A Dream Of Stone And Shadow Part 1

A Dream of Stone & Shadow.

By Marjorie M. Liu.

Prologue.

It began with a knife in the heart. As usual. A fine sharp blade needling deep into the beating muscle, stilling it with a stab and cut. Charlie did not cry out. There was no real use. He was accustomed to death, and the price was not too high, given the exchange. He simply closed his eyes and laid himself down, let darkness creep in until he died.

Only then was it safe to dream.

It was always dark where Mrs. Kreer put her. Damp, too. Emma did not like to imagine what made her backside and legs moist as she curled up against the wall to rest. Andrew said it was p.i.s.s-that this place was a regular s.h.i.+t-hole, and that they put her here because she was s.h.i.+t, too.

She wrapped her arms around her knees, hugging them tight to her chest. She could feel the cold cement through her blue jeans and rocked in place, hoping to keep her backside from getting numb. She did not want to stand up; it might bring too much attention to her. In the darkness-this heavy, black, and suffocating darkness-things could hide that she would never see coming. Sometimes she thought she heard, over in the corner, scuffling. A tiny sc.r.a.pe and scrabble. Maybe the brush and flutter of wings or cloth. But she could not see enough to be sure of what moved beyond the circle of her tiny s.p.a.ce. Not in this darkness. She couldn't even see her hands. Andrew had put a towel at the foot of the bas.e.m.e.nt door, taped up the edges to keep out the light, until all Emma had left was her mind, the visions and colors that were her thoughts. That was all she was in this place.

Emma liked to imagine herself in different places, clinging feverishly to visions taken from glimpses of the outside. Like trees. She loved the trees. Those were real. Sometimes, when Andrew was slow setting up the cameras, Sarah would lean backwards on the bed and peer out the crack in the blinds and see them, tall and green, cast in sunlight.

Everything else-pictures from the magazines, women who Mrs. Kreer wanted Emma to imitate-she thought they might be real, but she could not be sure. She was not sure of anything, not unless she could touch, smell or taste it. Darkness was real, tangible. It had fingers buried in her hair. It traveled into her lungs with every breath she took.

Mrs. Kreer was real, too. So was her son, Andrew.

Emma did not remember much else that was real, except for her mother. But it had been a long time since she had seen her, and Emma thought she might be dead. She did not remember blood, but she remembered hearing screams from a distance. A loud bang. Emma did not like to think about that. It was not real.

The scuffling sounds in the corner of the bas.e.m.e.nt grew louder. Emma pressed her lips together. No crying for her. Andrew liked tears. He liked it when she was afraid.

But she still squeaked when a low voice said, "Emma."

The voice was so soft that she could not tell if it was a man or woman, and she was not sure she cared. Only, that the darkness around her had finally begun to pay attention, and still she could not see, could not fight-could not fight this, not when fists and kicks and teeth meant nothing against the two adults upstairs, who had finally taught her to obey.

"Emma," said the voice again, and this time she thought it was male. Which was worse. The voice was a thing, a cloud, disembodied words floating like spirits. A ghost. She was listening to a ghost.

She squeaked again, pus.h.i.+ng up hard against the cold wall, unmindful of the damp. She wrapped her arms around her head and shut her eyes tight. She thought she heard a sigh, but her heart hammered so loud in her ears it was impossible to say.

"Please," whispered the ghost, and the pain in his voice scared her almost as much as his presence. "Please, don't be afraid. I'm here to help you."

Emma said nothing. She felt something warm pa.s.s over the top of her head, and it felt like what she remembered of summer, fresh and green and lovely. The air around her mouth suddenly tasted so clear and clean, she thought for one minute she was outside, in the woods, in the gra.s.s and sunlight and sharp air. Emma opened her eyes. Nothing. Darkness.

The ghost said, "Emma. Emma, do you know where you are?"

"No," Emma mumbled, finally finding the strength to speak. The ghost, the darkness, had not hurt her yet. That could change, but until then, she would try to be brave. She would try very hard.

"There are trees," she added. "I see them sometimes."

"Good," said the ghost, and this time Emma did not have to try so hard not to be afraid. His voice was strong and soft-a voice like the heroes had in the cartoons she watched so long ago. She loved those heroes.

"Who are you?" she asked him.

