by Ramy Vance
“Ahh, I was on campus working—”
“It was a rhetorical question.”
“Oh yes, of course.” I couldn’t see her face, but I like to think that her Deirdre-borrowed cheeks flushed red. OK, so the demon in me wasn’t totally over her stealing my boyfriend.
“Here goes nothing,” I said, and fumbled about until I found the steel track that the elevator carriage’s rollers used. Gripping both sides, I started to climb up.
↔
WE MUST HAVE MANAGED to get up three flights before two things happened almost in sync. One, we found the elevator dead in the shaft. Two, a tiny drone made its way into the tube of machine grease and metal. The sound of the drone was unmistakable—four little fans frantically spinning as it flew inside to get a fix on our location.
But almost as quickly as the drone entered, I heard a crash as Deirdre or Mergen (or maybe Isabella) threw something at it, destroying it instantly.
“Nice shot.”
“Ummm, indeed,” Mergen said.
“Thank you, milady.” Deirdre’s voice was strained as she pushed against the elevator’s trap door, opening the path in.
Inside the carriage, I took a deep breath before saying, “OK, they know we’re in here. We either keep going up or we make a break here.”
“I cannot hear them or their tiny flying dragons in the hall,” Deirdre said.
“So we make a break for it. Let’s go before they have to a chance to catch up.”
“Once in the hall, then what?”
Then what, indeed. “We need to break through their line of defense.” I could hear Deirdre pulling apart the doors like Moses parting the Red Sea. OK, I’m sure it was nothing so dramatic, but I still liked the imagery. “Once we’re in the hall, run to the central stairwell. Let’s see if we can catch some of them off guard and—”
But before I could finish the thought, two strings of blue, electric lighting shot across the hall, illuminating both their path and Deirdre. She was being tazed. Not just tazed; the crackling energy was more than any standard-issue Taser could do.
She was being electrocuted.
I immediately swung my dirk downward, severing the lines and grabbing them.
Without connecting to a body, the lines had no power to them and any light they provided was gone. They did, however, offer me a direct line to whomever shot it. I pulled at the wires as I made my way down the hall as fast as I could until I found a body to associate with it. I was fast—faster than these two could anticipate—and I immediately took down the soldier on the left as Mergen charged at the other one.
“Two down,” I said as a flashlight shone in my face.
Shit—more soldiers. I braced myself for another Taser or worse, but instead of feeling any pain, I heard a voice say, “It’s you. The Cherub.”
A student had come out of their room to see what was going on.
“Please, get back in your room,” I said. “We’re under attack. You’ll be safe inside.”
“Attack? Who?”
I didn’t answer, moving toward the light and pushing him inside. From his bulk, I knew he was an Other. Perhaps the oni demon who lived on the third floor. Or maybe the valkyrie.
“Please. Get inside.” And raising my voice—no point in hiding; they knew where we were—said, “Everyone, please stay inside. I am sorry for bringing this to your doorstep. But these people … they are after me. Not you. You will be safe as long as you stay out of the way.”
“The Cherub, she lives in Gardner Hall?” I heard someone say.
“I knew she was one of us. No way someone who moves like that could be part of Molson or the other dorms.”
There was a cheer of residential pride, and for a brief second I reveled in it. Hey, I might be under attack, but a girl can still enjoy a wee bit of positivity, can’t she?
“Get inside. Please.” Then, whistling for the others to join me, I gestured for them to follow. “Deirdre—you OK?” I asked.
The changeling groaned in response. “I was once doused with the full brunt of a silver dragon’s electric breath weapon. That hurt more.”
“Good to know,” I said. “Let’s go.”
NO WAY OUT
We made our way to the central stairwell, but not before I disarmed the two soldiers of their Tasers and batons. The central stairwell ran along the side of the building with windows lining it. Moonlight illuminated the area slightly, which meant that they didn’t just cut the power to Gardner Hall, but the entire hill. A hill that also had a hospital on it.
I shuddered to think that patients were suffering because these assholes wanted to take us down.
But they couldn’t turn off the moon, and from the little lighting it offered I could see the hillside teeming with soldiers. At least two dozen by my count, which meant there were probably a dozen more.
Fighting our way out of this wasn’t going to happen. They were all lying down, rifles out in a typical don’t-disclose-your-position manner.
Only one of them seemed to be out in the open—a non-human in army fatigues. From this distance I couldn’t tell what kind of Other he was. The creature was standing way off in the distance and his hands moved in front of his chest like he was playing with an invisible ball or something.
I’d seen that kind of hand gesturing before. With witches.
Our best hope was getting behind the building and into the forested area surrounding the dorms. At least there we had a chance of losing them.
“Isabella, maybe you should do one of your shapeshifter tricks and go hide in someone’s room?”
Isabella shook her head.
“Come on, now’s not the time to be brave. Besides, once we draw them away, you can go to your lab and make the C4.”
“I don’t think I can hide easily.”
“Why not? You can literally look like anyone you want.”
“True, but they found us. Here.”
“So?”
“I have been shifting for the purposes of hiding for centuries. They did not track me. Which meant that they have other ways to find me.”
