by Riley LaShea
“You could have killed her.”
“Bullshit.” Sean dragged the deraph up by her collar. “See, she’s fine.”
Fine, of course, was a relative term, meaning she wasn’t dead, Slade discovered as he finally stepped off the bottom stair. She wasn’t even unconscious, though, blood running down her forehead and coating her hands, leg twisted at an unnatural angle, the deraph probably wished she was either.
“This way,” Garcia gritted the order, shining the flashlight toward a doorway on the opposite side of the room, and the sound the deraph made were almost whimpers as Sean pulled her across the stone floor.
Almost at the door, another cry cut through the night. Anticipating it, Slade no longer heard it as a disembodied echo. Honing in on the sounds that went along with it - the scrape of metal over the floor, the obstructed sob - Slade recognized their combined melody. It was a song he knew better than most, having had experience on both sides of the situation, as captor and savior, the distinctive chorus of someone being held against his will.
“Bring her here,” Garcia said as Slade made it into the room with them, and when Sean dumped the deraph onto the floor, Jim rushed to secure an iron cuff around her unbroken leg, as if it would make any difference. After her tumble down the stone steps, she wasn’t going anywhere, even without the tranquilizers, and if the deraph was in any condition to flee, one metal chain wasn’t going to stop her.
Sean and Garcia backing out of the way, Slade could finally see the other prisoner, the one who was there upon their arrival, and, taking in the captive, his eyes blinked in consternation. Seven or eight years old, at most, the boy shivered in the dank cold, knees pulled to his chest, arms wrapped tightly around them, head buried as if he thought he could hide. A hundred percent certain the kid was human from the first glimpse, Slade felt a drop in his stomach he couldn’t explain as he wondered how long he had been chained up down there. In his line, he’d seen far worse than one kid in chains, had caused worse than the piss-your-pants fear that afflicted the boy’s body as he tried to make himself as small as possible.
As the deraph snarled a last-ditch attempt at intimidation, backing them all up on instinct, the boy sobbed through his gag, and it had the most mystifying effect. Predatory sound halting at once, the deraph glanced to the boy, something peculiar entering her gaze.
“Let’s get this done.” Garcia raised his crossbow, but, eyes on the boy crying next to her, the deraph was unconcerned with the imminent threat.
“We need to know it works the other way.” Fiona pushed the crossbow’s aim toward the empty wall before Garcia could fire, and though Slade had no idea what that meant, he could feel the weight in the words as he dropped his gaze back to the deraph, watching her drag herself across the uneven stone floor.
Manicured fingernails, jagged from her rough night, brushing the boy’s jeans, he lifted his head just enough to glance the deraph’s way. Terrified of her an instant before, the boy calmed as their eyes met, a small smile forming on his lips as he took the deraph’s hand, and, through her agony, the deraph smiled back.
Transfixed, Slade almost didn’t recognize the sound as Garcia pulled his pistol.
“Wait.” He recognized his intent as Garcia took aim, recoiling at the shot that sent the boy’s head back against the wall with a sickening crack. Small body sagging toward the floor, it delayed Slade’s response for only a moment. Drawing his own gun, he put Garcia in its sights, prompting a chain reaction that drew everyone’s weapons from their holsters, until they were all left staring down each other’s barrels.
“Put your guns down.” Deed done, Garcia was the only one whose weapon hung harmless at his side. “Look.”
Wanting to take his eyes off Garcia even less than before, Slade jerked his eyes toward the deraph, grasping what he saw only as he looked away again. Turning back a second time, he stared at the woman’s still form, her arm stretched above her head where her hand had fallen out of the boy’s, her glassy eyes staring toward the far wall.
“She’s dead,” Garcia assured him when Slade tipped the deraph onto her back with the toe of his boot.
“What the hell is this?”
“It’s the new way,” Garcia said, and it sounded like a cult leader trying to brainwash new recruits.
“So, what? You’re just killing kids now?”
