by Eric Nylund
Eliot stomach twisted. He turned Robert. “I have to get down there and stop them. They’re going to kill those people!”
Robert pressed his lips into a single white line. Through gritted teeth, he told Henry, “Unblock my bike, man. We can save them.”
Uncle Henry hesitated and then, “I cannot. I want to, but the League would know.” Henry then cocked his head and looked at the courtyard. “How refreshingly unexpected!”
Eliot stared unbelieving as a single person strode into the courtyard-blocking the soldiers’ advance on the church.
It was Fiona.
61 WHAT LITTLE GIRLS ARE MADE OF
Fiona stood on a rooftop and watched soldiers in the courtyard below. They went from building to building, searching, pulling people out into the street. It was awful.
Behind her stood six boys from the Force of Arms class, wide-eyed, also watching with fascination. Among them was also the upperclassman who had given her a tour the first day at Paxington, the handsomely chiseled Dante Scalagari.
Mr. Ma observed as well, impassive, arms folded over his chest.
Fiona just wanted to leave.
She glanced back at the Paxington helicopter perched on the roof. It had whisked them from the landing pad behind the Ludus Magnus over the Pacific-then the turbines had kicked in and blasted them through the sound barrier.
They’d flown south at that terrific speed, so Fiona guessed they were somewhere near the equator from the position and strength of the sun overhead.
. . Sunlight that clashed with the chilling events in the streets.
The boys whispered about how the soldiers covered each other with overlapping patterns of fire. There was a nervous edge their voices. They were worried, too-for the people down there or for themselves, she wasn’t sure.
Mr. Ma had briefed them on the flight. They were to observe a coup d’état, the beginnings of a democratic revolution. If, he had stressed, none of the heroes of the revolución got greedy and seized the dictatorship for themselves. It would be a chance for them to watch urban combat tactics, and to witness the rarer occurrence of ideologies clashing on a battlefield.
Fiona didn’t understand that last part. All she saw were people getting pushed around.
“This situation has similarities to the battle of Ultima Thule,” Mr. Ma said. “Instead of Immortals and Infernals, however, there are many lightly armed rebels fighting a lesser number of soldiers who are better trained and armed.”
On the street, a squad of soldiers shoved a family out of their apartment building. There were older men and women and a dozen children-all so scared, they stumbled and huddled together for support.
This wasn’t even close to Ultima Thule. The few armed nonmilitary men she’d spotted had been running away. Meanwhile, the soldiers had automatic weapons and an armored tank on the corner. Similarities? Mr. Ma was crazy.
He was stone-faced, though, and his dark eyes were as unreadable as two blank blackboards.
Fiona felt sick.
She didn’t trust him. With six upperclassman boys here (charming Dante Scalagari or not), well outside the watchful eye of Miss Westin and the regulations of Paxington, Mr. Ma could do. . she wasn’t sure. . something awful to her. . or, at least, try to.
Fiona took two steps away, and only then did she return her attention to the street (still keeping Mr. Ma in her peripheral vision).
The soldiers herded the civilians from the apartment building toward another group. They made them stand against a wall and turn around.
The people weren’t fighting back. How could they? There were kids in the line of fire.
But then again. . there were little kids there. How could they not fight?
“W-what are they going to do?” Fiona whispered. Her knees shook. She locked them, forcing them to still.
“What do you think they’re going to do?” Mr. Ma replied without glancing at her. “What would you do if you had your enemies helpless before you?”
Fiona sure wouldn’t line helpless people against a wall and threaten to execute them.
“We have to do something.”
“Yes,” Mr. Ma said. “We watch and learn what we can. But only that.”
“What!” She turned. “Why?”
The boys in her class stepped back, astonished that Fiona had questioned Mr. Ma. Dante nodded, apparently sharing her sentiments, although not daring to offer an opinion.
