Retrievers - Burning Bridges Part 28

*where the h.e.l.l have you been?*

*busy. Here now*

Once before they had done this: in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Friesman Library, when faced with the forever-hungry maw of greed and vengeance given physical form. Then, Wren had hesitated. Now, she was grounded in the demon and on her feet before the other woman had time to react to the newcomer.

The question rose to the front of her mind, as it did the first time they had done this. *what are you, P.B.?*

*demon* he said, as though that answered everything. But she had no time to be frustrated; the battle was joined again. This time, with her core locked down and upheld by his unswerving support and dedication, buffered from outside blows by his love and affection, Wren was able to put the woman on the defensive, backing her up against the cold arch of the bridge and locking her in place with bars of current similar to the ones she had used to lock down the bansidhe, the one she had tested on the Nescanni Parchment, before that. Nothing was ever wasted, and nothing was learned in vain. If she survived this, what worse thing was this going to be training for?

*stop thinking. You think too d.a.m.n much*

Agreed. Wren locked down anything extraneous, and focused back on her opponent.

The woman had been pretty, was still pretty, if you looked past the eyes hard and flat like slate, and just as lifeless. Only the mouth still showed any kind of life, twisting and chewing on dry air. Trying to speak with them hadn't worked before, but Wren felt obligated to try, one last time.

"We're Cosa , little sister. Family. Why are you so angry?"

That red mouth chewed more, the jaw working as though trying to produce some result. "You consort with animals, cause pain in this world...."

P.B.'s voice, not a tag but already inside her brain: *crazy. wizzed. way beyond wizzed.*

*little d.a.m.ned busy, here*

*kill her.*

*no!* P.B. didn't understand. Grounded in his emotional bedrock, she found herself surrounded by a firm, unyielding pragmatism: survival above all. Demon. It was what he was, how he had been created; as much a part of him as the ability to survive the lashes of her current into his system.

But that wasn't how the Cosa worked.

You took care of the wizzed. You did not kill them.

"Little sister, listen to me." Wren said it with current as much as voice, focusing all of herself that was to spare into making herself heard. She dared not ping her opponent; the woman's sense of what was true and real had clearly been so badly twisted that getting tangled in her current would damage Wren even more than anything physical the Silence operative might do.

You took care of the wizzed. But you didn't emulate them. You didn't follow them. You kept your distance, as best you could, because they were crazy-strong in addition to being crazy-crazy. All the focus, all the will, and none of the self-preservation. That was why lonejacks were so selfish, why the Council was so cautious. Because if you didn't protect yourself from yourself, you ended up like this....

*P.B.* A sudden thought, communicated to him the same instant it occurred to her. *can you help her?*

*she'd kill me the moment I tried. Or I'd kill her, in defense when she attacked. Or, both*

d.a.m.n.

"I can't let you do that."

"You? Stop us?" Poul laughed. Neither Duncan nor Andre did. When Jorgenumunder realized that, he stopped, his gaze curious, but not worried.

"It's too late, Sergei, " Duncan said. "I understand-I appreciate the fact that you feel your loyalties have been given, but there is a reality here you cannot avoid. We will win. Humanity will prevail over these creatures. It is our right, and our duty to maintain our G.o.d-given place."

He sighed, seemingly saddened. "Had they only kept to their own place, in the shadows, in the darkness, perhaps none of this would have been needful."

Sergei doubted that. "There are more of them than you know. And the Silence, while strong, is finite. They will not go quietly."

"Oh, I have become quite aware of that. This city was our testing ground, a trial run. But we're not finished, yet.

"You say we are finite. True. But the outrage we can generate is not."

Sergei had no idea what the man was talking about. From the look on Andre's face, neither did he.

"Boss?"

Andre turned, his carefully patrician face suddenly showing concern as a tall, well-built blonde walked around the corner. "Andre? I got your message, and don't think it's not going to cost you, because getting past the cops out there was...oh."

Bren took in the scenario with a quick glance, and recognized that something was wrong instantly.

By then, Poul already had her in an iron grip.

Duncan turned to Andre. "You understand? You will see that it is taken care of?"

Andre nodded, his expression back to the cool facade he had perfected over his many decades with the Silence. Duncan nodded once in return, then walked to the car, getting into the backseat. The driver started the engine, and backed out of the alley, driving away into the cold winter morning.

Suddenly, Sergei realized that his fingers were freezing, even through his Thinsulate gloves, and his knees were creaky and painful, as though he'd climbed a dozen flights of stairs.

