by Kresley Cole
After the Flash, Jack had driven most of the time.
In a grave tone, Sol said, “All you had to do was ask me to go with you. I would have, without your threats hanging over my head.”
“Did you ask your prisoners if they wanted to fight for survival? Now drive.”
He shrugged and gave the truck some gas. We headed for the highway.
I watched in the side mirror as a shirtless “worshipper” sprinted after us with a duffel bag. He hurled it toward the back of the truck. . . . The bag landed well short.
This just wasn’t Sol’s day.
6
“Since you refuse to give me your name, what should I call you?” Sol asked. We were climbing higher into the hills, the road getting more treacherous. “O Great Empress? The Blond One? How about the Green Queen?”
I’d been staring out the window in silence, ignoring his attempts at conversation. As I took in one Flash-fried scene after another, I alternated from Evie to full-on Empress—leaf-strewn red hair, rose crown, dripping thorn claws, glowing glyphs—and back. At one point, I’d drummed my claws on the armrest with impatience, absently stabbing holes in it. Poison had collected.
Sol had shuddered in horror.
“Call me Empress.”
“We’re not on a first-name basis? Fine. You can call me Illuminator.”
“Yeah. That will never happen, Sol.”
Snow began to drift down. Jack’s words rang in my head, his voice over the radio when I’d ridden out to meet him: “So this is snow. . . .” A bayou boy, he’d never seen it before.
I’d been delighted by the clean white drifts. After a year of ever-present ash, the white had seemed like a blank slate.
With our voices linked, Jack and I had marveled at the snow.
My chest twisted so hard I almost screamed. Blinders! I fully believed that I would get him back. But the mere idea that we weren’t on the same plane made me crazed.
Sol said, “I still can’t believe the Empress is a real girl. For months, I’ve been hearing all these voices in my head, and then up pops one of them—in the very lovely flesh.” He’d been hearing our Arcana calls.
Matthew had told me mine was louder than everyone else’s. Apparently, my call had broadcast all the way to Indiana. Yet I’d never heard Sol’s.
He imitated my voice, “‘Come, touch . . . but you’ll pay a price.’” He raked his gaze over me. “Who wouldn’t pay it?”
Jack had. He would still be alive if he’d never met me. Or if I’d let him go after my battle against the Hermit Card.
Aric had paid over and over again.
He still hadn’t contacted me. Maybe the Arcana switchboard was down once more. After all, I hadn’t heard Sol’s call from mere feet away. Which would mean I had no mental link to my allies and friends.
And no idea where my enemies were.
Or maybe I just couldn’t consider the alternative: that Aric was too injured to respond. It wouldn’t matter anyway, because of time travel. Once I went back, I would keep him safe.
God, I could go nuts thinking about this! For days, I’d had zero sleep and little food. I wasn’t exactly tracking well. And the Sun’s leer wasn’t helping. “Are you done, Sol? Just pay attention to where you’re going.”
He wasn’t done. “I saw an image flash over you. You had your arms open, were beckoning me.” My Arcana tableau. “Some of the Azey soldiers spoke of supernatural people called Arcana. Even after so many baffling events—and my own powers—I scarcely believed.” I hadn’t either. “So if the voices are real, then the game must be too. I’ve heard enough to glean the basics. There are more than a dozen of us, right? And we’re all supposed to fight? To take each other’s—what are they called?—icons.”
I could confirm that a hand marking accompanied each kill. Instead, I shrugged. I didn’t trust this card whatsoever; keeping him ignorant seemed wise.
“You have icons, right? I thought I saw something on your new hand before you covered it.” When I didn’t answer, he asked, “Will there be other gods at Fort Arcana?”
Other gods. Ugh. Aric had called me a goddess, but he’d meant it figuratively.
“That makes sense,” Sol continued. “This fort of Arcana must shame my humble Olympus.”
The fort didn’t look like much, but it was strong. Jack had built it with his own two hands. “Fort Arcana was constructed out of anything available by people scrapping for a better life out in the Ash. Not everybody got to stroll into a ready-made stronghold.”
