The Immortal City

by May Peterson

  He smelled like damp, dying meat. It was like someone had doused me in cold water, the night’s fog of enchantment washing away.

  A few steps away, another young man stood, eyes wide, hands over his mouth. He was shaky, drops of dark fluid spattering his raiment. I couldn’t see a weapon, but the tracks suggested he’d caused the slashes. Behind him, a tall wolf-soul wearing a sword and a gray coat gripped him by the collar. She eyed me. “Little shits have been quarreling all evening. Didn’t think they’d actually draw blood.”

  Something squirmed in the shadows around us, settling into an array of humanoid shapes. “Never fear.” That voice. It pierced me through the silver haze. The voice of my earliest memories, of my barely formed nightmares. Lord Umber. The outline of wings showed his location, decorated with the glare of his crimson eyes. “Ari has come. All will be well.”

  Suddenly, the whole street felt like a stage. Faceless shadows had gathered here to see me fulfill my duty. I met Umber’s hollow stare for a moment, then nodded. I knelt down by the bleeding youth. “Give him to me.”

  The boy whimpered as he was slid into my lap. He kept mumbling. “Starting to get cold. I think it’s stopping. Shouldn’t have had so much to drink.”

  I peeled back the cloth, winced at the raw gashes. What the hell had he been cut with? My fingers played over them, pressing the tissue. Seeing ordinary mortal wounds, wounds that didn’t heal in moments, was always a little shocking when my own body bounced back so quickly. But this was what I was here for.

  My virtue. Just like the cat-souls and their cat-step, each beast had its own unique gift. The doves had the virtue of pitying, the power to heal. All I had to do was allow it to work, almost without thinking. The virtue rose up in me like full-moon light.

  “I’ve got you,” I breathed. Snow-shimmer bloomed from my fingertips, gracing his torn flesh. A sigh of apparent relief swung through him. I drew the touch over the length of the wounds, wet streaks coming away lit with white. “Don’t be scared.”

  In seconds, the wounds began to close.

  His entire body relaxed as if melting into me. The virtue-glow hummed in the air around us, painting the ground the creamy hue of my wings. The blood dried, and soon the tears were little more than scars, irate tissue softening and lightening under my touch.

  Maybe this was enough for me to keep coming. Maybe I’d done the wrong thing by keeping to myself. It was simply so hard to face this crowd and still feel so alone. But I had this role for a reason. I felt alone because I seemed to make no difference. I should have been like a village doctor, mending the ailing and improving their lives. Instead I felt like a mechanic. Patching up parts for them to senselessly get battered again, or dissipate into an insensate fog of joint amnesia. With all our yesterdays flowing away, we gradually lost the ability to feel each other mattering.

  “How many beads did he have?” My own voice felt distant, weary. I caressed his ribs, feeling the moon-glow sink through him, purging out the beginnings of infection.

  The wolf-soul sounded hoarse. “Four.”

  Shit. And he’d given all four worth; the extra blood loss might have killed him. The infusion of my virtue would replenish him soon enough, but he’d need help. “Water. And meat.”

  She didn’t ask for elaboration. In moments, hands were holding out bits of fat and poultry on sticks, bowls of partly eaten steak and rice, cups of water. I directed them to feed him, giving his body something to restore itself with. I could do the rest.

  He had enough strength for several bites before sleep pulled him under. But his heart kept a steady pace, and the aroma of death had left him.

  “Is he...going to live?” It was the man who’d taken the piece out of him in the first place. He all but shone with terror.

  I raised my head to nod—and Umber was staring at me. He’d drawn out of the shadow, eyes distinguished from the rest of the lights. The sight silenced me, filled me with cold. Lord Umber was called “the Dread Lord Umber” by most of those who kept to the upper streets, and his appearance reminded me of why. He looked like he’d been cut from living bone. Mountainous in height, his white face long and thin, framing that cadaverous gaze. Arch features, prominent nose and brow, a sweep of icy pale hair to match his bloodless white skin, body garbed in red and black. Two blood-donors stood by him. A young man and a young woman, thin and wan, faces misty with numbness.

