ARC: Crushed (30 page)

Chapter 41

A surprised Isaiah grabs Chi just as Jo’s knees give out. We jump forward and she collapses in Our arms. All the blood makes her slippery, and we lower her to the ground carefully, then drag her back toward the barricade. Isaiah does the same with Chi, where Crusader Chan tries to assess his wounds.

Jo looks dazed, and her pupils don’t match. Suddenly she jerks and twists trying to find Chi. “Chi, he’s–”

Dying. She doesn’t need to say it. The gaping wound across his stomach and Crusader Chan’s horrified expression say it all.

“Sergeant–” Chan says.

Graff doesn’t need to hear anymore. “Get him up top, Chan. Now.”

Jones rips off the remains of Chi’s shirt and cinches it across his belly, then heaves him into his arms. We’ve turned back to Jo before he’s made it out of the room.

“The Beacon Map,” We demand. “Where’s the Map?”

“Hid it,” she gasps. “Didn’t know you were coming, didn’t want them to find it on us…”

“Where?” We demand, but she’s already holding up a trembling arm. She points over the barricade, into the other room – the room currently filled with demons. “On a balcony.” Her words slur together. We leave her with Isaiah to scramble up the barricade.

The round room on the other side is pitted with balconies, dozens of them. It looks like a drunk architect decided to fill a room with ornately carved opera boxes. We slide back down and drag her back up with us. She points to one about thirty feet up.

“There’re carvings in it. Dozens.” She still can’t catch her breath, still can’t quite focus. “A gargoyle, big eyes. Big, watching eyes.” She opens her hands with a weak “pop” in front of her own eyes, which then roll back in her head.

We shake her but she doesn’t regain consciousness. I feel Graff’s assurance that she’s still alive, but his thoughts are already elsewhere, already calculating the odds. There are at least twenty demons between us and the balcony. Hudson, Teague, and Ellie – that’s how Graff thinks of the woman Crusader – are holding them back. If she could provide Us with enough cover to get through, we could throw the Map down to them. They could escape, the map would be safe.

I screech an instinctual
no
and he flinches.

We might be able to make it out.
He says with an unbelievable off-handedness.
In our limited acquaintance, Miss Melange, I’ve never known you to lack for confidence.

I snort.

His redness grows serious.
You know how important the Beacon Map is, and I think you know we can’t leave it behind. I’m sorry,
he thinks at me solemnly,
that you have to die with me. I don’t force people into suicide missions, but in this case, I have no choice.

I don’t want to. Holy shit, do I not want to, but I can’t come up with a better plan. We can’t leave it.

And the part of me that’s capable of shame, knows that it’s right that this duty falls to me. Chi, Jo, the dead Crusaders littering the halls of the Acheron – all of it’s all my fault.

No,
I think at him.
I’m sorry you have to die with me.
I feel his surprise, and… pride.
And come now, Sargeant Graff, we may make it out alive. In all our limited acquaintance, I’ve never known you to lack for confidence.

Graff snorts and relays the plan to the others, who resist instantly.

“No sir,” Ellie says immediately. “Let me,” she waves at the other. “Or any of us. You – and her – are too important.”

I can feel Graff’s pride at Ellie’s offer but not surprise. Graff knew they would, but, as he said, he doesn’t force others into suicide missions.

Well, you could have told me
.

I feel his mental shrug.

Isaiah stands from where he was kneeling by Jo. “No. Let me.”

Well, color me surprised.

He looks at Ellie. “I don’t have the magical abilities to provide any cover, and you have the best chance of getting out of here with the others.”

There isn’t a chance he’ll make it out alive. He knows; I can see in his electric blue eyes the same burning commitment I saw months ago when he tried to get rid of me.

If he goes, he will die.

“You think you can retrieve it?” We ask Isaiah.

“Yes, sir,” he replies, smartly, not looking towards the hordes of demons between us and it. “And if I can’t…” He trails off, not needing to say that, if he can’t, then someone else can take their turn. In the pause, an explosive blast hits a column behind us.

