“I can’t,” he had told her. “I can’t even leave this prison. If I do, the kings will devour me and all of creation will be lost. I…I know I’m not a good caretaker. I can’t be what humanity wants me to be. But I won’t abandon them like that. I can hold the line against the kings. That much, that little good, I can do for them.”
Nessa had pointed to the flickering, endless gulf of darkness above their heads.
“That darkness…that’s an infection in your mother’s blood, yes?”
He nodded. “It’s not supposed to look like that. They corrupted it.”
“You are your mother’s son,” Nessa said, and she rested her hands on his shoulders. “What if a fresh infusion of divine blood is just what it needs to become healthy once more?”
“You mean…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “…if I died?”
“I don’t think Sophia is dead,” Nessa told him. “I think she’s only sleeping. You know, I died once upon a time, and Hedy told her followers that I’d return to them—but only once they built a world I could return to. And so I did. Maybe that’s what Sophia is waiting for, too. Maybe Wisdom will return to us, once we show that we’re ready for her.”
“But they’re waiting for me. The second I open the door—”
“Trust me,” Nessa had said. “I think I can provide a tiny distraction.”
Far above, he could feel his creations in confusion. A distress call had gone out from the flagship of the King of Rust. His brother-traitors were scrambling, trying to react to a crisis none of them had ever anticipated, a threat they were too arrogant to imagine.
It was time.
In one hand, he brandished Nessa’s parting gift. Her slender little quill blade. She had offered him a trade. This blade in exchange for a few drops of his divine blood to feed her Cutting Knife. Granting it the power it would need for the battle ahead.
With his other hand, he reached toward the sky and opened the firmament.
The dome over his pocket world cracked and parted wide, and the Shadow In-Between rushed in to claim him, devouring all. As it did, he gazed upward. He’d thought about last words, but they seemed pointless. Last deeds were infinitely more important.
Maybe he could make something beautiful. Maybe, just once, he could make something perfect.
He slashed the blade across his throat. His blood erupted from the wound as his head fell back, a gout of golden droplets that soared upward, blossoming, and spreading wide to meet the darkness head-on.
Forty-Five
The King of Lament’s flagship, like half of his brothers’, had flown in for the special occasion. The celebration of the death of the Demiurge, their hated father, and the last obstacle to their triumph. They’d taken on a holding pattern, waiting for the King of Rust’s invitation to board.
Now the command deck had gone mad, hooded figures with flashing eyes racing from console to console, scarred fingers slapping against mold-crusted controls and levers of jagged metal. Radio chatter squawked from the neighboring ships, everyone talking over each other at once. The captain rose from her spiked command throne, a third eye peering from a crack in her radiation-blistered forehead as she bellowed orders.
“I want centipedes loaded and an armed boarding party over there now!”
“Sir,” one of the hooded pilots said, “without an invitation, that could be construed as an act of war—”
Her lobster claw of a hand gripped him by his throat.
“No idea what’s going on over there, but that distress call can pretty damn well be construed as an invitation. And where is Adam?”
“Monitoring the situation,” the deep and gravelly voice rumbled over the ship’s speakers. “I’m coordinating an emergency response now. Everything is under control.”
Through the grimy windows of the deck, the void flashed vivid white as the King of Rust’s flagship exploded. The neck of the vessel detonated with the force of a sun going nova, blasting debris in all directions, running lights flickering and going dark. They barely had time to react before a second explosion washed over them.
An explosion of pure light, from a dying god.
A mammoth shock wave of liquid gold blew across the horizon like a tsunami. Wave after wave of shining light rocked the ship backward, tossing it out of control. The golden light bloomed as alarms screamed and every readout flickered, overloading. A console exploded and blasted its operator backward in a shower of sparks.
“Get us out of here!” the captain screamed. “Terrestrial transition, now! Pick the nearest habitable world. I don’t care which one!”
“Ma’am,” one of the pilots called back, “we could be stranded. And the drives won’t be able to fly outside of the Shadow—”
She pointed at the command deck windows. Cracks were starting to form along the glass, the flagship crumbling under the onslaught of gold.
