by SGD Singh
Lexi’s voice was calm and terrifying. “So you want us to just leave them? Innocent civilians?”
The silence stretched beyond the darkness, filling Jax’s insides with icy dread.
Dolph said something, and Ylava nodded. “Most of them are barely alive. The human body can only withstand so many months before the mind shuts down permanently.”
Ursala stepped forward, towering in a very bear-like way in the ultraviolet light. “Is that supposed to make us feel better? We’re not abandoning innocent civilians. We’re abandoning tortured senseless innocent civilians. To a fate worse than death.” He laughed with no humor. “Sure. No problem.”
“What do you want me to say?” Ylva grimaced. “That I like this? That I’m proud this realm thrives on blood and death, that everything from electricity, to water, to building material are only possible because of Blood Lettuce? I’m choking on the same foul air that you are. But we will die down here if we try to save all the Feeders.”
“Ylva,” said Uma, and Jax could see that even she was wavering, her horror at the sight before them pushing against her sense of mission. “We are The Infernal Guard. You can’t seriously expect—”
“They will just bring more, Uma!” Ylva was losing patience, and Jax sensed the others shifting uneasily around her. “Don’t you see? It’s impossible for even The Infernal Guard to protect all seven billion Satya civilian lives. And those who run the Goblin-Witch Alliance? They know it.”
Jax said, “Is the processing tower flammable?”
Everyone turned to her, Ylva’s purple light aimed directly into her eyes, reflecting on eight pairs of glasses. She stepped forward.
“The Feeders are all attached to this tower somehow, right?” Jax focused on Ylva and Dolph, ignoring the stares of her security-detail. “If we destroy it, then we destroy the crop. Send a message to this Alliance not to use humans.” She shrugged. “And if we can’t save them, we put the Feeders out of their misery.”
“Holy fuck, Jax,” Ursala muttered. “Have you ever tried to imagine what it’s like to be burned alive?”
Chakori and Uma exchanged a glance, and Jax felt Kelakha’s hand tighten around hers. She hadn’t realized she was still holding it.
“I got burned by a hot coal once,” said Aquila behind her. “It was a little coal, more of a spark, really. But it hurt. A lot.”
But Lexi smiled in understanding. “No, Jax is right. I would rather be burned to death than feed their crop until I die.”
Ariella nodded in agreement.
Ylva looked thoughtful. “The plant’s processed fats and oils are highly flammable,” she said. “But an explosion of that size could kill all of us. We’d have seconds to evacuate.”
Dolph said something to her, and Ylva added, “Plus, Satya realm fire won’t work here. You can’t use our flares or ammunition. We’d need to create fire, and that’s not easy to do. “
Jax ignored the doubt. She was looking up, seeing nothing but pitch black, thinking of Asha and the Seer. “Is there a danger of bringing down the entire castle?”
“No,” Ylva said without hesitation. “It would take more than one sky scraper sized structure exploding to penetrate the solid rock between here and the palace.” She grinned sharp teeth. “It’ll probably cause a fire in the kitchens, though.”
Jax turned to Dinesh. “How much time will it take you to transport us all?”
The Upperworlder materialized to her right. “Traveling with this many people? Five seconds, give or take.”
Jax nodded and turned to Lexi. “Just bring me one Urnayu. I’ll get you fire.”
Chapter 41
Asha closed the enormous doors behind them, using the power from the guards to fuse the glass together so no one could follow them. She turned back to Sid, who was sniffing the cold air, looking confused. “This place is deserted, Dream Eyes.”
Nodding once at the Vampire, Asha ran along an elaborately lit hallway of shining stone, Sid keeping pace close behind her.
Holding the Seer’s rosary, Asha came to a stop at a place where the hallway split and closed her eyes, easily ghosting its owner, and soon found her conscious self at least by his side.
A figure, a boy she knew instinctively not to focus on too closely if she wanted to stay detached, lay unconscious against a gaudy bed of carved stone and gold surrounded by silk cushions.
