No, she had to get that collar off Misha, somehow. What to do?

  The wooden floor vibrated from the music from the restaurant. They were standing right over it. She could hear grunts from the bedroom, Misha was fighting but he didn’t have a chance like this. She had to get the key to him. How?

  “Sit, love.” Arkadi made her turn to him.

  “I want to watch,” fell out of her mouth, surprising him, and a red eyebrow flicked up curiously. Had Vadim lived, he would have looked exactly like this in ten years. Would mentioning his kid brother make it worse or better? Worse in that he would kill her immediately. Better in that he’d lose control of his telekinesis. Anger had an overwhelming effect on people, but without having a clue as to how telekinesis worked because she’d never bothered to ask Misha, she couldn’t risk pissing Arkadi off.

  She rolled the dice. “Let me go to him.”

  “All right, if that’s what you want.” He popped a sugar cube into his mouth. “What do I get?”

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “I try not to be forceful with women. I have sisters and all,” he said, wiping his mouth. He had many silver rings on. “But I’ll play if you want to suck my cock,” he said, then added, “in front of your boy.”

  Now that she’d seen their faces and heard his name, there was no chance they were letting her leave. But he may just break her neck (a bullet would be too loud) if she stayed out of it, which coming from Eve would be mercy. But Misha…

  “Let me go to him,” she whispered. All right, she was about to see some orange bush though it was the middle of the winter.

  A smirk on his face, then he released her. She ran into the bedroom. She knew what they were trying to do because she could hear them. Monster in the dark with black eyes. The only light coming in was from the conjoining room, and Ardaki stood by the door now, his shadow on the bed.

  Lena went straight for the junk of the deep voiced one, grabbing and twisting his meat because he was on Misha. “Let him go,” she whispered.

  He grabbed her hand, nearly crushing her bones, but Ardaki said, “Give her a minute, brother.” He whistled. “You too, Victor.”

  They let off Misha and he scampered to get away from him. The bed was set up against the wall and all he could do was kick back into the corner, still surrounded.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Misha panted as Lena went to him and wrapped her arms around him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Why did you come back? You shouldn’t have come back. Fuck.”

  “You okay?” she whispered, cupping the sides of his neck while feeling for the groove of the collar. There would be a keyhole on the bottom of it but she couldn’t find it shaking so badly. The clock was ticking in the worst way possible, and when it ran out… bad things were about to unfold—things that lived in the head of the demented.

  “Why would you come back, Lena?” His heart was breaking, and she saw it. “I can’t protect you.”

  Yeah, no shit. He couldn’t even defend himself, not like this anyway.

  “For you, silly.” There it was or she’d thought, but the stupid prong wouldn’t fit. She turned it and pricked it but it wouldn’t turn. Was it supposed to? How the fuck should she know?

  “Time is up, love.”

  Misha grabbed for her when Ardaki yanked her back by the hair, but he was slammed into the wall in return. No one had touched him—fucken telekinetics.

  Arkadi was in her face, breathing into her mouth. His tongue flicked. He pressed her face against the wall, kicked her legs out from the back, and his hand was under her dress skirt.

  “I changed my mind. I think I want to fuck you instead.”

  So much for having sisters such and such. She still had the key in her hand and reached back and stuck him between the legs but caught his hand because he’d been fiddling with his fly.

  Light flashed as though someone had struck a match in the dark, and the world tilted. It banged inside her head. The music downstairs first grew louder as she fell on the floor, then it grew distant. The window shattered, and she found herself crawling on her belly as she would under fire because she was hearing gunshots. Furniture flew by overhead, felt like whispering shadows till they smashed into the wall, then they sounded like more guns going off. She crawled under the bed and covered her head. Her ears rang.

  A thud. An enormous weight dropped to the floor and she was staring at a monster face to face. A door sized man, the one with a deep voice, his jaw and the front of his throat ripped clean off. His tongue had spilled out and he was croaking. A bullet went through his skull and punched into the floor, making splinters fly up. Lena flinched when blood sprayed on her face.

