“Are you…? Fuck, Eerie! What was that?”
Eerie blinked her eyes, moist already to the point of tears.
“What was what?”
“You don’t remember? I just had a talk with your future. I think.”
“Really? Was it…you know…good?”
The ground beneath them buckled, crystalline ground shattering in all directions.
“Shit, come on!” Katya stood, and then hauled Eerie rapidly up after her. She threw her pack on, grabbed Eerie’s bag, and then the Changeling’s hand. “Derrida, let’s go! We’ve got to get out of here!”
The dog followed obediently, while the Changeling needed help.
“Why?”
“Something bad is coming. I think,” Katya answered, tugging her along. “Just run!”
The Changeling was frustratingly clumsy, and Katya was forced to slow her place to accommodate frequent stumbles. Derrida stuck close to Eerie, his side pressed against her thigh, occasionally glancing back at the spot they had vacated and whining. Katya chose not to look back, deliberately forging ahead into the canyon as fast as her companions would allow.
“What…what are we running from, Katya?”
“Shut up and run!”
The anomaly they occupied was deeper than it was wide. Katya had Eerie’s arm across her shoulders, very nearly dragging the enviably light Changeling along. Their feet were lost in a layer of freezing mist that chilled Katya, pulling like a tide toward the unearthly gravity of the singular black star that loomed above. Glimpses of the ground below the mist showed a surface that looked like bottle glass. In the indeterminate depths, shadows squirmed and writhed, and ten-thousand-year-old crystal broke like the surf.
Something was moving, Katya thought, a ripple of pure dread running through her. Something was following them – something huge. Katya grabbed Eerie and pulled her right off her feet, dragging her along in an encumbered jog across the splintering valley, the massive banks of black mist surrounding them punctured with slow lightening.
“Katya? What happened?”
“You really don’t remember?”
“I wouldn’t keep asking, otherwise!”
“As far as I can tell,” Katya said, dragging the Fey after her like luggage, “you ended the damn world.”
***
Alex woke suddenly, his eyes fluttering open. He blinked at the brilliance of the light, and waited for his eyes to adjust. His vision was odd, dim on one side, filled with ghosts and afterimages of unseen lights. His head throbbed in time with the beating of his heart, and his extremities were numb with cold.
“Emily? I think he’s waking up.”
The voice was familiar, but he could not place the speaker. Alex tried to remember where he was, and came up blank. As for recent history, his mind flinched away from it like his hand from a hot stove. He rubbed his eyes, shocked by how cold some of his numb fingers were to the touch.
“Emily! Are you listening to me? Come over here!”
His vision slowly resolved into an unfamiliar paradigm. Alex tried to make sense of what was happening as the shape looming over him turned out to be a frowning young woman, looking at him with mixed distaste and concern, and occasionally yelling for Emily.
Emily. There was a great deal of importance attached to that name, more than he cared to think about. His head felt fragile, and Alex worried that if he tried too hard to retrieve his dislocated memory, something in his traumatized brain might snap.
“Alex. My name is Leigh Feld. Are you awake?”
Feld. A familiar name. A vampire, then, Alex thought, remembering a different vampire, one with red hair, and a quiet sort of companionship that he had enjoyed. Sad echoes of Margot Feld rang through his head. He did not need any encouragement to put the disjointed memories aside.
There was a flat quality to the light in the room, a dimness, and a partial obstructed in his peripheral vision on the left side. The room was long, with a low white ceiling and rounded windows, furnished with a pair of wicker couches and a handful of benches. Alex was laid out on one of the couches, atop a sheet so new it was crisp with starch.
Leigh glanced at someone with obvious relief, and Alex was confronted with another blurred silhouette.
There was nothing unusual about the light, he realized. There was something wrong with his eyes.
With his eyes? With his eye…
“Alex? Oh, dear…”
He remembered, with intense specificity, the sensation of the tip of machete puncturing the fleshy core of his eyeball. Alex curled into a ball and hyperventilated, fully intending to start screaming and never stop.
