The Reckoners

by Doranna Durgin

  ::Krevata,:: Sklayne said, clear exasperation coming through. ::Not personal.::

  “Damned right it’s personal!” Garrie said. “They won’t... surely they won’t... I’m not even the same... being!”

  ::Power hunters, feel you.:: Sklayne might still be invisible, but Garrie thought she saw the flick of a barely-there tail from the corner of her eye. ::Not suspecting you yet, poor stupid powerless lost human. Waiting for the big one to say. You go!::

  She watched the Krevata; they watched her. One of them gave a little involuntary flex of his hips. The big one, she realized, wasn’t an allusion to height. The others responded with their own little demos of self, offering up little grunts of appreciation — and shuffling closer. Coming for her. Power hunters. Getting off on the mere scent and ethereal feel of her.

  “Gahh!” she cried, and ran for it. She scooped up the satchel and aimed at the nothing and...

  She ran right through it and smacked into the wall beyond, hard enough to bounce slightly but not so hard she didn’t immediately snarl an accusation. “Sklayne!”

  The Krevata lumbered in to take up the whole of the room. They bounced up and down on their bizarre backward-jointed legs and Garrie got the distinct impression that this passed for laughter. This time she shouted less with accusation and more with frantic need. “Sklayne!”

  ::Push them,:: Sklayne said, somewhere inside the room and boy, he had to be quick if he’d avoided a trampling. ::Use the Trevarr and push them! Push the nothing!::

  Braced against the old whitewashed brick of this section, Garrie gave them a panicked first push. They staggered back slightly — not so much, actually — and then they bounced up and down, the laughter movement. And other movements, as well.

  ::No, no! Use the Trevarr!::

  “Okay, okay!” She doubled down and drew hard on the foreign feelings within her, flooding herself with sensation even as she flung a strong gust at the Krevata. This time there was no laughter to their staggering — this time, two of them went down.

  ::Impressed,:: Sklayne said. ::Made them mad.::

  “Yeah, that was totally my intent. Piss them off. Because things aren’t bad enough already.” Garrie clutched the lumpy satchel. That, too, was a mistake — the lead Krevata noticed, for the first time, that she had the thing at all. His disc ears swiveled around; his tiny eyes widened. He reached across his hunched shoulder and pulled a short, machete-like blade from a sheath tight to his back. In his other hand he held a stumpy revolver.

  “Oh, crap,” Garrie said. Didn’t matter that the Krevata held that gun as though it was a found thing, an awkwardness that didn’t fit his hand and wasn’t even held so it could, fingers that would barely fit in the trigger guard once they tried. It was a gun, and it would go off. “Oh crap!”

  ::Push the nothing spot!:: Sklayne commanded her, in a voice that meant all his fur was standing on end. ::Do, do, do!::

  Garrie did.

  The Krevata exploded into angry snarling, slobbering grunts, rocking in a violent side-to-side motion, as the spot bloomed into a fiery presence, no longer any sort of nothing.

  Sklayne shouted right into her head — ::Go! Go!:: — and she shouted back, “But that’s fire!” and then she didn’t have any choice — they all had machetes, and oh boy they weren’t laughing any more as they hunkered down and charged her.

  She had to run straight at them to reach the fiery sucks-life, filling her lungs to bellow what should have been a battle cry but came out as pure ahhhhhhhhhhhh — ! Running at fire, running at lusty, musty and furious Krevata —

  Hoping not to collide directly with any of them.

  Fire poofed out to engulf her, hot and full of brimstone; Sklayne yeowled a victory and then faded as her battle cry turned to a scream. The fire scoured her from the inside out, grabbing her up for an instant of suspension that took —

  — Forever —

  And then spit her back out again.

  Garrie tumbled to an undignified stop, clutching the satchel. There she sprawled, head spinning, breath panting... assessing. Did she even have any hair left? Any skin? Hard to tell, with her senses so fried. She tried to orient — heard no Sklayne, heard no sound of Krevata... smelled no Krevata.

  Smelled leather and wood smoke.

  “Trevarr?”

