Ismene spit on the chuck of metal in her hand. “Three, two…” She whipped it at the SUV. “One!”
The hood of the vehicle exploded. The woman with the gun fell backward.
Nax pushed me toward the bus. “Go!”
I bolted for the bus’s steps.
Cadmus peeled off his spot against the bus and lunged. I pushed him off, and bounded up the steps. “Mrs. K!” I yelled. “Hold on!”
She leaned over the rail and looked down the steps. “Emperor!” she called.
I dropped into the driver’s seat just as Cadmus tackled Nax.
Nax managed to push Cadmus against the bus. Cadmus rolled into the door and scrambled up the steps.
I kicked at his head. He dodged. “Philadelphia Simone Parrish! You are—”
Mrs. K bonked him on the shoulder with a wrench.
“What the—” He ducked, but she bonked him again.
“Naughty boy!” She swung the wrench, but he snagged her hand.
“Stop it!” Cadmus yelled at Mrs. K.
Nax bashed him on the back of the head with Mom’s garden gnome. He dropped onto the floor at my feet.
Nax pushed by and closed the door. “Drive,” he said.
Outside, Ismene lobbed another spit-bomb at the last remaining Seraphim.
I put the bus in reverse. “If I hit Vivicus, will it hurt him?” I asked.
Nax plopped into the seat next to Mrs. K. He was pale again. “He’s the morpher. His body is indestructible, and if he’s like this world’s Vivicus, he’s literally unkillable.”
Mrs. K nodded her agreement.
I did my best to miss him anyway as I backed out. I might have hit him. Ismene danced out of the way. The soldier didn’t fire at us, maybe because her gun had been damaged. Or maybe because she didn’t want to spray bullets into the houses.
Or maybe she didn’t care, like Cadmus.
He moaned.
Nax kicked at his shoulder.
“That one’s going to be a problem,” Mrs. K said. She looked up and to the side. “Maria says he’s healing faster than a non-Shifter or Fate should be able to heal.”
“He’s got some sort of power,” I said. “I can see it.” I took us out of my parents’ neighborhood.
Nax handed the gnome to Mrs. K.
“Oh how lovely!” she said, and set it on her lap. “It’s chipped.”
I looked over my shoulder. “That’ll happen when a gnome hits a Seraphim.”
Nax groaned, but knelt next to Cad. He yanked twice, and managed to pull the gun off the magnetic scabbard on Cad’s back. He set it on the seat behind Mrs. K, then stripped off the discs, Cad’s holstered small weapon, and the knives.
Nax gathered the weapons and took them to the back of the bus. “I need to lie down.”
Cadmus groaned again. He was right next to my foot, right there face-planted on the same tread Nax had puked on.
“What about him?” I asked.
Nax kicked at him again. “Guess it’s time for the world to see a naked Seraphim, huh, Irena?”
She leaned over the seat’s side and looked down at the Seraphim. “Every cloud has a silver lining,” she said.
“Just don’t hurt him,” I said. “I’ve had enough of hurting for a while, okay?”
Nax frowned. “Drive.”
I drove, and did my best to ignore Nax stripping the super-suit off Leif-Cad the Seraphim bad-boy douchebro.
I drove, and wondered how long it would be before that suit—and its owner—would try to kill us.
Chapter Ten
The radio said the invaders destroyed the East Coast before The Incursion closed, and everything that wasn’t currently crawling with dragon soldiers or hellhounds was on fire. Every coastal city had been hit, from New York City all the way to Miami. Farther inland, Canada lost Quebec City, Montreal, and Toronto. America lost Charlotte, Atlanta, Detroit, and Cleveland. Chicago took one hit away from the lake and into the western suburbs, and reports from Minneapolis and St. Louis said that they had invaders, but no ballistic attacks.
No city west of the Mississippi had been touched.
The morning sun crested the trees and the hills, and burned off the wispy remnants of The Incursion, but smoke and ash from the end of half of America rose into the clouds like reverse confetti falling up to the sky.
