“Who’s Brian?”
“He’s my—“Chloe stopped, unsure of how much to reveal. “He’s a friend of mine in the Tenth Blade who saved me, sort of, when I was fighting the Rogue and then when Alyec and I ran away. …”
It was Kim’s turn to stare in incredulousness.
“Your life,” she observed finally, “is very complicated. And extraordinarily dangerous.”
“Tell me about it.” Chloe looked at the blank eyes of the house, its dead windows. “So—you think my mom is dead?”
Kim shook her head. “If she was killed by the Mai, there would be signs. We aren’t perfectly neat killers. Ironically, it may be a good thing that the Order of the Tenth Blade—or whoever—got to her first.”
“Hey, guys, stop with the chatting!” Alyec poked his head into the bushes where they sat. “We have about five minutes before they figure out I led them on a wild-goose chase.”
He put out his hands and helped the two girls up. Chloe was surprised that Kim didn’t object, but the girl still seemed a little stunned by the evidence and their discussion. As they walked back, just three normal-seeming teenagers, Kim filled Alyec in on what she had found.
“So we think she’s been kidnapped by the bastards?” Alyec asked excitedly.
“She’s probably still being held somewhere by them, yes. Assuming it is the Tenth Blade and not someone else, for some different reason,” Kim said. “If it is them, your little diversion with their guards tonight may have bought us some time—it proves to them that Chloe is interested, or someone is interested, in coming back to this house. Which means they have a reason to keep her mom alive.”
“Excellent,” Alyec said, rubbing his hands together. “We can have a real raid! I’ll bet Sergei knows where their HQ is. … This is going to be great! There hasn’t been any real action in years!”
“I hardly think the leader is going to sacrifice a troupe of us and the kizekh to attack the home base of the Order of the Tenth Blade to save a woman it looks like he was meaning to have killed.”
“Maybe we can embarrass him into it,” Alyec posited.
“Pride leaders don’t embarrass that easily, Alyec,” Kim objected, with the faintest gleam in her eye. “I think we should look to volunteers. There are enough who think we’ve been too intimidated by the Order for years and are just itching for some payback.”
“I wonder how many we can get.”
“I wonder how we can avoid too much death and injury.”
As her two friends animatedly discussed and formed plans, Chloe remained silent. In the streetlights, their three shadows climbed the empty street before them, doubled, and then receded into the light of the next to be reborn slowly again behind them. They could have been Amy, Paul, and Chloe for all the detail their gross shades gave them. Just turned away from a party or something, planning great revenge, or discussing their dreams, filled with the sort of energy only walking on the streets at night can give you.
Instead of making war counsel.
“Hey, are you all right?” Alyec asked when they got back. Chloe still hadn’t said a word.
“Yeah. I’m just a little … tired.” She couldn’t even smile weakly at him. “It’s a lot to think about, you know? I thought Sergei was like—”
“Your dad?” Kim prompted quietly.
“And now it looks like he was just going to kill—”
“All the fun, if he catches the three of us skulking around,” Kim interrupted what Chloe was about to say, looking obviously around with her eyes. Chloe understood immediately. No more talking. Not here.
“I should get home, anyway.” Alyec kissed her sweetly on the lips. “I’ll come back tomorrow after school and we’ll talk about this more, okay? What to do about your mom, I mean,” he added pointedly. While Alyec had seemed a little aghast at what Kim had accused Sergei of, he, too, didn’t seem particularly surprised. Between the family enmity and his desire to maybe take over someday, the boy was all gung ho about disobeying the leader—and possibly punishing the older man somehow.
Chloe waved good night to him and Kim and went upstairs.
Hours later she was still awake. The photos were once again spread over her quilt as she sat huddled against the headboard, knees drawn up to her chin. Sometimes Chloe would pick up a picture, like the one of her sister, and hold it in front of her face for a long time, staring at it like she was trying to see the 3-D image in one of those trick posters. She tried to feel the other girl through her face, tried to pick up some sort of impression or thought across the void. Then she would put the picture carefully back down in the exact same place it had been.
