Smoke & Mirrors

by C. L. Schneider

  Freeing a potent explosion of flame, her body jerked as the blow ate through leather, scales, and organs. When it reached the ground beneath, I extinguished my flame and stood.

  As I headed across the field to finish the others, Evans cried out. He was with the ciguapa, in the shadow of the wall. There was too much distance to make out his words. He was pointing up, gesturing excitedly. In warning, I thought, a breath before the blade cut through my wing. Pain penetrated my back, and I growled, “Fuck.”

  Twisting, tracking the trajectory of the hit, I lobbed the knife in my hand. Fire followed. Steel and flame struck the chest of the lyrriken overhead. His body landed—again—closer this time, with a smoldering thud. The last member of the patrol had recovered, as well, but he’d chosen flight over fight and was already some distance away. I’d have to hurry if I wanted to stop him.

  With a furious, painful shake, I dislodged the weapon. The resulting tearing sensation across my shoulder blade, as I tried to move the wing, wasn’t good. The knife had pierced muscle. It wouldn’t last long if I tried to fly. And I’d never catch him pursuing on foot.

  Watching his lyrriken form fade into the dark sky, I could only hope he’d failed to get a good look at me. If he saw my face…

  What’s done is done. I couldn’t do anything about it now.

  I turned the remaining operative’s heart to ash and jogged over to Evans. He was doing his best to corral the ciguapa, but she wasn’t having it. Plain, brown tunic ripped and muddy, her lengthy sapphire hair brushed the tops of her backward feet. It sailed over her face, obscuring it completely as she made a fist and swung with all her might. Catching her punch in his hand, Evans grabbed hold of the writhing creature and pulled her back against him.

  “Stop,” he ordered her. “Just—calm down!”

  Her reply was a string of trilled sounds and high-pitched phrases.

  “She can’t understand you,” I said. “This might be the first time she’s had contact with anyone outside her world.”

  Fighting his grip, she plunged into another unintelligible rant.

  Evans held her tight. “Can you speak her language?”

  “I know a little, but…” Listening, I shook my head. “She’s speaking so fast.” There was one phrase, one word she kept repeating. “It might be her name. Nyakree?” I said, and she stopped flailing.

  Her squint was intrigued as she studied me, but the little twitches of her head betrayed skittishness. It was a known trait of her kind. Ciguapa were easily excitable. When calm, their intense, yellow eyes took on a lulling, hypnotic quality. In that state, when they were most in control of their emotions, they took command of their bodies, too. Their blue coloring faded. Their eyes softened and contracted. In low light, their features passed for human. If you didn’t look at their feet.

  This one was nowhere near calm.

  “How did she get here?” Evans said.

  His voice startling her, the ciguapa’s head reared up, smacking him in the nose.

  “Better yet,” he groaned, “how do we get her back?”

  “We don’t. The exit she came through could be miles from here.”

  “But we can’t leave her.”

  “She’s not a lost kitten, Casey. We can’t bring her home and stick her in a shoebox in the closet.”

  Evans yelped as her teeth clamped down on his arm. Jumping around, trying to shake her off, Nyakree’s blue hair danced about, covering them both. I stepped in, grabbed a handful to hold her still, and punched her.

  As the ciguapa collapsed, unconscious in his arms, I examined the bloody bite mark on his wrist. “She broke the skin. We need to take care of that now.”

  The scales on my palm flared red, and Evans shied away. “I don’t think so.”

  “You came to a world ruled by dragons—alone. And you’re afraid of a little heat?” I clamped my hand on his arm. After an involuntary yelp, Evans (mostly) contained the scream in his throat with moans and grinding teeth. I smiled, watching him pale. “Still want to keep her?”

  Panting as I let go, Evans shook his head. “Definitely not. We should take her to Coen. He runs the Sentinel’s supernatural refugee program. Let him get her home.”

  “I’m not sure if he’s still in the city. I haven’t heard from him in weeks.”

  “Coen wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye. Not to you, at least.” His implication was as obvious as the balaur’s affection for me. “Are you worried about him?”

