Prince in the Tower

by Stephan Morse

“So?” I asked.

  “It is one thing to fight for respect, another to consider murder from annoyance. My father would be ashamed if he knew.”

  Leo’s reproach shut me up. I had been acting differently. It was more than not wanting to be a coward. My pulse was running fast. Eyesight had dimmed just slightly as the conversation went on. Parts of my mind sifted through memories searching for reason for the sudden change in perception.

  Sleep came slowly that night.

  5

  You Smell

  Once unconscious my mind slipped into the past, picking up where it left off from my prior landing. Seeing history replay itself both captivated my senses and came with a strange detachment. The upside was that I knew names for all the objects that had so mystified my younger self.

  Child me woke up alone, in an empty field of metal with beaten down grass. Trees and broken piles of dirt littered the landscape. Long smooth pipes stacked in hollow pyramids. Everything was new, these objects, the way they were put together. The large noisy boxes that came through on iron wheels.

  I learned later it was a train yard. The boxcars were parked on unused tracks. Most of this place had been shut down in recent years, since with trucks and highways and bypasses it’d become ineffective to run the rails for most businesses.

  Days passed while I searched the area, studying, and learning.

  There were buildings. People marched on their way between places unknown. Some were happy, some sad, many indifferent. I watched them go into a building with a clown’s face on the side. They came out with bags of food that smelled heavenly.

  But I was young, smaller than all these people, and alone. I kept watching, looking for scraps. People would eat half a hamburger and throw the rest out. Three days of hunger overrode caution.

  On the fourth day I stole a family’s discarded leftovers. Their child had barely eaten half the meal before they huffed off with grumpy faces. That moment of sheer fright, narrow minded focus on food, and poor coherency was a low point in my life.

  Hunger pushed me past caring. The half nibbled food barely slowed me down. Filth in the garbage paled in comparison to my current sleeping arrangements. Nothing mattered aside from reducing the gnawing inside my belly.

  This pattern went on for a few days before large men in blue tried to capture me. They had shiny badges on their chest pieces, a star covered by a bird I didn’t know. Their words were cautious but kind. Their postures were ready and wary.

  I ran from them, to the first place I’d landed, and hid in the piping. Later that night it started to rain, but I was too scared to go back to the place with food. The men with sticks in their belts made me afraid and the disapproving looks as I dug into discarded wrappings bothered me.

  They weren’t like me.

  I let out some heat, stoking the fires inside with fear and desperation. The small increase in temperature helped me stay dry.

  Those funny men in blue, which I later learned were police, stuck around for another day, driving my barely contained hunger to new levels. They even left a completely untouched meal sitting out in the open. My kind was crafty enough to know a hunter when we saw it, and those two were certainly trying to lay a trap.

  A voice crawled across the back of my mind, warning me of the tricks of lesser creatures. The words were indistinct but their mumbled meaning was clear.

  My mind kept trying to pull on a time from before the land of emptiness. Even the sensation of falling had become faint and hard to concentrate on. That portion of the past had grown extremely dreamlike. They were memories that only existed in the imagination of a drunken story teller or a man reliving the past in fresh chunks.

  Days of hunger later and I was huddled in my small refuge. The pyramid of pipes served as a poor shelter from the rain.

  The other person I’d been traveling with was nowhere to be found. She should have been. I choked back tears of frustration but couldn’t control the partial gasps for air. My mind kept trying to find her, like I always could before. The same way I found anyone who mattered to me.

  But there was nothing. Not even a face to summon up.

  “Hey, man.” A boy stood outside the pipes. The same one I’d seen upon landing in this new place. How had he found me again?

  He was clothed in some slick thing that water wasn’t catching on. It covered his entire body and went over his head like a helmet. Up above was another strange bowl shaped object that further reduced the rain.

  I didn’t respond.

  “Don’t you have a home?”

  I glared and curled into myself, arms crossed over knees, body withdrawn. One eye cast toward an escape route on the other side.

  “Your parents must be worried, man,” he said.

  They probably were, but I couldn’t remember them any more than the girl I’d been escorting. My brows furled. I think my parents had told me to run with her and keep her safe from something.

  A sniff escaped.

  “You a run away? My dad says people do that sometimes. But their parents always worry. Even when the kid’s grown up. He says it don’t matter what happened.”

  “Go away,” I whispered.

