Enemies: The Girl in the Box, Book Seven (11 page)

“Taser,” Karthik replied.

“Well, this will certainly help me if we run into a meta that can kill an entire village.”

“Sorry,” Karthik said, and I could hear the notes of genuine contrition in his tone. “Guns aren’t quite as easy to procure here as in America.”

I stared at the flimsy little shock gun in my hand and shook my head. “More’s the pity; I doubt this nine-volt battery is going to do a hell of a lot to something like Wolfe.”

“And a pistol would?” Janus asked with a smile.

I shrugged as I reached the top of the church steps. I continued to lead, even though Karthik had a perfectly good 9mm clenched in his hand. I let my thumb click the little handle to release the door, and I started to swing it open slowly, listening for noise from within over the sound of squeaking hinges.

“Excellent work,” Bast hissed from behind me. “I’m certain they didn’t hear that door open in Surrey.”

“Is that far?” I asked, not moving my eyes off the darkness within the church as a wave of air pushed out from inside. The smell was stronger now, turned loose by the opening of the door, a hint of rot and worse. I had a feeling I knew what we were going to find inside, so it came as a surprise to me when I looked down the main aisle of the church to find the entire place empty, the marble floors shining from the dim light being let in by the stained glass windows.

“Looks clear,” Karthik said quietly, and I felt him relax, heard him reholster his pistol.

I took another sniff, and behind me, Bast did the same. “Hardly.” The smell was thick; faint, but much stronger than it had been outside. I shot a look at her. “What do you think? Basement?” She nodded, and we veered off, opening doors to see if there was an entrance underneath either of the towers that lay to our right and left. After we found that there wasn’t, we advanced slowly down the center aisle of the church, my shoes clicking against the floor. Janus’s did as well, his leather wingtips squeaking with each step. I shot him a look; the suit and tie was hardly the right approach for what we were doing here. “Are you sensing anything?” I asked.

He gave a slight shake of the head. “Not really. Other than the three of you, and the rather bored sensation of most of those officers outside.”

“I have a feeling things are about to get considerably more interesting for them,” I said as we reached the far end of the church. There was a door for the pastor to enter through into the back chambers, and we headed toward it. This time, Karthik dodged ahead of me and I let him.

We entered a small set of rooms like a dressing chamber, and sure enough, there was a stone staircase against the far wall. The rich, velvety red carpet gave with considerable softness as we crossed it. A chill crept into me as I wondered what we’d find next. The idle thought came to me that I’d actually never been inside a church, and I wondered in a detached way if my life would have been different if I had. I shrugged it off, thinking about how I lived in a world where people who used to be called gods were standing within easy reach of me right at this very moment and I tried to not give it any more thought.

The air grew damper as we descended, the colorful carpets and rich woods of the back rooms giving way to the musty smell of basement air. I kept quiet as I followed Karthik down, his black hair vanishing in the dim light. I squinted my eyes to see if it might improve my vision, but I realized that there were few light sources visible from where I was standing. Egress windows were sunk down the sides of the basement, which was a massive space spanning the entire footprint of the church. I looked down the concrete pillars and realized that there were shapes huddled on the floor, unmoving.

Karthik stopped and I bumped into him; a clumsy move for me. His strength was enough to stop us both from tumbling down, however, and I managed to keep my balance after our collision. I stopped on the bottom step, looking out over the vast concrete basement.

“Well,” Bastet said behind me, her voice a choked sound, like she had swallowed ash, “I suppose that answers the question of where the villagers went.”

The smell was heavy here, the first stages of decomposition hanging in the air, along with the other odors that presented themselves when someone died. The floor was covered with them, corpses, all packed tightly together—women, children, men and old folks. I could see them with my waking eyes, but it was almost as though it were a dream. There were easily fifty of them, and I wondered if they were all metas, or if there were humans mixed in with them as well. Not one of them moved.

“Water?” Karthik asked me as I sat on the ledge of the chopper, watching Janus and Bast talk to the cops who were still holding their perimeter around the village. I looked up to Karthik’s warm features, and he offered me a bottle that I immediately accepted, taking a long drink that reinvigorated the dry mouth I didn’t even know I had. I finished it in two long gulps and he smiled at me. “I had a feeling you might be thirsty after our flight.” His face fell a degree. “And … everything else, of course.”

