by Amber Jayne
Virge couldn’t help but look around her, knowing that the Weapon was gone, knowing that he’d occupied this very space just seconds before.
Dove on him? Grabbed him? A man with wings? She could barely wring any sense from the words.
Then Pelkra said the name that brought it into focus, which lent her story an awful believability. She said, “Rune.” She fired off the arrow, reached immediately for another. “I recognized him. He was blindfolded but the rest of his face was bare.”
Virge looked upward—and instantly regretted it. Above, seemingly far too close, the Black Ship spread in every direction. There was no sign of sky, just that terrible wriggling, glowing monstrosity. Nausea swam in her. But somehow she concentrated. She scanned the heavens. She didn’t see Urna. Or Rune. But this clear tract of land was surrounded by many crumbling buildings. The two men could be lost among those towers by now.
Rune. The Shadowflash. He’d come for his Weapon. There was no other explanation.
“What the hell’s going on?” came from below. Gator again. The first indication of strain in the big man’s voice. Pelkra fired another arrow. Hervo, in the lead vehicle, twanged off two crossbow bolts.
Virge saw the black shapes racing toward the two stopped transports. Some were skittish of the headlights, while others kept coming. She raised the pistol, using two hands. She sighted along the barrel, slit her eyes. And, doing a thing she had never done before, she pulled on the trigger.
A dozen yards out a Passenger flipped over backward, scraped at the ground with wicked claws for a second or two, then lay still. It was the dumbest of dumb luck, the sort of thing that can never happen until it does.
Pelkra, meanwhile, had called down the news to Gator. Gator said something in reply that Virge, aiming and firing again, didn’t hear. Next to her on the roof, the bowwoman made some sort of hand sign at Hervo in his sniper’s nest in the forward vehicle. A moment later Arvra was moving, Gator pursuing. And Virge Temple was picking off Passengers as best she could. There wasn’t even time to hope that Urna was okay.
* * * * *
The strain was fantastic. Rune’s arms were wrenched at the shoulder sockets, hard enough that he literally thought, in those first seconds, that they would be torn wholly from his trunk. That Urna would go plummeting away, still wrapped in the Shadowflash’s frantic, bodiless embrace. That Rune himself would soar higher and higher, armless, twin gouts of blood erupting from the new ghastly gaping holes at his shoulders.
But no such grisly and gory eventuality came to pass. Instead, Rune’s plan—devised quickly, in the field, his combat training asserting itself—succeeded. He had come within the proper range. He’d heard the Weapon’s breathing, detected the tight grunt each time he discharged his pistol. He distinguished from all the other noise the minute tugging of facial muscles as Urna broke into a grin.
First, though, Rune had seen the two vehicles, the very ones described by the Guard over the radio. He had hovered above, at last laying the blindfold over his eyes, allowing his other senses their full dominion. Finally, after following awhile, he’d seen his chance. The vehicles were in the clear. He had plunged upon his target.
He had caught Urna beneath the arms, hooking him, colliding with him and using that swooping momentum to lift the Weapon from the roof of the hulking transport. He dove in an arc, so to pluck up and carry his prey away. Upward. Up. Away from the Passengers, away from the band of salvagers Urna had evidently fallen in with. Leave the ground behind.
To the roofs. But still the strain was terrible, and Rune could barely hold on. His hands were locked across Urna’s narrow chest. The angle of their ascent was steep and rapid. As the Weapon’s silver hair streamed over his face, the wings were taxed all the more, now with a double load. The motor protested. If it gave out before they got to a rooftop, all would be finished. The only compensation would be that the two would die together, locked in this belly-to-back embrace, a lunatic, precarious parody of countless lovemakings.
They rose and rose. The ground shrank away. Urna, still in shock probably, barely squirmed in his grasp. Rune aimed them for the apex of a looming, decaying tower. Its crown was flat and hopefully wide enough for any kind of landing.
Fire screamed through Rune’s arms. Blood hammered in his skull. His breath had left him and not returned yet he managed, even so, to growl into Urna’s hair, “You are mine.” Which was the truth. The absolute truth that governed the Shadowflash’s existence. Urna was his.
