James Axler - Janus Trap

In response, Grant just nodded and beamed a bright smile. Kane knew what that meant—they were here now, and there wasn’t a lot they could do about it.

The discussions seemed to be going well between Ohio Blue and Brigid Baptiste, until Brigid opened up her satchel and showed the trader its contents.

“What is this?” Ohio said, clearly affronted. “Some kind of joke?”

“Fifty gold coins,” Brigid stated, trying to remain calm. “Exactly as requested in your communiqué.”

Blue held one of the ancient coins before her visible blue eye and, for a moment, Brigid half expected her to bite down on it like an olden-day pirate testing if a gold piece was genuine.

“We’ve traveled quite some distance to obtain this merchandise,” Brigid prompted.

Blue looked at the gold coin for another half minute before finally flipping it back into Brigid’s satchel. “I need more,” she said.

Brigid was incredulous. “You’re upping the price?” she said. “But all I brought was fifty pieces.”

“Seventy,” Ohio declared, her lone blue eye staring at Brigid.

Brigid sighed, considering her options quickly. “What if I take less?” she suggested. “What does fifty get me?”

Ohio Blue smiled tightly. “Nothing. Deal’s off.”

“Wait,” Brigid instructed. “I can get seventy. I just don’t have it here.”

A wicked smile crossed Ohio’s thin blue lips. “Perhaps,” she said, gazing openly at Grant, “we can work out a trade?”

Brigid followed the woman’s eye line, watching Grant as the huge ex-Mag stood with his broad back to them, checking their surroundings. “What kind of trade?” she asked, her tone dubious.

“One can always use more…employees,” Ohio said, her tone dripping with meaning.

“Grant’s not for sale,” Brigid stated firmly.

Ohio Blue’s gloved hands turned inward, held open before her as though such a suggestion were beneath her. “I’m not talking about a sale, Miss Baptiste,” she said. “I’m not a barbarian. A simple trade is all. Your impressive friend there for the items you wish to acquire.”

Brigid appeared to be giving the matter some serious consideration before she finally shook her head, her red tresses flowing back and forth with the movement. “I’m afraid I can’t let Grant go right now,” she explained sadly.

“In which case,” Ohio told her, standing up from the couch, “you’ll be leaving empty-handed.”

After a moment, Brigid stood, too, and turned to offer the woman her hand once more. “It was nice meeting you, Miss Blue,” she said, a tight, businesslike smile on her face. “Seventy coins. My people will be in touch to organize another meeting.”

Blue nodded her agreement, and Brigid walked back through the makeshift alleyways of stacked crates with Kane and Grant falling into step behind her. The coins in the satchel chinked as it slapped against Brigid’s leg with the roll of her hips.

“A swing and a miss,” Grant muttered. “I could have stayed in bed.”

Brigid turned to look at him, a mischievous smile on her lips. “You almost ended up in someone else’s,” she said quietly as they neared the door. Just then, Kane flinched, an almost unconscious movement, and his arms swept forward in a blur, shoving Brigid to the floor and pulling Grant down to join them. “Down!” he shouted, but the word was obscured by the explosive sounds of gunfire coming from behind them.

“What the hell!” Grant snarled, scrambling to cover between the crates in a rapid crouch walk.

Kane rolled beside him, while Brigid ducked behind the stacked crates across from them, pulling the TP-9 from its holster. Kane and Grant powered the Sin Eaters into their hands as they backed up against the tall stacks of crates.

“This is crazy,” Brigid hissed across the gap between them in a harsh whisper. “They had us outnumbered, could have killed us at any time. Why now?”

There were more gunshots, and a hailstorm of bullets drilled against the crates beside them. When the shooting stopped, Kane flicked his head out into the space between the crates, taking in the scene in a fraction of a second before ducking back behind cover as more bullets whizzed past.

“It’s not us they’re after,” Kane told Brigid as he returned to cover. “I think someone’s come to speak to your new friend.”

“With bullets,” Grant added, shaking his head. “Nice.”

At the back of the cave, the assassin who moved like a ghost waited patiently as Decimal River’s fingers played across the laptop’s glowing keyboard. At the other side of the low-ceilinged cave, Cloud Singer’s eyes flicked to the ghost woman, still wary of her despite all that had happened in the month since she had found her way back to the Original Tribe.

The woman, the assassin whose warrior name was Broken Ghost, had such an air of stillness about her, of utter calm despite the tenseness of the situation, that it made Cloud Singer uncomfortable. The woman’s flesh seemed almost washed-out compared to the café-au-lait complexions of the other members of the tribe. Her braided black hair and dark eyes gave Broken Ghost a striking appearance unlike anyone else in the tribe. She had painted her face with subtle blends, adding the illusion of shadow, intensifying her cheekbones, making her sharp-angled face appear almost skeletal, and she had weaved bits of glass and small, sharp chips of rock into her thick hair. She wore a loose undershirt that left her lean arms bare, their tight, corded muscles visible. Her skirt was really just two strips of material—one in front and one in back—that dangled to her knees and left her firm legs unencumbered.

Cloud Singer looked down at her own body, perversely unable to stop comparing herself to the magnificent warrior. By contrast, Cloud Singer was just a girl. Sixteen years old, with all the energy and suppleness that that granted, but none of the raw power of the formidable woman at the back of the cave. She wore her warrior’s garb, as she had done ever since returning home to the outback: a tight strip of material stretched across her small breasts like a bandage, with more strips across her groin and legs, wrapped around her arms and encasing her scarred knuckles. Once upon a time, those strips of material had been the pure white of the clouds for whom she sang. After the massacre in Georgia, of which she was the only survivor, the strips had been washed with the blood of a squealing boar while Cloud Singer slit its neck, squeezing its life out of it, until the material was dyed red. After that, despite protests from the elders of the tribe, Cloud Singer had refused to remove her warrior clothes, to the point of even bathing in them in the underground pool that the tribe used. Only alone, in her few moments of absolute solitude, had she stripped out of the strange uniform, and then only to be naked. Until the mission was complete, she would never wear anything other than her warrior’s garb. She had promised that much to Neverwalk as he lay there, head lolled at that dreadful angle, the dried blood splashed all about him in the underground bunker in the Caucasus Mountains.

“They’ve used their slicer,” Decimal River stated, his head turning right then left as he addressed the two women on opposite sides of the cave. He was a young man, just a few years older than Cloud Singer, and his left arm was decorated with tattoos of circuitry. He wore baggy shorts and a loose shirt, open to the waist. The shirt was dark with sweat, and clung to his dark skin where its folds touched him. His hair was braided, like Broken Ghost’s, and his face showed a nasty scar from a burn across the left cheek, stopping just shy of his eye.

“Not slicer,” Broken Ghost corrected, her voice low, eyes closed in meditation. “Mat-trans. They call it a mat-trans.”