by Jen Ponce
“I know. I can’t. I can’t fight it. I want to eat. I’m so hungry.”
“So, food?” I glanced at the dead thing. Looked like something had already been eating it. She raised her head and the blood streaked down her chin told me who.
She whined again. “I can’t get full.”
“I know that feeling.” I ignored little sister’s look and said to Tam, “You are going to have to work harder to feed yourself. That will help.”
She swiped her chin, smearing blood and making her face a worse mess. “They give us rations when we’re in the Anwar.” Her face was pulled down, her body language screaming that she didn’t want reason or comfort. She wanted raw meat.
I took a breath, realizing I’d gotten caught up in solving her problem instead of supporting her. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up. That will help.” To little sister, I said, “What’s your name?”
She made a face. “Lynessa. Everyone but my brother calls me Sharps.”
Tam gasped and doubled over. Her skin shivered and rippled as if it were in a high wind. Sharps yanked me back, her feet slipping in the dirt. “She’s losing it. We need to get away from her.”
“She’s changing? Tam. Do you want to change?”
“No, you thick cunt. I don’t want to be,” she gasped, “a monster. Ow!” She fell to the ground, writhing in the dirt.
“Tam!”
I shook my head. “It’s all right. I’ve heard worse.” And said worse, honestly. Of insults, it was a silly one. What’s the shame in a thick cunt, I ask you? “I think you deserve whatever happens to you,” I said.
Panting, she twisted until she was on her back. Fur had sprouted on her legs and claws were pushing from the tips of her fingers. “What did you say?”
“Big whiner like you. Why not? World would probably be better off without you in human form.” I fought back a grin as I watched the fur retreat some. The claws shortened. She struggled to sit up.
The girl hit my arm. “What are you doing?”
“Standing on my two feet, unlike this chick who seems to think it’s better to roll around like a dog. Why are you fighting it so hard, anyway? I think it’d be just a normal day for you to be a dog.”
She snarled and lunged at me but I jumped back without much worry. She’d have to stop wallowing long enough to chase me if she really wanted to do some damage. I didn’t know if she had it in her, steeped as she was in self-pity. No, it wasn’t something I could do at work, which might explain why I was having so much fun with it now. Her skin rippled and absorbed more of the fur until there was only a faint line where it had been. “Tell her to leave me alone, Sharps.”
Sharps looked at Tam then me. “She’s right. You are a whiner, Tam.”
The woman gasped then shoved herself to her feet. She sagged as if her muscles weren’t firing correctly and had to hold onto the pole to keep from falling again. “How could you? It hurts and you’re mocking me?” Tears slid down her cheeks as she fought to stay upright.
“No. I’m challenging you. Look at yourself.”
Tam did, staring at her feet for a long time. Then she sniffed, straightened her legs. “Oh.” Her bloodshot eyes met mine. “That wasn’t nice.”
“No it wasn’t. Sometimes nice doesn’t work for shit. Sometimes you have to get angry.”
She nodded and let go of the pole. She wobbled but managed to stay upright. “I need to wash up.”
“I’ll help you.” Sharps slipped under Tam’s arm and walked her to the tent flap. “Thanks,” she said.
“Sure. You can count on me to be an asshole any ole time.”
She laughed and even Tam chuckled. I followed them out of the tent into the fresh night air. Without any street lights, the stars popped in glorious splendor, clustering across the sky in purples, reds, and blues. I stood staring, awed, and didn’t hear him until he put a heavy hand on my shoulder. I jumped, knocking him away with a shriek. “What the hell?”
His smile flashed in the dark, leering and cold. “Don’t fuck around with my people. They don’t need saving.”
My fingers curled into fists. I reminded myself that we needed him, at least until we got through the Anwar but that didn’t stop me from wanting to spit at him. Extreme reaction, Devany. Chill yourself out. As far as pep talks went, it wasn’t a good one. “Right.” It was all I could manage. I wasn’t going to agree with him but I was physically unable to ignore what he said.
