Marat couldn’t stay in trance around the clock, and Keisha didn’t trust him that much anyway. There was no way she could get more clairvoyants; the brass just weren’t going to cough up reinforcements until she delivered some solid results (and by then they wouldn’t be able to move in help fast enough—but that was brass for you).
The next best thing was a dowser, and those weren’t hard to get, if you didn’t mind paying through the nose. Money was no problem—General Green was good for the odd wire transfer—and three thousand bucks got her four junky models. Atyrau, like a lot of places, had a small cottage industry of reverse-engineered knockoffs of old Soviet gear. Technically illegal for civilians, but lots of ordinary people got them for peace of mind.
Keisha rigged all four up to the apartment’s current with Marat’s help, and spread them out to cover the compass points. She tested them with her pipe, and they passed; she now had a really crappy paraphysical activity detector she could leave on and forget.
And forget it she did, until a little before eight Sunday morning, when one of them went into red alert. Only a brief signal, enough to get them both out of bed and dressed in a hurry. It saved their lives. Keisha called for Adesina just as the men were running down the hall outside, and burned the lead man’s head off before he could breach the door. The idiot had already pulled the pin on his grenade, as it happened, so that did for the rest.
She hustled Marat out the door before anyone else could show up. Adesina scouted the stairs down, and took down the reserve squad for them. They got all the way to the parking lot before the first rocket hit Marat’s bedroom window. Adesina did for the launcher before they could send a second.
“They knew we were here?” he said, when they got a moment to catch their breath. He took it pretty well. Thank God for her halo.
“Of course. Be stupid not to, wouldn’t they?” Adesina limped over to his truck, leaned painfully under, and lit it up enough to rule out suspicious lumps. Good. Keisha didn’t have time to crawl under there snipping wires. “But this is mostly to slow us down. If they really needed us dead, they’d send a familiar.” Probably they were keeping the real muscle in reserve, to cover every approach to the city. Either way, if they were springing the trap now, it meant the wait was over. They’d spotted Marshalls, and Keisha was no longer necessary.
She got them out of the neighborhood before she let Adesina go, and let Marat have ten seconds to get himself together. Even that was pushing it; with the halo down, he got anxious fast, and she dropped their map into his lap and told him to make himself useful before he could get worked up into a panic. Sure enough, he found an active halo, southeast end of the city. Not too far, thankfully. She turned at the next light, and got moving.
Marat led her to a big, fancy house on the edge of town, with a tall fence and lots of trees in the yard. That was some good luck; she didn’t feel like breaking into an apartment building, and if the trees gave the occupant privacy, they also gave her cover. For what that was worth. They parked as far away as they could while still having the house in sight.
“What’s the valence?” she asked him, as she looked the place over. Marat answered with a few Russian words she didn’t know. Whatever. He wasn’t looking agitated, so that ruled out all the kids’ emissants, and she doubted they’d be in a house like that anyway. It would have been nice to know who she was up against, but not essential. “Where’s the emissor?” His hand pointed to a window on the upper floor. “Moving?” He shook his head. “Fine. Just hang on.”
There was no chance of sneaking in, not with a Knyaz involved personally. They would have all angles covered, including from the neighboring houses. She put the truck into gear and set off down the street at the fastest speed she’d go if she were only passing through. No doubt they’d have snipers tracking her all the way, but she’d made sure to pack kitties with pop-lids for this trip. She fished one out of her pocket, and cracked it with one hand as she passed the target. As soon as it was open, she shifted gears and stomped on the gas.
She only had seconds to work with. Adesina shuffled into the room right under the emissor (ignoring the three armed men inside it) and burned out the ceiling. She left the room before it could collapse on her head, and got to work wrecking the house at random; Keisha didn’t have the attention to spare on anything more targeted. As predicted, every window in sight was lit up with muzzle flashes. A few shots thunked into the truck before she got out of range, but nothing on the cab or the engine. The disorientation of a new halo had bought her that much. With any luck, whoever she just dropped would break a leg at minimum. Nothing else she could do without getting shot full of holes.
She let Adesina go once they were two blocks away. At least half the house had fallen in by then—not bad for rushed work. “Where was the familiar?” Marat slapped at a spot on the map after a few seconds’ thought. “Thank you.”
