Cold Warriors

by Rebecca Levene

  Nicholson studied him for a long moment. There was no warmth at all left in his face. For the first time, Morgan could see the man who'd done all those terrible things.

  "You're a fool, boy," his father said. "Do you think you can fight me? I've been through death already - and I won't go back. Nothing in the land of the living can hurt me."

  "I know," Morgan said. He turned to Anya, who was watching him uncertainly. "Give me your mirror."

  The expression turned from unease to puzzlement. "What?"

  Nicholson looked baffled too, but that might not last long.

  "You're a woman, aren't you?" Morgan said impatiently. "You wear make-up - you've got to have a mirror somewhere."

  The look of incredulous affront she gave him almost made him laugh. But she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small silver case.

  He snatched it from her and snapped it open before either she or Nicholson could react. Nicholson yelled something, lost beneath the growing clamour of the crowds of dead. Morgan thought his father understood - maybe not what Morgan intended, but certainly that it was a threat. He still had Raphael's semi-automatic in his hand and now he dropped the crown and raised that.

  But Nicholson hesitated. Morgan knew he didn't want to do it. He still hoped that Morgan would relent. Morgan slapped the burning golden cross against the glass of the mirror and turned both to face his father.

  He saw Anya's face drain of colour and his own hand shook as it held the mirror, even though he'd known what to expect. Because another hand was emerging, small and blunt-fingered, through the silvered glass. It grabbed the cross and kept on moving - and as it emerged, first a wrist, then an elbow, then a shoulder, the glass expanded too. There was a smell like burning plastic, and underneath it a hint of roses.

  Morgan released the mirror, which wasn't a mirror any more. It was a gateway, and someone was stepping through it.

  "Hello, Marya," he said.

  The little girl smiled at him. She was as pretty as he remembered, the shadow of the adult she never became in the soft curves of her cheeks. But there was another face, overlaying or inside hers, brown-skinned and soft eyed. Her smile was his sister's. Nicholson's eyes widened in shock, and suddenly there was another consciousness shining behind them. The blue of Raphael's eyes infected Nicholson's amber and both men looked in horror at the little girls their magic had killed.

  The spirit reached out, curling her far smaller hand around Nicholson's. There was a moment of complete stillness - and then she pulled. He stumbled forward a step, then another. She was back inside the mirror now, only the tips of her fingers in the outside world. She shouldn't have been strong enough to compel him, but Nicholson seemed unable to resist. Maybe Raphael's fear paralysed him, locked somewhere inside. Or maybe it was his own - facing a threat from the one realm he couldn't control.

  Marya's voice floated out of the mirror, as insubstantial as a cobweb. "Come with me, Father Raphael. That's what I want."

  Then she gave one final tug. Nicholson fell forward and kept on falling, through the surface of the mirror to whatever lay beyond. Morgan stared after him, and for one second he saw another face. His sister was smiling at him and he smiled helplessly back. Then the gateway blinked out of existence, and Anya's mirror fell to the ground and shattered.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Anya could scarcely believe Tomas's death, or everything that had followed it. Morgan was standing beside her, glassy-eyed, as if the last few minutes had eaten up every reserve of character and strength he had.

  And all around them, the hordes of the dead rose to their feet, blank eyes scanning for a leader who wouldn't come. Naively, she'd believed they'd disappear when Nicholson did. They hadn't, and now they were beginning to move. Their expressionless faces twisted and changed, filling with a mindless, directionless rage.

  "Shit!" Morgan said. "I thought..."

  "Well they're still here!" Anya snapped.

  He looked around him, blinking. "We've got to stop them."

  Anya laughed harshly. "Any suggestions?"

  "Valeria has something," Kate said. Anya had almost forgotten about the other woman. "A summoning spell tied into an old ivory whistle. I don't know - it's designed for animals - but it might work with these things too."

