Authors: Dakota Banks
M
aliha’s scale was in motion.
She carried on her body a depiction of a balance patterned after the scales of justice, carved into her flesh by the fiery claw of her demon Rabishu. One pan of the scale held tiny images representing people she’d killed while serving as his assassin. The other pan held images of people whose lives she’d saved since she defied the demon and went rogue. The pans were seriously out of balance. Maliha was a long way from saving as many people as she’d killed, which was the only way she could reclaim her soul from Rabishu.
As she sat transfixed by pain on the sidewalk, small figures left the “lives taken” pan and walked across her belly, leaving a trail of small footprints burned across her belly, like a splash of acid. The miniatures climbed into the “lives saved” pan, and the scale swung through a small arc on her skin to reach a new balance point. The reward for stopping Xietai’s slavery operation had been generous.
Then came the aging. Whenever her scale rebalanced, she aged a little. The amount wasn’t always in proportion to lives saved, so she never knew what to expect. It was Anu, the main Sumerian god, pulling the string that tugged her through time. She judged by the strength of the pull that she’d aged only a month, if that.
She gathered her legs under her and stood, now aware of the pain of her back, wounded by Xietai and freshly scraped by bricks. If any challenge presented itself on her way home, she wouldn’t be able to give a full-force response. There was no hurry to leave the area. It wasn’t likely that Xietai’s body on the defunct theater roof would be discovered until it began decomposing. Maliha moved into an alley and found that she had company, a homeless man snoring in a makeshift tent. Maliha didn’t cringe from the homeless, as some did, because she’d been in similar situations herself during her more than three centuries of life. She was no stranger to living alone or living off the land when it served her purpose.
Easing her body down to the ground at the entrance to his tent, she decided that she’d stay a few hours to recuperate. Scooting backward, she ended up just inside the filthy, torn fabric that served as the tent’s flaps. The odor assaulted her, the unwashed man, the alcohol, the tent that could have been a corpse winding, and the smell of urine. She tugged one of his blankets over to cover her cold legs and feet.
Not too bad. Smells better than a demon, anyway. A lot better.
She synchronized her breathing to the old man’s snoring first, then gradually slowed it and entered a healing meditation she learned from Master Liu. Giving her body the task of healing her back, she let her mind walk the loops of the glowing, golden infinity symbol she used as a meditation aid. As her mind filled with the radiant glow, what healing ability she had left from the time she’d been Ageless went to work, stopping the bleeding on her back and starting to knit together the edges of jagged tears in her skin.
Coming out of the trance later, she stood and stretched. Her back made it clear to her that healing was nowhere near complete, but she could start back to her hotel with confidence without needing a cab. There was a bottle of water in the makeshift tent, and after she assured herself that the contents weren’t anything else questionable, she cleaned the blood from her limbs and face as best she could. The tent didn’t have a closet full of clothes, but she managed to find a ripe, rumpled T-shirt that she pulled on.
She felt like a reverse Robin Hood, taking from the poor and giving to the rich, but made plans to return the next night. She hoped that he’d still be here, so that she could bring blankets, clothing, and some money. He’d slept through her entire intrusion.
It was an overcast morning with a slight drizzle that washed away most of the thin ice coating. She pushed away the chill in her bare feet and took off at a moderate walk that worked up to a jog. She couldn’t wait to get back to her hotel for a hot shower and a change of clothes. She didn’t have a room key or identification with her, and she smelled like a wet dog.
No problem.
But before cleaning and refreshing herself, she would see that her knives were spotless. Master Liu taught that comfort never came before showing respect to the weapons that kept her alive.
M
aliha Crayne had originally gone to New York City for a happy event. Her new car, a black Zonda F, had been at a customizing shop. The previous car, a McLaren F1, had given its all in a crash. The shop had finished installing her custom-designed safety package of cockpit nets and expandable foam, plus other items that she’d found useful in the past.
The Zonda F coupe was made by the Italian manufacturer Pagani. It was light and fast, and looked like a black panther ready to spring. Maliha fell in love with it. Amaro, another friend of hers, had negotiated the purchase, a thrill for him, but this was the first time Maliha had seen the car.
It was all hers to drive home to Chicago. The drive wasn’t as fun as it was supposed to be, especially with her back wound. She had to concentrate on her driving and keep the pain suppressed as well as she could.
She pulled up in front of the Harbor Point Towers in Chicago, her lakefront home. The past few weeks of bodily injuries, guilt, and deaths on her recent case plus her pursuit of Xietai had taken their toll. She needed time to work on those things, physically and emotionally. She hadn’t alerted her friends to the exact time of her arrival, even her more-than-friend Jake Stackman, an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Not that she wasn’t thinking of him, fantasizing about another night in his arms.
Jake, her Ageless lover, had already told her the plans he had to cheer her up. While the plans sounded enticing, they didn’t include any rest for her, unless she counted short naps between periods of lovemaking. Maliha’s girlfriend Randy Baxter had a habit of assigning nicknames to her lovers based on anatomical features or talents in bed. Getting into the spirit of it, Maliha had dubbed Jake “Repeater.”
I’ll be ready for him in two or three days.
She had a delicious thought.
In the meantime, he can bring me takeout dinners. I’ll meet him at the door in next to nothing and just take the food.
She smiled for the first time that day, thinking about how her idea might play out. While she and Jake had some problems in their relationship, they were great in bed. But Jake had a few years mysteriously missing in his past. That left Maliha with the impression that he’d done something bad—so bad he couldn’t tell her about it because it would make it impossible for her to love him.
