Page 100 of Deathless
"They held," he said.
"Yeah." I shook on the yoke. "They held."
I brought the Cessna down ugly. The landing gear hit the patched runway, and the whole airframe shuddered. We bounced once, twice, and I muscled the yoke forward and kept us on the ground through sheer stubbornness and the knowledge that crashing this close to the hangar would be a stupid way to die.
The engine coughed and died when I cut it. The propeller wound down, and the silence rushed in, huge after hours of noise.
Mila woke up. She pressed her face against the window and looked out at the damaged base and the people moving toward us across the tarmac.
"Is this home?" she asked.
I looked at the scorch marks and the craters, and the figures running toward our plane. I looked at Jasper with blood on his face and his daughter in his arms.
"Not yet, pequeña," I said. "But it's close."
I barely got theCessna door open before my mother was there, crossing the tarmac at a speed that defied every law of physics and most of the ones she'd learned in church. She grabbed my face in both hands, pulled me down, kissed my forehead, then slapped the side of my head hard enough to make my ears ring.
"Ow. Mamá..."
"No messages?" She grabbed my ear.
“The comms were dead, and Vihan’s last message said there was an attack.”
"I thought you were dead, Diego. Dead."
"I'm not dead."
"You look dead." She pulled back and took in the blood on my shirt, the bandage on my shoulder, the circles under my eyes. She pressed her lips together and locked it down. My mother did not cry in front of people. My mother cried in the kitchen at two in the morning when she thought no one could hear, and I'd inherited that from her along with her jaw and her stubbornness.
She pulled me into her arms and held on. I buried my face in her hair, and the smell of her shampoo and wood smoke and something baking hit me all at once, and my knees almost buckled.
"I'm okay, Mamá," I said into her shoulder. "I'm okay."
"You are not okay. You are bleeding on my blouse." She tightened her grip. "But you are alive, and that is what matters, and we will discuss your definition of okay later when I have time to yell at you properly."
Jasper climbed down from the Cessna with Mila. My mother looked at them, looked at the blood on Jasper's face and the bruises on Mila's throat, and crossed herself.
"Dios mío." She released me and crouched in front of Mila. "Mi corazón. Let me see."
Mila went to her without hesitating. Carmen tilted Mila's chin up and examined the bruises on her throat, the ones shaped like a grown man's fingers. She tightened her jaw but kept her hands soft.
"Are you hungry?" Carmen asked.
"Yes," Mila said.
My mother went still. She looked at Mila, then at me, then back at Mila. She blinked hard and fast.
"Then we fix that first." She cleared her throat and stood and wrapped one arm around Mila's shoulders, and steered her toward the main building. She glanced back at me with a look that saidI will deal with you later,and alsoI love you,and alsoyou are grounded until you are forty.
I turned to help Jasper, and Lorenzo was already there.
He leaned against the hangar door with his arms crossed and that particular grin that meant he'd been through hell and come out the other side pretty enough to brag about it. He had a fresh scar on his jaw, a bruise across his cheekbone, and his left arm in a sling. He looked at me like I was the best thing he'd seen all week.
"Porra, Diego." He pushed off the wall and walked toward us. "You look like absolute shit."
"Hermano." My voice cracked. "You're alive."
"Obviously." He stopped in front of me, and his grin softened into something real. "You think a few Myrmidons are going to take me out? Please. Rafael would kill me if I died."
