Green: The Beginning and the End (5 page)

Kara glanced at her friend. “It’s okay. He obviously knows at least some of the truth.” Back to Billy. “But you must understand how dangerous your knowledge is. I’m not sure you do. In the wrong hands, what you know could bring about more pain and suffering than you can possibly imagine.”

“Oh, I think I can imagine it just fine. Why do you think I’m here? I’ve spent every waking minute for the last year thinking of it, tracking you two down.”

“The information you have could end life as we know it,” Kara continued.

“It could bring the great dragon down from the sky and fill the oceans with blood,” Billy said. “Saint John’s Apocalypse.”

He could only imagine them blinking behind their shades. Too much, way too much. His imaginations were a thing that he should keep strictly to himself. He should know that by now. Not even these two had the capacity to go where his mind went, which is why he was suited—perhaps even prepared, preordained, chosen, all of that rot—to do what needed doing now.

“As a figure of speech,” he said, circling his hand for effect, “the dragon being the symbol of death, virus, nuclear holocaust, Armageddon. Point is, if it’s all true, if a person could cross into another world with Thomas’s blood, and then return with untold secrets, they might not only unravel the past, but also solve the problems of the future. Of now.”

“We get it,” Monique said.

He couldn’t read her true sentiment by her tone; he’d become too accustomed to reading people by their minds.

“So then. You’re going to bring me in?” Billy asked.

“We should lock you up and throw away the key, Billy,” Monique said.

“What she means,” Kara inserted, “is that none of us is trustworthy with what we know. We both try to stay . . . private. We’re not sure you appreciate just how difficult that can be.”

“I was raised in a monastery. I think that qualifies me.”

“Perhaps. But we don’t know where the blood is, Billy. Or if it even still exists. We’ve removed ourselves from that knowledge.”

“For everyone’s sake,” Monique said.

Nonsense. Billy knew then that they had no intention whatsoever of trusting him with the code to their front gates, much less the most potent secret the world had ever known. And why should they? He’d presented himself as a bit of a loose cannon.

But they didn’t know him. He’d danced with the devil himself, and he wouldn’t let these two witches stop him from doing it again.

“Well, then we’ll have to take this one step at a time,” Billy said. “I was wondering if you could recommend suitable accommodations.”

The door flew wide and a young woman walked in, dressed in a short black dress with spaghetti straps. Bare feet, petite physique. Her black hair fell loosely past square shoulders, and her soft brown eyes cut sharply through the world.

“Excuse me, Mother. So sorry to interrupt. Henri tells me you’ve decided to sell our New York research laboratory. One of
my
laboratories the last time I checked. Tell me why Henri has decided to speak lies.”

“So nice to see you, Janae,” Monique returned in a soothing voice. “How was your trip to France?”

“As expected.” No further explanation. Monique’s daughter, this stunning creature with a fluid French accent who looked to be in her early twenties, seemed to notice Billy for the first time. She turned her gaze on him and peeled him open with that first look.

And who is this young pip? An American, clearly, dressed to attend a rock concert. What kind of fools is Mother exposing herself to these days? And what are those monstrous glasses doing on Mother’s face?

“Mr. Rediger, please meet my daughter, Janae.” Billy saw that a thin smile had nudged the corner of Monique’s mouth northward. “But then you probably already know all about her, don’t you? Perhaps more than I do.”

The bold pronouncement left Janae silent for the moment. Billy thought it best to leave the young woman wondering.

“You might want to consider wearing dark glasses, dear Janae. Our visitor from America seems to have the ability to read minds.”

Again, silence from the spirited one. Billy decided then that he would out himself fully to the dark-haired beauty. One, because he found her strangely compelling, and two, because he thought it wise to give her a reason to find him just as interesting.

“Young pip?” He stared into her eyes. “This young pip who’s dressed to attend a rock concert is inside your mind right now, dear Janae. And what a delicious treat it is, all that hostility and resentment for having never known your father. He vanished when you were a small child, and you’re thinking even now that he held secrets that would complete you. Isn’t that what all orphans believe?”

She blinked. Her mouth parted slightly but held back the gasp some might utter when so quickly stripped. He liked her already.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m an orphan as well.”

“I think we all get the point,” Monique said. “He’s quite dangerous. I would tread carefully.”

But Billy wasn’t finished. “I’m here for the vial of blood that your mother harvested from Thomas Hunter three decades ago. Maybe you know where it is. Or you could help me find it.”

He might as well have dropped a bomb in the room.

Janae looked at her mother. “What blood?”

