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The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews (Part 2).txt
| 23 |
O'Rourke's phone rang when he was midway through the laptop's cache of incriminating file folders—the call a welcome distraction, as everything in the one labeled "Splat's Recordings" would haunt him till he died.
Clicking the folder shut, he answered before the second ring: "O'Rourke."
"Remember how you told me to keep you... informed... when I do something a little off the books?" Kessler asked.
"Yeah."
"I might be sneaking a certain teenager down a stairwell right now. She's hurt."
"You mean she was actually here? No way she was the one who—"
"Look, you going to arrest me for this or not? Just asking."
Glancing again at that folder—remembering the things someone had done to a young drifter with a corkscrew—O'Rourke made a snap decision. "Fine. Whatever she did, whoever helped her, she's still not the one I want." Whoever had hired these bastards was used to slithering through the shadows unseen. But I see you now.
"Thanks," Kessler huffed through the phone.
"Why are you panting? Thought she was tiny."
"There was also a bag of gold."
"The fuck?"
"Look, I dunno, she had a bag of gold, it's heavy. What do you want me to say?"
"Ask her about the batarang."
Now it was Kessler's turn to ask what the fuck.
"Just do it."
A moment passed and Kessler muttered, "It, uh, was a gift from her date. She said."
O'Rourke glanced at Splat's folder on the monitor again, shivered, and then looked to the room ravaged by some lightweight package of savagery and—probably—a dozen Army Ranger ninja sidekicks who'd helped her. He hoped. "Use the back stairwell. Leave through the fence's rear exit. I'll meet you in the alley behind in the car."
He hung up and popped the portable drive into his pocket, knowing evidence like this tended to disappear—swallowed down a weird memory hole, like everything else he regarded as black-binder weird, or else destroyed by someone on the take. He told a uniform to bag the computer as evidence, but kept the drive to himself.
Sucking on his bandaged thumb, he swore for the hundredth time that one day he'd stop being surprised by this goddamn city.
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The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews (Part 2).txt
| 24 |
Enya slept only during the new moon or to heal, but it was always dreamless—her awareness would have sharpened for danger, except Kessler placed her somewhere warm that smelled of him, and her slumber was disturbed only when he bandaged her. His hands startled her and she woke with a snarl, but his scent and clinical ministrations quieted her. Once bandaged, she sank into a fortification of covers.
When dawn's light touched her eyelids she roused and stretched, Kessler's coffee mug shattering as it hit the floor. He'd wandered into the bedroom where she stayed and was now transfixed on her regrown arm.
"You didn't put me in jail," Enya whispered, unsure why. He was police now and it was what his tribe did—police were for jailing lawbreakers, as surely as she was for killing monsters.
"Your arm." He still gaped. "I thought—"
"Are you not honorable?" She'd thought Kessler unlike other mortals—capable of being one thing, unchanging, of having no duplicity; closer to her kind than his own. "Why am I not jailed?"
Shaking himself from the sight, he took his time figuring out her question. "It's complicated. But I had a dad once, and he died half a world away fighting for these people—people he didn't know, who I didn't either. I never understood until I met you. When I got you out of that hell, I felt a piece of what he must have. That... connection you can have to kids who aren't yours, family that's found, not made." His eyes tightened and he unclipped his badge from an inside pocket, examining it. "You're big on honor. I get that. But I brought you here, you're my responsibility, and I'm not sending you to jail." He set the badge face-down on his bureau and turned his back on it, walking out. "Get some rest."
Family. The idea felt claustrophobic; like she belonged, yes, but also belonged to someone, and its first taste wasn't good. Tossing her blankets off, she flicked the kanaf from her back, cloaking herself and scaling from the window with Saxby's gold in tow.
A few months and the Veil would swallow Kessler's memories of her regrown arm; a few more and it might eat this absurd idea about "family" too.
I was wrong about him. He's like the rest. Like Natalie. They didn't understand what it was to be constant as the stars—to be forever just one thing.
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The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews (Part 2).txt
| 25 |
With Saxby loose, all Enya could do was hide his gold in an abandoned smokestack and guard Natalie during those nighttime hours when the beast would most want to take her. She was loath to approach her former friend's home, its roof unwelcome and the scents producing the most rending sensation in her heart, urging memories forward that hurt for being so blissful.
But immortals held mastery over the passage of time and what they beheld. Enya banished all perception of Natalie's heartbeat, voice, and aroma, attuned to danger while inoculating herself from memories too happy and bitter. She made the girl into a living ghost—into a gaping hole in the world.
And what a hole it was. As Enya lay awake on the roof, she knew that to surrender her control for even a moment, she'd be allowed to inhale Natalie's scent and listen to her strong pulse and the oddly soothing rhythm of her breathing.
Any time she wanted to, she remembered Natalie in the snow, lying still and clutching herself, sobbing. That memory haunted Enya most of all, making her want to flee into those unpopulated forests where she could live decades without bothering to have any thought beyond: hunt, eat, drink, rest, run, a part of the earth without being distinct from it; no different from the stones she slept upon or the animals she devoured.
Some days, when Enya felt certain Saxby's presence was far away, she went to school simply to spend time alone—a large school, she'd finally realized, was as good as alone, if she could endure its smells.
After hours of staring at dead words, a strange thing happened, and some of them came alive. One piece in particular she read over and over, as though there was something special in it. It was about a bird coming down the walk, its restless eyes and feathers somehow brought to life with ink stains, until at last:
Like one in danger, Cautious,
I offered him a Crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers,
And rowed him softer Home –
Something in the lines came off the yellowed page and pinched, the syllables stamped into her brain, and she found herself watching birds and wondered if she ever again could simply watch them, live like them, without remembering those branded words.
The time in school also brought higher marks, but thankfully no new attention. Other than a colorful sticker and different letters, it was the same.
The cold weather broke, the days lengthened, and the moon swung around without so much as a whiff from Saxby. When the new moon arrived, Enya stumbled through a day at Parker-Freemont half aware, even as Harper Pruett and his pack once again mocked that blue-haired girl. They'd Named her, so often and well that the entire school called her those things.
The Naming and the mocking must have broken her, because on this particular day Enya had to catch a knife the blue-haired girl tried to bury between Harper's ribs from behind. Tearing the blade away, she tossed the girl back into some lockers.
Harper spun to face Enya, his sneer transforming and face going ashen when he saw the knife in her hand. "Help!" he belted out, shrinking away while gesticulating wildly at her. "That fucking psycho's armed. Shoot her! Someone shoot the bitch!"
The blue-haired girl slunk into the crowd with the same frightened eyes as that bird in the poem, disappearing even as the resource officer in her uniform strode from among the gawking students, leveling her electric weapon. "Drop the knife!"
Enya blinked through the haze, weary. "It wasn't—"
The officer fired and Enya was barely cognizant enough to catch the barbed prongs in her palm, the tingle rousing her. The snarl she loosed sent everyone, officer included, clearing the floor around her. She presented the knife to the officer, then drove it forcefully into the wall's cinder blocks, to the hilt. "Take it," she spat. "If you can."
She stalked from the school, its bullies and cowards and clumsy administrators, intent on never returning. No one stopped her.
Detouring through the parking lot, she cut Harper Pruett's car in half.
That night, Natalie and her friends attended a religious gathering called a "lock-in." None of her father's soldiers would attend, so Enya did her best to shuck off gravity and follow the girls to an old part of Garden Heights with a stone Episcopal church, its iron fences hemming in a lawn of spring grass. Neither asura nor deva were permitted in temples of the new religions, which afforded some protection from Saxby—though Enya couldn't enter without herself being damaged, so she folded into a ball on the laundromat roof across the street, breathing in warmth from nearby steam vents.
Heat made her muscles spongy, her brain fogged, and the weight of other sleepless new moons pushed down on her until she slept; hopefully she'd rouse if there was trouble.
She woke in the dead of night, alert.
Rolling to her feet, the sight of Natalie startled. Though Enya lived most nights on her roof, she never really looked at her—but there she was, sprinting joyfully across the fenced-in lawn. That smile broke something in Enya's chest—broke whatever thing let her pull deep, clean breaths. At a full run, she was perfect in the way her hair flowed, body sharpened, all her grace on display. Enya wanted to run with her like it was the only thing she'd ever desired.
Natalie didn't seem troubled, or to be running from anything, and soon disappeared into the church. Unable to put it to rest until she'd sniffed around, though, Enya dropped to asphalt, jogged to the fence, and vaulted over. She knelt in the grass to savor its tickle against her palms, grass Natalie had enjoyed moments ago.
"Hey! What the hell are you doing here!" hollered Denise.
Enya's stomach tightened and she stood as Denise approached from around the corner, flashlight in hand.
"Some nerve showing up here." As Denise closed in, her expression remained inscrutable as ever.
Blinking through the haze, Enya shifted back a step. "I'll leave."
"Fucking stalker." The words were barbed, and she jabbed two fingers into the monster's shoulder, more fearless than she had a right to be. "You hurt my friend—did I not explicitly warn you? And following her is screwed up. Hope you don't plan on ambushing her out here."
"No," Enya swore. "Don't tell her I'm here."
"Don't tell me what to do. I'm twenty seconds from screaming some things that shouldn't be uttered in the shadow of one's church." She set fists to hips, examining Enya with an intensity that suggested she was deciding what exactly to do with her. "Not here and not tonight, but you're going to fix her."
"What?" Enya asked, retreating another step.
"Fix her. You broke my friend. I thought it was her dad's aide getting kidnapped at first, but she hasn't talked about you since that night. What'd you do to her? If you hurt her, I swear to Christ I'll—"
"I showed her the truth," Enya growled. "What I am."
"Bullshit. You did something to her." Denise strode forward, almost nose-to-nose as though searching for the truth in the deva's blue-tinted lenses. "You kiss her?"
Enya stiffened. "No!"
"Too bad."
Now Enya was confused. It was the norm around Denise.
"I stayed over at her house a few times." Backing off, Denise assessed the deva again. "She seemed to want me there with her; she was scared."
Enya tensed, remembering a few nights with Denise in the bedroom below. She had no idea what Natalie had been like those nights.
"She jerks awake from the nightmares. Sits up with this wild look. But she screams your name."
How her palms ached—she'd balled her fists, cutting them again.
"Of course, some nights she's not jerking awake; she's gasping, rolling around, moaning." Denise smirked. "Not 'in pain' moaning, either. The other kind."
"I don't understand."
Denise's eyes rolled upward and she shook her head, patting Enya's shoulder in a humiliating way—but she knew things, clever and sideways things, and if the deva wanted to hear, she knew to ignore the gesture. "Sometimes when she dreams, it's like she's running from you; other times, more like she's fucking you."
Enya sputtered, a torrent of started words that never finished.
"Since that night, my friend's only ever half smiling. She broke up with Horatio—said it was because he's going to Alaska this summer and she hates long distance, but Horatio says she wouldn't even kiss him. Not interested. And that is a boy who's not used to disinterest, trust me. So I don't know, maybe she is and maybe she isn't, but for a while, all that attention she poured into you made me wonder. I can't tell what screws with her head the most: that you scare her, that you turn her on, or that you disappeared."
Remembering Natalie's scent, how it changed when Enya got too close, she shut her eyes and shook her head. "No." She couldn't let herself believe it; it made the loss too large if there'd ever been hope.
"You'll fix her, but you don't get to make up with her tonight. You're in pain, and you deserve it, so you have to wait. But in June, we're all going to camp together. A week of outdoor adventure, right up your alley. You're coming as my guest, and you'll approach Natalie—timid as a pussycat—and grovel until she forgives you."
Enya's fine hairs went bristle-brushy, her words low and dreadful: "You have no concept of what I am."
For only a moment, Denise wilted in uncertainty. But she found her footing and turned her back on the monster, headed for the tall church doors. Over her shoulder she called, "See you in June."
"You won't."
"You must be confused," Denise smirked. "Because I always get my way."
The heavy wood doors swung shut, a dull sound that vibrated in Enya's chest, shutting her out from Natalie's world.
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The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews (Part 2).txt
| 26 |
The city thawed in April, warm spring winds teasing Enya's hair; she walked the parks, starving for things green, and touched every blooming tree. Her school expelled her for the fight, though security footage showed her thwarting a stabbing, which plucked her out of legal trouble.
She didn't stay out of legal trouble. She'd been avoiding Roosevelt Place, but Ms. Cross's fury at her expulsion led Enya to return to the group home early one night. Coming in through the window, she caught Albert Birch masturbating beside Susan, asleep in her bed.
In retrospect, she shouldn't have thrown him through the wall.
But she didn't feel bad in the least about what she did to his nose. It deserved to be as crooked as the man.
It was her first night in a detention center. She spent it worried sick about Natalie, planning to break out if they kept her more than a day. Kessler had posted bail by morning, and he and Ms. Cross both set to work—their case was helped along by the testimony of Susan and two of the Rabble, who described Albert Birch's lewd behavior around boys and girls alike. He was implicated in the suicide of Susan's old roommate.
There was also the fact that it wasn't generally regarded as possible for Enya to have thrown a grown man through drywall, insulation, a wooden beam, and out the other side.
The hearing came at month's end, the judge saying plenty of angry things to Albert Birch before dismissing the case against Enya. The Rabble and Susan were divided, sent to different homes. Susan got one with all girls.
Kessler and Ms. Cross both insisted Enya find a school and live with Kessler, but she was legally allowed to drop out and live on her own, so she did. When they asked about supporting herself, she fetched one of Saxby's gold bars, thumping it onto the table in Kessler's apartment next to the butter dish.
Ms. Cross folded her arms over her chest, eyes narrowed. "I want to know where you got that."
"You really don't," Kessler said.
He exchanged the bar for a large sum of money, though Ms. Cross warned they wouldn't exchange another for her unless she continued therapy. That rankled, but if someone had to sway her life, Enya preferred it to be Ms. Cross. She was at least formidable.
Her new home was near Dock Street in a 150-year-old structure called the Fairchild Building. Her top-floor room was a long, narrow chamber with towering ceilings, the space voluminous enough to echo. It had once housed a clothing factory and tall windows let in all the wonderful nighttime cold. Bathroom aside, it was a single, unpartitioned room with a balconied platform at one end overlooking the rest.
It was infested with bed bugs, sporadic gunshots sounded from the neighborhood, holes opened the windows to whistling air, and the pipes leaked rust-red water. Enya chose it over everyone's objections, even the building owner's, and it kept her busy: tossing out furniture, installing a steel door, replacing pipes and windows. At her presence, the bed bugs and other pests fled except for a single, gray rat.
Since the rat was dust-colored, shy, and unobnoxious, she named it Susan II. It deserved the room, having lived there before Enya, and it didn't complain when she fed it crumbs or slivers of radish, often wedging itself into a cardboard toilet-paper roll beneath the radiator. Enya imagined it kept the rat warm in the way its old colony had before its exile.
While Enya guessed Susan II missed its old home, she wondered if it could be lonely. Were cardboard and radiator good enough for a rat? They probably were. Envying Susan II, sometimes Enya lay next to the radiator too and tried to feel as warm as she had when Natalie embraced her.
Ms. Cross hated her space because she had to sit on the floor. Ticking off demands on her first visit, she made Enya buy chairs, carpet, and a bed and kitchen table. "A bed is psychologically necessary, even if you never sleep," the human explained. "It's not just about sleep—it's your private space; refuge, comfort, all those things. The kitchen table's the opposite: it's your public forum. You need a sanctum and a gathering place for loved ones. You understand?"
"Yes." Enya waited to see if she was better at lying yet.
"No," Ms. Cross sighed. "You don't. But buy them before my next visit anyway. I know you can afford them." Patrolling the space with hands on hips, her brow furrowed. "What do you do in here all night and day?"
"Watch the sun move." At night, she guarded Natalie.
"You need a hobby. A television. Books, maybe."
Humans were like this. Their short lives compelled them to fill every second or they despaired.
She nonetheless obeyed Ms. Cross's dictums, filling her room's corners with stacks of books she found attractive in look, feel, or smell, positioning the kitchen table at an edge, always keeping floor space as wide open as possible. She bought a laptop but never used it—it kept Ms. Cross's criticisms at bay, which was its only purpose. The bed had curtains, Enya having taken to heart the words about privacy, and it was the only thing about her furnished room she liked.
In May, Enya moved from pipes and windows to the wall, smoothing its patches with stucco and replacing panels. The room felt more whole, and she appreciated the great, hollow, intact chamber.
"You're going to wallpaper, right?" Ms. Cross asked during their mid-May checkup.
"No," she said.
"Why not?"
Why would she?
"The blankness doesn't bother you? It's so sterile." When Enya didn't answer, Ms. Cross sighed. "You were making progress. Now, it's like you've stopped trying. You don't express yourself. Is it because of the fight with your friend?"
"She was a mistake."
"Because she's not interested in you?"
"Because," Enya growled.
Ms. Cross paused in her circuit around the room.
Enya's hackles rose, sensing something was coming.
"You're afraid you'll hurt her?" Ms. Cross asked at last.
Trying to stare her down, Enya wound up glaring at Ms. Cross's back. "I fear nothing."
"Avoidance implies fear, Enya. What do you fear?"
Anger rising, Enya spun and strode for the door.
Without raising her voice, Ms. Cross spoke, somehow aware Enya could hear her at any volume from any point in the apartment. "Have you apologized?"
Turning back, Enya bared her fangs. "Why?" Why do they insist I stoop and scrape like a mortal?
"Do you want to know what I think?"
"No."
"Too bad." Ms. Cross took a seat facing her, smiling now. "Natalie is the first thing you've loved and you hurt her. Badly. You did it by being true to your nature, but you're guilty—and you're afraid of guilt. You're afraid she won't forgive you, that she'll reject you, but most of all, you're afraid she can change you."
Enya sneered at the blasphemous charges. "I am no more mutable than the constellations."
"Stars don't feel. You never did either; not until this. You're not in the unfeeling heavens anymore, poor girl." It was hard to be sure, but Ms. Cross's eyes seemed softer. "You're trapped down here with us. That's what you don't see. Natalie? She's already changed you."
The accusation rocked her. "Get out."
Ms. Cross lifted an eyebrow, but she stood and made her way out the door. Whispering from the other side—Enya could still hear—she said, "You love her, you idiot."
Enya activated her computer for the first time. A day later, she still couldn't send messages on the damned thing, so she tracked Denise and strode up behind her when she was alone after school. "I will go camping with you. But," she warned, "only because I wish to. And I will not grovel." She gave her hardest stare and stalked away, burning from even that much.
Denise made it no better by shouting after her, "Okay, pussycat."
The hot days of late May and early June burned off the calendar one by one, and she lay on Natalie's hot rooftop never listening or scenting, just waiting for that fearful trip. It felt like the end of an era. She, a goddess, had to go before a mortal and beg forgiveness.
Yet it spiked her pulse, sweetened her blood, because though she couldn't imagine what would happen, she knew Natalie would be there.
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The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews (Part 2).txt
| 27 |
[ Summer Storms ]
Denise's father brought them to Cold Spring Highlands, a half-day's drive from New Petersburg in the heart of Appalachia. It was a campground nested in steep hillsides of dense pine and deciduous trees, interspersed with buildings, a basketball court, soccer field, and pool. Structures stood on any surface flat enough to build on.
Enya fought the buttons in the car until she found the one that made windows disappear, then jammed her head out and sucked in a breath of the minty-sweet pine.
They parked and Denise carried a box of her father's cookies, so Enya took her bags, having only brought a duffel for herself—filled mostly with a loaned bedroll. They registered, waiting around in front of an outdoor stage facing log seats.
Campers clustered into their assigned groups all around, Enya silently hoping hers stayed small.
When she turned, Natalie stood ten feet away and Enya heard the thump of her bag on the ground without remembering letting go. Having transformed the girl into a living ghost, she'd had no way to hear Natalie's approach, and now ten short feet separated her from the thing she craved and feared more than any other. Everyone can hear my heart. She was certain of it.
Releasing the barrier that had locked out her friend, Natalie was suddenly all she could smell: the fragrance of rain and sunlight crushed her senses. The auburn-haired girl wore jean shorts and a too-long T-shirt accentuating her height and casual athleticism, and Enya wanted to touch the shirt's hem just to ensure she was real.
"Elli, let's find the counselor," Denise said, but it didn't matter because she and Elli weren't actually there anyway. It was just her and Natalie, gazes locked.
Natalie's was fragile and she took tentative steps closer, arms folded around her middle.
Now they both stared at their own feet.
"Guess we should talk," Natalie said.
"Yes."
Except neither did.
A pressure built in Enya's chest and she wheeled, searching for escape. I don't want to do this. She'd never done anything like it, so her mouth opened and moved without producing sound. Trying a second time, she made words happen: "I... I am sorry." It was done. Her chin tucked against her chest and she felt as though Natalie could smite her with a word.
Natalie's hesitation stretched the moment painfully. "I didn't tell anyone," she whispered. "About what you did to Walter Banich. Or those others."
"...that is not what I'm sorry for."
"How can you not be? You were ruthless. My father told me Banich still can't walk. It might be years."
"I'm adept at breaking things."
Her brow furrowed. "Then what are you sorry for?"
"For hurting you. Terrifying you." More words rose to the threshold of her mouth and she swallowed them, afraid of the tremor in the ones she'd already spoken.
Natalie bit her lip and shifted a step nearer to whisper softer still. "That night I thought you were going to kill me."
"I know."
"Did it ever cross your mind?"
Enya shook her head briskly. "Never."
"You seemed so angry. Your voice... changed. Everything about you changed."
Sealing her eyes, Enya could only nod. She hadn't even known that, but didn't doubt it. "I wasn't angry at you."
"Who?"
She shrugged, inspecting her shoes.
"Yourself?"
Another shrug.
"Why?"
"Because it was my fault. The nightmares were about me." The pressure in her chest burst, the words all gushing out at once. "I don't like your fear, Natalie, I don't like it at all, it doesn't taste right. I only want you to be safe, to sleep, to not scream at night. But how can I hurt what haunts you when it's me?"
Natalie stepped closer, both hands making push-down motions. "Shh, shh, I get it." Setting her finger to the deva's jaw, she raised it like she was raising all of Enya with it. "You're not a nightmare."
"I am."
She smiled, eyes gleaming strangely bright as she tilted her head to the side. "You are, aren't you? But I'm not afraid of you now; I'm never afraid when I look right at you."
"Maybe you don't see deep enough." Enya's throat was dreadfully tight.
"I don't always understand you. But I'll look at anything you show me, and I'll try."
Enya shook her head in disbelief. "You still... wish to see me?"
"Naturally," she said with a wink. "But you have to apologize."
"Yes." Anything.
"Say you're sorry for running away. For scaring me and disappearing without any explanation. And then never do it again—it's not how friends act."
Friends. "I'm sorry for leaving you in the snow." It felt good to say, like a vise on her insides had released. It was a singing relief she'd never had before—relief from pain she'd lived with so long it had started to feel normal. It made her lighter; made her stone mouth smile.
"Don't do it again," Natalie repeated, touching Enya's face once more, and the deva wondered if she was allowed to touch back. The auburn-haired girl's scent had turned dark and lovely.
"Hey!" Denise shouted.
Natalie straightened and jumped to face her.
"Guys, meet our counselor." Denise guided over a college-aged brunette in jeans, a T-shirt, and multi-pocketed vest with dark sunglasses, ponytail hanging out the back of her ball cap.
"Ladies, I'm Counselor Jane. Welcome to Adventure Camp. Let's see." She checked a clipboard. "Enya, Denise, Elli, and Natalie are here. We have two more girls and we'll meet the rest of our family group at the cabin."
"Family group?" Natalie asked.
"The boys are the other half of our family group," Denise said.
"Yes, there is a cabin of young men who join us for most activities." Jane scanned them all. "They have their own counselor and quarters, the interior of which you won't be touring, particularly after hours. Everyone copy that?"
"Yes," they all agreed, though Enya noticed the way Denise crossed two fingers behind her back.
Their group included a pair of sisters, Phoebe and Cara. They hiked a winding forest path that opened to a firepit flanked by two cabins, one belonging to the girls. "Cabin's built for twenty, but this week we only have seven, myself included," Jane said. "Plenty of space to sprawl."
"How many boys?" Elli asked.
"Closer to ten."
Elli pumped her fist. "Ka-ching."
The cabin had concrete floors and bunk beds, the restrooms in a separate building through two hundred yards of hilly forest. A breeze passed through screen windows and Enya could hear scurrying rodents in wet branches outside. Everything would come alive by night, and she ached to hear rain pattering through the leaves.
She set up near the door, but Jane summoned her to the midst of the pack in one corner, ordering her to "be social."
The boys arrived at the firepit, another noisy Rabble except ten strong. Most were younger, disappointing Elli, but an older one caught her eye immediately. "They call him Patrick," she whispered, returning from her reconnaissance. "He's got to be a senior."
Indeed, Patrick was tall, graceful, and strong, with dusty-blond locks and a broad jaw raspy with stubble. He wore ragged shorts, a T-shirt and a hemp necklace.
Elli, Natalie, and Denise all glanced out the window at him and spoke at once: "Look at his shoulders." "Wow, he's tall." "I hate his stupid necklace."
They all looked at Denise. "What? I do. Kind of want to light it on fire."
"Check out his tan," Elli cooed. "I heard him say he's from the West Coast. I'll bet he surfs." She glanced back at Denise. "Since you hate his necklace, you can't have him."
"Don't look at me." Denise shook her head. "After the Nine Lives, I'm taking Mom's advice and only dating well-trained males. Less work, emotionally simple, good cooks. That boy looks... needlessly complicated."
"Yeah," Elli sighed happily. "What do you think, Natalie? Since Horatio's done, we could flip for him. You want to let Patrick fill the hole in your heart?" Under her breath she added, "If not, he can fill the hole in mine."
"It's your heart you're talking about him filling, right?" Denise grinned.
"I'm talking about whatever he wants to talk about. Unless Natalie wants him—she's got free Saturday nights, and I'd have to put my Craig-related plans on hiatus." She considered the male again. "Long, long-term hiatus."
"Leave Natalie out of your web of sin, dork," Denise said. "Let her heart mend however it likes." She cast a look Enya's way the others didn't catch.
Enya felt a prick of something in how they fawned over Patrick. He was tall, certainly, but his face was dumb. And Denise was right: so was his necklace.
Outside, they joined the boys and played an introductory game with a ball. Whoever caught it had to share something—the first circuit, a name; the second, a single word describing themselves. Enya lost track of every new name.
Denise caught the ball and said her word: "Loyal." She underhanded it to Elli.
"Fun-loving." Elli glanced with meaning at another boy and sent the ball to Natalie.
Natalie looked right at Enya, her smile sending electric currents through the deva. "Joyful."
Then Patrick caught it, and his gaze also held meaning, directed at Natalie. It rankled. "Single." Cara—she was only thirteen—blushed in his direction.
Patrick underhanded it to a boy beside Enya, but she snatched it from the air and held the tall male's gaze, narrowing her eyes behind her blue-tinted sunglasses.
"Enya?" Jane asked. "What's one word that describes you?"
She kept her stare level on Patrick. "Territorial."
They broke for dinner, crowding outside a dining hall as scant drops of rain fell from the darkening clouds. A storm rolled steadily over them, Enya dragging it closer so she could taste the rain. Before it started in earnest, though, everyone around her did something terrifying.
They sang.
Counselors led the songs. It was a human game. Natalie sang avidly, of course; it was brilliant to watch her find a melody and laugh at the childish rhymes. It soured when Patrick glommed onto her enthusiasm and joined her.
Denise elbowed Enya. "I'm with you. I never sing for my supper."
"Come on," Elli whispered. "It's camp. Go ahead and be stupid, no one cares. It's fun!"
"You can have my fun," Denise scoffed. "I'm about topped off watching this actually happen."
Enya despised the very idea of singing, or talking in crowds, or crowds generally. This activity rolled it all together in one. Worse, Patrick and Natalie whispered about having so much fun.
Camp fare disappointed her, as it came from cans. There was fresh game within a hundred yards, but somehow she doubted they'd let her kill anything. While Natalie made quick friends with Phoebe and Cara, Enya gave terse answers and avoided talking.
Rain caught them on their way to the cabins. A crack of far-off thunder broke the air and scattered the campers. They sprinted; Enya strolled. She tilted her head back, drinking fat drops that rolled from the leaves.
Natalie cut through the abandoned soccer field and stopped midway across. She held out her arms; she accepted it, the only other person who understood she could get no wetter, and so instead smiled. The downpour lit her in a white halo of scattered droplets, framing her sleek hair in soft light, painting her shirt to the skin of her torso.
Enya didn't realize she'd been approaching until Natalie whirled, scattering water from her fingertips. She laughed, flashing her teeth and those bright, bright eyes, framed by dark lashes that held pearls of water. "You look different in the rain," she said.
Enya had no answer for that.
Natalie beamed at her. "You look... content." She eased nearer. "Like you and the rain belong together."
A smile teased its way to Enya's lips, still unused to the way Natalie saw to the core of her.
Denise and Elli returned through the downpour. "You coming?" Denise called.
"Come on," Natalie challenged. "You've got all week to be dry."
They found the soccer ball and at first Natalie and Denise played one-on-one, darting with practiced ease, two rivals who'd done this together enough to have each other's measure. When Natalie fired the ball sideways to Enya, she popped it into the air with her knee and head-butted it over Denise, further downfield.
"She's on my team!" Denise called.
"Nope! Everyone against Enya!" Natalie said.
They played through the storm and mud, shouting and shrieking, every motion kicking sparks of water through the air. Enya wove through the trio, letting them snap the ball from her a few times. It was relaxed until the boys joined, transforming into girls versus boys, and against them Enya was less magnanimous. She still passed the ball more than she took shots, disliking the attention of scoring, but she loved to slip into the pack and steal the ball effortlessly, to rocket it unexpectedly to Elli's feet even if Elli lost it every single time.
Jane waited an hour to break them up and they retreated to their bunks, Natalie throwing an arm around Enya, hollering, "MVP! If we had you at Madison, we'd go all state."
Enya glowed with delight.
In the cabin, the girls hung wet clothes and towels on crisscrossing wash lines between bunks. Enya dripped water and Natalie dragged her into a corner where hanging towels cordoned them from everyone else. "You forgot towels, didn't you," she teased.
She needed no towels—if she could get free, she'd flick her kanaf once and be bone dry again.
"Here." Natalie ruffled a towel through Enya's hair before she could protest.
The friction felt good and the deva leaned into the contact, her friend releasing the towel so that it draped like a hood.
Natalie snorted. "More kitten than tiger when you're wet, I'm afraid." She reached for the monster's sunglasses, but Enya darted back.
Smiling apologetically, Natalie fetched her own towel and did something in the quiet corner that put Enya's spine flush to the bedpost: she peeled off her own shirt. It exposed dew along her abdomen, water beading at her chin and running teasingly across the ridge of her collar bone. Then she skinned off her pants and tossed them with a wet slap to the concrete floor.
She never looked at Enya and dried off mechanically, though her ears were pink and her scent changed again—it felt almost like she was pretending not to see Enya, planting one foot on the bunk beside the deva. Her coltish leg went on and on, higher than Enya had seen before, all the way to rain-soaked underwear, and the sight sent a delicious, terrifying curl of warmth through her belly. Tearing her gaze away while Natalie changed into dry panties, she folded herself protectively under the towel, heart galloping in her ribcage.
Natalie scrounged in her bag, tossing a shirt to Enya. "Here. I brought too many clothes and you probably forgot PJs too, knowing you. And..." She finally glanced back. "I know you don't wear certain things regularly, but that'll be long enough to cover you."
The old shirt had a cartoon tiger on it, though not a dangerous-looking one. Enya would have preferred her kanaf, but felt trapped. She started to undress, slow and uncertain.
Denise peeped through their blanket partition. "Oh, there you two are."
Natalie smiled, her back to them both as she shrugged out of her bra. "Just getting Enya situated."
"I see." From Denise's tone, Enya wondered what she saw.
Natalie rolled her eyes, snaking into a nightshirt and pajama bottoms, slipping out of their partitioned compartment. Enya changed into the tiger shirt, hanging her wet kanaf close to where she slept since the shirt's length stopped slightly above her knees and left her feeling exposed. She scampered immediately into her bedroll.
Nearby, the other girls chatted long into the night. Enya avoided the conversation, but Natalie was in its midst, sitting up Indian-style on her bunk. Lying on her side, covered in a shirt imprinted with her friend's scent, the deva savored the sight of Natalie speaking. She liked watching her do anything, but liked it even more when the other girl's gaze slipped back to her, which it did every so often.
Natalie slept a few feet away and that was best of all.
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews (Part 2).txt
| 28 |
The rain let up by morning and Enya rose first, twisting the kanaf around her body. Natalie shivered in her bedroll from the morning chill, the deva fixated on her friend's parted lips, where foggy breath spilled out.
Her fragile, sleeping form returned the curious heat to Enya's belly, made her want to crawl into the bedroll and hold the auburn-haired girl close. She was in the midst of those thoughts when she sensed eyes on her and swiveled to face Denise, who grinned up at her.
Enya narrowed her eyes.
Denise made kissing motions with her mouth that only made the deva's eyes narrow more.
They hiked to breakfast through wet mist that settled around the knees, blanketing the forest's ferns in a way that put Enya at ease—at least until the singing. Worse, when Patrick joined Natalie, they goofily slung their arms around each other. It was the same arm that had been around her after soccer and she wished for once in her life she could make song. Scenting Patrick for asura in case he needed to be decapitated, it unfortunately turned out he was just a boy.
Enya wanted to catch her friend's eye during breakfast, except she was engrossed in conversation with Cara. After breakfast came something called trust falls, where Enya panicked at the realization she had to drop backward into someone's braced hands. She sought Natalie to save her, but Patrick had again intercepted Enya's favorite human.
Fortunately, Denise fast proved her second favorite by partnering with her and convincing the counselors Enya "totally just did like four" while they weren't looking.
It still rankled to see Natalie fidget and smile shyly when Patrick's big paws caught her shoulders. She even laughed at something he said! Not only couldn't the monster sing, but she wasn't funny either.
It wasn't until Denise snorted that she realized she'd been growling at them. "You are so unsubtle," her second favorite whispered.
Then came other group activities: helping each other cross a wire line suspended eighteen inches above the ground, or climbing a wall together, or carrying a beach ball up a hill on a blanket. It was meant to be done as a team, an idiotic concept: Enya could have done it all much easier alone. Or perhaps with just Natalie.
And Patrick told them all what to do. Worst of all, they listened. When he ordered Enya to let him boost her up the wall since she was lightest, she stared him down and then scaled the wall on her own.
At lunch, Natalie sat with Patrick so Enya cut out early, using her afternoon free time to brush up on archery. She loosed shaft after shaft into distant hay bales, ignoring their awful instructor. Every satisfying thump of arrow to target unspooled her violent urges, perhaps since the target's size and shape wasn't a total mismatch for Patrick's face.
"Who are you imagining in that bullseye?" Denise leaned against a nearby post. "Patrick?"
Her concentration wavered and her arrow planted an inch too wide. Out of anger, she thumped three more into the red dot, one-two-three, so fast the instructor said an oath in front of campers. How does Denise always know my thoughts? "Are you an empath?" she demanded.
"Uh. No?"
Enya sighed. "I'm confused."
"For what it's worth, I know why Patrick flirts with her. I'm fuzzier on why she's flirting back."
Lowering her bow in resignation, Enya sank to the bench seats behind the firing line. If Denise was confused, Enya had no hope of understanding.
"I do have a theory." Denise shifted to face her, hands in pockets and weight rocked back against the post. "It was weird that she'd date Horatio right after you two met. She's normally slow to let guys take her out. At first, I thought she wanted that first kiss, but the double date actually makes scoring a kiss slightly more challenging. Fast-forward to now, and the moment you two make up, boom: she's hanging off Patrick."
Enya stared ahead at the target bristling with her arrows. "I don't understand at all."
Denise shrugged. "It's just really damn convenient that every time she's around you long enough to get her panties tickled, she tries her damnedest to fall in love with the closest guy."
"So I'm insufficient." Enya frowned, unwilling to admit surrender. "Denise. I must make jokes. Teach it to me now."
Her second-favorite human sighed. "Think what I'm saying is that you're very sufficient. Overly sufficient, even. This time it's not your fault. For once? It's the princess who's screwing it up."
For dinner they served a congealed meat tube inside bread. That was Enya's limit, so she crept out and found a raspberry bush in the forest to pick over. By the time darkness spread over the campground, the solitude had fortified her and she returned to the firepit, looking in on the popping coals—how often had she done this? Except this time she strode from the brush and her presence among the mortals was unremarkable.
She froze. The humans were huddled close, and Natalie clung to Patrick as they whispered scary stories.
Noticing her, Denise stood and approached, uncertain. "They're a couple," she whispered, more gently than she'd ever said a thing to the deva.
Nodding, Enya stumbled back into the dark, only returning to the cabin after everyone else had. She slumped into her bedroll fully clothed.
"You need a nightshirt?" Natalie whispered from her bunk across the aisle.
Enya rolled over, her back to her friend.
The next day, rain chased them off the ropes courses and trapped them in the cabin, where the others chatted and played cards. After lunch, some of the boys started a tackle game on the field with an oblong ball, and Enya thought it would be a relief to do something away from Natalie. She asked to join and they fought over who would take her until one with a twangy accent rolled his eyes at the bickering and invited her to his side.
Her toes curled when she spotted Patrick on the other team.
Intuiting the rules from a few plays, she waited for the ball to snap and darted across the field, separating from the others in a burst of speed. The thrower who had invited her to his team fired from back in the rain, ball spiraling wide of her trajectory. She sensed Patrick coming up on her, caught the scent of his exertion—it tasted aggressive and wrong somehow.
Pivoting in the mud, she cut hard and the ball thudded into her outstretched hand. Its spin squeaked in her wet grip and cheers shot abruptly from the sideline—the girls were watching. Natalie is watching.
Patrick dove at her from behind. Enya flicked low and nailed his middle with her shoulder. As he folded into her and went rolling over top, she used her strength to fling him higher so that he sailed end-over-end. When he hit earth, he skidded, flipped, skidded again, and splashed into an enormous mud puddle.
She had no idea what was wrong with Patrick, but her gut told her something was. Untrustworthy. Glancing up at Natalie, though, she saw the auburn-haired teen's mouth was an angry, straight line. Enya tossed her wet hair over one shoulder, meeting her friend's glare.
The thrower who'd invited her to play jogged over, helping Patrick up. Patrick groaned, stumbling.
"Let's... let's play two-hand touch," the thrower said, with nervous looks at Enya.
"I'm done." She stalked away, headed for the field's other side, away from them all.
Denise caught up to her first, though. "Jesus. Enya! Hold on."
She halted, wheeling on the girl. Her throat clicked out a growl. "Why?"
"Because... because I'm worried you're about to murder someone."
"I'm not."
"You didn't have to smile like that when you hit him."
"I smiled because I enjoyed myself."
At dinner Natalie wouldn't even look her way, a frosty anger in the teenager's demeanor. But Enya was angry too. Her friend had coupled with a boy with a wrong scent. What if he was a monster? Perhaps I should eat him to be sure.
"That wasn't cool," Natalie hissed on their walk back from dinner. "You were trying to hurt Patrick."
"If I were trying, he'd be hurt," Enya growled.
"What's your problem?"
"I don't trust him."
"Why?" she demanded.
"Because." Enya's lip twitched. "There's something wrong with him."
"I'd like more to go on than your gut feeling. It seems like you just don't like me spending time with him."
"Why would I care who you spend time with?" she snapped.
"Because I... because he..." For once, Natalie was speechless.
Enya bolted into the woods to escape the rising bitterness, the disillusioned sense that Natalie was playing some stupid, dangerous game. She lurked along the fringes of the forest, staring into the clearing and those licking, orange flames—relegated again to her proper place at the light's periphery, looking in.
Patrick's skin glowed in that light and he seemed to drink it, as well the affections of the campers and Natalie, who all smiled at him.
I'll bet he doesn't even taste good, she fumed.
That night, Natalie slid from her bunk while everyone else slept. She padded across concrete, easing out the door. It didn't fit her usual nighttime patterns, so Enya sneaked after, ascending into the trees and trailing her along the winding paths.
Natalie's flashlight joined Patrick's, and the two embraced. He stooped for a kiss and Enya's stomach tightened, but Natalie danced to the side, smiling instead. She dragged him off the path and into the shadowy wood.
Enya glided after, from trunk to trunk. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
They perched together a few hundred yards into the forest, on a jutting rock overlooking the steep drop-off of a ravine. Patrick had laid a blanket down and they nestled side by side, staring into the night while rain rattled the leaves. Their pulses were at ease, and Patrick's scent seemed fine now. No. It was wrong. He's wrong.
They spoke in hushed tones. Patrick had lived with his father; his mother had been killed in crossfire at the hospital where she worked when two gangs had opened fire on each other. "The bullet came through her office window."
"Oh my God," Natalie whispered.
His hands clenched, unclenched. The aggression was back—now that Enya knew why, it didn't stink so bad. No! It's bad enough; it's not right for her.
"It was fast," he said. "At least there was that. Went through her neck. She sort of coughed, fell over. She shook really hard and she was gone before I could get a doctor."
"You saw it?"
He shrugged. "Yeah." Glancing off into the ravine, his fists squeezed and released again.
"My mom didn't die in the car," Natalie murmured at last. "She was hit by a drunk driver, but she made it to the hospital alive. She lived about a day." She sucked in a breath. "People hear about car crashes, picturing it like it's sudden, clean. Broken metal and smashed glass, then you're just gone. It wasn't like that. It was... ugly. She was my mom, and she was so, so beautiful. But at the hospital, I could... I could barely recognize her. There were tubes everywhere." Her voice was barely there. "She didn't have any legs. It made her seem small. I remember not being able to find a good place to touch her—nowhere that still felt like her." She wiped at her eyes. "I wish she'd been awake. I wanted so bad for her to hear me one more time."
Enya realized it went deeper than songs and jokes. She could never relate to Natalie like another mortal could. The deva had no mother but the dark sky. Death was not her enemy; she had nothing it wanted, nothing it could touch except, perhaps, Natalie.
The teenagers leaned into one another, and though their sizes were different, their bodies seemed almost made to rest together as they stared off—and then their fingers laced, their hearts sped, and they looked into one another's eyes.
This is how it's meant to be, Enya realized. I'm not a part of their world. It was all in front of them, precisely as Denise had once described at the Nine Lives: a first kiss; making love for the first time in six more months; married in a church where Enya couldn't enter, and then to live short lives, rear children, and die. Precisely the life Natalie had always dreamt of.
Sorrow filled her and she wanted to see them kiss; wanted a clean end, as hard as she'd wanted it in the snowy forest next to the drive-in. Her nails sank into the bark.
Their lips neared.
Her heart flared—with anger, yes, but also hope made defiant. No!
Lightning broke the sky and lit the forest in neon brightness. It seared the imprint of trees into her vision, thunder rumbling through the old trunk and into her bones.
Natalie jerked away before Patrick's mouth touched hers, and they both stood under the sudden deluge from Enya's sky.
In that instant, the kiss, the lovemaking, the wedding, children, and even death itself—all were swept momentarily away.
"I— I should go," Natalie said.
"You don't have to." Patrick offered her his hand. "We're not getting any dryer."
She shook her head. "Let's talk again tomorrow." Together they ran for the trail, shadowed by a monster from the treetops.
They were stopped at the firepit by Jane and the male counselor, whose name might have begun with a T.
"You two have a fun stroll?" Jane asked.
"Nice of you to escort her to the restroom," T-counselor said.
Enya dropped to the wet ground and stayed in the forest.
"It's not like that," Natalie said. "We just talked. Nothing happened, relax."
"You can't wander around in the dark. It's dangerous." Jane glanced around. "Where's that little angry kid?"
"Enya's not in the bunk?" Natalie asked.
Not good.
"Of course not." Jane folded her arms. "That kid's never where she's supposed to be. You didn't see her out there?"
"No." The word was angry enough that everyone took notice of Natalie. "She's only seen when she wants to be. But I'll bet she's been with us all along."
"What?" Patrick spun to look around. "Seriously? Who, that short one with the attitude?"
Natalie turned to the forest and folded her arms. "Get over here," she called sternly.
Enya froze, confident no one had spotted her.
"Enya! Get your ninja butt out here! Now!"
The deva slid from wet brush; Natalie fixed on her and everyone else startled back at her presence. Rain pounded her as she approached.
"You have a lot of nerve." Natalie's voice was coldly furious.
"Wait, was she following us?" Patrick asked.
Enya glared at him, but Natalie ignored her boyfriend. In spite of how bad this was, Enya liked it when she ignored him.
"All right," Jane said. "Everyone's alive. Todd, get Patrick to his bunk." Todd the counselor did so, and that left the three of them in the rain. Planting hands to hips, Jane took note of Natalie's aggressive posture. "Whatever this is, settle it. I mean in the next five minutes, ladies. Then get to your bunks, sleep, and tomorrow we'll raft the crap out of that river. Natalie? If you had sex, go talk to the nurse."
"I didn't have sex!" Natalie shouted. "We never even kissed."
"She didn't," Enya confirmed.
"You're not helping your case." Lightning flashed again and lit the outrage in Natalie's eyes.
Shaking her head, Jane went into the cabin.
Natalie wheeled on the deva. "How could you! After scaring me to tears, after filling my nightmares for weeks, how could you do that to me again?"
"I didn't frighten you!" The accusation hit Enya hard, because she never wanted to do that again to her friend.
"It doesn't matter. You invaded my privacy. It's creepy and wrong."
Enya bristled. "I was guarding you."
"From what? My boyfriend?"
"I don't like him. I don't trust him." Enya straightened, saying the truest, most damning thing of all: "His smell is wrong."
"So? You don't get to sniff all my boyfriends and grade them pass-fail! You're not responsible for guarding me. The people my dad hired do enough of that!"
Now the deva smirked. "They're not a tenth of what I am. You think they kept the monsters from your room every night? No." I did that.
But Enya had not concealed those last words cleverly enough. They must have been in her eyes, because Natalie froze and a look of horror filled her face. "Wait. What do you mean you kept monsters from my room?" She took a step back. "You were there, weren't you? Outside my house at night."
Tired of the lies, Enya nodded. "Every night. Except once, the night they sent Casper Owens. That night I... failed you."
"You failed me," Natalie said, eyes gleaming too bright, "when you stalked me every night for months. When you came in through my bedroom window, it wasn't the first time you were on my roof. You'd done that before; you do that almost every night. Sit on my roof. 'Guard' me." Now her eyes were sad. "Oh my God." She blinked and looked away. "God, you're insane. You're actually insane."
"I'm not."
"You're a deluded, insane stalker."
"I'm not."
"Then leave me alone!" she shouted. "Leave us alone! He's my boyfriend."
"He's not right!"
"He's right for me!"
"No!" she hollered, the loudest she'd ever dared to be in front of Natalie—energy shot through her, heels to shoulders, her face buzzing.
But Natalie stood her ground, eyes narrowing as though she saw something she'd missed. "How do you know?"
Enya covered her mouth with one hand. Had yelling displayed her canines? She whispered, "He is fake. He hides his aggression and smells wrong and is not right. Not... right for you." She clenched her eyes shut. "You want this thing. With... with a first kiss, and six months before mating, and a wedding in a church where I cannot go, and fine. Do that. If you don't want to be with one like me, be with Horatio. Just... don't be with Patrick." It made her feel lower than a worm to grovel, but she peered up into her friend's eyes and whispered: "Please."
Rain drummed on them and Natalie's face was still with shock. "What did you say?"
Her pulse quickened.
"You said... if I don't want to be with you."
It had been said too fast and she'd therefore said too much. But she just nodded. "I did."
"Enya. Oh Enya." Everything in her friend's face was gone now except pity, and pity had such a bitter taste. "I'm so sorry, but I'm not—"
"Don't." Enya shook her head.
"I want to be your friend, but I want you as a friend. Not as a competitor who wants to wreck my relationships so she can get a date with a straight girl."
"You want to hold hands with boys in front of me? Fine. Laugh at their jokes, because they're funny and I'm not? Do it. But not that boy."
"But you understand, right?" she asked. "That I'm straight? That we can never work?"
Enya shrugged.
"Tell me you understand."
"I do not."
Her friend's anger flared. "You need a chart or something? It's a Venn diagram of 'women' and 'people I date' that's two circles, never touching."
"Let me tell you what I understand," Enya said. "I won't call you any words—straight, gay—I don't care for them." She edged forward. "I know this." She tapped her nose. "I smell how your body changes when I'm close. It changes even now. I didn't recognize why, because your smell is different—special. But you have desires, and they're stronger when I come close."
"Enya, I don't— And how would you— You can't smell desire, that's crazy."
"I can. Don't lie to me and don't tell me what I can't do." She was close enough now to touch her friend, and the girl had gone rigid like prey. "I can smell the sun in your hair, the rain on your skin. And when I step very close, like this, and when we stare at each other like we are now, your scent changes. I like that change." Now she was near enough their breath spilled together. "It changes now."
Natalie exhaled sharply, lips parting. She shook her head, but so minutely it barely registered. Then she shook it harder, stepping forcefully back. "I'm not gay. Okay? I like boys. I'm going to fall for a guy, I'm going to marry him in the same church as my mom and dad. Denise is going to be my maid of honor and you—you were going to be a bridesmaid. That's how it goes." Her eyes glassed with tears.
Enya frowned and suddenly didn't want to push her, didn't want to so much as nudge her friend for fear she'd crack in half. "I cannot do that with you. But you should do as you wish."
"Leave me alone," Natalie whispered.
"Very well."
"Not just tonight. Leave me alone, Enya. Leave me alone forever. Stay the hell out of my life! Stay away from Patrick. Just... stop ruining my plans, stop ruining everything." Her voice trembled, and though the words stabbed Enya's heart, they must not have penetrated nearly as deep as they had through Natalie, because she wilted before running for the cabin. The door slammed shut behind her.
Standing in cold rain until her skin went as numb as her insides, Enya wandered indoors to lie wet on her bunk. It didn't matter. When she turned her head, she saw Natalie with her back presented, shoulders quaking. She cried until she slept.
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The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews (Part 2).txt
| 29 |
[ The River ]
Dark dreams held Natalie underwater until first light. The soggy chill reminded her she was at camp, the memory of her fight with Enya tightening the knot in her stomach. She rolled over and Enya's bunk was empty. For a brief, terrifying moment, she wondered if the raven-haired girl had actually left her alone—forever—as she'd demanded.
No. Her bag is still there.
So what if she had? After what she said, maybe that would be best. Ignoring the jittery panic, she packed her bathroom things, put on sandals for the long trail to the showers, and hoped to trek it alone. She needed a broody walk.
Except Denise waited for her in the cold, gray wet, leaning on the cabin's outer wall with bathroom gear in hand.
Without a word, Natalie strode up the trail. Without a word, Denise followed.
Halfway there, Denise asked, "So what's this Patrick thing about?"
"I'm not in the mood."
"I heard your blow-up last night. Everyone did."
Natalie winced. "What parts?"
"Not all of it. Just the loud parts. And where Enya yelled that he's not good enough for you. She's right, by the way. Patrick's... shady. He's got some deep-seated anger below the surface."
"I know."
"You know he's sketchy and you're still dating the guy?"
"Yes." Natalie stopped, facing her oldest friend. "You don't think I know? I can tell he buries his anger; squeezes it off when I bring up his mom. He's broken, just a little bit. So is Enya. So are you. We're all a little damaged, so don't talk to me about fake. That's none of Enya's business."
"Okay, okay." Denise started walking again.
She had to jog to catch up, arriving at Denise's hip before she realized she'd spent her anger giving chase and didn't know what else to add. She did that on purpose, Natalie realized.
Denise had on her clever smile, which Natalie hated. "I just didn't think you were doing the boyfriend thing yet. Not so soon after, you know..."
"Horatio?"
Denise snorted. "No. After that striptease you did for Enya the other night."
She guffawed. "Striptease?" Her voice came out sharper than she liked.
"First bad thing you've ever done, and with a girl no less. I was proud."
"I was changing clothes. You change in front of me all the time. It wasn't like that."
"It was so like that, and you know it was. And you know you liked it like that. So no, I don't understand this Patrick thing. It's like you're trying to win back your straight cred. You know you can tell me, right?"
"Tell you what?"
Denise stopped, so she had to as well. Her friend looked Natalie straight in the eyes. "Tell me you're gay."
The words caught in her throat. "Denise." She shook her head. "I'm not gay." She'd built the list of reasons already, but knew if she went through all eleven, Denise would try to shoot them down one by one. "Didn't we both go through that Tom Hiddleston phase together?"
"Not saying you wouldn't fuck Tom Hiddleston. I'm simply saying you'd prefer to fuck his sister."
"Denise!"
"Do you have, like, a physical list of reasons you're not gay, because it'll be faster if you just give me the piece of paper."
Her ears burned. "Of course not."
She raised her hands. "Tell me Enya doesn't turn you on."
"She doesn't."
Denise cracked a smile. "Liar."
It wasn't a lie—there were aspects of Enya she found thrilling, but she just needed to find those aspects in a boy. "Enya and I are through."
"Enya's the kind of girl who—if you tell her to leave you alone forever—she's going to. So I hope you're sure about that."
"I am!"
"...she said, with not a hint of fear in her voice."
"It's not fear, it's anger. Stop telling me how I feel. You don't know."
"How much you want to bet?"
Natalie spun and strode back toward the cabin.
That forced Denise to stop. "Hey. Where you going?"
"What, you don't know? Guess you're not omniscient, Denise. I'm going back!"
"Why?"
"Because it's away from you."
Her friend quieted, which was highly unusual to say the least. Guilt gnawed on Natalie's stomach. What if she'd actually upset her? Pausing, Natalie glanced over her shoulder to check.
Denise stood there with a huge smirk.
She knew I'd look back. Her whole face burned.
Denise winked.
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Enya kept out of sight until they loaded into two vans for their rafting trip. She avoided the one with Natalie in it. During the long drive to the river, it sank in: her time with Natalie had finally ended. Only dealing with Saxby remained.
They arrived at a boat launch and boarded yellow, rubber vessels suitable for whitewater, the plan being to raft downstream, camp overnight, and raft again the next day to a rock-climbing locale.
Natalie joined Patrick in the forward raft; he guided her into the boat, even though it wasn't a challenging step for someone with her superb balance. Enya boarded the second raft with Denise and their group pushed into the brisk current. Rain had fattened the river until it hissed and spat and beat on their vessel.
Jane plunged her oar into the stream, angling them with a white-knuckled grip. "I know this river. You do what I say and no one goes for a swim. Trust me and listen to me, because you don't want to fish our tents and food out of the drink. Copy?"
Everyone else cheered. Enya stared ahead at Natalie's bobbing raft, sensing she was near to never seeing the auburn-haired girl again.
The rapids tossed them around, but Jane kept their raft true. Ahead, Natalie's jarred over rocks, washed down sluices between stacked tablets of stone. Their boat trailed, rarely losing sight of the other. Campers shouted and squealed their delight, and even Enya savored the spray of cold water against her body, its flavor alive on her tongue.
When the river later flattened into a stretch of glossy, unbroken ribbon, Denise scooted closer, whispering, "It's not so bad, you know. It's not you she's really mad at."
"She wants me to leave her alone."
"So you're going to run off again?" Denise asked. "Just like that?"
"I'll protect her until she's safe." Staring grimly ahead, she added, "It won't be long now."
"That's how it is?"
"That is how it was always going to be. And it's what she demanded."
Denise leaned closer. "Let me tell you a horrible secret. I'm planning to kill her."
She twisted on the mortal, eyes wide.
"Oh yeah. It's because she won't come clean about how she feels. So unless she convinces me I'm wrong, I've got diabolical plans to end her life. In a slow, agonizing manner involving a crate of weasels. So with that in mind, I don't think she'll be safe for a while, and you'd better keep a close eye on her."
A smile tickled the corners of Enya's mouth. "Denise?"
"Yeah?"
"I don't desire to kill you."
"Aw. I love you too, weirdo."
Ahead the river narrowed, funneled into churning whitewater that roared louder as they approached, misting over the edge of their boat. Jane shouted orders, tensely focused as they whisked down a steep slope, sank abruptly off waterfalls, and cracked their raft off dense stones with whip-snap force. She'd call for them to paddle or crowd different parts of the boat to manage the impacts.
"These are class-five rapids," Jane announced. "Ahead's the Devil's Drop, so I want you razor sharp. This is dangerous. People have died at the bottom of that waterfall. So do not fall out. We're going to try zagging across the river to miss it, but the best route down's like threading a needle. If we have to flip, crowd right and we'll at least flip away from the waterfall."
Todd steered their craft from the left bank, across the river, and Enya tensed—Natalie leaned out to paddle on the side with the falls.
Their boat turned, swept close to the lip of Devil's Drop, but Todd stabbed his paddle into the water and cut their vessel to the side. It slid onto a sloped rock and bobbed wildly on its way past the waterfall. They'd done it.
"Look out!" Patrick pointed to the right side of the boat. Everyone glanced that way, the passengers in Enya's own boat focused on Jane's commands.
In that moment, Patrick grabbed the strap on the back of Natalie's life jacket. She'd already leaned partway out, facing the river instead of her boyfriend. He heaved her over. She tumbled into the water, disappeared without words or commotion. Gone.
The deva tore off her life vest, straps busting with a loud rip, and dove into the river in the same clean motion. Kicking beneath the rapids into the dark, cold underworld, she heard only the roar of the moving water. Her glasses washed off her face; she ignored it.
Beneath the surface, away from air and light and in the sanctum of crushing water, she surrendered any pretense of humanity. Body flexing along her powerful spine, she kicked both feet together, careening through the water in a frantic search. She couldn't hear Natalie's telltale heartbeat over the thundering of the river, so she dove wildly and wound between the stones, following her into the deep.
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Natalie's world flipped end over end. Water pushed into her nose and ears, grabbed hold of her whole body, wrestled her into the dark. It was strong—stronger than anything that had ever held her; she belonged to it, and it was trying to kill her.
The current sucked her down and squeezed her head. The river pushed its thumbs into her eardrums until she wanted to scream in pain. It ignored the buoyancy of her life vest and held her there, pinned her to a cold, dark blue space and somehow the river bit her ankle—her whole foot was wedged in the lip of a heavy tablet of underwater rock.
I'm going to die here.
It pounded at her chest, as if beating at the doors to her lungs, demanding the last sliver of precious oxygen locked beneath her ribcage. She jerked on her pinned foot with all her might, and when that failed, fought to undo the waterlogged laces. No good. She'd double-knotted them, a habit from running, and her fingers were numb and trembling.
A wild thought to cut off her foot shot through her brain. No knife, she realized.
Her lungs burned. She focused on calm. On surviving, on having faced worse things than rocks and rivers. She fought the wet strands of her laces again, and when the knot finally released, hope sprang to life—but even untied, her foot wouldn't budge. The river had her, and it wasn't going to let her go.
Hope died.
She bit her own mouth, hard, to fight the reflex to inhale. She clung to her last breath, but the oxygen burned down lower and lower, a sputtering candle flame on the last of its wick.
Her vision darkened. Bright spots popped off behind her eyelids. An ache blossomed like a hand grenade in her skull, her mind shuddering off and then on, as if she'd drowsed, and adrenaline kick-started her brain in time to watch the trail of silver bubbles escape her mouth and rise through the murk. Now her chest felt concave, and the urgent need to inhale grew.
The escaping bubbles distorted around a shadow. A thing descended toward her—a thing from her nightmares. It rode on draperies of fine darkness and its pale face was the only thing on it with form. Death. Death is real, and it's here now. It had eyes that were at once beautiful and terrifying, something Natalie had only felt staring into lightning storms.
Yet Death had an oddly serene, oddly familiar face. Not Death. Enya.
She'd followed Natalie down into the frigid, lightless void and ignited it with the strangeness in her eyes. Not that it would help, with Natalie's foot wedged in the crevice.
No time. She tugged her knee again, but there was no give.
No time.
Natalie's eyes shut and her mouth opened. Reflex kicked through her willpower and she inhaled, her whole body expanding to fill the painful vacuum in her chest with water.
Instead, precious air surged into her throat and sweet oxygen flooded her lungs. Natalie's eyes shot open. Enya's hand clutched the back of her head. Natalie felt her lips on hers, fused. She drank the air greedily from Enya's mouth.
The raven-haired girl floated a few inches away and again Natalie saw her eyes. The irises burned bluer than stained glass backlit by the sun. They produced their own light, eerily illuminating the water. But where a human's eyes would have been white, hers were matte black. Nothing on Earth should have eyes like that. And it confused Natalie, because she hardly recognized Enya—it was a small part of her face, but utterly changed the meaning of every other line, and so it was the first time Natalie had really seen her.
She tried to push her away, but not from fear. Enya had just fed her the air in her lungs. They might both drown if her friend didn't surface now.
Enya's hand stroked the side of her face. Soundless, the girl's mien was placid, unconcerned. It was her calm that stopped Natalie's struggling. She drifted lower, to the pinned ankle, and stretched one hand back, striking the stone tablet with four stiffened fingers. A crack of thunder. A tremor hummed all the way up Natalie's leg to her hip. The world split, it must have, judging by the sound ringing in her ears. Then, the strange girl rolled away an engine block–sized stone with one arm.
Again, the oxygen in Natalie's lungs was spent. Again, her vision darkened. Enya took her chin in hand, leaned in, and briefly their eyes met. Had the water paralyzed her, or had something else made her timid? Their lips touched a second time. Natalie's eyes widened as air once again filled her. She only stole half a breath, likely all her friend had to give—every last whisper passed from Enya to her.
And yet Enya didn't die or pass out, didn't slow. With unflagging strength, she tugged Natalie close and powered through the vicious current, carrying her, dragging her inexorably to the surface world. A ceiling of glassy water jumped closer with each of the girl's kicks. They broke through.
She collapsed onto a rock slab, Enya beside her. Coughing, sucking in gulp after gulp of air, she hacked out mucus that dangled from her lip in a slimy strand and inhaled again. Blackness at the edges of her vision receded. The oxygen starvation left needle-prick burns in her face, ears, and lips. "God. Enya. What are you?"
Enya settled onto the other side of the slab. Her shoulders rose and fell, no more winded than if she'd been jogging, instead of battling the river without a drop of air in her lungs. Her head bowed. She wrapped her arms around her knees and made no response.
All the pieces settled into place: the men she had hospitalized or killed; the way she'd faded into shadow; her vicious speed, unearthly grace, and strength enough to overturn great stones. Her eyes. Oh my God, her eyes. They burned in her mind, a fire that wouldn't go out, and she couldn't tell if her limbs shook from the near drowning or from the creature who'd saved her.
Creature. Because Enya wasn't a person. She was something else.
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[ Eye to Eye ]
Natalie sank to her knees atop the stone slab and lowered her terrified gaze. When the edge of her vision caught Enya, a jolt ran through her, as though her entire wet body were an exposed nerve, and she snapped her eyes back down. A hundred thoughts collided, locked up, and she didn't know what to do: run, hide? Some errant part of her thought to bow.
Yet when she at last dared to look, Enya faced away with arms folded around her shins and forehead to her knees. She didn't seem dangerous that way; she seemed small, alone.
They must have stayed that way twenty minutes. It was Jane lurching from the brush, stumbling upon them, that woke Natalie from her mental paralysis. The counselor appeared to count them over and over, confirming both were there. "The hell was that?" she asked Enya. "Your life vest!" She stabbed a finger at the river, as if accusing the monster and river of conspiring. "What. The. Hell!"
Shifting, Enya only presented her back to Jane. It deepened the counselor's rage.
"Stop it." The words sprang from Natalie unbidden, and she said the next words as much for herself as Jane: "She saved my life."
"What?"
"I almost drowned. She dove in after me, and I'd be dead if she hadn't. Don't yell at her. We're both freaked out enough."
"All right." Jane seemed to be collecting herself. "All right, but you fell in; she dove. Let's not do that again."
Fell. Had she? Frowning in thought, she tried to remember how it had happened. It hadn't felt like a fall. But the only person next to her had been Patrick.
Denise hit the slab a moment later, rocketing directly into Natalie so hard she almost knocked them both into the river. She tightened her long arms around her friend, whispering "Thank God" over and over. Elli appeared from the brush as well, but instead of hugging, she stood back and sobbed uncontrollably.
When the hugging and crying had started to work itself out, Jane said, "Come on. The others are downstream, worried sick. They'll want to know you're all right." When she reached for Enya, the creature scooted away.
Enya's eyes were shut, head still bowed. She's hiding her face. Remembering those unnatural eyes that marked her as a predator, she realized Enya had lost her glasses. She sat next to the girl, swallowing, body buzzing harder the closer she got. "You don't want to show your eyes?"
Enya nodded.
"Wear a blindfold." Her mouth was weirdly dry. "We'll tell them the light hurts your eyes without your glasses. We'll guide you."
"You would do that?"
Heart in her throat, she nodded.
Enya produced a dark strip of cloth seemingly from nowhere, putting it on.
When Natalie stood, she offered her hand by reflex before her brain could remind her: Don't touch. Danger.
At the contact of the raven-haired girl's palm, she shivered reflexively as another jolt leapt up her elbow. The strange energy that entered her seemed to pour hot oil into her heart, making it pound faster. Shooting back a step, she severed the connection. What was that? It summoned a vivid mental image of Enya's mouth pressed to hers underwater, one that left her lips tingling. A terrible thought worked through her: That's why I can't forget her. Why she sticks to my senses for hours after she's gone; why she haunts my dreams, both good and bad; and why my skin remembers her when she comes closer. It's some kind of... spell.
That dreadful thought seized hold. She was helpless before the power of this spell, but it put all these past months' confusion into sharp relief. Denise had been right—she'd poured her attention into Horatio and Patrick, trying to find in them the things Enya had unleashed with her clever magic.
Staring at the slight, dangerous creature before her, Natalie tried to hate her.
She couldn't. That was how deep the magic had rooted.
Denise stepped in to guide Enya by the elbow. Natalie trailed, but for the entire walk her head swam with sensations. The air was delicious, and every current of wind exploded her senses. Colors had brightened, refined, and she could distinguish minute shades that changed the foliage from a swaddle of green to something infinitely more nuanced and beautiful. Her brain absorbed details until she felt dizzy.
At first she wondered if it might have been caused by nearly drowning in the river—but no, this was more than sensory overload. The air tasted alive. She could distinguish smells she'd never known before—that Elli was on her period, that Jane carried enough of Todd's scent that she could tell they were an item.
Her thoughts warred: though Enya had saved her, she'd also done this to her; changed her senses, how she felt, and against that spell she was defenseless. If Enya could do all that, what else was she capable of?
Downstream, the rafts were dragged to an embankment and Todd had corralled everyone around untouched lunches. Relief overtook all their faces at the sight of them—everyone except Patrick, who sat on a cooler with guys on either side of him. He registered only surprise, and maybe guilt.
Natalie could feel from ten feet away Enya's skin tightening, hear the low-frequency growl purr from her throat and gradually swell into the range audible to humans. Slipping close, she set her hand to Enya's damp shoulder, sensing that coiled-spring body beneath her fingertips. "Please don't," she whispered. If he threw me into the river on purpose, she might hurt him. Or worse. She didn't want this creature to murder Patrick on her behalf.
Enya wore her intensity like a cloak. Simply in touching her, Natalie became somehow aware of her friend's body, of its shape beneath wet cloth—from powerful heartbeat to the soft contours of her skin, an intimate knowledge that burned her ears. Jerking her fingers away, she was scalded by the swell of desire it produced.