“Don’t tell me you object. And he wasn’t just a kid. He was a synjument.”
“Yeah?” Slade returned. “And what the fuck is that?”
“When a deraph is born, so is a synjument,” Garcia stated. “Good and bad. Yin and yang. One cannot survive without the other. If the synjument dies of natural causes, it returns. As you can see, though, if it dies by violent means, it takes its deraph with it. One is just far easier to kill.”
“Yeah, ‘cause he was a kid,” Slade said again.
“They’re not all kids,” Garcia responded. “You’re the one who chose the target. You said we should go after the youngest deraph, so we went after the youngest. It just so happened her synjument was young too.”
“This is fucking whacked.” Shaken deeper than made sense, it was as if the musty castle air had taken up residence under Slade’s skin. In all their planning, as they worked side by side to lay out positions and exchange hardware, not once had anyone bothered to mention the real target was a young boy.
“They die anyway,” Garcia said.
“What?”
“Likewise, when you kill a deraph through violent means, its synjument dies. So, assuming you didn’t put the deraph you killed down with painkillers and a lullaby, you technically killed one first. Does it really matter who takes the bullet?”
Argument completely logical, if it could be believed, even logic wasn’t sitting real well with Slade at the moment.
“Don’t tell me you believe this crap.” He looked to Fiona, further shaken by the realization that, in a room with his own crew, even after everything, she was still the person he trusted the most.
“I don’t really believe anything, Slade,” she said, and it should have been a satisfactory answer. It should have been her only answer.
Harbor no creed of one’s own. It was a mercenary’s motto. Be a blank slate, so others can write their beliefs on you for a mission, and you can wipe yourself clean once that mission is done. It wasn’t Fiona, though. Back in the day, it was Fiona who had helped him find his sense of right and wrong when Slade could no longer tell the difference, who helped him realize there were bad guys on every side and there was always some justice in taking out the bad guys.
Looking into Fiona’s eyes, they looked empty, whittled away by all they had seen. With all his talk about how much the job could mess a person up, Slade didn’t know how he failed to notice, somewhere amidst the work and being let down by him, Fiona had gotten the most messed up of all.
“This boy…” Garcia drew Slade’s eyes from her, and Slade felt hatred rage within him. Of course, Garcia would take advantage of the situation. Fiona needed someplace to go, and Garcia had a place to give her. A place where she could be put to good use, just another cog in his moral machine. “He was given an unfortunate lot in life, being the carrier of something he had no control over. But he did carry it. And, like any disease, it’s better to kill the infected than let the contagion spread.”
Not buying into, or giving a rat’s ass about, Garcia’s analogy, Slade returned his gaze to Fiona, searching for any sign of the woman he knew was there only a few months before.
“You said I should do this for my daughter.” He should be angry at her too, maybe even angrier. She was the one who had convinced him, after all, made him believe this was some sort of worthy cause. But when he tried to find the emotion, too many other sentiments got in the way. “Wasn’t this someone’s son?”
The question appearing, at first, to bounce right off of her, Fiona’s gaze at last drifted downward, and something in Slade wanted to go to her, to grab her and yank her out of this dungeon and into
a world where the air was clearer.
“You’ve done what we needed of you.” Garcia’s gun finally joining the potential exchange of bullets, the barrel felt tighter on Slade than anyone else. “Put your guns away and go. There’s no reason we all have to die down here tonight.”
“What makes you think we’re just going to let this happen?” Slade asked. “The kid is human. You just put a bullet in his head. Why do you think we won’t walk out of here and call the police?”
The burst of laughter from Garcia tightening his finger on the trigger, Slade clenched his teeth against his other most pressing desire, to throw the gun aside and rush Garcia with bare hands.
