Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle - eARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  Gutteral howls—more like animal sounds than German—echoed outside.

  There was a burst of static inside his ear that made him wince. Then “—think you got his attention.”

  John tried to keep walking, but his legs refused to carry him anymore. The world spun again, and he slumped to the floor hard.

  “You really gonna let him talk about your mother like that? I’m pretty sure she didn’t service Croatian troops…at least not in that capacity.” Her tone changed. “JM. Johnny! Talk to me! Come on, snap out of it! Get moving! He’s still up, and he’s still coming! If you don’t get back in the game he’s gonna squash you like a cockroach!”

  John didn’t have any strength left to bother answering Vickie; he barely had enough to roll onto his back. The door that he’d locked on the barn exploded inwards; Ubermensch stepped through, looking as furious as ever. He was also bleeding from the ears and nose; a side effect from his gizmo going berserk, probably.

  “Dammit Johnny, talk to me! Zhar-ptica is about five minutes out!”

  Ubermensch looked down at him, and smiled. “Amerikan schweinhund. You have no stamina. Now you are a dead man.” The Thulian lifted one of his armored boots, savoring the moment before he crushed the life out of John.

  Despite feeling like he’d dug his way out of hell with a spork—a plastic spork at that—the adrenalin running through his system and his enhancements allowed him to see things happening in “stretched time.”

  This gave him enough time to remember Perun, and that battle in Atlanta. The old man shouting as he used his powers to save his teammates, his comrades. It was the first time that John had met the man, and the first time he had fought Ubermensch. At this exact moment, the two incidences seemed identical for some reason. John’s mental barriers fell, and his fire welled up inside of him until it shot forth, his arms reaching out almost of their own accord, as if to embrace a loved one. The beam was gigantic, encompassing Ubermensch’s huge body. It blasted through the roof of the barn, shining through the darkening sky like a demonic spotlight. John’s mind, still operating somehow, idly worried about whether some unlucky flock of birds or an airliner might be in the way.

  The beam shut off unexpectedly, leaving John gasping. The barn was completely ablaze, now; the neat hole cut into the roof had quickly caught, and with the cotton lint and dust everywhere, and the aged, dry wood, the building was basically tinder waiting for a spark.

  John summoned more strength, willing more than commanding his limbs to do his bidding. Slowly, he rolled onto his belly. His arms came up in front of his face, and he pushed himself off the ground and onto his knees. Gasping for breath, he came up into a kneel, turning painfully to look where Ubermensch had been.

  The Thulian was lying on his back, groaning weakly. The elaborate set of armor had been mostly blasted off; what was left was melted unevenly to his hide. A glob had cooled over his eyes, blinding him at least temporarily.

  Finish it.

  John stood over Ubermensch, their positions from seconds before reversed. He hated Ubermensch, hated everything that the man and his fellows stood for. The Thulians were malignant, an infectious sort of evil and alien. The hate rose like lava inside him, flowing through him and powering him just as much as his blood did for his enhancements. It felt as hot as the fires raging around them, seemed to take life and strength from the blaze. John felt the sweat mixing with his blood, the ashes, and the dirt. When he’d killed before, it’d often been impersonal; necessary, and that meant different things depending on the situation.

  This was something he wanted. He wanted to destroy this man, this travesty of human, this monster, utterly. To wipe him clean from the world and leave no mark of his passing. The fires came back to John; his restraint was not there, because he didn’t want it to be. No familiar twinge of pain. The fires boiled through him, ready to be loosed and to do their work—

  —and then they died. John felt as if he was suddenly plunged into darkness, into the depths of an Arctic ocean, and as if he was sinking into it forever. With a strangled gasp, he fell backwards, helpless and powerless. Vaguely, he saw Ubermensch’s aide, the woman from the car, running to help carry the Thulian away. He felt arms encircling him soon after, hooking under his own and dragging him. Everything was burning; the barn, the ground, the stars were even blazing. The world was wreathed in fire for John.

