Affinity

by Dianne Wilson

Ten more steps.

  A cloud of glowing orange surrounded him.

  Five more steps.

  His hands flew, swatting wildly.

  More bites. More burrowing.

  Kai reached the glow of the cave and the bugs screamed, a high-pitched whine that made his eyeballs ache. It was worse than the jumpsuit. Kai fell through the opening, clawing at the leeches. The swarm hung back, avoiding the pale luminescence all around him. Those feeding off him seemed less affected. Shivering, he plucked them off, grinding them underfoot. Seven bites in all. Gross.

  Kai dashed farther into the cave, away from the opening. Feverishly he searched his body, over and over, desperate not to leave a single sucker alive. Only when he was sure they were all gone, did he check his wounds. Each bite formed a perfect circle–not bleeding, but oozing smoky blackness. His vision blurred, and for a moment his arms turned see-through, twisting his stomach.

  No. No. No!

  He shut his eyes, breathed deeply, and found the rhythm in his surroundings. Steady drip off to the left. Faint sounds of rushing water deeper within the rocky structure. Ordered. Quiet. Slowly, his thoughts surrendered to the cadence around him.

  Backing up slowly, he tucked himself into a crack in the rocks and willed his eyes open. It was hard to tell if the cave was man-made or natural. Smooth, marbled walls curved upward like the upturned hull of a pirate ship shot through with streaks of glowing amber. Beneath his fingers, the wall hummed as if alive. He glanced down at his arms, once again healthy and pink. His stomach flopped at the sight of slug wounds, still pouring black. The feeling of being watched snaked down his spine.

  Risking a glance, he peered right. The chamber stretched off into the distance, narrowing into a tunnel at the far end. Carved rectangular recesses dotted the walls at regular intervals, varying in shape and size. Kai frowned. What were they for? He stared at a long, narrow recess directly opposite him. Joy bubbled in the pit of his belly. His gaze slid to the next one as waves of sadness rolled over him. Each rectangle hooked emotions, hauling them out like a fisherman’s net. He pulled back, stunned. How could just looking at an empty space affect him like that? Better to avoid the recesses altogether.

  Someone was watching him. It was time to move away from the cave entrance. The floor dipped sharply down, and he hunched over, veering right towards the narrowing tunnel. With each cautious step, the sense of being watched lessened and ease of breathing increased. He straightened and walked faster, moving deeper into the grotto. Kai tried to walk silently, but every other step sent echoes bouncing through the hollow spaces all around, yet it seemed those echoes were his only company. He kept going.

  Soon the roof dipped and the walls pressed closer, shrinking in to form a single tunnel. As he turned the corner, the light up ahead dimmed, and he froze. There was a clear line between where the glowing rock ended and something else began. Whatever it was, it gave off no light. The tunnel ahead was complete darkness. Kai tilted his head and squinted. Beyond the passage, a glow trickled through the deep shadow. Blood rushed through his temples. Go forward or go back? He flicked his fingers to stop their trembling and carried on.

  Walking with one hand on the wall to steady himself, the rock beneath his fingertips gave way to a cold surface like thick glass, twisting his belly with a sense of wrongness.

  Yet it looked bright on the other end of the tunnel.

  He just had to keep going until he was through.

  I’m the only 18-year-old I know who’s scared of the dark. Seriously, get a grip.

  His bites throbbed and ached, seven vivid reasons to be afraid.

  A sharp tap on the glass above him brought an orange glow. A leech bug on the glass. Kai tripped over his own foot and fell, rolling onto his back. The bug clung to the outside of the tunnel straight above him, its stinger tapping like a woodpecker’s beak. Another landed next to it. Then three more. The sky filled with a meteor shower of glowing bugs, all intent on getting to him through the glass. The tapping of their stingers filled his ears, the low buzz of their wings loud enough to fill his brain with noise. The tunnel was lit up in sickly orange by the mass of glowing bug bodies.

  He flipped on his belly and crawled. Then he found his feet and ran.

  5

  Evazee sat at her dresser, pulling a brush mechanically through her long, blonde hair. She was home at last, but today had been one of those troubling days. With a few swift strokes, she piled her hair up high on her head, tying it in a messy bun with an elastic band.

