Sunrise(Pact Arcanum 2) (24 page)

Nick looked away, sickened at the waste. Letting go of the crystal staff, he probed Ana’s body with his mind. The Sentinel was still alive but slowly asphyxiating as the capillaries in her lungs began to burst under hard vacuum. He quickly reviewed Rory’s memories, but couldn’t find jump coordinates for anywhere nearby, except the Citadel itself. Finding the information he needed, he stretched out his body and burst into motion. Nick flew above the lunar landscape at unimaginable speed, faster and faster, the tumbled rock plain beneath him blurring into a featureless gray smear.

Thirty seconds.
A mountain flashed by him on the left, barely registering as he extended his senses to the limit to avoid any obstacles.

Sixty seconds.
They crossed the terminator into night, and the temperature dropped like a stone. Nick wrapped a cocoon of warmth around them as his lungs burned with his held breath.

Ninety seconds.
Ahead of him, his mind touched the structure he was searching for, and he began to decelerate. Ten seconds later, he saw the telltale shimmer of an artificial invisibility shroud ahead. As he passed through the camouflage field, the space station appeared before him—a great spoked wheel with a flattened sphere in the center.

Nick flew directly toward the central sphere, coming to a stop just next to the airlock he had identified. He slammed his right hand down on the pad next to the door, and the airlock slid open. Dodging inside, he hit a similar pad next to the inner door. The outer door slid closed, followed by the faint hiss of the airlock pressurizing. Nick swung Anaba to the floor and gulped the oxygen-rich air. Then, he tore open the front of the Sentinel’s combat armor with his full strength. Placing both hands against the pale, bruised skin of Ana’s chest, he began the spell for major healing.

First, he drained the blood from the Sentinel’s lungs, repairing the capillary damage and oxygenating her blood. Next, he gently coaxed the neurons of her brain back from anoxic damage, careful to protect the sensitive neural tissue to prevent reperfusion injury as it was flooded with fresh blood. He checked her major organs, to see if he had missed anything, until he was satisfied he had repaired everything to the limits of his Gift and Luscian’s knowledge. Then he sat back on his heels and finally rested.

The poisonous blue color had faded from Ana’s skin, and Nick watched her for a moment to ensure she was breathing easily on her own. Carefully picking her up, he walked through the open inner door and into the stark white metal corridors of Hephaestus Station, following the map from Rory’s memories of a visit here more than three years ago. As he walked, the lights blinked on above him, the station’s AI recognizing his presence. Finally, he walked into a wide, open space beneath a clear dome—the observation deck at the center of the structure. Placing Ana on one of the soft couches, he then walked to the transparent wall of the dome and looked out at the bright half-disk of the Earth, hanging in the star field before him.

For almost an hour, he watched the planet on which he’d lived his entire life, sifting through the memories he had absorbed from Rory and Luscian.
Everything’s different now,
he thought.
How could the world have changed so radically in a single day? So many wonders, hidden in plain sight.
His thoughts turned caustic for a moment.
How could Rory have kept all this from me?

Then he heard a weak cough behind him and faced Ana as she struggled to sit up. He didn’t try to help, instead observing her reaction with his enhanced senses as she realized two things: first, that she was alive; and second, that she wasn’t alone.

Nick sighed as she attempted to raise her mystical defenses. “Ana, it’s okay. I’m Nick, again.”

“And I should believe that?” Anaba asked, her voice hoarse. She swung her legs to the floor and sat up on the couch, glaring at him.

“It doesn’t matter whether you believe it, Sentinel. But it’s true.”

Ana watched him through bloodshot eyes, then nodded once. “I couldn’t draw enough magic to bend a spoon right now anyway, let alone fight you.” She looked around. “Where are we?”

“Hephaestus Station. It’s lucky you left the environment controls running when you decommissioned it. I didn’t have jump coordinates for any of the orbital stations, so I had to fly. It was the only pressurized space I could get to in under two minutes, or you would have died.”

Anaba blinked owlishly. “You flew from the Citadel to Hephaestus Station in two minutes?”

“I had incentive. You were drowning in your own blood. I repaired all the major damage, but you should probably get checked out by an expert when you get home.”

