“You look like shit, you know?” Rosalia told him, edging toward the bench.

  Kane nodded with little enthusiasm. “Thanks.”

  Then Rosalia sat on the cozy little bench with Kane, the seat so tight that her hip brushed against his. “What’s bothering you, Kane?”

  “Just thinking about stuff,” he told her after a moment’s consideration. “Cerberus and everything that happened there.”

  Rosalia snapped her fingers in front of Kane’s face, just an inch from his nose. “Hey, you’re free of all that,” she said. “We got out, didn’t we?”

  “Yeah.” Kane nodded heavily once more. “But where’s Baptiste?”

  Rosalia began to reply, “Maybe she didn’t…”

  But Kane stopped her with a ferocious look, the fury clear in his narrowed eyes.

  Rosalia held his gaze, taking a slow breath before she spoke, her voice soft. “She might not be alive, Kane,” she said gently. “It’s a possibility and one that you should accept. I’ve had friends die on me before now…”

  “Not Baptiste,” Kane interrupted.

  “It’s been a month,” Rosalia pointed out reasonably.

  “She’s alive,” Kane assured the woman, speaking with conviction. “I’d feel it if she wasn’t.”

  “Is that what you really think,” Rosalia asked, “or just what you hope?”

  Kane opened his mouth to speak, but stopped himself. Closing his mouth, the ex-Magistrate gazed out over the gardens for a long time, watching the bubbling stone waterfall as clear water trickled over its sides, filling a small, dark pool at its base. “You were a part of it, Rosie,” Kane said. “You saw what they were doing in that Life Camp we were held in. Surely you must know what happened to her, where they took her, why she wasn’t…”

  With a gentle firmness, Rosalia placed her hand on Kane’s leg, the dark pools of her brown eyes fixed on his. “You’ve asked before and I don’t, Kane,” she said. “I’d tell you if I did.”

  The ex-Mag stared at her, waiting for her to flinch, to show some sign that she might be lying. But she didn’t. Ultimately, Kane nodded in resignation, accepting the sad reality that Rosalia was trying to tell him. “If she’s alive, we’ll find her,” was all he said, and Rosalia smiled sympathetically.

  “Of course,” she said quietly.

  In losing Brigid Baptiste, Kane had lost his anam-chara, or soul friend. The nature of their link was something Rosalia didn’t truly understand, but she recognized Kane’s loneliness and his need for reassurance. Rosalia reached up, stroking a hand along the rough stubble that dotted the man’s jaw as he looked away from her.

  “You’re becoming less like a Magistrate every day,” she told him.

  “And you sound less and less like a mercenary,” he replied, giving her a lopsided grin.

  Rosalia smiled mischievously as she looked up from under, into Kane’s eyes. “You can be so naive, Magistrate Man,” she said, her words barely a whisper. “But it’s sweet,” she added before he could reply, and she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, her tongue brushing along the line of his jaw for a long, lingering touch.

  Rosalia gazed out over the tranquil gardens, her rich chocolate eyes narrowing as she searched for her dog. As she did so, Kane looked at the woman beside him as if for the first time. Lithe of limb with dark eyes full of promise, Rosalia was certainly an intriguing companion for any man to find himself with. For a moment Kane found his eyes drawn down her body, admiring the way the shadow suit painted itself over her curves like a second skin.

  INSIDE HIS CHAMBERS in the lodge, Grant sat very still as Shizuka brought a razor blade toward his scalp. He had already shaved away his stubble, trimming it into a goatee-style beard that surrounded his lips like dark strokes from an artist’s brush. It had become a very hostile world out there and the encounter at the valley-based settlement only served to remind Grant of just how dangerous it really was. It seemed that the whole world had been turned against him and his colleagues in the Cerberus organization, and he and Kane were now wanted men. A deliberate change in appearance seemed like a smart move under those circumstances.

  “Stay still, Grant,” Shizuka advised him gently, running the safety razor over his soapy scalp. She had kneaded soap into his hair, bringing it up to a frothy lather before taking the safety razor from his meager possessions and flipping off its plastic catch.

  “You sure you know what you’re doing?” Grant asked as he sat in a seat in front of the bathroom sink.

