by Platt, Sean
“They were going to take us,” Piper said. “They weren’t going to let us near the pyramid. They were just going to take us in, maybe kill us outright.”
Cameron could only shake his head. That was only one of several things that had gone horribly awry in the last ten minutes.
“I thought they needed us to find Thor’s Hammer,” Piper said.
Cameron was still shaking his head, out of breath, adrenaline filled, and shocked. “Apparently, they decided they don’t need us after all.”
“Shh,” said Jons, warning arm still out, searching the street for signs of pursuit. Cameron thought they’d got away clean while the lights had been out, but there was no way to be sure. This hadn’t been like last time, when the Astrals had let Cameron believe he might be alone, that there’d been a huge oversight in security and intruders were free to wander the streets at will. This time, they hadn’t been as subtle. Piper was right; they weren’t planning merely to shadow them to the Apex, leaving them alone until they revealed what they knew in the quest for Thor’s Hammer. That had been a mob, closing around them like a noose.
It had always been a possibility, of course, and Cameron might never have gone if not for the visions — if not for the certainty that when they entered Heaven’s Veil, something unexpected would intervene to help them. And when the Titans closed around them in the knot, that had felt dream familiar too, as if he’d known it was coming. He could only see a few seconds ahead, but he’d believed those visions.
But that didn’t mean he had any idea what had just happened.
“They’ll be looking everywhere,” said Christopher, speaking to Jons. And as if to underscore his point, there was a purr one street over as a Reptar (or perhaps a contingent) ran past. Cameron could hear their claws scraping on concrete, the rattle of indrawn breath.
“Surveillance,” Christopher said when Jons didn’t respond.
“The networks are down. Surveillance is down.”
“The Astrals have their own devices.”
Cameron was about to speak up from their hidden position, adding his two cents about the tiny silver BBs. But Jons seemed to know about that, too.
“Based on what I got from those bald white fuckers earlier, most of their shit isn’t working, either. At least as far as prying eyes. If it was, they wouldn’t have been licking our balls to help out.”
“We can’t take them to the station.”
“We’ll take them to Grandma Mary.”
“Who’s that?”
But Piper seemed somehow, impossibly, to know. She raised her voice to Jons.
“They know about Mary. The church by the wall was an underground camp. I was with them a while ago. The church was raided, and we escaped through a tunnel that came up in Mary’s basement.”
“They don’t know about Mary,” Jons said.
“How can you be sure?”
“Because she’s my grandmama. And she said they didn’t follow you through the tunnels.”
“I heard a shotgun behind us,” Piper protested.
“She shot a few through her window.”
“They’d come after her for that.”
“They did come after her for that. But Grandmama shot them, too.”
He lowered his arm then waved for them to follow.
“Let’s go. Her place isn’t far. If your asses are lucky, she’ll have a pie on.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
She couldn’t just sit here.
Heather stood from her chair. Dusted herself off, even though Terrence’s old house (presumably old; he’d probably be cut into pieces and sent to the mothership as lunch after he was done) wasn’t especially dusty. She took a few deep breaths, looking out across the lawn between here and the main house.
Security lights had come back on a few minutes ago. City lights were still stubbornly dead. Neither had affected Heather as she sat in the dark. But now with the lights on, she could see the line Lila and Clara had tromped through the evening dew, straight as an arrow slicing the grass between here and the mansion’s side door. Even the line of footprints managed to look angry, as if Lila had left all her frustration behind.
Well, fuck her. She was Heather’s daughter, but if Lila didn’t believe, fuck her. This wasn’t a joke, and nobody — even the Queen of Mean, hiding from Meyer’s creepy doppelgänger in one of the small houses — thought it was funny. If she’d been trying to have a laugh, then okay, Heather could see Lila’s point. But she wasn’t.
Meyer was dead.
And now he wasn’t.
Not only was it crap to blame Heather for simply stating facts; it was dismissive of all that she’d suffered. Was it Lila who’d had to watch her father die — to let Raj kill Meyer, to add insult to mortality? Nope, that had been Heather. And was it Lila who had to face off against … against whatever the shit that was in there? Nope. Again, that honor had fallen to her.
And now she was being blamed for her horrid experiences? For her trauma? For being forced to endure so much terrible, gut-wrenching crap in one day?
Yeah. Lila was Heather’s blood and the apple of her eye, but right now: Fuck. That. Bitch.
The jolt of righteous anger made her feel better.
Heather stepped out onto the porch. She still felt nervous, still unsure. Not long after Lila had stormed off with Clara (who’d wanted to stay; that was another reason for FUCK LILA right now), the security lights had buried the lawn in darkness.
Then there’d been some sort of enormous commotion from the home’s front, from past it. Like out near the gate.
Not long after that, there’d been a ruckus in the house itself. Heather looked up now, seeing a window open and a light way up on the fourth floor. She knew that place well. That’s where she’d gone with Terrence then been trapped and tied up by Lila’s cunt of a husband. That’s where Meyer had done the thing that had — and she was sticking to this version of the story, though it hurt more — got him killed.
Again, by Lila’s cunt of a husband.
