I Am Not Junco Omnibus: Books Four - Six (81 page)

I send Annun a message.
Take them to the Stag and wait.

“I’ll stay and fight with you, Tier.”

“I don’t need yer help, Annun. Take them.”

Iliana is only a few paces off, still twirling around, looking at the plasma cannons on the roof. John Hando reaches Annun, the tap completes, and they are gone.

This is some secret signal for the cannons to come alive because the entire Circus is hellfire before me.

I don’t burn.

I can’t burn.

But these Angels do. It won’t kill them, but it slows them down. I find the commander of this squadron by the signals coming off his body. He’s low-level compared to my brothers. Arel could kick this Angel’s ass without even trying.

The concrete explodes in front of me but I simply fly forward through the flames and hover above their captain as the other Angels form a circle around me.

The cannons stop, like whoever is controlling them wants to watch what will happen.

“You have an audience,” the Angel says in avian as he stares up at me. It sounds like singing in his native accent. He points behind me and I chance a glance. I’m on the giant screen that broadcasts the shows that take place down in the amphitheater to the people up in the Circus level. There are a lot of humans trapped down there, like there was a concert before the aliens appeared.

Stupid fucking humans.

“I should make it worth their time, then, right?” I say back in my Amelia version of the old language.

He holds up his hands. “We’re not here for you, Beast,” he replies in English.

“No, but I’m here for you.” I attack. He flips aside, quicker than he looks, and swipes his razors across my back as I turn.

I smile.

“You’ll play then?” I watch his expression change as I morph up another level. My wings crack and my feathers drop. Not one by one like a gentle wind blowing flowers off a tree. They shed in a single moment of time. Left behind are the batwings reserved for Lucan. The Captain’s reaction is surprise. “You have no idea what I am, do ya?”

I laugh.

And morph up again. This time there’s a cracking sound as my leg bones break and mend millions of times in the span of a moment. My arms follow, then all my muscles rip apart and repair themselves.

I am two feet taller now. Let’s see Gideon hold those two centimeters over me now.

The Captain is afraid.

But he remains still, so I level up again, the knives burst through my boots, ripping and shredding them until they fall apart.

“You come to my world and think I’ll let you live?”

“This fight is not with you,” he sings in avian. “I’m here to collect the Seven, Beast. She belongs to us.”

I attack again. This time I’m so fast he doesn’t even know I’ve moved until his head is on the ground, rolling towards his second-in-command.

“You’re next,” I growl. “And then you.” I look past him to his third, then the four, the five, the six, swivel my head and find the seven, the eight. I find them all by their light in exact ranking order. I point to each one individually. “I’m going to kill you all.”

And then I enter the shift, only this time I
am
time. I walk among them like they are statues, that’s how fast I move from their perspective. For me though, I walk like I’m taking a summer stroll on the Sargassum beach with HOUSE. I cut their heads off, one, two, three, four, five… I lose count, just continue, slowly, methodically, in perfect ranking order, until the seven lowest ranking members of this squad are the only ones left.

When I exit the timeshift, they are standing with their mouths open.

My vision screen says four seconds have passed.

I take the new One by the throat. “I have a message for ya, Angel,” I say in my most formal avian to make sure he understands. “You go tell your commander Aesin that Raubtier Aves is the ruling Angel of this planet. You tell your commander Aesin that if he wants someone who resides here, he’s to come beg at my feet for her. You tell your commander Aesin that if he wants to leave Sol System with all his pieces intact, he will come kiss my claws and bow his head.”

And then I laugh.

“You tell your commander Aesin,” I drawl out the word now, slipping back into my Amelia avian accent. But it hardly matters, the gist of my words is already being broadcast back to the Angel who needs to hear it. “He will never take my Seven.” I stop to repeat it so there is no mistake. “And you tell him”—I roar so loud that the One’s body vibrates and a trickle of blood seeps out of his ear—“that I will rip his throat out if he tries.”

I look over at the giant screen on the mountain and it’s got a close-up of me. I see myself in this form for the first time. I’ve never made this change. Ever. You don’t morph back easily from this level. I don’t know where the cameras are, but I’m must be looking straight at them. It’s a frontal close-up of my demon face. My fangs are ten feet long on that screen. My eyes are nothing but red light. My neck bulges with each and every inhale, my chest sucking in tens of liters of oxygen with each draw to power my muscles and metabolism.

I switch back to English because now I’m talking to Earth. “I will kill them, but make no mistake.” I stop to walk over to the edge of the top level and peer over the side to talk to the humans down below directly. “Make no mistake, I will kill all of you as well. No one will get out of this unscathed. This planet will be unrecognizable when I’m done. You will all be dead and my father will live. But this, humans, is better than the alternative, take my word for it. This is yer best-case scenario.”

I look up to see what’s happened while I was raging. The Halo is stretching out across the horizon from southeast to northwest.

It’s done. She’s coming home now.

And then I port away.

Feeling pretty fucking satisfied.

Chapter Twenty-Six—LUCAN

Tigris-Euphrates River Delta

5000 BC

I don’t go back to the river that night. I sleep in my house on my soft bed, and dream about Amelia the whole time. I don’t go the next night either. I bathe in my own bath house. I fully expect a visit from Crage or someone, asking me to join them again. But no one comes.

My whole week passes by. I stand up on the supervisor’s terrace, looking down on the slaves toiling in the hot sun. Aesin interferes with the crops, bothers the women, kills some of them… it only gets worse from there.

