MirrorWorld

He shrugs. “Perhaps closer to the Enola Gay, the B-29 that carried the bomb. Either way, the choices you make will have an impact on a war that most people aren’t aware of but are feeling all around them. There is no insulation from what’s coming. We will prevail and live or lose and die. That is the nature of war, and your actions will have very real and long-reaching consequences. I need you — we all need you — to take this seriously.”

I look to Allenby, knowing she’ll give it to me straight. “Is he serious?”

She looks from me to Lyons and then back to me. “There is no doubt that the Dread are attacking the human race. What I would like to know is why. I would prefer a peaceful resolution, but that doesn’t seem likely, and if they continue on track, with no resistance from us, it’s going to be an easy victory.”

“That’s enough for now. Time is short.” Lyons says. “If you want answers, they will be given when the bull is dead, and only if you decide to grace us with your presence.”

“And if I decide to leave?”

“You can watch the world burn on your own.”

I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but if these Dread are behind the turmoil around the world, they need to be stopped. Though I don’t fear them myself, I’ve seen the effect they have on people. If they can turn three trained soldiers against each other, they can turn a crowd into a mob or a protest into a riot. Maybe even a misunderstanding into a war.

I stand from the chair. “I’ll kill it.”

“You’ll try,” Lyons says.

“And when I do,” I say. “No more secrets?”

Arms open wide, he says, “I will be an open book.” He turns to Katzman. “See about the windows. I want every crack, ding, and scratch repaired within the hour. We cannot afford another incursion.” Then to Allenby, “Get your nephew whatever he wants. I expect him out of our doors in five minutes.”

“He’s sustained some injuries,” Allenby says.

Before I can wave off her concern, Lyons says, “Pain focuses the mind. He can heal if he comes back.”

“When,” I say. “Not if.” But as I turn to leave, a strange sensation washes over me. It’s not fear. It’s a lack of confidence. For the first time in my short memory, I’ve just talked straight out of my ass, and everyone in the room knows it.

23

Four minutes later, after a stop at a first-floor armory, I’m fitted with black body armor; have a new, sound-suppressed P229 handgun holstered on my hip — for all the good the last one did; and what I’ve begun to think of as my machete over my back. The new addition to my jet-black arsenal is a compound bow and twelve arrows with wide hunting tips. A bullet will punch a hole in a target, but these arrows will carve two one-inch-long slices deeper into the target’s flesh than a bullet can puncture. Unlike a bullet, which fragments on impact, the arrow will slide straight through. And it will barely make a sound. Even without a kill shot, a target will quickly bleed out. Last is the up-close and personal weapon of last resort, or perhaps first resort. Nothing kills as efficiently or quietly as a garrote wire. The thin oscillium cable has a handle at each end and, once wrapped around a target’s neck, can kill quickly and quietly. No one has ever tried using the device on a Dread, but it’s an assassin’s best friend when subtlety is called for. Or, at least, I think it is. I have no memory of ever using one, only that I know how. I loop the wire around my hand and pocket the weapon.

The bow and arrow clip onto the back of my ride, a jet-black ATV, the perfect vehicle for navigating the woods of New Hampshire.

“I’d offer you the helmet,” Allenby says, holding a matching black helmet in her hands. “But we both know you won’t take it.”

When my hand grips the key already in the ignition, Allenby puts her hand on my arm.

“Last advice from my aunt?” I ask.

A glimmer of sadness makes a brief appearance but is chased away by hardened eyes. “From your doctor. The … changes your body is undergoing. It will let you do more than see them. Much more. If that happens, the pain you felt before, when you were just seeing them—”

“Got it,” I say. “It’s going to hurt like a bitch.”

She smiles. “Like the mother of all bitches.”

“It’s rewriting my DNA or something like that, right?”

“Something like that, yeah, targeting your senses.”

I nod slowly. “I’ve heard them.”

“Good,” she says. “Just remember that you’re in control. You can turn it on. You can turn it off. Just like they can.”

There’s a hint at something in what she’s told me. Something I don’t like. But I can’t figure it out, don’t really have time, and there is a more pressing question on my mind. “You said the Dread world was like another frequency. Separate from ours.”

She nods.

“So how was that creature, that bull, able to be intangible to me yet in contact with the stairs and walls?”