Lex Talionis

by Keira Michelle Telford

  “We’re protecting ourselves.”

  “Yeah?” Her eyes perform a quick tumble and she looks away. “Well, that doesn’t apply here. Alex isn’t a single man, he’s my husband. He’s not looking to breed with your females, he’s already breeding with me.”

  “How does that work anyhow?”

  “Excuse me?” Silver pulls a face at him, seeking clarification.

  “Your pregnancy. How did it happen?”

  Silver smothers a laugh. “Shit. Did you honestly just ask me that?” She glances at Alex, then back at Aiden. “First of all, Alex’s cock got really, really stiff—that happens a lot around me. Then, he rammed it in my cunt and—”

  “Silver!” Alex silences her, pinching the bridge of his nose in the same way that her father would do when she said something he didn’t want to hear. “I think he wants to know how you and our baby are uninfected, not how we conceived.”

  “That’s not what he asked.”

  “Silver …” Alex sighs.

  “Okay, okay.” She holds up her hands in defeat. “I was infected with a mutated strain of the original, civilization-destroying Chimera virus first,” she explains to Aiden. “Alex caught the infection from me, but his viral load was really low when we conceived. Our baby was still uninfected when I received the cure given to us by your military.”

  “You were wiped?”

  Silver shrugs. “Yeah, I guess, if that’s what you wanna call it. By the way”—she leans forward and wags a finger at him—“all this segregation bullshit is the reason your daughter can’t get laid.”

  Unwilling to continue this discussion, Aiden opts to walk away from it. “I’m going to see what’s taking Mason so long.”

  In the wake of his departure, Linx returns from the tuck shop, munching on something from a paper bag. She makes a beeline for Alex and perches herself on the tabletop beside him, a goofy smile pasted on her lips.

  “Do you like liquorice?” She offers him some. “Do you have liquorice where you’re from? Where are you from? How did you get here? What nationality are you? Wh—”

  “Linny!” Aiden yells at her from the other side of the courtyard when he spots her getting friendly with Alex. “Get your arse home right now!”

  Like a reprimanded puppy, she leaps up from the table and hightails it back to their cottage without question or hesitation.

  Silver giggles and jabs at Alex’s shoulder. “That kid has such a crush on you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Come on, Alex. Do you not see the way she keeps looking at you?”

  “I’m old enough to be her father.”

  “I don’t think she cares.” Silver clears her throat. “Oh, Alex, I do love a nice bit of meat,” she mimics Linx’s voice. “Oh, Alex, pity me, I’m a sweet, innocent virgin.”

  “Leave her alone.”

  Alex says that with some bite, and Silver is momentarily taken aback by it.

  “Whoa. Overprotective much?”

  “Jealous much?”

  “She’s a child, Alex.”

  “She’s twenty years old.”

  “Oh, you asked her that, did you?” Silver raises both eyebrows at him. “Making sure you wouldn’t be breaking any laws?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

  “Why do you wanna fight about this?” She jabs him again, harder this time.

  “You started it.”

  “You’re being touchy and oversensitive.”

  “And you’re being a bitch.” He spits those words out, then gets up and rummages through his hold-all, digging out a cigarette to relieve some of his tension.

  “Wow,” Silver mumbles to Luka under her breath. “What just happened?”

  “I’m not sure, but it was weird.” He watches, completely baffled, as Alex deliberately positions himself away from Silver.

  There’s no time to reflect on it, though. Aiden reappears and summons them.

  “Honey wants to see you all in Gwydir.”

  He picks up their bags and motions for them to follow him out of the courtyard, taking a short walk up a paved road toward the tip of the village.

  All the while, Silver wonders what the hell Gwydir could be, and what drunken or illiterate fool must’ve named it such. She dare not even attempt to pronounce Llanrwst.

  The notion that these are all ancient words marking ancient places, some of which—like Gwydir—have existed here for almost a thousand years, is so far out of her realm of comprehension that it’s almost impossible for her to grasp. In her land, nothing is older than a few generations. No trace of the last epoch exists, least of all the place names. No-one cared to find out what the streets were called before, they just built straight over them. Her people hadn’t wanted to remember the past, they wanted to start afresh.

