Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe #2)(70)

“No!!!!!!” wailed Greyson.

She fell dead, without any of the drama of the fallen Caesar. No final words, no look of acceptance or defiance. Just there one moment, dead the next.

No, not dead, Greyson realized. Gleaned.

He ran to her. He tried to cradle her head, to say something to her that she could take with her to wherever it was the gleaned went, but it was too late.

More people arrived. Scythes in disguise? Guards? Greyson didn’t know. He felt himself a spectator now, watching as Constantine gave orders.

“Don’t let them start a fire,” he ordered. “The water supply to the sprinklers has been compromised.”

So Constantine had heard him! And he was not part of the conspiracy after all!

“Get these people out of here!” Constantine screamed—but the audience didn’t need an invitation—they were already climbing over one another for the exits.

Before Constantine could turn his attention back to him, Greyson gently let Purity go and bolted. He could not allow the grief and turmoil in his mind take hold. Not yet. Because he still had not completed his mission, and now the mission was all that he had. The acid was still a clear and present danger, and although there seemed to be scythes all around the theater now, taking down his coconspirators, it would be for nothing if those sprinklers went off.

He ran back down the narrow hallway where he had remembered seeing an old fire ax that had probably been there since the Age of Mortality. He smashed the glass case that held it, and pulled it from wall.

? ? ?

Scythe Curie could not hear Scythe Constantine’s warnings above the panic of the audience. No matter—she knew what had to be done—take out the attackers by any means necessary. With blade in hand, she was more than ready to join the battle. She could not deny there was something invigorating about ending the lives of those attempting to end her own. It was a visceral feeling she instinctively knew could be dangerous if allowed to take root.

When she turned toward the exit, she could see an unsavory in the theater lobby. He had a pistol and was shooting anyone who got in his way. In his other hand, he had some sort of torch, and was setting anything that would burn on fire. So that was their game! Trap them in the theater and burn them out. Somehow, she had expected better from these assailants. But perhaps they were nothing more than disgruntled unsavories after all.

She climbed on two chair backs, so she was above the escaping audience. Then she sheathed her dagger, and pulled out a tri-blade shuriken. She took a half second to judge her angle, and she threw it, full force. It spun over the heads of the crowd, out to the lobby, and into the fire-starter’s skull. He went down, dropping gun and torch.

Curie took a moment to revel in her triumph. Parts of the lobby were on fire, but it was nothing to worry about. In a moment or two, the smoke detectors would begin to blare, and the sprinklers would burst into action, dousing the flames before they could do much damage.

? ? ?

Citra recognized the boy she knew as Greyson Tolliver the instant she saw him. His hair, his clothes, and those baby horns at his temples might have fooled someone else, but his slim build and body language gave him away. And his eyes. An odd cross between a deer in headlights and a wolverine about to attack. The kid lived in a constant state of fight or flight.

As Constantine gave orders to his subordinates, Greyson ran off down a hallway. The blade that Citra had used to glean Aldrich was still in her hand. She would now need to use it on Tolliver—although in spite of his obvious guilt, she was conflicted, because as much as she wanted to end these attacks, she wanted to be able to look him in the eye on her own terms and hear the truth from him. What was his part in all of this? And why?

By the time she caught up with him, he was holding, of all things, a fire ax.

“Stand back, Anastasia!” he shouted.

Was he stupid enough to think he could fight her with that? She was a scythe, trained in all manner of bladecraft. She quickly calculated how to disarm him and render him deadish, and was barely a second short of doing so when he did something she didn’t expect.

He swung the ax at a pipe running along the wall.

Scythe Constantine and a BladeGuard arrived beside her just as the ax connected with the pipe. It ruptured in a single blow. The BladeGuard lunged for him, putting himself between Citra and the ruptured pipe, which now gushed water at him. But in moments, the water gave way to something else. The man went down, screaming, his flesh boiling. It was acid! Acid in the pipes? How was this possible?

It sprayed in Scythe Constantine’s face, and he wailed in pain. It splattered across Greyson’s shirt, dissolving it as well as some of the skin beneath. Then the pressure in the pipe dropped, and the spray of acid became a flow that ate away at the floor.

Greyson dropped the ax and turned, running off down the hallway. Citra didn’t chase him. Instead, she knelt down to help Scythe Constantine, who was clawing at his eyes—only he had no eyes anymore, for they had bubbled away into nothing.

Just then, alarms throughout the theater started to blare, and up above the fire, sprinklers began to impotently spin, spewing the room with nothing but air.

? ? ?

Greyson Tolliver. Slayd Bridger. He had no idea who he was or who he wanted to be anymore. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he had done it! He had saved them all!

The pain across his chest was unbearable—but only for a few moments. By the time he burst out of theater’s stage entrance into the alley, he felt his pain nanites kicking in to deaden his flaming nerves, and the strange tickle of his healing nanites struggling to cauterize the wounds. His head now swam from the medication spilling into his blood and he knew he’d lose consciousness soon. The damage was not enough to end him, or even make him deadish. Whatever happened now, he’d live . . . unless Constantine, or Curie or Anastasia, or any of the other scythes in that theater tonight decided that he deserved to be gleaned. He couldn’t take that chance, and so with his strength quickly waning, he hurled himself into an empty trash bin three blocks away, hoping they wouldn’t find him.