by D K Girl
‘Are you finished being juvenile?’ His eyebrow was at full attention. Quite impressive.
‘Probably?’ Alcohol and unease gurgled in Kira’s stomach. ‘Am I?’
‘Yes. You are. Now pay attention.’ The big guy had a habit of going all boot-camp instructor on her. She blamed steroids. Usually. Today though, he seemed less irritated and more distracted. He kept darting a look at a tablet he held.
‘Attention being paid, sir.’ She saluted him.
Hulk-Rossiter had a button nose that was almost adorable, especially now when he screwed it up. ‘You need to get down there while the spacemen are at prayers.’
Curiosity surfed over trepidation, and Kira leaned forward. The aliens held a prayer service every morning at five, like clockwork. Their captain, a.k.a Mr Asshat, made them pray to some god of theirs for an hour. Eron had never given details, and Kira didn’t want them. Other things to do.
To him. To his bits. And then him to her bits.
Shit, damn it, shit. Don’t go there.
‘You do know that’s kind of…racist…or alienist…or something,’ she said. ‘It pisses them off, calling them spacemen.’
Eron had told her he hated the word. Almost as much as he hated being poked in the belly in the mornings. But it was so irresistible. His belly, not the word. Just the right mix of muscle and softness. So silky. And as for what lay lower, well hello sailor. Whatever moisturiser they used on that planet of theirs, Syrana, she needed the formula.
Holy Christ in chains, what was wrong with her? Sober up.
‘Kira, pay attention for god’s sake. The car will take you to the Quartermain entrance, I’ll meet you there. Once the spacemen are at service, I’ll take you to Blake on level eleven. ’
‘Roger that.’ Kira saluted him again. ‘Whoa, hang on a gosh-darned second. Level eleven?’
Two kilometres underground,with far more concrete and rock and steel between fresh air and freedom than she cared for. Made her chest tight thinking about it.
‘See you at Quartermain in fifteen.’ Rossiter signed off, leaving her glaring at a black screen.
‘Dick!’ Kira slumped into her seat, and the bongo drums in her head grew louder. Level eleven. Jesus. Kira hated being under bedcovers, let alone underground.
The car shot past her all-time favourite tree. A lone cactus, giving a one-fingered salute to the world in a giant, prickly display of defiance; set far apart from its clustered brothers and sisters that formed packs across the desert landscape.
Sighting the rebel of the cacti world meant the first of the Facility’s three security gates was about a minute away. The hired guns behind blackened windows would watch her speed past, already aware she was coming from the moment Perry had shoved her into the car. A drone had probably filmed her throwing up on the roof-top. Hell, one had probably filmed Liam’s liaison with her vagina. Keeping big secrets at the Facility meant stealing everyone else’s.
Kira flopped across the back seat. ‘Home sweet fucking home.’
Eron - 2
Eron opened his eyes to an emerald world, and awesome, terrible dread filled him.
‘Brandis mer.’ The Syranian curse flew from his lips with the sharpness of an arrow.
There were two places he should not be at this present point in time. Lahar’s shrine on level ten, in the depths of the Facility’s underground, was one of them. Yet, here Eron lay, intolerable fool that he was. Splayed out like a carcass at the base of the petrified tree stump that took pride of place at the centre of the Syranians’ place of worship. Banished from the proceedings of the evening past, Eron’s intention to spend a quiet few hours in repentant prayer had taken a toll. His eyes had closed, and, beyond all comprehension, he had slept.
Flickers of green light shimmered against the glass walls and ceiling and danced across his pale skin. Eron moved to rise, lifting his long limbs. Sudden and shocking pain halted him. It was as though ice had found its way into blood and bone and broken into untold numbers of razor-like shards. The level of discomfort was unfamiliar, a far distant memory from a life he barely recalled. Eron’s appointment as one of the god Lahar’s holy soldiers brought with it a preternatural tolerance for pain and a remarkable capacity for healing. But the only thing remarkable now was the level of agony he endured. Eron dragged himself the short distance to the nearest wall, pressing elongated fingers against the cold glass and using the leverage to raise himself to his feet. He got to his knees and could go no further. Though the Waters did not touch his skin directly – running as they did within the glasswork – the fluid’s power reached inside him with taloned fingers and radiated beneath his pale flesh. The mighty and divine Waters were, as the humans would say, liquid gold. A flowing, transcendental medium that had once, a very long time ago, enabled the gods to move between their realm and the corporeal universes of Earth and Syrana. But for any mortal foolish enough to taste it, the liquid brought no hint of what it felt like to be divine – only a short-lived, desperately painful, and soul-crushing high.
