HAVING BEEN THROUGH an underspace portal before, Hex was braced for the disturbing sensation of nothingness that enveloped him as he stepped into the gate. Blasphet's description of death as feeling as if he was falling from his own body echoed the experience, though not fully. For the briefest flicker of time, Hex simply ceased to exist, and all his senses ended.
When he emerged on the other side, the first sense to return was touch. He stepped into air that was positively balmy. It was night; he stood in a well-manicured garden full of statues, male and female nudes of exquisite perfection, their skin and hair crafted from precious metals, gold and platinum and palladium. Bright pink and white flowers filled large terra-cotta pots, lending a sweet scent above the sea breeze that swirled gently around him. In the center of the garden was a fountain made of glass with a central spike taller than Hex. Water poured from a large golden disk atop the spike in an unbroken circle and fell in a shimmering column to the pool below. Goldfish that looked crafted from actual gold darted about in the softly lit pool.
Beside him, Bitterwood tilted his head upward, then higher, then higher still. They were surrounded by towers that rose until they vanished among the stars that shimmered in the cloudless sky.
When he looked down, he found Vendevorex and Jandra standing on the broad glass rim of the pool. She said, "Gentlemen, if you're done gawking at the architecture, we need to get to work. The second I start construction of the antenna, the city mind will know something is happening. We need to get you ready for the fight."
"I'm as ready as I'll ever be," said Bitterwood.
Jandra smirked. "Your thorn-tipped shafts aren't going to scratch the guards here in Atlantis. You need an upgrade. Draw an arrow."
Bitterwood frowned. Hex sensed that the hunter didn't like being ordered around so brusquely. Bitterwood was here for the same reason he was; not to fight the city, but to stay close to Jandra. He was almost certain that Jazz was the controlling personality within her. That last sliver of almost was enough to keep him from lunging out and snapping her skull between his jaws while he still had the strength. On his empty stomach, he felt every muscle in his body trembling.
Bitterwood drew an arrow from his quiver and stared at the tip, perplexed. The shaft now ended in a tiny rainbow, with an almost invisible spot of black at the point.
"Now when you draw an arrow from the quiver, it will be capped with an electromagnetic field encompassing an underspace gate only a millimeter across," Jandra explained. "This tip can carve through any matter it encounters and send it on a one way trip to the Mare Ingenii."
"Where's that?" asked Bitterwood.
"The far side of the moon. There's a city there now. If you shot Hex with that arrow, some moon man would no doubt be mystified as to why a long spaghetti-shaped strip of dragon entrails had fallen on him."
"Spaghetti?" asked Bitterwood.
"Moving on," said Jandra, turning to Hex. "You've suffered brain damage. It's slowing you down, and I don't have time to fix it. Luckily, I have a sort of whole body crutch you'll find useful."
Hex shook his head. Jandra might be about to put underspace gates on the tips of his teeth, a prospect he found worrisome. "No thank you. I've fought with more severe injuries than this." He hadn't.
"This really isn't a situation where you get to choose to accept my help or not," said Jandra, casting her gaze toward the statues. Suddenly, the gold that coated them began to drip to the ground, exposing naked flesh beneath. Around the garden, men and women fell to their hands and knees gasping as the nanite shells that supported them flowed into a large golden river that snaked toward Hex. Hex flapped his wings and hopped backwards, avoiding the liquid metal.
He landed in an even larger pool of gold. Flecks of the cold metal splashed onto his belly and wings. Instantly, they began to slither and expand, coating his scales. He flicked his wings sharply to fling the metal off, to no avail. The gold crept upward. He craned his neck and held his breath as it reached his jaws. He instinctively closed his eyes as the liquid metal washed over his face. When he opened his eyes, he was completely encased in a flawless sheet of gold.
"Gold seems ill-suited for armor, daughter," said Vendevorex. "It's too soft, and too heavy to allow him to move freely."
"Gold is merely an aesthetic component," said Jandra. "The armor actually incorporates several different elements, including titanium. There aren't many things that are going to be able to cut through it. The added weight is offset by the exoskeleton's power, which will multiply Hex's strength by a factor of ten."