“Does that look like the fucking Shadow to you?”
On the endless horizon, for the first time in uncounted eons, shone the bend of a rainbow.
One by one, the flagships of the Kings of Man blinked out of sight. Banished from their own dominion, and scattered across the wheel of worlds.
* * *
Suited agents armed with bullpup rifles and sidearms scrambled along Vandemere’s outer pathways, taking up firing positions. Hedy led her coven to the gates, making their stand by the abandoned carousel. The sight of the zoo sparked old memories in Marie, old aches. But more than that, a quiet appreciation of the road behind them. Her batons dangled from her belt, ready for the fight ahead.
She took Nessa’s hand.
“We’ve come a long way,” Nessa said.
“We have.” Marie looked up to the starry sky. “For a moment, I thought this was the calm before the storm. It’s not.”
“No?”
Marie shook her head. She looked at Nessa.
“It’s the eye of a hurricane. We passed through one side of it. Now we have to get through the other.”
“Well,” Nessa said, “don’t go dying tonight. I still owe you a wedding. If…you still want to, I mean.”
Marie pulled her close. Her hands squeezed Nessa’s shoulders, traced the curve of her back, as their lips met. One last kiss before the fight. She pulled back just a little and nuzzled her forehead against Nessa’s.
“That answer your question?”
“Admirably,” Nessa replied.
The sky erupted.
A jagged chasm opened in the night and spat out the remnants of the King of Rust’s flagship on the heels of a shock wave of blinding golden light. The light washed over the battlefield, floodlights bursting, electronics shorting out as the wave of raw magic hit the ground.
Then came the wreckage. The remnants of the flagship, all that remained after the Valkyries’ explosives split it in half, were two stories of twisted metal and exposed, smoking engines with a circular command deck barely clinging to life. It hovered for a moment and then came down hard, power dead, almost all hands lost. The command deck slammed into the ground nose-first. Windows exploded and its front end crumpled on impact as it crashed into the walkway near the old monkey house. It dug a four-foot trench in the path, spraying dirt and broken concrete, sheer momentum propelling its massive weight. One rumpled slice of a wing carved into the monkey house, caving the wall in and bringing the ceiling down, while the deck jutted out over the pit of a tiger den.
For a moment, there was silence.
* * *
Another smaller rent in space tore open above the roof of the zoo’s lodge. Adam’s massive foot, textured like raw clay, thumped down on the broken shingles. Then the other, as the crack in space whipped shut at his back.
He brandished the copper blade of his own Cutting Knife in one hand. In the other, the chrome neck of a vintage microphone. He swung it down low, like a crooner from the forties, and spoke into its art-deco grille as he surveyed the battlefield.
“All hands,” he said. “The King of Rust is unde
r direct attack. Need reinforcements to my location immediately. Network elites. Open gateways to parallels alpha-eight-zed—”
“Say again?” a response crackled from the microphone. “Direct attack? Sir, that’s not possible—”
The ship’s debris spat sparks, the frayed steel cables twisting like a nest of angry snakes. Coolant fluid pooled across the overgrown walkways and filled the musty air with a scent like ripe jungle fruit. Hazy blue smoke wreathed the wreckage; nothing moved inside.
“And yet, I am standing two hundred yards from what’s left of his command deck, with heavily armed mortals closing in. Abandon doubt, embrace faith, and do as I say. Open gateways to alpha-eight-zed, delta-blue-triskelion, and ninety-seven-minor.”
“Sir,” the dispatcher’s voice crackled, “we’re reporting unprecedented turbulence inside the Shadow. As it is, do you realize how much that will cost? We’ll have to strip-mine an entire planet’s worth of resources to power those gateways, even if they’re only open for a minute or two—”
Adam put the microphone against his wormy lips. His voice dropped to a deathly growl.
“I take full responsibility. These humans have given us unprecedented insult. Our reprisal should be no less historic. Open the gates.”
