“Magic.” I growled the word out through gritted teeth and got up to my knees. “Fire.”
The ground was a blank canvas. I sketched out a circle in my own blood, reaching into the well of power that I had been without for so long. I was brimming with it, spilling over with cold heat. Dirt swirled around my hand as I focused on it, and then looked up in sudden wonder as I felt – and somehow, saw – the matrix of the air and earth resolve in space. I wasn’t just looking at the Weeders as they fought, leaping and clawing, striking and falling. I could see everything, the field of atoms and energy vibrating, exchanging, decaying, flaring. It passed in a moment as I grasped the components given to me by will, and in a moment of Promethean awe, smashed them together. It was kavannah. The intention of my heart was to stop this thing. “Aysh!”
The bug reared, about to stab through Jenner’s back as she scrabbled to run, and then it blew back in a sudden explosion of fire and friction. It slammed into the semi, sending the vehicle tumbling to the side. The cargo tray followed more slowly, toppling as the insect, burning and thrashing on its hard back, kicked its legs out and screeched. The big cats were on it in an instant, raking and snarling, ignoring the flames as they tore ichor from its belly and pulled it to the ground.
The Deacon. Where was The Deacon? I snarled with effort as I got back up and began to lurch towards the line of black cars. I could see the Wrath’ree – it was three times the size it had been after it had pulled itself from my body, and it was decimating the ranks of The Deacon’s men. Two of them saw me weaving towards them. They turned their guns on me and emptied their clips against the shield I spun with a slash of my hand. Bullets sparked away off the blue matrix, then red as I focused on the word I’d used to flip the bug. The blue turned to red. The men screamed as they burned.
I heard a cougar’s scream of warning from behind and turned to see Mason’s bulk soaring towards me, paws outstretched. He was more glass than flesh, his head pushed to the side by spears of crystal, every wound bristling with bloody glass. With a shout, I slammed the knife up into his breastbone as he took me to ground. He reared up over my body, claws extended.
Jenner broke for me with a bellow, hindquarters not quite as fast as her forelimbs. I saw her as I twisted back, trying to drag myself away, as the insectoid DOG brought down a leg in its death throes. We were no longer slowed, but it seemed to take forever. The dull crack of her spine, the gape of shock, the agonized struggling as the insect pulled her off the ground like she weighed nothing and threw her back and forth, impaled on the thrashing limb.
“Chet!” I roared the command of my easiest spell, my fastest spell, and shoved the shield up and forwards. “Jenner!”
Mason’s claws screeched over the shield of energy, slipping across. He regathered for another blow, but a lean figure sprung in from the side. Angkor, bloodied and battered, his lip and forehead split, swung the fire axe we’d taken from the safehouse and buried it deep into Mason’s flank. The tiger was so screwed up with overgrown Yen that it couldn’t even roar; it reared up and twisted in pain as Angkor hauled the axe back and chopped into his neck and shoulder. Whatever it hit shattered: the blade and Angkor’s arms oozed with honey, which he wiped across the head as he dodged the crippled animal’s paws and spines. When Mason got close to me, I pulled the knife out of his body and stabbed whatever came to hand. With the two of us working together, glass broke free and the structure began to collapse. Mason tottered to one side with a moan before falling to struggle and kick on the ground.
“That sick rapist motherfucker is getting away!” Angkor snarled, whirling with the axe in hand. He was exhausted, his hair plastered to his face and clumped with sweat.
“Jenner,” I wheezed. No matter how I tried to focus, the pain was coming back. Kutkha was there to hold my metaphysical hand, but his cool, calming presence could only steer the course as gravity began to press me down with insistent hands. “Children. On the truck.”
Angkor went to his knees beside me, dropping the axe with a clatter. He stared into my eyes: his own were a very dark, very intense gray. It was an unusual color to see in an Asian face. I watched interestedly as his pupils grew larger and the rest of his face receded towards a great height, framed by light that grew more and more intense. The pain in my stomach was fading into white noise, a tingling and throbbing instead of wracking, burning fire. The oily, acid taste in my mouth was gone. I had been tired for so long now… months and months. Kutkha was right, again. It felt like sinking into a deep bed; a deep, quiet darkness.
