Ghost Soldiers (30 page)

Xiesha fought to halt the widening rift, her mouth set in a snarl of concentration. Slowly, she began to slide backward across the surface of the court as if some invisible force pushed her away. She didn't topple or bend, but stood rigid, though her feet scraped as she was gradually driven back.

The Seam burst open with a roar and a series of eerie fluting noises, wind wailing through a slit throat or a pipe carved from a human thighbone. The gap spread at least ten feet wide, stretching more than a dozen feet into the air before Xiesha dug in her heels and stopped its expansion with a flare of power.

Bright, blue-white light streamed out of the hole. Blue-tinged vapor curled and seeped along the surface of the court. Frost spread behind the vapor in a carpet of white. Through the wormhole opened a space so vast she could not see any ceiling or the floor, swallowed in churning blue vapor. Massive columns of a crystalline material rose into the darkness, and blue lights blazed within their depths. She saw shapes and designs that her mind could make no sense of—machinery perhaps. Maybe vehicles. Alien structures too foreign to guess their purpose.

A Thresher, much like the one Karl had fought before, loomed near the gap, armored in asymmetrical plates of shimmering metal. Its head turned. Its massive red lens-like eye locked on her, and the cluster of smaller eyes around it shone a brighter red light. The Thresher held something in its large hands, some kind of tube-shaped thing unlike any gun she'd ever seen, but clearly enough a weapon.

She sighted in with the crosshairs on its chest and yanked the trigger. The launcher jerked—a loud bang and a hiss and gray smoke billowing everywhere. The rocket shot through the rip and missed where she'd aimed by a good two feet. It disappeared into the blue-white haze, and she heard a distant rumbling explosion.

The Thresher swung its weapon toward her. She hurled herself to the side, feeling the sear of the hot launcher breech as she turned. Her boots slapped the ground hard. She threw out her free hand to steady herself. The surface of the court burned and melted in a long scorched channel behind her without even a light show to go along with the Death Ray.

She snatched the second HEAT round and took off running as she loaded it, twisted the warhead to lock it in, and then slid to a halt and dropped into a crouch. The Thresher's weapon tracked after her. No time to carefully sight in before she pulled the trigger, gentler this time, more controlled. The grenade shot out with another bang and hiss as a haze of gray smoke obscured the Thresher. The warhead hit its lower abdomen and exploded into a high-velocity jet of metal shredding through its armor at supersonic speed. The explosion threw the Thresher backward. A shimmering chunk of its armor went spinning by her head, humming like a helicopter blade, and blue fluid spattered down like rain. The explosion was so loud she flinched and almost dropped the launcher. The crystals in Xiesha's stands flared with an intense pulse of light, and thin cracks spread across their sides.

The rift started to close again. Xiesha's hands blurred ever faster as if she twisted knots of energy back together, repairing severed links, sewing the tear closed.

Maria reloaded the rocket launcher with numb hands, her fingers slow and barely responsive. Battle terror and exhilaration had merged into an almost serene state, where sounds seemed muted, things moved slowly, and her thoughts were sharp as new-made razors cutting across her mind so quickly there wasn't even any pain.

She pressed her eye to the optical sight. Another Thresher stood at the rift, its body all irregular angles of metal and weapons, and it stepped over the smoking remains of the first. It made a chiming sound—the
clong
of a monastery bell summoning the faithful—that hit her like a punch, and she felt a burst of pain in each earlobe and the wet, cold trickle of her blood.

“Goddamn sonuva
bitch
,” she snarled, putting the crosshairs on it and squeezing the trigger. The rocket shot straight for the Thresher's chest, but right before it hit home, a sun-yellow amorphous gel spread from its arm and entrapped the rocket. The warhead exploded without sound, and the yellow gel expanded to twice its size to contain the shrapnel and explosive force. Then the gel plopped to the ground with a squelch, shards of shrapnel intermixed within.

The Thresher made another strange chiming bell toll. She knew the damn thing was laughing at her. It came for her with steps that shook the ground.

She jumped for the rest of her weapons, and her hand closed on the butt of the flintlock pistol. For an instant her mind recoiled, and she almost dropped the gun. The Thresher took another step toward her. She spun to face it, aimed along the flintlock's barrel and fired.

