Demon Accords 05.5: Executable (9 page)

The runes I had written in black permanent marker on the rental led me like a faithful hound.  I had scrawled Tir, Rad, Ur
, 
and
Cen
, …
the runic equivalent of the work
Track
.  Those simple shapes were all I needed to focus my Sight on the vehicle so that now, I could see every move the car made with my mind if not with my eyes.

The guy was headed out of town, but not toward Burlington, its tiny airport, or any of the local law enforcement stations.  Instead, he was kind of headed into the boonies.

Six miles out of town, he turned down a dirt driveway that was little more than two tracks in an expanse of trees.  A couple of minutes later, I pulled up to the same turn and noted two things.  One, I had driven this road many times and never noticed this driveway, and two, a real estate agency rental sign had been pulled up and dropped flat on the ground, making it almost invisible.

Checking my mental image, I saw the big agent man pulling Sarah from the car and leading her toward a small, rundown cottage. 

Turning onto the driveway, I let the Beast idle itself down the muddy path in first gear.  When I got to what I guessed might be the halfway point, I five point turned the Toyota till I was facing back out toward the main road and backed up till I figured I was as close as I could get without him hearing my car.  Leaving the car door open and the keys in the ignition, I was happy for once that Beast was too old to have any annoying warning chimes as I started walking stealthily down the rest of the road.  The whole driveway must have been a third of a mile long, so I was still several hundred yards from the cottage when I parked, which is why I didn’t hear the fight till I had walked for a bit. 

At first, it was just some dull rumbles, but as I got closer, they became distinct bangs and finally the crash of breaking glass.  Rushing forward and around the last bend, I found Sarah, clothes torn and ripped, face bleeding, bending over the prostrate form of the agent who appeared either dead or unconscious.

She spun at the sound of my feet, her body tense, her face drawn up in a silent snarl which turned to surprise.  She straightened up as I got close, studying me as I studied the whole scene in front of me.  The tiny house had one main window which was now broken, the glass glittering on the overgrown weeds and broken concrete path that led to the front door.  Lying unmoving in the middle of the walkway was the agent man.  It appeared that he had been thrown through the window and ten feet further out to the sidewalk.  Pretty good toss, as the guy had to go a hundred eighty or so.

“Did you kill him?” I asked her.

She shook her head as she watched me approach. 

“Come on, I’ll give you a ride to your mom and you two can get going,” I said.

“How did you find me?” she asked, her expression intent as she continued to study me.  Her cuts appeared superficial and her clothes were more disheveled than destroyed, although her t-shirt had a few big rips in it, a black bra showing through.

“I followed you,” I said.  “Come on, let’s go.”

She shook her head.  “I would have heard your car.”

“Heard my car?  While you were in another car hundreds of feet ahead?”

“I have
really
good hearing.  How did you do it?”

I paused, exasperated at her delay.  It wasn’t every day that I helped a fugitive escape federal custody, and I was more than a bit nervous.

Finally, I waved at the car.  “It’s marked with a tracker.”

She looked at the car, glanced back at me, then started a fast walk around the vehicle.  She stopped by the bumper sticker I had written on, looking from it to me and back again.  Finally, she came to some conclusion, turned from the bumper, and went to the passenger seat of the car, where she retrieved a roll of duct tape.  “He told me if I got mouthy, he’d tape my mouth shut.  He
should
have used it on my wrists,” she explained, holding up her wrists.  The handcuffs were still on, but the links connecting them were torn apart.  She moved to the unconscious agent and rolled him over onto his stomach. 

Grabbing both arms, she proceeded to demonstrate just what she was talking about by taping the crap out of his wrists and forearms.  Half a roll later, she tore the tape and sealed it to his arms, then moved to his ankles, which she wrapped just as completely.  A final piece went over his mouth, and she tossed away the mostly depleted roll. She really scared me when she unbuckled his belt, but it was just to get the holstered .45 and double magazine carrier off it, as well as the handcuff key from his pocket.

“Alright, let’s go.  Just so you know, I think you’re an idiot for getting involved in this,” she said, but her tone was much softer than her words.

“It might shock you, but I’ve been accused of idiocy before,” I replied.  “Ah, is he gonna die like that?”

“Would that matter greatly to you?” she asked, studying me a moment before going on. “He’s Juiced.  That tape won’t hold him more than a few hours before he manages to rip his way free.”

“Juiced?” I asked.

She hesitated before answering.  “He is an
agents in rebus
operative.  Blacker than the blackest ops.  His government ID would check out as real, but it isn’t.  AIR agents take supplements, a special formulation of drugs that make them faster, stronger, and dulls their pain receptors.  He’ll tear himself free, losing much of the skin on his forearms and hands in the process, but he’ll get out.”

“Are you juiced?  Is that why you can jump four feet in the air and beat up steroidal maniacs?”

“Do you know what they say about you in school?  That your aunt is a real witch and that you are too?” she countered, stuffing the gun and mags into her bookbag, which she retrieved from the car.

So there it was.  It had always been just a matter of time before we got there.

“I’ll tell you what.  You answer one of my questions and I’ll answer one for you,” I said, watching as she went back to the man and pulled a folding knife from his front pocket.

