Maria Romanova. She’d piled into the SUV with all of them, probably to watch over Nax.
When Maria shoved her arm into the glove, Leif’s suit registered a systemic change—a burst—in the glove’s readings. Janus must have also, because he pulled Stab back from the incursion bubble.
Whatever Maria was doing, it couldn’t be read by his seers. Janus clearly still had no comprehension of what was happening, or why.
She slammed her gloved fist into the bubble, and—
Leif’s suit shut down. The internal display that allowed him to see through the hood switched to black. The suit’s plates immobilized. The haptic feedback indicators all froze mid-pulse. The bio-systemic readings, the atmospheric processing, the onboard heater—they all seized up.
He couldn’t see. If he moved, he might damage his suit, so he couldn’t tap in his password. He immediately muttered it instead.
The suit didn’t respond.
But he could hear. Wind howled as it circled the mustang’s steel hooves. The metal of the statue groaned.
Someone grunted. Footsteps moved across the gravel. Pressure hit his elbow as if someone was using his arm for support.
“It’s gone,” Nax said.
“My suit’s in emergency shutdown,” Leif mumbled as best he could with his hood over his mouth.
Hands gripped the sides of his face. “If it’s in emergency shutdown, then why is it stiff? That’s idiotic design.”
“It’s not supposed to be stiff,” Leif muttered. It wasn’t. The suits were supposed to revert to their fabric states to allow movement.
“Then it’s not shut down, is it?” Nax wiggled Leif’s shoulders as if to loosen the stiffness. “Janus’s suit is also stiff. I can see his face. He’s unconscious. His suit is holding him up.”
“Vivicus?” Leif asked.
“I don’t know where he is.” Nax wiggled Leif’s hood. “Maria wanted me to…” He trailed off. “I’ve never heard her,” he said. “But damn…” He trailed off again.
She’d communicated with him. “The incursion bubble,” Leif said. “It might have done something.”
Nax sniffed. “She stuck her arm in the damned thing and it vanished. No pop or wave or burst. Just gone and all the suits froze.” He rustled. “The glove’s gone. I don’t know about Maria.”
Leif muttered his password again, and again, nothing happened. “Get Stab,” he said.
“Aye,” Nax moved away. A grunt followed. “I can’t get the sword out of his grip.” He moved back toward Leif. “What the hell did she do?”
Nax poked at the pad on Leif’s arm. “What should I do?” Nax’s hands worked across the keypad. “Sunlight Morocco Sweet Baby Jesus,” he whispered as he tapped. “That work?”
The suit engaged an emergency power-up. Leif’s visual capacity flickered to life, and the magnetic slides that allowed the plates of his suit to move unfroze.
Emergency systems only shimmered a deep red in his left peripheral vision. The color would cool toward green as the suit righted itself, but for now, he could move, and see. No camo. No outbound communications, either.
Diagnostics engaged shimmered in the right side of his vision. Like the left side indicator, the right one would change color and composition as the suit checked itself. His advanced systems needed to be rebooted, which he couldn’t do until the diagnostics finished.
Nax’s eyes were sunken and shadowed, and his skin had shifted from his normal bronze-touched warmth to a slightly green-tinged shade of pale. He swallowed too, as if holding down bile.
“Can you run?” Leif asked.
Nax’s face contorted with pain. “Do I have a choice?”
Janus didn’t have his hood over his face and was as unconscious as Nax had said. Penny wasn’t moving, and from where they stood in the mustang’s shadow, it wasn’t clear if she was conscious or not.
Vivicus was nowhere to be seen.
Janus still held Stab by its hilt out in front of his face, so Leif hit the bottom of the blade’s diminutive pommel, hoping to force it upward. If he could get enough of a grip on the blade guard he could pull the sword from its Progenitor stone.
He hit the pommel again.
“Good thing they’re gladii, huh?” Nax said. Like all gladii, the sword didn’t have much of a flare on the end of its hilt, but it did have a blade guard, which an original Roman gladius did not.
“Help me.” Leif wedged a finger between the top of Janus’s grip and the guard.
