by Traci Loudin
He came toward her, his face twisted in a scowl. She held her ground and backhanded him. Though he didn’t try to stop her, he also didn’t seem surprised by it, either. She knew he must be peeking inside her mind.
“I already killed two friends today, Caetl. I refuse to make you number three.” Saying the words made her throat close up, her eyes blur.
“You… considered me a friend?” The large man’s defenses came down, but she didn’t want to take advantage of it.
“You’re one of us, aren’t you?” Nyr raised the purple trinket, hoping to remind him who the real enemy was.
Don’t worry, my dear. The Wizard’s voice was like a knife in the back. You’re next on my list to scoop out and reprogram.
What’s stopping you? Dalan keeping you busy? Nyr glanced in their direction and saw the Wizard running away. I see you running away like the coward you are.
“You’ve mastered two-way communication, I see.” Caetl sounded more like himself.
She didn’t see Dalan or Ti’rros. The Wizard shrieked in her mind, and Nyr went to her knees. Without intention, her fingernails clawed the sides of her face. Only the sudden pain of scratching her open wound brought her to her senses.
“There’s only one way to stop the madness,” Caetl said, his voice far away.
Nyr opened her eyes. He stood over Azaiah’s body with a gun in his hand.
He pointed the gun at her and pulled the trigger. Pink light flooded her vision. The force of something hitting the pendant’s shield knocked her on her ass. She frantically rolled to the side in case Caetl fired again.
The Wizard chuckled. Why would you want to give up the device, when it’s all that’s stood between you and death so many times?
Nyr pushed herself to her feet. “Caetl, that’s enough!”
He held the gun in front of his eyes, as though trying to determine why it had fired.
Getting up had sapped the last of Nyr’s energy. “I’m too tired to fight you.”
“So is Dalan,” Caetl said in a sad voice. “Too much transmelding.”
He kicked at her, but she shifted her weight into a deep stance, and his foot found only air. He seemed to have forgotten the gun. Moving in close, he raked her face with an open palm, fingers splayed and curled, as if he had claws. She skipped a few steps back.
Caetl grimaced. Then his eyes lit up, as though he’d remembered something. Lightning struck, cleaving through her skull. The anguish on Caetl’s face turned to agony. Before her world faded to black, she saw him slump to the ground with her.
When Nyr opened her eyes, she and Caetl lay in a crushed circle of grasses. His hands clenched into hooks, his fingertips were stained red… Gouges on his neck showed where he’d clawed at himself, trying to get the pendant off.
His eyes were open. Though the rest of his body was limp, his lips moved, whispering. Nyr rolled to her side to better hear him, but his voice strengthened with his next words.
“That’s right, Dalan. It’s safe to go back to your human form now.”
Nyr’s head swam as she tried to puzzle out the meaning behind the words. Dalan’s ability to transmeld the trinket away was the only thing protecting him from the Wizard. Why would Caetl—
“Listen to me, Dalan. I’ve got him under control.”
Nyr examined Caetl’s vacant expression for any clue as to his plan. She waved a hand in front of him, but his eyes were glassy.
Like a corpse.
“No,” she said.
“Do as I say.” Those words, that voice… It wasn’t Caetl at all.
Nyr climbed to her feet, fighting nausea. “Don’t listen to him, Dalan.”
The grasses swayed in the breeze, with no sign of her companions or the Wizard. Behind her lay Azaiah’s body, and beside her, what was left of Caetl.
So much killing... first as a trained warrior for her clan. Truth be told, she’d never been a real warrior. She realized that now. More like a butcher of the weak, of those undeserving of death. Why should Caetl be any different?
After all, she’d brought her own clanmates, the people she’d hoped to lead, into the slaughterhouse. Neula and Jaul had been justified in seeking vengeance, and she’d killed them as well. Caetl would be just one more death on her hands.
She’d become the ruthless killer Dalan always thought her to be. She was alone in the world.
“DO AS I SAY!” The voice tore out of Caetl, making her jump. The man beside her was just a husk, an extension of the Wizard’s will. He’d found a way into Dalan’s head through the mystic.
