Rapture

by Kameron Hurley

“If they helped make the world, can’t they still do it? Help… I don’t know… make it better or something?”

  Safiyah shrugged. “They have been rebuilt and repurposed and renewed so many times… What all these parts and pieces originally did, no one is certain. Even more important, it’s quite possible that none of the organic circuitry here is original. It’s all been changed many times. And unless someone has a record of what it was supposed to be like… well, we can all breathe well enough.”

  Nyx stared up at the great guts of the beast.

  “Come now,” Safiyah said. “Let’s build a proper glamour.” She raised her hands, and Nyx felt a wave of nausea. Next to her, she saw Khatijah’s image waver, then bleed into the long, leggy form of one of the Aadhya. Her features, coloring, clothing—it was all different, and so much like Shani that Nyx had to resist the urge to draw her blade again. She likely looked the same. When Nyx looked back at Safiyah, the magician, too, had taken on the guise of an Aadhya. She was, admittedly, more conservatively dressed than either of them, in a short red tunic and burnous in addition to her turban.

  Safiyah smiled. “Must be a new thing for you two, running off into the desert to save men instead of kill him.”

  “We have to find him first,” Nyx said. “Khat? Ideas?”

  “I guess we go deeper into the hold, and find out how many people we’re dealing with here.”

  “And hopefully who,” Nyx said. She glanced back at Safiyah. “You can really hold this glamour the whole time?”

  “As long as you like.”

  Khatijah led, and Nyx took the rear, protecting Safiyah’s back in case someone broke her calm. Though honestly, the way things were going Nyx was beginning to think that few things would do that.

  Nyx heard voices ahead, and fought the urge to pull a weapon. She needed to walk carefully, here. Smoothly. Like she belonged.

  Khatijah rounded a corner. The three of them passed into a massive room. It appeared to be an eating or gathering hall. There were over a hundred men there, eating and talking in loud voices.

  Khatijah glanced back at Nyx. Nyx urged her on, gesturing to what looked like another door on the far side of the hall. The men here were all tall and lanky desert men, with the same reddish skin and dark hair as Shani and her sisters. As long as no one tried to have an extended conversation with them, they should be able to pass through.

  Nyx was four steps into the hall before she realized there had been no men among the people Shani brought with her. She stopped cold.

  Three men at the end of a table nearest to Khatijah yelled something at her. They stood. A few more heads turned. The men began gesturing at Khatijah angrily.

  “Safiyah,” Nyx said. “Do men and women generally hang out a lot among the Aadhya?”

  “Yes,” Safiyah said. “The women generally do all the fighting, though, and they own the men. So I’m not sure why these are here.”

  The men were getting angrier.

  Khatijah tried to bluff her way forward. Kept walking. Nyx held her head a little higher. Her hands itched for a blade.

  One of the men grabbed Khatijah’s wrist.

  She broke it neatly.

  That was enough to incite the others.

  Twenty or thirty men swamped them at once. Nyx pulled her blade. Safiyah squawked and jumped back the way they had come. Nyx lost sight of her. Nyx cut down the first man who got within reach of her blade and sliced back another one.

  Two more came up from behind. She kicked back. Broke someone’s knee. She pulled a dagger. Sliced two more men open. Her hands were slick with blood. She heard Khatijah curse. The men kept coming. A swarm of them, fodder for an endless war…

  Like her brothers. Like her squad. Like Eshe.

  Like her.

  She was so bloody fucking tired. There was no retirement for bel dames, not really. There was no soft, gentle end. No fading away. Just this, always this. Cutting down wave after wave of men. Burying boys in the desert. Death in some black place, alone… like Eshe’s body—a crackling husk in some godfucked desert.

  Eshe. She didn’t know whether she wanted to vomit or weep. Neither would do much good. Neither changed anything.

