Seeker

  Halfway there, she looked up to see their path blocked by four figures—the Dreads and her father. They stood firmly on the tilted floor, taking deep, long breaths. Then all four pairs of eyes went to the athame and lightning rod at Quin’s waist.

  She pulled her mother in the other direction, toward the far doors, but one of John’s men already stood there, blocking that route.

  John himself had worked free of the piled objects and was climbing up the floor toward her, his hands busy searching for the disruptor controls on his chest. She knew she must act now, before he fired that weapon.

  “John!” Quin called.

  She pulled the athame and lightning rod from her waist and sent them spinning down the floor toward him.

  The Middle Dread and the Young Dread turned immediately, following the path of the stone dagger. Shots rang out then, thunderous, the bullets caroming off the walls behind her. John’s men were shooting at the Dreads.

  To Quin’s surprise, Briac didn’t follow the athame. Instead he began walking toward Quin. He was injured, in a leg and a shoulder, but his whipsword was in his hand, and he looked ready to die as long as he could punish her. He slashed out with his sword, and Quin ducked.

  “You have shown yourself worthless, girl,” he said to her, his voice both soft and deadly, like the oily substance of a whipsword. “Why did your drunken mother provide me with a girl? You’ve weighed me down with your lack of skill. Your faithlessness.”

  Quin cracked her whipsword out and blocked his next blow, but she found herself hesitating. Years of training had taught her to follow Briac without question. Instead of stepping forward and striking him, she took a step back, into her mother.

  Briac became aware of Fiona then, and like a spotlight, his anger tilted and focused upon her.

  “You, Wife! Cowering as usual. All your training, and you were too cowardly to take the oath. Scared of what you saw in my mind? Frightened of a bit of blood and screaming. I should have rid myself of you both!”

  Quin saw her mother staring at Briac with wide eyes, unable to move, an expression that said, Don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me.

  And that was enough.

  The look her mother wore—Quin had seen it countless times as a girl, and she’d tried to ignore it, had hoped she was mistaken. But hadn’t she always known, somewhere in her heart, that there was no mercy or love behind Briac’s eyes? Hadn’t she sensed that if she crossed him, there would be no forgiveness? Even if she hadn’t been as submissive as her mother, hadn’t she also thought, I’ll believe in you, Briac, I’ll do what you say, if only you won’t hurt me.

  “Stand aside, Quin!” he ordered, gesturing her away so he could strike at Fiona. Even now he assumed she would obey him without question.

  Quin stared at her father, with his sword raised, his face, his whole being, full of malice. And the spell was broken.

  “Go ahead,” she yelled at him. “Try to kill us!”

  And with that she struck at him hard, her motions quick, fierce, and without warning. Briac caught her blow with his whipsword but stumbled back a pace, looking shocked that she would attack. She stepped forward, swinging at him again.

  This time, Briac didn’t hesitate. He slashed out to block her, then struck again. But Quin raised her sword viciously, throwing off his blade.

  “You tried to kill me on the estate,” he said, his voice acid, his whipsword hitting at her again, hard.

  She caught the blow on her own blade, one of her hands at the hilt, one at the tip, the force of his strike bending the middle of her whipsword until it almost touched her nose.

  “What kind of a daughter kills her father?” he asked, his sword pressing harder against hers, his face close. “What kind of monster did I raise?”

  Hatred welled up in Quin like a tidal wave. Looking into his dark eyes—so like hers on the surface, and yet entirely different underneath—she wondered, How could I ever have followed you?

  “You’re the monster,” she said. “And I’m through with you.”

  She twisted her shoulders and thrust her hands forward, her whole body behind the sudden motion. Briac’s sword slipped to the side, and then he fell, off balance, sprawling onto the floor.

  His head hit the ground hard enough to stun him, but still he was coming after her. Quin lifted her whipsword high, ready to strike down and split her father’s head in two.

  Before she had the chance, Briac disappeared in a blur of limbs as something large and flailing dropped through the air directly onto him. Someone was on top of him, punching him again and again, in a fury equal to Quin’s own. Briac was twisting his body and cursing beneath the rain of blows, clawing at the floor to get away.

  Then the punches stopped abruptly, and Briac crawled off, scrambling out of Quin’s reach as quickly as he could.

  His attacker rolled over, clutching a bleeding gash in his side.

  It was Shinobu. He’d fallen through the ceiling. He looked up at Quin, his eyes full of pain but also triumphant.

  “I really hate him!” he whispered to her.

  CHAPTER 63

  MAUD

  Along the slanted floor, the Middle Dread and the Young Dread approached John and his two men. She could see the athame and lightning rod several yards behind John. The stone objects had come to rest against an upturned desk.

  John’s men were firing guns. The range was close, and the Dreads should have been easy targets for the bullets. Yet the Young and the Middle had slowed their sense of time to that point she often felt in battle, when a heartbeat took a minute, and a breath an hour. She saw the bullets as they left the barrels of the guns, and her body was no longer in their path by the time they reached her. They themselves would appear as blurs of motion to the others in the room.