Ranya has kept him in her own room.
The “ghost Asha” turned from the bed and jogged through the open door, passing through a large sitting room full of sunken couches and plush Oriental rugs, and moving along a hallway of white marble and embroidered tapestries. She made her way down a spiraling staircase to the hallway, where she saw herself standing with Sid and rejoined her body.
She opened her eyes. “This way.”
“That was weird. You were there, but not there. And you call Vampires scary.”
Asha smiled. “I’ve never thought you guys were very scary.”
“You wouldn’t, would you?”
As they entered the white marble hallway, Sid hissed something in his own language. “Seems the import business is flourishing,” he told Asha.
“I noticed.” Somehow the huge slabs of Satya stone, so out of place in the dark realm, were even more shocking to Asha than a river of holy water. What had Ranya done to get them here? Asha thought of the young Witches with white hair, and Asha realized how dedicated they were to their mistress, creating portals again and again for whatever she desired.
Asha glanced at Sid. “You forget to talk like a seventies pimp when you’re upset. What is it about lavish indulgence that bothers you more than torture for sport?”
“I knew a pimp back in the day.” He smiled, looking as if he should be on the cover of a teen heartthrob magazine. “A totally nurkin’ dude.”
“Don’t change the subject, Bloodsucker.” Asha halted and touched Sid’s icy arm. “You’ve been forgetting your stupid slang since you found us tonight. What changed?”
Asha watched the Vampire’s beautiful face fill with sadness as he studied the floor. He looked almost human if you ignored the fact that his chest didn’t rise and fall, and his eyes didn’t fill with tears.
“One of my sisters recently returned from Satya.” He met her gaze. “She was in the old city last night.”
“Your… oh God, Sid. I’m so sorry.” Asha put a hand on his shoulder, forgetting for an instant that she couldn’t heal him. He was already dead. “So that means…”
“Manananggal,” Sid whispered through gritted teeth. “Sport for the Emperor and his entourage. A game for The Hunter of The Warped.”
“So that’s why you’re willing to give more than directions.” She waved a hand around. “Revenge.”
The Vampire met Asha’s eyes, his mask dropped, and she almost flinched. Gone was the handsome, laid-back hippie, the surfer-dude, the punk-rock idol. Here was a dangerous predator of her realm’s worst nightmares. Something entirely not human.
Maybe she should be afraid of Vampires, after all.
“Why did he do it?” There was more to the story, Asha knew. “He destroyed thousands—millions—of lives, just for the sport of hunting a few Manananggal?”
Sid was silent for a long minute before his legs seemed to collapse beneath him. He slid down the wall, his hands in his hair as he looked at the ceiling. Asha crouched in front of him.
“Our Emperor doesn’t care about life.” Sid met her eyes, the picture of homicidal.
Asha waited silently for him to continue.
“I didn’t know any of this when I met you yesterday.” He shook his head. “The rulers of this realm have been cruel as long as anyone can remember, the lives of the masses meaning less than nothing to them, so I thought the attack on the city was just their usual reaction to boredom, an attempt to spice up the party or some such shit.” His eyes were homicidal. “Then I went home to convince my family not to go to the banquet, that it would be too dangerous, and I found my own mother
half-dead with grief.”
The Vampire squeezed his eyes shut in such a human gesture.
“I’d had my head so far up my ass that I hadn’t noticed what was going on…” Sid ran a perfect hand through his perfect hair. “My sister’s human form was of unsurpassed beauty. Everyone warned her never to come back here. Everyone knows that any female, or occasionally male, who finds a human of rare beauty runs the risk of catching the Emperor’s attention.”
Asha looked at Sid in the light of the lamps, thinking if his looks didn’t qualify, his sister must have been breathtaking.
