Fate: No Strings Attached

by Erik Schubach

  I looked at the group as Atta stepped inside, wrapped in the blanket still. They all looked a little tired and slightly disheveled, but presentable, and there I was pushing my snarled and matted hair back out of my face. Just great, first impressions were not my strong suit.

  I answered the call of nature and took a moment to run that comb through my hair the best I could without tearing the snarls from my skull, then tied it back with another loose thread from a towel. I wasn't going to embarrass Drey in front of her captain.

  I rejoined the group as I slipped on my jacket to hide my tattoos, and itched at my wrists absently. I could feel the tease-storm rising from them, and I was about to reprimand them all when there was a knock at the door. I noted how we all still deferred to Detective Lisbon as our leader as she stepped up and opened the door.

  A fairly fit, middle-aged man with decidedly Asian features and silvering black hair stood there. He had the bearing of a cop and someone with authority. Drey stepped back in silent entreaty for him to enter as she said, “Cap.”

  He inclined his head. “Lisbon.”

  Andreya took a quick look around before shutting the door. We all stood there, just looking at each other until our blonde leader made the introduction. “Captain Arthur Cheong everyone. You know Miss Sloan Tesha from her case file. This is her roommate, Miss Enid Rosenbaum. Mr. Brett Holiday and Mrs. Mary Ramos, Sloan's...” She cocked her head and said, “...her father and grandmother.”

  He raised his chin in greeting, and we all nodded in return. And now that niceties were dispensed with, he turned to Drey, who was a couple inches taller than him and he growled out, “So you care to fill me in on this cluster fuck of yours that has the feds breathing down my neck, Detective? I've half a mind to hand you all over and wash my hands of it.”

  Andreya smiled crookedly. “But then you wouldn't get a chance to stick it to the alphabet soup.”

  His grim face broke into a conspiratorial grin and confided, “There is that. Telling me what I can and can't do in my own jurisdiction... I should throw them all out on their collective asses and file a complaint. If I could figure out just where they were really from. All their shiny FBI and Homeland Security badges aren't fooling anyone.”

  Then the man looked directly at me. “Just what about you has them hot and heavy about invading my precinct, Miss Tesha?”

  I gave him an apologetic shrug as I scratched and rubbed at my wrists a little more emphatically now. The reavers must have been in motion again, renewing their hunt on the mainland.

  He exhaled and said to his subordinate detective, “You can fill me in on the way to the dock. We can use one of the safe houses in town until our department attorney can determine the validity of the feds request for Miss Tesha and all information about her case. I personally don't like them strong-arming us like this.”

  He shook his head and added, “And it will give us a chance to weather the media shitstorm flying around about civilians fighting reavers. We're downplaying the whole fuckin' thing since there isn't any hard evidence that anything illegal even occurred.”

  I grinned a bit at his abrasive terminology, I sort of liked the man.

  As one, we all looked to Drey for our cue. She nodded once and said, “Ok, sorry this put you in a spot Cap.” Then to us, she turned and said, “Grab your things.”

  We gathered our meager belongings, and I glanced at Mother and Atropos. We needed a moment alone for us to check out the movement of the hunters. The twisting ink under my skin was all trying to get out and was starting to burn under my skin. I could feel the images upon me were shifting to reflect the current world around us.

  We stepped outside then into the drizzling rain. The overcast sky was starting to lighten, signaling the rapidly approaching morning. We started down the path single file, and after a few dozen feet I almost gasped as the heat and pain became more insistent. I looked down at my hands to see smoke starting to rise as the almost blinding light emanating from my wrists burned the fabric of the jacket and bubbled my skin.

  I bit my cheek hard to stop from crying out in pain. Had they found us? I had just started to give in and reach for the threads, even though the captain was just in front of Andreya and me, when I saw it. As he was walking, I saw shadowed claws extending from his hands. Knotted threads! He was one of them!

