by eden Hudson
None of this helps us, I told Lonely and maybe Scout. We need to know where the sword is now.
“Hmm,” Lonely said. “Not entirely true, tarnished one. We need to know everything we can learn about the sword, not just where it is now. You never know which piece of information might turn out to be important.”
Bailey glanced my way again. “All information is inherently valuable. Your girlfriend seemed like the type who would’ve recognized that. As much as I hate to admit it, Ajax didn’t. He could store nearly infinite data in that brilliant head of his, but he never quite saw the need for the gathering of it.” She looked down at the floor as if she could see Jax laying in his grave. “He would’ve made a good mage, but a terrible witch.”
“To get back to the matter at hand, though,” Clarion said. “Kathan probably can’t wield the sword. Mikal could. But Mikal’s in Hell now. So where is the sword?”
“I think Colt might’ve had it,” Scout said. “One of my people did a fly-over of the cabin last night when Hell came for one of the fallen angels. They wouldn’t have used it on each other, so that means Colt had it.” She looked at me and nodded like I was already agreeing with her. “Right?”
Just a fucking kid just a fucking kid just a fucking kid started looping through my head. I nodded so I could look anywhere else but at Scout.
Bailey pursed her lips, then nodded. “Mikal stole it from the Garden. Colt stole it from Mikal. The Tracker and a squad of foot soldiers led by Rian killed Colt and Tiffani Cranston last night. One assumes that they recovered the sword during or after the melee. It surely would’ve been high on their priority list, with Colt’s death a close second.”
Then she laughed. A real, delighted laugh that lit up her whole face.
When Bailey saw that we were all staring at her, she shrugged. “Prophecies never turn out the way you think they will. ‘The last chosen soldier of God must visit death upon his brother before a holy champion can rise and the last battle for Earth can begin.’ Even when they’re written in a clear, coarse language, the human assumptions are always so far from what actually happens that it’s…well, it’s laughable. It’s like the 10-day weather forecast.”
Lonely laughed then, too, a few loud crawks that shook his head and shoulders. Almost human, but at the same time definitely not human at all. The sound scraped down the back of my neck like a bad chord.
“So, if I’m hearing you right,” Clarion said, scratching the gray-blonde stubble on his chin, “Then the sword is back with the fallen angels. Our next course of action is pretty clear. We have to get it back. So, how do we do that?”
“Well, that’s trickier,” Bailey said. “Like any item you wish to steal, you would have to know who has it, where they’re keeping it, and how to take it away from them without dying.”
That was what it always came down to. Not dying.
Tempie
How do you turn against your rescuing angel? How do you betray the only being who ever understood and loved you unconditionally?
I don’t have to betray anybody, I thought again, more forcefully.
This isn’t something you can stubborn your way out of, that little voice in my head argued. You either let them torture your sister until they kill her or until she’s as fucked-up and lost as you, or you betray the one shining memory of your life, the one being who’s ever been honest with you, the only thing that could ever love you.
No, I thought again. I don’t have to betray anybody.
And for once in my life I wasn’t just saying it because screw anybody who tried to tell me what to do. No, this time I was sure I was right.
“Make love to me,” I whispered—or thought—to Kathan. “To my body. Please, Kathan. Really love me.”
I wasn’t sure whether or not I was alone in our suite—there was always the chance that Kathan’s projection beside me was actually a piece of his mind holding the pieces of my mind together while they recovered—but when I spoke, he sighed against my throat, and I felt it in every piece of my mind and body.
“Would that I could, my love.” A little nip of his teeth at my collarbone. Burning fingers tracing down the outside of my thigh, then sliding back up the inside, under my skirt. “But I’ve got the legions lining up at my parlor door, waiting to kneel down to me. Can’t keep them waiting much longer.”