We could literally see the death of the nation on the eastern horizon, but it still didn’t make sense. I had no understanding of the words coming across the bus’s radio. No understanding of why the skies roared with military planes, or why flames ripped through entire swaths of Denver, even if all we had to deal with locally was Ismene’s pets. The local deejays sounded as numb as I felt, as if the whole thing was just some surreal movie script they were supposed to read but wasn’t—couldn’t be—real.
But I’d seen an Incursion up close and personal. I’d stuck my arm into it. I’d dealt with hellhounds and Seraphim from an alternate future where the invaders did destroy Denver. From a future so terrible that I became horrible.
Half of that destruction happened here. The reports said that all the Asian and European nations north of the equator had been overrun. One of the deejays broke down into sobs when he reported on the images coming out of the remains of Tokyo and Osaka.
I hadn’t looked. I hadn’t even turned on my phone to check whether my mother had returned my calls. Part of me didn’t want to know. Part of me didn’t want to face what was happening to the world outside of the Paradise Homes mini-bus.
I couldn’t look. I couldn’t mourn. I had a job to do.
Maria Romanova wanted us to drive east. She hovered around me in the gray swirling energy, still unseen but fully felt.
She had, at least, been kind enough to not distract me while we fought our way out of Vivicus’s grasp. But now that we were on the bus and heading toward “her ring,” she and Stab made sure I was fully aware of what they now wanted me to do.
“Mrs. K,” I said. “Ask Maria if getting her ring will help us fight Vivicus.”
He’d find us. No doubt about it. Maybe Maria having her magical ring would give us a level-up in super-soldier fighting capability.
Mrs. K looked up and to the side, as she often did when talking to Maria. “Yes,” she said.
“How?” I asked.
Mrs. K patted the gnome and looked out the window. So much for getting more information. I returned my attention to the road ahead of us.
Our Seraphim guest was still unconscious. Nax had tossed him into the fourth seat behind Mrs. K so he’d be visible in the mirror as I drove, but still far enough away from me that if he got loose, Nax could hammer him with the gnome again before he caused problems.
Nax had stripped him down to his dangly bits, all while mumbling things like “implanted connectors” and “this technology doesn’t exist yet.”
He stopped once and stood up, but didn’t turn around. His hand touched a spot on the inside of our guest’s wrist. Nax looked at it, shook his head, and went about his task of stripping Cad bare.
Maybe Cad had a small tattoo of some significance. I couldn’t tell while I drove, and I wasn’t sure I cared all that much, anyway.
Nax folded our guest’s garments and set them on the seat next to Mrs. K. She touched them gingerly, looked over our now-naked Seraphim hostage, raised an eyebrow, and set the garden gnome on top of the fabric.
Turned out the suit had three layers—the outer camo-armor layer complete with boots, gloves, helmet, and holsters. A wired-up gray-violet suit made up of a jacket with semi-attached pants, gloves, and socks under that. And a final layer of undergarments that Nax said were some sort of piezoelectric charging battery something or other. Cad the cad also had an array of circuitry printed on his neck, wrists, and ankles that in real-world light looked more like black UPC code lines than anything metal-based, but in the gray, glowed like fairy lights.
Several brightly-colored patterned but also blob-like tats wrapped around his torso and his arms,
which didn’t surprise me one bit. He seemed like the kind of guy who would tat up just so he had an excuse to take off his shirt and flex his pecs.
Nax tossed a sleeping bag over Cad’s free-hanging bits. “His real tattoos probably have a purpose.” He pointed at Cad’s side. “I don’t recognize the designs.”
I wasn’t going to stop the bus to look.
Nax, it seemed, had spent a great deal of his Paradise Homes downtime reading up on all things scientific and technological, and was more up on the workings of the suit than any of the rest of us.
Except Maria. “His second layer looks much like other Maria’s uniform,” Mrs. K said.
She’d talked about how the “second Maria” disappeared a few weeks ago, and how she’d gone off to “get her sword.” At the time, I’d thought she was just talking up another of her ghost stories, but now I wondered what really happened.
Second Maria had never come back, so I doubted I’d ever know.
