I grimaced, watching her walk.
She looked like she was hurt pretty bad. She cradled one of her arms, wiping blood off her mouth from a hunched position, wincing at every step.
Her mouth was firm though, her eyes fixed determinedly on the way out.
Then the SCARB agent spoke, forcing my eyes back to him.
I flinched at the sound of his voice.
I’d forgotten how deep it was.
“Take it easy.” He sounded irritated, and unnaturally loud, given the previous silence. “You were drugged. Don’t try to do too much too quickly. I can still feel it on you.”
I got the distinct impression he was annoyed I’d gotten to my feet.
“Are you letting her go?” My jaw didn’t want to work, and I remembered the gag he’d removed. “She’s leaving?” I said.
He nodded, catching hold of my arm as he reached my side.
“She does not want to stay.”
I let out a humorless laugh. “Yeah. Right.”
“She wanted me to thank you.” His pale eyes met mine when I looked up; they held a harder scrutiny now. “She was very grateful to you… very grateful. She would not say why. She did not want to stay long enough to speak to you personally. She was worried I would see something in her if the two of you spoke. Something you would not want me to see.”
He paused, frowning harder.
He seemed to be waiting for me to explain.
When I didn’t, he made that clicking sound again.
“She said she will keep your secret,” he added, gruff. “She said to bless you on your path, and wished that you might be watched over by your Ancestors. She was very grateful. She wished you a long life… and much light. Most of what she spoke of was you. She did not wish to discuss her captivity, either.”
I nodded without trying to make sense of his words.
I was still trying to work my jaw.
“What is all this for?” the man said, blunt, when I still hadn’t spoken. “Why is she grateful? Why all of this love and light? Why the secrecy? She would not tell me anything. In fact, she actively hid this from me. She had enough infiltrator training that I could not discern the truth, not without hurting her… and I did not wish to do that.”
I didn’t try to understand what he was talking about that time, either.
I only shook my head. “I have no idea. Honestly.”
The man frowned, but he didn’t let go of my arm.
“No idea?” he said.
I let out another half-laugh. “For crying out loud… no. I really don’t know what she’s talking about. I mean it.”
His fingers tightened on my arm. He didn’t answer at first.
“Are you okay?” he said then.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed.
“I’m positively fabulous. How are you?” I said.
He made that clicking noise, and I heard the irritation in it again.
“Thanks,” I said, before he could speak. “Given that I was kidnapped, drugged, nearly burned to death in some end of the world apocalypse ritual and then chained up in the middle of an honest-to-gods gunfight… I’m good. I’m alive. So thanks.”
He didn’t answer.
Not my words, anyway.
When I looked up next, he jerked his head towards the other side of the clearing, his face expressionless. I realized he was indicating toward the third person who’d been tied to a log––the guy with all the symbols burned and inked into his skin.
I’d forgotten all about him.
“We should talk to him,” he said.
I nodded, looking down at my legs.
Biting my lip, I mentally willed them to move––or maybe just tried to give them a bit of silent encouragement before I tried.
I couldn’t help wondering why he was bringing me along to talk to the guy though, and not the seer, who could have gotten actual information off him. They’d seemed pretty friendly, so maybe he was just being considerate, letting her go.
It struck me a moment later that I was jealous.
The thought made me laugh a little. It was too ridiculous not to laugh.
If the man noticed me smiling, he didn’t ask.
“Who did this to the fire?” He motioned around the clearing at the burning pieces of wood. “What happened here? Why are the trees burning? What did this?”
I grunted. “Honestly? I thought you did it.”
“What?” His voice sharpened. “Why would you think that?”
I looked up. His pale eyes held that wary scrutiny again.
“I was tracking you,” he said, frowning. “Then I heard the screams. I came, and it looked like something had already happened. What?”
I frowned back. “You were tracking me? How?”
“Answer the question, Allie.”
Exhaling, I tried to think about his question.
Everything that happened right before everyone caught on fire felt like a dream. The fire and the gunshots felt like a dream. After a longish pause where I thought about that weird flash of light, the angel wings, I shook my head.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“But something happened?”
I blinked up at him.
Then I looked around the clearing, frowning at the piles of scattered and smoldering wood, the man with the burned face, Ponytail with one half of his body charred and pink.
“Well… yeah,” I said, looking back at Simon. “Obviously.”
I tried to think past the pounding in my head, but I was still coming up blank.
“There was a bright light,” I said, when he didn’t speak. “I guess one of them must have done something to the fire, because once I could see again, it was spread all over like this. A lot of them were on fire. Screaming, like you said.”
“One of them?” he said. “You mean one of the Mythers decided to let you go?”
I shook my head. “They said they weren’t Mythers.”
“Stop derailing. Whatever they were… one of them tried to let you go? Which one?”
I looked around at the bodies on the ground, but it didn’t really help.
I only recognized a handful of the faces, and none of the ones I knew seemed likely candidates for a sudden change of heart. I counted ten cultists total. I’d seen roughly that many before, but I hadn’t seen everything they’d been doing or heard all of their words.
