The Burn

by K J Morgan

  "Nothing serious."

  She grimaced, knowing that was a lie.

  "I promised you that I wouldn't let go," he said. "Now I need you to promise me the same. Don't let go of me. Don't ditch me again for my own protection."

  She looked up at him.

  "We're in this together now," he said.

  Pete appeared above them, leading Julie by the arm. "C'mon," he said quickly. "Shady characters around here in cloaks. Into the RV. Now."

  Chapter Sixteen

  Miranda climbed into the RV, Seth following close behind her as she ducked through the narrow door. The air inside the cabin was and hushed and still. The storm lashed over the bulky vehicle, peppering the windshield with dry sand. Pete and Julie climbed into the cabin a moment later, one of them locking the door shut.

  Shadows passed along the playa outside.

  "Lights stay off," Pete said, drawing the Glock from the holster at his side. "Everyone keep down and keep quiet. We wait out the storm here."

  "Pete," Miranda whispered.

  "Don't," he said, a note of pure exhaustion in his tone. "I don't want to know, okay? I don't want it explained. What I saw out there… Not yet. Just give me a minute, okay, kiddo?"

  She nodded, watching as he dropped down in the driver's seat of the RV and fished a cigarette out of his shirt pocket. Placing it between his teeth, he focused on the storm through the window, allowing the cigarette to slant at an awkward angle from the crook of his lips.

  He didn't light it. He didn't look back.

  The Glock rested in his lap.

  Julie sat down beside him and buried her head in her hands, the two of them lost in the same silence.

  Miranda felt Seth's hand close on her arm.

  "We need to talk," he murmured, his voice soft and warm against her ear. "Alone."

  Miranda nodded, tearing her gaze from the others as Seth drew her toward the back of the RV. She followed him past the tiny bathroom where she'd watched him in the mirror, the memory of that moment now a thin reflection in the dark.

  She paused inside the doorway to the bedroom, glancing over the crumpled sheets of the bed, the glow of moonlight playing in the dusty windows. Looking up at Seth, she caught the dark hint of recognition in his eyes, proof that the time they had spent here was still just as vivid for him.

  Drawing close, he kissed her, the taste of dry sand and salt on his lips, his mouth flavored with welding smoke. She relaxed in his arms, savoring the warmth he offered, the familiarity of his touch.

  He gently broke the kiss and looked down at her, his breath tight between his teeth. "Okay. What next?"

  * * *

  He watched her consider her answer, her gaze luminous under the thick sweep of her lashes. She looked like an angel with the moonlight at her back, the silken waves of her hair glowing past her shoulders, a soft blue translucence to her skin. For a man who found beauty in tarnished steel and rusted out plate, the rose petal blush of her lips and whisper of her breath was all it took to hold him spellbound.

  "You have to leave this desert," she whispered.

  "We've tried that before, remember?"

  "I don't know what he'll do to you, why he wants you." She closed her eyes, as to block a memory that was too painful to bear. "But what he's done…"

  "I know he killed Logan," Seth murmured.

  "No. He didn't kill Logan. He didn't have to. He drew some monster from the walls to do it. I tried to fight the thing, but he's a ghost."

  "You can't go back there."

  "I am there. I belong to the Gate. I'm not human anymore. I don't belong here, with you. You have to accept that."

  "I know what you are."

  Miranda released a tense breath. "No, you don't. You think I'm still human somehow, but that's just what he wants you to think. That's the entire point of my human appearance. The other goddesses are just ghosts in the walls. They don't walk around like this. They don't talk. They don't breathe. They don't love…" Her voice trailed off. She dropped her gaze, as if she regretted saying the words.

  "Miranda," he whispered.

  "It's a trap I was created like this to bring you to him. You play some part in the Enlightenment, and time is running out. He's quietly awakened more of us, all but two goddesses now, and grown stronger every time, but he still needs you in order to make the whole thing work. Don't you see how risky it is for you to stay?"

  "But if my name's really on one of those walls, there might not be anything either one of us can do about it anyway, right?"

