Cold Warriors (36 page)

Morgan reacted first. He flung himself against the door, slamming it shut. The door bounced against his back and his feet slid two inches along the carpet before he grimaced and forced it closed again. His fingers scrabbled against the lock, trying to turn it, but it needed a key. "Help me," he hissed.

Anya knelt beside the first of Raphael's dead followers, fumbling in his pockets.

"It's no good," the other Anya said bleakly. "Valeria had the key."

The door shuddered as more weight was thrown against it from the outside and there was a deep tearing sound as the wood began to splinter beside Morgan's head.

Morgan dug his heels into the carpet, using the leverage to push back. Then he held out his hands, one towards each half of Anya.

The other Anya reached out and took his hand.

She kept hers behind her back, clenched in a fist.

"For fuck's sake do it!" Morgan yelled as the door slid open another inch.

The Anya holding Morgan's hand was crying. She thought this was going to kill him, and it hurt her. All those soft emotions did hurt, she remembered that now. There was a reason she'd wanted to rid herself of them. That other Anya was all the parts of herself she hadn't been able to live with. Why would she want them back?

"Please," the other her said. "The shadow needs the light."

Anya watched her own hand reaching out to clasp Morgan's. His was hot and sweating and nothing at all happened when it touched hers. Then he brought his hands inwards, joining them all together, Morgan and the two people who were both her.

Something detonated without sound, blinding and deafening her, locking her inside her own head. It was fuller than she remembered, overcrowded. She was awash with contradictions and for a second they were unbearable and she tried to tear herself apart again. But the moment passed and something in her seemed to expand to accommodate these new-old feelings. She was both whole and broken, as everyone always was.

She opened her eyes and found that she was clasping both Morgan's hands in both of her own. His own eyes were blank and as she watched his legs gave and he slid to the floor.

Kate jumped forward, yelling in panic - but the door held. It wasn't moving and behind it there was silence.

Anya knelt down beside Morgan and felt his neck and wrist, searching for a pulse. There was nothing. She felt tears choking her throat, vying with anger that he'd forced her to this and regret that there hadn't been another way. The normal jumble of emotions.

"I think he's gone," she said to Kate.

The other woman held a hand in front of Morgan's mouth to feel his breath. After a moment she shrugged and took it away. "I don't know that he was ever properly alive. But it's too early to give up on him. Things that would kill a normal person, with Morgan..." She shrugged again, then put her hands in his armpits and heaved him aside.

With Morgan gone, the door swung gently inwards. The three men still stood behind it, arms braced to press against a barrier that wasn't there. Anya flinched back, but they didn't move. There was a thin coating of something white and glittering on their faces and clothes.

Anya saw her fingers shake as she reached out to the nearest arm. When she touched it there was a sensation of extreme cold. Then her fingers passed through what had looked like solid flesh. Only now there was nothing there, and she didn't understand how she'd seen anything except bones. They hung in the air for a moment like an anatomy-class skeleton. But nothing was holding them together and with an almost musical clatter, they fell to the tiled floor of the hallway.

Anya released a breath she hadn't known she was holding.

"Look at this," Kate said. She was back inside, by the French doors that led to the balcony.

The light coming from outside was strange, white and diffuse. When Anya joined Kate on the balcony, she saw why. On midsummer's day it was snowing in St Petersburg. She held out her hand and a fat flake landed on it, perfect and beautiful in the moment before it melted.

The snow had already coated the ground, muffling the sound of people running. There were some screams, but far fewer than before. All over the pavement and road, stretching off into the distance, she could see humps of snow where something lay beneath it. Some of them were big enough to be bodies, others just piles of bone.

"When they split me in two," Anya said, "it created an explosion the size of a tactical nuclear bomb. An exothermic reaction."

Kate nodded, still looking out. "And the reverse process needed to draw in an exactly equal amount of energy. It came from the dead through Morgan. It's always the cold, isn't it? It's defeated every army that tried to invade this country, from Napoleon to Hitler."

Anya glanced at Morgan, but he hadn't moved. Only his eyelids had slid shut so that it looked like he was sleeping. "He was right."