My mind was exhausted from staying apart for so long, but I broke off that burned-out emotionless piece again and sent it after some part of my angel lover. He wanted sex, needed it. The plays that were in motion now were happening so fast—and worse, they hurt him. They dug into those eternal wounds in his soul. He needed something to take his mind off of that pain, even just for a few moments. He needed my love and adoration to sooth the pain. He needed to know that I needed him.
It wasn’t a lie. I did need him. After he let me see inside his mind, it helped to have physical sensations—real ones, not essence-borne ones—to reset my internal gauges, to remind me what was real and what wasn’t.
“Please,” I begged. “I can make it fast. I just need to feel you. Please, Kathan.”
His hair fuzzed across my exposed belly and his teeth nibbled again, this time at my hip. “Later.”
“Now.” I groaned and tried to press closer.
His laughter rumbled through his chest and across my skin. God, I loved to make him laugh. He was so deeply scarred, so angry, so determined. But when he laughed—really laughed—he was beautiful.
I took Kathan by the sides of his face and pulled him up to my lips.
The kiss surprised him. He pulled back, his black, black eyes staring down into mine.
For a second, I thought he was going to ask me why.
For a second, I thought I was going to beg him to stop now, to be satisfied with me and the kingdom he’d made for himself here in Halo. Don’t take the chance. Don’t go marching off to war, Johnny.
The second passed with only the sound of our hearts and breath.
I know every part of you and yet you continually surprise me, Kathan said. Where did you ever hear that piece of music?
I don’t remember.
When his lips came down on mine again, they burned.
I have to, he told me. The words were almost an apology.
Then make love to me for real. Make love to my body. I can be the same as Desty again. You can make me the same. You were thinking about it before. I heard you.
Again time passed without speaking. Only Kathan’s eyes, boring down into my soul, searching for something.
You aren’t sure whether you can kill the baby, I told him. You don’t know if you have the time to find a poison that will work. You don’t know if Desty and I will even be identical enough once it’s dead for the enthrallment to work on her. But if you make love to me, if I conceive…
He tucked my hair behind my ear, and I felt the sickness inside his soul reaching out to me as if I could heal it.
How is it that you can’t see how good you are, Temperance? He kissed my cheek. How faithful? How willing to protect the ones you love?
Tears slipped down my cheeks. Please don’t say things like that.
I just need you to know that I can see it, he said.
We made love. Apologetic, determined, broken love.
Desty
Blood. Rivers of blood. Deep, velvety reds swirling across my field of vision. Except this time I didn’t feel any panic. Just a sense of weightlessness. Instead of being dragged down, the blood held me suspended. Warm and thick, it caressed my skin, pressing in on me just enough that I felt protected, not trapped or confined. Usually the blood dream sent me into a panic attack. This time, I just felt peace.
I’d never had the blood dream without having had some sort of chemical depressant before falling asleep—cough medicine or alcohol or bite sedative from a vampire. If I thought hard about it, I could remember the foot soldiers who were in charge of…of hurting me had injected me with a few different things. Maybe one of those had caused the bl
ood dream. When I woke up, I could see whether I felt hungover or strange.
“That’s probably it,” I said. My voice sounded flat, echo-less and strange, as if I was underwater, listening to someone on the surface talk.
I’d never been able to speak before in the blood dream. Whenever I had opened my mouth to scream or beg for help in the past, the blood filled my throat and lungs, choking me.
I took a deep breath in, then let it out. Still no drowning. The reds in front of my nose and mouth swirled and shifted on my exhale.
I reached out. My fingers bumped smooth padding. The lunatic cell’s wall. Or floor. Probably wall. The darkness was disorienting, but I doubted that I could be on my hands and knees without realizing I was.
Then I could see it—all of it. There wasn’t a flash from blood to darkness, not like waking from a dream and suddenly being in the real world. They existed at the same time without contradicting one another. I could see both the darkness and the blood at the same time. Black, red, peace, comfort, safety, warmth.
“I’m not asleep,” I said. “Maybe I’m hallucinating.”