  Before I could blurt out a warning, we all stopped when we heard the unmistakable sound of a gun slide being pulled back. I saw Drey shove the barrel of her weapon against the Captain's back, and whisper to him in a tone of utter sadness and disbelief as Cheong tensed to attack, “Steel jacketed rounds, Cap. I wouldn't.”

  He hesitated at that, and then slowly raised his hands, the rest of the group seeing his shadowed claws. Mother and Atta were pulling threads from me instantly as I started forming cords of solid life force from my wrists. Enid slid her frying pan off her back and held it in front of her as we started looking all around us.

  He chuckled. “How did you know, Lisbon?”

  She said with disappointment in someone you looked up to in her tone, “Back in the cabin. When you said 'reavers.' Nobody ever mentioned the term to you.”

  He chuckled and said as he turned slowly around to face us, his hands still up. He said with a grin, making his shadowed fangs look out of place on his face, “Damn, never slip up around a detective I suppose. Live and learn.”

  Atta was already methodically stripping the shadow strands from his thread as he spoke. Then Mother hissed as she looked at a construct in front of her while the Captain said to me, “You have something my employers need. Just hand it over, and maybe we'll kill you quickly... Fate.”

  I ignored him and looked at Mother who's eyes were darting around the glowing weaving. She looked up and said gruffly, “They're everywhere.”

  Cheong's smile broadened, knowing the mice now knew they were in the trap.

  Drey reached past my shoulder and said, “Enid,” as she made a grabbing motion with her hand. A moment later she was swinging toward the man as she said, “Sorry Cap.” Then with a loud clang and the hiss and stench of flesh burning and bubbling, the Captain spun to the ground from the force of the strike with the frying pan.

  The irony of it all not lost on me that the most absurd thing in our possession was the most deadly to our enemy. The man hitting the ground and his eyes rolling back up into his head was the catalyst, and all hell broke loose. By the stitch and nap, I could feel dozens converging on us as the forest erupted into battle cries from lesser and greater hunters.

  Andreya watched as combatants all shrouded in bestial shadows started coming out onto the path. She spun on a heel and said, “This way!” And she handed Eeen her pan as she ushered her up the path and got us all running.

  She took up the rear, firing only at the reavers that burst out onto the path too close, or used their superior agility to gain on us. I was about to scream out in panic when she fired, to tell her that if she killed them before we had stripped away the shadow filaments from their threads, that all the people whose life force they were leeching would die too. But I saw them falling to leg wounds or shoulder wounds. She wasn't shooting to kill. But those steel jacketed bullets were certainly stopping the reavers in their tracks like no other weapon could.

  I felt admiration for her swell inside me, that she could think so quickly in dire situations and adjust to the preternatural and adapt to the situation on the fly. I started lashing out at a couple reavers that appeared in front of us, wrapping the lashes around their necks and yanking, sending me flying up into the air in a high arc above them as they stumbled forward.

  Lash engaged one hand to hand, centuries of combat training making her muscular male form a match for a shadow enhanced abomination.

  Enid started wailing on the second reaver, who was off balance from my attack, with her pan. I twisted in the air, working on instinct, feeling the motion of the shadows in the world as I landed in a spin, my ropes lashing out like a whirlwind as I spun.


  I heard the rhythmic shots from Andreya's weapon as my whirling attack took down another reaver who was leaping through the air toward Eeen's back. Drey only had one spare clip, and she had already slapped it home into the receiver. We needed to find a defensible position.

  Atropos slid on her knees past the reaver fighting Mother, her scissors sliding along a thread coming from my neck, twisting and deftly severing all of the parasitic shadow filaments from it. She came to her feet grasping the bare thread in her fist as the natural strength of Brett Holiday's fist slammed into the now quite human reaver's nose with a sickening crunch.

  Atta smirked in satisfaction and then with no more thought than brushing a leaf off her shoulder, cut the thread. As the reaver fell lifelessly to the ground I wrapped the thread in one hand, and it burst into light and dust, just like the body.

  I wrapped the third reaver in my ropes and swung her through the air toward Mother, who slammed her boot onto her back and then actually hogtied her with her own life thread as Atta started working on it.

