Nemesis: Book Five (23 page)

The crystallization continued, moving inch by inch across the strands—quicker than they could grow. No one spoke, all just watched as the ice moved outward.

And as death followed.

The white of the strands darkened, turning gray, and finally a lifeless ash. The ice moved and death came next.

Kenneth Marks walked forward, leaving the pack behind, and went to the edge of the white cake's expansion. Ice stood an inch from his foot, and beneath it, he saw a lifeless organism.

Kenneth Marks kicked the alien, breaking the ice and sending the gray strands out into the white world in front of him.

The world behind Kenneth Marks?

They cheered with the screams of the pardoned. Some even cried.

N
o screams ricocheted
through Morena's head as before.

That might have been a relief, actually. When her children screamed before, it was because they had a chance, they understood what was happening and begged for help. Those screams, the ones Morena hated so desperately before, were now replaced with silence. The silence of the dead. Not even any pain. Just complete and total nothingness where there had once been
something
. Her children.

And she felt it spreading. That nothingness.

She knew everywhere her children went, every last inch that they spread across, and now she felt that area retreating.
Fast
. Much too fast.

The northeast.

Morena went to the air, leaving behind everything. All of the world disappeared besides her need to get to that shrinking perimeter. To see what was happening to her children.

* * *

T
he world
around Junior was broken. He didn't know if this planet had seen such destruction before, but if it had, he knew it wouldn't recover this time.

Buildings no longer existed. Instead, wreckage piled ten and twenty feet high in what used to be streets. Metal bars jutted up across the landscape, twisted and black, some even melted into grotesque shapes resembling nothing of the original. Fire still burned, though not the roaring unstoppable force of a few hours before. Now it lived in pockets, eating away what was still left. Besides the crackling flames and the still settling wreckage, the city was silent.

No one besides Junior lived in this city any longer.

He hovered above one of the fires, letting the warmth beneath feed his own body.

He kept his eyes closed, waiting. He had done well so far, but this was taking too much time, and he wanted to be done with it. He understood other places existed on this planet, places that he would need to cross oceans to reach. He couldn't do it by himself though, not in a timeframe that would please Morena.

So now, he waited.

And when they came, arriving from the air and spreading out in a circle around him, he knew that speed would come now. The destruction he wrought on this world would increase at a rate humans couldn't comprehend.

Junior opened his eyes and saw hundreds of auras in front of him. He circled slowly, looking at all that had come to him, flying clear across this landmass, to an entirely new coast. Here, now.

His army.

He took to the air, and they all followed.

M
orena floated above death
.

She had seen death before, numerous times. Death caused by her and death caused by others. Beginnings always had endings, which was something she came to accept long ago—something all Vars must understand. Her own death would mean the passing of power, giving a generation unto the next ruler.

Death meant life, death meant things were born anew.

Except for this place. Morena looked down at a very different death, one she didn't accept, one that wouldn't bring life.

She saw her children's ashes. Both strands and Bynum's alike, mixed together by wind and weather as if no more than dust.

And that's what they are, Morena. It doesn't matter what was or could have been. They're no longer any of that. They're dead, and look further, Great Var, and you can see this stretching far into the distance. Indeed, you can't even see the end of this abomination.

The words mocked her with their truth. Beneath, she saw what the humans left behind, the markings from their machines on the asphalt roads. She saw how close they ventured to her children, how brazen they were about the murder they brought. They had stood mere feet away, as if her children weren't capable of wiping out their entire world—as if they weren't already doing it.

They're not. Not anymore.

The humans were brazen because they could be. She knew who did this, the one who created this gray ash she floated above—Kenneth Marks. And then he left, hiding after starting a plague on her species. She alone remained here with her dead children, holding the only vigil they would ever know.

She turned around, looking back across the land that she had considered conquered. No more. The gray death swept across this area like paint on canvas. Morena didn't know what it was that moved through her children, killing them so efficiently. She didn't even know if she could touch their remains, or if it would infect her as well. Unknowns everywhere she turned, yet everything still relied on her though she held no answers.

Morena slowly descended from the sky, landing on the road just outside of her dead children's reach. He—Kenneth Marks—had stood here, or near it; she felt certain. He stood here and watched the death he created spread through those she cared most about. And did he smile? Morena had seen it, that smile, witnessed it in the cage while in charge of Will. Yes, for sure, the
motherfucker
smiled as it started. He might still be smiling, wherever he went.

Morena dropped to one knee. If the death still lived in the ash, then all of this would be over momentarily. No more worries, no more struggle, just the end of her and Bynimian.

She reached forward and picked up the gray that had once been pure white. Her aura wrapped around it, searching as quickly as it could for danger.

