Exquisite Possession: A Dark Scifi Romance (The Machinery of Desire Book 4)

by Cari Silverwood

  If he didn’t get her help, Fern was going to die.

  How could he be so overjoyed and so afraid at the same moment? Because now he had her, could touch her, but saving her was just… He swallowed past the anxiety and looked up. Through a break in the fog, he saw the rope caught partly curled around the harness, on a lump of rock.

  Returning whence he came seemed insurmountable. Safer to stay here, if it wasn’t for the lack of food, or water, or anything that sustained life. Fern would die if he waited.

  She might no matter what he did.

  Weak, to tremble because of a hurt girl.

  A toggle of his courage yes/no switch and determination let him climb up and fetch the rope, attach the harness to her, then tug.

  He couldn’t let her be dragged up by herself – that’d kill her. So he prayed Sassik had helpers and hung onto the rope, guiding her limp body over lumps and large ledges, taking the strain, being a shield when small rocks tumbled past.

  They made it to the top. Sassik hauled the both of them over, with Blue beside him. The scav and her, that was all who’d pulled the rope?

  He gasped out a thank you then rolled onto his back and stared at the sky of curling white-and-blue clouds, while the sweat dried, and his heart recovered.

  “She’s likely going to die, JI, you know this?” Sassik was next to Fern, kneeling. Blue was on the other side, tucking a blanket around her. “Blue and I pulled out the last wire. We can bandage some wounds but –”

  He clawed himself to his feet, staggered over. “Shut up, and thank you for the help. She’s not dy –” What had Sassik said? JI? He stared. “You know my name?”

  “Yes, I do. As the caretaker –”

  “I don’t care why. Don’t care at all. I’m taking her down to a healer. There must be hundreds in that gathering.”

  “Okay. This is fine and good. However, you’re going to be driving fast. I’ll stop her rolling about in the back, you drive.”

  JI hesitated. Did he trust this man? Of course he did. He’d just pulled him and Fern up a beast of a cliff.

  There was a limit to what a healer could accomplish. That problem was what ran in a loop in his head as he drove.

  On the way, they had to negotiate a stand-off between ramms that’d landed on the road, and a backlog of scavs in trucks and smaller vehicles, but he managed, somehow. They gave way before his stubborn anger. The mekkers wanted to stop the scavs from getting to the top. Why?

  Were they worried the mech was salvageable?

  Fucked if he knew.

  At the bottom, they reached the town of Diavulge, a place of mingled scavs and grounders, and stopped there. Blessed men from Ryke’s group had infiltrated, it seemed. They wore a new symbol – a white star that apparently said they were willing to be nice to non-mekkers, or some such thing. With his new cynicism, JI wondered if it might make them targets in the wrong circumstances.

  He drove down what seemed the main street.

  “There.” Sassik pointed. “That house. I know the healer there.”

  Without knocking, JI burst through the yellow door and found only a child and his mother at a kitchen table. She leveled a pistol at him. “I apologize, but I have a dying woman who needs help. Unless you are the healer?”

  “No. They’re all at the gathering area. He was summoned. There are more dead and dying than…” She stared helplessly. “Go there. You might get someone there.”

  Mayhem. The gathering was a mess of thousands of people, with a thousand different frantic needs.

  By grabbing a healer by the neck and demanding they help, he found some help for Fern, but it was too little. A makeshift tent procured by Sassik was their shelter for the night, on a rise looking down a gentle slope of land that led to the recent battleground.

  Her breathing worsened. No one wanted to talk to a scav who’d seemingly appeared out of nowhere and brought trouble. Even Ryke was nowhere to be found. JI was on his own, apart from Sassik. Everyone was snarling at everyone else. Blaming everyone else. Too many dead, and with the judge gone, the scavs were hating the mekkers again, in general.

  He retreated to the tent with despair his main companion. If not for Sassik, he’d be screaming at the sun and stars.

  “War is coming, not peace,” Sassik observed. “I had hopes.”

