Each embers ghost, p.1
Each Ember's Ghost, page 1
part #2 of Fireborn Series
This one’s for Steve Lockley—cowriter, good friend, with me every step of the way on this one. It couldn’t have happened without you, fella. Enjoy.
© 2012 by Fantasy Flight Publishing, Inc.
All rights reserved.
eBook edition published in 2012.
Cover illustration by Mathias Kollros.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Print Edition ISBN: 978-1-61661-432-4
iBooks Edition ISBN: 978-1-61661-528-4
Fireborn, Each Ember’s Ghost, all associated characters, character names, and distinctive likenesses thereof, Fantasy Flight Games, and the FFG logo are trademarks owned by Fantasy Flight Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Chapter 1
The Heist
Alice Ho slipped through the darkness like a razor blade cutting into a vein. Silence was a virtue in certain walks of life. In Alice’s it was the stuff of life and death itself. She pressed herself up against the wall, feeling the thrill of cold stone on her back. She offered as little of her profile as was physically possible to the surveillance cameras. It was impossible to hide from all of them. The cameras covered every inch of the corridor, a miniaturized version of the world outside: once upon a time, London had been the most spied upon city in the world—there were still eyes everywhere. Alice was pragmatic. She wanted to make life as difficult as possible for the authorities, and yet still taunt them with the hope that they might just be able to identify her. It was all about angles and light and shadow, and the fact that she just loved to tease. It didn’t hurt that she enjoyed being three steps ahead of the people chasing her, twice as intelligent as them, and better looking.
Alice barely suppressed a chuckle at that.
Sometimes when she was on the job her thoughts would ramble so she didn’t obsess about what she was doing. Obsessives invariably made mistakes and became OCD about stupid superstitions when they were on the job. More often than not in her line of work the obsessing needed to come before the heist; during the job itself instincts were far more important.
She edged toward the great, grey metal door at the far end of the corridor, and then turned, just for a second, and flashed a killer smile at the camera; she could imagine their consternation at that. That made her smile all the more.
Two small, circular metal plates on either side of the huge brass handle shielded the old-fashioned keyholes. The entire mechanism was an echo of a bygone age. It never ceased to amaze her that so many banks were reluctant to let go of that simpler time. Instead of replacing the vault’s door with a hi-tech electromagnetic locking mechanism, optical reader, biometric scanner, or other foolproof layer of protection, they had simply added an electronic alarm. It wasn’t even a sophisticated one. She could disarm it with a four-digit code punched into the keypad beside the door. There was an arrogance in the fact that they hadn’t taken measures to protect the vault adequately; it was as though they didn’t think anyone would have the balls to rob them. Some jobs didn’t need the proverbial testicles, they just needed a ruthless woman like Alice Ho.
She traced her fingers over the metal. The contact sent an involuntary shudder of pleasure through her body. A sudden surge of heat through her fingertips distracted her for a moment. Alice took a deep breath, and then moved her fingers again, feeling out the intricacies of the mechanism that lay sheathed within the layers of thick steel. Her smile spread with the heat as, on a molecular level, the steel grew more and more agitated by her touch. The heat intensified, almost burning now, as it ran through her fingers, through her hand, and crept up her arm. The metal began to weaken at her touch, softening around her fingers until Alice felt the levers beneath begin to move. One by one they eased themselves into alignment, matching the precise position they would have fallen into if she had pushed the right code into the keypad, and then they moved again, as though keys had been inserted and turned. A sudden sharp burst of static charge coursed through her body as the final pieces fell into place.
Alice grasped the great brass handle and with one confident twist of downward pressure pulled back the six solid steel bolts that held the door closed.
She was in.
Alice let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding as the heavy door swung open. The sheer weight of the thing created its own momentum. A light came on inside the vault as though it were a giant refrigerator.
For the sliding moment of silence between heartbeats Alice was tempted to let the door slowly swing all the way back until it thumped up against the raised rubber stopper that had been screwed into the floor. There were chunks of plaster missing from where the door had chipped away at the wall for years before the stopper had been screwed into place. She didn’t, though; she caught it before it could. There was a second metal door—this one no more imposing than a metal-mesh gate—that separated row upon row of safe deposit boxes from the shelves of files and other things that needed to be kept in the safest part of the bank. Alice laid her palm flat against the lock plate. It only took the briefest surge of heat to pop the lock. The gate slipped open and she slid through the gap even as it was still opening. Inside the vault proper she played her fingers along the rows of boxes.
Which ones? Which ones? she thought, using her gift to feel out the contents of the vaults. It wasn’t that she could “see” what was in them, or actually even “feel” the contents, but certain things vibrated at different frequencies, so she could sense a difference between paper and gemstone, for instance, meaning she could methodically work her way along the line feeling out which box held jewels and which held cash, but she couldn’t know which box held dusty old documents or bearer bonds, because they were essentially the same. Likewise, a work of art was indecipherable from a last will and testament. Her touch wasn’t that precise, but that was all part of the fun. Life would have been oh so dull without a few surprises along the way.
