CHAPTER XV

It was almost nine in the evening and Reggie’s was closed.

The corporal and Morgan had left Jude to his preparations – It’s all terribly mundane stuff, darlings, I won’t bore you – and to choose a location for their ambush while, later in the day after Morgan showered and ate, they met with Ling for Wrath’s contact information.

Morgan had expected Reggie’s to be open. From what he understood, although cage matches didn’t occur all the time the bar was open on most days to the general public. Reggie, Morgan was beginning to understand, was one greedy sonofabitch and wanted the extra revenue. Guilty by association, so did Ling.

It made no sense, then, for Reggie’s to be dark and silent, as abandoned and miserable as it was the second time Morgan had gone there. No, even more so – there was a strange atmosphere hanging at the top of the stairs that led into the venue, like a raincloud.

And, like a melancholy summer breeze pregnant with the scent of wildly blooming flowers, so too could Morgan taste blood, carried by the dank air from the bar’s ventilation system.

‘Corporal, guns out.’

Shalia obeyed quickly, keen amber eyes scanning for threats. ‘What is it?’

Morgan unholstered his own Austere. ‘I don’t know yet.’

He went in first, Austere to his chest in case someone on the other side snatched it out of his hand. An ingrained precaution; if there had been someone there, his nose and mind would have told him so before his eyes. But it was what they taught officers at the academy, and it was imprinted in his muscle memory. A quick scan of the bar revealed little, the only illumination the standard houselights necessary to keep the place out of darkness. No staff or cleaners; the floors and tables still carried the filth from the previous evening. The scent of blood wasn’t coming from the main area, either, but from somewhere deeper in the venue. With a sinking feeling, Morgan thought he knew where the smell was coming from.

‘Not you.’

Shalia had her gun pointed to the bar with a quick flick of her forearms before Morgan placed his hand over the barrel. He holstered his Austere, slow and careful, and went to the bar, where the same bookkeeper from his first and second visit to Reggie’s sat at the counter nursing a bottle of clear alcohol.

‘Empress, anyone but you,’ she slurred into the rim of the bottle.

Morgan took a seat, leaving one barstool between them. He reached over the counter and grabbed the first bottle of whiskey his fingers touched and three shot glasses from a rack nearby. Shalia stood next to them, arms crossed in unease, as Morgan portioned out the liquor and slid the shot over to the bookkeeper. She stopped it instinctively before it could slide past her.

A shot of fire down the throat, then he asked, ‘You got a name?’

‘Yes.’

He tempted the corporal with the second shot, who shook her head. A shrug, then he downed the amber liquor. ‘Gonna share it?’

‘You bureau?’

‘Does it matter?’

The bookkeeper squeezed her eyes closed, as though fighting a migraine. Her thoughts were too muddled with drink and despair for Morgan to make out anything substantial – as though she were repressing them, even for herself. ‘I guess it doesn’t matter now. Twist. My name. My name around here, I mean. Nothing you can do about it, anyway.’

‘Your name?’ Another shot. Morgan could feel his body repairing itself, casting the alcohol out, but it was the act itself that mattered, as though he could trick his brain into thinking the body was tipsy. He had a gulf of experience as a teenager to draw from – it had to mean something.

‘No, not my fucking name,’ said the woman called Twist. ‘Asshole.’ She lurched to her feet, liquor bottle in hand, and made her way unsteadily to the back of the venue.

Morgan took one more shot than followed, jealous, almost, that his body didn’t sway as he stood. Shalia followed at his side, hand ever hovering over the place where her Austere was concealed.

‘You’re not gonna need that,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘Because –’

Twist shouldered the door open to Ling’s office and gestured them tiredly inside.

‘– Ling’s not gonna put up much of a fight.’

What was left of Ling was propped up on his leather sofa in a facsimile of indolence, arm draped over the cushions, head lolled back, pink sunglasses propped over the nose.

‘Hope it was fucking worth it,’ snapped Twist, taking another swig. She left them alone with the corpse.

Shalia and Morgan remained in the doorway, frozen by the sheer brutality of it. Something had torn out the old man’s throat – something immensely strong and incredibly violent. His rib cage had been ripped open, a wide, dark cavity where his heart had once beat life into tired veins. The skin around both wounds was scorched and blistered. It was difficult to determine what had precisely killed the old man first – the blood loss? The pain? The wound in his neck? Or had Ling lasted until the very last moment, until his chest was forced open and his heart wrenched free?

Shalia whispered, ‘Empress,’ and began to reach for her Glass.

