Vicious Grace

cracked, arcs of whiteness pouring out. The lighter gray around the opening lid shifted like soil. Dark earth. Kim’s breath was suddenly ragged, her heartbeat faster than it should have been.

The box burst open, light pouring out of it. What color was it, she wondered. Had they dreamed this as the clarifying yellow-blue of dawn? The red and gold of sunset? There was something inside the light. She had the impression of a forest of glasslike teeth, an eye, a hand with fingers splayed and proportions out of true. The screens fluttered, shifted, and fell out of sync. A moment later, they were all different again, each mind on its own, individual journey. Oonishi stopped the playback.

It was a trick. She couldn’t let herself fall for it.

“Interesting,” Kim said. “Data corruption?”

“I’ve been through the data streams. They’re all fine.”

“Well, it’s clearly some kind of equipment failure,” Kim said. “Unless you mean to suggest that all your subjects magically started sharing the same dream.”

She let it hang in the air between them. Even if all of his research assistants were secretly recording the exchange, an upload link to YouTube standing by, Kim was not going to come off looking like the idiot. Let him come to her.

“You have,” Oonishi began, “something of a reputation for—”

“I got drunk at a Christmas party four years ago,” Kim said. “I said some things that have been wildly misinterpreted.”

“Do you believe in spirits?”

“I am a research scientist. Maybe not in a field with as much respect and clout as yours, but I’m not some kind of crystal-humping, incense-burning new age fake. No matter what you may have heard.” Her face felt hot, her throat thick with an anger she hadn’t expected. She swallowed, cursing herself for rising to the bait, even that much.

“Then you don’t believe,” Oonishi said.

Kim gave herself a moment before she spoke. She had to keep better control.

“I believe there are many, many things we haven’t figured out yet,” she said, pushing back a stray lock of hair. “If no one ever came across evidence that didn’t fit theory, I wouldn’t have a job.”

The concession softened Oonishi’s expression. He sat on his desk, leaning over his own knees. His feet didn’t reach the floor, and his heels tapped against the side of the desk. Kim had a brief, powerful image of what the man would have looked like as a young boy sitting in a chair too big for him. When he spoke, his voice was low, almost a whisper.

“If I have . . . artifacts like that when I publish, the best thing that will happen is Boaris and Estrahaus at Stanford will accuse me of faking the data. My career will be destroyed. And not just mine. Every coresearcher on the project will be guilty by association. Their careers will be over before they’ve begun,” he said. And then, slowly, as if each word cost him, “I’m in trouble here.”

Cold and dread filled Kim’s belly. He looked lost. He looked empty.

It wasn’t a prank.

“Show me again,” she said.

Oonishi rose, tabbed back the playback, and they watched again. The dark box, more than half buried. The uncovering. The flashing, pouring light. Teeth. That misshapen hand. Kim found she’d pressed her fingers to her mouth without realizing she’d done so. Oonishi stopped the flow of images.

“I know you’ve caught some hell for talking about this kind of thing,” he said, his voice very careful, preemptively apologetic. “But can you help me?”

“I can’t,” Kim said. And a moment later, “But I know someone.”

ONE

I lay as flat as I could on the carpet of old pine needles, my rifle hugged close against my cheek. The world smelled of soil and gun oil and sweat. I kept my breath soft, my hands steady. In the crosshairs, Chogyi Jake crouched beside a huge pine tree, one hand on the rough bark to steady himself. He had a rifle of his own, held low against one hip. The sun was setting behind me. If he looked in my direction, the light would dazzle him. From my perspective, it was like God was shining a spotlight on him. The targeting site magnified his familiar face. To someone who didn’t know him, who hadn’t spent over a year day-in, day-out in his company, he might have looked fine. To me, he radiated the same physical exhaustion I felt. I let the crosshairs drift down to his body. Shoot for the center of mass, I told myself. Go for the biggest target.

Gently, I put my finger on the trigger. I breathed out as I squeezed. My rifle coughed, and a wide swath of bark two feet above Chogyi Jake’s head bloomed neon green. He looked up at it, and then out toward me with an expression that said Really? That was your best shot? just as three sharp impacts drilled into my side. Baby blue splotches marked my autumn-leaves camouflage fatigues. Aubrey’s color. I rolled onto my back and said something crude.

“Okay, Miss Heller,” Trevor said in my earpiece. He always called me Miss Heller instead of Jayné. I had the impression that even after he’d heard it pronounced correctly—zha-nay—he was afraid he’d refer to me as Jane or Janie. “I think we’re calling it a day.”

I fumbled with the mic. Somewhere in the exercise, I’d pushed it down around my collarbone.

“Got it,” I said. “I’ll see you back at the cabin.”

I lay there for a moment, the wide Montana sky looking down at me through the trees. The setting sun turned a few stray wisps of cloud rose and gold. The ground under me felt soft, and the sting of the paintballs faded. A breeze set the pines rippling with a sound like something immense talking very gently. I thought that if I closed my eyes, I could fall asleep right there and dream until the bears woke up next spring. My muscles felt like putty.

I felt wonderful.

I’d gotten Trevor Donnagan’s name from a cop friend of mine in Boulder. He’d said that Trevor was hands- down the best place to go if you absolutely, positively had to train yourself into a killing machine in the minimum possible time. A former Green Beret and five or six different kinds of black belt, Trevor had spent the better part of his life meditating on how to dislocate joints, shatter bones, and immobilize bad guys without having the same happen to him. His cabin sat on eight square miles of fenced-off woodland, and he was charging me enough for a month of private, intensive training to pay for eight more. Considering the shape my life had taken in the last year, it was cheap.

I’d been coming up on my twenty-third birthday when my uncle Eric died. I went to Denver knowing that I’d been named his executor. I didn’t know that I was also his sole heir, or that he had more money than some small countries. Or that he’d made his fortune as a kind of spiritual fixer, dealing with any number of parasitic things from just outside reality that could take over people’s minds and bodies and do magic a thousand times more powerful than a normal person could manage. Vampires, werewolves, shape-shifting demons. The generic term was rider.

Now I was almost a month into twenty-four, and several times in the past year, my learning curve had approached vertical.

Aubrey walked up from my left. I knew from the sound of his footsteps that he was at least as tired as I was. I turned my head. His camouflage was smeared with Day-Glo yellow over his right shoulder and left hip, meaning that Ex had gotten the drop on him at least once during the day. His sandy hair stood at ten different angles, and a smear of mud darkened one cheek. I raised my left hand. He took it and hauled me up to my feet. I followed through, collapsing against him a little, my forehead resting in the comfortable curve where his shoulder met his neck. I felt his chuckle as much as heard it.

“I have never been this tired in my life,” he said, threading his arm around me. “I’m getting too old for this.”

“Poor ancient man,” I said. “Can’t keep up with his bouncing baby girlfriend.”

“My poor childlike sweetie looks like she could use some rest too.”

“I’m fine,” I said, leaning against him a little more. “Just lulling you into a sense of safety.”