twenty-one 
twenty-one DR. PHOENIX WAS not going to enter Ashtown through a kitchen door. Nor would he make one of his offspring carry an umbrella for him. He had walked, flanked by his two lean sons, all the way up and around to the main lawn. Now, with rain streaming off his long trench coat and his straw hat, he stood at the base of the great stairs, near the wet body of a porter.
He could hear the beating wings of a platoon of giant dragonflies in the darkness behind him. They had grown in number, but there were no guards to see what they saw, and no one to command them to attack.
Climbing the stairs, he approached the huge wooden door, but it whined open before he reached it.
Inside, the glistening mapped floors and the vaulted frescoed ceilings stretched away toward the leather boat on its pedestal. Phoenix inhaled slowly and then sighed. It had been too long.
Cecil Rhodes and twelve others stood in a line with their backs against the wall.
Dr. Phoenix savored the sight. And then, laughing, pulling off his gloves, and shedding his hat and trench, he crossed the threshold into Ashtown. Farther down the hallway, he could see bodies, all facedown, limbs splaying awkwardly, foam dribbling from their mouths—the casualties of his triumph.
“Where is the boy?” he asked Rhodes.
Rhodes cleared his throat and picked at his mustache. “Not exactly sure, sir. Sterling had him. But, as you know, we seem to have lost Sterling.”
A gilled man laughed. “Crack team.”
Phoenix turned slowly, and then moved down the line until he stood in front of the man. He was much taller than the man was, though far thinner.
“My friend, who gave you those eyes?” he asked, smiling. “Those lovely shark gills?”
The man said nothing. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
“Did you ask to be born, sir? Did you ask for sight, for smell, for ten fingers? No. And yet you were given them. And I have given you more.”
The man looked into Phoenix’s eyes and flinched, trying to look away but unable to. Panic raced across his face. Phoenix raised his right hand, a long forefinger pressing against his thumb. He snapped, and the man’s eyes rolled back in his head. His legs wobbled, and he staggered forward, gasping.
“Your body no longer wants its lungs,” Phoenix said. “And gills do need water.” The man fell to the floor. “Be comforted,” Phoenix continued, smiling. “You are unique. Not many men can drown in air.”
While the man kicked, Dr. Phoenix turned back to Cecil. “You are missing nine of the men named to me. Where are they?”
Rhodes licked his lips and shook his head. “I don’t know, sir.”
Phoenix nodded, filled his lungs, pushed back his black hair with the heels of his hands, and flattened the lapels on his soiled lab coat. “Do please take me to the bodies, to the harvest, to the sweet sunset of the Order’s chattel.”
“Right,” said Rhodes. “Follow me, then.”
While they moved down the hall, Rhodes cleared his throat. “About what we discussed, sir,” he whispered. “The Brendanship … the coup is complete. It might be appropriate for you to tell the others. I will, of course, reiterate my loyalty to you.”
Dr. Phoenix stopped and let his head hang. His long arms dangled limp by his sides. His shoulders bobbed with laughter, but when he looked up, his face was a sharp tombstone.
“Mr. Rhodes,” he drawled loudly. “You are a traitor to your people, your Order, and your friends. I would not entrust you with my laundry.” He moved on. “When I have need of more betrayals, then I shall have more need of you. Come. I have asked to see the dead, the many you have stung for me.”
“I didn’t—” Cecil stopped himself. The green twins parted around him, neck gills fluttering, heeling to their master. “But you said …”
“There will be no Brendan!” Dr. Phoenix yelled. “No Order, no ranks, no charade of self-importance! Only master and mastered, Mr. Rhodes. I will build a new race, a species apart and above the filth of humanity. Ashtown will be a womb, and you shall be a nursery maid.”
The twins followed Dr. Phoenix down the hall and past the boat. The other men trailed behind, some glancing at Cecil, some smiling, some smirking, some hanging their heads.
A minute later, Cecil Rhodes stood alone. He looked back down the hall at the large door still open onto the courtyard, the door leading away from Ashtown, away from what he’d done. Rain spattered on the stone steps, and he could see a porter’s feet. Dragonflies darted past the entrance.
Turning away, he ran after Phoenix, rushing past hundreds of damning eyes staring out of photos, past sprawling bodies bearing witness to his crime.
One of the bodies jumped to her feet and kicked him in the stomach.
Breathless, he crumpled to the floor and slid into the wall. His eyes filled with tears, and as he blinked them away, he found himself looking up the barrel of a revolver and into the face of Diana Boone.
The hammer clicked back.
Over her shoulder, the Smith boy appeared. He was holding a small African club.
“God knows I should,” Diana said. Her voice was low. A growl. “But I can’t waste the bullet.”
The boy stepped forward and raised his club. The blow fell.
Cyrus looked down at the limp, unconscious lawyer. Diana was already scanning the hallway.
“That’s one,” she whispered. “Your sister? Jax? Dennis?”
Cyrus shouldered his club and looked into the Quick Water. His heart was racing. “All down,” he said softly. “They saw them coming.”
“Good. Watch our backs.”
Diana jogged down the hallway toward the big, open front door and a porter’s feet, pulling out the small corked bottle Jax had given her as she did.
