Erelah was unprepared for what came next.
A wave of pricking heat pounded up her arm and into her spine. Her head sagged. She tasted copper as she bit her tongue. The images were a collage of torture and rage. It came in a sudden violent wave:
Bleeding flesh, naked twisting anguished bodies, keening mixed with a woman’s shrieks. There were dozens of them: women and men. Each a disappointment for Tristic and ending up staring at Maynard’s bloody smile.
“Tristic gives us to you… when she’s done. The ones before me. The ones that didn’t work out,” Erelah rasped, not aware she had even spoken.
The smug sneer on Maynard’s face evaporated. He tried to pull back but her hand was frozen in place around his wrist.
She wanted to force him away. Something within her pushed out at him, like fingers digging and parting the slick loaves of his brain. More images jumbled behind her eyes, with them a foreign memory of Tristic’s water jasmine and rot voice:
Veradin shall be the new host.
“Get her off me.” Maynard barked.
“Host?”
Erelah was distantly aware of the sounds of panicked techs rushing to the room.
Strong hands wrenched Maynard free. He stared, wide-eyed, as he massaged his wrist. Dark hair slipped into his eyes across his pale forehead. His bravado was gone. There was something else there: fear.
She liked it. He knew. He had realized what just happened and he was afraid.
“You’re just as big a monster,” Erelah breathed. “Maybe worse.”
“Quiet.”
Impossible to stop, the words now poured from her in a frantic torrent: “Your mother knew what you were, even before you did. That was why your father sent you off as a conscript. They found you with that poor servant girl and saw the bloody work you had done—”
Maynard shoved her. Her head collided with the wall.
Around her, she was dimly aware of a panicked scramble among the techs in the suite. She soon felt the injector at her bicep. A soggy darkness drowned out the sterile world and Erelah dreamed of running across winter fields on Argos, of a little girl in a blue fire-silk dress being chased by a rat-faced monster with great bloody teeth.
---
The stars blurred, framed by the tiny portal in Erelah’s cell. Hastily she wiped the tears away.
She felt them around her as she always did when she was alone like this: the Human women who had come before and were as unlucky as she to fall into Tristic’s grasp. It was worse now, knowing what had truly become of them.
Erelah knew it was her imagination. Old Sissa had told her that the Fates would not suffer ghosts; every child knows that. Nyxa may end a soul’s fleshy torment, but her sister, Natus, collects your eternal spark and returns it to the night skies where you rejoin those who have gone before you.
Ghosts or not, Erelah felt their echo. How many had survived this long after suffering Tristic’s tortures? They urged her in a chorus only she could hear, like one of the morality plays performed at the temple on Argos during the festivals of Miri. The spirits of the dead warriors would goad the wounded hero to victory.
Avenge us, they called.
I am weak, Erelah told them. I cannot be your champion.
Tristic would be back soon. She had been called away by the Council of First. But no doubt Maynard had informed her of Erelah’s little trick in the lab today. It had surprised them both. Erelah ventured it was an aberration, something new. Tristic would be anxious to return.
After all, Veradin shall be our new host.
Erelah had hours since waking in her tiny room to guess what that word meant: host. All of the conclusions she reached were dire, darker than the last. The images from her connection with Maynard had faded, but she realized he had watched many tragedies like hers. Never before had it been with such urgency. None of the others had survived the treatments to this point. Her body was being changed somehow, rewritten.
Defensor Tristic was dying. It was written in the ragged wet quality of her breathing and the way she sometimes grimaced in pain as she moved. There was the nearly constant presence of a medical attendant in her wake. Tristic was the one running out of time.
Was I to be host to her? Would she take my body like an ocean creature takes a new shell? Or something worse still?
Host.
Erelah knew it meant an end for her.
It came to her in a flash of clarity, so rare these days. The whole of Tristic’s plan. The Defensor was playing a long game, practically dynastic in its design.
