He was wrong. Luther swung his cross and the boy was instantly dead. He turned on Kali and his Apostles followed. They all tore at her. She did not resist. She lay on her back and gobbled contentedly, and her laughter enraged Luther further ...
Until he noticed that all his Apostles were dead.
TWELVE
They gathered in the room from which Adam had been taken.
Conal watched them come in, one after the other. His head still hurt something awful, but it was minor compared to the feeling of fear that was stealing over him.
The three Titanides were wet, and ignoring it. Cirocco was wet, and didn't seem to notice. Chris had a towel and was drying himself off. He seemed exhausted, and distant. Conal didn't know the special hell Chris was going through, but he could see some signs of it.
Robin was wet, and shivering. Chris handed her his towel when he was through.
Nova ...
She still wore Conal's coat. She was holding it over her shoulders with one hand, shivering almost as badly as her mother. And, though she wore the coat, and though she was holding it in place, she was making no attempt to cover herself. It only reached to her waist, anyway, so it wouldn't have done her much good, but she held her injured arm out for Rocky to work on, and was unconcerned that one breast was revealed.
Nova seemed to have no body modesty. Conal was used to that in Cirocco, and saw it frequently in long-time residents of Bellinzona. But it was unusual in new arrivals.
He remembered her pressed against him up there in her bedroom.
It was a moment he was not going to forget. And now he couldn't seem to take his eyes off her.
"This is going to hurt badly," Rocky said.
"Doctors don't say things like that," Nova said. "They promise you it isn't going to hurt much."
"I am not a doctor. I am a healer, and this is going to hurt a lot."
Rocky poured the antiseptic solution over Nova's cuts and started to clean them out. Her face froze, then turned very ugly, but she didn't scream.
Conal thought she was foolish. He had been treated for zombie wounds. Rocky had to probe deep to be sure he got out every particle of corruption. To have a zombie breathe on you was enough to put you in bed for a week. To be torn up like Nova ...
He had to look away. He'd never had a strong stomach.
Cirocco had been waiting like stone for everyone to assemble. Now that they were all here, she wasted no time.
"Who was in the room with Adam when he was taken?" she asked.
Conal's heart froze.
He saw Chris looking around, frowning, trying to put it together.
"Me and Robin were out in the Witch room," he said. "When I got here-"
"I'm asking a simple question," Cirocco interrupted. "I just want to know who was in here. We need a place to start."
"Nobody was in here," Conal said, and swallowed hard.
Cirocco turned to face him.
"And how do you know that?"
"Because when I heard the scream, I ran upstairs..."
Cirocco kept looking at him. She was not in the mood to waste time, so her look couldn't have gone on much more than two seconds, and those seconds didn't take much more than twenty years to go by.
"I told you to protect him, at all costs," she said, tonelessly. For an instant the doors were open over the twin blast furnaces. Then she looked away and Conal could breathe again.
Chris spoke up.
"That's not fair, Cirocco. What was Conal supposed to do when he heard Nova scream? Ignore it? There's no way he-"
Then Cirocco was looking at Chris, and he didn't have anything more to say.
"Don't waste my time, Chris. We can debate fairness some other day."
That's right, Conal thought. Nobody told you it was going to be fair. You walk up to the oldest, meanest, most paranoid human in the solar system ... and you try to make a man out of what is left.
"Cirocco, what about Nova?" Robin asked. "Chris couldn't have-"
"Shut up, Robin."
"Captain," Rocky began.
"Shut up, Rocky."
Several people tried to speak at once, including Nova.
"Shut up."
Cirocco didn't precisely raise her voice, but she put something into it that nobody could argue with. And she didn't wait for silence. It came, but she was already plunging ahead.
"I know how fast an angel can fly," she said. "I couldn't see this one well enough to know which clan it was. There are twenty-five species of angel and they all dislike each other, so it's possible we can get help from other flights. Their range is limited. We can assume it's headed for Pandemonium, so-"
"Why don't we just let him go?" Nova muttered.
Cirocco took two quick steps and slapped Nova's face so hard the young woman was thrown to the floor. She sat up, her mouth bleeding, and Cirocco pointed at her.
"Kid, I've taken all I'll take from you. This is your first and last warning. You will grow up, damn fast, and you will join the human race, or I'm likely to kill you accidentally, and I'd hate to do that because Robin is my friend. We will now discuss how to save the life of a human being who happens to be your brother, and you will speak only when spoken to."
Again, Cirocco had not raised her voice. There was scarcely a need to. Nova was lying on her side, stunned, in a place far beyond humiliation. Conal's coat had fallen from her shoulders as she went down. A few minutes ago Conal would have been quite interested, but now he could only spare her a glance as Rocky helped her up. Cirocco needed him, and Nova had turned into just another broad, and a dumb one, at that.
"Gaea is behind this. Gaby warned me the child was important. I don't know why Gaea wants him. Possibly just to lure me to do battle with her, which she's been trying to do for years. But Gaea doesn't have him yet. She is in Hyperion, which is as far from here as you can get. There's something I need to know. Chris, when you entered Nova's room, was the zombie already dead?"
"That's right."
"And the one in the hall ... "
"It wasn't there when I went in, and it was dead on the floor when I came out."
"Any of you kill it?" Cirocco swept them with her eyes, and everyone indicated they hadn't.
"The one in the music room. Tell me about that."
"I was getting ready to fight it, and it just keeled over."
"But the one with Adam got away." She turned to Nova. "What did you do to that first one?"
"I shot it," Nova whispered. "I shot it ... three times."
"That wouldn't kill it. What did you do then?"
"I threw the gun at it."
Cirocco waited.
"I threw the bed. Then other things."
Nova shrugged, listlessly. She seemed to be in shock.
"The vase, the lamp, the cr-... " All the blood drained from her face.
"What?" Cirocco kept at her.
"Some-some-something I m-m-made."
"I'm not going to hit you again, Nova, but you are going to tell me what it was you made."
Nova's whisper was almost inaudible.
"... a love potion ... "
"She borrowed some ingredients from the kitchen," Serpent volunteered.
Cirocco turned away from them all and was quiet for several seconds. No one moved. At last she turned back.
"Chris," she said, pointing at him. "Radios. Three. Bring them back here, then meet me at the cave."
Chris hurried off without a word.
"Valiha. You take one radio and go, as fast as you can, to Belinzona. Put out a general call to all Titanides who still have faith in their Wizard. I want live zombies, as many as you can take. Don't risk your life to get them, and stay in radio contact with me."
"Yes, Captain."
"Rocky, you will stay here. We may have further instructions when we find out how they plan to get Adam to Pandemonium."