And still, Crage never comes.

Each day my workforce gets smaller, until finally, after six continuous days of harassment by Aesin, the slaves rise up and he slaughters them all, leaving me with no one to farm.

It’s not the first time. This is a well-known pattern. But the slaves are not smart enough to understand what he’s doing. They don’t see it, otherwise they would not react to him by rising up.

Now I am forced to go to Gibborum Plaza and request a new crop of workers.

This excites me. I’ve stayed away from the river for a week. I didn’t even send a servant to check and see if she’s there. But now I will surely bump into her in the plaza. They have to know that my workers have all been killed by Aesin. They have to be expecting me.

The gardens inside the plaza are lush and green, the small irrigation systems built to support the botanicals flowing in small canals all over the place. There are little foot bridges that allow passage as I make my way over to the genetics building and relish the artificially cooled air inside after the door closes behind me.

Environmental conditioning units are enough to convince me to turn scientist. The genetic labs must be kept cold in order to thrive.

I chat with the man in the reception area, then take a seat in a chair with a view to the outside where small colorful birds hop from limb to limb in the branches of a great billowing tree.

Minutes later I am greeted by Amelia. “Hello, Lucan,” she smiles. “My father is waiting for you. Follow, please.”

She is so beautiful. I can’t take my eyes off her when she’s speaking. Her eyes light up with her smile, and her skin looks as soft as I remember it being. I regret every night I stayed away from the river.

She stops and waves me into the ordering room, but I halt next to her and take her hand. “How have you been?”

“Lonely,” she says. And then she pulls her hand away and walks off.

“Lucifer?”

I turn at the name and recognize the Justice officiator. “Hello, Rache. Tell me you’re not part of this? You? The presiding legal entity here for Earth-sanctioned creation science?” I point to the empty hallways where Amelia just was.

“No, that was Gib and Ea. I think she said she mentioned it.”

“Yes, but I assumed that was a collective name for the institute. I do not know this Gib.”

“Ah,” is all Rache says. “I’ll introduce you before you leave. But let’s talk business first. I hear your father has slaughtered your workers once again? Let’s try another type of worker this time, shall we? See if we can’t get them to learn to keep their mouths shut when he’s on a rampage. It will save us all a lot of time and resources if we do it this way.”

I chuckle a little. They mistake my quiet nature for ignorance, I suppose. “No. Messing with the native genetics is illegal. I’m not sure how Amelia was created but—”

“Your High grandfather made her, Lucan. She is sanctioned.”

“My grandfather, as powerful as he is, has no domain here. He’s going to get everyone killed with this nonsense. That girl will be slaughtered if she is seen by Aesin.”

Rache spreads his arms wide. “And so what will you do about it?”

“Me?” I laugh. “I’m not involved, Rache. Whatever it is you’re doing here, I’m not getting—”

“Lucan!” my uncle exclaims.

“Lucifer,” I growl. I don’t lose my patience often, but I’m losing it now.

“Come,” he says, taking my arm like a child. “I’ll show you the new models we’ve designed. They work smarter, Lucan. We’ve programmed them to think critically, to learn from the past, to try to imagine the future before committing to an action. They will last much longer than the last batch.”

I walk with him and try to concentrate on what he’s saying, on how I will object when he’s done, on how angry my father will be once he realizes this is going on right under his nose… but Amelia walks past down the hall and my mind is held prisoner with her beauty. Outside under the bright sunlight her hair is as red as the earth in the southern deserts. But inside under the artificial lighting of the institute, it’s almost brown. Her hair, like her eyes, changes with the light. I’m studying her dress—it’s blue hemp. Now where did she get that color fabric here? I don’t even think Aesin’s goddesses have blue dresses. The process of making the dye from woad is tiresome for the goddesses, and none of the native women are capable of a task that complicated.

Crage spots me eyeing Amelia’s dress and grunts. “She makes the dye herself, Lucan. But our new workers can also make dye. They can do more than plant and harvest. And—” He stops to pull on my arm a little to snap my attention back to him. “We’ve taught them how to work the mines, Lucan. We could be done here decades ahead of schedule if we make these new workers.”

“What?”

He laughs. “I thought that might get your attention. We’ve made them smart. They reason now, they remember lessons learned from experience. They can get you home faster.”

It’s a trap, I realize this. They are luring me into giving them permission by dangling the idea of home in front of my face. I imagine home for a moment. Cool, dark, familiar. My friends from Clutch, my team from Fledge. I ache for these things. I ache so badly for them. So even though I know it’s a trap, even though I know that what they are offering will anger my father, and even though I know I’m being used… I begin to listen.

I begin to think about life after Earth. I begin to think about the friends and teammates. My world, the cool darkness—all of it.

“Listen, Lucan,” Crage whispers. “We have them already made up, son. All you have to do is give the order. You will have workers tomorrow who will please your father. Women who will know what to say and how to act to make him happy. Men who will not rush to retaliate, but instead take time to think through their revenge. Aesin is on his way out. I am giving you this world, do you understand? You can finish the mining operations and be done with this place. I will give you Inanna to make Archers with, I will give you Rache to keep the peace, I will give you the talented geneticists, Gib to create whatever you require.” And then he points down the hallway as Amelia walks past once again—her long blue gown made of cloth only a goddess can wear—and whispers, “I will give you her. I will give you Amelia to take as your own. You will have everything, Lucan. And you can keep it or go home. It will be your decision, not your father’s.”