The Branded Rose Prophecy

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “Light switch?” Lucas asked Charlee, clearly expecting an explanation.

  “It’s complicated,” she said. “Go ahead. I have to secure the door behind us.”

  Lucas walked down the steps and Charlee followed him, tapping his head just before he rammed it against the top of the door frame.

  He ducked and kept climbing down, moving out of the way. Charlee followed, bringing the door swinging over the top of her and backing down the steps until it was lowered into place. Then she dropped the black masking patch over the hole in the door. “Lights,” she called softly.

  Ahead of them, Asher flicked the switch. Naked, low-wattage, incandescent bulbs glowed overhead, the wire between them pinned to whatever would hold a nail. Lucas stared at them. “It’s not a generator,” he decided. “They’re not flickering. Not a bit.”

  “I told you—” Charlee said as she slid the locking bar into place and the bolt over the top of it to secure it.

  “Complicated. Yeah.”

  The steps led straight down, with a short landing halfway down. The basement at the bottom had once been a studio apartment. There was carpet, wallpaper, and furniture, but all of it was covered in a thick layer of dust. On the west wall, there were twin rock-falls in each corner.

  Lucas stared at the wall there, which was pitch black and didn’t reflect any of the light at all.

  “Is that…?” he asked, pointing.

  “The base wall, yes,” Charlee told him.

  The base wall had cut off a thin triangular section of the corner of the room, which left the rest of it looking oddly shaped, as if a giant had wrenched the square out of shape.

  Asher walked around the sofa, over to a standalone black wooden closet that Lucas thought he might have seen advertised in an Ikea catalogue once. “Don’t touch anything,” he told Lucas.

  “Don’t leave dust prints telling someone people have been here?” Lucas clarified. “Would anyone survive the C4 upstairs, to make it down here?”

  “I can’t think of a way they might,” Asher admitted, sliding his fingers along the crease between the wall and the closet. “That just means I haven’t thought of all the ways someone might end up down here.”

  “You’ve grown cautious in your old age,” Lucas teased him.

  “Absolutely. Charlee lives here, too.”

  There was a click and the closet swung forward a tiny fraction of an inch. Asher opened it the rest of the way. “Charlee first.”

  Charlee stepped across the room, unstringing her bow. “I’m dying to take a shower,” she confessed and stepped through.

  “Shower?” Lucas repeated, sounding startled.

  Charlee held out her hand. “Torger,” she called and reached for the main light switch, turning it on. Lights came on, brighter than the ones illuminating the basement steps.

  The passage they were in ran straight ahead and Torger was standing in the middle of it, sniffing at Fudge’s tail. His own short tail was wagging.

  There were doorways along the length of it. The Alfar’s base wall made up the right-hand wall of the passage. Even with brighter light, the wall did not reflect anything back.

  “You’re living right up against the wall?” Lucas asked, astonished. “Christ, I knew you both had balls, but this is….” He shook his head.

  “Thanks, I think,” Charlee told him dryly. “We’ve discovered the outside of the tower has some useful properties. Here, put your hand against it.”

  Lucas laughed nervously, so Charlee picked up his hand. She put her own hand flat against the black wall and pressed his next to hers.

  He spread his fingers, exploring the sensations under them. “It’s warm,” he said, surprised. “And sort of…it’s very faint, but it feels like it’s…pulsing or something.” He pulled his hand away and looked at Asher, who was fastening the closet door behind them. “Is it living?”

  It was an astute question, one that Asher and she had considered at length.

  “Not if you’re using the scientific definition of ‘life’, which includes the ability to procreate,” Asher answered. “We’re pretty sure it’s a highly complex, self-contained system, and one thing we do know for certain is that the tower is generating the shield aura.”

  Lucas rubbed his hand. “Out of what? Thin air? You don’t get something for nothing.”

  Asher smiled. “Auras aren’t electricity. They keep using that analogy because it’s a useful way to explain alien concepts, but the auras behave quite differently.” He put his hand on Lucas’ shoulder. “Come and have a drink, and I’ll explain as well as I can.”

