Blood

by Kay Williams

  having used magic and technology to benefit everyone.

  Snow thought only of himself. He had an Eternal life and did nothing with it, Carson had known Snow with a simple photo, and his extreme views and the lengths he would go for his cause. Carson and his friends were Councillors for the Dependants, Carson was supposed to be a leader and an enforcer and he had done nothing to stop Snow and others like him.

  How many people over the years had vanished? How many had been held captive and drained? How many had been murdered? How could I ever have thought that Carson cared about the living? He may not be blood-thirsty or share Snow’s opinions but he did nothing to stop it either. Carson had claimed to be a lawyer, but I wondered how often he had got one of his fellows off the hook for a crime they committed only to let them back on the street when he couldn’t be bothered to see justice done.

  Snow wasn’t expecting the burst of speed that saw me to the door he did throw himself at it to stop me closing it and locking myself in the security booth but I reinforced the door and my own weight with a kinetic push and the door locked shut as if he had never bothered trying to stop it.

  I had to be careful, Snow and his friends had only second-hand knowledge of my power I had to assume was gleaned through watching Carson’s rattled attempts. My best chance for survival lay in the element of surprise and to dumb down what I was actually capable of.

  “There is nowhere to run to,” Snow called through the door. “I’ve disabled the electronics, and you have managed to lock your rather expensive computer with its built in phone out here with me.”

  I moved Pear aside gently whispering a soft apology to the man who had died for nothing. I might have resolved to kill Snow, but Dependants were considered one of the Races of man and the law would see it as murder, or manslaughter at the very least if I managed to prove my life was in danger. A bang on the security door made me jump, it was a cheap metal thing with one magnetic lock. It wasn't built to withstand a determined and sustained attack. Pulling up a camera feed from the corridor I watched Snow lift a fire extinguisher and smash it against the door handle.

  The man wasn't as stupid as I though, the magnetic seal for the door was in the handle, if Snow could damaged the handle enough to move the magnets then the door would pop open.

  I watched him smash at the handle a couple of times, it wasn't a case of if Snow could do it, it was a case of how long it would take him. Snow's limbs wouldn't tire and he wouldn't stop.

  Pear had already told me that he had called the emergency services to report the triggered was false and there was no need for them to attend, but if I could reverse that and tell Snow the police were on the way then he might feel inclined to back off rather than risk being caught.

  I used my ID to log into the computer as Snow began to pound on the door in a deliberate steady rhythm. I tried to reverse the block that Pear had placed against the call. But it required me to back up the written application with a call them which I couldn't make. I submitted it anyway hoping someone would review the submission; it would take a few minutes for the application to be reviewed with the emergency services but I hoped that telling them Pear was dead, a Dependant was attacking the security booth and I was

  trapped would be enough incentive for them to send help, with or without a back up call.

  I couldn't wait in the booth hoping that someone was coming.

  I needed a way out and I needed a way of keeping myself out of Snow's hands.

  There were many security cameras through the museum, I ran my gaze over the monitors and my attention locked on the pieces acquired regarding revolutionary France and at its centre a reconstruction of the guillotine. The few lights that had remained on to guide people to emergency exits weren't very bright and the cameras had all switched to infrared. Snow wouldn’t be able to see in the dark but I worked here and knew this place like the back of my hand, it wasn’t much of an advantage but it was something.

  A metallic snap told me that Snow's sustained assault on the handle was beginning to pay off. If he could break in I could throw him backwards but I was still going to be susceptible to Bespelling by voice, all he needed was time to say my name and I would be in his power.

  It was luck really that he had wanted to frighten me by crowing over the causing Pear's murder rather then just grabbing me. I would have had no defence against a Bespelling given the shock of finding Pear.

  It was panic that made to look up for any kind of escape from the bare room, and an inventiveness born of desperation that made me consider the air conditioning vent above the computer console. Standing on the desk, I opened the access panel to the shafts and lifted myself up inside, for once my size doing me a favour. I crawled a few junctions before dropping down into one of the staff corridors.

  When prey ran, predators hunted. Snow would know I was no longer in the room, because be would no longer be able to hear my heartbeat through the door, but I wasn’t some scared gazelle running from a lion. I had the unfortunate ability to be able to think and reason and Humans weren’t known for their herbivore tendencies; Snow would underestimate me. That would even give the opportunity to incapacitate him, or to kill him.

  I wasn't bothered which, but if I was nothing but a cow to be herded for my blood as Snow thought me, that he was nothing more than a tick on my back. And just like a tick the best way to rid yourself of the insect was to take its head off.

  I waited for the guilt to kick in at the thought, waited for the despair and the self-disgust that should have come at the idea of taking a life; but there was none. Snow was a parasite, sucking blood from the living because he had a disease. His illness was both mental and physical it would be better for everyone if it was purged from the face of the Earth.

  I opened the service door and fled through the exhibit dedicated to this year’s Pause Festival and out into the Great Court, I sprinted towards the old reading room that now contained the revolutionary guillotine surrounded by the wax figures in the correct clothes. The bang of the service door told me Snow wasn’t that far behind.

