ΔV Pt. 13

"Mmmmmmmrrrrrrjesuschrist that was fucked up," Annie groaned out -- her whole body buzzing with her words, as she hadn't quite formed physical lips. She felt her body coalescing, like dew on the window of a house. Her fingers gently caressed along his chest. Her eyes half closed. And she knew that her flight was coming soon...

She floated in a haze of pleasure -- the worries of the future feeling comfortably distant. She wasn't sure how long that haze lasted.

She knew, instantly, when the haze ended.

Dale sat up, his hand clutching his chest. His teeth clenched and his eyes tightened shut as he hissed. "A...Argh!"

It wasn't pain. It wasn't even agony. It was a hurt so deep, so pervasive, so all consuming that to hear it in his voice nearly cut her to the quick. Dale's eyes half closed and he wheezed out. "My...phylactery."

"What?" Annie asked. She wished to feel a hammering heart, a thundering rush of adrenaline. All she felt was cold. Her hands cupped his cheeks and she racked her brain, trying to remember everything he had taught her about his phylactery. It was a gemstone that contained a backup of his soul, in case he was killed. It was something he had crafted, early on, when he had come to Stark. It hadn't been banished with him -- he had built it here. But it had also served as the central piece, the keystone, of his spell to summon the undead. They had secured it deep within headquarters. "What's wrong with the phylactery?"

But Dale wasn't able to do more than strain his teeth, in a rictus grin of pain. His eyes closed and he clutched at his chest fiercely enough that skin dimpled and furrowed under his fingernails. His lips opened and he screamed -- a wordless wail of agony.

Every nerve in Annie's body wanted to cling to him. To hold him. To make the pain stop. But she forced herself to think like a necromancer, trained by the finest necromancer seen on two worlds. She forced herself to ignore the way his shriek rose beyond what she could have imagined his throat could make -- to ignore the breaking note as his voice turned into a ragged, jagged squeal. This was an attack. But it could not be on his phylactery, it was too heavily guarded by warding spells and literal guards. Which meant, which only meant, that it had to be an attack with his phylactery.

"Heydrich!" Annie snarled. She snatched her phone from the table and barked a message into it: "Mord, get everyone to the phylactery chambers, with guns!"

And then she dove forward into the ground -- shooting through the floor and out of a ceiling. The moments between solid material was flashes of brightness and confused expressions from humans who were assisting with the administration and the undead who were working beside them. She emerged from the ceiling of the phylactery chamber. There were the two most precious things in Dale's life. Her body, preserved by magic and plastic wrappings, set on the floor, in a place of prominence. And there, on a pillar, ringed by the floating spells of protection, his phylactery. A ghost she didn't recognize -- one that was almost indistinct in physical form -- and Mordechai stood before the phylactery.

"Good, you're here!" Annie said, nodding. "Where did that fucker go?"

Mordechai looked at her, his eyes wide. He was holding in his left hand one of the modern pistols that they had equipped most of their patrol ghosts with. The nearly insubstantial ghost looked at her, then started to float back and away -- and Annie's brow furrowed as the door to the chamber burst open. Two of the guards, one of them a Union trooper from the Civil War, the other a Pomo tribesman, both holding modern weapons, stepped inside. Between them was Heydrich -- his face set.

"We got the alarm," he said.

Annie...wished she could feel the rush of air from her lungs.

The sinking of her gut.

The freezing of her heart.

Instead, she felt nothing but cold numbness as she looked from Heydrich to Mordechai. He lifted the pistol, his face set -- the barrel pressed against the phylactery.

"No!" Annie screamed, reaching out with her magic and her hand both. Magic and spirit were willing -- but technology had the edge in speed. In the time it took for her will to begin its working, the chemical charge in the caseless round had already exploded. Dust bust from the reciever of the pistol and it didn't even jerk in Mordechai's hand. The bullet, that hateful bullet, tore through the weaned shields and struck the phylactery, which exploded apart in a shower of iron fragments and glass. Red light throbbed in the air. Annie glared at Mordechai -- then leaped at him. Their bodies smashed together and she tackled him to the ground, her fingers growing to claws. She grabbed his throat and slammed him onto his back.