It found nothing.

Just lifelessness.

She let the aura continue swirling, and watched as it swept out among the remaining dead—searching within them as well. Some clue. Some knowledge as to what happened and how she could stop it.

Nothing.

Morena closed her eyes and called her aura back. She wrapped her arms around her knee. Rage welled inside, rage that she had never known before—not during her attempted execution, not during any of Chilras' sermons. Rage against a universe that wouldn't let her live ... wouldn't let her children live.

She didn't scream, made no noise as she knelt alone on the asphalt. She let the rage rise like waves in a typhoon, slamming against whatever was in their way.

An hour passed, perhaps more, and then Morena rose to her feet.

The universe would bend.

The arc of fate would bend if that's what it took.

* * *

S
he wasn't a woman
, no more than Morena—yet the creature was clearly female.

Michael saw her though he didn't understand how that was possible. The landscape around him remained a bare desert, completely devoid of life, and he'd been in it for hours at this point, seeing nothing but the blackness of Bryan's mind.

There she stood, though. A mile away? Maybe more? Michael couldn't tell distance in here, and if it wasn't for the color wrapping around her, he probably wouldn't have seen her at all.

The white aura hung from her like Morena's green. This white, though, resembled the pure white of the ship that dropped from the sky in the field. It looked like the ship Morena traveled in. The white aura blew around the creature, revealing her body of the same nature—the same purity.

Am I dreaming?
Michael wondered. But
could
he dream, given the current state of his mind? He stood up from the sand, dusting himself off as he did.

The creature raised an arm, though she was too far away for him to understand the gesture. Was she waving? Beckoning? He didn't know what she wanted, but knew
he
didn't want to go to her. Despite the purity her white brought to mind, whatever she was, she
wasn't
human. That creature was of Morena's ilk and she shouldn't be in here. Not in Bryan's mind nor his. Neither had any contact with a creature like this, so why could he see her?

Could Bryan?

No, he wasn't here. The vastness of Bryan's mind amazed Michael, but his friend rarely came inside this place. Michael didn't ask why because he didn't need to: Bryan wouldn't find anything in here—just like Michael hadn't until now.

What do you want?
he said silently.
How are you even here?

The creature let her hand drop to her side, but didn't move in any other way.

Then, after a few seconds at least, she began crossing the desert sand—heading directly toward him.

* * *

I
f The Makers exist
, they created nothing greater than this.

The world before Junior stretched out in an endless array of flames and smoke.

He had done very little in this city, Los Angeles. No, his army, his brothers and sisters, they created this destruction. And it was good. He only watched, directed, and assessed.

Junior walked across the broken ground, moving lightly from jagged concrete to fractured pole, flying just a few inches above the devastation when necessary. Smoke brushed across his face, the smell of burning gasoline venturing with it.

Junior walked upwards, climbing the wrecked buildings, wanting to gain a higher vantage point to see what they had truly accomplished. The rocks and rubble tumbled around him as he climbed, his feet causing slight shifts in the way the new structures lay. He didn't stop though, didn't even pause, as the moment something crumbled, he would simply lift into the air or have his aura hold the structure together.

And finally he stood a hundred feet above the ground. He turned around, slowly, taking it all in, understanding just how much they had been able to do. How far they had pushed. How many lives they took. He saw Bynums still fighting, scattering the few remaining people that hadn't fled or died. Some looked at him and some at each other. Junior glanced up at the mountain backdrop to the city. When he first arrived here, those mountains had been an aside, something to look at once his eyes moved past the city.

Now, the mountains were the largest structures around for miles.

Now, Junior's eyes went to them first.

He brought himself back to the destruction, wanting to understand if he could have done anything differently—perhaps made the attack safer or more efficient. The ground glittered back up at him, glass twinkling in the dying sunlight.

The sun would rise again, though. Junior understood that. Tonight, it would fall, and tomorrow, the flames would be just a bit less and Bynimian's life just a bit stronger.

All over the west coast, this occurred.

Up and down the state humanity had called California. And where Junior started this? Texas existed now only in memory, as anything resembling the land that humans conquered had passed from existence. Perhaps on long stretches of highway, where no one ever lived, people would recognize their world. Even now, Junior felt confident whatever survivors lived in that state were trying to make it to those spared pieces of land. They would find somewhere to hide, which was fine at the moment. Junior's group, and the groups still being born, would find the rogue humans and end them.

He said nothing to those below him and they offered no words either. His brethren hungered for the next city. At this rate, the entire United States would lie under white strands or broken buildings within the week, and from there? Junior would take this army across the world.

Feed them, then
, Junior thought.
Give them the next city.

And he did.