He wasn’t entirely certain which of the twins he was speaking to. As much as they hated to hear it, the two girls really were identical. It was hard for anyone to tell them apart.
Dominic looked up from beating the eggs in the bowl. “Do you want to set the table, Simone?”
“I’m Eloise.” She sounded deeply offended.
“You’re Simone,” Dominic shot back. He gave her a smile that twinkled. “His name is Heath, right?”
Jake brushed past her. “Just set the table, sis.”
Simone’s face colored. She flounced over to the island, pulled out the drawer and began to rattle cutlery.
Jake settled at the table.
“Jake, could you get coffee mugs out, please?” Patrick said. “I don’t know where you keep them.”
“In the overhead cupboard behind you,” Jake replied. He didn’t move.
Patrick looked at him sharply. “I asked you to do it.”
Jake looked amused. “What, you’re my mother, now?”
Simone had stopped pulling out cutlery. She watched them both.
“Your mother has been out all night, working to keep you safe.”
Jake snorted. “In between screwing you two.”
Patrick didn’t have to speed up his movements very much. He stepped over to the table, picked Jake up by the scruff of his shirt and marched him over to the cupboard, then held him until he had his balance. Jake threw his arms out, a breathless little shriek emerging from him. To Jake it would’ve felt like one moment he had been on the chair and the next he was in front of the cupboard.
Patrick didn’t keep his voice down as he spoke directly to Jake from his position right behind his shoulder. “You’re not going to be a clichéd drama queen, are you? Just because your mother has a semblance of a life that isn’t completely focused upon you?”
Jake twisted his head, until he could see Patrick from the corner of his eye. He licked his lips. “Are you moving in, then? Because I don’t remember anyone asking us if you could.”
Patrick gripped his shoulder and turned him so that he was looking at him directly. “We’re not moving in. For a start, the house isn’t big enough for all of us. So if anyone was going to move, it would be you.”
“You’ve been here for weeks.”
“A week and a bit,” Simone said.
Patrick nodded. “It has been more convenient to stay here, than to make the trip back and forth from Bel Air. We’re still trying to figure out details. If and when anyone moves in with anyone, we’ll sit down and explain it to you. Don’t ever think you get to have a vote in how your mother runs her life.”
“That sucks,” Jake muttered.
“It’s called being a kid,” Patrick said. “When you hit eighteen, you can start making decisions for yourself. Until then, you have to trust that your mother will make decisions that she feels are the best for you, as well as her.” He patted his shoulder and dropped his hand. “So get the mugs out, will you?”
Dominic poured eggs into the frying pan and they hissed, breaking the silence in the room.
Then Simone began laying out cutlery with small clinks.
Patrick waited.
Finally, Jake shrugged. He turned and opened the cupboard and Patrick hid his relief. He moved back to the island and glanced at Dominic, who gave a tiny shrug.
“Oh, wow, that smells so good!” Eloise stood at the door, sniffing. “You guys can cook breakfast whenever you want, if it’s going to smell like that.”
“Thank you,” Dominic said. “Perhaps you should wait until you taste it?”
Eloise picked up the remote control that sat on the corner of the island and turned on the TV. Immediately, CNN blared out at high volume, the reporter frantically talking over the top of the sound of people screaming in the background. She cranked down the volume. Everyone’s attention had already been drawn by the images of Summanus moving around in the dark, their long arms swinging, as they swiped at humans running around them, past them, and away from them as fast as they could go.
“Man, there’s dozens of them,” Jake said.
Patrick glanced at the log line at the bottom of the screen. Sao Paulo, Brazil. He looked at Dominic. “Is there anyone in Chile that you should make contact with, just to check on them?”
“Is that where you’re from?” Simone asked. “I thought you were from Mexico.”
“I’m from LA, now,” Dominic said. “I do have family in Santiago.” His gaze shifted to Patrick and he could see the worry in his eyes. “I haven’t spoken to anyone for years. Not since….” He began to stir the eggs, concentrating on them. “They think I’m dead.”
Underneath the sound of CNN, the kitchen was silent. Everyone was looking at him.
“Does it matter that they think you’re dead?” Jake said. “Everything’s changed now.” He pointed at the TV. “Just look at that.” His expression was pinched and his eyes wide, like a hurt child. Childhood wasn’t all that many years behind him, Patrick reminded himself. Even though the boy stood nearly as high as Dominic, he was still trying to figure out the ways of the world.
“Perhaps we should turn the TV off while we have breakfast,” Patrick said.
“God, yes please!” Simone said. “I’m so sick of hearing about the Others. It never ends.”
Eloise turned off the TV and the silence was a relief.
Dominic was doing mysterious things with spices and taco chips that he had pulled out of the back of the cupboard. “You know,” he said, speaking casually. “It’s possible this war could last for years.”
Jake pressed his lips together. “How many years?”
“It may not end before you are officially an adult,” Dominic said softly. “All of you should start thinking about how you’re going to live your lives with the Summanus all around you.”