  "You still have a choice. He admitted as much. Your name may be in the Gate, but you've walked away from it, and from him, many times before."

  "I've never seen him before."

  "You've seen him before because you've somehow lived before, and you've always chosen to remain out of his grasp, as a human. But you're not exactly human, so you keep coming back as the same person, as the man you are now."

  "What's 'not-exactly-human'?"

  "I don't know. I don't know the history of the Gate, what your place is, or how you got here. I just know that you still have a choice and I don't."

  "So I'm supposed to leave? And you're going to try and stop him. Just you?"

  "I think I'm the only one who can."

  "And if you can't?"

  "They can't kill me."

  "You're asking me to turn my back on you. How can I do that?"

  "You have to," she insisted.

  "I don't think so."

  "Seth—"

  "The Gate talks to me too, remember? I'm the only help you've got."

  Her expression darkened. "You might have some kind of influence, but who knows how powerful the Necromancer is, and what he can do? We don't know anything about him."

  Seth conceded that with a nod. He cut his gaze to the front of the RV, finding Julie's silhouette framed against the glow of the windshield. "Maybe its time we asked."

  * * *

  Julie looked frightened, sitting on the floor of the RV with her hands clasped around her knees, her pale eyes red-rimmed and glittering. "I don't remember the whole story. It never made much sense. We were talking about something, human destiny maybe, and he told me that he'd lived on Earth for over a thousand years. He was some kind of warlord in the Ukraine, back before it was the Ukraine."

  Miranda shook her head, confused. "The Ukraine?"

  "That's what he said."

  "What was the Gate doing there?"

  "The Gate has been almost everywhere. It's had different names."

  "Yeah, okay, but the Ukraine?"

  "There were caves there, priests, it was supposed to be hidden." Julie rubbed the corners of her eyes, looking away into the darkness. "The Necromancer knew where it was, but he also knew that he didn't want to take on the Master of the Gate himself, because whoever spills the blood of a master is damned for eternity, so he convinced the Khagan to do it for him."

  "The Khagan," Miranda hissed.

  "A Ukrainian King. The Necromancer tricked him, told him that the Gate would make him even more powerful. The Khagan tried to take it from the priests but the Master of the Gate fought him. There was a war and most of the Gate was destroyed. All the original goddesses were lost, as well as the Master himself. The Khagan, who was responsible for shedding the sacred blood of a master, was damned forever, his soul enslaved in the walls of the Gate. The Necromancer then seized control, after the fighting was done and there was no one left."

  "Jesus," Miranda whispered. "But how could the goddesses have been destroyed? The Rathvam aren't living beings."

  "You really don't get it, do you?"

  "What?"

  Julie shook her head. "All this stuff I'm telling you, you're supposed to already know it. Miranda, you can ask any question from Rathvam, you can see anything that happened with the collective memory of the Gate."

  "Let's just assume I haven't gotten that far yet."

  "Yeah, well—" Julie struggled with that. "Then it's complicated. I never u
nderstood what he was talking about. That's why he talked to me, you know? He liked reliving it with someone who couldn't follow along."

  "Just tell us what he said."

  "Sure," Julie muttered in frustration. "Okay, picture that we live in much larger world. Much, much larger."

  "Okay."

  "And in this world, humans aren't the top of the food chain. They aren't the most highly evolved. They aren't the ones with the most control over their environment. In this, much larger world, humans are like birds or butterflies. We're bright little things that live and die in the lower dimensions. We pass in and out, over and over again. We're the ones who live a thousand lives. The gods are different species altogether, far more evolved than us. The gods live in the highest dimensions, above all universes and all worlds. The gods never die."

  Miranda nodded, feeling an uncomfortable recognition.

  Julie tightened her arms around herself. "The Gate allows humans to pass into the highest dimension and return, like SCUBA divers in deep, deep water. Only problem is that the humans that go higher don't come back the same. They evolve in the presence of the Divine. They become something that doesn't belong in one world or the other."