  Am I? I wondered. Coen was the largest lyrriken I’d ever seen. When he shifted into human, his three heads became three separate people with three distinct personalities. Regardless of form, he was a pain in the ass. Coen was also a machine, loyal and solid and fierce. I’d be a fool to worry about him.

  “I’d stash her at my place,” Evans said, “but my landlord’s way too nosey. And your apartment is out. With this case, Creed will be ringing your doorbell more than usual.”

  I thought a moment. There was someone, but I’d have to persuade her. She lived a more private life than I did. “Nadine can look after her until I can get a hold of Coen.”

  “Nadine? Isn’t there someone else?”

  His skepticism was warranted. All flirt and sarcasm on the outside, the leggy siren served up alcohol and attitude in one of the oldest bars in the city. She didn’t give off anything close to a “babysitter” vibe. “She’s all we’ve got.” Stifling a pained grunt, I put my wings away. “I can’t fly. We’ll have to climb up through the break in the wall. “And you,” I pointed at him, “get to carry her.”

  Repositioning the blue body in his arms, Evans winced as he hoisted Nyakree over his shoulder. “Are you sure about this?”

  “It’ll be fine. Nadine has a soft side. And she’s a sucker for strays and lost causes. Why else would she have spent decades trying to get me a decent date?”

  The ciguapa was still out cold when we reached my office. Evans took her into the other room, while I changed the code on the keypad and locked the vault. Shifting back to human, I raided the box of Sal’s Gym apparel in the stock room. When I stepped out onto the gym floor a few minutes later, in clean sweats and a tank top, Evans was muttering to himself.

  Positioning his charge this way and that on a padded weight bench, he was determined to keep her from slipping off the sides. Between Nyakree’s curves, her miles of hair, flopping limbs, and backwards feet, her body wasn’t inclined to cooperate. Finally, he settled on pulling her down a few inches and letting her large appendages hang off the end. Hands out, prepared to catch her if she fell, he inched away.

  “How’s your kitten?” I said.

  Evans threw me an exasperated, “Snoring.”

  “And the arm?”

  He eyed the distinct hand-like pattern of blackened flesh on his wrist. “Well, I don’t want to throw up anymore. So, better?”

  “I’ll take care of it. A little dragon scale ‘magic’, and you’ll be good as new tomorrow. Do you mind stitching me up first, though?” I gestured at the gash on my back. “It’ll give my body a better chance of healing before I have to be at the station in the morning.”

  “Sure.” Evans followed me into the locker room. Retrieving the overstuffed duffle bag from the large locker by the sink, he made a face at the weight as he dropped it on the counter.

  I pulled the strap of my tank top far to the side. “How does it look?”

  Wetting a towel, he wiped the blood away. “Five should do it.”

  “Have you done this before?” I twisted around to squint at him. “And don’t say you’ve seen it on TV.”

  “On TV, the heroes sew themselves up.”

  “Yeah, well on TV, the monsters aren’t real.”

  Chuckling, the sound faded as Evans unzipped the bag. “Damn, Nite. You went shopping. No wonder it’s so heavy,” he said, rifling through the supplies inside.

  “I like to be prepared.”

  “For what? The zombie apocalypse?”

  “You wish.”
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  “Every day.”

  I reached into the next locker for the half-empty bottle of whiskey I had stashed there. “I couldn’t carry a lot with me on the road. I had to move fast. Leave things behind. Too many times, I was scrambling to save a life. Sometimes, it was my own. Now that I’m here, I decided it was time to gear up.”

  “You could doctor a small army with what’s in here,” he muttered, still searching. “What do you think will happen to her?”

  “The ciguapa? It depends on why she left home. If Nyakree wandered through an exit by accident, getting her back shouldn’t be a problem. If she had a reason to leave, then it gets more complicated.”

  He held up the needle and threat in triumph. “Found it!”

  A faint thud from the other room startled us both.

  Evans sighed. “I knew she was going to fall.”

  A series of noises followed.

