“Be careful, child,” advised the angel.
“Don’t listen to her!” snapped the devil. “She won’t let you have no fun!”
I laughed at both of them, clicked my bare heels together and leapt out into the heart of the night, spreading my arms to embrace the wind. It sang in my face, a vast, jubilant monster that tugged at my hair and bouyed me up gently, as if I were made of thistledown.
I took a swan-dive downwards, trailing my hand through the dew-black canopy of the forest, then I looped back up towards the stars. Somehow I’d always known I could fly and I claimed the air as if born to it, dipping and darting, spinning and swooping. I was a kestrel, a falcon, an eagle dancing on the wind, my partner the moon, her pale light a benison that glinted on my brazen plumage. Plumage? Yes, feathers indeed—a rich golden crop of them had sprouted through my skin, tough primaries from my fingers and forearms, wide secondaries along to my shoulders and a drift of down over my throat and breast. Talons I had too, and a beak as sharp and cruel as a sabre. I called out to the wind, the sound an inhuman shriek. The breeze swelled itself into a gale, screamed a challenge in reply and gave chase as I spiralled out over the Forest of Dreams.
We played tag for an hour or two, turn and turnabout pursuer and chased, while the moon smiled down and the sea intoned a perpetual lament, until the game grew stale and the maze of air currents seemed a prison.
“Time to go,” called the gale. “Sails to fill, old oak trees to topple, loose tiles to tear from gables-ends and cast down on unwary heads!”
“Where must I go?” I screeched back. “Where, to find lost souls?”
“In the forest,” came the answer, trailing away as the impish gale fled out over the sea. “Under the forest. Beneath the stone.”
Where else? The clearing gaped wide under the curve of my wings, dark curtain wall of trees ringing sad, pale grass, an eye in the forest, its iris the sinister grey stone, its pupil a single figure robed in black. I folded my wings and fell to the ground, reshaping Anna in one fluid moment. The figure turned, red hair and white face under its hood.
Chandre.
“Michael sent me to rescue you,” I said, and my heart leapt in relief at finding her at last. “Now you’re safe.”
She drew the hood back and under it her face was stiller than stone, her eyes as blank as the space between stars. “Go away, Anna. You, with your endless youth, your insolent tongue, your infernal luck—go away. Trouble walks at your back, girl. You inflict more pain than even you can heal.”
A gulf yawned between us, a void no human power could bridge. I stretched my hands out, knowing as I did so that it was impossible to reach her. “Only come with me—I’ll take you back to Lyall.”
“No.” She took a step backwards, her feet sinking up to the ankle in the fallen stone. “I am lost. How Lyall will weep! He’ll never forgive you.”
“Tell me, where must I look for you?”
“You don’t want to find me, don’t want to find us.” Chandre accused. “Had I been alone I would be safe by now, but the poor child—Erik’s child—her you have no intention of finding.”
“That isn’t so!”
“In your head you may believe that, so reasonable, so logical, so impartial, but in your heart, Anna, what truth lies there? Look there, and tell me you care one jot for the child’s fate.”
I couldn’t meet Chandre’s lambent gaze. I covered my eyes and wished myself away. The world shifted around me and I was alone in the forest, under a spreading chestnut tree. I made a new dress out of a thought, cool silk to suit the mood of the night, blue to complement Anna’s gold and cream persona. Out of the shadows came my friend the tiger and, at his side, walked my enemy, Meeka Jansen.
“Where’s my daughter?” she demanded. In her eyes was all the hate of the world.
I had no words for her and bowed my head.
Meeka laughed, a sound so sudden and mad that the tiger growled. The woman lifted one hand, each finger of it tipped with a claw, and struck me across the cheek. I felt three of the razor-edges bite, carving viciously down to the bone. When I explored the injury there was no pain, just an odd numbness, but blood ran over my skin like molten gold.
“I kept my promise!” Meeka said, with a triumphant toss of her head. “Heal that!”
I swayed back against the trunk of the tree and its hidden door slid open beside me. The sight amused me, yet I kept the smirk from my lips. “You do me an injustice, as your husband did before you. You see, I did find your child—your Angel is down there.”
She frowned. “Truly?”
