by N. D. Wilson
To Glory’s right, something else completely was happening outside the second temple. She knew instantly that’s where she belonged. Between two stone toads holding bowls of fire, five fighters stood against a flood of strange figures and beasts pouring out of the temple. Apparently made of liquid and bandages and fragile mummified flesh, the attacking horde was climbing over a field of their own strewn carnage to reach their enemies.
The five fighters who stood against them were all familiar. Glory saw a woman with hair as white as her own, and then four men. Two of the men shifted shape, leaping into the air as massive ghostly owls to face heavy-bodied vultures, and then landing again in tall man shapes and wielding borrowed Aztec swords against watery mummies. Manuelito? And Tisto? Glory hadn’t seen them since Sam had received his snakes, but she knew them immediately. Joy mingled with her excitement.
With every deadly blow, the last free chief of the Navajo and his son splashed the attacking bodies into foamy pieces. The entire platform was slick with black, oily water, pooling and overflowing down the stairs.
Peter! On the far side of the fight, she saw the young Father Tiempo, slinging enemies away with sand, scattering damp mummies and monsters through time. This is where he was. But why hadn’t he told them? He should have brought them.
Peter was firmly positioned over two bodies on the ground, never straying to meet an attacker. Clearly standing guard. An unconscious man lay on his back in a heavy buffalo coat, and a pretty dark-haired girl was hunched over him, crying, and tending some hidden wound.
Watches floated from his chest.
The Vulture’s heir? Had Peter already captured the man? Was Dervish trying to retrieve him? Was she looking at her future son? Was he dead?
Adrenaline overwhelmed weariness and Glory ran toward the fight, shaking her black scythe blade out of her hand, ready to harvest the monstrous crop. But who were the other two? The white-haired woman splitting her enemies with a black blade, and the tall man with a Spanish sword in each incredibly fast hand?
“Peter!” Glory yelled. She was picking up speed. Peter hadn’t heard her. She whooped louder. They needed to know she and Sam were coming in on their left flank or run the risk of friendly fire. She didn’t want to deal with one of those owlish talons, no matter how ghostly.
“Peter!” she bellowed. “Reinforcements on the left!”
Peter saw her this time, and his face went suddenly white with fear. His arms dropped in shock.
“Glory!” he yelled back. “No!” And then he swung both hands in her direction, ready to sling sand, to send her into the darkness, or another time. But why? Before he could act and before she could wonder any more, a watery ax slammed into Peter’s chest, knocking him backward.
Glory jumped into the fray, halving a liquid-skinned mummy with a crocodile head. And then the older woman with the white hair turned, and she looked straight into Glory’s eyes.
And all at once, in a moment of pure horror, Glory understood.
She was already here. But older.
Glory looked on Glory.
A young heart, beating fast, knotted tight and convulsed. Ice pierced it nearly to death, and Young Glory gasped in pain. But an older heart, weary with battle, broken with grief from the moment she had glimpsed the body of her captured, corrupted, and now fallen son, that heart shivered, trembled, and unclenched behind worn ribs, releasing its soul.
Glory Hallelujah, wife of Sam Miracle, mother of Alexander, fell to the ground. Her soul departed. Her eyes went empty.
Young Glory watched herself die and the ice in her chest suddenly became fire. She felt her soul surge and swell within her, and her heart tumbled. A long, burning ice-cold breath that she hadn’t inhaled herself suddenly poured out of her lungs.
The tall man with the steel swords roared in grief and rage, and spun to face Young Glory. His arms twisted and coiled to strike.
Sam Miracle. Tall. Broad. Scruff on his jaw and scar on his cheek. Cindy and Speck were massive, rippling muscles in his arms. So much grown. Scales gnarled and scarred.
Glory saw Sam’s eyes widen in fear. She spun around and yelled.
“Sam, stay back!” But Young Sam was already staggering up behind her, breathing hard, staring at himself, both rattles buzzing. She threw her arms around him and tried to force him back, but his body was already contorting, his eyes rolling in his head. He yelled in pain and his right arm jerked and spasmed, twisted like a corkscrew, and then went limp. He dropped to his knees, gasping.
