New Olympus Saga (Book 2): Doomsday Duet (47 page)

I forced myself not to pace or do anything counterproductive like knocking trees down, or pawing at the ground like a rabid bear. Or worse, rushing out into the mist. I had no idea how wide an area it covered. I could wander around blindly for who knows how long without ever finding Christine. I knew I was being an idiot. I might not be in control of how I felt, but I sure as hell could control what I did. So I pointedly didn’t look at my wrist-comp, walked to my tent and grabbed a couple of power bars. Compulsive eating wouldn’t help, either, but at least it didn’t hurt anybody.

Father Aleksander joined me. “She will be all right, I think,” he said.

Several unkind responses came to mind. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about” was the nicest one. “You keep telling yourself that, Judge” was also on the tip of my tongue. But I kept my peace. Whatever he’d done in the past, Father Alex was one of the good guys now. If things went to shit, I didn’t want my last words to be something hurtful. So I shrugged and choked down a power bar. Chocolate. One of the kinds Christine hated the least. I’d be nice to Father Alex, for her sake, and for mine.

Fuck. I was getting sensitive in my old age. Who’d have thunk it?

“I hope so,” I finally said.

Father Alex nodded and left it at that.

More time passed. I managed to wait almost thirty minutes before sneaking another glance at the time display. It didn’t help that I was freezing my balls off. I’d tried my warm-up trick while I waited, just to help pass the time, and I’d had to shut it off before I burst into flames. Christine had completely wrecked my inner thermostat. I’d probably have to spend a few weeks learning how to regulate the ability again. Small price to pay for turning into Ultimate Junior, I supposed.

Unless it was a symptom of something worse, the paranoid side of me wondered. I set the thought aside. There were plenty of other things to worry about.

I could have read a book or watched something on the wrist-comp, but I didn’t feel safe enough to do either. So I ate some more food and kept looking around, waiting for Christine to emerge from the mist.

She didn’t, but the mist started to withdraw. The gray-white mass had become a part of the landscape, and it took me several moments to realize the clear area around our camp was getting bigger. A few seconds after I noticed the change, the cloud rolled backwards at faster than a walking pace, quickly disappearing back into the forest. I had no idea what that meant.

“
Materi tvojij kovin'ka!
” Vasyl shouted behind me. I whirled around.

Darkness was rolling towards us from the opposite direction the mist had come from. It was as if nightfall was descending on the forest at impossible speeds. Unlike the mist, though, I was pretty sure I knew what it was. I’d read about something very much like it, in the comics and in serious history books. There’d been plenty of accounts about sudden unnatural darkness in the journals of German and Russian veterans. The false night always came first, and death followed soon after; after a dozen massacres, even rumors of its appearance were often enough to rout hardened combat units. This was the encroaching shadow that had made SS men piss themselves and cry for their mothers.

Baba Yaga was coming.

Vasyl knew just what t we were facing. After his initial curse or prayer, he yelled one more word. “
Kurwa!”
The old guy grabbed his rifle and took off at a dead run, heading away from the approaching darkness. I wished him luck; the poor bastard didn’t deserve to get caught between us and the Witch of Pinsk.

I turned to Father Alex. “You should run too.”

“It wouldn’t do any good,” he said in a soft voice. His eyes had a sleepy, dreamy expression. “And I can help you, lad.”

He touched my shoulder with one hand, and my perceptions changed.

It was a bit like how Christine described her special ‘vision-thingy.’ The darkness was still there, swallowing the morning sunlight and turning everything pitch-black, but I could sense things within it, constructs of light roughly in the shape of trees, and a humanoid figure running among them, moving at inhuman speed, a light form that my altered senses recognized as a display of emotions. Father Alex had somehow made me share his empathy powers, and through them I could spot Baba Yaga.

The Witch of Pinsk was in a pretty good mood, in a way that reminded me of Kestrel. She was glad to be on the hunt, and eager to hurt someone, anyone.

Time to change that.

