“Don't we all,” she said with no little amount of sarcasm.
Dracht left the sidewalk and jogged into the street. Alexandra followed. She saw he was steering them away from the front of the shops being raided where the volatility level was high. Traffic had come to a stop a block back, the drivers going around to other streets that were not filled with bodies.
An increasingly difficult thing to find, she thought, with so many people on the move.
A sudden yank of the bag on her shoulder jerked her off her feet. Because she'd been holding on to it so tight, and had been between one jogging step and the next, she got pulled off balance and landed with a thump on her back. The wind whooshed painfully out of her lungs and she gasped, wheezing in a startled breath.
The looter gave her no pause, no question, no second glance. All Alexandra saw was a flicker of motion and something dark before the looter cried out and went crashing to the ground.
A moment later, Dracht, looking as angry as she'd ever seen him, hovered above her.
Eyes watery from the pain, she tried to speak, finding it difficult after having the wind knocked out of her.
“Got to get up, Alex. It's too dangerous to be in the middle of the street.” He scooped her up off the ground like she weighed nothing.
Tough, hard as nails Alexandra had difficulty gaining her feet. Not a woman prone to displays of weakness, she clapped a hand against her chest and forced a breath in. Staggering at his side, she let him weave her through the throng while her vision blurred at the edges.
Maybe it was the after effect of falling.
She couldn't tell, could hardly breathe.
“You all right? Alex?” Dracht hustled her around a parked car and back into the street. He tossed a concerned look at her.
“Yeah, yeah. Hard to...catch my...breath.” It was coming back gasp by gasp.
“It's getting darker. Or whatever this is. We need to hurry,” he said, leading her past another clog of looters who only seemed intent on their target rather than fleeing citizens.
A ball of fire erupted when something whipped through a shop window; heat blazed outward, a lick of flame shooting halfway across the street less than five yards ahead.
For the second time, Alexandra found herself on the ground. Face down this time, cheek scraped on the asphalt, skin tingling from the heat.
Dracht spat curses in two languages, on the ground with her, the bags laying haphazardly at their sides.
“What was that?” Alexandra turned her head the other way, trying to see. She saw others on the ground, some getting up, others vaulting the bodies like hurdles. Mentally, she checked her body for burns and didn't feel any.
Small favors.
“Home made bomb. Little molotov, probably. Things are devolving quickly. We need to get to the marina.” Dracht lurched to his feet and took her with him. He shouldered both bags and kept her hand in his.
The tether felt unusually nice. She ran with him around the flaming store, grateful to have come out of that with just a few scrapes and bruises. Dracht didn't look worse for wear; likely, he'd seen the incendiary get thrown and had taken them down just in time to avoid an uncomfortable injury from flying debris.
At the juncture of the next intersection, Dracht pulled her to the corner of a building and unzipped one of the bags. Tugging out a bottle of water, he took off the cap and offered it to her.
“Here. See if this helps while I scope out the next block.”
“Thanks.” She took the bottle and had a drink. Choking on the first swallow, she got another few down without trouble.
A mother and her three children ran past, the kids faces masks of terror. Two girls were not far behind, holding hands, frantically looking left and right as if they'd lost someone. Smoke curled into the darkening sky, making it that much harder to see.
Bringing her attention back to Dracht, she capped the bottle, saving as much water as she could in case they needed it later.
“What's it look like?” she asked.
He had his head wrenched around the corner, muscles flexing along his throat.
“Like the last one. You ready? The longer we wait, the harder it will probably be to get past.”
“Ready.” She tucked the bottle back into the bag. In the distance, she heard sirens. It surprised her.
“They're probably going to try and lock the city down, assert a curfew once night falls,” Dracht said.
“I'm kind of surprised the police or the military functions at a time like this.”
“It's what they're trained for, though I don't think the fabric will hold together if daylight comes tomorrow and something else happens.”
Alexandra knew what might happen. Dracht craned a look around at her for her silence.
They locked gazes. In periphery, blurs of bodies and color and light made a peculiar backdrop to their frozen moment.
“Should I start taking guesses or are you going to tell me?”
“Plague. The plague is next.”
Chapter Thirteen
Black sun, red moon. Minna couldn't have appreciated the odd beauty of a red moon if she hadn't witnessed it with her own eyes. The advent of night erased most of the strange, gray atmosphere, leaving an almost normal looking canopy overhead. Almost.
With the sun on the other side of the earth, it left a clear shot of the moon that didn't look smaller for its discoloration, but bigger. To Minna, more of the detail could be seen than in its pale guise. Weirdly, most of the stars were missing. Only here or there did she see a sporadic twinkle, a glimmer, a wink. An odd sense of being enclosed and encapsulated could not be escaped.
She wondered what the people of the world were thinking, feeling, doing. Out here, sitting on a rock outside the cave overlooking the Dead Sea, everything was silent. There were no people anywhere in the vicinity.
