Nine Lives of Chloe King

  “We had tried tracking you down for a while,” Sergei said, turning back to Chloe. “Finally we assumed you died in the violence between the Georgians and the Abkhazians. Imagine my surprise when you turned up here, right under my nose!”

  “You two are working together to kill everyone who might be a real Pride Leader?”

  “I really don’t like that phrase,” Sergei said with a pinched look. The Rogue just smiled. “But yes. For this one thing our purposes crossed paths—the Tenth Blade doesn’t want any mystic, powerful leaders of the Mai who could unite them and lead them to victory—or whatever it is they think you’re going to do—and I rather enjoy my current position.”

  “You’re working with a man who wants to wipe us out,” Chloe said, the thing in her stomach becoming rage as her confusion dissipated. “With someone who has killed Mai! If you really love them so much, how can you murder them—us? You’ve told me how few there are left!” Chloe said desperately, trying to understand.

  “Strange bedfellows, I know,” Sergei said, nodding. “The loss of you two girls is a shame genetically, but it’s a small sacrifice to prevent complete chaos in the Pride—which was working just fine before you came along, Miss King.”

  Chloe opened her mouth but didn’t know what to say. The Rogue was still, but who knew how long it was going to be before he attacked? Her time was running out.

  “Did you send people to kill my mother?” she finally asked quietly.

  “Which one?”

  Chloe’s eyes narrowed. “My adoptive one.” But now that she thought about it…

  “Yes,” Sergei answered promptly. “But that was before we all found out you were ’the One.’ You were another Mai we welcomed into the fold, only you didn’t seem to be ready yet to leave your past behind. We were just hurrying that process up a little.”

  “You would have had to kill more than my mom to get me into your fold completely,” Chloe said hotly. “You would have had to kill Paul and Amy and Brian. …”

  “I do what needs to be done,” Sergei said, shrugging again. “Don’t flatter yourself in thinking you were the first Mai to be raised by humans. There are six billion of them and only a thousand of us, Chloe. They don’t need you. We do. Well,” he added apologetically, “not you, obviously, but in general.”

  The Rogue finally seemed to be tensing a little, bored with the conversation.

  “Did you even look for my dad at all?” But she already knew the answer.

  Sergei put the big set of keys back in his pocket, getting ready to go. “I don’t know. Olga might have since I mentioned it in front of her. I really will miss our time together,” he said with a sigh. “In any other circumstances, I would be proud to be your father.”

  “I’m tired of listening to this,” the Rogue finally growled. “Prepare to die, Mai whore.” He started to cross his arms over his chest, reaching under each sleeve for a blade.

  “Don’t call her that,” Sergei snapped, annoyed. “Just do your job.”

  “I’m tired of you too, Demon,” the Rogue said tonelessly, and neatly whipped a shuriken at him.

  Before Chloe could react, the star ended its flight buried in Sergei’s throat. It stuck beneath his neat, short beard, neat, long, dark red ribbons streaming from it.

  “You—,” Sergei gurgled, ripping the star out of his throat. His claws came out and he launched himself at the Rogue.

  Alexander leapt easily out of the way, though not so far as to avoid one of Sergei’s fat, square paws raking five bloody troughs in his arm. He spun around and buried a long knife into Sergei’s back, causing him to let out something between a groan and a scream that was completely inhuman.

  “You’re Mai, too, Sergei Shaddar,” the Rogue whispered as he held Sergei to drive the blade farther in. “You mean nothing to me.”

  Sergei let out a last bubbling groan and died.

  Thirteen

  Chloe gaped at the scene in front of her. She felt disconnected, like it was all happening on TV. There was just too much to take in.

  Sergei and the Rogue had been working together. And now the relationship seems to be, uh, over. Sergei had helped kill her sister and lead Chloe to this theater to have the Rogue kill her, too.

  Who was the better person? The assassin or the traitor to his race?

  Hey, Chloe. RUN.

