by S. L. Huang
I held up a hand to halt Simon as we approached the first of the outbuildings, and tried to listen without getting distracted, even as the all-too-familiar feeling began tugging at me to cringe into a hole and quiver. I hoped Simon didn’t see my shaky relief when I realized what was happening—although, of course he did, the bastard.
“They’re loading up the animals for transport,” I said. “It’s unlikely to be anyone from Pithica, then. Just people drugged up enough not to be affected. That means we can take them and interrogate them.” Oscar’s memories had revealed how anyone handling the dogs got close—take something mind-altering enough to make yourself unable to be properly afraid, and apparently that did the trick.
Of course, it also meant whoever was down there would not be the most cooperative.
I glanced back at Simon. He gave me a rapid nod. I took a second look at his face and tried to ignore how glassy his eyes were, how shallow his breath was.
I’d bullied him into this, but he’d have told me if he wasn’t up for it, wouldn’t he?
“I’m okay,” he said, as if he could feel my doubts. “I—I think it’s a bad idea, but—I’m okay. I think.”
Unless his judgment was impaired …
But I had to make the call. If he wasn’t fighting telepathic humans, only the dogs—that would be okay, right? He could handle that.
“Here’s what we’ll do,” I said. “Whenever they’re done loading or unloading or whatever they’re doing—they have to drive out of here. I’ll take them down as they come up the lane. The dogs will have to be shut up at that point.” They’d be locked either back in the barn or in the truck itself, if they happened to be the cargo.
Fuck, depending on how many dogs they were transporting—what were they planning with them? No, we definitely had to go in now.
Simon nodded again and wrapped his arms around himself. We waited in the dark.
We were still too far away to hear the shouts, but I thought I counted two voices. Two humans. That was fine. That was easy.
Simon had started fidgeting.
“Quit it,” I whispered. “I’m trying to concentrate.”
Doors slammed across the yard. They must be getting set to go. We wanted to take them alive, I reminded myself. For questioning. Even if it was D.J. himself, interrogation would be smartest. I’d give them to Rio this time and damn the consequences.
The lights changed as someone turned half of them off. A human voice hollered. The sound of chains rattling. A dog barked, apart from the rest of the clamor, echoing against its surroundings. Not all the animals were shut up yet.
The human voices raised in pitch, shouting in concern.
The dog barked louder. Threatening.
“How good are these animals at being actual guard dogs?” Simon whispered.
My hand tightened on the rifle. “What are you saying? Is it sensing us?”
“I don’t know; I can’t read dogs—”
But the human voices rose to a shout, and I didn’t need Simon clawing at my arm to hear their raw panic. Something was going wrong, something scaring them—and I might not be able to read dogs either, but sounds pinpointed location instantly for me, the growling roar breaking free and leaping in our direction—
The noise crescendoed, breaking for our position. One of the dogs.
Charging us.
In a split second it would round into view and attack. No time to think about the consequences: I snapped my eyes shut, raised the Vector, and stepped around the corner.
The snarling burst out and magnified, the position zeroing. I pulled the trigger in one smooth motion while Simon began a rapid mantra behind me, something about fear and self-control. The rifle clapped in my hands, and the snarls that had roared toward us cut off with a thump.
Someone shouted again. The truck engine roared to life just as the cacophony of a thousand more animals clawed into the night.
No. Not a thousand animals. Seventeen. Six in the truck and eight in the barn and three who weren’t anywhere yet, between the truck and the barn, and now loose, loose and leaping to attack us. Wheels skidded on gravel, and my ears couldn’t keep up with the changing variables anymore—it was open my eyes or be devoured alive.
The panic took hold before the colors and shapes even registered in my vision.
I screamed my attack and starbursts went off in front of my eyes—the rifle, I was firing the rifle, and I emptied the magazine in seconds. Someone shouted at me, but someone else was shouting up ahead, and everything was chaos and noise and light.
Monsters. Monsters everywhere.