Maybe he was a cuckold. The odd, irreverent, irrelevant thought gave Heather a jolt of glee. Clara didn’t look like Raj at all. Usually, those foreigner genes were dominant as hell, but Lila had squeezed out a blonde with blue eyes. It would point to Heather’s failure as a mother if Lila had been playing the field of dicks and only telling Raj this kid was his, but it would also strike Heather as more awesome than disappointing if true.
The fourth-floor window was quiet. That must have been where the crashing had come from, though; the noise had been sharp, and no other windows were open. No other lights on this side (notably: Trevor’s, which also hurt) were lit. Terrence was burning the midnight oil, with Raj whipping him to undo what he couldn’t — what he probably wouldn’t undo if he could.
Yes. Well, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that she couldn’t just sit around and let … well, whatever it was … happen. Throughout her life, Heather had always faced adversity in one of two ways: Either she’d run and pretend she didn’t care or face it the way someone would fight while a camera was on her. Heather had a reputation as “feisty” in Hollywood before Astral Day, but really it was all a performance. When her adversaries got reasonable and discussed resolution, she always folded. Without a fight worthy of the front page, Heather’s soft center just wasn’t strong enough.
No more.
Some weird crap was happening here, and for once, she wouldn’t be the wiseass who made jokes and did nothing.
Meyer Dempsey had, it seemed, never stopped loving her.
Whatever it was inside the house wasn’t the man she once adored.
She owed it to him. To Meyer. To his memory.
Heather crossed the grass, her fists clenched.
Chapter Thirty-Three
When the lights came back on and the tumult from above finally settled, Lila let Clara go. Her daughter hadn’t wanted to be held in the first place. Lila told herself she was protecting her child. But really, she was looking for a teddy
bear to squeeze.
With the lights on and Clara gone from her arms, Lila walked to the window.
Grid power was still off. She plucked her phone from the end table and verified that there still wasn’t service. Outside, she could tell that the less superficial networks — used by the city’s bones and even the Astrals, she suspected — were probably still out as well. From her room, she couldn’t see much more than she’d managed on the ground, except a scattering of cops running hither and yon, not at their proper posts inside the house grounds, not coordinated at all. She could see the Astral shuttles patrolling like people would without leadership: more or less randomly — every man (or alien) for himself.
But the generator lights were back, just like in the house. Even the lights not connected to the grid had winked out, before returning.
“You feeling okay, Clara?” Lila said.
Clara was curled up on the floor with the blocks and toys that had so recently and so intensely interested her. The purple scarf, which had seemed to play an important role in the game, was lying discarded to the side. Clara’s power was like the city’s, it seemed. Bright one moment and dead the next.
There was a small baby blanket, too small for her daughter last year, on a low shelf. Lila grabbed it and draped it over what little of Clara it managed to cover.
“Yes, Mommy, you should go.”
Lila realized she’d been thinking about her father. It wasn’t surprising, given what had happened or what she’d been recently mulling — not even including the face-off with her mom across the lawn. But still she hadn’t noticed until Clara spoke, and she couldn’t help hearing those words as a suggestion about Dad. Or maybe permission.
“Go where, Clara?”
Her daughter was already sleeping, looking for all the world like an ordinary two-year-old.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Heather expected to find Meyer in his office. His life had been defined by work. That was who he had been. It was, until he’d died, who Meyer was even today.
So it surprised Heather when she walked through the big dining room’s east doorway and saw him bleeding all over the formal table, wrapping his hand in gauze and tape.
He looked up. He seemed to smile, feel the grin on his lips, then consciously fight to keep it down. It was a confusing sequence of actions, and seeing it unnerved her.
“Heather,” he said.
Lila entered the dining room from the other end, through the west doorway, before Heather could respond. Her mouth hung open. She looked at her father then her mother. Heather saw remonstration. Of annoyance. Maybe of hatred.
That was a cruel, sick joke to tell me he’d died, she seemed to say.
Heather opened her mouth to reply, but then Lila rushed forward and hugged Meyer around the middle.
His hands went up. His destroyed, dripping right hand brushed Lila’s side, painting her with a broad stroke of crimson. She hugged him while he waited, holding up gauze and disinfectant, dark blood trickling down his arm. A wad of paper towels was on the table with the rest, soaked.
Lila released him, her eyes wet.
“Hey,” he said, forming a smile. “What was that about?”
Instead of replying, she hugged him in an encore. Then she released him again and said, “I love you, Daddy.”
A strange, defenseless look crossed his features. “Thanks, sweetheart.”
“Mom said you were dead.” She looked hard at Heather then back at her father. She seemed to realize what a strange thing that was to say to someone who seemed so healthy (other than one smashed hand), but she forced her next words behind it. “She said Raj killed you.”
Meyer gave a dismissive little laugh. “Well, he didn’t.”
Heather came forward, skirting the table. She looked at Lila.
“Don’t look at me like that, Lila. You heard Raj. You saw how bloody I was. Don’t act like this was all a big joke. And don’t you dare act like you were right, seeing as I told you he was alive again.” She paused. “Except that like I said, he’s dead.”
