Afterlife (Second Eden #1) (21 page)

Amber clutched her aching ribs and stumbled after him. “But I
can
fight. I just didn’t know how it worked, and now—”

“Listen, girl. A wraith’s power comes from her rage. You want to move fast, punch hard? You got to get angry. You got to let go of hopelessness and pain. You got to embrace the rage and think you can do it all. Why aren’t you getting angry?”

“Of course I’m angry!” Amber dropped her arm and straightened. “You didn’t even give me a chance!”

Bentley laughed and spread his arms, circling her like a hawk eyeing a rabbit. “None of us here got chances. Afterlife doesn’t coddle you, girl. You show up with nothing, with no one, and either you make it or you don’t. No one cares because nobody’s your friend or your family. Who’s gonna care about you, huh?” He motioned to Dino. “Him?” He swept his arms toward the crowd. “Them? Nobody’s gonna take you by the hand and show you the easy way out, girl.”

“Stop calling me
girl
.”

“But you are a girl. A little, whiny girl.”

“I’m not!”
 

Bentley blurred as he raced around her. His breath washed across the back of her neck. “Girl.”

He shoved her. She spun around, but he had already danced behind her.
 

“Girl.” Bentley pushed her and laughed.
 

Amber swung wildly behind her, but he ducked and pivoted from the sloppy blow. “Girl.”

His strong hands knocked her forward, and she nearly lost her balance. “Girl.”

Amber swiped again, but Bentley sidestepped and slapped her cheek. “Girl.”

“Bentley, stop,” Dino said. “Amber, get down from there. We’ve got work to do.”

Amber quivered, her heart thrashing against her ribs, her pulse thumping hard in her neck. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She glimpsed Dino as he slipped into the ring to try and bring her down, and it only infuriated her more. This whole brawl was his idea. He knew it would happen. He wanted it to happen.

Bentley with his wide, mocking grin called her girl over and over again. He danced around her, a furious, terrifying blur of power and speed.

Amber’s eyes shot open. Her hand fastened on Bentley’s wrist just before his backhand connected. The muscles in his forearm rolled beneath her grip. She squeezed them tighter. Strain creased his brow as he fought her hold, but she kept his hand still.

“My name is Amber. Not
girl
,” she said.

Bentley laughed, throwing his chin back. “Right, right.”

His foot darted between her feet, kicking out the right leg and hurling her to the mat. He slipped from her grasp and snorted, walking from the ring. “You will be girl to me until you learn to be something more. I feel sorry for you, Dino. Afterlife’s no place for a babysitter.”

“I can fight!” Amber pounded the mat. “I’m not weak!”

Bentley flipped onto the floor, shooing the crowd from the ring. “Come back later then and prove it. Learn how to be more than a little girl. Or don’t. Your choice, but now you know what training with Bentley Diya is like, so come ready or don’t come at all.”
 

Amber brushed off her dress. She followed Bentley from the ring and did her best to ignore the smirking wraiths returning to their practice.
 

“I’ll see you soon,” she said.

Dino sighed and offered up an apologetic smile. “You gave it the good ‘ole college try, Ms. Blackwood.”

“You did this on purpose, asshole.” She jabbed her finger at his chest and shot daggers with her eyes. “You enjoyed every second of it, didn’t you?”

“It was just as painful for me to watch. I expected you’d at least put up some kind of fight. You looked like a rubber doll getting flung around out there. What’s everybody going to think about me now that they saw the girl who kicked Dino’s ass can’t defend herself to save her life?”

“Maybe next time it should be you and me in the ring,” she said.

“Only if I’m lucky.”

Six generals sat around a long, polished table. At its head lorded the archduke in his massive chair, a tufted, black velvet monstrosity framed in elegant ivory. The archduke himself watched the proceedings cloaked in shadow, the only hint he even existed the intermittent sigh of frigid, smoky air emanating from the black that surrounded him.
 

Bone Man stood at attention before the Iron Council. Both the box and the agate necklace he recovered from the mortal world sat in a column of light in the table’s center.