“Permission granted, Crusader Hooper.” None of the sadness I feel in Graff, none of his memories of Isaiah as the small boy he was just a few years ago, bleed into his words. But I see it. I see it all.

Isaiah’s not doing it for me, I tell myself. He’s doing it for the cause. He’s dying in my place,
but not for me
.

But he looks in his enemy’s face when he says it. It’s his enemy’s head that tilted in assent, sending him to his death.

Isaiah nods and turns to the barricade where the others launch our defense. He looks solemn, his face carefully blank, but I see his hand, where he places it on the leg of an overturned table, trembles slightly. He looks back at us.

“Sergeant.”

“Yes.”

“You can hear her thoughts, can’t you?”

“To an extent, yes.”

“And she’s with us, right? Really
with us
.”

We nod.

He licks dry lips. “Can she hear me?” he asks, and again We nod. Isaiah peers closely, searching for something in Our face. “It was never about you, the things we –
I
– did.” He waits as if for a response but I don’t have the voice to give him one.

You can
, Graff says. I feel his redness, shifting, sliding out of the way until there’s a path to Our vocal chords.

Before I can use them, Isaiah forces a twisted smile. “Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t
like
you, Monster.”

“Ha, good.” I say, my throat tight. If he’s surprised it’s me talking, he doesn’t let it show. “For a second I was worried you were going to hug me or something.”

Isaiah’s too anxious to laugh, but manages a snort.

“And you know I’d have to gut you if you tried, because
I
don’t like
you
, either.”

That does get a laugh, if a short, tense one. “No, you wouldn’t,” he says. We hold eyes for a moment, then his sharp smile is back. “It’d ruin your escape.”

“You’re right, I wouldn’t,” I agree.

He straightens sharply with a salute. “Sergeant,” he says, and turns to Ellie, “Crusader,” then turns to me. “Monster,” he says, and I return his salute with a one-fingered one of my own.

Then, with a glittering smile, Isaiah is up and over the barricade. We provide cover as best we can, launching magical attack after magical attack. At one point I climb over to draw the demons’ attention to me. Isaish’s scrambling up the carved gargoyles when he takes the first hit. It rocks him to the side, but I don’t hear him make a sound. He grimly continues, up, up, up, until he reaches the target balcony and hurls himself over the bannister. He disappears from view.

The demons swarm up the wall after him, like ants after a sweet. We give him the best cover we can, but we need to keep them off us as well. There are too many, and it’s only a few minutes before the first demon makes it over the bannister after him. Then another.

Isaiah doesn’t reappear.

Then suddenly, suddenly he’s there. With a terrific yell he hurls the package in our direction as hard as he can, just as the demons swarm over the bannister, dragging him down. The package flies over Our head and We lunge for it. We catch it, land hard and roll. Ellie hurls one last blast of magic, then goes racing by, the unconscious Jo slung over her shoulder, while the others cover our retreat. Graff and I overtake Ellie, to lead us out of there. We don’t need to turn around to know the demons are behind us.

We don’t need to turn around to know that Isaiah no longer is.

Epilogue

Once again Jo, Chi, and I are in the back of a big kidnapper-van, bumping over twisting mountain roads on our way back home. I’m in much better shape than last time, but Chi and Jo are mummified up and passed out on painkillers. Jo’s next to me on the first row of passenger seats, and Chi in the row behind us.

The van’s windows are covered in black paper, but I stare as if I can see out anyway, thinking about the nature of friends and enemies.

I don’t know what happened to Armand, and I don’t ask. Jo says its better this way, probably because she knows he’s dead. But I’m not afraid to ask because I don’t want to hear he’s dead; I don’t ask because it doesn’t matter. He’s dead to me, what we had is dead, regardless. I’d be more afraid to hear he’s alive.

“Meda, what’s wrong?” Jo’s groggy voice next to me.

“Nothing,” I say, hoarsely.