  Another man swung a club at her. Nyx countered. Batted it away. Came in with a palm to his nose. The weapon came around again. Nyx pivoted left, not away from the blow but into it. The weapon came crashing down on her skull. Blackness flashed before her vision. Crashing light.

  Then, blessed darkness.

  37.

  Inaya walked further down the hall, dressed in the crimson robe and black cowl of one of God’s Angels. She passed more interrogation rooms, and… other rooms. The Angel who interrogated her told her he didn’t have to torture her. But from the look of the mangled bodies in these rooms, there were many others they saw fit to torture.

  She kept moving, searching for a way out. Surely there was more than one way out?

  Finally, she came to the end of the hall, and an arched entry. She hesitated. Beyond the doorway was a wide reception room. She stepped through. Turned the corner.

  Three figures, dressed as God’s Angels, stood huddled around a fourth person. From the look of the clothing, it was another Angel.

  Beyond them, Inaya could see yet another door, half-open—and beyond that—daylight.

  She took in the measure of the chamber. It was a stark white room with a large domed ceiling. Lockers ran along the full length of it. She wondered if this was the entrance for the Angels.

  She closed her eyes and tested her ability to shift. Her skin rippled. She tried to let go, to bleed into the floor, but once again, she hit some kind of barrier. A—nothingness. Held her head high. How had she seen them walk? She gripped her hands together in front of her, so her long sleeves hid her arms, and began to walk purposefully across the room.

  As she neared, she could make out the voices.

  “You deserve to die here for what you’ve done,” one of them said. “If you had broken her we would not be in this mess.”

  “We should have had her case transferred a month ago,” another said.

  “The letters should have made her crumble, with the right delivery and persuasion. Are you so unskilled that you cannot release a confession from a weak-minded woman?”

  Inaya glimpsed the group from the corner of her eyes. The Angel on the floor was unmistakably the one who had interrogated her these many long weeks. No, months, from what they were saying. Months. An entire season, perhaps?

  “You do not understand,” her interrogator said. “I could not condemn an innocent woman. How many times—”

  “Fool! None of them are innocent. No one brought to this place is innocent. Don’t argue innocence. Not here before God’s fist.”

  “I humbly request—”

  “Leave him incarcerated here with his charges. He made this mess. He can soak in it.”

  “No, please. I am still useful. You must understand!”

  Two of the Angels picked up her interrogator and hauled him back the way she had come.

  Inaya quickened her pace until she was on the other side of the room. Her fingers met the door. She turned the handle. It opened.

  A burst of cool, humid air met her face. She gasped. In her hurry, she nearly stumbled over her robe. She walked out into the rainy afternoon, and was struck by how… normal everything looked. There were a few outbuildings here, but for the most part, they were surrounded by jungle. She would need to wait to shift before she traveled, or hijack one of the bakkies. If they were indeed very far from a major city, there would be no proper transit station.

  Inaya heard the door open behind her, and scurried forward to a nearby bakkie barn. She crouched behind a parked bakkie.

  “The entire facility is a loss,” one of the Angels said. “I want it shut down until the emergency is over.”

  “What about the girl?”

  “We need to bring her to a senior Arch Angel. We’ll have her transferred. The records are a mess. I’d
have to go through every cell to find her. Then we’d have to transport her ourselves. I’m not doing that without the proper help. Let’s come back with a relocation team.”

  “And what of Pieter?”

  “Let him die here. I care nothing for weak-willed men. Those drugs will last for three days. He’ll be dead by then.”

  Inaya heard them get into a bakkie. Heard it cough and sputter away.

  She pressed her back against the outbuilding. Pieter. Her interrogator. He had a name. Of course he had a name. But in those long, terrible sessions she did not see him as a person. Just as he did not see her as one.

  It would be hours more before she could shift. She settled down and waited. Sometimes waiting was the most difficult thing. She had waited many months. Already she was tired from all the walking, and desperately hungry. Surely there was more food inside?

  Inaya crept back to the door. Her hand hesitated again at the handle.