  Mother was looking a little worse for wear, her mortal body bloody and bruised but she spun and slammed a boot into the gut of the reaver who was trying to stand up from under the relentless assault of my pan wielding manic-eyed roommate.

  Drey called out, “Come on people, we need to get moving, I've only four rounds left!” Moments later there were two more clouds of ash drifting off in the wind and rain.

  We took off up the path as it rose up and up. We figured it was leading to the airfield on the upper plateau, we were wrong. We skidded to a stop on the muddy ground as we burst out of the woods at the top of a cliff which looked down over some jagged volcanic rocks of the shoreline far below. It was low tide.

  They chose their ambush well. Cheong knew this island well, and if his attack down below had failed, like it had, the pack of reavers was in a position to herd us up the path to this dead end. We scanned the treeline and saw an overgrown path heading toward the island's interior. It likely led to the airstrip, but the three revers heading toward us from it precluded our using it as an escape.

  We all glanced at each other, took deep breaths then stood tall as we readied our weapons, I reached out and moved Enid behind me with a sweep of my arm.

  The remaining eight reavers stepped out into the clearing, barring any chance of escape. I knew the injured ones would soon recover from their wounds and join them, though they'd never fully heal from their contact with steel.

  I growled out, “Ok then... let's do this you aberrant weaves!”

  Chapter 14 – Adumbrates

  Andreya stood beside me, her weapon leveled at the closest hunters to us. Mother and Atta were furiously pulling threads from me, Atropos doing what Atropos does as she started pruning the threads, digging down to their cores.

  We'd need to protect her if we had a chance in hell of surviving. Just cutting the threads was no option... I couldn't imagine the countless innocents who would die. And they knew our hesitation and used it against us.

  They charged as one.

  Drey fired on one, it fell, screaming in pain as it grasped its shoulder, and they were on us. Our blonde detective demonstrated just how formidable a mere mortal could be, even against a stronger opponent as she exchanged a flurry of blows against a large pot-bellied man with a bald head, who still wore the uniform of a Mount Vernon bus driver.

  I started whirling and slashing with my preferred weapons, spinning life energy into them, making them burn as they snapped out like whips of pure energy. I waded into them, twisting and turning in a dance that celebrated the life I could spin in my hands. The reavers hissed out in pain with each strike, backing away from the heat of the strikes. I had to keep them away from the others.

  Mother was pulling more and more threads from me as she wove a construct, the sheer amount of threads was draining on me, it was almost to the scale of a World Weave. Where the act of weaving felt like music and it moved like dancers on the stage when I did it, she was more adept and efficient, and I knew what she was looking for.

  She was looking to cut off the serpent's head, then the followers would drop. Without the Adumbrates powering the shadow filaments, their bastardized weavings would fall apart on their own. I could feel the end coming, but it was hazy instead of the crystal clarity we Fates were used to seeing. This day would see either the fall of the shadows or of the Fates.

  Mother hissed out to us as I went tumbling across the ground when a woman slammed into my side, “I can't find them, it's as if they are no longer a part of the tapestries, with their hunters attacking, we should be able to follow the shadows back to the source.”

  I winced at the pain in my side as I rolled to my feet and whipped a cord around the feet of two reavers who were taking advantage of my fall to go after Enid, who looked terrified with her white-knuckled grip on her pan.

  I spun and pulled all the remaining strands Mother and Atta were not working with from under my skin, the pain of the effort matched the sudden immense counterweight I used in my spin to send the two reavers spinning off the cliff. There was so much momentum I flung them a hundred yards out to sea, beyond the rocks. I sobered and internally chastised myself. Though they would survive, the life energies they were leeching from others would see to that, but if they had hit the rocks below instead... I shuddered to think of all the people's lives I could have ended to save Enid.

  Then I shuddered again, knowing that I, Sloan, not Clotho, wouldn't hesitate to do it again to save my friend, no matter how selfish that may be. Because besides Andreya, she was the only thing I had in this new life of mine worth fighting for.

