by Daniel Price
Zack reflexively reached for the space where a gearshift would be. There was nothing there but a cup holder. He scanned the wheel and dashboard. “Where the hell . . . ?”
“What’s the problem?”
“The gearshift. I can’t find it.”
Hannah searched with him. “Did you check the other side?”
“I’m looking everywhere. I can’t see it.”
The second hinge rusted away. Hannah’s door fell to the asphalt with a loud crash. The green-suited twin stood fifteen feet away. He aimed his hand at the actress.
“Oh God!”
She shifted into high speed and clumsily hurled a walkie-talkie. It shattered at the man’s feet, cutting his ankle with a bouncing piece of shrapnel. He lost his concentration.
The window behind Theo crumbled with age. “Zack, why aren’t we going?!”
“The controls are all weird! I can’t find the gearshift!”
Mia snapped to attention and opened her journal. She’d been so busy worrying about Amanda that she forgot the other notes she received.
“The steering column is the gearshift!” she yelled. “Press the white triggers on the wheel to—”
The rear doors suddenly flew open. Mia screamed as a bloody glove grabbed her arm.
The Motorcycle Man was out of patience. His cracked helmet had been removed, revealing his gaunt, leathery face. By official records, he was twenty-nine years old. A lifetime of shifting had done a number on his body, not to mention his mind. The six people in the van all looked like Hannah to him. He was fairly sure he was hallucinating again, but what did it matter? Rebel said they all had to die. If he killed them one by one, he’d eventually get to the bitch who broke his ribs and took his sword.
The moment he seized Mia, Amanda’s mind went white.
“NO!”
A geyser of tempic force erupted from her palm. It split evenly around Mia, converging on the Motorcycle Man in the form of a twenty-inch hand.
The tempis shoved him with enough force to knock one of the rear doors off its hinges. It crashed to the driveway. The Motorcycle Man crashed harder.
Amanda stammered in shock as she eyed her broken victim. She’d acted without a single thought and yet somehow the tempis knew who to save and who to hurt.
Zack pressed the white triggers on the steering wheel and pushed the column forward. He floored the pedal. The Salgado van peeled away, its one rear door swinging loosely on its hinge.
Nobody spoke a word as Zack navigated the long and winding path to the exit. Hannah looked out her empty door at the moving trees. Mia gazed at the shrinking building behind her. David peered ahead to the front gate. Amanda stared down at her bloody, trembling hands.
Only Theo glanced around at the others in the van, his fellow survivors. He’d lost his memories of the apocalypse they’d endured. Now he had a strong idea of what he’d missed.
“Jesus,” he said, in a croaking rasp. “Jesus Christ.”
—
Gemma Sunder screamed.
She’d been in the middle of a calm sentence, a theory as to how the breachers might have been alerted to their attack, when her head snapped back and her face contorted with sudden terror.
“We have to get out of here! We have to go right now!”
Ivy took a step back. Her niece didn’t just see the future. She lived it one minute at a time. Her nonlinear lifestyle made her a strange and difficult child, but she was rarely one to panic.
“What are you talking about, Gemma? What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t have time to explain! Just make a door and get us out!”
With a circular wave, Ivy drew a new portal in the wall. Rebel forced himself up to a standing position. His muscles still throbbed from the chaser attack. His hand screamed with stabbing agony.
“Not leaving without the others . . .” he groaned.
“There’s nothing we can do for them!” Gemma yelled.
Ivy shook her head. “No. I have to get Krista.”
“Goddamn it! Why don’t you two ever listen to me?! If we don’t get out of here in the next twenty seconds, we’re dead!”
“Gemma, what’s coming?”
“Something bad,” the girl replied. “Something really bad.”
—
Hidden among the bishop pines at the front of the property, Slim Tim Witten readied his weapon. At sixty-three, he was a clan elder, one of the last of the third generation. If his slight build and advanced age hadn’t been enough of a perceived liability, he had a talent that didn’t lend itself well to combat. But he’d begged to come along on this crucial mission, and Rebel ultimately gave in. Ivy had stashed him among the trees by the main gate. His task was to shoot any stragglers who tried to escape.