What if it was so terrible that we couldn’t stay together?
The thought of having a life with him was almost too much to hope for, but in the deep recesses of her heart, she knew that was what she wanted most.
She felt a phantom child growing and kicking inside her, as her daughter Constanta had done until she was stillborn in a dark, dirty jail cell, a small and helpless casualty of colonial injustice. Maliha put a protective hand over her flat abdomen to cradle the life within, but the illusion of pregnancy faded. Decades, then centuries, of living since then came rushing at her. She saw the split-second decision she’d made to become Rabishu’s assassin and felt the new Ageless power rushing through her blood after her first kill. Her training with Master Liu turned her into the perfect stealth killer, with a heart armored against feeling the human suffering she inflicted. Years rolled by and the killings became a blur, until she felt she was turning into an evil creature like Rabishu, sprouting claws and carrying the stench of death. Finally there was the one assignment that repelled her so much that she couldn’t carry it out. Defying her demon had been at once the most terrifying and the most liberating thing she had ever done.
The attentive doorman called for a porter and a valet. The porter unloaded Maliha’s three small bags on the curb, heading first for the rear of the car until she waved him to the front. One carry-on bag, a garment bag, and a grungy, beaten-up hard-sided case that weighed about a hundred pounds. It was her weapons bag. She’d gone to New York by commercial airliner, so the weapons she took had to be in checked luggage. She used to carry plastic knives with her on the plane, but with full body scans in some airports, there was no reason to take the risk since she didn’t really need them.
The doorman was unfamiliar, even though it was Arnie Henshaw’s shift. Maliha had a long-term relationship with Arnie. He didn’t know all the details of her life, but he understood that she fought crime. He helped her in the subtle way that a doorman could, such as warning her when someone was waiting for her. Arnie also knew about the two homes she had in this building. One, on the thirty-ninth floor, was her public home where she received guests. The other, on the forty-eighth floor, was her private haven.
The new man took care of the luggage efficiently and it was all going to the thirty-ninth floor, so there was no problem.
She turned to the valet, who couldn’t keep a big grin off his face at the prospect of parking her car.
“It’s the private garage on Level One.”
“I know, Ms. Winters. Didn’t you used to have a McLaren? I’ll take good care . . .”
“Yes. No drooling on the leather.” She tossed him the key and turned her attention back to the doorman. “Is Arnie taking a day off today?”
The doorman’s face got serious. “You haven’t heard, then?”
She shook her head.
“Arnie disappeared a couple of weeks ago. No one’s heard from him since.”
Surely he didn’t quit. He wasn’t old enough to retire.
“I’m sorry to hear that. We were friends.”
“I think he got tired of the job and took off for some place warmer. There’s a shitload of people, excuse me, who’d love to live the fantasy.”
“You don’t have to excuse yourself. My ears aren’t tender.”
He leaned in close and whispered, “Seems as though the police are looking into foul play, though.”
“Really? You’ll have to let me know if they turn anything up.”
“Will do, ma’am.” He put out his hand to shake hers. “Sounds like we’ll get along just fine. I’m Chester Rafferty, the new day-shift manager. Call me Chick. Anything else I can do for you right now?”
“No, thank you, Chick. Please call me—”
“Marsha. You’re Marsha Winters, right? The author?”
Maliha nodded. “I’ll just go upstairs.”
“You need anything, you let me know,” he called after her. “Including anything . . . medicinal.”
Maliha realized she’d been walking a little hunched over, favoring her back.
I look like I could use a stiff painkiller.
She straightened and turned around before she got to the elevators. “No thanks, and I should mention that my boyfriend’s—”
“A DEA agent.”
“How did you know that?”
“Just building gossip. I seem to be kind of a magnet for it.” He gave her a lustrous smile, and then rounded his thumb and forefinger into an “OK” sign.
She punched the elevator’s
UP
button.
“Oh, wait up, Marsha.”
Maliha turned back and headed for the doorman’s station.
“There’s a package for you. Came today. Just a minute.” Chick rummaged through the desk and came up with box about a foot square and four inches high.
On the way up in the elevator, carrying the box, she wondered if Arnie had taken off for somewhere with a tropical breeze. Maliha had tipped Arnie generously over the years for his cooperation and silence about her activities, and given him investment advice.
He’d be a millionaire by now. No reason he couldn’t live his dreams. I’m surprised he didn’t say good-bye, though. Maybe he sent me a postcard from Bora Bora.
She remembered the considerate way Arnie had kept her from meeting Jake with blood on her face, early in their relationship when Jake didn’t know much about her.
“There’s a DEA agent in the lobby waiting for you, Ms. Winters. I told him you weren’t home and I couldn’t buzz him in, but this guy doesn’t take no for an answer. I think he’s prepared to sit in the lobby for days. He had a sandwich delivered from Dave’s Deli and read the
Tribune.”
“You’d think he’d have better things to do with the government’s time. Thanks for your efforts, Mr. Henshaw.”
Arnie stretched his neck to look around her at the lone figure sitting in the lobby and shook his head. “You want to go up the back way?”
He meant the loading dock and a service elevator.
“No, I’ll take care of it. I wouldn’t want him to grow roots in there.” She turned to walk inside.
“Wait. Ms. Winters, you’ve got a little spot of . . . er, red paint under your right ear.”
She held still while he dampened a blindingly white handkerchief from a bottle of water and dabbed at her face. The handkerchief came away streaked with red.
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of the, er, paint rag.” He folded the handkerchief and tucked it in a compartment of his desk.