Reborn

by Kate Danley

  She leaned close to Matt and whispered, “So what’s the plan?” The people sitting nearby could probably hear her, but they didn’t react.

  “Stop the ritual. Save as many people as we can,” he answered.

  “Okay…” Tanis wasn’t much of a planner. She’d never made a to-do list in her life. But she’d been counting on Matt to have a strategy.

  “We’ll know more when we get there,” he assured her. “Then we’ll just have to improvise.”

  This wasn’t especially comforting. “Have you ever dealt with something like this before?”

  “People who can control others and mindless slaves, yes. Ancient gods, no.” He heard what he’d just said and gave a short laugh. “It’s a strange life.”

  “You seem to roll with it pretty well,” she observed. In fact, she’d never seen Matt lose his composure. It was a little spooky.

  “I’m not sure that’s such a good thing,” he said.

  “You miss your old life?”

  “Every minute,” he said. “But mostly who I used to be.”

  “Blissfully unaware.”

  They sat for a moment, feeling the deck roll back and forth beneath them as the dromon headed across the sea. “One of the reasons I want to find other people like us, why I came looking for you when I read your blog, is that nobody should have to deal with this alone.”

  Tanis smiled. Matt wasn’t always the most expressive guy, but she liked him. She trusted him. “Thanks,” she said. “For finding me.”

  He nodded and looked around the hold. “Thanks for coming with me. I get the feeling I’m going to need the help.”

  # # #

  On the Dromon, Somewhere at Sea

  After what seemed like hours, the Descendants brought buckets of water down to the hold. Each of the passengers took a drink, then handed their bucket to the next person. Then the Descendants brought buckets filled with loaves of stale Wonder bread. It wasn’t exactly the Royal Caribbean buffet, but it kept them nourished. They didn’t want any of the sacrificial lambs to die before they could do the Descendants, and Moloch, some good.

  At some point, the Descendants began leading their charges out in groups, to what Tanis discovered was a small, very foul-smelling room with a hole in the floor. Apparently, the Descendants didn’t want their offerings to the gods to be covered in their own excrement. Tanis could see how that might offend Moloch.

  Her brainwashed comrades took their turns squatting over the little hole with no hint of embarrassment. One of them was a cop in a filthy, sweat-stained uniform. The name tag on his chest read “Alvarez.” She reminded herself that after everything she’d seen and done, this was nothing. She took her turn squatting over the hole like the rest of them and returned to her spot on the floor beside Matt.

  She definitely appreciated having Matt around, but more than anything, she wished she could talk to Brett about all this madness. The real Brett, who had always pointed her in the right direction, even if she didn’t always manage to get there. Not the Brett who’d chopped up their mother into little pieces with a chain saw.

  “Oh, Dr. Jared, I’ll never be as good as my brother.” The voice was a bad imitation of her own. Tanis looked around for the source.

  Dr. Jared Dolgner sat among the passengers in the cargo hold.

  No, she corrected herself, not Dr. Dolgner. It was Mr. Dark. It always had been.

  Her face grew hot from the humiliation of falling for the handsome disguise, falling for him.

  He gave her the compassionate look that had made her feel so safe, and threw her own heartfelt confessions back in her face.

  “I’m stupid and lazy and unreliable, just like Mom says. Sometimes I think”—he stifled a faux sob—“she wishes she’d never had me at all.”

  Tanis started to leap at him, but Matt yanked her down sharply. “Don’t.”

  Mr. Dark pretended not to notice. “The thing is, honeybun, you’re right. You’re a disappointment. A waste of good Byzantine blood. You want to know why Brett inherited their power and you didn’t? It wasn’t because you died.” He leaned close to her, exuding a stench from his mouth that made the odor from that shithole in the floor seem like perfume by comparison. “You just don’t deserve it.”

  “Fuck you,” she muttered. That “inheritance” had turned Brett into a monster and destroyed her family. She wanted to kill the power-hungry Byzantine asshole who had signed himself and his descendants up for it. Of course, that’d be redundant. The asshole had already killed himself to seal the pact with Moloch.

