Wilder (26 page)

Chapter 49

T
he New York City bus McKenna had commandeered came with one pissed-off bus driver. Rosie sat in her seat, chomped on her cigar, and shouted for everyone to get in and sit down; she had a schedule to keep.

In a low voice, Aleksandr asked McKenna, “The streets are empty. The whole subway system is shut down. What schedule is that?”

“I told her we had two hours to get to the Osgood building and stop him from taking over the world.” McKenna’s voice was both fascinated and appalled. “She cursed me and asked why I didn’t tell her sooner.”

“Really, McKenna, why didn’t you?” Samuel gave Isabelle a hand up the steps, then bounded after her.

The Belows shuffled to the back.

Taurean shuffled with them.

The people from the mansions looked bewildered, as if they didn’t know what to do in a vehicle fragrant with the smell of pee and furnished with plastic seats, but they finally moved into the front seats close to the police.

Charisma was interested to note that Amber sat with them.

The former Chosen scattered themselves up and down the bus.

Moises sat next to one of them.

Rosie got up, looked down the aisle, and shouted, “Hurry and get your freaking seat! This isn’t a freaking first-class flight, and I am not your freaking stewardess!”

The pace picked up.

The Wilders filled in the middle left side.

The Chosen Ones filled in the middle right side.

Isabelle took the seat behind Aleksandr and Charisma—and the feathers, wrapped in the blue cloth and cradled in Charisma’s arms.

Samuel sprawled next to Isabelle. In an aggrieved little boy’s voice he said, “I don’t never get to hold the feathers.”

Charisma turned around and grinned at him. “The feathers like me best.”

He fake-grinned back at her.

She was going to miss him so much.

“Charisma is the Chosen One of the Chosen Ones,” Genny said as she seated herself with John in front of Charisma and Aleksandr.

“All right. I’m putting my ass in the driver’s seat, and we’re headed for the Osgood building. There’s not much traffic today”—an understatement; there was no traffic—“and we’ve got to get there fast. So if you’re on the wrong bus, get off!” Rosie pointed at the door. “Otherwise, hang on and I’ll get you there on time.”

“I love that woman,” Rosamund said.

Rosie put her ass into the driver’s seat, slammed the bus into gear, glanced in the rearview mirror, and they peeled out so fast they burned rubber.

Across the aisle, Konstantine shouted, “Powerful engine in this thing!”

Charisma looked around.

The passengers were divided between the people enjoying the ride, mostly Wilders; the people looking stern about the speed, mostly cops; and the terrified, mostly everybody else.

The bus screamed south on Fifth Avenue, past Central Park, past the stores, shuttered and dark. The city streets were empty, and the black clouds scudded across the sky, blocking the sun, turning day to night.

Konstantine leaned over to Aleksandr and spoke.

Aleksandr nodded, then leaned forward. “John, do you have any real plan at all?”

John shook his head. “Get there, hopefully in one piece. Get inside with the feathers. Confront Osgood and see whether we can figure out how Jacqueline’s prophecy will work.”

“Play it by ear. Got it.” Aleksandr leaned back and spoke to Konstantine.

Konstantine nodded enthusiastically, hooked his elbow around Aleksandr’s neck, and gave him a hug, then gave John a thumbs-up.

Charisma had to admire Konstantine, a man who faced the annihilation of his entire family, possibly during a bus ride before the battle, and yet who glowed with good cheer.

Aleksandr leaned over to her. “He figures this is his last battle, and it’s a good one. Plus he’s happy to see me.”

“Aren’t they
all
happy to see you?” Charisma asked.

Aleksandr wavered. “Well . . . within reason.”

Charisma’s temper started to rise. “They didn’t criticize you for your forced decision to change forms?”

“They didn’t mention the way I look. I didn’t mention the reason I look this way.” Aleksandr rubbed the hair on his cheeks as if to call her attention to the difference between him and the boring-looking humans. “I imagine we’ll get to that when we finish off Osgood.”

Charisma nodded. “Yes. When we finish him off.”

Aleksandr continued. “But my father and uncles are a little tight-lipped about why I didn’t make contact sooner.”

“You had amnesia!” Charisma glared across the aisle.

“The women cried for me. The men grieved. My mother is still weeping. I put them through a lot.”

