by C. S. Nelson
“You didn’t have to let it get to this point, brother,” Zed growled.
“You did this to yourself,” Tawa responded, smirking at him. “You have brought dishonor to our entire species, Zed. You’ve caused our mother more stress and embarrassment than she ever deserved. You know what she said to me before I left today?”
Zed stayed silent.
“She asked me to come find you. Said that you were her biggest regret. She told me to kill you.”
“Mother didn’t say that,” Zed whispered so quietly that Annie could hardly hear him. There was so much tension between the two brothers. She could feel it as they circled around silently on the freshly fallen snow. This was going to end in the death of one of them. Neither was going to allow the other one to walk away. Annie just prayed that Zed would be the one to succeed.
“She weeps every night, brother,” Tawa continued. “She knows that there are whispers in the village of how odd you are. What an unfit mother she must have been. Twenty-five perfect children, model citizens. And then you arrive and dishonor the entire family.”
Zed leapt at his brother, his claws outstretched for his brother’s throat. Tawa braced for impact, grabbing Zed by his body and pulling him to the ground. Annie gasped as Tawa climbed on top of his smaller brother, his claws at Zed’s throat. “What do you think, human?” Tawa turned and looked at her with his evil dark eyes and horrific grin. “Should I kill your boyfriend quickly? Or have a little fun?”
Annie swallowed the lump in her throat. “Why don’t you let your brother go?” she asked quietly. She had known this was going to happen. She watched Zed, his back on the snow-covered earth. He wouldn’t even make eye contact with her. He knew that he had failed her.
Tawa laughed at her, pressing his forearm into Zed’s face, forcing it into the snow. “I don’t think you humans have a little thing called honor, considering your despicable past. This scum must have been hanging around with you for too long, because he’s lost his.”
Annie could feel her entire body trembling, but it was no longer from the cold. In fact, she no longer felt the chill in the air at all. She had never had such a long interaction with a volatile soul sucker without shooting it or running away. She was safe up in the tree house, as far as she knew. But the way the sucker looked at her made her skin crawl. She was a wounded deer, and Tawa was playing with her before taking her out. She had no weapon but a small knife, which meant a very low probability that she would be able to lethally stab the creature. But she watched as Zed’s face turned greyer than it already was. If she didn’t do anything, Zed was going to die in front of her.
“You speak of honor, yet you continue to murder a generation of humans that had nothing to do with what our ancestors did to you,” she yelled down to the soul sucker sitting on his brother in the snow.
Tawa laughed out loud, masking the sounds of his brother’s dying gurgling. “Your species came to this Earth and within a couple of hundred years destroyed the entire planet. All of you brainwashed by your own. Too stupid to realize how new your species was here, taking credit for our history, putting your disgusting machines on our soil and pumping poison into the atmosphere. You rounded up our animals, who were our friends, and slaughtered them so you could lick their bones clean. You stole their children, their milk. Slit their throats to chew on their muscles. And you dare to call us the monsters.”
“I have not made the same mistakes as my grandparents and their grandparents. I am not the people who sent us here. So why do you still want me dead?”
“You don’t understand this planet, human,” Tawa growled, pushing his arm deeper into Zed’s throat. Zed had stopped making noise beneath his brother's firm grasp. “The way it breathes, the way it lives. I let you go, I let you breed, and you’ll birth out little monsters just like yourself, who will continue to destroy the planet years from now. There is only one way to protect our home, and it’s a purge.”
Annie took a deep breath. Every survival instinct within her was telling her to stay in the tree house. But Zed was down there, dying. With every passing second it was less likely that he would wake up. “If you feel that way, let your brother go. Fight me instead.”
Tawa laughed again. “Are you looking to die today?”
“The only reason Zed continues to meet with me outside my Shield,” Annie began, watching Zed’s eyes close more and more with each passing second. She prayed that Tawa didn’t realize there were holes in the Shield and that any soul sucker could get in. But he was rather boastful. If he had figured out where Zed was actually going, Annie was sure he would have brought it up by now. “Is because he wants me to survive. If you want him to stop coming to my Shield, all you have to do is kill me. Spare your brother’s life.”
Tawa was silent for a moment, and then released his forearm from his brother’s throat. Zed gasped for life, coughing and sputtering into the snow next to him. “I admire your sacrifice,” he said, backing up in the snow, bowing his head. He was going to be honorable. If the soul suckers were anything other than vicious monsters, they were fair. “Perhaps our species has rubbed off on you a little, after all.”
Annie lifted one foot over the wall, and then the other. Before she could think to change her mind, she jumped down, her feet crunching into the snow. She rose from her crouched position, pulling her pitiful knife out of her belt and holding it in front of her. “Ready?”
Tawa grinned. “You don’t even have a gun, little girl? This doesn't seem like a fair fight.”
“I don’t need a gun,” She ran her knife over the three long scars on her arm. “You don’t want to know what I did with this knife to the sucker that gave me these.” A slight exaggeration. She remembered quite clearly running for her life from the alien that had put the scratches on her arm, but she figured if she had any chance in winning this fight she would need to intimidate Tawa into making a mistake.
