Breath of Earth (30 page)

Wordlessly, Cy stood. He grabbed the tin from the floor and went on down the hallway.

“Hey,” said Lee, tapping Ingrid's shoulder. “Do me a favor. Don't die.”

She looked at him and remembered who he was, really. “The emperor's son. All this time. I made you scrub the floors.”

“You don't know what was funniest about that. Remember your mom's favorite brand of wax?”

It took her a second to recall, then she burst out laughing. “Imperial!” They giggled together.

Suddenly overcome with emotion, she flung her arms
around Lee, remembering at the last second not to squeeze him. “Everything is so strange now, but thank you. Thank you for saving Mr. Sakaguchi. Thank you for being . . . you.”

“Don't thank me yet.” His voice was muffled at her shoulder.

“He's still alive. He wouldn't be otherwise. The rest . . . we'll figure out.” What the Wui Seng Tong would do with Mr. Sakaguchi, how this earthquake might change everything, how to conduct hostage negotiations. What Mr. Sakaguchi and Mr. Roosevelt truly intended.

“We're locked down!” yelled Cy.

“Very well.” Fenris looked over his shoulder. “Been nice knowing you both. Don't die.”

“It's not on the agenda,” Ingrid said.

“Hey, Fenris, don't go up in a ball of flame either,” said Lee, heading off down the passage. “Especially when I'm mooring you!”

Ingrid leaned closer to Fenris. “If we don't meet you at the church—”

“Don't even say it.” He scowled and faced forward again. “Back at the warehouse, about Cy. I said we've moved around a lot, but that whole thing about him leaving behind a trail of broken hearts? I lied.” His shoulders shifted in discomfort. “Now get the hell off my ship. First voyage and my beauty's already dinged up because of you. Go.”

Cy stood over the hatch. “Lee, close that door behind you, if you will.” He did so. “Ingrid, we'll be about fifteen feet off the ground. I can duck and roll, but you two haven't trained for that. Do you think one of your bubbles would work here?”

“Yes.” No hesitation.

“Lee, hold on to her tight, no matter what happens.” Cy unfastened some latches on the floor, keeping the stairs secured flat, and came around to Ingrid's other side. “All of us sit down, right on the edge. I'll kick the door open and we'll drop.”

Unable to manage words, Ingrid nodded as she sat, her knees tucked against her chest. Lee wedged in beside her, a thin arm clinging to her bloodied waist. Cy barely fit in. His grip on her was as strong as always.

“Go!” yelled Fenris.

Cy kicked the floor, hard, and it gave way beneath them.
The stairs rattled against their restraints. Grass rippled within a sea of turbulent blue fog, and then Cy was over the edge and dragging them with him. Panic spiked in Ingrid's chest as gravity seized her. She drew out power, but instead of focusing it on her feet, she pushed it below her soles. She imagined it like a mattress, something to catch them, cradle them. The ground zoomed closer and then they struck—not the grass, but the invisible cushion just above.

The impact shuddered through her feet as though she'd made a mere five-foot jump. As her skirts flew up and her bottom impacted, she felt a jolt again along the length of her spine. The fog stroked her like lukewarm water. Cy grunted, while Lee managed a somewhat piglike squeal. Neither let go, though Lee's hold was tenuous on her silk obi as he bounced alongside her and stilled.

She let the buffer fall away. Soft, tall grass embraced them, and the heat welcomed her. It curled up her calves in sinuous tendrils, like a hot version of the grass. She'd used enough energy in their fall that the new flow didn't completely addle her brain—not yet, anyway. It wouldn't take much for her to be overcome by energy sickness again.

“That was almost fun,” Lee said, scrambling to stand. The grass came up past his knees.

“Good landing,” Cy said to Ingrid as they both stood. Without cloud cover, sunlight shone directly down on them for the first time that day. His clothes were crackled with blood and soot. The blotchy red of his face looked strange next to the raccoon rings around his eyes.

