“I think I would explain them as what they are,” he said quietly. “Vengeance. The righteous fury of an angry woman.” He moved his hand back to the elevator console and thumbed the emergency stop button, filling the air with a klaxon that honked at us like an angry goose, digitized. “Do you know much about Athena-types? Like the girl we met this morning?” He smiled. “Odd that she was actually named Athena, but do you know anything about them?”
“Just what you said.” I ticked them off on my fingers. “Goddess of Wisdom, Law, Courage—”
“The original Athena was goddess of many things,” he agreed. “She was like a mother to me after my own was killed, but let me tell you that her powers are mostly rooted in the better nature of men. And women,” he hastened to add after I shot him a cockeyed look. “She can stir creativity, a desire for justice, a yearning for truth, and if she is truly strong, can almost catapult these emotional states into a level of genius in those she works upon like nothing you have ever seen. If you look upon any great work in mankind’s history, at least half of them were probably inspired by the efforts of an Athena-type.”
“So she can toy with emotions,” I said sullenly. “Like you.”
“Not at all like me,” he said. “I can affect your direction, can alter your emotions. A strong Athena can direct an entire society toward a program of space exploration or get it to embrace the arts with a fervor nearly bordering on religious zeal. They are inspiration and can drive the mind of man to new heights. I can only direct people at the level they are currently at, toward anger, fear, contentment, whatever. Athena could inflame the emotions of entire societies but only in a positive direction.” His eyes bored into mine. “One of those things she was goddess of—one of her powers—was to make righteous warfare. Do you know what righteous warfare is?” I shook my head. “Perhaps an outdated concept in the modern world, but it was—in the original Athena’s words—the most difficult state to induce, especially for one used to directing the arts, the law, and all these other emotions, because it involved taking a person, or a society, and dipping them into a realm usually reserved for truly horrible things. Making war, on the surface, would seem like a wholly unrighteous endeavor, and it often can be. But there is justification, at times, for harsh action, and this is the area that Athena specialized in.”
Janus took his hand and put it on my upper arm, grasping me. I could feel his grip through my shirt and it was strong, reassuring. “Simple vengeance is not just warfare. I do not want you to think that. What you have done so far, with your M-Squad, and what you mean to do with Winter, these things are not righteous. Your anger is righteous. The desire for vengeance is human, entirely human. But there are greater purposes, things that justify doing what you have done. There are justifications for killing a man. Not in the way you have done it, I think, save for with Wolfe and Gavrikov, but they do exist.”
“You think I made a mistake,” I said, but I didn’t pull away from him.
“I think you let your emotions carry you into thinking you were righteous, and now you realize the folly of that.” He leaned closer toward me. “But you and I have talked about monsters, and you know that this is the first step to becoming one, to kill easily, indiscriminately.”
“They wronged me,” I said, and felt the anger boil over in emphasis as I said it. “They—”
“Oh, yes, they did,” Janus agreed. “And so will the next, and the next, until at last you look at the grievance for which you just killed a man and realize that it was because he was standing in your way as you tried to pass.” He thought about it for a moment. “Actually, that seems to happen a lot nowadays, often in the automobiles with the road rage.” He became serious again. “But the path from where you are to thinking that any killing is justified because you will it—because they stand between you and what you want—this is not a one-step process, and you decide what your next step is. I would suggest to you that you find something else to fill the emptiness that you are currently staring into within yourself.”
“I’m not …” I felt sullen again. “I’m not empty.”
“Oh, no? Then what would you do with yourself if I turned you loose right now and asked you to fill the next five days on your own, without any plan or other ideas?”
I swore under my breath. “I … I don’t know. Be a tourist,” I said, but I didn’t believe it.
“Oh, no, you’re not empty at all,” Janus said. “This is the dark side of obsession, the empty feeling you get when you’re not doing what you’re intended. What will you do when Winter is dead? Hang out about your house? Study the snowfalls of Minnesota while the world of metas burns around you?” He smiled but he looked grim. “You are no monster.”
“How do you know?” I asked trying not to sound as small as I felt.
“Because a monster,” Janus said, “wouldn’t care how many people Wolfe killed in the mad rush to get to them. They would only care that it wasn’t them.” With that, he stepped back and let go of my arm and pressed the emergency stop button again. The horn ceased, the lift shuddered, and we started up again.
“That was a long time ago,” I said.
“Yes, well,” Janus said, and I could tell something was weighing on him heavily. “I suppose we’ll see how you feel about it shortly.” My ears perked up and I gave him a quizzical look. “There was a cloister of metas in an English village not far from here. We were not associated with them, but we knew of them. They are … quiet, now, shall we say.”
“They’re dead, you mean.” A dull, steeping sense of dread filled me at his words. “They’re dead, you mean.”
“Not necessarily,” Janus said. “We were not associated with them, so they could have fled the country in advance of what has been happening. The attacks have spread to Europe, after all, but have been quiet here.”
“But you think they’re dead,” I said.