Heather could hear herself, knew how ridiculous she must sound. Alive again. And Like I said, he’s dead. Yeah. Those weren’t things a crazy person said. It was positively shocking that Lila didn’t believe her every word.
It was impossible to talk with Meyer between them, with him dressing his wound in the middle of the formal dining room instead of somewhere logical, like a bathroom. How had this little display even happened? They didn’t store gauze in the dining room. He must have run somewhere for it then brought it here. Or he’d started to clean this strange new wound (and forget that mystery for a second) before getting suddenly hungry.
Heather grabbed Lila’s arm and dragged her aside, to the room’s end, as if Meyer might not notice them standing there talking about him.
“I wasn’t lying to you, Lila.”
“Mom …”
“I told you he died. He did. I saw it happen. He wasn’t breathing. His eyes were open. It was over.” She blinked back tears, realizing how strange it would be to cry over the death of a man who was, in most people’s opinions, standing five feet from her now.
“I know you thought that, but—”
“And then I told you he was back. I told you to go in and find him. I was telling you the truth then, too.”
“Mom, I know how you are, and I just—”
“This isn’t funny to me, Lila. I haven’t been screwing with you. You need to believe me. That’s not …” Heather stopped, hearing herself. She was about to say, That’s not your father. And when it had been just Heather and Meyer in the room, that had been easy to believe. But now she wasn’t just seeing Meyer through her own eyes. She was seeing him through Lila’s, too.
What, did she think he’d been body snatched?
Was it really that hard to believe what he’d said earlier, now that she really thought about it? After knocking Raj out cold, she’d seen a shuttle coming. She sat on the stones, sobbing over what she’d thought (perhaps erroneously) were Meyer’s final breaths. The shuttle’s approach was the reason she’d run, fleeing in futile circles before realizing Dorothy was right, and that in an alien-colonized city, there really was no place like home. She’d assumed the shuttle would arrive, see what had happened, and cart him away. Maybe finish Raj off for her. Or perhaps give pursuit, knowing Heather was a saboteur, and a potential murderer.
But maybe that’s not what the shuttle had done.
Maybe it had fixed him, even though he’d been technically dead.
After all, when people drowned, CPR could revive them minutes later. When they flatlined in ambulances and emergency rooms, countless TV shows had proved that a crash cart could bring those people back.
Yes, he’d been dead. Shot through the heart or lungs or God knew what else. Diced inside. But maybe the aliens been able to fix the damage and re-fire his system.
“That’s not what?” Meyer said, looking right at her.
Heather said nothing. Lila’s hard eyes softened. Heather exhaled, her shoulders dropping, defensive tension draining from her frame.
Heather thought Lila might cry, for reasons unknown — for the stress if nothing else.
Or maybe she’d walk out, still annoyed by her jackass mother’s antics.
But instead, Lila hugged Heather, too.
Behind her, Meyer smiled.
He continued to wrap his damaged hand.
Because even though Astral technology had healed a bullet through the chest, it somehow wasn’t available to fix a tenderized fist.
Chapter Thirty-Five
When Charlie came around the RV, Nathan had parked himself in a folding lawn chair at the vehicle’s front, kicked back with a beer that had to be at least three years old. The moon had emerged and Nathan had no idea what time it was, but in this shitty folding chair he’d enjoyed the feeling of sitting under the sun on a summer day. Possibly while swatting flies and bitching about welfare.
“Send your drone,” Charlie
said. There was no hello. There was only a command.
Nathan looked to Coffey for support, but she must have gone inside. The lawn chair next to him was empty, its garishly colored straps of woven plastic fiber exposed to the cool nighttime air instead of safely concealed by her ass.
“It’s malfunctioning,” Nathan answered.
“Let me look at it.”
“It’s so malfunctioned, you can’t even look at it.”
Charlie stood still, staring at Nathan through his thick glasses, his bushy brown-and-gray beard doing nothing to make him look softer or less angular. Charlie didn’t have particularly large eyes, but they always seemed to be sticking out, accusing the person they were watching of idiocy.
“The lights have been on for a while now,” Charlie announced. “Still just the generators. The drone might be able to spot them and go unseen if you got it close before. We need to know if they went toward the Apex. If they’re on target.”
“I don’t think they are,” Nathan stared.
Charlie stared.
“Are you going to ask why I think they’re not on target?”
“Why?”
“Because the Astrals probably chose to arrest them instead. It was inevitable.”
“We decided that the chances of arrest were low. That’s why we did this.”
Nathan swigged his beer. “Ah. Yes. But that was back when we thought the Astrals would need our friends to show them to Thor’s Hammer because they themselves didn’t know where it was.”
Charlie’s stare faltered. So he was human after all. “What are you talking about?”
“I dropped a message to Meyer Dempsey. Told him that two people were entering the city and that they were carrying the key to something the Astrals were very interested in, inside Cameron’s satchel.” Another sip. The beer tasted like gasoline.
Nathan tipped his beer at Charlie. “Oh. And that what the Astrals were searching for was almost for-sure under the Apex after all, just in a different chamber, and that if they scanned down there for stone matching the unique kind used in the key, they’d probably have no trouble fi—”