by C. T. Aaron
Girlies. He really says that.
“Your world is one Russian hack away from losing every dime your parents ever saved. Here? Shit. We’re lucky the motorcycles work, never mind a massive internet infrastructure. This is my little otherwordly ATM, and I’m making bank. Plus it’s fun. You ever watch those Jurassic Park movies? They always have a gang of little dinosaurs in them, little meat eaters. They usually kill some low-level character. You know the ones I mean? Now tell me this: Do you want to see a whole movie about those little pricks? No. You pay to see the T-rex, you pay to see the big-ass thunder lizards tearin’ shit up. Most Fams are the size of those little dinos. So when I find a big one like your gargoyle? That’s money. See what I mean?”
I sneer at him. “That’s it? That’s all you care about is money?”
“That is all anyone cares about, girlie! Where have you been? Earth is a cesspool filled with cash. I can’t believe you’re so naïve to not know that. I mean, how would your life change if I handed you a million dollars right now? Really think about that. Seven actual figures. Maybe pay of your parents’ debts? Get yourself a fancy car? Move out of whatever shitty one-bedroom apartment you crawled out from? Make some smart investments, live on the interest, your family never has to work again. You can travel world, sail the seven seas . . . “
I can’t comprehend half of what he’s saying. It’s all scrambling my brain. He’s distracting me. And he obviously likes to hear himself talk.
Alexander suddenly leans closer. “It’s all about money. That’s not my fault. Someone wants to make your world about helping people and doin’ the right thing, and I’ll jump right in. Till then, I’m not letting someone with more money than me tell me how my life’s gonna go.”
“You’re pathetic.” It comes out before I can stop it.
Alexander smirks. “Yeah. And rich.”
“And alone.”
The smirk falls off. “Well,” he says, “you won’t have to worry about that for much longer.”
“People die!” Maebry shouts at him.
“People choose to die. That’s not my fault. I never put a gun to anyone’s head and forced them to this meet.”
He pulls a silver pistol from his coat. “Well, not till now, anyway. But you kind of brought this on yourselves. Cut the two-dollar psychiatrics, would you, please? You’re going to need the energy.”
Maebry takes a step toward him as if she can menace him somehow. “If you think we’re going to try to kill a Familiar, you’re crazy! They’re people’s souls for one thing, don’t you get that? We’re not about to kill one so you and your jerk buddies can place bets on it! It’s not gonna happen.”
Alexander furrows his eyebrows and tilts his head.
“Familiars? Now who said anything about you fighting Familiars?”
He holds out the ax.
“Maybe you’d like this one? Or are you more of a baseball girl?”
Alexander smiles, and my stomach clenches tight.
He means us.
SIXTEEN
Mae doesn’t take the weapon. She just stares at Alexander as she realizes, I think, the same thing I just did.
Alexander shrugs and steps out of the doorway. “Come on out. This way.”
We file out of the store room and follow several of his goon squad up the slight ramp to the field. The stands are occupied with men again, some of them cheering and whistling. It makes my guts turn liquid to hear them. Some of them, closer to us, I can even see their faces. They sneer and yell and cheer at us as we walk slowly onto the field, with Alexander and his guards behind us. These men in the stands, they aren’t Counterparts; I can sense that much.
I wonder —or maybe know—if it also means they have no soul. Because the looks on their faces sure make them look like it.
“I hope you all go to Hell,” I say.
None of them hears me, or if they do, they definitely don’t care.
Alexander’s goons lead us to the middle of the field and form a loose circle around us. Someone has given Alexander his megaphone back. He has it slung over one shoulder on a plastic strap. He tosses the three weapons several yards away from us in an approximate triangle before raising the megaphone to his mouth and addressing the stands.
“All right!” he calls. “A little something new today for your viewing pleasure before we get on to the main events. These three fine upstanding citizens, who, I remind you, utterly wiped out your previous wagers, are going to put on quite the show for us.”
“You’ll pay for this,” I say, which is not only trite, but almost certainly demonstrably false.
