Under Dark Sky Law (26 page)

As much as she would have loved to humor her
opponent and make her think that she was overwhelmed by the
attacks, the truth of things was that the woman was clearly out of
practice. She may have encountered more than her share of
shenanigans in the dome, but she hadn’t been living in the harsh
reality of the pits for the last twenty years. She’d grown soft,
and it showed. Perhaps that was part of why she felt so compelled
to challenge Xero again. She’d lost the fights before, but was
certain that beating Xero in another fight would bring her
vindication.

She was rather disappointed in Voodoo’s
diminished fighting skills. She had actually been looking forward
to a really good fight. Fully assuming that she was going to nail
Xero in the ribs, Voodoo had sunk all of her weight into her
strike. A big mistake, as the gambit made her lose her balance and
crash into the outer wall after Xero dodged out of the way. Without
even thinking about it, Xero flipped around and drove her knife
into the back of Voodoo’s thigh with one quick in and out stab. She
could have killed the woman right then and there, and the thought
crossed her mind. With Voodoo dead they could do business with
someone that was less of a pain in the ass, but they didn’t have
time to wait for all that dust to settle. She backed away until she
was where Voodoo had started out, leaning against the stainless
steel kitchen counter.

Voodoo screamed as red blossomed out across
her white dress, the blood quickly dripping down over her thigh and
splattering on the tiled floor. Xero was fairly sure that she
hadn’t hit the femoral artery, but there was still plenty of blood
running down the floor. Voodoo clutched the knife in her shaking
hand and was trying ineffectively to stop the blood flow with her
other hand. Xero nodded towards the weapon.

“First blood?” Xero said.

She watched Voodoo’s tense face, her eyes
bulging, her teeth clenched as she breathed in short bursts that
sent strings of saliva cascading over her full lips. She kept
breathing heavily, but the fire drained out of her eyes, her face
softening like a slowly falling soufflé.

Voodoo dropped the knife and it clattered
against the cold tiles. “First blood,” she said.

“Good,” Xero said and put her own knife down
on the counter. “You want me to patch that up for you?”

Voodoo shook her head, her dark skin turning
a shade paler as blood continued to run down her leg.

Xero shrugged. “Suit yourself—you better get
some pressure on that soon or you’ll pass out,” she said. She
looked over her shoulder. “Hey, you got any beignets left back
there?”

CHAPTER 25

Voodoo didn’t look pleased, but Xero had in
fact found some beignets and coffee that had been left in the
kitchen from before it was abandoned for their fight. Her team
enjoyed the snack before some goons had come back out of the café
to give them their next directives. The beignets tasted real, so at
least that was a good indication that some things were still
functioning in the city. All of their food stuffs hadn’t gone
synthetic like they had in a lot of the bigger East Coast cities.
She had half expected Voodoo to die of stubbornness before she
summoned some kind of medical care, but apparently she was still
smarter than that at least.

They were taken back to the plantation home
where they had started the evening. Still in their concert gear,
they spread themselves out in the parlor again. Radar and Xero
shared a purple velvet loveseat. She ran her hands back and forth
over it’s soft surface, brushing the fibers this way and that. She
laid herself out horizontally across the couch, her feet hung over
the edge and she leaned against Radar’s side.

“That’s not exactly a fighting-ready
position,” Radar said.

“Any position is a fighting-ready position
for me. I’m always ready to go,” she said and kept playing with the
velvet. “You know, for as many problems as this area has, they sure
have a lot of great stuff. This couch feels real too. You hardly
ever see actual velvet anymore. Think of all the great stuff we can
get if Voodoo ever stops being butt hurt and gets over being
stabbed. We can put velvet all over the Golden Lanes—it’ll be just
like the 1960s,” she said.

“Good to know you’ve got your priorities in
order,” Radar said.

Xero hung her head backwards to meet Radar’s
gaze. “Hey man, never underestimate the importance of style. Image
is everything,” she said and looked down at the voluminous gothic
lace gown that she was still wearing. “Hence, the reason why we’re
wandering around in these getups.”

