I heard sobs from the man whose hair and face had burned. Another black-clad form was cursing loudly in a language other than English, stomping out flames before they could reach the main gates by the medieval arches.
Ponytail moaned, exposed pink, black and white pieces of his flesh smoldering where he lay on the grass not far from me. One of his legs looked burned from the calf to his thigh, and one of his arms had lost most of his jacket and a good portion of his skin. His boot on the same side smoked, sending up a bitter odor of burnt synth and rubber.
Seconds later, when the wind changed, the smell of cooked meat reached me, making me gag and dry heave, filling my mouth with saliva.
I didn’t hear anything from the Russian.
I saw his boots twitching on the other side of the fire, but he didn’t make a sound. A man next to him was sobbing, hands over his face.
Overall though, it was quieter now.
I was getting afraid again.
I still couldn’t loosen my arms or legs from the chains.
Whatever had happened, the other two captives seemed to think it was my fault, which meant Ponytail and his fanatics would probably think so, too. I didn’t know what they’d do to me when they pulled their shit together again.
In desperation, I tried to inch my way down the length of the log, throwing my weight up and pulling the chains with me. I hoped I could just fall off the end of it, but when I craned my head, I was pretty sure I could see the log resting on some kind of support.
When I looked at the female seer, my fears were confirmed.
Her log rested on two stone blocks, curved at the top to hold the log firmly in place and white like the stone basin. I kept trying to inch my way forward anyway, wondering if I could use my feet to get leverage on the stone. I knew the log had to be insanely heavy, but I harbored some hope I could unbalance the whole setup enough to knock some part of it over.
Of course, then I ran the risk of crushing myself under the log when it fell.
That pale green light in my eyes seemed to be coming back, maybe from my fear.
I blinked against it, trying to see past that disorienting glow as I struggled to pull the chains with me down the log.
Then, out of nowhere, I heard something else.
Gunshots.
21
BETTER LATE
I FROZE, SURE I’d hallucinated them.
Then I was sure I must have misinterpreted what I heard.
I started to relax, forcing an exhale, when another shot echoed in the space between the wall and the church-like building.
That time, I saw it hit.
It slammed into the shoulder of a black-clad cultist who’d extinguished the fire on Ponytail. The force of the shot threw him to the grass.
Crying out against the gag, I struggled to breathe through the thick, bad-tasting bandanna. When another series of shots broke the relative quiet of the clearing, I started to struggle frantically against the chains holding me to the log.
By then, gunshots seemed to be coming from more than one place.
I flinched when the scattered shots turned into a volley, as Ponytail and his religious nuts started firing back at whoever shot at them from higher up.
Crouching as best as I could against the side of the log, I tried to figure out where the other shots were coming from, but that light in my eyes was still making it difficult to see.
Initially, I thought their attacker fired from the wall, but now I thought maybe he was inside the museum, or maybe on the roof.
I went back to trying to hitch my body down the log.
My head throbbed. My whole body hurt.
I still struggled against that weak, depleted feeling, as well. My arms were starting to go numb, and my weight pulled at my shoulders, worse now that I hung at a more awkward angle. Whenever I threw my body up to loosen the chains enough to move, sharp pains shot up my biceps and back.
I’d also rubbed my wrists raw, trying to drag the thick chain along the bark.
When I hit the edge of the cement block, I had to stop, panting.
Shots continued to fill the air in the walled garden.
I winced, flinching back when a few zinged close to me.
Gripping the log, I tried to use it as a shield, even as I pressed my bare feet against the cement base under the tree trunk, trying to see if there was any give. Each nearby shot made me flinch again, but none of the bullets hit me.
I couldn’t move the cement block even a millimeter.
Giving up on the log, I hung there, panting.
After a few more seconds, I tried peering around the side to see what was going on.
Ponytail’s guys were mostly holding guns now, at least the ones who could.
The shooting started up again and I looked around, trying to follow their sights to see what the cultists were aiming at. It still looked like one of the higher windows of the main building behind me. Either way, they’d completely forgotten about me and the female seer.
I felt a surge of hope when I realized something else.
Whoever that person was out there, they were a good shot.
Another of the black clad religious nuts jerked and cursed as I thought it, lowering his gun as he clutched his arm. He started to raise it again, wincing, when he got hit again, that time in the neck. He collapsed to the grass near the stone basin. I watched him clutch at his throat, choking, his boots only a few feet from what remained of the bonfire.
I knew it was foolhardy to assume whoever was out there might be friendly.
For maybe the first time in my life, I really hoped they were cops.
Two more of Ponytail’s guys fell next to trees they’d been using as cover.
Ponytail himself had joined the firing by then, even with how badly he’d been burned. He held a handgun with his good arm and hand, firing steadily into the dark somewhere over my head and to my right, his face contorted in pain and fury as he fired. I heard glass break at some of the shots, echoing ricochets, more glass.
The redhead remained in the fight, as well.
Unlike most of his friends, he looked totally unharmed by the fire.
