Wilderness of Mirrors (36 page)

Three shots. One took out the windscreen, spraying us with miniscule beads of glass. One hit the sniper high, spinning his body to the right along with his spray of gunfire. One removed the back of his head. Damned if I was going to take another chance with Brad’s life, I tested out the Rover’s all terrain traction and marveled at the relatively minimal disturbance a two-foot bump created in the cabin.

The remainder of our decline was much slower, and I cringed when taking the shepherd crook curves, hoping Brad’s battered body wouldn’t be damaged further by the minimal protection of the forest-green metal interior. By the time the vehicle reached sea-level, I pressed the earpiece again and relayed our position.

“Agents Board and Game out of red sector. Permission to go ahead to the Station?”

“Permission granted. Medics standing by. You have the suitcase?”

“Copy. Suitcase on board.”

I glanced over my shoulder. Brad wasn’t moving, and I couldn’t tell if the black rug was stained with more blood. “Brad?”

Nothing.

Then Jones woke. “He’s dead. They shot him.”

“He’s fine.”

His lips became a snarl, unbecoming on a jowly, beady-eyed individual. “What did you do to my men?”

“
Your
men?”

“Where are they?”

The wheel slid through my loosened hands as I took the turn into the bustling port-side village. “Resting back at The Villa.”

He lunged for me, quite aware I was being sarcastic, but his nose met my gun’s barrel. “I suggest you settle down before you need a rhino-plastic surgeon.”

I reached the Station, a non-descript stucco cottage on the outskirts of the village just as the sun was beginning its slow decline. Backing the over-sized vehicle into the false-fronted potting shed took a bit of maneuvering, but within thirty seconds, I was out and surrounded by operatives.

I glanced once at Jones before heading for the vehicle’s rear. “Get him the hell out of my sight,” I snarled from the muffled back of the SUV, cursing under my breath when I realized the hatch didn’t have clearance.

Our team doctor opened the side door diagonal to me, and I squeezed through the dark until I was across from him.

“What did you give him?”

“An intravenous dose of sodium bicarbonate, no transportable oxygen available.”

“Vitals?”

“Weak, rapid pulse, cyanic coloring, labored breathing last I checked. Seizures post-medication.”

“Okay.”

A light went on, and I recognized our Handler beside The Firm’s doctor. They filled the doorframe, one set of eyes trained on the patient, one on the patient’s partner.

“Is he going to be all right?”

The doctor removed Brad’s flack jacket, leaving his chest exposed, drenched in blood and sweat. “The bullet passed through.” He grunted as he felt his way along the back of his patient’s shoulder.

“So it didn’t ricochet downward.”

“No.” His concerned face flashed me a worrying look. “But the cyanide salts have had…”

“Twenty-five, no twenty-three minutes.” My Rolex Oyster gleamed in the semi-light.

“
That
is not good.”

I punched the floor.

Our Handler’s gray eyes observed me closely. “You didn’t know Jones was going to double cross us. You were told to get him out at all costs. It’s not your fault, Parker.”

The use of first names is mandatory in SIS, but not the way in which they are spoken. Pity?

“I don’t agree.” My head turned to the doctor who was yanking a syringe from his khakis. “What’s that?”

“A solution of dicobalt edentate and glucose. He’s probably going to vomit, so I’m not putting the oxygen mask on him until he brings up his lunch. By the way…” A slightly amused look flashed my way. “Am I correct to assume he ate a large meal?”

I felt a ghost of a smile form on my lips. He nodded and resumed filling the hypodermic needle.

“Will it work?” It made me nauseous to ask the question.

“That remains to be seen. Help me turn him on his side.” We followed his lead, my fingers cradling Brad’s head, covertly caressing his skull while Alasdair moved Brad’s legs.

“I thought the clean cut James Bond look was de rigueur.”

“I’m not James Bond.” White open-necked Hugo Boss shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, untucked and hanging over frayed Versace jeans and bare bronzed feet. Hair, thick, loosely curled and jet-black, finger-slicked back to frame a wide-square face cloaked in five-o’clock shadow.

