by J M Guillen
“—figure this out.”
I paced my small room, each step painful. My cuts had started to scab over, and my skin smelled faintly of alcohol. Those scratches had been cared for very well. Any time I awoke, I found I’d been cleaned and sanitized, my bucket emptied.
More than once, I’d tried to remain awake in the hopes of catching a glimpse of my captor.
Captors? Surely Ignacio couldn’t be alone in this.
But I could never stay awake.
As always, a tray of yogurt, meat, and water had been in my room when I’d woken. I’d eaten nothing but yogurt and drunk nothing but water for days, and…
I was hungry. Starving.
I’d never felt so hungry in my life.
It wasn’t like hunger, not really. It felt more like a deep insatiable lust, like being held underwater and desperate for air.
I wanted the meat.
“Maybe it’s the protein,” I muttered out loud, as I often did now. Yogurt had dairy protein though, didn’t it?
“Don’ care.” I sat on my bed and rocked. I could smell the meat, so wet with life, delicious, juicy.
“No!” Disgusting. Eating raw meat would make me sick. It really—
***
—didn’t seem that way though. It seemed like the meat was the most succulent thing I’d ever smelled. I just sat on the bed, with my mussed hair and rumpled clothes. My hands wrapped tightly around my knees as I rocked back and forth.
“You look crazy.” I nodded. “Yep. Crazy.”
But I knew, knew that once I moved toward the food, I would eat the meat. It seemed like exactly what I should do.
That was why I couldn’t move. The moment I did, I would cross a line I wasn’t ready—
A momentary shadow fell over the room, and I saw the silhouette of… someone as they peered in through the window.
“Hey!” I sat stunned. But only for a second. I leapt off the bed and ran over to the window.
The person—were they wearing a mask?—saw me and ran off.
By the time I peered outside, they were gone. I saw nothing but wind and sweet grass.
Watching. Someone watched me.
“I saw you!” I yelled as loudly as I could. “Come back! I just want out!” I beat and kicked at the boards some more, even though I knew it was no use.
I kicked until my feet bled.
The smell of the meat was a physical thing. It was a beautiful song. It was everything I’d ever wanted.
I couldn’t say no.
I crawled to the tray. Yogurt, meat, and water.
The scent of the raw flesh intoxicated me.
I froze over the tray and picked up a single piece, my fingers trembling. I stuck out my tongue and just touched the tip of it to the squared off corner.
Rapture. Bliss.
Blood, like a river of poetic sensuality, dripped down my fingers, my chin.
“Celeas’Elhia.” The nonsense words felt like a small prayer upon my lips. The meat felt slick and wet, sensual on my skin. I rolled the cube between my fingers and smeared its sweetness on my cheek, down my neck.
Slowly, I licked my fingers, and it was rapture.
I shuddered and my hips writhed. Elemental pleasure burned along the surface of my body.
I’d eaten rare steaks before; this was different, so different. Nothing like beef. Stringy, yet tender. I gasped as I swallowed, sighed as electric filaments of desire trickled through me.
I ate the whole bowl in a matter of minutes, and it was wonderful. So thick and hard to chew.
I sighed and whimpered, giggled and moaned. Blood, scarlet with life and pleasure, ran down my chin, over my breasts. Between my legs.
“Celeas’Elhia.” I caressed myself, sending ripples of sharp ecstasy through my body.
Like an animal, I licked—
***
—his face and writhed eagerly. I wrapped my legs around him and growled as I wriggled against him.
“This is who you were before,” he groaned. “We have done all of this. Throughout lifetimes, throughout worlds.”
“Yes.” I raked my fingernails along the musculature of his back. “Fuck, oh yes.”
The stars had come to their rightful places, the currents of ancient power surged. Around us, I saw masked faces that gazed down at us.
Eighty-one, I thought. But just one, all the same. Singular infinity.
Ignacio bit my neck, my breasts. He held my legs so far apart that I cried out from the pain of it.
“You are Celeas’Elhia, and Celeas’Elhia is the gateway,” he incanted, his eyes burning with fury and Nothingness.