Elyria wanted to suck them back down to its surface. The wings howled alarmingly. The chill air clawed them.
But Rune, peering past locks of whipping silver, saw the top of the tower approaching, its edge coming into view. They were nearing the roof, so close, so close—
* * * * *
When he was let go, it was not a soft landing he met. Instead, stone. Tumbling and flailing. His body the proverbial marionette with the cut strings. And someone had flung this toy without care, letting it roll and bruise and bleed.
And yet Urna scarcely felt a thing.
His eyes were closed as he at last flopped to a halt. Nevertheless, he saw. The child with the beautiful eyes. Eyes just like his own.
Whatever floodgate Kath had opened, be it by legitimate magic or simple power of suggestion, there was more behind that unlocked barrier. Information. Memories. They were meant to come slow but strong, so she’d said. But now it was as if too much were trying to get through at once, permitting only a trickle, promising an imminent deluge. It frustrated him. But he didn’t let the frustration eat at him. Instead, lying still on the hard stone, he let the memories come.
They were standing in the light, he and Rune. Sunlight. These children had known no oppression, no darkness, however distant. They had lived free. Then something had happened to change all that. Did that mean they had been raised inside the Lux city? It was the only explanation that made sense. Only, the feel of the memory indicated some different place.
Again Rune was trying to tell him something. Warning him of some danger that he, Urna, could not comprehend, or did not want to.
“They’re going to take us away, Laine. We have to run. Run away and hide.”
Laine?
A name. Freighted heavy with meaning, with memory. It brought a delicious ache to Urna’s chest. Laine. A lovely name. A treasured name. A name he must never lose…
He was on the cusp. The totality of his remembrances loomed near. They hadn’t been destroyed, just damaged. Not obliterated beyond retrieving, merely confused and veiled. But the drugs were out of his system. The mental dampening had eased. Kath had applied her magic—and, yes, why not admit that such a thing as magic could exist? Must exist.
But there came an intrusion. An intruder. A hand seized him, a hand grabbing the collar of his coat, lifting his head from where it had come to rest. Inside his skull, Urna—Laine?—felt the vast slosh of memories, warm bright waters slapping the bony confines of his head. Don’t disturb them! Let the memories come!
He heard harsh breaths. The hand pulled tighter, winding itself into the coat’s fabric, drawing the collar cruelly about Urna’s throat.
“You…are…mine.” The breath was on his face now. The other hunkered near, still cinching the coat’s collar. It could become a strangling.
Urna opened his eyes. Doing so brought the pain, all the hurts of the rough landing. Tears stung his eyes. He tasted blood on his tongue. Wild dark hair framed the familiar face that hovered over him. The beautiful eyes were cloaked by a strip of black. Cruelty stamped those features. Madness, maybe. And agony as well.
Love gave that face such pain.
Urna, sprawled helplessly on the rooftop, beneath the immense and ghastly canopy of the Black Ship, gazed up at Rune. Not a child now. Rune continued to grip his collar. In his other hand was a pistol. Its maw hovered before Urna’s face.
“Micah,” said the onetime Weapon to the current Shadowflash.
Chapter Eighteen
; The taller of the two buildings occupying opposite points of the intersection was only partially collapsed. The one across from it had almost completely tumbled in on itself, only its steel framework revealing its original height. The vehicles made a path between these piles. It was a squeeze.
Arvra had seen the Weapon snatched from the roof of the transport behind her. Her eyes had been on the rearview mirror when it happened. She had seen as well the face of the man who’d abducted Urna in such a dramatic way. Rune. He was even wearing that distinctive blindfold like in the publicity photos the broadcast commentators showed when they were discussing the Shadowflash’s prowess. Arvra was sure it had been him, though she’d said nothing to Bongo and Hervo. Those two didn’t need any distractions.
Neither did she, she thought grimly. They’d made fast time across the park, despite losing Urna on the way. Now, Bongo said, they were only one block from the arsenal.