The needle slid into his vein, the one pulsing slowing in the crook of his arm. Long and sharp, it paused and released its contents into his blood stream.

“How long will it take?”

“A few minutes, but I’m going need to get him inside the Station to do a thorough exam. Alasdair?”

Alasdair nodded and they both backed up, leaving me alone for a few unguarded seconds with Agent Milton.

“Can you hear me?” I whispered, turning him so his head was rested in my lap and stroking his damp hair away from his unshaven face. “Brad, you’re going to be fine, we’re safe now.” I looked up as light flooded in through the rear of the potting shed, giving the other agents room to open the hatch. It swung up, and I used the infinitesimally small moment to kiss his mouth.

Miraculously, it parted. Manna for my soul.

“Awkward motherfucker… ” The harsh whisper faded before the pistons stopped hissing, and I finally found a reason to smile.

AN EXCERPT FROM

Something Wicked

AVAILABLE DECEMBER 2011

“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something Wicked this way comes.”

                           ~Shakespeare

K
ing Dagda had long considered immortality a double-edged sword.

What use was life if it consisted of eternal sorrow?

Hands clasped behind his back, he ignored his audience and paced the Great Hall in reflective silence.

His people had drifted south, ethereal as ice floes, in a time long since forgotten. They were a people of peace. A people of the land. They forwent things of flesh, surviving instead on flora and mead. In harmony with all living things, they dwelt, filling the warmer lands with their temperate offspring.

Until one of their members - born on the day when the sun vanished in the path of the moon - devoured the flesh of his murdered kin. Shame befell his clan, and they were left to fend for themselves while Dagda’s people sailed on to an island of green.

Long centuries passed, during which the divided peoples had no contact. Then, when greed for power and treasure proved too much for the Flesh Eaters, they sailed the seas, raiding without remorse.

King Dagda’s scouts had heard rumors of the growing power, and he gathered his council to discuss what was to be done. They met upon the highest hill where two resolutions were put to the vote.

One was to fight.

The other was to vanish into the hills where peace would still reign.

Votes were cast. In the end, by the narrowest of margins, peace won out. All but a handful of his people went underground, sealing the inner world of their much-loved Green Island from its surface.

There they dwelt, rebuilding the cities that now decayed above them.

Time passed, as did most contact with the world above, and all seemed well.

Until the king’s Seer spat forth a prophecy foretelling the demise of the Sidhe at the hand of a Northerner who would steal the soul of a Sidhe princess and turn her traitor.

So the council met again, and a law was written forbidding King Dagda’s daughters to choose their husbands. But Dagda’s youngest daughter, a willful creature of singular beauty, strove to convince him otherwise. She argued that another prophecy - an older one - changed the meaning of the second. It spoke of an alliance after bloodshed, of an endlessly prosperous age beneath the rays of both sun and moon. It spoke of the melding of dark and light, of man and immortal fitting together as two pieces in a puzzle.

There could be peace, Aisling had argued, if there was trust.

There could be peace, even after war.

At last he conceded, and her privilege was graven upon a silver parchment. It gave Princess Aisling permission to choose her soul mate, even if he was of the race of man.

But the council was not so easily convinced. They added their own cunning twist, hoping to dissuade her. If after one thousand years, no matter the obstacles, no matter the deceptions, her husband no longer loved her, her life was forfeit and no future contact could be made with the world above.

To Dagda’s dismay, his beloved child accepted the harsh terms and entered the world of men stripped of title, immortality and protection.

Now he knew she had found love with the Northerner kneeling before him.

Until someone or something had silenced her.

She had been lost to him these many years.

Until today.

Memories crowded the king’s mind as he leaned, elbows locked, palms cold against the stone windowsill.

Still his visitors remained silent.

The Seer because she rarely spoke.

The Northerner because he was awaiting the king’s response.

Dagda stared through windows into a subterranean courtyard aglow with enchantment. Its beauty was nothing to the sun’s, he reflected sourly. Time may have left his land of Tir na n’Og unchanged, but the same could not be said for him. The loss of his cherished daughter - like the loss of the sun - was violent.

