But they were not. And gradually the tumult slowed, the screaming stopped, and the world fell back to stillness. When Callie finally dared open her eyes, she found a slab of ceiling angling inches above her, one end propped on the overturned table.
She and Pierce sat up together, coughing in the settling dust and looking around, astonished to be alive. Voices at the chamber’s far end drew their attention to their friends, staggering up from the rubble. Aside from them, though, and a few residual trickles of plaster, nothing moved. Chills crawling from scalp to heels, Callie realized they alone had survived.
Beside her Pierce was surveying the wreckage with a horror that had nothing to do with the carnage. When he finally looked at her, his face was dead, his eyes bright with tears.
“Oh, Callie,” he whispered, “what have I done?”
And for the first time it dawned on her that going through the fire curtain had killed his chances of using the exit portal anytime soon.
“Why didn’t I wait?” He stared at the floor, layered with dust and rock. “Why didn’t I trust him?”
Battling her own horror and dread and rising anger, Callie had no words of comfort. He closed his eyes and speared his fingers through his dusty hair, shaking his head. She wanted to hit him, scream at him, and fall sobbing into his arms all at once.
The others congregated silently near the crushed fire curtain, looking around in bewilderment until John’s voice broke the spell. “Hey, look! Is that a passage beyond that crack?” He gestured toward the only patch of sky-painted backdrop remaining at the rear of the curve, rent now by a yard-high crack. Evvi investigated and confirmed there was indeed a passage, and one by one they disappeared into it.
Callie stood. “Are you coming?” she asked Pierce.
He swallowed, opened his eyes without looking at her, and got up.
The crack led into a corridor lit by a glowing white line in the floor. They stood in silence, puzzling over it, and then Evvi said, “Hey! I can feel the link again.”
The others looked at her, first in surprise, then in blankness as they sought their own connections and found them.
Callie hesitated, still entangled in the riot of emotion that gripped her. Beside her, Pierce sagged against the wall and closed his eyes. To her surprise, the tightness of his jaw immediately loosened, and the anguish between his brows softened as pain gave way to peace and renewed purpose. His gaze caught her own, and she could almost feel the warmth of the link through it. Elhanu had forgiven him. Again.
She turned away, chagrined by the sudden memory of her own wish that Pierce do exactly as he’d done—go through the curtain and save her, no matter the cost. She had trusted no more than he.
Chastised, she took her own failure to the link and found the wondrous warmth she craved. He wasn’t even surprised. It was as if he had known all along. . . .
And knowing, he’d be able to make it all work out. Wouldn’t he?
Footfalls and shouting sounded outside. Even in the midst of disaster the surviving Splagnosians weren’t going to let them go without a fight. She wondered if Cephelus had already found a new body.
Together they hurried up the serpentine path through a honeycomb of intersecting corridors. Without the lighted line they would have been hopelessly lost, and Callie gave thanks that the Splagnosians apparently couldn’t see it. Behind them, the shouts and footfalls waxed and waned erratically, but never actually caught up. It wasn’t long, however, before she realized Pierce was failing. Stopping to face him, she saw blood wreathing a walnut-sized hole in his thigh and numerous stains marring his tunic. He was disturbingly pale, and the pain in his face was now purely physical.
“You’re hurting,” she said. “We’d better stop.”
“I’m fine. It’s just taking longer to heal.”
“You’re not fine.”
“The longer we wait, the worse I’ll get.”
She pressed her lips together and did not argue with him, but his pace continued to slow. Finally, when they stepped into a grotto from which several corridors opened, she insisted he rest, and he let her push him onto a rock, still protesting his wounds were not serious.
“Don’t lie to me,” she said, pulling up his tunic to examine him. “You haven’t a clue how bad they are.”
He pulled the tunic back down before she could see anything. “It doesn’t matter, Callie.”
She frowned at him.