Her photo quilt was missing quite a few panes: there should have been pictures of her mom, Amy and Paul, Marisol from the shop. All the people she hadn’t really been related to but who felt like family had been slowly replaced with people whom she was probably related to but knew little about. Kim and Olga. Igor and Valerie. Even Sergei. And what about Brian and Alyec? If things continued the way they seemed to be going, Brian and Alyec might be literally facing off in a few days.
She thought about her mom, who hadn’t known what she was getting into when she’d decided to raise Chloe on her own.
Amy’s walkie-talkie buzzed.
“Hello?” she asked distractedly, still staring at the pictures.
“It’s Brian. Look … I can’t talk much now.” He was panting as though he were running, and Chloe could hear street sounds in the background. “Listen, I was just over at the … Order’s place and found an earring. Does your mom wear big blocky silver things with patterns and black in the etchings…?”
“John Hardy,” Chloe said calmly, both shocked and unsurprised. “Does it kind of look like animal plating? Like of a snake? Or like spheres that have been squished flat, almost into polygons?”
“Bingo. I don’t think anyone in the Order wears anything like them.”
“Can you … can you get her out?”
“I don’t even know exactly where she is, Chloe. And people are becoming suspicious of me over there. If we tell the police, it will amount to nothing—my dad’s very experienced in avoiding that kind of trouble.” There was a long pause. “Chloe, if you are planning some kind of raid, you should know—it’s going to be a bloodbath.”
Chloe didn’t say anything.
“Some people have been waiting years for this kind of direct confrontation. And while the Mai may not carry weapons, we do.”
Chloe felt trapped and uncertain. “Have you told Amy and Paul?”
“Not yet. I’m meeting them in a few minutes to give them back their walkie-talkie—they’re very possessive about it. Maybe the three of us together actually can think of some way of extricating your mom secretly. Anyway, three heads are better than one. And your friend Amy seems pretty experienced at the whole hacking and breaking-and-entering thing.”
She smiled at that. “All right. Thanks. Keep me posted.”
“Will do!”
Chloe hung up and put the picture of the Mai woman back on the bed with the others. Then she flipped open the phone again, dialed Brian’s home number, and waited.
“Hi, this is Brian Rezza—if you’re looking for Whit Rezza, you can reach him on his cell at 415-555-1412. Leave a message. Thanks!”
She hung up. Then she dialed again, carefully remembering the number.
“Hello?” A rich, masculine voice answered the phone.
“Hello, Mr. Rezza. It’s Chloe King.” She paused for a long moment, working up the courage to speak her next sentence. “I want to talk to you about a trade. Me for my mom.”
Twenty-five
Chloe Waited on a rock in the middle of the Presidio, obviously by herself and open to attack.
This was one of the most central, hidden areas in the mazelike complex of abandoned army buildings, a long-empty row of houses that were small and neat and as kept up as a suburban dream—but completely empty. The grass was trimmed on the little shared green the houses a
ll looked out on, and the rock on which Chloe sat had obviously been moved there from somewhere else. Lucasfilm was moving its headquarters or something there at some point; for now, the area at dusk was as weird and perfect and lonesome as a Tim Burton set.
Chloe sang a little song to keep up her spirits, but all she could think of was “New York, New York.” It still had a lot of 9/11 connotations to it, patriotic and stirring—fitting for her current mood in the empty military base. But her voice was reedy and got lost in the wind; she kicked her heels like a little girl and waited for something to happen.
As the breeze changed direction, she caught a scent. Human. A few of them. And something familiar—a warm scent, a comforting skin smell.
“You can come out here,” Chloe called carelessly. “I’m all alone.” She tried not to get too excited, but they really had brought her mother with them. The exchange would happen. And no one would get hurt. Except for maybe herself.