Looking over his shoulder, Cyrus ran behind, keys jingling against his chest.
The two of them stepped out into the wet wind and flipped the small porter onto his back. Cyrus opened the boy’s mouth and lifted his tongue. Diana squeezed two drips off her dropper, and they rolled the boy back onto his face.
Straightening, Diana squinted out into the dark courtyard. “See anyone?”
“Over there,” Cyrus said, pointing. “On the path. Two people.”
Side by side, they stutter-stepped down the slick stairs, reached the gravel path, and jogged through the stinging rain.
“It’s Rupe!” Diana yelled, and she moved into a sprint.
The big man’s head and shoulders were off the path, his face in the grass. He was wearing a rain cape, but the hood had fallen back. In one hand, he held a short shotgun. His other fist was clenched around foil-wrapped chicken. A dragonfly screen flickered in the grass. The boy, Oliver, was lying facedown in the gravel.
Antigone’s cheek was pressed into the red carpet. She’d put a large man’s foot on her head to disguise herself, but there hadn’t been much need. The place was strewn with bodies. Young, old, men, women, children, monks. Under tables, on tables, tangled up in tablecloths, buried beneath food, shattered china, and the limbs of dining partners.
So many people and so much silence. Each breath felt like a sneeze in church. The Quick Water had worked. She’d seen the horrible man coming with his people, and she’d shoved Dennis down and whispered at Jax. He hadn’t stopped. Not at first. Not until the doors had moved and the two green men had stepped aside for the monster in the bright white suit beneath the soiled lab coat. She stopped her breath and felt her heart quicken.
The cloak. She hoped Nolan was right.
A small crowd had entered behind Phoenix. Don’t look closely, she thought. Don’t, don’t, don’t.
The bodies closest to the kitchen were all facedown. The bodies closest to the kitchen were all foaming at the mouth.
The monster in the white coat moved farther into the room, prodding the unconscious dying, grinning from ear to ear.
Suddenly, he stopped and closed his eyes, lifting his face and raising his arms.
“Children of Brendan,” he said, falsely somber, “I pardon thee whatever sins thou hast committed—”
He stopped, interrupted by a cough. Lowering his long arms, he squinted around the room. Nolan’s voice descended from the ceiling.
“ ‘My name is Edwin Harry Laughlin.’ ” Lilting, mocking. “ ‘I am sixteen years old and a recent Acolyte in the Order of Brendan, Ashtown. My father’s name is Harry Hamilton Laughlin. My mother’s name was Pansy. She died two years ago, after one of my father’s experiments.’ ”
Phoenix’s face purpled, and then paled quickly as he collected himself. “It seems we have a wit in the room,” he drawled. “Do show yourself now. Or how can I know in which direction to applaud?”
Antigone bit her lip, watching Phoenix’s men swivel and search. And then the two identical green men slid forward, creeping smoothly across the bodies like stalking wolves. Their nostrils were flared, and their eyes were on one of the heat vents just beneath the beamed ceiling.
“Shoot him,” Phoenix said.
The men drew guns, and a pair of fireballs corkscrewed toward the vent, exploding in the grate.
“Idiots!” Phoenix groaned. “I would prefer if you didn’t burn the place. Bullets! Use bullets. And your heads.”
The men tucked away their weapons and drew new ones—long-barreled revolvers. The beveled grate bent and puckered as they fired, and the smell of sulfur and gunpowder drifted through the room.
Antigone jerked at each report, but no one was watching. She could see Dennis breathing hard. Jax was inching forward, his jar tucked beneath his arm, dropper in hand. Antigone wanted to yell at him to stop moving. The men were right there. If any of them so much as glanced down, he’d be killed.
The firing stopped. All eyes were on the ruined grate. The silence was brief.
“ ‘My mother,’ ” Nolan said, “ ‘was the sort of sweet, empty-headed thing great men like my father can find themselves burdened with. There were even moments when I loved her. But I hate her Gypsy blood. I hate that it is in me. I want it out. I will get it out. My father tried, and he came close. I will succeed. At least, there are times when I think I will. I dream that I will. But my waking hours are spent in pain. My legs. My mind. Too many blood purifications. Too much electricity. I cannot sleep without nightmares, and when I wake, my bed is swamped with sweat.’ ”
Dr. Phoenix was a statue, his face bloodless. His eyes unfocused. “You, sir …,” he began, but his voice trailed away. His jaw clenched, pulsing. His chest heaved. He was panting now, rolling his head, clenching his fists. Antigone tensed and slid a little farther away. Nolan had wanted Phoenix angry, but why that would make him take off his coat, she didn’t understand.
And then, suddenly, the thin man with the black hair raised quivering hands to his shoulders. He tore off the stained white coat and threw it on the ground. His suit coat followed. Antigone blinked. The man’s hair was whitening. His nostrils flared, and his shoulders thickened, broadening. Huge hands balled into hairy melon fists. His legs thickened, shortening and bowing out.
Snarling, Phoenix—Mr. Ashes—leapt forward, scrambling over bodies, jerking the guns from his sons’ hands.