“She is the bearer of insatiable desires.” I gasped as he pushed himself deeper. “She hungers for the strength of men.”
Celeas’Elhia wasn’t her Truename, I knew that. Each of the masks had a thousand thousand names, across a thousand thousand places.
But I felt her Truename. It whispered at the edges of my heart, a secret meant only for me.
“So do we create the world anew.” He bore down upon me, faster now, and I gasped and wailed from the fury of it. “Through her power, you shall be the gateway. Through you shall the next Harbinger be born. They shall slice the world asunder. They shall Herald the Turning.”
“Mriswul, the Scarlet Star.” The voices chanted around us, in perfect cadence.
That name bore truth, pronounced perfectly. Each syllable cut, every sound burned on the edge of my mind.
The name sang of elemental darkness boiling over the world.
The name whispered of a star, scarlet in the sky.
The name bore the hame of shambling humanity and broken minds.
“You shall bear this mark.” Ignacio traced the mixture onto my forehead, where it stung and burned. I couldn’t see the Sign of Mriswul, yet I felt it burn into me. “You shall be the open way.”
“Yes, Ignacio!” I moaned his name as red ecstasy built in my body.
“The time is not yet,” the voices chanted in the shadows. “First shall come the Skittering Dark and then the Harvester. The Unfathomable shall follow.” They paused. “These three shall herald the Scarlet Star.”
Ignacio traced the symbol on my forehead again.
I screamed.
Burning pleasure surged through me, kindling and smoldering in my womb.
“Yes!” I screamed, delirious with pleasure. That Sign burst into my mind, and clarity—
6
8 January, 2001 - Present Day
St. Julian’s Bay, Malta
Earth
“Anya!” Rachel’s cry sounded shocked, a meld of anger and horror. It felt as if her voice came from impossibly far away, cast across a vast darkness.
Anya screamed.
I had only heard her truly scream a handful of times in my life. Typically, the Preceptor’s dainty voice came as little more than a whisper when she actually chose to speak.
Now Anya wailed, her keening moan lamented, agonized.
My eyes snapped open.
The blue haze of Isabella’s engrams faded.
Somehow, Isabella had awakened, even while she bore the touch of the Neural Lacuna.
She screamed as well, blasphemous words that burned my ears and dizzied me.
“Her passions are sharp! Hungry!” Isabella leapt upon Anya, grasped her face with her clawed left hand. As before, mad incantations of shadowed blasphemy bubbled from her lips, but now, something else joined those sharpened words.
Numbers. They described arcane patterns, arcs of heretical physics that should not be.
Anya wept and whimpered. She trembled. Her anguish shattered my soul, even as she burned with some incomprehensible pleasure that wracked her body.
Isabella wept, tears of crimson blood that dripped down her face.
I leapt, a susurrus of lunacy and furor.
No doorway stood here, no scarlet passage between me and bestial desire. Yes, the song of bitter blood burned within my mind, and yes, a dire foe stood before me.<
br />
Yes, I hungered.
In any other moment, these things would call to the aberration. I would feel the arch of its back, catch the scent of the prey. My skin would itch. Like an echo across a sanguine sea, I would feel the creature as it approached.
Harbingers. Whispers of the primal hunger it bore.
Not this time. The hunter did not come.
It was.
Mine!
At that thought, the Large One glanced over at me, concern on his genial, bearded face. He had heard my thought, as my pack often did.
I nodded toward him, once.
As my feet left the ground, Michael Bishop leapt toward Isabella. We landed in a feral pounce, all deadly grace and fury.
I held no weapons, yet this did not matter. Every muscle moved with pure poetry, every sinew burst with rage at the woman who dared lay hand upon (mine) the Silent One.
I roared, feral and inhuman, a cry that echoed with ancient truths.
Michael! the Sharp One cried in my mind, yet I did not turn.
I knew where our foe lay.
The woman whipped her head toward me. On her I smelled rot, blended with the nectar and liquors of wanton desire. Her eyes cackled with a maddened glee.