Mr. Ma twitched a single eyebrow. “This is a League matter, Miss Post,” he said. “Paxington’s charter states we must preserve our neutrality among the Immortals, Infernals, and mortal magical families. Staff and students are not allowed to interfere. . regardless of how much we wish.”
“The League’s doing this?” Fiona asked, but more to herself than to Mr. Ma.
She was part of the League of Immortals-but only because the Council had decreed it so-not that she actually worked with them. They never even told her what they did. She chewed her lower lip. She wasn’t sure why they’d do this, but if they had a reason for a civil war here, the League was capable of making it happen, she bet. . and make it appear as a military coup.
Mr. Ma looked back to the courtyard and continued his vigil.
Uncertain what else to do, Fiona turned and watched, too.
A mother and her child sneaked away from the others. They made a run for the church at the opposite side of the courtyard. Several others rushed though its doors, too, seeking refuge.
“This is no Ultima Thule,” Fiona declared. She heard the rising indignation in her voice and couldn’t stop it. “Those people will be slaughtered. Is that what you wanted to teach us today?”
Mr. Ma gripped the metal railing on the edge of the rooftop so tight, it creaked. “Perhaps,” he said.
Fiona’s jaw clenched. “I’m going down there and stopping them.”
“I have told you,” Mr. Ma said with strained patience, “I cannot permit school staff or students to-”
Fiona shrugged out to her Paxington jacket. “Then I’m ditching.”
Without waiting for him to tell her to stop, or some acknowledgment that she was doing the right thing from Dante or any of the other boys-Fiona jumped over the railing onto a fire escape.
She padded down and around the ladders and landings. . pausing on the last.
She’d need a weapon. She unzipped her book bag.
What was she was doing?
She should have thought this through. These weren’t shadow creatures or Paxington students with swords. They were men with guns that could kill her before she got close to them.
Her hand closed about her wooden yo-yo. What good was that going to do?
She had to do something, though. What was the point of being a real goddess-of everything she’d learned at Paxington-all that training in gym class, if she couldn’t put it to use?
She touched cold metal and jerked her hand from the book bag.
Her father’s gift, the slightly rusted steel bracelet, had wrapped itself about her wrist. The bracelet had unclasped and grown to a heavy chain before, its links tapering to razor edges. . it had lengthened a dozen feet and whipped through a Parisian lamppost.
It was magic. An Infernal thing. A thing to cut.
And precisely what she needed.
Okay. Mr. Ma was training them to fight. So she’d fight.
She squeezed the metal. It warmed, squirmed, and heated. . just like her blood.
Infernal or Immortal rage, that didn’t matter, and it didn’t matter that the anger was the only emotion that seemed to come easily to her these days. Right now, she was going to use it to do some good.
Fiona slid down the last ladder and strode across the courtyard. She walked straight toward a soldier who watched the church. He shielded his eyes to see through its stained glass windows, raised his Kalashnikov machine gun, and shot at the shadows.
Part of Fiona knew not to be afraid. She was half goddess, and half. . whatever her father was.
But sh
e was afraid.
She was still the same old Fiona Post.
And yet, there was something else in her: a fighter. Something extraordinary. She clung to that-and strode forward to find which Fiona she would become.
She uncoiled the length of chain now in her hand and loosed a slur that would have never qualified for a round of vocabulary insult with Eliot. “Hey!” she called out. “Perro que come excremento!”[56]
The soldier wheeled.
Fiona lashed her chain at him.
Before the chain struck, however, he shot her.
A staccato burst: three rounds in her chest and gut.
The impact blasted her back; she spun and bounced and flipped and skidded along the cobblestones to a halt. . facefirst.
The pain was beyond anything she’d felt. It was lightning that flashed and unfurled from her belly button to sternum to her spine-bone shattering, organ shredding-it ricocheted teeth to toes.
She lay still. Dead.
Boots on cobblestones approached.
She had to be dead. . didn’t she? Of course.
So why then did she feel her heart thump-pumping, faster, until blood thundered through her veins?