  Charlee headed down the passage, but Lucas stopped at the first door on the left. “There’s bright light coming from under the door. What’s in here?”

  “Have a look,” Asher offered.

  Charlee turned back patiently. Lucas had always been this way, exploring every inch of a new environment. Becoming a SEAL had cemented the habit—he had explained once that knowing the layout of any indoor area was a basic survival skill in his work.

  Lucas pushed down on the lever handle and let the door swing open.

  The rush of warmth fanned Charlee’s face, and the aroma of green, growing things. She noticed that Lucas didn’t step straight into the room. Instead, he scanned the interior for a second, from outside the door. His mouth fell open. “I’ll be….” he murmured and walked inside.

  It was very warm. The overhead lights provided a lot of that heat. Lucas looked up at them. “Full spectrum light,” he judged. “Of course.”

  The room was big—twenty-five feet by twenty. There were no outside windows, and if there had been they would have been buried under rubble. The walls were bare concrete. Everywhere were trestle tables, made of rough materials: pallets and framing studs, pieces of drywall, and more, all of it recovered and brought back here. The objects holding the tables up at a useful workbench height were equally as creative: dining chairs, boxes, ladders, roughly cobbled together A-frames made out of more recovered timber. There was even a battered electric stove holding up one end of a table. The oven door was a useful under-shelf.

  On every flat surface were tubs, pots, half-barrels, boxes and yet more boxes, made of anything able to hold soil and that was mildly water-proof. Every container held plants.

  Lucas walked along the rows of tables, examining the plants curiously. “I thought you used the art museum for this stuff,” he said, his voice remote. He was absorbed in exploring.

  “I still do,” Charlee replied. “When we were living in the Strand Manhattan, it was my only source of soil for growing things. But after you found your old team members and went off to reconnoiter the shield, I started to look around for alternatives. The garden at the museum can’t be relied upon. It might be discovered at any time. I only plant herbs and crops there that I can afford to lose. These,” she waved her hand around the room, “are the vital supplies.”

  Asher leaned against the wall just inside the door and crossed his arms. He wore a small smile, like he was very pleased about something.

  Lucas stopped where he was, in the middle of the second row, and began to turn slowly around. As he turned, he named what he recognized. “Potatoes, lettuce, tomato, cabbage, cauliflower, strawberries…is that kiwi fruit?”

  “Very high in Vitamin C,” Charlee replied.

  “Lots of herbs…and what are these scrungy looking things?”

  “Turmeric, mustard, kale.”

  “Is there anything you don’t grow, here?” he asked.

  “Protein,” she said flatly. “I dream about chicken breasts, sometimes. I think I’ve forgotten what they taste like. Whenever I see the golden arches on the corner of 42nd Street, my mouth starts watering, and I used to hate hamburgers. Squirrel doesn’t even come close.”

  “I brought you a hawk last month,” Asher pointed out.

  “He shot it down with his pistol, he says,” Charlee told Lucas and rolled her eyes. Asher just grinned.

  Lucas straightened
. “So what surprises do the other rooms hold?”

  Charlee showed him around the rest of their living quarters. In New York terms, it was a spacious apartment, hacked out of three adjoining basements. There was a bedroom, a large kitchen/workroom that also doubled as their relaxation area, when they had time to relax. Two of the smaller, irregular rooms created by the base wall chopping rooms down a size or two were used for supplies. The smallest triangular room, in the far corner of the kitchen area, was the walk-in refrigerator.

  Lucas backed up as the cold air brushed his face. “A fridge? A fucking fridge? I thought you were pulling my leg when you mentioned a shower, but the greenhouse was hot. You have running water, too?” He looked almost offended.

  “I told you, there are advantages to living right beside the base wall,” Asher told him. “Come and sit down. You look like you need to.” He closed the door on the cold room and pulled one of the chairs out from under a small square dining table pushed up against the opposite wall. Most of the space in the middle of the kitchen was taken by Charlee’s big work table.

