Ourselves

by S. G. Redling

  The parents learned quickly just how far out in the Reaches they were. They had come from rural Pennsylvania looking for work, the father having had a falling out with the Council. They expected Shelan to find work of his own but once the boy discovered he had a kindred soul in Anton, work was the last thing on his mind.

  The boys were night and day. Where Anton was muscular and brooding, Shelan was wiry and plugged in, his body constantly in motion, his mouth running. He buried Anton in filthy jokes, horror stories, and outrageous lies and Anton ate it up. They spent the winter hitchhiking and jumping freight trains trying to find any town with Nahan girls. They beat up common boys, fed off common girls, stole from common stores, and ran from common cops.

  Shelan’s parents fought constantly with each other and with anyone who crossed their path. For once, Anton felt lucky to have his parents separated. They only fought on the rare occasion his father ventured out to the desert from Boston. Shelan said repeatedly he wished the Adlais would adopt him since he hated his own family.

  “We could tell people we’re twins. We’re a miracle!” Anton laughed at that and Shelan began weaving the story that would sell the improbable truth.

  “Nobody is gonna believe us, brother, trust me on that.”

  “You have no imagination, Anton.”

  It was true. He didn’t possess a tenth of the Shelan’s ability to create stories and read people. Maybe it was from years of tuning out his parents’ fights or maybe he just didn’t have it in him. He knew his strength was fearlessness. He was strong and he was fast and he was just young enough to think nobody could beat him.

  Shelan counted on that confidence, his mouth forever getting them into scrapes they would narrowly escape. Anton didn’t care. He felt more alive with Shelan than he had his entire Reaches-imprisoned life. That was why when Shelan suggested they leave New Mexico and head west to the party scene of Hollywood, Anton couldn’t pack his bags fast enough. They stole a car and were gone before the sun came up.

  For five years, the two tore through the country like a wildfire, stealing anything they wanted, letting women run through their fingers like water. Shelan tried to teach his friend what he called the fine art of seduction but it was clear neither young man was interested in pairing up with a Nahan girl anytime soon. The world was theirs for the taking, they thought, and no woman, common or Nahan, was better than the rush of pushing each other to the limit. They skirted the edges of society, running drugs for cash, jacking cars, one time even robbing a bank outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Anton had taken a bullet in that caper and, although there was no scar, some nights he could still feel the twinge in his side.

  “I know you said you’d take a bullet for me, man, but you didn’t have to prove it,” Shelan had said. There was nothing in the world they wouldn’t do for each other.

  Everything changed one summer night on Fremont Street in Las Vegas. The heat was crippling even after the sun had set but Shelan had it in his mind that they needed the kind of trouble only Las Vegas could bring. They went into a dingy casino, Shelan rattling off possibilities ranging from rolling the blackjack dealer to seducing the weary cocktail waitress. Anton let him talk, his eyes scanning the room, ready to follow whatever scheme his buddy came up with, ready to knuckle down any problems that arose. He felt like a fight and knew that with Shelan the odds were good he’d get one.

  “Good evening, gentlemen.” A well-dressed Nahan man stood before them, looking cool in a natty sport coat despite the heat wafting in from the street. “Nice of you to join us.”

  Shelan grinned. This wasn’t the first time they had run into a mainstream Nahan big shot. From Buffalo to Miami to Seattle they’d been lectured and warned about cleaning up their act, getting a job, “doing their part” for the community of Nahan. No one had gotten through to them yet. Judging from the look on Shelan’s face, Anton doubted this greased-up joker would have any better luck.

  The man’s diamond pinkie ring glinted under the flashing casino lights. “You boys gonna behave yourself in my casino tonight?”

  “Oh yes, sir.” Shelan purred.

  “Sorry to hear that. I was hoping for someone with a little hell in their eyes.”

  Anton looked to Shelan who nodded. “Go on.”

