by Bobby Adair
Thinking that he was on a lucky streak, Oliver scanned the grounds below, hoping that from his high vantage, he'd spot a glint of shiny metal sparkling against the dark ground. Maybe he'd find a gun like the ones Jingo had described. Maybe he'd find one small enough to carry with him. That was a power that appealed to Oliver.
He was still searching when he spotted movement.
The movement startled him. At first he thought it was a demon, but as he scanned through the dark shadows around the jumble of wrecked ships, he recognized a human gait. Someone was running through a gaping, rusty hole on the side of a leaning ship.
The woman with the gun.
Oliver leaned forward, watching her disappear inside the distant ship below.
Chapter 9: William
After Winthrop's pronouncement, his people leaned closer, hungering for another word. William glanced frantically from one side of the fire to the other, afraid he'd just been condemned. He struggled and kicked against the men holding him. Winthrop's smile oozed across his face. Some of the priestesses held their hands over their lips, urging William to be quiet.
"Blood him! Blood him!" someone in the crowd yelled.
"The blood of our god will show him the way!" said someone else.
With fingers stretched wide from big hands, Winthrop stepped toward William.
William screamed.
"It's okay, my son." Winthrop laid his palm on William's forehead. "Whatever spells the demons have cast over you will be broken."
"You will taste the warmth of our god," one of the men told him assuredly as he held William's shoulders.
William lunged forward, ready to run through the fire for his freedom. He felt like he'd landed in a nightmare, in which Winthrop had taken over the Ancient City instead of Brighton.
Fear coursed through William's body as several more men carried a limp, gnarled carcass of a demon and laid it next to them. Winthrop cast a glance at the demon corpse, then let go of William's forehead and waved a woman over who had been lingering at the edge of the circle. In her hands was a knife that was large and sharp enough to hack through William's skull.
William tried to squirm to break free, but the men forced him to his knees.
Winthrop watched as the woman knelt down next to the dead demon. William's eyes darted to the corpse. He recognized it. The demon's knobs and warts—indistinguishable to anyone else—had become identifying marks to William. The demon's eyes were dark and sightless, its dying gasp stuck on its lips. It had tried to save him. And now it was dead.
The tempo of the chant quickened. Heads swayed and hands waved in the air and the circle filled in around him.
"Blood him! Blood him!"
"Show him the way!"
"Show him the light of our god!"
William felt like the crowd was preparing to consume him. After a nod from Winthrop, the woman with the knife lowered the blade to the demon, slicing its chest open. William cried out for help, as if the demon might spring to life and assist him. The woman lifted the demon corpse with the help of another man, offering it to Winthrop. Winthrop leaned down and buried his palm in the flowing blood, his eyes dark, his lips moving as the people chanted around him.
"Stop struggling, my son! The power of my blood will cure you of the demon-curse!"
Winthrop held up his blood-drenched hand. "My blood will make you stronger! It will cure you of the demons!"
Winthrop took a step, red blood dripping from his fingers.
The more William struggled, the harder the men refocused their efforts.
Winthrop slapped his palm against William's shirt. William cried out in fear, closing his eyes, waiting for the pain to come, certain he was living the last moments of his life. But the only sensation he felt was the blood seeping through the fabric of his shirt.
Surprised that he wasn't dead, he gathered the courage to open his eyes. He looked down, expecting some mortal injury, but he saw only red imprints where Winthrop's large, splayed fingers had been.
"I have cured the demon boy!" Winthrop screamed, prompting cheers from the crowd. "The boy is immortal!"
The crowd screamed and resumed their chanting.
Chapter 10: William
The tall bonfire blazed hot on William's skin, but Winthrop stood even closer to the flames, ecstatic, entranced, the focus of every crazed eye in the ancient, circular building. Winthrop didn't burn, though. He didn't even notice the fire as it whipped flares of orange flame at the black sky.
Everywhere on the ground, between the fires, up the tiers of ancient stone and all the way up to the giant, thick rafters overhead—the fragile old bones of a once grand place—Winthrop's zealots stomped their feet, shook the ground, and pulsed the building itself.
Thrump, thrump, thrump.
They chanted, "Our beast, our soul, our god!"
The sound permeated William, shaking his guts and rattling his bones.
Thrump, thrump, thrump.
"Our beast, our soul, our god!"
Every demon in the city had to hear. William knew they did. But they didn't come.
Thrump, thrump, thrump.
"Our beast, our soul, our god!"
Outside, the demons heard the power of these people, like William felt it inside. And the demons were afraid.
William was past fear. He was wearing the blood of his own brother, and he was being ingested by the collective soul of Winthrop's mob as they slid willingly into the black abyss around Winthrop, yearning to touch his bloody robe, pining for a beatific gaze, aching for a loving smile.
Thrump, thrump, thrump.
"Our beast, our soul, our god!"
They were all mesmerized, and the trance was contagious in a way William never knew existed. He'd seen power before at every Cleansing back in Brighton—three councilmen sitting on a dais, doling out death to the smudged and unlucky. But that was power propped up by fear and swords.
Winthrop had transcended that smarmy, feeble, earthly power. He was something different. William didn't know what, but all these people thought Winthrop was a god.