  They had to have been memory sellers as well. Some people sold even new memories they made, being paid to constantly reset to a blank slate, feeding Umber ongoing loops of new vicarious experiences. I knew the aura that clung to them, practically all that clothed their half-nude limbs. They, like me, were drowning in the endlessness of amnesia. I hoped whatever reason they’d had for selling their pasts, it was worth it. But it was hard to imagine that anyone so blank was truly making an informed choice, and the choice not being produced from them like puppetry.

  “Well done, my boy.” His grin stretched for miles, tore open the darkness and replaced it with him. Something in his manner and tone imparted the feeling that he’d been watching closely as I worked and never looked away. As well as what was unsaid: Welcome back, Ari. My angel.

  Yes. Practically saintly.

  The wolf-soul angled her face to him, not quite meeting his attention. “I take the blame; my caution was relaxed.” She cuffed the aggressor with the side of her hand, pulling a yelp from him.

  “No.” Umber’s amusement practically fell on the ground, wound around my feet. “No, there is no need for blame. Come here, child.” His long fingers beckoned to the youth, seemed to pluck his will from him. He nodded, trembling. He looked like he was resigning himself to being eaten.

  How close to true that was.

  The wolf-soul bowed and backed away. From here, I could see the young man’s eyes widen. Umber yanked him close. A slim finger traced the line of his cheek. “You need not even remember this came to pass. Attend me.”

  The lord of crows sunk back into the shadows, the man locked in step. No, he need not remember. In a sense he didn’t have a choice—it would be easy to bully a “sale” from someone who was overcome with guilt for a brawl gone wrong. Umber would devour the substance of his mind, digesting it into whatever dark corridor in which he stored Serenity’s sins. In theory one would only receive amnesia if they asked, but Umber had always struck me eerily eager to overstep.

  I wanted desperately to not have come. To be asleep, to at least have the void back.

  The youth I’d healed was taken from me and the crowd began to diffuse back into its cloud of motion. After what felt like lifetimes, I pushed myself to my feet.

  My wings ached. The price of the silver poisoning was hitting me now. This had been a mistake.

  “My, my, my.” The words descended on me like rain. They drew a shiver down my back. “Looks like you’re the savior of all creatures great and small, not just strangers who fall from heaven.”

  I turned slowly, not quite believing. But there he was. Hei. A still spot in the din, mere paces away. Smiling knowingly. Like he’d been waiting for a chance to see me do exactly this all along.

  My abashed laugh seemed to be something he made happen, extracted from me. I couldn’t help it. “You should know that ‘savior’ is probably a misnomer, though.”

  He bit his bottom lip. “What’s in a name?”

  Another laugh. Damn. “Not much, honestly.”

  We looked at each other for a few moments. He looked...different. Less like some uncaring youth who’d run across the tundra. Swathed in a form-fitting black leotard and tight coat, the graceful lines of his body in relief. Silver poisoning rendered the ground unsteady, twisted my sensations in on each other. Yet Hei was solid. Clear.

  I glanced to my feet. “This is...what I meant. About running into each other.”

  “Right.” His voice was light. “You were afraid you’d only
see me as a patient.”

  Or worse. That I would see him next as a blood-donor who’d sold his past, vacated of the person I’d met.

  “That tells me something.” His scent was suddenly close. Not a whiff of alcohol, no fumes, nothing like silver. No wonder he seemed so steady when everything else was off-kilter. Probably the only sober fucker in the whole quarter. “That I’m about to prove again what a thrill-seeker I am.”

  That brought my gaze up to his. He was leaning in, near enough to whisper so that I would hear and others wouldn’t.

  His mouth curved sweetly, pointedly. “I think I like you already.”

  Then those lips touched me, gracing the side of my cheek. It could barely be called contact, finished in less than a second. But it was damp, and hot, and boiled through all of my senses. My thoughts slowed to uselessness. He backed away, winking. With a gesture, he’d faded again into the crowd, the blur of bodies trammeling down his scent.

