Inheritors of Chaos

by Barbara Ann Wright

  “Somewhere they couldn’t attack and kidnap people!”

  Simon stepped between the two. “What’s done is done!” He hated that he had to take on the role of peacekeeper when he wanted to rage, but Horace needed him to keep everyone on track. “We have to find Horace now.”

  “If we don’t leave and hurry, Naos will keep attacking us,” Patricia said quietly.

  Simon rounded on her to say he didn’t care; nothing was more important than Horace’s safety, but Cordelia stopped him this time.

  “Let’s go back to the tree and think it through,” she said.

  He took a deep, shuddering breath, but his anger could quickly grow beyond his control. He’d had a lot taken from him in his long life. Horace would not be another loss. The Iliad came floating to him again, the poem that started with rage. “If he dies while we’re thinking, I will burn this whole goddamned planet to cinders.”

  * * *

  Lydia ran through her dream. She saw the flames again as they careened across the plains, gobbling up people and animals, all of it playing in slow motion like some obscene torture.

  She couldn’t hear them, the future forever silent, but this felt different from what she’d last seen. Now, she was in the middle, and her heart pounded in terror.

  “Nemesis!”

  Fajir was here somewhere, but Lydia’s mind rejected that idea. She shouldn’t have been able to hear her. Maybe the future was finally fading into a normal dream? But the flames still roared soundlessly around her.

  “Nemesis, stop!”

  Lydia turned, hearing Freddie’s voice along with Fajir’s. Was Freddie in the flames, too? Her future and her dreams pulled at each other, blurring around the edges, and Lydia saw Freddie crushed by the prog’s foot, heard the horrible sound of crushing bone. She tried to scream, tried to get to Freddie, but just as in real life, she could only watch.

  “Nemesis, you will fall!”

  Just as Freddie had fallen. Someday, she’d witness the fire in all its glory, hear the cries of terror as she’d heard Freddie scream.

  No, no, no, she had to get away!

  “Nemesis!”

  Lydia gasped as something smashed into her, and her feet lost contact with the ground. She had a moment to wonder if the flames would consume her before the ground smacked into her, driving her breath from her lungs. She rolled, and a sharp slap to her cheek made her eyes fly open.

  “Lydia!” Fajir yelled, their faces inches apart, bathed in moonlight. Her eyes were wide with fear and concern. “Wake up!”

  Lydia gasped. She could hear her heart in her ears, felt not only the sting in her cheek but the ache of Fajir’s tackle and the hard ground beneath her. Her bruised rib ached, as did her nose. Tears left wet streams down her cheeks, and she couldn’t breathe. She tried to force herself to calm, but a low sob escaped her. “What…is this?”

  “You dreamed.” Fajir hauled her upright. “And then ran as if haunted. Maybe your injury…” As Lydia sobbed harder, Fajir patted her awkwardly. “You’re safe now.”

  Lydia wanted to laugh at the sheer discomfort on Fajir’s face, but she didn’t feel as if she had control of her own body; she couldn’t stop crying.

  The night after they’d left the tree, Lydia had slept deeply, only awakening when Fajir shook her roughly in the morning. Fajir had stared at her with concern all the next day. This night, their second on the plains, it seemed her dreams and the future had melded somehow, but instead of simply thrashing and calling out, she ran. It had felt too real.

  “Why?” she asked with a sob. “I’m doing what I should be. I’m trying to find this future. Why won’t it leave me alone?”

  Fajir sat beside her in the moonlit grass. Their campfire was an orange glow not far away. “I…I don’t…”

  “I’m trapped, Fajir. My power told the Storm Lord where to put his troops on the palisade at Gale, and the boggins snuck in the other side. If I didn’t have power, maybe things would be different.” She sobbed again, knowing most of her words weren’t coming through clearly, but she couldn’t seem to stop them either.

  “And I saw Freddie get stepped on, and I knew it was hopeless without even looking. Why couldn’t I have some other power or none at all? I keep running from it, but it keeps finding me, and people will never stop asking me to use it, and I’m so tired, Fajir!” Lydia tilted sideways until her forehead rested against Fajir’s breast. She’d never felt so hopeless. Maybe she’d damaged more than just her skull when she fell, breaking something else inside herself. “Please just hurry up and kill me.”