She got up.
The man who’d shot her stood there, mouth open, blinking. He raised his Kalashnikov.
Fiona didn’t give him another chance. Chain wrapped about her fist, she slugged him.
His head snapped back, and he fell, and didn’t move.
Three holes smoldered in her shirt and skirt. Her belly was a solid bruise, but it was in one piece. . which was more than she could say about her uniform. Custom fit by Madame Cobweb-how was she going to replace it?
Heat surged through her and seared away the pain.
Six more soldiers saw her over their fallen comrade. They ran at her, yelling, and leveled their weapons.
She moved toward them.
They opened fire.
This time the bullets felt like wasp stings. They hurt. A lot.
But Fiona shrugged them off.
She whipped her chain around-it elongated, links clinking-and cut through black gun metal, wooden stocks. . fingers, and hands.
The soldiers screamed and writhed on the ground. The smell of their blood repelled her, and, at the same time, it was intoxicating.
When she’d cut Perry Millhouse in half, that had been a different Fiona Post. She’d actually mourned the death of that killer.
These men were murderers, too. They would have killed innocent people. Little kids.
The only thing she felt for them was contempt.
She stepped over them-left them crawling, in shock, bleeding-and strode toward the church.
Every soldier in the courtyard saw her now, though. There were two dozen of them. They screamed. Some made the sign of the cross. Others ran away.
Most opened fire.
They couldn’t touch her. She was no longer Fiona. No longer susceptible to mortal inconveniences like death. Power and hate pulsed through her every fiber-
A monstrous diesel engine coughed to life behind her.
Fiona froze. She’d forgotten one very important thing.
She whirled and her overblown ego deflated. . along with her sense of invulnerability.
The armored tank on the corner belched black smoke from a tailpipe. Treads chewed through cobblestones as it and its turret rotated and the main gun arced toward her.
Stupid. Stupid!
How could she have been so blatantly arrogant to turn her back on an armored tank?!
Three options flashed through her mind.
First, she could stand here like an idiot and get blown to bits (an option her body seemed to favor at the moment because her knees wouldn’t unlock). Not that it even had to hit her to kill; the overpressure blast from the cannon could do that without ever touching her.
Two, she could run. She was sure, though, all that would accomplish was to get her blown up a few paces from where she stood. Great.
Or three. . she could do what she came down here to do: fight.
Her body moved before she finished that last thought-as it had when she’d fought Mr. Ma. Her muscle and sinew knew more about saving itself apparently than her brain.
Fiona sprinted toward the tank. The chain played out through her grasp.
The turret locked on her dead center.
She jumped and flicked the chain forward. The slender bracelet that had loosely fit about her wrist was now five times her body length, each link as large as her fist, the edges razor sharp. It wrapped about the tank’s turret-whipped around and lashed twice about the main gun’s muzzle.
Fiona felt rapid pings through the metal in her grasp. . the shell clicking into the tank’s firing chamber.
She grasped the chain with both hands and pulled.
Infernal metal shrieked through hardened steel. The turret slid apart at an angle where it’d been severed; half the muzzle clattered to the ground.
The tank fired.
Turret cut in half, firing mechanisms no longer aligned, the shell exploded inside. . along with the rest of the tank’s munitions.
The air filled with firecracker flashes, each as bright as the sun.
Fiona only distantly registered this as she was hurled back, felt a thousand stings-and then a section of steel tread hit her.
There was blackness. . It was quiet. .
That was nice. Peaceful.
But then a ringing intruded on her rest, which started faint and then turned up to an ear-and then skull-splitting intensity.
She blinked. There was a dull blur. The sky? Clouds?
Yes; they were nice. Fluffy. That one looked like a hand. Those, a flock of white crows.
She rolled over. The courtyard where she and the tank had been a moment ago was a crater of smoldering bits of metal and shattered cobblestones.