"What the fuck!?" she screeched, the whole room throbbing with her banshee resonances.

Mordechai, his pistol arm pinned above his head, snarled. "I died fighting people like him."

Annie jerked backwards. "W-We're not..."

"Being a gentle tyrant doesn't-"

A dart of motion out of the corner of Annie's eyes drew her gaze and cut Mordechai off -- and both of them froze as they saw Reinhard Heydrich, his hands outstretched, cupping the glowing red light that radiated from the ruin of the phylactery. Light began to ooze into his arms and his normally cold, distant face was split by an ecstatic grin. His fingertips glittered and his whole body quaked as he hissed. There was no gloating words, no speech. Just the pleasure of power -- burning through him. Annie snarled and flung herself to her feet -- grabbing for the same light. Her clawed fingers closed on it and she felt the great working that she and Dale had crafted, becoming wild and chaotic.

Heydrich lacked magical skill -- but he made up for it with a focused will that she had never felt before. It rivaled Dale's power, but it was unrestricted. Unrestrained. Ferocious. He hammered into her soul with his raw strength. She fought back with her own tricks, with her own refusal to let some Nazi fuck get the better of her. The red light between them grew brighter and brighter. First, like a lamp. Then, a flashbang grenade. Then the furious heat of the sun.

Mordechai was aiming at Heydrich.

The bullet didn't do damage -- but instincts older than his death jerked Hydrich backwards and the sudden loss of tension caused the power to snap. Red light slammed outwards in a circular wave of force. Annie's ears rang like a bell as she sprawled on her back, floating in the air. Her fingers crackled and she felt an awareness of thousands, millions of threads. They flowed into her mind and buzzed in the back of her head. Most of them were the faintest of murmurs. Quiet whispers. Decisions that required next to no thought, like cells in her stomach lining. It was a choir of the undead...and among that choir, there were the voices, the thoughts, of people who were thinking.

She heard Mordechai's thoughts. Faintly. But she heard them.

But she did not hear Heydrich.

She didn't hear nearly as many as she thought she should have. Half the undead in Europe weren't communicating with her. No one from China. Huge chunks of South America. Canada was riddled with blank spots.

She shook her head and started to sit up in the air, groaning. Reinhard Heydrich was doing the same, his feet planted on the ground. He snarled something in German. She caught the word toeten and her eyes widened. "No!" She shouted, then reached, groping for undead that she could control in the headquarters. It was thin on the ground, but she did not need words to command them. She knew the magic in a way that Heydrich did not. But as she wrangled, and as she thought, Heydrich turned and ran.

Mordechai gaped after her -- looking like he had no idea what exactly had happened.

Annie flung herself upwards. She shot through ceiling after ceiling -- and emerged into the hallway.

The air stank of blood and gunsmoke.

Sprawled on bed, his body withered and gray, his chest a ruin of red craters, was Dale.

His eyes looked, empty, into the air.

Annie did not move. She did not think. She did not feel. All she could see was the empty, staring nothingness in those eyes. A low, dull roaring was beginning to fill her head -- squealing in her ears. It grew louder and louder and louder. Then snapped. The two guards that she had left behind lowered their rifles, looks of faint satisfaction in their eyes. The satisfaction of completing an order. Of finishing their mission. They turned to face her and Annie reacted. Her hands closed around their throats and she lashed out with magic she had never used before in her life.

Dale had taught her.

But she had never dreamed...

The two ghosts screamed as their essence tore to shreds, ripping apart into nothingness. Their rifles clattered to the ground. Annie screamed out her order. "Bring me Heydrich!"

The entire headquarters buzzed.

But it was already too late. Him and the ghosts that he could control had made an instant beeline for the teleporter. By the time she arrived in LA after him, he was gone. And she felt the reports filtering in through her head, she could feel parts of the world going dark. Not because the life within was being wiped away, no. But because ghosts were destroying the grid of magical enhancements and communications that Dale and her had worked so laboriously hard to build. They had planned for...

