He’d stopped running—had come to a standstill on the roof at some point after he’d started to wonder how he could move as he did. He didn’t have time to sort through this, and so he refused to question it. Today, his life and Rylee’s depended on him trusting his intuition. These memories, they were like a floating, disconnected foundation; they gave him the skill, the ability to move in ways he hadn’t imagined, but he had to trust them, had to ignore the how and why, or else his mind was yanked down into a clutter of confusing remembrances.
He landed with a grace he found familiar and yet foreign, and promptly ignored it. Didn’t want to think about what else had changed, what or who he was—not now. A cascade of foreign memories, new associations that his mind had not previously made to his surroundings, came to the forefront of his thoughts. He felt himself begin a maneuver that would take him five more steps to complete, but he didn’t know the steps—he felt his way through them. Every instinct told him to obey, that his body’s muscle memory was way ahead of him.
He set his mind on Rylee and he moved, felt his body deciding the details for him, his mind growing quiet.
Over the noise of sirens and the city in chaos, he pushed himself faster toward the dull thuds of battle. In the quiet of his mind, a memory of Malkier standing over him rose to the surface. A part of him remembered what had happened—saw what had played out the night a man had made a Borealis bleed. It was another side of him that comprehended the why… the how.
A grunt of effort escaped him as he surged forward over the rooftops, urgency pushing him to move faster.
Rylee felt the collision in the air and the impact with the ground before the pain caught up to her. She put a dent in the rooftop where her head and shoulder first hit. She managed to roll into the fall, tumble through the momentum and protect her spine, until she rammed to a sudden halt against a solid barrier. The wall of a taller building connected to the roof she’d just managed to face plant into.
She’d known it was a mistake—but only in that split second after her feet had left the ground and it was too late to change it. Staying out of Malkier’s grasp for so long had taken every move in her arsenal, but she couldn’t keep it up. Even now, despite the pain, she was fighting desperately to catch her breath.
She’d tried to put distance between them, risked a longer leap than was wise, made herself a target that, while moving, followed a predictable course. It had been a jeep, she thought, that crashed into her. Caught her in the legs, clipping them out from under her and sending her into a spiral as she fell out of the sky.
She tried to stand now, but alarming pain raged up from her left ankle and knee. For a moment, she lost hold of her fear. If her leg couldn’t hold her, this chase was over.
The last nail in her coffin—acceptance—came when she sought the signal with her senses. The man fighting Jonathan, he was far away now. The signal seemed still, but it was hard to know at this distance. She could hope he was still struggling against Jonathan, but that meant he was much too far away for him to help her in time. It appeared that she had given Jonathan all the time he was going to get.
She felt Malkier join her on the roof, his weight causing an audible thud and shaking the ground beneath her. She closed her eyes, listening to his footsteps approach. Though the sky was covered in gray rain clouds, the light around her dimmed when the monster stepped between her and the sun.
“Have you felt it by now, human?” Malkier asked as he looked in the direction of the signal. “Has their fight grown still?”
Rylee swallowed, but didn’t speak or look at him. She reached for the wall, searching for some leverage to pull herself up. If her time had come, she wanted to face death on her feet. Her body trembled as she put weight on the leg, but she refused to show the weakness on her face.
“It is clear, now, why my brother wanted you. It’s such a waste, I admit,” Malkier said. “A creature of grace. Your death, it could have been so much more than a footnote in the story of Brings the Rain.”
She opened her eyes and looked into his white slits. Perhaps she had hit her head too hard, or perhaps he’d simply pissed her off too much to be afraid any longer. But the world, it seemed brighter to her, even though she now stood in this monster’s shadow. There were two things of which she was absolutely sure.
“He lives,” Rylee whispered, steadying herself.
Malkier’s head tilted, and he studied her eyes with an interest that had not been there before. Neither of them blinked or gave it much attention when the flicker of a shadow passed over the rooftop. Rylee pushed away from the wall, planting as much weight as she could on her good leg, and drew her rattan.
“And I am no one’s goddamn footnote,” she said.