Hex spread his wings. She was telling the truth. He didn't notice any additional weight. He still didn't feel good, but he no longer felt as if he were about to collapse.
He looked around at the score of men and women who lay on the ground, groaning in agony. Some of the statues still stood, unaffected by Jandra's spell.
"Were they prisoners of the shells?" he asked.
"No. The statue act is a kind of art. They stand out here for years at a time. Visitors to the garden try to figure out the real statues from the living ones. They're like very, very, very slow and focused mimes."
"Why are they in pain?"
"Severe nanite withdrawal," said Jandra. "The city knows we're here by the way. Heads up."
Hex looked toward the sky. The stars were blotted out by an army of onrushing angels.
"Keep them out of my hair," said Jandra. "I've got an antenna to build."
BITTERWOOD KNEW HE was being manipulated into this fight. He pondered Zeeky's counsel that Jandra could be saved. He placed his new arrow against his bowstring. If the shafts were as powerful as Jazz said they were, would they slay even her?
Unfortunately, this wasn't a moment for contemplation. A throng of marble angels swooped toward him. Despite their wings, they were objects explicitly out of place in the sky. They appeared carved from polished marble, too heavy to do anything but plummet.
If these creatures were like Gabriel or Hezekiah, the danger they represented through their sheer numbers made them more of a threat than the goddess for the moment. Yet, the angels weren't bearing any obvious weapons. Their faces were placid, devoid of emotion. They looked as if they were here to investigate, not to fight.
Yet, against foes this powerful, the element of surprise was something Bitterwood couldn't afford to lose. As so often happened in his battles, he would draw first blood… though he doubted they had blood. A rainbow-tipped arrow launched from his bowstring in a glowing streak, punching into the brow of the nearest angel. The winged statue lost control of its flight, its body wracked with spasms as it dropped, crashing onto the granite tiles that surrounded the fountain, sending a shower of gravel and dust skyward.
The other angels instantly halted their descent, their eyes narrowing as they turned their gaze to Bitterwood, assessing the threat. Bitterwood needed no time to think. A second arrow raced skyward, then a third, then a fourth, his bow singing a song of one-note staccato plucks. Three more angels dropped from the sky, silently, with no sign of pain on their faces. They crashed into the ground, shattering.
A strong wind suddenly swept over Bitterwood as Hex beat his wings, launching himself at the angels. They were only a hundred feet overhead, barely two body lengths for the giant dragon. They had no time to focus on him before he grabbed the first angel in his toothy jaws. He whipped his head about, tossing the angel into his nearest brethren. The wings of both shattered from the impact and they plummeted.
It had been almost twenty years since the first time Bitterwood had shot a sky-dragon in flight and watched it fall to earth. Watching the angels fall, he felt the same pulse of adrenaline wash through him. He didn't know if he was on the right side in this battle. He didn't know if Jazz was manipulating him into an act of unspeakable evil here in the city of gods.
Mere moments ago, all he had wanted was to save Jeremiah and take him and Zeeky far away, to a place where war was only a distant whisper, to live in peace as something almost a family. He had wanted to put his life as a killer behind him. Yet, as he watched his opponents fall from the sky, all these desires faded, washed away by the battle lust that surged through his veins. He targeted the next angel with a feeling approaching glee, and let his arrow fly.
JAZZ PAID NO attention to the throng of angels. Her experience with the two warriors at her back left her confident that the next sixty seconds would pass in relative quiet. She clapped her hands and the water falling into the pool trickled to a halt. The golden disk atop the fountain would make an excellent conductor for her transmitter.
She needed to concentrate. She allowed the shell of light that clung to her like her third skin to fade away, revealing her second skin, the silver genie that was affixed to Jandra's pores. It had been an obvious mistake to wear her genie in such a compact form inside her old body. Balling it up like that had left it vulnerable to Gabriel's sword. By spreading it out along the full surface of her new body, she had a greater chance that, should any part of it be damaged, the rest of it would survive. Her personality was still mostly located within the computer memory of the genie. Once all the excitement was over, she'd spend a few days relaxing on the beach, soaking up some sun, and rewiring the synapses of her new brain so that it would be truly her own.