"A friend," he replied, and again Emma felt warmth upon her head, moving slowly down her face. Soothing, like sunlight. She closed her eyes and pretended it was the sun.

The bas.e.m.e.nt door rattled. Emma heard tape rip away. Lines of light appeared above her at the top of the stairs. She turned and looked and saw the outline of a man beside her. She could not see his face, but he was very large. For a moment she was afraid again, but that was nothing to her fear of Andrew and Mrs. Kreer, and she whispered, "Help me."

"I will," the shape said, but Emma did not see his mouth move. She looked closer and thought he had no mouth, no eyes. Faceless. His entire body was nothing but a lighter shade of night. An imprint.

"Andrew's coming," Emma said.

"I won't leave you," he replied.

She begged. "Don't let him touch me."

The ghost said nothing. Emma felt warmth upon her face, and then, quiet: "I'll be right here with you."

"Please," she said, "I want my mommy."

"Emma-"

The door opened. Emma s.h.i.+elded her eyes. Andrew stood silhouetted in the light: narrow and lean, tall and strong. His hair stood up off his head in spikes.

"Time to get you cleaned up," he said, and his voice was not soft, but hard instead; not strong, but thready, with a sharp edge. Emma looked into the darkness beside her, but the ghost was gone. She swallowed hard. Tried not to cry.

And then warmth collected at the back of her neck and she heard, "I'm here," and when Andrew said her name in a bad way, she stood up, still with the sun at her back, and found the strength to hobble up the stairs into the light.

Chapter One.

The hunt was on.

Aggie had a gun chafing her ribs and a very panicked man at her side as she drove ninety miles an hour down a residential backstreet, narrowly missing the jutting b.u.mpers of badly parked vehicles, the slow moving bodies of several elderly men out for a stroll, and one very large garbage can that truly rolled out of nowhere and which required a quick jerk on the wheel, sending Aggie's little red Miata spinning deliriously into an empty intersection. She pulled hard on the emergency brake-the tires squealed; the world spun. The car slammed to a stop. Her partner made a choking sound.

Perfect.

"Oh, G.o.d," said Quinn, clutching his chest.

"They're coming," Aggie snapped, rolling down the window. She clicked off the safety on her .22, but kept the gun in its rig. She needed her hands free, and Quinn was the better shot. "Yo, did you hear me? They're almost here, Quinn. Are you ready?"

He made gagging sounds. Aggie wondered if that greasy lunch at Tahoe Joe's was going to make a repeat appearance. The Miata's leather seats were not vomit friendly. But then her vision s.h.i.+fted and she glimpsed Quinn's immediate future, and puke was not involved.

But death was.

Aggie undid Quinn's seatbelt and reached across him to open his door. "Gotta move, gotta move," she murmured, still with the future rolling quick inside her head. They had less than a minute; already she could hear the roar of a powerful engine gunning down a nearby road. So much for a quiet neighborhood. So much for a peaceful life.

"I'm going to kill you," Quinn said, wiping spit from his mouth. "It's the humane thing to do."

"Keep talking, little man," Aggie replied, and shoved him from the car. Quinn was not the most graceful person in the world, but he managed to keep his feet. He gave her a dirty look, which to anyone but Aggie would have felt menacing-those dark eyes, that wild bushy mountain man hair. He was not quite five feet tall-but his extremely short stature meant nothing when he had that expression on his face. Quinn was a law unto himself.

He leaned against the inside of the Miata's open door and reached inside his leather jacket for his gun. He hesitated before drawing the weapon. "Why aren't you getting out of the car?"

"Shut the door," Aggie said, ignoring him. "Get some cover. We don't have any spike strips, so you might need to shoot out some tires, maybe do more if I don't have a clear way into the van."

"Aggie."

"Quinn."

His jaw tightened. "No chicken."

She forced a grin. "I'm but a leaf in the wind. A feather."

"Aggie, no."

The roar of the oncoming car got louder. It was still out of sight, but soon, any second now, it would turn onto this road and...

Aggie said, "You have to do this for me, Quinn. Shut the door."

"Bulls.h.i.+t. I won't leave you. I can work from inside the car."

"You can't."

"Agatha," he said, which made her wince. "You take too many risks."

