The escort cars were stopped, and one of them was on fire. All but two of the motorcycles were headed towards the roadblock, and I smelled a trap on instinct alone as I backed up from Mason, who was stalking me, eyeless sockets fixed on my position. I’d barely taken five steps before the front line of riders collapsed in a straight horizontal line. The lead riders were decapitated at the neck. The ones behind them either crashed into the one in front, or swerved into a skid to avoid the wire strung between trees on either side of the parkway.
Big Ron and Jenner pulled around up ahead and charged back from behind Mason. As they shot past us Mason reared up to slap as Jenner leapt off the back with a wordless cry, shifting in midair. She landed on Mason with her forearms spread, claws out, a wrap-around bear hug that began their bloody close quarters fight. The orange tiger slammed Mason into the truck and threw him to the ground, where they tangled into a snarling, spitting, slashing heap.
Men had unloaded from the black cars ahead of us, guns in their hands. With no regard for the few oncoming civilian cars trying to weave through the mess, they opened up on the remaining Twin Tigers like a firing squad.
We were dead. The cops were guaranteed to show up now, but they wouldn’t be here in time and they wouldn’t have enough initial firepower. I staggered behind the truck tire, crouching and shielding as stray rounds flew by and struck the truck, the shipping container, and the two tigers trying to rip each other to pieces. Ron had kept on going, turning the street corner up ahead and roaring off the way we’d came. He was going to look for Talya.
Two figures were running down the road towards us from that direction: Angkor and Zane. They were shouting, waving their arms. Hope flared back to life, and I got to my feet, drawing the Wardbreaker and a deep breath against the pain. I rounded the corner to rejoin the fray and got knocked upside the jaw with something hard and heavy that pitched me to the ground. The Wardbreaker skittered away from my hand.
A weird chemical taste filled my mouth. I rolled over, groaning, and squinted up at the calm face of John Spotted Elk.
Chapter 39
The reedy old man, false paragon Elder of the Four Fires, wore a black turtleneck and a shoulder holster. His hair was tied back. He was pointing the muzzle of the Wardbreaker at my head with an uncertain hand.
“Alexi Sokolsky,” he said. His face was graven and deeply lined with fatigue. “The Deacon warned me about you. I tried to put a stop to this nonsense. I tried being nice. I tried to get Ayashe to take you in. I respected you, because I know what it’s like to live in Russia during times of crisis. I did it once, long ago. Now look at this mess you’ve gotten yourself into. No one had to die like this.”
“Times of crisis? You mean during the chush’ sobach’ya?” I said. “The Revolution? Is that what you’re talking about?”
“Of course,” he replied, stiffly.
I laughed, for the first time in months and months. I couldn’t help it. His face became more and more graven.
“During the chush’ sobach’ya? ‘The Bullshit’? Really?” Once the laughter started, I couldn’t stop. “Bozhe miy, everything about you is a lie. You can’t even hold a gun straight.”
He looked down his nose at me, nostrils flaring with rage, and said nothing in reply.
“Pseudologica Fantasia,” I said. “Pathological lying. You weren’t in the Navy. You weren’t anything. The only thing you are is a good liar, and that just makes you a piece of shit. You’ve never even killed someone yourself.”
“I’m about to,” he said.
“Preserving your fantasy life was worth the lives of how many children, exactly?” I crawled back a bit, the knife in hand. “Twenty? A hundred?”
“They have to learn all of this sooner or later,” Spotted Elk replied, shifting his finger on the trigger. “When you’re as old as I am—”
I rolled my eyes. It hurt, but it was worth it.
“—and you see all the things HuMankind is willing to do to itself, you realize that none of it matters anyway.” His voice firmed, trembling with gathering anger. “I was in the trenches in World War One, I was in the Inquisition and I was hunted by them. No one ever noticed me watching them. After the first hundred cycles, I stopped pretending I was human. They’ll be reborn no matter what happens. Death is a lesson we all have to learn.”
While he was lecturing me, Jenner and Mason’s fight raged. They were chasing each other towards the side of the road, limping with ragged, gaping bloody wounds that weren’t healing. Beyond them, it was a bloodbath. Bikers were using the emptied escort cars for cover against the gunmen firing on them. Neither side were properly trained or properly armed. Three of the black cars were somehow on fire.
“What a load of bullshit. Rape and murder aren’t lessons appropriate for children,” I replied, focusing back on Spotted Elk. “You never cared about them. You knew what Lily and Dru were doing, and you didn’t stop it. You’re not even a shapeshifter.”
“I am the oldest and strongest Elder in this country!” he spat.
I flared my eyes and leaned forward. “Do it, then. Transform and eat me. Go on.”
His face contorted with anger. “I don’t have to prove anything to the likes of you.”
I curled my lip. “You. Can’t. Change.”
John scoffed, but he was sweating. It was pouring down his face, running off his nose. “You think you’re a killer. You think you’re all that. You’re just a loser. Everyone knows what I am, what I did for this community and for the tribes. I’ll tell them that I was kidnapped. They’ll believe me, and you’ll be dead.”
“Then fucking do it, suka!” I struggled up higher. Zane and Angkor were surely almost within firing range.
His finger trembled on the trigger. “You don’t want to be alive when the world is the way it is. It’s all wrong.”
“DO IT!” I roared.
John Spotted Elk was panting. He cupped the butt of the pistol, but he couldn’t control the weapon and he was confused as to why he couldn’t press the trigger. I knew it. He’d never shot a damn thing in his life.
The sweat dripping from his nose froze in mid-air, hanging like a tiny crystal. I couldn’t move… or that I could, but only with extraordinary slowness. My heart thundered in my ears. The blood bubbling in my chest and throat popped and gurgled in stop motion. Only my mind remained at normal speed.
From the direction, a figure strode forward. My eyes couldn’t track him fast enough: he phased in and out on his way to us up the road, past the truck, and around. His robe boiled shadow behind him. It was wet with blood, stirring like the hood of a jellyfish underwater. Only the mask was a constant: bone white, streaked with grime. The only features were three cruel, black slits.
“All this blood and misery,” The Deacon said. He looked down at me. “What a terrible tragedy, Alexi. It’s almost as if nothing cares about life, and living.”
I tried to speak, but my jaw wouldn’t move to form words. The Deacon took something out of his robe. At first, I thought it was a weird knife – another StainedGlass weapon, maybe – but I had all the time in the world to observe the yellowish, serrated arrowhead-like thing as he turned it around in his hand, and plunged it into John Spotted Elk’s back. He put both hands against it, ramming it in deep as the other man’s face slowly morphed from fear to agony.