Chapter 38
EMBER
The soldiers that streamed into the catacombs were not the caliber of the guards we’d dispatched earlier.
These were warriors, through and through.
As soon as Lara and I heard their footsteps, quiet and calculated, we shimmied up the ropes attached to our harnesses and into the shadowed archways of the watery room.
A soft crackle came through my earpiece, then Briony’s voice filled my ear. “Lara? Ember?”
Elsewhere on the comm line, faintly, I heard noises that I hoped meant our friends were escaping. Lara and I could make it out of this. We’d certainly fought our way out of worse. She held up her hands. Eight. She’d counted eight of them.
We could handle eight easily. I wasn’t worried, but neither did I want to give up the element of surprise. I made a soft noise, hoping Briony understood that we could not answer her.
“Okay,” she replied. “I take it you’re not in a position to answer.
That’s fine.” The teenager sounded a little out of breath, like she might be pacing, or at the very least, pretty hyped up.
It was probably the latter, and I wanted to know how much coffee Eli’d let her have, but of course now was not the time to ask.
For a moment, I watched as the soldiers fanned out, then I followed Lara onto a narrow passageway atop the catacombs’ arches. I nearly stumbled as something below caught my attention. When I paused to look, nothing was there, but I could have sworn I saw movement in the water below.
Please let me be wrong, I prayed to Paloma. Gargantuan sea monsters had never really been my thing. Not Kraken, not Ceti, not sweet blue whales. Respect the sea had always been my motto, and by that I meant, stay the fuck out of it.
The water rippled, a menacing movement and my heart sank.
Unlike the soldiers, what might be in the water worried me, but we had to keep moving.
Lara silently counted us down through long-established hand signals, giving me tactical directions so I could listen to Briony over the comm line.
I nodded to Lara to show I read her clearly.
Three.
“Two things…”
Two.
“One: I found the swords. The real ones.”
One.
As I dropped to the floor, movement in the water caught my attention again. Something huge lurked beneath the surface of the dark water, and it was rising fast. One of the Ceti had made its way here.
Fuck my immortal life. Godsdamn sea creatures. How’d it get here?
It didn’t matter how the thing got here.
We had to get out, as soon as we could. If it wrapped the tentacles that it could eject from its terrible mouth around the stone columns that held the National Gallery up, it could easily pull the entire building down.
And despite what the lore said about them being devious creatures, they were mostly just giant destructive assholes.
We were lucky it wasn’t one of the Kraken.
Now there was a creature to fear. Smart, enormous and mean as fuck.
But the Ceti just liked ruining things. Inwardly, I winced, thinking of all the art that would be lost if the creature did what was most natural to it.
I motioned to the water, and though the creature had descended far enough that it could not yet be seen, Lara nodded. She’d spotted it too.
Briony kept talking as we moved faster. “The swords are moving. They’re in a truck going north. If you can get to a boat, you can intercept them at the Midtown bridge.”
Fucking, fuck, fuck. This was a mess.
Voices on the comm line spoke all at once. We weren’t going to make it there on time. “Go without us,” I murmured, hoping someone would hear. “There’s too many of them. Get the swords.”
Lara signaled to me: split up. I nodded, and we parted ways. She’d drawn two short swords, ones I bought in hopes that she would like them. It made my heart sing to hear her quick movements.
She was killing our opponents rather quickly, and there was nothing like the sound of victory to motivate me.
I stalked the nearest soldier, slashing his throat from behind before he could make a sound.
Like the guards before, he went down easily, but the next was on me, quicker and better prepared.
As I met each of the hooded soldier’s blows with one of my own, Briony began to speak again. “Ember… Lara… You have to get out. This is the second thing… After you pointed out that Tyche’s alignment was wrong, I wrote an algorithm…”
She kept talking, but I couldn’t concentrate on killing the soldier I fought, as well as the second that had arrived, and listen to her at the same time, so I tuned her out to focus on elbowing the first in the gut as he tried to get behind me, then twisting to knee him in the groin and sink my knife between his ribs to get to the heart.
It was a precision hit, but it went home.
They were like sad babies. Their training was good, but mine was better.
My second attacker got me in the kidney, once, but lacked the skill to keep up with me as I twisted away.
I jumped atop a small pile of discarded crates as the remaining soldier ran at me, my vision clarifying my target as he moved.
I leapt into the air, my knife delving into the space between his armor, near his collarbone, my knife piercing his meaty flesh, severing his subclavian artery.
I abandoned him as he fell. As I ran toward the sound of Lara fighting, I remembered Briony was still talking, still telling me about how she’d gotten her algorithm to track Tyche’s orbit, or some such information.
Would she please just get to the point? I’d grown to love the kid, but she was prone to over-explaining at the worst times.
I drove my knives into flesh, moving in a gruesome dance in time with Lara as we cut down the rest of the soldiers. More were on the way. “Bottom line this for me, babe,” I said finally. “What’re you trying to tell me?”