  “My name is Mr. Delson. This is my place and there are some people who are not following the fair rules of my establishment. They have abused my generous nature. I am hesitant about involving the law due to the private nature of my ownership. I’m sure you understand. If I had someone I could trust, someone discreet to handle the more difficult aspects of my job, someone of my own kind . . .” The boys grinned. Mr. Delson shook their hands and just like that, they worked for the Council.

  Their work took them beyond Las Vegas. They moved money and vehicles up and down the West Coast, learning their way around the hierarchy of the Council. Shelan was amazed at the intricacy and scope of its reach. Nahan business intertwined with mobs—Italian, eastern European, Asian. There were legitimate businesses and enterprises that fell in the gray area in between. There were enormous amounts of money changing hands but that wasn’t what kept the two friends working. It was the world the Council opened up. There was no place in the country they couldn’t go and be welcomed; no hotel that would turn them away; no car they couldn’t get their hands on if they so wished. The Council played to their strengths, relying on Shelan’s quick mind and Anton’s fast fists.

  They were in Reno for Shelan’s first r ‘acul. Despite all the scrapes, all the violence, Anton had taken the heat through the rough stuff. He had killed numerous times, sometimes r ‘acul, sometimes for work, sometimes just for the hell of it, but Shelan still had never taken a life until a cocktail waitress named Dixi had gotten too coked up. Her heart was beating a little too hard for Shelan to resist as he fed on her and before he realized what he was doing, he felt the explosion of death rock through him. He collapsed on the carpeted floor of the motel room, his head erupting with light. Anton finished off the girl he was working on in the bed beside him, although he had had no intention of killing her before, and joined his friend in the post-kill high.

  “We’ve gotta get down to the casino! I’ve got to see this!” He dragged Anton to his feet and the two ran across the street to the Big Hat Casino and Gaming Hall. Anton laughed, loving the smell of the night and the exploding stars and was happy to finally see that same ecstasy in his best friend’s face. Once they passed through the swinging western doors of Big Hat, however, Shelan’s eyes grew enormous. His mouth dropped open and his hands grasped helplessly at the air before him. Anton laughed at what he thought was a joke. Then he saw the tears dripping off his friend’s cheeks.

  “Shelan, brother, what is it? You okay?”

  Shelan’s head rolled on his neck as if it were broken, his gaze spinning across the room. His voice was thin and panicked. “What are they?” Anton looked around him, seeing only the usual collection of commons in polyester they had seen at every casino.

  “What, man? The slot machines? Is it the lights? Are they too bright?”

  Shelan’s knees buckled and Anton caught him and took him out onto the street. Once the swinging doors had closed behind them, Shelan began to relax.

  “Do you see that every time you kill?” Shelan asked.

  “I don’t know. What did you see?”

  “It was snakes, man. They were covered in snakes.”

  “Who? The people in the casino?”

  Shelan nodded, wiping his eyes. “They weren’t real snakes, they were, like, made of smoke or something. And they were everywhere, just reaching for me, reaching for each other. There was all this . . . this desperation and rage and jealousy. Holy shit, I thought my heart was going to explode.”

  Anton wrapped his arms around his friend, holding him while he shook. “We’ll figure this out, brother. We’ll talk to somebody. Somebody’ll know what to do.” Anton continued to rock Shelan, ignoring the cars and noise that surrounded them. They were part
of the Council now. As soon as Shelan could walk, they would find a phone and call the office. Someone would clean up the mess in the motel room. They had cleaned up more than their share of other Nahan messes; it wasn’t too much to ask. Then they would find somebody on the Council, a doctor or somebody, who could take care of Shelan. Anton rocked his friend, feeling him beginning to relax. They always took care of each other.

  Three hours later a Cadillac picked them up and took them to a house out in the desert where the Council conducted its more delicate business. Surrounded by Nahan, Shelan was feeling better but for once Anton did the talking. He explained to their handler what had happened, trying to describe what his friend had experienced. After hearing them out, the handler made a phone call, repeating the story to someone on the other end. He listened, nodding, occasionally looking over at them. He hung up and turned to Shelan.

  “You’ll stay here tonight. Someone is coming to see you tomorrow. Adlai, the car will take you back to town.”

