by Davis Ashura
“Are you saying that because most of them are black like you?” Lien asked.
“Meaning I wouldn’t care if they were white?” Daniel asked.
Lien nodded.
“I’d feel the same way no matter what they looked like,” Daniel said.
“Besides, Daniel’s only half-black,” Jason reminded her.
“Everyone’s half-something,” William said. “I’m a mix of Indian, Irish, and a bit of Carib black.”
“Not me,” Lien said, sounding proud. “I’m pure Chinese.”
“And no one cares,” Jason said. “Skin-deep is how most people here see us. None of us are fully white, but that doesn’t make any difference, not even to the people in Over-the-Rhine.”
“We’re foreigners everywhere in the Far Beyond,” Daniel agreed. “Some of the folks down there would call me an Oreo, black on the outside and white on the inside.”
Jason smiled. “We’re nothing like that. We’re not white or black.”
“Or Chinese,” Lien piped up.
Serena felt like an outsider, listening to them. They were talking about their true home of Arylyn, and she wondered again if it was really as free and egalitarian as their descriptions.
“Check out the buildings,” William said. “This area is supposed to have more historic buildings than any neighborhood outside of Harlem in New York.”
Serena immediately noticed what William meant. Hidden beneath the boarded-up windows, and the crumbling facades stood once lovely buildings. “Why would they let them get this rundown?” she asked.
“Because this is the ghetto,” Daniel said.
A sad, but true answer.
A short time after, they pulled in front of the church and disembarked the bus. The anklet William had given Serena for Christmas jingled with every step she took.
He noticed. “Is that the anklet?” William asked.
Serena drew up her pantleg to let him see.
He smiled, obviously pleased, and together they followed the other students into a large parish hall. Windows, yellowed and rippled with age, allowed in some sunshine while gusts of wind rattled them in their frames. Heavy, dark beams held up the ceiling and interspersed amongst them were rugged chandeliers to light the space. Several fragrant candles burned cheerily on a corner table. The floral scent did little to cover the musty odor filling the air.
While the students waited for the teachers to tell them what to do, Serena caught sight of a tall, blonde girl—strong and self-assured—accompanied by an Asian Indian boy, also tall and confident. He moved with a sublime grace.
She inhaled sharply. “Who’s that?” she asked.
William looked to where she gestured. “Jessira. You know her. She’s a freshman.”
“I meant the boy she’s with.”
Based on his frown, William must have immediately understood who Serena meant. How could he not?
Even with his youthful, unfinished features, the handsome boy standing next to Jessira had an undeniable presence.
“I don’t know,” William said, his frowning deepening.
Serena suspected he might be jealous, and she paused in her thoughts, wondering if it might be true.
“He moves like . . .” William said.
“Like what?” Serena asked.
“Someone dangerous,” William finished.
Serena nodded agreement. William’s observation rang true. The Indian moved like no freshman Serena had ever known, like no person she’d ever seen. Next to him even Isha would have seemed clumsy.
“Who is he?” Serena repeated.
“Let’s find out,” William suggested.
They had only taken two steps before the Indian noticed their approach and assumed a curious smile while he awaited them.
“Hello, William, Serena,” Jessira said. “This is Rukh. My . . . good friend.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Rukh said. Around his neck he wore a silver chain with a pendant of a calico cat.
“Pleasure to meet you, too,” William said.
“Are you new here?” Serena asked.
Rukh quirked a smile at Jessira before answering. “I arrived yesterday. I’m learning what’s required somewhat later than I intended.”
Serena frowned, trying to parse out Rukh’s words. They contained a sense of hidden meaning.
“Gather round,” said Father Jameson, their religious studies instructor. “We’ll be splitting up into three groups. Each of you will be assigned a different part of the church. As soon as you’re done with whatever you’re told to do, come back and find me. You’ll then get your next task.”
William and Serena were assigned to the same group as Jason, Daniel, and Lien, and they were sent to clean out a couple of rooms in the back of the church. Cobwebs curtained the corners, and dust covered every surface.
Serena grimaced, although the work didn’t truly disgust her. She’d done far worse. Nevertheless, she knew the others would expect her to respond with an unhappy expression.
“We should make this work last,” William suggested. “Take our time with it, like an old janitor friend of mine once told me.”
“When did you have an old janitor friend?” Jason asked.
“Back when I worked for the city library a few summers ago,” William answered. “He always told me to slow down and take it easy.”
“I’d rather get it over with,” Serena said, still grimacing. “The sooner the better.”