  "Do you know where she is?" Anya shouted. The noise from the dead was fearsome, a unified howl that rose and rose. There was still a clear space ten feet wide around them, the last residue of their deference for Morgan, but Anya didn't think it would last long.

  Kate shrugged. "I know where she was."

  "That's good enough for me," Anya said.

  "OK," Morgan said. "OK." He turned to Kate, and whatever power it was that restrained the dead was suddenly broken.

  Only the fact that there were so many saved them. There was no single consciousness guiding them now and, released from all constraints, the first target of the dead's savagery was each other.

  The living turned and fled. Within ten paces, Anya had lost all sense of direction. The park exit had been behind her, now it could be anywhere. The dead crowded close all around, a strange double vision overlaying them. Sometimes they were nothing but bone, walking skeletons strung with ribbons of clothing or long-mummified flesh. Other times she saw translucent flesh and faces, facsimiles of people. She didn't know which was worse. At least when they were bone she didn't have to pity as well as fear them.

  When skeletal fingers brushed her arm she flinched away, but they were all around. They were closing in, and she was losing Morgan and Kate in the crush. At the last minute Morgan's hand groped for hers. She flinched away, convinced in her panic that he was one of the dead. She felt the bones beneath his skin.

  "This way!" he shouted, and pulled. She didn't know how he could tell, but she forced herself to grip his hand and trust him. There wasn't any other choice.

  Anya wasn't blindfolded. She'd seen the streets they led her through to this place, and she'd be able to find it again if she was asked. That was a bad sign. They'd have hidden it from her if they meant her to survive.

  And she'd seen the sacrifice they'd carried out, the girl whose bleeding corpse still lay in the centre of the room, her heart impaled beside her. Anya could see her eyes, staring blank and glassy at the ceiling above her. She'd heard her screams.

  But they wanted Anya to live a little longer. Blood was trickling from a hundred scratches on her face and arms, deeper peck-marks oozing a fluid that was almost black. They'd called the birds from the sky to attack her, but then they'd called them off again and brought her here.

  She was tied to a solid wooden chair in the living room of a perfectly ordinary apartment. The chandelier that hung from the ceiling was over-ostentatious and just a little dusty, and there were pictures of a family, smiling kids and dour grandparents, on the mantelpiece. This was someone's home. She wondered whose.

  Not the woman who sat opposite her, whom the others had called Valeria. Her face could have been pretty - Anya knew a lot of men would have said so - but Anya thought it was too bony, and there was too much anger in her eyes.

  Valeria was glaring at Anya as she took apart her gun, carefully oiling each part. The men were elsewhere in the flat. The smell of boiling cabbage suggested they were making themselves something to eat. Nothing like a square meal after a murder.

  "Now what?" Anya said.

  Valeria carried on oiling her gun.

  "What's happened to Tomas? You can at least tell me that."

  Valeria sighed, then said, "He's served his purpose in the world."

  "And what would that be?"

  "Ending it."

  The Ragnarok artefacts. The Japanese had known what they could do, it was why they'd tried so hard to prevent them being brought together. But Anya had never quite believed it. Not till now.

  At first the growl sounded like it was coming from inside the room. But it built and built and Anya didn't need to see Valeria's expression to understand that something was beginning.
Valeria's face was transformed by joy until it wasn't just pretty, but beautiful. She rushed to the far side of the room and flung open the French windows, stepping out onto what Anya saw was a wide balcony.

  The sound was even louder with the window open. Anya had only heard something like it once before, when she'd been trapped in a building in LA during the earthquake of 1994. Was that how the world would end - tearing itself apart?

  "Let me up," she called to Valeria. "There's nothing I can do to stop it now."

  To her surprise, the other woman came back inside and knelt beside her, pulling at the ropes behind her back. "You're right," she said. "It's too late now. You should see it - everyone should see the birth of the new order."

  They went back out to the balcony together. They were ten storeys high and the whole city lay spread out in front of them. The sun shone down on it, bright and clear.

