by Jax Garren
Time slowed as the gun steadied in his hand. “No!” she screamed. The air left her lungs as his finger closed on the trigger
The rapport exploded into the night, deafening her.
Hauk jerked with the impact and fell backwards onto the pack.
Cold shock ripped through her, shooting prickly numbness from her core to her fingers. “No!” she screamed again, “Hauk!” He’d been shot before. This was no different. He’d get up.
But he didn’t. He breathed in pained gasps and crashed down on the seething pile of bodies. Blood pumped in angry gushes from a bullet hole at his throat.
Heart thundering, Jolie wrenched at her captors’ hold. “Get up!” she screamed at him.
Priests strode forward, carrying rope, ignoring their own soldiers writhing at their feet. Grant Barrett and Pierce MacArthur, a friend of her father’s, marched at the head.
Her struggle turned feral. If Hauk couldn’t get up, she had to get to him.
At a nod from Pierce, priests bound Hauk’s feet with ropes and tossed the ends out the open door. Jolie was thrown to the ground. Marble jammed into her wrists and knees, shocking her stiff joints.
Ric and the other Hand picked up the rope and heaved, jerking Hauk forward by his ankles. His body rolled over the rest of the fallen Atropos and slammed to the temple floor.
Jolie scrambled up the slick stairs to him. Shuffling as he moved, she bore down on the gunshot wound trying to stanch the flow. His blood streamed hot and thick around her fingers.
Too fast. He was losing it too fast. “Call Odin. Get him back here.” This was not the way it ended.
He tried to speak. Blood bubbled from his mouth, but no words came. His hands shifted sideways, urging her to leave.
The suggestion made her angry. “Fuck that. I’m staying with you.” His waist tipped over the steps, and she lifted his head, keeping it from slamming onto the marble, as if a potential concussion was the biggest problem. Her blood-soaked fingers cooled in the chill air and left crimson fingerprints on his phoenix tattoo. Her tears swelled with each step. “Call Odin! Make him heal you!”
He burbled something into the blood seeping down his chin. His eyes rolled back in his head. The movements of his hands grew weaker.
Her whole body went cold. “Wake up! Odin, get your ass down her! Wake the fuck up!”
Nothing changed but the growing crackle of fire.
The inexorable progress down the steps ended in front of the brazier.
More Hands swarmed forward, each grabbing onto him with the eagerness of bullies preying on the fallen. She shoved the nearest.
Arms encircled her again, yanking her back. “You don’t want to go where he’s headed, hotness.”
They lifted Hauk and carried him closer to the blaze.
She understood. Her stomach plummeted. She slammed her head back into Ric’s jaw. He grunted but didn’t let go.
Blood coursed down Hauk’s torso from gunshots and stab wounds. His fingers jerked with each slow gasp. The Hands carried him closer to the heat.
They tossed him into the blaze.
“Wesley! No!” She clawed at Ric, struggling to get to the pyre. Hauk did not die like this. This was not the end.
It took four men to force her to the ground. Cold metal locked around her wrist. The Hands left, and she ran toward the fire. She couldn’t get close enough. She scratched at the cuff on her wrist, tearing into her skin. She barely felt it. Nothing mattered if she couldn’t get him out of that brazier.
A cry, almost eagle-like, tore into the night. Hauk’s mouth was open, his eyes bulging wide as fire once again consumed his skin. The stink of burning flesh assaulted her, and she retched on the steps. Her muscles quivered, ceasing to function at her command.
Another cry.
Hauk went still. Smoke rose from his body, almost birdlike as it swirled gracefully into the night.
Her legs gave out, and she collapsed onto her ass. Blackness threatened her vision, but she willed it back. Blackness meant giving up. She would not give up on Hauk.
But he didn’t move. She pushed her hair from her face, dragging cold blood across her cheek and streaking it in her hair. Hauk’s blood. Her clothes were sticky with it, her hands coated in drying scarlet. Bile filled her mouth as shaking overtook her. The fire continued to rage, the stink growing unbearable. Tears obscured her vision as pain stripped her bare and flayed her.