Emily laid hands on him like a faith healer and wrapped him in an empathic security blanket.
Alex drifted blissfully back into unconsciousness.
Emily slumped back and wiped sweat from her forehead, while Leigh paced irritably.
“He keeps waking up like that,” she said, jabbing her finger accusatorially at Emily. “Your boyfriend is a fucking PTSD’d wreck.”
“Ex-boyfriend. Cut him some slack, won’t you, Leigh? He’s had a rough time.”
“We’ve all had a rough time.” Leigh gave the unconscious boy a contemptuous look. “That’s the human condition. Present company exempted, obviously.”
Emily laughed.
“Alex is still human, at the very least. Whatever we are.”
“Is he?” Leigh tapped one of his frigid fingers, and it rang like glass. “I’m not so sure.”
***
Alistair nodded, and Drake Simms gunned the engine to the lead van, knocking the gate from its hinges and carrying it forward on the hood as they roared into the parking lot, the van behind them riding nearly on their bumper. A telekinetic gestured disabled the perimeter lights, plunging the anonymous office complex into darkness. Drake steered across the parking lot guided by telepathy, deftly weaving between concrete barriers and planters to pull up in front of the seven-story building, a single rectangular tower of blue glass embedded in a small lake of concrete and asphalt. He pulled up so close that Alistair heard the rims grind against the gutter.
Hit it, Alistair commanded, reaching for his seatbelt. We don’t need any prisoners. No shooting inside! Make sure not to damage of any of the equipment.
The Isolation Field snapped into place, while Alistair severed the links to the Etheric Network and muffled emergency beacons. A small box mounted to the rack in the back of the first van prevented cellular calls, while another quick burst of telekinesis took care of the land line.
Alistair stepped out of the van, and Drake ran around, handing Alistair a suppressed pistol, the grips rough and new in his hands. He sauntered casually up to the entrance of the building, flanked by a small crew of Anathema gunmen. They took positions in front.
Hello, Black Sun peons. You do realize that the building you’re in right now is on fire, don’t you?
It took a moment for the mass telepathic message to sink in, and then the building howled. The night was split by the sound of the fire alarm, and the lobby of the building was illuminated by several brilliant flashing lights. Alistair flipped the safety off on his pistol, taking aim with one arm extended. Behind him, the rest of the Anathema followed suit. Just for fun, he breached the consciousness of one of the people he could feel, scrambling down the stairs from the third floor, convinced the building was on fire. Through the borrowed sensorium, Alistair could feel the heat of the flames, his breath short in the smoky air.
Returning to himself, Alistair smiled and waited.
The front door to the office building slammed open, and a man in a white shirt and loud tie came rushing out, huffing and panicked. Alistair let him get to the parking lot before he put a round through his right eye, and watched him fall to the asphalt. Turning his attention back to the front of the building, he took aim at the small crowd gathered there, scrambling to exit the perceived inferno.
He shot a dark-haired woman in a blue blazer as she neared the handicap pa
rking, and then an older man in a brown jumpsuit who made for the rear fence. At the doors, the small crowd hesitated, some turning back toward the imaginary flames, while others charged forward heedless of the gunshots.
Don’t worry about the gunshots, Alistair ordered, shooting a fleeing man in the neck as he fumbled for his car keys. Just keep worrying about the fire, okay?
The remaining occupants of the building stampeded into the parking lot. The Anathema crew behind him opened fire, with more enthusiasm than accuracy. Alistair picked his shots, privately wishing for the days when he had Auditors to boss around. Good help was hard to find.
***
Keeping his eyes closed was suddenly like holding his breath – Alex could not do it forever. When he succumbed to what felt like necessity, he discovered that this his vision was still distorted, one half of the room dim and filled with ghostly afterimages.
Emily watched him with a nervous smile. The empath squeezed his hand, and Alex felt a surge of relief.
“Are you awake, Alex?”
He wanted to nod, but that required more effort than he was prepared to make.