It gave her a lot of time to contemplate the rest of the seals. Of what might happen if she decided not to break them. This was no simple game, no whim to be exercised at will and then retreated from. Once the first seal was broken, the rest were meant to follow.
She wondered if Ashrael or another Guardian would show up if the plague wasn't released tomorrow. Would they break them in her stead?
Her second thoughts, she knew, were a normal part of the process. Grieving for the things that would be lost, the people, the souls, made her wish she could offer the planet up another opportunity. Even now she mourned the process taking place even while she marveled at it, existing in perpetual contradiction over what she knew she needed to do over what she wanted to do.
This first seal would not be the hardest. Releasing a plague and the rain, would be. And after that, the Sixth Seal itself. Those catastrophes would bring unaccountable death and destruction. Certainly today there had been some. Car accidents, suicides, victims of crime from panicked citizens stocking up for the end of the world.
The events tomorrow would make the ones of today wither in comparison.
***
Out on the open water, Evelyn eyed the plethora of ships, boats, canoes and sailboats with no small amount of wonder. Panic had driven people out onto the ocean in droves, some paddling frantically for god knew where, likely to wind up going in circles if they had no navigation aid. The further they got from the mainland, the more the number of vessels dwindled, until there was nothing but the sea and the uncomfortable sky.
Through the red moon night, Rhett had pushed the yacht to its ultimate limit, driving forward relentlessly on a path of least resistance. He only allowed her to take the wheel once while he slept, a three hour power nap that seemed to provide plenty of energy for him to get up and get right back to work.
Rhett was as intent as she'd ever seen him, always planning, always plotting, always preparing. Refueling on one of the small islands had been an exercise in danger and frustration, which he circumvented by siphoning gas from cars in the parking lot near the docks. With the chaos in full swing, no one bothered to stop him.
The owners, whoever they were, kept the galley stocked with drinks and a supply of canned and packaged food that kept them both hydrated and fed. Rhett ate with the same no nonsense style she'd come to expect from him, shoveling in mouthfuls of room temperature stew straight from the can. Several times they passed other boaters on their way in different directions; none stopped to talk or even try to make contact.
Everyone had somewhere they wanted to be. Home, family, loved ones were the only focus.
With Rhett in control they made excellent time, the onboard radar tracking their progress toward land.
Wind whipped, she pulled a piece of hair away from her face and made her way into the steering room where Rhett stared out the windows, grip tight on the wheel.
She knew it wasn't fear of losing control of the boat that made his knuckles white under his skin, but the unknown.
Any second, the sky could turn even darker with a swarm of insects bent on slithering into every crevice, every nook and cranny available. A moving, chitinous cloud of sticky-legged, winged beasts.
He glanced over like he felt her there, rather than heard her, and gave her a tight smile.
“How long do you think we have?” he asked.
“I don't know. I wish I could guess with any accuracy. Damn it, I wish we all had our phones.”
“Do the Guardians have them too?” His sandy colored brows skewed at the thought.
Evelyn chuckled and leaned a hip against one of the seats. “Uh...no. No, they don't need phones.”
“So you can talk to them in your head—telepathy or something?” Out here, he didn't need to be so vigilant about crashing into another boat, so he gave her more of his attention for longer stretches of time. Any other vessels looked like tiny blips of white in the gray, too far for now to be any kind of threat.
“No, no. We can only talk to them face to face. My sisters and I don't have that capability, either. If we had our cell phones, though, I could try to talk them out of it if they were the ones breaking the seals.” Telepathy would have come in handy right about then.
The drone of the engine purred along under their conversation. Evelyn, with a rare moment to study Rhett, did so. Rugged with his whiskers heavily layered over his jaw, he looked like he'd been accosted, beat up, drug through a gutter and more tired than she'd seen him in a while. His wounds were all superficial and even the one on his shoulder had stopped weeping overnight.
Yet he continued to exude confidence and a lust for life that defied imagination considering the situation they were facing. He pushed himself to the limit and beyond, demanding obedience from his body and mind, never once breaking down or freaking out or any other myriad emotional overtures some men might have made.
Far from infallible, impatient to the point of obnoxiousness sometimes, he wore his badges of imperfection with perfect ease.
“You're staring,” he said without accusation.
“Yes I am.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I'm thinking that it's going to be an utter shame to lose you just when I found you. Before we've even had time to really know one another at all.”
“Oh, I think I know you pretty well,” he said with a surprisingly jocular tone.
Evelyn arched a brow and cupped her hand over the back of the chair to put more weight into her lean. “Is that so?
His attempt to suppress his grin at her wry question was ill concealed. “That's so. Would you like me to demonstrate just how well I know you?”
She wouldn't have thought her grim thoughts could be derailed, or that amusement would flare as bright as it did. Rhett had always had a talent for catching her off guard though.
“Yes.”
“I know you're stronger than you think you are, and that you're not as strong as you wish you were.”
Evelyn chewed over that, bemused. “Does that mean you think I'm weak?”
“Not at all.”
“What else?”