  It wasn't an earthquake. At first, Anya couldn't see what it was. She could hear screaming, floating up from the streets below, but she didn't know what was causing it.

  Valeria must have sensed her confusion. She pointed to the left, where a green space broke up the gold and grey of the buildings. Anya realised after a second that it was a graveyard. And there, finally, the earth did seem to be moving.

  "Our army rises," Valeria said.

  Anya thought it was an optical illusion at first, a product of the heat haze hanging over the city. But when she blinked they were still there, the figures clawing themselves out of the ground.

  "Jesus," she said. "This can't be real."

  They were everywhere. As Anya's eyes scanned the city they found more graveyards, the earth roiling inside them as it was disturbed from below. Elsewhere the dead emerged from beneath pavements and inside buildings and she remembered that this city stood over a mass grave. Just below their balcony she saw one man dragged to the ground, ripped apart by the walking corpses. The stench of blood and shit wafted up.

  Anya heard the directionless screaming of sirens and soon policemen and then soldiers appeared. There was gunfire, and in some places the soldiers held their line, firing and firing and firing at the dead because they didn't stop until there was nothing left of them. In other places the soldiers and policemen saw what they'd been called to confront and fled. In the growing chaos, she saw bullets pierce living bodies and soldiers trampled beneath the fleeing feet of the people they were trying to protect.

  "This isn't right," Valeria said. She was frowning and chewing on her lip.

  "It's too late for regrets now."

  "But it shouldn't be like this, so... disordered. They should be an army, not a mob. They're meant to be led."

  "By who?"

  "By me."

  Morgan stood in the open doorway of the apartment, a slender, middle-aged woman on his right side, and the other half of Anya on the left.

  Anya saw Kate's shocked expression and knew she hadn't expected this. But Morgan looked relieved. He was smiling at the mirror image of herself, pulling her into a bear hug. He'd known.

  The men burst into the room before she'd decided how to react. Kate had Raphael's gun. She'd fired it only once against the dead, before they'd realised it was useless. There were seven rounds left and she shot all of them into the three men. They were down before they'd even drawn their weapons, blood a barely visible red pool soaking into the blue carpet. They lay beside the mutilated corpse of the woman they must have killed.

  After the flight through the streets to reach this place, Anya was numb to death. She barely spared them a glance. She looked a moment at Valeria, the woman they'd come to find, but she was cowering away from Kate's gun, no kind of threat. And then she just stared at herself.

  The other her stared back, surprised but not amazed, and Anya realised she'd known too.

  "Who the hell are you?" she said.

  "She's you," Morgan answered. He flushed when she turned to glare at him. "Half of you, I mean - all the things you aren't."

  There were a thousand and one questions, but only one that really mattered. "Are you it, then? Are you what's been missing these last four years?"

  The other her nodded. Anya could see rope burns around her wrists and she rubbed at them absently as she spoke. "Yes. The Japanese did it to us. They wanted an agent in the BND."

  "A real double agent," Anya said. "Morgan, you piece of shit."

  She tore her eyes away from the other her. Screams and gunshots drifted through the open French windows, but they were getting quieter. There were fewer people left alive. Soon the dead would leave the city, and then there'd be no stopping them.

  "We've come for the whistle," Morgan told Valeria. "It's the only thing that can stop this."

  Valeria squared her shoulders, suddenly defiant despite the gun pointed at her. "I don't want to stop it. This is what it was all for."

  The other Anya took a step towards her, hand held out half-pleading, half-placating. "But it's gone wrong. You said so yourself."

  Morgan stepped forward too, beside Kate. The three of them lined the entrance to the balcony, blocking Valeria's escape. "Raphael's dead," he told her. "It's already over."

  "No," Valeria whispered. "It can't be. He promised we'd win. He said we'd make them suffer."

  "Who?" Anya asked.

  Valeria smiled, baring yellow teeth beneath her pale lips. "Everyone."

