That explained nothing. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. On this world, under this set of circumstances, the people among whom you lived are ile. We exist to make sure they survive. When we’re no longer needed, we’ll die out like many other subspecies before us.”
The more he explained things, the more confused she became. For now she had to just gather the crumbs of information and hope all would make sense sooner or later.
Lucas walked on, down the wide path of smooth stones. Karina scrambled to follow. They walked side by side along the path and over a bridge. The gardens burrowed into nooks in the buildings here and there, forming small sitting areas. To the left two women sat on a bench, discussing something. They looked so normal. Both wore jeans; the older of the pair had on a flowered top, white on blue; the younger woman wore a familiar yellow blouse—Karina had looked at it in J. C. Penney last week.
Last week. A lifetime ago.
The women saw Lucas. Their faces took on a certain tightness, as if they were straining to keep calm. They looked her over next. Karina met their gaze and saw pity in their eyes. Suddenly it made her furious. If Lucas grabbed her throat right now, they wouldn’t lift a finger to help her. They would just sit there and watch him choke her to death and feel sorry for her. She raised her chin and stared at Lucas’s back. No, thank you. She didn’t need anyone’s pity.
Henry’s words came back to her. Lucas is the most feared. “They’re afraid of you,” she said.
“I’m the security specialist here; I have the right of judgment,” he said. “I can kill anyone on base at any point without any retribution.”
“You protect them, and all you get in return is fear. Why do you keep doing this?”
Lucas kept walking. “Because everyone must have a purpose. The Mandate tells me what I am doing is right and must be done and because I’m the biggest and the strongest it’s my duty to put myself between my people and danger. I would do it for you.”
He would. She believed him. “Lucas . . .”
“Yes?”
She wanted to tell him that if he ever shielded her or Emily, she wouldn’t be afraid of him. She wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to put up with people shrinking away from him, but inside a cold rational voice warned her that she was losing her grip on reality. The plan had to be to escape. The plan couldn’t be to fall for Lucas and be that one sole person who comforted him.
He was looking at her.
“I’m really confused right now,” she told him. “So this actually doesn’t mean anything.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“Bend your arm at the elbow.”
He did. Karina reached out. What am I doing? She put her hand on his forearm and raised her chin. The two women on the bench stared at them, openmouthed.
“Now we walk,” she murmured, avoiding looking at him.
“We can do that,” he agreed. They started down the walkway. His arm was rock-steady under her fingers. A few moments, and the dense greenery of rhododendron shrubs hid the women from their view.
“Why?” he asked.
Because she lost it, that’s why. “Would you hurt those two women?”
“Not unless they tried to hurt someone else first.”
“Then they’re in no danger and they know it, but they still make a big production out of you walking by, minding your own business.”
“That still doesn’t answer my question,” he said.
“Can we stop talking about this?”
He didn’t say anything. They simply kept walking. It was surreal, Karina reflected. Beautiful flowers, Emily and a tame bear-dog, and she and Lucas striding side by side.
“I’m tired,” Emily said.
Karina bent down and picked her up. The effort nearly made her lose her balance. Apparently she was weaker than she thought.
Cedric sniffed at her feet.
“Let her ride him,” Lucas offered.
“What?”
“Let her ride him. He doesn’t mind.”
“I want to ride!” Emily squirmed in her arms.
Karina surveyed the bear-dog. He was almost as big as a pony. Gingerly she lowered Emily on his back.
“Hold on to his fur,” Lucas said. Emily dug her fingers into Cedric’s brown mane and they were off again.
They emerged from the stand of rhododendrons. Lucas stepped aside, revealing a round plaza paved with dark red stone. A bronze statue rose in the center, a nude man, muscled with crisp precision. Enormous wings thrust from his shoulders. An angel, but not a garden cupid or some mournful cemetery statue. The angel leaned forward, one arm stretched out, his muscles knotted on his frame. The wings thrust up and out, featherless, as if made of sharp bone. The angel’s perfect face stared into the distance, its gaze focused. Everything about it communicated fury and power. This was a predatory being about to kill its victim. Metal letters beveled on the side of the statue read “A. Rodin.”