And then, ice cold, he shivered in her arms. Young Sam opened his eyes.
Glory looked back over her shoulder. Older Sam was still on his feet, but a bronze blade stuck out of his chest. Her brother, white-haired Alexander, jerked his sword out of Sam’s back, and pushed his body forward onto the ground.
“No!” Glory screamed. Jumping up, she raced toward the brother she had once loved—or the body of the brother, now used by another she didn’t know. Her glassy scythe blade whipped faster than sound, and thunder roared her wrath. The stone beneath her feet shook. Her soul was spilling over, double portioned, and her anger was immeasurable.
The body of Alexander Navarre, with liquid eyes, ducked and rolled. Glory split the stone platform beneath him. Her scythe leapt out of her arm as long as a windmill blade, but it felt as light in her hand as a leather belt. The air ripped in two around it, and thunder deafened her. The world was silent, and she had no need to slow it down. She felled fifty of the bandaged liquid mummies with the first swing, seventy with the second. Dark water washed around her ankles as she marched toward the temple. Her brother ducked back into the entry, but she split the columns around him and the stone walls and ceiling crumbled like crackers. He flinched away from the collapse, and in a blink she had him.
“Join us, sister,” he said. “Our mistress could use you.”
Once, she sliced, then twice. And Alexander’s black clothing collapsed.
His eyes were not the only part of him that was liquid. They were windows to his core. When Glory struck down the image of her brother, he splashed to the ground, nothing more than a spill.
With a final swing, she swept the platform clear of enemies, and then attacked the pyramid itself.
“Glory! Stop!” Peter gasped. “You’ve already killed yourself once. Don’t do it again.” He was clutching the ax wound in his chest, and his face was bloodless.
Dropping to her knees in a puddle, Glory buried her face in her hands and began to sob. After a moment, Sam knelt beside her. His right arm was dead at his side, limp and dangling. But Cindy slid around her shoulders.
“Your arm,” Glory said. “Speck.”
“Yeah.” Sam nodded. He bit his lip. Tears welled in his eyes. “He survived in the other me. For now.”
Glory looked back at where the older Sam had fallen. He was facedown on a pile of enemies with Cindy stretched out lifeless beside him. But Speck was moving, dragging his right hand to Sam’s face and nudging his cheek to try and wake him.
Glory’s sobs overwhelmed her. They shook their way out from her core, grief doubled by the older soul she had absorbed. Every part of her ached. Every part of her wanted to die.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Exhausted and blurry, she slumped against Sam’s chest.
“No time for sorry,” Peter gasped. Manuelito stepped into view beside him and slipped his long arm around his young brother’s shoulder, keeping Peter on his feet.
“Much is unraveling,” Manuelito said. “But much can still be saved if we act with a swift touch.”
Hundreds of panting Aztec warriors, decorated with tattoos and feathers and Spanish blood, leapt up onto the platform behind them, raising gory ironwood swords.
And above them all, with gold watch-wings spinning an entrance into the darkness between times, Alex and Rhonda were floating away.
13
A Stitch in Time
RHONDA WASN’T STUPID. HUNKERED DOWN, SHE K
NEW that checking Alex’s pulse and trying to stop his bleeding while owl men and a priest and two strange superheroes battled a leathery, rotten army enfleshed with water could only last so long. And that didn’t even factor in the Aztecs fighting the Spanish down below. They were bound to show up sooner or later.
Rhonda managed to get three of Alex’s watches floating. And then four. But the dark-haired boy with the red headband kept kicking them back down to the ground while he was slinging sand. She thought about shooting him in the back with Alex’s gun, but not for long. The things he was fighting off were far worse than his occasional kick.
When two younger versions of the superheroes showed up, the boy priest was distracted enough to take a watery ax blow to the chest, and Rhonda saw her chance. Grabbing all seven chains, Rhonda whipped them like a bundled lasso above Alex’s body and then let them go. The broken chain and four watches floated. Unsure what else to do, she quickly wound the two watches that had dropped and then tried to launch them again.