A gun fired, but not his. Flame flashed out of the vent, and Dr. Phoenix—Mr. Ashes—dropped to his knees. One of the twins fell. The other reached the wall. The firing shifted toward the door, into the crowd.
Yelping, leaving one of their own behind on the floor, the men flooded back into the hall.
Antigone saw Jax pinch two drops into the next mouth, roll over the body quickly, and wriggle on.
Dennis raised his head nervously and then scooched himself forward.
The coat was on the ground. Antigone puffed out her cheeks. It was her turn.
Antigone tucked her little bottle into her jacket pocket. She had a gun in the other, but guns were everywhere. Sliding slowly over a drooling monk, still gripping her Quick Water, she braced herself and prepared to run.
Phoenix rose to his feet, and his back rippled beneath his shirt as he looked up at the vent. Dropping his guns, he splayed and flexed huge fingers. His voice was molasses-thick and just as slow. “I’m not that easy to kill, friend.”
“You and me both,” said the voice of Nolan. “But the green one there looks hurt.”
Phoenix moved like a gorilla, knuckling off the ground as he rushed toward the wall beneath the vent. Behind him, one of the wounded twins struggled to his feet. The other stepped out of his way.
Phoenix leapt at the wall and two wrecking-ball fists crashed through the plaster. Leaving his arms in the holes, he pulled himself up off the floor. One fist at a time, he punched grips in the plaster as he climbed.
Antigone’s eyes locked on the rumpled white coat. She should have gone already. What was she waiting for? Jax was nodding at her. Dennis, peering through bodies, widened his eyes meaningfully. She had to be fast. Faster than she had ever been in her life.
One of the bodies near the kitchen door moaned loudly, coming to. Another one rolled onto its side. A third struggled to sit up. She’d waited too long. Phoenix’s men were peering back in from the hall.
“Go!” Dennis yelled. “Run!”
Antigone scrambled to her feet. Three men jumped forward through the door. Nolan’s gun cracked again and they jumped back. Both twins turned.
Antigone’s knees were bouncing high. Running through the bodies was like running through Cyrus’s pool of tires—tripping, slipping, bouncing off backs, stepping on wrists. Her eyes searched for empty spots of floor and bounced back up to the coat. Jax was high-stepping toward the kitchen. Dennis lagged behind him.
The twins were hesitating, picking their prey from among three runners. The coat was rumpled on the floor halfway between Antigone and the worried crowd in the doorway. Thirty feet. Fifteen.
She heard Phoenix crash back off the wall behind her. Nolan was firing again, trying to cover her.
Antigone slid across a tangle of teenage limbs in white shirts and snatched the coat. Turning toward the kitchen door, she ran like a dog in drifted snow, leaping bodies, popcorning up and down wherever her feet could find the floor. She was the only real target now. She was racing two bleeding green men with golden eyes.
The coat flapped behind her like a flag.
Guns were cracking all around. A bullet ripped through her short hair, and a pair of fireballs swirled over her head and exploded on the wall. Phoenix was roaring. Nolan was yelling. Jax and Dennis were shouting over their shoulders. They reached the door and burst through in front of her.
One of the lean twins was faster than the other. He dove, snagging her ankle.
Twisting at top speed, she fell backward through the kitchen door, slammed onto the floor, and slid headfirst into the island of still-flaming burners.
The kitchen was all stench and burnt food and groaning bodies. Gunner was sitting up with his head in his hands. Jax was sweeping pots off the burners and shouting something. Dennis had tripped over little Hillary Drake and tumbled beneath a table.
Antigone jumped to her feet, dropped her Quick Water on the floor, and jerked her small revolver from her pocket. Closing her eyes tight, she pointed at the door, looked away, and squeezed three times, feeling the gun bark and jump.
Jax had already cleared the pots and turned up the flames. Antigone threw Phoenix’s coat across the flickering burners.
A yell as primal as pain itself rose up in the dining hall.
The door flew off its hinges, and the twins entered. Behind them, bellowing in agony, white-haired Edwin Harry Ashes leapt into the room. His right arm was on fire.
Ignoring Antigone, he grabbed the edge of the island and swung up and over it, knocked his coat to the floor, and stamped out its flames.
Jax raised a gun, but Ashes sent him sprawling with the back of his charred and smoking arm. He leapfrogged back over the island easily, crashing to the ground in front of Antigone, staring into her eyes with black rage.
Stammering, stunned, she tried to raise her gun. His left hand closed around Antigone’s throat. Bullets hit the floor.
Her breath was gone. She kicked and clawed and punched. She gasped, her ears ringing as she watched the twins throw Dennis back to the ground. Her vision blurred. The ceiling and walls disappeared.
And then there was nothing. Not whiteness, not blackness—nothing. And she became part of it. Almost. She slipped to an invisible floor.
Things were exploding. More guns. More fire. She didn’t like guns. And she wished Cyrus would stop yelling. She was trying to sleep.
Breathing hard, dripping, Cyrus and Diana ran back up the front steps.
“What now?” Cyrus whispered.
“Time for the plane.”
“Do we go all the way around?”
Diana shook her head. “Too long.”
