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  I gagged once, swallowed, then gagged again and lost the battle, vomiting until my abdomen ached. I continued to dry heave, my intestines wrenching like the wringing of a wet towel.

  I’d been exposed to plenty of blood and gore in my profession. This certainly wasn’t the first friend I’d seen die. But it was the first time I’d held the weapon.

  I screamed again, putting all my rage and frustration behind the sound. “You bastard!” The words strangled from my tightened throat while my open palms slammed the stone floor. Micah had stolen my choices from me. Again.

  Time passed, I’m not sure how much, but breathing grew more and more difficult as smoke filled the room. Knees shaky, I staggered to my feet, then nearly fell when the chamber tilted and swam. Oxygen deprivation. I needed to get out.

  Despite the urgency, I stumbled to the sleeping area, locating the lockers built into the partition. Tears blurred my vision, and I found my storage space by feel and habit. It took three tries to enter the release code on the keypad, one of the few evidences of modern technology in the Guild house. When it snapped open, I dumped its contents and clawed through them for whatever I could easily carry: a spare pistol and back holster, another knife (I wasn’t retrieving my favorite one), a holocube. I could have used the change of clothes, another set of working gear. However, I’d left my satchel in the aircar on the surface. I cut a strip from a shirt and wrapped it around my mouth and nose.

  Now for the door. I weaved my way to Micah’s corpse, aware of my unsteady limbs. My thumping heart reverberated in my chest and head, building to a migraine crescendo that finally dropped me to my knees beside the body. The impact clicked my teeth together in an audible snap.

  I made the error of glancing at his face one last time, but this slack, lifeless mask wasn’t the man I’d loved, the man who’d saved me and given me a purpose in life.

  It had been months since he’d been that man, almost a year since he’d chosen the Guild over me.

  I forced myself to look away.

  Like detached things, my hands slid beneath his tunic, fumbling for his belt and the door release I’d find there. The lingering warmth of his skin seeped into my fingertips, renewing my nausea, but I fought it down. No more time. Darkness encroached on the edges of my vision.

  I closed my grip around the device, found the signal switch, and flipped it. The shriek of metal on stone sent my headache to new heights of agony, and I blinked repeatedly before standing to face the door.

  Three master assassins blocked my exit.

  At least I thought there were three. The way my eyesight was distorted, I could have been mistaken. Three or ten, it didn’t matter. One would best me in my current condition.

  I’d watched my lover kill himself, nearly asphyxiated on smoke, gotten the door open, and I still wasn’t going to get away. Part of me wanted to shatter.

  The masters glanced from me, wavering and covered in blood not my own, to Micah. It gave me time to identify them: Benn, Alek, and Yesenia. Benn, whom I’d always considered a friend, hesitated. Yesenia shouted with rage. I had a half second to react before she and Alek drew their knives and flung them.

  I dive-rolled behind the firepit, where the smoke clung thickest and the flames roiled. One of the blades missed, but the second drove into my back, just below my right shoulder. I smothered a shriek of pain beneath a choked sob and crouched, considering my options. There were frighteningly few, and judging from all the motion in the room, Benn had decided to join the attack against me. I swallowed my hurt and surprise. Assassins had no permanent friends.

  One thing in my favor—all three wore training clothes, not working gear. I’d have the only laser in the room, not that I could aim it with my head swimming, but it was something. Micah must have planned this, sent them out on some minimalist survival expedition so if they returned early, I’d have a small advantage. Small consolation, knowing he wanted me to live, but better than nothing.

  A trickle of sweat, or maybe blood, ran down my back. It traced odd patterns beneath my clothing, reminding me of nights Micah had done the same with his fingertips. I shook myself, earning an agonizing burst of pain for my efforts. Since the blade didn’t feel terribly deep, I reached over my shoulder with my left hand, grasped the knife hilt, and yanked once, hard. The weapon slid from skin and muscle with a sound like a baby suckling. This time I did cry out, though the crackling flames drowned it.

  The masters approached with caution. They needn’t have bothered. My right arm hung useless; my head spun. I’ve never been much for religions or gods, but I turned my face upward, toward the ventilation hole in the chamber ceiling. Before I could offer up a random prayer, I froze, staring.

