Skinner Luce

  He wanted to buy her out: the memory wells up as if from weeks ago. Sentries can’t be bought out, they’re too important. I’m important, she thinks a little smugly, then comes back to the reality of the van careening along the highway, and where they’re headed.

  She dozes off for a time, curled up on the back seat.

  About three quarters of the way to Eden, Gabriel gets word that Q.C. entered the compound way later than anticipated. They’re taking fire and don’t have enough manpower. They’re retreating till Boston arrives.

  “That sick bastard,” Gabriel fumes. “Fast as you can,” he barks at the driver, then gets on the phone again with Eric.

  “The Q.C. Qadir’s screwing ours over,” Sina explains to Lucy.

  “You can bet he’ll still send a bill,” Gabriel snaps.

  “Yeah,” Sina says, tilting her head back and closing her eyes.

  Eric lets them know there’s a storm rolling in that’s going to dump up to ten inches, which they knew about already, but it’s picked up speed. Gabriel snarls into the phone like it’s Eric’s fault, then hangs up. His eyes glaze over, staring into the middle distance. He hasn’t shaved, and Lucy sees streaks of gray in his beard; she wonders how long sentries get to live, she’s heard a century, at least.

  I’ll bury Sean, she realizes, dismayed. She always just assumed she’d be the one to die first.

  Everyone did, doubtless.

  “WHEN WE ARRIVE,” HE says, “you jump and run, we stick together, you understand?”

  She nods. The sentry’s grim, earnest face floats in her vision, his lecture disembodied chatter outside the high hum of the engine. His name is Aaron. The name is familiar, but she can’t place why. He has a fat, brown mole under his eye she’s trying not to focus on. He keeps ramming information at her: “We’ll come in twenty-five yards from the rear of the main house. We’ll break off into four groups, one at the house, and the others at the outlying structures.”

  Aaron, she realizes at last. “Is Detective Bedrosian O.K.? Where is he?”

  The interruption annoys him. “Pay attention. We might be taking fire, so you stay low and close. Do not run off on your own. Are we clear?”

  She nods, wondering why he thinks she’d be so stupid as to run off on her own.

  THE VAN ROLLS TO a stop. The door opens onto a swirling storm of white, and the sentries vanish into it. Lucy’s boots are heavy as rocks. She gets pushed from behind. The lumbering boot catches on something, and she lurches forward into the air, her arms flung out in panic.

  SNOW CLOGS HER MOUTH, clumps all over her face, she tries to see but can’t make out anything except bright orange flashes illuminating the hulking darkness of the house looming ahead. Gunfire thuds all around. Which way is she supposed to go? She spins frantically on her belly, propelling herself with elbows and knees, but she can’t see anyone else. She goes still, staring around in despair. Snow trickles freeze down her neck. The wool coat is sodden, heavy, and the cold’s starting to seep in through her sweater. The vans are gone, obscured by the swirling white. She’s alone in this huge empty space, by herself, they left her: she can’t believe it, Oh my God, she’s going to get shot— “Move it!” Gabriel barks in her ear. She feels herself lifted up, and she grabs at his coat. He lets her cling to him as they run, and she’s so grateful, he’s as big as the house, he’s strong, she can hide in his lee. There’s a sudden rat-tat of gunfire nearby, and she cries out, except there’s no sound, just the wild rush of her own body plunging forward. She can’t see, she’s going to fall, then he reaches back, closes his hand around her arm, and yanks her through a doorway.

  They’re inside, they made it inside.

  Wheezing, mouth agape, she scuttles close to Gabriel, pressing herself into his broad back. He’s just inside the doorframe, firing. Her hands make their way up to her ears, she presses hard. There’s the tromp of boots on the tile floor, bodies blundering by bringing gusts of cold and snow and wet.

  She gets dragged onward with the wave of them, deeper into the house.

  “Stay here,” Gabriel says suddenly, and shoves her. Her knees rap stone: a curved bench beneath a narrow stained glass window, high up and conical, like you’d see in a church. An alcove. Theo always did like his medieval shit.

  “You’re in the way,” Gabriel explains, and then he’s gone.