  She shook herself out of her thoughts just as Alexander let Sergei’s body drop to the floor with an ungraceful thump. And unlike Chloe, Sergei showed no signs of returning to life anytime soon.

  “Well, what do you know,” the Rogue said with little surprise, “he really wasn’t the true Pride Leader.”

  The assassin standing before her probably knew way more about the Mai than she did, Chloe realized.

  “Even for a Mai, he was traitorous filth,” the Rogue continued, pulling out his blade and wiping it off. Then he turned to face her. “You, on the other hand …”

  Should she stay and fight or run? The part of Chloe that had snapped her out of her thoughts before still urged the whole fleeing thing, but somehow she didn’t think that would be a wise move. No exposing the back—especially to someone who has range weapons.

  “Me, on the other hand …?” she prompted, tensing, preparing herself to go into fight mode, sidestepping a few feet to the left.

  “You would make a truly great leader; your false gods chose well. Too bad you’re not human.” He gave her a little bow. “Which is why,” he added apologetically, “I really have to do this.”

  “You don’t really have to do anything,” Chloe pointed out. She moved so her back was to the theater door, Sergei’s head pointing at her feet. “I’ve never done anything to hurt anyone—for chrissake, I even tried to save you from falling.”

  “I know.” For just a moment the Rogue’s cool expression broke and he looked puzzled. Then the moment was over and he gave her a grim smile, drawing out twin blades. One was still stained with Sergei’s blood. “Probably comes from being raised by humans. It would be an interesting experiment—if you weren’t the Chosen One, I mean—to see how you’d turn out. To see which side you’d choose.”

  “There. Are. No. Sides.” Chloe leapt just as he threw one of his long daggers at her; she went straight up and it passed beneath her to bury itself in the velvet-covered wall behind.

  “There is good and evil, us and you,” the Rogue said, circling to where she was, keeping his eyes locked on her.

  “No, there is sane and fucking nuts,” Chloe corrected. “Or in your case, fucking nuts and really fucking nuts.”

  At some point he had pulled out a second knife to replace the one he had thrown; Chloe was dismayed to realize she hadn’t noticed it. He had also managed to force her away from the doors so they were behind her—she was now at the worst-possible angle to escape.

  “And what about Brian?” she pushed, continuing clockwise around Sergei’s body. His head pointed at the doors. “Was it ’good’ what the Order did to him?”

  The Rogue frowned. “What Richard did was inexcusable, treating a human and one of our own like that. There would have been other ways to deal with Whitney’s son.

  His hands moved so fast they blurred and suddenly there were daggers spinning toward her.

  Chloe hissed and threw herself up into the air and backward.

  Her claws extended and she grasped the back of a seat, knowing it would be there. Her legs came down and her foot claws came out, grabbing a seat in the next row. Suddenly she was terrified and powerful, hunted but in control.

  She knelt on the narrow seat back, barely using her claw tips to balance.

  “Ah, the animal comes out. This makes it easier,” Alexander said, grinning. He threw a screaming silver dagger at her. He, too, was as he should be: the hunter.

  Chloe turned and sprang from seat back to seat back, down to the front of the theater.

  Keep it under control, she told herself. But it felt so good to be moving.

  “Your sister was hard to k
ill,” the Rogue taunted, running down the aisle to keep up with her.

  My sister.

  By the time Chloe found out she even had one, the girl was already dead. Thanks to Sergei. And the Rogue.

  Rage exploded in her heart, burning her limbs. She took a last wild leap from the first row to the proscenium, twisting in the air so she landed facing the Rogue. Now she had higher ground: a distinct advantage.

  “One last question,” she growled. “Was it you following me all this time?”

  “Unless there was someone else, yes,” he said, jumping from the floor to the first row of seats. He ran along their backs as nimbly as a Mai. “But you’re almost always surrounded by humans. We had to get you alone.”

  The Rogue launched himself forward, vaulting up onto the stage and landing neatly in a crouch.