  Fajir’s arms went around her slowly. “I understand. No matter what you do, you’re forced into this…circle, and you can never reach the end.”

  Like Fajir and her vengeance. Lydia’s breath was ragged as she tried to rein in her sobs.

  Fajir’s embrace tightened. “You’re a widow like me, but no one ever taught you how to be one. No animal killed your love; your power did that, and so you seek to fight your power.”

  Lydia pulled back but didn’t scoot away, shocked by the understanding in Fajir’s voice. “I don’t kill people.”

  Fajir snorted a laugh. “I didn’t say that we’re exactly alike, Nemesis.”

  “My name is Lydia. I heard you say it.”

  Her smile grew warmer. “To conquer your power, you must rid yourself of it.”

  Lydia rolled her eyes. “Sure. I’ll just go back to the day I was born, and—”

  “Don’t be tiresome, Nemesis.” She stood, and her unarguable grip pulled Lydia with her. She led the way back to the campfire. “Healers can burn out power. The Lords told me Simon Lazlo once did so to himself.”

  “But it came back.” Simon’s and Horace’s powers had returned. Because they were micro-psychokinetics. Healers. They had enough power left to slowly heal themselves, but for Lydia… She started to laugh, a stutter that grew to a guffaw, chasing away the last bits of her dream, the last dregs of horror.

  “Fajir, you’re a genius!” She grabbed Fajir’s shoulders, pulled her head down, and kissed her quickly on the lips.

  Fajir gaped like a fish, her eyes practically bulging out of their sockets. Her face went scarlet behind her tattoos, and she took a step back as if she feared Lydia might attack. “You…you must not…”

  “I should have thought of that!” Lydia cried. “Long before now. I’m a widow, and I have to fight my power by getting rid of it. Then I’ll be free.” She took a step forward, and to her further amusement, Fajir backed up again. “And you’ll help me.”

  “I will?”

  “You just tackled me to keep me from hurting myself. You haven’t killed me yet, and you’re not going to.”

  “I’m not?”

  “Nope. We need each other. That’s why we keep coming back to each other.”

  “Ah.” Fajir nodded, but her eyes were still wide as if she was struggling to understand. “You need me to save the plains and to help you rid yourself of your power, and I need you for…”

  Lydia took a deep breath and thought about that one. She was good at reading people after spending so much time looking at various futures. She knew Fajir was developing feelings for her, but whether they were truly romantic or just the attachment one drifter felt for another, Lydia didn’t know.

  “I’m your project,” Lydia said softly. “You needed something else to do with your life, so why not help another widow? Maybe you’ll even prove to me that some people deserve to die.” Though she didn’t believe that was possible.

  But Fajir smiled and nodded, and that was enough. They returned to camp but didn’t sleep, sharing a short silence until dawn when they began walking again. Fajir said she would deliver Lydia to Gale, but after walking in that direction, Fajir spotted the trail of the drushkan tree.

  “They must be going to the mountains, to Naos,” Lydia said.

  “Do we follow?”

  Lydia nodded and saw the relief on Fajir’s face. It seemed Fajir had developed a superstition a
bout Gale that was similar to Lydia’s. Nothing good happened there.

  * * *

  Everyone was still reeling from Naos’s attack, but Cordelia didn’t believe Naos had orchestrated her assault for the very same instant that Horace and Lea disappeared. Patricia knew something, no fucking doubt.

  After they’d climbed out of the ravine, Simon ranted that they needed to do something to get Horace back before they could even think about moving, but Cordelia found it hard to plan with a traitor in their midst.

  “There are tunnels through this whole area,” Patricia said at last. “I found some connected to my…the mine.” She glanced at Cordelia and cleared her throat. Cordelia was tempted to correct her about whose mine it really was. “And many of them branch together. It may take days to track them.”

  “How convenient,” Cordelia said. “As convenient as the fact that the only telepath we had who even approached your strength is now missing.”

