Ruby Callaway- The Complete Collection Read online

  Captain Stevens was the closest thing I had to an old friend in this place.

  I felt the zip tie cuffs tighten around my wrists. I wriggled slightly and a single-use needle popped out from the zippered plastic to administer a mild sedative.

  “Uh, Captain?” The soldier’s voice swam with anxious unease. First week on the job. He’d get the whole jackbooted gestapo thing down soon enough. They all took to it like ducks to oil-slicked water. But there was one problem with ruling by hate: pretty soon it choked you, made it hard to breathe.

  “Goddamnit, Washington, I’m busy.” Captain Stevens only liked charging through doors, scaring the unlucky supernatural fucks within. Paperwork, evidence and hard thinking didn’t really suit his style. He dragged me upward by the plastic cuffs and shoved me into the waiting arms of his containment squad.

  Gloved hands shoved me out the ruined door. We began marching past the rows of identical pre-fab, one-story buildings sitting quietly in the moonlight. It was impossible to tell if any other creatures were awake. After curfew, having a light on was enough to be sent to the dark room.

  So there were no other disturbances tonight.

  There were no disturbances on any night.

  As always, I stood alone. No one else was stupid enough to risk the containment squad’s wrath.

  I preferred to think of myself as driven.

  “You’ll want to see this, sir,” I heard from back inside my cabin.

  “Better be worth my goddamn time,” Stevens said.

  “She killed three more,” the rookie said breathlessly. “Dewitt was just the latest.”

  I guess they hadn’t gotten wise to my plan.

  I guess I’d just gotten sloppy.

  Before we could head further toward the dark room, the captain’s gruff voice cut through the stillness.

  “Wait.”

  His heavy steps pounded against the cabin’s hard tile as our procession came to a sudden halt. A soldier’s rifle jabbed me in the spine, warning me not to make any sudden movements.

  He needn’t have worried. I’d seen more than a few creatures get torn to shreds within these electrified fences by the diamond-studded bullets with silver cores. Old, new, weak, strong, imp, witch, didn’t matter.

  At a hundred rounds per minute, smooth reload, no jamming, even a toddler could put down an uprising if he kept his finger on the trigger. MagiTekk must’ve been making a fortune. Not that they provided stock updates in here.

  I ran the numbers in my head. Standard-issue supernatural suppression gear and loadout. A thousand soldiers, workers and military personnel per internment camp. Seven hundred camps nationwide, who knew how many across the globe. And then there was law enforcement, FBI, the military…

  I reached a number somewhere in the trillions as the captain cut in front of me. “What the hell you been up to, little girl?”

  His tightly balled fist clutched the bloodied list of names.

  “Read between the lines,” I said.

  A swift, hard punch connected with my ribs. The faint wisps of dark energy swirling above Stevens’s head had offered me a minor warning, allowing me to tense my abs. Still, the blow sent me to the ground, choking and spitting up blood.

  Titanium alloy nano implants. Strengthening the muscle fibers beneath the skin.

  I gasped as dust flooded my nose.

  The captain knelt beside me, his moustache curled in a cruel smirk. “Playing field got a little more even, didn’t it?”

  I wanted to pass out from the pain and sedative, but instead I spat in his face. “Try me in a fair fight.”

  I expected him to knock me straight in the jaw, but instead the smirk widened as he coolly wiped his cheeks. His vicious eyes glinted with opportunity as he examined my list like it was a macabre résumé.

  “You might be useful.” He glanced between me and the list, gears turning. Never a good sign.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” My eyelids drooped, fighting the urge to sleep.

  “I think the FBI is gonna be real interested in you.” Stevens rose and nudged me roughly with his boot. “They’ve been trying to solve this thing for years.” He shrugged, like he would’ve had it in the bag within the day. “Some hotshot’s lookin’ for real special freaks.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Didn’t you hear?” Stevens said. “Serial killer. Necromancing son of a bitch.”