In a way, Sol was like the Hermit Card, a worm who slithered from one shell to another.
“Who started the game?” Sol asked. “What happens if you don’t wish to fight anyone?” Casting me a significant look, he said, “I’m a lover, querida, not a fighter.”
“No, you just make others fight. For your entertainment.”
“I could’ve drawn you a map to the fort, and then you could have killed me. Why kidnap me? Because I helped you regenerate?”
“I have plans for you.” If I was going to use Sol in the past to face the Emperor, would he need to be on Tess’s carousel with us? Would more people make it harder for her? Maybe I could go even further back in time, then drive up to Olympus to snag Sol before the clash.
Time-travel conundrums made my head hurt. I’d figure something out. . . .
Sol said, “Plans for me? Like using, then killing me?”
Bingo. But I didn’t want him to think his number would soon be up. “Drive faster.”
“Again, what’s the rush? We must be hurrying to meet other gods.”
I was stuck in this cab with a guy who thought he was divine. “Why don’t you concentrate on the road?”
“Sí. Okay.” Two minutes later: “Where are you from? With that drawl, I’m thinking Deep South.”
My heart ached to think of my native Louisiana. I tucked my hand into my pocket, touching the red ribbon.
Despite my silence, Sol said, “I’m from Barcelona. I came to the States for college. Do you speak Spanish?” Nope. Cajun French. “You don’t talk much, do you?”
Once upon a time, I’d been bubbly and friendly to everyone I’d met. “Maybe I just don’t talk much with murderers.”
“That’s rich, coming from you. I’ve learned enough about the game to say: takes one to know one, Empress.”
“I’ve killed in self-defense. You forced others to kill for sport. Even children.”
“Or perhaps I weeded out my followers based on their actions in that fight. I was well aware of the crying boy. My Bagmen referees wouldn’t have allowed the child to be hurt, and anyone who’d targeted him would’ve been disqualified from Olympus.”
“Yet there were no kids in your stands? Don’t lie to me again.” I tightened the Baggers’ collars in the back.
When they wailed, Sol clenched the steering wheel, and sunlight flickered from his face.
Thanks for the top-off. My body vine sprouted from my neck, nuzzling my cheek.
He grimaced at the sight, then said, “I sent children and parents on their way.”
I raised my hand to hurt the Baggers some more. I was glad I had two zombies to work with. I might have to gank one, just to show Sol I was serious.
“It’s true, Empress! Mierda! I swear it’s true.”
Maybe it was. But . . . “What about those injured prisoners who couldn’t get out of their cages fast enough? Your guards shot them in cold blood.”
“A mercy,” he said firmly. “Anyone injured A.F. is in a literal world of misery. Besides, I’d say eight out of ten of those men have murdered.”
I couldn’t quite disagree. I’d rarely met decent people out on the road. But that didn’t give me an excuse to round them up and play games with them.
Didn’t matter anyway. I wasn’t going to befriend this card. Sol might be better than the Lovers or Richter, but that bar was as low as Circe’s abyss.
“You threaten others so easily,” he said, sounding hurt. “Without a
thought. Why are you so cruel?”
“Bagmen aren’t others. They’re monsters.” My mother would be alive if not for them.
“Not to me. They’re my friends.”
The Lovers had called their carnates children. “Then you’re sick.”
“And you’re not? You’re over there necking a slithery vine. For all I know, you could be the most evil of the gods. Maybe I should ally with other Arcana and take you out.”
“Maybe.”
“I’ve heard of one who could hand you your ass. Doesn’t the Emperor control fire and volcanoes and earthquakes? He should be able to take on some measly plants.”
Enough! “The Emperor is a mass murderer! For sport, he annihilated hundreds of men, women, and children—non-Arcana, people who had nothing to do with this game.”
“Oh, really? And how do you know that?”
“I watched him do it! I heard Richter laugh as his lava burned them alive.”
Right before then . . . Jack and I had marveled at the snow.