A few hours and a few chores later, the church looked much better. Afterward, they gathered in the chapel. While everyone slowly streamed in, Serena cast her gaze about the sanctuary. The stained-glass windows above the altar immediately captured her attention. One of them depicted the risen Christ with lambs and children at his feet. The image touched a fallow part of her heart, one she wished swelled with more life.
Father Jameson interrupted her thoughts when he began the service. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened,” he said, “and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
“That’s beautiful,” Serena whispered. She wished such a loving God was real.
“It’s from Matthew, chapter eleven,” Jason told her.
Next came communion, and William, Jason, and Daniel all went to receive.
Lien stayed with Serena. “Us heathens need to stick together,” she whispered with a half-smile.
During communion, a musician played a soft melody on a guitar, and Serena closed her eyes, praying for her sister.
William leaned back in his chair, feet propped on his desk as he tried to focus on the slim novel in his hands, Against the Fall of Night. However, his attention continued to drift, and his gaze flitted about his room. The Galactica, the Enterprise, and the Millennium Falcon had pride of place on a bookshelf. The pennants for the Bengals and the Reds still hung from the wall. The only change was over his bed where a poster from Blade Runner had replaced Eddie the Head. Otherwise, his room embodied its nerdish normality, but a new sense of unreality had entered William’s life.
Ever since they’d survived Kohl Obsidian attacks, he’d spent many hours reading about the necrosed. Mr. Zeus had brought back several books on the topic, and William had devoured them. Early on, he’d quickly discovered that much of what the magi considered to be settled knowledge was oftentimes grossly wrong. Some of it was poor deduction, while other supposed facts were nothing more than laughable supposition.
For instance, in one book the author had advised that the best way to kill a necrosed was to stab the creature through the heart with a sword made of white-gold. Other than sounding like a cool weapon—Thomas Covenant would have loved such a weapon—it was a stupid idea.
So too, was the explanation of how a necrosed covered such vast distances so quickly. They ran really fast. Nothing more. Just speed.
How dumb.
But in one book, The Dying Dead, the aut
hor might have actually come across a necrosed a time or two. That volume contained a reference to what happened if the blood of a necrosed infected an asrasin. According to the author, there were three possible outcomes. The blood would transform the asrasin into a necrosed, the blood would kill the asrasin, or the asrasin’s lorethasra would purify the corruption of the necrosed. In that last case, the blood became a blessing rather than a curse, but in all of history, only two such cases had ever been documented.
The claim in The Dying Dead had sent William’s thoughts traveling back to his first meeting with Kohl Obsidian. When the necrosed had confronted them at the saha’asra in West Virginia, the monster had snatched William’s nomasra and the locket had burned the monster, causing him to bleed. That blood had mixed with William’s own, penetrating through a scratch delivered by one of Kohl’s talons.
Until reading that account, William had never considered exactly what had occurred during his first meeting with the necrosed.
Now, he did.
Ever since his parents’ death, he’d noticed his increased speed, strength, and stamina, even his improved sense of balance, and those changes had accelerated following that initial confrontation with Kohl.
Had something happened to him?
“Earth to William,” Jason said.
William snapped upright in his chair and blinked. “What?”
“I’ve been calling your name for five minutes. You ready?”
“For what?”
“Sparring. It’s time for judo,” Jason said. “Hurry up.”
“Sorry, man. I forgot.” William said. He glanced at the digital clock on his nightstand and noticed the time. “Let me change and I’ll be right down.”
“Be down in five,” Jason shouted over his shoulder as he left William’s room.
Sparring against Jason.
William’s thoughts drifted again. Recently he’d started winning matches against Jason. In fact, of the two of them William was now the faster and stronger, and while he lacked his friend’s skill, that too could be changing.
A few weeks ago, Jason had asked about it, but at the time William hadn’t known the answer. He now did. Or at least he had his suspicions, suspicions he feared might be correct and which he feared to discuss.
Kohl Obsidian had touched William. Blessed or cursed, he wasn’t sure, but he had yet to tell Jason and Mr. Zeus about it. According to The Dying Dead, history had never recorded what happened to those two individuals blessed by the blood of a necrosed. Reading between the lines, though, it seemed likely that they had met a terrible end at the hands of their fellow asrasins.
Jake plunked his books on the school library table where Sonya and Steve already sat and prepared to get some work done. A mix of old chandeliers and new fluorescent fixtures provided lighting, and circular tables, populated by busily scribbling students, took up the central portion of the large, open room. The edges of the library held the stacks, the odd assortment of books and magazines. They left the place smelling like old paper.
