Shoot the Messenger Read online

  I jabbed a staunch pad over the hole just as the marshal moved closer, and dropped my clothes back over the wound before he noticed any incriminating tattoos. Pain exploded up my side. I gritted my teeth, gripped the counter, and rode it out. All things considered, I was lucky to be walking. Most fae weren’t sloppy enough to leave their victims breathing, but I doubted the warfae had expected me to leap out of his window.

  I couldn’t stay here. He would send someone to kill me or come himself. More likely come himself. Twice now he’d surprised me, and both times he’d kicked my ass.

  I was off my game.

  My lips ticked.

  The head of Arcon was fae.

  In many ways, it was brilliant. Where better to hide than in plain sight?

  The idea was so ludicrous. Even if I told someone like the marshal, they wouldn’t believe me. The fae despised tek. And the head of the largest tek company in Halow was a fae disguised as the charming Larsen. I’d been there, he’d thrown me into an oak table and shot me, and I still wasn’t sure I believed it.

  I frowned at the marshal eying my oozing wound, my thoughts muddied by pain and shock. He was staring like he might tackle me and take me in.

  “Earlier, in the sinks, we met,” he said.

  “Some coincidence that you’re here now…” I grabbed another staunch pad, breathed deeply, and lifted the back of my upper-garment to get a look at the entry wound. Crackling sensations danced through me, alternating between pain and numbness.

  He saw me wince. “You should have a doc check you out.”

  “Yeah, I should.” I gave him a look that dared him to ask why I wasn’t getting medical attention, but the marshal glared back, not taking the bait. All he had to do was look around to know I was in serious trouble.

  I shrugged one arm out of my coat and tried again to get the back pad in place, but twisting made me want to throw up my breakfast bar. It didn’t help that the marshal wasn’t leaving, and I really did not want him or anyone to see the marks on my skin. He probably wouldn’t know what they were, but it wasn’t worth the risk.

  “Will you let me help?” He came forward.

  “No.” My bloody fingers slid across the pad, leaving tacky trails. This wasn’t going well. “Stay there. Don’t come near me.”

  He stopped, my pain mirrored in his eyes. “At least tell me what happened.”

  “Why?”

  “So when you pass out, I’ll know what to write in my report.”

  I snorted a laugh, ditched the wrinkled pad and used my teeth to tear open a fresh pack. Help get me arrested, more like. “Like I said, everything is fine, Marshal. I don’t need or want your help.” This time, I pressed the pad in the right place. It latched onto the good skin and plastered itself into and over the wound, sealing it tight. Pain throbbed deep and low and hot, saliva filled my mouth and my vision blurred, but it passed. It always passed. The fix would have to do until I found somewhere safe to hole up.

  The marshal had fallen silent, stewing on me, my words, and the situation. I figured he didn’t much like being told no. He scanned the mess, reluctant to dismiss everything his instincts were telling him.

  “Do you have a license for that whip?” he asked for a second time, nodding at the whip I’d placed on the counter.

  I touched the whip. “What whip?”

  He pushed his coat aside and tucked a thumb into his pants pocket, revealing the pistol hitched at his hip. “Because if you don’t, I’ll need to take you in. You know the law regarding illegal possession.” His eyes had turned shrewd while that tightness to his lips had widened into the beginnings of a smile. I wondered if he smiled at all the criminals he was about to apprehend. Maybe he thought his looks might steal their hearts as well as their freedom?

  “You do not want to mess with me right now, Marshal,” I drawled from the corner of my mouth, hiding a sneer.

  “A crime has been reported. It’s my duty to do everything in my power to see that any wrongdoer is brought before the law.”

  “Wow.” Wasn’t his world so wonderfully black and white. His duty wasn’t about helping me; it was about upholding the law, even if that law screwed me over. “You going to arrest me?” I pushed upright, dragging the whip with me.

  “Do I have to?”

  I took one last look at my home. There wasn’t much here. In truth, it had never really felt like a home, just a halfway post between points A and B. And now Sota was gone and there was nothing left here for me.

