Allies and Enemies: Exiles, Book 3

by Amy J. Murphy

  “You’re going to be fine,” Erelah sobbed. A memory rushed her, not hers…Tyron’s. Atilio struggling to breathe. The cloying smell of incense. A loss already tallied and everything a lie in the face of it. The hopelessness of it.

  Erelah pushed back hard at the alien memory, clenching her teeth.

  Not like that. It won’t end like that.

  Asher’s hand moved up to cradle her face. His trembling touch was so cold. That alone was enough to spur more fear, like a stinging shock of ice. “Rachel, hurry!”

  “Don’t worry ‘bout me.” He grinned with eyes half-lidded. “I’m splendid…now.”

  Rachel cursed, her mantra changed to something desperate and ugly. She pushed a billowy mound of bandages into Erelah’s hand and set it back against the wound. The blood seeped through it eagerly, slimy and warm between her fingers. She pressed harder, her arms trembling with the force of it.

  Rachel barged Erelah aside, removed her hand. Metal instruments clanked as she worked at the wound. Asher gritted his teeth and hissed with pain. “Forget about me. You got t’go.”

  “I can’t get it. I can’t get it,” Rachel seethed. She tossed aside a clamp, its teeth wet with blood. “I can’t find the artery. Can’t clamp it off.”

  “Do something! You have to!”

  Rachel shoved the useless handful of bandages back in place. Her eyes were huge. “I’m sorry.”

  “Time to go, Er’lah.” Asher’s voice was a wet croak. “Get out of here. Brother’s waiting. Got a ship near the core room here. They’ll take you to Kelta. She knows what to do.”

  He tried shoving her hand away.

  “No.” She pushed back. He was weak indeed if she could resist him. The sob crawled out of her. “No. I’m not leaving you.”

  “Irresistible me.” He tried to smile, stopped.

  She leaned down, pressing her forehead against his. She felt his hand settle on the back of her neck. “I have to tell you. I’m—”

  “I know.” It was a weak whisper, broken at the edges. He swallowed a cough, eyes narrowed in pain. “I came here to keep you both safe. That’s why you got to leave. Now.”

  He pushed her away, and she rocked back with an anguished sob. Her fingers were ferocious hooks against his clothes. Again, he pried loose of her grip, gathering her wrists. “Go.”

  He shut his eyes. The lungs gave another lumbering wheeze. Erelah collapsed against his chest.

  Time ground on around her. She was aware of shuffling in the room and the sounds of dragging. All unimportant. Rachel engaged in debate with another in her native language.

  Then after an eternity, she heard the dry chuckle.

  She lifted her head, seeking its source and knowing the owner, no matter how the voice changed. The Human soldier, Chapman, wrists shackled through the leg of a heavy piece of furniture, sat on the floor.

  His mouth split into a bloody smile she would know on any face.

  “Such a pity.”

  Forty-One

  Tristic awoke to the sounds of sobbing. It was practically musical.

  Erelah. My girl. My perfectly imperfect girl.

  She opened the host’s eyes. The view was blurry. It had sustained damage. She could see the dark-skinned Human, Northway, coddling the girl as they sat on the floor. She rocked her, uttering soothing sounds beside the dead body of the hulking Binait mongrel.

  Tristic turned her attention to her new host. Her wrists were bound. They had used metal shackles this time, feeding them around a leg of furniture that was bolted to the floor. She gave the situation a cursory inspection. She considered popping the thumb joints out of place to slip free of them. The blood that covered the host’s hands would make them slick enough to accomplish this.

  “Such a pity.” The words came out garbled when she spoke. The jaw felt wrong. The now familiar copper taste of Human blood welled between the dull teeth. Even the tongue felt swollen and misplaced. Tristic knew the host—the foul-mouthed creature named Chapman—was in agony. She ignored it and jerked herself up to a seated position.

  Across from her, Erelah uncoiled from her friend. Her shoulders went rigid, her jaw slid forward in angry defiance. Tristic sensed a delicious rage radiate from her. This was new, unexpected. Very interesting. Nearly invigorating.

  The Erelah she recalled was a mewling thing, fearful of the darkness and easily cowed by threats of pain. At some point, the girl had grown some spine. Breaking her all over again would be so much more satisfying.

