by Jenn Stark
On the other side of the room, the lab was in chaos. Fire ran around the ceiling like a trapped electrical storm. The technicians had given up on their packing job and were instead cowering under tables and behind machines. The monitors blinked and chittered crazily, their circuits clearly fried.
I intended to throw a sprawling Gamon at their feet, but I didn’t have the energy. Instead, I dropped her in a heap of limbs and fabric.
“The antidote,” I gritted out, my voice sounding like gravel. “Where is it?”
Nobody moved.
I lit one of the bone shards like a taper and pointed it in the corner where a half-dozen techs huddled. The table sheltering them instantly caught fire, and they scattered out from beneath it, squawking in several languages.
But enough of them knew English, I was sure. It was the international language of the arcane black market.
“Antidote,” I snapped again. “You have to have one, dammit.”
There was another squawk of fear as I traced an arc of fire along the floor.
“They don’t.” Gamon’s laugh interrupted my rant, her voice low and throaty. I turned, aiming my double spikes at her, ignoring the jerk of pain as the second one seated itself alongside the first in the base of my left palm.
Crap.
But Gamon lifted herself to one elbow, staring at me with a mixture of surprise and disbelief.
“You still don’t get it, do you?” she rasped. “There is only one creature on this world or any other that can supply the final ingredients for the drug, and only with those ingredients could we create a true antidote. And the cost of delivering that ingredient was—simple. You. Your body, your blood. Nothing else was strong enough to summon the mirror of smoke. And once the mirror was in place, the god could be reborn.”
I stared at her, my spikes still emitting pops and sparks. “You seriously have never made an antidote. Your god couldn’t put that together.”
“My god wanted you,” she said simply.
“Well, he sucks, then. He won’t even show himself.”
At that moment, another explosion blasted through the earth, ripping a hole through the walls and exposing a fiery conflagration beyond. The force of it dropped me to the floor, and the techs around us dove for cover—any cover—as multimillion dollar machines cracked and exploded in the heat.
Gamon, however, kept her gaze fixed on me. “Tezcatlipoca,” she murmured, her eyes bright with the fervor of the damned. “Giver of both hope and despair. The drug and the antidote. But only in exchange for your life.”
I sat there a moment more, lungs heaving, hunched over, forcing myself to think. What was I missing here?
Gamon was crazy, clearly she was crazy, but I’d found in my line of work that sometimes crazy people believed things based on a kernel of truth. I had made some enemies in this world, and some enemies outside it. It wasn’t completely unreasonable that my life was worth trading drug secrets from the other side of the veil. Which made Gamon not my only enemy—if she was the face of this Tezawhatever god, the go-between, even killing her wouldn’t put an end to this trade. It would simply crop up again.
The heat of the fire finally broke through to me, and I turned, squinting into it.
“Who’s back there?”
Gamon didn’t bother turning. “You want the antidote. I want the complete drug. Both hinge on you, Sara Wilde. And the clock is ticking. You don’t need me to tell you what will happen to those people infected with the highest concentrations of those drugs if they don’t reverse the effects in time. You’ve seen it yourself.”
I stared at her a long time, then finally nodded. “You can make the antidote?” I asked.
“I can,” she said, and her voice was filled with certainty. Her eyes were burning with an unholy ferocity, but in this, I believed her. As insane as it sounded, I believed her. “I will.”
“Then do whatever you need with me,” I said at last. “Now.”
She stood, and I stood with her, both of us ragged and bloody, but only one of us certifiable. So far. My left hand was unnaturally weighed down with two shards, but at least that allowed me the ability to have the use of my right. Edward Scissorhands had nothing on me.
With Gamon leading the way, we stepped out of the lab and back into the room of smoke and fire, the bright yellow light still licking from beyond the sacrificial altar, the mirror of smoke still shimmering behind it. The heat was so intense, I flinched, ducking my head as Gamon strode forth. As we walked, I searched for a way out or through this—but there was something in Gamon’s manner that struck me as authentic in a way I wouldn’t have imagined possible with her. She believed that the way to get what she wanted was by handing me over—and I believed it too.
I might not like it, but I believed it.
Gamon finally stopped, called something out I couldn’t translate. The fire lifted just enough for me to peek out from my arms, and behind it, through the flickering flames I could see—something else. I could almost make sense of it too, the image dancing in the shimmering heat, scattering apart only to coalesce again.
Then it finally resolved into a single form.
I froze.
“Tezcatlipoca,” Gamon breathed.
But it wasn’t an ancient Mesoamerican god staring back at me, with its distinctive flat features and space alien body. And it wasn’t a god of smoke and mirrors, at least not in any traditional sense.
It was a tall, powerful woman wearing robes of red and gold, her dark hair falling over her shoulders, her face impossibly cold and cruel…
And…familiar.
I swallowed, my voice cracking in my throat as I spoke.
“Um, Mom?”
Chapter Thirty
The being turned to me. She was—unmistakably—the figure I’d seen on the side of the dome in Atlantis in my vision, the one Martine had painted on the warehouse wall. She was also my spitting image, a taller, better version of me—her hair longer and more lustrous, her body stronger and probably not nearly as scarred beneath all that silk.