Everything hurt. Fiona was cut and bleeding and a slash in her side bubbled as she tried to inhale. It felt as if she were drowning.
At least she stopped those creeps before they killed anyone. . except, maybe, her.
She laughed. That hurt, too.
She spotted three soldiers. They’d retreated into an alley and peered at her, astonished at what she had done. . and that she still moved. One held a radio, spoke into it, looking at her-then up at the sky-back and forth.
She didn’t want to die here. The anger that had made her so strong before, though, was nowhere to be found. All she felt was her pain and a bitter cold as shock set in.
She hallucinated that Eliot and Robert stood by her. Oh-how she wished that were true. She would have given anything for Robert to take her hand and help her up.
She got to her knees. Hallucinations or not-she wouldn’t lie here and bleed to death.
She had to defend herself. Or get back to Mr. Ma.
Or, if she couldn’t do that, she’d at least be on her feet if this was the end.
Dizzy, Fiona pushed on her knees and rose. She looked at the clouds again. A line in the sky flattened and arced toward the street.
That was a contrail made by jet engines. She squinted and saw a Korean-war era warplane: a MiG-15. They had two 23 mm cannon.
It was doing. . what was it called? A strafing run.
Funny how her last thoughts were from the old encyclopedia-loving Fiona Post. Maybe that’s what she truly was made of after all.
That was okay. She liked that Fiona Post.
She clutched the chain in her hands. She had no regrets about what she’d done. It had been the right thing-the only thing she could have done.
Fiona stood tall and proud and faced death as it rushed at her.
62 COLLATERAL DAMAGE
Eliot hung onto the sidecar for his life.
Robert’s Harley clipped an overturned car, and then narrowly missed several people (civilians and soldiers) running from the courtyard.
He swerved around a burning pickup, and Eliot realized that their insane speed was warranted. Maybe. . they’d even gone t
oo slow. In the center of the courtyard, Fiona stood nose to nose with an armored tank.
Eliot blinked to make sure he saw that right.
Fiona crouched and jumped at it, lashing forward with a thick chain. The chain wrapped about the turret and muzzle.
She pulled-severed metal from metal.
The tank exploded. Inside.
Steel and titanium mushroomed out-and a dozen detonations followed and lit the courtyard-blasted the armored tank to smithereens, as well the ground for twenty feet in every direction.
Fiona tumbled through the air, bounced, rolled. . and lay limp in the dirt.
Was she dead? He and Robert should’ve gotten there faster. Done something. A cold, hard shape took form in Eliot’s mind-a dangerous thought that if his sister was gone, a lot of people were going to pay for it. . starting with Uncle Henry and the League.
Robert ducked but didn’t slow as molten metal and shards of stone whizzed past them.
He skidded sideways next to Fiona.
Eliot jumped out of the sidecar, guitar in hand.
Robert stayed on the bike, pulled his Glock 29, and aimed at the three soldiers huddled in the alley.
One of the soldiers spoke into a handheld radio and pointed at the sky. The other two had Kalashnikov machine guns. They looked stunned, at least for the moment.
Eliot’s reached for Lady Dawn’s strings.
Robert was faster. He shot three times-one round cratered the wall over the soldiers’ heads. Two bullets hit the Kalashnikov stocks and shattered wood.
The soldiers dropped their weapons and ran.
Fiona moved. . got to her knees, and slowly stood.
“Are you okay?” Eliot asked, helping her up.
This had to be the stupidest thing he’d asked in weeks, because blood trickled from Fiona’s ears and nose. She ignored Eliot and looked with glazed eyes up at the sky.
. . To the same spot where that soldier had pointed.
Eliot turned. A MiG-15 jet dived toward them on what had to be a strafing run.
Robert stood next to Fiona and propped her with one arm. She must really have been hurt because she let him touch her, even leaned against him. She tried to raise her hands, but the chain she clutched seemed too heavy for her to lift. Robert had his Glock and frowned at it. Useless against a jet.