CHAPTER 7

Karina pulled Emily off the bear-dog and into her arms.

“Stay close,” Lucas barked as he turned and ran back up the path. She followed him, trying not to stumble. They pounded over the bridge they’d crossed on the way in.

“What’s happening, Mommy?”

“I don’t know, baby. Hold on tight.”

Emily was so heavy. Karina never remembered her being that heavy. It was like all of the strength had somehow gone out of her arms.

They cleared the garden and burst into the open space between the two spires, Lucas ahead and she, out of breath, a few dozen yards behind. A group of people stood by the spires, where the road out of the settlement rolled down the hill. A familiar face looked at her with merciless sky eyes. Arthur. Daniel’s golden mane swung into view. He grinned at her, a deranged wild grin that had too much mirth. On the periphery a few yards away, Henry stood with his eyes closed, tense, his face raised to the sky. A young girl, barely a teenager, stood next to him in an identical pose. To the right an older, dark-skinned woman and another man, tall and gaunt, imitated them.

“Good of you to join us,” Arthur said.

Lucas walked up to stand next to him.

A huge sound came from the distance, deep, booming, as if someone was playing a foghorn like a trumpet.

The girl at Henry’s side inhaled sharply and dropped to her knees, breathing in ragged, painful gasps. Henry’s eyes snapped open. He thrust his hand out and clenched it into a fist. “Oh no, you don’t.”

A desperate scream of pure pain came from the distance.

Henry smiled. His face glowed with vicious joy, so shocking that Karina took a step back. He stared into the distance. “Not as fun to pick on someone your own size?”

The scream kept ringing higher and higher, pausing for the mere fraction of a second that it took the agonized being that was making it to gulp some air.

Behind Henry the fallen girl opened her eyes and rose to her feet. The older couple awakened from their trance.

Henry twisted his fist and jerked it, as if ripping something in half.

The scream died.

“Thank you,” the girl said.

“It’s all right. Next time remember to cloak.” Henry turned to Arthur. “They have two hundred civs, fifty pigs, two heavy field artillery batteries, six squads of twenty-five men each, and seven Mind Benders. Minus one.”

He’d killed an enemy Mind Bender, Karina realized. Kind, shy Henry crushed him, but not before he made him suffer.

“Too many,” someone muttered.

“It’s overkill,” Daniel said.

“There is at least one Demon, too,” Henry said.

Lucas laughed, a bitter, self-assured chuckle.

They had a Demon like Lucas. Lucas would fight it. She saw it in his face. She didn’t want him to die.

Something climbed over the crest of the distant hill, spilling onto the prairie. Karina squinted. What in the world . . .

Arthur’s face remained serene. “Begin immediate full base evacuation.”

A dark-haired woman on Karina’s left held out binoculars to her. “Here. Looks like I won’t need them.”

“Thank you.” Karina lowered Emily to the ground and took the binoculars. “Stay with me, baby.”

The woman turned and ran, back toward the garden. A moment later the alarm sounded again, but this time in two short bursts.

People peeled off from the group and headed back, deeper into the base. Now was her chance. If she could slip away and go through the gate, she could get away. Nobody would find her in the confusion . . .

“Lady Karina,” Arthur’s voice rang out.

She snapped back to look at him.

The gaze of his blue eyes bore into her. “Stay close. We must hold until the evacuation is complete. Lucas may have need of your services.”

His voice was soft but his eyes left her no doubt—he knew what she was thinking and escape was futile.

Arthur turned and looked out to the plain. She looked, too, raising the binoculars to her eyes. The mountains swung into view, suddenly clear. She tilted the binoculars lower . . .

People came walking over the hill. To the right a middle-aged man in filthy khakis and a ripped shirt with thin blue stripes climbed over a rock. Next to him two dark-skinned men in jeans helped a third limp forward. On the left a woman in business clothes walked on, stumbling. The binoculars captured her face. Her features, caked with grime and dust, twisted into an expression of abject terror.

Karina inhaled sharply. A red-haired teenage girl followed the woman. Her ruffled black skirt hung limply around her skinny legs in torn stockings. She shuddered as she walked and Karina realized she was sobbing.

Karina jerked the binoculars down. “There are people out there!”

“They are captives,” Lucas said. “People the Ordinators snatched up here and there, the missing. The pigs are running them at the net. It’s designed to stop high-impact projectiles, but if enough body mass hits it at once, it will overload and collapse.”

The memory of the bird shocked by that red glow flashed before her. “They will die!”

“That’s the idea,” Daniel said. “They’re trying to break through before we have a chance to detonate the network.”