Kate looked back at him, and Anya realised she was crying. "Yeah. Tomas would have been proud."

EPILOGUE

Morgan had been conscious for two days. They still had a drip in his arm and one of those heart monitors attached to his chest that made him feel like he was in an episode of
Casualty.
He hadn't been able to sleep properly the first night. He kept waiting for the steady
beep-beep-beep
to transmute into the long loud hum that said he was flatlining.

They'd told him Anya was coming to visit, so he wasn't surprised when she poked her head round the door an hour after breakfast. She saw he was awake and moved all of the way in, pulling out an orange plastic chair to sit beside his bed. He smiled when he realised she hadn't brought any flowers. He knew which half of her that came from. There was a long silence as they studied each other.

"How are you feeling?" he asked eventually.

She laughed. "I'm not the one who was in a coma for ten days."

He shrugged.

"I'm fine," she told him. "Apart from the two completely contradictory sets of memories. Someone asks me what I did for Christmas and I've got two answers." She smiled, as if it was all a joke, but she looked strained. Strained, and not quite the woman he knew - either of them.

"Are you happy, though? Is it what you wanted?"

She nodded, but her eyes wouldn't meet his and he thought maybe it was a stupid question. If she was a complete person now she was probably glad and sorry, not just one or the other.

She picked up the book he'd left lying on his bedside table, beside the half-drunk plastic glass of water and the two pills he hadn't yet taken. "Phillip Larkin," she said. "Poetry doesn't seem like your kind of thing."

"Kate brought it - it was Tomas's. She said he'd have wanted me to have it. I don't think he was losing any sleep over my inadequate literary education, but whatever."

She smiled. "Do you like them?"

"He's got one thing right. Your mum and dad definitely do fuck you up." There was a short silence, then he told her, "They've permanently reopened the Hermetic Division, put Kate in charge of it. She wants me to work for them once I'm out of here."

"Has she told them what..."

"What I am?" He grinned at her discomfort. "I doubt it. Did you tell the BND what
you
are?"

She shook her head. "No point."

"Exactly."

"And will you do it - join the Hermetic Division?"

He looked down, toying with the crisp white sheet. "You know, the man who had this room before me died here. He wasn't that old, about forty. His hair had all fallen out, so I guess he had cancer."

She frowned, not understanding.

"I saw him," he told her. "In the bathroom mirror yesterday. Maybe the Division's where I belong."

He glanced up idly when the door opened again, expecting a nurse, come to nag him about his tablets.

"Hello, Morgan," Belle said. "I told the receptionist I'm your goddaughter. I hope you don't mind."

He felt a wave of rage that half lifted him out of the bed, before a wave of exhaustion lowered him back down to it. "You've got a fucking nerve," he hissed. "Get out of here."

She smiled. She wasn't pretending to be just an innocent little girl any more, and it wasn't a pleasant expression. "Or what? You'll call the police?"

"We didn't know if you'd made it," Anya said, as angry as Morgan. "But Kate warned the Hermetic Division about you anyway."

Belle skipped forward, blonde hair swinging, and perched cross-legged on the end of Morgan's bed. "I know," she said. "They'll be here soon, I guess. And when they get here I'll tell them to call the CIA, and the CIA will tell them politely - but firmly - to let me go."

"Then we'll tell the CIA what you are," Anya said.

Belle laughed. "See no evil, hear no evil. They'll choose not to believe you. I'm far too valuable to them to lose."

"Then what are you doing here?" Morgan asked.

She pouted. "I wanted to see if you really were still alive. The Hermetic Division had a news black-out about you. And the Russians are claiming the whole thing was caused by a poison gas attack. Chechnyan terrorists." Her laugh was as light and tinkling as ever. "Fortunately they don't have much in the way of a free press to poke holes in the story. And they're not letting foreign reporters anywhere near St Petersburg."

"Well, thanks for filling me in," Morgan said. "It's been nice seeing you."