  “Don’t listen to him, Tanis,” Matt said.

  “Well, look where she’s gotten listening to you,” Mr. Dark said, gesturing to the people in the cargo hold. “You do know that our little Tanis is going to die on that island, don’t you?

  That’ll be another innocent death on your head. Quite a tally you’re racking up. How many will that be now?” Mr. Dark started counting them off on his bony fingers. “One, two, three…”

  And as he counted, he began to fade, like smoke. But his voice lingered for a time, still counting, as he went to some distant place. “…twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight…”

  They sat quietly as the voice faded, both trying to push the Dark Man from their thoughts and both failing. Finally, Tanis said, “It wouldn’t be your fault. Even if something does happen to me—”

  “Don’t let him shake you,” Matt said. “We can do this.”

  She nodded. “Right. He’s only trying to sabotage us because he thinks we really can defeat Moloch. So, actually, it’s encouraging that he even bothered to show up.”

  Neither of them believed this. Matt sat back against the wall, still thinking. “With Mr. Dark, it’s never quite that simple.”

  Which made them both wonder why the Dark Man had chosen that moment to show himself after being absent for so long.

  What the hell did Mr. Dark want?

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Tyrenos Island, Somewhere in the Black Sea

  As it had done before, the dromon made the journey with supernatural speed, covering thousands of miles in only a few days.

  Tanis was equally amazed by her own rapid healing, a miracle she still hadn’t gotten used to. The entry and exit wounds on her punctured arm now looked like fresh scars. She could feel her right hand getting stronger every time she flexed it. By the time the ship stopped, she could grip the claw hammer tightly. She was ready to fight.

  The door of the hold opened. Matt and Tanis followed their fellow passengers up to the deck. She was startled to see two Descendants, J.J. and Wendy, now wearing white robes embroidered with gold and silver thread. Just like their long-dead ancestors, whom Tanis had unfortunately met. They directed the brainwashed people down a rope ladder to the rocky shore below.

  Tanis looked out over the brand-new island. It was shaped roughly like a teardrop, maybe a quarter of a mile from end to end. The subterranean forces that brought Tyrenos back to life weren’t done yet. Scalding steam billowed from open fissures, superheated by the exposed magma below. Sulfur bubbled up through a lake of trapped seawater. A jagged mountain of obsidian rose near the middle of the island, surrounded by smaller peaks. The air was hot and acrid. She remembered how Heather had described the world of Moloch: it was very much like hell.

  She and Matt climbed down from the ship and followed the line of people making their way deeper into the island. J.J. and Wendy led their mindless servants on a winding path around the steaming fissures, through a treacherous landscape of sheer cliffs and sharp edges. Tanis moved carefully in her ratty sneakers, envying Matt his sturdy work boots.

  She watched the curly-haired boy she’d seen on the ship clambering easily through the fractured terrain, like any normal kid. One of the Descendants, a puffing, obese man, had considerably more trouble, slipping and stumbling every few steps. He was sweating heavily in the heat and his face was bright red. Tanis couldn’t help thinking that if this guy “deserved” the mighty power of Mol
och, then the standards weren’t very high.

  She’d counted eight different Descendants so far. There were probably more she hadn’t seen. The good news was, they didn’t seem to be carrying daggers, like the dead lords on the dromon had used. As she’d thought before, they weren’t expecting a fight.

  Ahead of Tanis, the procession reached a treacherous patch of brittle rock that crumbled under the weight of a step. Several of the brainwashed lost their footing, slicing their legs and hands on the broken shards. They paid no attention to these injuries, simply righting themselves and falling back into line with the others.

  A man in his t-shirt and boxers, Wendy’s husband Carl, was lumbering along the treacherous path when he slipped, and his foot became wedged between two rocks. He fell forward, his shinbone splintering as he went down, one jagged end tearing through his skin. His head smacked against stone and he lay sprawled across the narrow path, dazed.

