Taggart’s eyes showed real recognition, even concern, at the sound of his grandson’s name. “Emmett—where’s Emmett?”
Ella held his gaze, willing his mind to reach further, remember more: Remember who he was, what he had been, remember his duty. . . . “You have to get everyone out to the light, do you understand?” To safety . . . remember your duty . . . to keep them all safe. . . .
Taggart nodded, his eyes looking at her with genuine comprehension now. She stepped aside, as he began to act on his returning memories, taking her place as leader of the group as they all moved on toward the entrance, drawn toward the true meaning of the light at the end of the tunnel. . . .
JAKE FINALLY FINISHED off the second of the two aliens, and allowed himself to take a deep breath of relief. They’d been a damn sight harder to take down when they weren’t caught by surprise: as fast as roaches, and as deadly with their light-weapon as he was.
He’d begun to think their own weapons protected them a lot better than his did, until he’d gotten lucky with his shots and hit a couple of vulnerable spots. He’d been even luckier that they hadn’t hit any of his—he remembered what the weapon had done to Dolan.
Finishing the fight had driven him out of hiding, he suddenly noticed, and into the main cavern. He searched the space around him for movement, not seeing any other aliens. The weapon closed up again, as if it felt safe . . . but he knew better by now than to believe it was telling him everything.
The cavern could’ve held half the town of Absolution; he couldn’t be sure the demons were all outside, through the clouds of steam or whatever it was that fogged the space around him. Its form was constantly shifting under cold blue lights or in bright-hot hellshine. All around him he saw the strange shapes of things he remembered from his dream, although he had no more clue as to what they were than he’d had when he first saw them.
It was hot in here, not cool, like caverns usually were. He realized this must be where the aliens’ entire ore-smelting process went on, as they extracted gold from the stone they’d stripped out of the mesa’s interior. He wondered if this place actually held their entire mining operation. It didn’t look like any kind of mine he’d ever seen. But then, he was probably being an ass to think it would—
He looked up, and up, realizing the cavern was almost as high as it was wide and deep, although he couldn’t really make out the ceiling. Jesus God, they must have eaten out the whole inside of the mesa. How could anyone—anything—even do that . . . and where the hell had they put the tailings?
He became aware of something suspended from the heights, filling the middle of the space all the way to the ground. His mind couldn’t even begin to picture what it was, until he suddenly remembered Ella saying, “The rest of the ship is underground.”
The real base of the ship: that had to be what it was. The rest must be mining equipment, and supplies, and ways of dividing up the space. . . . He turned slowly where he stood, gazing around as his mind tried to hold onto a reality that kept trying to warp beyond recognition.
He saw and remembered the streams of golden tears rising in lines into the air . . . or were they falling? . . . as tall glowing cylinders crept along the walls, eating away at the stone—mining it. They were machines, like the flyer, moving as if they had minds of their own, although this time he couldn’t see anyone—anything—even directing them. He moved closer to one, fascinated, feeling the heat that radiated from it as he watched the streaming tears of gold.
Was that real gold, being processed from the rocks? Or was it beads of heated light—some kind of bound lightning, like the blue beam from his weapon? The urge to put out his hand and touch a glowing strand, to find out what the golden tears really were, was almost irresistible. He resisted, remembering that either of those things would burn his hand off.
He turned suddenly to find Ella at his side. “What the hell are you doing back here?” he asked, surprised, worried, and caught off-guard as usual, as she found him gawking like a damn fool at the aliens’ machine.
But she smiled at him, and her smile said she was more than relieved to find him in one piece; her glance reassured him that everything was all right—the captives were free. She looked at the mining machines, and her smile disappeared; she stared at them like he had, as if even she was horribly fascinated by something about them.
But then she turned away, gesturing at the ship. As if she expected he’d be smart enough to figure out what that was, she said, “When they realize what’s going on, they’ll pull up anchor and leave. We won’t be able to hold them long.”
Her face looked deadly serious again. She started away, leading him toward the ship. She holstered her gun as she walked and unbuckled her gun belt, handing it to him. “I need the bracelet. Take it off.”
Jake took the gun belt from her, out of habit, without understanding what she’d just said. “What for?” he asked, as he cinched on the belt.
“I think I can use it to stop the ship from leaving.”
He started, and glanced down at his wrist. “I can’t get it off—” He touched the sleeping weapon with his hand.
“Yes you can,” she said, with that way she had.
“How?” Jake asked.
“Same way you shoot it, with your mind.” She was starting to look at him now like he was slow in the head.
He glanced at the metal cuff, thinking maybe she was right, since he’d never had any idea how it worked. The only time it had done what he’d wanted was when he freed Ella from the flyer. But that was . . . different. He’d never even known why the gun had latched onto him in the first place, any more than he’d understood the rest of it.
Unless the gun hadn’t seen any difference between him and the aliens . . . him and a demon.
But he wasn’t a demon; he was a human being— Maybe the thing had never understood him, either.
