Tears rendered him blurry, obscured the body of the boy who had died protecting them, one of many. "No, no it isn't."
CHAPTER TWELVE
Rotors thrummed, a drumbeat of life a thousand times faster than his heart. The searing itch of regeneration overwhelmed all other sensation, and behind the wall of pain and shock the whispers promised him release if only he'd let go. Akash Rastogi smoothed his hand over Matt's head, warm and comforting. "Don't listen to them, eh? They're liars."
A million voices murmured their agreement, among them his son, the only one of the white whispers he knew to be alive.
"Are you here?"
Sakura answered, but in his ears rather than his mind. "Yes. Be still."
He let his useless eyes flutter closed and gritted his teeth against the itch, and the raw burn of her knife cutting eager new flesh away from slower-healing bone.
* * *
Monica sat on the wooden bench, Adam asleep beside her, his head on her thigh. Policemen and women rushed back and forth, the Macon County Sherriff's Department overwhelmed by a disaster of this magnitude. The lone TV in the corner, a 20" tube that might have been new in 1990, scrolled misspelled captions beneath a talking head on CNN, switching back and forth between the attacks and explosions in Tennessee, Nebraska, Virginia, and Texas. Reporters lurked on the sidewalk next to the traffic circle in front of the building, cameras aimed inside or at bottle-blonde reporters yammering what they didn't know into microphones.
Steve huddled in the conference room, comforting his wailing mother. Numb and huddled in the freezer, he hadn't told Monica the boy who'd led their attackers away had been his older brother, nor that one of the scout masters had been their dad.
Had been.
Twenty-three dead, including nine scouts, five scout masters, the cowboy and his wife – who'd killed two assailants as they ran for the store before being gunned down – two civilians caught in the crossfire, and five attackers. An unknown number had escaped, taking with them the State Police vehicles and minivans caught on security cameras. The manhunt had spread across the state and into Kentucky.
Aaron Walters had been rushed to Nashville via helicopter with multiple gunshot wounds, and last she'd heard was still in surgery.
The thunder of a helicopter shook her out of her stupor, and Adam popped up from her lap.
"Daddy!"
A sad smile crossed her face, that Adam would associate helicopters with his father, an unwanted reminder of how much time Matt spent away.
He bolted for the front door and Monica took off after him, scooping him up into her arms before he made it more than a few steps. Her legs tingled, pins and needles from sitting too long on unpadded furniture, but she turned toward the commotion outside.
Matt limped up the steps, his black ICAP uniform a bloody tatters, bullet holes in the chest exposing the sleek armor underneath. Sakura stalked in front of him, clearing the steps, her helmet on and mirrored, a nightmare of menace in female form even without any visible weapons. They ignored reporters and cameras both, Sakura holding the door for Matt as he stepped inside, and shutting it behind them.
Red knots mottled his muscular arms and legs, the mostly hairless skin a sign of new growth. His light brown eyes blazed with equal parts fury and relief. As Adam squirmed and reached out for him, he forced a toothless smile, which broke into a real one as he tossed their son into the air and caught him in the crook of his arm.
Adam cackled as Steve's mother sobbed, and Monica's heart soared and broke in equal measure. She slid in under Matt's other arm and held her family, squeezing too hard, not nearly hard enough.
After a moment Matt shifted, a subtle tensing she wouldn't have noticed had she not been holding him.
"Hey," he said. "Turn that up."
She turned to look at the TV, a series of images of weird tentacled creatures and children with creepy smiles, a helmeted man – obviously her husband – using a stop sign as a battle-axe against a winged caveman-looking man. As the volume came up a woman's calm, newscaster voice droned on. "—were taken from the helmet cameras of a top-secret government division known as the Special Threats Bureau."