By somehow becoming Erelah Veradin, the Last Daughter of a noble house—no matter how sullied a past—the half-breed Tristic would no longer be an outsider, an abomination. First would be quick to forgive a flawed Kindred past when offered something as valuable as the Jocosta and what it represented. Everything would open before her. And in an unhappy footnote, her unlikely mentor, the twisted abomination, Defensor Tristic, would have succumbed to her long illness, leaving Erelah Veradin appointed to control Ravstar. And from there, inside her, Tristic would grow, like a cancer.
13
Compared to the quiet of the lab, the crew levels were a jarring chaos of light and noise. Erelah stumbled through the crowded corridors, gracelessly led, and sometimes carried, by Maynard’s two men. There were no shackles. Nothing to suggest she was really a prisoner. Nonetheless she felt them staring: the techs, a few sub-officers. Their curiosity was plain, and with it a vague type of envious awe. As if to be a party to Tristic and her secrets imbued Erelah with some special quality. If only they knew. She sneered at their faces, her head bobbling on her neck.
Maynard scowled. But he was fearful still. No more posturing.
“You disappoint me, my love.” He said. “I’ll show you no more favor.”
“For that I thank Miri,” she slurred in High Eugenes. Her head buzzed with the pharms, but she held onto that one bright thread of clarity that had come to her in the anguished quiet of her cell. Somehow it would be her salvation. Somehow she had to use it. But how?
They entered Tristic’s now familiar chamber with its ceiling that disappeared into the dimness high above. Maynard receded to the shadows that hugged the wall, where she knew he would watch with sick fascination.
“You have been keeping secrets from me, Lady Erelah,” Tristic said, climbing down from her throne-like chair. The evil queen from a child’s tale holding court in her dark lair, menacing and all powerful. She liked to use Erelah’s title, throw it like a barb, a reminder of who she once was. It was a reminder of the warm and safe, a realm she could never regain.
Erelah tucked her chin against her chest and shifted her gaze to settle onto a black corner. She listed on her feet. Inwardly, she felt herself withdraw, disengage. The room became distant.
A stinging slap brought her back into the present. She caught the blur of Tristic’s hand moving away and tasted blood between her teeth.
“You exist because I wish it, foolish child. I could have reported you a hundred times over by now. I have shown you mercy. To your brother as well.”
“Mercy. What do you know about mercy?” Erelah croaked. “You cannot touch Jonvenlish. I understand that now. Even you have limits. I know what I… saw.”
“Is that so?” Tristic canted her head. Those deep brown eyes moved from her to peer at Maynard.
Somewhere in the shadows was a nervous twitch of fabric. Maynard cleared his throat. “Defensor, allow me to explain—”
“You are dismissed, Lieutenant.” As she spoke, Tristic continued to watch Erelah. “You and I shall speak later. Bear no doubt on that.”
There was the curt echo of Maynard’s brisk footfalls in retreat.
Then Erelah was alone with her.
The beast drew closer, studying. The now too familiar stench of water jasmine and decay assaulted Erelah’s nostrils. With a gloved hand she prodded Erelah’s chin, pulling her gaze up to meet her own. When she tried to turn away, the fingers dug in, stopping her.
What would happen, I wonder, if I touched that scaly white skin? What half-lit horrors will I glimpse?
Erelah shivered.
“Physical contact with a subject triggered the Sight in you. Remarkable. Better than I had hoped,” Tristic congratulated herself. “I wonder if emotional distress or pain are triggers…”
When their gazes met, she felt an impossible wave of heat emanate from Tristic. It was the sensation of passing a hot stove in a cold room. With it came the familiar pricking sensation that had enveloped her in the medsuite with Maynard, but far stronger. It pressed against her temples and pounded down her neck. An oily, alien presence invaded her thoughts. She wanted to twist away, but her body was riveted to the spot. Tristic was doing this somehow.
“What did you see, child, when you touched the lieutenant? You know of his sordid past. But what else?” she snarled. “Tell me.”
Although she intended to say nothing, Erelah heard herself speak in gasps: “Images and feelings. I became Maynard for a moment. I know what he knows. About you. Your plans.”
