Daughters of Forgotten Light Page 16

“They want to play hide and seek,” Farica said.

  The Daughters’ cyclones sat over by the wall, abandoned quickly and without an effort to line them up all neat. Farica had them running scared. So what do you do with prey that’s running? You keep up the chase until they drop from exhaustion.

  “But we’re the best at this game aren’t we, ladies?”

  The Amazons grunted agreement. Their right leg and left arm rushed to the stairwell. Farica and her second-in-command followed. The two in front opened the door and hadn’t even touched the first step when a cable tightened and pulled at something at the top of the stairs. Rang shots blasted toward them, tearing one Amazon’s arm off and hitting the other right in the gut.

  Blood splattered Farica’s face as she and her second split from the doorway before the balls could hit them. The armless Amazon’s screaming filled the stairwell. The one who’d gotten hit in the stomach mouthed silent words as blood pooled over her lips.

  The Amazons’ second-in-command ripped the cable from the door with a curse. The blood had gotten in her mohawk, polka-dotting the purple. Farica bent over the sheila who’d taken the hit to the arm.

  “God, it hurts!” she screamed.

  “Shit, I’m sorry,” Farica said. She raised her rang to the woman’s head. “I’ll do you a solid. No one should suffer like this.”

  “No, Farica! Please–”

  Pzzzt.

  And that was that.

  The sheila with the gut shot no longer mouthed anything, or breathed. Farica’s last Amazon stared at her.

  “You still want to see this through,” Farica asked.

  “Fuck yes,” she said.

  “Alright, then. Let’s take our time. The Daughters have been busy. And I don’t want any more surprises.”

  When they got to the second floor, Farica poked out her scythe to attract any rang shots. But after a few minutes of waiting, and then searching the second floor, they found it empty. And each floor after that was the same.

  “This is starting to piss me off,” Farica said, waiting outside the entrance to the last floor.

  “Maybe they left,” her second said.

  “No. Their cyclones are all here and there’s no other way in or out.”

  “How do you know?”

  Farica squinted at her. “I have my dweller spies, just like everyone else.”

  “They didn’t seem to do us much good with that rang trap.”

  What a cheeky brat. But she was right. When Farica got out of here, she’d be cleaving flesh to teach her dwellers how to be loyal.

  “OK,” Farica said. “If they aren’t on this floor, I’m going to hope they jumped. Be careful to–”

  There it was. Rory’s cry. Coming from the other side of the door.

  “You hear that too?” Farica asked.

  Her second nodded.

  “Go.”

  They crouched onto the top floor, lined with bare walls and jagged corners. Another cry shot through the quiet hall, and Farica flicked two fingers toward the sound. Her sheila took the lead, both Amazons keeping their rangs aimed for any of the thieving bitches to pop out.

  When another cry came, Farica’s sheila got excited. She leapt from her crouch and ran for the door from where the crying had come.

  “Wait, stupid!” Farica whispered.

  The door opened, sensing the Amazon’s running approach, and she went through with ease. Her screams only started halfway down the empty elevator shaft, probably when she realized she’d fucked up. And then they vanished from hearing, replaced with a low thud.

  “Damn it!” Farica crawled to the open elevator door. She peered over the edge, holding on to the stability of the outer wall. It was a long, dark way down. She sniffed the air, listening. How had they made it seem like Rory was crying from the elevator shaft?

  Chapter 35

  Lena held two fingers over Rory’s lips. She had no way to rock the baby to keep her quiet, not when she clung to the inside of the elevator shaft with her other hand. What a dumb, stupid fucking thing she’d done. But it had worked, hadn’t it? One less Amazon to deal with.

  Farica stood at the door, sniffing at the air like some feral animal. Lena wanted to bring up her rang and shoot the bitch in the chest, but she could see only the tip of Farica’s nose from where she hung, and even if she could somehow manage a shot, she’d run the risk of falling nine stories with Rory at her chest.

  Just stay quiet, pretty girl.

  Farica started making clicking noises as if she was calling a kitten for supper. Rory closed her eyes. Something wet and warm spread across Lena’s chest, the tangy smell of piss with it.

