by LW Herndon
I drifted through the line of men and women and back down the mountain toward the village.
I floated past the stream where Itzel lay, still and pale, her head and legs bloodied. Tokwal crouched beside her, his body still bearing her blood. He’d forced himself on her, angered at her rejection of him, even while she’d fought him. Her death was an accident of lust and passion, punishment for her poor judgment in choosing me as a friend and someone worthy to love. He’d exacted his vengeance on her delicate body through pain and force.
I’d found her in the clearing near the river where the shaman preferred his mushrooms gathered. Her eyes were cloudy and blank, fixed on the tree limbs in the canopy far above. The soft, warm light I knew, gone. I’d touched her neck and, finding no pulse beneath my fingers, cradled her in my arms.
Tokwal brought his father, the chief, and several elders. The accusations were clear on their faces as they witnessed me holding her, my grief evident in my possession of her body. A sly smile of satisfaction lit Tokwal’s face. He couldn’t have Itzel, but I could see he felt my death was a fair trade. I was to take the punishment in his place and no one would ever know of his crime.
I’d had no chance against the tribal judgment. I made no attempt to redeem myself. They would never have taken my word over Tokwal’s. To the shaman, my benefactor, I had professed my innocence. He had nodded with resignation. There was nothing he could do for me. I knew it, and so did he.
I drifted further back through wisps of gray to the shaman’s hut, to the small chair where he had branded tattoos to my five-year-old chest to cover those I’d been born with. To protect me, he’d said. To keep the demons from invading my spirit and taking me.
There was no protection for me. There was no protection for those I cared for. There was only doom for those who chose to stand beside me.
The gray circled and lifted me. I floated above the crumpled carcass of the plane that had buried me in these isolated jungle mountains as an infant. The plane had never reached its destination and left a one-year-old infant the sole survivor.
Over that rusted shell, covered with underbrush and growth, I floated, curled in a ball, waiting in nothingness. The peace ended in one large wave of splitting light and pain that shredded my mind and cut the air from my lungs.
Then the true darkness came.
***
“How do we know if they’ve already extracted information?” Anne’s voice, sound and solid, permeated the cotton in my brain.
“Well, they’re not here yet. That’s got to be a good sign.” Jez’s voice.
“Most likely we are not their immediate target.” Decibel’s throaty voice cut through the nothing in my brain.
“How do you know?” asked Anne.
“Shh, you two. I think he’s awake,” said Jez.
I could feel the presence of their bodies around me—warmth, female scents, wrapped in a blanket of worry—even though none of them touched me.
“Are you just going to stare at me?” I opened my eyes slowly to diminish the jab of ice picks, shooting from my eyeballs to the back of my head.
Anne’s fingers forced a pill between my lips. Her hand cradled my skull so I couldn’t avoid a straw. The water was cold, and I had trouble choking any of it down.
“That should help a little.”
Easy for her to say. She didn’t need to relearn how to swallow.
“You don’t need to baby him.” Decibel’s annoyance rang out.
“It’s not his fault,” said Jez.
“Yes, actually, it is. He chose to answer the demon summons to attack the Consortium. He should have been working on an offensive plan, not playing defensive strategies. Now we have none.” She crossed her arms in annoyance.
“That’s not fair. He’s not omnipotent.” Jez leaned forward and got a look at me from above. I saw ceiling and the ugly chandelier in Anne’s living room just over Jez’s shoulder.
I was lying on sheets on the carpet in Anne’s living room. I tried to move, but the wrapping around my body stopped me.
“You should just lie still,” Anne said. “There’s a lot of damage, and I don’t want you to pull off any of the scabs. Wounds might fester. I’ll remove some of the bandages a bit at a time.”
“How did I get here?” My tongue felt thick and I wasn’t sure if it was from the medication she’d given me, the layers of bandages around my face and body, or damage to my brain. I couldn’t remember much past the look of shock on Brazko’s face as the bullets tore through his chest.
Anne nodded to Jez. “She could feel you were in trouble and…the other one found you and brought you back.” She left for the kitchen. Jez sat there and stared at me as if I’d grown two more heads. Given the way I’d felt, I couldn’t rule that out.
Decibel appeared over her shoulder, her face calm and stoic as ever except for the telltale tremor at the corner of her mouth.
“Thanks for the save,” I said. “And just for the record, you left me first. After Ray’s.”
No witty reply. She just lowered her head a bit in acknowledgement.
“You okay?” I asked Jez. She looked normal, except for the puffy eyes and small red wrinkles of strain around the corners of her mouth. I asked because of our bond, though I couldn’t sense any emotion from her now.
“I didn’t feel much after the first few minutes.” She looked away and avoided my gaze. “There was a little stuff later, but…that sort of stopped too.”
A partial lie. Based on the determined set of her chin, it was all I was going to get from her. She now took lessons in stubbornness from Decibel as well. While she might not have felt everything, I had no doubt she’d seen every image my tortured mind had revisited. I couldn’t even deal with what I’d seen. I never desired for her to make that journey.