I shook my head. “Like what? A tracker device?”
“Maybe. Probably. But where it would be, I do not know.” She pursed her lips and shook her head. “Besides, Justin’s only hope is that we escape and carry out our plan. Tonight.”
Her face wore the kind of bravery that came from one who wanted nothing more than to run, but despite her fear, was choosing to stay.
She was right.
She was being tracked, but how?
I remembered the strange Other who was rubbing that invisible ball and a terrible thought occurred to me. I grabbed a pair of goggles off one of the soldiers I’d taken down and put them on, and while I saw the expected night vision’s green hues illuminating my surroundings, I also saw a small screen on the upper right-hand corner with an image of Isabella. She was marked in red and stood alone, even though we were right next to her.
“Isabella, did you sign an NDA when you began working with the World Army?”
A pause. “Well, in a manner of speaking. How did you know?”
I ignored her question. “When you signed that NDA, was there anything strange and or magical about it?”
Isabella thought about it before saying, “I never signed it. I had to give them a droplet of blood, though, to bind the contract.”
“You know that humans use ink … from a pen.”
The expression on her face clearly indicated that she didn’t.
“Shit, you’re right—they are tracking you. With magic. See that guy over there? He’s some kind of shaman.”
Isabella looked out across the field. “That’s Kendall. He’s a wendigo shaman.”
“Yay. You couldn’t hide if you wanted to. OK, so the plan just got more complicated. Not only do we need to get away and hide, we need to take out tracer-witch there in order to stay hidden. You’ll need this.” I handed her the Taser.
“I don’t know how to use thi
s.”
“It’s easy. Just point and shoot.”
Isa nodded.
“But making our stand and fighting our way out of this … I don’t see that happening. There are too many of them. They have this place surrounded.”
Mergen smacked his lips in anticipation. “So true.”
“Not helping, dude,” I said.
“Indeed,” he said as he licked his fingers in the that-was-good-barbeque kind of way.
“We’re only on the third floor. Maybe we could get out a window and—” Isabella started.
“They’ll have the back covered, too,” I said.
Deirdre stood. “Then I will clear a path. It will be my greatest honor.”
“No, Deirdre, I’m not losing you to this.” Brave words, given I might not have a choice in this. My brain raced with every possible scenario I could think of for escape, desperately trying to come up with a plan.
But any hopes of a plan were dashed with the crackling of the downed soldier’s radio.
↔
THE RADIO CRACKLED AGAIN. I knew I shouldn’t be drawn to it, that I should just let it call out to the oblivion, but I was spurred on by curiosity and the hope that if I spoke to these assholes I’d see a way out of this. How big was my ego that I thought I’d be able to negotiate with them? Or out-smart them …
Sometimes I am humbled by my own arrogance.
I picked up the radio and put it to my ear. I don’t know if there was a sensor or another drone, but as soon as the earpiece was in place, I heard a familiar voice say, “Katrina Darling.”
“Serena Russo, I presume.”
“Katrina Darling, nineteen-year-old human with virtually no social media presence, a forged birth certificate and passports. It didn’t take much digging to figure out who you really are.”
“And?”
“Three-hundred-year-old vampire, the daughter Eoghan McMahon, inspiration for the Order of Divine Cherub Hunters and a murderous bitch.”
“Ouch,” I said, “no need to get personal. And what do you want, exactly? A cookie? A medal? All that shit was figured out already by the Diamond Dogs.”
“The Diamond Dogs?” she said, less of a question and more a surprise that I even knew that name.
“You know, General Shouf’s division,” I said, seeing a possible way out of this. “A few weeks back I helped them out by killing three dead gods. And before you ask, yes, dead gods need to be killed twice.”
There was silence as I presumed she was checking it out.
Maybe, just maybe, she’d see my connection to that event and her searches would trigger some kind of red flag or something.
Then General Shouf and Jean could swoop in and save us from this hell. Of course, General Shouf would want to make me one of her operatives, so being rescued by her would be something akin to ‘out of the fire and into the frying pan’ … or whatever the expression was.
After an agonizing minute, the radio crackled. “Interesting. It says here that you died in that assault. I’m guessing that was your reward? Death—at least as far as the world is concerned. Whatever the reason for this clerical error, it will make what I’m going to do to you much easier to clean up.”
OK, so that backfired.
“Listen, you—”
“Let me spare you the superhero speech and make this easy for you. Surrender.”
“No,” I said.
“Hold on. Let me finish. I have a whole carrot-stick routine prepared to entice you.”
I walked over to the window, and in the field I saw Serena emerge and walk to the center of the quad. She waved at me like we were friends meeting for a coffee or something.
“OK,” I said, “I’m listening. Let’s start with the stick.”
“If you don’t surrender, my guys start firing wildly at the dorms and we blame Other terrorists for the deaths.”
“What? You’re willing to kill innocent students for—”
“I’m willing to do a hell of lot more than that to get what I want,” she spat. “So spare me your indignation and judgment. Whether you’re capable of understanding this or not, I am fighting for the greater good. Besides, I still have the carrot.”