Both floated. But nothing else seemed to happen. Lying down on wet and sticky stone beside Alex, she leaned her head against his, looking up at the night sky, and she began to swing the watches around.
Thunder shook the ground beneath her, and her ears began to ring. Water and foam splashed against her back, and she swirled the watches even faster.
A darkness deeper than night opened above her. The watch chains tugged at Alex’s unconscious body, and he began to rise, arms and legs limp, head lolling back, the soaked and dripping buffalo coat trailing behind like an anchor.
Rhonda jumped to her feet and slid one arm around Alex’s chest. With the other, she supported his flopping head.
She could hear rage and war. She could hear grief. But she didn’t look. She had one job right now and that was quiet, slow escape. She shut her eyes and held on tight, pressing her face into Alex’s wet shoulder. Her feet scraped at the ground, and then she was up, but they were going too slowly. Anyone could shoot them. The owl men could snatch them.
The higher she floated, the more she could hear. Thousands of running feet. Thousands of pumping lungs. Sneaking a quick peek, she got her first view straight down the steep pyramid stairs. An army was climbing, and they had already reached the top.
She and Alex were only twenty feet up. And given how many wild eyes were on them, they were still very much in view and in range.
“C’mon!” Rhonda said. She kicked like a swimmer, but only managed to spin in place. And then she realized her mistake. The broken chain was above Alex’s head.
Hooking her legs around his waist so she wouldn’t fall, Rhonda brushed the broken chain away into the left wing. Grabbing a watch, she lofted it quickly above Alex’s head, and immediately she felt a tug of acceleration.
“Wait!” The young priest was yelling below her, clutching his chest. “Stay! We can protect you. These are his parents!”
A long arrow whistled through Rhonda’s hair as they ascended. A second tore through Alex’s buffalo coat.
SAM WATCHED MANUELITO LEAP TOWARD THE AZTECS with Tisto right behind him. Both men rose into the air and spread the feathered wings of owls. Seconds later, those wings expanded, twenty feet, thirty—but the broader they became, the more ghostly and translucent they were.
The Aztecs flinched backward in surprise, and the owls dove over their heads. Arrows punched through their ghostly wings to no effect.
Peter grabbed Sam’s limp right arm. “We have to get out of here!” he said. “We’ll find another way to save your son.”
Glory looked up.
“Son?” Sam asked. “What are you talking about?”
“His son, too?” Glory slapped at her cheeks and stood, facing Peter. “We have to fix this. We have to put this right.”
Peter nodded, pale and in pain. “But not here.”
Glory’s face was stone hard. Focusing on the two rising bodies as they vanished into darkness, she extended her right arm and spun in place like she was throwing a discus. Instead she threw a storm. A sucking funnel cloud of black sand and melting glass leapt up from her hand, and she whipped it into a frenzy.
The top of her tornado plunged into the darkness. The bottom, six feet across, hovered above her head, sucking at her hair, her clothes, and even the wet carnage all over the ground.
She pointed at her older body, and at Sam’s.
“Don’t let the older usses come!” she yelled at Peter. “Get back in time and stop us!”
The ghostly owls shrieked, circling the funnel cloud of sand as the Aztec warriors, bearing witness to gods on earth, retreated.
Puddles around Glory’s feet were sucked upward into her time storm. Mummified limbs, clothing, even weapons spun up the tunnel and disappeared.
Glory grabbed Sam by the shirt and pulled him in tight beside her.
“Our son? Are you sure about this?” Sam asked. “When were you going to tell me?” Without answering, Glory looked up the tunnel above them both. And she dropped her hand. The molten glass and sand storm descended on them like a straw, like a hose on a vacuum.
Together, Sam and Glory tumbled upward, launched into the darkness between times.
And they flew.