Nax pushed from below.
Stab moved. Leif forced his palms under the guards and pressed upward.
The sword popped out of Janus’s clenched fists and clanked to the ground next to its scabbard, which still sat next to the Fate’s feet.
Leif scooped them both up. “Can you vanish?”
Nax bent over and gripped his knees. “No.”
Leif placed Stab in its scabbard and thrust them at Nax anyway. “Try.”
“Whatever you hit me with is wearing off, young man.”
Leif scoffed at young man. “We’re both too old for this shit,” he said.
Nax grinned.
Dare Leif hit him with another dose of adrenaline? “How strong is your heart?”
Nax glanced up. “You’re the one with the magic doctor glove, not me.”
“We need to get out of here.” Leif motioned to Janus. “Before he wakes up.”
Nax slowly stood straight. He looked around. “Where the hell is that crazy motherfucker Vivicus?”
He hadn’t attacked them, and Leif’s suit wasn’t showing him telemetry data on the rest of the team.
Which meant that if Vivicus had somehow gotten his suit into camo mode, he truly would be invisible.
Leif pointed at where Vivicus had been. “If his suit’s operational enough he’s in full—”
Vivicus’s disembodied fist rammed into the side of Leif’s hood. Leif took the hit—and another into his gut from Vick’s gloved other hand.
Leif swung at where Vivicus’s shoulders should have been, if Vivicus had been a normal human with a normal, non-First Morpher body.
Vivicus hit him again.
No systems disruptions from the contact, so Vick’s suit might have ramped up the camo, but it wasn’t fully operational.
“Nax!” Leif swung his hand so it landed on the Lesser Emperor’s neck.
He shouldn’t inject a second round of adrenaline. It might react with the Burner factors in Nax’s blood. It might kill him. But they didn’t have any other choice.
Nax gasped—and vanished with Stab.
Vivicus roared.
The sound came from just off Leif’s left shoulder. He twisted and slammed both hands down on what was either Vivicus’s head or his upper back.
Dust puffed up as Vick face-planted into the gravel.
Leif danced out of the way. A kick was unlikely to connect and would only end up with Vivicus wrenching his knee and forcing him to the ground, too.
Gravel moved. Vivicus must have pulled his naked hand up into the arm of his suit because no part of him showed.
“Vick….” Leif said. “Remember why we’re here.”
“To kill that witch, Philadelphia Parrish,” Vivicus growled. “The universe has bigger plans for us, my dear b—”
A burst of light flashed from Vivicus’s entire suit, and he became immediately, completely visible.
The suit’s repairs to its hood crackled with electricity, and an acrid smoke puffed off the magnetic slides. Adrestia had done it real damage before they’d left Del alone back on that road, and the suit obviously hadn’t completed its healing.
The broken parts fell away. Vivicus, his one eye now visible, stared at Leif fully aware of what was happening.
The suit lifted up over his heart. Just a little—just enough that Leif noticed. Then Stab’s point cut through the material.
Vivicus sighed. His shoulders slumped.
He wasn’t afraid. He wouldn’t die. But he was annoyed that
he’d be out of action for at least an hour.
Stab sliced Vick’s heart in two. Then Nax turned the blade and cut his spine, too.
Vivicus dropped to the gravel.
Nax was panting when he appeared, Stab still in one hand and the scabbard in the other. He sucked in his breath until his chest bowed out.
He dropped the scabbard and raised his arms to swing at Janus’s neck.
“Stop!” Leif grabbed his wrist. “Don’t.”
“We kill him, this stops!” Nax hollered.
“He’s the Fate, Nax,” Leif said. “You and I both know that no matter what we do, he’ll make sure we regret it, dead or alive.” He already had enough regrets in his life, as did Nax. “Killing isn’t why I’m here.” Not even Janus.
Nax lowered his arm.
“Del wouldn’t want this,” Leif said.
Nax coughed out a laugh. “You do not know that.”
He didn’t. “She wouldn’t want you to add to your regrets. I do know that.”
Nax staggered into him. “Regrets.” He retched but managed to keep down the vomit. “I assaulted Daisy Pavlovich,” he said.