A few of Phoenix’s men were visible down the hallway, peering through a door. Cecil Rhodes was still motionless, a huge knot over his temple. Cyrus hoped he hadn’t hit him too hard.
Gunfire.
“What’s going on?” Diana glanced down at Cyrus’s hand. He held up the Quick Water.
“Shooting at Nolan’s vent.”
Diana nodded. “We have to hurry.” She slid quickly inside and hung close to the wall, the enormous reptile skin above her.
Cyrus had ditched his club next to Greeves. Now he held the little shotgun in his right hand, the Quick Water in his left. He’d wanted the revolver. Diana didn’t care what he wanted. She could hit something with a revolver. Anyone could hit something with a shotgun.
The crowd suddenly flooded back into the hallway as Diana and Cyrus ducked around the corner. Diana jogged down the side hallway and around another corner. She forced a door open and slipped inside. The Africa collection. Cyrus hurried in behind her and shut the door.
“Di?” The room was a black hole.
“Over here,” Diana said. “Keep well to your left and come straight on.”
Something large and breathing bumped into the back of Cyrus’s legs. Yelling, he staggered forward and fell. Teeth clacked together.
Air rushed through the room. Teeth didn’t clack. They ground and snapped. In the darkness in front of Cyrus, the gold outlines around Sir Roger’s eyes began to glow. The skull was on its ear, rocking in place, trying to bite.
Cyrus kicked it hard, skidding it back into the darkness.
The lights flashed on. Frightened, confused, Diana stood at the switch, looking from Cyrus to the big skull.
“I have the Dragon’s Tooth,” Cyrus said. “Sterling wasn’t lying. I have the tooth that killed Roger.”
“What?” Diana blinked. “You’re serious?” She shook her head. “Don’t tell me. We don’t have time. Get up and come on.”
They ran across the room to a small door set between shelves. Diana opened it, and they stepped into old brooms and mops and buckets.
“Shared closet,” she said, and kicked open another door, shattering a brittle jamb.
The next room was lit. Card catalog cabinets taller than houses lined the walls. Flights of spiral stairs on wheels dotted the room. Across from each other, two middle-aged women were facedown on the same desk, a plate of food and a scattered game of chess between them.
“Keepers’ Catalog Room,” Diana said. “Tough job. Every item and collective holding of the Order is listed in here.”
Cyrus set his shotgun and Quick Water on the desk, pinched cheeks and lifted tongues. After the drops, the women’s faces went back onto the chessboard.
Diana rushed off to another door.
They crossed a hall, went downstairs into a machinist’s shop, upstairs through an old coal-chute door, and out into the rain.
Turning his back to the wind, Cyrus checked his Quick Water again.
Diana was running down the hill.
“Trouble!” Cyrus yelled. “Di!”
She didn’t hear him, and he didn’t care. Antigone was running in his palm. Cyrus raced alongside the building, dodging window wells and columns. He could see the kitchen’s garbage stoop, and he passed beneath the lit wall of windows. He could hear the yelling.
Climbing the stairs on the garbage stoop, Cyrus pulled back the hammers on his shotgun and put his shoulder into the door, forcing his way into mayhem.
A woozy Gunner was on his feet. Jax was down. Dennis was down. Two tall green men stood above them, their eyes on Nolan, bleeding and blackened, as he emerged from a heat tunnel. The kitchen door was off its hinges, and on the other side, dozens of people were trying to lever themselves off the red dining hall carpet.
Cyrus ignored all of it.
A man with gorilla hands was strangling his sister.
“Drop her!” Cyrus yelled.
Snarling, the man threw Antigone to the floor and faced Cyrus. “Smith!” he said, stepping forward. “I drained your father’s blood. Your brother and mother. And this”—he kicked at Antigone’s crumpled body—“your wretched sister. And you. All of you will die.”
Cyrus’s gun had two triggers, side by side. He pointed at the man’s broad chest and pulled both of them.
Mr. Ashes rolled backward with the blast, and then rose to his feet.
“Right,” said Cyrus. “You’re one of those.”
He dropped the gun and reached for his neck. His fist closed around the keys. Pulling them free of Patricia, he clenched the tooth between his knuckles.
Ready, he raised his fist.
The angry ape of a man froze, and then smiled. His anger drained away, and while the mayhem in the kitchen rumbled on, he picked up his white coat. The right sleeve had burned away up to the elbow.
“Come on!” Cyrus said. “Come fight! Are you scared now?”
As the coat slipped over the man’s shoulders, Cyrus watched him change. The veins and creases in his face smoothed. His arctic hair blackened.
He thinned, his body stretching, lengthening.
Dr. Phoenix stepped forward. “Boy,” he said. “Your mind is as open to me as was your pitiful brother’s, as was your unfortunate mother’s. It is as open to me as the sky to the bird, as the sea to the shark. I’m afraid that I must be quite insistent. Give me the tooth and those keys.”
Smiling, he held out his unburnt hand.
Cyrus shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but it’s not going to work.”