Milo was sitting across the room in a
high-backed chair that was also upholstered in deep purple velvet.
His gaze was cast down at his fingers that were fidgeting,
interlacing and unwinding, tapping at his thigh, clenching and
unclenching while he thumped his right foot against the hollow
wooden floors. His foot taps echoed in the high-ceilinged room.

Xero swung her feet off the couch and faced
straight forward again. “Milo. Hey,” she said.

His head snapped up to meet her gaze, but his
eyes were still unfocused and faraway. “Yeah?” he said.

“I’m just fucking around, you know that?
First priority is getting the Ketocillin. Don’t worry. One way or
another we’ll make this happen. We’re almost there. Voodoo is
desperate. She had to put on that little show back there just to
make herself feel good, but she wouldn’t have ever let us in here
in the first place if she didn’t really need our shit,” she said.
“Now that she’s done grandstanding, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t
kill her with that little stab wound to the leg, we can actually
get down to business,” she said.

Neptune was leaning against a column by the
front door, waiting for trouble to come knocking. “I don’t like
that they wouldn’t let us have any weapons,” she said.

“That’s pretty standard dome policy for
outsiders unless we’re being directly monitored by or working with
the government,” Xero said.

Neptune started pacing back and forth across
the room, her eyes searching the area for possible weapons. “Yeah
but the other domes aren’t secretly run by a psychotic bayou
priestess,” she said.

“At least, in some ways that gives us a
little more leeway. Things here don’t seem to be as controlled or
monitored as they are in other domes, especially judging from your
friggin showdown in the middle of the day. You couldn’t get away
with that anywhere else, even if you had the big cheese running the
show. You’d be picked up for assault within minutes,” Radar said.
“Dealing anything directly in the domes is still risky business,
and this should help make sure we don’t get caught until we get a
little bit better at this process.”

Xero turned to him again. “It sounds like you
have some experience in this arena,” she said.

“I’ve been a merc for a long time. There’s
not much I haven’t tried,” he said.

Xero made a cat noise and faked a scratching
motion in his direction. “Meow, sexy,” she said.

Radar rolled his eyes. “Do you ever stop?” he
said.

“No,” Milo and Neptune said in unison.

Xero just laughed. “You guys know me too
well,” she said.

Someone knocked and within seconds Neptune
was at the door, demanding to know who it was.

“Voodoo. Open up,” she said through the thin
door.

The sun had finally set and Voodoo was
illuminated by the hazy porch light. Her eyes were blank and tired,
and she was wearing another clean white dress identical to the one
she had been wearing when Xero stabbed her. Neptune looked from
side to side, craning her neck to look for additional
personnel.

“You alone?” Neptune said.
“No. I have others waiting, surrounding the house if you should
choose to disobey my orders, but I prefer to do business one on
one. Rest assured though, if you make one wrong move, this whole
place will go up in flames,” Voodoo said.

Xero slowly nodded her approval, but didn’t
get up from the loveseat. “Pyrotechnics, I like it,” she said. It
also meant that Voodoo had enough power in the city that she could
blow up a house and make the issue disappear under the rug.

Neptune shut the door behind Voodoo and the
woman walked to stand in the center of the room, trying to hide her
pronounced limp and failing. Radar and Milo started to stand.

Xero looked at her leg. “Shouldn’t you be in
the hospital or something like that,” she said.

“Stay seated,” she said and the two men
settled back into their seats. Neptune remained rooted in place,
standing by the column with her arms folded.

“I’ll stay right here, thanks,” Neptune
said.

“Your dogs are disobedient,” Voodoo said,
casting a glare at Neptune.

Neptune showed her teeth and barked. “I bite
too, but usually you have to pay extra for that,” she said and
licked her lips.

“Disgusting,” Voodoo said. “I can’t believe I
agreed to let scum like you into my territory.”

Xero adjusted herself on the couch. “Okay,
yeah I got that part just fine. You don’t like us being here. The
quicker you stop playing these games and just get down to brass
tacks the quicker we’ll be on our way. Not that we wouldn’t mind
staying here and enjoying your lovely city, but there’s been a lot
of shit going down, and we don’t exactly like being away from home
any longer than necessary,” she said.

