“Vampires?” he said.
She wrote a note, folded it up, and then hesitated about how to have it delivered. She and Haniel needed to arrive at the castle before the note was delivered, or else the whole plan wouldn’t work. While she liked the minions, she didn’t necessarily trust them with this task.
Lilith tore a ribbon off her sleeve and created a clever cobra.
Take this to Catherine’s house, she commanded, and deliver it to the vampire named Corporal who wears an army jacket and stinks of Vitalis.
She sent a clear picture, and the king cobra nodded enthusiastically, smacking its lips. It gobbled up the note and charged through the snow.
Haniel nudged her. “You ready, or what?”
She nodded.
It’s been nice getting to know him.
The thought surprised her. She never expected to be anything more than indifferent to him. Now though, she was almost enjoying him. Maybe it was because they were trying to solve two puzzles together, side by side, both striving for the impossible. Him with his legion and she with her snakes, all trying to survive. How could she despise a creature so much like herself?
She shivered, prickling with the sensation of being watched.
When she glanced up, the statue was gone. The path was empty. A shudder rippled up her spine.
“Let’s go,” she whispered, and Haniel didn’t have to be told twice. Her shoes crunched on the clusters of ice and snow that froze, melted, refroze, and thawed over and over. Spring hadn’t committed to blooming yet.
His breath puffed in the cold air. “This is taking too long.”
“We need a vehicle,” she said.
“It’s clear by now that neither of us has any business driving.”
“Then we find someone to do it for us,” she murmured. One way or another. She pushed up her sleeves.
She whacked him on the chest.
“Ow,” he complained.
“Everallin mentioned FEMA. They’re an army, right?”
“Not really. It’s part of Homeland Security that came in to deal with the crisis—”
“I mean, they’re the resident human authority, so they’ll have fuel and vehicles.”
“And guns,” he said. “Lots of guns.”
“Yes!” She rubbed her hands together. “We should have guns, too.”
“I mean, they have guns, therefore they’re more likely to shoot two monsters instead of letting us hitch a ride.”
“Monsters?” She scoffed. “Speak for yourself.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Look, crazy lady—”
“Start walking, cherub,” she said. “Let’s go find ourselves an army.”
Chapter 22
All of Lilith’s newfound ambition sizzled away under the light of day. If she hadn’t had a miserable night and an awful week and a morale-killing discussion with an oracle, the sunlight might not have bothered her as much. Unfortunately, she was practically dead on her feet. Haniel continued to limp, but this time she was the one holding him back.
“We need transportation,” he said.
Lilith agreed. She’d try anything: a bus, a plane, a donkey. She’d have torn off her heavy skirt to make sails if she thought it’d work.
“If we find people,” she panted, “we’ll find resources.”
He nodded, and after that, they simply followed the scent of fresh corpses and old death.
War-torn buildings towered around them, bearing evidence of human territorial skirmishes and struggles over resources. Lilith had seen worse: Bosnia, Biafra, Myanmar, and the Ottoman Empire.
While she tread onward, the spark tickled and twisted, doubling down. She’d dumped everything she had to escape Catherine’s house, which had drawn heaven’s attention, and she didn’t want to have to use the spark again so soon.
Unfortunately, she’d never been able to stop the spark from growing. She’d never found a way to ‘turn it off’ or turn it away. Today, the power rebelled, pushing on her heart, banging against her ribs, and kicking her lungs as if she was a door upon which magic was knocking, waiting for heaven to answer.
Maybe the spark wanted to get caught, to escape her flesh and go back to the source, the Pneuma of God.
She shivered.
The charnel stink grew stronger, dirtier, and permeated every drop of moisture in the air.
An automobile repair shop stank up the south side of the street, and Lilith saw commotion outside. The back lot’s gate was open, revealing a two-axle trailer piled high with bodies in different stages of decay.
A pair of men were offloading the trailer and coating the pile of bodies with old, black oil. Corpse disposal or disease control, she couldn’t tell. From the wide, bare, black earth stretching out and the smoldering bits of rubble, she guessed they’d been burning carcasses for a while.
