Monster Planet(57)

'We do what we have to do to keep going,' Marisol told her. 'You know that. So don't you dare judge me.'

'Killing me won't solve your problem,' Sarah demanded.

'No. But it will keep my people from rioting and making things a whole lot worse. You have a better idea?'

Sarah swallowed all the spit in her mouth and turned her head to look at the towers of Manhattan. They looked like the kind of impregnable fortresses you only read about in fairy tales. 'Maybe,' she said. 'Maybe I go over there, and find out what's doing this. And maybe I can make it stop.'

Marisol snorted. 'Yeah, and maybe you can grow dragonfly wings and fly back under your own power. Come on.'

'It's worth a shot,' Sarah said. Truthfully she didn't believe it. She just thought it would be a way to escape. 'Look'you can throw me to the wolves and maybe that will give you time to evacuate. Or I can go over there and maybe I can actually achieve something.'

Marisol stared at her, twin beams of judgment emerging from her eyes to pin Sarah to the spot, probing her, studying her. Sarah squirmed like a laboratory specimen under hot lights. Then something weird happened. Jackie coughed, a sputtering sound like a stalled engine. Marisol blinked. She seemed to lose about an inch of height and the tight muscles of her shoulders and arms drooped. 'Okay,' she said.

Sarah shook her head, not comprehending. 'Seriously?' She thought maybe Gary was taking over Marisol's body, or maybe the Tsarevich could control the Mayor's body remotely but no, there was no dark energy anywhere nearby. Sarah would have known if there were magic at work. Marisol, she realized, was just bereft of other options. She needed help that badly.

'Yeah. I'll give you a boat and whatever weapons you want. You go over there alone. You do what you can, then you come back. I know you won't try to run away.'

Sarah said, 'Of course,' meaning, 'of course I'll run, as fast as my little legs can carry me.' She didn't say that.

'I know it,' Marisol told her, 'because if you do, you'll never see your father again. I'll pull him out of that tower and I'll make him my example.'

Hope fell inside Sarah like cold liquid draining to her toes.

She had just talked herself into a nasty little corner.





Monster Planet





Chapter Eleven


She didn't sleep anymore. She would never sleep again. As the night came on Ayaan's eyes began to feel sore and dry. She rubbed and rubbed at them until her skin started coming away. After that she forced herself not to rub.

One by one the cultists headed off to their beds, hammocks, old mattresses with the dust and insects beaten out of them. They drained away into the dark storefronts and broken-down hotels, stretching their arms, yawning.

The moon came up and found Ayaan still waiting, waiting for sleep to come, and knowing it never would. Something else found her, too. The lipless lich. Semyon Iurevich, who saw all, who knew all. He wrapped his bathrobe tight around striped pajamas a size too big for his gaunt frame. 'Come,' he said, and he lead her away from the bonfire in the middle of Ocean Avenue. Away from the light and the few zealots who stood an almost silent guard duty.

She watched the lich's back as he moved away from her, the pale stretch of robe across his shoulders like a beacon drawing her into the grid of darkened streets. She watched his feet shamble forward, ungainly but unflagging, she saw the complicated engineering of his shriveled ankles, all the knobs and spars and bits of bone, and the stretched sinews over them. When he turned to look back at her his face was a death mask, leather pulled far too tight over unyielding bone. His eyes were so large in their sockets.

She was vaguely aware that she was paying far too much attention to the lich. She thought perhaps that she was subconsciously horrified by him not because of his dire appearance but because she knew she would be like him soon enough, that her own body would dry up, slim down, exude horrible chemicals. Rot.

Then again it was possible he was merely hypnotizing her. She didn't know the extent of his psychic powers. She only knew that he could see inside of her heart. And that he had lied to his master on her behalf.

'Yes, is right,' he told her. They had stopped moving. They were inside a tiny room with stripes of light slanting in through wooden jalousies. She didn't remember entering the building, which was probably a bad sign. She stretched out her hands to try to get a literal grasp on where she might be but she clutched only cobwebs. 'I lied, for you. You understand? Is lie I told, that you are trustable. Harmless. Bah!'