I didn’t say anything. The comparison between myself and Nicholas unsettled me.
“In other words,” said Murdo in a dry voice, “we should join the winning team before it’s too late.”
“Exactly. I don’t care what you do,” said Lorenz. “But Miss Moran needs to think about the future. Because whatever we do today, the future is decided. The High Queen is going to fall, and the Revolution is going to conquer Earth. It doesn’t matter if I kill you today, or if you kill me, or if we kill each other. The world is about to change, and you need to decide your place in it.”
I snorted. “And if I join you, then my brother dies of frostfever. I doubt Lord Morvilind would keep casting the cure spells if I join the Rebels.”
Lorenz laughed. “You’re smarter than that. Do you really think the Knight of Venomhold doesn’t have the power to cure frostfever?”
I stared at him, something dark shifting in my mind. A dragon pearl and Vander could cure Russell, but I had to find or steal a dragon pearl first. A wave of weariness went through me. If Nicholas’s victory was inevitable, and if the Knight really could cure Russell…
“Sure she does,” I said, trying to sound sarcastic.
“You don’t think Connor would reward you for your loyalty?” said Lorenz. “For that matter, you’re powerful. You have…what is the word…bargaining chips, and you have a lot of them. For the aid of a wizard of your power, Connor would make sure that the Knight healed your brother.”
I have to admit…I thought about it.
I really did.
I was tired. And I was scared. Really, really scared. Not for myself, since I had died so many times that one more death wasn’t a big deal, but for Russell. During my years as a shadow agent, I had always kept Russell out of my jobs for Morvilind. Now he was here with me, his life in danger.
And maybe…maybe Lorenz was right.
Maybe it was inevitable. Maybe the Rebels were going to win no matter what I or anyone else did. Why keep fighting the Rebels if it wouldn’t matter in the end? Lorenz was a rat, but that meant he was going to stick with the winning side. And if he was so certain that the High Queen was going to fall…
“You understand,” said Lorenz, his voice low, compelling. “You’re like me that way.”
I flinched. “What?”
Lorenz smiled. “You’re a survivor. You’ll do what is necessary to make sure that you and your brother survive. It’s admirable, really.”
A wave of violent revulsion went through me at those words.
I remembered the people killed during the bombings at Madison, remembered the pregnant women and children who had died at the Ducal Mall. I remembered Dr. Andrea Tocci, dying as she vomited up blood, all because she had moral qualms about Nicholas’s plans. I remembered how Nicholas had nearly bombed a stadium full of innocent men, women, and children. How Sergei Rogomil had boasted that he was willing to kill ninety percent of the human population so the remaining ten percent could live free of the Elves. And Baron Castomyr’s attempt to summon a Great Dark One? That would have killed forty million people…and Nicholas had been willing to let it happen to advance his plans. For that matter, Nicholas and each of the Gatekeepers had a Dark One inside of them, and the Dark Ones would only enter someone who had murdered an innocent victim as a sacrifice.
I was tired, and I was frightened, but the rage was stronger.
“Lorenz,” I said, my voice quiet.
He inclined his head, studying me.
“I’m not a good woman,” I said. “But we’re not alike. There are lines I’m not going to cross. And if the price of survival is crossing those lines…then I’m going to go out in a blaze of fire with a ring of dead Rebels around me first.”
“For God’s sake,” said Lorenz. Vastarion only looked baffled. Like I had started spouting gibberish or jumping up and down on one foot.
“I’ll let you get back to your goons because I promised,” I said. “But after that, we're having it out for the last time. This entire conversation has been a waste of time.”
Actually, that first part was a lie. I planned to get to the vehicles and get the hell out of here. Once we had the others in a safe place, then Murdo and I were going to hunt down Lorenz.
“Well, yes, I expected that,” said Lorenz, glancing back at his orcs and anthrophages. He smiled again. “But that’s all right. I didn’t really expect you to change your mind. I just wanted to keep you talking for a while.”