  The Middle cracked out his whipsword and stabbed forward at the first of the men. The Young’s sword was already out, preparing to engage with the second man. She swiveled to the side as a bullet tore by her head, then she raised her sword. This would not take long.

  Before she struck the man, she spared a glance at her master, who was standing behind them, keeping himself apart from this fight. As the Young met the Old Dread’s eyes, her mind shifted even higher. Images poured through her. He had trained her for years, been a father to her, taught her about the hum of the universe. The athame was to move a great mind beyond the bounds, but there were no great minds, only good hearts. Was she a possession? It takes only one hand to place an athame. Only one mind to decide. Where was the justice of the Dreads?

  She saw it then. Her master could not rid himself of the Middle Dread. The reason was a mystery, but the fact remained: her master was tied to the Middle. He had been looking, for a thousand years perhaps, for a Young Dread who would do what was right.

  Without another moment of hesitation, she turned her sword away from John’s man and thrust it straight through the Middle Dread’s back, as she had imagined doing so many times. As he lifted his own sword to deliver a death blow to John, she neatly pierced his heart.

  The Middle reeled backward, her sword all the way through him, and the Young Dread caught him as he fell. John was staring at her, eyes wide, shock and gratitude chasing each other across his face.

  Her master was by her side now. He leaned his head close to her ear.

  “That was right,” he whispered.

  CHAPTER 64

  JOHN

  John was seeing the moment of his own death. The Dreads had boarded Traveler with Quin, and though they didn’t seem to be helping her, their presence had destroyed any hope of avoiding a fight.

  The athame and lightning rod were on the floor some yards behind John, and the Dreads were out for blood to retrieve them. In a cloud of motion, the Middle Dread was raising his sword to kill John.

  Then something long and thin sprouted from the man’s chest, covered in red. As John watched, it snaked its way back into the Middle’s torso and disappeared. Then the man fell backward into the arms of the Yo
ung Dread.

  For the briefest moment, John’s eyes and the Young Dread’s eyes were locked upon each other. She had saved him, she had helped him. Then the Young was gone, dragging the Middle away.

  John turned toward the athame and found Briac Kincaid heading right for him. Briac was limping, and his face was bloody, but this didn’t seem to be slowing him down. The bright light of revenge was burning in his eyes.

  A gun went off, and John’s shoulder jerked back. He could see the gun clutched in Briac’s left hand. The man was going to kill him. Except that John had something worse than death in his own hands. Ever since that day, so long ago, when he’d glimpsed the flash of rainbow-colored light from his hiding place beneath the floor, he had been waiting for this. Ever since that day in the old barn, when Briac had stood before the withered figure in the hospital bed, lecturing the apprentices about the dangers of disruptors, he had been waiting for this.

  John’s remaining guard lunged forward to stop Briac, just as John’s own hand slid down the edge of the disruptor. There was a high, piercing whine as the disruptor launched a thousand sparks.

  The room was filled with multicolored light again, and the hiss and snap of electricity. The web of sparks collided with both of the men, John’s guard and Briac, who were now locked in a fight.

  His own man jumped backward, beating at his head, which was swimming with electrical flashes. Briac fell to the ground, falling out of the cloud of sparks as he did. But he was not completely free of them. A small handful—maybe three or four—were still dancing around Briac’s head. The disruptor field had split between the two of them, something John had not known was possible. Briac rolled along the floor, swatting the flashing lights like they were flies.

  John turned away, searching frantically for the athame and lightning rod.

  Quin threw me the athame! he thought, filled with a relief so profound and a happiness so intense that they were almost overwhelming. She chose to give it to me!

  His hands closed around both stone objects. But they were wrong. They didn’t feel as they should. Instead of cool stone, his skin felt something softer, warmer. He hit the athame against an overturned table, and it crumbled to pieces in his hands.

  It was a trick. She hadn’t thrown him the real dagger. She hadn’t chosen to help him. He stood quite still for a moment, despair flooding in. And then came anger.

  He could see Quin and Fiona farther up the steep floor, kneeling by another figure. As he approached, he recognized this figure: Shinobu MacBain. Quin’s rescue on the Bridge suddenly became clear. Shinobu had been there. He had been helping her. Perhaps, in Hong Kong, Shinobu had taken John’s place. Perhaps he and Quin had been together for the last year and a half. He could imagine her touching him, kissing him, helping him, as she had refused to do for John. The idea made him furious.

  “Can you move?” he heard Quin ask him.

  Shinobu was clutching his side, and one of his legs was bent in the wrong direction.

  “Sure,” he whispered. “I can move.”

  “We’re going to pull you,” she said. “Hold my arms.”

  Before Shinobu could grab on to her, John grasped his whipsword with both hands and drove the butt of it into the side of Quin’s head as hard as he could.

  She dropped to the floor, stunned.

  Then there was a tremendous groan from the back of the ship, followed by the sound of a great amount of metal tearing away from itself.

  Traveler began to plummet.

  CHAPTER 65

  QUIN

  The room was swinging madly. Something had hit Quin, hit her head so hard she couldn’t see properly. Her vision was spinning, but she was fairly certain the room was spinning as well. There were skyscrapers outside, whirling across the huge glass canopy like the lights of a carnival ride.

