by Laura Legend
“Fine,” Cass said, shaking off his hand and drawing her sword. “Let’s settle this like civilized people.”
Both of the men stumbled backward into barstools and grew intensely interested in the soccer match. The whole bar went deathly quiet.
“That’s what I thought,” Cass said as she sheathed her sword and followed the toad out the backdoor and into a second alley.
This time, she found her friend perched just on the edge of a sewer drain.
If Cass lost him down there, she’d never find him again.
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” Cass whispered to herself.
Then, in a sing-song voice, she tried luring it back with kindness: “Don’t go down the drain, Mr. Froggy. Just wait right there for Ms. Jones. Just wait right there, sweetie.”
The toad, though, wasn’t waiting. He’d had enough. He croaked one last obscenity and prepared to dive down the drain.
Cass wasn’t going to make it in time.
From the corner of her eye, though, she saw a blaze of orange fur fly from behind a garbage can and snatch the toad up into his mouth.
“Atlantis!” Cass cried, relieved.
Then she realized that her cat had a psychedelic toad in its mouth, pinched between razor sharp teeth.
“Atlantis,” Cass said, trying to sound both calm and commanding, “don’t eat—or, oh God, lick—that toad!”
32
GARY WAS PACING the lab floor, running his fingers through his graying hair.
Dogen sat settled in the corner.
Since Red had locked them in, Gary had had a constant stream of expletives running through his head. They’d been so close and now they knew, even, exactly where Cass would be.
Somehow Thomas had known they were coming and was anxious for their help.
They had worked at the door for hours, but it wouldn’t budge.They’d tried all the tools they could leverage. It had refused to move even when Dogen ran into it at full, lumbering speed. He’d just bounced off and ended up on the floor, basically in the spot he still occupied.
“God-damn-shitgibbons! Scumbering-thunder-cunting-wankhammers! Fuckity fuck fucking fuckwads!” Gary cursed as he turned on his heel to pace back in the direction from which he’d just come.
Dogen looked up, surprised.
Gary stopped in his tracks, blushing. He had just said that out loud?
“Did I just say that out loud?”
“Yeah,” Dogen confirmed, “you kinda did.”
“Well ... shit. Sorry.”
Gary knew he had to move beyond this fury. It was clouding his head. His frustration wasn’t helping anyone. He leaned against the stone table in the center of the room, pinched the bridge of his nose, and tried to take a deep breath.
What could they do?
Even if they were on the outside of the door, Gary doubted he’d be able to crack the code and unlock the door. He certainly wasn’t going to do it from in here.
He took another look around the room at the equipment, surgical trays, flasks, and chemicals. Eventually, his gaze settled again on the slab he was leaning against and he realized, suddenly, that he knew exactly what he was looking at in this room: an apparatus for “Turning” vampires.
The process was delicate as it involved arresting, midway, a person’s transformation into someone who was Lost. He knew that Rose had been keenly interested in that procedure as a rich source of data about how she might take the whole transformation one step further and redeem a vampire.
Gary circled the stone slab. He wondered if Rose had, in her travels, ever been in this very room. Had she stood right here? Had she witnessed a Turning?
She had grown more and more obsessed with the idea of redemption as the seed Thomas had planted in her head had taken root. For Rose, finding redemption—healing the volatile emotionality of the vampires—was the only way she could save Cass from being consumed by the imbalance in her seerhood. And Rose would have done anything for their daughter. She had spent more and more time traveling, more and more time in the Underside.
Kumiko had warned Gary. He’d shared her worry and begged Rose to give up the project. He’d even asked Miranda to intervene. They would find some other way to help Cass. They didn’t need to save the world to help Cass learn how to control her emotions and live with being a seer.
Gary picked up a shiny steel scalpel from a nearby surgical tray. His reflection was neatly bisected in its blade.