“I have a lot more than one question,” she replied, moving toward the car and flicking the blade open one-handed.

“Me too.  So we go back and forth,” I said.

She jammed the blade into the front right car tire, deflating it completely.

“Okay, so are you a witch?” she asked, voice casual as if it was a common question.

I moved over to the hood of the car, placed my right palm on the still warm surface, and concentrated.  A moment later, sparks flashed out of the engine compartment, followed by smoke, which dissipated and drifted away after a moment.

“Yes,” I answered.  “Are you Juiced like him?”

She was staring at the smoke over the car as she answered.  “No, I’m different.  I don’t need drugs.”

I waved one hand toward the driveway, toward my waiting car and she nodded, moving up beside me.

“What is a witch?” she asked, which I found interesting.  The few times I’ve gotten this far with people, they always asked if witches were real, even after a demonstration like the car engine.  But she was looking for a definition.

“Humans lost the arms race against the rest of the animal kingdom right off the bat.  Instead, our ancestors went for brain power, which, as it turned out, was the right move.  Part of what came along with our problem-solving capability was a group of mental abilities that allowed us to survive despite our crappy senses.  Most of those abilities have withered from disuse, but they are present in a latent kind of way in most humans.  More in some than others.  The modern world tends to label them as psychic abilities when it acknowledges them at all.  Science can’t figure them out or replicate them in a lab, so it says they aren’t real.  Yet countless examples happen daily.  The mother who
knows
her kid is in trouble, the teenage girls who call each other at exactly the same time, the businessman who seems to have a sixth sense for negotiating.  Some people and cultures haven’t forgotten these abilities.  Some actually work to develop them and maybe even choose mates to concentrate them.”

We rounded a curve, and my car came into view.

“So your aunt and your parents were all witches?” she asked, seeming to have no problem with the concept.

“Nope, no fair.  My turn for a question,” I answered.

“But your answer was incomplete,” she protested, climbing into the passenger seat of the Beast.

“Hmm.  You have a point.  Yes, my aunt is a witch, and so was Mom.  I don’t know much about my biological father, so I can’t answer for him.”

“He died when you were little?”

I waved a finger back and forth.  “Un uh.  My turn,” I said.  She nodded grudgingly.

“Is your name Sarah or Caeco?”

That surprised her.  I didn’t know what she thought I was going to ask, but that was obviously not it by the way her head pulled back as she flashed a look my way.

“It’s Caeco,” she said, now looking down at the dashboard.  I waited for her next question, taking the time to grab a couple tissues and a bottle of water from the gear I keep in the back of the Beast. I also grabbed a clean t-shirt from my get home bag. I handed all three things to her. Apparently, she decided she wasn’t done answering my question.

“It’s an acronym. Chimeric Adaptive Enhanced Combat Operator.  It’s actually my designation, but it became my name.”

She was quiet for a moment, which was good because I was trying to understand her answer.  She had a designation, not a name? A hundred more questions flooded my brain as I thought about her name.

“So your dad… did he die when you were young?” 

“I don’t know.  He could be alive for all I know.  See, my aunt and my mother were both raped.  They fled Ireland and came here, where Mom had me.  I’m the product of rape,” I said, trying to make it sound like it was no big deal, like I was born prematurely or something.  My eyes were on the bumpy driveway as I put the car in gear and headed out. No matter how many times I said it, it still sucked.

The green Land Cruiser rumbled down the driveway and out onto the main road, leaving Mike West free to step out of the cover of the big poplar tree. 

The hardest thing he had learned in spy school was mixing procedure, common sense, and his instincts.  His gut had told him to park his car off the road a goodly ways past the hidden driveway and walk back.  Procedure frowned upon leaving his ride so far away, but he listened to his talent and had found the kid’s car on the dirt road, turned and ready for a getaway. 
Common sense planted a GPS device under the heavy front bumper, and when he heard the voices coming down the driveway, he’d jumped behind the tree.

Now that the kids had both left, he needed to find out what had happened to Machete.  Sidearm held loosely in one hand, he walked quietly to the house and spotted the hapless AIR agent just beginning to regain consciousness, trussed like a turkey on the concrete walkway. Machete’s rental car was sitting near him, one tire flat and the smell of fried electronics sharp in the air.

He pulled the strip of duct tape away from the other agent’s mouth.  Immediately, commands issued forth.

“I’m a federal agent in pursuit of a violent fugitive.  Cut me loose and give me your car keys.”

“Tsk tsk tsk.  You’re lying to me already, and we only just met.  Bad way to start a relationship, Machete,” Mike said.

The other agent’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”

“I’m from Oracle,” Mike replied, enjoying the way the light dawned in the AIR agent’s eyes. He settled himself cross-legged on the ground.

“Let’s chat, you and I, about the little girl who beat you up, took your gun, and disabled your car,” Mike said, pulling a Taser X26P out of his coat.  The bound man in front of him locked his eyes on the black pistol-shaped weapon, then strained in vain against the silver tape that held him in place.  “Now, about that girl who is so damned handy with duct tape?”