by Jen Ponce
Nex would know, and Nex had asked Kali to take him there. Had he guessed because of their, because he was her Archaeon Tezryo? “Damn it.”
“What?”
“Nex knew. Or suspected. Nex … fuck. He didn’t give up on her. But he didn’t see it happen, didn’t hear her neck snap.” He wasn’t aware he was pacing until Morgan stepped in front of him.
“Get a hold of yourself, son. If we need Nex to find her, then you need to find him.”
Right. He focused on Morgan’s face again. “Where’s Kroshtuka? We need a Wydling that can shift into a fish or anything that breathes underwater and won’t be immediately food for the fleshcrawlers. I’ll collect the construct once we know what we’re dealing with.”
Devany’s father was nodding along, hope crawling all over his face. How did it not kill him? “I’ll talk to Kroshtuka. Do you know of any fleshcrawlers that might be on our side?”
Doubtful. “I’ll put Kali on that. She enjoyed her last visit to their lair.”
“Good. Find Nex. Find a fleshcrawler. How … how would you like me to contact you once we’re ready?”
Tytan grabbed the other man’s hand and shoved back his sleeve. Before he could do much more than squawk, Ty had drawn a sigil on his arm that singed the man’s skin. “There. Put your hand over that and call my name. I’ll remove it when this is all over.”
Morgan’s lip was curled but he didn’t protest.
There was too much at stake.
“We’ll get her back, son,” Morgan said.
There was too much compassion in that voice, too much understanding. Tytan left before he cracked open and spilled his secrets wide.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Devany—better known as Dev Two to anyone not native to Earth—hummed as she cleaned the kitchen counter. The streetlamps were on outside, lighting up the puddles with their golden glow. It was a good day, though most were. She wasn’t exactly alive in the normal sense of the word. She existed to be filled with memories and used as a placeholder.
She wasn’t supposed to be disturbed by that or even understand what she was, but she was disturbed, and she did understand.
It hadn’t come all at once, this knowledge, but crept in over time. Visions of terrible deaths crowded her dreams at night, and one by one, the stories of those deaths became something more than just the fevered mash of a night’s sleep. They were real. She’d looked them up whenever specific details floated to her consciousness. She printed out the news articles and pinned them to a tri-fold board she’d purchased at the dollar store. The board itself was hidden in her closet so that her constructed children would not find it.
Oh yes, she knew they were like her. Seemingly alive and happy, perfectly real children--both hollow inside.
She wondered if they, too, dreamt of the murders that had led to their making but didn’t dare ask for triggering an unraveling.
Was that what was happening to her? Was she unraveling? How was it she knew this, knew what it was happening to her?
Perhaps it was the visit from the police that had triggered it, though she’d been dreaming about the murdered victims whose blood had fueled her long before the knock on the door. “We regret to tell you that Arsinua has escaped from prison. Can we come in, have a look around?”
Arsinua. She was living inside a construct too. Perhaps that construct had been Dev Two and she was Dev Three, an imperfect, smiling clone expected to live another’s life because that one was too busy to do it herself and too scared to make a choice that would end what she had here.
A police car made its slow way past the kitchen window. Dev Two … or maybe Three, barely noticed them anymore. No, she had her eyes on the plate in her hand, the one she’d swiped with the wet rag at least fifty times now. Maybe she’d woken up when Tytan kissed her, though he hadn’t wanted to kiss her, not really. He’d been wanting the other one, the Original, the whole time his lips had been on hers.
He watched her. She knew that. He thought he stayed out of sight, but she’d spotted him several times standing on the corner, brooding. A dark cloud of sorrow or anger or both hung over him. Devany wondered what had happened that made him so desperately unhappy.
Her fingers went to her lips, remembering the kiss, the way it made her feel—as if she were real and whole, her own person, instead of a shadow of someone else.
Had she the ability, she would hunt down her namesake and … what? Kill her? That one had power, she did not. She had nothing but this borrowed life, these borrowed children.