A lot could happen in one block.
She steered the six-wheeled vehicle through the littered street. It was worse, in her opinion, being in these ancient rotted cities than out on the gray, lifeless open spaces of the Unsafe. In the colorless flats and hills you could—providing you didn’t look up—pretend you were just crossing some particularly dreary stretch of land. But within these sad, old cities you were helpless against imagining what they must have been like when they were inhabited, functioning. Alive. And those thoughts led invariably to the cold realization of how many had died here. Whole populations just wiped out. Slaughtered by the Passengers. Granted, those deaths were long ago. But being here, on these streets and among these soaring, ruined structures, made the ancient tragedy seem like it could have happened yesterday.
Arvra gripped the wheel tighter, detouring around a heap of bricks that had fallen, many years ago probably, into the lane.
“That should be the building.” Bongo pointed.
Arvra gritted her teeth. “Should?”
“Is,” the blond man amended. “It is.”
Behind them Hervo loosed yet another crossbow bolt. Farther behind came the discharge of the pistol. The woman named Virge had taken up Urna’s firearm, it seemed. As far as Arvra could tell, the female in the Guard outfit was making decent use of the weapon.
The Weapon. The word, in another context, touched her memory. Again Urna’s image flashed across her mind. His naked form, his silver hair spilling over her. But the vision was quickly canceled by one of him being torn from the roof of the vehicle and borne away into the sky.
Arvra braked. The structure was a dark block with stolid architectural lines. Slit windows looked out onto the jumbled street. It was a squat building compared to some of the towers nearby, but had weathered the long years better. Aside from some crumbling at its uppermost story, it appeared intact.
Carved into the facade, still just legible, were the words POLICE ARMORY. A wide green metal door stood ajar just beneath.
Behind them, Gator slowed, turned, wrangled his big-wheeled transport around so that its lights pointed outward into the street. Arvra copied his maneuver. It put the loading hatches for both holds toward the squat structure.
“Okay,” Arvra said, feeling a quickening of blood in her veins but holding her voice steady. She turned her gaze toward Bongo. “It’s you, me and Gator—we go in and start collecting the goods. The others give us cover. Simple. We do it fast. Got it?”
Bongo had already heard the plan but he nodded. They jumped out, leaving Hervo in his elevated seat. Gator had already climbed down and was hurrying toward them. Virge too, Arvra saw, had hopped down from the transport’s rooftop. Pelkra, pulling the feathered end of an arrow back toward her cheek as she sighted on a target, stayed where she was.
“You’re supposed to be giving us cover,” Arvra said sharply as Virge approached, the pistol still in her fist.
Virge indicated the partially collapsed rooftop. “I’ll have a better vantage from up there.” She ignored the skeptical look Arvra gave her and strode toward the structure.
“And how exactly…” Arvra started, then her voice trailed off as the woman in the Guard uniform slipped the pistol into her waistband and vaulted onto the highest point of the debris piled in front of the building. It wasn’t a particularly good jump, but she managed not to fall. Arvra was further startled when Virge showed no hesitation in using her new perch as a sort of springboard to launch herself at the facing wall. Arvra’s eyes widened, but Virge caught onto the bottom edge of one of the slit windows. It was a struggle to swing her left arm up, but she did it. There were plenty of handholds on the decrepit fascia and soon she was making her way up. It was more a matter of tenacity than athletic skill.
Next to Arvra, Bongo let out a chuckle. “That girl just keeps on surprising me.”
“Let’s get to it,” Arvra said, flexing her fingers in her gloves. The air was crisp, as it always was under-Ship. All around them the dead city lay, contrarily alive with the scuttlings and scurryings of Passengers.
The trio made for the green metal door.
* * * * *
When Virge reached the roof she pulled herself up and over the small rise of the ledge. Several large pieces of slate scraped away under her feet, falling into the building. She heard them crack and looked back over her shoulder to see blackness. There wasn’t much of a roof left to speak of. She was panting from her efforts but not exhausted by them, rather, she felt exhilarated in a way.