  Yawning, she checked the calendar. Gran’s hip operation had been seven days ago. Evazee had been lumped with the task of visiting Gran for five of them. Mom had work but Eva was on break, so naturally it fell to her. “Besides,” Mom had told her, “you always seem to know just the right thing to say.” It was true. She did. Sometimes she could swear the words lit up in front of her in glowing gold letters. She’d never mentioned it to anyone and probably never would.

  It’s not that she minded keeping Gran company, even though it entailed sitting through the same six family stories as if Gran’s button was stuck on repeat, scraping her lunch into the bin when there were no nurses around, and fetching her dentures. All that was fine. It was the hospital itself. Her daily trip past Casualty required a glimpse into a grim parade of raw pain—broken bodies that came with crying families.

  There was nothing Evazee could do for any of them. First Aid badges earned at school sports days counted little here. Mom had always said she was born with rescuer blood flowing through her veins. For five days she’d wished she could wrap arms of comfort around each patient and make it all better. But how did one go up and hug a stranger? One didn’t. That’s what their families were for. So Evazee just sat with her heart full of longing and no one to spend it on.

  But the boy in 2C was different. He didn’t seem to have family. Black, spiky hair, and a bruised body—probably from fighting by the look of him. He was about her age but definitely not her type. And yet, she couldn’t help her curiosity. No one had come to visit him. Not that she’d been watching exactly, but Gran’s room was across the hall.

  She was even dreaming about him. Such weird dreams.

  Today she’d found herself reaching beyond this world, one hand stretching up to hold the Hand of Heaven, the other carrying in its palm this broken boy who couldn’t reach that High. Jesus, bring Your light. Your hope.

  Today her defences had been breached.

  Snuggling deeper into her rose-pink gown, she sought comfort within its soft, warm folds. She needed sleep. Tomorrow was another day.

  ~*~

  Kai scrambled out of the tunnel and lay on the sandy floor, breathing, basking in the warm light pulsing through the rocks. The circular space around him contained openings leading off in four directions and a rocky roof that swept upwards to a high, curved pinnacle. It was as if he was stuck inside a tin-foil hat.

  The floor dipped to form a wide, shallow bowl in the middle. The air above the bowl began to shimmer. Kai shuffled backwards and tucked himself into a crack in the cave wall. If there was one thing he’d learned in this odd dream, it was not to trust what he saw.

  A translucent figure appeared—a woman kneeling. Her eyes were closed, hands clasped together, lips moving silently in passionate entreaty. Her hair hung to her waist, gleaming locks of midnight black.

  Kai’s heart strained towards the transient figure before him. She seemed familiar, yet they’d never met. Something about her reminded him of sunlight pouring through his windows on pale mornings, the low rumble of a kitten purring while it slept on his lap, the last school bell on a Friday. Something in her gentle features was like coming home.

  Maybe she could help him get out of this dream. He eased himself upright, joints popping and clicking. He ran fingers through his hair and felt the spikes pop straight back up. Somehow, he didn’t think she’d mind. He rolled his shoulders back, clicked his neck left and right, and stepped out.

  “Don’t fall for her
charms.” The words hissed in his ear from behind and a pale hand clamped down on his shoulder.

  Kai yelled and fell forward, away from the rock and the pallid fingers that left cold lines in his flesh. He tripped over his own feet and staggered, rolling all the way to the dip in the floor.

  The woman was gone. A dry chuckle sounded from the owner of the hand, the palm of which writhed in a coppery tattoo, snakes tied at the tail in a knot of darkness, radiating outward in curled loops. A living tattoo, trapped beneath pale skin. The shadowy figure hung back, tucked too deep in the crevice Kai had just exited for Kai to see who it was that mocked him.

