Killing Dead Things

Chapter 2

Chapter 2Monday, October 13, 2014

Ridley, Washington

This birthday wasn’t a Friday the 13th, it just felt like one. I didn’t have much of a plan as I stepped out of Rosie’s back door, arms full of restaurant trash bags that obscured my upper body. It’d only make the inquisitors outside hesitate for a second until they could identify me but hopefully that’d be enough time.

“Freeze!” “Freeze!” Both inquisitors snapped the order. I knew they had weapons on me.

The senior partner was probably the one on my right, further from their vehicle blocking the alley the other direction. Empathy isn’t mind reading but it did tell me about their emotionally states.

The one on my right felt cool. Calm, with a controlled under-current of excitement. Pride. Probably thinking about getting the credit for making the bust. Recognition. He’d already seen enough to identify me.

His partner felt less controlled. Nervous. Even a bit scared. More likely to shoot, but also more likely to hesitate. I threw the bags at him and used the motion to spin around, striking out at the inquisitor on my right.

Surprise. Anticipation. Pain from the blows, quickly dismissed. Determination. His emotions flowed over me. He was good, but I felt his deception as he tried to fake me out and I used that to my advantage. I turned, taking a glancing blow on my shoulder, so that I could use the momentum to shove his head hard against the brick side of the building.

Emotions cut off with a flash of pain. Darkness from him. Not dead, only unconscious. If I’d killed him I could have woken him and used him against his partner but I wouldn’t do that. I’m not a monster, no matter what people think about witches.

His partner was scared. Terrified. Tripping over the garbage bags, trying to get his weapon on me. I kicked it out of his hand, drew my own weapon and struck him with it. I felt his surprise just before he dropped to the alley unconscious as well.

The whole thing had taken seconds. Both men would most likely live. I hated to hurt anyone, but I would do what I needed to do. Lockwood had failed me.

I put away my weapon and simply walked away down the alley. I didn’t run. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and walked with my jacket pulled closed. The cool rain helped calm my excited nerves. Two blocks up and three over, near the playground at the city park, that’s where I left my car. I moved it to a different location each day or every couple days. Never anywhere it would get towed.

As I turned the corner onto C street, the park just ahead with the wet and silent playground, I saw my Subaru Outback sitting right where I left it only now it was sporting a new hood ornament.

Lockwood.

I have to be close to feel someone’s emotions unless I really reach, but I didn’t need any special empathy to understand the satisfied smile on Lockwood’s handsome face.

He has a really great smile. If he wasn’t an inquisitor he could have been a movie star. One of People’s Sexiest Man of the Year, but he didn’t look for that kind of attention. His eyes were the color of the rain-filled clouds overhead.

He waited for me. He knew my choices. Run and he’d follow, but he had communication links with the others and would most likely catch me quickly. Draw and try to shoot him, but we both knew that I wouldn’t do that. Maybe I should, but I couldn’t. Not Lockwood. When it came to him my emotions were too complicated.

Not to mention the fact that I wasn’t a killer.

He had planned this whole thing, which meant it had been a test. Lockwood loved his tests.

All of that went through my mind in a second before I accepted the inevitable. I focused on my breathing as I crossed the street and walked up to my car. I had to control my own emotions. Otherwise I could accidentally wake dead things and I didn’t want that to happen.

Lockwood rose as I reached him. He’s taller than me, just an inch or so. He’s got twenty-two years on me. The first time I saw him, he was younger than I am now. Weird thought. He looked so tall and handsome that I was tongue-tied and shy around him. But then I was four. It was the first of his tests, then to see if I had picked up my grandmother’s ability. The Inquisition tested kids to see if they were going to prove dangerous.

I never forgot that either.

“Well done,” Lockwood said smoothly. “I was afraid working in a library would have dulled your instincts.”

I gestured to the car. “Obviously it did or you wouldn’t have found the car.”

