Ava’s Revenge (An Unbounded Novella) (6 page)

Since my recent return from England with Locke and Ritter, I’d been hearing more and more about such illegal events happening, and there was no way I was going to sit by and watch as my friends’ lives were stolen. If I had my way, this particular slaver, Lucias Johansson, was going out of business—permanently.

Just that fast, Betsy curtsied and was gone. I began removing my skirt to prepare for the evening’s adventures. I normally loved the gowns of the south, but my combat training had also taught me how impractical they were. I couldn’t be encumbered by skirts tonight. The clock on the fireplace mantel told me I had plenty of time for my disguise.

Excitement rippled through me—my Unbounded genes kicking in. I was ready for action. I craved it. Though we’d recently had two skirmishes with the Emporium in New York City when their agents had tried to assassinate several key political leaders, for the most part I had been in the background. All Unbounded were gifted at something, but my sensing ability was a rare talent and none of our Renegade allies were willing to risk me. After determining the guilty parties, I’d been relegated to watching and waiting.

Neither of which I did well, even when necessary. Maybe it was something I’d learn in the next hundred years or so.

My eyes landed on the letter I’d been reading earlier, sticking partially out of my reticule. Miles Smithson, Gabriel’s second great-grandson, had grown up to be a good man, and the money I’d spent educating first his father and then him had been well-employed. Miles had become an attorney-at-law in Alabama and hadn’t needed my patronage for years, but I still enjoyed exchanging letters with him. Though I couldn’t tell him the full extent of my life, he shared my views on nearly every political issue—especially those regarding slavery.

Of course he might not have had much chance to pursue other opinions. I’d been his family’s benefactor since Gabriel senior’s death, sending all his posterity to college. Because I was their benefactor, they’d had no choice but to listen to my views, and the more educated they became, the more they understood the world at large and the evils slavery represented.

I’d met Miles only once, when he was a young child. Though I’d promised Gabriel to look after his family, I’d satisfied my duty with letters from afar so that my unchanging appearance wouldn’t be noted. Every now and then I made an appearance as some relative—a granddaughter or the granddaughter’s niece. It was enough to fulfill my promise and to keep them safe from the Emporium, who would use them as collateral against me if they discovered an opportunity. The Emporium would be happy to capture a sensing Unbounded with an extended lifetime of childbearing in front of her.

At that thought, my stomach tensed. I had almost married again a decade ago, but for the fertile Unbounded, marrying always meant bearing children, and I couldn’t. Not then. So I had let him go. I hadn’t regretted my decision. Mostly. One advantage of living two thousand years was having plenty of time to change your mind.

Maybe I’d look Miles up on our way back to Georgia. He would be twenty-nine now, only a few years younger than I was, and he wouldn’t remember my visit so long ago. I’d be interested in meeting a man who wrote an old lady—or someone he thought was an old lady—such witty and intelligent letters. I’d have to pretend to be an even younger relative than the granddaughter’s niece he thought me to be, the woman he’d met as a child. Maybe a cousin this time. I’d have to research what I’d told him.

Humming under my breath, I turned into my bedroom to finish dressing.

LOCKE’S SMILE GREW WIDE
as she took in my appearance. “You make a mighty pretty boy.” She was also dressed as a man, and her blond hair was hidden under a hat like mine, but her disguise made her look in need of a good shave instead of a woman wearing a man’s clothes. Nothing short of a miracle where the very female Locke was concerned.

Dragging my gaze from the mirror over the bureau, I scowled. “That noticeable, huh?”

Beside her, Ritter barked a laugh. “Your skin. It’s not right. Not even close.” He peered closer, a sardonic grin on his face. “Is that face powder mixed with coffee grounds?”

I groaned, though a part of me noted the laugh. Even after seventy years of working together, the laughs didn’t come frequently enough. His anger still consumed him, but he was more careful now. Maybe in another fifty years he might understand that anger never brought our loved ones back. It only made us different from the people they had loved in life. Maybe we even risked becoming someone they wouldn’t care to know.

“I was trying a new process,” I said, “but I hadn’t tested it yet.” I usually did our operations in my dresses—accidentally touching people or pushing my way into their minds to study the sand stream of their thoughts. More often than not, my job was primarily to inform those gifted with other abilities which Emporium agents were Unbounded and which were mortal employees. Only when I was really lucky did I get to use my combat training. This only made me train all the harder because I didn’t want to let anyone down if I did have to fight.

Locke opened her bag and began setting out containers on the bureau. “Well, the smell certainly screams
eau de l’homme.
” She meant aroma of man, but the French words lost something in the translation.

Ritter folded his arms across the very wide expanse of his muscled chest. He looked dark, dangerous, and deadly. I sensed he wasn’t offended by Locke’s comment, his thoughts already far away. A flash of memory filled me: a dark-haired woman in a blue dress, her body severed in three. Ritter’s former fiancée, who had been murdered with his family. Severing the body’s three focal points—the brain, the heart, the reproductive organs—was one of only two ways Unbounded could be killed. That his fiancée wasn’t likely to undergo the Change hadn’t mattered to the Emporium. They had been gunning for Ritter, who, after reaching his thirtieth birthday, had Changed, and for his little sister, who had the possibility of Changing one day.

