Dragon City (17 page)

There came a knocking at the door and Reba screamed, a little sound like a bleat. She was in her bedroom in the temporary Cerberus headquarters on the coast, lying on the bed with the drapes drawn.

The knocking came again, firm and insistent, the hollow sound of knuckles on wood.

“Reba?” a man’s voice. “Are you in there?”

The Cerberus medic turned her head and looked at the door. It was just a door, wider than the one in the Cerberus redoubt, the wood pale and unpainted. The floor in front of it was plain, not bloody like the store cupboard she had hidden in listening to the sounds of death and pain just inches away.

“Reba?”

“I’m here,” she replied, raising her voice a little to ensure she would be heard. She recognized the voice now; it was Dr. Kazuko, the on-site physician supplied by the Tigers of Heaven.

The door opened just a little, and Kazuko asked, “Are you respectable?” before he proceeded inside. He smiled when he saw DeFore on the bed, a friendly and very human response that she appreciated as her thoughts threatened to consume her.

“I’m fine,” DeFore told him, sitting up on the bed. “Must have drifted off for a minute.”

Kazuko nodded. “There’s been a lot to keep up with just lately,” he said, but he was staring at DeFore with puzzled interest.

“What is it?” she asked.

“You’re wet,” Kazuko said.

DeFore looked down at the one-piece jumpsuit she wore. It was damp, dark patches of sweat showing at the armpits and around the neck. When she placed her hand against her forehead she found that was wet, too, and so was her hair, cold with sweat. “Must have…” she began, correcting herself as she went. “Hot in here, I guess.”

Kazuko nodded. “Maybe it is a little at that.”

DeFore put a hand through her wet hair, tucking it back behind her ears as she followed Kazuko from the room and off to where Edwards was incarcerated. Ullikummis had never touched her but he had given her something of the future he had promised, she knew. He had given her the fear.

Chapter 18

Shizuka stood outside the low building that had become the temporary headquarters for the Cerberus operation. She wore simple clothes now, a loose cotton shirt and slacks in white that billowed around her and allowed skin to breathe. She had been tempted to accompany Grant on his exploratory mission, but her place was to remain here with the Cerberus op itself. She and her Tigers of Heaven had to protect it against any possible attack.

While things seemed quiet, Shizuka had made her way past the little sunken garden with its hypnotically clacking water feature and out onto the lawn in the lee of the house. She sat there now, cross-legged on the grass, stilling her thoughts. In front of her, she had laid out a plain blanket upon which were two items—her
katana,
a twenty-five-inch blade of sharpened steel held within a dark scabbard decorated with gold filigree, and a small wooden casket, six inches by three, that looked a little like a music box.

Her breathing slow and regular, Shizuka opened her eyes and opened the lid, reaching inside the box. The contents of the box had been placed carefully inside specific compartments, a masterpiece of simple design and economic use of space. There were sheets of thin rice paper, a soft square of cotton, a lightly chalked powder ball and a small bottle of oil. In the front of the compartmentalized box, a tiny brass hammer rested across the longest length, held separate from the other items in the cleaning kit. This was her
katana
cleaning kit, as much ritual as necessity, and its use dated back to the days of feudal Japan when samurai had employed it to ensure that their
katana
—often referred to as the soul of the samurai—remained strong and clean, free from defects that might hinder a warrior in battle. But it was also a ritual, however, one that served to fill and calm Shizuka’s mind as she awaited her lover’s return.

Overhead, a gull cawed on its way to the sea. Beneath, Shizuka oiled the steel blade and gently tilted it, letting the oil run along its length.

* * *

R
EBA
D
E
F
ORE
didn’t want to be performing surgery. She felt tired and irritable and that sense of fearful panic was still nagging at her after she had lain semiawake and found her mind drifting to all that had happened with Ullikummis. Still there was urgency here, a sense that time was of the essence. No one quite understood what was wrong with Edwards, but when she had brought him back to the new Cerberus headquarters, it had taken four men—including an ex-Magistrate called Decard, who functioned as both prince and sheriff for the hidden city of Aten where Reba DeFore and Edwards had hidden—to subdue him. Edwards was like a wild, ravening beast, a constant well of fury and contempt bubbling just beneath the surface. While they had been in Aten, Decard had kept the man incarcerated in a solitary cell, well away from any human interaction. To do otherwise had proved impossible.

Now Edwards lay sedated in front of her on the operating table, looking the most peaceful he had been in almost two months. With Dr. Kazuko standing ready beside her, DeFore held the scalpel poised, staring at the marked spot on Edwards’s shaved skull. This was exploratory surgery; no one quite knew what the mass was that was showing up on the CAT scan. The only way to be sure was to cut into Edwards, and as the redoubt’s physician, that task fell to DeFore, whether she felt up to it or not.