  “No way, man.” Shelan said. “If I stay, he stays or no deal. I don’t give a shit what’s wrong with me. If I gotta ditch my brother to fix this, it’ll have to kill me first.”

  The someone coming to see Shelan turned out to be a Storyteller and the one night they were supposed to stay became more than a week. Both young men were interrogated, Shelan more intensely, for hours on end. On the eighth day, which Anton had spent playing pool alone in the billiards room, Shelan strolled in and collapsed on the leather sofa.

  “You’re not gonna believe this one. They say I’m Storyteller material.”

  “No shit.”

  “No shit, brother. They want me to go into training.” He smirked but Anton knew his friend well enough to recognize the anxiety.

  “And what does that mean?”

  “Well I’m hoping it means free booze and lots of pussy but I’m doubting it. They want me to go to Chicago. There’s some big complex out there where all kinds of training happens. Feel like taking a drive?”

  “Am I invited?”

  “Are you kidding me? I told them you’re my twin brother. We’re the miracle twins.”

  “Did they buy it?”

  Shelan shook his head. “No dice. And do you know what the real bitch of it is? They told me to stop telling people my first name. They want me to go only by my last name. I asked if I could change it to Adlai but he wasn’t biting.”

  Anton flopped on the couch. “My dad should have signed those adoption papers.”

  “No shit, man. I’ve spent my whole life trying to forget my parents and now I’m saddled with their fucking name for the rest of my career.” He waved a finger in Anton’s face. “Let me tell you something, you little bastard, no matter what they say, the first time you call me Hess, I’m kicking your ass.”

  The icy Chicago wind numbed Adlai’s face as he sped along. It wouldn’t have mattered had it been a soft tropical breeze. He had long ago learned to keep his face a mask. There was a quirk among the acul ‘ad. While most of them were not gifted in reading people, they were also difficult to read even by Storytellers. He believed it was one of the reasons the two groups were drawn to each other. For the acul ‘ad, the Storytellers were a link to a world that was essentially closed to them, a translator of the emotional language spoken all around them, which they themselves could rarely speak.

  For the Storytellers, the opaque nature of the acul ‘ad was a blessed oasis of silence from the constant and often painful barrage of emotion that besieged them. Both groups were admired by the Nahan but within that admiration lay traces of fear and mistrust. The Nahan survived by working as a unit, a hive mentality. Anyone within that unit who resided on the fringes could be perceived as a danger, even if it was understood they were a necessity.

  Adlai could still see Shelan’s face the night they took him down. The Storytellers, the Coordinator, and the Council had pushed him and pushed him even while he begged to be released from his training. Shelan had grown increasingly paranoid the deeper his meditations went and his handlers had decided to keep him in isolation for his own safety. That’s what they told Adlai, who’d been forbidden access to his only friend. Adlai hadn’t argued. His years in the business had taught him that when you were outnumbered and outgunned, a frontal assault was a mistake. Instead he worked and waited, lurking about the complex in the hope of just laying eyes on Shelan.

  That moment had come four years ago at daybreak when Shelan’s screams could be heard roaring through the corridors. Adlai raced toward the sound and arrived in time to see Shelan, wrapped in a sheet, strapped head-to-toe on a gurney being rushed toward the loading bay doors. His pitifully thin body bucked and thrashed, straining at the straps; his voice was harsh and raw as he screamed again and again.

  “They’ll kill us all! They’ll kill us all!”

  There was one brief moment of silence when Shelan’s eyes met Adlai’s as the attendants raced the gurney to the waiting van. Adlai stood frozen, helpless to stop the Council from removing his best friend. Once eye contact was broken, Shelan resumed his rant, the attendants continued their race, and the Council went back to the business at hand.

  “Mental dissonance.” That was the term they had used. “A danger to himself and the Nahan.” Adlai had listened to their explanations, had put on a little show of outrage and despair and finally resignation as the Storytellers and the Coordinator explained Shelan’s removal into private care. He could feel it—all the while their sad and sympathetic voices rubbed up against him, they were feeling him out, trying to read if he truly bought their bullshit.

