Poison Tree

had she left willingly or been taken?

Sarik hurried to the parking lot to see if Alysia’s car was there, and found her in the process of opening the driver’s-side door. She was carrying a backpack, as well as a black case slung over the same shoulder. And someone stood between them, watching his prey.

Alysia was being stalked.

The vampire glanced to the side in response to a door closing at one of the nearby buildings, and Sarik caught a glimpse of the red teardrop decorating his left earlobe.

She recognized the symbol. Jason had an identical piece of jewelry still tucked at the back of his drawer, wrapped in a scrap of fabric. He had worn it for almost a year after he had left Maya, as if it were a symbol of that bit of her he couldn’t quite rip from himself.

Sarik could have called a warning, but Alysia did not have a weapon in her hand.

Bracing herself mentally, she let her vision narrow to a point at the back of the vampire’s spine. She leaned forward, putting her hands on the hood of the nearest car. As she boosted herself up, she shifted shape, so it was a tiger’s paw that landed on the back bumper and a full-grown tiger who bounded over the car and then stretched in an arc, leaping with a roar. By the time the vampire turned, she was already on top of him.

Alysia turned at the sound of the tiger’s weight driving the vampire to the ground, her eyes going wide as the tiger roared and, with one quick shake, broke the vampire’s neck.

Sarik stumbled back, spitting out the too-familiar taste of blood in her mouth, ghting nausea and overwhelming sense-memory. She reverted to human form, seeking a human’s dulled senses.

“Thanks,” Alysia said, sounding dazed. She knelt by the vampire’s side and reached out to tilt his head so she could get a better look at the earring. “He’s a mercenary,” she said, probably assuming Sarik wouldn’t already know that. She drew a slender knife from a makeshift holster at her waist. “I don’t know exactly who’s after me, but it’s me they’re after,” she said. “So I’m leaving. I’m not pitting SingleEarth against the Bruja guilds, not over me. SingleEarth isn’t weak, but Bruja—”

“Don’t,” Sarik protested as she realized Alysia intended to drive the knife into the vampire’s heart. “He …” She trailed off.

The human hesitated and said, “His spine will heal in less than a minute. He was sent to kidnap me, but he’ll want to kill you for hurting him. You do not want him getting back up.”

Sarik didn’t want him getting back up, but she also didn’t want him dead. A few years earlier, it might have been Jason lying there. The ones who had seen Sarik, who might recognize her, were all dead. But Alysia was right—he wasn’t going to get up and just forgive her for breaking his neck.

Alysia moved to drive the knife down, not waiting for any more objections from Sarik, but the hesitation was costly. The vampire jerked his arm, the movement not smooth but su cient to divert the blade from his heart so it only grazed his opposite shoulder. Even so, he hissed in pain, and Sarik caught the acrid smell of firestone touching vampiric blood.

The vampire threw Alysia to the side and snatched the blade Alysia had tried to end him with.

Move. Help them.

She didn’t know how to help Alysia without getting in the way.

A black and golden blur shot past her. It was smaller than her own tiger form, immature, but fearless as it leapt into the fray, rst on paws and then coalescing into the form of a young boy who was small and lithe enough to put himself between the two combatants, carrying his own knife.

“Jeht!” Sarik shrieked, running forward. He must have heard her roar, an instinctive sound of fury that could be heard for miles around.

The ght was over in another instant as the triumphant nine-year-old let out a hoot and turned to Sarik with blood on his hands and a dagger in his fist.

Alysia scrambled back from the vampire’s corpse and the exultant child. “You all right, kid?” Alysia asked as she snatched the firestone knife off the ground.

Jeht didn’t answer her but hurried back to Sarik’s side, looking proud. He had defended his territory, killed an intruder. He hadn’t hesitated like Sarik had.

“You hurt him,” Jeht said. “He would have wanted to kill you. You can’t let people live who want to kill you.”

That’s why you’re here, Sarik wanted to say. Because your tribe had the same twisted principles that my father’s has, and the new leader knew you would try to kil him for kil ing your father.

She said, “Jeht, it’s more complicated than that.”

“Are more coming?” he asked.

Sarik looked up at Alysia, who was leaning against the side of her car, staring at Jeht as if he had grown a second head. She said, “Tell me you’ll get that kid some therapy.” She opened her car door. “And thank him for helping me out. And let Lynzi know I didn’t mean to bring this down on you all. Really, I didn’t. I won’t be back before I sort it out.”

She tossed her backpack and the weapons case onto the passenger seat and closed the door without another word. As Sarik watched Alysia drive away, she said to Jeht, “Give me the knife.”

He handed her the weapon, which looked like it had been made with sharpened atware from the cafeteria. As she took it, she realized there was blood on her hands as well.

“Let’s go clean up,” she said.

It’s over. Not the way she wanted it to be over, but what else could she do?

CHAPTER 11

CHRISTIAN WAS STILL sleeping when he heard a knock on his hotel room door. He opened his eyes, shut them against the glare of midday sun streaming in his window, and then forced them open once more as he stood up and crossed to the door.

Before he reached it or leaned down to look through the peephole, Alysia said, “It’s me.

Can I come in?”

He couldn’t help but smile. He hadn’t told her where he was staying, or even the name he had used to register at this hotel, but he had used a name she would recognize from past exploits. It had probably taken Alysia ten minutes, at most, to hack into and scan through local hotel registries in order to track him down.

Christian remembered the day that Alysia had tried to explain to him why she had worked so hard to digitalize Frost, and why the Bruja guilds needed to move “out of the

Stone Age and into the Silicon Age.” Piracy isn’t done with a ship and a sword anymore, she had told him, pacing back and forth, frustrated by his lack of interest. A Crimson or Onyx member might take a contract to kil some wealthy businessman, probably because his heirs want to inherit his money, but it ends there. In the digital world, it’s possible to assassinate a man’s character, steal his identity, turn his world upside down without ever spil ing a drop of blood.

Bruja was big and powerful two centuries ago, but these days, they’re earning penny candy to engage in little local scu es. They’re going to fade into obscurity if they don’t realize the world has upgraded from a blade to binary.

Christian didn’t understand half the words Alysia used when she went on one of her tech rants—Onyx had never been big on computer work, so he knew little about them—but her passion on the subject never failed to make him grin, especially when it made the leaders of Crimson, Onyx, and the Bruja guilds gnash their teeth because they knew she was right but refused to admit it.

His smile disappeared when he opened the door and saw the blood on her face. She glanced over her shoulder as he pulled her inside, and that was enough warning for him to shut, lock, and bolt the door behind her.

“Someone following you?” he asked, his eyes lingering on a cut down her cheek. It was too neat to be the result of someone’s st splitting the skin; that wound had been made by a blade.

“Could be,” she answered. “You haven’t heard?”