And then there was the final element of her curse.
‘Olivia?’
Asgard’s voice broke through her chaotic thoughts and brought her sharply back to the moment.
‘You said my mother was a Seer?’ she said, her mouth dry.
‘Yes. Natalia’s powers evolved after she reached physical maturity. Although Sara was her twin, she only possessed traces of Natalia’s abilities.’ A melancholic smile flashed across Asgard’s face. ‘She was good at hunches.’
‘Was clairvoyance the only gift she possessed?’ said Olivia.
She was surprised at the eagerness in her voice. Her fingers flexed unconsciously over the symbol on her right palm. ‘Was she—was she marked in the same way as I?’
Asgard cocked his head and watched her shrewdly. ‘She could also see the past through her dreams. And she possessed no unique marking. No one in the bloodline did, as far as I am aware.’ He paused. ‘I take it from your expression that you have experienced both visions and nightmares?’
Olivia nodded mutely. Relief and excitement filled her in equal measure, shocking her in their intensity. She had never been able to speak of these matters freely with anyone other than the abbess.
‘They started after I turned eighteen,’ she admitted shakily. ‘Could my mother also hear other people’s—?’
The vision came without warning. Instead of the sick feeling that normally preceded one of her prescient episodes, images suddenly filled her sight. She rose from the bed and gazed blindly in front of her.
Asgard took a step toward her. ‘Olivia?’
His anxious voice came to her from far off, drowned by the roar of blood in her ears.
Cars raced down a dusty main road, flashing lights atop their roofs. They screeched to a stop next to a long, low, one-story building sitting on a parking lot, their tires burning tracks of smoking rubber on the hot asphalt. Uniformed men with pistols and shotguns jumped out. In the bedlam that followed, a man in a familiar, olive army fatigue leaned across the hood of a black four-by-four and sighted down the barrel of a sniper rifle.
She returned to the present with a jolt and stared at the two men, her pulse racing with fear. ‘Run!’
Chapter Seven
They came with sirens muted and engines screaming. As he sprinted out of the front door of the room behind Asgard and Olivia, Ethan glimpsed county sheriff and state trooper cars sliding to a stop in front of the motel.
Great, the cavalry is here!
He scowled and gripped the duffel bag on his shoulder, his blades clinking under his jacket. At least they’d emptied the Jeep before they went inside their motel room.
Asgard pounded the blacktop to the south, his fingers clasped around Olivia’s hand, a bag strapped to his back over his arming sword. They stayed between the building and the scattering of vehicles lining the parking lot. To her credit, the nun was keeping up.
The first gunshots shattered the sleepy stillness of the morning seconds later. Ethan rounded the corner of the building after the running immortals and felt stone chips strike the back of his legs from the bullets peppering the asphalt. He glanced over his shoulder, identified three shotguns, and focused on the weapons. Colorful cursing rose to the clear skies. Metal clattered to the ground in the distance behind him.
Ethan grinned and bolted onto the vacant lot at the back of the motel. Asgard and Olivia were halfway across it already.
Rust-stained silos rose above a concrete manufacturing plant to the north of the deserted parcel of land, the aluminium roofs of the main factory building glowing blindingly under the blazing sun. To the east and south, silver-colored, cylindrical storage tanks on steel struts dotted the perimeter of the plot. Beyond them, the ground dropped to a shallow basin.
The two immortals were headed straight for a gap between the tanks. Ethan put his head down and accelerated.
He was twenty feet from the running pair when he heard tires squeal on his left. A patrol car came into sight on the dirt track next to the motel. It veered wildly, bounced onto the empty lot, and barreled toward them.
Ethan skidded to a stop and scowled at the officers behind the windshield. His gaze dropped to the hood of the vehicle. He perceived the steering column in his mind’s eye, raised his left hand, and flicked his wrist.
The steering wheel spun violently between the driver’s hands. His companion braced himself against the dashboard and the roof, mouth opening on a scream. Their panicked shouts were barely audible above the shrill whine of the engine as the car pinwheeled on its axis in a cloud of dust and gravel.