  “Yes.” JI was more concerned with keeping the one person who was closest to him alive. “Fern?” Her eyes wandered open, as if by accident.

  “Yes? Where am I?”

  “You’re safe now. The judge and the mech are gone. You walked the KI-mech into the Chasm.”

  Ironic. She was safe but dying. The healers had a limited amount they could do before it drained them. The dead were numberless. The bodies strewn over the plain near the landship would cut anyone to the heart. Some had families collecting them. Some lay alone.

  Headless, limbless, burned – this all accomplished in seconds.

  He clasped her cold hand.

  “I am? Aunt M saved me, you know? After all that. He cut me free but got dragged down.”

  JI nodded. “You should rest.”

  Her eyes closed. They’d been bleeding. And the bruises from the wires were bleeding again too.

  Rest, while he ransacked his useless organic brain for some clue, some solution. It wasn’t mechling surgery she needed. Skunk had snuggled under her arm, but he had no relevant skills. Even a mechling with surgery programming was pointless.

  She needed blood. She needed to recover from the shock of internal bruising, exposure, and numerous small things that added up to death. A healer could normally fix that, but there were none. Or none who could spare themselves.

  JI rummaged in his pants pocket and brought out the lump of black waik crystal Fern had found in the Chasm. This one was as dark as the other and perfect in shape. No chips or cracks. No foreign inclusions. His hand warmed as he rotated the stone.

  Deliberate? Had the world known what was to come about, this day? If so, what did Aerthe want from him, and JI didn’t really care at this point. He wanted to heal Fern, and this stone had no healing capability…

  Oh. Yes.

  It might.

  He stood, crouching due to the low roof, then swung to Sassik where he sat on the ground just outside the tent entrance. Dark soon, from the fading light. “Watch her, please. I’ll be back with healers.”

  Sassik could’ve returned to his woman and his caretaker role but hadn’t. He steepled his hands before his nose, stared over them.

  “What have you in mind? There is no one. And look.” He gestured with an open hand toward the chaos below. Milling people, flames still licked at the sky from the split landship, screams, and raised voices. The scavs had formed their remaining trucks into what would be a defensive perimeter.

  “Doesn’t look promising but…” He firmed his expression. “Make sure she stays alive.”

  “I will do what I can.”

  “Thank you.” He headed off down the slope at a jog.

  Chapter 38

  Fern’s surroundings jolted into view as she opened her eyes. Something beautiful had happened. Warmth. Enough air, a feeling as if her body had thrown off the pain that’d been leeching her at her sensibility, ever since…

  Ever since the judge sewed her to the circle.

  Forget that.

  Fern inhaled, and her ribs expanded fully, with no hurt at all to remind her of her many wounds.

  Nothing.

  Aunt M had flung her off the KI-mech, into a cliff face. Saved her but at cost. She’d bled again, and had been dying, surely?

  The look in JI’s eyes when he held her hand that one moment, it’d told her she was dying.

  She closed her eyes again, raised her hands under the rough blanket cocooning her. Wounds had been everywhere, but as she ran her palms over her body, she found nothing.

  Was this days later, then? She pushed herself into a half-sitting position with her elbows behind her on the lumpy ground. Feeling close to normal and
strong, she sat up. Swayed. Not quite one hundred percent, but she could see JI outside. Clothes, though? Fern pushed the blanket down. Someone had dressed her in a blue-embroidered shift that was likely grounder fashion. No underwear, but she would just keep her legs together. Fern smiled.

  After all that’d happened, she was alive, and so was JI.

  Only Aunt M was gone.

  She crawled to the tent entrance and arranged herself near JI – to sit beside him – it was so odd, so surreal.

  What had happened that she was healed so well…and so quickly?

  The landship still smoldered. The wreckage of the ramms and scav trucks was only now being surveyed. Men strolled around the smashed vehicles and minor war machines.

  JI had said nothing to her. His face was taciturn, and he’d only glanced at her. His arm though, he brought that behind her and pulled her close.

