Apocalypse Nyx

by Kameron Hurley

  Nyx sat on a divan and put her feet up.

  “Drink?” Hadjara said, moving to the ample liquor cabinet.

  “You know I do,” Nyx said. “But first tell me when exactly I called you.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “That’s both a relief and a signal I should probably shoot you.”

  Hadjara laughed. “We both know you can’t hit anything, Nyx.”

  “So what is this about?”

  “You’ve triggered a lot of discussion among the bel dame council,” Hadjara said, pouring them both a whisky. She brought the glasses over. “And you did ask me to report to you if you came up in bel dame discussions.”

  “Friendly arrangement,” Nyx said. “You do what you like.”

  “I like you,” Hadjara said. “I wanted you to know.”

  Nyx balanced her drink on her knee and waited for Hadjara to drink first.

  “So they going to kill me or what?”

  “They’re afraid to have you working for that family in Alabbas,” Hadjara said. Her gaze moved to the door once, fast, then at the floor. That put Nyx on edge. “There was a bel dame apprentice associated with that family, and she had a very bad reputation. I looked her up for you.”

  “And I didn’t even have to call,” Nyx said dryly. “Hadjara, we haven’t talked in a year, and you’re stationed all the fuck away in Mushtallah. That means it took you at least a day to get here by train, which is also expensive. You could have sent a letter, even encoded a com to my com tech. Why a personal visit?”

  Hadjara lifted her glass, and Nyx noted that her hand was trembling. “I’m sorry, Nyx.”

  “Goddammit,” Nyx said. She pulled her pistol and leapt off the divan, putting the divan between her and the door. “At least tell me her name,” she said. “The bel dame apprentice. The one trying to frame me for this catshit that’s about to go down. One name before I kill you or they do.”

  Hadjara’s eyes filled. Nyx heard footsteps pounding up the stairs.

  “Rasim Muhktar,” Hadjara said, and the door burst open.

  Nyx shot first. But their aim was better. She ducked as they came in firing. They hit Hadjara in the head and chest.

  Nyx scrambled across the floor to the big wardrobe stuffed with pamphlets, and pulled it down behind her for cover. It was heavy, and fell like a massive tree. The crash made the whole room shudder. Nyx glimpsed four women in the doorway, and let off another couple of rounds in their general direction. She glanced at the window. It was covered in paper, probably lined with an organic filter, too, to keep out bugs and noise at the very least—people at the worst.

  She let off a few more shots that, predictably, hit nothing, and huddled behind the wardrobe for another breath. Two options—fight out through the front or take a chance that she could pass through the window without getting fried by it.

  Getting shot hurt. But getting fried or—at the very least—stunned by the window filter had a far higher chance of ending her stand here quite permanently and negatively.

  “Fuck it,” she said, and pulled her scattergun from her back with one hand and her sword with the other. Swing and shoot.

  She twisted her body so she was headed toward them shoulder-first, giving them the leanest target possible while firing her scattergun. One woman dropped. Another took cover in the hall. A bullet thudded into Nyx’s right shoulder; another hissed past her ear. She felt a hot, burning pain and splash of warmth on her neck.

  Nyx mashed the closest woman’s face with a palm-heel strike and butted the other in the jaw with the end of her scattergun. Not satisfied that they were down quite to her liking, Nyx shot them both again and slogged toward the first one who’d gone down and lay clutching her gut and pissing in her own rapidly pooling blood.

  “That was a friend of mine,” Nyx said, and shot her in the face.

  Nyx grabbed one of their guns; a much fancier one than she was used to, with at least ten more shots in it. The barrel was sleek, skinned in an organic sheath. It molded itself to her hand. She shot out into the hall, aiming high for the ceiling, and heard a shot in return from her left, giving away the location of the fourth and final woman.

  Nyx rounded the corner, keeping close to the wall, and came around the corner into the main room just in time to see the woman sloughing off her clothes and starting to shift. Long strings of mucus bled from her eyes and mouth as her body folded in on itself; the hair on her arms and neck grew darker and longer as her face elongated.

