“Vorshna et gralith du shargul,” he finally growled.
The room was silent, no one daring to speak up after the first guy had lost his head for it. Nate wasn’t sure why the beast would expect them to understand a word it was saying anyway.
Not until it looked around the room once more, and added, “Vorshna et Excalibur.”
Nate’s blood went cold.
He’d misheard, he wanted to think. Imagined it.
But the sickened feeling churning his gut told him the truth.
It was him. In all the terror of the abduction, Nate hadn’t had time to wonder how the hell they’d ended up in State College, of all places, if they were only looking for the Beacon. But the answer was obvious. They were looking for him, too.
This was his fault.
Nate sat frozen in horror, numbly trying to grasp just how badly he’d failed here, and just how laughably sad his attempts at training had really been. It was incomprehensible.
What had that drunken asshole been thinking, pulling him into all this?
And where was the Excalibur now?
“Vorshna et Excalibur!” the troglodan roared.
Nate froze mid-flinch, sure his reaction had already given him away, then wondering if he shouldn’t just speak up and have done with it anyway. He swept his eyes across the hundred or so people chained up between him and the troglodan leader, wondering how many in the city had already died because of him. If he could end it all right now...
He had to.
Only he couldn’t seem to get his mouth to work, or his hands to move. He just sat there while the leader studied the room, telling himself that it wouldn’t matter if he gave himself up—that he didn’t even actually understand what they were asking for and that, even if he had understood, there was no way to guarantee the aliens wouldn’t just exterminate the remainder of their captives once they had what they wanted. Better he wait and see what was actually happening. Wait, and look for his shot to do gods knew what.
With any luck, the military would be rolling in before any of them had to figure that part out. There was no way an incident like this could go unnoticed. Hell, he’d already had the Space Aggressor Squadron keeping tabs, right? Even now, the Pentagon must be rustling up a full run of fighter jets and drones and everything else.
Unless they were too busy scrambling those forces elsewhere, Nate thought uneasily, remembering what the Merlin had showed him of a burning New York City the night he’d told Nate about the Beacon.
Get it off of this planet, the wizard had said, or the troglodan invasion will soon be the least of Earth’s troubles.
Ahead, the troglodan leader was shifting its weight, baring yellow teeth in a kind of sneer. “Gargoot,” it said, with an air of finality, before it turned and stomped out of the room.
A bulky metal door slammed shut behind it, and for a long, long time, they all sat dead still, the air thick with the heaviest silence Nate had ever felt. Almost as heavy as the Merlin’s last words, echoing over and over again in his head.
All of humanity may well be counting on you.
He had to get them out of there.
23
Vorshna Et
The following hours were the most hellish of Nate’s life.
It wasn’t just the conditions of their imprisonment. The cold almost didn’t bother him—hadn’t much seemed to since he’d begun his metamorphosis under the Excalibur’s influence. The pain and discomfort, too, were at least somewhat tolerable. His wrists ached where he’d strained against the shackles one too many times, and his hips and back and neck all felt like shit from a few hours pinned to the hard deck. But that much, he could stand.
It was watching the suffering around him that was really killing him.
It was the terrified silence that stretched on long after the head troglodan left. It was the lone sob that eventually broke that silence, and the rapid unraveling of the brig from silent mausoleum to wailing shit show that followed.
It was the look in Gwen’s eyes as she turned to him with her own silent tears, like a quiet plea for him to do something. Like for some intangible reason, she actually believed he could.
Until then, even knowing what he did, it had all been too fast—too alien to be real. Even the brutal execution behind them had felt like something out of a movie. But when he saw that look in Gwen’s eyes, it all came crashing in. Too much raw emotion to process, even if the overwhelming majority of it did feel a lot like guilt. Guilt that he’d failed to bond with the Excalibur and find the Beacon in time. Guilt that he’d failed to even remotely grasp what was at stake, even after the Merlin had shown him. A deep burning shame, underneath it all, that he’d never even had the courage to simply tell Gwen how he felt years ago, when he’d had a thousand ample chances.
It was almost laughable, how afraid he’d been—how completely ignorant to how good and easy his life was before the Excalibur had come to him. How worthless and naïve he’d been once it had. So laughable, so pathetic, that he found himself sharing in Gwen’s silent tears before he knew it, clutching to her hand while the brig howled on around them.
He feared every moment that the troglodans would come bursting back in to make another bloody example and quiet the racket, but there wasn’t as much as a thump on the wall. They didn’t seem to care. Not even when some of the more optimistic voices rallied enough to start telling their neighbors how the army or the air force would be sweeping to save their asses any moment, just you wait. Not even when a few particularly bold spirits started asking if anyone still had their phones, or any ideas about how to get free.
Maybe the troglodans didn’t understand what they were talking about. Maybe they just didn’t care.
Nate refrained from joining the conversation, pretty sure that what little he knew would only succeed at scaring the shit out of everyone, and possibly turning them all against him, to boot. He needed a proper plan first, he told himself. Or at least some clue as to what the troglodans might do next.