The security was laughably poor, to the extent that it took a lot of fun out of the job. There was nothing here to test herself against. She could have beaten this system with one hand tied behind her back when she was barely into her teens. Now it was an insult to her skills.
The individual safety deposit boxes only needed the box holder’s single key; there was no counter-key measure for the bank itself. There wouldn’t be any spares; it wasn’t that kind of bank. This was the kind of bank where anonymity was a better protection than any key code or combination lock could ever be. It was the kind of bank where the police would need a court order and a drill to gain entry, and even then the client would be tipped off to remove their belongings long before the drill could breach the lock.
But Alice Ho was one of a kind.
She walked slowly along the line, letting her fingertips trail across the doors of the boxes one after another, then another, and another, each time feeling the satisfying soft snick, snack of the locks on each of them open and close again.
There were no cameras within the vault itself. The bank’s clientele were the sort of people who demanded absolute privacy. There was no telling what lost treasures were stashed away down here, Alice realized. She knew for sure she could make herself rich beyond her wildest dreams in less than two minutes flat, such was the wealth stashed in the vault, but this job wasn’t about personal gain. There was a lot more to it than that. On the simplest level, she was doing it out of gratitude for one person and to gain the favor of another, but even that didn’t come close to scratching beneath the surface motivation.
She had memorized the numbers of the boxes she needed to open. Writing things down in her line of work wasn’t just a mistake, it was a potentially fatal one. The people she did jobs for didn’t want their involvement known. Discretion was a priceless commodity. If pieces could be put together in such a way as to make a trail, measures would always have to be made to be sure it was a cold one, meaning a dead end. Literally. Alice had no intention of ending up as one of those. So she didn’t write things down. Ever. Her mind was a steel trap when it came to the intricacies of a job. She worked alone. She controlled the variables. All of them. Indeed, she thought ahead through so many possible permutations that she actually welcomed the discovery of the theft from one of the boxes. It was a vital part of the disguise she was building to hide what else she had planned.
Alice moved quickly and efficiently, opening the two boxes she wanted and leaving the rest alone. She only took two things. From one box she removed a necklace and with the blade of a penknife she pried a single gem from the setting, then tucked it away safely before returning the rest of the necklace to the box. From the other she took a small velvet pouch, feeling the weight in her hand before adding it to the jewel in her zip-pocket at her hip. She replaced one of the boxes carefully, making sure that no one would be able to tell she had been anywhere near it, and left the other sitting wide open on the table in the middle of the room.
It was time to go.
The CCTV cameras were still watching as she left.
Alice flashed one a single smile, knowing that it would never be seen by anyone.
Chapter 2
Fire Burn Within Me
Jack Callaghan is in darkness so black that the world seems brighter when he closes his eyes.
There are voices here, and deeper in the darkness, the sounds of battle.
The words are unfamiliar…wrong…but the screams and cries of the dying and the smells of death are not. They’re very familiar. Intimately. They are all around him. Jack has no idea what this place is, where it is—or was—and yet there is something naggingly familiar about it. It is as though he has been here before, but now it feels like a long-forgotten dream.
And a bad one at that.
There is heat in the air, and the unmistakeable odor of sulfur.
Jack is torn. He wants to call out to whoever is lurking out there in the darkness, but he doesn’t dare to draw attention to himself. Fear knots itself in the pit of his stomach, screaming for him to make himself small.
The afterimage of a face drifts in and out of focus, like a ghost slipping across his mind. It’s not just a face…it’s a head. There are ragged wounds of blood and gristle around its neck where it has been hacked clear of its body. Its wild eyes stare at him. Into him. Its mouth moves, sounds bellowing out. They’re words he can’t understand and yet, they exhort him to rise up, to battle, to fight, to rage… The words don’t matter, it’s what they do to him that does. They banish the fear that had wrapped itself around his soul. Even though he cannot understand a single word, they give him courage. They set his pulse to racing. They drive his blood pounding through his veins and drumming against his ears until that maddening dub-dub dub-dub is all that he can hear.
He longs to scream a battle cry and charge into the fray. Battle is calling him. But this can’t be real. It has to be a dream.
But he can’t remember what real life is.
The head moves again, swinging against the blackness, twisting as though some giant hand has tangled in the matted curls of black hair and is raising it aloft… The madness of it all makes itself known to Jack Callaghan, a rational man, a policeman, he remembers, who has no time for the impossible in his life. The mouth moves, lips twitching around the voice that pours forth. White bone shines through ragged flesh and sinew hanging from where it has been severed at the neck. Jack isn’t afraid of the ghostly head…why should he be? This is just a dream…
The eyes rove, rage burning behind them. They bulge in their sockets. The voice roars. Jack can feel the voice resonating with the blood as it roars through his body. And slowly, one by one, each unknown syllable starts to fall in time with his heartbeat.