However, those humans had working transportation, and she wanted it.
Haniel covered his nose with his shirt. “Can you see who they are?”
“One man is wearing a dark blue uniform—” she squinted across the distance of several city blocks “—with a Homeland Security patch. The other is wearing a green uniform but the patches are missing.”
“FEMA,” Haniel said, “and National Guard.”
One soldier was twice the size of the other, sporting a gut that sagged loosely from dramatic and sudden weight loss. His collar was unbuttoned, despite the cold, to show a handful of gold necklaces and curly black and white chest hair.
The skinny soldier had a dull brown and yellow beard, which was currently dribbled with whiskey from a flask they passed back and forth.
Lilith nudged Haniel and started forward, walking closer. She looked all around them for other soldiers (being flanked was the last thing she wanted) but saw no one. Finally, she stepped out of the gray wet dawn so the men could see her.
The skinny one stared at Lilith, his eyes alternately narrowing and widening as he took in various parts of her body.
The big one said, “This area is off limits.”
“We’re passing through,” Haniel said.
“Motherfucker, you deaf?” The fatty said, “I told you, area’s off limits.”
Lilith said, “I need a car or train.”
The lean man stared suspiciously, but the big one said, “I got a train for you, honey.”
He sneered in such a way that Lilith didn’t believe they were talking about the same thing. His bare, scruffy throat taunted her from a few yards away. One good leap and she could be sinking fang-deep…
When she shifted her weight, the lean man quickly stepped back. His hand twitched beside his weapon. “Get lost.”
“C’mon now, Archie,” the fatty said. “I think we should keep her.”
The machine gun hung on a strap over his shoulder. Lilith had an idea.
“Is that your truck?” she said. “Where do you keep the extra guns?”
Archie’s hand tightened on his weapon. “Get the fuck out of here before I put a bullet in you.”
Fatty squared to them, paying rapt attention to the situation. He smiled like they were nothing but petty amusement, but his hand aligned to his weapon. Burnt oil and dark blood blackened his fists.
Fresh out of patience, Lilith flicked a spark at the bigger man. The repressed magic got away from her. Too much stampeded out, scraping her tender insides, and the Becoming was bigger than she intended.
Fatty’s gun strap thickened into a snake with black and brown bands down her shiny body. The snake swelled in length, wrapping over the man’s back and around his waist, growing like a leviathan.
The snake’s weight threw Fatty off balance. The weapon fell off the ‘sling’ and the soldier toppled. His movement startled the snake. Muscles contracted in a wave down from her head, and her hood flared. The African forest cobra lunged, biting the vulnerable spot behind the soldier’s bare chin. She ejaculated a surge of venom through her hollow fangs.
Archie stumbled back. “Oh, sh
it!”
Fatty flailed, howled, and punched the snake. Then he promptly stiffened, eyelids drooping, body seizing. The ten-foot-long forest cobra slithered around the body and swayed toward Lilith.
Lilith reached for the cobra, which climbed up her arm, and peered into its round button eyes. She cooed, “I think I’ll call you Naja.”
Naja flared her hood, preening.
Fatty twitched and convulsed on the ground, eyelids drooping, heart thundering.
“What the fuck,” Archie wailed, swinging his weapon from Lilith to Naja to Haniel. All the while, he watched his friend out of the corner of his eye. “You okay, buddy?”
Lilith tsked. “Of course he’s not okay.”
As if on cue, the prone soldier began to gargle, muscles seizing, boots pattering, necklaces jingling about his neck.
Lilith held out her hand. “If you give me a ride in that truck, I’ll give him the antivenin.”
Archie pointed the gun at her. “Give him the cure, or I’ll shoot you.”
“Shooting me won’t do him any good.”
“I’d listen to her if I were you,” Haniel said. “She can’t be killed, and your friend will die long before you can find help.”
“Shit.” Archie lowered the weapon. “Goddamn.”
