Relics and Runes Anthology

by Heather Marie Adkins

  I cut the engine and kicked the stand down, my movements heavier than usual. Uneasiness dragged my limbs, and I wasn’t certain it had anything to do with Warren and his disappearing act.

  My Com rang. I paused beside my bike to answer. “Yeah.”

  “Where the hell are you? I’m starving,” my twin brother complained. For such a skinny sonofabitch, Rice could eat like a hobbit.

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m running late.”

  “Clearly.”

  “The skyscraper didn’t collapse during the quake, did it?”

  Rice laughed. “No, unfortunately. Maybe we wouldn’t have to listen to Ms. Vincente’s television all night if it had.”

  “Everything in the apartment okay?”

  “Couple broken dishes. Otherwise, good. It was small.”

  My brother’s voice leveled my nerves. He’d always had that effect on me, as if my mother’s body had given him all the calm, easygoing genes, and I’d gotten the neurotic, semi-sociopathic leftovers.

  “Have you even made it to the restaurant yet?” Rice asked.

  “Sure. All taken care of.”

  “You’re a terrible liar,” he told me. “Why do I trust you? They close in twenty minutes, Maurelle.”

  “I know, Maurice.” We tended to fall back on the full names we hated when irritated with one another. “I just need to check in with Population and secure my prisoner, then run by the Reina’s office. You call in the order, and I promise I’ll get it before they close. Okay?”

  “You come home without my noodles, I’m changing the locks.” He hung up.

  The Population desk occupied a corner of the first-floor lobby, behind which an electronic door led to the jail. A uniformed Population guard sat behind the wooden counter, watching the multiple security screens that monitored the interior. He looked up as I approached.

  “Agent Nez. You’re lookin’ fine this evening.” Moriarty leaned back in his plush chair and whistled softly, his blue-eyed gaze trailing down my dusty jeans and tank top. He was a good-looking man, but a little too shiny, a little too smarmy, hair a little too coiffed. “Get into a tussle? Was the other girl naked?”

  “I loathe you.” I slapped Georgina Lewis’s file on the counter. “She ready for my signature?”

  Moriarty tapped on his keyboard for a moment and nodded. “Yeah. They booked her on Sub-4. Hearing is tomorrow morning.” He slid the electronic sig pad to me, and I scrawled my name with my index finger.

  Sub-4. Something inside me panged. If I thought I had any empathy left, I’d have figured it to be sadness. Sub-4 was smoke and mirrors. You got assigned there, you weren’t leaving alive.

  Better the Population team get the dirty work of killing her than me. Too many more deaths by my hands, and I would drown in the blood.

  Moriarty slid the electronic pad back into place. “You sure you don’t want to go out sometime, Nez? I’ll even pay.”

  “I like girls,” I tossed over my shoulder as I strolled away. He knew I was lying.

  “You’re breaking my heart!”

  I had a thing about elevators, so I took the stairs two at a time to the fifth floor, and shoved through to the Reina’s personal offices, where the fae half of our leadership ran the Hollow.

  Her assistant – the nighttime girl, Carla – glanced up, saw it was me, and went right back to her magazine with a distracted, “Hey, Relle.”

  “She in there?”

  “Isn’t she always anymore?” Carla turned the page.

  I thumbed the code to my best friend’s office and entered.

  The Reina of Senka Hollow, Lila Lear, sat behind her massive desk, her head in her hands and her long blonde hair trailing over the messy surface. She didn’t bother to emerge from the cocoon of her palms – only two people in the Hollow knew the code to her office, and one of them was her husband.

  “Did you come in the back?” Lila asked, voice muffled behind her hands and hair.

  I sank into the chair in front of her desk and propped my legs up on the table. “Yeah. Why?”

  She finally glanced up through her curtain of soft curls. Her emerald eyes were bloodshot, and her nose was red as if she’d been crying.

  Unfortunately, not an uncommon sight for Lila.

  “Fuck. What happened?” I put my dusty boots back on the floor and leaned forward to pat her hand awkwardly. “Is it Everett?”

  She snorted, but it was more half-sob than sound-of-irritation. “Not even the half of it. Are you busy?”