The man reached Cyrus. “The arrangement can still be friendly. I am no longer Mr. Ashes. I am prepared to show mercy. I will spare your mother. Perhaps even your brother. They are sleeping so peacefully in my plane right now. My sons could bring them in.”
Rupert Greeves, eyes rolling and foam dripping down his short beard, staggered into the kitchen on wobbling legs. He was carrying Cyrus’s small club.
“Phoenix!” he bellowed. “Your cowards fled.” He tried to cross the kitchen, but the twins jumped back, shoulder to shoulder, weapons raised, barrels ready to spit their balls of fire. Nolan stepped beside Greeves.
Dr. Phoenix didn’t turn. He smiled at Cyrus.
Give him the tooth, Cyrus thought. No. Hit him in the stomach.
Phoenix shook his head.
Give him the tooth. Cyrus shook his head at his own thoughts. They weren’t his thoughts. He looked at Phoenix’s temple, gauging the distance.
“No,” said Phoenix. “On the tip of an arrow, maybe. Carved into a bullet, perhaps. If only you had thought ahead. Would you like your family to live? Or would you like to be responsible for their deaths?”
Greeves staggered forward, bellowing and swinging his club at the green men. He slipped and hit the ground.
Lunging forward, Cyrus swung for the temple. Phoenix’s left hand swallowed his fist easily, but the tooth plunged deep into Phoenix’s palm.
Smiling through the pain, Phoenix began to twist Cyrus’s grip, levering his hand back, driving him to the floor. Cyrus’s breathing stopped. His mind wouldn’t let his lungs inflate. His heart was slowing. The key ring bent and began to give. The silver sheath popped loose in his palm.
No. Cyrus tore his fist free and staggered back, still clutching the tooth between his bloody knuckles, his lungs suddenly bursting with air. Phoenix stepped forward calmly.
Cyrus looked at his unconscious sister, at Jax and Dennis rising to their hands and knees, at Rupert and Nolan facing the bleeding green twins and their guns, at Gunner and the waking mob through the doorway in the dining hall. Turning, Cyrus lurched toward the kitchen’s back door. He had to lead the hunters away.
Banging out into the wind, Cyrus slipped down the stairs onto the wet grass. Scrambling to his bare feet, he ran along the building.
Phoenix was yelling. Behind Cyrus, the twins slid out of the doorway and into the storm. Cyrus accelerated through the shadows, brushing his shoulder against the wall. And then his shin collided with a hidden bicycle. Shoving the partially separated tooth and keys into his pocket, he grabbed the handlebars, jerked the bike away from the wall, and jumped into the seat. A large umbrella propeller spun in the wind above him.
He didn’t have time to worry. He pushed off down the hill, pumping the pedals.
Cyrus gasped as the wind jerked the bike off the ground. He surged up past the first-story windows and back toward the building. The propeller tip sparked on stone and the bike swung, cracking Cyrus’s knee hard against the wall. He wasn’t flying, he was blowing away like an unleashed kite. The gusting wind pulled him from the wall, spun the bike in a circle, and forced him toward the trees. Below him, the ground was dark. Treetops were jagged silhouettes waiting to swallow him. Pedaling furiously, Cyrus tried to lean and tried to steer, but he was at the wind’s mercy.
A fireball swirled past him, and he felt the heat on his wet skin. He watched it dissipate in the wind as it climbed. The wind spun him around. He was facing the harbor but blowing backward. Two more fireballs climbed into the sky in front of him, shredded by the wind high above. Cyrus stood, pumping hard on the swaying pedals, and scanned the ground forty feet below. He could just make out the twins, guns raised.
Jerking hard on the handlebars, Cyrus managed to twist the bike around, getting the harbor and the wind at his back. He was racing toward the main building.
Teeth grinding, Cyrus pumped for elevation as the wind threw him forward.
He was climbing, but not fast enough. Statues loomed above him along the roofline. A fireball burst on the stone in front of him, blinding him with light. Another rose up in front of him, singeing his face.
It exploded in the umbrella propeller, raining fire, burning skin.
Cyrus didn’t stop pedaling as he fell. The bike crashed into the wall and tumbled down the stone face. The wind tore the blackened propeller free and Cyrus slammed into wet earth with the bike on top of him.
Gasping, blinking, he managed to push the bike off. A green-faced man with strange eyes leaned over him. His eyes were golden. Gills fluttered on his neck. His identical brother loomed behind him.
“Take it!” Phoenix yelled in the wind. “Bring it to me!”
Cyrus’s breath was gone, and his mouth was filling with blood. He spat and gasped and felt for his pocket, trying to roll onto his side. Wrong pocket. His fingers grazed glass and tingled with electricity. The green man pushed him flat and pressed him down. Long hands groped for his pockets.
“Can’t,” Cyrus gasped. Gritting his teeth, he gripped the lightning bug cube, tugged it free of his pocket, and slammed it against the twisted metal of the bike frame. Glass shattered. Shards dug into his palm, but the pain was nothing to the roar of electricity that shot up his arm.
With his empty hand, Cyrus grabbed at the groping twin’s shirt, tugging him down while he raised his electric fist. Green arcs sparked between his knuckles.