“He can’t be,” Leigh scoffed, emerging from the bathroom with a stack of steaming towels. “He’s not screaming.”
“Leigh, be nice! Alex is recovering from a very difficult experience.”
He never managed to ask the questions, but Emily must have seen them on his face, or read them off the top of his battered mind.
“You were taken prisoner, by Samnang Banh, with the intent of interrogating you for the Church of Sleep. However bad that might have been – don’t try and remember, please – she probably saved you from a worse fate. I’m not sure what Alistair had planned, but he very nearly killed you at the Far Shores.”
He remembered the tips of his fingers rolling across the floor first, and then the rest of it returned to him.
“Oh, God!” Alex gasped. “My eye?”
Emily fought against the wave of panic and terror that submerged his mind for some time, before giving up and putting him back to sleep.
“You’re right. It’s useless.” Emily sighed and cracked her neck. “He’s a mess.”
“I think you’re just babying him,” Leigh grumbled, dropping a warm towel haphazardly across Alex’s forehead. “Hasn’t he thrown enough of a fit by now?”
“Psychic torture is subjective,” Emily reminded her. “We don’t know what was done to Alex, or how long it seemed to him to last. He may have experienced the equivalent of decades of torment.”
“I guess. We aren’t making much progress, though. Eventually Alistair is gonna figure out what we did and come looking…”
“You’re right, of course. Which is why we’re in Palermo, rather than the Outer Dark.”
“I thought that was just because you wanted to go to the beach.”
“No. I mean, that doesn’t hurt anything, but…”
“Yeah, yeah. What’s our next move?”
“I’m going to the beach!” Emily grabbed her towel and discarded her bathrobe in one unified movement. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
“Hey! What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“Maybe watch some TV?” Emily suggested, already halfway out the door, resplendent in a trim blue bikini that she must have bought sometime in the last few hours, as they had arrived without luggage. “Keep an eye on Alex, won’t you?”
Emily shut the door behind her before Leigh could complain.
Leigh lingered in the kitchen, mildly annoyed. She let her hair down, combed the tangles out with her fingers, and then reset her ponytail. She wandered through the living room, sparing a glance at the unconscious boy laid out on the couch.
The sun was warm and mercilessly bright on the whitewashed balcony. The building beside their hotel was painted a soft yellow that accented the brilliance of the light, from the sun beating down in the sky or reflected off the blue waters of the bay. Leigh made a quick check to make sure she was not observed, and then ran through a few cycles of sun salutations, stretching tense muscles, dispelling pent up frustration. She felt quite a bit better when she let herself back into the hotel room, aiming for the shower.
Alex watched her calmly from the bed, eyes exhausted and suspicious.
“Hey,” she said, adjusting the curtain behind her to block most the dazzling sun. “How are you feeling?”
He seemed to need to think about it, like the idea had not previously occurred to him.
“Strange.”
“You earned that, I suppose.” Leigh took the wooden chair tucked beneath the complementary desk in the corner, and set it beside the bed. She took a seat not too far away, her movements slow and wary. “You remember me, Alex?”
Another hesitation, a bit longer than felt normal, followed by a nod.
“Leigh. Leigh Feld. Margot’s…”
“Sister. Yeah. I never really met her, though. Just the one time.”
His eyes were weary and quiet, his mouth opening several times before he responded.
“The fight.”
“Yeah.”
“When Alistair…”
“That’s the one.”
Alex looked at her for such a long time without saying anything that Leigh became very uncomfortable.
“He killed your sister,” Alex said slowly. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“Not that much – sorry, I can tell she meant something to you. Like I said, I didn’t know Margot at all – but if it makes you feel any better, I have all sorts of reasons to hate Alistair. So, we have that in common.”
A very slow frown.
“Where is Emily?”
“The beach,” Leigh said, moving her chair a little closer to the bed. “How do you feel?”
Another period of contemplation, she assumed the time it took Alex to survey his limbs and organs for presence and viability.
“Better.” Alex held up his formerly incomplete hand for inspection. “Why is that?”