“Can’t they just use a tank or a vehicle?”

“The net would fry it,” Lucas said grimly. “Biomass is the best way to go.”

The people on the right broke into a run. Karina raised the binoculars.

A creature bounded over the hill. Huge and brown, it looked like a seven-foot-tall boar moving too fast on surprisingly long and skinny legs. The pig paused. Its long crocodilian jaws gaped open, flashing fangs as large as her fingers, wider, wider, until the pig’s entire head seemed to split in half. A hoarse roar burst forth. The daeodon.

The people in front of the creature scattered like minnows, sprinting across the rough ground toward the net in a ragged herd, a blond man in a once white tank top leading the run. The daeodon roared again and gave chase.

On the left, a second pig crested the hill, sending another group of prisoners into flight. An older man in a torn flannel shirt stumbled and fell, splaying in the dirt. The pig bore down on him. The long jaws dipped down. A shriek rang out, vibrating with the sheer terror of a man who knew his life was ending, and vanished, cut off in midnote.

On the right, the blond man ran headfirst into the net and jerked, caught by a deep carmine glow. His body convulsed, his legs and arms flailing, as if he were being shocked by a live wire. The man directly behind him tried to slow down, but his momentum carried him right into the red glow and he shook, caught in a similar seizure.

Karina whipped to Lucas. “Can’t you do something? Anything? They’re dying!”

“We can give them a quick death once they break through,” Lucas said.

“But . . .”

“Lucas is correct,” Arthur said. “We will spare them the pain.”

The air around Arthur shimmered. People backed away. He bowed his head and stood very still.

On the prairie, the prisoners tried to swerve away from the red glow, but the pigs drove them forward. One by one the bodies crashed into the net. Karina turned Emily around. “Don’t look, baby.”

“What are they doing?”

Lie, she told herself. Lie. But the words spilled out on their own. “They are dying, Emily.”

“Why?”

“Because the bad guys are killing them.”

“Are the bad guys going to get us?”

“No, little one,” Henry said. “Arthur and Lucas will kill them.”

The red glow bent forward under the weight of many bodies, and still more people were coming across the prairie, herded by the daeodons like sheep. Arthur didn’t move. His eyes stared into the distance, somewhere far away.

“How long till the detonation?” Lucas asked.

Henry closed his eyes and opened them. “Three minutes.”

Lucas rolled his head right, then left, cracking his neck.

With a bright flash the net collapsed under the weight of the bodies. People fell into the gap, tumbling over each other, convulsing on the ground. The four huge pigs who’d herded them to the net galloped into the gap, trampling the bodies beneath their hooves. The daeodons charged up the slope.

Lucas grunted. His skin seemed to peel off his bones in thick slabs. Bloody mist filled the air. Karina stared, unable to look away. Bones bent, ligaments twisted, and the beast burst forth. It was bigger than she remembered. In her memory, he had morphed into a dark, featureless shadow, but here, in the light of day, she saw every bulge of terrifying muscle, every fang, every sickle claw, every hair in the black crest of his mane.

Fear washed over her, setting every nerve on fire.

The beast turned his head. Lucas’s green eyes looked at her from a horrid face.

Don’t flinch, she told herself. He was about to fight for them. He could die in the next few moments. She didn’t want him to go into it thinking she was disgusted by what he was. Whatever Lucas’s faults were, he was about to put himself between the pigs and her daughter. He deserved better than the blind fear the two women in the garden showed him.

She met his gaze. They looked at each other.

“Good luck,” she said.

The daeodons roared, pounding up the slope.

The beast who was Lucas nodded to her, leaped down, and smashed into the first pig. His claws sliced across the daeodon’s neck and it went down. Lucas swerved away from the gaping jaws, leaped onto the second daeodon, and thrust his claws through the brown hide and wrenched a bloody shard of its spine out.

The third pig halted, unsure. The fourth veered left, around the carnage, and charged up the hill, digging into the hard dirt with its hooves.

Karina clenched Emily closer. Her instinct told her to run, but around her nobody moved.

Twenty yards. Fifteen. Ten.

Daniel stepped forward and clenched his fist. With a dry crunch, the bones of the pigs’ front legs snapped. White bone sliced through the muscles and skin. The pig squealed, crashed on its side, and rolled down the hill. Lucas rose from the body of the third pig, leaped over the fallen daeodon as it tumbled down, and smashed its skull with one brutal punch.

“Are we in a story, Mommy?”

