Chapter Eleven

Fire erupted all around her. It touched the trees and filled the air with the stink of burning pitch, it ran in liquid waves over the snow and left smoldering ground behind. Ayaan dropped to her knees with her arms over her head as a second explosion tore into the roadway, a third, fire everywhere and the noise, a fourth, the noise was hammering at her, the air was jumping with it she could see pine needles leaping up off the ground as if the entire planet had been picked up and given a good shake.

She rolled onto her back and slid down into a hollow, into a little space of snow where a boulder had sunk into the earth. She reached out her hands and pulled Nilla in after her. Nilla started to speak but Ayaan shook her head no. She peered up, around the side of the boulder, and saw a helicopter hanging there in the air, close enough to touch, no, that was just her poor depth perception, the inability of her dead eyes to focus properly. The helicopter stood in the air over the flatbed, white and orange, and mummies leaned out of its crew hatch, mummies in the name of the Prophet mummies—did they want revenge? Did they seek revenge for the forty-nine mummies she had killed on Cyprus, she wondered?—and then there were more explosions, brilliant flowers spreading overhead, fire, and smoke.

Her brain rattled in her skull like an animal trying to get loose. She pulled her arms in close to her body, brought her chin down. Made herself small. Nilla’s dress was stained, ruined, and they were both soaked in snow melt and splattered with cinders, some of them still on fire. Ayaan brushed at the embers on her jacket, ran her fingers through her hair to shake them loose. The helicopter just hung there in the air. Rifles started firing back from the ground, living cultists with rifles shooting at the helicopter but its pilot knew enough to stay out of range. Where were the machine guns? She had inspected the .50 caliber machine guns on the flatbed herself, had stripped and cleaned them on the long trek when she had been glad for anything to do, anything to break the boredom. Where were they, why weren’t they firing back? They had plenty of range.

The helicopter assault must have targeted them. Smart. Nilla started climbing up, clambering up the side of the boulder but Ayaan pulled her back down. They were only ten feet or so from the roadway, the column. Even if the mummies didn’t get them the column might, it had to turn around. It was the only logical move. The column had to turn around.

Where was Erasmus? Where was the truck? She hadn’t seen it in days, it had been sent to scout ahead but they needed it now. The column had to turn around. There had been a narrow defile in the side of the mountain maybe a quarter mile back, it wouldn’t be easy but the column had to turn around and head for the relative safety of the rock walls. Where was Erasmus? The column could move a lot faster, could get turned around a lot faster with the truck, the straggling cultists could clamber up onto its cargo bed, they could hang on to the outside of the truck.

The Tsarevich wasn’t turning the column. The column was still plodding forward, surging ahead at maybe three miles an hour as if there had been no attack, staying its course as if nothing had happened at all.

Another explosion tore through the thin air. Debris and metal fragments like flying daggers and body parts went flying, human body parts and it didn’t matter if they’d been alive or dead or undead, human bones and flesh went flying over Ayaan’s head like a horizontal rain of gore.

Where was the fucking truck? She heard it before she saw it, saw it only moments before it went roaring right over her head, its wheels barely gripping the road. Mud and cinders poured down into her defile, splashed against the boulder. The truck roared past—and then she heard the distinctive fizzle and bark of an anti-aircraft missile jumping out of its launcher and she saw the rocket’s exhaust, a thin banner of white wind superimposed on the blue sky. She opened her mouth wide in exultation, in excitement, and whooped with joy as the missile bent like a perfectly hit football in the air, bent right for the fleeing helicopter. Something fell out of the side of the helicopter as it banked to try to throw off the pursuit. Something fell out and dangled there on a line like a spider.

It was Sarah.

Ayaan was too far away and the helicopter was moving too fast for her to really get a good look. She didn’t use her eyes. She sensed the energy there, as familiar as the hairs on the back of her own arm, an energy she’d lived with for years, since long before she had understood that such energy existed and could be seen with the right eyes. She knew that energy.

It was Sarah.

The whoop died in her throat and she grabbed at her teeth, literally reached into her mouth and grabbed her own lower jaw in terror. At any moment the AA missile was going to collide with the helicopter’s airframe, it was going to plow right through the tender aluminum skin of the helicopter, lodge itself inside and the sexual horror of that, the violation of it wasn’t lost on her, it would come inside the helicopter and then go off, detonate, its high explosive warhead would burst apart in a million tiny jagged pieces of shrapnel, each with its own trajectory, its own ballistic intent, and there would be enough of them to cut to shreds every person in the helicopter. There would be nothing left but pieces, parcels of flesh raggedly torn apart and bleeding and unrecognizable and falling out of the sky.