Malkier smiled. “Wha—”
It all happened so quickly, as though she had taken one long breath only to find herself standing alone when she exhaled. Rylee blinked, shook her head, then blinked twice more, trying to process what she had witnessed.
Malkier’s words had suddenly cut off. Rylee had heard it—a moment before his eyes widened in alarm, before his disturbing voice was replaced with a gagged choke—the sound of a metal chain pulled taut.
Doomsday had suddenly snapped into place—pulled tight into Malkier’s jaw and around the back of his skull. He had never had time to brace himself, hardly managed to reach for the obstruction lodged between his teeth before he was shooting away from her. He’d been four feet in the air, his body suddenly parallel to the roof, before he tore down through the edge and dropped out of sight.
Jonathan had been there behind them, she was almost sure. He had been moving too fast, plummeting headlong out of the skyline and straight for the street as though trying to gather as much speed as possible.
“Uh, okay—tag, you’re in,” she said before the sound of a massive impact rose from the street below. It was quickly followed by a tremor that shook the city around her. Rylee staggered and fell forward onto her hands and knees, grimacing as the fall sent agony up her leg.
Despite the injury, she began to crawl. Even with the pain brought by each movement, a smile was forming on her face. It grew as she dragged herself closer to the gouge Malkier’s body had left in the side of the roof. Then, as she moved to place her next hand forward, a figure suddenly came into being above her.
He dropped from a few feet in the air, falling in between her and the ledge, a familiar red and black cloud swirling around him, rapidly dissipating as he rolled to a stop.
A black fedora fell onto the ground in front of her.
Heyer had landed face down, steam wafting off his body and clothing as he lay there in the rain. He roused slowly, pushing up to his hands and knees to see her watching him.
“Rylee?” he asked, his voice on the edge of complete exhaustion. “Where is Malkier? Where is Jonathan?”
Her exhaustion was hard to mask, but she nodded her head to the crater left in the side of the building. Heyer turned back to her just as they heard Jonathan’s roar below.
“Rylee, we can’t let them kill one another,” he said.
A fire hydrant’s waterline had broken, its contents and the rain now flowing into the Alpha Ferox-sized crater punched into the street below. Jonathan hung four stories above the sidewalk, Doomsday dangled from his fist, the weapon’s spiked end swaying beneath him. Excali-bar was sunk into the building’s exterior wall. The staff and his legs had torn deep gouges down the structure’s side while he was bringing himself to a momentary stop.
He felt the wall starting to give.
Jonathan stared at the scarred face of the monster as he drew in Doomsday’s slack, securing the chain with a trained one-handed technique that spun its length up his arm. Once he’d reeled in all he could, his chain-wrapped hand joined Excali-bar overhead, just as the building’s wall began to crumbled around him. He drew the staff free and gave himself back to gravity.
As he fell, time moved at a glacial speed, the world outside his enemy becoming an aftertho
ught. He pivoted in the air, positioning Excali-bar’s point over his shoulder. Malkier had not yet opened his eyes. A clawed hand rubbed at his jaw as though testing if his mouth still opened and shut as it should. Jonathan was a heartbeat away when the white slits finally opened, and he roared when the ancient alien met his eyes.
He slammed into Malkier’s abdomen with his knees while bringing down Excali-bar with all the force he could put behind it. The staff slowed to a halt, the weapon’s edge trembling a precarious and frustrating inch above his enemy’s eye. The debris that had fallen with Jonathan rained down around them as the Borealis’ gaze narrowed.
“So, the son survives,” Malkier said, with a calmness uncharacteristic of the Feroxian species. As he studied Jonathan, that composure began to melt away. “Picked up your father’s weapon, Brings the Rain? Presume you will succeed where he fai—”
Jonathan had clenched his jaw and stood from his knees to bear down on Excali-bar. The Borealis had flinched, stopped speaking mid-sentence as he felt the lost leverage. A disturbed wonder crept onto Malkier’s face as his muscles trembled with the effort of holding the staff’s point at bay.
