Scavenger of Souls (29 page)

“Later,” I mumbled. Ardan had turned his head and was looking suspiciously at us, so that gave me the excuse I needed.

Mercy, though, didn't seem fazed. “To be continued,” she said, giving me a quick kiss before skipping ahead to join her brother. “And just as a reminder,” she shot over her shoulder, “I am not exactly renowned for my patience.”

Ardan offered me one last scowl before nodding to his sister and turning to concentrate on the road ahead.

I walked right behind them, with Nessa and Adem in the rear. We marched for a half hour without a word, the brother-sister team consulting the protograph and communicating as quietly as our footsteps, with nods and glances and hand gestures. We'd just approached a door that looked identical to all the doors we'd passed when Mercy paused, letting out a breath. It sounded like a gale-force wind after all the silence.

“What's the problem?” I asked in a whisper.

“Take a look at this,” she said.

She held out the protograph, and we all clustered around it. She'd switched the view to the surface level, and what it showed was a mass of Skaldi surrounding what appeared to be Udain's headquarters. “Uh-oh,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “The little buggers are standing right on top of the charges. They've shifted position since the last time I checked. Almost like they know we're coming.”

That was the last thing I wanted to hear. And the last
thing I wanted to tell her was
why
the Skaldi always seemed to know when I was around.

Nessa leaned in closer. “Is there another way?”

Mercy gave her a look. “Another way to do what?”

“To set the charges,” Nessa said. “Like, from underground.”

I could see Mercy warring with a response. “There are tunnels all over the place,” she said through her teeth. “But the charges are at surface level. We have to be outside to get at them.”

No one spoke for a long time. Then Nessa said, “So we need to create a diversion. We need to split into two teams, one to draw them away and one to set the charges.”

“
Them
happens to be about two thousand Skaldi,” Mercy said. “In case you hadn't noticed.”

“I noticed.”

“And are you volunteering for this suicide mission?”

I stepped between them before my first official action as commander ended in a fistfight. “Enough, you two,” I said. “Nessa's right. Mercy, what's the closest tunnel to the generator room?”

Mercy muttered to herself while she scanned the protograph, making very little effort to prevent the rest of us from hearing what she was muttering. Ardan filled the space beside her, double her size but not half as vocal. She quieted down only when she found what I'd asked for. “There,” she said. “If we come up on the outskirts of the square, we'll be within spitting distance of the generator. What's your plan?”

“Fire on the generator,” I said. “That should attract at least some of their attention. Meanwhile the second team sneaks over to headquarters and sets the charges.”

“And which team is which, may I ask?” Mercy said.

Before I could answer, Nessa spoke up. “Adem and I will create the diversion. The team that sets the charges will need Ardan's strength and Mercy's knowledge. How much time do you need?”

Mercy glanced at her brother. She seemed to be having a hard time keeping her breath under control, though I had no idea why. It was obvious she didn't like Nessa, but we were all in this together.

Finally she answered. “We'll need to set at least two to take out the Skaldi on the inside as well as the perimeter. Depending on our luck and how many flesh-eating alien monsters decide to get in our way, that could take us anywhere from ten minutes to forever.”

“We can give you ten minutes,” Nessa said. Adem, I thought, looked pretty green, though the light in the tunnels was gray white. But he swallowed a lump the size of his fist and nodded.

“Great,” I said. “Mercy, let's go.”

She held her hand out to Nessa in exaggerated politeness. “Right this way, princess.”

Mercy and Ardan led us onward. After a few minutes Mercy signaled for another conference, the two of them poring over the protograph. Mercy's brow knotted in concentration
before she pointed the way. We wove through a new set of hallways that looked like the old set of hallways, and I could feel an angry silence radiating from Mercy that I couldn't explain. Her mood was really starting to fray my nerves when she said, “Stop.”

I peered ahead. The corridor was indistinguishable from any we'd walked in the past hour.

“We're close,” Mercy said. “Through that door and up the stairs.”