Shit, she was one evil bitch, willing to kill innocents to get us to surrender. {{ISA NEEDS TO HAVE SOMETHING SHE WANTS}}. I have spent enough centuries with all sorts of evil to know when someone fully intended on backing up their threats. Serena would fire at the dorms. She would kill students to get us.
I thought back to what Seth had told me back at the O3 house: that I would attract monsters. Well, he wasn’t wrong—I’d just thought those monsters had claws instead of manicured nails.
Serena. The World Army. They were worse than just about every monster I’d faced; they were smart, ruthless and absolutely convinced of their own rightness.
“So, onto the carrot,” Serena continued. “Egya.”
Hearing his name was like a punch in the gut. “What about him?” I quivered, my heart racing at the possibility that he’d been captured. Or worse.
“He’s off contacting the resistance. Stupid name, by the way.”
“I know,” I said, but as much as that was an open for a wee bit of banter, I was too distracted by what she had in store for Egya.
“Regardless. I will let him go.”
“What?”
“I will let him go. And the changeling as well as that weird ghostly fellow. I will let them all go. Of course, none of them will ever know what happened to you, but—”
“And Isabella? What about her?”
There was a long pause before she said, “I can’t let her go, but I promise you this: I will not kill her. I need her, but once I am done with her, I will release her. This I swear. This is my oath to you.”
“Humans don’t have many qualms about breaking oaths.”
“I do,” Serena said without hesitation. “There is no way for you to know that for certain, but I do. I really do. I will let them all go. I will even try to save Justin. But I need what Isabella has, and I need it now.”
“Screw you,” I spat.
Serena sighed before saying, “From one evil bitch to another—I will keep my oath. You can put on that human lie detector and have him hear my words.”
I gestured for Mergen to come over and listen in. As soon as he was in earshot, Serena spoke. “I swear that should you surrender, I will let Mergen, Deirdre and Egya go. I will also hold Isabella captive, using her knowledge until the experiments I am working on are successful. Then I will let her go, too.”
Mergen smacked his lips as he rubbed his belly. She was telling the truth.
“And what about me?”
“You? Sadly, I will not let you go. I can’t. Your psychological profiling is pretty clear on that point. Let you go and you’ll just come after me again and again and again until one of us is destroyed. There is no escape for you. No happy ending.”
“Let me guess, you’re going to throw me in some dark dungeon and—”
“I’m going to kill you,” she said, as if stating some indifferent factoid like there are three hundred and thirty-six dimples in a golf ball, or two thousand, seven hundred and eighty-nine miles between New York City and LA. “It will be painless, but you will die. So there you have it. The truth.”
I didn’t need to look over at Mergen to know she was telling the truth.
“And let’s not forget: do not surrender and I will kill innocent students. I will order my men to fire wildly at the dorms.”
Mergen licked his lips. She was telling the truth.
“OK,” I said, “I believe you. Give us a minute to consider our options.”
“You have five. Then I give the order to shoot.”
WE ARE ALL CHERUB
I grabbed Mergen’s hand before walking over to the others. “You do not tell them what she said. You understand? We have to surrender, but Deirdre will never agree if she knows what’s going to happen to me. Swear to me that you will never tell them what you hea
rd.” I paused, fighting back a tear. “Even after.”
Mergen stared at me, his ghostly white eyes sullen and sad, but then he nodded. “I swear.”
“Good,” I said. “Then let’s go tell them the good news.”
Walking over, I put a hand on Deirdre’s shoulder. “We’re beat. We can’t win this one. We fight, we lose. We run, well, even if we manage to get away, they’ll find us. We are simply beat. We have to turn ourselves in.”
Mergen rubbed his belly.
“What did Serena say?”
“Oh, a bunch of stuff. Mostly that if we turn ourselves in and hand over the anti-venom, she’ll let Deirdre, Mergen and Egya go. She also promised not to hurt you, but she said you have knowledge she needs. Sounds like she’s going to force you to work for her.”
Isabella nodded slowly. “Not surprising. I did steal everything she knows about Others.”
“She promises not to hurt you. She won’t let you go either, though.”
Mergen licked his fingers in agreement.
“And you, milady?”
“Dungeon,” I said, giving Mergen my death stare to make sure he didn’t expose my lie by making a face like he was sucking on a lemon or something.
“Then we will—”
“No Deirdre, we will not. She also promised to start killing students if we didn’t surrender. I can’t let innocents die because I wasn’t willing to spend a little time in some cell. I just can’t live with their blood on my hands. Not when I could have prevented it. No, my friend—my dear, dear friend. We have to surrender. Please.”
“So what? We give up. What about Justin?” Isabella’s panic was rising, and I was sure that everyone who didn’t listen to my stay-in-your-room advice heard her.
“She promised to try and help him.”
“But—”
“Isabella, we have no choice. Let’s say we try to fight. The GoneGods know that with Deirdre here, we could make a good show of it. But they’ve got guns and all kinds of nasty projectile weapons. There are too many innocent kids here to risk it.”
“But Justin,” she said.
“He’ll be fine,” I lied. She knew it, Deirdre knew it … and when Mergen’s face went sour, any illusions I was trying to create were dispelled.