  Erelah disengaged from Northway and staggered to her feet. Her dark hair hung around her face in damp clumps. Her eyes were puffy and wet with weakness.

  Had she really cared for that creature? That hulking impure primitive? How repulsive.

  “Tristic.”

  Hearing her name in that voice was like hearing a haunting melody. It bore the bittersweet sound of nostalgia. She smiled. “There you are, my lovely girl.”

  There was the flinch she remembered. But none of the cower. That had been taken from her, replaced by a surprising ferocity. Erelah strode closer, the front of her simple clothing made black by the half-breed’s blood. She wore it like a badge that somehow emboldened her.

  Northway clutched the girl’s arm, slowing her. “What’re you doing? Don’t go near that. It’s what it wants.”

  Wren, the pitiful shell she had left behind, watched in a near-stupor. He had collapsed in a chair, watching it all like the slack-jawed imbecile he was.

  Erelah shook herself free. “It’s what I want.”

  Interesting, indeed.

  “You seek an end of things, do you not?” Tristic husked.

  “Yes.” Erelah picked her way around the fallen Humans with the grace of a dancer in some wretched ballet. “Shall we end this? Here and now? There is nothing left. You’ve been my tormentor so long, I cannot remember anything else. There is nothing else.”

  She looked back over her shoulder at the dead half-breed, Corsair.

  Tristic worked the jaw of her host. It was out of joint, one side slack. Something warm trickled from the corner of the mouth. She ignored it. “You are wrong, little one. There is so much more. Where you see death, I see opportunity. Chaos is its heart’s blood. We can feed on it and grow stronger still. Together we may bring it new life…new purpose, my purpose.”

  The girl edged closer, a frightened mouse encountering a serpent, hypnotized. “You seek only to destroy.”

  “I do not destroy, child. I have only ever wanted what is mine—a chance at rebirth. If I could but show you. These piteous souls that you champion in their narrow lives would not understand a fraction of it. But you shall, through me.”

  Erelah knelt before her, tantalizingly close. Defeated, wounded. “Then show me.”

  Northway lurched forward, her reach falling short. “Erelah, no!”

  Erelah thrust her hand out. Her terrified features rearranging into a sudden vicious fury. Her hand rammed into the chest of Tristic’s host.

  Forty-Two

  Erelah falls. The sensation is overwhelming, though part of her knows her body is really pinned elsewhere, back in the destroyed room, surrounded by fallen strangers and slumped over the body of another of Tristic’s shells.

  Arms, legs, eyes do not matter here. Not in this place. Bad thoughts skitter in the dark corners. Sorrow creeps along the walls.

  This was a secret place, part of Tristic. No one like her was ever meant to see it.

  She falls and sinks. She is everywhere and nowhere. There’s a visceral reflex to throw her arms wide, to brace herself and stop the plunge. But she is aware that won’t work.

  This is what it was like for them. The people that I’d worked Tristic’s dark gift on—Sightjacked. This is good, fitting. I deserve this.

  She’s aware of another presence. There’s something greedy and black at the end of this plummet into a sightless void. It pulses with sick delight, bloated with hunger and ready to consume her whole, become her, invade her.

  Tristic
.

  /This is what you were meant for, child. My perfectly imperfect girl. This is the end you desire and deserve./

  Erelah pushes back against the floating black that’s surrounded her. In the faraway room, she’s aware of her teeth grinding and muscles gone rigid in spastic tremor and the warm iron taste of blood.

  The falling stops.

  Parts of her peel away like old scales. Memories and wishes shed and disintegrate as they’re carried away in a formless tide. If she stayed here too long, it would be just as bad as completing the plunge and meeting that maw below.

  /You’ve wished for this from the beginning, child. You’ve always craved your own destruction./

  The hunger at the other end reaches out to her. It won’t be cheated. Its power is undeniable, like the radiation of a failing star, a pure force. Tendrils snake from it. They whip and taste the black for Erelah.

  I could end this, she thinks.