I wished I could convince Ritter that it wasn’t his fault, but in the end I didn’t think it would matter. His family and the woman he loved were still dead, along with Ritter’s Unbounded ancestor who’d arrived barely in time to save him. It was a guilt he’d have to come to terms with or the two thousand years of his life would be long and lonely.

That loneliness I sometimes still felt in my own heart, and on those days, Locke and Ritter and my work weren’t enough. I still longed for my Hannah, but I no longer blamed myself for her death, even though ultimately, through my youth and inexperience, I was responsible for it.

“So what’s the plan tonight?” Locke asked, as she began fixing my face. She was older than me by more than four centuries but was content to let me lead. She just wanted to fight. Between her and Ritter, who shared her combat ability, I’d have to make sure they didn’t have too much fun. Mortals broke easily, and while we wanted to stop the abuse of our friends, our ultimate goal was to protect mortals from the Emporium—and from themselves.

“We’ll free Frances and her family from the holding pen,” I said. “Then we’ll track down Johansson and have a chat with him.”

“So we aren’t just going to wait until tomorrow to buy Frances’s family? It might be better.” We’d done it before, but the anticipation in Locke’s voice belied her comment. She wanted to put an end to the slaver as much as I did.

“No,” I said. “We’re going to shut Johansson down.”

THE CLUSTER OF BUILDINGS AT
the Forks of the Road was little more than a dirty prison camp. The sprawling market would sell up to five hundred slaves a day, most bought in Virginia and sold here in the Deep South to cotton plantation owners. Importing slaves from outside the US hadn’t been legal for over forty years, but the domestic breeding and slave trade abounded. The profit was huge and even larger when the slaves weren’t really slaves at all like Betsy’s family.

Anger burned in me. We’d helped thousands of former slaves over the years, and our Renegade allies were active in politics, fighting to end slavery altogether, but the greed of humanity—and the Emporium, who had fingers in every large slaving company—meant that it would likely be years before the end came altogether.

One life at a time,
I told myself.

Most of the slavers had marched their so-called property to Natchez like cattle, boating them only part of the way. Here they would be bathed, clothed, and then haggled over like a mule or a wagon. The indignity aside, being torn from their homes and loved ones was something they never got over. I knew because I felt their emotions, and they were every bit as human—perhaps more so—as those who treated them like animals.

Rough wooden buildings partially circled the slave holding pen, the spaces between the buildings enclosed with wood fencing, tin scraps, or whatever was at hand. A large gate led into a courtyard. Inside the buildings, slave men and women and children were kept at night and bargained over during the day. But Betsy had seen Frances and her family in the courtyard with others, constructing makeshift tents or simply collapsing on the ground. That told me the market was unusually full, but the coming summer did mean higher profits, so it wasn’t surprising.

We investigated the entire area from the outside and formulated a plan, noting the positions of the few patrolling guards. In the fading evening light many of the exhausted slaves in the courtyard resembled sacks of flour lumped on the ground. Evening came early in April and could be deathly cold, though tonight it was still relatively mild. I hoped the good weather would hold.

A child’s cry cut through the night. A child who by morning might never see his mother again.

“Wait for the signal,” I told the others. I was going inside to find Frances.

Locke and Ritter nodded, fanning out along the perimeter. I didn’t have to tell them to watch for the patrol. Locke and Ritter both knew their job, and I’d signal with the pistol I carried in my holster under my coat if things got out of control.

Getting inside shouldn’t be a problem. I carried a crate of white cotton shirts that matched those the slavers distributed, and while I was older than most delivery boys, I knew how to get through. I approached the two guards at the gate entrance, my eyes down on the ground.

“What you got there?” With the squeak of a leather boot, one of the guards stepped in front of me. He reeked more of
eau de l’homme
than I’d smelled on any man since Simon had grunted over my body after a full day of work in the fields. His long brown hair looked greasy enough to oil my gun.

“More shirts. They need ’em before morning. Gotta get them Negroes up to snuff.”

“Who they for?” asked his partner. His hair fell into his mean eyes, and a vertical scar ran down the center of his cheek from his eye to his jaw, looking awfully similar to the fake one Locke had fashioned across my cheek. I hoped he didn’t expect me to trade war stories.

“Oh, it’s that tall dude. Should be in the courtyard. Mister, uh . . .” I was gambling a little, but there seemed to be too many slaves in the courtyard to belong only to Johansson, and for now I didn’t want to be remembered in connection with him since I planned to steal Frances and her family away from here. Reaching out, I used my proximity to push into the long-haired guard’s mind. There his thoughts ran in a stream that resembled sand angling from the top right of my vision and vanishing near my lower left, each grain representing a thought, and not always a conscious one. I saw almost immediately what I needed. “Mister Armstead,” I said.

“He ain’t that tall.” This from the first man, who was rather short.

I shrugged, not meeting his eyes. “Everybody’s tall to me.”

He barked a laugh and puffed out his chest. “That’s true enough.”

“You’ll find Armstead’s Negroes that way.” The mean-eyed fellow threw out an arm in the opposite direction I wanted to go. Oh well.

I took a step forward. “Thank you.”

“Wait.” Hard fingers gripped my shoulder. Mean-eyes, of course. “Don’t you got somethin’ for us? You know the rules. It’s after hours.”

I pulled a bottle of gin from under the shirts. “Right. Almost forgot.” They took the bottle, laughing greedily, and didn’t stop me from hurrying away.