by Shadow Soft
But I steeled myself and resumed scrambling through the dim tunnel. It bent left up ahead and I turned with it. Escape. I had to think for myself now. The Nightfalls had done what they could for me; they couldn’t do more. I was alone again, I was ranging free. I had to be smarter, quicker than my enemies—SCHNUET and LDV alike.
They won’t kill the Nightfalls, I promised myself, ignoring the flashing sting from my palms as they scraped over the cement floor of the tunnel. SCHNUET has no reason to kill them, right? If they’re hurt, it will only be temporary. They’ll be fine. They can start a new life somewhere––
A sudden low wail echoed through the tunnel and I jerked still, every hair on my body lifting. It was Vales. I knew it. In my stomach I knew it, in that instinctive part of me, the part that knew her by nothing other than the sound of her breath.
I turned the next corner and saw a wash of pale light up ahead. Another grate. Quicker than before, I scrambled to it. This time fear for Vales drowned out fear for myself, and I half-stood to press my face up against the grate and peer through.
I was underneath the town square. In front of me—in the direction heading down the road toward the Nightfall’s cabin—SCHNUET men carrying the silver-powder guns were forcing a row of people to their knees. My eyes skimmed down the line. Victor. Valerie. She was crying. Vales. She was crying, too, and trembling. Her dentures must have been knocked out, because her long canines were visible beneath her quivering upper lip. My heart went out to her. Blake was to her right, a line of blood leaking from one nostril.
In the square around them were more SCHNUET hunters—all carrying guns—and a despondent lot of Symbiosians. Most of the Symbiosians looked defensive; some hands were raised, some heads bowed. Others looked truculent—I noticed Grizzly among them––and still others looked more confused than afraid.
A man in gray paced in front of the kneeling Nightfall family, arms folded across his chest. On his shoulder was a red stripe. I remembered seeing him earlier; he must have been the leader of the SCHNUET hunters. “Folks,” he declared, “there’s no need for any more blood to be shed today.” He glared at Victor and his voice turned harsh and peremptory. “Stop playing dumb and tell us where the kid is.”
“Sorry bucko, we don’t know what kid you’re talking about.” I recognized the voice—it was Louise. She hovered on the very edge of my sight, arms folded imperiously.
“Stop fooling around,” Red-stripe growled. “I saw him myself. He’s the only child in this village; he isn’t hard to spot.”
“I said,” Louise snapped, “we don’t know what you’re talkin’ about!”
Red-stripe flung out one arm and fired without looking. Louise collapsed to the ground; I threw a hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. The gun in Red-stripe’s hand was real—no silver powder. A bullet. A real bullet.
“Now.” Red-stripe lowered his arm. “Where is Subject X?”
“Find him yourself,” Victor snarled. He spat out a string of curses.
“I could do that.” Red-stripe fiddled with the trigger of his gun. “But that would take a while, and I don’t like waiting.” He rubbed a smudge from the gun’s barrel, frowning. “Tell me where he is.”
“You haven’t given me a good reason yet.”
Red-stripe looked Victor in the eye, then straightened his arm with the gun pointing at Valerie’s chest. I saw her catch her breath. “Is this a good enough reason?”
The color drained from Victor’s face; his eyes darted to his wife, then to his children. He was about to say something when Valerie, who was staring into Red-stripe’s eyes undaunted, spoke up instead. “Don’t tell him, Victor. It’s not worth it.”
A whine of breath escaped through the fingers I had pressed over my mouth. Not Valerie, I pleaded. Not her. Don’t shoot. The only mother I had ever known . . . .
“I won’t lose you for this,” Victor hissed. His words were quiet, choked by desperation and a welling of incomprehensible emotion, but the square was quieter yet and I could hear them. “I’ll give my life to protect him, Valerie, but I won’t give yours.”
Vales whimpered and Blake swore vividly.
Valerie glowered at Red-stripe. “We aren’t going to tell you,” she spat.
Red-stripe shrugged and switched the tip of his gun from her chest to Victor’s. “Now?” he asked.
“No,” Victor said.
“No,” Valerie echoed. Her voice sounded strangled.
Red-stripe shot off to the side and I heard a scream of pain. “How many will bleed for your stubbornness?” he demanded, voice curdling. He snatched one of the silver-dust guns from a SCHNUET hunter standing beside him and fired at Blake.
Blake’s face twisted into a rictus of hatred; he tried to tumble to the side, but the SCHNUET hunter standing behind him kicked him back into the powder’s trajectory. It fell across his skin and he writhed in pain, howling, before his body went rigid. I could see his eyes from my hiding place; they were wide, the pupils dilated. His hands shook against the ground, quivering with small, fierce tremors.
