by Mercedes Lackey; Cody Martin; Dennis Lee; Veronica Giguere
The seat squealed underneath the big man’s weight as he sat at the bar. He pressed the ice against his shoulder, but didn’t touch the glass. “I was serious, Gautier. You want in, you’re in. We lost a lot of good people that day, and we’re hurting for help.”
She paused, the glass at her lips. With a fair amount of restraint, Mel set the glass down and knocked her fist against her thigh as she struggled to come up with a suitable response. “So, second string, then. Wasn’t good enough the first time around, but now that there’s this need, you’ll just take anybody?”
“It’s not like that, Gautier. I’m not talking about a charity case; I don’t have time for that. I need answers, and I need good people to help find them.” Bulwark fixed her with a look that none of her illusions could have ever equaled. “Are you willing to be worth something, Reverie, or are you only good for a barfight and Jack Daniels these days?”
“It’s Maker’s Mark.”
A pause. “I don’t drink bourbon.”
“Yeah, you don’t look the type.” Mel turned away and braced herself against the back bar, a long breath escaping her lips. If she stayed, it wouldn’t be long before Blacksnake came back with more people to retaliate rather than recruit. If she left, it would be a chance to prove herself again and maybe start fixing what was so very broken. “If I come with you, and join up,” she said. “If I do that, do you think they could”—she made a vague motion with her unwrapped hand, fingers gesturing to her temple—“fix it?”
The barstool creaked as he shifted again. “We’ve got some good docs who might be able to tackle it. Some of the newer recruits have experience in that sort of rewiring, and they’ve got a gentler touch than the army docs. Multiple therapy sessions, so you don’t lose what you’ve got. What happened to you isn’t uncommon, Gautier,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact. “It gets fixed every day.”
“Then why didn’t someone bother fixing it the first time!” She barked at his reflection in the glass, her hand coming down hard on the counter in frustration. “If I was so good, why did they push me away? Damn it, Bull, I loved what I did! I didn’t want to leave, even after what happened! I wanted to be worth something again, and they kicked me out!”
“So be worth something now.” He raised his head to meet her gaze through the mirror, neither sympathy nor pity in his expression. “Pack up, turn in your notice, and be at the Jax Brewery building in two hours. Leave the self-pity here, and don’t be late. I’ve got a schedule to keep.”
Her eyes narrowed at his reflection, and she finally dropped her chin to her chest as she took a deep breath. Hands relaxed before she turned around, and Mel sized up the man with a trained eye before speaking again. “Scotch.”
“Pardon?”
“You’re a Scotch man.” Without waiting for an answer, she poured him a double of the top-shelf brand they stocked and set the glass next to his hand. She left the bottle on the counter before walking to the back and throwing a few words in the direction of the office. There was a shout of indignation, but Mel returned seconds later with a lazy smile on her pretty face.
“So,” she drawled as she leaned against the bar. “How long ’til we leave for Atlanta, boss?”
CHAPTER SIX
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Watch Over Me
MERCEDES LACKEY
One thing never left my awareness, ever. The creature that the media was calling “the Seraphym.” She hung in my magical awareness like a second sun. I knew what she was. I just couldn’t figure out what she was doing here. Sometimes I wondered if even she knew.
The Instrument of the Infinite, the Flaming Sword known as Seraphym, was walking almost invisibly over the dirt of a playground. “Almost,” because some of the smallest children could see her. She was wearing her gentlest aspect because of that, and little faces, tan, white and brown, turned towards her, bright eyes gazed at her thoughtfully and then went back to the important business of reenacting the battle that had so recently raged here with small plastic figures, cans and broken bricks. There was no need for a rescue at this moment, the threads of the futures remained momentarily unchanged, and for as long as both those conditions held, she had chosen to walk this place. The power that could take down a Thulian ship with a single blow was sifting through the dirt at her feet, seeking glass and rusty metal, brick, cement, wood fragments, and stone. And when she found such things, she reduced them to powder. Step by step, she walked this playground, making the ground safe for the children. Once, she felt a tugging at her gown, and turned to find a small one holding up a ruined plastic figure, bright with the colors that had once adorned the meta known as Kid Zero.
