Collision Course

by Helena Maeve

  “The subway!” Neil pointed to a sign marked ‘M’ half a block down. Eve could have kissed him. She nearly did, but that would’ve involved stopping their frantic, haphazard run and she wasn’t in any rush to risk it.

  A hundred feet. Seventy. She struck the pavement with her boots, claws jamming a little deeper into the leather with each step. It would’ve been simpler to run in bare feet, but there was no time to stop and rethink her attire. Neil’s hand started to sweat in hers, his syncopated breaths loud in her ears. He stumbled about twenty feet from the steps, taking Eve down with him.

  It was the second time she’d found herself becoming intimately acquainted with dusty Parisian sidewalks. She promised herself there wouldn’t be a third.

  Neil picked himself up again, stumbling. It took Eve a moment to realize he was favoring his left leg over the right and no time at all to realize he must have twisted his ankle. It was Murphy’s law in action. Just make sure it doesn’t encounter Newton’s principles of gravitational attraction and you’ll be fine.

  “Come on, big guy,” Eve said, sliding an arm under his shoulders. “You’re my ticket out of this mess. Let’s go.” For such a skinny guy, Neil was heavier than he looked, much like his younger brother. “Felix will be so pissed off he missed the end of the world…”

  Neil huffed out a laugh, his breath stirring the loose curls that had slipped free from her ponytail. So much for NASA predicting the spread of destruction on A-Day.

  “Think that means the States got the long end of the stick for once?”

  It was a nice thought, but Neil greeted it with a shake of the head as he steadied himself against a tiled wall.

  “Depends how the asteroid hit us. Could be a spray of destruction all across the Western hemisphere… Could be just Western Europe and the Atlantic.”

  Eve rolled her eyes. “You just enjoy being a stick in the mud, don’t you?” It was either forced levity and bad jokes or giving in to panic. The awful, subsonic zing of asteroid flakes striking buildings overhead was hard to ignore. “We should go deeper. Find somewhere to wait out the storm—”

  Someone else was in the tunnel with them.

  Eve spun around, expecting a threat. She had been ready for a good, honest fight for a few hours now, but Paris let her down.

  It was only a girl, holding up her hands in front of her in a sign of surrender. There was just enough light spilling down from the surface and the emergency lights marking the exits for Eve to make out her features.

  The redhead smiled, sallow cheeks filling up as she peeled back her lips. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  Eve wouldn’t have recognized her face, but she’d never been able to put that timid voice behind her. The last time she had seen the oracle, she had been nineteen and too naïve to know any better.

  The woman hadn’t aged a day.

  * * * *

  “You remember me, don’t you?” she asked, her pale eyes staring blindly ahead into the shadows.

  “Unfortunately,” Eve said. Neil was a heavy burden between them, weighing on their shoulders with heavy grunts as the oracle led them deeper and deeper into the rabbit’s warren of the subway station. “You’re sure there are no more trains?”

  “Oh, yes. There haven’t been any trains for months. It’s very quiet. I would have thought you of all people could hear the silence…”

  Eve could hear the asteroid shower overhead and taste the fine rain of plaster dust that drizzled onto their heads whenever a piece of debris struck too close. She didn’t want to think about what was going on above. It was bad enough that the ten days she’d thought she had before her had vanished in an eye-blink. She wasn’t ready to face what came after the end of the world. Whenever she closed her eyes and tried to imagine it, all she could come up with were motorcycle-riding leather daddies with crazy eyes and an appalling lack of personal hygiene.

  The silence between the awful, juddering asteroid-strikes was even harder to bear. Eve cleared her throat. “Long way to fall from the backroom of Malachi’s Bar and Tavern…”

  For a soothsayer who could see the future, the oracle seemed amazed that Eve would find her circumstances unusual. “My lord and master brought me here. He said to wait and I have. I knew he would have me waiting for a reason.”

  “And what reason is that?”

  The woman tittered. “You, of course. I was waiting for you.”

