Prince in the Tower

by Stephan Morse

  “It’s still too much,” Muni added.

  Daniel waved his arms. Muni froze in her preening and watched the Hunter with an unwavering gaze. He ignored her and went back to pacing. “We can’t gut him. You tried that with Yoodinn, and then what happened?” Daniel spoke a name that didn’t sound right. He stretched it out and added an odd accent in the middle.

  The raven-haired woman didn’t respond and watched for signs of aggression.

  “We have to give him an outlet. It’s like the aggression, the fighting. I need to hunt monsters. He needs to establish dominance over a region. It’s instinct. We have to use that desire to cripple him.”

  She picked at feathers woven into braids and bounced a leg.

  Daniel pointed at me. “You have your own store of energy, right? I mean, we’ve talked about it, but I need to make sure. This whole plan relies on you being able to use yourself as a fuel source. We can’t fuck that part up, man, we just can’t.”

  I nodded.

  “And you can get more from the elements around you, but doing so alerts Hunters like myself. We can feel it, and I don’t know what your limits are, but too much would probably alert the entire sector.”

  They were right. The gifts of the elements, fire, air, earth, water, were mine to use. Burning my own energy simply made me tired, but borrowing from the world would cause other problems.

  Nature reacted poorly to pulling on its powers. Pulling on wind became a storm. Pulling on earth became a quake. Pulling on fire, well, the idea was clear enough. It was worse than simply alerting Hunters like Daniel. Natural disasters would follow.

  “And doing that, now? It would be a death sentence. It’d be exactly what the Council needs to do a second Purge. Public, brutal.” His pacing made me nervous. “Blood tests. DNA. Camera phones? The goddamn internet? It would turn into a modern-day witch hunt and those fucking elves might unmake us all. It’s bad enough there’s conspiracy nuts we have to quash every other month. Seeing you over a city, now? At best families would tear themselves apart and we would be at war with the other sectors.”

  “I know, Crummy.” I swallowed. “I know.”

  Muni had given me a trinket to hide my form from others. It helped them forget when I did break free and wing over a chunk of landscape. By moving around the country, chasing leads from Daniel, it kept the sightings as flukes. People ignored flukes.

  “All those tasks I’ve sent you on. Those ones you didn’t like.” He pointed at me and I fought back a growl. “The people you’ve brought back. Those are positive examples, man. Those are showing you help keep the peace. We need that. But if you forget all about those goals, those missions and simply act on instinct.” He shook his head. “When you go under, you’ll need a limiter to prevent that.”

  “Even if it’s a lie we make up for you, a bit of past that was never right,” Muni added.

  We’d circled around this plan for months. Daniel had probably been thinking about it seconds after Muni’s existence became apparent. I couldn’t imagine what that was like, coming into work one day and finding out a creature capable of altering memory had simply inserted herself into the Western Sector organization.

  “So, we let you think those connections you have, the cords you feel tying you to claimed objects, is the sole source of your power. But eventually you’ll realize that it makes no sense. Eventually you’ll realize that it’s all you. Your power. You taking it from the world.”

  “And then?”

  “And then, I hope you’re fighting something worth going public for, because there’ll be no going back, man, not for you, or any of us.”

  Muni snorted.

  “They’d find you eventually.”

  “They haven’t yet,” she responded.

  The memory shattered into black feathers. I gasped heavily and found myself sitting on the ground with my face cupped in my hands. My life was a lie. I’d participated in deceiving myself because of the worst-case scenarios Daniel was afraid of.

  “Jay!” Stacy yelled in my face.

  My arms moved but fell limply to either side. I didn’t have the focus to fight back. She reared her arm back, ready to slap the shit out of me.

  “We’ve got a few rations from the last food drop.”

  My stomach growled. “Food sounds good,” I said. It’d been almost a full day since eating anything. Shapeshifting in that huge form had drained me, then hiking through the woods with a grumbly and narrow focused Sector agent hadn’t helped.

