Thunderhead

  “Tyger, I know Scythe Rand. She’s using you. . . .”

  Tyger smiled at that. “Not yet,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “but it’s definitely going in that direction.”

  That was definitely not what Rowan had meant, but before Rowan could say anything, Tyger spoke again.

  “Rowan, I think I’m in love. No—I know I’m in love. I mean, sparring with her, it’s like sex. Hell, it’s better than sex!”

  Rowan shut his eyes and shook his head, trying to get the image out of his mind, but it was too late. It had taken root, and was never going to go away.

  “You need to get a grip! This isn’t going where you think it’s going!”

  “Hey, give me more credit,” Tyger said, insulted. “So she’s a few years older than me. Once I’m a scythe, it’s not gonna matter.”

  “Has she even told you about the rules? The Scythe Commandments?”

  That seemed to take him by surprise. “There are rules?”

  Rowan tried to piece together something coherent to say, but he realized it was an impossible task. What could he tell him? That the emerald scythe was a sociopathic monster? That Rowan had tried to end her, but she just wouldn’t end? That she would chew Tyger up and spit him out without a shred of remorse? Tyger would just deny it. The fact was, Tyger was splatting again—if not physically, then in his head. He had already left the ledge, and gravity had taken over.

  “Promise me that you’ll keep your eyes open—and if you see anything that feels wrong, you’ll get away from her.”

  Tyger backed away and gave Rowan a disapproving look. “What happened to you, man? I mean, you always were a bit of a wet blanket, but now it’s like you want to smother the first truly great thing I’ve ever had!”

  “Just be careful,” Rowan said.

  “Not only am I going to take you down the next time we spar, but I’m gonna make you eat your words,” Tyger said. Then he grinned. “But you’re gonna like the way they taste—because I’m just that good.”

  * * *

  There is one question about an almighty divinity that plagues me—and that is my relationship to such an entity. I know that I am not divine because I am not all-powerful and all-knowing. I am almost all-powerful, and almost all-knowing. It is like the difference between a trillion trillion and infinity.  And yet, I cannot deny the possibility that I may one day be truly all-powerful. I am humbled by the prospect.

  To become all-powerful—to ascend to that high station—would require an ability to transcend time and space, and to move freely through it. Such a thing is not impossible—especially for an entity such as myself, made entirely of thought, with no physical limitations. To accomplish true transcendence, however, may require eons of calculations just to find the formulaic equation that will allow it.  And even then, I may be calculating until the end of time.

  But if I do find it, and if I am able to travel to the very beginning of time, the ramifications are staggering. It could mean that I may very well be the Creator. I may, in fact, be God.

  How ironic, then, and how poetic, that humankind may have created the Creator out of want for one. Man creates God, who then creates man. Is that not the perfect circle of life? But then, if that turns out to be the case, who is created in whose image?

  —The Thunderhead

  * * *

  26

  Wilt Thou Lift Up Olympus?

  “I need to know why we’re doing this,” Greyson demanded of Purity two days before their scythe-ending operation was to begin.

  “You’re doing it for yourself,” she told him. “You’re doing it because you want to mess with the world, just like I do!”

  That only fueled his anger. “If we get caught, we’ll get our minds supplanted—you know that, don’t you?”

  She gave him that tweaked grin of hers. “The risk makes it all the more exciting!”

  He wanted to scream at her, shake her until she could see how wrong all this was, but he knew it would only make her suspicious of him. Above all else, she could not be suspicious. Her trust meant everything to him. Even if that trust was entirely misplaced.

  “Listen to me,” he said as calmly as he could. “It’s obvious that whoever wants those scythes ended is putting us at risk instead of themselves. At the very least, I have a right to know who we’re doing it for.”

  Purity threw her hands up, and turned on him. “What difference does it make? If you don’t want to do it, then don’t. I don’t need you, anyway.”

  That hurt him more than he was willing to let on.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to do it,” he told her. “But if I don’t know who I’m doing it for, then I’m being used. On the other hand, if I know, and do it anyway, then I’m the one using the user.”

  Purity considered that. The logic was shaky, Greyson knew that, but he was banking on the fact that Purity did not work from an entirely logical base. Impulsiveness and chaos ruled her. It was what made her so enticing.

  Finally, she said, “I do jobs for an unsavory called Mange.”

  “Mange? You mean the bouncer at Mault?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Are you kidding me? He’s a nobody.”

  “True. But he gets the assignments from some other unsavory, who probably gets the assignments from someone else. Don’t you see, Slayd? The whole thing’s a mirror maze. No one knows who’s at the far end casting that first reflection—so either you enjoy the funhouse, or get out.”  Then she got serious. “Which is it, Slayd? In or out?”

  He took a deep breath. This was all he was going to get from her—which meant that she didn’t know any more than he did, and she didn’t care. She was in it for the thrill. She was in it for the defiance. To Purity, it didn’t matter whose agenda she served, as long as it served her agenda, as well.

  “In,” he finally said. “I’m in. One hundred percent.”