“It’s
him,
isn’t it?” Her voice is a little more awake, a little sharper. She hasn’t said Armand’s name since I told her what happened. I hear the springs creak as she pulls herself upright on the bench next to me. “Meda, you should
hate
him. He
betrayed
you.” She tries to sound calm and rational, but her fury pops through, emphasizing almost every other word. “He almost got you
killed
. He
stole
the
Beacon Map.
You
know
what that would
mean
. He–”

I turn and look at her. I just look. I don’t say a word, but whatever she sees in my face makes her stop. This isn’t something she can fix, nothing she can explain away. It’s not that I don’t understand the facts; it’s that my human heart doesn’t care. My monstrousness could kill Armand, but my humanity can’t escape mourning him.

“Tomorrow, OK Jo?” I exhale, and it aches. “I’ll hate him tomorrow.”

She gingerly takes my hand. “OK, Meda. Tomorrow.”

We ride in silence for a few more minutes, the air tense with my misery.

“It’s Chi,” Jo says out of nowhere.

“What’s Chi?” I ask, absently.

“It’s Chi,” she repeats, in a weird way that gets my attention. She shoots a look at where he’s still sleeping, “who won’t.”

“Won’t what?”

She makes a face and a circular
you know
motion with her hand.

“Jo, I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

She makes a frustrated sound and says through her teeth, “Why we haven’t
you
know.
”

“No, I don’t know.” I don’t why she’s the frustrated one. “Use your words, Jo.”

“Jesus, Meda!” She throws her hands in the air. “You’ve been pestering me for months, I finally tell you, and you don’t–”

Oh my God, she can’t mean–

“‘But why?’” she mocks my tone from earlier this week.

OH MY GOD SHE DOES!

“Chi?
Chi?
” I squeal.

“Shhhhhhhh!” She twists, making sure he’s still asleep. She’s still embarrassed, but can’t resist a little smirk at my shock.

Me, I’m stuck on repeat. “Chi?
Chi?
” So much for Superhero Meda, bending gender roles – it didn’t even occur to me it could be Chi. Mind. Blown.

Jo forces nonchalance. “Yeah. I figure, the way things are going, we could die any day. Might as well…” She shrugs
.
“But you know him–”

Apparently not.

“–always the optimist. He’s convinced we’re going to make it to a ripe old age.”

Suddenly, as if to prove Chi an idiot, there’s an explosion.

It’s so close by that the van rocks, and instinctively I grab the passenger seat in front of me. The driver shouts some profanity and brakes so hard we spin sideways on the gravel and Chi slams onto the back of our seat. He scrambles up just as Jo rips the paper from the window.

Spread out below is the flaming rubble that was once Mountain Park II.

The Crusader in the passenger seat is yelling at us to buckle up and simultaneously casting the communication spell, while the driver works to U-turn on the narrow gravel road. Other vans, filled with wounded, are trying to turn around, while motorcycles zip around and head into the valley.

As for me, I have an overwhelming, entirely inappropriate urge to laugh.

“Seatbelt, Meda!” Jo snaps hers into place, and pulls the sling off her arm, wanting it free. “Seatbelt! What the hell is wrong with you?”

“‘He’s convinced we’re going to make it to a ripe old age’ – those would have been some terrific last words. So close.” I hold my fingers in a little pinch.

“Seriously, Meda?”

“Look on the bright side, Jo – maybe this will help convince him.” I wave at the flaming wreckage.

“Oh for freak’s sake! She’s lost it.” Jo jerks my seatbelt out of my hand and slams it home just as the driver guns it back down the mountain.

Maybe I have lost it. Maybe there’s just so much crazy a person can take. I should be worried, scared, freaking out. I know that. But I’m not thinking about the flaming school, yet another near-death encounter, or where the hell we’re going to hide next.

No, I’m still thinking about last words, about the last thing Armand said –
that Hell would give him back his soul if he convinced me to join them.

It means that selling a soul isn’t permanent. The demons can give them back.

Or we could take them.