I shot them and kicked and snarled and brought my elbow back into someone who tried to grab me from behind. A roar filled my senses and something grew bright and huge in my vision, but that wasn’t the threat, the threat was in front of me, the threat was claws and fur and teeth—
“Cas!” someone yelled, and tackled me. I hit the ground, and my mouth filled with dirt and grass. A vehicle thundered by my face close enough for the dust to spit in my eyes, and a human voice screamed.
I raked at the ground, trying to find the rifle, to reload and bring it up again. It clicked and misfired, clogged with dirt. Still prone, I pawed for the handgun I knew I had.
“Cas, Cas, you can do this, think—”
Shaking words, hands on my shoulder. My senses vibrated like an earthquake had hit.
“Cas, that’s it—that’s—” The trembling voice cut off in another scream. My gun came up and dispatched the monster bearing down on us, but this time, I saw it more clearly, its outlines more animal than demon.
Begone, witches! Begone! wailed a voice in my head, the dead woman rearing up out of the recesses as if to devour the chaos. My brain compressed like it was in a vise.
“Cas! Come back to me—come back here. You need to stay with me!”
Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitches!
“Cas!”
I struggled back to the night and the tearing pain in my arm and the scents of blood and smoke. I had to do something. Had to get to the people.
No time had passed. I was still half-lying on the hard, sandy ground. The truck was still in range, roaring up the lane. The spiky shape of an automatic weaved from the driver’s window and went off in a wild spray as the truck lurched.
Over our heads. Over our heads.
I had much better aim than that. I raised my pistol.
I didn’t see the man who leapt up in front of me, running, yelling in the wake of the truck. I literally did not see him, as if my brain had edited him out of the picture.
“Cas, no!”
A hand shoved my gun off line the instant I pulled the trigger, taking my shot far astray, into the night.
The truck lurched one more time, and the automatic sprayed again, much lower this time.
I grabbed Simon and rolled us into a hedge. I barely saw the shape of the invisible man jerk like a puppet as the automatic fire caught him, as his invisibility deleted him from the vision of his own side in the very same way it had deleted him from mine.
This is what we deserve! Valarmathi howled. Burn us all!
twenty-eight
SIMON WASN’T moving.
His limbs sprawled limply, both legs bent at impossible angles, blood, so much blood, and the white gleam of bone.
My hands stumbled to staunch the bleeding, to find a pulse, but the furred corpses pushed in on my consciousness from all directions. Simon had made them less than hellhounds, but Simon wasn’t here anymore, couldn’t tell me they were only fairy stories constructed by a malicious villain.
I groped for his thoughts, his emotions, his pain, and found nothing.
A pulse stuttered against my fingers. Barely.
The dead shapes in my peripheral vision began to rise back up as ghosts, into ominous shadows of pestilence and war. I had to get out of here.
I got my arm under Simon and hauled. One of his broken legs caught on a shrub and wobbled grotesquely. I tried to get a better hold on
him, to lift him, but my foot buckled under me.
My heart ramped faster, more adrenaline leaking into my bloodstream. I tried to keep my eyes on Simon, on Simon, but murdered nightmares punched through the edges.
I stumbled and almost fell, and squeezed my eyes shut. Run, I needed to run.
No. Fight.
My hand tightened on the hard grip of my Colt.
My other hand was fisted in Simon’s clothes. I focused on the roughness of the fabric. The heat from his body, still living, still living. Get him out. Get out.
Somehow, I managed to begin dragging us, unseeing, across dried grass and ridged, uneven ground. My mind extrapolated the curve beneath my feet, guiding my stumbling steps. But aberrations in the curve’s assumed smoothness kept pushing up and tripping me, catching at my boots and making our progress a jagged stumble in the dark.
I didn’t open my eyes until we’d gotten back to the road.
Simon’s skin had gone so pale and waxen, he was an inert dummy, texture stretched over misaligned bones in an attempt at a human form.