  My fingers scrabbled at my belt, drawing the thin grappling line from its pouch a meter at a time so the wire zinged; I cringed at the noise, but I didn’t have time for quiet action. The duroclamp at its end activated with the press of a button, and I hurled it, straight up into the billowing smoke. It continued to unwind from its container, homing sensors searching for something to dig into, built-in impellers carrying it farther than my waning strength could throw. I worried it might not have enough length, when it went taut.

  Its powerful miniaturized motor activated instantly, and I was jerked off the floor by the waist before I had a chance to grip the line with my good hand. Flailing like a fledgling bird, I presented an easy target to my former comrades. Another knife embedded itself in my thigh, then went deeper when I collided with the exterior of the ventilation shaft, clanging up along its outer casing like some deranged bell-ringer until the duct work stopped two meters short of the ceiling. I sucked air through my teeth and willed myself to remain conscious. At last I finally managed to wrap my fingers around the cord and pull my torso upright.

  I rose higher, the ground swirling dizzyingly below, and hit the overhead stone surrounding the hole. The grapple motor strained to finish retrieval of the line. Contorting myself, I bent at the waist to fit my body through the opening. I tore several holes in my clothing squeezing through the tight space and forced the knife in another several centimeters until its blade no longer showed. Blood ran in a river from the wound.

  One-handed, I clawed at the sand around the jagged aperture, finally grasping a rock to aid the grapple in its job. I flopped on the dirt like a dying fish, ripped the fabric from my face, and gasped air through my mouth and nose in delicious gulps.

  I couldn’t imagine moving, but I wasn’t out of this yet. Below, I could barely make out shouting, and in the distance, an aircar engine roared to life.

  Wonderful.

  The chain of events had been set in motion. Phantasmic shapes drove through the midnight fog, blending with the natural phenomenon and hiding themselves amongst it. The grotesque and distorted faces of the ancient dead, stretched and twisted in the tendrils of haze, remnants of corporeal forms trailing behind in elongated strands of white.

  The ephems, as He-Who-Had-Created-Them named the creatures, let themselves be carried by the air currents, multiple mouths open in silent death-throe shrieks. The wind blew in the desired direction, so they conserved their demonic energy for later deeds. They flew across great expanses of ocean waves, over narrow docks and harbored boats, above corrugated rooftops and wooden-frame houses—so peaceful. So vulnerable.

  They intermingled and fought, struggling for dominance, attempting to tear one another’s tenuous forms apart. Then they separated. He-Who-Had-Created-Them would disperse them for such behavior. They had a purpose. They bore on toward their final destination, though the life forces in each human home tempted.

  The mansion rested atop a low rise at the edge of the village. Oblivious inhabitants slept within, windows thrown open wide to cool rooms using gentle ocean breezes. The specters hovered at first one ledge, then another, at last drawn inward by the unmistakably bright, delicious aura of the bedroom’s single occupant.

  Like magnets to metal, the white light surrounding the sleeping young man drew the e
ntities closer. Succeed, and they would live off his sustenance for days, perhaps weeks. Fail, and the energy would dissipate and destroy them, returning them to the realm of nightmares from which they’d been called.

  They had no choice. Retreat meant destruction assured. The master did not accept failure.

  Swirling about the bed, they sought entry. The sleeper had a beige blanket pulled all the way up to his chin, but it left his face exposed, expression beatific in slumber.

  The spirits’ expressions formed demons and death’s heads in the misty fog. They surged into the young man’s nostrils, driving deep into his soul on a single intake of breath.

  The sleeper awoke, choking and sputtering, sitting bolt upright in the double bed. He coughed and wheezed as he struggled to draw air into his lungs. While those vital organs fought to sustain life, he squeezed his eyes tightly shut and therefore did not see the flare of bright white light that emanated from his body and lit the comfortably appointed bedroom.

  It flashed through the open window, streaking across the mansion’s manicured lawn and arcing over the village below. Late-night revelers at the town tavern would tell tales of it for weeks to come. None of them believed.

