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  Finally, she hoisted her personal gear over her shoulder, and came to him, sitting next to him. A sad, almost wistful smile warmed her face.

  “Well. Aubry. How was your talk with Sister Dearest?”

  “What would you expect? Dreadful. She wants to believe that the government can protect us.”

  “And if they could?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well … I don’t think that it would matter. You brought Mira’s ashes back with you. They killed your last link to Warrick. They hurt Leslie. They disrupted your ceremony.”

  His nod was barely perceptible.

  “You’ve embraced civilization, as long as the civilized mode works for you. When it doesn’t work … well, let’s just say that you wouldn’t bleed if you had to toss it away.”

  “Is that so wrong?” He was surprised by the genuine inquiry in his voice. What was right, or wrong, in a situation like this?

  “It is true to who you are. But what’s the truth here?”

  “The truth.” Aubry looked at Jenna, at the light cream of her skin. Whereas Promise was a blend of African and Polynesian and European bloodlines, Jenna was more European and Asian. Much lighter-skinned, not quite as pretty. Her body was made for movement, for combat, for work. She was a finely timed machine, in her own way as finely tuned as Promise. But whereas Promise and Aubry created a balance, a certain yin-yang balance that was irresistible, Jenna touched him in ways that Promise had not. Could not. That, perhaps, no other woman could.

  Jenna took lovers when she wished. Sometimes women, sometimes men. But she belonged to no one. She was the combat mistress, the security chief of Ephesus, and she had always walked alone.

  But she was his friend. In a strange way, perhaps the best friend he had ever had. If Aubry Knight had to be reborn as a woman, he would want to be Jenna.

  “I think,” he said slowly, “that I’ve spent most of my life just reacting to what happened around me. That habit got me into deeper and deeper trouble. God—I only survived because of this body, Jenna. Because it is faster and stronger and has more energy than anybody has the right to have.”

  “You talk about your body as if it isn’t you.”

  “Sometimes I wonder,” he laughed ruefully. “But now I’m in this position. Ephesus. The Scavengers. The NewMen. There are people who rely upon me, depend upon me. But the truth is that Promise is doing most of it.”

  “Which means?”

  “That she’s growing, and I’m not.” He stretched his arms, and she heard his joints pop. Aubry’s muscular density was astounding, as was his flexibility, his sense of balance, his muscular and cardiovascular endurance. It seemed that everything about him was in perfect proportion, but functioned at abnormal amplitude.

  But sometimes his eyes were those of a child. Questioning. Wounded. Wondering. Looking out at the future, uncertain of what there was, or could ever be, for him.

  “I feel cold.” He wrapped his arms around his knees, and pulled his head tight against them. “I saw myself crawling across the floor like a dog, begging for death. And I know now, I know, that that’s how I’ll die. This thing inside me, this thing that pulls violence into my life, is the flip side of the skill. Unless I can find a way to heal it, one day my skills won’t be enough. One day … it will happen.”

  She had to lean close now, to hear a voice that had dropped so low it was like the sound of leaves falling against grass. “I know what it is to have a family now. I’d die for them. Or for you.”

  Her hand rested against his shoulder. His skin seemed to burn.

  “But that’s not the death I’ll get. I’ll need to prove myself once too often. I’ll draw some piece of unfinished business from my past. I’ll stumble across a mugging in an alley. And I’ll die, away from home, away from my family. A painful, meaningless death without honor or grace. Just death.”

  He looked up at her, and now more than ever his face was the face of a child. “I don’t want to die like that. I want it to be for something. I just don’t know how to get out of the loop.”

  “Does going after Swarna get you out of the loop?”

  “My mind says no. But my guts … my heart …” He fumbled for her hand. “There’s something going on here that none of us understand. And there is something inside me that says ‘Come.’ It laughs at me. ‘Come to the Firedance,’ it says. It promises nothing, but it says ‘Come.’ And it’s not the same voice that has pulled me into violence. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that voice before.”

