Vicious Circle

by Elle E. Ire

  The stricken expression on his face tore at my heart. “They’re allowed to commit violence under one circumstance—in defense of the Chosen. In defense of me.” He gagged on the last word, spitting bile onto the wooden boards as we crossed to the boat.

  I sniffed the air, smelling smoke, and turned to see several waterfront shops on fire. The flames danced and shimmied, reflected in the calmer water of the bay. Shattering glass and gunfire destroyed the peace of the sleepy village. Such an incredible waste of beauty and lives.

  When we reached the yacht, Jaren broke away from me, grabbed one of the lines, and swung onto the deck. “I’ll go below and get the engine started,” he called.

  A moving shadow emerged from the central cabin.

  “Watch out!” I leaped, landing on the deck in front of him, between him and the new threat.

  Light flashed, and the ripper blast caught me in the left side. I fired back, and a groan rewarded my efforts. Searing white-hot pain doubled me. I gripped the wound, feeling warm, sticky wetness gush over my fingers.

  Jaren caught me as I staggered, wrapping his arms around me and leading me to the cabin. “There might be more of them,” I protested. The weak tremulousness of my voice scared the shit out of me. A roaring in my ears and sparkles at the edges of my vision warned me I would soon lose consciousness. The shot must have hit some major organ. Please let it be the spleen. I might survive if I could get some medical attention somewhere.

  “Then we’re dead, regardless. You can’t run, and I’m not leaving anyone else behind.”

  We stepped over the body, and I recognized the first mate from the Regiment 1. He wasn’t singing little ditties now. So, this had been Captain Vargas’s interest in Lissex. They must have used the other pods to reach the surface and come in right after I had. I’d caught this crewman in the chest with my laser. He died before he fell.

  I might not be far behind. Looking down, I saw a pool of blood forming at my feet that didn’t come from the first mate. As Jaren half dragged, half carried me down the steps to one of the cabins, I found myself wishing I’d let Kila succeed in seducing me tonight. Maybe then I would have known if any of what she’d professed to feel for me had been real.

  Jaren shouted orders to the yacht’s onboard computer, bringing up interior lights, casting off lines and starting engines, but I barely heard him. He laid me on the bunk in the same room I’d occupied on the way out. With nothing else to concentrate on, the full agony of the wound hit my nervous system, and I couldn’t suppress my cry of pain.

  Jaren drew my hand from the injury, placing his own atop it and ignoring the gory torn flesh and flowing blood. He rested his other hand on my forehead, smoothing my hair and speaking in gentle tones.

  “Let yourself heal, Cor. You’re all right. Breathe. Rest.”

  I wasn’t all right. I didn’t know the extent of Jaren’s skills, but I was dying. I wanted to tell him, but my mouth didn’t work. The buzzing in my head resumed with a vengeance, deafening me so I could no longer hear his words, though his lips still moved. Nausea reared and I gagged, then rolled to vomit over the edge of the bunk.

  The effort drained the last of my strength. I fell against the mattress with a groan and passed out.

  Hours passed. The guards secured the T’ral household. Kila’s parents came to tell her what happened, that she’d inadvertently brought a murderer home. They never suspected that had been her intention.

  Through a constricted throat, Kila begged they leave her alone. One last look into her tear-filled eyes, and her mother and father departed her suite. She’d been duped by her lover, after all. She needed some time alone. Or so they thought.

  He lived. Jaren T’ral lived. Despite their master’s quietly hired mercenary reinforcements—they took some satisfaction from that—he’d lived and escaped. And now, one needed to return to He-Who-Had-Created-Them and pay the price of failure.

  Within Kila’s body they battled, the larger of the two ephems enveloping the other, compressing its companion until the girl doubled over from the abdominal pain. She retched and expelled the weaker entity along with her vomit while the other remained inside, wrapped around her intestines, clinging for its life—or what passed for life.

  Kila trembled from stress and emotion, seated there on the cold flooring of her suite’s bathroom. Cor left her. Jaren left her. And yet, a part of her thrilled to the knowledge her brother survived.