“I could stand to eat, too,” I said, looking at the empty village ahead. “Is that strange? That I could see a spectacle like that,” I waved my hand at the church in the distance, “and still be hungry afterward?”

Karthik gave me a light shrug as he sat down beside me. “I suppose it just means you’ve seen enough death that it doesn’t bother you like it used to.”

“It should,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like that. Those people were innocent. There were children in there.” A shudder ran through me.

“Our enemy is a merciless one,” he said, and drank from his own bottle of water. “They don’t spare a thought to who they might kill in their mad quest to wipe us all out.”

“So you’re a meta too, huh?” I gave him the sidelong look. “What’s your power?”

“Rather mundane, actually,” he said with a smile. “I’m very low level for my specialty, but I match up well on physical strength and dexterity, so I’ve managed to prove myself useful.”

I eyed him carefully. “And your power is …”

He shrugged. “I’m a Rakshasa.”

“I don’t know what that is,” I admitted.

“No one ever does,” he said with a smile. “There are very few of us left. I can, uh … well. Perhaps I’ll show you at some point, when there’s an actual need for what I do.”

“Sure,” I said with an almost dismissive nod. “This isn’t the first of these sites you’ve been to?”

“Not at all,” he admitted. “I’ve been to the ones in Greece and Turkey, and more recently Germany and France. It’s getting bad out there. Almost all the metas in Europe live in cloisters. It’s making it all the easier to wipe us out.”

“What’s Omega doing to stop it?” I asked, genuinely wondering.

“Everything we can,” Karthik said, clenching his fist at his side. “The problem is that while we’ve always wielded considerable power, it’s not total power by any means.”

“You mean you don’t normally go dropping into these cloisters and tell people how to run things?” I wore a faint smile as I asked.

Karthik smiled back. “We really don’t. These are independent cloisters. Omega recruits from them, trying to find young and disaffected metas looking for something outside their quiet village life but as a rule, we focus our efforts on things that matter to us—exerting power in the places it most benefits us.”

“So you don’t spend all your time hunting down metas like me?” I let my bare palms rest on the edge of the chopper floor, felt the cool metal against them along with the pressure of the edge.

“Very little of it,” Karthik said. “The thing you have to understand is that in the ‘old world,’ as it were—not the Americas—cloisters are everything. They’re tightly knit communities, they police themselves, they mostly retain their own offspring and keep them in the same villages. You don’t see as many of these wildfire metas here as you do in America. You know, the ones who don’t know what they are, that manifest and then suddenly get crazed with power and go on a crime spree?”

I felt my lips curl. “Met a few of those, yeah.”

Karthik shrugged. “They happen here sometimes too, usually from a meta father impregnating a human woman and not sticking around. The child has no idea what to expect when they come into their own abilities. We deal with those occasionally, on contract and under the table for the EU, but generally we’re focused on our own activities. Growing our influence, our power.” He didn’t blush but looked almost ashamed for a moment. “Our wealth.”

“So you’re telling me that Omega is just a moneymaking organization?” If I had baked any more skepticism into that question, it would have exploded over everything.

“Not only but primarily,” Karthik said. “It’s why I joined. They promise wealth, and they’ve consistently delivered. It’s how they recruit disaffected kids out of villages. You do your term of service, and a portion of your pay goes into Omega’s investment portfolio. By the time you retire, you’re bloody wealthy.”

“Uh huh,” I said. “How exactly does Omega make that money?”

Karthik laughed under his breath. “By using our powers to gain unfair advantages in the world of commerce, of course.”

I rolled my eyes. “Specifically?”

“Oh, think about it. You place a telepath in a position to be around very powerful men and women, and then make investments in companies based on the information they bring back to you.” His smile crinkled lines around his eyes. “I know it sounds nefarious, and it’s certainly illegal in some jurisdictions, but it’s hardly the most odious scheme going.”

I shook my head at him. “Sorry, no. Don’t buy it.”

He raised his hands to either side as if to absolve himself of having to prove it to me. “I know you’d like to believe we’re some shadowy, dark organization—”

“Because you are.”