“Sara,” she whispered, and the words vibrated off the sides of the room.
Beside me, Gamon turned back, staring hard at me, then at…there was no way I could keep calling her Mom.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
That response seemed to galvanize Gamon into action and at the same time relieve her of whatever was troubling her. She faced me triumphantly. “She is the warrior god of the ancients, the sorcerer god of the new peoples of this earth, and the god of magic for today. She is all that is missing in this world.”
“Vigilance.” The voice that came out wasn’t my mom’s, however, as much as I would have preferred it. It was mine, and it seemed pulled from the depths of my being. The rocks shook and heaved around us, and the shards of bone sizzled in my left hand.
Gamon’s mouth contorted, but it was my mother who spoke.
“Vigilance,” she said, lengthening the word as if trying it on for size. “Yes, I have been vigilant these millennia, waiting for the time to return to my rightful place among you. And all it took was the simplest, frailest of humans, in the end.” Her laughter swelled. “Long have I watched, looking for my chance. Long have I hunted every seam and frayed thread of the veil your precious Council has wrapped so tightly around this earth. Have you ever wondered why they have been so dedicated to the cause of that veil? Have you never considered that it is not so important what they were keeping out, but what they were allowing to remain within?”
“They cannot compare to your power,” Gamon piped up, like the suck-up she clearly was.
“Why do you want back in?” I asked. Watching this better, stronger reflection of me was having a weird effect. I suspected I should be feeling intimidated, or at least a little awed, as Gamon clearly was. Instead, I felt nothing but irritation and a curious letdown. This was my mother. This magical, powerful being from another dimension, this creature who had so enraptured the peoples of Atlantis that they’d painte
d her picture on their central dome like some sort of goddess worthy of worship. This was where I came from, and yet—
She’d brought me here to bleed.
“Why do you want back in so desperately?” I asked again, stronger this time. My mother’s gaze shifted from Gamon, whom she was regarding with clear condescension and the faintest ghost of a smile—to me.
Her expression hardened.
“Yours is not the place to ask questions. You have gone too long without guidance. You were so close in my grasp the day Llyr broke through the veil when you were only a child—but you ran. You ran! To live a life without the truth. Heeding countless voices when there has ever been only one that has the answers you seek.” She narrowed her eyes on me, and I felt the faintest shiver in the back of my brain, exactly the same way I felt when Armaeus was trying his lock picks on my cerebellum.
“Mine,” she hissed.
My third eye flapped open in sudden alarm, and I stepped back, raising my hands in instant deflection. For a moment, I was too slow, and I was blasted back by the sheer force of my mother’s strength, my mind filled with a cacophony of voices, screams, thundering crashes, and high, terrifying cries. And everywhere, there were words, so many words, my name chief among them, swirling and cutting and diving like weapons. I thought instantly of the torture that the Devil of the Arcana Council had endured months earlier, the endless riddle of demonic pursuit, starting and twisting back and starting again, a snake eating its tail.
“No!” I finally managed, lifting my hands higher. The twin spires of the Gods’ Nails sparked with their own hiss of fury, and a burst of fire shot out, filling the space between us. In my right hand, I held my gun—though I knew it wouldn’t offer any true help against my mother.
Gamon was still human, though. And, Revenant or not, she could still be killed.
“You dare defy me?” My mother had somehow succeeded in infiltrating my mind, and I could hear both her outside and inside voice. It was worse than anything I had endured with Armaeus, even at his most insidious. Her voice crawled through my nervous system, leaving a trail of violation. Across the room, her face stretched into a smile. “You are strong, Sara. But make no mistake, you are not that strong.”
A shocking burst of pain shattered my concentration, and I staggered back. I stared down at my shoulder, confused at what I saw.
There was blood there. Crimson, shining. Welling from a hole that simply had not been there a moment earlier.
Gamon’s voice cried out, high and strained, and I realized she was also holding a gun. “You are no true daughter of a god,” she cried. “You bleed, you die.”
“You dare!” The movement from the being on the other end of the chamber was instantaneous and devastating. Gamon screamed as she collapsed forward, pummeled to the ground by a wash of flame. Clearly, beating on me was a task reserved solely for my mother, and I didn’t miss the twisted expression of outrage, pain, and forlorn need that haunted Gamon’s face as she fell.
I couldn’t go to her, though. I had bigger fish to fry.
“You need to go now, Mom,” I gritted out, taking a step forward despite the gunshot wound, despite the screaming in my mind. “You need to leave.”
“I am never leaving,” hissed my mother. “I have waited too long for this, fought too hard. You are the entry into all that has been ripped from me, the entry, not the vessel.”
“Right now, I’m the stop sign.” I took another step forward, thrusting all my shock and awe aside. My mother stopped advancing and straightened, clearly surprised.
“You dare,” she said, this time aiming the words at me. But, unlike with Gamon, there was no outrage here, no shock that a kicked dog would dare bite and thrash. There was…surprise. Confusion even.