  It thrust the specters out, hurling them in rolling balls of distortion until they gathered themselves and recoalesced at the harbor’s edge. The fog helped, thickening the air and providing additional weight and substance. Without it, they might have been torn apart beyond reconstitution.

  They could not return to He-Who-Had-Created-Them. Not with the task unfinished.

  Heat lightning flashed, arcing from the sky to the waves and sizzling on impact. The spirits drew on its energy, taking in as much power as they dared to regain a semblance of physical form. Dead bodies walking the streets might bring retaliation, but the lightning alone did not provide strength enough. They needed a different sort of vitality.

  It was a simple matter to seek out thoughts of grief, loss, and mourning amongst the living, and a child’s emotions ran closer to the surface than those of adults. The ephems took those thoughts, crafting and shaping them into pale representations of familiar corporeal shapes.

  Side by side, the elderly couple, a white-haired man and woman, shuffled up the cobblestone street of the sleepy island town. In the flicker of old-fashioned streetlamps, the few passersby did not discern their bloated bodies or the blue tint to their skins. This was how the child imagined them, how she saw them in her nightmares, and therefore, these were the images their natures forced them to adopt.

  The sweet tang of sorrow drew them off the main thoroughfare to a cottage surrounded by gardens of white chella flowers. At one time, four wrinkled hands had carefully tended the blooms, husband and wife laughing and chatting back and forth, but the plants had grown wild in recent weeks, creeping over the paving stones leading to the whitewashed porch.

  One of those hands, gray and bloodless, tried the door. When he found it locked, he knocked a dull, steady, insistent rhythm.

  The porch light sprang on, and the ephems in their assumed bodies shied from it, stepping from its cast circle of warmth into the shadows of the covered porch. The door creaked open on salt-air-rusted hinges, and a sleepy face peered into the night.

  Wide blue eyes struggled to pierce the darkness, to see the faces of her visitors, whose figures seemed so familiar. “Grandma? Grandpa?” She reached a hand to rub the granules from her eyes. Tearstained cheeks crinkled as she beamed a smile. “Grandma! Grandpa!”

  The little girl threw herself upon the closer figure, the “woman,” tiny arms wrapping around her grandmother’s ample waist, unable to meet behind her.

  “The boat! They said you’d drowned. I knew they were wrong. I knew!” She sobbed and laughed as one, a joyous yet heart-wrenching sound that would have brought human onlookers to tears of their own.

  On the ephemerals, it had no effect.

  They stared down at the child, faces expressionless, eyes sunken into their sockets, eaten—as the girl had dreamed—by the many carnivorous creatures that roamed the planet’s seas.

  “Felicia?” An adult woman’s voice, tinged with concern, carried from within the cottage.

  At the same moment, the girl recognized a wrongness in how her grandmother felt, in her lack of response to her only grandchild. Felicia looked up, mouth dropping open in shock and horror.

  Reverting to their spirit forms, the ephems poured down the girl’s open throat.

  It took seconds to drain her.

  Vitality restored, they drove their way toward the mansion once more, this time selecting a different window for entry, one a little less brightly lit.

  Far behind them, in the village below, a woman screamed as only a mother who’d lost her child could.

  Chapter 2

  THEY’D FOUND my aircar, despite holographic shielding and camouflage nets. I recognized the grinding in the motor I had ignored for months. I’d never been one of those my-aircar-equals-my-baby types.

  I raised myself on my left elbow. The right arm had no feeling, and I suspected nerve damage or worse—poison. The Guild only allowed the use of fast-acting toxins, labeling all others as inhumane, but that didn’t stop a few of the grittier assassins from sneaking in a vial or two and keeping a knife coated in some torturous concoction. But to use it on me…. Well, I was a traitor now, wasn’t I? Looking across the desert surface, I scanned the base of the rocky outcropping hiding the cave entrance. A pair of headlights glowed like a predator’s eyes.

