by C. T. Adams
He started to lower the flaps. The plane hit a pocket of turbulence just as one of the engines stuttered to a stop. “I think it’s time to buckle up. Will you need help up here?”
Nasil shook his head, concentrating on keeping the jet level. “I’m more worried about taking off again than landing. If all the fuel was burned or stolen—”
Tuli and I left him to the landing, hurrying back to the seats and buckling up. I wanted to ask her things, but she’d closed down from me, careful not to make eye contact—even though she made a point to sit right beside me. I could smell her desire every time we brushed hands or arms, which was often as the plane dipped and slid over the treetops.
Nasil’s voice came over the intercom, making us both look at the ceiling. “Hang on. It’s going to be bumpy.”
He didn’t exaggerate. Branches cracked against the bottom of the plane, making ripping sounds that caused Tuli to lift her feet from the carpeting. The entire plane shook and the oxygen masks dropped from above . . . not from lack of air, but just because they were shaken loose. Tuli finally spoke and it was accompanied by the taste of fear. “Have I mentioned I’m not fond of flying?”
It seemed an odd thing for any Sazi to be afraid of. I shrugged. “You’ll heal if we crash.”
Even if it was what she expected to hear, my matter-of-fact tone apparently surprised her. Her expression and scent turned to one of deep hurt and she looked away from me. Had she expected comforting words? And why?
She gripped the armrests and closed her eyes, her teeth gritted for whatever would come. I heard the slowing whine of the second engine just as we made a steep nosedive, still going faster than I could care for this close to the ground. But then the nose rose rapidly and we were thrown against our belts from the force of the air brakes slowing us. The wheels hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud that made my jaws slam together. We were thrown abruptly backward against the cushions and then forward again as the brakes were applied. Smoke rose from the wheels, invading the plane and coating my tongue. It would take days to get my joints back to normal. Even if I shifted now, I’d ache.
Loud scraping outside came from the front of the plane, with more branches breaking, as we went off the end of the runway. But we’d stopped. Tuli was still gripping the armrests with white knuckles and her breathing was rapid. I touched her hand and she froze, stilling even her breathing. Only her frantic pulse said she was still alive. “I am sorry if you were frightened.”
There was nothing else to be said, so I unbuckled and stood, leaving her alone to get her composure. Nasil was already outside, examining the plane. It would probably need a new paint job and the landing gear was slightly damaged on one side, but it actually fared quite well.
While I loathed giving Nasil a compliment, there was really no choice. But there was nothing saying I couldn’t turn it to my advantage. I lowered my brows with a studied frown, in a passable imitation of my father. “A skilled landing. I suppose I’ll let you live another day.”
He’d finally had enough and stood up to his full height, turning to face me with the confidence of old. “Be very careful you don’t overstep yourself, Rimush. Your father didn’t underestimate me, and neither should you. While I chose to serve him, I was, and am, every bit his equal. Who do you suppose it was he sparred with? Do you really believe he would hold back from giving his best in a battle . . . any battle? I wouldn’t be alive today if I couldn’t hold my own. You’re here at my sufferance. If you expect to live to return to your plush life, keep your mouth shut.”
It was time to increase the stakes, and his nervousness. “I’ve seen you with a sword, Tormentor. I know your skill with all manner of weapons and potions and your magic is strong. But you should be careful as well, for my back is now fully black. I hold death in my hand—” I let the smile that bared my teeth rise into my eyes. “And I’ve been practicing.”
Inheriting power wasn’t the same as inheriting gifts and he knew it. He was likely still faster, but you can’t outrun a killing touch. His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t respond. He simply stared. But even the scent of burning brakes couldn’t hide his anger, or his sudden fear and wariness.
Tuli found us like that, staring across the distance of half the plane, neither one giving ground nor advancing. She seemed back to her old self. She descended the stairs and stood precisely between us, turning her head from side to side. She let out a low, angry hiss and thrust her chin forward. “You both stink of challenge and we have no time for that. We have work to do. I’ll go make sure the temple is safe. You two find out what happened here. If you can’t work together then, for Her sake, at least stay apart!”
For her sake? At last we were getting somewhere. “I would like to see the temple, if I could. Father talked much about it.”
Again Nasil’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, but I gave nothing away except the excitement I really did feel. Tuli nodded. “Of course. You’ve every right to see what we work for and meet those who will serve you. You’ve claimed the right of succession.” Now Nasil stiffened, his back going completely rigid. So, that term meant something to him too. Interesting. “Come. It’s this way.” She walked away and I followed, careful not to pay any attention to his reaction. After all, you don’t notice those who serve. They do their job competently without your supervision or they die.
But Nasil was no ordinary servant. I’d have to watch my back from now on. It was nothing new, of course. I’d listened and tasted for his presence in every room of every home I’d lived in since I’d left Akede. What was a few more days?
TULI BECAME MORE agitated the farther we walked along the jungle path. It had been carefully cleared of undergrowth, but was hidden from above by the towering trees. Birds and insects of all descriptions swooped around us, but I could do without the biting flies. I just hoped they choked on the venom-laced blood. “Is something wrong?”