My eyes narrowed. I had been stalling for time. Had Lorenz been doing the same? I shot a quick glance over the waiting orcs and anthrophages, but none of them were moving…
Wait.
“Ah,” said Lorenz. “Here he comes. Good work, Vastarion.”
“Your approval is immaterial,” growled Vastarion.
A human man emerged from the waiting orcs and walked towards us. I tensed, but he didn’t have any weapons. For that matter, he didn’t look all that healthy, his skin pale-grayish.
And as he drew closer, I saw the green glow in his eyes.
He was undead.
“Before you go,” said Lorenz, “I wanted to give Vastarion a chance to show off his little pets. They are impressive, aren’t they?”
“They’re disgusting,” I said, staring at the undead man, who had stopped a dozen paces away.
In pre-Conquest movies, apparently, the undead were always shown as rotting and shambling, which I thought was stupid. What good was a rotting, shambling soldier? The undead I had encountered did not rot since they were preserved by the necromantic magic, and they ran like cheetahs and punched like pile drivers.
Oh, and they liked to bite, too.
“It is a pity we couldn’t hire Vastarion for the Revolution,” said Lorenz. “The undead make admirable soldiers. We…”
The undead man had been standing motionless, but he turned his head and stared at me, his green-glowing eyes unblinking.
Then it started to talk.
“The fire burns,” said the undead man, his voice perfectly normal. “The citadel falls. The sky will turn to blood and the sea to ashes.”
“What is it doing?” said Lorenz, taking a cautious step back.
“Oh, Vastarion didn’t mention that?” I said. “They talk sometimes. All ominous and grim and portentous. Like crappy fortunetellers.”
Except sometimes the undead really could tell the future, even if in a cryptic form. The undead I had encountered in Chicago had said things that sounded disturbingly like details from my life. I don’t know if they had just been spouting bullshit, or if they had seen glimpses of my future. Nicholas’s research had turned up a documented case of a man who had used the foretelling of the undead in Chicago to predict a change in agricultural prices and make a fortune.
Then the man had killed his family and then himself. I wasn’t sure if he had always been unstable, or if talking to the undead had made him that way.
“The undead, you see, are not quite as bound by linear time as you and I are,” said Vastarion, some animation coming into his gaunt features. Martin Corbisher loved to lecture about money. Maybe Vastarion was the same way about necromancy. “Consequently, they can see glimpses of the future, though they are unable to interpret it to be of any use, and…”
“Why is it staring at her?” said Lorenz, looking back and forth between the undead man and me. The undead had not blinked once since it had arrived, and those glowing green eyes dug into me.
“Most likely it has identified her as the most dangerous threat,” said Vastarion.
“She burns at the heart of the storm,” said the undead creature. “She opened the tomb of the warlord. Now she will open the gates of his citadel. The weapon of destruction lies within. The ruin of worlds waits in the shadows of the past.”
“What the hell is it talking about?” said Lorenz, unsettled.
“It…seems to be seeing her future,” said Vastarion. Suddenly I realized the necromancer was disturbed as well.
That was all
kinds of cheery, let me tell you. If the creepy insane necromancer found the behavior of the undead alarming…
“Behold!” said the undead, and it pointed at me. “She is the one! She will take up the weapon! I see your future, and I see fire and ashes! She will lift the weapon, and the worlds of both mankind and Elves shall shatter.”
“Tell the thing to shut up!” said Lorenz.
Vastarion frowned and pointed at the undead, a glimmer of green light around his finger. The undead rocked and fell silent.
Then it kept talking.
The look of shock on Vastarion’s face was profound.
“She burns!” said the undead. “She will set the world to burn! I have seen it written in blood and ashes and ruin! She will open the citadel, and she will lift the Sky Hammer!”
Now it was my turn to flinch. I had been watching the conversation with a mix of uneasiness and amusement at Lorenz’s obvious discomfort. But now I felt as shocked as Vastarion looked. The Sky Hammer? Nicholas was looking for something that had been called Operation Sky Hammer, some project of the long-dead General Jeremy Shane, and my previous two thefts for Nicholas had brought him closer to the weapon, whatever it was.