Anne returned with two bowls of water and some small towels, which she placed on the floor beside me. “I’m sorry about the accommodations, but there are so many spots.” She waved a hand toward my body. “It’s easier to get to everything on a flat surface.”
Decibel’s eyebrow jumped, and her mouth twitched in humor. “It had the added benefit you wouldn’t roll to the floor while you’re unconscious.”
“Great.”
“This may hurt a bit.” Anne reached for the wrapping at my shoulder and started to pull away the bandage. Bits of skin flaked away with the bandage, but nothing horrific invaded my calm.
“How long have I been out?”
“Three days.”
I started to lurch up. Shalim needed to know about the parasite. And Aisha and Marco.
“No.” Anne and Jez both put a hand on my shoulders and forced me back to the floor. Just the effort to move felt like ninjas on speed had pummeled my body. It was nothing compared to my rising panic as I ran through the list of people at risk while I had lain here, unconscious and infected with a parasite that was potentially sending information on our whereabouts to our enemies.
Decibel squatted by my side. “Your wizcateers are fine.”
I squinted at her. “Ray would never let you in to check on them.”
“No need.” She held up her phone. “I can see them from the window, and they can speak.” She rolled her eyes. “At least the girl child is capable of communication. There may be some hope for that one.” She stood and walked away to leave Anne to her task of stripping off bandages.
I felt a sensitive poke here, one there, none of the pain I’d experienced earlier. “Are you sure you were able to get rid of all of it?”
Anne stopped. “Yes.” Her voice came out in a whisper. I could feel the raw emotion spill out as she recalled the treatment, but I needed to be certain.
“How do you know?”
“I did what you said. I burned the disgusting thing. Everywhere.” Her hands shook, but she went back to removing the bandages.
“Good.”
“We’ll see if you agree when the bandages are off.”
“It doesn’t hurt much.”
> “I’ve given you some pretty strong pain medication.” She sat back and looked at the portion she’d uncovered. A puzzled expression marred her features. With the back of her hand, she pushed away her hair and stared at me.
“You can tell me.”
She glanced up at me as if she’d forgotten I was there. “This section looks pretty good actually.”
“I heal quickly.”
“Okay.” She continued with the next segment and placed the strips in one bowl. Using a sponge and cool water from the other, she washed away layers of dead skin. She sat back at one point, lost in thought, and then with new determination, she removed a bandage from my face. Her lips tight in concentration, she gently removed the remaining gauze around my head.
The tension on my face eased once my skin made contact with air. I closed my eyes, blinked, and pursed my lips. It felt good not to be mummified.
Anne stared at me again. Her fingers pressed around my cheeks and my forehead. She gently moved my head from one side to the other and then checked my ears.
“Guess the hair’s gone?” The cool feeling on my scalp clued me in.
Jez shook her head. “It’s growing back. You have a buzz cut and a little beard stubble to go with it.
“I told you. I heal quickly. I would never have survived as a demon if I didn’t.”
“We should clone you.” Anne was less gentle removing the remainder of the bandages.
I worried she was becoming a little overzealous in her determination to see how much I’d healed.
“The spread was thorough. That’s why the burn was necessary—inside and out.” She muttered more to herself than me. “It was horrible. Took several minutes of holding you within the flame to get it to retreat. The thing was voracious. Didn’t want to let go.” A quick inhalation of her breath and she fell back on her seat. “What the hell is that?”
Decibel and Jez leaned closer. A canopy of heads above me inspected my abdomen and pulled back at the sheet that covered my hips.
I grabbed the sheet and shooed them back. “I’m not a cadaver, and this isn’t Biology 101.” I managed to lean to one side, a bit wobbly, but persistence helped me to sit and keep the sheet around my privates. I don’t enjoy exhibitionism.
The pain was manageable. I looked down at my arms and chest, which, while pink, looked more like sunburn than flayed skin. A good thing, except the shaman’s artwork was gone and my own birthmark had emerged instead and grown. “Unless any of you ladies want a private, personal viewing.” I attempted a smile, wiggled my eyebrows, and tapped the edge of the sheet at my hip.
Jez pulled back quickly. “You letch, and to think I felt sorry for you.”
“Shame.” Anne shook her head. “I’m old enough to be your mother.”
I widened the smile. “Not my mother.”
Both women rose and stood in the perceived safety of the other side of the kitchen counter.
Decibel remained with a cold, strange calculation visible in her eyes. I couldn’t decide if it was revulsion or some other emotion. I’d never seen the look on her before, and it wasn’t comforting.
“So, beautiful blue-eyed child, your true nature persists,” she said.
I looked down at my right hip, showing from beneath the sheet. Swirls of the black and blue sigil covered my skin and crawled up my side to my shoulder. The glyph was an expanded version of the one I’d been born with. Gone was the brand seared into me as a child by the shaman, the one to save me from demons. I had always thought that ironic, since I’d become one anyway.
“My demon sign.” I grimaced and stroked at the marks now visible for everyone to see. A residual tingle sang back from my touch.
“No.” She shook her head and turned away. “That is angelic script.”
“What are you talking about?” My voice sounded strained and gravelly, even to my ears.
