New Olympus Saga (Book 2): Doomsday Duet (8 page)

She remained silent.

“Do not fret so, my darling Lady Shi. Your Bear is not gone. His essence no longer dwells here, yes, but it’s not utterly gone. He is in another realm, a little place I’ve made for my many devotees, although I doubt he’s enjoying his stay. If you are a good little girl, I might even let you see him again.”

Hope was a trap.
He is dead, dead and gone.
Her only hope was for revenge. Still, she let herself look hopeful, to let Mr. Night think he had fooled her. She bowed to him as a loyal follower would to her rightful leader.

“That’s better. You did a good job here, my dear. The fellows you dealt with were getting ready to strike back at our Russian allies, and we can’t have them distracted while they continue to search for the girl. This little incident should make the remaining members of the
Cosa Nostra
a bit more prudent, and that’s all to the good.”

She bowed again in acknowledgement of the compliment, quietly fantasizing about ripping out his throat, as he continued speaking. “Finding the girl continues to be a challenge, even with the remnants of Archangel’s organization acting as our hounds. If she tries to access the Codex, I will have another chance to find her, but if she doesn’t…” Mr. Night trailed off for several seconds, lost in thought. “It occurs to me that there is a small chance our lost bird and her friends will try to strike back. Come with me, my dear.” He extended his hand to her, and she reluctantly took it. She repressed a shiver as darkness surrounded them.

“We shall prepare a fitting welcome for them, should they decide to grace us with their presence.”

Christine Dark

Lake of the Woods, Ontario, March 15, 2013

The big guy flew away. Bummer maximus. She’d hoped they could chat for a while longer. Truth to tell, a part of her wanted to do way more than chat. After the whole mess at the island, a part of her wanted to do something primal and life-affirming, preferably with somebody else. Not quite anybody, but with somebody she liked. John had been her first choice, but he’d decided to be a big macho man. It might also have turned out badly, for assorted reasons, so maybe his leaving was for the best. But there was somebody else on the island or peninsula or whatever, somebody who she knew was more than a little interested in her.

Such a bad idea in so many ways, though. Starting with, it’s not fair to him. Continuing with, he’s your unofficial bodyguard/sidekick, and getting involved with him could mess things up, bad. And ending with the fact that I don’t really approve of lots of his life choices, like killing people at the drop of a hat.

Yeah, it’d be best to set her near-death-experience-induced rush of hormones aside, and concentrate on the business at hand, she told herself firmly. Concentrate on saving the world, and herself for that matter. She resolutely tabled the matter and headed back to the cabin, all businesslike and stuff.

Kestrel was back downstairs, sitting on Condor’s lap, about as businesslike as a stripper at a bachelor party, which come to think of it was businesslike in its own way. For the second time since Christine had met her, Kestrel wasn’t wearing her trademark painted-on latex outfit, having changed into a slightly less slutty pair of shorts and a t-shirt, sort of a Sporty Skank casual wear thingy. Kestrel’s vibes had changed, too. She’d gone from her usual twisted nympho ways to a mixture of fear and concern. It wasn’t fear for her own safety; Kestrel did not care if she lived or died, something that made Christine feel slightly nauseated when she picked it up with her empathic senses. Kestrel was afraid Condor was going to die on her. It was shocking that she actually felt something, other than wanting to stage crossover productions of the
Kama Sutra
and
Fifty Shades of Gray
.

Christine caught that burst of emotion despite the fact she kept her empathy senses turned all the way down when looking at Condor and Kestrel. Even the surface stuff coming off them was disturbing enough, a toxic stew of lust, guilt, shame and pain, marinated in assorted bodily fluids. It wasn’t quite as bad as looking at her father’s tainted aura had been, but it was nothing she really wanted in her head, either. A deeper look into their psyches might just drive her over the edge. Mark had been worried about Condor hooking up with Kestrel. He’d been so right it wasn’t funny.

“Where is the new boyfriend?” Kestrel asked Christine as she came in. Kestrel and Christine weren’t going to start a Sisterhood of the Travelling Tights anytime soon. The super-skank didn’t care for Christine, or maybe she was one of those women who didn’t like other women. A female misogynist. Lovely.