Leif figured as much. He gripped Nax’s arms. “Did you—”
“No!” Nax barked. “I would never force myself on anyone.” He handed over Stab. “Take the damned sword.” He scooped up the scabbard.
Did Leif even want to know what had happened? They needed to leave.
Maybe it was the adrenaline. Maybe Nax felt closer to death than he had since becoming infected with Burner factors. Either way, he seemed to need to confess.
“I was with a Fate. We had a son. We were in Ukraine. It was dangerous. She wouldn’t take my help, so I took the boy somewhere safe. Wisconsin Dells, where we could hide among the Shifters living there.”
Leif knew that part of the story. Everyone on his Earth who worked with the Captain knew about his childhood in the Dells.
“Ms. Pavlovich showed up one day. She’d flipped her motorcycle. My son took notice, and she took notice of him.”
“She never interacted with you in our timeline.” It’d been Penny who’d had most of the interactions with Nax and his son.
“Daisy Pavlovich isn’t one to give up easily.” They staggered toward the airport. “I threatened her and hit her hard enough to knock her unconscious.”
His Nax had not assaulted anyone. His Nax had graciously accepted the help of the Dells Shifters and had reconciled with the Captain’s mother. Daisy had not been involved.
“I’ve been hiding from Pavlovich’s people ever since.”
“Wise,” Leif said. Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov was not a man one crossed—he took the righteousness of his decrees as rock-solid and immutable. Harming his daughter probably meant this Nax had a permanent death sentence on his head.
“I was afraid,” Nax said.
Those three words carried more weight than all of his confession. They held Nax’s truth—and the truth of all men who rage. Vivicus’s truth. Probably Janus’s truth, too. They certainly held Leif’s.
He wrapped his arm around Nax’s back and helped him stagger toward the airport proper. They limped away from the haunted blue stallion statue, two men who did not belong to this world—one decreed by the universe, and the other by his own hand.
Nax pointed at the SUV. “That motherfucker destroyed our ride.”
About half a mile up ahead, the looming terminal of the Denver International Airport shimmered in the morning sun. Faint calls over loudspeakers floated on the cold air, as did the hum of both power and engines.
Behind the terminal, a commercial airliner took off. Three escort jets followed.
“Why the hell didn’t they come out to greet us?” Nax said.
The answer was obvious. “The suits and Stab hide us from Fate seers.”
“Fates are why we are in this mess,” Nax wheezed. “Fates manipulate us all.”
Leif hauled Nax forward. “You do not sound good, Emperor.”
“That’s because I’m not good.”
No, he was not. Whether or not he’d find a way to atone for his crimes was not up to either of them, nor was it up to the woman who should have the final say, Daisy Pavlovich.
Nax’s atonement was up to the cold and uncaring universe, just like Leif’s.
“These Final Protocols,” Nax said. “They involve twenty-three centuries of time travel, don’t they?”
Leif helped Nax toward the road. “We never figured out how such a long jump into the past happened,” he said. “Nor did we figure out how they became Progenitors. Replicating their abilities was beyond our tech.”
Nax groaned. “So he wants us because we’re pre-powered.”
Probably. “Trajan and the higher-ups in the Mundus Imperium made sure the five individuals who could become the Progenitors were fully trained anyway.” The team that was destined for Tokyo had included not only the Seraphim, but also the five Sentinels.
“You worked with your pre-father, didn’t you?” Nax asked.
“Not really.” The last thing Leif had wanted was to be around the kid who was-not-was his father. Which, if he was honest with himself, was the real reason he’d joined the Seraphim.
“Why the hell did that maniac think I could replace the Burner Progenitor?” Nax coughed again. “I feel hot.” He coughed again. “How ironic.”
“I have no idea.” Nor did he understand how he was supposed to replace both the Dracae. He did not have the strategic brilliance of his aunt, nor did he have his father’s soul.
Nax stopped walking.
“Nax?” Leif’s suit indicators still said Emergency only. Diagnostics were only about half completed. He still did not have medical monitoring capacity.