I didn’t exactly have the best vantage point, chained to that log.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess?”
“Why would they do that, Alyson? Why would they kidnap you, only to try and free you?”
I threw up a hand, wincing when it hurt my arm. “I have absolutely no idea. Why would they want to set us on fire in the first place?”
My answer only seemed to frustrate him more.
He didn’t say anything, though.
Sliding an arm around my waist, he pulled me off the log, leaning me against his side to support some of my weight. I flinched a little when he first touched me, but I felt zero agenda in the contact.
It was perfunctory, rote.
Without asking a second time, he began walking me over to the man still tied to a log.
23
TRUE BELIEVER
AS WE APPROACHED, I realized the bare-chested man had even more symbols carved and inked into his skin than I’d seen.
He was also younger than I’d realized.
Looking at his face, I guessed him at late teens or early twenties––mid-twenties, at most.
We were about halfway to his log when he began to speak.
He didn’t aim his voice at us; he spoke his words to the night sky, murmurs that sounded like prayer.
“…And the day will come when the darkness will become Light, and the light, Dark,” he intoned. “And the One God will open the great gates a last time, and the brothers and sisters will look across time and remember they are no longer alone. A new world will await them, many worlds, far across the stars, and they wil
l go there, or be hunted unto death…”
Flinching, he turned, watching our approach.
Once he made out my face in the starlight, he began speaking louder, his eyes so wide they looked like silver coins punctuated by his irises, black with pupil.
He stared at me alone.
“AND THE END OF TIME WILL COME AFTER THE THIRD RACE HAS BIRTHED...” he said. “AND THOSE WHO ARE NOT CLEANSED SHALL BE FORCED TO REMAIN BEHIND, IN THE DIRT AND ASH OF THAT BROKEN, FORGOTTEN WORLD, UNTIL SHE COMES FOR THEM, UPON TIME’S END…”
“Who?” Simon said. “Until who comes for them?”
The man blinked up at the black-haired man.
He looked at him blankly, as if noticing him for the first time.
“The Bridge, of course,” he said, his voice oddly normal-sounding.
The black-haired man frowned, glancing at me.
“Some kind of scripture,” he muttered.
I sighed. “I figured.” Letting go of him, I caught hold of the log where the man was bound, straightening with a grimace as I looked down at him.
He was so damned young.
I looked over the scars on his skin and winced, seeing a few that looked like brands. Some looked old enough that he must have gotten them when he was a kid, maybe even pre-adolescence.
“What does any of this mean?” I asked Simon, still staring down at the marked skin. The cultist’s blue eyes really were unnervingly like those of the man with the blond ponytail. “Do you recognize these symbols, other than the spirals? Do you know the scripture he’s talking about? You SCARB guys have to study all this stuff, right?”
The black-haired frowned at me briefly.
Then, turning away, he clicked under his breath.
“No,” he said, staring down at the man chained to the log. “I don’t know it. Not the scripture, at least.”
“They said they weren’t Third Myth,” I repeated. “They said they followed something older than that… some dragon god. The one true god, they called him.”
The black-haired man didn’t respond.
He seemed to be scanning the symbols on the blond’s body now, squinting as if trying to identify them. The man must not have tried to get away even once during the gunfight. He still lay on the very top of the log, his eyes wide as he looked between our faces.
From his expression, we could be speaking a language he didn’t know.
He still stared mostly at me.
I saw fear in his eyes, coupled with a fawning reverence. That reverence unnerved me more than the fear––and more on him than it had on the female seer.
“Did they say anything to you?” the black-haired man said, still studying the symbols on the man’s skin. “Why they were doing this?”
Realizing he was still speaking to me, I shrugged.
“Standard blood and fire whacko religious crazy shit,” I muttered. “Something about an offering. Their leader said the ritual was supposed to call the Bridge here. And someone called the Sword.” I pursed my lips, trying to remember more. “There was a fair bit about that dragon god. They said they needed one of each of us.”
The man looked at me sharply. “One of each of what?”
“I don’t know, exactly.”
Thinking, I frowned.
“My brother, Jon, mentioned some seers believe in three races. I figured that’s what this guy meant. I thought the third race were like angels, though, not actual people living down here.” I glanced up at him, still frowning. “They called me something. First race. He said I was an inter-medi-something––”
“Intermediary.” The black-haired man continued to stare at me, his face unmoving. Finally, after another pause, he said, “Why would they think you were one of those?”
I threw up a hand, wincing again when it hurt my arm.
“How would I know? I don’t even know what that is. Again, you’re asking me these things like I have answers or something, like I know anything at all about arcane seer religions, or the cults that exist around them. I still don’t even know why you saved me from that bomb in San Francisco––”
“I meant, did they give you a reason?” he growled.
I sighed, looking down at the blond kid.
I watched him murmur his prayers to the night sky, that reverence still in his eyes as he gazed up at me. I really wanted to believe he wasn’t that other guy’s son, but the more I studied his features, the stronger that gut feeling grew.
