by Leith Briar
My cheeks feel hot now and I think he notices, because his smirk grows. He leans in closer to me, so close I can feel the warmth of his breath on my neck and bare shoulder. “You know, I do not require you to put your scent on me.”
My head turns towards him. He couldn’t know the way I was feeling. Surely not?
But just as I’m about to open my mouth in protest, his head turns too, and suddenly his lips are covering mine.
I should fight this.
I should slam my fists onto his shoulders and pull my head back and ask him what the fuck he is doing.
But the truth is I don’t want to.
I like the way this feels. He’s not rough or demanding, his lips are gentle, his tongue caressing, and I let myself relax into him. My arms twist around his neck and his grip on my thigh tightens while he teases my mouth to open further for him.
I don’t know if it’s the temperature outside or this kiss, but I’m burning up. The world around us is falling away and right now the only important thing in it is the two of us.
And just when I start thinking how strange it is that I’m feeling this way, he breaks the kiss and lets me slide gently down his body.
I stumble a little when my feet hit the ground, and he catches me by the elbow, steadying me. “Now my scent is on you.”
He says it in such a matter-of-fact way, it has me wondering if what just happened was merely business to him. A transaction of scents. I guess I was foolish to think it would be anything different from a man as cold as him.
He leads me over to the huge beast and I try to dig my heels in. For as much as I want to see what lies in this new land, I really don’t want to do it on the back of that thing.
“His name is Sgail,” Colm tells me. “And he looks worse than he is.”
I look from the horse to him, doubting the words that come out of his mouth. “What does Sgail mean?”
Probably Killer or Predator or something.
“Shadow,” he says, holding me under the arms and lifting me up onto the thing. I’m so far up from the ground my stomach is twisting in knots. He didn’t even let me put my leg over for a bit of stability and I’m convinced the minute this thing starts walking I’m going to slide right off.
But Colm jumps up quickly, and he does have one leg on each side. He pulls me in closer to him, until I’m practically sitting on his lap, and now his thick thighs are acting like a sort-of seatbelt.
He takes the reins and with a kick, Sgail jumps a little and then breaks into a canter.
I look at the horse, because I’m too afraid to look around and see just how fast we are going. Muscles flex under his hard exterior, and he pants furiously as he moves. The sound is unlike anything I’ve ever heard before, louder than the clatter of his hooves as they race over the cobblestones.
“Where are we going?” I shout the words so Colm can hear me over the racket.
“You see that mountain over there?”
I pluck up the courage to turn my head for the first time and immediately wonder how I missed this the night they brought me here.
The thing looms in the distance, so high that I have to crane my neck to see the peak. I’ve seen mountains on Earth and this is nothing like those. It looks like it was forged in graphite, a dark grey colour that glistens in the bright sunlight. I can see even from here that climbing it would be almost impossible, the thing is jagged all over. Beside it lies a cliff which tapers off as far as the eye can see, and between us and the range lies only the black wasteground soil.
“That marks the edge of our territory. The natives, they live just over that smaller ridge behind us.”
I turn my head and see what he’s referring to. It’s similar to the graphite mountain but much smaller, and not nearly so jagged.
“Back up a second. What do you call this place? This planet?”
He smiles at that, his face almost proud looking. “Nova Scotia. It means—“
“It’s okay, I know what that means.”
He looks surprised at that but doesn’t comment, and I wonder if I should tell him.
No… I can’t ruin it for him.
Instead, I go back to the original subject.
“And what lives on the other side of that mountain?”
He glances down at me, and I see the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows. “There is much you do not yet know of our history.”
“Then tell me. I want to know everything.”
His face turns hard, and he looks at me with those cold silvery eyes. “The beings who brought us here — we call them the Plaigh — took us for the sole purpose of creating an army. They enhanced many things about us, the crops we grow, the livestock we keep, the beasts we ride on.” He glances down to Sgail and I nod my head in acknowledgement. “But they took others, too. From Earth. They were laying their bets. The Plaigh always lay their bets. The others they took were not nearly as agreeable as we were. We called them Deamhain. Horrible creatures. The Plaigh abandoned them.”
My thoughts are spinning with questions, and finally he seems to be giving me some answers. I start at the beginning. “I don’t understand how you can be here when there are no women. Did they create you?”
He furrows his brow. “I had a mother on Earth. I was thirty winters old when I was taken.”
I’m so confused. He acts like he’s been here a long time, but he doesn’t look much older than thirty now. “And how long ago was that? How long have you been here?”
“Seven-hundred years, give or take,” he says.
My mouth falls open in surprise. “But… how can that be?”
He shrugs. “The Plaigh gave us a drink which prolongs our life. We call it Uisge-Beatha, which was our word on Earth for Whisky, and translates to water of life.”
