From the direction, a figure strode forward. My eyes couldn’t track him fast enough: he phased in and out on his way to us up the road, past the truck, and around. His robe boiled shadow behind him. It was wet with blood, stirring like the hood of a jellyfish underwater. Only the mask was a constant: bone white, streaked with grime. The only features were three cruel, black slits.
“All this blood and misery,” the Deacon said. He looked down at me. “What a terrible tragedy, Alexi. It’s almost as if nothing cares about life, and living.”
I tried to speak, but my jaw wouldn’t move to form words. The Deacon took something out of his robe. At first, I thought it was a weird knife – another StainedGlass weapon, maybe – but I had all the time in the world to observe the yellowish, serrated arrowhead-like thing as he turned it around in his hand, and plunged it into John Spotted Elk’s back. He put both hands against it, ramming it in deep as the other man’s face slowly morphed from fear to agony.
“So now we’re here, you should listen to what I have to say.” The Deacon continued to work the weapon into John’s body, levering it into his frozen form. “You did everything I foresaw, and for that, I thank you. We are one step closer to the final showdown with a great evil… and you played your part to the end. The very end.”
How the hell was he holding a field like this? I fought to bring the knife around, but it was like trying to move through resin.
“For the service you have done, I’m going to show you mercy. Uncommon mercy. It’s something very few people deserve.” The Deacon reached out, and took the Wardbreaker from John’s hand as his fingers loosened on it and his skin began to streak through with thick violet veins, bulging and creeping under the skin of his throat and face. “Unlike this gentleman here. He’s a liar… a man so proud that he’d rather make himself up than live. There’s a reason that pride is the greatest sin in the Bible. It’s pernicious. You start thinking you can do anything, be anyone, but it’s just not true. We’re always stuck with ourselves, alone.”
Replying was out of the question. I was still trying to get up and run.
“It’s funny how things work out. When Jana made contact with Lev Moskalysk, I told him I would have preferred to meet you instead of Vanya, but I was warned that you would violently reject what the Father has to offer mages like you and me.” The Deacon pulled his glove off and pointed the weapon down at my face, gathering a deep breath. Beads of blood appeared on the pale skin of his forearm, drawn up by the wave of arcane power I felt rising in the air around us. The liquid collected like mercury, then slid up along his hand and filled the grooves and sigils that were engraved along the barrel. Each one of them flared to life in slow motion, burning a baleful red. “It’s a shame. You do good work. I remember this gun, for example… nice toy. We used it to get into your apartment. All of those books you wrote, all those instructions you left on your Phitometry… In another life, you’d have been my apprentice. You could purge the world of the filthiness you hate.”
I wanted to retort, to say something in reply, but all I could do was observe as he dropped the muzzle down. John was open-mouthed now, eyes bulging, his hands very slowly reaching for his face as he fell to his knees.
“But you’re too proud. That’s the problem with self-taught mages. You evolve in solitude, and know that you’re better than everyone else.” The Deacon’s voice was warm, even friendly, and I was sure he was smiling behind the mask. “But even so, I admire the will to power, Alexi. You tried for a high score before you lost the game, even took out a few other players. Better luck next time.”
As I fought to react, the Deacon leveled the Wardbreaker in a steady one-handed grip, and shot me in the stomach.
Chapter 40
Getting shot in the torso doesn’t really hurt – not at first. It’s like a punch that goes right through you, a wave of pressure that tears out your back and ripples outward. And THEN it hurts.
There was no exit wound. This gut-shot tore out the front of my body: I saw the magical pattern of energy flare brightly around the Wardbreaker as the round left the chamber and flew, spinning before impact. Blood erupted from my shirt front in a slow-motion arc, lit by the Red energy of dissolution that I had crafted with my mind and hands and skill. The bullet shattered the binding that Sergei had laid on me, as well as The Deacon’s temporal field. Time snapped like an elastic band, and I screamed in real-time as the parasite’s sigil-form collapsed, legs whipping around and gathering under my skin. It pushed, squeezed itself out the entry wound like an octopus, and launched itself at the Deacon’s face.