“Pray… continue.” Dark amusement in her gaze.
Another wave of pressure churned inside her skull. Her own body betrayed her once more. She listened to her voice like that of a stranger. “They do not know what you do here. The Council of First. They don’t know what you do in Ravstar, don’t want to know. Once in a while you crawl into the light and offer them a new weapon to prove your usefulness. They praise you like a pet. You have learned secret things about them for leverage. But there is a limit to your reach. It has gotten you this far, but you want more.”
“Well done.” Tristic granted her a black smile, staggered slightly. Then seemed to collect herself.
Erelah gasped. The pressure in her skull dissolved. She found she could move once more.
“This entire time you thought you were protecting your brother,” Tristic said. “Yet now you understand. Don’t you? It was a means to control you. To disclose your secret nature as Human to First would mean your Kindred would be declared renegade. And you would become useless to me.”
“Useless as what?” she sobbed.
“Oh. Come now. Do not pretend.”
She knew the answer: Host.
“No.”
Tristic grinned. “You are the vessel into which I shall be reborn, Veradin. I shall slip this ruined body and assume yours. And in turn your body shall bear new life. The origin of a new dynasty.”
Her finger caressed the line of Erelah’s cheek. “At last, you are ready.”
---
The two guards ushered her through a twisting maze of corridors that grew quieter and less populated. Even the rumble of the Questic’s engines seemed softer underfoot. Erelah found herself in a room that looked nothing like a medsuite. The buzz of the pharms in her system was ebbing. Now details were easier to make out as she peered about the space. The lighting was soft, not clinical. The walls were adorned with costly relics and artifacts of long-conquered worlds. This, she realized, was the dark queen’s den. This space belonged to Tristic. She froze, shoulders drawing up to her ears. As the haze of the drugs abated, an icy panic seeped into her.
“Let’s make you comfortable,” one of the guards sneered, his arm on her elbow.
This one’s name was Caveo. Erelah recognized him from the scar-pocked skin along his jaw. He often accompanied Maynard in his self-important strutting though the ship.
Caveo grabbed her restraints and secured them to the bulkhead a few feet above the floor. The odd angle forced her to kneel to alleviate the pressure in her wrists and arms.
“What a shame….” Caveo tsked down at her. He licked his lips. “Sweet looking little thing. All gone to waste.”
“That grotesque half-Sceeloid bitch,” his partner added. She had never bothered to learn his name. “Not one to share, is she?”
“Not that I’d want what’s left.”
They laughed.
Erelah kept her eyes on the floor beneath their boots. A thick rug woven with threads of fire-silk covered the space. She stared mutely at the glint of the reddish threads as she withdrew inside. From there she watched the world in detached silence, although panic gnawed a path up her throat.
“Tell me, pretty.” Caveo yanked brutishly at the tangled mess of her plaited hair. “Do you like that? Is she all Sceeloid where it counts, that bloody ugly witch?”
She did not move, did not speak. Eyes forward, Erelah peered through the genetic misstep of a sub-officer.
The Sight, Tristic called it.
Old Sissa had told stories about the Sight. It was the gift the Fates used to see into the hearts of men and know their worth. It was how the Fates judged right and wrong. And how they knew the thoughts of misbehaved young boys and girls who set out on adventures in the wilderness beyond the manor without permission.
When she was an older student, her tutor had told Erelah the story of Miri, the Fate who had her Sight stolen by Sceelo, the dragon, when he consumed her body. The demon had wanted the Sight for himself to make him a more powerful enemy of men. Brother Elid, her teacher, had explained that the theologians considered the story an ancient allegory for the Sceeloid’s ability to dominate the wills of lesser species, something later called sight-jacking.
Lesser species.
Her mind creaked through scenarios like a neglected machine, rusted from disuse. If there was anything that made a hierarchy of species believable, it was the existence of men like Caveo or Maynard. The grotesqueries she had seen in the squalid folds of Maynard’s diseased brain made her shrink from the idea of using this Sight.