“The Sky Hammer?” I demanded. “What do you mean?”
“Tell that damned thing to shut up!” said Lorenz.
Vastarion looked at a loss.
“The Sky Hammer!” shouted the undead, pointing at me. “Sky Hammer! Sky Hammer! Sky Hammer!”
The undead was so loud that its words were echoing over the street.
Wait.
No, they weren’t.
It wasn’t an echo. It was a chorus.
The same shout was coming from behind the warehouse.
I whirled, trusting Murdo to watch my back, and I caught a glimpse of green light from behind the warehouse complex.
More undead were coming.
Then I understood. I had been delaying with this conversation, but so had Lorenz. In hindsight, his plan was obvious. He had lined up all his mercenaries and anthrophages in plain sight, letting me see them. The conversation had held my attention, and Vastarion’s little show with his talkative undead had also been a delaying tactic, though it was clear neither Lorenz nor Vastarion had expected the creature to be so chatty.
Meanwhile, Vastarion’s undead had been maneuvering to attack. God, had he killed a bunch of people and raised them as undead? No, that would be too risky and might draw the attention of the local authorities. Probably Vastarion had a room in Venomhold stuffed full of animated corpses. It wasn’t like he had to pay them or feed them or anything. Both Vastarion and Lorenz could open rift ways, and after the fight at the clinic, the first thing Vastarion had probably done was go back to Venomhold for reinforcements.
All this flashed through my mind in a second.
“Shit!” I shouted as I spun back around. “It’s a trap!”
Murdo had come to the same conclusion. Even as I turned, lightning blooming around my fingers, he leveled his pistol at Lorenz and started shooting. An instant later a volley of lightning globes leaped from my fingers and hurtled towards Vastarion.
But as fast as we were, Vastarion was faster. Whatever Lorenz had paid the renegade Elf, it had been worth it.
Vastarion made a twisting motion with his hands, and that dome of translucent green light sprang into existence around him once more. The dome was large enough to enclose both Lorenz and Vastarion, and my spell and Murdo’s bullets rebounded from the dome. Vastarion gestured, and the dome doubled in size.
Which meant it slammed into both me and Murdo.
The spell looked insubstantial, but it was like running full speed into a concrete wall, and I wasn’t ready for that kind of blow. My head snapped back, blood flying from my nose and lip, and I hit the ground hard. Murdo landed better than I did, and he bounced off the ground and came up, shooting his gun. My bleary mind noted that he missed the dome entirely.
No. Murdo first shot down the undead man with two rounds through the head, and then shifted aim to shoot at the orcs and the anthrophages, who were charging at us. Lorenz was casting a spell, fire shining around his hands. I heaved off the ground and got to one knee, calling magic to me.
Both of us would have died right there, but Vander had taught me a new spell an hour or so before.
I cast the Splinter Mask spell.
I was angry, and my blood was up, and the fury empowered the spell as it had not in the warehouse. Silver light rippled around me, and nine duplicates of me appeared from nothingness, each one perfect in every detail. They even had blood on their lips and chin. At my mental command, some of the duplicates charged at the surprised mercenaries and anthrophages, and some illusionary spells at Vastarion’s dome.
I leaped to my feet as the enemy reacted to my Splinter Mask. The orcs and the anthrophages started shooting at the illusions.
“Come on!” shouted Murdo, grabbing my arm. It kept me from falling over. I nodded and sprinted after him and into the warehouse yard. Blue-white light flashed across the ground and formed into an intricate symbol that covered both the street and most of the yard. It was a Seal of Unmasking, and it collapsed my illusionary duplicates.
The orcs and the anthrophages aimed their weapons at us, but I was already casting another spell. I flung out my hand over my shoulder, and a curtain of white mist congealed into a tall, thick ice wall, one big enough to seal off the gate and a large portion of the chain-link fence itself.
I heard the roar of weapons fire as bullets slammed into the ice wall.