  Charlee tended to Lucas’ wound. It was a shallow cut running the length of his biceps, a scratch in comparison to what the Alfar knives could do to a human body. But the edges were inflamed and the flesh on either side red and puffy. “I have home-grown penicillin I can put on it,” Charlee told him. “You’ll have to change the dressing in a couple of days, but the penicillin will take care of the infection.”

  After she had finished dressing the wound, she set about preparing a meal. There were three hearty servings remaining of a savory soup she had made from some wild mushrooms and onions from the garden, and cheese she had made from milk she had bartered for. The goat that had lived on the roof of Ylva’s house had long gone, but the milk-giving animals living on the island when the Alfar had arrived had been recovered and cared for. Charlee made cheese from goat’s milk and gave half of it back to the woman in the tunnel who had started with a pair of goats and created a milk industry by breeding them.

  There was plenty of salad, which would round out the meal. As it was a special occasion, Charlee used some of her precious supply of oat-flour to make and cook some flatbread. While it was cooking in the oven, she put honey and jam on the table, along with dressing for the salad, also made of goat’s milk, and salt and pepper.

  Lucas touched his stomach. “Whatever you’re cooking, it smells heavenly,” he told her.

  Asher put a mug of mead in front of him. “This will take the edge off your appetite.”

  “It will, indeed.” Lucas picked up the mug. “Who made this?”

  “I did,” Asher said, “but Charlee taught me how to do it.”

  “Did she now?” Lucas asked. Then he took a deep, gulping swallow of mead and came up for air, his eyes widening.

  “Been a while since you had a drink, I imagine,” Asher said, refilling his mug.

  “A bit,” Lucas agreed. He looked at Charlee. “Where on earth did you learn to make mead, and all the rest of this stuff?”

  “What stuff?” she asked curiously.

  He touched the board holding the cheese. “This and the jam and the whatever-it-is that is cooking in the oven and making my mouth water. All the medicines you make. And I couldn’t help noticing you’re wearing makeup, and I don’t think I’ve seen a woman wearing so much as lip gloss for a year or more. I was told all the makeup has been used up. I’ve seen women mixing ash with water to try and create eyeliner and that looked, well, weird. But you look freaking marvelous, if Asher doesn’t mind me saying so.”

  Asher chuckled.

  Charlee had a few minutes to spare, waiting for various items to come to boil or finish cooking, so she sat on the edge of the office swivel chair that served as their spare seat. Fudge pushed up against her knee, his tail thumping happily.

  “The Valkyrie taught me nearly everything useful,” Charlee said. “First, living in Ylva’s house, where the training was incredibly thorough. Then afterward at the Second Hall in Oslo, where all that training was put into practical use, which polished everything off.” She gave Asher a small smile. “I had no idea at the time, but everything I learned as Ylva’s apprentice has been so incredibly useful the last few years. There are people inside the shield who live hand-to-mouth, begging for scraps and shelter, and living the most desperate lives. There’s very little meat, no power for most people, and there are no viable medicines left on the shelves anywhere. A single Tylenol capsule can buy you a full meal with bread. But Asher and I have thrived, with barely a snivel between us, thanks to Ylva’s training.”

  “If I ever come across her again, I’ll kiss her cheek,” Lucas said.

  “I imagine she’s busy keeping together the Kine who survived the initial wave,” Asher observed.

  “Do you still think she might have survived?” Lucas asked curiously.

  Charlee got up to stir the soup. “We never see them in the tunnels, trying to barter, but I think Ylva and her girls are alive and using all their abilities to provide for the Kine inside the shield.”

  Lucas glanced at Asher. “Still keeping your distance?”

  “It’s still too risky to contact them. The Alfar have learned how to pass as human, and that means they’ve learned the art of spying. They will have tabs on the Kine inside the shield. If I contact them, the balloon goes up.” Asher shrugged and looked down into his cup of mead. “They’ll have to do without me for a bit longer.”