Whit Rezza stepped out of the shadows. He wore a long, flowing raincoat that made it look like he was about to get on a plane for Europe, not negotiate for the release of a captive. Following him was a younger man in khakis and a black leather jacket, propelling her mom forward with a gun to her head.
“Chloe!” her mother said, trying to cut the sob of relief into a direct order. “Get out of here. These people are insane.”
“No can do,” Chloe said cheerfully. “It’s my fault that all of this stuff is happening, and I’m going to fix it.”
“Chloe, leave this instant,” her mother said again, standing up straight and looking over her glasses at her.
“None of this would have happened if you hadn’t adopted me,” Chloe said.
Her mom rolled her eyes and almost stamped her foot. “Chloe, would you shut up? I love you and I’m your mother and I’m telling you to run away while you still can!”
“How much did he tell you?” Chloe demanded. “What did he tell you about me?”
“I told her the truth,” Whit said. “Well, up to what she could handle.”
“He told me that there’s some sort of Russian Mafia connected with your biological family and they’re involved in … I don’t know, bad crimes or something, and that they had lured you in. And that they needed to protect me from them—that they would come after me. And that you had been involved in a murder. Whatever the story, this gentleman has a gun to my head, so I’m guessing that the truth is a bit skewed.”
“You never believed anything we were telling you?” Whit asked, a little surprised.
“Piss off,” Chloe’s mother spat.
Her daughter couldn’t help grinning. “Don’t worry, Mom, it’s for the best.”
“You would do well to listen to your daughter,” Whit suggested mildly. “For a member of the Mai, she is surprisingly logical.”
“Yet you’re still going to kill me,” Chloe said, rolling her eyes.
“You killed a member of our Order.”
“I did not. I tried to save him,” Chloe said, leaping down from the rock, frustrated.
“Yes, that’s what my son keeps saying.”
“That’s because it’s the truth!” Brian stepped out from around a building, throwing stars ready in his hands.
“Brian?” Chloe said, surprised.
“Brian?” his father said, confused.
“Brian,” Richard spat. “I should have known you were going to try to save the cat bitch.”
“Don’t talk to my son that way,” Mr. Rezza snapped, surprising everyone.
“Since when does the Order start carrying guns, you coward?” Brian demanded, coming closer, eyes locked on the other young man’s.
“How did you know I was here?” Chloe asked, relief washing over her. She still had every intention of saving her mom and keeping the bloodshed to a minimum, offering herself up as a sacrifice—but she was also extremely grateful that there suddenly might be options other than her possibly being killed.
“I didn’t. Once I was pretty sure that they had your mother, I kept an eye on my dad and followed him and Dickless here.”
Brian didn’t look like the brooding, complicated man she knew; he strode forward confidently, never taking his eyes off the gun, every inch the hero she wanted him to be. The wind blew his thick dark hair back, and his face was livid with anger.
“I saw her reach her hand down to try to save Alexander when he slipped—with my own two eyes!”
“But why would she do that?” his father asked, sounding genuinely confused and a little exasperated.
“Because she’s a good person, Dad.”
“You saw that when you were at the bridge helping her,” Richard said, jerking his chin in Chloe’s direction. “I’ll bet.”
“Yeah. That’s right,” Brian spat. “Sue me for trying to help an innocent girl you sent a psycho killer after.”
“So the betrayal is complete,” Mr. Rezza said wonderingly. “Of the Order, your forefathers, your own father, your mother—”
“Don’t you dare bring Mom into this,” Brian yelled, aiming one of the shuriken at his dad.
“I cannot—will not—protect you from whatever action the Order takes against you,” his father said levelly, not looking at the weapon targeted on him. “Or random acts of revenge.” He said this to Brian, but his eyes flicked toward Richard.
“Will you listen to yourselves?” Chloe said, suddenly weary. She had watched the whole fight between father and son in silence and finally couldn’t take it anymore. “Kidnapping innocent people … hired assassins … revenge and protection and betrayal and weird secret societies that go from generation to generation. It’s insane! Both you and the Mai. This is America in the third millennium. AD. Leave all that other shit back in Europe and the Dark Ages where it belongs. You think of yourselves as self-appointed protectors of the human race, but you’re nothing but a group of barely restrained vigilantes waging a war on people who never did anything to you!”