  Someone…a voice he knew…was yelling in Russian in his ear. Vickie responded in the same language. He heard his name, but couldn’t seem to make his mouth work. He was just…tired. So tired. It seemed a good time to sleep.

  * * *

  “We are having problem.”

  Red Saviour sat on the edge of her desk, arms folded, looking down at John. Untermensch leaned against the wall behind her, arms similarly folded.

  John had been through some dress-downs in the past, and this debriefing was sure feeling like it would shape up to be an epic one.

  “Problem is being, Comrade Murdock, that you were to be landing at different airport altogether from your destination, and were rerouted.”

  It was Untermensch’s turn. “So how is it that the fascista swine are meeting you when you land?”

  “Permission to speak?” John kept his tone neutral and respectful.

  Saviour nodded. “Do not be thinking is little recluse magician. She is never leaving apartment except for physical training and did not know any sooner than you.”

  “Naw, Vic’s straight. But still, somebody somewhere f—erm, messed this one up. They had that joint set up proper, with Ubermensch running the show.”

  “As in trap?” Untermensch’s eyes narrowed.

  “Sure felt like one. Reb stooge for a hostage, cars an’ guards waiting. The fact that the location was one that we were already gonna check out due to new intel, an’ the fact that the entire site was scrubbed of anythin’ useful ’cept for bodies before I got there…it all seems to point towards a trap.”

  “Hrrrmm.” Saviour considered this. “So…not so much that you were intercepted, but that we were lured there from beginning?”

  “Y’all tell me. Where’d the intel come from? The warehouse my team hit, but it got passed through Marconi an’ Tesla. I’d start from there, see what they’ve gotta say ’bout this. See if it was properly vetted.” He shifted uncomfortably. He was still extremely sore from the fight; Jadwiga had initially patched him up when he came into HQ, and given him enough stims and painkillers to allow him to get through the debriefing and remain clear-headed.

  Saviour nodded again. “That is being our job. Yours is to be telling us everything, from beginning. You land at airport. Da?”

  “Roger that, Commissar.” John went through all of the details, from landing, the Thulian flunky contacting him, the ride and the fun that entailed, all the way through to the fight and his collapse. The last part troubled him; he was definitely not in fighting trim. Despite that uneasiness, he didn’t hold back any pertinent information.

  Saviour and Unter, for all their faults, were good strategists. And once they had made up their minds that the “fault,” if fault there was, lay elsewhere, the debriefing evolved into only that. But it was intense. And detailed. They questioned his reasoning behind every move he had made. Why had he not kept Vickie more informed? Why had he broken the guard’s arm? Why had he not fled?

  It wasn’t any worse than he had expected; and that was good. They needed this information to figure out where things could be improved in the future. The Thulians were definitely playing the game in a new way, and everyone had to try to stay a step ahead of them. The world couldn’t afford to react to another Invasion.

  Unter tapped his finger on his chin when John was done. “One thing I fail to see. This…does not fit the pattern. It is not blitzkrieg. It is also not infiltration. It is not selective assassination. Why is it like…a personal challenge? Armies do not send challengers.”

  “Permission to speak freely?”

  “Da, da.” Unter waved
at him,

  “Y’got it nailed already, Georgi. This ‘Ubermensch’ has a hard-on for me.” John shrugged. “He was pissed off from when we first saw him here in Atlanta. Got angrier the more I taunted him. An’ he finally snapped when I mentioned the Commissar.”

  “Borzhe moi. This is making no sense…” Saviour began. But Georgi interrupted her.

  “Is making old sense, Natalya. Is like first days of Great War, when metas dueled while armies fought below or around them, like idiot knights. Is exactly like old days. You think in logic. This has no logic.” Georgi rubbed his temples. “Be asking your father, or Boryets. Ask them what it felt like.” He turned his attention back to John. “Would you say, obsessed, Comrade Murdock?”

  “I would, comrade. I wouldn’t go s’far as to say it was like a couple of gladiators; I’m not that grandiose. But he certainly wanted to make a moment of separatin’ my head from my shoulders.”

  “Could to be weakness we can exploit.”