  I ducked inside the exhibit and pressed myself up against the circular wall, easing down low. Snow would know where I was, if not instantly then he would be able to narrow it down in a matter of seconds and I needed to be in place.

  I froze as a black silhouette moved into the room and for the first time I suffered a moment of hesitation, it had been easy to assume I would be able to kill Snow, now the moment had arrived, but despite the man was already dead and I hated him, I wasn’t sure I could. He moved in slowly, the green glow of the emergency exits the only source of

  light and even than it wasn’t enough to really see.

  Maybe there would be time for me to sprint back the way I had come, passed the security booth and out into the street. There was enough police presence because of the festival that finding one to beg the help of wouldn't be a problem. Then I remembered Pear, the man’s absolute love for his children and grandchildren. The sacrifices he must have made and lived with through his early years, how much he would have had to give up so that future generations wouldn’t have to.

  I doubted that Snow would have Bespelled Pear before digging his fangs in and slicing his throat open, he would have died paralysed, bleeding and frightened and Snow would have enjoyed watching him suffer. I couldn’t make Snow suffer, but I could even the score and I could show the rest of his friends that I would not be used. I was more powerful than they anticipated, or comprehended, and it was they who should be afraid of me.

  Snow moved in front of me humming the French national anthem, he looked down at me I could see the whites of his eyes and he looked into mine.

  “Come out. Don’t make me hurt you. Quinton won’t be pleased if I come back with you to damaged too bleed for him. He is not a patient man.”

  I readied myself, my abstract and my aim.

  Snow let out a frustrated breath and his hand shot out to grab me, I shoved up out of my hiding place at the same time.<
br />
  I landed both my hands against his chest and pushed with both my psychical strength and with my abstract.

  Snow launched back as I fell forward, tripping over the wax figure wasn’t part of my plan but the pain of landing in a tangled heap with it wasn’t enough to fault the application of my abstract or my aim and he landed with his neck right where it needed to be. The fact he landed hard on his back rattled the fragile wooden frame and I had to work quickly as the machine shuddered. I wrapped my will around the top half of the lunette headlock using my abstract to bring it down trapping Snow in place, before I used another command to pull up the handle unlocking the blade and allowing it to fall.

  Snow’s hands struggled with the headlock, his body twisted and his legs kicked, but it was all in vain and he screamed for the last three seconds of his life before it was over.

  I covered my head with my hands as the blade fell and I emerged from under them with a lightness in my head and my heart I didn’t expect. I pushed myself up, Snow’s prone body lay on the bascule, his hands had managed to reach the lunette but my will had kept him from pushing it off, by the time he must have realised he wouldn’t be able to shift it the mouton and blade were already descending.

  His infected blood was splattered against the shield and was seeping into the wood.

  I had decided to take what little of a life he had, but I never expected it to be so easy, I never expected to feel light and free, I had thought I was good enough that I would feel some kind of guilt or stress or nausea.

  I retreated out of the reading room and ran back across the court, taking a quicker route down the corridors to the security room, as Snow had commented through the door my computer was in the hallway and thankfully had been left in one piece.

  With steady hands I pulled the phone ear piece out of the side of the computer and I called the police; knowing that if I fled the scene I would be even more of a suspect than I already was.

  # # #

  Her name was Claudia Prim and she was the detective in charge of my case, she was a short, muscular, and direct woman who had the unnerving tendency of allowing her fingers to trace the holster of the gun-shaped taser she wore on her hip as she worked. She was also currently trying to draw Carson into a heated debate, I had to hand it to Carson he remained completely untouchable.

  I hadn’t spoken to him yet, but I wasn’t in an interrogation room either, instead Prim's officers had put me into a little office with a one-way window, but I had been left guarded by another police officer as if I were a suspect, I didn’t complain, I just sat quietly with my hands wrapped around a cup of lukewarm vending machine tea.

  I knew from the reflection in the one-way glass that I was pale and wan, despite the afternoon with junk food and chocolate such a concentrated use of my abstract had left me weak and drained, if I intended to use it like that more often I was going to have to increase my calorie intake.

  I was cold and trembling now the adrenaline and righteous indignation for Pear had worn off, even so I still couldn’t find myself guilty. Snow would have done worse to me, and as far as I was concerned he had got what was coming to him, he had probably been deserving his True Death for several decades. A part of me was even upset that I wouldn’t be able to see Quinton Long’s face when he found out that Snow was dead and that his prey had teeth. Long wouldn’t be stupid enough to believe the ‘tripped and fell’ story I had fed to Prim, he would know I had teeth and that I was willing to use them.

  Still if the state of me helped Prim believe my story than I wouldn't complain about it but I did that I wished I had a blanket or something to wrap myself up in. It wasn’t cold in the police station but I had used so much energy killing Snow I was suffering for it.

  I hadn’t been charged with anything but nor had I been allowed to call my family or a friend. Right now I didn’t know if that was good or bad and I lacked the energy to stress out about it too much.