Hauk was dead.
Chapter Nineteen
“The price of anarchy, Jolie Benoit.” Pierce’s voice was soft against the crackle and hiss of the fire and the heavy gasp of her sobs.
Jolie wanted to strike out at him but couldn’t find the strength to do anything but clutch at the marble steps and cry. Her strength was burning away on a pyre.
Pierce stood above her, somehow regal even in his ridiculous toga-like getup, and stared down at her with unflinching gray eyes. “Tomorrow we’ll give you your own choice.”
“Fuck you, Pierce.”
He continued like she hadn’t spoken. “We’ve already given your reporter friend the tattoo. He may have run off, but he will come back to us soon. Meanwhile the others we’ve inoculated are programmed to secure the Underlight, infect those they can with the potion and report back to us your location so we can take care of any stragglers. The Underlight is dead, Jolie. You have until morning to consider carefully your choices. We give you this option in honor of your father. But whether you join us willingly or not, you will be one of us tomorrow.”
He left and it didn’t matter. Hauk was dead. They could do what they wanted, and she wouldn’t give a damn. Her reason for fighting was gone.
Together. She and Hauk were supposed to be together to the end. He’d promised.
A dark chuckle behind her made her hackles rise. She didn’t turn away from the fire, couldn’t tear her eyes off of Hauk’s blackened body, but she sat up straighter.
“I hope you keep that bad attitude, hotness. I’ve been promised a nice present for my hard work.” Ric’s voice snaked around her, oily and chill-inducing.
The revulsion that prompted broke the thrall of Hauk’s remains. Hatred seethed through her blood. She aimed it at Ric with all the withering disdain a Benoit could muster. “It would take more than a lobotomy to get my hands on you, asshole.”
He grinned. “I don’t think you’ve got it in you to give in. I think you’re doomed. And that will make you mine.”
She stepped toward him, nails ready to sink into his skin, but he stayed just out of reach. “Coward.”
“You have no idea what they can do.” His grin turned into a snarl. “But you’ll find out what I can. And then I’ll dump you for the next pretty bitch who comes along.” He blew a kiss off his fingers. “Hasta mañana, hotness.”
She lunged against the chain, straining to reach him as metal ground against metal, holding her back.
He laughed and turned around lazily. So confident.
Her arm couldn’t reach him, but she bet her foot could. She executed a roundhouse, leaning into the chain for leverage. With a satisfying thud, her shin connected with the back of his skull.
He stumbled forward, yipping like a puppy and grabbing his head. He glared venom at her. “You’ll pay for that.”
She wagged her fingers in a “come and get me.” He could probably beat her in a fair fight, particularly with one of her hands bound, but she didn’t care.
Instead of advancing, he spit on the steps at her feet.
“Coward!” she yelled. “You’re not half the man he is. Programmed murderer.”
“Maybe, but I’m the one standing here with a gun in my holster, and he’s the one roasting.”
Jolie yanked against the chain, straining for him again. “Come back and fight, asshole! Come back!” No matter what she yelled, he ignored her all the way around the temple and out of sight.
The scream built from deep inside, an animal sound of fury and despair. She faced the fire. Keening her pain to the sky,
she could swear she felt her heart break.
* * *
Screams of the zombied citizens echoed through the halls as Mercy sprinted to the shop. The door was cracking. If it burst, a flood of infected people would likely overwhelm their defenses. But that lock and those hinges were designed to discourage mischievous kids, not hold back a determined tide.
The bursting door, of course, would be the least of their problems if the handful of pendejos who’d refused to be tested and came up infected managed to beat their way past a guard station and escape to bring Ananke down upon them.
Somebody else was dealing with that containment. She had to make sure these doors held.
“How’re we doing?” she asked the guards. But she didn’t need to see their wide-eyed stares to know. The relentless pound and creak said those doors weren’t long for this world. Nearly two-dozen people were throwing their weight against the wood. “Ay, Virgen.”
“Incoming!” yelled from around the corner.