Normally she would have suggested just a local anesthetic for this type of minor surgery. After all, it wasn’t brain surgery but was more akin to removing a cyst. But with the way that Edwards fought everything, the decision was made that it was better if he remained sedated for the whole procedure. They could awaken him when he was back in his bed, strapped down and no threat to anyone.

A few feet behind her, in the room beyond the closed door, DeFore sensed that Mariah Falk and Lakesh himself were waiting anxiously for her report.

Edwards lay on his back, head tilted to his side and rested on a paper-wrapped pillow.

“Shall we begin, Dr. DeFore?” Dr. Kazuko gently urged.

She nodded.

Steadying her hand, she leaned in and made a small incision to the side of Edwards’s right ear, putting just a minimal amount of pressure on the sharp blade to cut through the skin. Blood blossomed immediately around the open wound, and Kazuko gently staunched the flow with gauze. Once he was done, DeFore renewed her work, bringing the scalpel down once more and drawing a deeper line into Edwards’s head, cutting down behind the ear in an inch-and-a-half gash. She waited, holding her breath as the scarlet flow filled the wound once again.

Kazuko blotted away the blood, letting it turn the white of the gauze red before pulling the block of muslin away and using another to wipe away any excess flow. He was patient, his movements unhurried.

As Kazuko cleared the blood away, DeFore saw the growth for the first time. There, inside Edwards’s head, was a dark line. It was a brown-black color, a matte substance that didn’t reflect the bright overhead lights, and it sure as heck didn’t belong inside a human’s head.

Gently, DeFore pushed the tip of her index finger into the wound, touching the dark substance to see what it felt like. It was solid—rock solid—and it stretched off past the open ends of the one-inch wound she had cut in Edwards’s head. Blood began to rise around the edges of the wound again, and she pulled her finger gently away.

Stemming the flow of blood, Dr. Kazuko looked at DeFore, one perfectly shaped eyebrow raised on his golden face. “Stone?” he asked.

She nodded. “I think so.” There was nothing else it should be. They already knew how Ullikummis operated, how he implanted living rocks inside of people, rocks with different properties depending on the position of the person in his grand operation.

Leaning close once more, DeFore drew another scalpel down, this one with a slightly larger blade, and instructed Kazuko to pinch the wound to hold it open. While Kazuko did as she had requested, DeFore pulled the sharp edge of the scalpel blade over the dark surface in front of her, pushing it with a little effort now to try to carve into its surface. It was hard going, and blood began to ooze over her field of vision as she carved two parallel lines along the surface of the rock. Kazuko cleared the blood away, professionally and silently, so that DeFore could bring the blade in again and finish the exploratory surgery. Fifteen minutes after they had begun the operation, DeFore had removed six thin strips of rock from the solid surface inside Edwards’s skull, each one looking a little like a toenail clipping that had been varnished brown-black. DeFore placed the strips in a sterilized metal dish to avoid contamination.

Then, with infinite patience, DeFore took the threaded needle from her operating kit and began to suture the wound. The needle dug into Edwards’s skin and DeFore pushed it through, beginning the first stitch to close the black rock back inside her colleague’s head. She stopped midstitch, a wave of fear gripping her as she stared at that solid wall of stone that was infiltrating Edwards’s skull. It was like looking at him, at Ullikummis. She swallowed, felt the tremor take her hands, her heart palpitating against the cavity wall of her chest.

“Doctor…?” Kazuko coaxed, his restrained voice bringing DeFore back to the present.

The needle was still poking through Edwards’s flesh, waiting to find its mark on the other side as Kazuko did his best to wipe away the forming blood. DeFore breathed, not daring to look away from the wound, even though it meant looking at the stone wall inside Edwards. She was steadier then, the infinitesimal trembling in her hands abating. She could do this; there was nothing to fear.

It was right at that moment that Edwards moved, his arm snapping outward and whacking DeFore just below her rib cage with a solid punch.

“What the hell are you doing to me?” Edwards snapped, sitting up on the operating table. He was wide-eyed and looked mad as hell.

DeFore staggered backward, her hands going to her gut where she had been hit, feeling the breath splutter back up her windpipe in a coughing fit.

On the table, Edwards rolled back and over, kicking his feet up to snag Dr. Kazuko on either side of his neck before pulling him back. With a yelp, Kazuko went flying the length of Edwards’s body and off the far end of the operating table, landing in a heap by the wall.