“Armand has two medals of valor,” Garcia returned. “Jim is an admiral. I’ve earned my own stripes. Fiona, well I’ll give that her record is spotty, but I suspect it will still hold up against yours. You tell anyone about this, who do you think they’ll believe? Three decorated veterans or two mercenaries who, I’d be willing to bet, are wanted in several countries and have zero character witnesses? The authorities will peg you so fast for what happened tonight, you may as well write your own arrest warrants.”
To Slade’s discontent, that logic held up too. It wasn’t like they could call for help when they helped set fire to the bridge that took other people into the raging waters with them.
“Thank you for your service.” Garcia sounded so fucking condescending, Slade considered the other means he had of rectifying the situation, and it was rather unsettling to realize the only thing that kept him from killing Garcia on the spot and letting the others fall where they may was the likelihood Fiona would die in the crossfire.
Gun falling to his side, he had to get. Pushing between Amber and Katlego, they fell instantly into step at his back as Slade headed for the dark staircase, determined to make his way up it in the pitch blackness.
“Fiona,” he heard Sean utter before he came after them, and, expecting to hear a gunshot as Fiona did to Sean exactly what she promised she would do if he harassed her, Slade wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed when it didn’t come.
7
They had no recollection of the plagues. The closest any of them had come to the true ravage of human disease was the Spanish flu, and, as bad as that was, it cost half the lives of the Black Death and modern medicine carried sufferers in off the streets.
In the 14th Century, people were falling in the streets, the smell of infection so heavy on the air, it was impossible to know who was and wasn’t on the verge of illness until a person was taken far enough away from the rest of the population to leave the stench behind. Those with tainted blood, they had to kill anyway, or run the risk of exposure. So, in a way, deraphs of the time took on something of an altruistic role by accident, putting many people out of their misery before they had the chance to suffer.
Still, mistakes were made, bad blood frequently consumed. It was a difficult time for all.
So, although the rest of her clan could see Haydn’s concern when Vinn was carried in dead from the sea, they couldn’t truly appreciate it, and it was in her premature relief that whatever struck Vinn dead seemed to be an isolated incident that Haydn hadn’t thought to consider other threats that might be at hand.
Her clan had no recollection of the witch hunts either, the Great Scourge. Morning papers already in circulation, she could imagine their headlines. An attack on New Year’s Eve. Witnesses describing unnatural things. Though being chased through Amsterdam on one of the most crowded nights of the year had been invigorating for her young, most of whom hadn’t had a taste of death in decades, it was no thrill worth having. This was how it always started. People saw too much, or thought they saw something they didn’t, vigilantes popped out the torches and pitchforks, and soon there were bodies piling up on both sides.
For their kind, nothing good had ever come of human conviction.
“I’m terribly sorry.”
Looking up from the high-backed velvet chair, Haydn watched Auris’ sire Samuel falter in the doorway. Book open in her lap, she had no idea how long she had been sitting there, or why she bothered coming to the library in the first place. With such extensive personal experience at her disposal, far more knowledge was coming from within than without.
“I thought everyone was still celebrating,” Samuel said, as if his presence required justification.
“So did I,” Haydn returned, though it was a wayward belief that there was something to celebrate.
“Well, I won’t intrude upon you.” Starting back through the door, Samuel appeared anxious to get away.
“Samuel,” Haydn called, and, uncertain gray eyes, framed by wire glasses, came once again around the doorframe, peering out from beneath his fall of thick gray hair. “You don’t have to leave.”
“Oh. All right.”
Stepping inside, Samuel seemed equal parts pleased and ill at ease with the invitation, and Haydn knew she was to blame for his discomfort. Despite living under the same roof for more than a century, and speaking in passing, she remained a rather fearful figure for him, as she did for most of them. It had never been her intention. She just didn’t know how to be more. When she came to the realization she couldn’t remain on her own for all eternity, she hadn’t needed many. Gijon and Auris would have been enough. It had never been Haydn’s desire to lord over scores.