* * *
Like cancerous rose blooms, portals erupted across the abandoned zoo. As they waited for Ezra to perfect his dimensional gateways, the Network’s own experiments had borne instable, erratic fruit. The tunnels blossomed from pinpricks of light to giant and gaping toothless maws of inflamed flesh, their exposed gums bleeding fractals made of violet light. The fractals tumbled to the weed-infested pavement and shattered into bouncing sparks.
Harmony and Jessie had commandeered an overlook by the gates. A line of old tourist binoculars still stood on candy-painted rods at the overlook’s railing. Harmony dropped a quarter in the slot and leaned close, swinging them around for a better vantage on the distant flashes of light.
She watched a squad of men jog from the gaping tunnel in perfect synchronicity, moving two by two and six deep, bracing sleek assault rifles against their digital-gray camouflage. A second squad followed moments later. Then a third. Jessie stood at Harmony’s side, sunglasses off; her turquoise eyes glittered in the dark, radioactive, and she didn’t need binoculars to see that far.
“Full battle rattle,” Jessie said. “Looks like the contingency plan just showed up.”
An old map of the zoo lay spread across a picnic table, pinned down at the corners with empty ammo cases and sliced with a precision grid drawn in bright red Sharpie. Harmony jogged over, checked the map, and got on the radio.
“All teams, we have enemy movement at C1 and F4, arriving via some kind of teleportation. There’s another portal at E2, but it appears dormant. Hold positions and continue to provide cover. If Roth and Reinhart don’t make it through…” She put the receiver back to her lips. “Get them to the target. No matter what.”
“Uh, Harmony?” Jessie waved her over. “E2 isn’t dormant anymore. What the hell are those?”
Harmony dropped another quarter and swung the binoculars around. Through the dusty lenses, she watched a horde of gray and ragged figures swooping through the fleshy maw. Their funeral gowns and thick veils gave them a shapeless, flowing outline, and their fingers—too long for any human hand—twisted like boneless worms at their sides.
* * *
Harmony’s lead team, Redbird Cell, made their stand by the reptile house. The air was thick and musty, the stench baked into the old, bleached stone. Out front, a ten-foot statue of a gecko on a long, low dais had once marked the hub of a roundabout in the path. Now the gecko’s paint had all but faded away, leaving the paper-thin shell a dull gray flecked with green, and the statue had crumbled in spots to expose the wire armature beneath.
Redbird took up firing positions behind the three-foot stone dais, lined up their sights between the gecko’s patchwork legs, and waited.
In the country night air, the tromping of boots carried for miles. The team leader kept his eyes on his iron sights and one fist to his shoulder, curled. Wait for it. The first wave of Network reinforcements came into sight. They’d slowed their pace, lead troopers sweeping the dark with halogen lights fixed to their rifles, hunting for mortal prey. Every passing second brought them closer to Redbird’s hiding spot.
The clenched fist held steady. Wait for it.
Lights played across the gecko’s pallid tongue and its wirework ribs, then moved along.
Two more heartbeats, and the team leader gave the order. His clenched fist became two outstretched fingers, pointing sharply at the men in digital-gray camo.
The night erupted with gunfire and muzzle flashes, as Redbird hit the Network’s elite like a pirate ship delivering a lethal broadside barrage. Bodies dropped, riddled with high-velocity bullets, and stray gunfire shredded the underbrush at their backs.
The team lead sliced the air with his hand, calling for a cease-fire. The last report echoed into the distance. Then there was no sound at all but the metallic clatter of fresh magazines sliding into position.
“That’s all they got?” muttered an operative at the team leader’s side. “Thought these guys were supposed to be scary.”
One of the corpses twitched. Then it jerked, spasmodic, like someone had jolted it with an electric cable. Others were moving now, lurching to their feet, and one turned their way with a wheezing groan. His left eye was a gelatinous ruin from the bullet that had killed him. The other blazed with a light brighter than the one on his rifle barrel, as the dead man raised his weapon to return fire.
