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  GHOST DANCE

  When the mirror swung open there was darkness beyond. He thought that if he tried hard enough his eyes could pierce it, but he didn't want to know what he'd see. In that moment of fear his mind released the image and the door swung shut, closing with a soft click.

  The glass was a mirror again and Morgan could see the reflection of a woman - but it wasn't Kate. This woman's cheeks were rounder, her eyes a paler, washed-out blue. Her gaze passed over Morgan without seeing him. She was studying herself, mouth squeezed shut as she applied her lipstick.

  Morgan noticed the man behind her at the same time she did. He was watching her in the glass. His hair and eyes were the same dark brown that was almost black and though he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, Morgan thought he belonged in uniform. He recognised a soldier when he saw one, the tense shoulders and loose arms, aggression held on only a light leash.

  The woman gasped, then turned and smiled. Morgan fought the futile urge to shout a warning. This was her killer and she didn't know it and wouldn't realise until it was too late.

  WWW.ABADDONBOOKS.COM

  Dedicated to David Bailey, Jon Pollard and Gramsci, who are brilliant friends and - not entirely coincidentally - great cooks. They also had a lovely apartment in San Francisco and were foolish enough to let me stay in it.

  An Abaddon BooksTM Publication

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  [email protected]

  ISBN(.mobi): 978-1-84997-222-2

  ISBN(.epub): 978-1-84997-223-9

  First published in 2010 by Abaddon BooksTM, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

  Editor: Jonathan Oliver

  Cover: Pye Parr

  Design: Simon Parr & Luke Preece

  Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley

  Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley

  The Infernal GameTM created by Rebecca Levene

  Copyright © 2010 Rebellion. All rights reserved.

  The Infernal GameTM, Abaddon Books and Abaddon Books logo are trademarks owned or used exclusively by Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited. The trademarks have been registered or protection sought in all member states of the European Union and other countries around the world. All right reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  THE INFERNAL GAME

  GHOST DANCE

  Rebecca Levene

  WWW.ABADDONBOOKS.COM

  PROLOGUE

  When he looked in the mirror, George W. Bush looked back. The mask was expressionless, blank - the way he felt inside.

  He'd laid the guns out on his bed after his mom left for work. There was the Beretta 391 semi-automatic shotgun which he'd stolen from Joshua Heligman's house, from the gun drawer his dad was supposed to keep locked but never did. Joshua had told him about that in Home Room, his pimply face flushed with excitement. Joshua claimed he used to take the gun into the woods and use the rabbits for target practice.

  The holster for the Beretta fit on his hip. He slung the Browning A-bolt across his back, where it bulged out the leather of his duster. The material creaked in protest as he moved and released its distinctive smell. Musty - as if the curing hadn't quite halted its decay. He'd stolen the rifle from a freshman whose name he couldn't remember. His parents had given it him for his fifteenth birthday, a present no one would forget.

  The two little pea-shooters in his pockets had come from Christine Dunn's house. They didn't have much stopping power, but he was saving them for her. He wanted to imagine her parents' faces when the cops told them their stuck-up little bitch of a daughter had been shot with their own guns. He enjoyed picturing everyone's faces.

  The phone rang, but he ignored it. That would be the school secretary wanting to find out where he was. She'd know the answer soon enough.

  The sun was bright, the sky flat and the air dead as he walked the half mile to school. Old Mrs Corry stared as he passed, probably trying to guess the face behind the mask. She hadn't spoken to him anyway since the day she found her little kitten's guts smeared all over her microwave door. She'd known it was him, but not been able to prove it. That made him laugh as he passed her and he heard the clacking of her pumps speed to a half jog as she hurried away.

  There was no one at the school gates. He'd waited long enough to ensure Mr Atkinson was back inside, no longer lurking to pounce on tardy students. No one would stop him. This was really going to happen.

  He'd thought he might experience things differently today of all days, but he couldn't see this place through fresh eyes. He felt the same dull ache of hatred as the doors swung open onto the gloom inside. He squinted, momentarily blind. The squeak of rubber soles on linoleum told him he wasn't alone, and when his eyes cleared he saw Mrs O'Grady striding towards him, red ringlets swaying.

  He let her get very close before he drew the Beretta and he waited to see the fear in her eyes before he put a bullet between them. The silencer muffled the retort to a dull thump, but he still froze, momentarily stunned by what he'd done. The bullet hole in her forehead was surprisingly small. It looked like that mark - he couldn't remember the name - the red dot that some of the Indian students wore.

  When she fell to the floor it was with a thud that startled him out of his paralysis. And there was the blood he'd anticipated, spreading in a scarlet halo around her head. The exit wound would be far larger than the entry and suddenly he wanted to see it. He used his foot to flip her head to the side and the blood leaked on to his shoe, alongside skull fragments and fatty brain matter. There was nothing left of the back of her head.

