by Cate Morgan
Aika took hold of her fear in both hands. She should have been numb with cold—instead she raged with fever. “Storm’s coming.” She could sense it even through the biosphere.
“I daresay it is.” He looked up from his hand comp for the first time. “What’s it to be then? Verbal swordplay, or something rather more physical?”
The storm’s progress was extraordinary, rapidly gathering steam in the manner of an approaching shark right before the bite. “Something like that.”
He noticed the pommel peeking over her shoulder like a curious bystander. “Ah, I see.” He cocked his head to one side in intellectual curiosity. “Tell me, can you actually die?”
Her heart pounded against her entire body, as though trying to break free. “Oh, yes.”
“How reassuring.” He pressed another button. “Well, the carrions will be here any moment. Are they sitting Vigil for you?”
“False assumptions again.” The sky had turned completely black. Stall him, keep him talking. Don’t let him catch on to the truth.
He smiled at the old argument. “Of course. Your flock.”
Light flickered, dimmed. “Not mine, but yes. It’s always been about them.”
“Bravo. Spoken like a true shepherd.” His eyes shimmered at her. The air grew heavy. “There is still time to change your mind.”
The wind came then, cool benediction across her hot skin. The Agent looked around, startled. She flicked on her earpiece once more. “Are you still there?”
“Yes.” The reception cut in and out.
“I’m sorry, Dec. I’m so sorry.” She removed the earpiece and extended her fist over the side, releasing the last connection to those she loved to tumble end over end out of sight with a forlorn sense of finality. She drew her sword with a rasp that echoed strangely in the abrupt quiet.
The Agent focused on her at the sound. He stepped forward. “You’re out of time, old friend.”
Her smile was bittersweet. “I know.”
The storm blotted out the last of the moonlight, the bright flashing advertisements on the biosphere flickering and snapping out of existence, one by one in rapid succession. The glittering lights below winked out in a rolling blackout. There was just enough light left to see one another’s forms in the shadows.
“Everyone should have a choice,” she whispered past the bone-freezing terror.
Thunder reverberated across the biosphere, drowning out any response, even the sound of her own heart pumping in panic. A sharp, ear-splitting crack shook the ground and every window in the building.
Aika spun and drove her blade through the capstone as lightning struck. The Agent shielded his eyes with his arms as its light washed the world to nothing.
A jagged crack like an opening to hell ripped down the pyramid’s façade, hot iron red and pure electric white. Steel melted. Glass shattered one floor after another, flung out across the verdant grass below. He grasped the railing as the building’s death throws nearly tossed him over the side. The metal seared the flesh from his hands, and he fell to the metal grating.
When he could see again past a debilitating swarm of floating, flowering bruises, he inched his way across the platform to the capstone. A graceless heap curled like a sleeping child at its point, what remained of his greatest adversary and, he realized, the closest thing he had to a friend. He stooped and pressed fingers against her pulse.
The Agent pulled his hand comp from the belted steel wreckage of the platform. He hadn’t realized he’d dropped it. It was a miracle it still worked. He scrolled through to a file embedded deep within the layers of his system. A flashing red thumbprint flashed on the screen. He pressed his right thumb against it. A moment later the screen went black, followed by the fading biosphere.
Then he lifted Aika into his arms, the sword pommel stuck fast to her clenched palms. It lay lengthwise down her body like a broken effigy. The internal service elevator would still work, if nothing else.
Drops began to fall, feather soft and strange. He turned his face to it as the ground continued to sway with aftershocks.
He found them waiting at the park entrance on the gravel path stained dark with rain. The old man, the angel and the lover.
Doors and windows slammed open along the streets and people piled from of their homes and restaurants and clubs to see what was going on, calling out excitedly to one another. Somewhere someone turned up the volume on distant music, and London’s people began to dance in the startling wet.
Declan came forward and took Aika into his arms, stoic expression faltering momentarily before turning to marble once more.
