Hand of the God

by Sonya Bateman

  Ears ringing, nose trickling blood, I forced myself to my feet and staggered a few steps, shaking my head. “What the hell kind of missile was that?” I gasped out.

  “Concussive blast.” Rex’s voice was muffled, probably because I could barely hear anything. “They’re not shooting to kill. Not yet, anyway.”

  “What? That doesn’t make any sense,” Calla said. “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “Do you want them to try killing us?” Sadie snapped.

  Chester waved a hand over his head and pointed. “Incoming!”

  I looked up in time to see three long, dark shapes detach from the helicopter and head for us.

  “Shit! Taeral, even if we throw shields, three of them blasting like that could kill someone,” I said — thinking mostly of Calla, with Chester and Rex a close second. They were only human, and all three of them were bleeding more than me already. “Got any ideas?”

  “They are metal, correct?” He drew the lodestone pendant from his shirt and gripped it with his metal hand. Almost instantly, the black crystal shard glowed purple, and the same light traced through the runes carved into his arm. “Stand back.”

  I nodded and tried to herd everyone away from him. The lodestone could control all types of metal — but I’d never seen him try to use it on metal that was moving so fast.

  Taeral gestured with the pendant. Three blasts of purple light shot from his hand and impacted with the missiles, stopping them in midair. Taeral’s teeth clenched, and his outstretched arm trembled with effort as he made a complicated looping motion. The missiles turned obediently and flew into each other, exploding on impact.

  The shockwave from the blast still shook the ground where we stood.

  “Still think they’re not shooting to kill?” Calla said sarcastically.

  Rex had no response to that.

  Now the helicopter was close enough to make out the machine guns mounted at either side door, and the missile tube attached above the cockpit. As I watched, two more missiles launched from the tube — followed quickly by a third, and then a fourth.

  Taeral staggered back a step, the purple glow sputtering in his hand. He wouldn’t be able to do that again.

  “Come on!” I shouted, rushing toward my brother as I gestured for the rest to follow. There was no time to think of anything else. I’d have to try another dome shield and hope the blast didn’t break every bone in our bodies. “Cruihnn à dionadth!”

  I gestured fiercely and felt my body burn with the effort. It wasn’t my spark running out. The spell that Kelwyyn gave me had sapped something vital, and I had almost nothing left. At least the shield still formed.

  But it didn’t do much against the missiles when they hit. This time the sound was a deafening roar as the blast not only took out the dome, but tore up the ground, rupturing dirt and spraying stone into the air. I caught a stomach-churning glimpse of a few tangled bodies as the mass grave ripped itself open with the force of it.

  Then the ground opened up beneath us, and we were falling.

  Chapter 12

  “Everyone okay?” I croaked out when the ground stopped moving and I found myself flat on my back, surprisingly not buried under a landslide. There was space around me, but I couldn’t see anything beyond a few slim pencil-beams of light choked with swirling dust and grit, descending from somewhere above.

  A few coughs and groans responded. “Define okay,” someone rasped in a voice so hoarse, I couldn’t make out who it was.

  “Preferably not dead.” I pushed up on trembling arms and drew the moonstone pendant out. “De’àrsahd.”

  The stone spilled out cool white light, and I blinked around trying to take in the damage. We were in some kind of tunnel, blocked at the end where we’d fallen in and stretching past the glow of the moonstone in the other direction. I counted five bodies other than me, all of them more or less moving, so at least we’d all made it down here.

  Wherever this was.

  I forced myself to my feet and headed for the others. Taeral and Sadie were already up, with Sadie looking a half-conscious Chester over while Taeral stared intently down the tunnel, an uneasy look on his face. Rex sat on the ground, squinting and patting his pockets like he’d misplaced his keys. And Calla leaned against the dirt wall of the tunnel, head down and shivering with her arms crossed over her stomach.

  “You all right, Frost?” I said as I rushed toward her. She was filthy and bloodied, which was about the same condition as the rest of us — but I worried she might have internal injuries or something. The last series of blasts felt like they’d done some serious damage.

