by Gwynn White
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. I found myself seeing all the people he’d shot, and hyper-aware of the fact that I was still completely helpless.
Had he done that thing to the fire? If so, how?
Fighting to stay as silent as him, I fought 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 that 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, down to the chains on my wrists.
Fighting to work my jaw, to swallow, I spit out some of the bad taste left over from the ga
g. 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 breath 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. It 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 broke 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 bones.
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 the 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, 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.
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 each 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, holding a harder scrutiny. “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 again.
“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-god 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 some 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 on the surface 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 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 from burns.
“Well… yeah,” I said, looking back at Simon. “Obviously.”