Chapter 8

EIGHT

I knowI'm not needed before I get there, but I join Trench anyway. The thing had come into the Zone in my territory and had crossed into his right before it would have passed the old proximity markers.

Like it knew where they were.

The creatures are intelligent. If we could just reason with them, my life would be so much easier.

"An easy one?" I ask, boots crunching in the snow as I go to where Trench stands above the carcass taking measurements and samples. The others call him a ghoul. It's another one of those sacrifices he gets to make.

"You'll have to ask Arc." He looks up at me with an irritated pinched scowl. "I asked what he was doing patrolling my sector and he told me the correct words were ‘thank you, brother, what would I do without you?'"

"And did you thank him?"

"Of course. And he promptly told me to shove that thank you up my ass."

That certainly sounds like him. "What was he doing over here?" I'd put three sectors between the two of them for a reason. They were actual brothers and for reasons unknown to me, Arc couldn't stand Trench.

"Was he intact?"

"You know Arc. Luckiest bastard of the lot of us. He says he caught it off guard. He was riding the base of the inner caldera, and came at it from behind."

I move around the carcass, trying to get a good look at it, but there's nothing to see. It turns my stomach, and if Trench wasn't willing to deal with the carnage, none of us would be studying the things—no one would be trying to find an alternative to killing them one by one.

"You didn't have to come out for this," he says.

"I did."

He laughs, mirthlessly and pulls a tarp from his bike. "We knew the brotherhood would change when matebonds started clicking into place. Just because you don't have a real one yet doesn't mean you can pretend you're the same as you were a few days ago."

I help him wrap it up. He's not taking this one home, but we can't leave it here.

Cavrinskh are drawn by the scent of their dead.

Grabbing a shovel, I bury all of the blood I can see while Trench preps it for the ride to one of the flow chambers where we can incinerate it.

Even if we could bury it, normal scavengers will trip the proximity sensors just as easily as the cavrinskh. Best to not give them a reason to venture into the Zone.

"There's twenty minutes until the next flow. Think we can make it?" He asks.

"We'll find out."

I follow him across the frozen Zone until we get to a patch of ground that is all rock, no snow.

The perfectly square hole cut into that rock has already started to release its heat mirage.

"You're cutting it close."

Trench doesn't say anything to me as he hefts the creature off the back of his bike. When he drops it—holding onto the tarp only—the body rolls out and over the edge of the lip, hitting the bottom with a hard crack before I hear the hard sizzle of the magma consuming it.

This system Trench and Arc's mother made has been the biggest single help in dealing with the cavrinskh that want out of the inner caldera. If we didn't have a way to get rid of them, more and more would come.

I watch the pit, not daring to get any closer to the slick shimmer emanating from it. The invisible smoke already hurts my eyes.

"Why are you still here?" Trench asks, glancing from me and then toward my outpost.

He can't see it, of course.

But when I turn and look that way, I can. I can see Kimba's silhouette in the windows upstairs. I can tell that I need to show her where the thermal vents are if she needs it to be warmer…

"You love her, right?" Trench watches me like he expects me to confess some deeper secret.

"I do."

"Then you need to find a way to keep her after the immediate threat is over. The powers that be might let her live on her own as an unbonded widow, but I don't think they're going to let one of their biggest sellers stay away from the stage for long if she's not bound to you."

"Even if she does take me, I won't make her quit dancing."

"Not sure I could do that." Trench laughs again and tosses an enzyme packet onto the tarp. "Guess it's a good thing I'm not signing up for a mate again. I'm too greedy to be kind."

"That's not greed. And if you ever change your mind, I'll sign the documents the minute you send them over."

"My life is death and gore. I'm not going to bring a woman into that again." He picks up a handful of snow and scrubs at the blood covering his hands as the packet dissolves the remains of the cavrinskh from the tarp, leaving ugly white streaks behind.

He's the only man I know who has gotten a bondmate and had her refuse him. He's the only man I know who has given his bondmate a chance to reject him.

Death and gore had been the two words that had featured most heavily in the paperwork that came through after he took her back to the Agency—a drive he did not return from as the same man.

Trench has been looking for answers inside the cavrinskh for years, and he has barely scratched the surface. He needs help, but there's no one we can ask.

He needs a partner.

The magma consumes the dead creature faster than any normal fire would, and it flows through its cycle a few minutes of silence later.

"You should go home and get out of the cold."

"It's always cold here." He shakes the chemical remains from the tarp and starts to fold it.