  But what did Cor intend to do with him? The assassin hated her. That much she’d seen in Cor’s expression when they parted at the stairs. Maybe she would eventually take out her revenge on Jaren. Maybe he’d end up dead after all.

  It was what she wanted. It was what she dreaded.

  How could doing the right thing, what Jaren himself wished for, hurt so much? And losing Cor….

  Kila reached an unsteady hand to activate the suction system, flushing her regurgitated dinner and the unseen ephem down into the plumbing and out of the T’ral mansion. The second entity read her thoughts and soothed her strained digestive and nervous systems, triggering her body’s release of endorphins. It waited until she flung herself on her mattress and slept, then nudged her subconscious.

  The fates of worlds were at stake. She had failed, but she could not give up. If Cor refused to assassinate Jaren, perhaps someone else would carry out the assignment.

  In a dreamlike state, Kila rose, packed toiletries and a change of clothes in her carry sack, and departed the mansion in the glow of early dawn.

  The grounds lay in shambles, scorch marks on the healthy green grass, flowerbeds trampled, stone walks cracked from the weight of too many heavily armored men. The attackers had knocked down the perimeter fence in numerous places, the metal bars bent and mangled, flattened against the ground.

  During the night, emergency personnel from the village had removed wounded house guards, much to the entity’s disappointment. It could have used a snack to recharge itself. A skeleton team of protectors stood sentry at the remains of the front gate, useless as that was. They never saw Kila step over a strip of fallen fencing and make her way toward the smoldering town at the base of the hill.

  From there, she proceeded to the wharf, ignoring those who called to her, inquiring after her brother and the rest of her family. The Triumph wasn’t the T’ral’s only vessel. They owned several other, slower yachts, and she selected the Tempest and got her underway with a minimum of conscious thought.

  Only after the island receded into the distance and appeared as a mere shadow on the horizon did the ephem release her Will. Kila swayed on the Tempest’s deck, taking several minutes to get her bearings. She convinced herself her conscience had driven her actions, sending her after Cor to make amends, to try to salvage their relationship if she could.

  Chapter 17

  THE TRIUMPH’S engines hummed, vibrating the mattress beneath me. The waves rolled outside the window, and the smell of salt air carried on the morning breeze. Hazy sunlight lit the room. Then the events of the past two days flooded back to me and I groaned into my pillow.

  I was alive. That was something, I supposed. And I’d saved the Chosen, at least for now. I huffed out a breath. The importance of that remained to be seen.

  I pulled away the thin sheet covering my upper body. At some point, Jaren removed my jacket and shirt, and I could now see the extent of my injury. I blinked at the half-healed wound forming an impressive scar across my abdomen. Either I’d slept a lot longer than one night, or Jaren’s powers far exceeded calming and soothing techniques.

  The subject of my musing chose that moment to enter, bearing a tray of dried fruits and a glass of water. He’d changed clothes. I supposed the family kept a shipboard wardrobe. Now he wore loose-fitting beige shorts and a casual white shirt. The color choices made him appear even paler, or maybe that was simply stress.

  He noticed my appraisal and gestured at himself. “Sorry. I didn’t find anything onboard that might fit you.”

  I waved off his apo
logy.

  Jaren handed me the tray and checked my wound, nodding with satisfaction. He sank into the chair he’d dragged to the side of the bed sometime during the night. Dark circles beneath his eyes told me he’d likely slept in it. “Now you see why I wanted to die.”

  I shook my head. A wave of dizziness blurred my vision, and I closed my eyes for a moment. “I see why you’d need to hide.”

  “There’s no place to hide. No place I’ll be safe. The Givers of Life have many followers, on every settled world. They’re fanatical, bound to the Generational, and take what it says quite literally. They believe once I come to power that they have the right to not just defend me, but to conquer worlds on my behalf, to force others into peace. The ultimate protective effort.” Jaren gave a humorless laugh. “Every few hundred years or so, one of the Chosen appears. Wherever the Believers congregate, warfare erupts. In the past, it has ended rather quickly.” He paused, studying me. “Maybe religions don’t interest you—?”