Then Whit and John entered the chamber, the others right behind. “Someone’s following us,” Whit said. “Not Splagnosian—at least he’s not wearing armor. And he’s sneaking, like he doesn’t want us to know he’s there.”
“Just one?” Pierce asked.
“Sounds like it.”
“Maybe he can’t see the guide light,” Evvi said.
“A lot of good it’ll do him to find the portal, then,” Pierce said, standing up.
“NO!” The rough bellow echoed off the stone walls as a wild-haired man lurched through the doorway behind them. He wore bloodstained leathers and held a Zelosian riot gun low across his body. His one good eye was ringed with white and was full of madness.
Screaming invectives, he insisted they couldn’t be here. “I’m the one who worked for this. Not you.”
“Garth, we can both go,” Pierce said, reaching for his weapon.
“You’re not going anywhere, you traitorous bone sucker! None of you are!”
Callie’s eye flicked to the firing lever of the riot gun, saw it was on automatic, and understood—Garth meant to shoot them all. In that instant everything seemed to slow down and clarify. She saw the tendons in his arm ripple, contracting his trigger finger as she dove for the floor, seemingly miles away. Whit was bringing his weapon slowly around as Pierce launched himself at Garth. Two green beams slid out of the riot gun, penetrating Pierce’s chest one after the other as he hung in space. Then momentum carried him into his target, and both men fell, the gun clattering aside. Callie scrambled for it, but Garth rolled free and recovered it first.
Whit’s weapon finally discharged, its blue lance burrowing into Garth’s shoulder, hurling him back against the wall. He pushed off, gazed about wildly, and fled a blaze of pursuing fire.
Callie rushed to Pierce, who was now struggling to rise. Bright blood soaked the front of his tunic in a huge, spreading stain, but again he refused her attentions. “I’m not gonna make it anyway, and you’ve got to reach the portal.”
“I’ll carry you,” Whit suggested.
“No. Garth won’t know which way to go if there’s another fork. He’ll wait for you—try to take you out once he knows the way.”
“Ah, Pierce, why would he do that?”
“Because we prove everything he believes to be a lie. Because he’s whacked out from too much fire curtain. Because he’s being driven by something other than his own passions.”
For a moment, no one spoke. They stood panting, looking at one another in surprise.
Then Whit said gravely, “You mean a Tohvani?”
“I mean Cephelus himself. He had to go somewhere after I killed the Partas.”
“Cephelus was in the Partas?” John asked, wide-eyed.
“We can’t just leave you,” Whit persisted.
“You don’t have a choice, my friend. Please. Go!
” The black man regarded him unhappily but finally turned away. As he and the others disappeared up the dark corridor, Callie turned to Pierce. “I’m not leaving, so don’t even suggest it.”
“Callie, one of us has to make it.”
“You said yourself it’s close now. Just get up and let’s go.”
“I can’t.” His body trembled under her touch, and his skin felt cold. His breathing was coming fast and shallow. It was like reliving the nightmare in the Cauldron cave all over again. “Everything’s getting numb and fuzzy,” he murmured.
She grabbed his tunic, strange little whimperings issuing from her throat. “Please, Pierce. Don’t do this. You have to go on.”
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His eyes were starting to glaze. “Look at me, Cal.” He slid his hands through the blood on his chest. “I’m all shot up. And you know I can’t go through the portal this soon.”
She struggled to breathe. “We could wait. Hide out until you’re better. Even go back. They could heal you. We could live here—”
He pressed a hand to her mouth. “Go home. You know that’s the right thing to do. Splagnos is a ruin. And even if it wasn’t, you don’t want their lies.”
“Oh, Pierce, I can’t do this.”
“You have to.”
“It’s not fair. If not for you, the rest of us would never have made it. You don’t deserve an ending like this.”
He smiled ruefully. “Yes, I do. I took the bait . . . tried to do it myself when I very well knew better. More than anyone else . . . I knew. This is exactly what I deserve.”
Her throat was tight and hot. Tears blurred her vision. “Oh, Pierce . . .”
