by Reese Hogan
“Just till the war’s over? He’s here for the damn war! Look!” She thrust the book out before her, holding open the page to the stamp. Andrew only glanced at it a second before looking back at her.
“So?”
“So he’s not hiding from a draft! He’s in the army!”
“He could have gotten that book anywhere. A secondhand store. A friend. I don’t know.”
She threw the book down with a snarl. “Grow up, Andrew! Don’t you see what you’ve done?”
“Nothing! I haven’t done anything!”
“Nothing? You let a Dhavnak into our house! You let a Dhavnak see our parents’ notes!”
“That’s not true!” he said, his voice rising.
Should she just grab the notes and go? It was too late to change what Cu Zanthus had already seen, but if there was a chance he hadn’t been through all of them yet…
She felt faintly nauseous. Then he wouldn’t need Andrew anymore. If she was right about him – and maybe she wasn’t, she could admit that much – but if she was, then who knew what he’d do to Andrew if he returned to find the notes gone? The risk was too great. If he got even a hint that Andrew suspected something, he’d be better off shooting him than letting him live. He probably wouldn’t even hesitate.
“You have to come with me,” she said.
“What are you talking about? No, I don’t!”
“Cu Zanthus might hurt you. It’s too dangerous.”
“He’s not dangerous!”
“Andrew, what do you think he’ll do to you when he’s done? When he doesn’t need you anymore?”
For a moment, Andrew just stared at her, breathing so fast she knew he was on the verge of a panic attack. Then he turned and ran back down the hallway. A door slammed.
“Andrew! No!” She ran after him, skidding to a halt in front of his closed bedroom door. She tried the knob. Locked. She banged on it. “Come out! I’m trying to help!”
“Go away!” he screamed.
She stepped back, lifting her foot – and bumped into something. She spun, fist raised to put through Cu Zanthus’s face if it was him.
But it was Holland, his hands raised in defense. “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but when you didn’t–”
“Deckman, go grab that yellow bag and load up as many notes as will fit from the closet in the back bedroom. I have to get my brother.”
“What’s going on?”
“He… he’s not safe here. I’ll explain later.”
“OK, ma’am.”
Holland disappeared again. Blackwood leveled her foot and kicked as hard as she could, driving her heavy army boot between the knob and the latch. It gave on the second kick. Andrew was against the opposite wall, a big hardback book clutched in his hands.
“You don’t care about me!” he yelled. “This isn’t about keeping me safe! It’s about wanting to be a hero for your army, taking the notes, taking Cu Zanthus, proving to them you’re still useful–”
“Andrew, be quiet! We don’t have time for this!”
She strode up to him and tried to take the book. He brought it down hard, hitting her hands when she reached out. She jerked them back, cursing. A spike of anger shot through her. She lunged for him and wrenched the book from his hands before he could swing it again. When he saw the look in her eyes, he turned quickly – maybe to try to escape out the sandpane, maybe to snatch another book – but before he could do either, she dove forward and latched her arm around his neck. A loose book slipped under his foot, and they both fell forward. His face smacked against the sill of the sandpane. Her heart jumped. He slid to the floor beneath it, motionless.
“CSO?”
Blackwood looked back. Holland was standing in the doorway, watching in horror.
“What are you – did you – is he–”
Blackwood still had her arm around Andrew’s neck. It must look to Holland as if she’d shoved his face right into the pane. She hurriedly scrambled off him and rolled him over. He let out a moan. He had a nasty gash on his cheekbone from the sharp ledge and he was unconscious, but he was breathing. Xeil be praised.
“Were you choking him?” said Holland.
“No! I mean… I couldn’t force him, not fighting the whole way, so I–”
“Knocked him out.”
“I- I didn’t mean to. Not like that, anyway. It wasn’t out of anger. If that’s what you’re thinking.”
Was it? No. She had been angry, but not out of control. I was trying to help him. Why wouldn’t he listen? But there was Vin. There was Zurlig. A flash of fear numbed her for a moment. I could have hurt him. Really hurt him.