Ana slumped in her seat. “Thank you, I suppose.” She glanced up sharply at the looming bulk of the moon that filled half the sky. “What happened to the Citadel?”

“It’s gone. You blew away the center of the city, and the rest was on fire and venting atmosphere.” Nick’s expression turned sad, remembering the instant of wonder at seeing the entire city for the first time, just before it was destroyed. “I’m sorry, Anaba. I know it was your baby. I don’t know how you did it.”

Ana lay back against the couch, lacing her fingers behind her head as she lifted her gaze to the majesty of the stars. “The people were evacuated. It was just buildings. Buildings can be rebuilt as long as my dream is alive.”

Nick tilted his head curiously. “What dream?”

Ana turned her head to face Nick with unconcealed hostility. “The hope that, one day, people like me won’t have to give up their lives and everything they love, just to protect the world … from people like you.”

Nick watched her silently for several seconds before speaking again. “House Luscian is dead, Ana. Soulkiller is dead. You won a great victory today. Doesn’t that count for something?”

She snorted and focused on the infinite sky. “And how many people will die someday because I wasn’t strong enough to kill the thing that looked out at me when you first opened your eyes?”

Nick looked away. “I wasn’t ready when I took the Crown from Luscian. I didn’t understand what it was or how hard they could fight. It wasn’t until it was clear that I was going to die along with them that I was able to muster the will to suppress them. Now I know. They won’t have the chance to break free again unless I open the door to their cage by using the sword, and I would never do that. I swear that will never happen.”

“Good intentions don’t lead to Heaven, Nicholas.” Ana chuckled. “You’re a vampire lord. How long do you think you’ll be able to keep that level of power leashed before you finally decide to compromise your principles? The only question is whether it will be sooner or later, and how many people will die in the process.”

“Are you always this cynical?” Nick asked, stung by her dismissal.

“I’m a realist,” she answered. “How did you break through my circles without killing me? Call it professional curiosity.”

Nick flushed. “I dispersed the last circle from the outside after I got out. That’s why it didn’t break when the Citadel fell.”

Ana raised an eyebrow as she dropped her gaze to regard him curiously. “How did you escape without breaking the seal?”

Nick didn’t meet her eyes. He scratched nervously at the brown cross on his shirt, the blood having dried during his stint in hard vacuum. “I cast a Faith Ward. The circle was black magic, so it got out of the way as I walked through.”

Ana frowned at the cross on Nick’s shirt. “A Faith Ward is holy magic from beyond the Gates. Living beings are too weak to channel that much power through their own bodies without being destroyed, so the spell requires a sacramental medium to act as a focus, like consecrated silver. Ink wouldn’t have worked, even if you had a marker in the circle with you. What did you use for a containment matrix?”

Nick swallowed nervously. “Blood.”

Ana rose shakily to her feet, her fists clenched in fury. “You created a Faith Ward using a cross made of
vampire blood
?” she snarled. “Do you understand how deeply sacrilegious that is?”

Nick shrugged. “It’s Sentinel blood. From the circles.”

Ana blinked, taken aback. “
My
blood?” she screamed, shaking with anger. “You brought me into it?”

“It’s not fucking up to you, Ana. The Light accepted the offering, so spare me your self-righteousness.” Nick growled at her, his fangs showing. “Besides, if a Sentinel can go far enough into the Black to cast blooded circles, then a vampire can certainly use them to reach for the White.”

Anaba collapsed back onto the couch, slumping against the backrest. “Touché.”

Nick scratched at his head, ignoring the dried blood beneath his fingernails. “Look, Ana, we might as well make the best of it. This station was decommissioned. Is there still food and water here?”

“Yeah. The station was only temporarily shut down; it’s still supplied with non-perishables. The reactor cores will be stable for at least another century or two, so there was no reason to take the environment offline.” She shrugged. “It didn’t cost us anything to keep it running, so we just didn’t staff it, in case we needed it again. We took Hephaestus out of service only because we didn’t need a specialized facility to manufacture elysium alloy once the Citadel was complete, and there wasn’t such a need for ultra-high-strength materials.”

