“Do we have another mask in Stanislav’s size inside the backpack?” I ask urgently.
Eyes wide with horror, Dylan shakes her head.
“What about one for him?” I gesture at the necromancer.
“Maybe,” she says, helplessly glancing toward the robot.
I take a breath, trying not to panic. “Tell him to get his ‘helpers’ to bring Stanislav his mask and to let Felix go get one for him.”
Dylan and Nulen go back and forth, looking increasingly agitated. Finally, the necromancer nods, and the zombies reopen the tunnel that leads to the robot.
As Felix sprints for the backpack, the zombies pass a mask over their heads is if it were a stage diver at a rock concert.
Stanislav’s mask arrives first, luckily intact. He carefully puts it on, letting the necromancer see how he works the back straps.
Felix comes back and throws Nulen his mask.
The necromancer puts it on and speaks in a muffled voice.
“He asked about a cure,” Dylan says. “I told him we don’t have it yet but are working on it. He then stated that we’re lucky. He indeed has never heard of a Cognizant power that would cause blood tears, particularly at a distance, so he has to give us the benefit of the doubt. Ultimately, it’s up to the Parliament to decide if we’re telling the truth. He’ll take us to them.”
“Good,” Valerian says. “Let’s hope Maxwell survives his trip back, and that the scientists on Gomorrah work out how to make the cure posthaste.”
If we’re throwing around hope, mine would be please let us not get sick. No, make that pretty please, with a cherry on top. Valerian still has a good point, of course. Without a cure or some other counterbalance to bad news, the Parliament might well treat us as the proverbial messengers to shoot.
Nulen strides toward a big opening in the canyon, and the zombies part for him in the widest tunnel we’ve seen yet. He waves for us to follow.
“What are the chances Stanislav caught the virus?” I ask in a low voice as we walk after him.
“Depends on a lot of factors.” Dylan’s professorial tone is back. “We’re outside, and Stanislav and Nulen didn’t stay close together for long. Also, chorts have excellent immune systems—though not pre-vamp levels, of course. If I had to guess, I’d say infection is unlikely.”
“I’ll keep my distance from everyone, just in case,” Stanislav says and falls back.
Valerian looks at Dylan. “Did you ask Nulen how he might’ve gotten sick?”
Dylan smacks her forehead, then talks to Nulen for a few seconds.
“He doesn’t know,” she says when they finish. “He’d never heard of a virus like ‘ours’ before today.”
“Did he talk to anyone else who came through the gates?” Valerian asks.
Dylan checks.
“No,” she translates a moment later. “The reason he was there by the hub was to enforce the policy their Parliament put in place many years ago. No one from the Otherlands is allowed on Necronia.”
Not friendly, but understandable in light of how necromancers are treated on vampire-biased worlds like Earth and Gomorrah.
We don’t talk the rest of the way, and when we exit from the canyon, it’s into yet another canyon that’s big enough to fit a small city. Once we’re out of that canyon, a big herd of zombies spills out of there, following us.
Glancing to make sure Nulen isn’t looking, Felix turns back and sends a blast of magenta energy behind us.
A few seconds later, his robot suit crawls out of the canyon on six limbs.
Without turning, Nulen shouts something.
“Leave that there,” Dylan translates.
“Dude.” Ariel waves at the hundreds of corpses all around. “He can see through the eyes of his dead minions.”
With a sigh, Felix makes the robot sit on the ground by the smaller canyon’s entrance.
“You think it’ll be safe?” Ariel looks wistfully at the robot. “I want the gate sword back.”
Felix gives Nulen a suspicious once-over. “Depends on whether they have any high-end blowtorches on this world.”
Fabian places a hand on the small of Dylan’s back and loudly whispers, “Tell our necromancer friend to be careful of the self-destruct mechanism inside that machine. That should keep our stuff safe.”
“You want me to lie?” Dylan asks, her face flushed.
The werewolf pulls his hand away and tilts his head like a curious puppy. “You can’t lie?”
“Of course I can,” Dylan mumbles. “Just prefer not to.”
“Well, it’s not really a lie,” Itzel says. “If they were to apply a blowtorch in the wrong place, the suit could explode.”
Placated, Dylan delivers the message to Nulen, and he doesn’t respond with so much as a grunt, just keeps on heading toward a large contraption that resembles a wooden raft, only large enough to carry an army.
Odd. Is there a river I’m not seeing?
Reaching the “raft,” Nulen and two dozen of his helpers step onto it. Looking at us, he shouts a command that Dylan translates as “get on.”