The Heavens Rise (31 page)

“Nikki Delongpre?” he growled.

But once he said her name aloud, realization hit. Three birds at once. There’d been three birds at once, and unless she was infinitely more powerful than him, there was no way she could have hooked more than one animal at a time. He’d tried countless times and failed. She wasn’t alone.

He was still wiping the blood from his eyes when he felt sudden movement around his legs, then in between them, the brush of cold, tensile skin. His vision cleared just enough for him to see the giant snake coiling itself around his knees. The exhibit’s star attraction, freed from its tank and coiling around his waist now. He managed to lift one arm above his head, but the other was pinned underneath the sudden constriction, and immediately his lung cried out in protest as he felt the squeeze. The son of a bitch was ten feet long uncoiled, so thick he probably wouldn’t have been able to fit both hands around its body.

And now its expressionless eye was level with his, its giant head sliding over his chest, and when he went to scream, there wasn’t enough breath left in his lungs to give voice to its terror. He had one free arm, but when he went to claw the thing’s eye out, the mouth opened and swallowed his hand. And the knowledge that it was human intention—
her
intention—driving the snake’s seemingly emotionless movements only added fury to his terror. He tried to say her name, but what came out was a slurred perversion of it that made him sound brain-damaged. And he prepared himself to die, on his knees, splinted by the snake’s unnatural constriction, his vision finally cleared of his own blood.

Then the snake’s head exploded, and its suddenly lifeless body lost its coil, sliding down him gradually. He pulled his hand free of the mass of gore that had once been its head and used it to push himself out of
the snake’s ghostly coil. The last few movements needed to free himself made him look like a bride stepping out of a wedding gown she’d let puddle on the floor.

Another sharp crack from high above, but nothing animal about it. Another rain of glass from the shattered ceiling. Only there was a disturbance in the high mound of jungle foliage a few feet away in advance of the impact. A startled movement that was all too human. The fresh rain of glass was about to expose someone’s hiding place.

Ben Broyard somersaulted to the walkway in front of him, head slamming to the pavement just as the giant wet leaves that had concealed him were torn to pieces. His body went limp and Marshall was wondering if the little fucker had been knocked out cold when suddenly, for the first time, his own world was wiped away from him as if by a giant hand.

•   •   •

Someone was calling his name. His head was spinning and everything he heard sounded like it was coming to him through a thin tube. But he could hear his name, laced with another word he couldn’t make out. A woman’s voice. Screaming . . .

Nikki.

His eyes popped open. Marshall Ferriot stood over him, wide-eyed, blood streaming from the bites across his forehead and the bridge of his nose, his expression as vacant as Marissa’s had been earlier that day when she’d almost torn his head off. Nikki’s voice was blending with the squealing emergency alarms. They’d spread out the second they hit the jungle exhibit, both of them trying to get different vantage points on Marshall, as far away from him as possible.

But now he’d been exposed and . . . she’d hooked him! That’s why she was screaming. When he’d fallen right in front of Marshall, she had no choice but to hook the guy, and that was the other word she was screaming:
Now Now Now Now Now.

Ben reached out for a giant shard of glass lying a few feet away. He ignored the fact that it had sliced into the flesh of his palm. He knew if he looked right into Marshall’s eyes, he would hesitate, so he closed the distance between them without looking at his face. When there were only inches between them, he slashed the jagged pieces of glass at Marshall’s throat. And it was as if it had moved through water.

Because Marshall Ferriot’s skin had become fluid and black. It looked as if he was bending backward at the waist, but his torso was actually lengthening, his legs fattening, and then his mouth opened so wide it appeared to consume his entire face, turning his head into a featureless, gelatinous black mass that looked like crawling lava after it has dived under the surface of the ocean. His neck was lengthening and taking on the patterning of a snake’s smoke-colored scales. His arms had opened as if he were about to take Ben in an embrace, then they sealed themselves to both sides of his narrowing trunk, sprouted into something that looked like a millipede’s legs. Then the matching rows of dripping fangs took shape inside the creature’s giant, crescent-shaped mouth, and it was now ten feet long, level with the floor, its blazing eyes focused on Ben.

