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fiction: serial fiction
the crown, book one: chapter 13
Damian Dare stood in the back of the elevator, a wide grin on his face. He adjusted his black turtleneck and watched the pampered and posh come in and out of the doors, swimwear and suits scenting the cramped space with chlorine and cologne. He always found it amusing how much taller people had gotten over the centuries, and wondered if his own humble height would come back into vogue, or simply become an evolutionary footnote.
Finally the elevator found its way to the ground floor, spreading its doors wide. Dare expectantly took a step outside and glanced around. After so long, he wasn't really sure what to look for. He walked up to the concierge, a delicate man with a pencil-thin mustache and pleats so sharp they could slice cheese.
"Excuse me," Dare said quietly, actually amused at the idea of speaking to hired help personally, "I'm a guest here, and I was ..."
"Going to meet a young lady here in the lobby?" the concierge finished. "Yes, Mister Dare, she's already been by asking about you. She's in the main lobby, by the fountain."
Dare smiled and nodded, turning away. The lobby of the Four Seasons was a paradise of muted lighting, golden illumination clinging to the walls with gold-trimmed furnishings placed here and there. Dare rounded one of the doric columns and saw her.
Surrounded on every side by light, Tonya Fitzgerald stood before a burnt sienna vase filled with bamboo arranged like a fan. A beige hijab kept her hair hidden from view, and she stood, arms crossed at a slight profile, the delight of her curves clear in the amber light. Dare felt a swelling in the pit of his stomach, a kind of excitement altogether unknown to him. He consciously resisted an urge to run up to her, this long lost figure from a past only he remembered, the very first immortal he'd ever known.
He approached her with trepidation, finally, and stood a few feet in front of her. "Tonya?" he asked, his anxiety almost too much to bear.
"Hello, Damian," she responded. She opened her arms slowly, like the rising of the sun, and stepped in to embrace him. He leaned into her hug and exhaled slowly. So comfortable, so familiar. The smell of Egyptian sandalwood dominated his nostrils and, unexpectedly, she kissed him on his left cheek, the plush texture of her skin on his making an almost electrical tingle.
She stepped back and held his shoulders, taking a look at him. "Come, sit with me," she said, her voice like a warm bath. She took his hand (her skin, smoother than the surface of polished opal) and led him over to a nearby couch.
Dare was flummoxed, so ... happy to be in her presence after so long. He actually didn't expect to feel so elated just to see her, just to be near her ... later on he'd realize that should have raised an alarm in his mind all by itself.
"It's good to see you, Damian," Tonya said calmly, sitting back on the couch and crossing her legs. She was wearing dusty cargo pants, he noticed, with matching sandals ...
"It is," he murmured, appreciating her. "I ... I've looked forward to this for a long time, and I'm really very happy to see you, too. I can't believe how happy I am to see you."
Tonya chuckled, a rich throaty sound that danced around the insides of his eardrums like children playing in sunshine, and patted his hand.
"I can't wait for us to start working together again," Damian said hungrily, leaning forward a bit. "It'll be better than old times."
Tonya smiled enigmatically and replied, "I think you're right. Do you have the belt and the stones?"
Damian reached without looking into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a small satin drawstring bag, feeling the cowrie shells rubbing together inside, and handed it to her. Wordlessly, it disappeared into the sandy colored handbag she'd had hanging across her forearm. While she had the purse open, Tonya pulled out a thin tan envelope. "Here," she said, handing it to him.
Damian looked dumbly at the envelope in his hands for a moment, then back at her. "What's this?"
"Inside that envelope, you'll find some really interesting things," Tonya smiled, brushing his cheek with her hand, "including a business card, printed up about a block from here and picked up by intermediary. On it is a fairly easy to remember email address, where you can reach me. I'll check it once a week, through a series of anonymizers and redirected servers, just in case."
"I don't understand," Dare said, starting to get a little angry. "We're supposed to be working together ..."
"... and we will work together, because it's a good idea, if we both can accomplish something that'd make us both happy. But listen," Tonya said, taking his hands in hers, "because you're not going to be this agreeable for long, and I want to do everything I can to make this work. We can't spend time together, you and I. You almost beat me to death, Damian. You raped me repeatedly. I've spent the last nine hundred years running, specifically from you. There's no possible way we can sit around and be friends."
Dare felt like the wheels were coming off the wagon, and started to move closer to her when he felt something hold him back.
"I can see by the expression on your face that the ward is working," Tonya continued, still holding his hands. "I had to get close enough to kiss you for it to take effect. Through word or deed, you nor any witting or unwitting agent of yours can harm me in any way. You agreed to me putting that on you."