It was only when he recognized Todd’s voice among the Big Talk council up front that Nate truly began to feel like a chicken shit—as if the universe had just needed to flick him in the eye with one more reminder of how useless he’d been. Nate craned his neck and saw that the Greek god was chained on the front wall, with Emily Atherton huddling into his side for refuge from it all.
Even in the freaking alien apocalypse, Todd Mackleroy got his little slice of comfort and glory, didn’t he? The thought infuriated him, which in turn only made him feel petty and childish. Doubly so when Gwen broke from her own quiet ruminations to ask if he was all right.
“I’m just, uh…” He tore his eyes from Todd and Emily and considered Gwen’s expression. The steady rattle of chains and the vibration of the troglodan ship beneath them. Now wasn’t the time. He was sure of it. But he wasn’t sure there’d be another. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about…”
Jesus, where did he even start? There were too many confessions to count at this point. Her perfect brow was furrowed, waiting.
“… About Todd and Emily,” he forced himself to say.
Her eyes widened a hair.
This was so not the time.
“I saw them together after the INN party that night,” he pressed on anyway, desperate, as if maybe fixing this one thing—this one failure from the painfully long list—might somehow mean something. “Todd saw me seeing them, too. Long story, but…”
The surprised look on Gwen’s face was morphing to one of disbelief, and betrayal, and—
“I should have told you sooner,” Nate whispered. “I should have…” He grimaced down at the grimy deck between them, and at the spot where’s Gwen’s hand had left his to return to the safety of her own thigh.
What the hell was he doing?
Gwen seemed to be wondering the same thing.
“Is this really what you’re worrying about right now?” she whispered, looking pointedly around at the dozens of students crying, soili
ng themselves, and otherwise losing their shit around them.
Nate shook his head, cheeks burning, chicken shit despondency lurching to embarrassing new heights. “You’re right. I’m sorry, I just… There’s just a lot I would’ve done differently, if…”
“If you’d known we were going to be abducted?”
Nate fumbled for words and fell back on a helpless shrug.
“You and everyone else aboard this ship, I’m guessing,” Gwen said, not quite unkindly.
Nate said nothing. Just sat there listening to the soundtrack of despair all around him, turning mental loops underneath the sinking weight that he, unlike everyone else aboard this ship, had actually had a chance to do something about this. And what had he done with that chance?
“Well,” Gwen said quietly beside him, “if you’re trying to clear your conscience about not saving me from the big scary cheater, you’re missing a few important details. Like the fact that I haven’t seen Todd since that night at Iota Nu Nu.”
Nate glanced over at her, not understanding, surprised she’d brought the subject back up at all. “You haven’t?”
“The other part you seem to have missed,” Gwen continued, looking like she couldn’t quite believe she was having this conversation right now, “the part that I actually told you right to your face, is that Todd was never really my boyfriend.”
“But you…”
“Did you really think I was too busy swooning over his abs to notice he was spending time with other girls? Jesus.” She shook her head, half-muttering to herself. “Todd walks around thinking I’m the wife material he might one day see fit to grace with a ring and fractional fidelity, and you…” She glanced over at him, brow furrowed in frustration. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe—just maybe—I understood the situation perfectly well, and was capable of deciding what arrangements I was and wasn’t happy with in my own life? That maybe I was open to other possibilities too?”
Nate could only stare, trying to process.
“You wanna know what I think?” she asked quietly. “I think you’re so obsessed with believing that you’re this downtrodden, unappreciated sideline spectator that you’re actually in danger of becoming an asshole just to maintain your own Nice Guy self-image. It’s like a bad oxymoron.”
“That’s not...”
“True? Fair? Look at this.” She yanked her chains taut trying to point to his muscled chest. “Do you think that’s what’s holding you back? That you have to have bigger muscles, or anything else, to get what you want?”
“What? No, I—”
“You think Todd’s an asshole because he takes whatever he wants. But you know what? I don’t see how that’s any worse than this passive-aggressive game of hide-and-seek you’ve been playing for four years.”
The last words were barely a whisper. Judging by the surprised look in Gwen’s eyes, she hadn’t really meant to say them at all—had tried to tamp them back down to whatever fountain of truth they’d bubbled up from. But she had meant them. He felt that much in the cold vacuum slap they smote across his insides.
He looked away, unable to meet her eyes. For a few seconds, he felt so hollow that he couldn’t even bring himself to care that they were still chained up on a troglodan ship, and that, even in the bleak reality of their impending doom, more than a few of their neighbors were staring at them now, ears cued in to this tasty little morsel of drama—Marty and Kyle probably included, he couldn’t help but think.
It hardly mattered.
“Nate…” Gwen whispered. “Nate, I didn’t mean…” A heavy sigh. “Shit. I didn’t mean to say it like that. Can we just…?”
Nate nodded mechanically, accepting her unfinished request with eyes forward, hating how pathetic he felt. He knew she hadn’t meant to hurt him, just like he knew she’d meant everything else she’d just said. And why wouldn’t she?
She was right, after all.
More right than she could know.