  She and Fiona and Shinobu were sliding across the floor together, and someone else was there. She could feel him breathing near her face. He was clutching her as they slid, keeping her with him. And his arms were searching inside her cloak.

  “No,” she breathed.

  “Why wouldn’t you choose me?” he whispered. “Just once?”

  She had to stop him from searching her pockets. Her head was throbbing and her arms weren’t working properly, but she struck out. He pushed her arm away like it was a stalk of wheat.

  “There,” she heard him say. “There it is.”

  It was John, and he sounded happy. She could see him now. He was holding the athame and lightning rod, the real ones that she had concealed.

  “No, John …”

  He continued to search inside her cloak. She tried to push him away, but there was no strength in her arms.

  He was taking something else from her pocket. She heard him draw a breath in surprise.

  With great effort, her head pounding, Quin turned toward him and made her eyes focus. John was staring at a thick book with a leather cover and a leather tie holding it shut. She grabbed for it and was confused to see her hand move in the wrong direction.

  “You don’t want that,” she whispered. But the words seemed wrong: of course John would want it. She watched as he flipped through the pages, a look of joy crossing his face. She made another grab for the book, but her arms came nowhere close.

  It’s all right, she told herself. Even in her dazed state, Quin remembered that John taking the book was not a catastrophe. She’d brought it as a potential bargaining chip, hadn’t she? There was a reason she could let it go. Somehow she’d taken steps …

  “How do you have this?” he asked her. He sounded like a child on Christmas.

  “Briac …”

  They were sliding again. John leaned over her so she could see his face clearly.

  “You have helped me,” he whispered, his words kind, grateful. “Thank you, Quin. Thank you.”

  His lips were on her cheek, warm and soft. And then John was gone, sliding across the floor and away from her.

  The ship was screaming. Traveler began to rock back and forth. There were hands on her arm. Someone was pulling her. She turned. Shinobu was there, trying to bring her closer. Her mother was lying flat on the floor, tying a thick wad of cloth against the deep cut in Shinobu’s side.

  When Shinobu had fallen through the ceiling, Briac’s whipsword had caught him in the center of his chest. The thin layer of armor under his burned clothing had deflected the tip, which had slid across his torso, then finally pierced the armor at his side. There was warm wetness along Quin’s leg. Shinobu had been saved from instant death, but he was still bleeding all over the floor.

  The ship was lurching upward now, like a wounded animal trying to pull itself back to its feet. The engines were roaring in different keys. Shinobu was grabbing Quin’s shirt.

  “We’re crashing,” he whispered.

  “Hold on to me,” she told him. Her head was pounding, but she was no longer dizzy, and her arms were starting to work again. “I’ll pull you out of here.”

  “I crashed the ship,” he said. “I think I’m bleeding …”

  “It’s okay. Hold on to me.”

  The ship was tilting more severely, as some engines cut out completely and those remaining tried to lift the vessel back into the air. Shinobu and Quin slid sideways until they hit the wall. Gravity pressed her tightly against him.

  “Keep talking to me,” she whispered as his eyes started to droop.

  “Did he take the athame?”

  “He did. It doesn’t matter …”

  “Am I dying?”

  “You’re not dying.”

  “Quin …”

  “It’s just a little blood, I promise. Hold on.” She grabbed him more tightly, as if her own arms could protect him from the falling ship. His cheek was pressed against hers.

  “Quin, we’re only third cousins, you know.”

  “Half third cousins,” she whispered, her lips close to his ear. “Hardly related at all.”

  “Did you want to kiss me … in the basem
ent?”

  “Yes,” she breathed, “so much.”

  The buildings outside were lurching around the glass canopy drunkenly. The ship was bucking and falling at the same time.

  Shinobu pulled her so their faces were level. Then he kissed her lips, very slowly and tenderly, as if they were not lying in a spinning, crashing ship, as if they had all the time in the world.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  “I love you,” he whispered back.

  Then Shinobu threw himself over her. With one final scream, the ship’s engines pulled the nose up, and Traveler crash-landed in Hyde Park.

  The glass canopy shattered into a thousand spiderwebs, and the large sheets began to fall. Shinobu was pinning her down, protecting her. She saw her mother in the corner a few yards away, hunched in a sheltered space where two walls met. Quin tried to roll out from under Shinobu, to push him closer to that corner and to safety. There was a thud as a sheet of glass landed on top of them, crushing him into her. Quin felt the breath knocked out of her lungs.

  There was stillness then. But not quiet. The ship was settling beneath them, and there were sirens everywhere. Every ambulance, firefighter, and policeman for twenty miles was converging on their crash site.

  “Come,” a voice said as Quin struggled to breathe.

  The Young Dread was lifting the glass sheet up. Quin didn’t pause to wonder how so small a girl could lift so heavy an object. As quickly as she could, her breath returning, she wriggled out from beneath Shinobu. The Young Dread was holding up an athame. A deep tremor flooded over Quin as she and Fiona and the Young Dread dragged Shinobu’s limp form through a dark circle in the dark room, the energy of its edges surging inward toward complete blackness. A moment later they were not in the ship at all; they were There.

  CHAPTER 66

  QUIN