Ingrid stepped forward, the heat whispering against her
bare feet. Her terrible sense of dread increased. “I think they may be preparing to attack again. There's so much power here.”

Cy grimaced. “We're grounded for now, whatever happens. Lee—”

“Yes, yes. Good luck, be sure to tell Fenris that we might be swallowed up by another earthquake at any time, et cetera. I better see you two in a while. Don't make me come after you.”

Lee's worried gaze raked over Ingrid. She offered him a soothing smile, though with the blood on her hair and face, she probably looked like a ghul. He set off across the field.

“What are you feeling from the earth?” Cy asked as they walked. “Should I carry you?”

“No. It's not that bad, not right now.” She could see the stiffness in his movements now, the pain. It was a wonder he hadn't killed himself jumping out of the
Bug
back in San Francisco.

“I have a smidgen more kermanite. Let me know when you want it.”

She granted him a curt nod. They entered the strip of woods, and from here, they could see the rigid hull of the airship on the far side.

She stopped to press a hand to the leafy duff. The fog of heat ebbed and flowed, as if the earth itself breathed. Her own breaths fell into sync with it. She couldn't even comprehend the majesty of a creature that could create such an outpouring of power.

“It's the Hidden One,” she murmured. “The snake. It's really here. I can feel it
breathing
through the ground.”

“Will they—it—attack us?”

“I don't know. Maybe there's a reason so few people have
sighted the Hidden Ones and told the tale.” Heat increased with each step she took.

Despite the danger of this confrontation, she could imagine the delight on Mr. Sakaguchi's face when she told him that she'd seen a Hidden One in the flesh. She
would
tell him, too. God willing.

Voices rang out. Arguing, loud voices. The airship's engine had been shut off. Ingrid hunkered down low to pass beneath some branches. The miasma lapped against her with a slightly audible electric buzz. There was so much . . .
potential
to it, like a thoroughbred at the starting gate with its muscles bunched in anticipation of the bell. She joined Cy behind the bushes at the edge of the tree line.

“We have to bring him out! Completely out here!” That was Miss Rossi, her voice high and imperious.

“You're a fool. I poked him with a fork in Chinatown a few days ago, and the building almost fell in. You saw what the Hidden One's thrashing did to the city from thirty miles away just now. What do you think will happen with us standing
here
?”

Mr. Thornton stood by Miss Rossi about ten feet from the edge of the fissure, on the far side from Ingrid and Cy. His blue glow had intensified since she'd seen him from above. If he stood on the ground long he'd become ill as well.

“In
Chronicles of the Fantastics,
they say biggest cracks near fault zone mean nearest to head. These heads, they are what I want!”

“They may want you, too—for breakfast, you bloody ninny. Besides, I dosed him with enough chloroform to sedate a Clydesdale.”

The third man was silent. He stood tall and pale, a brown tweed suit a bit too loose on his lanky form. He still held the pistol and eyed the sky, clearly their bodyguard. The airship sat behind them. The entrance door was on the side of the craft, with the stairs swung down over the landing tires.

“The cows are alive!” snapped Miss Rossi.

“The cows are a quarter mile away, and more. Even cows have more sense than you.”

“Quite the affectionate relationship these two have,” Cy murmured.

“He wasn't like that with his wife, but he changed after she died. Became angrier.” A sense of sadness weighed on her. “He changed more than anyone realized.”

“You two might make the creature rise with the way you go on!” The bodyguard spoke with a clipped British accent, not unlike Mr. Thornton's. “That airship could come back.”

Mr. Thornton turned on him. “That airship was probably checking to see if we needed assistance, or wanted to look at the crevasse themselves. There was no call to shoot them and draw attention to us!”

While Mr. Thornton spoke, Miss Rossi whirled around with a flounce of her lush skirts and headed back inside the airship.

“Maybe, maybe not,” said the man. “I'm not about to take the risk. They see us, they die.”

