Majesty

by Brooke Vinson

  “Honey, you’re not gonna be able to understand this.” She tsked in her false falsetto, southern belle voice. “It comes from the heart, just like love. Good ole fashioned love.”

  “I don’t care if you cross-dress, if you’re two spirit or whatever else you claim to be, but I will not,” I flashed a warning with my green eyes but didn’t push her, “have you talking like an idiotic fool in that kind of voice. Understand?”

  “Don’t be so sensitive,” she dropped into her male voice and flipped her fluffy scarf away from her face. Amica waited until everyone had left to stand fully back up. He moved over to me with a small smile.

  “This might be fun. All we ever did with Eris is ride and perform. So, where are we going?”

  “I don’t know. Away from here.”

  “You did not steal my train and capture me because you wanted to run away from home.” Eris sleepily raised his head with a low growl. “I was beaten up by a child running from his parents. This is the biggest humiliation I have ever experienced. When I get free—”

  “You won’t.” I promised. “And you won’t exact revenge either. I plan to dump you in the smallest, most secluded town we can find.”

  “He has a point.” Amica said, shrugging and I slightly glared at him. “You don’t seem to have a very good plan for any of this. How are we supposed to trust and accept you as our new conductor if you don’t have a plan? This doesn’t seem very well thought out.”

  “Sorry for only having a few minutes to plan this out while being chased by the Earth Guard and being abandoned by my family.” I snipped at him and regretted it as his face fell slightly.

  “I’m sorry and I understand that you haven’t had much time to figure anything out, but you also need to understand where we’re coming from. If the others knew you didn’t have a plan, they wouldn’t be so compliant with your takeover. This may just be a passing fling for you, but for us, this is our life. Where you choose to lead us, we have to follow even if it’s somewhere we don’t want to go.”

  “I want information.” I mused aloud. “I will go where I can find more information. I need to go someplace foreign, interesting full of new knowledge. We’re going to Skypia.”

  “Skypia?” Amica paled visibly. “You are sending us to hell.”

  “You won’t achieve anything if you only ever risk nothing.” I turned and smiled at him, showing off my dangerous teeth. “If you’re with me, you won’t get hurt. I promise it on my life.”

  Forever Loyal

  “Rise and shine, Capitan!” I cracked one eye and gave the flashy, wearing a bright red kimono with light blue lotus printed across it, crossdresser a death glare. “It’s already noon and you’re snoozing away the day! Come and eat breakfast, I saved some for you!”

  “I’m nocturnal. I can’t sleep at night and I have trouble staying awake during the day. Now leave my room before I bite you. I haven’t tried Skypian, but I’m willing to bet you taste like chicken.” I turned over to make the small amount of light that was creeping in my room disappear from my sight.

  “Capitan! You shouldn’t encourage such bad sleeping habits! Plus, I think we might have reached the stop you were looking for and we need you to commensurate dumping Eris overboard.” For that, I gritted my human teeth and rolled out of the bed I had stolen from Eris. I stumbled for a second as I lost my balance and leaned against the wall.

  “Glasses?” I held out my hand, refusing to open my eyes until the darkening lenses were in place. I heard some shuffling and an ominous crunch, but after a good minute of waiting, my sunglasses were on my face and I was heading to the cargo drop off. “How are the food stores? Equipment? Condition of the train? We need to stock up on supplies if we’re low. Our next stop isn’t for another few days.”

  “We have enough food to feed a small army four course meals for a month. We won’t need to restock for quite a while. If you want to find out about the equipment and condition of the train, you have to ask Amica. He handles all of the technical aspects. He’s human so he doesn’t really have the skill to be part of the circus act, but he compensates by taking care of the train and working behind the scenes during the performance as a stage hand. You’ll catch on quick to everyone’s duties. We’re a very easygoing lot, well except for Nihilo.” Raven trilled

  As we passed by the silent, meditating giant I finally noticed the rosary in his clasped palms. “Why doesn’t he say anything? Is he mute, dumb or simply has nothing to say?”