  “She’s awake.” I sat the whiskey on the counter. “We should—”

  The next thud was distinctive. We looked at each other, both of us proclaiming, “Back door,” and ran from the locker room. Sprinting across the gym and through the storage room, by the time we reached the alley, the ciguapa was gone. We split up and checked the street at both ends, but there was no sign of her.

  I slammed the door shut as we went back inside. An old boxer robe of Sal’s was missing from a peg on the wall. “At least she covered up.”

  “She’s blue,” he said flatly. “We need to find her, before she gets spotted by some asshole with a camera.”

  My concern had gone in a different direction. If something was out there, preying on the monsters, Nyakree was prime for the picking. “I know her species. She’s scared. And Ciguapa do one thing when they’re scared. Hide. She’ll find a place to go deep for a few days. When she gets comfortable enough to poke her head out, then we worry.”

  “But she has no food, nowhere to go.”

  “She’ll figure it out. Even if this is her first time off-world, her species aren’t ignorant of the exits or humans. As long as we find her before she starts hypnotizing men and luring them to their death, we’re good.”

  “Seriously? Why does everything that comes here want to eat us?”

  “Ciguapa don’t want to eat you. They want to mate with you.”

  “Are you telling me this is a love bite?” Evans held up his charred wrist.

  “Probably not. At the height of their mating cycle, sex becomes a compulsion. They’ll hop on whatever they can find. No offense,” I added, as he made a face. “When it happens, their sweat and saliva become highly toxic to other species. And they don’t take no for an answer. But it’s only twice a year. The rest of the time, they’re basically harmless.”

  “Let’s hope it’s the rest of the time.”

  “If it wasn’t, you’d already be dead.” Ignoring his stunned expression, I said, “Ciguapa are excellent at not being seen. She’ll find some dark, out of the way hole to curl up in. Some place with a vantage point so she can watch the streets and learn how to get around unseen.”

  “Is that what you did?” Assuming he knew my reply, Evans didn’t wait for it. “Forget it. I know you hate when I ask about your past.”

  “Not all of it,” I said, as we returned to the locker room.

  “I know you left Drimera without permission. You pissed off the queen, and she put a warrant on your head. Why can’t you tell me the rest?”

  Too tired to lie, I said, “I’m afraid.”

  Evans laughed, glancing away. “Nice try. You’re not afraid of anything.”

  I smiled. “I wish that was true.”

  “I won’t judge you.”

  “Yes, you will. And you have a right to.”

  “I know I messed up, sneaking off to Drimera, but I’ve kept your secrets. I’ve risked my job for you. Lied for you. Gotten hurt for you. I lost my sister because of our friendship. I know Marnie put herself in that nightclub. But if you and I hadn’t ruffled that damn dragon’s feathers, if we hadn’t been there that night…” Jaw firm, he glanced away, then back again. “If none of that earns me the truth, nothing will.”

  Staring a moment, I nodded. “Okay.”

  Evans blinked at my sudden reversal. “Okay?”

  “You’re right. You’ve given me a lot, and you’ve asked little in return. If knowing my whole past is important to you, then ask away. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  He didn’t hesitate. “You said you were happy on Drimera. But when you talk about living there, you don’t sound happy. You sound sad.”

  I wrapped a hand around the whiskey bottle and brought it with me to the first row of lockers. Straddling a bench, I took a drink. “I was chosen by the Guild when I was young. They raised me and trained me. I loved being an operative. I was ambitious, obsessed with earning the queen’s praise. I worked my ass off and earned one of the highest ranks a lyrriken can achieve.”

  “Executioner?” At the surprise on my face, he shrugged. “I’m not deaf.” Bringing the bag over, Evans sat behind me. He waved a bottle of disinfectant in my face. “This is going to hurt.”

  Liquid slid cold into the wound.

  I waited for the sting to subside before I went on. “I was good. Damn good. I was cold-blooded. Ruthless. Efficient. I killed hundreds of creatures, including humans—men, women, and children. I didn’t care who my target was. I killed because it was my job.” Like the workers in my vision at the factory, I thought, mindlessly chopping and disposing. Not liking the comparison, I pushed the image away and went on. “I killed because she wished it.”

  “Queen Naalish?”