Part of a large family once, with hundreds of brothers and sisters, and all the security and envy that went with them, she knew how larger clans came with greater complication. She wasn’t going to stop them, though, Gijon and Auris when they had shown a yearning for more. Even if it would never fulfill them as they hoped. So it was in life, it was in death. Others could get only so close. No one could ever truly touch the deepest recesses of another. In the end, they were all completely open, and completely unknown, to each other.
“How’s your arm?” Unable to miss the stiff way Samuel reached to the shelves, Haydn watched as he fumbled a book at the question, dropping it to the floor with a thud, and pushing his glasses up in a slightly embarrassed gesture after bending down to retrieve it.
“It’s uncomfortable,” he acknowledged, putting the book back into a place of safety on the shelf.
“I imagine it is.” Haydn felt a twinge of empathy in her chest.
Vinn. Raquel. Brooks. Samuel. Her. The drastic improvement in the hunters’ track record over the past weeks was nothing short of baffling. And terrifying. If she didn’t figure out how they were managing it, and fast, she would no longer need to worry about the size of her clan. Slade and Garcia would control the numbers for her.
“You know, I could actually use that massive brain of yours,” she said.
“Of course.” Samuel positively glowed at the compliment. “It’s at your service.”
Turning too quickly, a grimace came to his face, and renewed fury rose up in Haydn at the damage the hunters had already done.
“It’s odd, isn’t it?” Closing the book in her lap with deliberate care, she managed to clamp down on the anger as she slid it onto the table next to her chair. “Garcia and Slade working together?”
“It was rather unexpected,” Samuel agreed.
“What do you think it would take to get them on the same side?”
“You mean, aside from a lightning strike that rendered each with no memory of the other?” Samuel replied, and, watching him push his glasses higher once more, it occurred to Haydn it was she who was missing out by not spending more time with her twice- and third-removed sires.
“Yes.” She couldn’t help but smile, though it was tempered by the worry of what might be to come. “Aside from that.”
“Something rather unprecedented, I imagine,” Samuel replied.
“I was thinking the same,” Haydn uttered, and he seemed pleased just to share an idea with her.
“That’s why I came in here,” he said, drifting toward another shelf to examine its titles. “Layla and I were discussing it on the way back. She’s been somethin
g of a protégé these past years.” When Haydn nodded her interest, it gave Samuel confidence to go on. “We thought, perhaps, there has been some sort of universal interference, a bit of research may be in order.”
“It’s nothing like that,” Haydn replied, and the statement stilled Samuel’s hand as he reached for a thick volume.
“How do you know?”
“When you live as long as I have, you become rather attuned to the universe.”
“Remarkable.” The bulk of his curiosity turning suddenly on her, Samuel seemed to be searching for signs of Haydn’s cosmic clairvoyance. “I would love to discuss it further sometime.”
Able to make no promises, Haydn tried to mitigate her lack of response with a smile. “Auris told me you finished a new machine,” she said. “Something to revolutionize medicine.”
“Did she?” Samuel turned almost bashful, like a young boy being praised by his teacher.
“Is this it?” Haydn asked him. “Is this the great invention you were sure you had in you?”
“I didn’t know you knew,” he said.
“That is why Auris bestowed you, isn’t it?” Haydn proved she wasn’t completely oblivious of those in her line. “Because you believed you could build the greatest invention ever made, if only you had enough time.”
“Time is an advantage to us all,” Samuel declared.
“So, is this the one?” Haydn asked again, and the pride that came to his face was not just the natural bravado of their species, but sincere delight in honest hard work.
“It is a very special machine,” he said. “Perhaps, it could be. It does need further testing. And, I don’t know…” Pausing for a moment, he looked entranced by possibility. “I always thought I had one great invention in me. Now, free of limitation, I do wonder if, perhaps, there may be more.”
“You have many lifetimes to find out,” Haydn encouraged.
“Yes.” Samuel looked indebted for each and every one of them. “And this machine did only take me a hundred and twenty five years, so…”