“Of course.” The bubble of confined laughter danced in my throat.
She watched me as she stepped through the doorway, as if I might pounce on her. On the top step she hesitated, uncertain in the face of that darkness. I pushed her hard in the back and listened to her scream as she fell. It was a short scream, followed by a dull thud. The door tidily closed itself and I brushed imaginary dust from my hands. The tiger stared at me.
“Here is a secret between us.” I told the great cat.
“This unit will erase this event from memory at your request,” the construct said.
“Do so.” I smiled my farewell and exited the scene. The balcony unfolded under my feet and, as I stepped down from the parapet, two figures rose out of the stone like smoke.
Garnet and Amethyst Treebone.
“Go back!” Garnet advised. “Here is the danger I warned you of!”
Amethyst pointed one bony finger at my heart. “The devil waits for you within!”
“Silly old women, with heads full of magic and dreams!” I giggled at them. “An indeterminate number of sisters indeed! There are only two of you, dressing in different hues, wearing contact lenses to make your eyes match and taking such pretty names—Opal, Emerald, Topaz, Peridot and Tourmaline, some seers, some dowsers, some necromancers—petty conjurers all! You may fool all the others, but I have the True Sight and I’ve guessed your secret! Can you guess mine?”
“You are not who you pretend to be, Anna-Marie.” Garnet accused.
A thin smile iced over Amethyst’s lips and something cruel fluttered behind her violet eyes. “Poor child! I don’t think that even you know who you really are!”
I dismissed the pair of them with a wave of my hand and went into my room. When I paused before the mirror to straighten my wind-tossed hair, the reflection was Caron’s again, a pale waif with sad eyes and tousled auburn ringlets, wearing yesterday’s dress. Meeka’s gift to me marred her freckled cheek, three neat parallel cuts. I put them from my mind and they vanished.
“Poor child!” I echoed, touching the image in the glass. “Afraid for your lost friends and at the mercy of capricious fate. Who will heal you, little girl?”
“Perhaps I may.” SantDenis unfolded himself from the ugly shadows, a leering imp with ruffled shirt undone to his navel and breeches half-unlaced. A medallion hung over his heart, a bright bauble of gold and blood-ruby, cruciform and bladed like a dagger, winking in the pallid moonlight like an armoured phallus.
Caron’s eyes went very wide and her voice shook as she said “Get out of here now, or I’ll scream!”
“I shall make you scream later, for pleasure, not pain.” The Tambou dipped in a mocking bow and swept an arm towards the bed. “Your carriage awaits, sweet angel. Ere dawn we shall journey to paradise and back!”
“Are you mad? Get out!” Caron and I both took a step back, which he matched with an advance. “I will scream!”
SantDenis moved as we delivered that final threat, moved faster than I could, as fast as a striking snake, as fast as a knife falls to embed itself in quivering flesh. He caught my left forearm and flipped me over with such casual ease that I might have been a rag doll. I landed on my back across the end of the bed, then his weight pinned me there, arms crushed in the small of my back. He covered my mouth with a palm and grinned at me. “Scream now, if you can!”
I did. Only a muffled yelp came out. H
is other hand contorted in the scant space between us, plucking the buttons from my dress like ripe fruit. The strength in his short frame was shocking, as was the heat of his skin against mine and the cinnamon-steam of his breath in my face. I squeezed one hand free, using it to slap wildly, ineffectually, at his head, then sliding it through the looped braid of his mane to pull his face away from mine. He clenched the muscles along his neck and the hair tightened like a noose around each of my fingers, trapping the hand. Satisfaction leered at me out of his eyes, a distant, arrogant amusement, and for an instant it seemed as if something else looked out through the windows of his soul.
I bit his hand, drawing blood and winning back my voice. “You! You’ve been following me, skipping from person to person. Who are you?”
“You’ll know me, soon enough! Sweet, virgin Caron, I’ll spill your blood as you’ve spilt mine!” His weight across my ribs meant I could only pant for breath and my head was starting to spin. SantDenis laughed at my panic and, even though the buttons were gone, he ripped the fabric of Caron’s dress, baring my right breast. He ran his tongue lightly across my exposed nipple, which hardened beneath the unwanted caress, the instant response more terrifying than anything he could do. “Struggle all you want, little miss,” he said, drawing his lips back from coyote-teeth. “I find your resistance stimulating.”