Nax dropped into the seat directly behind Mrs. K and in front of Cad. He leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes, but asked questions anyway. “What do you remember of the other Maria’s uniform?” he asked.
Mrs. K sat quietly and stared out the window.
Nax opened his eyes. “Irena?”
She looked over her shoulder. “She had silver eyes, and was smaller than our Maria. Her uniform looked worn, as did her scabbards.” She looked up and to the side. “Maria says you should wear the suit, young lady.”
I glanced at Mrs. K in the mirror. “She does, does she?” Maria did want me to put it on. I felt her desire as a kind of push from the gray.
Mrs. K returned to staring out the window.
Maybe getting her to concentrate on a physical object in her space would help with the spacing out. “What about Reginald?” I asked.
Reginald was the garden gnome. Our six-inch-tall, red-hatted bit of concrete had turned out to be our best weapon against the Seraphim, and I figured he deserved a name.
Mrs. K touched the gnome. “He looks more like a Rostislav to me,” she said, but then she nodded. “Though I do like Reginald. It’s regal.”
I glanced at our guest in the mirror. “I’m not putting on his suit.” I pulled us out onto one of the main roads running east out of Aurora. “That thing is probably keyed to his genes or something, and will strangle me the moment I zip it up.”
Mrs. K shrugged.
Or worse, it had been broadcasting our location to Vivicus and his backup dancers since the moment we knocked Mr. Hottie McDouchebro on the head.
If it wasn’t, then something was wrong with its workings—which might be true. The armor had powered down to a flat gunmetal blue-gray. The bodysuit looked just as flat and dead as the armor in both the real and the gray. Only the zappy underwear—a scoop-necked short-sleeved shirt and a pair of what looked like biker shorts—seemed to have any life to it.
I figured we’d pay the price for stealing a Seraphim soon enough. Vivicus seemed like the kind of guy who had a lot of his ego wrapped up in controlling other people’s insolence, and nothing said cheeky disrespect like letting a Burner smash in his brains while we stole one of his minions.
Maria pushed against my shoulder. Not touched. Not whispered or spoke or anything real. She pushed and I understood.
Drive, she wanted. We’re close.
Because running from one terror wasn’t enough. We had to run headlong into another storm.
Or maybe her ring was exactly what we needed. Maybe we’d all be able to see her once she put it on, and she’d be able to put the fear of the Tsars into our guest.
Probably not. More than likely, he’d try to steal it the moment he sniffed out its presence.
“Maybe we should dump him somewhere,” I said. The area was remarkably empty. This road had very few cars full of families returning home after ignoring the order to shelter in place. We did pass a couple of abandoned minivans. We could drop him in one with a sleeping bag and a bottle of water. “There’s no one here he can hurt.”
Our guest groaned, and Nax quickly wrapped a bungie cord from the camping supplies around one of his wrists, then hooked it to the back of the seats. Then he did the same to Cadmus’s other hand, but stretched out his arm toward the window. Nax followed this with another set of bungies around Cad’s ankles.
Cad sat spread-eagled like a sacrifice in the middle of the seats, groaning and mumbling in all his lovely nakedness. And he truly was a beautiful, well-defined boy, with an exceptionally exquisite chest, arms, and rippling abs.
I blinked several times and refused to look at the mirror. I might carry a sword, but I used to be an aide at a nursing home. I’d seen my share of male body parts. Old body parts, but still body parts.
I would not be distracted.
Nax re-tucked Cad’s sleeping bag as if he was the guy’s dad. “It’s cold,” he said, as if he really did care. Then he dropped into the seat between Mrs. K and Cad the wonder cad and let out a deep pained-sounding sigh.
“Nax?” I called.
He held up his hand as if to tell me to be quiet.
Mrs. K tapped the padded rail in front of her. “Maria says his abilities are sparking again.”
“I’m pulling over.” I pulled the bus onto a wide spot on the shoulder under a stand of trees. The early morning sun blasted through the branches and in through the windows and onto Nax’s face.
I pulled the keys and grabbed Stab from her spot alongside the driver’s seat.