There is heat, but this time it is inside him. It feels as though his blood is coming to a boil in his veins.
Fire threatens to consume him.
Chapter 3
Blackbird
Curzon Street was deserted when Alice Ho stepped out into the brisk morning air. She’d slept in the townhouse rather than her work place out on the Isle of Dogs. The townhouse was an indulgence from a rich ex. Rich men liked to shower her with trinkets and toys, and the richer the man, the more extravagant his gifts became. It was as though they were trying to disprove the old adage money can’t buy love. Alice didn’t love them, but she was rather partial to their generosity, so she smiled and pretended when it suited her. It was just another form of theft, really. A long grift. And like any theft, there was an art to it. And Alice was good at what she did.
The street was strewn with litter. Not so long ago this had been one of the most prized addresses in the city, home to the rich and famous, the richer and the even more famous. Times had changed. Now they couldn’t even get a street cleaner to work at night around here. There were too many terrors lurking in the shadows, too many strange things stalking the side streets and alleyways for anyone to put themselves in harm’s way. It was all primal, instinctual. They didn’t know what was happening around them, but some long-buried danger-sense flared up and they had to listen to it. Street cleaners worked from sunrise to sunset and not a minute longer. If the clean up couldn’t be finished before sundown, the garbage sacks could stack up, the cardboard burger boxes and the sheets of yesterday’s news could line the gutter.
The last orange glow of streetlights would soon fade away as the sky gradually grew lighter, heralding the relative safety of dawn.
Alice was not afraid of the dark; if anything she welcomed it as part of her natural habitat. She was a night walker. A creature of the moon. She rarely needed sleep, and when she did, she was just as happy to close her eyes when the sun was at its highest and the streets crowded. Crowded was a relative term. It was a long time since London had genuinely been choked with people. The dark skies had put an end to that.
Still, for all that, the houses along the old curved street almost smelled of wealth. The richest and safest homes were still to be found in this part of London, replete with their high security protection, surveillance cameras, and guards. Some of the more regal old buildings still had doormen standing like sentries in their crisply ironed red uniforms. The only difference was that now they carried concealed weapons to give the residents the peace of mind they paid so richly for.
Alice saw changes everywhere she went. The sad thing was that she’d long since stopped paying attention to them; plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, as the saying went. The world had changed, and she had changed with it. That was just the way it had to be. It was either a case of becoming part of the new order or becoming a relic of the old. She was no one’s relic. What she was was a thief, and a damned good one at that.
She closed the red door behind her. She didn’t need to lock it. She had all sorts of security in place that made something as banal as keys redundant. No one would break in to the townhouse. She started to walk. She needed to clear her head. The last dregs of adrenaline still buzzed through her system, though the high that had got her through the night was long since gone. Now she was itchy. She needed to be moving. Doing something.
She ended up going to the café on the corner. It was blissfully quiet. No one had slumped down into the deep faux-leather seats for hours. She loved those chairs, with their foam poking through to offer a lesson in the secret anatomy of upholstery. And she loved this time of day. The coffee shop was quiet apart from the gentle rattle and clatter as Franco set up for the day, the occasional gurgle of the espresso machine, the tamping of the coffee press, the slice of the carving knife on the breadboard—all of those small comforting sounds that said she wasn’t alone in the world after all.
Alice had been coming into Franco’s for coffee since she had moved into the townhouse. The café wasn’t actually called Franco’s, it was called Brasco’s, after an old movie mob character, but it would always be Franco’s to her. Franco was well into his fifties, with that olive skin and dark stubble of a second generation Italian, and dark, smoldering eyes that could have melt the panties off an unsuspecting woman at one hundred paces. He was ruthlessly charming, and an incorrigible flirt. They had a good thing going on; he smiled and tried out his lines on her, and in return she got the best coffee in the city. She never felt dirty or threatened by anything he said, unlike some of the jokers she met on the underground club scene. With Franco the “Hey, pretty lady, you’re looking especially lovely this morning” always felt like an honest compliment, and that made her feel good. It never came across as a prelude to something more, which made a pleasant change of pace.
Franco brought over her espresso and a plate of biscotti.
Alice liked to imagine that he had an elderly mother who got up at the crack of dawn to make them especially for her. She didn’t need to know about the wholesaler who lurked behind the curtain or the factory conveyor belt of sugar rush he presided over. Reality was always so much more boring than the fantasy. Besides, thinking there was a secret family recipe and a little old lady slaving over them made the biscotti taste so much better.