John screamed, garbling and then retching onto the ground as the Deacon backed away, battling the freed Wrath’ree. It had lost its black color – it was now a brilliant orange mass of energy, half sea anemone, half lightning bolt. I rolled over, clutching the soil, and felt the energy of my Neshamah mesh through me. Power, sensual and thick, rolled up my spine and turned the throbbing wound into an icy void.
“Kut… kha…” I gasped aloud. Writhing, clutching at my gut as it oozed between my fingers, I looked up and saw a corona of descending black wings and burning white eyes, shimmering as if through water.
“Oh, my Ruach,” Kutkha whispered, a psychic voice like leaves whispering along the pavement at night. His voice was eager and bittersweet, heavy with sorrow. “We are reunited, but too late.”
The Deacon was fighting for his life against the Wrath’ree, pushed back towards the line of cars, and John… John was transforming. He twisted in agony, clawing at his face and mouth, and then retched a gout of blood and torn flesh onto the road as his back split like a cicada’s shell.
“You were right,” I said.
“I am not always right.” Kutkha fell around me like a blanket. “But perhaps I was, this time. Take comfort, my Ruach… dying is difficult, but death is easy. This, now, is the hardest part.”
John Spotted Elk didn’t explode so much as unfold into something that was half assassin bug, half coyote – an insectoid DOG the size of a schoolbus that drove its legs into the tarmac as it split and bubbled and divided and reformed. I stared at it, huffing through my teeth. “Will I see Vassily again?”
“It is inevitable, without intervention,” Kutkha replied, sweet and sad. “Only the NO destroys.”
The thing in front of me, shaking ichor from its body, was the NO. I’d kill myself before I let it take us. “I don’t Will to stay here. Help me cut the pain... I’ll fight to the end.”
“Yes.” He breathed the word like an incantation, the same gravity I had heard in Zarya’s voice. Kutkha’s presence swelled, and then the pain of my wounds receded into the far distance, sucked back by gravity. I reached out, and wrapped my hand around the knife. Slowly, I got to my feet, swaying, bleeding, but numb.
A cougar charged past me, and then a lion – an African lion, fully maned and golden furred. Right behind him was Talya’s American Lion, injured and bloody, but still moving fast. As the insect reared up, legs raised over me like an attacking spider, the three cats leapt onto it in different places: thorax, abdomen and head. The first two slid off, unable to get a grip on its slippery armor. Big Ron’s lion bit down on the bug’s armor with a crunch, only to be shaken off. The thing flung him into the door of the semi; he hit with a snarl as he bounced to the road in a sprawl, the metal dented. The bug was stupidly fast. Ron barely scrambled out of the way before its proboscis punctured the door like a sheet of paper and tore it free. Then it came after me, slamming the door down on the tarmac like a hammer.
The pain was gone. Deliriously focused, I swayed to the side and ran underneath it. I jammed the knife into the joint of its leg, and the bug screeched as it dipped down on that side. Talya leaped again, flexing her claws under the edge of an armored plate. The insect whirled, knocking me down, and I saw the lion swing as she clung on and began to rake with her back legs.
I was stumbling up again when a huge orange shape hit me like a cannon ball, bowling me out from under the inse
ct’s body just before it dropped its bulk to crush whatever was underneath. We rolled together, and then the tiger – Jenner – sprung back up to her feet. She was heaving, her flanks soaked in blood, her chest, neck, and hind legs ripped like canvas cloth. One of her eyes was missing: the right side of her face looked like raw hamburger. She roared in defiance, and charged the bug as it rolled and twisted, stabbing at the cats and the road, tearing up asphalt and the soil beneath.
“Magic.” I growled the word out through gritted teeth and got up to my knees. “Fire.”