She hopped to the floor again, leaving the bed bouncing behind her. "You should have died back there, it would have been easier for everyone. Now you're just a loose cannon, a nuisance to your enemies and a danger to your friends."

"Bullshit," Anya said. "You lost. We won. It's over."

Belle stopped, small white hand on the door handle. "Is that what you think? The other side put all its eggs in one basket once, and looked what happened to him - nailed to a plank in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. We're not so reckless. Or did you really think, Morgan, that you were the only one?"

Her shadow followed behind her as she left the room, the dark outline of wings twitching above its shoulders.

Now read the first chapter of the next exciting novel in Rebecca Levene's
Infernal Game
series...

GHOST DANCE

PROLOGUE

When he looked in the mirror, George W Bush looked back. The mask was expressionless, blank - the way he felt inside.

He'd laid the guns out on his bed after his mom had left for work. There was the Beretta 391 semi-automatic shotgun which he'd stolen from Joshua Heligman's house, from the gun drawer his dad was supposed to keep locked but never did. Joshua had told him about that once, in home room, pimply face flushed with excitement. Joshua had claimed he used to steal the gun himself, take it out to the woods and use the rabbits for target practice.

The holster for the Beretta fit on his hip. He slung the Browning A-bolt across his back, where it bulged out the leather of his duster. The material creaked protestingly as he moved and released its distinctive smell. Musty - as if the curing hadn't quite halted its decay.

He'd stolen the rifle from a freshman whose name he couldn't remember. His parents had given it him for his fifteenth birthday, a present no one would forget.

The two little pea-shooters in his pockets had come from Christine Dunn's house. They didn't have much stopping power, but he was saving them for her. He wanted to imagine her parents' faces when the cops told them their stuck-up little bitch of a daughter had been shot with their own guns. He enjoyed picturing everyone's faces.

The phone rang, but he ignored it. That would be the school secretary, wanting to find out where he was. She'd know the answer soon enough.

The sun was bright, the sky flat and the air dead as he walked the half mile to school. Old Mrs Corry stared as he passed, probably trying to guess the face behind the mask, but she didn't say anything. She hadn't spoken to him anyway since the day she found her little kitten's guts smeared all over her microwave door. She'd known it was him - known, but not been able to prove it. That made him laugh as he passed her and he heard the clacking of her pumps speed to a half jog as she hurried away behind him.

There was no one at the school gates. He'd waited long enough to ensure that Mr Atkinson was back inside, no longer lurking to pounce on tardy students. No one would stop him. This was really going to happen.

He'd thought he might experience things differently today of all days, but he couldn't see this place through fresh eyes. He felt the same dull ache of hatred as the doors swung open onto the gloom inside.

He squinted, momentarily blind. But the squeak of rubber soles on parquet told him he wasn't alone, and when his eyes cleared he saw Mrs O'Grady striding towards him, red ringlets swaying.

He let her get very close before he pulled out the Beretta and he waited to see the fear in her eyes before he put a bullet between them. The silencer muffled the retort to a dull
thump
, but he still froze, momentarily stunned by what he'd done. The bullet hole in her forehead was surprisingly small. It looked like that mark - he couldn't remember the name - the red dot that some of the Indian students wore.

When she fell to the floor it was with a meaty thump that startled him out of his paralysis. And there was the blood he'd anticipated, spreading in a scarlet halo around her head.

The exit wound must be far larger than the entry and suddenly he wanted to see it. He used his foot to flip her head to the side and the blood leaked on to his shoe, blood and skull fragments and fatty brain matter. There was nothing left of the back of her head.

He expected to feel something. He'd been sure that this, at least, would penetrate the dense fog that softened everything he saw to the same white nothing. But it was... disappointing. Maybe he'd rehearsed it so many times in his mind, he'd already sucked all the marrow from the bones of the experience. Or maybe he hadn't hated Mrs O'Grady enough.

He flipped her back over and saw her face again, slack in death. Back again, and there was the mess and the gore. He could smell it too, along with the shit and piss that stained her dress. He left her like that, exit wound exposed, the truth that was the dead meat, not the lie that had been her face.