Yet…

The words of hope offered by the Northerner presented miracles too great to wish for.

“My king.” The Seer softly acknowledged his sorrow. “Perhaps the Northerner is right. Your daughter may not be lost to us after all.”

The Sidhe King whirled, his fists clenched like gnarled oak. “My daughter chose her fate - mortality and death.
Your
prophecy was fulfilled.” The king stalked closer to the pair. “Now her decision has brought us a new enemy,” Dagda let the words hiss as a blade being drawn from its sheath, “and we stand to lose what little we have left.”

For a time there was silence.

Then the rasp of the Northerner’s knuckles against his palm broke it. “Your Highness, allow me a chance to fight against the Dane and find out if Aisling is still alive. Your daughter believed the prophecy misinterpreted. She believed peace was possible, that a healing between our worlds was achievable. Your daughter…”

A sharp catch clipped the Northerner’s rich voice. Dagda considered that the man’s wounds, despite the Seer’s ministrations, would never completely heal.

“My wife.” The Northerner balled his fists and flattened his grimace of pain. “The mother of my son, your grandson, was valiant enough to search for love. I would be that brave. Test me as you wish. Prove to yourself that your warriors will be safe under my command.” The Northerner’s voice, low in timbre, clung like a burr to its listeners’ ears. “Allow me a final chance to find or, at the very least, avenge her.” Head bowed in obedience, the Northerner’s eyes were unreadable beneath his golden head of hair.

And, as the king recalled that Aisling’s tresses were like the wings of a raven, he thought further of her eyes. Like the moss of memory, they were. The moss of Eire. A place he’d taken his people in another lifetime. A sanctuary he’d once believed to be theirs. Only now it was a forgotten roof. A ceiling through which the sun could never shine.

Still, he was not certain of the Northerner’s motives. “My people long for harmony. Yours do not.” His words bore chill enough to freeze the underground lake before them.

This time, the Northerner’s blue eyes challenged the king’s silvery gaze. “My ancestors did not know your daughter, Your Highness. She changes much inside coarser men.”

The king sensed a smile of triumph upon the Seer’s mouth as she said, “A thousand years, My Lord, such things are possible with spells.”

Had the council’s clause left opportunity for interpretation?

Could the thousand years of prophecy be accomplished with magic?

Long moments passed as the king made a careful study of the man his beloved had chosen. “Would you know her after a millennia? Could you find her,” he said, the thought like a gust of unbidden wind, “if her soul was hidden? If her silken plaits and emerald eyes could not catch your eye?”

The Northerner, king of another place, of another people, seemed unperturbed by the strange words, and he opened calloused hands. “I would be given the chance.”

Honesty was something the King of Sidhe had not known Flesh Eaters to possess. He shuddered, shielding a flicker of hope, and finally allowed himself to believe as his daughter had. “You will permit my Seer to do as she wishes. If she is satisfied, my warriors are yours, and you may seek your revenge against King Svein of the Danes and his witch wife, Sigrid. If they have done half of what you say, your cause is a just one.”

The Northerner’s tears greened the leaves beneath him. “My love will not fail Aisling, Your Highness.”

But the King of Sidhe was not so certain. He averted his gaze as the Seer approached his daughter’s husband. Fighting the mind’s demons was a challenge indeed, even for those who lived by the sword. For the king had seen traitorous Sidhe killed by the Seer’s spells, and the Northerner was but a man.

Fiona was jerked into reality by the screaming of brakes. She faced the subway train’s window, her pale, tear-stained reflection staring back at her. Already the vision was fading, but the terror and despair it had brought left her numb.

She struggled to her feet and lurched off the steps, stumbling before catching herself on a newspaper stand. A full-page photo of the world’s reigning fashionista mocked her own disheveled appearance, and Fiona banished a fleeting urge to throw herself onto the third rail.

She scrubbed a hand across her face and neck, pulling her dark mass of hair from the coat’s hold.