Threads of silver shot from her fingers and wrapped around the glass spire at the center of the fountain, twining upward around it, sinking into the gold at the top, etching elaborate maps across its surface.
An angel crashed into the fountain on the other side and the glass rim shattered. The pool water surged out the new opening, leaving goldfish flopping about beneath her. She didn't mind that she was about to kill or cripple six billion people, but she felt bad that the fish had to suffer.
She was vaguely aware that Vendevorex was standing right beside her. She was a little perplexed as to what she should do with him. He wasn't part of her plan. If she'd killed him back in the barn, it would have made her Jandra act less convincing. On the other hand, Hex, Bitterwood, and all the others were recent acquaintances according to Jandra's memories. They were easy to fool. Vendevorex had known Jandra her whole life. Was he buying her act? She'd called him by his full name earlier, which was a slip up. Jandra had a more affectionate term for him.
"Ven," she said. "The key to talk to your nanites once the pulse is activated is 17351. It's about twenty seconds in coming. Since you're not doing anything in the meantime, could you save the goldfish?"
Vendevorex nodded. He swept his wing over the shattered pool with a dramatic flourish, sending out a shower of silver dust. The shards of glass began to dance, hopping and popping until they formed bowls around the gasping fish. He closed his fore-talon, and the water that clung to the bottom of the pool rose in a mist. He opened his talon, and the water poured down in precise rain clouds, filling the fishbowls.
If Jazz had known he'd complete the task so efficiently, she wouldn't have shared the key. Not that it was important. Vendevorex might have been a wizard among more primitive minds, but he was little more frightening than a birthday party magician to her. He could push a few molecules around, bend a little light, and knit together a bad cut. Parlor tricks compared to the technology's full potential. Jazz configured the last circuit.
"Omega," she whispered, activating the signal. Instantly, the angels remaining in the air exploded into clouds of dust.
Seconds later, a howl that could have come from the depths of hell itself echoed through the city, as six billion souls that had felt the touch of a shared mind for a millennium suddenly found themselves alone with their own thoughts.
In the rain of dust, it was impossible to see more than ten feet. Hex and Bitterwood couldn't see her right now. Jazz turned to Vendevorex. She twisted the electromagnetic field around her fingers as she once more opened the razor thin underspace gate that would form a rainbow blade. "Thanks for helping with the goldfish. Now, no hard feelings, I'm going to kill you."
She slashed the blade across his throat. She waited, watching for his neck to slide from his shoulders. His eyes, rather than rolling back into his head, glared at her with a stern look of disapproval.
He said, with a voice unmarred by trachea severing, "You've taken something from my daughter. It's time you give it back."
The underspace blade was so sharp that perhaps the surface tension of the water in his cells was holding his neck. Jazz stretched her silver-plated fingers forward to give his head a nudge and knock it loose.
Her fingers passed through thin air.
Her feet were suddenly locked in place as the thick glass rim of the fountain began to climb up her legs. She went blind as twin phosphorous flares erupted inches from her face. A dragon's fore-talon fell upon her shoulder from behind.
Parlor tricks.
FROM THE MOMENT she'd stepped from the rainbow gate, Vendevorex had suspected that Jazz was the mind animating the body of Jandra. When he'd come back into contact with his genie, he'd discovered something curious: Nearly a month of Jandra's recent memories were stored within the device, recorded during the time Jandra had worn his genie. Jandra apparently hadn't discovered this was a function of the device, since she hadn't encoded her memories so that other users couldn't access them. Thus, he knew in great detail the events of Jandra's life from the moment she'd put on his skull cap to the moment that Hex had ripped the genie from Jandra's spine. He knew who Jazz was, and the threat she represented.
He wondered if Jazz was aware of the threat he represented.
The ground beneath them rumbled as an earthquake wracked the island. He had no time to ponder the cause.
