The Blazing Bridge

by Carter Roy

  “Swing!” Dawkins yelled, kicking his arms and legs like he was swimming through the air.

  I tried swimming, too, but by the time our movements rippled up the fabric to Greta, we’d already been raised another twenty feet, and she was well past the roadway.

  We rose smoothly and steadily after that.

  “Cut me loose,” Dawkins said.

  “It’s too far to fall.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Dawkins said. “Eventually. And then I’ll bring help.”

  I drew my sword out and slashed at the fabric between us.

  “And Ronan!” Dawkins shouted. “Your promise!”

  My second swing at the silk cleaved straight through, and Dawkins fell, the silk whipping in the air behind him.

  “Geronimo!” he shouted.

  I lost sight of him under the bridge, but I heard a loud splash.

  “Ronan!” Greta shouted. “Where’s Jack?”

  “Went to get help,” I yelled, though that seemed like wishful thinking.

  Only one person could stop the Bend Sinister now. And that person was me.

  Too soon, I was being lifted up under the auxiliary cable by a team of five Bend Sinister agents, and then carried forward by three of them like a piece of furniture. They took me to the ladder, then handed me up to more agents who were waiting atop the tower.

  I recognized Legion’s team even before they rolled me over onto my face, tied my hands behind my back, and then set me on my feet next to Greta.

  “Hey,” Greta said, the wind blasting her hair all over her face.

  “Hey,” I said back. “You doing okay?”

  She shrugged. “It’s like four in the morning, a huge storm is rolling in, and we’ve been captured by a bunch of crazies up on the Brooklyn Bridge. So, yeah—I’m good, all things considered.”

  We were right beside the ladder, only a few feet from the tower edge. Bald pizza-eating man stood behind me, his hands on my shoulders; the dark-haired woman stood beside him, arms crossed, staring straight ahead. The redheaded agent had her hands on Greta’s shoulders, while Legion’s driver, a goateed gym rat with tattoos around his neck, was next to them.

  Counting the four agents behind us, there were seven Bend Sinister members up on the tower. My dad and his team weren’t among them. They should have reached the tower by now, I knew, so I figured they were lying low nearby.

  “Let me do the talking, and if you get a chance, make a break for it.”

  “Forget it, Ronan,” Greta said. “No way I’m leaving you behind.”

  The tall, white-haired woman in the red-and-gold robes walked toward us with her arms outstretched like someone welcoming you to her house. She was old, I realized—I mean, really old, like the sort of person who makes headlines when she dies because she’d been born before the wheel was invented or whatever. She was thin, but she didn’t look frail. For some reason, I found her terrifying.

  The old woman smiled at us. “So nice to meet you at last, Evelyn Truelove. I am Evangeline Birk.” Like Dawkins, she had the faintest of accents.

  “I’ve heard about you,” I said. “You’re even higher up in the Bend Sinister than my dad.”

  “Your father is nothing,” Birk spat, the smile gone and her teeth bared. She shivered and the smile reappeared. “Though I must say, you bear quite the strong resemblance to him!”

  “Lucky for me looks are only skin deep.” I laughed like I’d said something funny. “Anyway, I take after my mom, not some Bend Sinister flunky.”

  Birk stared at me for a long time, the smile frozen on her face.

  I realized what was so terrifying about her: She never blinked. Not once.

  “He did lead us straight to you after years of hiding you from us,” she said at last, “and for that, I am grateful.” Years of hiding you from us. She thought I was a Pure. Why else would my dad have sacrificed so much to capture me? Why else would he have risked—and lost—the soul of another Pure, Flavia, at the Glass estate? And I suddenly realized only my dad knew the truth about Greta. He hadn’t r evealed that to anyone.

  “Good old Dad,” I said. “I owe him a lot.”

  “Children bore me.” Birk turned to Legion. “Prepare the equipment, and send word to the teams on shore. Everything must be ready by sunrise.” She walked to the tower’s edge and gazed out at the lights of Manhattan. “Our years of work are at last coming to fruition. The Reckoning is upon us!”