The Lesser Emperor dropped to his knees.
They needed help—help that Janus had forbidden. Help his suit couldn’t call.
Unless he overrode the diagnostics.
Leif slapped the control pad on the inside of his arm. “Override six-one-three-three,” he said. “Sunlight Morocco Sweet Baby Jesus,” He tapped in a second override code. “Reboot.”
His display powered down, and the fabric of his suit slacked. Leif counted one, two, three…
His display powered up. Emergency override glared in his left peripheral vision, and Diagnostics paused in his right. Hopefully his suit hadn’t taken any permanent damage.
Nax twitched.
Leif hit him with half his remaining Burner suppressors. “That’s going to have to hold you, Lesser Emperor. I’m sorry.” Any more, and the next time this happened—and it would happen again—he’d have nothing.
Nax’s twitching moved to full spasming.
“Comm on,” he said.
Outgoing signal only the display said.
What the hell had happened to his suit?
There’d be a time and a place, Leif’s father once told him, when he’d have to accept who he was. Some day when he’d have to recognize that he had inherited something special. He wasn’t Shifter. He wasn’t Fate. He was Dracae, and he was no one’s soldier.
“Antonius!” he yelled into his suit’s comm. “Vivicus has gone rogue. The Fate Progenitor tried to open a new ground incursion under the blue horse outside the Denver International Airport.” This world was as insane as the one he’d left. “I have Pertinax. He needs immediate medical evac.”
Leif hauled Nax up so he could take him onto his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Nax was close to his size, but Leif was Dracae.
Leif had come into this new timeline for one purpose—to stop Del from stealing the Dragonslayer, thus changing the course for his home version of Earth. Thing was, he understood incursion physics well enough to know how the multiverse worked.
He wasn’t saving his timeline. He’d always be saving someone else’s. So he might as well save this one.
No more kowtowing to a morpher who never should have been in charge. A man who took a village that no longer existed to keep him on the right path.
&n
bsp; Leif’s comm clicked. Someone heard him.
He carried Nax toward the road. “Terra est humanum,” he growled into his comm. “Nostrum terra est.” Earth is human. Earth is ours.
Whoever listened needed to understand that he wasn’t of this timeline. None of his remaining soldiers were.
But he would step back from Empire here. He would do good by this world.
Because he knew how to deal with Fates. Janus may have put machinations in place to keep Del from engaging the people in this world who could help, but that didn’t mean the representatives of those same people from his world couldn’t step up.
“Ego Dracones Legio,” he said.
I am Dragons’ Legion.
“Nos non Seraphim.” They were no longer Seraphim. “Antonius! Et sumus Legio,” Leif said into his comm.
We are The Legion.
And they damned well better start acting like it.
Chapter Eight
Del…
I couldn’t help Harold check Daniel and Marcus. The bus slowed, and the steering thankfully worked, but we hadn’t come to a stop yet. “Are they okay?” I yelled.
“Marcus? Wake up,” Harold said. He looked up and out the front window, probably to make sure we weren’t going to hit an abandoned car. “Why would your boyfriend bring through tech that hurt Fates?”
“Leif is not my boyfriend!” Why did everyone think Leif was my boyfriend? Not that he was important at the moment, anyway. “He dated that Daisy woman where he came from. And he works for Vick the Asshole.” We weren’t playing on the same field.
“You have no idea how bad Vivicus is.”
I slammed on the brakes again, maybe out of hope that this time it’d work. Or maybe because I really did not like having no idea.
“Obviously!” I yelled.
Harold checked Daniel. “Hey, Daniel my friend, wake up first, got it? It’s important.”
Oh shit, I thought. Daniel might not wake up first. Addy might.
And I had no desire to meet Addy.
“What are we dealing with here, if she wakes up first?” I asked.
Harold carefully positioned Marcus on the seat, then checked Daniel again. “The wise thing for us to do would be to take them outside and drive away.” He looked up. “But we can neither drive nor abandon Daniel to Les Enfants de Guerre. They’ll kill him twice.”
Witch of the Midnight Blade Page 28