The Liminal People (12 page)

Norm life, drinks at a bar with the mates, trying to pick up some fit girl—it doesn't usually bother me. I'll admit to a private jealousy when I see the tourists in Marrakesh or Moulay Idriss holding hands with their children, casual. The norms don't know, can't perceive the world around them the way I can. They don't see the old powers in the darkness, the ones that make such grand machinations and movements that they seem predestined. Usually, I envy such innocence. But not tonight. Tonight I'm on a murder mission. That means someone is going to die. Most likely it will be the idiot that tried to make a kabob out of me. But I'd be a moron if I didn't realize that whoever angled in on me almost took me out with his last attempt.

Times like this, I don't wish for ignorance. I look around and I see the bloated ignorance of the lumpen proletariat: roly-poly, sausage-fingered, ginger-topped fathers of at least two illegitimate children trying to massage the asses of waiflike, peroxide-scarred students who are themselves trying to navigate adulthood with their new-found freedom from outdated parenting. Luckily, booze makes it all seem rational, or at the very least palatable. This was the world that would have been mine had Yasmine not . . . What? Died? Left me? Rejected her power? Married poor dumb Fish'n'Chips? I want to honor the dead and pretend that this life of pubs and anorexic waitresses would have been fine for me. After all, even Fish'n'Chips's NGO circles are just champagne versions of the larger party I'm watching now. In truth, all permutations of this life bore me. Yasmine got it wrong. She thought I was chasing death when I was searching out wisdom. I beg for all the knowledge in the world. But I'm in this for the death right now. So I order another of the same before the last call sneaks in on me. Two minutes later, the stolen phone in my pocket vibrates.

“After all you've been through, I would've expected a better outing from you.” Nordeen's voice is paper thin, with more timber than bass. Still, he's not angry, which relieves me of a small part of my anxiety about calling him.

“I didn't know what I was dealing with,” I'm saying, walking away from the bar into the back patio. “Your last words to me have been proven false.”

“I believe I said we tend to stay away from each other for good reasons. Are you now saying we all tend to stay close to each other?”

“Maybe just those of us in London,” I say, taking a swig. No use even trying to hide where I am from him anymore. Most likely he knew where I was going all along. If not, my calling from a random cell phone with an Essex callback would be all he needs to figure it out.

“London is much like Marseilles now, though its security can be seen as much more benevolent, according to some.” There's a familiar acridity in his voice, though I can't place when I've heard it before.

“Could that benevolence be behind what I've been going through?”

“The motivations of the mover in those regions are a mystery to most, even myself. It claims one motivation but will often act in ways that seem contraindicated.”

“You're losing me.”

“Never,” he says, way too sharply.

“I mean I'm not understanding you.” I'm trying to muster supplication, but it's hard with the vision of dead Yasmine going through my mind.

“Then come home. This is a poor medium for truth-based conversation. Your mission has ended tragically, true, but it is over.”

“I still owe the ones who did the deed payback.” I want to scream my protest to him, want to tell him how I'll kill them. “But I'm concerned about crossing greater powers, including you.”

“Your reason for staying is solely to settle this debt?” Only a few days away, and I've forgotten the danger of his questions.

“Like you said, a poor medium we're on. I don't want to return until I fulfill an old friend's final request.” I don't want to bring Tamara too much to his attention.

“Then we shall have to find a better medium, yes?” He hangs up before I can respond. The call is so confusing I chuck the phone over the back wall of the patio and into someone's bird pond five units over. I'm out the bar with the rest of the early quitters.

I take a cab back. The cabby's a Nigerian. After offering me weed, stolen jewelry, and khat, he settles his eyes on the road and leaves me to his dubbed version of “Dark Side of the Moon.” Fucking Nordeen. He knew where I was. He knew about the explosion. Hell, half of the world knows about it. He knew I was dealing with powers. He knew it all and told me nothing. I'm ready to move. I think I can track the exploder down. I know I can find the dog girl again. I just need one of them. I bet the boss knows where both of them are. I don't know what he wants. I can't find a better medium. He's like a petulant god, demanding offerings but not revealing what foods or spices he enjoys. I lost more than I gained by calling him and should have expected as much. The cabbie overcharges me for my return to the hotel. I pay the inflated charge and reactivate his oral and genital herpes as a tip.

