by Adrian Cross
“He just wanted to talk, Rhino,” she said quickly. “I swear. I haven’t seen him since he left, not until today.” Her eyes were wide. Rhino had raised her and was likely the closest thing she had to a father. Clay was sure this wounded, suspicious beast was not the person she thought she knew. It wasn’t one Clay saw often either.
Rhino stared at Clay, still pinned against the door. Hot breath washed over Clay’s face. In Rhino’s eyes, red streaks swirled, as if a window to a furnace-like rage. Clay could almost feel Rhino’s overwhelming desire to crush Clay’s skull against the door, like a heat against his skin. Rhino’s lip curled and—
He let go.
Clay dropped, knees flexing to take the shock. He drew a slow breath. That could have gone either way.
Rhino moved back to the bed, supporting himself on the post again. A trail of bloody footprints marked his path.
“If not that,” he rasped, “then why are you here?”
“To ask a question.”
Rose had relaxed as Rhino moved away from Clay. She bent, perhaps thinking it was safe to pick up her weapon, but Rhino’s head snapped around.
“No!”
She jerked her hands up. “But… It’s me.”
Rhino stared at her for long seconds. It seemed as if regret and pain fought with suspicion before he shook his head sharply and looked at Clay.
“What question?”
Clay considered his words. He didn’t want to provoke Rhino further—for example, by admitting Clay had something to do with the army pounding against the castle gate.
“I have a client who’s gone missing. I wanted to know if you’d seen her.”
“A client?” Anger flared in Rhino’s eyes. “You came here to ask for help with a client? When my castle is under attack and I’m bleeding in my own room?”
Clay could do nothing but plow on.
“Her name is Karen Waters. Young, blonde, and wearing a ripped red dress the last time I saw her.”
“You have to ask now?”
“I think she’s in danger.”
“But is it a danger she brought on herself?” Snake asked musingly. He leaned against the frame of the open door, heavy arms crossed and amusement tugging at his lips.
Clay shot Snake an irritated look. “I thought you were going to wait below.”
“Wishes ain’t fishes, cowboy.”
Clay glanced reflexively at Rhino, expecting the Boss to reprimand Snake for interfering, but Rhino just watched, gaze smoldering. Things had changed since Clay had left. He was no longer the favorite.
“Answer the question,” Rhino rumbled.
Clay wondered how Snake had known. He gritted his teeth.
“She might be involved, but not through her own fault. They think she stole something from them.”
Rhino’s sword jerked up off the floor, shuddered, and then planted itself again, as if he fought it back down.
“Why are you making this so hard for me, Clay? You’re supposed to be on my side.”
Anger straightened Clay’s back. “I’m on my client’s side,” he snapped. “I paid my debt to you many times over. You had a decade of my life.”
“Not me. I don’t fight for myself, Clay, as you know. Have you lost sight of the bigger picture? This girl is a diversion, a waste of time. She could get my soldiers wounded or killed for no reason. I have shed more blood today than since the Last Great War. And this isn’t even important! What do I care about what some silly girl stole? If I knew where she was, why wouldn’t I give her to them? I’m fighting for a world!”
“That’s the point, Rhino,” Clay said. “That’s why I left. A world is made up of people. She’s not a soldier. All she tried to do was help her people, and the Earth gods want to kill her for it.”
“Gods?” Snake asked, with exaggerated dismay. “Are you saying the people attacking us are gods?”
Clay worked to keep his voice level. “I don’t know what they are. They call themselves that, and they do have power of some sort, but they’re not all-powerful or all-seeing. And one thing I’ll tell you, whether you want to hear it or not: I’m not going to let them have her. Not while I’m alive.” A memory seared his vision, Sarah’s body, small and burned, nestled in the ash. Not again.
“Who says you’ll have a choice?” Rhino’s sword lifted and pointed at Clay’s chest. “I can lock you up in the cellars until it’s over and there’s nothing you’d be able to do about it.”
“You know that’s not true,” Clay said softly.