  John nodded. Live bait was always the best sort of bait. If they could take advantage of Ubermensch’s seeming incomprehensible desire to defeat John—because the Commissar was too important, in the scheme of things—then they might be able to take him down for good. Ubermensch was a big name for the Thulians, back in the “Great Patriotic War.” Good things could only come from his heir-apparent no longer being around to bolster their forces and their morale.

  “We will be discussing this. You may go. I need not warn you not to be making gossip?” Saviour raised an eyebrow at him. John nodded, saluted, and turned on his heel to leave. The Commissar spoke just as he was in the doorway. “Oh, and you are to be going to Jadwiga directly. This business of power going with no warning…not good. You may still be suffering from injury.”

  “Will do, Commissar.”

  * * *

  It seemed that the past year’s theme was scars; John had been collecting new and interesting ones at a prodigious rate since the Kriegers had decided to try to burn down the world. Amazingly, things were holding together, if barely.

  Still, despite the demonstrated resilience of the human spirit, the attack from the Thulians had left marks on everyone. Scars of the soul, the heart, the body.

  Scars. That’s what my life has boiled down to. John held up his left hand to examine it as he took another swig of beer from the perspiring bottle in his hand. The asymmetric lines covering his entire body save for his face were the only outward evidence—save for his tattoo—that he had been part of the Program. But, even without the scars from the surgeries, he still bore its marks. Just like the people he was now helping to watch over.

  “You are melancholy.” He should be used to the way Sera just appeared by now, but maybe the last twenty-four hours had made him jumpy. It’s not every day that you almost get stomped into a puddle by a Nazi giant. She had alighted on the roof just in his blind spot; when he pivoted so fast he almost lost his balance; she was right there in his shadow, probably as close as she’d ever gotten to him. Well, except for that stolen kiss.

  “Just thinkin’ ’bout things a little too hard, Sera. Ain’t nothin’ that some rest won’t cure.”

  “Rest, which you never allow yourself.” She looked very alien tonight. There was nothing soft about her; she was all hard edges and fire. He got the peculiar feeling that something had happened. He didn’t like it, but figured he’d let the issue lay for the moment.

  “Ne’er any for the wicked, right?”

  “There are many more wicked than you, who sleep well of a night.” Definitely, she was angry. Not at him, but…angry.

  “Yeah, well, there’s more of them than there are of us, so I’m forced to pull the occasional double.” He took another sip of his beer, thought for a moment, and decided to chance the question. “Y’already know my problems. What’s on yer mind, angel?”

  “Frustration. It is a common human feeling, I am told.” Abruptly, the fire dimmed, the hard edges softened. Her voice lost the otherworldly quality. “Therefore I should do better at controlling it. This half-and-half life, spirit and material…confuses me, at times. And you should rest. What happened?”

  “I’ll rest when I’m dead; ought to be plenty of time for it, then.” He gazed off towards the city. “As for what happened, well, I got in a fight with a—”

  John was interrupted when the door to the HQ’s roof opened; it was Untermensch with a pack of cigarettes in his hand.

  “Apologies, comrade. I did not mean to interrupt.” He picked a quiet corner opposite from John and lit up. When John turned back to where Sera had bee, he found the space empty.

  “Catch y’later, Sera,” he muttered under his breath.

  Heaven Beside You

  Cody Martin and Mercedes Lackey

  Only the Commissar and a few choice people—of whom I was one—knew that Fei Li had gone off the reservation.

  None of us knew quite how far…

  The General arrived at Verdigris’ office at the appointed time, dressed in conservative business attire. The snake had recommended it after Shen Xue had started to turn heads and become the topic of gossip in reception. The General did not care for the opinions of lesser men; there was only one purpose that tied him to Dominic Verdigris, and that was the destruction of the Thulians at all cost. Still, if Verdigris believed that he would arouse less suspicion and garner less attention by dressing in such a deplorable fashion, he would suffer it. Though it did itch terribly compared to the silks from his homeland that he normally wore. Was there such a thing as a silk suit?