  Jenna put her arms around Aubry and pressed her cheek against him. For a long time she remained with him like that, breathing when he breathed, her slender, strong fingers stroking the coarse, tightly curled hair at the base of his neck. Then she said, very softly, “If you have to go, Aubry, then go. But Aubry … you don’t have to do this alone.”

  He pulled back, and she saw his eyes transformed from human eyes to beads made of glass. Somehow, she had said precisely the wrong thing.

  “Yes,” he said flatly. “I do.”

  24

  Promise was still awake when Aubry returned to their bedroom. She said nothing, as if she already knew what had been decided.

  “Where is Leslie?”

  “She’s in her own room in the south wing. We’re alone.”

  He nodded and stripped out of his clothes. He sat on the edge of the water bed and looked down at her. She was probably the most beautiful woman he had ever known. Certainly and by far she was the most passionate.

  He felt out of control around her—as if there was a part of him that surrendered completely, that would do anything, or try to be anyone, that she wanted or needed. But there was another, just as powerful, that remained hidden, carefully under control. A part that watched and waited.

  He leaned forward, brushing his lips against her neck. Her body rolled slowly, richly, pressing against the gauzy nightgown, forcing the covers back and away. He ran his hands over her skin. Hard, callused hands, which could crush concrete. He wondered, not for the first time, if he ever inadvertently hurt her. He would rather die than hurt her … physically.

  But he was willing to die, and hurt her, to accomplish something that might ultimately have no meaning at all.

  Come. Come to the Firedance.

  He felt caught, trapped by forces he didn’t understand.

  Now was the time, the moment, the instant when Promise might have said something, something that would change the course of action in his mind.

  But she didn’t speak, as if knowing that she might say the words, and save his life, but destroy some more vital aspect.

  Instead, she drew him down onto her, raised her lips, and found his, anchoring there, and for a time it seemed like they fed on each other, as if each contained some terrible, addictive nectar.

  And when her fingers, questing, clasped him into heat and wetness, raised her hips to him in steady, urgent, kneading rhythm, he cried out and clung to her, clutching at her as if she contained within her the secrets of all the universe.

  As if in the shadows that moved upon the wall there were all the truth that two human beings could find.

  As if in the hot, salty sweet rhythm of sweat and lubrication and seminal fluid there were all the nourishment two human beings could desire.

  As if they needed to stretch this moment, make it not just another evening’s love but something terribly special. A final and ultimate time, something that each of them would remember always, even into the depths of that last long and dreamless night.

  25

  Leslie was asleep. The child slept with only a single sheet draped across his body, in a room carefully monitored for temperature.

  Fine golden-black hair covered Leslie’s body. It was the body of an animal, each and every muscle perfectly developed, perfectly placed, as if the child were half cat and half human being.

  The light slanted in through the window, and the moon was high. In that cold, cool light, Leslie seemed even younger. Th
e lines of his jaw, sometimes harsh, were softer, the feminine aspects of his face more apparent.

  Aubry looked for himself in this child. So innocent now, so soft and vulnerable.

  What was there in children that evoked that response? And what kind of people would threaten a child to get to him?

  So Aubry had made a mistake. Perhaps a terrible one—killing the wrong person. Swarna’s son Ibumi. There had been no option. The combat had begun by mutual consent, and a ritualistic nightmare it had been. He had no regrets, and if he were to try to project feelings onto another man—something that he tried never to do—he would say that Ibumi had no regrets, either.

  But that was entirely beside the point. Swarna had made a mistake—a fatal one. Aubry Knight was not alone anymore. He had resources, resources that extended all the way to the Oval Office, and by God he would use every last one of them to protect what was his.

  When Aubry sat at the edge of the bed, Leslie rolled lazily into his arms. There were no words, but Leslie’s thin body shook. Could it be the cold? Aubry felt no draft, no sign that the environmental seal had been ruptured.

  Something to his surprise, Aubry realized that his terrible child was afraid. “Shhh,” he whispered.

  “Daddy.” Leslie’s voice was barely audible. “I don’t want you to go.”