She took it, and sought in her mind for that fleeting spirit, and found him, safe and full of wonder. With a sigh, half of regret, half of relief, she let the fires run over the plastic in her hands, reshaping it until it was restored to playability again. Then, on a whim, she changed its colors: black jacket and pants and boots, gold star on its chest, red cape. CCCP. Let them know who their new protectors were. She handed it back to the toddler, not noticing she had changed the hair too, to a certain chestnut brown.
* * *
John Murdock patrolled his ’hood as he had before, but slowly, cognizant that he was still not fully recovered. Sometimes she sensed trouble in the futures, dangerous things intersecting with that blankness that was him. She intercepted these things if he was not strong enough to handle them himself yet—and if he was, she still waited and watched, to be sure he would not come to harm. And when she had nothing urgent to tend to, Sera shadowed him, staying just out of sight. Watched him, paid attention to what he paid attention to. Tried to read his thoughts from his expression. And still, he was an enigma. The blank place in the futures would not resolve, and somehow she shrank from invading his mind to read what was there. But she had to unravel this if she was to find the way out of doom.
In the community garden, the seedlings drooped. Planted by inexpert hands, overwatered, in sour soil too heavy with clay and urban contamination for healthy growth, they were fighting a losing battle with root rot, and no one who tended them knew that.
Seraphym knew. She had seen John Murdock here, staring perplexed at the unthriving seedlings, knowing something was wrong, but not what, nor how to mend it. No one here was a gardener. And this garden meant more than mere food. It represented the hope of the community. Instinctively, John understood this.
She came here in the dead of night, stood in the middle of the plot in bare feet, and became more truly herself for a moment than anyone had ever seen her. A pillar of flame, she breathed in the contamination and burned it away, and breathed out healing. The sacrifice had already been made here, of time and torn hands and tears. She repaid that sacrifice with a tiny, tiny miracle. The seedlings raised their heads to the night air, strong and healthy again.
Then she walked the garden as she had the playground, speaking to the earth, softening it, and making it fit to nurture.
* * *
John spoke to a distraught mother, promising he would have a talk with her son. But Seraphym reached the boy first, manifesting in a burst of fire between him and the house where he would find . . . poison, for the body and the soul. Her eyes were angry, and her sword was in her hand. This boy was nothing in the futures; they would not change with him in them or out of them. So . . . that oddly gave her freedom.
She forced him to see her. The blood drained from his face, and his legs crumpled beneath him. His mouth worked, but no sound came out. She let him feel the force of her anger—not the full force, for that would kill him, but enough. And then she was gone. And when his legs would work again, he staggered home, and thrust the money into his mother’s hands, and went out to mend the roof that she had been begging him to fix for six months.
* * *
In the informal day-care center, the old woman left in charge of the preschoolers drowsed in a scavenged recliner. And children whose eyes had seen terrible things, and who hid hearts wo
unded by terror, gathered around the glowing lady who had appeared when their caretaker fell asleep. She had summoned them with a glance of her strange eyes, collected them around her, let them cuddle close to her, and emanated compassion and purest unconditional love. She told them things without words, told them stories they would never afterwards quite remember, and slowly, their hearts healed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
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Baby, I’m an Anarchist
CODY MARTIN AND MERCEDES LACKEY
People had begun to relax. It was stupid, of course, but when there was no more sign of the Thulians, people began to dare to think that maybe, just maybe, they had thrown their entire force into the blitzkrieg effort, lost, and had crawled back into a hole and all we had to do was figure out where they were and smoke them out of it.
Red Saviour, Bella and I never believed that, of course. Sometimes paranoia is useful. We had gotten the “shock and awe.” Now we were in for the terror.