  She climbs onto the bench so as to be closer to the wall. Huddles up, arms tight around her knees. A soft round light high up on the ceiling illuminates her nightmare: long narrow tiled corridor, cream walls, the alcove where she’s trapped, shaking. You have to calm down, a stern, rational part of herself commands. But she’s plagued by panic: is Gabriel coming back, is she supposed to go find him at some point? He didn’t tell her what to do.

  The stone house echoes with the noise of gunfire, breaking glass, loud crashes, metal pings. She huddles tighter.

  Her head is a metal song, there’s nothing left but noise, no room for thoughts. Her body curls into itself until she’s on her side, face pressed into her knees, hands jammed against her ears.

  At last, gradually, the noise starts to die. The silence that fills in the gaps is gigantic. The gunfire’s sporadic and more distant. She forces her bent legs to uncurl. Pain shoots through her muscles at this near impossible effort. When she sets foot on the floor, her legs buckle. She hangs onto the wall, listening.

  Shouts, far away, barely audible.

  She edges along, hugging the wall, trying not to make any noise. The shouting fades. No one was coming for her, she realizes, with a new rush of anxiety. But, maybe that’s because it’s not safe yet. She should go back.

  At the end of the hallway is an oak door that opens onto a short staircase. She climbs. At the top, there’s a living room, or what used to be one. The furniture’s overturned, glass lies shattered all over the place. She steps around a toppled bookcase, the books fanned out across the floor. There’s a pair of bare feet sticking out from behind the couch. She creeps forward. The guy isn’t a sentry, nor one of the soldiers. She doesn’t know who he is. Half his face is blown off. A gun lies in his slackened hand. She swallows, turning away. There’s someone else a few feet away, all curled up. Barefoot. They must have been servs, living here with Theo. They came out in bare feet, against an army of sentries. Total morons.

  Could’ve been me.

  Because here she is at last, in that magical la-la land where they’d be freed from Service, tucked safe under Theo’s paternal wing. Eden: she’d pictured columns, sweeping marble, something derivative of an ancient temple. The actuality is a lot different, but it still feels familiar, it has that heavy splendor that might befit a restored Nafikh in this realm, from the shining grand piano to the ornately framed oil paintings to the crystal chandelier she can just see hanging low over the formal dining table in the adjacent room.

  Just hours ago, this house must have been filled with the anticipation of great things to come. The feeling of those precious days in Ayer balloons inside her, along with the bitterness she’s nursed all this time for being shunted and rejected.

  And yet, for what? This is the truth of it, this schmuck serv’s curled-up rigid corpse, his hand over his face, like at the last second he finally grasped the reality of what he signed up for.

  He was expendable. They all were, right from the start.

  There’s shooting far off, a dull series of pops. She recalls the aerial view they examined before leaving, trying to figure out where the sound might be coming from. The big barn, maybe, the one near the lake. She wonders how many more servs were already tucked away here, living the dream, full of smug pleasure at Theo’s attention. Now getting picked off one by one.

  She makes her way through the debris, passes into the dining room. Her boots crunch glass beneath the broken window. The gently falling snow blows in from the outside, melting into the carpet, floating across the furniture. In this untouched, splendid room, the weird whiteness layering everything, Lucy has the impression of sinkin
g undersea, in the wreckage of the Titanic.

  She stands there, not knowing what to do, watching the snow float in.

  Becomes aware, gradually, of a faint reverberation beneath her feet. A motor, maybe? A generator?

  “Lucy! Come on!”

  She almost topples over from fright, but it’s Sina, gesturing from a doorway. Lucy bangs her shins on the table leg, then skids a few feet on the carpet in her haste to reach Sina’s side, breathless and grateful.

  “Pull yourself together,” Sina snaps, then turns on her heel and lopes off.

  The criticism stings. The little pocket of solitude and reflection that she’d crept into suddenly tears open, drops her hard. An urge comes over her with the force of a tidal wave, to smash her fists into the wall, or into the back of Sina’s sleek head more like it.

  “Where are we going?” she asks through clenched teeth. “Where is everyone?”

