21

FIRE

I LIMPED DOWN a darkened aisle, head low. I’d picked the movie theater because it was dark, and close to where the crew stairwell let out on the first floor deck.

Now I felt a little too Lee Harvey Oswald.

I reached a side exit, glancing up at the movie playing on the white screen as I grasped a door handle. I opened it, only remembering then that the light on the other side would make my outline visible to every person sitting in the dark theater.

I needn’t have worried. The attack didn’t come from behind.

Strong hands grabbed me, pulling me through the opening before my eyes could adjust, swinging me around and slamming my back against the wall. I heard the door close behind me with a bang.

The seer holding me turned me around, shoving my chest against the wall to bind my wrists. I jerked my elbow back, missing his face and he smacked mine against the same wall, stunning me. I managed to kick backwards a few seconds later, but he grabbed my leg and deliberately bent my hurt knee the wrong direction.

I screamed. Before I could get very far, he clamped a hand over my mouth, shoving me to the floor. I fell hard to the deck, sucking air.

It all happened so fast I couldn’t move at first.

Standing over me, he reached over his shoulder, pulled out a black metal rod. An arc of current sparked from one end.

Staring up at it, I gave a kind of choking laugh. “Jesus...” Gripping the floor with my fingers, I tried to crawl away. He kicked me in the stomach. As I crumpled to a fetal position, gasping for air, he lowered the prod, aiming it for my back.

Shots echoed in the small corridor.

Two volleys followed, one after the other, barely a breath between them.

I flattened myself to the deck, flinching as bullets pushed air in a rush over me. The guy who’d been on the verge of jabbing me with a cattle prod lay sprawled on his back. I didn’t have to look for long to know he was dead.

Down the hall, another seer lay on the floor, one I hadn’t seen, although he must have stood there, watching as I failed to fight off the first guy. He lay on the floor too, holding his chest, making choking sounds. I stared at his blood-covered hands.

Then I turned. Briefly, my heart lifted, sure it would be him.

But the man who lowered the gun had two different colored eyes. His full lips curled into a frown as he released the empty magazine from the still-smoking Berreta, replacing it with a fresh one. Locking it into place, he motioned for me to get up, holding out a hand.

“Come on, love,” Eliah said. “No time to get teary.”

I tried to comply, but my knee wouldn’t cooperate. I got halfway up before it crumpled, and I let out an involuntary cry.

Walking closer, Eliah slid a shoulder under my arm, still holding the gun. He brought me to my feet, then through a side door marked “Crew Only.”

I stumbled onto a metal, mesh deck that started just past the door.

“Where’s Revik?” I said.

Eliah gazed at a fork in the corridor, surrounded by exposed pipes. He paused only long enough to glance at me.

“Sorry, love. He's gone.”

I felt the world gray, like it had in Vancouver.

My breath stopped as I forced it back, biting my tongue until the lines sharpened once more.

“Gone? What does that mean?” I said.

“Quiet.” He said in a whisper, “I’ll tell you everything. But you have to be quiet now, love. Or we’re dead.”

He waited for me to acknowledge him when I didn’t answer, shaking me until I nodded. Then he brought me through the narrower of the two passages and down several flights of stairs. I let him support most of my weight as we passed through a few more sets of doors to emerge in the main storage bay of the ship’s stern. Still holding me up, he led me through a long, towering row of boxes and covered crates, between one-seater forklifts and bolted-down vehicles being transported to Anchorage and the Russian coastline.

He finally stopped at a low ramp that ended in a massive roll door.

Leaving me by the pulleys on one side of the segmented metal sheet, he jogged to the bottom of the ramp and hit a red button. I gripped a segment of wall in my hands and just watched as the massive door opened, gears grinding, with a rattle of rusted chains.

Churning ocean roared through the gap.

The opening sat low enough in the water that curls of spray shot up the sides of the ship, wetting the deck and me along with it. Wind and spray plastered my shirt to my skin. Pale light framed the clouds, illuminating edges.