  New world.

  New city.

  New everything.

  Fortified manor houses and castles were things of fairytales. Until now.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  As it turns out, Gwydir is a castle.

  Built of gray stone, the massive fortified manor house horseshoes around a sizable curtilage, where large blue birds with poofy tails wander freely over the gravel driveway and ornate flowerbeds. Ivy creeps up the castle walls, obscuring some of the windows, and workmen on the roof are busy repairing some loose tiles before the next rainfall.

  Its chimneys are shaped like turrets, and Silver counts at least eight of them. That means eight open fireplaces. Where she’s from, it’s illegal to burn a real fire.

  One of the braver blue birds follows them all the way down the driveway, its train of tail feathers bobbing along behind it. When it comes up alongside Silver, it stops and ruffles its tail, startling her.

  Shaking its butt, displaying a fan of colorful tail feathers that’s easily five feet in diameter, it squawks at her, causing her to stumble into Alex. The fan is so huge that it arches across the bird’s back and touches the ground on either side. Each feather seems to have an eye on it, with swirls of dark blue, turquoise, orange, and gold. When it wiggles toward her, a little blue crest on its head wobbles back and forth.

  “What the hell is that?!” Silver prepares to fend it away by kicking it if necessary.

  “It’s a peacock,” Aiden says, laughing. “Haven’t you ever seen a peacock before?”

  “Well, yeah, once. It was attached to this really dorky kid in math class. He forgot to zip his pants up after he came back from the washroom, and it was sort of hanging out. In his defense, it was winter, so maybe it was cold and that’s why it was so—”

  “Silver,” Alex shuts her up again. “Is everything a dick joke to you?” He tosses the butt of his cigarette away and walks on ahead.

  “My guess?” Luka brushes up against her shoulder, anticipating that she’s about to ask what the fuck Alex’s problem is. “Nicotine withdrawal.”

  “It fucking better be.” She turns to Aiden. “Please, tell me cigarettes are available in this country? I can’t deal with him like this.”

  “We can get them brought up from London, but it’s not a habit we encourage.” He watches the peacock gobble up the cigarette butt. “He’d be better off working through the withdrawal.”

  “Easy for you to say.” Silver huffs. “You’re not married to him.”

  Their moods dulled, Silver, Alex and Luka are led into Gwydir and taken to a grand dining hall with a stone slab floor and a big open fireplace at one end. The ceiling has exposed beams from which bundles of herbs have been hung to dry, and an oak dining table stretches the length of the room, twelve chairs around it, a candle chandelier hanging above it.

  “Holy fucking shit.” Silver looks around, taking in all the majesty of it, not noticing Mason and Honey enter the room behind them.

  “Welcome, strangers.”

  Silver pulls her attention away from the architecture. In the doorway, she finds a woman in her forties, with dark skin and long dark hair. Like Linx, she’s wearing black leather pants an
d boots, but her outfit is paired with a corset-style top that has frilled lace shoulders and a leather trim.

  “Nice to meet you, sugar.” Silver extends her hand, but Honey doesn’t take it.

  “My name is Honey,” she says coolly, her voice velvety and deep.

  “Sorry, honey bunch.” Silver draws back her hand, trying not to smirk. “Does anyone take you seriously with a name like that?”

  Without warning, Honey slams her elbow into Silver’s solar plexus and winds her, then grabs the back of her neck and doubles her over, simultaneously hooking her foot around Silver’s knee and bending it forward, bringing her swiftly to the floor.

  Silver collapses onto her knees, straining to breathe.

  “People take me seriously,” Honey informs her.

  When Silver manages to sit up on her knees, still gasping for air, she’s smiling. She respects any woman who can drop her to the floor like that.

  “She’s pregnant, you know,” Alex dares to chastise Honey, at the risk of being sent to the floor himself. “If anything happens to the—”

  “The baby’s not gestating in her lungs”—Honey fingers the dog tags around his neck, checking out his name—“Mister King. Your unborn child is quite safe.”

  Turning from them, she flicks her fingers at Mason and Aiden and orders them to empty out Silver, Alex and Luka’s hold-alls onto the tabletop.

  “That’s an invasion of privacy,” Silver rasps.

  “So? Are you questioning me? Does that seem like a good idea?”

  “Maybe I like getting beaten up by women.” Silver picks herself up off the floor as Honey starts rooting through their belongings.

  From inside Silver’s bag, she finds: underwear, jeans, t-shirts, bras, a hairbrush, a toothbrush, and so on—nothing whimsical. Inspecting a pair of Hunter Division combat pants, she accidentally dislodges a finger-sized, sharp talon from one of the pockets.

  She holds it up. “This is …”

  “Chimera.” Silver nods. “They’re not known for keeping themselves well manicured.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “It’s a memento from my first kill.”

  “Chimera still exist in the Americas?” Honey examines it closely.

  “Aplenty.”

  “And you kill them?”

  “Aplenty.”

  “Your men as well?” She points her fingers at Alex and Luka.

  “You bet your ass they do.”

  Discarding the talon, Honey starts on Luka’s things next: clothing, condoms, a spare knife, and some hygiene products.

  She pinches a condom between her fingers, glaring disapprovingly at him. “You like to possess things, don’t you?”

  In Alex’s bag: clothing, cigarettes, various small tools and gadgets, a comic book, and Silver’s engagement ring.

  “You’re sentimental.” She admires the ring.

  A second later, raised voices in the entrance hall interrupt her dissection of their lives, and she swivels to face the doorway in time to see a woman barging her way through it.

  “Did they see him?” The woman directs her question to Honey. “Is it true that these people came from Manchester? I need to know if they saw him!”

  She’s frantic, her short, spiky hair unkempt and disheveled. Brown eyes that might once have been lively and twinkling are now dull and sunken, the circles beneath them so dark it looks like they’ve been blacked by a fist.

  Her dress is plain, but nice, the hem all the way down to her ankles. The only bit of color on her is a small silk scarf wrapped around her neck. Her sleeves are rolled up to the elbows, her hands slightly damp, and there are small splashes of water on her clothing. She was most likely washing dishes when she heard word of their strange new visitors, and dashed out without even bothering to put on any shoes.

  She steps further into the room and Aiden restrains her, preventing her from getting too close to Honey.

  “Tuppence, this is not the forum for your personal drama,” Honey reprimands the fraught woman calmly, her voice never raised.

  “Wait a second. Saw who?” Silver pays no heed to Honey’s politics.

  “My husband.” Tuppence clasps a hand over her heart. “He’s missing.”

  “Do you need to be told again? He’s not missing, Penny,” Mason growls at her from the other side of the room. “He’s dead.”

  “You don’t know that!” she wails.

  “He’s gone, Penny! How many times do you want us to say it?”

  “Is his name Tomkin?” Silver takes another step closer.

  The room falls silent.

  Tuppence snivels. “He’s alive?”

  “For now, yeah, but he’s been beaten. He’s got plenty of bruises and a broken wrist. They’re toying with him, and he doesn’t think he’ll make it through the week.”

  “They?” Honey comes in between them.

  “Uh-huh.” Silver nods. “Slade and his men.”

  “I knew it!” Tuppence lunges at Mason. “You cowards left him there!” Aiden holds her back.

  “He was as good as dead,” Mason defends their actions weakly.

  “You didn’t think it might be a wise idea to double check that before you wrote him off?” Silver snarls at him. “Why didn’t you try to rescue him?”

  “We’re not equipped for antics like that.”

  “Equipped? What do you need? Some balls and a gun.”

  “We don’t use guns.” Honey peeks curiously into a cloth bag containing their confiscated firearms and knives. “Since we lack the means to manufacture firearms or ammunition ourselves, it would be foolish to become reliant on such things for our safety.”