‘Ethan!’ Asgard barked as the vehicle skidded to a screeching halt.
Four state troopers and two county sheriff officers emerged from the side of the motel. Ethan twisted on his heels and raced after the immortals.
Olivia suddenly staggered to a stop. Asgard grunted and stumbled. The nun ignored him and looked around wildly, her eyes frantically scanning the landscape.
Asgard tugged her forward. ‘We have to go!’
Ethan saw her stiffen and followed her frozen gaze to the arid, brown hills rising beyond the rail tracks and the river east of the basin. Something glinted in the distance. The nun grabbed his wrist as he reached her side, pulled on Asgard’s hand, and dragged them into the shadow of one of the storage tanks.
Silent shots pelted the ground where they had stood a second ago. The state troopers and county officers stopped in their tracks and gazed around in confusion. Further shots thudded into the ground next to them, raising small puffs of dirt. The men dove behind the cover of the stationary patrol car in the middle of the lot.
A bullet zinged off the driver’s side mirror. The next one pierced the window and struck the policeman’s left temple. He thudded onto the steering wheel, eyes wide open, his slack jaw striking the horn. A high-pitched blare tore through the air. His companion opened the passenger door and stumbled out of the vehicle, gun in hand.
‘Shit!’ hissed Ethan.
They were directly in the line of fire of the officers sheltering behind the car. He was wondering whether to disable their weapons when more bullets struck the dirt close to where the three immortals crouched. One pinged off the strut of the tank.
He turned and looked into Olivia’s eyes, his heart thundering inside his chest. ‘Sniper?’
She nodded, her fingers biting hotly into his skin. ‘It’s—it’s the same men who were at the abbey!’
‘Jonah,’ growled Asgard.
Olivia’s hand flexed unconsciously on Ethan’s wrist. He felt a faint quivering inside his skull once more, as if a butterfly was touching his consciousness with its wings. He turned his arm over, grabbed her fingers, and yanked her toward him.
‘Is that you?’ he asked harshly, inches from her face.
She gasped. Her eyes turned to jade, dark pupils dilating with shock.
Asgard’s hand landed heavily on Ethan’s shoulder.
The older immortal was glaring at him. ‘What the hell—?’
A bullet struck the body of the tank, making them jump. Liquid splashed onto the ground a couple of feet away, pale and viscous. Dread filled Ethan as he watched the growing puddle darken with dirt. He recognized the pungent, sweet smell of the fluid.
‘That’s naphtha oil!’ He rose, yanked Olivia and Asgard to their feet, and urged them toward the southeast border of the plot. ‘Go!’
Further shots whizzed by when they cleared the shelter of the storage tank. They ducked behind the next reservoir and skidded to a stop behind its hulking shape. Ethan moved to the back of the structure and peered around the contoured edge. A faint breeze stirred his hair when a bullet sang past his head.
He pulled back sharply. ‘Dammit! This bastard has us pinned. He’ll shoot us like fish in a barrel if we go out there!’
Asgard was staring at the patrol car in the middle of the vacant plot. The state troopers were in the midst of an animated discussion, fingers occasionally pointing in their direction. The blast from
the car horn stopped abruptly when they pulled the dead policeman off the steering wheel. Distant sirens broke the sudden silence. They had called for backup.
Another sound rose from the north. Asgard dropped flat to the ground and squinted between the tank’s supporting struts.
‘There’s a freight train coming,’ he said after a few seconds. He rose to his feet and dusted off his hands. ‘That’s our way out of here.’
Ethan looked from him to the tracks some five hundred feet on the other side of the shallow valley separating them from the hills. The train horn came again, faint but unmistakable.
‘How the hell do you propose we get on it without being shot to pieces?’ he said.
It was Olivia who replied. ‘You can manipulate metal?’
Although her voice shook, she was studying him with a singularly focused expression.
‘Yes,’ said Ethan with a faint frown.
Her gaze shifted to the distant hills. She bit her lip. ‘From how far?’
He blinked, surprised. ‘I don’t know.’