“I think they are dead, yes,” Janus said with a slow nod and a quiet finality about his words. He met my gaze. “But I think it would be best for all our sakes … if we were to go and find out for certain.”
Chapter 12
It was hardly my first time in a helicopter, but the chop of this model was particularly distracting, the bump of it in marked contrast to the Black Hawks that I had become used to riding in. This one was an old civilian model that looked like it was used for tourists, and I sat in the small compartment in the back with three others—Bastet, Janus, and a man I hadn’t met yet but whose entire bearing told me he was annoyingly earnest, even though he tried to play it a little cool. He didn’t pull it off very well. “Karthik,” he said, as he extended a hand to shake mine. I looked at it with pity, and he nodded and withdrew it with a chagrined look. I wondered if he’d ever met a succubus before; plainly he knew what I was all about if he took his hand back so quickly.
Unless he just figured I was unfriendly. I was all right with that too, though.
We experienced some turbulence off and on as we flew relatively low over the English countryside. I watched London fall away behind us, a bit at a time, and reflected on how different it was from Minneapolis. My city was dingy in places, but the buildings had a newer, boxier feel to them. I had caught another glimpse of London’s skyscrapers as we took off. They were no doubt impressive, and in truth newer in a lot of ways than what Minneapolis had. But the rest of the buildings were where the difference lay. Most of London felt old, riddled with history spanning back hundreds of years. It carried an aura of age, of being preserved. It was the old world, a place where history was everything. Minneapolis was the new world, nothing older than fifty or a hundred years, and most of it far newer than that.
I watched the buildings thin as we headed north, and I realized that a part of me missed the new world. As much as I appreciated it, the truth was I had no more connection to the old than anything else transitory in my life. It was just another place, with no more significance than anything else I’d read about in those old books that had piled up on the she
lf in my room over time.
Green fields and freeways (I’d heard them called motorways here) passed underneath. The chopper was quiet as we flew, and I wondered why they weren’t at least talking to each other. Janus looked quiet, his face slack as he stared at the steel floor. Bastet was tense, I could see, and she had changed into a flight jumpsuit that looked to be made of heavy cloth. Her hands were exposed and she wore sandals, which I thought was odd before realizing that as a cat goddess she probably had literal claws. Karthik, on the other hand, was dressed in something only a few degrees off from what M-Squad had worn when we’d been on missions.
After about an hour, I felt the chopper shift and begin to descend. I looked out the window and saw a village that could only be described as quaint. Everything was brick, rows and rows of brick homes, with flat roofs that came around the edges of the buildings like helmeted tops. For some reason I thought of Oliver Cromwell. Hell if I know why.
The pilot took us down to a gentle landing, and I slid the door open before Karthik could do it for me. Janus showed no reaction as I glanced back at him, but I could see both him and Bast queuing up behind me to make sure that they didn’t waste an unnecessary moment on the helicopter after I’d gotten off. I felt my shoes slip into the long grass patch we’d landed on, could feel but not hear the crunch of the grass underfoot over the wash of the rotors. The green waved and blew from the air that our helo was disturbing, and I got clear of it with a slow, determined stride. No point in acting like I was in a desperate hurry or anything.
Karthik passed me just beyond the perimeter of the helicopter blade, and I noticed a single pistol on his belt. I thought about asking for a weapon, but we were fast approaching a half dozen police officers blocking the main road into town, their subcompact cars the sort of thing one would find in the smallest of parking spaces in the U.S. Here they appeared to be standard issue.
They were wearing vests, fluorescent yellow with silver reflective strips. Their hats were tall, too, ridiculously tall to my mind. I followed behind Karthik and exchanged a glance with Janus, whose steely look told me everything I needed to know: be quiet and let us do the talking.
“Hello,” Karthik said with a smile as he flipped a badge out. “What have we got here?”
The cops all looked at each other, exchanging sidelong glances, until the one out front, a short balding fellow with reddish-blond hair spoke. “About time you lot showed up. It’s been ages since we called it in. The whole village has gone quiet, like all the phone lines are out or something. People called in from Wales, said they were trying to reach their cousins but couldn’t.” He shrugged. “So we sent over—”
“You should tell ’em what we found,” a stocky cop next to him said, a guy with short dark hair and way too many extra pounds.
The reddish-haired officer turned and rolled his eyes at the second. “Well, we didn’t find anything now, did we?” He turned back to Karthik. “We did a brief search, by the book. The place is empty. Like they all picked up and moved off in the middle of the night.”
No, Little Doll. My eyes widened involuntarily; I still wasn’t used to hearing disembodied voices in my head, even after all this time. Especially not in the middle of a conversation. My first instinct was to act like not a damned thing was happening. I didn’t really care about any of the Omega operatives’ opinions of me, since they knew what was going on in my head (sort of) but I had some reticence with having random strangers think I was insane. Smell that?