“But when Tanikka heard about our great-grandfather’s illness, she came back anyway. My parents thought they could keep her hidden from the palace spies, but apparently they were wrong. The Emperor found out about her, and wanted her for his harem. When the request—the order—arrived, Tanikka refused on the grounds that her mate was waiting for her back in Satya. My father stood by her… none of us thought the Emperor would risk enraging the entire Stragoii community by murdering a member of the royal family. But he killed not only Tanikka, but three of my cousins, after spies told him they were in the city last night.”
Sid shook his head. “This Witch, like you said yesterday, she is different. She’s made Shunyata worse, reckless. Word throughout the upperclass is he’s gone insane, thinks he’s destined to rule the entire realm, and realms beyond.”
Sounds like he and Ranya make a perfect couple.
Sid’s grip on her arm was like icy metal. “He destroyed my family. Promise me you’ll give me a chance to kill him, Asha.” His voice was like a whispering tiger. “I don’t care if I die trying. Just promise me one chance.”
She had heard about Vampire loyalty since almost her first day of training. The books said that although Vampires were deadly to other creatures, they remained fiercely loyal to their families, forming bonds that had caused more than one bloody war in the past, spanning realms.
Asha looked at Sid and knew the reports weren’t exaggerated. She tried not to think about how many Vampires she had killed in the past ten months.
“Okay,” she said, standing. “I promise.”
Sid rose with lightning grace and Asha hooked her arm in his as they continued along the deserted marble hallway. “If we come across His Royal Moldy Balls of Cowardice, he’s all yours.”
“Thank you.” Sid sniffed again. “But I still don’t understand why this place is empty of life.”
“Don’t worry,” Asha said, pointing to the spiraling staircase. “Our Seer is up there. And Ranya didn’t really leave him unguarded. She just wants me to think she did.”
“What then? It’s a trap?”
Asha grinned. “Of course it’s a trap.”
Chapter 42
Jax thought she was prepared for the sight of a field that was being fed with human lives, but as they walked closer to the Blood Lettuce, she realized just how unprepared she was. Rows upon endless rows of blackish-red plants spread out in regimented lines that ended with a glowing tower at the center. It was as if a purple sun had been thrown by an interstellar god’s hand to land, splattered and rotting, against the dark soil.
The group moved through the crop. The plant’s leaves reminded Jax of rubbery ruffles on a ball gown, the dancers buried upside down in the soil, and she imagined their mouths open in silent screams.
She tried not to notice the veins along the millions of leaves, tried not to think about the blood that flowed in those veins.
Then, as the tower grew closer, she saw them.
Humans.
Layer after layer of humans stretched skyward as far as she could see, like a macabre towering cake. Milky-blue vines twisted around their bodies like overgrown umbilical cords, hugging them to the structure. Jax tilted her head back until she stumbled, and Kelakha caught her. She couldn’t bring herself to feel irritated with herself for how glad she was when he kept a comforting hand on her back.
“Holy mother of God… and they’re alive.” Lexi gaped at the people tangled against the tower, their silhouettes glowing against the purplish light behind them.
Uma waited a few seconds for Lexi to speak, but all thoughts of leadership had clearly left the blonde warrior’s mind. Uma stepped up. “Okay, people. Let’s get these civilians out of here, the sisters first, the more recently, uh, plugged-in immediately after. Lexi and Ariella, stick with Ylva and Dolph and cover them while they work. Chakori and I will cover the perimeter. Ylva? What else do we need to know?”
Aquila and Ursala stepped forward in unison. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Ursala asked his mother.
Uma shrugged. “You’re with Jax, like Asha said. We’ll handle the Lizards. Make sure Jax gets what she needs before the Urnayu flood the area.”
“The nuns are there.” Ylva pointed to the lower right corner. “The plant won’t be manned, especially on a banquet night. The Lizards stay underground until harvest, or until they’re alerted to a disruption, so watch the rows directly opposite our captives. Dinesh.” She turned to the Upperworlder, whose skin shone in the strange purple light as he made himself visible. “Stay here, away from the Lizards, with Jax, and we’ll bring the survivors to you. Jax. You have sixty seconds once the alarms go off. After that, we have to go.”