She squared her shoulders and seemed to reach a decision. ‘Let’s find out.’
She raised her right hand and hesitated for a heartbeat before gently cupping the side of his face. Her fingers trembled when her third eye birthmark came to rest against his skin.
Ethan froze. A shiver skittered down his spine as something alien glided across his consciousness. ‘What—?’
Olivia closed her eyes, brow furrowed in concentration.
In the next moment, brightness flooded Ethan’s sight and obscured his vision of the nun. He blinked when the dazzling brilliance coalesced into a kaleidoscope of colors and fragmented images. A wave of dizziness made him stagger back a step. The nun’s hand flexed on his face. She stayed with him, never breaking contact.
Ethan swallowed down bile. The ground he stood upon appeared beneath him and unfurled rapidly, as if he were somehow flying above it. The valley flashed past at a dizzying speed. The rail tracks and the river followed. Then, the hills were looming before him, brown slopes rising to a pale blue sky. A black spot appeared on the arid ground and rapidly grew in size, a target in the middle of his view.
It was a SUV with tinted windows. A man in an olive army uniform leaned across the hood of the vehicle, a sniper rifle fixed to a tripod under his chin. His eye was glued to the scope atop the weapon. Another figure stood behind him. Ethan inhaled sharply.
He recognized the second man.
‘Focus,’ whispered Olivia.
For a moment, Ethan was unsure whether she had actually spoken or if he had heard her voice inside his head. He gritted his teeth and centered his attention on the rifle.
The soldier’s finger moved on the trigger. Time slowed.
Ethan saw the shot leave the suppressor a second before the barrel crumpled into a twisted ball of metal. The soldier jerked back behind the scope, his expression startled.
The bullet struck the dark pool at the bottom of the punctured tank forty feet away. The liquid ignited.
Olivia dropped her hand from his face. Ethan rocked back on his heels as his consciousness slammed back inside his body. He blinked at the nun. Sweat beaded her forehead and she was panting unevenly. Her eyes gleamed with a hint of triumph.
Flames rose up the flowing rivulet of oil in a blazing roar. Asgard swore, grabbed their shoulders, and pushed them toward the lip of the basin. They stumbled and broke into a run. The tank exploded just as they reached the edge of the drop.
Searing pressure slammed into Ethan’s back and lifted him off his feet. He heard Olivia cry out, reached out blindly, and wrapped his arms around her body just as they were flung clear of the brink.
They were suspended in midair for timeless seconds before gravity sucked them to the ground. The landscape spun sickeningly around Ethan. Air wheezed out of his lungs in a harsh grunt when they landed heavily on a gravelly slope. He tucked Olivia’s head instinctively to his chest as they slid and rolled roughly down the incline. A rock sliced the skin on the back of his hand. Another ripped a hole in his jeans, gouging his leg. He ignored the stinging discomfort and tightened his hold on the woman in his arms.
They finally came to a stop at the bottom, Olivia lying atop him.
Ethan lay still for a stunned moment. He blinked at the plumes of black smoke rising toward the sky above him. A buzzing noise filled his ears and muffled all sound. Olivia’s heart fluttered madly against his chest, her rapid breaths warming the skin at the base of his throat. She raised her head and looked down at him.
The immortal felt as if he had been sucker-punched.
Her hair framed her face in a halo of gold. Her eyes were a green, hypnotic pool, her pupils a dark abyss he feared he would drown in. Self-preservation kicked in and sent a sudden burst of trepidation coursing through his veins. He gripped her shoulders to push her away.
A wave of dirt and gravel heralded Asgard’s arrival. The older immortal rolled to a standstill a few feet from them and uttered a choice curse word in Czech. He spat out a mouthful of earth before crawling unsteadily to his knees.
‘You two okay?’ he asked hoarsely.
Olivia blinked.
Ethan found that he could breathe again. ‘Yeah, we’re all right. I—’
A shadow passed over them, cutting him off.
The burning carcass of the oil tank dropped from the sky and crashed some fifty feet from their position. Another detonation rocked through the twisted, metal remains. The ground trembled.