  When I got within a few steps of her, she held a hand out to stop me without looking up. “Gimme a sec,” she muttered.

  I nodded and moved back a bit. She shuddered, coughed a few times and spat in the dirt, then swiped an arm across her mouth before she finally raised her head. “Ugh,” she said. “So, any idea where we are?”

  “Um, a tunnel. I guess,” I said, just as the muffled sound of a helicopter engine swelled somewhere above us. The ground vibrated, and small shivers of dirt and stones erupted from the ceiling. It sounded like the thing was landing right on top of us.

  “We’d better move away from here,” Calla said. “Do you think it’s safe?”

  “No idea, but I’m sure it’s safer than up there. For now.” I glanced over and saw Rex and Chester on their feet, looking at the tunnel ceiling with alarm. Sadie had grabbed Taeral’s hand, and he still wore the same worried expression directed into the darkness beyond. “C’mon, guys,” I said as loud as I dared over the helicopter noise. “Let’s put some distance between us and that bird.”

  We headed further down the pitch-black tunnel. Chester and Rex had both managed to produce flashlights from somewhere, and I extinguished the moonstone in favor of the light on my phone. Had a feeling I’d need to conserve as much magic as possible, especially since we were underground.

  When we’d gotten far enough away from the chopper that we couldn’t hear it anymore, I turned toward the rest of them and motioned to stop. “Maybe we’d better take a minute and figure out what we’re going to do from here,” I said. “This wasn’t exactly in the plan.”

  “Yeah, no shit,” Chester grumbled. “All the food and water, most of the weapons, they’re still up there in the Hummer. I say we wait ’em out, then go back and get it.”

  “Like those bastards ain’t up there picking that vehicle clean as we speak.” Rex looked at him with a frown. “How many brains did that blast knock out of your head, Iceman? Don’t tell me you lost your edge.”

  Chester huffed a breath. “Shit. Well, we’re still armed,” he said, patting the snub-nosed micro Uzi at his side, one of them he’d passed out on the drive into town. We all had one, except for Rex. “So now that they’re on the ground, we go up there and — damn it, that won’t work either. Assholes probably have backup on the way already.”

  “Okay, look. Whatever’s up there, we might have a problem down here too,” I said. “I mean, we fell into a random tunnel. Any idea how it got here or where it goes?”

  “Could be part of an old silver mine,” Rex said slowly, shining his flashlight around at the featureless dirt walls. “There’s abandoned mines all over those mountains. Don’t know that one of ’em would stretch all the way out here, though.”

  Taeral moved toward me, catching my eye with a solemn gaze. “This is no mine shaft.”

  “He’s right. No support beams, no rails or lights,” Chester said as he walked toward one of the walls and pushed a hand against it. Rills of dirt tumbled down from his palm. “It’s freshly dug. Couldn’t have been here more than a few days, a week tops.”

  “I believe it has been here no longer than a few moments,” Taeral said.

  That got everyone’s attention. I blinked at him, a frown furrowing my brow. “So, what, you think Milus Dei was digging out to us, or from the burial pit, or …”

  His jaw firmed. “You did not feel it, then.
”

  “Feel what?”

  “The magic,” he said as he drifted slightly past me, still staring into the darkness ahead. “I felt it just as I activated the lodestone. A great surge, something powerful and … ancient. It was nearly similar to Fae, thought I could not tell why it was off. And it came from there.” He pointed down the tunnel and looked back. “Someone — or something — created this passage in response to our magic.”

  A shiver traced my spine. “Is that good or bad?”

  “I’ve no idea,” Taeral said.

  Rex grumbled under his breath, produced something from a pocket and directed his flashlight beam at his hand. The something was a compass. He watched the needle shiver and steady, glanced up and back down to check the compass again. “Well, magic or not, this tunnel’s headed straight for their base,” he said. “We keep going down here and they’ll never see us coming.”

  “Or they’re expecting us to take it straight to their base, where they’ll be waiting at the other end,” Sadie said. “I mean, Milus Dei could’ve made the tunnel.”

  Calla shook her head. “Highly unlikely. They study magic, but they don’t use it.”