John Murdock hadn’t seen much of the CCCP base except for the infirmary and a couple of offices. When Soviette had declared him “fit to fight,” he had pretty much headed straight out the door without looking around. He’d had a lot of thinking to do.
He was sitting on his usual “thinking spot,” the corner of a ledge on his squat’s roof, Guinness in hand and the moon high above.
Finally, he’d settled on a decision. CCCP was still a hierarchical organization. It answered directly to a government, though it seemed the organization was a bit of a black sheep, from the research that he’d done. Anarchist as he was now—and looking at the Soviet abuses of power in the past—it weighed on his mind. The paramilitary aspect was . . . something that was comfortable for him; it was structure, and a welcome change after his past few years of wandering. Things were different, and he wouldn’t be able to face this fact alone. His newly acquired “family” through the neighborhood certainly couldn’t fight against it, even with his help.
The situation was still better than Echo and a damn sight better than Blacksnake and . . .
With a shudder, he turned his thoughts away from what that tattoo on his wrist represented.
He’d made up his mind. All that was left now was bucking up and making it official. Leaving the empty beer bottle on the ledge, he headed downstairs.
One cold shower—since he didn’t have the time or inclination to set up a solar-powered one, at the moment—and a change into the cleanest and least abused clothing he had, and he was back on the CCCP’s doorstep.
This time, he came in through the front door.
He didn’t recognize the person at the front desk, but as he addressed the stony-faced man, he noted with relief that at least the fellow spoke English.
Though when he keyed a handheld walkie-talkie device in lieu of an intercom, he spoke Russian. All that John could make out was his own name.
The reply was faster than he expected. And evidently faster than the man expected too. “You may go up to the Commissar’s office, Comrade Murdock,” was all he said, leaving it up to John to find his own way.
This was very clearly a former warehouse and factory. Brick, two stories of offices in the front facing the street—Saviour had kept this area as offices, and the CCCP’s makeshift sickbay, it appeared—and behind that, the vast expanse that had once had heavy machinery and storage piled to the ceiling. Now this section was being partitioned up into barracks, a larger infirmary, kitchen, garage, armory presumably. It was all very impressive, though clearly in its early stages; there was still a lot of building going on back there. Still, he’d kill to have even half of those resources for the neighborhood. The pounding of hammers echoed around him as he climbed worn wooden stairs to Red Saviour’s office. Construction dust made him want to cough.
Finally, he reached her office; it took some navigating to find it. Leave it to Russians to make a maze out of their HQ. The Commissar remained seated as he tapped on the side of the door. “Come,” she said, and nodded at the Spartan wooden chair in front of her desk. “I assume you have something other than a pleasant good morning to be telling me?”
John cleared his throat. “I’ve given the matter some thought.” Red Saviour stood impassively, waiting for him to continue. “I figured that it’d be in my best interests and the interests of the neighborhood if I were t’join y’all. If you’ll take me, that is.”
Red Saviour regarded him enigmatically. And with remarkable calmness. “Comrade Parker argued your case for you with some vehemence,” she replied. “She expected that you would be making this request.” The Russian woman chuckled dryly. “You could not have a more enthusiastic advocate. If you had not been incapable of such things when you were in our care, I would have suspected you had become lovers.”
John flushed, but didn’t otherwise outwardly react. But Saviour was bulling right on. “However, since that is not the case, it must be your . . . other merits. So”—she leaned over her desk—“you will be telling me about your scars. And how you got them. And do not attempt to deceive me. This is my territory and these are my people and it is my right and duty to see they are not put in harm that I do not put them in as their commander.”
John began to sweat. During his years on the run, he had been especially careful about his past. It was his one weak point; the one thing that could get him, and anyone near him, killed—faster and more completely than a bullet. John moved to close the door to the office, looking to the Commissar for permission; she merely raised an eyebrow, which was enough for John. Closing the door, he turned to face Saviour, gripping the back of a shoddy chair positioned in front of her desk. “There’s not much to tell. I was taken in as part of a research gig, run by the government. They made some changes to me; strength, reflexes, endurance, senses. Nothing outstanding, but enough. I . . . took an ‘early’ release for myself when my powers first manifested. They didn’t take too kindly to that, an’ I’ve been avoidin’ any unnecessary entanglements since.” It wasn’t the whole truth; the whole of it was damning, and would have taken much more out of John to tell. But it was, hopefully, enough; he hadn’t lied, at the very least.
