Choose Omnibus (Choose: An Interactive Steampunk Webserial Book 3)

by Taven Moore

  F

  or a long moment, Jinn said nothing. Remora bit her lip and backed away. As his employer, she was within her rights to order him to speak, but the temptation to do so was hollow at best.

  As heiress to the Price fortune, she’d had many bodyguards. Jinn was hardly the first. He was, however, the first that she had chosen herself. Despite his carefully professional exterior, she felt closer to him than she had any of the many quiet, alchemist-gun-toting suits that had stood at her shoulder since she was old enough to get into trouble.

  Perhaps, though, Jinn did not feel the same. A lump rose in her throat and Remora bowed her head. She would not pressure him further for a confession he clearly did not wish to give.

  Her heart leapt at the sound of his voice, amplified by the narrow air vent. “All people are eaters of life. It does not matter if they be human, dresl, Shinra, or lowly cur in the gutter. We all consume others. The Shinra’ere do not . . . we do not . . .”

  He exhaled in a frustrated rush. “My brother received the gift of wordplay, not I,” he growled, then tried again.

  “When I was a boy, my brother and I were twins, as like as two sides of a sword. Our beds were patches of grass, as soft as downy feathers. One morning, I woke to find the grass under my body had withered and died during the night, while the grass of my brother’s bed remained vibrant. That was when my parents knew that I was to be Shinra’ere instead of Shinra’dor. I was sent to the agoge that very day, before the sun reached its full height.”

  Remora gasped. “Sent away? What parents would do such a thing to their child?”

  Jinn spoke quickly. “They did the right thing. Without gaining control of my hunger, I would kill everything I touched. Ten years within the agoge, Remora. Ten years before I was allowed near any living creature that was not another Shinra’ere or a dresl warrior. I learned discipline. Restraint. Martial skills.” His voice softened. “Not all of my agoge-mates were able to master themselves. The weak were culled to keep them from harming others.”

  Remora swallowed the unpleasant word. “Cull . . . you mean they were killed? You were but children! Is that not excessive?”

  “One of them devoured the lifespark of his best friend during an embrace,” said Jinn, his voice flat. “This is not the sort of thing which invites leniency, Remora. I tell you this so that you will understand how dire our situation is, so that you will leave me in peace.”

  How terrible, to kill one’s own best friend. How horrifying, as a child, to watch not one but two friends die for that mistake.

  Forcefully, Remora thrust the thought aside. Right now, she needed to focus on Jinn. “You have gained control, though. You are a Shinra’ere warrior, so that you are no longer a danger, is that not so?”

  Jinn scoffed. “How long can you go without eating, Remora?”

  Remora recalled the Ardelan Encyclopedia page clearly. “Assuming proper hydration, the human body can survive several weeks without food.”

  “I have not eaten since I renounced my family and left my Clan.”

  Remora paused, thinking back. When she had met Jinn, he had already been clanless. Weeks had passed since that day. Horrified, she gasped. “How long—?”

  “Too long,” he answered grimly. “Imagine yourself the thirstiest that you have ever been. The hungriest you have ever been. Then place yourself in the same room as a table piled high with the most delectable foods you have ever known, cups brimming with wines to quench your thirst. Imagine how badly you would desire that food and that drink, and know that if you give in to that desire, you would hurt innocent people.”

  Remora bit her lip.

  Jinn took her silence for assent. “And that is why you must cease to pester me, Remora. Restraining my hunger has not been easy, and restraining it further so that I do not leak control and consume against my wishes will take all of my attention. If I reach the point where I unintentionally consume, I will not have enough control to stop, and as our captor has stated, either Snow or you will die.”

  Remora glanced to the white leopard dresl, whose pale blue eyes were wide with fear. “Danger” “Please” her clawed fingers signed again. This time, Remora understood the warning.

  From the grate, Jinn’s voice cajoled, “I need quiet, so that I may concentrate upon my meditation. Do you understand, Remora?”