  “Clearing the rest of the buildings.”

  “You came back for me?”

  “Yes. What’s happening?”

  It takes a moment for Lucy to understand the question isn’t directed at her. There are some servs up ahead. They must be from Q.C. They’re decked out in military gear. One of them steps forward, a block of a guy with a stiff square crop of blonde hair, a tattoo on the shaved scalp above his ear. His nametag reads A. Coutreaux. He says, “No change.”

  “Shit,” Sina mutters. She shoulders by, and he spins and follows close behind. Their departure creates a sudden vacuum. Silence. The two other servs eye Lucy from the shadows, dead quiet, machine guns cocked on their hips. She feels their hostility like a sharp prickle across her skin, and it aggravates the turmoil in her limbs that she’s trying so hard to suppress. She can’t look at them, not directly. Just the boots, the cockily bent legs, the Victorian pattern wallpaper behind with its golden birds perched among fruit bushes.

  “T’as un problème, toé?”

  She lifts her eyes. It’s the taller one that spoke. P. Lefevre, narrow chin jutted like an aggressive dog.

  She says, “I don’t know French.”

  The guys exchange a quick, suspicious look. She chooses this moment to walk on by. They follow. Their presence behind her is like two heavy weights. She can hear every little thing. Their breathing, which is tense, fast. The rustling clothes, the boots. Faint metal on metal, the weapons brushing a buckle or belt. The pungent smell of them, too, of sweat and oil, leaves a sour taste on the back of her tongue. It takes every ounce of will not to glance back.

  It must be the boost giving her such awareness. This better be a passing phase, because living like this will be a bitch.

  Sina and Coutreaux are in the kitchen, fixated on something going on outside. The wide-open doors creak on their hinges in the gusting wind. Snow blows in, dampening the breakfast table. Beyond the patio, about thirty feet from the house, Hansel stands in a slump, His outstretched arm propping Him against a giant old oak tree. There is something similar in their two forms, both so massive and still, snow settling silently onto them.

  “What’s He doing?” Lucy whispers.

  “He was shot. He should leave, but He’s still refusing. Dammit,” Sina curses. She taps the mic on her headset. “Gabe, we can’t wait any longer.”

  Her jaw works hard as she listens to the reply, staring at the slumped Nafikh.

  “There is no time,” she says flatly.

  Pause.

  “Negative,” she says. “I’m forcing the blow.”

  She switches off her headset. “Coutreaux, move out. Now. She goes with you.”

  Coutreaux’s pale blue eyes flash across Lucy, emotionless, like a computer reading her presence. “Acknowledged. Good luck.”

  “What are you doing?” Lucy demands. “What’s going on?”

  “If this one dies, we’ll have even more of a shitstorm on our hands,” Sina says. “Go with them.”

  The sentry’s so cold and calm, not even looking in Lucy’s direction.

  “Come on,” Coutreaux barks from the hall. “Hurry up!”

  Lucy can’t, though: she’s riveted by Sina’s methodical passage around the kitchen table and out the open doors. Her boots sink into the snowdrifts, making her gait choppy and labored.

  “Tajjakah!” she shouts. “Tajjakah! Eyaman-eh!”

  Hansel sways. The snow blows horizontal in the howling wind. He lifts a hand, touches His mouth uncertainly, then peers at His fingers.

  Sina walks forward. “TAJJAKAH! TAJJAKAH!”

  Hansel turns His head, and even at this distance, Lucy feels the sick lurch from looking upon the void of His eyes. Then, she senses the change in the Nafikh; it happens all at once, with the violence of a bursting dam.

  “Get back!” Sina screams, running at her. “Back, back, back!”

  A beat, another, and Hansel lifts Himself to His full height, arms thrust outward. A brilliant light breaks through the whirling snow, emanating from His form. Lucy cries out, the light sharp as splinters in her eyes. She runs blindly, slams into a wall, turns, runs. There’s a weird, hollow thump inside her chest, and then everything goes black.

  Then consciousness: What?

  Fire, her mind informs the panicked, stunned self lying on the floor.

  Fire!