Alexander knows it too. He doesn’t bat an eye. “Now, we’ve refunded everyone’s bets, so you’re starting from a clean slate. Here come our bet girls! What do you think? Which of these poor suckers is going to go the distance?”
The “bet girls” show up at the top of the staircases again and move down the steps toward the men in the stands. For as terrified as I am, seeing them carry on like all this is no big deal makes me sick to my stomach.
Alexander turns to us. He is not smiling, not pretending, not being the bad guy. Now he’s just being a businessman.
“Simple rules,” he says. “Whoever’s standing at the end gets to leave. That’s it. You don’t fight, then I’ll send them in after you.”
He gestures to the sideline farthest from us. Two men approach from the tunnel opposite the one we exited from, leading two Familiars. One is Ezzy’s size, a rhinoceros-like creature with short forest-green fur and a mane of what appears to be writhing snakes. The other is more gorilla-like, trundling along on its feet and knuckles, but with a pair of curved horns jutting out from behind its shoulders and on its elbows. They take positions on the sideline, no more than twenty yards away.
I notice something about the men right then; about the Counterparts. Not only can I sense them and identify them as being Counterparts, but there’s also something else, something I’d never noticed back home. A secondary sensation that’s hard to understand, much less describe. It’s a color I can taste, or a smell I can touch. There’s just something different about those two guys and their Familiars . . .
A deep thrumming breaks my concentration on the two men and their Fams. I recognize it immediately and look up at the opened roof. The scary-looking hummingbird creature flies to the center of the opening, hovers for a few seconds, then lands on one edge of the roof, glaring at us.
Alexander tips his head toward it. “Just in case you had any thoughts of calling your Familiar and getting out that way. Good luck to . . . well, one of you anyway. Make it a good show.”
He turns on his heel and stalks away toward the opposite sideline. I glare all the hate and rage and spite I can muster at the back of his head, hoping it will somehow make him burst into flame . . .
And notice something I hadn’t before. Even through all the fear and rage, one detail about Alexander comes through clearly right then.
He’s not a Counterpart.
I get absolutely no sense from him. He’s just a regular guy who doesn’t have any connection to his Familiar in this mirror world. Which means he’s not the one controlling the hummingbird creature.
“Anyone got a really really impressive plan?” Spark says, taking a backward step toward the fire ax.
I can’t believe he’s really doing it. “Wait, Spark, come on, don’t pick that up!”
“We’ve at least got to make it look like we’re going through with it, kid! So grab something!”
He’s right. We have to stall. I race for the baseball bat and pick it up even as Maebry stares at me with her mouth open.
“Briar, what is wrong with you?”
“Spark’s right. We have to at least pretend for now. Go!”
With pain in her eyes that sears my heart, Maebry stomps over to the prybar and picks it up. It looks heavy and awkward in her hands.
“Circle!” Spark whispers.
So we start sidestepping toward each other, keeping a distance of ten or
fifteen feet between us. I can hear the bastards in the stands calling out and shouting. This is what gladiators must have felt like.
I use the time we’re buying, however much or little it might be, to check out the two men and their Fams on the sideline again. As Spark crosses my field of vision, getting between me and them, I finally piece together what it is that’s different about them.
I can sense Spark as a Counterpart just as easily as I can Maebry. But Aison and Betty aren’t here. The two men on the sidelines . . . they’re actively controlling their two Fams. That’s the difference, that’s what I’m sensing.
At least I hope so. Because if I’m right—
“Duck!” Spark grunts at me, and charges.
Yipping, I skip backward and nearly fall over as the ax head sails over me. It wasn’t that close, but it damn well could have been. By the look on Spark’s face, he knows it, too.
“Wait a sec!” I snap at him, tightening my grip on the bat. “I’m trying to think!”
He glances at Mae. Like a target. “Think faster!”
I jump between him and her, brandishing the bat. “Back off!”
“Dammit, we are running out of time!” Spark’s eyes are wide and desperate. “I want to get Betty in right now but I don’t think she can take either of those things over there. What the hell are we supposed to do?”
