The Diamond Dragon (Kip Keene Book 4) (20 page)

Warning
, a sultry voice announced over the chopper’s speakers,
fuel reserves have been exhausted. Please perform emergency exit procedures immediately
.

The message looped over and over. Keene struggled to get Alessia into her parachute. Everyone had been insistent that everyone else would get a chute. There wasn’t time for that fall-on-your-own sword shit, so Keene had forced Carmen and Alessia to don the chutes.

They would be responsible for him, Linus and Strike.

Strike held her forearm. Prashant’s blade hadn’t cut an artery open, but the wound was nasty, offering up a full view of ruined pink sinew. Blood trickled down her skin.

“Nice shot,” Strike said. “Thanks.”

Alessia didn’t answer. Keene patted her on the back, indicating that the chute was ready to go. The chopper began to dip in the sky, turning slightly. They needed to leave before it began tumbling end-over-end towards the earth.

He glanced out the opening, at the burning fields and the ruined estate below. The prism was still clutched in the pocket of his soaking jeans. But Keene had no time to be cold, or to acknowledge the fear coursing through every vein in his body.

“We regroup on the stairs and then we make a run for the basement,” Keene said. “That’s where Cladius was taking you before he was killed, right?”

Alessia nodded.

“So that’s where the exit portal must be,” Keene said. “We have less than ten minutes. Strike has the last pistol we have left. Would’ve given you a heads-up on those missiles, but then Prashant might have cut our new friend’s throat, here.”

He shot a look at Carmen.

“All right, hug your partners close,” Keene said. He locked arms with Linus and Carmen. “Jump.”

Keene dug his fingernails so deeply into the palms of his hands as the wind streaked by that his hands bled. But, despite all the points against his plan, Carmen proved to be an ace parachutist. They glided towards the ground, landing softly not fifteen feet from the stairs.

Keene immediately stood up and assessed the situation. No resistance members were present. They all must have gone home. Maybe the berries had worn off. He watched the other parachute streak through the night sky, landing about twenty yards away. A minute later, Strike and Alessia appeared.

“It’s like a ghost town,” Strike said. “Everyone’s gone.”

“The berries have a limited time-frame during which they work,” Alessia said. “I believe everyone has come to their senses.”

An awkward silence fell over the group. Shambhala would implode in under ten minutes because of them. Good people would die, a universe would crumble. This wasn’t the type of saving Keene had in mind, but this was life. Choices weren’t black or white, but infinite shades of gray.

Alessia understood that better than anyone. Her gaze was far away, staring at the moon.

The group wordlessly tore through the smoldering wreckage of the once magnificent estate, quickly finding the door to the underground basement. The group squeezed through the narrow passage, descending the stairs into a small room.

Alessia gasped.

Up against the far wall, Martin Redbeard lay still, his eyes shut, chin against his chest. She rushed over to hug him. But he didn’t respond.

“He must not have gone along with Cladius’ plans,” Strike said. “Wouldn’t have been much use, then.”

Keene approached Alessia and lightly touched her shoulder. “It’s time.”

“He was all I had.”

“I know,” Keene said. “He did a good job.”

“A good job with what?”

“Raising you.” Alessia glanced back and stared at Keene’s hand. Then she got to her feet and wiped her eyes.

“Okay. It’s goodbye, then.”

“There’s our ticket,” Keene said, pointing in the dim light. “Home.”

In the center, along an unfinished wall, was a familiar looking slot.

Keene touched the prism in his jacket as he walked closer. It thrummed with a hidden energy. Somewhere in this estate, Cladius must have had a prism just like it, one that allowed him to travel between worlds on a whim. But now that prism was buried forever, about to be crushed like an atomic grape.

“Ready?” Keene said.

He didn’t wait for an answer.

He took the glowing object from his pocket and shoved it into the wall.

Then, like so many times before during this very long day, he fell into nothingness.

Keene rubbed his eyes and coughed from the smoke. The walls echoed with a loud, plaintive chime—twelve of them to mark the midnight hour. He stumbled to his feet, wincing from where the harness had halted his descent. His shoulder and calve smarted from where the arrows had grazed his skin.

He stared at the hollow, endless ceiling. The plain walls stretched up into unlit darkness.

But Keene knew where he was.

The clock tower
.

A groaning nearby caught his attention. He found Strike on the bare ground. She clutched her arm.

“Guess we made it,” Strike said. The echoing chimes stopped. Keene waited for a moment, half-expecting the world to fade into the ether. But another minute passed, and the Earth remained. “What’s with all the smoke?”

“I don’t know,” Keene said. “We gotta get out of here.”

The two walked slowly about the clock tower’s ground floor, searching for the others. The smoke appeared to be coming from outside, wafting beneath the large double-doors, rather than from the building.

Still, Keene didn’t want to stick around too long and test his luck. They found Alessia, Linus and Carmen after a few minutes, and the five of them proceeded to exit the tower.

“Jesus Christ,” Keene said when he stepped outside. All of Tillus was burning.

“Stevens, that son of a bitch,” Carmen said under her breath.

Keene glanced up the street, where the bank once stood. It was now a spindly skeleton of ash. The cop cars out front were burned out husks. Anything that wasn’t on fire was smoking, a mere shell of its former self.

He covered his mouth as he walked up Main Street. It was difficult to see with all the smoke, but some of the fires looked fresh. The UCD must have started with the heart of town and fanned out.

Keene turned towards Carmen. “You take Linus and Strike.”

“We shouldn’t split up.”