“Sarah,” Ayaan croaked.

“You know her?” Nilla asked, her face wide with confusion.

Ayaan got her feet under herself and she climbed back out of the defile, back up onto the roadway. The helicopter had dipped down into the trees and the AA missile followed. Ayaan’s chest lurched and a horrible belch came out of her, stinking of dead things. The missile touched the tree line and exploded harmlessly well behind the fleeing helicopter.

Okay. Sarah was safe. Ayaan didn’t breathe a sigh of relief. She no longer breathed. But her body sagged. Relaxed a little. Okay.

Except—if Sarah was attacking the Tsarevich, then—then—Sarah was—Sarah had chosen to become—Sarah had unwittingly aligned herself against—against Ayaan, who had—in some noncommittal way—sided with the Russian lich.

She had it an instant later but it didn’t help. Sarah had to know, had somehow learned that Ayaan was now a lich herself. Sarah had attacked specifically with the intent of sanitizing Ayaan. Except she had missed.

And except for the fact that Ayaan didn’t want to be sanitized. She had always believed that when the moment came she would beg for the bullet in the head. Kneel in the dirt and grovel for it. Only now—now she had something to live for, something bigger than herself. The Tsarevich was going to rebuild the world. Ayaan wanted to help him.

Sarah was fighting against them.

“For Christ’s sake, woman, help me,” someone screeched behind her. Ayaan turned and saw the green phantom literally, physically pulling ghouls and living cultists toward the flatbed, pushing them towards the fires there. They grabbed up armfuls of snow and tossed them on the flames. A few had real fire extinguishers and were trying to save the yurt. They moved faster than the others, faster than human beings were supposed to move. The green phantom was accelerating them. Ayaan glanced forward, at the machine guns mounts. One of them was gone altogether. A crater in the side of the flatbed was all that remained. Molten metal had dripped over the side of the bed and formed long silver icicles.

The other machine gun was on fire. Its ammunition crates were right there. If they went up, if they got too hot, every round in those crates—thousands of bullets—would go off at once, firing in random directions, carving out bloody linear tracks through the living and the dead on the flatbed, all of the cultists clustered around it, everyone in range. Ayaan surged forward and was repulsed by a wave of fire that tore upwards on a gust of wind. She moved forward again and saw that the crates were already on fire. She had a split second before she was shot full of random holes. Without even thinking she gathered up energy and blasted the crates with her power.

Stupid—incredibly foolish—but it worked. Fire couldn’t exist without fuel. The wooden crates disintegrated under her blast, the wood darkening, turning gray, turning to dust. Long belts of ammunition slithered out and slinked away across the flatbed or over the edge. It didn’t matter—the fire was out.

Ayaan adjusted her footing as the flatbed went over a dip in the road surface. It was still moving. She shook her head and then she grabbed the green phantom’s arm. “We have to stop the column,” she shouted at him. He didn’t respond fast enough for her. “Let me in to see the Tsarevich. Let me talk to him.”

“Who are you?” he demanded. “A month ago I punished you for trying to kill my master. Now you want to be his ally?”

She didn’t have time for this. “I do what I think is best.”

He crossed his arms across his robe. “A dangerous policy in the best of times. You can’t see him. He’s already given me his orders and they are that the column must keep moving, at all costs.”

“There could be another attack—if it were me I would have an ambush waiting for us up ahead. Come on. I know you don’t trust me. You called me a dog, once, a dog that had to be kept on a short leash. But trust me now. Please. So much is at stake.”

He shook his skull-like head. “I have my instructions. Why don’t you go and find Nilla? Make sure she’s safe.”

Ayaan grunted in frustration and turned away from him. The green phantom was willing to give her something, though.

“My name is Enni Langstrom,” he said.

She turned around. He was squinting at her, his sunken eyes narrow, suspicious slits.

“My name was Enni Langstrom. Alright? I trust you enough to know my name.”

She nodded, understanding. He wanted her to feel like part of the Tsarevich’s inner circle. He wanted to reward her allegiance. She was in.

Now she just needed to figure out where Sarah fit in. Please, she thought. Please, Sarah, just give up. Go home. She stared out at the trees that blanketed the mountain. Sarah had to be out there somewhere. Please, don’t make me fight you.

Ayaan had always been willing to sacrifice her life for a true cause. She had always believed that one life was a small price to pay for the common good.

If it came to that, to firing a blast of her darkness into Sarah’s body. If doing that meant preserving the Tsarevich and therefore the only chance the human race had left. If it came to that.

She nodded to herself. She would do it.