Eron stared up at the domed roof of the shrine and forced a breath through the intolerable spasms. Carved into the glass above him was Lahar’s glaring totem. A Precon beast from Eron’s home planet, Syrana. The predator held some resemblance in appearance to the rats of Earth, if those creatures mutated ten times the size, grew an extra eye and a tail layered with spikes containing enough poison to fell a Syranian army.
‘Forgive me,’ he breathed. His tongue betrayed him with human words, but he couldn’t find the strength to admonish himself. The Precon eyed him with nothing resembling forgiveness. They were creatures feared for their inherent cruelty, known to leave prey hovering on the brink of death whilst they consumed it. The priests of Syrana’s temples had chosen well for divine Lahar. As one of the last three Living Gods—deities still tethered to the corporeal worlds— Lahar’s desperation to rise to the next realm bred a cruelty that had seen Eron’s home planet embroiled in war for the entirety of his memory, and beyond. It was this same desperation that had brought Eron and his brothers to Earth. Lahar had aligned himself with the goddess Ereshkigal, a deity long since moved to the next realm, in the hope that his own transcendence would be his reward. Eron had been forced to leave his world behind for a god that wanted nothing more than to abandon them altogether.
The goddess’s totem watched Eron too. An Arabian wolf whose enormous eyes let nothing go unnoticed. The air was thick and freezing in Eron’s nostrils, his breathing challenged. God-soldier or not, he’d lingered far too long in close proximity to these Waters. The body-hugging shirt he wore insulated him against natural temperature fluctuations, but a very unnatural chill enveloped him now. Limbs weak, he knelt on hands and knees. Eron blinked against the lights in his vision, fighting the encroachment of unconsciousness. Cold splinters made light work of his innards, and his bones were brittle with the chill. It would be no surprise to feel the taste of his own blood in his mouth, for it seemed that he was being jabbed within by a thousand angry points. A train of self-deprecating thoughts pounded their way through his mind. Ludicrous that it had come to this. He’d survived divine anointment and travelled breathtaking distances across space, only to freeze to death in his own god’s shrine while repenting.
A divine shower stall. That is what Kira had called the shrine when he’d made an ill-advised decision to bring her here. Eron groaned, pressing his hands against the glass. Of all the moments to allow the very reason for his alienation into his head, this surely was the most inopportune. He had spent the night here because he could not be elsewhere. Unable to stand alongside his god-soldier brothers at the First Meld. And Kira was the reason for his banishment from that sacred ceremony. She had put him here. Away from his brethren. Disenfranchised. Shut out of the very task that brought him to this world. But despite all his inner ragings her image refused to leave his mind. The human girl, with her wandering hands and soft mouth, had bewitched him.
Fingers gripped Eron’s upper arms, and hi
s shoulders were lifted from the ground.
‘Eron, do you hear me?’
He recognised Bel’s deep Syranian tone. Eron let his eyes flutter open. Bel stood over him, his outline silhouetted by a soft green glow, his ebony skin morphing him into a shadow.
‘I hear you.’ Eron’s reply clicked with the rapidity of his native Syranian tongue.
Bel crouched down, lifting one of Eron’s arms and draping it across his shoulder.
‘Stand, Eron. Get to your feet.’
The world was darkening. Eron’s thoughts with it. He didn’t make a sound as he was lifted to his feet, Bel taking his weight across his shoulders. Their progress down the short flight of stairs, out of the shrine and into the greater expanse of the Orientation Room, was an ungraceful affair. Eron’s weight was no issue, there being far too little of it, but his height and disabled body were. All the Syranians were tall in comparison to the humans, but Eron was the tallest of the group by a good half metre. Bel cursed under his breath as he tried to negotiate Eron’s barely cooperating limbs. They reached the floor and Bel released him. Eron’s knees met the concrete.
