The Taken

Grif felt a headache growing behind his eyes, and forced himself to relax his clenched jaw. He tried to control his breathing, but felt like he was waiting for a bell, too. He needed a corner man to talk him down, help him shake it out, get his head right. If he could just talk to Sarge, he could make him see that this wasn’t right. Not for Grif. Not for the woman, Craig, either.

And what about these men? Why couldn’t someone talk sense into them? That was one thing Grif had never been able to wrap his gray matter around, crimes against women. To him, it was like lifting a babe from the carriage and smashing its melon on the sidewalk. Easy destruction, just for the sake of it.

And forget about premeditated violence, the unstoppable train that was just minutes away from Craig’s station. Even a random, careless act—even bad luck—was too much for most females to handle. After all, wasn’t the way Grif had bumped into Craig’s life random and careless?

But it was physiology that was really at fault. Even the big girls were easy to put down. Craig wasn’t big or small, but right in the middle where a woman should be. She was like that roller coaster he’d loved at Coney Island as a kid, made up of long slopes and wide curves, built for thrills. Something wild, he thought, but also something that made a man just want to let go.

You’d think that kind of natural wonder would engender a sort of awe in all men, but some were the moral equivalent of a smoker’s cough. They were a black noise let loose in the world, a cloud heralding illness and death. The two men entering this room were like that. Walking cancer. Destruction, just for the sake of it.

The shower droned on. He glanced down at the wristwatch Evie had given him on their second anniversary, latching on to the memory for distraction. He remembered the way she’d bitten that sweet lower lip of hers, watching him unwrap it, though she’d waited until it was fastened around his wrist to tell him it was a knock-off. Like he cared. Point was, Evie had been thinking of him even though he hadn’t exactly hung the moon for her in the previous twenty-four months, and he was both touched and secretly relieved that she still celebrated being his wife. That she still believed in him.

So he accepted the watch, and wore it religiously, never telling her he thought timepieces were silly affectations, never saying that he believed nothing really started until a person got there anyway.

But everyone’s here now, he thought wryly, lifting his head as the shower snapped off. At least for fourteen minutes longer.

You’re going to bring that poor girl’s soul home. You’re going to offer her guidance.

But I don’t want to, he found himself thinking as the plasma moved like a panther in the air. It peeled away from the hallway, padding silently through the bedroom and into the bathroom.

Propping one creamy, pale leg at a time on the vanity stool, Craig began toweling off. The limbs appeared disembodied from where he stood, but the blond cancer-man could see everything from his corner, and Grif knew he’d be the one to add violation to death.

I didn’t cause this, he almost said aloud, and realized desperation had somehow turned the thought into a prayer.

Nicole Rockwell did this, he said silently to whomever was listening. Frank did this, because he was allowing it.

God did it.

There was no reprimand. As with any prayer, no answer at all. Instead, the wind just continued howling outside, while another minute dropped away within.

Bricks, thought Grif, squeezing his eyes shut. Twelve minutes, and this will all go away.

Time enough to change your mind, Sarge, he thought, feeling panic rise, making itself known as an ache in his chest.

A white robe whirled and was wrapped tight. Grif’s boxing robe had always been white, too. He’d loved the feel of it, the scent of bleach against the stiff terry-cloth. Not that it ever stayed white for long.

Plasma swirled, wrapping around Craig’s legs like shackles as she rubbed her hair dry. Grif wanted to close his eyes.

Then she stepped into the room. The shower had relaxed her, and the booze piggybacked her fatigue so that her empty tumbler hung from two fingertips. But instinct—prey’s or woman’s—had her suddenly stiffening. She whirled, eyes wide, but the cancer-man in the hallway, faceless beneath a ski mask, was already on her. Grif had already seen this on the TV, but the sound hadn’t been turned up then. His death senses were firing like rockets now, and Craig’s knifed gasp jolted him. The slap of flesh was a shot fired. The man’s growl was feral as he pounced.

Craig strained forward, but it was useless, and only had her robe falling wide. She turned instinctively to close it, and spotted the blond man already reaching for her flesh. But Craig—Grif’s Take, his case, the woman—looked away from that oncoming train for a split second, and, with a mixture of shock and horror, focused on him.