My mind is spinning with the implications of this. He’s been here for seven-hundred years. I assumed that was when humans were first brought here — not that they were the humans who were first brought here. And… this means I will get old. I will age and I will die, and he will remain exactly as he is now.
The thought of it has my stomach feeling heavy.
“What are you thinking?”
“Nothing,” I tell him. Just that I’m going to die.
He slows the horse for the first time and takes the reins in one hand, so he can tilt my chin up with the other. “You are sad,” he says. “I can feel it.”
“You can feel it?”
He nods.
“How? That’s not possible.”
He smiles. “Neither is living for as long as I have, and yet here I am.”
Chapter 13
Colm
I can feel her sadness but I don’t know why she would be sad. It hit me like a sack of stones right after I told her how old I was.
Perhaps I should not have mentioned that I can sense extreme emotion. She will only ask questions, and then I will have to answer them and tell her what else they changed about me.
But I could not help it. I want to take her sadness away, even though I do not understand it.
“But how can you know?”
“The Plaigh changed a lot of things about us. Our genes, our hormones, our biological makeup. The Balachs you see, they are human. But the Bhiasts are changed. We are only partly human.”
“So you can sense things… like how dogs know when you’re upset?”
I laugh at that. “Aye, I guess that is about right.”
“What else did they change?”
I swallow, trying to choose my next words carefully. Loche was correct, the offer of taking her out and showing her this world seems to have acted as a peace offering of sorts. She is warming to me. She wanted that kiss earlier, I could feel that just as surely as I can feel her sadness now. The last thing I want is for her to return to being scared of me — not when she seems so close to overcoming that.
“They made us stronger. Bigger. Faster. I need you to remember that we were created for the sole purpose of destroying the Plaigh
s enemies. Everything they did to us was with that end in mind.”
“You still seem so human,” she says.
“You must not make the mistake of thinking that. Your life could depend on it one day.”
There it is. Her body tenses. Her eyes widen.
The prickling of fear rears its ugly head again.
“What do you mean?”
“I will try to explain when we get to where we are going.”
She nods slowly and turns back around. We are close to the bottom of the mountain now. There are openings dotted all over and a whole intricate network of caves, filled with all sorts of wonders. In the early days, the Deamhain would use these as hideouts, but it has been hundreds of years since they have been spotted here.
Now, as far as we can tell, if there are any of them left they stick to their own side of the mountain.
Sgail stops just outside one of the larger entrances. It is cooler here at the mouth of the cave, the jagged rocks above our heads casting shadows on the scorched earth, and he will be fine outside for a few hours at least. Like me, he was also genetically engineered to be more than a horse. He can go days without water or any real rest. The heat does not bother him, and nor does the winter snow.
I dismount and hold my arms up, catching Sophia by her waist and helping her down. She looks up at the entrance with wide eyes, taking in everything around her.
“What is this place?”
I take a few steps forward and she follows me. “We call this specific cave Aite Uisge Liomhach, but there are many just like it.”
“Aite Uisge Liomhach, what does that mean?”
“Place of sparkling water,” I tell her, taking her hand while I lead her inside. It is dark in there, although I can see reasonably well in anything but the blackest of situations, she will see nothing. “Watch your feet. It gets slippery the further in we get.”
She grips her little hand tighter around my arm and I pull her in closer to me. After a few slips, we reach the centre of the cave and now there is light coming from below the vast pool of water. It casts reflections on the dark grey roof of the cave, every colour imaginable. On Earth, the water is clear. But on this planet its colouring depends on the dominant minerals in whichever place it comes from.
The colour of the water in this pool is a deep blue, but the gemstones that form the basin make it appear multicoloured, as if the whole thing is glistening and changing hues. At the far end, a waterfall pours more of the warm blue liquid into the pool, creating bubbles and a constant stream of small waves.
I tear my eyes away from the view and drink in the sight of her. Her eyes are wide and her mouth is open, and she still has not released her tight grip on my arm.
“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she whispers. I can barely make out the sound above the constant crashing of the water, but I can read her lips well enough. “It’s warm?”
I nod my head. “Aye. Do you not feel it in the air?”
She turns her head and looks around, as if she has forgotten how to nod and is too caught up in everything else. Her eyes hover on the large diamonds, emeralds, and rubies scattered along the walls. “On Earth there is nothing more precious,” I tell her. “But here they are as common as the grains of sand back home. The only thing precious on this planet is gold.”
She lifts her hand and runs it across the large gold hoops in her ear, and I smile at her.
“You asked me outside how I am different.” I take a seat on one of the smooth black rocks just behind me and gaze into the polished water. A few moments pass and she does the same, sitting down beside me. “They took things from different animals — and not just Earth ones, either. And they gave parts of them to us. In battle we are like machines. We do not stop. It is hard to explain. We feel nothing, other than a constant rage. There are parts of me that only come when I am feeling that way.”