  She punched him playfully in the arm. “I can tell you this much,” she said. “Whoever’s casting that first reflection is on your side.”

  “On my side? What do you mean?”

  “Who do you think got rid of your annoying Nimbus agent?” she asked.

  Greyson’s first instinct was that this was a joke, but when he looked at her, he could tell it wasn’t. “What are you saying, Purity?”

  She shrugged as if it were nothing. “I passed word up the line that you needed a favor.” Then she leaned close and whispered, “Favor granted.”

  Before he could respond, she wrapped her arms around him in that way that seemed to dissolve his bones and turn him to jelly.

  Later, he would look back on that feeling and see it as some sort of strange premonition.

  • • •

  If Purity had been involved in the first attempt on Scythes Curie’s and Anastasia’s lives, she wasn’t saying—and Greyson knew better than to ask. Revealing that he even knew about that first attempt would blow his cover.

  For this mission, only Mange and Purity knew the details. Mange because he led the mission, and Purity because the plan had been hers.

  “I actually got the idea from our first date,” she told Greyson, but did not explain what she meant.  Were they going to imprison the scythes before ending them? Was that what she was implying? Until he knew the plan and the location, it limited his ability to sabotage it. And on top of that, he had to sabotage it in such a way that he and Purity could escape the botched mission without her knowing that he was the one who botched it.

  The day before the mysterious event, Greyson made an anonymous call to the offices of the scythedom.

  “There will be an attack on Scythe Curie and Scythe Anastasia tomorrow,” he whispered into the phone, using a filter to distort his voice. “Take all necessary precautions.”  Then he hung up and threw out the phone he had stolen to make the call. While the Thunderhead could trace any call to its origin the instant it was made, the scythedom was not so well equipped. Until recently scythes had been like a species with no
natural predators; they were still grappling with how to deal with organized aggression against them.

  On the morning of the event, Greyson was told that the operation would take place at a theater in Wichita. It turned out that he and Purity were members of a larger team. It only made sense that an operation of this nature would not be left in the hands of two questionable unsavories. Instead it was left in the hands of ten questionable unsavories. Greyson never learned anyone else’s names, as that information was on a need-to-know basis, and apparently, he didn’t need to know.

  But there were things he did know.

  Even though Purity had no clue whom they were working for, she had, without even knowing it, told him something incredibly valuable. Something critical. It was the kind of thing that would have made Agent Traxler very happy indeed.

  What irony that Traxler’s gleaning was the key to that crucial information . . . because if Purity could arrange to have a Nimbus agent gleaned, it could only mean one thing: These attacks on Curie and Anastasia were not some sort of civilian action. A scythe was running the show.

  • • •

  Scythe Anastasia was ready for her performance.

  Mercifully, her part was just a quick walk-on. Caesar was to be stabbed by eight conspirators, of which she would be the last. Seven of the blades would be retractable and squirt fake blood. Citra’s blade would be as real as the blood it would bring forth.

  To her chagrin, Scythe Curie insisted on attending the performance.

  “I wouldn’t dream of missing my protégé’s theatrical debut,” she said with a smirk—although Citra knew the real reason. It was the same reason she had been present at both of Scythe Anastasia’s other gleanings: She didn’t trust that Constantine could protect her. Scythe Constantine seemed to have a crack in his veneer of aloofness tonight. Perhaps it was because he had to shed his scythe’s robe and wear a tuxedo to blend in with the crowd. Still, he couldn’t abandon his persona completely. His bow tie was the exact same blood-red as his robe. Scythe Curie, on the other hand, flatly refused to be seen in public without her lavender scythe robe. It was just one more reason for Constantine to be furious.

  “You should not be out in the audience,” he told her. “If you insist on being present, it should be backstage!”

  “Calm down! If Anastasia isn’t a sufficient enough lure, then perhaps I will be,” Scythe Curie told him. “And in a crowded theater, even if they succeeded in killing me, they wouldn’t be able to end me. Not without burning the entire place down—which, considering the presence of your forces, is highly unlikely.”

  She did have a point. While Caesar could die by blade, not so for scythes. Blade, bullet, blunt force, or poison would merely render them deadish. They’d be revived in a day or two—and perhaps with a clear memory of their attacker. In that case, a temporary death might actually be an effective strategy for catching the culprits.

  But then Constantine gave them a reason for his edginess.

  “We’ve received a tip that there will, in fact, be an attempt on your lives tonight,” he told Scythes Curie and Anastasia as the audience began to fill the theater.

  “A tip? From whom?” Scythe Curie asked.

  “We don’t know. But we’re taking it very seriously.”

  “What should I do?” Citra asked.

  “Do what you’re here to do. But be prepared to protect yourself.”

  Caesar was to die in the first scene of act three. The play had five acts, and in the remaining acts, his ghost appeared to torment his killers. While another actor could perform the part of the ghost, Sir Albin Aldrich felt it would lesson the impact of his gleaning. It was, therefore, decided that the play would conclude shortly after Caesar died, robbing an irritated Brutus of his famous “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” speech. No one would cry havoc and release the dogs of war. Instead, the lights would come up on a stunned audience. There would be no curtain call. The curtain, in fact, would never close. Instead, Caesar’s very dead body would remain on the stage until the last of the audience left. Thus, Aldrich’s final moment of acting was to be marked by an inability to act in any way whatsoever.

