by C. P. Rider
"Before I started working with her, she didn't know that much," he said. "She's from the Other. You know the stories. People there don't acknowledge abilities, much less understand them."
"But her mother was an Elite," Gilda said, "her grandfather, too."
"She died when I was seven."
"Elites start training as soon as they are able to respond to discipline. I was sixteen months old. Samuel was…"
"A year."
"I was taught to hide mine," I said.
"That's awful." Gilda's pitying look annoyed me, but she wasn't wrong. Why hadn't my mother taught me more about my ability? For that matter, why wouldn't my grandfather teach me now? It's almost as if they were ashamed of what we could do.
"Diversion." She clapped her hands together. "We need one. To give you time to dig."
Bad idea. "The limpid worm hole was a challenge for me."
The three of us started running again as the chimera uprooted the tree she was digging under and chucked it over her shoulder.
"And that hole wouldn't be big enough to keep a chimera contained. The only reason it worked with the worms was because they have fragile skin. The fall, coupled with the dirt she piled on top of them, burst the things open like a ripe melon dropped from a rooftop." Samuel glanced over his shoulder, grabbed my elbow and Gilda's, and ran faster. "Mountain chimeras have skin like a military tank. Unless Maria digs a hole to the earth's mantle and drops her in, burying her won't work."
"Chimeras?" I huffed out the word. "Plural? There's more than one?"
"Uh, yeah. Everybody has parents." Samuel hoisted me up by my arm until my toes barely touched the ground. "The others are deeper in the Beyond. This one hunts in the mountain range closest to Dead End."
It was a weird time to get desperately homesick, running for my life as I was, but I did it anyway. In that moment, I missed Dad and our side of the Divide more than I had since entering Sanctum.
"The bunker is over there." Gilda pointed to a cluster of meridian trees. These trees were twice as big as the one by the lunch tables at school and they looked menacing—if trees could look that way—which they obviously could, since these were totally pulling it off.
I got a cramp in my left calf and let out a yelp.
"Move." Samuel scowled. "It's almost midnight."
Five meridian trees came alive at the stroke of midnight. Thankfully—or sadly, depending on how you looked at it—we were not near them at the time.
"Bunker is a no-go," Samuel said.
"I've got an idea." Gilda slammed on her brakes out of the reach of the first tree. "Cover your ears."
We did as she said, but I could still hear her, could feel the gut-clenching intonations of her powerful voice as she sang to the trees. One by one, branches drooped and trunks bent as if collapsing under their own weight as she lulled them to sleep.
Samuel ran, so I ran, too. When we reached a steel door set into the ground, he pointed at me with his elbow. "Spin the wheel."
The thing reminded me of something out of a war movie, like a hatch door in a submarine. I was a desert kid. I'd never seen a sailboat in person, much less a submarine. But I yanked on the wheel anyway.
"Two hands." Even with his hands covering his ears Samuel cringed as Gilda hit a particularly low note. I almost threw up. If we survived this, I was investing in a strong pair of noise-canceling headphones.
I gripped the wheel with one hand on top and the other on the bottom, and turned. The wheel made a grinding, rusty noise as if it hadn't been used in a long time, but it moved. I pulled the door open and went inside, climbing down a short ladder to a dirt landing. Samuel followed.
Gilda kept singing until she reached the door. When she stopped, the trees immediately snapped awake, faced her —which made no sense seeing as how they didn't have faces, only mouths—and let out a series of shrieks.
"Uh-oh." She scrambled inside and yanked the door shut. Something hit the door with a loud thrump and she turned the wheel, which spun more easily now that I had loosened it up.
Samuel leaned against the dirt wall across from me, his breathing ragged. Gilda half-slid down the ladder to land on her knees in the dirt, chest heaving, blood oozing out of her nose.
"Here." I handed her one of the pressed linen handkerchiefs Grandpa Holli always made me carry for some weird reason. A handkerchief and a granola bar. His idea of a survival kit.
She pressed it to her nose. "Thanks."