All he knew was that if Ella needed it, the gun was going to figure him out, right now—He stared at the weapon, thinking, Get off me, you bloodsucking leech. I don’t want you. I don’t belong to you. . . . Goddammit, go to her . . . she needs you—! Trying every possible order, demand, curse or threat that came into his mind. He tried to force his fingers under its edge, uselessly, as his frustration grew. “This is not working.”
“Stop thinking. Look at me.” Ella’s eyes met his, and their gazes locked; he felt her draw his mind into a place of almost ethereal calm.
She was the real Morning Star, come down out of the sky to save his world. . . . He remembered her as she walked out of the fire, glowing with unearthly light, walking toward him . . . remembered her standing on the hilltop, gazing up at the stars. . . .
“I told you, stop thinking,” Ella said. He could have sworn her cheeks showed a faint blush.
“I’m not thinking!” he said. But how could he not think about her, when just looking at her made him weak in the knees, and not with fear. . . .
Alice had made him believe there might be more to him—something good, that made his existence here more than just a blight on the world. . . . But Ella made him believe anything was possible . . . made him believe there might be something good in every human being, if they only had the chance to prove it—
Ella pulled him into her arms and pressed her mouth against his in a kiss filled with frustration, desperation . . . loneliness, as deep and vast as the space between the stars. . . .
Jake’s arms went around her and he kissed her back, the way he’d wanted to kiss her last night on the starry hill. He answered her with all the passion for life, the hunger for love, the human need that he’d buried under a pile of stones so deep he’d almost forgotten they had ever existed inside him. . . . Feeling the human warmth of her body, her lips on his, her sudden aching hunger, impossible to separate from his own. . . .
She kissed him then with all the longing of someone who’d denied passion, need . . . any love that could touch her heart or soul too deeply . . . longer ago than he could imagine: terrified of her ow
n vulnerability after so much pain. . . .
She’d willingly abandoned herself when she became a warrior in a cause that was greater, more universal, more important than any individual’s heart or mind, body or soul.
Until now, here, trapped in the paradox of this human form she wore, with its brain so entangled with its body’s needs, logic and emotion so intimately bound to each other that her struggle to reach the conflicted soul of one outcast human man had brought it all back to her—the true reason why she had chosen to fight, and what exactly it was that she had really been fighting for, for so long. . . .
Jake understood, with every fiber of his being, as the barrier between their separate minds vanished, and everything they were became one: She couldn’t go on, now, without letting him know, letting herself remember, the only emotion that had ever created something out of nothing, instead of tearing down all of existence . . . the one true thing that could make his people, and her own, into something more than the ruthless monsters they fought to save themselves from—
I love you, Jake thought, and when she answered him he felt as if the universe itself reached through her, and touched him. . . .
There was an odd small chik as the demon gun’s lock unset, as the aliens’ manacle sprang open and dropped from his wrist, setting him free.
The moment outside of space and time ended: Ella’s arms were no longer around him, and he had to let her go. The weapon lay on the floor like a lifeless piece of scrap metal.
Ella picked it up; she hesitated, looking at him again with an unearthly light still shining in her eyes, and the strangest, saddest, most joyful smile he’d ever seen. And then she turned and started away, circling the base of the ship, touching a deliberate sequence of different-colored metals on the weapon’s seemingly dead surface as she moved.
Jake shook off his bedazzlement and followed her, scanning the shifting clouds around them, the shadowed crevices and blind corners, for anything more substantial than a shadow. For the smile she’d given him by that lake in the desert, he’d willingly led her back into Hell. For the way she’d left him feeling now, he’d willingly follow her beyond forever. . . .
A series of flashing lights appeared on the demons’ weapon. Jake heard a faint rising whine like the sound of a distant engine struggling to pull an overloaded train—Energy building up . . . in a weapon that fired energy like a bolt of lightning.
He realized she meant for the thing to explode. He couldn’t even imagine what would happen if something like that released all its energy at once; it would make being struck by lightning seem like spring rain.
“I have to go inside.” Ella stopped, looking up at the side of the ship again. “It’s the only way—if I get into its core I can stop them.”
Jake looked up too, seeing some kind of open hatchway, and a dark tunnel that led God only knew where, into what kind of danger. “I’m coming with you.”
“No.” She shook her head. “This isn’t my home, Jake. It isn’t my destiny to stay.”
He blinked, not understanding her sudden refusal. “I’m not letting you go up there alo—”
The energy beam from an alien weapon exploded the ground inches from their feet. They took cover behind an outcrop of rock by the base of the ship; more weapons-fire burst around them, pinning them there.
Jake peered through a crack in the rocks. He saw three aliens advancing on them. . . . The one in the lead had a red scar distorting its face.
That scar. . . . He remembered that scar, from his dream: He’d put that scar there, with the one of the aliens’ own cutters. . . . Alice—
For a second, memory blinded him again. He forced his vision clear, vengeance and cold fury burning away the echoes of the past.
His eyes went to Ella again, trapped between impossible choices. He had no time to think about it, as Ella turned toward the side of the ship, reaching up to find handholds on its surface. She began to climb, her focus completely on the task she had come to accomplish, now, with the demon weapon she’d made into a stick of alien dynamite clutched tightly in her hand. He caught hold of her and boosted her up as far as he could toward the opening; with a quick scramble, she was inside.