BLINDERS!
Sol frowned at me. “Why should I believe you?”
“Half a day’s ride from Fort Arcana is a valley. You’ll be able to tell that he struck.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Why am I even telling you this? You don’t have sympathy for innocent people.”
He quietly asked, “How many people are innocent after the Flash?”
I hated that he had a point.
“Empress, from where I’m sitting, you’re merely the diablo I know.”
No, the Devil had been a totally different card.
7
I could hear the howl of the wind even through the bunker-thick walls of the electrical substation where we’d holed up. Jack always loved to stay in these—concrete cubes with steel doors and no windows. Good A.F. shelters.
Gale-force gusts had foiled my need to push ahead. The canvas on the back of the truck caught the winds like a sail; when we skidded on a patch of black ice, we’d nearly headed off a cliff. Guard-rail maintenance was a thing of the past.
Though I was racking up minutes I didn’t have to spare, I figured I couldn’t help Jack if I was in the bottom of a ravine somewhere.
I’d made a thorn cage inside for the Baggers, keeping them close for leverage. While I’d used flints to start a fire, my vines had dismantled a storage crate for wood. The smoke wisped upward and vanished through some crack or vent overhead. The flames were a reminder of Jack’s death, but soon I’d have him back.
I glanced over at Sol on the other side of the fire. He was still sullen because I’d yelled at him. Sure enough, there’d been a fairly new corpse when we’d stopped to refuel. I’d ordered Sol to remove the dead man’s boots.
The Sun had put up his nose. “That’s disgusting. I’d rather go without.”
I remembered when I’d been too freaked out to source sunglasses off a body. Or to retrieve a precious arrow out of a Bagger. How had Jack put up with me all that time? “You hang out with slimy Bagmen,” I’d pointed out, “and you’re calling a corpse disgusting? Baggers are corpses.”
He’d looked at me like I’d insulted his mother.
“Boots, Sol. Now!”
He’d refused, launching into a diatribe in Spanish, and things had gone downhill from there. . . .
Now I dug into my bag for a package of freeze-dried soup and a collapsible pot, courtesy of Sol’s “worshippers.” I’d always depended on easy-to-carry energy bars, but beggars, choosers, blah blah.
When had I eaten last? Couldn’t remember.
I dumped the package into the pot, mixing in water from my canteen. After the last week, I’d never take having two hands for granted. I set the pot over the flames, and stirred with an all-purpose utensil.
Sol’s stomach growled. “Are you going to share any with your captive?” He gestured to the soup with his bound hands.
“I might have, if my captive had offered to heat this room—and this meal—with his powers.”
His lips thinned. “If you’re not nicer to me, I’ll make sure you get a Bagman bite. Maybe not tonight, or even this week. But someday.”
I took the pot off the fire. “Try it, Sol. See where that lands you. I’m sure I’m immune.” Well, five percent sure. At his frown, I said, “Poison’s my thing.” I started to eat, blowing to cool my first spoonful. Pretty good.
“Bagmen don’t inject poison, venom, or even a pathogen. It’s a radiation-based mutation. Like something you’d find in comics.”
“I’ll just take your word for it. Besides, I regenerate. I can’t get sick,” I lied. I had no idea how my body would react to a comic-book mutation. I hadn’t caught bonebreak fever—but then, I hadn’t had the plague injected into my skin via a zombie’s mouth.
“One of my worshippers is a scientist,” Sol said. “He’s been studying Bagmen. Besides, I wouldn’t order a bite to turn you—I’d do it just to be a dick.”
“Ah. So I should watch my back for them?” I pointed to his caged pets. Silent and motionless, the two stared blankly ahead, gruesome with their creased skin.
“Those particular ones don’t bite anyone.”
The pot had cooled, so I drank straight from it. “Again, I’ll take your word for it.” And your icon, if you don’t shut up.
Once I’d finished about half the soup, I gazed at his seemingly sincere expression. Maybe I shouldn’t be trying to shut Sol up when I could be learning about an enemy. “So . . . does it make you tired to shine?” I took one last swig of dinner, then passed the pot to him.
