The disembodied voice tut-tutted its tongue against its teeth.

Gwynn made a slow three-sixty, trying to find his a.s.sailant. A forearm slammed against his throat, pushing him back against a tree. Before he could react, his good arm was caught in a powerful hand and pinned.

His eyes met his own staring back at him.

"Cain," he coughed through his constricted throat.

"You," Cain contemptuously vomited the word.

Cain released Gwynn's throat only long enough to grab it with his free hand. He tossed Gwynn like he was a piece of garbage.

"Stop wasting my time," Cain said. "Just get out of here."

Gwynn got to his knees, coughing, and rubbing at his throat.

"What do you mean?" Gwynn asked. "We're in the Veil. We're not anywhere."

Cain shook his head, a rueful laugh rumbling in his throat.

"You're in me," he said. "I thought you were some other Anunnaki, who'd wandered in here. But it's just you. Poor, pathetic, useless, you."

"I don't understand. How can I be inside...Oh? You're not really Cain, are you?"

Cain sighed.

"At least you don't take too long to catch on."

Gwynn rose to his feet and straightened his back.

"I came here for you. I need to have power equal to Cain's."

The image of Cain laughed-laughed so hard he had to brace himself against a tree. After a few minutes, he gave some dying guffaws and wiped tears from his eyes.

"You? Equal to Cain? You can't even be as interesting as Cain, let alone equal his strength."

Gwynn took a step toward the manifestation of his soul.

"So you do favor Cain," he said.

"Hmph. How could I not favor Cain? Do you know why we even bother with you meat suits?"

Gwynn didn't answer, sensing the question's rhetorical nature.

"For experience. We are beings of energy, stuck in a static existence, never changing, never evolving. But you, creatures of flesh and the world of time, you do change. You learn new experiences, you grow from eating, s.h.i.tting, sleeping sacks of meat into functioning, hormonal, creatures who waver between extreme poles of behavior. Through you, we are able to learn, change, and be transformed. Cain has lived hundreds of lifetimes, f.u.c.king and murdering his way across continents and worlds. He's absorbed the powers of hundreds of his descendants. He's delivered the sweet experience of terror and hopelessness to millions of my brethren. We all have much to thank Cain for."

Gwynn's fist clenched so hard his arm shook.

"How can that be?" he asked. "How could you want those experiences? What about joy or happiness?"

The image of Cain, the image of himself with the addition of his right arm, shrugged.

"Happiness, joy, it's all so soft. Fear, anger, those sharp emotions carve the greatest of experiences. Why does anything evolve? Because it must overcome adversity. Happiness equals complacency. I told you, didn't I, that we use you to experience change? Complacency is anathema to us. Which is why I have little use for you," it sneered. "At the point where your powers awakened, what did you do? You stuck your tail so far up your a.s.s you lost those powers for years. And then? You lived those years as a no one, hiding yourself from the world, afraid to even talk to the girl of your dreams. You've wasted your potential. To sum it up perfectly-you're boring. What have you given me that can compare in any way to Cain's contribution?"

Gwynn's stomach clenched and his eyes burned. He consciously tried to loosen his fist, refusing to allow this thing-it couldn't be his soul-the satisfaction of seeing him upset. He drew a slow breath to steady his voice before he spoke.

"You're a liar," he said.

"Oh? So you don't have an answer for me, so instead you attack my sincerity?"

"No," Gwynn said, "I know you're lying because if you craved change, you'd be far more interested in me than Cain."

"How do you figure?"

The tightness in Gwynn's chest loosened. Audible doubt had crept into the other's voice.

"Sure, anger, fear, maybe those things initially cause change, but how many years of abandonment issues can you stomach before it makes you nauseous? Does Cain even think about the people he kills anymore? Maybe the first kill, maybe even the first twenty, might have changed him. But now he's moved on to destroying entire worlds from the shadows. I bet he doesn't even look his victims in the eye anymore. You ask what I can give you?" Gwynn stood a little taller, let his chest lift higher. "In the past eight years I've awakened as an Anunnaki, had my heart broken, killed, destroyed billions of worlds, fell in love again, and had a child. And unlike Cain, I've managed to have a child who doesn't hate me. In eight years, I bet I've gone through more changes than Cain has in eight centuries. If I was so boring and useless to my soul, why else would it lend me its strength? Why would Xanthe have answered my call when I needed it? And why did it help me save Pridament those years ago? Admit it, you're not only lying about having no use for me, you're not even truly my soul, are you?"

The vision of himself leaned its head back, looking at the canopy of stars above them. He lifted his hand and covered his face. A long, exasperated, sigh escaped from his lips.

"Now you've gone and done it," he said.

He blinked out of existence, reappearing crouched before Gwynn. He launched upward, slamming his fists into Gwynn's chest, who lifted into the air, slammed into a ma.s.sive tree, and became caught in its limbs.

A familiar dark blade pierced his chest, pa.s.sed through his back, and pinned him to the tree's trunk.