"That way." Samuel pointed to another door. This one also had a large wheel mechanism in the middle of it though it was an actual door, not a hatch.
The front room of the bunker was surprisingly comfortable. It was stocked with fresh water, snacks, and a bed, table, and chairs. It looked the way I imagined a bomb shelter from my side of the divide would look, only with more rooms.
"You could fit the whole town in here," I whispered.
"That's the idea," Gilda whispered in reply. "Four quadrants branch off from the main room. Beds, supplies, weapons. Enough for the entire town to live on for six months, if necessary. Reinforced steel and seven shaman blessings. Even a Beyond chimera couldn't bring this thing down."
Samuel, pale and covered with sweat, slid all the way down to the floor. Blood dripped down the sides of his neck.
"Oh no, Samuel. Your ears." I hurried to his side.
He gritted his teeth. "I'm aware,” he whispered. “Could you give me a minute? I know you mean well, but every word you two say sounds like artillery fire."
Nodding, I moved closer to Gilda. She sat on the edge of the bed with her head back, my handkerchief pressed to her nose.
"Are you all right?" I whispered.
"I'll manage." She glanced in Samuel's direction. "How is he?"
"His ears are bleeding and extremely sensitive right now."
Samuel covered his face with his hands. "Please shut up."
Gilda quieted her voice. "You wouldn't happen to have another one of these handkerchiefs, would you?"
I shook my head.
"I'll see if I can find something in the supply boxes." She kicked off her heels and padded barefoot across the room to a set of floor-to-ceiling shelves.
Worried, I returned to Samuel. His eyes were closed, and his breathing had steadied. I looked him over but didn't dare speak.
"I feel you staring," he whispered. "Mouth the words if you have something to say. I'll be able to hear you."
We can't stay here, I mouthed. The chimera is going to hurt someone. I thought of Zack. Someone who doesn't deserve it.
Samuel breathed in through his nose, then out through his mouth. At first I thought he hadn't heard me, so I repeated myself. He held up his hand, cutting me off mid-sentence.
"I heard you. Just trying to get my bearings back."
Given the lack of color in his cheeks, I didn't doubt that. The distant sound of the chimera wreaking havoc outside drew my attention.
What do we do?
Samuel opened his eyes. "We need a plan."
We need help.
"That too," he replied.
The outer hatch creaked open and slammed shut. Samuel grunted in pain. The wheel on the inner door spun slowly.
Gilda looked over her shoulder at me. "Cover his ears."
I knelt beside Samuel and did as she said.
"Who is it?" Gilda asked with her ability. I knew Samuel needed my hands more than I did, but it was hard to resist the urge to cover my own ears when she did that.
"Maria? Samuel? Are you guys in there?"
I shot to my feet and hurried to the hatch door. "Cindy?" I grabbed one of her hands away from her ears and yanked her all the way inside. "What are you doing here? You could have been killed. The meridian trees… and there's a chimera running around out there… How did you get in?"
She glanced at Samuel and whispered, "It's after midnight, so the meridian trees were no problem. And the chimera isn't out there anymore."
"Where is she?"
"Headed s
outh."
"Toward town?" Samuel grimaced. It seemed even the sound of his own voice hurt his ears.
"Yeah." Cindy's natural smile slipped off her face. "Toward the north end of town. Your neighborhood, Samuel and Gilda."
23
"I have an idea," Cindy whispered.
"What if Maria created a hole large enough to capture the chimera's feet?" Gilda whispered, in deference to Samuel's ears. "If we held her still, perhaps one of the fire abilities could attack."
"And burn down half the town in the process?" Samuel leaned his head against the wall. "No, thanks."
"See, the thing about chimeras—"
"What about the Johnsons?" Gilda rolled over Cindy again. "Their son Matt froze a swimming pool solid last summer."
"It was winter, and it wasn't solid," Samuel said.
This had to be one of the strangest conversations I'd ever had, as we were all doing our best to keep our voices soft.