Rose hadn’t agreed. She’d known that the temporary fix she’d concocted of short-circuiting Cass’s powers and emotions through her wandering eye wasn’t going to last. It was a stopgap at best and it would cost Cass too much. They couldn’t lift the massive burden of her being half a seer by splitting her down the middle again and making her half a human. They needed a permanent solution.
If Gary wasn’t willing to do whatever that took, then Rose was sorry. But she would.
Gary tried to hide his tears from Dogen. He wandered to the far end of the room where the wall was covered in a row of lockers and cabinets.
He’d lost Rose. He wouldn’t lose Cass, too.
He wiped his eyes and blew his nose. His head felt clearer.
He still didn’t know what to do, but standing in the corner facing the lockers, Gary noticed something that he’d missed before.
A subtle draft of cool air was blowing from behind the lockers.
“Dogen!”
Dogen looked up and rumbled to his feet, spurred by the hopeful note in Gary’s voice.
“Move these lockers,” Gary said, stepping out of the way.
Dogen cracked his knuckles, obviously relishing the idea of putting his strength to some useful end. He grabbed the whole stack of lockers, six wide, and slid them screeching across the floor until they were clear of the wall.
The back wall of the lab was split by a fissure in the rock. The fissure was likely an original, geological feature of the caves. It was about four feet deep and, on the far end, Gary could see a sliver of night sky.
The fissure, though, was narrow.
Gary couldn’t even be sure that he would fit through it. There was no way it would accommodate Dogen.
But even if he could squeak through, there was still no way Gary would be able to crack the code and open the door from the other side.
He could see that Dogen had realized this even before he had.
Dogen took Gary by the shoulder and turned him toward the fissure.
“Go,” Dogen said. “Save her.”
Gary gave Dogen a fierce hug.
“Thank you for helping me, old friend. I’m sorry I’ve been away so long. I promise we’ll be back for you.”
Dogen sniffled and turned Gary back to the task at hand.
“I know you will.”
Gary zipped up his jacket, sucked in his gut, and squeezed himself into the narrow passage.
33
“HERE, KITTY-KITTY,” Cass sang as her voice, a little too desperate, cracked. “Don’t eat that froggy.”
Cass tiptoed toward Atlantis, trying not to make any sudden moves, trying to will the cat to stay perfectly still until she could get just a little closer.
Atlantis kept looking past Cass at the rear entrance of the bar, as if he expected someone else to arrive.
If he just stayed still, Cass didn’t care what he was looking at.
Cass drew the cat gently into her arms and began to carefully remove the toad from his mouth.
Cass almost had the toad free when, at the last moment, Atlantis’s tongue flicked out to take a taste.
At first, nothing happened. But as he licked his chops, Cass saw the cat’s eyes roll back into his head until only the whites were visible. Then, with only the whites of his eyes showing, she could have sworn that his eyes were literally spinning in their sockets.
The effect only lasted for a moment, though.
After Atlantis shivered from nose to tail and coughed up a scary-looking hairball, he seemed like his normal self.
Regardle
ss—even if her cat had just been brutally exposed to the dark underbelly of his own animal mind—Cass had succeeded. She had the toad firmly in hand. Atlantis had saved the day. She was willing to let him take one for the team.
Cass zipped the toad into the front pocket of her pack and left just a crack for air. She shouldered her pack again and dusted off the knees of her pants.
Now, apart from the red-hot needle being shoved through the back of her eye and into her brain, Cass was ready to go. She just needed to get to the Underside site hidden beneath the Temple Mount and see if she could, without her nagging doubts about Thomas interfering, cure her own timesickness.
Cass winced as the pain and accompanying white noise flared.
Nothing to it, Jones. Piece of cake.
Cass was rubbing Atlantis behind the ears, checking the location of the moon, and trying to orient herself in the city, when she was interrupted by a cold, unfriendly voice calling out from behind her.
“Jones!” the voice rang out. “Give up before I forget that Maya wants you back in one piece! And I want my fucking boots back!”
Cass whirled to find Red coming out the back of the bar, her red hair streaming, her eyes angry, and her feet bare.