I'm completely ignoring the lobby when the concierge politely asks for my attention.

“This was hand-delivered for you about half an hour ago, sir.” It's a small envelope with a black-encrusted razor on the front. Nordeen.

“Hand-delivered?”

“Yes, sir.”

“By who?”

“I would say a normal delivery person.”

“And would you happen to remember the height of this normal delivery person?”

“Height, sir?”

“Yes, height, or age, race, at this point I'd even settle for gender. Do you know if it was a man or woman that delivered this letter for me at 12:45 a.m.?” I shouldn't be castigating this sad norm.

“I'm sorry, sir. It's been a long night. I can honestly say I don't remember. If it's important, I can check our video logs to—”

“Forget it.” I don't even bother looking at the letter again until I'm alone in the elevator. A black jeweled razor across the front of the envelope. Big deal. Maybe it is from Nordeen. Or maybe it's from somebody who knows I work for him. Either way, someone found me. Either way, someone wants me to do something. In this line of work, you only send letters when you want something. Wanting something's not an issue. If it's not Nordeen and they want something from me, the answer is “no” . . . assuming the request has nothing to do with finding Yasmine's killer.

I'm more concerned that another power like me was at my hotel. I've passively scanned everyone I've come across here for the ability to turn an electrical storm on in their brain, and gotten nothing. But the letter means that someone who knows I work for Nordeen is looking for me. I'm opening my room door with my keycard, wondering if this is how all those other powers felt when Nordeen sent me to them.

The door is closed before I realize there's someone in my room. I'm sloppy. Tired. I turn to look behind me and get hit with a wave of pure force. No hand could deliver this blow. It doesn't just hit me—it sweeps the room, pushing everything twenty feet forward. For a moment, I panic. The last time I felt someone “push” me this powerfully it was my brother. But I look ahead, brace for the impact into the wall, and see that, it, too, has been pushed forward and ripped from the rest of the building like a stray plank off a wooden ship caught in a typhoon. It's not Mac. My brother would never let pass the opportunity to push me hard against a wall. Good. Not Mac. Now, how do I deal with being pushed out over the street by a massive invisible wave?

I land like a spastic chicken. Almost forget to dodge the lighter contents of my room until some of them embed themselves in the walls over here. Fuck. Whoever it is, they're strong. And looking across for me. The lights are out. Smart little twat. I can feel their eyes strain. Fuck it, you little bastard. You want to see me? No problem.

I brush the loose bits of glass and shattered metal off my body. I boost my adrenal output, kick up my ATP to Olympic runner stats, and dense up my leg muscles so tight they're almost bulletproof.

“Wrong day to fuck with wrong man.” And I run. I run at the gaping hole in the side of the building, the hole in my life, the hole in my future if I screw this. I'm powered by rage and a weird bio-chemical prowess that makes people like me special, a process that give us abilities no one truly understands but one for which we will be hunted and killed anyway. I run with my weird fuel, and just when it looks like I'm doing what Yasmine always thought I would, I jump instead. I'm sailing across the night sky again, angry, heading at the yawning expanse created not five seconds ago. Halfway there, I see my unsuspecting foe. This moron is dressed in all black, complete with a lower mouth cover. Can't be more than fifteen years old. Doesn't matter. Dog girl taught me what happens when I underestimate kids. Before this kid can process my crazy ass flying across the street, I've got a super dense fist going straight into that masked jaw. The punk does good. At the last minute he pushes back against my fist with the same power that pushed me out the window. Instinct saved the jaw. Won't save this asshole. I'm dropping my knees on the fuckwit's ribs, making them more brittle with my power. I saw cops in the distance on my jump back over. I won't have a lot of time to get this done.

