Histories of the Void Garden, Book 1: Pyre of Dreams (48 page)

With the force
of the first impact, Julius felt his body tumble through the air,
his head landing hard against the guard railing at the side of the
bridge and through the ringing numbness, he watched one of the two
men fall towards the sea. Hanging on at the edge of consciousness,
Julius wondered how many of the men and women amongst the crowd
were Leechborn. Was there enough for an ambush, or were there only
a few scattered here and there? He heaved the second man’s leg off
his chest, which freed up his head enough so that he was able to
get a better look at their situation. The silhouetted forms
climbing the steel cables hand over hand provided all of the
information he needed.

There was a
faint beeping, somewhere behind his head. He reached a hand back
and picked up the sat-phone.

“Not a good
time.

Tiernan’s
voice, “You’re needed back home.”

“Impossible.”

Looking
Eastward, he could see the soldiers starting to pour out of their
vehicles or taking up positions at mounted gun turrets. Little use
the turrets would be, although he hoped it wouldn’t take the troops
long to realize that clean head-shots could still be effective.

“Julius,
there’s a situation here. How soon can you extract?”

“Extraction is
not an option. If we could, it would be disastrous, but I’m telling
you point blank, there is no way we can extract.”

A wave of
nausea hit him as the man next to him started to move again. He
tried to pull himself up. The man swept his legs from under him
before he had time to react, and just as suddenly, the man was on
top of him. He tucked his chin towards his chest, trying to protect
his neck, but hands moved to his shoulders, lifting his body
forward and slamming his head back against the railings.

There was no
sense of control, the man was moving too quickly for Julius to make
any conscious effort to command the leeches. Julius knew that in
dire circumstances, it was best that way. They knew what to do.

Sergeant Bickersley’s
legs writhed back and forth, feeling the metal give a little more
with each thrust. He was desperate now. The air was thick with
acrid fumes. He knew it was only a matter of time until the
humvee’s engine blew. That, or more worryingly, the Truck’s engine,
which he figured must be more or less directly on top of him. He
couldn’t tell if the others had managed to free themselves, but
from the nightmare of gunfire and yelling, he understood that being
free of the wreck would not be the end of his troubles. There was
very little room for him to move his head and although his left arm
was unobstructed, his right arm was trapped between the door and a
buckled section of the humvee’s roof. Through the torn fabric of
his jacket, he could see that the skin of his arm was rippling with
movement, as if his muscles were convulsing, but he could also make
out that there was an odd sheen to his skin, more pearlescent than
sweat.

He closed his
eyes, focusing his efforts on his legs, pushing once more, then
pulling his knees upwards, his feet wedging tight against the seat.
One more kick, then … The explosion tore through his senses, the
flash of light burning bright in his retina, even through closed
eyelids. His body folded awkwardly as he was blown through the
passenger door, metal and burning debris covering him where he fell
at the roadside. He tried to roll, but he was unable to achieve any
leverage with his right leg so he pushed with his right arm,
heaving his upper body out from under the flaming detritus. The
fire was everywhere about him, no matter how he turned, he was
unable to escape it. His vision recovering from the blast, he
caught sight of his clothes, fire rippling across the surface of
the fabric. He started to tear at them, fingers ripping and clawing
at the cloth in frenzied terror.

When the
woman’s foot made contact with his stomach, he thought at first
that she was trying to help him, he even attempted to shout his
thanks, although what escaped his lips was a tortured gasp. The
second kick was absolutely clear in its message, connecting with
his chest with enough force to crack several of his ribs. He wasn’t
ready for the third kick, and he could feel that he was losing his
battle with the fire. He rolled blindly, hoping that he was moving
away from his assailant, but instead he felt his arm wrapping
awkwardly around a leg. He heard her scream as she fell and he
clambered desperately over her body, unsure of what he could
possibly do now that he was on top of her. Her fingers were
grasping at his arms, her teeth clamping down on his shoulder, the
crushing pain in his chest prevented him from responding with any
vigor. Then she was screaming and he couldn’t understand why, but
he wrapped his arms around her as tightly as he could manage.