The ground was a blank canvas. I sketched out a circle in my own blood, reaching into the well of power that I had been without for so long. I was brimming with it, spilling over with cold heat. Dirt swirled around my hand as I focused on it, and then looked up in sudden wonder as I felt – and somehow, saw – the matrix of the air and earth resolve in space. I wasn’t just looking at the Weeders as they fought, leaping and clawing, striking and falling. I could see everything, the field of atoms and energy vibrating, exchanging, decaying, flaring. It passed in a moment as I grasped the components given to me by will, and in a moment of Promethean awe, smashed them together. It was kavannah. The intention of my heart was to stop this thing. “Aysh!”
The bug reared, about to stab through Jenner’s back as she scrabbled to run, and then it blew back in a sudden explosion of fire and friction. It slammed into the semi, sending the vehicle tumbling to the side. The cargo tray followed more slowly, toppling as the insect, burning and thrashing on its hard back, kicked its legs out and screeched. The big cats were on it in an instant, raking and snarling, ignoring the flames as they tore ichor from its belly and pulled it to the ground.
The Deacon. Where was the Deacon? I snarled with effort as I got back up and began to lurch towards the line of black cars. I could see the Wrath’ree – it was three times the size it had been after it had pulled itself from my body, and it was decimating the ranks of the Deacon’s men. Two of them saw me weaving towards them. They turned their guns on me and emptied their clips against the shield I spun with a slash of my hand. Bullets sparked away off the blue matrix, then red as I focused on the word I’d used to flip the bug. The blue turned to red. The men screamed as they burned.
I heard a cougar’s scream of warning from behind and turned to see Mason’s bulk soaring towards me, paws outstretched. He was more glass than flesh, his head pushed to the side by spears of crystal, every wound bristling with bloody glass. With a shout, I slammed the knife up into his breastbone as he took me to ground. He reared up over my body, claws extended.
Jenner broke for me with a bellow, hindquarters not quite as fast as her forelimbs. I saw her as I twisted back, trying to drag myself away, as the insectoid DOG brought down a leg in its death throes. We were no longer slowed, but it seemed to take forever. The dull crack of her spine, the gape of shock, the agonized struggling as the insect pulled her off the ground like she weighed nothing and threw her back and forth, impaled on the thrashing limb.
“Chet!” I roared the command of my easiest spell, my fastest spell, and shoved the shield up and forwards. “Jenner!”
Mason’s claws screeched over the shield of energy, slipping across. He regathered for another blow, but a lean figure sprung in from the side. Angkor, bloodied and battered, his lip and forehead split, swung the fire axe we’d taken from the safehouse and buried it deep into Mason’s flank. The tiger was so screwed up with overgrown Yen that it couldn’t even roar; it reared up and twisted in pain as Angkor hauled the axe back and chopped into his neck and shoulder. Whatever it hit shattered: the blade and Angkor’s arms oozed with honey, which he wiped across the head as he dodged the crippled animal’s paws and spines. When Mason got close to me, I pulled the knife out of his body and stabbed whatever came to hand. With the two of us working together, glass broke free and the structure began to collapse. Mason tottered to one side with a moan before falling to struggle and kick on the ground.
“That sick rapist motherfucker is getting away!” Angkor snarled, whirling with the axe in hand. He was exhausted, his hair plastered to his face and clumped with sweat.
“Jenner,” I wheezed. No matter how I tried to focus, the pain was coming back. Kutkha was there to hold my metaphysical hand, but his cool, calming presence could only steer the course as gravity began to press me down with insistent hands. “Children. On the truck.”
Angkor went to his knees beside me, dropping the axe with a clatter. He stared into my eyes: his own were a very dark, very intense gray. It was an unusual color to see in an Asian face. I watched interestedly as his pupils grew larger and the rest of his face receded towards a great height, framed by light that grew more and more intense. The pain in my stomach was fading into white noise, a tingling and throbbing instead of wracking, burning fire. The oily, acid taste in my mouth was gone. I had been tired for so long now… months and months. Kutkha was right, again. It felt like sinking into a deep bed; a deep, quiet darkness.
“Hey! GODdammit, Alexi! You can’t die!” His voice rang out from far away. It had a pleasant mouthfeel, blue and silver and green, but I couldn’t see him anymore. “Alexi!”
Alexi… lexi…exi…
Angkor’s voice echoed on, stretching out forever.
