Dreams of Gods & Monsters

“They said that?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Well,” said Karou. “It’s pride. They might pretend not to, but they will enjoy it.”

This had been her small idea, her baby step: to feed the seraphim. Someone, Elyon or Briathos, had let slip in the war council that the Misbegotten, having fled in a hurry from their various postings around the Empire, had already expended what small stores of food they’d managed to bring with them. Feeding them—nearly three hundred of them—would expend the chimaera’s stores, too, but it was a gesture of solidarity for the sake of the alliance. We eat together and starve together. We are in this together.

And maybe someday we’ll even live together. Just creatures in a world. Why not?

The rasp of the lighter—a little red plastic lighter with a cartoon face on it, entirely at odds with the seriousness of its task, not to mention out of place in this world—and Zuzana lit the incense cones, one by one down the line. The scent of Brimstone’s revenant incense slowly filled up the rock chamber, and first Uthem, then the others, came alive.

Karou’s emotions were complex. There was pride: in herself, and in Zuzana, too. The bodies were well-made, strong and proud, and not monstrous or exaggerated the way her kasbah resurrections had been. These were more in Brimstone’s style, and she felt nostalgia and longing, too, for him.

And bitterness.

Here was a refill for the bowls. More meat for the grinding teeth of war.

Just creatures in a world, she had thought, moments earlier, and she wondered now, watching them stir to life: Could that ever be true?

28

ANGEL-LOVER, BEAST-LOVER

As they had led the host down the winding passage to the isolated village, so now did Karou and Thiago lead them back up. The Misbegotten were already present in the grand, echoing central cavern that served as gathering place. They had, quite conspicuously, claimed the far half of the cavern, leaving the other half to the chimaera. Together but not, as though a line were drawn right down the center.

The food was carried in, great bowls of couscous spiked with vegetables, apricots, and almonds. The small quantity of chicken was stretched thin across all that food so that an actual morsel was rare, but its flavor was there, and there were discs of bread baked on a hot rock—more bread than Karou had ever seen in one place in her life. As vast a quantity as it looked, however, it went fast, and the eating even faster.

“You know what would be good now?” Zuzana whispered, when the sounds of spoons on plates had mostly quieted. “Chocolate. Never attempt an alliance without chocolate.”

Karou couldn’t imagine that the Misbegotten, roughly treated as they had been their entire lives, had much experience with dessert.

“Absent that,” Mik suggested, “how about music?”

Karou smiled. “I think that’s a great idea.”

He got out his violin and set about tuning it. Since they had come into the cavern, Karou had been watching for Akiva while pretending not to. He wasn’t here, and she didn’t know what to think. She didn’t see Liraz, either; only several hundred unfamiliar angels, and every last one of them held their faces blank and grim. This wasn’t inappropriate—it was the eve of the apocalypse, after all—but neither was it comfortable. Karou felt the détente to be as insubstantial as it had been on their arrival, and that all of these soldiers would as soon slit one another’s throats as break bread together.

Mik began to play, and the seraphim took notice. Karou watched them, sca

At dawn they would fly back to the human world. What was happening there? she wondered. How had Jael presented himself, and how had he been received? Were they scrambling to provide him with weapons? Even now training him to use them? Or were they skeptical? Some would be, but who would be louder? Who was alwayslouder? The righteous.

The fearful.

“Karou,” whispered Zuzana. “Translation needed.”

Karou turned to her friend, who was back to learning Chimaera vocabulary from Virko just as she had at mealtimes at the kasbah. “What’s he saying?” she asked. “I can’t figure it out.”

Virko repeated the word in question, and Karou translated. “Magic.”

“Oh,” said Zuzana. And then, with a furrowed brow: “Really? Ask him how he knows?”

Karou duly asked.

“We all felt it,” Virko replied. “Tell her. At the same moment.”

Karou blinked at him. Instead of translating, she asked, “You all felt what at the same moment?”

He met her eyes. “The end,” he said. Simple. Eerie.

A chill went down Karou’s spine. She knew exactly what he was talking about, but she asked anyway. “What do you mean, ‘the end’?”

“What did he say?” Zuzana wanted to know, but Karou was fixed on Virko. An understanding was settling in her like something that had been hovering and darting just out of reach and had finally grown too tired to be wary.

Virko looked around at the company, gathered in small and large groups, some with eyes closed listening to the music, some staring into the fire. He said, “After it happened, I thought to myself: The angels are lucky. I must be losing my wits.I forgot my sword mid-draw. Just stood there with my mouth hanging open, feeling like my heart had been pulled out through it. Thought I was scraping the bottom of a long life, I did.”

He let her process this, and she felt cold and then warm, in waves. “But it was the same for everyone,” said Virko. “It wasn’t me, and that’s some relief. Something happened to us. Something was done.” He paused. “I don’t know what, but it’s why we’re all still alive.”

Karou sat back, dazed. How had she not guessed immediately? Nothing like that despair had ever come over her before, not even when she stood ankle-deep in the ashes of Loramendi. And it had come and gone like something passing. A sound wave, or particles of light. Or… a burst of magic.

A burst of magic at the precise fulcrum of catastrophe, peeling them back from the edge. And if the White Wolf had risen to his feet and spoken, he had spoken into the silence of its passage, helping to gather them all back to themselves as their souls reeled. But he hadn’t done it, hadn’t stopped them from killing one another.

Akiva had.

The realization spread through Karou like heat, and before she could even question if she was right, she was sure.

And when Akiva finally did come into the cavern, Karou knew him even from the side of her downcast eyes. Her heart leapt. When she darted a glance to confirm it was him, he wasn’t looking her way.

She felt as much as heard the stir in the company around her, though it was a moment before the words came clear.

“It was him,” she heard. “He was the one who saved us.”

Had someone else figured out what she had?

She swung around to see who had spoken, and was surprised to see the Dashnag boy, who of course was a boy no longer. Rath was his name, and he could know nothing of the pulse of despair; his soul had been in a thurible then. So what was he talking about? Karou listened.