Three deep breaths. Andrew was not her enemy. But he was a young and naive adolescent who wouldn’t listen to a word she said.
She didn’t know which was worse.
They’d waited too long. She knew it the second they walked out of the door. Planes rumbled overhead, so loud they completely drowned out the air raid siren – if it was even still sounding. The low booms of explosions carried through the air. Blackwood jogged to the bottom of the steps, Andrew slung over one shoulder. Holland came right on her heels, the hefty duffel slung across his hip.
“Wouldn’t it be safer to stay indoors at this point?” he yelled in Blackwood’s ear.
“I don’t know when Cu Zanthus will be back!” Blackwood answered.
“Who?”
“The Dhavvie who’s been staying with him. Once he finds out Andrew’s been compromised, he’ll kill us all.”
“Kill us, ma’am?”
“I’ll explain later. But we can’t take the risk.” Blackwood swore under her breath. The situation had gotten way too complicated. “The Sandhill Primary School. There’s a bomb shelter there. It’s not far.”
She swung Andrew’s body so he straddled both shoulders and took off at a run. The incessant drone of the planes vibrated through her body until she was nearly numb. She couldn’t help glancing overhead, tracking what seemed like hundreds of black shapes across the sky. She could even see the clusters of bombs falling from their bottoms, in every direction. Bile rose in her throat. The explosions sounded closer by the second; the blast from one washed past them in a cloud of dust and smoke, making the very ground shake. The streets were empty of people, and Blackwood felt like she and Holland were the last survivors at the end of the world.
The more the explosions rattled her brain, the more her dekatite mark hummed like a live wire. The tingling became harder and harder to ignore, tipping from discomfort into pain. Her fear. Her fear was making it worse. She struggled with Andrew’s weight. His body felt like it slipped with every stumble, and she was afraid she’d drop him. The gunshot wound in her arm screamed in pain again too, delivering a sharp jab with every step. Nausea rose in her, sudden and unexpected, and she stopped, gasping for breath. Dust filled her lungs. She hacked to get it out. Holland stumbled to a stop beside her, his breath coming ragged. She saw him wince, pulling at the strap on his shoulder. All that paperwork wouldn’t be a light burden.
They were in front of a physician’s office, though the boarded entrance and shredded awning suggested the place had been long closed, maybe even since before the war. They were about halfway to the school, maybe less. It was farther than Blackwood remembered. She stooped, lowering her brother to the sidewalk. Just long enough to get a better grip, she told herself. That tingling was eating into her skin. If only that would stop, she could think straight. Was it just her? she wondered. Or was Holland’s acting the same way?
“Holland!” she barked.
He looked at her, his pale face coated in dust, and shouted something back. She couldn’t make out his words over the blasts from all around them. She held up her left hand and stabbed a finger at her palm. He shook his head and pointed the other direction: Keep going! She started to step closer, so she could shout her question in his ear, but at that moment, the sidewalk around them darkened. She looked up. Her stomach churned as she saw a black Dhavvie warplane swooping so low,
she could actually make out the symbols on the bottoms of its wings – spirals in bright white. It barely cleared the twenty-story building across the street. As she watched, a shape detached from its undercarriage.
She threw out her right arm. The mark on her arm twinged, hard and sharp. A white, jagged slash rent the air, crackling with a terrible sizzle. The bright flare seared her eyes and heated her skin. It ripped through the fuselage of the plane. Another branch split from it, striking a direct hit on the falling bomb.
The force of the resulting explosion threw Blackwood against the wall of the office behind her. Pain shot through her left shoulder blade before she crumpled to the stone landing. Shocks rippled through her in quick succession. She curled on the stone sidewalk, hands clenched into tight fists at her midsection that she couldn’t unfold if she tried. Though her eyes were open, all she saw was smoke and the ghostly afterimages of the lightning bolt – a barbed incandescent streak driving down again and again in an unchanging pattern. Thunder crashed around her, almost as loud as the bomb had been.
