Page 40 of Love, Nemesis
Ana met the woman’s eyes, and their surprise mirrored one another’s for a flash. Evira’s eyes flinched, seemingly at her failed hypnosis. With an expression of unease, she scanned the crowd. Evira’s chin lifted in increments and then she searched the room, as if responding to some deeply seeded instinct. She took a step back and then another, feet completely silent. Her eyes zeroed in on smoke accumulating from the darkness to the left of the tent.
Ana could smell something burning.
The twang of a bowstring cut the silence. An arrow loosed from one of the prop crossbows in the darkness in the opposite direction. Evira dodged it, and Ana saw a growing shape behind her on the stage.
“Get back!” Ana shouted, leaping up onto the stage and shoving Evira over. The object, a hanging balance beam, loosed from one rope, slammed into Ana, and carried her off the stage. She crashed into the ground, rolling back to her feet in just enough time to see a figure leap from the darkness and tackle Evira. Evira’s back arched with some resistance, but the force of the action wrestled her into the boards of the stage.
The crowd clapped in dazed hypnosis as the figures rolled through the light on the stage and then off into the two hanging silks. Blood trailed through the light. Evira’s shrill screams sounded unnatural, her limbs fighting through the silks like an animal trapped in a bag.
Ana dove into the mix, tackling Evira’s assailant off the stage. He rolled with her, slamming her in the ribs and propelling them into metal props that clanged as they collapsed like a pyre over them. A sword nicked her shoulder, another slicing over a face she now recognized to be Lethe’s.
He recoiled from the metal, escaping with a red line bleeding down below his eye.
She fought through the metal swords and spears, breaking free as Jasper intercepted Lethe, who hopped back onto the stage. Lethe dodged him. Ana grabbed Jasper’s arm before he could pursue him.
“Wait!” Ana warned, searching the area in a panic. Fire had started to spread around the tent, a heavy cloud of smoke accumulating over them. An eerily familiar smell saturated her nostrils.
Ana showed Jasper her open palm coated in dark oil.
For the first time, she saw the extent of it smeared across Lethe’s shirt, dribbling over the stage, dripping from the silks. Evira fought through the silks Lethe had managed to wrap her in, her body doused in it.
Lethe removed his lighter, something like a porous blade inserted where the flame had once been, the skull opened up around it.
The blade ignited. Evira was yelling at him now, shouting in fluent Mystic. Her servants tried to free her but started to scatter at Lethe’s approach. The oil had made the silks stick. He was in no rush, as if observing the patient ritual of a ceremony.
“Mutated knife,” Ana said in alarm.
“Cherry Knife,” Jasper corrected in a rushed whisper. “Used by the Riders of Saint East to kill Strike.”
“Does he have a death wish?” Ana set a foot on the stage as she drew out her Atlas, fingers lingering on one of the light triggers.
“Looks like it,” Jasper said, backing away as Lethe drew closer to Evira. “I rolled the water tank near the stage. I’ll get Evira. Do what you do.” He rushed off.
Ana leapt onto the stage and jumped in front of Evira, grabbing Lethe’s wrist with the knife and sliding under him with a hard sweep of his legs, using the oil to her advantage. She flipped him away from the oil, activating her Atlas around his knife hand and trapping the flaming blade in time as she rolled with him over the oil. Lethe moved with her as if preparing to throw her. She posted a leg out and shot up and away from him as she jerked his knife out of the hand frozen in time. She deactivated her Atlasand tossed the knife into the water tank Jasper had pushed near the stage. It sank into the tank with a loud hiss before Jasper busted the glass with one of the loose prop swords, releasing the water through the tent.
Smoke and steam billowed across the stage in a blast. Ana jolted into motion as Lethe moved back toward Evira. She found herself crouched before Evira again, but still Lethe did not appear to be in any rush. For the first time, she noticed, he even appeared at ease.
His form emerged from the steam and smoke, and in its own way, time seemed to slow for Ana. With an acute awareness, she noticed the cut on his face, completely healed.
He’s not human.
The idea flipped a switch in her mind and any defensive strategy she had, reversed with so much violence that she found herself carried away with her own reflexes. She charged him, sweeping up a fallen rod that had rolled onto the stage from one of the props.
She swung it toward him, but Lethe grabbed it and yanked it forward. She gave it up like bait, her feet snapping against the floor as she slammed into him with her full force. She whipped him against the nearby catapult with an abrupt change in direction. He yanked her down with him, and she shouted as she shoved forward, using his momentum to roll them both back over the catapult. The lifted side gave with their weight and flipped down, rolling them down into piles of loose rope. Ana grabbed some of the rope, looping it around Lethe’s arm before they both flipped into the backstage area and onto a pile of cannonballs.
She sat up over him, yanking the rope that served like a pulley around Lethe’s arm, forcing his arm up toward a tent pole where the rest of the ropes waited, his shoulder arched against a loose cannonball he’d landed on.
“Hello again,” he said, a smirk on his face before he drew a knife with his free arm and bucked her forward, delivering her straight toward it.
Her Atlas activated over him. Ana sat back as she exhaled, weaving her hand around the knife before leveling her eyes with his.
She removed the knife from his hand, inspecting his irises for anomalies. She tossed the knife to Jasper, who pushed through the tent flap, catching it before she grabbed more rope outside of the trappings of her Atlas’s time and scooted it up over Lethe’s head.
She waited, listening to her watch.
Tick.
Tick.