Karina looked down into Emily’s big brown eyes. I wish we were. I wish we were dreaming. She reached deep inside herself, through the fear and anxiety and disbelief, and when she spoke, her voice was calm and confident. “It will be okay, baby. We will be just fine.”

More daeodons spilled from the prairie, dashing toward the base; so many, she couldn’t even count. A huge beast led the charge. He looked just like Lucas, except for the reddish fur. The red beast sprinted, widening the distance between himself and the mass of daeodons, moving in powerful leaps that devoured the prairie.

Lucas backed two steps up the slope and planted his giant feet.

The beast thundered at them, hurtling like a cannonball. It jumped and sailed over the mass of writhing human bodies.

Lucas leaped. The two monsters collided in midair and Karina realized that Lucas was visibly smaller. They rolled down the hill, snarling and tearing at each other like two massive feral cats.

The larger beast raked Lucas’s side. Blood wet the dirt in a hot spray.

Karina spun to Daniel. “Help him!”

“I can’t,” he growled. “I need a clear target.”

The beasts brawled and snapped, biting and ripping in a tornado of claws and teeth.

The alarm blared again, this time a single long note followed by a short beep. Daniel whirled to an older woman standing next to him. She was short and plump, with an elaborate knot of tiny braids on her head. Her gray pantsuit was pristine, her makeup flawless. She looked like a secretary or a receptionist for an upscale business firm.

“Rip it,” Daniel said. “Now.”

The woman pulled a knife out of her pantsuit, jerked the sleeve back, and slashed a gash across her skin. Blood welled. The pain must’ve been excruciating, because she bent nearly double, cradling her arm.

At the bottom of the hill, the larger beast hurled Lucas aside. He flew, flipped in the air, and landed on all fours. Blood streamed from his flanks. The two creatures squared off and collided again.

The woman straightened. A pale green glow burst from her stomach, twisting into thin strands of light. The strands snapped out, flared, and split the empty air in half. A seven-foot circle appeared, filled with darkness.

So that’s what the dimensional rip looks like.

Arthur raised his head.

The ground shook under his feet. Tiny rocks bounced up and down. The vibration pounded the bottoms of Karina’s shoes.

“Lucas! End it!” Daniel screamed. “End it now!”

The reddish beast leaped, striking with an enormous paw, claws out like daggers. Lucas spun, rolling to the side, inhumanely fast. The large beast landed in the dirt. The moment his paws touched the ground, Lucas vaulted onto his back. Huge teeth flashed and he clamped onto the rival beast’s neck. The creature screamed, kicking and trying to roll. Two beasts plunged down.

Karina held her breath.

The black beast rose, slowly.

She exhaled.

Lucas pondered the body of his fallen opponent as if he wasn’t sure where he was or what he was doing there. Behind him, the captives, caught between him and the sea of pigs, scrambled to their feet.

The vibration below the surface increased, hitting Karina’s feet like the blow of an underground hammer. Tiny red sparks flickered around Arthur.

“Hurry,” Henry whispered next to her. His gaze was fixed on Lucas, his voice an insistent low whisper, almost a command. “Hurry.”

Lucas jerked. His head snapped up. He saw them and bounded up the hill.

The sparks around Arthur danced faster. Arthur’s feet left the ground. He rose three feet into the air, his body tense, looking down at the prairie stretching before him.

Oh, God.

The beast reached the apex of the hill, crashed down in a sickening revolt of flesh, and rose again, as Lucas, bloody and shaking. He shuddered on his feet, careened, and Karina caught him. For a moment his entire weight rested on her. She looked into his eyes and saw pain. And then Daniel pulled him off her and dragged him forward to the rip.

In the distance the foghorn blared frantically. The daeodons closed in. Karina swept Emily into her arms.

Henry wrapped his arm around her. “We must go. You don’t want to see this.”

They hurried to the rent. She looked back over her shoulder, as if pulled by some invisible force. The sparks darting around Arthur’s shoulders paused. For a fraction of a breath they hung motionless, then blinked, then sparked into brilliant light. Red radiance burst from Arthur’s shoulders in twin streams, boiling with flashes of white and orange, unfurling into two enormous wings knitted of lightning.

“Come on.” Henry pulled her toward the rip. It loomed before them, lightless and frightening, a hole in reality itself.

The red lightning flashed. The front row of captives fell to their knees. Fire spilled from their eyes and mouths, as if they were being incinerated from the inside out. Their faces turned to ash. The second row followed and on and on and on . . . Jets of flames spurted from the ground. The whole hill quaked as if caught in the grip of a powerful earthquake.

Oh, dear God. So that’s what a Wither does . . .

“Now!” Henry barked.