Ursala kissed Ariella, saying something in Punjabi, and the group split up. Lexi was focused again, leaping lightly over rows of the foul plant, staying close behind the Werewolves as she disappeared out of sight.
Jax crept toward the tower and studied the numerous tubes and gears along the tower’s base, refusing to distract her mind by meeting the glazed stares of those held against the glowing liquid.
“You really think you can blow this thing up?” Ursala asked, behind her. “Life on the streets taught you explosives?”
“If anyone can do it, she can,” said Kelakha. “It’s like magic the way Jax talks to machines.”
“It’s not magic,” said Jax. “It’s logic. The Urnayu carry explosives within them.” She stooped to lift some tubes, following them along the space between two rows of Blood Lettuce until they disappeared into the black earth, and then went back again to the glowing liquid. “Once you see how a thing works, it’s simple.”
“It’s the seeing how things work part I don’t get,” Ursala said, frowning at the tangle of wires. “Simple, my ass.”
Aquila stood next to her, looking up, and without thinking, Jax followed his gaze. One of the human’s feet were twitching, their skin sickly pale against the reddish glow, their ribs standing out like an animal’s rotting carcass. Jax felt her last meal threatening to come back up.
This is so wrong. How could I have asked them to even consider destroying all these human beings?
Aquila’s voice was a hoarse whisper as he voiced her thoughts.
“I’m not sure killing all of these people should be classified as simple.”
Chapter 43
Passing through the sunken living room of silk cushions and velvet drapes, Asha reached the carved metal door of Ranya’s bedroom with Sid close behind her.
Death, her mind stated indifferently. Sid dies if he goes with you.
The future shuddered, then slipped back into focus. Asha tried to think of a way to protect the Vampire without offending him, but her Seer’s Talent was finished helping.
Asha tried to sound stern, commanding. “When I go through this door, you will stay and hide here.”
“What?”
Asha ignored him.
“I’m beginning to side with your deliciously round friend. Why did you bring any of us with you?”
“Do you want to leave?” Asha nodded back toward the hallway.
Sid just crossed his arms and regarded her with a fierce glare.
“You want a shot at this evil oppressor dude, right?” Asha waved at the tall windows overlooking an ornate balcony, the long drapes of brocade velvet. “He’s not in there. Just hide until everything is copacetic, and you’ll have your chance.”
>
“Hide.” The Vampire sounded as if the word made him physically ill.
Asha sighed. “Our Seer is alone in there. He’s… important. Not just to The Guard, but to the future of all realms. Ranya is expecting me to find him. She’s waiting for me to find him. But if she sees you, she will kill you. Just for the pleasure of it, understand?”
Sid looked as if she’d punched him in the stomach. “A single Witch.”
Asha raised a hand. “Don’t even start with that shit. This Witch is more powerful than you can even imagine. She will kill you, make no mistake. And I don’t want that. I want you get a chance to die heroically, saving your kingdom from His Royal Parasitic Highness of Moldage.”
“So, I just hide.”
“Precisely.”
Sid looked at Asha as if he didn’t understand English. She jerked her chin at the curtains. They were running out of time. He made a noise she was certain was a curse more foul than anything her realm had to offer, and then the Vampire moved. One second he stood in front of her and the next he was gone, hidden out of sight.
Asha pushed open the carved metal doors of Ranya’s bedroom before he had a chance to change his mind.
It was a circular room with no windows. The metal walls, matching the doors, were covered in carved geometrical designs that looked Persian. The gaudiest bed Asha had ever seen, the size of two king-size mattresses, dominated the space, with four black and gold carved posts supporting a canopy of jeweled brocade and velvet, and a mountain of cushions were piled at one end.