I glance at the hummingbird. As if noticing me do it, it lifts its legs in a little dance, like it’s trying to find a better place on which to perch.
“Mae, stay behind me,” I say over my shoulder. Then I slowly sidestep to my left, keeping Spark—and his ax—in front of me. I keep moving until I estimate I’m just about but not quite blocking Spark’s line of sight to the two Familiars.
“The two assholes on the sideline,” I say to Spark. I jab the bat at him as if trying to ward him off, hoping it looks like a good show from the stands. “Can you sense them?”
Spark looks confused, and raises the ax higher—hopefully also for show. “Yeah, so?”
“They’re controlling their Fams. Can you sense the difference? They’re . . . exerting.”
Spark shuffles a little closer to me; I shuffle back in response. I glance back once, fast, to make sure Maebry is keeping pace behind me.
Then Spark’s expression shifts, just a little. “Okay. Okay, yeah, I sense it. So?”
“So Alexander isn’t a Counterpart. I just noticed it when he walked off. He’s not controlling that bird thing up there. Someone else is. We have to figure out who. Can you do that?”
Spark glances right and left. “Someone nearby.”
“Right.” I make a big show of taking a swing with my bat, but it’s nowhere near close enough. He doesn’t even have to dodge. The crowd boos me.
“Kill her!” someone screams from the bleachers. “Kill those bitches!”
Don’t listen, I tell myself. Focus, B, stay focused, you can do this . . .
“If you can find the Counterpart and distract him, we might be able to get out of here.”
I see Spark’s grip tighten on the ax. “Okay. I’ll try.”
“When you’ve done it, just shout ‘now,’ okay?”
He nods, and licks his lips.
“Okay.” I pivot to face my girlfriend. “Mae? I’m coming at you.”
She starts to say What? but can’t get it out in time. With what I hope is a convincing scream, I race toward her, holding the bat in both hands.
I crash into her prybar with the bat. Maebry stumbles backward and drops the weapon. I push her to the ground on her back and fling myself on top of her, making sure we’ve got our hands on the bat between us.
“When I say now, call Aison,” I whisper harshly.
Maebry doesn’t hear me. “B, get off me, what are you doing?”
I push the bat closer to her face and put my weight on it so we’re almost nose-to-nose. “Listen! When I say now, you have to call Aison. Hear me?”
She meets my eyes. “They’ll kill us.”
“It’s our only chance. Do it. When I say so, you have to call him.”
She nods a bit. I nod back, then start making loud, stupid noises, like I’m struggling hard against her.
“You have to fight me back,” I grunt. “Make it look good.”
I check to see what Spark is doing. Half of me is expecting him to brain me with the ax at any second; he didn’t want to be here in the first place, after all.
But I realize what he’s up to: He’s working the crowd.
Spark is half skipping, half running around the perimeter of the field, shaking his ax up and down and raising his other hand in the air at the same time. “Yeah!” he’s shouting. “Come on, let me hear you! Look at these chicks, huh? You think they gonna take on this? Come on, come on, make some noise!”
Somehow it’s working. The men in the stands are eating it up, raising fists and cheering. Hell of a gamble but it’s paying off; this way, he can scan the most people in the shortest amount of time, trying to find the hummingbird’s Counterpart.
“B?”
I turn back to Maebry. We’re not putting up a struggle as much any more.
Maebry says, “If we don’t—”
“Don’t say it. Get ready.”
Spark has stopped running. He’s at the far end of the field from us, fifty or more yards away, where a cluster of men are standing, arms crossed, but grinning. They’re having a good time with his little cheerleader performance.
He moves closer to them, shaking his ax. Some of the men cheer back at him.
One doesn’t. He’s standing a bit to the side, looking smug but not participating.
He’s the one.
Here it comes.
“Get ready,” I whisper again to Mae.
And then—Sparks swings.