  Slowly, she unkinked herself, finding in this dim, diffuse light that she did indeed still have her skin — unable to resist a quick pass over her hair to confirm its presence as well.

  She blinked, unable to find walls, unable to find a ceiling... unable, really, to find the floor. Only able to find where her feet stood in featureless reddish gray mist. Vertigo seized her, sudden and ruthless, and dropped her to her knees and almost to her face. She closed her eyes, clutching the satchel tight.

  After long moments, her perceptions settled. She opened her eyes cautiously, keeping a soft focus as she turned a slow three-sixty right there on her knees.

  And found him.

  Too late, too late, please not too late.

  He was nothing but a crumpled form in the distance; inexplicable energy smudges smeared the otherwise featureless mist around him.

  She scrambled to her feet, sprinting the distance, her body still not adjusted to this place and taking forever to reach him even though she ran with huge, flashing strides, the satchel an awkward burden in her arms. Forever, before she threw herself down beside him. “Trevarr!”

  He didn’t so much as blink — not fallen, but on his knees and sitting on his heels on this strange undefined surface, his hands resting on his thighs, the leather coat splayed across the ground. Unmoving, unresponsive — not, at first glance, even breathing.

  A second glance said it all, showing the twitch in his hand, the faint shudder in shallow breathing, his expression troubled — drawn brow, tension around his eyes, faint flare of nostril. The muscles of his jaw were hard; those of his neck corded.

  “Trevarr?” She whispered it, a hesitant hand hovering over his arm. “Look,” she said, nonsensically. “I brought your things. I met Sklayne, and we found the Krevata, and everything’s falling the hell apart, and what else didn’t you tell me?”

  No, no, that’s not what she’d meant to say, not nearly.

  She glanced up at those smudgy spots again — nothing there to clue her in; if they so much as drifted in this undefined fog of a backdrop, she couldn’t perceive it. No natural breezes here, nothing for her to gather and shape. Only what she had within.

  Better not waste it.

  She pulled the satchel closer, taking her first good look. It was some kind of leather, tough and nubbly and stained, the contents a rough jumble of disparate things. She caught a glimpse of burnished metal and found the disk she’d seen earlier — and beside it, another inexplicable device. She pulled that out, frowning at it — tightly machined pieces with rounded edges, molded to fit a hand and inscribed with precise glyphs, inset with spots of cloisonné color. Right. Whatever. She slipped it back into the bag.

  The stout stick, she would have called a bludgeon — if it wasn’t for the thick metal glyphs and lines worked into the smooth wood, all of it polished by age, no rhyme or reason or pattern there. She could make no more sense of what she would have called a belt, had it been sturdier — as wide as her hand, made of intricately knotted string, a silky, fragile-looking piece. Then a stone — deep blue and blooming all over with silvery lace, wrapped in metal inlay much as the stick. The glint of glass caught her eye — or she thought it was glass. A vial, thick, heavy, filled with something... when she reached for it, her fingers prickled.

  She decided not to touch anything else. There certainly wasn’t anything here that looked as though it could be of help — or if it was, she didn’t recognize it and didn’t know how to use it.

  But Sklayne wanted Trevarr to have this.

  She had no idea why. Or what to do next. Except to follow the impulse to rest her head against his chest, listening to the thud of his heart. Looking for a stron
g, solid beat and getting something erratic and shallow — a skipping pattern that made her own pulse surge in fear.

  “What have they done to you?” she whispered, not expecting an answer.

  A spirit popped into existence nearby, complete with a swoosh-and-suck that broke the silence hard enough to make Garrie jump — her defensive posture fading as she realized this one offered no more threat than the smudges around them.

  As indistinct as the spirit was, its terror came through to her. “Hehhh,” it said, an equally indistinct plea for help. “He-eh!”

  “What’s wrong? How did you get here?” She hunted for breezes to work with, any kind of energy she could use to bolster it.

  Found nothing.

  “He-ehp!” One of the unformed mitts of its hands reached out to her, grasping air —

  And then the spirit dissipated, the remnants hanging there in the gray vagueness.

