Mortal

by Ted Dekker

  He hadn’t expected such a typical question from the Dark Blood. Not under the scrutiny of his superiors. Neither did he see any reason to respond.

  “Call your man back,” he said, jabbing his chin in Saric’s direction. “Or I’ll kill him.”

  “I don’t run,” the warrior said.

  “Mather! Back!”

  The Dark Blood immediately straightened. Then he was up and jogging for his ranks, order unquestioned.

  Roland walked to his horse, swung into the saddle, and wheeled around.

  Michael glanced at his chest. “You’re all right?”

  “Just a cut.”

  He trotted back toward Saric and stopped. Only ten paces separated them. Other than the three Bloods who’d been sent to fight him, not a soul appeared to have moved. The army was extraordinarily disciplined. Machinelike… and unnervingly alive.

  Roland knew then that there was no way his Nomads would survive a head-to-head battle with the Dark Bloods. They would have to think through their strategy very carefully.

  “Impressive,” Saric said. “Your point?”

  “Where is Pasha?”

  “Your man.”

  “Yes.”

  “Feyn killed him.”

  Feyn. The one Rom insisted was their only hope.

  Roland gave only a curt nod.

  “My point is that you’ll have your hands full if you come against us. But you won’t have to.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you want Jonathan,” Roland said. “And I can give him to you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE CORPSES STARED at Jordin and Jonathan as they passed. One of them, a girl no more than five wearing a ragged red coat, came running a few steps toward them, only to stop abruptly and gape at Jonathan. Big green eyes, set in a face that was far too pale. She was clutching a dirty doll.

  Jonathan paused and reached out to her, but the guard stopped him.

  “We’re not there yet. I’m putting you in Fifteen. Come on.”

  He made no move to follow the order. She sensed his anguish then—desperation rising inside his chest like a hard fist.

  “Where are the guards housed?” Jordin asked, as much to give Jonathan a moment as to learn more. She quickly added, “If there is ever trouble.”

  “Trouble? There’s no danger in the compound.”

  “No one tries to escape?”

  He gave her strange look.

  “Why would they?”

  It was hard to remember what it meant to be Corpse without any ambition or sorrow or desire. To be guided only by fear. They lived in fear of leaving the compound as much as in fear of death. As did the guard.

  “There are four of us and we live outside the walls. You’ll see wardens and employees. If there’s any trouble, tell one of them. But there won’t be. Hurry up, boy.”

  Jonathan tore his gaze away from the girl and followed after the guard.

  Only then did Jordin realize she’d hardly registered the smell of the Corpse girl in the close proximity of so many doomed.

  Now she could see the large, worn numbers on the end of each building. The white paint was peeling and faint against the gray concrete. Odd numbers on the left, even on the right. There were thirty housing units in all—each of them long buildings inset with small, square windows under the eaves of an industrial roof. Their panes were dirty, dark, as though covered over with some kind of film.

  Maker.

  Now she saw them closely, the dark heads, the dirty hands pressed up against the glass. She blinked, swallowed.

  Faces, in the windows. Four, five apiece. Ten windows along the side of the building, spaced perhaps ten feet apart.

  She glanced back the way they’d come. An old man peered at her from the far corner of Building Four, leaning heavily on a wooden crutch, a part of his lower leg missing. A woman came out of a long building against the far side of the perimeter—the shower rooms, perhaps—walking as though half her body did not work properly, so that she had to drag it to catch up with the functioning side. A man with a bandage around his head and obvious palsy followed her. The victim of an accident, perhaps.

  An affront. Alchemy, which had long solved the genetic puzzles of cancer, wasting diseases, blood disorders, dementia, and myriad maladies to humanity, could not abide to be reminded of the infirmities it could not prevent.

  She swallowed and lowered her gaze to Jonathan’s heels in front of her, to the stony soil beneath that was as gray, nearly, as the concrete. As the smoke wafting to the sky. She tried to school her breath, which grew ever more erratic with each step. She would follow him anywhere, even into this maw of Hades.