  Everything, I hoped, would feel better after a meal.

  17

  Whole Opening

  They’d set up a campfire and were sharing about each other. That was insanely against my nature. Both the fire out in public with so many prying eyes, and the whole opening myself up to others. Being friendly went against my nature.

  The latest shock to my mind had left me numb. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else. Arms a stranger’s. When the world went away, it took me a full second to realize I’d simply blinked and forgotten to open my eyes afterward.

  “That sea god is a lot bigger than the reports,” Agent Brand said. She wore a loose shirt a few sizes too big. Her skin was smudged with ash still, despite her efforts to rinse off in the stream.

  “Sea god?” Leo asked. He had fewer issues now the ladies had decided to wear shirts.

  It ruined part of my day, but so be it. Now wasn’t really a good time to investigate the single life on a crowded island. Besides, other creatures were stirring.

  “Names for those creatures are almost pointless. A lot were once revered as Gods before they were captured or killed during the initial Purge. Though”—Agent Brand stared up at the darkening sky for a moment in consideration—“it’s different back in the Eastern sectors.”

  “Is that where you’re from?”

  “Not entirely,” she said with a downright wicked looking smile. It belonged on a sixty-year-old spinster who plotted people’s deaths, not a teenager.

  Agent Brand was a confusing person. She felt younger than the first time we’d run into each other in the alley. Perhaps dying somehow cost her years. Wouldn’t women kill for that sort of power? I’d known people who tried to become vampires simply for a chance at eternity.

  “There are cities out there. Cities where one oh ones rule. In what used to be China, before it collapsed, there’s a city of eternal night. For two thousand years the sun has never shone once. Never.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Once.” She cast her eyes down as lips tightened. “The city is a prison. There are creatures there that would horrify you to learn of. But it’s half a world away and they can’t leave.”

  “A prison?” Leo asked. He was almost cute in his inquisitiveness.

  I’d been told the tale of this city by Daniel once before. In it, was said to be a woman so old she’d met Jesus. Daniel claimed she was a spider, and had cast a web over the city; inside she fed on the souls of those unlucky enough to come to her for protection.

  So, we’d both decided not to venture there. I wasn’t sure there was enough fire in the world to deal with a two-thousand-year-old spider.

  “Yes. Like Atlas, but different. A different cage, where prisoners are trapped with a different monster.”

  He looked around and shuddered.

  Leo was the youngest of us all. He’d dealt with the stray races which gathered at Bottom Pit, but none of them were terrifying monsters. Worrying perhaps. A race of warriors with the constant urge to beat each other senseless would throw humans off.

  But cannibals who ate their own mothers, like the fang toothed squid children I’d personally burned to a crisp, hadn’t made it to his home. He was protected from the worst monsters. He didn’t exist in that version of the world.

  I hadn’t either, not really. Not for years. Even being a collections agent for Julianne was practically being a girl scout. How had Leo put it? I wasn’t in here for selling cookies.

  Gods help me. I
t was so much worse.

  “How much do you know about Atlas?” Agent Brand asked the young man.

  He shook his head.

  “That people get sent here when they attack another race,” I answered.

  “How about that no dead bodies ever come back? How about that no one can really remember what happens if they’re outside the walls? Even pack bonds get shattered then blocked. It’s hell for wolves.”

  “But packs were together in the yard?” Leo asked with a wince.

  Stacy leaned against the muscled woman. This third woman, whose name I still didn’t know, stayed rigid and refused to relax despite Stacy’s need for contact. They were apparently really close and managed to position themselves back to back.

  “Were they? Or did they just stand together and pretend? Take it from me, they’re not really in packs. They’re like dogs finding a more comfortable place but they’re not connected like we’re used to.”

  A wolf’s inborn desire for connections must be tough. To be here, on Atlas, and completely isolated from their old pack bonds? That was probably a bit worse than my first few days after landing in the train yard.

  “Sounds terrible,” Leo responded.