“I could shift through the hundreds of faces I have of your kind.” Tawa flashed his razor teeth. “But I think I’d rather just taste your soul instead.”
He lunged at Annie, faster than any human could move, and she found herself falling to the side to avoid his sharp talons. She pushed herself up from the ground as fast as she could, the jagged ice that was hidden below the fresh snow leaving deep cuts in her palms. She turned to face him again, holding her knife out in front of her. He chuckled, beginning to circle his prey. She looked at Zed out of desperation, who was still only partially conscious on the ground, his hands wrapped around his throat.
“If you surrender now, I’ll make it quick and painless for you,” Tawa said, circling her faster and faster.
“Same goes for you,” Annie replied. She didn’t have time to regret jumping down from the tree. Only to try to keep her eyes on him as he moved impossibly fast.
He lunged at her again, but this time, Annie was ready. His arms outstretched leaving an unshielded area in the middle of his body. Annie stabbed where she thought his heart should be, and made contact. The blade made a nauseating sound as it penetrated Tawa’s skin.
He screamed, but Annie couldn’t tell if it was out of pain or anger. Blue blood began flowing out of the wound site and Tawa momentarily stood still. “Good shot,” he said, sounding as though he was out of breath. He touched his own blood for a moment, as though he had never seen it before. Maybe he hadn’t.
Annie backed up and watched him hold his chest. The blood spewed between his fingers, flowing down his stomach and legs, and pooling in the snow. “Thanks,” she said. But inside she was horrified. She had never had killed anything by hand. She had always had the convenience of a gun. The sound, the feeling, that she had felt as the knife went through his skin and then muscles, made Annie want to retch.
Tawa lunged at her again, more slowly this time. And Annie knew exactly how to react. As he swiped at her she knelt low, stabbing him in the stomach. He squealed again, and this time, she knew it was from pain. Tawa fell to the ground, crying out, clutching his sto
mach, which was bleeding even more than the initial wound had.
“I’m sorry,” was all that Annie could say as she watched the creature bleed out in front of her. She covered her face with her hands, squinting through her fingers. She felt nauseated, unsure if she could watch him die.
“Kill me,” Tawa screamed, rolling around on the ground. His entire grey body was covered with blue blood, and there was more in the snow. So much more than seemed possible to have come from just one body. “Please, kill me…”
Annie slowly walked over to the dying silver person. She knelt down in his blood and put her hand on his shoulder. “We aren’t as different as you think,” she said. He was breathing heavily, his face slowly getting paler. “You offered me a quick and painless death, and I’ll give you the same. I’m so sorry that it came to this, Tawa.”
Annie held his chin up, and slit his throat. He gurgled a couple of times before lying still in his own blood. She sat for a moment, unsure if she was going to retch or pass out. Then she dropped him back to the ground. Annie backed up, sobbing, until she reached the clean snow. Her hands were bleeding as well. His blood was splattered all over her coat and face. She felt dirty.
She wiped her own blood into the snow and cried by herself, ignoring the numbing sensation that was spreading through her body from lying on the forest floor. “Annie,” Zed’s hoarse voice called from a few feet away.
She sat up, wiping the tears away from her face. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Are you?”
Annie’s lips were trembling. “I killed your brother, Zed,” she cried. “I stabbed him and now he’s dead.”
Zed reached out his hand to her but crumpled in pain before he could reach her. “I think he broke one of my ribs,” he winced.
Annie crawled along the snow towards him, leaving red and blue handprints along the way. She grabbed Zed’s pale skin and sobbed. “What do I do?” she asked.
He was still lying on the ground. “We have to get back to safety,” he coughed. “Before my family comes looking for him. They can smell our blood from miles away.”
“How do we move?”
Zed slowly attempted to push himself off the ground. He got up onto his knees, his face grimacing in pain. “I think I’ll be able to walk,” Zed said. His hand was on his ribs as he tried to pull himself up onto his feet. He screamed out, falling back to the ground.
Annie cried out, pulling her hair. “I killed him. I’m so sorry. I killed him.”
Zed rolled over and reached out for Annie’s hand. She took it and squeezed it as hard as she could. Somehow just holding him made her calm down a little bit. Her breathing slowed. “Annie, you saved my life. You did what you had to do,” he grunted. “Never apologize for that.”
Annie continued to sob. She had taken a life. It wasn’t the same as the suckers that she had shot. That hadn’t felt quite as real. But here, she had felt the knife slide into his body. She had murdered a living thing. An evil thing, from the human perspective, but a being none-the-less. And she was covered in his blood.
“Annie,” Zed snapped. “You are never to cry again.” She looked down at him. He was on the ground, bleeding, holding his side. Yet he was calm. “You are never going to get anything done by crying. You are strong. You are amazing. I am not allowing you to cry another tear, ever again.”
Annie nodded, wiping her frozen tears away from her face. Zed was right. She was too strong to be wasting her time crying. She pulled herself closer to him and lay in the snow next to him, ignoring the chill against her body. His breath was blowing hot against her face, keeping her warm. “How do I help you?” she whispered.
His dark alien eyes opened and stared into her own. She hardly even noticed that he wasn’t in his human form, the one that she was familiar with; he still looked as good and pure to her as he always had. “You already have,” he responded.