  She took a step, pressing her back to the balcony railing. The dead continued their terrible work a hundred feet beneath her.

  "Give it to us," Morgan said. "Or we'll kill you and take it anyway. Believe me, we don't give a fuck if you live or die."

  "I know," Valeria said. "No one ever has."

  Anya guessed what she intended a moment before she did it - and a second too late to prevent it. She watched, helpless, as Valeria's thin hands grabbed the railing behind her, tensing as she vaulted over it. She hung in the air a moment, suspended. Then her fingers slackened, her grip on the rail loosened, and she began to fall.

  It seemed to take a very long time for her to hit the pavement. Her body lay there, broken but still twitching, and then the dead swarmed and she was buried beneath them.

  Anya saw Morgan slump in defeat. The other her clasped his shoulder and he managed a wan smile, which she returned. Did that Anya actually like him? Had they fucked? The idea both repulsed and intrigued her.

  The other Anya turned from Morgan to look at her, and there was an almost physical shock as their eyes connected. The other her looked content. Her mouth wasn't bracketed by the same worry lines that had carved grooves around hers. She smiled as if happiness was easy. Anya found that she was bitterly jealous. Why had that half of her been given all the joy, and she'd been left with the anger, the regret, the crippling sense of duty?

  The other her seemed to read the resentment in her eyes. "I've been trying to make us whole again," she said. "That's why I was searching for the artefacts."

  Morgan's head jerked up. "And now you've found them."

  The other Anya gave him a look of incredulous hope. "You've got them?"

  "I am one."

  "Is that... you're saying you can do it? Reconnect us?"

  He shrugged. "I think maybe I've got the power."

  "But it needs a huge amount." The hope faded from her face. "Even if you could do it, it would probably kill you."

  He laughed. "We're not getting out of here alive. In case you hadn't realised."

  "Then what's the point?" Anya asked.

  "I want to die a whole person," the other her said. Her face was the same one Anya saw in the mirror every morning, but she hadn't seen that expression on it for a very long time: wistful and yearning.

  "No," Morgan said, "that's not why. Think about it, Anya. I was made to lead the army of the dead. That's the point of me. I control that power, even if I don't want to. If I can put it into you, instead of them - maybe I can stop them."

  "Maybe, maybe, maybe," Anya said. "Or we know you can command them. You can tell them to stop."
r />   "I can't."

  "For the love of god -" Anya said.

  "No," Kate cut across her. "Don't you see, there's a part of Morgan that wants that? That wants to be what Nicholson made him. He's resisted temptation once, don't make him do it again."

  Anya saw that Kate was right. Morgan was tempted, and frightened by it. The other her wanted him to do as he'd suggested and make them whole - but she was afraid that it might kill him. Anya didn't care if it killed him. She could forgive herself for that, now she understood she was the half of herself that couldn't care. But she wasn't sure she wanted to be whole again. To stop being who she was now.

  There was a silent moment, indecision holding everyone still.

  Then, slow and creaking, the door opened.

  The three men behind it looked perfectly ordinary. But their old-fashioned clothes hung loosely on them. Their faces were hollow in the cheek and puffy round the eyes, sick and starved. And then the faces faded away and Anya saw the skulls beneath.

  Morgan reacted first. He flung himself against the door, slamming it shut. The door bounced against his back and his feet slid two inches along the carpet before he grimaced and forced it closed again. His fingers scrabbled against the lock, trying to turn it, but it needed a key. "Help me," he hissed.

  Anya knelt beside the first of Raphael's dead followers, fumbling in his pockets.

  "It's no good," the other Anya said bleakly. "Valeria had the key."

  The door shuddered as more weight was thrown against it from the outside and there was a deep tearing sound as the wood began to splinter beside Morgan's head.

  Morgan dug his heels into the carpet, using the leverage to push back. Then he held out his hands, one towards each half of Anya.