A blow slammed into his face, but he didn’t let go. A knee crashed into his ribs. Cyrus sputtered, shoving his quivering beetle hand down the man’s shirt, just managing to open his throbbing, electricity-petrified fingers, releasing the lightning bug against green skin.
The twin shivered with the current. The storm sky flickered. Too late to get away. Cyrus clamped his eyes shut.
Through his eyelids, the flash was bloody red. Pure heat ripped through his body.
He heard nothing. He knew nothing. All was forgotten.
Someone was slapping his face, even harder than the needling rain. He opened his eyes. Greeves, looking ill. Antigone, worried hands cupped over her mouth. Nolan, with his hand raised for another slap. Instead, he pulled Cyrus to his feet. His bare feet hurt. A lot.
“Where’s the tooth?” Nolan asked.
Cyrus shoved cracked and blistered hands into his pockets, but he didn’t need to. He felt empty. The tooth’s power was gone. The keys were still there, but they and the remaining charms were loose in his pocket. And the key ring, bent and molten, was stuck to the empty silver sheath.
A green man lay in the grass with open, steaming wounds. Cyrus blinked quickly in the wind, remembering the struggle. His eyes wanted to roll back in his head. “They took it. After the lightning. Sorry.”
Without a word, Rupert and Nolan began running down the slope.
Antigone threw her arms around her brother’s neck. “We’re alive,” she said. “But Mom. Dan. He still has them. Was he telling the truth? Are they in the plane?” She squeezed her brother hard.
Letting go, she wiped her eyes. “Where is Diana?”
Cyrus looked around. His body felt like Play-Doh. His brain was blistered.
“The plane,” he said. “Diana, we …” He swallowed. “She’s trying to blow up the plane.”
Lightning shattered the sky. Thunder washed around them. Down near the airstrip, fireballs corkscrewed back up the slope and over their heads.
Diana Boone reached the airstrip and looked back up at Ashtown. She could see motion in the lit kitchen windows, but Cyrus was gone. She didn’t have time to go back. He knew where she was. He could catch up.
The rest of the way to the jetty, she was more cautious. The dragonflies found her—she felt bad for them, slower and battered by the storm—but Phoenix hadn’t seemed to feel that his plane needed a guard. Overconfident, she thought. She hoped.
The plane was all the way at the end of the jetty, tied off and facing the shore, grinding its pontoon up and down the rocks as the waves washed in. She’d thought about cutting it loose, but with the wind it would only drift into the harbor. Now she was wishing that she’d paid more attention to her cousin’s monotone recitations as he worked on her Spitfire. He would have found the fuel line in no time. And, once he’d found it, he would have known what to do with it.
Diana glanced back up. The kitchen door opened. Two tall shapes stepped through. They were looking for something. They didn’t have to look long. Spiraling fireballs climbed into the sky.
Diana’s mouth fell open. Cyrus was trying to fly away. In this storm. Pulling her gun, she began to run back down the jetty. She paused. She had her own job to do. She’d have to do it quick.
She turned back to the plane. The water was rough, too rough for any sane pilot to attempt a takeoff. But it had been too rough for any sane pilot to attempt a landing. And the wind would give the plane extra lift.
She had no time. None. And no plan. Bright, erupting fireworks continued up by the main building. She couldn’t let herself watch.
Diana looked at the gun in her hand. She had five rounds. She looked at the plane’s grinding pontoon. Three steel braces attached it to the main fuselage. They were pipes, and they weren’t very thick.
Scrambling down the rocks and through the spray, Diana hopped onto the pontoon. Pulling the hammer back on her revolver, she aimed down at where the forward brace attached to the pontoon. She fired.
A hole appeared in the metal.
Up the hill, lightning forked to the ground. The thunder washed around her, fading quickly in the wind.
Diana fired into the brace two more times, and then twice up into the plane’s engine for good luck.
She heard guns. Two tall shapes were coming down the hill. Phoenix was retreating, but where was Cyrus? Shapes were rushing out the kitchen door, and she saw muzzle flashes. A fireball swirled back up the hill but fell short, erupting into a hurricane of sparks in the wet grass. Another painted white flame across the face of Ashtown.
Diana moved down the jetty. Her gun was empty. The shapes at the top of the hill were huddling over something.
Two shapes were retreating across the airstrip. They’d be at the jetty soon. Pursuit had begun. Gunfire. White flame swirled back up the hill in reply.
Lightning struck again, but behind her, over the water. Diana covered her ears against the thunder and backed toward the plane. She didn’t want to be in the water with lightning falling, but she didn’t have much choice.
The two tall men reached the jetty—Phoenix with one green man.
Diana hopped onto the pontoon and slipped off quietly, treading water beneath the plane. She could hear yelling, but her ears were ringing from thunder and her own gunshots. The wind and waves swallowed the rest.
Fuel dripped into the water around her.
The twin dropped to his knees on the jetty, and white fire swirled back at invisible enemies. Phoenix jumped into the plane.
Spitting water, Diana wished she hadn’t emptied her gun.
A moment later, the engine sputtered to life. Diana closed her eyes against the propeller’s battering breath and wished she could cover her ears.