  Don’t be a fool, she thought. She pulled her hand away. She would wait until she could shift.

  While she waited, she tried to doze, but she could not rid her mind of Pieter, the Angel. He was going to starve in there, the way he had left her to starve.

  Goddammit, she thought.

  She prayed.

  Dusk. She woke to thirst… and something more.

  Inaya’s body felt suddenly lighter, her mind, clearer, as if a curtain had been pulled away from her mind. She struggled to her feet.

  And let go.

  She surrendered to the delightful freedom of changing forms. She burst into a soft, wispy cloud, then yanked herself back and rebuilt her form into that of a large sand cat, then a tremendous black beetle. And finally, a wispy green mist—the fastest way to get back in.

  She descended back to the compound, and slid under the door. She raced to the cells where the other shifters were kept. She coded her blood to match that of the dead Angel whose clothing she had stolen, and released them all.

  In the last cell, as it went from opaque to transparent, she recognized Pieter.

  He stood as the filter changed, and stared out at her—or, the misty wraith she had become.

  “I knew it,” he said.

  Would he murder all the shifters she had just released? Would she endanger them by releasing him?

  He came to the edge of the filter. For a long time, they regarded one another.

  Inaya made her decision.

  38.

  Nyx came to lying on her side. Went from blissful black nothingness to painful muzzy-headedness in the space of a breath. Tiny insects crawled across her face. She jerked upright. Her wrists were bound, so she wiped the bugs away on her shoulder. Turned out they were ants. Some kind of biting ants, and they bit hard. She put her face between her knees and scrubbed it clean.

  Sometime during the rubbing, she heard a low babble of voices. Then a grunt. It rose to a ragged scream. Then nothing. The sound was coming from beyond the door. She slid back down onto her side, and tried to peer underneath the door. She saw some kind of holding room. There were other doors across the dusty floor. More prisoners? But the air smelled funny for a cell, and a closer inspection of the patterns on the walls told her this had been a cellar long before it was a cell. A cellar meant she was underneath Bomani. Not a great place to be, for her. But a great place to muffle screams. She wondered if Ahmed would have approved of the space.

  There were a few pairs of sandaled feet surrounding the table, but from the crack beneath the door, she couldn’t see who or what was on it. One of the desert women?

  She heard the same scream again, high-pitched, biting. Like somebody taking a knife in the gut. There was some talking again, this time in some muddy language she didn’t understand. There was a brief moment of silence. Then a soft, strangely familiar voice said, in Nasheenian, “All they seek is the location of your sisters. We know there are more of you outside. How many?”

  Silence.

  Nyx kicked herself closer to the door. She shoved her face right into the spongy floor, mashed her nose against the door. That was a voice she knew. A voice she had not expected to hear again. And sure as hell not out here.

  The feet moved around a bit. Nyx heard a scraping and chittering sound. Sharp intake of breath. Then full-throated screaming. Not just once this time, but over and over again, like water running over stones.

  Nyx pushed against the door to gain some leverage. Stood on shaky feet. Her ribs were sore, and her face felt like it’d been mashed with a shovel. She wondered how long they’d beaten her before throwing her in this cell. She tried to find some kind of key hole or window, but there was nothing.

  The screaming stopped.

  The muttering started again. She heard someone moving closer to her cell door.

  Nyx stepped deeper into the cell. There were at least four of them out there, plus the translator, and they would be armed. But there was nothing she could use as a weapon in here—not a rock or stick or bug—just dirt. They had stripped her down well for non-Nasheenians, and even her sandals were missing. About the only thing she had left were the needles in her hair. But with her hands tied behind her, they were impossible to reach.

  The door opened.

  A pale man wearing a bloody apron beckoned her forward with two fingers, as if she were a dog.

  Nyx bared her teeth.

  He sighed, and called in the others. But Nyx wasn’t looking at them. She was staring behind them, to the translator. The familiar voice.