The tension hung in the air, each heartbeat passing slowly. Clay’s fingers tingled. This time, if Rhino came at him, he wouldn’t just take it.
Snake chuckled. “They want Clay, too.”
“What?” Rhino snarled.
“The big horned one was ranting about it the last time I looked over the castle wall. Apparently Clay really pissed him off. He wants us to hand over Clay, the girl, and something he called the Golden Rib. Oh—the white-furred lady was there, too.”
“She’s still alive?”
“Apparently next time you need to make a bigger hole in her.”
Rhino had wounded Latine? Not only that but thought he’d put her down for good? Rhino was a good judge of injuries, having inflicted enough, so he must have cut her pretty badly. Which meant a nine-foot cat woman with semi-divine powers took a lot of killing.
Snake’s lips curved as he glanced at Clay. “They might go away if we hand him over.”
“They won’t,” Clay said. “They hate all humans.”
“So you say. I vote to try it.”
“Out, Snake,” Rhino ordered.
Snake’s serpentine hair rose. “But—”
“Now!”
He grimaced and left.
The room was silent, other than a slight buzz in Clay’s ears. Rhino had slammed Clay into the door pretty hard. But he kept his attention fixed on Rhino. The Boss was coming to a decision and undoubtedly one option for him was to take Clay down before he expected it. Rhino didn’t like to put things off once he’d decided they were necessary. If he attacked, it would be sudden, hard, and fast. Rhino stared at the blade in his hands. Clay shifted his weight to the balls of his feet.
“Why’d you leave?”
Clay hesitated. The question was unexpected. It wasn’t the time and place he’d have chosen for this conversation. But it was better than being hacked at by a six-foot sword.
“You changed,” he said slowly. “You lost perspective. You can’t kill innocent people if they get in your way.”
“You know they’re going to die anyway.” Rhino’s eyes stayed fixed on his blade. “They just don’t know it yet. You, of all people, have to understand that.”
“Why? Because I lost someone? That doesn’t mean I killed someone who didn’t deserve it.”
“Oh no?”
Clay shook his head. “Never intentionally. I trusted you, Rhino. Probably more than I should have. But now you’re twisted by your obsession. Humanity isn’t at war anymore. Let it go. That’s the past.”
“No. It’s the future!” Rhino surged toward Clay.
Clay’s hand snapped to the dagger at his back, fingers around its hilt, but Rhino stopped as fast as he’d started. He stood maybe two feet away, hunched, steam curling out of his nostrils.
“When did we first meet?”
“In that bar,” Clay said. “My first day in StoneDragon. Makko didn’t like it much.”
“No.”
“What?”
“No, that’s not right. We met four years before that. On my last day of the Great War.”
Clay’s mouth opened, but no words came out. Was Rhino joking? Clay had never been to the Last Great War. He looked at Rhino’s eyes. No. The huge Boss was serious as death.
“You met Clay during the war?” Rose looked at Rhino as if wondering if he was delusional.
The Boss had lost a lot of blood. But his eyes were sharper than when they’d first arrived, his stance straighter. He
looked better with each minute that passed, not worse, as if his body were doing a better job repairing itself than Doc Cullen could—which actually wouldn’t surprise Clay much. He wasn’t a big fan of the doctor’s.
Rose shook her head. “But… that’s impossible.”
“Is it? There are few things I remember better in this life. I thought it was the end of all things. And then this man appeared. He looked like Clay, although maybe with more grey in his hair. I couldn’t swear to that. But he held two things: a plastic red pistol and the hand of a small tear-streaked girl. He gave me both.”
Rose shrank back, her face draining of color. “I…” She stared at Rhino.
Her gaze moved to Clay, as if pulled by an invisible magnet. Confusion shone in her eyes, along with pain and a sharp unexpected hope.
It was Clay’s turn to feel like shrinking back, although he kept his expression flat. Was Rhino telling the truth? The large warrior generally did unless it served him otherwise. But what did he have to gain here from lying? So maybe Clay had met Rhino in some alternate time and given him Rose. It was obviously possible, given they rode a time-traveling city, but why? And if so, how were they connected?