The picture changed to Ronald Kellett standing at a podium. Humans for Humanity's founder stood against the backdrop of dark blue banners emblazoned with H4H. His wrinkled, pale skin stood in stark contrast to his charcoal suit, complete with a dark-purple pocket square and matching tie. His hands trembled, but his voice rang out strong and clear. "My fellow Americans, there are those who might say I'm too old for politics. One of them might be me. But when our government funds, our President associates with, the demonic and unnatural, what are we to do? When beings from the ancient antediluvian days lay waste to cities and neighborhoods, what are we to do?"
The camera zoomed in on his clear gray eyes flecked with blue, something Monica had never seen before. They didn't shy away, and they didn't waver. "Despite being so very weary of this evil world and its evil ways, of evildoers and evil creatures, when God calls I must answer. And so I am declaring my candidacy for President of the United States."
He spoke for several more minutes, most of it about the Special Threats Bureau, led by ‘demon wizard’ Matt Rowley and ‘heathen witch’ Isuji Sakura, and answerable only to President Robert Williams. Matt reached up and turned the TV off.
"Fuck me, babe. What was that?" She stole a guilty glance at Adam, but if he'd heard he gave no indication, instead staring at the back of Matt's head.
He turned and threw up his hands. "I don't know, Mon. Something not good."
* * *
Sitting on the bed, Conor turned off the TV and Kellett's ramblings then ran his hands through the girl's black hair, taking no pleasure from the warmth of her mouth on his cock. Tiff or Tina or something, she'd joined his cult and his bed a willing victim, desperate to give everything for a hint of his adoration. The useless twat's soul held the same allure as the motel room she kneeled in, soaking up every nugget of faint praise, every suggestion of approval, a simpering void where he needed a font.
At climax she looked up at him, grinning, and swallowed. He lifted his legs and squeezed his thighs. With a shocked squeak her head burst, blood and brains gushing from the separated bone plates. He held her there long enough for struggling hands that didn't yet realize they were dead to smear her fluids across his stomach, then let her collapse on the floor.
His perfect body held not the slightest blemish. Stronger, taller, faster than before his death, he blazed with life and energy, an Adonis far too good for Aphrodite. But all food tasted like ashes, every touch a pale shadow of what had come before. He'd crossed the bridge, but left something of himself behind.
The bridge quivered in his mind. The things on the other side danced and scurried, fought and shoved to be near the front. They mewled and cajoled, begged and promised, demanded obeisance, offered fealty, if only he'd let them across. Far too much of him wanted to do it, a thought he still recognized as not his own.
Standing, he let flesh and fluid drain as he stretched, a human reaction that he didn't need and that didn't feel good, not like it used to. Some costs were better hidden than others.
"Dammit. Alive to jive, right?"
Instead of showering he opened the front door and stepped naked onto the stoop.
Hastings Shore didn't have much of a shore, just a smattering of decrepit docks that reeked of dead seaweed and old fish. Nineteen houses and a post office, its sixty-two residents depended on a gas station for overpriced groceries when they couldn't be bothered to drive twenty miles to somewhere smacking of civilization. None of them had eaten in days, or gotten their mail, or called their loved ones or families.
They stared at him in rapture from the parking lot, where they'd remained on their knees since he'd braided their souls and minds into a conduit for his will. Their incisions had festered in the damp environment
, and ropes of bloody pus leaked down from the angry red lines in their scalps. Dehydrated and starving, not one had walked away, not one had resisted his will, and instead of empowerment he felt only disgust.
Creatures such as these had no place in the world, no place in the universe but as chattel, playthings, or food for higher beings. An insult to reality, they squandered their spirits on base things, television and gossip and envy. Not one knew the meaning of power, nor even thought to ask.
He circled around the first, put his hands on her shoulders, and cleared his mind. Black wind howled across the bridge, and against it he sent a trickle of jade. It wormed through the bore in reality and split into fine hairs, and split again and again, until sixty-two filaments groped across the span, fighting the wind's rage to wind ever closer to the eager creatures on the other side.
The first leapt, grabbing the closest filament, and screamed in triumph. Dissolving, it pumped up the jade strand like blood through an artery, screaming into existence as Conor jammed the other side into the woman's neck.