  The General pushed through the double doors to Verdigris’ office, striding toward his desk confidently. Khanjar was by his side, as always, and looking less than pleased to see him, as always.

  “Thank you for gracing us with your presence, General. You’re ever a vision for these poor eyes, especially in that lovely suit! Would you care for some tea, perhaps something stronger?” He gestured towards an amply stocked bar to the left of the desk, all of the libations in tasteful crystal decanters. Perception and what it accomplished meant a lot to this fiend.

  “What do you require of me now, brute?” The General was in no mood for pleasantries. Normally, he encouraged formality and passing time with honored persons before getting to the heart of whatever matter was at hand. But Verdigris was no honored person to him.

  Verdigris sighed theatrically. “Straight to business as usual, I see. If nothing else, you are admirably consistent, General. Which is precisely why I need you for this next task. In fact, it’s safe to say that it is the reason why I brought you into our little cabal.” He gestured to a chair in front of the desk. “Please, take a seat while I brief you on your latest target.” The General did as asked, crossing his legs demurely and waiting with restrained impatience. He always felt as if he needed a bath after dealing with this man. A screen rose from the edge of the desk, oriented towards him and began following his sight line.

  “We’ve identified a particular metahuman that we believe is of vital importance to the war effort. At first it was thought that there were a group of metahumans with similar powers operating in concert during the Invasion, thwarting some of the Krieger forces. Since that time we’ve revised that hypothesis in favor of one singularly powerful metahuman. In addition to the obvious abilities demonstrated in these videos,” he paused momentarily as scenes of a single fiery entity in different locales was shown decimating entire groups of Thulians single-handedly, with swords and spears of fire along with its bare hands, “we also have a strong reason to suspect that this metahuman is precognitive, in a way that is unmatched by those metahumans so far known to have that sort of power.” He spread his hands wide. “It’s obvious how that last bit there could be of tremendous use to us; anticipating the Kriegers with one hundred percent accuracy, knowing where and when to strike at them…it could help finish the war in a week. Overnight, even.”

  The General’s interest was honestly piqued, now. To know the outcomes of battles before they happened,
to see the moves and countermoves of an enemy perfectly…it was every battle commander’s dream. He turned his eyes to look into Verdigris’. “If this being is able to see the future, will it not be able to see me coming and destroy me?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to have some sort of ‘celestial’ abilities yourself?” he countered, and sat back with folded arms. “This would be the time for you to prove that.” The General knew that he didn’t believe in magic; he always saw it as “science through unknown means,” whatever that meant. The General knew better. There were eldritch forces that moved the world, for good or for ill, with a power that few understood. The General’s being and blade were proof of that.

  “I will find this being, and bring it into my service.”

  “Surely you mean our service, my dear?” The snake kept the same bemused smile on his face, but his eyes had changed ever so subtly. Shen Xue could almost hear the cogs and wheels working behind those cold green eyes of his.

  “Of course. I misspoke.”

  Verdigris bored into Shen Xue with a stare for half of a heartbeat before he rocked back in his chair, the cold look in his eyes gone once more. “Good. You’ll have all of the resources you need at your disposal for this task. It means that much to all of us, to the war effort, General. Once we have this ‘Seraphym’ in our custody, we can find out what it can really do, and force it to operate in our favor instead of at its own whim.” He retrieved a large manila folder from a drawer in his desk, pushing it towards the General. “Everything else you need to know is in there.”

  The General stood from his seat after grabbing the folder. “Understood.” The Seraphym? Hmm. There had been one appearance of the creature by that name at the door of the CCCP HQ; Shen Xue’s entire being had rung like a bell in the proximity of its presence. Verdigris was a fool. The creature was far more powerful than he guessed.

  But perhaps a wise fool. No matter how powerful this creature was, no matter what magic formed the foundation of its powers, Shen Xue carried Jade Emperor’s Whisper, the sword formed for the Jade Emperor Himself, and even the most powerful magician in the world trembled before the might of the Supreme Ruler of Heaven’s power.