“I know you're a little bit of a dreamer, you're tenacious, stubborn, hard headed--”
“Those last couple are pretty much the same,” she interrupted with a droll smile.
“Let me finish.”
“Okay, okay.” She showed her palms in surrender.
“Tireless, afraid of confrontation, insecure without your sisters--”
“Hey, wait just--”
“Insecure without your sisters,” he repeated, insisting.
Evelyn bit the inside of her lip.
“Willing to take risks, kind-hearted, prone to flippant remarks when you're stressed and you have to have the last kiss—and the last word.” He looked momentarily smug.
She stepped around the chair to his side and rested her hand on the small of his back. An almost reverent touch while she stared up into his face.
He met her eyes and held them, then asked quietly, “Aren't you going to tell me what you know about me?”
“I know you're strong, smart, fast, sly, cunning, impatient, curt when you're under pressure, controlled during the same, good with weapons, compassionate, willing to risk your life for what you believe in, and one hell of a protector.” Evelyn didn't have time to be shocked at how easy all that poured out.
He half turned to cup her chin with his fingers and brought his face closer.
“Do you know what else I know about you?”
“What?”
“You're in love with me.”
***
In another boat, miles behind Evelyn and Rhett, Alexandra stared out at the dismal day with her arms crossed over her chest.
Stealing the boat had proven no problem for Dracht and they had made their escape from the docks as the mayhem built to a mighty crescendo. He insisted she sleep for the first leg and though she'd argued with him, she went out like a light the second she got into a prone position.
Dracht had spent an hour marveling over the red moon before he too forced himself to rest.
Alexandra had taken the wheel and steered them on the heading he provided, thoughtful through the night about their circumstance. Several times the engine had stalled out for no reason that she could discern, slowing their flight down considerably. Dracht managed to restart it every time and get them moving forward again.
Morning brought with it the depressing iron sky, and she found herself looking deep into the distance, as deep as the gloom would allow her, for signs of the pestilence.
Dracht scrounged up a minimal amount of food and water from below deck, insisting she have the lionshare.
Alexandra refused to take it, of course, leaving it sit there for another time. They still had water in their bags that she sipped from instead of drained, like she wanted to.
“So, I think we should make a plan, just in case,” she said out of the blue. Dracht was at the wheel this time when she sprung the topic on him.
“What plan is that?” He swerved a curious look her way.
“If we see it coming, I think we cut the engine, drop anchor, and bolt ourselves below deck until it passes.” She arched a brow.
“I was thinking of doing the same thing. It would help if we knew when whoever has the seal might break it, and where the pestilence starts first. It'll move in a swarm, right?”
“You'd think so? I mean, I've never witnessed this before. No one has. Not of this magnitude. Couldn't tell ya where it manifests, either. Maybe out of the blue.”
“That's reassuring,” he muttered. “How long do you think it'll last?”
“If we get there in time. If,” She wanted there to be less doubt in her voice than there was. “Then we won't have to worry about how long it'll last. Otherwise? I don't know. We'll be watching out the windows so we'll see it come and go.”
“What if it doesn't 'go', though? What if it covers everything until the next event—what was that one again?” he asked. Whiskers spread out from his nea
tly trimmed goatee, covering his jaw. He'd had no time to shave or even think about that kind of personal detail.
Alexandra pulled her attention back in from the slate colored surface of the water. “That'll be a bad thing. Because the next seal is rain. It might wash the bugs off, but we're going to have a difficult time moving around after a few days. I mean, it's gonna come down.”
“Well, we just have to get there before the seal is broken.”
They were going as fast as the boat would allow them to. Looking at the map spread out over the wall, Alexandra judged they had about eight hours until docking in Israel. Time was not on their side right now, not with the boat acting up and cutting out at random.
“Maybe we should lock ourselves in here instead. Blow through the swarm if it comes so we can keep going. I mean, we could end up dying down below if we just sit there and wait it out,” she said.
Dracht seemed to consider it. “If we can't see, we run the risk of running aground...but you're right. We're taking a big risk thinking the pestilence might pass before the rain so we can keep going. It's a crapshoot either way.”
Alex grunted. And wasn't that the truth? They could be in trouble no matter what decision they made. In her mind, they had to keep moving at all costs. The more she thought about it, the more she thought that was the right thing to do. Waiting it out was safer short term, not long term.
“I'll go find some towels or blankets or something to block all the crevices.” Alexandra left the cabin and jogged through the first deck rooms, finding several towels and a thin shawl. The material had the scent of its owner's perfume worked into the fine threads. Something musky, floral and faintly spicy. She wondered where they were, what predicament they'd found themselves in with the advent of the black sun.
“Alexandra!”
Dracht's voice, urgent and loud, cut through her thoughts. She broke into a run, bursting out into the corridor leading to the upper deck. Taking the stairs by two, she charged into the steering room, wildly looking out the broad windows at the gloomy sea.
Daughters of Eve Collection (Books 1, 2 & 3) Page 38