She stopped and listened for a long moment. Her tongue flicked repeatedly, tasting the air in all directions. I wasn’t sure what she was searching for, so I remained quiet and passive to whatever might happen.
The heat was oppressive, moisture hanging in the air like steam in a sauna. Moving would at least get a breeze going. I shrugged. “What are you listening for? I hear nothing but birds.”
She nodded, her teeth nibbling on her lower lip. I’d forgotten she did that and remembered how adorable I’d found it when we were children. But her words weren’t childlike when she spoke. “Precisely. I don’t hear anything either, and I should. There should be guards, many guards and the priests of the order. We’re only a few steps from the temple, and it’s silent. Something is horribly wrong.” She broke into a sudden run and I followed, twisting and turning behind her along the rocky path.
When she stopped, I nearly ran into her, avoiding her only by sidestepping. My hands hit something solid, covered in green slime. It was a stone, cut to a perfect square and set alongside a hundred others in every direction.
We’d arrived.
Tuli didn’t wait for me. She ran around the corner of the structure, calling out names. “Carlos? Jose? Where are you?” Now her voice doubled and I realized I was hearing it both outside and echoing through the stone next to me. “Syed?” She let out a loud gasp of fear and surprise and I found myself racing around the corner of the temple and into the blackened entrance before I even realized I had.
It took a moment before my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting inside the temple entrance. There were torches in sconces on the walls, but they were unlit and cool to the touch. The only light was the torch in Tuli’s hand. She was fifty meters or more ahead, the only spot of light in the black that the daylight couldn’t reach. “What’s happened? Why did you gasp?”
“They’ve broken through. She’s gone. Someone has stolen our queen.” Her voice was flat, in the sort of shock that people get when the unimaginable has occurred.
I hadn’t thought to bring a lighter with me so I walked forward with trepidation, not sure i
f the path to where she was standing was a straight one or if I’d fall into a black pit somewhere in the middle. But I needed to see what she was talking about. This was apparently a vital part of my father’s plan for it to be so important to Tuli. I found myself wishing she wasn’t involved in this, didn’t actually want my father’s goal to proceed—whatever it was. To defeat it was to defeat her, and that brought a conflict in my mind I hadn’t expected.
The path was straight and sure. I stepped up behind her and tried to look around her into the breach in the far wall. But she wouldn’t move, seemingly frozen by the sight before her. I finally grasped her by the shoulders and moved her bodily aside and took the torch from her hand. The flickering flame didn’t reveal anything of interest to me, but it might be because I didn’t know what I was looking for. All I could do was bluff and hope Tuli revealed more in her answer. “Are you certain She was here?”
Tuli shook her head and threw her hands into the air with the same frustration I could taste over the mildew, moss, and lingering sweat. I could taste other snakes too, and recently. It must be a strange sort of species that sweats. Most of us don’t. “I don’t know. The priests seemed so certain. The temple was the right size and the right location. The legends spoke of the precise layers we found here. The egg should have been in this center pyramid, the red one that was protected by her priests for millennia.”
She’d taken my question at face value, and I suddenly realized just exactly what was happening down here. The torchlight revealed the deep crimson plastered over the stone next to the breach. Ochre blended with blood and then with cement. My heart started to beat so hard I could feel it my head. The tiny clues that had been gained by the blood of a dozen Wolven agents across the world for nearly a century all abruptly clicked home. Fortunately, if Tuli could smell my fear, she thought it was for another reason.
It wasn’t that Father was resurrecting the Order of Marduc to be its leader. He planned on actually raising Marduc Herself! The great winged snake was considered to be male in Assyrian and Babylonian folklore but was, in fact, female. Only a few of the very ancient Sazi even remembered She existed, in fact. Most cultures had tales of such a creature, from dragons to quetzalcoatls and beyond. But few realized there really had been a freak of genetics in the ancient past. A Sazi, that was born of snake, fused to bird and had the strength of legions. There was no fire that breathed from her mouth, only power. Raw magical power that could freeze or burn into ash. It was said that lightning crackled around her with each wing flap and storms followed in her path. That would mean she had the equivalent power to the entire council. To the ancients, she was a goddess. And if Father had found a way to make her live again—
“Merciful Adad,” I whispered, an oath I hadn’t used since I was a child. I pushed the torch fully into the crack in the stone, now realizing it was just about the size and shape of an egg that could house the great and mighty Marduc. I wanted to laugh at my concern from last winter that there might be were-spiders back among us. I’d face a thousand spiders rather than one winged serpent that was born with any help from my father. Who knew what he had been putting into the process? But I now understood his desperation to have Tahira Kuric-Monier as his servant, to have a true power well that could pull on a thousand Sazi to bring her to life. He’d had an ego the size and depth of the oceans themselves, so I had no doubt he believed he could control her and make her a slave to fly before him and conquer, leaving him to rule in her wake.
I wasn’t so certain.
“Yes.” Tuli’s voice made me flinch. “We must inform Nasil. Hurry!”
