Текст книги "Dreams of Gods & Monsters"

Автор книги: Лэйни Тейлор

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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 35 страниц)

56

MY SWEET BARBARIAN

Cleanliness, at last. Mik and Zuzana took turns in the bathroom, so that one of them could sit with Eliza, while also keeping a vigil for breaking angel news. The TV was on low, and Esther’s laptop was open with several feeds constantly refreshing, but nothing had happened yet, and wouldn’t be likely to for a while

Karou, Zuzana knew, had a stop to make before the Vatican: the Museo Civico di Zoologia. It was a natural history museum, and there had been a calm defiance in her when she declared her intention to go there. It had half broken Zuzana’s heart, knowing what it was for—to replenish her store of teeth, in case souls had been saved, at least, in the battle—and that she wouldn’t be there to help, whatever it was they found when they got back to Eretz.

Damned helplessness. Zuzana sensed a T-shirt design coming on.

BE A SAMURAI.

BECAUSE YOU JUST NEVER KNOW WHAT’S BEHIND

THE FREAKING SKY.

No one would understand it, but who cares? She’d just glare at them until they went away. That worked in almost any situation.

No, she chided herself. It did not. Because if it did, there would be no need to be a samurai, would there?

She looked at Eliza, beside her, and sighed. Eliza didn’t seem to need or register company, but the idea of leaving her alone in the corner like a piece of softly murmuring furniture just didn’t sit right. Zuzana was no nurse, and had no instincts for it, but she was mindful that the young woman needed someone to take care of her basic human needs for her—food and drink just for starters—and she was more docile now, at least, whatever Akiva had done. Less agitated, and that made it easier.

What they were going to do about her after today, Zuzana couldn’t think about right now. Tomorrow was soon enough. When all the tension of today was a thing of the past, and they’d had a full night’s sleep in an actual bed, and a meal that had never even been on the same continent as couscous.

Tomorrow.

But for now, it was good to be clean. It felt like rebirth—Venus emerging from a layer of crud—and the clothes Esther’s shopper had chosen were elegant and understated, of fine materials and nearly a perfect fit. Zuzana’s filthy stuff, zebra sneakers included, she’d stacked neatly and wrapped in several layers of plastic bags; it felt like a betrayal, especially after her old shoes sat next to her new ones on the floor and she got the idea that they were being forced to train their replacements. She scuffs a bit, they’d tell the new leather numbers, fond tears seeping from their rheumy old-shoe eyes. And she stands on tiptoe a lot, so be ready for that.

“Sentimental of you,” Mik had commented when she came back into the sitting room and shoved the bundle into her backpack.

“Not at all,” she’d airily declared. “I’m saving them for the Museum of Otherworldly Adventure that I’m going to found. Exhibit title: ‘What not to wear camping in freezing mountains while forging an alliance between enemy armies.’ ”

“Uh-huh.”

Mik, taking his turn in the bathroom, felt no such sentimentality for his dirty clothes. He was happy to drop them in the trash, though before he could do that, he fished furtively into the pocket of his old jeans and withdrew…

… the ring.

The maybe-silver, maybe-antique ring he’d been in the act of purchasing when the world went crazy. He turned it over in his fingers, looking at it closely for the first time since. Zuzana was always in proximity (and thank god for that); he hadn’t had a chance to take it out. It seemed to him a rough thing now, especially in the context of this ridiculous hotel. Back at Aït Benhaddou it had fit right in: primitive and tarnished, maybe a little lopsided. Here it looked like something that had fallen off a Visigoth’s pinkie during the Sack of Rome. Barbarian jewelry.

Perfect.

For my sweet barbarian, he thought, and as he went to tuck it into the pocket of his posh new Italian trousers, he fumbled and it spun from his fingers. It rang against the marble floor and rolled like it was trying to escape. Mik followed, thinking maybe it was real silver after all, because supposedly real silver makes that chime sound, and then it escaped into a three-finger gap beneath the marble vanity.

“Come back here,” he whispered. “I have plans for you.”

He dropped to his knees to grope for it as, in the sitting room, his sweet barbarian held water to Eliza Jones’s ever-murmuring lips to coax her to drink, and, in the smaller bedroom in the back of the suite, with the door closed and music playing to mask her voice, Esther Van de Vloet made a phone call.

It wasn’t an easy phone call for her to make, but the most that could be said in her defense was that she had hoped not to make it. She hesitated for a fraction of a second, and though a shadow of her true age may have haunted her face, no indecision did. She forced out a harsh breath and got on with it.

After all, power doesn’t maintain itself.