She screamed, and this time it didn’t sound like static from a television. It sounded like a woman. It sounded like his Evie.

It sounded like a bell ringing, calling him from his corner.

Grif rocketed forward, clambering over the bed like he was bounding the ropes. As he entered the ring, he thought he heard an announcer’s voice in the static buzz of adrenaline coursing in his veins. It was an audience’s far-off roar, and it swelled when Grif rounded the S-curve of Craig’s white, naked hip and caught the man holding her, hard in his ribs. The blond stuttered in surprise, allowing a backward step that gave Grif space to pivot, just as the hallway man shoved Craig to the ground.

Rage had him going for the man’s throat. There was no training driving him now; the rust of death-years had softened the one-two, one-two-three-four of his youth into an uncontrolled flurry, but Grif knew just what to do when he caught the chin. He might not have wings, but he still had fists.

Fear entered the hallway man’s eyes, but then Grif connected … and the swirling plasma parted like the Red Sea.

Sure, a part of Grif still knew he was wearing a watch with marching minutes, that fate wouldn’t allow a knockout blow. But something had snapped inside him, that same howling something the Everlast had failed to heal, and he half-believed that if he punched hard enough—if he could just send his award-winning, no-holds-barred southpaw hook directly through the back of the cancer-man’s no-good skull—he could prevent what was already done. He could turn his timepiece into a stopwatch. He could halt Craig’s death.

The murderer’s feet caught air, out for the count before he hit the wall. Grif pivoted through the motion and turned, pulling back one of his mitts and letting loose a fist that wiped the What the fuck? right off the blond rapist’s face. The blow struck home, and Grif was suddenly there. Solid on the rock, square on the Surface, sure-footed in the mud, knuckles singing, breathing deep of the polluted air.

The awareness cost him. A fist came out of nowhere to deaden his nose, and he gagged as blood filled his mouth. The blond man loomed for a moment, but then there was a flash, a white tide rolling his attacker to the other side of the room.

Not a tide, Grif thought, staggering. A different kind of natural wonder. He broke through the shock of tasting his own blood just in time. Pushing Craig aside, he took the blow meant for her, and bled some more, but it didn’t matter. The blond was suddenly gone, reduced to a shadow dragging his sparring partner from the room. Grif tripped on his own legs before realizing he didn’t need to follow. The air was curiously cancer-free. It was also clear of silvery-white plasma, naked but for shadows that loomed in black and grays.

So Grif just bled. Chest heaving, stinging knuckles bunched on his knees, breath straining in lungs that creaked, he squinted at his watch. Then he looked back up at Craig, who stared back at him with open-mouthed horror.

“Ten seventeen,” he said, and offered her what had to be an unsettling, bloody smile. But unbelievably, miraculously, time had just proven his long-held theory right.

Nothing really started until a person got there, anyway.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Kit wrote about crime, imagined it, was outraged by it, but up until now it was something that happened around her, not to her. Sure, the threat of attack was a reality for any urban woman. Someone stronger and larger than you could always turn on a whim, and there wasn’t much you could do about it. But then life could turn on you like that, too.

Yet knowing it wasn’t the same as experiencing it. That was probably why shock was settling in now, why she’d begun shaking, and why she couldn’t quite believe what had happened. She was in the bedroom she loved, yet the objects she’d so carefully collected suddenly looked like props on a Hollywood set. Vibrant and pretty enough, but without any real value or substance.

And while she was wearing her favorite cream robe, soft as snow, it now sported an unfamiliar tear in it that almost looked obscene. And with the wet blood of a total stranger staining its hem, it was. It was.

And don’t forget this, she thought, touching her lower lip, already growing fat. But her fingertips were scented with the foreign man, and she jerked her hand away, and began shaking harder.

Kit looked around at her unfamiliar room, her gaze finally landing on the most unfamiliar thing of all.

“Who are you?” she asked the man hunched on the floor.

“Griffin Shaw. I’m here to …”

She watched him struggle, as if he didn’t actually know why he was there.

“I’m here to help,” he finally said, then winced.