  Nyx shot her mid-shift. The twisted body dropped. Nyx surveyed the rest of the room. Blood smeared the floor. The glasses behind the bar were broken. But she saw no other bodies. Hopefully Morda and her crew had had time to hole up in their rooms.

  She knelt next to the partially changed woman. The woman was huffing mucus now. Her ears were curled up, and the whites of her eyes had been nearly swallowed.

  “I don’t take kindly to people trying to kill me,” Nyx said, “or killing my friends.” She drove her sword through the woman’s still mostly human hand, the fingers slightly truncated, the nails thicker and sharper now, but not fully dog yet.

  The woman whined.

  Nyx’s ear was starting to burn in earnest now; her shoulder throbbed. She wondered how much of the ear she’d lost to the bullet, but didn’t dare put her hand up to it yet. The wound in her shoulder was more serious, and bleeding profusely. The pain was starting to register properly, and she let her grip on the sword go lax.

  “Here is what I promise,” Nyx said. “I’m going to leave you here to bleed out or get chopped up by Morda and her crew, or even, if you’re lucky, just tossed out the back where your friends will find you. I’m doing that because I want them to know that I’m coming for them, and that Nyxnissa so Dasheem takes no shit from anyone. You put a hit out on me, I hit back.”

  Nyx yanked her sword from the woman’s hand and sheathed the blade. She stood as blood drooled down her arm, and staggered to the door of the brothel, which still hung open. She clattered down the steps, scattergun still dangling from her one good hand. She tried to get a rickshaw, but none of them would stop for her. She supposed if she drove a rickshaw, she wouldn’t stop for her either.

  Her vision swam. She pushed her bad hand up through her shirt in some vain hope to ease up the flow of the blood. There was surely a hedge witch around here who could patch her up.

  Instead she stumbled into a bar and demanded a drink. When they didn’t bring one, she hefted her scattergun at the barkeep. They passed over one whisky, then another, and she barely got down a third drink before the order keepers showed up and asked her to vacate the premises.

  “You got no better shit to do?” Nyx yelled at the beefy women. “No bodies in a gutter somewhere? No burglaries? No brawls? You coming here to interrupt a bleeding woman trying to have a drink. You know who I am?” She waved the gun at them, oblivious to the weapons at their hips. Even drunk—especially drunk—she was more than confident she could take them.

  Blackness rode the edges of her vision, and she blinked hard, shook her head. “I just need another drink,” she said. She turned from them and banged her glass on the counter.

  The bar woman took the glass with shaking hands and refilled it. Nyx heard the order keepers talking in low voices behind her. Let them try and remove her. Just try it.

  “Excuse me, I work for her.”

  Nyx turned at the voice. She knew the accent. It was the fucking Mhorian man. For all his bulk, he came into the room with head bowed and shoulders hunched, his gaze on the floor, like he was just some penitent little fuck.

  “The fuck do you want?” she said. She picked up her glass, but it tumbled from her fingers and shattered on the floor. “For fuck’s sake,” she muttered. She reached for it, and saw long streamers of blood flowing down her arm. Why was her wound bleeding so badly? It was just a scratch, nothing. Need to find a hedge witch and get fixed up, that’s all.

  She stared at the blood mixing with the whisky on the floor, a
nd had a sudden jarring flashback to another bar, another night, somewhere on the Chenjan front. Nyx heaved back against the bar as her legs trembled. She vomited.

  “I’ve got you,” the Mhorian said, and took her by the shoulder. “I’ll take her home,” he said.

  She punched him in the arm, but her strength was waning. She gazed at the vomit on the floor and wondered how so much blood had gotten into it.

  “That woman is fucked,” one of the order keepers said.

  Nyx laughed. “You’ve no idea,” she said.

  “I’m taking you back to Hadya Street,” the Mhorian man said. “Will you come with me? We’ll go slow. Perhaps we’ll find a rickshaw.”

  “We going to fuck?” she said, pawing at his face. She left bloody fingerprints on his cheek. His face was so serious.

  “Maybe later,” he said.

  “I’m holding you to that,” she said, and that was the last clear memory she had for some time.

  Rhys had just settled in to sleep after evening prayer when someone banged on the door. He lay awake staring at the ceiling, waiting for Taite to get it. Anneke was out gambling, but he could hear the radio on in the workroom, and that meant Taite was still awake.