  The guard turned onto the broken walk that led to the door of Building Fifteen. The sky flashed again. Thunder in the distance.

  Even the heavens couldn’t abide it. These people were created to be alive, not dead. Imperfectly alive, not perfectly dead. The realization hit her like a hammer.

  Jonathan was born to bring life, not a new order. Chaos, not perfection.

  I see, she wanted to cry. I understand.

  She spun to Jonathan, words half-formed on her lips, but the sight of him robbed her of breath. He was frantic, trying to open the door, seemingly mindless. Clawing at it, banging on the wood with tears on his cheeks, gasping even as the guard was trying to unlock it.

  “Move aside, boy, or I can’t—”

  Jonathan shoved the guard aside.

  “Hey!”

  The guard went after him, and Jordin met him with a quick crack of her elbow to his temple. He dropped beside the stoop, unconscious.

  Jonathan worked the key in the lock, got it open, and then tossed the ring to Jordin.

  “We have to find her!” Jonathan cried.

  She didn’t need to ask whom he meant.

  She snatched the ring of keys from the air, leaped over the unconscious guard, and ran to the next building in the row. Thirteen.

  After fumbling to find the right key, she opened the door…

  Stared into the interior of the dormitory.

  A hundred faces peered back at her. Some of them sat on bunk beds set like shelving into the walls, some on the floor. A young boy crouched in the corner. There were no chairs. No tables, no sofas, no comforts of any kind. No blankets on the beds that she could see. The sallow light of a lone electrical fixture illuminated not only the dirt of neglect, but the utter hopelessness of looming death.

  “Is a girl named Kaya in here?” she shouted.

  No one moved. A middle-aged woman began to cry. One man, older and feeble, thin as a skeleton, cradling an open and tattered copy of the Book of Orders on his lap, shook his head.

  Hurried steps behind her. And then Jonathan was there, filling the doorway, staring into the dormitory over her shoulder.

  “Is she here?”

  “No.”

  He grabbed the key ring and took off running. She stared a moment longer and then ran after him.

  “Kaya!”

  Jonathan came out of Building Twelve and ran to Eleven. She had never seen him like this before. Frantic. Desperate.

  “Kaya!” he shouted before he had it open.

  “Here,” Jordin said, taking the keys from him, finding the one, opening the lock. Throwing open the door.

  “Kaya!”

  Again, the mute stares, the soulless whimpers. A little boy ducked under a bunk and peered out with wide eyes. A young woman, not much older than Jordin herself, got to her feet and screamed.

  Building Ten.

  No Kaya.

  Nine.

  And then the sirens went off. A wail, low as a rumble at first, from the direction of the observation tower, lifting in pitch to an all-out shriek. Up, over the walls, ringing in the ears. Banks of lights on the corners of the compound flashed on, bright as an unnatural sun beneath the churning sky.

  Jordin glanced up, squinting against the light. A clamor from
the direction of the gate, shouts.

  Only then did she see it, falling through the unforgiving electrical light: a powder as fine as ash. Horrified, she glanced down and saw the dusting on her tunic sleeve. The same pallid gray seemed to permeate everything in this place.

  She recoiled and tried to brush it off, but there was too much.

  “Hurry!” Jonathan.

  She glanced up at him. The ash clung to his braids, his lashes. It was then that she saw the stricken face that peered from the nearest window beyond him.

  The girl.

  “Kaya,” she breathed.

  Jonathan spun, saw the girl. He fumbled with the lock, got the key in the first try, and yanked the door open.

  He rushed through just in time to catch Kaya as she threw herself into his arms. She sobbed into his shoulder. “I didn’t tell anyone. I’m scared. Jonathan, I don’t want to die!”

  A low wail from farther in back of the building. Stifled sobbing nearby. And against it all, the backdrop of the siren.