‘Don’t.’

‘Sir?’

Morgan’s eyes passed over the corpse and found Ling’s Glass by his thigh –

Shattered. The screen a mess of glass and circuitry, invisible when the device was whole. It was unlikely Ling had a backup server transmitting its data, since most of his work was illegal and servers were monitored.

A dead end.

Morgan smothered the rage that quickly rolled through him, tightening his hands into fists until the nails drew blood. ‘Fuck!’

Shalia spotted the broken Glass after that. She stared at it impassively, then back at him, then closed her eyes. When she opened them again, her gaze was to the floor. ‘I know how we can get the information out of him.’

Morgan felt the skin on his palms tingle uncomfortably as the skin knitted back together. He struggled to temper his voice into a conversational tone. ‘Yeah?’

‘I-It won’t be for very long. A minute, at most. And I’ll need your help to do it.’

‘Do what?’

She took him gently by the wrist and led him over to the corpse. Morgan blanched, the scent of blood and burnt flesh heavy in his nose. ‘Corporal –’

‘It’s not for long,’ she said more to herself than him as she kneeled by the body, her fingers still around his arm. ‘Can you put up with it for a little bit? A minute, I promise. A minute’s all I need.’

‘To do what – Shalia.’

She paused then. Intense amber gaze focused on the dead man, she said, ‘My – my abilities. You’ve seen them. I can see what goes on under the skin and fix it. It’s a rare gift among my kind. I was just lucky, I suppose. Or cursed, whichever way you look at it.’

Morgan kneeled beside her, curiosity pushing his unease aside. He pushed the thought that she still had his arm in her hand aside, too.

‘I…Empress, I’ve never – I’ve never told anyone this,’ she took a breath, ‘I can force life into the dead.’

Whatever he had been expecting, it wasn’t that. ‘Oh.’

‘It doesn’t work for very long!’ she rushed to explain. ‘The dead use a lot of energy to get moving. It kind of feels like they’re pushing the life back out, like it’s not theirs to take anymore. Living bodies suck it up like a sponge.’

Sceptical, ‘Your “gift”.’

‘Or curse, yes. That’s why I need you – you’re not disgusted with me, are you?’

Morgan peered at the strong olive-green fingers around his wrist, trembling slightly. ‘You’ve seen me boil my own skin off and you ask if I’m disgusted with you.’

‘It isn’t funny, lieutenant.’

‘Never said it was. No, corporal, I’m not disgusted with you. I think you’re –’

Eagerly, ‘Yes?’

‘A diligent worker,’ he said, losing his nerve at the last second.

An almost imperceptible narrowing of the brows. She said, infuriatingly, carefully, neutral, ‘I see.’

‘Among other things.’ Backtracking.

‘Uh huh.’ It was too late.

‘What do you need me for?’ Moving on.

She accepted the change of subject. ‘Well, from the past couple times when I healed you, I learned a few things about your condition.’

‘Condition.’

‘Your body not only sucks up life energy way more than a human – or even fae – body can, but it holds a lot of life in itself. Like a bottomless pit. You wouldn’t think it.’

‘Because all bloodsuckers are walking corpses whose hearts don’t beat?’

‘Well, yes. Vorvintti are the exception, I suppose. If we touch, I can transmit that bottomless well of life energy into the corpse. It might make him stay alive longer.’

‘Will you be okay?’

She chewed her minty lips for a moment. ‘As long as you’re helping me, I should be fine. But you need to be specific in what you ask.’

‘Me?’

‘The faster we do this, the better. We’ll need your persuasiveness.’

For a moment, Morgan wondered if his compulsion worked on the well and truly dead. It had been dulled on Teddy, the necrosite undead from two weeks ago. Would it be effective now? ‘Alright,’ he said, and laced his fingers with the corporal’s.

Her gaze rested on their conjoined fingers for a moment but she didn’t pull away. Then she took Ling’s right hand in her own, flinching at the cold contact. ‘Get ready.’

He felt the moment the magic took effect before there was any visual cue. A draining of something vital and living that started from his fingers and crawled, frostlike, up his arm, leaving behind achingly cold, numb skin. ‘Corporal,’ he warned, when the frost began to reach his shoulder.

‘Just a second.’ The light started at their joined fingers, trailing up and blazing through the corporal’s veins as it drained from Morgan’s. It wasn’t like his Sleight, violent and destructive, but gold and warm, like morning sunlight, and it snaked lazily across Shalia’s chest, into her other hand and seeped into Ling’s pale flesh.