The police officer continued to talk to Karthik, but I tuned him out and took a deep breath, trying to sift it through, savor it. It was cold air, which always held its own smell. I caught a little of the scent of the grass and some nearby flowers that were pleasantly pungent. There was a faint aroma of exhaust from the helicopter, even as it throttled down. Finally, I caught it, barely, underneath it all, as the wind began to turn toward us from the east.
“What is it?” Janus asked me quietly, so quietly that none of the humans would have heard him. It took me only a moment to realize he’d picked up on the flow of my emotions, tripping him to the fact that something was amiss.
“A scent in the air,” I breathed back, and I saw Bastet close her eyes and take a deep breath through her nose as it flared to take in the smells around us. “This way,” I said and veered to the right, away from the line of officers.
“Where’s she going?” the short, dark-haired one called out.
“Investigating a lead,” Karthik called back. “We’ll be a few minutes. Maintain your perimeter.”
I heard a few muttered utterances from the officers before the red-haired one spoke up again. “Did you bring a psychic out here?”
We trod down a sloped hill, walking over the green fields that were dry, the cold air surrounding me a brisk counterpoint to what I was used to from winter back home. I wondered if it would snow here, and if so, how soon it would come. The village was spread out in front of us, both down the hill and up the next, a near-endless collection of houses and other assorted buildings. The one I was drawn inexorably towards was a church. It had a gothic facade but wasn’t particularly large. It had one tower with a pointed tip that reached far above a second, squared one. The main part of the building stretched back from the impressive entrance. I knew as I looked upon the massive white doors that whatever I was smelling would be found inside.
I ascended the steps slowly, carefully, as though afraid that the doors would burst open and something would come clawing out at me. What that would be, I had no idea, but I thought surely it must just be a figment of my imagination. I also thought it curious that I didn’t fear it would be a squad of men with guns, because that would kill me just as surely as some beast ripping my throat out. Actually, it was more likely to. I felt a flash of irritation that I’d had to stow my guns before I got on the plane to come over here. What was the likelihood Omega would give me one?
“I need a gun,” I whispered to Janus, who was only a pace or two behind me. Karthik was edging up on my shoulder and I exchanged a look between the two of them as Janus looked to Karthik. Karthik, in turn, reached to his belt and handed me a small, boxy thing with a handle and a trigger that looked like a gun, but only if I squinted really hard. And was stupid. It was lighter and felt like it was made of plastic. I held it up and noticed some yellow crosshatching on the “barrel” as I waved it. “What the hell is this?”
“Taser,” Karthik replied.
“Well, this will certainly help me if we run into a meta that can kill an entire village.”
“Sorry,” Karthik said, and I could hear the notes of genuine contrition in his tone. “Guns aren’t quite as easy to procure here as in America.”
I stared at the flimsy little shock gun in my hand and shook my head. “More’s the pity; I doubt this nine-volt battery is going to do a hell of a lot to something like Wolfe.”
“And a pistol would?” Janus asked with a smile.
I shrugged as I reached the top of the church steps. I continued to lead, even though Karthik had a perfectly good 9mm clenched in his hand. I let my thumb click the little handle to release the door, and I started to swing it open slowly, listening for noise from within over the sound of squeaking hinges.
“Excellent work,” Bast hissed from behind me. “I’m certain they didn’t hear that door open in Surrey.”
“Is that far?” I asked, not moving my eyes off the darkness within the church as a wave of air pushed out from inside. The smell was stronger now, turned loose by the opening of the door, a hint of rot and worse. I had a feeling I knew what we were going to find inside, so it came as a surprise to me when I looked down the main aisle of the church to find the entire place empty, the marble floors shining from the dim light being let in by the stained glass windows.
“Looks clear,” Karthik said quietly, and I felt him relax, heard him reholster his pistol.
I took another sniff, and behind me, Bast did the same. “Hardly.” The smell was thick; faint, but much
stronger than it had been outside. I shot a look at her. “What do you think? Basement?” She nodded, and we veered off, opening doors to see if there was an entrance underneath either of the towers that lay to our right and left. After we found that there wasn’t, we advanced slowly down the center aisle of the church, my shoes clicking against the floor. Janus’s did as well, his leather wingtips squeaking with each step. I shot him a look; the suit and tie was hardly the right approach for what we were doing here. “Are you sensing anything?” I asked.
He gave a slight shake of the head. “Not really. Other than the three of you, and the rather bored sensation of most of those officers outside.”
“I have a feeling things are about to get considerably more interesting for them,” I said as we reached the far end of the church. There was a door for the pastor to enter through into the back chambers, and we headed toward it. This time, Karthik dodged ahead of me and I let him.
We entered a small set of rooms like a dressing chamber, and sure enough, there was a stone staircase against the far wall. The rich, velvety red carpet gave with considerable softness as we crossed it. A chill crept into me as I wondered what we’d find next. The idle thought came to me that I’d actually never been inside a church, and I wondered in a detached way if my life would have been different if I had. I shrugged it off, thinking about how I lived in a world where people who used to be called gods were standing within easy reach of me right at this very moment and I tried to not give it any more thought.
Enemies: The Girl in the Box, Book Seven Page 8