“I am tired of you little fuckers trying to kill me!” I grab the bastard by the neck and drag him into the bathroom. Fire alarms are going off. The hotel is emptying. I don't care. I keep his head in the toilet with my foot. All of a sudden I'm flooded with images of Mac again.

He hates me. I'm little again, in our house in Maryland. I'm only eight. He throws me into the ceiling and pins me to the floor with his power. It's the first time I've seen him use his power so blatantly. He says he's better than I ever will be and that I should worship him. Oh God!

What's going on?

My skin is tearing. Ants and beetles fat with blood are crawling out my skin. They've lived in my body all my life. I am the sum of their thoughts. I'm in the burning car with Yasmine.

I am the burning.

Her skin is melting off, and I'm sitting next to her. Smiling. No.

In between waves of guilt and nausea, I realize I've felt this before. I am not seeing ants and fires. I'm feeling them. My visual cortex is picking up nothing, and my frontal cortex is in overdrive. I keep reminding myself to pay attention to my body, like Nordeen has taught me. This has happened before.

Guinea a couple of years ago. Local witchdoctor with real power, but thought he was a match for Nordeen. He threatened to steal our souls. Instead he did . . . what's happening to me now, forcing emotions and sensations on me, demanding that my mind come up with some logic as to why my skin feels like it's bleeding off, why I'm freezing and sweating at the same time. It's like a bad acid trip. I stopped it then, and I can stop this now.

I lash out. I cause all bodies in a six-foot radius of me to shut down renal functions. I demylinate all neurons in under a second. It's not out of choice—I just reach out with my powers and pull. It stops the images. Fucking telepath. This wannabe ninja is a telepath, and a girl if my powers are any judge. But my opponent has her head out of the toilet. Her nose is bleeding, her brain is seizing. Her blood is building up toxic levels of waste by the second. She's still got hate in her eyes.

“You killed my parents.” Fuck! Tamara. Dressed like a goddamn ninja, I should've known. Telekinetic and telepathic. I heal her quickly but keep her energy low. She's powerful and angry. That's dangerous.

“I'm saying this once. I don't have time to convince you, and after what you just did I'm sure as hell not letting you in my head. My name is Taggert. I am . . . was . . . a friend of your mother's.”

“Such a friend you killed her!” The rage in her posh accent, turned hard by street living, is almost endearing—like a rabid fox snapping out of fear more than aggression.

“Use your head for something other than a hat rack, girl. What kind of killer sits in the car he's rigged with explosives?” It's a logic she can't fight, but I boost her pulse rate and clear her headache a little, just so she can think clearly. I'm famished and freezing lying against this tub. “You were just in my head, right? You pulled . . . you saw what I saw. Any part of that even seem like fun to me?”

“You could be her.” She stands, trying to figure out how to get the embarrassment of toilet water out of her hair.

“Who?”

“Or work for her.”

“Unlike you, I don't read minds. Feel like trying to make some sense?”

“What do you want from me?” She's looking down at me, eyes still filled with tears, but now more born of frustration than anything else. My back is getting cold. That's a bad sign for me. Means my body is so tired from the jump, the fight, and the neurotoxins Tamara flooded my brain with that it's not up for maintenance healings. No way I'm letting this little girl know that.

“She wanted me to find you.” She knows what I'm talking about. I let my words sit in the air until she admits her own fatigue and sits on the sink. “Now I want to find the assholes that killed her. I get the sense you can help me with that. You down?”

“You're like us?”

“Us?”

“Me and Mum . . .” She starts choking on her tears.

“No time. I'm sorry I shoved your head in the toilet, but you've got to decide pretty quick if you trust me. Cops are coming. . . .” I don't need to go on. She shouldn't be able to stand after the beating I gave her. Even with my healing. But the notion of cops has her moving. I stand to match her eyes only to find she's a good foot and a half shorter than me. “So, do you trust me?”