GRIT

by Elle Cross

  They clearly couldn't use Jack, or Owen, in the same way as they used me, or the other women they had held. But they made him do other things. Owen flashed in my mind. What things they made him do because he couldn't be broken. He only died because he was able to stumble away from here.

  I was untrained, whatever that meant. And they needed someone like me specifically. I couldn’t help but notice that I had a passing resemblance to Kate, the dancer. To the girl that they broke with Owen.

  When the girl died, it had disrupted whatever plans Churchfield had. That was why they didn’t want another one die again. That was what they meant when they'd wanted to keep me alive as long as possible. Not a sacrifice to kill, but one for pain. A living sacrifice, something that could enduring never-ending torment and not die.

  Humans would break too easily. Gods, however…

  But why….

  A yawning chasm opened within me as if the thawing winter landscape of my mind gave way to a wakening understanding. As if memories seeped back into the consciousness of my mind, lessons that had been hidden from me, tucked away and forgotten.

  I didn't remember the old myths in detail. The ones before the creation of Power Brokers to keep the veils between worlds healthy and strong. Only that there were older things, ones that didn't follow old rules. They existed before the rules.

  They were the reason you were afraid to close your eyes. Or afraid to open them when you heard that sound in your room at night. They were the thing in the dark that made your hair stand on end. That thing that you brush up against between the sleeping world and waking world.

  Chaos. That yawning void that would feast on souls and minds, infect enough of the population to create entry into this world. When that happened, everything in this world would fall.

  I gasped at the vastness of it all. The endless universes eventually crumbling away into void. "You can't do this."

  Churchfield didn’t know that I referred to the cosmic side effects of his actions. What would come from feeding into this Chaos. The foolish man thought I only spoke of the here and now. Of avoiding my own pain.

  "I'm afraid I have to. To preserve our way of life."

  Why was that always the excuse? And what way of life wasn’t being preserved? The only thing I could see was that he coveted the power that the Remnant Gods wielded and wanted it for himself. This wasn’t for Humans or anything else.

  But now wasn’t the time to preach to a zealot stuck in his ways. "You've been deceived. Please. If you invite this thing in, if you help it, Chaos, it will destroy everything. It doesn't care about your petty politics or insular view of Humanity. It's just a giant nothing that will consume everything. It won't be satisfied. Never satisfied."

  "That's just the lie. Once we can get it to infect these Remnant Gods”—he said it like it was something dirty in his mouth—“it will make them run back to wherever they came from, leave us in peace. Then, we cut that thing off too if it gets too uppity. Easy peasy."

  He wanted to run people off of a land that was theirs before Humans were conscious of thought. Run people out that had sacrificed and torn apart their tribes in a voluntary exodus to ensure the continuation of the worlds. "You're a fool. The Power Brokers are the only ones keeping it at bay."

  There was a look that came over his face. "I'm the fool? I’m the fool? I'm not the one tied up to the bed." He swung the baton again, this time at my leg. I braced for it. I swallowed my pain, grateful the bone didn't break.

  A squealing, alien sound shot from the mirror. Then the lieutenant nodded his head. "Yes, that's right. I'm going about this all wrong." He snapped his fingers then. “You, now,” he called to Jack as if he were nothing. Jack, who had been keeping himself small and quiet and unobtrusive, fought against the order.

  No matter how hard he struggled against the order, the strain that made his eyes rim red with burst blood vessels, he still came.

  A fear that I haven't felt in a long time moved within me, and leaked in a whimper out of my mouth.

  That alien thing that moved inside the lieutenant hissed its approval.

  Jack was at the edge of the dais now.

  I couldn't think of this as Jack. This was not-Jack. "Jack," I whispered to him as he loomed over me, crawling over my body. "I know you can fight it. You're strong. So much stronger than this thing. Please."

  He lowered himself on top of me and kissed me. Soft and sweet. It distracted me enough that I let down my guard, all of the things he'd experienced rushing into me. Pain, rage, fury, despair. It was in that shocked moment that he sank a blade into me, parting the skin on my arm slowly.