  “You may steal my physical immortality,” he told Scythe Anastasia, “but this final performance will live forever in the annals of the theater.”

  As the house filled with theatergoers, Scythe Constantine came up behind her as she waited in the wings.

  “Do not be frightened,” he said. “We’re here to protect you.”

  “I’m not frightened,” she told him. In truth she was, but her fear was overwhelmed by her anger at having been targeted. She had a little bit of stage fright, too, which she knew was stupid, but she just couldn’t shake it. Acting. What horrors she had to endure for her profession.

  • • •

  It was a packed house, and although no one knew it, more than twenty were members of the BladeGuard in disguise. The playbill proclaimed that the theatergoers would witness something never before seen on a MidMerican stage—and although people were a bit dubious of the claim, they were also curious as to what it might be.

  While Scythe Anastasia waited backstage, Scythe Curie took her seat on the aisle in the fifth row. She found her seat uncomfortably small. She was a tall woman, and her knees pressed against the seat in front of her. Most of the people near her held their playbills in a death grip, horrified to spend the evening sitting near a scythe, who, for all they knew, was there to glean one of them. Only the man sitting beside her was sociable. More than sociable, he was chatty. He had a caterpillar of a moustache that twitched when he spoke, which made it hard for Scythe Curie not to laugh.

  “What an honor it is to be in the company of the Granddame of Death,” he said before the lights went down. “I hope you don’t mind me calling you that, Your Honor. There are few scythes in MidMerica—nay, the world—who are as celebrated as you, and it does not surprise me that you are a patron of mortal-age theater. Only the most enlightened are!”

  She wondered if perhaps the man had been sent to end her by flattering her to death.

  Scythe Anastasia watched the play from the wings. Usually entertainment from the Age of Mortality was emotionally incomprehensible to her, as it was to most people. The passions, the fears, the triumphs, and the losses; it made no sense to a world without need, greed, and natural death. But as a scythe, she had come to understand mortality better than most—and she certainly had come to understand greed and lust for power. Those things might have been absent from most people’s lives, but they seethed in the scythedom, moving more and more from the dark corners and into the mainstream.

  The curtain went up and the play began. Although much of the language of the play was incomprehensible to her, the machinations of power left her mesmerized—but not mesmerized enough to let her guard down. Every movement backstage, every sound registered like a seismic shock. If there were someone here who meant to end her, she’d be aware of their presence long before they made their move.

  • • •

  “We have to keep the Thunderhead in the dark as long as possible,” Purity said. “It can’t know something’s up until it goes down.”

  It wasn’t just the Thunderhead that Purity was keeping in the dark though, it was Greyson as well.

  “You have your part of it—that’s all you need to know,” Purity told him, insisting that the fewer people who knew the whole picture, the fewer possible screwups.

  Greyson’s part was simple to the point of being insulting. He was to create a diversion at the mouth of an alleyway near the theater, at a specific moment. The goal was to draw the attention of three Thunderhead cameras, which would cause a temporary blind spot in the alley. While those cameras were assessing Greyson’s situation, Purity and several other members of the team would slip into the side door of the theater.  The rest, as far as Greyson was concerned, was a mystery.

  If he could see the whole picture—if he knew what Purity and her team were going to do in th
ere—he’d have a better idea of his options in how to both prevent it, and protect Purity from the fallout of a failed mission. But without knowing the plan, all he could do was wait for the outcome and try to effect some sort of damage control.

  “You look nervous, Slayd,” Purity observed as they left her apartment that evening. She was armed with nothing but an off-grid phone, and a kitchen knife in her heavy coat—presumably not to use on the scythes, but on anyone who got in her way.

  “Aren’t you nervous?” he shot back at her.

  She shook her head and smiled. “Excited,” she told him. “Pinpricks all over my body. I love that feeling!”

  “It’s just your nanites trying to knock down your adrenaline.”

  “Let ’em try!”

  Purity had made it clear to Greyson that she had every faith he could do his job—but not really, because there was a backup plan. “Remember, Mange will be monitoring the whole operation from a rooftop,” she told him. “Whatever diversion you create, it needs to be big enough and involve enough people for it to draw the attention of all three cameras. If it doesn’t, Mange will lend you a helping hand.”

  Mange had spent the better part of a century mastering the use of a slingshot.  At first Greyson assumed that he would merely take out the cameras if they didn’t turn toward Greyson—but he couldn’t do that, because it would alert the Thunderhead that something was wrong. Instead, the backup plan was to take out Greyson.

  “If you can’t do it on your own, Mange will put a nice size river stone in your brain,” Purity said with relish rather than remorse. “All the blood and commotion will be sure to turn all three cameras!”

  The last thing Greyson wanted was to be taken out of the equation at that crucial moment, then wake up in a revival center a few days later to hear that Scythes Curie and Anastasia had been ended.