  Ah, fuck!

  The scythe blade swung into the shaft, striking just inches from Lena’s face. Farica pulled it back, scratching glass with the sharp point. It sent a screeching into Lena’s ears, a spasm down her back. Where were Hurley Girly and Dipity? They could just run out and push this shitbag into the shaft and end this godforsaken noise!

  Rory scrunched her face, stuck out her bottom lip, looking ready to cry.

  The scythe blade flipped and swung to the other side of the elevator shaft. Farica did the same thing – striking as far as she could reach and then pulling the blade along the metal in a torturously long scratch.

  Then there was silence and Rory calmed down, relaxing her face back into infant slumber. Lena kept her breathing tight, quiet. If she knew Farica as well as she thought, the bitch would be waiting there, listening and smelling for them.

  The elevator door closed, and Lena loosed a breath. It had to have been only a few minutes, but it felt like forever before Hurley Girly and Dipity opened the door.

  “Take Rory,” Lena told Dipity. The baby looked so tiny in Dipity’s monstrous arms.

  “I guess you’re keeping that name for the baby then?” Hurley Girly asked, offering Lena a hand.

  “It’s a good name.” Lena shuffled out of the shaft and got far from the open door. “She pissed all over me, though. I’m going to need a shower. But first – where the hell were you two?”

  “Hiding in the next room,” Dipity said. “We figured we could wrestle her down if she tried to come in. But there was no way in hell we were going to come at her with only one rang.”

  Cowards. “What about Ava?” Lena asked.

  The Daughters’ right arm herself ran around the corner, shaking her head. “These Amazons are dumber than hell. I waited forever in that room. They never checked it.”

  “Guess Farica figured she should hit the road while she still could,” Hurley Girly said.

  “She’s not out of here yet.” Lena placed Rory back into her jacket. “Let’s hurry downstairs and grab your rangs.”

  “Don’t you think one of us should stay back and hold the baby?” Ava asked.

  “No,” Lena said.

  Chapter 36

  After taking their rangs, Farica stepped over the two dead Amazons at the bottom of the stairs, and wished them a whispered goodbye. She hurried for the front door, now with a rang on each arm, striking the floor with the bottom of her scythe with every other step. She might have been outnumbered for now, but she’d be back to finish the Daughters, with more dwellers than they could count. Hell, fuck a gang, she’d be leading an army. And then Oubliette would be hers, and she could do what she wanted, kill who she wanted, fuck who she wanted, all without the weight of a goddamn truce.

  Beside her, a Daughter popped out of a manna box couch, roaring a gurgling cry and aiming her rang gun at Farica. The ball fired from her arm before Farica could react. But it was a poor shot and went low, grazing Farica on the side of her knee.

  “Shit!” Farica screamed, firing her own rang with even less success.

  She limped and jumped for the bitch, making it to her just as the woman’s ball of light returned to her rang. Farica swung her scythe down, cutting through the air with a low whistle that ended in a pleasing thunk. The blade had gone through the Daughter’s head, down into her throat. The sha
rp glass was visible through her open mouth. The dead woman’s eyes rolled back, leaving only the whites.

  How the fuck could they have missed her when they first came in? Farica saw she had made herself a hole under the couch seat. Her legs were a mess, a puddle of blood under her knees, but not from what Farica had done to her. It looked like the Daughter wouldn’t have made it much longer anyway.

  “You’re welcome,” Farica said.

  She pulled at her scythe, but the damn thing was stuck. She yanked and yanked. Nothing. She was going to have to put her boots on the dead Daughter’s chest for leverage. As if she couldn’t have gotten dirtier.

  Chapter 37

  Lena waited with Ava as Hurley Girly and Dipity grabbed their rang guns from the turrets at the top of the first flight of stairs. The two dead Amazons the guns had taken out still lay at the bottom. Seeing them filled Lena with a sudden fear, and she thought of Sterling. Lena shouldn’t have listened to Sterling and her stupid death wish. They could have found a way to save her.