Hovering there, the raven-haired girl danced on the balls of her feet with the energy of a lightning bolt with nowhere to go. She stormed across the beach with Denise at her heels, the blindfold not seeming to hinder her one bit.
It took a while to explain what had happened to everyone's satisfaction: to describe Enya's rescue while editing out the supernatural parts—and also how their mouths had touched. She echoed assurances that she was all right again and again, more frustrated each time, because all she really wanted was to puzzle out this otherworldly girl who had bespelled her.
Jane finally ended the explanations by asking if Natalie wanted to leave. "We have a radio. We can hike up to the road."
"No," she said automatically. Though terrified of what Enya was doing to her, she couldn't risk letting her disappear again—maybe this time forever. Maybe I'd get my regular feelings back. But did she even want to? Some dark part of her liked being in its thrall.
"You're sure?" Perhaps Jane sensed her uncertainty.
Looking to the distant log where Enya sat alone, she nodded. "I want to keep going."
The crowd clung to Natalie, trying to drag her into more detail about her brush with death, but anyone who spoke to Enya ran into a stone wall of silence and eventually gave up. Patrick stayed on his cooler, nodding wanly when a boy muttered, "God, that was lucky."
But when she next looked to the log, Enya was gone. Edging from the crowd and making excuses all the way to the trees, Natalie slipped into the forest. No, she's not gone. She could feel Enya, taste her in the air, and she peeled through brush until she found the girl gliding between trunks—angling for Patrick's position. No blindfold. The sight stilled her, because she'd come upon a predator in the woods, and her heart crushed against her ribcage. She managed to ask, "Wh-what are you doing?"
Enya crouched on a splintered stump, head bowed to hide her searing gaze. "What I'm best at," she whispered, and Natalie was seeing her for the first time—seeing the animal in her stance, her voice. "Hunting."
"Please don't hurt him," she whispered. Bowing in turn, hoping supplication would win her over, she said, "I don't want you to kill because of me. And... I want to know why he did it."
She loosed a low, clicking growl. "I hunt other monsters. This is my way."
"Please. Is it because you think he'll hurt me?" She risked a glance.
Enya nodded, thankfully keeping her gaze low.
Taking a breath, she tried to bargain with the monster who was her friend: "If I rescind my... request... that you leave me alone... if I ask you to watch over me instead, will you agree not to hurt him?"
"Do you know what promises are to me?"
"I'm beginning to understand." She lowered her head again, aware she was bargaining with something far different from the shy creature she'd befriended. "The truth is, I don't want you to go," she confessed.
"Why?" When Enya lifted her gaze, the sight forced Natalie back into the crux of two slender maples. "You know what I am."
"A demon. Or an angel. Or something stranger. I don't know, but I don't want you to disappear again, and I don't want you to hunt Patrick." She at last looked up, eyes pleading.
With a solemn slowness, Enya crossed one finger over her heart, as she had several times before; except now Natalie felt the gesture's gravity. "I vow to protect you until you're safe from him. And I will not harm him—unless he first tries to harm you. Then he is mine."
It would have to be enough, because Jane was calling the campers back to their rafts. With a quick aside, Natalie convinced the counselor to swap her onto Enya's, mostly to avoid Patrick. She paddled one seat ahead of Enya and, in spite of the blindfold, could feel how the monster's attention fixed on her. It marched a prickly sensation up the ridge of her spine, the fine hairs on her neck abuzz. Her heart came alive at the crisp spray of water against her face. Sophisticated river smells danced through her forebrain, and Natalie marveled at the subtle difference between sweetly oxygenated surface water and the moldering fragrance of the nutrient-rich depths.
Enya's attention had a texture to it, the sensation reminding her of the dressing room, where nearness had caused Enya's teasing breath to tickle her hot skin; or how it had felt to dance with her for hours, reveling in their two bodies' intimate knowledge of each other without ever touching; or how safe she'd felt falling asleep on her bed while Enya perched stalwart above her.
That last memory lingered, and Natalie had never been sure if the dream of soft fingers brushing her hair while she dozed had been real or imagined—because oh, she'd had so many dreams. Some unintelligible with terror, dark shadows in Enya's shape prowling through parking garages or the corners of her house. Some not just frightening, but thrilling, the shadows wrestling her into dark, sweet-smelling places, tangling around her like bedsheets, tightening—but not too tight—capturing her and holding her exquisitely still. How often had she dreamt that and thrashed in anticipation of forming shadows whose soft breath brushed her body? How often had she woken in a state of half panic, half arousal?
Natalie had to shake off the redolent memories, as they'd joined with her sensitized skin and the rocking of the raft, leaving her acutely aware of how near Enya was behind her. It changed something in the air—her own scent, she realized. The monster was right about her scent, and her cheeks burned with shame. She couldn't look up from the paddle or water for the remainder of the trip. From the beginning, Natalie thought. Enya had worked this dark magic on her from the very beginning.
By the time they arrived at their campsite and had dinner, all Natalie wanted to do was get the monster alone and pry out why—why her, to what ends, and would it ever end? At least, she hoped that was all she wanted.
The sky darkened over their grassy embankment above the shore, where everyone erected two-person tents—boys on one side, girls the other, and a shared firepit between. Enya took a tent away from the group, placing it among the network of roots and beneath the crowning of an oak's mossy branches. In spite of the blindfold, she found a gap in the roots and felt out locations for spikes with her fingers, sureness in every motion.
Natalie approached, hands clasped behind her. "Can I help?" She knelt, finding Enya's blindfold hid those impossible eyes and she could get near; even reach for the hammer.
Enya jerked away. "I can do it."
"It's our tent," she decided then and there, pulse racing. "I'll help."
"...our tent?"
"I was with Denise, but she can bunk with Elli. So I'll be with you."
Enya fidgeted with the hammer until Natalie plucked it from her hand.
She started to tap the spikes in place. "I don't bite."
"What if I do?" the monster asked.
That pulled from Natalie something between a shiver and wiggle, between fear and... want. She cleared her throat. "I'll have to take my chances," she said properly. More quietly, she added, "I mostly need to talk. About... what you're doing to me. I'd like it if you'd stop." God, it sounds like I'm asking a favor. "Please."
"Stop what?" Enya threaded poles into the nylon of the tent; it rose, taking shape.
"Whatever this magic is." She sighed. "I admit, it feels... kind of good. But it's scaring me. Like I'm losing control. And it's not who I am."
Enya's eyebrows pinched together in bafflement.
"I understand you're maybe not doing it on purpose. If you are, I'm flattered, sort of." Natalie felt weak dancing around it, so she squared her shoulders and started over. "I'm not stupid. I see and smell and taste all kinds of things since you... put your mouth on mine. I know what I'm feeling isn't normal."
Now her friend nodded. "Yes. That. I'm sorry. When we touched, when you shared my breath, some of my power went into you. My power is chaotic. The effects fade."
"Good." But her heart dropped a little. "All of it, though, right? Including the stuff from before we touched?"
"Before?"
She nodded. "Yes. Like how you made me feel when we danced. Or in the dressing room, or..."
"We shared no breath."
"You don't have to lie. I won't be mad, I promise. I just want to go back to normal."
Enya crossed her heart. "I vow that I'm speaking truth. I didn't make you do any of that; I can feel when my power goes into a mortal, from any distance, and the river was the first time it touched you."
"Then how did—"
A shy smile appeared on Enya's face, showing the tip of a sharp canine. "What did you feel?"
"That's— That's none of your business!"
"As you wish." Enya's smile vanished.
Natalie glanced sharply down to tap in the final spike with fumbling, nervous hands.
Unzipping the tent, Enya took her sleeping bag under an arm. "If you feel wrong things around me, perhaps you should sleep elsewhere. I didn't make you feel them; I can't stop you from feeling them again." She slunk into the dark tent.
Natalie stared into the shadows between those flaps, eyes not adjusted enough but still sensing her friend in the inky shadows, as she had in so many dreams and nightmares. Something otherworldly is in there. Only a fool would go in. "You don't actually bite, do you?"
Her voice slid from the shadows: "I won't harm you."
That wasn't a no. She had a vague memory of a long-ago conversation they'd had waiting for a train. "Didn't you once say you'd never bite someone you liked?"
"I've never liked someone like I do you."
The words shouldn't have made her want to go into the tent—but they did. Natalie inched into the lion's den and settled her bag, acutely aware she was near enough a monster to feel her movements stir the air. The creature was still, save for her breathing, and when it whispered against Natalie's forearm her skin tightened and she shuddered. "This is going to sound stupid, but just... can you talk? So I know where you are."
A click and Enya had turned on a flashlight, aiming it upward so that she stayed shadowed, but outlined.
"Oh. That's a better idea." She laughed nervously and noted the tent seemed more suited for one-and-a-half people than two. Her bedroll mashed into Enya's once unfurled.
Everything felt close together and the nylon gave the illusion of privacy. The tent felt like its own tiny universe, but indistinct conversations floated from the campsite and with the flashlight on, their shadows might be visible to anyone with a mind to look. It was a reminder they weren't quite alone, though it wasn't enough to curb Natalie's reckless pulse.
Enya's attention was fixed on her in spite of the blindfold. She slid her flashlight into a nylon sleeve hanging above their bedrolls so that it worked somewhat like a lamp, beam facing upward so they could huddle beneath. Natalie settled into her bedroll, facing the girl, and dusty-pale moths beat their wings against the flashlight's lens. Ignoring the black blindfold, she stared a while at Enya's soft mouth and the way her glossy raven's-feather hair rested on her soft cheek, or how her ear cutely peeped from beneath the mane. Those features reminded her: I still know this girl. Whatever else she is, I know her, and she's my friend.
When she'd stared long enough, built her confidence, she whispered: "Are you really a monster?"
A nod. "I am."
Natalie swallowed. "You kill for pleasure?"
"I kill because I'm a killer. I do take pleasure in it."
"I don't understand. That's not an answer. That's tautology."
"Yes. Humans are born and they change; the wind blows and they are moved. I'm none of these things. I am... uncaused."
She managed to joke: "Still arrogant, I see." Bracing herself, she went on. "What do you kill? Who?"
"Monsters."
"You are one, and you hunt them? I guess I should ask: what do you mean by 'monster'?"
"The things civilization abhors. Men who steal life and sanctity: rapers, murderers, torturers."
"Why are you a monster? Do you... suck blood? Turn into a wolf?"
Enya's brow furrowed. "I've never turned into a wolf." She said it in a way that suggested maybe she could, but hadn't gotten around to it. "And I don't suck the blood."
"You— You consume it, though, for sustenance?"
"I told you I hunt. A hunter eats what she kills."
"Would you want to consume mine?"
Enya propped herself up on an elbow. "No." She shook her head. "Why would you—"
"It's what vampires do. They want to drink the girl's blood."
"Vampires." She frowned, leaning closer. "I don't know that word, but if something drank your blood, I would get it back for you."
Oh. I guess that's... thoughtful. "So that means you probably can't be killed with crosses, silver, or a stake through the heart?"
"Why do you want to know how to kill me?"
"Those are always the two questions, right? 'What do you want' and 'How do the villagers beat you at the end?' "
"They don't. I cannot be killed and I have no end."
"Oh." She blinked. "Like, at all?"
"If my body were destroyed, I would be reborn. I'm too old to die for long."
The thing across from her was undying; immortal. Natalie looked upon something that rewrote the world from beginning to end, that tore apart all her textbooks and reordered the pages with addenda inked in arcane runes. Her jaw worked until she could get the question out: "How old are you?"
"My years cannot be numbered."
"Can you ballpark it for me?"
Rather than summon a number, Enya thought a while. "It's difficult. The new religions split the old world apart, and time passed differently in the Long Ago. When time sundered, some worlds fell away and others merged. I lived through eras that were erased from time. Others who lived in the Long Ago remember it differently than I do, because they were part of different worlds. Your history books before a certain point are gibberish to me. There is order to history now, which didn't exist when I first inhabited the Earth. So the years I've lived cannot be counted."
"But... older than twenty."
"Older than twenty."
I am in so much trouble. "Are you a demon?"
"Our kind have many names. We use 'deva' most often."
"There are more like you? Other monsters?"
She shook her head. "Few monsters remain. When the old world fell away, the deva who were too chaotic to pass as mortals were deemed monsters and banished from all the cities and nations of the realm. Deva who could pass for mortal became gods and blended in; most older monsters left Earth or fell asleep."
"That's it?" Natalie asked, shaking her head. "Your eyes glow and that makes you a monster? And otherwise you'd be a god?"
"I'm a monster and my eyes glow because my power is chaotic. I can only live in these lands because your people invited me. My banishment subjects me to your laws. If not for that curse, yes, I'd be a goddess."
A picture had started to form, of not so much a monster, but a wild creature standing in the light for the first time. "If you added up all the centuries you've lived, it would be more centuries than I've had years. But if you added together all the conversations you ever had with human beings before coming here, and put them in a book, how big would that book be?"
"You could read it in a day."
"Oh." This creature was older than time, had power enough to never die, and yet she'd had to teach her the difference between pleats and frills. When she'd fed Enya hot chocolate, it actually had been her very first taste. I took a deity on a double date and—oh—I tried to make her wear heels.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Enya asked.
"Nothing." She'd been wondering if Enya had ever kissed someone. "I don't know whether to be in awe of you or..." Attracted.
Some moments weighed more than a mountain. Often, they were the quietest ones. Staring now into the face of a divinity, much of Natalie's world mattered less. Her life's plan? How loving a girl could alter how everyone saw her? Those things were dust. They were nothing when scaled against this thing, who had moved through all the pages of history and now offered her friendship. And more, Natalie knew.
"You never put a spell on me?" she asked cautiously.
"Never."
"I can trust my feelings?"
"They're your own." The deva fidgeted and, in that moment, didn't remotely look the part of an immortal or blood-hungry monster. She was an anxious teenager who, like Natalie, had never been kissed.
It was as though all those ages in total isolation had frozen the raven-haired creature in a kind of adolescence, the sweet insecurity of the goddess reining her down to earth where Natalie could touch her—wanted to touch her, and treat her with care. You think you're a monster, but maybe you just haven't been made to feel human yet. Can gods stay cold when they live among us? Shimmying closer until their breath mingled, she stroked the smooth ribbon over her friend's eyes.
Enya tensed, prepared to dart away.
"Shh. Let me."
"You'll be afraid," she whispered.
"Then let me be. Let me see all of you and not just the pieces you feel safe showing me. I'll try to understand."
"I don't want to be your nightmare again."
"They weren't all nightmares," she said, tugging the cloth free.
Enya opened her eyes.
They were eyes on fire—a fire that consumed fire. The black scleras had gravitational pull and if Natalie had to identify the kind of fear she felt, it would be the fear of falling; a sense those scleras were the new "down" and if she was careless, she'd tumble into them. Heart thundering in her ears, her urge was to flee for the safety of the firepit.
The deva closed her eyes. "You see now?"
A thrill swam through her on being released, but the memory of that cold light lingered, afterimages appearing when she blinked. "Not enough."
"You've seen more than enough."
Determined, she set her gaze on Enya. "I want to see it all. Your eyes and your teeth."
"You'll run. It's instinct, burned into your species from the time I first hunted your kind."
Swallowing, Natalie inched closer, almost to the point of touching. "Then hold me still."
The monster frowned.
"I know you won't hurt me. Hold me still and let me see." A mad request—but she had to withstand it, to get beyond the instinct to the other side, because it was the only way she could know Enya. "If it's too much, I'll tell you."
"You promise?"
Showing more certainty than she felt, Natalie nodded. "I do."
Tentatively, Enya wrapped one hand around her bicep, the other awkwardly at her mid-back, Natalie's body electrified by the sensation of her friend pressed close. "Are you prepared?" asked the monster.
"Do it. Just hold on tight."
Again those eyes lit her with bright, singing fear. Her breath caught and a plea died in her throat. True to Enya's word, she tried to fight from her grip, to flee. She writhed, and the monster rolled abruptly atop her, pinned her—those eyes boring down into her.
The pinning changed everything. Her panic joined with a sensitive stiffening of her fine hairs. She found Enya's gaze somehow predatory and alluring at once, realizing the flames subtly brightened and faded as though Enya's breathing were a bellows. Her terror and attraction weren't in tension, they didn't seesaw—they both rose together, the desire to run and to touch raging through her at once, until she didn't want to be released for fear she'd get away.
"I smell your fear."
"What else do you smell?"
They both knew. The fire and shadow in her eyes and the flashing ivory of her canines painted a portrait of something equally divine and savage.
"You really are both," Natalie managed to say. "Goddess and monster." She lifted her face nearer to the one holding her still.
Enya jerked her head back. "What are you—"
"Come closer. It's okay."
She didn't at first. "Mortals don't do this. They flee. If I let go of you, so would you."
Heart in a vise, Natalie lifted one hand and carefully—oh so carefully—stroked Enya's cheek. "Then don't let go."
She drew Enya closer, unsure if the magnetism was drawing the deva in or trying to push them apart, but when their mouths were close she felt the electric space between—and in the end, that last finger-width of distance only disappeared when Natalie leaned up to erase it.
Her first kiss.
Sort of.
It was hard to know what it felt like, because outside the riot of her pulse, the shaking in her hands, that was her only thought: My first kiss, sort of, not counting the river. That might have been all there was if it hadn't lingered, the sweet press of her friend's mouth quieting the noise in her head. When the deva pushed down into her, a happy growl whirring from her throat, the tension released from Natalie's body and she melted until it was hard to think of anything but the sensation.
It was Enya who pulled away, panting, and true to form the radiant brightening and dimming of her eyes kept time with her lungs.
Not letting her get away, Natalie's fists clutched the girl's shirt at both shoulders, dragging her into a second, less chaste kiss: somewhere in the heat of it, they rolled to their sides, knees entangling and Enya's trembling fingers raking through her hair.
Natalie only broke for air when she'd let out a needful sound that might have carried to another tent, surprised enough at her own voice that she blushed.
And for a few precious moments after the kiss, she could stare into those eyes without anything holding her down. She came in close, brushing against Enya's cool nose, warm lips, and confessed: "There is a chance... a small one... that I may be slightly less straight than I thought."
"I still don't care for your words," and she closed her eyes before they could chase Natalie away.
They lounged that way a while, breathing and grasping, and when they kissed one more time, Natalie ran her tongue against those sharp canines to prove it was as strange as it all felt. And it was.
Not slaked, but tired from their day and perhaps too afraid of what it all meant, they both went still and listened to the chirping of frogs and indistinct chatter from the campsite. Natalie savored the pads of her friend's fingertips stroking her face.
When Enya yawned, it displayed her pointed canines like a cat's, but the contentedness of the yawn dissipated and the deva was aghast. "What did I just do?"
"That's a yawn." And it's adorable.
"It felt like my spirit stretching out of my throat."
"You've never yawned before?"
She shook her head.
Natalie grinned. "Looks like when we, um... 'share breath,' it does more than crank my senses to eleven. Maybe it's a two-way street. Is my sleepiness rubbing off on you?"
She stifled the next yawn. "It feels like the new moon. Strange." Her face nuzzled into Natalie's shoulder, voice muffled: "It feels right, though."
Stroking her hair, she had to admit it did. "You don't sleep?"
"Not like you. Not with dreams. What if I dream?"
"I'll be nearby." She relaxed into her pillow, appreciating Enya's warmth and the fact she didn't push for words to define what they shared. Were they still friends? More? Natalie had no clue, but there was a rightness to this moment.
For a stretch, they were silent and she drifted, asking a question that floated through her foggy mind. "What's your coolest superpower?"
Enya murmured something that tickled her ear with breath. It sounded like, "...out here, away from concrete... the weather obeys my heart..."
"Clear skies from now on, you think?"
"Probably not."
Folded into each other, they drifted off, and in their dreams Natalie sprinted through a strange vertical forest of sharp stone and birdsong. It smelled of clean rock, wind, and wet roots. Enya sprinted beside her. In the wilds of their dreamscape, though, the monster's unearthly eyes were at home.
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The dream bent distances, distorting Enya's knowledge of every stone in the Fortress of Needles, but it was still wonderful—made so by Natalie, who kept up, and together they tasted the same clean air.
Enya stopped to scent. Something was wrong.
Natalie bolted past her, laughing. The dream defied logic by simply placing the auburn-haired teenager beside Enya again when she asked, "What's wrong?"
"You're in danger."
"It's a dream, weirdo. I think it's safe."
"It's not."
Enya caught the knife and her eyes snapped open in the tent. Natalie startled awake beside her.
The razor tip of Patrick's steel pocket knife trembled an inch from Natalie's throat, held back from her pulsing carotid by Enya's hand.
The blond male threw all his weight into the knife, but Enya dragged the point until it hovered above her instead. Glancing angrily at Natalie, she growled, "I only promised to spare him until he attacked."
There was fear in Natalie's eyes, and Enya couldn't tell who for. "Please don't kill him."
That left her some latitude.
"What the hell," Patrick snarled, but when he caught a look at Enya's eyes, his face drained of color.
Snapping the steel blade off his knife, she flicked to her feet and planted her shoulder into his middle, tossing him flailing through a hole he'd slit in their tent. He fought for balance even as she strode after.
"You think you can stop me?" he shouted.
"Yes." Enya tossed him to the dirt, straddled his chest, and bludgeoned his face. Soon, other campers were unzipping tents and spilling out. Enya took her time to disguise how fast she could be, which left her with an audience.
"Enya!" Jane screamed. "Enya, stop it, what are you doing!"
"Fixing his face." It had started to look about right. "Almost done." She gave it two more shots, releasing him so he flopped limp with drool and blood pooling from his shattered mouth.
With her gaze down to hide her eyes, she sensed how Jane darted forward. Natalie called out, "Patrick tried to kill me. But Enya, stop it—you're going too far." The quaver in her voice stopped Enya and Jane alike, the crowd paralyzed at what was unfolding.
"He's not done yet." Enya seized Patrick's arm, pushing him facedown and dragging the wrist into the air behind him. "Confession—" She twisted the bones into an alarming contortion. "—it's good for your soul."
"Enya!" Natalie shouted.
"You work for Saxby." Enya leaned down to hiss it in his ear. "No, don't look at them. They can't help you anymore. You're mine, little snake." She applied torque until he whimpered. "Tell me where your master is."
"What are you talking about?" Natalie asked. "Are you crazy? Enya, you're hurting him."
"Shut up," Patrick snarled. He lanced Natalie with a baleful glare. "Stop pretending. Stop pretending you care! Let your pet demon loose—you know it's what you really want!"
Natalie stared, mouth falling open at the change in Patrick's voice, at the mask of hatred covering his face.
"You're exactly like your father," he spat. "Pretend to care. Preen for the cameras. But I know your kind for what you are. Fucking vermin. You eat this country from the inside."
Natalie was porcelain, unmoving.
"It started with your mother, didn't it? Is she the one who thinks gangsters should go free? Who thinks we should just sprinkle more guns on top of the problem? When you anarchists bribe your way to victory, you fucking mug for the cameras and call them 'gun rights' and 'rights of the accused,' and never mind the bodies you never had to bury!"
"You're one of them," Natalie whispered. "Those people. That website. You're one of them."
He laughed, a deranged cackle that shook him. "You got my message?" he asked in a broken voice. "I wanted to see your face. Watch it go still when you die." He looked up at her. "And I want to see your dad's eyes when he hears how it happened. I want it to change him forever, the way he changed me!"
"He's been twisted by another." Enya dropped him to the ground, setting her heel to his spine to pin him. She no longer wanted to kill him. He'd been bent this way by Ghorm before she'd ended the asura.
"Fuck you!" Red spittle flew from his gums. "You're all anarchists! Move back to that broken slab of concrete you call a country and leave us alone!"
"Why are the pretty ones always crazy?" Elli whispered.
Patrick lurched toward Elli, and Enya shoved him facedown again with her foot. Jane apparently had had enough, binding his wrists with clothesline. "Everyone form up. Todd, get on the radio. We need the police."
Something disturbed the air above them and Enya placed her palm square to Natalie's chest, throwing her effortlessly across the campsite, collapsing her into a tent.
Saxby's terrible claws dropped from the heavens and thundered into Enya, knocking her senseless.
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[ Who Owns the Skies ]
Saxby clutched Enya in his draconic claws and pumped his wings. They sailed higher and Natalie shrank into a toy person, swallowed by the ocean of trees that spun below. A steel-fibered kanaf protected Enya from the hundreds of stingers lining his grip, each one trying to drill an envenomed barb into her skin.
Enya thrashed.
"Tut tut, little monster," rumbled the wyrm above her, a grin peeling across his scaly lips. "Any moment, I'll nick that smooth flesh and you'll be gone. I daresay my latest venom would follow you into your next life."
She inhaled, expanding her chest to strain his claws, flexing her shoulders with all her strength—then exhaled sharply. In that instant, using the smallest gap, she snaked one arm loose. With a snap, her claws cracked through him and she dropped through the air alongside the spinning remnants of his toes. She sharpened into a needle-point dive.
Wheeling, he screeched and bent his wings tight to his flanks, both of them plummeting for the same rapidly approaching, stony patch of earth. The wind sang through her ears as the stones swelled larger.
They struck the ground a split second apart, she on hands and feet like a cat. She rolled, and his claws cratered the spot she'd left behind. They were beside the riverbank and he was the size of a house now. Before he'd settled, she twirled and chopped off his barbed tail, the stump spurting blood.
"You smell like her," he snarled. "I didn't take you for a collector of pets. I wonder how long she'll live when I swallow her alive." He leapt for the air, wings flaring.
"No," Enya roared. "These skies are not yours!" She reached out to the forest on both sides of her, eyes shut and spirit touching the air, feeling it tremble in anticipation—it was wind too long untapped by gods, too long abandoned to natural forces and allowed to twirl and rage inside a glass bottle. Enya uncorked the bottle, lifted both hands, and poured it on Saxby.
The trees swayed and groaned, and then bowed. In the maddening whirl, Saxby's wings folded in an awkward direction and he sank to the other side of the river with a dull thud.
Already, he'd regrown his severed tail. Glaring across the river, his reflection was distorted when the water rippled into streaky waves from the gales. "No matter. To save your girl, you still have to get past me. Ghorm twisted that mortal boy so tight he's a killing spring. The boy told me he wanted to kill your pet with a machete. I told him: splendid. He's doing it now. This very moment."
Fury tinged her vision red.
"How many seconds does she have left?"
He was goading her, trying to get her to behave rashly. She didn't care. I'll murder him as rashly as I please. But no sooner had she started forward than he blew oily fire across the river and lit its surface aflame.
He laughed at her. "Tick tock, monster. Tick tock."
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Natalie struggled out of the nylon canopy Enya had tossed her into, standing and orienting herself, but seeing Enya nowhere. She'd been thrown clear, everyone else spread across the ground, confused. A strange wind seemed to have blown through.
Wait. Where's Patrick?
By starlight, she saw his figure advancing with a duffel bag in hand, shucking off the last of the clothesline bindings. He tossed the bag off a length of metal that glinted in the moonlight. "You're vermin, Natalie," he called out with an unhinged lilt. "An invasive species. Brought here by your mother. Your kind infest the halls of our institutions and chew them up from the inside."
Mind swimming, she crept back a step to see if he noticed her—he did, and veered her way. Pivoting, she fled, feet carrying her swiftly even as she heard him barreling after. He's faster than me. She knew from playing games with him all week. He was laughing and gaining. He knows it too.
She sprinted into the edge of the wood, spun to face him—his black size swelled and he swung. But she'd danced between trees and the machete sunk into an elm. He struggled to pry it free.
"Listen to me," she insisted. "I'm your friend. You opened up to me, told me things. I know that was real."
"Of course it was real," he snapped. "I wanted you to know why I'm killing you." He wrenched the blade free, stalking forward as she retreated pace for pace.
The weather changed. Winds shifted and the cold prickled her skin.
"I've always wondered." He crept after her. "They wouldn't execute my mother's murderers. 'Cruel and unusual!' Courts all belong to vermin now. Do you think your father will ask them to give me the death penalty? I can't tell what'd be sweeter: him groveling for the judge to give it to me; or watching him give another fucking speech about my rights while you're cold in the grave."
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Enya brought the wind together, collapsed it from four horizons, and crushed it into the space around her. Storm clouds piled atop one another, circling overhead. She stroked the storm across treetops like a hand over velvet.
"Howl for me, monster, but know that's all you'll do!" Saxby laughed in the glow of a fire he'd lit across the river. "I know your beginning and your end! I've tasted your power."
"And now I'll make you drink it," she promised. "To the dregs." A fist of air struck the burning river and cut a gash down to the rocks below. The banks swelled, great waves rising on either side of the gash. Enya crossed the barren divide made by her storm, glinting claws splayed at her sides.
Saxby reeled, kicking up dirt as he positioned like a cat to pounce, launching into the air where he tried to fly clear of her approach. His wings beat, he climbed a spiral path—and she sunk her fist low, winding the maelstrom around behind him. She caught him by his own wings, and with bullet force cast him to the earth. Trees exploded, sheared by his mass, and he left a hundred-foot furrow of raised ground and splintered stumps.
Pivoting, ignoring the dragon, she flew through the forest for Natalie—for the only important thing. Around her, the storm dropped the temperature of the woods to match her cold heart, her breath fogging as though it were a December midnight. Rain that streaked from the sky turned to snow and moisture in the forest froze to slick patches; tree trunks brittled with clinging frost.
Saxby crashed through the forest, toppled icy trees, and came at her on all fours. He intercepted her at a clearing, spitting a barrage of spines from his throat. Enya sank behind a fallen trunk, quills thudding into the log's other side, thick as a porcupine's hide.
More quills sprouted from the ridge of his spine and his pointed elbows, each dripping venom. They furred his claws, bristled along the softness of his underbelly. "I'll bet he's got her blood on him by now." He spat a volley, heaved another from his tail, reared to fire a thicket of them from underneath his coils. But Enya danced between them; she flicked between trees, always seeming to find another thing to duck behind as he launched his next barrage.
He's stalling me. She cut to his flank and tried to outrun him, but he gave chase and his body lengthened, growing yet more serpentine, winding through the forest in her wake with only trees, ridges, and stones to cover her from his glistening barbs.
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Snow fell heavy through the air and settled into branches, whose cooling sap made them crackle when they swayed. It was snowing in June, during the time of raspberries and fireflies, and Natalie had never been so cold. The temperature stung her nostrils and lit her breath silver.
She couldn't run or he'd chase her down. Nor could she stand still, because then he'd cut her in half. Instead she stepped cautiously backward, and Patrick advanced at exactly the same rate. He was savoring it, the slow pace of her murder.
"Listen." She raised her hands. "I'm not your enemy. They've twisted you all around."
"What would you know?"
"You aren't the only one who lost someone. I understand what it does to you."
"Mine was murdered. With a gun your father thinks should be legal, by criminals he wants on our streets."
"Mine was killed by a drunk driver. She—"
"It's not the same!"
"Your mother wouldn't want this."
"She always told me to follow my heart." His machete was painted in frost. "Guess what my heart's saying?"
She swallowed and tried not to imagine the bite of cold metal into her body. "Think of her face, Patrick. Think of her eyes before she went away, and tell me that doesn't make a difference. Tell me she's looking on you fondly right now, and I'll let you do it."
"You can't stop me either way." He swatted the machete through branches in his path, never slowing.
She backed into thick brush and the frigid branches snagged her. "Is there anything left in you except hate?" she asked, searching the shadows of his face.
"I thought about shooting you," he said, and it was clear he no longer even heard her. "Wanted to use the same kind of gun that killed my mom. More poetic that way. But I get nauseous at the idea of touching one." He lifted the machete. "At least this way, I get to make a mess."
Natalie tensed, wondering if she could tackle him—a near-hopeless prospect, but it had come to that.
It was Denise who came from behind him, shouting, "Eat it!" Her voice drew Patrick around just in time to catch a frozen branch to his face. His jaw snapped violently up, blood spraying from his mouth. The machete whirled into snowy litterfall.
The blow spun him almost a hundred eighty degrees, and Denise launched onto his back from behind. She pulled his hemp necklace taut, choking him with it. "You're mine, shit-bag!"
Gagging, he slammed an elbow into Denise.
A white nova of fury lit in Natalie's core and she burst forward, aiming her best kick between his legs. It thumped home with satisfying force. Somewhere in the chaos, Denise got the crook of her elbow around his throat.
Out of the trees came a screaming Elli, who sprayed Patrick in the face with something. He shrieked.
Together, they dropped him to the snow and kicked him until they were out of breath while Denise choked him out. She held on until he started to shake and, gasping, tore off his jacket, belt, and shoelaces, hogtying him. They were all Girl Scouts, but Denise knew the best knots for some reason.
"What— What was that you sprayed him with?" Denise gasped, rubbing her eyes as Elli stood back with a spritz bottle still leveled on an unconscious Patrick. "You can't bring mace to camp, you maniac."
She checked the label. "It's Binaca. Peppermint." Glancing down at Patrick, she added, "I think I contributed."
Denise folded her arms skeptically, but then looked around the forest with concern. "What the hell is going on? Someone broke summer."
Natalie stood, gaze drawn to the sky. "Oh my God." Goddess?
A ring of clouds the size of a mountain spun in the sky, a roiling black halo lit with flashes of lightning.
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Enya sprinted between two rows of trees glazed in crystalline encasements from roots to highest boughs. The forest groaned at the sudden drop in temperature, trunks threatening to burst from the pressure of expanding water within.
Sliding to a stop on one knee, Enya stretched her hands to the ring of storm clouds overhead. The dragon was a scaly ribbon twisting through the trees, angling for her with jaws opened wide to disgorge more poisoned barbs. She stretched her power to the nimbus crown in the sky and drew down lightning.
Ragged bolts rained from the heavens, white-hot tongues of celestial fire dancing among the trees. Clean and pure as her wrath, she enveloped every tree Saxby neared. The power transformed the water inside to steam, a violent expansion that exploded trunk after trunk like bombs. Wood shrapnel peppered his hide, the impact clobbering him and spoiling his forward momentum. The dragon crashed headfirst into the snow, his slithering mass buckled like a train that had derailed. Fresh powder filled the air as he rolled to a stop.
Her claws flexed and she took them to Saxby's body; she carved him with method and malice—not to incapacitate, no, he'd only heal. There was no punishment there. She peeled him. She flayed until his body opened into bloody gills anywhere she could reach; she scraped off half his face in one swipe.
Her own eyes were flash-imprinted, ears half deaf from landing thunder at her own feet; but Saxby was rendered senseless, except of course for his sense of touch. He lived now in darkness, alone except for her cruel hands, and she worked him until he keened.
"Sing!" she snarled. "Sing for me."
And he did. There was nothing asura hated more than pain. It was enough to force a miscalculation—the last one he'd ever make. With a cry for release, Saxby split his essence again. His flesh rippled, spirit pushing through every drop of his erupting blood. The flesh foamed like the sea, burst, and transformed into insects, scorpions, and serpents. To her immortal eye, it happened slowly—and she leapt through the wriggling epicenter.
With her kanaf as armor to shield herself from stings, she snapped a single snake from the swarm, tucking it close.
Landing on the other side of the buzzing cloud, she reached again to the clouds above and pulled the sky down upon both their heads. The snowy earth lit with not just a few bolts—she brought them all down.
As she'd promised, she made him drink her power. To the dregs.
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Natalie gasped as the sky opened up. She'd never seen lightning so bright, so vicious. It came from every part of the dark ring of clouds, a flurry of bolts that bent inward to the same central patch of ground. They struck a distant place she couldn't quite see. Shielding her eyes, she watched as thunder shook the stones and trees, trembling through her.
I kissed the thing that's doing this. Nameless feelings gripped her, too varied to comprehend, though her hands trembled, her heart pounded, and she wanted to hide from Enya's eyes at the same time she wanted to... kiss her again. But carefully.
"That— That isn't— I don't..." Denise stared at the same sky, along with Elli. "What's happening?" She swallowed. "Is it the end of the world?"
"I don't know," Natalie confessed. No one could speak louder than a whisper. "We have to get back. Come on."
They bent to drag Patrick, who was groaning and probably concussed from Denise's branch.
Still, the lightning struck. It had not yet stopped pouring from the clouds, battering a single piece of ground as though artillery from Heaven. She said the weather obeys her feelings, Natalie remembered. That's... a lot of feelings.
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Again and again, Enya spent her anger in blinding neon strokes from the sky. She beat him like an anvil until her head rang, until her eardrums bled, until all she saw was blue and all she tasted was ozone.
When she stopped, she unfurled the kanaf from around her shoulders and stood alone on a singed patch of earth. When enough of her vision returned to make out shapes, she could tell nothing stood within fifty feet of her in any direction. It was only charred stumps, black ground, and boiling pits of vapor where once there had been water. A stink filled her nostrils: that of the ten million dead life-forms Saxby's essence had split into.
She extracted the snake, the very last piece of him, and could smell his essence inside the struggling serpent. "Stay your hand," Saxby begged, voice disconnected from any physical form. "I'll tell you who paid us."
"I've no time for lies."
"No lies. This is the work of other deva! The Pretender and his foe, the Hidden One, and the Hidden One cannot be found without my help. I know a way. He's paying for my experiments; he wants to use them for his plans. I could—"
Enya tossed the serpent into the air and sliced it in half. She cut Saxby's essence with it. His stink was snuffed from the air forever. Dead and gone, in a flash of her nails.
She ran for Natalie, making quick work of the trek in spite of her near-sightless eyes, relying on scent and intuition to navigate the forest.
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Jane and Todd had dragged their rafts beneath an overhang in a rock wall and herded everyone, blankets around their shoulders, into the rubberized crafts to keep stray lightning strikes from reaching them through tree roots. Both counselors jogged out to help the girls with Patrick, since it had exhausted them to drag him that far.
"Where's Enya?" Jane shouted.
Natalie wheeled and stared into the forest, which was thick with swirling snowflakes. Something was coming through the gaps in the trees, a shadow pressed against the snow. "Take care of Patrick. I'll get her." Natalie ran toward the darker patch in the flurry.
It was Enya. The deva hugged herself tight in her hoodie and kept her head bowed. Blood trickled down her cheeks from her ears and she leaned into a tree. Natalie could still see wisps of smoke rising off her shoulders and smell the stink of electric discharge on her clothing.
"Enya! Oh God, Enya, are you okay?"
Enya stared at her mouth, and Natalie realized she was reading lips. But her eyes unnerved Natalie and stole all her words, making her want to retreat to safety with the other campers. Enya nodded and collapsed against the tree, fell to her butt and curled her knees close, hugging them.
Natalie shivered and sank next to her friend, bopping her shoulder into the other girl's. The deva leaned back into her, and the heat coming off her felt amazing.
When Natalie spoke, Enya watched her mouth again. "Could you t-t-turn the snow off?"
"Sorry," Enya shouted too loudly. Then, more softly: "I was... upset. Afraid. For your life."
Natalie stroked her friend's hair, the uncertainty in that voice softening her heart. "Will a hug fix the weather?"
Enya glanced shyly to the forest floor. "It might."
Natalie wrapped an arm around her, squeezing.
Enya's attention fell to something by her foot. It was a lone plant poking from the snow and coated in a film of glassy ice. She snapped it off by the stem and blew gently, her breath transforming the ice into water. A gorgeous, sunset-colored lily lay beneath, and now its leaves were dewy with melted ice.
With gentle hands, Enya lifted the flower and put it in Natalie's hair.
The gesture fired her cheeks. "Thank you."
All around them, wintry gusts had died and the air warmed. There was no more lightning and the stars began to shine down from a smooth, clean sky.
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[ The Pretender ]
Enya had finally destroyed the asura threat against her friend, and so had no reason to haunt Natalie's rooftop at night. She did out of habit, liking the scrape of shingles and how it was close to the mortal but not too close. On occasion, when the auburn-haired teenager opened her window, she'd whisper into the balmy summer night: "Are you out there?"
Her voice paralyzed Enya. That night in the tent had felt so right, but anxiety rose in her when she imagined the ways it could go awry. Perhaps Natalie knew her just the right amount to like her; if she learned more, this tenuous thing they had might evaporate.
So she stayed silent—listening, looking in, never slinking too close to the warm light of her friend's bedroom window where, deep down, she knew she'd never belong.
And her job wasn't wholly done either. Saxby had pleaded for his life, but he'd named names; now she had two deva to find. She didn't want war, but she couldn't kill just one god. Their web of alliances meant that touching one brought three more from the shadows, ready to make something of it. They'd once made a hobby of trying to cage her, some seeing her as the last wild thing to be hunted or tamed. Evidence of these battles still dotted this world: sunken nations and scars carved too deep into the Earth to heal.
She'd thought the deva too wise to cross her again, but if they so much as brushed Natalie with the hems of their robes as they passed, Enya would commit deicide until the realm was emptied of their magic.
But now I have something they can take from me, she reminded herself, and that frightened her.
The generic-voiced people on the television reported Patrick had been questioned by police before they jailed him, and Enya wanted to know if he'd told them anything about deva. She started her hunt at O'Rourke's apartment, since that one always smelled like secrets.
There were sensors in his windows and a pressure plate under his carpet, all triggered to an alarm. He's clever. She scuttled along shelves and furniture, exploring his workshop table, spartan kitchen, a refrigerator full of takeout, and shelves upon shelves of books.
One row of books all had black binders smelling faintly of goatskin. Sniffing, she drew one from the shelf. It creaked when she opened it, the words written in a code that might have been based on pictograms. Strange tongues bound in the leather of sacrificial animals. Clever indeed.
She heard his enormous heart long before he leveled the handgun on her. "Enya Miller." He lowered the weapon.
She shut his notebook and slid it back into place. "The leather does what?"
He was dressed in a sleeveless shirt and boxer shorts that did nothing to hide the roll of belly fat protruding. Squinting at the shelf, he unloaded his handgun. "My reports had a habit of going missing. Maybe it gets lost, or the ink's too smudged to read, or a water main breaks in the records room..."
"The Veil." It erased memories and any other evidence of gods, monsters, spirits, and outsiders. It was always at work, a magic that had imbued their world since history had broken in half.
"Whatever you call it, it's damn annoying for a guy who hates to forget. The leather seems to hold it at bay." He motioned to the whole series of notebooks. "That's everything I ever learned."
"How did you know to use goatskin?" she asked.
"No idea. It's probably in one of those notebooks, how I figured it out. I forget what's inside if I don't reread them." He shrugged. "That's why I keep an index. Sometimes you need to know a thing, and you need it now."
She stroked a fingertip across the bindings. A god would have burned this shelf the moment he found it, to protect the deva. Enya couldn't care less. "Meticulous."
"You know things, don't you?"
She shrugged to avoid speaking a lie.
"I questioned Patrick Dailey. Boy said he was 'herald' for some kinda monster. A dragon. Occurs to me I can't really arrest a dragon, but he was emailing that enormous hacker whose corpse we found at Primrose."
He knows more than I do. "What else did he say?"
O'Rourke snorted. "Someone bought the kid a machete, paid for him to go to that camp. Kid claims he never met the guy in person."
"They knew I'd smell them on Patrick if they interacted in person."
"There was a go-between who gave him some cash. Got a sketch out of it, and the face matches some secretary who works for a corporation called Zmey-Towers. Those guys lobbied hard against Senator Bradford's security bill." O'Rourke eased into an overstuffed chair. "So I think Zmey-Towers is at the head of it all. Paying the hackers and the people who manipulated the Dailey kid. But I got nothing to go on. Unless you want to throw me a bone."
Saxby had told her the Hidden One was involved. Once, they'd called him Glycon. He'd been fond of mortal cults and it seemed little had changed. "They worship a master," she said. "His ceremonies occur on the full moon. Find who in their leadership this 'secretary' works for and follow her on that night. If you do, you'll locate their whole coterie."
"Who's this 'master'?"
"Someone you won't find." That was her job now. "But jail his followers and you'll stymie his plans."
"Can't arrest people for having kooky meetings."
"If they're Glycon's, they'll do more than meet." She turned from him, headed for the window. "Glycon kept the old ways. There will be sacrifices."
O'Rourke took a moment to respond, perhaps digesting what she'd said. "You're sure I can't find this Glycon guy?"
"He and the Pretender are beyond you."
"The Pretender?"
"I don't know that one. He's too young. Glycon will be hard enough to find—he carries no scent and his appearance changes through the ages."
"The ages? Holy shit." O'Rourke glanced at his bookshelf. "Guessing you don't want me to start an entry on you."
"That would be a mistake."
"Look, from what I heard, those two... beings... Glycon and the Pretender guy, they're at war. I know Glycon wants the Bradford bill to succeed. So what if the Pretender guy's fighting against him?"
She snorted. "Then he's useless. I've turned back Glycon's pawns at every turn."
"Unless," O'Rourke said, "that was the Pretender's play. What if he put you in motion? What if you're his pawn?"
Enya bristled. "I chose to defend Natalie Bradford. I chose to hunt Splat."
"Splat?"
"Walter Banich."
"And no one nudged you in his direction?" O'Rourke asked.
A dark mood passed over Enya and a growl clicked from her throat. "Dust."
"Sorry, is that a person too? Okay. Well, whoever this 'Dust' is, assume he works for the Pretender. You want to find him? Go through Dust."
"Oh," Enya said, flexing her claws, "I will."
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Enya shattered the museum skylight, dropping to the floor amidst tinkling glass and tattling alarms. Her dark eyes—dilated by psilocybin mushrooms—honed on Dust's presence in a display of crisp baseball cards, each sleeved in a slab of bulletproof glass and screwed onto a plate for display.
She ripped the card from its plate, claws fracturing the clear casing in spiderweb patterns. Slamming it facedown into the display, the impact punched her claws millimeters closer to precious cardstock. "Where is the Pretender!"
Dust had gone silent, still.
She squeezed. Her claws neared the tender card where his essence rested. If they pierced him, he would die. If he moved, he might scrape against her nails, which could also prove fatal. "Where is he," she hissed.
"I— I dunno who you're talkin' about!" He was awake now.
The glass cracked again as her nails burrowed closer to him. "A shame," she taunted.
"I ain't telling you a blessed thing till you swear to let me live."
She scanned the display case she'd pried him from. At bottom it read, "Donated by: Orpheum Industries." She growled at the asura in her palm. "So the Pretender owns that company. And you deceived me, an elder monster... for baseball cards? Violins and old junk?" She might have laughed at his stupidity if it were remotely a laughing matter.
"Not any old junk," he grumped. "The best old junk. Delicious old junk. You oughta try incentives sometime, beastie. Catch more flies with sugar than murder."
"I don't catch flies," she ground out. "I swat them." She ripped the front of the sleeve off and stroked her nails across naked paper.
"Okay! Okay! Wasn't even that bad, Jee-zus, you got problems, you know that?" She kept her nails close, but gave him space to breath. "He goes by Set—Set the Pretender. He mighta talked to me, asked if I could... redirect your attention a little. I naturally told 'im, 'Set. Buddy, c'mon, you know I wouldn't mess with someone like Erynis, I respect her too—' "
"Get on with it."
"Long story short, he begs me to point you toward Splat and his obsession with the Bradford girl. But hey, he said you'd probably want to get involved anyway, so it was basically win-win-win. The Pretender gets Splat outta the picture, you get to eat Splat, I get the 1961 Clemente card—what's not to love? Peace, beastie, we got no quarrel. Not with me and not with this innocent card, which, by the way, never did nothin' but give people hope. Kill me if you gotta, but this slip of paper? Let it be."
"How did he know I would be at the group home?" That was where Dust had first contacted her.
"He's got eyes everywhere. He told me where to be."
"And what about me getting out of Sacred Oaks and onto the street?" The timing was too convenient to be coincidence.
"Don't you get it? The Ostermeier Trust Fund—the private money that used to pipe into those facilities—he sank it through some kind of Ponzi scheme. Sent the whole system belly-up to free you."
Enya scowled and tossed Dust's paper house carelessly across the floor. "What is his game, Dust?" She flashed her nails. "Tell me, or I shred the room."
"Peace, peace! Same game it's always been—Set and Glycon, going round and round each other, snappin' like dogs. But they can't touch each other, not really, or the Fates would step in. They've all crossed their hearts and vowed to play by certain rules. So it's all done by proxy."
"I am no proxy!"
"Yeah, I'm picking up on that, okay?"
"Why do you call him 'Set'? Set has passed on; he sleeps."
"Yeah, you been gone a while, must not have heard. That's why they call him Set the Pretender. He's only a few centuries old, tells everyone to call him Set, but the Fates know he's not Set. But rules are rules—gods can't name other gods. So they call him Set, and added the epithet to keep him in line."
"Then you tell me, Dust." Enya approached, knelt, and stroked the card lying on the floor. "Tell me quickly, before the police arrive, or I'll end you. Tell me where this upstart calls home."
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Enya sensed no human life in the echoing, empty Docks warehouse. It wasn't supposed to be abandoned—it was a property of Orpheum Industries with gates, cameras, and forbidding barbed wire crisscrossing its perimeter. She descended to its rooftop and cut a hole in the skylight that was clean enough not to trigger sensors. Descending silently, she peered through the barren interior.
Scrape marks on concrete showed where they'd moved all the equipment in a hurry. The air was thick with bleach odor, the entire lofty space emptied and scrubbed of its original smells to take her off the trail of anyone who'd worked here. All that remained was a table with a single, thrumming black laptop and projectors aimed at the four walls around her. A lonely alley cat with a missing eye slept on the laptop's keyboard, snoring softly. The cat hadn't been put there; it appeared to have wandered into the room and found somewhere warm to rest.
As she approached, the laptop activated and the cat let out a discontented meow. It hopped from the computer, thudding to the floor and padding off to find a dark corner.
Projectors on all sides displayed forty-foot images that mimicked the laptop's display. She was surrounded by Set the Pretender. He was a dark-skinned man with chiseled features, black eyes, and extensive tattooing on his hands and bald scalp that disappeared into a white kurta. He knelt, bowing his head to her. "Erynis. A pleasure."
"If it is, come meet me," she beckoned.
"I cannot help thinking that would be a... poor decision." His mouth did something that might have been mockery.
She bore her teeth at him.
"You have many names, though none pleasant. Erynis—the implacable one. Adrasteia—the one from whom there's no escape. Nemesis? Yes, that has a certain foreboding ring, doesn't it? Let's not forget Lailah—pretty. At least to the tongue. Not so pretty for those who crossed you."
"My deeds speak for me, not that tangle of names that clutch at history. Tell me. What are your deeds?" She approached the computer.
"Numerous, dark, and manipulative." He shrugged. "Haven't you heard the reports? The Fates don't think much of me; nor does Glycon."
"I've never heard of you."
"Ah." He nodded. "I get that a lot too. Whatever my press, I'm the one who intends to survive you."
" 'Intends.' "
"I'll confess, it's not up to me." He stood, spreading his palms. "I'll start with an oath." He crossed his heart. "I swear to never harm your mortal, Natalie Bradford."
"As you swore not to harm Glycon?"
"I swear it for Natalie more deeply than I did for Glycon—I'll follow the spirit for you, not just the letter."
"I don't believe you."
"You won't at first." He sighed. "You've little reason to. If you haven't figured it out, I'm the reason for all this. Glycon had originally targeted the family of Senator Wulf. I took Wulf out of play through... various means. I knew when Glycon couldn't get to Wulf, he'd target Bradford and his daughter instead. I nudged him that direction, knowing it put your friend in danger."
Enya's hackles rose. "For that, you'll die."
"I knew you'd defend her."
Glaring at him, she shook her head. "You don't know anything about me."
"Not true," he chuckled. "I know everything about you. And, while you're old and deadly, you're not terrifically complicated. For instance, I also know that no matter how mad you are at me, you'll go after Glycon for what he did."
"I'm coming for you both."
"Splendid." Another strange smile. "I cannot feed you information about Glycon directly without violating my own oaths. But I do wish you luck—at least, in regards to hunting my rival. As for me? Now I'll slink away and hide; avoid you and your mortal as best I can. Glycon, as you know, lacks my characteristic humility. You hurt him. He'll come for you; he'll come for Natalie. If you love your mortal, you'll deal with Glycon first."
She balled her fists, prepared to cleave this young god into a dozen pieces for daring to put Natalie in danger and manipulate Enya for gain, all in one bold stroke.
"I'd love to talk more." He shook his head sadly. "But I'm afraid I've got to blow up the warehouse now."
"Why?"
"Tradition?"
"I'm unfamiliar with this tradition," she said.
"I'm keen on making new ones." He removed a smartphone from his pocket, punching a button. A large number "10" superimposed on the screens. It ticked to "9." It took until "8" for Enya to realize what was happening.
Sprinting past the computer, she tore it in half on the way. She slid along the floor, snapped the hissing cat into her arms, and broke a side door from its hinges. She'd vaulted the outer fence when the explosion hit her back. It sent shrapnel into the sky for hundreds of feet.
Enya rolled to a stop as fire and debris fell on all sides. She shielded the cat, and once the last piece of smoking sheet metal rang against the asphalt, she peeled the traumatized animal from her shoulder and tossed it aside.
"Two gods to kill," she whispered. A dangerous task, especially with her heart invested in a fragile human being. But she saw no other path, especially since Set had spoken the truth about Glycon—he wasn't humble, and he wouldn't let Enya's encroachment on his territory go unpunished. They were on a collision course, one engineered by Set.
She kicked over a flaming stack of cinder blocks and waded through the rubble. Let him come, she decided. I will darken his whole world.
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A tiny gremlin crouched alone in Glycon's pocket world, cold snow underfoot and dark trees towering on all sides of them. The altar at the clearing's center was cut from an ancient stump, its roots burrowed like great claws into the ice. The emaciated creature was all knobby joints, combing down its bristled fur to make itself more presentable before him. It bowed, bat ears drooping in a show of submission. "...that is all I knows, Lord Glycon. I swears it."
"Spare me your groveling." How he despised gremlins. But he'd run into... issues... with his cult, and so was forced to rely on outside contractors. Far outside, he mused. "Were you able to recover any part of Mr. Saxby?"
"No part recoverables, not a one. We searches the forest high and low, my brothers and I. All we finds was the lab, the pieces police stored. Those is here." It waved to the two suitcases in the snow.
"Very well. Your payment." He passed the gremlin a manila envelope.
With deft fingers, it checked the papers. Six authentic certificates for the adoption of six young children. "They is healthy? Had their shots, teeth real good?"
He scowled. "I'm no roadside vendor. It's in order. Healthy specimens all. Now begone!"
The gremlin stooped and scraped on its way out of the portal. Glycon sealed his pocket world with a dismissive wave of the hand, knelt, and opened the briefcases one at a time. He lifted free a glass jar that contained the decomposed remains of a rodent, bristles of white fur still visible amidst the rot. In the center, though, pulsed several still-living eggs; and beneath the pink, Glycon detected faint signs life.
He smiled. "It's a start."
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The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews (Part 2).txt
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Mark stayed in the car but insisted on driving Natalie to her friend's apartment, since it was around the corner from a place dubbed "Murder Alley" for the fact so many corpses showed up there. David Kessler had given her the address after her dad started asking for it—apparently he wanted to send thank-you flowers. Upon hearing Enya lived by Murder Alley, he'd asked instead about sending a thank-you gun.
Enya's building was grayed with age, accented with fresh graffiti layered over the old. The elevator seemed a little deathtrappy, so she took stairs that smelled faintly of urine, climbing to the top floor.
Enya had the only top-floor apartment, the stairwell exiting to a short corridor. The imposing door was made from steel and bolts, and after she knocked, it opened just a crack. Enya peered through, wearing new glasses that were the same model as the pair Denise had bought her.
"I thought—"
The door shut with a clank.
"Okay." Natalie blinked at the door. "I understand communication isn't your forte, but you shouldn't just—"
A rattle of the security chain and Enya swung the door wide, stepping aside to motion her in. "You're welcome here." Peering past her, she added, "But just you."
"I'll keep your clubhouse totally on the down-low, promise." She flashed the Scout's-honor sign. The space was open-aired and almost featureless, though all Natalie could initially think was, She is way too short to have her own place. Especially somewhere so... tall. It had bare wood floors with a drab area rug, and a dais on the farthest edge was furnished with a four-poster bed. Every wall was smooth, white, and unpainted. With its vaulted ceiling, she couldn't decide if it reminded her more of a gymnasium or a barren cathedral.
"Why are you here?" Enya shut the door with another clank and she fidgeted.
"Missed you." She toed at the floor. "I thought since we kissed, I might, um, see you once in a while. Not that I necessarily deserve that, after yelling at you and accusing you of putting a spell on me." She cleared her throat. "I was kind of a jerk, wasn't I?"
Enya shrugged.
Something was the matter, and Natalie squinted, trying to figure it out.
The attention made Enya transparently uncomfortable and she twisted one hand around her opposite wrist.
Why's she so freaked out? Natalie straightened at the realization: here was a deific creature who had never so much as had a friend before her, and now they had kissed. "Do I make you nervous?"
"No," she lied.
Natalie approached, gently touching her friend's cheek. The raven-haired girl startled, but didn't back away. "Don't be. I still like you."
"There's more." Enya leaned slightly into her hand. "There are dangers. Beings who are going to hunt me; who I have to hunt. They may try to harm you. Everything is so fragile. Easily broken, easily lost."
"They've already tried to hurt me," she said evenly. "You've saved me more than once, and every day's a gift I wouldn't have had without you. So there's no reason for guilt."
Enya nodded but didn't look up.
"And they'd be coming for me even if we weren't together, wouldn't they?"
"Probably."
"So there's nothing to do except your best." Before she could disagree, Natalie drew her into a hug. At first, the monster's whole body stiffened, but the longer she held on, the more Enya relaxed into her. "Come to my house this weekend."
"Why?"
"Dad's orders."
"But why?"
"Big mystery. You'll have to show up if you want to know."
Enya shifted, having locked her hands behind Natalie's back. "It sounds like an ambush."
Natalie inhaled, the deva's hair possessing a woody smell like oakmoss, but with something of a sweeter note. "What if I'm part of the ambush?"
The slight creature shivered in her arms. "I might like that."
"Then come." She hesitated and kissed Enya's cheek, wanting to taste her mouth again but not yet as courageous as she'd been in the tent. The light of day had reminded her how much of her life was invested in being Natalie Bradford, future hetero wife and mother-of-two; there were so many unknowns. What if everyone talked? What if she fell for some amazing guy and ended up just leading Enya on? The combined weight of those fears applied just enough inertia to keep the kiss affectionate but chaste. "So you know," she said slowly, "I'm still figuring stuff out."
"Do you want to do what we did in the tent again?" Enya asked, blunt as ever.
She hesitated. "Like I said, I'm figuring it out."
Enya bit her lip. "Did you like it?"
Natalie nodded, the heat in her face confirming the truth.
Neither could quite look the other in the eye, but Enya released her. "Then I'll wait."
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Enya heard by way of Ms. Cross that both Kessler and O'Rourke were being praised for having followed the Glycon cultist. They'd stopped the worshipers from feeding someone to a giant snake and this was apparently good for their careers, especially since a lot of the men feeding people to the snake were rich or powerful—owners of companies and nonprofits, involved in the film industry or federal government.
She asked, but no one told her what they'd done with the snake.
In July, Ms. Cross and Kessler both visited at once and Enya instinctively locked down at the sight of them together. They sat near one another and sometimes held hands; it didn't seem fair how they'd joined forces. It was cheating.
Ms. Cross cleared her throat. "You're going to finish school."
Next came Kessler: "What Victoria means to say is, rather, we think it's important. Not just for the degree, but because it'll integrate you better. We're here to encourage you to do the right thing, not make ultimatums."
"Though we also insist," Ms. Cross said.
"Gently," Kessler added. When Ms. Cross glanced at him and did something with her eyes, he cleared his throat. "But firmly."
"The school won't have me." Enya folded her arms. "There's no point in talking about this." There. Done.
"We've researched private schools." Kessler slid a glossy pamphlet across the table. "Your grades are actually good. Given your, uh, 'inheritance,' money's not an object. This school is selective, but it's our favorite."
Enya tore the pamphlet in half. "No."
"That's Madison Academy," Ms. Cross said.
Quickly matching the two halves together, Enya recognized the gates on the front. "Natalie goes here."
"The thought had occurred to us," Ms. Cross said, pleased.
"School. With Natalie?" The idea wasn't wholly bad.
"It's prestigious," Kessler said. "Kids with your background aren't well-represented there, but I can get a letter of explanation that'll better reflect the reasons for your expulsion. With a letter of recommendation from Victoria and me, that gets us most of the way there. The fact that you've apparently pleased a sitting U.S. senator will round out your recommendations nicely."
Enya nodded.
"You'll keep your grades up, of course." Ms. Cross said it like the thing was decided. Perhaps it was.
"And there's one more thing," Kessler said. "Madison requires a parental guardian. So you'll live with me."
Enya shook her head. "I live here. I like it here. I own it for one year; that's the law."
"All right," he said. "Crash here now and then, when you need to. But take the spare room at my new place. It's closer to Madison, since I'm in the Central Precinct now with O'Rourke. It's closer to Natalie, too. I'll work up the foster-parent paperwork. That is, if you trust me enough. I know that's hard for you. I get it."
Enya felt cornered.
"We care about you," Ms. Cross said.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because we do," Kessler said.
"But why?"
Ms. Cross took a breath and let it out. "Because we love you, you silly girl. Both of us. Tremendously. We want you to succeed; we want you to flourish."
"I tried to tell you before," said Kessler. "I had to go halfway around the world to find it, but you're part of my family now, Enya."
She stood, but they did too. She wanted to back away but couldn't, not because her path was cut off, but because another part of her didn't want to. Instead, she took a hesitant step forward and Kessler hugged her. She set her head into his chest and, like always, he smelled like the safest person in the world. She realized she was hugging him back and squeezed.
He let out a sound that meant he couldn't breathe. She loosened her grip.
Ms. Cross hugged them both too and she wondered if that was family. If it was, it still tasted funny in her mouth. But maybe not completely, entirely bad.
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The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews (Part 2).txt
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Kessler and Ms. Cross drove Enya to Natalie's house on the appointed night, and Enya had to dress nice—which meant wearing the clothes Natalie had picked out for their double date. It felt odd to arrive by car instead of rooftop, and when she entered, Senator Bradford met her in suit and tie.
"The guest of honor," he announced. "I hope you don't mind my secretly engineering this dinner through well-placed calls to your loved ones. It's in your honor of course."
"Why?" Enya asked.
"New family rule. Anyone who saves my daughter's life more than once gets a dinner. Thank you, Ms. Miller."
"I am called Enya."
"If we're being particular, call me 'the Senator.' I like to hear it."
"Do not call him that," Natalie said from the top of the stairs. She was gorgeous, her hair an auburn halo, dressed precisely as she'd been on the night of their double date. Except now it was Enya who stood speechless at the foot of the stairs, listening to the flutter of her own heart. Natalie wore a secretive smile, knowing precisely what she had done. The clever mortal had finally gotten the thing she'd so wanted, but instead of a boy it was Enya who gawped at her elegant descent of the staircase.
Dinner was served at the table, a spread Natalie and Denise had prepared, though Elli was supposed to have helped—they accused her of leaving it all to them, having spent all her time texting Horatio, who she was now dating with Natalie's permission. There was salad, some kind of mixed fruit, and steamed legs from a large crab.
"To open it, you do this," Natalie said, picking up a nutcracker.
Enya figured it out first. She grabbed it at both ends, snapped it in half and rent it apart, plucking the meat from inside. "Like this?"
Natalie stared at the shell debris all over her plate. "Sure."
It was great fun, actually—the challenge of ripping the meat's armor off before eating it. Enya enjoyed the entire process and Senator Bradford and Kessler both made jokes at her expense. It didn't stop Enya from finishing perhaps one too many crab legs, because there was no hunger at all left in her belly. She disliked the satisfaction that came from too much food—it robbed her of her edge, slowed her down. But sitting at the warm table, part of her liked it. Just this once, she decided.
Senator Bradford tapped a goblet with his fork. "To round the evening out, I just got off the phone with the admissions committee at Madison Academy. I understand Enya will receive an acceptance letter any day now. Also, I think Natalie has something for you."
"We have something for you," Natalie said. "We all chipped in." She held out a small box with a red ribbon around it.
Enya took the box and pulled off the top, revealing a shiny, black cellular phone. She handled its weight and inhaled the plastic scent. "I don't understand."
"It's definitely not to eat," Denise said helpfully.
"It's to keep in touch," Natalie said. "This way I don't have to physically go to your house, or wait for you to show up here. Turn it on. I'll show you how it works. We've paid the first few months."
Enya wasn't sure she wanted a phone. But she liked how close Natalie sat while they went over how it worked, and she maybe didn't catch on as fast as she could have.
Kessler and Ms. Cross excused themselves after dinner, since Enya insisted she could take the train home. Elli and Denise left next, and when the hour grew late, Natalie yawned and stretched. "To bed with me. Denise and I are doing Scout things tomorrow. You're invited if you don't mind babysitting itty-bitties."
Enya didn't like small children. They were clumsy. But because Natalie would be there, she nodded. "All right." After a stiff hug that seemed too quick, they said goodbye. Enya left through the front door. On the porch, she smelled the summertime garden and savored the electric glow of their mothy porch lights.
Her phone buzzed and she clicked the button to receive a text.
Natalie
I'm not asleep.
Enya wondered what that meant.
Another buzz from Natalie:
Dad went straight to bed. Has to be in office tomorrow.
Enya puzzled over the messages. Would Natalie send her a text updating her every thought? Based on the third buzz, she guessed so.
That means sneak in.
Oh. Enya skittered up the tree behind their tall stone wall, across the rooftop, down to the windowsill, and pushed through the curtains covering the open window.
"You can be so dense sometimes." Natalie sat on the corner of her bed, legs crossed, so pretty it hurt Enya to look directly at her.
"Did you want to talk?" Enya asked.
"No," Natalie whispered. "I want you to sit. Here." She patted the bed and Enya swallowed.
She did what Natalie asked, and the girl slid behind her. She noticed there were hair bands on her wrists.
"Can I touch your hair?"
"Yes." A shiver scrunched Enya's shoulders together.
It was the same bliss as months ago, when Natalie had braided her hair the first time. Enya shut her eyes and every touch soothed her.
"I'm sorry for that night when I yelled at you," Natalie said after a while.
"It's all right." It really was. Everything everywhere was all right.
"I was mixed up. I still am."
Enya opened her eyes and could tell Natalie stared across the room at the plastic structures she'd built with her mother. She looked in particular at the unfinished, jagged model that was supposed to have been the Eiffel Tower.
Natalie glanced away. "I think kids are always trying to save their parents. Trying to learn from their mistakes and do it differently; do it right. Or just, you know, avoid the same tragedies. My mom never got the happily-ever-after, she never got the Eiffel Tower. I thought I'd get married in her church, and then go with my husband someday, and maybe that'd make it... cosmically right?
"And it scares me. Not just the church part, but because I never really talked to my mom about how she'd feel if I were gay. It never came up. I'll never know what she thought—but I guess I have to believe she'd love me no matter what."
Natalie had stopped braiding, and Enya reached back to touch her hand. Their eyes met through the mirror. "You smell like half of her. If she is even half of you, then you shouldn't worry."
"Thanks."
"I'm sorry too."
Natalie laughed. "What for?"
"Scaring you."
"You're not that scary; not underneath."
That worried Enya. She looked at Natalie through the mirror. "I am, though."
At that, Natalie averted her gaze and went back to braiding. She did it for a while, and Enya couldn't tell what she was thinking. Only that she was. Was she remembering all the people Enya had killed? Humans always seemed especially bothered by that.
"Remember that deal we had last time I braided your hair?" Natalie asked.
"If you could still hug me after I told you what I was, you got to braid it and put a flower in." It was a sweet memory now.
