12.21.12: The Vessel (The Altunai Annals)

by Killian McRae

  “It was bugged?”

  “Hell, yeah, it was bugged. Did you learn nothing about the man you’ve been spying on?”

  Anton shook his head in denial. “He said ... he said he trusted me. He didn’t even have access to the thing. It was only in my name. I picked it up from the carrier.”

  Victoria’s eyes turned skyward, fretting the dying light which would take with it the life of her proxy if she didn’t get her ass to the Docklands in London and quick. Unlike Anton, Alex had been smart enough to leave his cell behind. If she could just push the gas hard enough, and if Alex managed to endure long enough ...

  “You’re not the first one to be fooled into trusting him, but still, you’re probably the most gullible.”

  Their car had been built for practicality, not for military ops. She cursed that she hadn’t taken a higher end model from the house, choosing instead the Subaru registered in Anton’s father’s name.

  “Hold on,” she cautioned.

  “Why? What are you—Oh, no, Victoria! Ahhh!”

  Anton’s girlish scream rent the air as Victoria plunged the brakes and spun the front wheel, sending the car pivoting. The scent of burned rubber infiltrated the cabin, but Victoria didn’t hesitate. Within seconds, she had slammed fury back into the gas pedal, propelling them toward London and, unfortunately, in the direct path of the Humvee now just a half-mile away, locked on a collision course.

  And it was clear to Anton, whoever was driving the other vehicle was intending to take them out head on if necessary.

  “Milady?”

  No response, just a steady increase in speed.

  “Victoria?”

  The other party wasn’t slowing either, and he could almost make out now the silhouettes of two brawny occupants through the tinted glass.

  “Sekhmet!”

  His eyes followed his words, turning toward her.

  Anton gasped.

  Her caramel hair fanned out like a halo, framing her blackened, wild eyes. Her skin had paled, and over the surface, an odd gold-orange-red hue of luminescence spread, as though flames had alighted her surface and licked at her limbs.

  “What the hell?”

  It was like he didn’t exist in the same space or time with her. The distance was closing faster, faster. Anton knew he was going to die, either from propelling through the windshield when the Subaru’s hood met the Humvee’s grill, or incinerated from the heat pouring off Victoria’s body.

  “Take the wheel.”

  Anton obeyed with all haste. Her hands free, she clapped them together in front of her chest. The light-heat that had crawled over her surface centralized and collected on her fingertips. With a forward thrust and a roar like a jet plane, her hands propelled forward, blasting out the windshield and forming over the hood into a ravenous fireball that flew out and hit the Humvee dead on.

  Victoria snatched back the wheel and steered a wide left just as the Humvee exploded, barely missing the range of the blast. As it charred and crackled behind them, she pulled the car to the side.

  “That ... wasn’t ... smart,” she wheezed, doing a spot on impression of an asthmatic.

  “Smart?” Priest repeated. “It was brilliant! You saved us. I never knew that you could ... What’s wrong with you?”

  Her head lulled to the side, her eyes rolled back in her head. She struggled to focus on him, on speaking.

  “Summoning fire takes ... a lot of ... energy. I’m d–drained.”

  “Drained? Here? Now?”

  “I just need ... a few minutes. Need to ... refocus my strength. Have to get to London. Have to ... save Alex.”

  He felt a pang of guilt in his stomach. “It’s because of me. The phone was bugged and Dmitri’s henchmen found us because of me. It’s all my fault.”

  “Yes, it is.” No one ever said she was a compassionate goddess. Her head fell upon the steering wheel, her shoulders slumped, but she brought her breathing under control. “But that’s not as important as the fact that Alex is about to fall into a trap.” She moved the car back into gear and trained her eyes forward. “We don’t have any time to—”

  “Use me.”

  The car shuddered and lurched as she slammed the brakes back down. “What?”

  Anton offered out his arm, peeling back the sleeve of his sweater and turning his wrist over in supplication. “Take my energy so you can port yourself there. Get there in time to save your proxy.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Priest. What you’re suggesting will—”

  “Kill me? Yeah, I know. So do it.”

  “You ... You want to die?”

  Anton shook his head. “Not particularly, but for you, I’m willing.”

  “Why?”

  “Because once upon a time, you gave me my life back. I’ve loved you since then, even knowing I can never have you. Even knowing that while you respected me, you didn’t particularly like me. I would have died years ago if you hadn’t been there. Let me return the favor.”

  His words left her speechless. Not that she hadn’t known Anton had felt something, but she had always chalked it up to a sense of greed mingled with lust for power, a power that only she had the potential to provide him. She knew that his secret wish always was to be bonded. She had just never understood why.

  Damn, because he loved her. What an idiot. If only she felt the same. Then, perhaps, she would have been strong enough to deny his offer. Maybe she would have let another live instead of adding one more death to her lengthy rap sheet. If she was stronger—if she was divine and owning of the compassion and wisdom a divine being should possess—she would say no.

  But she wasn’t any of those things. Powerless to do anything more than human, Anton became the simplest solution.