The Agent flexed his hands over nothing. “There’ll be war over this.”
“War’s coming regardless.” The old man cocked an eyebrow, reminiscent of Aika. “They’ll be after you.”
“They’ll have a time finding me.” A smile flickered across his face. “They’ll have to bring their own carrion, and they do not travel well.”
“They do tend to get hungry when they’re hunting.”
The trio turned away. He understood, finally, he was in the presence of something larger than himself. He didn’t want it to end.
He didn’t want to be alone.
“My name is Charles.”
The old man’s eyes gleamed like shards of moonlight over his shoulder. “It’s good to meet you, Charles. It’s lamb tonight, if you get hungry.”
Aika woke to an azure sky too vibrant to be real. Something hard pressed into her spine, and the air smelled of sun-warmed grass and stone. The back of her head felt strange laid flat, and she realized her hair was down. She never wore her hair down.
She sat up to find Brighid standing over her. Not only was her hair down, but she was also wearing a dress. Shimmering white silk traced her curves from collarbone to ankle. Tumbled auburn tresses pooled in her lap, among multi-colored petals cascading like rainbow snow.
“Is that it?” She coughed, as though breathing were unnatural. “Did it work?”
“Nearly.” Brighid brushed more petals from her hair with maternal tenderness. “They sit the Vigil now.”
That startled her. “Still? I thought—”
In that moment Aika was caught up in a whirlwind of muffled sound and candlelit images. She fell back against the stone.
“You thought it was finished, and there were no more choices to make.”
“I’m so tired.” And she was, her bones heavy, muscles stiff, eyelids drooping. She straightened her spine with a forced stretch, but it curved again almost immediately.
“I know.” Brighid came closer as she swung her feet over the side with all the energy of winter molasses. “But things are different now.”
Warm wind blew through their hair. Aika pulled strands from her face. “So then I’m…” Pure white energy whirled in her gut by way of an answer, starting as a diamond bright kernel and growing, hungry, feeding on itself like a whirlpool.
“What you were meant to be.” A smile crossed her face. “It was a long time coming.”
Aika tried unsuccessfully to bind her hair back in its own thickness. “I suppose I was living in the past.”
“You come by it honestly, child. The Tír Danaan are known for it. Sometimes we forget there is a future to consider.”
Another tilt-o-whirl of sight and sound, this time with a blur of faces. One drawn face with brilliant blue eyes stood out among the flurry.
“They’re calling you back.” Brighid waited with the eternal patience of the already eternal. “Will you go?”
Aika caught her breath. The possibility startled her, but not as much as sudden hope. Until then her only hope had been that someone would be able to take her place in the Burnout Zone. “Dec.” She searched Brighid’s eyes, afraid to see regret or denial in them. She was no trickster, like the raven, the Morrigan. “I’m not needed on the front lines?”
Brighid folded her hands before her. “The Vigil is enough to summon you back, if that is your choice. There is mor
e than one front in a war, you know.”
“I have a choice.” Revelation made her voice little more than a whisper.
Brighid closed her eyes. “He prays to me now, in honor of his mother. It is his love that makes my intercession possible.” She cocked her head, listening. “There is a new voice, one I have not heard before. A soul saved by the redemption you wrought.”
Aika felt her blood warm, her body turn feather light. Her time to choose grew short. “It did work.”
An elegant, queenly shrug. “Either constitutes a strong enough pull to bring you home—one’s love, one’s turning to the light. Taken together, the situation—and what you might do about it—garners enough interest to bring me here.” The quiet smile broadened into a full-fledged grin. “Eternity can be so boring without a good gossip, and this is the stuff of legend.”
“Send me back.”
“Are you certain? Despite your ascension you will still be mortal. And with no time to help you become accustomed to your new state.”
Dec’s face arrived in the forefront of her mind. “I don’t care. For once I’m choosing for myself.”