Her strength
was tremendous. He felt her struggle to her feet, even with him
clawing at her, his hands in her hair and digging into the flesh of
her back. Opening his eyes, he could see the plume of flames rising
from their bodies and he understood now why she continued to
scream. Then he was falling, wind buffeting him as she tried to
prise him off her body. As the water swallowed him and blackness
engulfed his senses, he felt her fingers loosen finally.

Unable to listen to
any more, Tiernan threw his phone at the wall. There were a great
number of Second Realmers and Blood-Bastards on home soil, but
Julian’s army would have been something altogether different. His
best option now would be Arctum, but they presented their own
problem. They needed leadership.

He watched the
drone reconnaissance of the Stupins Institute. There were no
building plans on file. The best guess was that there were only a
handful of people in the complex, but without building plans there
was no real way of knowing what they would be facing.

With a small
militia from Arctum, he felt confident that he could drive home the
right message. It felt right though, that he should lead the
charge.

Stephanie felt the
weight over her eyelids and the bridge of her nose, felt the touch
of soft fingertips on the skin of her face. She opened her eyes
slowly, bracing herself for what the world would bring.

Stanwick spoke
gently, “Your dad’s downstairs with the others. They’ve been up all
night, fretting.”

“They shouldn’t
fret.” The room filled so quickly with thoughts.

Stanwick
continued to stroke the child’s forehead, “You saw it didn’t
you?”

Stephanie
nodded.

“Follow me,”
Stanwick whispered, “All of you.”

Down the grand
staircase, Stephanie’s finger’s slalomed lazily down the length of
the banister, her stick finger skier hotdogging it off the
banister’s end as she jumped off the final step to the ground
floor. She paused for a moment where the banister arose from the
floor to carry on its winding ways deeper into the house. Her
fingers rocked back and forth, the skier preparing to launch. It
was a good run, zigzagging, knuckles juddering as the skier
contended with imagined moguls, then feet spread wide, one knee
bent, down to the first basement level.

Lost in her
game, Stephanie wasn’t aware how many levels they had descended by
the time the banister’s graceful curve finally offered an
unforeseen obstacle for the skier, the thick wood alighting briefly
on the palm of a hand which had been carved from Frosterley Marble,
the polished limestone fingers reaching up from the floor to stroke
the banister’s underside, the oak seemingly melting into the floor
as it followed the form the wrist. Stanwick stopped, allowing
Stephanie to stroke the cool marble.

“It’s lovely.”
She looked up at Stanwick, knowing, “You made it.”

Stanwick
smiled, and it dawned on Stephanie that it was just Stanwick, and
that here, there was just her.

“I can see!”
She bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, shaking
Stanwick’s hands.

Stanwick
laughed with her, feeling the child’s joy so fully, understanding
that her elation was complex and multi-faceted. Because Stephanie
was well aware that her eyes had not suddenly healed; rather she
could see clearly because through everything, through all of the
opportunities, the trillions of evolutionary successes and
ancestral happy accidents that had to happen for her to get there;
through it all, being there, right there, right then, holding
Stanwick’s hand was an inevitability.

The distant walls
shone with the light of the universe, distant galaxies spiraling,
exploding, colliding, all wending their way through the infinite.
Stephanie let loose Stanwick’s hand, running to the immense walls
of glardium.

“Wait,”
Stanwick called after her, “Don’t touch the walls just yet.”

Stephanie ran
back to her side and held her hand, trusting.

“It’s dazzling,
but it’s not stars Stephanie. It’s not the universe.”

Stephanie
didn’t speak her reply. She didn’t have to. The heaviness, the
sheer weight of emotion Stanwick felt massing in her eyes, her
chest tightening as it hadn’t in more than a century, because she
knew that she was wrong.

And now, so
many feelings that Stanwick had lived without. Suddenly afraid,
because she had been so wrong about something that she’d known
throughout all of her long years. Scared to allow Stephanie to use
the hopper, because she realized that she had never understood it.
Not really.