  A glance past the marshal revealed the section of counter where Sota’s dock had waited was empty. The dock was missing. Why would the intruder take the dock if the warfae had dismantled Sota? He wouldn’t. Sota was alive.

  The marshal still waited for my reply, his hand resting easily on his hip, so close to his pistol. “Go back to upholding your laws and forget what you saw here.” I turned my back on him. “At least one of us can…” A blur of cloaked movement shot through the open door. Something small, bright and buzzing sailed over my shoulder and landed at the back of my container.

  The crackling ball hissed and spat, arcing out veins of electricity. Grenade!

  The marshal’s outline blurred—too fast to be human. He swooped in, snatched up the fizzing ball, whirled, his coat fanning out, and smashed his elbow into my projector screen and through the window. The grenade sailed through the hole. The blast hit a second later. A wave of noise and heat slammed through the window and exploded through my container. I recoiled, throwing my coat around me, and staggered against the assault on my senses. Alarms shrilled, inside my head or in the building, I wasn’t sure.

  Fingers dug into my arms, and the marshal was in front of me, mouthing something I couldn’t hear through the ringing in my ears. I blinked, seeing something unusual in his mouth. Then he shoved me toward the shattered window, leaving me with no choice. I clambered through and hissed at the sting of jagged metal cutting into my hands. Alarms still wailed, drowning out everything but the thudding of my heart. I twisted to look back through the window for the marshal. A figure cloaked in a shimmering exo-suit had joined us. The intruder fired a two-pronged device, designed to deliver a shock into the marshal’s body. The barbed teeth sank into the marshal’s arm. Electricity danced down the connecting lines. But the marshal did the impossible. He clamped a hand around the lines and tugged, pulling the intruder toward him. The marshal’s fist met the intruder’s face and crumpled the metal mask inward. Blood spurted from the mouth grill, and the intruder dropped. But another dashed in, and behind him, another, both wrapped in exo-suits that enhanced their strength and agility. The second stepped over his fallen companion and swung for the marshal. He jerked to the side and threw the intruder back with an uppercut that almost took the guy’s head off.

  I knew I should have been climbing down to the street below, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the marshal’s terrible lethality. Was he fae? But he didn’t move with the same liquid grace they did. He fought brutally, no holding back, no fancy shit. The third intruder revealed a pistol, but he never got to use it. The marshal moved in a blink, impossibly appearing behind the last assailant. He hooked his arm around the suited figure’s throat and twisted. I didn’t hear the neck break, not over the shrieking alarms. The last intruder collapsed.

  The marshal looked up, and I saw again what I thought I’d seen earlier. Sharp teeth. Our glares locked. He’d killed, and we both knew it. Not very lawman-like. His eyes asked, What are you going to do with that knowledge?

  I started down the mangled fire escape, avoiding the sharpest pieces of twisted metal. The street below had borne the brunt of the explosion and buckled under its weight, but the containers, although dented, had survived intact. People were emerging from their homes. Witnesses. The first responder bots would be here soon, and after that, it would be difficult to escape unseen.

  The marshal landed in a crouch beside me on the street and drew up to his full height. My container was too high to safely leap from the window. Yet
more evidence he wasn’t anything like what he appeared to be. But what was he? He tugged his coat straighter and eyed the swelling crowd. A lawman would take control, probably arrest me, take me in for questioning and expose me to the kind of people who had already tried to kill me. But exactly what kind of lawman was he?

  I watched him closely, waiting for him to reach for his weapon or his cuffs. That would be the right thing to do, but something told me he followed his own set of laws. If he battled with his morals, none of it showed on his stoic face. All the smiles and all the humor had vanished. He looked down at me for answers I had no intention of giving him. So where did that leave us?

  “Go,” he said. “You were never here.”

  I wouldn’t hang around and question his attack of generosity, even if it was suspiciously nice of him. Collar up, chin down, I walked away from the crowd and the marshal, and slipped deeper into the gulley. It wouldn’t matter soon anyway. After I got myself patched up, I would leave Calicto. Larsen—if that was his real name—had sent those intruders. The fae knew too much. He saw too much. I needed space to regroup and plan. And then I would return. The truth hiding in my past demanded it.

