I walked until I saw two women hunched over the water, hems of thick cloth skirts skimming the surface and sending rings of disturbance out from each sweep of fabric. They reached chapped hands into the water, catching creatures sluggish from the cold and tossing them into the handmade nets hanging from their waists.
This place was unlike any other I’d ever visited. And the knowledge that this was where Armise’s strongest bonds had been formed, that this placid expanse was the frame for his existence, shone a new light on how I viewed Armise.
Knowledge was more dangerous than ignorance when it came to my feelings about Armise. There was little of the notion of love that I could apply to my life up until now. The president and his fatherly presence. My parents. Neveed. Anyone I could have purported to love had died. Had betrayed me. Or I couldn’t love back.
Armise was unlike any of them. He had been since that first moment through the riflescope. He was a threat I couldn’t ignore, theoretically or empirically. And now that I wasn’t shutting out all possibility of a deeper tie to him—one that emotionally cut into me—there was nowhere to hide.
More importantly, what was I supposed to do when I was possibly the greatest threat against the only man I needed to survive this war?
I stayed a respectable distance away from the women yet had the mad urge to remove my boots and socks and join them in the cold. I needed that centering force to grasp on to in this moment. Instead I wandered off, following the serpentine curve of the river, walking away from the women hunting for their dinner.
I walked until the village was in the distance but the sun wasn’t so far into its downward arc that I wouldn’t be able to get back before darkness set in. I hadn’t seen anything that led me to believe I was being followed but that didn’t mean it wasn’t happening. I sat at a bend in the river where a rocky outcropping jutted up against the bank before the river tumbled over a precipice and fell into rocks below.
The last person I could have bet would find me was Armise’s aunt, but she appeared over the crest of a hill and headed straight for me. There was a knife nearly the size and width of a sword hanging from her belt and a pistol in her hand.
“Maniel pointed me in this direction.” She spoke to me in Mongol. “Interesting you would choose this place to stop. Did he tell you about it?”
I hadn’t said more than ten words to Manny since I’d met him, so she had to mean Armise. I shook my head. “What about it?”
“This was where I found Armise the night he tried to kill himself.”
I paled. Had I understood her Mongol correctly? “What?”
She stood next to the river and watched the water cascade below. “He never told me that is what happened, but I am assuming that was his goal since his blood had turned the river red by the time I got here. I did not tell him who I was. I don’t think he would have recognized me even if he had known I was still alive. I had known who and what he was for years but had stayed away mostly because of fear. But what I saw that night taught me that he wasn’t a man to be feared. At least not like I thought.”
The crush of that memory—shared with me through her eyes—settled like a weight in my chest.
Nayan lifted her head and peered at me. “His ger is at the center of the village because he is one of the oldest surviving members. My ger is at the outside because I came late.”
I hadn’t put together that the ger we were in was Armise’s. He’d not only brought me to his village, but his actual home. I turned her words over, contemplating Armise’s role as part of a community and not as a Dark Ops officer who acted alone.
“They protect their own here.”
“With a vengeance.”
Vengeance was a word I was becoming much too accustomed to.
We sat in quiet, listening to the hush of water over stone as the sun set behind us. But I couldn’t let this silence hold.
“Will you tell me about what you know of Vachir?”
Nayan smiled at the name, her toothless grin lighting her face. “Armise’s older brother was larger than life.”
I huffed. How was that possible?
“More than Armise?”
“Who Armise has become has much to do with who his brother was. We did not bury his brother like we did the rest of the family. Armise is unsettled by his failure to mark his brother’s life as it should have been respected.”
I inhaled around the knot building in my chest. Tightening, stealing my breath. “I was told no one survived the attack on his village.”
“We did not find out until much later that Vachir lived but had been captured.”
“I killed many Singaporeans, many of whom looked like Armise…” That I couldn’t decipher which of them was Vachir bothered me. But I didn’t know if I had the strength to carry that dark knowledge as well. I couldn’t be the cause of another loss to the Darcan family. “I’m afraid I’ll be the cause of his death too.”
“You may be but that is his choice to make.”
‘But I can’t, and won’t, go on without you. Not anymore.’
Armise hadn’t faltered from his decision since the moment I’d learned he’d turned against Singapore for me. “It is and I’ll respect that.”
“You will not leave him.”
“I won’t.”
“That was not a question,” she pushed me.
I couldn’t—wouldn’t—stop Armise from staying at my side if that’s where he chose to be. But I would destroy, deconstruct and burn everything around us to protect him. I met her eyes and let her see my intent.
“And I didn’t give you an ambivalent answer.”
* * * *
Darkness had nearly settled over the village when Nayan and I returned. She parted ways with me at the perimeter and left me to find my way back through the encampment of gers, to figure out which one, of all the ones that looked exactly the same, was his. I remembered the path we had taken, in a rough sense of the word, but there hadn’t been much to mark where we were then and there wasn’t now. No wonder those who were protected were kept at the center. Finding anyone would be a journey through a maze.