Brighid’s shimmering eyes flashed approval. “I couldn’t have chosen better myself.”
Declan was not one for praying. After his mother died a stupid, pointless death in the Second Blitz he’d given up on faith in anything other than his own intellect and the hope it would bring him someone like Aika to help.
Now he prayed with all his heart, his mother’s Brighid’s cross pressed with painful fortitude between his hands as the downpour beat down overhead. The Tree and Flame public rooms were empty, polished to a warm glow by the fading heat of the hearth and the candles lit at intervals along one of the long tables where Aika lay with her sword between her hands. The metal of the blade and his silver chain gleamed like false hope in the light, the room cool and fresh in the driving rain. Bobby’s soft booted circles around the table offered subtle counterpoint to the rain and the faint, busy clicking of steel knitting needles from the hearth.
Aika’s death wouldn’t be a stupid one, he knew, nor a useless one. He wanted her back all the same. And so he prayed, and counted every one of her shallow, all too intermittent breaths.
The Agent—Charles—sat across from him with his hand comp between his bandaged hands, staring as though to ignite it with the force of his concentration alone. Hating, numb, still.
Yet he was the first to break the silence. “Will she—?”
Coward, Declan thought with an internal sneer. Then hated himself for not being first.
“Tough to tell, case like this.” A pause in the metallic clicking as a row of stitches was closed off. “Our girl was—is—strong willed. Stubborn, like her mother. She’ll be back if she can. Depends where she’s needed most.”
Anger rose in Declan like a dragon’s fire right before some poor idiot in his own broiler tried to poke it with a bit of kabob stick. “You’re what she is. Surely you can make a difference? Intercede, or something.”
The old man shook his shaggy gray head. “I’m not risking anything by losing her here today. All it means for me is a change of venue.” He rescued a dropped stitch. “I don’t have a vote, so speak.”
Declan turned his thwarted fury on Charles. “You’re a bastard, you know that? All she wanted was to keep these people safe from people like you, and you couldn’t let her carry on, could you?”
Charles blinked with the slowness of a lizard in the desert sun. “I was…misinformed. And she was considered a liability.”
Declan bolted to his feet, wiping the plate of cold food at his elbow to the ground. “Misinformed?”
“Down, the both of you.” The old man had no need to shout. Ancient authority rang in every syllable like the bell at his side. He addressed Charles first. “Redemption is earned, not given. She gave you a chance, that’s all. It’s up to you what you do with it.” Then it was Dec’s turn. “It’s plain you love her, lad, but this is no decent way to sit a Vigil.”
After a moment Declan sat again, though he refused to apologize. “Is it all right if I…” He swallowed. “May I touch her?”
“By all means, if it shuts you up.”
Declan inched his hand across the dark wood that made her skin glow whiter than ever, afraid to find her small hand cold and stiff as a true corpse. Instead it raged with fever and elicited a faint hum like lightning about to touch down. The small hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. After a moment Charles took her other hand. Declan surprised himself by not snarling at him.
“Please,” he whispered to her motionless form, breath catching on an inhalation as his lungs constricted. His throat burned. “Please.”
Only the rain offered comfort. Its steady rhythm lulled him to sleep.
Declan walked a boggy moor in the muted light of a false dawn, feather-soft drizzle drifting over his hunched form. He climbed a steep hill, and as he reached the top the sky cleared, bright sunlight washing over him. Now the sky was a perfect royal, satin blue, grass a silky, eye-popping green.
In the distance a circle of standing stones jutted from the ground at slightly drunken angles. A figure stepped through the foremost gate, dressed in a white silk gown that fluttered in the summer breeze around her bare feet, her autumn hair all unbound. She held a white candle lit with a golden flame between her hands, gown pulling tight across her curves in the wind.
The candle transformed into a bouquet of bright-colored roses, each offering a rainbow hue including impossible blue. She smiled as she approached, flinging the roses into the wind. The petals rained around them, multiplying into an infinite number. It was blessing, benediction, promise. Hope.