With quick concentration, he refreshed the earthly hues of his skin and beard—his lumiflage, as he called it. He blended among the foliage like a chameleon.
Now he could spot the van’s approach in the curving driveway. He saw two people behind the windshield, with hints of more in the back. Fourping hell, Rebel. Did you get any at all?
Once the vehicle reached the straight and final homestretch, Tim aimed his rifle at the wavy-haired man up front. The augurs said he was some kind of artist, and that he could be dangerously clever if given half the chance. Whatever he was, he was the driver, and so he was first. Tim lined Zack in his sights and fired.
The bullet traveled fourteen inches before disappearing into a small white portal. Tim cocked his head, flummoxed, until a cold hand grabbed his shoulder from behind. In the span of a heartbeat, he advanced in age—from gray to white to ancient to desiccated. At last Slim Tim Witten crumbled into dust, fertilizer for the shrubbery.
Standing in his place, Azral Pelletier watched his young Silvers approach. He had just arrived. He was not happy.
THIRTEEN
The moment the van crossed the sensors, the iron gate retracted on squeaky wheels. Hannah peered at the street beyond. She’d only experienced the outside world once before, for a quick but crazy eighty-one minutes. She wasn’t ready for more trans-American culture shock, but the fears of moving forward were just a gentle breeze compared to the nightmare behind her. Her safe little limbo, her Ellis Island, had been irreparably breached. She never wanted to go back.
As the vehicle idled in front of the sliding gate, the actress nervously tapped her fingers. She glanced out her missing door, then froze in the light of a familiar face.
“Oh my God.”
“What?” Zack asked.
“That’s him.”
“Who?”
“The guy who gave me my bracelet. He’s standing right there.”
Zack leaned in to Hannah’s vantage as the Silvers in the back peered through the shattered window.
Azral returned their gazes, still as stone. He wore a white oxford under a sharp gray business suit that was peppered with London rain. Even at twenty yards’ distance, his blue eyes popped with eerie vibrance. To Mia, he was the most terrifying thing of beauty she’d ever seen in her life—part vampire, part archangel, and (God help her) part David. He shared the boy’s small nose, bright eyes, and flawless symmetry, but there wasn’t a shred of kindness in his expression.
Hannah fumbled a hand in Zack’s direction. “I think we should—”
“Yeah.”
The passengers kept a fretful watch behind them as Zack lurched the van through the gate.
“Is he doing someth—”
The sound of crashing glass and metal suddenly filled their ears. Zack jumped in his seat.
“What happened? Are we hit?”
“It’s the other back door,” said Mia. “It fell off.”
Zack checked the damage in the rearview mirror. “He’s not following us?”
David shook his head, his eyes slitted i
n busy thought. “He appears to be letting us go.”
The van turned left onto a narrow suburban road. Theo peeked through the gateway. “Hannah, what did you say that guy’s name was?”
“Azral.”
“That’s what he told you?”
“That’s what you told me,” Hannah replied. “Right before your coma.”
Czerny mumbled something faint. Amanda leaned in closer.
“What did he say?” Mia asked.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t make it out. I don’t think he’s—”
“Pelletier,” he repeated. “His name’s Azral Pelletier.”
The passengers fell quiet for the next sixty yards, until Zack aimed his wide stare at Czerny.
“What?”
—
Krista Bloom staggered back into the lobby, still reeling from David’s assaults. Her head throbbed beneath her ski mask. The sounds of the world filtered in through a teakettle shriek.
Through the dancing spots in her vision, she saw her fallen teammate by the reception desk. She checked his wrist for a pulse. Nothing. It was hard to muster sympathy. The man in the Roosevelt mask had been a pariah among his people, banished long ago for unconscionable acts of cruelty. Rebel had offered him a spot in this mission as a chance to earn his way back into the clan. Krista found it sad that the path to forgiveness was carved through the murder of innocents. These were desperate times. Frightening times.