Seconds later, the plane fell, wings and tail burning as it ripped down the side of a building a half-block away. Chunks of steel and glass shot through the air, along with billowing smoke smelling of gunpowder and hot metal.
Blackwood struggled to move, to get up, but her muscles clenched tightly back toward her body as if they had a will of their own. She trembled. She turned toward the wall instead and used her cramping fists to stabilize her body before forcing her legs underneath her, bringing her up as far as her knees. She didn’t know if the spasms wracking her were persisting shocks or uncontrollable shivers. She pressed her cheek to the wall, trying to muster the energy to pull herself up the rest of the way.
“Blackwood! I’m here.” Holland ducked low to get an arm around her back and pull her up. The pain in her shoulder blade made her gasp, but she pushed through it and kept her feet, though only with the support of Holland on one side and the wall on the other. She could hear the bombing again, breaking through the fading echo of the thunder.
“Are you hurt? How bad?” Half of Holland’s face was covered in blood. The gash was on his right temple; if the flying shrapnel had been a touch to the left, he would have lost the eye.
“No, I’m f- fine.” It was hard to talk for the chattering of her teeth. “You’re cold?”
“J- Just shock. Andrew?”
“Yeah.” Holland started out from under the awning, trying to pull Blackwood along. Blackwood shook her head.
“Don’t think I c- can walk yet. Make sure he’s OK. Come back.”
Holland nodded and ran to the sidewalk. Blackwood closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe in and out deeply, to calm her racing heart. Every breath threatened to pull her from consciousness. Holland was right. It was me. I took out that plane. That bomb… if I hadn’t set it off so high in the air, it would have…
“Blackwood!” The next thing she knew, Holland was holding her up, hands pinning her shoulders against the wall. She realized he’d caught her from falling. “Andrew’s alive. But, Blackwood – you – what you did–”
She nodded, and her head swam.
Holland stared at her, his expression stricken. “You almost killed yourself, CSO! You can barely move.”
“I’m OK.” She shoved away from the wall. Her surroundings spun sickeningly. Holland caught her just before she went down again. Another explosion sounded, its report echoing off the buildings around them.
“CSO, no way are we gonna make that bomb shelter.”
Blackwood grimaced, but the kid was right. “Get us in there,” she said, jerking her head at the building behind them. “It’s better than nothing.”
She crawled back to the wall as Holland ripped a handful of boards off the front door, near the bottom. She listened to the low thrum of concussions in the distance as wind whipped the heat of burning buildings across her face. She could hear a subtle difference in the reports now. Belzene planes fighting back, she thought at first. But no. Something deep in her stomach clenched. Artillery. Tanks. It wasn’t a good sign.
She watched Holland drag Andrew’s limp body inside, then the duffel full of research. The next thing she knew, he was shaking her again. Blackwood drew in her breath, inhaling another lungful of smoke and dust.
“There’s a basement!” Holland shouted. “Nothing big, just something they used for medical supplies, but we should be safer there.”
Blackwood nodded. “You think this is the one?” she asked as she struggled toward the door.
“What one?”
The attack that captures the capital. But she kept herself from saying it at the last moment. No need to plant those thoughts, if Holland wasn’t having them already.
She couldn’t help casting one more glance overhead before heading inside. If Ellemko was taken… would she always wonder if she could have used this new power to save it?
Chapter 10
ANDREW’S BARGAIN
The deep thumps of explosions sounded somewhere just outside his awareness. Andrew was conscious only of fleeing down the hallway, his throat constricting painfully as smoke enveloped him. He was already burning from the bomb that had come through the roof, but if he could reach his parents, he could get them out in time. When he reached their doorway, though, someone was blocking it. Mila, her long curls blowing in the inferno.
“Let me through!” he yelled.
She shrugged, smirking, and stepped aside. Beyond her, he saw only charred skeletons in the bed. He rushed inside and fell to his knees at the bedside.
