Alia thrashed in the arms of the soldiers dragging her along the road, past a line of armored trucks and Humvees.
“Jason, stop this,” she pleaded. “You can’t let them die. Not Nim, not Theo. They’re no threat to you. You can let Diana go home. Please. Jason—” She didn’t even know what she was saying anymore; it was just a series of entreaties, one more desperate than the last. She knew she was crying. Her voice was raw. Her arms ached where Jason’s soldiers had hold of her. Their fingers felt unnaturally strong, like steel prongs.
When they reached the back of one of the trucks, a soldier passed Jason a canteen full of water. He drank deeply, but when he offered it to her, she slapped it from his hands. The soldiers yanked her arms back tighter? and she snarled at them, kicking out with her legs as they lifted her off the ground. Jason sighed.
“Alia!” he barked. He set his hands on her shoulders. “Alia,” he said more gently. “Stop. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
A sound that was half sob, half laugh ripped free of her throat. She stared at him. Her brother. Her protector. Her friend. His face so like hers that it was almost like looking into a mirror. “Jason,” she said quietly. “Please. I am begging you. Help them.”
He shook his head, and she saw true sorrow in his eyes. “I can’t, Al. A war is coming. People like Nim and Theo won’t survive it. This is a kindness.”
“Stop talking that way.”
“I’m sorry. This is how it has to be.”
The emotion that rose in her felt like something rupturing down her center, cracking her in two. Jason, who had read to her, who had let her cry herself to sleep curled into his side, who had walked to school with her every day for months because she’d been afraid to ride in a car after the accident. He couldn’t be doing this thing, this horrible thing.
“No, it doesn’t,” she said. Jason was the reasonable one, the steady one. She had to make him understand. “It doesn’t. We can undo this. We can make it right.”
“Alia, I know you don’t see it, but I know what’s right for both of us.” He glanced over his shoulder. “And I’m afraid it’s too late.”
Alia followed his gaze and retched, her mind rejecting the horror before her. Pinon, Jason had called her, the Drinker. She was emerging from the trees, being herded toward the open back of a Humvee. But she didn’t look as she had when his men had unleashed her by the river. Her body was bloated, the skin gray and distended; her swollen tail dragged on the ground behind her. Kill the others. Drain the Amazon.
Diana was dead. She was dead, and this thing was full of her blood.
“Have her disgorge and bring me the ampoules,” Jason commanded. “I want to start processing the data on the way to base.”
Two of the soldiers dragged Pinon into the back of the Humvee. Through its doors, she could see part of it had been converted to cages.
Another of Jason’s men said, “Will you be taking the helicopter to base, sir?”
Sir.
“No, I want the Seahawk keeping an eye on the surrounding territory and making sure we didn’t draw any unwanted attention. We’re safer on the ground, and we don’t have much time until the sun goes down. Set a fire once we’re a few miles out and make sure the bodies burn.”
How could he say these things? “You’re talking about burning our friends.”
“I’m doing what has to be done.”
“I will never forgive you, Jason. Never.”
Jason’s gaze was sad, but it didn’t falter. “You will, Alia. Because you’ll have no one else. You are the Warbringer, and when the sun sets, you will fulfill your destiny and pave the way for me to fulfill mine. One day, you’ll learn to forgive me. But if you don’t, I’ll find a way to live with that. It’s the price I’m willing to pay for a world transformed. That’s what heroes do.”
Now she did laugh, an ugly sound of serrated edges. “You were my hero. The wise one. The responsible one. But you’re the kind of guy Mom and Dad would have hated.”
“Dad would have understood.”
“This is really about him, isn’t it?” Alia said as the pieces shifted into place. “All that talk about generals and warfare, but this is about Dad. This is because you’re so desperate to be a Keralis instead of a Mayeux.”
“Be careful. Be cautious,” he sneered, mocking their mother’s warnings. “Is that how you want to live? Playing by their rules instead of making our own?”
“You are playing by their rules—choosing the strong over the weak, turning against the people who always had your back.”
“These are my people,” he said, spreading his hands wide. “Heroes. Winners.”
Alia shook her head. “You think you’re going to save the world and everyone’s going to finally thank you for it? You think all your new gun-toting friends are going to take your side when the battle is over? This isn’t going to change anything.”
“You don’t see it, Alia, but eventually you will.”
“Tell yourself what you want. You’re not a hero. You’re a little boy playing war.”
“That’s enough.”
“I’ll let you know when it’s enough,” she snapped.
His eyes narrowed. “You are a child, Alia. You’ve had the luxury of being a child because I kept the watch, because I made the hard choices. I can’t protect you forever.”
The pain inside her was a living thing, a wounded animal that strained at its leash.
“What’s going to happen to me, Jason? Is someone going to betray everything I believe in and murder my friends? Is that what you’re going to protect me from?”
“Stop being a brat.”
She spat in his face.
Jason recoiled. He wiped his face clean with the hem of his shirt. For a moment he was just a boy, her brother, in a dirty T-shirt and jeans. Then he spoke, and the illusion shattered.
“Get her in the car,” he said to two soldiers standing at attention nearby. “But be cautious. You aren’t immune to her power the way I am. I don’t want you fighting among yourselves. We’ll change drivers as we travel.”
The soldiers hauled her toward the backseat of one of the Humvees, but they paused when Jason said, “Alia, the world’s about to become a very ugly place. Everyone will need allies. You may want to think about how alone you are.”
He was scolding her, like a kid being sent to bed without supper. She loved her brother, maybe she even understood the hurt that drove him, but she would never forgive what he had done.
When she spoke again, she didn’t recognize her own voice. It was a low, thrumming thing, the rage within her burning like a crucible, making it something new.
“I’m a daughter of Nemesis,” she said, “the goddess of divine retribution. You may want to think about how well I can hold a grudge.”
“Cuff her,” said Jason as the soldiers dragged her away. “I don’t want her trying to hurt herself in some misguided attempt to save the world.”
Sister in battle, I am shield and blade to you, she repeated to herself as the soldiers tossed her into the back of the Humvee, as they used plastic zip ties to fasten her wrists to the metal console that divided the backseat. As I breathe, your enemies will know no sanctuary.
I’ll find a way, Diana, she swore. For you, for Theo, for Nim. While I live, your cause is mine.