  The thought frightens and invigorates at the same time. She could welcome it: being unmade, unspooled, as she is drawn into the event horizon of this poison star. It is the promise of never having to return to that ruined room, never having to look upon Asher’s still body again. There’d be no Erelah left to feel the pain.

  She’s distracted by this bliss as the first of the tendrils reach her. Feels the writhe of sudden cold sinew against her. Tasting.

  Erelah’s spine goes rigid.

  You can’t have me.

  /There is nothing else left for you, child. Join me. Become me. And I you./

  She’s aware of a keening desperation as Tristic reaches out.

  The tendril tastes her again, then latches on.

  Tristic’s screech is world-shattering. It pierces everything in a staggering shockwave. Erelah gasps with phantom lungs.

  /Poison! You poison yourself against me. Me!/

  The touch snaps away, already withering to dust.

  /The half-breed Binait. You carry his mongrel. It’s poisoned you from me./

  Tristic’s pain rolls into her in a wave that she cannot fight. She endures it. After millennia, it fades.

  There is something left for me to fight for. It grows in me.

  Fight. She seizes the tendrils, relishing the agony that her touch creates. Another of Tristic’s agonized screams fills her head.

  Erelah feels a scream build within her to match it, not of fear, but of fury. It’s a battle cry. It shrieks through this new abyss. She wants to rage, and rend and tear. So she does. She does this forever, finding freedom in mindless vengeance.

  Each time Tristic seeks to pull away, she traps her until all that exists is a mewling sound, pitiful to anyone but Erelah.

  This goes on until there’s nothing left to fight.

  She is aware of the kernel of light growing in the dim; it’s a place that would be just under her heart. It grows, pulsing and insistent as it drives back the floating dark.

  This is what powered her fight and poisoned Tristic. Asher’s child.

  She casts about, seeking to look upon her work, to find Tristic’s destroyed remains. But there’s nothing left.

  She folds herself around that pulsing light. It would be so easy to stay here in its warmth and forget the world that existed beyond this one. A voice calls to her from that chaotic alien room she’d left. She knows that going back there will be a painful struggle. But the child needs her to return there. So she does.

  Forty-Three

  Erelah woke to the bleating sound that could only be a siren. Rachel’s face pinched with concern, hovered over her, her voice washed out by the siren’s wail. Finally, she understood what was being demanded of her and stood on uncertain legs.

  She gaped down at the soldier’s lifeless body at her feet, suddenly recalling its presence. The young man that Tristic had used up on a whim. She should feel pity, remorse. Or even elation at knowing Tristic was finally gone.

  In its place there was nothing.

  Rachel embraced her, seeking to give her comfort or assurance. Neither thing was possible. They existed as abstracts.

  Still locked in the woman’s arms, Erelah stared down at Asher’s body. He lay in a litter of discarded bandages and useless medicines. Someone—Rachel, or the wasted looking man called Wren—had placed his hands across his stomach and draped a thin jacket over his head and shoulders.

  She felt a hot rush of scorn. It seemed presumptive, an act done to comfort the living more than to honor the dead. How would these strangers know his wishes?

  Overhead, the siren ground on. Insistent. Yellow light rolled and danced from the doorways, the ceiling. Shapes moved past the milky glass of the doorways and filled the corridor outside. She realized that the downed personnel were waking around them to a new nightmare of light and noise.

  “Kid, we got to get out of here. Wren says the core is going to pop.” Rachel had to scream above the din. “You okay to walk? He says they have emergency skiffs we can get to.”

  An androgynous voice called out in the Human language overhead. It was some sort of automated warning.

  “Erelah?”

  The core. Ships. Jon was here.

  The memory of Asher’s final words to her rolled up from the numb place in her head. She connected the urgency with it. Her feet tangled as she pulled away from Rachel, even as she tried to lead her away. “No.”

  “No?” Rachel stepped in front of her, leaning into her view of Asher’s body. The medic’s brown eyes showed compassion and urgency. “I’m sorry. He’s gone, but this whole place is going tits up. Wren’s already getting his people out.”

  The door to the corridor outside opened. The chaos of hustling bodies and muted shouts flooded in. The alarm out here was louder. It was like stepping into someone else’s nightmare. Rachel tugged her through the current of barging shoulders and angled elbows. They gave her strange looks, but Erelah did not care. Occasionally she looked back over her shoulder. The room with Asher’s body was far behind them, a million miles, tucked into a place where she could never return.