Unbelievably, it was nearing dawn.

Eliah looked at his watch. He held one of the chains by the roll door, swaying slightly in the motion of the ship. He caught my eye, smiled reassuringly.

“You all right there, love? That knee looks like it smarts some.”

“Where’s Revik?” I said, loud enough to be heard over the wind.

He hesitated. Letting go of the chain, he walked over to me, digging a hand into the front pocket of his dark pants. Once he had whatever it was, he held out a hand, motioned for me to take what he held.

“Go on.” He motioned for me to hold out my hand until I did, palm up, under his.

Something cold fell into it.

I focused on the silver ring.

He didn’t have to tell me where he’d gotten it.

“I’m sorry, love,” he said again.

I stared at the ring, unable to make my mind react.

“He was ambushed. Five of them, at least. It looked like they tried to save his life after they shot him down...probably to bring him in alive. But he was dead when Chan and I finally broke through.”

When I didn’t speak, Eliah caught hold of my arm, his eyes serious.

“Allie...love. I know this is a shock. I know it. But I need you to focus right now. Put him out of your mind, love. Just for now, okay?” When I still didn’t answer, he shook my arm lightly, forcing my eyes up to his. “If it gets down to the wire, you and me, we might have to jump. Now I know you’re wounded, but you’re a seer, so that’s not as bad as it sounds. You’ll live, easy. But it’ll hurt. And that cold’ll be something you remember to your grave...”

I stumbled when he released me, catching hold of one of the hanging chains.

The wind tore at his words.

“There, now, love. I’m sorry, I truly am. But we can’t fall apart. Or we’ll end up like him. Then his sacrifice would be for nothing, right? You can hold it together for him, can’t you? Just a few minutes more. Then we’ll be in the clear.”

I stared over the side of the ship. The water churned, white foam and dark blue beneath an overcast sky. It looked like liquid ice.

Eliah blew on his hands, checked his watch again.

“We can’t wait much longer, love,” he said. “Why don’t you—”

The rhythmic thud-thud-thud-thud of helicopter blades erupted low over the water, making both of us jump. I heard Eliah curse as one set of propellers joined another, then another...until a fleet of dark gray Apaches was passing by and over the cruise ship, riding over the light of first dawn. The sight was so surreal that all I could do was stare, watching them go by like a fleet of metal hornets. Eliah grabbed my arm just as they were nearing, pulling me into shadow behind the lip of the square opening...

And I found myself with him, inside his mind.

...Flashes fill the Barrier sky.

Lightning cracks downward from overhead clouds. All over the ship, bursts of staccato charges fall, plummeting around military helicopters as they fly past in formation, shining with a faint silver light. The bursts don’t come from the helicopters, but from the metallic, cloud ceiling above, falling like bombs.

I’m still staring upwards as a light-bomb falls from almost straight overhead.

Eliah grabs me with hands of light, pulls me away to narrowly miss being hit by a second bomb I hadn’t seen...

A net, he tells me. They are looking for you, Allie. And for me.

Looking for you, I repeat numbly.

I wince from a sudden, sharp pain at the back of my neck.

Eliah stares at my hand clutching that pain, at my fingers rubbing my own neck in reflex. Then, unexpectedly, he grins, his eyes shining with moonstone light.

Well, he says. That’s good news, at least.

When I look down, I find I am gripping the silver ring so tightly it digs into the skin of my palm. Through the Barrier, I gaze down the length of the ship, no longer caring who sees me. I let myself fall deeper...

...and without warning, he is there.

Revik lies broken on a patterned carpet, his neck at an odd angle. A metal collar circles it, and the skin there twitches, dancing under a coarse electric charge. He is covered in blood. His chest isn’t moving...

We’re losing him! A doctor kneels beside him. Goddamn it! He really will kill us. Did you see his face when those eyes lit up—?

Eliah grabs my arm.

Turning me towards him, he punches me right in the face.