I shrieked in his face, the Caron-persona in tatters, bucking to throw him off me, feeling his taut muscles sliding over mine through the soft cotton of the dress. The Tambou only grinned some more and used my motion to ease his breeches back from his hips. His penis was erect, wide and spade-shaped, naturally without a foreskin and all the more obscene in the lack of hair around its base. He ran the tip of it along the inner curve of my thigh and I broke out in a cold sweat.
Anna, listen to me! Zenni said, with such urgency that I wondered how long I’d been blocking his voice out. Put him to sleep.
I reached inside the Tambou’s head, through the red ocean of his lust, and touched the sleep centre of his brain, slapping the circuit shut as if it was a switch. His pupils went wide, there was a brief sensation of astonishment, then he went limp. I crawled out from under his dead weight and left him there, slumped on his face across my bed.
Are you all right? Zenni demanded.
Yeah, for sure, just peachy! I discarded the remnants of the ruined dress. Where’s Jeb?
Your cabin.
He was in the shower. He said nothing when I opened the door and just stood there looking at him, lean, bony and reassuringly hairy. He stepped aside so that I could join him under the spray.
“Don’t touch me!” I snapped, as he reached out. “Oh shit, don’t listen to that—touch me!”
So he lathered my hair and soaped my body, first the aching lines of my back, then turning me to face him. A thought leaked out of his head, that my skin was too hot, too clammy. When he touched my breast I knocked the soap from his hand, lifting my face clear of the warm rain so that I could look at him. He knew the hunger in my eyes then, saw my need and pulled me close. We had sex without leaving the cubicle, with cold, slick tiles against my back, the act itself breathless and slippery, uncomfortable and sharp, almost violent instead of tender. Jeb was harder than iron and rough, and I was oddly dislocated, aware of my moans of pleasure but not really part of it all. After the painful, unsatisfying conclusion, Jeb drew me back under the full flow of the the shower to wash our stickiness away, then shook the water from his mane of hair before lifting me off my feet and carrying me, loose-limbed and dripping, to our bed. He swathed me in a gaudy beach towel and wound himself in another, lying very close to me, nose to nose. “What happened down there?”
“Nothing. Less than nothing.” I pushed back a wave of wet hair, gold-brown, dark with water. All semblance of Caron had left me. “I don’t care to discuss it, okay?”
Jeb nodded and we lay still for a time. I heard the change in note of the cabin airflow, as Zenni stepped up the speed and temperature of the system to dry us more efficiently. I smiled at that—he was ever the mother-hen.
Jeb watched me, his eyes still soft and silly in the wake of our passion, and he copied my expression, thinking it to be for him. “Love you, Anna.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re beautiful.”
“Too glib, you honey-tongued bastard! Why really?”
“Because you’re—” He counted each item off on his fingers. “Lovely, smart, brave, good and kind, and you’ve a great sense of humour.”
“You could say the same about millions of other women in the galaxy. Why did you choose me?”
“Seriously?” He chewed speculatively at his bottom lip. “Because of the differences between us—rich and poor, dumb and smart, dark and light—I like that contrast, it’s intriguing. Having said that, we do share something fundamental—neither of us truly belongs. We’re misfits, living on the edge, like wolves outside the circle of light cast by civilisation’s campfire, lost souls abandoned in an alien milieu without a guidebook, or even basic instructions. We can’t read the fucking manual, ’cos nobody ever gave us one! It’s what first attracted me to you, Anna-hon, that air of being not quite human. You mask it better than I do, acting the part, pretending to be one of the herd, but I can sense that you’re not.”
“And that scares you just as much as it attracts you?”
“It terrifies me!” He grinned. “But, as my mother always used to say, if you want to cure your fear of being burnt, just plunge your hand into the fire!”
“I did that, when I was Angel’s age, and that’s why I’m afraid of it.” The memory was so old, so insubstantial, that it slid away from me. “So long ago—maybe it was someone else?”
“You, afraid of fire?” Jeb laughed. “Anna, you are fire, the elemental force and energy of it! Are you afraid of yourself?”