  I neither agreed nor argued.

  “But even hidden, they would fight on my behalf unless I faked my death first, and sooner or later, my location would be revealed.” He spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “I’m driven to heal others. Suffering makes me ill. It’s not something I can shut off.”

  I considered all that, picturing the simple Believers attempting to subdue armies. They’d be slaughtered. I forced myself to nibble a piece of fruit from the tray. “I thought it wasn’t even supposed to be ‘on’ yet. Twentieth birthday? Ceremony?”

  Jaren’s mouth quirked, and he cocked his head. “It’s biological. Some want to call it magic, but it’s a recessive genetic trait, miraculous, but it follows its own time line. Do all women begin their cycles at a set age? Do all male voices change at a specific hour in their lives? Twenty is an estimate. I actually came to full power a couple of months ago, though only you, I, and Kila know, and I hid the early indicators for years. It’s all about what the Believers believe. For example, they don’t know about Kila. She has it, too, though to a lesser extent. The Generational’s scribes didn’t account for twins. And so she is safe. They aren’t looking, so they don’t see.”

  Like I hadn’t seen. She’d played my emotions to suit her needs, and while I now understood her reasons, it didn’t hurt any less or take away my anger. “And what, exactly, is full power?” I spat the question, and all the bitterness in my voice twisted my face into a snarl.

  Jaren reached to place a hand on my shoulder. I feared unnecessary motion would hurt, so I let it stay.

  “We’re audible healers. I can calm nerves, eradicate disease, close wounds. Essentially, I can give a body the strength to live, despite fatal injury, though it does have some side effects, I’m told.”

  Yeah, ear buzzing and nausea. I nodded and used more fruit to remove the remains of the bad taste in my mouth.

  “Dead, however, is dead. Once life leaves someone, I cannot bring that person back. I’m not one of the gods.” He snatched an orange-colored piece from my tray and continued. “Kila’s talent works through music, not words. Don’t ask me why. She can relieve stress, begin the healing process of nonlethal injuries, and reduce pain in old physical damage that’s already mostly healed.”

  Hence the reason my leg and arm no longer bothered me. I hadn’t had trouble with dusk vision since I’d befriended her, either, though I didn’t make note of it until now.

  Jaren’s fingers tightened on my shoulder in a gentle squeeze, forcing me to meet his gaze. “She can’t create feelings where there are none. Neither of us can.” He smiled, guessing my thoughts perfectly. “We might unconsciously enhance what’s already there, but we don’t originate affection.”

  Jaren turned to the window, looking out across the waves to the distant horizon, and I knew he worried about his sister.

  What he said helped, but not enough. “She lied to me. She used me.”

  “She loves you,” he said firmly. “And she loves me. We talked about finding someone to assist in my death, but I never thought she’d have the strength to do it. When she came back with you, I truly believed she’d found her Bond mate. Hiding the truth from us both must have torn her apart. But it had to be done. You never would have believed her.”

  He was right. I wouldn’t have. Not without seeing Jaren’s miraculous acts. I still didn’t understand why he needed to die, though. Why he couldn’t change his identity, take on a new persona, of a doctor, perhaps. Surely his ability could be hidden behind placebo pills, fake devices, something.

  He stood and paced the room. “And you have to see how important it is. Outsiders who suspect the legends are true have already destroyed my home, killed my friends. Armies will go to war to possess me. Can you imagine? I could heal hundreds of soldiers.”

  “Only one at a time.”

  “Perhaps. But it would still give one force an incredible advantage over another. And think of what scientists would do. If they get a hold of me, they’ll take me apart trying to find what makes it work. And then there are the Believers themselves and their refusal to interpret the Generational any differently. They’ll all die and take thousands with them in the process.” He threw up his hands in exasperation. “It’s better for everyone if you just kill me. Let them worry about it again in another few hundred years.” Jaren stopped and stood over me, staring down with pleading eyes. “Everything I know of the Guild says they kill for the betterment of humanity. I’m a threat. Assassinate me and save the others.”