  He expected to feel something. He'd been sure that this, at least, would penetrate the dense fog that softened everything he saw to the same white nothing. But it was... disappointing. Maybe he'd rehearsed it so many times in his mind, he'd already sucked all the marrow from the bones of the experience. Or perhaps he hadn't hated Mrs O'Grady enough.

  He flipped her over and saw her face, slack in death. Back again, and there was the mess and the gore. He could smell it too, along with the shit and piss that stained her dress. He left her like that, exit wound exposed, the truth that was the dead meat, not the lie that had been her face.

  He moved deeper inside the building, drawing the rifle from his back to join the Beretta in his hand. Now he'd notched up his first kill he didn't have much time left and he had to make it count. He removed the silencer from the Beretta's barrel, wanting to make a noise - to be heard.

  Classroom 4B was on the second floor. As he took the stairs two at a time he realised he felt weightless. Was this the elation he'd been waiting for? It hadn't occurred to him that happiness was something so foreign he might not recognise it if he felt it. A kid scampered towards him as he rounded the second curve of the stairs. It was no one he recognised, just some jock senior with a thick neck and dumb eyes. They widened when the boy caught sight of the semi-automatic in his hand.

  He took a moment to savour the raw terror in the jock's face and then fired. The trigger was lighter than he'd realised and a hail of bullets shattered the silence before he released the pressure. The senior's body danced and jerked, just like in the movies.

  When the bullets stopped the screams started. A door to his left opened then quickly slammed and he knew that the cops would be called very soon - but not soon enough. There was the wooden door to 4B, pitted at the bottom where generations of fee
t had kicked it open. He added his own toe print, a little memento of his existence that would be lost amidst the bigger legacy he was leaving.

  It was Mr Skeet's class. He'd planned it that way. Skeet had once taken him aside and told him that he had a real talent for physics. He'd asked if there were problems at home, if there was anything he wanted to talk about.

  There were no problems at home, that was the problem. There was only the destructive blandness of it all.

  Mr Skeet was the first to die. Then ten more in the first wild volley of bullets. He'd read about other school shootings, and the thing that had shocked him was the survival rate. It seemed to him those other guys hadn't done their research. But he'd read an airport thriller about Navy SEALs once and he knew they never took a kill for granted.

  He didn't either. Brittany was bleeding from a wound in her shoulder. It seeped a rich dark blood through the fingers she'd curled protectively against it. When he took a step towards her she said his name and he wondered how she recognised him behind the mask. But he found it gratifying that she did. He was memorable - hell, he was unforgettable. He winked at her through the mask as he rested the barrel of the gun against her ear and pulled the trigger.

  It became almost mechanical after that, each kill a little less of a high and more of a chore, like the fourth hit of Ecstasy when the pleasure was gone and you were just looking for the energy to go on. When he'd finished there was blood everywhere. He placed himself in the middle of it, feet planted in the deepest pool. He lifted a hand to his mask and considered lifting it. But no, the crime-scene photos would be so much more memorable if he was still wearing it. The media would love it. They'd fucking eat it up.

  The barrel of the gun scalded him even through the mask as he rested it against his temple. All that heat from the bullets, the transformed kinetic energy. That was something he'd learned in Mr Skeet's class. He took a deep, final breath as his eyes slid shut.

  They snapped open again when he heard the footstep behind him. His finger tightened on the trigger of his second weapon as he spun, but the chamber clicked empty and the man just smiled. For a moment he thought this must be his father. The shape of the face was the same, and the wide hazel eyes. But this man was younger, and his father had never worn quite that knowing, cynically amused expression.

  The man nodded at the gun in his other hand, the one still pointed at his own temple.

  "If you knew where you were going," he said, "you wouldn't be in such a hurry to get there."

  The man was waiting for Alex outside the front door of the school. She walked right past him into the bitterly cold Manhattan morning, cellphone pressed to her ear as she made an appointment with her manicurist, only for him to grab her wrist and swing her round to face him.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?" she said, jerking her arm futilely in his grasp. "And while we're on the subject, who the hell do you think you are?"

  He was a tall, dark-haired Native American, with a quality of stillness about him so intense that it was hard to tell if he was even breathing. "I'm an agent of the federal government, Miss Keve," he said. "And I'm arresting you. I can put on more of a show if you like. Mirandize you, handcuffs, the works. Or you could just come quietly."

  She was so shocked that she let him pull her unresisting down the steps and past the stunted, winter-bald oak trees to the car park out front. It was only when she saw Jenna leaning against her Porsche, eyes unreadable behind dark glasses as she waited for her ride home, that Alex returned to her senses. She dug in her heels, skidding a few inches against the sidewalk before pulling him to a halt.

  "Not so fast, Agent Orange," she said. "How about you show me some ID? And how about I get my constitutionally mandated phone call and use to it call my dad? Who, by the way, is a senior 9th circuit judge, in case no one mentioned that to you."

  He raised an eyebrow, unperturbed. "Have it your way, kid. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law-" He pitched his voice loud enough to carry across the entire car park. Jenna's head jerked up at the sound, looking shocked when she caught sight of Alex.