“Go!” I said, and we sprinted towards the van and the SUV. I prayed that Russell had gotten the engine started, that Robert had gotten everyone loaded up.
And they had, thank God. As I went around the corner of the warehouse, I saw that both the SUV and the van were already running, and through the windows, I saw that Robert, Alexandra, and Felix were in Murdo’s SUV, while Russell, Vander, Rusk, and Jill were in my van.
I also saw the dozens of undead rushing towards us. Most of them were orcish, but there were quite a few humans in the mix as well. Maybe the Knight of Venomhold paid Vastarion in corpses or something.
“Sky Hammer!” they bellowed in unison. “Sky Hammer! Sky Hammer!”
“Nadia!” shouted Russell from the driver’s window of my van, his eyes wide and a little wild. He might have seen Murdo’s damned elephant, but that elephant hadn’t been undead.
“Have Robert follow us!” I said.
Murdo nodded and ran to the passenger’s side door of his SUV. “You’ve got a plan?”
“Yep!” I said, skidding to a halt next to my van’s door. “I’m going to blast my way right through them.”
I wrenched the door open and scrambled into the passenger seat, winding down the window as I did. Damn manual windows.
“You’re hurt,” said Russell.
“Not badly,” I said. “Drive right through the undead. It’s the only way we’re getting out of here. Stomp on the gas!”
Russell, to his credit, did not hesitate. I just had time to remember that he had still been on his learner’s permit the last time I had seen him, and then he hit the gas. The van’s engine roared, and the vehicle shot forward, the tires squealing against the asphalt. I leaned out the window, calling magic, and a fireball blazed to life in my hand.
“We’re gonna hit them!” said Russell.
“Oh, God!” said Rusk, and Jill let out a croaking little scream of fear.
“Right through them!” I screamed, and I cast my fireball spell. The sphere of fire leaped from my fingers, soared in front of the van, and landed amid the charging undead.
I managed an impressive explosion. The blast immolated a dozen undead, and flung a dozen more to the ground, their bodies wreathed in flame. The undead I had fought in Chicago had been vulnerable to magical flame, and it seemed that Vastarion’s creatures had inherited that weakness from his teacher’s minions. For a moment, there was a mostly clear space through the undead.
The van plowed into it at about forty-five miles an hour.
The fender hit two undead and knocked them over, and the van thumped as first the front wheels and then the back wheels ran them over. The impact drove me forward, but I was grabbing the window frame, and I was ready for it. Another undead flipped over the hood, smashed into the windshield, tumbled over the van’s roof, and fell off the side. It left a spider web crack in the center of the windshield but didn’t do any other damage. Another undead hit the hood and managed to hang on, and I leaned out the window and cast a spell of telekinetic force. I didn’t hit the undead creature hard, but it already had a precarious grasp on the hood, and my spell was enough to send it backward.
The van ran over it, which made the vehicle thump and my head bounce off the ceiling. Again.
“There!” I said, pointing. “Russell, there!”
Russell nodded and wrenched the wheel to the right. The tires squealed, and he turned so sharply that I was afraid the van was going to tip over, but he just managed to keep the vehicle upright. Then he punched the gas, and the van hurtled through the yard’s back gate and onto another street. There was no sign of the white vans or any more undead, and Russell accelerated.
“Get back to the main street and turn left,” I snapped, looking into the rearview mirror. Murdo’s SUV was right behind us, and though there was a massive dent in its hood and the passenger’s side mirror and window were now missing, it looked otherwise unharmed. “That will get us back to the main streets. Lorenz won’t try anything there, not with so many witnesses.”
“He tried at the clinic,” Vander pointed out from the back. He was still calm. Likely he had seen mayhem worse than this in his long life. “Plenty of witnesses there.”
“Yeah.” I reached down for the CB radio microphone. “But he was expecting to grab Russell and retreat to Venomhold. He wasn’t expecting to run into me.” I hit the button on the microphone. “Rory? You there?”
There was a long pause, probably while Murdo found the microphone.
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