And maybe he was.
Thrump, thrump, thrump.
"Our beast, our soul, our god!"
One of Winthrop's priestesses flung her robe open, exposing her naked skin for all to see. She sidled up to William, wrapped her slick, sweaty arms around him, and ground her pelvis against his with the rhythm of the chanting and the stomping.
Thrump, thrump, thrump.
"Our beast, our soul, our god!"
The stink of a crowd full of unwashed skin and soiled clothes dragged its oily fingers across William's tongue and up his nostrils. The stench of cleaved guts and burnt flesh screamed to William that he was in hell.
But Winthrop seductively called through silent lips, letting the incantations of thousands of proud voices pound their magic through William's resistance.
Thrump, thrump, thrump.
"Our beast, our soul, our god!"
William hated Winthrop and everything Winthrop had ever done.
Winthrop was death, the flame that killed his father, and the sword that hewed his demon brothers.
But Winthrop was more, something William couldn't see, something he couldn't define, something he couldn't begin to explain except through the power of all those voices, all those stomping feet, all that stinking flesh pressing in on him.
William wanted to belong to the mob. He wanted to follow Winthrop, wanted to love him.
Thrump, thrump, thrump.
"Our beast, our soul, our god."
Chapter 11: Bray
Locating a large tower on the edges of the weed-covered area of ancient stone, diagonal from the dome's entrance, Bray snuck inside, using the moonlight that shone through the windows to guide him to a set of stairs. He climbed in the dark, feeling his way along the wall, ensuring he didn't misplace his feet. The building reeked of damp rain that had gotten into the crevices, and the occasional rotting animal that had died deep in the building's bowels.
After climbing several flights of stairs, Bray paused and looked out across one of the levels, noting that he could only see the first few rows of Winthrop's people. The dome was a hundred feet away. He made a quick determination of how many more levels he'd need to climb to have a better view inside.
Bray was winded by the time he found a perch in an overlooking window halfway up the tower. The moonlight illuminated the edges of the room, revealing a set of scattered animal bones and rat droppings by his feet. He clung to the edge of the window and peered out the ancient building and into the Ancient Circle, comprehending the scope of Winthrop's army for the first time.
There were thousands.
The army was comprised of men and women of all varieties—blue shirts and what looked like farmers and tradesmen. The men and women chanted and danced, surrounding individual fires that blazed across the dome, turning gnarled carcasses on sticks, or smearing fresh blood on their faces. A massive group was congregated around a fire that was larger than the others, forming a circle around someone in a white robe who was waving his hands to the sky.
Winthrop.
Bray blew a relieved breath as he spotted a smaller figure that looked like William. William was unharmed, swaying in a line with some others, caught up in the ritualistic dance.
They'd adopted him like some abused orphan.
Stinking pig scratchers.
He wanted to ram his sword into their skulls, throw them into the fire, and put an end to their savagery, but that would have to wait. Bray's instinctual urge to get to William was tempered by the fact that he was still alive. If they hadn't killed William yet, chances are he'd be safe for a while longer, long enough for Bray to weigh his next move. He considered slathering some blood on his clothes and stepping inside, dancing with the others, trying to get close, but he didn't see a clear way to ferret William away with so many in close proximity.
Watching William dancing with the others, he decided it would be more reasonable to wait until morning, when the group's interest in William died down.
Feeling the ache of climbing more stairs than he could count, Bray closed his eyes to rest.
Chapter 12: Oliver
Oliver waited, and he watched. He didn't know if the woman was inside the ship for a moment, or for the rest of the night. Maybe the grounded ship was where she lived, now that her town had been destroyed and all of its residents slaughtered. What he did know was that he didn't want to lose track of her.
Oliver quietly observed from his high perch.
Every passing moment led him to believe she'd be staying inside long enough for him to climb down the tower. Once he started down, all of his concentration would be focused on placing his feet and gripping the thick logs in just the right way to keep him from slipping off and falling to his death. He wouldn't be able to watch the row of ships. In fact, the lower he descended, the less visibility he'd have of the ships washed up on the shore. In those minutes, the woman might slip away.
When enough time had passed, Oliver steeled his nerves and gave the shadowy ships one last look. He scooped up several of the big bullets and put them in his pocket as proof for the others of what he'd found. He gripped the rail and climbed over the observation deck's wall.
On the way down, he thought about running back to the tower where the others were sleeping and alerting Ivory, who was taking his turn keeping watch. But that was a wish more than a thought. Oliver didn't want to risk letting the woman escape while he crossed the town, trying to rouse the others from their sleep. No, he had to do this alone.
Once his feet landed solidly on the ground, Oliver turned and jogged past the corpses scattered in the wide spaces between the towers. The closer he got to the shore, the more he saw of the wrecked ships, but he saw nothing moving—no woman running away in the dark, no eyes in the shadows looking back at him.
He came to a stop beside the remains of a collapsed cabin that stood closer to the shore than any other building in the settlement. The cabin was now little more than a pile of half-burned logs and boards entombing blackened bodies.
