Exalted (22 page)

“When
you want to communicate, call for 'Lille'. He knows when he is needed, often
even if no one calls.”

“So
none of the Authorities can contact The Alpha at the moment, in any way you
know of?” Julia quizzed; she intentionally failed to acknowledge Jacquie's
instructions about 'Lille'.

“Not
at the moment.”

“Meaning
you don't have any insights.”

“Do
you?” Jacquie challenged.

“We
have a few,” Julia said on impulse. “We may choose to share them later, after
we meet with our group in Egypt.”

Unfortunately,
she thought as they said goodbyes and Cayne thrust them back into the air, she
was bluffing again.

Chapter Thirty-One

By
the time they reached the dry, warm skies over Alexandria, Julia was working on
a bad mood.

At
their perch in St. Moritz, at a pit-stop in rural France, and again in Tripoli,
where a barge caught fire while they sat talking in a waterfront cafe, she and
Cayne had discussed their plan. Or tried to.

Neither
of them had any real idea of The Adversary's weakness. He was unpredictable,
violent, and according to Cayne's Spidey Sense, moving west, possibly toward
California, which gave Julia d
éjà vu
 
in
a Samyaza kind of way.

At
the cafe in Tripoli, Cayne had done his old Cayne trick, encouraging a handsome
man with salt and pepper hair to fork over his smart phone. Cayne thrust it
into Julia's hands, asking her to find a newspaper.

“Why?”
     
He'd shrugged. “An American one. I
just want to hear the headlines.”

So
Julia had found them—and felt a fresh new wave of terror.

The
top one said:
American stocks plunge; Europe profits from war fears

A
quick skim revealed that violence had arisen in several European countries over
'the debt crisis', which meant a few key manufacturing companies had made a lot
of money on security and war supplies. Apparently, the profiting companies were
partially owned by a large American conglomerate. Which the FBI claimed was the
motivation for two terrorist attacks—one a chemical attack on the water supply
of a major metropolitan area on the east coast of the U.S., which had caused
several thousand deaths; the other a bomb in a west coast mall, taking out,
among other things, a kids' clothes store.

By
the time Julia finished the article, as well as a side-bar about one of the
children, who apparently had already been fighting cancer, she didn't have the
heart to click on the links about a pestilence in Chinese rice fields, the drug
war in Mexico, or a rapidly melting glacier. As she tried to close the stupid
news app, a photo of a made-over woman popped up; Julia blinked when she
recognized Jess Stanton. Apparently she'd overdosed.

Her
stomach felt full of rocks when she shoved the phone to Cayne. “Do something
with this.”

“All
bad?” he asked.

Julia
nodded.
 

Cayne
took one look at the article and shut the paper. “Sounds right,” he muttered.
Then he sat the phone down on the table, and they left.

Since
then, Julia had felt riddled with anxiety. She thought of the kids in the
clothing store—innocent children, riding in strollers and those little wrap
thingies that moms wore—and it dawned on her for the first time that The
Adversary wouldn't be here, inciting people to violence with his presence, if
Jacquie had killed her when she'd tried.

That
made her feel horrible.

Then
she remembered Meredith. Good God, had she actually forgotten about Meredith?
For a second, she had. She squeezed her eyes shut, but she was so miserable,
she couldn't even manage to cry properly.

What
were they going to do?

When
they'd been flying over desert for a long time, Julia tapped Cayne's shoulder
and yelled, “STOP SOMETIME!”

He
nodded, and despite her misery, Julia leaned in and kissed his nape. This time,
her eyes did fill with tears—tears over all the things she knew she'd never
have, like a house and a college degree and a future with Cayne. A few more
tears slipped out when she berated herself for even caring about those things.

By
the time Cayne finally landed, just beyond a small town where a factory had
been burning, putting off an acrid reddish cloud, she'd had time to have a
small cry over the shit-tastic-ness of the world in general, and she was
feeling slightly calmer.

She
held on tightly as Cayne dropped lower to the desert floor, his great, winged
shadow dark against the blazing orange and red tones of sunset on sand.