“The UCD knows me, they know you,” Keene said. “They don’t know her.” He nodded towards Alessia. “And if they find out, well…”

“Got it.” At the end of Main Street, the group split up. Keene tugged Alessia up the road, towards the inn.

“Where are we going?”

“I think there’s someone you might want to see.” He stared at the vacancy sign. This street hadn’t been destroyed yet. “Better run, though.”

They hurried towards the small-town inn. Keene burst through the door, chest heaving. The innkeeper stood behind the counter, in the same place where he’d first seen her.

“How far can you go outside the limits,” Keene said, saving introductions for later.

The woman glanced up. “Ten miles. But I have nowhere to…” Her voice trailed off when she looked to Keene’s left, at the girl he had brought along. Tears filled her eyes. “Oh my god, it’s you.”

She came around the counter slowly, approaching Alessia with measured steps. Her hand came up to brush her lost child’s face.

Then she embraced the girl.

“You brought her back,” the innkeeper said with a wide smile. “You brought my daughter back.”

Keene leaned back in the beach chair and reached for his drink. It was one in the afternoon, but he was already a few deep. A week had passed since they’d made it out of Shambhala alive. He’d dropped Alessia and her mother in a barn outside Tillus, then gotten the mother’s tracker removed so that they could both be free. That part felt good. Saving the girl. Saving the world, less so. The taste of smoke still clung to his mouth, no matter how much he drank or brushed his teeth or bit his tongue.

But Keene knew it wasn’t actually smoke, but the choice. Was there another way? He’d never know. And no one else would know either, because Shambhala—and every other universe out there—was invisible to Earth. But that wasn’t the same as nonexistent.

He reached for the beer, but a hand came out of nowhere and knocked it over.

“You bastard.” A wild-eyed Strike stared down at him. She looked ready to strangle him.

“I was drinking that.”

“It wasn’t your choice to make,” Strike said. “To try to fix me.” She threw a balled up piece of paper at his head. Her injured arm shook in its sling. “Partners rely on the truth.”

Keene knew what this was about before he even saw the paper.

“Partners rely on the other one not being high as shit, too.” Keene reached over to pick up the sheet. “So Linus spilled that we sent you to rehab, huh?”

“It wasn’t your decision to make.” She stalked off, flipping him the bird. Could be just a tantrum, but the way her eyes were an electric blue—hurt by the betrayal, the lack of honesty—Keene had no way of telling. With Linus and Carmen at their own place—Keene couldn’t even fathom that, but it was the truth—that left the mansion entirely empty.

At least there was plenty of booze in the basement.

Keene sighed and picked up his beer. There was sand in it.

Screw it.

He drank the whole thing in one gulp and closed his eyes.

He awoke around four. A tall, pale man in a black suit stood staring at him with a look of intense curiosity.

“So you’re Mr. Kip Keene,” he said in a gravelly voice. The man was about fifty, but the lines on his face made him look older. “I expected more.”

Keene rubbed his throbbing temple. “And you are?” He tried to swallow, but the cotton-mouth was bad. Too much more of this and he’d become a cliché.

“Supervisory Agent John Stevens,” the man said, extending a hand that Keene didn’t take, “the head of the Unexplained Crimes Division.”

“Lovely,” Keene said. “You didn’t bring me a beer by any chance, did you?”

“Carmen said you were an interesting one,” Agent Stevens said. “Capable, but somewhat…aloof.”

“Did she now,” Keene said. He pushed the rim of his shades back up the bridge of his nose. “Tell me why you’re here.”

“Your performance was quite impressive, saving the world like that. I admit, our personnel didn’t take that particular threat seriously enough. Then again, few are experts in quantum physics and multi-verse theories.”

“Thanks for the compliment,” Keene said. “Door’s that way.”

“I should think you would be more interested in what I had to say,” Agent Stevens said.

“You thought wrong.”

“Be that as it may, Mr. Keene, I am a man who gets what he wants.” Agent Stevens smoothed out his suit coat and stared out at the ocean. “And what I want now is to discuss
The Jade Jaguar
. And how you might be of instrumental utility in recovering it.”

“I’m retired,” Keene said. He looked out at the endless waves. His mouth was dry enough that drinking seawater almost sounded like a good idea.

“We do have a little incentive to sway your decision.”

“You seen this place? I don’t need money.”

“Not money, Mr. Keene,” Stevens said with a vulpine smile. He reached into his suit pocket and extracted a bent 4 x 6 glossy photograph. He tossed it towards Keene, then began to walk away as the picture fluttered to the sand. “Your sister has done some regrettable things, has she not?”

“My sister’s got nothing to do with anything.”

“Whether that is true remains entirely up to you, Mr. Keene,” Stevens said, his voice trailing away. “And your abilities.”

Keene knelt in the warm sand to pick up the photograph. Lorelei Keene’s dirt-streaked face, eyes wide with terror, stared back at him from behind bars. He balled up the photo in his fist and flung it towards the waves.

“What do you want from me?”

“To pass a little test before we begin,” Steven called back, his gravelly tenor carried on the sea breeze. “And then to search for the truth.”

“What truth?” Keene screamed.

But Stevens was gone, and Keene was by himself, right back where everything began. Lost. Alone. Confused. One thing was different, though.

He knew exactly where this ended.

Keene was going to bury Stevens in a plain pine box, six feet under, while the rest of the UCD burned.

He unballed the photograph and stared at the neat handwriting on the back.

Pack a jacket, Mr. Keene. For it’s about to get cold.

Yes.

It was about to get very cold indeed.

For everyone.

THE END