  Patricia snorted, but she was wise enough to say nothing. Cordelia didn’t know if her snort was in response to the very thinly veiled accusation or the thought that Horace could ever come close to matching her.

  “Who gives a fuck how long it takes?” Simon yelled. “Pool can start digging out the tunnel, and we’ll go from there.”

  “The drushka are already scouting for another way in,” Liam said.

  Simon waved his words away and resumed his march toward Pool.

  Nettle spread her hands. “Some of the abductors were plains dwellers. Perhaps others in the area will know where they are going.”

  “Unless ‘others in the area’ are more captives you’ve already let go,” Liam muttered.

  “Don’t fucking judge me,” Cordelia said. “We didn’t have anywhere to keep them, and we couldn’t kill them.”

  He didn’t back down. Patricia stepped up beside him. “What do you think we’ll have to do now if not kill them?”

  Cordelia glared, ready to tell her to mind her own business, but Nettle spoke first. “Battle is different than killing unarmed captives,” Nettle said. “When their leader has been dealt with, they may submit as drushka do.”

  “And in the meantime,” Patricia shot back, “they’ll pick us off one by one like in a damned horror vid.”

  Cordelia frowned. She hadn’t understood that when Simon mumbled something about it, and she didn’t understand it now. Liam barked a laugh as if he was firmly on Patricia’s side. Brain damage or not, she’d gotten to him.

  “Who cares who did what in the past?” Simon said, some of the words spoken through his teeth. When they hadn’t followed him, he’d come stalking back. “Horace has been taken, and now we go get him.”

  “Shawness,” Nettle said softly. “We cannot linger here and wait for Naos to attack again.”

  And they still didn’t know why Naos was doing that. Cordelia looked around, hoping a clue would appear out of midair; a thought tickled in her brain. Horror vids. She turned a hard look on Liam. He shifted his gaze away as if embarrassed.

  Or guilty.

  Liam glared when she didn’t stop staring. “What? You got something to say?” He sneered, clearly trying to put her off with anger, but coming at her mad was never the way to get her to back down.

  And he knew that.

  Had known it, anyway.

  Horror vids. What was it about…

  Cordelia felt eerily calm. “Yeah, I’ve got some questions.”

  As they continued their staring contest, Simon started railing again. He asked Nettle and Reach to go to Pool in person and plead his case. After Cordelia nodded, the two drushka headed back. Patricia argued, but Cordelia kept her eyes on Liam. She watched for an expected reaction, anything familiar, but she didn’t picture any, her mind carefully blank.

  “If you’re waiting for me to give you a hint about how he should act,” she thought as “loudly” as she could. “You’re shit out of luck.”

  Patricia’s gaze jerked to her. So, she was listening. Horror vids. She didn’t know what that meant, and neither should Liam. It sounded like one of those references a person had to really understand before they’d laugh.

  Unless they’d been brainwashed by someone who understood completely.

  Cordelia reached for him, going in hard. Her legs went out from under her, but she’d expected that as Patricia flexed her power. But Simon was there, and Patricia yelped in pain. Cordelia let herself fall and rolled, slower in her armor but still fast enough. She grabbed Liam’s legs and knocked him to the ground.

  “I don’t know what Patricia did to you,” Cordelia shouted. “But if you can hear me, Liam, fight back!”

  She grabbed him before he could roll away and pulled herself on top. She couldn’t sit on him forever; she needed to help Simon. One quick punch to the chin should do the trick.

  He put a hand to her chest, teeth gritted, no doubt in pain from her weight.

  She pulled back a fist. “I’m sorry.”

  He got a look in his eye she’d never seen, a casual cruelty. “I’m not.”

  A white flash filled her vision, and her head snapped back, teeth clacking together. The smell of ozone filled her nostrils, and she couldn’t move.

  Why was she tumbling, then? Rolling over and over before hurtling into the sky. Before she reached the stars, something jerked her to a halt, her strengthened lifeline.

  Cordelia gasped. “What the fuck?” Had Patricia done something? Naos? It felt like…

  When she’d been standing outside the palisade and the Storm Lord had come for Liam. He’d hit her with his lightning instead.