I had to circle out to the edges and back inside again before I realized I’d been two rows off and I moved farther inside. I found Armise’s ger with the white cloth drawn back and clipped up, revealing the pale-orange flicker of flames. When I stepped inside Armise was at the stove, stirring something and grumbling under his breath.
“Not dead then. That’s helpful,” he said as he set the spoon aside with a loud clank on the blackened metal.
He did sound like me. When had that happened?
I smirked, set my boots and weapons aside and let the fabric fall shut behind me.
There was no power in the village, no hum of lights or water purification systems. And yet there was no doubt we were surrounded by people. I could hear the throat clearing of someone settling into sleep. Hushed whispers, the tread of feet outside our door. The air inside the ger smelled of dust and disuse, mingled with the bite of fresh smoke from the stove.
We ate rice mixed with spices I’d never tasted and a blend of seeds and beans that looked familiar but I had no name for. Armise eased in the silence, resting his back against the edges of a platform made up as a bed. His hair was long, the tips curled over his ears and brushed at the top of his eyebrows. I scooted over to sit next to him, grazing his thigh with my knee, the only spot on us that touched. It wasn’t enough.
For the last two weeks I’d been able to touch him whenever and however I wanted, and to go back to this—unsure if now was the time or if this was the place, to decide if we had to be completely on guard—made me bone-weary for the same reasons it used to hype me up.
“I just want him to come,” I said. “Dakra. Or whoever. It doesn’t matter who it is. I want to get this waiting over with so I know what comes next.”
“It’s pain and fear and anger and possibly death—hopefully death when it comes to Ahriman and not us,” Armise retorted. “That is wh
at comes next.”
“I know that. I’m talking about what comes after that.”
“That I do not know.”
I finished my food and pitched the bowl on the earthen floor in frustration. “Which is why I’m sick of waiting. But I think our coming here will put them into motion. Ahriman likes a spectacle. He doesn’t just want to destroy this world, he wants to watch it happen.”
The spoon in Armise’s hand clanked against the side of his bowl. “We led him to an audience.”
I froze. “And to a cache of victims.”
Armise licked his lips. “I didn’t think of it that way.”
I shook my head. “I considered the risk of leading Dakra here, but Ahriman… Shit. We should leave.”
“Agreed,” Armise said, already lifting himself up and grabbing his pack. “Weapons and basic food stores. The rest we can deal without.”
“Let’s get Manny. He can travel with us.”
“I’ll go find him,” Armise offered.
“Thank fuck,” I said under my breath. I didn’t think I’d be able to ever find my way back to this ger in the dark. I grabbed Armise’s arm before he could walk out. “We booting up comms?”
“Good idea,” he replied and pulled his comm strap out of his bag.
I took it from him and secured it around his neck. “Help me out tonight,” I said. “Don’t die.”
Armise smirked. “Yes, Colonel.”
I grabbed the fabric on his chest and pulled him to me. “I’m serious. Just…don’t die.”
Ever.
Armise swallowed. “Yes, Merq.”
I pulled him in for a bruising kiss. It wasn’t enough. Never enough. “Find Manny. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
He put his hand on the back of my neck and knocked our foreheads together, then he was off. I took my strap out of my pack and affixed it around my neck. I heard Armise in my ear as he tried to reach out to Manny, but there was no answer from our hybrid ally.
There was a crackling over the comm and I could hear the thunder that had been looming in the distance drawing closer. “Not now,” I mumbled under my breath. Just thinking about mucking through the steppe in a storm was miserable.
“It won’t rain here,” Armise said over my comm, immediately picking up on what I was bitching about.
“You’ve said that,” I replied as I finished packing.
“With us. Now,” I heard Armise growl in a low tone, then a huff of breath. “I have Maniel.” Another roll of thunder crashed around us. “The rain clouds ride the natural curve of the mountain. We’ll have lightning, nothing else.”
“Even worse,” I mumbled and picked up each of our packs.
I was out the door a second later and Armise was at my side, taking the second pack from me as he kept moving, weaving his way through the gers and toward the perimeter of his village.
“You going to—” Manny said as we stormed past Armise’s aunt’s home, but Armise didn’t stop.
“She will figure it out,” he shot over his shoulder and took off for the hills as if Ahriman was already on our heels.
* * * *
There was a palpable charge to the air that made my skin feel almost like it had in those hours when I had been coming off surge and my body had craved relief from the maddening itch. The hairs on my arms stood on end. The air had a bitter taste of ozone each time I sucked in a breath as we ran.
With each step I could see anger overtaking Armise, but it wasn’t until we were well outside his village before I pulled him to a stop. He whipped an arm out at me and I bent back to keep his fist from meeting my jaw. I slapped his hand away when he froze, realizing that he’d just tried to take a shot at me. “We have to know where we’re going before we start wandering into the dark—”
“I know where we are,” he snapped back.
“Holy fuck,” I heard Manny mutter and he slung his rifle around to his chest then walked away, leaving us to fight it out.
