Monsters & Empire, page 31
She tried to rise, but the naiads beside her held her down. As soon as the wave had arisen, the original biter had dragged her underwater; friends had joined her. They waited around Grendel now, looking up at the surface fearfully.
Grendel squinted up, watching the starlight rippling on the surface.
Maybe they’d dragged her down to the bottom of the river because down below was the best place to be after a giant wave? That seemed possible, a way to avoid being smashed as the wave crashed. “Was that why they dragged me down here, ghosts?” she asked, the words bubbling through her vocal cords, and incomprehensible.
But her ghosts understood. “How should we know?!” they responded unanimously. “The Great Lakes might be inland seas, but they don’t have tsunamis.”
Nor did rivers.
Grendel scowled. Weren’t tsunamis caused by earthquakes?
“I think so,” another ghost said tentatively.
“We have to get out of here,” they all cried at once.
Grendel agreed. Maybe as long as she stayed low, her companions wouldn’t mind her leaving? Turning to the naiads, she mimed with her fingers walking across the river bottom. In the underwater, she couldn’t read their expressions well, but she saw them nod one by one. Rising slowly, she started off.
It was hard to walk underwater. Her eyelids felt heavy and …
“Don’t you dare fall asleep!” her ghosts cried.
She kept going, but she wanted to sleep. “Why?”
A single ghost spoke in a tentative tone, “You don’t need oxygen to stay alive, because you’re already dead, but maybe you need it to function? Water has less oxygen than air, so you’re tired. Your body temperature has dropped. I wonder if that is in compensation? If your body temperature is lower, you are expending less energy to stay warm, and thereby consuming less oxygen.”
“Ugh,” Grendel thought in response.
She blinked, yawned, and almost lay down. The mud looked soft. Her eyes slid closed.
“No sleeping! We are not getting stuck here!” her ghosts roared.
Her eyes bolted open. Slouching and tripping over a submerged log, Grendel kept going. She passed some tires, a washing machine, and mattress springs.
“Charming,” her ghosts said, making her snicker, which also kept her awake.
“The surface is closer,” one of her mental hitchhikers said. Grendel was too sleepy to respond, but then her head was exploding into open air, and she was hacking and vomiting water. “Ooh … were those minnows in our lungs?” a ghost exclaimed too excitedly.
“The river is draining,” another ghost said. Grendel blinked. She saw where the shore was, and a line of mud where it had been. Fish, caught off guard, lay in its wake. Still hacking, she looked across the once mile-wide river that was swiftly shrinking. She looked upstream and saw a bank of earth rising above her head. A dam. The earthquake—or was it quakes?—had created a dam of earth. It blocked her view of the town of Saline Landing, the river tributary, and the fort. She swallowed. If the dam was holding back water from two rivers, would there be any town, any fort? Or would both be drowned beneath a growing lake?
She tripped and focused on the present. The river level was dropping. The bottom left behind would be muddy and would be impossible to cross here or downriver … she closed her eyes. But Theo had Ice Makers—they could freeze the mud. Frozen mud would be harder to make impassable than ice. Even as the top layer thawed, the lower ice would hold and not collapse, because it sat on mud, not water. The UMS soldiers would soon be able to cross.
Another thought struck her. If the Saline River wasn’t flowing into the Ohio and was backing up, not only would the town of Saline Landing and the fort be flooded, but there would also be a natural barrier between the Southern part of Illinois and the rest of the state.
Grendel growled.
Wolves howled in response. Lupin and Lupina loped down the bank toward her. Lupin called, “You’re awake and upright.”
She wouldn’t believe that all the Marines and irregulars stationed at the fort had perished. This area flooded all the damn time. The locals would know where to go and how to get there. The SMASH would help.
Owls shrieked. Mortars blasted into the night, and a raven cried, “Boats! Boats! The UMS is sending boats into the water! And troops! And half the naiads are washed away!”
Grendel quickened her pace toward the shore. “Take cover!” she shouted to the wolves. Lupin and Lupina half-turned toward the tree line. But Lupina ducked her head and whined, and Lupin growled, “Hurry! We smell members of the Order crossing the dam!”