  Something was wrong. “What day is this, JI? Is it the day after the battle?”

  He took a few breaths then said, “Yes.”

  “That seems impossible. How am I so well?”

  In his unoccupied hand a large black crystal rolled about. “This. I had you healed in a roundabout way, due to this. And I nearly killed someone. An innocent. Not on purpose, but I’m sure that means little to them.”

  She placed her hand on his forearm. “If accidental, you should not blame yourself.”

  “Not even when I could have seen it coming. It was statistically predictable.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I commanded five healers to follow me. Before, I could get none to heal you. The casualties have overloaded them severely, and…I knew this. I went down there, into the makeshift healing areas, and rounded up five. Then I told them to heal you as much as they could.”

  She frowned, thinking. “And one of them used up too much of their life energy?”

  “Yes. I should have predicted it. I managed to stop them just in time. This thing is dangerous in my hands.”

  Waik power absorbed from the atmosphere and redirected was supposed to be mostly what healers used. The stone must have forced them to draw from deep within.

  “May I?” She drew his hand to her. “It was black?” He nodded. “It still is.”

  “Yes.”

  Aunt M gone, and JI was blaming himself for this too. How many other wounded people were neglected for her sake? No wonder it weighed on him.

  “What’s done is done.” He must have been desperate to help her. That made her happy, which made her wonder if she was terrible too. “You must move on, JI. So long as you don’t do the same again. You’re not bad. Obviously. Without us the judge would be killing twice as many as are down there now.”

  “Those down there don’t know that. Our part in this was missed. We are not heroes; we are victims in the eyes of most.”

  “So no one knows I made the mech walk into the Chasm?” she said, slowly.

  “I know. I figure it wasn’t M, so it had to be you. You are a hero to me.”

  As JI was to her. “Unsung heroes are better than dead ones.”

  “True. There is one more problem.” He pointed at the land below and the people. “War is inevitable. The signs are there. No mekker will stop the scavs blaming them, no blessing will do this. Ryke and his people will be the first to be attacked, assuming the rest of the landships escape here without a fight. I walked among them while searching for healers. There is too much anger. For once, the mekker leaders are the most reasonable, but it will avail them zero.”

  After surviving what the judge had done, killing him, killing his war machine, and now this?

  “Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war. Shakespeare,” he mused. “Emery never did tell me the story that came from.”

  “Nothing can be done?”

  “There may be something that will stop this.”

  She tightened her grip on his forearm and looked directly into his face. Though he’d enunciated steadily, something in his tone of voice had frightened her.

  “You’re scaring me, JI, and I’ve faced a lot of scary stuff.”

  “I must do something, and you must rest some more.”

  Though she searched him for a clue as to what he was thinking, there was nothing. “You will tell me?”

  “When I decide, yes.” He reached for her and kissed her forehead in a now familiar gesture. “Rest, pet-girl.”

  “Can I rest here, put my head in your lap? I’m sure I can sleep here.”

  “Not yet. I have to leave for a while. Sassik is still here. I can’t get the bastard to leave. He sees me as something important ever since I used the crystal in front of him. When I return you can sleep in my arms if you still want to.”

  “I will always want that.”

  “If Sassik tells you to leave and go with him, do so. I wish I could take you, but where I’m going is more dangerous than here.”

  The slight twist of one eyebrow, the upward tilt of his mouth – these told her he was anxious but was trying not to be. She knew him so well now. At first, JI had been supremely confident, now his humanity was messing with his head. Maybe more than it should.

  What could be more dangerous than here? “Take care then.”

  They kissed, and then she watched him stride away down the slope.

  He was worried about where he was going now that they’d been through Hell?

  Whatever it was, he would tell her when ready.

  Chapter 39

  He took the crystal in his hand again. The heat from contact was never ending with this one. No matter what drain he’d placed on it, and surely commanding the healers had done that, it did not change.

  Aerthe had given this to him, of that he had no doubt. He supposed this was why Sassik was sticking to him. Yet the man had not seen what he had when he last used the stone. Flashes of what seemed future possibilities had risen in his mind. Was he predestined to do what was shown? He’d seemed a god of sorts.