Cy looked at Ingrid in warning, and she glared back. She wasn't turning back now.

“Except they didn't die, did they?” asked Mr. Thornton. “They flew away. Christ.”

“The craft moved strangely fast, even for a Sprite.”

Fenris would have preened at that.

“And if they had crashed here, we'd have a plume of smoke to attract everyone in Olema. I'm surrounded by bloody fools.”

The man stiffened at that, his gun shifting in his grip.

Miss Rossi reappeared on the stairs of the airship with her arm wrapped around the waist of a tall, frail figure. Long silver hair trailed past his shoulders and blended with a scraggly beard that reached to midchest. He wore a robe red with blood. Ingrid could see fresh patches against fabric that had already been fully saturated. Fainter stripes crossed him horizontally from his shoulders to the blue fog at his knees, as if straps had held him down.

Miss Rossi certainly didn't care about his injuries. She all but dragged the figure down the stairs, treating him like a spoiled girl would treat a doll.

“No!” yelled Mr. Thornton. “Don't let him—”

As soon as the bloodied man's legs made contact with the ground, the earth shuddered.

Caught off guard, the two arguing men were bowled over. Bright blue power boiled up from the fissure and lapped against Ingrid's legs. The bloodied man stood upright as he looked across the divide and straight at her. Azure spirals encased his body.

“Another geomancer.” The words were both a whisper and a scream. He pointed straight at her, as if he could see her hidden in the brush. A sharp crack shuddered through the air. Cy grabbed hold of Ingrid's shoulders and shoved down. She dropped. A succession of tree branches crunched to the earth, several larger than entire Christmas trees. Leaves rattled and
stilled. The man had lopped off a tree's canopy with a motion of his hand.

“You fool!” screamed Mr. Thornton. “The energy shocked him awake! He's feeding off it!”

“Come out!” called the man drenched in crimson. He paid no heed to Thornton. “You're powerful, too powerful. You glow like the sun. Who
are
you?” He sounded more curious than angry, even as he waved his hand again. More branches crashed to the ground just a few feet away. Loosened leaves whirled across her bare feet.

Cy's hand rested on her shoulder. “Dear God,” he whispered.

Ingrid kept staring at the man as she struggled to see through the blue sheen. His sunken eyes. The cheekbones. His dark skin, chalky, perhaps from loss of blood. The way he pulled and contained an abundance of energy from the earth—the way they saw each other, both aglow.

“Come out and say hello,” said the man, waving her forward.

His hooks of power latched on to her legs and shoulders, not with pain, but with immense pressure. She jerked into the open, her feet scraping on the grass. Grinding her teeth, she called on her own magic. Her heels dug into ground and created small furrows as she dragged to a stop. She felt the man's sharp intake of surprise more than she heard it.

“Hello, Papa,” she said.

Papa.

Captain Sutcliff and Ambassador Blum had been wrong. He was alive. He was here. Papa was more extraordinary than any Hidden One, more mythical. Ingrid could sense Cy coming after her, but she gently propelled him away without a backward glance. Energy rolled from the crevasse and wavered in the air. She breathed in power as she walked into the meadow.

Across the gap, Abram Carmichael stood with his arms dangling slack like a marionette. His head tilted to one side. How alike they looked at that moment, both of them slathered in blood and gore and rippled in blue.

“Ingrid?” The word was a whisper, but somehow it caught in the fog of power and rang in her ears.

“I was told you were gone. Killed in China.”

He grinned. It was an ugly thing of crackled blood and missing teeth. “I don't die easily.”

Papa's presence, saturated in blood, made everything clear.

The attacks on San Francisco had indeed been caused by him. He was the weapon. His pain had devastated the city, and in turn created a harvest.

No other geomancer could channel energy like Ingrid—no one except her papa. He had at least partially filled the stolen kermanite. That's why the rock had been brought to the Bay Area. It wasn't powering a weapon—not yet.

