Three (38 page)

“Come out. I just want to see you.”

He knew exactly what was happening. The frequency of her voice was being tuned to modulate the electrical impulses in his brain, inducing a dream-like state that left him dangerously open to suggestion. And even knowing this, he couldn’t keep himself from stepping into the alley.

“There you are,” Jez said with a suppressed smile. Seductive. “I’m
so
glad to see you.”

She took a step closer. Three’s arms hung limply at his sides, while the tiny part of his mind that was still his own screamed for him to act. He would have to destroy her… but not yet. He wanted to hear her, to see her, just a little longer. He felt so warm, so comfortable. She started walking toward him now. Not the stalking, bird-like movements he’d seen before. Fluid. Feline.

“I was hoping I could be the one to find you, you know,” she said, her voice low. “I wanted to be the one.”

Her smile. Her eyes. Everything about her said she loved him.
Desired
him. But Jez was going to kill him. He knew it. And he accepted it. It would be alright.

“Asher will
love
me for being the one.”

Six feet away.

And suddenly an arctic light pierced the veil, a pulse of blinding white shocking him back to himself. He reflexively shielded his eyes. In the next instant he glanced back to Jez, who was momentarily stunned by the flash. Their eyes met for a split second, and as she opened her mouth to speak, Three closed the gap and lashed out, striking her across the throat with the web of his hand.

Jez reeled backwards choking, but as Three advanced she snapped her head around, whipping her long braids towards him. Not realizing the threat he tried to strike through the attack, but felt the sudden impact and sting across his face as the razortips woven in her hair bit deeply into the flesh of his cheek and neck and brow. The shock blurred his vision, and he missed his target.

Three followed with a forearm, but Jez slipped the blow and swiped upward with her palm, aiming for his eyes. Three threw his head back, narrowly dodging the attack. He snatched her wrist with one hand and wrenched her elbow with the other, using the leverage to slam her face-first into the alley wall. Before she could rebound, he drove his knee into her lower back. And as she arched backwards from the strike, he grabbed her head in a lock and twisted nearly to the point of breaking.

It hadn’t been that long ago that he’d been in her position, a fraction of an inch and a few pounds of torque from dead. Jez started to go slack, and Three forced her down on to her knees, keeping a strong stance behind her. Another day, in that critical moment, he would’ve snapped her neck without hesitation. But the sudden realization that if not for Dagon’s mercy he would be dead was enough to give him pause. Locked together as they were, his cheek pressed hard against the back of her head, Three could hear her choking breath as Jez’s throat continued to spasm from his blow. The whole left side of his face was wet and sticky with blood, one eye blinded with it.

“Please,” Jez rasped, barely forcing the word out through his chokehold. The power of her voice was gone. So, it seemed, her will to fight. Jez wasn’t like Fedor or Kostya. She wasn’t a fighter. She was a manipulator, a seductress. And somehow, now, caught in his arms that were so much stronger, she seemed suddenly fragile. Not altogether unlike Cass.

At the far end of the alley, towards the city, the white light continued to pulse. Three recognized the source now. Wren’s strobe from the Vault. He’d forgotten the boy even had it. Three glanced behind him with his good eye. Wren was there, standing in the courtyard. Watching. Three loosened his grip on Jez.

And suddenly–

“Asher, he’s here!” she called out in her damaged voice.

Three strengthened his hold.

“Wren,” he called. “Look away.”

He left her body behind the building and together with Wren fled towards the center of the city. They were careful to dodge other citizens until Three could get the bleeding stopped and the blood washed off his face. Crouched behind a one-story clothing shop, he used a maintenance pump to splash ice cold water across his latest wounds, and scrubbed them clean as best he could.

The cuts sprayed across his face were thin but deep, the kind of precision pain only a razor can deliver. The one across his eyebrow was the worst. He was fortunate not to have lost the eye completely. Wren stood quietly by, pale with fear, brave in his silence.

Three wiped his face and shook his hands dry as well as he could, and caught Wren’s eye. “You OK?”

Wren nodded slightly.

“Where’s Ran now?”

Wren’s eyes unfocused for a moment. “Heading back towards the middle of the city.”

“Governor’s compound?”

Wren shrugged. “I guess. Yes, that seems right.”

Three wondered why. Why Asher wouldn’t send Ran after them immediately. Frightened? He probably didn’t know about Dagon yet, not for sure. But he’d lost Fedor and Jez within eight hours. Maybe in his panic, he was calling all security back home. But Three’s hope of that was quickly lost. The next moment, all across the city, alarms began to blare.

Wren reflexively stepped into Three’s body, buried his face against Three’s neck. Three threw his arm around him protectively.