Then
Stephanie’s small fingers squeezed hers, and everything was
still.

Stanwick was
ready. She walked on until they reached the middle of the wall,
where the chest sat waiting. Stanwick traced her finger along the
chest’s lid and it opened silently. She took out the glardium weave
and the neck brace, placing them on the floor, then she stroked a
small glistening strip on the floor and the recording bank rose
with a soft whispered sibilant.

She led
Stephanie to the wall, turning her around with a gentle push of the
hand.

“Lean back…
that’s it.”

Stephanie
closed her eyes and smiled.

“In a moment, I
want you to think about what you dreamed last night. Remember it.
Let it pour out of you.”

Stephanie
spread out her fingers and eased her hands backwards slowly,
dipping her fingers into the farthest reaches of time, and as
Stanwick laid the glardium weave over her face, Stephanie’s heart
stopped.

A minute passed
between each beat, and Stanwick held her own hand to the wall,
feeling the future pouring out of the child. A heart beating in
cosmological time, a hundred lifetimes lived between each
contraction of those small muscles.

In the
darkness, when she dreamed no more, Stephanie felt his breath, and
the screaming began.

Panicked,
Stanwick pulled the glardium from Stephanie’s face, her hand
steadying the neck brace, then dropping it to the floor with the
cloth. She sat cross legged, cradling Stephanie, her index finger
mopping the little trail of blood which had dripped from her nose.
She knew Stephanie’s dread. She’d felt it herself. She’d felt that
dread for so long, but it was necessary. She had always known it
was necessary.

As Stephanie
stirred, Stanwick hugged her close, stroking the back of her head,
fingers pulling carefully and lovingly through her hair.

“You felt it.”
Stanwick asked.

“Yes.”

“You
understood?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t mean
for you to see that.”

Stephanie
squeezed tight, and her perfect blue eyes met with Stanwick’s.

“Don’t lie to
yourself.”

Stanwick let go
of the child, shattered, and ashamed, because she had seen her
first glimpse of the woman that Stephanie would one day become.

Hannah Beach hadn’t
moved away from the TV for sixteen hours. It had been by chance
that she’d caught the news report about the chase. When she’d seen
that brief glimpse of Stephanie’s face, a couple of frames caught
by one of the patrol car’s dashboard cams, Hannah had sat down, her
whole body shaking, and she hadn’t been able to get up since
then.

Every time it
looked as if there was nothing more to report, no more news on the
subject, she’d pick up the thread on another station. More
salacious headlines.

Girl killed in
police chase related to gas station murder.

Gas station
survivor reveals all: Feral wolf child on gas stop rampage.

Mechanicsburg
PA Police Patrols report no bodies found at scene of crash.

Then of course,
later in the evening, she had read the footer feed. Sam Cushing
announces plans to write and direct self penned epic “The Kings
Mosaic”. When the full significance of Cushing’s interview dawned
on her, she threw up in her mouth. To say that she was feeling
emotionally scarred would have been such a feat of understatement.
She was the fucking English Patient of emotional scarring.

As the morning dawned,
she was beginning to appreciate the way David’s mind worked,
because jumping from one station to the next, she could see that
all of the stories were connected, although none of the reporters
joined the dots, because they couldn’t, because the man told them
that joining the dots wasn’t allowed. She had been up way too long.
Oh, she had looked up the Stupins Institute, because of course
there was more to that. No one had bought the book. Who did that
bitch think she was? So when the news feed had pinged up it’s
cheery little message that the national guard were assaulting the
cult leader of a heretofore unheard of cult in West Virginia,
Hannah was on it.

The shelling had
started at nine in the morning, and Hannah had cried, horrified at
the possibility that she was correct, that her Spiff was there,
that her brother was there, but the alternative was worse. The
thought that they had died in a police chase was impossible. She
couldn’t process it. So she watched the shaky footage of the
shelling, the walls of the building crumbling, the drone strike
systematically dismantling the regal building.