  “Something about his religion, quite silly if you ask me. Hinduism or something like that. All eastern and stuff.”

  “Buddhism. Probably mixed with some Shintoism too.” I stifled a yawn as I corrected her. I remembered reading something about certain Shinto sects mixing Christianity into their practices.

  The Earth Guards didn’t offer much of a stipend as we handed over the sedated Skypian. Rather, they looked us over with critical eyes and caused Raven to pick at her gloves to make sure her feathers were hidden. Even I felt uneasy as they started questioning us with their heart monitor readers locked on our chest. Even though I was an expert at lying, I fidgeted as we turned to leave.

  We pulled out of the dock as fast as I could find an open rail and we were back on track. I sent out a message over the intercom to let me sleep in peace before heading to my room. I snuggled into the bed and fell into peaceful slumber until the coursing energy of the falling sun fired through and woke me. I launched out of bed and migrated to the kitchen, looking at the room shifter with slight annoyance. All but two of my companions were in their room, sleeping. Before our journey ended, they would have to learn to be nocturnal.

  “I thought you would be getting up soon. Would you like to have breakfast or do you want dinner? I’ve never met a real nocturnal person before. Then again, I’ve never met a Skypian like you and I’ve seen a fair amount of Skypians in my short life. What subspecies do you fall into?” Amica chatted happily from his seat at the small kitchen table.

  “I would appreciate some dinner. I’ve never been overly fond of breakfast foods and ever since I changed, I haven’t had much need for the energizing effects of coffee.” Amica smiled at me and got up to rummage in the cabinets.

  “You changed? Tell me about yourself while I cook. I like to know people. Be warned though, I’m not the cook for a good reason. It will be edible but little more.” I nodded acknowledgement as he pulled out some vegetables and oil.

  “Up until a few days ago, I was a normal human who only had an affinity for the night and an unrealistically high IQ. Then I started feeling off… dizzy and thirsty, so thirsty. That was when my second teeth came in and with them my powers, but… it also severely impacted my sleep schedule. The sun saps my energy and all I want to do it sleep. In turn however, the onset of night energizes me to the extent where I can easily lift thrice my weight.” I stared at the food he was sautéing as I thought about my own strange situation. “I don’t know what happened… I have a half-brother, a mother and even an asshole of a stepfather. All human, but my father was part of the Earth Guard. He was definitely human. I… there are many, many things I can’t explain or figure out.”

  “Harsh, it must have been horrible finding out your life isn’t real.” Amica had underrated his own cooking abilities and my mouth was watering excessively as I took the first bite. It was very spicy, but I appreciated the strange flavors I hadn’t had much experience with. “My story isn’t as bad as yours. My parents were poor people living off the dregs of Skycity. It was an accident, or at least I like to believe it was, but they lost me. Maybe it was during a raid by the rebel forces, but… I fell into the loving hands of a Skypian mother.”

  He sat down across from me and noticed I had drunk my entire glass of water. “Are you thirsty? I can get you some more.”

  “Please,” I muttered, but knew no amount of water could cure the thirst I was feeling. I needed blood and I had no source to safely receive it from. If I could hold out until daybreak, the urge would g
o away and I could make plans to stop at a way station. Until then, I would have to keep Amica at a distance. The others didn’t make me want to feed off of them. Maybe it was because they were Skypian, but I only received glancing urges when they were around. Amica was like a full course buffet to a starving man.

  “Here you go. But I had a good home working as a servant for a rich family. That’s what most Skypians do, you know. I don’t know how much you know of Skycity, being from the Earth and all that, but Skypians are worse than dirt for most families. Thankfully, the family I was indentured to had a longstanding relationship with their servants and treated them almost like family.” He ate a few bites while he composed himself. Just from his little story, I was beginning to understand him. Amica was a very open and friendly person who liked to pretend to be perfectly happy and content, but he was actually fragile and filled with hidden grief. “But… they started losing money, quick, real quick. They couldn’t afford to feed themselves, let alone us, so they sold us… I didn’t manage to last more than a month. They did things… things that should never be done to another creature, human or not.”

  “Then you escaped like I did, onto the circus train.” I finished his story for him as he struggled against his emotions. I respected him more for trying to fight and subdue his rampart emotions than if he had tried to illicit pity. It was a show of power and control, one that gave others the knowledge that they had found a leader not a follower.

  “Yes… but at least I always knew who I was and who my family was. I can never forget them… Ursa-Mamma and Ursa-Papa. They had real names once upon a time, but they faded with the fading of their independence. The Ursa-Cubs have names, but I won’t ever share them. They joined the resistance and are fighting for the freedom of their parents… and of me.”

  “You are strong.” I stood and cleared the table with a couple sweeps of my hand. “That means that you will live long and find happiness in the end. Some people are born into happiness, others fight for it. The ones who fight will eventually have their joy and it will take much more to take it from them than if they hadn’t.”

  Amica looked at me and I felt a connection with the boy. He wasn’t one of the delusional souls who thought life was a grand time, made for frolicking and happy times. He knew life for what it was; a beautiful lie. A lie that we all must live and fight to unravel in order to have a reason for existence. In that moment, I knew I had made a lifelong friend.

  “You know…” Amica hesitated as I walked out the room, but decided to follow me and finish whatever he had been trying to say. “You’re extremely wise for your age. Extremely wise in general too. How did you come about such knowledge? I’m kind of street smart, but that doesn’t help me hold an intellectual conversation with anyone. Dexter and Siniste can easily talk circles around me in all kinds of science and math stuff.”

  “I was innately born with the ability to collect, rationalize and store information. If I could find a way to get information, I could use it to my benefit in some way. I’ve never been an impulsive person and with access to books and the like, my intellect simply overrode any and every other impulse I have.” I had to stop at the edge of the engine room as a wave of dizziness overcame me. I could feel my hunger gnawing at me from the inside out. Every time I had tried to feed, I had stopped myself and stopped my body from taking in the nutrients it needed. I didn’t know if I would have to kill my victim to draw out all the nutrients I needed, but I needed to fill up or my body, or worse, my mind would collapse.

  “Are you okay?” I jerked back as Amica leaned in and let his tantalizing scent wash over me. I pushed him away weakly as my body fought to override my senses.

  “You need to stay back. My body needs nourishment and you are a prime buffet.” Amica kept back like I asked, but now my eyes were tracing his every movement. “Better yet, go awake some of the others, immediately!”

  Amica, true to his instincts, ran to get the others. I was a predator waiting to quench its hunger on the nearest possible source and he was the closest victim. If the others were awake, I could override my instincts with intellect. As the others grumpily marched into the control room, I realized I had seriously miscalculated my body’s desire for food. Even though I wasn’t overly attracted to their scent, I was still attracted and a large amount of prey had just entered the room.

  I rushed past them with the inhuman speed I possessed at night and headed to the secluded and currently unoccupied equipment room. I leaned against the wall, forcing my breathing to even out and keeping my face carefully blank. My composure would stand if I had to die trying to keep it.

  I thought I had finally calmed my body and deterred it from attacking when the wrong hand touched me. “Able, are—”

  “Sorry.” I managed to whisper as I grabbed him and bit. His blood was thick, thicker than the blood of my half-brother or the thin, anemic blood of the girl in the library. His blood would fill me. I couldn’t let go as the lifesaving moisture flowed down my parched throat and into my empty stomach. I couldn’t even let go when my body had taken enough to survive; I wasn’t satisfied. I needed this, I wanted this, I craved this.

  The pair of hands that tore me off of him also threw me to the side and I couldn’t find the energy to move. My body needed to process the blood it had taken and it didn’t have any energy left to perform basic motor functions while it did this. When I finally managed to stand shakily up, my teeth were still aching for more and I was dizzily heading towards where I could smell it.