Everyone held their breath and listened. The tunnel was absolutely silent. Mercy spoke my mind before I could.

“No pulse,” she muttered.

“You think the beam's down?”

“Possibly. The Skaldi might have taken it offline in the war room.”

“My signature wouldn't have brought it back?”

“Depends on what the thing did to it.”

“If it is down,” I said, “will that make a difference with the charges?”

“It'll sure as hell make a difference in terms of our ability to
get
to the charges.”

Nessa spoke up again. “Not if we can anticipate their movements—”

“Oh, for God's sake!” Mercy snapped, forgetting to keep her voice down. “There's an army of Skaldi ten feet above our heads. You think you can
anticipate
them? What are you going to use? Tarot cards? Divining rods?”

Nessa shook her head but said nothing. I reached out toward Mercy. “I think she just means—”

“Bug off!” Mercy snapped, shaking me away and storming a short distance down the tunnel.

I caught up to her. She didn't make any effort to elude me. “Mercy, what is wrong—”

“I'll tell you what's wrong!” she exploded. “Every time Skinhead opens her smart-ass little mouth, you're all,
Wow, what a great idea!
Since when did she become so high on your list?”

“You're . . .” I couldn't believe I was about to say this. “You're jealous?”

Apparently that was the wrong thing to say. “You are such a flipping idiot,” she said. “It would be lovely if everything was about you, wouldn't it? But it's not. Did it ever occur to you this might be a trap?”

Now she'd totally lost me. “A trap?”

“Yes, a trap,” she said. “Designed to march us straight into their waiting arms. Or mouths, as the case may be.”

She held out the protograph. At first I couldn't make sense of it: where a moment ago there'd been a mass of red lights so dense it was like a puddle of blood, now there was only a single dot, pulsing weakly in the center of the screen. Then I realized what I was seeing: our own position. Underground. And with the red light of a Skaldi right in front of my eyes.

“I'm kicking myself for not catching it before,” Mercy
said, her voice finally under control. “But I was focused on where we were going, not where we are.”

“Who is it?” I whispered, wondering if it might be me.

She shrugged. “My money's on Little Miss Diversion. That minx has been raising my hackles from the get-go.”

I decided not to risk asking what a minx was. “But she passed the test.”

“There's only one test I'm convinced by,” she said, fingering her rifle. “The question is, do you want me to fry her cupcakes now, or are you in a gambling mood?”

I glanced up the corridor at the three shadowy figures. Ardan's posture appeared as stolid as ever, Adem's as indecisive. But I sensed that Nessa knew what we were talking about. If, that is, it was really Nessa.

“Contact Tyris,” I said in a low voice. “Don't tell her what's going on. I just want to know their position in case anything happens to us.”

Mercy switched on her walkie-talkie, but only static filled the line. I took a deep breath and steered my gaze back to the end of the tunnel. Mercy waited, the light too dim to tell if it was expectation or annoyance I saw in her face.

“This is what leaders are for,” she said, handing the protograph over. “To make the tough calls.”

I deliberated a moment longer, then tucked the protograph in my pocket and nodded toward the door. “Tyris and the others will have to fend for themselves. Keep an eye on
Nessa. But don't shoot unless I say so. We're sticking to the plan.”

Mercy spoke no word of objection, but I felt her silence behind me like a blade in my back.

We rejoined the others, and together we inched toward the door. It opened at the touch of my finger on the keypad. The stairwell beyond was unlit, and so dark I couldn't tell if anything waited in the shadows. I thought of lighting our way with our flashlight, but I didn't want to alert them. With me in the lead and Mercy gripping her rifle in the rear, we crept up the stairs. When we got there, I touched the button beside the door.

It opened onto a courtyard swarming with Skaldi.

Darkness blanketed the square, the perimeter fence visible only as black uprights against the dead gleam of the impact zone. But I could make out the humped shapes that filled the area in front of us, wriggling like an enormous hive. A rot worse than thousands of corpses emanated from bodies that had never been alive to begin with. They hadn't detected us yet, but without the beam to immobilize them, it was only a matter of time before they did.