Anger had arrived, and it swept across Dare's face like ten thousand Zulu rushing across an arid plain. He practically shook in his seat. Had she really been that good a magician? His inability to lift his arms and get his fingers around her throat were a testament to her skills.
"Like I said," Tonya continued, "you can email me with any ideas for collaboration and I'll get back to you within a week or two. I will be untraceable and unfindable. You never specified under what terms we'd be working together, so I decided to go on and do that."
Dare stopped shaking with rage. He just sat there and looked at her, his eyes bulging with disbelief.
"So that's about it," Tonya said, then broke into a bright smile. "Oh, before I forget, the spit and fingernails you gave me have been shipped to a variety of plenipotentiaries, and if I don't give them the right signal after certain pre-agreed intervals, they'll change the DNA results in a number of very serious murders to fit yours and then fit your fingerprints ... on the bag, by the way ... into the national data bank and slip some anonymous tips to the local media. I think we'd both agree that the worst possible thing an immortal can have is attention, and given your somewhat public profile, and the heinous nature of these crimes, it would be a good idea if I were able to go about my life unmolested."
Dare started laughing.
Tonya raised an eyebrow suspiciously, completely surprised by this reaction. Dare fell back on the couch, holding his stomach with one hand, holding his forehead with the other, laughing out loud with a kind of abandon that Tonya didn't think she'd ever seen from the man. Several attempts to ask him why were met with fresh gales of amusement, so after a few moments Tonya simply sat back on the couch and waited for his guffaws to settle into chuckles, and then into a kind of grin, wiping his eyes.
"A-heh, whoo," Dare smirked, "now ... which one of you came up with the crimes part? That was the mortal, wasn't it?"
"... actually, yes," Tonya smiled slyly. "I had the people in place, but yes, it was his idea."
"Oh wow, that's really amazing," Damian said, still laughing a little. "Do you remember the first thing you said in the seminar you used to teach on practical applications of magic?"
Tonya grinned and recited from memory, "'The less specific you are, the more likely things will go wrong.' I forgot that you took that class."
"I've worked very hard ... to remember as much as I could about you, Ka-yet," he said, falling back into the familiar sound of her original name. "This ... this will be all right. I hope, though, that if we run into each other you won't be in such a hurry to put a few continents between us."
Tonya shook her head slowly. "No, I think I'm more comfortable around you, until you find a way around that ward spell, but you have to know we'll never be like we used to be."
"No more philosophical debates at the riverbank?" Dare asked quietly. "No more guessing about how the future will turn out?"
"The future will be fine with or without the two of us, Damian," Tonya said sadly. "I'm sorry we can't be friends, and I really mean that, because I've known you longer than anybody in the whole world. But what happened between us is unforgivable, unfathomable, and despite the real genuine affection I feel you're giving me now, I still believe you are a horrible, evil man and I can't allow you regular access to my life."
Dare looked into her eyes and recognized the steel behind her words. He nodded and looked down at his hands. "You're probably right. At least I can drop you a line now and then."
Tonya stood up and said, "Come walk me out."
Dare rose and tugged down his jacket. Tonya took his arm and together they walked towards the bright open doorway of the hotel.
"So, do I get to meet this mortal of yours?" Dare asked passingly.
Tonya chuckled. "We decided that would be a bad idea, despite his desires."
"He wanted an old-fashioned brawl?" Dare wondered.
"I told him with pressure points alone, even given his abilities, you'd kill him before he could get you into orbit."
Dare thought about that and responded, "Do you know, I don't really know that I've considered that attack. A Crowned mortal would easily be able to get me airborne, and if he were half as skilled as I am, he could easily incapacitate me and throw the body out of the atmosphere. That's pretty good tactical planning for a mortal ..."
"But you'll admit I'm right," Tonya smiled, stopping by the valet station.
"I can't see me dying that easily," Dare admitted. "You parked in the valet?"
Tonya reached down into her purse and shook her head. "No, my ride will be along to pick me up soon."
Dare looked at her. "How many spells did you cast on me?"
"The ward, which required the kiss," Tonya said coyly, "and a little something to make me even more stunning than I might have ordinarily been. Kept you off balance for a crucial moment."
Thoughtfully, Dare commented, "You started it in the elevator?"
Tonya nodded. "Left in in there last night, with a small video camera that's now gone. Odorless, noiseless, and specific to the man whose spittle I already had."
"But what if I'd taken another elevator?"
"That was the one farthest west, which corresponds with your history and your general sentiments. Plus, we put them in all the elevators."
Dare laughed again, holding her hands. "Is another hug out of the question? I promise that's all it would be."
Tonya nodded and stepped up to hug him again. The whirlwind of wonder that spun around his head was absent this time, but she did feel very good, pressed up against him.