Cass had no intention of returning the boots. They were, in all honesty, the best boots she’d ever worn. They were light and supportive and stylish. They went with everything. She could imagine wearing them at her wedding.
She loved those boots.
But when Cass and Red locked eyes, they both knew in an instant that Cass was still in no condition to take Red in a fight. Red grinned, twisting her head to the left. Her neck cracked, and her eyes narrowed—if Cass was going to stay in one piece, let alone keep the boots, she would have to run for it.
Cass tossed Atlantis to the ground, gritted her teeth against the pain, and began to run.
Atlantis, mercifully, led the way.
“Just for that,” Red yelled, “I’m going to tie you up first so I can cut the damn boots off, and I’m not going to take your feet out!”
Red gritted her teeth and gave chase.
Atlantis led them out of the alley up a cobbled street street overhung with alternating stretches of spreading fig leaves and curved archways.
Cass ignored the static gathering at the edges of her vision and pushed herself.
The unaccounted for strength she’d enjoyed in the months before her trip down the well was gone. All she had at her disposal now were the stiff muscles in her own legs, the ragged breath in her own lungs, and the bright pain in her own eye.
She wasn’t the Seer, running for glory. She was just Cassandra Jones, running for her life.
At first, her legs protested mightily and her thighs burned. But once she moved past those initial objections, muscle memory kicked in and she focused her attention on the ache in her eye, letting it grow and eclipse all the other warnings her body was attempting to register.
Cass wasn’t one hundred percent clear about where they were in the city, but she was confident that Atlantis was not leading her in the direction of the Temple Mount. The road they were on instead bent toward the north end of the Old City, and the increasing prevalence of the pale Jerusalem stone over painted concrete in the surrounding buildings indicated that they were heading towards the city’s ancient, beating heart.
Cass was pushing herself hard. If the pain in her eye hadn’t drowned everything else out, she would have heard her lungs screaming for air and her legs crying for relief.
Red, though, was still gaining on her. Her strides were probably twice as long as Cass’s.
Atlantis broke hard to the left, down an alley lined with discarded pieces of black, scrolling metalwork, and over a stone wall.
With her blood pumping, Cass inhaled the smells of the street—the bread from a nearby bakery mixed with cinnamon, cardamom, and sumac. The pungent scent of animal waste cut through, focusing Cass on her task at hand. She followed Atlantis over the wall.
So did Red.
Atlantis led them into a cul-de-sac that dead-ended in a high wooden barricade, climbing with deep red geraniums, then slipped through a crack in the boards.
The crack was just wide enough for Cass to follow. She jammed herself through and was almost clear when Red’s hand shot through the gap and grabbed her bag, almost tearing it off her back.
The bag, to Red’s surprise, croaked, offering a filthy proposition.
Cass fought Red for the bag, knowing that getting away wouldn’t be good enough. If she didn’t also hang on to that psychedelic toad, Cass would not be taking a trip to wellness world.
Cass cocked a fist and struck Red’s forearm with everything she had. Her blow bounced off without effect.
Red laughed and pulled hard on the bag, slamming Cass back into the fence.
Cass turned her attention to the back of her weak eye, but didn’t find any fire or strength waiting for her there.
The only thing she found was pain.
Screw that, Cass thought as Red pulled hard again and the straps on her bag began to tear. I’m more than some vague collection of powers and prophecies. I don’t need superpowers to defeat this bitch.
Wedging her feet against the fence, Cass launched herself forward, forcing Red’s arm farther through the crack. Then she wrenched herself sideways into a somersault that twisted Red’s arm, bending it in an unnatural direction. Cass heard a sickening pop as she barely got her feet back under her and landed in a cloud of moonlit dust.
Red’s arm went slack. She lost her grip on the bag and stifled a scream with a stream of invectives.
“Suck it!” Cass spat over her shoulder, already running. “The boots are mine!”