“I knew what to look for, it gave me an unfair advantage.”

“Know your enemy.”

Lockwood’s smile broadened. It was annoying. “I’m not your enemy.”

“What are you then?” I searched his gray eyes for answers, but found now. His emotions were hard to read too, although I picked up his happiness at seeing me.

He let that one leak on purpose. Lockwood always had control over what he let others see. Even me.

Lockwood held out a key. My key, the spare car key from the key box I kept on the car. I snatched it.

“Show off.”

“Let’s get inside and talk while we drive.”

“Where are we going?”

“For now just head south down 101.” Lockwood was moving around to the passenger side. He opened the door, reached in, and came out with an Inquisition-issue red suit jacket. He tossed it to me.

I caught it. “What’s this for?”

“You.”

“It doesn’t go with what I’m wearing.”

“It’ll do for now.” Lockwood got into the car and closed the door.

That was my chance. I had the key and he was in the car. I could have hit the lock button on the door and run for it. He’d be out of the car in seconds, but that might have been enough of a head start for me to get around the corner and out of sight. I knew all the streets of Ridley, all the potential escape routes from here. If I could elude the long enough I could get to the backup car, to the junker I kept in Bo Jesper’s yard among his collection of junkers. It’d started out as his, I bought it off him and kept a second, basic bug-out kit in the trunk. He was supposed to keep it in running condition for me.

I liked the Outback better. I got in the car with Lockwood, tossing the jacket into the back seat as I slid behind the wheel. I started the car and pulled out. At least with Lockwood with me the other inquisitors would be less likely to shoot me on sight. Sort of like having a hostage.

Or being the hostage, I wasn’t sure which.

The highway was only a few blocks away. I turned south onto it and settled in. Lockwood hadn’t said anything, and still wasn’t letting his emotions leak.

“So what’s the deal?” I finally asked. “This isn’t just a routine check to see how I’m doing, if I’ve lost control of my abilities.”

“No, it isn’t. I want you back and the Inquisition has a job for you.”

“I’m not working for the Inquisition anymore.”

A felt a small flash of worry from him. “See, that’s the problem. The politics have shifted and you’re an anomaly and a potential embarrassment. Not only were you trained as an inquisitor out of college, you’re a witch.”

“That’s old news. There have always been those that feel a witch jeopardizes what the Inquisition stands for, mostly old farts that get off on burning people like me.”

“I’ve always believed that some witches could learn to use their abilities constructively, the way you have. We should focus our attention on those who are dangerous to others.”

“Yes, so what’s really changed? It sounds like the same old stuff to me.”

“The new Inquisitor General is Fournier.”

“Carl Fournier?”

I felt the worry and concern that Lockwood felt for me when I said the name. He let that through, knowing I’d pick it up. We were already falling back into old short-hand from working together. He never lost control, but at times he did let me know what he was feeling. Easier than saying it aloud.

“So, Fournier got himself appointed to the Inquisitor General by the Suprema, that’s it?”

“Essentially.”

“And you couldn’t have just sent me a warning? Told me to bug out and disappear?”

Lockwood shook his head. “They would have come after you. You’re good, I know that. You probably could have stayed hidden for years, but eventually Fournier’s Inquisition would have found you and burned you.”

He was probably right. I still didn’t like it.

“So instead you came after me? With a retrieval team? You couldn’t just keep the appointment and tell me over a nice lunch?” I was starting to get angry, and a bit scared. Knocking those inquisitors out could have caused serious brain damage. “What if I had ended up killing someone? Or they might have killed me!”

“But you didn’t, and they didn’t.” Lockwood shook his head. “It was as much of a test for them as it was for you.”

“Great.” I tightened my grip on the steering wheel but I kept everything else under tight control. I wasn’t about to let my emotions get away from me. “How does this help?”

“Fournier must see that you’re a valuable asset, one we should keep close to us. Your abilities make you uniquely suited to deal with the problems we face. You should be out in the field helping us handle the tough situations.”

