The Anathema

by Rawlins, Zachary

  “Two teams that we know about,” Anastasia reminded him. “There could be more. They aren’t here for me exclusively. The Taos cartel fields twenty-two combat capable operators. If they are making a move, then it makes no sense not to hit me with everything they have.”

  “Are you going to recall Renton?” Timor asked nervously, checking his long Russian army coat, no doubt confirming the presence of the various implements of his trade. “He could be useful.”

  “No, I like him where he is,” Anastasia said thoughtfully. “If they are hitting multiple targets, I am willing to bet that Alex is one of them. But I do have to warn someone.”

  She had Brennan, the only other competent telepath she had on campus, relay the call to him. The man she wanted to talk to wasn’t a telepath, but thanks to the Etheric machinery implanted in his brain, he could download protocols at will from the network. Since he was a precognitive, he was always listening when he needed to be, because he knew that he would need to be.

  “Gaul.”

  “Anastasia. I assume I know why I’m hearing from you?”

  “Yes. I have five of them over here, two teams. I’ll take care of them. Nevertheless, I thought you should know – they are members of the Taos Cartel, and there could be fifteen or so more of them in Central. Proscribe the Taos Cartel. I officially withdraw the Black Sun’s protection.”

  “Understood. Don’t bother taking them alive.”

  Anastasia broke the connection and smiled. As if, she thought. Questions had to be answered, and it wasn’t as if Gaul and his Auditors planned on sharing information with the Black Sun when they dragged their own prisoners down to the cells.

  “This works out well,” Anastasia said, satisfied. “Alright, Timor. Take the first group as they leave the woods. And if you can leave one of them alive…”

  Timor acknowledged her with a nod, and then ducked on ahead, moving at a jog. She gave a curt command in Norwegian, the Weirs’ mother tongue, and they glided into motion, spreading out to Timor’s flanks, moving quickly through the leaves and the darkness.

  16.

  “Hello!” Alex yelled over the near deafening music, waving like a total idiot, and then shoving his hands in his pockets, so they couldn’t embarrass him any further.

  Eerie blinked, looking briefly confused.

  “Hi…”

  Alex stood in the doorway.

  “What – uh, what are you listening to?” Alex asked, over the thunderous, robotic bass.

  “The Glitch Mob,” Eerie responded seriously, after glancing at her laptop. “Do you like it?”

  Alex shrugged, at first trying to figure out if that was the artist or the song title for, then deciding it didn’t matter. Eerie put music on his mp3 player all the time without him even realizing it, since he hit shuffle every morning when he put his headphones on. Because he’d asked about it, he was pretty sure he would hear the song again eventually.

  “You won’t believe this,” Eerie said softly, from where she sat stretched across a small couch in the corner of the room, her tongue stained as blue as her hair from Pixie Stix, “but I actually tried to clean up.”

  If she had, he couldn’t imagine what it had looked like before. There were two narrow paths through the clutter that led to the small couch on one side of the room, and the unmade bed on the other. The rest of the floor was covered in a layer of software cases, DVDs, and articles of discarded clothing. The desk in the corner groaned under the weight of several different computers and displays, and the wall behind it was at rat’s nest of cords and black boxes with green blinking lights. The monitor's glow provided the room's primary source of lighting.

  “Thanks for inviting me,” Alex said lamely, shrugging out of his sweatshirt and then casting about for a place to put it, while she changed something on her computer that turned the sound down. He settled for tossing it on the bed, and then moved to sit down next to it.

  “No,” Eerie said, holding out her hands. “Come here, silly.”

  “O-okay,” Alex stammered, picking his way careful across the floor littered with things that looked like they might break if he stepped on one of them, stepping over the pile of discarded candy wrappers that surrounded the couch. Eerie waited for him, her expression blank and ambiguous.