Voodoo took a step closer and faltered,
catching herself just before taking a nosedive into wood floors.
Xero couldn’t decide if she was just that arrogant or just that
foolish for coming into a house full of potential enemies while she
had a significant injury to contend with.

“You wanna take a seat?” Xero said and
motioned to one of the empty chairs near Milo.

Voodoo’s mouth stiffened into a hard line.
“No. That will not be necessary,” she said.

“Very well then. You already know what we
want, and you already know what we have. What more do you need?”
Xero said.

Voodoo put her hands on her hips and Xero
noticed her subtly shift the weight off her injured leg. She had
been patient so far, but a big part of her wished that she’d just
straight up offed the bitch back at the Café du Monde. It would
have been so easy, but the mess wouldn’t have been worth the
cleanup.

“I don’t trust you and your dirty drugs. I
need proof that they’re not contaminated and we’re not going to
have another incident like we did before, “ Voodoo said.

“Ask around, we only sell product that is
totally pure. Something like Swamp Rat or whatever you guys called
it out here would never be mass produced by one of our labs. I’ve
told you this so many times—I don't know how else to explain it to
you,” Xero said.

“I don’t care what you or anyone else says. I
want you to prove to me that your product is pure,” she said.

“Do you have a lab that we can have access to
without it looking suspicious?” Milo said, his voice calm, but
backed with sadness that perhaps only Xero could pick up. “You
could see a chemical readout that would tell you that it’s pure.
Surely you have chemists that can do that for you.”

Voodoo shook her head. “I don’t trust none of
that sketchy science—we‘ve trusted scientists out here before, and
look what happens? Our whole damned city nearly washes away. No, I
don’t give a shit what no lab says. I want a live demonstration. I
want you to take it and prove that it’s safe,” she said.

“No,” Xero said. “We don’t do drugs. It’s bad
for business.”

Voodoo gave a snort. “Oh, I see how it is.
You won’t taste your own poison. Fine then. Deal’s off,” she
said.

“No!” Milo yelled and stood up. “We’ll do
it.”

Xero stood up too, the lace of her dress
sticking to the velvet couch and pulling it backwards. “Milo. This
isn’t something you can decide,” she said.

“I don’t care. I’ll take it. I’ll take as
much of it as she wants to prove that it’s safe,” he said. His
fingers were digging into the fabric of his pants.

Voodoo turned to Milo, a satisfied grin on
her face. “I see you at least have some sense,” she said.

“I’m a doctor. I promise you it’s safe. It’s
addictive, and you can overdose on it, like any other narcotic, but
if used correctly there’s very little risk of death,” he said,
facing Voodoo but locking eyes with Xero, his body language
pleading with her to agree.

Xero grabbed her dress and freed it from the
static cling of the couch. Radar joined her in standing. “Alright.
Here’s the deal. We will do a dose of Alphamine, but one of us
stays sober. For all I know you want to get us all high so you can
kill us off and take the Alphamine for free,” she said.

“I’ll stay sober,” Neptune said. “I’m not
letting one of your thugs take out our crew.”

“No. The doctor can stay sober. I want
reports on your vital signs, and it’s too risky to bring in one of
my outside medics. Plus, if you’re lying, I don’t really feel like
disposing of your bodies. It’s not worth the trouble,” Voodoo
said.

Xero set her jaw and wrinkled her forehead.
“Okay. That’s reasonable,” she said. She would have preferred to
keep Neptune sober, as she was the better fighter between the two,
but having Milo straight edge just in case one of them had a
reaction wasn’t a bad idea either.

Xero turned to Radar. “Have you ever done
Alphamine?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Nope. Same as you guys, I
typically stay away from any of the things I traffic. Like you
said, bad business,” he said. “Plus, I’ve never needed any of the
lung enhancing benefits, so it’s not something I would try out of
necessity.”

“I knew I liked you,” she said. “Crap. Milo,
you said he had a bad reaction to the A+?”

Milo frowned. “Er, yeah, he did,” he
said.

Xero took a step towards him. “Does that mean
he’s going to react to the Alphamine?” she said.