He stroked her cheek. “It won’t be as bad as you think. Trust him, Cal.”
“I love you.”
He smoothed her hair, then cupped the back of her head with his palm and drew her down to him, kissing her gently. Even in the kiss she felt him slipping away, and when they drew apart, he was gray.
He touched her tears. “Find me. On the other side.”
CHAPTER
31
He was gone.
She sat blankly, shivering, her hands touching him, then pulling away. She kept expecting him to open his eyes, for it all to be a dream or a joke—anything but reality. But the stillness in him was utter, and it was the stillness that finally got to her. She backed away on her knees. “No!” she murmured. “You weren’t supposed to leave me. We were supposed to go through together. How can I do this? I can’t. I can’t!”
She stood up, wanting to run or scream or do something, but she could only shake her hands helplessly.
Peripheral movement drew her eye as two Aggillon emerged from a lighted opening in the rock, a gurney floating behind them. Chilled, she watched them place Pierce’s body gently on the table. As they left one of them looked into her eyes, jolting her as nothing else had.
He wasn’t totally lost to her. Not yet. But if she didn’t reach that portal, he would be.
Seizing his SI, she fled up the corridor. The passage undulated, angling increasingly upward, and soon the steepness slowed her to a walk as she struggled to control the noisy rasp of her breath. She wanted to hear whatever might lie ahead—and at the same time, not give her own approach away. She rounded a bend and stopped in surprise at finding two more Aggillon with another body—Meg’s this time. Numbly she watched them bear her friend away and close the door behind them. It was splattered with blood. So was the floor.
Garth must have caught them here.
She continued cautiously as the Splagnosians’ distant shouts echoed behind her. From ahead she heard nothing, but the blood was fresh, and there was lots of it.
Suddenly a Watcher stood in her path, laughing at her. You’ll never make it without him. You’re too weak and stupid. You have no friends to help. You’ll never do it.
Rage swelled in her, fueling a desire to hurt this creature as she’d never wanted to hurt anything in her life. But the only way to really hurt it was to get through the portal, so she walked straight ahead. The Tohvani vanished before she reached it, but still her heart pounded with the anger it had triggered. Her thoughts roiled with vengeance and I’ll-show-yous until she realized she was still letting her emotion distract her. Her priority was to get up this corridor alive, and she’d best concentrate solely on that if she wished to succeed.
She rounded another bend and stopped in the doorway of yet another grotto, much larger than those she’d encountered earlier. Great mounds of blackened bones piled the floor to either side of her, gleaming in the light of the center stripe. Forty feet ahead, the piles ended and the ground sheered off into a moatlike chasm spanned by a narrow footbridge. The stripe ran straight up to and over the bridge, ending at a man-sized doorway cut into the far wall and covered with what appeared to be clear plastic wrap.
Callie stared in disbelief. Was this the end?
Then she saw the Watchers—thousands of them clinging to the walls and ceiling. Sudden suspicion sent her gaze back around the chamber, and now she saw a figure sprawled among the bones—tall, dark-skinned, wearing a bloodied white tunic—Whit. She also spotted Evvi and John and Brody, the latter’s chest stained with blood. John had something wrong with his leg. Evvi, nearest of the three, worked her way across the bones toward a jutting wall of rock, her weapon clamped under one arm as she pulled herself along with the other. There was no sign of Garth.
Callie hesitated in the doorway, SI leveled, ready to fire. But there was nothing. Maybe he’d gone through.
Except, he couldn’t go through. Had he fallen into the pit?
She started toward Evvi, and the woman finally saw her. “Callie, no! He’s waiting—”
Callie whirled a second too late as the gun was slapped from her hands and she was hurled to the ground. The wind driven from her lungs, she shuddered as hard hands groped her through the linen shift. Bright sparkles danced across her vision, but she recognized the black beard and coal-bright eyes of her attacker.
“I told you I wasn’t done with you,” he said. Holding both her hands above her head in one of his, he used the other to scrunch her shift up toward her hips.