This time the silence was all almost profound. Patrick’s heart began to beat. He could see the fear in their eyes, as what Dominic said opened up their perceptions beyond the self-absorbed concentration on their own little affairs that was so typical of teenagers.
“They’re not going away, are they?” Simone said softly.
Patrick could see Dominic hesitate. So he spoke, instead. He used the same calm voice that Dominic had used. “No, they’re probably not leaving. Not without some sort of miracle and we seem to be short on those these days.”
“So….” Eloise began. “Things are never going to go back to the way they were. We are always going to be fighting them, aren’t we?”
Patrick nodded.
The same loaded silence filled the room.
Then Eloise picked up the coffee mugs that Jake had been filling and silently began adding them to the table in front of each place.
Jake brought over cream and sugar, while Simone laid out plates in front of Dominic for him to serve up the eggs.
They were all sitting around the table before anyone spoke. Breakfast was in front of them, except for Patrick, who sat at the head of the table opposite Dominic, in front of an empty place.
“Is there any point in going to school, then?” Jake asked.
“What you think?” Patrick replied.
“I think we’re going to school, anyway.” He sounded peeved.
No one mentioned the Others after that, even though the conversation flowed easily, free of any tension. It was as though everyone was trying to avoid the subject.
And that was just fine with Patrick. The Summanus had inverted his life, too. He should follow Dominic’s advice and figure out what sort of life he wanted, now that the Others were here.
He was long overdue for some serious thinking.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Republic of Karelia, Russia
“You’ve been drinking too much vodka, my friend,” Marcus told Sasha, as he struggled breathlessly through thigh-high snow.
Sasha glared at him and hitched his backpack into a more comfortable position. “If I had known that I was going to spend a week traipsing
through the forests of Karelia, I would never have met you in St. Petersburg.” He paused and wiped sweat from his brow from underneath the heavy wool cap he was wearing. “Do you not think this is a fool’s mission?”
“I double-checked Rick’s computations,” Marcus said. “Nial agreed, too. If Rick says the Elah are here, then it’s a safe bet he’s right. He rarely makes mistakes.”
Sasha took a few more steps, trying to push his knees through the snow and making a wading movement. “He does make mistakes, yes?”
Marcus chose to ignore that question. He took a swig from the insulated thermos and grimaced at the cool coffee. Despite the very best insulation, the coffee had chilled off in the last few hours. At least it hadn’t iced over yet.
He looked around. For as far as the eye could see, towering firs stood over them. They hadn’t seen the sun for three days, except for quick glimpses every now and again through the canopy.
“You weren’t planning on sneaking up on them, were you?” Sasha asked. He grunted as he swung his knees for two more steps, then looked at Marcus. “Because there’s no way either of us can sneak up on anything right now.”
“Nope,” Marcus said shortly.
Sasha halted again. He had caught up with Marcus now. He looked at him with suspicious eyes. “You want them to find us.”
Marcus shrugged. “There are a lot more of them than there are of us and this is a big forest. Besides, someone has been following us for a couple of hours. I’m wondering why they haven’t shown themselves. They must surely see that we’re completely harmless.”
Sasha grew still. Only his eyes moved as he tried to peer in all directions. “How close are they?”
“Close enough to hear how unfit you are.” He turned and faced the trees in the general direction he thought they were. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
The creature stepped out from behind a tree to Marcus’s left, not too far away from where Marcus had thought it would be.
Sasha swore softly in Russian. He clearly didn’t like that someone had been able to sneak up on them. His paranoia had been spooked.
Marcus couldn’t take his eyes off the creature. It was clearly an Elah, because he had never seen any animal wear clothing before. It looked human, with arms and legs about the right length and a head about the right size. It was difficult to measure how tall the creature was because it was not standing at the same level as them. It only sank into the snow a few inches and had no trouble walking toward them.
Sasha fumbled for his gun under his heavy parka. Marcus grabbed his wrist and shook his head. Sasha subsided.
The Elah stopped several paces away from them and studied them. It was a mutual observation, for Marcus could not look away either. He was not sure of the sex. The Elah probably could not determine their gender, either, thanks to the heavy clothing they wore.
It had skin that was almost gray in color and very inhuman-looking. Its chin was sharp and fine and the nose was sharp, too. Its eyes were big, and they were set as far apart as a human’s. There was the suggestion of brows above.
It also had hair, of a distinctly furry type—thick and dark. It sprang up from the head and bent back, as if it was trying to stand up against a heavy wind. The brows had to be of the same coarse hair.
Its mouth was small and as Marcus looked at it, the thin lips moved. It spoke.
Marcus stared at it in astonishment. He didn’t understand what it was saying, but he did recognize the words. It was speaking Russian.
“What did it say?”
“It’s said, why are you here?”
“Does it speak English?”
“I speak what you call English only a little,” the creature said. Its voice sounded very human and distinctly male in tenor. Marcus stopped himself from concluding that the creature was male. Perhaps this is what all the females sounded like. Maybe the males had the light voices. They just didn’t know enough to draw any sorts of conclusions just yet.
“We’re here,” Marcus said, “because we were hoping we could speak to your leader. The one that we called Dai Chi. My apologies if this is not his name. It is the only name we have for him.”