  She dashed back to the car, drew her side bag from the backseat, and slung it over her shoulder before falling down again next to Priest. With an air of reverent gratitude, Victoria raised her hand to Anton’s cheek and caressed it tenderly. His eyes closed as he cocked his head, leaning into her touch.

  “Thank you,” she whispered as she closed the distance and planted a gentle kiss on his lips.

  His eyes remained closed. “Kiss me again?”

  She pulled on his bottom lip with her teeth and ran her tongue over the sensitive skin, but not because he wanted her. It was a diversionary tactic. His heart may be willing, but his body was shaking from the weight of his decision. It worked, and she could sense his utter concentration shift into processing the sensations her physical actions were causing, loving her with the entirety of his being.

  Victoria brought her arms forward and closed her hands around the pulse points on his wrists.

  “I accept the offering,” she whispered against his lips as she withdrew. He smiled and looked at her one last time. “I will not forget.”

  With a deep breath, she closed her eyes, pulled Anton’s hands forward, and killed him. The rush, the total consumption of a soul, fueled her. Without pause, she harnessed the strength and used it. However, when Victoria opened her eyes, she wondered if it had been all for nothing.

  The walls of the alley framed perfectly her view of Dmitri’s building across the way. It appeared outwardly unguarded, though any seasoned veteran like Victoria knew otherwise. There would be an army waiting on the other side of that door. It wasn’t getting in that concerned her, however. It was being inside, and so near to Dmitri, that had her worried.

  Chapter 23

  The Guardian read the signs the moment the first dagger pierced Caesar’s abdomen. The eagle would spread its wings, and Egypt was but one of many lands in which it would roost. The Vessel, however, would not yield, so convinced was she that she’d save the queen. It was only a matter of time before the will of empire would crush her, and like
the sorry, love-struck sap that he was, he would come running the moment she cried out, just so that she could reject him anew.

  Tlalli’s faith in her abilities had once blinded her to the reality that her Cleopatra was already a lost cause. He hoped the faith he held in his own wasn’t binding the Vessel to share the same fate.

  -Ψ-

  “Why do I get the feeling you’re waiting for something?”

  Dmitri looked up from his cell with only a passing interest before training his eyes back to the screen. Shep’s question wasn’t his first. However, it was the first that had gotten any reaction from the sudden stoic. After randomly rattling off inquiries—Where is Altunatus? What powers do the Altunai have? —it was this simple interrogative statement that broke Dmitri’s near-militant stare at his device.

  “Not something, Shep, someone.”

  “Anybody I know?”

  Dmitri’s mouth broke into a grin as he shook his head and laughed lowly in disbelief. “Good news,” he said after a few minutes’ pause. “We’ll be leaving for Egypt soon. Won’t it be good to be back?”

  The room was spinning, Shep thought, but Dmitri didn’t seem to notice. He sat perfectly still, his eyes firmly glued to the tiny screen.

  “Back?”

  “My researchers are some of the best money can buy, Shep, and according to them, you haven’t been to Egypt in three years. For an Egyptologist at such a prestigious university, that seems odd.”

  By the grace of God, Dmitri rose and reached into a nearby pantry, pulling out a bottle of rum, one of the smaller ones sized for gifting. He put it on the table, and within fifteen seconds, Shep tasted the sympathetically numbing liquid on his tongue.

  “I haven’t been back since ...” He nearly choked on his words as he held the glass an inch from his lips. “... since Christine died.”

  In a flash, the echoes of her final words reverberated in his mind, bouncing off his memory in a way that nearly reached his ears. His body relived the movement of the quake, the distortion of his equilibrium as the ground shook beneath him, the sway of his body as he tried to find his footing, the sibilance of the sand as it filled in the excavated chamber.

  Christine’s voice called out across the years, “Shep, it’s beside us! It’s beside us!”

  He felt a warmth on the back of his hands, equally physical, and somehow emotional in nature. He hadn’t even realized that he had closed his eyes until they opened again, taking in Dmitri’s sympathetic gaze.

  “Planning on sharing another memory with me, comrade?”

  He smiled warmly. “Actually, you just shared one with me. My condolences, Shep. That was horrible to have to witness.”

  Pulling his hands back, he placed them in his lap. The iPhone lay flat on the table, and Shep could see the grainy black and white image. At once he understood what Dmitri had been watching; every few seconds the image shifted to the perspective of another camera, streamed from his security system.

  “Did you ever figure out what she meant?”

  Shep arched an eyebrow.

  “What Christine said right before she died,” Dmitri clarified. “Did you figure it out?”

  “Oh, no. Not really.” Nursing his rum, he felt the poison vying for control of his stomach. “So, Egypt? Well, I know you’ll tell me I’m free to not go, then tell me why it’s in my best interest to go anyway, so I guess it is what it is. Will Anton be coming?”

  “No, Anton is dead.”

  Heavy footsteps with a certain unmistakable cadence cut off Shep’s response. José’s frame filled the kitchen door. He saluted Dmitri before making some proclamation, and Dmitri returned a quick native-sounding string of Español back, sealed with a “gracias” and José’s “de nada” chaser. The security chief waited dutifully as Dmitri rose to his feet, sliding his phone into his pants pocket.