Jake liked it.
Twenty minutes later, though, he hadn’t gotten past the first page of the history text he meant to read. Instead, he found himself staring out at the morose weather, a typical midwestern winter day—cold and windy with endless, scudding gray clouds—and wishing for somewhere warm and tropical.
Jake grimaced. February. The worst month of the year. Utterly pointless, with nothing to do or see. At least the other winter months had the excitement and joy of sports and playoffs to brighten their dismal days.
But not February.
By February the Super Bowl had ended, March Madness was weeks away, and the sweet smell of fresh cut grass from baseball’s Opening Day was a distant hope. The only thing of note in February, that crappiest of months, was the Daytona 500. Speed Week.
Jake sighed. Sunshine, pretty girls, and fast cars all collected down at a Florida beach. How he’d like to be somewhere warm like that. Maybe even farther south. Like the Caribbean. Maybe St. John’s. His family had gone there once for Spring Break, and he’d loved it. The sand, sunshine, and warm water. Anything to escape Cincinnati’s dismal winters.
And he needed that escape.
Jake frowned as unwanted memories rushed back. He’d tried to forget what he had seen, but every day the same scene recurred in his mind. And he hadn’t been the only one to see it, either. All his friends had. They’d all been there in Winton Woods when William, Jason, and Serena had shown up with swords in hand and fear on their faces.
At the time, Jake had scoffed at their concerns, all the way to the moment he had arrived. The creature who haunted his thoughts, the monster out of nightmares, a demon with talon-tipped hands, fangs like a bear, and a snarling voice of terror.
Who or what had that thing been?
Weeks later, Jake still had no idea. During the Christmas holidays, he had gone back to Winton Woods—only during the daytime—searching for William, Jason, and Serena’s remains. He’d even ventured a short way in to the forest, but he’d found nothing. No trace. No blood. No bodies. Not even the crappy truck William had driven. Nothing to give any sense as to what might have happened to the three of them. They’d simply fallen off the face of the Earth.
And then a few days later, right before Christmas, everyone who’d seen the monster started acting weird, like they didn’t know what Jake was talking about. They claimed to have no memory of the fanged horror who had chased them through Winton Woods. It was like one day they knew, and the next day, they didn’t. As literal as that.
It hadn’t taken long for Jake to figure out what must have happened to his friends. Something had made them all forget about the monster. Someone had stolen their memories, and if Jake wasn’t careful, that same someone would come for him, too.
“Jake!” Sonya snapped her fingers in front of his face.
He started and glanced around, relieved to find himself still in the library.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“Thinking about college,” he said, managing a rueful smile even while guilt ate at him at how often he’d been lying to Sonya. He took a sidelong glimpse of William and his friends who sat several tables over. He tried not to shiver when his eyes passed over Jason.
“You sure?” Sonya asked, sounding doubtful. “You’ve been acting weird ever since Christmas break. What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Jake said, a touch of irritation creeping into his voice. “I was thinking about college. That’s all.”
Sonya eyed him with a frown. “Why are you worried about college?” she asked. “You’ve got your scholarship to Notre Dame.”
“I still don’t know why you chose that program,” Steve said. “They haven’t been good in, like, forever. You see how bad Miami beat them a few years ago?”
“They’ve turned things around since then,” Jake replied.
“Whatever. They aren’t going to be any good this year or next, and you know it.”
“Yeah, they will,” Jake said. “They’ve got me.”
Steve snorted in derision. “Sure thing, superstar.”
Jake didn’t have a chance to reply because Mrs. Menshaw, the librarian, shushed them. Sonya and Steve returned to their studies, and Jake tried to do the same, but he couldn’t concentrate on his work. He continued to wonder about William and his friends.
Who were they? They laughed and talked like nothing bothered them—Lien even sang non-stop—but their attitudes came off as muted compared to how they’d been before Christmas.
William caught him staring, and Jake offered a brief bob of his head. William nodded in return before laughing at something Serena had said. But Jason looked Jake’s way with what might have been wary curiosity in his eyes.
Jake quickly shifted his gaze away and suppressed another shudder. He remembered the creature at Winton Woods, but he also remembered Jason, and the lines of fire erupting from his hands.
“Allow me to think on it.”
A large par
t of Serena hoped Isha would never find a way. Her father might consider her pilgrimage a failure if that happened, but it would probably be a forgivable failure. Going against six magi, surviving a necrosed, and seeing the creature killed . . . her pilgrimage already had to be considered some kind of success, didn’t it? In any case, at least she would see her sister, Selene, again.