Kamlai Chakma cleared her throat. She tended to speak first in Council meetings, being eager to please the archduke in whatever way she could. The youngest soul on the Iron Council, Kamlai came to Afterlife less than fifty years ago, and in that short time built a respectable martial presence in the eastern districts. Impatient at the lack of upward mobility in the Soul Assembly with its old souls and established houses, she turned to other means to extend her power in the city and gladly committed her forces to the archduke’s cause in return for a place at his table.

General Chakma was pivotal in crushing the Soul Assembly’s counterattack in those first days of the Ardent Revolution. Her spirits had the Assembly’s forces clawing out each others’ eyes or running screaming to the dusty Deep. Now, her blackjackets prowled the streets, searching for Fool’s Errand scum, or hunted in the Deep, scavenging the endless dunes for buried relics.

If the general had emotions, she hid them, and while Bone Man never understood why she hated the Assembly with such a passion, he enjoyed seeing her eyes darken at their mention.

She waved at the artifacts and frowned. “So the necklace and the box are linked, yet one came from the Deep, and one came from the mortal world? How is this possible? Things from the Deep are from the Deep. They have no connection to the living.”

“Not linked,” General De Luca said. He was a powerful soul, unmatched in the doppelganger curse and so cold in demeanor and tone he could make ice shiver with a glance. “We believe the necklace was used to summon the thief. The thief delivered the box to this mortal girl, and now she bears the curse contained within it. Whatever power the box contained now resides in the mortal’s heart.”

“So we have a new enemy in our midst,” Kamlai said, her gaze drifting to Bone Man. “Because
you
could not kill the girl. You have failed the Council, Bone Man, and now the Fool’s Errand may have a weapon it can use against us. A weapon that might even be stronger than you.”

Bone Man clenched his teeth and looked away from the woman. His eyes settled on the shadows of the archduke’s seat. No others mattered but him, no other voices carried weight.
 

General Kelly interlocked his fingers on the table and leaned into the light. “Perhaps this matter isn’t suited for one such as Bone Man. I have many capable phantoms who can scour Afterlife and find her. Dino is a smart man, but I doubt even he could hide a girl like her for very long.” He looked to the archduke and straightened. “Sir, we could have this girl in the Black Palace in days, if that. Give the command, and I’ll divert my forces from the border to the inner districts.”

De Luca shook his head, leaning back. “Your phantoms would be no better at finding the Fool’s Errand than my doppelgangers have been. Faye has her now. This requires something different than stealth. If we are to stop whatever weapon the mortal has become, we will require a full-on assault. We should call in our favors with the Scarlet Sinners and identify as many rebel camps as possible, then wipe them out with one grand offensive!”

“De Luca, for such a talented doppelganger you have a bad habit of speaking like a wraith,” Oscar noted.

“And that’s so bad, General Kelly?” General Padilla asked. “Let’s not forget it’s my wraiths who keep the city in order.”

Fabiana Padilla leaned back in her chair, angling toward the rival general. “This city would be in chaos if it were up to slippery phantoms and squirrelly doppelgangers to keep order. Remember that it is my wraiths who keep the gears of our Afterlife turning.”
 

“No offense intended, Padilla.” Oscar flashed a smile, tugging at his jacket. “I’m merely
 

saying that we can’t trust the Scarlet Sinners. If Wilhelmina learns of the cursed mortal, she’ll have our soldiers scattered throughout every useless corner of the city while she spins her little web to take the fly for herself.

“And to launch a full-scale assault on the Errand is folly. Faye’s cells are scattered all over the city. Try and root them out all at once and we’ll leave valuable assets exposed, ripe for the Errand or the Sinners or both. Who knows, Wilhelmina might even reach out to Faye for an alliance. We can’t afford that with the chaos going on in the expansion.”

The other generals muttered their agreement. Taking advantage of the numbers on his side, Oscar pressed the issue. “Bone Man is better suited as an enforcer. Let him hound. I’ll send my phantoms into the streets to find this mortal. They will not rest until she’s chained within the palace walls. It is the only logical solution. Ian, what’s your thought on this?”

Bone Man turned to the quiet general. Ian West, the city’s most infamous poltergeist. A man of few words, he often spent these meetings nearly as quiet as the archduke himself. Bone Man liked that least about the man, because it kept his motives shrouded in secrecy.

