Immortally Ever After (6 page)

I’d just braced a hand on the supply depot when a gaggle of clerks picked that moment to come pouring out like it was on fire.

“This is it. This is it.” One of them grimaced, giving a hard shake to my shoulder as she passed.

Oh, geez. My stomach gave a twirl. I’d already had enough excitement to last me the rest of the war.

“Cool it,” I protested as a petite yet forceful secretary trod on my foot.

“Sorry!” she called, joining the throng of people heading south.

A burly sergeant rushed past, the one I’d treated after he’d started a locust plague a few months back. “You.” I grabbed him by the sleeve. “What’s happening?”

His meaty face and bald forehead shone with sweat. “The war has started again.”

I dropped my grip.

“They say it’s worse this time.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to take it all in. “How could it be worse?” This was war. We specialized in blood, death, and destruction. We had a monopoly on misery.

I joined the crowd, some of us running now.

We’d had peace for such a short, precious time. It wasn’t fair. It broke my heart to think it could be over so fast.

We jogged past the maintenance and supply tents, kicking up the red dust on the paths. The grit worked its way into my eyes and up my nose. I rubbed my face on my sleeve.

The crowd bottlenecked about fifty yards down, at the mess tent. It stretched long and flat under the limbo suns. To the right of it, a maze of personnel tents unfolded into the distance.

“Come on.” I halted at the back of the jostling line. At least everyone was in as much of a hurry as I was.

A collective gasp rose from inside the tent and a few people on the outside started pushing and shouting.

“Just what I’ve always wanted to see,” grumbled a voice behind me. “A riot.”

I turned to find Captain Thaïs. He was my least favorite doctor in camp and not just because he was a demigod asshole. Thaïs had almost killed me a few months ago. He’d made an insane attempt to incinerate the enemy and hadn’t minded in the least if he got me too.

He had no conscience, no soul, which meant the gods had carted him off to jail for about five minutes, before pardoning him.

I didn’t even want to share the same air. Thank God the mechanics had taken things into their own hands. Lazio had unbolted the mess hall doors from their hinges and tossed them aside.

Worked for me.

The crowd surged and pretty soon the entire mob of us made it inside. The television blared the latest from the Paranormal News Network, or PNN—all immortal news, literally all the time.

It was our version of CNN, with a few obvious exceptions.

The only TV in camp was a 1970s cabinet model that my enterprising colleagues had bolted to the make-shift stand on the far right wall.

They’d pushed back all of the tables so that a crowd at least twenty deep flooded the hard-packed ground in front of it. But really, there were people everywhere—on the tables, sitting on the serving areas, standing on chairs along the far wall.

I wormed down the side, along with about four dozen other people. The air inside was hot, and getting worse by the second. At last, I saw a little bit of room on the floor, a few feet in from the serving area.

I about groaned out loud when I saw Thaïs had the same idea. “Isn’t there a segregated demigod viewing area up front?” I asked, edging him out and diving in next to a group of nurses.

“A demigod goes where he pleases,” he said, getting elbowed by the crowd as he took the last available spot—next to me.

Lovely.

It was hard to even hear the television over the din of the crowd. A young-looking reporter with curly brown hair swallowed hard, as if the camera itself were about to attack him. “This is Zach McKay. Stone McKay is on vacation.”

“Ah, nepotism at its best,” I said, trying to edge Thaïs’s knee out of my space.

He gave me a sour look. “You’re just jealous because you come from a family of nobodies.”

Quite the contrary. I was perfectly happy to go home and stay out of this.

The reporter stood at the top of a dusty red stone battlement. His eyes darted to something offscreen, then widened as he returned his attention to us. “I’m here at New Army Base 8C, which this reporter believes will soon be under attack.”

The camera rolled over hundreds, if not thousands of our soldiers in their brick-red uniforms as they readied the cannons and took their battle positions.

Truly? I rolled my eyes. The penalty for spying was death-by-dragon incineration. Yet PNN had a reporter imbedded with our army, sending live footage of troop movements.

It seemed there was no secret as large as the ego of the gods.