“This is completely unacceptable,” Kara snapped, rising from her chair.

“On the contrary, this is the only acceptable course,” Billy returned. “You need to keep an eye on me. What better way than to keep me close? You know I won’t put up with either of you babysitting me.”

His implication could hardly be stronger. He took the fact that Janae didn’t immediately reject the notion of “babysitting” him as a sign of her interest. A glance into her eyes confirmed this.

On second look,
interest
was a bad word choice to describe her disposition toward him.
Fascination
was better. Billy turned back to the others.

Kara was clearly on rough ground. “Surely you can’t—”

“It’s okay, Kara,” Monique said. “He’s right. He can stay in the guest quarters until his curiosity is satisfied. God knows we’re all better off with him here than out there where real damage can be done.”

Monique de Raison thought she could control him, Billy realized. Anyone else and he would dismiss the possibility outright. But Monique was not anyone else. Neither was Kara.

Nor, for that matter, was Janae, who was still trying to understand him.

“Please give us a moment, Billy,” Monique said. “Williston will show you to the guest building. Janae will be right out.”

Billy stood and walked for the door. The scent of Janae’s musky perfume filled him with a sudden desire as he walked past her. Those deep, dark secrets her father had hidden from her seemed to beckon him. There was something about Janae that pulled at him like a strong tide.

“Take your time,” he said, stepping from the room.

4

The Future

The Circle hung on the unfolding drama as if not quite sure it was all really happening. One moment they’d been awash in Thomas’s poetic love for her and for Elyon; the next, the Gathering celebration had been flattened with this insane challenge to the essence of what they held sacred.

The Great Romance was being debated at the end of a sword! Is this what she’d drowned for? They all waited for Thomas.

But Thomas wasn’t stopping the lunacy.

Elyon’s people had never adopted a hierarchy of government that allowed a few to control the many. Guide, yes. But each person was encouraged to follow his heart. They’d all seen what religion had done when the Horde followed their priests, first Ciphus, then Witch, then Sucrow, and now the worst of the lot, Ba’al.

Thomas had a particular distaste for manipulation through religion, preferring faith and Elyon’s Great Romance. But this . . . this was ridiculous.

Chelise glanced at him and saw that his jaw was set. He was going to allow them to fight.

Samuel launched himself at a knee-high boulder, planted his right foot near the top, and threw himself into a backflip high over Marie’s head. He brought his sword down as he sailed above her, a devastating swing that took full advantage of not only his well-muscled arms, but his leg strength, transferred now to his downward thrust. Thomas had told her that the splitter, as the move had been dubbed, had been named back in the days of war for its ability to cut a warrior in half, from head to crotch, with one blow.

Marie dropped to one knee, lifted her sword—one hand on the handle, one on the broad blade—and jerked the weapon over her head as a shield. The sound of Samuel’s blade crashing into Marie’s clanged through the valley, echoing off the cliff walls.

Would Samuel have completed his swing if Marie hadn’t reacted in time? The impetuous fool had lost his mind.

Marie’s braided hair swirled around her face as she pivoted, still on one knee, then lunged for Samuel’s body before he landed and gathered his bearings.

Samuel anticipated her. Somehow he managed to withdraw a gutting knife. With a flip of his wrist he turned the knife back along his forearm and deflected Marie’s sword. He landed with a chuckle and used his momentum to throw himself into a back handspring.

But Marie was already swinging around, sword extended for a second blow. This one nicked Samuel’s chin as he threw himself out of the way.

Marie snatched her blade back, and Samuel righted himself. He touched his chin, felt the blood flowing over his fingers, and glared, face red. Marie stood on guard, breathing steadily through her nostrils.

A grin slowly twisted Samuel’s lips, but this was not the look of humor or the stuff of play. This was a fierce grin, strung with resolve and rage.

“Now,” he said. “Now you will see.”

“You want to kill me, Samuel?” She circled to her left, opposite him. “Huh? Is that what the love of Elyon has taught you?”

“Was that Elyon who just drew first blood? I could have sworn it was you.”

“Only because you challenged to kill my lover,” she said.

“One for the sake of many.”

“You wouldn’t kill me, Samuel.”

He responded in a low, guttural voice that could have belonged to an animal, Chelise thought. “Then you don’t know me.”

Samuel moved so quickly that Marie didn’t have time to deflect. She could only jerk to her right as his knife flashed from his left hand, sliced through the night air, and thudded securely into her left shoulder.

Where it quivered, then stilled, buried two inches in her flesh.