Decibel stood at the far end of the room and moved her finger as if stroking across the marks on my flesh. “Before Shalim’s clan, where were you?”
I shrugged. “I survived a plane crash in the mountains of South America. Fifteen years later, I stumbled into Shalim’s territory.”
“And what of the time in between?”
“Growing pains. Competition, murder, and a little revenge.”
“And your parents?”
“I have no knowledge of my parents. No background, just the name from a plastic hospital band, which I’ve never traced to anything. Oh, and some unique skills.” I shifted to lean back against the couch and looked for my clothes.
She picked up a pair of sweatpants from the table and tossed them to me. I grabbed them as I struggled to get up, finding it harder than I expected. I’d never felt so weak. A little dizzy too. My legs floundered, unsteady, as if I’d been in bed for weeks.
She remained watching me. So much for privacy. I dropped the sheet. True to her demonic self, she took several long seconds before she turned sideways, not giving me complete privacy, but I didn’t really care. I felt like shit and probably looked like a poster child for some bad science experiment.
“Picked up some of my clothes?” I asked, since it was obvious Decibel had been back to my apartment. The thought of her prowling around there didn’t bother me as it once had.
“Unless you were planning on wearing the sheet.”
I nodded in acceptance. “Thanks.”
“And the others in the plane?” She spoke over her shoulder.
“They were dead. There was only a pilot and another male passenger. I was in the back, strapped in an infant carrier. Evidently that section broke off, but I was trapped there.”
“You were what, twelve months old?”
I didn’t bother with confirmation, still struggling to get the pants over my tender skin. Healing quickly doesn’t mean it’s painless. I skipped the shirt and held on to it while I sank slowly onto the couch, relieved to sit. The purge of the organism must have taken a huge chunk of my energy.
“And your mark. It was different before?”
I suspected she knew the answer. Only Decibel could have shielded Jez enough to protect her from the brutality of my memories. She had seen my past, but at least she was gracious enough to pretend ignorance. “The shaman branded over it.” I laughed and braced my elbow on the couch arm and put my head in my hand. “To protect me.”
She nodded. “It did keep you from being detected. Your father had quite the sense of humor.”
“My father had nothing to do with me, my life, or my survival.”
“The odds of that are unlikely. At such a young age, you would have become a target for those who would ‘cleanse’ a marked child from this world.” She walked around behind the couch. “The perfect hiding place for a child marked by angels—first isolation and then within a den of demons.”
Humor laced her words but no disdain. Yet I still couldn’t decipher the odd vibration of emotion I picked up from her.
I didn’t find this as funny as she did. Frankly, my faith was nonexistent, marked by angels or not. The marks were either for my protection or more likely to warn others of my threat. Given my past, I was willing to bet on the latter.
“It doesn’t require your faith,” she said.
“That’s good, because I don’t have any.”
“You will be who you are meant to be.”
“I control who I am.”
“No one can avoid their destiny.”
I glared at Decibel, and her resigned expression was enough to push me over a perilous brink. I’d fought. I’d survived. I’d existed on the edge of every society I’d ever known, and I had maintained my sense of self. Now, with her persistence rankling, I could feel the heat and boil of years of frustration and anguish push their way to the surface. I would not be what she wanted. I would not play into the hands of fate. I would not relinquish the self I had achieved through raw determination.
My anger and denial lashed out. A wave of energy thrust outward in a quick, brutal rush. Instinct, not planned
. It happened in a split second, and the thoughts were still in my mind as the wave of energy hit her. The unexpected speed and force flung Decibel across the room and into the dining room wall.
I froze in shock, engulfed in instant regret. I hadn’t intended an assault.
She moved to pick herself up from where she lay on the floor near the kitchen. Pushing up with one hand, I started to leave the couch to help her, but she shook her head and raised her other hand. “Do not.”
The commotion sent Anne and Jez farther back into the relative safety of the kitchen. One look between Decibel and me brought varied expressions of confusion and concern from them both.
“You need to learn to control your powers,” Decibel said and motioned to Anne and Jez. “Both of you leave us.”
Jez started to object.
“Now.” Decibel’s voice rumbled like thunder and reverberated through the walls to shake the floorboards and jiggle the light fixtures.
To Jez’s credit, she looked less frightened than annoyed. “Fine.”
Anne, on the other hand, looked highly offended at the potential damage to her home.
Neither woman seemed the least bit concerned with either Decibel or me. They stepped across Decibel, passed by me on the couch, headed out the patio door, and into the backyard without question.
“I’m sorry, it—”
Decibel spoke over me. “That brand over your mark has not only hidden you from others. It also leashed other natural abilities.” She stood and dusted herself off but remained on the far side of the room. “It will be much like learning all over again, I imagine.”
I shook my head. Like hell. “Forget it.”
She crossed her arms across her chest, narrowed her eyes, and tapped a finger on her arm. “How did you learn the defense and demon skills that you have acquired?”
Bad topic, but I’d just tossed her across the room, so I supposed I owed her something in return. “Trial and error with the Hunta tribe. More years of trial and error with Shalim’s clan.”