“The Mai killed my wife,” Whit began, with great emotion.
“No, they didn’t. Brian told me. She was killed on a raid that you sent her out on.”
Chloe’s mom turned to look at Whit. “You lied even about that? That’s sick!”
“She wouldn’t have been killed if a human hadn’t been attacked and killed by the Mai, forcing us to call the raid—”
“Okay, just stop,” Chloe said, throwing up her hand. “Each side can claim a million random violences done back and forth on them—”
“Since the Slaughter five thousand years ago, when you wiped out an entire country of humans,” Whit interrupted. “And I will not be talked to by a teenage girl, Mai or human, like that. As for ’random violences,’ Miss King …” He stepped forward as he spoke, glaring at her. “While luring you out of hiding was important, we’ve done this to protect your mother—who was as good as dead the moment you took up with Sergei.”
Chloe’s eyes widened.
“Oh yes,” Whit chuckled, “I know Sergei. And his habits … Did you know that male lions, when they take over a pride, often kill all the cubs fathered by other cats?”
That gave Chloe pause.
“We kidnapped your mother for her own sake. To keep her safe.”
“It’s amazing the lies you continue to tell.” Sergei came tapping up the previously empty road, his expensive shoes echoing against the pavement. Behind him were seven deadly looking Mai, all trained kizekh. Unlike a troop of humans, they didn’t march in unison: they prowled and sniffed the wind and kept their unblinking slit eyes on the enemy.
“There are four more hidden behind the house and two over there,” one of them hissed to Sergei. “They reek of machine oil. … They must all have weapons, guns, except for the two behind that bush.”
“I suppose this was inevitable, wasn’t it, Sergei?” Whit said easily, turning from Chloe as if she were dismissed. Richard tightened his grip on Mrs. King.
“Nothing is inevitable,” Sergei replied crisply. He cocked his head, and tw
o of the Mai disappeared into the shadows to take care of whoever they found there. “Since when has the Order stooped to kidnapping innocent women?”
“As soon as you sent out assassins to kill her, you murdering animal!” Brian’s dad began to lose his cool; black anger shone in his eyes.
A gunshot went off, muffled, somewhere among the houses. No one jumped except for Chloe. There was a thump and a growl somewhere else—like they were in the middle of a horror movie, with horrible things happening all around them in the dark.
“Um, was this little secret meeting of mine secret to anyone?” Chloe asked, partly of the world, partly of Brian. Mostly it was a failing attempt to lighten the situation. She had tried to fix everything herself and avoid a fight—and what she’d done was bring the opposing parties together, armed, at an out-of-the-way place where no one would have any idea what was going on.
Young, feminine screaming—and a not-so-feminine male shriek—came from the bushes.
“Wait! We’re not sworders—uh, Bladers—don’t hurt us!”
“Amy?” Chloe said, recognizing the confused voice. Two of the kizekh slunk into the open, one with an iron grip around Amy and Paul.
“They’re with me,” Kim said, stepping out of the darkness. Alyec was next to her, cursing in Russian and wiping blood off his arm.
“How did you … ?” Chloe looked at them in wonderment. Everyone really was here.
“I am the best tracker in the Pride,” Kim said, drawing herself up straight.
“And the walkie-talkie I gave you?” Amy said, stepping carefully away from the scary-looking soldier with his mouth open and canines bared. “It’s got GPS.”
“We knew where you were every minute. We tracked you on it.” Paul was camo-chic, in army pants and a tight-fitting camouflage windbreaker.
Chloe had a thousand questions: How had they all gotten to know each other? How had they gotten together? How had Amy and Paul reacted to Kim? How were Kim and Alyec getting along?
But most of all, she felt like sobbing in relief. All of her closest friends had come to help her out. To save her.