I looked back at the black-haired man, trying to answer his question.
“They said something about medical records,” I said finally, exhaling. “And someone who helped them… they called him ‘patrón,’ or maybe ‘The Patrón.’ Whoever that is, real or imaginary, they claimed he gave them information that helped them find me. The head guy, the one with the blond ponytail, said they found nine of us down here.”
The black-haired man visibly flinched.
Turning slowly, he stared at me. “Nine?”
I nodded. When he didn’t say anything else, I gave a low snort.
“Apparently I was convenient,” I added sarcastically. “Oh, and I’m doing nothing with my life, so there’s that. They figured no one would miss me if I died. They were all just so thrilled and honored to meet me, though… right before they tried to set me on fire.”
The black-haired man didn't seem to notice my tone of voice.
I saw him thinking, staring down at the bound man.
I flinched when he leaned down, catching hold of our prisoner roughly by his straight, blond hair. Clenching his hand tighter, he lowered his face, speaking in a harsh voice.
“We can start the fire again,” he said, his German accent thick. “No ritual this time… no glory. No wreathes of garlands from the Ancestors. Just pain. Just fire.”
Symbol-guy’s eyes shifted from me to the man holding his hair.
The black-haired man’s grip looked like it hurt, but the blond kid didn’t seem afraid of him, or of his words. Mostly, he looked confused.
“Are you her guardian?” he said finally.
His voice was tentative, childlike. That and his wide-eyed expression made him seem even younger, like he was barely out of high school.
I winced at the thought.
The black-haired man didn’t appear to be moved.
“Yes,” he said, colder. “I am her guardian. And you’re going to answer my questions, or I promise you… you aren’t going to like me very much.”
The younger man swallowed, but his wide-eyed expression didn’t change.
“How did you find her?” Simon said.
“We were wrong,” the other told him seriously, not seeming to hear the last few things my friend said. Nodding solemnly, he looked back at me. “We were wrong. Very wrong. She wasn’t Serpent. She wasn’t Trickster. She is one of them. One of the Four. She was hiding––”
For some reason, his words seemed to anger the black-haired man.
“You’re damned right you were wrong,” he growled.
He gripped the man’s hair tighter.
Then he shocked me, smacking the blond head against the log, hard enough that I flinched.
“How did you find her?” he said again.
The man smiled. Looking up at the stars, he began speaking in a faraway voice, as if reciting something from memory, his words monotone.
“Abnormalities of the blood, matched to certain illnesses documented incorrectly as genetic defects,” he said, smiling wider. “…Differentials in heart rate. Reflexes. Abnormality of heart placement. Accelerated brain tissue growth. Rate of cellular and genetic degeneration––”
“Where did you get the ID? No one has a reliable ID for intermediaries. No one.”
“The Patrón…” the man said, still in that faraway voice.
“The patron of what?”
“He is a prophet. A man of wisdom…”
“Where is he?”
The man’s smile remained blissful. “The Patrón comes to most of us only in dr
eams, friend. Javier spoke to him. He spoke to him in the flesh––”
“Who is Javier?”
“He’s dead,” I said.
When the black-haired man looked at me, I pointed at the Latino man who’d shyly told me I was the Serpent. I saw the black-haired man’s frown deepen.
He looked back at our captive.
“Who else knows?” he growled, harder. “Who else has her name? Anyone?”
When the blond didn’t answer, the black-haired man slammed his head on the log again, making me jump.
“Are there more of you?” he growled. “Who else has the fucking list?”
“We are everywhere… our spirit lives forever.”
“What about in the flesh? How many of you are still here? On Earth?”
“The Patrón,” the man said again. He looked up at the black-haired man, that blissful smile widening on his face. “The Patrón knows…”
“What the hell is wrong with him?” I said. “Is he just crazy? High? What?”
The black-haired man looked at me, as if remembering I was there. He released the man’s hair in the same instant. His face remained in a scowl.
“He’s drugged,” he said. “It’ll probably kill him, whatever it is. It’s the practice for willing martyrs in his sect. They drug them so the death isn’t prolonged. So he’d be mostly, if not completely dead before the fire killed him. Or at least in a lot less pain.”
“His sect? What sect is that?”
He gave me another sharp look, then frowned.
“He’s an Evolutionist. That’s the European name for them, anyway.” He glowered down at the man tied to the log, his voice threaded with disgust. “There are other names for them.”
Turning, he gave me a sharper look.
“What that one told you… Ponytail. It’s not exactly accurate. They are Mythers. The first Mythers. The ones who came after them are watered-down versions of this sect.”
When I frowned, about to ask, he went on, looking back at the blond.
“They’re old,” he growled. “Pre-First Contact. They claim to come from a movement started prior to the First Displacement. Kardek was said to be a secret member. So were many of those in the Elaerian High Council. They worshipped the first among them. The first of the First. They called him ‘Dragon,’ the One True God, for he is said to have spoken the rest of the gods and mortals into existence. According to scripture, his voice alone could manifest beings, calling them forth from as far as the places beyond the Barrier.”
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