  Chapter 5

  Titillating music drifted from The Boot as I pushed through the door into the bar. Hulia was on stage, playing hauntingly beautiful music on an electronic violin. She dipped and swayed, dreadlocks swishing over her shoulders. Beneath the flood of colored lights, she almost looked as though she were moving through water. When she played like this, people came from all around to spend all the v-coin they had just to listen to one more piece of music.

  I shivered off hot and cold waves and headed upstairs, passing by a homeless man on the stairs and two young women getting personal on the landing like it was their last night alive.

  The Boot was the only safe place to hole up for a few hours while I planned how to get off Calicto unnoticed. I helped myself inside Hulia’s apartment and clicked the door closed behind me. Blues of all shades assaulted my eyes. Couch cushions, wall color, even the lights rippled a light watery blue. She liked her blues.

  A shudder ran through me. The pistol wound needed attention.

  I peeled off my coat, revealing the blood-soaked staunch pads sticking to my waist and back. Going to an ER was out of the question. Larsen might be looking for black spots in his Arcon surveillance feeds. Black spots that would indicate how someone like me had fooled his scanners and gotten close enough to share drinks.

  Okay, so I had to get myself cleaned up before Hulia got back.

  Her music still played its lullaby a floor below.

  I was safe here, for a little while.

  Stripping off, I took to her dry-shower. The pads dissolved under the chemical assault, leaving the puckered wound exposed. My stomach lurched at the sight. Covering it would make it worse. It needed sealing.

  I stepped from the shower, bunched up some towels and pressed them to the freshly weeping wounds, ignoring the sickening roll in my gut. I’d had worse. I’d patched up worse and lived through worse. It had been a few years since I’d spent nights fixing myself up, but that shit didn’t just go away.

  A quick search through Hulia’s bathroom cupboards revealed a well-stocked med-kit. After digging out some drugs to numb the pain, I set about cleaning the wound and stapling its edges together.

  I was almost done when Hulia returned. “Giiirrl, what in the three systems are you doing to yahself?”

  Hulia sashayed toward me, eyes wide. I was sitting in my underwear in her living area, surrounded by bloody swabs and my filthy clothes.

  Her doubled eyelids flickered and focused a little too hard on my chest. It wasn’t my physique that interested her, but the dark, swirling marks that painted my skin. She couldn’t miss them. They started at my calves, wove their way around my knees, up my thighs, and swept around my waist. From there, the black swirls spread out, flowing across my stomach and over my breasts.

  If she knew what they were, if so much as a flicker of fear widened her eyes, I would have no choice but to act.

  “That is some serious ink you’ve got there. Must have taken an age to laser in…”

  Only a lifetime, I thought while picking up my discarded clothes. She wasn’t afraid. She didn’t know. Her ignorance had just saved her life.

  “I saw you come in. What I didn’t see was how someone had gone to town on you.” Her gaze drifted to the array of bloody towels. “Are you okay?”

  I shrugged on my upper waistcoat, fastened it tight and pulled on my pants. “I’m sorry about all this.”

  “Don’t be.” She waved a hand. “Anything you need. Always. You know that. You’ve helped me and mine out enough times. I owe you.” She approached and looked at me as though she might be holding herself back from wrapping me in a hug. “You got yourself some trouble, eh?”

  “A little,” I admitted. “I’m handling it.”

  She grabbed two glasses from her kitchen area and filled them with something colorful and sparkly. When she handed mine over, I gulped it down so quickly it barely touched my throat. The warm tingling it left me with helped soothe my nerves. Part of me wanted more, wanted to drink so much that it numbed my thoughts and chased all of this away. Five years I’d been on Calicto, carving out a new life. But the fae being here…? Yeah, I was in a world of trouble. The kind that meant my life as Kesh Lasota was about to end, if it hadn’t already.

  I handed the glass back. “Do you mind if I rest up here? Just for a few hours.”