Keisha didn’t have a firm plan in mind, beyond seeing what the emissant (whatever it was) had been up to before she took it down. She was only assuming that it had something to do with the Marshalls. Once again, though, they got lucky. She recognized the girl leaning on the busted car before she got anywhere near it. That gangly frame, the wary way she cocked her head—they weren’t proof, but they sang out to her.
Five seconds. Five seconds for that first, heavenly embrace, to sweep the child up into her arms and tell her the things she’d wanted to tell her for the past month and more. Things she wouldn’t have minded being told herself. She couldn’t recall after what exact words she used. Blame the lack of coffee. The girl should have waited for a more reasonable hour to do this.
Then Fatima interrupted in her usual snotty way, and the ugly twinge of impingement brought her back down to earth with a hard bump. Ardent rose into the sky, a black dragon looking for a white knight to kill.
“This isn’t so bad,” she said, thinking out loud. “They want you alive, so he can’t throw rocks as long as we stick close. If you just—“ She looked back at their truck, with its two seats. “Okay, we’re riding with you.”
“I don’t think this car will run anymore,” Nadia said. “It landed very hard when the gold thing died.” Not that Keisha stepped back to take a look at her, she looked like hell. Dark circles around her eyes.
“All right, that’s more of a problem.” Ardent was gliding their way, not too quickly. Probably just a recon run. She thought fast. “No usable vehicle. Fatima, can Mister Higgins move a vehicle you’re in?”
“Of course. Done it plenty of times.”
“Fine. Marat! In here!” She jabbed a hand at the rear seat, next to Ruslan. Her Kazakh ally dutifully abandoned his truck in the middle of the street. “We’re going to need some firepower, so if you can pull out Ézarine at the same time—“
Again Nadia interrupted. “I don’t have Ézarine anymore.”
“Say what?”
“I was dead, for a little bit. She left. I don’t know if anyone else got her.”
“Didn’t do much research, did you, Bob?” Fatima smirked up at her. Adesina’s halo reassured her that things would work out; apparently she felt like that gave her more liberty to snipe.
“Whatever.” She got in on Ruslan’s other side, behind the passenger seat. Eyeballing it, Ardent was too far for his halo to actually reach them right away. “Here goes.” She pulled Adesina back to SP level, and Fatima immediately lurched forward, clutching at her right arm with her left and groaning. “Oh lord, what’s wrong now?”
“Half my damn bones are broken, is what’s wrong!” Fatima snapped back.
“Then why are you in the—no, never mind that.” Ardent was still headed their way. “Is there anything else catastrophically wrong I need to know about right now?” She looked at Ruslan, whose expression was somewhere between concerned and confused. Mostly confused. “Besides him. I know about him.”
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“Haven’t slept in about … twenty-four hours,” Fatima growled through her teeth. “Shit. Why am I putting up with this? Rus! Fix me up!”
Nadia screamed an objection; Keisha didn’t bother. As Ruslan shut his eyes and took a deep breath, she snaked one arm around his neck and grabbed the back of his head with the other. She squeezed for about eight seconds before he went limp, ignoring two sets of deafening screams.
“The fuck did you just do?” Fatima raged as she let him go.
“I prevented mass murder,” Keisha told her. “We can’t risk him flipping over into the Blackbird. Anyway, I feel a pulse. He’ll be fine.” He groaned, and cracked one eye open. “See?”
“I don’t know where the hell you get off—“ Keisha shoved one of her three remaining kitties in Fatima’s face, nearly smashing her in the teeth. “Hey! What’s this?”
“Ardent is coming!”
“My damn arm’s broke, fool!”
The black monster was a lot closer now; if he weren’t held back by his master’s limited speed, they’d be inside his halo already. She put a hand on the lid. “Mister Higgins. Can you call him?”
“Yes!” The word was nearly a scream.
“Then do it, now!” She tore the cap free. Everyone in the car but her shuddered as the keystone popped out, and Ardent bounced back like he’d been flicked by a giant finger. The ugly, blobbish form of Mister Higgins popped into place on the roof of Marat’s truck, caving it in. The Kazakh howled, and swung a fist at Fatima’s wounded arm; Keisha lunged across Ruslan to swat it away. “No time for that. Get us in the air, fast.”