  The procession moved relentlessly forward. Tanis didn’t really expect any of the Descendants or their mindless servants to stop and help the fallen man, but she was stunned to see them walk right over him, stepping on his body like it was just part of the landscape. When Tanis reached the man, she did the same, maintaining her cover as a drone, staring at the sky to avoid looking at that awful, protruding chunk of bone.

  They stopped on a plateau between a wide fissure and a wall of dull gray basalt. The Descendants herded their servants into orderly groups along the fissure. Heat blasted out from deep within the earth. Fire, thought Tanis. Moloch demanded sacrifice by fire. The yellow-eyed monsters were going to incinerate all these people in a pit of molten rock in exchange for eternal life, awesome power, endless riches, and maybe all the virgins they could handle when Moloch finally showed up. She glanced at Matt. From the look on his face as he stared at the fissure, he had drawn the same conclusion.

  The Descendants formed a rough semicircle in front of the rock wall opposite the fissure. There were eleven of them. Tanis thought that seemed like a manageable number, if they were really unarmed. Now she saw what they were all looking at. There were several pieces of white marble embedded in the darker basalt—part of a fluted column and two cracked, squarish chunks. One of these bore the faded engraving of ancient hieroglyphs. These were the remains of Moloch’s temple, risen from the depths of the Black Sea. This was where the Byzantine lords had made their pact and set this whole nightmare in motion.

  J.J. approached the ruins of the temple and knelt, bowing his head reverently. Then he stood and walked back towards the fissure. For a moment, Tanis thought he was going to throw himself in. The pact had been sealed with the willing self-sacrifice of one of the lords. Maybe that was the price to raise Moloch, too.

  But when J.J. stopped by a group of blank-eyed slaves, Tanis knew what was about to happen. That was why they’d brought these people here. To sacrifice them. She desperately tried to think of some way to stop it.

  The Descendant faced the tall mountain near the middle of the island.

  “I welcome you and offer this gift,” J.J. said, then turned to the waiting group. “Go.”

  Tanis could barely hold back an agonized shout as Officer Alvarez and eight other people walked obediently into the fissure. There were no final screams, no sounds of impact. They were simply gone.

  She turned to Matt, her voice low but urgent. “We have to do something. What if we kill the Descendants? There aren’t too many of them, and I don’t think they’re armed. No more Descendants, no more pact, right?”

  “Maybe,” he said, without much confidence. “But as soon as we attack any one of them, the others will turn this whole crowd on us.”

  A violent tremor shook the island. Several Descendants and some of their sacrificial victims fell to the ground. Chunks of rock tumbled from the jagged stone peaks. Tanis realized that she hadn’t thought much about whether this ritual would actually work. She’d focused on saving the brainwashed people. But if the Descendants could cause an earthquake, maybe they could really summon a god.

  Matt seemed to feel a new urgency as well. “I want to get to those ruins. Especially that piece with the hieroglyphs.”

  She nodded. “Maybe it’s giving them power. Like the altar on the dromon.”

  “I don’t think smashing it will make all the Descendants drop dead, but it might weaken them somehow. And it should stop the ritual, at least for a while.” He nodded towards the eleven Descendants, who had resumed their places around the ruins. “I just need to fend them off long enough to get it done.”

  “You mean we need to fend them off—” she began, then stopped cold as one of the Descendants stepped forward and knelt.

  It was Brett.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Tanis felt a surge of elation. He was alive. Her joy faded as she realized that his eyes were still yellow and he wore the same white robe as the other Descendants. He was here for the same reason, to sacrifice all these people to Moloch.

  “What is it?” asked Matt.

  “Brett,” she told him.

  He looked at Tanis’ brother, kneeling at the temple ruins. He didn’t see any resemblance. “I’m sorry,” Matt said gently. “But you know that doesn’t change anything.”

  “Fuck you. It changes everything.”

  Brett stood and walked towards the fissure. Tanis knew what he was going to do. She had to stop him. Matt’s hand closed around her arm.

  “You can’t save him,” he said in that maddeningly calm voice.

  “I have to try.” She struggled furiously, but Matt’s grip was too tight.