  “Why are they always scared of me? So annoying.” With a pained sigh, a pale man emerged from the rock, his eyes the same deathly shade as the shadowed marble he’d come out of.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Aah! It asks good questions.” A strange smile of satisfaction crept over the man’s perfect lips. He moved snake-like, making no sound as he crossed the marble floor to a patch of glowing orange stains. As he bent over to examine the marks, his silvery hair swung forward, hanging long on either side of a face so beautiful, Kai couldn’t tear his eyes away. Beautiful was not usually a word he would use to describe a man, but this man’s arrangement of features left him strangely speechless. Faint stubble dusted the man’s cheeks and chin, the only darkness in an otherwise light face.

  The smile on his lips deepened as if he knew the effect he was having on Kai. “You’ve had some trouble with the LightSuckers, I see.”

  Kai felt a wave of guilt wash over him at the orange blobs that marked his trail from the bugs he’d squashed underfoot. They pulsed on the floor at the man’s feet. Kai checked his feet. They still bore the marks of the bugs he’d killed. “I’m…sorry, I didn’t mean to… it just felt like—”

  Another deep chuckle, “Like what, Kai? Like they were…killing you? Is that it?”

  Heat flooded into Kai’s face. “I don’t know what came over me.” His mind flopped around like a goldfish that had leapt out of its bowl. He felt small and stupid. Ashamed of his fear. And he couldn’t remember what the irritating girl had told him. Find…

  Mesmerised, he watched the pale man’s boot step onto the orange patch.

  Find…

  Kai felt a surge of hope. Could this be Tau?

  The boot lifted and the glowing orange was gone. Absorbed into the sole of his shoe.

  Pale-man crossed the floor in three paces. His hand stretched towards a streak of flowing light chasing through the marble wall.

  It had to be.

  Fingers connected to the glow. It seeped into him. He was drawing light from the rock, drawing light into himself. Kai hungered for light, this had to be the one he was looking for.

  “Tau. I’ve found you!” Kai whispered, awestruck.

  He watched as the light bled from the rock… something was wrong.

  “Are you the one?” Kai had to know.

  Light drained from the rock into Pale-man, yet it did not illuminate him. It was as though the light was sucked into a black hole or flushed down a dark drain. Ashen eyes blazed with black light. The brightness in the cave dipped.

  When the light leaves, you leave too.

  Eyes stretched wide in horror, Kai turned to run.

  But where?

  Pale-man, or LightSuckers. What a choice. Kai went with what he could squash underfoot and bolted back through the tunnel—dark once more—into the cave with moody recesses. He stopped, listening for sounds of Pale-man coming. Blood thundered through his head too loud to hear anything else. Outside seemed a shade lighter than the extinguished cave. Strange shadows loomed over the doorway to escape. Mocking laughter bounced off the rock walls, and Kai dove for the entrance. Adrenalin took over and his legs carried him away from the rock and Pale-man’s cave.

  He ran until a fire burned in his lungs.

  He ran until he could not put another foot forward.

  He lost count of the number of times his foot caught on something dark and immovable and he fell forward onto his hands and knees. Each time, he pulled himself up, fear willing him forward. Exhaustion laced lead through his limbs and he tripped again, no root or stone to be blamed, just one foot colliding with the other. His legs crumpled beneath him.

  ~*~

  Light seeping through his closed eyelids woke him. Kai jerked with a start, smacking the back of his head on the hard ground that had been his bed.

  “Boy! What are you doing here? Do you want to get swallowed up by the dark?”

  Aaah. The annoying girl was back. He grimaced and peered at her through one half-open eye. “Zee! I’m happy to see you too.”

  He flinched as she swatted his arm. Her finger pointed at his nose, waggling up and down with alarming speed. It looked too long for her hand from this angle. “Don’t get cheeky with me. Do you know how close you are to the borders of the Darklands? Do you?”

  Kai sat up, hunched into a ball, and gingerly touched the swelling lump on his skull. It dawned on him that he could see. Morning had finally arrived. What a messed up place. Zee wore a soft pink robe. Her feet were bare, and her hair was coiled in delicious loops on her head. Now he’d seen it all.

  “Are you in pajamas?” He tried not to grin and failed.

  “What the—” She glanced down and blushed to her roots and back. In a blink she wore army fatigues, boots polished, hair scraped back into a tight bun. He groaned and flopped onto his side. This kind of impossible made his brain ache.