...AND I GASPED, clutching a chain hanging from a roll-down door in one hand, the ring in the other, the ocean wetting my back. My jaw hurt where he’d hit me, and my skin felt flushed, almost fevered. I faced Eliah, who held my wrist to keep me from going over the side. He gave me an apologetic look...but I knew.

That hadn’t been the past.

Which meant everything he’d just told me had been a lie.

“You did this,” I managed. “You’re him. Terian.”

He blinked at me, his different colored eyes widening in surprise.

Then he broke into a smile. A smile that turned quickly into a chuckle.

“Allie, my dear...I am endlessly impressed by you. So many surprises...”

When I tried to jerk away from him, he slammed my back against the edge of the roll door, his different-colored eyes hardening on mine.

“You’re hardly in a position to fight me now, though, love,” he said.

The man who’d killed my mother smiled at me affectionately, his thumb absently caressing my upper arm. He held the beretta in his other hand, aimed at my middle section. I hadn’t seen him reach for it, but I stared at the end of the barrel now, wincing as he tightened his hold on me.

“I suppose it is fortunate that I met you before you were fully trained,” he said. “How on earth did you find Galaith...? I am so impressed. So very, very impressed.”

I tried again to yank my arm away, but his fingers gripped like talons, pulling me closer, then slamming me back against the metal wall, and into a sharp protrusion on one of the beams. I gasped, the air knocked out of me.

“You know,” he said. “...you’ve put me in a bit of a bind, dear heart. I really had hoped to be out of here before der Fuhrer showed up. He was quite fond of your mate.” Terian/Eliah sighed, gazing out over the water. “I suppose I’m in for a bit of a spanking on that score. I’m afraid your dear Dehgoies isn’t long for this world. And I really had hoped I’d get the package deal...”

I threw myself at him.

I grabbed his hand with the gun, trying to force the barrel towards his face. I don’t know if I thought I could do it without being shot, just push him over the edge and it wouldn’t affect me, or if I just didn’t care anymore.

There was a loud sound in my ears.

Eliah jerked forward, nearly into me, as if sharply pushed. When I looked up at his body, he had a bleeding wound in his chest. The gun had left his fingers, clattering to the deck like a broken toy. I watched the red expand over his gray sweater in a numb confusion, then looked around and past him for the source, knowing that it hadn’t been me.

I focused on a high pile of wooden storage crates right as Chandre stepped from behind them, raising a gun towards my face.

“Move away from him! Allie, step back!”

Eliah burst into a laugh.

“Move away!” Chandre said, louder.

When neither of us moved, Chandre fired a shot past our heads that clanged when it impacted against the metal hull.

I don’t think I even flinched.

Eliah ducked his head, then grinned around at Chandre. When I released him, taking a half-step back on the ramp, Chan aimed the gun directly at my face.

“Stay where you are!” she said.

I held up my hands, but my mind remained indifferent.

“Kill him,” I said. Tears ran down my face, but I barely felt those, either. “Please, Chan...kill him. Do it now.”

“What are you doing with him?” she demanded. “Why did you leave the cabin?”

I didn’t answer.

It wasn’t stubbornness. At that point, I could barely make sense of her questions. I didn’t understand why she wasn’t shooting him.

Chandre fired off another warning shot, and I felt it whiz by my head. I continued to look at her, still thinking only the same repeating thought.

“Just shoot him, Chan. Please.”

“Do not mistake me for him!” Chandre warned me, her voice coming out emotional, angry. “Do not mistake me for your husband the Rook, Alyson! I don’t kill simply because you tell me to. I demand an answer! What are you doing with him?”

“I do believe I’ve made her angry, Chan,” Eliah said. Smiling, he pointed from where he held his hands above his head, gesturing towards my face. “Look at her! If I didn’t know better, I’d think—”

“Shut up!” The hunter aimed the gun back at Eliah. “Get away from her, you piece of shit! We know what you did.”

“He’s not Eliah.” I surprised myself again by speaking. My voice sounded strangely calm in my ears. “He took his body. He’s not real, Chan...”