  Had I not held him in my arms, felt his weight, I could’ve believed he was a ghost. Maybe even the ghost of someone I had once known—or wanted to know.

  * * *

  I didn’t go home. Somehow, it seemed the escape was wasted. Hei had killed it. May as well scrape my thoughts back off the ground and see if any of them were worth salvaging.

  Tamueji found me as I lurked in a bar, knee deep in my drink. This was a little startling. I couldn’t recall her ever coming to me before, and she’d done so twice tonight. Had I ever seen her at one of Kadzuhikhan’s parties before? Had I felt less hollow, this might have seemed an encouraging overture of friendship.

  She sighed. “You look like dog’s shit. A sick dog’s shit. Eat something.”

  Her word choice brought a grimace to my lips. “After you.”

  A chuckle. “Here.” She deposited a sack next to my seat; it opened on a thin container, steaming with what looked and smelled like pork tossed in garlic and oil, some green onions, maybe a bit of offal.

  There was that tummy rumble again, and this was actual food, not some party-going rush of body fluid. “Did Umber tell you to look after me?”

  Her expression became amused but sad, and she folded her brawny arms across her chest. “Right. He’s nurturing that way.”

  I raised the cup, slid the container under my nose. “Point, match. Thanks. I was actually kind of famished.”

  “No telling.” A shake of her head, quiver of wings. “I’d say it was good to see you here amongst the living, Ari. But. You know. It’s not. Such as it is.”

  I nodded. That groove had been well worn recently; no need for her to explain. “Thanks. Again.”

  “Don’t thank me.” Tamueji ducked her head, and stepped back into a thermal wind, billowing up in flight.

  It was a little sad to see her go. I wouldn’t have minded the bit of company. But who really knew what kind of company would be satisfying in return to the Watcher of Shadows.

  I forced myself to eat. Objectively, it tasted good—it had to. Oily, rich, meaty, salty. But it felt like swallowing patches of greasy human skin. The torn flesh of that boy. Ugh. I paused until the image passed and ate some more.

  And wrestled with the alarm burning in my veins. It had pounded out all the silver by now. Something was wrong. I just didn’t know if it was inside me, outside me, or both.

  Hei. Was he...alive? Living-again? He smelled, looked, and felt mortal and human. And he also invaded my thoughts, had cracked open a chasm in me after two meetings of mere minutes each. An introduction, a laugh, a kiss. He seemed to stand out from the tide of faces, a shape that remained still in the mercury. I was thinking about him.

  I think I like you already.

  Maybe he was some kind of professional stalker Kadzuhikhan had trained. A new sexual oddity—a prey that hunted you. Maybe he’d been designed to peel off my skin, destroy the few barriers I’d been able to build between myself and the city. Maybe he was a witch, trying to bottle the contents of my heart for some arcane purpose.

  Maybe I kind of wanted to fuck him. Bend him over the windowsill in my room and not stop until I’d drawn out the deepest squeal of pleasure he had in him. Feel that boiling energy of his mouth, let his desire eclipse my numbness.

  I chewed on a disgusted groan. No. I was tired of looking to Serenity to make me feel again. It never seemed to work.

  What I needed was a way out of Serenity—a real way out. To untangle its overgrowth from inside of me, reclaim something of what a life could be.

  I went to find Kadzuhikhan.

  The “orgy” part of the revelry was reaching its blossom, it seemed. In the corners of the twilight-studded bars, out under the awnings, on the streetsides, everywhere was dotted with groups fucking. It had once been a shockingly gratifying sight. All those people smearing each other with pleasure.

  A pair of women pawed at each other, removing clothing while a somber-looking bear-soul ran her fingers tenderly through their hair. A cluster of nubile young men rolled on a padding of spared garments, lost in each other, stretches of gorgeous flesh on display. The wolf-soul from earlier was making her boy, the one I’d saved, beg while she swatted his round backside, and his eagerness for her command all but fumed off him. A small crowd of onlookers had joined to tease him, add to his obvious glee, praise his mistress’s firm hand.