  “What do you believe?” I asked him.

  “What?”

  “You refer to the Believers as fanatics, yet you are their Chosen, raised in this religion. What do you believe?”

  He paused, lost in thought. “I believe that peace cannot be forced, that the forcing drives the targets to greater acts of violence. Peace must be a choice.”

  I leaned forward and set the tray at the foot of the bed, then swung my legs over the side. The movement caused a dull ache and an odd pulling at my waist, but I could manage the minimal pain. Fatigue from blood loss made me want to curl up under the blankets, but I stood and faced him instead. “I kill evil people. I kill those who intend harm toward others. I will not murder you. There has to be another way.”

  Jaren went to the bedside table and opened the single drawer. He removed a modern copy of the Generational with its plastic pages and cartoonish colored images. This he tossed on the bed, knocking over my glass of water and letting the liquid soak the sheets. “Kila thought so too. Even she gave up. I wish you better luck.” He stood and left the room, shoulders slumped, utterly defeated.

  Free of Kila’s corporeal shell, the second ephem soared on the ocean breezes, reveling in the feel of complete lack of inhibition, recognizing its fleeting nature. Experiencing life through the Kila-host felt good, too, especially when the assassin touched her. Especially then. Tasting, smelling, hearing all had their own pleasures as well, but it missed the ability to fly, to go places the human body could never go without mechanical aids.

  Its destination dampened its enthusiasm, however.

  The island in the distance, just a few kilometers from Triumph, could hardly be called that. More like an oversized sandbar, it held a small dock with a traditional sailing vessel tied to its moorings, a grove of trees, and a single house built of dark atchet wood. Six shallow graves lined the gray stone walkway leading to the vacant porch—the final resting places of the architect and builders who’d constructed the home and dock. Its owner named the isolated locale Dreadmore—he had a flair for the dramatic—and its name wouldn’t be found printed on any map.

  The ephem drew within half a click of the residence and hovered, sensing the energy barrier that shielded and protected the home from view and attack. Crossing the barrier hurt, in every sense such an entity could feel pain, but no other avenue of entry existed. He-Who-Had-Created-It already sensed its presence, and once detected, He would retain little patience for delays.

  Resigned to its fate, t
he ephem passed through the shielding, flowing with the invisible electrons, clinging to its cohesion with all its strength as the energy attempted to tear it apart. As it had within the assassin’s skull, it lost a bit of itself, weakening its overall strength. On the opposite side of the shield, it reformed as best it could and flowed toward the forbidding house.

  Any human approaching the structure would assume it abandoned. Not that its owner allowed it to deteriorate, but it simply looked empty. Thick shutters covered the windows on every side, and the front and rear doors lacked the traditional viewpanes that adorned most entries on Lissex.

  None of these proved a problem to the entity. It seeped beneath the front entrance and wafted down a long, dark hallway where hastily discarded sailing gear lay strewn to one side, still wet with spray. The master had arrived only shortly before.

  The ephem slipped into the study at the back of the house. No bookcases lined the walls, no desk dominated the room, no easy chair reclined against the wood paneling. Instead, ancient oil lamps hung in each of the four corners, flickering in the darkened interior. Intricate artwork in pitch-black ink wound its way from the base of each lamp, wandering through curlicue patterns and almost-words of the old tongue until they touched the floor.

  There, the designs changed to sharp angles, jerking and thrusting their way to the dead center of the otherwise empty space. The four lines met in a single point, a pinprick of deep red, and upon that point knelt He-Who-Had-Created-It, spine arched and head bowed.

  An intruder might mistake Him for a corpse, so motionless did He remain.

  His arm rose as if of its own accord, seemingly detached from the rest of His body. No other part of Him so much as twitched. The palm extended up and back, beckoning to the ephem hovering in the doorway, uncertain.

  The ephem felt true fear for the first time since its humanly existence, far worse than during its battle with the assassin’s Will. It hesitated.