  “What did you do to him?” Something, someone grabbed me and I flinched back, my body aching in protest. They seemed to sense something was wrong with me and let me sit for a moment as my body completed its routine.

  “Amica.” I finally managed to mutter and blinked a few times as my vision returned in blurred shapes. “Is he alright? Did I hurt him? Is he—”

  “He’s not doing well and you have a whole lot of explaining to do before we chuck you overboard!” Siniste growled. I stumbled over to where I could sense Amica’s life force. It was fading quickly, but there was also something underneath, something simply warm buried inside of him. Something connected to the blood I had taken from him.

  I knelt down beside the warmth and reached a hand down to trace his lips. There was something deeper I wanted from him, something more dangerous, but also something he needed to survive. I leaned down and brushed my lips against his in my first kiss, but there was nothing sexual about it. The kiss had connected the two lines I had felt between him and the blood coursing inside me. As my mouth hovered over his, I felt a painful, aching cold liquid leak from the crevice between my normal canines and my cover teeth to drop from my mouth to his.

  With a shuddering gasp his breathing suddenly sped up but not at an abnormal rate. Rather, his breathing gained a new rhythm to match his swiftly pounding heart. As my vision slowly refocused, I looked at what I had done to him. There wasn’t enough blood left to leak out of the savage wound on his neck, but the mauled mess was still tinged with the red brown of dried blood. His face, however, was what made my breathing still and my composure break for just a moment, but enough for him to see and worry to replace the absolute bliss on his face.

  “What’s wrong?” He tried to say, but couldn’t get the air to pass through his mouth.

  “Nothing,” I lied and traced the brilliant blue veins flowing over his entire body with growing horror. “You’re going to be just fine. Why don’t we get you in bed so you can get some sleep?”

  “No! I want to stay with you—”

  “Sleep.” I flashed my hypnotic eyes and he fell limp in my arms, his panicked attempt at talking stopped.

  “What did you do?” Siniste pushed me aside and grabbed him, but at her touch Amica’s body spasmed in protest. Even his body wanted me, wanted me beyond words, beyond reason, beyond consciousness itself.

  “I…” I couldn’t find the words so I stood and changed directions, “will put him to bed first. Then we can talk.”


  As I laid him down, I had to murmur gently in his ear to force his body to release me from his grip. When I finally left the room, I had figured out the true horror of what I had done. When I entered the kitchen, the eyes looking at me were all frightened rather than accusatory. They could at least feel what I had done at some unconscious level and they were scared.

  “I am a parasite, of what origin or for what reason unknown, but I need the blood of others to survive. I have not had the chance to test why my body needs such nourishment, I think an iron deficiency might be plausible, but it is all merely speculation. That was why I sent him to wake you up. I needed others to stop me… Normally, I wouldn’t take so much and I don’t need it every day, but the last… my first two feedings I cut short in panic. That caused my deficiency to compound and… cause that.” I shook my head and looked at the dirty dishes piled in the sink where Amica hadn’t had time to clean them.

  “But what the hell did you do? That wasn’t normal; that feels dirty, like you violated his very soul. Like you took his—” Siniste stopped whatever vulgar comment her sister was going to spew out with a well-placed jab to the stomach.

  “My sister doesn’t have a very intellectual way of speaking, but her question still stands. What did you do to him?”

  “I think…. I linked our auras… our life force for lack of a better term. His soul is still separate from mine, but I am fueling his existence. I’m not sure exactly what I did, but as long as I’m alive and his heart still has the energy to beat, he will not die.” I didn’t know how I knew any of what I did, but what I had done…

  I shuddered internally as I looked at the continually blank face of Nihilo. I stared as a golden koi tattoo swam across his face and disappeared down his neck, leaving the fading patterns of warring dragons behind. I had seen inklings of the tattoo before but never the full thing. Nihilo was as much a Skypian as the rest of us… but of what kind, I did not know. “This is also going to have a negative, or rather, really positive impact on our relationship. Based on what I’ve already seen, he sees me as a savior... as his god.”