Chelise was too stunned to act on the horror that swept through her mind. Thomas looked on, immobilized by outrage or letting history take its own course, she couldn’t tell, but she wanted to slap him and tell him to make them stop.

They lived in a brutal world, but the way of the Circle was to avoid this kind of brutality in favor of love, dancing, and feasting deep into the night.

“Stop this.” Mikil said, stepping forward. “For the love of Elyon, stop this foolishness.”

“Back off.” The growl came from Marie now.

Johan joined Mikil. “She’s right, this is proving nothing.”

Marie jerked the blade from her shoulder and sent it flying in Johan’s direction. “Back off!”

He slapped the blade from the air before it reached him and snarled. The general in him hadn’t forgotten how to move.

But before any of them could move to interfere, Marie threw herself forward and swung her blade.

Again, Samuel deflected the blow.

Again, Marie swung.

Then they were in close combat, thrusting and parrying, filling the valley with grunts and the clash of metal against metal.

The first sounds from the crowd came in the form of gasps when either Marie or Samuel narrowly escaped the opponent’s blade. Then cheers of support or objection rose from a small number when Marie landed a hard blow to Samuel’s right leg, severing his leather thigh guard in two.

The crowd is being pulled in,
Chelise thought.
They are throwing aside their love for Elyon and blindly following this sickening orgy of violence.
The crowd’s cheers of support or opposition swelled. Then one cry rose above them all and sliced through Chelise’s mind.

“Silence the Horde lover, Samuel! Gut this child of Qurong!”

Chelise’s blood ran cold. The call, a woman’s shrill cry rising above the others, had come from the right side.

“They took my child. Take theirs! Vengeance belongs to Elyon, and he will drink their blood as they have become drunk on ours.”

Samuel and Marie couldn’t possibly have heard the voice amid the cacophony of shouts, the roar of three thousand voices now either crying out in outrage or throwing their support behind one of the combatants.

Chelise’s son and daughter by marriage fought on.

There it was again, off to her right. She isolated the voice. “Gut the son of Teeleh. May Qurong and Ba’al, the servant of Teeleh, rot in hell. Qurong is the son of Teeleh, and the Horde who hunt us are Shataiki, who belong in a river of blood.” Then even bolder, so that Chelise forgot how to breathe. “May Qurong rot in hell, and all who call themselves loyal to him die under the sword of Elyon!”

“Silence!” Chelise screamed. “Silence!”

But her voice was hardly heard above the clash of swords and cries of outrage on all sides. Many of the people were protesting, she saw. But enough backed Marie or Samuel to spur on their bitter battle.

“Thomas!” She spun back, saw that Thomas had vanished from her side, and quickly searched the crowd. Instead of finding her husband, she was drawn to the sight of a woman who stood on a pile of boulders, fists raised to the sky. She was glaring at Chelise. It could have been the firelight, but the woman’s eyes appeared red in the night.

“Death to Qurong and all of his bloodthirsty offspring!”

Chelise took a step back in horror.

Her love for the Horde was a personal love, directed toward her own father, Qurong, and her mother, Patricia, neither of whom she’d seen in ten years. She’d become preoccupied with their rescue from the disease this last year, so much so that Thomas had asked her to stop bringing it up publicly. She needed to curb her incessant, affectionate talk about the leader of the Horde, who had ordered their extermination. Qurong was rumored to walk the halls of his palace, cursing the albinos who’d absconded with his daughter and turned her into an animal. Her love for her father was being met by blank stares, a sure sign that she was testing everyone’s limits.

Chelise glared at the woman who ripped her father to shreds in a high-pitched voice. “‘Vengeance is mine,’ says the maker of all that is pure. He will cut off the impure branch, Qurong and his bloodthirsty priests!”

She knew then that if this one woman challenged her to a fight over the fate of her father, she would accept. She would defend Qurong to her death over the insults of this one witch on the stone.

Marie was doing no less, she realized. Confusion swirled about her.

Marie and Samuel exchanged a round of clashing blows, each effectively deflected by the other. But there was more blood now. Marie’s thigh lay open, and the side of Samuel’s head was bleeding.

Having sought the right to kill Horde, he was being soundly beaten in a fair fight, Chelise thought. She caught herself and shook the idea from her mind. Had the resentment of their tormentors grown so deep that they could no longer tolerate the abuse? The running and the hiding, the death of a loved one . . .

Just last week one of the camp’s finest dancers, Jessica of Northern, had lost her son, Stevie, when he went out to hunt deer with two of his friends. They were young and bold, and their search had taken them into the forest, where Horde assassins called Throaters had fallen on them from the trees and killed Stevie. Jessica had wailed for a day before falling hoarse.

