The gorge widened and narrowed as she trudged along, the floor rising and sinking. In several places, she could see fresh gouges in the walls. She should count herself lucky that the rock under her ledge had held out against the flash flooding, but she couldn’t quite convince herself of having good luck in the last day. It was nearly six hours later that she finally caught up with her miniprobe, hovering against the far side of the gorge wall. It had come to rest against a protrusion of rock and she quickened her step to get to it. The temperature of the sand was approaching unbearable and she’d been quick stepping for the last half hour.
Murphy dropped to her knees and scooped away the loose sand at double time, panting in the rising heat. It took several minutes of digging, hard work with just her gloved hands to push the sand out far enough to keep it from sliding back into the hole. She brushed against the edge of a boot, and she paused, overcome with a relief so intense she nearly lost her balance. She pressed her eyes closed and offered up thanks to a god she’d stopped believing in a lifetime ago. With renewed energy, she dug out the left boot, scraping away as much of the damp sand as she could after she yanked it from the ground. One boot was better than no boots, but there was no way the other would be in the same place. Her luck just didn’t run that way. She clambered away from her dig site on hands and knees. Two meters away would be enough to reset the miniprobe.
She dropped to her rump, her boot safe between her raised knees, and reset the miniprobe. Sure enough, it resumed its downstream travel. It was as good a time as any to take a break, so she rummaged in the first aid kit for a piece of gauze and set to getting as much sand from out of the inside of the boot as she could. Eventually satisfied, she stood up to stamp her foot into the boot and did it up, doing her best to keep her balance with only a toe down on her other foot. Heartened by the find, she fished out another ration foil and set off after the miniprobe again.
She made good time through the rest of her travel day, stopping only twice. The first time to retrieve her battered helmet – its visor cracked - and the second to pull her second boot from the now dry sand. Her left thigh and hip were aching from carrying her in the hop-step-hop gait she’d adopted to keep from burning her right foot. The layer of sand on the gorge floor was much thinner here, so walking was getting easier, and her swollen feet made her boots fit better, reducing the rub against the burst blisters. Another full day and she would reach the other life pod. With luck, that pod’s WAC sat had survived landing and the pilot had launched. The melon sized weather and communications satellite had a shell tough enough to survive atmosphere exit, but it couldn’t survive being crushed under a water tank whose bracket bolts had sheared off in crash conditions. The loss of the little satellite was more discouraging now than during her mad dash to clear the life pod. It would’ve been nice to have had forewarning of the storm that had stolen her boots and helmet.
Halfway through the day she’d run out of the water she’d packed from the life pod, and now she was reduced to using her suit water. Even with the crack in the visor letting in some unfiltered air, wearing her helmet made breathing easier which meant retaining more body fluid. She’d do anything to keep from having to drink more suit water than was absolutely necessary. Now that she was pushing into the sixteenth hour of dogged travel, the internal debate whether to keep going or stop to sleep was getting fierce. Indecision could keep her going for a while yet, but she needed the rest and this rocky terrain would at least give more shelter than the gorge she’d left behind three hours ago. The vegetation was also taller, greener, leaves plumper. She wasn’t sure if it was a result of the rain that had passed so recently or because she was finally getting close to the end of this desert. She hoped for the later, but suspected the former.
Not much later, she came across a rock formation that would provide some shade from the beating sun, and crawled under to sleep. No alerts of environment concerns from her wrist unit interrupted, so she slept heavily until her wake-up alarm went into screech mode. Groaning, she shut it off, sat up, and removed her helmet only long enough to eat. Resetting her helmet in place, she climbed back to her feet and pressed on. At the rate, she was going she should be at the other pod in ten hours or so. That would make it a short day, and then within the comfort of a pod she could get clean and have a real sleep. She didn’t even care if the other pilot relegated her to sleeping in the flight chair rather than the deep sleep capsule.