“Oh.” Charisma glanced across the aisle. She knew Konstantine from his earlier visits to New York, and the rest of the family in a peripheral way. The legend of Darkness Chosen had been well documented, and she’d studied the Wilder family’s rare success in their battle with the devil. She respected them for their determination and admired them for their courage.

But somehow none of them were the people she’d pictured.

Firebird kept glancing over at them, and every time she did, she smiled tremulously.

Douglas spoke to her quietly, and the glances he sent their way were a great deal more stern.

At Davidov’s, Zorana had embraced Aleksandr . . . and then taken him by the shoulders and shaken him. If it hadn’t been so heartfelt, it would have been funny, for Aleksandr towered fully two feet above her.

The people Aleksandr had introduced as his uncles and aunts were all holding hands. . . .

“I guess, since they’re Wilders, they know what they’re getting into better even than we do,” Charisma said.

Aleksandr put his hand to his chest, over his heart. “I would not have brought this trouble on them if I could have avoided it.”

“You didn’t make this trouble.”

“No. But they are here because of me. For me.”

“You should sit with them,” Charisma said in a low voice.

“No. I shouldn’t. I should sit with you.” He put his hand over her cold fingers and warmed them.

Charisma was glad. In a time of so many sacrifices, whether they sat together on this last ride shouldn’t make any difference to her. It shouldn’t—but it did.

The bus rumbled past Madison Square Park.

Here a few people were on the streets, standing and looking toward the roiling black clouds and the lightning striking the empty skyscrapers, or running in the opposite direction. But mostly there was that unnerving stillness, as if the world were waiting for a storm to break.

Charisma found herself listening too hard, holding herself too tensely, and she jumped when Jacqueline turned and made a speech to the Chosen Ones. “Aleksandr is back. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for. It’s time for us to join hands and feel the energy between us.”

The bus got very quiet. Everyone craned their necks, including Rosie, who watched in the broad rearview mirror and never slackened speed.

Jacqueline offered one hand to Caleb and one to Aaron in the seat behind her. One by one, the Chosen Ones and their mates joined hands: Jacqueline and Caleb, Aaron and Rosamund, John and Genny, Samuel and Isabelle, and finally Charisma and Aleksandr. For a long, tension-filled moment, nothing happened.

Then the feathers in Charisma’s lap lifted.

Lightning zapped through the Chosen Ones, clearing their minds and gladdening their souls. Before, that was all that had ever happened, and it was enough.

But this time, in each of their brains, a vision sprang to life, and each of the Chosen Ones saw himself or herself soaring on angel wings through the crystal-clear air, the world far below, the heavens above . . . while Osgood’s building broke apart and vanished.

Then the vision melted, the feathers settled back into Charisma’s lap, and each of the Chosen Ones was breathless with awe, reinforced in his or her determination, and exalted with a renewal of hope.

Then the bus hit a speed bump so hard they left their seats and landed with a thump, and they laughed as Rosie drove them through Little Italy, toward Osgood Headquarters now towering on the horizon.

Jacqueline turned. “Did everyone have the vision?”

Nods all around.

“What did you see?” she asked.

“I was flying with the wings on my back,” Genny said.

“No, it was me,” John said.

“Me!” Aaron said.

Rosamund straightened her glasses on her nose. “A most unusual occurrence. What is commonly believed is that this means that any one of us can perform the task at hand.”

Jacqueline nodded. “We have to get to the roof of the Osgood building. That’s where Osgood is. He’s calling in the storm, remaking the earth. The roof—that’s where we’ll take flight.”

“Then the roof will be our goal,” John said.

“Charisma carries the feathers.” Jacqueline’s low voice carried to every ear. “So whether or not she takes flight, she
has
to make it to the roof.”

John stood up and shouted, “Charisma Fangorn has to make it to the roof!”

Around the bus, every head nodded.

Rosie turned a corner so hard John hit the window and remained plastered there until she straightened the wheel.

“Hope we live through the ride,” Konstantine shouted cheerfully.

Isabelle put her hands on Charisma’s shoulders.

Charisma felt the flow of warmth start, and sighed with pleasure.

“You’re stronger.” Isabelle’s surprise told Charisma that Isabelle, too, knew of her fatal poisoning. “Oh! How marvelous! Your gift is back.”