“Ingrid Carmichael?”
Mr. Thornton worked to his feet. The ground quivered. He looked at her in utter disbelief. “A geomancer?”

“Why? Why attack San Francisco?” she shouted at him. To her surprise, the words boomed as if shouted from a megaphone. “How could you kill everyone in the auxiliary? You walked away from the building. You left us there to die!”

Mr. Thornton and the others staggered backward and covered their ears—but not her father. He stood there with a grotesque grin, his teeth bared, dried blood cracked on his cheeks.

Mr. Thornton looked from Ingrid to her papa. Some twenty feet separated them, the ten-foot fissure in the middle. “You can't be a geomancer! You're a woman! I've known you since you were a child!”

Miss Rossi burst out laughing. “Men! Think they know so much.”

Mr. Thornton glared at Miss Rossi and then back at Ingrid. “Why destroy the city? Miss Carmichael, have you seen what the Unified Pacific has really done to China? No, of course not. Newspapers and theater reels don't show reality—it's all waving
flags and parades here. China is destroyed. Leveled. Ashes and debris for mile upon mile. Farmland is little better, with rivers dammed or contaminated, fields left to desiccation or rot. Britannia will do the same to India, and who will stop them? The Americans? No. Factories in Atlanta are churning out Durendals and dirigibles and painting Union Jacks on them now. Because if the Brits are fighting in India, they won't be fighting the Unified Pacific, and there's money to be made. Brilliant, eh?” Mr. Thornton's lips curled back in a snarl. “My beautiful India. They'd make it a wasteland.”

“But why attack San Francisco?” Tears stung her eyes.

“By necessity. This was our first strike, our test. The auxiliary . . . that had to be done first. The wardens would have lessened the impact too much.” His expression softened. Sweat made his skin shine as the blue energy thickened over him. “I hated having the others killed, Miss Carmichael. They were my friends, my colleagues. I knew Mr. Calhoun from the time we were boys.”

“Yet you killed him first,” Ingrid said with a nod. “Arsenic.”

“Yes. I had to.” Mr. Thornton stared at her, blinking, as though stunned to realize that she had added two plus two. “I thought his experience in India would bind him to our cause. He didn't agree.”

“Enough of this!” snarled the bodyguard. He aimed his gun at Ingrid.

A gun fired from just behind her. Blood gushed from the bodyguard's shoulder. Almost simultaneously, he lifted up ten feet in the air, then twenty feet, and hovered there for the space of a breath. Cy's gun certainly didn't cause that.

In a blur, the man slammed into the ground—not dropped, but flung. His body sloshed at the force of the impact, bloody pulp wrapped in tweed. Miss Rossi screamed, high and shrill. Mr. Thornton, awash in spatter, fell backward.

Papa smiled at Ingrid. It was the guileless smile of a child expecting approval. Ingrid's stomach roiled. The cattle earlier had been bad enough. But that was—had been—a man.

Cy stepped alongside her. The earth quivered. “Ingrid, we—”

“Get away from her.” Papa flicked a hand. Cy jerked away and landed in the bushes with a terrible crackle.

“Cy!” Ingrid yelled, then whirled to face Papa. “Don't hurt him! He's on our side.”

“You can't trust anyone. You're just a little girl. He'll hurt you. They all hurt you.” He glanced down at himself. “These people don't even know how to properly torture. The Unified Pacific—now, those people know their jobs. When they used me in China, I didn't even have bruises. Certainly not this
mess
.”

Papa waved a hand toward Miss Rossi. She screeched and spun in midair, striking the ground with an audible crack of breaking bones. She moaned and lay still. Ingrid looked to where Cy had landed. She couldn't see or hear him, and if she approached him, Papa might attack again. Her heart galloped. Heat siphoned through her skin. She wavered on her feet.

“Lucas Thornton.” Papa stood over the fallen man. “You always were a pompous bastard.”

