by Angie Fox
Perhaps I didn’t need to give in—in order to show him how he affected me.
His breathing quickened, and a small part of me rejoiced that I’d gotten to him just as he’d gotten to me.
Shadows soothed the rough edges of the hut. It truly was a place apart.
We were alone, hidden from the world.
Galen dipped his chin until it was inches from mine. “Your move.”
The lantern light caught the mirrors like dozens upon dozens of flickering candles. Jaw clenched, I remained where I was, bracing against the unnamed emotions he stirred in me.
I touched a hand to his chest. “I’m tired of being alone,” I admitted.
“Me too,” he said.
An industrial flashlight zapped us, stinging my eyes. “Ow.”
Galen cursed under his breath.
Shirley poked her head into the lair. “A little crowded in here, isn’t it?”
“Can you give us a minute?” Galen asked, his voice rough.
“I didn’t mean to intrude,” she said, her face a shadow as she continued to blast us with her beam. As Kosta’s assistant, Shirley was issued the new army version of high-tech. Didn’t mean she knew how to use it.
I slipped my hand from Galen’s.
“I wouldn’t interrupt,” Shirley said, clearly not understanding what she’d barged into, “but it’s here, Galen. The guys are setting it up right now.”
He nodded curtly, his breath harsh as his eyes wandered over me. “Good to know. We’ll be there in a minute.”
Yes, well, we might have been doing something a lot more fun if he didn’t have eighteen projects going on.
He gave me a smoldering look that said he’d been thinking the same thing.
“Come on,” he said, lacing his fingers in mine.
Wait a second. “Why do you need me?” I asked as we followed Shirley. I wasn’t going to get drawn into this.
The only problem he could solve for Shirley would involve Kosta in bed with a bow on his head, and although Galen had proven himself quite talented, I didn’t think he was that good.
And if he was, I didn’t want to be a witness.
We ducked outside, and he pulled a torch from the ground near the front of the lair. “You didn’t hear the real news, did you?” Some of the tension left his face as if he were relieved. “No wonder you didn’t come to me.”
“Confident, much?” I asked, gazing past him, realizing that Shirley had bugged out.
Shadows lengthened around us as the few remaining members of the crowd retrieved their torches and faded down the path.
We were alone. “What’s going on?”
Torches bobbed in the distance as people rushed toward the mess tent, or huddled in groups, talking.
He squeezed my hand.
“Horace?” Galen called to the orderly as he zipped past. “Want to tell Petra what happened?”
Horace flew down to us and hovered, impatient. The cave light he wore on his head flickered. “The first prophecy came true!”
Chapter Fourteen
I about fell over sideways. Horace didn’t notice.
“It happened last week, evidently,” the winged god said. “Although I have to say I’m surprised it didn’t take us even longer to hear in this backwater dump.”
My heart raced. I couldn’t believe it. My actions, my pulling the dagger out of Galen’s chest had to have been the start—unless some other doctor who could see the dead came across a bronze dagger. It could happen.
Holy smokes.
I yanked at Galen’s hand. “What if you’re actually right about this?”
“What if?” He raised a brow, apparently too classy to rub it in.
I broke contact and wandered down toward the main path by myself. My temples pounded. I rubbed them—as if that would help. “What are we going to do?” I said to myself more than anyone.
Horace dropped down right in front of me. “Why, PNN, of course.”
“What?” I didn’t get it. My head was racing. Was I breaking out in a rash?
“Paranormal News Network,” Horace answered as if I’d hit my head on a rock. “Really. I have to go.” He took off toward the mess tent.
People rushed past us as we hit the main drag. “I know about the Paranormal News Network.” I barked out a laugh, a breath away from really losing it. PNN was our world’s answer to CNN. “But I’d like to see how you’d get a TV in Limbo.” Even if any of us could afford to ship one down here, it would short out on the way through the portal.
A pair of cafeteria workers rushed past us.
“I put Shirley in touch with Dumuzi’s people,” Galen said as if this was supposed to make sense.
“Dumuzi?” I asked. “The Babylonian god of fertility?” And what was Galen doing talking to Shirley?
“I helped her contact his harem, specifically.” Galen handed me a torch. “Evidently she had something they wanted pretty badly. Forty-eight thousand condoms to be exact. We have a real television set up in the mess hall,” he said. “Pre-oracle coverage has already started.”
“Pre?” I tried not to drop my torch.
How did everyone seem to know the procedure for this? We hadn’t had a new oracle in most of our lifetimes. We hadn’t had one this important in thousands of years.
I couldn’t get over the idea that I could have started this entire thing. Me. I was a do-gooder, not a leader. I couldn’t start making historic prophecies come true. I’d screw it up, like I did the last time.
My stomach had morphed into lead by the time we reached the mess tent.
Leave it to my colleagues to throw a party. The long room buzzed with talk and laughter as chairs and tables were dragged across the floor and slapped together.
And there, along the right side of the long hall, bolted to the menu board, was the ugliest television I’d ever seen. It was one of those old 1970s cabinet models with the carved wood and the curved gray screen.