  Remora’s brow furrowed, her mind racing. He sought to control his hunger, though they were prisoners and likely still days from Bespin. Even if he were right, and he were somehow capable of restraining his hunger until they reached the skycity, he would still have a desperate need to feed. Someone would die. Even if it weren’t herself or Snow, it might be a guard or it might be an innocent person.

  Furthermore, he would need to feed regularly for the entirety of his time with her. What they needed was not silence, but a solution.

  “This, the way that you feed—it is a secret, yes?” Remora asked quietly. Surely it must be, if none of her books had mentioned it.

  “Very much so,” said Jinn.

  Remora closed her eyes and nodded. If it were a secret, then it seemed unlikely they would find any help in Bespin. The solution they found must be one of their own making. “Very well, Jinn. I understand,” she said.

  The relief in his voice was nearly tangible. “Thank you, Remora. Now, if you could simply—”

  “I give you permission to feed from me,” she said primly.

  “What!” The strangled bark that came through the vent sounded little like the calm Shinra’ere guard she knew—though she now better understood why he seemed so withdrawn and silent. It was a heavy burden that he had carried, and she would see to it that he did not carry it alone.

  “Should I be seated for this?” she asked, eyeing the hard metal floor doubtfully. “I presume I shall be weak afterwards and I should feel simply dreadful were I to fall and hit my head. Would it be easier if I sit closer to the grate?”

  “Remora, this is madness. I will not allow it.”

  Remora sniffed, ignoring both Snow’s frantic gesturing and the note of panic in Jinn’s voice. Really, one would think he did not appreciate her offer! Without waiting for Jinn’s response, Remora lowered herself to the floor, folding her legs neatly beneath herself. “I was not seeking your input, Jinn. From what you say, I gather that you have yet to reach the point where you have no control at all. Therefore, if you are to feed safely, it must be done immediately. You are to be my bodyguard for six months, and I’ll not have you starving to death during that time. Not only would it be unprofessional, it would also be a breach of contract. As your employer, it is my duty and responsibility to ensure that you are properly looked after, including your meals.”

  “Remora, I will not feed on you.”

  “From what you have already admitted, we have a choice of being eaten either intentionally or unintentionally, and the unintentional version involves an oblong wooden box.” She frowned at him. “I am making a logical decision.”

  “Logical? You are asking me to feed off of your life force! That is not logic, it is madness!”

  “Are there any side effects I should be aware of?” Remora asked, arranging her skirts over her knees and ignoring his frantic posturing. He would see that she was right, as soon as he calmed down and focused.

  He scoffed. “Aside from possible death?”

  “Yes, aside from that,” Remora agreed.

  “How can you be so calm about this?”

  Remora gave a sad little smile that she knew he could not see. What would he say if he knew the truth, that she was going to die in seven months—no, she was almost down to six now. She didn’t want him to know the truth. That Bones, first mate of the Miraj, had found out was shameful enough.

  “How can you be so horrified?” Remora countered. “Surely you have fed before.”

  “Yes, but that was on dresl!”

  Remora lifted an eyebrow. “For shame, Jinn. They may have animal features, but that makes them no less people than you or
I.”

  She could almost hear the scowl in his voice. “That’s not what I meant. They were my team. They had been raised from childhood with me, knew it as part of their purpose.”

  “I am no less willing than they had been, and you are wasting time. Unless there are other side effects I need to know of, I would prefer if we get this over with quickly.” Remora’s hands shook, though her voice did not. She’d never fed a Shinra’ere before, nor heard of any others who had. Part of her—a rather large part—told her that feeding a monster was not logical at all. After all, Jinn had made it quite clear that she might forfeit her life. To die now would be to abandon her search for Starbirth.

  She shook her head. She could hardly sit back and allow Jinn to die or suffer the horror of accidentally killing them. What if she lived and Snow died, while she could have prevented it?

  No. She was no longer Remora Windgates Price, cloistered daughter of Lord Magnus Price. With her father’s death, she had reinvented herself. She was now Remora Gates, and Remora Gates did not back down from a challenge. Life was too short to take the safe road.

  She smiled a little as she remembered what she had told Bones, the day he had learned her secret. “One must do something illogical every day,” she whispered to herself, spirit lifting.