“Michael Bishop!” she cried and hurled my twitching pack mate to the ground. Her hand burned with a darkened flame. “Shall I show you? Do you wish to—?”
I snarled, uncaring for her foolishness. I lunged toward her and relished in the instant of terror as she realized she was not the hunter here.
No. She had erred.
I grasped her by the shoulder, intent on simply breaking her.
The woman twisted and lunged toward me with her claw of shadowed sorcery.
I grabbed her head and bound to one side. When she tried to clasp my face, I roared.
“Fool! You do not see—!” she howled.
I twisted her head and bellowed in a thunderous howl.
I felt the bone snap.
I felt the sinew tear.
I heard the flesh rend.
I ripped the woman’s head off, splatting carnage all across the floor and my pack.
“The fuck?” The Large One scrambled backward, stumbling over himself.
“Got him!” the Sharp One called. Snick! Snick! Snick!
I turned toward her, starting when three tiny pinpricks bit at my shoulder. They bore some sweetness to them, a deep drowsiness I had not felt moments ago.
I snarled, not understanding what had happened.
Time to chill out, big guy. The Sharp One gazed at me, desperate worry in her eye. She nodded when I met her gaze. We’re safe. Everyone is safe.
“No.” The word felt like a stone on my tongue, and I shook my head, even as the drowsiness grew stronger. Her. Mine. I turned toward the Silent One who still twitched on the ground.
We have her, the Fierce One, whom I hadn’t seen moments before, thought to me. Rachel will see to her, Mike. Just rest.
“Fix. Her.” The words came heavy, guttural.
“I’ll try, Bishop.” Rachel’s eyes rimmed with wetness.
“No!” I roared, even as the blanket of warmth fell around my mind. You don’t try. You do it. You fucking—
I collapsed.
The shadows of slumber collapsed with me.
The Unfathomable Mask
“It’s under control.” The feminine voice sounded a touch clinical, a bit distant. “I don’t see any of the aberration’s markers within his endocrine system.”
Rationality has returned to baseline parameters, Anya linked. Although this is difficult to confirm with the proximity of the Variance.
“But he’s okay?” The man spoke in the syrupy accent of the deep South. “He’s not gonna sprout animal hair or nothin’?”
I tried to listen, but the voices came from impossibly far away. Sometimes they mumbled, other times they warbled into sounds that made no sense.
“I’m going to keep the thing dormant.” The first woman sounded as if she might be angry. “He may not like it, but that’s the Designates’ official word on the subject.”
“I dunno.” That voice came from somewhere to my left and crinkled sweetly at the edges with a Hispanic accent. “Every time Bishop’s friend has come out to play, it’s been for our benefit.” She paused. “I think perhaps we worry too much.”
“That’s true,” the man mused. “But it’s a matter of control. Did you see how quickly Bishop ripped that Irrat’s head clean off?” He gave a low whistle. “What if it’d been angry with us? Would you have had time to stop it?”
“Control is exactly the point,” the first woman agreed. “You don’t know how many different experiments and test runs we did on him while he was in torpor. Aside from placing a permanent algorithmic system within his physical body, we just couldn’t keep the thing at bay.”
“He can hear you,” I called as I pushed myself to a seated position. Apparently I’d fallen squarely in the middle of the Corvus, and for the moment they had left me there.
“I hope you can!” Rachel didn’t even try to control her anger. “Michael Bishop, when you told me you had this thing under control, I believed you!”
“It’s kind of good that he didn’t, right?” Delacruz gave Rachel a lazy smile. “What might’ve happened to Anya if it wasn’t for the lobo?”
“That’s not the point,” Rachel snarled.
“It’s kinda the point.” I gazed at her. “But you aren’t wrong, Caduceus.” I sighed. “I can’t be in charge of a crack team of professionals if they’re constantly concerned I might go bestial.”
“Well.” Rachel appeared positively shocked. “Michael Bishop. I never would have thought.”
Now I just need to find a crack team of professionals, I linked to Wyatt.