Karina took a deep breath, cradled Emily, and stepped into the darkness.

*   *   *

It was like being underwater. As if she were walking through a flooded tunnel of crystal-clear liquid filled with sunlight. Her body was very light, almost weightless. It lasted a lifetime or a single moment—Karina couldn’t tell—and then she stepped onto beige carpet.

For a second she was afraid to move, afraid to do anything, and then she remembered to breathe. The air tasted sweet.

Emily looked at her, blinking.

“Are you okay?” Karina whispered, her voice strained.

Emily stirred. “I know!”

“Know what, Emily?”

“Mom, I know, I know! I am the Courageous Princess. Like in the comic book.”

Karina exhaled and hugged her. For some reason, she wanted to cry.

They stood in a foyer. There were people around her, both men and women. In front of her a glass wall guarded a conference room, a long black table with matching chairs; and beyond that a floor-to-ceiling window offered a view of an evening city from above, lit up with electric lights. They had to be on the twentieth floor.

They had gotten away.

In her mind the bodies still burned, vomiting fire and ashes. What the hell was Arthur? What were all of them?

“We shouldn’t be here,” Henry said next to her, his voice vibrating with alarm. “This is wrong.”

A woman behind her snarled. “The fucking Ripper dropped us into the wrong base.”

A soft thud made her turn. Lucas crashed onto the carpet and Daniel tried to pick him up. Lucas’s eyes were closed. He looked so pale, his skin had gained an almost greenish tint.

She set Emily down and knelt by him, sliding her hand on his forehead. His skin was cold, almost clammy. Blood clung to his rib cage and a big purple bruise stained the right side of his stomach. He looked like he was dying. The heavy metallic scent rolled off him, so thick she almost choked. He wasn’t just hungry for her blood. He was starving for it and he hurt.

“What’s wrong?”

“Too much venom,” Daniel spat out. “He shouldn’t have phased into the attack variant so soon after the last fight.”

Arthur stepped onto the carpet out of thin air. “He will be fine.”

A grimace skewed Daniel’s face, stretching his scar. He looked like a rabid dog. “We should’ve evacuated yesterday. You overwork him. You know he needs at least two weeks between phasings, but you counted on him to save your ass anyway, because you knew he would do it. Look at him. Look at him, Arthur. He’s dying from the venom.”

Arthur glanced at the skyline. “Not now, Daniel. Where is the Ripper?”

“You are a fucking asshole!”

Henry closed his eyes and opened them. “She isn’t in the building.”

“Daniel, stop your hysterics and search the building . . .”

“Fuck you!”

“Will the two of you shut up?” Lucas said. His eyes were still closed. A shudder gripped him. He arched his back, his heels digging into the carpet, his arms rigid, his massive body straining against the pain.

Idiots. Karina wrapped her arms around Lucas, trying to hold him down, but it was like trying to hold down a bull. “We need something for his mouth. He’s grinding his teeth.”

“Vault, now,” Arthur snapped. “Pick him up.”

People swarmed Lucas, brushing her away. He lashed out, convulsing, throwing a man aside like a rag doll. They pulled Lucas up and dragged him down the hall.

Arthur bent down, grasped her by the elbow, and pulled her to her feet. “Come with us.”

“My daughter . . .”

Arthur’s fingers clenched her arm like a vise. He pulled her down the hallway, after the clump of people trying to move the convulsing Lucas forward.

Emily ran after her. “Mommy!”

Karina jerked. “Let go of me! You’re scaring her!”

“Do you want your daughter to live?” Arthur asked.

“Yes!” Bastard.

“Then do as you’re told.”

They were almost to the end of the tunnel. Something swung open with a heavy metallic sound. Karina caught a glimpse of a huge vault door standing ajar. The people carrying Lucas ducked into the round opening and parted, and Karina saw a room beyond the door. It lay empty and the light of the white fluorescent lamps reflected off the metal floor and walls.

They would put her into the vault with him. Lucas hurt so badly, he was convulsing. He required her blood and he’d rip her to pieces to get it. If she crossed that threshold, she would die.

“Mommy!”

She dug her heels in. “Emily!”

Henry picked Emily up. “It’s okay, little one.”

“You agreed to the contract,” Arthur said. “Time to honor it. Get in there and do whatever you have to do to keep him alive.”

If she didn’t go in, they would throw her in. She heard it in Arthur’s voice.

Karina jerked her arm out of his hand. “Take care of my baby, Henry.”

“I will,” he promised.

Karina took a deep breath and walked inside.

“No sudden movements,” Henry called out.

The door behind her clanged shut.