If it was a test, then Alex wasn’t the first to fail it. There was a girl somewhere else, and a bed that he wouldn’t be sleeping in tonight. And then there was the naked girl on top of him, the smell of saltwater from her hair and the softness of her breasts cupped in his hands, and the utterly unprecedented thing that they had done together, that had left them both moist and out of breath and looking at each other with different, softer eyes. The first time was over quickly and a little embarrassing, but still a revelation for Alex. The second was sweet and languid, continuing for a time that was indeterminate and utterly consuming.
Alex considered guilt, in the interval between, when Emily excused herself and went to the bathroom, and then put it aside. It was too soon, and he was still too much in the glow of pride and excitement. He wished that he could have called someone to brag, even if he did feel a bit bad about it. Then, when she returned, Emily was too warm and permissive, such an immediate and fascinating reality that Alex had no room in his mind for anything other than her, for the places where their bodies met and joined.
He told himself he had tried. Alex lay contentedly beside her, neither of them moving much, in the warm, floral-scented darkness on her side of the bed. Eventually she begin to move along the length of him, and he reached for her and pulled her close. Her hair fell across his face as she kissed his collarbone, her nails scraping his chest…
“What was that?” Alex asked, sitting up halfway and almost spilling Emily from off him.
“Hush,” Emily instructed. “You are the least romantic boy.”
Alex laid reluctantly back, his eyes closing. Then it happened again, this time much louder, the bed shaking slightly beneath them.
“Okay, what the fuck is that?” Alex asked, again sitting up partway. “You heard it that time, right?”
Emily smiled at him.
“Alex, it’s nothing for you to worry about,” she said reassuringly. “Try and focus on being here with me, okay?”
“That was definitely gunfire,” Alex said, pulling her down with his free arm. “You should stay down, keep out of the line of fire while I try to figure out what the hell is going on here…”
“Alex,” Emily pouted, gripping at the sheets bunched up in her hands. “You really don’t like me at all, do you?”
“No, I do, but… is this the time?”
Alex stood up and took a single step toward the window, meaning to sidle up to the wall next to it and peer cautiously outside, and then he stopped and looked down at his feet.
“That’s weird,” he said. “The floor is totally soaking wet. There’s like an inch of water in here…”
“I know,” Emily said, pulling her slip up and sighing. “I turned the tap on a few minutes ago, when I went to the bathroom. I didn’t think you’d notice. And I’ll probably need it.”
“You’ll what?” Alex asked, puzzled. “Emily, none of that made any sense to me. Do you know what is going on here?”
“I made a deal, Alex. You forced my hand and I made a deal, but not with the people expected me to. Silly boy,” she said, laughing or crying, he couldn’t tell which in the dark. “You don’t even know the names for the things you should be afraid of. Anathema, Alex. The exiled are returning to take back what was theirs. I made a deal with them, Alex. Now I get everything that I ever wanted, only not the way I wanted it. Would you like to hear how I paid them, what I had to do because you wouldn’t make up your mind?”
There was a brief, intense pounding on the door, a pause, and then part of the lock fell off and the door flew open.
“Alex! Emily! Look, I hate to do this to you, but I need both of you to get somewhere safe and oh my fucking God,” Katya said, horrified, taking one faltering step back. “What the hell is going on here?”
“Please shut up,” Emily said, glaring at her. The water swelled up around Katya, briefly, appearing to swallow her, a splashing column of water in the shape of a girl, and then it collapsed to the ground again. Katya made a strange, frantic motion with her arms, clutching at her neck, and then she fell down, sideways, and started to kick out her legs.
“Why is she doing that?” Alex said, pulling at his feet, which seemed to be attached to the soaked hardwood floors, up to his ankles in icy-cold water. “Why is she making those noises?”
“Because she is drowning,” Emily said callously. “Like they did to me. The Anathema. It was weeks ago, before we left on break. I was frightened for days beforehand. Did you even notice? They came and they took me to a place that looked like a temple built out of stone, like the Academy but all translucent blues and greens. There were pools there, deep enough that you couldn’t touch the bottom once they covered it over. It was dark and cold and I held my breath as long as I could. They said the water was full of nanites, but I didn’t know for sure until I after took that first, deep breath. Then everything changed. I am not who I used to be, Alex.”
“Why would you let them do that to you?” Alex asked, bewildered and horrified. “Why didn’t you ask for help? I would have helped you!”
“You had a hundred chances to help me, and you never did. Now I don’t need anyone’s help, ever again. And if you try your protocol on me, Alex Warner,” she warned sternly, “that water you feel all over your skin will freeze. You’d kill yourself, trying to kill me.”
“Emily,” Alex said, “I’m really sorry. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”
The needle impaled her head, only one end visible, poking out of her hair on one side, a bit above her ear, like an ornament. Alex howled and grabbed for her body as she fell.
“I sure would,” Katya croaked, coughing as she stumbled across the room and grabbed Alex’s shoulder. “God that hurt. I wasn’t sure whether I could port the water out of my lungs or not. Alex, we have to go, she’s not…”
Alex was holding an armful of water that was leaking back to the floor. He ignored Katya pulling at his arm and stared at it as it melted away. It all seemed so unreasonable. He thought of Emily sitting next to him in class, her flowery handwriting, the worried look she got every time he did something stupid, and he simply couldn’t reconcile it.
“No,” Emily said, out of a slowly rising column of water that only vaguely looked like her. “She most certainly is not.”
“Alex,” Katya commanded, pulling him to his feet. “Run.”
The Weir lunged, spittle flying, and Mikhail Bashmet ducked the attack easily, not even paying it much attention as he whipped the hatchet in his left around, removing the top part of the Weir’s head, along with a bunch of indeterminate matter that hit the trunk of the tree behind him with a wet, plopping noise. He barely heard it, moving forward, leaving behind the dead Weir, hunting whatever it was the pack was dying to protect.
All around him, operatives of the Black Sun moved through the pine trees and the great tufts of ferns, killing Weir and Ghouls with silent precision. The air crackled with discharged protocols, and with the potential energy of more, held in reserve for the right moment. The shadows were thick beneath the trees that fought and clawed for every inch of sunlight, but for those with the right eyes, the forest was lit from within for miles around, the last stand of Taos Cartel. A few members had gone to ground in Washington, along the Canadian border, out on a small ranch not far from the Snake River. When Mikhail’s extermination team arrived, Weir had come boiling out of the primitive structures of the camp like insects, allowing the occupants to flee to the woods. After mopping up the beasts, Mikhail and his team had followed. It had galled him, requesting that another team be ported in to supplement his own in this operation, but now that they had come so far, he was glad of the extra men.