Karina glanced at Lucas. “A. Rodin? The sculptor who created The Thinker?”
Lucas shrugged. “He says so, but I wouldn’t put it past him to have the name slapped on there over the actual sculptor’s signature. He is vain enough.”
What? He who? She scrutinized the statue.
Oh, God.
The angel wore Arthur’s face. It had to be figurative—she hadn’t seen any wings on Arthur’s back when he offered her tea.
“But Rodin died in the beginning of the last century.”
Lucas circled the statue and kept walking.
“Lucas!”
He turned and looked at her over his shoulder, light eyes under black eyebrows like two chunks of ice. “Arthur is a Wither. Subspecies 21. They live a long time.”
“How long?”
“Long enough to have met Rodin. Come.”
She wanted to freak out. She wanted to scream and kick her feet in panic, because right here, in cold bronze, was the final proof that this was not a nightmare. Instead Karina waved Cedric ahead of her and they kept going deeper into the garden.
Lucas turned left, down a path leading to a section of the building structured with an almost Japanese flair. Except for the white roof, it could’ve been part of a teahouse. An older woman waited on the covered porch, a stack of clothes neatly folded next to her.
They were twenty feet away from the porch when the siren ripped the quiet into shreds.
CHAPTER 7
Karina pulled Emily off the bear-dog and into her arms.
“Stay close,” Lucas barked as he turned and ran back up the path. She followed him, trying not to stumble. They pounded over the bridge they’d crossed on the way in.
“What’s happening, Mommy?”
“I don’t know, baby. Hold on tight.”
Emily was so heavy. Karina never remembered her being that heavy. It was like all of the strength had somehow gone out of her arms.
They cleared the garden and burst into the open space between the two spires, Lucas ahead and she, out of breath, a few dozen yards behind. A group of people stood by the spires, where the road out of the settlement rolled down the hill. A familiar face looked at her with merciless sky eyes. Arthur. Daniel’s golden mane swung into view. He grinned at her, a deranged wild grin that had too much mirth. On the periphery a few yards away, Henry stood with his eyes closed, tense, his face raised to the sky. A young girl, barely a teenager, stood next to him in an identical pose. To the right an older, dark-skinned woman and another man, tall and gaunt, imitated them.
“Good of you to join us,” Arthur said.
Lucas walked up to stand next to him.
A huge sound came from the distance, deep, booming, as if someone was playing a foghorn like a trumpet.
The girl at Henry’s side inhaled sharply and dropped to her knees, breathing in ragged, painful gasps. Henry’s eyes snapped open. He thrust his hand out and clenched it into a fist. “Oh no, you don’t.”
A desperate scream of pure pain came from the distance.
<
br /> Henry smiled. His face glowed with vicious joy, so shocking that Karina took a step back. He stared into the distance. “Not as fun to pick on someone your own size?”
The scream kept ringing higher and higher, pausing for the mere fraction of a second that it took the agonized being that was making it to gulp some air.
Behind Henry the fallen girl opened her eyes and rose to her feet. The older couple awakened from their trance.
Henry twisted his fist and jerked it, as if ripping something in half.
The scream died.
“Thank you,” the girl said.
“It’s all right. Next time remember to cloak.” Henry turned to Arthur. “They have two hundred civs, fifty pigs, two heavy field artillery batteries, six squads of twenty-five men each, and seven Mind Benders. Minus one.”
He’d killed an enemy Mind Bender, Karina realized. Kind, shy Henry crushed him, but not before he made him suffer.
“Too many,” someone muttered.
“It’s overkill,” Daniel said.
“There is at least one Demon, too,” Henry said.
Lucas laughed, a bitter, self-assured chuckle.
They had a Demon like Lucas. Lucas would fight it. She saw it in his face. She didn’t want him to die.