  She halted. Rachel stumbled to a stop, turned to look at her. “Come on, hon. You can do this.”

  “No.” Erelah pushed back against the current of fleeing bodies. They were going the wrong way. She twisted out of Rachel’s grasp.

  “We have to get out of here,” Rachel urged.

  Overhead, the alarm and the automated voice crackled and then fell silent. The noise of rushing and barely subdued panic seemed worse.

  “Let me go!” Erelah shouted. A trio of the strangely clad Human soldiers sprinted past, none of them bothering to give her a second glance, the drive for survival likely to override any need to impose order. Nonetheless, she waited for them to pass before continuing, her voice lowered now that she no longer needed to compete with the wailing siren. “My brother came for me with Asher. Jon did this! He’s waiting. I have to find the core room.”

  Rachel cast her gaze around the hallway as if imploring unseen spirits for deliverance. “The core? You’re not thinking clearly.” Her tone sounded practiced. Erelah guessed it was the type of voice a doctor needed when her patient was unruly. “That’s a real bad place to head toward right now.”

  “I am! Asher told me!” Erelah felt a sudden surge of irrational anger. “Leave me. Go with your people. I don’t care. I’m finding my brother.”

  She didn’t wait for Rachel to reply and lurched into an unsteady run in the opposite direction. The corridor seemed to flex and water around her. She was aware of a sobbing noise coming from her throat.

  “Erelah! Wait!” She heard Rachel chase after her.

  Erelah slowed, allowed the woman to catch up. “You’re an enormous pain in the ass,” Rachel said. “You know that?”

  Erelah made a short, mirthless sound, as much a cry of anguish as anything. “I know.”

  “Besides…you’re my people.” Rachel sighed. “Let’s go find your brother.”

  Forty-Four

  “Quit it. Will you stay still? ”

>   The voice was angry, feminine. For a disconnected moment, Jon was in the sliver of a bunkroom back on the Cass. Sela was annoyed with him. Again. Something else he’d done. Another infraction he’d committed against her million rules of cohabitation.

  An immediate sense of wrongness followed the thought.

  The deck vibrated; the engine pitch seemed taxed, smaller. No a-grav. Straps pulled at his stomach and shoulders.

  “Marv…Mav-whatever, You’re going to rip the cut back open.” There was a curl to the Commonspeak the woman used. It was definitely not Sela. He was aware of a large shape thudding past him, muttering annoyances.

  “Where’s Ty?” It came out: Wuzz Ty.

  His tongue felt two sizes too big. He tasted the bright acid of bile. Pain wedged like a chunk of ice in his brain the moment he tried to move. “Where’s Corsair? What’s going on?”

  A hand pressed against his neck. The cold, slender fingers prodded the tender skin there. He found he had only the power to open his eyes to an unsteady half-mast. Someone stooped over him had her back to the light, her face obscured in shadow.

  When she pushed back with the effortless ease of null grav, he picked out dark skin, the blue of the shipsuits from the Human station. Panic crackled. Somehow he’d been captured. Their mission had failed. Erelah! He straightened, hands splaying. The motion pushed him up from the grav bench and into the restraints. The pain in his head blossomed and became impossible to ignore.

  “Where am I? Where’s my sister?”

  “Hey. Easy.” The woman gently guided him back against the bench. He grabbed her wrist. But she didn’t flinch. It was as if she’d expected the response. She moved and talked like someone used to giving bad news and fixing wrongs. “It’s okay. You’re safe. You got yourself banged up.”

  “Where’s safe?” The words had better edges to them this time. His throat was a perfect cylinder of fire. Details surfaced with the pain beyond the immediate vicinity of his grav couch. It was the interior of the Wedge, not far from where Maeve had killed the ripper-crab. Across from him drifted another body, strapped to a trauma bench. Long dark hair unfurled in the strange grace of weightlessness: Erelah. Delicate eyelids shut to the world. Cheeks sunken. Her skin ashen. A staggering dread engulfed him: She’s dead. We were too late.