She had nothing that hadn’t already been Devany’s … except one thing.
She dropped the plate into the sink and went to the front door, hurrying, heart pounding, unsure why she was doing what she was doing, only sure she had to. She yanked the door open expecting him to be there.
He wasn’t.
Disappointment thrummed through her, mixing with the restless unease that had been building and building, thundering at the confines of her skin as if it wanted to break her apart and destroy her. Though perhaps that would be better than this half-life she’d lived up until now.
Where was he?
Why did she care?
Her namesake wanted him, but she was also wary, wary in a way Devany Two did not understand. He wasn’t a monster; he’d saved the children, saved the Original more times than she could count. Why the fear? Devany Two wasn’t afraid of him. She yearned to feel alive in the same way she had when he’d touched his lips to hers. She wanted his hands on her, his lips on her. She wanted him inside her.
Thoughts of him left her trembling with need.
She shut the door and retreated to her bedroom—not hers, the Original’s—and stripped naked, crawling into bed afire with yearning and anger. She took care of her—not the Original’s—needs, and fell into a troubled sleep.
Arsinua faced Neutria calmly, though inside she was knotted in fear. She hadn’t remembered the chythraul being quite so massive, though she realized she may have never had to stand in front of her before, staring her down, hoping she wouldn’t pounce.
Betrayer of girl child, Neutria hissed, her chelicerae spread in warning.
“I won’t explain myself to anyone else. I did what I did for Bethany’s good.” She clamped her lips shut when she realized that she was, in fact, explaining herself. She’d begged every creature who’d come close enough to take her back—to Earth, to Midia, she didn’t even care at this point—and no one would help her. They had her blood, they’d scared her, what more did they want?
“Shh. Leave the poor woman alone, Neutria.” The one called Elizabeta tsked at the chythraul as if Neutria weren’t a gigantic spider capable of sucking out her insides and wearing her skin as a disguise. She grasped Arsinua’s arm and guided her away, not once glancing back to see if the chythraul would pounce.
Arsinua did, she couldn’t help it.
Neutria hissed at her, fangs spread, venom dripping.
“Just ignore her. She likes to talk big but she’s really quite lovely.” Instead of taking her back to the corner the way Arsinua figured she would, Elizabeta steered them both outside. The wavery ground and churning vistas were less repulsive now, something that made Arsinua angry. She didn’t want to get used to this place and yet used to it she was, at least to some degree. The freakshow Skriven that crawled, slithered, or thumped by still made her tremble, but that was more of an afterthought rather than an all-encompassing fear.
She hated it all.
“I’ve been wanting to speak with you for some time,” the woman said, clearly unbothered by the world around her. She linked her arm in Arsinua’s and guided her away from the buildings through dirt orange grass. In the distance, a tall tower thrust itself from the center of a massive island surrounded by black water.
Arsinua realized two things at once: they weren’t walking so much as hooking—in tiny leaps—toward the island and Elizabeta wasn’t as relaxed and casual as she was projecting herself to be. Arsinua wished she’d h
ad the presence of mind to grab Travis before she’d been pulled away, but all her focus had been on Neutria.
“Are you a witch?” Elizabeta asked once they were near the shore of the black water. It stunk and Arsinua wished for the corner back in the tentacle-headed man’s shack.
“Yes. Though probably not the kind you are in mind of.”
“I need your help. And I know you need mine. Perhaps we could work out some sort of deal.”
Arsinua noted the hulking Skriven that had followed them from the shack. The thing was bound to Elizabeta through some magic known only to the Slip. She didn’t particularly like that he was there, and hoped he lurked far enough behind them that he couldn’t overhear. “What kind of deal?”
Elizabeta took a breath and let it out, a smile playing on her face as if she actually enjoyed what she saw around her. “I can have Oren take you home, wherever you wish to go.”