  Chloe threw herself at him before he was completely down, growling. It took all of her effort to resist instinct, which told her to just get him in the chest or the stomach, disemboweling him the way a cat would. But she could see that under his neoprene he had Kevlar armor rippling over his arms and chest.

  She reached out with her claws, aiming for his throat, right above his matte black armor, his only exposed and vulnerable place.

  The Rogue brought his arms together and up, holding a dagger diagonally down against his wrist to protect his throat. Her left claws clanged against metal, sending shivers up her arm like a nail bent backward. But her right claws got something; as she pushed herself off him there was blood, but she couldn’t tell if it was on his hand or ear. The Rogue didn’t scream; he just sucked in a choking lungful of air.

  She flipped backward twice and landed fifteen feet away. Her hands came up, protecting her own throat, and she waited for him to react. If she turned her back and tried to run, even for a second, Chloe knew she’d have a dagger between her vertebrae.

  This theater could easily become her mausoleum.

  And she would wake up with him leaning over her, waiting, and he would take his little silver dagger and drag it across her throat. Seven times. Until she didn’t wake up again.

  Chloe panicked for a moment, filled with memories that weren’t hers. A girl, running through the dark. A city at night. An alley. The dream she had—a tattoo on an arm. Sodalitas Gladii Decimi. Her sister.

  The Rogue stood up, a little shakily, but he already had a shuriken in the hand that didn’t have the dagger.

  She had lost her concentration.

  “FREEZE!”

  Both of them turned.

  The doors of the theater crashed open and a policeman stood there, his .45 drawn and aimed. It was hard to tell which one of them it was aimed at. It didn’t matter; another appeared by his side and also clicked her safety off. A third came forward, saw the body, and ran forward to kneel by him.

  “Both of you. PUT YOUR WEAPONS DOWN,” the first policeman shouted.

  For a split second Chloe and the Rogue shared a moment, looking at each other. Then at the same time—without a signal—they both began running in opposite directions. Chloe made for the emergency exit on the right side of the screen.

  “I SAID FREEZE!” the policeman bellowed again.

  She leapt forward off the stage, putting all of her strength into her arms and crouching into a cannonball. She crashed into the door, forcing it open as the first shot went off. It was loud. Louder than she could have believed from TV.

  Chloe barreled through the door and rolled onto the pavement outside, just ducking and pulling her legs in before it swung hard shut behind her. Her knuckles were bloody and raw from protecting the top of her head.

  She took off, running and leaping and jumping from hydrant to awning to fire escape to roof, grabbing and swinging until she was back on the skyline, where she could travel quickly and safely, where she belonged.

  Fourteen

  What now?

  Chloe kept running but forced herself to think—something her cat instincts didn’t like.

  She had spent the last several weeks at home, recovering from a previous attempt on her life, integrating the relatively sudden manifestation of her new abilities, two death-resurrections, and the Order of the Tenth Blade, the Mai, and their relationship for the past thousand years into her normal teenage life.

  But what hadn’t she done?

  “Prepare, make a safe room, dig out a Cat Cave,” Chloe answered to the night air as she leapt across the gaps between buildings, ignoring the hundred-foot drops below. “Actually train myself in fighting. Come up with some sort of defensive strategy. Initiate an emergency or panic routine for me, Amy, and Paul to follow. And Kim. And Alyec. COME UP WITH A PLAN.”

  She cursed herself for not having done it sooner. Complete denial mode does not save lives, Chloe thought.

  “A little late, Chlo,” she muttered.

  At least the Rogue probably wasn’t following her. As strong and skilled as he was, Alexander was still human and couldn’t make the sort of jumps or move at the pace she could. For a moment Chloe allowed herself to picture him in a Rogue-mobile, with an evil grinning face on the front like a blond Joker. Even if he did have a car, he was probably driving it as fast as possible away from the police without any regard for her.

  “Thank God for the police,” Chloe muttered, for once without irony. How did they know what was going on? How did they know that anyone was there?