“If you mean John, he’s gone off to talk to Janus.”

“Janus?” Condor said, looking up from the computer. “Whatever for?”

Christine gave them all a quick rundown of her conversation with John. Her empathy-thingy picked up that Condor was dubious and worried about John’s actions, Kestrel didn’t give a crap, and Mark was just glad that John was out of his figurative hair for a while. “Anyways,” she concluded. “Are we doing anything else tonight or can I go get some sleep?”

“We’ll stay put,” Condor said. “We are thinking about going back to New York to find some Russian mobsters to interrogate, but not until tomorrow or the day after, at the earliest. It might be a good idea to rest up for a day or so.”

“Or until the Legion beats Ultimate into telling them where we are,” Mark said, being his usual downer self.

“I’ll keep monitoring all multimedia traffic,” Condor said. “If Ultimate is captured, there’s going to be some chatter about it. We should have some warning, so I think we’ll be safe here for now.”

“I’m off to bed, then,” Christine said and headed up to her designated bedroom. Someone had left a pair of sweatpants and a shirt for her on the bed, both of them a couple sizes too big but better than nothing. Probably Mark’s doing; he was kind of a sweet guy when he wasn’t being a sour-no-puss or a psycho-killer. She changed, brushed her teeth and got under the covers.

Almost an hour later, she was still tossing and turning. She was tired but too wired to sleep: her brain kept insisting on running laps around a gazillion fun questions, ranging from ‘Is Daddy really dead?’ to ‘What happens next?’ That wasn’t the worst part, though. Now that she was alone in the dark, she couldn’t help thinking about the magical cube. Nothing will keep you up like finding out about a multi-billion year old cosmic struggle and that you’ve been born – not just born, effing
bred
– to play a part in it. No pressure or anything.

She’d asked Mark to hold on to the cube for now. No sense risking it getting activated by her being in close proximity to it, or worse, it deciding to crawl towards her while she slept. Now that was a nice and creepy thought. Doing her damnedest not to think about any of it, she curled up under the covers and tried to sleep.

No luck. She was exhausted, but she couldn’t sleep. Christine distantly heard Condor’s voice as he and Kestrel went into their bedroom. The place was big enough so she probably wouldn’t hear them if they decided to have a little romp or three, but the thought didn’t help with her sleeping problem
. Try to think about something else
, she told herself. How about home, back on good old Earth Prime?

What did people see when she disappeared? Christine knew she’d had a bit of an audience when she was puking her guts out on the lawn of the Phi Beta Gecko frat house, on that fateful night when she was dragged kicking and screaming into Earth Alpha. March 11, a whole four days ago. She was sure at least a couple of d-bags had been videoing her on their smarty-pants phones. What had they recorded when she went poof? Would people think she had disintegrated, or been abducted by aliens? Which she had been, kind of. Abducted by aliens, that is, not disintegrated. Would the videos end up in a bunch of conspiracy-theory websites?

OMG, Mom.
What about Mom?
Christine had been missing for almost four days now. Her mother must be going through hell. With Dad out of the picture, it had always been Christine and Patricia against the world. She loved her mother with all her heart, even when Mom drove her insane. Going to college and leaving the nest had been awesome, but Christine still went back to New Jersey whenever she could, and called her mother at least a couple of times a week. Mom must be going out of her freaking mind. And there was nothing Christine could do, unless Dad wasn’t dead and agreed to help send her back.

Was there something she could do? There were a few other Neos with the power to travel between worlds, from what Mark had told her. One of them, the Magister, sounded like her best option, even if his dimension-hopping machine was disguised as a Porta-Potty that was a lot bigger on the inside than on the outside; instead of a sonic screwdriver he probably had a laser plumber, or something like that. Of course, she had no effing idea how the hell to find Porta-Potty Man. Even if she did, she couldn’t leave until she and her band of broheims dealt with the a-holes who had abducted her in the first place. So, no Mom, not for a while. That almost made her cry.

Well, thinking about home hadn’t really done anything to help her sleep.

Christine realized she hadn’t heard Mark come up. He must be having his own insomnia problems.