  But Patricia didn’t have that power. No one did. Just the Storm Lord, and he was dead.

  When was the last time any problem of hers had stayed buried?

  “No!” she shouted. “No fucking way!” They’d never found his body, but Simon had been so certain of his death. She should have known better. She grabbed her lifeline, trying to pull herself back. Where was he? Hiding? Then why hit her when he did? Why give himself away to protect Liam?

  Unless…

  Mind fuckery, just as she’d suspected. Patricia or Naos or who the fuck ever had salvaged the Storm Lord’s mind or something. And now he was a passenger in Liam’s body just like Patricia had been in Naos’s?

  The thought made her want to vomit. Liam must have been going crazy in his own head, forced to share his fucking body with the asshole that killed his mom. Cordelia had to get back and dig that fucker out before Liam went as crazy as Naos.

  She felt a tickle in her brain before a shadow loomed over her mind. Just as before, she felt the titanic presence that heralded Naos’s arrival. It was getting closer, coming from the planet rather than from space as Cordelia followed her lifeline down, out of the atmosphere.

  This time, Naos wouldn’t want to have a jolly conversation, not after Cordelia had tried to kill her.

  * * *

  Simon had just enough time to be grateful he could still act on instinct.

  He’d known Patricia was using her power, but since he wasn’t a telepath, he couldn’t read her mind, and he didn’t sense her power reaching out to anyone, so he assumed she was either shielding herself, or she always kept her power ready.

  Then Cordelia leapt at Liam, and Patricia’s power flexed. Without even realizing it, Simon attacked her power center and gave her enough of a shock that Cordelia got loose.

  “What the hell is—” Simon grunted as Patricia pushed back, a wild look in her eyes. He didn’t know what had happened with Cordelia and Liam—not to mention Horace—but he was putting an end to it right now.

  He faced her down, their powers clashing. Her telepathy was her most dangerous ability, so he kept his focus on that part of her brain. She was fast, and it was obvious she’d had some practice switching “gears” when it came to power, an ability she’d no doubt perfected after sharing a brain. He’d just have to be faster.

  A scream and a burst of pain distracted him. His power stuttered as anger and fear rolled
through him along with recognition. He knew that pain, that power.

  Dillon.

  He felt an answering scream inside his own chest, a cry of disbelief and rage. He reached deeper than he thought he could and summoned every ounce of power, knocking Patricia down, almost knocking her out. He looked for Dillon, wondering just how in the actual fuck this was happening.

  Ultimately, it didn’t matter. Simon would kill him personally this time and make sure it took.

  Cordelia lay on her side, unmoving. Liam sat next to her, breathing hard. Simon sent his senses out, looking for that body he knew so well.

  When he reached Pool, she was distracted. Something was happening aboard the tree; the drushka had all withdrawn to Pool’s branches. Faintly, he felt the panic of Cordelia’s astral form. He reached for her through Pool.

  “Naos is coming!”

  “The human mothers are in turmoil,” Pool sent, nearly on top of Cordelia’s thought.

  A rumble came from the tree, and a group of branches blew apart on the side. A shriek of pain came from Pool’s mind, nearly bringing Simon to his knees. He staggered that direction before he remembered Patricia.

  And Dillon.

  When he turned, Patricia was gone, along with Liam, and Dillon was still nowhere in sight. Cordelia had been right about Liam, at least. Patricia hadn’t just talked him into going with her. He sensed the two of them scrambling over the next hill. She threw a bolt of telepathy his way, and he strengthened his own brain, only blinking at her weak attack. He knew he should hit back, but Pool and Cordelia were still screaming for his help.

  And Dillon was still out there somewhere.

  Fuck.

  * * *

  “Fuck!” Dillon cried. Patricia wanted to yell at him to shut up, but she saved her breath. “How in the fuck—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she snapped. “Just keep running. She didn’t know what had fucked up her plan, but Cordelia had obviously figured out that something was wrong.

  “You didn’t kill Horace,” Dillon said. “Why the fuck not?”