Archon's Queen (64 page)

James stared at Anna’s limp figure, his words at a precipice between speech and shout. “No savory pleasure to the imperious man above whose head hangeth the spring-loaded combat knife of Damocles.”

His frown deepened as he forced the knife downward with enough force to spike it into the concrete. Gordon’s subsequent scream did not crack his dour glare, only caused the focus of his telekinesis to shift from the weapon to the hand through which it had been impaled. He shoved Gordon off the ledge, leaving a bloody smear around the blade where it tore through his palm. The screaming fell into the distance, and silence.

Anna rolled onto her back and floated straight up until James cradled her in his arms. As he carried her to the van, Aurora’s nude form stepped out of a cloud of mist. She looked about ready to faint from exhaustion.

He paused at the door, glancing at her. “Would you mind tending to the rubbish, my dear?”

Aurora trudged over to the men, stooped, and took one of the rifles from their unconscious hands. She unloaded the magazine, sweeping automatic fire back and forth through the group. Her skin, the color of new-fallen snow, spattered with crimson until the magazine ran dry.

She sashayed to her waiting ride, vanishing into the astral for less than a full second―long enough to shed the coating of gore.

irst Class accommodations on the inter-coastal shuttle gave them a private room with four large seats, two facing front and two facing rear. James sat to her left near the door while Anna’s window seat offered her a view of the clouds below. Her body ached, though it showed no outward signs of the beating she had received. Lauren, wearing an oversized pair of sunglasses, reclined in the seat facing Anna. Most of her skin hid behind boots, gloves, and a long coat. No one had taken much of any notice of how pale she was at the shuttle terminal.

Anna looked away from the swirling white, ten thousand feet below, and sent a loving smile at James. When she needed him, he had been there for her. Feeling her stare, he lifted his eyes to meet hers and returned the affectionate glance.

“James… why is the shuttle so high? We’re only going to the other coast.”

Mardling rolled his eyes. “Apparently, the rebels have lost control of most of their land. Some nonsense about cyborgs they sent out there to clean things up turned traitor. Funny bit of karma, that.” He chuckled. “The shuttles fly up here to avoid missiles.”

“Rebels?” Anna shook her head, laughing. “Now you’re beating a dead horse.”

“Terrence is doing well in the west. He has already found half a dozen other psionics interested in my philosophy. According to the data you retrieved, we have five years before the ship is completed. That should enable us to get things set up quite proper.”

Aurora shuddered in her seat, sitting bolt upright for an instant before she collapsed again. Anna gave James a worried look; he had no reaction to the writhing figure, as though such episodes were a matter of routine. Aurora slipped into a half-awake state, her arms clawed at the air as if to stop from falling.

Overwhelmed with curiosity, Anna peered into the woman’s mind. The vision saturated her thoughts, pulling her in and trapping her in Aurora’s perspective. They fell through the bottom of the shuttle, sailing out into the sky. Anna screamed in silence, the scene so close to real it triggered primal terror. Aurora sensed it was a dream vision and took control, riding the air currents and following whatever force pulled her down in a graceful curve.

She moved through the clouds far faster than a normal fall; her trajectory flattened out, skimming over cracked desert ground. Scrub brush and weeds rocketed past, followed by the occasional cactus and scrap vehicle. In the distance, a smudge of maroon seemed more distinct than the surroundings, like the one object of color in an otherwise black and white video. Aurora headed for it, and an old wooden wagon made from the trailer of an ancient box truck painted dull red-orange grew from the speck. Tall white letters dominated one side with the phrase: “Magic Healer - 10 Coins.”

Two living horses grazed to the left of it, detached from the otherwise unpowered vehicle. She swung around to the other side where a line had formed, dozens of people. Wanderers, bandits, and the unfortunate souls condemned to the Badlands had queued up from a point defined by a portable metal podium, an item once used to hold sheet music.

Behind it, a dark-haired man his early thirties dressed in the garb of a cowboy pranced about and waved his arm. “Come one, come all, see the great magical healer who can cure you of anything that ails you. Any condition except death can be fixed for ten coins.”

Their point of view glided past him, sliding under where the open side of the wagon formed an awning. Tucked between a small bed wrapped in dingy sheets and a pea-green wooden cabinet sat a tiny metal cage. A little blonde girl no older than seven peered through the bars with eyes that glowed luminous blue. Tears streaked clean lines over grimy cheeks as she struggled to reach through the bars at a dying man on the ground by the podium.

The child wailed at the salesman, pointing at the man. He smiled at her, shaking his head to the negative and patted a fat pouch of coins. The man would die because he had no money; the girl was more upset over his death than her captivity. Aurora gazed at the scrawny waif clad only in grime. For an instant, the girl seemed to look right at them.

Shock at being seen broke her concentration. The wagon, the crowd, and the desert flew into the distance, her point of view sucked up into the sky.

Anna found herself on the floor, wracked with shivers and cold sweats. She felt dizzy and as sore as if she had fallen down stairs.

James helped her into a seat. “Now you know why I wait for her to tell me what she saw. Clairvoyant visions have a rather nasty habit of taking over an eavesdropper’s consciousness.”

Aurora convulsed and gasped in her sleep.

Anna got up on her knees, patting the woman on the cheek. “Hey, wake up. What happened?”

Aurora leaned forward and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

“I just saw… the present, I think.” She squinted at the window. “Yes, it didn’t feel like past or future.”

James raised an eyebrow. “That is quite unusual. You only see the present when something horrible is about to happen, though I dare say I would call that the future.”

“What did you see?” Anna returned to her seat.

Lauren thought for a moment. “Another Awakened, I think. I’m not entirely sure. That child had a strange energy about her.”

Clouds of ill-scented mist rolled through the rain-soaked ground, drifting through rows of pipes running in all directions. The autocab zipped off into the distance, Anna found it confusing they called them PubTrans here; the name would take a long time to get used to. She looked over and up at a row of massive white hyperbolic towers.

She squeezed his hand. “James, is this what I think it is?”

He smiled. “Indeed. We found an old power station in a part of town where the police are terrified to go. It makes a perfect metaphor I think. We are more than capable of protecting ourselves from the local rabble.”

A young man of about seventeen emerged from a four-story reinforced building. Metal stairs clanked as he trotted over to the approaching trio.