The glass doors swung open. Krista could make out the MacDougals. She had to squint to identify the unconscious figure they carried between them. The Motorcycle Man was just one violent incident away from becoming another exile. He’d been such a sweet young boy. But as he grew older—faster—his good nature and sanity withered away. Krista noticed from the freakish way his nose bent that it wasn’t just his mind that had snapped.
“Will he live?”
The brothers replied with a grim stare. She wasn’t sure if that meant yes or no. They weren’t his biggest fans either.
“Well, did you at least kill any of the breachers?”
The freckled twin shook his head. There was no point in asking for details. The MacDougals hadn’t spoken a word since they were eighteen. Their vow. Their sacrifice.
“Damn it! How could this have gone so wrong?” Krista pressed her collar mic. “Ivy?”
No response. Her blond brow furrowed. “Ivy, are you there? Talk to me.”
After attempting to call the other missing teammates—Rebel, Gemma, Slim Tim—Krista read the worry on the brothers’ faces.
“No. No way. Ivy wouldn’t leave us behind.” She wouldn’t leave me, Krista thought.
“Oh, but she did.”
Startled, Krista spun back to the reception desk, where Esis sat atop the polished marble. She dangled her legs off the desk, kicking her feet like a bored child.
“Your friend has departed the premises, along with her niece and the stubborn ape she mates with. Foolish creatures, all of you. I grieve to call you ancestors.”
Krista eyed Esis strangely. The woman wore a damp yellow raincoat over a short and leafy vest dress. It was a hip fashion among the progressive youth in London but utterly alien here in the States.
“Who the hell are you?”
Esis jerked a thumb at the brass Pelletier sign. “You broke into our house with your fearful schemes and wrongful notions. You’ve inconvenienced us greatly. We are not amused.”
She removed an English hippie sandal from her foot and curiously studied it.
“You should be making love, not war.”
Krista and the brothers each raised a hand to attack. Esis dropped her shoe. By the time it hit the floor, the Scottish Twins, the Motorcycle Man, and the Winter Blonde were all brutally slaughtered. Krista didn’t even have a chance to think her daughter’s name.
—
Amanda knew that Czerny shouldn’t talk in his condition. But like the others, she was anxious to learn why the terrifying being known as Azral also happened to own the name on the lobby wall.
The physicist spoke through pained grunts. “When Hannah provided her initial testimony, she told us she received her bracelet from a white-haired man named Azral. We found that highly peculiar considering that just thirty-six hours before, we’d finally been introduced to our organization’s financier, a gentleman who perfectly fit that description.”
David opened his mouth to speak, but Amanda touched his wrist. Wait.
“Upon broaching the matter with Dr. Quint, I was . . . He didn’t take it well. He said I was being an idiot, thinking like a conspiracy theorist instead of a theoretical physicist. He threatened to fire anyone who brought up the subject again, even in jest. So we put it out of our minds. All things considered, coincidence still seemed the likeliest explanation.”
He closed his eyes in pained lament. “I’m sorry, friends. I’m afraid we’ve all been a little misled.”
“Not a little,” Zack hissed. “And not Quint.”
Czerny weakly nodded. “Yes. You’re right. I’m certain now that Dr. Quint knew the truth. I’m sorry for that too. I can’t even begin to guess the reasons behind the deception.”
“What were they planning to do with us?” Mia asked Czerny.
“Not sure. Our only task was to keep you safe and comfortable while we learned as much as we could. Dr. Quint never once said anything to make me believe he wished you harm.”
“And if he had?”
Czerny tilted his gaze at the driver’s seat. “If he had, Zack, there would have been mutiny in his ranks. We may be scientists, but we’re still human beings.”
“I know you are,” Zack replied. “And Quint knew too, which is probably why he kept you in the dark. God only knows what they were planning for us.”
