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There were three different ways you could enter a building you weren’t supposed to be in. You could sneak in through a nontraditional entrance: window, sewer, skylight, loading dock. Wren had once had herself rolled in via a beer delivery. You could walk right in through the front door, brazen it out and hope nobody thought to challenge you. Or, you could find a commonly used entrance, and slide in with a crowd.
If you were a Retriever, you had a fourth option. You went invisible.
She had tried to explain it to Sergei once as being just the next step up from pretending that you weren’t there. Everyone did that; praying the cop would pull over the guy next to you even though you were the one speeding, that the gym teacher would pick on someone else, that the bum on the subway would sit at the other end of the car and leave you alone. The difference was, when you had current and skill to back you up, your chances for success went up.
Way up, if you were Wren Valere. And if there were days that she wished every head would turn when she walked in the door, it was nonetheless a skill that made it possible for her to call the tune of her own life.
“Impose this
upon their eyesight:
blindness falls.”
Two young men walked past her, and as the last word of her cantrip hit the air, the one nearest to her stumbled and went down to his knees, crying out in shock and not a little fear.
“Charlie?” His friend went to him, shifting his coffee to his off hand as he tried to help his companion up.
“Jesus! Everything went black!”
Wren winced, but didn’t hesitate as she moved past them, opening the heavy metal doors of the theater and slipping inside to the lobby. She hadn’t meant it to be quite so literal! Hopefully it was only temporary.
Tone it down. You’re too full, too charged. This isn’t a fight. It’s a job. Finesse, not fury. Don’t let it control you, you control it.
Right. She took a moment to stand still, settling the current down into her more securely. Too much was as bad as too little. Worse, sometimes. All it took was one instant for the core to escape control…Mirroring the neon outside, the current glowed around her bones, slithering like snakes, always restless at the hint of action.
Control, control. Only the small amount I need, and the rest of you, sleep…
According to the emerging theory her neighbor and fellow Talent Bonnie had told her about, there was a weird mucous lining on their cells that allowed their bodies to channel current. That didn’t fit well with her visual of the core as being a dry pit filled with muscled neon snakes, but it made a lot of sense, otherwise. It was also, in a word, disgusting. She preferred to think of it as willpower and self-control.
Control. Yes.
The tension in her skin eased for a second, and she felt almost normal.
Confident now that she would pull only the current she needed, Wren started moving again.
The job literally was a grab. No cursed objects, no semisentient entities, no high-magic or low-tech security systems. Not even any half-awake, geriatric guards to work around. Just the cast and crew of a Broadway play, the normal preperformance nerves shimmering in the air, and a silver hip flask engraved with a Fleur de Lys that if Wren was really lucky, would have something potent inside, and she didn’t mean spellwise.
Wren didn’t understand why the client felt he needed a Retriever for this, but the truth was that she had become somewhat of a status symbol. Anyone could have something stolen. You had to pay a lot to get The Wren to Retrieve it for you.
Morons. But so long as the check cleared, the client got to be Mr. Moron.
The lobby in front of her was everything the façade had promised: red velvet, gilding, soaring ceilings, and the faint but unmistakably tangy scent of an overworked air circulation system. Nice, if you were into old buildings.
Her blueprint of the theater showed a series of tunnels running under the stage itself. She supposed they had been used to move sets and actors around, since there wasn’t much actual “backstage” to be found. What she wanted was—allegedly—hidden there.
If Sergei…
Sergei wasn’t.
But if he was, you’d know for certain. He would have pulled something from one of his contacts….
Contacts that, more often than not, came from the Silence.
Her voice fell silent, unable to argue the point.
It’s not the Silence….
Jesus wept, shut up.
The voice shut up again. But that didn’t make the truth of what she didn’t let it say any less. It wasn’t his connection to the Silence that kept her from returning his phone calls, weeks ago when he still left messages for her. Everyone else might think that, but she knew better. So did he.
Sergei was an addict. He was addicted to the feel of her current; mostly when they made love, but any time he could get it. Current took the signature, the feel of the person using it, once it was in the core for a little while. Sergei wanted that, wanted the rush of it—of her—in his system.
Only problem was, he wasn’t a Talent. He was Null. And current damaged Nulls.
It killed them.
Sergei knew that. And he still craved it. Asked her to give it to him.
And she, damn her, did. Because she couldn’t refuse him anything he needed that badly, especially when it was all tied up in how much he felt for her.
So she denied him. Everything. Her. Kept him safe by giving him up.
Because she could forgive him anything—anything—except using her to kill himself.
“Who left the damn door open?” A very tall man clad entirely in black, with a long ponytail of red hair reaching between his shoulder blades breezed into the lobby, and shut the door Wren had entered with a resounding slam. “Idiots think that just because it’s springtime we don’t heat this place no more? Actors. Only thing worse than actors are musicians, and the only thing worse than musicians’re the crew…”
He breezed out again, muttering under his breath about the useless bags of meat he was sent to work with.
“The director, I presume,” Wren said, amused. She had never been a theater person, but one of her friends in college was, and between Suzy and Sergei’s own dealings with the artists he showed in the gallery, or met on the circuit, she’d heard countless stories about the “temperament” of the artistic types.
