Dreams of Gods & Monsters

Swift and bloodless, that was the point. No carnage, no crime scene, just persuasion. They should be in and out before these two soldiers even woke up and rubbed their aching heads.

Karou set down lightly and cast a brief glance at one of them. Unconscious, he looked like any number of the Misbegotten from the Kirin caves. Handsome, young, fair. Villain and victim both, she thought, and she recalled Liraz’s proposal that fingers be taken instead of lives, and wondered: Was it possible even Dominion soldiers could learn to live in the new world, if ever there was one? Did they deserve the choice? Looking at him like this, to all appearances asleep and i

Maybe when he woke, his eyes would fill with hate, and he would be beyond hope.

This was a worry for another day. They were here. Jael’s windows were in sight. The chanting at the perimeter enclosed them like the roar of the sea, but the effect was a seeming sphere of quiet within.

“I’ve thought of a better idea,” Karou had a

The angels just melt away.

Simple.

“Okay,” she said, pausing to text Zuzana before turning off her phone and tucking it away. “Let’s do it.”

57

FED TO THE LIONS

There came a knock at the door of the Royal Suite, and it was not casual. The dogs, Traveller and Methuselah, leapt to their feet, instantly alert.

Zuzana and Mik didn’t leap up, but they, too, were instantly alert. They were at the window of the living room now, having transferred from the sitting room on account of the windows on this side facing toward the Vatican. Their eyes were wandering between the TV screen and the slice of sky they had revealed by cranking the red velvet curtains apart, as if something was going to play out on one or the other.

And something would, as soon as Karou and Akiva were successful in their mission: The “heavenly host” would rise up into the sky and hightail it the hell back to Uzbekistan and the portal there. Don’t let the… uh, sky flap thing… hit you on the way out.

Sky or TV. Where would they see it first?

Zuzana’s phone lay on the arm of her chair so she would know at once if Karou called or texted. There had been one message so far.

Arrived. Going in. *kiss/punch*.

And so. It was happening. Zuzana couldn’t keep still. Sky—TV—phone—Mik, that was the circuit of her glances, with pauses on Eliza, too.

The girl remained subdued and remote, her eyes glassy but not still, not entirely. They’d rest for a time, then flick back and forth, her pupils dilating and shrinking, even when the light was steady. It was as though her mind was participating in a different reality than her body, her eyes seeing different sights, her lips shaping the soft lunatic poetry that Zuzana was glad not to be able to understand. When Karou had translated some of it for her, it had been too eerie for comfort, some kind of horror movie with lots of devouring. And not the kind of devouring that went down between Zuzana and the plate of chocolate-dipped biscotti she liberated from atop the piano.

Okay, exactly that kind of devouring, but from the biscotti’s point of view.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.

It was alarming, the force of it. An StB knock—or Stasi, or Gestapo. Pick your secret police. It had a they come for you in the nightweight to it—and… nobody sashays blithely to answer a they come for you in the nightknock.

Except that Esther did. She’d been in the bedroom in the back; they hadn’t seen much of her since the others left. She came forth now, still barefoot and striding calmly through the living room without a sideward glance. As she vanished down the corridor to the door, dogs flanking her, she said, “You should gather your things now, children.”

Zuzana’s gaze flew to Mik, and his to her. Her heartbeat seemed to lurch to its feet with the same swiftness as the mastiffs had, and then she herself followed suit, jumping up. “What?” she asked at the same moment Mik said, “Jesus.”

“Jesus what?”

“Get your stuff,” he said. “Pack your bag.” And Zuzana still didn’t know what was happening, but then there were men coming in, two of them, large and in fine suits, and they had wireless com things hooked onto their big, dumb ears and Zuzana’s first thought was Holy, they reallyare secret police, but then she spotted the crest embroidered on their coat pockets, and her fear transformed to the first simmer of outrage.

Hotel security. Esther was throwing them out.

“All right,” said one of the men. “Let’s go. It’s time for you to leave.”

“What do you mean?” Zuzana faced them down. “We’re guests.”

“Not anymore you’re not,” said Esther from the doorway. “I tolerated you for Karou’s sake. And now that Karou… Well.”

Zuzana swung toward her. The old woman was leaning there with her arms crossed and her dogs pacing around her. There was a look of predatory calculation in her eyes, and Zuzana’s immediate impression was that a snake had swallowed the downy-haired grandma and somehow becomeher. The liveried hotel thugs weren’t a step into the room before the weight of what this meant slammed down on Zuzana.

Karou.

“What have you done?” she demanded, because if Esther was throwing them out, it meant that she anticipated having no further contact with Karou—not just tonight, but ever.

“Done? I’ve just alerted the management that I find myself overrun with uncouth young people. They knew at once who I meant. It seems you made quite an impression downstairs.”

“I mean, what have you done to Karou?” She hurled the words and started to hurl herself, and in that moment she could have believed that she wasa neek-neek, sting and all, and woe to lion-sized dogs and beefy bullies who stood in her way.

She was a neek-neekthat was easily captured in midair, however, the nearest bully hooking her wrist with a practiced grab and holding tight. “Let go of me!” she snarled at him, and tried to thrash her arm free.

No luck there. His grip was ridiculous, like he spent all his spare time squeezing one of those stupid rubber balls, but then Mik lunged in and grabbed the hand that held her. “Let go of her,” he demanded, and, in an uneven match of violin player versus brute, he tried to peel back the thick ugly fingers from Zuzana’s wrist. No luck there, either; Zuzana was able to register, just barely, through her outrage, how humiliatingly un-samurai-like the pair of them were at this moment. With his free hand, the guard easily shoved Mik down the corridor to the front door—so much for getting their stuff—and Zuzana after him. Her wrist throbbed where he’d held her, but that was scarcely noteworthy in the tornado of rage and worry that had become her mind.

Refusing to be herded, Zuzana broke aside, darting around the guard to come face-to-face with Traveler and Methuselah, barring the way to their mistress. The dogs regarded her. One of them lifted the lips from his teeth in a bored kind of growl, as if to say, See these here choppers?

I’ve seen scarier, she wanted to tell them. Hell, she wanted to bare her teeth right back, but instead, she just held her ground and lifted her eyes to Esther. The look on the old woman’s face—stony apathy—was scarcely human. This wasn’t a person, Zuzana thought. This was greed wearing skin. “What did you do? What did you do, Esther? What. Did. You. Do.”