Max Collins - After the Dark

“Explain,” White said.

The silver-haired leader gripped White’s arm and whispered in his ear. But White shook his head and yanked his arm away.

“ Explain! ”

Max quickly told White that she’d first encountered Bostock trying to get ransom aid from Lyman Cale.

“That makes sense,” White said, astonishingly self-composed, but not looking down at the little sheet-wrapped corpse. “Approaching Lyman Cale for the ransom... but how did you recognize Franklin as a Familiar?”

She explained tracking Ray down. “When we got to the house, we were too late, only by moments, but too late — two men had executed Ray and his aunt. One got away, but we stopped this one...”

She gestured to the dead Familiar in the snow.

She went on: “I recognized him as one of the security guards employed by Bostock.”

Mole stepped forward and flipped the corpse over, giving White a good look at the face of the Familiar.

Almost gently, she asked, “Recognize him?”

White nodded.

Max said, “He was assigned to Lyman Cale, wasn’t he?”

White nodded, his gaze on the secretary now.

“We’re enemies, White,” Max said. “But I wouldn’t have killed your boy. For one thing, I needed him, to get Logan back. For another, I’m not a sick son of a bitch, like Franklin, here.”

The secretary tried to break away from Alec, but the X5 grabbed him by the arm and shoved the gun back in his ribs.

“What do you have to say, Franklin?” White asked, in a tone that was all too reasonable.

Bostock said nothing.

“Is it true, Franklin? Did you kill my son? Why would you do such a thing... to a Brother?”

Ignoring White, Bostock turned toward the tall, silver-haired monklike figure. “Matthias! You know I would do anything to further the goals of the Conclave — anything! And White, here... he’s failed so many times. Open your eyes, Matthias! Look who I have delivered unto you! How many times has White failed, and who is it that brings her to you — the One!”

Disturbingly, White was smiling, his arms folded, the gun casual in his grasp. The robed figure — Matthias — listened to Bostock’s pleas impassively, his expression blankly unreadable.

Bostock was saying, “And when she’s gone, there will be nothing that can stop the Conclave’s directives from being carried out. I brought her to you — on this, the night of nights!”

Bostock’s voice echoed across the grounds.

“The Coming,” he was saying, “is but minutes away — we are close to final victory, total victory... because of me. I brought her to you! Not White. Not this... spawn of Sandeman, the father of all of our problems.”

Still, Matthias said nothing — his eyes bright, as he stared at Bostock. A hint of approval...? Max wondered.

Finally, the secretary said, “Yes, I had Ray White killed, another weak spawn of Sandeman — but it was part of my design, the plan to bring her to you... and here she stands. She is here. She is ours — yours . Kill her now, and the future is ours.”

White glanced, almost casually, at the silver-haired man. Their eyes met for a brief instant, and Matthias — almost imperceptibly — nodded.

White raised his pistol and shot Bostock in the head.

Bostock went straight back, flopping onto the snowy ground, sending up puffs of white; the black hole in his forehead was ringed with red, and he lay looking at the sky with wide, empty eyes, as if even in death he was anticipating the arrival of the comet.

White brought his pistol to bear on Max. “The fool was right about one thing, 452 — you do need to die.”

“The comet!” someone in the crowd shouted, and others blurted the same. They milled, wide eyes raised, arms and hands upraised, a sea of faces salted with the ritual markings, some paint, some inked flesh.

White’s eyes went to the sky, too, where a stream of sparks flew across, exploding in a shower of color.

The rocket provided the diversion Max needed — she would kiss that spudhead Dix the next time she saw him — and, as White realized the ruse of the fireworks and swung the gun back around, firing it at her, the shot sailed wide, Max diving toward the two Familiars holding Logan’s arms. She flung one off, kicked the other in the head, and held her hand out to Logan.

He took it.

More rockets streaked across the sky, and not all of the Familiars were wise yet, though several had taken time out from the display to attack Joshua, Alec, and Mole in a flurry of martial-arts moves, bizarrely awkward coming from the robed warriors, yet formidable. The snow-dusted grounds glowed yellow and orange under the momentary daylight.

“It’s fireworks, you fools!” White yelled.

And then all of the Familiars were on them.

The quartet of transgenics fought hard, but it was clear that the Familiars’ numbers were just too great. The only plus — other than White — was that the cultists did not seem to be armed; they had gathered at Big Sky to party, not fight.

Logan was slugging it out, too, but he was weak and no match for Familiars.

Then, echoing up through the woods, came battle cries.

Dix had brought more than just fireworks from home.

A hundred transgenics stormed out of the forest and joined in the fray — Dix and Luke and so many strange, familiar faces. A few brandished weapons, but mostly it was just a wave of sheer mutant force, sweeping onto the wintry landscape.

She stepped in and helped Logan, who was battling the two Familiars who’d held him captive before, and her kicks to the throat and groin and every other dirty tactic that could actually get through to a Familiar were enough to put the two down, at least long enough for her to grab Logan by the hand again and look him in the eyes and say, “ Run — Logan, go to the woods and wait!”

He shook his head and went for another of the Familiars. She loved him for wanting to stay and stand to fight at her side, but it was a decision as stupid as it was brave. Within seconds he was on his back on the ground, the Familiar looming over him, choking the life out of him.

She head-butted a tattooed face in front of her, the man’s nose exploding in a scarlet shower; he wobbled but did not fall, and it took an elbow in the throat to convince him to do so. She got behind the one strangling Logan, grabbed his head and gave it a good hard twist, snapping his neck. Before the dead weight could fall on him, Logan rolled out from under.

She knelt next to Logan, who was groggy, face red, from the near strangulation; a gunshot cracked the night and something hot erupted through her shoulder, knocking her back. She lay there, looking up at an enormous sky, seemingly filled with stars, but it was just Dix’s fireworks display continuing to go off. Turning her head to the right, she saw Logan reaching out to her — he was dazed, his eyes wide in horror — and their hands touched and she felt peaceful, happy, a quiet settling over, banishing the battlefield...

... but the sensation lasted only a moment, as White jumped on top of her, straddling her, pulling her up to him by her vest. In a way, he did her a favor, snapping her back to full consciousness and a world much bigger than just her and Logan; again she was cognizant of the sounds of fighting around her, the explosions in the sky... and Ames White’s tortured, demonic face inches from her own.

“Bostock may have killed Ray, 452,” he said, and he was smiling though there was pain in it — Familiar or not, he was a father who’d suffered the greatest loss — “but you caused it, didn’t you? Like every misfortune that’s been rained down on me in the last year and a half — you. ”

He raised the barrel of his pistol toward her face to deliver the kill shot.