  A heavy sigh. “Remora, you do not understand—”

  Remora cut him off, her voice an unintentional echo of her father’s—hard and unswerving. “Enough. My decision is made.”

  A long pause, during which she feared he might still refuse her, followed by a quiet, “Thank you.”

  “It is my pleasure,” she said, just as quietly. Pointing her chin forward, she cleared her throat and spoke clearly, “Carry on.”

  At first, she thought he was going to back down. She had, in fact, opened her mouth to scold him again when she felt it.

  “Oh!” she gasped. Immediately, she tightened her jaw and resolved herself to silence, lest Jinn take her surprise as a faltering of her resolve.

  Her hands clenched in her skirts. She wanted to clutch at her stomach, her head, her chest, her very skin, but the pain—no, it was not pain. Not pain at all, but rather a feeling of intense loss. As he had said, she was unprepared. It felt as if he drew from her essence as one might slurp a milkshake through a straw. Almost immediately, she felt weak. Diminished. Hollowed.

  “Oh!” she heard, and at first thought it was an echo of her own exclamation before she recognized the voice as not her own.

  It was Jinn.

  Abruptly, the sensation of being emptied vanished.

  Remora slipped to the floor, falling as she imagined a spent autumn leaf might drift to the ground. She felt the touch of furred hands, but opening her eyes to see Snow’s black-spotted fur seemed an impossible effort.

  As if from a great distance, she heard Jinn’s voice, tinged with audible horror. “Seraph? Why did you not tell me, Remora? I did not know. How could I have known? How can you be Seraph? This is impossible!”

  Remora wanted to shout, to deny the truth of it, even to ask him why he sounded so frightened, but her lips did not obey her. Her final, dulled thought was an unhappy observation that the feeding had not gone as she had intended. In point of fact, she was quite displeased.

  She sank into a velvet darkness that held no dreams.

  3. Sparktouched

  Jinn stared at his hands, turning the now-alien appendages to survey the changes. His fingernails had always been more claw-like than the shovel-shaped nails that tipped human hands. Now, they jutted outward, curving into wicked sickle-shaped talons, tipped with copper as if he’d dipped them in paint.

  A scarlet drop fell, vanishing into the tight black bindings that wrapped his arms. His mouth twitched in a half-grimace, lip torn where twin saber fangs pierced during their hasty protrusion.

  Sparktouched, they called it. A myth among his people. A legend. A foolish story whispered into dark agoge nights. “You’ve not lived till you’ve tasted Seraph. Till you’ve been sparktouched,” they would say, though none among their peers or teachers would attest to the rumor’s veracity.

  Remora was Seraph. It was impossible, yet it must be true.

  The Seraph were gods among men. To feed from them would be anathema. It was not done. Ever. By anyone. Even with his brother whispering midnight treason that the Seraph were no more gods than the chittering shonfra in the swamps—even so, the thought of what he had done shook Jinn to his core.

  He had tasted human and dresl and both Shinra’ere and Shinra’dor. He had tasted trees and grass and dumb animals. Every species had a flavor, every life force a spice unique to its owner.

  Humans tasted of bread, mostly. If Remora were human, she would taste of a yeasty sourdough or a buttery roll.

  Instead, Remora tasted of nothing he had ever encountered. She tasted of copper and cinnamon, the salty tang of the ocean and the sharp bite of rusted metal.

  She was not human, yet she could not be Seraph. He had seen a Seraph, once, when visiting his brother in a skycity. The Seraph had not so much as glanced in his direction and still Jinn had felt as if he could not breathe. The Seraph had a presence that seemed to squeeze the air from the room. It commanded attention, even without taking into account the wings.

  Ah, the wings. Calling them “wings” seemed an insult, as if a comparison could be made between a sparrow and a Seraph. The Seraph’s metal wings hovered, detached from the Seraph’s back but following behind him. The wings had crackled with energy, shot through with bright bolts of electricity that danced through the hammered-silver plumage like squirrels chasing each other through trees.