  "The middle species," Miranda murmured.

  "Ghosts, trapped in the Gate. Your souls power it. Your names are the language, its past and it future. You're part of the metal, part of the machine."

  "So when part of the machine is destroyed…"

  "Exactly," Julie said. "The Rathvam are destroyed with it, at least those released by the damage. They become lost energy."

  Miranda dropped her gaze. "So all of the women the Necromancer took from the playa were replacements for the goddesses that were lost, chosen because our souls have the right kind of energy, because we can merge with the Gate."

  "And because each of you has a defining trait, one of the recognized traits of humanity as seen from above. Passion, Empathy, Creation, War, Tyranny, Impermanence and Excess…"

  "What about Seth? What place does he have in the 'sequence'?"

  Julie frowned, looking back at him. "I don't know."

  "The Necromancer never said?"

  The younger woman looked at her, her delicate features pinched. "No. Just that we couldn't let him go. Then, we he said that Seth had to die…I couldn't take it anymore, you know? I don't want him to die. He's only here because there's some kind of connection, because he loves you."

  Miranda frowned, the truth of that statement resounding much louder than the words had been spoken. She met Seth's gaze, noticing that he didn't shy away from them.

  "We're all looking for that, aren't we?" Julie murmured, lost in her own misery. "No matter how strong we are, we're always looking for someone to decide that they love us for whoever, or whatever, we are. I always knew that the Necromancer didn't love me. But in the beginning I thought he was capable of it, if only he realized how devoted I was, how dedicated to the cause. But he never really saw me. And why would he? I'm beneath him, not Rathvam, just human like everyone else."

  Pete sighed. "Human's good enough for me."

  They looked at each other.

  Julie startled as a blast of wind hit the windshield, pelting a thick wave of dust over the RV. "He wants me dead. I can feel it, like this horrible coldness I can't get rid of. He'll kill me himself if he can."

  Miranda glanced at Pete. "You should get her out of here."

  Pete looked up, squinting with emotion he couldn't hide at the sight of her. The cigarette still dangled from his lips. "I'm a little lost here, kiddo. You want me to do what?"

  "Get her to Reno. I—" She paused mid-sentence, catching sight of a shadow moving beyond the windshield. It approached through the storm, its outline obscured by streams of sand and moonlight.

  Miranda took a step back, recognizing the muscular line of its shoulders, the terrifying definition in its golden mask.

  "The Khagan," she breathed.

  Reaching down, she grabbed onto Pete and pulled him from the seat. He stumbled up against her and she pushed him toward the back of the RV.

  "Away from the windows!" she shouted.

  The monster raised his sword and charged at the glass, slashing the long blade in front of him. The windshield shattered, sending a wave of shining pellets pouring over the dashboard, dust billowing in from the storm.

  Miranda ducked, wincing through the acidic haze.

  The Khagan leapt up into the destroyed window frame, his large outline blocking the moonlight, his helmet cast in shadow.

  Julie screamed.

  Pete took aim with the Glock and fired twice. The shots clapped in the small space, the muzzle flash bright and instant in the darkness.

  The Khagan crouched before them, unaffected. He turned his head, the black eye-slits of his helmet focusing on Seth.

  Miranda clenched her teeth. "The hell you will."

  Charging forward, she ducked the sword and shoved into him with all her weight. He lost his balance on the dashboard and reeled backward, falling through the window frame and dragging her with him.

  They tumbled out onto the playa together, the wind and sand tearing between them. She pushed to her feet, glancing back as Seth leapt onto the dashboard after her.

  "No!" she yelled at him. "Stay where you are!"

  The Khagan rose before her, sword drawn. "You cannot protect him now. This is his destiny."

  "I won't let you kill him," she yelled back, retreating back toward the wreckage of Seth's metal sculpture.

  "His human death is of no importance. He belongs to the Gate."

  "As what? A servant to the murdering psychopath you call your master?" She grimaced against the sting of wind. "I can't let that happen."