  She ran to the main room.

  Farica had a foot on Sterling’s chest, pulling her scythe from the Daughter’s head. It was an understandable time to scream, to cry, to show any form of emotion, but Lena emptied out and all that remained was Horror.

  The others were still in the stairway when Lena shot. The Amazon raised her scythe and deflected the ball back to her. Using her left arm, Farica fired, sending Lena rolling on the floor to avoid it. She normally wouldn’t have been so slow on the return. But she was holding Rory.

  Stupid!

  “You’re dead,” Farica shouted. “All of you. And you know it.” She stood at the hole in the front door and dropped something.

  It wasn’t until it hit the floor that Lena recognized it as a rang gun. She rolled behind a manna box as Farica fired from outside, the light ball striking the discarded rang. The explosion blew everything at the front of their ganghouse to high hell.

  Lena cradled Rory like a cocoon just before the manna box slammed into her back. Glass pelted her head as dust filled her nose and mouth. She coughed for several minutes, spitting out the burnt grit on her tongue. When she stood, Rory made a terrified face, but she couldn’t hear the baby’s cries. Muffled voices came from behind. Ahead, huge chunks of debris blocked the exit. It would take a while, but they could clear it away. Farica, however, would be long gone.

  She set Rory down on an opposite couch and cradled Sterling, lowering the dead Daughter onto her back. Lena didn’t mind the blood. She already needed a shower.

  Lena closed Sterling’s eyes and mouth before the body would become too stiff to do so. They’d have to bury her. And Grindy. That was the second thing they had to do. The gang couldn’t do anything else until properly mourning those they’d lost and they couldn’t properly mourn until they’d hunted Farica and removed her from existence.

  But what about Sarah Pao?

  The other Daughters came back and circled the couch. Gasps and breathy curses all around her, but Lena had nothing more to give. What Farica did to Sterling had hollowed the head Daughter. Lena knew what she wanted to do, what she had to do, but there was no rage or misery to go along with it. It was just an urgent item on her to-do list. Maybe after everything was checked off she could allow herself to cry.

  “Hurley Girly,” Lena said. “Go squeeze some juice out of a manna loaf for Rory. She needs to eat. Ava, you, me, and Dipity are going to kill that redheaded rectal itch for good.”

  Dipity cleared her throat. “We have to get Pao back.”

  “I know,” Lena said.

  “We’ll have to give Shamika the baby,” Ava said.

  “No.” The harshness in Lena’s voice was a surprise, even to her.

  Ava threw her hands into the air. “Why is it so fucking important to you, Lena?”

  “She has a name.” Lena stared into Ava’s eyes. “She’s not an it, she’s a person.” She groaned and rubbed her face, trying to scrub away some of her exhaustion. Logic pushed away emotion. “But I know you’re right. We’re going to need to be on their good side. And we need Pao back. I’m not going to stand for one more Daughter dying.”

  “So we go to the top of the hill, then?” Dipity asked.

  “Not yet. We have to clear this shit away so we can get outside. Farica couldn’t have gotten far. Revenge first. Then we bury our own. Then we retrieve our own. I need a minute with Rory. By myself.”

  Ava and Dipity nodded as Hurley Girly came back with a cylinder full of milky liquid. When they’d cleared enough of a hole to fit through, Lena took Rory outside. On Earth she would have said she was getting some fresh air, but there was none of that here, just the same recycled staleness.

  Rory opened her mouth when Lena put the cup to it, hungrily sucking up the juice. Lena thought she could almost see a smile. The baby’s happy wriggling in her arms brought a grin to Lena’s face and, God, did it hurt. She didn’t want to let Rory go, no matter the benefits of letting the OC get their way.

  “It looks like God’s an asshole,” she whispered to Rory. “He couldn’t let me keep my first, and he won’t let me keep you.”

  A sound buzzed from above. It wasn’t like a cyclone, or a rang shot. It was something she’d never heard before – soft, but definitely out of place. She stayed still, keeping her head down, eyes on the baby. But at the corner of her sight, just above the short building across the street, something was hovering.