Forty-Six
Marie unholstered her batons. Standing beside her, Nessa took a deep breath. Their prize, their only shot at survival, was on the opposite side of the Vandemere Zoo. All they had to do was get there in one piece. Hedy and her coven stood at their backs, an honor guard, while a fresh stream of playing cards riffled into Daniel’s outstretched hand. Caitlin’s eyes glittered like dying embers in the dark as she studied the pathways ahead.
Everyone waited for Marie to give the word.
She felt the power of the Conversation calling to her. The faint, demanding voice of Lady Martika, insisting she have her say. Battlefield tactics are what I DO, Martika told her. Let me take command.
She pushed the voice aside. She didn’t need a general’s skill to know how to tackle Vandemere. She’d been here herself once, back when it all started, and she’d run these twisting paths with her own two feet while a murderous cult hunted her down.
Gunfire sounded in the distance. First contact.
“There are three ways to reach the monkey house from here,” Marie said, pointing the way. “Hedy, take your people around by the southern path. It goes by two of our support positions, and they might need your help.”
“We’re not here for them,” Hedy said.
“Those men are risking their lives to help us tonight,” Marie told her. “All they have are guns and bravery, nothing else, and they’re still holding the line. For us. We will not leave them unprotected. You’ll be close enough to reach us if we need you, and you’ll draw some enemy attention away from us.”
“How about me and Cait?” Daniel asked.
“You’re on the northern trail. That one goes high, and about midway across it runs right through the old food court, overlooking the whole central zoo. You’ll have overwatch on us for most of the route, and you can call out any trouble you see coming our way.”
“On it,” he said.
“And speaking of drawing attention?” Marie looked between him and Caitlin. “If you get a chance, make some noise. Make it loud, make it flashy.”
Caitlin gave Daniel a sidelong glance. “Apparently she knows you well, pet.”
“As for me and Nessa,” Marie said, “we’re going right up the center aisle. Fastest way between point A and point B.”
Nessa gripped the Cutting Knife and held it high. Clytemnestra’s silhouette shimmered on the blade
, one hand raised to catch the stars.
“We have one shot at this,” Nessa said. “Let’s make it count. And whether we win or die tonight…let’s make them remember our names.”
* * *
They broke in three directions, feet pounding the weed-infested walkways to the staccato beat of distant gunfire. Past the carousel, Nessa and Marie’s path was a straight shot through the heart of the abandoned zoo.
The last time she’d been here, Marie had been defenseless, hunted, on the run. Now she brandished her batons, the enchanted rods trailing winter-wisps of glowing light in her wake, and smelled blood on the night wind. Nessa was at her side, stars shining bright above her lover’s face, moonlight burning down.
Fifty feet ahead, square in their path, another ragged, raw hole in space tore itself open. Marie expected soldiers. The figures it disgorged, one after another until nearly a dozen stood in their way, might have been soldiers once. They were mannequins of flesh and metal in tattered uniforms, the fabric clotted with dried blood from the wounds that killed them long ago. Titanium plates and rods had been hammered into mottled flesh and drilled through bone, holding them together and armoring them like metallic beetles.
“Not dying here,” Marie said. Their old refrain, one last time.
Nessa nodded, sharp.
“Not dying here.”
Marie ducked low and lashed out with one of her batons, shattering the first trooper’s knee with a blast of concussive force that flipped him off his feet, sending him flying in a rag-doll somersault. She stayed on the move, fluid, her other baton thrusting out and stabbing a second attacker in the stomach. The shock wave knocked him backward, straight into another trooper and sending them both to the dirt.
Nessa didn’t hold back. There was no reason now. She was out of time, and she’d either seize victory in the next few minutes or die trying. She called the power of raw Shadow into her, through her, using her body as a conduit. As one of the dead men lunged at Marie from the left, trying to blindside her, she brought her curled fist sweeping down.
Bring the Fire (The Wisdom's Grave Trilogy Book 3) Page 34