From his hiding place by the cabin, Oliver looked at the ship into which the woman had disappeared. It was huge, and laying half in and half out of the surf, rolled onto its side like some enormous, dead beast. What had to have been the top—the deck, as Jingo called it—was facing Oliver. It was planked with what had been exquisitely cut, perfectly straight boards before they'd had suffered in the weather and waves. Many were warped and peeling away from the ship's skeleton. Other boards were rotted in place, exposing holes like the one through which the woman had disappeared.
On the deck was what looked like a building, with doors and windows, now standing sideways with the rest of the ship. The deck held other, smaller structures that seemed to have no purpose. The ship looked like an artifact created by the Ancients. It had the appearance of great age.
Before crossing the open distance to the ship, Oliver took a long look at its windows and doors, those facing the surf below, and those facing the settlement. He tried to discern the black shapes through the holes in the deck, but saw nothing identifiable. With no human or demon face looking back at him, he ran through the tall grass until his feet crunched on rocks and shells on the shore that sloped steeply to the water's edge.
Knowing he could do nothing to hide the sound of his feet, he bounded across the beach and only slowed when he splashed into the surf. He gasped as the cold sea filled his boots and the smooth, rolling waves pushed salty water up over his knees. He waded toward the big hole in the leaning ship into which he'd seen the woman disappear.
Anxious to get out of the freezing water, Oliver reached out, grabbed hold of a rusty piece of metal rail, and steadied himself to listen. He desperately wanted to climb through the hole, but he knew that rushing into the ship's dark interior without listening for demons was risking an ambush.
Waves splashed against the ship's hull. Floating debris softly clinked against metal deep in the shadows, making rhythmic sounds over the rise and fall of the water.
Leaning into the hole, Oliver saw a cavernous space of rusty metal walls and doorways leading to even darker places deeper inside the ship. Shafts of silver moonlight speared through the whole place, pouring through holes, some built into the ship, round with crusted edges, some that were tears through the thick, rusted and fragile steel. A mix of odd smells swirled into an unfamiliar odor, a new kind of rot. The ship smelled dead.
The remains of a metal stairway, now lying horizontal, groaned each time the water pushed it this way or that. Oliver climbed inside, sloshing carefully through water that rose and fell over his feet and ankles, stumbling a few times over debris hidden by the dark water. Of several doors that led out of the space, one was half submerged. Another was high up on a wall, accessible by way of a large pile of wreckage. Oliver reached the loosely jumbled rubble and worked his way up, careful to test each handhold and foothold for purchase. He didn't want creaking junk to alert the woman to his presence.
If she hadn't already spotted and evaded him.
Crawling into a sideways hallway almost tall enough for him to stand in, Oliver proceeded on careful steps. Doors lined the hall on what was now the ceiling and floor. The open doors above let in faint moonlight. The doors below him were pitfalls into darkness, sloshing water, and more foul smells.
Oliver didn't dare put a foot on any closed door for fear that it would give way and swing open.
Taking a moment to peak into each room with an open door, either above or below, Oliver worked his way down the hall.
"Don't move." The voice was menacing, especially given its strange accent, but it was a woman—the woman. It had to be.
Guessing that she was maybe twenty feet behind him, Oliver didn't think the woman was in a position to tell him what to do. He turned around and saw her dim shape down the hall. She was holding her weapon, not casually like before, but up against her shoulder, pointed at him as she looked down the length. Oliv
er asked, "Is that a real gun? Does it work?"
"Why are you here?" she demanded.
"I saw you." Oliver pointed in the direction of the tower he'd seen her from, as if that was sufficient explanation for how his sighting came to pass.
"Where are your friends?"
"My friends are asleep," said Oliver.
"Why are you following me?"
"I wanted to find you." It seemed to Oliver like an obvious answer.
"You're being evasive," said the woman. She took a quick glance over her shoulder and asked, "Tell me why shouldn't I shoot you right now."
"Shoot me?" Oliver was intrigued. He'd seen the demon's wounds that Jingo said came from the guns, but he couldn't get past the magical nature of the weapon to the fact that it might actually kill him.
"Yes, shoot you. You don't think I'll do it?"
"I've never seen a gun shoot before. Did I use the word right? Shooting, that's what you do with a gun, right?"
"What?" The woman pointed her gun away for a second as she gawked at Oliver. She looked over her shoulder again. "Is there something wrong with you? Do you not understand things?"
"You have an accent," observed Oliver.
"No, you do," the woman told him. "Where are you from?"
"Brighton," answered Oliver, pointing vaguely west.
"How far is that from here?" asked the woman.
"Brighton is on the other side of the mountains," Oliver told her.
"How did you get here? Where's your ship?"
"I've never seen a ship until I saw these." Oliver stomped on the floor. "You must have a lot of steel where you come from. Did you make this ship, or did the Ancients make it?"
"The Ancients?" the woman asked.
"The people from before," answered Oliver. "The ones who built the ancient cities. The ones with the Tech Magic."
"Tech Magic." The woman's voice softened. The unspoken threats drifted away, and she looked over her shoulder again. Sounding like she was speaking to herself, she said, "You must be from one of the ignorant barbarian tribes." She heaved a sigh. "Maybe we've both got a lot to learn from each other."