When
he let her down under a weird-looking desert tree, Julia slumped against its
trunk and Cayne stood a few feet away from her, arms folded, face grim. Behind
him, the sky blazed.

She
let her breath out slowly, thumbing the dirty laces of her All-Stars. “So...what
should I tell the other Chosen?”

Cayne
sank down in front of her, putting one hand over hers. He looked at her with so
much caring in his eyes, Julia thought she just might cry again. “You know this
is not your fault, don't you?”

She
pressed her lips together, allowing herself, just for a second, to experience
the comfort of Cayne's kind green eyes. “It's not mine either,” he admitted.
“This is his nature, Julia. Even in a realm that isn't his, he stirs the pot.
All bad things orbit him. He's like a magnet.”

Julia
rubbed a hand over her eyes, and he squeezed her foot. “Cheer up, buttercup.”

Hearing
that
—from
him
: priceless. Julia actually giggled, and Cayne gave
her an almost-believable smile.
 

“I've
been thinking about that,” he said. “About what our plan should be.”

She
scrunched her face up. “Any ideas?”

"I
wonder...” He pressed his lips together, shaking his dark head slowly.

“You
wonder what.” She slapped his shoe. “Don't keep me in suspense!”

“The
link is still there, so maybe I could pull his power back into myself if I did
it right. That way you wouldn't have to be involved.”

“You
can't take him on all by yourself," Julia snapped. She rushed to say,
"Sorry," and added, "I just don't want you rushing to be heroic
again. Not because of what happened. I just want to know you'll stick with
me."

He
nodded, somber. "Of course."

Julia
relaxed a bit. "Don't forget, I've got Methuselah's power now. Some of it,
anyway."

"A
lot, I think," he said, unhappily.

“I
can use it if I need to.”

Cayne
rubbed her eyes and looked down at the sand. "We'll figure this out when
we get back to the others. We can talk to the group before you address the
entire Chosen population."

She
nodded. "And Cayne, I meant what I said. Don't even think about any lone
rider stuff again. I can't handle it.”

He
stood up, holding his hand out for her, and after tucking her shoe-lace back
in, Julia reluctantly took it. The sun, sinking behind the flat horizon, was
blinding, so she cupped a hand over her eyes, barely able to see Cayne's tight
smile.

"We'll
do it together—somehow. Right?"

***

It
was another twenty minutes before they reached the pyramid. Twenty minutes for
Julia to think about what he'd said, about how much power she might have.
Twenty minutes for her to freak out over exactly how she would—how she
could
—pitch
a plan she didn't have yet to a bunch of Chosen who'd already been through a
Demon stampede.

Her
mind was a racing mess.

And
then they saw the pyramid, or rather
what was left of it.

Her
first instinct was to cry. Her body went ahead and got things ready: stinging
eyes, constricting throat, flushing cheeks. All its typical pre-crying stuff,
except as Julia's blurry gaze swept from the charred, smoking remains of the
pyramid to the handful of gray tents in the dirt, she locked her jaw and she
refused.

Crying
over Meredith, over Suzanne and Harry, over kids killed in a terrorist
attack—that was one thing. Crying because she was scared was quite another.

The
Julia that
reacted
, that cowered in the face of horror, the Julia that
pulled her hair out because she couldn't make a decision, the Julia who'd
wanted to hide at the resort in St. Moritz forever and ever... That Julia was
no more.

This
Julia was furious.

She
locked her arms around Cayne's neck and squeezed, telling him with her body
that she was angry. He glanced down at her, and there was love in his eyes.
Love and encouragement.

She
bit her lip as Cayne circled the perimeter, counting the tents.

Two-dozen.
Oh, God, she only counted twenty-four tents, and for a very intense second, she
wanted Cayne to fly away. She didn't want to know about Drew and Carlin and the
rest. She couldn't take it.

No,
she argued. She
could
. She could and she would. And if this was The
Adversary's doing, so help her...