  “Do I look like I’m busy? It’s nine-thirty on a Friday night, and I’m in your office.”

  Lila tinkled with laughter. She shoved her chair back and grabbed a handful of tissues. As she gingerly dabbed around her eyes, she said, “I punched him in the nose.”

  “I’m sure he deserved it. Why?”

  “I don’t know. We were arguing.” She blew her nose with an inelegant duck-like honk that made me adore her even more. “He said something dumb about my ass. I insulted his abilities. You know how it goes.”

  “You’re the most dysfunctional couple in the entire Hollow.”

  “Thank Senka we aren’t the ones in charge. Oh, wait…” She cracked a half-smile that faded quickly. “Forget Everett for a minute. I need to show you something.”

  Her long white skirt swished prettily around her thin ankles as she padded across the office in bare feet. Lila was beautiful the way the ocean sounded in the night – discreet and soothing, like divinity come to life. She had an ageless face and an innocent smile, but I’d seen her spear her fingernails into a shadow-touched’s eyes with vicious, grim determination. Petite beauty aside, she was a lioness, and I never underestimated her.

  I was rather fond of my eyes.

  Lila tapped the down arrow for her private elevator.

  I made a face. “Do we have to?”

  “You are a grown woman. This fear of elevators is ridiculous. And yes, we have to. We’re going below.”

  “I’m not afraid of elevators,” I argued as the bell dinged and the door opened. “I just prefer solid ground beneath my boots and full control of my person.”

  “That’s why you’re my sidekick,” Lila joked and touched the B2 for Basement Level 2. “I float around somewhere in the stratosphere, weighted securely to your concrete slippers. You keep me grounded.”

  Neither of us spoke as we drifted steadily beneath the sands of the Hollow, down to the level where our princess lay in cold and silence. Senka’s grave was a shrine in the Hollow. To visit her meant being granted special permissions by the Rein and Reina, who were fiercesome guardians of our priestess. The cavern in which she lay was as protected as a National Heritage site of old. More protected than the cliff dwellings where my ancestors had birthed, lived, and died.

  The moment the elevator slid below ground level, her presence was all around. I imagined the humans who attended church felt in their pews the way I felt while near Senka.

  The bell dinged. Lila placed her hand on the bio sensor, and the doors swished open to admit us.

  Only a dim blue light illuminated Senka’s tomb, giving the cavernous room an underwater glow. The ceiling soared high above us, shadowed in the stillness. My boots echoed with every step across the marble floors. I didn’t make it a habit to come here, mainly because either the Rein or Reina had to be with me, and they were busy enough without giving unscheduled tours. But when I did get a chance to visit, the weight of my existence faded surrounded by Senka’s hallowed peace.

  “Did you feel the earthquake?” Lila asked as she led me to the shiny silver railing that overlooked the grave one floor below.

  “I did.” I neglected to mention Warren, time-travel, or the possible destruction of an ancient pueblo cliff dwelling while on duty. Lila had enough on her plate without adding my crazy-ass night to the mix.

  “Look what the quake has done to our princess.”

  I stepped up beside my reina and wrapped my fingers around the cold metal bars. Far below us, Senka
’s grave lay split open, as if the earth had offered her to the light and the light had declined. The dark fissure hissed and smoked, so deeply black it appeared to go on forever.

  I sucked in a breath and clung to the railing. My heart sounded in my ears, nearly drowning out Lila’s next words.

  “The guards on duty during the quake reported to me immediately.” She turned her haunted emerald gaze on me. “They said they saw movement below.”

  3

  I barely made it to Wang Chee before they closed, but I did, tires squealing on my bike as I skidded to a stop at 9:59. Mr. Wang, a tiny, wizened old man with a magic touch in the kitchen, smiled as he held out my bag in one hand and locked the door with the other. This wasn’t his first rodeo, and given my penchant for pressing time, it wouldn’t be his last.

  Equipped with Rice’s noodles and my rangoon, I zoomed through quiet city streets for home, content that my brother would neither change the locks nor maim me.