Wearing kevlar, he sported a long, weirdly-shimmering rifle, wearing an expression that looked colder, more purposeful, but no less furious than that of his boss. Down on one knee, he crouched so he was partially hidden behind the stone basin, letting off rapid bursts of fire.
Then a shot got him directly in the face, and he fell back, screaming.
Ponytail fell a second later.
The first shot seemed to get him in his burnt leg.
After gasping and clutching his pink and black thigh with his scorched and exposed hand and arm, he kept firing until a second bullet got him in the middle of the chest. Throughout the whole thing, he never made a sound, unlike the redhead who still screamed, rolling in the grass and making sounds worse than anything those burning had done.
I stared at Ponytail’s body, gasping, shocked at the suddenness of the last two exchanges.
Looking at his unmoving form, it hit me that he was probably dead.
That feeling of unreality stole over me again.
A well-aimed shot from above threw another of Ponytail’s people to the grass.
That one I didn’t know. Stocky and broad-shouldered with dark hair, he crawled over the grass by one of the burning trees, trying to get away. I heard wet, choking, gasping sounds coming from him, and figured the bullet must have gotten lodged in a lung.
The last of the cultists lowered his gun.
I saw him look at his friend crawling and choking on the grass. Dropping his rifle, he made a run for it, bolting towards the stone arches leading to the main building of the museum.
Another shot brought him down, too.
Seemingly all at once, it was over.
The clearing grew quiet.
Once it did, I could hear other things––things previously overpowered by the echoing, booming gunfire in a semi-enclosed space.
The seer tied to the far log was making sobbing noises.
I watched her struggle against her bindings, fighting so violently she was all the way under her log, just like me. The redhead continued to scream from only a few yards away, and at least one other person pleaded with someone––maybe the shooter, or maybe that dragon god they were all so fond of.
I probably looked a lot like the seer.
Like her, I hung beneath my log, gasping, trying to get enough oxygen through the gag, fighting to move my arms.
I’d stopped kicking at the cement block holding up my log, though. Now that we might have help, I didn’t want to accidentally commit suicide by tree. I could tell the seer was a lot more worried about who might be here to assist us, and I didn’t blame her, but I still held onto some hope that they might actually let us go free.
Anyway, she had a lot more to fear than I did.
The thought brought a twinge of guilt.
Somewhere in the midst of my thinking that, the shooter appeared on the lawn.
Like the cultists, he wore all black. Walking in the darker shadows, those untouched by the dimming firelight, he didn’t make a sound as he wove in and out of trees, scanning the ground. I couldn’t even tell for sure from which direction he’d come. I just saw him out there, a tall, dark form gliding soundlessly, eyes following the gun he held out from his body.
I couldn’t help but be fascinated by how he moved.
It was like watching a jungle cat in a low stalking walk as it tracked game. He moved with a grace I’d never seen on a human being before.
He’d saved our lives. I was sure of that now, but somehow, my relief and hope turned back into nerves as I watched him survey his own handiwork. Like him, I found myself looking out over all the people he’d shot.
I also grew hyper-aware of the fact I was still completely helpless.
Had he done that thing to the fire? If so, how?
Fighting to stay as silent as him, I struggled harder against the bindings on my arms, nearly choking on my breath to keep it quiet. I never took my eyes off him, watching as he bent over and knelt beside felled bodies, checking them, one by one.
I watched him feel over the body of Ponytail, extracting a gun from somewhere on his person before he took a second gun from the redhead and shoved it into a pocket. Then he straightened, looking down just long enough to shoot the redhead in the head, once.
The booming sound made me flinch.
The redhead stopped screaming.
Panting, I watched the dark-clad shooter glide away on silent feet.
I got that killing the redhead might have been an act of mercy at this point, or even pure expediency. Still, whoever he was, he obviously wasn’t operating within the confines of the law. More than that, the sheer casualness of the act shocked the hell out of me.
If he heard me react, he didn’t look over.
Moving to the next cluster of bodies, he disarmed two others, even though they weren’t moving or making a sound. The shooter didn’t pause, but proceeded methodically, his gun always trained on the ones he hadn’t yet gotten to.
Whoever he was, he didn’t seem to be in a hurry.
I could only hear a few people breathing in the clearing now. The guy with the burnt hair and face wasn’t moving at all. Nor was the bald Russian with the black beard, or the redhead, or Ponytail, or the young Latino who called me a Serpent.
In fact, the only person I saw moving now, apart from the three of us tied to logs, was the guy with the long blond braid who’d tried to make a run for it at the end.
I was staring at him, watching him crawl across the grass towards the museum, when the sound of another echoing shot caught me off guard.
His body crumpled to the grass, just feet from the stone steps.
I gasped, looking back at the shooter.
I still couldn’t see his face, not with the way he stuck to the shadows, or the weird angle of my view from under the log. When he circled closer, doing another pass around the clearing, I could only see his legs, which were covered by dark-colored pants.
Before I managed to pull my head together, I saw those legs moving in my direction.
