Nite Fire: Flash Point

by C. L. Schneider

  Century after century, they’d hurt and bled, staining the strips of stone and metal, shedding their torment and misery to coat the walls. The ghostly remnants of their suffering were thick and prevalent. They heaved and swelled, like the room itself was drawing breath. Each phantom exhale leaked more pain. It drifted over me, arousing my empathy at a rate impossible to keep up with. Bounced between one spectral flash and the next, impressions of past agony flickered in time with the light above. I saw heads ripped from mangled bodies; limbs crushed; tissue sliced and bowels emptied. Skin peeled back like the layers of an onion.

  The wails of countless species tainted the air, silent and unheard for so long. They passed through me, voiceless. I gave them one, and screamed until I couldn’t anymore. Processing the pain was the quickest way to be rid of it. Yet my cries excited the living nightmares around me even more, inflaming the nageun and making them tug harder on their chains.

  One had stretched his links. The saliva frothing from his mouth was soaking the stone inches from my leg. He seemed oblivious to the choking pain in his throat, yet I wasn’t. With each tug, each gag of the collar tightening around his neck, I flinched. It wasn’t from sympathy. If I was lucky, the beast would strangle itself to death. But my guard was down, and the jolts of sorrow and panic plaguing the nageun—interspersed with the clear hot sting of an electric current—had walked right in.

  Over the years, my empathy had become sensitive to most sentient species, but this was one I didn’t care to read. I was curious, though, to know what was shocking their bodies.

  Pushing away my awareness of the creature, I studied the floor.

  The grates were laid out in large sections. Many were hinged to open and wired to produce arcs of energy that leapt across the metal. The charges appeared random in location and strength. It only took a moment of study to realize the shocks were preventing the nageun from changing into their shadowy forms. The electrified field interfered, blocking the signal from their brains to their bodies.

  Now that I’d noticed, I could see it affecting all the nageun. I could feel the pain it induced. But there’s more, I thought. Much, much more…

  These weren’t the same pitiless creatures that held me in their nest when I was young. These weren’t the ruthless hunters that had chased me to the ravine on the eve of my execution. Yet, fundamentally they were all the same. I understood that now. They were all afraid, deprived, angry, tormented. They were in pain. Not from the collars digging into their throats or the electricity striking their nerves. Those were mild discomforts. Their true agony was deeper. It was gouged into their bones. It lived in their muscles and their souls. It was older, like they’d carried it from day one—like they hadn’t been born right and every move hurt.

  It does. I could feel that, too.

  The nageun were a mutation that occurred nearly every time two lyrriken bred. It was well known their brains were inferior and defective, lacking the gifts of their parents, including reason and intellect. But it was more than that. Being malformed had affected them on a physiological level. They were in constant agony, in their joints and bones, from the moment they were born. Only when they were sated, when their bodies were nourished, and able to yield copious amounts of the venom, did their suffering subside.

  I felt it ebb in one of the creatures, as the poison flooded its system and masked the pain. While the others continued chewing ravenously, trying to bring about a momentary comfort they didn’t understand.

  Every step, every shift of joint or clamp of jaw, reverberated like a knife’s edge scraping over their ragged nerves. It pressed on me, wrapping around my body, squeezing, forcing my empathy to forget what scarred the room, to move on from the agonies of the past in favor of the nageun’s pain. Theirs was now. It was fresh, renewable. I’d never before felt such self-perpetuating trauma. It trailed off their bodies, edging closer, over the floor in long ghostly shadows; dousing me with adrenaline and fear; drawing the sweat from my pores.

  Yet, a part of me wanted it inside. I could feel it better that way. I could know it. Take it.

  I altered position. Stretching my legs out, I breached the encroaching black. I absorbed their ghosts—hours, days, years of unending distress and torture. My body shook with the strength of their pain. I waited for their agitation and frenzy to overwhelm me. Surprisingly, the nageun began to quiet and still. Their breathing calmed, and so did mine. My heartrate slowed. The cold presence of their trauma was still in me, yet I wasn’t drowning in it. I was holding it.