I rushed to meet her. Whatever Father Alex had done did not dissipate after I moved away from him, thankfully. She didn’t know I could see her, and her emotions changed from amusement to shock when she ran right into my fist. I put everything I had into the punch; the result was pretty impressive. Nearby trees shattered by the shockwave, and both of us bounced back and ended up on our asses a few feet from the point of impact. My notional ears – I’d dropped the false face as soon as I got into the fight – were ringing from the echoes of the thunder-like sound we’d made when we’d collided, and my hand felt pretty sore where it had crunched into Baba Yaga’s face. My hope was that her face and neck were in far worse shape.

I flipped back to my feet. The Witch of Pinsk was sprawled on the ground; she wasn’t moving, but her aura was still glowing. Her colors had changed; she was angry, and she was hurting, but she wasn’t out of the fight, not by a long shot. I rushed her and tried to stomp on her neck; she rolled away just in time and leapt away, moving fast, faster than me. Fuck.

We played tag for several seconds. She flitted up trees and I knocked them down. I reached her a couple of times but she dodged my punches and kicks. As the chase went on, however, I noticed I was speeding up with every passing second. I was catching up to her.

She didn’t notice my increasing speed until my hand closed on her coarse curly hair and I yanked it back, stopping her on her tracks. The angry screech she made when I grabbed her sounded like a thousand cats being dropped into a vat of boiling water, but I ignored the way the sound drove spikes of pain into my brain and chopped at her neck with the edge of my hand. She fell silent and went limp in my grip for a second, but just as I was shifting my hold on her to snap her spine, she became something else. I couldn’t get a good look at her through the darkness, but so far her outline had looked like an athletic woman about an inch shorter than me. She changed forms and now I was holding something larger, a beastlike thing with long limbs, leathery skin and nasty claws and teeth. I lost my grip on her hair as she slashed at me with talons like razor blades that cut through my protective aura and the skin and flesh beneath, and now it was my turn to go on the defensive while she tried to gut me like a fish.

Fighting her was like being inside an industrial wood chipper. I blocked her claw strikes, taking deep cuts on my forearms to spare my face and neck. She kept coming, biting and tearing at me, growling like nothing that had any business walking the Earth. I managed to back away far enough to kick her in the gut, which rocked her back a few paces. I bled from a dozen injuries, but they were healing fast, much faster than when I’d been plain Face-Off, vigilante. Power rushed through me, increasing my healing ability, my strength, my speed, and I didn’t care that my insides felt like they were burning; what’s a little pain when you can go hand to hand with a creature of legend?

Baba Yaga’s mood was beginning to change from rage into fear. She dealt half a dozen mortal injuries on me, but I shrugged them off and went back on the offensive. The Witch of Pinsk tried to flee again but I swept her feet from under her and kicked her in the side before she could scramble away. I felt her ribs collapsing under the impact. Her screeches of agony were painfully loud, but sounded like music to my ears. My next kick broke one of her arms like a twig. I had her now. I was gonna –

Her aura disappeared and I was plunged into total darkness. I felt the connection with Father Alex being cut off.

I felt him die.

There was not time to grieve. I kicked Baba Yaga again, going for the place where I’d seen her last, but it was a glancing hit and she rolled with it. She was hurt, but she wasn’t hurt enough, and I couldn’t see her anymore.

I didn’t stop moving. A still target was a perfect target. I back flipped a dozen yards back, then reversed course and, by pure luck, slammed into her. That wasn’t exactly good luck, though; her talons drove right into my lower abdomen, ripping into me. I tried to twist her head off but couldn’t get a good grip before she broke away. That was the last time I laid a finger on her. Baba Yaga danced around me, easily avoiding my flailing blows, and tore me to shreds. It was the death of a thousand cuts, each slash hitting me from the sides or behind, no matter which way I turned. After a while, my healing factor couldn’t cope with the wounds. I went down.

It stopped being a fight and became simple torture.

* * *

The sunlight was back, a pale whiteness that welcomed me back to consciousness.