Heartbeat, still a heartbeat. I had nothing to splint the bones with. Tore my jacket at the seams to bind the worst of the bleeding and tourniquet him. Groped for a phone, he needed a hospital—but mine was gone, dropped or lost. Simon had a burner in his pocket, but its face was cracked and dark.
I pressed his wrist again—then harder. The weak tap of a heartbeat was gone. His chest wasn’t moving.
Fuck. No. I pressed my hands against his sternum, the dimensions of his ribcage building themselves for me faster than thought. The success rate of CPR was somewhere in the single digits, but that was when people who weren’t me did it.
Compress, the force waves radiating downward, the impact rippling through the flesh, pressing the blood into circulation. Exactly the pressure to beat the heart by hand, pushing oxygen to his brain, pushing his body into functioning. Compress again. Again. Again. Fast and rhythmic, exactly in time, exactly consistent, a scrupulous substitute, until the flesh fluttered back against my hands, and I pressed one more time before laying my hand flat across his chest to feel.
The beats pushed back small and labored, and I’d broken two ribs, but his heart was working again.
The distant hum of an engine rose in my hearing. A vehicle. I leapt up, and my foot almost went out from under me—fucking stupid ankle, it’s a sprain, it’s just a sprain. I pushed at the ground, willing myself upright, and staggered out into the street.
The silhouette of a semi cab rose behind headlights, taller and taller, and then brakes squealed as it skidded and swerved. The rest of the truck fishhooked around in slow motion, almost going over onto its side as the cab ran off the road and up against the brush.
“What the fuck, get out of the road!” the driver screamed at me.
I limped up to the driver’s window. “There’s a man dying right there, on the side of the road. Call 911.”
The man’s hands had gone up, even though I wasn’t pointing a weapon at him. He was a large, mustached fellow, burly and dark. “What? There’s what?”
“A man. Dying,” I said. “Call the fucking ambulance.”
He slapped at his pockets. “I don’t have a cell phone, man!”
Who the fuck didn’t have a cell phone?
The man had started babbling. “I don’t got it, man, I don’t got one! I’m sorry!”
“You have a radio!” I yelled in his face. “Use it, now!”
He couldn’t obey fast enough. Even without drawing on him, I’d scared him so badly, he fumbled with the handset before sending out the call.
I’d lost the rifle somewhere, but my Colt was still on me. I left it tucked away for now and limped back to Simon.
He was still breathing, but barely, only the slightest stirring of air. I guarded his condition until sirens wailed on the horizon and the red lights washed toward us in waves, and then I slipped back to the car. I pulled away just as they arrived, the bulk of the semi still blocking the street and hiding my departure from view.
* * *
I HAD to pull over to do a rudimentary job of tending to my own injuries. My right arm throbbed—laceration, tearing, puncture wounds—a dog bite. And the sprained ankle. Cuts, bruises, abrasions. On top of the deep bruising to my knee and head from—had it been only a day ago?
Nothing that wouldn’t heal. Nothing I couldn’t wrap tightly and function on.
I kept feeling again the spooky silence of Simon’s unconsciousness. No pushing, no unintentional projections of his thoughts or emotions. Just … absence.
It would be bad for me if he died. As Simon himself had said, Valarmathi leaking through my brain amounted to a chronic mental condition that I didn’t have another stable solution for.
Would I care, otherwise, if he died? I should. I had violated his mind and then dragged him along and he had—he had saved my life—
My memory flashed on images I hadn’t understood at the time—the cube truck, roaring toward us, my whole consciousness consumed and paralyzed. Simon tackling me out of the way. The crack of bone as he screamed.
I slumped in the driver’s seat. I should regret how injured he’d gotten, I thought. I should feel grateful for his help, sick that it had gotten him so hurt.
I should want him not to die. Be fighting against guilt.