  She lay sideways across the cushions, with her head on one arm of the couch and her legs thrown across the other, her shoe dangling from one foot. She wore striped stockings that ran almost all the way to her wrinkled blue skirt, with only a sliver of white skin showing between. The tank-top she wore was blue, with the phrase ‘Fever Ray’ printed across it, which he assumed was a band. One of the her sleeves drooped down her arm, revealing her round, unblemished shoulder. Alex stopped at the edge of the couch, but she reached up and pulled him down onto the couch beside her, tangled up with her in the small space. Alex was so surprised and satisfied that he was afraid to say anything, for fear of messing the situation up somehow.

  “Alex, could you move your arm a little bit?” Eerie asked, red-faced. “You are crushing my chest.”

  “Sorry!” Alex said, straightening up as a reflex, almost falling off his precarious perch on the edge of the couch before she grabbed him and pulled him close again. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to – I didn’t know where my hands were…”

  “It’s okay,” Eerie said softly. “You’re allowed to touch. Just not crush, that’s all.”

  “Oh,” Alex said, feeling his cheeks burn. “That’s, uh… I thought maybe you were mad at me.”

  “Because you are being all cozy with Emily in class?” Eerie asked, her voice low and musical. “Or because you kissed me and then you didn’t talk to me again afterwards?”

  “Well, both, I guess,” Alex said, rolling on to his side so that his head was facing hers, almost uncomfortably close. He could feel the air move when she breathed. “I feel bad about all of it, so I’m pretty sure it couldn’t have made you feel good.”

  “No, it didn’t, really,” Eerie admitted. “But I didn’t bring you here to fight.”

  “No?” Alex couldn’t keep his disbelief off his face. “Look, I need you to know, Emily is only my friend, whatever she thinks. I... I like you, Eerie.”

  “That is good,” Eerie said, putting her finger to his lips. “Now show me how much.”

  He tried. There was a long kiss, sometimes deep, sometimes with only their lips touching while Alex struggled to catch his breath. Eerie ran her fingertips under his shirt and down his spine, and it tingled and made him arch his back, pressing himself urgently against her. She kissed him again, pushing her small tongue into his mouth; the taste of blue-raspberry artificial flavoring, and seconds later a wave of euphoria, of disarming excitement and sensation across the broad palette of his senses, pleasure scrawled in neon letters on the walls of his mind. Eerie opened her eyes, and they were close enough that he could see his own reflection there, his own dazed and hungry face. For once, he didn’t have to wonder what she saw. The world spun and danced pleasantly as he lay beside Eerie, pressed together on the small space of the couch.

  “Wow. That’s just…”

  Eerie laughed, a sound like small glass bells breaking.

  “That is how you make me feel,” she said, sounding satisfied. “That is how I know I like you. You can feel it now, too, can’t you?”

  “I can,” he admitted, “but I’m not sure what to make of it. It isn’t like before, in San Francisco.”

  “We aren’t like before,” Eerie said firmly. “You aren’t.”

  Alex lay there, watching little multicolored motes of light consume the ceiling, filling his vision with self-devouring, brilliant fractals. He kissed her neck, and her sweat tasted like honey and the ocean, and her skin smelled of sandalwood. When he touched her thighs, her tights crackled with static electricity.

  “Once I am back from field study, will you take me dancing again?” Eerie asked, clinging to him.

  “Sure,” he said easily. He would have agreed to anything
she asked.

  “But this time you have to dance,” she ordered, her eyes sparkling playfully.

  “How could I ignore you, Eerie?” He spoke softly, feeling as if the couch were floating on the surface of a gently rocking ocean, as if his hand was trailing along in blood-warm water beside them. “What is wrong with me?”

  He wondered if the music was still playing. He felt like it was, but somehow he couldn’t be certain. Eerie sat up, brushing her hair back from her face and looking at him with obvious concern.

  “Do you feel better now?”

  Alex was about to be confused, about to ask what she meant, when he realized that he did feel better. The heaviness, the confusion, the fog that had been following him for days, so ubiquitous that he had stopped even noticing it, was gone as it quickly as it had come. His head was brilliantly, marvelously clear, washed clean by the euphoria of their contact.

  “Holy shit! This is so weird. I must have been half-asleep for days. How could I have not seen it?”