  “Must’ve missed that on the news.”

  “Lucky for you, little girl, I read that memo.”

  “I’m surprised you can read.”

  “You can’t catch this necromancer fuck.” Stevens grinned wide, teeth shining like fangs. “But someone like you can get me a promotion.” The smile grew. “And maybe that necromancer will even slice you open. World could use one less freak.”

  “Promotion to what? You’re already the biggest asshole here.”

  Captain Stevens just raised his eyebrows and walked away, dialing his superiors via neural link. The containment squad dragged my limp body toward the massive concrete monolith at the heart of the camp.

  Central command. A place where only mortals were welcomed.

  It was my lucky day. I’d caused enough trouble to meet someone important.

  Or maybe I’d just earned a visit with someone more sadistic than even Stevens.

  2

  Captain Stevens’s men threw me into a holding area on central command’s third floor. Must’ve been serious, since I’d never been within even four hundred yards of the concrete beast. Over the years, they’d tacked on floor after floor, adding administrative layers as the Tempe Internment Camp grew from its humble origins.

  I was what they called a lifer. Got to see the whole thing grow up before my eyes.

  Lucky me.

  The plain room didn’t have a window, just a single red door and a pane of blackened glass to my right. A clear glass table and two stainless-steel chairs—one immaculate, the other covered in scratches and dings—completed the layout.

  I paced around the space like a caged animal, mind racing. I repeated the final three names on the list over and over, worried they might slip from my memory. But that wasn’t a risk. Those names were all I ever thought about.

  They whispered to me when I closed my eyes.

  I chased wisps and strands of essence in my dreams, like a wolf hunting rabbits.

  Some might consider them nightmares.

  Reborn as a Realmfarer after cheating death, I had been granted the gift of intuition. Call it a blend of lie detection, cold reading and fortune-telling. As powers went, it was less impressive than, say, being able to summon a tornado.

  But it had many practical uses—and also allowed me to stay beneath the radar. Certain creatures of essence seemed to attract trouble wherever they went. It was in their supernatural DNA. But more than twenty years ago, that trouble had finally found us all. When the curtain came up, and the supernatural emerged from the shadows, mortals were less than pleased.

  Instead of evoking wonder, awareness of our existence triggered mass terror and paranoia.

  What the hell is essence? everyone suddenly asked. Is it dangerous?

  Yeah.

  You could say that.

  The ancients once called magic mana, which has an air of occult mystery. Over the years, mana simply became known as essence. Guess someone decided the supernatural needed a rebranding. Call it whatever you want; it’s just the magical power flowing through a creature’s veins. Some light, some dark.

  Some so fucked up that it deserved to be locked away in a place like this.

  Some less deserving, but caught in a broad, wide-reaching net.

  Either way, there was no vitality in the essence I saw around me here at the internment camp. I could sense the dim gloom in the creatures’ auras—that magical energy that swirls about a supernatural being, signaling its species and power to others with essence in their veins.

  Magical gifts once rarer and more brilliant than gold
were, in the camp, as common and useless as dirt. And I knew that where once I saw light—or at least shades of gray—all I saw now was darkness. Which made me wonder how the mortals outside the fence had fared over the past decades.

  The red door swung open almost silently.

  I stopped pacing.

  The man had his back turned, talking to someone in the hallway. He said, “No, I’ll be all right.” A muted conversation I couldn’t hear, then his sharp reply. “I’ll handle this alone.”

  The door glided shut, and he turned to face me. We stared each other down, each trying to read the situation. We had a brave one. Most of the personnel here talked a good game, but were little more than bullies. They couldn’t even look me in the eye.

  His eyes didn’t fall away from my gaze. Instead they probed deeper, searching for clues. Strands of light flitted over his head, the vivid colors painting a story. Where he had been. Where he might go. A black undercurrent wove through them all, driving everything else in his life.

  My breath caught.

  “I turned off the dampeners in here.” He nodded, gauging my reaction. “Have a seat.”

