasses as she clutched the hole in her gut. “Don’t you let her get in your head. She does things.”

“Trust me,” Chan said, squinting down the pistol sights. “You’ll be back soon, right?”

“Fast as we can.” Goodwell sneezed, wiping rain from his eyes. “If something comes up behind you... drive. Don’t wait. Just get out of here.”

Chan nodded tersely as Goodwell and Fitch stomped off together into the trees, the ferns folding around them until they were little more than shadows advancing up the slope.

The woman and Chan were alone.

“Got more coming,” she growled from where she lay in the muck. “The whole department’s looking for you. You better not be here when-”

“Shut up.” Chan might’ve been a slight woman, but there was something ferocious in her eyes, in the set of her shoulders. No doubt she’d put in the hours on the range. A bullet through the head at any distance. “What’d you do to my friends? What are you?”

The woman in bug-eye sunglasses grimaced. Fifteen feet to the car. Could she get on her feet and rush Chan before she fired? Did her legs even work? She twitched her toes inside her shoes. They tingled, barely curling. Hard to heal so quickly when part of her heart had been stolen.

Better to wait for an opening. “Hard to concentrate with you waving that thing around, you know.” A wave of pain clamped her jaw shut. It was worse than being trapped in the blood circle, a firecracker radiating inside the bullet-hole. Wasn’t supposed to hurt like that. Was she breaking down? Had the Queen’s gifts run out of steam?

Had the Queen abandoned her?

“Don’t get up.” Chan hadn’t moved. The detective might’ve been carved from granite. “Two in the chest and one in the head, and I know that’ll kill you. So tell me. What are you? Got a name?”

She could’ve lied. Would’ve been easier that way. She’d been built to lie, trained into it since the moment the Queen birthed her. But the pain was growing, a jagged-edged fire spreading up through her stomach and into her lungs, and she was so tired, tired of running after the living and hurling herself into the darkness on the Queen’s orders. Tired of the emissary growling at her from beneath the hood of his dime-store rainslicker.

Tired of the way everything hurt when she tried to remember what’d come before. The times when she’d had her own legs. A beating heart.

“You don’t want to know,” she said. “Honest, you don’t.”

Steel clicked as Chan put pressure on the trigger.

The woman sighed. “Well, you asked for it.”

Slowly, fingers shaking, the bullet-hole in her abdomen throbbing like it was ready to ignite, she reached up to remove her glasses.

The rain was cool on her eyesockets. It felt good. Soothing on raw, broken skin.

Chan gasped. “The hell is-”

“Might as well start at the start,” she said. “You want a name? Call me Darling.”