  One of those flashes had given rise to a different hope and now compelled him to do what he did, even though it was possibly Aerthe luring him to her, with the most precious bait.

  He walked to the closest ramm, parting the throng of mekkers with words so that they fell away like water flung by a storm, for he used the force of the crystal. His voice was deep and imbued with the scent of power, the crushing taint of deadly force, and the God Emperor aura. So it was that the future had labelled him.

  God Emperor rolled off the tongue. He’d tried it when alone.

  He spoke it now and discovered an even more resonant tone: “GOD EMPEROR.”

  Interesting. He would keep that in reserve.

  The guards around the war machine succumbed to his command.

  “Let me board the ramm.”

  Once aboard, he ordered the pilots to fly to the Chasm. He was sure that Aerthe would not seek to snare this craft as she had the others, because he was inside. The three mekkers in the cockpit had opened their mouths as if to deny him, but now they turned to do as he asked.

  The curve of the view screen reminded him of his existence as a mech.

  Simpler, it had been so much simpler then.

  It was merely minutes before they arrived above the crack in the world, and he ordered a descent. Once they’d dropped lower than where he rescued Fern, he adjusted and ordered them to slow. Though a ramm could hover, the engines strained, and the craft shuddered with a cyclic, bone-shaking throb.

  Above, the clouds had thinned but here, they remained.

  The scanners were functioning and should detect any large conglomeration of metal.

  Wisps licked the glass, moisture condensed and dribbled down.

  The external lights painted the fog with tincture of blue. Even the rocks of the nearly vertical cliff took on a blue wash.

  An eerie blue, he decided. Nothing living came here, or nothing that lived for long. Unless you counted Aerthe itself.

  “GO SLOW.” This could be addictive. Using the crystal made his blood si
ng.

  The pilots nodded. At least his stone-linked commands gave rise to zero unnecessary puerile conversation. They simply obeyed.

  Where the KI-mech had been dragged down by gravity, or perhaps where the Aerthe itself had clawed, were great gouges in the rock. He’d heard rumors of giant lashing arms reaching up to pull mekker vessels into the thrashing maw at the bottom.

  “She will not eat us,” he reassured the sweating pilots.

  By the time he spied the tangle of wires, then the pincer, JI was doubting the vision. But there he was. The fog drifted across and hid details, but he knew what he’d just seen – Aunt M, or his remnants.

  “OPEN THE DOOR.”

  Not in their rule book perhaps, but he exited via a side door – slid it back and leaped onto the cliff at a spot where he could reach that part of his friend. Then he latched onto the wires and dragged in the mangled contraption that was left of him – slowly, for he had to take care not to overbalance.

  If he fell, the Aerthe might spit him back out, or it might not.

  The red lights of M’s visual system flickered on, then the limb he grasped flexed itself. Alive?

  Most of him seemed here. A few limbs were gone, but his central core was intact.

  “Hello, JI.” The humming voice of M. Using a few of those crooked, spindly limbs, he clawed himself slightly upright, though upright here meant clutching the cliff and praying you didn’t slide.

  JI wiped sweat from his forehead, maybe a tear from both eyes. “Hello, you mongrel machinery. Friends forever?” He grinned.

  “Friends forever. Though my faith in you was, I must admit, waning. What took you so long?”

  “Stuff. Get in there.” He indicated the ramm’s open door. “I have to talk to someone before I return. Shall I throw you over or can you jump?”

  “With five point two intact limbs I can do that blinded. I was merely powered down, not malfunctioning.”

  “Hah.”

  “Just toss that piece of me in afterward.”

  He leaped and clattered in, scratching the outer paintwork, but who cared about that when projectile holes already decorated a fin on the craft.

  JI fetched the severed limb M wanted and tossed it after him, a few other pieces too. The blast of the engines was parting the mist below, pushing it aside in rolling pillows, and now and then he glimpsed what they hung above.