  “I know how hard this is,” he told her. “Believe me—”

  Brett faced the tallest mountain. “I welcome you and offer this gift.” He turned to the group of sacrifices. “Go.”

  She could only watch as her beloved brother sent nine people to their deaths. There had to be some way to reach him, she thought desperately. The real Brett was still in there. He couldn’t just be gone.

  The island shook again, harder this time. The fissure gaped open wider, releasing a huge cloud of steam. The big mountain started to crumble. Chunks of obsidian the size of cars broke away and crashed down the slopes.

  Matt and Tanis were thrown off their feet. She wrenched her arm free and ran to her brother, standing by the fissure’s edge. “Brett!”

  He looked at her with those horrible yellow eyes, then exclaimed, “Kiddo! What are you doing here?”

  Tanis spoke in a rush. “Listen to me. You’ve been taken over by some kind of ancient magic that’s making you do terrible things. But I know my brother is still in there. You’re strong. You can fight it. Please, Brett, fight it. For me.”

  “Kiddo…,” he said more seriously, and reached for her hand. Tanis recoiled from his touch, instinctively raising the hammer to protect herself. Brett smiled. “You don’t understand. It’s the dawn of a new world. Look.” He pointed to the mountain.

  She looked. The broken slabs of rock were starting to reveal something inside the mountain. Something that moved. Tanis stared in horror.

  Ancient god or not, it was enormous.

  “You see?” Brett asked happily. “He’s coming.”

  When Tanis had pulled away from Matt, his first instinct was to go after her. Then he saw the Descendants by the temple ruins, struggling to their feet after the quake. At least two of them were hurt. He had a clear shot.

  Matt ran to the ruins embedded in the wall of basalt. He swung the blunt end of the ax into the chunk of marble engraved with ancient letters. It cracked into pieces, some falling out, others held in place by the rock.

  J.J. hurled himself at Matt, who slashed his neck with the ax. The young man clutched at the wound, gurgling blood as he staggered back. Wendy had been striding towards Matt as well, but she thought better of it and stepped back.

  Instead, she turned to the blank-faced people waiting by the fissure. There were still more than two hundred of them. She swept her hand over some of them and half the cro
wd peeled away towards Matt.

  “Kill him.” Wendy commanded.

  Tanis saw the crowd charging towards Matt. She turned to her brother urgently. “Stop them. Please.”

  He shook his head with faux regret. “Sorry, sis. This is the way it has to be.”

  Before they surrounded him, Matt had just enough time to smash the second chunk of marble and the fragment of column. Nothing happened. No flash of yellow light. The Descendants’ eyes were still glowing, and their obedient servants were still going to kill him.

  “It’s all right,” Brett assured Tanis. “The temple doesn’t matter. The awakening has already begun.”

  Wendy turned to others, the ones who hadn’t gone after Matt, and pointed to the fissure. “Go.”

  Like the others, they didn’t hesitate to step into the crevasse, plunging into the molten lava below.

  The island was jolted by the strongest quake yet. Tanis dropped to the ground and held on to an outcropping of rock to keep herself from tumbling into the fissure. She looked up at the mountain to see a slab of obsidian slide off and crash down the slope. Now something was forcing its way out, like a baby bird pecking through its shell. The point of what looked like a sharpened bone protruded from the peak. Tanis realized it was a horn. A bull’s horn. On a creature with the head of a bull and the body of a man.

  Her mind was racing. There had to be some way to end this, to break the pact, but that would require one of the Descendants to willingly sacrifice himself, and she didn’t see that happening.

  And then she remembered something Mr. Dark had said. What had he called her?

  A waste of good Byzantine blood.

  He’d also said that she would die on this island.

  Maybe, in his own way, the evil bastard had told her how to stop Moloch. All she had to do was die.

  Or it was a trick.

  What would Mr. Dark gain from Moloch’s defeat?

  Maybe his own, eventual dominion over humankind.

  Or not. Maybe he just wanted Tanis gone, one less “dead person” to fight.