  The nageun flinched. Convulsing, they fell limply to the floor. Sporadic shudders ran through their bodies with each shock from the electrified grate. Their eyes were fixed. Breath barely passed through their lungs. I’d never seen their kind in such a relaxed state.

  But it wasn’t peace. It wasn’t unconsciousness. It was emptiness.

  When I took their pain, I took what drove them. They had nothing left.

  Experiencing an unnerving sense of déjà vu, I recalled my dream of Coen. I thought of the humans and how that twisted version of me had taken their ghosts. They’d shuddered a moment before going limp and catatonic. Like the nageun.

  Like Officer Clemmons.

  I took a breath. I couldn’t afford to be afraid. I’d rendered a portion of my current problem helpless, and that was encouraging. The shock of my strange accomplishment had also disconnected me from the centuries’ worth of scars left on the room; also good. With the fog of black gone, I could see my surroundings more clearly now. The indistinct light above was a series of candles hung from chains affixed to the ceiling. Only two walls in the room were solid stone—behind me and to my left. On my right was a wide entryway marked with gray columns. The stone had been carved and sculpted to appear as if the tail of a dragon was wrapped around its girth. The third wall, in front of me, was different than the rest. Inside a stone frame was a large plate of window glass, painted a dark muddy brown.

  Sitting in front of the glass, in a wooden thrown-like chair, was Brynne.

  Once more in her human skin, wearing her skirted Guild uniform and tall boots, one slender leg was thrown over the arm of the chair. The necklace Naalish had taken from her was back around Brynne’s neck. A ribbon of hair hung carelessly in her small face, accentuating her deliberately casual posture. Her expression was equally cavalier. Yet, her eyes told the truth. They were the wild blue of an ocean storm.

  The tempest centered on me. “What have you done to them?” she demanded.

  Brynne’s words had been edged with worry and horror, and I remembered: I wasn’t the only one terrified of the nageun.

  She asked again, “What have you done?”

  I swallowed, wetting my dry throat; stalling. I wasn’t about to tell her she wasn’t the only one in the dark. So I embellished. “I can wake them if you want. Maybe send a few your way?”

  “You expect me to believe you can control the uncontrollable?”

  “I just did.”

  Quiet a moment; disdain chilled her voice. “How?”

  “It’s like you said. Pain lets you be what you never could before.”

  Brynne froze.

  As she tried to decipher my meaning, I fixed my eyes on Ella’s necklace. “I keep wondering why that damn thing is so important. Stealing it from the police, defying the Queen...seems a little much for a kill trophy.”

  “Adornments mean nothing to me. But to Aidric, I’m told this one means a great deal.”

  “So you’re keeping it from him. Siding with Naalish in some pissing war between her and Aidric over a human?”

  “Don’t bother trying to understand. You’ve been—”

  “Gone a long time? So everyone keeps telling me.” Annoyed, I raised my voice. “Whose eye are you wearing, Brynne?” Her bow lips parted in surprise, and I smiled. “Don’t you know what it looks like when a mage petrifies a dragon’s eye?” A nagging, fuzzy thought, something from my recent dream, tugged at my mind. I brushed it aside. “There’s a statue
in the Queen’s lair that’s said to hold the eyes of the first dragons.” Sensing a sudden quickness to her breath, I added, “I guess Naalish never shared that story with you.”

  Brynne slid her leg off the chair arm and stood. Her hands rested on the metal batons at her hips. Her fingers drummed their surface. “Stories are for the young.”

  “I assume you at least know that elder eyes maintain a semblance of power as long as the owner’s heart is intact. In fact, they’re pretty damn popular on the supernatural black market. You wouldn’t be planning on selling that necklace or trading it for something? I knew a del-yun who would have gotten you quite a price for it.”

  “I would never lower myself to befriend any creature that deals in such a trade.”

  “I didn’t befriend him.” My stare tightened. “I torched him.”

  “Is that what you want to do to me? You want to torch me, Dahlia? You want to hurt me?” Brynne pushed her lips in an exaggerated pout. “You want to make me cry?” Abruptly, she snarled. “Like you did before?”

  “I never set out to hurt you, Brynne. I didn’t care about you enough to hurt you.”