  “Where is your suit?” All traces of disenchantment in her tone were gone, leaving instead a low, cold fear that twisted his belly.

  Uh-oh. Where was it? “I couldn’t breathe inside of it…” he held his hands out. You’ve got to understand.

  She was on him in a second, rolling him onto his stomach to check the wound on his neck, the bite-marks on his arms and back. The edges of each wound had hardened to a painful orange crust, and dark trails feathered out from each circle, extending into the healthy flesh. Dark oozed out of the wounds, staining black wherever it touched.

  “You didn’t find Him, did you?”

  Anger flashed through Kai. “What do you expect? What do you want from me?” White heat burned strength into him. He got to his feet, wobbling. “I was a little busy trying to dodge flying orange leeches and a certain dude who sucks up light for fun. In case you haven’t figured it out, it isn’t much fun fumbling around in darkness so thick, it feels as if it’s about to grow teeth and have you for a snack.” He checked the bottom of his feet for evidence, but all traces of LightSucker remains had worn off.

  Kai nearly laughed at the horror overtaking Evazee’s features. Nearly.

  “You met him? But I told you to stick to the light! How could you get it wrong?” She began pacing, muttering under her breath. He caught snippets of taking things seriously and if he doesn’t care, why should I.

  “What? You’re blaming me? When you left, night arrived. Trust me, there was no light. Anywhere.” He glared at her, muttering under his breath, “Except the cave, but that came with its own problems.”

  “Don’t talk rubbish. There is no night and day here. I told you that already. Wait. What do you mean?” Her hands shot up—twin stop signs. “Never mind. We need to find your suit. Which direction did you come from?”

  Kai tilted his head sideways and something snapped in his resolve. It was not a rational decision, but nothing here made much sense anyway. With a lazy stretch that made his back click, he settled his rear onto the dusty earth.

  Evazee stared at him as if he’d sprouted an extra head from his armpit. Who knew that getting under her skin—her perfect, unflappable, always-right skin—would be so satisfying?

  With a fake yawn he leaned back, propped his hands under his head, and stretched out as if he were on a beach trying to catch a tan.

  When he opened his eyes, Zee’s face was right above his, so close their noses nearly touched. She leaned in a fraction of a hair c
loser. “I am not your mother. There is only so much I can do for you. The rest is up to you.” The blue in her eyes sparked with anger.

  His hands found her shoulders and he pushed her aside as he sat up. “Of course you’re not my mother. No one is.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing. Listen, Zee, I can’t keep doing what you tell me. I need to know how to wake up. Why am I stuck sleeping? Talk to me. I’m going mad.”

  “You’re not sleeping. Read the scroll. It’s all in there.”

  “It’s blank.”

  “That’s not possible. Show me.” Disbelief creased her brow.

  “It’s…in the bag.” Kai coughed and rubbed the back of his neck. He could tell she was impatient by the fidgeting of her hands. They were never still, yet now they froze for a moment, palms up in a gesture that screamed, well, go get it out of the bag, dimwit. “It’s right there, in the bag that is…with the suit.” Cringing, he pointed two guilty hands back the way he’d come. Yep, it was somewhere between LightSuckers, and a man who vampires the light out of everything he touches. Yeah, I am a dimwit.

  Evazee grew fuzzy around the edges. The fluffy gown was back, and her hair hung in soft tendrils that framed her face. “You need that stuff. You know what to do.”

  As the word do left her mouth, fuzziness took her and she vanished as if she’d never been there. Warmth left with her, and Kai rubbed his arms to keep the chill at bay. The light dimmed.

  Not again.

  By the time Kai reached the cave, blackness covered the land. He didn’t travel in the open but stayed inside the line of trees that ran the length of the river. So far, he’d managed to avoid being bitten, which was a good thing, and nothing had chased him—which was even better.

  The cave opening stood gaping like a hungry fish. Deep, inky blackness within the rock took the darkness to a deeper level. This was not so good. The wide girth of the tree he hid behind gave him cover, and he took a moment to gather his thoughts. His plan was simple. Get to the rock, retrieve his belongings, and climb into the suffocating suit.