  A smudge.

  Garrie jerked around to look at the other smudges — wildly, now, taking in the vast undefined space all around her.

  Smudges everywhere. Dissipated ghosts, all of them.

  No wonder the spirits had become so upset — and so desperate. They’d been trapped, and they’d become prey. Herded and consumed and dissipated.

  What the Krevata got from it, Garrie didn’t know.

  But she bet Trevarr would.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 30

  Hiding in the Basement

  Maintain an appropriate demeanor at all times.

  — Rhonda Rose

  Holy farking crap!

  — Lisa McGarrity

  Sklayne hid in the basement corner. Alone. Waiting. Staying glass.

  So very hard, trapped as cat. Barely doable at all. Every breath in, he renewed the effort; every breath out, some part of him became just a little more visible. Toes this time, tail tip the next...

  But the Krevata weren’t paying attention just yet. The Krevata, who could do this not-seen thing too...

  The Krevata were too busy throwing a communal fit. Because Trevarr had been right. They wanted the Garrie. Just like Ghehera would want the Garrie, if they learned of her.

  The Garrie, small person of much sweet power.

  The Garrie, the small person who could save Trevarr, if anyone could.

  So then Trevarr could stop the Krevata.

  And he and Sklayne could go home.

  Home.

  Sklayne flattened his ears against the falling dust and mortar, squinting. Wanting to do, restricted by the glyph-bonding. Wanting to stop Krevata.

  Stupid Krevata, throwing a fit about the Garrie while this world tore itself to pieces around their ill-warded portal.

  Sklayne waited. Staying glass.

  Hoping.