  “Aye, but they have often forced Others to perform magic in their service,” Taeral said. “Reun, for instance.”

  “And my pack,” Sadie said pointedly.

  “Well, I’m still Team Creepy Tunnel,” Calla said. “We don’t know what’s up there in terms of men and firepower. Like you said, Chester, they’ve probably called for backup already. And they seem to have assholes to spare.”

  Rex grunted. “Don’t know what’s down here, either. Maybe the Iceman’s right about going back and blasting those bastards.”

  “Yeah, scratch that. I think I’m leaning toward Team Creepy Tunnel,” Chester said with a glance at Calla. “But maybe we should ask the boss.”

  Everyone looked at me.

  I held back a sigh. This whole lead-the-charge thing really wasn’t my style, but apparently I was stuck with it. “Fine,” I said. “For now, we’ll stay with the creepy tunnel. It might be the faster way, at least.”

  I’d just have to hope it wasn’t the faster way to death.

  Chapter 13

  We’d been walking for hours through the unchanging tunnel when I called a halt, before we could start dropping from sheer exhaustion. I would’ve stopped sooner due to the lack of supplies, but Chester and Rex had managed to carry a surprising amount of stuff concealed on their persons — among them trail mix, a couple of MREs, some meat jerky of mysterious origin that I didn’t want to ask about, and full canteens of water.

  That’d kept us going for a while. But now we were almost completely out of water and food, the batteries in the flashlights and the phones we’d been using were close to dying, and it was getting late.

  “We’re stopping now?” Rex grumbled when I announced the rest. “Come on, kid. We’re only five miles out from the place, give or take. We should keep going.”

  Taeral raised an eyebrow at him. “How could you possibly know that?”

  “Because I know my pace count,” Rex said, pointing at his feet. “Once you know that, it’s easy to calculate distance. You don’t go out into the wilderness without knowing how fast you walk and how far you’ve gone, especially if you’re going without a map. Back in the seventies, me and some buddies walked the—”

  “All right.” Taeral flapped a dismissive hand in the air. “I’ve no need to hear your life story as an explanation. You might have simply said ‘math’ and be done with it.”

  Rex’s lip curled. “That’s right. I forget you high-and-mighty Fae don’t bother with shit like math and logic and strategy. You’ve got magic.”

  “Aye, we do,” he said. “And you’ve … grit and determination, or some such thing. I suppose you believe yourself superior to the Fae because you try harder. That is the general human sentiment, is it not?”

  A thick sound escaped Rex’s throat. “Hey, I’m not the wimp who decided to stop five lousy miles from the bad guys. That was your superior brother.”

  “Okay, stop,” I said sharply, stepping between Taeral and Rex before my brother could try to smite him for insulting me. “I’m sure you wouldn’t have a problem walking five more miles, but it won’t do us any good to be exhausted when we get there. Right?”

  Rex muttered something under his breath.

  “What was that, human?” Taeral said in a dangerously soft tone.

  “Taeral, calm down.” I shot him a warning look, and then turned to Rex. “If you knew my brother, you’d understand that what he said about grit and stuff was actually a compliment—”

  “It most certainly was not,” Taeral snapped.

  “At least it would’ve been, if you hadn’t gone after him first,” I finished with a sigh. “But here’s the thing. We have to find some real food and get some sleep before we go up against God knows how many Milus Dei soldiers, and Taeral and I need to get up in the moonlight to recharge our stones. And ourselves. That’s why we’re stopping now.”

  Rex studied me for a minute, and then turned a sour expression on Taeral. “I guess that means he’s gonna do that dirt-moving trick again, huh? It’s either that or we keep walking until we find the end of this thing. And I don’t know about the rest of you, but I ain’t got a shovel up my ass.”

  “Yes, I will do my ‘trick’,” Taeral said with a sneer. “As for food, perhaps I shall transform you into a cow. I would not mind feasting on steak this night.”

  All the color drained from Rex’s features. “You can’t do that,” he sputtered and looked at me. “Can he?”