  I screamed pain into his mouth.

  The thing that was Chaos grew heavy with pleasure. It leaked a little of itself down from the mirror to test the room. It found me, filled me, my thoughts, filled my nostrils, invaded my ears and mind. It settled and sank on my skin, waiting to penetrate my pores. Delved inside me.

  It wanted to use me. It needed me. It wanted to be in my flesh.

  The girl. The one who died. She wanted to die before that happened. She made Owen kill her before it happened.

  Jack cut me again, this time my other arm, swallowing more of my pain in his kiss. He did it again. And again. Kissing my body with either his lips or the knife.

  Silent tears streamed from my eyes, raining down my face.

  He touched the places he had cut me. Traced his finger in the bloody lines that marked my body. Kissed the open wounds.

  Churchfield liked what he saw. The heavy musk around him made me know that he didn't need the Chaos inside him to like this. That he didn't need an excuse to get him to inflict pain and torture.

  My vision blurred as I lost myself to the pain and blood loss. They would keep me alive, of that I had no doubt. But I couldn't live through this. Another day, another hour. How long had others lasted?

  Fingers dipped in blood caressed my face. My blood. Jack ran his fingers on my face. Then my arm. He kept touching me even as he cried bloody tears from his eyes.

  I blinked, and suddenly I felt like I could breathe deeper, more clearly. A clarity sharpened my eyes.

  No longer did the brand burn into my skin. He had knifed away the symbols that were binding me. And instead, gave me symbols for protection, scrawled over my body with my blood.

  So much pain. But I was no longer powerless by the brand. And what was more, I wasn’t constrained by fear or terror.

  In that moment, I knew. I had given it to Jack. All the pain and fear he released from me, and took it from me, swallowing it down in stolen kisses.

  I knew it was what I was supposed to do now. Jack sensed that I understood what I needed to do now. I had swallowed a lot more pain and fear and whatever else. I needed to release it all now. Release it all into him so that I would have nothing to sacrifice, nothing to strengthen the Chaos.

  He would take it for me, and die for me to give me a chance to live. I choked down a sob so I wouldn’t give the Chaos even a tiny sip of anything to feed from.

  Jack kissed me again. When he did, I shifted the pain into him. I gave him all of it. I couldn't not.

  And he drank it down and more, the tears he shed rained on my face, washing my face clean of blood.

  He fell away, his body lying on his side.

  My chest heaved at the sight of Jack’s crumpled body.

  Lieutenant Churchfield thought this was odd. “Wait. He wasn’t supposed to die!” Then he looked at me. “What the hell did you do?”

  Doors swung like pendulums in my mind. All the doors. Any doors.

  Every space and pathway was open to me to walk. Even the pathways that connected to people. Every heart was a doorway for me to walk toward and open.

  I breathed in the yawning mysteries that flipped like pages of a book before me, and I exhaled the cold darkness of space. I directed it to the mirror above.

  I had called for a portal to open to the farthest known star I could think of.

  The yawning maw o
f an event horizon rippled in the mirror above me. Churchfield gaped at it. Then looked to me. The alien thing that had slipped inside of him long ago swirled agitated behind his eyes.

  He wouldn’t be able to deny me. "Jump," I ordered him.

  In a blink, he was gone.

  I looked into the bit of space that had opened a path above me, thanked it for answering me, and asked it to close now. Please.

  Lightning clashed, and the seething rage of a summer storm boiling over preceded Deimos's arrival. Staccato bursts of gunfire stopped short and gave way to screams. I heard the wet tearing of flesh, and splatters. I didn't fear those sounds, even though I knew I should.

  My mind was already numb, tears spilling in endless cascades.

  Deimos found me, then. He was resplendent in his god form, so terrible and beautiful, walking through the mist like out of a desperate dream. The black whorls on his body swirled in agitation and made him hard to look at. He bared his teeth at the sight of me, and pulled on the restraints that anchored me to the bed. They gave way easily.