  The bed lifted and Misha was peering down at her. Painted in blood, his eyes were like theirs, and he had a pistol in his hand. “Are you all right?”

  “Just my head…” She was still dizzy.

  He pulled her up and pressed the gun into her hand. “Here,” he said, then climbed the broken window, the glass was everywhere.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “After the redhead. I can’t let him go. He saw you. He’ll hunt you down. Protect yourself and find the fucken IA.” He went out the window.

  Left holding the pistol in the middle of a destroyed room, Lena looked around and found other bulky fallen. The bluesteel collar that had been on Misha had gone through his eye socket and into the wall, and he was being held up by it like a hook. He was very much dead, but the armoire was missing, the one with ‘God Reaps’ on his knuckles.

  Her brain still scrambled (she was pretty sure Ardaki had slammed her face into the wall when she pricked him with the key) she stumbled out into the conjoining room, found the light bright, opened the door to the corridor, and found herself staring at the other redhead, the female twin. Perhaps she’d heard the ruckus, maybe she’d drunk the entire bar, but she had a bottle in her hand and cocked her head at Lena.

  Her green gaze flicked down to the pistol in Lena’s hand, then she smiled. “Press that against your temple and pull the trigger.”

  Yeah, no. Lena shot her in the face, ruining her pretty dress and the wall in the hallway. The soldiers from the adjacent rooms all dashed out, coming to life at once, and looked confused as though they’d just woken up. It was the female who had been influencing them, she guessed.

  “For IA, your training is absolute shit!” she yelled at them. Then again, she wouldn’t put it past Ardarion, who was a slithering snake, to place incompetent men on duty for the pretense of security while letting Eve gain access without a fight. He would have expected a telepath and these soldiers scratching their balls in the hallway wouldn’t have been informed of shit.

  Speaking of the devil, he came striding around the corner, the blonde with him, and Lena opened fire on him. A civilian flung the door between them, saving his miserable life, and the inspector vanished around the corner, yelling, “It’s fine! Hold your fire! Don’t shoot her!”

  Lena chased him around the bend, shot at him till the slide locked back, the cartridge spent, then she chucked the gun at him. One of the soldiers had to tackle her to the ground because otherwise, she was going to kill the inspector with her bare hands.

  “I understand you’re upset. Calm down, Lena.” The inspector spoke to her while she was being held on the floor. “Where are they?”

  “Outside.” She blew a strand of hair that fell over her face. She’d never try bangs again. The damn thing was always falling in her eyes. “Grow a set and take your men outside.” She knew Misha was alone.

  “Well, you really know how to—” he was going to say something smug, that asshole, but the music from the restaurant died, being replaced by a louder sound—air raid sirens.

  “Drakon?” The blonde looked up at the ceiling. Everyone had become mannequins at the store, frozen in their positions. Had it been so long since they used to hear them every day?

  “Fuck,” whispered the inspector in disbelief. It took a moment but he regained his sense and began yelling at his men, “Move! Move! I need him alive! I need the redhead alive! Move!”

  Then Lena was alone in the hallway, lying on the carpet. Well, perhaps not alone but amongst stampeding feet. People were running. During drills, people were far more orderly, followed instructions, and didn’t take their belongings (they weren’t supposed to) but under actual attack, they always ran with things, with suitcases and trunks. Afterward, the streets would be littered with the things they carried, photographs, letters… money, worthless like paper and flapping in the wind, caught under charred black corpses.

  twenty-one

  Fury

  ‘Mama! Mama!’ She wasn’t moving, and Lena knew she wasn’t going to wake up, but she shook her anyway and yelled at her. Because what was she supposed to do now, alone? ‘Mama!’

  Vaska was screaming his head off. He didn’t understand about Mama, but the building quaking and the thunderclaps outside were frightening him. Also, he’d lost his favorite truck, a red fire truck. It had rolled under the sofa and Lena fished it out. She wrapped him in a wet blanket and headed for the stairwell. She understood she was supposed to leave. But what about Mama?