  “What for?” Neil asked. “We weren’t supposed to be here today. Or—ever.” He was right. Their meeting at the museum had been purely accidental. One day later and Eve would’ve been free to enjoy her premature retirement. Neil could’ve disposed of his poltergeist without a second thought. Their paths had diverged a long, long time ago. None of this was meant to be.

  “Destiny is not a straight line,” said the oracle meditatively. “There are tangles in the yarn.”

  “Oh, good, I almost forgot how much I despised your New Age bullshit,” Eve sighed. “Thanks for reminding me.” She couldn’t keep vitriol out of her voice any more than she could pretend to be unaffected by their present circumstances. She hadn’t been kidding when she’d told Neil she didn’t like being underground. “Shouldn’t you be healing?” she muttered, meaning the question for Neil’s ears only. It was no use—without the hiss and whistle of trains accelerating through the darkened tunnels beneath the city there was no whisper that wouldn’t echo under the cavernous arches.

  “I should,” Neil confirmed, straining with every step. With the night goggles on, he looked more machine than human. It didn’t help to know that both were fallible.

  Like Felix. What had happened to him was happening to Neil now. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

  “Here we are,” the oracle announced, though Eve could see nothing in the shadows that might suggest they had reached anything closer to a hidden lair.

  “Here where?”

  Sooner than answer, the oracle shifted Neil’s arm from around her shoulders and danced away into the pitch-black darkness without another word.

  “Hey, lady!” Eve gritted her teeth, staggering under Neil’s weight.

  She heard a metallic click in the darkness and, half a second later, blinked in the timid glare of a candle. Its flame trembled, tilting this way and that as the oracle moved to light the wick of a tall taper beside it. “My lord and master is much like you,” said the oracle. “He does not like the dark.”

  Eve heaved a breath. “Lucky him. Can I set him down somewhere?” There was a mattress in an alcove and a copper washbasin with a rag. Not exactly the Ritz, but safer by half than the devastation that likely awaited them above ground.

  With the other woman’s help, they got Neil to the mattress where he collapsed with a ponderous groan. Eve watched him peel the goggles off his brow. The dents left in the skin at his temple were just fine enough to look like scars. If he couldn’t heal himself, did that also mean that his other talents were equally sapped? Don’t think about that now. She had come this far on faith alone. She could go a little farther for Neil’s sake.

  Their eyes met over the candle flame, his gaze liquid and bright. Eve couldn’t help but think of the creature that had sent her careering out of the world she knew and into oblivion.

  Well, into the heart of Paris.

  “His ankle needs to be set.”

  “What?” Eve blinked at the oracle’s blithe assertion. “How do you know?” Silly question.

  “He will need painkillers. I know where—”

  “Hell, no. You’re not leaving us down here alone.”

  The oracle paid her no heed. “He can block out the pain only for so long. You will help him. I will try to be quick.” And she rose before Eve could stop her, dancing out of reach on bare feet made dark with grime and soot. She picked her way out through the shadows with ease, arms outstretched and steps carefully skimming the ground before she moved.

  Before the shadows swallowed her whole, she almost looked angelic. Almost. Eve remembered how she had suff
ered at the Briars because the oracle had advised her to heed her packmaster. Any flattery converted quickly into quiet loathing.

  “I must admit, this isn’t the Paris I wanted to show you,” Neil said, his voice soft and a little echo-y as he settled his back against the wall.

  It was enough to bring Eve firmly back into the present. “You wanted to show me Paris?” When had that ever been possible?

  When they had met, Neil had been firmly under his parents’ thumb. By the time Eve had been ordered to follow the pack to the Briars Examination and Research Facility, it had been clear that they had no future whatsoever. And yet Neil nodded, albeit a little absent-mindedly. “I thought about it when I was in Truro. That’s in—”

  “Cornwall,” Eve interjected. “Yeah, I know.” He wasn’t the only one who had thought of the future. Staring at a map had been Eve’s sole way to project herself out of the predicament of a relationship that couldn’t possibly lead anywhere. She had studied the names of towns and counties, rivers and mountains until she could remember them by heart. Later, in the gray-walled solitary cells at the Briars, she had recited each one, made ditties and songs to keep herself from going crazy.