By now, the glass of the fountain had climbed to Jazz's waist, immobilizing the lower half of her body. Jazz twisted her neck around, trying to see him, but it wouldn't have mattered if she'd swiveled her head in a complete circle. With the flares before her eyes, she couldn't see a thing. He fashioned a long staff of glass with a head in the shape of his fore-talon, and lowered it to her shoulder. As anticipated, she whipped her arm over her back, stabbing the rainbow blade into the space where he should have been standing in order to touch her. He dropped the staff and leapt forward, grabbing her wrist, pushing it against her back so that the impossibly sharp sword cut away a thin slice of the nanite shell along her spine, exposing Jandra's skin.
He needed both his talons to control the blade as she struggled to free herself. He bent his serpentine neck forward and caught the torn edge of the silver shell with his teeth, peeling it out from her skin. Then, though it would cost him his powers, he willed his genie to reconfigure itself, turning into a stream of silver liquid that raced down his scaly snout and leapt onto the patch of skin he'd exposed.
Instantly, the flares vanished. He leapt back, flapping his wings, getting out of the reach of the blade. The glass around Jazz's legs cracked and shattered, as Jazz overpowered his unguided nanites.
Jazz spun around, her face distorted with rage. "Flying won't protect you, you bastard," she snarled.
Before Vendevorex could fly higher, the glass of the shattered fountain reshaped itself into an enormous hand that reached up and plucked him from the sky. The fingers closed upon his ribs with an unearthly swiftness and pressure. The sound of snapping bones reached his ears a fraction of a second before the bolts of pain.
Suddenly, Jazz shouted out, "No! Noooo!"
The glass hand went slack. Vendevorex lost awareness as he tumbled into the flowers below.
SHAY FELT AN odd sensation in his wings, a new sense he hadn't known he possessed until this moment. There was an unseen wave of energy in the air as he emerged through the gate, and his wings tingled with each pulse.
His arrival was badly timed. He seemed to be in the middle of an earthquake. The air was thick with dust. The ground beneath him shook violently. Yet, instead of buildings toppling, the opposite was happening. A structure was rising from the earth nearby. He recognized it from the books he'd studied as a Greek temple, with walls formed by gleaming white columns of marble. In scale, it rivaled the Dragon Palace. Within its shadowy confines, a giant man, two hundred feet tall, glared out. He wore a shimmering toga and sported a thick white beard and a mane of long white hair. He carried a trident, like the image of the god Poseidon.
The god did not look happy.
Thunder rumbled through the air, loud enough to rattle Shay's teeth. It took a second to realize the thunder formed words: "Who dares silence the voices of my children?"
A golden dragon that bore some resemblance to Hex darted through the air toward the god. In scale, it was like an eagle attacking a bear. The god lifted his hand in a dismissive swat. The golden beast flew off in a streak and smashed into one of the impossibly tall towers. The force drove the dragon through the wall. Shay couldn't see if he emerged from the other side.
Skitter slithered from the gate beside him. Zeeky craned her neck toward the god's angry face. She sighed. "I guess I'd better go talk to him."
"Talk to who?" Shay asked.
"Him," said Zeeky, pointing to the giant.
"Him?"
Zeeky nodded. "I can talk to pretty much anyone. It's my gift."
By now, the dust was starting to settle. Jazz stood beside a large spire topped with a golden disk. The granite-tiled walkway she stood on was sopping wet. For some reason, she was surrounded by hundreds of goldfish bowls.
Jazz looked as if she were dancing. Her skin was silver once more. She was whipping back and forth, her silver hair flying, raising her hands over her shoulders to claw at her back.
Shay rushed toward her and raised his sword to strike. Yet, as he neared, he realized Jazz wasn't dancing. There was something moving beneath the silver shell that coated her back, and she was trying to claw it off.
"Get out!" Jazz screamed. Or was it Jandra?
Knowing he might forever regret his decision, he swung his angel sword. The flat of the blade smacked squarely across Jazz's ear. The force of the blow tore the sword from his grasp and sent him spinning through the air.
When he stabilized, he turned to see the results of his blow. The silver-shelled woman stared at him. She didn't look injured.
"Shay," she said, in an utterly neutral tone. "Thanks for helping me focus."
"Jandra?" he asked.