She held her hands to him in welcome. Her touch was warm and soft, like sun-heated silk. Her skin glowed like fire opal, barely a flush darker than her gown, and she smelled of wild flowers and wind. She smelled like magic, ancient and tantalizing.
Unable to resist her smile, he released her hands to take her face in his hands, wove his fingers in her fire-spangled hair, stooped to kiss her with careful softness. Her hands pressed against his chest and she stood on tiptoe to open her mouth to him. His hands slid down her back, arms curling around her waist until she was lifted from her feet.
All things considered, the raucous clanging of a bell rather ruined the effect.
Aika’s fingertips touched Brighid’s and the ground shifted beneath her feet like a child’s merry-go-ground. The world swirled around her, head rushing to keep up in such a way she knew her stomach was in serious trouble. Closing her eyes provided no relief.
She was thrust into the bone-crushing dark of between, unable to breathe or move. Then she was stretched thin, atom by atom, until she was certain she no longer existed. She could smell light, taste fire, hear red and orange and blue in a symphony of color. Then she snapped together again and rocketed to the other side on a tailwind of heat and pain.
Her eyes sprung open to a blur of light and sound, a chair skittering across a wooden floor as its occupant flew to their feet with a yell, the heat of candlelight flaring to the ceiling on all sides, the dragon’s roar of a hearth. The spinning tilt-a-world came to an abrupt stop before her head and stomach were completely ready and she was thrown forward.
Fortunately someone else was prepared for such an eventuality. She gripped the edges of a musty metal bucket and let her body carry on without her for a few violent moments. She didn’t open her eyes again for fear she might see her spleen at the bottom, or a few toenails.
She looked up through tear-blurred eyes into the face of her rescuer. “Bobby?” She coughed on his name.
A cool, capable hand seared on her forehead like fresh steak in an iron skillet. “You’re burning up.”
“Aika?”
She fell back against the table and tried to sit up as she turned her head—a mistake as it throbbed warning and dizziness overtook her again. The rest of her body joined in the threat. It was worth it to see Declan staring down at her with
an uncertain smile desperate to fit on his ragged face. “Did it really work?”
“It did.” Back to her right side, where Charles crept out of the dark. “I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s already been said.” Her body shook with every breath as she tried to force normal operations under way again. “Quite frankly, I don’t have the energy to beat the unholy crap out of you at the moment.”
The old man reached over and prized the sword from her unprotesting hand. She hadn’t realized she she’d still been gripping it. “We need to get you down to the Flame before you light the place up like a beacon.”
Declan and Bobby each took a hand and pulled her to the floor where her knees sagged. Both were tall enough to drag her up off the floor when they pulled her limp arms around their shoulders. Together they propelled her through the kitchen and down into the cellar, the toes of her boots drawing thin, wavering lines across the dirt floor. They helped her down the stairs where she pulled away and stumbled to the brick-lined fire pit of the Flame.
She scraped her palms on the brick and mortar rim, and the Flame flared in response. The heat within her built to volcano pitch, her guts beginning to twist and strain against its inevitable rising.
“Feed the energy into the Flame,” The old man urged. He came around the other side of the pit, eyes flashing in the dark. “Deep breath now, exhale slowly, let it flow.”
She bled the raw, raging power in her belly into the Flame with preternatural slowness, head hanging between her extended arms as sweat dripped and sizzled on the bricks beneath her. The fire glowed bright cherry red like the inside of the old man’s pipe with fresh tobacco packed in. A few of the weaker bricks began to crack under the pressure.
The old man didn’t take his gaze off her. “Now’s the time to do it, girl. You can compel the Flame to your bidding if you’re quick, now it’s glutted on your energy.”
She stared at him, breathing hard. “I can’t. I don’t have anything left.”
“You can if it means protecting them everlasting. Especially from what’s coming.”