“This is your final warning,” Caetl’s voice was toneless. “I know what you’re going to do before you do.”
Fur pushed out of her skin. As her ears slid up her skull, her hearing improved. Closing her eyes, Nyr gathered her resolve.
She wasn’t alone. She’d found a new clan, and to keep them alive, she needed to kill one last time.
“Obey me, and I will let her live,” Caetl whispered.
Nyr straddled Caetl and met no resistance when she pulled the gun from his grasp. She stared at him, the feline in her focused on the blood on his neck before flinging the gun into the tall grasses far afield.
She’d killed so many times before, and for what? To plunder, to bring so-called glory to the Tiger Clan and the greater Hellsworth Tribe? Pointless. Yet now, when she needed her old bloodlust most, it was missing.
Caetl whispered something else, so quietly Nyr couldn’t hear his words, even with her improved hearing. Hope rose in her, making her wonder if Caetl could still fight back. But his green eyes stared up at the sky.
He’s gone, Nyr told herself. What lay beneath her was only a shell.
“Do it,” he whispered. “Kill me.”
She blinked, and just like that, all her resolve evaporated. Caetl had become their ally, part of their plan to beat the Wizard at his own game. None of this was Caetl’s fault. Despite her earlier skepticism, she knew he’d done his best to protect them. She couldn’t repay him with death.
“I’m sorry,” she found herself saying, hoping he understood the full depth of those words. She was sorry she’d dragged him on horseback to test his story when he’d first come to them, she was sorry she’d tried to kill him, and she was sorry now that she couldn’t.
Caetl’s lips curled in disgust, the first expression he’d made in some time. “No, you’re not. You’re weak. Clanless. Unworthy of being called a feline.”
He bucked beneath her, and Nyr leaned forward to keep him pinned, to keep him from hurting either one of them. Too late, she recognized it as a distraction. His hand snaked up to her bad forearm. Then he squeezed, grinding the broken bones within.
Nyr howled in pain. The frustration she’d borne all day, unable to fight the Wizard, erupted. The claws on her good hand reached their full length.
She buried them into soft flesh and twisted even as she cried, “No!”
Blood spewed from Caetl’s neck, and she jerked her face away. She couldn’t bear to watch the light in his eyes fade.
Caetl made a gagging cough, as though trying to speak. The words came to her mind instead. I forgive you, Nyr of the felines. Thank you for setting me free.
Where her knee touched the ground, warmth and wetness crept through the fabric of her pants. The earth leeched his lifeblood away.
She didn’t want to see his face frozen in agony. He’d become one of them despite the rough welcome he’d received at her hands.
Her eyes searched for the object in the sky that always comforted Dalan. As Caetl’s body twitched beneath her, the clouds in her view blurred together.
When she found the All-Seeing Eye, Nyr let out a primal scream, remorse tearing from her. A sob caught in her belly and seized in her chest, coming out as nothing more than a whimper. Cries wracked her body, and for the first time in a lifetime, she gave in to grief.
Chapter 31
Jorrim stared at Korreth’s broken form, trying to block out the conversation between th
e Ageless as Zen said, “Mortal humans are unworthy. Their lifespans aren’t long enough to appreciate the implications of the power we wield.”
A drawn-out cry got everyone’s attention. Gryid leaped over the wall in one bound. The blades of his forearms flashed, his expression twisted by fury. He clenched an additional knife in each fist.
“Korreth, Jorrim!” Soledad called out. “Stop him!”
Jorrim’s blood ignited in anger. His bad ankle protested, but he got to his feet anyway. He forced the words out, testing their newfound freedom. “No, mistress, we will not.” He didn’t say that Korreth could not.
The spell—the nanotech—hadn’t forced him to call her Soledad, or forced them to obey her command. They were free, for all the good it would do Korreth now. If he had the strength, Jorrim would raise the remaining SCL and shoot her, but climbing to his feet had exhausted him.
Though Zen couldn’t move, Gryid’s blades had no effect against his metal. Soledad tackled him before he could find soft flesh to sink his knives into.