  Shelan was still alive. He was sure of it. Anton had been biding his time, doing his job. He didn’t have Shelan’s gift of prescience, but he knew with every fiber in his being that the new acul ‘ad and her Storyteller boyfriend were the keys to freeing Shelan. He would find him, free him. He couldn’t kill the people who had done this—Nahan didn’t kill Nahan—but he could bring a world of hurt down upon them.

  Sylva sat on the edge of the carpet, watching. Someone unfamiliar with Storytellers might have been bored watching two men sit cross-legged, facing each other, eyes closed for two hours. That someone might also wonder why the temperature in the room had risen several degrees for no apparent reason.

  She couldn’t explain the physics of it but Sylva knew the amount of energy being spent before her. This was a private guidance meditation, meant only for Storyteller and apprentice. Dalle and Desara had joined in a way she could never understand, Dalle leading the young man with gifts she knew a person had to be born with. Across the carpet, still as a stone, sat Lucien. He didn’t join the meditation, only sat by in case something went wrong, something only a Storyteller could see. Sylva’s job was to monitor Desara physically, to watch for outward manifestations of distress.

  She saw no distress, nothing acute, but she saw plenty going on.

  Although their positions never changed, Sylva could almost see the exchange of energy between them. Dalle would twitch and then Desara would flinch. Dalle shifted his shoulders and Desara groaned.

  Lucien saw it too. Sylva saw his attention on Desara’s fingertips, which fluttered and twitched where they rested on his knees, and more than once the apprentice’s skin broke out in goose bumps despite the rising temperature. She began to worry when she heard the boy’s teeth grinding, saw the tendons in his neck pull taut. Dalle reacted as well, leaning forward, still deep in meditation, his breathing speeding up to match the almost-pant of Desara. Lucien got to his knees when she did, both of them prepared to break the meditative bond if necessary but Dalle broke it first.

  His hand shot out, gripping Desara’s jaw, his thumb pressing hard enough to stop the gruesome grinding sound. The boy’s breath was part sob as he bent forward, slipping from Dalle’s hand, his head resting on his mentor’s crossed legs.

  Dalle breathed a long sigh. Sylva saw the fatigue on his face. He nodded to her and, without a word, rose from the floor, letting Desara’s head hit the carpet. Luc
ien rose as well and the two men left the room.

  Sylva slid her hand beneath Desara’s forehead. Gently she helped him sit up and then cradled his skull as she laid him out on his back. He never opened his eyes but smiled when she brushed the hair from his sweaty forehead.

  “Enough for tonight, Desara.”

  He sighed and turned his cheek toward her palm.

  In her office, Dalle and Lucien were muttering to each other, refilling their water glasses from her cooler. “So? What’s the verdict?”

  “His concentration is not great.” Dalle said. “He kept popping in and out.”

  “That’s to be expected in any meditation.” Sylva kicked back in her chair, her feet on the desk. “He’s still way ahead of the training arc.”

  “If he’d get his head out of his crotch he might be even further,” Dalle said and Lucien snorted. “Good god, for a girl who doesn’t talk much, Stell seems to have some extraordinary oral skills.” Both men laughed as Sylva looked on confused. “It’s just that when Desara gets frustrated, he tries to take his mind to a calm space, but it often goes on without him to a happy place.”

  Sylva laughed. “At least we know he has some balance in his life.”

  Dalle looked from one to the other. “He’s different now, but . . .”

  Lucien nodded. “It’s still there? The block?”

  Sylva had heard them mention something blocking Desara several times before.

  Dalle scratched his forehead. “It’s not . . . I don’t know what it . . . where it’s coming from. The cold. There’s something very, very cold that blows through him. So cold. Tooth-shattering cold. But no matter where I look, I can’t see it in him.” He folded his hands together. “I want to take him deep. I want him to call out the Vint.”

  “Already?” Sylva’s feet hit the floor. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I can’t see any further into him.”

  “But that doesn’t mean you need to break him open. He needs time. He’s not strong enough. Not yet.”