But I didn’t think I was. I could feel the blood. I could hear it, filling my ears and dampening every sound. I opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue. I could taste it—salty, hot, thick. A little metallic.
What was this?
Did it matter? The blood and darkness were safety. I could rest and recuperate for however much time I had before the foot soldiers came back. I should just enjoy the peace while it lasted and stop ruining everything by questioning it.
I shut my eyes. The river of blood washed my pain away.
Tough
“How many warm bodies do we have?” Clarion asked. “Seventy-nine coyotes if the last two packs show.”
“However many crows,” Lonely said.
The coyote turned toward the crow so he could see him out of his good eye. “You don’t even know how many members are in your murder?”
Lonely gave a shuddering shrug. “Between seventeen and forty, depending.”
“And about sixty humans so far,” Scout said, heading off another argument. “Probably more by tonight. I know some people have been trying to reach their family from out of town.” She looked at me. “And you know Tawny and Beth Ann Hicks’s uncle started that Human Rights gang down in Cape Girardeau, so they’ve got some connections if they can get ahold of them.”
Clarion’s lips twisted down at that. “Hicks? The guy who got thrown in jail for lynching that coyote pup?”
“Bad time to get picky about allies,” Lonely said.
No shit, I thought. Jake Bones’s pack from over in North Fork had screwed us on an ammo deal back when Ryder was still alive and almost killed all three of us, but you didn’t hear me bitching about having to work with coyotes again.
“I’m not picky,” Clarion said. “I don’t have to like who I work with, I just want to be able to trust them not to shoot me in the back.”
“It might not matter, anyway,” Scout said. “They might not even be able to get into contact with him. Nobody might be able to get in contact with anybody outside town. NPs like the Matchmaker who can read minds? Who knows how much they’re monitoring and reporting to Big, Bad Warden Kathan? He might already have all the communications cut.”
“Doesn’t need to cut the communications,” Lonely said. “He’s got an elemental. Magnetic.”
Scout and I both snapped to attention at that.
But Clarion just nodded. “That explains a lot.”
Bullshit it does.
“What’s an elemental?” Scout asked.
“Not exactly an NP,” Clarion said. “More like a force, but with some amount of sentience. Kathan’ll have it monitoring the incoming and outgoing information. Being magnetic, it feeds off electromagnetic pulses. Certain messages will disappear, others might be altered. It’s probably explained away with some baloney about NP energies messing with wireless signals and radio waves.” He looked at Lonely. “How long has the thing been in Halo?”
Lonely cocked his head and considered the question for a while. “It’s always been in this ground, at least as long as crows have been in Halo. Probably longer.”
Clarion’s eye stared off at nothing.
“That explains a lot,” he said again, even though it still didn’t explain shit. After a second, he shook his head and looked up. “I’m sending messengers out. I think I can get us some reinforcements, but it might be a day or two before we hear back. It’s a long drive. In the meantime, we need to be working out the best way to acquire that sword.”
“Pretty simple, isn’t it?” Scout said. “We steal it. Just like Mikal did, just like Colt did. Send in a wave of troops to draw the foot soldiers out, then while they’re fighting, a small group slips in the back and recovers the sword.”
If I’d had a spare grenade and unbroken window, I probably would’ve pulled a repeat of earlier, but since I didn’t have either of those things handy, I slapped one of the bare rafters. The boom shook the attic.
Scout’s head snapped around to look at me.
“Easy on the lumber,” Lonely said, grinning not quite at me. “This old building’s got to last me another couple years at least.”
I held Scout’s gaze and shook my head, hard. Throwing a bunch of humans at the Dark Mansion to draw the fallen angels out wouldn’t work. For one, we were talking about a bunch of kids—collective hours of combat training: zero. Maybe the crows and coyotes had been fighting and killing each other their whole lives, but most of the human Halo lifers had never even held a pellet gun. If we used them to draw out the fallen angels and the foot soldiers didn’t slaughter everybody outright, then they would take a few prisoners, find out where the rest of us were, and wipe us off the face of the Earth.