Ben wasn’t sure what terrified him more, the thought of staying put or the thought of what the thing’s soul would look like if he tried to drive it a second time. So he turned and ran. And that’s when he felt an incredible gust of air behind him, heard a deafening, pained hiss and looked back in time to see the winged beast Anthem Landry had become seize the giant serpent in its great avian beak and lift it off the ground. Doglike, the winged monster swung its head back and forth, wings pumping madly, and the giant serpent’s entire body jerked and spasmed as it was hefted up into the air. Then they both dropped.

The serpent’s limp body smashed into the emptying remains of one of the open-air tanks. Now that it was pinned to the floor, the winged creature landed talons-first on the serpent’s back, and then tugged lightly on each talon to make sure it had pierced its scales. Then, wings
pumping to give it balance, it pulled its talons in opposite directions and tore the son of a bitch in half.

One after the other, it yanked it talons free from the blood, gore and shredded scales. When it turned and looked back at Ben, he collapsed on the walkway, just inside the tunnel that lead to the rest of the aquarium. The creature stood up on its hind legs, its talons tucked against its feathered chest, and despite the inhuman shape of its blood-splattered beak, the eye that it focused on Ben was Anthem’s. And when the creature opened its beak and let out a piercing scream that sounded like a woman’s cry filtered through a torrential thunderstorm, Ben thought it might be parroting the terrified sobs he couldn’t fight any longer.

Having exhausted itself, the creature picked up the serpent’s severed head in its talons, then kicked itself into the air with its powerful legs, the pumping wings giving it flight. It took a few minutes for Ben to gather his courage and walk to the spot where the serpent’s shredded lower half lay strewn across the walkway. Once he was there, he looked up and saw Nikki standing on one of the thatched, elevated walkways that passed just below the tree house overhead. She was staring up through the shattered glass ceiling of the exhibit, probably at the spot where the creature had flown away. By the time he had joined her on the walkway, they could hear the footfalls of approaching police officers, too many at once to drive off, so he took her hand and they sped off down the walkway in the opposite direction.

MADISONVILLE

T
hey crossed Lake Pontchartrain in silence, and by the time they reached the old push boat outside Madisonville, they had three hours until dawn. Nikki used her Maglite to guide the way toward the ship’s remains, which now seemed tiny to Ben in comparison to the leviathan that had almost run them down earlier that night. For a while, they stood at the edge of the empty parking lot as Nikki ran her flashlight beam over the push boat’s glassless windows, waiting for the eruption of some unnamable creature cowering inside, Ben scanned the night sky. But the boat was empty and so was the sky. The dock had mostly rotted away, so they were forced to wade through waist-high water to get to its back deck.

They searched the lower deck for any signs of talon marks, any stray obsidian feathers. But there was nothing, just a hollowed-out steel-walled cavern. The situation on the upper deck was the same. That
left the wheelhouse. And when the beam of Nikki’s flashlight traveled across the pile of red Mardi Gras beads Anthem had piled there every year after the Krewe of Ares parade, she sank slowly to her knees and ran them through her fingers.

Ben turned his back on her, allowing her this private moment at the graveside of her adolescence, and surveyed the sweeping view of the lake. In the near distance the causeway twinkled, though not with its usual energy given the lateness of the hour. But the world around them was flat, silent and dark, devoid of monsters and seemingly drained of magic. And this sudden peace made him feel dizzy and light-headed. He had the sense that he was about to float away, as if all that truly tied him to the earth’s surface over the years was his belief in the inevitable orderliness and decay of the human body.

He was exhausted, and he smelled awful, so awful he was tempted to douse himself in more lake water. But that would only make it worse. Having taken her moment with Anthem’s makeshift altar, Nikki sank to the floor, knees to her chest.

“The way to keep from losing your mind is to see them as extensions of the person, rather than . . . you know, a separate thing. Something from another dimension. It sounds horrible, but it actually makes it easier. The eyes . . . They’re always there, in the eyes.”