“You think it has anything to do with those killers back there?” Hannah asked.
David shook his head. “I don’t think so. I also question Zack’s view of Azral’s intentions. I mean he had us dead to rights and he let us go.”
“I have no idea what he’s planning, David. I just know that if he set this place up years ago, just for us, then he’s playing a long game. He’s not done with us.”
Mia fixed her anxious stare out the missing back doors, her journal squeezed tightly in her grip. She held a whole book of prophecies in her arms and yet she didn’t even know where she was sleeping tonight. The future had become a fierce, wild creature. And she still had two warnings left about the events of the day.
—
Azral grimaced as he opened the lobby doors. The carnage was unpleasant to look at and even worse to smell. He hailed from a more civilized age, and wasn’t accustomed to the raw scent of blood.
Esis remained barefoot in the center of the lobby, standing among the bits and pieces of her four latest victims. Unlike Azral, she’d adjusted quite well to the savagery of this era. Her hands had become long white scythes. Streaks of gore ran at crossed angles across her coat, her face, her tempic blades.
She reverted her hands to humble pink flesh, then reversed the blood from her clothes and skin. Her dark eyes narrowed to a petulant squint. She wasn’t pleased with Azral right now, for reasons he couldn’t refute. She’d warned him about the possibility of this attack and he didn’t listen.
Despite the setback, Azral assured Esis through soft, foreign words that the situation was far from tragic. It wasn’t the end of all their hard work. It was merely the end of Quint’s.
A curved screen of light appeared an inch above his wrist. Countless words of a strange alphabet scrolled past his vision at dizzying speed. He paused on one, a verb that was four syllables long. The definition fell somewhere in the space between cleanse and amputate.
With a wistful sigh, Azral activated the command.
—
At 6:32 and 58 seconds, an invisible swarm spread acros
s the globe, a breed of subatomic particle that modern science had yet to name or even notice. The energy was undetectable to all but one species of beetle and harmless to all but twenty-one unfortunate souls in the state of South California.
Charlie Merchant was showering at home, thinking how nice it would be to rub soapy lather on Hannah’s naked body. While his imagination flourished, a thin trickle of blood escaped his nose. His eyelids fluttered. His muscles clenched. And then Quint’s youngest employee fell to the drain. Dead.
Martin and Gerry Salgado were speeding toward the office in their Royal Condor. Beatrice had phoned them nine minutes ago with shrill cries of deadly intruders. Now while Martin floored the aerovan’s accelerator, Gerry desperately tried to hail his siblings on the radio. Martin didn’t care about Czerny or Beatrice or any of the freakish guests. All he wanted were his two youngest children. He prayed that Erin and Eric were okay, even as dark instincts told him otherwise.
Suddenly both father and son slumped forward in their seats. The aerovan lulled into a drifting spin, languishing twenty feet in the air like a half-filled balloon. For the next hundred yards, the Condor twirled a lazy path over Terra Vista. Dead.
In a fraction of a moment, twenty-one people came to an end. Everyone who worked for Sterling Quint. Everyone who’d met Azral Pelletier on the night of the Silvers’ arrival.
Of the staff, only Beatrice Caudell had noticed the strangely gritty texture of Azral’s handshake. She’d considered pouring rubbing alcohol on her palm, a move that would have saved her life. But red wine and romantic thoughts had overtaken her that night. She resolved to stop being a germaphobe for once.
Now she wrapped her arms around her knees, crying tears of relief from the underside of Czerny’s desk. The intruders were gone. The crisis was over. Oh thank God. Thank God. Thank God.
She then felt a warm trail under her nostril. She touched the blood on her lip. Her eyes rolled back and she collapsed to the floor. Dead.
—
Five miles away, Sterling Quint continued to sleep in good health, blissfully unaware that his staff had been let go. Safe and snug beneath his Asian silk blanket, he dreamed of time travel and Nobel Prize medallions.