Endgame: The Calling (47 page)

Shari tries not to think about Baitsakhan. She is home, and it is peaceful, just the way she left it before the Calling. She thinks she’ll stay here for a while and rest. But then she feels the ghostly numbness where her finger should be, and she thinks about hunting down the Donghu and killing him.

She has not made up her mind.

Shari is on one knee. Little Alice is sitting on the other. Her dark hair is in pigtails. Her eyes are big and wet, like smoothed river stones. Shari is hugging her daughter’s shoulders. Jamal is standing over them, beaming. Little Alice is holding one of Shari’s hands. “Where’s your finger?” Little Alice asks.

Shari shrugs. “I lost it.”

“How?”

“An accident.”

Little Alice is not a prospective Player. Jamal knows of Endgame—knows everything—but Little Alice knows nothing. Shari would like to keep it that way, but she knows she can’t. Not once the Event happens. Not once the world begins to end.

“Did it hurt?”

“Yes, my little
pakora
, it did.”

“How much?”

Shari releases her daughter’s body and stretches out her arms. She pulls her hands close together, so that only a few inches separate them. “Only this much,” Shari says.

“Oh.”

Jamal kneels. Shari puts her hands back out as far as they will go and says, “But being away from you hurt this much,
meri jaan
, this much.”

“Okay,” Little Alice says, smiling, and she bounces off Shari’s knee and runs away, down the grass lawn, toward a loitering peacock at the end of the garden. The southern face of Kanchenjunga looms over the hardy shrubs, its jagged peak white in the sun and blue in shadow. Jamal watches their daughter. He is two years older than Shari. “Where is your ring?” he asks quietly. For Shari, his voice is like a blanket and a warm fire and sweet milk all together.

“I lost it too,” Shari says matter-of-factly. “But I will get it back, my sweet. Even if I have to fight the god himself, I will get it back.”

Jamal puts a hand on his wife’s thigh. “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“It won’t. A little monster masquerading as a boy has it. He will return it.”

“You’re going to chase him?”

Shari looks at Jamal. There is a darkness in her eyes that wasn’t there before the Calling. Gently, he puts a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t know yet,” she answers.

“Take some time,” Jamal says. “Stay with us for a while.”

Shari nods, watches her beautiful daughter running through the grass. Endgame is in motion. The Event will come soon. Perhaps before it does the other Players will come first, to hunt her, to hunt her family. She flexes her remaining fingers, thinking about how quickly everything can fall apart.

Later that night, after they’ve gone to bed, Shari wraps her fine hands around Little Alice’s slumbering neck and squeezes. Squeezes. Squeezes.

The girl’s eyes snap open. She smiles. Mouths,
Mama.
Cries tears of joy. Even as her body writhes and spasms and dies.

Shari holds on to the warm neck until the pulse stops. She lets go. Brushes the hair from her daughter’s face. Leans in and gives her a kiss.

She turns to her own bed. Jamal still sleeps. Shari looks to her hands and there it is. A knife from the kitchen. Shining steel. Bone handle. The one she uses to dice garlic and
dhania
. She puts the point over his heart. Waits. Waits. Waits.

Plunges.

The rich blood sprouts along the blade and Jamal looks at her and says, “Thank you, sweet.” As he dies, he reaches out his hand and takes hers and holds it until he can’t anymore. When she pulls the knife out of his chest, the ring that the Donghu stole comes with it.

Shari lifts it up. Looks at it. Licks off the blood. Swallows.

And then she is an elephant on a green expanse of grass and the stone circle is there before her, iconic and permanent. She bellows her grief, the sound reverberating off the stones.

A dream.

She sits bolt upright. Covered in sweat. Little Alice is crying in the bed next to theirs; Jamal is there, soothing her. The moonlight filters through the cool mountain air and into their cozy house.

This peace cannot last.

I must always keep a gun. A gun with three rounds in it.

She sees the old standing stones of her dream, placed by druids, and knows.

Earth Key is there.

I will not tell.

Another can have it.

18.095, -94.043889
^lxix

Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, Istanbul, Turkey

Chiyoko takes her hands off the wheel and claps. Claps again. Sarah and Jago each wake with a start, their reflexes buzzing. Christopher still sleeps.

They are in Istanbul.

It’s evening. Chiyoko guides the 307 across the Mehmet Bridge. The black strait is 210 feet below. Boats of all sizes move through the water in the same lanes once used by Minoans, Greeks, Romans, Cypriots, Caucasians, Moors, Israelites, Egyptians, Hittites, Byzantines, and every kind of person from every walk of life that the world has ever seen.

Jago flips a computer terminal out of the back of the passenger seat and searches for hotels. He finds a nice one and punches it into the car’s navigation system. Chiyoko claps once in thanks.

“I’m going to book us into a really nice hotel. Might as well play Endgame in style, right?”

Sarah smiles at Jago. Chiyoko nods in agreement.

Christopher stirs. Rubs his eyes. “How long have I been out?”

“Not long enough,
pendejo
.”

“Jago,” Sarah scolds.

Jago folds his arms and mumbles something vulgar in Spanish. Sarah, in the passenger seat, turns to face Christopher. “How’s your leg?”

“Numb, but okay. Toes move and everything. We going to a hospital?”

Jago snorts.

“We’d rather not. Let’s have a look at it first.” Sarah runs her hand over the knee, which is still slightly hyperextended. She pushes down. “How’s that feel?”

“Not great, not terrible.” She wiggles the knee from side to side. “And that?”

