No Turning Back

by Sharon T. Rose

  Chapter 16

  It was six months before she got to see Graig in his natural habitat, six very long months. Gontozenel activity rose sharply around the world, keeping all the Descendants running to the dropping point. Satherlin went an entire week without unsuiting because of all the conferences demanded by various world leaders. Lyshunda had finally threatened him in some unpublicized way to force him to sleep. He didn't emerge from his quarters for two days. The rest of them travelled in shifts, spread so thin that a trap in Comoryos nearly killed Clatyn. Satherlin took the news grimly, but there were too many incidents to send them out in teams.

  Sylenn had all the alone time she wanted; and all the activity the beast craved. They brought back dozens of Gontozenels every week, and the beast consumed every one of them that Demney would allow It. The doctor was still upset about losing his research subjects, but he was no match for the combined will of the Descendants. Every Sukker that the Hunter ate was one that couldn't come back to make another Drone.

  The beast should have been fat and happy, sated with all the energies it consumed. But each time Sylenn woke, she felt Its gnawing hunger; every day was driven by Its howling need. The Ancients had crafted well in making sure their pet would always do their bidding.

  One of the most dissatisfying events of the rest of that year was the public outcry against the Descendants. This, too, was a world-wide effort and was also gaining momentum. The primary instigator refused to identify with the Contemptors but rather claimed to be taking a more "practical approach" to the issue of the Descendants and was an Ivrithan woman named Halina Holthim. A leader in the suffrage movement, she'd made challenging the legitimacy of the Descendants her platform. The Descendants agreed that she'd made being an unholy pain her life's goal.

  The week that Satherlin stayed suited up was half spent dealing with Halina's demonstrations. Groups around the world rallied behind her ideals, which she had printed and shipped using her own monies; her words were strong enough that even men who would never otherwise listen to a woman used her arguments. They wouldn't admit such a thing, of course, but the words were nearly the same.

  Konyetta returned from one mission with a tale of how the citizens of Berziny had actively hindered her during a fight with a Drone, allowing it to escape. Tad had inadvertently killed three men who'd tried to stop his battle. Hae had been screamed at by a group of women after one of her battles had caused a wall to fall on a child, who died immediately. The older woman had taken to her bed for three days afterwards and when she emerged, she had aged another ten years. Satherlin had given her permission to stay at the Temple, but Hae declined.

  "I couldn't have known that the boy would die," she'd whispered, "but I believe that what we do is important. I can't let ... a casualty, even one so terrible, keep me from doing this." Her eyes remained dry and her gaze remained haunted. Hae hardly spoke after that, but she suited up every day and went wherever Satherlin or Lyshunda bid her.

  Sylenn finally met Halina on one of her excursions to Suljem. The Hunting trips she'd taken had made her more familiar with the city than any of the other Descendants, so any incidents in Ivrithan's capital were usually given to her, if she wasn't off somewhere else. The Drone she followed that day charged down an alley-way and into a square filled with people before Fulenthen caught up. In truth, she'd ended the chase because of all the people; there was potential for them to be injured, so she cut short the beast's fun.

  As she finished funneling the Gontozenel's energy into one of the balls, Fulenthen became aware of the focus of the crowd. They shifted restlessly around her, muttering angrily to one another. Gently lowering the man to the pavement, Fulenthen turned her attention to them.

  "Take no hasty actions, good people," a woman's voice rang out. "We are civilized persons, not base rabble!"

  Fulenthen turned her gaze to the platform erected at the far end of the square, some thirty yards away. Several figures stood there, the central one an elegantly dressed woman. This must be Halina.

  "This poor, benighted woman is not our enemy; she is a victim!" Halina continued, recapturing the crowd's attention. "A victim, as we all are, of the ingrained whimsy that an elite group of men and women are needed to 'protect' the world from danger. What danger is that, I ask you? What danger is there that you cannot defend yourselves against? These Descendants claim that they protect us from the Sukkers, whom they now call Gontozenels, but we must ask ourselves if this is a real threat! Are the Sukkers such a danger? When do they strike out? When do they cause harm? Only when the Descendants chase them! Only when they are hunted like foxes across the meadows of our country!

  "I ask you, reasonable men and women that you are, to consider carefully as you look upon the poor, twisted form of this woman, who cannot even clothe herself to satisfy base decency. If she did not chase, would the Sukkers run amuck? I ask you to think, good people, if we could not perhaps defend our own cities, our own homes, from these so-called Drones, who show no signs of violence until the so-called Descendants appear! It is the old argument of first creating criminals and then punishing them. If Descendants did not chase after the Sukkers, the Sukkers would not run in blind fear and cause panic in their flight. Deprived of this false cause, the Descendants need never be Awakened and could have normal lives, be normal people and productive members of their countries, rather than the drain upon us all that they are now.

  "Think, good people!" Halina continued on the same vein, weaving a dream of a world that didn't need Descendants, where poor fools who had deluded into thinking themselves gods would be mere mortals again, and where the common man could be proud of his ability to protect his own home and family. It actually sounded good to Fulenthen. Most of it, anyway.

