I kept my eyes open this time, not bracing for the impact of the river as I had before. Gaia released us from the Abyss not above the Missouri River, but inside it. Nixie once again made the entry into the water smoother than anything I’d experienced before. It was a strange sensation, diving beneath the waves without getting wet; shielded by Nixie’s warmth around me, while the frigid waters rushed by.
We surfaced near the bank where the national guard units had incurred such great loss. Now it was an empty, muddy, and blood-soaked field. The carcass of the Green Man Aeros had slain waited like a fallen log. I blinked, and stared at it, in death unable to discern the difference between the sentient being and the driftwood around it.
Shouts echoed around us, but I couldn’t pinpoint their source. Nixie stumbled beside me before hunching over, hands on her knees.
“This is awful,” she said.
“Look on the bright side,” I said. “We’re still alive enough to know it’s awful.”
She laughed, made a pained noise, and slowly stood upright. “Come, no one is here. I pray we weren’t wrong.”
We struck out toward the scattered gravel and old railroad tracks that led back to the street. The shouting grew louder, and slowly I came to realize that we were hearing more than raised voices. Heavy equipment ground and squealed in the distance.
“Tanks?” I said, frowning as I looked either way on the street. I cursed when I saw the small clusters of tourists. The military might have been regrouping, but the gawkers and ghouls had come out to stare at the carnage.
The boom of a gunshot echoed around us, and Nixie and I exchanged a glance.
“This is bad,” I said.
I ground my teeth as we hurried through the seething masses of soldiers, a level of chaos that spoke of their inexperience.
Aeros’s voice boomed and cut through the noise of the street. “Stand down!”
Commoners screamed and ran away from the mass of rock and rage that formed the Old God. A still form lay at his feet, partway sheltered while Aeros faced down a tank rolling down the hill.
“Damian, we must hurry,” Nixie said, dragging me forward. “We must clear the innocents out of harm’s way.”
“Shit, yes,” I said, hurrying along beside her as fast as I could in the throng of soldiers.
“I don’t know if you fully understand the consequences,” Nixie said, her steps wobbling slightly under the vertigo of the Abyss. “This is a tactic Lewena used against Leviticus in the war for Atlantis. She drowned the innocent in front of the soldiers, drawing them out to die at her convenience.”
I cursed and crashed through a line of soldiers. The commoners stood around us, stunned into silence. Two of them stepped behind me, and I thought I recognized them from the store when I heard the man say, “Stay behind Damian.”
The machine gun mounted on the tank burst to life, cutting a line of chips across Aeros’s chest while the bullets ricocheted in every imaginable direction.
The tourists and more stubborn locals weren’t the only people in danger here. I raised my hand in a useless protest. Nixie held me back, preventing me from doing something stupid.
A flash of black and white wings caught my eye beyond the tank. “Angus!” The fairy looked up.
The tank’s main turret fired.
Flames and death and smoke screamed from the barrel of that awful weapon. Aeros raised his fists, and a u-shaped wall of stone sprang up between him and the shell. The wall cracked in the following explosion, sending waves of shrapnel and debris skyward. Angus had barely escaped, shocking me with his speed as he grabbed two of the kids behind the wall and launched into the air with them.
One of the kids he’d had to leave behind screamed and went down, clutching his leg. Aeros glanced at the child, then turned back to face the tank. The Old God dropped into the earth, vanishing into a circle of green light. The tank adjusted its aim.
The next shot would take what was left of the wall of stone, and kill the half dozen people sheltering behind it. The commoners who had been protesting, the kids who had come to call Aeros a friend.
“No!” I shouted, sprinting forward. If I could get close enough, raise a shield, raise the Hand of Anubis, do something. I wasn’t that fast. No one was that fast. “Run!” Angus dove back into the panicked crowd.
A loud thunk sounded from the tank. I wasn’t going to make it to them in time. Where the fuck was Aeros?
He answered with a fury, rising beneath the tank. One stony fist grabbed the barrel and bent it toward the ground before the Old God flipped the tank over and slammed it against the earth. Stone flowed over the armored metal shell, and the tank squealed as Aeros tore it apart.
“They are children! ” the Old God roared. “My stone will bear your names for all time, and the world shall call you murderers.”
“Aeros, no!” I shouted.
He paused with his fist raised above the exposed soldiers, his eyes flashing between me and the terrified men below him.
“Don’t kill them,” I said.
“He’s dead!” A voice screamed, cracking and rising into hysteria. I turned to see a child tugging at the arm of an older man. The endless, undefined wails of a survivor. There were the cries of grief, and then there were the primal chords of loss no person could put into words. The hiccupping, terrible sobs of lives broken, and a world that would never be the same.
“Murderers.” Aeros turned away from the soldiers and looked down at me. “They should be held accountable. Would you not slay them if they were Fae or vampire?” He walked back toward the screaming boy.
I stepped up onto the flattened edge of the tank. “Okay, look, that’s a big talking rock who wants to kill you now. Congratulations on pulling that off. You also just murdered someone’s grandfather, so fuck you very much. The Fae who triggered Gettysburg are still out there, and they still want to kill you. Wise up before you find yourself alone in this fight.”
The nearest soldier’s hand reached for his sidearm. It caught on a mangled strip of metal.
The man next to him had a smarter approach. He placed his hand on his companion’s arm, preventing any further attempts to draw his weapon. When the first man tried to protest again, the man I’d come to think of as the smart one stopped him more forcefully.
“Stop it. Do you want to see your family again? Or you want to die here?”
The man with the gun stopped fidgeting. I backed away, letting them climb out of the ruined tank. The wails of the child behind me cut through the silence of the men before me.
“Never forget that sound.”
I turned away at that point, not wanting to see what the men would do. Or maybe I just didn’t care anymore.
“Can you get them to the hospital, Aeros?”
“It will be done.” He held out his hand, and the sobbing boy climbed onto it.
Nixie held her hand over the wound in the man’s chest. “He’s still alive.” Her hand trembled, and a small orb of water congealed across the wound. “It will stop the bleeding for a short time, but you must be quick.”
“I will be,” Aeros said. The earth beneath the man shifted and surged forward, carrying all three of them past the overturned tank like a ship set upon the stones.
A familiar face caught my eye in the chaos. “Ranger Rick!” He didn’t hear me, just kept walking.
Nixie raised her voice into a shrill, cutting octave. “Rick!”