Soledad had never wanted them to kill Zen. She’d commanded them to do everything but. Jorrim looked down at his friend again. Despite his earlier pessimism, some part of him had hoped Soledad really would stop Zen. And she had, but she didn’t intend to finish the job.
Korreth was dead because of her. His children would never know their father. Jorrim raised his eyes to the Ageless, wrestling in the grasses beneath the towering cyborg’s immobile form. Zen’s very existence threatened Korreth’s family’s safety. Zen hunted technology, and if someone didn’t stop him, he’d keep at it for centuries. Jorrim owed it to Korreth to make sure Zen never found Zhouri or his children.
Soledad kicked Gryid in the head. “Damn it! We’re supposed to protect the technology, not destroy it!”
Gryid aged, wild-eyed, and returned her blows.
Jorrim leaned against the wall, his eyes drawn to them. If Gryid wouldn’t do it, Jorrim would find a way. He gripped Korreth’s SCL in his right hand, though he hadn’t the strength to raise it. His strength failed, and he slumped back into the grasses, defeated. He leaned against the wall.
“Kaia deserves vengeance,” Gryid’s voice was high-pitched, on the verge of hysterical. “And you would become another Zen in the end.”
Jorrim tried to raise the rifle once more, but couldn’t get the barrel above kneecap height. Groaning at the pain, he lifted both arms to heave the SCL onto his knees.
Soledad whirled and said, “I release you,” to Zen.
The cyborg’s mouth opened in a yell as he reached for the lamppost on the ground. Jorrim pulled the trigger, and a red ball of energy tore through Zen’s mouth and throat.
The giant toppled over. His fingers and legs began twitching.
Soledad stared at the body, her jaw going slack. Gryid went into a rage, kicking the corpse and screaming, crying, his voice tearing.
She whispered, “I was going to distribute all his knowledge, disperse it as the Prophet himself did. But this time, to everyone.”
Her gaze moved over Korreth’s crumpled form to Jorrim. Realization dawned in her eyes—the first time Jorrim had seen fear in her expression.
Jorrim said, “Make her pay.”
But Gryid turned away and threw himself to the ground near Kaia’s body. Soledad bolted.
Rage built up in Jorrim, starting in his veins and bursting from his pores. Adrenaline pounded through him, and he pushed himself up against the wall. Fury gave him the strength to chase her through the waist-high grasses.
The anguish inside him said she wouldn’t get away, but the pain in his ankle lanced with every step, and every breath tore from his chest. He fell farther behind, tired and wounded, while Soledad would be forever fresh and unwinded.
“Soledad!” Summoning the last of his strength, Jorrim ignored the pain and raised the rifle. He fired, and the shot sheared off the tops of the grasses beside her. She stopped and faced him, her age paralleling his own. Her dark eyes bored into him, like she was waiting for him to say something. Something important.
He lowered the weapon. “Korreth is dying because of you.”
Still she stared at him.
The words poured out of him in between gasping breaths, “He shouldn’t be the one. It should be me. Korreth has children. A family to go home to.”
Soledad’s lips moved, but Jorrim couldn’t hear her over the whispering of the grasses. She retraced her path through the trampled grasses toward him, her arms open wide, hands catching tufts as she slid toward youth. Her whispering continued until she stood in front of him.
Then she raised her voice. “You should take care of your friend.”
She grabbed his left wrist and looked him in the eye. “Lay your hands on him and say these words: Curen sus heridas. Then my friends will take care of you.”
Soledad let go of him and retraced her path toward the north once again.
Jorrim’s chest constricted. He raised the SCL and fired. The red sphere flew through her back, just between the shoulder blades. Soledad fell, disappearing into the grasses. She reappeared as an adult, whole again, with a perfect circle in her shirt above her diaphragm.
“I suppose I deserved that.” She flicked a grass tuft from her sleeve. As he watched, her Ancient clothing repaired itself. “Hurry back to Korreth if you want him to live.”
His eyes widened when the breeze picked up. Jorrim turned on his heel and rushed back to the broken stone wall where Korreth lay. In the heat of the moment, he’d forgotten the words.
Korreth’s head was bathed in blood. He wheezed, his breathing shallow.