  “He won’t,” I said firmly. “But yes, he can get us up to the surface. In the meantime, I don’t think we should all go out there. Maybe we can—”

  “Gideon?” Sadie called from somewhere in the darkness ahead of us. She’d already scouted ahead several times throughout the long walk, since she could actually see in complete darkness thanks to her werewolf senses. “Can you bring a light up here? I think I found something.”

  Taeral and I glanced at each other, and then took off at almost a run. I activated the moonstone’s glow on the way.

  “Chill out, gentlemen. It’s not a bad thing … I think,” Sadie said as we reached her.

  The glow from my pendant illuminated something that looked like it used to be a wooden door, or maybe a wall, that had been blasted into the dirt tunnel from the other side. Splinters and larger pieces of old, weathered wood sprayed across the floor and stuck into the walls. Beyond the exploded hole was an actual mine shaft, complete with support beams and rails and torches that hadn’t been lit in decades. The air smelled musty, and the faintest breeze whistled down the wider, more inviting tunnel — which continued in the same direction as the one we’d been walking in all day.

  “See? Told you there were a bunch of mines out here,” Rex’s voice said from behind me, just before he pushed past us and walked straight through the blasted-out hole.

  Chester and Calla had followed him over. While Chester scrambled after Rex, calling him ten kinds of idiot for not checking for traps before he stepped through an obvious explosion, Calla came up next to me and grabbed my arm. “I’m not so sure this is a good sign,” she said under her breath. “A magic tunnel that just happens to join up with one that probably goes right into that mountain?”

  “I thought you were all aboard with Team Creepy Tunnel,” I said, giving her a reassuring squeeze. “Yeah, I don’t know about this either. But it’s what we’ve got right now, and we need a break.”

  Calla frowned and stared through the hole, where Rex and Chester were gathering pieces of loose wood and arguing over where to build a fire. “I guess,” she said reluctantly. “But I’m probably going to sleep with one eye open and a gun in my hand.”

  I figured my night was going to look about the same.

  Taking Calla’s hand, I led her toward the mine shaft and made sure Taeral and Sadie were following. “Okay, so the fire will pr
obably be fine,” I said. If this was a trap, and someone at the other end smelled smoke and came after us, at least we’d be able to see them coming. “Taeral and I will head out for food and water, while you get that going and maybe figure out sleeping arrangements or something.”

  “Hang on, kid.” Rex dropped a few boards onto the growing pile between him and Chester. “You’re gonna need somebody with experience out there, if you really want to gather sustenance. Ain’t no convenience stores in the desert.”

  I managed not to roll my eyes. “Don’t worry. I can handle it.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Chester chimed in. “Look, Gideon, you know I respect you. But just because you can spot a nest of snakes in the Appalachians, doesn’t mean you can find food, let alone water, out here.”

  Taeral blanched at the s-word. “I despise snakes,” he said hoarsely.

  “The mighty Unseelie is afraid of snakes,” Rex said with a laugh. “See what I mean, kid? You let me and Iceman go up there, and—”

  “I do not fear snakes. I despise them,” Taeral spat.

  I flashed a smirk at him, and then faced Rex and Chester. “Really, I’ve got this,” I said. “I’d rather have you guys down here prepping the fire and keeping watch.”

  Rex folded his arms. “So what do you think you’re gonna find to eat? Nuts and berries, maybe a barrel cactus or something?” he said. “And what about water? Bet you can find an oasis just around the corner, right?”

  I knew he was testing me. Didn’t really want to brag about my desert survival skills, but I had reasons for wanting just me and Taeral up on the surface. And if I told him why, I’d wound his pride. So I decided to stick with facts.

  “Well, most barrel cactus are basically toxic, and pine nuts take about six weeks to process,” I said. “Chokecherry’s out because of the arsenic. We could cook them down, but there wouldn’t be much left and they don’t really taste that great, anyway. So I was thinking prickly pear pads and maybe a few jackrabbits, since they’re usually out after dark. Oh, and the water. We’ll look for a spring under a willow or cottonwood tree, or a water hole if we can find any wasps or sparrows active at this time of night.”