"Want to play again?" She didn't look up from the work of her fingers.
"What is the bargain?" Enya asked, heart beating harder.
"You let me put the flower back in your hair and I'll let you take me out on a date. No boys this time." She glanced up into their reflection again. "Just us."
Enya smiled, turning on the bed and pushing Natalie back, enjoying the way she relaxed into the mattress beneath her. "I'd like that."
Natalie reached for her glasses, sliding them off, and Enya's gaze chased her back to the headboard.
"One condition." Enya prowled after her.
"What's that?" she asked, breathless.
"I dress how I like."
"Be careful." Natalie's eyes crinkled with mirth. "Some humans make assumptions about girls who don't wear underwear."
"Then you can wear it."
"Maybe I won't," Natalie challenged, and for some reason her tenor excited the monster.
Seizing the auburn-haired girl's ankle, Enya dragged her close, Natalie's breath hitching as she was pinned under glowing eyes. They kissed again, and from her friend's sigh and arching body, it was as good for her as it was for the deva. "You should wear a dress," Enya purred.
"So you do like them."
She nodded. "On you."
"You realize, of course, that I'm hopelessly bossy—if we do this, if we really do it, you're going to get dragged into things—things like dresses and family dinners and who knows what else. You hate change, but with me, it's going to happen."
The stars couldn't change and neither could Enya. She was finding, though, that Natalie could unearth parts of her that she'd never known existed. "We'll see," she said, and before they could argue, she kissed Natalie again.
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The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews (Part 2).txt
| 49 |
John Laek's buddies dropped him at the curb, blitzed and swaying on the short walk to his apartment building. His neck burned from a fresh tattoo and the whisky bottle sloshed. They'd grabbed it off an amputee vet in the Draintrap.
He rummaged for his keys, making three attempts at putting it in the lock before he got into the building. On the short elevator ride he checked his texts: two from Gregor congratulating him on the dropped charges for that dustup back at the Nine Lives; one from Senna looking to score, but he was sick of screwing her.
He was horny, though. Drunk and horny and he'd been jacking it in his cell for months, waiting on Gregor to pay off that Nine Lives bouncer who was threatening to testify. Next time, Gregor had warned him, Try not to fuck with a senator's kid.
Crashing in his apartment, he pulled up a few names, looking for that honor-roll chick he'd had almost a year ago. He found her picture, having entered her name as "A-Plus Mouth."
"Come over," he typed. "Want an oral exam." He giggled at his joke.
"Leave me alone," she replied.
"Nah. Get over here." He waited, blood going icy hot.
"You've got the wrong number."
He looked at the message a while, face souring. Laek shook his head and pulled up the footage from last September when she'd been high on his couch and a little more willing, sending it along. "Really? This ain't you? Shame."
A long, long pause, and he grinned while he waited. Finally: "You kept that?"
"Babe, it's on the internet."
A barrage of misspelled, raving texts followed: curses, threats that she'd call the cops, informing him her dad was one. He liked that one best. The last message read, "You know I'm underage, right? That's child porn. You'll go to jail, you pedophile."
He laughed. "I didn't post it. My face ain't even in it. Who says I did that shit to you?"
Another pause. "What do you want?"
He took his time typing: "Too late, bitch. Hope this doesn't go viral and ruin your life. If you want to beg, you know where I am." Laek wasn't sure he even wanted her anymore. Her mouth had been more of an A-minus, come to think, but he was interested to see if she'd show up with tears in her eyes.
It wasn't long before his door buzzed. Standing, he fumbled for his handgun—he gave it fifty/fifty she'd sent her pissed-off dad or older brother to knock his head off. When he opened the door, though, the hall was empty.
"The fuck?" He took off the security chain, stepped out, and had a longer look around: just the same old cracks in the plaster and an empty beer bottle on the hall's far window.
Back inside his apartment, he turned on some porn and picked up the phone, typing, "You out there, Miss College Scholarship?"
He went to make a sandwich and heard a ding, and was halfway back to the living room when he realized it hadn't sounded like his phone's usual tone—and besides, his phone was dark in his pocket.
Laek realized his fine hairs were on end. Through his drunken haze he felt a tickle of fear, and realized someone else was here. The question slithered through his brain: Did I lock the door?
Rushing back, he checked, and the security chain was firmly in place. "Stop freaking out, John," he told himself. But he heard it again: the soft ding indicating a text, but not from his phone.
It had come from the bedroom.
He cocked the hammer on his gun and trod to the bedroom with care, hugging the wall and focusing on being stone-cold sober. Hopefully the noise of his porn covered the occasional scuff from his sneakers.
His door was partly open, which wasn't unusual, and he prodded it further, using the hall light to look across his darkened bedroom. But it was empty. He realized one of Gregor's guys must have crashed at his place while he'd been in a jail cell—and left their fucking phone. "Christ." He dragged a sweaty palm down his face. "Going to kill Gregor."
He stormed inside, tossing pillows and blankets aside, going through drawers to find the errant phone.
Another ding, from under his bed. "Seriously?" But a split second later, his own phone chirped. He saw it was a video file and briefly wondered if that pretty high-schooler had sent something interesting.
The short video played. It showed two sneakers from a weird angle on the floor.
His shoes. The video had been shot from under his bed.
The number wasn't the high-schooler—he recognized it as Pavlo's, who he hadn't seen since the Nine Lives.
He whipped out his gun. "Who are you, you—"
The growl came softly from under his bed. It surged from the gap between the mattress and floor, made from wet ink and hatred. Its eyes stole every reasoning part of Laek's mind, familiar eyes that had haunted his nightmares too many cold nights. Razor fingers wrapped around his gun hand and he watched from beside himself as the whole arm came off. He heard the meaty rip, and was staring at the space where he'd used to have a limb.
It was only a moment later that the pain hit and he screamed.
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The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews (Part 2).txt
| 50 |
Enya didn't stop, not through the screams and not through the begging. She could have told herself this was because mortal prisons had failed to punish him, or for what he'd have done if she'd let the monster live. But the truth was simpler: she was made to eat monsters, and John Laek's heart was as good as any other. She plucked it free and devoured him, sending him off to the fires of gehenna, where the world would be free of him and he would be free of himself.
She picked up his phone when she'd finished, using what remained of his finger to access it. These were useful devices—she'd messaged him using the phone of Pavlo, the handsy one he'd been partnered with at the Nine Lives, whom she'd already eaten. There was a girl messaging Laek, afraid of images he had of her, but the phone also had contact information for the last monster who'd been with them at the Nine Lives.
Enya's own phone dinged. It was Natalie yet again: "You're just full of questions about phones tonight. Glad you're taking to this. Sure you don't want to come over and talk date logistics?"
Her thumbs smeared blood on the screen as she replied, "No." The other good part of a phone was that Natalie had a harder time seeing through lies. "Going for a run. Talk again soon."
She stepped over the pieces of John Laek she hadn't eaten and left through the window.
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 2 |
[ The Great Spirit ]
Not so long ago, far from civilization, Aina bled to death in the dark and could think only of her younger brother.
When she opened her lips to say his name, no words came—just warm blood, which spilled from her cut throat, swallowed by desert sand pressed firm to her back. She stared straight up—stared into the bottom of the glittering sky—with the sense she might fall off the world and disappear into the space between stars. The shadows of the men who had killed her shrank away, tethered to their crunching boots. She pitied them all.
A dark cover slipped over her eyes. A year might have passed—or a minute. There was no time left to contain her. All she knew was her body lay somewhere beneath her, her life somewhere behind; she saw her life in picture-flashes, saw her village, her family, dragged backward on tides of memory all the way to her mother's labor pains. Released from the overpowering current, she burst forward and swam through the good years of walking, talking, and touching everything in her world. Then came the hard, sad years after Father died from fever.
A burst of white filled her vision and it was yesterday again—the day her brother's skin burned just as Father's had. Aina flew above it all, her mother and brother, above the missionaries who drove toward the city, intent on medicine that couldn't arrive in time. Above her very last yesterday. Her brother's fever worsened and he cried all day.
After dark when she was supposed to sleep, his ragged cries woke her and she couldn't wait for the missionaries one more minute. Aina's body sprinted from the village and across the far reaches with Father's machete in hand, her spirit flying high above in pursuit of the dream. She chased her body as it ran from cities and medicine and concrete, and instead toward the Fortress of Needles where the Great Spirit lived.
She had not anticipated the foreigners and their trucks, and her body couldn't hear her spirit's shouts of warning. They ran her down.
Another flash of white and she no longer flew. She was living her last memories from inside her own skin. They bound her wrists and placed her atop one of their crates in a stretch of featureless, flat ground at the doorstep of the Great Spirit's house of stones. The man with the scar through his eye questioned her, every word relayed through an interpreter.
"Tell me, Little Morsel, why are you out here in the dark with the monsters?"
"I seek the Great Spirit."
"Your prayers will be heard by nothing but hollow wind."
It was her second time talking to the scarred man and she felt less fear, since he had already murdered her. She answered more easily in the dream. "You do not understand. Just like the missionaries, you do not know the Great Spirit. It is not a god for worship. It is not a god swayed by words or burnt offerings. It is power, thirst, and it rules men as the wind does, without care for what they are. To plead for its mercy is to ask the lion to bow down."
It lived out there, in a forest of tall stone, alone and hungry, always hungry, but the scarred man didn't believe her. "Tell me more about your idols." His men wore bandoleers; they had sharp edges and thirsty smiles, and they chuckled while he ran a knife across Aina's cheek.
"Sometimes when the moon is high, it comes to our village and takes the men away. It likes soldiers, the ones with hard eyes and hearts, so they don't come to our village anymore. When I was small, it took my uncle. My cousin never spoke until the next night, and she told me it had dark eyes lit with blue fire, and that the Great Spirit promised that her father would never, ever touch her again."
Some of the bandits shifted uncomfortably, but the scarred man leaned close. "Do you mean to frighten us?"
"No. You do not understand well enough to be afraid. The missionaries didn't either, not with their God who forgives, and not you with your bullets and bombs. The Great Spirit cannot forgive, and it cannot die. You do not understand darkness or how it moves and breathes. You have forgotten magic and the shapes that lurk at the fringes of the well-lit places. My people do not forget. We live here, beneath the playground of gods, far from the thrum of electric wires."
He laughed and called out into the night, "Oh Great Spirit! Forgive my love of air conditioning! Of motor oil and gunpowder and the smell of money! Forgive my men the fun we intend to have with your fool of a worshipper."
"I do not worship. I fear." Aina shivered and wanted the dream to end, because she remembered what came next and didn't want to live it twice.
"Why did you come out tonight, Little Morsel?" the scarred man asked.
"To offer my life for my brother's."
"Offer your life to me instead."
"No."
"I am the only power in this desert. I am your Great Spirit. Offer it."
"You are not. And it will come for you." She lied, then, afraid because of where he slid the knife along her slight body: "There is more than one. They number dozens. They will all come for you. They are born from Hell and will burn you forever and ever." The only light about them was in their knives, and the void inside their eyes yawned so wide that their depths froze her skin. Her teeth chattered.
"There is no Hell but the one I make for you," the neatly dressed translator said. The man with the scar through his eye leaned close and she could smell his breath. "And I am your only god now."
Then they hurt her. And through the pain and the degradation she could not help the swell of pity, because each of them—as he took his turn—condemned himself to a fate ten thousand times worse, and she wondered for the first time if some people could feel Hell coming for them. Pulling them into its orbit. And whether the pain they wrought was because of the great evils that bore down upon them. She would not let the same evil that ate through their hearts take hers, and so she would not hate them, even as they worked their terrible will on her body.
They finished and they slit her throat and left her for animals to devour.
It was no longer before. The dream had ended.
Aina drifted into a snug and warm place like the heat under her wool blanket on a chilly morning, and she felt a stranger's heartbeat nearby. It drummed big, hollow notes, like a horse's. Was she in a womb? Had she died, and passed through gates, and become a person again, only not yet fully formed? Or was she being born an angel in some newer, stranger place?
She never found out even though she wished to. Something seized her center like a small, bright thread and tugged. At first, gently. Then, it pulled upon her like a swift river and dragged her from the cozy nest. Death was a threshold made of fire, she discovered, and though great comforts lived on either side, Aina now understood that it hurt to move through it, whether going forward or back.
She was cold. Blood was smeared on her face and an incredible ache in her throat pinched off a scream; she touched her neck by reflex, and felt the tight weave of fine stitches. The same night sky spun above her, the moon dark, but the stars shifted. From the temperature of the blood—her own blood—and the movement of the sky, she had been dead for at least an hour. She lay on her back on something so frigid it burned, a sheet of white, and specks of the stuff floated down through the desert air. Snow. Aina had only seen it in books brought by the missionaries, and yet here it was so beautiful that it hurt to look at.
The Great Spirit knelt over her, its body a hooded veil outlined by the drifting snow, and somehow she knew that the Spirit had made the snow, and it seemed very alone in their small patch of white frost in the middle of a vast desert.
"Did you save me?" Her voice came out a raspy whisper because of the threads through her neck.
It nodded. Its chin was pale like the missionaries, but its eyes held no white; the scleras were black as deep skies with irises of blue fire. Blood wreathed the snow beneath its hands.
She had never hated the foreigners, but their bodies stained the patch of snow and she knew the Great Spirit had hated them for her. And it hated better than she ever could, cleaner and hotter, and for the first time in her life Aina felt no fear, because the most dangerous thing in the world had already decided in her favor.
"I came for you," she rasped. "My brother. So ill. Trade me for him, please. I will go with you to Hell if you save him."
It reached down and took white snow into its hands, which were bandaged in shadow like the rest of it, and exhaled until the water melted. Its breath hung, a cloudy mist in the air, and the snow became a gleaming pool that reflected more starlight than it should have. It drained the water into a canteen, which it passed to her, and Aina understood. The water carried the Spirit's breath, a rare gift that would save him.
But the expulsion of power caused the Spirit to collapse into the snow. Its fingers splayed there. She could see how it stooped, bent-backed, weakened, and wondered just how much of a god's power was required to drag her back through death's gates. So, too, was the moon gone, and she knew the Spirit was always strongest when the moon rode high. "What's wrong?" she asked.
The first shot rang from the dark. The bullet struck the Spirit's shoulder and Aina was shocked at the solid thud. Though it didn't appear to wound the Spirit, it loosed a beastly growl and pointed out into the desert. "Flee," it said, in a voice like rough sandstone. Rough, yet spoken from what appeared to be a feminine jaw.
"They will hurt you! They're monsters!"
It climbed to its feet. "I am the one who eats monsters." It turned toward the men—more of them than before. Undaunted, it charged its prey, loosing an otherworldly howl that rattled Aina's courage.
And so Aina ran and carried the water back to her sick brother, unsure if the Great Spirit could hear prayers, but saying one instead to any god who would listen: put wings to her feet and aid the Great Spirit in working its terrible will.
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The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 3 |
[ Clockwork Men ]
Helicopter rotors spun in the darkness and nothing that lived here knew that sound. Scrub mice scattered to their burrows and snakes tasting the frigid air from their holes slithered back into the deep places.
The headset crackled and Sergeant Kessler heard the communication from his position behind the cockpit: "Artemis One, this is Artemis Two. Package spotted. Converge at two klicks north by northwest."
The helo flew adjacent to limestone forests. The Fortress of Needles was a stony region of brackish rivers and mangroves protected by natural hazards that had stymied human settlement since humans first lived. Spires of rock jutted into naturally dagger-sharp points. Every ridge, crest, and handhold had been wind- and water-scoured to broken-glass edges. Razorlike stones chewed both climbing gear and flesh with ease. The deadly ridges rose above the helicopter's trajectory, and in the distance they looked to Kessler like the uneven, serrated contours of a medieval implement of torture.
A long desert scrubland flanked the east side of the fortress. Far to the west, though, stone spires protected a dense rainforest known mainly for its variety of poisonous reptiles. The rainforest swallowed the region's waters, cradled its rivers, flooding for entire seasons of the year. On one side of the vast stretch of limestone walls, a man would drown and be eaten by crocodiles. On the other, he'd die of thirst and have his softer parts swallowed by buzzards.
It lay not far from pirate-harried coastlines and warlord-controlled villages, a region once called by the British "a sort of natural anarchy" where man lived in suspicion of his neighbors.
The temperatures, venomous animals, wild carnivores, serrated rock, blinding sandstorms, seasonal floods, and bottomless sinkholes had chased off naturalists and explorers alike. It was the last untamed place. Kessler and the other members of his squad banked and flew along its feet, scanning the cold earth for traces of warmth and life.
Not every beastly thing in the Fortress of Needles was an animal. Their quarry used the desolate alcoves at the edge of the Fortress as a pit stop on their journey north, a sort of reverse underground railroad of human, weapons, and drug trafficking.
The helo cruised over flat lands until it found its twin, and they hovered like moths. Long cords spilled from their bellies and dropped to the sandy earth, and soft as snake hisses the soldiers boiled out and alighted among the desert scrub.
The soldiers were clockwork people who moved as they were taught to move—low and fast and outward-facing with their weapons, the first to land being the first to find positions until both helicopters had released their full, deadly payloads.
Kessler paid attention to the simple gesture-and-flick of his unit commander, cocked his carbine assault rifle, and moved stealthily into position. The air tasted thin and cold, the sky above him black as a bottomless pond, the stars especially bright and the darkness behind them especially empty. Out here in the primordial sand, all distance between the heavens and earth shortened so that he could have scraped his nails across the sky—and the emptiness stretched down from behind the stars and into Kessler. It swallowed him, so that he felt suspended between cold ground and the abyss.
Their approach was measured, slow. Their snipers took up position in the flat of the sands, on the peak of subtle crests that only rose after a hundred yards of effort, and even then, only a few scant feet higher than the rest of the terrain. They hid like insects camouflaged as their surroundings, beneath neatly folded wings of tarp, armed with rifles that could cut through a tank.
Kessler and the other soldiers crunched through the sand and hardened earth, with the same unnoticed forward advance as the moon across the sky.
The enemy had built a bonfire at the foot of tall limestone walls and nested in a dark alcove behind it. Three trucks with canvas backs were parked in a row, aligned so one's headlights was on the encampment and two others faced out, creating a perimeter of light that the soldiers studiously avoided. It also interfered with Kessler's night vision, so that he couldn't count them.
The outward-facing lights didn't fit and Kessler's mind buzzed in quiet alarm. The smugglers used this region because it was desolate. What were they so afraid of that they'd set up a perimeter?
No—it didn't fit. Something had happened. Something had frightened them.
"Eight contacts," said the radio. Kessler counted four, but the trucks blocked his view to the alcove.
He knew it wasn't his place to speak up, that radio frequencies could be monitored. He did it anyway. "Be advised, they're set up for us. Something's wrong."
"Number four, shut up," said the commander. "Team, proceed."
Kessler's lizard brain vibrated the fine hairs on his neck. He wanted to scream into his radio and order the team back. He couldn't. Just by speaking out, he put the whole squad at risk. He swallowed his intuition, forced it deep into his gut, and with jittery limbs he stepped forward.
The first explosion erupted twenty yards to his right, washing out his night vision as hot force swept over him. It filled up the desert with a soldier's rattled scream.
"Minefield!" said the radio in his ear.
High in the rocks a muzzle flashed, and the shot reached his ears the next moment. A near miss. He disobeyed his instincts again and didn't move, because there was no cover to be sought. The explosion from the mine had backlit him for a moment, but the shooter didn't have a good bead on him. If he moved—if he disturbed the darkness—that would change. Instead, he used his radio. "Contact, twenty meters above the campsite, sniper in the rocks."
A gunshot rang from their own side. His night vision registered the falling corpse that hit the dirt.
He remembered the scream and pivoted. Smoke drifted up from Jenson, who lay still. The other soldiers dropped to the ground and fired into the enemy camp.
Kessler sprinted for Jenson. Shots rang out all around. He slid to a stop in the dirt. Jenson's breath came in short gasps, his mask pried loose, so that Kessler could see the spark of his clenched white teeth, face contorted in pain. His chest rose and fell quick, like the sharp breaths of a woman in labor, trying desperately not to scream and give away their position.
The legs were gone below his knees and Kessler's stomach wrenched. He wasn't the primary medic but he had training and knew enough to save Jenson's life. He went through the procedures, hissing to Jenson's face so he could read his lips: "You're good, hang in there. Going to do a tourniquet and get you out of here. You with me?"
"Yeah," he said between sharp breaths. "I'm here. Sure as fuck not—anywhere else."
Horror froze Kessler's hands at first. Revulsion washed through him. The sight of the bloodied stumps struck a gong in his skull that wouldn't stop ringing. His training muted the noise, dulled the reverberation until it became a persistent buzz. He ignored the human being and focused on the stumps and the tourniquet and the bandages. Instead of operating on a person, he sought only to stop the bleeding. It changed him from a panicked surgeon to a competent plumber.
Shots like firecrackers erupted all around him, the echoing pop pop pop filling up the sky. Strobe flashes from the cliff sides and the scattered positions of his team ignited the darkness. The radio burst with frenzied messages: "... need helo support now, pinned down..." "Paint the target, Seven, unsure if there are non-hostiles on the ground." "Enemy behind the trucks, repeat, taking cover behind—" "Then push them back!" "Anyone get a look at the mine that clipped Three?"
Kessler glanced at the crater in the ground, then at Jenson. "You get a look at the mine?"
"Don't fuckin' know, might have been... might have been under some brush."
Made sense. The ground here was short scrub brush sprouting from clay. A freshly buried mine would look like a discolored zit on the open terrain, so they would be hidden under brush. But there was too much dry vegetation to avoid it on their approach. And there had to be a lot of mines, since Jenson had triggered one only a hundred yards out from the trucks. One step could kill or maim Kessler or any of his squad mates.
No, he thought. Don't think like prey. He slammed the door on that. Focus on the enemy, focus on what they're trying to do. The outward-facing trucks and mines were a defensive perimeter. Something had spooked them enough to unload a cache of munitions and mines they must have been trafficking and create an impromptu minefield in the middle of nowhere. He looked at the trucks and their headlights, then the places in shadow where his squad had taken root.
That was it. The light and the shadow. Not a lot of mines, he realized. Well-positioned ones. The truck lights were meant to corral the enemy into the darkness, into the mines. He tapped his radio. "Four to squad, advise, the mines are in the shadows underneath the scrub."
First a pause. Then pops. The truck headlights shattered. "One to squad. Avoid the scrub. Approach in front of the trucks where there was light before. Suppression fire. Chase them back into the alcove and then drop the goddamn hammer."
A scrape of boot heels signaled the appearance of Hendrickson from the shadow, hopping and jumping over the scrub like some perverted battlefield game of "the floor is lava." He knelt by Jenson. "I'll finish here."
Hendrickson was the more experienced medic. Kessler stood and danced over the brush, blending light-footedness with the low, swift movement of a soldier. Alvarez had made it to a forward position and fired his light machine gun from prone. Seo had dug into a flank and together they'd chased back the traffickers hiding behind the trucks. Concussive booms in the distance signaled fire from their snipers. Three traffickers fled to the alcove and then dropped like puppets whose strings had been cut.
Kessler sprinted past; Alvarez stood and tagged along behind him. They ran parallel to a truck and took cover behind one of the tall spikes of rock just forward of the Fortress's cliff side, where the cavernous holes hid their enemy. The alcove was partly lit and partly obscured in their night vision by the fire burning in front of it.
Return fire hit the rocks above Alvarez's head. Kessler had an angle into the cavern and a glimpse of the shooter. He'd never killed a man before. It was a shot across sixty yards at a partly uncovered torso through the fog of shadow and glare of fire.
Kessler drew the bead. Gunfire cut through the night air to his right. A stutter of bullets from Alvarez's machine gun struck the shooter an instant before Kessler could fire. In the grainy night vision it looked to Kessler as if the man's head folded in, like a smashed pumpkin.
The ghost of an emotion filled him, irritation or relief, but no time to process it, and like a shadow it was gone. He poured on suppression fire and the squad caught up, then shifted forward under alternating fire.
"Paint the overhang," their commander radioed. "Aim high, don't damage the package."
The helicopter rotors grew in volume, desert sand flew past Kessler's ankles, and then its big guns opened up. Thunder cracked the sky in half and roared palpably into Kessler's shoulders. The cliff wall above the overhang transformed into powdered stone. Between bursts they could hear the rattle and collapse of rock formations crumbling under the onslaught.
"No rockets and keep it over their heads," the commander said between explosions from the heavy cannons. "Don't want to breach the package."
Blind spots for the overhang rested along the cliff wall. They could position there and sweep the inside. Kessler pointed at the wall to Alvarez, who nodded. Over the fire and noise from the helicopter, they sprinted for the cliff. He sensed Seo and Ike hustling to the right-side cliff wall as he and Alvarez went left. Return fire from the enemy position came in sporadic bursts. Not even aiming. Not chancing a glance around their stony cover from inside the overhang, lest the helicopter's fire rip them to pieces.
Kessler hit the cliff wall and spun. The motion ground one shoulder strap along a serrated rock, slicing the fabric halfway through. He and Alvarez looked ahead. Up close he could see a tall wooden post, like a short telephone pole, that they had planted in front of the fire. They'd tied a shapeless black mass of supplies to the top of the pole with baling wire to keep it from predators. A round from the helicopter snapped through the middle of the pole and obliterated half the thick beam. The big guns quieted and the wood groaned in the night air, threatening to snap.
"Go, go, go," said Ike. Kessler rounded the overhang's wall and stepped into the alcove.
Bang, bang, bang, each rifle shot a percussive beat in the tight confines. Seo's shots lanced through a trafficker who crumpled forward without a sound, like a wind-up toy whose spring had run down. Another trafficker popped up and aimed at Seo. Kessler's rifle snapped to attention. His finger teased the trigger.
Ike fired first and the trafficker's head snapped back. He collapsed.
Kessler finished rounding the corner while Alvarez strafed for a rock, wanting a spot to set up his machine gun. For a split second, it was only Kessler. A figure ran from around a stone pillar, away from Ike and Seo as they cleared the opposite side of the cavern. Running away rather than toward the fight, he had his rifle down. Maybe fleeing, maybe repositioning. He ran straight into Kessler's path.
For one split second Kessler saw him. Saw through the bandana on his face and to the surprised, black-eyed face beneath, eyes un-creased by age or experience. He had the lank body of a teenager. His weapon tensed.
It was going to swing up or drop to the ground. Kessler's gut told him it was swinging up.
He fired.
The trafficker hit the ground. His rifle skated away from his fingertips. Kessler pushed back the desire to second-guess himself and swept the rest of the corner just in time to see one more enemy step out from a rock formation and fire into the space Kessler had occupied a breath ago. Alvarez's machine gun kicked the camo-dressed man off his feet into the back wall of the alcove.
The team cleared the rest of the small opening in the cliff wall. The helicopter's gunfire had killed three men and the rest had died in the brief firefight.
"Possible ID on the package," Seo said.
Kessler knelt and waved a handheld black box over the surface of a metal crate about the size of a garbage disposal. The black box clicked rapidly and he nodded. "Positive ID," he radioed. "Package is intact."
"This thing going to give us cancer?" Seo asked.
"I wouldn't lick it if that's what you mean," Kessler said. "But the seal's tight enough for short-term handling."
"Area secure," radioed Davis. "Bring in the evac bird. Sending the package and Jenson back in Artemis One, per Extraction Plan Bravo. Hendrickson, stay with Jenson."
Kessler and Seo went carefully over the rest of the bodies. "Got a live one," Seo said.
They both knelt around a young trafficker, his hood pulled back to reveal heavy black hair and nut-brown features. Kessler came in close to the man and lifted the night-vision goggles on his own face. Seo brought his penlight out. "Tell us where you were taking the package. Who was your contact?" Kessler checked the man's wounds, putting pressure on them. Two to the center mass. He didn't have long.
"Take me," he said in English. "Take me away. Before it gets me."
Seo and Kessler shared a glance. "Sure," Kessler said. "Just tell us who your drop contact was. We'll get you out of here, get you patched up." It was a lie. Without a new liver, he would die. "I need a name."
"No. I'm dead," he said, glancing down at the black blood on his vest. "Take my body away. Before it drags me to Hell."
"No one's dragging you to Hell," Kessler said. He was confused. There were old military tales of Westerners wrapping dead Muslims in pig flesh or filling their mouths with pork before burying them, ostensibly to threaten Hell on their enemies, but the mission brief said these traffickers didn't worship anything except money. So why the superstition?
"Took them. Took them to Hell. I heard them screaming. Only found pieces of my friend, small pieces. It was not from this world. Men cannot move like that. And the sounds it drew out of the other men... men do not sound like that."
"He's hysterical," Kessler said.
Seo shook the trafficker. "What screaming?"
The dying youth lurched up and grabbed Kessler, his fist tight around the front of his jacket. With the strength wakened at the precipice of death, he pulled Kessler face to face. Seo drew his sidearm, but didn't fire.
"We followed their howls. Followed the trail of... remains. It ripped apart seven more of us before we brought it to the ground. Just one did that, and the girl said there are dozens more out there. We cut it for hours to draw them out, but it made no sound. I— I do not think it can die. Please kill it. If you can. Then take me from here. Don't let it have me! Fly my corpse away and throw it into the sea. Hell lives in its eyes."
He collapsed, eyes wide open and staring straight up into the air, the motion and life in his body evaporated, so that only the husk remained and not the animating force of the man.
Seo scratched the back of his head beneath his helmet. "How many drugs you think that guy was on?"
"All of them," Kessler said.
They both walked out of the alcove and toward the fire, built with the remains of wooden crates. The post groaned in the breeze, threatening to snap in half from where the round had blasted through it. Kessler looked again at the bundle of supplies strapped to the top. It didn't look like much, just a lump wrapped in black trash bags, strapped to the stake with baling wire. A big, metal tent spike had been driven into the post up high to nail it in place. Seo gave it a firm push with his shoulder and the post cracked, falling to the side and away from the fire. "Timber."
The post hit the hard desert ground and the bundle of supplies growled at them.
"Holy shit," Kessler said. Had they tied a wild animal up? He leveled his rifle, clicked on the front-mounted light, and shone it over the misshapen heap of bags. He traced his light up the pole. Rust-brown bloodstains coated the wood below the bags. Then he passed his light to the tent spike.
"Oh holy God," Kessler said. It wasn't a strap they'd nailed to the post. It was a human wrist. "It's a person."
He and Seo dropped to their knees. He flicked his combat knife out and sawed the baling wire. Seo worked from the bottom up and snapped a wire off, then forced the mass of garbage bags aside, baring small feet. Please let them be attached.
Seo clipped another wire. They were. Kessler ripped the plastic bag open where there was a lump like a head, above where the wire tightened around the shape of a neck.
"It's a girl," Kessler said, his throat and stomach contracting all at once. "I think." It was hard to tell. Her face had amassed brown and purple bruises, eyes swollen to slits, her mouth a bloody mess.
"Look at her wrist," Seo said.
He did. She'd been tied to the post by baling wire and covered in plastic, but her wrist was stretched straight over her head. They'd pounded a railroad tie–sized spike through her wrist just below where the bones in the forearm met. "Jesus. The wire on her throat's tight," Seo said. "Can't get my knife in. Think she's conscious?"
"Has to be," Kessler said. He swallowed. "Only way she could keep from choking to death..."
"...was by hoisting herself up on the spike in her wrist," Seo finished.
They glanced at one another, and then Kessler radioed. "We have a hostage in bad shape. Need an evac with Jenson. Badly injured left arm, low on blood, unknown number of other injuries," he said as they pulled the plastic bags off. Her skin was chalk-white wherever it wasn't bruised.
"How bad?" Davis radioed.
"Bad. Counting multiple wounds to her torso. Combination gunshots and knives."
Seo checked her scalp. "Someone shot her close range. You can see where the bullet glanced off her skull."
They'd half freed her from the wire when her eyes slitted open beneath the swelling. They were black.
She spat a wad of blood. White teeth flashed and for a split second Kessler thought he saw fangs. He leaned in to get a better look. Then she seized his throat. He gripped her skinny arm at elbow and wrist, pried, but he couldn't shake her. He wheezed, eyes watering.
Seo grabbed her and pulled from the other direction, but she gripped like a demon. Ike and Alvarez saw them and both jumped on. Finally they wrenched her loose. She fought them, a flurry of animal sounds, elbows, wild punches. One knocked Alvarez's helmet sharply down and to the side and he fell onto his ass blinded by his own gear. Kessler leapt onto her and pinned her midsection, forcing a forearm across her throat. "Settle! We won't hurt y—fuck!" She'd sunk her teeth into his forearm. Felt like a bear trap. Bled like one too. Seo went to rip her head back and Kessler yelled, "No, fuck, get back."
They stared.
"Just get back!"
The three of them did. He stared into the slits she had for eyes, blood seeping out of his forearm. He could see where her unnaturally pointed canines had penetrated the flesh. She had teeth like a wolf's, a bit too long on top and bottom.
He swallowed through the pain and looked down at her. "I'm a doctor. I won't hurt you."
She growled but didn't rip his skin off like he was sure she could.
His hand snaked around and he put the syringe into her neck. He pushed the plunger down. She spat out his arm, clubbed him with a tight-balled fist, and rocked him off her.
Seo dragged him back. "What'd you give her?"
"Enough. I hope."
It wasn't. She wriggled, arched, and a crack of wood sounded. She squirmed free. Then she grabbed the tent spike.
With one, two wrenches, she tried to rip it free. At last, she collapsed flat on her face, making a soft thump as she hit the dusty ground, where she lay motionless on her stomach.
They all stood and approached with weapons leveled on the slight, raven-haired girl. Ike toed her with his boot like she was a Fourth of July firework that had failed to detonate. "You think she's with the traffickers or being trafficked?"
"Neither," Kessler said. "They wouldn't ship just one person at a time. And she's white. Foreigner."
"Think she's American? English?" Seo asked.
"No idea," Kessler said. He knelt and checked her pulse. "Going to live, though."
"Jesus, look at her back," Alvarez said.
Kessler got on the radio again. "Subject's sedated. Highly combative. Looks like multiple lacerations on her back. On her everywhere, I think."
"Lacerations?" Davis asked.
"Torture," Kessler said. "A lot of it."
"Keep her sedated. She rides out in Artemis Two. Keep her away from Jenson."
"Copy."
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 4 |
[ Feral ]
Ryn woke bound and powerless. Her brain felt sticky from the drugs. She smelled lifeless plastic, tasted the iron tinge of human artifice on her tongue. A prickle of urgency tensed the muscles in her legs. They had her in a machine. In a whirling, thundering abomination, bound to a gurney, and two of them prodded her with fingers covered in man-schemed rubber. The stench of their gloves caught in her throat and alien hands probed her wounds.
Wounds.
It was a type of sacrilege, to be harmed by such temporary creatures, but dragging the village girl called Aina back from death had been no small feat; and she had given the mortal a second gift of breath to carry home to her dying sibling. Giving life back was the hardest thing she could do and she'd never dared it twice in a row before. That was why Ryn had fought with no more strength than a mortal, why her power had yet to return.
At least she knew Aina had succeeded. She had sensed the expulsion of her power across a vast distance, felt in that moment how her life force had punched into the heart of Aina's brother. Ryn was glad. Though she disliked mortals as a rule, Aina had the clean scent of rain on her skin—free of the stink that oozed out the pores of the species. Whatever the price, paying it had freed the little village girl who Ryn had watched from the time she'd swelled her mother's womb. Now Aina, too, would have time to grow old.
The two soldiers rolled her on her side. They both hailed from that new country that had been re-colonized in the last few centuries, a place where the blood of a thousand origins ran together. They were imperial in self-regard, and they spoke a faddish language that had swept the world. It was a great civilization in wealth and prowess, and arrogant, but she hadn't bothered to learn its name. She had stopped learning the new ones' names.
"What is this stuff?" asked the one called Seo. He tugged the strands of her kanaf, all that remained of the mystic fibers that normally cloaked her. Another thing lost in the battle.
"Can't tell," said the one called Kessler. "Fiber's stiff, like Kevlar." He tugged and it popped out of the slit in her back. "These six lacerations on her back are different from the others. Too symmetrical, not bloody enough, and this black stuff looks like it got... worked into it somehow. Almost like she's attached to it."
"They don't match the other wounds. Maybe two different guys worked her over."
"You'd need a scalpel to do this. Probably not even that. These remind me less of cuts and more of... gills."
The butchers cut away the last of her kanaf. How long before it would regrow?
Kessler took her wrist. Ryn feigned unconsciousness. She remembered Kessler, the one who had injected her with the drug. Normally the only thing she liked about soldiers was the sound they made when she broke them. But these ones didn't stink quite so badly, Kessler especially, and so she hadn't yet mutilated him. She'd lost consciousness around him and he hadn't harmed her. That didn't seem typical of humans.
He attached a sensor to her undamaged wrist and she felt a prick to the inside of her elbow. Fluid tried to drain into her through the needle but her body stopped it. A "beep-beep" sounded from one of their loud machines.
"This bag isn't flowing. No stoppage. What the hell?" Seo asked.
Ryn slitted one eye open.
"Don't know, but there had to be four pints of blood in the camp back there between the post and where they tortured her. Should be tachycardic, but her pulse is strong, slow." Kessler was a brown-skinned man with symmetrical features, eyes like black slate, and charcoal hair.
"You sound worried."
"It's too strong," Kessler said. "She's lost half her blood, ought to be in stage-four hypovolemia. She's not in shock, not at all. She's... stable."
"Strong kid."
Kessler absently massaged his throat and nodded. "Maybe too strong. She's what—five feet tall? Sixteen years old? She weighed a hundred pounds, give or take, when I lifted her."
"What're you getting at?"
"Ever seen a girl this size throw a punch like that? She's just a kid."
"Fear and adrenaline?"
"Could be. My friend back home sometimes works with troubled kids. Juvenile offenders from all kinds of crazy backgrounds. She said you'd be surprised what these kids can do. One of them—barely twelve—once put a three-hundred-pound caseworker on crutches."
"Good thing she's zip-tied down."
"Guess so." He pressed fingertips to her hair and smoothed it away from the gunshot wound on her scalp. "I'm not a surgeon, and she's scabbed over, so we'll let the ER docs on the ship take a crack at most of this. Maybe stitch up this mess, though. Pass me those scissors."
Seo passed scissors over her and she realized they meant to cut her hair.
No.
"Shit, she's awake," Seo said.
"Not with all the dope I put in her." Kessler met her eyes and she peeled her lips back, showed him her canines. He didn't shout, or curse, or sign himself with the cross, or throw salt over one shoulder—all mortals reacted differently to her eyes, to their cold depths and the spark of divinity that burned in her irises. She guessed her weakness had dimmed the spark, because he only shivered.
Ryn jerked at her plastic bonds. She twisted her spine in every way a spine could bend and a few more. Both men jerked away from her. "Fuck!" Seo shouted.
"Everything okay back there?" called someone from the cockpit.
"It's a scene from The Exorcist!"
Her gaze narrowed on the scissors and she sensed some give in the plastic tie binding her right wrist, where he'd tied it looser because of the metal shard embedded there. They had sawed the spike off the post rather than pulling it from her flesh. She rotated her wrist faster and faster, using her blood as lubricant, never mind the bolt of pain that fired up her arm so sharply that she felt it in her jaw.
"Hey, easy, sh sh shh, it's okay. I'm putting them down," Kessler said over the flying machine's engine. He lowered the scissors.
She followed the motion of his hand. The monitor's annoying bleeps had sped with the rate of her heart.
"Do you speak English?" He touched his chest with both hands. "I'm Sergeant Kessler. This is my friend, Corporal Seo, and we're not going to hurt you. We're flying you to a hospital. Can you tell me what language you speak?"
Ryn didn't understand. Soldiers were men with weapons, hard men sent to the serene fringes of the civilized world, who bent it and subdued it and filled it with loud noise for the sake of colored pieces of cloth waved around on a pole. The idea that a soldier did not want to hurt—especially a female—only confused her. What else were they for? Yet this one spoke of hospitals. "Soldier," she said. "Soldier means no harm? No. No." She hadn't tried their language before and it sounded foreign to her own ears.
"Yeah, soldier," Kessler said, patting the metal tags dangling from his neck. "Not a bad soldier. We don't want to hurt any innocent people, or you, we were only hunting the bad guys."
Ryn shook her head. "Always hurt. 'Want' not matter. Always women, small ones, old ones—caught by bullets, swords, spears. If not on purpose, then accident. Clumsy." She spoke the last word like a curse because too few humans understood how wrong their clumsiness really was.
"I'm not clumsy. Let me fix your wound. I just need to cut your hair."
She snarled.
"I don't think she wants you to cut it," Seo said.
"Really? You think?" Kessler glanced down at her again. "Okay, okay. What if I put the stitches in and leave your hair alone?"
Normally she stitched her wounds with her kanaf, but that was gone. "I do it."
"I can't let you. But I can tell you don't trust me. That's all right. Here," he said, and rummaged for a tray bottom. It was reflective like a mirror and he gave it to Seo. "Hold this up for her." She could see everything his hands did to her scalp now. "You can watch, all right? That way you know I'm not being clumsy."
She glared, but until they untied her, she could do little. That irked her. Even worse, the cottony hold of the drugs had returned and she felt it lulling her toward the brink of unconsciousness.
He cleaned the wound and put sixteen stitches into her scalp.
"Done," he said. "See?"
"Not good."
"Was it clumsy?"
"No. Just not good."
He chuckled. "Thankless brat." She didn't know what "brat" meant but it sounded good and bad at once, the way he said it.
"Let go. Let me go," she whispered.
"Don't worry. You're not in clumsy hands. You're all right."
"No. Not in hands. No one's hands. No one holds me." Her voice sounded far away and her heavy eyelids lowered. She felt only the rattle and vibration of the flying machine, and then nothing at all.
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 5 |
Kessler stepped into the cramped briefing room on board the USS Tsongas, one of the military's "floating cities" that deployed around the globe. It had the medical facilities—and then detainment facilities—to deal with the girl, and he'd been shuttled alongside her while the limitless wisdom of the military bureaucracy tried to decide whether she was a detainee, a refugee, or something else that fit into their check sheets. He was glad it was Major Blackmun who sat behind the desk, since he'd served under him before. Beside him was a bespectacled doctor with a receding hairline and his nose buried in a thick medical chart.
"Have a seat," Blackmun said. He had a square, boxy head, with the hardened frown of a bulldog, and he put his glasses on with the noticeable disdain of a middle-aged man who hated the small betrayals of his body.
"Yes sir."
"At ease. What's this I hear about your transfer?"
"Garfield thinks I'm too slow on the trigger, sir. Fraction of a second. Wants to move me for the rest of my term, put me in an investigative role. Said it suits my personality better."
"Can't say he's wrong. You've got great instincts, but you're the kind of soldier who has to be sure before he pulls the trigger. That kind of caution will suit you where you're going. Now. You're here because we still have a puzzle to solve. You went and found yourself a stray, Sergeant. And nothing about her quite adds up."
"No, sir."
He motioned to a monitor on the wall and judging by the time stamp it showed footage twelve hours old. The girl sat in an interrogation room at a metal table, cuffed, in an orange jumpsuit. She didn't move. She stared straight up into the camera, and from a distance her eyes were dark with bright sparks where the irises should have been. Kessler had never looked at her eyes and not shivered, this time included.
Blackmun never looked up. He kept his gaze steady on Kessler. "You don't think she should be a detainee, do you. Why not?"
"Because they tore her up bad, sir. Never seen it that bad before, and I didn't grow up in the best neighborhood. Broken bones, lacerations, bullet and stab wounds, two mashed-up eyes, burns, and those weird incisions on her back. I don't even want to know what else they did to her."
The doctor cleared his throat and said, "The report yielded little. They tried to get her to sign the consent form and she stabbed the nurse through the hand with a pen. However, we do think she was—"
"That's enough, Dr. Mellon," Blackmun said. "Yes, I read the report. They tortured her and she lost more than half her blood, although what concerns me is that a good deal of the blood on her hands and body belonged to other people. Her predilection for violence is a problem. She woke from her surgery and choked a surgeon. But beyond the violence, there are other questions."
"Yes," Mellon said. "Like how she's back on her feet so quickly. She's already got a red-cell count that's off the charts." The more he went on, the faster he talked. "Most of her wounds have mended. Her bones have mended. Her metabolism is unreal—I don't mean high, I mean impossible—because she hasn't eaten or lost any weight. My colleagues want to test her DNA, because we're not even certain she's genetically—"
"Doctor Mellon." Blackmun silenced him with a glance, then looked back at Kessler and hit a button on his desk. "Then there's this." On the screen, which Blackmun still refused to look at, the time stamp went from a slow crawl to extreme fast forward. Minutes ticked by faster than seconds, but the girl didn't budge. There was no jerkiness to her. She sat like a statue, a fixture as motionless as the table, unflinching, for eight hours. She stared through the camera, peeled back the circuitry and wires, and looked straight into the briefing room. Interrogators blurred into the room and tried to talk to her, and even when they put water in front of her it remained untouched. Kessler's skin crawled.
Blackmun hit stop. The only indication was the frozen time stamp.
"What are you getting at, sir?" Kessler asked.
"I believe three things," he said. "First, that she isn't allied with the nuclear traffickers, and we lack any other evidence to suggest she's either an asset or an enemy of this country. Second, that she's a foreigner to the country where we picked her up, origins unknown, and clearly a minor at that, which, let's just say, complicates things for an old man like me." For as long as Kessler had known Blackmun, he'd had pictures of his daughters on his desk. "And thirdly, that she's unusual in ways that make her... dangerous."
"You think she's a child soldier, don't you?"
"You tell me. She won't talk to us. You're the only one to successfully communicate with her so far."
"Wrong part of the continent," Kessler said. "Also, she's white and speaks some English, so she's from somewhere else. Her verbal and interpersonal skills are stunted. Then there's the violent behavior, physical toughness, and neither of you even mentioned the eyes or the filed canines."
"Oh, not filed," Mellon said. "There's no evidence of dental—"
"Mellon, you can leave us," Blackmun said. The doctor frowned, sighed, and left through the ship's heavy steel door. When it shut, Blackmun said, "He's one of five doctors who want to write on her for medical journals. I'm not having any of that. This operation is still classified. The girl is a problem. I need her to go away, quietly. Help me understand her, Sergeant."
"What about feral children?"
"Like The Jungle Book?"
"Sort of. I researched it a little, and most feral children miss a developmental period. They don't pick up language, or learn how to eat with a fork and knife or use the toilet, and they never develop an interest in other human beings. Not my impression of this one. She's only half-feral. She recognized gestures, spoke some broken English. Sort of like a child who ran away very young, when she was halfway socialized."
"Ran from what?"
"Usually a rural home. An abusive one. The wilderness is sometimes more attractive."
"You think she survived where? The Fortress of Needles? I've read the briefing. Experienced survivalists have died there. One slip, one tumble, and you end up vivisected. The mission work-up explicitly forbade your team from engaging in that environment for fear we'd lose most of you. Then there's the question of who she ran away from, since there aren't that many white English-speakers in the vicinity."
"Missionaries, maybe?"
"Then you think she could be American?"
"It's possible. Have you asked her?"
"No. I want you to."
"I understand, sir. What do you plan to do with her? She'll want to know."
"If we can't figure out where she belongs? We'll treat her like a refugee. But I don't want her stateside unless we can find an institution for her."
Kessler recalled the other research he'd collected on feral children. "I have an old friend back home. A caseworker out of New Petersburg. She has a lot of connections, and she deals with children—some very violent. I think it's likely we could place her. There's private money there for it, some kind of trust fund, and a lot of professionals are interested in feral children."
"No research," Blackmun said. "She's connected to a black op. No research, no publicity."
"Like I said, I know someone. I can take care of that. What about citizenship?"
"I'll pull some strings at State. Grant her asylum for now. But make sure she's not Russian, or British, or God knows what else first. And find out if she has parents, if you can."
"Yes, sir."
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 6 |
The girl slipped her cuffs twice and they finally stowed her in a small cell with a thick locking door, then stationed two guards. It felt to Kessler almost like a joke to wrap so much security around a hundred-pound teenage girl, but he reminded himself of the vicious left hook she'd used to damn near knock him unconscious.
He and the guards exchanged salutes and he glanced through the eye-level viewport into the cramped bunk. Her sheet had been draped over the side of the metal cot and she was likely beneath in a makeshift tent.
"Blackmun told us not to fuck with how she sets up the room," said the guard. "Long as she stays put, anyway. Probably wouldn't even understand us if we ordered her to fix it."
"She understands us." Kessler reached into his pocket and took out an orange. "Open the door."
He stepped in and the guard shut the door behind him. The echo reverberated in the narrow confines. Kessler settled on the floor, back to the wall and his side facing her tent. He listened, hard, for the telltale sound of breathing or the small scrapes of motion. None came. He only heard the distant hum of ship engines through bulkhead. She made less noise than settled dust.
He set the orange down next to his knee. Then he rolled it, so that it lay between his leg and the curtain.
He waited.
It must have been an hour. His mind wandered. The guard poked his face up to the window now and then, but Kessler ignored him. He never once looked entirely away from the orange because some part of him felt certain that if he did—for even a second—it would disappear.
At last, a small hand darted from the curtain, snatched the orange, and shrank back in the bat of an eye. He could hear her peeling. She took her time even though she must have been starving. After a spell, orange peels slid from beneath the curtain.
"You're welcome," he said.
Nothing.
"There are citrus groves in the Fortress. I figured you'd like oranges. My name is Kessler. Do you remember me?"
"Yes," she whispered.
"Do you have a name?"
"No."
"What should I call you, then?"
"Whatever you like."
"You should at least pick something. Otherwise, I'll call you Butt-Face."
"Then call me Ryn."
"Are you afraid of me, Ryn?"
"No."
"Then why are you hiding?"
"The eyes. They itch."
"Your eyes itch?"
"Their eyes. They make me itch."
Her English had improved. A lot. "I'm supposed to figure out whether or not you're dangerous. Are you dangerous?"
"Are you?"
"Not to you."
"But you are. You are dangerous."
Kessler gazed off into nothing. "I suppose I could be. I suppose it's the same way with you, then? You could be dangerous. But I'll bet what you really want is to be left alone. Is that right?"
Nothing again.
"Where are you from?" he asked.
"Outside."
"You mean the wilderness?"
"I am from outside," she repeated.
"We need to find out who your parents are. Where you come from. So we can figure out where to put you."
"Put me back."
"We can't do that. You have to have a home. A place to be, with others like you."
"There are none like me."
"No parents?"
"No."
"No family at all?"
"Do you have family?"
He laughed. "This conversation is about you, not me. Tell me about your family."
"There is only me. Tell me about family. Tell me about yours."
"All right, fine," he said. "I grew up in New Petersburg. My father was a soldier and he died when I was very young. My mother passed away three years ago. Lung cancer. I have a much older half-sister who lives in Boston, from my mom's first marriage, but we never talk. Your turn. Where did you learn to speak English?"
"People. I hear them. I listen."
"What sort of people?"
"Every sort. They come to the places they should not be and fill them with their words."
"You say they shouldn't be there. Should you?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
She was quiet for a while. Then: "I am not allowed in the city. Or civilized lands. Ever."
"Why? Who told you that?"
"Does not matter who. Not allowed. Not welcome among kings or gods."
"We could send you back with us. To the United States. We don't have any kings there."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure. We have a president."
"There are always kings. Always gods. Always."
"Not here. Not with us."
"Not that you can see."
"Is that what you're afraid of? Kings? Rules? Dictators? Is that what you mean by gods, powerful people who'll hurt you? Did someone hurt you? Is that why you ran away?"
"I am not afraid of them," she said. Then, quieter: "They fear me."
"I'm not afraid of you."
The drapery slid up, and Kessler scooted down so that he lay on his side. He could see just one of the girl's eyes, with blackness instead of whites and the unsettling irises that seized the brain, drained it of thought, and covered his skin with a slow prickling sensation that radiated from the back of his neck. "There isn't anywhere left, is there?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Nowhere to go anymore. Nowhere people aren't. They are everywhere. In every small and large place in the world. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to be unseen, untouched, unthought-of. It is all close together now. Too close together. Like this room. Walls, ceiling, floor, all so close you can touch the two sides with both hands."
"I guess there's not much in the way of frontier left, no," he said.
"Then put me where you will."
"Tell me where you're from and we'll try to put you back there," he said.
"You don't understand," she said. "The place I am from doesn't exist. Not anymore."
She dropped the veil back down.
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 7 |
[ Through the Gates ]
The elevated train rolled along at window and rooftop level, channeled through corridors of brick and graffiti. The rhythmic clickety-clack of the wheels over the track joints accelerated and they jostled each time the aluminum car swayed outward on a turn. The press of bodies in cramped space had concentrated the salty odor of anxiety that clung to the city and now it suffused Ryn's clothes as well. She rode beside Victoria Cross, a dark-skinned woman dressed in a crisp suit and slender-framed glasses. Ms. Cross managed the chaos of her unruly hair by pinning it into a clutch, but stray locks danced over her right cheek.
Ms. Cross talked on her cell phone. It went about as well as all her phone calls.
"Level with me, George: are you thinking of hurting yourself? Or someone else? No? Good. All right, slow down. The first thing you're going to do is sit down and breathe. Ten breaths. Tell me when you're done." She paused for a spell. "Now, why did she leave? Did you hit her?" Another pause. "Did she deserve it? Oh, she did? Did she burn your winning lottery ticket? Then no, she didn't deserve it, George. Well, that's what happens when you hit a woman. No, I won't tell her that. Because she shouldn't come back. Yes, I am a bitch. You don't get to be a program manager without being a bitch. It's on my résumé. I underlined it twice."
Ryn liked riding beside Ms. Cross. She could focus on the faint aroma of rose-water perfume that Ms. Cross wore so often and lightly that it might have become her natural scent, and it drew Ryn's attention from the oily layers of stink that plastered the inside of the cramped train car. It was the smell of city people, of gnawing worry, the kind that applied constant pressure. It pushed a person into a perpetually frayed state, where they proceeded fugue-like and unaware that their credit cards, overdue bills, and inboxes had settled into their shoulders and bent their gait. They lived like a man forced to walk, never stopping, until he died.
The train's vibration nudged down Ryn's dark sunglasses. She pushed them back up before anyone could see her eyes. Best not to cause a panic on her first day in the city.
The train doors opened at a South Dock Street platform and she followed Ms. Cross into the frigid January air with her bag over one shoulder. Ms. Cross speared through the crowd and continued her conversation.
"Yes, I think it's very possible she's talking to the police. I'm sure they do hate you, George. If I had to come down to your place and arrest you twice a month, I'd hate you too. As it stands, I'm sitting at severely disappointed." She changed ears. "Uh-huh. And how am I supposed to do that if you're not at group? Yes, you'd better be there. I know 'sick' means hung over, and your meds don't mix with alcohol. I'm not as naïve as my various degrees would suggest." She led Ryn down the platform stairs and through the brown-slushed avenues. "Glad we had this talk. Remember: meds, group, no alcohol. Hanging up now." Ms. Cross snapped shut her phone and glanced at Ryn. "How about you? Ready for big changes?"
"Yes." So ready she could feel every slack tendon in her legs tingle, too long unexercised inside the tall, beige walls of Sacred Oaks. Ryn juked between the shouldering masses and tried to stay in the bubble of space Ms. Cross projected by force of will.
"Out of the institutional pan and into the group-home fire. You won't be as closely monitored there."
No. And every inch of freedom returned a portion of her strength. The ancient banishment that had cast her from civilized lands left her power strangely susceptible to mortal laws. Somehow, though, she had avoided the pain of a curse that normally afflicted her whenever she set foot inside their borders.
"You're ready for this," Ms. Cross said. "No more regimented schedule, no more group therapy, no more orderlies."
No more watching the days, weeks, and months zoom by through her window, patiently awaiting release, no more trying and failing to figure out what parroted words the men with clipboards and pens wanted to hear.
"You can meet people your own age. You can get a part-time job. You can go to a real school."
She could break out into the night and hunt down one of the ten thousand horrific smells ground into the asphalt. Find the most hateful monsters and spirits that fled to the cities to escape the ones like her—to escape the bigger monsters. Find, stalk, kill. Yes. She could nearly taste it.
"Tell me: what are you going to do once you settle in?"
"Behave." In front of the mortals, at least.
"And see me the first Tuesday of the month. And, no hospitalizations."
That had happened only once and Ms. Cross refused to forget it. "I understand." But she didn't give her word.
"You're an awful liar."
It was true. Mortals were practiced at lying and seeing liars. Ryn barely understood what their faces meant most of the time, and they could divine her every mood based on the tics of her mouth or tone of voice. She'd never realized until now how strangely good people were at interacting with one another—maybe twice across her countless centuries of life had she socialized with a human. "I will try."
"You say that now. Sixteen months ago, you knocked a tooth out of an orderly. I liked that orderly."
"He smelled wrong."
"And from now on when people smell bad, you will use your words."
Except Ryn could not. She could do many things without effort—anything at all with her hands or body, or with the acuity of her senses. But after observing the human species from the fringes of its campfires for as long as it had built campfires, Ryn had concluded they were not meant to be understood by something like her.
Which suited her. What was there to like, besides how the wicked ones tasted?
Salt caked the cars and the slush pushed into her thin-soled shoes. The brick buildings were many stories tall, windows dark or dingy, and graffiti decorated building sides, mailboxes, and street lamps. Shop fronts were squashed together and steam rose from sewer vents. Wintry gusts swept in from the bay and people screwed down into their coats. Ryn hardly felt the cold, and kept her face up to greet it, savoring its salty sting and lonesome moan.
"What is the name of the couple who run your group home?" Ms. Cross asked.
It was a test. "Judy and Albert Birch."
"Yes. And how do they feel about girls who growl at them?"
"They don't like it."
"Good. And how are you to treat them?"
"With respect."
"And?"
"Check in every night. Check out every morning when there's school. No exceptions."
"And?"
Ryn scrunched her face up. "...no hospitalizations?"
"Good."
She hated Ms. Cross's quizzes, and her finger point that indicated where Ryn ought to go or stand, like a trained dog. But Ryn couldn't read humans, or decipher lies, or sense their true motives, and she discovered considerable diversity in their trustworthiness. Her instincts insisted Ms. Cross was safe, a non-predator, no matter how grating. All she could do was cling to the woman, otherwise adrift in a complex web of social interactions and cues that meant nothing to her.
They stopped in front of a seven-story, brick apartment complex that was squat and perhaps a little sad, labeled with a cornerstone: "Roosevelt Place, est. 1922." Its crumbling stoop led to incongruously modern glass doors. Ms. Cross buzzed in and they rode a rickety elevator. Ryn hated elevators. They reminded her that humans didn't enjoy the feeling of their hearts beating inside their chests. Sometimes she wondered if they enjoyed being alive at all.
On the fifth floor, they knocked and an apartment door swung wide. Ms. Cross smiled, chatted amicably with Judy and Albert Birch, and introduced Ryn, who remained silent and non-aggressive and stifled the reflexive growl when Albert Birch came too close. Instead of being pleased, Ms. Cross chastised her for darting back.
"How many?" Ryn demanded.
They all stared and Ms. Cross scolded her for interrupting. Ryn hadn't been paying attention to their words, so they probably hadn't been important.
"What do you mean?" Albert asked, stooping to her height with his hands on his knees. Ryn liked him even less at eye level.
"How many?" she repeated, counting chairs at the table. "How many stay here?"
"Oh, well, my wife and I, you now, and six other young people, ages nine to seventeen."
"Where am I?" People liked to assign rooms. Organized like that.
"Right this way; I'll show you," Judy Birch said.
Ryn was guarded with Judy and Albert Birch. They didn't feel safe like Ms. Cross or Sergeant Kessler, and Albert Birch had something in his eyes she couldn't place. Too beady. He smelled like salami left out in the sun, and she was happy to get away. Judy led her through a living room cluttered with knickknacks and toys, but no filth.
There was a cuckoo clock in the kitchen and Ryn smelled an asura living inside of it, but of course the humans didn't notice the little spirit.
Her room was a converted dining nook with two doorways into it, one from the living room and one from the kitchen, curtained off by thin sheets. It had nothing akin to privacy. It was barely large enough for the bunk beds and a dresser, which sported two drawers labeled "Rin." She had no idea what to do with two entire drawers.
It had one good feature: the bay window. It stuck out from the side of the building and Ryn immediately perched on the cushioned seat beneath the frosted panes. She gazed through the bars and into the ice-glazed courtyard between Roosevelt Place and the surrounding buildings. It was littered with rusty bikes, a bent basketball hoop, and jacketed people working charcoal grills.
Ms. Cross came in. "That's no good. Those bars are a fire hazard. They come off."
Albert Birch scratched the back of his head. "I'll see what I can do," he said, and after Ms. Cross looked at him in a way Ryn didn't understand, he added, "The bars are on the outside of the window and five stories up. Can't get to them until spring, when they wash the outside of the building. I'll talk to the super."
"You have rules for people coming in and out of this room, right? I don't like the curtains at all, not for girls; they should have a door," Ms. Cross said. While they talked, Ryn noticed the other bunk's occupant, an eleven- or twelve-year-old girl, silently swept away in a thick book. She was reedy and large-eyed, with dust-colored hair and a tendency to blend in. Ryn liked her.
Ms. Cross stayed long enough to levy a dozen more criticisms of their accommodations until Judy and Albert Birch made a series of attempted farewells, following every new requirement with something to the effect of "Fine, fine, it's been a long day, we'll see you to the exit." Perhaps a half-hour after the first time they said that, Ms. Cross let them push her out the door.
Ryn leapt onto the top bunk in a clean motion and lay back, staring at the pattern of plastic stars on the ceiling. Judy and Albert came in and said some things, none of which seemed terribly important to Ryn, other than that dinner would be soon. Judy in particular asked a lot of questions and Ryn found the best way to deal with too many questions was to not answer any of them.
Judy left muttering things about attitudes.
"I don't think she likes you," the girl beneath Ryn's bunk whispered.
Ryn slid off the bed halfway, gripped the edge, and dangled to have a closer look at the other girl. "Does she ask fewer questions when you read?"
"Yes."
"Is that why you read?"
"I suppose so, at first. The house gets loud. The boys are all out at the Y and they'll be home for dinner. That's when it's loudest. I'm Susan. What's your name?"
"Ryn."
"Why do you have those glasses on?"
"I have an eye condition," which Ms. Cross had coached her to say. Ms. Cross had had a friend write the prescription for dark glasses after a bad group-therapy session—of all the people to react to her eyes, schizophrenics liked them the least. Ms. Cross said keeping her eyes covered let them save on haloperidol costs.
"You mumble some," Susan said.
"I do." It hid her teeth.
"You don't like to talk, do you?"
"I don't know why people fill the air with so many words."
"The conversations in my books are better. So are the people." Susan held up her book for inspection. "I guess I don't like small talk either." That was the name for it, then. No, Ryn did not like small talk.
Susan found a thinner book and gave it to Ryn. She lay back on her bed and leafed through yellowed pages, which gave off a mildly vanilla odor. Most of the book in her hands had been alive once—paper, ink, glue. It was dead now, but inside, the words lived in front of her eyes. She had learned the mechanics of reading English, of long division and algebra and other pointless tasks, at Sacred Oaks as part of a plan to "mainstream" her into a place called high school. Her book featured a very useless female who kept getting into trouble, except that she attracted the interests of a man who was a pirate and whom Ryn would have preferred the book to be about.
Soon, the apartment filled with tromping feet and the brash voices of "the boys." They met at the dinner table and Ryn regarded them, with some unease, as a rabble of disparate youths, two of them twins, who operated in mob-like togetherness. They pounded their silverware on the tabletop and chanted, "Feed us, feed us, feed us!" and Albert turned up the volume of a television set on the kitchen counter.
Judy served rice, two microwave family dinners, and the contents of three cans of vegetables mixed together. This was treated as a big affair. Albert poured about a fistful of salt onto his food and the Rabble battled over the leftover Salisbury steaks: "...give, it's mine you ass..." "Ow, he bit me!" "Did not!" "I'm bigger, give it." The patty smelled to Ryn like the train and she avoided the vegetables for the same reason. She scooped her patty to the quietest of the Rabble and ate rice, wishing there had been fresh fruit on the table.
"You a vegetarian?" Albert Birch asked with his nose at an upward tilt.
"No." She'd eaten her share of animals and people, but she wouldn't call what they ate "meat," and she preferred to only eat flesh when she'd killed it with her hands. Animals that lived wrong or that ended wrong carried wrong flavor. Nothing here tasted right.
"Picky eater, then?" he asked, muting the television. Was it a challenge of some sort? Did he want to fight Ryn for dominance? Probably not. It had never turned out that way with the orderlies. Humans never wanted to fight for anything.
"Not hungry," she said.
"We don't take special orders here," he said. "Eh, boys?"
The Rabble laughed and Judy murmured her agreement.
"No orders," Ryn said. When she had first arrived at Sacred Oaks and refused food, they had tried to jab her with needles attached to bags of fluid. That was when she'd realized the horror of that place—to the authorities there, she was not competent to fend for herself. She had to be taken care of. Like cattle. Every time they'd said "for your own good" she'd had to bite off the desire to demonstrate her core competencies. At least now she could forage.
"So what's her malfunction?" asked one of the twins, nodding toward Ryn.
"Not my business to say," Albert Birch said. Then he leaned forward. "But she's from Sacred Oaks."
"I hear they put crazy people there," another one said. "People who write on the walls with their own poop."
"Robby!" Judy said. "Not at the table."
"It's true," he insisted under his breath.
"Well, they've downsized," Albert Birch said. "That Ostermeier Trust Fund's run about dry is what the television says; some kind of bad investment deal. So they're kicking out some of the parasites."
"Suppose she's dangerous," the twin said.
"She's not dangerous, look at her," Albert Birch said. "Little stick like that? Figure you boys can keep her in line, am I right?"
They laughed and shared pet theories about why Ryn had been in Sacred Oaks, and Ryn absorbed it all in silence. She hated this place and everyone in it except maybe Susan.
She cut a quick path back to her room after dinner because the Rabble pushed and shoved a lot and she didn't trust herself not to play rough. As enjoyable as that might be, she didn't want trouble with Ms. Cross. The Rabble skirted only briefly into her bedroom before Susan shooed them out, and Ryn sat at the barred windows looking out at the darkened world. She shut her eyes until Susan asked to turn out the lights.
Near midnight, the last boy nodded off and the entire house breathed in the easy rhythm of sleeping humans. Ryn alighted soundless to the floor.
Freedom had strengthened her—she could feel it in the needled anticipation of unsprung calves as she crept from the bedroom, past a snoring boy wadded up on the sofa, and to the kitchen and the cuckoo clock that slept unmoving beneath layers of dust. "Wake," she whispered.
Nothing. Not a tick. Not a twitch of its ornate clock hands.
"I smell you," she growled. "Come out."
The clock doors whined open and a streamer of dust motes sprang out, curling through the air like a serpent, igniting gold against shafts of street light. It curled twice around Ryn, took her measure, and flitted back to the clock. The thick sheet of motes all over the aged clock shimmered as they caught the light. It spoke in the raspy voice of an old man: "What right've you got ordering me around, deva?"
"I am Ryn. What are you called?"
"Dust," and when he said it, flecks sneezed from within the clock. The asura did not give true names, as it was dangerous for their kind. "What's a goddess doing, bothering an old soul's rest?"
"I am no goddess."
"Eh? Tell me. If you ain't a goddess, why're you lurkin' around here?"
A good question—one she had not yet answered to her own satisfaction. "I am here, and I am no goddess. I am a monster."