If Simon died, I’d wake up the next day and start trying to track down another way of staying sane. If Simon died …
I did feel guilty. I felt guilty about how little compunction I felt. He might have just died saving me, and I still didn’t …
Would a better person forgive him now? Would a better person mourn him as a fellow human being, even if she didn’t forgive him?
Would a better person consider that no matter what he’d done, he wasn’t a piece of nothing to be used and discarded as I just had?
All those messy lines that never felt visible until after I’d crossed them. And sometimes not even then.
I thought of Arthur. I’d used him as my conscience for years now, trying to live up to his standards, and it had never been as easy as making the decision—it had instead been a constant struggle, a morass of self-doubt and getting sucked backward again after every time I did manage to meet with his approval. And in the end, it hadn’t merited me the least bit of real trust.
But I didn’t want his approval anymore. I wanted his friendship.
And I didn’t want to be him. I wanted to find my own standards—if I could figure out what those were. The fear lurked that my friends might break with me over whatever I chose … but better they walked away from me than I refused to go to the mat for them.
I reached the Rosales house in the muted cool of early morning, the time just after sunrise when quiet still blanketed the streets. When I opened the door, Rio was sitting in a chair he had dragged into the foyer, a rifle across his lap.
“Hello, Cas.”
I shut the door and leaned against it. “We got attacked,” I said baldly. “Simon’s in the hospital.”
“I see.”
“There might still be evidence or—or something there, but I can’t go back with the dogs there, even the ones I—” The ones I’d killed would still leave me mewling and rocking in blanked-out terror without Simon along. Even his presence had barely kept me lucid against that many of them. “Can you go and follow up, see if you can find anything? I’m assuming the dogs won’t affect you, and I’m betting they’ll be torching the place any minute to hide their tracks. Or blowing it up, what with D.J. involved.”
“I’m sorry, Cas. I won’t be doing that.”
The air suddenly went heavy. “What’s—what’s going on?”
“You used Simon’s injury to take his thoughts.”
I swallowed.
Deciding to steal Simon’s memory already seemed like such a long time ago. It had felt so clever. An ingenious cheat.
One I’d known I had to hide from Rio.
I didn’t know how to answer, but Rio sa
w the truth anyway.
“You deceived me to accomplish this,” he said. “You knew I would not agree with such methods.”
I licked my lips, tried to speak. Rio—I’d seen what he’d done to people when trying to get information. Or even just to get his way—people shot, stabbed, carved up and flayed alive; there was a reason Checker and Arthur and Pilar didn’t want Rio around—heck, only months ago he’d threatened Checker’s life and then broken Pilar’s arm, and I’d had to extract the promise from him not to go after them again, ever, them or their families, not that I’d known at the time about Arthur’s, but the point was I’d had to make Rio give me that promise because it had been necessary. Malcolm’s body splayed in front of me again, his face half gone, killed by Rio to get to me.
“I know you think any sort of—of mind control—I know you think it’s unethical,” I got out. “But it’s not like Simon’s innocent; you know he’s not—”
“And that does not make what you did right.”
I was having some trouble standing. I pressed my hand against the doorknob to keep myself upright. “But you … Rio, you…”
He stood. “I would not aid someone like myself in an endeavor either.”
Less than an hour ago, I’d sat in the car hoping I could choose a morality my friends could live with. Never, in my entire remembered lifespan, would I have predicted Rio would be the one to walk out on me.
“Cas,” Rio said. “I have no wish for harm to come to you, nor to your friends. But I cannot continue with nor condone your choices here. We must part ways on this.”
“But you keep saying—this could be Pithica,” I got out desperately. “And this could be a lead. Don’t you want—”
“I shall follow my own leads,” Rio said. “Ones that were obtained by other methods. If it means a longer process, so be it.”
Other methods. Like torturing or massacring people. That was okay, but mind reading wasn’t. The gospel according to Rio.
“Be well, Cas, and repent,” Rio said to me. “I would prefer to see you again soon.”
He moved toward me. I lurched out of the way so he could let himself out the front door, and he was gone.