Red-stripe walked over to Blake and tapped him with his toe. Blake trembled and a line of spittle coursed down his chin, but otherwise he didn’t move. Can’t move, I realized. The silver dust immobilized them. How?
“You’re a smart man, Victor Nightfall,” Red-stripe said. “You know you’re beat. Come—why be stubborn?”
A vein of sweat mingled with blood coursed its way down Victor’s forehead. “The boy is my son,” he growled.
My heart clenched in my chest. Gray boots scuffed over the grate I was crouched beneath and I recoiled momentarily into darkness, but as soon as they had passed I lifted myself carefully into view of the goings-on in the square once more. I knew I should run, but I couldn’t.
Oh come on, Valx. The Nightfalls are buying you the time you need to escape. Don’t be stupid and ruin everything they’re giving you. Run! My eyes flickered into the darkness of the escape tunnel. It whispered to me of safety and anonymity. Escape.
I closed my eyes and took a breath. Run. When I opened them again they were fixed on Victor’s face. The ferocity in his eyes. The blood and sweat trickling down his face. Blake on the ground a few feet away, quivering in pain. Tears blossomed in my eyes. This was for me. They were doing this for me. How could I run?
“You won’t catch him,” Victor gasped. “He’s too smart for you.”
Red-stripe kicked Blake viciously in the stomach. “Imagine how it must feel,” he said softly, kneeling beside Blake’s head, “to have your very last memory in life be the words of your own father, saying that he loves another boy more. A boy who isn’t even his own flesh and blood.” There was an ominous click as Red-stripe cocked his handgun and pressed its barrel to Blake’s temple. He met Victor’s eyes. “Imagine the emptiness inside. The betrayal. To know that your own father would sacrifice your life for that of some other kid.”
Blake uttered a long, indecipherable groan. Valerie wailed and made a sudden leap for her son, but one of the SCHNUET soldiers standing by caught her midair with a blast of silver powder. She collapsed to the ground with a howl of pain, thrashed briefly, then went stiff and trembling like Blake.
I saw Victor swallow. Even from all those yards away I saw the wavering in his eyes, the terrible choices being made and undone and remade in his mind. “Valx,” he said with deadly quiet, “is my son!”
Red-stripe guffawed. “You spineless bastard!” he spat. “You have the gall to call him your son! Let’s be honest, Victor—we’re all hopelessly selfish power-rats here. You didn’t take the boy in out of pity. You saw something you could use and you took advantage of it. Just like the rest of us. You’re not his savior. You’re the very thing he’s trying to escape!”
Victor’s eyes darted to the gun pressed to Blake’s skull. “I love him,” he ground tightly.
“Ha. You love his blood is what you love, snake. Or tell me you never touched a drop of it over the past three years. Huh?” The gun,
which had strayed from Blake’s temple, returned with merciless purpose.
I could feel Red-stripe’s finger on the trigger. I could feel the moment it was pulled. The nearness of it. Any second now. I would watch Blake die. And I knew I couldn’t do that. There was another blast from one of the silver-powder guns and Vales crumpled beside her mother, screaming in pain. The sound of her cry hardened the fury in my chest, hardened it to something solid that propelled me forward.
Without ever making a conscious decision, I suddenly found myself lifting the grate from above me. It slid to the side and I scrambled out into the cold open air. I tore the gun Louise had given me from my pocket and cocked it. I couldn’t remember ever learning how.
I began to lift it toward Red-stripe, and that was when the first bullet took me. From the side, burrowing into my chest. I felt a rib shatter. The pain was incredible, but pain was an old friend. I staggered to the side, knocked off balance by the impetus of the bullet, but it couldn’t slow me. My body was already healing, and I lifted my gun once again.
I was aware of SCHNUET soldiers shouting, of Valerie making urgent moaning sounds and Victor screaming at me to run. Another bullet buried itself in my thigh and I screamed, but it was a scream of adrenaline, of the vicious protectiveness that drove me forward. Red-stripe turned. He seemed to be moving in slow-motion. My leg was already mostly healed. I stepped forward and began to pull the trigger. Red-stripe’s neck. I was aiming for his neck.
He was quicker. He whipped his gun from Blake’s temple and shot me between the eyes. Idiot, was all I could think as the bullet shattered my skull. Doesn’t he know who I am? I saw blackness, but this time there was no pain. I wondered why. What nerves had been severed. What physiological process decided now was not a time to send the alarm of pain lancing through my body. One second, two, and then my sight began to return. I could feel the bullet dissolving from my brain, leaving me as whole as before.
I pulled the trigger. Red-stripe’s head snapped back and he crumpled to the ground.