Letting out an involuntary cry against the gag, I fought harder against the cuffs, but I seemed to be stuck in place now, unable to move anything. I didn’t know if I’d strained my muscles to the breaking point, or if I’d finally managed to get the cuffs or chains stuck on some part of the wood. I was still struggling, gasping for breath, when the shooter reached the side of my log.
His knees bent, bringing his body, then his face, level with mine.
I stared at him, shocked into stillness once I made out his features.
Pale, crystal-like eyes glowed in the fading light of the fires, narrowing as they studied my face.
It was Simon the SCARB agent.
22
SECRET
I COULD ONLY stare up at his face as he untied the gag from around my mouth.
Before I could think of anything to say, he dropped the gag and straightened.
I felt him feeling over my arms, up to the chains and cuffs on my wrists.
Fighting to work my jaw, to swallow, I spit out some of the bad taste left over from the gag. Coughing, I spit again, still working the kinks out of my jaw. Hanging there, gasping, I had a faint moment of relief as I worked my throat in a few more swallows.
I could almost breathe again.
I saw him move then and craned my neck, watching as much of him as I could see. My eyes glimpsed his dark-clad legs as he walked around to my feet, on the other side of the log.
There was a pulling sensation around my ankles as he did something to the chain that tied them to the log.
Then, suddenly, the ankle-cuffs opened.
I let out an involuntary cry when my lower body fell, yanking even harder on my arms and shoulders.
I felt his fingers graze my wrists, hands and fingers again, this time from the other side of the log. Again, there was a pulling sensation as he started tugging on the the chain dug into the wood between my cuffs. I let out an involuntary moan as he pulled harder, stretching my already hyper-extended arms. My moan didn’t stop him from whatever he was doing.
Then, all at once, I was free.
I fell like dead weight.
Because I couldn’t move my arms, I fell straight onto my face and knees, right into the remaining stack of wood under my log. It hurt, but no where near as bad as my arms hurt when I tried to move them to push myself up off the ground.
Waiting for the feeling to come back, I lay there, paralyzed for a few seconds.
While I collapsed there, panting, I realized the cuffs were off my wrists, too.
He hadn’t cut the chains; he’d gotten the metal bands to open somehow.
It took a long moment of heavy breathing before I could make myself try to sit up again.
Slowly, I managed to writhe and crawl off the wood.
It took forever, it felt like.
I felt nauseous, weak beyond belief. My arms shook violently when I put even a tiny amount of weight on them, and my hands were numb slabs of meat. Gasping every time I placed my hands, I clutched and slid and climbed over the wood until I was lying mostly on grass.
It occurred to me that Simon hadn't waited for me.
He’d walked away.
When I turned my head, I could see him over by the female seer, on the other side of the stone dais that made up the middle part of the clearing.
He was freeing her, too.
He held some kind of tool in his hands. I watched him wrap it around one of the thick cuffs cinching her delicate wrists.
Seconds later, she fell as heavily as I had, letting out a similar cry.
Unlike with me, he helped her out from under the log. Then he was doing something to her neck. I realized he was using a different tool to cut through the collar she wore.
It took him less time to cut through that.
When the collar bro
ke in two, I saw her gasp.
Then he was taking it off her.
She pulled her hair over one shoulder as he did it, and I saw his eyes narrow as he removed it carefully from the top of her spine, his mouth hard. The way he did it, it seemed almost like part of the collar had been inside her, maybe even connected to her in some way.
She wrapped her fingers around her bare neck when he finished, smiling at him.
Even from where I lay crumpled on the ground, I could see tears in her eyes. She nodded to something he must have said to her, but I didn’t hear anything.
I saw her using some kind of sign language then, moving her hands in graceful, articulate gestures and flicks of her fingers. He motioned back to her in a similar way, smiling before he touched her face briefly with his fingers.
Then he helped her rise shakily to her feet.
Traumatized or no, and even with his help, she seemed to have a lot better control over her body than I did. Still, seeing her upright inspired me to try for the same. I only made it to a sitting position before I had to rest again, panting.
Leaning forward slightly, I looked over at the two of them.
That time, I saw her touching his face, caressing his cheek and jaw with her fingers. She was still smiling at him when she leaned up to kiss his cheek, gesturing gracefully once more with her hands. If they were saying anything to one another aloud, their voices were pretty damned low, because I hadn't heard a sound from an actual person since he shot the blond cultist.
I hadn’t heard the SCARB agent speak at all.
Fighting again to get vertical, I made it to my hands and knees, then grabbed the support on one end of the log. Gasping, I dragged myself shakily to my feet.
I was still leaning most of my weight on the log when I saw the SCARB agent heading back towards me. He made a strange clicking noise as he motioned in my direction, flicking his fingers in a sharp, irritated motion.
Behind him, I watched the female seer limp away from him, away from me, away from the clearing altogether. My eyes followed her progress, then looked past her, in the direction she was going. She was walking towards a stone corridor lined with columns and arches.
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