  “You’re not the boss of me. My dad says I don’t have to let other kids order me around, that I’m different.”

  I remembered shaking. I remembered being so alone, and desperate for food or comfort. I needed to find those left behind in that strange tidal wave of pure existence. My body shook with terror about meeting other people. Men in blue had chased me three times by now. A woman in some funny yellow dress had come out and yelled at me once. Two people buried in dirty browns screamed and threw things the day before.

  Hunger. Failure. Grief. It was too many emotions for a small child and too many problems that couldn’t be worked through by my limited experience. Maybe now, decades later, I could have dealt with them. But in this memory of mine, I’d been too young.

  “You hungry, man?” The boy, light skinned, freckled, and red headed sounded concerned. Nothing in his posture was like the adults. He didn’t ooze guile or lean toward me ready to spring.

  I nodded weakly and barely held back a storm of tears.

  “I’ll go get food. You stay here, okay?”

  What else could I do? I would run if someone else’s footsteps came, but the hope of food would keep me rooted there.

  True to his word, the boy brought back a full meal with extra fries. He sat six feet away, chattering mindlessly while I tore into the poorly dressed meat. For the first time in days I almost felt full.

  That boy, who looked comically baby faced, had been coming to my rescue most of my life. Later he would be a friend, a Hunter, and Western Sector agent. This was the childish version of Daniel Crumfield.

  I woke and groaned as the speakers blared a morning alarm. A day of chores passed while my mind felt like burnt scrambled eggs. Leo and I met after the day’s tasks were completed.

  “Two days until my father’s visit,” Leo said in low tones.

  I grunted. We were back in the yard again for the second time this week. Spike had fought with someone else and been denied privileges for four days. He seemed to be the sort who pushed other people’s buttons a lot.

  Turned out Spike didn’t just prod wolves, he annoyed humans, too. Leo had informed me of this and many other things during his last week of scouting. It was strange receiving a report from the field, as though I was a commanding officer he had to check in with.

  “I can survive two days.”

  “Unless you piss more people off.” Leo seemed unsure for a moment, looking around at the figures nearby.

  People here were amazingly nosey and still maintained distance. Even during chores there was this intangible bubble where most people weren’t willing to get into fights. The three strike system with almost certain death on the other side of the island had an impact.

  “Group seven does swings,”—he kept right on going—“but we haven’t seen many vampires yet. I guess most
of them hit their three strikes quickly and go to the other side.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, strange right? The few people who talk down at the presses say fangers prefer to live feral on the other side. Not too many burnouts either, most of them dare an escape or don’t survive the transfer.”

  “So we’re stuck with mostly humans and wolves.” I repeated Leo’s unnecessary information.

  None of the species in here mattered to me. The only one that might have made a difference was an elf, but they rarely broke the law. They were too busy dealing with their own insane addictions and customs while working hard to keep things covered up.

  “The humans are split like the wolves. Most here just try to keep their heads down and avoid getting a strike. Others band together and risk getting a strike to push others over.”

  “Like Spike’s group.”

  “Exactly.” Leo rolled one shoulder and circled his foot on the dirt before continuing. “Spike’s faction is one of the bigger ones, they push loner wolves over to the other side and hope they get killed. They really hate wolves.”

  “And what do the packs do?” I asked.

  “Keep to themselves. Most seem to be in here on charges of recklessness, not actual murder. They get therapy sessions and an intense form of rehabilitation.”

  “Any Alphas?” Alphas were like steroid using wolves. Their regeneration, battle drive, and ability to take charge of a pack were all a step up. Part of it was inborn, and in some cases the gift took to certain people.

  “I haven’t figured that out yet,” Leo said.

  Silence stretched on while Leo paced. His feet wove familiar patterns. He was at least getting his practice in where he could. Our four cot cell didn’t have enough room for leg practices.

  “Two days?” I repeated the timeframe while looking up. The sun was obscured by thin, rapidly moving clouds.

  “Two. Even someone with a strike can have visitors who are deemed worthwhile to the inmate’s rehabilitation.” Leo frowned and his movements stuttered for a beat.

  “He told you this?”

  Leo looked hurt, stuttered his footsteps again, then managed to pick back up. “No. My brothers answered the phone and told me.”