"Chimeras have thick hides," Cindy said. "External attacks are useless. You have to—"
"What about Javier Rivas?" Gilda asked. "He turned a meridian tree to stone. Fossilized the thing."
Samuel rubbed his chin. "Rivas might work."
"Why do you keep talking over Cindy?" I asked Gilda. Frankly, I was getting pissed off about it.
"I was under the impression that we were in a hurry, so why would we choose to waste even more time?" Gilda finally looked at Cindy. "Not to be cruel, but you have no abilities. We need an Elite to deal with this thing, and the only two people who know every Elite in town are Samuel and I."
"Not every problem requires an Elite to solve it," Cindy said.
Samuel tilted his head, regarded her with that quizzical, interested look he seemed to save just for her.
Gilda noticed. Her face screwed up, then flattened. "Well, of course you'd feel that way." The condescension was thick. "And no one would blame you for it, but it's simply untrue. Now, please, be quiet and let us figure this out."
Although I didn't appreciate the way Gilda spoke to my friend, I had to admit she kind of had a point. If you had people who could set things on fire or freeze them or fossilize them with their mind, you probably didn't have to call on emergency services very often.
"Understood." Cindy pasted on that unhappy smile she often wore at school. "I should get home."
"I'll go with you," I said.
"No, you should stay here and try to figure out how to handle this mess. I'll talk to you tomorrow." She opened the bunker door. "One thing, though. You're wrong, Gilda."
Gilda sighed. "Again, I understand why you'd feel—"
"I know every Elite in town. Every single one. I have to. It's a matter of survival for my kind." She dug in the pocket of her jeans, pulled out a tiny plastic container. "Here. I had a feeling you might need these. Chimeras are notorious screamers." She tossed them to Samuel.
He stared at the object in his palm for several seconds.
"What is it?" I whispered.
"Earplugs." He put them in his ears and smiled. "Thank you, Cin—"
She was already gone.
"Fossilize a mountain chimera? Are you freaking kidding me?"
Javier Rivas stood on his front porch in a pair of plaid pajama bottoms and nothing else. He looked to be around eighteen or nineteen, and I was pretty sure he worked out daily. Maybe even twice a day, with abs like that.
"You took out a meridian tree," Samuel said.
"That was blown out of proportion. The tree was sick and it wanted to die. I wouldn't have done it otherwise. I'm not a freaking monster."
"But the mountain chimera is," Gilda said.
"Is she?" Javier narrowed oak brown eyes. "Or is she a Beyond creature who was minding her own business when a bunch of partying teenagers disturbed her hunting grounds?"
Boom. Got it in one.
I had a feeling I was going to like Javier despite the fact that we were from very different worlds. Not only dimensional worlds, either. He was standing on the porch of a house the size of my middle school gym, on a street with three others like it, and they all reminded me of the scale model I made in fifth grade of the San Juan Capistrano Mission. All white-painted brick and tall arches and red clay roofs. Rich people houses.
My grandfathers, and Cindy's family, had modest suburban houses, a lot like the one I'd grown up in. Samuel lived in a big house on the outskirts of the nicer part of town, but Javier was in his own category. His family had to be loaded. I wondered what they did for a living, or if they needed to do anything…
"Javier, please help—"
"No, Gilda. I'm not cleaning up the mess made by a bunch of smug-ass Elites who think everything they do is acceptable because of their birthright. I'm not part of that and I never will be, revolution or not." He shook his head at Samuel. "I thought you were different."
"Hey, I came along after the fact. Don't blame me for this mess." Samuel crossed his arms over his chest. "But I'm not going to abandon my town to an enraged chimera either. Sometimes we have to clean up messes we didn't make."
Javier dropped his chin to his chest and groaned. "That's how you're going to play it, Bekker?"
"Yep," Samuel replied.
After another louder groan, Javier let loose with an explosion of Spanish curse words that all basically meant the same thing. He was going to help us.
