CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

WHAT IS THIS place? Evie’s voice rang clearly in my mind.

The last place I saw your grandfather. The AOZ, 1996. It’s a construct Oleg has made from my, and probably his, memories. But enough of what I see, show me Everlast. I breathed deeply, closing my eyes to the hot winds and constant hush of sand.

Little Buck, how fitting to end life at same place as father. Uncle Oleg is happy to kill you at home. Oleg’s voice came from inside my head.

Ignoring his taunts, I kept my eyes closed and focused on the current. Tell me what you see, Evie. I caught a quick flicker, then a pulse. Eventually static gave way to clarity. I can see them. You did it, honey.

The twitchers are attacking! Daddy, there’s one—

I see it. I whisked my eyes open. Oleg’s battered and scarred face lunged directly for me. I ducked, feeling his hot breath on the back of my neck. Rolling, I quickly regained my feet and my orientation. Visibly, the tattered remains of Everlast had been dropped from the sky, landing smack in the middle of the rocky, desert canyon where my father’s expedition had ended in failure—where his final adventure had begun.

Underneath the visible world I perceive the constant hum of the current—oil and water forming the energy signatures of both militia and twitcher alike. Only Evie remained an unformed glowing ball of light a hundred feet away, guarded by two twitchers adorned in Bedouin garb.

“Jim!”

I spun, throwing up my forearm to blunt the attack of a charging twitcher, also bedecked in indigenous desert clothing. The strike radiated pain from the point of contact throughout my body. While absorbing the blow, I latched onto the demon with both hands. Clutching the scruff of his neck, I whipped him around and down, slamming his face into the sand. As the two of us slid to a stop, he yanked free of my grasp. Spinning on his head, he kicked me in the jaw before bounding back to his feet and withdrawing.

Adel sprinted to my side, a loosely wrapped turban allowing her red hair to spill out the top and down one side of her face. “Is this real?”

“Half me, half Oleg. All real. This is where we finish it.”

“And these?” She held up a scimitar, glinting in the harsh light.

I shrugged, scooping an identical sword out of the sand. “Not me.”

“We’re outmaneuvered here.” Jeb and several other militia joined us, each carrying a sword of their own, each dressed like the Bedouin defenders of the Arabian Oil Zone of my youth. “We need to get higher.” Even as a Bedouin, Jeb’s chest hair burst from his thawb, unbuttoned at the neck.

“Agreed, but not without Evie.”

“Doc—”

“She’s my connection to you. Without her you’re on your own.”

“Jim, they’re not gonna just let us—”

“I don’t plan on giving them a choice.” Before I’d finished the statement I covered several yards. Sprinting head-on, twirling my sword in one hand and growling, I closed the gap in a blink.

I slammed into the lead twitcher with my full weight. Bringing my sword down after the fact, I sliced diagonally across his body. Spinning into an attack on two more twitchers, I stuck a boot in each of their chests and untethered them from the canyon floor.

I rolled as a sword sliced through the sand beside me. Sweeping a leg, I cut the twitcher’s feet out from under him and leapt up. Leading with the tip of my sword, I plunged it through him until it hit rock. Another attacker loosed from my sword, knocking me backwards into a dune.

A slashing movement intervened as the hulking figure of Jeb barreled between me and the lunging twitcher, knocking the wounded animal solidly to the ground. “Next time wait for the rest of us. Without you, we all die.” He handed my sword back.

“Thanks. Behind you.”

With a quick elbow, he cracked the skull of an attacking twitcher, before grabbing it by the back of the head and tossing it into a boulder. “Now for your daughter.”

Side by side we cut our way forward, but the twitchers were falling back too easily. Using Evie as bait, they were leading us into a trap.

“Jim! Stop.” Adel stumbled over to us, propping herself up on her father’s back. “It’s no good. They’re stringing us out.” We sheltered under the covered boardwalk in front of the diner, the door already half blocked by windblown sand.

“I’ve got to reach her.”

“There won’t be any of us left when you do.”

I took a count of the signatures still swimming in the current—seven bright, nineteen black, and Evie.

“Dr. Buckner,” it was Gwyn, the first time I’d seen her since the fighting began, “could you defeat them on your own?”

“What?” The last of the trailing militia reached our position safely, acting as a rearguard while fighting back a half-hearted twitcher assault.

“If you didn’t have to protect us. If you could fight them on your own terms, could you defeat them?”

“And let you die?”

“Our mission has been to prevent people like Oleg from attaining the power you have accidentally discovered. It would be better if our lives were spent in maintaining that mission than preserved at its expense. His death would be a worthy price for our lives.”

Daddy, there’s another way. It was Evie, listening in on the conversation.

I held up my hand to silence the others. “Evie?”

Oleg says he’ll fight you man to man. If you win, he’ll let us all go.

“You can hear him?” I scanned the tops of the dunes across from us, indicating the others should keep an eye open for a trap.

Not as clearly as I hear you.

“Evie, tell me. What do you think? You can read people.”

I don’t know, Dad. She fell quiet. He’s so angry. But I think he’s scared too. What if he doesn’t do what he says?

“If he loses he won’t have a choice. You with me?”

She hesitated. Yeah. Kick his ass, Dad.

“So ladylike.”

Make it quick, we still have a movie night. She severed the connection.

“Okay,” I stared the others in the eyes, “Evie says Oleg’s willing to fight me one on one. I win, it’s over.”

“Either way, it’s over.” Jeb nodded.

“Yes.”

“Why would Oleg agree to that?” Adel put her hand on my bare shoulder, her skin cool to the touch.

Gwyn answered. “As I suspected, he doesn’t want to fight the doctor without the rest of us limiting his abilities. He needs Evie and the rest of us as living distractions.” She wrapped one arm around her husband and another around her daughter. “You should leave us to defend ourselves.”

“I don’t trust him.” I shook my head. “It could be a trap to get me to do just that. He wants us all dead, but it isn’t going to happen. He’s getting weaker, talking to me through Evie now.”

“All the same,” Jeb nodded toward the high ground.

“Agreed. Let’s climb out of here while the climbing’s good.”

On the way up the ridge of a dune, Adel leaned close. “He’s old, Jim. He’ll have tricks up his sleeve he hasn’t shown yet. Not to us, not to anyone.”

“I used to think I was old. Maybe youth will be on my side this time. Plus, I’ve got Evie. He tries to pull something, she’ll see it.”

“All right.” She looped her arm through mine as we reached the top, maybe a hundred feet above the bottom of the small canyon. “I got us into this thing. Sorry I can’t be of more help getting us out.”

“It’s not over yet.”

She nodded.

We strode toward the pile of rocks at the end of the canyon, south of the desert version of Everlast and projecting another hundred feet above the level of the dunes. The surviving twitchers had taken Evie there ahead of us. I supposed Oleg wanted me thinking about the cleft I’d hidden in during my father’s death. Maybe he wanted the same experience for Evie, to visit her thoughts in another twenty years and start the cycle all over again. It wasn’t going to happen.