by Victor Milán
Where’d he get that? Is he trying to bandage himself—
She noticed his eyes were so wide she could see whites all around his irises. A dark mottling shot through with black veins crept up the visible half of his face as his choked cries rose an octave.
“Oh,” she said, as thick bundles of fibrils lashed from the floor and walls to entangle DuQuesne’s neck and arms. “Looks like Mama can do that blood-exploding thing, too. I bet that hurts.”
She stood up and watched Mama Evernight’s hemolytic stings have their way with La Vipère. The instant he fell still and silent, she turned and started the long limp back to Mama’s burial chamber.
She knew what happened next, and that she didn’t want to watch.
Everything that dies below Paris, She consumes.
* * *
“You have done well,” Mama said in her borrowed voice. She had three Speakers Candace hadn’t seen before and was too tired to pay much attention to. But the others were all there in the crowd in Mama’s outsized crypt, along with most of the other people she’d met before, like Toby and Sluggo and, of course, the Archive, as well as a bunch she hadn’t met. “I understand why you severed my fibrils. There was nothing else you could do, and nothing either of us could have done to save more of our people.”
“Yeah,” said Candace.
The current Speaker, an elderly man, gestured toward the television set. Though its volume was low, Candace could hear the blonde news-reader woman talking about the tragic cave-in which had killed seven members of GIGN’s Section 23, inside the old mines for a nocturnal training exercise.
“The President knows that Colonel DuQuesne made unauthorized use of nerve gas against French citizens,” the Speaker said. “Or if he authorized it, he has conveniently forgotten it, chosen to cover the whole thing up, and has had Mme Boumedienne on the phone to extend us the olive branch. We’ve won.”
“We have purchased tickets for you on a flight leaving Orly in three and a half hours,” a young man with what looked like small fish-fins sticking out of his face and head at odd angles said. “The authorities will be more than happy to see you go. Do you need to collect any baggage?”
“I never travel with anything I can’t walk away from.” Is there anything I can’t walk away from?
“Then my children will convey you there. You may leave as soon as you wish. And—thank you.”
“Yeah.” Candace shook her head. She felt tears start. Fears of loss and anger and a thousand more things than she could name. “They won’t stop, you know. They won’t leave you alone. Whether it’s run by compassionate imperialists, or the brutish kind, the system’s still imperial. It can’t put up with competition or defiance. And it will not stop until it overwhelms you, one way or another.”
“We will survive,” Mama answered with serene conviction. “Whether it means digging deeper, or something else—we will survive. It’s what we do.”
“Me too,” Candace said. “Now, about my brother—”
In a moment she heard him shouting behind her. “Candace, please, you have to help me! Please.”
Brick and Bigfoot had dragged Marcel in. He had on another set of castoff clothes. He also had a fibril skein around his neck, ready to sting him if he tried to shape-shift.
“I did help you, Marcel. And you were helping La Vipère all along. How did he turn you? Was it the torture? That was bad, I know. He bit me too. So I killed him.”
I probably didn’t need to add that last, she thought foggily. Oh, well.
“He offered me the Leopard Men,” Marcel said. “He said he’d back my play to take over the Paris cell, then allow me to run the whole organization. As his tool, of course. They thought he would control me. But young people are hearing the message of the True PPA. The old ones had gotten soft, even Léon. He had no idea what I would build once I controlled the Leopard organization!”
“So you were playing him the way you played me?”
“It was for the Revolution,” he said, as pious as Mass.
“No,” she said. “You thought you were. In fact—”
In her reduced state she reeled physically from revelation’s impact. Toby steadied her arm with a black and white dappled hand.
“—DuQuesne was playing you to take down the Leopard Men. The way he played me, to force the President’s hand to stop equivocating and let him kill Mama and wipe out Evernight without any more debate or delay.”
“No! He couldn’t have been!”
“Because he was so trustworthy?”
His eyes went wide, and his mouth shut.
“As you see,” Mama said gently through a Speaker, “we can never let him go.”
Candace sighed. “Yes. I do see that. You changed, Marcel. And not for the better.”
She looked at Mama’s form, embossed atop her bier of bones. “But remember your promise. You can’t kill him, either!”
“I keep my bargains. You won his life as well as your own. But your brother must stay here forever in Evernight. He will Share his organ functions with me, and do his part to sustain me. And through me my people, to whom his foolish actions have brought so much harm.”
“See, Candace? See? They’re going to tear me apart, and rape my body for my organs!”
“That’s not how it works, young man,” the Archive said. “Mama Evernight will connect her body to yours as she does to ours when she needs to: with her fibrils. You will not suffer. She will stimulate your brain chemistry so that you lie in perfect endorphin bliss. It’s like sleep, but better; I know.”
“I wish that horrified me as much as it should,” Candace said.
“No, no!” Marcel shrieked, struggling wildly and uselessly. “They’re going to drug me! They’ll kill my soul while this undead monster sucks me dry. You can’t let them do this to me, Candace! I’m your brother!”
“I might try,” Candace said, “if only you had chosen to be my beloved little brother. Instead of letting them turn you into a swaggering macho revolutionary asshole like—like the Radical. But then, if you’d chosen to be my brother, we’d already be gone. Free. And a lot of innocent people would still be alive.
“You’ve earned this, Marcel. You’ve earned far worse. I still love you. I’ll always love you. But I am done with you.”
“No! No, please. You’re my sister! You can’t abandon me. You can’t!”
“Marcel,” she said. “I can’t trust you, and they won’t. There’s nothing else to do. I love you. Good-bye.” She turned for the exit to the surface world and walked away.
“You betrayed me!” he screamed behind her. “You betray everything!”
She stopped. Not looking back, she said, “Only what betrays me first.”
And walked on.
About the Author
The Dinosaur Lords is the start of a sprawling epic fantasy series by Victor Milán, best known for his award winning novel Cybernetic Samurai. In previous worlds he’s been a cowboy and Albuquerque’s most popular all-night prog-rock DJ. He’s never outgrown his childhood love of dinosaurs … and hopes you didn’t either. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Victor Milán
Art copyright © 2018 by John Picacio