“You still need elysium for jumpship hulls, don’t you?”

Ana raised an eyebrow. “You know about jumpships, too?”

Nick tapped the side of his head. “I picked up a lot from Rory’s memories today.” He smiled. “Did Take really come up with the idea for Recursion Drive?”

“Sort of. He read about the idea of using repetitive ultra-short-range teleportation to create inertialess spaceflight in a comic book. When he asked me whether it could work for real, I looked into it on a lark. It was actually pretty simple to set up and eventually became the basis for our entire space program. Well, except for conventional Gravity Drive, which came later, for short range flight and applications that required moving objects rather than teleporting them.” She looked beyond Nick at the stars. “Most of the jumpships we make now are built at one of the more advanced manufacturing facilities in the Outer Colonies.”

“How long will it take to get a jumpship over here?”

Anaba considered. “Well, with the Citadel gone, the FTL communications grid will be down to emergency capacity only, using the uplinks in Anchorpoint and Icehaven. Once I get the station’s communications array online, we can send a message to the other orbital habitats requesting a rescue ship to pick us up. It shouldn’t take more than an hour or two.”

“Good.” Nick turned his gaze back to the Earth again. “Ana, can I ask you a personal question?”

“If you want, as long as we’re stuck here.” She snorted. “I might not answer, though.”

“Why do you hate Rory so much?”

Ana froze in her seat. “I don’t hate him,” she whispered.

“He thinks you do.”

Ana leaned back in her seat and sighed. “I don’t hate Rory. I hate his choices and the things he’s done.”

“Because he killed you.”

Ana slid the upper portion of her torn combat armor off her shoulders and onto the floor. “Not because of that. I know the Red Wind was playing with his head, and his reason was shot, even if it’s hard to accept that sometimes.”

“Why, then?”

Ana stood and walked to stand next to him, following his gaze. “He brought us back. He shouldn’t have done that.”

Nick looked sideways at her. “You blame him for saving you?”

Ana faced resolutely ahead. “The world is made of choices, Nick. That’s what free will is all about. He killed us. He should have lived with that and moved on. Instead, he made himself a slave to the angels to carry out an impossible task. He will never be free until the end of time. Now I am forced to go through life again, living with that, knowing I’m part of the reason he trapped himself in the darkness forever. That’s why I hate being around him. It reminds me too much of what he did because of me.”

Nick turned his head again to face the Earth. “You said saving you was part of the reason. Did you ever ask him the rest of it?”

Ana shook her head. “No. What does it matter? He had his motives, and he never wanted to share them with us, so why should I ask? He made his choice, and I accept it.”

Nick sighed. “Anaba, you’re supposed to be the smart one. If Rory wins and converts or destroys all the Children of Darkness, what will happen to the Sentinel Gift without the Red Wind to kindle it?”

Ana turned ashen as she snapped her head around to stare at him. “It will die,” she whispered.

“Do you know what Rory said to the angel just before he took the deal? ‘Swear that if I do this, if I win, that none of us will be forced to fight in your war again. That our descendants will not inherit the duty to die protecting the world, as we did. The legacy of the Gift will end, forever.’ He made the Pact Arcanum in the hope that, one day, people like you won’t have to give up their lives and everything they love just to protect the world from people like me. Sound familiar?”

Nick watched her with his vampire senses fully open. Ana trembled slightly. “It’s the same dream as yours. But he knew from the beginning that he wouldn’t live to see it. Even if he wins, he’ll be the last Red Wind vampire in the world. That future won’t be safe until he’s dead, and he accepted that. That’s what
he
had to live with when he trapped himself in the darkness forever. So why don’t you cut him a little slack?”

Ana swallowed. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

Nick looked at the unblinking stars. “Because he thought you hated him, and he didn’t want to make it sound like he was making excuses. He still thinks that way. Maybe if you make an effort to repair your relationship, he might finally tell you the truth.”

Ana took a deep breath. “Why are you telling me this, Nick?”

“Because he’s my friend—even though he had to lie to me left and right to keep me from finding out about your world—and because you still mean a lot to him. If I can help him out before I leave, I want to do what I can.”