  Chapter 38

  “This picture sucks!” Dolfuse said. “Can you get a better look at her face?”

  “Only if she raises her head or if I do some quick programming for it to get closer, if it doesn’t fly off first. You wanted to stay covert, didn’t you?”

  Dolfuse had to know who this woman was. She had dark brown hair, pale skin, a slim build, but from what Dolfuse had seen the woman was stronger than her appearance let on.

  The baby drank something from a cup. An ache swelled in Dolfuse’s stomach, and it was stupid, she knew, but in that moment she wanted to be the one holding her, not some murderous biker a million miles away. Who was this woman?

  “Program it to get closer,” Dolfuse said. “I doubt any of them have the slightest clue we’re watching them.”

  Lundgate shrugged and had the drone move in closer. It didn’t advance for almost a minute, then the picture jumped and the woman raised her head, shooting her right arm forward. A brilliant blue light filled the screen and then there was only static.

  “What the hell just happened?” Dolfuse yelled.

  Lundgate pushed at buttons randomly as the static flickered on the television. “I think she just blew the drone to hell,” he said. “Pardon the swear.”

  “Can you back up the recording?”

  “Sure.” He rewound the video to just before the ball of light left the woman’s arm.

  “Pause it,” Dolfuse said. “Right there!”

  The image froze on the woman’s sneering face. All the evil in the world and beyond the stars was contained in that one look.

  “I guess they found out we were watching,” Lundgate said.

  “I’d like a copy of this.”

  “Sure thing,” he said. “And I’m just joshing you about the covert thing. I mean, so what if they know we sent a drone. It’s not like they can do anything about it.”

  Lundgate laughed, but his words stuck with Dolfuse, like taffy between the teeth. These women were capable of building machines and weapons out of the leftovers Oubliette’s founders had never gotten to use. They’d formed a ruthless society and had years of stewing in their hatred of Earth folk. If Martin planned on leading an expedition to Oubliette, she was in for a very rude welcome.

  Chapter 39

  “Motherfuckers are spying on us,” Lena said, storming back in to the ganghouse.

  The Daughters jumped to attention.

  “Who?” Ava said. “The OC?”

  Lena put Rory on a couch to sleep. “Come with me and I’ll show you.”

  Out
side, Hurley Girly kicked her boot against a big chunk of the machine. It was still smoking and had more jagged edges than Farica’s teeth.

  “I’m pretty damn sure it’s not the OC’s,” Lena said. “This had to be from Earth. Doesn’t look like anything Grindy’s dwellers would build.”

  “Might have come in with tonight’s shipment,” Dipity said.

  “That’s what I’m assuming.” Lena nodded. “And I sure as hell don’t like it.”

  “Why the fuck would they care about what we’re doing out here? Why now?” Hurley Girly asked.

  “Cause something’s changed,” Ava said. She looked at Lena and, almost like telepathy, her stare told Lena everything she needed to know. They knew about the baby.

  While her knowledge of military strategy was lacking, in every war movie she’d seen, they always sent recon before attacking. If they could send one flying machine, who was to say they wouldn’t send more, with guns. Shooting the damned thing down probably didn’t help matters either. If the UCNA didn’t attack Oubliette, they sure as shit could let them all starve to death.

  Lena sighed. “We’re going to have to ration manna even more than we already have been.”

  “Ah, shit,” Dipity muttered.

  “This is too much to deal with,” Hurley Girly said. There was a moan in her voice that sounded like a blizzard of crying would erupt, the kind that hit you so hard, you lost all your breath with each sob, and tensed into a silent, open-mouthed mess.

  “What we don’t have time for is pissing and moaning. Sterling wouldn’t want that. We’ve got to be proactive. Otherwise we’ll all be gone and forgotten. And no one is going to cry for us.”

  “There more than likely won’t be a shipment coming,” Ava said. “Not anymore.”

  “So we’re going to have to find a way out of Oubliette,” Lena said.

  “I’m with you there,” Dipity said. “But that’s something we should’ve already figured out by now. And with Grindy gone…” She looked away.