Karou and her companions cut over the rooftops of Rome, their errand at the natural history museum behind them and only Jael ahead. The night air was thick with Italian summer, the cityscape below them a muted canvas of rooftops and monuments, lights and domes, cut by a snake of dark that was the Tiber River. Honking of horns filtered up as they flew, and traffic whistles, along with snatches of music, and—growing louder the nearer they drew to the Vatican—chanting. It was unintelligible, but followed the rhythm of liturgy.

There was a stink, too—the unmistakable aroma of humans packed too close for too long. Judging by its acrid edge, Karou figured that once pilgrims achieved a spot near the barrier, they didn’t want to give it up for something so temporal as bodily function.

Nice.

The news had reported a public health crisis, as people were bringing elderly and infirm loved ones to the perimeter in the hope that the mere proximity of angels might cure their diseases—or, scarcely to be hoped, that the angels might actually come out to bless them. Claims of miracles had been made, and though they were unproven, they nevertheless overshadowed the documented number of deaths resulting from this practice.

Miracles will do that.

Seen from the sky, the Vatican was a wedge—if a lumpy wedge, like a collapsing slice of pie. Within the boundary, its vast circular plaza was its most visible feature, enclosed by Michelangelo’s famous curved colonnades. It was incongruously choked with military vehicles, tanks dozing like ugly beetles, jeeps coming and going, even troop transports.

Just beyond the north colonnade lay their destination: the Papal Palace. Karou led the way.

Esther had been able to provide them, thanks to her “pocket cardinal,” with the precise location of the chambers Jael had been given for his use, and the three of them swung in a broad circle above the cluster of buildings—the palace was not one, but several, grown together—scanning the rooftops for signs of seraph presence.

They expected guards. Human soldiers were concentrated on the ground—they could see soldiers patrolling with dogs—and certainly at the entrances to the building, both inside and out. But they still expected to find Dominion posted to the rooftop, too, because this was standard operating procedure in Eretz, where an attack was as likely to come from the sky as the ground.

And there they were. Two.

Easy.

“Don’t harm them,” Karou reminded Akiva and Virko—needlessly, she hoped—and felt them move off. She watched the guards, and saw Akiva’s and Virko’s moon-cast shadows descend on them. Vividly she recalled the tidal wave of shadow chased by fire that had engulfed the company back in the Adelphas, and felt no pity as the soldiers, in unison, stiffened and then slumped.

Quick blows to the head. They went limp but didn’t collapse. Their bodies seemed to drift in slow motion to the rooftop, as Akiva and Virko caught them and laid them quietly down. They’d have goose eggs and headaches later, but no more than that. It wasn’t a matter of whether they deserved mercy so much as the parameters of this mission: no blood.

Swift and bloodless, that was the point. No carnage, no crime scene, just persuasion. They should be in and out before these two soldiers even woke up and rubbed their aching heads.

Karou set down lightly and cast a brief glance at one of them. Unconscious, he looked like any number of the Misbegotten from the Kirin caves. Handsome, young, fair. Villain and victim both, she thought, and she recalled Liraz’s proposal that fingers be taken instead of lives, and wondered: Was it possible even Dominion soldiers could learn to live in the new world, if ever there was one? Did they deserve the choice? Looking at him like this, to all appearances asleep and innocent, it was easy to think: yes.

Maybe when he woke, his eyes would fill with hate, and he would be beyond hope.

This was a worry for another day. They were here. Jael’s windows were in sight. The chanting at the perimeter enclosed them like the roar of the sea, but the effect was a seeming sphere of quiet within.

“I’ve thought of a better idea,” Karou had announced back at the Kirin caves, so certain that this was the way to avoid an apocalypse. A quick and quiet end to this drama. No clash, no weapons, no “monsters.”

The angels just melt away.

Simple.

“Okay,” she said, pausing to text Zuzana before turning off her phone and tucking it away. “Let’s do it.”

57

FED TO THE LIONS

There came a knock at the door of the Royal Suite, and it was not casual. The dogs, Traveller and Methuselah, leapt to their feet, instantly alert.

Zuzana and Mik didn’t leap up, but they, too, were instantly alert. They were at the window of the living room now, having transferred from the sitting room on account of the windows on this side facing toward the Vatican. Their eyes were wandering between the TV screen and the slice of sky they had revealed by cranking the red velvet curtains apart, as if something was going to play out on one or the other.

And something would, as soon as Karou and Akiva were successful in their mission: The “heavenly host” would rise up into the sky and hightail it the hell back to Uzbekistan and the portal there. Don’t let the… uh, sky flap thing… hit you on the way out.

Sky or TV. Where would they see it first?

Zuzana’s phone lay on the arm of her chair so she would know at once if Karou called or texted. There had been one message so far.

Arrived. Going in. *kiss/punch*.

And so. It was happening. Zuzana couldn’t keep still. Sky—TV—phone—Mik, that was the circuit of her glances, with pauses on Eliza, too.