Finally, Saviour seemed to be content. Or as content as she was going to get. She made some notes. “Now . . . we talk ideology.”
This time she made him sweat in other ways. Never before had he been forced to articulate the philosophy he had come to—well, it was more than “embrace.” It had become his life preserver in a way, and now he had to justify it and reconcile it with Leninist/Marxist Socialism. It was a long, a very long, hour. Mostly he expanded upon his personal beliefs concerning free will, self-determination, social and individual contracts, the nature of hierarchy and coercion, and so on. He didn’t lie during this portion of his “examination” either; when asked questions pertaining to Statist Communism, he stated his unflattering opinions of all of the examples of the systems. She made notes the entire time.
When she was done, she pulled a file off the top of a stack of others, and pretended to leaf through it. Pretended, because he was sure that she knew it by heart. “Comrade Parker gives you a clean bill of health. Comrade Soviette does likewise. So. Now, we go beyond ideology. Is not enough to say one thing, even to believe it, but do another. Practical application, comrade.” She put both hands on the desk and leaned over at him. “There is a bag of kittens on the railroad tracks and a train is approaching at 75 kilometers an hour. Nearby is a group of Young Pioneers about to succumb to the blandishments of a capitalist with an Xbox. What do you do?”
John stared at her, stunned. But before he could react—
Something crashed down through the ceiling, piercing and shattering the desk between them, scattering the files in a snowstorm of paper. Something huge, metallic . . . something he had seen before—
—the metallic tentacle of a Nazi war machine.
It withdrew as quickly as it had smashed down. John snapped into his fighting mindset without even thinking about it: calm, analytical, and mind goin
g one thousand miles per second. Pure instinct, reflexes, and training; muscle memory, as opposed to calculating, conscious thought. He dashed to his right, crouching down into a half-stance and looking to the gaping hole in the ceiling. Red Saviour had gone to the opposite side, overturning her desk for cover; her fist was already glowing malevolently with charged energy. Within moments, the sunlight streaming into the room was blotted out by the huge and terrible form of the Nazi war machine. Both of them heard the telltale ultrasonic whine of the machine’s signature energy cannon charging, preparing to fire and erase them from existence. Even with realization of their impending doom hitting them in microseconds, there was still no time to react; even their tremendous powers couldn’t beat the speed of light, beams of coherent energy lashing out instantly.
They stared into the glowing mouth of the thing. And then there came an inarticulate bellow of rage from somewhere on the street outside. A huge rust-bucket of a sedan hurtled into the side of the war machine, impacting just below the muzzle of the cannon. The analytical part of John’s mind recognized it as a ’69 Chevy. The whole war machine boomed with the impact, ringing like a bell, and probably shaking up the pilots inside. The Chevy disintegrated in a cloud of scrap against the machine’s armored hull, raining around John and the Commissar. A second vehicle followed the first; this time it was the remains of a delivery van. And that was followed by a chunk of concrete almost as big as the Chevy. With that kind of barrage going on, not even a computer could have kept the guns aimed.
That was the only opening that they needed. “Davay, davay, davay! To the roof, comrade!” The Commissar literally flew through the hole in the roof, kicking off of the desk. John got a running start, and then vaulted forward and as high as he could; he felt his strength ebbing, trickling away with each exertion. His injuries were still healing, and he was going to pay the price for that. Grasping, he barely caught the edge; still a Herculean leap for an average man, but well below what John was normally capable of. With a grunt, he pulled himself up above the lip of the hole and immediately began moving; a still target is a dead target, and he needed to go from the defensive to the offensive as soon as possible if he wanted to get out of this fight alive.