  It would be good if more people would take action against the Drones, would step up to protect and defend, and give the Descendants a break once in a while. Every time she unsuited, all Sylenn could do was collapse into her bed. It would be a good thing for the regular people to help out. But eliminating the need for the Descendants altogether? That wasn't going to happen until all the Sukkers were in the beast's belly.

  Fulenthen truly wished she could give over the responsibility for tracking down and containing the Drones. Yet she knew that regular humans couldn't handle what the Drones could throw at them. But the "mere mortals", as Halina called them, could still help. Maybe she would talk to Laillmen about that when she got back.

  "Fulenthen Sonelion!" Hearing her name yanked her thoughts back to the square. Halina pointed grandly at her. "What do you say? Do you truly think you are superior to any of us? That we would be helpless without you and your brethren?"

  Once again, Fulenthen mentally blessed the extraordinary calm that came with the suit. Sylenn would be struck speechless by the sudden attention, but Fulenthen easily gazed back at the people and their leader. "Superior? Why, no, Mistress Holthim; I do not believe that we are superior to any other human. Physically, we may be different, but inside, at our core, we are not. We want the same things you do: safety for our homes and families."

  "And what families are those?" Halina cried triumphantly. "You leave your families when you Awaken; you abandon your parents and husbands and wives and children in order to pursue this grand crusade that destroys what it claims to protect!"

  "And why are you not tending to your family, Mistress Holthim?" Fulenthen shot back with a sharp grin. Halina flushed.

  "I suspect you are not caring for your family for the same reason as we have: because you believe in something greater that you feel you must do. You chose to give your time to this cause; we were made to give our lives to ours. No-one chooses to Awaken, Mistress Holthim. It surprises all of us."

  "And yet you insist on making more of yourselves, on finding more people to Awaken! You speak as though you regret becoming the thing you are, yet you would make another into one just like you. Is that not true, Fulenthen Sonelion?"

  The way Halina repeated her name grated on Fulenthen's nerve
s. "Until the Gontozenels are destroyed, there is need for Descendants, Mistress Holthim. We are the only ones who can withstand their attacks and the only ones who can destroy them."

  "Ah, but you are the only one who can truly destroy them, is that not so, Fulenthen Sonelion?" Halina looked sly as the breeze whipped her coat's collar around her face. "I have it on good authority that until you came along, no-one could even locate a Sukker until it defended itself. Yet your special ability is sniffing them out; that's why they call you the Huntress. The Descendants have told us for thousands of years that the Sukkers number in the tens of thousands; do you truly think you can find them all?"

  Fulenthen's hands curled slowly into fists at her side as her black eyes took on a feral gleam. "I will find them all, Mistress Holthim," she said softly, not caring if she could be heard, "Starting with you."

  The leap was effortless, a tiny flexing of muscles in her legs to send her airborne. To those watching, it likely appeared that she had vanished. In truth, she soared above the crowd, traveling faster than unaided eyes could track, heading for the platform. Landing gently next to Halina, she towered over the well-dressed woman who hadn't registered her presence yet. When she did see Fulenthen standing there, she screamed softly and jumped back a pace before a large, strong hand caught her arm and held her fast.

  "Now, Mistress Holthim, you are an interesting case," Fulenthen murmured.

  "Un--unhand me, you beast!" Halina cried, regaining composure through anger. Her companions, including a burly man likely hired for this sort of situation, rushed over. Fulenthen comfortably ignored them. If they attempted anything, they would hurt Halina, not Fulenthen.

  "Beast, am I?" Fulenthen grinned, allowing a little of the creature she carried to show in her solid black eyes. Halina saw It, and fear momentarily swept away her anger. "Mistress Holthim, you have no idea. And I have no idea what to do with you. You are not contaminated, yet you reek of Gontozenel. You are not a Drone ... but someone near to you is."

  Halina gaped, twisting to glance owlishly at the people on the platform with her. They each stammered a denial before Fulenthen's chuckle cut them off.

  "Oh, no; none of these. I would have gone after them first, if I had smelled the taint on them. No, Mistress Holthim, not someone here, but someone else very close to you is a Drone, and I wager that you do not even know it."

  Halina struggled harder, so Fulenthen let her go to prevent injury; the sudden release sent the woman staggering back several paces.

  "How dare you lay hands on me?" Halina demanded. "This outrage is precisely the sort of behavior we need to be rid of! Good people, you have witnessed this with your own eyes! When put to the stand, when asked direct, disconcerting questions, the Descendants respond with strong tactics designed to inflict fear in all of us! See how little regard they give to our persons, to our dignity, as they hurl baseless accusations so that we would no longer probe them for the truth!"

  Fulenthen ignored the speech; she was still trying to puzzle out the smell on Halina. Definitely a Gontozenel, and thick, almost like contamination. Someone she worked or lived with, then, more likely someone she lived with. But how would she not know that she lived alongside a Drone? They always acted out in some way, always acted different after the Gontozenel took over. Had she not noticed? Perhaps if it were someone new ... but the scent was so strong, so ingrained, that Halina had to have been associating with that Drone for a long time. Years, at least. Perhaps she had met the person after the Sukker had moved in ... which could make it a very old Sukker indeed. This bore watching.

  Leaving the rhetoric behind, Fulenthen set off after fresh prey.