“Yes, sometimes—” I found a fragment from that past and held to it, shaking my head at its lack of logic. “I remember now! I put my hand into the flame and it didn’t burn me. It just felt warm and soft, like honey in the sun.”
“You were just a child, imagining that to hide the pain.”
Later, when Jeb was asleep, Zenni cleared his throat, a peculiar sensation in the back of one’s skull. You lost it down there, Anna. You could have stopped SantDenis as soon as he laid a finger on you.
It wasn’t poor Herculeon. Something else was inside his skin.
As in possession, as in Amethyst Treebone?
The very same.
The Zenith laughed. You’re dreaming, Anna!
If that’s so, you’re dreaming along with me.
Perhaps I am a dream?
I shook my head and the cabin fell apart around me, then Brimstone dissolved into tiny sparkling shards and melted away. Only the stars remained. True dreams, Zenni? Shall I remember them?
In dreams begins responsibility, my partner quoted, and I woke up.
Chapter Nine: Obsidian Sand
I became aware that my face was buried in damp grass a fraction of a second before I became aware of a throbbing, incandescent ball of pain at the back of my skull. Systems overload—I made a frantic attempt to burrow my way back into anaesthesia and dream, which failed, so I gritted my teeth and tried to get enough clear space inside my head to think straight.
Anna? Zenni held communications down to a minimum, yet the murmur thundered around my much-abused brain. Drink this.
I trembled as he triggered our psionics and about a tablespoon of sweet liquid materialised in my mouth. I swallowed my medicine obediently, followed by the second dose that Zenni sent down. It tasted pretty good and the sweetness soothed my parched throat. There had been no urgency in my partner’s manner, so I was content to lie still and let the restorative do its work. After a while the pain subsided to a bearable level and some warmth crept back into my cold limbs. My right shoulder and hip were bruised and sore, and every bone in my body ached dismally. Calling on a scrap or two of discipline that lurked in the d
usty corners of the resources cupboard, I clenched and relaxed each muscle in turn, working down from my neck. This exercise reminded my circulation of what it ought to be doing and I started to feel better. I turned my head slowly and my eyes opened to blackness. I was sprawled face down on grass and my body seemed to be covered by a heavy canvas sheet.
I asked the unoriginal question. Where am I? Not in the tomb, I hope? I feel like I could be dead!
They’ve kept you in a drugged stupor for about thirty-six hours, not unconscious exactly, just deeply asleep. Zenni sounded weary, if that was possible for a machine. I’ve kept you under constant surveillance, monitoring your life signs, tracking you when they moved you. For most of the time you’ve been in Lowkrys, then, a few hours ago, you were brought up into the forest. At present you’re under guard, in the clearing with the recumbent stone.
Sounds reached me then, a myriad voices shouting in approval and then dying away. What the hell’s going on out there?
You aren’t ready for that yet, Zenni said, with measured patience. The stimulant will take a little more time to reach its peak and you ought to rest until it does. I gave you a long-acting compound, but at best it can only buy you three to four hours. You need some real, honest sleep and you could do with some food. Are you hungry?
I could eat. I was amused by Zenni’s babying, knowing that whatever he did was in my best interest. A foodpak materialised in my hand, warmed and open. I sucked at it quietly, mindful that I shouldn’t be heard. Chicken soup. How are you working the psionics?
Jeb finished rewriting the programs. He added a new routine so that I have access to the Freeberg-Dane unit when you hit a sub-optimal state. That man’s a genius, Anna. He seems to have an intuitive understanding of Zenith systems that far outstrips that of our designers. The enthusiasm ebbed from Zenni’s voice, replaced by exhaustion. Quite honestly, Anna, except for that age when we were apart, I’ve never operated through a worse thirty-six hour period!
Did my state scare you that much? I wondered how much of my dream’s content had seeped up the link. Most of the images were fading fast, yet some remained; the easy joy of flight in avian shape, the sudden, wicked delight of Meeka’s murder, and entirely too many memories of that incident with SantDenis. Yet it was only a dream, a confection of my troubled mind, spun out by my drugged state, and there was no truth in it.
The Beauty of Our Weapons Page 17