General West leaned back in his chair, his hands folded neatly over his round belly. “My poltergeists excel best in combat, so I could put my souls to better use in an all-out assault. That said, I tend to agree with General Kelly on this matter. An assault based on flimsy intelligence leaves us vulnerable to our … inconsistent allies and avowed enemies. I do not trust the Scarlet Spider to remain on the sidelines when an advantage appears to her. She will do what she can to weaken our rule, because it strengthens a bid for her own claim on the city.”

“Good! Then we should send my blackjacket phantoms,” Oscar rapped the table and smiled at De Luca.
 

“Hold on,” Ian said. “Your souls are still needed in the southern expansion to keep the peace and drive out the dust devils.”

General Kelly’s cheeks reddened. “Then what do you propose?”

“We must keep order in the city and continue Afterlife’s expansion into the Deep, but it’s time we teach the populous that harboring the Errand will not be tolerated—to any degree.”

The other generals leaned toward West. Bone Man had to give him credit. Ian’s logic was sound so far.

“Fabiana will order her wraiths to punish Errand sympathizers as harshly as possible,” Ian said. “Let it be known that any sympathizer will be dusted publicly. So will their husbands, wives, lovers, and even neighbors—all dusted in public squares and plazas. Let those who think Afterlife is a safe place for fools understand that the time of the Errand has come to an end.
 

“I suspect after these executions start, we will begin to learn the locations of Faye’s cells, but we shouldn’t attack as soon as we know them. Hans can send his doppelgangers into them to ferret out Faye’s network and determine where they hide her. We will find the girl. And when we do, we send the full fury of our forces to each and every cell we’ve identified and utterly crush them all at once.”

“I’m liking this plan, Ian,” Chakma said.

 
He nodded, swiveling his chair toward the archduke. “Oscar’s phantoms will disarm their defenses. Chakma’s spirits will turn them on one another. My poltergeists will crush the buildings they hide within. Fabiana’s wraiths will turn whatever ones escape to dust. What remains of the Fool’s Errand will be crippled, the city’s people thoroughly turned against it, and this mortal will be in the Black Palace, to do with as our archduke pleases.”
 

Bone Man nodded with respect. The plan was solid, and it let each general contribute to the cause. All eyes turned to the archduke. Bone Man lifted his chin, his breath washing across his cheeks from behind the mask.
 

The shadows around the archduke writhed like the tentacles of a creature reaching up from the deep. Icy smoke poured from the darkness and washed across the table in two streams like serpents racing for a meal. The vapor coiled around the artifacts before thinning into oblivion.
 

“An excellent plan, General West, and one I can agree upon. Begin preparations.”

The generals scooted back from the table. “Wait,” the archduke said.

The generals stilled, then inched back into their seats.
 

“As yet, Faye LaBelle has eluded all your forces. Somehow I think trapping and crushing her will not be as easy as this plan suggests, despite how sound it seems. It may take more effort than you hope and time than you think, and with this mortal in
my
city, time is not a luxury we have. Your eyes are fixed on the enemy we know, but there is another enemy, one who exists beyond our knowledge.”

The generals traded glances. Bone Man smirked.
 

“The thief!” The archduke pounded his armrest, and the air in the room warmed considerably. “This thief is the progenitor of the highest crime against my authority. This relic thief broke into
my
sanctuary, my holiest, safest of places, and stole from me! No Sinner or Fool has ever done this.
Ever!
”

All gazes fell to the table. The archduke’s power flowed into the room, a simmering, oppressive heat emanating from the man’s hidden glare.
 

“You look to crush Faye, but do not forget I want this relic thief found, and I will make a hundred burnt and broken Old Cities to find this enemy. Who knows who this thief might be, one who has access to the palace and mirrors to the mortal world? How many souls in Afterlife know the most inner parts of my palace
and
the portals to mortal lands? Few.
Very
few. Might I be so bold as to say the only souls who might know both are in this very room?”
 

Bone Man straightened as the other generals stiffened. General Chakma rocketed from her seat first and saluted the archduke. “I will post ten spirits in every district in Afterlife! I will find this relic thief and have them to you in days!”