My sense of the gray returned, but not as overwhelmingly as it had during the fight. It didn’t flow into my vision so much now as pulled on my perception and gave me a sense of location. It felt more like knowing where something was because I was used to it being there than because I’d noticed where it was in the first place.
“Whoa,” I said. Stab was layering on the weirdest, most not-right sensations I’d ever felt.
I almost set her back on her scabbard. Almost. But Nax needed help and seeing what was wrong would help me help him more than any weird feelings.
I held her up and waved her back and forth. His power had contracted down to close to his body—but so had all the little random Burner fires. I quickly checked our guest, since he wasn’t wearing his suit, to see if the power I’d seen before was him or the tech.
It was all him—and still completely different from any Shifter or Fate power Stab had shown me. Magnetic-line-like power curved around every inch of his skin.
I set Stab on her scabbard and buckled it on as I moved toward Nax and checked his forehead. “Your fever’s back.” Of course it was back. He beat up a Seraphim, then stripped him naked instead of resting. “No more fighting,” I said.
Cadmus startled. His entire body jerked, and he was suddenly, fully awake. “Hey!” he roared.
Mrs. K and I both yipped.
Cad yanked against the bungie cords. “These will not hold me,” he said.
Nax looked up. “I am not in front of you. I am behind you with my arms wrapped around your head. I will snap your neck if you so much as twitch in a way I do not like.”
Nax lied, but Cad paused. Nax had faked him out, at least momentarily.
Cad stared at Nax, even if he twitched. “You don’t look so good, Lesser Emperor.” He’d figure out soon enough that Nax lied and really was in front of him.
“Shut up,” I snapped, then to Nax, “Do you think you can keep down water?”
He leaned against the window again. “Let me rest.”
“That Burner venom’s killing him slowly,” Cad said. He pulled on his restraints again.
So much for the fake-out.
I jabbed my finger at his nose. “You shut the fuck up or I’ll use Stab to cut out your Seraphim tongue.”
His cheek twitched. “Now there’s the Philadelphia Parrish I know and love.” He lunged at me as best he could with his restraints. “I know you’re kinda lacking in the real man department around here but that ain’t no excuse to take my dra
wers.”
“Nax?” I touched his face again.
He didn’t answer. He wasn’t responding.
“Nax, can you hear me?”
He vomited. His eyes rolled up into his head and his entire body began shaking.
“Nax!” I yelled.
A seizure ripped through the Emperor’s body.
Chapter Eleven
Cadmus pulled against his bonds again. “You need to untie me. I can help.”
“Shut up!” I laid Nax down on his side along the seats. Cold wafted in through the edges of the windows but heat rose off Nax’s body. “His fever’s spiking.” I touched his forehead again. “Damn it, he’s on fire.”
I reached across the aisle and grabbed a loose roll of paper towels off the floor. I wiped away the vomit as best I could, then made sure Nax was enough on his side that if he puked again, he wouldn’t suck it into his lungs.
We weren’t carrying the kind of supplies I needed to stop a seizure, or to quickly bring down a fever. “Nax?” I whispered.
“I can help him!” Cad leaned as close as he could get. “I carry Burner blockers.” He nodded toward his suit. “They’re meant to slow down a Burner’s incendiary nature so they don’t explode or fizzle to dust before we get them in. They should work on venom.”
“Liar,” I snapped. “If you had anything like that, your friend would have used them on Ismene.” I wasn’t going to fall for his shit.
“I carry Burner blockers! They’re new. Kai had the cuffs. Vivicus wanted me near you because of the Emperor.” He nodded at Nax. “Otherwise I would have dosed the Burner.”
Was he lying still? Nax jerked again.
“Damn it,” I muttered. I wasn’t sure if I had a choice. I had to trust him. “How do I give them to him?”
Cad pulled on the bungies again. “You can’t. My suit is in emergency shutdown. No one but me or one of the other Seraphim can turn it on. You need to let me go.” He nodded toward the shaking Nax. “There aren’t many people remaining where I come from. We left a world with less than five hundred million humans. Our first charge is to save lives. All Earth lives—human, animal, plants, beetles, ants. Everything. No matter what.”
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