The picture shook as we heard a distinct rumbling in the background. The reporter wet his lips. “We’d like to apologize. My camerawoman is on her first assignment as well. Our sources indicated that the armies would not be advancing for some time.”

Thaïs growled under his breath. “Is he kidding? We never should have submitted to a cease-fire to begin with!”

I resisted the urge to elbow him in the ribs.

The wobbly camera panned over the desert beyond the fort, where the air itself seemed to shimmer.

“Did you catch that radiation?” the reporter half whispered, like it was a secret between us and about three million other viewers. “This is all happening live. We are in quadrant 133.9A where the new god army is defending the Setesh Wastelands. As you can see, there is energy building in the desert. The gods can transport a battalion or less with no impact to the air whatsoever. Any more, and you get glimmers of it like we’re seeing right now.”

Thunder rolled over the desert, the skies darkened, and suddenly at least three battalions of old army soldiers appeared out of thin air. Artillery at the front. Behind them, massive black dragons stomped and fought at their restraints. Then, finally, endless rows of ground troops in old army tan.

The young reporter looked like he was going to be sick.

Explosions boomed and the camera fell to the ground, stuttering black-and-white snow.

PNN cut to a stick-thin blond woman behind the PNN news desk. She clutched her powder-pink-taloned hands in front of her and seemed shocked to even be there. “We’re back in the studio while we deal with…” She paused so long I wondered if she forgot where she was. “Technical difficulties.”

Her eyes widened as she listened to her earpiece. “Is that the only crew we have out in the field? It is the only crew. Okay. I apologize. We’ll try to get them back.” She did her best to buck up and rally, her expression going stern. “Our sources had made it quite clear that the gods had retired to Shangri-la, for their annual mortal death trials and skiing tournament. Obviously, the old gods had other things in mind.”

She wiped a shock of hair from her damp forehead. “I’m former intern Valerie LeMux, filling in for Stone McKay, who is, I’m sure, returning from vacation as we speak. In the meantime, let’s go to commercial and we’ll see if we can get Zach back for you.” She gave a shaky, five-second grin, then opened her pink-glossed lips and let out a high-pitched, keening wail.

I didn’t blame the banshee one bit. I’d have screamed too, if I thought it would help.

The camera lingered for a few moments until it abruptly cut to a commercial for the Basilisk of the Month Club.

I turned to Thaïs. “Nobody was ready for this? We’re in the middle of a war.” A temporary cease-fire was just that—temporary. What part of that had these people not understood?

For once, the demigod and I were in complete agreement. “Oh, we’re ready,” he said, eyes wild.

“I hope.” I mean, I thought we were. We’d stocked up on supplies and made sure gremlins didn’t make off with the generators. We were up a doctor, thanks to Marc, although I didn’t know how we were going to keep his dragon girl or my ex hidden if we had massive casualties in the ER.

Thaïs crossed his arms, thinking. “The Setesh Wastelands are about thirty miles north of us, which puts them close to the 8033
rd
.”

We took their overflow, along with the 7964
th
. I hoped our sister units had kept their supplies up and their people focused.

The soldiers around us cheered as an ad came on for
The Real Werewives of Vampire County,
a new reality show set in Malibu of all places. Heaven knew why anyone cared about a spoiled werevulture and her clique.

PNN came back on and the camera focused on a nervous-looking Valerie. At least she’d combed her hair, although it seemed she’d begun to chew at her talons. “I’m Valerie LeMux, filling in for Stone McKay. Junior reporter Zach McKay is live in the field. In case you’re just joining us, the old army has broken the cease-fire and launched a surprise attack on the new army stronghold in the Setesh Wastelands. From what we understand, the new army took this ground six months ago, as they routed the old army at the Mountain of Flames.”

The camera cut back to the curly-haired reporter. “Zach McKay here and I’ve made it to the highest battlement of Fort 8C,” he yelled over the pounding, screaming sounds of artillery fire.

Okay, he wasn’t just new. He was insane.