"Goodbye, Damian," she said wistfully.
"Goodbye, Tonya."
She walked a few feet out into the sunlight -- in its golden glow he remembered how golden everything looked, an homage to Het Heru, probably reinforcing her spell -- until she reached the sidewalk. A pretty severe amount of planning went into this, and Dare had to appreciate that.
Tonya turned around, holding her handbag close under her arm and waving. Then, with no preamble or fanfare, she was gone, the spot in which she stood empty as a breeze rushed in.
Dare walked out to where she'd been standing and looked around. No telltale sizzle of air, from teleportation. No smoke, no sign of her mode of transport at all. He nodded appreciatively. "You have become quite impressive, Ka-yet."
Dare didn't know whether to be amused or infuriated when he got back to his floor. The guard he'd left at the suite found himself snoozing heavily in a chair, the kind one would find in the rooms. Nonplussed, Dare shook his head and walked heavily into his suite.
Predictably, the door was open. Eliot was standing, facing away from the door, shouting at everyone in sight, and people were rushing to and fro. From the doorway, Dare called across the crowded room, "Should I assume you have no telemetry for me?"
Everyone stopped and looked nervously at Dare, arms crossed, a wry expression on his face.
"Go, all of you, out," Eliot said tiredly. Not waiting for more than that, the room cleared out. Eliot flopped down in one of the chairs near the balcony.
Dare grabbed another chair and dragged it over to Eliot, sitting down. After a moment of watching the man holding his head in his hands, Dare said, "Talk to me."
"We don't have anything," Eliot said with a clear sense of disgust.
"They disrupted the signal from the mics and cameras in the lobby?" Dare asked. "Did they cut the power to the equipment?"
Eliot shook his head. "Everything works fine, power's up, microphones are live, video's ready to roll. We just never pressed record."
Dare sat up and tilted his head to the side. "Pardon me?"
"The last thing any of us remember is you walking out that door," Eliot began, uneasily. "Then, a couple of minutes before you got out of the elevator, most everybody woke up, standing in the ops room, all clumped up together like a crowd at a concert. I was just standing here, in the middle of the room. All the tapes had been erased, manually. Mic inputs pulled out, manually. Hard drives, wiped clean, manually. Every bit of research we've done since we got to town, except for the early stuff we uploaded to the server, all ... just gone." Eliot was very emotional about the loss.
"Forensics ..."
"Nothing," Eliot interrupted. "No prints I couldn't practically recognize on sight, no unauthorized logins. Everything here looks ..."
"Like somebody floated in and told you to do it," Dare finished, "just like somebody had the power to command you all with his voice and you'd obey, no matter what he told you to do, from wipe hard drives to stand in a room together, to forgetting everything you'd seen."
Eliot looked up at Dare, uncomprehending.
"We drastically underestimated our prey, Eliot," Dare noted, leaning back thoughtfully, "something I would have thought impossible. Get to work salvaging whatever we can from whatever we can physically remember and let's go back to New York."
"We're leaving?"
Without responding, Dare stood up and walked out on to the balcony. Glaring at the city, a thin gray sheet of smog obscuring its details, he nodded grimly, gritting his teeth.
Miles away, atop one of the towers in Century City, James regarded Dare through the telescope.
"Yah, he looks pretty pissed," James agreed, munching on a sandwich.
"I bet," Tonya smirked, laid back on one of the lawn chairs they'd left here the night before. "I've never mated him in chess before. Are you sure you didn't have to rush?"
"That guy with the eyepatch was amazingly professional," James replied, assuring her. "If there was anything there, he nailed it. He even offered several suggestions I would have never gotten."
"Helpful," she noted.
"You sure your neck is okay from the sudden takeoff?"
Tonya sat up and rubbed her neck. "It's fine, I just shouldn't do that more than twice a month. One practice, one time doing it for real, and we were fine, just like I told you."
"Except for me missing you entirely and needing two passes," James chortled, tossing a piece of pickle at her. "Glossing over that, aren't we?"
"You already told me your head was resistant to frisbees, okay, so you banged into a building at six or seven hundred miles per hour. No blood, no foul!"
James shot her a look that elicited a giggle and he leapt, knocking them both over on to the gravel rooftop.
"How are we gonna throw off that energy bloodhound?" James asked, breathing heavily, his face inches from hers.
"I got some radium lying around," she smiled, tracing his lips with her finger. "We'll just hang it in some trees around town, in a really solid lead containers. That should do it. He doesn't read radiation, he reads the energy behind the radiation."
"You just have all the answers, doncha?" James grinned wickedly.
"As long as you're with me," she said breathily, her eyes taking in his face, "yes."
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