She rushed back out of the pyramid, leaving me to consider my options. I needed to get word back to Charles and Lucas. This was too important to simply stay undercover and try to undermine the process without help.
Tonight. During the hunt, I’d find a way to return to the cave and see if the magic was still strong enough to reach the young wolf. I’d marked it well so that I could both find it by scent and sight after dark.
Yes, tonight we’d begin the process of bringing down Father’s plan at last. I sent out a silent mental plea, with no idea whether he could hear. Be listening, wolf. Be waiting somewhere to speak.
Chapter Fifteen
“—SPEAK? MR. GIODONE? Can you speak at all? We’re here.” I felt someone shaking me and I shot upward so fast that the shoulder belt, still strapped to the frame, slapped against my nose.
Liz winced and pulled her head out from the passenger door. A low rumble echoed around me and cool, exhaust-laden air made me sneeze four times in a row. I snorted and snuffled and tried to get my head on straight while Liz watched me with a bouncing nervousness that spoke of actual concern. Sweet kid.
I got out of the car and looked at my watch. Unfortunately, the numbers didn’t really register any sort of meaning in my head. It sure would be nice if I could just pop out of these visions and be back to normal, but it wasn’t that easy. I felt thick and slow, weighted down under a pile of fluff—loose and floating, but too heavy to move.
She already had the bags out, so I locked the car and started to follow her inside. She stopped and stared at me for a second, probably realizing I wasn’t quite all there. “Wheel well?” Her eyes dipped to the key ring in my hand and all of a sudden, the real world came crashing back. The fuzz was gone and I was clear-headed. Thank God. “Gotcha.”
I put my hand up to slow the car coming up the ramp and sprinted across to where the car was parked. Now my watch meant something when I looked. We had just over an hour left, which would work just fine. We could still grab a burger or some Chinese and get our allotment of meat and make it to the gates. I waited until the travelers hurrying from their cars had gone and tucked the key and chain up under the wheel well so it was sitting on the engine frame. It could still be reached, but wasn’t obvious to passersby, or even a regular sneak thief.
When I reached Liz again, she smelled relieved, a little pocket of light, fresh air in the chemical-laden entry. “You look better now.”
I held the door for her, which seemed to surprise her. I smiled, but dropped my chin for a little reproach. “I can be a gentleman, your ladyship. And yes, I’m better now.”
She shook her head as we walked down the hallway toward security. “I don’t know if I’ll get used to the royalty thing. That’s just weird.”
I shrugged. “If by royalty you mean three hundred fiftieth in line to the throne, I suppose so. But don’t be planning your coronation any time soon. Remember, no title—so probably no tickets to the ball either.”
Her little pouty face had too much sunny humor underneath to be anything other than a joke. “Oh, sure. Ruin my fantasy.”
We were at a jog now, so when I spotted a ticket kiosk, I had to do a skid that nearly sent my roll-along sailing ahead of me. “Tickets.”
“Oh. Oh! Yeah, that would be good. Should I go wait in line at security?”
I grabbed her wrist in response and felt a brush of power that was pretty impressive for a new turn. “What do you think? No. We stick together.”
The little huff of air was frustrated, but not resentful. “Okay, I deserved that. But I’m not going to run. I was just scared before.”
“And now you’re not?” I asked as I started to enter data into the computer. Charles had given me the paper with the confirmation number so it was pretty easy to pull up the boarding passes and hit the print button.
“No, I’m better now. I think it’ll probably come back, but I’m just going with it for right now. Maybe I’m in shock.”
I pulled the pages out of the printer tray and then we were off again at a race-walk clip. “Could be. Stranger things have happened.”
Her voice came out a little airy from gulping for breath trying to keep up with me. “Speaking of strange things, what happened to you in the car? Where did you go?”
I let out a laugh loud enough to cause a couple of heads to turn. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
&n
bsp; We reached the end of the security line, which was only three twists deep around the cordoned poles. She wouldn’t let go of the bone she was chewing on. “Try me.”
As I handed her the boarding pass with her name and pulled my wallet from my back pocket, I gave the short version. “I was in the head of a snake in the Honduran jungle, learning that a creature I thought was a fairy tale, or more precisely, a Tale from the Crypt, is actually real.” I turned my head toward her as I tucked my pass and license back in my pocket and started to take off my shoes. “So, I’ll be spending most of our time together on the phone, letting the right people know what they need to do to make it go bye-bye.”
“Oh.” She paused as my phrasing sunk home. It must have occurred to her that when a creature of legend is scared of another creature of an even weirder legend, it’s a bad thing. “Oh! Yeah, okay then. Is it . . . um, nearby?”
“Hope not.” My shoes and bag sailed through the scanner and I passed through the detector without a fuss. “They lost it. That’s part of the problem.”
Dammit, I’d been right earlier. A serious-looking uniformed guard walked up to us when we were putting back on our shoes and asked politely, “Could you two step over into the office for a minute?”
Liz groaned and we both looked at our watches simultaneously. Eleven o’clock. The hand search of the luggage probably wouldn’t take very long. I was just hoping there wouldn’t be a cavity search involved.