His expression didn’t change. In fact, it seemed as if he was vacant behind his golden, staring eyes and slight smile. That blank look scared me more than a glare. And then he spoke. “Have you ever watched ants kill a wounded dog? They swarm over its body and it yelps and yips and spins, biting at them but they keep coming and coming until it looks like the dog’s fur is alive. It takes a long time for it to die. Did you know that?” He wasn’t there, in his head. He was somewhere else, watching that wounded animal suffer. “A long, horrible death. The ants in the Anwar have a quick-heal venom. So as the ants are biting the dog and the dog bleeds, the poison enters its body and keeps it alive.
“Ants like eating living meat.”
Then his eyes focused on me and his grin widened.
Acid burned my throat. He was a big guy and I was out here in the dark with him.
“Leon?”
I didn’t look away from him and his eyes stayed on mine. A superstitious fear rose up inside me: if I looked away first or blinked, he would incapacitate me and tie me to an anthill to watch me die. And he would smile the whole while.
“Leon. I need your help. Please?” Sharps’ voice tipped upward until she sounded about five. It made me sick to my stomach but I still didn’t look away from him. It wasn’t until she put her hand on his sleeve that he finally turned away, blinking at her as if she were an apparition. “I can’t find my dolly.”
“Why are you out after dark, Lynessa? Come. I’ll take you to bed.”
Blood drained from my face. Oh dear lord, I hoped that didn’t mean what I thought it meant. “Sharps—”
She slashed her hand down, glaring at me. “Go. Now.” She tugged at him and he went, walking with her, his head bowed as they faded into the dark.
I stared after her, unable to move.
“Devany?”
“I think I’m going to have to kill him.”
“Come on. Come.” Jasper slipped his hand into mine and tugged me back to our wagon. I didn’t realize how badly I was shaking until he wrapped a blanket around me and helped me into bed, where he held me and whispered soft words into my hair.
“How can there be such awful people in the world?”
His soft, slow breathing calmed me, as did his fingers gently sifting through my hair. “Some would say that you can’t appreciate the good things without the evil.”
“Some would be stupid assholes.”
“I agree.”
He held me until I fell into uneasy dreams.
We packed up and moved out early the next day. Everyone had a job to do and did it with economy. Quorra escaped Alton and came by, pestering Nex to come with her to her tank so that she could cuddle him. When Nex declined, she sat on the steps until her minder found her and led her away, though she cast long, sad looks at Nex until she was out of sight.
Jasper and I watched Yorloff hitch up the oxen, Leon having given him permission to teach the virgies how to pull their own weight. The animals were called oxen but they didn’t look much like the oxen on Earth. These were muscled blue beasts with fat, conical horns and hammer-handed fists instead of hooves. I wondered if this was where the first stories of Babe the big blue ox had come from. The oxen stood complacently enough while Yorloff yoked them, using their hands to rip up what grass hadn’t been trampled flat and stuff it in their mouths. The part of their knuckles they walked on were callused and thick. Yorloff told me it was death to be punched by an ox. “Tougher’n bone and sharp on the top edge, they are. Slice and smash.”
I gave them a wide berth.
/>
Jasper drove the wagon and already I could see that this would take forever. I couldn’t be away from my kids so long. “There has to be a faster way to find those Theleoni.”
“I know not what that way would be,” Jasper said, his grey eyes on the wagon ahead of us. We were the caboose in the train of wagons and the dust was thick and awful. “Perhaps you should climb in the back and call your spawn?”
I nodded, glad for the idea since I was unwilling to waste away the days playing pioneer. I used the handle on the side and stepped from the front to the steps while the ground rolled underneath me. Inside, Nex floated in his bunk, his eyes turned toward the window.
“You all right?” He hadn’t said a word since Alton had dragged Quorra away earlier.
“I did not think to miss my life in the swamp. But I find myself looking back on those days with sadness.”
