In the late afternoon, once they were all rested, even the glabren (who needed sleep, too, it turned out), the group set out once more. Layanna, leading the way, as Avery’s attention was more focused on keeping a weapon trained on Virine, brought them north through the city toward the temple of the Sisters of Jucina. Still, neither she nor Avery told the others where they were bound, knowing that that was one piece of information they should keep to themselves. Privately they had discussed how they were to return to the temple; it wouldn’t do to let Virine know where the rebels were located. Even if they decided to imprison or kill him, he could still get the word out to the Octunggen through his glabren. Either Layanna or Avery would have to go ahead, meet with the rebels, then take Virine and his glabren to some secondary location.
Unfortunately, their route took them perilously close to the fighting. The gunshots and bombs grew louder, and Avery could clearly smell the smoke now. If they tried to avoid the fighting by going the long way, it would take another night at the least to reach their destination, and meanwhile the Starfish were driving toward the coast. There was no time to be lost by playing it safe.
Night fell and the group pushed on, despite much loud swearing on Virine’s part and much inner swearing on Avery’s. He prayed that Janx and Hildra were making their way back to the temple in better fashion, hopefully with the soldiers that had taken the four to Coleel’s abandoned mansion in the first place. The fighting continued, but it came in spurts, with long lulls punctuated with the pops of guns, then voluminous and sustained gunfire. At one point the group was obliged to leave their tree bridge behind and find a different one, as the gap to the next roof was too far for it. Once this was done, they were quite low on bullets and wouldn’t be able to fell another one. With any luck, the sound of the gunfire it had taken to bring the new tree down had been attributed to the battle. The group briefly discussed leaving the rooftops and venturing the rest of the way along the sidewalks below, but even without the presence of the nearby fighting this was quickly deemed impossible in light of their strange, tense partnership. They stopped to rest twice more, during which times they ate, then moved on after a short break.
Finally, though, Virine had had enough. Sweating and breathing heavily, he said, “Fuck this shit. Look, I’ve had it. It’s been fun and all, but I’m heading the fuck outta here.”
Coleel thumbed the hammer back on the pistol he was pointing at Virine’s head. “Leave and die.”
Virine sneered. “You won’t shoot me. Do it and my glabren’ll drill you were you stand. Remember, I don’t need to be conscious or even alive for them to carry out my orders. I’ve already ordered them to kill you if you fire at me, and, believe me, they will.”
“They’ll try,” Layanna said. She was sounding much more confident. Avery wondered if she were able to bring her other-self over yet. She had been eating infected vegetation nonstop.
“Let’s not do this,” he said. “Let’s just continue on. We’re almost there.”
“Almost where?” Coleel said.
“You’ll find out when we get there,” Avery assured him. “Our deal still stands.”
Coleel spat. “This deal hasn’t gone the way you said it would.”
“We’re not the ones who brought him into it,” Layanna said, indicating Virine. “Anyway, it’s done now. You will honor the deal, won’t you?”
Coleel nodded raggedly. “You give me sanctuary, I tell you how to acquire the nectar.”
Virine’s eyes gleamed. “That almost might be worth sticking around for. Almost. No, I’m gone. Farewell, you motherless sons of leprous whores.” He turned about and marched away, his glabren, walking awkwardly backward so that their guns were still trained on Avery and Coleel, following after.
Virine stopped cold.
“Shit.”
Avery looked past the gangster to see several robed figures climbing onto the roof from the fire escape Virine had been making toward. It was too dark to see them very well, only as shadows against the blackness, but even from here Avery caught the odor of rot.
“The priests,” he said. “They’ve found us.”
“Bastards,” said Layanna. It was one of the few times he’d heard her swear.
Virine stumbled back, behind the wall of his glabren. Two of them spun about and trained their weapons on the advancing priests. The third alternated its aim between Avery and Coleel.
The priests, and there were about ten of them, flowed forward, not even seeming to touch the gravel of the rooftop, just drifting like ghosts between the strange trees and vegetation. Some animal shrieked in fright and fled them, the bushes shaking where it passed; Avery could hear it if not see it. Two of the moons were out now, and many stars, but the trees cloaked much of the roof in darkness. Still, he could see the line of priests, moving in single file through the vegetation, as they drew near.
Avery moved backward, Layanna at his side. Behind him was the wall around the edge of the roof, then a broad street below. Gunfire popped in the near distance, growing more frequent. The fighting had been in a lull, but it was returning in full force.