The sound of Briony’s little squeak hit me right in the heart. She was just a kid doing her best. I regretted being snappish, immediately, but she did as I asked. “There was a thrysos at the exhibit, Ember. This was all a ritual… They’ve imbued it with Chiore’s power.”
Motherfucking Chiorics, of course they did some gross little ritual.
Why wouldn’t they? Everything I thought I’d figured out about who might have stolen the swords went out the window.
If this was all for the Chiorics to imbue some random thrysos with the goddess’ power, then who the fuck had stolen the swords in the first place?
“Fuck,” Lara swore. “This just keeps getting worse.”
“You have to get out of there,” Briony pleaded.
“We do,” I said, nodding towards the water.
While we’d been fighting, the Ceti had emerged.
Its great mouth opened and closed, showing rows upon rows of razor sharp teeth, and those dangerous tentacles that shot out from the back of its throat.
Typically, it used them to pull prey, like sea dragons, down to the bottom of the ocean.
Or ships. Right now, it had two tentacles wrapped around the columns that held the building up.
“Great, it smells the blood,” I murmured. The Ceti might have drifted in here out of curiosity. It was rare they traveled into fresh water sources, but not unheard of, especially during a mating season, which this was not.
But when they did, they were almost always looking for food, and we’d killed enough soldiers in the past few minutes to convince the creature that we’d prepared a feast. And yet, despite that, the Ceti preferred a live kill. To hunt their prey and snap its neck… We were in danger if it saw us.
“Move slowly until I tell you to run.”
Lara nodded. Slowly, slowly, we backed further away from the water. The Ceti could leave the water, of course, for short periods of time. And if it chose to do so, we were well and truly fucked, because in short bursts it was much, much faster than we were.
But its attention was elsewhere, on the stream of soldiers that flooded the catacombs from all possible entrances within the building. “Go,” I shouted.
Lara ran, and as I turned to follow her, my stomach dropped out of my body, cold sweat breaking out on my neck and back.
Senator Cromvale followed the soldiers, walking behind them, gazing lovingly at the thrysos in his hands.
It was essentially a glorified glaive, ordinary enough, but for the fact that it glowed with sickly green power.
I turned to follow Lara, cursing the luck that had kept our swords from us.
Thank all that was holy, Lara ran like she had a homing beacon inside her.
It was like she innately knew the way, but I knew her practically photographic memory probably traced the path out inside her incredible mind.
Joy filled me as I realized that she would make it out.
Behind us, I heard the rumble before I felt it. And chanting. So. Much. Chanting.
The Chiorics were drawing the Ceti out. Beckoning it to do something. To pull the Gallery down? To chase us? Who fucking knew what they were up to? It was bad, that much was certain. They had the thrysos and a sea monster. Things couldn’t get much worse.
I pumped my legs harder, forcing myself to run faster.
We had to get out before the building came down.
We took two corners at high speed, nearly skidding as we went, but up ahead there was a door labeled ‘EXIT.’ Lara made it through first. Ahead of us, tied to the dock on the river, there was a boat.
“See the boat?” Briony asked. “The fancy wood one with the red flag?”
“Yeah,” Lara answered, nearly out of breath.
“Get on it,” Briony breathed, her voice raspy. “It has a remote start. I’m hacking in now.”
Lara ran for the boat, assuming I was right behind her. It wasn’t until she was on board that she turned back. When she didn’t hear my footsteps on deck. “What are you doing?” she shouted.
My throat ached, all the things I wanted to say burning me up inside. There wasn’t time. We’d gauged this whole thing wrong. There was only one thing left to do.
“She’s staying to fight,” Briony whispered. “Ember, no.”
Somewhere on the line, I heard Ares and Rhiannon, arguing.
I took my earpiece out, but spoke into it.
“Lara, you go. Help the rest of them get the swords. If you have time, bring mine back to me.” I took a deep breath, watching Cromvale walk calmly out the National Gallery door, just as the building began to creak.
The Ceti was going to pull it down. And he was going to try to kill me, but I wasn’t going to let him. This wasn’t over, but I knew my odds against a godkilling weapon, a throng of cultist and a sea monster weren’t superb, by any means.
“I love you,” I said. To Rhi. To Lara. To Briony. To Ares. “I’ll hold him off to give you time. Don’t forget about my tree, Rhiannon. You know the place I want to rest.”
Through the earpiece, I heard her screaming my name. I held a hand up to Lara in goodbye, then pressed it to my lips and my heart. “I love you,” I shouted to her, as I dropped the earpiece and crushed it with my boot. “Go.”
I could see the tears on her face from here, as she shook her head. “Go,” I screamed. “Help them.”
I didn’t wait to see if she would do as I ordered, but turned to meet Cromvale. If tonight was to be my end, then I would go with honor, protecting the people I loved.