Fatima sneered, but apparently the petty vengeance against the pickup had been enough to satisfy her anger for the moment. Mister Higgins opened his mouth, and an iridescent flood gushed out to lift their car up into the air. It wasn’t an especially gentle lift, and everyone braced themselves and complained, but inside a minute they were over the rooftops. “What next, Your Bobness? Any other orders? You want fries with this shit?”
“We’re safe for now,” Keisha announced. “They can’t reach us here, or attack Mister Higgins without risking a drop. Get us out of the city.”
“And then? You got a plan?”
“I had several. I could get us out by land, sea, or air—but not with oprichniki on the loose. We’ll have to improvise.”
Nadia had been slumped over in her seat, looking passed out or close to it. Now she lifted her head to turn around and fix Keisha with a death glare. “Who says we want to improvise anything with you?”
“If I can get you to America, you’ll be safe.”
“We were safe, Keisha. We were a thousand kilometers away from here when we heard you were here, desecrating the place that matters more to me than anywhere else in the world. You got us into danger in the first place—again. Just like when I first met you. Why should we trust you to get us out of it?”
The girl was obviously exhausted, and under the influence. The words still hurt. “They were never going to let you go, Nadia. They would have hunted you down to Antarctica if they had to, now that they’ve seen what Ruslan can do. Your brother might be the key to the next generation of paraphysical research. They will never, ever stop hunting you.”
“But America can protect us, right?” Fatima put in. “Bull. Shit. Don’t pretend you don’t want us for the exact same reason.”
“We don’t, actually. Yunks is terrorizing Europe. We need your help with that.”
“Yunks?” Nadia wailed the word. Ruslan cringed into his seat. “Keisha, what on earth are you talking about? She disappeared the night Titus died—the same night I beat her, with just Ézarine. But now a government needs our … what? Just, what? You’re not making any sense!”
Keisha glanced at Ardent, who was holding position in the air some distance away. They were retreating at a fairly unimpressive speed, Mister Higgins hopping and crashing down the street to keep pace. “A lot has happened. I can fill you in later. For now, we need to focus on getting clear, so I can contact Washington for reinforcements.”
“How?” Fatima waved her good arm at the horizon. “You just said they’ll never stop chasing, dumbass. You want me to just bubble him away so he’ll leave us alone? How many of these fuckers are we even up against?”
Keisha didn’t even know the answer to that question; there was no guarantee the emissor she dropped at the house was dead. They might still have four to worry about. But their only hope for survival now lay with a badly injured, sleep-deprived, foul-tempered teenager who hated her guts. And she was the only one in the car who could sustain anything like hope at present. “Focus on moving us away from the center of the city, for now.”
“Like that isn’t obvious?”
She let about ten seconds pass before she spoke again. “I knew I would probably get into a situation like this when I volunteered for this mission. You might not trust me, but I hope you don’t think I’m completely stupid. I came here, knowing the risks, because I felt sure it would be worth it. I’m not leaving you again. If I have to die here trying to save you, I will do it, with no regrets. Please believe me when I say that.”
Nadia gave her one miserable look, shook her head, and turned back around to stare at Ardent, easily keeping pace with them. Fatima didn’t even think her little speech was worth that much of a reply, and only rubbed her arm some more.
They were about two hundred feet up now, with a fine view of the area. The Caspian Sea sparkled in the morning sun. Keisha was admiring its shine, and trying and failing to think of a brilliant plan for escape, when a big patch of it flashed into a cloud of steam, and a little silver dot streaked into the sky, trailing fire.
Fatima flapped an arm at it. “Oh, balls. Who’s that supposed to be?”
Keisha swallowed. “Zenith. The oprichnik for Atyrau.”
“You couldn’t have killed his ass, while you were stirring up all this shit? What are you even good for?”
“I tried to kill him yesterday. Marat and I lured him out to challenge us, then tracked him down while he was distracted with the fight.” It struck her that she’d never introduced her ally. Now seemed an awkward time.
“And he survived because … ?”
“Because, when I found him, I found a frightened boy about your age. Maybe even younger. I smashed the door down, got a bead on him, and hesitated just long enough that I nearly got myself killed. Had to run for it while his bodyguards shot at me.”
That got Nadia’s attention. “They have a child for an oprichnik? Why?”