  The pounding came again. Louder this time.

  “Get the door,” Rhys muttered. He had written his resignation letter for Nyx and left it in her office, but she wasn’t home yet, and he wanted to be soundly asleep when she finally got home and read it. He wasn’t sure how she would react. Would she throw him out right away, like Taite said? He had saved some money, and he might be able to float for a while until the government job sent him a train ticket and stipend.

  The knocking went on and on. He heard a voice yelling now: a male voice, which was unusual.

  Rhys sighed and rolled out of bed. He pulled on a burnous and went out into the workroom. The radio was still on, but Taite wasn’t there. The trapdoor to the basement was open. Rhys called down. “Do you hear the door, Taite?”

  “What?” Taite yelled.

  Rhys said, “Never mind, I’ll get it,” and pulled his burnous close. The air got much cooler at night, and no one had bothered with a fire. Without him to nurse them all, this place would fall apart. Let it fall apart, he thought. Maybe the world will be a better place.

  With Nyx and Anneke both out, he wasn’t just going to open the door to anyone, not this time. He’d learned that lesson one too many times, most recently this morning when he was nearly blown up. Instead he pulled open the viewing port on the face of the door and stood just to the left of it as Nyx had taught him, just in case somebody tried to shove a gun through it.

  The dim orange light of the glowworm lantern above the door showed him a grim picture. A huge, moon-faced Mhorian man had one arm wrapped around Nyx’s waist. She was covered in blood; half her ear was gone. Her eyes were glassy and the pupils were unevenly dilated.

  Rhys threw open the door and helped the Mhorian bring her inside. “What happened?” he asked.

  “She was shot,” the Mhorian said. “I think it was a smart bug, not a regular bullet.”

  “Put her down here,” Rhys said. “Shut the door.”

  The man laid Nyx down on the floor of the foyer. Rhys pulled up her bloody tunic to reveal the breast binding beneath. He ran his hands downwards from the wound until he reached the bottom of her rib cage, and felt a soft, niggling tremor in his hands. He told the bug inside her chest to stop its tunneling, and felt it respond.

  After closing the door, the Mhorian knelt beside him. “You a magician?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Rhys said. “We need to get this bug out. It’s done damage to her internal organs. I don’t know how she’s still standing.”

  “Heard she was a bel dame,” the man said.

  “Who are you, exactly?” Rhys said.

  “Khos Khadija. Saw her in the bar. She had some trouble with order keepers.”

  “They did this?” Rhys couldn’t imagine order keepers surviving an encounter with Nyx unless there was an army of them.

  “No, long story. What can I do?”

  “Go in the back, get some hot water from the tap. I’ll need a knife. You’ll find one in the kitchen back there.”

  “What’s going on?” Taite said. He came in from the workroom, wiping his hands on a rag.

  “I’ll need red bug salve,” Rhys said. “Make up that spider-mite tea.”

  “Shit,” Taite said, dropping the rag. He ran back into the workroom.

  Rhys tried to redirect the bug inside Nyx’s rib cage to repair some damage while they waited, but whoever had programmed it was a far more powerful magician than he was.

  Nyx was drooling blood and babbling nonsense about fields of body parts and black suns. He chanced a look at her face and a dagger of fear cut through his body. What if he lost her? What if she died right here under his care, after all she had done to keep him safe? For all the horror and madness she had exposed him to, she had taken him in when no one else would. He wanted her to tell him now it would be all right, and he hated himself for that.

  “Concentrate,” he muttered, and closed his eyes. He directed the bug to start pushing up through Nyx’s abdomen, moving it past major organs. When he opened his eyes he could see it bulging there against her skin, slightly smaller than the bullet casing that it had ridden in on.

  The Mhorian handed Rhys a knife and set a bowl of water next to him.

  Rhys said, “Hold her down,” and was suddenly glad to have this huge man here to hold Nyx because neither he nor Taite would have been able to do it.

  Rhys sunk the knife into Nyx’s belly. She thrashed and swore, though it was not his name she used. He heard a litany of names from her, and more creative curses than she had yet used.

