Read Samael's Fire for Free Online

bathroom door, his stubble half gone and her razor in his hand.
    “My necklace.” How could she have forgotten? It was like forgetting Sky. She wrapped the black satin cord around her neck and kissed the silver half heart. “My sister wore the other half.”
    “Sisters are good.” He popped into the bathroom and back out again with a clean face. “I love all my sisters. Well, that’s not true.”
    The Emperor had a hundred concubines. An exaggeration, but Jake surely had more sisters than he knew about. Char had only the one, living or not.
    Watching Jake dress, she remembered something from the Blue Marble. “Jake, tell me about the raptors.”
    “It’s true.” He pulled on his boots. “I’ve seen eagles and peregrines myself. Rani saw ospreys, and I’ve heard about vultures.”
    “How is it…”
    “Possible? How is any of this possible? It’s all part of the big contamination, I guess. Every species is vulnerable to mutation. The bees dying off. Hairless humans with metallic eyes. Birds transformed into giant monsters.”
    Bing-bong.   A gentle alert chime rang with a message on the room’s compad. It wasn’t Mike.   Special Bulletin. Please access Channel One .
    Jake continued. “When I dropped Rani at the V, a guy in the bar swore he saw someone disappear right in front of him. I mean, teleportation is one of the ludicrous ones, but some of the rumors are going to be based in fact.”
    “How big was the raptor you saw?”
    “They fly in pairs. The bald eagles were the largest. I’d say their wing span was close to thirty feet, tip to tip.”
    “How is this kept secret?”
    “No reporter will touch the story. They’d lose access to everything else. But it’s not so secret. There’s plenty of chatter on the grid.”
    “Whack chatter.”
    “Exactly how the Emperor wants you to think of it.” He certainly had no love for the Emperor.
    “What about on Vacation Station? The observation deck.”
    “It seems their telescopes have been broken for some time.”
    Shibad . Raptors had mutated, truly. Even so, the stories had to be embellished. She’d heard the birds fed humans to their chicks, ripped the intestines from people’s bellies while they were still alive.
    Bing-bong.   The chime rang again, and this time the message on the compad flashed continuously:   Special Bulletin. Please access Channel One .
    The monitor in the sitting room covered three quarters of one wall. The picture came up split into four sections, each showing a mushroom cloud and the name of a city: Montreal, Houston, Redmond, Mexico City.
    “Those aren’t dirty bombs,” Jake said. “This is real.”
    It took Char a few moments to realize the disaster unfolding was a live feed and not some computer-simulated war game. “But all the nukes are gone.” This couldn’t be happening. With the Treaty of Pyongyang, the world’s nuclear stockpile had been destroyed. That was before she was born.
    “Someone didn’t get the memo,” Jake finally said, his voice barely recognizable. He pulled out his com. “Damn them to the last circle of hell.”
    Beneath the mushroom clouds, the crawl continually updated:   Defenders of Gaia deny nuclear strike. Estimated 10 million dead. EU on alert. Pacific Zone quarantine delayed due to North American strike.
    On a repeating loop, a pleasant artificial female voice droned. “For your safety, please remain in your quarters.” They were far above the range of any effects of a nuclear strike on earth—the unacknowledged reason so many Imperial offices had relocated off planet—but all over the station people had to be watching. And panicking.
    “Do you have a com signal?” Jake muted the monitor. “I can’t get through to Rani.”
    Char fooled with her com. “I’m powered up, but I can’t send or receive.” A new headline crawled over the monitor:   Emperor and family unharmed in Machu Picchu.
    Jake snorted. “Ten million dead, but the important thing is the asshole who