"Risks?" Images pa.s.sed through Aggie's head, destiny spinning, channels switching, the immediate future spread before her in all its infinite variations, blurring into something more than instinct, something less than conviction, but all of it creating one single knowing, one interpretation. Aggie looked at Quinn and saw him in the pa.s.senger seat with a bullet in his brain, looked and saw him dead and dying, looked and saw him paralyzed, looked and saw him in a coma, looked and saw and looked and saw and...

Aggie's hands tightened around the steering wheel. "The probability of you dying or getting f.u.c.ked over inside this car within the next thirty seconds is higher than eighty percent. On the street, ten. Make your call, Quinn."

He stared, and she could feel his resistance, his hesitation-she could see it on his face, and G.o.d, only Quinn would try to argue fate with a pre-cog-but Aggie stared him down with an expression only her mother could have loved, and he finally-reproachful, angry, oh so stubborn-slammed the door shut. He raised his hands over his head so she could see them through the window and flipped her double birdies.

Yeah. It sure was nice to have friends who loved her.

Aggie counted to five. She revved the engine, savoring the roar, ignoring the shaking pit in her stomach and the bone-white of her knuckles around the steering wheel. Quinn moved into position up the street, a small figure huddled behind the b.u.mper of a Cadillac. A good choice; her inner sight clicked and whirred the probabilities, and he came out fine there. No likely injuries.

Maybe. Anything was possible.

"Anything," she murmured, and watched as the target-a green windowless van, sparkling clean-finally turned onto the street. It drove toward her, and Aggie smiled, grim.

She released the Miata's emergency brake and hit the accelerator. No room for mistakes-no room at all to let the men in that Chevy go. Aggie knew what they were about; she and Quinn had been standing in that parking lot at Tahoe Joe's for a reason, as part of their investigation, and there that van had pa.s.sed them by, and with it blood and screams and all kinds of wrong, all kinds of horror, because those two men in the front seat had something in their possession that made all the probabilities go bad, bad, bad-worse than Aggie had ever realized entering this case. And she and Quinn had to stop them, cut them off, no matter what. Fight the future, and all that jazz.

The world dropped away. Distance died and scenarios played through her mind. If she blocked the road, the driver would put the car in reverse, find a way through one of the tree-lined back alleys connecting the yards of neighborhood homes. Too much risk of a getaway-the odds were in their favor. She had to pin them, disable them, make sure they could not move at all. She had to be a little crazy.

The street was narrow; the possibilities were not endless. She counted on Quinn to do his part and did not let up on the accelerator. The Miata growled. The van ahead of her slowed, but not enough-he thought she was teasing him, that he had enough room in the road and she would squeeze on by.

Aggie gritted her teeth and veered into his lane. Her sight narrowed-the future to a needle point, the eye in a sieve, squeezing- There was a gunshot. The van's front tire blew out and it swerved. Aggie pulled hard on the steering wheel, moving parallel, ramming the side of her little Miata into the van's broad body. Metal screamed; the pa.s.senger door crumpled. Aggie felt her side of the car momentarily lift off the ground as the winds.h.i.+eld cracked. She slammed on the brakes, jerking so hard against the seat-belt that all air was pushed from her lungs. She heard a crash-could barely turn her neck-but she managed to move enough to see the van had sc.r.a.ped past her and slammed head-on into a parked car. Lovely, lovely.

Another gunshot; Quinn, with his unnatural aim, making mush of the van's back tire. She heard shouting-struggled to get out of her seatbelt-and glimpsed movement around the back of the van.

It was the driver, swaying on his feet. Tanned, wrinkled, fat nose, with a face screwed up in a snarl that was one part confused, one part afraid, and a whole lot of angry. Aggie recognized him. David Yarns. Notorious for living an unremarkably remarkable life off the radar. A hard man to find, because he never stayed in one place for long. Until now.

Blood trickled down his forehead. Aggie's mind pushed hard for the probabilities, but her gift chose that moment to go dark. No more future. No more live feed to the Book of Coming Things. Bad timing. Real bad. Aggie thought, I just might be screwed, and then saw the gun in David's hand, and knew that "might" had just turned into "definitely." Future come, future go.

Quinn , she thought, but there was no way her partner could see Yarns around the back of the van, no way he could stop him as the b.a.s.t.a.r.d pointed his gun at her. She ducked just as the winds.h.i.+eld shattered above her head; a bullet slammed low into the pa.s.senger seat. Terrible aim. Terrible for Quinn, if he had been sitting there.