Her only real friend in the arts had been Tree-taller, and the sculptor had been as calm and measured as one of his sculptures. But that came from being an artist with Talent—working metal with current made you cautious, or it got you dead.
She winced. He had gotten himself dead anyway, hadn’t he? So many dead…
Focus. A different voice this time, sharp and unforgiving. The voice she heard too often in her dreams, now. An unfamiliar, unforgiving voice, refusing to let her rest. A combination of all the dead: the Talented and Fatae dead of this city, trying to drive her forward into things, places, she didn’t want.
Bite me, she said to it now, and followed the director down into the theater. The set was dark; if the rest of the cast had arrived for the matinee already, they were elsewhere in the building.
The blueprint said that there was an entrance to the main tunnel to the left of the stage, just behind the pillar. Wren looked around to make sure that nobody was lurking, then vaulted to the stage, careful as she landed not to make so much noise that anything echoed. They might not be able to see her, but they’d still be able to hear her.
“Okay, door. Where’s a door? What looks like a door?”
To someone used to the stage, it was no doubt obvious. Wren, in the dark in more than one way, had only her natural sense of sneaky to guide her.
Well, that and a little extra fillip of Talent.
“The way down
is the way to go.
Lead me there.”
Thankfully cantrips didn’t have to be any kind of great poetry. So long as the words helped you focus, they were effective. A faint blue shimmer of light flickered off her fingertips, tiny cousins to the neon flickering outside, and floated off as though they had all the time in the world.
“A little speed, willya?” she urged it in a whisper. In response, the lights brightened a little, then moved en masse to a spot just to the left of the pillar. Wren followed, noting as she moved that she was now out of sight of anyone in the audience.
The blue lights spread over the wall and thinned into a bare thread, outlining a narrow door.
The tunnel.
She held up her hand and the blue current sped back to her. You didn’t leave evidence behind on a job. She might have been careless before, not thinking that it mattered, but having Bonnie living in the building with her had been an eye-opener as to what the PUPIs—Private Unaffiliated Paranormal Investigators—could do with even a scrap of signed current. And she had been holding this in her core long enough for it to “taste” like her to anyone who bothered to test it.
She eyed the door, trying to get a feel for any alarms or other wiring securing it shut. Nothing. As far as her abilities could tell, it was just a fitted wooden door. Which led to the next choice: fast or slow? You could open it slowly, and risk one of those soul-killing creaking noises. Open it fast, and who knew what might happen. Either way, there was a chance of alerting people to an intruder.
“Screw it,” Wren said, and opened the door normally.
It slid open without a sound. A black light went on overhead, lighting the steps down. She frowned at it before realizing that the black light was probably so that nobody onstage or in the audience might see a distracting glow when a performance was running. Nice. She was going to have to experiment, when she got home, and see if she could create the equivalent with current. A handy thing, if she could make it work. Handy, yes, and possibly profitable? If she could bottle it somehow, the way some Talent made prepared Translocation spells—they overcharged so much, she only used them when there was no other choice, and they had to be individually set and had a limited lifespan, but a current-powered blacklight…hell, a prepared current-light, period…
Worry about it later. Just because this is a cakewalk, no reason to get sloppy. Bad things always seem to happen when you get cocky.
The stairs were surprisingly comfortable to walk down, even keeping her back to the far wall. There was some sort of rubber padding tacked to the steps, which had the advantage of both muffling footsteps and keeping her footing secure when the stairs turned sharply.
At the bottom, the tunnel was much larger than she had expected; rather than a narrow walkway, it was a broad and arched hall with a track of modern lighting running along the ceiling. The air was cool and dry, not musty or stale, indicating that they had at least a basic air filtering system in place.
Nice. With a little work, you could probably turn this into the trendy new living space, and make a fortune.
All right, enough with the money-making plans, Valere. Get the job done.
She set her back against the wall, feeling the cool stone even through her leather jacket, and tried to orient herself. She had come down here, and she was facing there, so…It might be cheating, triangulating via the pulse of Times Square, but you used what you had. Confident now that she knew where she was going, Wren pulled her lockpick tools out of its tummy sheath, and stepped forward confidently.
There was no warning. One moment she was moving forward, the next she was pinned against the wall again, only this time there was a heavy forearm against her throat, and the smell of hot breath on her face. A white cloth mask was pulled over his face, showing only narrowed brown eyes above the fabric.
Wren reacted the way she had been trained: fast and hard, but not lethally. Her mentor, John Ebeneezer, had been a huge fan of not killing people, and even years of Sergei’s “survival at all costs” attitude and P.B.’s casual disregard for bloodshed had not been able to quite eradicate that early influence.
She didn’t even try to shove back physically—she was in shape, but her strength was not in meat and muscle. A hard pull down on her core, and thick-bodied snakes of sizzling red and gold came to her, coiling up her arm faster than she could visualize them. There was enough power there to jolt any assailant back on his ass and crisp the ends of his short-and-curlies.
The guy jerked and grunted when she hit him, but didn’t let go. And he absolutely didn’t fly back onto his posterior the way he was supposed to. Instead he slapped her across the face, hard enough that her vision swam and her face burned.
