Demir shook his head. “You set all this shit up for that? Are you fucking mental? You have any idea how many paper spoofs I do in any given month, a year? How many identities I farm or buy from paper farmers? You really expect me to remember one name out of hundreds of thousands, out of dozens of countries?”
I slipped the photo of Caern out of the dry inside of my wallet. It was the one Dree had given me of them. I slammed Demir’s head hard against the wall behind him. I was beginning to hear sirens, and I felt another wave of nausea churn inside of me. I shoved the photo into his face.
“Okay, I’ll make this easy for you, since you’re such a busy man. One of the girls in this picture is the girl you helped out. One of the girls in this picture has a father with enough juice he makes you and your business associates look like fly shit, and who will personally oversee your vivisection if you don’t help him and us, his humble representatives, find his daughter.” I smashed his head against the wall again. “Is this thing on? Is this working? Anything coming back to you?”
“Okay! Okay! Shit!” Demir said. The sirens were louder now, closer. I nodded for Dwayne and Gretchen to head on downstairs. They did. Demir knelt and opened the case at his feet. Inside nestled in cut foam cradles were hundreds of small, black, cylindrical, encrypted USB drives, each with a tiny numeric keypad on their face. Demir ran a finger along the rows and finally pulled one loose. He handed it to me. “The key is,” he closed his eyes, recalling, “2621985045.”
“Ballard! Cops, brah!” Dwayne yelled from the front door.
“I remember her,” Demir said with a grin. “Sweet young thing, running away from something, burning down her old life, so she sold it to me. Gave something else to me too on the boat. She was my little cabin pet for the whole trip. She fought for a little bit. I was her first. By the time we reached Portugal, she was broken in just fine.”
A cold snake of bile and anger thrashed in my guts. Part of it was the poison, but most of it was Demir. “You left her in Portugal?” I said coolly. I was looking around the hall. Demir nodded.
“Yeah, but she told me she was coming here. I toyed with the idea of selling her or keeping her for myself, she was a sweet little piece, but she bolted as soon as we were off the boat. End of story. You going to get me out of here now, or what?”
The sirens were on top of us. “Yeah,” I said gesturing toward the stairs, “go on, get to the truck.”
I was thirteen in an eighteen-wheeler at a rest stop off I-64, just over the Kentucky line. He had picked me up, fed me, let me sleep in the warm cab when it was so cold outside. He put something in my food, and I couldn’t move, couldn’t think while he touched me and made my body respond to his dirty thick fingers all over it. He tore me as he entered me from behind; it felt like fire, like broken glass pushed by stone, like my insides were going to crush up into my heart, my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. It hurt so bad and I was so ashamed.
I had the power of the stars and the planets, the whole universe, turning inside me, like a secret clock, and only I had the key to turn it, to make it spin, to slow, to stop, or to break the whole fucking thing. I was a young god, and I could do nothing while he stole the last shreds of me not dipped in pain, and loss, and fear. Adult me knelt in the hallway as Demir descended the stairs and the sirens heralded consequence. I stood.
“Hey,” I said. Demir turned to look back. He saw the pistol in my hand, aimed at him. “She was thirteen.” I shot him in the head, and his face folded in as it disappeared; a dark mist sprayed out the back of his skull. He tumbled down the stairs and was still. I dropped the gun and headed down the steps. I almost fell. I was dizzy and sick. Everything seemed like a dream, and I had nothing left. I reached the bottom and started to turn toward the short hall, the front door, and the garbage truck. I sensed something was wrong and turned.
The death hex sizzled the air as it bore into me. I reacted with nothing but animal instinct, trying to deflect it with raw power—no spell, no focus, no finesse—just my life screaming “No!” If I hadn’t stolen that tiny dram of life force in the transfer when I saved the dog’s life, I’d be dead, courtesy of a spell designed especially for me. The blast took me off my feet, knocked me back into a wall. Everything in my chest felt broken and jagged inside, as I slid down the wall and coughed, choking on my own blood. I heard Dwayne shouting and Gretchen barking. The sirens were a chorus of demons, singing hallelujah as they opened the gates of Hell for me.
There was a man, dressed in black, wearing gloves and boots. A hood hid most of his face. His skin was black and had pockmarks on the chin from a bad bout of acne. He wore a black nylon combat harness with various holsters, sheaths, and pouches all over it. Behind him, one of the large windows that gave a view of the mountains and