The girl remained subdued and remote, her eyes glassy but not still, not entirely. They’d rest for a time, then flick back and forth, her pupils dilating and shrinking, even when the light was steady. It was as though her mind was participating in a different reality than her body, her eyes seeing different sights, her lips shaping the soft lunatic poetry that Zuzana was glad not to be able to understand. When Karou had translated some of it for her, it had been too eerie for comfort, some kind of horror movie with lots of devouring. And not the kind of devouring that went down between Zuzana and the plate of chocolate-dipped biscotti she liberated from atop the piano.

Okay, exactly that kind of devouring, but from the biscotti’s point of view.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.

It was alarming, the force of it. An StB knock—or Stasi, or Gestapo. Pick your secret police. It had a they come for you in the nightweight to it—and… nobody sashays blithely to answer a they come for you in the nightknock.

Except that Esther did. She’d been in the bedroom in the back; they hadn’t seen much of her since the others left. She came forth now, still barefoot and striding calmly through the living room without a sideward glance. As she vanished down the corridor to the door, dogs flanking her, she said, “You should gather your things now, children.”

Zuzana’s gaze flew to Mik, and his to her. Her heartbeat seemed to lurch to its feet with the same swiftness as the mastiffs had, and then she herself followed suit, jumping up. “What?” she asked at the same moment Mik said, “Jesus.”

“Jesus what?”

“Get your stuff,” he said. “Pack your bag.” And Zuzana still didn’t know what was happening, but then there were men coming in, two of them, large and in fine suits, and they had wireless com things hooked onto their big, dumb ears and Zuzana’s first thought was Holy, they reallyare secret police, but then she spotted the crest embroidered on their coat pockets, and her fear transformed to the first simmer of outrage.

Hotel security. Esther was throwing them out.

“All right,” said one of the men. “Let’s go. It’s time for you to leave.”

“What do you mean?” Zuzana faced them down. “We’re guests.”

“Not anymore you’re not,” said Esther from the doorway. “I tolerated you for Karou’s sake. And now that Karou… Well.”

Zuzana swung toward her. The old woman was leaning there with her arms crossed and her dogs pacing around her. There was a look of predatory calculation in her eyes, and Zuzana’s immediate impression was that a snake had swallowed the downy-haired grandma and somehow becomeher. The liveried hotel thugs weren’t a step into the room before the weight of what this meant slammed down on Zuzana.

Karou.

“What have you done?” she demanded, because if Esther was throwing them out, it meant that she anticipated having no further contact with Karou—not just tonight, but ever.

“Done? I’ve just alerted the management that I find myself overrun with uncouth young people. They knew at once who I meant. It seems you made quite an impression downstairs.”

“I mean, what have you done to Karou?” She hurled the words and started to hurl herself, and in that moment she could have believed that she wasa neek-neek, sting and all, and woe to lion-sized dogs and beefy bullies who stood in her way.

She was a neek-neekthat was easily captured in midair, however, the nearest bully hooking her wrist with a practiced grab and holding tight. “Let go of me!” she snarled at him, and tried to thrash her arm free.

No luck there. His grip was ridiculous, like he spent all his spare time squeezing one of those stupid rubber balls, but then Mik lunged in and grabbed the hand that held her. “Let go of her,” he demanded, and, in an uneven match of violin player versus brute, he tried to peel back the thick ugly fingers from Zuzana’s wrist. No luck there, either; Zuzana was able to register, just barely, through her outrage, how humiliatingly un-samurai-like the pair of them were at this moment. With his free hand, the guard easily shoved Mik down the corridor to the front door—so much for getting their stuff—and Zuzana after him. Her wrist throbbed where he’d held her, but that was scarcely noteworthy in the tornado of rage and worry that had become her mind.

Refusing to be herded, Zuzana broke aside, darting around the guard to come face-to-face with Traveler and Methuselah, barring the way to their mistress. The dogs regarded her. One of them lifted the lips from his teeth in a bored kind of growl, as if to say, See these here choppers?

I’ve seen scarier, she wanted to tell them. Hell, she wanted to bare her teeth right back, but instead, she just held her ground and lifted her eyes to Esther. The look on the old woman’s face—stony apathy—was scarcely human. This wasn’t a person, Zuzana thought. This was greed wearing skin. “What did you do? What did you do, Esther? What. Did. You. Do.”

Esther breathed out a sigh. “Are you an idiot? What do you think?”

“I think you’re a backstabbing sociopath, that’s what I think.”

Esther just shook her head, a blaze of scorn displacing her apathy. “Do you suppose I wanted it this way? I was happy with the way things were. It’s not my fault Brimstone is dead.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Zuzana demanded.

“Come now. I know you’re not the little doll you look like. Life is choices, and only fools choose their allies with their heart.”

