Chapter 24: A Debt in Blood

  “Why lie?”

  I didn’t raise my voice, didn’t push. Just let the question hang between us, heavy as a guillotine.

  Paddy exhaled, low and slow. “Wasn’t supposed to matter anymore.” He didn’t meet my eyes. “And I never lied, lad. I just... didn’t tell the whole truth. There’s a difference.”

  “Spin it however you want,” I said. “Doesn’t change the fact you were hiding something. That woman—Linh Phan, the queen of the Boogeymen, remember her? She tried to kill me.” My voice hardened. “Now you’re telling me you’re one of hers?”

  Paddy stepped toward the tree line, just beneath the twisted canopy—trying to slip away from the group. I caught his shoulder and spun him.

  He slapped my hand off. “Aye, she tried to kill you. I didn’t.” His face burned red as his hair. Acne scars stark white under the flush. He jabbed a finger at my chest. “I don’t owe you a damn thing, lad. And if you call me one of them again, we’ll have more than just feckin’ words, you hear?”

  My blood surged. The predator icon at the edge of my vision pulsed with each thump of my heart. Since they’d shut off my implant, I’d been on edge. Now it boiled over.

  I stepped in, face to face. “Why. Lie?” The words were ground out between clenched teeth.

  “I didn’t feckin’ lie!” he snapped. “Now back off!”

  I didn’t move.

  His hand twitched.

  Storm Sense flared. I turned, just as something dropped from the canopy behind him. I shoved Paddy aside, activated Soldertouch, and caught the thing by the face. It shrieked and squealed, flesh bubbling from where my fingers were wrapped around its fleshy little head.

  I turned to face Paddy. The creature in my grip scrabbled weakly against my arm, trying to escape. I ignored it.

  Paddy had his bow drawn. An arrow of glowing light was nocked—but I couldn’t tell if it was aimed at the creature or at me.

  For a breath, I calculated. Could I get the dying alien between me and that arrow in time?

  “Merde! That’s enough!” Ariel stepped between us.

  Tyler crossed to Paddy and gently touched his bow arm. Tammy’s hand fell on my shoulder. I didn’t flinch. I had sensed her.

  “Boys!” Ariel spat.

  “Easy, Red,” Tyler murmured.

  But Paddy’s aim didn’t drop. And now the arrow was pointed squarely at Ariel.

  The creature in my grip spasmed one final time, smoke wreathed my wrist as it went limp. Smelled like the BBQ pork they cooked at the old Chinese restaurant near my primary school. I let the body drop and summoned Ebonrage in its place.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Ariel said. “We’re on the same team.”

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  “Yeah? Then why’s he pointing a weapon at you?” I asked. “And why’s he working for someone who tried to stick a knife in me?”

  “I don’t feckin’ work for her. I hate her,” Paddy said, his voice shrill. His bow hand trembled.

  Ariel threw up her hands. “Seigneur, délivre-moi des crétins muets par orgueil ou bêtise. It was his parents, Allan. Paddy’s folks were the Boogeymen. Not him.”

  “Figures you’d know,” Paddy muttered. “The feckin' Du Bouchard name’s as blood-soaked as hers.”

  “Oui. But just as you are not your parents, I am not my Papa.”

  She walked right up to him, stopping when the arrow tip was at her forehead. I took an involuntary step towards them. Memories of dead blue eyes vivid in my mind, I was itching to yank her back—but she didn’t even flinch.

  Paddy squeezed his eyes shut—and with a whoosh of air, the bow vanished into his inventory.

  I exhaled.

  We pulled back away from the treeline onto the empty plains. The silence sat heavy. I scanned the landscape, uneasy. Something felt… off. Was it just that we had killed every living thing in sight?

  Nobody spoke. I gave them a minute, then broke it.

  “So… your parents, huh?”

  Paddy didn’t answer.

  “You don’t have to talk about it,” I added. “But… I get what it’s like to lose someone.”

  I cursed myself for sounding so stiff. I was shithouse at showing empathy.

  It worked, though. Sometimes thats all it takes, I guess. Just one fumbling attempt.

  “Yeah.” Paddy sighed. “They worked for her. Old stock. Legacy recruits, ya know? Our family go way back to the IRA.”

  I had no bloody clue what the IRA was, but nodded to keep him talking.

  “She said the work ran in our veins. They worked intelligence. No weapons. No violence. No blood.” He glanced at Ariel. “Not directly. But I guess the blood’s on your hands, even if you aren’t the one who held the baton, eh?”

  Ariel’s eyes flashed—probably consulting someone back on Earth.

  “We had this cottage in County Meath. Stone, lime and sod. A fairy fort in the field — like something out of a story book." He sighed. "They worked from home, in a room I was forbidden to enter. When I was little, I’d climb through the flower beds and peek at them through the window. It was full of maps, charts, blueprints.”

  The wistful look on his face hardened into something darker, more familiar.

  “When I was seventeen, they came for them. Agents, boogeymen, whatever. They were all smiles, but I’ll never forget the look on my Da’s face. He told me to wait upstairs, and I watched from my attic bedroom as Da tried to distract them. Ma climbed out of the flower garden window. She ran for the fairy fort, but they caught her, clubbed her 'til she went limp and dragged her to a truck.”

  He stared through me.

  “I never saw them again. Don’t even know if they’re alive.”

  Surprisingly it was Tyler that stepped in then, his rough southern drawl uncharacteristically soft. “You didn’t owe us that, Red. But I appreciate it.”

  He turned to me. “Reckon we all got secrets. Reckon we’re allowed them.”

  I felt the sting of guilt. Then checked myself. This place—this game—was life or death. Suspicion wasn’t wrong.

  But maybe how I handled it was.

  I stepped closer to Paddy. Locked eyes.

  He was just like me.

  I thought back on the oath I had made on the first stage. To punish those that had hurt me. To bring them ruin. The aliens that had brought us here to die for their amusement, and the humans that had controlled us back on Earth. The simmering anger that was with me at all times rose to a boil.

  I reached out and put a hand on Paddy’s shoulder, locking eyes with him. A few faint bars of the predator’s tune came to me on a breeze that wasn’t truly there.

  “There’s a debt of pain owed to all of us, mate,” I said. “And I intend to see it paid in blood. But I can’t do it alone. Not yet.”

  The hue of Paddy’s eyes changed as I spoke. From the flat, matte green of old dollar bills, to something bright and sharp as shattered sea-glass.

  “A debt, is it, lad?” he said. “Aye. I guess there is. If you’re collecting, then count me in.”

  He grinned, wolfish and ragged. A tangled triangle of teeth.

  “Blood paid for blood owed.”

  ***

  The glow that filled our enormous cavern had shifted from green, to blue and was now bruised with purple. It reminded me that we were on the clock. With a last squeeze to the Irishman’s shoulder, I turned to the twisted jungle.

  “Right then, let’s take a look at whatever this alien is that tried to interrupt us. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before we get to the vault.”

  I froze.

  The scent of BBQ pork still hung in the air.

  But the corpse was gone.

  I spun back to the plains behind us. Empty. Clean.

  Too clean.

  “There should be bodies,” I muttered. “Dozens. All the Y’Gaha we fought… where are they?”

  Nobody answered.

  Ariel’s eyes flashed. Tyler summoned his shield. Tammy drained her beer. Paddy looked to the jungle.

  Something was watching us.

  And it was cleaning up.