The day passed much as the previous day had. She knew she’d pushed herself beyond exhaustion on this forced march, and dreaded the price she was going to have to pay for it. It could be days yet before the search and rescue team got to them. All that mattered was that they got to her and her shipmate before the Keks did. During the trek the realities of the war had faded into a distant part of her mind, it didn’t seem real any more. Sand, sun, heat, and pushing her body one step forward at a time dominated her every waking thought, and her sleep had been a respite of nothingness. The desert had been as lonely as space, but the sharply curving horizon and unceasing turquoise blue sky, even here in this desert, gave more comfort than the hostility of cold space. The desert was trying to kill her as surely as space, but taking a much longer time to do it.
Murphy scrambled up a rise of stone, covered in loose rock, paying close attention to where she put her feet to avoid a twisted ankle and paused at the top, her chest heaving. There, below her, was the other life pod less than a kilometer away. A grin stretched dry lips to cracking but that did nothing to dampen her spirits. Here she was! She’d made it across hostile terrain with only minor mishaps to hinder her. She wanted to shout and wave her arms but knew it was pointless. Before she’d even caught her breath she started down. Halfway down she lost her balance and toppled over, landing hard on her elbow and shoulder. She lay there, stunned, for several minutes before she realized that the roar in her ears was actually external. She scanned the sky and spotted the search and rescue ship several kilometers off, its distinctive yellow and black herringbone hull paint accented with the red cross that spelled relief to her bruised and aching body.
A faint, hoarse hurrah came from the pod and she grinned at her fellow survivor, pumping a fist at the cavalry come to rescue them. She relaxed where she lay, watching her salvation approach when she noticed a shadow pursuing the squat personnel lift. She struggled to rise, a warning cry rising in her. One, and then a second contrail traced their way to the lumbering vessel. In horror, she watched the bright, unarmored ship explode, chunks of wreckage vomiting from the smoke and fire. The pursing vessel changed trajectory to leave atmosphere, flashing by overhead. She was sure her helmet camera would have caught the ship but it had been shorn off in the sandstorm. She did get a good enough look, though, to know it wasn’t a Kek ship. It ran clean, and Kek ships belched out great gouts of dirty smoke when in atmosphere.
By the time the ship had dwindled out of eyesight, Murphy had her breath back and she worked her way back to her feet. Her throat was tight with unshed tears, and she had to swallow hard, breathing several times through her nose to banish the tears pricking the backs of her eyes. Time to meet her fellow survivor and see if he’d gotten any data from his WAC sat before their rescue was wiped from the sky. The other pilot whirled when she set off a rock shower under her feet, his arm coming up to point at her. She waved her arms over her head, and he dropped his arms. He sat down on the rough ground, shoulders slumped, waiting for her, and she did her best to walk faster.
Three meters from him, she took off her helmet and took a look at him without the cracked visor to obscure her vision. She staggered and almost fell to her knees, biting back a cry of defeat when she recognized Wilson. That arrogant, conniving ass. And now she was stuck here with him, for what could be the rest of her life, on a pint-sized moon in an out-of-the-way solar system.
THE END.
THE CHANGED by Mandi Jourdan
The breeze was cool as it whispered through Ariadne’s hair and over her skin, but she thought it
had lost quite a bit of its inherent chill, now that her body had ceased to raise gooseflesh in response to the temperature. The cold English air didn’t bother her, now—not since her heart had stopped beating and she could no longer fall ill from exposure to the elements.
She’d never imagined a fate this twisted for herself. Raised as a daughter of one of the most prominent mage bloodlines, she’d been taught since her earliest memories to hate vampires and trained since she could stand to fight them. She’d been trained to kill, though she’d never had the chance to do so.
She was never supposed to become one of them.
“You’re not focusing enough, Ariadne!”
With a frustrated cry, the girl turned away from her sister, folding her arms over her chest and balling her fists. She felt the chill of ice beginning to form within her tensed palms, and she forced herself to relax and mentally pushed the element away.