“How did you get in my home?” she said. Whose voice is that? It was brittle and half-swallowed. Hard and meek at the same time. One more thing she didn’t recognize.

Her defensiveness seemed to fortify the man named Shaw. Slowly, he rose to his feet. “Just be glad I did.”

She was. She studied him, the rumpled roomy suit, the tightly razored pomp. His hair was dusky, a light brown that’d probably faded from the cool ginger of his childhood. Kit loved ginger hair. It put her in mind of blue skies and green hills and made her fantasize about French-kissing young, rebellious English princes on imaginary Welsh vacations. Yet this man could bulldoze fantasies with one hard look alone.

“They were going to kill me.”

It was another foreign thought, and something else that didn’t belong in her home. In fact, she hadn’t even known she was going to say it until it was out of her mouth. Shaw lifted the Mies van der Rohe chair that’d toppled when her attacker—his? theirs?—had fled. He sat with a groan, but kept that hard gaze on her.

“Yes,” he said, matter-of-factly, and the confirmation was a gut-punch. Kit lowered her head, and shook even harder. “Ever see either of those men before?”

“No.”

“No idea who they were?”

Kit shook her head, then realized she was usually the one asking the questions, and wondered why she wasn’t doing so now. She looked up, and out came that foreign voice. “Are you some sort of cop or something? A detective?”

Again, that hesitation, a genuine frown marring his brow. “I’m a P.I.”

“Who hired you?”

“I’m here because of Rockwell,” he said, both answering the question and not.

“Nic?” The strange voice broke on her friend’s name, and the tears finally came. Shivering, she pulled her savaged robe tight, then realized the man had moved toward her uncertainly, like he wanted to comfort her but knew he didn’t have the right. She looked at him again.

“There’s something familiar about you,” she said, sniffling. He edged back again in response, leaning into shadows that reached out to obscure his features. Darkness bent over him in a protective arch, almost like wings jutting from his back …

Squeezing her eyes, Kit shook her head to clear her vision. She was definitely in shock.

“’Course there is,” he said gruffly. “I’m the guy who just saved your life.”

She wiped her face. “Something else.”

Shaw jerked his chin at her. “Have another drink.”

“I’m not drunk,” she said, and was happy to hear her voice had some snap back.

“No, I mean it. Have another drink. You’re shaking like a leaf.” He tilted his head. “I don’t feel so hot, either.”

Kit had been so worried about herself—not to mention scared and confused—that she’d momentarily forgotten he’d been assaulted, too. “Oh, geez. Are you hurt?” she asked, moving toward him.

He jerked back, and his wings flared. Kit gasped, blinked, but they were just shadows again, surrounding that craggy face, and eyes that knew so much they gave away nothing. Kit shook her head again, and swayed.

“Whoa there.”

She felt a steadying hand on her arm. Warm. Real.

Gentle.

“I’m sorry. I thought I saw …” How was she supposed to say, while still sounding sane, that she thought she’d seen wings, with feathers the length of her forearm, rising from his back like black smoke? “Nothing.”

“You’re falling asleep on your feet.”

Her lids jerked open. She was. “Pills. I took a couple to relax. I just wanted to … go away.”

That would explain the hallucinations, Kit thought. Pills plus whiskey plus near-death equaled wings. What an equation.

“Come on,” Shaw coaxed, leading her to her bed. “Let’s get you settled into this pastry puff.”

“No. We gotta get out of here. They might …”

“They won’t be back tonight.”

“How do you know?” Kit asked as her head found the pillow, amazed by his certainty, amazed that anyone could be certain of anything after today.

“I can tell,” he said as he gathered the covers around her, and maybe he could. Maybe men who popped up to protect strange women could sense danger in a way others couldn’t. Maybe he’d tracked so many predators as a P.I. that he had an instinct for them.

Still, she sat back up. “We need to call the cops. I have a friend there …”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said shortly, and waved a hand before her face, as if smoothing out her frown. Relief flooded Kit in an almost dizzying rush, and she fell back, nodding.

Kit wondered how many women he’d rescued since becoming a private investigator, but what came out was “I don’t want to be alone.”