  My head was full of Senka. Forget Warren, forget time travel. I mean yeah, that shit was weird. But the guards' saw movement in the crevasse over the princess’s grave.

  What would that mean for Senka Hollow? Rasha sacrificed her daughter to save us. If something had gone wrong… If we had awakened the princess…

  Was anybody safe?

  I cut the engine and slid my bike into its usual street-side spot near the apartment. We rented a too-small loft in a four-story building, flanked on either side by a decaying skyscraper — two quakes from collapsing — and the Hollow’s only surviving library. This wasn’t the best area in the Core, but it wasn’t the worst, either; a fact I had to continually remind my mother. I found it less likely we’d be mugged, and more likely we’d wake up with the skyscraper crumpling through our windows.

  At the door, I touched my Com to the sensor and shoved at the bar, a movement I’d done a hundred times or more since leaving the Res.

  The door didn’t budge.

  I staggered back a step and nearly dropped the food bag, dumbfounded that my fob had failed. I tried again.

  Nothing happened.

  Shifting the bags to my elbow, I called up my brother’s number on my Com. It rang eight times, and went to voicemail.

  Fuck.

  I sighed. He was probably staring at the TV, his fingers getting a workout on some ancient video game. Not for the first time, I regretted ever splurging on electricity when half the Hollow did without.

  I scrolled to my landlord’s number and tapped to connect.

  “Yo.”

  “I’m locked out,” I snapped. “The sensor is on the fritz.”

  “God damn thing worked twenty minutes ago when I got home. What the fuck you do to it, Nez?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Screw you, Antonio. Let me in.”

  A moment later, the door buzzed to indicate manual override, and I shoved into a dim interior that smelled of curry and poverty.

  Some days, I regretted leaving the Res. My mother’s cabin was impeccable and always smelled like the harvested herbs that hung drying from her ceiling: basil, oregano, rosemary, cilantro. Life on the Res was simple and self-sustaining. Sunshine and dirt instead of concrete and shadow. I don’t know what went wrong with me that I craved the Core and the life of a cop over the stable future of a tribe’s chieftess. And where I went, Rice went – we were a package deal. Not for the first time, I wondered why my brother had followed me and my selfish dreams into this hovel.

  On the second floor, I passed 2-B and Mrs. Vincenzo’s overly loud television. Her husband had died last year, and I think she kept the damn thing on 24/7 because the noise filled the empty spaces.

  The couple in 3-A were at it again, firing angry, rapid Spanish at each other, punctuated by thuds and bangs. As I stepped onto the second landing to leave their bullshit behind, I heard a door open behind me.

  It never failed. The man had a nose like a bloodhound.

  “Relle?” a quavering voice called. “I smell blood.”

  “It’s probably not mine,” I said, turning to grin at Mr. Popovich.

  He stepped into the hall, his nose upturned and his sightless eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe you. Come here.”

  I sighed, but did as he asked. Mr. Popovich was a great old guy, and he’d known my dad a long time ago. The tenuous connection he maintained between me and my dead father made it easier for me to relent to his weird quirks.

  “You’re hurt.” He held a hand over my face, concern furrowing his brow. “Come. Let me clean you.”

  “Mr. Popovich, I’m okay. I promise.”

  “No, no. No arguing. You bleed, I fix.”

  I followed him into his apartment, because if I didn’t, he’d call my mother. The last thing I needed on a night like tonight was to deal with her special brand of crazy.

  “You work tonight?” Mr. Popovich asked, motioning to a chair at his kitchen table. The layout of his apartment was identical to ours, but the feeling wasn’t the same. There always seemed to be something missing in his place: a kind of emptiness that couldn’t be explained away by the sparse furnishings and lack of decorations.

  “Yes, I did. Had an apprehension. She scratched my face.” I’d forgotten about the wounds until my bloodhound neighbor had smelled the dried blood. Nail wounds were nasty business, what with the overabundance of germs living beneath a human’s fingernails. I’d almost rather get shot.

  The scratches burned beneath Mr. Popovich’s ministrations, but I knew it was necessary. For me, of course, because alcohol might keep my face from puffing up like a rooster. For Mr. Popovich, he could get his fill of fatherly duties and feel needed. Win-win.