"Aggie!" Quinn crouched across the street with his gun trained on the van. "Aggie, move!"

Aggie scrambled out of her new car, rolling instantly to the road and pus.h.i.+ng her back against the Miata, catching sight of Quinn just as three bullets rocked into the side of her Cadillac, just inches from her face. Quinn narrowed his eyes and squeezed off one round. Aggie heard a scream.

"Aggie!" Quinn shouted. "Where's Yarns?"

She peered over the hood of her car. Yarns was gone, but when she stood up she saw him-hauling a.s.s down the sidewalk. Quinn shouted at her again, but Aggie ignored him, throwing herself into a sprint, racing down the road until she had eaten up enough distance to pull a Starsky and slide over the hood of a parked car onto the gra.s.sy shoulder and hard sidewalk. She saw a woman come out of her house with a child in tow; Aggie screamed and waved her gun. The woman fell back inside, eyes wide.

David was quick on his feet. Aggie was a good runner, but he was better. Perverts were always fast.

You can't catch him , Aggie told herself. Not foresight, just common sense. Her gun felt warm and heavy in her hand.

"Stop!" Aggie shouted, but Yarns ignored her. No surprise. She took a deep breath, tried again to see the possibilities, and failed.

Heart in her throat-because she hated doing these things blind-Aggie shot at the sidewalk near his feet. Just a warning. He stumbled, glancing over his shoulder, but did not slow. Aggie could not risk another shot, even to wound. She would just as likely kill the man, and even though he deserved a bullet in the back, she had to play this one on the up and up. Her employer had a good reputation with local law enforcement, but that only took a girl so far. Witnesses were only good if you could talk to them.

Or catch them. d.a.m.n .

A gunshot cracked the air. David cried out and fell to the ground, hard. He began to get up-to turn with the gun in his hand-but Aggie heard another shot and the pistol flew from his grip, hitting the sidewalk, spinning away. David went after it, but no luck-another shot, another scream. Gripping his leg, he went down for the second time.

Aggie turned. Quinn stood on the sidewalk behind her, so far away she could barely make out his features. He waved, fob done. Three impossible shots. Aggie imagined there was not a man on earth who could do the same, even with a scope and long-range rifle. Quinn had a very talented brain. Talented enough to let him skim a man with bullets so there was no evidence of real abuse, but with all the force necessary to stun, surprise, make indecent amounts of pain.

David tried to stand, but fell and began crawling down the sidewalk toward his gun. Aggie caught up with him and pressed the muzzle of her .22 against his head.

"I don't think so," she murmured, glancing down at his legs. His jeans had been slit open at the knee; the skin beneath looked red, burned. Some distance away Aggie saw several bits of metal glinting from the base of a tree. Good. Quinn always took care with his bullets.

Aggie kept plastic cuffs in the deep pockets of her denim jacket. It did not take long to secure David's hands behind his back. She did the same for his ankles, binding them to his wrists so that he arched backwards on the ground like a bow. He did not resist or say a word, simply lay with his rough cheek pressed to the concrete, staring. Aggie wished he would fight, give her some excuse. He deserved the worst.

Aggie left him sprawled on the ground and ran back to Quinn and the van. Police sirens curled through the air, closing in. Any minute the cops would roll up and there would be some tough explaining to do. She was not worried. All the evidence she needed was inside that van-everything that would make it easy to explain why she and Quinn had gone ape-s.h.i.+t on two strangers.

Of course, the how of that knowledge was another matter entirely, but the agents at Dirk & Steele were good at deflecting those kinds of questions. It came with the territory of keeping secrets, of being different from the rest of the world in profound ways. A life like that cultivated the ability to wheedle around the truth, to protect your own life while still doing good. A necessary evil, one that Aggie supposed lay at the core of her employer's turn-of-the-century foundation. Hiding and helping. Dirk & Steele showed itself off to the public as an internationally respected detective agency, but that was just a mask. A ruse. Underneath ran deeper waters.

The van's second pa.s.senger lay on the sidewalk at Quinn's feet. Aggie did not know his name and she was utterly uninterested in learning it. His hands were tied and he bled from a shoulder wound. His gun lay on the driver's seat inside the van.

"Have you checked the interior?" Aggie asked, dreading his answer.

"No," Quinn said. "It took me a h.e.l.l of a time just to get this guy out."