Seeker

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.”This content belongs to Nô/velDra/ma.Org .

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 basement?”

“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.