  "What makes you think you can stop it? You have been recreated in this world for one purpose, just as I have."

  "We have a choice," Miranda hissed, pausing as her foot bumped against a discarded pile of cut steel pipe by the sculpture.

  "Goddess," he warned. "I was merciful last time."

  Miranda nodded, dropping down to grasp onto a sharp segment of pipe with both hands. She rose and swung it at him. He reacted quickly, slipping back into the wind, the blade of his sword deflecting the blow with ease.

  He scraped his sword blade from the pipe. Flipping the hilt in his hands, he circled the edge to counter attack. Miranda saw only a flash of metal. Her focus snapped to the thin edge of his sword as it sliced through the air. She reacted, catching the blade repeatedly as he attacked. The blows knocked her backward, his sword clanging against the length of pipe.

  She stumbled, watching him flip the sword in his hands again, his movements as graceful as they were lethal. He was faster, stronger.

  He swiped at her, then lunged, his weapon singing through the wind. She ducked. His sword sliced though the pipe, halving it in two. Miranda smashed one of the segments against the side of his helmet and kicked him in the chest.

  His head whipped back. He staggered.

  Miranda kicked him again.

  He took the hit and pivoted close, backhanding her with blinding force. Blood spilled from her nose, its thick taste blooming in her mouth. Her eyes watered with the pain, blurring his image as he raised the sword.

  "Miranda!" Seth yelled from the RV.

  She charged forward, ducking under the warrior's sword to ram her shoulder into the hard leather of his armor. He twisted and threw her off. She landed on her feet and leapt onto him again, this time grabbing onto the dagger on his belt.

  It slid loose in her grasp and she jammed the blade under his armor. He made a rasping noise. Blood poured over her hand. She looked up, feeling a dark snap of energy flow between them, thick and terrifying.

  He grabbed onto the fabric of her dress and lifted her against him. She clenched her teeth, swinging at him, her fists landing helplessly on hard muscle and cold armor.

  Seth materialized from the storm at his back.

  The Khagan turned, flipping his sword and cutting at Seth, who le
apt just out of reach, his eyes never leaving Miranda. "Let her go!"

  The Khagan kicked Seth in the stomach and flung Miranda into the stinging wind between them, whispering a harsh prayer at her back.

  Her strength dissipated.

  She stumbled forward, then looked down, watching as long cuts appeared on her wrists, opening to a thick flow of blood. She felt the warm trickle of it on her neck, the sensation of her life draining away. The spell.

  Miranda collapsed and Seth caught her, shock making his expression harsh. She blinked, unable to speak as he dragged her back through the wind.

  The Khagan appeared above them with his sword drawn.

  The RV rumbled to life, its engine growling into the storm. The glow of headlights lit up the sand then turned blinding as Pete flipped on the brights.

  The Khagan paused, a phantom caught in the glare.

  Pete began to honk the horn, its incessant alarm drawing attention. Faces appeared at the edge of the glow. Onlookers stopped along the road, their faces dark with concern. The Khagan tore his gaze from Miranda, scanning the gathering crowd. He regarded them coldly for a moment, assessing the risk of interference, then stepped back.

  Looking down at her, he shook his head, blood still leaking from under his armor. A gust of sand swept up at his back and he lowered his sword, disappearing into its harsh swirl.

  "Stay with me, Miranda," Seth insisted, his voice strained. He pulled her tighter against him, his arms crushing her to his chest. "Stay with me."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Seth felt her lose strength. Her body went slack in his arms. Her head fell back on her shoulders. Her lashes fluttered, the pale green of her eyes growing dull beneath them. She parted her lips, as if to whisper, but spoke only empty breath.

  He clenched his teeth, knowing that she was still close. He could still reach her, hold her in his world. There was something of her that still existed…

  Pete appeared from the glow of headlights. He cursed, kneeling down beside Miranda. "Jesus," he muttered, reaching out to touch the red waves of her hair.

  Blood still flowed from her, staining Seth's clothes, his skin and the brace wrapped around his wrist.