"Guess again," she said. She turned her back to him and slammed her foot down onto the hilt of the flaming sword. In the center of her back there was a bulge. It looked almost like a woman's face, crisscrossed with chains. Jazz looked up at the Atlantean god, who glowered down at her.
"To answer your earlier question," she shouted to the giant, "I dare!"
The god shook his head slowly, as if pitying her. He crouched and reached toward Jazz with his impossibly huge hand.
"You no doubt thought I'd attempt to crack the jamming code of your signal," the god said, his thunderous voice causing the flowers of the bushes to tremble. "A more elegant solution is simply to destroy your antenna."
The god's fingers closed upon the golden disk.
Instantly his fingers vanished, then his arm, then his torso and shoulders and head. Shay was again aware of a tremendous surge of energy in the air.
"Sucker," said Jazz. "I knew you could still control the nanites you were in contact with, since you could transmit your commands through physical connections. Touching the disk gave me access to these physical connections. I've knocked you back to your core form. And now, I'm going to flush you."
Shay had no idea what had happened, but he was pretty sure it wasn't good. From his vantage point in the air, he could see into the giant temple. Where the god had stood, there was now a small, naked, white-haired boy, perhaps no older than five, slumped on the ground. He looked dazed.
Jazz suddenly appeared next to the boy, even though she also continued to stand by the fountain. The Jazz by the fountain looked down, as if the boy was standing right at her feet, and said, "Underspace gates have so many uses." The boy looked up at the Jazz in the temple, a frightened look in his eyes. "Traveling to the moon in a blink is one. Disposing of unwanted gods in the reaches of interstellar space is another."
She snapped her fingers. A perfectly circular rainbow appeared around the boots of the Jazz standing in the temple. A black pit opened beneath her, expanding outward. The white-haired boy opened his mouth as if he were screaming, but Shay couldn't hear him. The boy tried to crawl away, but made little progress. The only sound coming from the temple was a terrible howl of wind. The circle expanded ever outward. Shay was tugged toward the temple by a sucking wind. The black circle was now fifty feet across, and stars shimmered in its depths.
The flowers in the courtyard beneath him all leaned in the direction of the yawning pit. The boy's desperately grasping hands found no purchase on the marble. He splayed his body out, searching for any handhold, as his small form was dragged by the air rushing to the gaping void.
Shay ground his teeth and tilted toward the temple. The boy would reach the edge in mere seconds. Could he fly fast enough to save him?
Before he could find out, there was a flash of copper as Skitter raced up the steps at the side of the temple. Zeeky leaned down from her saddle, extending her hand. The boy's legs tilted over the side of the space pit and he closed his hand around Zeeky's.
The force ripped Zeeky from her saddle. Skitter slid to a halt on the polished marble floor, whipping his head around, snapping his mighty jaws shut on the back of Zeeky's tunic as she, too, tilted over the edge of the space pit. Skitter's claws left scratch marks in the marble as the wind caught him. The boy dangled from Zeeky's grasp as she dangled from Skitter's jaws.
"Oh, the suspense," said Jazz, giggling.
Skitter's first pair of claws slipped over the edge, then the second. There was a flutter of dark motion in the shadows at the rear of the temple. Shay's heart leapt as he realized it was Bitterwood's cloak. The archer was perched in a tree on the other side of the temple, his legs securely wrapped around a branch to resist the wind. He glared at the Jazz over the black pit.
He let an arrow fly.
It sliced straight through Jazz's head and kept flying, burying itself to its leafy feathers in a marble column beyond.
The Jazz near the fishbowls winced. "Ooh, that would have stung. Good thing Ven wasn't the only one who knew parlor tricks."
The way Jazz turned her head as she spoke drew Shay's eyes. She was looking at the fallen body of a sky-dragon who was tangled in the twisted branches of a thorny bush. He couldn't tell if the dragon was breathing.
Jazz began to twitch.
"Calm down," she growled.
The face on her back bulged out further, its mouth opening to scream, "Vennnn!"
Jazz closed her fists and clenched her jaw, concentrating to push pack Jandra's ghost.