“I’m doing the best I can, Hecate.”
“No, you’re not.”
Ariadne rolled her eyes as the familiar sound of a blade being pulled from the mannequin she and her sister had been practicing on since childhood reached her ears, and a moment later, she felt a hand squeezing her shoulder and wheeling her around. She met the brown eyes of her elder sister, who was watching her with a frown.
“Try it again.” Hecate pushed the dagger into Ariadne’s hand, and the younger girl shook her head.
“There’s no point.”
“Of course there is!” Hecate stepped back, pointing with a sharp snap of her arm toward the mannequin standing across the concrete basement floor. “If that were a real vampire, the throw you just made would’ve cost you your life. You missed the heart. That thing would’ve ripped you to shreds.”
“Why are you being so hard on me?” Ariadne snapped. “I’m not old enough to hunt on my own, and when I’m at Briarcrest, I’m surrounded by the leaders of every decent bloodline. I don’t need to be a perfect fighter, yet!”
Hecate gritted her teeth, closing her eyes and letting out a long sigh. “I can’t believe how ready you are to accept being second-rate at this. You’ve never shown less than complete commitment in anything you’ve actually cared about.” She opened her eyes and stepped forward again, her boots clicking on the floor as her expression implored her sister to show sense. “This is your life, Ariadne.”
“And I’m learning.” Ariadne felt the heat rising in her cheeks, and she struggled to keep her voice as calm as possible, though she felt like screaming. “Just because I’m not perfect at this right now doesn’t mean I won’t be in a year or so. I’m only seventeen, Cate.”
“And I don’t want to lose you.”
For a long moment, Ariadne stared at her sister. So that’s what this is about, she thought. She sighed, taking a few steps backward and turning her attention to the mannequin. Drawing in a deep breath to steady herself, she let the dagger fly.
Two years later, she lay on her parents’ living room carpet, gasping for air as blood seeped from the open wound tracing the length of her neck. She raised a pale, trembling hand, struggling to channel her magic enough to heal herself. Each time she felt the edges of the wound begin to twitch closed, another surge of agony spread through her, and she lost her focus.
She knew the venom must be keeping her incapacitated. As her blood mingled with her red hair, Ariadne mentally cursed herself, replaying every criticism her sister and parents had ever made of her skills as a huntress and screaming in her thoughts that they had been right all along. She hadn’t been able to protect herself.
A head of dishwater-blond hair swung into view above her, and she barely felt the fingernails digging into her shoulders past the bone-deep pain in her neck that had begun to spread outward. She reached out to shove her attacker away, her palms frosting over with a thin sheen of ice for an instant as she focused all her might on summoning the element for which her family held the strongest affinity to help her. The ice faced almost as soon as it had formed, however—Ariadne was beginning to realize, with a sickening twist of her stomach, that she was far too weakened by her injuries to access the full extent of her powers.
She was also too weakened to resist as her attacker, the vampire she recognized as Elisabeta Sturm from her history lessons at Briarcrest, dragged her by the shoulders from the floor and onto the sofa, depositing her beside her parents, who sported similar wounds and had been lashed together with a thick, metal chain. In a blur of motion, Elisabeta darted around the sofa, securing another chain around the three of them and pulling it more tightly than any non-vampire could’ve managed. Ariadne gasped as the metal dug into her arm and crushed against her ribs, and she was certain from the crack that ripped through the air that she’d broken something, but her mind was too overwhelmed by the pain assaulting it from all angles to determine what that something was.
“Why?”
With considerable effort, Ariadne turned her head to face her mother, Agrippa Johanssen, to whom she was tied so tightly that not a centimeter remained between their shoulders. Agrippa was staring at the vampire woman, who had paused in front of her captives once again with a smirk on her lips.
“I told your grandmother that your entire line would pay for what she did to my brother,” said Elisabeta. “She didn’t believe me.”