Cyrus stood panting in the rain beside his sister. His face was singed and blistered. Rupert Greeves and Nolan stood beside them, their clothes smoking. The guns were all empty, and every time they took a step forward, another fireball bowled up the hill, exploding in the grass while the wind whipped the flames around them.
“Cyrus,” Antigone said. “We have to get them. We can’t let him do this.”
Cyrus said nothing. Blinking away the rain, his eyes bounced between the plane and the man guarding the jetty.
The plane’s engine started. The propeller was growling, ready to pull, ready to climb. Lights were on in the cockpit. It hadn’t blown up. Where was Diana?
Tensing, he inched forward. Greeves dropped a heavy hand onto his shoulder, holding him back.
Cyrus bit his lip, tasting blood. If his brother and mother were really on that plane, he couldn’t watch them leave, not with that man, not into a storm. He didn’t have a choice. Dying would be better than watching.
A dragonfly whipped by overhead.
Rupert watched it go, then he raised two fingers to his mouth and whistled long and sharp.
Cyrus dashed down the hill.
The first fireball seemed to come in slow motion. He dropped onto the wet grass and slid through its sparks. Hopping up, he had three strides before the next one exploded at his feet.
He jumped as high as he could, flailing his arms, kicking through the heat, overbalancing as he came down. The crash became a roll, and he was up again and running.
A wave of dragonflies streaked above him. Nolan came up beside him.
The screaming pitch of the seaplane’s engine climbed, and it rocked away from the jetty, beginning to turn around in the harbor, preparing to fight the wind. The man on the jetty was finally retreating to the plane, running fluidly, spraying fire over his shoulder. A fireball exploded around a ship’s mast. Three others drifted away into the trees. The dragonflies were on him now, and he swung at them as he ran. At the end of the jetty, he launched himself easily through the air, landed on the plane’s moving pontoon, grabbed the wing, and swung himself up through the open door.
The dragonflies veered away.
Cyrus reached the wet stone. His mouth opened and his tongue crawled out as he pumped forward, every tired muscle firing, his limbs screaming as he sprinted the long stone curve. Nolan was falling behind. Rain stung. Legs burned. None of it mattered.
The plane had completely turned. It was just off the end of the jetty. The engine shrieked at the wind, and it began to pull away.
One second. Two seconds. Three.
Cyrus planted his left foot on the end of the jetty and threw himself out into the air.
He smacked into the tail and tried to hang on, his hands slipping down the wet metal, peeling open his lightning-blistered palms. And then the plane hit its first wave and shook Cyrus off. Dropping to the water, he grabbed for the pontoon, just managing to hook his left arm around the rear brace.
The plane was picking up speed, bouncing, slamming into each wave, dragging him on his back, nosing him under into the force of a waterfall, skipping him across the top like a stone.
The pontoon smashed into a wave and rose above the water.
Cyrus’s torso rose with it. His waist was free. His legs slapped into the next wave. The force jerked him loose and sent him rolling across the rough surface. Above him, free of the water and accelerating into a climb, the plane burst into flames.
Sputtering but still conscious, Cyrus watched the plane as it dropped, trying to touch back down against the windblown waves.
With a snap, the first whitecap ripped off a pontoon and sent it cartwheeling across the surface. The plane’s nose smashed into the water. Its tail rose and fell forward in a somersault.
Metal creaked and sighed. Flames trickled out onto the water.
Cyrus tried to swim toward the wreckage, but the wind was too strong for his weakened arms, and the chop of the water was too big, driving him back toward the distant shore.
Filling his tired lungs to bursting, he dove, pulling himself below the moving surface.
Ten feet down, he started kicking forward. He could hear the groaning metal of the plane all around him. He had no sense of direction, no energy in his limbs, and no possible chance of reaching the wreckage.
But he couldn’t stop. Not now.
A large shape rose up beneath him. Sandpaper skin against his hands. A vertical fin. He grabbed on, and Lilly the bull—he hoped—surged forward through the darkness.
The popping and creaking grew louder. Before long, the orange dance of fire lit the surface above him.
He patted the shark and let go, kicking up toward the inverted cockpit.
Both doors were open.
The submerged cockpit was empty.
Cyrus slid through a door and pulled himself back toward the rear of the plane and up into an air pocket.
Dan was sitting on the plane’s ceiling, bleeding from his forehead, cradling his mother in his lap. His blond hair had been cropped close to his scalp. His eyes were frantic and confused. He was much bigger.
“Cy!” he yelled. “What are you doing here? What’s going on?”
Antigone watched Cyrus and Nolan run, and her teeth drew blood from her fingers when Cyrus jumped.
She saw the plane drag her brother into darkness. She saw the fire and the tumbling crash. She raced after Greeves as he ran down to the docks, and she jumped into his metal shell of a boat while he jerked the cord on the motor.
Nolan was standing on the end of the jetty, watching the lake’s churning surface burn. Diana climbed up the rocks beside him and sat, covering her mouth in shock.
Antigone grabbed on to the heaving prow, and the boat surged and chopped its way out into the lake. Her mind was numb. Water stung her unblinking face. Wind and rain tore at her hair. Distant lightning and approaching flames seared their brightness on her staring eyes. The burning plane was sinking—the last three people she loved were sinking with it.