Then there was chaos all around. Guns started firing from both sides; people fell like scythed wheat around me. SCHNUET soldiers, Symbiosians. Cooks and waitresses and grocery store owners. I cocked my gun again and fired at a random SCHNUET soldier. He fell. Three bullets hit me––shoulder, neck, knee, and I crumpled to the ground, twisting in pain for three, four seconds before my body healed itself.
Then I was up again, shooting. Victor was shooting too. Bullets ricocheted off walls and shattered windows. Not my friends, I thought grimly, not my family.
I don’t know how many times I was shot in that frenzied minute of firefight. At least two dozen. The SCHNUET soldiers seemed to have this inane idea that by peppering me with bullets they would somehow be either preserving their own lives or obtaining their objective. Obviously they were wrong. I healed and healed and healed again. It hurt, sure. It hurt like you have no idea. But I was glad for it. Because every bullet I took meant one of the Symbiosians lived.
Then there came the last shot, and someone fell. It was a man in gray. We crouched, gasping for breath, the dozens of us who had gathered in Symbiosia’s central square. When we realized the last gray man had fallen we stood slowly. Looked around. A shocked silence consumed the village. Someone sobbed. Someone clapped. Someone cried out. I didn’t know if it was in grief or victory or both.
Strewn around the square were the bodies of the dead and the dying and Symbiosian vampires who had been incapacitated by the silver dust. Groans of pain filled the air.
“Sabrina,” someone said faintly, “open the hospital.”
Chapter 10
The next day in Symbiosia things were quiet. Thirty-two Symbiosians had died yesterday, among them Twinkle, the amiable diner waitress, and Jason, the young man I’d eaten breakfast with. Louise had lived.
The hospital bustled with activity, but everywhere else it was still. It was a stillness of shock, of grief, of silent, resilient triumph. SCHNUET had come for us and we had beaten them. It was worth something. It meant that we could fight together, as a team with a common purpose.
To protect me. I sighed and twisted my mug of hot chocolate in a half-circle on the tabletop. It was still hard for me to believe that so many people had died. For me. They had died for me. Victor had called me his son. He had been willing to risk Blake dying so that I could have a chance at escape. He had been willing to die himself. The enormity of it turned sluggishly in my head.
Footsteps thumped down the stairs and shuffled down the hall. I lifted my head to nod at Blake as he shambled into the kitchen. He was sloppily dressed, his hair uncombed, his dentures forgotten. I didn’t mind anymore. Seeing his canines no longer unnerved me. Not after seeing what he had been willing to endure for me.
Blake mumbled something that might have been good morning and poured himself a cup of coffee. He spilled, cursed under his breath, and joined me at the table without cleaning it up. We sat in silence, drinking our drinks, Blake blearily sleepy and me quietly, coolly thoughtful.
It must have been ten minutes before he cleared his throat and met my eyes. “So.” His voice rasped. “What are you going to do now?”
I drew a shape in the ring of liquid around the bottom of my mug. “Stay with you guys,” I said.
Blake raised an eyebrow. “Now’s the time to leave. Things are going to be tough from here on.”
I sniffled. “Yeah.” Shrugged. “Might as well have someone to go through it with.”
His heavy eyes weighed on mine. “I mean in Symbiosia. It’s going to be an all-out battle against SCHNUET now. You could leave.”
“Abandon you?” I smiled bitterly. “I realized something, Blake. Actually I realized a couple things.” I took a drink of hot chocolate, wiped my mouth, and folded my arms on the table in front of me. “Your family loves me and has sacrificed safety to protect me. I should do the same for you. And SCHNUET isn’t about research. It’s not about science.” My tone and eyes grew hard. “It’s about power, and I am the source of that power. They’re not trying to better mankind. Find cures for diseases. They know the key to unlimited power—my blood—and they’re trying to obtain it at any cost. They’re selfish bastards and if I can fight them in any way, it will be my pleasure to do so.”
Blake grinned wearily. “I noticed,” he said. “Soft-spoken Valxy turned berserk on those SCHNUET hunters yesterday. Found a gun in his hand and decided he liked using it.”
“I need more than a gun,” I said seriously. “I need to keep training with you. I need to become elite, Blake. In every way. I’m the one they want. So I have to be better than all of you if I’m going to protect myself.”
Blake took a long swig of coffee and leaned back in his chair, nodding. “Make you better than me?” He shrugged. “I can do that.”
“That’s just the beginning.” I finished my hot chocolate and set it aside resolutely. “The end is that I’m better than them. Better than SCHNUET and LDV combined. Better enough that I can destroy them.”
Blake’s eyebrows lifted. “Destroy them? Now that’s a big task for a thirteen-year-old boy.”
“Oh don’t worry,” I growled. “I have eighty-seven years left to see it done. And besides.” I heard another, lighter pair of feet padding down the stairs. Valeska. “I have a family to protect.”