Shay was torn. Should he attack Jazz again? Last time, physical pain had helped her focus. He decided to rescue Zeeky. But when he looked back to the temple, he saw a long bright pink rope tied to the tree where Bitterwood had stood. The hunter himself was gone, but the rope stretched in a straight line to the edge of the pit, where Skitter had his claws wrapped around it. The giant beast had inched himself out of the void, dragging Zeeky, who still held the boy. They were only feet from the pit, and the wind was beating them mercilessly. Still, for the moment, they were safe.
A physical attack on the goddess hadn't done him any good. Could an emotional appeal make a difference?
He dropped from the sky, coming to rest before Jazz, who had her eyes closed. The turmoil on her face was gone. She looked almost peaceful.
"Jandra," said Shay, barely a yard from Jazz's face.
Jazz opened one eye to glare at him.
"Remember Lizard," said Shay.
Jazz fell to her knees as a howl rose from the face on her back.
HEX PICKED HIMSELF up from the sandy beach where he'd come to rest. He was astonished to find he had no broken bones. There were scratches on his golden shell from his flight through the buildings, but no cuts or gouges. Just how tough was this armor?
He tried to flap his wings, but found he didn't have the strength to lift into the air. The fault wasn't his golden shell. He was still too weak from having had nothing to eat or drink. Jandra-or was it Jazz?-had said the shell would multiply his strength by ten. Unfortunately, ten times nothing was nothing.
He limped back into the city of towers. All around him, men and women in exotic hues wandered around, looking dazed. Many had simply collapsed where they stood, staring into the night sky, paralyzed by fear. He could hear the cries of men and women rising from unseen chambers beneath the earth as the lights of the city fell dark.
He came to a fountain. He lowered his jaws to drink, then halted, focused on the strangeness of seeing his countenance in gold. His green eyes weren't coated by the metal. He opened his mouth. His teeth were covered, but the metal stopped just inside this gums. His tongue was unprotected, still purple and raw.
He didn't care about the pain. He thrust his snout into the water and gulped until he'd had his fill. When he lifted his head once more, he heard a howling sound, like wind rushing through a cave. The flowers in the garden around him fluttered as the breeze picked up.
With his belly full of water, he felt even more sluggish than before. Yet, he couldn't afford this weakness. He, more than anyone, was responsible for Jandra's condition. This meant he, more than anyone, was now responsible for the fate of the world.
Digging into the deep reservoir of strength that only guilt can provide, he beat his golden wings and took to the air. Quickly, he gained his bearings. He could see the temple in the distance, though he couldn't tell what was happening in its shadowy interior. As he weaved his way among the towers, he soon spotted the silver form of Jazz, down on her knees beside the shattered fountain. A winged man stood before her. One of the angels?
He dove closer and realized it was Shay. He was talking to Jazz. Jazz was shaking her head. Her silver shell was bubbling up on her back. What was happening? He had only seconds to decide on a course of action. He knew his strength would fail any moment.
Shay's eyes grew wide as he saw Hex.
Jazz looked over her shoulder at him.
Hex made his decision. Just before his jaws clamped down onto Jazz's silvery body, he realized that the bulge on her back looked a bit like a woman's face.
He dug his teeth into Jazz with all his might. It sounded as if two voices screamed inside his mouth. He spread his wings to come to a halt before he crashed into the columns of the temple. He stumbled as he hit the ground. The wind at his back was like a hurricane. He tumbled and rolled, losing his grip on the silver woman. He bounced up the steps of the temple, pushed by the incredible wind. He dug his golden claws into the polished marble as he continued to slide. He craned his neck and saw Skitter struggling to keep from being pulled into an enormous black pit over which a second Jazz stood.
While his golden shell was stronger, and his claws were sharper, his metallic scales did lack one important quality: friction. Nothing he did halted his slide toward the void.
A sharp pain punched into his left wing. He came to a sudden and complete halt. He looked toward the source of the pain.
One of Bitterwood's arrows jutted from his wing. Half the shaft was buried in the marble floor. The force that tugged on him would no doubt have torn his ordinary flesh, but the golden shell held firm against the arrow. He was pinned.
"Take her down!" Hex growled.
Somehow, even above the howl of wind, he suspected the Murder God heard his prayer.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: