Temper

by Nicky Drayden

  Kasim nods, and rips a strip of fabric from the bottom of his ciki. The cloth is saturated in seconds. He tosses it, then applies another. This one stays pristine, and when he removes it, there’s nothing but an inflamed paper cut an inch long.

  Munashe looks at this. I expect her to be awed like I was, but she starts shaking her head. “Impossible,” she says. “I saw that cut. It was deep. Too deep.” Her head keeps shaking. We’re going to lose her.

  I need to do something. Before I can hatch a plan, I notice I’ve picked up the discarded, bloodied cloth. My mouth waters after it like a piece of ripe fruit.

  Take a taste. You won’t be able to stop at one.

  I feel Icy Blue at the back of my teeth. No one is looking. No one will notice. I slip one end into my mouth, suck lightly at the fabric. The blood is like a rich, thick icing upon my tongue, both savory and sweet. There are high notes that linger on my taste buds, like overripe tropical fruit, and dense, earthy low notes that work their way into my olfactories, digging themselves a place in my mind to establish a permanent craving.

  Quickly and discreetly, I suck the cloth scrap dry, then toss the remnants into the fire. I have to force my gaze away from the beat of Munashe’s jugular. Icy Blue is desperate and will not go quietly. He will not go at all if Munashe abandons us. I focus my attention on the vice talismans Kasim has laid out so perfectly. A quick swipe when no one is looking, and then I call out. “Oh, shit. The penis candle! Did anyone see where I stuck my penis?”

  Munashe and Kasim look at me like I’ve gone mad. It’s better than the terror that was on both of their faces a moment ago.

  “I can’t find my penis anywhere. Come on. It has to be here somewhere.” With raised eyebrows, I bid Kasim to join in on my folly, but he stares blankly. “Come on, guys. Help me look for it. Don’t give me the shaft.”

  This raises the slightest giggle out of Munashe. Kasim finally realizes how much this situation could use some comic relief and jumps in.

  “He’s right. We can’t leave him hanging,” Kasim says with a smooth grin.

  “Thanks. We need to find it before moonrise, when this whole thing comes to a head.” I look at Munashe, still tense and uncertain. There’s a hint of a smirk on her face, but I’m not sure it’ll be enough.

  “I’ll help,” she says, after a long stretch of silence. “Maybe we should spread out our search. You go north, I go south, you take east. You know. Each of us can look in a different erection.”

  Kasim and I groan.

  “Okay, I’ll admit it,” Munashe says. “That one was limp.”

  We all laugh, watching the last bits of sunset, and it’s not all that bad. Kasim busts open a few packets of Jak & Dee’s. The “meaty” flavor packets are awful, but the dried samp and beans aren’t so bad if you let them moisten long enough on your tongue.

  If nothing else, it helps distract from the flavor of blood.

  “Thanks for trusting me,” Munashe says, voice growing more confident even as the night settles in. “I know singletons don’t exactly have a reputation for being trustworthy.”

  “We don’t buy into those stereotypes,” I say, licking samp and bean dust from my lips. I smile at Munashe with Jak’s big-tooth grin and semi-offensive comfy rat shoulder shrug he sports on the packaging.

  She laughs, and warms her hands over the fire. “Maybe if more people were like you . . .” She hesitates, no longer smiling. Flames lick too close to her fingers, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “. . . then maybe Tiwa. She was a girl I met when I was little. She was a . . .” The word won’t come out, but with the look Munashe gives me, I know. A singleton. It’s not a derogatory term, but it makes me squirm just the same. “She was like me. We used to pretend we were twins. Marked our arms up with fake scars and everything. Not at school of course, because everyone knew, but outside the neighborhood, we got away with it.”

  Kasim and I look at each other uncomfortably. I want so badly to change the subject, but we owe it to Munashe to listen. “You two looked alike?” I dare ask.

  “Ha, nothing alike. But people believed us. Why wouldn’t they? It was a lot more palatable than the truth. We made friends with twin sisters. Best friends. Tiwa and Sayde, they probably would have gone on to be something more serious, but . . .” Munashe’s voice catches. She swats away flies. Or tears. I’m too busy nursing my twin guilt to tell which. “I wanted to come clean. Tiwa didn’t, but the four of us, we told each other everything. I convinced her that they would understand. And they did! But a couple months later, Sayde let the truth slip to her parents, and well . . .” Munashe unwraps the bulky kola nut choker from around her neck, revealing a garish scar across her throat. “They took it upon themselves to free our spirits from our bodies so that we could be reunited with our unborn twin.” She swats away more flies. “They didn’t cut me quite deeply enough, but I’d like to think that Tiwa found hers.”

  “Munashe, I’m so sorry,” Kasim says.

  She shrugs. “You trusted me with your biggest secret. Now you know mine.”

  I stay quiet. One part of me can’t help but think about how they kind of deserved it for lying like that, and the other part is aroused by the thought of all that blood. I don’t know which part I’m more ashamed of. Either way, the moon cannot rise fast enough. As soon as it is fully over the horizon, I stand and stretch, then move my pelvis around suggestively.

  “Well, I declare,” Kasim says, breaking the awkward silence with an exaggerated twang. “Auben Mtuze, is that a wax penis in your pocket, or are you just happy to get this exorcism started?”

  “Why this little ol’ thing?” I retrieve the candle. It is definitely not what I would describe as little. As I set it down in the proper position, my hand trembles at the lurid smell of Munashe blushing in the darkness.

  A promise is a promise.

  No harm will come to Munashe by Icy Blue’s hands, but what can I say of my own? I volunteer to go first, and Kasim does not object. I stand precisely at the middle of the circle. The process seems simple enough. Kasim will chant a few words while Munashe tends to the talismans, keeping them upright and in place. Why they are susceptible to falling over, the incantations do not say.

  Kasim clears his throat, then begins to call out his practiced words, his mouth rolling slowly over the drawn vowels. He reads carefully, enunciating each syllable of the incantation, something about returning me to my rightful form, or so we pieced together from our first-year Sylla glossary.

  The penis candle falls over, but it is only the wind. Munashe skitters over to upright it, and relights it. My mouth waters as her blood stirs and heat settles upon her cheeks.

  Kasim continues, the primary incantation taking a full five minutes. When he is done we all look at each other. Nothing is happening. “Maybe we should try again,” he offers. “Maybe I messed some of the words up.”

  “No,” I say, pointing to a stir of dust whirling up around the eye jar. A dirt devil. Appropriate. I immediately know that it is not simply one of those signs someone sees when they’re looking for signs. There’s something screaming inside the dirt devil. Tiny, tiny screams that haunt me nonetheless. I kneel down next to it, carefully scoop the dirt devil into my palm and look closely. I see demons, dozens and dozens of them, their miniature faces pressing in and out of the whirling dust. Icy Blue shifts within me, like churning tendrils of ice. Maybe he’s nervous. Maybe he knows that I’ll soon be free of his nightly reign. He laughs at my thoughts, then goes uncomfortably still. I shake my head. I will not be intimidated. This will work. “We’re ready for the secondary incantation,” I say.

  I steady my nerves as Kasim starts to read again. This time a prayer, to give me the strength to survive the process. Personal accounts of the exorcisms are mostly from observers. They say it will not be pleasant, but I will not remember much of the experience, if anything. I just need to get through these next few minutes.

  Kasim shouts the next set of phrases, beating the words out with an
gry clicks of his tongue, and the snapping of his teeth. The dirt devil grows. It startles me and I drop it. It circles around me, nearly up to my knees. The miniature smokestack blows its top, like a temper gone unchecked. Munashe retrieves the lid and replaces it in time to chase after the half-djang coins that have flipped up onto their sides and rolled away. Munashe diligently presses them back into the dirt. I feel a tug deep within me, then a sudden release like I’ve started unraveling. My neck arches so far back that I feel like my spine is about to give way. I think I’m about to fall, but I no longer feel the ground beneath my feet. Thin wisps of my iced-over breath rise from my mouth and entwine themselves in the dirt devil. It grows larger, larger, until it is as tall as I am.

  The demons within the dust are the size of dogs now, their screams no longer tiny. They bay at me, at the moon, gnash at each other, around and around. I feel something letting from me, like an oozing wound. A new shadow forms within the twister. It worked. My toes tip upon the earth. I feel like myself. Normal.

  Kasim stops reading, and backs up. Munashe does likewise.

  “What?” I say, the voice not mine, but familiar enough. I put my hands around my throat. They are not hands, but tawny paws with scythe-like claws. My face is a muzzle with fangs. My short tail swishes with aggravation. My ears prick at the quick beat of Munashe’s heart. My nose fills with the wonderful bouquet of fear and desperation and vulnerability. It is like I’ve been walking around with a burlap sack over my head all my life, muting my senses, and it’s finally been pulled off.

  “This isn’t right,” Kasim says. “I did everything as instructed. You should be back to your true form.”

  My mind tells me that Kasim messed up and got this all wrong, but there’s no doubt in my heart that he has gotten it right. And that scares the hell out of me. At least I wish it would.

  “Try it again,” I say with a bloodthirsty growl.

  Lechery

  Kasim fumbles back to the first page of the incantation. He reads especially carefully this time, so slowly that my mind wanders between words, my thoughts gruesomely specific as I recall last night’s killings. The crunch of bone, the delicate scent of fear, and the warmth of a heart clenched in my paw as it takes one final beat. The sensations converge upon my moistened tongue. I should be repulsed by these things, but arousal grips me hard.

  Dusty winds lap at my skin, as Kasim reads the incantations with more conviction. The winds escalate until they tower over me like a tornado. Kasim’s screams are lost in the oppressive howl. I brace myself, but the tornado snatches me from the ground, and sucks me within. It’s trying to unravel me, to separate me from Icy Blue, but there is nothing to separate. Instead, the winds rake at me, siphoning my soul from my breath, ripping me apart nerve by nerve.

  I bay at the moon, beg the stars, cuss Kasim, wail into the winds. The tornado constricts, hundreds of pairs of vengeful demon claws dragging me down with them. If I screamed any louder, I’d shatter the sky and send all the stars crashing down upon us.

  “You’re killing him,” comes Munashe’s voice, now booming over me like that of a giant.

  “You saw what he is. We have to do this. You don’t know what he’s capable of.”

  “He’s your twin! You have to stand by him no matter what.” There’s so much longing in her voice. Maybe she understands what she is missing after all. “We have to find another way.”

  Kasim reads a few more lines, but the conviction is gone. He snatches Munashe’s walking stick, braces himself against the storm, and swings. The stick shatters the glass containing the eyeball, and the whole mess of foul liquid goes careening off the cliff face. The winds shift off-center. The pain recedes, if only enough to allow room for my temper to build. My own brother would see me dead?

  He knocks away the candle, the coins, the other talismans. The winds release me, setting me down lightly, like there’s no harm, no foul. But there was definitely a foul.

  Munashe approaches, timidly, yet with genuine concern. “Auben?”

  I blink away the lingering dizziness, then focus on her eyes, tuning out the enticing gallop of her heart. “Yes.” The voice is mine now, though Icy Blue’s growl clings around the edges.

  Munashe takes my hand—scantily furred and heavily clawed—into hers. “We’re going to fix this, okay?” She casts a firm stare at my brother, the betrayer. “Aren’t we, Kasim?”

  “Of course,” he says. His eyes trace along my demon form, not quite man, not quite beast.

  “Good,” Munashe says. “I think we should rest up tonight and descend after sunrise. We’ve all been through too much to try to go down tonight.”

  “You’re not afraid of me?” I ask.

  “If you wanted to harm me, you would have done so already. And listen . . .” My ears swivel. Other than the sound of our beating hearts and the panting of our breath, there is nothing. No skittering of dassie rats across the rock face, no chirping of crickets, no hooting of owls, no prowling of lesser predators. “We’re safe up here. Nothing is coming within a mile of this place.”

  Her fingers squeeze my hand in reassurance, but all I feel is the touch of five little sausages, eager for me to pry them from their casings. I think I’ll save those for last.

  Kasim steps between us as if he can read my thoughts. “She’s right. Leaving now would be a death sentence. At least for those of us without the advantage of claws and a counterbalance.”

  I take his meaning, but not to heart. Though he is a traitor, he is right about this. I cannot stay up here tonight. The strain on our proximity will hurt, but it doesn’t compare to the pain of denying myself what I crave most. “I’ll be back after sunrise,” I say, whipping my tail. “And we’ll all leave together. Safely.”

  “Where are you going?” Munashe asks.

  “Hunting,” I say flatly. I leave the details loose, and bound off into the night.

  The zest of desperation hits me well before the swampy sweet stench of old sex. The night is stretching long and the chance of one last customer tonight grows slim for the streetwalker—a slender andy kigen, couldn’t be any older than myself. Eir hair is buzzed, and although ey dresses and projects male, eir features are soft and feminine. The kigen’s twin runs deeply in this one’s blood, and I smell the dueling aromatic notes split almost evenly. The male. The female. And that third essence that’s a note all its own. On top of that, ey will menstruate soon—for a sterile kigen, the blood of futility, but for me, a delicacy too tempting to resist.

  Ey starts when ey sees me emerge from the shadows, then smiles and primps. Brows bob and lips are licked. The beat of eir heart quickens. “I’m yours tonight for fifty djang.” The streetwalker’s voice trembles slightly, like ey is still new at this.

  I still wear the cloak of a predator, but now it is better suited for the prey at hand. I tug at the silken trim of my tailored business-style ciki—the type of quality worn by someone who wouldn’t flinch at the going rate for flesh. I nod, trying not to look em in the eyes, trying not to see the person beneath the muscle, tendons, and veins begging to be eviscerated. Fangs crowd my mouth, slick with saliva, and my whole body trembles with hesitation. And anticipation.

  “You don’t have to be nervous,” ey says.

  No . . . but maybe ey should be.

  Ey takes my hand—eirs cold and moist, even compared to mine—and leads me to an adjacent tenement house. The stairwells and hallways are sparsely lit, but it is of no matter. Sight is no longer my dominant sense. In fact, it doesn’t even rate in the top three. The building comes to life through my nose. I can identify the sex and approximate age of everyone on this floor, and the one above and below. I know what they had for dinner, when they last bathed, last fucked, last cried. We pass a door, and I taste the milk of a lactating mother on my tongue, laced with the scent of tobacco and sanjo that permeates throughout this place. From somewhere above, I hear the pleas of a woman begging someone not to hit her, shortly followed by the sound of flesh impacting fles
h. From below, the bickering of half-starved siblings. Drugs baking, lovemaking, Grace forsaking. If there is anything but ill repute in this place, I cannot find it. I’m not sure I would want to.

  The andy leads me to eir hovel, not room for much more than a filthy mattress on the floor and a rickety nightstand on which to leave my fifty djang. Ey unbuttons eir shirt and reveals skin so taut, I imagine the sound it will make as my claws drag through it. Ey slips out of eir trousers just as quickly, eager to render services so that money can be paid.

  I’ve seen naked kigens before, of course, in locker rooms, bathrooms, and even a bedroom or two, but still, I catch myself staring. Intensely. Not at eir genitalia, nor breasts, but at the throb of the life force running through eir body. I marvel at the beauty and vulnerability of what lies within, the delicacy of Grace’s handiwork. I am embarrassed, disgusted by my desire to wreck it all, but I can’t bring myself to look away.

  “You’re the kind that likes to watch,” the streetwalker says confidently. Maybe ey’s been at this longer than I thought. Ey grips emself, but my eyes do not wander there. I am lost in the maze of veins running beneath eir skin, and the supple meatiness of those thighs. A bit of drool slips over my lip as my craving becomes impossible to deny. “No, you want something more,” ey says, eyes narrowing and assessing me. “You need something more.”

  Ey turns eir back to me and digs through a drawer in the nightstand. I open my mouth, bare my fangs, flex my claws. Now. It will be easiest when ey’s not looking. I prickle all over, ready and willing. I settle on my entry point. The flank, long and lean. As I inch closer, the gleam of something metal catches my attention. The streetwalker holds a machination in eir hands, a metal ball like the one I’d found in Mother’s closet. I fumble my lips over my teeth and hide my hands beneath my back as ey turns. We are nose to nose.

  “Oh,” ey says, forcing a smile.

  “Where . . .” I say carefully over my teeth in a failed attempt to conceal them. The streetwalker scrambles backward on the bed until eir back hits the wall.