She could hardly believe what she’d done. But whatever instinct had compelled her to scale this building, it was the right tactical move. She saw that clearly as she took the gun from her belt and surveyed the view. She had a terrific sweep of the street below, and firing off this weapon during the past several minutes had proven to her that she could hit a target.
Pelkra looked up and Virge lifted a hand to let her know she was all right and in place. Glancing around herself, she saw that the rooftop was all but gone. Large holes would drop her down onto the floor below if she wasn’t careful where she stepped. But at least she was alone up here, with no Passengers for company. She stayed near the ledge, feeling much like one of those gargoyles that decorated the eaves of some of the older, statelier buildings in her town—her former town.
From here she could see for several blocks in each direction. There were few Passengers in sight and no armor-plated Guard units coming for them. Not that she was expecting the latter. Gator had said the Guard wouldn’t follow. She believed that.
The Guard policed the Safe. But the military worked the Unsafe.
Rune had taken Urna. The shock of that had punched a hole in her mind, leaving a deadness, a blackness into which she couldn’t look too closely. She could only wish that the Weapon was still alive, that Rune hadn’t come to kill his wayward teammate.
She could also only hope that more military personnel weren’t on their way. If that were the case, the Passengers might end up being the least of their problems. There was no telling what duty Aphael Chav would charge the other Shadowflash/Weapon teams with tonight. Possibly, they were in the Unsafe right now. Rune had ended the search for their renegade brother. But old Aphael might be after this very team of illegal salvagers.
But it did raise the question—how the fuck had he found out about them in the first place?
Virge Temple, crouching on the crumbling roof’s edge, caught sight of movement below, still half a block distant. She took her time, aimed carefully, squeezed off a shot. By now she was used to the gun’s kick. The Passenger fell. It hadn’t even gotten near the vehicles. She grinned. Despite Aphael Chav and Rune and anybody else who showed up, this operation might just succeed after all.
* * * * *
“Let go of me,” Urna ground out through his teeth. “Let…go.” His pale face was beginning to darken. Rune could hear the blood gathering into his cheeks. That beautiful face. He had to see it.
But he had the Weapon’s coat collar wound up in one fist. That was what was choking Urna. In his other, Rune gripped his pist
ol. It was aimed squarely at Urna’s forehead.
A giddy horror raced within the Shadowflash. Thoughts and emotions were flitting through him almost too swiftly to leave any true trace. He didn’t know what was going to happen here, upon this rooftop. That uncertainty was intoxicating.
Choosing to hold on to the gun, Rune released Urna’s collar then reached up to yank the blindfold from his eyes. A second’s wavering passed as his vision focused. He no longer needed his other senses enhanced so to track the Weapon. He had him. He had him. But what was that name Urna had just called him?
Name?
Why did he think the word—a strange, unfamiliar word—was a name?
Micah.
They had barely reached the top of this tower. Rune had thought the wings were going to give out just before he could carry himself and Urna past the edge. But they’d made it, and once over, Rune had lost his grip on Urna, the Weapon tumbling alarmingly across the gritty surface. Rune had cut the wings’ motor but had made a poor landing himself, hitting the ground at a bad angle. He too had rolled, no doubt bruising himself. A knee and an elbow both throbbed painfully but it was a pain he could ignore for now. Undoing the harness had taken some effort, but he’d gathered himself together before Urna had. And now he had the advantage. The Shadowflash dominated the Weapon.
Urna had a scrape on his forehead, which was oozing blood. A hank of his silver hair was pasted against this wound. He blinked his dark blue eyes again and again. He looked ridiculous out of his combat clothes. No Weapon should visit the Unsafe dressed like he was, in civilian garb.
The thought twisted a strange, high laugh from Rune. He cut it off and, with the pistol still pointed at Urna’s head, said, “What did you call me?”
“Micah.” Urna turned his head, spat out blood. Internal injuries? No, Rune saw. He’d only bitten his tongue when he landed. Perhaps he’d actually suffered no worse injury than that. “I can explain…”