They scrambled to their feet as smoke from the conflagration washed over them. Police sirens wailed shrilly from the direction of the motel. Asgard looked to the north. The freight train had rounded a curve in the land and was a growing yellow shape on the horizon.
Asgard jerked his head. ‘Let’s go!’
Patches of wild woodland dotted the ground separating them from the tracks. They entered the cover of a coppice just as a horde of squad cars screeched to a stop at the top of the incline. Shots shattered the air above their heads a moment later.
Heat scorched Ethan’s throat as he sprinted over the uneven terrain. Up head, Asgard had taken hold of Olivia’s hand once more. Although she stumbled and nearly fell a couple of times, the nun stayed the course, her stance resolute. They navigated past a large pool of stagnant water and emerged from the shadows beneath the trees into the blazing sunlight bathing a wide patch of barren land.
The freight train was half a mile away and closing in rapidly. The scream of engines and the harsh sound of tires grinding on gravel reached Ethan’s ears at the same time as the growing peals of sirens. He looked over his shoulder and spotted four patrol cars racing down a dirt track toward them.
‘Shit!’
He glanced from the approaching train to the running pair ahead of him, gritted his teeth, and slid to a stop.
‘Keep going!’ he yelled at Asgard as the older immortal started to slow down.
Asgard hesitated before nodding, a muscle jumping in his jaw. Olivia gave Ethan a frantic look over her shoulder as she followed her uncle.
Ethan turned and focused on the vehicles coming at him. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and raised both hands, palms facing out.
There was a series of loud bangs. He heard a crash and blinked in time to see the vehicles smash into each other. He had popped their hoods, effectively blocking their windshields. The patrol cars juddered to a halt in a billow of dirt, a mass of buckled bodies and entangled metal. The shouts of the officers trapped inside echoed faintly in the hot, dry air.
Ethan took off after the two immortals.
They were about a hundred feet from the tracks when a dark shape shot into view on the other side of the river. Ethan scowled.
It was the SUV from the hills. A figure was raising a rifle through the passenger window.
The crack of bullets was almost drowned out by the growing rumble of the approaching freight train. Shots smashed into the ground close to Asgard and Olivia, raising sw
irls of dirt. Another ripped a tear in the older immortal’s left outer thigh. He stepped protectively in front of his niece, his stride unbroken.
Then the train was there, some seven thousand tons of screaming metal and engine on wheels.
Ethan glanced over his shoulder. They had just over half a mile of train left to make their escape. The SUV flashed in and out of view between the freight cars.
Asgard was the first one to reach the tracks. He looked down the train, let go of Olivia’s hand, and skidded to a halt. ‘Keep running!’
She stumbled past him, turned, and continued sprinting parallel to the charging train.
Asgard rocked tensely on the balls of his feet. He reached up, grabbed the ladder on the porch of a passing grainer car, and jumped on. His feet landed on the platform.
He grasped the side rail tightly and leaned out. ‘Olivia!’
The nun turned and raised her hand, her face pale. Asgard gripped her outstretched arm as he came past and lifted her off the ground. He cushioned her body as she slammed into the side of the car and guided her inside the porch. They clung grimly to the ladder and watched as Ethan came abreast of the railway line.
A couple of tank cars zoomed by. Ethan stole a look behind and raised his hand just as a boxcar appeared. His fingers closed on the rung of a side ladder. He swung up, legs dangling in empty space while he sought purchase with his free hand. The wind drag tore at his clothes and the bag on his shoulder. His fingers slipped on the metal bar.
A panicked shout drifted from up ahead at the same time that his grip closed on the rung below. The soles of his boots skimmed the ground next to the tracks. Ethan grunted, grabbed the side rail with his other hand, and hauled himself up. His feet found the bottom rung of the ladder. He closed his eyes and hugged the metal structure for a long moment, his heart pounding inside his chest and his mouth dry. By the time he made his way to the grainer car and the two waiting immortals, the sirens of patrol cars had faded in the distance behind them.
Legacy Page 7