Rhino returned his gaze to Clay. “The man with the red pistol led me to the Wall and StoneDragon. He saved my life and gave me Rose.” Muscles in his forearm flexed as he squeezed the sword hilt. “He told me to prepare for the Last Great War, that I would see it one last time before I died. He said humanity depended on me.” The sword lifted. “I believed him.” Ice and fury filled Rhino’s voice. “And I will do what he asked of me, what you asked of me, even if it’s over your own cooling body. Because I don’t owe my loyalty to you but to the person who saved me on that bloody day. And I’ve given you too many chances already.”
Rhino stepped closer, his eyes burning as he stared at Clay.
“You need to leave. And if you get in my way again, if I even see you before this battle ends, I will hammer you down, wrap you in chains, and deliver you to these Earth gods myself. Believe it, Clay. I’ve had enough.”
Rhino strode to the door, the blade loose in his hand, no longer a crutch. And the floor was dry. The bloody footprints were gone.
When he reached the doorframe, he looked back, crimson gleaming in his eyes. His gaze flicked toward the hidden door in the corner of the room, then returned to Clay.
“Did I ever tell you about how the army made me what I am?”
Clay shook his head.
“It was torture. Literally. And the one who led it would look very familiar to you.”
The door slammed shut behind Rhino.
Clay looked toward the hidden room. Rhino had emphasized it deliberately, Clay was sure. With slow steps, dreading what he’d find, he moved forward and wrapped his fingers around the release. Pulled.
Behind the door was a small featureless room. The walls and floor were made of mahogany-stained oak. A black iron pedestal rested in its center. The only other piece of furniture was a straight-backed chair, with loops of rope securing its occupant. The prisoner wore a worn leather jacket, and dark curls hung over his forehead. Clay’s heart froze.
The head lifted, revealing eyes older than they should be.
Clay gripped the doorframe as relief weakened his limbs.
“JP.”
26
What Did It Mean?
Rose’s world had been uprooted, torn to pieces, and then reshaped in front of her, with new pieces, new cracks, and new questions. She’d always hung on any word Rhino uttered about her past. But those had been grudgingly few, scraps amidst the broader feast of questions. He’d told her that she was from the Last Great War. He’d told her she was not his daughter, but he’d promised to look after her. And he’d told her that she needed to know how to fight because war was coming. But nothing else.
And Clay, a man she’d respected, emulated, and even secretly had a crush on, had been the one who’d given her to Rhino. Her stomach knotted. Did that mean he was her father? A disquieting thought. Another relative? Or simply a Good Samaritan, with no other connection? She stared at his features as they strode down the corridor but could see no resemblance. Her nose and chin were subtle, whereas his were all hard lines and angles. But fathers had daughters who didn’t look like them all the time.
“I have no idea,” he said.
“What?”
“You’re staring. I have no idea what Rhino was talking about. I’ve never been to the Last Great War.”
So he knew no more than her. Which didn’t mean Rhino was lying, just that it might not have happened yet. Fear and longing tangled her insides. How she wanted to have a real family, a past, beyond her ill-defined relationship with Rhino.
Clay didn’t want to hear any of that, she could tell. His shoulders were hunched. She looked away.
“We need to get out of here,” she said.
“I don’t think JP can go faster.”
JP was walking as if half-asleep, his eyes glazed and his hands sliding up and down his wrists. He stumbled frequently.
The castle walls shuddered, releasing chunks of masonry. JP frowned and glanced up. Then he looked at Clay, as if the vibrations had shaken JP out of his trance. Despair filled his gaze.
“He knows,” he said. “He knows what I am.”
Rose frowned. “Who knows? And what are you exactly?” He looked normal enough to her, although shaken by his capture.
“Rhino knows,” Clay said, “that JP was once a tool in the Last War.”
Ah. Rose knew the fascination Rhino had for any potential weapon, especially one from higher technology Shifts. While Rhino didn’t keep prisoners—that Rose knew of anyway—she was still surprised he’d let JP go so easily, if that was the case.