  “I’d prefer to stand.”

  “Then I’ll sit.” The handsome man pulled out the chair, his lean bicep tensing from the movement. Before he sat down, he made sure his dorky, well-fitted polo was tucked into his dark pants. But he wasn’t a pencil pusher or systems tech. Not the way he moved.

  With an agile, minimalist smoothness, he took out his service weapon and a small data cube. He placed them both on the clear glass table. But I was focused on the other thing he brought out.

  My dog-eared list.

  “You do this all yourself?” He tapped the paper, eyes not leaving mine.

  “Who the hell are you?” I asked. He had a cool ease that was more than a bit unusual.

  “I could ask you the same question.” Instead of giving me an answer, he slotted the data cube into the corner of the glass table. After the system requested a voiceprint ID, he replied, “Special Agent Colton Roark. FBI.”

  “Call sign?” the system asked in its sultry tone.

  Roark replied, “Lightning Blade.”

  “Unauthorized personnel detected within the room, Agent Roark. Proceed?”

  I expected him to get up and tap on the black glass, maybe put in a call to his superior. But Roark didn’t hesitate, which I had to respect. “Just grant temporary clearance to my friend here.”

  “Welcome to the Supernatural Capture & Containment Task Force database, Agent Roark. How may I assist you today?”

  The login screen dissolved, streaming into the glass table. A large virtual desktop spread across the clear surface, filled with options that I didn’t understand. Even my intuition was having difficulty making sense of the information deluge. The wisps simply swirled above the table in a black cloud.

  Or maybe they were trying to tell me something.

  Like I was screwed.

  The surface lit up with dozens of blurry photographs, redacted memos and other clippings. His fingers glided through the air, paging through the data stream in a blur. The FBI had an impressive file on me, down to a wanted poster from 1882. But I saw—with some measure of satisfaction—that they still didn’t have a name. Or what I was.

  It wasn’t for lack of trying. I had the scars from the dark room to prove that.

  “The way I see it, you have two choices.” Roark stopped browsing through the data to look at me.

  “I’m sure they’ll both be great.”

  “You continue enjoying your five-star accommodations.” Roark tented his hands on the surface, leaning over. “Or you convince me that you’re able to help.”

  “And give Stevens a promotion?” I glared at the darkened glass, just in case he was out there watching. “Take me to the dark room, man.”

  “We both know you don’t want anything more to do with that place.”

  There was a cool tension in the air as Roark allowed the words to percolate. This guy was good. He had all the hallmarks of a rising star. You could use his damn back as a level, he sat so straight.

  A sterling product of the bullshit they fed him at the FBI, no doubt. But then there was the issue of the disabled dampeners. Maybe my intuition was rusty from disuse, but I couldn’t quite figure out his play.

  Breaking the silence, Roark said, “Bring up the murder of Dolores Dewitt.” He glanced at me, trying to gauge my reaction. I offered him nothing but a stoic display of blankness. Inside, though, my stomach churned. I’d managed to pull off three kills without getting caught.

  The fourth should have been smooth.

  But instead I was in here, perhaps ready to go to a place worse than the dark room.

  “Audio and video?” the system asked.

  “If you’d be so kind.”

  “You are such a gentleman, Agent Roark,” the system replied. I furrowed my brow. Was the machine flirting with him? Roark, for his part, didn’t even seem to notice. For a moment, I felt as confused as the mortals must’ve been upon learning they’d been living with vampires, imps and trolls in their midst.

  Someone more prescient than me once said technology was indistinguishable from magic once you got far enough down the line. Still feeling the sting of Stevens’s titanium punch, and watching Roark have a conversation with a table, it was clear that man had no idea just how much of a visionary he really was.

  The video finished loading.

  Roark rose from his seat, walking smoothly around the table until he was by my side. Unlike other authority figures, he didn’t loom or use his presence as a threat. Instead, I think he was genuinely curious about what I was seeing.