“They’re coming!” Wren said in a terrified whisper. He gripped Three so tightly, it nearly choked him.

“I’m not gonna let ’em take you, Wren. Not now.”

It was a promise. He said it, and he meant it, even though he had no idea how he was going to keep it. His brow still hadn’t stopped bleeding yet, but if they were alerting the whole city there was no reason to worry about that now. And there was no way to figure out a plan, no time to strategize. Three didn’t know how many guardsmen a city the size of Morningside had, but it was likely in the hundreds. They had to move.

“Come on, Wren,” Three said, picking the boy up.

Morningside’s security forces would most likely seal the gates, and work their way from outside in. That made the Governor’s compound literally the last place they’d look. And maybe he’d get a shot at Asher before all was said and done.

They raced together through the streets as citizens began flooding out of their homes, and it didn’t take long before Three realized something else was going on. Something terrible. The citizens of Morningside were in a panic, fleeing together in a mad rush, a churning human current that swept Three and Wren along with it, all going in the same direction. Towards the Governor’s compound. And then above the cries of panic, Three heard a shriek that pierced his heart.

The Weir were attacking.

T
hree and Wren were among the first of the crowd to reach the Governor’s compound, and as they approached, Three slowed his pace. Already a thin line of citizens was pressed against the gate, pleading with the guards on the other side to let them in. The guards stood dispassionately, clad in black, grim-faced and motionless. Their only job to protect the Governor, not his subjects.

“Governor Underdown! Governor, we need you!” came the cries. “Governor, please!”

From the clamor of the crowd, Three picked out news that the eastern gate was already overrun, that the guards had been cut down before they could seal it. The Weir were inside.

Three’s mind reeled at the prospect. He had walked the open for decades and never once seen the Weir roaming in daylight. Images flashed from his walk through the streets the night before, images of the people he’d passed. So clean, so carefree. Soft. He could only imagine how quickly the Weir must be cutting through them now.

Wren was sobbing on his shoulder, sucking in choking breaths, gripping Three’s coat in his trembling fists. “Asher. He’ll know. He’ll know I’m here!”

“I know, Wren,” Three answered. “We’re counting on it.”

The crowd swelled as more citizens joined the ranks, crushing together around the compound, piling against the gates, clamoring for Underdown to appear. Their Governor. Their savior. Three kept clear of the crowd, held steady around the edges, alert for any sign of the Weir. Watching for Asher.

“Tell me if Ran shows up,” Three said. Wren didn’t respond, so Three dug the boy’s face out of his shoulder and looked in his eyes. “I need you to do that for me, OK?”

Something shifted in Wren then. He caught his breath, wiped his eyes and nodded, and though he lay his head back on Three’s shoulder, he didn’t hold on so tightly.

Moments later, a cheer went up from the crowd. Both Three and Wren looked to the mob of people, then followed their collective gaze up to the wall. There, next to one of the towers to one side of the gate, he stood.

Underdown.

He was tall, nearly six and half feet by Three’s guess, with pale blond hair and a powerful frame. Even from this distance, the resemblance was striking. If there’d been any lingering doubt about whether Cass had told the truth about who Wren’s father was, it was dispelled. The Governor could have been Wren, thirty-five years older. Whatever catastrophe was about to befall Morningside, Governor Underdown had arrived to thwart it. Silence fell over the throng of citizens, though in the distance Three could hear the cries of the Weir approaching.

Three started to press his way into the crowd, a new idea forming. If he could just get close enough, maybe he’d be able to force a confrontation between Asher and Underdown. But as he neared the Governor, he stopped. The look on Underdown’s face was not the cool confidence Three had expected. Nor the grim determination of a seasoned warrior before battle. The eyes too wide, the lips colorless. The look of a man caught in a lie. Powerless.

He opened his mouth to speak, and closed it again wordlessly. At a loss. Somewhere nearby a Weir shrieked its electric call. Three figured they had two minutes, maybe three.

“People of Morningside!”

Another voice now. Younger. Cocky.

Asher.

“People of Morningside, you have been deceived!”

He strolled along the wall, making his way towards the Governor casually, hands clasped behind his back. Three had never seen him before but he knew him instantly. Shaggy brown hair, sharply handsome, he had just enough of Cass in his cheekbones to make Three hate him. Seventeen, maybe eighteen years old, he walked like he owned the world. Now that Three saw him, he couldn’t believe this was the little punk they’d been running from for so long.

“Your beloved Governor is a fraud,” he said, with a smirk. Like it was some cruel joke he’d pulled. “Tell them,
Governor
. Tell them how you lied.”