  “My ancestors have been masters of the blade for over a thousand years,” Shizuka reminded him. “I think I can handle it.”

  “Yeah,” Grant said thoughtfully. “But did these ancestors of yours perform any decapitations? Didn’t you once tell me your great-granddaddy was the shogun’s executioner?”

  “Just pillow talk, my love,” Shizuka said sweetly, dismissing his frivolous questions. “Now keep still.” Then she was running the razor through his hair.

  Grant felt her run the razor over his head, shaving away his hair and leaving a hairless streak across his scalp. He smiled at the sensation for just a moment, the feeling of intimacy as Shizuka fussed over his appearance.

  Pulling the blade away, Shizuka let out a little laugh, a gentle trilling in the quiet intimacy of the warm room.

  “What are you doing up there?” Grant asked, his voice edged with a note of suspicion.

  Shizuka reached at Grant from behind, her fingers playing across Grant’s lips for a moment, hushing him. “Making it harder for them to find you,” she whispered, and Grant felt the razor play over his scalp once more, a lock of black hair tumbling to the floor.

  Grant closed his eyes, letting his beautiful samurai companion perform her barber work.

  EIGHT OF THE hulking birds swooped down toward where Domi stood by the lad and his wounded girlfriend, wings tucked behind their bodies as they rocketed toward the ground. Domi stilled her thoughts, focusing on those swiftly moving creatures as they blurred in front of her ruby eyes. Her head darted left and right, searching for the nearest tree trunk. Then, as the first of the birds snatched at the ground, Domi began running, weaving out of range even as the bird cried out in irritation.

  “Come on, birdie,” Domi muttered. “Come to mama.”

  As the sounds of that discordant caw filled her ears, Domi ran for a nearby beech tree, her chalk-white feet slapping at the earth, arms pumping as she hurried forward. Behind the albino warrior, the flustered bird was lifting its head, bringing its body upward to swoop up and away from the ground where it had tried to attack her, its plumage brushing less than two feet above the ground itself. Domi’s left foot slammed against the sturdy tree trunk and she seemed to continue to run, using her momentum to sprint a half dozen steps up the side of the tree before flipping out and backward, arms outstretched as she sailed through the air. Clutched in her pale hand, Domi’s combat blade flashed for a heartbeat as sunlight licked across its shiny surface.

  Then Domi was rolling in midair and she landed astride the lead bird as its powerful wings cut at the air. With the sudden increase in weight, the bird swayed erratically for two beats of its enormous wings before righting itself. At the same time, Domi found herself falling backward, and her right hand slapped down toward the bird’s back, driving her nine-inch blade between the elephantine bones of the bird’s spine. They were ten feet above the ground and Domi’s legs swung left and right as the knife drove through the bird’s flesh, struggling to find purchase. Domi felt the blade judder as it ripped over one of the massive vertebrae, then another and a third before finally lodging firmly in the ghastly creature’s back.

  Seven more of the grotesque monsters were zooming toward the ground, screeching angrily as their companion was attacked. They weren’t used to prey that fought back, and they sure weren’t happy about it.

  The russet bird let out an angry caw, struggling to stay in flight as Domi’s blade cut into it. With her free hand, Domi snagged a handful of the monstrous avian’s leathery tail feathers as the creature spiraled between tree trunks. Domi looked up just in time, some sixth sense warning her, as the disoriented bird went hurtling toward the wide podium of a redwood’s trunk.

  Domi leaped, pulling her knife free in a rupture of spilled blood as the bird slammed headfirst into the tree trunk. Then the albino warrior herself was hurtling through the air, body twisting as she reached for a jutting branch of the redwood. She snagged it with one hand, flipped over it to quell her momentum before bringing herself up and around so that she crouched on the mighty bow of the towering tree.

  “Domi to Cerberus,” Domi said out loud, engaging the Commtact unit buried behind her jaw. “Situation is urgent. Please respond.”

  As she spoke, Domi was scanning the leafy cover around her, watching as the other birds swooped around in dazzling formation. Twelve feet below her, the young man pulled his bloodied girlfriend close to a tree as the birds rushed at the ground one after the other, unleashing angry cries as they grasped for but missed the young couple.