Her sigh contained finite regret, moments squandered from birth to now, as the demon infested her body. Its triumphant smile turned to shock as Conor grabbed her hair and lifted off her skullcap. He dove his hands into the glistening, rotting brain, and feasted.
The demon gibbered in panic as he stuffed chunks of the greasy organ into his mouth, chewed, swallowed. Its wail failed to nothing as he consumed its power into his near-mortal body, a churning oubliette for souls both human and demon. Across the bridge the others scattered, but too late. As jade filaments brushed them they froze, and whimpered, and gushed across the bridge in a fury of impotent betrayal.
Conor moved from host to host, choking down slimy gobbets of possessed human brain until he thought he might burst, and then did it again, and again. With each the bridge shuddered, shimmered, diminished, and his body shook with power.
The bridge shattered as he swallowed the last corrupted soul. His roar drowned out the ocean, and the Earth rumbled with his glory. Waves obliterated the dock, and wind tore houses from their foundations.
A thunderclap blasted him from his feet. He lay on his back, a smile on his lips, as the spell faded. Every nerve shot with ecstasy, every sensation an orgiastic banquet. He opened his eyes at the stars – he'd lost hours, but had an eternity to make up for it – and marveled at a beauty no human eyes could see.
Apotheosis. Godhood. Unimaginable power wrested from—
"Oh, silly boy." Her voice cut off his meanderings, and he snarled.
"Watch your tongue."
Her shadow blocked out moon, and then the stars, until emerald wings and jade eyes became his universe. Gerstner. Nyx. Bathsheba. Lilith. The last of the nephilim, she took many names, but he knew her form, knew her voice. It resonated with the universe and drowned him in majesty. "You think you know power, but what have you stolen? The lost looking for a way across the bridge? A few dozen souls? Trinkets."
He stood to look her in the eyes, and found his neck craned back. She stood as tall as the sky, an infinite shadow dwarfing him and everything around him. Glints of jade hinted at unimaginable beauty. Lust, a lost emotion he hadn't felt since murdering his sister in his early teens, consumed his mind.
She drew a fingernail down his neck, tenderly tore a jagged, bloody line through his skin. "You think you've achieved something, gained some kind of significant power. And I suppose for your kind you have. But you forget the bargain."
Conor sneered. "I made no bargain."
"Do you think I survived twelve millennia, bested all of my brothers and sisters, as a fool? All plans fail, so we make more than one. You traded power for servitude the moment you took me into your veins." Her smile brought a desperate need to please her, and he whimpered, choking it down to drown it in bile. It burned in his chest, undiminished, and another denial wouldn't form on his lips.
"I created you, Conor Flynn. Elevated you above men, led you to the dark places to find knowledge of bridges. All you are and all you've become is because of me. Belongs to me. Do you believe you did these things on your own? And do you believe I did this because I loved you?" Her hand sank lower, fingers pushing through his stomach into his abdomen, a horrible pain he never wanted to end. "Or have I misjudged you so poorly?"
"No!" The desperation in his voice disgusted him; desperate to keep his intestines where they belonged, desperate to feel her touch even if it killed him.
This isn't me. This isn't me. THIS ISN'T ME!
Words formed, his but not his. "I've felt you all along, guiding me."
"And what is my gift in return for my generosity?"
He licked his lips. "I am yours."
The lie became truth on his tongue, and at that moment he knew true damnation.
* * *
Otayba smiled at Levi. "Have you heard the tale of why blackfellas must never walk alone?"
Levi returned his grin, white teeth in a face too black for his name. "You going to go old wallaroo on me? Hit me with a boomerang and eat me?"
Otayba shook his head, then jutted his chin toward a girl stumbling down the country road toward them, one hand on a bottle of booze, the other holding her skirt out of the mud.
"You're going to hit her with a boomerang and eat her?"
Otayba shrugged. "Close enough."
Levi's nervous grin faded. "What do you—why?"