‘How long have you been in there, you fool?’ Bel said. ‘Are you without any sense?’
A moot question that Eron did not answer. At least his breath came now without the sensation of knives slicing through his filtering cavity. He lifted his head. Bel was alone. No sign of the captain, or any other. That should have gladdened him, but he didn’t have the energy or inclination for such an emotion. A dark, inky feeling embraced him. He’d come down here last night to slip out of the grip of isolation, to distract himself from his exclusion. It seemed the shrine had merely enhanced his depression.
‘I do not need assistance.’
Eron’s attempt to stand betrayed him, but to his utter relief, Bel did not offer further physical assistance.
‘That is not what I have seen for some time, Eron,’ Bel retied his loosened jet-black hair, as always pulling it tight enough to lift the skin around his eyes. ‘You are lucky it was I who came to begin preparations for service this morning. Parator and Gren might not have been so amenable.’
The Orientation Room was a sparsely furnished space with bare walls and floors and Bel’s voice seemed to reach every corner.
‘A veridical observation.’ Eron clutched at the back of one of only two chairs available. ‘I thank you for your assistance, Bel.’
Eron’s curiosity about the First Meld’s success or failure burned him to a degree not dissimilar to the Waters. Lifting a shaking hand, he pushed back a strand of silver hair escaped from a careless topknot. If the Meld was successful, a creature of Kur now stood in this world after thousands of years of absence. Bel’s eyes rested on Eron, and there was a noticeable softness in the gaze. Of all his Syranian brethren, Bel seemed the least troubled by Eron’s indiscretions with Kira. There was every chance he might answer Eron’s enquiry.
‘I understand how difficult last evening must have been for you,’ Bel said. ‘To be kept from the First Meld is no small thing. But this behaviour will see you no closer to inclusion, brother. You must get a hold of yourself. Show yourself to be worthy, if there is to be any hope you will be allowed presence at the Melding of the Four.’
Eron nodded. Breathe. Bel’s voice gave him something to focus on. Breathe deeper. The chill seeped from him. The Waters released their hold. Believing himself steady enough, Eron released his tight grip on the chair. A rush of vertigo swept over him, and the room tilted. Bel grasped Eron by the elbow and applied just enough force to keep him upright. Turning to thank him, Eron noticed Bel’s gaze drop to the small tattoo Eron bore on his right wrist: a small stain of black against translucent white skin. The tattoo he’d chosen on that final night out with Kira, three months ago. Eron liked dogs. Small ones, of course. The very first evening he’d left the Facility with Kira, they’d happened across an old, thankfully near-sighted man walking his animal companion. The creature had not run from Eron; it had licked him, fallen asleep in his lap. It had wanted to be near him. Even now the memory still bestowed an odd calm. Despite what had ensued.
‘These past weeks I have done nothing but serve my penance, Bel.’ Eron pulled his arm away, hiding his wrist at the small of his back, keeping the proof of his inadequacy from sight. When he had been discovered by the captain, Eron had been as high as the proverbial Earthly kite after an evening spent in a place of music and flashing light. A place where his own oddness had been misconstrued and embraced by the humans around him, mingling with their own. A place where he could indulge his predilection for the finery and delicacy of the clothing of Earth’s females without remonstration.
‘You need to leave, Eron. You cannot be here when they arrive for service. They will be here within the half hour.’
Bel stooped to pick up the jacket Eron had discarded at the foot of the stairs hours ago. Eron chose to risk his question.
‘Was the First Meld completed?’ Eron said. ‘Will you tell me that much, Bel?’ He took the jacket from Bel, barely noticing the weight of hit in his hand.
Had they succeeded in moving a soul from the ethereal domain of Kur to this Earthly plane? A great part of the task their god-soldier lives were devoted to.
Bel did not look at him as the maladroit moment stretched out. All at once, Eron was achingly tired. Too tired to stand there like a desperate animal waiting for a scrap. So he walked away. Making an unsteady line for the door, he’d almost reached it when Bel finally answered.