"It's warmer if you want it to be."

"Don't pull that nonsense on me. Exercise your own advice, first." Trench rolls his eyes at me. "Besides, who in their right mind would want to warm a ghoul? The rest of you can play at being lovers. I'll stay where I belong."

He straps the folded tarp to his bike and hops on, waiting for me to do the same.

"Ask her to stay," he says. "It's easier to live in that limbo, but you're not like me. You'll be happier if she says yes."

"And if she says no?"

"I guess you'll have to learn how to live without her."

The bike rumbles to life, Trench throws a small salute, and then I'm alone in the vast icy expanse again, as I have been so often before.

I only get halfway home before a buzzing in my ear makes me slow, almost to a stop.

"Riann." I say when the call connects. "What can I do for you?"

He's on a full screen and with my helmet on, I can see him in my display, but he can't see me.

"I know it's late, but I figured you'd be awake. I need a consultation." Grimacing, he glances behind him. It's a crime scene and I see blood, but not a body. "It's better if I don't say too much over comms."

"I understand. Send me the address and I'll be there as soon as physically possible."

D is tense.

His jaw is set tight and when we get to where we're going, I don't blame him.

CSS officers swarm the lawn of a suburban home.

They look at us askance when we get out of the car and one comes up to D, telling him we can't be here—he doesn't look at me. He barely gets the full sentence out before someone shouts and all eyes turn to the man in the doorway, waving us forward.

I know him.

He's been at the club before—I'm sure most of them have—but something about that man in particular is memorable. Maybe it's the dark purple of his skin, or the way he holds himself.

Broken glass crunches in the grass as we cross to him.

"Riann," D says, taking his offered hand.

Riann, that's right. He was Jillian's favorite before she decided to retire. She said he was special, but never went into detail as to how.

"Kimba, this is Riann, one of the junior officials of the CSS. He is a friend when he wants to be."

Riann smiles as if that is a long-standing joke. "It is a pleasure to meet you. You are a bit of a celebrity, so I hope you won't mind that I try to get you out of sight before people start asking too many questions."

"Not at all." I follow them inside and listen to the other officers trying to sort through the scene.

Nothing in particular catches my eye until…

I stop, boots scraping on more glass.

There is a dead man on the floor, staring up at me like he was waiting, just for me.

Again.

"I'm sorry. I should have warned you." Riann says softly and I see both of them shift, uncomfortably, in my periphery.

Don't they close their eyes here?"I recognize him."

"From the club?" D asks.

I shake my head, unable to look away from those dead eyes.

He hadn't looked like he wanted to be anywhere near me that day. But he'd been alive. I remember the way he shifted his shoulders. He'd been alive.

D steps between us. The loss of the sight of him kicks my brain back into gear and I shiver. "I recognize him from… the incident in my parking garage."

"You're sure?"

I tap my cheek. "I've gotten in the habit of noticing scars. Even when I don't want to. Even when I'm scared shitless, apparently."

"That's a good thing. It gives us someplace to look and it's one less of them that can come after either of us."

I take a deep breath, meet his eerie eyes, and nod. "You're right. And you're right."

"I feel like I missed something." Riann looks back and forth between us, the sharp ridges of his brow quirked.

"You did." D squeezes my hand, still looking at the other man. "But this is not the place to fill you in."

"As you say." Lips pursed, Riann dips his head in a nod and glances at the other officers. They're all decently far away. "We know who he is and you know why I needed you here. The coroner is the only other person who's going to walk through that door and possibly know what they're looking at."

I was so shocked by the familiar face, I barely registered that the man's body had been ravaged.

When D turns, I look at the man again. He's a bloody mess and I'm certain what killed him wasn't Sian, human, or even a zurgle. And with D called in…

"Another one got out?" I ask, as quietly as I can manage.

"It would appear that way." Riann is the one who answers me.

D is too busy looking around us. His eyes don't change color… not really, but they are different.

He points toward the floor beneath the sofa in the distant room.

"Floor safe." He takes a deep breath. "Have your guys move the couch and I'll see if I can get it open."

"As long as you don't have to do that creepy eye thing again."

"All my ‘eye things' are creepy. You've just gotten used to some of them."

Riann actually laughs and calls two of the officers to help him move it.

"You've known him for a long time?" I ask, watching Riann supervise.

"Not too long. But he's never given me a reason not to trust him, and he's trusted me with certain secrets that could kill more than his career."

"He didn't seem surprised that I'm with you."