  Aubry stroked the very fine hair along the back of Leslie’s neck. So beautiful.

  “I have to.”

  There was a long pause, and then Leslie spoke again, without opening his eyes. “Let me come with you.”

  “WHAT?”

  Leslie’s eyes snapped open, flaming, and he was rattling words at a blistering pace.

  “It could work, Father. I would be the perfect camouflage—no one would expect you to bring a kid along on a hit.”

  “Lone Wolf and Cub?”

  “Well … maybe, except Daigoro was a wimp. I can learn any language in a week. I can break into any data net—”

  Aubry shushed Leslie with a massive finger. “I know you could, sweetheart. I just …” What? What could he say to this hot-eyed creature, whose short life had seen so much mayhem?

  “I want you to have a chance, Leslie.”

  “A chance to what?”

  “I didn’t have any choice. I had to fight. I had to kill. I want you to have choices that I didn’t have. The doctors don’t know quite what to make of you, but I do. You’re my son. You’re my daughter. You’re the most beautiful, dangerous creature alive, and you’re going to have a normal life.”

  Leslie’s voice changed. It seemed that he was an automaton imitating human speech. “Father,” Leslie said. “You are … all I have. You are … Without you, what chance would I have?” The machine’s voice trembled, cracked. “If you die, do you know what would … happen? To me?” The tiny body was actually shaking, as if there were some windup apparatus under the warm flesh, something struggling to rev free.

  Aubry drew Leslie to his chest, shushing him. “First of all, I’m harder to kill than you seem to think. I survived quite well before you were a twinkle in your mother’s eye, thank you. Swarna won’t be expecting me to come after him. I think I can pull this off. Secondly—what you’ll have is a good life. You are respected and honored here. A good life, dammit, in Ephesus if nowhere else on this planet. You’re going to have those things, Leslie.”

  Leslie’s eyes shone in the dim room, and he held Aubry, as if seeking to meld bones with him through pressure. The child seemed all steel and catgut, something not at all human. His fingers sank deeply into Aubry’s iron muscles.

  Then some resolve, some well of strength expired, and Leslie held Aubry and wailed, the tears running down his father’s chest. Aubry held Leslie in return, and felt himself pulled to the brink of some abyss beyond his understanding, as if there were within Leslie a Void, some great and utter vacuum against which all of his child’s intelligence and energy warred.

  All that sustained the child was his relationships. To Promise. To Aubry. To Jenna.

  To Mira? Had Leslie cried for Mira?

  And perhaps the tears now, a vast and endless flood of grief, were the tide of emotion held in check only by that monstrous will, the dike buckling under the thought of losing the only father he had ever known, or could ever hope to know.

  They held each other, and Leslie sobbed until the first light of morning rose to meet them.

  26

  JULY 25

  No security system in Ephesus can stop me. I see in the infrared and ultraviolet. I hear things that bats and cats hear. I can feel pressure traps, and sixty percent of standard movement sensors don’t register me at all. I do not understand all modifications performed upon me for the Medusa Project. Some standard training. Some direct induction. Some implantation of pre-programmed fetal cortex. Some neural grooving of spinal tissue. And more: nanotech, genetic, hormonal, cybernetic. Everything Gorgon could do to produce a perfect killing and infiltration machine. Perhaps I was the best. I am certainly the last.

  Father was gone. He kissed us goodbye and took one of the small Toyota transport skimmers. Travel plans said Los Angeles, and then Denver. From there to hell, by routes unknown.

  If Father died, not Mother, or Jenna, or anyone in the world would stop me from finding Swarna, and killing him.

  And then myself.

  The sheer wall outside Jenna’s apartment was an engraved invitation. I disconnected the alarm, opened the window and sat on the sill, naked, four stories above the ground.

  A guard passed beneath me. Quiet. Efficient. Unaware.

  Jenna and a companion slept. The companion was female. Unidentified. I differentiated Jenna’s breathing pattern. Jenna snores. It is one way I can be sure she is really asleep. Women rarely pretend to snore.