  “You won’t die. I’m here.” He held her away from him, shook her lightly, eyes intent on hers, tears choking his words. “You hear me? I found you. I found you and I won’t let you go…”

  She clung to him, arms around his neck as he fumbled at the pocket of his coat. As soon as Jordin saw the stent, she knew what he meant to do.

  “We don’t have time! We have to get out.”

  He flashed her a tortured glance, face twisted in anguish and desperation. “She has to be Mortal… they’ll send her back. Open the dormitories. Set them free. Please!”

  Tears were streaming down his face, leaving dirty gray tracks on his cheeks. Maker, he was beautiful. And yet his tears terrified her. His emotion for this one girl drew him into unfathomable danger. He would do the same for any one of them, she knew. Already, he was looking around him, at the faces crowded on the lowest bunk, the ten more sitting above them. The aging woman and the man with one arm missing. And she knew instantly his thoughts:

  How many? How many could he save? How much time did he have?

  But it wasn’t a matter of time. She knew he would stay and save as many of them as he could until they either hauled him away or killed him.

  For a moment she stood rooted to the floor, afraid to leave him. Afraid he would give not only Kaya but the man behind her—and the woman behind him—and the girl behind her—his blood. Until it was gone. It took a pint to bring a Mortal to life. He would empty himself out without reserve or thought of his own life to save them.

  And that frightened her most of all.

  “Please!” He had his sleeve rolled up, was digging at the permanent stub in his vein.

  With a glance at Kaya’s stricken face, Jordin tore herself away.

  Panic flooded Rom’s veins at the sound of the siren. For an instant, he told himself that he had no way of knowing where it came from exactly. Perhaps it was a fire. An emergency on this side of the city.

  And then the lights went on.

  He raced around the last dock of the garbage center, making his way directly for the walled perimeter of the Authority of Passing.

  He knew the place. Had known it always, been conscious of it since the first day Avra had asked for his help after her accident, so many years ago.

  She had avoided the Authority, and for that she had been out of Order her entire life. Doomed, by any standard of Order’s Maker, to suffer Hades even now in the afterlife.

  The stallion labored, neck lifting and dropping with the effort to run. It had had a short-lived new burst beneath Rom’s slightly lighter weight, but now each step came with more difficulty than the last, as though they traveled through tar.

  He reached the far end of the concrete perimeter. Turned the horse down along the concrete wall past the ominous suns of Sirin’s halo in his peripheral vision.

  Just before the northwest corner of the perimeter, he slid to the ground as the horse staggered to a stop on unsteady legs.

  And then he ran.

  Building Nine. Open. The inhabitants had huddled as far back from the door as possible. Several of them screamed as the full blast of the siren invaded the darkness.

  Building Eight. Open.

  She could hear the guards shouting outside the gate. Smell them, far more ripe than she expected in a sea of Corpses such as this. They were terrified to enter this place of death, unaccustomed to the disruption that had invaded their world.

  Overhead, the sky flashed again. Thunder interrupted the wail of the siren as the first fat drops of rain pelted her scalp through her braids. Something in her mind whispered louder than the siren in her ears.

  Maker’s Hand.

  But the Maker’s Hand was superstition. It didn’t exist.

  Seven. Open.

  She raced toward the middle walk to see if the guards were approaching, but they were there still at the gate. Pointing. Waiting. It could mean only one thing: reinforcements.

  Six buildings left. But what was the use? So few of the condemned had even come out of the buildings she’d opened, too afraid to leave the confines of their prisons.

  But she knew now that Jonathan needed them as much as they needed him. This was his purpose, to save the dead from themselves.

  She gauged the distance from the roofs of the buildings to the concrete wall. Too far to leap—and even if they did, it was covered in wire. One tangle, one slip, and Jonathan might be too injured to escape. The girl would never make the jump.

  Movement to her right grabbed her attention, and she spun to see Jonathan, climbing up onto the roof of Kaya’s dormitory, wind raising the braids off his back, his pants plastered against his legs in the wind.

  What was he doing?