"Andre?" Bren was curious, a little nervous, but not frightened. Not even when Poul dragged a serrated blade across her throat, and her body dropped to the ground with a single gasp, did she display any fear.

Jorgunmunder calmly set the blade to her skin in five or six places, each mark looking like a jagged wound, the kind that might be created by the sweep of a tiger's claws.

Or a demon's.

Sergei let out a low moan of realization, and lunged forward, hands reaching for Poul's own throat, but Andre had a gun in his hand now, and it was pointed at Sergei.

"I am sorry, my boy. I saw no way to prevent it."

Satisfied with his work, Poul took a vial out of an inside coat pocket. About the size of his thumb, it was filled with a thick, black liquid. He sprinkled a little on the ground, creating a careful splatter pattern, then smeared some of it onto Bren's face and hands, as though she had fought her attacker off.

"Fatae blood, " Sergei said, his voice dead.

"Exactly." Poul stepped back to consider his work, then added another smear to the palm of her left hand.

"She was a team member. A coworker. A fellow Silence member. Is this what the Silence taught you?" Sergei asked, too many steps beyond disgusted to remember his way back.

Poul didn't hesitate in his response. "The Silence taught me to do the right thing. Protect the innocent. Protect the weak. That means humans. Real humans."

There was a soft noise, and the vial fell from Poul's hands, the look of surprise and outrage on his face almost comical as he turned to stare at his mentor. "You..."

Andre waited until Poul fell onto his knees, then dealt him a solid blow to the side of his head with the b.u.t.t of his pistol, hard enough to crack his skull.

Bending down, the old man took the blade out of Poul's pocket, flicked it open, and placed it in his protege's hand, closing the cooling fingers around it firmly.

"Is there any of that blood left?"

Sergei picked the vial up, then shook his head. "No."

"Ah well. It will have to do. To all appearances, he killed her, and someone then killed him.

"Leaving out the important part, the part that the Silence has played in all of this." It wasn't a question: it was the only reason Andre would have been part in all this, to somehow, still, try to preserve the Silence.

"Lies built on lies, to protect the truth. This world turns on chaos, and we all fall into the fire." Andre looked down into the conflagration, water aflame with current, bodies scattered on the ground. "We do what we must. And I...will go back to the source of it all. Duncan will not trust me, but then, he has never trusted me. And in that lack of trust, I am still useful to him."

"Until..."

"Until this is over, one way or another. On the inside, I still have a chance to change things."

"You think you can survive long enough to oust him?" Sergei was aware of how macabre it all was, standing over the bodies of two former coworkers, two people Andre had chosen and trained, discussing what were, in effect, corporate politics.

"I believe in the organization, " was all Andre would say. "I have to believe in it, or it's all been for nothing. Duncan is the power, but he was not the creator, was not the source of our mission. I will find allies, and I will fight back."

He looked at Bren's body, then Poul's, and for the first time in all the years Sergei had known him, the old man looked old.

"And you? What will you do?"

"I don't know, " Sergei said, looking down at the base of the bridge. A short white form was there, barely visible in the sunlight. And leaning on him, limping but alive, was another familiar form. Something that had gone cold inside him started to warm again. "Gather the bodies. Make my report. Do what's required of me. Same as always."

Andre started to speak, then reconsidered. "Stay safe, boy."

"You, too."

His former boss, his mentor, walked away and didn't look back.

Twenty-Three.

Everything was a blur, even now. Sergei had met them at the bridge, stepping over bodies to reach them. He had hailed them a cab, bundled them inside and sent them home. That had been two weeks ago. She hadn't seen him since then. P.B. had told her what he knew: the confrontation with the Silence, the dead bodies that were found in the aftermath. Wren had identified them both, Andre's second-in-command, the woman who had warned them in the diner; one enemy, one reluctant ally. Something had gone down, and gone badly.

She had left a message on Sergei's phone that day, but he had never returned the call. She was told that he had made a formal report, in writing, to what remained of the Double-Quad: Bart, his ribs taped and his leg splinted, Susan, still recovering from second-degree burns, and the nausunni elder, who had been protected by the river's depths. Beyl had taken a current-bolt through the lungs, and died that night, surrounded by the flock she had led for so many years. Gentle, mad-biker Rick had died of current over rush on the scene. Michaela was in a coma, and not expected to ever open her eyes again. Wren was too tired to mourn. There were too d.a.m.n many deaths to mourn.