  “What does that even mean?” I asked.

  “It means a new day is dawning, Evelyn Truelove, one in which the old world will end and a new, better one, will rise up in its place. And you—you will have a front-row seat!”

  “I’m curious about something,” Greta said.

  “Be quiet,” I whispered. “Just let me talk.”

  Birk sneered at Greta. “What is it you’d like to know?”

  “This whole end-of-the-world thing,” Greta said, warming up like she used to do on the debate team. “It seems to me that the Bend Sinister is part of the world, so if you destroy the world, aren’t you going to destroy yourselves, too?”

  “No,” Birk said. “An ark saved the blessed during the great flood, and now, when the great conflagration scours the earth clean, we will again take refuge in an ark.”

  “Sounds like a good plan,” I said. “Listen. I’m the one my dad’s been chasing, I’m the one he wanted to deliver to you. You’ve got me. Do whatever you have to do, but please, don’t make my friend watch.”

  “How very touching,” Birk said, raising an eyebrow. “Legion? Time for the examination.”

  “I’ll bring it to you, ma’am,” Legion said. She went and counted the metal chests, confused. “One of our lockers is missing.”

  “That was me.” I shrugged. “It was full of guns, so I threw it into the river.”

  Birk leaned forward so that she could pinch my chin between her thumb and forefinger. “It won’t be long now, Evelyn Truelove.”

  “Please, Ms. Birk, I prefer to be called Ronan.”

  Behind her, Legion reached into the fourth metal chest—the one Dawkins had never opened—and removed a black wooden case from within. She brought the box to her boss, falling to one knee in front of her and raising it up in her outstretched arms.

  Evangeline Birk turned her back, and I wasn’t able to see as she opened the case and took something from it.

  When she faced us again, she held a shape-changing red mask I had seen only once before, worn by my father.

  “Le percepteur,” Evangeline Birk said, and I was able to place her accent at last. It was French. She was the same Madame Burque who’d killed Mathilde.

  “Now, let’s have a look at the two of you.”

  CHAPTER 21

  THE RECKONING

  I tensed, ready to throw myself at Evangeline Birk.

  But that was an obviously dumb idea.

  For one thing, my hands were bound behind my back, so I couldn’t do much but head-butt her. For another, I had a Bend Sinister agent behind me with his hands on my shoulders, and a second agent standing next to that one, both of them armed. I’d never get anywhere near Birk, let alone stop her from putting on that mask.

  So I leaped backward instead.

  Bald pizza-eating man wasn’t expecting that. He made an oof sound and his hands left my shoulders.

  I bounced off him and fell to my knees, then rolled over and faced him.

  He spun his arms in the air, trying to regain his balance as he slowly tipped back over the tower edge.

  The dark-haired woman caught one of his hands, and the redheaded woman guarding Greta caught the other. He froze like that, leaning out over the abyss, his feet on the edge but his fellow agents holding him steady.

  His eyes narrowed at me.

  So I rocked back and kicked him square in the knees.

  His feet shot from under him, and with a look of surprise on this face, he dropped out of sight.

  Neither of his fellow agents let go of his hands, so th
e two women were silently yanked off the tower with him.

  I didn’t stop to congratulate myself. Instead, I got to my feet, turned, and charged straight at Evangeline Birk.

  Some part of me was dimly aware of other things going on: Greta struggling to get away from Legion’s goateed driver, stamping on his feet and shouting. And way on the other side of the tower, Legion’s huge blond goon dropping whatever he’d been doing and pounding toward me.

  But I was focused on Evangeline Birk. She dropped the Perceptor into its case and backed away at the same moment as Legion stepped in front of her, a sword drawn. “It will be a delight to cut you in two, Truelove!”

  I ran straight for her. But when I was a few feet away, I dropped into a slide like Curtis Granderson stealing third, coming in under Legion’s sword and far to her left.

  “Missed us!” Legion crowed.

  But I hadn’t been aiming for them at all.

  My right foot tagged the Perceptor case dead center. It skidded across the silk like a square hockey puck and arced out over the river, then plummeted toward the water.