“Hey! GODdammit, Alexi! You can’t die!” His voice rang out from far away. It had a pleasant mouthfeel, blue and silver and green, but I couldn’t see him anymore. “Alexi!”
Alexi… lexi…exi…
Angkor’s voice echoed on, stretching out forever.
Somehow, I remembered this feeling… the oceanic expansion, an inescapable pressure dragging me backwards, faster and faster until the darkness turned to pure light and sound. The words faded into a heartbeat larger than the sum total of all the planets in my solar system, of all the galaxies in the Milky Way. It was GOD, the YESbeast, the Mystery. The Star of Stars, which could only say one thing.
…LoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYouLoveYou…
Chapter 41
We were drawn through the interstitial ocean towards a bright core, as close and distant as the Sun. Kutkha was my caul, an elegant, winged form that encapsulated my awareness as we soared through what had to be the cellular fluid of GOD’s mass. Every second of every moment, I was wracked by memory that was not my own. Rapidly cycling flickers of imagery, voices, faces… hands and whispers, the flick of a lighter, Zarya’s eyes, bright and blue as the Earth from space.
After a timeless space, the feeling of distance and motion contracted. Kutkha plunged through a prismatic haze like a blue-black arrow, through a sky of dancing color and light until he broke through the clouds into a white sky over a white forest, a land of pure Glass.
To my surprise, I saw myself standing on the rise of a small hill. I was hairless and pale, toned and aesthetic in a way that my body had never been. A long sarong of sheer fabric fell from my waist to the soft white loam beneath my feet. My bare palms and forehead were pressed to the trunk of a tree that looked like pink coral, stretching out with an arc of branches that shivered with pleasure in the soft, warm wind. Many of the thinner branches were wrapped lovingly around this man’s back and shoulders and thighs, this Me-Not-Me.
Suddenly, he lifted his head and turned it, nostrils flaring. His eyes were my eyes, silver-white and colorless. The branches of the tree withdrew from him just as my awareness collided with his and then rebounded away, faster than light, faster than-
I heaved a deep breath.
White floor, white tiles, blue uniforms, murmuring voices. The world spun; I tried to get up, to run from The Deacon and Mason and get to Jenner before she died. My body, wracked with pain, was pushed back down by several pairs of hands.
“DOG!” I tried to speak. It came out as a gargle around something in my throat.
“Put him down! He’s going to pull the tube out!”
Heat flushed up my arm, pounded in my head, and I forgot about the tube, forgot about the DOG and The Deacon. I fell back down to the hospital bed, and slept.
The first indication I had of dreaming, of being lucid in my dream, was the recognition of sound. It was dark, but I heard the Ukrainian Community News Radio and the drone of conversation, punctured by laughter and the bang and tinkle of a small bell striking a door as it was opened and closed. It was the sounds of Mariya's deli. The white wooden front, never materialized visually. I heard the blue and white awnings whipping in the salty, humid air of Brighton Beach, and I smelled it, the cakes and tea and mingled cologne and perfume of the customers. All I could see was the dark Green sea as I lay semi-conscious, my mouth dry with longing, my heart hammering. Something wet lapped at my cheek.
Eventually, I open
ed my eyes within the dream and found myself lying on my side in dark warm water, staring into Vassily's deep blue eyes. He lay facing me, his hands loose by his face and throat, his black hair wet and trailing in the water. He breathed softly, watching me. I stared back in confused wonder.
Vassily's mouth crept up in a wan smile. Wordlessly, he shifted one hand toward me, and caught the tips of my fingers with the tips of his. My hands were bare, ungloved, and very pale in the inky water. A shiver of sensation lanced from hand to groin, so intense and so foreign that I jumped, sending ripples through the suspension around us.
"We need to talk, Lexi," he said, his words burst like bubbles in my ears. Unseen, but felt in the ears and mouth and mind. “River’s got to move on. Okay?”
I was sedated, conscious. Everything was warm. Everything hummed with life. “I’m tired.”