  Then there was him. Away from everyone he’d ever known, except for me; the murderous uncle who stayed on the fringes of his family. How out of place must he feel?

  “We had a few members who came back from Atlas, in our pack. They don’t talk about it. They’re broken and terrified of returning here. But I never knew what happened to them, not exactly. What happens in Atlas, stays in Atlas,” Stacy offered.

  “Thomas didn’t seem to know.”

  “Thomas is an idiot. Julianne had all the—” she paused and tightened her mouth a moment. The woman she leaned against turned slightly and Stacy shook off the moment of funk. “She had all the brains.”

  I nodded.

  “It’s easy to explain. I mean, look around. They just let one oh ones wander around without giving two shits,” Agent Brand added.

  “What’s a one oh one?” Leo asked.

  I sighed. The boy was almost downright ignorant. He’d been out here for almost a month and knew enough to survive and fight, but when it came to the reasons behind problems, he hadn’t learned anything.

  So, I answered this time. “It’s someone who doesn’t fit into the four major races. Western Sector trains every law enforcement personnel to call for help should something exhibit signs of being remotely outside the norm. It’s their first lesson upon reaching the big leagues.”

  “That makes no sense. The news says the Purge is over. I thought”—he grimaced—“the monsters were dead.”

  I snorted.

  “The news says a lot of things,” Agent Brand piped up. “I’m sure giant serpents off the coast of one of the world’s biggest prisons won’t make it to the seven o’clock.”

  Stacy laughed with tight muscles. She pointed at me and Brand. “That’d go over well. About as well as a winged dinosaur and a red space chicken. Or a—what do you call it—a tribe of sons of the mountain? Whatever those are.”

  “He’s no Ogray,” the other woman said. “He’s barely a half breed.”

  Leo’s teeth ground. He glanced at me, then turned his head away sharply. The past washed over me, arguing with Roy and Tal. Leo’s mother had been human. A thin woman who was a tall bean pole. She could have turned sideways and vanished.

  She’d died giving birth to Leo. Cast and Pol were from another mother. She died too.

  I huffed and lamented my recovered memories. Knowing the past had benefits, but realizing those little bits of history wouldn’t help me keep everyone safe and alive.

  It also didn’t tell me what an Ogray was. I mean, it could be an original gangster ray, or some foreign creature. Names of species rarely helped do more than sort them into piles.

  “Ogray?” Leo asked, much quieter. Maybe he realized how many questions he’d been asking.

  “Just ignore it. Ogray is another useless name for some species with only three people. It doesn’t matter what your one oh one is. Half of us don’t have names. Me. Him.” She thumbed in my direction.

  Leo’s expression widened. Stacy snorted. The other girl kept her serious face.

  “Not like it matters anyway. When you leave the island, no one remembers anything,” Agent Brand said.

  “What?” I asked, then realized how stupid that sounded. There could only be one creature working with Western Sector who screwed around with memories.

  “It’s probably Aunt Muni,” Leo answered. “She… came to me in the jail cell and said to be careful. She’d put a charm on the island. A big one to help hide a really mean creature from outside eyes. It’s why no one has said anything about it back on the mainland.”

  I raised an eyebrow at Leo. “Oh, so you’ve seen her.”

  Leo nodded automatically. “But she told me not tell anyone but Jay.” His words grew slower with each syllable. His lips puckered briefly. “Damn.”

  He’d been acting deferent to the ladies. My head swam. Memories hit me again and filled in the blanks. Roy and Tal had bowed to nearly anything Rachel said. When Roy had girlfriends, he’d put them well before his own wants and desires. It was either a trait of their species or simply how they’d been raised.

  It explained why Stacy put up with Leo. To her, Leo would be a non-threat. Too young, stupid, and easily led around.

  “Whatever. It’s not like anyone here could kill the damn thing anyway. The fun part about our races, any races, is it’s all a stupid balancing act. The sector agents, or Hunters, or whatever, they did a study with powers and ratings.”