Whatever worked. I thrust my hands forward, and from the depths of my being, a burst of fire billowed forth and blasted across the room. My mother cried out, not in pain so much as shock, and I staggered forward a few more steps, my gun forgotten, dropped behind me, my hands outstretched—one with foot-long pincers driven into it, one lost in a mass of fire.
I sensed more than felt the running of feet, the surge of emotion behind me, then suddenly I was no longer alone. Nikki pulled up beside me, machine gun under her arm, and a phalanx of black-suited guards piled in around her. She put a hand on my shoulder and held me—held me fast, the blow of crushing horror emanating from my mother’s form somehow blunted and shunted aside but not yet dead, not yet—
“No.” The masculine voice sounded in my ears, in the air, and in the very rocks around me. I knew that voice. Nikki hadn’t just brought the reinforcements of the mortal kind, she’d pulled the strength of the Magician to her side. As Ma-Singh had said, no one could accuse her of doing things by half.
And that the Magician was here—again—struck a keening and unfamiliar chord within me, momentarily drowning out all other thoughts, all other truths. He had come here, he had followed me, through the water and the wild. He’d sent reinforcements when I’d been in danger, and when I needed more—so much more—he’d stepped into the breach himself, lending his immortal strength and otherworldly magic to my aid.
If he wasn’t breaking the rules of his own Council, he was bending them pretty far. I didn’t know why, but right now…right now I was just desperately glad he was here.
“No,” Armaeus breathed again, and in the center of my being, I felt lighter, brighter, the darkness that Vigilance had brought with her easing its hold on my heart—the heart, which even Gamon had known was the central force in all this. The heart that Gamon had pierced and I had hardened.
“No.” I added my voice to the throng, Nikki’s protecting presence beside me, and with a Herculean thrust, I rejected all of my mother’s darkness, hurling it toward her with a scream of loss and outrage that had first begun building inside me twenty-seven years earlier, when she’d apparently brought me into existence not as a child to love and help grow…but as a tool, a pawn. Her pawn.
But I wouldn’t be that for her—couldn’t be.
“No!” I cried again.
And that seemed to do it. The sudden sound of rushing wind jetted through the chamber like a reverse tornado, dropping the House of Swords warriors to their knees, Nikki and I stumbled forward, also going down. Armaeus—I didn’t know where Armaeus was, exactly, but I knew he wasn’t here, wasn’t caught up in this maelstrom. Was he the one causing it? Or had I done that?
It didn’t matter. Everything was wind and pain, and even Gamon’s broken body was lifted and flung forward, her long legs and arms flailing until she finally gained her balance—then she was running, sprinting after the disappearing visage of my mother. I realized too late Gamon was getting away, but I had no more breath in me to stop her, no more strength to do anything but breathe.
“No,” I gasped one last time, then there was nothing at all.
Silence blanketed the room.
Nikki and I crouched together, staring at the hole that had been blasted into the wall, while Ma-Singh barked something in Spanish and several black-clad warriors sprang forth, running pell-mell into the breach.
They wouldn’t find Gamon though, I knew. They definitely wouldn’t find my…
I swayed.
“Whoa there, dollface, easy does it.”
Nikki steadied me as some unseen person wrapped a blanket around me. She held me in the crook of her arm, speaking over my head.
“She’s got multiple lacerations and a fairly fresh bullet hole in her, and I don’t want to test her superhuman healing skills on this. Someone find the way out of here and pronto, because we sure as hell aren’t getting out the way we came in.”
That last made me laugh, and I choked a little, realizing with some surprise that my throat had been burned raw. “Martine?” I managed.
“Sent up the alarm exactly like you instructed. We were already in Mexico City, Armaeus sent us right after he lost contact with you the first time in the black market.”
I fr
owned. “When was that?
“Don’t know, don’t care. Something didn’t sit right with him, and I wasn’t going to argue.” Nikki turned me gently. “Here we go now. We’ll get you out of here and back to the—”
“Wait,” I stopped her. We were passing the shattered Sun Stone, still slick with my own blood. I picked up the largest chunk I could carry, a section that bore the face of a jaguar, its mouth open, the hungry maw a hole meant to capture the blood that even now was stained inside it. “We’re going to need this,” I managed. “For the antidote.”
Nikki paused, but knew enough not to ask unnecessary questions. “Just the one chunk?”
I sighed, looking down at it. I had only so much blood to give, not so much that we’d need more of the infernal stone than this to strain it. “Just this. If it works…when it works…we’ll need to destroy everything else in this place.”
“Consider it done,” she said, and in her voice was the strength I no longer had, the certainty I might never have again. In her hold was the power to keep me on the path I must follow, and the warmth and security that she would cradle my broken body, when all was said and done.
“Thank you,” I whispered, tears running down my face for no reason at all.
“Thank you right back, dollface,” she said, patting my shoulder. “And thank you for not dying. Saves me from dealing with a heartbroken Mongolian. Ain’t nobody wants to see that.”
She turned me gingerly toward the door, and eased me out of the room.