  “Right. I thought about flying you over. I had this whole—intricate plan about springing you out of the Briars and taking you out of the country.” Neil smiled and shook his head. “There’s a hotel not far from here, at the Invalides. I’ve never been, but I heard it’s nice.”

  “Neil, the whole city is empty. We could probably sleep in the President’s bed and nobody would notice.” If the Elysée was still standing, which Eve wouldn’t bet on.

  “So what you’re saying is I should have aimed higher?” Neil quipped.

  Considering that when he’d been making his plans the odds of their even meeting again had been scarce, that wasn’t what Eve was saying. “Nothing wrong with dreaming big,” she teased, bumping her shoulder against his.

  She felt shaken and out of her depth. The whole world was literally crumbling around them and somehow they had found themselves once again at the mercy of a trumped up fortune-teller. “I don’t like this… Any of it. First the guy at the factory, now her? Something’s very wrong here.”

  “I know,” Neil echoed. In the candlelight, his eyes seemed shadowed, cheeks sunken in like he was wasting away right under her nose.

  Eve hooked a hand around his wrist and folded their fingers together. “We’ll figure it out. When she gets back, I’ll… I don’t know, growl at her until she talks?”

  She felt rather than heard laughter shake free of Neil’s chest. “That usually works for you, does it?”

  “I got my things back, didn’t I? And don’t say your brother is just small potatoes! He did manage to snare me once.” That he wouldn’t manage it a second time was another story. Her pride was plenty bruised.

  Neil gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. “It’s not so unusual for a precog to have some scrying ability… She probably felt us when we were bumbling about. It wouldn’t have been hard, especially in an empty city.”

  “I thought you’ve got wards giving you anonymity and I’ve got my magic coin?”

  “She’s a precog first,” Neil recalled. “I’d have to check if one ability can affect the other… But I left my grimoires at home. Along with all my other toys.”

  Eve cracked a smile. “I’ve heard better excuses.” A warlock’s true power lay in his knowledge, not in the abilities he was born with. There was no point in pretending that Neil wasn’t a fish out of water without his vast library at his fingertips, but distracting him from his current predicament seemed like a kindness. Eve wished someone had been around to do it for her back at the Briars. She wished she’d never gone there in the first place.

  “Like what?”

  “Like… I’m sorry I couldn’t come to Paris with you, but I was busy being poked and prodded by doctors with sharp scalpels?” That wasn’t funny. She grimaced. “Sorry, my sense of humor is a little—”

  Whatever it was, the apology died on her tongue, replaced by the warm, familiar pressure of Neil’s lips against hers. He kissed her chastely, unhurriedly, as if they weren’t huddled in a subway tunnel and the world wasn’t ending above their heads.

  Eve was surging into the kiss, cupping his cheeks in her hands. “This is so wrong,” she gasped between kisses. “So very wrong. Shouldn’t be doing this again, should—should we?”

  Neil hummed his agreement as he licked into her mouth and scraped his bottom teeth against her soft lip. He didn’t stop. Eve didn’t want him to. There were too many unknowns, but this at least was absolutely certain. She knew the shape of Neil’s hands so well that by the time she felt him circle her shoulders, she was already tilting into his touch, pulling at his shirtfront.

  “Here?” Neil panted.

  Eve pulled back long enough to see his flushed cheeks, his kiss-swollen lips. To hell with should and shouldn’t. “Here,” she growled and pulled him on top of her. His pained groan was lost inside her mouth as their bodies slotted neatly together.

  This was a familiar dance and it didn’t take much for Eve to slide open his pants and shove her own down to her ankles. She was already wet by the time Neil pressed his fingers between her folds. She moaned with the sensation, spine arching against the bare mattress. It wasn’t the most romantic venue, but it felt like a handgrip at last, something to hold onto while everything else disintegrated around them.