  Her eyes open to see the kitchen far down the hallway engulfed by flames pouring towards her, the heat searing her face.

  Sina: she was coming from there, from where the fire roars.

  She didn’t make it. No way she could have.

  Lucy’s limbs explode to life. She scrambles backwards, gets to her feet after a few stumbling attempts. Starts to run. Bursts into a huge room, a parlor with lounge chairs and books. It is bright as day in here, the room encircled by a dancing carousel of flames. She cries out, throwing her hands up over her face. Backs away, stumbles over something.

  A body. One of the Canadian servs. The shorter one with the red freckles.

  The second she touches him, she feels that awful weight of something dead. Unmoving. Now she registers the pool of blood beneath his head. The ceiling, she understands numbly, slowly turning her gaze upwards. This part of the ceiling collapsed. Snow’s falling on her face, into her mouth. She backs away into the corner. Feels the immense pressure of heat all around. Sweat pours into her eyes, blurring her vision. The flames light up the posh mahogany, green velvet, paintings in ponderous, gilded frames. The light is so brilliant that color’s stripping out of everything, it’s like looking at an overexposed photograph. Jump out the window! she cries to herself, but the fire is outside, too: it’s in the snow. Or, it’s displaced the snow. The snow is gone, it’s just fire outside. Not fire, a distant part of herself corrects. Nafikh-fire. And it’s everywhere inside, too, spreading slowly, almost languidly, through the crackling flames it has ignited.

  There is nowhere to go. All ways blocked off. Her eyes stream tears, blinded by the brightness.

  I’m going to die.

  “Hey! You!”

  She turns in place. Through the flames she catches sight of a shadowy figure. She blinks, rubbing her eyes. It’s Coutreaux, far away across the room. His arm pumps direction, “That way! Jump!”

  Her legs obey, dragging her in the direction he’s indicating. A fiery obstacle lies across her path. She clambers over it, failing to jump. He’s on her in a heartbeat, spinning her around as he tears her burning coat off one arm then the other, and tosses it aside. Then he shoves her along, towards an archway framed by burgundy drapes tied back with gold cords. Flames lazily snake their way up the material, creating a halo of light around them as they pass through. She wonders if it, the Nafikh-fire, can tell it’s elsewhere, if it is alive in its own way, because it almost seems like it’s tasting the drapes, encircling, dancing, and finally obliterating.

  She blinks, trying to focus. Her eyes hurt awfully. But she can see where they are: a dead end.

  They’re at a dead end, and there’s Lefevre, slamming his shoulder again and again into a metal door, his fa
ce worked up into a twisted knot of fear and rage.

  “Tasses-toé! Let her do it!” Coutreaux hollers.

  Do what?

  “Open the door!” Coutreaux screams. “Open the fucking door!”

  Lefevre steps aside, bubbles of spit on his gaping lips. Lucy stares uncomprehendingly at the door.

  “Quelque chose ne tourne pas rond avec celle-là!” Lefevre rages.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Coutreaux shakes her, pushes her towards the door. “Is there something wrong?”

  He peers into her face, like he might detect the flaw.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t understand.”

  “What the fuck!” he explodes, spit flying into her face. “Just open it! You’re a goddam sentry! Open the fucking door!”

  “Dépêches-toé!” Lefevre wails, his eyes wide on the approaching fire.

  “Hurry up!” Coutreaux yells. He grabs her hand, forces it onto the door handle. “Come on!”

  She grips the handle and pushes. Nothing happens. There is a gentle, rumbling thunder, followed by the musical tinkle of a thousands of pieces of glass shattering. She whips around to see the flames pouring in like a curling wave through the shattered windows, rolling upwards when they strike the floor. In front of this backdrop, the two servs gaze at her in horror. Then Coutreaux’s face twists up into a mask of pure panicked rage:

  “OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!”

  Lucy screams in response, a wordless protest hurling from her deepest insides. What the fuck does he mean, he’s crazy, she hates him, she’s going to die. She wrenches at the door handle, throwing her whole being into the act. She’s jerked back by the force of her own gesture, the massive iron door swinging outwards, the bolt snapped clean in two with a distinct metallic crack.