  I began to imitate it.

  I reached full rapport in just over thirty seconds. Began to change the rhythm, slowing it so that Jenna slid deeper. Listened and coaxed simultaneously. Jenna is intelligent, imaginative, sensitive. Thoroughly versed in trance arts. An ideal hypnotic subject.

  Outside, the temperature was thirty-four degrees. I focused my attention tighter.

  I hopped down from the window and crept to her side. Her breathing was deeper, and slower. Down to one-point-seven per minute. Perfect.

  I whispered in her ear, timing each phrase to her natural exhalation cycles:

  “Jenna. Your love for Aubry is almost as strong as your sister’s—but you are even more capable of helping him. Only you can help him. Listen to me. You will go to Leslie, and ask her to help you to access the information concerning Swarna. You must know. And when you know, you will find Miles Bloodeagle. You will help Aubry. It is …” Jenna has an appreciation of the dramatic. I paused to build subconscious response potential. “… your destiny.”

  Jenna continued to snore. I allowed myself a brief flash of satisfaction and backed out of the room. I clambered back up onto the windowsill, and climbed down.

  As soon as Leslie was gone, Jenna’s right eye opened. She grinned in the darkness. Leslie. Little brat. Durga specialized in trance states. Teach Gramma to suck eggs, sweetie. Still, the muffin had a good idea. Aubry was waltzing into the meat grinder, and a little help might go a long way. There were resources available. The only real question was their appropriate utilization.…

  27

  LOS ANGELES

  Aubry hadn’t been in this dead-end, red-bricked alley for a thousand years. It was still behind a refueling station near the corner of Century and Vermont, in South Central Los Angeles, beyond the invisible walls of Mazetown.

  When Aubry was a boy, the station had sold unleaded, and diesel, and propane. Now it also dealt in liquid hydrogen, and recharge posts, and fast battery swaps.

  That was the only landmark remaining. The neighborhood was still poor, but both ground and air traffic bustled. The pavement thrummed with the sound of the subway. It always seemed that it would be impossible for Los Angeles to grow more crowded. Or that the city would survive th
at overcrowding. So far, the first had always been proven possible, and the second remained to be seen.

  In many ways he no longer recognized the alley. Peeling posters from forgotten political campaigns still cajoled, no longer shifting images and colors with the passage of the sun. Time seemed to have forgotten them. But to Aubry the pavement stank of blood, not garbage.

  The air boiled with flies, drawn by the mountains of garbage, the boxes and cans and bags of offal. It was here, amid the filth, that Aubry’s father had died.

  Died trying to protect a woman who had been nothing but bait.

  Aubry looked back into the years, ripped the veil painfully away. And he saw, as if the man were still there, as if the pain were still new, as if the crowd had just gathered to watch the death of the only family a boy named Aubry had ever known.

  He knelt close to his father’s body, close enough to hear the hiss of breath from the ruptured chest cavity, where the blade had slid in, severing life.

  “Aubry …” the man had said. And then something … Aubry didn’t understand. Couldn’t remember. Had never been able to remember. It sounded like gibberish, or …

  “Firedance. Iron Mountain …”

  Aubry rubbed his eyes. Father was gone. Years vanished like yesterday’s newsfax. He was alone in the alley again. He leaned his head against the wall, trying to remember.

  “Hey!” someone yelled. Aubry looked up. At the far end of the alley a unisuited Exotic glowed. He had completed what Promise had begun, all visible flesh covered with plastiskin. His entire visual character changed as Aubry watched, shifting subtly to resemble Aubry. A freelance Rapporter, seeking empath bits for the network. He carried his feelie box with him, its antennae already wiggling toward Aubry. “Are you in pain? Could you use assistance?”

  Aubry shook his head.

  The man smiled. It was a big, warm smile. And suddenly it wasn’t quite a man’s anymore. The processor shifted the visual image into a woman’s. Smiling. Warm. Dark-skinned. Slightly overweight. Its best guess about Aubry’s mother?