Chandre rounded the gun back on me.

“You too, Bridge! I would just as soon shoot you as well...dump your body right over the side. For all I know, you were in on it. For all I know, this is you starting your fucking war...”

Eliah laughed louder. “Are you crying over Dehgoies, too, my sweet, sweet, Chandre? I would never have guessed...”

“Eight of my people are dead! Three of them had mates, families. Dehgoies at least carried the karma of such a death...that and a hundred times over...”

I stared at the other woman, feeling her grief, her anger, even her fear. I wondered at her ability to feel so much. My own body felt like stone.

I couldn’t see through the light in my eyes but the woman’s outline shone there anyway, a shadow with two hands gripping a desert eagle I recognized from a different set of long, white fingers. Chandre took another threatening step in our direction, stopping when I didn’t react, or change expression.

After a pause, she exhaled, pointing the gun at Eliah without taking her eyes off mine.

“Gods,” she said to me. “You’re even starting to look like him.”

Under my feet, the deck trembled, just before I heard a hollow booming sound that shook the metal.

Eliah lost his balance on the edge of the doorway.

I saw my chance.

Without thinking, I lunged towards him, helping gravity and the shaking metal under our feet along.

It didn’t take much. He’d been standing too close to the rim.

Before I could think about what I’d done, he was falling, and I tumbled with him, tangled in his limbs. I groped backwards for the metal chain...but it slipped through my fingers, leaving a hovering instant where it occurred to me I wouldn’t be able to get free of him.

I plummeted through freezing wind and spray. I was sure I would die in those few seconds it took to fall, numb to everything but his hands on me and the deafening roar of water.

I hit the dark surface and it was like being thrown into a wood-chipper.

Tossed downwards, Eliah and I were ripped apart.

I felt his hands clench then leave my skin. A curl of wake threw me upwards and I surfaced, gasping.

Not far from me, another body slammed into the water. Then another.

I fought to keep my head above the white foam.

My leg hurt so badly I could barely force myself to breathe. Next to me, a dark head surfaced, and I began backing away, using my arms. I recognized Chandre, braids plastered to her head. Another head breached next to hers. In confusion, I stared at the face of another of the Seven’s Guard that I recognized.

I tried to paddle backwards, but I could barely stay afloat; my legs wouldn’t cooperate. I looked down the lines of the ship at the ship’s wake and saw what looked like another person, their face white above dark water. I watched the body struggle against the current, sucking downwards towards the lower stern and the propellers...

“You’re fucking crazy, Bridge!” Chandre yelled.

I tried to work my arms faster, to get away from her, but Chandre swam after me, groping for my limbs. “Bridge! It’s okay! It’s okay, Bridge!” Once she had ahold of me, her eyes followed the body caught in the ship’s wake.

“He’s gone!” she shouted above the spray. “You killed him!”

“Are you going to kill me?” I said.

“No,” she said, spitting water. Unbelievably, she smiled. “No, Bridge. You won’t be dying today. I wouldn’t kill the mate of the man who exacted the only revenge anyone on my team got against those bastards. And anyway, if you’d been working for him, I don’t think you would have wanted him dead so badly.”

Hearing her words, I looked up the steep sides of the ship, and my throat closed. I looked down at my hand. Somehow I still clutched the ring.

...15, 2, 1, 111, 99, 3326, 1, 42, 47, 15, 15, 12, 996, 651, 222, 231, 244, 4, 4, 4, 4, 6, 27, 13, 15, 15, 21, 66, 24, 89, 97...

At that exact moment, the sky caught on fire.

THE EXPLOSION FLARED out of darkness.

It blew back the nearest of the helicopters, causing it to careen into the one flying alongside it. The propeller clipped the vehicle’s hull, splintered like dry kindling.

Galaith watched in a kind of slow fascination as the bird in front of him fell in a nearly straight line, breaking apart as it slammed the dark water.

The booming from the ship continued.