"Monsters don't get to do that, dearie. Their lot was banished from cities—but here you are, spry twerp without your bones set on fire, which tells me you're dead wrong on at least one count. You're a deva? You can caper about with mortals? Only one thing you could be: a goddess."
"I will never stop being a monster. That is the first and the last of what I am."
"Some kinda loophole?" he asked, intrigued.
Ryn didn't know what that was and she waited. He seemed like the sort who enjoyed prattle.
"Way I recall," he said, proving her right, "the deva who couldn't pass for anything but monsters were banished. But that curse never actually made 'em susceptible to the laws of the gods—made them weak to mortal man's. If man's rulers invited you in, well, there you have it."
Ryn snorted. "Man does not rule man. Every king belongs to a god."
"Funny place, this one. Ruled by pencil pushers, bureaucrats, by screaming moms on the news and scared old men in ball caps and angry young ones with no fucking clue; ruled by everyone and no one. A thing happens, and half the time you're lucky just to know who did it, forget why. And here you are, wriggling through a crack in the door like a shit-covered cat."
His explanation satisfied. "They invited me."
"Poor, dumb fucks."
"Why do you live in that clock?"
"I live in a lotta places, darling. Places like this one, for the quiet. For the taste of old wood and paint, rusted springs and gears. There's life in 'em. More life than the average person. Never trusted flesh riders anyhow. They get one taste of human insides and go batshit. Gimme a musty attic any day. Only proper house for an asura's the one that's dry, none of that wet biology for me, thanks."
"Are there many flesh riders here?"
"Damn straight. Flesh riders love a good loon, and New Petersburg's got a few thousand on the streets after shuttin' down the rubber rooms. There's a couple nasty asura out there, the kind who don't take well to deva and their rules, so watch your ass."
"You should pass the word around. I am not like other deva. I have few rules. But I do not tolerate the stink of torture, rape, and murder, the screams of the innocent weak, or the arrogance of the evil strong. I am the monster who eats monsters, and this city is mine now. My territory, my hunting grounds."
"Warn them? Ha! You think I like the devils who shred souls and eat babies? I'd rather sit back and watch."
"Then we have no quarrel."
"Music to my ears, baby monster."
He didn't understand her—not fully—but she preferred it that way. Ryn pried open the unbarred kitchen window and crawled into the rising moans of nighttime wind. She clung to the mortar in the wall by her fingernails. The wind snapped at her T-shirt, licked her torso, and her jeans rasped against rough bricks. She shut the window, faced the half-full moon that clouds skated across oh-so-swiftly, and scaled to the roof. Every motion warmed the tight cords of her muscles, until they were hot with anticipation.
She crested the roof and perched on its lip. The black sea of staggered rooftops stretched around her, with deep valleys lit yellow by headlights and street lamps.
The air teased her black hair. She pulled her shirt up and angled one arm behind her back. Her finger traced the faint groove of a scar that covered the six slits holding back her kanaf. They tingled beneath the moonlight and she plucked a single, loose strand and examined its knife-edge gleam. By the full moon, she would have her cloak again.
She pulled down the uncomfortable, unnatural fabric of her T-shirt. Without the kanaf against her skin, she felt naked.
She leapt off the rooftop and glided soundlessly to another. Then she sprinted, vaulted, climbed the brick and the black-iron fire escapes, savored the whip-kiss of cold wind on her chest, and with every step her heart pushed hot blood into her fingertips and toes.
She lived again beneath the limitless sky, and though her jungle was brick, concrete, asphalt, and metal, it still had a pulse and life of its own beneath her soles. She loved the city even more after dark, when people emptied the streets and she was free to roam unseen. She explored the rooftops in her block, learned the best routes, the easiest jumps—though she performed the hard ones, too, pleased that her season of near-mortal weakness had passed with something so simple as a stroke of Ms. Cross's pen.
Only mortal laws bound her here. If she could stay free, she would only grow stronger and stronger.
When the dark gave way to deep-blue twilight, she slid down the outer wall to her bedroom window. Clutching a brick protruding a scant fraction of an inch, she took hold of black metal bars with her other hand. She braced both feet and pulled with the whole of her body.
The bars groaned, bent, then tore from the brick wall. Powdered stone puffed into the air. She dropped the bars into the alley, where they rang loud and distant. Then she rapped on the window several times until Susan woke, approached, rubbed tired eyes, and opened the window for her.
"Am I asleep?" she asked.
Ryn swung into the bedroom and shut the windows. "Go back to bed," she whispered.
Once Ryn settled into her bed, Susan sleepily returned to her own. "You aren't going to jump, are you?" she asked through a yawn.
"Why wouldn't I?" Ryn asked.
"Please don't jump. My last roommate jumped. Albert put the bars in after she died. Promise you won't do that."
"I will not die." Ryn lay back on her bed and Susan's comments nagged at her. How foolish and clumsy Susan's last roommate must have been, to try to jump from the window to the rooftop. It was impossible for their species.
She really didn't understand them.
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 8 |
Naomi didn't often think about suicide, but today was different.
It was a Saturday afternoon and she rode the train back from the Docks, changed stations in Commonwealth Plaza and headed to her home in Garden Heights. The transitions between the three districts always bothered her, from brick and graffiti, to mirrored buildings that sparked in afternoon light, to the wide lawns and proud, old homes where she lived. Guilt gnawed on her, but not solely because of her neighborhood's affluence. She mentally reviewed the last six months and thought about all the ways she was to blame. She still wore the shroud of feeling that always followed her after funerals. Iosef had a sister who was almost the same age Naomi had been at her last graveside service.
Her phone buzzed on the short walk from the train station to her street. She checked it. Denise. Could she handle Denise after a funeral? Naomi had been brushing her off too much, sensing today was coming and unsure how Denise would treat her feelings. She loved her friend, but on suicide, Denise could be weirdly judgmental.
Naomi answered the call anyway. "Hey," she said, projecting a happier tone than she felt.
"You went, didn't you?" Denise asked.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"To his funeral. That kid, the one who shot himself. The one you tutored. That was today. You went, didn't you?"
"Uh." Naomi shut her eyes. Of course she knows. She knows everything. "Yeah, I went."
"You told me you were 'fine.' "
"I am. I was just paying my respects. I knew him pretty well."
"No, you knew him a little. You tutored him after school one day a week for a semester and a half. He drew you a picture once and—unless it was a different kid—awkwardly hit on you last year. But now you're inflating your role in his life so that you can beat yourself up. You're doing that thing."
"I have a thing?"
"Oh yes. The whole messiah-complex thing. It was sweet in third grade when your Barbies always saved my Barbies with their superpowers, but it's not fun anymore. It's angsty. You're not responsible for everything other people do."
This was why she had avoided Denise today: the aggressive insistence that Naomi should let things go before she was ready. Before she figured out for herself exactly what Iosef meant, and what to do with the fact that a kid she had tutored—and mentored—could do that to himself. To his family. And before she had counted and tallied all the signs she had missed.
"Now you're thinking about all the ways you could have stopped him, aren't you?"
I hate you, Denise. "No."
"Lies. Disgusting lies. Let me come over, though, and cheer you up with ice cream. Even liars deserve ice cream. I won't say another word about it. You can pick the movie and tell me about all the horrifying things you did and I promise I'll just nod and agree that you're a terrible human being."
Naomi had a distinct Charlie-Brown-going-to-kick-the-football feeling but she sighed and said, "All right. But after six. I've got homework."
"You didn't do it on Friday night, Miss Perfect? Slipping."
"I couldn't. Dad picked me up right after basketball practice. He was back from the Hill. He wanted to have dinner. Trying to convince me to volunteer at his office this summer. Had to tell him no, and that always takes hours. We're doing Habitat again this summer and between that, Scouts, staying in shape for cross country, and wanting to have an actual job, I don't have the free hours to give."
"Harsh," Denise said. "But working for a senator—even if he is your dad—has got to look good on college applications."
"Yeah, then everyone expects me to be a College Republican or something, and that's just not my thing. My dad kept all the political genes."
"I can hear you doing the blech-face from here."
It was true. She had.
"Your dad has you ridiculously over-scheduled. Too many things. You should come out with Elli and me next week."
"I can't. Dad's fighting that big security bill and he's only back for one day a week."
"Tell him to take an extra day hammering at Big Brother and you can come shopping with us. Elli's dying to get out and see non-Madison boys, and she's been talking my ear off about clothes for this trip all week. If you don't come, I'll have to deal with her going full-blown man hunter without your backup. Besides, we can do something bad."
"Something bad?"
"Yeah. I don't know. I'll smoke a cigarette near you."
"You don't smoke cigarettes."
"Maybe I'll smoke something else near you."
Naomi rolled her eyes. "You're awful."
"And you need to do one bad thing before college or—I swear to God—you will go former-child-star levels of crazy once you're there. You'll drop acid and shave your head."
"You're wrong. I'm the daughter of a U.S. senator and I never do bad things, especially when they're so photogenically bad."
"Do something bad with me next week. Your pick."
"We will buy dissident literature, watch an R-rated movie, and try on sexy clothes. How's that?"
"It's a Republican's idea of bad," Denise hummed.
"Someday you're going to get me arrested."
"I'll be sitting right there next to you."
"But only one of us will be featured in negative campaign ads."
"I'll talk to you later tonight. Mint chocolate chip okay?"
"Yeah." Naomi disconnected and, despite herself, felt somewhat better. Maybe she had cleared the pall from Iosef's funeral.
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 9 |
Splat picked at the stitches he had put into the meat's face. His excitement spiked when the auburn-haired girl crossed the sidewalk on her usual path. He leaned forward, snapping rapidly with the digital camera.
It wanted her now. But no, not just yet. It was still gathering supplies, waiting for the right moment. But it was close.
It had to be perfect. It would be perfect.
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 10 |
[ Hunting Grounds ]
Ryn explored her new territory by night. She learned the skyline's ridges on each block, mastered the rhythm of the elevated train and let its steel roof whisk her to and fro from riverfront to Dock Street. She stalked Oakland Avenue's neon-lit holes and boarded-up properties. She never rode the train westbound underneath the bay, to the heart of the city with its glassed skyscrapers and electronic eyes. Until she had her bearings, she didn't want to stumble upon a god.
She swept across rooftops in the Docks, ghosted between the bowed, wooden struts of water reservoirs, breezed between coils of razor wire, and blew up the iron fire escapes. She dropped through the crisscrossed maze of wash lines full of flapping laundry. The firelight of burn barrels underneath the Goldwater Bridge gave her pause. They called the place "the Draintrap." It was inhabited by bearded old men and wild-haired women who were so skittish they glanced Ryn's way and—not quite spotting her—shuddered. She savored the spicy smells in Bourbon Alley, a packed-full bazaar that swam with the pungent aroma of narcotic herbs and a thousand other things from across the world. She touched the gray rasp of the city's walls, tasted the brick and exhaust, and it was filthy from top to bottom in a way that settled into her skin and hair and made her feel like she was a piece of it.
Ryn loved the night. The days confused her.
She didn't understand the group home. Judy Birch never stopped asking questions and Albert Birch was often confused. He would wander around the house, often into Ryn and Susan's room, especially if Susan was changing clothes. Susan would yelp and Albert Birch would apologize, backing gradually through the curtain. Ryn suspected someone had damaged Albert Birch's brain. She knew better than to damage a human's brain, not unless she meant to kill one.
But then two days later he burst into the bathroom as she stepped out of the shower. She felt his eyes on her. She knew then it wasn't confusion, knew what it really was. Somehow the sin was harder to spot when she was trapped in the center of this whorl of human activity, as though the ocean of lying eyes and deceptive words dulled her knack for spotting predators.
She stood her ground, dripping cold water as Birch gawped. At first she could only think about cracking his head through the porcelain sink and how little she cared about his brain.
No hospitalizations.
Ryn stood her ground until he backed out of the room—far too slowly and not without making her skin feel grimy from what his eyes and his tiny imagination were doing. Fire flared in her chest, and she wanted to eat his heart. She couldn't injure or maim, though—she couldn't even threaten, couldn't even look up to bare her eyes at him without betraying her savage divinity and endangering her new freedoms.
And so she bowed her head. Like a supplicant. Something in her almost broke from the rage.
The Rabble was its own kind of trouble, a chattering tide of energetic bodies that filled the cramped apartment with unwelcome noise and smell. Between them and the itching presence of Albert Birch, the apartment frayed her patience, and Ryn was always grateful to leave.
She savored the walk to her first day at Parker-Freemont High School, a boring, tall stack of cinder blocks with shadowed windows, a few smashed and covered with plywood.
The apartment Rabble was nothing set next to the high school. Between classes the halls flooded with students packed tighter than cattle, and the noise—it staggered Ryn. The scents of a thousand oily bodies choked her and she stowed herself in a narrow space at the base of a stairwell with hands clamped over ears.
The students filtered into classrooms and the bells rang again and all fell silent. Ryn crept through empty hallways full of long echoes. She liked the school much more without the people; it felt like a locker-lined cave.
Ryn turned a corner and came across a stocky woman in a uniform. The grooves of middle age scored her face. Humans invested authority in uniforms, and this one even had an electrical weapon jutting from her hip. Ryn was supposed to respect the weapon and the uniform both. They got angry if she didn't. Ryn tilted her head inquisitively and let the human make the first move.
"Hey. You." She stuck her thumbs into her belt and strolled closer. "You lost?"
"No." Ryn folded her hands into the deep pockets of her hoodie. She wore baggy cargo pants and kept the gray hood up. Sinking into it soothed the itching from their eyes just a bit.
"Let me see your hands." She tapped the electric weapon.
Ryn didn't understand the woman's face, but saw tension in her shoulders. She showed her hands. The woman ordered Ryn to her class and followed to ensure she arrived. The force of thirty sets of human eyes centered on her at once and made her spine itch. She flitted to a seat.
"If you're all settled in, we can continue," said the teacher. Her face blended together with all the other faces Ryn had seen today. "Also, I have a very well-lit classroom, and you are not Tom Cruise. Remove your sunglasses, please."
"I have an eye condition," Ryn said, precisely as she had been taught.
"And I have a condition. That condition is: if students don't do as I say, I embarrass them in front of their peers." She squared her palms to the front corners of Ryn's desk and leaned over it, and Ryn wondered once again if she had to fight for dominance. If Ryn won, did she have to teach the class? She hoped not.
"The one with the weapon said I should be here," Ryn said.
The instructor's face changed color and Ryn could track the small explosion of tics and tremors through the right side of her upper lip and the corner of her eye. "Fine. If the glasses stay on, you'll be punished. Detention."
"What is 'detention'?"
"It means you sit in your chair, shut up, and suffer through the afternoon until I'm satisfied!"
Ryn couldn't figure out how that differed from where she was now.
The classrooms brimmed with students. After the bell rang, their chatter filled the air and they reminded her of the Rabble: loud, pack-minded, yet each one a mystery to her. She couldn't fight or flee, couldn't intimidate or growl. They had clipped her claws and locked her in a building and mandated by law that she spend her days with a thousand unknowable animals, and only one survival strategy remained.
Stealth.
She kept her hood drawn up and pressed through the hallways, their odor and noise putting the screws to her braincase. Then there were the classes. She struggled through English. She understood words and could follow the rules of punctuation, and spell or recite definitions. But they saw things in words that weren't there, like shamans who smoked herb and stared into the sky, imagining shapes in clouds.
In history, they missed important details. Their instructor discussed the Soviet Empire, a collectivist state encompassing much of the world that had collapsed only after the turn of the millennium. They only talked about its human rulers. There had been deva, too, pulling strings, propping it up and allowing it to live longer than it should have. The instructor seemed to hate them, since decades ago they had assassinated two people called President Paul Tsongas and Vice President Bill Clinton.
Mathematics interested her, but she doubted its application. Biology seemed strictly limited to the modern era, ignorant of the Long Ago, of magic, gods, the things hidden from humans behind the Veil, and they only knew about the material parts of the cells—and they taught a very crude version of even that.
Gym was the most difficult. It challenged her every conception of humans as her sister species. They ran as if wading; they used their hands and fingers with all the nuance of flippers. They played elementary games of coordination with ball and bat, only interesting because they couldn't perform them consistently. They couldn't even repeat a single basic motion, let alone a complicated sequence, like a toddler who beat—poorly—upon a piano key over and over. She felt embarrassed for them, even more so because they didn't know to be embarrassed for themselves. Ryn tried to blend in and mimic their ungainly motions, and it made her conscious of her own body in a way that she hated. She hoped they didn't all live that way.
At night, away from the school, she forgot the ungainly stumbling and exploded across rooftops. She savored the gorgeous sensation of matching her movement to the contours of the city. Like two pieces fit perfectly together, like hand in pocket, her sprint pushed her into a groove, the only thing in her life that worked right. Every night she ran, from black midnight until pre-dawn blue, and every night the moon filled and filled, grew brighter, and poured its jittery energy into her limbs.
Most people left her alone. One girl who hid behind her bangs tried to talk to her, but Ryn's stony silence chased her away. Then on Friday, the waxing moon became unbearable. She stared across the cafeteria, inhaled the stale scent of bland food, and wished for clear, frigid streams, and for the feel of wriggling fish in her hands. The moon teased her from the other side of the Earth. It tugged subtly on her slight shoulders. She wanted to drop to the floor, press her cheek to cool linoleum, and listen for its approach.
A boy sat at her table, directly across. He wore neatly pressed slacks and a buttoned shirt, his hair crisply in place so that he reminded Ryn of a well-clipped porcupine, and stank of spicy body-wash odor that burned her sinuses so that she couldn't even tell if he smelled wrong.
"You're in my gym class, aren't you? My name's Harper." His face did a lot of different things and he had very straight teeth.
Ryn fixed him with a steady look, one that chased most humans off after only a few minutes.
"So what's the story with the shades? I know you're not—ah, you know—visually impaired. You get around pretty well in gym."
Ryn stared.
"I mean, it's the only class I see you in. I'm taking all advanced-placement stuff this year. Trying to really get everything I can out of this school—it's not a great school, but my parents are kind of snobby about supporting public ed. I'm a senior. Doing college next year. How about you? Plan on getting out of here anytime soon?"
She stared.
"You look like you belong at a college. You've got the whole alternative look down. I'm into alternative stuff. Very, you know, open-minded."
"Leave now."
"Look, I know I've got the preppy look a little too cornered, but I swear it's just to keep my parents off my back. What do you like? Horror movies? Politics?" He leaned in. "Handcuffs?"
"Solitude."
"I even know where you can find a lot of quiet. A place no one would bother you."
Ryn wondered if someone had damaged his brain.
"I'll show you. It's a great place to get away from crowds. Promise I'll be a gentleman." He sneaked out of the cafeteria, and Ryn followed him, even though she didn't like him. A hiding place might prove useful. He led her up a flight of stairs and pushed open the door to a janitor's closet with the heavy odor of chemicals.
Ryn stepped in and frowned. "Small."
"Cozy," he said, shutting the door. "Hey, want to listen to my playlist?" He offered her an earbud.
"You promised solitude," she said, glaring at him.
"Right. Just you and me."
"I don't think you know what that word means."
"Oh c'mon, don't be like that. No one goes into a closet with a boy unless she's a tiny bit curious. Aren't you curious?"
"Only about what you taste like."
"Oh, holy shit, it's like that, huh? The guys were so right about you." He slid a thin plastic-wrapped wafer from his back pocket, its surface worn and crumpled. "Safety first, right?" He reached for her.
Ryn flicked back a pace. It took him a moment to reorient, to find her again with his eyes. She had been wrong to dismiss this one as an annoyance—he reasoned like a child, but he was full grown, and while he wasn't a threat to her, what if she had been a mortal girl?
"Relax, I don't bite." He reached again.
"I do." She braced him with her palm flush to his chest and his hand went to her shoulder, trying to urge her to her knees. His intentions offended her so deeply that her pulse spiked. "No." Anger flashed through her with the word and her free hand curled, finger by finger, into a rocky ball.
"Oh. I get it. You punk girls like it a little hardcore." He grabbed her shoulders and tried to drag her close.
Every fiber of muscle in her arm groaned for use. The full moon had left her in a fog of hunger. She salivated at the thought of pulling an organ out and showing it to him. Instead, she wrapped her hand into his buttoned-up shirt and cracked her skull into his.
He flew back into the door. It burst open. He flopped out of the closet and onto his back. Ryn strode after him and knelt atop his chest. She seized him by the spikes of his hair, and glared into his eyes. "I will forgive the confusion because we are not the same species. But this word. 'No.' You understand it?"
"Uhnn."
"Remember it."
It took his eyes a moment to focus on her and Ryn realized she was being observed by the uniformed woman from earlier, now standing over them both. The woman drew her weapon. "Back off!"
"He will be fine." Ryn stood and slunk back a step. "No hospitalizations."
Harper sat up, wobbled, and swayed back to the floor.
"...I think."
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 11 |
Ryn sat in a neatly arrayed office made to feel smaller by having too many people in it. There was a desk and a man in a crisp suit behind it in a high-backed, black chair. The desktop marker labeled him "superintendent." Ryn was separated from Harper Pruett by Harper's mother, who emphasized several times how upset she was at being summoned from the art gallery she managed.
Mrs. Pruett pushed up the tiny glasses on her nose and said, "I think it's clear this isn't a parental matter anymore. It's a police matter. My son was assaulted. It's not a question of whether I'll press charges, it's a question of whether or not I'll sue. My husband works for the law department at Graystone University and we know a lot of excellent lawyers."
"It's still unclear who started the fight," the superintendent said.
"Look at my son!"
Blue and black bruises had amassed around the bridge of Harper's nose and a cotton ball was stuffed up either nostril. Ryn only felt thankful she had restrained herself. The full moon made her blood sing. It clouded her brain, and whatever she did always seemed foolish in retrospect.
"Well?" Mrs. Pruett asked, looking at Ryn as she examined Harper's face. "Are you satisfied?"
"No."
Mrs. Pruett's mouth snapped shut. Her eyes got very large until Ryn could see the whites and tension filled her small, bird-like shoulders. "You filthy little—"
"That's enough, Mrs. Pruett!" The superintendent leaned forward. "Ms. Miller." That was the last name they had assigned Ryn. "Harper claims that you lured him into the closet—'seduced' him—and then tried to mug him. What about your side?"
"What is 'mug?' "
"Pardon?" the superintendent asked.
"Do you think playing stupid will get you out of this?" Mrs. Pruett snapped.
"Mugging is when you rob someone by force," the superintendent said. "Did you try to rob Mr. Pruett?"
"He has nothing I want."
"Then why were you in the closet?"
"My head hurt from noise. The closet was quiet. He wasn't supposed to stay."
"All right, so he took you to the closet and stayed. Then what?" He had to cut off Mrs. Pruett's objection with a pinch of his fingers.
"He reached for me. I warned him once. He touched me. I struck him."
"How many times?" the superintendent asked.
"Once."
"Once?" His eyebrow did something.
"Yes."
"He never hit you?"
"He cannot hit me," Ryn said.
"What, because you're a girl?" Harper asked. "Like that'd stop me, you crazy bitch."
She leaned out to peer around his mother at him. "Because he is slow."
"She's crazy!" Harper said. "She said she wanted to fuck and when we started, she flipped out!"
"Harper!" Mrs. Pruett said.
"What!"
"Did she tell you to stop?" the superintendent asked.
"No! I mean, not at first, not until we already started. I mean, it's not like—I mean, what is this, Red Light Green Light? I didn't hear her. And then she just whales on me! She's a liar."
The superintendent cleared his throat. "You can press charges if you like, Mrs. Pruett, but this sounds to me like a big miscommunication."
"It was assault!" Mrs. Pruett said.
"Yes," the superintendent said. "And sexual assault is a very serious matter. So I understand if Ms. Miller would also like to press charges."
For a while, no one said a word. Finally the superintendent glanced at Ryn. "Are you all right? You're shaking the entire floor."
Her knee bounced steadily. "I'm fine," she said. The moon still teased her.
"You're making us all nervous," the superintendent said.
"I'm fine," Ryn repeated, gaze zeroing in on the window behind the superintendent's head. A fly batted against the pane. Its tap, tap, tap made her toes curl and her stomach turn over twice and she wanted to stalk it.
"Might you stop?"
Her knee still bounced. She willed it to stop. The buzz was not in the fly, then—it tremored up her calf instead. Her knee bounced again. "No. I can't."
"She belongs in an institution!" Mrs. Pruett said. "Not around my boy."
"I'm sure a woman of your means can afford all sorts of alternatives if you're unhappy with where Harper is," the superintendent said. "In the meantime, if Harper is saying he was physically assaulted and Ryn is saying Harper attempted to sexually assault her, I have to turn this over to the school resource officer. There will be a formal investigation. Possible criminal charges. If, however, you both admit to a big misunderstanding, it can go away."
The superintendent and Harper's mother both seemed very interested in making things "go away," and Ryn doubted it was to her benefit.
He motioned them out, and while Ryn couldn't read Harper's face, she assumed the look he shot her meant this wasn't over.
She went to the roof. She lay on her back, shut her eyes, and waited. Lunar gravity took hold of her like a second, alien world, pulling from another direction. When it crested the night sky, the pull was from above and below and the moon's power made her weightless. She rose, stood on her toes, pocketed her sunglasses and let the moon touch her face.
Then she tore through her territory, her senses so sharp that she could hear screams from decades past, smell blood spilled into the paving stones a century ago. The six scars holding back her kanaf glowed red hot. Every noise and smell and sight pushed into her brain at once, too fast, like Ms. Cross's driving on the highways.
Pressure built behind her scars. She stripped on a dark rooftop, tearing off mortal cotton, until all that remained were faded, red tennis shoes. Her scars peeled open, split by black strands of razor wire beneath her skin. Countless thin fibers exploded from the slits and filled the air like a black cloud. They flexed and Ryn arched her back at the exquisite sensation of an eighteen-month cramp finally stretched and soothed. With a thought, she wove her kanaf into sheets and smoothed them over her bare skin. She willed them soft and airy as a breeze and reveled in the sleek feel of them covering her—adjusting them to the same shape, color, and apparent texture of her hoodie and dark cargo pants.
She no longer felt naked. The kanaf was as much a part of her as a bird's feathers.
Unfurling her wings had not released the deeper tension that coiled in her center. It was a spring prepared to release, crushed tighter and tighter by the institution, the school, the humans she couldn't hurt but who desperately deserved it. There was still one thing she could hunt, though, that mortals wouldn't miss. She filtered through the overlapping trails of old blood, the layers of killers and rapists and all manner of beasts on two legs until she found a fresh one. One that stalked right now, under the same full moon she did.
Perfect.
Ryn slid down a drainage pipe and vaulted across an alley, angling between two close boards on an upper-floor window. She dropped into the dingy room, which was cold from the gaps that exposed it to January's elements and delicious in its lonesomeness. Street sounds crept in unfiltered, the walls laced with mildew and the smell of aged wood. There was a taped body outline on the bare floor and an incongruous, wooden rocking chair that creaked in the draft.
She knelt before the rocking chair. "Dust. I thought you hated flesh riders."
He didn't answer at first. Then the chair groaned, its wooden struts protesting as if put under an invisible weight. "Mind your own business, deva."
"I am."
"On the prowl, eh? You're wound tighter than a three-day clock. Splat's got it too. Full moon gets him riled up."
"Splat." She rolled the name around in her head. It gave her ideas—delightful ones—for how to deal with him. "He was here. I can smell him. Why?"
"Just a little, ahem, territorial dispute. Splat keeps a hollow in Whitechurch and I got an attic in the same apartment. Like to visit. Has old photos on the wall. Black-and-whites, full of flavor. Tastes like old-fashioned romance, a dash of tragedy, just the way I like it. Don't find it on anything newer than Great Depression."
"A hollow?"
"Spare body. Call it that 'cause he and his cabal pulled the soul outta her. Did it with one of them plastic porn boxes, those buzzing, noisy what-do-ya-call-'em... laptops. So he and his asura buddies, they infest the laptop and convince this girl they're real flesh-and-blood people on the other end, isolate her, cave in her world. Grind her soul down to just about nothin'. Keeping her on tap, see, in case he needs spare skin. A good hollow's already half dead, soul partway out the door. Gotta get 'em so low they don't feel the asura slipping in to fill the fat, gaping void they carved out. Lotta ways to do it. Torture. Rape. This one was subtle. I kinda ruined it for him, I guess."
"How?"
"The photos. One of 'em was the hollow's grandmother. She kept a diary in a locked trunk, one with sweet, old pages dusted in perfume and tears. I knocked it onto her floor one night. Those old pages filled the hole they put in her. So Splat stopped by to tell me—covenants be damned—he'd eat me if I did it again."
"Who is he in?"
"Some nutcase he's been grooming. Dunno much. He's got a place on Oakland above the Big Shots Tavern. If you scent his hollow, you'll find it there. This isn't gonna come back to me, is it?"
"He won't bother you."
"You say that, but somehow I doubt you got a mirror box. How you gonna trap him?"
"I won't. He won't eat you because I'll eat him first."
"Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you must be too young to know. Deva can't kill asura. Unlike you, we got no bodies to kill."
"I am from the black places and the Long Ago. I can kill anything that can die, and a few things that cannot."
Oakland was only a few blocks away. Ryn found the apartment and cut a circular hole in the window with one fingernail. She popped the lock and seeped into the room's shadows. The urine-and-mold stink saturated a bare mattress. The hum of a refrigerator and computer fan didn't quite drown out the skitter-clicking deluge of bed bugs in the shadowy parts of the walls. They moved at once, poured from the ceiling like grains of sand, but left a neat ring of clear space around Ryn. They sensed death on her.
Her eyes peeled back the dark and she examined papers heaped onto the computer desk and pinned to the walls. There were maps with tacks clustered in different locations, shorthand notes with times of day, surveillance-photo printouts, and a reminder note taped to the computer monitor, scribed in disjointed letters. "To get: duct tape, needle-nose pliers, 45-cal, rivets (various)," with a final line in different marker, an afterthought scrawled at bottom: "car battery?" It was underlined.
A rotten smell came from the bathroom and she peered in long enough to be sure there were no corpses. Just blood in the sink and two clipped-off, human toes in the bathtub, shriveled and black with weeks-old gangrene. The asura hadn't taken care of its hollow, perhaps because it was nearly done using it. Whatever its plans, they happened soon. Probably tonight.
The photographs depicted groups of teenage girls who appeared outwardly near Ryn's age. One recurred—a very pretty, pale girl with auburn hair. She was the target. But for what? It involved bullets, pliers, and a car battery.
Ryn had to settle her imagination before it could offer a suggestion.
She took the scent of Splat's hollow from a ball cap near the door and returned to the rooftops. With the moon full, she could have found him from three cities distant. She trailed the street he'd driven and rode the steel spine of a tractor trailer across the Goldwater Bridge. Terrain mattered, and she didn't know the rooftops of Commonwealth Plaza, so she darted from the truck, spidered up the exterior wall of a train station, and scented the air. Northeast.
Another train line whisked her that way. At each stop, she bounded to the station roof and sprinted over top, avoiding the prying eyes of humans and their cameras. She recalled Splat's maps. Most pins were in Garden Heights, where the new line terminated.
She picked the scent up again just before Garden Heights, in unfamiliar terrain between the suburbs and Commonwealth, called Center Square. The buildings were shorter than in Commonwealth, but crowded with bus stops and neon lights advertising department stores, coffee shops, and the bright arches of fast food. She rode the train into the station this time, dropped to the platform among startled passengers, and slid beneath the turnstile. She tracked the scent across an elevated walkway that crossed six lanes of traffic and connected the station to a massive parking deck that fed into a sprawling, four-story shopping complex called Center Square Mall.
Ryn paused. The predator's scent had filtered down to her mouth where she could taste it; she savored the moon's bright light and opened her senses. The dark was wide with possibilities. Deciding on her next move, she hooded herself from prying security cameras and tracked Splat's scent to a white van on the top deck.
She darted between camera rotations and found a blind spot by the van's windowless rear doors. Locked. She stiffened her fingers into a knife-hand punch and drove it through the smooth metal. Though her nails appeared mundane, they parted the aluminum hide like oily liquid. She wrapped her fist around the locking mechanism and tore it out with a firm twist. It banged against the asphalt and she cracked the door open.
A duffel bag reeked of Splat. She opened it. It contained a car battery, phallic-shaped plastic objects, handcuffs, duct tape, and a roll of cloth that, when unfurled, revealed a shiny collection of corkscrews. Sitting at the bottom of the bag was an acetylene torch.
Ryn lit the torch and examined the inside of the van by blue-hot glow. She set the shag carpet aflame and tossed the torch into the center of the crackling fire. Slamming the back doors, she ducked behind a row of cars and evaded the cameras until she arrived at the walking bridge into the mall.
She walked into a wall of noise and stink. Bodies and wares pressed and puréed together—fried foods, sweets, paperback books, detergent-stiff clothing, hard plastic, and human oils mashed into one thick soup. Then the perfumes hit her: a meteoric explosion of a thousand compounds that each combined a hundred other scents detonated inside the front of her brain and slumped her into the wall. She lost Splat's trail. The noise and color, too, the riot of signs and the music intermingling with three or four hundred chattering voices collided together like ten trains in her skull. She stumbled forward into a fourth-story railing over the food court.
Too much. No time to adjust. She'd gone from the bright full moon sharpening her senses in the empty city to the crushing mall interior in just two steps.
Clapping her hands to her ears, she shuddered a breath in, then out, and shut the door on the world and everything in it except the measured thud of her inhuman heart, hard and sure. It dimmed the universe outside her skin.
The first sound to cut through the deep well she'd dropped herself into was the voice of a young woman. "Are you all right?" It ran through Ryn smoothly, except for a faint rasp that brushed at her senses. The girl's scent hit next. Her soul smelled different, like a rain shower that washed out the salty taste the entire city bled from its pores. And her skin had the faint tinge of a citrus shampoo that made Ryn think of sunlight.
Ryn slitted an eye open behind the dark sunglasses that shielded the world from her, and every fine detail of the pretty girl's gleaming, auburn hair burned through. She stood a head taller than Ryn, with a slender and long-limbed build that brought to mind the strength and flexibility of willow branches. She dressed in a calf-length skirt, trim blouse, and a red, hooded jacket. She had poise, the sort of grace other humans forgot, her hands clasped. Her large eyes were soft and deep brown, fixed on her, and when Ryn looked at them she couldn't move.
"I asked if you were all right," the girl repeated.
It was the girl from Splat's photographs.
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 12 |
[ Dinner with a Demon ]
Naomi realized she was talking to a girl. It had been hard to tell from a distance because of the formless outfit and dark sunglasses that—truth told—kind of made her look like the Unabomber. The tips of Naomi's ears burned as she asked her question a third time: "Are you okay? Sorry, clearly you are. And I'm being weird now." She withered under the girl's stare.
Up close, the other teenager looked more her gender. She had pretty enough features, with a straight, expressionless mouth and a stray wisp of darkest-black hair dangling loose from her hood. She might have been goth with a bit more effort, but seemed more than anything like a tomboy dressed in the slapdash apparel of secondhand stores. "I'm fine," the dark-clad stranger bit off.
"Good." Instinct had demanded Naomi approach her. Instinct, and maybe Iosef's ghost still walking around in her shadow. Something in the girl's stance at the railing, in the way she clutched her head as if under attack, had drawn her closer. It could have been a migraine. But it could have been something worse, too, and she'd forced herself to make sure. "I'm Naomi."
The strange girl examined her with a cant to her head, like a dog trying to figure out whether or not someone was speaking to it. "Ryn." Her nostrils flared and she snapped her gaze to a spot behind Naomi, where Denise and Elli stood.
"Those are my friends," Naomi said. "Denise is the long-haired one with the affected expression of boredom and Elli is the one in black-frame glasses." Denise made a show of checking her phone impatiently and Elli held the bags while examining her toes. Naomi turned back to Ryn. "We were just buying some books. Do you have friends here?"
"No." She didn't elaborate. It came out as a dismissal, an invitation for Naomi to leave.
Naomi took a deep breath and ignored the critical gazes that no doubt bored into the back of her head. Sometimes she wished she could ask the obvious: Are you okay? But that never worked, so instead: "Want to hang out?"
"No." Ryn glanced back at the railing.
Okay, the direct approach it is. "It's the crowds."
She caught a hint of Ryn's eyes narrowing behind those dark glasses. "How did you know?" An accusation.
Naomi lowered her voice, too quiet for her friends to hear. "The skittish way you looked at Denise and Elli, at the people around us."
Ryn's eyes sparked beneath the shades and a current of alarm shot up Naomi's spine. "I am not afraid," Ryn growled. Naomi had never heard anything like it, never heard someone wrap the English language so perfectly into a snarl, and it switched down some kind of primordial breaker in her brain.
"Sorry, no, of course not," she hurried, the words matching her quickened pulse. Forcing a steadying breath, she ordered herself against every instinct not to scurry off with tail between legs—What is it Dad says? Timid doesn't look good on us. "Okay. Full confession, you're the kind of girl more likely to elicit terror than to feel it. I get that."
A solemn nod, as though Ryn were satisfied with the answer.
Clasping her hands in front of her, Naomi added, "Promise you won't murder me, and I might even feel bad enough to make it up to you."
"I won't harm you." Ryn's tone softened. "You smell right."
Naomi blinked. The fear, though, had fled her, the invisible fist that squeezed her heart unclenching so that she could breathe again. "Glad to hear." A jolt of exhilaration followed, her body's reward for surviving an encounter with this strange, almost-goth creature. "So you'll let me make it up to you."
"I'm fine."
"I know you are, but I'm not over it. You want to grab food with me?"
Ryn bit her lip in a way that hid it in her mouth, no teeth on display, and it was a strangely sweet gesture that made Naomi think: cute like a cat; like someone who thinks she's apex predator, but also doesn't mind when you bring her tuna. The self-serious girl shifted and looked in the other direction. "Not hungry."
Naomi had never met a worse liar. "Not at all?"
"I can feed myself."
"And I can buy the food that you feed yourself with. Teamwork."
"There is... food at home." Oddly, another lie.
"There's food here too. Come on. My treat." Naomi used her brightest smile—a dirty, low-down move that usually worked. "Just this once and I'll never bother you again. Scout's honor." Three fingers held up, somewhat guiltily since that was probably also a lie if they spent any time at all together.
Ryn opened her mouth, shut it, gazed back into the crowds, and finally back at Naomi. "What do you want from me?" She wore a look of such desperate frustration.
"Naomi!" Denise called. "Getting hungry. Let's go. Let emo kid be emo."
Naomi shot her a warning glare. "Stop." Facing Ryn, she offered her hand.
Ryn danced back, hands clenched to the rail, tension filling her body like a spring compressed tight. When Naomi backed off, palms out in placation, Ryn relaxed.
Not just the crowds, Naomi realized. Like an idiot, I cornered her. She really was a stray, in more ways than first surmised. "Sorry," Naomi whispered, lowering her arms to her sides and relaxing her posture. This seemed to relax Ryn slightly as well, and the girl eased back to her full height. "I'm not trying to trick you into going to my church or voting for my candidate, and I won't let Denise make fun of you. Just wanted you to grab a bite with us—if you want. Do whatever you like. If it happens to be eating with us, I'm buying. That's all. Sorry again."
Naomi expected that to be the end of it. This was a girl who had seen violence. She could sense it, could tell Ryn needed a basic charity without a covert quid-pro-quo. But she couldn't force it. For certain wary souls, the harder one tried, the faster they sprinted the other direction. Yet something happened between the two of them in that moment, a calculation in Ryn's mind that Naomi couldn't intuit. The other girl examined the floor between them and murmured, "I will go with you."
"Awesome." She smiled over her shoulder at her friends. "Guess what? This is Ryn, and she's joining us for dinner."
Elli and Denise both forced smiles and Ryn did nothing to acknowledge them, keeping to the other side of Naomi as they all walked. Naomi struck up a conversation and found out Ryn went to Parker-Freemont. It was a high school in the neighborhood next to Thatcher High, where Iosef had attended. Ryn's school competed with Madison Academy in a few sports, and since Elli had been a cheerleader and particularly hated their teams, her face scrunched up in scorn.
"Parker-Freemont is on the other side of the city," said Denise. "Did you really come all this way to shop?"
"No." Ryn's stare was on the crowds.
"Then why commute over here?" Denise asked. "Planning to rob someone?"
"It's a nice mall," Naomi said. "Maybe she likes it here."
"I'm looking for someone," Ryn said.
"I thought you said you didn't have friends here," Denise said.
"I'm not looking for a friend."
"Family?" Naomi tried to verbally separate Ryn from Denise, who tended to get catty when her blood sugar dropped.
"No," Ryn said.
"Who, then?" Denise asked.
"A man."
A boyfriend. That made sense. Naomi grinned. "Is he handsome?"
"I doubt it," Ryn said.
"Wait, you don't know?" Denise scoffed. "Is this some digital hookup? That's a little trashy."
Ryn's attention was fixed elsewhere. "I am not hooking with anyone." Naomi wondered for the first time if English was her first language.
Elli sighed. "The animal-vegetable-mineral game is kind of annoying. Just tell us what it's all about. Are you dating this guy or are you planning to murder him?"
"I have to find him first."
"So it is murder," Denise teased. They all laughed except for Ryn.
"She doesn't have to say what she's doing here." Naomi motioned with her jaw to a café. "Come on. Let's eat here, before Denise dies of starvation."
"I won't starve." Denise grinned. "I'd eat one of you two before I'd let that happen."
Ryn glanced at Denise for the first time. Naomi saw suspicion in it.
They sat at one of the café's outlying tables, separated from the mall proper by a divider covered with advertisements. Ryn fumbled with the menu and paid a lot of attention to the three of them, mimicking their movements and reading the sections they read from. Naomi made sure Denise and Elli ordered first. She figured Ryn was a foreigner and picking up the customs. Ryn ordered some kind of salad with oranges in it. "That looks good, I'll have that too," Naomi said. She glanced at the strange girl. "What do your parents do?" It was one of her surreptitious tricks for gauging how a person was doing. The more willing someone her age was to talk about their parents, the more likely they were okay.
Denise lifted one eyebrow a fraction of an inch, which meant, Could you be any more obvious?
Naomi shot back with a slight narrowing of her eyes: Shush!
Ryn didn't follow the best-friends telepathy at all and just shrugged. She appeared highly interested in the grooves on the lip of the table.
Naomi could have kicked herself. Maybe she had no parents. This wasn't a Madison girl; she was from the Bad Part of Town.
"My parents are both Dr. Kwon," Elli said, trying to fill the vacuum of Ryn's silence. "Just one of them works exclusively on bones and the other on... gunshot wounds, mostly, I think."
"My mom's a lawyer," Denise said. "Dad is a house husband."
Elli laughed and Naomi was happy for the change of subject. They discussed Denise's father's nontraditional family role a while, cracking the same series of jokes they had since grade school. Ryn sat quietly in her chair, observant but not saying anything, shifting and bouncing her knee at a steady frequency. She fidgeted and scanned the crowd.
"He's a good cook," Denise insisted. "He could open up a little bakery if he wanted."
Ryn spoke up for the first time. "What about you?" she asked Naomi.
"Oh. Well, my dad's a politician. Senator Bradford?" She prepared herself for the usual litany of reactions to that. There were only a few: stunned silence if they were impressed by senators, or an awkward joke about either voting or not voting for her father if they knew him from politics. Naomi had a few established responses, such as her crack that she wouldn't have voted for her father some days either, or that it sucked to have a parent who debated professionally.
Ryn didn't follow the script. She skipped over Naomi's father and asked, "What about your mother?"
Naomi hated that question—no matter how anticipated, it always made her breathing go shallow. "She passed away. A few years ago."
Ryn tilted her head. The typical responses were I'm sorry or That's terrible, and Naomi had her autopilot ways of making people feel less mortified. However, Ryn threw her for a second loop. "Tell me about her."
The table quieted. Denise picked through a packet of crackers meant for soup, sucking the crumbs off her fingertip. Elli played with her necklace. Ryn eyed Naomi with laser-like focus. Her knee still bounced. The quiet stranger had killed their small talk, shattering through niceties like a bullet through an Emily Post book.
"She died in a car accident," Naomi said at last. "Drunk driver." The words tightened her throat. If anyone asked her, she'd tell them it was a long time ago. It gave people the impression she was over it, because whenever she said she was over it, it didn't sound like she was, not even to her own ears.
"But tell me about her," Ryn said.
"Oh." Now the stray had cornered her. Elli and Denise pretended they hadn't heard the inquiry, and Naomi didn't trust her voice at first. "Mom was a very brave woman. She was from Russia, back in its Empire days, and she won a visa to study economics in the U.S. She stayed, illegally for a while, and lived in the ex-Soviet diaspora in the Docks. She met Dad at Graystone University in the city and kept turning down his marriage proposals. Dad says she only gave in because the feds were getting close, but I never saw anyone look at him the way she did. She said she married him because he had a dryer and she was sick of clotheslines."
The words had broken loose and came faster. "She was brilliant, and tenacious. She eventually earned her Ph.D., but they wouldn't award it for years because she was illegal while she worked on her credits and there was some bad blood in the faculty. Then her work earned a Nobel Prize and they sort of had to. Dad put it on the shelf next to his high-school track trophy and always asked her, 'But how high can you jump?'
"Later, she taught at Graystone University here in the city. She taught economics but she knew basically everything. She and Dad used to argue all the time, too, but in a good way. She was the only person I ever knew who could make the phrase 'anarcho-capitalist hardliner' sound like a term of endearment. Dad used to call her his little ex-commie renegade. She loved that."
Their food came. Naomi was glad; talking even that much had left her emotionally winded. Denise and Elli went back to chatting. Naomi didn't feel like talking, but she watched Ryn, who had seemed so much less important five minutes ago. Now Naomi wondered how she'd pulled exactly the right thread to make Naomi's heart unspool in front of everyone. Are you especially clever? Or especially clueless?
Ryn ate briskly between scans of the food court, sniffing the air periodically. Naomi hardly touched her food, inventing stories that explained this girl: the form-obscuring tomboy outfit, the too-large sunglasses indoors that weren't even cool, the soft-spoken words that were entirely too bold.
She'd seem awkward if she were not objectively adorable, made so by her apparent conviction that she was five feet taller than she was.
"So. Ryn," Naomi said at last. "What do you do for fun?"
"I run."
"Are you on a track team? I run the four hundred and I pole vault."
"No," Ryn said. "No team. Just outside. When I need to move."
"A lot of energy, then," Naomi said. "Your leg's been bouncing this whole time."
Ryn examined her leg. "Yes." It didn't stop bouncing. "What do you do for fun?" She asked the question in the same tone Naomi had used.
"Plenty of things. Basketball, Girl Scouts, camping, swimming, running. I like to dance."
"What is Girl Scouts?"
"Really? It's an organization. Our troop does some volunteer work and wilderness trips in the summer. Do you ever hike or camp out?"
Ryn laughed just once. It seemed to escape from her throat, and she clapped both hands over her mouth. The displeasure with which Ryn treated her own laugh warmed Naomi's heart, made her kind of love the little weirdo. Ryn seemed to have even more trouble looking her in the eye, though. "I've been in the forest," she said after a moment. "I didn't know people went there for fun. I didn't know about Girl Scouts."
"Is English your second language?"
"Not my first."
"You speak it well. Where are you from originally?"
Ryn shrugged. "The wilderness. Some other places."
"Maybe someday you can show me around your home," Naomi said. Ryn didn't like to share details and Naomi's mind swam briefly with suspicions. She thought of her mom and wondered if Ryn was also in the country illegally. Then she cut off that thinking—it didn't matter. Her dad had always taught her that immigration laws were too evil to be respected by decent people. "In the meantime, you must be new here. Let me take you out. Next weekend. There's this great dance club—it's under-twenty-one on Friday night. Do you have a piece of paper?"
"No."
"I mean, she doesn't have to come with us if she doesn't want to," Denise said.
"Don't be silly," Naomi said. "Here." She reached across the table and took Ryn by the wrist, clicking out her ballpoint pen. The click shot Ryn backward. For a moment, Naomi thought she'd fall off her chair. Instead, the chair slanted onto two legs and Ryn somehow alighted onto it, balancing it with a foot on the seat and another on the chair back. She crouched, focused on the pen in Naomi's hand.
Denise and Elli stared. Naomi raised the pen and presented it to Ryn. She clicked it a few times for Ryn's unwavering gaze. After a few clicks, Ryn glanced back at Naomi. Only then did she tilt forward. The front chair legs banged onto the floor and she dropped into her seat in the same motion.
Naomi had taken eight years of ballet, swing dance, and gymnastics, but had never seen anyone move like that in her life. The speed. The fluidity. "Sorry," she whispered. The low current of alarm had returned, and she licked her dry lips. "I should have asked." She set her hands at the table's midway point. "Do you trust me?" Do I trust you?
Ryn averted her gaze, and without looking up she slid her cool hand into Naomi's. Expecting calluses, Naomi was surprised by the smoothness of the palm, softness of the fingertips, and perfectly tended fingernails. Each nail's edge had a strange gleam. Rolling the sleeve up two inches to write there, Naomi startled at the glimpse of a scar. She flicked the sleeve back down to conceal the mark from Denise.
But the memory of it burned. Enormous, and not from a razor.
She wrote the information on Ryn's palm. "Now you won't forget."
Ryn looked at the address and time. "I won't." She stood, staring at the words on her skin. "I must go."
She pushed away from the table, hopped the divider into the mall proper, and disappeared into the crowd before Naomi could react.
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 13 |
The mall had too many eyes. The prickle of human gazes skittered across Ryn's flesh like a swarm of ants. Naomi's gaze had been a different kind of itch, one that made her feel small, uncertain, but kind of good. She couldn't tell if it was the too-gentle press of Naomi's fingers or the ballpoint on her palm that had made her so ticklish.
Ryn wove through the crowd. She could still feel Naomi's heart pounding against her through the fleeting contact of fingertips. The magnetism of her words still tugged on Ryn, confusing her and almost propelling her back to the café. Those words convinced her to do things she otherwise wouldn't.
No, not just the words: the smiles, the motions of her body. Ryn had never seen a smile before Naomi's, or at least, none had ever made sense before hers. It was like a codex, unpacking for the first time not just what smiles signified, but what they did. The surveillance photographs hadn't been enough, since they were too frozen, like capturing the ocean in still-frame when it could only be understood in motion. Naomi was animated. Her soul pushed to the surface of her face. Her movements added a dimension that drew together her whole meaning. And that clean rainwater scent... it was like Aina's, and alien to the city—a scent Ryn might catch once in a century, a scent with no evil in it. But most of all, Ryn could not figure out why she hadn't stopped thinking about Naomi. Why her mind and her feet kept trying to lead her back to the female.
Then it struck her: the full depravity of what Splat intended. The fugue of the full moon had almost blotted the hunt from the forefront of her mind, but now she sharpened her intent. No one would hurt Naomi. She fell now into Ryn's sphere of influence, and therefore, Ryn's territory.
Ryn ascended the stairs and paced a circle around the food court. She inhaled. Splat was out there. His presence tickled her brain in its darkest corners and her fingers clenched and unclenched with delight. The stalking had begun. By far her favorite part.
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 14 |
[ The Devil You Know ]
"Most awkward dinner of my life," Denise said on their way out of the food court, bags in their hands.
"It wasn't that bad," Naomi said.
"A close second to my eighth birthday party when Bragan Coates went to kiss me on the cheek and threw up down the back of my dress," Elli said.
"Bragan was just in love," Denise said. "Still can't figure out what that girl's problem with chairs was."
"Don't be mean," Naomi scolded.
"I'm not being mean; she just needs to be careful. Like maybe someone should start a nonprofit to educate people. On how to sit on chairs. Or maybe put the instructions on the chairs."
"You're being mean and it's because you're livid about my inviting her out next week," Naomi said.
"Was that for the best, though?" Elli asked. "I think she might be uncomfortable hanging out with us. You have to admit, she's not our usual thing."
Denise snorted. "Not our usual? You mean like how you can't tell she's a girl until you're right on top of her? Or do you mean like she might have some kind of chair-related dysfunction?" Her eyes lit up and she leaned in conspiratorially. "Or maybe the chairs offend her, because all chairs are imperfect shadows of the Platonic ideal of a chair. And so she's disinclined to sit. Philosophically."
"You're not going to manipulate me into uninviting her," Naomi said.
"Whatever do you mean?" Denise asked, her saintliest expression on display.
"You're trying to convince me you'll pick on her endlessly so that I'll uninvite her. Maybe instead you should humor me for one night."
"Fine—if you promise it'll help you get over the Iosef thing," Denise said as they boarded the escalator. "Because that's what it's about, isn't it?" she pressed.
"Maybe. I mean, I saw her at that railing, and she looked..."
"Aloof?" Elli nodded and let out a small sigh. "Aloof and mysterious."
Denise chuckled. "You thought she was a boy at a distance too, didn't you?"
Elli shrugged. "So I have a type; sue me. I thought Naomi was going to hit on her. Was about to go all green-eyed monster, too, until I saw she was tiny, and then a girl, and I realized the tragic failing of baggy cargo pants." She shook her head sadly. "Such unfortunate choices."
"Too bad she wasn't a boy," Denise said. "Then Naomi would have a date next week."
Naomi was rubbing the corners of her eyes. "I didn't see or care who she was, just that she was alone."
"There's a reason some people are alone." Denise turned her back to Naomi and stared ahead. "Some like it, and some are that way for good reasons; reasons you would have no clue about." They rode to the top of the escalator, and she added over her shoulder, "Drugs, by the way."
"What?" Naomi asked.
"She was here to sell drugs, Miss Perfect. Hence the internet stranger and the way she kept looking around. That's why she didn't want to come eat with you. She thought you were trying to buy from her, and she figured you might narc."
"I don't think that's it." Denise had a point, though—that explanation fit better than anything she could come up with. "I hope not. And if she was here to sell pot, I hope she doesn't think I was trying to buy any. Do you think that's what she thinks?"
"No idea," Elli said. "But she was jumpy."
"I'd be jumpy too if I were a waif who sold drugs in the Docks," Denise said.
"You don't know it was drugs," Naomi snapped.
"It's only ever two things, and she's wound too tight for the other thing. Drugs. She's buying or selling, and my money says she shows up next week either high or trying to sell you shrooms. Anyway, my point is: bring cash to pay her off, because you'll look like an idiot if you try to use plastic."
"Stop trying to talk me out of next week."
"Are you kidding? I've changed my mind. I want to watch this train wreck. Don't worry. You can pay her, but you don't have to take the shrooms."
They stopped because they had arrived at a crossroads, with Elli and Denise needing to exit toward a different parking deck. Naomi faced them. "Look. I don't think she was a dealer, and she looked like she could use a few friends. If you can't be that, then don't come out next week."
"I will be there next week and I'll be myself," Denise said. "Just because you tuck it all in for Daddy doesn't mean I will. However, I do promise I'll be gentle with your new charity project's feelings. Because I love you. Also, I don't want this girl to knife you in the ribs."
Naomi took a breath and expelled her irritation. "Good night, guys. Drive safe."
"Night. We'll see you Monday. Oh, and bring at least fifty bucks for your dealer. Because if I have to pay her off, I'm getting my money's worth."
Naomi pushed through the heavy glass doors and crossed a walking bridge to the parking deck. Frigid wind struck her from the right. She hunkered into her big coat and her hair did a wild dance. She entered a cavernous middle deck and passed through a deserted maze of shiny cars, the echo of her footsteps pinging off distant walls.
The deck lights flickered once and it went dark.
She stopped. The shape of the once-familiar concrete space was transformed by shadows; everything lay still, gleaming car windshields visible only because of distant illumination through the deck openings. A single warning shiver rattled up her spine, and out of nowhere her brain recalled the percentage of assaults and rapes that happened in parking garages. I hate you, brain.
She rummaged through her purse and flicked on a penlight. She took a deep breath. Likely a circuit breaker. She walked again.
The deck was silent but for the wind, which caught a plastic bag, crinkled it, and scraped it across the concrete. The sound raised her fine hairs and she gripped her bags tighter in her left hand, speeding her steps.
A singsong voice echoed off the cold pillars: "Here pussy, pussy."
She wasn't sure she heard the words right, but hurried along as cold fear prickled her skin. She'd borrowed Dad's car. It was still a dozen down and two aisles deeper.
"Don't run, pussy." She'd heard it right. Oh God. "Going to do such nice things with you; promise."
Behind her. Panic dulled her senses until she heard only ringing and she spun, dropped her bags, and snapped up her can of pepper spray. She jogged backward toward the car and flashed her penlight left and right across an empty floor. Where is he? Nothing back there except cars and the dark front of an unlit Coke machine.
"Step out, you coward," she said, projecting confidence she didn't have. All the while, she wove between cars, spun to check each corner, and worked toward her vehicle. Keys, keys, keys. Left pocket? "I'm armed!"
"Bad kitty. No scratches or I'll pull out those pretty claws." The voice came from everywhere and nowhere.
Where are you!
"You want to see me, don't you? Bet you scream." His voice was melodic and made her queasy. She spun toward her car, now in sight, and sprinted. She hit the key fob for the doors to unlock about eighteen times and heard them pop. She hit the panic button too so that its lights blinked and the horn blared. The side windows were shattered but she kept going. It wasn't until she grabbed the door handle that she saw it.
Someone had torn off the steering wheel.
And scratched "BEHIND YOU" into the side panel.
"Are you ready?" he whispered, his voice in her left ear and his breath far too warm on the back of her neck. "To scream?"
Naomi twisted around. Fingers vised around her throat, choking off her cry. He lifted her into the air with just one hand. How can he be so strong? She tried to say "Please" and only heard a weak gurgle. Her eyes watered and her vision filled with sparks. She gripped his wrist and kicked, but it felt like hitting a frozen slab of meat.
She thrust the pepper spray into the dark space near his face and squeezed.
It was a ski mask, but she unloaded into it. He choked, dropped her back onto her feet and slammed her flush to her car, gripping her neck without entirely cutting off her air. Her lungs worked fast to suck in oxygen.
He coughed and laughed at the same time, free hand wiping at his eyes. "Bad kitty really wants to get declawed. Don't worry, I can do that. Oh, but first: am I handsome?" He peeled off the mask.
That's not a face. Not really. It was a skull with skin stretched across it, yellow-toothed grin so wide she could see all the way to the back molars. He'd slit his cheeks from ear to ear. The gashes were stitched with thick, black wire, and messily, as if by the hand of a drunken boxer. His bugging eyes seared through her, the veins in one having burst, turning it red. "So, pet? Would you like to scream now? Or do you find me handsome?"
Naomi swallowed her revulsion. She shuddered out a deep breath and dropped her pepper spray. It rolled noisily away. Reaching up, she touched his mutilated cheek with her fingertips. "Maybe once. Before this." She covered the gashed part with her hand, until she looked only into his eyes.
He blinked, confused, and Naomi tried her best to hold him there in her gaze. It was a low-down, dirty trick, but she even managed half a smile.
That caught him off guard. For a moment, he was only trying to figure out the kindness in her eyes.
A moment was just enough. She sought with her right hand a loose black wire on his gashes and ripped it out with all her might. It made a p-p-p-pop, like the important stitch from a jacket sleeve.
He howled. She looped the wire around two fingers and kept pulling. His shriek pitched up an octave.
He threw her. The psychopath and the ground shrank. She sailed too high and too far, spun partway, and saw the hood and windshield of a car rise up at her. Rolling her body, she threw her arms down in a breakfall drilled into her by gymnastics, and the windshield cracked on impact. Pain jolted through both her forearms and her back, but evenly, and nothing snapped.
No sooner had she hit than she rolled off the hood and dropped to her feet, sprinting away.
Footfalls echoed behind her. She realized in her panic she'd sprinted to the wrong end of the parking deck. There was no ramp or stairs ahead, so she tucked around a corner and ducked between cars, working her way to another row. She stopped by an SUV and pressed her back into it, breathing heavily, and listened. Find him. Then sneak around him. It was hard to hear over her car horn.
A corner of the garage strobed in her car's headlights. She heard the psychopath snarl. The sound told her where he was, so she scampered down the aisle a few more car-lengths before something stopped her in her tracks.
Something moved out in the shadow, a patch that was blacker than normal black.
"Here kitty, kitty," the psycho called. He sounded far away, his voice from another direction than the twist she'd spotted in the darkness. "Here pussy. Such a bad girl. Wish you thought we were handsome. Maybe you'll grow to like our face once we carve you to match."
Naomi settled into a crouch. Trying to scare me, she realized. Wants to flush me out, and he's getting frustrated. Just keep your head. His voice made that hard, but when she glanced back at the weird knot of shadows, something else stole her breath.
Something else—that was all she could make of it, because it looked like nothing more than a distortion in the darkness that blew like smoke from behind a column, flitted across the floor, and merged into another column. Her heart thumped against the inside of her ribcage at what she'd seen: at something more fluid than form. Dread squeezed the air from her lungs and erased every rational explanation from her mind—for that instant, there was something wicked staring at her from the blackness; something had crawled from Hell and watched her with an ancient patience.
It terrified her in ways the psychopath could not. She sensed they weren't together, because the Hellish thing crept toward the madman's singsong voice—liquid shadows peeled from the column and appeared for an instant as the silhouette of a person, bounding to the rear of a truck and joining the shapeless ceiling. So quick it might have flown. So purposefully toward the stitch-faced man, she realized it wasn't hunting her. She was merely in its way.
No. She'd lost track of it, and with it gone from her sight, she closed her eyes and likewise forced it from her mind. It's not real. Just the fear playing tricks. Focus on getting out of here.
Her feverish mind pushed through the haze of terror, grasping for an escape. There was a stairwell and a ramp, and the psychopath would only have a general idea of where she was. He'd split the distance between the two, in case she ran for one of them. But Naomi was closer to the stairs now. Maybe close enough.
She sprinted for them.
She heard a commotion. A wet, animal snarl. The collision of bodies.
Every step up the stairs, she envisioned hands ghosting from behind to grab her ankles and drag her backward. Each stride across the bridge to the lit mall, she swore that furnace breath gusted against the back of her neck.
She hit the heavy glass doors. They resisted her and opened so slowly. She burst through one set, and the second was heavier than concrete. She stumbled through and ran until she reached a shocked, frozen gaggle of shoppers.
Everyone stared. Naomi collapsed, inhaled sharply, and gesticulated toward the exterior doors. Through hot, thankful tears she managed to focus on a round security guard—a badge had never seemed so lovely and welcome before—and struggled to say, "Parking deck! Someone. Some... man. Psychopath."
"What's he look like? Miss, are you hurt? Your hand."
She looked down at the black wire looped around her fingers, sticky with blood. It was all over her.
"Not my blood. He—had this. In his face. Oh God." She clapped her other hand over her mouth and shuddered, realizing how much of her own horror she'd swallowed in her effort to escape—but that sticky blood and black string sent the nail straight into the deepest part of her. He almost had me. That thing with half a face almost had me.
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 15 |
Fear was delicious. It was sour and pooled in the sweat of wicked men. It dribbled into their sinful blood, and like discordant sounds arranged suddenly into the loveliest kind of music, turned bittersweet. And it made stalking delightful. Fear caused paralysis, fogged the mind, and lent her prey the impetus to run. And when they ran, it twisted all the right places inside Ryn's stomach.
Naomi's fear was different. She fled the asura and trailed the musk of terror chemicals on car hoods and concrete. It wasn't a right smell. It was ripe-things-turned-rotten, like a rain shower filled with heavy oil. It was profane.
She flowed along the ceiling like wet ink, her hoodie and cargo pants dissolved into the formless black wings of her kanaf, bleeding her shape and color into the negative spaces around her. Every nerve buzzed, a sensitive conductor. The asura passed beneath her and Ryn's pulse quickened with voyeuristic pleasure. She could have reached out to flick open his carotid, yet she remained unseen. The waiting almost felt better than the bloodletting, savoring the moment before full, kinetic contact, her visceral urges piqued but teasingly denied for just a few heartbeats longer.
Naomi cut short Ryn's stalking when she sprinted for the corner staircase. Splat whirled to follow her.
I could let him catch her. I won't let him hurt her, but then I could stalk him more. No, she decided. Naomi was her territory now, and she didn't share.
Splat passed beneath her again. Ryn tore from her shrouded place on the ceiling and snarled her hunger at the asura. "Mine." The word came in the midst of her growl and she didn't know why she said it. He spun in time to see teeth and shadow, no more.
She hit him. They tumbled. Her force punched him into the concrete. She cracked him across his face, and because he was slow, she did it nine more times.
Then he fought back, throwing a wild punch. She rolled backward. His fist whiffed the air and her fingertips settled onto the concrete floor as she eased into a low crouch at his feet. She had to wait for him to stand. It took forever. He wasn't much faster than a person, not at all.
But she could smell some person in him. The asura wasn't in a hollow, strictly speaking; there was something of the human being left. She didn't want to kill the person if he wasn't either evil or completely gone, but getting Splat out of the human would be tricky. There were tales of holy men who could draw out an asura with words from their Almighty, but monsters had a messier alternative.
Pain.
He cocked his fists and she shot in low, wove a dance around his two blows, and vaulted onto his chest. Her deft fingers gripped one of his incisors and she leapt over him.
"Fuck! Fucking fuck!" He clutched his face and Ryn tossed the incisor aside.
"One," she said. Asura hated pain. They were not accustomed to it. Even the ones who mutilated their flesh preferred to do so with only one toe dipped into the host. As heady and intoxicating as the flesh could be for the pleasures it brought, they didn't have tolerance for agony. Life granted that tolerance only to creatures who wore their skin each day.
"Are you my new plaything?" he asked, practically singing the last word. But when Ryn advanced, he retreated.
She flew at him again. He tried a punch and missed, his fist crumpling in a car hood.
Ryn's hand whipped through the air and he shrieked. She twirled around him, then ducked an elbow strike. She tossed away a molar. "Two."
"Tell me, plaything, what do you— fuck!"
"Three."
The singing was gone from his voice. "You're going to run out of teeth eventually, you bitch."
"You have more than teeth." The dark was full of things that glittered, but none so bright as Ryn's eyes.
"I'll teach you respect." He wrapped his fingers into the soft metal of a car hood and spun the vehicle out of its spot. Its tires scraped on the floor and he swung it like a bat. Ryn rolled over top. The car crunched into the front grille of a Jeep. "What are you? Not asura. You're a damned goddess, aren't you? Think you can come down here and piss all over me on a full moon?"
He swung into a concrete pillar and powdered it. The choking dust flew into Ryn's face, an attempt to blind her. He followed it up by snagging a coupe and rolling it through the air at her.
Ryn dove through the car's passenger window, passed mid-roll through the cab, and burst through the driver-side door just before it crunched onto the floor. She alighted on the ceiling, gripping a metal rafter. "I will hear you scream," she promised.
Her cloak shrank at the fringes, tightening so it wouldn't get in her way. She was prepared now for battle.
He pounced from the floor; she descended from on high. They tangled in the air, where she allowed him to grapple her because it would limit her advantage in speed and agility. Ryn had been lit and left burning for too long; she needed to stretch, to taste blood, and to destroy him in all arenas—even those where he had an edge.
Together they whirled and sank to the concrete in a flurry of shattering blows. They traded fists and knees; Ryn deflected Splat's, and as they tore at one another, his blows pocked a trail of tiny craters in the concrete. He brute-forced Ryn into a steel girder. She snaked a leg around his knee, flexed him into the ground, and loosed a hurting volley into his ribs. He tore one arm loose, backhanded her, and she spat the blood into his eyes. Then she cracked her forehead down into his temple. He went limp.
But not for long. He lurched with new vigor. He grabbed a fistful of her kanaf and slammed her back into the pillar over and over until it dented. On the fifth slam, Ryn clung fast to the pillar. She pincered his throat with her legs and jerked him to the side, into a car hood so soundly that his face left an impression in the soft metal.