  Another reaver just stopped... collapsing to the ground in mid-stride, like a broken marionette. I smiled, Atropos had claimed another, righting an atrocity to life.

  I slumped and panted, trying to catch my wind, and I felt a warmth against me, Andreya had moved so that we could protect each other's backs. I smiled and spread my fingers, splitting my cords into thousands of razor sharp points around my hands as the remaining reavers dove at us.

  I was peripherally aware the fraying of Drey's thread whenever we came in contact with each other as we fought. She was hurt, but still pressing forward, still defending the others. After a series of exchanges of rapid strikes and kicks, leaving both sides bloody, Drey said, “Fuck this shit.” Then she fired her final three shots, and the last of the reavers fell grasping at leg, arm, and shoulder wounds. Flesh burning and sizzling where the bullets had struck.

  I had noticed the ominous click as she pulled the trigger the last time at one that was just winged and getting to her feet, and nothing happened. Knotted threads, she was out of ammo. She muttered, “Shit.”

  Then called out, “Enid.” As she held a hand out, Eeen tossed the pan with a grunt and Drey swung up like she was swinging a golf club just as the woman in the waitress uniform dove on her. With a loud clang and the hissing and stench of burning flesh, the reaver tumbled bonelessly to the ground, unconscious with a badly burned face.

  We stood there panting as we leaned back to back while we slumped to the ground, exhausted. I felt one by one, Atta isolating the threads of the hunters and cutting each one, setting right the balance of nature.

  Our scrappy detective chuckled humorlessly and held the cast iron cooking implement out for Eeen to take back. I rested my head back between Drey's shoulders as I tried to normalize my breathing, closing my eyes.

  I held a hand out and felt a group of severed threads get draped across my palm. I squeezed and unspun the threads, sending the energy back to whence it had come. I opened my eyes to see the bodies all turning to dust and drifting away in the drizzling rain.

  We all shared a nervous chuckle, knowing that we had just won a small victory here. I could already feel the others on the island farther down the path moving toward us, their injuries healing. Andreya's gun had made all the difference between us losing our mortal lives and theirs, but now she was out of ammo.

  We needed to g
et out of there and get back down to the boats. There was sure to be a path from the airfield down to the docks.

  Enid said in a shaky voice, “Well, that was... different.” This got us all laughing as Drey, and I got to our feet. She knew we had to get moving too.

  I held out an arm and Enid slid under it, and I kissed the top of her head, “I love you, lady. You're the best roommate, ever.” She beamed at the praise.

  Then my mind caught up with me, and I released her, spinning toward Lach and Atta as I dug in my pocket. They said they couldn't find the Adumbrates in the weave! I pulled out the scraps of fabric from my pocket and held them out to the other Fates. “You had to flee the loom before you could seal the last of the tapestries into me. This was the last construct you were working on, before...”

  Atta grabbed the scraps from my hand, the wicked gleam of the Crone in her eyes. Lachesis placed her masculine hands on them as they started glowing and they unraveled the cloth into webs of pure life energy in the air between us.

  I heard men coming up the path, including the Captain's voice. Andreya said as she moved between us and the path, “Come on people, we need to get moving, now!”

  We all turned to her, Atta nodded then slammed her palms toward me and the weavings burned themselves into my skin so fast the pain didn't come till a moment later. I gasped and bit my tongue to keep from crying out.

  She said, “Don't be such a baby, child.”

  I flipped her off, and she grinned, then said, “That was the weaving we had isolated the threads of the Adumbrates in before the Loom fell. They have millions of shadow filaments leaching off of countless lives here in the mortal realm. It will take time to trim it all back.”

  Lach was holding a thread that was as big around as her arm, it was writhing and dripping with the sickness of unnatural shadow, like a sludge that was warping all it touched, and she dropped it like it burned her. She repeated Drey's words with more urgency as I absorbed the sickening thread under my skin, it wriggled and burrowed into the weave inside of me, “We need to go! They are almost here.”