  “I’ve come to bring you life!” he shouted. His voice competed with the wail of the siren. The harsh light was in his braids, illuminating each one of them in stark and vivid clarity to her Mortal-enhanced eyes. His jacket was off, his one sleeve still rolled up. The veins in his neck stood out like cords from the open neck of his tunic.

  “I give you life beyond any you have known. Life from my veins.” He thrust out his bared arm. “Life of my blood. All who take it will live!”

  She stared, unable to tear her gaze away.

  He’s magnificent.

  And then: He’s mad.

  A white-hot bolt of lightning blazed down through the clouds like a crooked finger to the far south corner’s bank of lights. They went out in a shower of sparks. Screams ripped through the compound.

  “I’ve come to bring a new kingdom of life!” Jonathan was pointing at those who’d ventured out on shaking legs like dead emerging from tombs. But she knew they would not be freed. It didn’t matter that the doors were open. It wouldn’t matter if the twenty-foot walls fell to the ground. Their prisons did not exist in concrete or barbed wire.

  A distant squeal. She knew that sound. The underground. Reinforcements.

  The new scent hit her like a locomotive. It rushed through the compound, born on the gust of a rising storm.

  She turned just in time to see them arrive at the gate.

  Dark Bloods.

  Rom’s knives were in his hands as he rounded the corner of the perimeter. He smelled them before he saw them: two Dark Bloods and two guards at the gate, armed with swords. Jonathan’s and Jordin’s horses were tied to a rail halfway between the corner of the perimeter and the gate itself.

  A cry rang out from inside the compound. “I’ve come to bring a new kingdom of life!”

  A second car had entered the train tunnel. He could hear it, lower pitched than the siren; could pick out with Mortal ears the beat of the wheels churning on the track.

  More Dark Bloods…

  He whistled once, tongue curled hard against his upper lip as he rushed the Dark Bloods. Four heads spun toward him. He threw the knives in a swift volley, underhanded. The first caught a Dark Blood square between the eyes. The second never reached its target—the warrior reacted too swiftly, snatching the knif
e from the air and launching it back before his companion hit the ground.

  Rom dropped to his knees and slid the last five yards as the knife whirred overhead. The Dark Blood was already closing, rushing in. Rom grabbed the hilt of his sword, freed it, but the Dark Blood was too fast. His foot came down on the blade, pinning it to the ground as he slid his own weapon free.

  Rom rolled to his feet. The Dark Blood rushed forward, sword slashing through the rain. Rom threw himself to his right to avoid the blade. He felt the tug on his shirt as the sword sliced through the material. Too close…

  He lunged forward and slammed into the Dark Blood with enough force to send him reeling back.

  The distinctive sound of steel smacking into flesh drew his momentary attention to the gate where one of the guards spun and staggered back against the iron bars, clawing at a knife in his jugular. Beyond, the blurred vision of Jordin, who’d thrown the knife, pulled up sharply, hands empty, which meant only one thing: she was out of blades.

  The squeal of sparking brakes cut the air as the underground car came charging up out of the tunnel a hundred yards away. Six forms inside.

  Rom saw it all in the space of a second, even as the Dark Blood recovered and came again, more measured this time, sword in both hands. Rom dipped down and snatched his last knife from his boot, knowing that he was outmatched by his opponent, who was quicker and armed with a much longer blade.

  The heavens opened in earnest.

  To his left a form sprinted down the length of the concrete perimeter headed pell-mell for the Dark Blood. Triphon. He grabbed the hilt of Jonathan’s sword as he ran past the horses, yanked it free without breaking stride.

  “Triphon!”

  The Dark Blood’s eyes darted to the new threat. Rom moved then, while the warrior’s attention was divided. He sprang toward the remaining guard at the gate, leaving the Dark Blood for Triphon, knowing full well his back was exposed.

  He reached the guard in five long steps and plunged his knife into the man’s neck as the sound of Triphon’s bulk colliding with the Dark Blood joined the rolling thunder.

  Rom spun to see them crashing to ground. The rain was so heavy now that for a moment he couldn’t tell which form was which.