“You just sealed your fate, Messenger.” A purring sound emanated from the back of his throat. He lifted me off my feet, into the air. I kicked out, hitting his waist, but he only smiled.
Istvan Larsen hadn’t sent the assassin. He was the assassin.
“Where’s… Sota?” I croaked. I couldn’t use the whip in close quarters, and it didn’t matter anyway. My magic wouldn’t hurt the fae. I groped for my pistol with my free hand.
“Now? Likely dismantled.”
“No,” I gasped. Shock spilled numbness through my veins. I searched the fae’s bright eyes for lies, knowing they couldn’t lie. He wore the ocular implants to prevent anyone from seeing the truth in his glare. His stare didn’t waver, didn’t falter. Sota was truly gone.
“It’s better for me if the evidence disappears.”
He had killed Sota.
He had killed my drone.
I yanked the pistol free and fired, not caring where it hit. The fae howled and slammed me down. Timber snapped and pain crackled up my back, pushing in dark fingers of unconsciousness. I lay stunned, surrounded by fragments of Larsen’s oak table.
The warfae appeared in my watery vision, drifting there like a dream. “You’re a complication I didn’t anticipate.”
Hate burned the blur away. I saw him clearly now.
“If word ever escaped that Istvan Larsen was fae…” he began and gestured around him at the huge meeting room. “That Arcon was fae… Well, you can imagine how some might perceive it.”
A fae oversaw Halow’s surveillance and security. The same surveillance and security that watched over hundreds of thousands of people on hundreds of planets. A fae deep in the heart of human territory.
He smiled at the horror on my face.
“I see you understand.” He pointed a finger at me, mirroring my earlier threat. “You found me, and for that, you must die.”
I plucked the stiletto dagger from my hair and flung it like a dart, straight at his right eye. It should have hit. It would have hit had he been human. But the bastard whipped his head aside at the last moment and the dagger sliced across his temple. He recoiled, staggering backward. Where he pressed his hand to his face, blood streamed between his fingers.
I snatched my whip and pushed to my feet. My pistol was gone, but I couldn’t fight him anyway, not like this. I needed a plan.
He was too fast, too strong, too fae. There was only one way out of this.
Run!
With my whip uncoiled, I ran at the glass.
A pistol shot barked. Something slammed into my back and punched through, tearing a hole in muscle and flesh. My last step buckled beneath me, but I had enough momentum to thrash the whip against the glass, igniting a spark. When my shoulder hit the window, glass shattered, and I fell through.
For a few breathless moments, there was nothing around me but air and glittering glass. Then I hit the fifteen-degree building fa?ade with a shuddering oomph and started tumbling, over and over. I threw out both arms, stopping the roll. Leather squeaked on glass. My coat had tangled around my legs. I half skidded, half fell. I flicked the whip at passing nodules—the large bolts used to fasten the panels to the building. The whip’s coils snagged on one and snapped me to a halt, wrenching agony through my arm.
For a few thudding heartbeats, I stayed pressed against the glass, aware that something cool and wet dribbled down my side but hardly caring. I didn’t need to look down to know it was a long way to a sudden end. The circulating breeze fluttered across my face. I couldn’t lose consciousness. If that happened, I wouldn’t be waking up.
Move.
Giving the whip a jolt, I freed it from the bolt and slid downward, this time more controlled. Down and down and down until my whip snagged another bolt, and then another. Finally, I landed on the ground and immediately pushed off to get out of the open. As I limped into hiding, bloodied and numb, I realized with a sinking sense of dread that this was a long way from over. It might even be just beginning.
Chapter 4
My container door hung ajar.
The neighbor in Container 15 had his virtuavision up too loud. Music thudded against the walls and floor, muffling my approach.
Blood dripped from my fingers while I lingered in the hallway, contemplating whether to venture inside or walk away and hope I didn’t bleed out. My entire lower right hip fizzed unpleasantly. I’d lost feeling in my side, and tingling needles of pain jabbed their way down my right leg. The longer I left the wound untreated, the more damage I’d do. And right now, I didn’t have the luxury of time to heal.
I freed my whip and toed the door open.
A figure loomed at the back, watching my fake rainfall. Broad shoulders carried an ankle-length coat. A mop of dark hair stuck out at unruly angles. I’d seen him before, earlier in the day. The sinks hadn’t killed the marshal, and now he was here, poking through my things.
My neighbor’s music ended suddenly, and silence fell over my container. My heart thudded too loudly, thumping in place of the beat. If I was going to leave, now would be the time, before he turned around.
“Looks like someone went to town on your place,” the marshal said.
He was right. Anything not bolted down had been tossed about and knocked to the floor. Some cupboards hung open, their contents shoved from inside, and one door hung from a single latch.
The fae, or someone connected to him, had been here. He knew where I lived, probably knew my name. It wouldn’t be long before he knew everything.
I shoved the door open wider and wandered in, toeing through the mess. Had the intruder been looking for me or something else?
“Is anything missing?”
I blinked up at the marshal. Concern tightened his green eyes, and then his gaze skittered down my coat, catching on the bloody patch at my hip or my whip, neither of which I’d bothered to hide.
“I’m fine,” I replied automatically as I reached for the lower storage unit and the med-kit still lying inside.
I straightened and spotted the marshal eyeing something behind me. My bloody boot prints led inside, indicating I was not fine.
“I need to call this in.” He tapped his palm. “This is Marshal Kellee…” His words petered off.
I pretended not to notice how he struggled to find a signal and instead tore open the med-packs. Luckily, the pistol’s bullet had sailed right through; otherwise, I would have needed to dig around my own insides to find its fragments.
“What are you doing here?” I opened my inner jacket and peeled back the bloody and torn upper-garment, revealing a gaping exit wound. A large nodule of dark blood oozed free. Nobody should ever have to see their innards.
“One of your neighbors called in a disturbance. I was already nearby in the gulley…”
I jabbed a staunch pad over the hole just as the marshal moved closer, and dropped my clothes back over the wound before he noticed any incriminating tattoos. Pain exploded up my side. I gritted my teeth, gripped the counter, and rode it out. All things considered, I was lucky to be walking. Most fae weren’t sloppy enough to leave their victims breathing, but I doubted the warfae had expected me to leap out of his window.
I couldn’t stay here. He would send someone to kill me or come himself. More likely come himself. Twice now he’d surprised me, and both times he’d kicked my ass.
I was off my game.
My lips ticked.
The head of Arcon was fae.
In many ways, it was brilliant. Where better to hide than in plain sight?
The idea was so ludicrous. Even if I told someone like the marshal, they wouldn’t believe me. The fae despised tek. And the head of the largest tek company in Halow was a fae disguised as the charming Larsen. I’d been there, he’d thrown me into an oak table and shot me, and I still wasn’t sure I believed it.
I frowned at the marshal eying my oozing wound, my thoughts muddied by pain and shock. He was staring like he might tackle me and take me in.
“Earlier, in the sinks, we met,” he said.