“Yes.” Charisma touched the stones at her wrist. They sang to her of duty, of sacrifice, of a death nobly borne. “I can hear the earth again.”

“What about— Oof!” Samuel gasped as if Isabelle had elbowed him hard.

Both Aleksandr and Charisma turned to see Samuel holding his ribs.

He fake-smiled again, that lawyerly smirk that made Charisma glad she had never faced him across a courtroom. “I was going to say, what about me? You know how selfish I am. Isabelle should put her hands on me.”

“Yes! And heal you!” Before he could say another word, Isabelle put both hands on his hip and grimaced.

“Woman, you try my patience.” But the small, pinched frown between his eyes vanished.

“We need you, Samuel. We need every warrior.” Isabelle took her hands away and leaned sideways, as if trying to alleviate the pain in her own hip. “And don’t try to tell me it didn’t hurt, because now I know better.”

Samuel wrapped his arm around his wife and brought her close against his chest, closed his eyes, and rested his head on hers.

Aleksandr watched them, and his beastly yet beautiful face twisted in anguish. Then he looked at Charisma, and his blue eyes softened. For a moment, just the briefest of moments, she slid her arms around him and rested her head on his chest.

No one else could have made her happy. Except Aleksandr.

The moment of loving communion was all too brief.

The bus shrieked to a stop.

Rosie flung open the doors and yelled, “Osgood Headquarters. Everybody out!”

Chapter 50

A
leksandr joined the others as they moved to one side of the bus and peered out the windows.

Osgood Headquarters rose straight up, bleak, stark, almost completely windowless, with a sickly-white sheen that reflected the black clouds swirling in a circle around the top floors. In an eerie silence, lightning snaked out of the clouds, striking like flaming cobras at the walls, the trees, the ground. The earth began to tremble, then to shake. Giant cracks opened in the street, then snapped shut again while waves of destruction emanated from the building’s foundation.

Seemingly oblivious to the shaking, Rosie lit a new cigar. “No time like the present!” She stomped down the steps.

Clinging to the seats for balance, everyone stumbled their way down the aisle and onto the circular drive. A landscaped and lavish covered walk led to the cathedral-size bronze-cast double doors that opened to the lobby. They walked forward, exclaiming at the bronze arches, the stone benches, the perfectly arranged landscaping. The entrance resembled any entrance to a grossly wealthy conglomerate, except . . .

They all slowed.

They all looked around.

Rosamund said what they were all thinking. “Where are all the people?”

There were no employees. No visitors. No guards. No one watching them suspiciously.

“Something is very wrong here.” Charisma cradled the feathers a little closer.

“Osgood declared this Worldwide Apocalypse Day and gave them a holiday?” Samuel suggested.

Nobody laughed. Not even Samuel.

Ten feet before they reached the doors, John waved everyone into a circle around him. “Gather ’round. Gather ’round. And listen. I’m the leader of the Chosen Ones, which means I’m your general.” He bent a stern look on the older Chosen, on the Wilders and the street people, the wealthy, and the Belows. “I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure no one is hurt, but there’s not much time left before Osgood gets all the trump in his hand and starts his thousand-year reign on earth.”

The ground rattled beneath their feet.

Everyone looked up toward the top of the building, where the clouds circled faster and faster.

Aleksandr pulled Charisma close, and noted that there was no sign of life around them; not even birds twittered in the trees.

John continued. “We don’t know what we’re walking into. The Others are probably going to be in there, and heaven knows what other kind of creatures, and heavens knows what kinds of weapons. Stick together and stay behind me. I throw off energy, which means I can repel bullets and push people around. Remember—the elevators are at the back of the lobby. Our aim is to get as many of the Chosen Ones on them as we can and head for the roof.”

“Osgood has control of the elevators,” Aaron pointed out.

“We’ll have to take our chances,” John answered.

“What’s your choice?” Rosie chomped on her cigar. “Running up one hundred and some flights of stairs?”

“Right.” John nodded at her. “We haven’t got a
good
choice, but for sure, Charisma and the feathers need to make it aboard that elevator. Innovate as you have to. And for just a moment, let’s hold hands and—”

Behind them, Aleksandr heard a warning crackle. Heat flashed through him. He saw a blaze of fiery white light, felt the hair lift all over his body.

A bomb!

He flung himself around.