“I know. But Life’s hard and dirty.” He laced his fingers through mine. “You’re a radio, man. You have to pick up the signals, play the music. You need to stop with the me-me-me bullshit, not when the bad guys are coming. We’re all so huge. There’s so much to do.”
“Radio,” I repeated. For some reason, it made sense. The word felt terribly literal. “Vassily, I just… I… miss…”
His hand slid over my face, hot and smooth, and his lips drew towards mine quickly. Vassily, Zmechik, struck with his mouth like the snake he was named for. It was sweet, so sweet, a moment of contact as natural as breathing. It might have lasted for a moment or an hour, but it was not forever. We broke apart. And that was okay, too.
He smiled at me, the lines beside his deep blue eyes creasing. “Don’t worry about anything. Just Everything.”
My body struck the bed so hard that I bounced, a jolt that woke me and sent the world reeling. No roof, no floor: a tangle of blankets and I hit a solid surface with a short, harsh cry of pain. There was little light in the room. A car thrummed from outside. Beeps and clicks, the tick of a clock. Everything seemed overwhelming, too hot, too intense.
Angkor was sitting beside me, head dropped down to his chest, eyes closed. He snorted, half-asleep, and his fingers tightened and then relaxed.
“What?” I croaked. The tube was gone, but my mouth was parched.
Angkor startled up, and dashed at his eyes as he mumbled something by way of reply. Then he focused on me, and relief flooded his face. “GOD underfoot, Alexi. You’re alive.”
“Guhh.” Orientation took a couple minutes. I had an IV in, and I was still in bed. The clamor of surgery was gone; there was only the quiet hush of the overhead heating vent, the beep of the monitor, and the squeak of cloth against cloth as I pushed myself up to sit. “I’m… not sure of that.”
“It’s been four days,” Angkor said. He frowned for a moment, and rubbed his face. “No… wait. Five. You died like three times.”
I’d been out for five days? “I feel like a washed up jellyfish. What did they have to do?”
“Not as much as they should have, but you were really not doing so great,” he replied. “Ruptured spleen, torn stomach, trauma to pretty much everything between sternum and bladder. Broken ribs, busted shoulder. They pulled a bullet out. I did what I could for you to stop the bleeding and passed out afterward. Did more on the sly when you were in ICU.”
“Why?” I squinted at him.
“Why would I do that?” Angkor shrugged. “I’m a doctor. Among other things.”
My dream was fading, but the warmth of the momentary contact lingered. When I closed my eyes, I didn’t see Vassily: The images of Jenner being lifted off the ground, of the shipping container tumbling off the back of the trailer flashed through my mind. “Where’s Jenner? Zane, Talya? The kids?”
“The kids are all safe,” Angkor said. “The ones we found.”
My eyes narrowed, and he sighed.
“There were only eleven of them on the truck. All Weeders.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “The rest of them are AWOL. Either the Templum Voctus Sol shipped them to Texas already, or they’re dead.”
Three dead, twelve rescued… that left six unaccounted for. “Twelve out of twenty-one. It’s not good enough.”
“I know. But better than I expected.” Angkor pulled on one of his earlobes, then looked at his fingers: anywhere but at me. “I doubt the others are alive, or… HuMan. Like, they’ve probably been, uhm… re-purposed. Morphorde are like that.”
Exhausted or not, I knew guilt when I saw it. It was written in the slump of his shoulders and the way he kept touching his neck and face. “You know something about them. The Templum Voctus Sol.”
Angkor licked his top lip, glancing up and then away. “Not that much. Whatever new things I learned about them, I can’t remember because of The Deacon’s rape-and-torture-fest.”
“What do you know?”
“Well, they’re descended from a legitimate international fraternity that was around since at least the early nineteenth century. It’s less of a cult and more of a… a syndicate, I guess. A group of loosely affiliated interests.” He still didn’t look up at me, picking at his cuticles in his lap. “The Voctus Sol has money, that much I know, and human resources. Skilled operatives, maybe links to private security or military. Maybe even government.”