  He was gentle as he gathered me to himself, leaning me against his body, tucking my head beneath his chin. He cradled my numbed arms, pulled one cuff off me, followed by the other. He pushed against the gashes on my arm that I only now noticed throbbed in pain, as blood trickled over my arm.

  The sight of it made me kind of giggle.

  He cupped my face, looked into my eyes with concern. Then surveyed the rest of my body, the other cut marks on me. The anger that roiled from him rippled through the air.

  He covered me in the black night of his power as his men arrived. They echoed his seething anger, as they swarmed this place, silent as nightfall, and nearly as dark. They moved as one. Quick and efficient, rounding up the people to kneel if conscious, or be thrown in a crumpled heap if not.

  I had no idea Deimos had so many guards, barely rippling the air in their wake.

  The black whorls snaked from Deimos, wrapped me, and had me near-swaddled. I was bathed in a warm cocoon of black, a thrumming warmth that made me drowsy. I was nestled close to his heart as he rose to address the men.

  Balin was the most recognizable of them, the shadows that clung to him receded from his face. He levered Jack from the floor, his shivering body gave me joy, relieved that he was alive. Deimos held me closer. Another man quickly came to take up Jack’s other side.

  "Get him safe." Deimos's order rumbled deep from within him, reverberated through my body.

  "He needs a temple," I creaked out.

  Deimos stroked my cheek, nodded. "Corso." A spot darker than the surrounding blackness moved and gathered Jack up, wrapping him in jets of red and gold.

  "He followed me, didn't he? Corso was able to follow me here."

  Deimos didn't answer, but his "hm," sounded like a yes.

  Balin addressed his unit, all of whom had scoured every inch of this place. "Where is the leader?" one called out. "Did he get away?"

  “Nothing passed us and lived,” another growled.

  "Find him," Deimos said softly, a tone more lethal than if he’d shouted. "He couldn't have gotten far."

  "Oh." I bit my lip. I felt the others' attention turn toward me. I shrank from them, and spoke only to Deimos. Or rather, his chin. "Uhm, he actually did get pretty far."

  The men who heard seethed, and waited to be ordered to move. Deimos's jaw worked at that information, stroked my temple. "Did he now, darling? Don't worry, we will find his scent, then find him."

  I coughed primly. "Actually. You can't." Before he could interrupt I continued, finding the strength to look him in the eye and meet his gaze. "I opened up a black hole and sent him to the farthest star I could remember." I pointed my finger up toward what was now just a ceiling.

  Deimos looked up, then back down at me, and made me repeat what I said. I did. "You opened a black hole. Then, sent him to the farthest star you could remember." He said it slowly.

  I shrugged. "It was the farthest place I could think of." Then, I nestled into him some more. "I wanted him far, far away from me,” I whispered.

  He held me close, then kissed my forehead. "Always unexpected."

  Satisfied, Balin called out, "We have the rest then." A decidedly bloodthirsty look came over him. "Detective Troy will be here in five minutes."

  Whatever that look meant, Deimos didn't want to articulate in front of me. "Get them out then. We'll give the detective a perfectly usable crime scene."

  And in five minutes, it was. With cameras and official recording devices, the Major Cases Squad came to discover an internal affairs problem that implicated high ranking officials. "It's a shame that they couldn't handle the results of their own bad juju."

  She shook her head in frustrated anger. Then, she looked at me, eyebrow cocked. We good?

  I nodded.

  She smiled.

  "All right, civilians need to clear out so us official people can do our job. I'm talking down the line, fucking textbook evidence handling here. Stuff they'd teach about in law school as the prime example of getting shit done. We'll be the fucking ADA's wet dream when we give him this shit pile of evidence. You get me? All recorders out and running."

  She was in fine form indeed.

  And from one step to the other, I was nestled on Deimos's lap in his car. "Where are we going?"

  "We're going to take you home."

  "Where did those men go? The ones you didn't leave behind for Corbin." The ones that were still alive.

