Chapter Twelve
GLAD YOU CAN SEE REASON ON THIS. HAPPY TO LET BANK BUSINESS CONTINUE UNINTERRUPTED WITH ONLY MINIMAL GOLD TOWN OVERSIGHT. LOOKING FORWARD TO OUR PARTNERSHIP.
The Old Clock Tower was allegedly one of the first buildings constructed in Covenant, a rough, rectangular structure on the outskirts of Central Parish, maybe six stories high but made taller by the giant clock itself.
It’s ringed with buttresses that give it a little more grandiose look, but it’s dull and a bit tarnished in places, dusty all over from disuse.
It apparently was the center of activity in this town once, but then everyone flush with paper started developing airships and moving above the skyline, and everything else shifted with it.
The mayor. The town staff. Nearly all the resources.
They even built a brand-new clock tower over by the greenhouses.
A sleeker, more modern-looking one that reaches toward the sky.
The Old Clock Tower became a forgotten relic in the gray, cycling through owners until it was finally bought by some rich skyliner who set it up as a bank.
And, if Orion’s information is right, it’s now also playing host to quite a bit of Gold Town Gang activity.
I stand in the mouth of an alley, about two hundred feet from the big, arched double doors that serve as the main entrance, bouncing from the stimulant tincture I took a little bit ago.
Everything inside me is vibrating, even the backs of my eyes, but at least it takes the edge off my thirst and now I’m awake and ready to move.
Maybe a little too ready, actually. If Orion doesn’t point me in a direction to phase pretty soon, I might just come apart at the seams, like someone soldered me together wrong.
He stands in the shadow of one of the buildings looming over us, my goggles slung onto his head so he can scan the Tower and make an entrance plan.
I already took a quick look before; a lot of glowing orange people milling around on all levels of the building, taking care of whatever business they have.
Orion called it “a bank that only deals in crime.”
Which pretty much sounds like a regular bank to me.
“I don’t know about this, V.” Orion pulls the goggles off his head, handing them back to me. “This is looking dicey. I can’t see a clear, quick avenue in for us.”
I snort, leveling a glare at him. “You’ve broken into skyliner vaults—you can’t break into a lousy duster bank?”
“It took weeks to plan those jobs. I had schematics and diagrams and contingencies. I had by-the-minute timelines and occasionally even a crew. This is just…” He waves a hand at the Tower, sighing.
“A mistake waiting to happen. I need time to figure out how to get you in without you or your ‘special gift’ being spotted and bringing half of Trinity down on our asses.”
Time. That’s the one thing I’m not willing to spend right now, not when I’ve already wasted so much of it.
It’s been just over a day since Halle and Kelda were taken, and every hour that slips by is another where anything could be happening to them.
Hurt, beaten, shackled, scared for their lives, not sure if anyone is coming for them …
Maybe even dead.
No. No, no, no.
Not that thought. Never that thought. It will break me if I let it linger, and a broken killer can’t hunt.
I fidget, the stimulant tincture buzzing through my body as I scan the Old Clock Tower again.
Orion said on the way here that either my sisters were being kept in that building or a Gold Towner there would know where they were, but either way, we’d need to get to the top levels, where it was all Gold Town business with no worries about maintaining the banking front.
Or, really, I just need to get to the top levels. No one said he needed to be there, too.
“Fuck it,” I mutter, and shrug my cowl onto the alley floor, pulling my mask and hood up over my head.
I hear Orion start to say “Val, no, what are you—” and then the rest is lost to me as I make my move, bursting apart and disappearing.
Strange, but phasing feels easier than normal, like I can go just a bit farther, last just a bit longer, even with the exhaustion and the injuries and the hair of the dog side effects.
It leaves a tingle in my muscles that makes me feel strong, similar to the tingle I felt on my skin after that flare of light out on the Plains.
I phase-drift between the shadows of nearby buildings, scanning as I work my way closer and closer, taking stock of the people—Gold Towners, I’m guessing—on guard duty, keeping an eye on windows and doors, playing lookout at the top of the Tower itself.
But they don’t see me. You never see a ghost unless the ghost wants you to.
There are certainly quite a few people clustered in the upper levels, but I can’t pick up any specifics as far as what any of the rooms are or where might be the best place to get information on Halle and Kelda.
Orion might have been able to tell me if I hadn’t up and left him behind, but that’s fine.
I’m used to going in solo.
I pick an empty, cracked-open window on the fourth floor and phase over to it, through it, in one long breath, pulling myself back together in a dim pool of weak sunlight on the other side of the wall.
I’m in a corner of a long, open room outfitted like a lounge with a number of Gold Towners inside, some of them relaxing on couches while others are pacing, tense, coiled tight.
The one closest to the window spots me, crouched on the floor, one hand holding Wrath, the other gripping the handle of Reason. He jerks in alarm and swings his pistol around to my face, but his hand shakes a little.
“Holy shit,” he says. “Holy shit, it’s you.”
There’s a pause as the rest of the Gold Towners in the room hear him, register what he’s saying, turn to see me there.
I slowly straighten, Trinity’s song low but growing louder as my anticipation sharpens. “Tell me where they are and you live.”
He sets his jaw, putting on a brave face. A fool’s face. “You won’t get anything out of us.”
“Suit yourself.” I mock a little bow—
And then I’m gone.
I’m a shadow stuttering across the open space, attacking and disappearing and blocking.
Pulse fire scatters around the room—always a beat too late, always hitting the air where I was just a second before.
I’m behind them and beside them, cutting their arms and sides with Wrath and Reason, bloodying their faces with plated knuckles, cutting them off by their heels or knees, kicking them to the ground and slicing downward with the kind of precision that means they won’t be getting back up again.
I lay them out, flat and bleeding on the ground, life leaking out of them in sticky pools of red.
Then I step over the bodies and head upstairs.
Something crunches beneath my boots on the landing for the fifth floor, and I pause, crouching to get a closer look. It’s glass. Dozens of tiny, glittering shards scattered all over, likely from—
I straighten, eyeing the stairwell window, the panes all along the bottom half busted and cleared out. Likely so someone could crawl inside. Someone else who isn’t supposed to be here, like me.
Dropping low, I slink forward, through the stairwell door and out into the hall.
It’s empty, the filtered naphtha sconces all along the length of it flickering eerily, but there are noises coming from the room a few doors down on the right.
My movements are completely silent as I creep over there.
Three people inside—two are sprawled out on the floor, very still.
Probably unconscious. The other one is hunched behind the desk, yanking open the drawers to rummage through what’s inside.
In a blink, I phase into the room, just on the other side of the door.
Two big Gold Towners are laid out flat, trickles of blood at their temples, their pulse pistols still holstered.
Over behind the desk, by the light of a naphtha lantern, the third person is grabbing stacks of records etched onto metal tablets, flipping through them, setting a few onto the desktop and tossing the rest aside.
I watch them for a minute, trying to get a read on this mystery assailant, who looks to be about as tall as I am, but rounder in the hips and chest, with warm, light-brown skin and hair that glows a deep, dark purple in the lantern light—
I suck in a sharp breath and scramble to pull off my goggles and mask, needing to see for myself, to know if it really is …
“Dani?”