  “How is your daughter?” I asked him.

  “Good. Pregnant.”

  “That’s great,” I said, even though I didn’t mean it. Bringing kids into Senka Hollow was dumb and irresponsible. Senka’s failing protection meant more opportunity for the weakest to fall victim to the darkness.

  “No, it isn’t,” Mr. Popovich echoed my thoughts. “I told her it is not safe for a child here. Not now. She never listens.”

  “We have that in common.”

  “You are a good girl, Maurelle Nez. Hush now.”

  He dabbed ointment on my cheek, his cloudy eyes fixed on a point somewhere over my shoulder. I didn’t know how old he was. Sixty? Seventy? But he’d been around the block a time or two, and if there was anybody I could trust to ask sensitive questions, it was him.

  “Mr. Popovich. Have you ever heard of someone being able to time travel?”

  He paused, his meaty finger dangling over my eyebrow. “Many, many long years ago. Why do you ask?”

  “So it’s possible?”

  “There are tales, yes. It isn’t a magick I’ve ever seen myself.”

  “What would you say if I told you I met someone who could do it?”

  Mr. Popovich put the lid back on his antibiotic ointment. He looked right at me, as if he could really see me. “If that is the case, Maurelle, then I would be concerned. Nature evolves to save itself only when everything else falls apart.”

  My face burned like fuck as I stepped heavily off the stairs onto the fourth floor. The hall was blessedly silent, as it should be past ten at night. I hooked the small bag of rice and fortune cookies on the door handle at 4-A – my favorite neighbor, Elroy, a scrappy old dude who had left the Res before I was even born. He worked nights at the power plant on the outskirts. His food would be waiting for him when he got home, and I’d rest assured I wouldn’t get a lecture from my mother on his health.

  I stuck my key in the lock of the apartment I shared with my brother and turned it, but the lock didn’t unlatch; the damn thing was unlocked. I gritted my teeth and shoved open the door.

  “Rice!” I yelled irritably. “You left the damn door open again. I’ve told you, you can’t do that in this neighborhood. Even with the front door sensor.”

  I shut the door and flipped the deadbolt. My brother didn’t answer. I could hear the tinny sound of his
video games from his bedroom.

  “Noodles!” I called, hoping to tempt him to move. I flipped the light on in the kitchen and started pulling boxes out of plastic. The delicious smells emanating from the containers made my stomach rumble.

  I popped a fortune cookie from the cellophane and dropped it on the offering plate on our altar. The small ancestral temple was my one concession to our heritage, a habit that had traveled with me from the seat of my ancestors to this cramped, dingy downtown apartment. The ingrained habit seemed almost involuntary; a necessity similar to brushing my hair or showering. The importance had waned somewhere between then and now, lost along the road I’d taken.

  “Rice! Vittles!” I yelled again as I opened the cabinet to extract plates.

  I paused, the hairs on the back of my neck tingling. I’d been so caught up in getting home with our dinner, and then dealing with the faulty lock sensor and Mr. Popovich’s fatherly attentions, that I hadn’t paid attention to the energy in the apartment.

  I set the plates on the counter and opened my senses. The agent in me never stayed alert at home. All my guards could drop when I walked through the door; all the tension I carried, the razor-sharp focus, it could all vanish. This was my safehaven, the place I shared with my brother, who was the only surety in my life.

  Something heavy hung in the air. Something wrong.

  “Rice?” I barked. The first stab of worry sliced through me.

  No response.

  I walked the hallway to our bedrooms, feeling lightheaded. I trailed my fingers along the wall for balance, maybe for comfort, for proof that I was real and the world was real, even if Senka’s grave lay split to the air ten blocks away.

  My brother’s door hung open. Electronic music and chaotic light spilled into the hallway, like it usually did when he binge-played.

  “Rice. Dinner.” I put a palm on his door. The hinges creaked as it opened.

  Lit by the maniacally flashing lights of a retro Donkey Kong game, my brother lay sprawled on his bedroom floor, eyes wide and mouth slack.

  His throat gaped open like a hideous, bloody smile.