  The men took her by the arms and hauled her out. She finally got a clear look at the translator, and grinned. Then laughed. The laugh seemed to shake the men. They halted. She realized she was laughing over the bloody, mutilated corpse of Khatijah, staked out on the table like some magician’s specimen.

  The translator finally met her gaze, but his face betrayed nothing. In that moment, when he saw her and knew her and said nothing, when not a muscle in his face twitched, when the only hint of recognition she noted was the way he squeezed his right hand into a fist—in that moment she knew this was very, very serious. She knew this was not just another routine interrogation where she would walk out with most of her limbs intact. Because if he pretended not to know her, it meant he feared these men and their power more than he feared her. And that was a scary fucking thing.

  The pale men blathered on about something.

  Rhys translated. “These men would like to know if you would join your friend or if you will cooperate and spare yourself her fate.”

  “Tell them she’s not my friend,” Nyx said.

  “Indeed. I told them that already, but you can see they remain unconvinced.”

  She shrugged. “You do what you have to do, then.”

  He cleared his throat. Gestured to the men, and said something in their language. She half wished it was Ahmed who was caught along with her so he could translate what Rhys was actually saying. But if it’d been Ahmed, it would be him dead on the slab now, and nothing would be any different.

  One of the men took a giant hook from the table and chunked it into Khatijah’s torso. He hauled the corpse off the slab. It thumped to the floor. Just so much meat now. She had to admit the fact that Khatijah had held tight to the end, even on this botched job. Khat had been a proper bel dame. The way they were supposed to be. And then you threw the fight, Nyx thought. And you got her killed. You got all of them killed. This is your doing.

  Another man shoved Nyx toward the slab.

  “What, they don’t buy me dinner first?” Nyx said.

  “I’m afraid not,” Rhys said. “This isn’t Nasheen.”

  “In Nasheen, I’d fuck you first,” Nyx said. And this time, she meant it.

  “Promises,” Rhys said. He boldly met her gaze. It was the first time she could remember him looking her in the face when she brought up anything to do with fucking.

  Despite the circumstances, and the blood, and the body, and the mumbling men, she realized she had missed him. Missed him more than she had any right to m
iss him. He’s lived this long without me around, she thought. Now that I’m here, how much longer does he have? She glanced over at Khatijah’s corpse. The bodies were piling up. She had to get away from him.

  One of the men shoved her again. She rounded on him, teeth bared. There was more than one way to claw your way out of a hole.

  The man smashed her in the face with the butt of his gun. She was fast enough to turn away as he did it, and avoided a broken nose. The butt struck her jaw. Black, hot pain seared her vision. She tasted blood.

  They nattered on. She watched the one nearest Rhys drag Khatijah’s mutilated body away and pile it up near the door with a wet, fleshy sound.

  “They’re asking one last time if you want to share the location of your desert friends. They know you didn’t come alone. They want to know what you’re here to do,” Rhys said. “You can understand their… concern.”

  “I understand that they’re already illegally squatting here,” Nyx said. “They’ve got no more claim on it than I do.”

  “What are you here for, Nyx?”

  “They really going to let me go if I say?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Then what’s the point?”

  “They would have me tell you that you might live.”

  “We both know otherwise though, don’t we?”

  He nodded.

  She shrugged. “Then let them do their worst.”

  Rhys sighed, and spoke to the men in their language. She was hoping it was about what she said, but he rambled on for a good long time—long enough to start making her nervous.

  The men argued. They weren’t happy with whatever he was saying. But Rhys kept talking in that soft, calming way he did. Eventually, they relented.

  Rhys said, “They’ve agreed to give you a few hours with the body of your friend. To… think things over. I told them it would be very effective, since Nasheenians have an aversion to blood.”

  “You said that, did you?”

  “They’re from very far away,” he said. He gestured to the men.

  One of them grabbed the hook and chunked it into Khatijah’s body. Hauled it back into the cell. The others escorted Nyx inside with it.