Cass knew, though, that Red wasn’t done. She was hardly to the corner when the sound of splintering wood indicated that Red had just created her own passage through the fence.
Cass didn’t look back but she could clearly envision a Red-shaped hole in the wall and splinters in the woman’s hair.
Cass concentrated on keeping her feet moving.
Atlantis was waiting on the winding stone road. He looked displeased that Cass had made him wait. What had she been doing back there? Didn’t she know they were trying to get away?
Cass was running out of steam.
And Red was still coming.
Atlantis led them past a sign pointing the way to St. Mark’s in the Armenian Quarter of the city. Cass knew that St. Mark’s was one of two traditional sites for the Upper Room, the place where Jesus had convened his last supper with his disciples. Last meals seemed especially appropriate in her state, worn out and utterly unprepared to actually fight Red face to face. Cass turned down the narrow street, narrowly avoiding a collision with . The arched doorways on the opposite side of the street were deep and dark.
Cass wagered that she had a better chance of hiding from Red than she did of outrunning her. She ducked into the deeply recessed doorway of a building that was boarded up and unoccupied.
Cass could hear both Red’s approaching footsteps and the running description of what she planned to do with Cass once she got her hands on her.
Cass pulled back deep into the shadows and prayed that the toad would not feel compelled to utter any profanities.
Red came to a stop in the middle of street, unsure about which way Cass had gone. She turned in a slow circle, her eyes searching into the very shadows where Cass was hidden.
Cass held her breath.
Atlantis darted into view, caught Red’s attention, and gave her an object on which to fix her anger.
She took the bait and followed the cat.
Cass could hardly believe it. She didn’t dare reenter the street, so instead she tried the door behind her. It was locked, but the padlocked chain was loose enough for her to slip through.
Once she was inside, though, Cass was immediately overwhelmed by the site’s enormous energy. Her vision filled with static, time flickered chaotically, and Cass fell to her knees, hands to her head.
What was this place?
Then, in the moments that followed, Cassandra Jones, the Seer, saw things she didn’t want to see.
34
CASS’S MIND FELT like it had been spread thin across a dry piece of toast. There wasn’t enough mind to go around.
She had been exposed to too much time—too much past, too much future, too much present—all at once.
The moonlight slanted through the cracks in the boards that covered the windows. The room was filled with debris. The building had the feel of someplace condemned, or someplace waiting interminably for the renovation to begin. The dirt floor was rough against Cass’s knees. The air was dry and stifling. Dust motes filled the air.
Cass clenched her teeth and hung on for dear life.
She was sick.
Time stuttered. Scenes from a dizzying number of different times shuffled in and out of view, all pegged to this location and all displayed against a background of crippling white noise.
Generations of people appeared and disappeared from view, all of them passing through this room. Sometimes the room was occupied by a family, a father, a mother, children. Sometimes the room was empty and in ruins. Sometimes it was a place of business. Sometimes an old woman sat in the corner, alone. Sometimes the room was squatted in by refugees. Sometimes the clothes were medieval, sometimes they were modern, sometimes they appeared to belong to the first century.
Cass glimpsed hundreds of lives passing through this place, flickering into view for a moment and then—as human lives do—just quickly passing away.
She didn’t, however, recognize any of the faces.
Except for one.
Judas blinked into view, dressed like a first-century Jewish peasant. He bustled through the front door like he was late. Cass could hear singing in the room above them. Judas ascended and Cass, with one hand to her head and one pressed for support against the wall, stumbled after him.
When she arrived in the upper room, Judas had already taken his seat at a low table. The room was filled with men dressed like Judas, at least a dozen. One of them, though, had a different bearing than the others. The whole room and everyone in it seemed to lean, subtly, in his direction. It wasn’t that he looked any different from the others—same rough hands, same worn clothes—and Cass wasn’t even sure she’d be able to pick him out of a crowd. But there was no denying the magnetic pull he exerted—it was the same sense of invested power that came from the artifacts.