Leigh considered lying, and then decided it wasn’t worth it.
“You want the simple version, or the complicated one?”
“Simple.”
“Blood transfusion.”
She thought he took it well, considering.
“Blood?”
“Yeah.”
“Uh, okay. Sounds benign. Was I bleeding, or something?”
“Well, you were dying of septic shock. You also had gangrene, which is completely disgusting, by the way,” Leigh explained, ticking off the points on her fingers. “You’d already lost the one eye, plus most of an ear, and what was left was all infected, too. Plus, the little bits. The fingers and such.”
Alex attempted to look skeptical, but a good part of his face did not cooperate.
“Dying? Really?”
“Oh, yeah. In a hurry. Extremely low temperatures combined with whatever biological agents the Yaojing pumped you full of, that was just about all that was keeping you alive.”
“Oh, for god’s sake…how the hell does a blood transfusion fix any of that?”
“My blood,” the vampire explained, like it was the most reasonable thing in the world. “We rigged an IV pump, pushed it out of my arm and into yours.”
“I get it, I get it,” Alex moaned. “But why?”
“Vampiric nanites don’t do anything but self-repair. You know that, right?”
“Yeah…” Alex dimly remembered Margot years ago, explaining to him that the tiny machines inside of her converted damaged organic tissue to impervious inorganic material, gradually turning her to a statue. “So?”
“During my transformation, the doctors figured out the vampiric nanites continue their work after leaving the host. Not for very long – seconds, really – but we had time, and a basically unlimited supply.” Leigh laughed. “I had IVs in both arms all afternoon, one side replenishing, the other draining.”
“Oh, no. You…you’re kidding, right?” Alex examined his hand, tapped the porcelain first joints on his finge
rs. His hands quickly strayed to his leg, which had the same dull marble resonance. He wasn’t brave enough to touch his eye. “I have statue parts, now?”
“Statue?” Leigh raised an eyebrow, and then nodded. “Oh, I get it. Clever.”
“This is so fucked…why the hell would you do this shit?”
“Your damaged tissue was mostly replaced by inorganic material.” Leigh glanced at her mechanical watch, then pursed her lips in exasperation. “Infection and gangrene was replacing your flesh with rot. Which do you prefer?”
Alex tapped his new fingers against the railing on the rolling bed, a pained expression on his face.
“There’s…not nothing.” Alex’s voice trembled. “I mean, I do feel something…”
“Yes, a bit,” Leigh acknowledged. “I am a superior model of vampire.”
“My eye…”
Alex stumbled out of the bed, drawing a glare and a cluck of the tongue from Leigh, and dragged himself to a nearby mirror mounted to the inside of a closet door. His amended leg dipped and wobbled with each step, but it held his weight and functioned. Alex pressed himself to the mirror and tugged his eyelid wide for inspection.
The white of his eye was smooth and lusterless, like a white plastic. The iris glinted like glass bits embedded in flat marble, while the pupil was solid black and stubbornly fixed, refusing to adjust to changes in light.
Alex was so alarmed that it took some time to realize that he could see just about as well as before, and that his eye moved within the socket in unison with its fleshy compatriot.
“I don’t understand. Why am I not blind in this eye?”
Leigh snatched his hand, and placed it on the back of her forearm.
“Do I feel like a statue?”
Alex flinched, but he did not pull away. The vampire’s tissue felt like skin – perfectly smooth, dry, and cold, yes, but skin nonetheless. When he put pressure on it, her skin flexed beneath his fingers.
“Hey,” she said, pulling her arm and rubbing it resentfully. “That tickles.”
“Sorry, but I still…”
“You are dense, aren’t you?” Leigh grimaced. “I’m not poor Margot Feld. I was placed in a forced evolution chamber and fed the blood of a third of my race. I am not a statue. I am something else entirely. My body may be an inorganic substitute, but it is a high-quality substitute. The replacement material is extremely strong and durable, which naturally reduces sensation, but it retains the original function.”
The Outer Dark (Central Series Book 4) Page 37