  Too bad I’d already seen the video.

  Because I was there.

  I watched the steak knife glint as it sliced across the ultra-high-definition feed. Dewitt grabbed her throat, tumbling off the bed. Naked, I jumped off, the security camera catching me as I raised my arm for the final blow.

  A second later, I rose, covered in blood, and began re-dressing in my gray sweatsuit.

  Roark paused the feed and gave me a sideways glance.

  “I didn’t know she had a camera,” I said, my throat dry but the words clear. “The other three didn’t.”

  “I suppose we’d have had this conversation much earlier if that had been the case.” Roark leaned up against the wall, his biceps tensing. “Or not at all.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “If you’d gotten caught the first time, you wouldn’t be very interesting.”

  My eyes gravitated toward his service weapon, still located on the other side of the room.

  I ran through the scenario: two dozen soldiers between me and the entrance. Full lockdown outside. Still, it had to be better than a permanent stay in the dark room. Or being a lab rat.

  Roark was in good shape, but I felt confident I could beat him to the weapon.

  “I took out the magazine.”

  “What?”

  “The gun.” He opened his hand to display the weapon’s metal magazine. A thin smile graced his lips. He rubbed the stubble gracing his cheeks—a product of burning too much midnight oil—and raised an eyebrow. “I’d be thinking it too.”

  Caught off-guard, I stumbled on my next words. “That’s not—I was just thinking.”

  “I’m sure you were.” He pushed himself off the wall with his boot, stretching to his full height. I wasn’t short, but somehow he seemed taller than before. “They don’t call the FBI for an isolated murder.”

  “It wasn’t a murder.”

  Roark shrugged, holding his hands up. “Call it whatever you like. I understand.”

  The wisps above his head indicated there was more truth in that statement than his body language suggested.

  “I call it justice.”

  “I figured it had something to do with this.” Roark nudged his fingers, bringing up a booking report. The ease with which he found the data suggested that he’d spent a lot of
time rooting around in my file. Searching for a special partner to help with his necromancer problem.

  “Well, aren’t you a good little investigator.” I didn’t have to read the report to remember the events. I relived them every day, in vivid color.

  “The laws are better now,” Roark said, not taking the bait. His tone was almost apologetic. “It was anarchy, then.”

  “You were what, ten?” I didn’t bother to hide the bitterness. My eyes caught the highlights. Robbery. Homicide. Nothing about the setup. How I’d been essentially sold out for testing.

  Maybe I already was a lab rat. It’d been a while, though. Even Stevens got bored of the dark room when you didn’t break.

  “And the three left?” Roark nodded at the list sitting on the opposite end of the table.

  “Miles to go before I sleep,” I said.

  “My brother liked Robert Frost.” His sad eyes didn’t leave the video. “Never could get into it.”

  “Maybe it’s a generational thing.”

  He smiled wistfully. “You don’t strike me as the nostalgic type.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “Like how you surprised Dewitt?” His expression didn’t change as his gaze bored deep into my soul. “Fucked her, killed her. Planned for who knows how long.”

  “When you say it like that, it makes me sound like a sociopath.”

  “Catching bad people requires doing bad things.” Roark walked back around to the other end of the room and placed his hands on the table, staring out at the mess of the digital data. “I’m sure you know I have bigger problems than a couple dead assholes.”

  “Why creatures of essence?” I stared at the booking report. “Feds have plenty of resources. Seems like a lot of trouble.”

  Roark snapped his fingers, bringing up a different file. This one was sparse, full of gaping informational holes. They didn’t even have a picture of the guy’s face—just flowing silver hair and a ski mask with a single, glowing eye peering out.

  Hello, necromancer.

  “Seven kills,” he said. “One a year, always on the same day.”

  The crime scene photos blurred by. I noted that there were videos, too. Killed on a live broadcast. A date blinked in the middle of the virtual files. June 7, 2039. Seeing it in writing made me realize just how much time had passed.