“Our vehicle is at the other camp. We head there and pick it up. We can be there by morning.”
Armise sighed. “He will be on us before then.”
“Hey.” I grabbed his biceps until he was looking at me. “We’re away from your village.”
“Not far enough.” He ripped himself from my hold and tracked away. “How the fuck did I miss that?”
“Welcome to my world,” I said, waving my hand up and down my body. That got a hint of a smile from Armise. I shrugged. “At least as of late. I used to think I had it all figured out.”
Armise cleared his throat. “I take it you are recalibrating.”
I snorted. “That’s too fucking kind.” I readjusted how my rifle strap tugged at my pack. If I needed to use my weapon then it had to be accessible in less than a second. “So what do we do? Get a bit farther away and wait to see what happens?”
Armise cracked his neck. “I do not have another plan.”
There was movement behind Armise and I looked over his shoulder, bringing my weapon up as I moved. There was a man the size and breadth of Armise choking Manny while also holding a knife to his throat. The man had a bare chest and swirls of black lines that circled his muscled arms. Arms just as large as Armise’s. The cut of his cheekbones was the same as mine and my father’s as he sneered at us, his movements lightning quick and silent.
This had to be Dakra.
But he wasn’t a hybrid like the ones in Grimshaw’s camp. None of them had carried any of Armise’s or my features. Manny had said he was unstable… What had they done to him that had altered the process for future hybrids?
Armise rotated and brought his knife up as he took to my side.
Without a word, without warning, the hybrid stabbed Manny in his sternum.
Manny slumped to his knees and pressed the heel of his hand to the hole in his chest. He gasped great breaths that were punctuated with wet, sucking noises.
There was a whistling through the air and Armise’s knife punched into Dakra’s chest directly at the heart. But Dakra didn’t fall. He peered down at the handle and slid the blade out, dropping it to the ground.
Dakra shook the blood off his hand, the droplets spattering against his sweat-soaked skin. He put his hand into a pocket at the front of his weapons belt and pulled out a transport chip, which he held out to me.
“Ahriman wants to see you.”
Chapter Twelve
Nayan had the cloth entrance to her ger closed, but it wasn’t keeping out any of the wind roaring down from the mountains. Spears of lightning crackled around us as Sharlat hunched over Manny and coasted an advanced medical scanner over him. Armise blotted at the blood seeping from Manny’s wound, now a trickle when it’d been a torrent minutes ago as Dakra had handed over the transport chip and left us in his wake.
“All of his vitals are strong,” Sharlat said.
“I feel my cells multiplying,” Manny garbled, or that was what I thought he said.
Armise took Manny’s chin between his fingers and turned his head so he was looking at Armise. “Do you want to give me some of that invincibility?”
Manny laughed once, winced. “I’ll keep it all for now, asshole.”
I came over to him and offered him my hand. “You think you can sit up?”
Armise furrowed his brow and glared at me, but Manny nodded and wrapped his fingers around my wrist. Sharlat put a hand on his back to help him up but Manny didn’t need it. He stood, rolled his shoulders and poked at the closing wound on his chest. It was almost gone, only minutes having passed since he’d received it.
“Yeah, you’re fine,” I said to him.
“Where is the transport chip?” Nayan asked.
“We have it,” I hedged.
Armise had made me promise that neither his aunt nor his cousin would do more than help Manny. Not involving them more than they already were had been an easy decision for me.
Nayan glared. “You do not have to shield me, Ni.”
“I do and I will,” Armise
insisted. “Bringing Maniel back here was more of a risk than I was willing to take.”
I held up my hands but didn’t say anything to refute his claim. I hadn’t been able to leave Manny on the steppe and wonder if he had survived.
“I will not draw you into this anymore. You will respect this is my decision as the sole living member of my line.”
“Your choice to end that line without thought—” Nayan snapped then stopped herself. “It is your choice. Sharlat and I will leave you to talk.”
Armise’s aunt and cousin left the ger and I took the chip from my pocket, turning it in my palm. The chip was old tech, a late-gen model preprogrammed with one destination to one transport station.
Manny tracked my movements. “Haven’t you ever asked yourself why?” he said in a quiet, strained voice. “Why Ahriman is obsessed with you, Merq?”
I hadn’t.
“These machinations aren’t my strength,” I responded.
Manny looked to Armise and Armise nodded his assent to whatever Manny was going to say next.
“We think Ahriman knows why your survival is vital to Anubis,” Manny said.
“Of course he knows through his father,” I scoffed.
Armise shook his head. “Ahriman won’t torture his father for information. But he doesn’t respect that boundary because Dr. Blanc is his father. He’s too afraid of harming him irreparably.”
I bit at my lip piercing. “That’s fucked-up.”
Manny touched his wound and his fingertips came back clean this time. “The only way it’s possible that Ahriman has knowledge of historical information on Anubis is if he has the encryption key and a copy of the infochip, or some other source of intel we don’t consider a likely possibility.”
Armise lifted his head and locked his eyes with mine. “A source we don’t think exists.”
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