Arsinua’s heart leaped in her chest. Home. Midia, where her heart was, where her magic worked as it should, where she could be free. She would have to pay a con-aura to change her energy signature, have to change her looks, but she could be home, touching the soil on her planet once again. “What do you want in return?”
“Your magic.” She laughed at whatever it was she saw on Arsinua’s face. “I put that wrong. I need you to work a spell for me. It’s nothing that will harm anyone. It’s for me. I can put everything together, but I don’t have access to the Source like the Originators, or through them, the Skriven. I need power and you have it. Will you help me?”
“You must have magic of your own, you hooked us here.”
“Oren did. I can borrow his power in small dribs and drabs, but his magic won’t work for what I need.”
“And what is it you need? Specifically.”
“Do you need to know the details?”
Arsinua wanted to go home so badly, wanted it with every fiber of her being, but she couldn’t say yes to this without knowing the details, couldn’t lend her power to a working that could be intended to harm. “Yes.”
Elizabeta sighed rather dramatically, Arsinua thought, and pressed a hand to her belly. “I want to be compatible with Vasili.” Her golden-brown eyes slid over to Arsinua almost slyly. “I find him quite fascinating and I think he likes me too. I want to stay here, but not as a human.”
“There’s no magic that I know of to make you Skriven.”
She laughed. “I don’t wish to be. I merely want to be more durable. And I want my own magic so Vasili doesn’t have to do everything for me, so I can help him do his work.”
The hand on the belly didn’t mean magic, Arsinua thought, but didn’t say it out loud. She wanted to go home, she reminded herself, and what harm would there be in lending her power to this deluded young woman? “It will only affect you?”
“Yes. Me and no other. Well, it will affect Vasili when he realizes I’m not a weakling anymore, but that’s not a bad thing.” She picked up Arsinua’s hand and clasped it between her own. “Please?”
Hoping she wouldn’t regret it, Arsinua nodded. Elizabeta squealed, the sound making Arsinua wince.
“What do you need?”
Arsinua thought about the request, about the materials she would need, thought about the pathways of magic burned into her memory, and said, “A lodestone to boost my power. Henderson leaves, bostwick flowers, johnswort, and yager bulbs. Another lodestone to imbue with the spell—it will have to be an amulet, I would need much more time to effect changes in your body itself and I’m not sure it would be ethical to do so, either.”
“Understood. I will have these things to you as soon as we’re done here.” Elizabeta clutched Arsinua’s upper arms. “Thank you!”
Splashing noises made them both turn. A fleshcrawler pulled itself onto shore, its black eyes gleaming. Arsinua slammed a protection bubble down around them both, her heart thudding hard in her chest. If it hadn’t made a sound—and she knew very well they could move silently if they wanted—it could have taken them both before they’d known they were about to die.
“I need to speak to Tytan.”
Elizabeta touched the bubble and broke it before Arsinua had a chance to stop her. The crazy fool ran to the water’s edge and stopped but a foot from the fleshcrawler, well within striking distance. Arsinua whispered up her power, waiting to strike, but to her surprise, the fleshcrawler did not attack. “I will get him, though he is not in the Slip at the moment.”
“Thank you.”
She squatted down, even closer to the thing, even more vulnerable. Was she a simpleton?
“I’m Elizabeta.”
The fleshcrawler tipped his head, sizing her up for a meal, Arsinua suspected. Then he answered, which shocked her more. “Cazsada. The one named Nex sent me.”
“Nex! Is he all right? Never mind, I see your urgency. I will bring Tytan here as soon as I can.”
Cazsada inclined his head in the same regal way Nex always did, and Elizabeta strode away. “Oren! Take us to Vasili’s forthwith. We need to track down Tytan.”
Arsinua followed stupidly in her wake.
“What’s wrong?” Zephyrinia stretched her burnished gold limbs, her dark, curly hair spilling over her pillow and his.