“Don’t leave me!” he pleaded. “You’re all I have.”
From overhead, a weight descended. He looked up and saw not the gray-feathered form of Xeil, smiling in grace, but a man with fire burning on his head. The man cupped his hands, and Mother and Father’s spirits drifted up into them. Andrew struggled to his feet, holding out his hands. The sun god started to pass the spirits over, but then hesitated, and changed course toward Mila instead. Andrew turned in horror, seeing Mila waiting with a grin. She offered her own hand. But then the sun god took the spirits and rose, disappearing into the ceiling. Andrew stared after him. A vast emptiness consumed him, so immense he felt he would die. He turned toward Mila, but she was gone, too.
Alone. He was alone. He screamed, turning in a circle, looking for someone, anyone. But all he heard were explosions destroying his world.
There’s the brotherhood. The voice was distant, but it was there.
“Where?” he cried. “Tell me!”
All around you.
“I don’t see them! Please! Help me!” He ran back to the doorway, to face the continuous ball of fire roiling in the hallway. The explosions shook the house around him. But as he stood gasping for breath, he heard another voice at the other end of the hall.
“…Put some sort of power in my skin?”
Mila. The flames still roared between them. He couldn’t get through. He knew she would leave soon, but he couldn’t get through to stop her. He closed his eyes. He had to face the fire. He had to reach her, no matter what it took.
“…Something not of this world, anyway. Nobody knows where we were, ma’am. There’s no saying what sort of… magic, or science, or… or what they have in that realm. Maybe they…”
That voice. His eyes fluttered open again. It was her. The voice from the WiCorr. She’d taken something from him. What had she taken? The brotherhood. No. That didn’t make sense. He looked up again, toward the vanished sun god.
“But why give the power to me, when they’ve only ever killed us before? What’s changed? It couldn’t have been the dekatite.”
He had to reach them before they left. Andrew started to lunge from the doorway, but something held his arms tight. He pulled harder, straining. The flames were diminishing. He’d be able to reach her, if only…
“You’re saying you don’t feel anything at all?”
Other sensations were breaking through. Something hard directly b
ehind him, like concrete. Cords biting into his wrists. Cords? He stopped struggling, noticing a new pain pulsing at his left cheekbone.
“The tingling, yes. It’s still there. Doesn’t sound as bad as what you describe, though.”
“I got hit by something different. Must have been. Yours was marked by what you were holding, whereas mine was…”
“Lightning thrown by a monster?”
Andrew frowned, his closed eyes twitching, and pain traveled in waves across the left side of his face. What on Mirrix are they talking about? The noise of the bombs still broke through, safely distant at the moment, and he realized for the first time they weren’t part of his dream. He started to push himself up. Something popped in his right shoulder blade when his hands refused to move, and he gasped. His hands were bound. His teeth ground together as memories sparked to life. Mila.
“Ssh! Andrew’s waking up.”
He opened his eyes, blinking in the erratically flickering light. He saw a long, narrow space lined with shelves. He sat on the hard floor at the back of it, his legs sprawled before him, his hands above him, wrists lashed to a pipe or some other fixture in the wall. There were two lanterns, one on each side of the space powered by kaullix grease and sinew. The air already carried a faint smokiness and odor from the flames.
Mila stood over him, arms crossed, just far enough away that he wouldn’t be able to reach her with a kick. Her companion stood farther back, leaning against a shelf filled with dusty glass jars, broken syringes, and pestles and mortars. The young man’s hands were in his pockets, his glance traveling between Andrew and the stairway at the other end. Three strips of medical tape held together a wound next to his right eye. His short hair was pure black, unnaturally straight strands sticking up in all directions. Andrew stared at him, trying to sort through the mess of his memories and dreams.
“Andrew.” Mila knelt down so she was level with him. Andrew slowly transferred his gaze to her. Despite the pain in his face, he refused to let any expression show.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“You attacked me,” he said hoarsely. “And now you…”
