Chapter 21 #3
Fly paused, gloves resting against the sweating vinyl of the bag, his chest heaving. The wings behind him flared, wide and restless, casting long, impossible shadows against the wall.
“Why did you stop?” Shark complained, tapping the bag. “The vibrations were just getting sweet. You were finally flowing.”
“Everything else survived,” Fly whispered, his eyes wide, staring right through Shark.
His mind pieced the negative space of history together.
“The quipu survived. The owl survived. The sacred bundle survived. Every single artifact from that day is accounted for. The Tumi has no notation in any texts. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
Shark lowered his hands from the bag, his playful demeanor sharpening into genuine curiosity. “So someone stole it before the dust settled?”
Fact One: She had the Tumi.
Fact Two: She stabbed Cisco with it.
Fact Three: The scar still reacts.
Fact Four: The Tumi was present at the sealing.
Fact Five: The Tumi is missing.
Fuck Fact Five. “No,” Fly breathed. His mind raced back to the moment of crystallization. The font transforming under Quri’s touch and ritual creating solid stone, sealing everything. The Tumi was in the same place it had been from the beginning.
Fly’s eyes snapped into focus. The pattern completed itself. The logic was absolute.
“It’s not lost, stolen, or vanished.” Fly said, a cold rush of certainty washing over him. The insubstantial wings behind him gave one powerful, definitive sweep, kicking up a literal gust of wind in the basement.
Shark’s jaw dropped slightly, his sharp mind catching the current. “You mean...”
“I know where it is.” Fly said, already stripping off his gloves, his impasse entirely shattered. “As soon as they return…we have to go back to the font.”
* * *
Easy took them in through the dead corner of the compound he'd scouted, no sound, no light, and they moved through the dark like one body, Flash at her shoulder, the Reavers a step behind, Bondo built for the door, Twister hanging back for the wounded he already knew they'd find.
They cleared two rooms before the third.
Bagh and O-voo were in it, both down, both breathing.
O-voo's face was a ruin, Bagh's field dressing soaked through at the thigh, and the relief that hit her at the rise and fall of their chests nearly buckled her knees.
Twister was past her before she finished the thought, on Bagh, hands already working.
A figure stood over O-voo.
Her own face looked back across the room, her own mouth, her own eyes, and her stomach dropped like a missed step on a stair.
For half a breath no one moved. Then the thing wearing her face smiled with her mouth, and the smile was wrong, and the borrowed skin slid away.
The bones shifted. The face that surfaced was sharp and lovely and entirely its own, and behind her Komodo said the name before she could.
"Eva."
"In the flesh." Eva straightened, unhurried, a woman with all the time in the world.
“You look good for a dead woman,” Krait hissed.
Eva ignored her, her attention on Lechuza. "Quri Killa. I wondered when they'd finally drag you out of hiding."
"You've been busy wearing my name." Lechuza kept her hands loose and her weight balanced, the room mapped. Krait had drifted left. Bondo filled the door. "It ends here."
"It ends, but not here, and not with me." The smile widened, and under it was something that wasn't cruelty but something almost tender, which was worse. "I chose revenge because they deserved to die. You never got that chance, did you, Quri. You know all about killing someone you love."
The words found the old wound. She let them land and held Eva's eyes.
"I chose love, Eva," she said. "Sadly, you didn't."
Something crossed Eva's face, there and gone. Then the air around her thickened and feathered, and the great horned owl rose up out of her, barred, tufted, and vast, talons the length of fingers, the owl that hunted other owls. Her voice came through it doubled and inhuman.
"So much for the oath." The wings spread wide. "It's hollow, and I know a little something about hunting my own, too. Chaos sends his regards."
She flew at Lechuza, talons first.
Flash hit her out of the air, his shoulder taking what was meant for Lechuza's throat, and the talons opened his arm to the bone before he flung her off.
Bondo's bulk slammed in, and the owl twisted out of it like smoke, a wing-edge laying a line across his jaw.
Krait's knife found feathers and air. Eva was already wheeling, already breaking for the dark seam tearing open behind O-voo, a corridor folding the light at its edges.
Komodo hit her at the threshold, and his teeth found the flesh under the feathers and tore. Eva shrieked, wrenched away, and was through, the seam sealing behind her, gone.
Komodo spat red, his eyes already lit with the hunt. "I have her. Her signature's on my tongue. I can follow her through anything she opens." He was moving for the closing seam. "Give me ten minutes."
"No."