He doesn’t split the guy’s head in half, much as that might have pleased me. Instead he lowers the ax so it’s in both hands and then jabs the head of it flat into the guy’s stomach. The guy keels over as the rest of the men scramble to figure out what’s happened.
Spark drops the ax and sprints toward us. The terror on his face is clear even from so far away.
“Now!” he screams.
“Mae, now!” I shout.
She blinks. A heartbeat passes and then Aison pops beside us.
Lying down.
Motionless.
“No . . .” I whisper, and fall off Maebry to one side. “No, Aison, shit.”
Maebry scrambles beside him, laying her hands on one of his massive arms. “Aison? Wake up. Come on, please, be okay . . .”
Spark reaches us, sliding to halt. The arena fills with shouts and calls as the men realize something’s going wrong. I quickly look at the two Fams on the sidelines, and see their Counterparts lowering their heads, focusing their attention on us. Then the two Fams charge our direction.
Me; my girlfriend; Spark; and one unconscious Familiar who can’t fly us out of here after all.
We’re going to die.
I get to my feet, facing the two monstrous Familiars as they rush closer. My hands clench into fists, the bat forgotten in the dirt.
“All right,” I say. “Fine.”
I call Ezzy.
SEVENTEEN
Ezzy pops beside me, looking alert but tired.
“Can you help?” I say as we face the ape and the rhino Familiars.
Ezzy immediately sinks into a crouch. I put a hand on his flank. “I’m sorry for what I have to do.”
Ezzy lifts his lips, snarling at the approaching Fams. He understands.
I don’t know if it’s like using the Force or just what, but I stretch out with my feelings. It’s like an intangible muscle I’m flexing, searching for Ezzy’s body. Or maybe his mind or heart, I don’t know. All I know is that just as the ape and the rhinoceros reach us, my entire self connects to my giant Familiar.
I don’t see through Ezzy’s eyes or feel what he’s feeling. At least, not directly. But I also find that I can will him to move, t
o do anything I can think of, even while still being more or less aware of my own body. It’s not easy, but I get the basic idea.
The two Fams roar at me. I send Ezzy into action.
By jumping over them.
Both creatures skid and stumble, grumbling and growling as Ezzy’s enormous bulk goes flying over their heads. Clearly they—or rather, their Counterparts—were not expecting that.
Which had been exactly my plan. I gambled that these guys are used to fighting Fam versus Fam. In this setting, it doesn’t occur to them to attack a Counterpart.
I send Ezzy into a run, and I can see how much it hurts his legs to do it, but my wolf is strong and loyal and charges full steam ahead toward the two Counterparts on the sidelines.
I’d never hurt a Fam if I could help it, not after what I saw in the giant’s eyes, even it did belong to Oscar. While I don’t feel Ezzy struggling against me, I also can tell being controlled isn’t his favorite thing. I won’t do it for any longer than necessary, but since there was no time to tell him my plan, it was a lot easier to just jump into his driver’s seat and do what I thought—hoped—needed to be done.
The two Counterparts on the sidelines look startled, and their ape and rhino Fams respond accordingly. The two huge creatures stand still, swinging their heads back and forth, as if trying to figure out what their Counterparts are telling them.
But the men aren’t sure what to do—come after me and Maebry and Spark, or protect themselves from the giant wolf dog charging them.
It takes them too long to decide. I send Ezzy smashing into one of them with his head lowered, butting the guy tens of feet into the stands. He lands with a crunch against the seats.
Just as he does, the spiked ape grumbles and waddles backward on its feet and knuckles, apparently unsure what it’s supposed to do.
The second Counterpart tries to work his green rhino. It roars at me, making my ribcage rattle like a xylophone, and crouches in preparation to leap.
I snap Ezzy’s head toward the Counterpart, grabbing him around the middle. I try not to bite too hard, but in the heat of the moment, I can’t tell how much damage I do. All I know is that the rhino, whose hindquarters are poised like a housecat about to pounce, suddenly drops to the dirt and begins licking one paw. A domestic little nightmare kitty. The Counterpart has lost control of him, at least for the moment.