For an eternity.

She had...

She was...

Annie floated in the large clearing in the center of the LA arcology, the place that served as the housing for the teleport portal. Citizens walking by were looking at her curiously -- unaware that the world had already been completely unseated had just been cast, skittering, into a chaotic new direction. One that Annie could not foresee. Not predict. She put her hands over her face. Her shoulders shook and her resolve cracked. Crumbled. The world fell off her shoulders and she sagged to the ground, sobbing.

Dale was gone.

Dale was dead.

She was alone.

She didn't know how long she sobbed. Her throat could not grow hoarse. She cried from her reserves of grief, not from any tear ducts. She didn't run dry. Instead, she simply sobbed and sobbed and sobbed -- her shoulders shaking, her whole body shuddering. She did not know if her wails were tinged with the magic of a banshee's wail. But she felt it, crawling along her throat -- a screaming sound that would shatter glass and make ears bleed.

But the ending came all at once -- with the warmth of a human touch.

Annie lowered her hands. She looked up -- and saw a stranger. An older African-American man, looking down at her with concern. "Is everything alright, miss?" he asked. "Annie, right? That's what they say on the vids..."

Annie sniffed -- wondering what, exactly, the composition of her snot was. She didn't want to know, but the question still floated in her head. She mumbled. "No," she said. "No, it's not okay." She closed her eyes.

"We'll get through it," the stranger said. "That's what you and that Dale fellow say, right?"

Annie gulped...and nodded. She floated upwards and the man shuddered as his hand passed through her shoulder, leaving his fingers tingling. She nodded to him again. "Thanks," she whispered. Then she turned -- and she did not stop flying until she was in the headquarters, passing through the teleport gate and the walls with the same eager speed. Once she was there, she found Mordechai Anielewicz. He was standing, mutely, in the same place she had left him -- in the phylactery chamber. She realized that she had never ordered him to go. Never ordered him to move. Never gave him the allowance to do so. As she floated before him, she felt a cold rage building inside of her. Her eyes met his warm, brown ones and the rage grew brighter and hotter and she lifted her hand, her clawed fingers twisting. The same spell she had used before rose inside of her, coming to her lips.

And in his eyes, she saw...

Resignation.

Not shock.

Not fear.

Not even mildest surprise.

She saw that he expected this.

And, as if she was a puppet with every string cut at the same time, Annie sagged. She croaked, her voice raspy despite her throat being a ghostly supposition rather than biological fact. "Tell me. Why. Why did you do it. Answer me honestly and freely."

She felt the order snap through their connection. Mordechai breathed in sharply. Then, softly. "I did not die for my people to be brought back and turned into your puppet. To enslave more people -- to enslave the whole wide world." He lifted his chin. "To let a Nazi direct your fucking business. You use the ghosts of my dead people as weapons -- they were tortured once, killed once, do you need to make their indignity into an eternity of slavery?" He clenched his teeth, then looked aside. "I...I cannot explain it any clearer than that..."

Annie sagged.

"It's not enough to...not be bad," she said, quietly. "You have to be good, too." She closed her eyes. Then she reached out with her hand and her mind both. She found the tied connection between her and Mordechai -- and broke it. It was shocking how easy it was. A tiny weight lifted from her shoulders and the ghost jerked backwards. His eyes widened as her hand lowered.

"W-What?" Mordechai whispered.

"You're right..." Annie's eyes brimmed. Her hands tightened. "And we have to stop Reinhardt. He's got half of the undead on his side -- and I have no idea where he's gone. But first..." She gulped, then clenched her fists. "Get Dale's body preserved and placed beside mine." She closed her eyes, then forced an optimism she didn't feel to her fore.

Mordechai continued to gape at her.

Annie grinned. It was the grin of a predator. Her eyes flashed as she opened them. "Once I know how," she said. "I'm bringing him back. And the first thing he's going to see is a world he won't need to save."

TO BE CONTINUED