Because here he was, sitting helplessly with the girl he thought he loved while Todd prattled on up front, taking charge. Here he was with his training, and his forewarning, and his miraculously expedient five pounds of solid muscle gain a week, bearing the one and only weapon that might stand a chance of helping them out of this mess if he could only get it together, and what was he doing? Fucking sniveling. Just sitting here, letting others do the talking.
Because speaking up wasn’t heroic, he told himself. Because there was nothing heroic about causing mass hysteria. But also because he wasn’t a goddamn hero. Because whatever power was riding within him had gotten him exactly jack shit. Because at the heart of it, it wasn’t about muscles, or dedication, or how hard he tried.
It was that some assholes were just built for it, and others were just built to fix their computers.
Nate thunked his head back against the chain post and listened, utterly deflated, as Todd told everyone to keep their shit together up front.
“It’s okay,” Gwen said quietly, taking his lifeless hand, no doubt hearing the same. “We’re going to be okay.”
Gods only knew what was going through her head in that moment. He could hardly bear to think about it. What he needed to do was focus on getting them the hell out of there. Somehow. And then…
Jesus, he didn’t even know what then.
Race the troglodans to the Beacon? Sure. Why not? Maybe he could take a swing at curing cancer and ending world hunger while he was at it.
There was only one more place to turn. He barely even hesitated, hopeless as he was.
If you were waiting to make a point, I get it. I messed up. I’m not fucking worthy. I’m sorry, Ex. I’m really, really sorry. But if you just help me get these people out of here, I’ll do anything you want.
Silence.
Anything, Ex. I promise. Please.
Nothing. A long, long nothing.
He couldn’t even bring himself to be angry. Not at the Excalibur. Not at Marty and Kyle, as they tried to draw his attention across the aisle, first to check if he was all right, then again shortly after to weigh in on their quiet side debate about what was really going on here, and how they were going to escape.
Whatever else there was to say about the situation, he couldn’t help but be impressed with how well his friends seemed to be handling things, even if Kyle was clearly less than thrilled at having finally received his irrefutable confirmation that “they” did, in fact, walk among us.
What Nate wasn’t crazy about was the way Marty and Kyle were looking at him when he finally turned around—like maybe the guy who’d fallen off the edge of the map a few weeks ago after a suspicious large animal attack and some mysteriously hushed up heroics might know more than he was letting on here.
Frightened as he was of the ramifications, each passing minute weakened Nate’s reservation about simply saying to hell with it and spilling all of his juicy secrets for anyone who wanted to listen. He was on the verge of opening his mouth when the screaming started outside.
It wasn’t completely obvious at first. The kind of thing you cocked your head to clearly hear, and then promptly tried to explain away as ambiguous ship sounds, or maybe the distant coming of the military rescue that was definitely totally only a matter of time, according to Todd and the Big Talkers.
The ship had moved at some point in the past hour or two, Nate was pretty sure. Moved where, he had no idea. He couldn’t even say how long they’d been sitting here. Maybe they’d moved down College Ave, or maybe into orbit.
Christ, they could’ve been halfway across the galaxy, for all he knew.
But the screams... Muffled as they were by the grimy bulkheads, and persistently as the low din of conversation tried to carry on, pretending all was well, once the screams began to multiply, there was no ignoring them.
The room went quiet, the last in a long string of nervous no, no, that’s just the ship declarations petering out like a match at the end of its stick. And just like that, what little calm had entered the
brig in the past hours dissipated in a flash of wide eyes and one especially frantic cry from the back: “We’re all gonna die, man! We’re all gonna fucking die!”
Judging by how quickly the terror reignited throughout the room, Nate took it he wasn’t alone in generally believing the truth of the statement. But this time, he didn’t try to fight it.
This time, he focused on the feeling of his heart thundering in his eardrums, and on the growing panic in the room. This time, he rode the wave of adrenaline up, up, thinking dazedly about the otherworldly strength he’d summoned to stop that bike when it had felt like life and death. Thinking about the two words the Excalibur had uttered time and time again, whenever he’d insisted the thing fall in line and behave.
Make me.
His fists clenched. Around him, the room was alive with sobs and jangling chains and screams of its own.
Maybe the Lady had picked the wrong Knight. Maybe the Excalibur was dead set on sitting back while Nate and his friends died, content in the knowledge that it would likely be granted a more suitable Knight the next time around. But he had to try anyway.
So he let the fear in, embracing the panic, thinking about all the horrific things that were going to happen to all of them—to Gwen and to his friends—if he didn’t do something about it. He drank the sobbing desperation in until he was ready to scream himself.
Then he planted his feet and lunged forward against his chains as hard as he possibly could.
For a moment, there was nothing but the blinding roar of effort, and the desperate belief that this would work, had to work. Then something thudded against his back, and pain cut into his awareness, rippling from his wrists, and his neck, and the back of his head.
He’d thunked straight back against the goddamn chain post. Shackles and collar in place. Chains intact.
“Nate?!”
Nate turned confusedly to where Marty and Kyle were watching him with wide-eyed concern. His head was spinning. From impact or just sheer surprise, he couldn’t tell. People were looking at him. Gwen was looking at him. He felt her stare on the back of his head. Felt a burning in his throat.
The Eighth Excalibur Page 23