  “Until when?” Lucas asked.

  “Until something changes.”

  “Something will change,” Charlee added softly. “It always does.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Asher pushed open the bathroom door and stood back. “Take as long as you like. Hot water isn’t in shortage around here.”

  “And a flushing toilet?” Lucas blinked. “Now I really do know I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

  “Valhalla,” Asher corrected, with a grin. “The toilet was already here. I just adapted the water supply. The water comes from the Alfar, and it’s purer than anything you would come across in nature, with no nasty chemicals to get it that way. That’s all they drink so they know something about purification.”

  “They haven’t figured out you’ve tapped into their water lines?”

  “They don’t use pipes. They use…well, the ancient Arabic qanat is the closest you’d get, except they build theirs indoors instead of across the desert.”

  “Doesn’t say how you tapped it.” Lucas plucked at his shirt. He had been wearing personal armor, and the denim had become wrinkled and sweat-soaked underneath. The shower beckoned like a siren, but the mystery of power and water was too strong to leave unanswered, especially after years of bucket baths and flickering firelight, to say nothing of the stench of old-fashioned outhouses.

  Asher blew out his breath, soft and slow. “Okay, I’ll break it down to very simple. You’d have to become an Einherjar and work with auras for a few centuries to really understand the details, and a few snotty Valdar lecturing over your shoulder would help a lot, too.”

  “You saying I’m stupid?” Lucas kept his face deadpan.

  Asher gave him a quick smile. “The Alfar draw the water up through the earth, right here in the feet. The process creates energy as a by-product, which they feed back into the aura that creates the shield. That’s why the base wall seems to throb. I syphoned off some of that power, and used a transformer to create human electricity from it. Voilà, lights, power, a water heater—”

  “The heater doesn’t use gas?”

  “It’s one of those instant hot water things. I lucked out on that one. But if it had been gas, I could have used the heat that bleeds off the base wall instead. That’s what I use for the cold room—”

  “Now you’re bullshitting, man,” Lucas complained.

  “Look up how refrigerators work next time you’re near the library. Push the heat through a small enough aperture with enough pressure, and what emerges is icy cold air. It’s ba
sic physics.”

  “You’re a fucking freak, you know?”

  “So you’ve told me.” Asher didn’t seem to mind the description in the slightest. “I lived through the development of all these inventions—power, refrigeration, the flushing toilet. I got to see each stage, so I know by experience what you can only learn through books and only if you specifically need to know. Everything is specialized these days.”

  “Survival ain’t,” Lucas pointed out. “You’re ahead of everyone on that, too.” He straightened up, cocking his head to listen along the corridor. Charlee was still banging around in the kitchen.

  He looked Asher in the eye. “I’ve never seen her look so happy, man.”

  Asher’s expression didn’t change. “The occupation wiped away all the politics that said we couldn’t be together, that’s all. As long as we can both pretend I’m not Einherjar, we get what we want.”

  Lucas pursed his lips, considering. “She’s not the only one who’s over-the-moon happy about it.”

  “Glad I have your blessing.”

  “I was talking about you, stupid. You think I didn’t notice that what you’ve got set up here is a throwback to the way you used to live? A few modern conveniences like hot and cold running everything, and this is an apartment, not a longhouse, but she’s still keeping the homestead while you head out to do whatever Vikings used to do.”

  Surprise flittered across Asher’s face. “I hadn’t thought of it like that. And how do you know how I used to live? Have you been talking to Darwin?”

  “He still hasn’t shown up. I look in on his house every now and again, but the north foot of the tower is awfully close.”

  “You think he bugged out somewhere?”

  “All his books are gone. What do you think?” Lucas raised a brow. “And don’t think I didn’t notice the change of subject there.”

  “It wasn’t deliberate.” Asher waved toward the waiting bathroom. “I’ll dig up some spare clothes. Charlee is a damned fine dressmaker, too.”