Something climbed over the crest of the distant hill, spilling onto the prairie. Karina squinted. What in the world . . .
Arthur’s face remained serene. “Begin immediate full base evacuation.”
A dark-haired woman on Karina’s left held out binoculars to her. “Here. Looks like I won’t need them.”
“Thank you.” Karina lowered Emily to the ground and took the binoculars. “Stay with me, baby.”
The woman turned and ran, back toward the garden. A moment later the alarm sounded again, but this time in two short bursts.
People peeled off from the group and headed back, deeper into the base. Now was her chance. If she could slip away and go through the gate, she could get away. Nobody would find her in the confusion . . .
“Lady Karina,” Arthur’s voice rang out.
She snapped back to look at him.
The gaze of his blue eyes bore into her. “Stay close. We must hold until the evacuation is complete. Lucas may have need of your services.”
His voice was soft but his eyes left her no doubt—he knew what she was thinking and escape was futile.
Arthur turned and looked out to the plain. She looked, too, raising the binoculars to her eyes. The mountains swung into view, suddenly clear. She tilted the binoculars lower . . .
People came walking over the hill. To the right a middle-aged man in filthy khakis and a ripped shirt with thin blue stripes climbed over a rock. Next to him two dark-skinned men in jeans helped a third limp forward. On the left a woman in business clothes walked on, stumbling. The binoculars captured her face. Her features, caked with grime and dust, twisted into an expression of abject terror.
Karina inhaled sharply. A red-haired teenage girl followed the woman. Her ruffled black skirt hung limply around her skinny legs in torn stockings. She shuddered as she walked and Karina realized she was sobbing.
Karina jerked the binoculars down. “There are people out there!”
“They are captives,” Lucas said. “People the Ordinators snatched up here and there, the missing. The pigs are running them at the net. It’s designed to stop high-impact projectiles, but if enough body mass hits it at once, it will overload and collapse.”
The memory of the bird shocked by that red glow flashed before her. “They will die!”
“That’s the idea,” Daniel said. “They’re trying to break through before we have a chance to detonate the network.”
“Can’t they just use a tank or a vehicle?”
“The net would fry it,” Lucas said grimly. “Biomass is the best way to go.”
The people on the right broke into a run. Karina raised the binoculars.
A creature bounded over the hill. Huge and brown, it looked like a seven-foot-tall boar moving too fast on surprisingly long and skinny legs. The pig paused. Its long crocodilian jaws gaped open, flashing fangs as large as her fingers, wider, wider, until the pig’s entire head seemed to split in half. A hoarse roar burst forth. The daeodon.
The people in front of the creature scattered like minnows, sprinting across the rough ground toward the net in a ragged herd, a blond man in a once white tank top leading the run. The daeodon roared again and gave chase.
On the left, a second pig crested the hill, sending another group of prisoners into flight. An older man in a torn flannel shirt stumbled and fell, splaying in the dirt. The pig bore down on him. The long jaws dipped down. A shriek rang out, vibrating with the sheer terror of a man who knew his life was ending, and vanished, cut off in midnote.
On the right, the blond man ran headfirst into the net and jerked, caught by a deep carmine glow. His body convulsed, his legs and arms flailing, as if he were being shocked by a live wire. The man directly behind him tried to slow down, but his momentum carried him right into the red glow and he shook, caught in a similar seizure.
Karina whipped to Lucas. “Can’t you do something? Anything? They’re dying!”
“We can give them a quick death once they break through,” Lucas said.
“But . . .”
“Lucas is correct,” Arthur said. “We will spare them the pain.”
The air around Arthur shimmered. People backed away. He bowed his head and stood very still.
On the prairie, the prisoners tried to swerve away from the red glow, but the pigs drove them forward. One by one the bodies crashed into the net. Karina turned Emily around. “Don’t look, baby.”
“What are they doing?”
Lie, she told herself. Lie. But the words spilled out on their own. “They are dying, Emily.”
“Why?”