  My first attempt to gain my feet ended with me flat on my face, spitting sand and biting back a sob. In my delirium, I’d forgotten the blade protruding from my thigh. I ran my fingers along the exposed bit of hilt, tracing small, smooth pieces of shell used as decorations. I knew this weapon and its owner—Alek. Dread drove the remaining warmth from my body. Master Alek preferred a serrated edge. Removing it would rip my leg apart, and I’d bleed out. Given I was still alive, it was better to leave it in.

  Enough of this.

  I braced myself and stood, placing most of my weight on my right leg. Even the slightest pressure on my left drove the breath from me in a ragged gasp.

  The aircar’s motor revved higher, and the vehicle rocketed toward me. I reached across my body and drew my pistol from its holster, leveling it at the motor, not the driver. Even now I couldn’t bring myself to take a former comrade’s life. Between the glare of the headlights and the surrounding darkness, I couldn’t see who sat at the controls, but I knew everyone in the Guild.

  My mouth twisted in a humorless smile. They knew me too. Didn’t seem to matter to them.

  A big part of why you’re leaving, a little voice reminded me.

  The first shot from my laser went wide, scorching the sand and turning it to molten glass. The second reflected off the front grill, and the driver ducked lower.

  Good. Stay down.

  Narrowing my eyes, I focused my concentration. My target range record was almost as good with my left hand as my right, but I missed the comfort factor. At least the cleaner air cleared my vision. When I could read the falsified ID numbers on the front plate, I fired and dropped flat in the dust.

  The aircar passed over me, bathing my body in its superheated cushion of air and raising blisters on the exposed skin of my hands and the back of my neck. Instead of simply burning out as I’d planned, the engine’s whine rose to a keening screech. I had a sickening premonition of what was about to occur. Lifting my head, I watched the nose of the car plow into the desert floor. Then the vehicle flipped up and over to land on its passenger cab.

  The impact churned up a wave of sand and debris, and for a long moment, I could see nothing. Then a fireball exploded from the wreck, and I ducked to avoid being impaled by shrapnel. Hot pieces of metal whistled over my head as they flew and embedded themselves in the dunes, sizzling wherever they landed. One tiny chunk hit the back of my thigh, burning a hole through my pant leg before I could shake it off—one more small voice to add to my chorus of pa
in.

  I clung to the hope the driver somehow escaped the inferno until the dust settled and all movement ceased. Maybe I hadn’t killed Micah, but I’d certainly ended the aircar operator’s life. Strange to regret killing someone hunting me, but the driver thought I’d murdered the Guild Leader. In his place, I would have done the same, and that knowledge brought guilt and pity.

  The ground shifted under my feet, another of the frequent quakes famous in this region. Forcing myself upright, I jolted to the left. A steam geyser erupted from a new fissure in the distance. Another opened, and I hobbled faster, trying to put distance between myself and the uncertain ground around the smoldering aircar. A piece of the vehicle’s door, flung by the explosion, served as my crutch, but the heated debris raised new blisters on my fingertips.

  More things to worry about. An assassin without fine motor skills wouldn’t be much of an assassin at all. Wouldn’t be much of anything.

  The ground rumbled again. In my years with the Guild, I’d encountered nothing I feared more than nature itself. The violent tremors bred in me a healthy phobia of live burial. Hurricanes and volcanic eruptions were predictable. A person could see them coming and at least try to get out of the way, but when your enemy lived in the very earth you stood on….

  Hand beams caught my attention, and my adrenaline spiked as I altered course away from them. Almost no one ventured out here except Guild members and the Fatal Force mercenaries who used the area for training. So far, the mercs hadn’t located our underground hiding place. I tried to remember if this was their season to be on Sardonen. They might help, for a price, but I couldn’t identify them by hand lamps and wasn’t desperate enough to take chances… yet.

  Making it to the closest city, Weathered Palms, seemed beyond my current physical ability. Maybe I could get to the mercenaries’ camp, but I had to evade the other assassins Micah sent out on some manufactured exercise. Scanners might pick up my bio-signs, but despite the harsh environment, the desert housed plenty of distracting wildlife. Besides, with the fire I’d started, the aircar crash, and the minor quake, the Guild had other things to attend to beyond finding me. I tried to convince myself my efforts weren’t for nothing.