Page 67 of King Among the Dead

“You idiots didn’t even go to bed,” Kay groused, but her gaze was fixed on the screen. “What are you working on?”

“A chance to bring down the white whale at last,” Beck said. He sounded faintly manic.

Rose hitched upright in her chair, wincing at the crick in her neck. “I’ll go make tea.”

“Better make it coffee,” Kay advised.

“Right.”

~*~

Beck spent three days holed up in his study, consulting maps, searching news and gossip sites, scribbling notes on yellow legal paper. Kay gave up trying to coax him to the table, and she and Rose took turns taking him his meals.

Rose spent the time she wasn’t doing chores training. She cartwheeled down the balance beam, and worked the heavy bag until her shoulders burned. She emptied magazines into targets and threw knives until five out of six hit the bullseye. Beck’s mania was catching: she felt driven. Felt like every exercise, every repetition was crucial for what was to come.

On the fourth morning, he called her into his study, and he walked her through the plan. Showed her every angle, every exit, painted intricate portraits of the way it would all go down.

“And one last thing. The most important thing.” He looked at her, fixing her in place with an earnest gaze. Aburninggaze. “If I tell you to run, I want you to run.”

“What about you? What if you need me?”

“Promise me, Rosie. I won’t take you if you won’t promise.”

She swallowed around a sudden thickness in her throat. Gritted her teeth. “I promise.” She held crossed fingers behind her back, and wondered if he could tell.

She dressed with care that night, in her own room – where she rarely spent any time anymore. She wore black, and laced her boots up tight, and situated all twelve of her knives to within easy reach. She braided her hair in front of the mirror, smoothing back all of the little flyaways.

She contemplated herself in the mirror, startled by what she found there.

She’d undergone another transformation, a subtle shift, like when she’d first started to feel at home here. She In her black, with the collar of her coat lifted up around her throat, she looked like a wild thing. Sharp-eyed, unforgiving, ready. Like a predator. Like Beck’s mate.

She touched the crown she wore beneath her clothes, felt its ridges through the fabric of her shirt, then she went down to meet her partner.

TWENTY-ONE

The warehouse huddled on the edge of the river, belching dust-colored smoke against the snarled black of the stormy sky. Lightning flashed, illuminating a puddled yard full of vehicles, and armed guards. Thunder followed, an ominous rumble.

Rose crouched beside Beck, the two of them pressed together, sealed within a pocket of quiet by the steady drumming of rain on all the corrugated steel around them.

The warehouse was part of a sprawling industrial complex, one that had been around since before the Rift – and which looked it. Rusted, tumbled-down, a veritable maze of buildings of all sizes. Beyond the main warehouse, she spotted several stacks of old shipping containers, peeling paint and blurred white lettering in the next lightning flash. The property was ringed with rusted, but tall wire fences, new signs warning off trespassers at intervals. Beck had pointed out new security cameras, and slipped expertly through their blind spots. Eventually, someone would spot the hole they’d cut in the fence, but that could take days, given the slow routes of the patrols, and they’d be well away before then.

Rose couldn’t get her heartbeat to settle. It skipped and skittered like a frightened animal. This wasn’t the normal thrill of the hunt; this was no ordinary strike in the dark. What was he thinking? How did he expect this to go off properly?

Kay had pulled her aside before they left, when she was waiting for Beck in the kitchen. “This is suicide,” she’d said, big-eyed and earnest. Frightened. “I won’t bother telling you not to go – God knows you wouldn’t listen, and he needs someone watching his back tonight. But try to pull him out before it’s too late. Beg, play dirty if you have to. But he can’t fight them all. Not even with your help. Don’t let it go south, honey.”

That was a lot of pressure.

A pressure she would have carried herself even without Kay’s urging. There was every chance they’d die tonight, but she wouldn’t turn back and abandon him. It didn’t matter if this plan was crazy – ifhewas. He was hers, the best thing she’d ever had, and like hell would she walk away now.

As they watched, a low-slung black car, so clean as to be out of place, slid around a corner and rolled into view, blue-tinted headlights cutting across men dressed in black.

“That’s him.” Beck sounded eager. “Let’s move.”

They swung wide, slipping between the narrow pathways between outbuildings, stepping over old, half-melted bundles of cords and wires, treading through puddles deep enough to lap at the tops of their boots. Castor was wasting massive amounts of electricity on this place, trying to create a secure perimeter with floodlights, but there were gaps, and Beck knew all of them.

It was slow going, but they finally found themselves at an exhaust grate along the back of the warehouse, in a nook between two old dumpsters that reeked of something fouler and more frightening than garbage. Rose kept watch, but no one happened past, and Beck made short work of pulling off the grate. He motioned her to go ahead of him, and she – balked.

It was dark in there. Musty. Close. Her heartbeat swelled up into her throat, and every instinct told herno. But she took a deep breath, and crawled inside.

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