No, not a bomb. A lightning bolt had hit the bus, turning it into a pile of twisted, smoking metal.

“Why, you son of a bitch.” Rosie threw her cigar on the ground and stared at the wreckage. “You killed my bus!” With a growl that started deep in her chest and issued from her mouth as a roar, she charged toward the bronze doors.

“Let’s go!” John shouted, and ran after her.

The Chosen Ones encircled Charisma and Aleksandr.

The Wilders surrounded the Chosen Ones. The police, the wealthy, the Belows formed the outer perimeter.

The whole group followed Rosie and John, and barreled toward the heavy doors, into the lobby. . . .

They stopped. They stared.

They had found the people. All the people.

The gigantic room was a symphony of white marble, glittering gold, crystal, and cast bronze. And every inch was packed with employees, screaming, pushing, shouting, praying . . . begging. Begging the guards who held them at gunpoint to let them leave.

At the back, behind the security station, more employees emptied out of the elevators, packing the gigantic space tighter and tighter.

“Of course,” Rosamund said. “To seal his deal with the devil, Osgood is going to sacrifice them all. He owns their souls. Now he’ll take their lives. The bargain will be sealed in blood.”

Aleksandr was tall, and could see all too well, looking over the heads of everyone else and deep into the lobby. He could smell the fear of a thousand bodies pressed together, feeding one another’s dread. He could smell pain and terror. “Yes,” he said, “and that’s why he hasn’t killed the Chosen Ones when at any moment, he so obviously could have. If we are part of the sacrifice, it is all the more decisive—and powerful.”

Another earthquake rumbled the ground.

People screamed. They broke. They ran toward the entrance.

The guards opened fire, killing them and the employees behind them.

Blood spattered the white marble, splashed the bronze statues.

Shrieks of pain and fear echoed off the marble columns.

Rosie trembled with rage. She shouted, “You sons a bitches!” and charged again.

John charged after her, using his powers to block bullets, to knock guards aside.

More guards leaped to the front, firing at the people in the lobby.

John slammed the guards against the wall.

The police used their nightsticks with abandon, knocking out the guards, pointing out the way to the people rushing toward the door.

A wall of flame sprang up in the entrance.

As Aleksandr’s fur burned and curled, he pushed Charisma farther into the lobby and away from the doors.

Fire caught one of the fleeing female employees. She screamed in agony.

Firebird Wilder ran into the flames. “Don’t worry. We can walk through!” Putting her arm around the terrified woman, she led her to the door and outside.

“Good for your mother!” Charisma shouted above the din.

Yes, good for his mother. And what hell for his father, who abandoned the Wilders to run after her and ensure her safety.

The fire flared up higher, driving back the employees.

A female Other leaned against a marble column, a woman who smiled as she threw fire from her palms.

Samuel faced her. “You bitch. Don’t even think you can get away with that.” With a lift of his chin, he controlled her mind.

She staggered. Her eyes rolled back in her head. She fell to the ground.

The flames died.

Aleksandr saw his mother open the doors wide. She shouted and gestured the employees forward. The guards were still fighting, but the older Chosen blocked them. The Belows sneaked up on them and, while pretending madness—or perhaps with real madness—smacked the weaponry out of their hands.

From the back, something unseen slammed Samuel. A blade rose and glimmered in the light.

Charisma shouted.

Isabelle reached out and grabbed an invisible arm.

The outline of a human being materialized over Samuel’s prone body.

When Isabelle kneed him in the groin, he dropped the blade and doubled over.

She dropped his wrist and shoved him into the stampede of fleeing employees.

He disappeared from sight, then . . . disappeared in truth as crowds of people trampled him, tripped over him, cursed the invisible obstacle, and bludgeoned him with their tromping feet.

Charisma grabbed his wrist. “Aleksandr. Look!”

Taurean appeared, dragging two women toward the door.

A guard swung around and pointed his pistol at them. He cocked it.

Aleksandr howled and leaped through the crowd. He was too far. He wasn’t going to make it. He roared again.

The guard looked over his shoulder. Saw Aleksandr. His eyes widened. He tried to bring his muzzle around.

Aleksandr grabbed him by the neck and the belt. He lifted the guard over his head and flung him toward the wall.

The guard screamed. He hit. He slid.

Aleksandr turned back to find Charisma.

She was gone.