“Because Zenith would have been very, very loyal to the Soviet Union. I imagine they couldn’t convert him to the cause when they took over, so they killed him and replaced him with someone more flexible. They might have got the idea from your Titus Marshall.” Nadia grimaced; Fatima shook her head. “Everybody used to laugh at Zenith. We assumed he was being blackmailed, or maybe that he’d gone senile and didn’t even know he was fighting for the wrong government.”
She knew what was happening, and what would happen next. Just as she finished speaking, Fatima cringed in her seat, and a massive stone pillar sprouted from the arid land to their right. A brilliant figure like a centaur stood on top of it, brandishing a spear. “Was he a child, too?” Nadia said wearily.
Keisha didn’t bother to answer, only turned around to look behind them. The car shuddered to a sudden halt as a fourth familiar appeared, blocking off their last avenue of retreat. A creature like a giant white flower in the shape of a lady, or the other way around. Gracefully she waved her arms, and a thick wall of glass appeared across the highway, to make the point clear.
“I said no regrets, and I meant it, and I mean it now,” she said. Marat cursed under his breath, and struck at his door over and over again, making a repetitive thump. In the front seat, the children slumped down, exhausted. Mister Higgins said to throw up your hands and walk away, but there was nowhere left to go. “But this doesn’t have to be the end. We need to be ready to act as soon as the opportunity presents itself—“
“Keisha, will you please shut up?” The request came out slightly muffled; Nadia’s face was buried in her crossed arms, up on the dash.
All four familiars advanced in unison, at the same steady pace. Fatima groaned; valence pressure from all directions would be a right bitch. Keisha tried to think of how she could have done this better, given how the day started, and drew a blank. She’d done her best, made the correct decision at every turn, and still come up short. The deck was stacked, the game was rigged. It happened sometimes. She leaned forward to put her hand on Nadia’s shoulder, and gently squeeze. The girl didn’t react.
The car was starting to sink again, as Fatima gave up the fight. Bubbles popped, one by one, under their car. There were only four people to keep their own halo going, and the external pressure would be immense. Keisha was thankful the child was at least rational enough to let them down slowly, after all she’d been through. Soon enough the last bubble popped, and they thunked to the ground again on a stretch of highway running through the middle of nowhere.
“What’s next, Bobbity Bob?”
Keisha didn’t reply, because the truth was most likely that the four familiars would keep closing in until Fatima blacked out, and then the combined halos would wreck the rest of them with ambivalence. It wouldn’t do any good to tell them that. The alternatives? Not great. She had two kitties left, but they wouldn’t push back against that kind of power for long, and neither Mister Higgins nor Adesina could hurt outside her own halo. Which left …
She glanced at Ruslan. What the hell.
“It’s been a pleasure, children, and I’m sorry to have to do this.” Nadia muttered some thing that might have been an objection or a question, but Keisha tuned her out. “Fatima, this is our last chance, okay? I don’t know what happens after this. But I’m going to pop this kitty here, to buy us a few seconds. Then I’m going to do something stupid. When I tell you to, let Mister Higgins go. Can you do that?” The only answer she got was a grunt. She had no choice but to take that as a yes.
She popped the kitty, and Fatima lifted her head, ever so slightly. Keisha took the empty canister and slammed it into Ruslan’s chest, as hard as she could in the limited space. He grunted under the impact. “Ruslan!” she screamed in his ear. “You are letting us down! Your sisters are going to die, because all you can do is sit there and do nothing. What is wrong with you? Why are you so useless?”
His lip quivered as he turned to face her. Shitty thing to do, but the Russians wouldn’t even be this kind. She dropped the empty kitty, and slapped him in the face. “Don’t you give me that stupid look. Are you a man, or what?” Another slap. “Come on, don’t just sit there. Fight. Do you even know how to fight?” She slapped him again, and too slow he raised a hand to block it, then to swing back. She struck it easily aside. “Pathetic. Can you fight, Ruslan? Get up and fight!”
Again he swung; again she blocked it. “Let me hear you scream, Ruslan. SCREAM!” She demonstrated, right in his face. He shoved her away, hard, and bellowed back. “About time! Fatima, drop it!”
The halo collapsed, and Mister Higgins disappeared. Keisha took out her last kitty, and drove it into the boy’s stomach like brass knuckles. He screamed in outrage, and she popped the top, and a twisted snarl of pure black anger tore through the roof of the car to defile the blue spring sky.