“Bitch sparked me,” he told someone else over his shoulder.
“Stupid cunt.”
He relaxed his grip slightly, but before she could take advantage of it, another set of hands pulled her off the wall, shoving her down to her knees on the floor. From that position, she could see that they were wearing thick-soled work boots, and dark green carpenter’s pants.
Two of them. Then another set of boots came into view, and she upped the count to three. At least. Damn, and also, damn. Two she might have been able to take in an unfair fight. And they had expected her to use current. They had warded themselves somehow…. Rubber. The soles of their boots, probably fibers in their clothing, at least enough to absorb a nonlethal blow. They weren’t warded, magically; just basic physical forensics and a trip to the Army-Navy store. They knew about Talent. And they didn’t seem to be friendly.
A shove in the small of her back, and she went facedown on the stone.
Nope, not friendlies at all. Stay calm, Valere. Stay calm. Damn it, I should have brought the hot-stick.
A thin, thin filament of current stretched out from deep within her core, imbued with as much of her personal signature as possible. She sent it out, searching for anyone on the street above who would be able to hear her. There were people she could specifically tag, reaching out to their mental signature across the city, but by the time they understood what was going on, it might be too late to be of any use.
The filament didn’t find anyone other than Nulls on the streets above. No Fatae, no Talent.
Looks like you’re on your own. Figures. So much for the Patrol still hanging around.
Who were these assholes, anyway? Random goons who got lucky? The fact that they were prepared shot that idea down. They weren’t Council, and she doubted they were here to protect her target, so that left only one answer.
Vigilantes. The Silence’s goons. Fuckitall and why did she never get a break?
“Hurry up,” one of them urged the other two. “Let’s get this done.” She lay very still, trying to distinguish their voices in her mind. The one standing up was a tenor, she thought. He had a faint rasp to his words, like he had a cold. Not a local—she didn’t recognize the way he worked his vowels.
“Ain’t nobody down here,” the second one said. He was kneeling beside her now, and she repressed a shudder when his hand landed flat on her back, just above her waist. “They’re all upstairs getting made up.”
Local boy, definitely. Probably Staten Island. His hand slid up her back, and now Wren did shudder. The touch was more than unfriendly; it was unfriendly with Intent. And she didn’t want to think about that intent.
The last man to touch her with intent was Sergei, their last night together. Ham-handed boy got to take no such liberties.
The third guy was silent, just standing there, watching. She could hear him breathing, though. He sounded like another big guy, like he had a thick chest, and probably the weight to match.
“I wonder if what they say about their kind is true? Seems such a waste, dropping this little bird so quick.” Kneeling boy laughed at his own wit, and Wren would have rolled her eyes if she hadn’t been so nervous. Please. Like she had never heard that joke before? Her nickname came off her given name, Genevieve, and because she was hard to see, like the wren in a bush, but people always made the size assumption.
Her mind came back to the here-and-now with a nasty snap. Two hands now, one on each shoulder, pressing her into the floor, and a weight still on her back. His leg?
Oh shit. She was starting to get pissed off, the snakes in her core sliding against each other, their scales dry and scratchy, letting off static in a low hiss. I really don’t have time for this….
“George, don’t.”
George. Wren grabbed onto that. Local boy’s name was George. That was dumb, using names.
Then Wren really did shudder. Unless they weren’t dumb, just careless. Because she wasn’t going to be around to tell anyone. Oh shit, she thought again, this time with more emphasis as the pieces came together. “Their kind.” Talent. The insulated boots and clothing. “Little bird.” They were here for her specifically, not just vigilante yahoos looking for a Talent to bust, or even unwary legs to spread. They were hunting The Wren, and she’d walked right into them.
Or been sent right into them. The entire job, a setup? Or…it doesn’t matter, Valere! Just get out of there!
“Come on, you musta heard the stories.” He shifted, and Wren could feel him straddling her, sitting on her upper thighs. Then he leaned forward, covering her entire body, and she felt his erection pushing against her ass, even through her jeans. “Like dipping into an electrical socket, I’ve heard. Hottest shit ever.”
Thou shalt not kill, a memory said, oh so quietly in the back of her brain.
“Yeah, and you hear what else they say? They’re not human, man!”
“So?” George clearly wasn’t worried about that. He shifted again, one hand leaving her shoulder to reach around and wrestle with the snap of her jeans. “Come on man, help me. I’ll let you have a taste, after I wear her out, if you’re too scared to get in first.”
The other guy didn’t sound tempted. “The Man hears, you won’t think it worth it. Aw, hell. You remember what happened with the last one we popped? Bitch near tore his head off. You gotta get some, damage her first and you can get in and out before she dies.”
George didn’t stop his movements. “Whaddreyou, sick or something? I’m not doing a corpse! Anyway, I like ’em when they fight. Spicy.” His fingers got under her waistband, and started moving down, shoving aside her underwear.
The last one we popped…echoed in Wren’s brain, rattling around like dried beans. Bastards. They got off on this. They thought they had the right to do whatever they wanted, because someone told them they were superior, that they were better.