  “Well, as you can see, we rather like guns.” Silver locks eyes with her. “Which I guess makes me one of the best fucking things that’s ever happened to you.”

  “How’s that?” Honey folds her arms dubiously.

  “Because I can get him back.”

  “Silver …” Alex tries to guard her against making a false declaration.

  “I can,” she glares resentfully at him. “We can.”

  “Why?” Honey demands. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I’m pregnant,” Silver answers simply. “I’ll get your Delta back in exchange for prenatal care and safe harbor for the three of us—including my cranky Taint husband.”

  “Silver”—Alex clutches her elbow—“what are you doing?”

  “Not listening to you anymore. We shouldn’t have left him there, Alex. That was wrong.”

  “It was too dangerous.”

  “You didn’t even want to try.” She wrenches herself free and turns back to Honey. “So whaddya think? Do we have a deal?”

  “How do we know you can do what you say?” She cocks her head to one side, challenging Silver’s mettle. “You might just be a whole lot of pretty words.”

  “Test me.”

  “What do you need?”

  “My gun and a target.”

  With daylight ebbing away, Honey sets that up immediately. In under five minutes, she has the three strangers untied and escorted to a shooting range that the village archers use for target practice.

  Word of what’s about to take place spreads through the close-knit community like wildfire, and a swarm of people gather on the sidelines, filling the air with hushed chatter. For any other marksman, that might be off-putting. But not for Silver.

  Standing a clear two hundred yards away from one of the freestanding target boards, she takes a moment to scan her audience. Most are inquisitive villagers, easily distinguishable by the clothes they wear. Equally distinguishable is the odd one out: a petite, pale girl, twenty or so, with shoulder-length black hair and stunning green eyes.

  She’s tip to toe in black leather: pants, boots, and jacket. The jacket bears a white symbol of the Crown on the sleeve, although it’s been hastily and poorly scribbled over with black marker pen. She also has a gun holstered at her hip. Watching Silver closely, her lips are taut and unsmiling,
and she looks skeptical.

  “Hey,” Silver calls Aiden over. “Who’s that girl over there?” she asks discreetly.

  “A Taint from London. Why?”

  “Just curious.” Silver preps her gun. “What’s she doing here?”

  “She rescued a Delta she found lost and injured in London, then risked her life to return the girl to us. The girl would surely have died otherwise, and, as a token of our appreciation, Honey let her stay here while she recuperated.”

  “Recuperated?”

  “Her leg was badly broken, but it’s healed now. The cast came off a few days ago, and we expect she’ll be moving on shortly.”

  “Hmm,” Silver mutters quietly, noting the information in her memory banks.

  Getting ready to shoot, she raises her gun … then changes her mind. Tuppence is standing at the front of the crowd, her red silk scarf fluttering in the breeze—and that gives Silver an idea.

  “May I borrow this?” She strides over and fingers the frayed ends of it.

  Tuppence nods meekly, allowing Silver to unwrap it from her neck.

  Scarf in hand, Silver returns to her position in front of the target, then seeks Alex out. “Will you do the honors?” She hands the scarf to him.

  He knows exactly what she wants him to do; he taught her how to shoot like this when she was his student in the Hunter Division Academy.

  “You’re showing off,” he whispers, blindfolding her with it.

  “Absolutely.” She carries on unapologetically, turning her back on the target.

  Drawing on the skills she learnt as a teenager in his class, she stands perfectly still, tunes out the chatter of the crowd, and listens to the wind. She calculates its speed, pays close attention to its direction, and gets ready to adjust her aim to account for it.

  Building herself up to it, she begins a mental countdown in her head. When she gets to zero, she spins on her heels, raises her arm, and fires at the target.

  One shot.

  One chance to hit the bullseye.

  After the echo of the gunshot fades, the shooting range falls so silent you could hear a pin drop. One of the village kids draws the short straw to go and retrieve the target sheet off the board, and sprints to fetch it.