Shock waves from the second explosion reached the part of sky where Galaith’s larger transport helicopter maintained a safe distance. It shook the metal under his legs, forcing the pilot of the craft to compensate. A third explosion rattled the glass. Galaith heard his own pilot curse through his microphone, forgetting himself momentarily as he leaned on the cyclic, moving them sideways below the cloud deck.

Frowning in disapproval, Galaith decided to let it pass, gazing down at the long, white cruise ship, which had unmistakably come to a halt on the dark water.

Plumes of fire rose to the low deck of clouds, staining them red and gold.

Galaith watched the flames mix with the early dawn’s light, reflecting against the falling rain. Another blast lit the nearby land mass, illuminating dark, featureless hills, and his eyes studied the scrub evergreens and broken boulders, blinking against the sudden brightness. People the size of ants jumped off the tall sides of the ship as he watched. Even under the steady pulse of the helicopter’s blades, Galaith heard screams, and impact sounds as they hit.

Feeling the other occupants of the helicopter looking at him expectantly, Galaith made the sign of the cross.

Then, fixing his brow and mouth in the proper display of anger and grief, he signaled to the pilot with his hand, pointing towards the shore.

It wouldn’t do to be caught gawking at the scene.

Anyway, for all intents and purposes, his work here was done.

Alyson’s last known location was the starboard end of the stern, where his team set and detonated the first set of explosives. Galaith would have his seers look for her in the aftermath, of course, and retrieve her body if at all possible, but it was over.

That was a decision he’d made before he arrived. Better to send her back to those beyond-the-Barrier shores of which she was so fond. Better that, than to let her go alive to Terian and whatever dark scheme he’d concocted.

It was a good thing Galaith had that second team in place, watching Terian.

Even so, he’d almost reacted too slowly.

Whatever had been set in motion on the ship a few hours previous, it had been less of a plan by Terian as it was a reaction to an unexpectedly opened window of opportunity. Perhaps Terian had even imagined it would be so. It was the only way he could have moved his team swiftly enough to avoid any ripples of warning through the network Pyramid.

As he watched smoke billow out the bottom decks, Galaith knew any hope of her survival had to be slim. He retained a glimmer of optimism that the temperature of the water might preserve some bio-samples, however.

Ironically, it was she who called him here.

It was a genuine pity he’d arrived too late to reason with her.

As for Terian and whatever he’d been up to...

“I’ll be back for you, old friend,” he muttered under his breath.

He didn’t let himself think too closely about the loss of Dehgoies. That would have to be contemplated on another day.

“Sir?” the pilot shouted.

Galaith met his questioning look, wiping his face with one hand. Luckily, the gesture fit the moment, and played all the more convincingly for its sincerity, whatever its true cause. One of his secretaries, Martha, touched his arm in sympathy, and he clasped her fingers, letting his face show a flicker of gratitude.

He told the pilot, “Take me to the airport, Gene. We’ll coordinate the rescue teams from there.”

“Aye, sir.” The man saluted, grinning with obvious pleasure that Galaith had used his first name. Popping the wad of gum jammed into one corner of his mouth, he let out a half-shout above the rotary blades, “Wow! What a day!” Seeing Galaith’s dark look, his smile faded. “Of course it’s terrible, sir...terrible. All those people. No one deserves to die like that.”

Galaith did not give him a reassuring smile.

Still, he found the man’s comments amusing in their blatant insincerity.

Pity there was no way he could let any of them live.

ABOVE ME, ROSETTES bloomed in a bland sky. Clouds shone red and gold in billowing tongues of reflected flame.

I was still pretty sure I was dead.

Then a wave rolled up, filling my mouth with salt water.

I choked, only to be fully submerged. Physical pain brought my world sharply into focus as my head and mouth once more broke the surface. Salt sank into cuts in my skin. My knee felt like it had been pulverized. I forced my limbs forward through the blue liquid ice. I gazed at the fire and a dense wave of pain hit me again, not all of it physical.

Water filled my mouth and I spit it out.

Then, it hit me. It really hit me. For a moment, I disappeared.