Grendel cursed. More?
The Order. Troop carriers. The fort and town overrun. The naiad forces decimated by the tidal wave. The Marines, irregulars, and SMASH wouldn’t be enough. They would need reinforcements. The expanding Saline wouldn’t allow troops to cross from central Illinois, and Grendel suspected the troops in the South would soon be busy.
The decimated forces of Saline Landing were alone … Unless …
She tripped over a protruding log in the river muck.
“Uh, oh,” said her ghosts. “You’re hungry.”
Bayo wasn’t fighting. He wasn’t in the out-of-time. He wasn’t walking over water with the Vampire Legion, going in for a closer look at their enemies. He was heaving mortars and sandbags with other members of the legion and regular units, trying to keep them safe from the approaching wave.
The RoNet had reported a tidal wave moving down the river, and the owls reported that the UMS troops were moving twenty yards back from their usual position. Bayo should have expected the wave; they happened at sea with earthquakes. The river didn’t have enough water to generate something on the magnitude of a tsunami, but on the low-lying plain, it could wash away their artillery and the protective sandbags arranged around them.
Taig, Trent, and Bayo jogged up a low rise, already fortified with sandbags of its own, and deposited the artillery weapon and extra bags they carried. A rat sitting on the bags said, “You feel them yet?”
Trent shook his head.
Taig spit.
“No,” Bayo said, tasting bitterness in his mouth.
While Trent, Taig, Bayo, and others of the elite fighting squad hauled sand and weapons away from the upcoming flood, Eclason and Madison had gone across the river, attempting to get Eclason close enough to decipher what was going on. Bayo had wanted to go. But Madison had overruled him. “Coyote said you might be the key to destroying the Revived. We can’t lose you on reconnaissance.”
“There are other ways to hold the Revived,” Bayo had said. They could be frozen in place, herded with sufficient force, and captured, even if they were very hard to kill.
Madison had raised an eyebrow and turned and left with Eclason. He’d known Bayo wouldn’t follow. Reaching another soon-to-be-swamped barricade, Bayo picked up a sandbag, tasting its Magick as he did. It tasted like steel and stone. It would repel all but the most extreme mortar fire. He started back up the bank and off the floodplain and almost stumbled over a man who had slipped. Bayo bent and slung the man’s bag over his opposite shoulder and jerked his chin backward, urging the man to go back and get another. Bayo wished his arms were longer, and that he could carry more. He wanted to feel more useful. He wanted his mind to be concentrated on something that wouldn’t allow his thoughts to wander.
Grendel was in danger. He wanted to go to her, but he could not abandon his post. Even if he was just hauling sand at the moment.
His jaw tightened. This was why the Order took vows of celibacy. It had nothing to do with sex, and everything to do with the emotional entanglements that came with it. If only she were here … he’d not wanted her here before. He’d been glad she’d been stationed in the North. Now he couldn’t protect her. Heat that had nothing to do with the humid summer night rose in his chest. He approached another barricade on higher ground. A cyclops approached and took the bags from Bayo’s shoulders, saying, “Heard a smaller force is crossing by boat at Saline Landing. Flood waters swamped the town and fort. They’ve got to send someone up there.”
Bayo stood stock still, staring at the cyclops.
“Yeah,” the cyclops said, readjusting the sandbag around the artillery. “It’s bad. Still, bulk of UMS forces are here and—”
Bayo felt the Ember shift. He left time and spun around. A bloody Eclason and Madison were making their way over the last few paces of the river. Eclason had one of Madison’s arms slung over his shoulders. Eclason’s gaze jerked up to Bayo. In the silence of the out-of-time, he signed, “Revived. Here.”
Bayo’s nostrils flared. He might not be any more effective against Revived than any other fighter, but he had created them. He couldn’t abandon the people here to fight the Revived without him. Not even for Grendel.
Real-time returned and the sounds of humans, animals, and Old Magickals working together, preparing for the coming flood of water, men, and Revived. These floods never needed to come. This war never needed to be. Theo had done this.