He disappeared into his California mission mansion, returning a few minutes later dressed in jeans, a plain white T-shirt, and white sneakers that looked almost, but not exactly like, Converse. Without a glance at us, Javier strode across the lawn and down the sidewalk. We followed close behind.
As we moved through the neighborhood, a few sleepy townsfolk emerged from their homes, took one look at the chimera, and scurried back inside, slamming their doors behind them.
"I'd drive, but no way am I letting a chimera mess up my car. I just got the thing," Javier said.
Samuel shrugged. "Just as well. Looks like she ended up closer to this side of town anyway. Turn right at the next street."
Javier hung his head, shoved his hands into his pockets. "I won't kill her."
"You may have to."
"I hate this." He let out another string of Spanish curse words, some I'd never heard before—and Mom had been a colorful curser. Then he glanced over his shoulder at me and frowned. "You killed the limpid worms, right?"
"Yeah."
"How did you feel about having to kill them?"
I had to think about that. If pressed, I guess I'd say it hardly bothered me at all. All I could think about was saving those kids. But I sensed that was not the answer he wanted, so I said, "Conflicted."
"Liar." He laughed. "You felt nothing."
"Fine. I felt nothing. One of them tried to kill my dog." I threw that in there in case he was lumping me in with Gilda's crowd. "The others tried to attack some little kids. I wasn't thinking about the worms then, and I don't think about them now that they're dead."
He slowed a little, let me catch up to him. "Okay, but you do think about your dog."
"That's different."
"How?" His dark eyes smiled at me though his mouth remained a straight line.
"Toby is a sophisticated animal. He's kind to all living things—except for spiders. He eats spiders."
"No, it's different because you've anthropomorphized him." At my confused look, he said, "You've humanized him. You've attributed to Toby traits that you value as a compassionate being, but the truth is, if he was out in the wild, he'd have to kill to eat, to survive. That's all the chimera is doing. It's really all the worms do, though they do have to be thinned out or they'll overrun the town."
"The city council is working on deworming the town." I jogged to keep up with him.
"Yeah, they do it every year. It's a humane way of dealing with the issue. Unlike what we're about to do now." He slid to a stop and pointed at the sky. "That's her? Sweet Arcadia, she's grown by five feet since I last saw her."
"Yeah. She's not har
d to pick out in a crowd," Samuel said.
True. Being twenty feet tall gave the chimera one disadvantage. It made her very easy to spot from pretty much anywhere in town. If Javier had taken a moment to look up when he was standing on his front porch, he would have seen the top of her head then.
Javier opened and closed his mouth like a fish on dry land. "I should have left this to my dad. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't take her on." But he continued walking, so I took that to mean that he would at least try.
We caught up with the chimera at the park between Samuel's neighborhood and the rest of the town. Oddly, she wasn't throwing fireballs or screaming, or doing anything, really. She'd simply plopped down in the center of the park, crushing about eight trees beneath her, and was pawing at the ground with her massive claws.
"What's she doing?" Gilda asked. We were across the street from the park, on the concrete steps of a vacant house.
Samuel looked at Javier. "Do you know?"
"This is a new one for me."
"She seems sad," I said, "but calm. If Javier tries to hurt her, she'll be mad. And probably a lot less calm."
"Then what do we do?" Gilda threw up her hands. "Call in a psychiatrist? Maybe a shaman? Doug the apothecary?"
None of us had a good answer. So, we sat there and thought, and kept our voices low so as not to disturb the creature. It was shortly after Gilda threw up her hands for the sixth time, and right after Javier said he was going home because he had to work in the morning, that we heard the singing.
The song was gentle and serene, a pretty lullaby. It was beautiful. I glanced at Gilda, but her mouth was pinched shut.
The singer emerged from the trees to the right of the chimera and I caught my breath.
"Cindy."
24
"Cindy," I whisper-yelled.
She didn't hear me, of course. She was far too busy singing a children's song to a creature who could end her life with one bite of her snake tail.
"What's she doing?" Gilda snarled. "She's going to get herself killed. We told her we'd take care of it."