Splat took her knees in both hands, spun, and tossed her across the parking deck. Ryn let him. She reoriented in the air like a cat, landed gently on the face of a parked bus, and slid to the floor.
"Next time I get a hold of you I'm going to rape every part of you," he snarled.
She laughed at him.
"What's so funny? You think I'm going to tickle you? You think I'm playing games, you bitch? I'll make you feel every inch."
"You talk too much. Is that why you're so bad at this?"
He lunged and she melted away. He let loose an onslaught of blows, each one slow. He hadn't overpowered her in a grapple where Ryn's mobility was limited, and on open ground he simply couldn't touch her. She angled her body around one blow, rolled her shoulder to avoid a second. Each step he took, she countered, and each blow met vacant air. He backed her into a pillar, but she knew it was there. She ducked.
His fist powdered a chunk of concrete and Ryn stepped behind him. Four strands from her kanaf unfurled and tightened like a noose around Splat and the pillar. She cinched it with one pull, fastening him there.
"The hell—"
"I promised pain." Lashes from her cloak whirled around his forehead and lower jaw, and anchored below his armpits, so that she could place one foot between his shoulders, tug, and his head snapped back with his mouth forced wide. He struggled. But Ryn took her time and gripped two more teeth. She twisted the molars in their sockets very, very slowly, until his wails echoed. "Five." She scattered the teeth across the floor like dice.
He coughed blood, unable to fully close his lips. "Enough."
Ryn released him and absorbed the strands of her kanaf into the cloak.
But he hadn't ceded, not really. "What are you? You're no goddess. They don't fight that..." He coughed out more blood. "...that dirty." He was trying to distract her; the tension hadn't left his shoulders and his fists were still clenched.
Ryn didn't answer. She intended to demonstrate what she was. With her hands.
He lunged and Ryn caught him. She tossed him over her shoulder and folded him in the front of a sedan. He pushed out from the metal cavity and Ryn met him with her fists, because her claws would have killed host and asura alike. She painted him with concussive blows. Side of the neck. Ribs, ribs, thigh. He tried a kick. She broke the femur. No more kicks, she decided.
He produced a gun. She punched the weapon with a knife-hand strike of her claws. It cut the weapon into two neat halves.
Splat's other hand produced a knife. She deflected it with her hardened palm and threw her shoulder into him. He stumbled onto the broken leg, screamed, and fell to his knee. She flattened him facedown and drove a hundred razor wires from her kanaf into the space below the bump on the back of his neck. He tried to push up, but the syringe-thin wires coiled along his spinal column. She threaded gossamer into his nervous system. His arms twitched and went limp.
"It's mine," Splat whined. "It's my body. I earned it."
"Now it's mine." And with the slightest vibration of her kanaf, she fired pain through every nerve. He screamed. She vibrated the wires lower, longer, and the scream changed volume and tenor. Ryn tilted her head to the side, intrigued by the new instrument she had made. Then she scraped the wires, hard, and he cut loose with obscenities that evolved into a sound no longer human.
He jerked. His flesh went limp. The words came from a slack, unmoving mouth, his voice different when it was just the asura and not the human vocal cords: "Fine. You want me out? Fine. But, monster—"
Ryn felt pleased he'd figured it out. Demonstration successful.
"—whoever you are, wherever you're from, I will punish you. You wait. You won't see us coming." A thin vapor dissipated from the host's lips into the air.
Ryn retracted her cloak and her skin buzzed. She could sense the asura in the room. She could not see an asura without consuming psilocybin mushrooms, but she detected his presence. Car lights flicked on and off, signs of his power.
"You've earned enemies tonight, demon whore. Powerful enemies. I had plans for that mortal and... Oh. I see your face now! I saw you in the food court. You dined with my kitty. Oh, yes. I know how to hurt you now."
"And I, you." Ryn swept her claws through space. She slashed marks across a concrete pillar, then a second blow that left similar grooves in the front grille of someone's truck. Splat shrieked. She'd struck off a piece of him.
"Get away from me! What are you! You can't—"
"I did." She slashed the air twice more. She had only wounded him.
Splat's howl faded. He had fled.
Ryn stood alone in the parking deck. She crouched over the bloody, shallowly breathing human she had spared from death. His soul without Splat didn't smell especially clean, but he was just a man with a broken mind, and she no longer cared about him one way or the other so long as he stayed out of her way.
Distantly, she heard shouting voices from the walking bridge. Mortal security. Then, without Splat to keep them turned off, the deck lights flashed once, twice. Before the cameras could turn back on, she pulled up her hood, leapt through the open side of the parking deck and tumbled out into the moonlit sky.
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 16 |
[ Black Binder ]
Kessler crossed yellow police tape into a world full of twisted metal and broken glass. The parking deck was littered with crumpled cars and shattered pillars. A Chevy Cavalier lay on its side dripping oil from its broken engine block. He jogged to the ambulance and flashed his badge at a paramedic who shut the wagon's back door. "Where you taking the suspect?"
"Mercy General. Guy's a wreck. Can't hold this train up, sorry."
"Define wreck." Kessler followed the medic to his door, since he didn't break stride.
"Compound fracture to the femur, missing teeth, and his ribs are like a bag of broken sticks. Somehow the femur break didn't nick an artery, or he'd be in a bag. Face looks like he made out with a sausage grinder, but that's old. Didn't happen here." The medic got into the cab.
"Got an ID on him?"
"No ID, but said his name's Walter Banich."
"He say who did this?"
The medic gave a short, cynical laugh. "Yeah. The Grim Reaper." He slammed the door and drove off.
Kessler absorbed the scene and tried to sort out what could cause this much damage. There were no burn marks on the broken pillars or the cars, no evidence of explosives. No shell casings, either. It looked like collision damage, but somehow they had limped away in whatever car had done it.
"It's a black-binder case," said a gruff voice from behind him.
Kessler swiveled and came face to face with an obese detective with thinning red hair and a bushy mustache. His clip-on tie was half tucked in and had a food stain. Kessler had never met a more out-of-shape or ugly detective in his life. "Black binder?" he asked.
"Oh yeah. A weird one. I put 'em in a binder, the weird ones. Going to write a novel someday. You the one from the Four-Three?" He clapped a firm hand into Kessler's. "I'm Detective O'Rourke. Central."
"Detective Kessler. Central called me out. Word came down the pipe that a van belonging to one of the freshly released mental-health patients had caught fire. Wanted me to check it out, since the van's registered in the Docks and I have some rapport with the mental-health people. By the time I got here, all this happened."
"Military, huh?"
"Former. Making the transition. How'd you guess?"
"You've got the look. All neat, straight lines. What brings you here?"
"Home sweet home."
"What's your experience like?"
Kessler sensed scrutiny in the fat detective's deep-set eyes, so he said, "Only a year as an investigator. Before that, my main job was putting bullets through bad people."
O'Rourke rubbed the bristle on his double chin. "Why the transfer?"
"Slow on the trigger. Fraction of a second."
"Hn." O'Rourke turned from Kessler and he had the distinct impression that O'Rourke didn't like him.
"You going to fill me in?" Kessler asked. "What the hell happened to these cars?"
"No idea. Not going to bother."
So he was one of those cops. "Ah."
O'Rourke turned partway around and gave him the fish eye. "The cars are black binder. Trust me, when it's black binder, you need to simplify. Ignore the pieces that are incidental. So let's forget the cars. They either help us solve our puzzle or they obfuscate it. Core to the heart of the puzzle: who did this? Banich and a stranger. Our job is to find the stranger."
Okay. Maybe not one of those cops.
"Blood trail tells half the story and our vic fills in a little more," O'Rourke said. "Banich jumped her over there. She ripped stitches out of his face, then fled. Tough girl. Made it behind that SUV over yonder, then sprinted for the stairs. That's when it got interesting. That's when Player Number Three entered."
"A second assailant?"
"Girl says she saw something else."
"Something?"
"There you have it," O'Rourke said. "I ask her, she says 'something.' Not someone, something. I ask her to clarify, and she says she didn't get a good look. I ask her: animal or person? She says probably a person."
"Probably."
"There you have it again. Careful, if you turn out to have a brain, I might end up liking you. Now, I figure the vic is scared and seeing things, but damned if we don't have cars tossed around, and then that fucking thing." He motioned to a handgun on the concrete.
Kessler knelt. The gun was sliced in half. It was bisected straight down its barrel, a cut so clean it looked like it had been manufactured that way. Even the bullet that had been chambered was sliced length-wise, the powder from the cartridge dusting the floor. "What could do this? It's like someone took a diamond saw to it."
"No. There'd be shavings, irregularities at the edges—nothing portable cuts that way. So. What do we do with the gun?"
"Black binder?"
"You're spoiling all my preconceptions about you, detective."
"Wait. Preconceptions?"
O'Rourke kept going. "Way I see it, Banich had his rental van over yonder loaded with a rape-and-torture kit. It was torched. Third Player is the likely culprit. He burnt up the van, then beat Banich into half a lifetime of rehab. Now, I'm not going to lose much sleep over Banich, but if there's someone out there who can do damage like that, I want to know."
"Isn't the damage in your black binder?" Kessler asked.
O'Rourke waved a hand. "The binder's a method for cutting through the bullshit. It's not for assessing threats. This person? He's a threat. We should find him. Because it's possible he was working with Banich."
"How do you figure?"
"Accomplice who got cold feet," O'Rourke said. "Maybe a fellow wacko. The girl was a senator's daughter. Think about it: two creeps meet and share an obsession with this girl. One proposes the kidnap-and-rape scenario, and the other goes along with it and figures, 'I kill the other guy, I get into her good graces.' "
"All right," Kessler said. "Maybe I can get something from the security cameras."
"Good luck. Report said the power went out on this deck. One of the maniacs probably cut it. But find what you can."
"How's the vic, by the way?"
O'Rourke shrugged. "Scared. Get ready to put in some OT on this one. Like I said, her daddy's Senator Bradford. He'll be leaning on the captain, and the captain leans on us. I need everything you've got."
"Mind if I ask you a straight question, O'Rourke?"
"Best kind."
"You under the impression that I'm bad at my job? That I'm slow on the uptake or that I need a senator breathing down my neck to solve crimes?"
"Let me ask you something. Can you run a mile in under five minutes?"
"Yes."
"Bet you can bench, what, two hundred? Two-fifty? And you probably spent enough time on the range to put a consistent two rounds into a man's skull at a fair distance."
"So?"
"So you trained a long, long time to do all that shit for God and country. You ought to be proud. But a man's only got so many hours in his life to get good at things, especially if he's only been trying for a year. And I've seen a hundred tough guys come up from street patrol and make detective. Good cops. Diplomatic and streetwise. Excellent lung capacity. But shitty puzzle solvers. Try to understand, Detective Kessler, I love puzzles, and I know way too many guys doing this job who don't. That said, I'm pleased to have you here."
It didn't seem like it to Kessler.
"You're probably thinking, 'Sure doesn't seem like it,' but you strike me as earnest. Dedicated. It's not worth as much as you'd like it to be, but I can work with it."
"So what now?"
"Do the security footage and work your contacts in the mental-health system. We compare notes tomorrow. You need any resources, drop my name at Central. If that doesn't work, drop the senator's name. This is a high-priority case."
"Why?"
"Because it's mine."
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 17 |
Kessler hunched over a bespectacled guard at the wall of monitors in the mall security station. "I swear, I'm really good at this," the guard said. "But I haven't found anything—and I mean anything—on the van fire. It was set by a ghost."
"That can't be right. There's got to be twelve cameras on that deck."
"Eighteen. Here's the van door pre-blaze and here it is post-blaze, but no one approaching or walking away. If he came in or out of the mall around the time of the fire, though, he'll definitely be on the camera that overlooks the walking bridge. No rotation, no way around it. But there had to be forty, fifty people passing in that time frame."
"Copy me the footage. What about the fight on the parking deck?"
"Almost nothing."
"Almost?"
"Cameras came back on after the fight. Got a glimpse of... something. Here, it's easier to just show you."
The monitor blinked on. It was static at first and then showed the parking deck. Banich lay on the concrete. "What am I looking at?" Kessler asked.
"Took me a few times too. Let me put it on loop."
The video looped. Kessler strained his eyes. Shadows seemed to shift. No, not shadows. He leaned in close. On one of the loops, something inky-black slid from the corner of the frame and leapt out of the parking deck's open side. Kessler shot back three steps. "The hell is that?"
"I know, right? I think it's a person going over the edge. And the drop is five stories. We've had a suicide off that parking deck."
"Those light fixtures above the opening," Kessler said. "How high up would you say they are?"
"I don't know. Eight feet?"
"If that shadow's a person, even crouched like that, he can't be over five feet tall. Small guy. Banich had to weigh two hundred and fifty at least. How's someone that size do that to a person?"
"With a baseball bat? Or a car."
"Copy that footage too," Kessler said.
A thought crept over him. He knew a person in New Petersburg who was about that size, who could scale a sheer wall, fight like a demon, and send the shivers straight up his spine. She'd just got out of Sacred Oaks less than a month ago.
On his way out of the office, he dialed Victoria Cross. "Victoria. It's your ex. Uh, David. We need to meet." More quietly, he added, "It's about Ryn."
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 18 |
They met at a sandwich shop in Whitechurch. When Kessler had left New Petersburg more than a decade ago, the crime rate in Whitechurch had been dropping. The graffiti had since been replaced by spray-painted murals, the fire escapes dotted with spice-garden planters that would bloom come spring, and the streets flooded with educated people who wanted to live in the city between Graystone University and where they worked in Commonwealth Plaza. Its revitalization had driven up property values and chased out the poor. Now it was full of trendy restaurants, the sandwich shop flanked by a sushi bar and a vinyl record store.
Kessler found Victoria at a booth, surrounded by a fortress of case files. She'd been nothing but bones and wit in high school, and she'd kept her lean physique, except now her hair had a done-up, professional quality that projected competence. Nevertheless, the clasp could not quite contain her energy, and a few curls busted loose. She worked her case files at the pace of a mad scribble.
He sat. "Victoria. You look good."
"You should order the house club," she said.
"Not hungry."
"Order the house club and you will be."
"I'm here about Ryn."
"I know. And I don't talk about my cases, so you're wasting your time. Unless you order the club—then it won't be wasted at all. It's that good."
"You need to trust me. Especially when it comes to her. She wouldn't be under your care if it weren't for me. This isn't business, Victoria. This is personal."
"Personal?" Her voice had an edge.
"Yeah."
"Personal like, say, what we had in high school?"
Shit. "This isn't really the time—"
"It's relevant. Do you remember the Tuesday after graduation, David? Because I do. That was the day my boyfriend of four years broke up with me, by phone, while on his way to boot camp. Which surprised me, since I had thought we'd decided to move in together."
He ran his hands through his close-cropped hair, trying to contain the same surge of frustration she'd always incited. "Moving in was your plan, goddamnit. I didn't want to go to school, and I didn't want to meet all my girlfriend's college friends and explain that I worked in the Docks. I didn't want to stand still. That life would have killed me."
"What—living with me? I grew up two floors beneath you, you dolt. We were practically living together already by the end of high school. I used that fire escape next to your bedroom more than the alley cats."
Kessler deflated. "It wasn't you."
She made a face.
"I swear. I know everyone says that, but it's true. It was... well, my dad."
"I loved your dad, too. He was important to me. He used to walk me home when I was a little girl, down both flights, to my door. A gentleman, your father. Don't use his memory to excuse your meltdown. When you told me you were going into the military, you didn't say 'because my father died in a war,' you said 'because I have to do this.' It was duty. Honor. You chose that, and you chose it over me. So when you say Ryn is personal, I say I don't believe you. Because I know your priorities."
Kessler had avoided this conversation for ten years.
She removed her glasses and folded them. "It's not a bad thing. Duty, honor, service. Great things. Just... not for eighteen-year-old me. Maybe not for her, either."
"I tried to talk to you about my plans." Folded over his spot at the table, he lifted his jaw and squared her in his gaze. "A hundred times. But you weren't the sort of person who took 'no' for an answer. I'd say the words, but you'd never hear them. I'd say, 'I'm not sure about moving in,' I'd say, 'I can't find the kind of work I need.' You'd try to argue me out of it, like if you could present enough points in a logical enough way, I'd feel differently."
"So," she said, grinning. "It was my fault."
He sighed. "Fuck. Yes. All right? Yes, it was."
Victoria paused over her case files and actually smiled. "I know."
Kessler threw his hands up. "Then why the fuck are we talking about it?"
"I needed you to say it." She shook her head. "You're too damn noble. We broke up because I was a selfish girl who thought she could drag you along anywhere I went. You don't get to take the bullet for me, years later, after I figured all that out through the awesome power of a graduate degree in psychology." Pausing, she added, "You're exactly like your father."
"Not in a good way."
"What do you mean not in a good way? Your father was the best."
"Yeah. Big, dead hero who wasn't around for my first fight in elementary school. Had to learn to shave from my mom. Had to learn to drive from you, and that's done me no favors. So there I was, doing big-hero things an ocean away and ignoring all the pain in the city where I grew up. Don't think I left for the nobility of it, or whatever else you think. I was just running. Same as him."
"Bullshit." Victoria leaned in. "They were murdering children."
Kessler had read the report a hundred times—the real one, not the press release when they'd awarded the posthumous medal. It had been an ugly border incursion from the Soviet side—"freedom fighters" who had holed up in a school with enough firepower to push back the small NATO contingent stationed there. They'd started the executions as some insane bid to erase the line drawn through their country by the Soviets and NATO. "It was a goddamn trap, Victoria. They'd done it before—wreak some havoc, kill some kids or some soldiers, then fade back across the border."
"And your dad walked into a trap," Victoria said. "Outnumbered. While everyone else tore for cover. He lived long enough to fire every bullet they gave him. Sixteen monsters walked into that school; only two walked back out. And the kids? All those little hearts kept pumping because just like you, he couldn't follow an order, even if it might have saved his life. That's not what a runner does."
"He was my dad. I was eight. I didn't care about grade-schoolers half a world away. It was my birthdays he missed." Sitting up straight, Kessler said no more until he had his voice under control. "Selfish, I know. But I was eight."
"You can't be a father and see children—anywhere—without seeing some of your own kids in them."
"Maybe not."
"You never told me any of that when we were kids."
"You wouldn't have let me get away with bitching." He cracked a smile.
"I'd have definitely told you to suck it up." She closed her last file. "I trust you more when you act like a human. Explain this thing with Ryn."
"I think she's in deep shit. Last night someone beat a two-hundred-fifty-pound, would-be rapist named Walter Banich into the concrete. They dodged two dozen cameras and disappeared off a seven-story parking structure. Torched a van, too."
"Sounds like ninjas. Have you put an APB out on ninjas?"
"We both know who it sounds like. And the lead detective on the case thinks Banich had an accomplice. He had a history in the mental-health system, same as Ryn. Then there's this." He slid a folder from his coat and showed her a surveillance still. The blurry image showed Ryn crossing the mall's walking bridge.
"That might not be her."
"It might not be. But it is."
"Ryn is not this man's accomplice. That I can tell you with absolute certainty."
"Why?"
"You know why. Ryn's not like that."
"Treat me like I'm a hostile prosecutor. Convince me so I can convince the other detective."
"Fine. Ryn has an aggressive form of reactive attachment disorder. She doesn't socialize with anyone unless she trusts them, and she trusts so few people it's less a circle than a straight line connecting her and me. To conspire, you have to talk to people. Ryn doesn't do that. If she beat your man up, it wasn't because she turned on her buddy. It was probably because he tried to rape someone. That, actually, does sound like Ryn."
"Then how did she follow Banich? Do you think a maladjusted teenager could stalk him?"
"Yes. And you do, too." Victoria leaned forward. "You know things about her. Don't you? Things you haven't told me."
He sighed. "Fine. Here's how I met her." He told her the story, start to finish, and he even showed her the scar on his forearm. When he'd first sent Ryn her way, he had left out the details, but now that he filled in the blanks, she didn't seem at all surprised.
"Just how classified is that story?"
"Enough to put me in a cell," he said. "I'm a little bothered that you're not more... incredulous."
"I have a three-inch-thick file documenting the impossible things I've seen her do. Nothing surprises me as long as it's something she can do by herself and without smiling."
"Like what?"
"Promise me that Ryn is not just a case for you."
"Pulling her out of that hellhole is probably the best thing I've ever done," Kessler said. "I've visited her a dozen times since I moved back home. She matters to me, okay?"
"Okay. CliffsNotes version: Ryn's the strangest case I've ever seen. Her brain isn't human. I'd bet good money that if you put her into an MRI, the neuroscientist would reach for the whisky in his drawer five seconds later. He wouldn't even have words to define what he saw.
"A concert pianist came to Sacred Oaks a month into Ryn's stay. She was rapt because she'd never seen a piano before. Three days later, I caught her playing Beethoven in the rec room. Flawlessly. She's never done it since. She came in with broken English and no reading, writing, or math, and now she nearly has her GED. It wasn't until she was under 24-hour observation that we realized she only sleeps one day a month—and always on the new moon. All day and all night, like she's hibernating.
"Then on the full moon, she's half crazy. Tried to have a session with her once on the day of the full moon and she couldn't focus on anything. Kept telling me it was the moon distracting her. Ended up taking three coins on my table and spinning them. Never seen anything like it."
"Never seen someone spin a few coins on a table?"
"Not one on top of the other, no."
"And she still doesn't... understand people?"
"Not at all," Victoria groused. "She learns quickly—even the mechanics of language—but she only understands facial expressions in the most clinical sense. Can't lie, doesn't grok money or manners or the basics of friendship, love, or even family. She's atomized, and on some level... I question whether she wants to learn. I know the way she processes expressions and the tendency toward sensory overload probably put her somewhere on the autism spectrum, but it's not her only barrier. There's a lot she won't learn just because she resents it."
Kessler sat back. "What about the physical differences? The teeth. I thought she'd filed the teeth at first but the canines are actually too long. And her eyes? That's not normal."
"I'm not an expert, but maybe she's a genetic offshoot. Imagine a group of humans with those traits: sleeplessness, antisocial intelligence, sharpened teeth, bright eyes, and nocturnal habits. Getting close to a lot of Dracula-style fairy tales there. A small band of humans with those traits might end up isolated. Living on the periphery. Maybe they'd be nomads, probably secretive enough to go unnoticed. But that's all speculation. What I know for certain is that Ryn could have probably tracked Banich down. And beat him. But she'd never work with him."
"All right. I want to talk to Ryn."
"I'll tell her."
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 19 |
Kessler was used to the Four-Three Precinct by now—a rundown station with exposed pipes showing through patches of broken wall—so walking into Central, he had to adjust to thrumming, black computers and new-carpet smell. It seemed like the sort of place where solving crimes did more than hold back the tide. It possessed smooth, clean architectural lines, and natural light poured in through tall windows, which provided an unobstructed view of busy streets in Commonwealth Plaza. Those windows made him feel exposed, but then, building sides were rarely shot up in Commonwealth Plaza.
O'Rourke had a small, windowless office, its walls lined with photos and commendations. Two monitors displayed browsers with forty tabs open, case files were heaped on every available surface, and one stack balanced an open pizza box. O'Rourke ate and scrolled a mouse wheel. His reading glasses comically enlarged his small eyes. "What'd you find?" he asked between bites, without looking up.
"Rough image on a possible accomplice." Kessler paused. "Still working on the ID." More like working out what to do about it. He passed the stills to O'Rourke, who rubbed his oily fingers off on his tie and leafed through them. They included the shadowy image from the parking deck and the blurry one from the walking bridge.
"Can't see a damn thing. Based on the light fixtures in the parking deck, our perp's five-foot, give or take an inch. Slender. Matches this one you found from the walking bridge. Good job. Except if he's this big, can't figure how he wrecked Banich."
Kessler removed some folders from a chair and sat. "How about you?"
"Talked to the senator and found something damn disturbing. Let me bring it up."
Kessler glanced around the office. There were action figures on the desk: R2-D2 and Han Solo. The bookcase's lower shelves held textbooks on statistics, something called "Stata," and forensics, but higher up it turned into paperback science-fiction and mystery novels. "You read a lot?"
"You don't?" O'Rourke clicked a few more times with his mouse.
"When I have time."
"Find more time. Keep your brain sharp. Hungry. That's your most important tool now, and you need to learn obsession and curiosity. Otherwise your work regresses to the mean." He focused a moment on Kessler and said, "The mean in New Petersburg is pretty bad. Now. Look at this." He swung his monitor around.
It was a wall of text on an internet message board. Kessler scanned a few lines:
...best way to dump her corpse? Use lime, like the mob.
Noob. That's lye, ur killing a whore, not makin cocktails lol.
Why dump it? Put her on display at the end. Or during. Make it public.
When I think of all the people Bradford murdered to get where he is it just makes me want to cave his skull in with my fist. Wonder if he'll cry when we do to his daughter what he's been doing to our DEMOCRACY...
Kessler stopped reading. "There's got to be a hundred sites like this on the internet. Just people blowing off steam, right?"
"That's what I figured at first. The premise for the board is sick—point-scoring system for who can hurt Bradford the most. Last two weeks, it's been a nonstop circle jerk about kidnapping and raping his daughter. They doxed him—" O'Rourke paused, peering up to see if Kessler knew what that was.
"Posted his address and phone number." Kessler waved his partner on.
"—and a few weeks ago, one of them called the cops pretending to be Bradford, saying he had a gun and was gonna kill his daughter. Tried to get a SWAT team to break into his house. Luckily, the operator was on her game and figured it out before the wagon arrived. Bradford said they changed their number, but he was apparently keeping his daughter out of the loop until now."
"This is crazy, though. Do you really think this website inspired Banich?"
"He's one of their top five posters."
"And you think his accomplice was someone he met on the site?"
"Someone helped him. He had professional surveillance on his wall, and Banich wasn't the sort who blends in well. I don't think it's everyone on the site—"
"—but we need to figure out who helped him, and the site's a good start." Kessler considered what was on the screen. "The web stuff is out of my depth. Can we track them somehow?"
"We'd need a warrant for the IP addresses, and that still might not do it. Banich was a dumb shit by all accounts, but whoever took the surveillance and pieced it together for him... he's different. Has that slippery feel, sort who might be hard to find. Meantime, we split up the board posts and try to find anyone who chatted up Banich's account or looks especially suspicious. Banich's computer didn't have much, so whoever it was probably had another way of talking to him outside the boards, too."
"Even if we find this accomplice on the website, how do we get to him if he's as slippery as you say?"
"I can root around. Even if he covered his tracks, a lot of these assholes are vain and like to talk about themselves. We can still try to connect anything he gives away about his background, try to figure him out based on his habits or interests—or maybe he's got other accounts somewhere else with a similar ID. Burns my ass, though. You know how much easier this'd be if Bradford wasn't blocking that Senate security bill?"
Kessler didn't follow domestic politics much. "Hadn't heard about it."
"Some big plan to import static IDs to internet users. They'd still be anonymous to one another if they wanted, but everyone's name would connect back to their real-world identity in a federal database. Trying to crack down on cyberterrorism, but Bradford's opposed for some blah-blah-blah rehearsed civil-liberties reason. Since the bill's dead in the water—and 'unconstitutional as hell,' says Bradford—guess we do it the old-fashioned way."
Kessler looked at his partner a moment. "Isn't it a little strange the Bradford kid gets attacked by an anonymous internet maniac the same week her father's fighting a bill that would make the guy's accomplices easier to track down?"
A twinkle appeared in the fat detective's eye. "Another good reason to follow this rabbit hole all the way down, don't you think?"
"So you're saying conspiracy?" That's crazy, but at least it doesn't point toward Ryn.
"Saying I'm going to find out. If there's one thing I hate, it's a puzzle with missing pieces."
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 20 |
Roosevelt Place was a decrepit building in the Czech part of the Docks, based on the language of the graffiti. The elevator lights flicked out twice on Kessler's ascent. It was a medium-bad group home, but Victoria didn't have room to be picky in the crowded New Petersburg system. He suspected she'd placed Ryn knowing her to be a tougher-than-average girl.
Judy Birch answered the door. Her smile was plastic. "Are you the detective?"
"I am." Kessler showed her his badge. "I'm here to talk to Ryn Miller."
"She isn't in any kind of trouble, is she?" Mrs. Birch leaned close. "Because between you and me, that one is always up to something. Don't trust anything she says, especially about my husband."
Shit, that's not suspicious. "If I could just speak with Ms. Miller, that would be fine."
She let him through and he stepped carefully into the living room. The frayed sofa only had a body's width of clearance from the wall, all of the furniture too large for the size of their apartment. It was cluttered but clean. The absence of roaches or animal droppings alone put it above the cutline at which group homes might get written up.
He felt the air move and glanced over. Ryn stood in front of a curtained doorway and he wasn't sure when she'd arrived. Always with the little cat's feet. He noted the cargo pants and hoodie, same as the photo.
"Ryn." He didn't bother with a pleasant smile, since he knew she wouldn't care. "That look suits you."
"Sergeant Kessler. I prefer when you aren't covered in the stink of war."
"Such a charmer."
They stared from ten feet apart, Kessler in his jacket and tie, Ryn barefoot on the carpet with a paperback in hand. Judy Birch stood in the kitchen doorway, hands clasped and forcing a smile that, as the seconds ticked down, dissolved more and more into a frown.
"You two are friends." Her fingers tapped hastily together. "What fun!"
It clearly was not.
"Good book?" Kessler asked.
"About a cowboy and a woman. I don't understand why she hasn't shot him yet."
"You taking care of yourself?" She was still too thin—but she'd always been that way.
"You know I have."
"Keeping busy?"
"I read. I run."
"How about chasing? You do any chasing?"
She said nothing.
"You chase someone in the vicinity of Center Square Mall? Enjoy a little arson? Beat a guy named Walter Banich into a full body cast?"
Still nothing.
"Body cast?" Mrs. Birch tapped her fingers together again. "I'll just... go put together a cookie tray." She fled to the kitchen.
"The roof." Ryn disappeared into her curtain.
Mrs. Birch tried to pry information from him about the arson and beating; he just stepped close. "Your husband had better not touch any of these kids. If he does, what I'll do is the least of your concerns. But it should still be a very big fucking concern. You feel me?"
She blanched and nodded.
Kessler took a cookie from her plate and chewed on it going out the door. Raisins. Scowling, he tossed it into a garbage can in the hall and climbed to the roof, where Ryn stood on dark tarpaper, still barefoot, collecting snow in her raven-feather hair.
"Albert Birch ever touch you?"
"His eyes bother me."
"See that his hands don't. If he ever does anything to you or the other kids, call me." He knew she wouldn't. "And you should have called me about Banich, too."
"Will you arrest me?" she asked.
"Depends. Did you help Banich?"
She snarled and flashed her teeth.
He took a step back. "Point taken."
She turned. Her gaze lengthened over the rooftops. The wind tugged her hair, which was loose and long. Her features seemed somehow girlish and hard at once—soft cheeks, firmed mouth. He knew what her dark sunglasses hid and the thought made him shudder.
"I didn't know him," she said. "I didn't help him."
"But you were at the mall that night."
"I was."
"What were you doing there?"
"I walked. Met a... what is the word?"
"Friend?"
"Friend." It sounded alien on her lips. "Perhaps."
"You assaulted Banich at the mall and lit his van on fire?"
Again, the silent treatment.
"Someone your size, with your skills, assaulted him. You were there. There's probably footage of you in the mall. Ryn. You could go to prison."
She stood like a statue, her gaze on rooftops far away.
"Jesus. Look. Do you use the internet?"
"No."
"Ever?"
"People use it around me at school. I don't like the way the light moves in the screens. It bothers my eyes."
"So you don't have your own computer?"
"No."
"You don't know anything about an anti-Bradford hate site? And you never took any surveillance of Naomi Bradford?"
"No. That was another."
"Wait. You know the guys who helped Banich?"
"I know of them."
Kessler stepped closer. "How?"
She seemed lost in something happening in the alleyway. "He told me, in between screams. Naomi is still in danger. Isn't she?"
"You know her?"
No answer.
"Oh, naturally, of course you know her. Is that who you met at the mall?" Her silence indicated "yes," and Kessler let out an elaborate, pent-up curse. He stretched it into eight extra syllables. "If you're spotted around Naomi Bradford and someone links you to the Banich assault, it's going to get ugly. Keep your distance."
Ryn didn't speak. Kessler wanted to shake her. Then she said, "Be careful, Sergeant Kessler. There is more danger than you realize."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"They move in packs."
Kessler realized she was talking about Banich. "How do you know?"
"Whispers. Places you cannot go. The stories worm their way out of deep crevices."
"Then how many are there?"
"Hard to say. At least three. Never more than six, because seven is holy. But Banich is... unimportant. He isn't really one of them. The one who controlled Banich escaped."
"The ones who took the surveillance? And you know them?"
"Only as prey."
"No. No, Ryn. You cannot be involved. This is not the Fortress, we have laws here. And we're very good at this. We'll get DNA, prints, we'll track them down."
"You will find shadows and rumors. No more. These ones are ghosts."
"Stay out of this."
Her gaze met his, so hard it caught his breath. "Tell me again what to do. I dare you."
His mouth went dry. "Telling you what to do is my job."
"I have no job, only purpose. Unlike you, I must obey it, because my purpose is all that I am. And my purpose is to stay close to Naomi Bradford. She is safer with me. You don't understand this threat, because it doesn't come from civilized places."
"Then where?"
"They are born from great sins and powerful emotions, and they are more and less than human."
I'm talking to someone who grew up in a place where they take gods and monsters literal-fucking-serious, he reminded himself. "If someone pins the Banich assault on you, you will go to jail, because they will assume you met Banich in the mental-health system and that you helped him plan it. Do you understand? Spend time with Naomi Bradford and you go to jail. You will be exactly where you were a year ago, only worse."
"Then arrest me. Or don't. Until then, I'll do as I like." She hopped onto the ledge, turned her back to him, and stepped off. He ran to the ledge in time to see her spider into her bedroom window.
A feeling, a shiver, like a dark premonition, wriggled all the way up his spine. "Stay away from that girl, Ryn. Stay away, or this isn't going to end well."
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The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 21 |
[ Invited ]
The wane of a full moon peeled back layers of noise and sensation until Ryn was left with slack limbs and a steady heart. What she lost in power she gained in control, and in her clearer state of mind she had regrets.
She had declared Naomi Bradford her territory. True, she'd announced it only to herself after a moment of unusual feeling that she chalked up to the excesses of a lunar hunt. But no deva—not even a monster—took such words lightly. It was not a vow, but close to one, and Ryn had never regarded a human that way before. Worse still, she found herself thinking about Naomi, and not in the usual ways. Sometimes when she closed her eyes, the teenager's smile greeted her, and she would remember Splat's cruel promise.
Splat was a rank terror. He would suck the humanity from Naomi like the yolk from an egg, hollow her into a pale and decorative shell. To Splat, human skin was an instrument, their spirits a troublesome noise to be cleared out of his engine. That must have been why she thought so much about Naomi—it reminded her of the importance of killing Splat and his cabal.
Naturally, the thing to do would be to get as close as possible to Naomi.
Kessler was right. She risked prison in doing so, and mortal laws could contain her. But a deva her age was a constant, and like the orbits in the sky she would do the same bloody things always and forever.
Splat would rather attack Naomi while she was alone to avoid another touch from Ryn's claws and to keep himself hidden from mortal authorities; he had to, if he wished to avoid punishment by the secretive gods who despised mortal entanglements in their world. However, from Kessler she also learned he had mortal resources—and they could strike during the day and in public. There was little she could do about that, as Ryn was usually trapped in school on the other side of the city when the sun was out.
At night, though, she expanded her influence, commuting across the city and exploring Naomi's neighborhood, her school, the nearby rooftops of two- and three-story houses. It was called Garden Heights and featured grand, old trees and large backyards. The space between people eased a tension in Ryn's mind she'd forgotten was there.
She mastered the rooftops and hunted for fresh signs of asura, but all the scent trails were days or weeks old. She also prowled the city for the mushrooms that granted vision of the asura and poached a handful from a distracted vendor in Bourbon Alley. Humans enjoyed them for the hallucinations, but not everything they revealed was a lie.
School busied her during the day and Ryn eluded the notice of her teachers. She was introduced to the concept of grades and realized they marked her efforts. To avert attention, she strove for mediocre marks. It meant pouring effort into her English literature class, because the arcane interpretation of texts was impossible for her. In math and science, she varied her answers strategically to earn lower marks. In history, she simply answered truthfully. If an essay asked what the medieval era was like for women, her answers included a lot of detail about the main kinds of edible roots and the quality and range of military weapons.
Harper Pruett and his pack mates ignored Ryn, their attention having shifted to a girl with dyed blue hair two grades lower, who they mocked because of something she might have done with boys more times than they wanted her to. It bothered Ryn even more when they focused on the dye-haired girl, and Ryn wished she could get Harper into that closet again. She wondered how Naomi would handle the situation. Probably with less head-butting.
At the apartment, Albert Birch avoided her, often sweating his anxiety in fat beads. He also stopped bursting into their room, and Susan said that when Ryn was around, the Birches rarely bothered her.
"Does Albert Birch bother you when I'm gone?" Ryn asked, sensing prey-fear on Susan. It was something she scented on many girls and boys at school.
"No," Susan said. "Not me, at least."
"Who?"
"The girl before you. Before she went out the window, Albert bought her expensive things. Clothes mostly. I wondered what it was about."
"I don't understand."
"Well." Susan closed her book. "I figure—and I guess I don't know, but I figure—maybe he tried to keep her quiet about something they might have been doing, something they weren't supposed to. Anyway, he's creepy, but he never does more than gawk. How about you?"
"He sweats fear when I'm close."
"Hope it lasts."
On Friday, she rode the train to meet Naomi because daylight made the rooftops impassable—too many human gazes to avoid. It shrank her routes through the city almost to nothing. New Petersburg was uglier in the sunlight and there were too many bodies filling it with prattle and odors.
The city rolled past her window. She rode beneath the bay, changed trains, and then wandered Porter Avenue, a downtown spot near Whitechurch that blended the graffiti and panhandlers of the Docks with the noisy bars and nightclubs of younger neighborhoods. Salty brine and mud-slush caked the streets and cars so that everything had a grimy coating, but a sharp winter breeze lit Ryn's spirit on fire. She wasn't certain why she felt so buoyant, but the evening felt wide and unexplored.
She waited outside a club called the Nine Lives for Naomi and her friends. Near sundown, Elli and Denise arrived together.
Naomi isn't with them. Ryn's heart fell. "Where is she?"
"Couldn't come." Elli's smile was large—the shape of it meant something other than happiness, because why would she be happy her friend had stayed home? Ryn would have had better luck deciphering patterns in frosted car windshields than in Elli's face.
Confused, Ryn looked to Denise. This one doesn't smile at all. "Tell me more."
"Her dad freaked out." Denise got in line beside Elli and refused to look at Ryn. "Not sure if you heard. She was attacked last week at the mall. It was serious. She's okay, but it was close. Been on the news all week; made national. You don't own a TV?"
Ryn felt strange then. If her only task was to stand watch, find Splat, and exterminate him, this should have been fortuitous—Naomi was a lure, and watching the auburn-haired teenager from her rooftop narrowed his paths of attack, forcing him to fight Ryn straight-on. So why had the fire in Ryn winked suddenly out? There was nothing desirable in a club stuffed with oily, aggressive, aroused teenagers. Disgusting. Naomi would have had to drag her in.
It made no sense, what Ryn was feeling, and she scowled at her own sour mood.
Elli shuffled, seemingly unable to make eye contact. "You know, if you want to bail since Naomi's not here, we'd understand."
The question escaped Ryn's mouth ahead of conscious thought: "Did she want to come out?"
Denise's smile was thin—did that make her only a little happy? Why were her eyes narrowed to slits? "Doesn't matter. Her dad said no, and the princess always listens to dear, sweet father. The way is blocked. Verboten. Her social life shall commence sometime after, hm, I predict graduation."
Ryn bristled and had to suppress a flash of her canines. "She is human. She has will."
Denise snorted. "Not in that house she doesn't."
Outrage blossomed fresh and invigorating in Ryn's chest. "I shall see." She strode away from the girls.
"Hey. You leaving?" Elli did that smile again. "That's fine! Nice seeing you."
"I am going to have a conversation with Naomi." Ryn didn't break stride. "I may return."
"Did you hear what I said?" Denise called. "Are you dense or are you actually going on the warpath against a senator?"
"I would rather go around than through him." But either works.
Already half a block behind her, she heard Elli whisper, "At least that's over—she gives me the creeps."
Denise scoffed. "Just now? I started to like her."
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 22 |
With sunset at her back, Ryn clung to the train's filthy spine and rode it across the city. In Garden Heights, she danced among satellite dishes and outpaced cars on the suburban street.
The Bradford home was guarded by a tall rock wall that might have kept out a particularly stupid human or one who couldn't operate a ladder. The trees were the right height to cross from wall to branches to rooftop. The house possessed the sort of recesses and nooks that, along with the trees, hid her from the street. It was an ideal perch.
The security wasn't terrible: one bored cop in a squad car passed sometimes on the street and a soldier in a dark suit walked the perimeter at intervals. The soldier looked competent for a human. With enough bullets and luck, and on a new moon, he might have slowed down Splat.
Naomi's rain-clean scent rose from the back of the house and Ryn dropped from the roof to her window. Her toes caught the sill and she perched on the three-inch sliver, fingertips flush to a window with drawn curtains on the inside. Ryn felt a flutter of anticipation and knocked.
Would Naomi or the soldier answer?
The curtain whipped open. Naomi stood on the other side of the glass in a halo of warm light, dressed in pajama pants and a too-large, faded T-shirt whose wide neckline sloped almost off one of her shoulders. Ryn filled her window, and Naomi yelped. She shot back a step, tripped over a book, and flailed for balance, hitting the bed.
Ryn tilted her head to one side. She nudged the window open. "May I enter?"
Naomi propped herself on her elbows and gaped. "How did you get up there? Why are you here?"
"May I enter?" Ryn asked again.
"Yes! Hurry. If Mark catches you out there he'll shoot you."
Ryn eased in and shut the window. Naomi's room was filled with her scent and it immediately wrapped around the deva in a way that overwhelmed her with a sudden swell of feelings—a curious blend of longing and comfort, as though happy to be in the warmth of Naomi's presence, but made acutely aware she was an outsider; that she lived in the dark, and was only meant to watch from beyond the light's reach. That is why I declared her my territory, she realized. Not the full moon. This. I wanted this. That thought froze her with sudden alarm, because she was standing in the place she least belonged.
Naomi heightened that fear as she paced a circle, inspecting Ryn from every angle—inspecting a body meant for the shadows and hands suited for violent deeds. Her skin prickled in ways she... didn't hate, though her heart galloped.
While Naomi examined her, she in turn examined the teenager's room: clutter, clothing draped on chairs, and a bookcase with English and Russian titles. A high shelf contained famous monuments built from interlocking, plastic blocks. One—the Eiffel Tower, recognized from her school books—was only partway finished, as if some invisible hand had obliterated half of it.
Naomi breathed out. "Weirdo." She stood in front of Ryn again, fists to hips, and even though she'd called Ryn a word she knew to be insulting, the girl smiled after saying it.
Ryn didn't have any trouble whatsoever interpreting this smile—it sent warmth radiating from her stone heart.
"How did you do it?" Naomi begged. "How did you slip past Mark?"
"I climbed."
"How?"
"I don't understand." Ryn felt a hopeless tug because she'd explained and Naomi still stared.
"My dad's got police protection, motion sensors in the yard, and an armed guard. It's crazy you would even try. Seriously, how? And why?"
"You don't believe me," she realized.
"Of course I don't!"
"These things are easy for me. I don't move like anyone you know."
"You're agile, I get that. But you're not on Delta Force, and I'm pretty sure Mark could sneak up on his own shadow." Naomi peered out the window again, sliding her curtains closed, and Ryn moved into her blind spot—then bounded to the wall, skirting higher. When Naomi turned back, Ryn was perched in the corner of her ceiling, braced by fingertips and feet.
Naomi's back thumped into the far wall and she pressed her shoulders flat against it. Her breath quickened and a strange urge to touch her cheek floated briefly through Ryn's mind. "This is how I move." She dropped to the floor.
"You could have just said so," Naomi blurted, heart hammering in her chest like a cornered rabbit's.
Ryn softened her bunched-up stance, and tried to approach with one hand raised as she might an animal she didn't want to spook. "You didn't believe me."
Naomi folded both arms protectively around her middle. "You're right. Sorry. Still jumpy I guess." Fear had indeed darkened her rain-clean scent, less profane than a week ago, but something in the shape of her eyes made her fragile—made Ryn want to fold her in protective wings. "You heard about what happened to me?"
"I know about it."
Naomi opened her mouth as though to speak. Blanching, she folded back into the room's corner with her arms tight around her body, and she seemed, in the very midst of her home, to be somehow lost.
"Nothing will harm you here." Ryn approached carefully as the girl's heart slowed, but fear still overwhelmed her scent. As though she were that cornered rabbit, Ryn set a hand on her shoulder and stroked it with her thumb. Not knowing any other comforting gestures, she tried some human words: "I have no interest in eating you."
A snort of laughter, and Naomi stared with glassy eyes that seemed distracted from their troubles only long enough to notice her. "Thank you. I won't eat you, either."
Ryn nodded solemnly.
"I'm going crazy," Naomi whispered, her full attention locked on Ryn in a way that charged her with excitement. "Can't sleep from all the nightmares. No more than a couple hours at a time all week." She swallowed. "I don't want to be a mess in front of you, but I'm exhausted and my filter's burned out. For an instant, when I saw you up there, I thought you were... it."
"Banich."
"Kind of." She turned sharply, pacing, as if it would toss off the memory, and Ryn's hand fell away. "I don't like to think about it." She stopped and pressed her palms against her eye sockets. "I see things in every shadow of this stupid, creaky house."
Ryn wondered what, exactly, Splat revealed to her—how much Naomi knew.
"I realize it was just the fear, but I remember the whole thing clearly when I sleep, except now I know more about what Banich was planning than I ever wanted to. The news had all the details. The things in his van..." She covered her mouth suddenly, eyes going still. "A blow torch," she murmured. Blinking, she lost control of her tears. "Corkscrews." Her scent bloomed into a more acidic flavor, typical of horror-fear—familiar to Ryn from all the ways she'd taken men apart. It didn't belong on Naomi. "I try not to think about it, but I can't stop dreaming... Want to know something morbid?"
Ryn didn't know how to answer, as most of what she knew already was morbid.
"I Googled pictures of the corkscrews. Hoped that if I stared long enough the horror might somehow pass through me, like I needed to get to the other side of it. Stared until my skin turned to ice, but I think I just invited all of it in. I wonder if it ever goes away." She strode to her bed and collapsed there, thumping face first into a pillow.
"It will," Ryn whispered.
She shook her head, around which her wavy auburn mane had settled in a bright pool. "It won't," she groaned through the pillow. "And I'm an idiot."
"It will." Ryn took two small steps forward.
The girl rolled into a sitting position, clutching pillow to lap. "Dad wants me to take a semester off at Madison and attend cyber-schools. Maybe he's right."
"You fear leaving your cell." Ryn's lip curled, not at Naomi, but at what Splat had poisoned her with.
"It's not a cell." Her voice faltered at the look on Ryn's face, and she squeezed the pillow to her chest. "And I'm not afraid."
"It is. And you are." Ryn could taste it in the air, bilious and foul. "It turns strong legs wobbly and fills you with the need to vomit—yet you cannot, because the thing wriggling within you isn't bad meat. It's horror-fear."
Naomi stared, lips somewhat parted. "Horror-fear?"
"Why do you lie about it? I smell it." Ryn tapped her nose.
The smile was small—on any other mortal, a mystery, but on Naomi it made such wonderful sense: small because it was the mark of light weakly penetrating whatever pall afflicted her. "Smell. Right." She tapped her own nose, teasing. "That obvious, huh? I guess I don't want this to be a cell, and I don't want to be afraid." Her eyes glistened, and she brushed at them with both hands. In spite of it, tears still streaked down her face after.
Ryn's chest tightened. Before she thought better, she reached out and brushed one of those tears aside—a gesture she'd only seen humans do; why did it feel so right?
Startling at the contact, Naomi watched her a few moments while sucking on her lower lip. "Thanks. You're sweet."
"I'm not."
"I mean you're nice, not that you taste sweet."
Ryn thought on it. "I still am not."
Her giggle almost broke Ryn open. "You must think I'm a flake. Afraid to sleep, afraid of a dark hallway in my very-well-protected house." She pushed her tears away with the heel of her hand. "Banich is hospitalized. I know that up here." She tapped her temple. "Just can't shake the sense it isn't over."
Fingers wet from catching a tear, Ryn smudged them together, the tactile evidence of Naomi's terror filling her with sadness. She spoke the ugly, true words. "It isn't over."
Naomi's eyes were large, and made Ryn realize why not all lies were spoken with malice. "Why not?"
Staring at her fingers, Ryn refused to look back up. "There will always be more. There is no end to monsters. Even if there were, it wouldn't be over for you. Because it..." She didn't know the right words; she tried the best ones she could find. "It echoes. Even in safe, well-lit places, it echoes."
"The fear?"
"Yes." But Ryn couldn't let that be the end of it, so she looked at Naomi again and showed her a tight fist. "But there is me."
One of Naomi's eyebrows went higher than the other as she examined that fist. "Counting the change in your pockets, you might weigh a hundred pounds. Thanks, though."
Ryn wished she knew the magic of words—Naomi and Kessler and Ms. Cross all did, and had the power to make people see with nothing but strung-together sounds, yet that distinctly human magic could never be hers. If only she could hunt a bull elk and drop it dead at Naomi's feet; if only she could show her with deft hands what her idiot words couldn't: Look now at me. The dark is terrible, surrounds you, and is never empty as it seems. Though monsters lurk, know this: none is hungrier than me.
Instead, Ryn had only: "I am one hundred and three pounds."
"Oh, all right then." Her smile was radiant. "So long as you keep an eye on me, I think everything will be all right."
Ryn's hand did something it ought never do—and the oath came too quickly to stop. With a sureness she shouldn't have felt, she crossed one finger over her heart, an action no deva could do without binding her immortal will. "I vow to protect you."
And like that, Ryn's course would never alter. She could no more break a vow than she could die.
Yet Naomi laughed through her tears, hiding her smile behind that pillow and peeping over. "How are you like this? You're putting on an act, aren't you?"
Ryn scowled. "My vows are absolute."
"You're the most adorably intense creature I've ever met."
Adorable! The outrage stiffened her every fiber.
"Easy! Whoa, sorry." This time her giggle ended in a snort, which made her hide her whole face in the pillow. "It's a—a tough adorable. Relax." Lowering the barrier again, she gave Ryn another one of those searching looks. "Bet you're a hellcat in the ring."
The levity in her voice—that tone was mockery, Ryn realized, and she pressed her fingertips to her own face, because it had warmed in response. It had never done anything of the sort before, and the realization fired her cheeks hotter.
Naomi stood, eyes soft. "You're amazing at cheering me up; but I'm sorry, now you're going to get hugged. I'm an unstoppable force so don't even try to avoid it."
Before Ryn could figure out whether to hide, Naomi wrapped both arms around her unyielding frame.
"Thanks, Ryn." Those words came on soft breath against her ear and neck, plucking away her anxieties; relaxing into the embrace, Ryn let the scent overwhelm her, inhaling as quietly as she could for fear it wasn't a normal thing to do—and the heat in her cheeks made her worry for once what a mortal thought normal.
When Naomi backed up, Ryn could feel the vacancy left behind.
They both stood, the silence that Ryn normally loved turned awkward. She hoped Naomi would fill it with more soothing words, but Naomi seemed at a loss for them too.
Ryn said the only thing she could. "Come out to dance."
"I'd freak out."
"I vowed to protect you."
"I remember." Naomi smiled with not just her mouth, but her eyes. "Going to beat up all the bad guys?"
"To the last," Ryn swore.
"One problem. My dad would have an aneurysm, and I'm not old enough or crazy enough to fill his Senate seat."
"Don't tell him."
"And the armed guard? The one with the gun?"
"A small gun."
"But full of bullets."
"Small bullets."
She shook her head. "You're insane."
"I can show you how. If you follow." She pointed to the window. "I will lead the way—if you desire to leave your cell."
"It's not a cell!"
Ryn disagreed, but also couldn't figure out a way to convince her otherwise.
Naomi folded her arms and narrowed her eyes, seeming to mull Ryn's offer. "Fine. You win." She picked her pillow up, wiping the last moisture from her cheeks with the pillowcase. "Just let me get ready." She made a whirling motion with one finger. "Turn around."
Ryn stiffened again. "Present my back?"
"It's your paranoia or my modesty." She crossed her arms again, waiting.
Squelching her anxiety, the deva faced the window curtains. Naomi flitted through the room, rolling drawers in and out. Ryn heard pen scratching paper. "A note for Dad—he won't be back until morning, but don't want him worried I was kidnapped if he changes his plans," Naomi murmured. "Now. Breaking-out-to-go-dancing clothes. Bingo."
If modesty meant hiding herself from view, it would fail—a sliver of window through the curtains reflected the room, easing Ryn's feral distaste for turning her back—right up until Naomi shed her nightshirt. It flicked over her head into the corner. Ryn caught a flash of her long back, the groove tracking the path of her spine, and the delicate contours of her shoulder blades.
The urge to stare and absorb every smooth line competed with the urge to snap her gaze to the floor. Ryn tucked her chin to chest, studying her toes as heat blazed from her ears to the back of her neck. Twice, she nearly glanced up; twice, she shook off the desire.
And it all electrified her body in unfamiliar ways, currents of air making her too aware of her exposed skin.
Naomi tapped her shoulder and Ryn whirled, hissing.
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The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 23 |
That cool, dry hiss was like a snake's, scraping at Naomi's dulled survival instincts and rousing them to full, heart-pounding alertness. Her mouth dried and she stared at Ryn, who bowed her head to hide her teeth as she made that sound, as though she had venomous fangs she was embarrassed to show.
But it passed, and Ryn's body relaxed.
Only after it did could Naomi catch her breath. She swallowed, remembered herself, and spread her arms to show off the dark blue jeans, gray hoodie, and a slim white top. She liked it for subtly highlighting her shape, for how easy it was to move around in. "How do I look?"
Ryn—who wore the same hoodie, cargo pants, and dark sunglasses as last time they had met—clinically scanned Naomi's attire. "Not warm enough."
"You're bad at girl-ing. Look, my winter coat is downstairs. The hoodie's all I have up here. If we hurry to the train, I'll be fine. You got here in yours, after all."
"I am unlike you."
Naomi couldn't figure out if Ryn was arrogant or delusional, but it had a way of comforting her. It was precisely the bravado she'd needed all week. Maybe some of it would rub off. "Fine. How exactly do we get out? You bring a ladder or, I don't know, a grappling hook or something?"
"Follow." Ryn opened the window and hopped onto the sill, disappearing around the side in a flicker of motion.
Startled, Naomi toed to the window and peered out, seeing that Ryn had leapt onto a lip of roof four feet to the right and slightly higher up. She took one purposeful step back into her room. "Nope! No. I'll fall."
"Do as I did," whispered Ryn from her perch.
"Wasn't paying attention. Bring me a harness and carabiners and we'll talk."
"Step out." Irritation in her voice now.
She's crazy. I should not be listening to a crazy person. Yet Naomi wanted to follow. The idea of Ryn skirting into the night, leaving her to rot in her room one more evening... Sucking in a breath, she stepped onto the windowsill and refused to look down even as vertigo seized her. A tremor shook her calf. She mouthed "crap crap crap" like each iteration kept her steady.
"Now jump to me," said Ryn with too straight a face.
"It's too high." She peeked. Mistake. Her stomach turned over and the driveway spun, seeming more like fifty feet down than twenty.
"If you fall, I will catch you."
"Your arms are short."
"I will catch you."
Why did she believe her? It wasn't even physically possible. That arrogance. She loved it. "Okay, it's not much higher than a pole vault," Naomi reasoned. "Just pavement instead of a pad. What do I care, they're only legs." A breeze caught her hair. She sucked in a sharp breath, readied herself, looked at Ryn—that seemed to help the most—and jumped.
The ball of her right foot struck shingle. Flailing forward, Naomi slapped both hands flat to the roof's slope. "Did it!"
"Good."
Her pride glowed at the compliment, until Ryn spidered up the roof's slope with preternatural ease. "How is she so good at that?" she whispered to herself, following in a halting crawl that never peeled more than one hand or foot from the incline at once.
At the apex, Ryn guided Naomi with a finger point to walk the length of the roof to the crown of a tree on the other side of the house. "You first."
Sensing Ryn's penetrating stare as she took her first cautious steps, Naomi found herself wondering what the strange girl thought of her agility. No one had ever made her feel uncoordinated before; she focused on not messing up—and wouldn't have, if her heel hadn't planted on a rotted shingle.
It skidded down the roof and carried her with it. Naomi pitched toward the roof's edge. She toppled shoulders first, sensing the ground more than twenty feet below. Her mouth went slack, a scream leaping from her center.
Before she'd fallen two feet—before she could belt out a scream—she landed lightly in Ryn's arms, cradled at roof's edge like a dancer swept back. Her hood flopped down, auburn hair spilling out, and Ryn's other hand clapped to her mouth.
Panting, staring wide-eyed into the raven-haired girl's emotionless sunglasses, she could feel the riot of her pulse in her own throat. Her hands clutched Ryn's forearm. It was corded, lean, and though entirely too small, Naomi sensed power beneath her fingertips—a lot of it. And she was confused. She was behind me a second ago. How did she move like that? No one can move like that...
The smile that crept onto Ryn's mouth was slight and satisfied, yet it thoroughly intimidated. Before now, Naomi had been in her element, but out here in the winter air and on the rooftop, this wildling seemed more in hers—and that was the reason for the smile, she realized. Ryn had gotten to show her a piece of who she was, and the brat was proud.
Glancing behind her at the concrete far below, she focused back on her savior. "Going to help me up or hold me here all night?"
Ryn waited a beat too long before easing her upright, and Naomi felt her racing pulse skip a beat.
She found herself regretting for the first time that Ryn hadn't turned out to be a boy when she'd approached her in the mall last week. Would have made things much more interesting, she decided. "Thanks for the save."
"I told you I would protect you."
"How did you even get down here in time? That's incredible."
Ryn skittered to the roof's apex, offering a hand, which Naomi took, and the girl with curiously soft fingers didn't bother answering the question.
As Ryn led her, Naomi took notice of how fluid her steps were—how sure. "You remind me of these monkeys I saw at the zoo as a kid. Didn't even look like they were climbing, just scampering straight up a tree or upside down on a branch. Like gravity didn't matter."
"Gravity matters." She glanced back. "For you."
"Cocky much?" Naomi realized she was using her flirty voice and wiped the egg-her-on expression from her face. She kind of looks like a boy. If I squint. Except no, not really. She was actually pretty beneath the overly large shades and hood, her curves subtle, mostly erased by baggy clothes. A pretty boy, maybe.
"Between gravity and me, I am the superior force."
"So that's a 'yes' to the cocky question?"
"Yes." Ryn hopped almost six feet from the roof to the farthest branch of her father's oak. Naomi stood fascinated by the balance of weight as she landed, straightened, and spun, all the work in the balls of her feet. It was beautiful. A ballerina at the Met couldn't have done it better, yet Ryn just waited, expectantly, for Naomi to follow suit as though it were the easiest thing in the world.
Naomi shook her head. No.
Sighing, Ryn gripped an upper branch, leaned out, and closed the distance partway with her hand.
Swallowing her doubts—and her stomach, which had risen into her throat—Naomi threw herself off the roof. Her fingers scraped Ryn's in the air, the other girl's grip firmed, and when her feet thudded onto the branch, the girl's opposite hand clapped hold of her hip.
It steadied her. Somehow, just that hand on her hip was all it took to sap the wobble from Naomi's stance even as the branch they shared bobbed up and down. Once more, she sensed power there entirely out of proportion to Ryn's lithe build and short stature.
"You're strong for your size." Naomi glanced down at the hand on her hip, feeling her cheeks warm.
"I am." Ryn twirled her on the branch, somehow changing their positions without looking away.
And Naomi had done it with her, on instinct, their bodies able to communicate without words. "You're the most bizarre person I've ever met," she whispered.
Ryn broke the tension by pointing her toward the wall. It was only as she climbed across branches toward it that Naomi realized why her spirit felt so light.
She wasn't scared anymore. It was the first time in a week, and the very air tasted sweeter for it.
Ryn dropped to the sidewalk on the other side of her dad's stone wall, lifting hands to signal she'd catch Naomi. Sitting on the wall, glancing down at the raven-haired girl's come-down-here gesture, a swell of joy rose in her center. She makes me feel safe.
Pushing off the wall, she let Ryn clap hands to her hips again, absorbing the shock of her descent more thoroughly than anticipated. It wasn't until she was lowered gently to her heels that she remembered to breathe.
"This way." Ryn led her down the sidewalk toward the train station. "You're shivering."
It was from the cold, which was worse than expected. But Naomi was also bursting with excitement to go dancing. In addition to washing the horror from her mind, Ryn had reminded her how fun it could be to move in time with someone's body—and if she knew Elli and Denise, they'd have boys lining up.
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The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 24 |
Their train accelerated, whisking them from the station. Ryn stood guard over Naomi, who huddled in her seat, teeth chattering. Her nose had turned bright pink, but she wasn't huddling entirely from the cold. Ryn could tell she wilted at the presence of a nearby passenger who wore a scarf that covered most of his face.
From Ryn's place in the aisle by Naomi's seat, she could kill that man if he approached. She could kill or maim virtually anyone, no matter their approach. That was why she stood there.
Naomi didn't know these things, though, and so when the man in the scarf shifted abruptly, she shrank one size smaller.
At their changeover station in Commonwealth Plaza, Naomi hurried from the train and Ryn kept to her shadow, scenting for asura and worrying faintly about the way Naomi rubbed her shoulders for warmth.
Naomi blew warmth into her hands. "You stand and look around like Mark—the bodyguard my dad hired."
"Then Mark knows how to stand and look."
She felt Naomi inspecting her; it should have bothered her, but it didn't. "Are you some kind of professional criminal?"
"No."
"Recreational crime only, then?"
Ryn thought on it a moment and nodded.
"Explain it to me. Why you're guarded, and stealthy, and creepily acrobatic. Were you bitten by a radioactive goth? Should I be worried you'll bite me and turn me vampire?"
"I don't bite people I like."
Naomi snorted. "Even if they ask nice?"
Ryn frowned, knowing she had missed something.
"Where does someone like you even come from?"
"An older kind of place."
Another silence. "The place you're from was violent."
"Very."
"That's how you knew about my fear. Horror-fear, you called it."
"You also have prey-fear."
"Explain that to me too." Naomi leaned into her and stuffed all her frigid fingers at once into one of Ryn's pockets.
Going rigid at the unexpected contact, Ryn was at a loss.
"You're warm. Mind if I borrow some body heat?" Even her voice felt good, humming into Ryn's ear, and it took her senses time to adjust, to become aware of anything in the world besides Naomi.
When she had, she remembered the question. "Prey-fear." It was hard to think. "It comes from being ambushed and realizing predators exist. It sharpens your vigilance at first."
"So it's good?"
"Awareness is. But prey-fear fosters paranoia. Overreaction."
"So when Dad wants to pass a law so that seventeen-year-old assault victims can carry concealed firearms, he might have a teensy bit of prey-fear?"
It sounded like a good law to Ryn.
"Are you afraid of anything?"
"No," she snapped.
"Come on," Naomi sang, stretching the second word. "You know too much not to have felt it." She made a "hmm" sound, one that put her warm breath on Ryn's neck, eliciting a squirm that wasn't entirely from discomfort. "Crowds. Are you afraid of those?"
"I hate them," Ryn growled.
She laughed. "Yet you're going dancing?"
Ryn glanced away. "To guard you."
"If you hate crowds, why are you even hanging out with me? My dad's a senator, and during campaign season there are reporters in our house every other day. You might have picked a bad friend if the public eye bothers you."
A good point. There was danger in getting close to Naomi. She was no anonymous mortal; hers was the kind of life gods and nations alike might notice. Ryn had no more time to think on it, though, because their connecting train arrived and she stepped inside to the sight of Harper Pruett and his pack. Did he follow me? No, she realized. They were discussing the Nine Lives—they had the same destination.
Naomi sank into the first seat and turned to hide her face from the pack, and Ryn drew up her hood to hide her own, watching their reflections in the train window. Their talk was loud, speckled with boisterous shouts, lewd comments, grating laughs; completely interchangeable with every conversation she'd overheard at Parker-Freemont.
Ryn knew the instant Pruett noticed Naomi. She felt a shiver of discontent ripple through her muscles as he strutted nearer, leaned off a pole, grinning down at her with that mass of purple bruising still decorating the bridge of his nose. "I know you. You're Naomi Bradford—Tom Bradford's kid. One who got jumped at the mall last week."
"Sorry," Naomi murmured, "but I don't know you." She shifted away from him.
"My mom can't stand your dad. Hey, why so jumpy?" He tried easing closer; Ryn stopped him by turning her back, swaying her shoulder into his path. "I'm not some stalker," he insisted. "I'm kind of surprised I never met you before. I'm on Parker-Freemont's Model UN, and you're what—a Madison girl? We visit your school all the time."
"I don't do Model UN. I don't do any of that." Naomi didn't look up at him.
"Bet if we hung out, our parents would both have strokes. C'mon, you and your friend can link up with my crew. We'll keep the sickos away."
"That is my job." Ryn turned, lifted her jaw, and drew down her hood.
Pruett flew backward, shouting, "Shit! It's her. It's the one I was talking about!" He stumbled and collapsed into one of his pack mates.
"That's the girl who broke your nose?" one asked. They all stared, but at the next stop, he and his friends got quickly off the train.
"Friends of yours?" Naomi smiled shyly from her seat.
It wasn't exactly a bull elk, but it sufficed.
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The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 25 |
[ The Body Electric ]
They walked four blocks from the station to the Nine Lives. Naomi hugged her jacket tighter against the nipping cold, nose and ears tinged with rose. Her delicacy made Ryn steal occasional, anxious glances, until at last the deva opened her hoodie—an extension of her kanaf—and draped the protective part of herself around Naomi's shoulders.
"You'll f-freeze." Naomi tried to shrug out of it.
"Unlikely." Ryn turned Naomi to face her and sealed the jacket.
"Wow. This thing is amazing." She snugged into it. "Really amazing."
Ryn's kanaf could take on a variety of material properties, but the heat radiated from her heart. Even on another being, the hoodie wasn't truly separate from Ryn. However, just as Naomi could feel the deva's warmth, Ryn could feel her friend's soft shape as though pressed against her. It sent an alien tingle through her stomach, and on their trek, she clutched at the new sensation in her middle.
"Turns out you really are sweet," Naomi grinned.
The tingle grew. "The cold doesn't bother me."
"Nice and tough."
The warmth was joined by a smile that twitched the corner of Ryn's mouth.
There was a line at the Nine Lives. The bouncer argued quietly with men a few positions ahead of them about their identification, and Ryn didn't care for their scent.
"Get outta here," the bouncer said. "It's under-twenty-one night, not 'skeevy, bearded perv' night."
"Bullshit. I'm seventeen, check the ID." The goateed man was lean with a knit cap, and his soul was almost entirely rot.
"It's not even laminated. Looks like you ran it off a printer."
"Our school's got budget issues. Look. I'm just here to dance the night away in this great, free country of ours."