Otayba shrugged again. "Why did the wallaroo kill so many? Because he could, because he needed to eat, because they were vulnerable."
"I'm not sure I get what you're saying, mate."
He grabbed Levi's wrist, felt the blood pulsing under the skin. "Aren't you hungry?"
"Sure, mate. I'm…" His confused grimace faded into blank nothingness. "Famished. But why her?"
"You don't see enough white people around here? This is our land, mate. Ours, not theirs. But here she comes, not a fear in the world. Like she owns the place."
Levi nodded. "Right, let's kill and eat her, then."
"Glad you're on board."
They stood as one, turned, and walked toward the stumbling girl.
* * *
The bartender looked up as the door opened, a rare enough occurrence at 2:30 AM in Polevskoy, and rarer still on a week night. The miners drank hard until midnight or so, but the bosses had no patience with hangovers or late arrivals when the trucks left in the morning – if you didn't show you didn't work, and if you didn't work you didn't get paid.
He sized her up – worn leather boots and a smudged white dress with a lizard embroidered on the breast, no jewelry or purse – before appraising her figure, petite but curvy in the right places, her black hair in a long braid that fell to her waist. Her light green eyes met his over a quirk of a smile, and he grunted.
"We're closed. But would you like a drink?"
She approached, a stream tumbling down the side of the valley. "Yes."
He grabbed two glasses and the vodka, poured shots, careful not to spill any. "I'm Pavel."
She downed her shot and set it next to the bottle. "Call me Az—Anzhelika."
He didn't bother to hide his smirk, at her strange accent or anything else. "The green eyes, the slip of the tongue. You think me a fool? Did Andrei put you up to this?"
"Andrei? You must introduce me to him. He sounds quite the trickster."
A wave of fatigue reminded him that he'd been on his feet almost sixteen hours, and as cute as she was he had little energy for a walking hoax about the girl from Azov Mountain. "Look, Azovka Anzhelika, I'm too tired for playing games. It's been a very long night and I must be up early."
"Oh, Pavel, I came because you are alone and I wished to speak with you. We have a job to do, and I need you to help me."
"A job?" Extra income came hard in the Urals, and he'd been looking for something to supplement his bartending wages.
> Her fingertips brushed over his wrist, an electric thrill that shot to his throbbing heart. "Yes, Pavel. We're going to take back my mountains from the usurpers."
A small part of him worried that she wasn't speaking Russian, and that he knew no other language. But the rest fell under her spell, and downed his shot. "Okay, great. How are we going to do that?"
She leaned in until her lips brushed his ear, her breasts heaving against his arm. "You're going to free me, and then we're going to kill them."
* * *
Conor Flynn walked into the casino two hours from Oakland, California, and smiled. He'd always loved casinos. Rigged luck squelched the dreams of the rich and poor alike, brought in astounding wealth wrapped up in a semblance of freedom for a people that didn't, for all practical purposes, exist. The Mewok lived in worn-down trailers on land the government condescendingly allowed them to keep, and only a select few got rich from the white man's money.
That much resentment wouldn't need much of a push.
He walked up to the first employee he could find, a young man with light brown skin carrying a tray of drinks. He took a scotch, downed it, and set it back on the tray. "What say you and me steal the thunder, coyote?"
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
For the second time in far too little time, Matt disembarked onto the White House helipad, Sakura at his side. President Williams had demanded their presence the week before, but Matt had insisted on tripled protection for his family before leaving them in White Spruce, with a detail he picked himself – and that had taken four days.
They ducked into the entrance and surrendered their sidearms to the Secret Service before being marched through a warren of tunnels to a small, cluttered office barely big enough to fit Matt, Sakura, President Williams, and a worried-looking Air Force suit Matt didn't recognize, though his pair of stars made him a Major General. In contrast to the president's graying hair, clean shave and athletic build, the general sported an enormous black mustache and short, unruly hair to match on top of a beanpole frame almost six and a half feet tall.
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