The generator stood fifty yards away. Nessa and Adem would have to sprint through the Skaldi to get there.

“Satisfied?” Mercy said to no one in particular.

Nessa turned to her, hefting her rifle, and for a moment I thought she was going to use it. Mercy must have thought so too, because her own rifle rose to Nessa's chest. But then
Nessa clutched Adem's hand and pulled him from the doorway. He stumbled forward and stood shakily beside her.

“We can do this,” she whispered fiercely. “For Aleka. And Wali.”

For a moment Adem looked stricken. Then I watched his back straighten and his face take on a determined expression I'd never seen. Nessa gripped his hand and squeezed before turning to me.

“Go,” she said. “Be careful. Work fast.”

Then she and Adem were leaping through the Skaldi, firing bursts that lit the night. The creatures responded sluggishly at first, moaning and tumbling over each other in their confusion and panic to get away. Soon, though, they seemed to realize they were thousands against two and began streaming in the attackers' direction. In seconds so many bodies blocked the way I could no longer see anything of Nessa and Adem except the pale sparks from their rifles.

“Stay close,” I said to Mercy and Ardan. “But not too close.”

“You planning to drop a Querry bomb?” Mercy said.

“You never know.”

We crept toward Udain's headquarters, keeping low. Or, in Ardan's case, as low as a nearly eight-foot-tall human being could. Though many of the Skaldi had followed Nessa and Adem, hundreds still covered the yard, so many that some lay squirming on each other three or four deep. When
we reached the edge of the square I signaled to Mercy and Ardan, and they stooped—or loomed—by my side.

“They should be there soon,” I said.

We waited for a long minute, listening for the sound of Nessa's and Adem's rifles. But all we could hear were the Skaldi's moans.

“This is taking way too long,” Mercy muttered.

“I'll go in,” I said. “You two follow. Try to keep them from closing behind us. Let me know when we reach the charges.”

Mercy grabbed my arm. “You're forgetting one thing,” she said. “You're the only one who can set the charges. If you go under like you did at the altar, we're all screwed.”

She was right. I froze, seconds ticking by like hours. Still I heard nothing that would indicate whether Nessa and Adem had reached their target. In the dim light, Mercy's eyes flashed a grim and mirthless
I told you so
.

Then, all at once, the compound to our right was illuminated by a blaze of yellow light, the ground shaking beneath our feet. Sparks twisted into the sky, drawn upward by the column of smoke they lit. The Skaldi in the courtyard, attracted by the explosion, began to migrate toward the generator building. I suspected they would find nothing left of it. I hoped they wouldn't find any sign of the two who had demolished it.

But I couldn't think about them. We had our own job to do.

“Now!” I shouted at my companions.

Mercy sprinted through the gap in the Skaldi's ranks, with Ardan a step behind. I followed. Over my shoulder, I heard Nessa's and Adem's rifles coming alive again, the howls of the creatures they hit.

The mass of Skaldi had recovered from their initial surprise, and some came streaming toward us, clumsy but determined, moaning in fury or pain. Mercy hit the ones in our path with her energy rifle, their scars peeling back before they exploded into flying fragments. Some tried to circle behind, but Ardan was sharp, and he nailed them before they had a chance to form an effective group. The wild thought flashed through my mind that we could destroy them all this way, without worrying about the explosives. But I saw the countless shadows moving in the darkness, I remembered the few survivors of our combined colonies marching slowly through the tunnel with the body of my mother, and I knew we had to stick to the plan.

Mercy stopped without warning and fell to a knee. At first I thought she was hurt, but then she signaled and Ardan came to her side, understanding immediately what she needed him to do. She entered a code into a touchpad embedded in the cement, and a square metal plate popped free, exposing corners a normal human being could probably pry up with a crowbar. Ardan used his hands. He gripped the edges of the plate and pulled, and in a single motion the plate came free and flew into the night, colliding with a Skaldi and slicing its body in two.