“The woman must come with us,” the priests said. As before, they all spoke in unison, but not with human voices. Their radio static hisses chilled Avery and made cold sweat pop out on his brow.
“Get away from us,” he said.
“She must retrieve the Key. The Sleeper must be woken.”
“I’m not retrieving anything for you, whatever you are,” Layanna said. She sounded as unnerved as Avery had ever heard her. Even she had no idea what these things were or what their agenda might represent.
It was as if her refusal were irrelevant. “You must come with us.”
“Fuck your mother up her cancerous ass,” Virine said, and there was satisfaction in his voice. As the last syllable fell, his two male glabren let loose with their weapons, firing directly into the first priest in the procession. The bullets punched through the man and out his back, showering dried flesh and gore, and struck the robed figure behind him, who seemed to be a woman. Neither the male priest nor the female one slowed but only continued forward through laden trees sheathed in hard carapaces adorned with subtly glowing moss and lichen.
The glabren continued firing, and at last the lead priest, his legs disintegrating under their hail, collapsed to the ground, where he still continued forward, dragging himself with his fingers. The woman, and the others behind her, stepped over him and closed on the glabren without pause. The woman, taking a long blast right in her chest, clapped her hand on one of the glabren’s shoulders.
Virine screamed. Surprised, Avery spun to see the gangster’s face screwed up in pain. Whatever the woman was doing to the glabren, he could feel it through the psychic link.
The glabren fell to the side, though whether that was Virine severing the link or the work of the priestess Avery didn’t know. Another priestess had clapped its hands onto the face of the other combatant glabren, and that glabren shuddered and twitched, its gun arm hanging slack.
The robed figures poured around them, making for Avery and the others.
“Come … with us …” they said. “You must … retrieve …”
“Bastards!” Virine said. He yanked a pistol from his jacket and pressed it to Coleel’s temple. “We’re getting out of here, Losgana. Drop your gun.”
Coleel obeyed. “There’s no way down.” His voice betrayed only a slight undercurrent of the fear Avery knew he must feel; Avery felt it if he didn’t.
Virine’s free hand pulled on the vines that grew over the side of the roof. “These look like they’ll bear our weight. Go! Now!”
Coleel hesitated.
“Go!”
The priests stalked forward. The final glabren and the others pulled back.
“You’re not taking him anywhere,” Layanna told Virine. “He’s ours.”
Avery pointed his gun back at the gangster. “Let him go.”
Virine lifted his lip, exposing his fang. “Fuck with me and die. Let me go and I’ll leave the last glabren to fight for you.” To Coleel: “Now go!”
There was no time to argue about it. Coleel reached out to grab a handful of vines—
Layanna’s other-self erupted outward, spilling alien light over the roof and knocking everyone back with the wind of its coming. The smell of salt and ammonia filled Avery’s nose even as Layanna’s human self lifted off the ground and seemed to hover, weightless, inside her amoebic sac, filled with white and pink and purple lights that seemed to glow from her various organelles. The sac’s perimeter was marked by her tapering pseudopods, each fringed in curling tendrils.
“What in all the milkless mothers … ?” said Virine. Instantly his last glabren, the female one, spun from facing the priests of the Restoration to facing Layanna. The glabren fired directly into Layanna’s sac, but she couldn’t penetrate it. Just the same, Layanna didn’t appear to appreciate being fired at, and before Avery could stop her (assuming he could) she reached out a tentacle and coiled it around the glabren, whose dance Avery had so reluctantly admired earlier and who was truly an innocent in all this, and she burst into blue fire and burnt to blackened cinders in seconds. The ash blew away as the priests closed in.
Coleel, though clearly awestruck, seized his chance. While Virine was rooted in shock, perhaps even sadness, the merchant grabbed his gun arm, balled a hand into a fist and smashed it into Virine’s face. Avery heard the crunch of bone and Virine fell to his knees. Coleel snatched the weapon free.
“Surrender,” the priests told Layanna, coming closer. “You must retrieve the—”
Layanna grabbed them all up in different tentacles. One she passed poison into. It squirmed, and its flesh boiled. Another she crushed into pulp so that its rotting innards trickled to the ground. Another she filled with alien fire, and it erupted in otherworldly flames.
“Wait!” Avery said. “Leave one alive!”
Too late. She had destroyed them all. At least she hadn’t eaten any of them. Avery crept forward and investigated the bodies, and what he saw shocked him—but, at the same time, knowing what he knew about the priests, didn’t completely surprise him: maggots squirmed among apparently decayed remains.