  Khos pressed her down with one hand on her good shoulder, the other on her opposite hip. Even injured, though, she was strong, and it almost wasn’t enough. Rhys sliced open her skin and popped the bug out into his palm. It was a green-backed, wormy little thing with a mouth full of teeth. The mucus it secreted stung his skin, so he dropped it into the hot water.

  Taite came in with the tea.

  “Help me get her to drink it,” Rhys said.

  It took all three of them to get the tea down. Rhys suspected they would have had more luck if he dumped it into a whisky. Rhys took the salve from Taite and spread it over the wound he’d made, which began to sizzle and mend itself almost immediately. It was an expensive concoction he’d gotten from his mentor, Yah Tayyib, and worth using now. He cut open her tunic over the original bullet wound and put salve there, too, and slathered more onto her ear. She was still a mess, but she wasn’t bleeding anymore.

  “Can you pick her up?” Rhys asked Khos.

  “Think she’ll bite me?” Khos asked.

  Rhys peered at Nyx’s face. Her eyelids fluttered, and she was whispering something about taxes and bomb squads.

  “Maybe we’ll just try and walk her to her room,” Rhys said.

  Rhys on one side, Khos on the other, they half-walked, half-dragged Nyx to her cot at the back of her office and laid her down. She had lost a sandal somewhere, so Rhys took off the remaining one, and covered her in a light blanket. He moved to the brazier at the corner of the room and used a handful of bugs to start a fire.

  When he turned around, he saw Khos sitting next to Nyx. She was snoring softly now.

  “I’m Rhys,” Rhys said to him, holding out a hand.

  “Khos,” the man said, taking his wrist.

  “Yes, you told me.” Rhys sat beside him. “You know Nyx.”

  “Only met her tonight,” Khos said, “in a brothel.”

  Well, that explained a lot, Rhys thought. “You have a place to stay?” he asked. He’d been a foreign man in Nasheen long enough to know what the answer probably was.

  “Sometimes,” Khos said.

  “You can stay the night,” Rhys said. “Extra bed in the back. Taite’s the kid at the com. Anneke is out tonight, but she does weapons, sniper work,
that sort of thing.”

  “That’s nice of you,” Khos said. “Haven’t met many nice people here.”

  “Well, I’m not Nasheenian,” Rhys said.

  Khos grinned. “I can see that.” He nodded at Nyx. “She be all right?”

  “Probably,” Rhys said. He hesitated. “If she isn’t, we’ll all need to get out of here quickly. You understand?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “They’ll blame us.”

  “Yes,” Rhys said. “You want to clean up? Her blood’s all over you.”

  Khos looked down at his large, bloody hands. Her blood was smeared across his face and tunic. “Thank you, yes,” he said. “Back there?”

  “Yeah, past the kitchen,” Rhys said.

  When Khos was gone Rhys lay down next to Nyx’s cot and listened to her snore. He stared at the ceiling and clasped his hands over his stomach. He hated her, so why did it hurt to see her get what she deserved? This was the life she’d chosen. And she would keep choosing it. She would come home every day bloody and drunk and spouting nonsense. Resigning was the only way to be free of her. Distance was the only way he could get himself to stop caring. Otherwise he’d just be here day after day at her bedside, watching her destroy herself.

  “Rhys?” Nyx reached down and took his hand.

  Rhys didn’t protest. He stared at her filthy, broken nails, the rough calluses, the smears of dried blood and the rough, lined skin and squeezed her hand back.

  “Nyx,” he said, and it was a sigh.

  “I need to piss,” she said.

  He let go of her hand, and went to find her a bucket.

  Nyx woke with a start, still reeling from a terrible dream about being eaten alive by maggots. She swung her legs out of the cot and dry-heaved. She saw a neat bedroll on the floor beside her, and had a dim memory of Rhys lying next to her all night. She stumbled to her desk. Her arm ached, and she stank terribly. She rubbed at her eyes and then dug through her desk drawers.

  “There’s no whisky in there,” Rhys said from the doorway. He held a plate of fried plantains that smelled great.

  “Catshit,” she said.

  He set the tray down on her cot. “I’ll get you tea.”