Elisabeta lifted the metal container she’d rested on the carpet upon her entrance and swung it toward the three captives, and Ariadne’s already erratic pulse accelerated as the liquid within doused each of them and she recognized the smell of an accelerant. The vampire replaced the container on the floor and reached for the box of matches she’d left on the coffee table, removing one and striking it against the box’s side. In the instant before the match made contact with her leg, Ariadne thought with the smallest flicker of relief of how fortunate it was that her sister had moved out of the house and was, therefore, temporarily safe.
She was then consumed by fire.
“Come inside, dear. There’s no reason for you to be alone, right now.”
Ariadne turned at the sound of the voice to face the blond woman whom she’d come to know over the last few hours to be called Seraphina Bellamy. The Ariadne of a week previously would’ve been incapable of holding a civil conversation with Seraphina—upon catching sight of the other woman, she would’ve drawn her dagger and probably sent out a bolt of mental energy designed to incapacitate Seraphina or worse. Ariadne had never successfully killed a vampire, but she’d certainly tried, and her efforts combined with those of her sister had wounded more than a few.
Seraphina held out her hand, and Ariadne stared at it for a moment. She knew she really had no other option. When she’d awoken to find what had become of herself and learned that the attack that had transformed her had claimed the lives of her parents, she’d known that she couldn’t return home.
When she’d heard from her sister’s friend Margaux that Hecate had refused to assist in the effort to heal Ariadne and had asked not to be informed of whether she survived, she’d realized that she had nowhere else to go, either, after Margaux and the mages who had assisted her had released her to her own devices. Ariadne assumed that Hecate was only distancing herself for the sake of avoiding the pain she would face if ever she were in the position to hunt Ariadne. The younger Johanssen refused to think about the matter for long enough to guess at whether her sister would, in fact, try to destroy her, now that she’d become that which the two of them had been raised to despise.
Seraphina’s hair was several shades lighter than that of the vampire who’d stripped away Ariadne’s life, and her face was much kinder. Though Ariadne knew the two others were of the same race, she felt safe in Seraphina’s presence, while she had felt nothing but terror in Elisabeta’s.
Ariadne took her hostess’s hand and allowed herself to be led back into the house, which she’d heard the vampire woman and her husband affectionately refer to as ‘Chateau Bellamy’ once or twice since her arrival. The home was immense, most of its floors made o
f white, polished marble and its furniture lavish and impeccably clean. Ariadne wasn’t certain what she had expected the residence of some of her kind’s sworn enemies to look like, but this would’ve been far from her imaginings.
I’m not a part of Magekind anymore, she reminded herself.
“Oh—they’re home.”
Seraphina paused, releasing Ariadne’s hand to lean down and reach out both her arms to catch a small boy as he ran into them. The woman then stood, pressing a kiss to the boy’s cheek and turning to face Ariadne.
“This is my son, Julian,” she said. “Julian, this is Ariadne. She’ll be staying with us, for a little while.”
Ariadne gave the boy a small smile, and he studied her with wide, grey eyes. He couldn’t have been older than two, and though she could sense that he possessed vampiric blood, he looked thoroughly innocent. The Bellamys were, Ariadne reminded herself, of a different breed of vampire than she herself had become. They were of the Born—vampiric aristocrats raised to believe that it was their right to hunt as they pleased to further the survival of their kind. She herself was one of the Changed—the group shunned by the majority of the Born for being the lesser species, as, unlike the Born, they were no longer technically alive upon their transformation. Their own blood ceased to flow, though they required the blood of others to function, and they could not reproduce. If Ariadne recalled properly, the Born vampire’s need for blood developed during adolescence. She realized that she was probably correct, then, in her assumption of the innocence of the boy before her. She wondered if Julian had any idea what he was to become.
She glanced up as Seraphina’s husband entered the room, another child in his arms. This one was a little girl, still an infant and reaching up to play with the hair of the man who held her.
“I daresay you know Apollo,” said Seraphina, smiling, “and that’s our daughter, Lara.”
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