You’d think it was a sixty-five-inch Ultra HD flatscreen from the excitement pulsing through the room. Chairs packed the area in front of the television. Dozens more packed the in-between spaces on the floor. Shoved-aside tables cluttered the middle. Dozens more sat on top of those. A beach ball bounced through the crowd.
The cafeteria workers had set out a make-your-own peanut butter and jelly sandwich bar on the back serving line, along with a bunch of jugs of orange drink.
Galen and I found a spot on top of a table, near the front. The picture on the screen flickered. An orderly sitting on a stool next to the television stood up and banged on the side of the set a few times. Everyone cheered as the picture steadied.
A perky blonde reporter stood at the bottom of a sheer cliff face with a cave cut into the rock. She wore a chunky gold necklace, a pink suit, and a perennially amused expression.
“I’m BeeBee Connor reporting live from the Oracle of the Gods, where just yesterday we saw the oracles come out of an intense soothsaying session in order to wail and tear at their hair.”
Tiny rocks pelted BeeBee as the mountain behind her shook.
“Look at that. Did you catch that, Rob?” she asked, delighted.
“The mountain has been shaking all day,” she went on, ignoring the rocks raining down on her perfectly coiffed hair. “A sure sign that our oracles are hard at work. And if you look below me, you can see the boiling lava surrounding Mount Lemuria.”
The camera panned to where her spiky pink heels hovered several yards above a bubbling, churning lake of orange.
“The crowds haven’t been too bad, due to the fact that Lemuria is a lost continent,” she said, in that perfect news monotone. “Still, we are getting some boats out in the water as the wait goes on. Officials are warning people to keep their distance. According to my sources, the lava hasn’t flowed like this since the oracle predicted the destruction of Atlantis.” She tilted her perfectly pointed chin down. “And aren’t we glad we listened then?”
Hellfire and brimstone.
She was too perky, and this was too much.
They panned back to the studio, where an overly tanned werewolf sat behind the PNN news desk. “Any word on when we might hear something, BeeBee?”
She tilted her head. “My sources aren’t saying. But one thing’s for sure. This new prophecy is going to be hot, hot, hot.”
The newsman delivered a toothy smile. “Thanks, BeeBee. This is Stone McKay, and you’re watching PNN twenty-four-hour live coverage of Oracle Watch MMXXI. More of day five after this break.”
My elbows weakened. “Day five?”
I did the math again in my head, but I knew already. It had been five days since I’d pulled the bronze dagger out of Galen. Five days since I said there was no way what I was doing had any bearing on any kind of prophecy. Five days since I’d started telling Galen he was wrong when, oh my stars, he might be right.
Galen drew a steadying arm around my shoulders, which was good because I was about ready to fall right off the table. “You’re okay?” he asked.
“Sure,” I replied, voice weak. I wanted to do something, say something, but all I could manage was to sit where I was and wait through the endless barrage of commercials for portable caskets and shapeshifter sheaths (shift without wrinkles, every time).
How could these people be thinking of clothes and vacations when we were waiting for the second oracle?
“And we’re back,” said a smiling Stone McKay. “It’s Oracle Watch day five, and in case you missed it, the oracles left their cave yesterday to wail and tear at their hair.”
PNN cut to footage of three middle-aged women in long white dresses appearing at the entrance to the cave. They cried and yanked at their long hair and clothes.
“Can we get a freeze frame on that?” Stone asked as the camera shot stilled. “If you look, you’ll see that’s Ama on the left, Radhiki next to her, and Li-Hua on the far side, holding up a large femur bone, presumably from a small dragon or a large cow.”
What was I going to do?
What if the second oracle asked me to expose myself? Could I do that? Was I sure enough?
“Here’s another angle on the wailing and the tearing of the hair,” Stone continued.
I’d told Galen I needed real proof, and here it was. The oracle had come true on the day I’d pulled the bronze dagger out of his chest. What were the odds?
The idea of peace was too momentous, too wonderful. But not if I had anything to do with it. I’d screwed up badly before. I’d misinterpreted the signs and brought horror to the people I loved. What if I stood up and I sacrificed and I gave everything and it happened again? I couldn’t take it.
The world, and PNN, didn’t seem to care.
“For those of you who are just tuning in, we are on day five of the Oracle Watch.”
A banner scrolled along the bottom. Breaking news: oracles wail and tear at their hair.
“What am I going to do?” I asked myself, voice shaky.
Galen drew me closer and said nothing.
The PA system crackled.
Attention. Attention all personnel. Incoming wounded.
I leaned my chin against my chest. “Holy bad timing, Batman.”
It’s going to be a doozie.
Chairs skidded and boots slammed down on the floor as everyone made their way to pre-op. I wasn’t on call tonight, which meant I was backup in surgery.
I could see the lights from the helicopters approaching in the distance.
In the locker room, I dressed quickly, listening to the shouts from the yard and the mechanical screech of brakes as ambulances pulled in.
I was getting ready to scrub in when Kosta grabbed me by the arm.
“See me after this,” he said, dragging a surgical cap over his bald head. “We have a problem.”
Oh no. Had he found out about me?
“What kind of problem?” I asked. If it was bad news, I wanted to know now.