  “All I wanted was what every lyrriken raised by the Guild wants: for the elders to love me, to be their cherished servant. I wanted Naalish to favor me. And she did. At least, I thought so. I didn’t realize I’d been brainwashed from the beginning.”

  “Hold still.”

  I winced as the needle pricked my skin. It slid beneath and out again. Steeling my jaw as Evans made the next stitch, I went on. “One night it all went sideways. I was sent to execute a man in one of the human villages on Drimera.”

  “What did he do?”

  “I don’t know. Naalish didn’t give me a reason. She never did. She didn’t have to. Her orders were clear, though. If his family were there, they died, too.” I paused. It wasn’t too late to stop. I could still lie. He doesn’t need to know the rest.

  But I suddenly needed him to.

  Memory burrowing in like a cold wind, a shiver ran through me as I confessed. “I did as I was told. They were all dead, but one. His youngest child. I was about to execute her, and this rush of emotion hit me. It wasn’t mine. I didn’t understand at first, but…it was hers. That was the moment my empathic ability first emerged. It gave me her fear, her pain. I suffered it with her. But it wasn’t enough to stop me. My mission was to kill them all, and I did.”

  Evans fell quiet as he focused on the stitching. A moment later, he broke his silence with a grim, “Is that when you left?”

  “Almost. I was arrested later that night. I did what I was told, but it wasn’t a clean kill. I hesitated. Naalish has no tolerance for indecision or free thought. She saw my brief uncertainty as betrayal and ordered my execution. So I ran.”

  “They call you a traitor because you hesitated to kill a child?”

  “No. Because I didn’t lay down and die with honor. Escaping, wanting to live, proved my disloyalty in the eyes of Naalish, of all the elders, even my own kind.”

  “That’s fucked up. Who doesn’t want to live?”

  “My wants were irrelevant. They’d always been irrelevant. But that night, for the first time, surviving for me was more important than dying for her.”

  Evans finished the last stitch. I thanked him quietly and stood. I took a last, long, swig, then handed him the bottle. By the lack of color on his face, he needed it more than me.

  Craving a minute alone, I stepped away. Whatever the aftermath, whatever hi
s emotions, it was best to calm my own before dealing with his.

  I rounded the partition to one of the private changing areas and stopped.

  I’d forgotten about the full-length mirror on the wall.

  Rattled, I almost shrank away. I hadn’t looked at my reflection in months. I’d witnessed so many terrible things. I’d done far more. Of course, the imprint of my deeds lurked inside me. For years, I’d sensed its silent burden haunting my thoughts. I’d felt its weight growing on my soul. Recently, I’d come to believe I could see it, too.

  The idea of being treated to a glimpse of my own ghosts unsettled me—to the point where I’d removed all the mirrors from my apartment. Now that I was standing in front of one, I almost wanted the bastards to show themselves, to give me something to dread besides his reaction. Because when my words sunk in, and Evans realized I’d killed human children without shame, he’d never look at me the same way again.

  But my daring stare into the mirror was a dud. There were no black ghosts in the dusty glass. There was only me, looking haggard, bruised, bloody, and tired as hell.

  Evans came around the divider. His brow was soft, his gaze thoughtful. He didn’t speak, didn’t try to catch my eyes. I wasn’t sure what to do.

  “Casey, I—”

  Reaching out, he pulled me into his arms. I didn’t resist. I was too shocked. His embrace was warm and kind. It felt like friendship not condemnation. Not rejection. It was an unexpected response that melted my anxiety. I let my fears go with a deep, cleansing sigh and hugged him back. This was new territory for me. For the first time, I had someone in my corner who knew the whole ugly truth, and still wanted to be there.

  Eight

  The amount of emotional residue hanging around the City Medical Examiner’s Office always surprised me. Most ghosts sloughed off by the dead did so at the place of death, not hours or days later as their shells lay sprawled on an exam table. But a few stubborn emotions must have clung to a few cadavers over the years, holding on just long enough to be wheeled through the door. Over time, enough had dropped off to create the usual dark, murky puddles on the tile floor.