  “Our guest has arrived,” Dmitri informed him. “Come on. We don’t want to be rude and leave him waiting too long.”

  “Victoria?”

  Dmitri scoffed. “Better.”

  He followed without resisting, too weary from lack of sleep and administrations of booze to argue or ask anything else. The art of inquiry was highly overrated. It was like trying to eat just one potato chip; you never were satisfied.

  “Your neighbors must be very understanding. Or extremely terrified.”

  As they passed the processional of hired soldiers in the hallway outside the flat, each stood to attention and saluted. Dmitri seemed to take no notice.

  “No neighbors,” he informed him as they began down the stairs. “My flat’s on the third floor. There’s a guest flat across the hall that’s rarely used. The other four flats are primarily for storage.”

  At the second floor landing, he pitched right and opened the door marked 2B.

  “Storage of wh– Holy Mary, mother of God.”

  From object to object to object, each one was more rare and more awe-inspiring than the last: a full-sized Ramses statue, a sculpture that was likely a Michelangelo, an antique harpsichord, an Easter Island head … even an old west stage coach that had somehow been placed in the seemingly closed-in space without difficulty. How had it—

  Oh, that’s how. Looking across the expansive space, Shep noticed that the flat wasn’t actually flat at all. There was a staircase at the far end of the room leading down to a receiving area, and where windows should have been on the outside wall, there was instead twin delivery bays, each with a roll-top security door. It had looked like a warehouse from the outside; part of the building still served that purpose.

  “José, there’s a corpse in my flat,” Dmitri said matter-of-factly as they crossed the room to the metal-mesh staircase. “Take care of it.”

  “But, señor,” Mr. Channeling-Ché said, “the prisoner ...”

  Shep wondered if they were talking about him, or about the hooded figure who sat in a folding chair before them with his hands tied around his back.

  “Will be no danger to me, and I need you back ASAP,” Dmitri returned. He looked around the far reaches of the room, as though suspicious someone was about to leap out. “You know it’s just a matter of time before the cavalry shows up.”

  For lack of a better term, José seemed to blush. Was he embarrassed? “If I had known she was Jaguar before she drugged me—”

  “I’ve told you, José, I forgive you. You didn’t stand a chance against her. We’ll just consider ourselves lucky that you survived your encounter. Yes, you made out pretty well, didn’t you?”

  With gnashing teeth, the commando turned and made his way back upstairs, his feet pounding on the metal steps sounded like fat raindrops falling on a tin roof. Shep felt his knees buckle as he fell backward into a folding chair across from the prisoner. For a second, he worried that his world would go dark if he too was hooded and bound. The relief set in, however, when he noticed Dmitri’s position next to the captive.

  “You’ll forgive an old man his fancies, Doctor,” Dmitri teased, causing Shep to smirk ruefully as he took in the youthful features of a male appearing to be no more than twenty-five, “but I do so enjoy seeing the look on a human’s face when his worldview is irrevocably altered.”

  A clap of thunder shook the building. Shep jerked from the sound, then leaned forward and put his hands on his knees, curling his back and rolling his shoulders for comfort. “What, Jimmy Hoffa under that hood? Looks a little too petite to be Amelia Earhart.”

  With nary a word more, Dmitri ripped the cloth off from the prisoner’s head. A set of emerald eyes blinked rapidly, adjusting to the light the fabric had denied. When his gaze caught the sight of the person sitting across from him, the young man’s face went stark white.

  “Shep?”

  “Alex?”

  How a family reunion had come to pass under thes
e circumstances, neither one knew. In harmony and disbelief, they stared, each at the other.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” they uttered in perfect synchronization.

  Chapter 24

  In the shadows, a lion lay in wait. Well, a jaguar perhaps. She was so befitting of her feline association at the moment, slowly pacing back and forth in the alley across the street from Dmitri’s building, stalking the length and width of it as though sizing up prey.

  She had expected a scuffle, or even a shoot-out, but instead heard nothing. Either Alex’s death had been quick—but wouldn’t she have felt it if he’d died?—or Dmitri had decided to hold the proxy until the audience had been seated. One thing was for certain: if Dmitri had known Alex was coming, there wasn’t a chance that he could succeed at his mission.

  She wasn’t sure what emotion was appropriate for the occasion. Anger? If she was upset with anyone, it was herself. She should have known far better than to send such an inexperienced proxy and … well, naïve human unto Dmitri’s turf. Disappointment? Again, self-loathing to the point of guilt. Hope? Not at this particular moment.

  Frustration? Yeah, that one was spot on. Unfortunately, that was the worst possible thing to feel. To be frustrated was to be overwhelmed with one’s lack of options. Lack of control and Victoria were a toxic combination. Terrible, terrible things happened when she felt flustered. The power she intentionally pulled from humans allowed her sustenance, provided her energy to function. However, there was a higher form of energy with which she sometimes made contact. The planet was alive; it pulsed with power. It wasn’t one she could beckon and wield like she could with what she ripped from men. The only times she had ever channeled it had been when her emotions had raged out of control, when her consciousness was overridden by instincts primal in nature. In those times, it wasn’t unusual for the earth to begin to tremble, or for a nearby volcano to suddenly erupt.