“Never again,” JP muttered. He shivered.
The walls shook again, a deep boom rolling through the corridor.
Rose tensed. “What’s that?”
“The trees,” Clay said. “We’re running out of time.”
“This way,” she said. Returning to the barber shop seemed the safest bet. Not that she planned on going with them, necessarily, but she felt obligated to get them to safety. Especially Clay. Knowing he was tied to her past, she felt an almost frantic need to keep him safe. He was capable, but anyone could get themselves killed, and he had a bad habit of throwing himself into the hottest part of a fight.
They made it only a few steps down the new corridor, however, before a crack brought them to a stop, echoing from the walls. A dark jag wound its way across the floor. With a snap, the marble flagstones heaved up, and the stone ceiling buckled down.
“Back,” Clay barked, his arm stretching out to push the other two back.
Rose took a double step back so his arm wasn’t interfering with her movements, even as her crossbow slid into her hands. She aimed at the dust rolling slowly out of the new holes. As it cleared, she could make out a green fibrous texture through the holes, as if a great root had circled the tunnel and squeezed.
From a crack, a body dropped, chittering. It was lean, grey, and muscled, its eyes bright with excitement. A mongoose warrior carrying a sword. It took a step, then died, Rose’s bolt sprouting in its eye.
“Other way,” she snapped. “Let’s go!”
She turned and ran, drawing another bolt from the quiver under the cape. Behind her, she heard the thump of a second body dropping out of the hole. Their attackers had found a way in.
She raced through the stone hallways, examining her options as she did. They weren’t many. Most of the castle’s obvious exits were being assaulted, as she’d told Clay. The path to the basement was blocked, unless they took a circuitous route. And the sounds echoing through the castle, of yells and steel, suggested that wouldn’t be an easy proposition.
They had another option, though. A gamble, but what wasn’t at this point?
“Up,” she gasped, ducking sideways and entering a small opening in the wall, leading to a set of steep spiral stairs. The sound
of their breath echoed in the close space, so loud she couldn’t tell if they were still being pursued.
She scrambled up, higher and higher, the stairs winding in a tight circle, an occasional flash of light on her right announcing a window.
“Wait!” JP called.
Rose spun, crossbow raised, thinking the Earth warriors had caught them, but she saw no battle beneath her. Just Clay and JP, stopped by a small arched window.
“Look,” JP said, his voice low.
Rose squeezed beside them so she could see through the narrow opening as well. They looked out over the main road to the castle, which was teeming with Earth warriors. As she’d said, none of the easy routes in and out of the castle remained open. But that wasn’t what caught her attention.
Moving ponderously up the pathway, Earth warriors parting on either side, was a great tree. Flame coursed up its mass, its light almost eclipsing the light of the Wall. Flames chewed its branches so only the thickest remained, and its trunk glowed in chunks like red-hot charcoal. But the tree moved with the unstoppable momentum of an ancient dinosaur. It stumbled sideways, demolishing a line of buildings in a flash of sparks and flame, and then righted itself.
“Apparently Horan doesn’t like to waste firewood,” Clay murmured.
Rose shot him a confused look and then stared back at the tree, feeling her fingers tingle. She rubbed them. Would a thing like that even notice a crossbow bolt? “What in hell have you gotten us into?”
“They can’t really be gods, can they, JP?” Clay asked quietly.
Why ask the teenager? Rose wondered. But JP looked serious, as if considering the question.
“You believe in vampires,” he said finally.
“Not the same thing,” Clay objected. “That’s a disease. A creation of the Last Great War.”
JP nodded. “Given the Enemy’s influence over metals, they could jam a gun by looking at it, so low tech was more valuable than high. Geneticists used myths as inspiration for creating a pile of bio-engineered warriors. They didn’t think about the consequences if any of those warriors survived—or maybe they were just too desperate to care. But now you have remnants of those experiments in StoneDragon, traveling to earlier times. There’s nothing stopping them from leaving the city.”