  She was gone now like Papa, and now all she had was Vaska. She had to look after him now because she was a big sister and that was what they did, look after their little brothers.

  Fire was so loud when it was big, louder even than the sirens. It was alive, looked for things to eat, and had a sound like a hoarse scream. It was so bright, and she couldn’t see anything because whatever wasn’t on fire was completely black like the sky. People were shadows, running. Dead ones were everywhere, and Lena covered Vaska’s eyes when she stepped on a hand, a dead person’s hand.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she mumbled because she hadn’t meant to do that.

  Where was she supposed to go? A shelter, she knew but where was that? She followed the silent shadows, everyone’s faces grey and black and their eyes orange looking at all the fire. If anyone said anything, she no longer recalled, she only remembered how deafening the fire was. Buildings collapsing was also loud, throwing up dust plumes into the orange and black night.

  They were running in circles, there was no way through. They were surrounded by the flames. It was so hot, the winter felt like the inside of a furnace and if she couldn’t breathe, Vaska couldn’t either. Perhaps that was why he’d stopped crying.

  A little boy was slumped by a dead soldier. She knew it was a soldier because of the helmet and the gun truck on fire. People ran by him, and no one was helping. She checked Vaska and his blanket was completely dry. They had to get out of here, but she went to the boy. Maybe that was his papa on the ground.

  ‘Hey,’ she yanked his shoulder.

  He turned and he was laughing. He hadn’t been sobbing but laughing. A pistol in his hand, and he lifted it.

  Bang.

  “Lena!”

  She was in the lobby of the Imsk Hotel. She’d made it down the stairs but couldn’t get out. War, she kept thinking because everything was red again—some soldier. The screaming was terrible, and she couldn’t make herself go outside or help anyone.

  “Lena!” Misha shook her. His eyes were grey and staring at her.

  “Oh, you’re alive,” she said, and embraced him. It was good, he was like a blanket.

  “Come on, let’s go.” He pulled her up. “We have to go take him down.”

  “What?”

  “The Fury, Lena. Help me take the Fury down. You’re the only marksman I got.”

  Then she found herself running after him.

  Deafening outside, on top of the wailing siren, the antidrakon rocket launchers were going off, which sounded like cars racing by, zooming.

  The buildings across the street were blazing and the statue of the general raising his sword to the sky had turned to a black silhouette against the brightness of it all. Flipped cars, bodies under rubble, chaos, and a horse and carriage careened by, both on fire, the knock of the horse’s hooves on the paved road hollow and echoing.

  Ash stirred in the air, in the updraft the fire was creating.

  “Where are we going!” Lena yelled.

  “Tower!”

  Well, that made sense. It was where she should have headed the moment the sirens came on. She slapped herself while she ran, trying to get her head in the game and be help and not hindrance.

  Some towers were cement and looked like lighthouses by the ocean, but this one was metal like an enormous antenna. She didn’t know why Misha had chosen this over the others. When she looked up, the observation deck was on fire, but she followed him and climbed, vertigo hitting her halfway up because she hadn’t done this in a while… or ever.

  A dead soldier hung from the ladder by the leather strap of his rifle.

  “Sorry,” Lena mumbled, as she yanked the rifle and the soldier fell, disappearing into the flames below. The taller they climbed the brighter it grew, the whole damn city was burning.

  Up on the observation deck, part of the roof was gone. The drakon clipped it was her guess because it wasn’t collapsed, but just gone as though someone had sliced it in half with a knife. Misha pulled the fire release, and the working sprinklers sprayed foam. Lena covered the muzzle of her rifle to keep the liquid from pooling inside.

  The flooring was fireproof matting and the soldiers had covered the ammo crates with fire blankets. The damage was contained to a little corner where the men ate and played cards.

  Misha moved around setting up the Defender, a 12.7x108mm machine gun Lena had no experience with, then said, “You’re my gunner now, Lena.”