Edwards leaped from the table then, a trickle of blood running down behind his right ear, the needle still dangling there by its thread. Struggling to keep her feet, DeFore looked at him under the bright lamps of surgery. He couldn’t be awake; that was impossible. He should still be sedated right now. No man could wake up from that dose this soon.

Before she could voice her objection, however, Edwards stomped across the room in her direction and swept an arm out, knocking her aside in a rush of flailing limbs. DeFore fell back against the far wall, crying out in pain.

Edwards ignored her. A trained ex-Magistrate like Kane and Grant, he was already familiarizing himself with his surroundings as he searched for the exit. He dismissed the door to the room, assuming that would hold the best chance to bumping into opposition. Instead he turned to a window at the far side of the pale-walled room. A heavy cotton blind had been pulled down over the glass there to block the sun’s rays where they might cast awkward shadows during the surgical procedure. Edwards yanked at the blind’s drawstring, ripping the blind from its rail and tossing it aside.

The window itself was roughly twenty inches wide and twice that in height, a single pane of glass with a hinge at the top and a metal handle at the bottom. They were on the first story. Outside through the glass, Edwards saw a vast expanse of neatly trimmed grass, the huge lawn of Shizuka’s winter retreat. Edwards grasped the handle and shoved, cranking the window open as wide as he could in a second. The gap was too small for his muscular form to fit through, and his nostrils flared as he glared at it.

“Stone,” he muttered.

Behind him, Dr. Kazuko was pulling himself drunkenly up from the floor, a dark red trickle of blood running down his face from the cut on his forehead.

Edwards turned, jabbing his elbow into Kazuko’s throat, and the physician fell to his knees, hacking in agony. “Back to sleep, Doc,” Edwards instructed.

Then, turning back to the window, Edwards grabbed it by its lowest edge and twisted, turning it against its frame. “I am stone,” he said, fearsome determination in every word.

There was a shearing noise of metal scraping against metal, and suddenly the whole window was wrenched free.

It was impossible, DeFore thought as she saw Edwards perform that remarkable feat of strength. First he had recovered from the anesthetic far too quickly, and then this. He was more than human. She had heard of cases of drug users displaying incredible bursts of strength, oblivious to pain, and Edwards’s actions reminded her of that.

DeFore watched helplessly as Edwards climbed through the window and out onto the lawn. But she wasn’t helpless, was she? She pushed herself up off the floor, glancing at Kazuko with concern to make sure he was all right. The man had his eyes closed in pain, and his throat looked dark red where a bruise would doubtless form, but he was alive and breathing.

In an instant Reba had grabbed a spare syringe of sedative and she followed Edwards through the window and out onto the neatly manicured lawn. She saw immediately that he had run into an unexpected problem. Shizuka, the beautiful leader of the Tigers of Heaven, had been training out there with her
katana,
as she was wont to do during her quieter moments. She must have come to investigate when she had heard the window being wrenched from its frame. Now she stood in front of him with her sword—still sheathed—held loosely in her hand. Edwards stared at her, tilting his head as if not quite sure what to make of the female warrior.

“You’re joking,” he muttered.

“What’s going on, Edwards?” Shizuka asked warily, well aware that he had been incarcerated here after turning traitor. As she spoke, Shizuka’s attention was drawn past him, peering at the ruined window and the second figure clambering through it.

“Be careful, Shizuka,” DeFore shouted as she lowered herself onto the lawn, the hypodermic syringe clutched in her hand. “He got loose, beat up Kazuko.” And me, she added mentally.

Shizuka nodded once in acknowledgment of the warning, her right hand grasping the hilt of her sword. “Edwards,” she said in a cold, emotionless voice, “I’m going to ask you once and only once to stand down. What happens after that, you bring on yourself. Do you understand?”

Edwards looked at the petite samurai, and a cruel sneer cut across his bloodied face. Then, without a word of warning, he strode purposefully at Shizuka, his legs moving into a jog as he pulled back his fist.

With a crystal-clear note of reverberating steel, Shizuka drew the
katana
from its ornate scabbard, dancing a single step aside as Edwards’s clenched fist powered through the air toward her face. The punch whizzed past the side of her head, missing her by just an inch.

Shizuka was already dropping, bending her knees to lower her center of gravity as she jabbed out with the hilt of the sword. The sword’s pommel struck Edwards between the ribs, and he yelped in pain as he spun away. Then he was leaping back at the female samurai, his fists cutting the air as he drove punch after punch at her face. Light-footed, Shizuka scampered backward, watching as each blur of fist missed her head by just a couple of inches. She had to keep in mind that this man was a trained Mag, just like Grant, that he was skilled in the arts of combat and would not hesitate to kill anyone he perceived to be an enemy.