  Then Domi dropped from her branch, falling feetfirst toward the next bird as it swooped up toward her, its reddish-brown wings cutting the air in majestic arcs.

  “Hello, Domi.” Lakesh’s voice came over the Commtact. “What seems to be the trouble?”

  Domi landed with a grunt on the neck of the swooping bird, driving the sharp point of her knife into the creature’s left eyeball. The creature shrieked—though whether in surprise or pain, Domi couldn’t be certain—and tried to shake her from where she clung to the downy feathers around its neck. Domi’s left hand bunched tighter in the feathers there, securing her grip as she twisted the knife that had been rammed into the creature’s coal-black eye.

  “I’ve run into some local trouble,” Domi explained breathlessly over the Commtact as she worked the knife. “Weird stuff—monstrous birds attacking in flocks. I’m going to need backup or a cleanup crew.”

  “Am homing in on your transponder now, dearest one,” Lakesh replied over the Commtact link.

  As Lakesh spoke, Domi let go of the bird’s neck and yanked her knife free. The bird cawed with frustration, wings flapping as it took itself upward, the glossy remains of its eye smeared across its face and beak, loosened feathers fluttering from its neck. Domi dropped from the creature’s back and fell through the air away from the ascending bird. Its vision impaired, the giant bird crashed into the branches of the nearest tree, scattering the leaves there, its wings tangling in the larger limbs as it struggled to get free with a frightful shriek.

  Domi fell eight feet as the next bird swooped into view. And then her hand snapped out, grabbing a tree limb and using it to flip herself around.

  Lakesh’s precise voice came over the Commtact again as Domi shifted her balance on the thick branch of the redwood. “Would you please elaborate on the nature of these birds you’ve found?” he instructed, ever polite.

  Her body twisting around the tree limb, Domi lashed out with both feet, kicking the next bird in the face even as its beak widened and it let loose a piercing cry. The knock pushed the bird off course, and it went careening off into another tree letting out a desperate “urk” as its neck snapped.

  Domi was swinging around a second time, as the bird crashed into the tree trunk, bringing her legs around and around as the next bird swept up toward her from the ground. “There are a whole flock of the things,” Domi related as she gathered momentum. “They look like birds of prey, heavy bastards and almost as big as a man.”

  Down on the ground below, the young lad toppled to the soil as another of the fiendish birds snagged his face with its sharp talons. Blood sprayed the air as he fell, spitting a loose tooth from his mouth.

  High above, Domi’s legs snagged around the neck of the next bird as it passed, and she twisted them together in a scissor movement. There was a sickening crack and the bird’s neck broke, though it felt as if she had been trying to break a log in two. The creature’s wings flapped once more and it went rolling away, losing all sense of direction. Legs still wrapped around the flying creature’s wide neck, Domi was forced to let go of the branch before her body was ripped in two.

  Hanging upside down, Domi released her leg grip on the monstrous bird as it hurtled upward through the canopy of branches. In an instant, the albino girl was dropping earthward from over twenty feet in the air.

  “Their wingspan is maybe eight or nine feet across,” Domi explained over the Commtact as she fell, turning the knife in her hand until it pointed ahead like the bowsprit of a sailing vessel.

  Ahead of Domi—which is to say down closer to the ground—another of the giant birds was flapping its wings as it came around toward her, crying out as it spotted this tender morsel of white meat. The falling Domi struck it with the force of a jackhammer, her right arm delving into its open mouth as it clamped to snap its beak shut around her. A line of blood formed around Domi’s trapped hand immediately where the beast’s beak pierced her flesh. Domi’s other hand came up, pushing the scythelike beak aside as she worked the knife inside the monster’s mouth even as it flapped its powerful wings to gain altitude. The keen edge of the blade tore through the ligaments at the side of avian’s mouth, tearing a hole there in the space of two seconds. The beast cried out as blood pumped from the wound that had suddenly appeared at side of its mouth, and it brought its talons up, clawing the air as it grabbed for the pale and twitching form of Domi.