D looks down at me, the places where his pupils should be look like brightly lit crystal balls—clear and haunting. "He is, in some ways, our unofficial CSS liaison. He knows you're with me. He doesn't know why yet."

I glance toward him, "But unlike others, he's not going to assume we're bonded."

"Unlike others, he knows we're not."

Right, because he'd have access to Agency information.

But if D trusts him… I'll trust him.

We wait for the other officers to leave and I ignore the way they stare at me once they've realized who I am. It doesn't bother me, I just don't want to engage with it right now, so I step to the side and use D as a shield as we make our way away from the dead man.

With the sofa gone and the rug pulled back, the dark disk of the floor safe's lid is obvious. It's a dark spot in the otherwise brightly enamel-coated floor.

D stands over it and Riann gives me an oddly sympathetic smile before we both turn to watch him.

He stares at it for a long moment, mouth screwed into a scowl. "It's an old-style keyed lock. Did he have keys on him?"

Riann pulls out a brick from his pocket and tosses it to D. He doesn't even look up, catching it while still scowling at the floor.

Almost everything can be programmed to a neural link. If they have something fully offline, they didn't want to have to register it.

D cracks the brick in half and the keys—circular and spikey—splay out for him. He doesn't have to try a few before he finds the right one… he just looks at them and knows.

The safe opens with a soft and solid thunk and D lifts the lid away, setting it aside and looking down into the darkness of the little hidey-hole.

The first thing he pulls out is a familiar metal stick. He hands the datafilm to Riann, who opens it and immediately starts reading.

Why lock the film when you've locked the safe?

"The rest is just physical credit blocks."

I look around the house. It's ultra modern. "He didn't collect antiques. So he was getting paid for something he didn't want anyone to look into." Like playing muscle to whoever wants D dead.

Look where it got him.

Riann mutters something under his breath as he looks through the data scrolling across the film.

While Riann reads, D goes to the far wall and lifts a sculptural wobble off the wall, setting it aside and revealing another safe. He grimaces.

"We need a human CSS officer as soon as possible. Are there any on site?"

Riann looks at him askance and then steps to the doorway, shouting at someone outside.

"Carrie will be here in a second," he says as he comes back. "What's going on?"

"He wasn't alone in the house." D stares at the safe door, key already in hand, and an uneasy coil starts to tighten in my stomach.

Carrie arrives and offers me a quick smile before she asks, "What's up?"

But D has already opened the safe door. There's space, the depth of the wall, and then another. When he opens that, light spills out and a woman inside lets out a little chirp of alarm.

"Oh." Carrie says. "Oh!"

She hurries forward and tells the woman everything is going to be alright.

D draws me away, and Riann comes with us, giving Carrie and the woman space to sort things out.

"How did you know she was there?" I ask.

There's a faint glow when he turns to me that has nothing to do with his neural link. "The walls aren't that thick. I can see through most things—sort of—if I want to."

He grimaces and turns to Riann, so I don't ask any more questions.

D glances toward the two women. "It wasn't a Lasap-lined room like last time, but it's a little too familiar."

"I agree. At least we know this woman is alive. Beyond that…"

"There's nothing else here your team hasn't already found." D looks around the house again, even though he sounds certain.

I watch Carrie help her out of the hole in the wall and she sits her down in a place where the woman can't see her dead captor. And then, she comes over to deliver her report.

"Her name is Sharon," Carrie says, focusing on her, even as she talks to us. "She got here on an Agency ship yesterday. She thought everything was kosher, but when they got here, his demeanor changed and she doesn't remember how she got in the room. They weren't bonded, so she didn't feel him die. She doesn't have any clue what's going on, or why he did it. She's just confused and feels betrayed. Reasonably, she's freaked out."

"Of course." Riann nods and glances at the woman too. "Get in touch with the Agency. She needs someplace safe to stay. Get the rest of her statement while you wait for them to come. And whatever you do, don't let her see the body."

"If it was me, I'd prefer to know he was dead," I say.

Riann studies me for a moment, and then says, "If she wants proof, she can see him at the morgue, tomorrow."

After he's cleaned up.

Nodding, Carrie pulls up a comm unit and walks away from us as she calls the Agency.

"She's going to be alright," Riann says and I'm not sure if it's for my benefit, or D's.

"But this is definitely related to the Company," D says.

"I can't see how it wouldn't be." Riann turns toward the door. "Coroner's here. I'll go through the data from the floor safe and get answers."

"Keep me updated."

I'm not going to be cut out of this. "Keep us updated."