“What does you mean?”
I guess it would be easier to show her than explain it to her, so I stand up and move along the edge of the water, putting the length of several men between us.
And then I do what I always do when I need to change.
I think about all the times I have been wronged.
I think about her ancestors, and how they betrayed us to the Plaigh. I think about how I would like to go back and crush their small skulls between both my hands. I do not think about the other crimes they committed against me, for I fear in doing so I would lose control of myself completely.
I think about the people who used these caves years ago, who would burn our crops and slaughter our animals as we slept. I think about how I did crush their skulls between my hands.
And then it happens. I feel it washing over me like a fucking storm, and trying to stop it from taking control completely is painful. It is a twitch at first, a pressure on my head as the bones rearrange themselves and blood swells.
First, my already too sharp teeth stretch even further. My muscles turn even harder than normal, and I feel them flexing under my skin as I grow. The skin that’s becoming harder and more coarse. Skin that even the sharpest blade would struggle to pierce.
Then my right hand changes. It is not like nails growing, but rather a claw forming. Harder than diamond and sharper than metal, it is like having five additional small blades attached to my hand.
And last of all, the horns. They don’t come as they do in the heat of battle. They’re smaller now, perhaps the size of Sophia’s thumb, but still noticeable nonetheless.
And one look at her face tells me Sophia has noticed them.
Chapter 14
Sophia
I’m trying not to cower away from him. I really am trying. I remind myself that no matter how he looks, no matter how worse he looks now, how cold his tone has been, how hard his face has been… he has never hurt me.
Not once.
So why does it look like he is going to?
My heart hammers as I take in all his features. His bare skin is ridged and toughened. His hand looks like it could gut me from my stomach to my throat in one vicious slice. His teeth are even sharper than they were, his silver eyes are glowing like moons and on his head there are… horns.
Fucking horns.
I remember what he told me. That mistaking his kind for human would be a grave mistake. And now I don’t doubt those words.
He is not human. Not at all.
He takes a careful step towards me and now I can no longer fight the urge to cower. I use my hands to scramble back some distance, and he stops.
“I thought it was better you seeing this now, instead of in the marriage bed.”
His words have my mouth hanging open in shock. “You were going to just… not say anything last night? You were going to spring this on me?”
He averts his eyes and turns, looking towards the glowing pool. “I do not fucking know.” His words shoot out harsh like daggers and send cold pins down my spine.
“You should have told me.”
“Really?” He lets out a joyless laugh. “What I should have done is fucked you before you had the chance to protest.”
My fingers cover the bangle on my wrist and I twist it around on my arms, unable to sit still while the hollowing of my stomach increases. How can he be so cold? I actually thought we were getting somewhere.
Now it’s clear there is nothing between us. Everything is just a means to an end for him.
“What do you want from me? Why did you bring me here when you so clearly hate me?”
He turns around. “I do not hate you. I wish I hated you, it would make everything easier.”
He has this habit of only picking up and responding to part of my question and it’s becoming infuriating.
“Why. Am. I. Here.”
He takes a long time to answer, but when he finally does, I fear I am still not ready for it. “You are an experiment, just as I was.”
“An experiment?”
He nods. “They want to see if we are capable of bre
eding. Our numbers grow smaller. We are hard to kill, but we are not invincible. Every battle we lose a few good Bhiasts. Men on Earth now, they fight with machines, not swords… and machines do not help against races who can jam electrical signals.”
“You want me to give birth to an army of warrior babies?”
He laughs at that, and I notice his teeth and horns shrinking just slightly. “I would settle for only eight or so. But you are wrong. It is not me who concocted this. The Plaigh want what the Plaigh want.”
I cup my cheek and look down at the glittering stones beside me. This is too much. He is too much. This is insane.
Everything about my life now is just completely insane, and I fear I’m about to lose what little grip on reality I had left.
“I can’t do this,” I tell him, standing up and trying to locate the passage — my exit — in the shadows.
“Sophia stop,” he calls after me, his tone angry.
But I keep going. I can’t stay here. I know he could easily catch me but I can only hope he sees sense and lets me have some time on my own.
“Do not make me come after you. Not like this,” he shouts after me, his tone laced with anger.
Why the hell would I stick around when he is speaking to me like that?
I’m already in the dark passage, using the walls to guide me. It isn’t too far. I just need to be careful not to lose my footing.
But I’m not even a few paces in when I hear him behind me, his footsteps, but also his breath, hard and heavy.
He grabs my shoulder and spins me around, pushing me up against the rough wall. The ridges dig into my back and it’s hurting me.
He forgets his own strength.
“Stop,” I cry out. “Let me go.”
But he just pushes harder up against me. “I told you not to run. You do not fucking listen.”
“You’re hurting me.” I try to get the words out but they connect with his chest, now much rougher and harder than it’s ever been before.