Shouts overhead and nearer screams snapped me out. Another wave submerged my head as I groped around for something to hold on to, something to support me. I grabbed at something as it floated by. It turned out to be a soaked life jacket.

I let it go, paddling like a wounded dog with one leg.

Trying to follow the others, I gasped out steam, glimpsed the burning white hulk behind me as I pumped my arms harder. The ship continued to belch smoke, but it no longer produced a churning wake. Instead it sat lower in the water, like a child squatting in a stream.

I had to find Jon.

The thought repeated, irrational.

Rain had begun to fall, along with soot, white ash, pieces of fabric and paper. I heard screams all around me...I closed my eyes, still trying to get my limbs all working in the same direction, when someone grabbed my arm.

When I turned, Chandre’s reddish eyes met mine.

She looked afraid. I gazed up at black-tinted clouds, a white tower rising from the middle of the ship where a blue, tail-like fin rose to meet the sky. A burning figure stood on the fourth deck, fighting to climb the railing. The wind flared the fire on his body.

Chandre yanked harder on my arm. “Come. This will get ugly, and fast! The Rooks are exterminating witnesses...”

She began to drag me through the water, and I let her. A plane skimmed overhead, lights ablaze. No one paid any attention to us.

Revik’s face rose in my mind. My sight flared, bringing even more pain. More death. Images of falling bodies ripped apart by ice-cold water. Mom’s face. Dad’s. I missed Jon so badly it hurt.  I needed him, had to find him. I floated, fighting to push past it, dragged through the current. Chandre didn’t stop pulling on my arm. It felt like she’d pull it out of the socket.

“There’s some chance,” I managed, talking to her, or maybe myself. “I saw him alive. Terian could have him. He could still have him...”

Chandre looked at me. She struggled words out between breaths as she stroked hard with her free arm, pulling me with her.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No. Bridge...you must face facts. I am sorry. Dehgoies is dead...different light signature. We tracked it...we saw him die...”

I shook my head back at her, trying to free my arm, but she only pulled harder.

“You must feel it.” She looked at me. “...Separation sickness...it will get worse. You have to stay out of the Barrier. Do whatever you have to, only don’t go in. He will have died for nothing. Don’t let them see you...”

I didn’t answer, remembering Eliah saying the same thing.

When I didn’t fight after a few seconds, her expression softened.

“I am sorry, Bridge,” she said.

I didn’t look at her again.

We remained a few hundred yards from shore when a sudden, sharp boom jerked both sets of our eyes back towards the ship. Like something from a dream in the rising light, yellow and orange plumes billowed upward. The ship sank fast after that. I saw glass blow out as windows exploded, pouring water, flames...more smoke. The wind changed, bringing us more screams, the smell of charred flesh and burning plastic.

Chandre resumed swimming.

Between strokes I heard her speak through clenched teeth.

“Hopefully they will believe we are dead, as well...”

A wolf runs on the tundra, tongue lolling past its blood-stained grin—

When I came to, I was aware of hands on me, people pulling me out of the water. Rough gravel and dirt met my bare skin, and nothing ever hurt so much. My legs dragged like dead weight. I couldn’t move my knee and my thigh felt like it was bitten to the bone by some kind of sea monster or shark. Someone wrapped a coarse blanket around my back, talking over my shoulder to Chandre.

I felt grief on the man holding me and realized I didn’t know him, or the woman standing next to him, watching me with pity in her dark eyes.

Only Chandre’s voice remained.

The rest stood silent, emotional despite their weapons and training, unable to tally what they’d lost.

...and the wolf still runs, his feet sending up puffs of white snow.

I want to tell them it’s all right, I know I’m safe.

For now, at least, my body at least. The wolf is no longer looking at me, but runs at a single dark form marring the white plain. Again it is dawn, and a black shape burns in the distance on a flat horizon that sparkles like diamonds...and my chest feels as if someone has taken an ice pick to it, hitting it again and again, digging out a pale light at its core.

It is a feeling worse than death.