The corpse jerked.

Shalia’s healing light dimmed quickly when it hit Ling’s body; she had to continually feed it more, and Morgan felt the drain in his own body even as it tried to repair itself.

Another shudder. A whistle of air through battered lungs –

Ling opened his eyes.

Bloodshot, they swivelled in sunken sockets until they rested on the corporal and Morgan. Ling gasped and the tattered remains of lung visible through his chest fluttered pathetically. He couldn’t make a sound through that ruined throat.

Morgan swore.

‘Ling?’ prodded Shalia softly, voice heavy with weariness. She squeezed Ling’s hand reassuringly, but that only made him take another panicked breath. ‘Lieutenant, ask him.’

Ling turned his bloody, impassive gaze on him. It seemed it was taking all the energy Shalia had just to keep him conscious; Ling could barely move his eyes.

‘Ling,’ said Morgan, lacing his words with compulsion; the sensation was slow and distant, as though the drain was even affecting this most basic ability. ‘Did Wrath do this to you?’

Am I dead? Ling’s thoughts were surprisingly clear, however the tone filled Morgan with a primal dread as though they were words no living being were meant to hear.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Was it Wrath?’

Yes. That little shit killed me. Disbelief, as though he had just realised this now.

‘Yeah,’ continued Morgan, ‘we need to get in touch with him.’

Ling’s bloody eyes spotted the broken Glass near his thigh. A tremor ran through his lungs as he took another laboured breath. The ledger. Under the couch. Near the front. Look for Calligaris – that’s him. Before –

Another tremor ran through Ling’s body. Shalia cried out sharply as Ling clung to her hand and the light within her drained in earnest. With his other hand still clinging to Shalia’s – he didn’t want to risk breaking their connection and hurting her – Morgan reached over and snatched Ling’s hand in a fierce grip tight enough to crush bone. With wide red eyes, the old man was forced to let go; he went immediately limp, eyes empty as he let out one final breath.

The pair watched the corpse for a moment longer, but there was no further movement – Ling was well and truly dead.

Shalia cleared her throat. Morgan quickly released her hand, which she hugged tight to her chest. ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ she said. ‘That was our one chance –’

‘I got it.’

He reached beneath Ling’s sofa and retrieved a massive tome bound in red leather. Old fashioned and out of place in a world that relied on electronic bookkeeping, it was a miracle Ling had managed to keep the book out of the hands of interested parties – until Morgan, anyway. He gingerly placed the book on the coffee table – once again in its rightful place – and, almost reverently, lifted the heavy cover.

‘His ledger?’ asked Shalia.

‘He said – thought, whatever – that Wrath’s info will be here somewhere. Care to give it a go with me?’

Shalia gave the corpse one more troubled glance. ‘Then we call it in.’

Morgan nodded, already absorbed in the pages. He realised, rather belatedly, that Ling had been lying when he had said he didn’t know Wrath’s real name. There were hundreds of entries dating back around twenty years, and all written in Ling’s sprawling scrawl. But they needn’t go back so far; Wrath had only begun participating in the cage matches around two years ago, Morgan recalled Ling saying. He scrolled through the entries to two years previously and began the laborious process of checking each entry. Shalia sat beside him and scanned the other page after he gave her Wrath’s real name.

When he almost couldn’t sit still a moment longer, Shalia exclaimed, ‘Got it!’

He zeroed in on where her finger indicated the name: ‘Calligaris, 45-23847, “Red Wrath”. To Morgan’s dismay, the entry was dated from seven months ago.

‘Let’s double check,’ he said.

Shalia nodded; she noted the number and they continued through the ledger, but the initial admission was the only one to contain a number, and even the name ‘Calligaris’; the rest had only his stage name.

‘Shit,’ said Morgan as he took off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose.

‘This will work.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Ling wouldn’t keep a ledger like this unless he really needed it,’ she explained. ‘He doesn’t – didn’t – seem like the type of guy that relies on technology for sensitive information. I mean, his livelihood is tied to this book! Just look at all the fighters and numbers in here! And he kept it for what, twenty years? And Wrath – Calligaris – made him a lot of money. That’s a contact he wouldn’t throw away. If he ever lost his Glass – no back-up server, remember? – then he’d at least have this to fall back on.’

‘So, you think,’ said Morgan, catching on, ‘If there is no other information for Wrath here, this has to be like, the number he would call? The one and only?’

‘I’m positive.’

‘Okay.’ He nodded. ‘That’s – okay. We’ll give it a shot.’