“Tough, it’s the only way. We sacrifice this battle to win the—”
People, I snapped, emphasizing it by moving my voiceless lips. You’re talking about sacrificing people.
“Colt would’ve agreed with me. You know he would have.”
She was right. If it was the only way to get the job done, Colt would’ve accepted that, then he would’ve gone to work getting it done, because he was an asshole who didn’t give a shit who had to die as long as the sacrifice worked in the end. Ryder might’ve been a psycho who would kick your ass as soon as look at you, but there had been times when even he had looked at Colt like, “What the fuck?”
Sissy was probably the only one of us kids who had agreed with Colt every time. But at least she had never acted like it wasn’t no thang to be talking about sending somebody to their death. That first time we attacked Kathan and his group after the war—the night she died—when Colt and her had come up with the plan, Ryder had pointed out every point in their plan where one or all of us might get killed. Sissy had listened to his list of potential deaths, nodding her head. Then she’d set her jaw and said, “You’re right. But if we don’t do it, who will?”
No one. No one else would’ve done it back then and no one else would do it now. If I stopped for a second and took a step back from wanting to nuclear blast the Dark Mansion and every single angel who had ever set foot there, I could see that there was a bigger picture than revenge. Maybe I wasn’t smart enough to know what that big picture was, but it had to do with keeping Willow’s daughter from growing up to be Scout and Scout from growing up to be me.
Go downstairs and pick them out, I told Scout. Pick out the ones you want dead, tell them what you’re volunteering them for, then get back to me.
“You think this is any different than what Pastor Danny did?” she snapped.
And how did that end? Oh yeah, with everybody over twenty-five decapitated.
“Freedom is worth whatever it—”
Bullshit! You want to know who buried your dad, Scout?
Her gray eyes narrowed. “I know what happened. You think I don’t know what happened?”
Foot soldiers. They got an excavator, dug a big hole next t
o the pile of headless bodies, bulldozed them into the hole, then they poured the foundation for the Dark Mansion.
“Is that supposed to scare me?”
It’s supposed to make you get your priorities straight. My dad knew it was going to happen—or, hell, at least he knew it was a possibility—and he acknowledged it. He was killing his friends and his congregation and maybe his kids, too, and he told them so. He didn’t dress the truth up with freedom and sacrifice and pretty shit.
“You’re one to talk,” Scout said. “Lonely had to drag your ass here! I had to drug you just to get you to listen to me! Who the hell are you to talk about priorities?”
She was pissed, but there was something else going on there, too. I recognized it because I’d been the retarded little kid on the other end of the ass-chewing before.
During the war, Sissy decided us kids were on the buddy system. Colt and Ryder were supposed to stick together and I was supposed to stick with her. But there had been one battle where Sissy and I got separated. I tried to fight my way back to her, but I just kept getting pushed farther and farther away, until I couldn’t see her or anybody else. At that point, I was something way past panic, past shit yourself and cry like a baby. My heart was pounding so hard and fast that I thought I was going to pass out. It looked like everything was closing in on me. I dropped my sword, pulled the little .22 Dad had dug up for me, and started squeezing off crazy shots, wasting ammo, and crying. That’s when I heard Colt—“I got you, Tough, I got you!” He cut a path through the NPs with his nine and his sword, then he grabbed me and dragged me back to Sissy and the rest of our army while Ryder laid down cover fire. I don’t remember whether Dad called the retreat on that battle or Sissy did, but when we’d got far enough away, she ripped into me.
“What were you doing?” she yelled. “I told you to stay on me! We’ve pulled this drill before a hundred times. It’s not rocket science.”
“I—”
“You weren’t paying attention. You’re never paying attention!” Then she’d stopped yelling and squeezed the bridge of her nose. “Ryder’s right. You are terrible at this and it’s going to get you killed. You want to know why Coach Greene never played you?”