“How can you pull in such power while in so much pain?” Mr. Thornton squealed out the words. “Anyone else would be comatose or dead.”

“Oh, Lucas. I'm worse than a cat.”

Papa glowed with an intensity that made Ingrid's eyes ache. He opened a hand, fingers splayed like spider legs, and he drew power up in tendrils of blue. He wove the strands, like a Reiki doctor at work, though now she could see the very ki of the earth. At his feet, Mr. Thornton curled up, his hands tucked against his body.

Ingrid had thought she could confront Mr. Thornton. She thought she could kill him. She looked at the mush of bone and flesh, and back to Mr. Thornton.

“Papa, no!” she said. “We need to know what he has planned, what they're going to do with the kermanite. He needs to be alive. The government—we can hand him over.” She thought of the worst possible fate. “Give him to Ambassador Blum. She can make him talk.”

“Ambassador Blum!” Papa snarled the name. “What do you know about that
thing
?”

That distraction was all Mr. Thornton needed. He lashed upward. The knife caught Papa in the thigh. Arterial blood gushed out in vivid red. Papa crumpled over Mr. Thornton, the two men in a blue knot splashed in blood. With a sharp pop and a gurgle, Mr. Thornton's head flung back, far too flexible for a human being.

Blue dissipated from his body, as if the energy escaped along with Mr. Thornton's soul.

Simultaneously, the earth groaned and shuddered. Ingrid stumbled to her knees. A terrible roar filled the air along with a choking wave of dust. Trees snapped. Ingrid, doubled over, coughed and tried to breathe as a tidal wave of power swept
over her. For about a half second, it felt good—deliriously, exquisitely good—and then the heat came, and the scorching fever. She didn't realize she lay facedown on the ground until she tasted grass on her tongue.

Something else roared, and it wasn't the earth.

Ingrid barely managed to raise her head. Through the brown-and-blue cloud rose an elongated shape the size of an autocar. Dust faded to show the ripple of brown scales, the pattern mottled along the spine, and black eyes the size of dinner plates. She
felt
its gaze on her. With a loud, air-shuddering hiss, the other head emerged. It was darker than its mate. The mouth parted and a tongue as long as Ingrid's body slithered out to taste the air.

She had no fondness for snakes, but this being was beautiful. Elegant. She could see why Hidden Ones had once been revered as gods. This felt like a god, with so much power, power that would kill her in steadily accelerating degrees.

“Ingrid.” Cy's voice was close to her ear, his hand on her shoulder. “Use your power to throw me over the chasm so I can get the airship.”

“What?” Her consciousness wavered.

“Throw me over the gap! Hurry!”

Airship. Escape. Survive. Yes.

Cy stood back. She forced herself up onto her knees. As she had seen Papa do, she drew up strands of blue and grabbed hold of Cy as with a fist. Feathery tendrils, like cirrus clouds, gripped him from shoulder to knee and hoisted him up. Unlike Papa, she didn't fling him. Power swirled through her like a whirlpool; there was no way she could vent it as it flowed in.
Cy was ten feet away, suspended in the air, but she could feel his entire body as if it fit in the hand, like a porcelain doll. His rapid heartbeat quivered beneath a mighty thumb. It would be so easy to
squeeze.

The fact that she even thought such a thing frightened her. What was this power doing to her? She didn't want to be like Papa. She couldn't be like him. She refused.

Cy's gaze on her conveyed absolute trust. Even his posture conveyed trust. He was scared, yes; he'd be stupid to feel otherwise. Taking a steadying breath, Ingrid lifted him high over the pit and the sinuous snake heads, and to the far side. The snakes showed no interest in him at all. Another quake jolted through her with a slice of power. She gasped. Cy fell. Blackness swarmed her vision, the fever searing her brain.

“No,” she whispered.
Don't let Cy be hurt. Don't let him be dead.