He beamed. “Sí, it does.” He drank the soup straight down, then swiped his brawny arm over his mouth. “The colder the weather, the harder it becomes. But I’m getting more efficient with practice, so I use less power. Soon I’ll be able to light up the entire world, commanding a legion of Bagmen.”
Good to have goals, Sol. I wondered if the Sun Card had possessed this kind of control over Baggers in past games, latent within him, but had never discovered his ability. After all, there’d been no zombies to experiment with, no Flash to create them. “How’d you figure out you could direct them?”
“I was attacked on Day Zero.” His gaze grew unfocused, and he winced at whatever he was remembering. “I wanted them to stop hurting me, and suddenly they did.”
So he was immune to their bites as well. “Why didn’t your Bagmen react when you were shining? I thought they feared the sunlight.”
“If they’re not starving or dried out, the light doesn’t seem to bother them too much. In fact, they are drawn to me, seeming to sense me, even ones I’m not controlling.” He shrugged. “Unless they’re simply attracted to what they fear.”
As I’d been with Death? Aric, where are you? Silence. I glanced over at the two Baggers. “Can you talk to them in any way?”
“I can command them with my thoughts, see through their eyes, and hear through their ears. I can merge my mind with any Bagman within a certain range.”
“You borrow their senses?” As the Lovers had with their carnates, and Lark did with animals.
“Sí.” His eyes turned filmy white. “I can see the scorched Statue of Liberty through one Bagger’s eyes. Another Bagger just limped down a highway exit for Disney World.”
“What else?” Vincent had said his carnates had ranged all over, finding only ash and waste. “What about people?”
“Lots of fighting. Murders. Rapes.” Sol’s eyes cleared. “If you saw what I do every day, you would not have so much sympathy for the men in those cages.”
Probably.
“Each week, my range extends, and I’m able to meld with Bagmen farther away. One day I hope to reach my native Spain.” In a softer tone, he said, “Maybe my family survived.”
“Would you know if they were . . . turned?”
He nodded. “It’s likely they were. So many were transformed.”
I thought about those boys in the Lovers’ tent, the ones they’d purposely infected. I cringed to remember a half-turned boy cry
ing over a trough of blood, fully aware of what was happening to him. I asked Sol, “What do you feed these two?”
“Blood. There will be a jug of it in the back of the truck. My worshippers would know to pack some.”
And where had they gotten the blood? From the fallen men on Olympus’s field? “Your pets don’t smell as bad as some.” Still, I grew red roses on their thorn cage to scent the air.
“The slime is what stinks. It takes a few days after it seeps to rot. I keep their skin clean.”
“Why are these particular ones special to you?”
His gaze grew shuttered. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Fine.” Switching subjects. “How did you get good soil for crops?”
“We harvested it from caves. If you get deep enough, it’s still fertile.”
He and his followers had figured out a way to cultivate crops, and they’d discovered the Bagger mutation. If Sol could be believed, then they were doing some good.
“We’ve been growing for about half a year, so no trees yet,” he said. “No apples, pears, or oranges.”
I’d grown Tess an orange tree to atone for nearly killing her. As if that would make up for the risk I’d forced her to take when she’d unleashed her power. At least my own powers couldn’t end me.
Sol asked, “You don’t need dirt to grow things, do you?”
I shook my head, figuring that reveal couldn’t hurt.
“Do you have any seeds? Maybe apple? I could give you some sun, and we could have apples tonight!” he said, as if it were an apple-pie-in-the-sky dream.
I sliced my thumb with a claw, and started a tree. When it grew to a sprout, I said, “Be my guest.”
Excitement lit his gaze—heated brown eyes framed with thick dark lashes. He beamed, sunlight pouring from his chest, arms, and legs.
I went heavy-lidded as the tree shot to the ceiling.
“Dios!”
I directed one of its limbs to him and one to me. We each plucked a shiny red apple. At his first bite, he groaned. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.”