  Red and gold flashed in the black of his eyes. He raised a hand, delicately kissed my wrist. "Nowhere you need to concern yourself with."

  "But I want to concern myself with it." I stared him down. "I don't want to be ignorant."

  "I would have you kept away from such things."

  "Tough." I stared at him, and refused to back down.

  He drew a finger down the side of my face. "Okay. But then after, you are coming home with me."

  "Deal."

  I finally found out what was behind that nondescript door to nowhere beside the conference room at Janus Holdings.

  It held nothing and everything at the same time. "This place is an intersection. We simply call it the White Room. It takes us where we need to go and holds things that need to be held."

  "Sounds like a weird long-term storage."

  A ghost of a smile fluttered across his face. The White Room was indeed white and it was like walking into blinding light. I didn't know how he kept his bearings. I closed my eyes to it until I felt the comfort of darkness blanketed against me.

  Deimos had shielded me with his own cloak of night.

  By the time he dropped his shield, we were standing outside of what looked like an industrial warehouse. It was all concrete slab and high ceiling. Exposed I-beams and other support structures stood out. Either this building was under construction, being demolished or both.

  Two guards remained at the entrance outside as Deimos and his men moved in. Inside wasn’t any better than outside. It was barely more than cinderblock, tarps, and electrical wiring. Another guard held the edges of the tarp aside for Deimos to walk through. I felt the rippling edges of a spell whisper over me as we crossed over an unseen barrier.

  Inside, I realized that the dirty tarps and cinderblock hid a ring of power. A blank space of nearly pure black, as black as the White Room was white, a single, unadorned workman’s light hung from the ceiling, illuminating the middle of the circle.

  That spotlight shone down onto a trio of blessed containment cells situated as a broken triangle in the middle of the ring.

  They were set up almost like the Basement in Midtown, Corbin's precinct. Each cell stood apart and rested on their own protective sigils, all so that any prisoner’s powers could be contained, while also being kept separate from any source of power, including elemental, which they could otherwise call upon. Beyond the center spotlight, hints of a construction project in progress slept in the shadows.

  Wisps of black smoke and tendrils of
gray fog grew weighty and dense near the cells. Then, a few of Deimos's men stepped out where the bits of smoke were. Each man held a squirming lump of black aloft, like holding up a piece of night. My eyes strained to see the distortion and what it was made of.

  The slashes of red and gold in Corso's bundle made it easier to see that they were men squished and wrapped together, struggling against their bonds.

  The men were dumped into the cells unceremoniously. There were about five to ten inside each cell. After a few of them tentatively touched the cells, no one bothered to fight against them. They had to have known that those cells were reinforced with power and blessings.

  I motioned to Deimos that I wanted to be let down. It took some compromise, a silent exchange, but Deimos unwrapped me from his shroud of power and set me on my feet. I didn't want to face the people who had abducted me and tortured me while nestled in the crook of Deimos's arm like a baby. It felt nice, and Lords Above knew I preferred it, but I didn't want them to see that I was helpless.

  I needed not to feel helpless.

  I was still a little unstable as I walked, and a warning rumble sounded in Deimos’s chest. Sighing, I nodded once, and allowed myself to be tucked under his arm, nearly melded to his body. He supported most of my weight, but dammit, I was on my own two feet, and that was all that mattered.

  Deimos ran his hand down my arm in answer to my thoughts, squeezing me more tightly against him. I looked up at him, accepting a brush of his lips against my temple.

  Soon, his touch seemed to say. Soon, you will rest.

  The men in the cells had gotten over the shock of their new surroundings. Now that they were no longer wrapped up and secured, some of them started to relax. Some even felt relieved, like this was better punishment than they’d hoped for.

  I was sure that if they were to have been taken to Human courts, they would have been part of the Human prison system and incarcerated for life. These men though seemed to be part of something else. They were a combination of police officers, and other prominent citizens. Wealthy citizens. Citizens that could pay their way out of anything with slick lawyers and bribes. Hells, blackmail.