They exchanged money through a handshake. The bouncer glanced down at the crumpled wad in his palm and then growled. He opened the door and whispered, "Your shit better not land these teenyboppers in Mercy General, or I'm coming for you, Ben Franklin."
"Relax. We're top shelf. All about the repeat business." Franklin and his two hulking friends went inside.
"What was that all about?" Naomi asked. "I think my ears are frostbitten."
Ryn had no idea. Humans could speak their language with exacting nuance, their faces, hands, and tone all playing a role. Apparently, they could also communicate by exchanging scraps of money. It was all so sophisticated, mysterious, and dumb. "Something about boppers."
The bouncer scanned their IDs and nodded. Naomi gave him money. When Ryn just stood there, Naomi quickly gave him another money and dragged Ryn through the door. "Don't be embarrassed, but are you broke?"
Ryn bristled. "I function. Flawlessly."
"No. Money. Do you have money?"
"I have a fare card." She produced it. Ms. Cross had said there was money and it was "on" the card.
"Right. Here's twenty dollars in case you need it—just where are you from? I thought the concept of money was pretty well saturated." There was something sophisticated to Naomi's smile, and Ryn realized she was being teased. It made her ears burn.
"I understand fine." Moneys were very important pieces of paper, and when the numbers on things got higher, people needed more of them. It was as perfectly stupid as anything humans did.
Stepping into the Nine Lives was like dipping into a pool of viscous sound. The scuffed walls, shadows, and ocean of bodies squeezed Ryn from every side, the music and voices gathered into a roar that vibrated through the floor. The bass pounded against her skin. The bottom floor had booths and tables, and there were only narrow avenues between all the people.
"The dancing is upstairs!" Naomi hollered.
Ryn choked on the odor of too many bodies, all too close. She tailed Naomi, but when someone brushed her bare arm, she jerked away. Another bumped into her from behind and she twirled, but collided with a third. Ryn spun around two times avoiding the flailing, awkward riot of humans. She realized the avenue from her entrance had closed and panic jolted through her. They were everywhere, pressing inward, crushing her, and she hated them all; she needed to claw her way out; she snapped her gaze to the ceiling in search of escape.
Then her hoodie slipped over her shoulders. She felt Naomi's hands on either side of her, steadying her. "You okay?" she whispered from behind. Ryn had backed straight into her.
Ryn closed her eyes and shook her head.
"Just breathe with me a second."
She nodded, hearing Naomi's breath and feeling the drum of her heart. It was steady and slow and soon Ryn's matched its rhythm.
"Stay close to me."
It was easier with the hoodie back on. Naomi had removed her own sweater, but the heat didn't bother Ryn.
They wound through the crowd, Ryn in her friend's wake. Males tried to talk to Naomi, but she just yelled, "Sorry, we're here with other people!" and pushed on.
The upstairs music flowed through Ryn's marrow with its tribal rhythm and synthetic flair. Smoke rolled across her ankles and sharp, unnatural colors bathed the swaying masses, shifting from green to blue to indigo. Even when the twisting dancers weren't pressed together, their movements knotted them anyway, so that the crowd moved as a single writhing body.
Ryn, too, felt the tidal pull of the music. It stuck to her hips, tingled up her spine and into her shoulders, and beat inside her brain with its loud demand that she lean into it. And then she realized something else. She didn't itch. At all. No eyes were upon her. The crowd's attention was pulled deeply inward, and Ryn's core filled with the discreet thrill of anonymity, the same one she felt on the hunt.
There in the crowd, Ryn stood alone. She shivered.
Denise shouted from the bar and Elli bounced up and down to be seen. Naomi shouldered through the crowd, Ryn chasing her.
"You made it!" Elli shouted over the music. "Unbelievable!" Then she glanced at Ryn. "Oh. Both of you."
"This place is lame without you." Denise hugged Naomi. "No amount of bribe money will get a shot of rum in my Coke."
"That's why I like it," Naomi grinned. "The last thing my dad needs is to turn on the news and see photos of his daughter and her drunk friends getting felt up by boys."
"So 'no' to the booze, but can we still have the boys?" Denise kissed Naomi's cheek. "I love you, but take off the Good Little Girl mask for one night."
"For the thousandth time, it's not a mask. And I'm just here to dance—so yes to boys, and no to fondling. Deal?"
"Boring! Cut loose a little."
"I am cutting loose. This is me being loose." Naomi wiggled.
"Right. Hey, I see someone interesting. Be right back." Denise waded toward the other side of the bar and talked to Franklin and his tall pack mates. Ryn tensed, careful to watch their exchange, not trusting Franklin and his rotten smell.
Elli and Naomi shouted their conversation over the noise, watching the crowd. "We've been here a while," Elli said into Naomi's ear. "Place is full of high-school guys who get scared unless they outnumber you."
"Let's just dance." Naomi motioned to Ryn. "Come on."
Ryn shook her head. The floor was jammed with interlocking bodies and she wanted no part in that.
They both shrugged and pushed into the motion on the floor while Ryn hovered at the bar. Not everyone danced the same. Some rolled with the music, in a trance, their hearts fast and blood spiked with stimulant chemicals. Others danced with form, coordination. A few women added more flare, accents with their hips and touches from their hands, teasing their males. A lot of the dancing looked more like a mating ritual, and some of them seemed sufficiently fused to have been actually mating.
Then there was Naomi. She laughed at first, her eyes scrunched into joyful half-moons, and she and Elli danced playfully. Gradually, a tension in Naomi's joints dissolved. Her body loosened, her frame became sinuous, and she slipped into a groove—like the groove Ryn fell into while traversing rooftops. She became a ribbon, caught the music's pulse, and Ryn couldn't look away.
Naomi danced like an artist, a woman pressed skin-to-skin with the room's naked sound. She did it naturally, without mortal clumsiness, and across the raucous expanse and through two dozen bodies and bass vibrations, Ryn could feel her heartbeat locked onto the music.
"Like what you see?" Denise asked.
Ryn startled and glanced at the bar, where Denise curled around a fizzing glass of soda, her expression somehow feline. There were no words to speak—she sensed Denise had seen something that gave her insight into the workings of Ryn's mind; she didn't like that feeling one bit.
Denise sipped her drink and shifted her gaze to a mirror over the bar. Ryn could hear very well over the noise by now. "Don't know what to make of Naomi?"
"No." Ryn had to raise her voice.
"She's not hard to get. Imagine a person without an evil bone in her body. Then make her stubborn, unyielding, and persuasive. An angel's graces and the devil's charisma." Denise slipped a tiny, white pill between her lips and drank her soda. She swallowed. "I wish for once she'd let her hair down. How about you? Be bad with me. I could use a partner in crime."
"I am my own kind of bad. You wouldn't like it."
Denise considered her and chuckled. "Probably wouldn't. But I'll try anything once."
Now Ryn felt like they were talking about different things. She glanced across the dance floor at Franklin, who hadn't taken his eyes off Denise since they had spoken. "Stay away from him. He smells wrong."
"Oh, not you too. Christ. I don't need to get it from two friends at once."
"Friend?" That surprised Ryn.
Denise chuckled. "Can't tell whether I like you or not, can you?"
Ryn shook her head.
"Yeah, me neither." She exhaled and took a moment to study Ryn. "Can't figure you out. At first, I thought drug dealer. Now I'm not sure. I mean, obviously you're into girls—only surprise there is Naomi hasn't caught on."
Ryn frowned. "I—"
"Don't deny it. Way you stare at the princess breaks my heart, because she's saving herself for her future investment-banker husband. How do I know? She told me when she was ten what her life plan was, and she doesn't deviate. Naomi Bradford knows what she wants, goes after it with single-minded determination, and watching you pine is like watching Wile E. Coyote salivate—just makes me pity you."
"Pity?" Ryn snarled.
Denise slid off her chair to stare into Ryn's sunglasses, speaking softer now that they were close. "Let me lay it out for you. First boyfriend, hand-holding only, age twelve. That was Davie Raines, check." She made a check motion with her finger. "First dance at Homecoming, age fifteen, invited by a junior—that was Arjun, and he was a perfect gentleman. Check." Again with her finger. "First kiss? That's sometime this year. Bet she's looking for a candidate tonight. First fuck? I'd always thought after marriage, but no, it's going to be her college boyfriend. She'll wait three months to let him under her skirt, then at six months she'll give it up, sometime after he proposes and on a suitable anniversary."
"Why are you telling me this?" It felt wrong; it was an invasion of Naomi's life.
"Only thing that's gone off the rails is when she lost her mom. Klara's job was to take pictures before the first dance and grill her future husband in advance of their wedding. I took the dance pictures, for the record. Also: I'm her maid of honor at the wedding. What I'm saying is, that girl is the daughter of a genius and a senator; she's nobility. You understand that, right? She's not going to make a mistake with you, if that's what you're sniffing around for."
"I am no mistake." The words purred from Ryn's throat and for the first time Denise faltered. "I am no hanger-on, no sycophant. And I have no interest in Naomi Bradford." I am her protector and she is my bait; that is where it ends.
Yet her final statement made Denise shake off her fear and smirk. "The red on your cheeks tells a different story."
Ryn could have cut her down, but Franklin appeared and sidled into Denise's personal space, his hips close to hers, hands in pockets. "Want to dance?" he asked, grinning down at her. "My boys can run the sales floor for a few songs."
Denise's stare seemed hard, but softened so quickly that Ryn wondered whether anything in her was authentic. Turning her smile on Franklin, she said, "First you take my money and now you want to dance? Ballsy, old man."
"I could give your money back."
"Keep it," Denise said. "I don't dance for money. Only fun."
Ryn seized her elbow. "Don't go. He smells wrong."
Denise lifted an eyebrow. "Don't ever tell me what to do." She shook free and took Franklin's arm, heading to the floor with him. "Let's show my friends what a good time looks like."
Ryn stalked the edges and corners of the room, away from the gyrating humans and their unwelcome touches. She prowled in the places that fell between mortal gazes, scented the air now and then for asura, watching Franklin to ensure he never got too close to Naomi.
At first, the three females danced with one another, alongside Franklin and males whom Naomi and Elli had secured. Denise pressed into and grinded on Franklin, seeming to cast Naomi various looks throughout—but the senator's daughter kept some distance from her own partner, playful yet not intimate. Just her smile seemed to keep his interest.
After two songs, Franklin departed for a corner his pack mates had staked out. Denise and Naomi argued, the distance drowning out the details. Naomi inspected Denise's eyes and put the back of her hand on her friend's forehead. Denise batted the hand aside, yelled, and stormed off toward Franklin.
Elli's hand fell on Naomi's shoulder, stopping her from pursuing, and those two reluctantly folded back into their circle of males.
Ryn glided along the periphery of the room, now keeping track of two different parts of it. In one, Naomi's heart pounded a steady tempo, her skin glistened, and her auburn hair burnished into darker, messier tangles. Her scent changed into something spicy-strange.
Denise orbited Franklin, along with his two pack mates and a female they'd found. Denise danced with other men, but mostly Franklin whenever he wasn't exchanging money and white pills with strangers. The pills were stimulants—whoever took them ended up with a racing heart and a different chemical odor in their sweat. Oddly, Denise's heart slowed instead, her eyes glassed, and her movements seemed entranced. Franklin danced nearer and nearer. Though she slapped at his hand once or twice, she became more languid the longer they went. Finally, she stopped protesting altogether and he found a seat on a nearby dais, pulling her into his lap, and though his rot was so thick Ryn could taste it even now, Denise fused her mouth to his. The deva's stomach turned.
During a song transition, Naomi scanned the bar area, frowning in disappointment. She swiveled, as if to look for something, striding off the dance floor as her search turned frantic. Ryn glided through the room's dark places. Naomi, in a bout of panic, nearly backed into her.
"I'm here," Ryn whispered close to her ear.
Naomi's shoulders tensed and she spun. Her eyes had a slight sheen and the spicy-strange scent mixed with fear. She ran quaking fingers through tangles of her loosened hair. "God. Ryn. I thought you left. It freaked me out."
"I promised to protect you and I will."
Naomi managed a grin. "You really are a cocky little thing. And I don't know why I believe you. But I do."
This pleased Ryn.
"You don't want to dance?"
She shook her head. "Too many people."
"And finally, I know your dark secret."
How had she intuited that Ryn wanted to break the arms of everyone who bumped into her?
"You're shy!"
"I am not."
"Come on. Elli and I will dance with you. Hey. Have you seen Denise? I just want to check on her."
"She has her mouth on a man named Franklin."
Naomi furrowed her brow and glanced worriedly around. She spotted Denise and Franklin and covered a giggle. "Oh! You mean kissing. Okay, come on, dance with Elli and me." She seized Ryn by the wrist and dragged her through the mass of people.
The monster should have snarled, and had any other being tried to physically move her, it would have uncoupled her wrath from her rationality. But it was Naomi, so she allowed it.
This once.
Elli was already dancing with three young men, and she didn't seem to mind having been left the center of attention. "Hey guys, this is Ryn," Naomi shouted.
They nodded, made brief introductions, and everyone danced again—Naomi beginning as before, conservative and almost hesitant until she shed her inhibitions; and then, weightless. In that moment, gravity didn't own her.
They weren't so much dancing with the males, Ryn realized, as in a tight circle—females to one side, males the other. Ryn stood, wary, bumped once by someone behind her.
"Move a little!" Elli coaxed, her smile different now—more obviously a smile.
"Find the rhythm." Naomi showed her how with her hips. "Just try a little two-step, like Wes. See? He's got it."
"Yeah," said the male named Wes. He was lanky and awkward in the way of a young giraffe. "Do whatever. You'll look good next to me, trust me. I call this move the Turtle." He swayed like he wore something ponderous on his shoulders.
Ryn let go, exhaling in a slow hiss, and closed her eyes. Another person bumped into her; they snapped back open.
It had been Naomi. Her friend slid nearer and intentionally tapped Ryn's hip with hers. "With me," she whispered, encouragement in her dark eyes.
So Ryn ignored the room. She fell deeper into herself, reached out to the music's tidal forces and surrendered to it. She buried the red-hot alarm caused by unwanted touches and focused on Naomi, because—she realized—Naomi made her feel something she had never felt among humans: welcome.
For a moment it was just Ryn's heartbeat next to Naomi's and the vibration of music pushed through floor, heels, spine. She shucked off gravity, grasped the same thread of music that held Naomi aloft, and they moved together. Ryn had danced before to thunder, had played tag with lightning, but this was new. Their dance shrank the chaos in her mind to nothing, tossed out the heavy clutter in her head until all that remained in those great, vaulted spaces was the rhythm, the magnetic sound—and she came to realize her heart now drummed in time with Naomi's.
She opened her eyes. Naomi danced beside her. Elli and the others were there too, but most of all it was Naomi. Neither quite mimicked the other—but their bodies threaded close without quite brushing. Part of Ryn wanted it closer still; part worried she'd overstepped, that she was stealing too much pleasure from the roll and snap of her partner's shoulders.
Naomi caught her gaze for an electric instant, the worry erased. Those eyes were entranced and some thought was happening behind them, one Ryn couldn't fathom—but it wasn't fear or disgust. It seemed an invitation to stay.
"She's got it now," Elli said.
Naomi only smiled, and glanced away. She said nothing, all her fear gone, replaced with that spicy-strange fragrance; and Ryn liked it.
Although they danced in a circle, they each appeared to have a cross-wise partner, and Ryn's was Wes. She didn't like him. Nor did she dislike him, exactly, which wasn't typical for her—it was usually one or the other. He only came too close once, but stayed away when her lip curled. Sometimes he would dance in a jerky way that made everyone laugh at him, except he seemed to encourage it; he didn't gnash at being made a joke. She sensed no aggression in him whatsoever.
Elli and her male tired, slowed, and for two songs they leaned against one another for support, moving at last toward a wall where they sat.
"Can't believe she's still going." Wes nodded at Naomi. "Your friend's a machine."
Naomi had paused only to find Ryn. Even after the point of normal mortal exhaustion, she still lived in the thrall of the music.
"Horatio, you want to get some water for us and the girls?" Wes asked, glancing at Naomi's partner. Horatio was tall, broad-shouldered, and had the trim look Ryn associated with soldiers, except with longer, more rakish black hair. Both his hair and brown skin shined from exertion. Ryn saw nothing in him to like.
"Yeah, sure." Horatio and Wes left for water.
For a moment it was just them, and Ryn's pulse spiked—but Naomi stopped dancing. "Can I ask you something? Did you keep an eye on Denise earlier?"
"She's near. Her male smelled wrong."
"Did she look... okay to you?"
"Lethargic." Ryn still sensed her faintly through the crowd.
"Come with me. I'm worried she might have taken too much."
They crossed the floor and, in fact, Denise no longer danced so much as slumped into Franklin while his hands held her aloft—held her at the curves, held her carefully, but with the ill intent of a spider. She was trapped in a fugue, the poison from his hand having done its work, and Ryn's stomach tightened as the reality settled: this was a web-spinner, a human who had played shell games with pills, and snared his prey so gradually she had let him. This one was a monster.
Which made him food.
Naomi skipped ahead, bolting over to Denise, the auburn-haired girl seeming somehow doe-like. She wound up inadvertently surrounded by Franklin, his two pack mates, and a female brunette affixed to one of their arms. The female's breath was ashy from cigarettes. At the sight of her rain-clean doe amidst them, Ryn's fine hairs bristled.
"There you are." Naomi set her hand on Denise's shoulder. "Guess you hit your limit." She glanced at Franklin. "I'll get her home safe. Sorry about this."
"No worries." Just the corner of Franklin's mouth tugged up. "She's cool where she is." He shifted Denise to his opposite hip, where she murmured unintelligibly, and he reached to brush Naomi's hair. "If you want to tag along, though, I got something that'll—"
Ryn seized his wrist, a growl rippling from her throat, one that spoke a simple truth: Mine.
Everyone stared, even Naomi—and Franklin jerked his wrist free. Ryn let him keep it, as well the hand. "Where'd you come from?"
"From Hell."
"Fuck you, Ted Kaczynski."
"Easy!" Naomi glanced nervously between the tall men. "My friend's high, so she leaves with me—that's our rule." She focused on Franklin. "If you give me your number, I'll—"
"Won't be necessary."
"What do you mean—"
"Didn't you hear? You're dismissed." He waved his hand. "Your friend's a good tongue fuck; guessing she can do a lot more. So unless you're offering better, we're done here."
"Relax, sweetie." The brunette lit her cigarette, leaning off one of Franklin's pack mates. "She's been hot and ready all night; little girl needs a rough dicking." She blew smoke their way. "No shame in it. We're all animals."
Naomi stared, subtly shaking her head in disbelief. "She's drugged."
"And she paid good money for those drugs," said the ash-mouthed female.
"She's not conscious!" Quietly, ferociously, Naomi hissed: "That's rape."
"Or maybe she's not like you," whispered Franklin. His voice drew Naomi's baleful stare. "She told me a story. About this 'princess,' she calls her, who can't get high, can't dance too close, can't fuck." He showed her his teeth; even Ryn could tell it wasn't a real smile. "This princess makes her feel like shit."
Ryn peered through the crowd, counting witnesses. Too many. Have to kill him later.
Naomi swallowed. "Give me my friend."
"You don't get it, do you?" Franklin asked. "You're not the white knight riding in; you're the thing that chased her right into my arms." He tilted his head to the side, as though to examine the hurt spreading across Naomi's face, selecting each word like the perfect sharpened knife and sliding it in with relish. "She's high 'cause of you, with me 'cause of you—and I'm the thing that's gonna cure her. Of you."
Naomi shook, a leaf at the mercy of strong winds. "I'll call the police."
"And I'll be gone." He made a poofing motion with one hand, still clutching his prize with the other. "See, you don't understand how well I know trust-fund bitches. Sluts like this need to be stoned to get what they want, 'cause frigid princesses convince them they're filthy."
He knew words—powerful ones, because they made Naomi shrink, made her eyes tense with hurt. With no words of her own, Ryn rotated her jaw to one side, listening to the audible pop, and in the space of that pop, she decided to kill him here—and would have, if one hadn't come from behind.
So focused was her attention, she allowed the mortal's hands to touch her. They clapped to her hips, his disgusting pelvis mashing into her from behind. "This one wants it filthy too," he bellowed. "Got that wildcat look, doesn't she?"
Twisting around, her palm lashed out, tossing him into his surprised pack mate, showing only a flicker of her power and a hundredth of what she marked him for. The murder-itch tingled at the roots of her teeth and claws, in every tightening joint, and she'd have reached through his stomach to break his spine if the moon were any higher. She refrained because she was fairly sure humans couldn't do that. What saved his life was only the desire to kill subtly enough to remain unjailed. Weighing her options, she decided on a more believably human response—she'd rip off an arm.
No sooner were her claws flexed than both Horatio and Wes stepped in front of her, stymieing her again.
With Franklin joining his pack mates, the two boys formed a wall separating Ryn from her foes, and she nearly ripped the boys open for protecting them. When she realized their intent had been to guard her, it angered her more.
"Back off." Wes's voice seemed high, thin. "If you couldn't tell, the murder-look meant 'you're not my type.' "
She didn't need an interpreter. Ryn had an uncanny knack for communicating her displeasure across language barriers.
"You're not anyone's type, you little bitch," said the pack mate whom Ryn had marked for maiming. "But no one needs to get hate-fucked harder than tomboys. Can see it in her face—I lit her pussy on fire; she's just beggin' to look me in the eye while I tame it." He grabbed his groin.
"First of all," Wes said, "that metaphor was mixed. You tame animals, you put out fires. I scold you, sir."
Horatio's fists tightened and he hissed, "Stop helping!"
Wes wasn't in a fighting stance—flat-footed, a sudden breeze could have knocked him down. With no clue how to brawl, he stood in front of three thick human warriors. Is he brave or stupid? "No one here wants trouble," Wes intoned.
Stupid, apparently.
Franklin slugged Wes, knocking him back into Ryn, who caught his shoulders. The drug seller had let go of Denise, who pooled on the floor.
A split second passed as mortals tensed for combat, but Horatio was faster than the rest. Before Franklin had reset from the blow, Horatio delivered one to the drug seller's gut that folded him in half.
Both the pack mates rushed Horatio, scuffling until they had their huge arms under both of his, holding him a moment before tossing him; Ryn didn't care for him enough to play catch again and let him drop to the floor.
Wes tried to rally, but couldn't make a proper fist, so Ryn squeezed his shoulder. "You will stay, or I will let one break you."
"Sorry, what?" Wes asked.
"You two fags need to leave," snarled Franklin, hefting Denise back into his grip. "This party just got dangerous. As for your slutty friend, you just sealed her goddamn fate. I'll fuck her stupid and send you the—"
Everyone went at once: Naomi screaming her outrage, Horatio scrambling, Wes summoning his courage. As for them? Aggression odors spilled from each, even the brunette, who seemed thirsty to see violence.
Ryn stepped between both tribes. "I claim her."
Franklin blinked. "Excuse me?"
"The girl." Ryn pointed at Denise. "I knew her first; she called me 'friend.' Give her to me, worm."
"Suck my dick. Possession is nine-tenths of the law."
"There is one law," Ryn snarled. "That is me." These lowly mortals decorated courtrooms in her image, as though they had the right—as though they knew justice, or what to do with monsters. "You cannot have her because I will it."
Hoots from the brunette and pack mates, who jeered: "Just slap the bitch." "Knock her back into her women's-studies class."
Ryn slipped her glasses from her eyes, pocketing them, stepping forward almost into Franklin. With apologies, Ms. Cross.
Denise blinked slowly and froze at the sight of Ryn's bowed head and eyes, her blue-burning eyes that proved Hell was a cold place she carried inside her; Denise slipped mercifully back into unconsciousness.
"Make your move." He bared teeth again. "Show me, you puffed-up cunt."
Lifting her jaw, she showed him.
Franklin stared back into the absolute assurance of the supernatural and stopped baring his teeth, stopped speaking.
This was a magic older than words. The magic in her eyes marked Ryn for what she was; they set her apart, gave the gods cause to banish her from states and nations—they were solid black except for the searing light of her irises, and no mortal could look upon them and doubt her inhumanity.
A closing throat choked off his scream and he couldn't tear himself from Ryn's gaze; his color drained from pale to chalk, and he reclined his head as far as he could, fighting to look away, but unable until she released him. A thin whimper rose from his lungs.
Ryn snapped her canines at him and he released his prize. Denise landed softly in Ryn's embrace as Franklin windmilled his arms in a mad backward leap that sent him crashing to the floor. He crab-crawled away on all fours, screaming a string of "fuck"s until his back hit a wall.
Ryn eased her glasses back on, shifting Denise into Naomi's arms. She pivoted toward Franklin's pack mates, who'd never seen her eyes—that display had been Franklin's alone. The one Ryn had marked bolted at her, reaching for her hoodie. "You're mine, you little—"
She snatched his wrist, twisting. The pop satisfied on nearly a spiritual level, as did his shriek. He buckled and Ryn backhanded him, snapping his head violently to one side. He crashed to elbows and knees at Ryn's feet.
Using his back as a springboard, she leapt and sailed onto the pack mate behind him. Pincering her knees to his shoulders, she punched straight down into his face. Again and again and again, she hit him; he couldn't get his arms up to block, so she took her time. A dozen shots changed his face's shape and color, from pale to purple under her thorough ministration. Teeth and blood flew over her shoulder; she broke his nose, the orbit of one eye. When he collapsed, Ryn sprang free, alighting to the floor.
The marked man she'd floored attempted to stand, so she planted her knee into his jaw, flattening him again.
"My God, you psychopath, you broke his nose!" cried the brunette, rushing to tend the marked man.
"Nose once, jaw twice; wrist in six places." I'm not done yet, either. Heal, you dog. I will be back for you all. She steered her gaze to Franklin. Especially you.
Perhaps Franklin understood, because as Ryn held his gaze, even the memory of what lurked behind her sunglasses spread a dark stain at the crotch of his pants.
From her knees, Naomi held Denise in her arms while gaping at Ryn, as though seeing her for the first time.
Wes and Horatio, too, stood still as statues, unmoving since Ryn had first acted.
It was Wes who broke the spell by clapping his hands three times. "I feel like... I mean, take this however you want as long as it's not badly, because dear God I don't want to offend you, ever, but—for what you just did—I should offer myself to you sexually. And not like, 'wee, fun for me' sex. I mean I would let you penetrate me. Not that you'd want to. Or should. But... holy God, what was that? Kung fu?"
Ryn furrowed her brow, unsure if she should be offended at Wes for suggesting a sexual liaison, except it seemed curiously harmless.
"We— We should go," Naomi said.
"Agreed." Ryn hefted Denise into a fireman's carry. Naomi stood. For an instant they shared a kinetic moment of eye contact that made Ryn's nerves buzz, heightened further when Naomi mouthed "thank you."
"Uh. Okay, not kung fu then." Wes chased after them. "Krav maga? Ninjitsu? Do you do lessons? Do you need a sidekick?"
"Easy," Horatio whispered. "Nerd out after we get help for their friend."
"Oh. Yeah, sorry."
Downstairs, Naomi explained the situation to two bouncers who intercepted them. She had a way about her, making eye contact, explaining everything quickly and clearly. Whatever magnetism she possessed, the bouncers believed her immediately and told her to get Denise to a hospital.
It was cold outside the Nine Lives, sweetly empty of synthetic light and loud music. Elli met them and said she'd been in the restroom during the fight, and she'd seen the bouncers escorting Franklin and his badly injured friends out a rear entrance. Ryn sat Denise on a bench and Naomi checked her pulse with two fingers while tapping her phone. "I'll order a ride," Naomi said. "She needs a hospital."
"We'll come with you, make sure you get there okay," Horatio said.
"No chance. My dad's been on high alert for a week, and I've never seen him so stressed. This isn't the night to add boys to the mix."
"He doesn't know you're out?" Horatio asked.
Naomi clasped one hand on her opposite wrist, twisting anxiously. "Not... exactly."
"Take it easy on the old man." Horatio leaned too close for Ryn's liking. "Pretty sure he's got a good reason for all that stress."
"Oh my God—you knew who I was?"
"You've been on the news all week. And my dad's got your old man's campaign sticker on his bumper. Sorry I didn't say anything. Just figured you were here to dance, not talk about shitty current events."
Ryn definitely didn't like the way Naomi laughed and dipped her nose slightly while still looking up at him. "Such a gentleman," said the auburn-haired doe.
"After you get your friend settled, let us know how she is. Please." He took Naomi's phone—the way he just reached for it made Ryn's claws twitch. He typed digits into it, passing it back. "My number."
Wes nodded at Ryn. "Any way I can get in touch with you?"
"I don't have a phone."
"A themed signal I could flash into the sky, maybe?"
"My therapist gives me messages."
"That is perhaps the most creative way a girl has ever blown me off," Wes said. Horatio grabbed Wes's arm, dragging him away, and Wes walked backward while shouting, "I was serious! About lessons, not about the penetration."
"Come on, every second you talk it gets more painful." Then, as they passed from human earshot, Horatio whispered, "What part of our thoroughly drilled 'dial it down' hand signal did you miss back there?"
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 26 |
[ After Hours ]
Walking into an emergency room after midnight was like wandering past a plot twist in other people's lives. Everyone there was living that moment out of sync, interrupted. Naomi glanced from face to face. A nervous mother in a business suit with rolling luggage held an icepack to her listless six-year-old's forehead. A bearded man with a sleeve of tattoos on each forearm clutched a rag over his bloody hand. His blood plinked onto the floor and he fought with a nurse over the mess: "Maybe if I had a fuckin' doctor, I wouldn't still be bleeding."
Ten minutes before, they'd carted a gunshot victim through. He'd yelled at his brother in Russian to find his wallet and keys. He was belligerently drunk and asked the surgeon if she'd like to have dinner tomorrow night. They tried to pry the liquor bottle out of his hand, but he said, "Nyet, is not empty!" He still gripped it when they wheeled him into the operating room.
Ryn stood next to Naomi's seat. "I could take you home."
She shook her head. "I need to make sure Denise is all right."
Elli had left with her father. He'd blown through the ER like a tornado, apologizing profusely to the staff he knew, checking Denise's chart and talking to her doctor. He'd insisted to Naomi that her friend was in good hands and would be fine. Then Naomi had wilted as he'd grilled Elli about drugs. On the ninth iteration of the same questions, Elli had erupted into tears and confessed to taking a hit off a boy's joint in the restroom line. Overall, her father had seemed relieved.
Ryn perched on a chair and seemed intent on the room. A pinch of anxiety sharpened in Naomi's stomach the longer she watched Ryn. She'd felt silly putting her trust in the tiny girl's vows, but that was before. Now she had only questions. What she'd done to three grown men had been unreal—no one had ever moved so blindingly fast. But seeing her after the melee shifted everything Naomi thought she knew: no trembling, no relief or bragging, nor any sign of exertion. Like she'd simply... scratched an itch, the same as a hundred times before.
Ryn had fought a war. Naomi didn't know where, or how, but suspected she'd fought it nearly all her life. Almost certainly, this graceful predator had taken human life, and probably with her hands. Who the hell is this person?
A shiver worked through her, though not entirely from fear—also from the perverse sense of safety she felt, knowing now that she'd been protected all night. Ryn's formidable presence had replaced fear with a tangle of feelings she couldn't quite unravel: warmth, a jittery charge whenever Ryn looked at her, and the pleasure of watching the strange girl move, akin to the fascination in seeing a housecat prowl.
When emergency-room doors parted for her father, Naomi was filled with a more recognizable anxiety. He'd abandoned his charcoal suit jacket and had rolled his sleeves to his elbows, his red power tie loosened and his hair disarrayed from a long day on the Hill. Mark and his aide, Carol, flanked him and Carol worked twice as fast to keep up with his long strides.
Naomi jolted to her feet, with Ryn stuck to her like a shadow. The teenaged soldier positioned herself so that she met Mark face to face, forcing him to stop short, and the two took one another's measure. Naomi's father rushed past those two, dragging her into an embrace that drove the air from her lungs.
It felt good and sturdy and right, but she couldn't savor it, because he pulled back and wore his fatherly face—not Dad, but Senator Dad.
She smiled weakly. "Heyyy, Daddy." Clearing her throat, she shifted back and put an unconscious step between them. "So nice of you to swing back from the Hill to... pick me up."
"Are you hurt?" His voice was tight, which alarmed her.
Fear, she realized. She shook her head decisively. "No. I—"
"You're sure? No one harmed you? Physically, emotionally, verbally, tangentially, or existentially?"
"No. Dad, I'm fine, it's just—"
"I'll ask once. Did you take anything?"
"Of course not."
He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. "That's exactly what I said to your grandfather the first time I smoked pot."
"I'm not you." She tried a smile she couldn't feel. "I take after mom, remember?"
"Who the hell do you think rolled it for me? Do they do drug tests here?"
No one answered him.
He hated that. "Carol. Check with the nurse. See if I can have my daughter take a drug test. While she's at it, ask her what kinds of drugs they have. I'd like a few myself. Find the ones that make tonight go away and put them in my briefcase."
She split off to find a nurse, sorting through which of his requests to take seriously. Carol had worked with her dad a long time.
"Where's this den of drug dealers and ne'er-do-wells? Please God tell me you bought them at a public university or something I can defund."
Wincing, she whispered, "Private business. The Nine Lives."
His face darkened—that old rage of a principled libertarian looking for a loophole. Partway through, he seemed to give up. "Fuck it. Fuck private businesses, fuck drug legalization, fuck sentencing limits and due process and bans on capital punishment. I'm having them shot." Probably not, but he looked ready to do something, pressing one fist to his forehead, bouncing on the balls of his feet as though to exorcise the frenetic energy that possessed him. "Who took you out tonight?"
Naomi wasn't ready for this turn. He was hunting for somewhere to vent his fury.
"Well? Speak up."
She opened her mouth, but no answer came.
"Denise or Elli? Which one dragged you from your room? Put you in danger? Never mind, it was Denise. She's the one who OD'd, wasn't she? She going to be all right?"
"Yes, but—"
"Good. I want to talk to her. She awake?"
"No. It wasn't Denise. It was—"
"Elli? Swear to God, I don't believe Elli's assertive enough to convince a dog to eat red meat. Don't lie to me."
"No! Listen! I left. It was my decision."
"You're covering. You were terrified. You told me—"
"Let her speak," Ryn snapped.
Silence.
All eyes turned to Ryn. Naomi swallowed and inched a step away, fearing that lightning might peal from the heavens and zot the raven-haired girl into ash and vapor. When her father made no immediate answer, Naomi remembered to exhale.
When he did speak, it was pure senator. "Excuse me, you must be confused. You're new, so I'll be concise. Walk away." He narrowed his eyes. "Walk somewhere far away from my daughter and me, because whoever convinced her to risk her life tonight—and now I'm pretty sure it was you—"
"It was."
"That simplifies things."
"No, Dad," Naomi pleaded. "She's just—"
"It needs to be said." Though he stared, Ryn tilted her head in a display of curiosity rather than fear. Her father went on: "This friend is stricken from the book of my daughter's companions. You never show your face at our home again. Don't even speak to her."
Ryn stepped forward, earning a warning look from Mark which she ignored. "Tell me once more what I may not do."
Naomi's heart caught. No one had ever spoken to her father with such anger.
"I will find your parents and make you wish—"
"I have none." Ryn tilted her head to the other side.
Her father cupped a hand over his mouth, dragging it to his chin, a gesture he mainly used to conceal his anger in front of the press or opposition party.
"Dad," Naomi soothed, "she's not from around here. She—"
"You put my daughter's life in danger." The catch in his voice wasn't rage, Naomi realized. It was nothing less than the distilled helplessness of a father.
"Nothing can harm her when I am close."
"Do you have any idea who tried to hurt my girl? She was attacked, nearly murdered—nearly tortured—" His voice broke off and left volumes unsaid; cold panic passed from her father's words in waves through her every capillary. "Last week." He could barely speak, holding his sleeve to his mouth. "And you took her from me? From my home. Dragged her across the goddamn city..." He turned away and punched the wall.
Mark and Naomi jumped, but Ryn stood unflinching. There was a crack in the plaster. The whole ER stared.
"Shit," her dad said to the wall, as if he and the wall were the only two in the room and he felt compelled to explain himself.
"She did protect me," Naomi insisted, knowing how crazy it seemed.
"Six. Damn. Days ago." Everything in him sagged and at bottom he seemed to be drowning. "There are more out there, God knows where, and all they want to do is hurt my girl. We can't find them, and they might be anywhere—might be anyone. And you took her."
Her father's attention on Ryn, Naomi reached out and touched his forearm. He startled, as though she'd scalded him. "Dad." She tried to swallow the tightness in her throat. "Listen. Just for a minute, please."
He nodded. "You have until Carol brings my drugs." Shutting his eyes, he sucked on his scraped knuckle.
"Ryn didn't drag me. She came to my room and made me realize those walls and guards and motion sensors weren't just keeping bad things out. They kept me in. I can't live that way, Dad." He tried to interject, but Naomi lifted a hand and raised her voice to cut him off—a trick she'd picked up from him. "I know it's only been a week, but it wasn't making me feel safer. Just isolated."
Again, he opened his mouth to talk.
"—yes, I should have taken Mark."
His mouth clapped shut.
"It was stupid not to. I could have called you, convinced you—and Mark would have been there when we needed him. But in my defense, I left a note."
Her father wasn't trying to get a word in edgewise, so she had a moment to think. Her heart sank as she realized how grave her mistakes really were.
"I'm so sorry," she blurted. "I'm not sorry for going out, but I'm sorry I didn't call, and I'm especially sorry about Denise. I could have kept closer tabs on her; I shouldn't have freaked out when she took that pill. She ran straight into that bastard's arms." Her stomach twisted at the memory. "Oh God, Dad, it wasn't just the drugs. Those guys... they were trying to do things to her."
"What happened?" His expression was far too schooled.
"I couldn't stop it. There were three of them and they were so big." The words came in a torrent of feeling. "No matter what I tried, what I said or screamed, they were going to take what they wanted. They would have." She was trembling. "They didn't care, they were getting off on making me realize it—making us helpless."
She glanced sidelong at Ryn, whose hands squeezed into fists on hearing the story told. "Except she was there. Don't be mad at Ryn. I know you think she's full of it, but she's not. Tonight is my fault." Every last piece of it—ditching Mark, scolding Denise, letting her friend fall in with those scumbags. "I didn't mean to mess up this bad," she sobbed, tears starting to form, trying to force her apologies around the tightness that choked off her voice.
Her father crushed her against his chest in an embrace so firm her ribs compressed, the words no longer necessary. He didn't speak either. His vise grip and the single ragged sob told her everything. That sound alone broke her open.
She wept, eventually ushered into a waiting room where she cried herself nearly dry. Mark blocked off the space, and somewhere in the shuffle Ryn disappeared without a farewell.
That stung, but Naomi chalked it up to whatever strange, war-torn place the wildling had come from.
Her dad sat beside her, never asking again about drugs, but explaining, "I called Bill Holowaty." He was the only cop in the world who liked her dad. "Said they've got the same detective on those three punks as they put on your case. He's supposed to be good."
Naomi sniffed and smiled. "That was lucky."
"Not really. Guy insisted on taking the case—maybe he thinks it's related. Point is, Bill seemed confident, so I don't think they'll get away with it. It's likely the drug dealer switched her pills, so there's a raft of charges they could nail him with if Denise testifies."
"I don't think she'll want to," Naomi murmured. "How about you? Is this a problem for your job?"
He snorted. "I'm a second-term senator and I'm fucking adorable. Old ladies love me; they think I look like a smarter George Clooney. Look at me, Naomi."
She did.
"Not one of my constituents cares what you do. You know that, right? That's not how elections work anymore. You can shave your head and snort a line of coke off a clown's ass and all I have to do is give the 'I love my coke-snorting daughter, clowns and all' speech. Situation defused. They elect me because this state is packed full of Republican gun owners and ex-Soviets who get twitchy about big government. Scandals involving kids won't even move the needle."
"I know, Dad."
"The reason I want you out of the news is for your good, not mine. As I do not place a 'D' after my name, the press are not fond of us, and what few rules they have about kids and women won't apply to you. You shouldn't have to pay that price—it's my political career. But that's why I worry. My politics make you a target for some of the media's less savory gossips—not to mention the conspiracy nutters."
"Do you think someone has footage of tonight?" Naomi asked. "The room was crowded."
"Maybe it ends up on YouTube, maybe it doesn't. We'll figure it out if it does."
"Thanks, Dad."
He wrapped an arm around her shoulder, dragging her close, squeezing. "You're a good kid. Not sure what I did to deserve you."
She leaned into him a while, thoughts allowed to wander. They kept coming back and sticking to Ryn, who danced her ferocious ballet whenever Naomi shut her eyes.
"We do need to talk about last week," Dad finally said.
Naomi's gut pinched, but she nodded.
He fetched his briefcase from Carol and both sat on the other side of a coffee table, where he opened the case and removed a thick ream of paper. Taking the top sheet off, he tapped it twice and glanced at Carol. "You need to tell her what you found."
Carol pursed her lips briefly. "Are you sure?"
He passed the sheet to Naomi. "These are highlights. It's from the webpage, where Banich was posting about hurting you. Normally this stuff is bullshit—there's loads of it out there, nearly all of it pointless screaming and naked id. Ninety percent of the internet is just kids trolling or crazies howling at the moon."
"So why is it printed out in your briefcase?"
He frowned at the stack of paper, fingering its edges. "Because one of them tried to kidnap you, and he wasn't alone. For whatever reason, this group—they're different."
The sheet rattled in Naomi's hands, and at first she read without feeling the words, a curious delay between their meaning and impact. But like poison, there was no stopping them once they were inside her—she grew lightheaded, sweating from her palms so that the page stuck to her hands. She sucked in a gasp, only then remembering to breathe.
It was strange that the words that echoed weren't the sickest, but the most profoundly earnest: I want to see her face and watch how it goes still when she dies. Then her dad's eyes when he sees it happen—how it changes him forever. They clung to her, because a real person had written them. A real person craved that.
"Enough." Her father plucked the sheet away before she'd finished more than half the messages.
"They aren't serious," Naomi whispered, stomach churning.
"At least one more is." Carol sat straight and pale, her mouth a thin line. "Someone sent... something to the office today. In the mail."
"What?" Alarm tingled through Naomi.
"A body part. Police are testing it against who they have on record. Based on the letter, we think he's someone who helped Banich, and who posts in that group. He cut it off himself. Mailed it as some sort of threat."
"He mailed a piece of himself?" The room felt crooked, her head spinning. "What— What kind of piece?"
"What's important is you know these people aren't joking," Carol said.
"What piece?" she whispered.
Carol glanced at her father, who nodded, so she looked across the coffee table and told her.
Naomi threw up.
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 27 |
Tom Bradford kept his bearing in the waiting room and on the short walk into the hallway, where he shut the door, leaving Carol and Naomi inside. Crumpling against the door, he sagged, the universe turning too fast as he tried like hell to catch his breath. Feels like someone's been sitting on my chest for six days. He squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing them through his eyelids, and desperately tried not to think—to avoid the white-hot anger or cold panic that washed through his blood whenever his thoughts strayed.
God damn it, I hate this hospital. He glanced at the ceiling, knowing his wife had left him one floor up. Was Klara's shadow staring at him now? She'd tap her jaw in that thoughtful way that meant she was dissecting him. Keep frowning like that, Mishka, and people will think we are both economists. Where is that belligerent optimism I married you for?
"Fresh out," he told the shadow.
His phone chirped. It was Detective O'Rourke, the one who'd interviewed him last week. O'Rourke hadn't seemed like much—irritable, immensely fat, hairy like a Tolkien dwarf, and a slob. That was why Tom had liked him. He'd met his share of people on the Hill who skated on charisma or looks, but this detective who'd garnered so much praise would have had to come by it honestly. "Hello?" he answered.
"Bill called. Told me you were at the hospital." O'Rourke slurped something, probably coffee. "There's a uniform driving down to visit those pushers who attacked your daughter's friend. A bouncer can testify he saw them slinging dope—club threw the bouncer under the bus after finding out he let them in. They're afraid you'll lean on the city to shut them down. He's trying to cooperate his way out of charges."
Tom grimaced. "I should shut them down." He wanted to. It had been advertised as under-twenty-one, and one of their employees had let foxes into the henhouse. He was within his rights to push it as a parent, but using senatorial clout was a gray area for him. "You think Denise will need to testify?"
"Maybe. Maybe they plead out. Not my department."
Tom should have been more concerned, but this wasn't the problem he needed solved. "Anything else?" He tried not to sound desperate.
"I could give you the canned 'pursuing all our leads' answer, but I bet you've given the senator version of that a hundred times."
"Hundred and one."
"Sit tight. I've got half a dozen little threads I'm pulling at, but it's a hell of a knot. I'll need some time."
Tom changed ears. "I'm just trying to keep my daughter safe. Can you tell me anything—anything at all—that'll help me do that?"
The pause on the other end lasted too long. "Who's your daughter's friend?"
"Denise?"
"The short one."
"I think her name's Ryn. Why?"
"Sending you some footage. Only video that came out of tonight, and it only exists in two places right now—my phone and yours. Keep it that way."
Tom frowned. "I don't understand."
"Look, this city is weird, and I can't—" He muttered under his breath, starting over. "It's evidence. I'm not supposed to share it. Breaking the rules some. Wouldn't do it if I didn't think you needed to see this."
"What are you—"
"Watch the video. You'll understand. Oh, and this 'Ryn' girl? She was at the mall last week with your daughter. Can't say anything more, but you're a smart guy. You'll connect the dots."
"Thanks. I owe you."
"You don't owe me a goddamn thing. This is my job and I'm paid on the public dime. Just keep it in mind, next time you slash taxes."
"I only slash the federal ones. But sure."
The detective grunted and the line went dead.
There's a man who loves what he does. Tom had never felt comfortable around cops, but he liked O'Rourke. The detective seemed interested in the work and not the club-y camaraderie—cops tended to be cliquish, defensive, and they despised most of Tom's stances on criminal rights and unions. The only reason Bill was still his friend was because they'd spent a short term in the military together getting shot at in Haiti.
Mark padded silently up the hallway. "News?"
Tom nodded. His phone chirped again. "Just got video from the club. Guess there really was a fight."
He shared the screen with Mark, tapping the file open. It played bouncy footage and he wasn't surprised at all to see two boys barricading off Naomi and Ryn, though the size of their assailants was breathtaking. Those are not teenagers.
"See the tattoo on that guy's forearm?" Mark said. "That's a Ukrainian gang tattoo. Been in the Docks two generations, guns and drugs mostly. Surprised they made it all the way out to Whitechurch."
The teenagers filming whispered about it "going down," the camera giving one more annoying jounce, and then it happened. The skinny boy took a punch, the narrator singing "Daaa-amn!" and Ryn caught the boy. She slipped to the front and Tom suppressed the spectator urge to yell, "Get back, you idiot!"
Ryn removed her glasses and the rest came too fast. The skinniest gangster, who seemed their leader, panicked and flailed away like she was a rabid dog. The slight, raven-haired teenager caught Denise. Kid's strong for her size. She passed Denise to Naomi.
The biggest gangbanger came at her and Ryn did something to his arm. It bent wrong. He fell and she flew off his back like a demon, clobbering the last thug. That one dropped too and she turned to deliver the big one a parting knee to his jaw.
"What the hell," Mark said. "Play it again."
It had been terrifying in its speed and brutality, its unexpectedness, and something in Mark's voice prickled Tom's skin. "Why?"
"What she did there— Just play it again."
Again, he watched. He saw more this time—saw details concealed by speed. The girl had done too much in too short a time for him to understand before, but it looked like she'd caught the big one's wrist, broke it with a jerk, and knocked him down with a backhand before launching into the last punk. It wasn't just a clobbering, either. It was at least six blows, shots like cobra strikes that blurred together. The knee to the big guy's jaw looked like an afterthought. She didn't even look down at him.
"Shit," Mark breathed. "From the top."
"You going to tell me—"
"Just play it."
They watched a third time and now Tom just noted her expression: a twisted, animal look of hatred, and through pixelated footage her bared teeth seemed somehow wolfish.
"Jesus," Mark whispered. "Never even touched the first guy. Just looked at him. Whatever those sunglasses are covering, it's got to be disturbing. Scars maybe. Whatever it was, it must have told him the truth."
"What truth?"
"Everything was smoothly executed, right down to the way she caught Denise and transferred her to your daughter. There's economy in every step. She's a veteran."
"You mean a soldier?"
"She's fought. Who for, and why? Hard to say. But she knows how to hurt people in ways you don't learn in a studio. Her backhand nailed a nerve in the big one's jaw—broke it, too, I'd say. Maneuvered his body in the other guy's way, blocked his advance. And then her leap—it's fast. I wouldn't have seen it coming; it's an ambush maneuver. She pinned his shoulders, seized his hair in one fist, and delivered ten, twelve full-impact blows in less than a second. No one I've met can do that—not with that speed and force—and I've met guys I wouldn't take on without a SWAT team. That knee at the end? She's got either near-perfect peripheral vision or a spatial awareness most fighters would kill for."
"What was your first impression of Ryn?"
"Thought she was full of shit. Teenagers, right? Thinking back now, though, she was hands-free and moved to intercept me. She was protecting Naomi. Same deal on the video, until she attacks. Her stances are on the aggressive side, but she's always mindful of your daughter."
"Could she have put down Banich?" It seemed insane, given the extent of injuries dealt to the parking-garage attacker, but O'Rourke had hinted at it.
"If I hadn't seen this video, I'd say it was impossible."
Tom shook his head. "Still seems impossible to me."
"Because you're not a fighter." Mark tapped the phone. "She didn't do as much damage to those men, but the skills on display—it's all there."
"You think she's serious about being able to protect my daughter?"
"Let me see it again." Mark took the phone, replaying it four more times before passing it back. "That's not luck. It's uncanny. You can't do that unless you fight like a motherfucker on fire."
"And your gut?" Tom asked. "What's it say about her?"
"She's dangerous."
"To Naomi?"
Mark frowned. "To anyone who fucks with her, I'd say."
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 28 |
After staying long enough to see Denise, it was nearly morning when Naomi left the hospital with her dad, Mark tailing them in his car. Emotionally winded and raw, she was blindsided by her dad's question.
"Where'd your tiny bodyguard go?"
"The one stricken from the book of my companions?" Naomi smirked at her dad's faux-innocent expression. "She... disappeared."
"Going out on a limb: I don't think I scared her off."
"She's just not well-versed on finer points of etiquette." Naomi settled tiredly back into her seat. "Someone feels guilty for yelling, huh?"
"She's not stricken from any books yet. Consider it a suspended sentence, eventually lifted for good behavior. She's actually got no parents, though?"
"I didn't know that about her." Suspected it, though.
"Not a Madison girl?"
"Does she look like one?"
He laughed. "Sadly, no. Your school's got a stick up its butt."
She rolled her eyes. "I thought you loved all things private, Daddy."
"I love that my yelling at Madison feels more effective, what with all the money I give to the people I'm yelling at."
"She's Parker-Freemont."
"So she's from the Docks. Maybe from abroad, like your mother."
"Maybe. English isn't her first language—she speaks it fine, but she's got no idea how to use most idioms." Or currency. "She's not talkative. But the things she says—I don't know, they're blunt and insightful." Talking about her made Naomi smile. "She's just... interesting, I guess."
"Like how?"
She hadn't gotten farther than "interesting" and struggled with why. "Did you know she dances better than anyone I've ever seen? That includes all those ballets you and Mom took me to when I went through that phase. It's in every step she takes. And she knows things about the world—I don't know, like she really sees it. In ways I can't. But other times, she's got no clue, and whenever she's not teaching me something new, I'm teaching her." Naomi clicked her mouth shut when she realized she was rambling. Then: "Is that weird?"
"Reminds me of your mother." Dad smiled. "Smartest woman I ever met—but God, that dark sense of humor got her into trouble. We were at a faculty Christmas party at Graystone when we first dated, and she brought me along—just a lunkhead undergraduate she was scandalously dating. I'm ex-military and there on an Army scholarship, so she introduces me to her very-Marxist dean with, 'Here is Tom Bradford. He shoots Communists, but don't worry, only Soviet ones sent to Haiti and paid by the Kremlin to fight. You are not paid to support Communists, you do it for free, so Tom probably won't shoot you.' "
Naomi chortled, but her mom had told it slightly differently one New Year's after drinking too much wine. Instead of introducing her dad by name, she'd called him "a handsome student I am sleeping with." Glancing at Dad, she asked, "Was this the same dean whose kids she complimented?"
He laughed. "Yeah. First time she met him, she looked at the pictures on his desk and said, 'Your children are beautiful in America. Not like our children in the Soviet Empire, because they are starving.' "
Mom's droll cynicism was the source of many a family legend, particularly when her parents had first gotten to know each other. Naomi wondered if those bumpy misunderstandings were part of what she liked about Ryn.
"Will I see Ryn again?" Dad asked.
"I hope so." She felt a tug at her heart. "Oh no—I still don't know how to get a hold of her."
"Can't call her?"
"She's completely off the grid. No phone, no parents—I don't even know her last name!"
"Relax. The same thing happened the first time I met your mom. Remember, she wasn't entirely legal then, so she didn't exactly pass out her information."
"What did you do?"
"Just kept going back to the café where I saw her working on her dissertation. Told myself, 'If I run into her again, it's meant to be.' Have a feeling you'll meet Ryn again."
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 29 |
Kessler woke from a dead sleep and answered the ringing phone.
"It's me," O'Rourke said. "Got a break in the case."
"What time is it?"
"About five in the morning."
"God Almighty." Can we go back to him being one of those kinds of cop? Those kind sleep.
"Don't worry. There's a Denny's nearby. It'll be open."
"Because that's what I was worried about."
"Meet me at the one on Eighth and Lincoln."
O'Rourke had coffee waiting when he arrived, but the world's unhealthiest detective didn't appear the least bit run down. He had a tower of books, including one on child soldiers, and that pinched Kessler's stomach. O'Rourke's tablet was open to a martial-arts webpage and he was looking at video of various moves.
"That a library book?" Kessler asked.
"City librarian gave me keys. I come and go; leave them notes on what I took. Comes in handy if you need a textbook at midnight. Be surprised how much that happens to me."
"Less and less surprised every day." Kessler drained half his mug in one long pull.
"Take a look at this." O'Rourke slid the tablet over and Kessler watched Ryn beat down two gangbangers and scare the piss out of a third. She used the moves he'd always suspected she knew. The vise on his gut tightened.
"Those guys are Black Sea mafia?" he asked.
"The punks are. The girl, though—the one rolling them like they owed her lunch money. What do you make of her?"
Damn it. "What do you mean?"
"Her name is Ryn and she fits my theory of a crazed stalker who turned on Banich. She's latched onto the Bradford girl, and she broke those two guys—not as bad as Banich, but it proves she could. Right body type for the images you pulled, too."
"Except she's got no internet access and her only contact with Banich was of the hand-to-hand variety," Kessler said.
"Wait. You had this lead?" O'Rourke's shaggy eyebrows lowered in anger.
"I ran it down." Kessler sighed. "I know Ryn, her M.O., and her caseworker—professionally and, uh, personally. We suspect she was following Banich and happened on Naomi Bradford as a result—she's too antisocial to conspire, too easily set off by abusers to fraternize with one.
"I was on the fence about telling you. My concern is that the media's already on a witch hunt against the mentally ill, thanks to Banich. The same trust-fund implosion that put him on the street put Ryn there too. The narrative right now is, 'Crazy people are everywhere, lock them up.' We throw Ryn into that meat grinder, she'll get kicked back into the system. For good."
"Christ. Fine, whatever, but you keep me in the fucking loop."
"Yeah, I get it. You're the lead."
"Bullshit. I'm your partner."
Kessler narrowed his eyes. Didn't you assume I was an incompetent meathead last week?
"Look, you might not be as dumb as I thought." O'Rourke frowned. "Most guys who say, 'I'm not book smart, I'm street smart,' might be smart as the bricks they paved the street with. You? You're bright, you actually get people, you do good legwork, and you'll meet me at ungodly hours to go over casework. So, sure: partner."
"You don't have a lot of friends, do you?" Kessler asked, folding his arms.
"I got a bad track record with hero cops. I'm judgmental—but that's what cops do. We judge. The good ones, though, know when to eat crow."
"You going to give me hell for holding back the info on Ryn?"
"Not if you're sure this girl's safe. You vouching for her?"
"She's not safe. But she's not dangerous to the Bradford girl. I know her because my unit pulled her out of a wilderness people aren't supposed to survive in, and let's just say nothing on that video surprises me. I'm sure she's got blood on her hands, but when we found her she'd been beaten and tortured almost to the point of death. She hates abusers. Hunting down Banich is exactly like her."
"So, a vigilante?"
"Sure."
"Not exactly legal to hunt people down," O'Rourke grumped.
"But she pounced on him after he went for the girl. If Ryn were anyone else, we'd be giving her a medal. With her mental-health record, and the public scared, she'd get kicked back into the system and buried."
"Not necessarily."
"Look me in the eye and tell me what she did was wrong."
"Why's she with the Bradford girl if she's antisocial?"
"Seems to agree about Banich having accomplices. Wants to keep the girl safe; might be hunting the accomplices too."
O'Rourke nodded. "How's she know about them?"
He sighed. There's no way to explain this that doesn't make me look crazy, or Ryn guilty. "She knows things. Said it creeps up from dark corners, or whatever, and that there's between four and six of them. Thinks they're... ghosts. Somehow."
Surprisingly, O'Rourke just nodded.
Staring, Kessler asked, "You believe her?"
"You don't?"
Was it a trick question? A test? He said nothing.
"It's a weird city. Don't worry about it." O'Rourke leaned in. "Black binder for the ghosts, and how Ryn figured it out. The number of assailants is worthwhile data, though."
"And what do we do about Ryn?"
"She's not a conspirator. Now that I've got your read on her, that look on her face during the video tells me all I needed to know. She's not hurting those men to get closer to the Bradford girl. Hate that pure and clean isn't instrumental."
"You sound impressed."
"I tell people my idol's Sherlock Holmes, but not really. I didn't read Arthur Conan Doyle as a kid. I read Batman."
Kessler snorted. "You're jealous of her."
"Incredibly."
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 30 |
[ Namaste ]
Every darkfall, Ryn shadowed Naomi by rooftop. She coasted on the metro and listened to the auburn-haired girl's heart through aluminum. She lay supine on Naomi's pebbled shingles, hearing the tosses and gasps brought on by nightmares. When the brassy sun rose, Ryn trailed on the street, learning to obscure herself in the city's flow of human bodies.
Weeks passed with no trace of asura. Ms. Cross complained that Ryn had not signed into her group home at night and about absences from school.
The moon waxed fuller each night and teased the blackest regions of Ryn's mind. Its light prickled her skin, her humming nerves attuned to the flutter of moth wings in the sky. On the night the moon burned its roundest, Naomi went ice skating in the city with Elli and Denise.
Ryn eased through the crowd, raw and moon-sick with bedlam pounding in her chest. Danger filled the air like fog, with Naomi at its epicenter, yet she scented no asura. All she smelled was aggression and sex from a slouching male who sat rinkside and stared too hard at little girls, always from the corners of his eyes.
He kept a cup of hot drink in his hands, another beside him as bait. A predator. He hunted, but not so well as Ryn. Though dull human eyes skipped over him, he stuck out to her, and in that instant they were the only two beings in the world. There was no asura in him, though. Was he the source of the danger Ryn sensed?
He distracted Ryn from hiding herself.
"Hey! Hey!"
The familiar voice snapped Ryn's gaze to attention: Naomi coasted across the rink to the wall where she stood. The doe-ish girl wore a too-thick, teal coat and a poofy hat and scarf that made her seem tiny even though she stood a head taller.
"You're here!" Her enthusiasm lit a fire in Ryn; her smile took away the air. "I was afraid I'd never see you again."
"You see me now." The moon amplified the pounding of Ryn's heart, and some enigmatic magnetism drew her in while at once making it impossible to look Naomi in the eye.
"Tell me where you live. Please?"
This female's power over her was such that she feared Naomi coming to find her; she could only barely stand to feel these things on her own terms and from the safety of the shadows. "Why do you want to know?"
"So I can get in touch. Where do you stay?"
"Roosevelt Place." Why did I tell her? The moon is making me a fool.
"Does Roosevelt Place have a phone?"
This must end. I am a monster and will not be hemmed in by the glances of a mortal girl. "Do you need something from me?" she growled.
Naomi's face fell and Ryn's heart dropped with it.
She'd said the words wrong, and moon sickness made her want to shrink. She examined her fingers, realizing with horror that somewhere along the way Naomi had been stitched into her—what the girl felt, Ryn did too. It took only a glance for the magic to happen, a power as surely as the basilisk's.
"You okay?" Naomi asked.
"Was that a frown?"
"I guess."
"I don't like them."
"I'm all done. See?" She pointed.
But Ryn's gaze was fastened to her hands.
So Naomi crouched and set her chin between Ryn's hands, peering up, startling the monster. "I've waited weeks to see you and I'm excited," said her friend. "I've wanted to talk to you like eighteen times a day, and then here you are—out of nowhere. Sorry if I come on strong, but in my defense, you totally knew that about me ever since the mall. Want to skate?"
Dozens of humans sailed effortlessly atop sleek ice, and at the sight Ryn quivered. She could think of nothing she'd rather do than fly on ice. Besides, her intuition wanted her close to Naomi. Checking, she ensured the child predator hadn't moved and nodded. "I would like that."
"I'll rent your skates for an address." She leaned in conspiratorially. "Though I'll tell you a secret." She spoke in a whisper that Ryn felt brush against her: "I like you enough that you could bargain me down, if you really don't want me to know where you live."
It was not in Ryn to deny her friend; not when she'd whispered so sweetly. "Your bargain is fair." She told her the address and Naomi went through one of those human gestures with a vendor, trading paper moneys for skates. It was done with exhausting precision, counting them out, being handed a few back because it was not the exact right amount. Their obsession depressed and amused Ryn at once.
Finally, Naomi passed her the skates. "These look your size."
The skates were inflexible and Ryn missed her worn-down tennis shoes or, better still, the sensation of rock and snow underfoot. But the moment blades touched ice, Ryn sensed the potential velocity within them.
"Have you skated before?" Naomi asked.
"No."
"It's easy. I'll show you."
Ryn remembered that humans were supposed to be clumsy animals, and she used her social camouflage honed in gym class. Holding on to the rail, examining one of the less adept skaters in the rink, she mimicked a tremor up her calf. But her camouflage felt dishonest here.
Naomi's hand clapped onto Ryn's elbow. "Easy. I've got you." With the moon so high and bright, she could feel the girl's fingertips, her pulse, almost as if it were skin-to-skin. It made Ryn want things, and she didn't know what. "Come on, with me." Naomi drew her off the wall, into the stream of people.
Ice flowed past her feet and the cool slice of blades over the frosty sheet slaked Ryn in a deep place. Her friend spun and skated backward, taking Ryn's hands in hers to guide, and with her face and its basilisk's magic right there, the monster became very interested in the ice at her feet.
"Don't look down," Naomi scolded. "Eyes forward."
Ryn couldn't resist; the magic was in her everything, even her voice.
"There, like that." And she was rewarded with a smile—such a smile, one that taught Ryn delight.
Yet in holding eye contact the feeling intensified, jolting from Naomi through Ryn until she felt her ears and cheeks flush with heat. A crinkle knit Naomi's brow and then she blushed too, turned away, and skated with just one hand in Ryn's. "I think you're getting it."
"Yes." Ryn allowed her feet to move more naturally, easing into clean strokes that propelled her side by side with the other girl. Through the static of cool air and the riot of full-moon sensation, she could feel the shape of her friend's body. It distracted her.
But then a cool dread pooled in her stomach.
Danger. It prickled the fine hairs on the back of her neck, but she didn't know from where it would come.
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| 31 |
Casper Owens had slipped into the office and cleared off the desk, pushing it near the window so that he had something to lie prone across. It was not flush to the wall, but set back far enough that he could balance his Winchester away from the cracked-open window facing the skating rink.
He lit a cigarette to steady his nerves, smoking, ashing into someone's coffee mug.
Through the scope, he observed the rink. It sat in a gap between buildings a city block away. Fast-moving revelers zoomed across the lens and he struggled to pick out Naomi Bradford.
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The moment stretched, Ryn scenting and listening, finding no obvious threat. Yet the danger was there, unsprung.
Denise broke between them and shattered the tension of the moment. "I'd say I'm surprised to see Ryn here, but there's a full moon. Seems somehow appropriate you'd show up."
She bristled.
"Relax! So testy. I'll keep my claws to myself if you do."
"She's lying about that," Naomi said. "But I do think she had something to say." She shot Denise a look that communicated something without words.
Denise rolled her eyes, retrieving a velvet case from her jacket. "Here." She thrust it at Ryn, who took it cautiously and sniffed it. "God, it's a gift, just open it, dumbass."
"Gift?"
"Sure. It's what people who suck at nice words do to make vaguely apologetic gestures. Don't read anything into it, it's just to make me feel better, okay?"
Denise was better at explaining human customs than anyone else Ryn had met.
"Did that burn so badly?" Naomi asked.
"Right down to my soul," Denise said.
The box contained sunglasses with blue-tinted lenses and elegant, wire frames. Though the lenses were smaller, the side shields would protect her eyes from view.
"They'll make you look less like you're casing government buildings." Denise tapped one lens. "If you're hanging out with us, I'd like it to be with a modicum of style." She hmmed softly and went to touch Ryn's hoodie. "How attached to this are you?"
Ryn recoiled. "As spirit and flesh."
"Unfortunate."
"Try them on," Naomi encouraged.
Ryn changed glasses by shifting her face down to hide her gaze. They tinged the world blue, the color not too different from her irises.
Denise examined them. "Just your color."
Does she remember my eyes?
"I can see more of your face." Naomi reached out to straighten the glasses, and the sheer liberty taken in the act somehow thrilled—no one before had dared. "You're pretty and now it shows."
Her smile was too spontaneous to stop.
"Holy shit, I made an emo girl smile." Denise shook her head. "Guess my karma's balanced." She skated away, leaving Ryn to feel abandoned under Naomi's scrutiny.
"You should smile more," her friend said.
"It's odd."
Naomi laughed. "Looks odd on you, but not bad. You know, I think you might have won over Denise in just about record time. She normally takes months."
"Won?"
"That's what a fully 'won over' Denise is like. The wild Madison brat, you see, expresses her affections through complex social signaling. Once she's been reduced to playful snark and taken an interest in your wardrobe, it means you're invited to the tribe."
Now it made sense. Why couldn't humans always be so succinct?
"How about it?" Naomi leaned closer in a way that made a loose tangle of hair dance against her cheek. "Want to spend more time together?"
Though excitement leapt in Ryn's chest, she bit it down before she could too reflexively nod. Of course, with days lasting longer, there's strategic sense to it... She cleared her throat. "Very well."
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| 33 |
Too far, Casper thought. He hadn't been told the shot was five hundred yards—his benefactors had only texted him the vantage point an hour ago. If he'd known, he'd have asked for a larger rifle. His favorite .308 could bring down a bear at two hundred yards, but the cartridges were packed for efficiency, and outside of 250 yards there wasn't enough powder to give the round punch. It would go rainbow-arced and wide.
True, in the military he'd used the same gun to shoot at commies at seven hundred yards, but this wasn't a communist: it was a seventeen-year-old girl. He didn't want a kneecap or a gut wound, he didn't want her to die after a half-hour of bleeding out. He wanted it clean—it had to be humane. Casper had a girl about that age and, necessary though this was, he'd never sleep right again if she died screaming.