He patted the fallen man’s pockets for the keys. Naja watched his movements with keen interest. Hand trembling, Archie tossed her the keys. Naja lunged, catching the flashy metal in her mouth like a trained pooch.
Smart as a whip, Lilith thought.
“There,” Archie said. “Now give him the cure.”
She laughed. “Idiot. I don’t have any antivenin.”
Fatty’s breathing grabbed and hitched, skipping steps as he wheezed. Archie fingered the trigger. Naja reared, lifting her body up a full meter into the air, and the man froze.
“Don’t be stupid,” Lilith said. “Volunteer to drive me and my friend wherever we want to go.”
Archie squeaked. “C-can I offer you a ride, ma’am?”
“Oh, that’s so nice.” She turned to Haniel. “He said ‘ma’am’ and everything. Isn’t he positively civil?”
“Positively,” Haniel grumbled.
Archie cast a glance back at his dead friend and then led them to the vehicle. While Archie detached the trailer of bodies, Lilith squinted at the triangular tires.
“The wheels look funny,” she complained. “Are you trying to trick me?”
“Regular tires don’t work in this kind of snow,” Archie said. “These tracks can go off-road, atop the snow where normal tires won’t.”
Naja curled around Lilith’s hips and eyed the soldier, who stood like a clammy, trembling rat. Daylight stabbed through filthy windows and scratched at Lilith’s face. Her eyes burned and her throat was dry, and she wanted to crawl inside a cave and hibernate for forty years.
She held out her hand. “Jacket.”
Archie shed the garment quickly, handed it to her. It stank of old sweat, whiskey, burned flesh, and gasoline. His moist heat clung to its interior and smeared on her skin, but the big hood draped over her eyes and offered some relief.
Haniel leaned over, took sunglasses from the dead man’s front pocket, and handed them to her. A cooling shadow caressed her singed eyeballs, and the effect was practically orgasmic. She vowed to never be caught without sunglasses again. She smiled her appreciation to Haniel while Naja inspected the reflective lenses.
Archie quivered nearby, probably cold and terrified.
“I want guns,” she said.
Archie showed her a metal box in the back of the truck with guns in it. Only a dozen or so guns, big ones, but she wasn’t confident they’d help take down a dragon. Unfortunately, she didn’t want to waste more time and energy wrestling a cache of weapons from a mob of drunk FEMA guys.
If she had to rely on mundane bullets to slay a supernatural dragon, she was doomed. She’d have to work with what she had.
“Good enough,” she grumbled.
“Let’s go,” Haniel said, brushing past Lilith and the deadly snake.
Archie drove in silence, and the truck’s odd tires ate up the jagged, icy earth. Lilith sat in the passenger’s seat, legs curled up, dress spread across the bench, and stared at him.
They traveled through a six-foot-tall barricade, past rowdy soldiers. Maybe the men would have caused trouble, but with Naja curled around his shoulders, Archie didn’t even try to recruit help. They drove onward and roved through grave neighborhoods, barren and dark. Either none of the inhabitants had electricity or everyone was dead.
Archie brought them up a hill and took them to a tall building where they could get a good view of Castle Island.
“Drive around the bay,” she ordered, excited but making an effort to be cautious.
The scalding sun glared down on her as she scrunched her eyes and scanned the horizon. Despite the purple clouds and the fact that she would probably die fighting a vicious dragon, Lilith had to admit the castle was handsome. Solid walls, sloping lawns, a port and a coastline that swooped out like a crescent moon. Ice-glazed beaches glinted prettily, completely empty. Not a car in any of the parking lots. No ships in the bay. No movement to be seen.
While they scouted, Naja died at with a fat snip and tumbled to the floorboards. Lilith bit her tongue and resisted making another, a dozen more, unleashing the hardening lump…
Daylight prodded her. Hunger punished her.
They drove the shoreline until they came to a park facing the bay.
When Archie stopped the truck and turned to her, white face quivering, she pulled him out of the vehicle and killed him, drank every drop, as he must have known she would. She left the corpse beside the truck and took the keys. She’d carefully watched him operate the machine and was confident she could manage it, although she doubted she’d be able to escape that way.