She didn't even have the strength to mourn Sergei, the death of whatever it was that had died between them. His fault, her fault. She only hoped that he would have the sense to stay low, stay out of sight. Stay alive. And not do anything stupid, jonesing for another rush of current.

n.o.body trusted Nulls anymore. n.o.body trusted anyone who might be part of the Silence, or their agents. Not after what they had done to the lost ones, the children, the Talent they had destroyed and turned into monsters.

The golden locket had been rescued from her pocket, but rather than replacing it in her jewelry box-a small wooden case-she had hung it over the edge of the mirror in her bedroom. In the night, when she lay in her cool bed, she would see glints from outside lights reflect in the metal, and wonder where her own innocence had gone.

It was February. Her bruises and cuts were healing. The wounds inside...she touched one, gently, and felt the pain like it had happened to someone else. It was there, it might always be there, but it was distant, observed more than experienced. Locked and sealed and not anything to deal with, anymore.

She had bought a rug, and a love seat for her apartment. Had hung framed and matted photos of her mother and grandmother on the wall. Kept the curtains drawn so that she could sleep in, and let P.B. fill her refrigerator with food, some of it even healthy.

She didn't miss Sergei. She didn't have the energy.

"When was the last time you slept?" P.B. finally asked.

"Every night, I sleep." Just not well, and not for long. She could have taken a sleeping pill, but she rather liked the edge exhaustion was giving her. She thought maybe she was going to need that edge.

"It's not over, you know." They were sitting on the new sofa, eating kung pao chicken and Jimmy's justifiably famous sesame noodles out of white cartons. Two fortune cookies sat in the center of the also-new coffee table. "All of it...it's not over."

"I know, " P.B. said.

He had been gentle with her since they had staggered back into her apartment that G.o.d-awful morning. Had been treating her like hand-blown gla.s.s, rare and fragile. It made her want to scream, but she was afraid that, if she did, she really would shatter and prove him right.

"It's not over, " she repeated a third time. "It's really only just begun. If what was in Sergei's report is true."

There was controversy over that; n.o.body was quite sure how much faith they could put in the words of a Silence Operative, someone who had been responsible, however indirectly, for the creation-the brainwashing-of the children who had been used against them.

Wren would never believe that Sergei had had anything to do with that, not after what they had been through, but she didn't argue. She was too tired of trying to be seen, trying to be heard. And she was just as glad that he was keeping his distance. She could survive anything, so long as she knew he was safe. And safe, right now, meant nowhere near her.

"It's not just us. It's not just this city, this coast."

The demon knew all this. He had heard her go over it before, in different words all leading to the same conclusion.

"The Silence...What they did to that girl, to the others...If we let it be, it will destroy us, down to root and stem. The Council-all the Councils-no longer have a choice about getting involved. This isn't only a regional squabble anymore. It never was."

"It's a new witch hunt, " P.B. said, agreeing as he had agreed before. "Null against Talent. Null against fatae."

"Only this time, fatae and Talent are working together. G.o.d, P.B. Do you have any idea what we did? Did you see? " Fatae and human, marching together. Some of them arm and arm, singing. Carrying signs. Covered with blood still, staggering out of the police station the morning after. Someone had thought to bring a camera to the fight-idiot, but brilliant.

"What we were building...it can't be allowed to fall apart. Independently, we lose."

P.B. sighed, stretched, sucked garlic sauce off his claw. "We're gonna lose together, too. You know that, right?"

She knew. But she had to hold on to the victories of the moment, and hope that they would be enough.

"Shut up and pa.s.s me the dumplings."

P.B. reached, then paused. Scooping up the fortune cookies, he got up and walked out of the room. She heard the window open, the sound of something being pitched into the snow, and then the window closing.

When he came back, empty-handed, some of the tension around his muzzle was lessened. She almost smiled.

Uptown, Blues played softly over an expensive sound system, a woman's voice crooning in French. Sergei Didier sat on his sofa, barefoot, wearing a pair of black dress slacks and a crisp b.u.t.ton-down shirt. There was a gla.s.s of wine on the table in front of him, and a square cloth next to it. On the cloth, a number of metal and plastic pieces were laid out with surgical precision.

He finished cleaning the barrel of his pistol, and placed it down next to the cloth, the blued steel making a clink on the surface that barely disturbed the sound of the woman's voice.

She could think whatever she wanted to think. They could call him a traitor: G.o.d knew the Silence already did. But the flames that had surrounded the bridge last month were a portent of what was to come: her fortune had warned them about that.

He might not be wanted by her side anymore: he couldn't blame her for that. He understood. That didn't mean that he was about to let Wren go into this alone, whatever "this" might turn out to be.

I can survive anything, he told her silently. So long as you're safe.