One of the knitting crew streaked down the hallway at breakneck pace, brandishing what looked like a bloody knitting needle. A guard from the main room staggered around the hallway, bleeding from his side.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Mercy raised her tranq gun and aimed for the knitter’s thigh.
The dart hit true, and the knitter paused midstride. Fought forward a step. Fell.
The door groaned behind Mercy, and she threw her back against it. “She did that with a knitting needle?”
The guard fell back against a wall, breathing hard. “She stabbed herself in the arm and then me. It’s not deep, but damn.”
Another pound on the door. “Stabbed herself? Why?” That was disturbing.
“No...idea...” The guard sank down, eyes suddenly heavy.
“Chris? What’s going on?”
His eyes fluttered closed as he rested against the wall, clutching his side.
Her muscles tensed for action, pushing down the flutter in her gut. “You’re freaking me out, man. What’s happening?”
Eyes clearing, he raised bloody fingers toward her.
“Yuck. Get to the doctor. We’ll hold ’em.” The only people excused from guard duty were Doc Benson and Tally and LaRoche, the former to care for injuries and the scientists to keep working on an antidote.
Mercy had little hope for that. The pair hadn’t slept in two days. She and the other guards had to hold the fort physically until Hauk and Jolie got back, hopefully with a solution to the formula. Something LaRoche could study and replicate quickly.
Chris sank to the floor to study the unconscious knitter. “I’ve got this. You get to the main room.”
“Why, more knitting-needle-wielding crazies? You don’t look like you can handle anything right now, much less this breaking dam.” There was something off about Chris’s eyes. “Seriously, man, take a break. Go see Benson.”
He lunged at her. Mercy ducked and tripped him.
The bloody knitting needle arced toward her side. She stepped away and brought the gun up to his neck. “What are you doing?”
He swiped. She shot. The dart pierced home, whipping his neck to the side and throwing him back. Her friend glared at her with such vitriol she hardly recognized him.
The other guards stared. “Was he infected?”
The door groaned behind her.
She looked from Chris to the needle and paled. “Viral. LaRoche said it worked virally. They’ve been programmed to infect the rest of us with their blood.”
A vicious slam, and one hinge popped. Fear jerked in her belly, insistent. Again she shoved it back. There was no time to be afraid. She dropped her empty clip and slammed another one in. She’d spent the day filling as many vials as she could while Tally bolted together a gun that could shoot repeating darts. It wasn’t the most accurate weapon she’d ever owned—by a long stretch. But she’d practiced enough to get the hang of it. She’d managed to make enough darts to down the known population of infected people and a few to spare, but if Ananke’s formula was infectious...
Her gut turned leaden. “I can’t tranq them all.”
“We can’t hold them,” the guard grunted, pushing against the doors.
They couldn’t. The doors wouldn’t hold, and who knew how many people in the common room were infected by now? Somebody was going to escape. They had to do something else. “You’re right,” she said. She couldn’t tranq them individually, but maybe there was a way to get large numbers at once. “Hold the doors. I’ll try to get a canister.”
She turned for the lab. LaRoche had spent over a year developing a formula to drop Hauk in his rage state. Surely he had something that would work.
A booming crack. Screams. The door had opened.
She glanced back. Brayden led the charge out of the shambles of the Underlight’s shop. He winked at her and raised one hand, handcuffs dangling from his wrist. They’d double-chained him, knowing he’d be able to pick the shop lock. Apparently he’d picked the cuffs, too.
He pointed, and the crowd surged toward her. Mercy ran, her heart in her throat. She had to reach the lab. If she, Tally and LaRoche couldn’t sedate the whole damn Underlight, they were doomed.
Chapter Twenty
The sizzle and crack of a dying fire woke Jolie from unsettling dreams. A corpse-strewn battlefield. A reckless feast. Ravens circling a dangerous crowd.
And Hauk.
“Wesley?” she asked, voice cracking around a sore throat and parched lips.
The brazier’s bonfire had slackened to glowing embers beneath a blackened skeleton. She sat up and rested her head on her knees. Her joints were stiff from sleeping on marble in the cold, her eyes sore from crying.