“She set my shoulder the night we met,” Jago muses, gazing out of his window. “A night I’ll never forget . . .”

“Yeah, why’s that?”

“It was explosive,” Jago says, flashing his studded teeth at Christopher. “She is good with her hands, yes?”

“Shut up,” Sarah says, “or I’ll cut yours off.”

Christopher looks from Jago to Sarah, his eyes widening, confused. Sarah shakes her head. “It was nothing like that. We had to jump off a moving train before it blew up.”

“Things blow up around you guys a lot, don’t they?”

“That’s what Endgame is,” Jago says.

“And look at me,” Christopher replies. “Little old rookie right in the middle of it.”

“Right where you shouldn’t be,” Jago says.

Christopher turns to face Jago. The backseat suddenly feels too small. “You got a problem?”

“Yes,” Jago says simply, “you’re a sack of meat, and I don’t want to carry you.”

“Meat? I’d knock your fu—”

“STOP IT!” Sarah shouts.

“I’d kill you before you touched me,” Jago sneers.

If Christopher was thinking straight, he’d remember what happened when he tried to punch Maccabee in the underground chamber. Around Sarah, though, his old high school instincts kick in. He’s not backing down. Christopher starts to move, but Sarah sticks a hand between the two boys in the backseat. “Chiyoko, pull over. Feo, you’re riding up front.”

Chiyoko stops the car, a slight smile on her face.
Boys. All the same.

Sarah gets out and opens the rear door. Jago eases onto the sidewalk. “He doesn’t belong here,” Jago whispers as he moves around her.

Sarah gets in back; Jago sits up front. Chiyoko pulls the car into the flow of traffic.

Sarah puts her hand on Christopher’s knee. “I’m sorry. None of this is easy.”

“I heard what he just said,” Christopher complains.

Sarah sighs and says, “And you know what? He’s right. I’ll get you back on your feet, but when I do, you have to go home. Nothing’s changed since the airport in Omaha. You shouldn’t have followed me. You
shouldn’t
be here.”

Christopher recoils. “I’m not going anywhere, Sarah. I’ve seen this much. I know about these Annunaki, these maker beings, our screwed-up history—I’m going to see the rest. For Christ’s sake, I was on that damn plane crash, did you know that? The one all over the news?”

Jago gives Christopher a mildly impressed look. “You were?”

“Yeah, me and that psycho Kala chick.” Christopher thinks of the murdered mother and daughter. Knows that they will haunt him for the rest of his life. “We were . . . we were the only survivors,” he lies.

Sarah puts her arm around Christopher’s shoulders. Jago faces front, not wanting to see this. “God. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, don’t sweat it,” Christopher says unconvincingly.

She squeezes his broad frame. Remembers what it was like to hug him, to be held by him. No one speaks for a while. Sarah asks Chiyoko to stop the car again. They pull in front of a pharmacy.

“I’m going to get some things for that leg, including a pair of crutches,” Sarah says, looking Christopher in the eye.
“That you are going to use to take your ass home.”

“Whatever,” Christopher says as Sarah climbs out and closes the door behind her.

An awkward silence descends in the car.

“Do you talk?” Christopher finally asks Chiyoko.

She shakes her head.

“Oh, that’s cool. I never thanked you for rescuing me from those two kids, so, thank you. They were bad news.”

Chiyoko bows slightly.

“Speaking of that—since you were in that big gold room spying on us, why didn’t you help? You know, before the little one stabbed Kala, before they kidnapped me?”

Chiyoko’s eyes shift but she is otherwise motionless.

“Fine, don’t answer,” Christopher mutters. “You Players are all the same. Out of your minds.”

Jago turns to the backseat, looks at Christopher, smiles, the diamonds in his teeth throwing off a sinister light. “This is Endgame, bitch. Best get used to it.”

Lago Beluiso, Lombardy, Italy

Aisling’s eyes are closed, as they have been for the last five hours, 23 minutes, and 29.797 seconds. Her back is straight. Her legs in half lotus. Her fingers laced in her lap. She sits before the cave painting of the beautiful woman she’s started referring to as the Mu, adrift on an open sea, the disk in her hands, death all around her.

Aisling waits for the painting to whisper its secrets. For her clue to unfold some new and immense knowledge within her brain. For something—anything—to happen. She sighs and opens her eyes.

Nothing is happening.

“This is bullshit,” she says, her voice echoing through the cave. It’s strange to hear the sound of her voice, dry and scratchy. Isn’t talking to yourself one of the first signs of dementia? She flops down on her back and grabs her satellite phone out of her pack, calls her grandfather. It was on his advice she climbed all the way up here, his fault she’s doing nothing when she should be out there Playing. He answers on the 3rd ring, his voice riddled with static.

“Now what?” she says, by way of greeting.

“Hello, Aisling,” he replies, a smile in his voice. “How’s it going?”

“How long am I supposed to stay here, Pop?” she complains. “It’s been days and I’m no closer to figuring this thing out.
If
there’s even anything
to
figure out. Maybe you misinterpreted my clue.”

“I doubt it,” her grandfather replies grimly. “Tell me what you see.”

“Paintings. Old-ass paintings. One is a weird-looking lady on a boat, floating around after—well—it looks like the world has ended, ya know?”

“And what else?”

Aisling glances to the other painting. “Twelve people gathered at—”

Aisling slaps her forehead. For the first time, she recognizes the stone monoliths that surround the 12. She feels like an idiot, should’ve recognized it sooner. It’s blurry, and rotated, and missing some pieces, but it’s the same place she’s studied and visited. It is a place sacred to her line.