The stranger who’d saved her, who looked familiar but wasn’t, who seemed as suspicious of her as she did of him, hesitated. Then he leaned forward, tucked the covers up to her chin, same as her father used to do when she was young, and stared down at her with enough calm for them both. “I will watch over you.”

“Thank you,” she said, and this time hers was a different strange voice, not brittle but slurred. Neither hard nor meek. A voice that was the sum of the equation of all the day’s events.

The man, Shaw, leaned back, disappearing again into the shadows. Where he belongs, Kit thought. Where he can evaporate like he was never here at all.

Her eyes fluttered shut, closing out even the shadows, but his reply chased her into sleep. “Least I could do.”

What the hell was he doing?

Grif leaned back in the leather chair, the question dogging him for the hundredth time that night. Well, he was watching a physically and emotionally beaten woman sleep, and had been for hours, just as he’d promised. Unwilling to entertain any more of his own dreams, he was also fighting off his own mortal need for rest. But more than all of that, the real question was, what the hell had he done?

I’m here to help. That’s what he’d told Craig, which was ironic since it was the same thing he always said. I’m here to help.

Instead he’d hoo-dooed her into not calling the cops, waving his hand before her like a second-rate Houdini just to buy himself time to think. Because Katherine Craig was alive. She still had flesh and breath, which she’d likely be thankful for when she woke, but the point was that she shouldn’t ever wake again.

Fate, he was willing to bet, was pissed.

But the ripple had smoothed out, and the plasma dogging the woman had disappeared. None of his celestial senses picked up a hint of looming death, and even his headache had dulled. And it had all happened at the moment Craig was scheduled to die but didn’t.

Pulling out his Luckies, Grif lit a stick and noted his scraped knuckles with odd fascination. Flexing, he wondered what it meant that they were both still alive.

“Means you’re in deep with Sarge, that’s what,” he muttered, slumping on the chair in Craig’s bedroom. The lack of communication alone told him that much.

But Sarge had dumped him back on the mud to do a job no soul should have to shoulder. And now that Grif had screwed up his case, what was the celestial response? Silence … with the additional bonus of memory and emotion to cement him to the Surface. Now it looked like he was stuck here until Sarge saw fit to reclaim him.

They’ll probably send another Centurion to Take her, Grif thought. Maybe even her Guardian, a Pure. Yet, despite it all—screwing up Craig’s life and death, along with the pain of breathing and remembering—he didn’t regret beating off those men. Craig had been so outnumbered, so helpless, and literally naked, that it seemed unnatural not to help. He couldn’t stand by and watch a woman get beaten, raped, murdered. He’d rather be dead.

“I thought for a moment that it had all been a dream.”

Grif jolted and, looking over, knew exactly how she felt. Katherine Craig sat up, the covers slipping down the upper half of her body to reveal her bare neck and one smooth shoulder, the skin so flawless it was like a curvy pail of warm, fresh milk. He swallowed hard, keeping his gaze away from the flare of her hip and breasts as she pulled her robe tight, but it was like trying to keep his eyes off the hills framing a sunrise. After all, it was so much more of an event when there was something majestic supporting it.

Yet Craig’s eyes weren’t bright with dawn. The shadows that’d been beneath them the night before were now deep half-moons, made even darker with knowledge. Oddly, coupled with the cascade of rumpled raven hair and her round bare face, it made her look impossibly young.

“Did you sleep?” she asked, the very question eliciting a yawn. It felt strange. He hadn’t been tired in decades. Grif shook his head, putting out his cigarette in a white ceramic vase. Craig’s shadowed eyes narrowed at the movement, but she didn’t chide him.

“Coffee?” she asked instead, pushing back the covers.

“Please.” His voice was as musty with disuse as his manners. He stood, and so did she, which was how they found themselves uncomfortably close. It was odd, Grif thought. He knew what she looked like close to death, close to naked, close to him … yet didn’t really know her at all.

“Excuse me,” she said, lowering her head and skirting him. Grif shoved his hands in his pockets, allowing distance between them as he followed her from the room.