“ Choose their allies? What is this, Survivor?” Zuzana was overcome with disgust of her own. Esther had “chosen” the angels, clearly. Because Brimstone was dead, and she was looking only to her own advantage. In that moment, and knowing what she did about Esther’s true age, she had a flash of insight about her. “You,” she said, and her disgust made a thick coating around the word. “I bet you were a Nazi collaborator, weren’t you?”

To her surprise, Esther laughed. “You say that like it’s a bad thing. Anyone with sense would choose to live. Do you know what’s foolish? Dying for a belief. Look where we are. Rome. Think of the Christians fed to the lions because they wouldn’t renounce their faith. As if their god wouldn’t forgive them their desire to live? If you have no more self-preservation instinct than that, maybe you don’t deservelife.”

“Are you kidding me? You’re going to blame the Christians, not the Romans? How about they just don’t throw them to the goddamn lions in the first place? Don’t delude yourself. You’re the monster here.”

Esther, abruptly, had had enough. “It’s time for you to go now,” she said, brisk. “And you should know that upon her decease, all of Karou’s assets go to her next of kin.” A thin and joyless smile. “Her devoted grandmother, of course. So don’t bother trying to access those accounts.”

Upon her decease, upon her decease.Zuzana wouldn’t hear it. Her mind batted the words away.

Esther motioned to the hallway and the knob-knuckled paws of the security guards hoisted them toward it. “You can keep the clothes,” Esther added. “You’re welcome. Oh, and don’t forget the vegetable.”

Vegetable.

She meant Eliza. All this while, Eliza had remained quiet. She was catatonic, and Esther was going to throw her out on the street, and Mik and Zuzana, too, with nothing.

Upon her decease.The tornado had gone from Zuzana’s mind, leaving whispers in its wake. What had happened? Could they be…?

Shut up.

“Let me get our bags, at least,” Mik asked, sounding so calm and reasonable that Zuzana was almost incensed. How dare he be calm and reasonable?

“I gave you a chance,” said Esther. “You elected to stand here insulting me instead. As I said before, life is choices.”

“Let me at least get my violin,” he pleaded. “We’ve got nothing, and no way to get home. At least I’ll be able to play in a piazza for train fare.”

The mental image of them panhandling must have appealed to her sense of class stratification, not to mention degradation. “Fine.” She flicked her wrist, and Mik took off down the hall, fast. When he came back he was holding his violin case in his arms like a baby, not swinging it by its handle. “Thank you,” he actually said, as if Esther had done them a kindness. Zuzana glared at him.

Had he lost his mind?

“Get Eliza,” he said to her, and she did, and Eliza came along like a sleepwalker. Zuzana halted just once, to face Esther across the living room.

“I’ve said this before, but I was always kidding.” She wasn’t kidding now. She’d never been more serious. “I will get you for this. I promise you.”

Esther laughed. “That’s not how the world works, dear. But you can try, if it makes you happy. Do your worst.”

“Wait for it,” Zuzana seethed, and the security guard shoved, and she was propelled down the passage, Eliza at her side, and out into the grand hall to the elevator. Subsequently de-elevated. And, at last, frog-marched through that gleaming lobby, subject to stares and whispers and, most stingingly, the haughty amusement of her eyebrow challenger—who again dared, in light of this shift in circumstances, to raise one of her overplucked, starved-looking amateur brows in a crude but effective I told you so.

The burn of mortification was like passing through a field of nettles—a thousand small pains merging into a haze—but it was nothing next to Zuzana’s heartsickness and panic at the thought of their friends, even now at the mercy of their enemies.

What was happening to them?

Esther must have warned the angels. What had they promised her? Zuzana wondered. And more important, how could she and Mik prevent her from getting it? How? They had nothing. Nothing but a violin.

“I can’t believe you thanked her,” she muttered as they were shoved through the doors and out into the street. Rome came crashing in on them, its vitality and sultry air a marked change from the artificial calm and cool of the interior.

“She let me get my violin,” he said with a shrug, still holding it to his chest like it was a baby or a puppy. He sounded… pleased. It was too much. Zuzana stopped walking—they had no destination but “away” anyway—and swung to face him. He didn’t just soundpleased. He looked it. Or keyed-up, at least. Practically vibrating.

“What’s with you?” she asked him, at a loss and ready to just sit down and cry.

“I’ll tell you in a minute. Come on. We can’t stay here.”

“Yeah. I think that’s been established.”

“No. I mean we can’t stay anywhere that she can find us, and she willcome looking. Come on.” There was urgency in his voice now, puzzling her even more. He hooked his arm around her to steer her, and she drew Eliza along with them—a dreamlike figure who seemed, almost ethereally, to drift, and the crowd subsumed them, parade-thick and easy to get lost in. And so the human density that they’d earlier cursed became their refuge, and they escaped.