  But she’d brought a rifle and everything. She only noticed Misha had a vintovka when he took it off the sling.

  “What do I do?” she asked. The lens on the sight of the Defender was warped from the heat, she realized, before fiddling with the dial nobs and not getting any focus. She switched that out to the iron spider sight.

  “Point and shoot. You’re calling him to me.” He was setting up his rifle.

  “The drakon?” Lena had to ask because he kept saying ‘he’ rather than ‘it’ and confusing her.

  “Yes, it’s an adult male Fury. Bring him to me.”

  All right, all right, she could do this. Where was he? She scanned the skyline.

  The guard towers were engulfed, and the city below looked like a carpet of lava. There was nothing but the wind up here, the fire making it loud. She knew fighter planes, when they used to have them, had trouble flying over burning cities because of the insane updraft that tossed them around. The towers weren’t that tall, just the right height, and the distance from the ground was enough to feel almost serene. Silence fell and her mind focused as she searched for the Fury across the dark sky.

  Drakon typically hunted when the sky was clear because a low cloud ceiling meant they had to fly that much lower, in firing range of the artillery, but the skies were cloudy, it had been snowing earlier.

  Where are you?

  She didn’t see him at first, but she heard the Northeast Tower firing. It was behind her. She rotated the gun and saw the tracers arching through the dark. Then the clouds parted, and the Fury dropped down, flying so low that it clipped the tower with its wing, decapitating the deck.

  An adult Fury, a forty-ton beast with a wingspan of two hundred and thirty feet, red scales shimmering as it moved to direct draft. It was gliding. The head was larger than a cottage and Lena froze because she’d never seen one from this high up, only the belly as it passed by far, far above.

  It had eyes, of course it had eyes, but that meant it would see her. It also had nostrils that flared. The jitters were wild, she couldn’t feel her hands on the firing grip, and her thumbs tapped the trigger bar because she was shaking.

  At the edge of the city, the Fury rolled, banking as it turned, then it beat its wings to gain height, and the air it stirred fanned the flames below. It too was looking for something. It climbed, then dove, leveled, and glided, the wings hardly moving now, and it used its tail to yaw.

  The fire snuffed out in its path as it sucked in all the air, turning the landscape below dark as it passed over it.

  “Lena,” she heard Misha. She’d forgotten he was with her. “Lena, I need you.”

  As the Fury flew into her sight, she saw Arkadi was on its back. “Sweet Savior,” she whispered. A fallen who rode a drakon, she’d never seen one. She depressed the trigger bar and the machine gun vibrated, spitting over six hundred rounds per minute. The muzzle rose and she fought for control but fortunately, she didn’t have to be accurate.

  She was shooting at no particular part of the drakon, just in the general vicinity. She didn’t have to worry about crossing fire with another tower because they were all gone. The Fury shrieked. She remembered that sound. When she was little, she’d thought the drakon was screaming but now she realized it was the scales making that noise, piercing the wind.

  “He sees you. Ease up on the trigger, Lena.”

  She let go, the muzzle had grown red. How did people do this for years and remain sane? It was fraying all her nerves. Yes, it saw her, and now it was headed right for them, sucking up all the air and creating a gale at once like the coming and returning waves of the ocean. It glided over the city, steady now that he was coming for the kill. She saw Ardaki and he’d been looking for Misha. A smirk twisted his face. They were that close.

  “Misha!” The Fury’s great mouth opened, glowing like an incinerator. “Misha!”

  “I have it. I have it,” he said.

  One, two, three tracer rounds fired one after another, all taking the same path across the sky, flashes really, but appearing to take forever, and all three hit at the back of the mouth, catching the secreting fuel a split second before the drakon breathed it out.

  Its neck exploded, spilling fire through the side of it and it really screaming as it plummeted, clipping the water tower, then cratering onto the earth below. Columns of dust, debris, and fire erupted behind it.

  “Is it dead?” Lena peered down over the edge of the deck. She couldn’t believe she’d lived through the night.

 

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