The silence of the crowd was intensified by the growing sounds of chaos gathering from the distance. The stream of citizens had ceased, which meant they’d either taken to hiding in their homes, or they’d been cut off by the advancing Weir. On top of the wall of the compound, Underdown remained speechless. Asher slid next to him.

“Tell them!” he barked, suddenly furious. Three saw it now. The trait which made Asher so frightening, though Three was not frightened by him. There was a strange mix at work; a malevolent childishness, like a spoiled prince with the power of life and death in his hands. No doubt he was powerful, to see how Underdown cowered before him, to know how men like Fedor, and Kostya, and Dagon had served his will. And in that moment, Three understood… Asher cared nothing for Cass, his mother, or for his baby half-brother, Wren. They had defied him, and for that alone he could neither forgive nor forget them.

Three’s vague plan had been to let Asher sense Wren in the Governor’s presence. He saw now his plan was falling apart spectacularly.

“He doesn’t protect you from the Weir,” Asher called. “He brings them upon you!”

Murmurs rose from the crowd even as the Weirs’ crying grew nearer. The tension strained with panic just beneath the surface, but some mix of curiosity, and dread, and belief that Underdown would still save them seemed to hold the people at bay, even if against their will.

“He calls them forth, and sends them away again! Behold! Your
savior!”

And with that, the first of the Weir appeared in the streets, coming from the east, loping towards them like wolves on the hunt. New screams rose within the crush of citizens, and they surged against the gates of the compound. Three started to force his way back out, clutching Wren close as he fought to push through, away from the people. He’d rather die fighting in the open than get trampled in a mindless panic. Apart from the crowd, they’d have room to run, or at least maneuver.

The sight of the Weir was terrifying to the people of Morningside, who’d likely never seen them at all, and certainly not without a wall separating them. But Three could tell something was off with the creatures. They moved more slowly, heads weaving back and forth, like men stumbling through a heavy fog. The sunlight, he guessed. Three was nearly out of the knot of people, threading his way to the edges where those near the back had given up hope of gaining entry to the compound and were so less pressed together.

“Save them, Governor! Save your people, as you have so many times before! Save them now, if you can!” Asher mocked him openly now, robbed Underdown of any last sense of dignity or power. “Why won’t you save them, Governor?”

And then without warning, Asher put his foot on Underdown’s back and shoved him from the wall. It was a fifteen foot drop onto concrete, and Asher’s kick had sent Underdown sprawling. The Governor had no way to cushion his fall. With a sharp cry he impacted with bone-shattering force and lay still, mere feet from the throng of men and women who moments before had been his adorers.

A sickly sort of paralysis overcame the mob then. The shock of their beloved Underdown broken on the ground, the shambling horde that approached, this brash new man on the wall who had cast their Governor down… it was as if their collective mind had ceased to process or respond.

“Three…” Wren whispered.

“Now, citizens of Morningside, watch,” Asher said, “and know true power!”

Asher leapt from the wall and landed just beyond Underdown’s motionless form with a lightness that surprised Three. He strode towards the Weir, his long coat billowing behind him like some great cape, and then halted, awaiting their final approach. There were thirty or so by Three’s quick count.

“Three,” Wren whispered again, urgently. “Ran. Ran’s coming.”

Three nodded, and started backpedaling slowly. But his gaze was still drawn to Asher and the Weir. The Weir had seemed to fix on Asher alone then, and they gathered towards him. Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten.

And then Asher raised his hand, palm out, and cried in a loud voice:

“FALL!”

And as if a towering wave had crashed over them, they did. The Weir were thrown back to the ground, where they lay dazed. Asher lowered his hand. Adjusted the sleeves of his coat. And as the first shouts of relief and amazement and joy from the crowd were just beginning, he turned and pointed directly at Three and Wren.

“Stop them.”

Three turned to run, but it was no use. They hadn’t cleared the mob yet, and those nearest pressed in. In the next instant the crowd swirled around them. Too many hands clutched and grasped at them for Three to get away. Wren fought to hold on. For a split second, Three considered trying for his blade, but didn’t, fearing what would happen if he didn’t hold Wren with both arms.

In the end, it didn’t matter anyway. They were forced apart, and Three felt Wren sliding away from him.

“Wren!”

“Three,” the boy shrieked, terrified.

“Wren! Fight, Wren! Fight!”

Three’s rage surged, and he channeled his fury into those around him. Like a thunderstorm against a mountain range, he threw himself at those who in their ignorance had dared to lay hands upon him. For a moment, he was free and a small space opened in the crush, the bravery of the mob briefly broken. But as he reached to draw his blade the crowd parted and a short but grim man strode towards him as if he were wading through shallow water.

Ran.

The blade was halfway from its sheath when the blow landed, and Three knew no more.