  With an offended grunt, she moved to the window behind her. She slammed her palm against the frame, and the dark glaze over the glass began to lighten. An illusion similar to the one in the Chandlers’ basement, the window vanished to reveal another cavern-like room. The prisoner inside was against the rock wall, shirtless and spread-eagle. Sweat lathered his bruised human skin and matted his hair. Spikes penetrated wrists and ankles. Razor-vines were wrapped about his stomach, but their needles weren’t stopping him from thrashing. I wasn’t even sure Ronan could feel their penetration, not with the tube inserted in his right arm, delivering a continuous stream of venom to his system. The yellow liquid flowing through flooded his mind with hallucinations; dulling his desire to escape.

  Brynne stepped into the room with him. Turning to offer me a smug smile, she gestured at the empty ‘window’ frame. “Our scouts have discovered marvels and curiosities on many worlds. With human science and our magic, a talented Guild mage can create even more.”

  “So that’s what we do here now? Steal technology from other worlds to advance ours? Then when those same worlds come to call we slaughter them?”

  “Trespassers,” she chided me. “If they come uninvited, they bear no other title.”

  “And what are we to them?”

  “I told you. To some, we are gods. To others…”

  “The devil?”

  Eyes thoughtful, Brynne sauntered up to Ronan. “What do you think, lover, is that an apt description?” When Ronan didn’t reply, she ripped the tube from his arm. Blood bubbled and ran. Brynne pressed her finger in the wound. She delved in until pain shattered the stupor and Ronan cried out. Stretching up on her tiptoes, she kissed him on the cheek. “I love it when you scream for me.”

  I grunted in disgust. “Is this torture or foreplay?”

  “Does it matter? They both hurt you. I saw how you were on that rooftop.” Brynne yanked her finger from his arm. She bit her lip in triumph. “You still want him.”

  I looked away from her gloating to Ronan. I assumed little of our conversation was making its way through the fog in his mind. But as his unsteady stare found me, I saw recognition.

  “Dahl…” he said thickly. “You shouldn’t be here. I wasn’t supposed to let you come home. I wasn’t… I tried to be impartial. I…” Licking dry lips, Ronan shook his head as he pushed out his venom-muddled thoughts. “I couldn’t stay on task. That’s why I kept leaving you. It’s why I kept coming back. You were always more than you were supposed to be, Dahl. You were always more…”

  Brynne pressed her hand against the razor-vine around his stomach. The needles pushed into his skin, forcing out a cry and a thin line of blood. I watched it drip, knowing that whatever Ronan had done, whatever reason he’d left Drimera, whatever lies he’d told; he loved me. But even if I still felt the same, that love wouldn’t save him.

  “Maybe I did want him,” I said, addressing Brynne’s taunt. “But I’m not sitting in the center of a nageun sandwich, because of him. No matter what you’ve got going on in that twisted head of yours, he’s not the reason you dropped a string of bodies like breadcrumbs on the streets of the Sentinel. And neither am I. We didn’t abandon you. This wasn’t some tag-team master plan. Even if Ronan and I had different motives for leaving, neither of them had a fucking thing to do with you. If I hadn’t dreamt of that night for the last ninety years, I wouldn’t have even remembered your goddamn name! So get over yourself. Shit happened and it fucked you up. Nothing you do here today will change that. Nothing you do to him or to me will make you better. Torture me. Cut off his balls. Kill us both. You’ll still be fucked up.”

  As the echo of my outburst faded, a cloud of black trauma burst out around Brynne’s body. “I don’t want it to make me better,” she said. “I want it over.”

  “Then let us go.”

  “Why?” Her shoulders shook in a laugh, disrupting the ghost that was still widening and darkening around her. “So you can go back to living in your easy human world? So you can forget? I forgot once,” she said, soft and distant. “The Guild made me forget.”

  “The Guild brainwashed you. They tortured you. They didn’t help you.”

  “No, they didn’t help. Because it came back. The edge of my children’s teeth scraping against my bones; the never-ending pull as they suckled, biting and drinking until all that ran from me was blood. I can feel it all again.”