  It had once looked like a feast of reality, evidence that I could exist, that there were people whose insides flushed with the same urges mine did. I’d felt surrounded and connected and proven real, once. But now I knew the different kinds of numbness they’d all go back to. That nights like these were the only stripes of reality that we were allowed to have here, stretching between planes of gray.

  Besides. Many of these partners were sex workers doing their jobs, and this bazaar of sexual wonder may be merely the end of a long shift for them. A part of me deeply resonated with that. Stimulation was indistinguishable from fatigue after a while.

  Kadzuhikhan’s scent came to me through the chaos—proof, probably, that I was fully sobered up. In an open hall shuddering with music, beer and spirits were passed around on trays. It was full of dancers, their shapes blending with multicolored strobes. I wasn’t even sure why I’d sought him out. Maybe simple math: he was the only person I knew enough to bother. And I couldn’t stand another night staring down my loneliness.

  His back was straight, dark, against the colors. I saw him leaning into someone under his arm as I approached. Talking to what was probably his latest claim. He didn’t seem to notice me coming near.

  When I was close enough, something odd struck me. More familiar smells. This picture was off, like something I was about to recognize as a dream.

  Hei was standing against the wall, grinning up at Kadzuhikhan.

  The sight all but knocked the wind out of me. I slid back a half step, barely aware of the motion. I was overcome by a swallowing need to not be seen.

  What the fuck had I been doing? I pushed my back to the wall, let the furl of my wings angle to shield the sides of my face. The crowd dutifully shifted to cover where I’d stood.

  I’d already been growing fascinated with Hei. Slowly spooling out my favorite possibilities of him, this strange boy with his exceptional calm. Imagining him coming for my heart. Just assumed he wanted me. As if he had kissed my mouth and not my cheek.

  It’d felt like that. The realization was like a bruise.

  The real explanation for his appearances, for his manner—the logical explanation—was far simpler. Thrill-seeker, remember? He was here for a good time, like the rest. Flirting with strange men, letting Kadzuhikhan manhandle him, gave him that thrill. And I’d all but expected him to...what? Follow me home? Ask me to marry him?

  The thick animal chaos around me became a wall of hard silence. The city was too big. I needed to go home. I needed...something.

  I dragged myself up to move. It felt like my
wings had turned into lead.

  But something disturbed the smooth rhythm of the revelers. A shout. It seized my attention in spite of me.

  Hei’s voice clarified out of the sound. “I said off.”

  My breath caught. What?

  Kadzuhikhan’s laughter was chemical, something that could chip paint. “You did. And I planned to get you off. So stop writhing and—”

  The notes of a struggle rose, then were aborted with a thump. I pushed forward, trying to see them again through the bodies.

  Hei’s arms were poised over his head, clutched in Kadzuhikhan’s grip where it’d struck the wall. Kadzuhikhan’s other hand was ghosting over Hei’s chin, taking hold of his jaw. Hei’s face shone with rage. His leg vaulted up to shove Kadzuhikhan back, but the cat-soul was too nimble. He caught the limb in his free arm, chuckling softly. “Mm. You did not look like a piece that’d have much fight in him. I’m not unhappy to see that this first impression was wrong.”

  Hei surged forward against his grip, only to be slammed back. The way the impact winded him was visible.

  And no one but me seemed to notice. To respond at all as a moon-soul prepared to abuse a young mortal like his will meant nothing.

  Observations flashed to the surface of my mind. I’d noticed, but not understood. Hei’s arms were covered. His collar was high. Not a hint of skin showed anywhere but his face and hands.

  No beaded chain hung around his neck. He wasn’t a blood-donor. He hadn’t been drinking. He showed no signs of participating in the group play. He hadn’t even done more than kiss my cheek.

  Good time my ass. This was no mutual mind game with Kadzuhikhan. He was in danger.

  I moved without thought. I spread my wings at my sides, and the layers of dancers separating me from Hei scattered. In seconds, I’d pushed through. Before Kadzuhikhan had even looked up, I caught his forearm.

  Catlike eyes blinked at me, as if I’d materialized out of vapor. “Ari? Fuck. Your timing is terrible. Just wait for—”