  "Shut up!" Alex hissed. "I'm coming, OK - just shut the hell up."

  The rest of the walk passed in silence, but he didn't release her wrist and she felt eyes on her, boring into the back of her head. Kids at West Village High didn't get arrested. It just wasn't that sort of school.

  Alex waited until she was inside his black Ford before she turned to him again. She'd decided on a new tactic, and it required her to look friendly. Her smile was so stiff it made her jaw ache.

  "Look, this has to be some mistake," she said. "Why don't you drive me home, have a word with my dad - I'm sure we can clear this all up." She was sure her father would be furious, but dealing with his anger seemed like the least bad option right now.

  "Here's the thing," he said. "Most people, when they're told they're under arrest, ask what the hell for."

  "I..." she trailed into silence.

  "You need to work on your poker face, kid. Too many tells."

  He was right and he knew it and there was nothing she could do about it. After a second he clicked on the radio to some college station, tapping his finger against the wheel just out of time with the music. She looked at her reflection in the car's tinted window, long blonde hair bleached to ash and pale skin, ghost-like. She didn't look like an innocent person taken against her will. She looked like a guilty person who'd been caught.

  "I have a problem," she said eventually. "I'll get help. I'll go into rehab. I'm not hurting anybody except myself."

  He nodded almost imperceptibly, eyes fixed on the road and finger still tapping.

  "What do the FBI care about a little recreational drug use, anyway?"

  "They don't," he said. "But thanks for the heads-up. I'll make sure to have local law enforcement search your home and locker."

  After that she sat in silence, fists clenched and jaw working soundlessly. She'd walked right into it and she only had herself to blame, but that didn't stop her fury. And beneath that, quivering in her belly, her fear. Because she really hadn't done anything other than attend a few pharma parties and maybe score X a few times when they hit the East Village clubs. There was no reason why a federal agent should have dragged her out of school and into his unmarked car. And though she'd asked for ID, he'd never shown it.

  He was bigger and stronger than her - if she reached for her cellphone, he might hurt her. She thought about screaming, but there was no one to hear except him. She had the horrible feeling it would just make him laugh.

  She stared out of the window instead, trying to memorise their route, imagining repeating it to a cop, a real one, when she made her escape. The West Village passed by, leafy and quiet, dull Chelsea, the sprawling campus of Colombia and then the shabby-hipness of Harlem. They were on 130th, somewhere between Lennox and 5th, when the car finally slowed.

  Alex hoped they'd stop on the street where she'd have a chance to call for help, but her captor pressed a button on the dash and the doorway to an underground garage opened onto darkness. She banged against the glass of the window as the car slid down, but all it did was bruise her palm and no one looked round.

  "I'm not going to hurt you," the man said mildly as he reversed the car between two identical black Impalas.

  "You haven't even told me your name."

  "You can call me PD if you want."

  The underground garage was empty, dank and dripping. Her heels caught in the cracked concrete as she walked beside him, but he didn't take her wrist again and she let herself believe that was a good sign.

  "PD," she said, "are you really with the FBI?"

  "I never said that I was." He turned to stare at her, head cocked to one side, considering. "Listen, kid - you're in trouble, but not the kind you think. You'll be walking out of here alive. Whether you're walking out a free woman or in cuffs is up to you."

  He led her to a rusted meta
l door and punched a number into a keypad lock before swinging it open. The corridor beyond was white-painted and strip-lit, clinical and unwelcoming. Her footsteps echoed on the tiled floor but there was no one around to hear them.

  The room he brought her to contained nothing but a table and three chairs. PD gestured at one of them and settled himself beside her so that she had to twist her head to see him. She was sure it was deliberate, an interrogation technique. But what the hell did he want to interrogate her about?

  She tried to keep calm and not let the waiting get to her the way it was clearly intended to. She tried to convince herself this was all a trick of her father's, something he'd cooked up with his contacts in the NYPD in an attempt to scare her straight. It was almost plausible enough that she could buy it.

  When the door opened behind her with a whoosh of air she couldn't suppress her start of surprise. She forced herself not to look around as the newcomer paused behind her. PD's head lifted and she knew the two were exchanging glances.

  A few seconds passed before she heard a soft sound which could have been a laugh or maybe just a sigh, and the newcomer moved to sit opposite her. He was thin, old and white with a friendly, almost avuncular face and eyes such an odd, pale blue they appeared blind. But the most striking things about him were his hands. He held them steepled in front of him, slender, desiccated fingers tapering into hooked nails. They were a skeleton's hands covered in only the thinnest parchment layer of skin.

  "Miss Keve," he said, "My name is Hammond. You must be wondering why you're here."

  She nodded, not trusting her voice.

  "The Patriot Act's a marvellous thing, Alexandra. It gives us a freedom we never had before. It allows us to listen in on a populace that once valued its privacy above its safety. And, as the conspiracy theorists have correctly surmised, Al Qaeda operatives aren't the only people we're searching for."