“His name cannot be spoken in any of the languages that we have learned so far. Dai Chi will do for now. It is a symbol only, representing our leader.”
“Humans take their names very seriously,” Marcus said. “Clearly you haven’t figured that out yet. Would it be possible to speak to Dai Chi?”
“Why would you want this?” The Elah tilted its head, considering them carefully.
“We are quite harmless,” Marcus assured him.
“Yet you both carry guns.” The Elah did not smile, nor did its face move in any way that suggested emotion. It remained smooth and almost flawless in its symmetry. “Dai Chi has declared that you must put such weapons aside. He would speak with you. He has questions.”
As they pulled out their pistols and dropped them to the snow, Sasha looked around the forest and the blinding white snow. “Is he very far away?”
Almost in answer, dozens of Elah stepped out from around the tree trunks surrounding them. They moved silently, with only the light crunch of snow to give them away. All of them wore clothing of human origin, designed to trap warmth against the body. All of them carried elongated knives, that looked like they had been shaved out of wood. Marcus studied the edge of the blades and could see that they were sharp. He had no doubt that the blades would cut as efficiently as a steel knife.
The very last Elah to step out of hiding was taller than the rest. He wore what looked like an old Russian military greatcoat, with the insignia stripped away. Just from the way the Elah was holding itself, Marcus knew that he was looking at a leader. There was an agelessness about him and his eyes had the same far away, history-filled wisdom in them that Marcus had seen in some of the vampires who had lived for thousands of years. Nial sprang to mind.
Except this Elah’s eyes were a slightly darker gray than its skin. There were no irises and nothing like irises that would help the eyes compensate for different levels of light. The whole eye was gray.
“Dai Chi?” Sasha said softly to Marcus.
“So that would be no, then. They’re not that far away at all,” Marcus concluded.
* * * * *
Dai Chi only spoke Russian, so Sasha had to act as interpreter. After a while, Marcus forgot that Sasha was interpreting and only heard the words as if it was a normal conversation.
The conversation took place right where the Elah had found them. Many bows and branches were bought into the tiny clearing and spread upon the top of the snow, the soft fronds acting as padding for their backsides.
Marcus was more than happy to sit after walking for three days and Sasha groaned loudly as he put himself down on the ground and shrugged off his backpack.
The Elah did not sit. They squatted, their knees pressed up against their chests as they folded up on themselves and wrapped their arms around their calves. None of them seemed to feel the cold quite as badly as humans did, so Marcus’s first negotiation was to ask for a fire to be lit.
The request was also a test. He wanted to know if they used fire.
As they whispered with their heads together for a few moments, he listened to their native speech. There were discernible words there, using syllables and emotional inflections. He suspected that it might be possible for humans to learn their language.
That was a task for another day. Today, he had a more important goal to achieve.
He did not see how they started the fire, but within minutes of his request, dry kindling had been bought and the flames sprang up. Second branches were added, proving that the Elah knew how to handle fire.
Sasha leaned toward the heat with an appreciative sigh and held his hands out toward the flame.
This seemed to alarm them, until they realized that Sasha was not putting himself on fire.
Dai Chi did not sit, nor did he squat. He remained standing on the other side o
f the fire, his gaze flickering between Sasha and Marcus. Marcus wasn’t sure if he was anthropomorphizing or not, but it seemed to him that Dai Chi was very intelligent. He was also immortal and the only leader among the Others who had survived being held captive in the Blood Stone.
That must give anyone of intelligence a very different perspective on life.
Marcus had learned a lot about how long life affected the way one looked upon the world through dealing with the vampires and especially Rick, who was on his third millennia. So it allowed Marcus to shape the way he approached the conversation.
“I am human,” he explained. “I am here to represent vampires. You have clearly been studying humans, enough to learn their languages and their ways, including clothing. You have been hiding out in the forests of the world while you did so. That has led some of us to believe that you do not intend to attack humans. That is why I am here today.”
“Perhaps we are merely biding our time,” Dai Chi said. “We wait until you waste your strength upon the Summanus. Then we attack.”
“You do not have the numbers to attack humans,” Marcus pointed out. “Even humans depleted by Summanus’ attacks.”
“The Summanus will not stop their attacks. If we wait long enough, then your numbers will be few enough for us to deal with.”
Marcus felt the chill seep into his body. He pushed the negativity aside. He had to concentrate. “All of this is true. If you wait long enough, we will be weak enough for you to fight us and perhaps win. Except that you have not made allowances for the human will to live. It defeated you once before, do you remember?”
The Elah in the clearing shifted on their haunches and Marcus knew he had made a point.
Dai Chi did not move.
“Those of us who have studied you believe that it is not your will to fight the humans.” Marcus held his breath.
Dai Chi did move this time. He turned and walked in a circle while the Elah all pushed themselves to their feet and got out of his way. Then he came back to the spot where he had been standing and spoke. “We remember very well. We remember that humans breed much faster than we do. We remember that their numbers are akin to those of the Summanus, overwhelming the Earth so that it cannot breathe.”
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