“Because the bad guys are killing them.”
“Are the bad guys going to get us?”
“No, little one,” Henry said. “Arthur and Lucas will kill them.”
The red glow bent forward under the weight of many bodies, and still more people were coming across the prairie, herded by the daeodons like sheep. Arthur didn’t move. His eyes stared into the distance, somewhere far away.
“How long till the detonation?” Lucas asked.
Henry closed his eyes and opened them. “Three minutes.”
Lucas rolled his head right, then left, cracking his neck.
With a bright flash the net collapsed under the weight of the bodies. People fell into the gap, tumbling over each other, convulsing on the ground. The four huge pigs who’d herded them to the net galloped into the gap, trampling the bodies beneath their hooves. The daeodons charged up the slope.
Lucas grunted. His skin seemed to peel off his bones in thick slabs. Bloody mist filled the air. Karina stared, unable to look away. Bones bent, ligaments twisted, and the beast burst forth. It was bigger than she remembered. In her memory, he had morphed into a dark, featureless shadow, but here, in the light of day, she saw every bulge of terrifying muscle, every fang, every sickle claw, every hair in the black crest of his mane.
Fear washed over her, setting every nerve on fire.
The beast turned his head. Lucas’s green eyes looked at her from a horrid face.
Don’t flinch, she told herself. He was about to fight for them. He could die in the next few moments. She didn’t want him to go into it thinking she was disgusted by what he was. Whatever Lucas’s faults were, he was about to put himself between the pigs and her daughter. He deserved better than the blind fear the two women in the garden showed him.
She met his gaze. They looked at each other.
“Good luck,” she said.
The daeodons roared, pounding up the slope.
The beast who was Lucas nodded to her, leaped down, and smashed into the first pig. His claws sliced across the daeodon’s neck and it went down. Lucas swerved away from the gaping jaws, leaped onto the second daeod
on, and thrust his claws through the brown hide and wrenched a bloody shard of its spine out.
The third pig halted, unsure. The fourth veered left, around the carnage, and charged up the hill, digging into the hard dirt with its hooves.
Karina clenched Emily closer. Her instinct told her to run, but around her nobody moved.
Twenty yards. Fifteen. Ten.
Daniel stepped forward and clenched his fist. With a dry crunch, the bones of the pigs’ front legs snapped. White bone sliced through the muscles and skin. The pig squealed, crashed on its side, and rolled down the hill. Lucas rose from the body of the third pig, leaped over the fallen daeodon as it tumbled down, and smashed its skull with one brutal punch.
“Are we in a story, Mommy?”
Karina looked down into Emily’s big brown eyes. I wish we were. I wish we were dreaming. She reached deep inside herself, through the fear and anxiety and disbelief, and when she spoke, her voice was calm and confident. “It will be okay, baby. We will be just fine.”
More daeodons spilled from the prairie, dashing toward the base; so many, she couldn’t even count. A huge beast led the charge. He looked just like Lucas, except for the reddish fur. The red beast sprinted, widening the distance between himself and the mass of daeodons, moving in powerful leaps that devoured the prairie.
Lucas backed two steps up the slope and planted his giant feet.
The beast thundered at them, hurtling like a cannonball. It jumped and sailed over the mass of writhing human bodies.
Lucas leaped. The two monsters collided in midair and Karina realized that Lucas was visibly smaller. They rolled down the hill, snarling and tearing at each other like two massive feral cats.
The larger beast raked Lucas’s side. Blood wet the dirt in a hot spray.
Karina spun to Daniel. “Help him!”
“I can’t,” he growled. “I need a clear target.”
The beasts brawled and snapped, biting and ripping in a tornado of claws and teeth.
The alarm blared again, this time a single long note followed by a short beep. Daniel whirled to an older woman standing next to him. She was short and plump, with an elaborate knot of tiny braids on her head. Her gray pantsuit was pristine, her makeup flawless. She looked like a secretary or a receptionist for an upscale business firm.
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