I was lying face down on the dirt, muddied and wet with my blood. The ground hadn’t frozen, so I couldn’t have been unconscious for very long. I was still healing, but much more slowly than before, there were places in my body where stuff was hanging out, stuff that shouldn’t be outside my skin; the cold air burned me where I’d been flayed and hadn’t quite healed up. My arms and legs were shackled. The second I tried to move, an all-too familiar agony coursed through my limbs: it was what I’d felt on the receiving end of the power disruptors. The pain was intense enough to make me black out for a few seconds.

When I came to again, I saw Father Alex lying next to me. His face had a surprised expression, and his head had been twisted the whole way around, so although his corpse was lying on its stomach, his sightless eyes were looking towards the sky. I hoped he’d found something good waiting for him on the other side. I’d known he was almost certainly going to get killed on this fucking caper, and I’d let him come anyway. And we’d gotten fucked anyway.

A moment later someone tossed Vasyl’s body next to Father Aleksander’s. Someone in a pair of oversized combat boots.

“I gave old Vasyl a chance to die like a man; he did.” said a familiar voice. “But Mykhailo, he didn’t fight back. I hope he is with his God, now.”

Akula.

I didn’t say anything. Curses and death threats would be just empty words. If I got the chance – when I got the chance – he’d get what was coming to him.

“I didn’t have choice,” he said apologetically, his grammar worsening. He sounded genuinely upset. “I didn’t denounce you to the Dominion. It was one of my men, he sells me out. I get two choices, get what I deserve or rejoin Iron Guard and all is forgiven. And we didn’t find you until an hour ago. Somebody told the Witch where you are. Not me.”

I was in no mood to accept an apology, so I remained silent.

“They want both of you alive,” Akula added. “Another unit has gone to get the girl now, to take her alive and unharmed. Maybe you can make a deal.” He didn’t sound very hopeful.

If the Ukrainians knew where Christine was, the First must have been the one who sold us out.

I could start struggling again, just so the pain would shut off my thoughts, but I forced myself to stay still.

I didn’t deserve the release of agony.

Christine Dark

Pripet Marshes, Dominion of the Ukraine, March 25, 2013

Stop struggling. Just be still, that’s a good girl. Be still and let go. There will be no pain, and all will be well.

The voice was sweet and soothing and Christine wanted nothing more than to surrender to it, to go back to sleep, delicious quiet sleep.

Not sleep. Death, you idiot! He’s trying to lullaby you to death, like he did back under Central Park, and you’re letting him! What’s the matter with you?
Her brain was such a bitch.

Hush, little one, just let go
.
The nice voice again, but now that her brain was working again she could detect a not-so-sweet note of anger in it.

How about ‘No,’ you condescending a-hole?

The sweet voice fell still. Christine opened her eyes.

She was lying on a cold stone floor, and a wizened little child-thing was kneeling over her. The pallid face was lined with deep wrinkles that marred the young boy’s features, and his eyes were glowing orbs filled with white light. She felt the First’s mind trying to take control over hers, but now that she knew what was happening she fought back; the child-thing recoiled and screamed in pain, throwing his hands over his eyes as if she’d thrown acid at them.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she yelled at the crying critter. A part of her was sorry for him, but she mostly felt angry and disgusted. “You were supposed to help me!”

“I can’t help you,” he said. His real voice was squeaky and about as pleasant as nails on a chalkboard. “I saw the most likely outcome, saw it right through your eyes.”

“And now I know what
not
to do! Didn’t you see that?”

“The most likely outcome remains the same.” Even with the squeaky voice, the First’s pronouncement carried the certainty of a death sentence. “You must not access the Source or this world will die.”

“Okay, I won’t. Send me home, then.”

“You would access the Source there as well. You would destroy that world, and then come back and do the same here.”

Earth Prime has a Source too? Where are all the superheroes, then?
No time to deal with that, though. There’d been something else her doppelganger had told her. “And you called the Dominion on me? Are you completely insane? They’ll make me access the Source and then it’s game over!”

“They will fail. You will resist their attempts to control you, and they will only succeed in killing you; that is an acceptable outcome.”

Oh, God. What if the old childlike critter was right? What if the only way to save the world was for her to die?