Ben nodded, and for a while, neither of them spoke, just listened to the gentle howl of the wind moving through the ship’s hollow, rusted skeleton.

“I never told him,” Ben finally said.

“Never told him what?”

“That I thought Marshall caused the accident. That I knew you two had gone to Elysium together.”

“What does it matter, Ben?”

“If I’d given him some reason to . . . suspect, I don’t know. Some reason to hate him or fear him, even, maybe he wouldn’t have let him get so close . . .”

“Marshall didn’t need permission to use his power on anyone. That’s not how it works. You know that.”

“I know, but . . . he brought him on the ship.”

“He could have been driving him all night long.”

“Then he would have changed earlier. Look how quickly Marshall changed. No, they were . . . They were together, Nick. For a while before Marshall did anything. And if I had told Anthem what I . . .”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I thought he would kill him. Now that doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.”

“No, of course not. Marshall would be dead and Anthem would be on trial and you would have no real idea of what you’d been spared, just that your best friend was going to go to jail for murder. And all because I was still out there, letting everyone believe I was dead. You’re not going to beat me at the blame game, Benny.”

Another silence fell, and then she whispered, “I never thought he’d wake up. You have to believe me. I never . . .” And then a tremor took control of her voice, and Ben sank down to the floor beside her and laced his arm around her leg and held it there until she seemed to have regained her composure.

“Of course you didn’t,” he whispered.

He gave in to the urge to rest his head against her shoulder, and when she relaxed under the weight, leaning back against the wall and spreading her legs out in front of her for support, he leaned in further and she curved an arm around his back.

“I’ve never turned one back,” she said. “You know that, right? I mean, not into anything that’s . . . livable.”

“But you’ve never loved any of them either.”

“That’s true . . .”

“Do you still love him?”

“What I feel for him, I’ve never felt for any other man.”

“Me too . . .”

“Did you guys ever . . . You know, after I left . . .”

“No. Oh my God.”

“I don’t know. I just thought, maybe . . .”

“You thought he’d get wasted and I’d get desperate.”

“Not exactly that. But something like it.”

“I would never.”

“All right, fine.” She ran her fingers through his hair gently. “Has there ever been anyone?”

“You mean besides the guy you drove out of my apartment that night?”

“You’re welcome, by the way.”

“No. No one who . . . mattered. As much as you or him.”

Her touch was soothing and hypnotic.

“Ben . . .”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know how they are when they’re . . . loose. What if he doesn’t come?”

“Then we look for him.”

Or someone else finds him first, and the entire world changes.
She must have heard the exhaustion in his voice, because she slowed the gentle movement of her fingers through his hair, and for a while, they said nothing. It was long enough for the weight of sleep to sand away the edges of his thoughts.

“Ben?”

“Yeah?”

“I really thought you’d get a little bit taller.”

He laughed into her chest, and then she tightened her arm around his back, and after another few minutes or so, he slipped away. But it was the kind of fitful sleep he typically had after too many drinks, where the brief snippets of dreams seemed raw and close to the surface of wakefulness; he dreamed that he was awake and they were talking to each other when they really weren’t, and then the images from
the aquarium played rapid-fire across his mind, each one too quick to startle him awake. But the high-speed-download quality of it left him with the awareness that he wasn’t slumbering so much as processing, and underneath this realization was the vague fear of who he would be once the impossible events he’d witnessed that night became a part of his memory.

Then Nikki was shaking him awake, and there was a noise outside like a low, crackling fire. “Ben,” she whispered fiercely. “He’s here.”

•   •   •

He could barely walk upright, not without the support of his wings pumping the air behind him, and the effort seemed to be exhausting him as he shambled across the empty parking lot. He switched to all fours but his forearms were ill designed for the task. In order to take a step, he had to flatten his five-nailed talons entirely against the asphalt, then take them up high into the air with each step, like a cat pulling its paws out of something sticky, all the while making sure the long curved nails didn’t fold together on each retraction, preventing him from taking another step.