The scent of wine drifted with the breeze. Two men stood on a ledge around the brazier, pouring liquid onto the fire’s remains to finish it off. Ananke performed their Grecian funeral rites correctly. She buried her forehead tighter against her legs. More useless trivia from the daughter of a newsman. Completely and utterly useless.
The fires inside the temple behind her kept the pre-dawn from utter blackness, but Hauk’s bones were near invisible in the dark. She rattled her chain—still firm—and debated what to do. If she pretended to give in, they’d surely have a test for her. Probably to reveal the Underlight’s location. She couldn’t do that. Unless Travis already had. Or Ananke’s plans had succeeded last night. Could Mercy really have kept all of them secure the entire night? And if so, how were they going to jail that many crazed people until LaRoche came up with a solution?
In all likelihood, Ananke already knew where the Underlight was, and refusing to tell was simply asking to be Ric’s bed slave. And yet she wanted to believe they’d made it, that something she cared about had survived the night.
She clutched her knees, trying to think of some way out. The men with empty wine jugs walked back into the temple as dawn light seeped across the horizon. The sky’s deep violet melted to rose as the first sun of spring appeared over the horizon.
Last night had been the equinox. She’d almost forgotten.
The smoke of Hauk’s pyre gathered and spiraled up, as if caught in a whirlwind. Her eyes were drawn to the brightness in the center of his grave, where the wine bearers couldn’t reach to fully quench the coals. Their yellow glow echoed the rising sun in a mockery of hope. In a trick of morning light the glow seemed to spread, widening under Hauk’s bones until his remains luminesced.
She stood and stretched to the end of the chain, trying to find words of farewell that could encompass some small part of what he meant to her. Heat still surged from the brazier, warming her chilled skin.
“Wesley...” She knocked tears from her cheek. How was it possible she still had any?
It wasn’t a trick of light; the fire was growing again, reigniting from those central embers. The smoke thickened, burning her nose. She stayed close as she could anyway.
“Oh, Wesley.”
The flames re-kissed his bones, burning the soot away and
cleaning them white. The fire built quickly, unnaturally so, claiming the space Hauk’s broad frame took up and heating the air to blistering. She took a step back as the brightness flared, momentarily blinding her.
Bird caws. Two enormous ravens flew low over the temple and toward the sun. They wheeled about and back over the fire, basking in the smoke, diving toward the flame and rising just before the brightness engulfed them.
Shadows moved inside the glowing brazier. A scream pierced the morning and was echoed by the birds. The fire abated, dying as quickly as it had burst back to life. The ravens flew off into the sunrise.
Hauk lay whole upon his bier.
Perfect, unscarred skin, two muscular legs, short hair the color of wave-kissed sand, a hint of stubble on his surprisingly boyish features. This fire had rebuilt the damage the first had wrecked.
Jolie gasped and ran toward the brazier. The chain yanked at her shoulder painfully, nearly dropping her to the ground. “Hauk! Hauk!” she yelled.
It didn’t make sense. She didn’t care. If he was there, whole and handsome, then maybe he wasn’t dead.
“Hauk!”
His eyes jerked open, blue as the lighting sky, and he gasped in a deep breath. His broad, naked chest filled and collapsed. Filled again.
“Hauk!” her voice squeaked as she cried his name over and over.
He turned to her, eyes and mouth open in shock. She reached for him. His perfect mouth curved into a smile so warm and comforting she wanted it touching her now.
“Jolie.” He unclenched his fingers and with small movements tested the rest of his muscles. That done, he examined his hands. With a sigh of relief, he raised them to the sky and mouthed something that looked like, “Thank you.”
He pushed himself to sitting as if he’d risen from sleep, not the dead, and rolled his neck. Smile somber, he hopped off the pyre and jogged to her.
She threw her arms around him. The first solid feel of him made her weak all over, and she fell against him. He caught her, engulfing her in his strong arms. He was warm, nearly hot to the touch. But he was solid and he was real. Gratitude for the miracle consumed her.