The pistol made a sound closer to a scream of agony than a gunshot. The smoke that belched from its barrel was a black so deep it seemed to eat the light. The Thresher used its yellow gel again, but the pistol ball, glowing like an ember, pierced straight through it, smashed into the Thresher's upper chest and blew apart the top half of its body. The pistol ball glowed and hovered in the empty space where the Thresher's torso had been before the explosion. It lashed out with arcs of lightning, then swallowed everything—shrapnel, blue fluid, ruptured plates of metal—back into itself before vanishing with a banshee screech.

The partial remains of the Thresher collapsed backward into the churning blue vapor, half its body still sprawled on their side of the rift.

Maria dropped the pistol with a cry of disgust. The wood felt clammy and hot, as if it had been breathing in and out against her palm.

The rip in the brane suddenly gaped wider, expanding despite Xiesha's efforts. Blue vapor poured through in a steady cloud, and frost crawled up the sides of the wall and the brick of the Faneuil House. Two of the crystals in Xie's tree stand spell gizmos had shattered. The last two pulsed with weak light.

Something new slipped through the fog beyond the rift. Not a Thresher. It had cerulean-blue skin which danced as if unstable, like flesh constructed of propane flame. The cerulean skin faded to swirls of white farther down its arms, ending in pure white hands that shimmered in the darkness. Humanoid—hell,
female
-shaped—but off a bit, with longer thighs, longer forearms and a gracefully arched neck. She had something like hair atop her head, but it was no human hair—this resembled white flames, dancing and shifting as if in the wind, tongues of fire falling down around her shoulders, which real fire would never do. Her eyes were solid white, no pupils, and they glowed with their own inner light. Her face had high cheekbones, a narrow jaw and a smaller mouth than a human. She wore no clothes directly on her body, but a huge white and gray cape, cowl and mantle floated above and behind her, held aloft by no means Maria could see. It followed her when she moved, hovering a good hand's-breadth above her skin, with slashes and curves of writing or designs along the edges.

The blue female peered at Maria and then turned her attention to Xiesha. She made a sound like little chiming bells, something one might hear on a sleigh.

Xiesha strode across the court and stopped opposite the blue and white woman with the fire hair. Xie lifted her arms, and a pulse of power—a concussion wave that pushed at Maria's body like a strong gale of wind—rippled outward, and Xiesha changed. Her human shell evaporated away, pieces of her skin and face dripping upward like rain in reverse. Maria stared at Xie's profile, aware her mouth had dropped open, aware she probably looked comically stupid, yet unable to help it. This new Xiesha had the same cerulean-blue skin, the same glowing white eyes, the same changed humanoid shape, but the blue faded down to swirls of violet at her forearms with solid violet at her hands, and her fire-like hair danced in the same vibrant hue.

Two kyveryn, facing each other across dimensions.

Xiesha's narrow mouth opened. Chiming and fluting sounds came out in some strange musical language. The other kyveryn raised its hand and made a complex gesture. A glowing disk of energy appeared in the air near her palm, hanging there like a pearl dinner plate, its flat surface turned toward them. A tear-shaped beam shot out of its center, straight toward Xiesha. Xie planted her feet and crossed her forearms in an X in front of her face. The tear-shaped beam struck her dead center and split into a half dozen strands like glowing fiber-optic cable, leaving deep scorch marks wherever it touched.

Maria moved slowly, circling wide, giving them more than enough room as she stalked toward the weapons.

Xiesha punched outward, and Maria sensed the energy shoot from her. The other kyveryn's cloak wrapped around her completely, rippling under the assault as Xie's attack smashed home. Then it flapped open again, showing the kyveryn untouched.

The kyveryn smiled. Xiesha made a sound—if a church bell could sound contemptuous, this would be the sound it made. They both lifted their hands. The rift started to close again, to seal the kyveryn on her side, and then it ripped wider, before struggling there, back and forth in a war of inches.