  Birk made a startled, furious noise.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I really hate that thing.”

  “I bet you do,” Birk said. To Legion, she said, “Kill him.”

  “Gladly.” The little dark-haired woman grinned and reared back with her sword.

  Before she could chop down, I rolled away.

  And came up against the dark leather shoes of the huge blond guy on Legion’s team. He reached down, grabbed my shirt with one fist and my belt with the other, and lifted me over his head. I squirmed and kicked until he walked the ten feet to the side of the tower. I had a perfect view of the road a hundred feet below us. Even now, at four a.m., traffic was heavy down there. He bent his arms at the elbow, ready to hurl me.

  “Stop!” Greta shouted.

  “Yes, stop,” Birk said. She sighed. “I’ve changed my mind. Don’t kill him.”

  He paused and held me over his head like that, his arms quivering, probably debating whether to listen to his boss or to throw me anyway. Finally he sighed, spun around, and dropped me from chest height onto the rooftop near the ring of lightning rods. I stared at them and the silver metal frame in the center. I was probably going to be strapped to that thing soon.

  I lay there for a moment trying to figure out what I could do next, when Birk and Legion walked over.

  “I’ll just send divers to locate the Perceptor,” Birk said, tilting her head and shrugging. “It’s practically indestructible.”

  “The Blood Guard will stop you,” I said. “They’ll be here any minute. They’re probably swarming all over this place.”

  “We both know that’s probably not true,” Birk said. “But fear not: whether or not I have the Perceptor, the Reckoning will take place.” She looked back and forth between me and Greta, deciding something. “Maybe you are valuable. Legion, have your man strap in the girl.”

  “Wait—what? Why?” I asked, sitting up.

  “Slight change of plans, Evelyn Truelove. I’m going to test the device with the girl first.”

  The huge guy placed one of his big feet onto my chest and pushed me flat again.

  “But she didn’t do anything!” I said.

  “Everyone is guilty of something, Evelyn,” Birk said, chuckling.

  Legion’s goateed driver draped Greta over his shoulder.

  “This way,” the Hand said, and the two of them walked a spiral pathway between the lightning rods around to the silver frame at the center, Greta kicking and shouting the entire time.

  I squirmed a tiny bit and the giant leaned on his foot so that I could barely breathe. All I could do was watch.

  There were leather cuffs at each of the four corners of the frame. Legion and the goateed agent used them to strap Greta in—a wrist or ankle at each corner.

  “What are you doing?” Greta shouted. She was only twenty feet away, but the wind made it difficult to hear her. “What does this thing do? Ronan?”

  And then Legion and the agent attached metal bands around her arms, legs, neck, and head. The bands, I figured, were connected to the transformers Dawkins had told me about, and those were connected to the sixty lightning rods.

  “Nothing’s going to happen, Greta!” I shouted. More quietly, to Evangeline Birk, I said, “Why do you want her to die? She hasn’t done anything to you.”

  “But I don’t want her to die,” she said. “Instead, I want to kill her again, and again, and again, and for each of those almost-deaths to be carried around the world via the fiery bridge that unites all the Pure like her.”

  “But she’s not a Pure,” I said. “She’s not.”

  “Then that will be evident, and she will have suffered for nothing.” Birk wagged a finger at me. “But I suspect she is a Pure, and that’s why you kicked my Perceptor away. Because you, Evelyn Truelove, truly are a Blood Guard.” She smiled. “I don’t need le percepteur to see that.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said.

  “Maybe! But if that’s the case, then after we’re done with her, it will be your turn.”

  Legion and the agent emerged from the lightning rod forest, and Birk said to her, “Have the Hands corral the storms and send them our way. We’re ready.”

  • • •

  Two more Bend Sinister agents climbed up to adjust dials and tweak settings on machines, and they chatted with Evangeline Birk while she pointed at this cord or that rod, and the whole time, I was trapped beneath the blond giant’s foot.

  He was enormous, a pro football linebacker in a pinstriped suit. He must have been six-foot-six and three hundred pounds—most of which seemed to be concentrated on my sternum.