MANUELITO AND TISTO SHOOK OFF THEIR OWL FORMS AND landed beside Peter. A dozen Aztec warriors crept forward, but cautiously, curiously.
“I have to go after them,” Peter said. “If they are killed . . .”
“You’re hurt, brother,” Manuelito said. “And you are young. If you are killed now, your death will be death to them, as well, and to everyone they ever would have saved. You know this. You must heal.”
“We’ll go after them, Uncle,” Tisto said. “We are Glory’s blood ancestors. We can find her.”
“But can you force her home?” Peter asked.
“Can you?” Tisto responded.
Peter focused on fallen Sam and fallen Glory. Speck was coiled up tight to Sam’s shoulder.
“Their bodies cannot be left. Dervish cannot be allowed to claim them.”
THOUSANDS OF MILES AND CENTURIES AWAY, MRS. DERVISH wiped her streaming eyes. She hadn’t laughed—really laughed from her core—in countless years. Collecting herself, exhaling, and smoothing her skirts, she turned back to her view above the Aztec temples. The night had been nothing like any version of itself that she had ever seen before.
And there they were. The Miracles. Two fallen bodies among the ruined forms of hundreds of her own makeshift army. She had done what the men in her life had never been able to do. She had wrought her vengeance. The surviving snake in Sam Miracle’s arm tugged against the weight of his master’s carcass, and there it was again, welling up inside her. Uncontrollable.
Laughter.
Oh, the helpless snake, doomed to rot.
Turning, she faced the line of her undead men and women and creatures still rising up from the tower below her and passing through her black pool—entering as dry husks and rising enfleshed with water and new life.
“I want the bodies!” she announced.
Her surviving general, bald and scarred and broad, was helping a one-legged minotaur up out of the pool.
“The way is collapsed,” he answered. “In her fury, Glory shattered the temple. The time garden is buried in rubble.”
“So unbury it,” Mrs. Dervish answered. “All my surviving vultures are hunting the younger Miracles in the darkness. They will return soon enough with their prey. But I want the bodies of the older Miracles, as well. I can use them.”
But she already knew she couldn’t have them. The Aztecs were no longer attacking. And without that distraction, the young, wounded Tiempo was tending to the fallen. He would never be foolish enough to leave her the bodies. The younger dream-walking healer was with him, too. The older one—the one responsible for giving Sam his arms—had flown into the darkness between times, joining in the hunt.
Perhaps she could still have the young Miracles as trophies, the pair who had defeated El Buitre and even the Tzitzim
ime, but had slain themselves for her through their own arrogant ignorance. They were pursuing her dying El Terremoto in the darkness. He had not lasted as long as she would have liked, but with the older Miracles already dead, the boy had more than fulfilled his purpose.
To have been able to witness the shocked expressions on Sam’s and Glory’s faces, their pain, the actual moment of those deaths . . . her diaphragm quivered once more. She bit her lip and smiled, but the shaking grew, and she gave in to it gladly.
Laughter.
FLAILING IN THE DARKNESS, SAM COULDN’T TELL UP FROM down. But the oily friction against his sweating face told him that—wherever they were going—he and Glory were moving quickly to get there.
“I like ground,” Sam said. His uneasy stomach turned. His voice sounded tiny in the vast emptiness.
Glory didn’t answer. But her foot collided with his shin. And she was breathing loudly.
Sam felt Cindy twist across his body, feeling for Speck.
Live.
The command crackled up his left arm. He’d never sensed anything like it from Cindy before. And again.
Live!
But the lifeless rosy-scaled rattlesnake would not obey; his joy, his distraction, his twitching, all of it was gone. Sam’s right arm felt like mud, with bones inside grinding like old teeth. He tried not to think about it. There was no point right now. Speck was still hooked up to him. He was still warm. Maybe he would wake up. Peter might know.
“Check the watch,” Glory said in the darkness.
“I don’t think this was smart,” Sam said. “Peter—”
“Peter should have talked to us.” Glory fumed. “He should have warned us.”
“He did,” Sam said. “He warned the older usses.”