“Anya?” I glanced meaningfully at the Preceptor, who stood against the far wall of the bay. “Are you status green?”
I am. She nodded, and I saw that she still felt a bit shaken. The Irrat disrupted key frequencies to my Crown’s engagement modules. If she had not been stopped, I would have permanently lost consciousness.
“Which doesn’t make dallying with aberrant horrors a good thing.” Rachel opened her pack and pulled out some injectables, along with a slender axial syntax modulator. The tip of the device burned with green light.
“I’m not saying it is,” I sighed.
“What matters most is what I think.” Wyatt sat in his seat at the front. His Tangler, again, had been partially disassembled, and he’d tied a NASCAR handkerchief around his head.
“Yeah?” I winced as Rachel gave me an injection. It bit a little more than usual.
I’m loading you for bear on mecha, Alpha. Rachel smiled. You might feel a bit jittery.
“That thing is fucking terrifying, Hoss.” Wyatt shook his head. “Nothin’ like standing next to an aberration that can rip a human’s head off and just have to hope it’s on your side.”
“Guthrie isn’t afraid of a little puppy, is he?” Delacruz crooned.
“None of this matters.” I cleared my throat. “We’ve wasted a chunk of time here. I don’t know that any of Isabella’s memories mattered in the end.”
“That was some sickening shit.” Wyatt shuddered.
The nature of the Darkened Road has always been a mystery to Facility Prime. Anya raked one hand along her hair as she linked. Perhaps it is valuable data.
“Not for us, I don’t believe.” I frowned.
I’m accessing some of your internal mecha dialogues, Alpha. Rachel gave me a small smile. You might feel a little woozy for a moment.
I noticed, now that I’d agreed with her, I had stopped being Michael Bishop and gone back to Alpha.
I nodded.
“Wasn’t a waste though.” Wyatt didn’t look up at me, instead focused upon the internal housing of the Tangler. Something within pulsed verdant and whined lowly.
“No?” I felt that wooziness like whiskey in my blood. “How’s that?”
“Key
.”
“Key?”
“Yeah.” Without raising his head from his work, he held up a key attached to a wrist bracelet. “Elevator key, I’m bettin’.”
“Well.” I couldn’t help but chuckle. “At least that’s something.”
“I left a quarrel in that hallway, Alpha.” Delacruz shifted gears seamlessly from her snark-off with Wyatt straight to business. “I’ve been peeking through it on occasion. The Zealators seem to have all cleared out.”
“Empty hallway?” That seemed too good to be true.
“I’m officially logging a request to be on the away team if you’re going back.” Rachel glanced up at me brightly. “I’m not wearing a red shirt, so it’s okay.”
“What?” I shook my head. Rachel Gardner would never make sense.
I agree with the Caduceus. Anya affixed me with an expression I’d almost categorize as stern. She will be required in order to modulate your mecha. I will also be required to track the axiomatic weave and how it shifts in proximity to the Variance.
“Yes.” I held up one hand. “I get it. We’re all going. From this point forward, we’ll all be more attentive to Asset Gardener’s moratorium.” I pointed at her.
“The one on biting?” She gave me a playful grin. “I didn’t expect we’d bite anyone.”
“The one on splitting up the party.” I leveled my gaze at the rest of my cadre. “Honestly, every time we do, we just find horrific trouble.”
2
Ten minutes later, I and my crack team of professionals stood in the hallway, arguing over the best way to split up the party.
“If the elevator is the only way in, then they’ll watch the elevator,” Wyatt reasoned. “Or rig the thing to explode. Or summon sexy aberrations to pour into it the moment the door closes.”
“I really hate it when you have a point.” I scratched my patchy beard.
“We’ve learned one thing for certain,” Delacruz mumbled, sotto voce.
“What?” Rachel turned to her.
“Not all of Mike’s Irrational girlfriends have tentacles.”
“That one was a real winner too, Hoss.” Wyatt chuckled. “I have decided to bow out and let you have her. True love must prevail.”