Mal shook his head. The buzzing feeling crawling over his arms and legs wasn’t painful, just annoying, and it was obvious Zeph couldn’t feel it at all. Had it something to do with his broken aura, the Skriven blood inside him? He’d been most eager to find answers to his creation, and being in the Slip seemed almost right, almost like coming home, until now.
Now, the buzzing set his teeth on edge and made him want to go back home, to feel the warm wood rails of the Lady Free under his palms. “I don’t know.”
“That’s not very helpful,” she murmured, running her hands over his skin, easing the prickling feeling, at least temporarily, with her touch. “If I can’t see it and you can’t describe it, I can’t kill it for you.”
He laughed, turning over to cup her breast in his hand. Her lips parted at his touch and he marveled that she experienced so much joy with him considering what he was. He didn’t have to turn his magic on her to make her happy, and thanks to her, he had control over it completely.
So what was this new thing scratching at him, digging into his teeth, poking the soles of his feet as if it wanted in to eat him from the inside out?
“I don’t know if it can be killed,” he said, pressing his lips over her heart, feeling its beat through the heat of her skin. “It just started. A buzzing, a nagging feeling, a dark cloud of impending doom.”
Her hands cupped his chin, brought his gaze to hers. “Do you wish to leave? If this is hurting you, we can leave.”
He shook his head and went back to kissing her, smiling at the low moan in her throat. “No, not yet. The answers are here, I just need to find someone with the time to give them to me.” Tytan had been the one Mal expected to provide the answers after Devany died, but that one was too busy thirsting for revenge.
“We could always come back some other time,” Zeph said, her voice breathy with lust.
He loved that sound coming from her throat. “I’d rather leave with the answers and not return.”
Another shift in her awareness. “What’s wrong?”
He laughed, his fingers finding the warm, wet part of her. “This place feels too right. I’ve learned to be wary of things that feel perfect. They never are.”
“I’m not … oh … perfect?”
He didn’t answer her for a long time, not until they lay panting together, hot, sweaty, and depleted. “You are.”
“Mmm?” she asked, her lids half-mast.
“Perfect. But not in obnoxious way.”
She laughed and he wallowed in that sound. Her happiness meant more to him than he ever could have imagined. With a sexy snarl, she said, “I’ll have to try harder, then. I like being obnoxious.”
His turn to laugh. Then the buzzing grew stronger, making him clutch his head with the noi
se. “It’s going to drive me mad.”
She was up and dressing in seconds. “We’re leaving. I don’t want any arguments. I’ll find someone to take us home. Mal? Stay with me.”
He nodded but couldn’t answer. The pain was growing, the pressure building so much that tears leaked from his eyes. He didn’t hear her leave—the voices drowned everything else out.
“Masssster,” the voices hissed. And another, exultant, “Yesssss. The cracks are growing.”
Mal gasped as agony ripped through him. He would split in two, he would die.
He rolled off the bed to the floor and struggled to his feet, still naked. He walked forward, slammed into the wall, and then found the door. As he moved forward, the pain lessened. If he stopped, it grew.
He moved, pulled along by the promise of relief. He left the manse where they’d been staying onto streets that weren’t his own, down paths that mushed beneath his feet, past monsters that took no notice of him. The buzzing grew, the pain eased, and Mal didn’t know if he could count it as a win or not. Zeph would be upset when she returned to find him gone but he couldn’t find the strength to stop himself, couldn’t still his feet that propelled him ever forward.
Without breadcrumbs or even scraps of clothes to leave a trail, he was at a loss how she would find him again.
He hoped she would find him. He didn’t want this to be his last day, didn’t want their lovemaking to have been the end of their relationship. He didn’t want to leave a hole in Zeph’s life she’d never fill.
But he couldn’t stop and so he went ever forward, praying each step wouldn’t lead him to his doom.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Tytan narrowed his eyes at the fleshcrawler currently swimming in his pool. “You ran away?”