  Neil slid between her splayed thighs as he had done so many times before and there was comfort in the familiar press of their bodies, the sweet slide of his hard length against her belly. They didn’t have time to tease and play each other’s arousal to the height of what they could stand.

  He entered her quickly, roughly, and Eve dug her nails into his hips to press him into her as deep as he could go. She had lost count of the number of times she had looked into his eyes when they were joined so intimately that she could no longer tell if the sharp staccato heartbeat she felt pounding within was his or hers. She wished she’d kept a tally, but her memory was as imperfect as any human’s.

  She rocked against him as best she could, not seeking to dislodge him but to make him move. She needed the friction, the sharp, frantic back and forth of a good, hard lay. And Neil didn’t disappoint. He’d always known just how to read her body. They needed no words for this. It was primal, the way she liked it, a graceless rutting tinged with the muted ache of a twisted ankle and fear of what awaited them in the shadows.

  If I have to die… Eve couldn’t let herself follow the thought to its conclusion. Part of that was fear and part of it was the stubborn conviction that where they were going, there were no gods that could grant amnesty for her crimes. Better this halfway place, then, this alcove at the bottom of the Earth, in the catacombs, where Neil’s kisses were free and the sharp jut of his hipbones bruised her in all the right ways.

  He came first, clinging to Eve as he shook and shook, making a litany of her name and whispering it ceaselessly against the shell of her ear. Eve held him through the aftershocks and he was still inside her as she slid a hand between her legs to touch gingerly at the stiff, pebbled nub of her clitoris. She thought of Neil’s mouth, of his talented tongue dancing over her labia and it was enough to put her over the edge.

  Neil murmured sweet nothings into her ear as she came down, making promises they both knew he couldn’t keep.

  “I’m not sure, but I think this is probably a faux pas,” Eve mumbled at length, banishing from her mind the thought of shimmering tunnels and men who looked just like Neil but weren’t. “What are the rules about fucking in someone else’s bed during Armageddon?”

  It pleased her to hear Neil laughing, even if it was a little thick with effort. “I don’t think there are any… Everything goes.”

  All the same, they struggled back into their clothes well before the oracle’s return, because while the asteroid might have obliterated the rules, it had left their sense of shame intact. Eve in particular
felt as though she had done enough for the benefit of strange, anonymous observers not to subject herself to needless scrutiny all over again.

  It wasn’t long before the oracle reappeared—this time with a first-aid kit slung over her shoulder, her arms outstretched in front of her just like before. Eve couldn’t shake the thought that she was playing a game of blind man’s bluff all by her lonesome. Then again, after the past twenty-four hours, that didn’t even seem all that absurd.

  “Now we can see about your leg,” the redheaded woman said, slowly ascending the stone ledge of the alcove.

  “You went above ground?” Eve asked, disbelieving.

  “Of course,” answered the oracle. “They don’t keep painkillers down here, you know…?”

  Eve had guessed as much, but the oracle looked withered and sallow, hardly strong enough to venture into a world littered with falling rocks. “It’s still pelting down?”

  “Quieter now, but I smelled smoke. The ground was very hot beneath my feet.” She found the bandages by touch alone and did the same with Neil’s foot. Eve couldn’t explain why, but the sight of those veined hands touching him had her smothering a ridiculous wave of jealousy. She didn’t think the oracle had designs on either of them in that sense. There was something otherworldly about her, as though she might not have been entirely human.

  “You owe us answers,” Eve said. “Maybe a side dish of oh sorry, I screwed up your lives to go with that, but I’ll settle for the answers.”

  “You want to know why you’re here.”

  “Yes.” And how it’s possible to travel thousands of miles in the blink of an eye. And what I saw at the factory—was that Neil? Eve bit back the query. One thing at a time.

  The oracle rolled Neil’s sock down, then felt her way over the swollen flesh around the joint. She clicked her tongue. “Not as bad as I thought. You’ll heal, young man.”