  Her hand still trapped in the creature’s vicious- looking maw, Domi swung her legs away as those razor-sharp talons grasped for her. One claw nipped at the floating hem of the summery dress, ripping a three-inch line in the light material as Domi twisted herself clear.

  Then the creature cried out again and Domi’s hand came free. Suddenly she was dropping once again, batting at the leaves and twigs as she fell through the cover of the trees.

  How high up am I? she wondered with sudden realization. Even as that thought struck her, so did something else—but this was something far less ephemeral; it was the thick limb of a redwood and it struck Domi with the force of a hammer blow to her head as she continued to drop.

  Chapter 8

  Lakesh spoke as his fingers played across the keys of his portable DDC computer. “Domi? Domi, please respond.”

  He didn’t stop working at the keyboard as he listened for Domi’s response, bringing up a detailed stream of data plucked from her transponder. The transponder display showed that Domi’s heart was still beating, her brain-wave activity still peaking and troughing as it should. Yet no response came from their linked Commtacts.

  “Domi?” Lakesh tried again, his voice rising a little with anxiety. Lakesh was naturally a calm man, but any risk to Domi cut him deeply. She had put his life before her own on more than one occasion, and even after their recent altercation with the Quad V hybrid, she still acted as a watchdog when she was around him, protective and loyal to a fault. Losing contact with her while they were so far apart was barely endurable.

  “Come on, dearest,” Lakesh whispered. “Please respond.”

  Still nothing. Lakesh checked the connections on the Commtact headset he wore while his typing fingers brought up a diagnostic of the Commtact communication network. To his dismay, everything was normal.

  Lakesh was not a man to overreact, and he knew that he was leading with his heart when it came to Domi’s well-being, yet he suspected that she was in real trouble out there on the outskirts of Snakefishville. Setting the computer to alert him if Domi’s Commtact should respond, Lakesh lifted himself out of the chair—a joy to do so with such ease after his recent health problems—and hurried to gather his companions. Used to giving orders, Lakesh turned to the samurai-styled guard who waited by the door and told him to fetch Grant and Shizuka. The guard genuflected an acknowledgment, then slid open the nearest door and disappeared into the winter lodge to call his mistress. At the same time, Lakesh made his way to the French doors that led into the garden, the ones he had seen Rosalia go through just fifteen minutes earlier.

  A light breeze was blowing in the garden around the lodge as Lakesh made his way past the carefully trimmed bushes and herbs, searching the area. He spied Rosalia’s dog first, bounding across the grassy plain beyond the low-walled garden, and he raised his voice, calling for Rosalia.

  The dark-haired woman materialized at Lakesh’s side a moment later, appearing with such silence that Lakesh almost jumped in surprise. “You called?”

  Lakesh nodded. “We have an emergency on our hands. I wonder if—”

  At that moment Kane joined them, appearing from behind Rosalia, running a smoothing hand over the black T-shirt he wore.

  “Aha,” Lakesh finished. “That’s answered that question.”

  Lakesh looked at the ex-Magistrate, and Kane recognized the grim look to the set of the older man’s jaw. “What’s going on?” Kane asked.

  “I believe that Domi is in trouble, my friend,” Lakesh explained as he hurried Kane back to the building. Rosalia followed them both, calling to her dog in an irritated hiss as if the beast was embarrassing her at a fine restaurant.

  Less than a minute later the three of them had gathered in the main room of the lodge along with Grant and Shizuka.

  Shizuka had dressed in combat wear, supple leather armor that had been molded to fit her petite form, curving softly over the breasts and tucking in neatly at the waist. The brown leather covered her torso and flared in a short skirt over her hips, leaving her arms and legs free to move with ease. Like the others, she had opted to wear a shadow suit beneath this, its thin black weave protecting her limbs. She also wore an ornate scabbard attached to her belt, gold filigree running along its three-foot length. The scabbard held a samurai sword called a katana, its blade razor-sharp.

  Grant looked different now, too. His mustache had been trimmed to form a goatee-style beard that surrounded his mouth and his head had been shaved bald, the dome shining like polished mahogany in the sunshine that filtered in through the windows of the room. Kane acknowledged the change in his partner’s appearance with a querulous tilt of his head.

 

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