“Abomination…” Malkier said. “Do you even know what you—”
Jonathan twisted his grip on Excali-bar, causing the staff to turn and making the edge poised over Malkier’s skull harder to keep under control.
“My brother should have disposed of you,” Malkier said, grunting with effort. “I would never allow this.”
“Malkier,” Jonathan said, his breathing heavy, betraying the toll it was taking to keep them at a stalemate. “He was counting on it.”
Malkier’s face contorted in anger, forced to consider if Jonathan had spoken the truth. “So be it,” the Alpha Ferox finally said. He started to push with his full strength, and Jonathan grunted under the strain as he began to lose ground, the staff’s edge pushed off target.
The alien was fast, thrusting the weapon back with a finality that took Jonathan’s balance. Before he recovered, Jonathan was caught by the monster’s leg tearing up from beneath the rubble. A massive foot planted into Jonathan’s chest before thrusting him blindly though the air.
He barely saw the corner of a building before he tore through it, slowing enough for his vision to resolve into a rapid interchange of gray rain clouds and the downtown street shrinking below him. A cry of warning sounded. He was gaining altitude too fast.
He closed his eyes as a collage of memories triggered reflexes. He felt the exhilaration of throwing himself out of the back of an aircraft and years of scenario training inside Mr. Clean. He’d survived this before. Doomsday was more than a weapon.
He stopped flailing and drew his limbs in tight before pulling his legs to his chest. The world stopped flipping end over end, as he brought his legs back out and his elbows in line with his shoulders. He pivoted hard, thrusting his torso and forcing his body to spiral. He tightened his grip on the loop of chain in his palm, and let the excess unravel from his arm, until the tug of its spiked end reaching its full length told him it was time.
Jonathan fired the weapon out below him and braced himself, hoping that the spiked end would anchor itself to something solid enough.
Sudden, agonizing pain tore through his shoulder when his direction shifted with a violent torque. He felt the chain tear free of its anchor before he shot into the narrow space between two buildings and slammed sideways into a fire escape. The metal collapsed in around him, leaving a gouge in the exterior wall. The rest was a barrage. He plummeted gracelessly down the gap between buildings, unable to keep track of up and down, until he suddenly felt as though his arm was being torn from his shoulder, and he jarred to a sudden stop.
Disoriented, he tried to get his bearings. He dangled two stories above the ground. Despite the painful tumble of the last few seconds, he’d managed to keep himself tethered to Doomsday. The spiked end was entangled in some part of the crushed fire escape above, and had stopped him from face-planting in one final smash on the alley floor.
The pain in his shoulder was screaming above all the rest of his lesser injuries, and he forced himself to reach up with his free hand and grab hold of the chain. His hand never got a grip before he felt himself begin to fall once again, the fire escape groaning mournfully before it came free of the wall and began collapsing down above him. When his feet touched the ground, his footing was hardly stable. It turned his run into more of a stagger, which ended in a dive to get out of the way of the falling metal.
Jonathan found himself face down on the sidewalk when the sound of the debris hitting the ground came from behind him.
He took a long breath and then exhaled. For what it was worth, that entire exchange had been lucky. He’d no intention of trying to stand toe-to-toe with Malkier, but Rylee had been out of time when he’d caught up to her and he’d been forced to intervene. The chances that either of them were getting out of this alive had been slim from the start. Now, with both of them battered and injured, the chance that both would make it out seemed almost non-existent.
But Rylee was getting out alive.
With her leg injured and Malkier focusing on him, he could be sure to keep her away from the danger. It didn’t matter which—Malkier or himself—survived the rest of this. If he died, then Malkier would be heading back through the gates before he’d get a chance to go back for her. When she was the only one remaining inside The Never, Rylee would follow the signal to her ticket home—the portal stone he’d left for her inside of Grant Morgan’s body.
Now that he knew she was safe, the time had come to piss off Heyer’s big brother.