Things rarely went according to plan, and the plan sucked to begin with.
Haniel stared across the field, over the small bay, his gaze affixed to Fort Independence. Both the channel and the bay had frozen over, bald and bare ice, crags of snow, drifts of debris and sleet.
A small red light blinked across the distance, up in the clouds.
She squinted at it.
“The airport,” Haniel said. “Last winter, any plane leaving was shot down. I guess the humans are flying again.”
Lilith remembered Everallin’s offer of a flight to Dublin. It wasn’t too late to change her mind, to run.
She scanned the skies, but her keen gaze had spotted no winged dragon.
“Get back in the truck,” Haniel said. Chest heaving, eyes fixated. “I’ll go check it out.”
Bullshit. He thinks he can sneak in there and get Maggie without me.
“We should hang back,” she whispered, “to see if we can discover how the humbaba’s going in and out of the fortress. Then, we'll determine the best way to enter. If we rush in, Maggie might get hurt.”
“Shouldn't you start making snakes?” Haniel said. “We'll need every beast you can conjure. This dragon needs to die.”
“I have a plan for them,” she snipped. “And where’s your legion, hmm? Or will you be going to war empty handed, relying solely on my efforts?”
“I can handle myself,” he growled.
She grunted, unimpressed.
She wrestled the dead soldier out of his gloves and put them on, which soothed her with its residual heat. Glancing down at the man’s body, she contemplated his meat.
“Should feed him to your little ones.”
He balked, face whitening. “Eating snakes is one thing, but a human’s flesh, the vessel of God’s spiritual creation—”
“You aren’t an angel anymore, Haniel.”
“As if I need reminding!”
“Apparently you do. This meal would offer me meager sustenance, not much more than a spit of blood, but your minions…this could fortify them, turn them from a wisp of a fog into a real platoon. Must I remind you, we need ‘
every beast we can conjure’?”
He clenched his fists and glared at her, eyes black as pitch, pupils growing wider and wider.
“Fine,” he spat.
Before she could say ‘fine’ in response, a spray of dark mist swarmed the body. Claws scored deep furrows in the flesh and began ripping it apart. Lilith had already suckled away most of the blood, but the meat tore like thick, wet cloth. After the limbs had been removed and dispersed, the manifesting demons settled into cliques to eat. Some tore and ate, others chewed meat right off the bone.
Lilith smiled at their guileless appetite. She’d been like that once, pure of hunger and purpose. Now she was full of devious thoughts and complicated gambles.
She glanced to the horizon, listening carefully, but the sound of the legion eating obstructed anything else.
Did her letter arrive safely? Would her plan work? If it didn’t, she wouldn’t have the means to perform the spell. The amulet would remain bound, power inaccessible, and she’d be…royally screwed.
She said, “You should eat something, too.”
Haniel recoiled at her suggestion, but his eyes perused the offering, which was spread out on the snow, clutched between the leathery hands of his legion. His tongue glanced over his lips.
He may have been mostly angel when she met him, then a touch human, but now she’d swear he was more demon than man. She cast an urgent wish into the universe that his descent would be rapid and helpful.
His eyes bounced up and met hers. Black as pitch. The color faded as soon as the sunset struck it, flared like a flame, and then warmed to his usual brown pigment.
He’s doomed, she thought, whether I destroy him or not.
She turned and walked a few paces away, examining the sky over the vast, cold ocean. If only she’d had the time and foresight to arrange for a boat…
A wind crept across her neck from the east, and she turned again, drawing her eyes back to the fort across the way.
“We’ll drive the truck in,” Haniel said.
She blinked at him. “You’re out of your damned mind.”
“Can you think of a better diversion?” he asked. “What better bait to lure the dragon out? The monster will fixate on the vehicle while the legion moves in. Maybe we’ll be able to sneak into the fort and grab Maggie before the dragon realizes we’ve distracted him.”
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