The thoughts spun through Chelise’s head at a dizzying pace, punctuated by the cries and clanging of swords. Both combatants were panting, bleeding, caught up in a sole objective now: survival.

She had to stop this. It didn’t matter that they had the right to the contest, as Ronin claimed. Thomas had to stop this before one of their children was killed. It would fracture the Circle. It would lead to more death!

But Chelise didn’t know what to do.

And then it didn’t matter, because in the space of time it took Chelise to blink, Marie was on her back, flailing for a grip. She’d fallen. Tripped on a small ribbon of rock that edged the flat stone.

Samuel, seeing the opening, hurled himself forward. He didn’t go for her throat. She would have expected that. Instead, his right foot made contact with the butt of her blade and sent it spinning through the air.

Marie was left without a weapon.

A roar erupted from the crowd.

The woman with red eyes screamed at Chelise.

Samuel dropped one knee on Marie’s gut, effectively preventing her from twisting free. His blade slammed against the rock an inch from her neck, spraying her right cheek with shards of stone.

That resounding crash of metal against stone silenced the Gathering. But the night was not quiet. A wail of bitter remorse cut through the air.

Chelise had heard this once, only once, three years ago when twenty-three women and children were beheaded by Throaters while the men were out searching for a lost child. Thomas had heard the news, dropped to his knees, and cried to the sky.

She spun around, crushed by the cry of anguish.

Thomas was on his knees on a twenty-foot cliff behind her, arms spread, sobbing at the night sky. “Elyonnnnnn . . . Elyonnnnnn . . .”

For long seconds he wailed unabashedly, struggling to find breath, trembling like a man who’d just learned that his child had been found dead at the bottom of a cliff. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he wept. For his Maker. For his children. For the Circle. For the Horde.

All around the valley, the Gathering stood rooted to the earth, cowering under this horrible sound. Behind Chelise, Marie and Samuel breathed hard, but there was no sound of swinging blades.

“It’s over,” Thomas wept. “It’s over!”

“No,” Chelise said.

He cried to the sky. “You’ve left us.” Then even louder, “You’ve left us!”

“No,” she said again, begging him to hear her. “No, he has not left us.”

His chest rose and fell.

“No, Elyon has not left us,” she cried. “I did not die for this!”

Thomas lowered his chin and blinked. He looked lost, a shell of the man who’d led the mighty Forest Guard to victory in campaign after campaign before Qurong overtook them. For a moment, Chelise thought he’d lost himself in hopelessness, a man stripped of all he once treasured.

His eyes slowly cleared and he staggered to his feet, looked around at the Gathering. His gaze settled on his son and daughter. Marie still lay on her back, pinned under Samuel’s sword.

“Stand up,” Thomas said.

Samuel stared up at his father. He made no move to relinquish his hard-won upper hand.

“Get up!” Thomas roared. His voice was heavy with rage, and it seemed to have caught Samuel off guard.

His son slowly removed his sword and stepped back. Marie rolled over and pushed herself to her knees. Then to her feet. They stared up at their father, wounded and bleeding.

“Is this what we have come to?” Thomas demanded. “A band of vagabonds who would return to their own captivity? You want to join the Horde again?”

“We should kill them, not join them,” the woman who’d challenged Chelise said in a low voice. She might as well have screamed.

Thomas thrust his hand at the horizon. “Killing is what
they
do. To kill them is to join them!” He paced atop the cliff, and with each footfall, Chelise felt her fear grow. She didn’t like the sight of the desperation that possessed him.

“Is it Horde that you want? You’ve lost your belief in the difference between us and them, is that it?”

“No,” Mikil offered. “No, Thomas, that’s—”

“You’re doubting that Elyon is here, among us? That he cares? That he has any power? You wonder if he loves his bride the way he once did, if the Great Romance has become nothing more than the talk of old men around a campfire? Is that it?” He shouted his challenge.

“Thomas—”

“Enough! You had your chance to defend your hearts. Now it’s my turn.”

The words turned the night cold. It wasn’t often that he was like this, but Chelise knew him well enough to know that he’d made a decision, and no force this side of heaven or hell would change it.

“My own son has challenged the very fabric of our way, and he has drawn my own daughter into a fight to the death. Fine. Then I, Thomas of Hunter, both their father and the supreme commander of this Circle, will issue my own challenge.”

He stood above them, legs spread to the width of his shoulders, hands gripped to fists.