Bayo had told Grendel he wouldn’t engage Theo—that he wouldn’t fight the Dragon. But by all the Old Gods, if Theo were nearby, Bayo wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to kill him.
CHAPTER 32
The forest wanted to kill them. Gray felt the malevolence radiating from the trees and from beneath the impenetrable undergrowth, tangling hip high on either side.
He felt it from the Earth itself. Gray put a foot down, and the ground gave way. Stumbling, he looked down. The Magick in his cowl barely illuminated the forest, but he spied a pile of fresh Earth by his foot, as though a mole had left a tunnel to collapse when he stepped on it.
His brows drew together. “This is a trap,” he whispered. He drew away from the depression. Sharp, thorny branches reached out to grab him on the narrow, overgrown path that barely deserved the name.
Ahead of him, Kurt drew to a stop and whispered to Ives, the senior member of their party, “Hold up.”
Kurt came back toward Gray. Camouflaged by his armor, Gray couldn’t see him, but he heard his footsteps and felt his presence in the Ember.
“What is it?” Kurt asked.
“A feeling,” Gray replied.
Closer than Gray expected, Ives said, “You cannot let fear make your decisions for you.” Ives spoke without inflection, but his derision rang loud in the Ember.
They’d seen the Vampire Grendel crossing the Ohio. Ives was a Waterworker, and he’d turned the dam of rocks and mud created by Richter and Quake to solid footing. They’d run across in pursuit of Grendel.
Grendel had killed Aion, Gil, Trent, Gareth, Eclason, nearly killed Gray and Kurt, and had come back to the UMS to kill Bayo … if you believed what you were told. The skin on Gray’s back prickled. But he didn’t believe. Something about it all was wrong … why hadn’t Grendel killed Gray and Kurt? To leave a message, but what message? Ives said the message was to show how powerful she was. But killing them would have said that. Could the real message be that she was merciful?
He shivered despite the humid heat.
“Gray can feel things,” Kurt protested. The one good thing about their adventure in Chicago was that Kurt—a powerful Telekinetic—trusted Gray’s feelings. Up to a point, at least. If Gray had confided how wrong everything felt since they returned from Chicago, would Kurt still trust him? If he told Kurt how the Revived made his stomach churn, and his chest feel like it was clamped in a vise, if he told Kurt how the Dragon King’s voice sounded like a metal nail scraping against cement, would Kurt still trust Gray’s feelings?
“We’re surrounded here,” Gray whispered.
Ives snorted. “The flood wiped out the Alliance’s forces in this area.”
Gray swallowed. Not just forces. People. A whole town filled with civilians, now underwater, with the diversion of the Ohio River into the Saline River basin.
Kurt whispered, “But in the Alliance … sometimes the trees … and the animals …”
The trees could be dryads—the Alliance didn’t chop them down—although Gray didn’t sense that sort of consciousness among the oaks, birches, and elms. Which still left animals. The Alliance didn’t round up their Magickal creatures and force them into service. They even allowed Magickal rats and cats their liberty—the UMS didn’t even try to bully them into service; they euthanized them. Magickal non-humans were free to interact with Commons, even though that put the Commons at risk of Magickal enslavement to lower creatures.
Ives huffed. “Magickal animals in these parts are less a threat to us than Common humans. A few small bears, maybe a mountain lion or two … those are the only creatures of any significance.”
Gray swore he felt the malice in the air increase at those words.
Ives continued, “We wear puncture-proof armor, and we’re all but invisible. As long as we don’t keep standing here yapping, we are in no danger.”
“But—” said Kurt.
Gray heard Ives walking away.
Kurt remained motionless. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, too. Saline Landing, we shouldn’t have …” Kurt cursed under his breath.
Gray exhaled, relieved that his friend felt the same way he did about drowning Common civilians. But then Gray felt his friend’s gaze on him. “Are you infecting me with your … worries … or …”
“It wasn’t honorable,” Gray whispered.
“No, but what can we do?”
Before Gray could answer, Kurt set off again, swearing as his foot caught in a depression that hadn’t been there a moment before.
Gray followed, eyes on the ground.