  The only thing I had been allowed to do was visit the restroom with Prim in tow so I could wash Pear;s blood from my hands.

  I didn’t know why Prim looked so frustrated. On the surface her case looked open and closed. She had Snow breaking in and overloading the power, his murder of Pear, my arrival and trying to save Pear's life. Snow’s threats and his attempt to get into the security booth, the effort I had made to reverse the false alarm code but being unable to complete it with my bag in hallway, my running, his stalking, my hiding, and Snow finding me. My lurch out of hiding had been half obscured by the poor camera view and Snow’s body. It looked more like I had fallen over the wax figure in an effort to run again, which resulted in Snow falling backwards and becoming trapped in the replica guillotine and lastly his beheading and my run for my bag and the phone.

  Coupled with my computer's record of the conversation with Pear, and all the video and audio that she had, I wondered why she was going to town on Carson.

  Prim had no evidence I had done anything wrong, and as yet there was no genetic test one could take to prove that they had an abstract, what it was or how powerful it could turn out to be. Prim could have no way of knowing that I had caused Snow's death. At least I hoped she didn't.

  I hadn’t realised that it would be standard procedure to call the Dependant Council when a True Death of one of their Faction happened. Knowing that Carson wouldn't be able to see me through the mirror I had watched as Prim took him into the video room and had been there for several minutes, so I knew that Carson would have been quick enough to see how I had manipulated Snow but the fact that neither of them came to arrest me straight away was heartening to some degree. After they had emerged Prim had started giving Carson the third degree very publicly in the middle of the station. Pity that the little room I was in, though it afforded a fantastic view of the station, was soundproof. I would have been nice to know what Prim was chewing Carson’s ear off about.

  I went back to staring at my tea, sipping it slowly. I wished I could have called Aolir, just remembering the warmth of his scales on my skin what enough to put a shiver down my spine. Not that the dragon had given me his number, he had made me drink off the tea in the goblet, he had escorted me to Carson when he had called me to say he was at the fair and offered his help with organising some security tapes. We had said our goodbyes with one last shake of our hands and I didn't expect to ever see him again.

  The door opened,jerking me back to the station and Prim entered. She shot me a look that surprised me with its depth of apology and warmth.

  “You can go, Miss. Roberts. Sorry for keeping you for so long, thank you for your patience.”

  I had already signed my statements so I pushed myself to my feet and managed to walk next to Prim to the front of the station where she gave me her card and promised that she would keep me updated if anything else happened.

  We shook hands though mine felt weak and she saw me out. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jeans and headed across the parking lot, I intended to wait for a cab, go home, eat something easily microwaved, sleep and let the eventual call from my boss go to voicemail until I had the strength to talk to him.

  I eased down on to the seats at the cab stand, still safely in full view of the station and rubbed my arms trying to warm up. It was futile effort though; I was out of energy and I knew I would be lucky to make it home without falling asleep.

  Right up until a large muscular weight crouched down in front of me and Aolir came into focus.

  “Hi,” I managed, surprised by his sudden appearance.

  “Had some fun tonight, didn’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t call it fun,” I answered, I hadn’t enjoyed taking Snow’s life, it had been necessary but not pleasurable.

  “Come,” he replied, holding out his hands.

  I took them, he pulled me to my feet, and looped an arm around my waist, taking most of my weight and warming cold skin. His car was a sleek black rental with comfortable leather seats and a wonderful warm interior. Aolir put the car into automatic, pr
ogrammed in the address of my flat, sat back and let the car do its job.

  “They kept you for a long time. I was worried they would press charges.”

  “For what?” I asked. Aolir’s silent response told me not to take him for a fool. “How did you know where I was?”

  “When we shook hands before I placed a Tracer Spell on you, I didn’t think you had seen the last of those Dependants and I wanted to know if you did something stupid.”

  “Like responding to a page and going to work?”

  “Snow left your colleague alive just long enough for it to be a legitimate call, you weren’t to know differently.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I am a dragon, little warrior, I can cover great distances in seconds with my wings, I have superior hearing and vision and I am a magic user, if I put my mind to it there isn’t a lot I am not capable of.”

  Coming from anyone else I would have taken that a smug self-aggrandising, but Aolir wasn’t trying to impress, or sing his own praises, he was just issuing statements of fact. Dragons were one of the most powerful and diverse Races of Favlas, contrary to Earthling mythology while in dragon form they were not all the size of high rise towers and capable of breathing fire, though some were that huge and terrible.

  Some dragons grew no larger than a chicken, others the size of cars or buses.

  Some hunted rats or rabbits and didn’t have any special magic or ability past that of a human form, others were born to a single element and could bend it to their will in a way that was more abstract than it was magic. With age, other dragons were known to become so in-tune with the landscape they lived in they could abandon the human form and chose to appear as trees, rocks or thousands of grains of sand.

  “You used your abstract,” Aolir continued. “Threw him on to the guillotine and loosened the handle.”