Dead of Night (Ghosts & Magic #1) (10 page)

Mickey was still where I had left him. I only had a few hours left, and I really wanted to get into the house. My aim was to make sure the stone was where Black's ops had said it was, and that it was a real thing, whether Arlen knew anything about it or not. It wouldn't mean it wasn't a trap, but I'd already seen through my rodent accomplice's eyes that the guards were following the path in the kinetics.
 

Mickey ran along the far wall, near the limits of my reach. I was ready to give up when I spotted a small vent just above the base of the grass. I moved him inside and skittered down a dryer line, hopeful that there was some way out of it, and that nobody picked that moment to wash some clothes. A tiny crack in the hose was all I needed, and I pulled my little buddy out and down the rest of the tube, and then on to the floor.
 

I was in the basement. The room was large and clean, with a couple of industrial washers, a huge laundry bin, and a servant who was humming while she put some cleaning agents back on a shelf. She didn't see Mickey, and I got him under the bottom of the bin before she turned around and headed away. I raced along behind her, following her feet as she climbed the staircase back to the main floor. I slipped through just ahead of the slamming door, ducking under a decorative table before I could be spotted.

I saw the guards walking the halls. They were all human, wearing sharp dark suits and carrying light assault rifles. They could have been users, but it was impossible to know without intel or witness. I was going to assume they were, because it would be better for my health.

In my mind, I matched them to the kinetics. It was a tricky proposition since I had to adjust for the time differentials, but despite the poor judgement I had shown in taking the job, I was good at doing the math. If the pattern was off, it wasn't off by much.

Since I knew how they were going to move, it was easy to avoid them. I darted from one piece of furniture to another, and then shoved myself under the corner of a runner that ran the length of the hallway. A young girl dashed by; eight or nine, in jeans and a sweater, headphones on her ears.
 

I didn't know Red had a kid. It was an unexpected wrinkle. How could I be sure she'd be out of harm's way? She was young enough she should be in bed by then, and if all went according to plan, nobody would know I had been there until I was gone. I brought Mickey out from under the rug and kept going, through the hallway until I got to the library.
 

The door was closed, but there was just enough space underneath for me to squeeze my rat through. Even from there I could see the stone, resting on a pedestal in the center of the room, with a large track light shining down on it, displaying it with pride. It was real, and it was there. In fact, other than the little girl, everything was just as it should have been.

Mission accomplished.

I kept Mickey moving into the room, in search of a place to leave his corpse where he wouldn't be noticed for a few hours. The whole room was lined with bookshelves, but they were floor to ceiling, with no space under or between. I would need to leave him in with the books.

It wasn't a problem. Mickey climbed up over the top of one, and then I forced him down into the rear, squished behind a brick sized novel with a leather binding. I brought myself back from the sortie, opened my eyes, and checked my watch. I had two hours left to wait.

This was going to be a piece of cake.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Like taking candy.

I had this ritual before I started a run. I'd been doing it since my first time leading a team in the operating room, and had continued it into my new profession, back when Danelle was still dragging me along and showing me the ropes. Those first few had been true cake work - a couple of burglaries, a couple of package drops. In and out, no questions asked. Dannie had handled all the details. All I had to do was show up and not get us caught.

I bent from the waist, stretching out my limbs. I did a few jumping jacks. I did some neck stretches. I cracked every knuckle on my fingers. I yodeled the whole time, though it probably couldn't be called yodeling. Caterwauling, maybe? I knew it looked ridiculous from the outside, because Dannie had said as much during the fit of laughter that usually traced my progress, and I had gotten the same reaction from the O.R. nurses. She said I could be a Youtube star if I were to upload a video of the calisthenics. I could imagine Molly seeing her dead father making a jackass out of himself on the internet. Talk about awkward.