“Pick up the pace,” Ives hissed, somewhere ahead of them, and Kurt and Gray broke into a jog, Gray keeping an eye on the ground for loose dirt. Or trying to. Bayo or Eclason or Trent or just about anyone else in the Order could compartmentalize their misgivings, focus on the mission, but Gray’s Magick was surging in him, distracting him from the forest that wanted him dead. He cursed his useless, inconvenient talent. Tried to pay attention … and couldn’t. Grendel, the temptress, had lured Bayo away from the protection of the Dragon King and the Crimson Guard and killed Bayo. With the aid of Coyote, one of the Old Gods of the Native Americans, she had absconded from the heart of the UMS with Bayo’s body, no doubt for some cruel defilements.
Gray knew this had happened. The Dragon King’s guards had said they’d seen it. They hadn’t lied about it … and yet … and yet … The Dragon King never spoke about it, and he had been there there. Because he was too emotionally wrought by the experience to talk about it, was the explanation. But … but …
Bayo had been at a brothel above a nightclub when Grendel had come for him. Bayo wouldn’t go to a brothel. He just … wouldn’t enjoy it. Gray knew this, like he knew gravity would pull him down. It was a surety that came with his Magick. Or was it his own mind speaking to him? And was it his mind or his Magick telling him that you did not protect Commons by wiping out a town of them? Was it his mind or his Magick telling him that the Dragon King was hiding something?
He growled. Aion, Gil, Gareth, Trent, Bayo, and Eclason were dead, and he should want vengeance.
His Magick surged again … Aion was dead. That was certain. News of his carcass being displayed on the banks of the Ohio was verified by multiple independent sources. Unlike news of Bayo’s death. Those sources had been multiple, but all military or the Revived. Gray shivered at the memory of the Revived, but then his talent surged, and he found himself thinking of Gil and Gareth. They had disappeared into Fairy. Their fates were uncertain, except insomuch that everyone said that a trip into Fairy was certain death. But Eclason, Trent, and Bayo had emerged from Fairy—not unscathed, but they had emerged. So was a trip to Fairy really certain death?
Trent had died later … according to reports. The Order never found his body.
Kurt and Gray had found Eclason’s body … except … except …
A tight knot in Gray’s brain unwound with such force he halted with a gasp. The night was dark and impenetrable, and yet he felt like a veil had lifted from his eyes and memory. He remembered an old, or at least older, woman in a chair in a humble apartment. He broke into a run. Catching up to Kurt, he whispered, “We never saw Eclason’s body.”
“What?” Kurt said, turning sideways, not stopping, but slowing. “Of course we did!”
“No, we saw the burning husk of his armor,” Gray said, a step behind, his toes almost biting his friend’s heels.
“Same thing,” Kurt countered, slowing further.
Gray continued in a rush. “Grendel … the Grendel we saw across the water wasn’t what the Dragon King’s Intelligence says she is. She wore armor and looked older and ...” His voice drifted off. She looked older than Intelligence reports, but younger than she had in her home. He remembered her with lines on her face and glasses on her nose. Why hadn’t he remembered that before?
Kurt panted. “She was wearing armor, because … newsflash … we’re at war.”
“Tonight, she looked like she was in her late twenties, older with her hair. She looked even older in her home,” Gray said. “Her home, it was a basement—”
“Old Gods, it was the freaking St. Petersburg Station!” Kurt declared in a breathless whisper.
Gulping down air, Gray said, “No, it wasn’t … that’s what the Dragon King believes, like he believes Grendel is young and Vampiric.” “Vampiric” was synonymous with “seductive.” Vampires were designed to be sexually enticing to gain access to prey. “Because that’s what the Dragon King wants.” He remembered the one meeting he’d had when Grendel’s description had been bandied about by Intelligence. The Dragon King’s arousal had hung in the air and spiked when he’d said he wanted her brought to him. It had made Gray’s talent spark then. Now it did more than spark—it roared.
“He’s got a Vampire fetish,” Gray said. “He’s probably one of those men who wants a plaything they can repeatedly defile but is alive and unblemished the next night.” Bile rose in the back of his throat.
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