Misery could use some company. She got up, put on her fuzzy slippers and headed downstairs. And yeah, she knew that what she was doing might lead to something that was a bad idea.

And yeah, part of her didn’t care.

Face-Off

Lake of the Woods, Ontario, March 15, 2013

I looked at the silent woods surrounding us from the lodge’s front porch. No cars driving by, no subways chugging along beneath the surface, none of the faint background noise of the city that was always there even in the wee hours of the morning. It was too quiet, too peaceful. It only served to remind me I was out of my element. Things would be better when we went back to New York. Even if I got killed in the city, at least it would happen on my stomping rounds while I was doing my usual schtick.

Going after the guys chasing us wasn’t as horrible a plan as it sounded. If we found them first, we’d have the initiative for a change. If you want to fuck someone up, you don’t challenge him to a duel. You find out where he sleeps, you sneak in and you smash his skull before he wakes up, before he knows he’s in a fight. Not nice, but it works, and your chances of being the one walking away in one piece are a lot better. If we could find the fuckers before they found us, we might have a chance. Of course, they could find us first, or set up a nice reception for us. No guarantees in this life. Used to be I had a psychic pal who really helped stack the odds in my favor, but she’d gotten herself killed while holding off the assholes looking for Christine. Cassandra had thought her sacrifice was worth it, and I wasn’t going to second-guess her decision. But dammit, I missed her, and not because of her precognition.

I had finally reached Father Aleksander on my comm to tell him the news. He and Cassandra hadn’t hung out much, except for a few special occasions – there’d been a couple Thanksgiving dinners, two Christmases, and a few surprise birthday parties, until I made it clear I really hated surprise birthday parties. I knew they liked and respected each other, though. They were outwardly very different – a blind psychic of possibly Gypsy extraction and an Orthodox priest from the Ukraine – but they both were better people than me, and had tried to help me be better than I was.

Father Alex had been distraught at hearing about her death, and very concerned about how I was doing. I wished we could meet at his church and drink to Cassandra’s memory. He promised we would, soon. I hoped he was right. After I hung up, I sat on one of the chairs on the porch and looked at the unfamiliar woods and the stars above them.

Christine stepped out onto the porch. She was wearing the sweatpants and shirt I’d found for her in one of the lodge’s closets. There hadn’t been a lot of spare clothing to choose from. Most of the women’s items in said closets had been lingerie of assorted colors and sizes, and I figured Christine wouldn’t have wanted to sleep in one of those outfits. I nodded to her as she sat down next to me.

“Hey,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me either.”

We stood on the porch quietly for a few minutes. Christine kept looking at the sky. Finally she spoke. “All those moving lights out there – are they all satellites? They move kinda slowly to be aircraft.”

I nodded. “Some of the bigger comm satellites, and the space stations.”

“Stations? How many space stations do they have up there?”

I’d been a big space nerd back when I was a kid, and I still paid attention to space news. I’d wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up. “About a dozen or so in low Earth orbit, another four or five in geostationary orbit, twenty-odd thousand miles up, plus three Moon Bases; one station over Mars, and one over Venus, besides the ground bases. And a few more, further out, one is out over Titan, off Saturn. Oh, there’s also the asteroid mining facilities, there’s a bunch of those.”

“Holy crap. How..? Ah, Neos, that’s how.”

I nodded again. “There’s about fifteen or twenty people who can put stuff into orbit, and three or four that can put stuff pretty much anywhere in the Solar System. Ultimate himself usually does at least four or five deliveries every week – used to, at least; now that he’s a wanted man that’s going to make a mess of launch schedules.”

“Wow.” She started to say something else, but quieted down and instead watched the International Space Station float on by. I appreciated the sight as well. It’s hard to get a good look at it in New York; too much glare from the city lights makes it hard to see even the big stations. On a clear night you can still spot it, the biggest structure in low Earth orbit, housing over two thousand people and a thousand-plus visitors on any given day. It’s big enough you can sort of make out its shape, the enormous cylinder and its even bigger solar arrays, rather than just a moving spot of light. I’d always wanted to go up there.