Jonathan started to stand, grunting as the pain in his shoulder announced itself. He shifted his weight to the other arm and got his feet beneath him. When he reached for Excali-bar out of habit, he found the harness on his back empty. He’d lost hold of the demolition bar after Malkier had kicked him into the next zip code.
He sighed, pulling in Doomsday to secure it around himself before he walked into the middle of the busy street. People running from the monster began to take notice, the light pouring out of his eyes drawing their attention. His presence heightened their panic as the fleeing civilians didn’t know if the man with burning eyes was any less terrifying than the giant black monster. Jonathan stepped up off the street onto an abandoned car, looking down the road to where he expected Malkier would pursue. Not yet seeing the Alpha, Jonathan leapt onto a bus overturned in the roadway.
Now able to see the wrongness in Jonathan’s eyes from afar, the flood of people parted before drawing too close. In the distance, he could feel the monster’s movements, the vibrations following Malkier’s landing somewhere outside his vision.
“MALKIER!” Jonathan shouted, his voice an angry roar calling to the monster over the sounds of the city.
The sound of the Alpha Ferox’s movements paused, and for a moment, despite the chaos, the city felt quiet to Jonathan—Malkier had heard his challenge.
“You call ME an abomination, alien?”
There was another brief silence—then suddenly, the Alpha Ferox’s landing sent a quake through the city streets as he dropped into view a few blocks ahead. Jonathan stared the monster down as it rose to full height.
“Borealis, your son is dead because I dispose of abominations,” Jonathan yelled. “His life was always meant to end with me!”
The white slits of Malkier’s face grew wide with rage. When he spoke, the sounds were guttural growls. Jonathan had heard enough Ferox speech to recognize the language, but just as he couldn’t feel Malkier’s location, the connection that normally allowed him a vague understanding of their words was absent—nothing translated in Jonathan’s thoughts. Instead, the anger the alien was conveying passed over him, leaving no effect on his face.
It didn’t matter; he was beating his chest so the alien would do the same—and if Malkier was enraged enough to start yelling at him in a language he couldn’t comprehend, then he’d pushed the right button. It had
n’t been much of a gamble. Jonathan figured he could bring out the alien’s rage—not by mocking the death of Dams the Gate, but by questioning his life.
Malkier had made too many sacrifices to be a father—every action he’d taken to bring a life into the world and protect it had been like forcing a boulder uphill while gravity fought against him. Now, his son’s killer stood before him, making a claim he knew the father feared. That the life Malkier had created was as unnatural a thing as The Never itself—a thing that the natural order had been trying to snuff out since the moment it came into being. Jonathan didn’t have to believe it, only had to convince Malkier that he did.
“Come with me, Borealis!” Jonathan roared. “I am going to show you where your abomination died. Then, I am going to show you how.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
HE WAS ALREADY in motion, hitting the ground and building up speed in the opposite direction, when the bus he’d stood on caved in beneath Malkier’s weight. He made no effort to hide but leaped down the street at a dangerous speed, and the alien didn’t lose a moment to hesitation before ripping through the remains of the bus and falling into pursuit. It didn’t take long to realize the monster was closing the distance between them, but Jonathan kept his focus—they didn’t have far to go.
At first, he followed the wires running along the bus routes. He knew downtown well, and only a few blocks passed before he realized that he knew where they were headed. He’d seen the substation hub every time he’d crossed the freeway into downtown. It was only now that he’d had reason to consider the purpose of the place. Of course, Dams the Gate hadn’t died there, but he needed Malkier to believe he was being antagonized—not wondering if he was being lured.
Coming around a corner hard, he clipped the side of a minivan parked along the sidewalk. The exterior caved around him as his feet looked for purchase on the wet streets. The van’s tires were forced over the sidewalk, only bringing him to a halt when the vehicle compressed against the nearby office building. He didn’t lose his footing, but forfeited some distance between them. A moment later, Malkier experienced the same trouble taking the turn and he gained it back. Jonathan pushed on, raising his eyes when the substation was a few blocks up.
The Never Paradox (Chronicles Of Jonathan Tibbs Book 2) Page 56