  “Brynne—”

  “The streets in your human city are never quiet,” she said. “I like that. I like how the night is never truly dark. I hate the dark.”

  I squinted at her abrupt shift in topics. “What are you talking about?”

  “It was how I saw you that night. You were across the street, sitting beside a man. He was making music with the strings on his instrument. It was sad, angry music.”

  “Henry.” I thought back. My last guitar lesson had been over a week ago. Well before Oren called me with the Chandler case. How long has Brynne been watching me?

  “At first, I didn’t see you. It was the music that drew me. Then you laughed and the breeze tossed your hair. On Drimera you rarely showed your human side, at least not to an apprentice. But you always shifted when you were alone with Ronan. He liked your bare human skin. How soft and pliable it was in his grip.”

  “You spied on us?”

  “I wanted to learn. How you talked, how you moved. How you pleased him.”

  “I take it back. The Guild didn’t make you this way. You were always sick.”

  “None of that matters now. Since finding you, I’ve lost my urge for all else. Sating myself with Reech, my duty, my affection for the Queen…it doesn’t warm me like it once did. It doesn’t move me.” Flat, she stated, “I hate you, Dahlia, far more than I care for Reech, more than I’ve ever loved my Queen.” She eyed Ronan a long moment. “Him, I despise.” Scales sheathing her arm, claws shot forth to rake his skin. Ronan groaned. But the sound quickly escalated to a scream, as Brynne pushed their tips into his chest.

  Tissue gave way. Blood doused her scales. I shouted in protest, writhing to break free, and the vines dug in. Their serrated grip sawed into me with each move. Bright blood wet my arms. It ran to pool on the stone where I sat. It slid off the edge, slicking the metal of the grate a shiny red as it dripped; whipping the trapped nageun below into a feverish state. The water churned. Their bodies leapt up and slammed into the grates. With each collision, the metal jumped with an incessant clang, clang, clang and an anxious spray of saliva.

  As the noise grew louder and claws reached up, struggling to grip the grates, anxiety flooded my body. Brynne’s cruelty lost import. Ronan’s suffering faded away. And in my mind, it was no longer the vines cutting me.

  It was teeth.

  Deep down, I knew the nageun couldn’t reach me. The grates were between us. The random jolts running over the me
tal deterred their advance, shocking them back down into the water. Yet, every splash as they fell stole my breath. Every slam, as they jumped and tried again, intensified my fear. I felt them behind me, nibbling on my arms. Their saliva ran down over my hands, warm and wet. Hating the feel of it, I whimpered. But in my head, I was yelling.

  It’s not them! It’s blood. Just blood.

  My blood.

  I’m losing too much.

  Hinges strained and popped with each assault.

  Metal weakened and bent.

  I cried out in alarm as the grate in front of me slid an inch out of place.

  I’m doing this. I’m luring them up.

  Another inch…

  Slats snapped, forming holes in the tenuous barrier.

  Stop…

  I have to stop.

  Panting, I fell back against the pole. The vines slackened and the needles pulled out of my skin. I sat still and quiet, pushing out the irrational fears. My mind calmed. My body followed suit, and as I relaxed, so did the nageun below me.

  Then my panic returned anew as Ronan screamed.

  I lifted my head. Brynne was digging her hand into his chest. As her claws penetrated, Ronan’s cry was strained. Yet it had purpose. Disrupting his agony was the stilted, pleading gasp of my name.

  I squeezed my eyes shut as he called for me again. Coward, I thought, as the sounds of his torment grew strangled and desperate. I couldn’t block them out. I sat and listened as the pain of the man I once loved beat against what little mental armor I had left.

  Ronan’s suffering cut off abruptly, and I opened my eyes. The window of illusion had gone dark. I couldn’t see what she’d done to him. But I knew.

  The wall rippled, and Brynne stepped through. Before I could get a glimpse of Ronan, the illusion settled in again. Brynne was partially shifted now. Wings and tail were still tucked away, but shimmery blue scales covered much of her body—as did Ronan’s blood. One hand was particular gore-slathered. Clenched in its palm, was a heart. I wasn’t surprised to see it there. What startled me was how damn much mine ached.