  Holy farking crap. Hoping.

  ~~~~~

  Garrie pressed both hands over her face and searched desperately for calm.

  For solutions. For something she could do.

  She hadn’t expected this. Not to sit here surrounded by ghost smudge and vast nothingness and kneeling beside hope and fear and the balance of a world all wrapped up in one man with no idea how to make things better.

  Fark.

  Seeing him like this seemed so much more personal than it should have, just like touching him had so quickly turned into something she just did.

  Lisa McGarrity, Reckoner Panicked.

  Because she knew only one thing to do, and she’d hurt him the last time he’d gotten in the way of her breezes. She’d hurt him badly.

  She drew a deep breath, focusing on the feel of his chest beneath her fingers. The fine material and the supple leather of his shirt, the front lacing tangled in her fingers. The warmth of him and the tension in his body, the unsteady nature of his breathing.

  Along with her own rising sense of certainty that offering of herself to him was not only the thing to do, it was the thing to do now.

  Carefully. Most carefully.

  She left her hand on his chest, summoning up the faintest hint of a pure personal breeze and channeled her trickle of energy there — giving of herself in a way she’d never done before. Giving back of herself. The passage of energy pulled at her, brushing nerves from the inside out — an astonishingly pleasant sensation, as if some part of Trevarr had trickled back up the connection to touch her.

  She floundered with that, losing herself to those sensations for a long, blissful moment — and then Trevarr made a sound deep in his chest. She folded her fingers around his, around the old scuffs and scars and hard living on his knuckles where his hands clenching on his thighs. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m sorry. I’m trying not to hurt you.”

  His body trembled beneath her touch; his fingers flexing as if he was reaching for her.

  “Okay,” she said, still feeding that trickle at him, still suspended in the connection — finding a little taste of the energies he’d given her and adding them into the mix. “A little more. That’s all. Just a —”

  His eyes snapped open, instantly finding her.

  “Holy farking crap!” she cried, and would have startled right away had he not moved with such blinding speed — grabbing one wrist, then the other. All feral, all power, all everything he’d ever been and then a hell of a lot more. Starting with those eyes. Bright in their tarnish-edged silver brilliance — bright enough so they seemed to...

  No. She wouldn’t think it. She wouldn’t think the word glow.

  Wasn’t it enough that they were no longer round in pupil, but now distinctly slitted, a cat’s eye in moderate light? So no, she most definitely wouldn’t think about the way they glowed.

  Or about the way they looked at her while they did it, inspiring dramatically conflicting impulses.

  Run. No, grab him back. No, run —

  Oh, less than an inch between them, now, and that scant space was practically vibrating, just as Garrie was practically vibrating. As if that sharing of energy had triggered something bigger than either of them and now reverberated between them, brushing every sensitized nerve ending and flooding her with sensation.

  He stood, pulling her up after him. When she would have spoken, he silenced her with a look, something demanding behind his gaze.

  His cat-eye gaze.

  He lifted her, and she didn’t think twice before wrapping legs around him — wrapping her hands around the back of his neck even though he balanced her effortlessly, keeping her with his strength and with his gaze until he seemed to give in to something, pressing his cheek against hers and inhaling deeply. She lost herself to his myriad subtle reactions — the flutter of his ribs as he struggled for breath and composure, the tension in his arms that spoke of restraint rather than effort, the faint tremor running through all. She tightened her hold on him, as if she could press herself against him more tightly yet.

  “Atreya,” he breathed, his voice strained at her ear. He held her just as tightly, his hands roaming her back, skimming along her waist and thighs. He took a deep and shuddering breath, holding it for a moment while Garrie’s heart pounded loudly away, and then releasing it as he eased her down to the ground.

  Or what passed for it.

  He smoothed her hair, pressing his mouth to her forehead before he stepped away. “She was right about you,” he said, as if some barrier had broken between them. “So much bigger than you seem.”

  “What are you —” Garrie cut herself off. She opened her mouth to try again, found herself without words. She was right about you.

  All his previous little hints and comments... the way he seemed to know so much more of her than he could possibly know. The familiarity.

  “Oh my God,” she blurted. “Rhonda Rose!”

  Intensity still lingered on his face. He said again, “She was right about you.”

  “How?” she demanded. “When? Where?”

  His hands loosened; his shoulders relaxed. He bent to scoop up the satchel. “Atreya,” he said, “We will talk. But to stay here is to die.”
<
br />   Sucks-life. Garrie’s impatience fled before understanding. “No wonder the spirits are acting out — this place is feeding on them.”

  It’s feeding on US.

  His expression confirmed the truth of that.

  “But why — ?” Garrie frowned. “I feel like the answers are finally right here — but I just can’t put it together.”

  “No,” he said, regretful. “Because you still miss pieces.”

  Garrie couldn’t stand it any longer. “Then give them to me.”

  He shot her a look, one that couldn’t begin to prepare her. “The Krevata are feeding from the Winchester House ghosts, atreya, because they are collecting the energy to fuel the plasma portal that destroys your world.”

  Garrie blinked at him. Blinked again. Remembered to breath. “World? Did you say world?”

  Sklayne had said world, too. She hadn’t quite taken him literally.

  “Did you mean world? And did you notice you said your?”

  Trevarr held out his hand. “We have to go,” he told her. “Before I cannot.”

  ~~~~~

  The Krevata would rip Sklayne’s form to shreds just for being in their basement room — but staying glass cat grew more difficult by the moment.

  Sklayne wanted more than his cat claws. Sklayne wanted sturdy scimitars. He wanted big ground-slapping paws, and the ability to slip between states.

  Then the semi-ethereal Krevata would understand what it meant, ripping to shreds.

  Trevarr had said no. Trevarr had wanted to gather them, to return them to Kehar where they would face tribunal truth-questioning. Only that would satisfy the blood honor — not just saving his people, but opening the door for Trevarr to return home unhunted. Sklayne, too.

  Exiles.

  It didn’t have such a nice ring to it, that word.

  Scimitars. Right there on the ends of his toes. He glared at them, imagining it — and just that quickly, slipped into visibility. His hair puffed out, spitting sparks. Unseen by preoccupied Krevata, he instantly pulled himself back in to visual silence.

  He pretended to not notice how much effort it took. No effort at all, usually. But trapped here in not-cat by the separation from Trevarr, the bond straining between them... the ground, enclosing him away from sun and radiation and all convertible forms... they weakened him. Oh brightly burning spark of Sklayne, always hungry.