I thought of his queen, out of her mind with madness and his body, hibernating somewhere while it grew back its head and became ... who? Nex again? Would this Nex fade away? I realized I’d never thought about his situation too much. What would a head do to pass the time? The Slip couldn’t have been much fun. “I’m sorry.”
He turned then, his large eyes contemplative. “It is a curious thing, how I feel. These emotions are foreign and quite useless. I know full well what I am and my place in life. To question it is strange.”
“It’s hard being something so new and unusual that there isn’t any guidance from those who have gone before. I never realized how easy we have it as humans, growing up with so many role models and examples of behavior and speech, rules and rebellions.” I paused, watching him, wondering if I should say more or shut up.
“I find myself quite adrift.”
“Questioning things is a great way to find your way.”
He acknowledged my words with a slight nod of his head, then he turned back to the window. “I will think on it.”
I retreated to the back bunk, leaving him to his contemplation, and sat on the bed, turning my mind inward. I opened my Magic Eye and looked for the strand that tied Tytan to me and followed it to his awareness. I got slapped by a wave of hatred so strong I almost lost my grip on the strand. “Tytan?” The presence wasn’t Tytan but was attached to him. “Ty? Damn it, what’s going on?”
“Your pretty little Skriven is busy right now. Tit for tat.” And the connection was lost. Holy fuck, what was that? Amara?
I wracked my brain, trying to figure out what the hell to do or who to ask. I settled on my wayward Draw who I’d dropped in the middle of Omaha in winter. Would he be amendable to helping me now? “Nex? I’ll be back,” I called down the hall.
“Mmm,” was all he said. I made a hook and stepped through it to a bathroom downtown. The stall I came out of had been out of order for a couple years now so I’d figured I wouldn’t startle someone half to death by hooking there. I made my way through the Coffee and Cafe and out into the cold, regretting my lack of coat instantly. Shivering, I headed down the street, opening my Magic Eye to hunt for Vasili’s thread. I found it, small and forlorn, and followed it.
The Skriven sat, huddled and miserable on a street corner, a red Solo cup in front of him with only a handful of change inside it. When he first glanced up at me, he didn’t recognize me. Then he jumped up, startling the older man leaning against the building next to him. “You came back for me.”
“Yeah, but you’d better not fuck around this time,” I said, yanking him down the slushy walk as I looked for a good place to hook. “Tytan is in trouble. I think. I tried talking to him through the thread and your mistress told me he was occupied. Tit for tat.” I pulled us through the hook as soon as we were out of view of the street and sighed in relief as we stepped through to the Slip, where it was never hot nor cold. “Does that mean she claimed him as her draw?”
“I doubt it. You would know. His thread would have resounded. Some of your power would have left you.”
“Where would she be?”
He stopped in his tracks, still looking like the dreadlocked young man I’d changed him into before plopping him on Earth. “No amount of torture would be worth telling you that.”
“You liked Earth that much, huh? You already want to go back?”
He looked pained and miserable. I felt bad, I did, but not that bad. “Follow his thread.”
“She cut it off, somehow.”
“Oh. Oh. That’s not good.” He rocked a little, clutching at his puffy coat sleeves as he did. “She’s trying to call his soul.”
“What?”
“You could do it for me, if you wished it. Call my soul. Most Originators don’t bother. They like the status quo. If Amara wants you removed, though, she might go to the trouble of hunting for his soul.”
I muttered a curse. “Can’t I stop her? Petition the council or some garbage?”
He shrugged. “They would consider it a matter between you and her and would not interfere.”
“Great. Just great.” Now it was more important than ever to find Tytan’s soul before Amara did. “Shit, shit, shit.” I paused. “How does it work, to force find a soul?”
He shrugged. “Easiest way is torture.”
The thought made me sick. It wouldn’t be the torture I’d put Vasili through by plopping him down on Earth without power. No. This would involve blood and pain, something Tytan had already endured from his former master Ravana.
“Is there anyway you can think of for me to find his soul quickly if I don’t have access to Tytan?”
Vasili’s nut brown eyes rolled upward as he thought. “No.” He shivered despite having the coat on. “She’s cut me off.”
“What?”
“I still don’t have any power. She won’t let me access it.” He looked miserable.
“Can you use mine?”
He looked startled. “You would allow that?”
“On one condition.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What?”
“Distract her.” He opened his mouth and I held up my hand, “I don’t mean you have to put yourself in danger. Heaven forbid. Just make it hard for her to concentrate. You can do that, can’t you? And wouldn’t it be worth it to get back to your normal self? Mmm? What do you say?”
“I say I’ll regret it if she finds out what I’m doing.”
“Be sneaky.”
He nodded once. “All right. Thank you.” The two words sounded like they might get stuck in his throat but at least he said them and looked like he meant it.
“Do I need to do anything?”
“Just accept my petition for power when it comes. I can make the offering when I’m home.”
“Okay. Uh.” I tucked my hair over my ear. “And what will the petition be? I mean, do I get a note carried by a pigeon, what?”
“It will be a feeling, in your solar plexus. Accept it, that’s all.”
“Seems too easy.”
He snorted, sounding and looking more like his snotty old self. “Originators don’t like work. My end will be the hard part.”
“Okay.” I held out my hand and he looked at it as if I were holding out a dead fish. “Shake on it, damn it. Promise not to double cross me and I’ll promise not to ever put you on Earth again.”
That had him. He shook with a vigor that hurt my shoulder. I formed a hook, then remembered the reason why I’d plopped him on Earth to begin with. “I need you to do one more thing.”
“Of course,” he said, his expression wary.
“Find out how to fade a place, to keep it from being noticed or seen. I’m going to need that information as quick as you can find it. Okay?”
He nodded. “That shouldn’t be difficult. I will send word as soon as I have the information.”
I left him and hooked back to the wagon, my head buzzing. Tytan getting tortured to give up the location of his soul. Wasn’t that stupid? She was an Originator, she knew he wouldn’t know where his soul was. I should have asked Vasili how the torture would gain her anything,
then realized she must be trying to hack into his connection with his soul. The thread that tied them together. Apparently she just couldn’t look and see it. I wondered if I could. Probably. That’s why she cut me off from Ty. Damn I had so much I needed to know about being an Originator and no time to learn it.
I opened my Eye and looked for Ty, on the off chance I could spot him somewhere. Hundreds of strands tangled and swam but nowhere did I sense his. I did spy Ellison’s strand. A thought came to me and I turned my attention to the front of the wagon where Jasper rode. He had a ephemeral grey strand, gossamer and light. The tiniest filament linked him to Ellison when I looked from Jasper to his Skriven. When I turned the tables, the string all but vanished. Oh, it was there, I could catch glimpses of it but it was so elusive and small I felt a small shiver of relief. Amara had her work cut out for her. I had no idea how she would follow something that transient.
It gave me time. Not a lot, but some. And hope that I could get Cyres somewhere safe and save Tytan before Amara hurt him beyond repair.
-FIFTEEN-
The wards went up at noon, after we stopped for lunch. “Have we even gone ten miles?” I asked, annoyed, hot, and frustrated with the inching pace of the wagon train.
Jasper grinned at me and handed over the water so I could get a drink. “You don’t like the great outdoors?”
“Not really. Too many bugs and too much dirt.” And one too many psychopaths.
“When we enter the Anwar, we’ll move much faster.” Sharps had pulled up alongside our wagon astride a golden horse with as much attitude as a runway model. Sharps had glared fiercely at me until I understood I wasn’t supposed to ask how she was or say anything about last night, then leaned over and handed a circle of grey to Jasper and a multicolored one to me. “Slip this on your wrist. As soon as you hear the horns blow, put up a protection barrier around the train. It doesn’t matter what type you use, just make one as solid as you can make it.” She prodded her horse into a cantor and left us to the dirt.