Annie heard the crackle of broken twigs in the distance. “Zed, what do I do? They’re coming.” She sat up, looking around. But all she saw were trees and snow. There was no movement. The air that hung in the woods was unnervingly quiet.
He groaned. “Help me up,” he said.
Annie stood up, putting her hands under his arms and pulling as hard as she could. Zed bit down hard to keep himself from screaming out, giving away their position. Finally, Zed was on his feet, hunched over and grabbing at his side. “Put your arm over my shoulder,” Annie whispered. “Give me all your weight.”
Zed did as she asked, and Annie’s knees almost buckled. He must have weighed an extra hundred pounds more than he did in his human form. It didn’t make any sense to the humans, how their weight could come and go, how their bone structure could change on a whim, or how they grew hair and it seemed to retract back into their head when they changed back into their soul sucker form. But it happened in front of her eyes, too many times, to ever deny it.
“Ready?” she asked. Zed nodded, and they began to take one slow step at a time. They walked in silence for a few minutes until Tawa’s body was out of view. Annie kept looking over her shoulder to ensure no one was following them. But the noises continued. The Shield still couldn’t be seen through the trees. Eventually, Annie cleared her throat. “We’re being followed, aren’t we?” she asked.
Zed nodded slowly. “We’re being surrounded.”
Annie wanted to cry, but Zed was right in that it wouldn’t do them any good. They were in an impossible situation. But Annie was an ace. Annie had just fought off a soul sucker with nothing but a small knife. That was unheard of.
As if on cue, a couple of soul suckers stepped out from behind trees in front of them. “Your brothers?” Annie whispered.
Zed shook his head. “I don’t know them.”
“What is this?” one of the soul suckers asked. Annie was taken by surprise. The creature had a beautiful feminine voice. Annie had never heard a female speak before. “A filthy human carrying one of us? What for?”
“Probably one of their fucked up experiments,” the other one said. A deep male voice. Terrifying. Exactly what Annie was used to.
“Please,” Zed begged. Annie wasn’t expecting this strategy. “Let us be.”
“We saw a dead body back there,” the girl said. “I’m assuming it was you considering your appearance.” She motioned to the blue blood that was now frozen to Annie’s jacket.
“It was self defense,” Annie replied. “He tried to kill his brother, and then he tried to kill me.”
“I find that very hard to believe considering he is the one laying dead.”
Annie opened her mouth to threaten them, but Zed nudged her gently. “Please, leave us alone. If you do anything to this girl, I will die.”
“Well unfortunately for you, she’s the only one we want,” the male laughed. “It’s been a while since a human has been stupid enough to wander around these woods alone. And we’re starving.”
Zed sighed. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to Annie. Then he swung his leg under her own, knocking her onto her back. The air was knocked out of her lungs, and she gasped, looking up at the sky. Before she could catch her breath, Zed was on top of her. She could hear the other two howling at him, but he didn’t stop. Zed pressed his lips against hers, and Annie finally understood what happened. Staring into his eyes, Annie felt the life being drained from her body. The last thought that Annie knew she would ever have was, why did I ever trust a goddamn soul sucker?
Chapter 21: Traitor
Annie’s eyes shot open. She felt as though she had been struck in the chest with a bolt of lightening. She gasped for the air that had escaped her lungs when she had been knocked to the ground. The memories started coming back to her. She had been killed, drained of her soul, by someone who she thought was her friend. So why was she awake? Was she dead? Was this heaven?
Annie peeled herself off the snow, the entire back half of her completely numb. She was still caked in Tawa’s blood. Her head was pounding. Slowly she sat up, needing to balance hers
elf with her hands as her head spun around. Eventually the dizziness subsided and Annie pulled herself up onto her hands and knees. No, she was not in heaven. She was still on Earth.
She felt so weak. All she could hear was the beating of her own heart, thumping against the inside of her head. She slowly turned her neck, looking around. Zed was lying behind her, wheezing, blue blood dripping from his mouth. Annie scrambled backwards with all of the energy she had in her. “Get away from me!” she screamed.
But Zed didn’t move. Actually, it looked as though he was incapable of moving. He couldn’t catch his breath either, let alone pull himself off the ground. He attempted to reach it out to her. “Stay back!” she warned again. But Zed didn’t react. This wasn’t an act for him, Annie realized. He was dying.
She crawled back over cautiously and watched him. “Annie…” he whispered hoarsely.
“What?”
“I need water.”
Annie sat down, raising her eyebrows. “You tried to kill me, why should I help you?”
Zed mumbled something that she couldn’t understand.
“Huh?”
“Idiot.” He had a smile on his face, which only filled Annie with more rage. Her body tensed up, ready to attack if he turned on her. “I saved your life.”
It suddenly dawned on her. He had taken her soul so that the other two soul suckers didn’t have a chance. He had protected it from them, and then somehow given it back to her. She pulled the small water bottle out of her belt and handed it to Zed, who drank it up in half a second. “Are you okay?” she asked, slightly embarrassed that she had been so hostile to him. Why was she always so stubborn?