Anyway, I kept the yodeling as little more than a whisper, and tried to minimize the movements as much as I could, but I had to go through the process. It was to loosen up my body, and my mind. It was to calm my nerves and get 'in the zone' as best I could. My first move was to hop a ten foot stone wall, without being caught by the security cameras. If that had been the only move, it would have been nerve-wracking enough.
 

I still needed to get into the house and past the guards.
 

The armed guards.

I had my gun in a shoulder holster, hidden by the trench. I took it out and hit a small switch on the bottom of the grip, and then held it up to my ear. A soft hum came from the barrel. I checked my watch. Ten thirty and thirty six seconds. I opened my timer app and watched the time vanish in front of me. At exactly ten thirty-one, I hit the 'start' button, turned off the backlight, and eased my way to the corner of the tree.
 

I watched the cameras swivel. At the moment of intersection, I aimed the gun and pulled the trigger.

There were no bullets. There was no sound. The gun wasn't a gun at all. It fired a micro sized electromagnetic pulse. The two cameras had just been burnt out and gone offline. I expected the disruption would be noticed right away, it was part of my plan, and I would be over and gone by then.

I sprinted from the tree to the wall, gaining speed until I planted my foot and pushed up, reaching forward with one hand for balance, and up with the other for height. I gained a few feet, planted my other foot, and gained a couple more. It was enough to get my hand on the lip of the wall, and I pulled myself up without difficulty. Even then, I didn't slow. I took two steps and jumped forward off the wall, dropping down in a break-fall roll and getting back on my feet, coming up running.

10:31:26. A quick glance in both directions showed me I had made it past step one. I came to a stop against the side of the house. Twelve seconds to get across the yard. I had made it in ten.

Two guards turned the corner at either end of the house, making their way across the grass. I dropped to my stomach behind the bushes and pulled myself along the ground towards the rear. I had two and a half minutes to get to the back of the house. It wasn't a long time, but it felt like forever.

One guard helped another onto the top of the wall. I risked a look back to see him bent over, checking the cameras. My heart was racing, my breath coming heavy. I clenched my teeth to keep from coughing, and kept putting hand over hand. I spent way too much time slithering like a snake.

10:34:58. I reached the rear of the house. The back opened up to a stone patio abutting an olympic-sized pool. Outdoor furniture lined the patio in front of a massive barbecue grill. The guard was standing right in front of the sliding glass doors, his hand to his ear, listening to the report from the others on the wall.

Getting over that wall had been the hardest part. This was the second hardest. There was no cover here. Once I turned the corner, I was going to be an easy target.
 

I reached into my pocket and took hold of the dice. I rolled them between my fingers. Every job had a bit of chance with it. Every job required some bit of luck. I pulled the dice up to my mouth and breathed onto them. "Guard at the door," I whispered, exhaling some of my power, and some of my decay.

They grew warm in my grip, a dark energy leaking out of my fist. I ducked down, and tossed them at the patio.

The echoes of the dice rolling across the stone caught the guard's attention. He didn't know what they were. Almost nobody knew what they were. He watched them skip and turn, in a strange rotation that didn't follow any known laws of physics. He impressed me then, taking his eyes off them and looking for the person who had sent them on their journey. He saw me a second later, and his rifle went to his hip.
 

The dice had already stopped moving. The magic hit him, and the rifle dropped from his hand. Blood began to pour from his eyes, his nose, his ears, his mouth... anywhere there was an exit point. I didn't need to see the symbols, I knew what they were by the reaction. Blood and Snake. My luck was still good. He toppled over without a sound.

10:35:47. They would find him when they came back around. I needed to get into the library and grab the stone, and make my way out the front before that happened. I ran over, picked up my dice, and checked the slider. It was unlocked, and I slipped inside.

I was in a quaint living area that was too modern for the more classic style of the mansion itself. There was a hallway at the rear, that was split by a second. I ducked behind the couch as a guard walked across my view, glancing over to the back. My dead guard should have been walked left to right, while one of the pair at the cameras crossed around the rear. I had broken that pattern, but the rest of it had continued, or so the guy in the hallway thought.
 