The world blurred, and Jorrim grabbed Korreth by the arm. “Your children are waiting for you, Korreth. You can’t leave yet.”
He closed his eyes and focused on Soledad’s lips and the words they had formed. His eyes flashed open, the answer pouring over his tongue. “Curen sus heridas!”
He’d known better than to expect magic, but the lack of change in Korreth’s condition crushed Jorrim’s hopes. He stared at his friend, willing his chest to continue its rise and descent.
Soledad had played her final trick, manipulating him one last time. He bowed his head.
He’d been concentrating so hard on his friend, he didn’t notice the changes in his own body at first, but his aches gradually faded. The black and purple stain still spread across his ankle, though the pain was gone.
He’d told Korreth he thought the nanotech took care of the pain first before fully healing their wounds.
His eyes jumped back to Korreth, who looked much the same. Jorrim shivered in the dying light of the day and waited.
He couldn’t be sure, but the bleeding on his friend’s head seemed to slow. He rose and limped over to the giant’s corpse. His cyborg eyes no longer glowed, but Jorrim still found himself tiptoeing by him. Without taking his attention off him, Jorrim scooped up Soledad’s forgotten cloak.
When he returned to Korreth’s side, he wiped the blood from his friend’s face and neck. To his relief, no fresh blood appeared.
Korreth’s cough startled Jorrim awake. He hadn’t meant to doze off, but day faded toward night.
Korreth’s eyelids fluttered. “Jorrim? What happened?”
He took in a chestful of air and smiled. “It’s over, my friend. Zen is dead. We’re safe.”
“Where’s Soledad?”
“Gone.”
“Then… we’re truly free?”
“It was always part of her plan.” Jorrim motioned at the dead cyborg, but Korreth didn’t raise his head to look. “She took the nanotech from us so she could defeat him.”
“And then she gave them back to heal us,” Korreth said. “But didn’t enslave us again.”
“I… wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
Chapter 32
Dalan’s three-toed hooves crushed the grasses. With his tail stretched out behind, he nimbly covered the uneven terrain and soon caught up to the Wizard. He flowed through ages, never getting o
ut of breath, but that didn’t mean he could run any faster.
Dalan overtook him and then headed him off. He snaked his muscular tail around the Wizard. As the Ageless shifted ages in his grip, he tightened his hold.
“Look.” The Wizard winced as his ribcage tried to expand. “If you join us, I’ll give up the others, hmmm? In a few years, Zen and I won’t need unwilling allies anyway, we’ll have so many willing ones.”
Dalan’s large nostrils felt dry, his mouth full of cotton. Transmelding would drain him of even more moisture, but he had no choice if he wanted to speak to the Wizard. Keeping his tail and body, Dalan did something he’d considered impossible only a few weeks ago—letting only his head, neck, and upper chest slide closer toward birth form.
“Is far too late for that bargain. Caetl’s already gone.”
“Not necessarily—he could recover. I didn’t realize how weak his mind was, but we need to focus on the future now. Soon we’ll have more technology than any other tribe, and we know how to use it. We’ll become a tribe bigger than any you’ve ever seen—a nation. We can use that knowledge to restart civilization, something most of us have always wanted. You can help us put the world to rights.”
“Release us from the necklaces and maybe you’ll live long enough to see that new world.”
Dalan wasn’t exactly sure what ‘civilization’ meant, but he doubted going back to the way things had been in Ancient times was the best of ideas. Not if the Ancients had fought amongst themselves as much as modern tribes fought one another.
Saquey interrupted, showing him that Kaia circled back toward Searchtown with Zen in pursuit. Dalan’s normal vision soon returned.
“Fine. Just put me down so I can get the amplifier.”
The Wizard had no reason to release them, not when he could keep Nyr and Ti’rros as hostages and slaves, guaranteeing Dalan’s compliance.
Caetl, tell me you’re okay, he pleaded, forcing his words outward. They disappeared into the void.
If the mystic had answered, the Wizard might have escaped his fate. Still, Dalan couldn’t quite bring himself to act. His whole life, he’d been taught that killing was wrong. Something evil men did, and good men only did as a last resort. He’d hoped to convince the Wizard to release them.