The snake heads roiled, hissing like vents of steam. She couldn't see them anymore, but she knew their movements, just as she sensed waves eddying around her ankles as if she stood on the beach with her eyes shut. A few minutes more and she'd drown. If she truly shared in Papa's resilience against death, the past day must have exhausted all nine lives.

But Cy might be alive. He might get to the airship, get them out of there. She couldn't give up.

“Papa, I . . .” She knew he could hear her, but what could she say? That she missed him? She hadn't; she had Mr. Sakaguchi, her ojisan. But she did wish she had known him, if for no other reason than so she could understand herself, and this power.

“I've been thinking these past few minutes, Ingrid, about the best thing to do. You should kill yourself.” Papa sounded so matter-of-fact. His voice echoed like a rattled, broken thing. “Your whole life will be spent running from them, or being tortured to the brink of death, again and again. They'll kill ten people through Reiki to revive you. If you jump into the crevasse, you'll die, and it will be fast.”

She knew the shock waves as he stood, tottering like a tree in a tornado. She couldn't see with her eyes, but through the thick magic, she sensed him as if he stood inches away. Blood boiled down his thigh. The sheer heat of him was like a furnace. Frothy red bubbles popped and sizzled as they struck the ground.

“I can still hear them scream at night, the people in Peking. When I sleep. When they let me sleep. I hear the walls crashing down. I hear them dying.” Papa sighed. “Nobuo Sakaguchi never wrote the truth about you, what you
really were
. Only that you looked like me. That you were bright.

“If I'd known, I would have come back to California. I would have smothered you in your sleep, back when you were small, innocent. You're too old to be innocent now. You're damned, same as me. The old stories always say gods and goddesses are so powerful. My mother always whispered of the old glory, how it used to be, but the truth is, Christianity is the closest to getting it right. When you're like us, every day is a Garden of Gethsemane. We can plead to God, to people, for mercy, but in the end we're still nailed to the cross.”

Ripples of power slapped Ingrid as he walked forward.

“I don't want to die. I want to live,” she yelled.

“Do we ever get what we want? Really?” He sounded so fatherly.

“That doesn't mean we stop trying. There has to be hope.”

“Ah, Ingrid. You've been around Nobuo too long.”

Tears stung her eyes at the thought of Mr. Sakaguchi. She ached for his reassuring presence. She pictured his smile of delight at the sight of the Hidden One. The twin heads wouldn't merely appeal to his academic side—no, he would love them the way a little boy loves his first puppy.

Through the cloud of magic, she sensed as the two massive maws opened wide. The snakes' forked tongues prodded the thick air. Liquid dripped from a fang as long as her arm. But for some reason, she wasn't frightened—not of them, in any case. Ingrid smiled at the snakes in Mr. Sakaguchi's stead, focusing on them as if she could transfer the impression of their might to him through sheer willpower.

The heads shifted. She jolted at the intensity of their four eyes. She couldn't truly see them, but she felt their focus like the heaviness of metal pipes. They stared at her, through her, as if they read her thoughts.

That was an idea.

Hello?
she thought at them.

Words didn't pop into her mind, but images. Impressions:
hot rock. sunny day. skin warmed.
Happy thoughts, the things that would delight a snake. Happiness directed at her, because she had somehow initiated contact. Their joy mirrored hers at the thought of Mr. Sakaguchi—of that special bond with someone.

How long had it been since they had spoken with anyone?
She pictured the sun and moon, of trees in all seasons.

In reply, intrusive images pressed on her consciousness. Cold earth, warmed; slickness of rain on skin, and sounds—voices, in a foreign tongue. Natives, unseen, their drums and rollicking rhythms shuddering through the earth to caress the growing Hidden One in its burrow of the San Andreas fault.

She thought at them again, this time picturing Cy. Maybe, with their keen awareness, the snakes could tell her if he was okay. She imagined his kiss, his smile, the way he carried her through the heat and pain. The feel of gratitude and security in the face of agony.