10:36:14. I got up off the floor and walked down the corridor as silently as I could. I ducked into a bathroom when the guard passed by again, and then turned right behind his back. A quick dash forward brought me to another door. I pushed it open and ducked into a bedroom that had been converted to a studio. An easel sat in the center, holding a half-painted portrait of a nude male model. A draped table was in front of the easel, waiting for its muscular and apparently well-endowed partner to return.

10:37.04. I heard the footsteps of the guard move past once, and then back again. Just as he crossed my hiding spot, I twisted the door open and put my arm around his neck, cutting off his air and pulling him backwards into the studio. He struggled against the grip, but I had done this often enough to resist despite his greater physical strength. I kept tugging him backwards, getting his whole body in. By the time I laid him on the floor, he was out cold.

10:37:49. I sprinted down the hallway and turned right, going down another short hall and coming up against the door to the library. I turned the handle. Locked. Damn.

I hadn't expected that. I pulled out my hairpin and stuck it in the lock, counting off the seconds in my head. My performance at the gas station had been shit. I needed to do a lot better. I closed my eyes and manipulated the pin. Five... four... I got it unlocked. Three... two... I pushed it open just enough. One... I gently eased it closed. I didn't make it all the way, but it wouldn't be obvious from a distance.

"Impressive."

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Lady in red.

"Turn around, let me see your face."
 

I couldn't see who was talking. She was female, that much was obvious. Older, and used to giving commands. I lifted myself to a stand and slowly rotated. The pedestal sat in the center of the room. The woman was standing next to it.
 

"I was wondering where this had come from." She was holding Mickey, dangling him by the tail. "It was my understanding that the Houses had an agreement regarding necromancers."

I had been right about older. Mid-fifties, maybe. Asian. She was slender, with shoulder length black hair lined with silver. She was wearing a shiny red suit with a white blouse underneath. A huge ruby hung from a gold chain around her neck.
 

I ran a pale gray hand along my hairless scalp. "What gave it away?"

"You came to take this?" She ran her hand along the top of the stone.
 

"Guilty. You aren't supposed to be in here."

She tossed my rat to me. I caught it instinctively. "Neither are you, but you're correct. I'm supposed to be in China right now."
 

She wasn't afraid of me, that much was obvious. Her clothes, her age, the massive ruby... They all gave me a solid idea of who I was dealing with.
 

Mrs. Red.

I had been scared the second she asked me to turn around. I was beyond terrified now. I was caught, like Mickey had been. She didn't need to call the guards to dispose of me, unless she didn't want to dirty her own hands. Either way, I was going to die.
 

I fought against my nerves, working hard to find my breath. I wasn't sure what else to do, so I tried to stall. "So why are you here?"

She rubbed the stone absently. I had heard Mrs. Red was a spitfire, but the woman in front of me looked more like a mourning grandmother, a victim. A tear ran from her eye.

"They told me Katherine was sick. They said she had the Rot. When I landed, they said they couldn't wait, that the Rot had taken over."

For years we'd been fascinated with the concept of zombies. Then the reversal happened, and with it came the Rot. It was the disease that started the whole walking dead mythos, and it was just like the movies. A fever, chills, death. Then your body started moving again, in time to a new drummer, motivated only by a desire to eat living tissue.

Unlike the movies, it wasn't that easy to get. Saliva to an open wound from someone or something with the virus would do it, but it was easy to avoid getting bit by a zombie. They didn't move very fast. There had been no hordes of walking dead, or world-breaking apocalypses; just a random stray victim from time to time, who could maybe take one or two others with them before they found themselves with a bullet, arrow, knife, or other blunt instrument lodged in their brains.
 

Whoever Katherine was, I couldn't imagine how she had gotten it here. I knew some animals could carry it like rabies, even if they never got symptoms. Maybe she had been bitten by an infected squirrel?