  “You didn’t want to,” Eerie said, shrugging, and then laying her head down on his chest. “I don’t blame you. She’s pretty, and you feel guilty every time you see her. That’s okay, but it makes you stupid and easy.”

  He should have known. He did know. Of course. How could it have been any other way? Alex remembered Emily holding his hand under the dinner table and felt a little queasy. However, on Eerie’s couch, her head tucked comfortably beneath his chin, her chest moving against his when she breathed, there was no possibility of anger, and there was no implied criticism. He felt shame, but that was entirely his own. Alex realized with startling clarity that the only person he had been failing was himself.

  “Oh, God,” he said dully, his lips numb. “Eerie… I told them that I would go on vacation to Anastasia’s place over the break. With Emily.”

  “Yeah, I know. Margot told me,” Eerie said, with an unconvincing shrug that he could feel more than he could see. “That’s okay. I have to go do field study in Central anyway, for the whole break. We wouldn’t be able to hang out anyway, even if you stayed. Besides, I trust you…”

  “Why?”

  He asked the question before he thought about it, and then it hung there, out in the air, in the space that he had suddenly created between them.

  “Because I don’t think that I trust myself,” Alex continued hurriedly. “I don’t know even know why I’ve done the things I’ve done recently, and now I find out that maybe they weren’t even my ideas to begin with. What if Emily… What if things get all weird again?”

  “It isn’t like that,” Eerie said quietly. “Emily gave you a little nudge, that’s all. She made it easier for you to do what you already wanted to. She is not enough of an empath to make you do something that is actually against your will. Now that you know what she was doing, you should be able to avoid it in the future.”

  “Really?” Alex buried his face in her hair. “So, I am an asshole.”

  “Sometimes,” Eerie said, her lips brushing his neck. “I like you anyway.”

  “Why would Emily try and manipulate my emotions this way? She had to know I’d find out eventually.”

  Alex had no idea why he felt compelled to ask the question. Eerie shrugged in response.

  “Rebecca might be able to tell you exactly what happened, you should ask her,” Eerie suggested. “Alex is interesting. I’m not the only one who thinks so.”

  “But what do they want?” Alex asked, puzzled, his hands resting comfortably on the flat of Eerie’s back, warm skin through a thin layer of cotton. “Why interfere with… you know. This. Us.”

  “You keep talking that way, and I’m going to get ideas,” Eerie said, smiling.

  That shut Alex right up.

  “They all want you for their own reasons,” Eerie said mischievously, levering herself upright so she was sitting across his lap. “I’m not that different, I guess.”

  “I don’t understand,” Alex said softly, looking at the blue-haired girl, surrounded by a corona of soft, honey-colored light, everything gone thick, sweet, and slow. He reached for her without thinking and she melted into him, into his arms as naturally as if she had always been there. “I don’t understand anything.”

  “Stop trying,” Eerie suggested, kissing him, nibbling on his lip.

  They stayed like that for a while, pressed together on the couch, their hands and lips exploring each other tentatively. Eerie smiled at him, and she looked soft and lovely in the flickering orange light…

  Orange light?

  Alex sat up slightly, so that he could look out the bedroom window that had also caught Eerie’s attention. It took him a little while to processing what he was seeing.

  “Ah, Eerie? This may sound dumb, but is Anastasia’s house on fire?”

  * * *

  “Brennan?”

  “Yes, milady?”

  “Is Renton still occupied?”

  “Yes, milady. He is currently engaged in combat near the dormitory buildings. There are currently three separate engagements happening across campus that we are aware of, and I am afraid he is at the epicenter of the largest. Shall I send reinforcements?”

  “I doubt he needs the help. Warn me if he comes back this way. And get Katya on the channel for me.”

  It took a moment for Brennan to manage the switchover, with another delay while he relayed the instructions. Brennan was not half the telepath that Renton was, but she was going to have get used to doing without his prodigious talents in the near future. Such a shame, she thought, clucking her tongue. What a waste.