“Are they connected with the Church of the Voice?” I pushed the blankets back and had a look at my stomach. It was better than I expected: a clear plastic wet dressing, no drainage bag.
“I don’t know. I wondered that myself, and I remember looking into it before I came to the USA. The Church isn’t just big in America: It’s pretty much taken over the Evangelical scene in Korea, and also has huge missions in parts of Africa. Liberia, Ghana, Congo, Nigeria. Places where there are weapons and mineral resources, and some really fanatical believers.”
“Korea?” I squinted. “Christianity in South Korea?”
Angkor shook his head. “South Korea is majority Christian, and has been since the War. Specifically, Evangelical Protestant. So on top of this pre-existing faith, many people in Korea are very goal-orientated… it’s not universal, but we’re given a strong message in school and home life that we’re supposed to be successful in our lives, or we have failed. As you can imagine, the self-help aspect of The Church of the Voice is really appealing.”
“Kind of like how worth is measured by wealth here,” I said. “America is full of temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
He smiled, but it was wan and bitter. His voice was orange. “That’s true in South Korea as well. Now, the thing is… the Church doesn’t just exist on this Cell.”
“Cell?”
“A Cell is a planet. You know, Cell of GOD. This world. I’m a sort of… euun… sort of a traveler between worlds.” Angkor scratched his head, grimacing. “I know you probably don’t believe that.”
While Angkor talked, I reached for Kutka. I felt as weak and rusty inside as I did outside, but he was there. The brief mental contact flushed my mind and mouth with color and energy, and the suppressed tension in my gut released. With it went some of the pain. “I don’t know. These days, I’m willing to believe some pretty weird shit.”
“Fair enough. Anyway, back to the Temple. I learned something about them before The Deacon took me out, but I really don’t remember any of it.” Angkor squeezed my arm and stood. He was creaky, but functional. “They kept hitting me in the head. When I have the energy, I’ll find a lab and try to repair the concussion damage. All I know that it was The Deacon who killed the Wolf Grove couple, but he was with someone else. I can’t remember who.”
“I think Lily and Dru had a revelation. They became lucid, and realized what they were doing.” I said. “They tried to break out of the business. They killed the courier from the bratva. Nicolai – the boss of Brighton Beach – was working with The Deacon from August, at least. What could temporarily cure them of this Yen virus?”
“Gift Horse blood, like I said.” Angkor cocked his head. “You know… It’s actually possible that they were out in their changing
ground and encountered a Gift Horse in the forest. That’s kind of why Gift Horses exist. They turn up where they’re needed, often without any real idea why they’re there. If they caught a Gift Horse and ate them, they’d have a period of lucidity. Once you have a Horse in an area, they’re generally stuck here until their mission is complete. You Hunted in this area not long ago, didn’t you?”
“Do you count butchering someone after hauling them out of a giant shell to be hunting?” I leaned back, exhaling. I hurt, but I was okay. Walking was a possibility. Running… probably not. “There was a Gift Horse here, but she’s dead. I killed her.”
“Did you eat her?” Angkor’s expression was suddenly very intense, his eyes very steady. The rakishness and anxiety was gone in a flash. There was only a peculiar intimacy, his sense of entitlement to an answer.
I drew a deep breath. “Yes. Just blood. A little.”
Angkor relaxed, leaning back away from me. He nodded, and exhaled heavily. “Alright, that’s good. If you ate part of her, she’s come back to life.”
I digested that news for a moment. “You’re sure?”
“Positive. They call it the Pact. Horses heal by dying, and when they’re eaten, they’re reborn. The necessity of the Pact is why they need Hounds.”
Zarya, alive. I couldn’t really believe it. People didn’t just… come back to life when you stabbed them in the chest. But if she was alive… that meant I could find her. And then I could kill her again, for lying about Vassily.
“It sounds like she came to this Cell, this world, in a Rind,” Angkor continued. “Rinds are protective cases… they can travel through some rough seas, so to speak. Where did you find it?”
Stained Glass: An Alexi Sokolsky Supernatural Thriller (Alexi Sokolsky: Hound of Eden Book 2) Page 36