With
one last shrewd-eyed glance at her, Cayne landed fast, and Julia was dashing
for the nearest tent, which was larger than it had seemed from the air. She
flew through the fabric door, realizing as she came to a stop in front of about
thirty Chosen that she should try to look less rattled. More in control.
 

She
locked eyes with the first woman she saw and said, “Nathan.”

“Two
tents down,” the woman answered in a Scottish accent. “And nice to see you,
too.” She smiled a sad, sympathetic smile, reaching out to pat Julia's arm but
pulling away before her fingers touched.

“Quite
an aura you have there.”

Julia
gaped, and the woman grabbed her hand and squeezed. “There's more than one o'
us, you know. The energy inside you makes your colors positively brilliant.
Blue-purple, more toward purple."

Julia
blinked, shocked into silence. She'd never known anything about her own aura,
and hearing that it had a lot of purple made her absolutely
ache
for
Meredith.

Finally,
she managed to choke out, “I didn't know that. Thank you.”

It
was all she could muster before she turned to go. Cayne was there beside her,
clutching her hand as her mind crunched numbers. Twenty-five times twenty-four
was… six-hundred. There had been more than 1,000 Chosen in Alexandria, down
nearly half from the attack at the Virginia compound.

She
nearly tripped over her All-Stars as she rushed toward the door of the Nathan
tent, desperate to see whether Drew and Car were among the living, but before
she could make it through the flap, Cayne tugged her arm.

Her
head snapped up, and she whirled to face him. “What?”

He
drew her into the dusty space between the two tents and pulled her against his
strong chest. “Breathe,” he murmured.

She
almost slapped him. “I don't want to breathe, I want to know if they're okay,”
she hissed.

He
 
pressed his lips against her forehead.
“Julia...calm down.”

“Don't
tell me what to do,” she seethed, and he looked calmly at her.

Then
he smiled, and his trick worked. She took a deep breath, then leaned into his
arms. "This power…I think it makes me more high strung or something."

His
lips touched down below her eye, beside her nose, atop her hair. As his arms
caressed her back, his voice rumbled near her ear. “We'll be okay, you and me.
We'll find a way to make things right. And you know what we'll do after
that?”
 

“What?”

“Live
happily ever after.”

Julia
nodded, and he stroked her hair back from her sweating forehead. “Where'd you
hear of happily ever after?”

He
smiled, lopsided. “We had fairy tales in my day, too, you know.”

“Back
in the stone age?”

He
pawed at her with his hands drawn to his chest, like a T-Rex, and Julia felt
depressed that instead of laughing, she just thought about the day Nathan had
tracked her to the museum.

Cayne's
smile quickly faded, and he squeezed her hand. “You ready to go in?”

She
nodded, and the world took on a faded, old film look as Cayne held the tent
flap open and Julia stepped inside.

She
was still wearing the same dirty jeans and stained, size small shirt Mer had
given her at the hostel in Scotland. She knew her filthy, hot pink All-Stars
looked like they belonged in the hallway of a high school, and her long, dark
hair was probably tangled beyond recognition. But as she looked around the
tent, she held her head high.

This
was clearly the place to be. Nathan sat at the center of a long, rectangular
table. His face was twisted in irritation and he was barking orders into a gray
walkie-talkie. Julia sighed when she saw Drew and Carlin sitting to his left.
Carlin was speaking into her own walkie-talkie, and Drew, beside her, was
running a hand over his short hair, the way he sometimes did when he was tired.

Julia's
heart jerked up like a buoy in her chest as Carlin met her eyes. Carlin's face
split into a huge smile, and Julia noticed her friend's lip was puffy. She
glanced again at Drew and Nathan's faces: bloody, too.

A
quick glance around the rest of the tent revealed several bustling stations of
what looked to be emergency operation. One table held flash-lights and small
generators, another was piled high with clothes (all gray, of course). At a
third, someone was arranging what had to be a thousand pairs of boots.

Julia
looked at her friends again, smiling until her eyes led her to the far end of
their table. Partially obscured by a massive stack of beat-up-looking water
jugs...
At that end of the table, there were Authorities
.