“—but it’s never as simple as it appears on the surface.” He met my gaze and didn’t look away. “Most of us are here for the money. It’s honest work and good pay.”

“Which part of the ‘honest work’ involves sending guys like Wolfe after girls like me?” I asked with a wicked grin. I probably shouldn’t have delighted in taking the air out of him like that, but … I did.

Karthik deflated. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I think our business is concluded here,” Janus said, returning to us with Bast a step behind him.

“Really?” I asked coldly. “What fortuitous timing.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Bast said with narrowed eyes. “We don’t worry ourselves about your conversations.”

“Except to have Janus tell you that we’re having one that might be concerning?” I asked as Janus cringed and cast an accusatory glance at Bast.

“Not concerning,” Janus said with aplomb. “Barely worthy of counterargument.”

“I see,” I said. “So, Karthik … did they tell you about the time they set loose a couple vampires on me?” I watched his expression fade as mine grew immensely satisfied. “They shot down a helicopter and ate the throats out of the pilots.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Karthik asked, almost confused.

“Or how about the time they had one of their operatives—an incubus—try to seduce me?” Janus clenched his jaw slightly. “He almost gutted me.” I took a deep breath. “Which reminds me of Wolfe.” I caught a momentary exchange between Janus and Bast, one in which he looked mildly annoyed. “What’s the matter? This listing of sins past isn’t bothering you, is it?”

“I would have done all that and more to bring you back to us if the Primus asked it of me,” Bastet said with an edge to her voice that left me in no doubt that she meant every word of it. “What we are playing at is the entire future of our race—”

“What was your excuse for what you did to Andromeda?” I asked, and watched her expression deteriorate into mild surprise. “Locking a girl away, doing some sort of experiments on her? This … Sovereign guy, this Century group, they weren’t on the warpath when you did … whatever it is you did to her, were they?”

“I don’t have the faintest idea what anyone is talking about here,” Karthik said quietly.

“It’s above your pay grade,” Bastet snapped.

I looked to Janus and he was quiet, still, concentrating on me. “Don’t go trying to implant any suggestions in my head right now. Just because you don’t want your lower levels to smell your dirty laundry doesn’t mean I have any problem bringing it right out front and center—”

Janus made a motion with his hand as if to wave me off. “All of this is information he would eventually learn anyway, should Karthik continue to advance.” He gave Karthik a reassuring look. “And I have no doubt he will. However, you must understand why it is not widely advertised.”

“Because it’s dirty laundry, not clean laundry,” I replied. “If you had the whitest sheets, you wouldn’t care if everyone saw them hanging on the line.”

“What interesting imagery,” Bast said, “since you’re the one who is presently soiling our linens.”

“I’m sorry,” I said with mock apology, “is all this truth just a little too much for you?”

“This is quite enough,” Janus said. “Yes, you have been wronged by us. I have admitted it. In one of her more charitable moments, perhaps under the influence of alcohol, Bast would admit it as well—” There was a look of pure, silent, unadulterated fury from her that told me differently. “No one is disputing that.” He cast a look sideways at Bast. “Well, no one but Bastet is disputing that. But we have our reasons, for you, for …” he paused, “ … Andromeda, for all that we do. You may choose to believe that, or you may remain skeptical and continue to build the case in your head that we are an all-consuming evil that is merely trying to hoodwink you. Whichever you choose, at the end of our tenure here, I will give you the location of Erich Winter, and you will be able to decide whether you wish to go murder him at that point, in cold blood—no pun intended—or continue to help us advance the cause of protecting our people from extermination.” He shrugged. “Either way, it is on you, and no amount of past sins—yours, mine, ours—will stop me from doing all that I can to ensure the survival of our race.” He pointed to himself. “That is my aim. What is yours?”

Without another word, he calmly stepped past me and into the helicopter. Bast gave me a self-satisfied smile as she boarded. I exchanged a last look with Karthik, one marked by embarrassment from him, before I stood to get into my seat. The helicopter’s blades were already spinning as I fastened myself in. I didn’t look in at the three of them as we began to take off, as though by looking away, I could forget that I was in a foreign land, with people I couldn’t trust, whose aims I didn’t truly know.