Kosta frowned. “One that I’ll tell you about when we don’t have two dozen casualties coming into camp. Now move it.”
The operating room was packed. I was at a table on the far left. They brought me a young private with an artillery shot to the shoulder. His eyes darted wildly.
I placed my hand on his arm. “I’ve got you. You’re going to be fine.” I always hated to promise that, but in this case, it seemed like a safe assumption. And it was something he needed to hear.
He drew a deep breath and nodded as Nurse Hume cleaned the wound and I prepared my sutures.
“Somebody needs to bring the TV in here,” Rodger said from the table a row in front of mine.
“Nothing’s happening,” Marius grunted from his table behind me.
“Yeah, but day five. That’s a big day,” Rodger said, tossing a piece of shrapnel onto a metal tray. “It never takes them longer than five days.”
I winced. “Can we talk about something else?” There was nothing we could do about the oracle anyway, at least not right now.
“Sure,” Rodger said.
“I can’t believe Galen got us a TV,” Marius said.
What was it with these people? “Let’s not talk about Galen, either.” Nurse Hume had finished cleaning the wound. I threaded my needle.
“Why not?” Rodger asked. “I saw how long you were in Marius’s lair. Believe me, there’s not that much to see.”
Oh yes. Announce it to the group.
“If the lair is a-rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’,” droned Hume.
I lost the thread out of my needle. Dang it.
“I’d date him,” Rodger added.
“Why are we talking about this?” I asked out loud, trying to rethread my needle.
“I prefer blondes,” Marius said.
“Hold him steady,” I said to Hume, ignoring them all as I set to work on the soldier in front of me. His breath hitched as I began sewing him together. Poor kid.
“Is this your first time?” I asked him.
He gave a small nod. “Just joined up in August.”
These soldiers were brave, every last one of them, but there’s nothing like being on an operating table for the first time.
“You volunteered?” I asked, wishing I could go easy on him.
He nodded, squeezing his eyes shut in pain.
Once again, I found myself lamenting the fact that anesthetics—or even painkillers—didn’t work on immortals. They were with us every step of the way.
“It’s not like they said it would be,” he gasped. “It’s way worse.”
I had no doubt of that. “War is hell.”
He was about halfway done. The wound was deeper than it looked, and I had to use more stitches than I’d planned.
It was already starting to heal on its own, which meant I had to get this lined up or it could knit together wrong.
A fine sweat gathered on his forehead. “They had more guys out there than us today.”
I gripped the needle tighter. “Is that so?”
“They’re talking about an unbalanced army.”
I didn’t even want to imagine.
Galen had said something about it—how things were hitting a crisis point. Heaven help us if he was right about that, too.
We operated for twelve hours straight. Marius left us right before dawn, which added to the load. Afterward, I pulled off my cap and sat on a bench in the locker room, head down, elbows on my knees as I listened to doctors tell the same story over and over.
The injuries are worse.
The casualties higher.
The armies are becoming unbalanced.
We were in deep trouble. Tired, I stood and let down my hair. Even that didn’t feel as good as it usually did. I tossed the ponytail holder into my locker and slammed the door shut. I leaned up against it, drawing a hand down over my face, waiting for it to all go away.
But I couldn’t avoid this. Not anymore. And besides, I had to go see Kosta. I could only imagine what he ha
d in store for me.
Chapter Fifteen
I changed out of my scrubs and into a pair of rust-colored new army uniform pants. Might as well try to look official. Events were in motion. I couldn’t deny it.
Naturally, I had no idea where I’d left the belt portion of the pants, so I smoothed my white tank top over the copper button.
The matching field jacket hung in the back of my locker. It was stiff from lack of use, practically new. I shrugged that on as well.
The first prophecy has come true. The armies are on the move and unbalanced.
It still felt like a dream. I wished it were. I could use a few z’s. We’d been in surgery all night and into today. My eyes felt like somebody had rubbed them with sandpaper.
The heat of the day had already gone from stifling to unbearable. I squinted against the suns and kept my heavy head up as I hiked next door to Kosta’s office.
Shirley was on the phone when I walked in. She sat at her desk, banging a pencil about 180 miles an hour. Her fiery hair curled out of its loose twist. A fan blew the hot air around, solving absolutely nothing. “Try looking under Fiction-Human-Irrelevant.”
“Is Kosta in there?” I asked, aiming for his office.
“No.” She swung her chair toward me and lowered the phone. “He had to deal with an issue in post-op.” She tucked the pencil behind her ear and held a finger up. “But don’t leave.”
Phone propped between her chin and her shoulder, she turned back to her desk and began shuffling through the closest of about six different stacks of files. The top papers fluttered in the artificial breeze. “I have something on Galen you’re going to want to see.”
“Something good?” I asked. See? I could be hopeful.
Shirley’s forehead wrinkled. “Depends on your point of view.” The phone squawked, and Shirley yanked it up to her ear. “Yes. I’m still waiting.” She frowned as she listened. “You didn’t find it?” She rolled her eyes. “Try Fiction-Human-Anthropological.”
She sighed, her eyes flicking to me. “I’m trying to get a few things for the new TV,” she explained. “Tell me. How do you think the army film depot would file season one of Dynasty?”