Could I control another, like Tristic? Like a Sceeloid? Could I sight-jack as well?
And just maybe… maybe.
Caveo reached down, his hand moving to touch her face. Erelah steeled herself.
“All secure, Sergeant?” Maynard’s needling voice interrupted.
The two men went rigid with attention.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then why do you remain? Leave!”
The guards scrambled from the compartment.
Maynard moved closer. He bent at the waist, hands on his knees as he peered down at her. How many times had this been a dark fantasy for him? And with how many unlucky others had he made it a reality?
“I used to consider your naïveté charming, can you imagine that? The peasant Kindred heiress come to the high polish of Ravstar’s domain.” Maynard gave a curt laugh.
“What’s going to happen?” She swallowed against a tongue like paper.
He affected a lovelorn sigh. “Dearest. I come to say my farewell. And to grant a parting gift to you. Well… two actually.”
“Going somewhere?
“You are. Permanently.” He reached out to touch her, then withdrew. “You will be ready to receive Tristic. And Erelah Veradin… well, the part that’s you at least, shall cease to be. This lovely face, this beautiful shell will be filled with such great purpose.”
Maynard knelt. “A shame that matters must now involve your brother. But that has always been the plan. He is no longer useful in assuring your compliance.”
Fear spiked her heart. “Jon has done nothing. Leave him alone.”
“You are stupid, indeed, little peasant.” He scoffed. “After all, he is the last living being that knows you, the former you and your inconvenient secret. An untidy loose end.”
“You’re lying.”
He leaned closer, gloating. The parody of a lover moving in to steal a kiss. “I sent the warrant myself, Veradin.”
“Bastard,” she hissed.
“Your outlook will be far different when we meet again, Lady Erelah.”
He fished an object from the inner pocket of his jacket. The light caught the glint of the glass cylinder. It was a jector.
“And now the second gift that I promised, my love.” He looked down at the device, no doubt relishing the terror it evoked in her. “This is an incredible moment. I wish that you could fully appreciate
it as I do.”
“No more drugs. No more.” She squirmed back, straining as far as the restraints would allow.
“You’ll like this one,” he shushed. “Tristic need not know. It is my gift for you. It will make you not care.”
Maynard tilted the jector. The amber colored contents shifted slowly inside the glass vial. “This will allow—”
Now. Please work. Even if I cannot touch him. Please work for me.
She dug into that icy little thought farm that Tristic was growing in her head, picturing its twisting black sinews writhing in the delicate white flesh beneath her skull. The remembered odd heat and pressure filled her head. And she pushed out at Maynard, full force.
The expression on the man’s face blossomed into wide-eyed panic. He swallowed several times, but seemed unable to move away or break her stare. Then he wheezed out one word: “How?”
Erelah pushed harder. Tiny capillaries throbbed in her vision, keeping time with her pulse. The weight of it was exhausting as she forced the command into his head.
“Let me go.”
A small trickle of blood slipped out of Maynard’s nostril and onto his lip. He coughed, sputtering flecks of blood. Then slowly, his hands moved to the metal shackles that bound her wrists. They tumbled to the carpet with a muted clink.
Once freed, Erelah collapsed back to her haunches, but kept her full attention on Maynard. He seemed bolted in place, eyes forward as he uttered a string of choking nonsense words. His hands contracted into claws. Tendons stood out in his neck.
She rose, watching him. His dark little eyes rolled around in their sockets like trapped creatures. A new pain started in the back of her head. He was fighting back. Her hold on him was lagging.
Inhaling sharply, Erelah summoned her strength for one final push. She visualized crushing his skull beneath two massive red hands, pulverizing bone and brain.
Maynard uttered an anguished cry. With a satisfying thud, he collapsed to the gaudy carpet face first. Erelah felt a sharp tug. The thing in her head crawled back into its black den. Pain flooded into the void it left. It was nearly enough to drown out rational thought. She doubled over, clasping her head.
Allies and Enemies: Fallen Page 11