The house looked fresh-scrubbed in the early morning, unfiltered light falling over the dark wood floor like the kiss of a veil. The furniture was even more lacy and feminine glowing with the dawn, and the soft surroundings seemed to revitalize Craig. Until she rounded the corner.

There she saw the kitchen’s sliding glass door, marginally ajar, which put a hitch in her step and breath. Cursing himself for not closing it before, Grif crossed to it and locked it shut. By the time he turned around, she was already standing with her back to him, stiff in front of the coffee pot. Though there was no mistaking its use, it was the one thing in the room he didn’t recognize from his time on the mud. It looked like it belonged on a rocket ship. Almost immediately the thing began to froth and foam, and Grif’s hands were curled around a hot cup in only a few moments more.

So there had been some improvements with the onset of the twenty-first century, he thought, sipping his first decent cup of coffee in fifty years. It was smooth and strong, black and warm, and it made him wonder what else he’d been missing. He’d learned a lot after incubation, things a Centurion needed to know when visiting the Surface, including the objects surrounding his Takes. Cars were different, phones were different, and information flowed through the air now. The Internet. That had been the hardest for him to muscle into his mind.

But many details were considered too small and mundane for the Centurions’ purposes. They tapped the mud too briefly for things like newfangled coffee-makers to matter. Instant coffee that tasted like a wet dream was apparently one of them.

Craig joined him at the white pedestal table, where he’d positioned himself in the corner, an effort to appear unthreatening. Craig shifted uncomfortably anyway, pulling her robe tight.

“How do you feel?” It was a question Grif never asked … though when you met someone right after a violent death, it wasn’t usually necessary.

She stared. “Like my best friend was murdered, I was attacked, and there’s a strange man drinking my coffee in my house.”

Grif sighed. Served him right for asking. And it had him looking again at the woman across from him, vulnerable in her robe and bare face and mortal body. Strong in her gaze, mind, and will to live.

“How about I ask the questions for now?” she went on, and one slim brow lifted high.

He inclined his head, and slumped into his corner chair. “You’re the reporter.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Toldja.” He pointed to himself. “P.I.”

She tilted her head. “But you never said who hired you.”

Yep, she was a strong one. Sharp, too. “Someone interested in the Rockwell case.”

“She wasn’t a case to me. She was a friend.”

“Probably why she left you this.” He threw her notebook on the table between them. He’d discovered it in the corner where he’d felled the blond man the night before. Even if Grif hadn’t seen the man stealing the journal on the gas-station security cam, this would have been proof positive that he was both girls’ killer.

Or would have been, if not for Grif.

Recognizing it, Craig let her cup clatter to the table, sloshing caffeinated gold across the shiny top. The spill looked like one of those Rorschach tests Grif’d had to take when entering the army. He wondered what it said about him that this one resembled a black angel carrying an enormous scythe.

“I found it on the floor.” He jerked his chin. “Open it to the last entry.”

She did, immediately. It was interesting, Grif thought, the way curiosity wiped away her fatigue. Maybe that was the spine holding her up, the wire threading her resolve. Whatever it was, it sparked the moment she spotted it, the name Rockwell had circled when Grif had allowed her to re-dress for the Everlast.

“This is why they took my notebook!” She looked up, met Grif’s gaze, then back down again. “Oh, Nic! You’re so smart.”

“So smart she almost got you killed.”

Not that he could talk.

Kit shook her head, not listening. “We were working on a story. She was meeting with someone who could provide us information when she was killed.”

“What kind of information?”

“Powerful men in compromising positions,” she said cryptically. It reminded him of Frank.

“You should go to the police.”

“You said you were going to call the police.”

Grif shrugged. “You fell asleep before telling me your cop friend’s name.”

Her eyes narrowed, though the notebook still had her attention. “I gave him this list yesterday. But this narrows it down to one.”

Grif thought of the plasma seeping into her home, curling about her flesh. “I’m sorry to break it to you, but your friend can’t help you. You have to run.”

“What?” She looked up, face wide with shock.

“Get out of town,” he said shortly. “Change your name. You got money?”

“Yes.”

“Use it. Buy yourself a new identity. Invent a new life.”