I glanced at him. Back to the highway. The traffic was light as we moved out of town. I had lived my life ready to leave in an instant but I was going to miss Ridley. I’d had a nice, mostly quiet life there for a time.

“That is precisely the sort of situation that they kept me out of, given what I can do. They didn’t want to risk me gaining any additional abilities that would make me even more dangerous! They wouldn’t let me into the rehabilitation centers, holding, or any place where I might come into contact with other witches. They didn’t even want to let me go visit my mother because it would put me in contact with my grandmother, as if I could gain anything new from her!”

I breathed in and out. Control. I couldn’t let my control slip but I felt that edge. I was angry, damn angry at Lockwood and the Inquisition. I’d lived in fear and fascination with the Inquisition since I was four years old and the evaluation visits had started. I used to daydream about growing up, wearing the uniform and marrying Lockwood. Two out of those three things had come true, and weren’t anything like I had imagined.

I didn’t see any possibility of the third happening, even without the age difference. No matter how good-looking Lockwood was, or how much he had looked out for me. With him my emotions were all mixed up with not having a father. Growing up I’d fixated on him as a male role-model, against which my other boyfriends always came up short.

“Fournier has his own reasons for approving this,” Lockwood said. “He expects this to go badly, for you to prove once and for all that the only response for witches is to burn out their abilities one way or the other. The bullet or the cure, he says. I’m betting on you instead.”

“Great. I get to be the guinea pig in the middle of this? Even if we do whatever it is you have in mind, what’s to stop him from burning me when we’re done?”

“I know it’s a risk. I get that, but it’s a chance. I have faith in you Ravyn. I think if you’re given the chance it’ll be so obvious that they won’t have any other choice. I’ve proposed a new branch of the Inquisition, one designed specifically to work with people with abilities.”

“Seriously? You’ve convinced them to give you a department of witches? What’re you calling this?”

“Coventry. Our objective is to identify non-violent witches and train them to help us stop the unstable ones, the ones that must be dealt with.”

“By bullet or cure? You want witches to go after other witches?”

“It’s a chance at least,” Lockwood insisted. “A chance for people like you to live a life without fear of being hunted. We’ve had a few over the years, like Maggie Russell, but this will be the first time we’ve gotten an organized effort together.”

“Fournier must love you.”

“The Inquisitor General is a betting man. He believes in giving people enough rope to hang themselves, and he’s betting that we will do just that.”

“What happened back at Rosie’s isn’t going to win us any friends.”

“You might have embarrassed them, but they’ll also respect you more now than they would have without the demonstration.”

“I’m not sure respect is what they’ll be feeling.”

“Well, you’ll know that one way or the other, won’t you?” Lockwood asked.

I didn’t need to look at him to know he was smiling. I could hear it in his voice and his happiness was tangible. He was tickled that I’d cracked two skulls on the retrieval team and eluded the others.

It was a damned mess but I didn’t see a way out. I couldn’t shake Lockwood’s arguments any more than the man himself. The bullet or the cure. If I didn’t join him those were my options sooner or later. Coventry. A group of witches trained by the Inquisition to identify other witches, convert the useful ones and deal with the unstable ones. When the word got out that the Inquisition was recruiting witches it was going to be a political firestorm. We’d have to have some pretty compelling evidence to sway public opinion.

The Inquisition acted under international law. We didn’t answer to any one government. We could go anywhere in pursuit of those with special abilities. The public understood shooting and burning witches. But working with them? Even more than the Inquisitor General, I wasn’t sure that we could convince the public to accept the idea of ‘good’ witches. It was too ingrained to hate and fear us. We’d have to have some way to show them the truth.

Lockwood had to have a plan for that too, he always did. “I don’t see it working, but you must have some idea how you’re going to show people. What are you thinking?”

I felt his flash of concern and I knew I wasn’t going to like the answer.