Maria pulled the pin on the fragmentation grenade and tossed it through the rift. The safety lever made a merry jingle as it struck the court surface and bounced. The kyveryn glanced at Maria and then at the grenade. It hesitated. The break in the Seam started to close, not by inches, but sealing up by feet. The kyveryn thrust out its hand—

The grenade went off with a deep bass
whump
. Dark smoke and shrapnel filled the air. The kyveryn's floating cloak wrapped around her at the last instant, but Maria saw blue blood spray through the swirling mist. The kyveryn made a sound like a bell shattering under the strike of its clapper.

Xiesha slapped both her hands together. The Seam sealed shut so fast it severed through the lower half of the fallen Thresher, leaving the bottom of its body in this world, pumping blue fluid onto the court top. The frost began to melt. The humming died, leaving the quiet of a bomb crater after an air raid.

Xiesha sagged to one knee and threw out a hand to steady herself. Maria ran to her and put an arm around her. Xiesha smelled different, nothing she could pinpoint exactly, but a scent reminding her of ozone and Basil herbs. Her skin felt more like glass, smooth, cool to the touch and vibrating softly. Xiesha turned her solid white eyes to Maria. Her narrow mouth twitched into something like a smile. The spell reversed itself, particles coalescing seemingly out of thin air, dripping down onto her body as she changed back. Maria stood and watched, and a moment later the human-looking Xiesha, complete with clothes, joined her again.

For a second they stared at each other.

“I wish I had hair like that,” Maria said.

Xiesha opened her mouth…and laughter burst out.

A window scraped up somewhere above them in the Faneuil House and a voice shouted, “What the fuck you two doing down there! Goddamn firework— Holy shit!” The window slammed down again. Maria glanced up and saw lights coming on in the Faneuil House and across the street as well. Great. Apparently one couldn't lob grenades and shoot rockets with impunity in Beacon Hill. Not like in Roxbury anyway.

Xiesha pointed at the Christmas tree stands. The crystals had all shattered and their light had died. “All the wards are down. They can see and hear us again.”

“Then let's get the hell out of here.” In the distance she heard the rise and fall of sirens, and she had no doubt they were headed here. The basketball court was a mess. Melting frost and shallow trenches marred the court surface, along with cracks, burn marks and shrapnel damage. Spatters of blue fluid dotted the ground, and a wider pool formed near the severed pillar-like legs of the second Thresher.

“Oh shit,” Maria said. “What're we gonna do with that thing? The cops are gonna flip.”

Xiesha hurried over to the scattered cache of weapons. “There's little we can do now.” She stooped and picked up the incendiary grenade's cylindrical canister. “Thermate will damage it, but parts may remain. I'll take care of it. Grab the guns.”

Maria gathered up the guns, spare grenades and the empty rocket launcher, and tossed them in the biggest suitcase. Then she dumped the water and shoved the bowl and the rest of Xie's supplies into the duffel bag.

Xiesha ran back from the Thresher corpse. The incendiary grenade went off, sparks and intense heat making Maria's skin feel tight and shiny. She had to turn away and shield her eyes because the fire was too bright to look at. Someone yelled in surprise from one of the windows.

Xiesha grabbed her hand and the duffel bag and pulled her away. Maria could feel the gaze of dozens of sets of eyes burning into her back as they ran across the court, out the gate and up the street. The sirens grew steadily louder. The suitcase wheels clattered and bounced while the heavy case wrenched from side to side. She almost lost it once. Another time she nearly wrenched the handle off by accident, trying to keep it upright.

They finally reached the car, tossed their gear inside, hopped in and slammed the doors. The engine roared to life at once. The police sirens suddenly went quiet—an old cop trick. Kill the siren about a half a minute or so out, so the perps couldn't hear the cruiser's position, then draw the net tight.

She floored it, tires screaming, and prayed to no one in particular they wouldn't smash head-on into a cop cruiser when the Benz power-slid around the corner.

 

She was clear as soon as she hit Embankment Road. Twice she caught sight of more police cars racing past on side streets, but they were headed to the scene and she was in traffic and long gone. Only when she was back on 93 did she glance at Xiesha, not surprised when her voice shook. “Who
are
those fuckin' guys? They show up every single time.”

Xiesha frowned. “Like…a collection agency, I suppose.”

“Your credit rating must really blow.”

Xie didn't laugh. She only stared at her with wide, unblinking eyes. “Maria. Thank you.”