  I tuned out for a moment and struggled not to let her younger, brash voice irritate me. She’d been annoying before and now it was like being with a teenager all over again. I’d been less annoyed by elves and that was saying something.

  “If you add up all the benefits and weaknesses against a normal human, it almost balances out. Humans are a baseline. Wolves get their regeneration and speed but…” Agent Brand paused for a moment and raised an eyebrow at Stacy.

  The female wolf, also known in my head as The Bitch, shrugged. She clearly didn’t care.

  “Since they’re severely allergic to a fairly common metal, it balances. Plus, their pack bond thing? Most wolves get really testy without a pack. I’m surprised any of them make it out of here, if their pack bonds get severed.”

  “More like numbed.” Stacy licked her lips. “Like an arm or leg that’s fallen asleep and won’t wake up.”

  “Vampires, they’re a bit above average.”

  “Vampires aren’t alone. They’re actually two races,” I said, thinking of the Night Shades.

  Agent Brand gave me a confused look, making her face pinch even tighter and turning her eyes into slits. I shrugged. She could glare at me all she wanted, I had answers and no desire to give more than I had.

  I wondered if Warden Bennett had made it through the day. Had he stood in that window until sunrise and ended his sojourn?

  “What about you? A giant”—Leo paused and tactfully chose not to say fire chicken—“bird seems unbalanced.”

  “Sure. But it’s not tough. Just fire. And every time I die, I get younger. You’d think it’s great, until you’re younger than your kids. Until your husband doesn’t look at you anymore because he thinks he’s cradle robbing. Then when you finally do grow up enough that it’s not awkward in public, he dies of a heart attack. Twenty-five and sixty-three? Not exactly widely accepted. Not even if you pretend to be an elf.”

  Agent Brand’s head sank down onto her folded arms. She looked smaller than ever and completely lost in the huge shirt.

  “I’m more like a niece to my own children. The best part? It’s hereditary. Or more accurately, a curse that’s passed on. If I die enough that I’m too young, one of my daughters gets it next. I can’t give it to my kids. I can’t let them suffer as I have.”

  Leo looked green. “I thought being so angry
I broke my teacher’s arm was bad. My entire family makes military boarding school look lax.”

  “Anger’s an easy curse,” the muscled woman responded.

  Stacy snorted. “Try having men inside your head. God. Would you believe I like it better out here? No pack. No one thinking about how my ass looks loudly enough to be heard half a mile away. No one crying about Julianne.”

  She shook her head. I pretended not to notice the downcast look, tight jaw, how her fingers dug into her arm.

  Leo might have heard some of it from Stacy, maybe he hadn’t. I couldn’t tell how much of my disconnected bits of life had crossed over. Julianne didn’t act like she’d known about Bottom Pit, but she had to know about Roy and Tal.

  “Not that me and her being together exactly helped. Assholes. If anything, they just imagined the two of us a bit too loudly. We—” Stacy faltered for a moment. “We were going to form our own pack once she transitioned. Just us.”

  I couldn’t find the memories explaining that.

  “So what’s your story?” Agent Brand asked while pointing to the third female. “I mean these two I know. They were on the list of known associates for Inmate Fields here. I’ve been up and down his file a million times since finding out his relationship to Muni. But you, you’ve been over here a while and I’ve never heard of you.”

  “I’m from another place. Somewhere… with fewer, cars, or helicopters. That’s the words for them. Fewer people. More monsters. Many, many more monsters.”

  I perked up. There weren’t many people from outside the sector who’d arrived here. It was possible other places were completely different in the four races, and we simply didn’t know because of the news.

  It seemed unlikely though. The Purge had been global. At least in this sector and most of the European ones. Asia and South Africa were far harder to figure out. I’d never been overseas, only heard rumors.

  “I found myself in a city made by men and being accosted by some person in a blue suit. He waved a weapon in my face, so I took it and beat him senseless with it.”