Somehow, I remembered this feeling… the oceanic expansion, an inescapable pressure dragging me backwards, faster and faster until the darkness turned to pure light and sound. The words faded into a heartbeat larger than the sum total of all the planets in my solar system, of all the galaxies in the Milky Way. It was GOD, the YESbeast, the Mystery. The Star of Stars, which could only say one thing.
…LoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYou…
Chapter 41
We were drawn through the interstitial ocean towards a bright core, as close and distant as the Sun. Kutkha was my caul, an elegant, winged form that encapsulated my awareness as we soared through what had to be the cellular fluid of GOD’s mass. Every second of every moment, I was wracked by memory that was not my own. Rapidly cycling flickers of imagery, voices, faces… hands and whispers, the flick of a lighter, Zarya’s eyes, bright and blue as the Earth from space.
After a timeless space, the feeling of distance and motion contracted. Kutkha plunged through a prismatic haze like a blue-black arrow, through a sky of dancing color and light until he broke through the clouds into a white sky over a white forest, a land of pure Glass.
To my surprise, I saw myself standing on the rise of a small hill. I was hairless and pale, toned and aesthetic in a way that my body had never been. A long sarong of sheer fabric fell from my waist to the soft white loam beneath my feet. My bare palms and forehead were pressed to the trunk of a tree that looked like pink coral, stretching out with an arc of branches that shivered with pleasure in the soft, warm wind. Many of the thinner branches were wrapped lovingly around this man’s back and shoulders and thighs, this Me-Not-Me.
Suddenly, he lifted his head and turned it, nostrils flaring. His eyes were my eyes, silver-white and colorless. The branches of the tree withdrew from him just as my awareness collided with his and then rebounded away, faster than light, faster than-
I heaved a deep breath.
White floor, white tiles, blue uniforms, murmuring voices. The world spun; I tried to get up, to run from the Deacon and Mason and get to Jenner before she died. My body, wracked with pain, was pushed back down by several pairs of hands.
“DOG!” I tried to speak. It came out as a gargle around something in my throat.
“Put him down! He’s going to pull the tube out!”
Heat flushed up my arm, pounded in my head, and I forgot about the tube, forgot about the DOG and the Deacon. I fell back down to the hospital bed, and slept.
The first indication I had of dreaming, of being lucid in my dream, was the recognition of sound. It was dark, but I heard the Ukrainian Community News Radio and the drone of conversation, punctured by laughter and the bang and tinkle of a small bell
striking a door as it was opened and closed. It was the sounds of Mariya's deli. The white wooden front, never materialized visually. I heard the blue and white awnings whipping in the salty, humid air of Brighton Beach, and I smelled it, the cakes and tea and mingled cologne and perfume of the customers. All I could see was the dark Green sea as I lay semi-conscious, my mouth dry with longing, my heart hammering. Something wet lapped at my cheek.
Eventually, I opened my eyes within the dream and found myself lying on my side in dark warm water, staring into Vassily's deep blue eyes. He lay facing me, his hands loose by his face and throat, his black hair wet and trailing in the water. He breathed softly, watching me. I stared back in confused wonder.
Vassily's mouth crept up in a wan smile. Wordlessly, he shifted one hand toward me, and caught the tips of my fingers with the tips of his. My hands were bare, ungloved, and very pale in the inky water. A shiver of sensation lanced from hand to groin, so intense and so foreign that I jumped, sending ripples through the suspension around us.
"We need to talk, Lexi," he said, his words burst like bubbles in my ears. Unseen, but felt in the ears and mouth and mind. “River’s got to move on. Okay?”
I was sedated, conscious. Everything was warm. Everything hummed with life. “I’m tired.”
“I know. But Life’s hard and dirty.” He laced his fingers through mine. “You’re a radio, man. You have to pick up the signals, play the music. You need to stop with the me-me-me bullshit, not when the bad guys are coming. We’re all so huge. There’s so much to do.”
“Radio,” I repeated. For some reason, it made sense. The word felt terribly literal. “Vassily, I just… I… miss…”
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