‘It was a success,’ Bel said. ‘The First Meld was a success. The goddess succeeded in releasing a gallu from Kur, and the carapace entombing him appears structurally sound.’
His sensory endings tingled with the revelation, and Eron dared another question. ‘And Ereshkigal’s Messenger, the boy, he survived?’
Tamas Cressly. The Facility’s owner, inheriting the place at the death of his mother several years earlier. Tamas’s mother had spent a better part of her life doing the goddess’s bidding, only to die as most did, unremarkably. Her body consumed by its own treachery. Cancer at her breast. The family descended from a powerful lineage, the Abgal Utuabzu, seven sages created by the greater gods themselves and sent to instruct the humans thousands of years ago. Messengers. A bloodline so rare now the boy was considered to be the very last with any true strength. The last of the pure Messengers: human conduits, living bridges between the divine and the human. But the bloodline did not grant immortality. That was reserved for the gods alone.
‘He survived,’ Bel said. ‘Drained, as one might expect from such an effort, but he lives.’
Eron stood in perfect stillness, his hand raised over the sensor which would release the doors. Quite possibly, Tamas was the only one in the Facility who felt worse than he did.
‘I understand.’
The hush of the opening doors swallowed his words, and he could not be sure Bel had heard them at all. Eron stepped into the main corridor, and the doors closed behind him. The First Meld was a success, and Eron had not been a witness to it. The bitterness of it swept through his dual stomachs. A creature of Kur had been raised into this world, sent by the goddess Herself, and his shortcomings had deprived him of witnessing the very reason for being on this world at all. Eron pinched the tatto, dug his fingernails into his skin, willing it to hurt. There was nothing.
Eron spoke to no one as he made his way back up to level eight, to his own quiet room. There was no one in his elevator for the short journey, and when he stepped out onto the silver-carpeted foyer of level eight, the security guards there gave him a nod but said nothing. Which suited Eron just fine. He made his way to his room, furthest down the arched corridor. The walls were painted in the starkest white, and framed paintings of landscapes, various locations around Earth, had been hung along them. The air-conditioning unit hummed around him, pushing out filtered air, never altering from its steady pattern. Entering his room, he pulled off his jacket and threw it onto the apparently expensive but incredibly
uncomfortable leather couch that took up most of the space in the main room. He had two intentions. Shower. Sleep.
He stripped off the rest of his clothes and stepped into the cubicle. Jets of hot water rushed at him from vertical and horizontal angles. If he were honest with himself, he’d admit he was not sorry to be missing service. Exclusion from that daily session of worship was the least vexing of his punishments. But being honest with himself had not served him well of late.
Eron watched his slow-to-colour skin move to a soft pink shade beneath the water’s heat, his thoughts drifting to the First Meld. It must have been a magnificent sight, after thousands of years of absence, the gods stirring once again on this miniscule, lonely world. He stared at the droplets of water streaming around the stone embedded in his right forearm. No moisture clung to the mea stone, repelled by the power of the relic. A power that would have coursed freely at the First Meld. Igniting the energy of the stones each of them bore.
Eron stepped out of the shower, wiped a hand across the condensation on the mirror. His snow-white hair hung limp on either side of his face. A faint trace of veins was visible beneath his skin, a sure sign of fatigue. The pale blue of his irises was dull beneath the thin layer of white that covered the entirety of his eyes. Humans were unsettled by two things. Firstly, that he and his soldier-brothers skirted a fine line between the masculine and feminine of the human race. Androgynous, Kira had explained after he’d asked her why one of the guards insisted on knowing if he was endowed with a cunt or a cock. Humans were ill-equipped to deal with the lack of either, it seemed, and so the Syranians had been dubbed male, and were referred to as ‘he’ and ‘him’. Bestowed with honorary cocks. Secondly, humans appeared to abhor the Syranians’ eyes. Eron’s eyeballs looked to be entirely white unless one drew close enough to see the hint of colour beneath. People’s demeanours changed the instant he wore contact lenses. Suddenly, Eron and his brothers became less alien. Less threatening.