  No way would I ever be able to get out from under him.

  The sky was getting brighter—the sun would be rising soon. Not that it would make a huge difference. Storm clouds were piled up to the horizon, their bellies dark and flashing with lightning. Any minute now, the Bend Sinister agents on the riverbanks would start directing that lightning here, with Greta its target.

  She would be electrocuted.

  The Bend Sinister would revive her.

  And then it would happen all over again.

  I’d promised Dawkins I would kill Greta rather than let her be tortured like this, but I couldn’t even reach her.

  I tried once more to get up, but the blond giant leaned forward even more. I wheezed and gasped until Greta shouted, “Stop it! You’re killing him!”

  Suddenly a jagged purple bolt of lightning crackled within inches of the blond guy’s head.

  “Get off my son!”

  My dad was standing by the ladder from the suspension cable, a Tesla rifle in his hand.

  The giant stepped away, and all at once I could breathe easy again.

  Evangeline Birk opened her arms. “Why, Head Truelove, you have arrived just in time to join us for the Reckoning.”

  Another of my dad’s agents appeared behind him, a bearded guy carrying a sword. At the same moment, the other four men in my dad’s team climbed atop the roof from the other suspension cables. All of them were armed.

  “Collect their weapons,” Dad said, gesturing at Birk, Legion, and the three other Bend Sinister agents on the tower. The five silently took Legion’s sword from her and collected two Tesla guns from the other Bend Sinister agents. The older guy who’d sung lead on the subway patted down my big blond tormentor. But the goon wasn’t armed. He didn’t need to be.

  “What is it you hope to accomplish here?” Birk asked. “Let’s forget our differences and join in celebration of the change that is to come.”

  “That’s not why I’m here,” my dad said, strolling toward us across the orange silk.

  I was still stuck on the ground with the blond giant looming over me. “No way are you here to save me and Greta.”

  “Of course not.” He laughed.

  Greta was too far away to hear our conversation. I couldn’t imagine what she thought we wer
e saying, or why my dad was acting like I’d cracked a joke.

  “Save her?” He pretended to wipe his eyes. “No, I’m here to make sure she serves her purpose. She is a tool, a means to an end … once I’ve assumed command of this operation.”

  Evangeline Birk tilted her head. “Whatever do you mean, Head Truelove? I am, of course, grateful that you brought this Pure—whichever child it is—to our attention. Now why don’t you have your team hand over their weapons. It’s not too late for you to make amends.”

  “Oh, but it is too late for you,” Dad said. He flicked a finger at her. “Four, please kill Ms. Birk.”

  The subway singer turned away from my blond giant, leveled his saber, and slowly closed in on the white-haired old woman.

  “No!” Birk said, backing against the central railing. “You don’t have the loyalty of the teams on the shore below. They are waiting on word from me. Without me, they won’t bring the lightning storms, and then nothing is going to happen here.”

  “Don’t believe her,” the subway singer said. “It’s me they listen to, not her.”

  “What?” my dad said. “What’s gotten into you, Four?”

  It’s Legion, I knew. Legion had taken over my dad’s team of agents.

  Behind me, the blond giant spoke. “Birk isn’t in control here. It is Legion we follow now.”

  Beside my dad, his bearded agent said, “It is Legion we wait to hear from.”

  And then, at once, all of the Bend Sinister agents spoke in chorus. “Legion is the one who talks to the teams, so Legion is the only one who can lead.”

  Startled, my dad backed away from his own men. “Which one of you is Legion?”

  “All of us,” said every Bend Sinister agent on the bridge. They slowly closed ranks around my dad and Evangeline Birk, swords at the ready. Everyone seemed to have forgotten me and Greta. “To make way for Legion, we must kill Birk,” said the tattooed goateed driver. “And Truelove, too.”

  “She’s there, Truelove!” Birk shouted, pointing to where Legion stood still near the ladders to the cables. Her eyes were closed and she appeared to be almost in a trance. “She’s the one you need to kill.”