"You're right," the image of him said, the blade attached to its open palm, "I'm not your soul. You know me better as Xanthe."

17.

Silver a.s.sailant

The high pitched clanging of alarms woke Marie.

She launched from the bed, her speed activating in natural response to her panic. The alarms had triggered the overhead lights to blaze at daylight proportions.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on?" she asked, exiting her room and grabbing the first person she saw.

"There's reports of an attack in the central block."

"Is it the Aesir?"

"I don't know."

He ran on further down the hall, heading in the direction of the armory.

The central block housed their meeting rooms and the places where most of their intelligence was gathered. They called it the central block, though the location varied every few months to keep it secret-central was more a description of its integral nature to the cause as opposed to its geographic position. If the Aesir had found it...

She tore the Veil and charged ahead, drawing her twin blades as she ran. She reached the central block's location within ten seconds. In her brief trip, she saw throngs of unarmed citizens fleeing and armed troops making their way.

Too few armed troops, she thought. If Jason doesn't figure out a way to help stop the night terrors, we're finished.

Fatigue hung on the men and women of Fenrir like weights. Adrenaline managed to get them moving, but already she saw glazed eyes and frantic, strung out, confusion setting in. At this rate, they were going to lose a lot of people to friendly fire. She considered ordering them to withdraw.

She shook her head.

No, this is their home. I have no right to tell them not to defend it. The best chance is to make sure they never have to pull the trigger.

"Caelum!" she called.

He was flattened against a wall with several Fenrir troops, taking cautious looks down the hall they flanked.

"What's the situation?"

"Anunnaki," he said, "but too disorganized to be Valkyries or Einherjar."

"So what? Rogues? Or..."

Caelum grimaced.

"Fallen?" Marie asked. "Here? But why?"

"If we could get down this hall without being cut to shreds, we might find out."

Marie stuck her head around the corner. Further down the hall stood a person with squared shoulders and posture that struck her as male-though she couldn't be sure because its body was a smooth metallic silver. It turned its head toward her and reached out its hand.

Even with Marie's speed, she felt the hair on the side of her head sizzle as she pulled away from a laser-like beam of light.

"Geezus, Marie," Caelum said. "Do you think we were just standing here for no reason? And then you just go and shove your whole head around the corner like some idiot."

She shrugged.

"I just wanted a better look at what we're up against."

"Yeah? While you were grabbing a better look, did you see the four ash piles in the hall-because those used to be our people."

Marie lowered her voice.

"Maybe if I go in there full speed, keep low and move from side to side..."

"From what we've seen, he can emit those rays from anywhere. You're fast, but I don't think you can go faster than light."

"Where's Brandt?" Maria asked. "He could probably just smother him in concrete or something, right?"

"About forty minutes out." Caelum sighed. "He went back to the bridge fragment to wait for Jason. He can fold nearby, but our wards mean he'll have a ways to hoof it."

"So what's our play? I mean, he's just standing there protecting the hall. So obviously the main event is in the chambers. Were there any members of the council down there?"

"I think Richards and Davies were down there."

"Dammit," Marie said. "Those two wouldn't take cover-they'd just start shooting. They would never think of their own safety."

"Yeah." Caelum smiled. "I admire them too."

Marie stuck her head around the corner. A moment later, she pulled it back around, chased back by another beam of light.

"You have a death wish."

"No, I think I have a plan."

Marie took off at top speed, returning less than a minute later with a half-length mirror.

"Hold this," she said, handing the mirror to Caelum.

She grabbed a rifle and leaned around the corner, squeezing off two rounds before the beams forced her back. As soon as the beams dissipated, she rounded the corner, this time firing five rounds before retreating.

"Bullets just bounce off," Caelum said. "Sorry, I guess I should've said that earlier."

"It doesn't matter. Hand me the mirror."

In her left hand, she braced the rifle stock against her side and held the mirror in her right. She pushed her left side around the corner and fired three shots. As the beam came at her, she tore the Veil and pushed all her speed into pulling back and twisting so she could have the mirror into the hall before the beam pa.s.sed. The light struck the upper edge of the mirror and melted straight through. Again, she poured the speed into rounding the corner and firing. Six shots. Mirror. This time, the beam didn't burn straight through. Eight shots. Mirror, which reflected the beam.

Marie sped down the hall, following the reflected beam. She went low, drawing her dual daggers from the Veil. She drove one of her daggers in the spot where the beam struck the Anunnaki in the chest. She put all her weight and momentum behind the blade, driving it through where the metallic coating had weakened.

Shocked by the severity of the injury, his power slipped, allowing the metal to melt away, starting from the head down. As soon as his eyes were visible, she drove her second blade through, ending the man's life.

"Let's go," she said.

Caelum jogged up to her and looked down at the mess that had previously been a person.

"Sometimes, you scare the s.h.i.t out of me," he said.

She smiled.

At the next junction, Marie held up a hand to halt their advance.

"I told you, I don't know anything about that," a male voice said further down the hall.