And it was necessary, because her father was the Antichrist. Casper had read the prophecies, seen the scripts with his own eyes at the anti-Bradford site. The benefactors had shared photos of the ancient scrolls found in a Jerusalem dig site, but the mainstream media never talked about them because they detailed the End of Days, and the MSM was full of atheists.
Tom Bradford couldn't be killed by normal means. His black heart beat in the ribcage of his own daughter, carried beside her own.
A stark choice: Kill Naomi Bradford or let the whole world burn.
Including his daughter.
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| 34 |
They skated a wide circuit through the rink, the din of voices softened by an envelope of quiet that held them both, punctuated only by Naomi's intermittent talk of classes. She loved them all except government, since her teacher singled her out for being the daughter of a senator.
Listening, Ryn tracked the crowd; the air still held a dark energy, and while she smelled no asura, she sensed their meddling.
Naomi changed the subject to those boys from the Nine Lives, so Ryn focused on locating the source of danger—but it was still a fog, not yet sharpened into a threat she could dispense with.
"So do you want to?" Naomi asked.
Ryn's attention snapped back. "What?"
"Go on a date. Wes has been asking about you, and Horatio invited me out. So a double date, technically."
Her nose crinkled. "A mating ritual?"
Naomi laughed. "You don't have to mate, I promise. It's just to figure out if you two like each other."
"I know already who I like."
"Who?" She came closer then, as though it were a secret.
But it wasn't. "My psychiatrist."
"Holy crap, your therapist? Um, not judging, sorry. Is he... handsome?"
"She smells of rose water."
Naomi's cheeks turned slightly pink.
"I like you too."
The pink bloomed further across the bridge of her nose.
"As well a detective named David Kessler and my roommate, Susan. Wes is acceptable. I don't want to kill him."
Now she was tittering, the fits shaking her shoulders. "No, God, I didn't mean who you like. I mean... well, you know."
I do not.
"Who you want to go out with."
Ryn opened her mouth to speak.
"Don't you dare tell me you go 'outside' with your therapist."
Now she didn't know what to say.
"I don't mean outside. I mean—geez, you're going to make me spell it out for you, aren't you? Dating is about romance. They have that where you're from, don't they?"
"So it is a mating ritual."
Exasperated, Naomi threw her head back. "Fine. But it's one that doesn't have to include mating at the end if you don't want."
Ryn had seen humans mate, but from the dark beyond their campfires their rituals always seemed hopelessly complex and demeaning for all parties. In principle, the silly dances served their purpose, but she'd never wanted to involve herself. Realizing Naomi did want that, she felt an abrupt surge of anxiety. "How do you want it to end?"
"I don't know," she said, pinking again and glancing away. "Maybe a kiss."
An image of Naomi's mouth joined with Horatio's heated Ryn's blood. "You can't," she sputtered.
"Okay, fine." Naomi beamed. "I will lay down the law with the boys and make sure they know it will be utterly chaste. No mating, no kisses. Will you go then?"
Again, it was hard to tell her no. "When?"
"I'll set it up, but probably not for a few weeks at least. Horatio's out of town. Now that I've got you roped in, how about we celebrate with some hot chocolate? I'll be right back." Naomi skated off and Ryn shivered in the void left behind.
She waited at the wall and kept an eye on the auburn-haired female, who waited in line. There was only a distance of forty-odd feet to cross, should the noose tighten.
Denise skated over again. "I heard you two."
Ryn ignored the comment, unwaveringly focused on her ward. Naomi briefly caught her gaze from the line and smiled, which made the corners of her own mouth twitch in sympathy.
"I guarantee you won't 'mate' with Wes."
Truth.
"Because you'd rather with Naomi."
"No." Her cheeks blazed at the lie, and she shook her head to cast off the fleeting impression of her mouth pressed into Naomi's. Yet the image was so searing it burnt Ryn in places deeper than she'd believed her nerves could root.
"God, you're hopeless." Denise leaned into the railing, silent as her hands twisted into knots. "Listen, about the other night." Yet for several moments she just stared at a featureless spot on the ground. "People don't like me, as a rule. I come on strong and bite too hard."
"So do tigers."
"I know, right? And everyone loves tigers, but they don't like it when girls are mean—that's somehow defective. At least you understand that much."
She did.
"I'm a tiger because Naomi is very much not. See, we grew up together and I admit I might sometimes be the tiniest bit protective. I scratch people I don't think are good for her, and because she doesn't know how vulnerable her big, dumb heart makes her."
"You guard her."
"Wouldn't you?"
Ryn nodded, again satisfied with Denise's explanations.
"Here's where it gets weird, though. I am not Naomi, and there's part of me that's wild and stupid and wants to be that way. Maybe I'm just naturally contrarian, or maybe Naomi drives me so crazy with her goddamn soul of pure white light that I need to introduce some bad into the picture. Like a kid bouncing on the ice, yelling, 'It's okay! Come out and play, it's really thick!' And the way she looks at me, like it's not okay to be out there—makes me want to be on the ice more than anything."
"Children shouldn't play on ice. They're stupid and fragile."
"Well put. And the other night at the Nine Lives? I was stupid. The ice was thin, I fell through, and you pulled me out. Maybe Naomi's right and I should just stick with her from now on."
"No. You're not her."
"Then what do you suggest?"
"Break the rules better." Ryn thought on it a moment. "Whether you break or obey a rule, if you don't understand the rule, you're not a person. You're a..." She had no word for it. "A thing. A thing that only does what it's allowed. Not free. A..."
"A cog. Like in a machine?"
"Yes. That. A working cog is better than a broken one, but still just a cog." Ryn glanced at Denise. "Break a rule because you understand it, though, and you are no longer a cog. You become a god."
"O-kay." She seemed to suck on the idea. "What do you call it when you're halfway between a cog and god?"
"Humanity."
Denise nodded. "Want to know something about Naomi?"
Always. She was greedy for more, for anything, and that terrified her.
"When she came to my hospital room, I expected the most elaborate 'I told you so' of all time. Never happened. There's hugging and crying, but no lecture. I even tried, masochist that I am, to bait her. 'Oh Naomi, If only I'd listened to you from the start.'
"She doesn't nibble. She says: 'No. If only those men hadn't tried to rape you. If only the world weren't full of scumbags ready to pounce on the first sign of weakness.' I don't think there's anything evil in her. You need to understand that about her—that, and even after she said those things to me, the hypocrite blames herself for the whole night."
Ryn frowned.
"Yeah, and girls like that—who blame themselves first—they don't do well in relationships with selfish people. They don't know what they're owed. They get hurt and then blame themselves for standing in the way of his fist. She's a good kid, but goodness makes you vulnerable."
Now Ryn understood. "So you will protect her." From me. The monster.
"Oh yes." Denise leaned in. "But I'm not telling you to scram; I'm telling you not to hurt her. My best friend is precious fucking treasure. Remember that." Tilting back to her original posture, she added, "Not that you have a shot, because if she were gay she'd have obviously hit on me by now." Clearing her throat, she added, "But then again..."
Ryn paid close attention.
"Naomi's good with people and usually sees straight through them. Understands things she shouldn't, weird things, things a princess shouldn't understand. Told me she knew right away at the food court that you'd seen 'violence.' How does a senator's daughter from the Gardens possibly intuit that? But she did." Denise shrugged. "Except there's a blind spot when it comes to... a lot of you-related things. You confuse her, you drive her up the wall; she talks about you constantly. You frustrate her."
Ryn scowled, as none of that sounded remotely good.
"Oh, you don't think that's good news? It is. I told you once, Naomi has her little ten-year plan. Maybe she doesn't get you because you don't fit. You're not from her world. You're the thing she never expected." Denise stretched, positioning herself to skate away. "Someday she'll figure it out, though. It's going to be awkward and, I admit, I really want to see her face if you kiss her. It'll be a disaster—at best, a beautiful disaster."
"I don't kiss," Ryn growled.
"God, you're adorable." Denise pitched her voice into a low purr. "Imagine that soft mouth getting closer to yours—her breath all aflutter; her never-been-kissed eyes staring back at you."
The magic of Naomi's basilisk stare worked even from memory, a surge of prickles covering every inch of Ryn. Her whole body tightened in response. "Stop it," she snarled.
"Horatio's going to kiss her if you don't."
Ryn liked that even less, the way it emptied her of some hope that had been quietly mounting. She leveled a warning glare at Denise, who she knew was toying with her.
"Though he doesn't know Naomi's dirty little secret."
Ryn narrowed her eyes, resigned to wait.
"No one's ever gotten her flowers. The boys at Madison are too chicken. A girl will always remember the first boy who gets her flowers. Even if that boy's a girl."
Then Ryn felt it like a change in air pressure: Something is wrong. Very wrong. Her teeth ached and she wanted—no, needed—to find Naomi.
Cutting her way across the ice, she darted for the auburn-haired girl, who drifted back toward Ryn from the concession line, smiling and unaware of what was on its way.
Not even Ryn knew what—only that it was close.
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When Casper's crosshairs first touched Naomi Bradford's chest, the tiny demon swerved into his scope and matched his target's pace exactly. His shaking hands faltered; it was the guardian. The benefactors had told him the Antichrist had a guardian. I must avoid her. She is Death.
Each time his crosshairs drifted close to Naomi Bradford, the demon's gaze would pivot and scan the crowd, sometimes the building sides too, her attention dancing closer and closer to him.
She senses me, he realized, an ice-water chill radiating from his heart. The demon's proof of it—no one's that sharp, not without a piece of Hell on her side. It's true, then. Every word is true.
The benefactors had put bait out for the demon, so he waited. His thumb clicked off the safety and he tried not to think of his daughter.
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Naomi coasted along with two white styrofoam cups in hand. "Wow, did you miss me already?"
Ryn took her elbow and steered her through the crowd, toward a corner, where the hairs on her neck relaxed. "Here. Stand here."
"Okay, weirdo." There was amusement in Naomi's tone.
Ryn wheeled and sought her foe. She tasted him now. Mortal.
The asura were using mortals.
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"Shit." Casper lowered the rifle's barrel. The guardian demon had taken Naomi Bradford to a part of the rink blocked by trees and a building corner. I wasn't fast enough. I hesitated, and now the world's fucked.
He took a finishing pull on his cigarette before grinding it out on the desk. Stop freaking out—it's not over. He wiped a sleeve across his sweaty face and scrounged for his phone, texting the benefactors.
A moment later, they replied: "Wait for the bait to do its job."
Casper settled behind his scope and pushed the butt of the cigarette into his ear to muffle the report of a shot he still intended to take. He imagined he was in one of those yoga poses the counselor had told him was "as good as a beer," which was bullshit—but he couldn't drink a beer, so he went through the poses in his mind's eye from first to last, until his heartbeat slowed enough to straighten the bullet's path.
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"Looked like you and Denise had one very intense discussion." Naomi settled into the wall, passing a steaming cup of dark liquid to Ryn. "What about?"
"Nothing." With her intuition as guide, Ryn now guessed a sniper. She had him triangulated, and Naomi tucked safely away.
"So you talked about me." Naomi held her cup between both hands, steam rising to touch her pretty face.
The heat from Ryn's own cup calmed her riotous pulse and she inhaled the savory aroma of cocoa bean and sugar blended together. She is safe for now. "How do you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Know things—things I haven't told you."
"People talk in layers." Naomi sipped, her mouth a soft pink contrast to her pale skin. Her lips were sensitive to the heat, fascinating in how gingerly she applied them to the rim. "What we say is only the top layer. Guess I'm more interested in the stuff underneath." She looked at Ryn then, in a curious way that made the monster realize she'd been staring too hard.
She snapped her gaze down and shielded herself by drinking from her own cup.
Something happened in Ryn's mouth that had never happened before and her body responded with a shudder. She drank again, more deeply, tipping the cup back as sweet, rich flavor coated her insides. "What is this?" Witchcraft, surely.
"You've never had chocolate? Hey! Careful, you'll burn yourself!"
Ryn finished it. "That..." She inhaled the inside of the empty cup, eyes shut. "That is the best thing I've ever had."
Naomi shook her head in amazement. "Welcome to civilization. You seriously don't have chocolate where you're from?"
"Seen it before. Smelled it." But it had been foreign and different. "I prefer the old things."
Naomi eyed the emptied cup. "Except for chocolate and ice skating, apparently."
And you.
"Want me to grab you another?"
Ryn shook her head hard. No. Stay and do not move. "The memory suffices." The heat was still in her center, the taste on her lips.
"What color are your eyes?" Naomi asked, leaning abruptly closer.
Ryn leaned away. "Why?"
"I'm trying to imagine you without your glasses."
"Why?"
"Humor me."
Ryn fidgeted, feeling somehow chased; more perversely, as though she wanted to be caught. "My irises are blue."
"And your glasses protect you, don't they?"
"How did you know?"
Naomi grinned. "Layers, remember?" Then she grew more serious. "I get the feeling you hide a lot—that you have to, to blend in. If you ever want to stop hiding from me, though... I'd like that."
Ryn had no answer to give. As powerful as Naomi's stare was, Ryn's eyes contained the dark secret of the universe—that storybook nightmares were real and made flesh and walked hungry through the world. If she tore off her person mask, everything would change.
"Did someone scar your eyes?"
My eyes would scar you.
Restless, Naomi finished her hot chocolate. "I guess it was really bad where you're from."
"It's bad here." Ryn didn't understand why no one saw that. "Men tried to rape your friend. Others torment a girl in my school for mating too many males; they sneer at me for mating none at all. Another mated a girl too small to stop him, until she killed herself. Where I am from, predators are not so cruel." Or if they were, they met her and didn't remain predators for long.
Naomi's face went lax, as though Ryn's words knocked all the feelings out of her. "What about you? Did someone—"
A snarl peeled the corner of Ryn's mouth, but she twisted her face from Naomi to disguise her fangs, and perhaps a corner of a dark memory buried now for eighteen months. "No."
Naomi made no answer and that weighed heavily on Ryn. She felt exposed, and Naomi didn't rush in with a new topic.
It reminded her of the child predator and she glanced at the bench.
It was vacant. Ryn jolted in that direction. "Stay here."
"What? Why?"
"Do not move." Ryn skated into the crowd and scanned it. Bodies crisscrossed her field of vision, but she let the sound, scent, the heartbeats and the hormonal odors traffic through her brain. She skated for the bench and then past it, following a ribbon of chemical arousal.
She realized Naomi hadn't listened. The warm-hearted female pursued, straight into the path of danger. "No." Ryn pivoted in a spray of ice flakes, terror rolling through her as Naomi approached her, a confused smile on her face, as if to ask, What? Why do you look so frightened?
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The demon took the bait. The benefactors' other man on the ground—the pervert Casper wished he could shoot instead—drew the guardian away and lured out the Bradford girl. He made the final adjustment to his scope for the crosswind.
Five hundred yards. Ten-mile-per-hour crosswind, partly blocked by buildings. To the right of her heart. Past her guardian demon. Not impossible, but...
He should have asked for a larger rifle.
What if I miss? The crowd...
Casper prayed to God that he didn't kill a child.
His crosshairs stroked Naomi Bradford's slender throat, then dipped to her heart.
"Namaste." He fired.
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Ryn gripped Naomi's arm and tugged her close. She spun and let the bullet strike the cup of her hand. The only sound was a muffled crack five hundred yards away that the humans didn't hear, a zip, and the soft spank of jacketed lead against her unbreakable palm. She held the hot slug and steered Naomi through the crowd.
"Hey, easy," Naomi said, shrugging off Ryn's hand. "Your grip's like iron."
She kept between the distant window and Naomi, but the danger had abated—the danger to Naomi, at least. She still smelled the child predator.
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Her hand. Casper lifted his face from the rifle. She caught the bullet. In her hand. She didn't even know where I was until I fired. How could anything move like that?
He slid off the desk and ripped his rifle's carrying pack open. One-handed, he texted, "It's over. Guardian spotted me. Bugging out. Will try again later."
And then: "DEFINITELY need bigger gun."
At least the demon will eat the pervert, he decided.
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They wove through the crowd, Ryn only as far in the lead as she dared with a shooter still out there, albeit no longer at the open window.
Through the shifting skaters, she spotted the predator. His wide bottom and tapered shoulders made him an ungainly triangle, and he chatted with a dark-skinned child perched on the rink's wall, her hot chocolate held between two blue mittens. The child kicked her feet playfully. When the predator brushed her hair, Ryn tasted copper from her own bitten lip.
She scraped to a stop and dusted his ankles with ice, glaring up at him, carefully considering her options. Do not break him in front of the child. Unless you must.
Naomi hit the wall behind her, scooting nearer with one hand on the rail. "Hello," she said to the child before Ryn could challenge the predator to battle. "Is this your daddy?"
"No, I'm lost," the girl announced, more from excitement than fear. "This is Dylan. He had an extra hot chocolate."
"That's right." Dylan's smile was wrong. Ryn could only tell because, unlike Naomi's, it never touched the other parts of his face.
"Well, my name is Naomi. This is my friend Ryn. Ryn is really good at finding people. I'll bet she could help you find your mommy or daddy."
"But I get to help, right?" the girl asked. "I'm Amanda." She waved at Ryn.
Ryn didn't know what to say or do around children. They were stuck in between being monkeys and people. She glanced up at Dylan, whom she knew precisely what to do with.
Naomi skirted around him, though, and interposed herself between Dylan and Amanda, catching the predator's gaze with her own. "Nice to meet you too. Naomi Bradford."
"Dylan," he said, his voice too soft.
"Dylan what?" Naomi's face lit with cheer and Ryn instantly wanted to break one of Dylan's legs and drag Naomi out of his orbit.
"Um. Dylan Crane."
"Give me just one second, Dylan." Naomi tapped on her phone, glanced over at the child, and added, "That's a cute jacket, Amanda. Where'd you get it?"
"Santa," she said.
"He did a good job with that." Her finger flicked the screen.
"Santa is way better at picking out clothes than Daddy. I think Santa's a girl. She picks clothes like Mommy."
"Dylan Crane." Naomi skimmed her screen. "You live over on Akron Avenue?"
"Um." Dylan rubbed the back of his scalp and looked all around him.
"Because this website says you live there." She presented her phone to Dylan. Ryn could see his picture, address, and a block of bulleted text on the website.
"Hey. I'm allowed to be here," he said defensively.
"Sure. But maybe your parole officer doesn't want you buying hot chocolate for young girls?"
"I was just helping. I'm leaving anyway." He skated away, stumbling on his way toward the exit.
"Why's Dylan scared?" Amanda asked.
"You shouldn't talk to strangers." Naomi helped Amanda to the ice and took her hand. They skated into the circuit of people, scanning for her parents.
"You're strangers," Amanda said.
"True. Don't trust us. We're probably Russian spies." Then, in Russian, she said, "I'm really glad my friend spotted you. I don't think you understand the trouble you were in, little one."
"She does not," Ryn said, also in Russian. Something about what Ryn said startled Naomi and Ryn wondered if it was offensive.
"You don't look like spies," Amanda said.
"That's what makes us such good spies." Naomi winked.
"Da." Lying to children was actually kind of amusing, since they would believe anything, even from Ryn. Maybe that was why humans liked them.
"Was Dylan bad?" Amanda asked.
"Yes," Naomi said.
"He didn't seem bad. He was nice."
Naomi's tone became serious. "That's why he was so good at being a bad man."
They found a middle-aged man and woman in the midst of a frantic search through the crowd of children at the concession stand. Naomi guided Amanda over. The father drew his girl into a crushing embrace, the mother hugging Naomi. After they spoke a moment, Naomi showed them her phone and they went wide-eyed. The woman cried. The man mashed numbers into his phone. Ryn watched and thought it would have been simpler to break Dylan's limbs.
Naomi skated back. "That was terrifying. What were you going to do to that guy? How did you see that from across the rink? And Denise. And all of the stuff you told me. How?"
Ryn shrugged. He was a distraction, she realized. The asura had put both the sniper and predator in play. Clever.
"I don't get you. You can't figure out dating, but you can sniff out a pedophile or a rapist from eighty feet away. You beat up a guy who was like three times your size. You speak some kind of crazy old-fashioned Russian." Softer, she asked, "Who are you?"
"All those things and many others." But Ryn could tell it wasn't what Naomi wanted. She wanted a label, a category, but the monster was too old, too large for those things.
So she edged away from Naomi, coasting backward on the ice. With the danger passed, the moon high, and the power in the auburn-haired girl's eyes raging through her, she whispered, "I must go."
"Wait! I don't understand—Ryn! You're skating backward." She glided quickly after. "You've been skating twenty minutes and... you're already better at it than anyone I know. I don't understand. Who are you?"
"You know more than you should." More than any other mortal has, she realized, shivering—and turned to flee. She sped from Naomi, hopped over the rink's wall and kicked off her skates, exchanging them for shoes. In an instant she was fading into the crowd while sliding them on, casting a final glance back.
Behind her, Naomi stood still on the ice and only watched, mouthing words she couldn't expect Ryn to hear, but which electrified the blood: "I don't understand yet—but I will."
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| 43 |
[ Just Friends ]
That night Ryn listened to the wild pump of Naomi's heart from the shadows of her rooftop. A nightmare dragged the teenager under black waves. Her panic sweated into the sheets and her thrashing transformed the covers into knots, pinning her arms. Each terrified moan cut Ryn—brutal cuts, a novel pain inflicted on the only pink and uncallused part of her heart.
No knife was sharper than her friend's soft plea of "no, stop." This new pain was felt in sympathy for another, allowing no defense. The faintest whimper upset the immortal's patience and set her to pacing.
And how much worse would the nightmares be if Naomi knew the truth? An asura cabal using humans could attack from almost anywhere: any mortal they could buy, blackmail, or deceive might become their instrument.
Ryn rolled the deformed rifle slug across her palm and didn't think too carefully about what it would have done to a wet, mortal body like Naomi's—how its speed and hardness would crack human bone like soft wood, shred skin and muscle, how so much of Naomi's soul depended upon the preservation of that fibrous mass behind her eyes. Ryn had seen brains cleaved in two, had seen them slip out large fissures in the skull and smear against stone. Those humans didn't have heads one iota less durable than Naomi's.
And so that became another thing she didn't think too carefully about.
Instead, she scouted widely and thoroughly, yet always keeping close enough to her ward to sense imminent danger. She no longer attended school or spent time in her group home, and left Ms. Cross's increasingly terse phone messages unanswered.
She stayed awake even on the new moon, all the way through a freezing rain that drove like needles and soaked through every part of her. Too tired to move, she perched like a gargoyle on Naomi's rooftop and waited for asura, for mortals, for any kind of malice to show itself. A cold river ran between her shoulder blades, a waterfall poured off the point of her jaw. The wet worked between fingers, toes, until no part of her was dry.
When the wind struck, the wet froze to ice. It encased her in glittering crystal and the rain turned to snow, which piled atop her, layer by heavy layer. Her cloak became a stiff burrow and Ryn tried her best not to drowse.
At the first touch of dawn on her forehead, the weariness of the moonless night lifted. Ryn moved and snow shed from her shoulders in great mounds. Her ice encasement cracked and slid off her in sheets as she stood. Her fingers flexed, released, and she listened to Naomi rouse with a start from another nightmare.
And throughout the day, still no sign of asura or their mortals.
Ryn could keep this up forever, but she worried if she didn't find the asura first, they would prod her defenses until a gap was laid bare.
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 44 |
"I understand," Casper Owens told his ex-wife over the phone. "I'm working on it. The check's literally in my hand." He polished the barrel of a custom rifle smuggled to his cookie-cutter motel room by benefactors he'd never met. Its mysterious black metal was too cold to the touch—too cold and too dark—and it was longer by half than anything he'd ever fired. He didn't recognize the design; there was no manufacturer's stamp, just stenciled silver scribbles in a bizarre language, and though he didn't understand the words, they made him queasy.
"I swear, I'm putting it in the envelope now." Casper lifted the weighty scope, disconcerted at the way a low-frequency hum emanating from the metal lifted the fine hairs on his arms when he touched it. "Take a picture? I don't have a smart phone anymore, I can't. Can I please just talk to our daughter?"
The line went dead. Figures. Frustrated, he set the scope on his desk and shut his eyes, trying to remember what Julia's voice sounded like. He'd give anything to hear it again; once he was finished, he never would. He'd be dead or incarcerated for life, and had no illusions that Julia would visit him in prison—she'd disown him, change her name, and pray her new friends never asked about her father. If they asked, she'd tell them he'd died in a war.
Hell. I basically did. Last time he'd felt alive had been that hot skirmish in Greece, shooting Soviets so Hillary Clinton could avenge her dead husband. Funny how he'd thought life would get better after the service, but his last job was on the road selling pharmaceuticals to doctors who were too busy or stupid to realize the latest "novel molecule" was a substandard repackaging of the last—different only for the fact it wasn't off patent and sometimes caused nausea.
He'd justified it at first: had to sell the drugs if his company was going to make new ones; he was only bilking the insurers, really; those doctors ought to know better; not like the drugs aren't doing their job. That's how this world eats you. Doesn't make you do evil; makes you believe heroes aren't possible. Squeezes you under the weight of its mediocrity. The best you can hope for is a nice-paying job that's only a little selfish—and a daughter who calls.
He missed war. He missed the way—when he'd first come home—a dropped dish in the other room would rip him from a dreamless sleep and drench every cell with adrenaline. He missed the smell of spent powder and brass, missed the feeling of purpose when he woke, the sense of mission. Sure, he'd laughed at the idea then. But if he'd known what was waiting for him, he'd have seen war with clearer eyes. Even the shitty things he'd done in the service—and there were a lot—had made a kind of sense. They were for a reason, something more than hawking a slightly worse cholesterol pill.
Casper booted his laptop's video chat. Time to corral two dipshits. The benefactors had warned never to meet Trevor Wilkins and Paul Burns in person. The guardian demon had Casper's scent, and his associates could wind up contaminated by it, so they met digitally.
He wished either of them had spent even a day in the service, but Wilkins was some moonbat who hated Bradford's drilling policies and wanted to sterilize everyone with an IQ below his—he claimed it was 140. Casper had his doubts. Casper had once asked him, point blank, what he'd do if he could push a button that'd kill half the human population.
Wilkins had told him he'd hit it twice.
The Gaia-hugging hippy wanted to save the Earth from humankind, but Burns was just rancid in every way. He'd claimed way back in the day his great-great-grandfather had owned a hundred slaves and a plantation, and he'd talked about it like it was a good thing. Bitched and bitched about how Northern aggression had destroyed his inheritance, and now—apparently—the Mexicans were going to do it again. Bradford had spearheaded a couple immigration bills, which was all the excuse Burns needed to unload his bile.
Ludicrous, Casper thought, rankling. I'm trying to save the world, and all I've got to work with are two guys who aren't even believers; not in anything that's real, anyway.
The video chat picked up Wilkins and Burns. It took them a while to get Burns's computer unmuted since he wasn't very good with technology. After wasting ten minutes on that, Burns asked, "Did the admins get your BFG?" He had on a baseball cap and was bristle-necked, with the blocky face of someone who might have been a linebacker in high school, a contrast to the fancy hotel room behind him. He was in New Petersburg proper, somewhere, and Wilkins appeared to be inside a dark van, sucking on the paper of a joint. He wore those black-rimmed glasses that were popular among stupid people who wanted to look more like their favorite pundits.
"No idea where on Earth this monster came from, but yeah," Casper said, holding up the impossible rifle cartridge. It had a red tip and felt ice-cold and heavy. The bullet didn't look like any metal he'd ever fired.
"Shee-it," Burns said, "could shoot through a fuckin' school with that thing."
"A tank, at least," Casper agreed.
"This country has a serious gun problem," Wilkins muttered.
Casper sighed, because that led to an eruption of shouts between his two cohorts. He couldn't figure out who he hated more between the two. "Stow it, both of you. We're here for our own reasons, but we're all here."
"Damn straight," Burns said, the crinkle in his eyes suggesting he only argued to see other people get angry. "Nothing wrong with a li'l tree hugging, we're all friends here." They weren't. "I'll personally fuck a redwood gentle-like if it'll get Wilkins here to help me wax that traitor Bradford and his uppity bitch of a girl."
Casper had yet to figure out why Burns also hated Naomi Bradford, except that she was pretty, rich, and talented: three things Burns had never been.
"Get fucked, Neanderthal." Wilkins pronounced Neanderthal with a hard "t" and it made him insufferable.
"Plan to," Burns said. "Got a couple buddies coming in this week and we're gonna hit the Red Light district. You wanna come, Wilkins? Do you stop being feminist if you pay for it? Or do you just have to tip real well?"
Casper could tell Wilkins was close to exploding, so he schooled his expression. "This is not spring break, Burns. We're here to do a job, and here are your orders. Wilkins, you follow the Bradford girl and monitor her routines. Be on the lookout for the girl in the hoodie, but don't approach her for any reason. Observe. Report. Figure out when she's not guarded, when she's vulnerable.
"Burns—do what you do best. Dig up everything on the dark-haired kid in the hoodie, but don't engage her. Figure out where she lives, who she knows, where she sleeps, and what her routines are. All our benefactors know is that she's centered somewhere in the city, but she's often close to the Bradford girl. You've got a description. Looks like she's a teenager, so start with the schools."
They both scowled. "What about you?" Wilkins asked.
Casper showed them the round again. "Target practice."
|
The One Who Eats Monsters - Casey Matthews.txt
| 45 |
Friday was special, because Ryn was invited into Naomi's home and didn't have to hide on the roof. Instead, she watched the girl fan out notecards on the table. Naomi had dark shadows beneath her eyes, her posture bent from sleepless nights—but her smile was somehow still glorious.
"What are these?" Ryn leaned down, sniffing a notecard.
"I can't get over the never-tasting-chocolate thing," Naomi yawned. "But you must know some kind of food. If you can find it here, I'll cook it for you. As thanks for the Nine Lives."
Each card had a recipe. Ryn scanned them all. "I know none of it."
"None? There's fourteen nationalities of food here. What's closest?"
Ryn seized a rolodex full of notecards and spun it, the cards going flickity-flick past her vision until she snapped it to a stop. Plucking one out, she examined the ingredients and recalled the hearty beet aroma rolling from peasant homes at forest's edge. The script was Russian and by an unfamiliar hand, the cardstock bearing faint impressions of a woman's scent that was... half Naomi. "This."
"Borscht? You've had borscht?"
"No. But I could smell it in their homes."
Naomi gave her a worried look, nodded slowly, and examined the card. "I could make it." She sucked on her lower lip, uncertain.
"This was your mother's?"
"Uh. Yeah." She breathed differently—as though air was catching too high in her lungs. "I haven't had this since... well, not for a while."
Since her mother died. "Do as you wish." Then, more quietly: "I will try new things if they are your things."
"Let's make borscht." Naomi placed the notecard reverently on the countertop.
They ordered a ride to a nearby grocery store, one filled with too many smells, though the food was surprisingly fresh. It was there she realized not every human in New Petersburg fed from boxes and cans. While none of the meat had been properly hunted, the vegetables were only lightly poisoned and hailed from so many different places that Ryn had never seen some side by side. Naomi insisted on pork for the borscht, but picked meat that wasn't as thick with human-schemed hormones.
The Bradford kitchen featured hard marble surfaces, bright knives and wooden cutting boards, copper pans dangling from a ceiling rack, and a gas-burning stovetop. Naomi yawned again and her knife slipped on the onion. "Ah!" She clutched her finger, body seeming to fold around the wound. "Shit!"
"Let me see."
"Could you grab me a towel, it's bleeding."
"Let me see."
She was reluctant to turn over her hand, drops of bright crimson dripping from her closed fist.
Ignoring the blood, Ryn took the auburn-haired girl's hand and let trickles of it pool into her palm. The cut bled freely, so Ryn bent close and gently blew.
"That's so unhygienic," Naomi said.
"Better?"
Naomi rolled her eyes, but then furrowed her brow and muttered, "Yes, actually. It doesn't hurt at all." Glancing at her digit while running it under tap water, she frowned at a cut now noticeably shallower than before. "It's not as bad as I thought."
The blood on Ryn's hand excited her, filling her with an unnamable frisson. It didn't feel like hunger—but seeing part of Naomi imprinted red on her hand was right. Part of her on me. It was only with reluctance that she washed it off.
While Naomi rummaged for a bandage strip in a cabinet on the other side of the kitchen island, Ryn took the knife to onion, beets, carrots, and potatoes.
"I can hear you chopping like a maniac," Naomi laughed. "Trying to murder the onion for hurting me?" When she turned at the sound of Ryn planting the knife point down, she took an involuntary step back at the sight of minced vegetables. "How'd you do that?"
Ryn shrugged.
"They were— They're all done."
Ryn nodded at her bandaged finger. "You're too exhausted."
Suppressing a reflexive yawn at mention of exhaustion, she narrowed her eyes. "Show me this time." Fetching the cabbage, she tossed it underhand across the island.
Ryn thrust her knife through the cabbage, spearing it between them. "If you wish." A thrill jittered through her whole body and she realized she'd decided something without ever thinking on it: to drop her social camouflage. It kicked her pulse, to know she was about to show her friend a secret—to expose it. Watching for a reaction, she was unsure if she'd see terror or shock or, perhaps, something better. As with their species' mating rituals, this was a disrobing. Desire. That is what I want to see in your eyes.
Releasing the cabbage from its seat on her knife with a graceful roll of the blade, she halved it with a thunk to the cutting board.
Whether at the fluid gleam of metal or the sound, Naomi straightened, and for a slow-moving second, Ryn savored the blossoming surprise in her eyes. I like when your face does that.
The knife flashed in her hand. Let me make you do it again. She showed with the singing knife what she couldn't with words, and she held back nothing: This is what I do. The lightning strokes made clean arcs at a speed no mortal could follow. Something the earth and sun took months to make whole, she had reduced to tiny, regular pieces in less than a heartbeat.
Naomi gripped the counter's edge tighter at the sight.
Now you see. I destroy, and I am good at it. Ryn again planted the knife point-down to punctuate the act, and her friend breathed, as if having forgotten how until that moment. Her gaze seemed to drink the deva, realizing only gradually what she'd witnessed—and how little she'd been able to see.
Ryn had never done this before. Never... shown off. Even she was breathing quicker in anticipation. "Is it as you like it?" she whispered. Or did I show you too much?
There was stillness to her friend at first, and then—her mouth somewhat open—a look of quiet awe that pleased Ryn so deeply, so thoroughly, that she now understood why some gods craved worship. "Where'd you learn to do that?" Naomi asked.
"There was never a day I couldn't do that."
She snorted in disbelief, the awe wiped clean. She was too sure of her world's boundaries and things taught in school to take Ryn at her word. "Fine, don't tell me. But since you already did the hard work, and I promised to cook for you, how about you let me finish? Unless you think I'm too sleepy to stir a pot."
"I don't mind watching."
Once the ingredients were set to simmer, Naomi led her upstairs and showed her books—showed her one called The Brothers Karamazov with her mother's notes in the margins. It seemed as though her mother's ghost lived in those notes, in the smell of the soup downstairs, and the auburn-haired girl's voice trailed off as her fingers danced over the spines on her bookshelf. She brushed one in particular, saying she could nearly hear her mom reading it to her. Ryn especially liked its title: Where the Wild Things Are.
The models of monuments made from plastic blocks also came from her mother, given to her "so you will not play with the slatternly dolls your friends play with," and they built them before visiting places. Ryn didn't ask why the Eiffel Tower wasn't finished. She sensed the answer.
Leaning back into her pillow with Ryn on her bedside, Naomi talked about needing to pull a new book from her mother's shelves over the summer. Then, yawning so wide it seemed to expel the last of her energy, the girl relaxed with eyes shut and she talked more quietly until at last the book she held slumped to her chest.
Listening to the rhythmic, slow breathing, Ryn tilted to face the girl, and Naomi rolled her way at the same time, curling almost around her, coming nearly to the point of touching. Half lost to sleep, she murmured, "Haven't slept much."
"Sleep now."
Something unintelligible—all Ryn could make out was "have company."
Leaning down, she whispered close to her friend's ear: "Nothing will hurt you when I am close. You are safe now."
A stale air left Naomi's lungs, as though releasing the last tension inside her, so that she pooled by Ryn's hip. Impulse seized the deva and she settled her hand into that auburn hair and tucked its glossy locks behind the girl's ear. Watching her breathe for two hours, watching her enjoy her first dreamless rest in weeks, Ryn felt strangely content. There was no other place she'd rather be, nothing else she'd rather do than stand guard so that Naomi could sleep in peace.
She heard Tom Bradford's car pull into the drive, so she gave him time to come inside. Sliding from the bed and prowling downstairs, Ryn found him on a stool at the kitchen counter eating borscht and watching the news on his tablet, a lone overhead bulb highlighting his haggard expression. The weeks had eroded him. She'd seen mortals crumble under far less. The hot, bloody-purple soup relaxed his shoulders and he slumped with arms circled around his bowl.
The Channel 5 news played on his screen and reported rumors of a "shadow" that street dwellers had seen in the Docks jumping from rooftop to rooftop. An elderly man with missing teeth told the anchorwoman, "Like some kinda animal. No sound. Made no sound." Bradford snorted and sipped the borscht off his spoon.
He jolted when Ryn paced around him; gawked a moment, then relaxed. "Jesus, be careful sneaking up like that. If I'd had my gun I might have shot you." He winced. "No need to tell any Democrats I said that."
"It isn't true anyway." She put the lid on the soup and turned off the burner. "Your daughter isn't sleeping enough."
"That makes two of us."
"Three," Ryn said. "But she is the worst off."
"I'd sleep better if Mark didn't take days off, though my daughter insists you're quite the badass. Where'd you learn that?"
"Many places."
"What was the last?"
She told him a country—if it could be called that. There were regions recognized on maps as states which weren't, where the rulers had power in name alone, and Ryn could still walk those lands uncursed.
He nodded, the two of them saying nothing. She sensed he inspected her almost as closely as she did him.
Soon Naomi padded downstairs in her quiet socks, rubbing her eyes. "Ryn, you're still here. Sorry for passing out on you. Hi, Dad." She kissed his cheek on her way to the stove. "It smells nice. How'd it turn out?" She fetched bowls.
"Perfect," Tom Bradford said.
Naomi spooned out borscht and glanced over her shoulder. "How was the Hill?"
"Rough." He hesitated. "Holland and Gordon are trying to ram through that security bill. Not happening. Trying to strangle it in the crib. If it escapes committee, I've got the votes—Lipset owes me after last November, and he puts me over."
"That's the bill on the news?" she asked, staring at her borscht.
Tom Bradford nodded, a silence opening between them that seemed a gulf. "I'm sorry. I rethought it after Banich. I just... I can't. It's too flawed, too deeply."
Ryn straightened when he mentioned Banich in connection with the mortal law. "What does the one have to do with the other?"
The senator explained something long and stupid and said the word "unconstitutional" the way old priests might have said "blasphemous." At one point he explained, "Private social-media companies would have to collect personal information on every user and provide the lists to law enforcement. Things as simple as your uncle's tinfoil-hat rants could put him on watchlists that violate a laundry list of rights."
Ryn stepped forward, bristling. "But this law. It makes finding Banich's associates... easier?"
"They bill it that way, but the bad eggs could just skirt the law. It's not about protecting people from lawbreakers, it's about controlling the rest of us."
Ryn could not care less about which mortals controlled which. "But it might help find them?" she pressed, heart blazing.
"It might put the website threatening her out of commission." Tom Bradford slid his bowl away. "It'd also chill speech all over the web, add about fourteen new ways for the government to jail people they don't particularly like."
Ryn didn't care. "You let these beasts exist, though they threaten Naomi? And for what? So fools might feel free to whisper in the dark to one another?"
"Rebels whispering in the dark started this republic."
Ryn's lip curled, caring nothing for republics. Let them burn, to the last. Were one day of life a grain of sand, the sand of Ryn's immortality filled the length of every ocean and desert across all the Earth—no republic's days had yet numbered enough to overflow her cupped hands.
"Dad's right," Naomi whispered, sipping borscht from her spoon and shutting her eyes, as though to taste without distraction.
"He is not," Ryn snarled. Were Naomi's days sand, they would fill even less than her cupped hands—less than a teaspoon in her palm. Yet each grain was more precious to the deva than any contrivance of law.
"It's like with my bedroom." Naomi wove those skillful words: "That's what Dad sees that you don't, Ryn. This bill's just an ineffectual wall. It's theater. It's meant to make us feel safe, but instead it... becomes a cell."
"A cell for others," Ryn insisted. And I care nothing for them.
"Sorry." Naomi winked. "Not ready to sell out my fellow countrymen. We're all in this boat together."
Ryn growled.
"I sympathize." Tom Bradford scraped at his empty bowl. "I don't like it either. And Holland and Gordon are good at reminding me. Been hammering me in the press, saying not everyone can afford private security if their kid gets threatened."
"Did you tell them about your latest scheme to arm teenage girls?" Naomi teased.
"I did, and wouldn't you know it, that idea's not flying with the press."
"Have more borscht. You'll feel better."
"It'll make me fat and slow is what it'll do." He checked his watch. "I have some calls to make. Give me an hour, will you?" She nodded and he disappeared from the kitchen into a nearby office.
Naomi laid a bowl out for Ryn and sat opposite, blowing gently in a way that was interesting to watch. "My mom cooked this for Dad on their fourth date, except with tons of garlic. My dad hates garlic, but he was so scared of upsetting her that he choked down three bowls. The best part? Mom could tell he hated it, so she kept giving him bowl after bowl, trying to get him to be straight with her. His eyes watered so bad, he tried to pass it off as tears of joy. He threw up in her bathroom."
Ryn sniffed the borscht. "Strange."
"They had a strange courtship," Naomi agreed.
Courtship. "This food is part of a mating ritual?"
Naomi lifted an eyebrow. "For them. Maybe we don't talk about my parents mating?"
She nodded.
Leaning closer, Naomi grinned. "But if you don't like my borscht, you should shut up and pretend to love it anyway." Her eyes crinkled into a smile. "It's tradition."
Tasting the soup, she startled at heat and flavor wedded so rightly together; the beet and vegetables warmed her insides. Even the pork was fine, stewed into the broth's flavor. "Good." She wolfed down the rest.
Probably too fast, because Naomi watched with amusement. "I declare this Food Friday successful. Would you like to come to another?"
"Food Friday?"
"Old traditions are good, but so are new ones. My dad worries because Mark takes off Fridays. He likes it when you're here. So if you visit every Friday to keep me company, I'll make a different recipe—my treat, or you can help if you insist. We'll find out what you've been missing when it comes to cuisine."
One visit had been pleasing, but a promise of more was dangerous: too many opportunities to show this mortal too much. Despite currents of alarm, she couldn't refuse. Naomi had become like a sun that Ryn wanted to orbit. Feeling weak, and a fool, she whispered, "As you like."
|
The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 2 |
"In the far reaches of an infinite cosmos, there's a galaxy that looks just like the Milky Way, with a solar system that's the spitting image of ours, with a planet that's a dead ringer for earth, with a house that's indistinguishable from yours, inhabited by someone who looks just like you, who is right now reading this very book and imagining you, in a distant galaxy, just reaching the end of this sentence. And there's not just one such copy. In an infinite universe, there are infinitely many. In some, your doppelgänger is now reading this sentence along with you. In others, he or she has skipped ahead, or feels in need of a snack and has put the book down. In others, he or she has, well, a less than felicitous disposition and is someone you'd rather not meet in a dark alley."
—Brian Greene, The Hidden Reality
|
The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 3 |
When the multiverse was confirmed, the spiritual and scientific communities both counted it as evidence of their validity.
The scientists said, Look, we told you there were parallel universes.
And the spiritual said, See, we've always known there was more than one life.
|
The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 4 |
Even worthless things can become valuable once they become rare. This is the grand lesson of my life.
I'm at the base of a mountain, looking over a landscape I was never meant to see. On this Earth—number 197—I died at three months old. The file only lists respiratory complications as cause of death, but the address on the certificate is the same one-room shack where I spent most of my life, so I can picture the sheet-metal roof, the concrete floor, and the mattress my mother and I shared on so many different Earths. I know I died warm, sleeping, and inhaling honest dirt off my mother's skin.
"Cara, respond. Cara?"
Dell's been calling me, but she's only irritated now and I won't answer until she's concerned. Not because I like being difficult—though, there is that—but because her worry over a wasted mission sounds just like worry over me.
Behind me, information is downloading from a stationary port into a mobile one. When it's done, I'll take the mobile back to Earth Zero, our primary Earth, the one the others think of as real. The information I gather is divided up into light data—population, temperature fluctuations, general news—and dark data—what is affecting their stocks that might affect ours, or, if it's a future world, a full listing of where every stock will close on a given day. The existence of the dark data is a big secret, though I don't know why anyone would care. Insider trading doesn't even sound like a crime—not a real one, one with blood.
"Cara..."
Still just annoyed. I check the download's progress. Sixty percent.
"Cara, I need you to answer me."
There we go.
"I'm here."
There's a pause while she resets to apathy, but I heard the panic. For a second, she cared.
"You don't always have to leave me waiting."
"And you don't always have to plant me two miles from my download port, but I guess we're both a little petty, eh Dell?"
I can hear her smiling but not smiling from 196 worlds away. I've dodged the physical training for my job since just after my hiring six years ago. She's so uptight, you'd think she'd just report me, but forcing me on these long walks is her answer.
"You're wanted back. There's a file on your desk."
"I already have my pulls for the week."
"Not a pull. A new file."
"No, but..."
I put my hand against my chest, expecting to feel a divot, some missing chunk of flesh.
I want to tell her it can't be true. I want to tell her I would have known. Instead, I tell her I need an hour and cut the link.
If I have a new world, it means that particular Earth's me isn't using it anymore. I'm dead again, somewhere else, and I didn't feel a thing.
I'm not sure how long I sit, staring out at a horizon that's like mine, but not. The download dings its finish. I could traverse out from here, since there's no one to see me, but I steal a little time exploring the place fate tried to keep from me.
Another me is gone. As I walk into the valley, I'm a little more valuable walking down the mountain than I was walking up.
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The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 5 |
When I was young and multiverse was just a theory, I was worthless: the brown girl-child of an addict in one of those wards outside the walls of Wiley City that people don't get out of or go to. But then Adam Bosch, our new Einstein and the founder of the institute that pays me, discovered a way to see into other universes. Of course, humanity couldn't just look. We had to enter. We had to touch and taste and take.
But the universe said no.
The first people sent to explore a parallel Earth came back already dead or twitching and about to die, with more broken bones than whole ones. Some actually did make it through, and survived on the new world just long enough to die from their injuries and have their bodies recalled.
It took a lot of smart people's corpses before they learned that if you're still alive in the world you're trying to enter, you get rejected. You're an anomaly the universe won't allow, and she'll send you back broken in half if she has to. But Bosch's device could resonate only with worlds very similar to our own, so most of the scientists—with their safe, sheltered upbringings in a city that had eliminated childhood mortality and vaccinated most viral illness into extinction—had living doppelgängers on the other worlds.
They needed trash people. Poor black and brown people. People somehow on the "wrong side" of the wall, even though they were the ones who built it. People brought for labor, or come for refuge, or who were here before the first neoliberal surveyed this land and thought to build a paradise. People who'd already thought this was paradise. They needed my people. They needed me.
Of the 380 Earths with which we can resonate, I'm dead in 372. No, 373 now. I'm not a scientist. I'm just what they're stuck with. The higher-ups call us "traversers" on paper. Using ports put in place by the last generation of traversers, we download the region's information and bring it back for greater minds to study. No better than pigeons, which is what they call us, not on paper.
One day, the Eldridge Institute will figure out how to remotely download information across worlds, and I'll be worthless again.
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The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 6 |
Back on Earth Zero, I go straight to my floor after changing into my office clothes. Dell stands out tall in the herd of desks, more than two-thirds of them empty now. Her face is all tight because she's been kept waiting by the only person who ever dares inconvenience her.
"Slumming it, Dell? I thought coming below the sixtieth floor gave you hives."
She smiles, less like she thinks I'm funny and more like she wants to prove she knows how.
"I'll survive."
Of that, I can be sure. Survival is Dell's whole problem. Here, on Earth Zero, she wanted to be a traverser. She was set up for it too: an air force pilot who'd had her eyes on space before the possibility of other worlds opened up. But Dell comes from a good family, one with money a long way back. In some worlds her parents never emigrated from Japan. In some she joined the private sector instead of this government-research-institute hybrid. But she survived in over 98 percent of other worlds, and in most of those she thrived. I've seen three dozen Dells, and all but one wore clothes more expensive than mine.
When I take off my jacket, we both hide our wince. Bruises line my arms in jagged stripes, and those are just the parts she can see.
"It shouldn't be this bad," she says, her eyes moving between quadrants of my body like she's doing hard math.
"It's only because I've been doubling up."
"Which is why I advised against it."
"I need the long weekend."
We've had this conversation five times this week and it always ends right here, where her concern is outweighed by the effort it takes to argue with me. She nods, but the look she gives my arms lasts long enough for me to notice. It's when she notices my noticing that she finally looks away.
Early on, the professionals on the upper stories, scientists like Bosch and watchers like Dell, told me the bruising was from the resistance of an object from one world being forced into another, like the violence of north and south magnets being shoved together. Other traversers, and they are a superstitious lot, told me the pressure we felt had a name, and it was "Nyame." They said her kiss was the price of the journey.
Dell touches the clear screen that's been delivered to me. It looks like a blank sheet of plastic, but once I activate it I'll know the basics of the world that's just been assigned to me. I learned quickly after moving here that the city loves plastic the way my town loves metal. Everything here is plastic. And it's all the same kind. When a plastic thing stops working, they put it down a chute and turn it into another plastic thing, or the same thing but fixed. Plastic here is like water everywhere else; there's never any more or less of it, just the same amount in an endless cycle.
"Do you know what your new world is?" she asks.
"You haven't given it to me yet."
"Can you guess?"
I should say no, because I resent being asked to do parlor tricks, but instead I answer, because I want to impress her.
"One Seventy-Five," I say. "If I had to guess."
I know I'm right by the way she refocuses on me. Like I'm interesting. Like I'm a bug.
"Lucky guess," she says, sliding the screen to me.
"Not really. There's only seven options."
I sit and pull out the drive that contains the payload from my last job. As soon as I plug it in, the dark data will upload to persons unknown and delete itself. I send the light data to the analysts who will interpret and package it for the scientists.
Eldridge thinks we traversers don't know about the first package of intel. Like the organizations responsible for space exploration in the past, Eldridge is technically an independent company, though it's heavily funded by the government of Wiley City. There is an industrial hatch outside the city walls, in the empty strip of desert between here and Ashtown, which brings in resources from other worlds. Taxpayers, government officials, and especially Eldridge's lesser employees are supposed to believe that is how the company supplements the income it gets from research grants. Sure, bringing in resources from another world so we don't have to harm ours is probably worth a mint. But that doesn't add up to tenth-richest-man-in-the-city money, which is what our CEO and founder has.
Because no traverser has ever made a report to enforcement or asked questions, they think they've pulled this elaborate ruse on lower-level employees. But really, we just don't care. A job's a job, and people edging out other people to make money buying and selling something invisible just sounds like rich-people problems.
I look up at Dell, still standing beside me. She's a rich person, but the kind who's always going to be rich. Rich so far back it'd take two generations of fuckups for her family to go broke. There's a lot of this up here in the city. Not new-money rich people, like Adam Bosch, but whole rich families where the wealth is spread out among the members so it doesn't attract attention.
"Something else?"
"Saeed is gone," she says.
"Star? They fired her?" When she nods, I ask, "Did she mess up?"
I hope she did. Starla Saeed is one of the last traversers remaining from before I started. She was born in what they call a civil war but was really just a ruler systematically killing his subjects. When she was twelve she took a journey across the sea that drowned more people than it delivered. She could travel to over two hundred worlds.
If she screwed up, it's just a firing, only interesting because we have the same job and were close once. If she was downsized, she's a canary in the mine.
"One Seventy-Five was the last world only she had access to. When your death on that world registered...Why pay two salaries and benefits when they can just put 175 in your rotation?"
What she doesn't say, but thinks: Why pay a decent salary at all for a glorified courier?
"One Seventy-Five won't be scheduled for at least a week, but it wouldn't hurt for you to familiarize yourself over your long weekend. And pay attention to the bruising. I want to make sure it's clearing before your next pull."
Again, I can interpret her fear over a wasted asset however I want, and I choose to pretend it's affection. The long look she takes at my arms and chest makes me shiver, and for a second I wonder if I am just pretending. But then she sees my reaction and backs away, nearly running into Jean.
"Ms. Ikari," he says, formally, the way she likes.
"Mr. Sanogo," she says, also formally, the way he doesn't like.
The famous Jean Sanogo has always just been called Jean, or Papa Jean by the papers.
"How is our best girl today?" he asks.
"Stubborn. She's bruising more than usual, tell her to pay attention to it." Dell glares over her shoulder. "She might actually listen to you."
"I assure you, she ignores us both equally," he says, and Dell walks away.
I've finished uploading the information packet under my username, so I log out and log back in with my superior's credentials. I use the stolen access to send a copy of the light data packet to my cuff so I can read through it later.
Jean has pulled over an empty traverser's chair.
"Dell is tense. You need to stop teasing her when you're off-world."
"But then how will she know I like her?" I say.
"You've been flirting with her for five years. She knows." He leans forward, setting down a steaming cup, and adjusts his glasses to look at my progress screen. "Am I witnessing company theft in my name? My wounded heart."
"Come now, old man. It can't really be theft if I'm just reading. You can't steal something that's still there when you've taken it."
"You'll find a large portion of the judicial system here disagrees with you."
I wave my hand. Judicial is a Wiley City word if I've ever heard one, and it has no place between us.
Jean knows what I'm doing. Not only was it his idea, but it's his credentials I use to send myself the info. He thinks if I study the figures and look for patterns the way analysts do, I'll be valuable to the company for more than my mortality rate. He thinks I can be more than a traverser, that I can be like him. With the number of desks sitting empty around me, I am desperate to believe he's right.
Jean was in the first group of surviving traversers. Before that, he lived through a rebel army's ten-year border war on the Ivory Coast. As a traverser, he could visit more than 250 Earths. He used to walk the worlds with us, but now he sits in a room and makes the policies surrounding traversing. When he goes out in public, people repeat his famous quote—I have seen two worlds now and the space between. We are a wonder—from the moment he landed safely on a new world. They shake his hand and take his picture, but he is quick to remind me that he was once worthless too.
Jean is the one who told me about Nyame, just like he tells every new traverser. It's the name of a goddess where he comes from, one who sits in the dark holding the planets in her palm. He says the first time he traveled to another world, he could feel her hand guiding him. I've never had much use for religion, but I respect him too much to disagree.
"This is 197, yes?" he asks, nodding to the screen showing the info I've just pulled. "The sky scientists were braying over it."
"They're called astronomers, Jean. And yeah, they put a rush on it. They want pictures of some asteroid that's too far away and they didn't want to wait a week for." I try to rotate my arm and wince at the ache.
"They paid a premium to rush a few pictures?" Jean makes a dismissive clucking sound. "Too much money, not enough purpose."
Jean's dislike of astronomers is an occupational hazard, and the dislike is mutual. Those working strictly in the field of space exploration haven't been fond of interuniversal travel, the new frontier that came along and snatched up a chunk of their funding. In return, those who work at Eldridge treat space exploration the way a young male lion looks at an older, sickly male lion—no outright violence, but maybe showing too much excitement in anticipation of the death.
Jean nudges the mug I'm ignoring toward me again. Sighing, I take a sip and barely keep from spitting.
"I was really hoping for coffee," I say, forcing myself to down the dark mixture of vitamin D, zinc, and too many other not-quite-dissolved nutrients.
"Coffee is not what you need," he says in the accent my limited world experience first thought of as French. "Nyame kissed you hard this time."
"With teeth."
"So I see. Dell marked you for observation."
Of course she did. "I've only been scheduling pulls close together so I can take a few days off. I told her that."
"A vacation? I should think staying in place would have more appeal for you."
"Not a vacation. It's...it's a family thing."
At the mention of family he smiles, which just goes to show what he knows. In the worlds where he survived—where he wasn't a child soldier, where he didn't die trying to stow away into Europe—he did so because of the strength of his father and the bravery of his mother. From the worlds I've studied, his deaths are usually despite their best efforts.
Most of my deaths can be linked directly to my mother.
"Enjoy this time off. Don't do too much studying."
"I'll try."
But not very hard.
I've been staying up too late studying world stats and the company's internal textbooks since he first mentioned the possibility of a promotion to analyst. My mother used to say I was born reaching, which is true. She also used to say it would get me killed, which it hasn't. Not yet, anyway. Not here.
|
The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 7 |
Before I head home, I swing by Starla Saeed's place. I'm nearly too late, and I approach her apartment among a stream of people in uniforms moving out boxes of her stuff.
She's standing in the yard, flanked on either side by immigration enforcement. Her eyes are glassy, but clear. She might have been crying earlier, but she's done with it now. She looks strong, defiant, head held high like she hasn't lost everything in the world. I hope I look like that when they come for me.
"Star..."
When she turns to me she looks neither surprised nor particularly pleased, but when she looks down at the basket of apples in my hand, she gives a little smirk.
"We're not all Ashtowners, Caramenta," she says. "Some of us have tree fruit in our homelands."
I look down. Most traversers come from the encampments outside of walled cities; I just assumed the other towns were like my wasteland. Starla comes from outside of Ira City in the Middle East, one of the biggest and oldest walled structures nestled in the space between what used to be Iraq and Iran. Maybe the settlements outside of Ira are full of fruit and white bread and everything else Ashtown doesn't have.
A man carrying a box walks too fast, and the sound of glass clinking against glass rings out between us. She watches him like he's dragging her baby by the foot. She looks like she might yell—she's known around the office for her quick temper—but her eyes flick to the enforcement agent standing closest to her and she swallows it down. She's furious, but helpless.
"I just thought you'd like something. I know it's a long flight." I hold out the basket. "You can still resent me, even if you take them."
She smiles again, her mouth wide and full. "I intend to."
She takes the basket, but it's more out of pity than wanting the fruit.
"I'll miss you," I say.
"So look for me," she says. "I'm only missing on a few hundred worlds, and this is just one more. I recommend Earth 83 me. She's my favorite."
A woman in a jumpsuit tells the agents they're done, and the men push Star along. She looks at me over her shoulder.
"Don't waste your time feeling guilty," she says. "It'll be you soon enough."
Over my dead body...but that's not what she needs to hear. She needs my absence more than anything. A witness to the shame makes it worse, even if it's a friend. So I nod goodbye, and turn away.
|
The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 8 |
There are infinite worlds. Worlds upon worlds into absurdity, which means there are probably worlds where I am a plant or a dolphin or where I never drew breath at all. But we can't see those. Eldridge's machine can read and mimic only frequencies similar to ours, each atom on the planet contributing to the symphony. They say that's why objects like minerals and oil can be brought in easily, but people have to be gone from the world first—their structure is so influenced by their world's unique frequency there's no possibility of a dop. Before we lost 382, there were rumblings of war. I'm not sure how many nuclear bombs it would take to change the song of a place until we can't hear it anymore, but we lost 382 over the course of an hour: a drastic shift making the signal weak, then another, then nothing.
It should scare us more than it does, but they were already an alien territory anyway. That's why the number was the highest. Each number indicates a degree of difference, a slight frequency shift from our own. Earths One through Ten are so similar they are hardly worth visiting. When I pull from there, no more than twice a year, it's just to make sure the intel is still exactly like ours. Three of the worlds in which I still live are in the first ten Earths.
There is something gratifying about going places where I'm dead and touching things I was never even meant to see. In my apartment I keep a collection of things from those places in sealed bags on the wall. I've never catalogued them, but I can identify each item on sight: dirt from the lot where my childhood home would have been in a world where the slums never made it that far; smooth rocks from a river that's been dead on my world for centuries; a jade earring given to me by a girl on another Earth who wanted me to remember her, but who only let me love her at all because she didn't know where I came from. There are hundreds, and when I get back from Earth 175, there will be one more.
The worlds we can reach are similar to ours in atmosphere, flora, and fauna, so most of their viruses already exist here. But just in case, I seal my souvenirs in the bags Eldridge used to use for specimen collection, before they got bored playing biologists and shifted hard to mining and data collection.
I'm staring at my clothes, trying to figure out which to bring. It's hard, living in Wiley while visiting Ashtown. Not a lot of people go between. Sure, Wileyites will visit Ashtown like tourists, and Ashtown kids sometimes get scholarships to Wiley schools, but no one ever tries to fit in both places. Wiley City is like the sun, and Ashtown a black hole; it's impossible to hover in between without being torn apart. I've spent my time in the city accumulating the kind of clothes that will make me look like I've never been to Ashtown at all. If I were smart, I'd keep a set of Ashtown clothes for these trips instead of standing out like a mirror in the desert every time I go. But deep down, I don't want to fit in. I don't want to look like I belong there, because one day I want to pretend I never did.
I'm fingering a blouse I can't bring—true black synthetic silk, nothing a former Ruralite holy girl would wear—when my sister calls.
Instead of a greeting, she answers with a grunt of frustration.
"Preparations going that well, huh?" I say, sitting on the bed. Esther is still just a teenager, but the amount of responsibility she's inherited makes her seem older.
"It's fine," she says, voice primly forced. Ruralites aren't allowed to be angry, not at other people, because it would violate their code of endless compassion and understanding.
"Michael still being useless?"
No one tests Esther's faith, or her temper, like her twin brother.
"Cara, you know all people have value and use in the eyes of God. Michael would be a valuable contribution to the dedication...if he'd shown up at any of the preparations."
Ah, there it is, Esther's rage—the venom no less potent for all its masking.
"And now we have Cousin Joriah saying he might drop in and—"
I roll off the bed. "Joriah?"
"Yes, you remember. Tall, red hair? He moved out here for a little while when we were young, but then left for the deep wastes as a missionary."
Of course I don't remember. I can't.
"He's based in some small town on the other side of the dead lands now, but Dad thinks he might make the pilgrimage."
She goes on, but I'm not really listening. I reach under my bed, pulling out my box of journals. Esther said when we were young, so I pick a journal from not long after Esther's father married my mother. Caramenta, age 13 is written on its cover. Esther would have been five.
"Hey, I gotta go, but I'll see you soon."
I hit the button on my cuff to disconnect from Esther, then begin searching through the journal. Eventually I find an entry mentioning Joriah moving in, and skim a bit longer until he moves away again, gleaning all I can about him. Apparently he was very funny, though not great at personal hygiene. I find a few more references in later journals, but then it really is time to go. My mother won't yell if I'm late—not like she used to—but she'll cloak herself in this sad, martyred quiet I can't stand. I put the journals back. In them, Cousin Joriah is just called Jori. I whisper both versions of the name so that when I say them out loud later, it won't sound like it's the first time.
I've gotten rid of a lot of things from my past, but I'll always keep the journals. I read them like data from another world, doing research on people who love me. I don't write now. I make lists in my current journal, but that only started as a way for me to practice writing in Eldridge's code, so I'm not sure it counts. In the box under my bed there is one journal for every year, two some years, but I've had the same one for six years now and haven't managed to fill it up. Maybe it's because there's so little I'm sure of these days.
I've been in Wiley City for six years as a resident. In four more, I'll be pronounced citizen. For now, I'm nowhere. I live in Wiley but I'm legally still Ashtown's, and neither has a claim on me that counts. It's a space between worlds, no different from the star-lined darkness I stand in when I traverse. The darkness is worth it, because I know what waits on the other side.
|
The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 9 |
The emperor of the wasteland wanted to make an example of my mother, and started with me.
One of my mother's boyfriends wanted to cover up what he did to me.
I was born addicted and my lungs didn't develop.
I was born addicted and my brain didn't develop.
I was left alone, and a stranger came along.
The runners came for a neighbor, and I was in the way.
The runners came for my mother, and I was in the way.
The runners came for my mother's boyfriend, and I was in the way.
The runners came for no one, serving nothing at all but chaos and fear, and I was what they found.
Sometimes, I was just forgotten in the shed where she kept me while she worked or spun out, and in the length of her high and the heat of the sun I fell asleep alone and hungry and forever.
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The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 10 |
I don't know, but there are eight.
I've been driving in the desert for an hour when the truck pulls up too close behind me. I've prepared to be stopped, but deep down I'm still surprised. Getting shaken down by border patrol is only for outsiders, and the man walking up to my car with a greedy silver smile is proof I've made it. His teeth tell me he's one of Nik Nik's lieutenants, the kind of guy I would have been happy to land when I was from here. Like all runners, he smells like dirt and sun. He's tattooed solid up to his jawline, where the ink stops abruptly. The display of vanity strikes me. These days I look for status by reading clothes, haircuts, and high-dollar wrist cuffs, but this too-pretty runner reminds me that I grew up wanting to lick silver teeth.
"Lovely weather for a day trip," he says, like it isn't the same ninety degrees with a hot-wind kicker it always is out here.
"Not taking a day trip."
I don't know when my posture changed, when my voice dropped, but when I look at him square I want him to recognize me as one of his own almost as much as I don't. I wish I knew him, knew the name his mother called him so I could throw it in his face. Nik Nik's runners all go by mister—Mr. Bones, Mr. Shine—but I'd bet he's an Angelo.
"Toll for lookie-loos from the Wiles is three hundred."
"You mean two-fifty."
"Times are tough."
"I was just here."
"Three hundred."
I reach into my dashboard and take out three hundred, just like last time, though I'm going to try haggling every visit until it works.
He takes the cash with a nobleman's slight bow. "Enjoy your stay in Big Ash."
When he starts to walk away, I clear my throat.
"My receipt."
"Mr. Cheeks," he says. "Tell the next one you're paid up."
|
The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 11 |
My mother lives in a farmhouse in the Rurals where a real farm never was. The Rurals are a part of Ashtown that thinks itself a subdivision, even though the only thing separating it from the concrete stacked pods that make up the rest of the city is a wooden fence and the agreement of people on both sides of that fence. The people in the Rurals are all about charity and piety and religion. The people in downtown Ash are all about anything else.
There aren't many cars out here—even runners usually keep their vehicles on the other side of the fence—and sometimes when I drive out kids run beside me for as long as they can, reaching out to touch the paint. Not today though. Today they're all indoors, sequestered in thankful prayer as they prepare for the dedication ceremony.
My mother's house is in deep, where the gray-white sand begins to turn a natural tan at the edges. The front of the house has been whitewashed for the day, the plaster cast of Mary wiped clean. It's Jesus's mother, Mary, not the foot-washing ex-prostitute Mary, which has always struck me as something of a missed opportunity given my mother's background. Mary's head is inclined toward a flute-playing Krishna, who smiles benevolently in the empty way everyone in the Rurals smiles at strangers. And at me. My stepfather generally preaches more from Islam than Hindu, but there isn't really a statue for that.
My mother lets me in, her mouth a line as even and unbending as her principles. Her black hair, 4C hair that I know is twice as wild as my own, is pulled back in a bun so tight it looks straight. Her patterned dress is clean, but washed thin. It bears no scars from mending, so it must be one of her best. I could buy her new dresses. I could keep her in the kind of flash she used to demand from her men before she walked away from the life with a preacher from the dirt. But she won't take anything from me these days, not even a hug.
Her eyes are down. Her eyes are always down, this mostly silent woman who'll wear no skirt higher than her knee and no lip stain darker than a blush. My mother was a woman who had hair feathered whatever color suited her mood and knew how to look men in the eye until they gave her what she wanted.
"You're early," she says. "That's nice."
"I took today off," I say, but she's already turning to lead me inside.