  She made for the tallest point on the local horizon before her, a large satellite dish that was screwed solidly but inexpertly to the top of a chimney. If anyone was coming after her—the police or the Rogue or whomever—she would see them coming.

  Once carefully balanced on top, one claw wrapped around the rim of the dish, she pulled out the one weapon she had available to her.

  Her cell phone.

  First she dialed Firebird.

  “’Allo, Firebird LLC,” the receptionist’s voice came over. Someone should really tell her to cut the Russian accent on outside calls, Chloe thought. She knew Alexandra could speak almost perfect English; at this point anything else was an affectation.

  “It’s Chloe. Get me Olga.”

  “She’s out at the moment—can I take a message?”

  “No. Get me Igor.”

  “Honored One, he is in a meeting,” she responded deferentially but promptly.

  “Get him out,” Chloe said, rolling her eyes at the strange incongruity of the other woman’s words. “It’s very important.”

  “Yes, Honored One,” Alexandra said, putting her on hold. Chloe was still amazed; the other girl obviously hadn’t liked her from the beginning, and now she did whatever Chloe asked without hesitation and only a little sarcasm.

  After a surprisingly short wait, Igor got on.

  “Hello?” He sounded a little irritated and snappish. Not so much into the whole spiritual leader thing. Which was going to make what she had to say next that much worse.

  “Igor, Sergei’s dead.”

  There was a pause, as if he was wondering if he had heard right. Igor’s English wasn’t perfect, so that was understandable. “What are you talking about?” he finally said.

  “The Rogue just killed Sergei. I was with him at the theater you guys are looking at.” Later she would burden him with the details about how she was there so that Sergei could have her killed; for now she just wanted the news out.

  “Wait, wait. The Rogue is still alive? I thought you killed him.”

  “No, in fact, I tried to save—oh, never mind.” Chloe sighed. Someday she would straighten that story out, too. “Apparently he did not die falling from the Golden Gate Bridge. Somehow he lived. And he just killed Sergei at the theater.”

  “What theater?” Igor demanded, his voice rising.

  “The theater you guys were thinking about buying and tearing down for apartments or something or other,” Chloe said, exasperated he had chosen to fix on that particular point.

  “We weren’t about to buy any theater…. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”


  Chloe sat back on the rim of the dish, stunned. It was bad enough that Sergei had been trying to kill her, but the lengths he had gone to plan it … Having keys to a property that no one at Firebird knew about just to have a convenient place for Chloe to be killed. Having Olga look for Chloe’s dad to give her a reason to meet them there. Was there anything Sergei didn’t lie about—or anyone in the Pride he didn’t lie to?

  “Where is this theater?” Igor prodded. “I’ll get there right away—”

  “No,” Chloe cut him off. “The place is crawling with police. They showed up right after the Rogue and I began going at it. Stay away—tell everyone to stay away, even the kizekh. We can’t risk the exposure.”

  She couldn’t believe she was talking like this.

  “Are you sure he’s dead?” Igor said in almost a whisper.

  “I’m pretty sure, Igor,” she said as gently as she could. “If there’s any chance he’s alive, they’ll bring him to a hospital. But he looked pretty gone. I’m sorry.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Did you kill the Rogue?” Igor finally asked with a deadly calm to his voice.

  “What? No,” Chloe said, knowing it was a mistake as the words came out of her mouth. “In front of all those police?”

  “Did you pursue him at all?”

  “No, Igor, I fled the scene. Did I mention the cops? With the guns?” She tried to sound equally calm and directed, not cowardly, like he probably thought she was. “Listen, I’ll explain it all to you later, okay? There is a lot to explain. I’ll come over tonight. But I have to go now.” She hung up. Why couldn’t it have been Olga? She was terrified, adrenalized, and now she felt like cowardly shit just because of Mr. Sergei’s ultratestosterone Padawan.

  Who was out there who would sympathize with her? Not accuse or question?

  As she dialed, a police car sped by a hundred feet below her, its siren howling. Chloe turned to watch, but it didn’t stop.