Rupert circled the wreckage and circled again, tightening his loops, passing through islands of flame. Finally, cutting the engine, he jerked his shirt over his head and prepared to dive.
Antigone grabbed his arm.
Antigone was the one who heard her brother—her brothers—calling out her name from the oily water. She was the one who spotted the three shapes in the darkness. And when Rupert had lifted her mother’s limp, dripping body from the waves, and a muscled, confused Dan had swallowed her in a hug, and Cyrus had emptied his gut of lake water and lay gasping at her feet, when the boat had finally turned its nose back to Ashtown, she was the one who held her mother’s head in her lap, rocking with the heaving waves, stroking dripping white hair, looking at her battered and bleeding brothers, mixing hot tears with the rain.
A mile to the east of the sinking plane, Lilly the bull found something strange. Two somethings. She could smell them. She could feel their vibrations in the water running down her skin. One of them was a people. He smelled like a people, looked like a people, and moved like a people. She mustn’t eat the people or taste the people or be seen by the people.
But the other was not a people. Parts of it smelled people, but more of it was like dog and monkey and … vile tiger shark. It had gills. She could feel the gills vibrating as it swam. It was not slapping the water like people. It was slithering through it, dragging the people on its back.
She needed to know what this new thing was. And, for a shark, there is only one way to be sure.
After trial, after hardship and horror, even after the darkest night, the Earth still turns. The sun still burns, though its light may discover many changes. When the morning sun rose into blue sky over the freshwater sea that is Lake Michigan, when its light kissed the stone walls and towers and windows of Ashtown, the chapel held twelve bodies in need of graves—eleven members and staff of the Order of Brendan who had not survived the night. One who had been murdered in the office of Cecil Rhodes.
Rupert Greeves stood beside them, his brow furrowed, his hands crossed, studying the faces of those he had lost. Five of his guards. A man and a woman, newly engaged, both cooks. A smiling Keeper. A monk. A wrinkled Sage. A young Acolyte. And Eleanor Elizabeth Eldridge. Alone, Rupert had already uttered blessings over each of them.
Jax had wept over each of those he had not reached in time, and he had paced every corner of Ashtown with his antivenin until Rupert had forced him to bed.
Rupert himself had not slept, and it would be a long time before he did. There were too many things to do, and the list wouldn’t stop scrolling in his head.
Cecil Rhodes was missing. The other captured traitors were in containment, waiting for Rupert’s arrival.
The young Oliver Laughlin was comatose.
Wisconsin authorities were waiting for his call about a reported plane crash.
An elevator needed fixing. The Brendan—soon to resign, no doubt—was probably hungry.
The O of B had lost its cook, but that wouldn’t stop people from wanting breakfast. He hoped everybody liked French toast, because that’s all he knew how to make.
Phoenix had the tooth.
Rupert dragged a heavy hand down his jaw and through his pointed beard. He didn’t even like to think about what that meant—old images, scars on his memory, flickered past, and he was again digging graves for the misshapen and disfigured remains hidden by a younger Phoenix in the walls and floors of Ashtown. His own brother’s body …
Rupert closed his eyes. He was going to need help from the other Estates. And he would have to train up help for himself within Ashtown. He opened his eyes, staring straight ahead. The future was invisibly dark, but to Rupert Greeves, it smelled like war.
He looked down at the row of bodies in their open boxes. Twelve dead in two days.
Sighing, Rupert Greeves turned and left the chapel. Everything else could wait until he’d been to the hospital.
John Horace Lawney was sitting up in his bed when Rupert arrived, carrying a large envelope under his arm. Gunner was snoring in the bed behind his uncle.
“Horace,” said Rupert, nodding.
“Greeves,” said Lawney.
The two of them looked at the row of beds.
Daniel Smith. Katie Smith. Antigone Smith. Cyrus Smith.
Diana Boone was curled up with a blanket on the floor. Nolan was hunched over, snoring in a chair by the window. Breeze-rustled curtains dragged through his hair. A slightly frayed red-winged blackbird hopped on the sill behind him.
Groaning, Daniel Smith opened his eyes and stretched his thick, bruised arms above his bandaged head.
“Mr. Smith?” Rupert asked.
Daniel opened his eyes. “Mr. Greeves!” He sat up carefully. “Are you here, too? I mean, were you there last night? In the boat. That part seemed like a dream. I didn’t know why you would be here. Don’t you live in California? You know, in the house? Sorry, I’m really foggy right now. Good to see you, though. It’s been a long time.”
“Likewise,” Rupert said. “I have something for you. And I wish I’d given it to you sooner.” He handed Daniel the envelope. “If you recall, I bought it from you furnished. Since that time, no one has set foot inside it. I owe you an explanation, and at some point, I intend to give you one. But for now, this will have to do.”
When he’d gone, Horace stood up and shuffled over to Daniel’s bed.
Daniel dropped the papers onto his lap. “It’s the deed,” he said. “To our old house in California.”
With hot eyes, Daniel Smith looked down the line of beds, and he laughed.