“You are a good man,” she murmured, looking down at him from the open hatchway. Her eyes, her mind, insisted that whatever he believed, whoever he’d been before, those words had always been the truth, and always would be. . . . “Goodbye, Jake.”
She disappeared into the tunnel; the hatch began to close after her.
“No—Wait!” Jake reached up, gripping handholds to climb after her.
Another beam of blue light scarred the ship’s side just above his hands, leaving him no choice: Ella had to do what she’d come here to do. He had to buy her the time to do it. He drew his revolver, and his finger pinned back the trigger.
He ran out into the demons’ line of sight, getting them into his own sights at the same time, and fanned the revolver’s hammer, not thinking, just reacting, letting his perfectly honed reflexes take over. He couldn’t afford to fail her, or fail himself, now.
Against all the odds, he made a perfect five-shot run: The first bullet hit Red Scar in the neck and sent it stumbling back, screeching. The next two struck the second alien in the eyes, blinding it; two more hit the third one’s temple.
Red Scar retreated into the steam; its eyes fixed him with an implacable stare. Jake met the red-eyed stare with his own unrelenting hatred before the demon disappeared from sight. He kept moving forward.
When Red Scar had vanished, Jake snapped open the barrel of his pistol, clearing shells out of the chamber, reloading all six chambers with mindless efficiency. No point in playing it safe now; if the gun went off, even by accident, he’d make sure it hit something besides himself. . . .
He closed in on the blinded alien where it lay thrashing on the ground, and took aim. The gunshot echoed as he put a slug through its head. The second one had managed to get up and away, but he was sure it wouldn’t get far.
He moved on without stopping. He had no idea how many men he might’ve killed, in the lost years of his past . . . but right now, for Ella’s sake, he’d just become the deadliest killer who’d ever lived. And the alien hunters had just become his prey. . . .
AS ELLA WORKED her way inward from the loading hatch, she listened to the sound of gunfire . . . a projectile gun, Jake’s real weapon. The last image of him caught by her still-human eyes was a blur of motion as he drew the enemy away.
She could still reach him with her mind, hearing what he heard, seeing what he saw: Four more gunshots followed the first, faster than her own heartbeat, and she saw every bullet strike a vulnerable point with deadly accuracy: a lone man with an inefficient weapon actually halting three invaders, driving them back in confusion, killing them. . . .
She glimpsed at last what it was about this man that had made his own people fear him so much that they’d wanted him dead. And yet that same man had willingly offered himself as a moving target, going after the aliens with a vengeance driven not simply by hatred, or even righteous anger, but also by love, and need—the need to set her free to save his people from annihilation. . . .
His kiss still burned on her human lips; the memory of all that had passed between them in a moment that had seemed to stop time still stunned her mind and her human senses.
But far more, the epiphany of that moment had erased all doubt in her that her cause was just, that these people were worth saving . . . and that she still possessed the most precious part of her own soul.
She forced herself to stop following Jake with her mind as he disappeared into the clouds of steam, pursuing the two aliens that were still moving. She was running out of time to finish her own task—
The access would eventually lead her, unsuspected and unseen, to the ship’s vulnerable core, where she could use the enemy’s own weapon against them. Jake was risking his life for her, and for his people; she wasn’t about to repay his final gift to her with failure.
r /> THE BATTLEFIELD OUTSIDE had spread to fill the entire slot canyon, and threatened to spill out into the wider valley beyond.
Black Knife turned his horse toward the aliens, leading a group of mounted warriors across the open ground; banishing all thoughts of fighting like the pindab’s cavalry, because against this enemy, even the ways of his own people had not been enough. He led his people in this attack not simply as nantan but as a di-yin of war, one whose gift was meant to protect them and guide them to victory.
He had finally been given the sign he had been waiting for to commit his warriors completely to fight side by side with the white-eyes, and it had come in a way he had never expected—the death of Nat Colorado, the pindab leader’s adopted son. The anguish of a white father’s grief for his lost Apache son had been a far more profound sign from the gods than any he had ever witnessed . . . except when the dead woman’s body emerged from the fire, not to bring ghost sickness upon them all, but instead returning to life, renewed, shining with the spirit of the Morning Star.
To witness two such things within so short a time could only mean that the gods meant for them to fight alongside the pindab, that these sky monsters were the greater threat to their existence, now and forever, unless the invaders could be stopped here.
He now carried a spear, a weapon used only for fighting close-in, carried only by the bravest of men—like the ones who rode with him now. His spear had been with him through many battles; bound to its tip was a bayonet taken from a soldier’s gun. Only by getting that close could he even imagine bringing such creatures down. But he still did not see how they could kill so many of these things. . . .
The alien nearest them heard their approach and turned suddenly, raising a light-weapon aimed directly at Black Knife; he couldn’t turn his horse fast enough to escape.
But then he saw the pindab leader, driving his own horse straight at the monster’s turned back, as if he meant to ride right through it. The man and his horse slammed into the alien before it could fire, and Black Knife’s own horse collided with it as it flew forward.