  Anastasia smoothed the billowing skirts of her dress carefully before she sat down, perched on a moderately level rock, careful not to stain or tear the fabric. She had worn the white dress because she knew Timor liked it, but now she rather wished that she had not. She had a good view from here, at the edge of the trees, so that she could watch Timor work under the moonlight. It wasn’t often, after all, that one had the opportunity to see a combat precognitive in action. Given the rare nature of their abilities, precognitives worked almost exclusively in support pools, but Timor was an exception. A Class C Operator, Timor had enough precognitive ability to see a bare second or two into the future. That was surely the reason that his parents had tithed him to the Black Sun, and that Anastasia’s father had in turn pawned Timor off on her. Fortunately, Anastasia saw value in what other people discarded. In combat, after all, a single second was an eternity, and Timor had learned to use his foreknowledge ruthlessly. She had helped him become deadly long before anyone had realized their mistake in casting him aside.

  She was not overly worried about the attack itself. She had already warned Brennan, Svetlana had spirited away the staff, and both the Black Sun’s critical documents and her own wardrobe were safely locked away in fireproof safes. Still, Anastasia had to admit that she hadn’t expected anything quite as uncouth or mundane as the Molotov cocktail they threw at the roof.

  “Oh, no,” she said, burying her head in her hands. “All my things…”

  “Milady?”

  “Yes, Brennan?”

  “Katya just reported in. She’s confirmed the secondary group in your area. They are attempting to establish a sniper’s nest. Do you want her to take care of it?”

  “Yes. And warn Timor.”

  “Of course, milady.”

  The first three assassins fanned out, clearly waiting for the fire to flush their target out of the burning building. One of them was probably a pyrokine, judging from how fast the fire spread throughout the structure. They had to spread out rather far in order to cover all three sides of the building, while the other group set up on the ridge above the house; a spotter with a scope and a sniper armed with what appeared to be a small cannon. With limited personnel, it wasn’t the worst setup Anastasia could imagine, but she still felt a bit insulted. If they wanted to attack the future head of the Black Sun, they should have thrown everything they had into it. Splitting up their forces and attacking multi
ple targets across the Academy was either extraordinarily foolish, or a sign that the attack was little more than a feint.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Timor,” she said, eyeing the flames on the roof nervously. “Will you please hurry about it?”

  Timor was faster getting into position than his sister was, probably because he had the dogs flanking him, so he could afford to be more confident. Katya was cautious by nature and the situation was likely to make her more so. That limited Timor’s options, as he had to avoid the sniper’s field of fire. In addition, Katya had to walk up the hill, a burden for which Anastasia felt a certain amount of sympathy.

  Timor hopped the fence between the staff guesthouse adjoining her own in one fluid motion, utterly casual, without a hint of tension in his movements. When he moved on, half-crouched, he had a mammoth black CZ .45 with a diminutive silencer held in both hands, held away from his body, pointed at the ground. Timor moved with utter self-assurance, and he never looked at the ground in front of him. She knew from experience that he didn’t have to. There was nothing there that could surprise him.

  Timor and Katya, she mused, her cousins that no one had wanted, turned into such lovely and terrible flowers under her watch. Anastasia’s father had never really thought of them as anything other than an obligation, and he treated them accordingly. She had approached them early. They’d had a little trouble putting confidence in the plans and ambitions of a nine-year-old, but they’d come around quickly once they realized what she was capable of, and they had been among her most faithful followers since. They were both Class C Operators, and therefore chronically underestimated, frequently to their advantage. Katya was a transporter who could move only ounces, far less than her own weight, and Timor a precognitive who could barely see into the future. The Black Sun as a whole had not seen much value in either. Anastasia had seen tremendous potential in both of them, and in the years since her investment in the siblings had paid her back many times over.

  Katya was erratic, vampy, obsessed with ridiculous gore films, and lethal within ten meters. Timor was polite, handsome, tragically her cousin and even more tragically gay, but equally as deadly in his own, slightly indirect way. Katya killed only on command, without passion or remorse. Timor killed effortlessly whenever he felt it necessary, preferring combat that didn’t upset his appearance. Both of them were devoted directly to Anastasia, rather than the Black Sun.