  “Course, Kesh.” She finished her drink and returned to the kitchen to pour another. “But you… you might wanna sit back down for what I’m about to tell you.”

  More bad news. I followed her to the kitchen area and handed over my glass. She refilled it and handed it back. I gulped down a few more mouthfuls. I would need it. “Go on…”

  “Word on the feed is there’s a hit out on you. Fifty million.”

  The drink threatened to come back up again. “What?!” I spluttered. Fifty million v-coin was more than I’d make in a lifetime. A fortune for most folks on Calicto.

  “I figure it’s you. There’s no name, but they got the description right down to your coat and boots. That whip of yours is a big giveaway. The entire sinks will be looking for you.”

  “Who’s bankrolling it?”

  “Crater’s gang.”

  Where had they gotten their hands on so much v?

  “You’re safe here,” she said, her eyes weary. “But I can’t vouch for anyone else… If someone saw you downstairs…”

  Would Hulia give me up? I looked at my friend with fresh eyes. She hardly knew me. I’d helped her out over the years and she’d made sure her door was always open, but she didn’t know me. I’d deliberately kept it that way. For that much cash, I would think twice about handing me over. I wouldn’t even blame her for it.

  “Nobody saw,” I whispered. “They were all watching you.” Fifty million. That amount was beyond Crater’s reach. They had help. The kind of help Arcon might have offered them?

  I dragged a hand down my face, trying to wipe away my numb shock. I had to get off Calicto tonight. That kind of bounty would follow me into all the corners of Halow. The more folks looking for me, the more my past would get stirred up. I couldn’t afford for the law or bounty hunters to pick me up.

  It was all coming undone.

  But what had I expected? Someone like me couldn’t hide forever. The Halow system suddenly felt like too small a place.

  “Can I do anything?” Hulia asked, reading the grimness on my face.

  I shook my head.

  “Rest up here,” Hulia said in a tone that left no room for argument. “I’ll keep an eye out downstairs.”

  After she left to watch the bar, I fell back into the couch cushions, rested my head against the wall, and closed my eyes. I would have to whisper my way off Calicto and onto a ship. That was easier said than done. It’s one thing to avoid security footage, quite another to disappear in fron
t of real people. Once off Calicto, I’d buy myself some time to figure all this out.

  I hadn’t planned on this. In truth, I’d stopped planning altogether and started living a life that didn’t belong to me. This was my fault.

  The fae were always going to come back.

  It had only been a matter of time.

  “You there, saru. Stand.”

  I eyed the fae through the curved bone-like bars. He held a prod with two nasty spikes in the end. Ghosts of old wounds throbbed down my back. His stony glare wasn’t fixed on me, but on the boy in the cell next to mine, the boy with the elegantly sloped eyes and summerlands skin. Older than me, by a few years, he had started growing into his body, filling out muscles, broadening into a well-bred male saru specimen, and his fae master had sent him here for training. I knew him as Aeon, but his slave name—his real name—he had refused to tell me. I couldn’t blame him. I hadn’t shared my real name either. Some things were sacred, even to saru.

  The fae smacked the prod into the bars, sending a spray of sparks flying. “You will stand!” A vein pulsed at his temple, and his eyes glowed a sharp green. I knew his name: Dagnu. It meant ‘bad blood’.

  Aeon slowly rose to his feet. His fingers twitched at his side.

  He lifted his head, tilting his chin up, and presented Dagnu with a defiant snarl. Defiance strummed through Aeon’s body, pride quivered through his muscles. All things saru couldn’t own for long.

  Don’t. I didn’t speak the warning. There was little point. He wasn’t the first to occupy that cell, and he wouldn’t be the last.

  The fae’s lips twitched knowingly.

  I turned my face away.

  Aeon would return broken—if he came back at all.

  A sudden sound jolted me awake. I blinked, clearing the fog of ancient memories or dreams or both. Why was everything blue? Blue walls, blue cushions. Hulia’s. I must have fallen asleep on her couch. I leaned forward and wished I’d stayed that way, stayed dreaming. Aches radiated through my battered body. That’s what happened when you narrowly survived a warfae’s attack—three times.