  Remora most certainly had no such presence, no such wings. Yet he had tasted her, could no more compare her flavor to any other that he had ever tried than he could compare that humble sparrow to the majestic Seraph.

  He uncurled his fingers. A red caterpillar of energy curled around his index finger, crawling to the tip and exploding in a spark that smelled faintly of cinnamon.

  He was sparktouched, which meant Remora was undeniably Seraph, regardless of how impossible that statement may be.

  She was his employer, his friend, his fellow inmate . . . and a Seraph.

  He clenched his fist, the sharp tips of his talons biting into his skin. She was a goddess, and he had allowed her to be captured by these brigands, these thieves. He had endangered her.

  He would not fail her again.

  Now that his hunger was sated, maintaining a physical distance from Remora and Snow was unnecessary. Removing the screws from the metal grate separating his cell from theirs was a simple matter. He pushed his arcblade, bound in black wrappings, through the grate before shimmying through the thin opening himself and into the other cell.

  Snow sat in the farthest corner, Remora’s head in her lap. The dresl’s furred, leopard-spotted tail curled protectively around the human woman.

  The look of fear in the dresl’s eyes as he approached drew him up sharply. She gestured, “Keep away!” with a paw-hand that shook and gave a half-snarl that told him she meant business.

  Lifting his hands to indicate that he sought peace, Jinn spoke. “All is well, I promise you. I know that I look different right now, but the effects will not last.” Jinn paused, and mentally added “probably” to the end of that statement. Assuming that the effects of being sparktouched would fade as he consumed the energy he had taken from Remora was perhaps premature.

  “You are in no danger from me,” he said, his new fangs pressing against his lips and making it difficult to form the words. “I wish to speak to her.”

  Snow’s paw lifted again. “You make many promises,” she signed, obviously referring to the promise that he and his brother had given her, that if she gave them the information they sought, they would help her escape safely.

  Jinn bowed his head. “Promises I still intend to keep.” He offered no excuses. His brother’s plan had fallen to pieces, and Jinn had panicked. After his brother’s capture during their escap
e, he had left Snow in the care of someone he trusted in Helion. He had chosen poorly. Now, she was in far more danger than she had been before he had “rescued” her, and she was right to remind him of that fact.

  Her paw flicked, a gesture indicating that she did not believe him, but that she did not wish to continue speaking of the matter. Even here, imprisoned, wearing a coarse woolen dress, and facing what was certainly a grotesque caricature of a Shinra’ere, she remained as poised and elegant as she had been when he first met her, swathed in silken kimonos worth more money than he would ever see.

  He stepped forward and Snow’s tail withdrew.

  Remora’s bird-thin wrists and delicate cheekbones seemed even more frail, her pale skin now stark against the strands of cinnamon-red hair feathered across her forehead.

  He did not touch her and her eyes did not open, but he knew she was awake. This close to a feeding, his heart beat in time with hers. If she were truly asleep, her heartbeat would be steady and regular. Instead, it raced and leaped, as panicked as a frightened deer.

  “Remora,” he said, watching her closely. He had not anticipated his own reaction to the feeding and could not begin to imagine what hers might be.

  Her eyes shot open, wide enough to show a full circle of white around the iris. He remembered her eyes as chocolate brown, shot through with flecks of gold. Now, her irises nearly shone, so bright was the metallic gold in them. Weak ribbons of brown drowned in the light of those eyes.

  Her pale lips parted, sucking in a breath of air as if he had punched her. “Too much,” she said. “Too much too much too much I can see too much . . . ”

  Snow gasped, and even Jinn leaned away. Her outburst, coupled with the drastic change in her eye color—what did it mean? What had gone wrong?

  Jinn’s motion attracted Remora’s attention, those eerie golden eyes coming to bear on him with an intensity that made his stomach curl.

  “Jinn,” she said. “Shinra’ere, the mark on your forehead carved, pale as bone, pale as ivory but it glows. It knows where the energy is and it eats, it hungers, it needs.” She stopped and placed her fingers against her temples, brow furrowed. “Jinn, make it stop, make it stop.”