“The Splagnosians are coming,” she gasped. “Don’t you want to go through the portal?”
“This won’t take long—”
She slammed her knee between his legs, loosening his grip enough to twist a hand free. Trying to shove him away with her upraised knee, she watched his eyes turn black as the Tohvani within him asserted itself. Its psychic power crushed her like a rock. Gasping and whimpering, she clung to the link for dear life and kept on shoving and hitting. It did no good.
He yanked her arm up, and she felt his full weight upon her, driving the air from her lungs. With her free hand she boxed his ears and poked his eyes until he caught it. His breath rushed hot and sour on her neck and the side of her face.
Once more transferring her wrists to one hand, he reared back and slapped her so hard the stars returned. “Now, hold still,” he grated.
Blue fire came out of nowhere, searing the stars and flinging him off her. Rolling blindly in the opposite direction, Callie tried to crawl away. A lance of green light glanced off the side of her head, spearing pain down her neck as he grabbed her heel and dragged her back, kicking and struggling.
The chamber flared again, and again she was released. She scrambled toward Evvi and happened, as she did so, upon her own weapon. She pushed up to bring it around—
Only to be tackled from behind. Garth’s laugh rasped in her ear as he flipped her onto her back and caught her wrists again. Desperately, she turned her head and bit his arm. Howling outrage, he released her wrists and gripped her throat. Within seconds lights flared around her field of vision, and her lungs screamed for air. But though she fought wildly, she could do nothing to free herself. Her strength ebbing, she finally sought the link again, and its power flowed into her, even as her hand fell aside onto something familiar—Garth’s riot gun. Awkwardly, weakly, she managed to drag it up and over her thigh. With no idea where the thing was even pointed, she found the trigger and squeezed.
He toppled away, releasing her throat to life-giving air. At first all she could do was lie there and gasp, wondering why he didn’t come back and disarm her. Only when she’d regained her breath enough to sit up did she see that he lay motionless on his back beside her, one arm flung wide, the other limp across his ruined belly.
Nauseated, she stumbled over the bones to where Evvi lay drenched in blood. She was still alive, but the Aggillon were taking Brody.
“Where are you hurt?” she asked Evvi.
“My arm’s broken.”
“But all this blood on you—”
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“Most of it’s Meg’s. How’s Whit?”
Callie looked up the pile. At the chasm’s edge, Whit had begun to moan and stir. “Alive.”
“And Garth?” Evvi glanced toward his body.
“I shot his guts out.” Callie shuddered.
“Head shot’s the only sure kill, Cal.”
“He doesn’t have an abdomen anymore. I’ll check on Whit and John, then I’ll see about him.”
Whit sat up as she approached. A red crease angled along his temple, but beyond that he seemed fine. John was not so fine. Garth had jumped them, shot Brody point-blank, and threw John across the chamber into the wall. His leg was broken, the white tibia jutting through the skin below his knee. He was in a lot of pain, but they had nothing to give him. His only relief lay in crossing the bridge and walking through the portal—which he had to do on his own power.
She and Whit lashed two femurs into a shaky makeshift crutch, then Callie picked her way back to Evvi. As she bent to help the woman up, a shadow erupted from where Garth had lain. Incredibly, he stood erect in the light, his abdomen a bloody mess, his eyes still Tohvani black, piercing her heart like arrows of malevolence. Never had she sensed such hatred, such pure incandescent rage. Around her the Watchers shifted on the walls, chittering eagerly.
Without the slightest warning, he flew at her. She almost didn’t fire in time—her beam caught him in the shoulder a mere five feet away. It flung him back onto the bones, but he got up screeching blasphemies. She braced for another attack, but instead, he whirled and raced across the bridge into the portal. It flung him out with a high-pitched scream. Like a blazing effigy, his remains sailed across the chamber and bounced off the wall, falling onto the bone pile, a smoking, stinking nightmare that would never rise again.