At least he had some fear. I could see his microphone hand shaking. It sounded like sonic booms going off behind him. “As you can see, old army bombs are pounding the wards just twenty feet from this fort.” The camera panned to a wall of dense black smoke as searing artillery fire blasted into it.

His face fell for a moment, and then he rallied. “Normally, either side would resort to a glorious field battle to hold this land. This fort was built because the desert floor in this area of limbo can be six feet thick in places—sometimes less—with the natural risk of digging a hole straight into Hades. And as openings into Hades are, by nature, quite unstable and prone to unleash demons, it seems the new army opted to construct aboveground defenses.”

The camera panned out to show the inside of an immense fortress, constructed from desert rock. New army archers and artillery lined the battlements, while infantry amassed on the ground. The soldiers looked hard, focused. They had to be scared.

Zach’s microphone hand shook even more. “It truly is a marvel of engineering for them to not only mine the rock, but bring it here and set it up between two natural obstacles. We have the bottomless sand pits to the east and the glass desert of the Furies to the west. I’m told that is less than an inch thick in places and not very good to walk on.”

We weren’t going to get casualties. These people were going to be incinerated.

The reporter wiped at the sweat streaming down the sides of his face. “I think it’s safe to say that the old army strategy will be to blow holes in the floor of our fortress, effectively sending us into the abyss for good.”

Thaïs grinned

My blood went cold. It
could
get worse than blood and guts and regular death.

Instead of being a positive change, a time of hope, the cease-fire had made the war even more grisly.

How could these people place such a low value on life? The gods were immortal. Surely if they needed thousands of years to live and have children and
be,
they could at least try and fathom why some of us would want a simple lifetime. A fucking chance.

The new army had positioned their people straight over Hades. And the old army wanted to open holes and send their troops directly at them.

The cub reporter straightened as a commander worked his way through the lines. “Colonel. May we have a word?”

The crusty solider kept going. “No.”

Screeches pierced the air and we watched as black dragons launched straight at the camera.

“The wards are down! The wards are down!” Zach hollered. Black dragons shrieked straight overhead. “They’re huge!” Cannons fired. Artillery tore through the dragons. I’d seen blood before, but I’d never seen a living creature torn apart.

I watched in horror as they shifted into desperate, bloody men and women, and fell to their deaths.

And holy hell—they were wired with explosives. Dragons streaked straight for the command center, the artillery, the elite forces on the ground, exploding on impact, killing and maiming.

The crowd around me went stone-cold silent.

The camera shook. I tried to see through the blackened smoke rising from the stronghold. They were kamikaze bombers. Dragons. I couldn’t believe it.

Soldiers ran, regrouped, jumped from the fortress, and scrambled into the sand as they burned.

The PA system in our camp crackled to life:
Attention. Attention all personnel. All on-duty surgical staff report to the OR immediately. All off duty, sit tight. You’re next.

The mess tent was quiet as death for a split second. Then tables rattled and chairs groaned as anyone who had anything to do with the OR headed for surgery.

Thaïs knocked against me and I didn’t even care. I was used to violence, tragedy. I just didn’t expect to get a front-row seat—or for it all to start again today.

Bodies crowded together as we bottlenecked at the door. I was shorter than most of the people around here and the mass moved against me with claustrophobic fervor.

The air grew thicker, hot.

I shook it off. At least I knew I’d make it out of the mess tent alive. No telling what the start of the violence meant for Galen. He’d be heading back into battle as a mortal.

“Hold up!” someone ahead yelled.

I ran smack-dab into the soldier in front of me as the crowd ground to a halt.

“What is it now?” Thaïs grumbled.

PNN droned above the crowd.

“In breaking news, a new prophecy is being handed down right now by the oracles.”

I stared at Thaïs for the first and perhaps only unguarded moment in our lives. “Now?” They wanted to screw with us
now
?

He looked as shocked as I felt. It used to take weeks for the oracles to deliver a prophecy. It gave me time to prepare.

I edged past him, toward a chair that had toppled in the fray. I turned it upright and stepped up above the crowd. I wasn’t the only one. Person-by-short-person, heads popped up like gophers.