I've seen her a hundred ways—with a shaved head, with hair to her back, with rows of piercings for eyebrows, blind in one eye, pockmarked with no teeth, and even as a still-beautiful matron of the House, who could charge as much as the young because she never used and always took care of herself—but this version is my least favorite. She spends her time passing out pamphlets downtown, shaming the workers at the House who took care of me when she didn't, who saved my life enough times to get this version of me to adulthood.
My family's walls are covered with more of the same holiness that's found outside. At least when we were poor she was original, painting murals on the concrete with the same paste she used to dye her hair. Now her walls are grids, family pictures—the old-school static holograms that flicker on and off with age—broken up with religious icons.
The more interesting things on the wall—dried animal bones and drawings of creatures with skulls for faces—are from Esther's faiths. My stepfather might love the Bible and the Quran, but my sister gives almost as many sermons as he does these days and she favors less organized religions, some that don't even have a unifying text.
"Joriah wasn't able to make the journey," my mother says, and I exhale a bit of the dread I've been hiding. I won't have to pretend all day then. At least, no more than usual.
She turns away from me. "Company's here," she says.
She won't say Caramenta. She's ashamed now to have given her daughter a slum name. My stepfather's name is Daniel. His children are Esther and Michael. My mother was born Mellorie, but those who trick in Ash use x's in their names as an identifier, so she'd been Lorix since before I was born. Here and now, she's just Mel.
My stepfather comes in, his smile wide and genuine. He is blond, like his daughter. It's an advertisement. Real Wileyites have white hair and skin so pale it's a shade off blue. Daniel's hair reminds his congregation that his great-grandfather came here willingly as a missionary from the city, not as a refugee or migrant trying to get into it.
He hugs me easily, with less hesitation than it took my mother to look in my eyes. "You made it. What do you think of the tie? Too on the nose?"
Usually, he wears a tunic like all men from the Rurals, but outsiders are coming and he's attempting to dress like them. His tie is covered in little fish, smiling at one another as they swim in all directions.
"Are you going for holy and approachable, or completely cheesy?"
He fakes thinking about it. "Both?"
"Then it's perfect."
"Thought so," he says, then nods over his shoulder. "Twins are out back."
I see Esther and Michael outside, having the kind of conversation I'm sure only twins have. Esther looks pleading, Michael resolved. Neither seems to be speaking, and yet both have been understood. Michael's black hair would have made him the outsider in the family if Mom and I hadn't shown up. He is nice to me, but not like we're family, not like I am someone he will ever give a nickname or call late at night. The twins don't remember their mother, a woman whose face and past matched theirs far better than my mother's ever will, but I've looked her up. In worlds where their mother lives, my mother never meets Dan and never leaves downtown.
Their conversation picks up again, and the wind carries Esther's raised voice against the window. I turn away, trying to remember the last time I cared about anything enough to scream for it.
I change in my old room, now converted into Esther's office. When she comes in, I take a container from my bag and toss it over my shoulder at her. She smiles as she catches it, running her thumb along the face cream's silver top.
"You shouldn't feed my vanity. It's my worst trait," she says, sitting on the cot that will be my bed tonight.
"That you think vanity is your worst trait is a sign of your vanity."
I put on tights, even though they're thick, black, and hell to wear in the desert, and Esther's eyes fixate on my legs. This last trip has pushed the traversing bruises—unique stripes on either side of my limbs and torso—down my thighs and onto both sides of my calves. That alone wouldn't force me to put on tights, but the garage tattoos on the back of my thighs, a massive eye on each leg, are also exposed.
My mother can never see the tattoos. I've had tattoos removed from my arms, chest, the base of my neck, and behind my ears. I've saved a little at a time to have the rest removed, but I started on the ones in plain view first. The next one I erase will be the largest: the six letters of someone else's name scrawled across my back from shoulder blade to shoulder blade.
"Mom still thinks you never got tattoos before you left Ashtown," she says.
I concentrate on not pausing in my task. "How did that come up?"
"Michael wants a plated tooth. She's been using you as an example, because you're worldly, but you didn't alter your body."
"He wants a runner's tooth?"
"Worse," she says. "He wants onyx, like Nik Nik."
"No." I look up from my tights so she'll know I'm serious. "You can't let him. If runners see him with an emperor's tooth they'll rip it out. It's an insult. If he has to get one, get silver. Silver's safe."
She's looking at me wide-eyed, seeing too much. It's the same way she looked at me when she was twelve. She's probably wondering how a Ruralite girl knows so much about downtown Ash's runners.
"Is that what you two were fighting about?"
She waits a second, deciding whether she's going to let me get away with moving the conversation along, then answers. "We weren't fighting, we were discussing, and no. That was about something else."
My sister tells me everything, so her pause means this is Michael's secret.
"I was good at hiding things from her before I left home," I say, sitting next to her. "That's why Mom never knew."
"And from me. I never saw them either until you came back."
"You were twelve. I could have hidden an eye patch from you then."
We talk for a little while, though mostly I listen. Eventually she looks out the window and stands. I stand, too, but I don't have anywhere to go. This is where we separate. The sun is setting, so she will need to pray. Today, the theme will be gratitude, a litany of thanks from a girl raised in a place with nothing. She will don an apron for tonight's festivities, something her people wear when they interact with the nonreligious, a sign of their willingness to help if asked. And I will wear my dress, a sign that I am not part of the church, just a nonbelieving donor.
But she's taking the face cream with her, just like she does the lip balm and tooth rinses I bring. She wears products from me that change her appearance, and it almost makes up for the fact that she is too fair to ever look like me. When I see her, absent the sunspots of her peers, her teeth shining white in that ever-benevolent smile, I think, There, there I am. Because that's what a sister is: a piece of yourself you can finally love, because it's in someone else.
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The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 12 |
Shoes. I'd forgotten to bring cheap shoes. I'd grabbed the only dressy pair I owned, black with the distinctive gold line running up the back indicating the brand without saying it. Dell got them for me because she knew I'd embarrass myself at company parties in whatever I owned, and by extension embarrass her, but it doesn't matter that they were a gift. These shoes could buy a month of food for the families out here. When I walk into the new church they click loudly in a crowd of heels too worn down to match the sound. It shames me more than it shames them, but it does shame us both. I make up for it by smiling too much, because my usual aloofness will look like elitism to them.
At the dedication ceremony, senior members of the church speak about how much this new building will mean to the community. I believe it. In my journal there's a picture of the old church. At best, it was a glorified barn. This new building has real walls, the kind that actually keep the heat out instead of just blocking sunlight. And, my stepfather's greatest pride, it has a series of attached rooms, each large enough to give temporary shelter to a family of four. Rural wastelanders eschew formal houses, but on bright days, days when the sun is too close and the atmosphere too thin, even those adept at living rough need more than mud over their heads.
The theme of the night is gratitude, so every speaker thanks God. But the theme for the night is also survival, so they are careful to thank Nik Nik almost as often. I don't know if they're thanking the emperor for a donation, or if they're thanking him for the privilege of having a building without his runners burning it down, but they aren't really grateful, just afraid of what will happen if they don't look it.
Nik Nik is sitting behind me. The Ruralites always save a seat in the back row for him during services, even though he rarely attends. Just as they always save a seat for the House proprietor, even though Exlee has no use for religion. They are both here tonight though: Exlee because standing there looking like the only soft thing in the desert is an excellent advertisement, and Nik Nik because he wants to remind people who bow to God that they must bow to him first. I stare at Exlee, done up in leather and black glitter, and long for the days when the proprietor knew my name.
After the speeches, my mother serves refreshments from behind a counter while the rest of my family gives tours of the facility. When I go to her, she hands me a glass of lemonade like I'm just another donor. It's her own recipe—hints of honey, the scent of lavender without the taste. She's not allowed to brag, but when I say it's the best thing she's ever made she doesn't correct me.
"Did you have to invite everyone?" I ask.
She manages to convey irritation without compromising the benevolence in her face. It's all in the eyes. "He gave. Everyone who gave is entitled to come."
She has to be respectful, because if you disrespect Nik Nik, he may want to teach you a lesson. That lesson can be a quadrupled utility bill, or a house fire set by a smiling runner.
I've never catered to him. But then, I've never been afraid to die, which has probably been my problem on more than one Earth.
"I don't know why you hate him so much," she says. "It's not as if he's ever crossed us personally."
I open my mouth to tell her how wrong she is, but she continues, saving me from making a mistake.
"We left downtown before he even inherited."
Hearing my mother talk about leaving the center of Ash reminds me where and who I am and which one she is. She doesn't know how many other hers died in the concrete because of Nik Nik and his even-worse father...but you'd think she could guess.
"You're right. I've never met the emperor. I just don't like the idea of him."
She stiffens, tapping the lemonade ladle against the bowl.
The sound is too loud in the room, which has suddenly gone silent. Which means he's here. If I turn around, I'll see the spectacle of Nik Nik: two tight rows braided just above his left ear, because he is the third in his line to control Ash; the rest of his hair left down so everyone who sees him knows he is not a man who works in the wastelands or with machines or at all; and in his mouth, all four incisors plated in synthetic onyx so they shine like black diamonds and, yes the rumors are true, cut just like them too.
And there is a world where in this moment a more reckless and honest me smashes my lemonade glass and cuts his throat with a shard, where I put my hands into his still-warm blood and the thick of it washes away the multitude of shames I carry. But that world and that me are so different from this one I doubt Eldridge would ever be able to resonate with it. I am no longer reckless, and I have never been honest.
I set the glass back down at my mother's station and leave the room to find Esther. I haven't heard Nik Nik's voice in over six years, and I intend to keep it that way.
To bring the night to a close, everyone is gathered outside. Daniel and Esther have each had moments addressing the crowd tonight, but this time it's Michael who steps forward alone. He doesn't speak. He just kneels, checking the wind every so often, until we finally see a faint spark in his hands. By the time he walks back to the crowd the sky is exploding over us. Michael is the son of the Ruralite leader, but he doesn't give sermons. He worships with fire.
The religious are the only ones who use explosive powders anymore. Weapons capable of murdering from a distance were banned after the civil wars, when Nik Senior took power, long before I was born. It feels miraculous to watch the fireworks, louder and brighter than anything Wiley City can ever give me.
Voices murmur through the crowd. This is when Ruralites believe in making confession, when the fire has grabbed God's attention and no mortal ears can hear through the explosion. So I wait, and when the next bloom of gold breaks open into the sky with a scream, I tell my truth.
"I am not Caramenta," I say. "Caramenta is dead."
|
The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 13 |
Caramenta died six years ago on Earth 22, my actual home Earth.
I was born Caralee, but I'd been Caralexx since my seventeenth birthday when I'd finally gotten tired of fighting for scraps in a world that would always be Nik Nik's. Once his dad died and Nik got true power, I put an x on my name and became his favorite girl. But he had a jealous streak as wide as his smile. I learned early on he was no different from my mom in handing out punishments for things I'd never done. My real mother—not the wilting silk scrap of a woman on Earth Zero who belongs to Esther, Michael, and Daniel but who will never be mine.
Out on the edge of the wasteland that was still half wet from the mostly dead river, Nik spent the night pretending to drown me. He held my head in the muck, but pulled me back before my lungs were even really burning.
I'd say, Why'd you stop?
And he'd say, Practicing.
Then he left, and left me alive, like he always did, because he liked me walking back to him tired and blistered. He liked caring for me afterward, as if the damage were done by someone else.
I was in a piece of the wasteland where the Rurals still reach in Earth Zero, face caked in mud that had turned as hard as fired clay under the sun, wishing I had anywhere else to go. That's when I saw the body.
Her eyes had starbursts of red in the white. Her left arm was broken out once and then back in again like a puppet, her shoulders caved forward but her spine bent back. In all my years living rough, I'd never met anyone who could stomach doing that to a person. Hers were the only tracks in the dirt—drag marks, not footprints. She'd pulled herself a little with her good arm, but whatever grace had pushed her had worn off, and a blood tide was crawling from her mouth across the sand.
I crouched down when I should have run away. Maybe I meant to steal what I could. Maybe I needed to see what mark that kind of death left on a human face.
That's when I saw it. The part of the face that wasn't destroyed was mine. The corpse was me, a neater, un-tattooed version of me. I stared at her face, my face, and thought it was a joke.
Next I heard the voice, small but not distant. It was saying a name.
I took out the transmitter, grazing an unpierced version of my own ear, and put it in.
"...menta? Caramenta? Are you there?"
It wasn't that the voice was lovely, but the concern in it was pure and sweet, something I'd never heard before and haven't gotten tired of yet.
"Yes...I'm here," I said.
I put on the woman's cuff and it activated, recognizing me as her. The picture on Caramenta's digital ID looked even more like me than her corpse. Her address was in Wiley City. I always wanted to live in Wiley City.
Caramenta, Caramenta, Caramenta. I repeated it so I wouldn't forget.
"Good. Thought we'd lost you on your first day out."
"No. I'm just...confused."
An irritated sigh, followed by, "I'm bringing you back. You're not ready. I'll walk you through the return procedure, but just this once. When you get back you'll need to do more than pretend to study the manuals."
Maybe it shouldn't have been easy, peeling the clothes off of my own corpse and leaving just enough of my things to identify her as me, but anything is possible once you convince yourself it's necessary. I'm not sorry, and I've never been ashamed.
After I changed into her clothes, Dell pulled me over and I was born into a brand-new world. That was six years ago. Six years since I've heard anyone say my real name. Some days, I can't even remember it.
|
The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 14 |
On saturday I work in the garden with Esther, because it offends me less than accompanying my mother and stepfather while they preach. The ground in Ashtown grows like it's half salt—leftover corruption from the same factories that used to pump soot into the air, giving the town its name—so the "garden" is an abandoned airplane hangar on the edge of my parents' land. There are rows of pots filled with imported soil, and the insulation is better than most houses in this area. The congregation helps with the tending and my stepfather divides the harvest evenly among his parishioners.
Ruralites aren't allowed to gossip, but they are allowed to stare, and those working with us can't help but look at the once-holy daughter of their leader, who went into the city and turned sinner overnight. I stay close to Esther, hiding in the shadow of her belonging. The work clothes I'm wearing stay in the back of my closet until visits like this, so even though it's been years since I bought them they still have that too-new look. Like I am an imposter. And I am. Back in the Wiles, I pass for someone who has known stability and money her whole life. Here, I pass for someone who remembers how to pray and scrape, who would never let the same kind of peppers they've spent weeks nurturing mold forgotten in the back of her fridge. I am always pretending, always wearing costumes but never just clothes.
Esther and I water and check the plants for salt-rot, a parasite carried in on the bodies of flies. It's the only thing that lives in the sludge far to the south that used to be a lake. The environment got too toxic for anything else, but salt-rot survived, jumping from reeds to ground plants to trees, leaving petrified white behind as it leached the nutrients out of its hosts.
On Earth 312 the factories we chased out here are still pumping, and there are no human inhabitants beyond workers who don't leave the airtight facility. In that world, salt-rot continued to evolve after the trees and the flies were dead. In that world it can infect the skin of a human and spread slowly but inevitably until a few years pass and all that's left is a glistening white corpse. They used to call it salt-rot too, but now they call it Lot's Wife and treat it like it's a curse instead of just a virus. I have the tiniest leaf of it in one of my sealed bags in the collection on my wall, and even though Eldridge's specimen bags are guaranteed to contain it, having Lot's Wife in my home is the closest I get to feeling true danger anymore.
I think about that danger as I watch my gloveless stepsister frown at a white leaf before tearing it off and tossing it into the incinerator. On 312, this whole building would be burned, and Esther would be exiled into the wastelands for daring contact with it.
We're supposed to stop to eat, then finish up, but there are two kids watering the other side and Esther walks our lunch over to them. Where Esther's clothes are faded thin but still clean and intact, these children's are crusted and ripped. They've got more in common with me than her, but they've been avoiding my gaze all day.
"We'll just push through and finish up," she says when she comes back from speaking with them. "It's an easy day anyway, and we'll have an early dinner."
She doesn't make excuses, just like she didn't ask before giving my lunch away. When Dan steps down it will be Esther, not Michael, to replace him, and at times like this it's obvious why.
We get home late for dinner, but Michael comes home even later. He plops down loud with his eyes raised. I wonder how long it took him to make noise again, to learn how to lift his eyes. In Caramenta's journals he's a pious boy, as reluctant to be noticed as the rest of his people.
His fingertips are clay red, like all the edgiest Ruralite teens. They dig their fingers into blood-colored rivets in the ground and leave them for as long as they can. The brownish stain on the nails is the closest thing to the black nail polish of downtowners they can get away with.
I'm admiring the ingenuity of his rebellion when he turns it on me.
"Is it true you kill people?"
"Michael!"
He flinches, but doesn't look at my mother. "Jeremiah says traversers actually go to other places to kill people. They laserblast their heads right off."
"You know we don't discuss that...business in this house," Daniel says.
That "business" is my job. Or my company, I'm not exactly sure which, but I know it's living, breathing, blasphemy to them. People who don't believe in taking up more space, air, or attention than strictly necessary are unsurprisingly opposed to claiming whole new worlds. They see it as new colonialism, and they're not wrong.
I turn to Michael.
"That's a ridiculous urban legend. Laserblasters don't exist, and even one of Wiley City's stunners would probably get fried if I tried to bring it over." I flex my fingers at him. "I have to use my bare hands."
My mother rolls her eyes, which is close enough to raising her head that I feel accomplished. Esther clears her throat to hide her laugh, and that feels like a victory too.
Michael looks down, considering what I've said. "But do you kill people here? They say that's why we've never seen traversers from other planets. You kill them all."
The company line is we probably have been visited by traversers, and just don't know it. Our traversers have never been caught by another world's surveillance, and other traveling worlds would take all the same precautions. But I don't tell my edgy stepbrother this. I just take a sip from my lemonade, maintaining eye contact long enough to make him shift in his seat.
I heard this theory—that every time a traverser is found on our Earth there's an employee waiting to garrote them and dump their body in a hole—my first week at Eldridge. Other traversers, and there were a lot back then, told the stories whenever we had a second without a watcher present. I was still new, newer even than they thought I was, so I didn't offer an opinion. It wasn't until later, when half of those eager gossips had dropped off and Starla and I were bonded beneath the idea that we'd be the last two standing, that I brought it up.
I asked her if she thought the company killed traversers from other worlds.
She just tilted her head at me.
Eldridge says they've never caught traversers from other worlds, remember?
She was always smart, savvier than me, so her procedural answer was a hint to drop it. It was a company function, after all, but we were alone outside while she smoked something from a green glass pipe that filled my lungs and mouth with the taste of figs each time she exhaled deliberately toward me. It made me bold.
Sure, they say that, but what if...
She rolled eyes larger and darker than any I'd seen outside of Ashtown.
What if, what if. So what? A handful of people are killed for trespassing when they're found. And? You still have an apartment. I'm still neck-deep in imported smoke. Maybe they kill people. Maybe they don't. Do you care?
That was when I realized...I didn't. I was curious, that was all, but not morally affronted. There might have been people dying, but they seemed inconsequential, against the mention of my city apartment and the promise of citizenship that seemed so close even back then.
Starla wasn't just telling me these hypothetical murdered traversers didn't matter. She was telling me nothing mattered. When I went, she wouldn't riot, wouldn't turn down my pulls to keep me in a job. I wonder if she would have kept inviting me out onto balconies for free smoke if she knew how things would actually shake out—that her selves would keep surviving and mine would die off more and more each year.
After dinner, when my family goes to sleep, I'll pack my things and slip out. Tomorrow is Sunday. They will spend the morning in silent prayer preparing for services I don't even know how to attend. And they will think I'm rusty because I've been gone so long, but soon they'll see I haven't forgotten...I just never knew.
Outside of the city the land is cut with a muddy scar that's still a low river in some worlds. This is the place where the dirt on my wall comes from, the place where, under another sun, I watched Caramenta die. I should stop, get out, and acknowledge the loss that no one else ever will. I should, at some point in the last six years, have brought a candle. But I won't.
There's a saying in Ash, mostly downtown, that's been applied to everything from thrones to land to spouses: It doesn't matter how you got it, if you have it, it's yours. So I don't mourn the dead girl whose life I live. Just like I don't spare another thought for Starla, whose absence means a bump in my paycheck and nothing else. I just begin the long drive back to the apartment, the city, and everything else I stole. Because it doesn't matter who it used to belong to. It's mine now.
|
The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 15 |
"You're late," Dell says as I run past her down the hall.
"Obviously," I say back.
I'd love to stay. Forcing Dell into small talk is fun because she's so bad at it with me. It's like she's being asked to communicate with a child or snake—something that is either boring or dangerous, with no in-between. But I'm not just late, I'm late for Jean, so I keep moving.
Every traverser has a more experienced mentor. Because I traverse more than any other employee, I get the honor of having Jean Sanogo himself. No one's ever questioned why my meetings with Jean are weekly while everyone else only checks in monthly. Only Dell ever looks suspicious, but she's classist to the bone so she thinks I need it to survive the pressure of a real job. Jean knows better. He knows growing up under the threat of starvation and homelessness means nothing will ever quite feel like pressure again. He knows even better than I do.
I dated a man a few years back who had never worn an untailored suit or cut his own hair, and who fell fast in love with my durability. He liked the way nothing shook me, not a house fire, not an approaching storm. The way he could count on me to never be afraid was its own aphrodisiac to an only son who'd been raised sheltered and fragile. I liked his fragility, how easily shocked he was, how he never thought to hide it.
His name was Marius and I miss him. But when his family met me, they saw cold where he saw strength. His mother warned him that people who come from Ash have seen so many bodies in the street they don't have feelings anymore, only a survival instinct. He told her I wasn't from that Ash. I was from the good, clean, farm-working Rurals. Still, she convinced him he was just a means to an end, a shortcut to security. I thought I cared about him, but I had done precisely that with Nik Nik on my old world, so maybe she was right. I do miss Marius, but like I would miss a pet bird—something fragile that trusted me to hold it in my hand, heartbeat against my palm, ribs vulnerable to the whims of fingertips. Maybe it's just the power I miss.
Jean is staring at his screen when I come in.
"Are you just now going over my report?"
"The summary. I've already gone over your analysis." He looks up at me. "Despite the late notice. Three A.M.? This morning?"
"I haven't pulled from that mountain port in a while. I didn't realize we had so much surveillance in that area and I didn't get back from the wasteland until Sunday."
He turns away from his screen. "You forgot to note the discrepancy in population change. Their population loss was holding steady with ours, now it's accelerated."
Four hundred lines of analysis and he would find the one mistake.
"By less than one percent."
"It still goes in the report."
"Analysts neglect significant findings in their reports all the time. I found discrepancies in all of the examples you had me study."
He leans forward, which means he's going to use his dad voice on me even though we've long since established I'm immune.
"Yes, they do, but when the company looks at applying analysts they don't see their skill. They see their credentials, background, and education. The people Eldridge hires have to prove they're unfit despite their background. You'll have to do the opposite, and to do that you need to be infallible where they are flawed."
It takes all the venom out of me, because arguing with him is just arguing against the voice in my head.
"I won't miss it again."
He nods. "When is the next placement test?"
"Six weeks," I say.
"And after that?"
"Six months."
He looks at his screen, then back at me. "That will be too late."
"They're that close?"
I've always known if Eldridge scientists ever figured out a way to remotely retrieve intel I would be out of a job. There is no grace period on the temporary employment visa given to traversers. The moment I'm terminated, the visa dissolves, and I will be escorted out of the city's walls just like Starla. If I can't get hired into a permanent position, if I can't make myself indispensable like Jean, I'll end up back in Ash.
"Bosch is hinting at a big announcement next quarter, something that will increase profits."
"Like cutting payroll."
Jean nods. "It might be something else, and a lot can go wrong even if he's confident, but we can't gamble on their failure," he says. "Can you be ready in six weeks?"
I shrug, but when he narrows his eyes I answer properly. "Yeah. Yes. Yes, I can. I have the hang of the comparison portion, I'm good at writing the actual reports and establishing conclusions. But that stupid memorization section is almost half the score and I can't convince my brain it's important to hold so much useless bullshit."
He types something into his computer. "You're right about your reports; don't leave anything out and you'll be fine. For the next six weeks I'll quiz you on the demographics of each world, starting with the closest by degree to the furthest. The last two weeks before the test date, we'll do a full review of all portions of the test."
"There are three hundred and eighty worlds. You think I can have over sixty worlds studied by next week?"
"There are three hundred and eighty-two. Worlds that used to resonate but have gone silent are included on the test too."
"I wasn't even working when 382 went dark!"
"Then you'll get to learn something new. Isn't that exciting?"
"Riveting."
I stand up. It's nine hours until my next pull, which is nine hours that just got earmarked for studying.
"Have you reviewed the file for 175 yet?"
"I haven't had time."
"Make time."
"Why?"
"One Seventy-Five is a future world."
"Why is that a problem?"
I want to ask, Why does that scare you? but Jean and I are alike enough that I know he'd never admit to being afraid.
"Because you didn't just die there. You were murdered."
He's too superstitious. He sees future worlds as premonitions. I am not like him or anyone else from outside of Wiley City. I don't have faith in things I can't see. But when he says murdered, I get goose bumps.
"I'm sure it's nothing out of the ordinary. I'd be more worried if it were natural causes."
"Cara, if this other you—"
"There is no other me."
It's a stupid thing for a traverser to say, but it's closer to being true for me than it is for anyone else.
"Just look into it."
"I will. I will."
|
The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 16 |
What I don't tell Jean, what he should already know, is that I've looked up as much information about the me on 175 as I can stand. I know her name is Nelline, and I know she never left Ash. That's how I knew she was the one to die when Dell asked. I don't know how she died for the same reason I couldn't turn around to see where Nik Nik was standing at my family's ceremony: I am too afraid to look. I can't yet process information about, or photos of, Nik Nik. Six years of emotional healing cracks right along old seams when he gets too close. If I open Nelline's last file and find a cause of death linked to him, it will take me back to every time it was me laid out in the dirt looking up. Every time a silver-tipped boot was the last thing I saw for hours.
The section for Nelline's "known associates" was always blank, but I'm sure she was attached to the emperor. She never had the too-thin look of the struggling, which means she had a little security, and there are few enough ways to get it out in the wastelands. I know what I would do if I were her. What I did when I was her. The House tried its best by me, but I failed as a sex provider. Don't let anyone ever tell you it doesn't take skill, because it does, and I didn't have it. Maybe the me on 175 was different. Maybe she had something I was missing and could make a real go of it.
But Jean is, as always, right. I need to stop hiding from Nelline's final report. I don't have 175's full world data like I do for Earths I've pulled from, but I've used Jean's credentials to ensure I always have a recent copy of the files from my other selves. It's either a small enough data transfer that he's never noticed, or he just understands and lets me have this. Using my cuff, I bring up the most recent information I got with Jean's login. But the file is nearly empty. No autopsy has been loaded, no pictures of a body, but they must have a body or I wouldn't have gotten the file.
There's only a brief death notice listing her age and naming the cause of death: exsanguination. It's not much, but it's enough for me to picture it.
It won't be a large wound, nothing messy. It's always a small slit across a vein. It would be easy to get help before you die, but the man who kills like this wears a cartridge ring on each middle finger. The one on his left hand thins the blood to water, the one on his right paralyzes extremities but leaves the organs pumping frantically. He inherited the rings from his father, and kills just like Nik Senior did, except he doesn't leave you in a sewage heap or a ditch. He chooses a place where you can see something you love.
The rumor is Nik Nik learned to kill by watching his father, which is why the method is the same, but that the first kill he saw was his beloved older brother Adranik, which is why the location is always kind. Every time I doubt that Nik Nik can truly feel anything at all I remember the way his eyes glazed whenever his brother was mentioned. If nothing else, I know he loved the brother his father killed. Which means he knows what it feels like when a powerful man takes the person you care about most in the world away...and still he does it.
The file is incomplete, so I don't know where she was found. But the tox screen and wound description in the notes are familiar enough. There's no mention of it, but I'm sure the small cut is jagged and full of saliva. A perfect match to an obsidian fang.
The first time he used those teeth on me was early in our relationship, our first fight. He'd cut my neck from behind, more a slice with his tooth than a bite. It was a small cut, not even into the artery, but I didn't know that and I'd heard enough stories to believe I was going to die. Especially once he put his fist in my mouth, my teeth stretched to aching against his second and third knuckle. No one my age has ever seen a real gun, but my mother told me my grandfather killed himself with one. In that moment I thought of him, teeth stretched around a metal barrel, and wondered if this death was in my blood.
I waited for the telling spray, the taste they say is bitter and signals that you'll never stop bleeding and you'll never feel again. He left his hand there until my jaw cramped, until the waiting was worse than the ending and I thought about probing the ring for a trigger with my tongue myself, just to have control. Then he pulled his hand away.
"Learn your lesson," he said before walking away.
I didn't. And judging by her cause of death, Earth 175 me hadn't either. Nelline. Her name was Nelline.
Good for you, Nelline.
I hope she died trying to take a piece of something that wasn't hers. I hope she died trying, because my mother always said that was how I was going to go, so her mother probably did too. Was her mother still alive? I poke at Nelline's file, hoping for even a next-of-kin listing, but the information is skeletal even for the basic files I usually download. There's an additional packet of information, but it's earmarked "Medical," which means it's been sent to Dell to compare with my own data. Whether the watchers are sent our dops' medical files for our protection—using the data to become aware of possible health concerns early—or to track the side effects of traversing against a control, none of us are sure. But I do know the files are locked down as confidential, and even logging in as Jean won't let me access them. I need to get them from Dell, and to do that, I'd have to ask her for them, and to do that, I'd have to be the kind of person for whom asking for things isn't exactly the same as drinking glass shards. So...I'm probably not going to get that file.
To palate cleanse from 175, I pull up 255 me. When I see her fuzzy image I exhale, like always. Earth 255 is my favorite. In the three-dimensional image that pops up, she smiles over her shoulder. It's not posed, just some candid that appeared in their media and so was picked up by our surveillance. She lives in Wiley City, but she wears her hair long and dark and fiercely curly, like she has nothing to lose by looking like an outsider. She's struck the perfect balance of being enough of them to belong, and enough of Ash to be seen as a novelty, a rarity. Valuable.
A Wiley City couple found her when she was four, barefoot and wandering by the main road into the city. So they took her. If my mother had any rights, it would have been a kidnapping, but she was just an independent worker struggling with addiction. If she'd still been attached to the House, the proprietor would have used their power to fight for the child to stay. But you can't work through the House if you use like you need it, so her mother had no support when the couple the papers called saviors abducted her daughter and called it adoption. Her name is Caralee, too, and her parents let her keep it. They even supported her as she used a portion of her inheritance for outreach to other children in Ashtown.
She got married last month on a balcony on the hundredth floor to a man who is a little rich and a lot in love with her. At least, that's how it looked in the photos the Wiley City press ran. I want to print out her picture and keep it on a wall, like a relative I couldn't be more proud of, but as much as I like knowing she exists, it makes me angry.
I was a climber. When my mother kicked me out as a kid, I would climb onto the roof of our house. 255 was probably just a shit climber, so she walked all the way to the road. That's how fickle fate is. One day you wander instead of climbing, and you end up rich and happy. One day you don't, and you're me. Or you're drained outside like 175. Or you're left bloodied and naked, facedown in the dirt on a world that isn't yours, like the girl whose bed I sleep in.
Fate breaks rough, most of the time.
|
The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 17 |
My pull today is on Earth 238. It's another rush job, this one being funded by seismologists wanting to know if a recent earthquake was more or less severe on an Earth that hadn't drilled in the area. By this time next month I will hopefully see the number 238 and know the population and time variances from our Earth down to a single death or tenth of a second. But right now I can only remember the practical: that the payload is in a heavy-surveillance country, so I'll need darkness and an obscurer for the cameras, but I died here as a young child, which means I can get out of using a veil if Dell's feeling generous.
I'm not allowed to access the building higher than my level. I have to wait for Dell to send the elevator down. When it doesn't come, I press a button on my cuff to buzz her.
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel," I say into the speaker.
There's a long moment of silence, and then "I'm not a princess" comes over the connection.
"Could have fooled me," I say, but she's already closed the link and sent the elevator.
Dell's prep room is on the eightieth floor, just to the side of the traversing room. I take a second to appreciate the all-glass view. It's an artery floor. Artery floors happen every twenty stories from 40 on, and are as tall as cathedrals. There are walkways on every floor, each lined with trees and gardens lit from the SimuSun panels on the paths above it, but artery floors are so tall real sunlight slips in like a peeking child. Real sunlight as filtered through Wiley City's domed artificial atmosphere, but still.
Dell doesn't know that I know, but she lives on this floor. It's high up for someone with a real job, the same floor Eldridge CEO Adam Bosch lives on, but Dell is an heir. Every day after work she walks out of the office exit on 80, and follows the curves around buildings for six blocks, and then she's home.
I don't live on an artery. Or even close to one. I exit on 40, then take one of the congested escalators down ten stories. I never see the sun, but it's still a good neighborhood. There aren't many bad ones in Wiley City. It was built and is still run by people who care...for other Wileyites, anyway. They save all their apathy for the world right outside their walls—for the Rurals, the wasteland, and people like me.
If I were born here, or if I were already made citizen, I wouldn't get kicked out if I lost my job. I'd go to a career center that would give me training to fix the issue that got me fired, then give me listings for a new job. If I lost my job because I was sick or having a nervous breakdown, I'd draw a basic income until I was better. At worst, I'd have to move to a lower level where housing is free, though it's usually reserved for retirees and students. But I'm not a citizen, so unemployment means nothing but a quick banishment.
"Do you miss it?" Dell asks, sneaking up on me the way I usually do to her.
The view isn't even of Ashtown; it's of a random spot in the desert on the other side of the city, but she wouldn't know the difference.
"No," I say. It's the easiest question I've had to answer all day.
I don't think she even cares about the answer. She just likes reminding me where I came from, why I shouldn't know where she lives.
"You don't seem like the kind that thinks deeply about the past," she says.
"Because I'm a worker bee and we only think about the job?"
She shrugs. "Maybe."
"Rather be a drone. They get to fuck the queen."
That, she ignores. For some reason seeing her unsettled makes me brave enough to ask a favor.
"Hey, did you get Nelline's medical records with that last pull?"
She looks at me again, showing a slight curiosity that would probably look like pure confusion on a more open face.
"Nelline?" she asks.
"Me. I mean, the me from 175."
Understanding, she looks away. "That's not really your concern."
I haven't actually asked to see the file, but apparently that's not a necessary step in her telling me no.
"It's just that Jean thinks...I just want to know more about how she died, or maybe her life before that. If you could just—"
"What good can knowing serve?"
"What harm can come from me seeing the file?"
She takes a breath, then looks me in the eye. "I know you were killed there, but if you plan on seeking revenge—"
"I'm just curious," I say, though I'm not sure that's it, not all of it anyway. "Did I try to get revenge over my last hundred murders? I'm the best in the universe at letting bad shit happen to me."
When the last sentence comes out of my mouth we both make a sound—her because she's done arguing, and me because it's one of those truths too true to ever be said out loud.
"It's time we start prep," she says, even though it's early yet.
I bite back a dozen arguments. Asking for access to the file in the first place cut me. Begging would kill me dead.
Dell has laid out everything I'll need for this pull, little stacks on the prep table as sensible and organized as her whole life.
The clothes I have to wear today are monochromatic and androgynous. Subconsciously or deliberately, the people in this section of 238 have rebelled against their government's surveillance by refusing to stand out. She turns away when I change, though I stay facing her. Not because I'm daring her to look at me, but because my attempts to be her equal would dissolve if she saw the tattoo on my back.
After I change, she installs the obscurer in the center of my chest, a small square that will disguise my presence from any electronic surveillance. When she reaches for a veil, a web of tape that will cross my face from chin to forehead and cheek to cheek, I stop her.
"I died here when I was four. I don't need that."
The numbers that could get me a permanent position I keep forgetting, but somehow I remember my death age on 373 worlds.
"But you've visited here before. Someone might recognize you and think your presence in the same place is suspicious."
"It's a remote area and the obscurer takes care of drones. No one's seen me in person. Once I encounter someone, I'll start using the veil here. But not before."
All traversers hate the veils. We say it's because they make everything look filmy. And that is the reason I dislike them. But the others fear the change. The tape pulls at your skin, changing its shape, then projecting a new image over it. Seeing a different face on yours in an unfamiliar world feels like you've become someone else and will never get back. The more superstitious traversers believe if you die like that, even Nyame in her dark and endless power won't recognize you to bring your heart back to the world where it belongs.
But the practical higher-ups have never heard of Nyame, the unofficial goddess of traversers. If they knew the irrational reason traversers reject the veil, they would force it on us. So we talk about our vision and diminished effectiveness and longer pull times, because these are terms they understand.
Thankfully, Dell bypasses the veil and slips the Misery Syringe into the vest pocket nearest my dominant hand. We never talk about it. If something goes wrong, if I get sent to an Earth where I already exist or if there is a complication with my entry, I am supposed to use the syringe. It will give me two minutes pain free, so I can live long enough to tell Dell what happened. She will recall me, even though the snap of being pulled back so soon will kill me if I'm already badly injured. They say if you time it right, your watcher can pull you before the euphoria wears off. They say you'll never feel a thing.
We walk out of prep and into the traversing room, a huge space with a domed glass roof. The sun is still setting, which means it's not dark on 238 yet and we'll have to wait.
"You'll be going to 175 soon. It's been a while since you've had a new world."
She's stalling, so I stay quiet until she gets to her point.
"Do you ever wonder what sets you apart?"
"You mean why I haven't died?"
She nods, but won't say it.
Why have I survived? Because I am a creature more devious than all the other mes put together. Because I saw myself bleeding out and instead of checking for a pulse, I began collecting her things. I survive the desert like a coyote survives, like all tricksters do.
"Luck, I guess," I say, because the first thing a monster learns is when to lie.
When she steps beside me, the backs of our hands touch. She doesn't react, and I try not to. Soon enough, the sun is winking out and she readies the last step.
"Deep breath," she says, like it's the first time. She injects the serum first into my left wrist and then into my right. Next she kneels, injecting just above each ankle.
It burns, but that's too simple a term. It burns like opening your eyes in the light burns, like being born probably burns. It doesn't feel like my body is responding to a foreign substance, but like the substance is awakening cells usually dormant.
Once the wave has reached every inch of my body, Dell comes with the collar. The serum opens my cells to having their vibrations altered, but it is the collar that will control them, that will send me away and bring me home. It doesn't need to be a collar. I could just carry the marker at the center of the collar and Dell could do a proximity pull for anything in its radius. But Eldridge doesn't trust us not to lose this key to Earth Zero unless it's hanging off of our necks. That, and I think they like reminding us we're pets.
Dell's fingers graze my neck and I shudder with what she thinks is pain. She doesn't know the serum doesn't just open my cells, it hones my senses until all I can think about is how loud the world is and how good she smells.
I climb the ladder of the hatch—a ten-foot-tall metal sphere that gained its name from the hole at the top you use to enter it, and what it looks like when you emerge. Once I secure the door, the hatch is as dark as an empty universe. I'm not allowed to know what material makes up the sphere, but even without its proper name, I would know it anywhere.
Outside, Dell will be putting on headphones and concentrating, like the DJ or safecracker she'll never be. I've always assumed she closes her eyes when she's listening for that corresponding hum, changing the output of the hatch until it matches. Even before Dell has begun the sequence it feels like I'm gone, like the empty space isn't in Earth Zero anymore, isn't anywhere. I stop existing the moment the door is closed, and when Dell enters my coordinates it will feel more like being reborn in the same place than traveling.
The humming in the walls gets louder. Or maybe it's my skin. Doesn't matter. The humming grows until I am the hum, nothing but my own frequency. Dell is adjusting the transmitter, seeking entrance. Science says she's tuning into my destination, but Jean would say she's petitioning a god, adjusting frequencies the way monks hum to access the divine.
I know I am on my way by the sudden feeling of someone else's breath on my neck. Scientists call the pressure along my skin resistance from imperfect frequencies, an atmospheric barrier I have to slide through before I can appear in another world. But Jean calls it Nyame's muzzle, sniffing at me for worth like a wolf determining friend from threat.
Just when my skin begins to bristle, she retreats and I am standing beneath a tree that looks almost familiar. It feels like waking up despite my eyes never closing. I take a moment to orient myself. The tree is familiar because I've landed here before to pull from 238. I visualize my task in detail until I know I won't get confused, won't start believing my real life is a dream and this Earth is my real place.
"Status?" Dell asks, a small voice in my ear. The quality of the audio is like a child's walkie-talkie, and it's the limit of technology that can travel with me.
I let her call me a few more times before I answer.
"Moving," I say, pulling up directions on my cuff.
I make sure the obscurer on my chest is lit and working.
"How far away did you put me?" I ask.
"Oh...about two and a half miles."
I ignore the satisfaction in her voice and start walking.
|
The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 18 |
By the time I've checked back in with Jean, I'm ready to be in any world that isn't this one. I failed. I got 68 percent on Jean's mock quiz of the first forty Earths. Not a miserable failure, but it might as well be a zero when I don't know how to change it. I read the reports. I wrote the facts over and over again and nothing has helped me retain enough to pass.
Maybe there's something to classism. Maybe eating caviar growing up gives you a bigger brain. Maybe eating dirt poisons your memory.
Or maybe it's just easier to think something is impossible than to try.
Sitting at my desk, I look back over my notes. I know the facts about each world when I see them, but I'm storing them in some part of my mind I can't access when there's a question in front of me and something on the line. It all becomes too important, like I have my own life in my hands, and I choke. I've made a copy of the stat page, but with the info left blank. I'll quiz myself until I get 100 percent, before I move on to memorizing for next week.
"Headache?"
When I look up, Dell's studying me like a map. I've been off observation since the bruising faded, but that doesn't mean she won't put me right back on.
"No, just concentrating."
I usually have time to brace myself before I see her. I didn't think she'd come here more than once in the same month. It's no secret that anything below the fiftieth floor is for traversers, clerks, Maintenance, and other support staff. We're classified as nonspecialists because there was no degree or expert knowledge or developed skill to get us here. With the exception of some of the traversers, we are stunningly expendable.
But she's here now, breathtaking and disapproving, and maybe the latter enhances the former because, like her panic when she says my name off-world, I can convince myself it signals concern.
"What?"
"Are you sure you're not experiencing headaches? Blurred vision?"
"I'll get an aneurism from irritating questions before I get one from traversing."
"Don't treat this lightly. Even the tiniest vibration in the mind is a trauma."
I snort at the princess telling me about trauma. Traversing shakes me, but it's not a trauma. The deepest bruises I've gotten world walking are a warm bath next to trauma.
"Is that why you're here? To check me for nosebleeds?"
"Your trip to Earth 175 is to be an extended one," she says.
"How extended?"
"You'll need to download from the area's backup ports after your pull."
"How many?"
"Four."
The number is high, but not extraordinary. The main port has the most information, and usually what we see in the backups is just redundant. But sometimes there is a piece of data that never makes it to the main port. If I'm having to do four, Starla must have been fired just before their quarterly clearing.
"Four? So I'll be there an extra forty-eight hours?"
"Seventy-two. There will be a solar event during your pull. You shouldn't be there for that, but we don't know what the conditions will be leading up to it, so we're giving you a buffer."
I nod when I want to shake my head. Seventy-two hours on Earth 175. Three days in a world that murdered me. It makes sense that she's asking about headaches now. Staying that long, the comeback will be rough. If I had a crack, I might shatter.
"You've been given your map of the ports you'll need to hit. The emergency shelters were stocked during the last pull, so your route will include those as well."
I nod. Dell's eyes drift over to the screen with my notes.
"Homework?"
"Punishment," I say. "From Jean."
"He really should know better than to waste his time trying to teach you."
He should, but her saying it out loud hurts. She must see that on my face because she tilts her head with interest, a wave of black hair petting her shoulders as she reacts to my pain like a scientist, not a friend.
"Don't you remember? We spent a week giving you packets and books to prep for your first pull. Once you hit new ground, you forgot everything and we had to restart."
I didn't forget. The one she taught died, and I had to be trained all over again. But I can't say that, so I say, "Going to a different world for the first time isn't enough of an excuse for being a little forgetful?"
"It's not a different world. It's still our world, just with different paths taken."
"Is that how you think of it?"
And if she answers, really answers, we'll have a conversation like equals. Not like royalty bestows thoughts passingly on a commoner, but like two people seeking to understand each other.
She straightens. "It doesn't matter what I think. You're the one who actually goes there."
"But you do live there. I mean, I visit, but I'm not there. You're in all of these places, all the time. I can only go because I'm not."
She shrugs, only half listening. I want to tell her I've seen her, just to see if it would make her curious enough to keep talking, but when her hair shifts my eyes snag on a missing bit of green at her ear.
"You've lost an earring." I say it half in awe, because the idea of Dell—careful, perfect Dell—losing anything is incongruous.
She touches the earring in her left ear, then her empty right. She covers it quickly but I see it in her face: despair. I know—though she's never told me—that her grandmother gave her those earrings. This was her paternal grandmother, who never left Japan's walled city when her parents came to this one. She loved her grandmother, because her accent made Dell's name sound like Dare and when Dell was a child no one had ever called her daring before.
I don't think Dell would have ever been a pilot had her grandmother not pronounced her name that way. Losing the earring must feel like losing her all over again. That's the trouble with living eighty stories up—sometimes things fall down too far to ever reach again.
"I can help you look, if you—"
But she's already moving away, hiding her eyes from me by looking down at her cuff. She doesn't believe I can help her, but I'm the only one who can.
When I get off work I make the long commute down to my one-bedroom apartment. Somewhere fifty stories up Dell is entering the first floor of what can only be called a mansion this far down. But right now, I have something she needs. I head to my bedroom, my wall of stolen possessions, until I find the bag from Earth 261—the earring from the girl who let me hold her because she didn't know who I was. I take the bag containing the carved jade teardrop off the wall and set it on my nightstand so I won't forget to bring it to her tomorrow. Knowing I can undo the loss she felt today fills me up more than it should. I guess I've been waiting to have something, anything, to offer her.
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The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 19 |
It was an accident when it happened, with Dell. Two years ago I had a forty-eight-hour on Earth 261, where the border between Ash and Wiley City is just a line on a map. The city was still nicer, and the wasteland was still the wasteland, but Ashtown was actually part of the same territory. The people there could vote and get medical services. In Earth 261, a massive wall doesn't separate the Wiles and Ashtown, it's just a fence, and there are working streetlights on both sides.
I went to the gardens on the eightieth floor to watch young professionals stream in and out of a bar on the corner. I didn't go in; currency is iffy between worlds, and it's a stupid risk to take. I just stayed in the garden, smelling fruit that had already been picked back home.
She came up to me. That's important. And maybe I was hoping she would. And maybe I chose that garden because it was near where she lives on Earth Zero. But she was the one who approached, who said, "They're free, you know."
All I did was take the orange from the branch and hold it out to her. After she took it, I said, "Nothing's free," and let her make of that what she would.
And she did.
And the sex was good, though Dell's apartment looked nothing like I had pictured. At first, lying in bed hearing stories about Dell's grandmother that Dell would never tell me herself elated me. But then I got angry. She was only telling me because my Wiley City accent was near perfect, and my pull was close enough to Wiley's sprawl that Earth Zero Dell had dressed me like one of her own. If she knew who I was, where I came from, she'd shut me out as much as my Dell did.
I feel bad, I do. It was a mistake...but every time I pull near Wiley City on another Earth, I find myself in that same garden. Just wanting to see her, to see if she'll come up and choose to talk to me again.
Sometimes Dell walks past me.
Mostly, she doesn't.
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The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 20 |
If you believe the jokes people in Wiley tell, the not-very-funny jokes whose punch lines never contain genitalia or maiming, office meetings are boring. Harry, one of our more social watchers, recently fired, would nudge me in the elevator on our way up and say, "Once more into the theater, eh?" And I would laugh exactly as loudly as expected.
But secretly, I find the company progress meetings exciting.
Every few months, all Eldridge employees are gathered into a room with a stage that is, yes, very much like a theater. We are given unlimited fresh fruit and baked goods—free—and coffee or juice—also free—and then we settle in and the CEO and founder speaks to us like we're his friends. His opening is always some variation of the first opening I ever heard from the stage: When I was a boy I used to wonder what it would be like to walk in the stars. Not on them. In the space between. When I was five I'd arrange rocks as models of the solar system and sit among them, turning them over like I could find the secret. I never knew that when I finally got the chance to discover what was out there, I'd be surrounded by such talented, wonderful people.
I have spoken one-on-one with the man who made traversing possible three times, but the first time was my favorite. Adam Bosch isn't as young as you'd think with everyone always calling him a boy wonder, but he doesn't seem nearly old enough to have changed the world, so maybe that's what they mean. But Wiley City is bad at age anyway. They see a fourteen-year-old runner outside the wall and say, A suspicious man spotted near the border, but when a thirty-three-year-old Wileyite murders his girlfriend it's Good boy goes bad.
The first time I met Adam, Dell was lecturing me in the hatch room. I was fresh on Earth Zero, nervous that any second I'd be found out, and nervous that my incompetence would get me fired before I was.
"Go easy, Ikari," he said, appearing like a ghost, an angel, a magician. "We were all new once."
He was kind to me. He's always been kind to me. That day he was wearing the same outfit he wears every year in the annual press releases. The white shirt and wide-legged black pants that news outlets mock, and yet he refuses to change. If he were from Ash, I'd say he wears them because the mockery is a challenge and he can't be seen backing down. But he's not. He's just one of those scatterbrained geniuses who doesn't think about appearances.
Still, his clothes were the reason I couldn't stop staring at him. They're simple; no one else would find them striking, but that shirt was so white and those pants were so impractical, and there was magic in their very existence for a girl from a place with more dirt than air and as many scorpions as flies. No one could wear those clothes outside of the city, and when I laid eyes on him it was impossible to think of him as a scientist, to think of him as anything but magic.
He walked past Dell straight to me. He looked down at the apple in his fingers like he'd forgotten it was there, then he held it out to me. Another thing that means nothing in the city, but the ground in Ash is barren and the warehouses only hold fruit that can be stacked to make the most of the space—berries in rows, or grapes crawling up the wall behind them. Mostly, we just have vegetables.
When I took the apple with near lust he said, "You're from Ashtown, aren't you?"
It sounded more like curiosity than judgment, so I nodded but was quick to add, "I'm from the Rurals."
Then he looked at me. It was the first time he met my face and it made me realize he'd been looking just to the left of my eyes the whole time.
"Are you?" he said.
And for some reason I wanted to tell him the truth. That I wasn't faithful, or worthy. That I was a liar from the concrete that everyone feared. It felt like he already knew. So I shrugged and looked down, which is the closest I've ever come to telling someone the truth before or since.
"It doesn't matter. You're doing great. We're all rooting for you," he said before he walked away. Dell resumed lecturing me after that, but the words rolled right off.
That last part turned out to be a lie, but I don't hold it against him. I'm not sure I could ever hold anything against Adam Bosch. Caramenta kept the letter offering her employment in a keepsake box I haven't bothered to throw away. Every time I reread it, I trace his hand-signed name at the bottom, and I feel the same deliverance and gratitude she must have felt. I could never be attracted to him, not the way I want Dell like my next breath. But I feel about Adam Bosch the way people in the Rurals feel about Moses or my stepfather.
When the lights dim for the meeting, my stomach drops. Adam Bosch is excited and it makes the air a little excited too. He's talking about impending breakthroughs, and while he doesn't name the project, we all know it's remote downloads. The analysts are celebrating because the technology is so close he can promise it is months, not years, off. And sure, they're excited because now data retrieval will be instantaneous and not monthly. But they're also excited because traversers will be gone. And what are pigeons but an infestation, at the end of the day?
Instead of the pride I usually feel to be part of a real company in the city, I just feel ashamed, the weight of my 68-percent score hanging over my head like an ax.
The last part of Adam's speech is cryptic. He's hinting at some coming change that will transform the nature of the company. Everyone else is excited. We are all keenly aware of how much of our funding relies upon the city, and if some new product can make us independent so we're no longer reliant on a government's annual budget, I should be cheering for it. But I've already stopped listening. Whatever it is, I probably won't be around when it happens anyway.
After we're dismissed, I grab an armful of free food to go with the rations I've already brought from home. I'm going to 319 today, and I always take extra when I go there.
Dell doesn't quite meet my eyes as she readies me, just like everyone looked away from me in the hall. I'm Eldridge's dead girl walking.
I grab my backpack after she loads me up and sighs.
"Are you smuggling extra food again?" she asks. "I saw you shoving danishes in there."
"Consider it my severance package."
"Cara..."
"What? Are you going to tell me my job's not on its way out? There were maybe six traversers in there, Dell. Six. For the whole sector. They're scaling us back."
"Them. They're scaling them back. You're more valuable than all the rest. You'll outlast them all."
"The last of a species still dies, Dell. Just a matter of time."
"It will be okay."
Such a Wiley thing to say. Such a Wiley thing to even get to believe.
"How? Will you make it okay? Take me in when I get my slip? Marry me when my residency is void?"
Her breath comes up short at that, like I said something offensive. And it must be, to her. I want to remember this, this borderline disgust at the idea of me, but for some reason I can never keep it long enough to stop wanting her. I reach into my pocket and pull out the Eldridge sample bag containing her earring. Not the one she lost, but its otherworld cousin so she'll never know the difference.
"I found this on my way home yesterday."
She snatches it like a child and holds it to her chest. The reaction is rare and human, and I let myself stare, because it's the closest I'll ever get to her holding me like that on this world. She looks up, and catches me staring.
There's a moment between us. It's like a snap into focus where all at once she sees me, she finally understands that all my flirting is just hiding in plain sight, just being so obvious she'd never guess she is the one thing on this world that I know and all I want. But then it happens. She looks, for just that first moment, afraid.
The universe is brimming with stars and life, but there is a section of sky that is utterly dead and empty. They call it a cold spot, a supervoid, and they say it got that way because two parallel universes got too close to touching. That's us. That's me and Dell. We coexist, parallel but never touching, and if one of us goes too far, if I ever get too close, the Eridanus Void opens between us. We both withdraw and leave a cold darkness in the space where we almost touched that three suns couldn't light.
"I tried to sell it, but I guess it's worthless without the other one."
She half smiles, but it's really a negative smile. It's the saddest thing I've ever seen.
"Of course," she says. "And I suppose it is in an Eldridge specimen bag because...?"
"What? Like you've never snuck office supplies home? I told you. Severance package."
I start climbing the ladder into the hatch before she can say anything else, because if I stare at her much longer, this woman who wants me but is too afraid of where I'm from to do anything about it, I might finally find a way to hate her. And I don't want to. Not really. Not yet.
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The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 21 |
All kinds of refugees—that's what Ashtown is made of. Those fleeing religious persecution came with a little money and a lot of faith, and generally settled on the edge where the sand was more white than gray so they could pretend it was the promised land. A hundred years after that, those who fled from poverty and drought followed rumors of water and work, building the city. Maybe they believed that once the last shining skyscraper was finished and there were still plenty of vacancies, they'd be let in. I doubt they would have built the wall so high and sure if they'd known which side of it they'd be on. The builders' descendants became factory workers, less proud but just as efficient, until the factory was no more. Now, the factory workers' children work for Eldridge's industrial hatch, transferring materials from one world they'll never see to another.
A couple centuries after the building boom faded, those seeking refuge from war found Ashtown. They went to the city, wanting a place with walls and defenses. They insisted they'd been promised aid. But the progressive Wiley City only keeps the promises it makes to itself. It is loving and nurturing and socialized...but only within its own borders.
So those hiding from war were left outside the walls, and war followed. Nik Nik's father was one of the most brutal fighters, and the infighting continued for a generation until Nik Senior stopped it, in the way a lion stops infighting among gazelle. When the dust settled, the new emperor was on top, challengers dead or exiled. He opened his mouth, blood still dripping from his jaw, and declared peace.
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The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 22 |
When I land on 319, I see Dell has stopped playing with me. She left me no more than a quarter of a mile from the port. It doesn't matter, because this is 319 so I have an errand to run. I adjust the pack on my shoulder and walk into Ashtown.
If I figured anything out in these last six years, it is this: human beings are unknowable. You can never know a single person fully, not even yourself. Even if you think you know yourself in your safe glass castle, you don't know yourself in the dirt. Even if you hustle and make it in the rough, you have no idea if you would thrive or die in the light of real riches, if your cleverness would outlive your desperation.
This is a lesson I learned here, on 319, because there is one person in the world I thought was consistent, and I was wrong.
She's standing in the doorway of her concrete rectangle. She reaches for the pack without any pleasantries, because she's a garbage git through and through.
"Given me more this time," she says, then looks up. "Lots more."
She's not sad, but she knows what it means.
"Might not be able to make it back, wanted to make sure you were covered."
She brushes her black hair, waist long here instead of her usual severe bob, over her shoulder.
"Dust's high. Better come in."
Her name here is Aria, and I'm the one who got to tell her it means music. She pours me a glass of water that tastes half-iron.
"I can't stay. I've got—"
"You're an angel, yeah?"
"What?"
She sets the mug down. There's a scar across her lips that pulls at her mouth when she speaks, so she usually sits quiet. When she does speak, she keeps her mouth small to minimize the effect. But I still notice, because I know what that mouth is supposed to look like. The wide gap of it when it smiles perfectly.
"I'm not some rabid Ruralite. But you come, you bring food. I tried to follow you once and you just disappeared."
"You followed me?"
"Tried. If you're leaving, can't you tell me?"
"I'm not an angel. Nowhere near."
She's waiting. Of course she's waiting. No one in Ash does anything for free and I've been bringing her food and clothes since I found her, but I've never asked for more than this ass-tasting water. I have never touched this version of Dell, would never. Not because she wouldn't let me, but because she might. It would reek of gratitude. And maybe she'd be insecure, think she was less than me. I don't want to make Dell feel like that, don't want to make her feel the way she makes me feel.
"You just remind me of someone."
"She dead?"
"No. Face like a night sky, though."
She nods, understanding. We've got half a dozen phrases out here for the same thing: something beautiful and perfect that you can't ever reach. Except I've traveled through the stars hundreds of times, and I've still never gotten close to touching Dell's cheek.
"Face ain't like that," she says. She doesn't touch the scar on her mouth, but she might as well. "Not anymore."
She begins counting out the rations I've brought before I've finished my water. After a while she looks at me, not at me but at my shoes.
"If you're going for good, just go."
I go. Out her door I get a view of Wiley City, the only way I used to see it. She's picked a house right on the edge of Ashtown, so nothing impedes her view. She must sense all her other selves inside the city, living secure eighty stories up. She must know she's been cheated.
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The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 23 |
The next morning, Dell is quiet as she readies me for my long stay on 175. Just before getting the serum, she hands me a plastic sheet. I turn it on and see the space fill with information about Nelline.
I look up from the text to her. "You came through."
She goes cold in the face of my gratitude.
"You knew I would," she says, but not like she's proud of being consistent. More like she's ashamed she couldn't stop herself from helping me.
I scroll through the text and swallow hard. I was right to avoid this. It's harder than I thought it would be, and the buzzing in my head doesn't stop until I've shut down the screen. I hand it back to Dell like one hands an empty cup of bad medicine back to the doctor. I needed it, but I hated it.
She doesn't respond to my reaction until I'm heading into the hatch.
"Are you scared now?" she asks.
"Have you been talking to Jean? It's just a pull, like any other."
"It's a new place. That hasn't happened in a while."
"They're all the same place," I say, and begin climbing the ladder.
"But this one just killed you. Might have a taste for it now."
I look back at her from the top of the hatch.
"Why, Dell, you sound exactly like an Ashtowner."
She takes it as an insult, which I take as an insult. We can't ever really talk. I want to take her hands and tell her that, yes, she is better than me but that is because she is better than me. Not because Wileyites are better than Ashtowners, but because she is driven without being manipulative, she is ambitious but only until it edges over into cruelty.
Until we have that common understanding, we can never really speak, and that's something I'm just coming to terms with. Not pursuing Dell and being rejected, which I've always accepted as an inevitability, but never getting her to see me enough to even speak to me.
"Miss me," I say, from the top of the ladder.
She doesn't look up or respond. She just slides her headphones in. I climb into the dark.
In a few seconds, when the door is sealed and the vibrations hit just wrong enough for me to know it's a killing frequency, I will wish she had. I will wish her eyes, and not her downturned face, were the last thing I'd ever see.
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The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 24 |
"A rotating black hole does not collapse to a dot. That's the old-fashioned thinking. It collapses to a ring, a ring of neutrons. And if you fall through the ring of neutrons vertically, you wind up in Wonderland. You wind up on the other side of forever."
—Michio Kaku
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The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 25 |
When the bodies of the first traversers were recalled, there was shock at the thoroughness of the devastation. Twisted in and out, glistening with fresh blood and something else.
The scientists said, We did not test it enough. We should have expected a backlash.
And the spiritual said, We did not petition enough. We should have expected a sacrifice.
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The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 26 |
I'm not surprised to die in the darkness between. Die exactly how I lived: belonging nowhere.
I know something is wrong the instant tuning begins, which means it's too late to do anything about it. Did Dell feel the resistance as she began the transfer? Did it come across like static, or a scream? It wouldn't stop her. Her job is to send me through, so she will. But this time, it will kill me.
The playful lick that usually just raises the hairs on my arms shifts dark, turns into a burn as it transforms from passive pressure to primordial rage. I've never really believed in Nyame. I carried her name, but only the way even atheist runners will wear Nicholas medallions before a tricky job. I wrapped myself in the pragmatism of Wiley City, a place so full of science and progress there is no room for superstition.
But now Nyame is as real as a backhand. I don't just feel her breath, I see her. She's staring down at a collection of universes like an old woman with a puzzle. She holds me up like a missing piece, but when there's already one where I belong she gets confused, frustrated, and tears me in half. It's a hallucination, I know, but I swear I hear her voice as my first bone breaks. But it does break, and it's my collar, so I don't think much after that.
Just before the blackout, one thought comes clearly: Nelline's not dead. Earth 175 me is alive and well. Eldridge was wrong, just like they were wrong once before.
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The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 27 |
The happiest days of my life were the first in Wiley City six years ago. It was my first taste of guilt-free joy. I'd made my way to the address on my cuff's digital ID, the apartment that was mine now. I found the house still packed up, Caramenta's things just waiting for me to put them where I would want them. And the box of journals detailing her life, sitting open on the rug like an instruction manual? It was fate smiling, I was sure.
But then the worry started. What they don't tell you about getting everything you ever wanted is the cold-sweat panic when you think about losing it. For someone who'd never had anything to lose, it's like drowning, all the time.
I set about the problem like I set about all problems. I made lists. I read Caramenta's journals and made a list of her traits, her phrases. She was faithful and pure and more than a pinch judgmental. But I didn't just want to be her, I wanted to be a better her, so I began reading the autobiographies of people who were born in Wiley City, and I made a list of their phrases too. They never called Wiley City The Wiles, so I wouldn't either. And they always referred to Ashtown by its proper name or simply Ash, never Ashytown or Big Ash like I used to.
I guess what I mean to say is this: I've been so consumed with keeping my job, with maintaining my stolen life, I'd forgotten the most basic fact I learned as a child. I was so concerned about getting fired, I'd forgotten that anyone can die, at any time.
You'd think someone who'd seen her own corpse would be smarter than that.
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The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 28 |
My ribs crush in, then expand out with the suddenness of the new world. I made it through. I may still die, but my broken body won't be rejected and sent back like the others. Not quite a victory, but something.
I land on packed earth that used to be a river, and recognize it instantly. I'm in the wastelands. When I try to sit up, everything hurts. When I lie back, blood fills my mouth. I reach into the pocket of my vest and pull out the Misery Syringe. This is when I'm supposed to use it. It will block out the pain, give me time to contact Dell for a recall. The recall will kill me, but at least they'll know what happened. But I can't. I can't die here, in the dirt. Not like the last Caramenta, and all the others before her. Not like my mother.
I understand why the others followed protocol. I see why a scientist would choose the quick snap of certain death from recall over enduring this for one more second. But this hurts just a little worse than when I was twelve and mouthed off enough for Nik Senior to have four of his guys stomp me for it.
I'll have two minutes of pain-free movement once I use the syringe, but I'll need more than that to reach the road. I'll have to move, and regret moving, then move again, and only when I'm about to go down will I use the syringe. The damage is in the top half of my body: ribs, shoulders, jaw, and the one arm curled awkwardly backward like my elbow's forgotten its job. The pain is only bearable in the space between breaths. Each time my lungs expand the feeling of ribs grinding wrong makes me wish my jaw wasn't broken so I could scream.
I used to think the traverser's death was punishment for trespassing into a world where you didn't belong. Now I'm sure it's a test. To see if you deserve to stay as much as they do.
I breathe shallow, taking in too little air, to limit the movement in my chest. Passing out is more likely now, but it's likely either way and at least this way I won't hurt all the way to unconsciousness. The first step is too hard, even moving my weight softly is violence, and I imagine, or I hear, misplaced bones tapping each other for luck.
If I make it out of the riverbed before using the syringe, I can buy myself an extra thirty seconds to run for help. Versions of me have died all over, but not this one. Never this one. If this is how I was supposed to go, it could have happened when I was fourteen, or eight, or sixteen, or any of the other times it happened to other mes. I tell myself it's just another shallow grave to crawl out of.
I cross out of the riverbed and onto the hard, gray land of Ashtown. I'm losing my vision. It's time. I use the syringe, and move a second before it takes effect. Bones already broken splinter, gashes already bleeding gush, but I do find a road.
Just before I pass out, I get to the shoulder. This world is as medically advanced as mine. They should have pods. They should be able to save me...if whoever finds me cares enough to try. If they're better people than I was, when I found myself.
I set my cuff to an away message, so Dell will think I just wanted to do this trip radio-silent. Better for her to think I'm being difficult than dying, because the protocol for the latter would kill me. Just in case, I rip off my collar and shove it into my vest. She won't be able to initiate a proximity pull unless I turn it on again.
My two minutes is up, and in the snap of agony everything goes dark for good this time. I'm whispering to Nyame that she can't have it back. I stole this life, but that doesn't mean she can have it back.
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The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson.txt
| 29 |
I must be dead, because life is pain and this is goddamn euphoria. The dark surrounding me is total, but for light-painted colors that I know aren't really there, like the aurora borealis left behind when you rub your eyes too hard. I don't know if I'm awake or asleep, still in the hatch or on my way to hell. All I know is I am not alone.
My body is broken to the point of delirium, and this is what my mind offers as a hallucination. I hear his steps before I see him, but I already know. I know the scent of his long hair, the sweat finely coating his neck and chest. I've avoided looking at him, even seeing his name in data, since I left Earth 22. I always thought I would panic when he came for me, but the sight of him calms me, because it means things are finally going as expected. I always knew he'd be standing over me when I died. Down deep, in the place behind my sternum where I keep all my shame, I am glad it's him. I want to be with Dell, but I wouldn't want her to see me like this. I want to seem strong and impenetrable to her. But him, he can be beside me when my heart stops beating, because he's always treated me as small and weak and precious anyway. For all the times Nik Nik has almost killed me, his presence now feels inevitable.
In the dream he asks why his name is on my back, and I don't know how to work my mouth into an answer.
Because I spent my money removing the other tattoos first.
Because I liked being reminded that once upon a time I belonged to someone, even if he was the worst person I have ever known.
Is my name still on your chest?
That's what I want to say. But the world is going watery, the black of the room closing in, and his face recedes into the blur like a light I've either been running from or chasing my whole life. The darkness takes me, but I tell him I hate him before I go. It's not much, as far as last words go, but it's one of the few things I can stand by.
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