  “You mean the twins.” They were older than Leo and adopted, I believed. One day they hadn’t been there, the next they were. I had returned with Ted and Barnie that day. Roy didn’t provide an explanation for his new sons, and I never asked.

  “Cast and Poll, yes,” Leo said.

  I stared across the yard at the other groups. My eyes didn’t stay in any one location very long. My other senses had grown stronger the longer we stayed here. Staying restrained would get tougher as the weeks wore on.

  The growing ease partially resulted from my memories coming back. Less stood between me and the man I had been. That view, the presence, everything I’d been was geared toward living life using my abilities at the drop of a hat. The more in tune I became, the harder hiding would be.

  Evan had told me learning what I was would change things. Muni had said much the same thing. The only issue was figuring out what portions of my life were still missing. The last few nights had been summoning bits of the past that were sorted, analyzed, and shoved into mental closets for later review. I spent my days in muddled exhaustion and tried to reason through whatever batch of shit filtered through my mind the night before.

  “How’s Nathan?” I asked without giving our third roommate a glance. I could feel him standing to the side of Spike’s group, rubbing one arm uncomfortably. There must be bruises which made him flinch as his fingers traced over skin.

  “He’s being beat when no one’s looking.” Leo’s voice held the same disapproving edge his father’s would. It disgusted the teen to look upon a man who wouldn’t stand up for himself.

  “He’s trying to survive,” I said.

  “Poorly.”

  I shrugged. No one was perfect. Hell, I had no room to judge what another man did for survival. I’d run. Not just for Kahina, not just for my family, but for myself. No amount of self-deception could blind me to selfish preservation—it certainly had been the driving factor. Fear of those close to me being hurt in ways I couldn’t protect them from hurt the most.

  What you claim defines you.

  What you claim hurts you.

  The litany rolled through, making my head shake. I swallowed dryly and rubbed an arm much the same way Nathan Simms did. Leo glanced over but said nothing. Our yard break ended and the second work shift came and went with relative peace. At night my mind slipped into the past.

  “Hey, man, you there? I know you are.” Daniel’s sharp tones of youth hit the walls like a nail. “You smell like brimstone.”

  I’d been crawling across one of the building tops doing surveillance. The wet puddles of stagnant water were warmed by a bright sun. At Daniel’s words I leaned over an edge and peered down.

  “What’s brimstone smell like?” I asked.

  “Sulfur and barbecue pits. And cat piss.”

  “Sounds bad,” I said. My own words were a bit deeper but no less biting.

  “That’s what my dad says. He says he fought a wrinkly thing that smelled like that.” Daniel smiled widely.

  The expression scared me. No one I knew smiled in such a way. The vague memory of a large toothy grin flashed into my mind before the same mouth opened to devour a four legged animal in a single bite.

  “Your father hunts?” I asked. While pulling away from the edge.

  “Yeah! It’s what our family does. We hunt monsters.”

  I didn’t want to come down now. My mind had already raced through the words and linked a conclusion.

  “I’m not a monster,” I insisted loudly. According to this boy I smelled like brimstone and cat piss. That meant something bad, right? I’d studied the other people wandering around. None of them were like me. None of them had the fire, none of them changed shape.

  Some had fur. There had been two strange beasts sniffing through the yard one night. I remembered growling at them to chase them away. One had turned into a female and tried to call out to me. They had eventually left after hours of trying to coax me out of the hiding place I’d found.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” I said to the redhead. Daniel had climbed up a nearby set of stairs then approached.

  “What? No, why?” He sounded wounded, almost whiny while approaching.

  The action made me nervous and I glanced behind me.

  “I can go where I want.”

  “No. Stay away.” I scrambled across the roof, down the far side, and off into the abandoned train yard.

  “Man! I wanna be friends!” he yelled.

  My feet kept running. I found the path to my other hiding spot. Upstairs, around a corner and inside an old office down the end of some rattling walkway. Slow prowling had resulted in me locating this hidden nest. It served as somewhere to rest and no one would disturb me.

  Daniel didn’t catch up and I spent the rest of my day in the same way as those prior; exploring and cleaning. Days of scrounging had resulted in many resources. The broom had been more useful than the funny smelling liquids. Its bristles were strange, and a little too big for my hands, too tall for a little child like me.

  Watching people work across the street had finally clued me in on the strange object’s usage. Sweeping the room and walkway clear of dust and cobwebs was a triumph unlike anything else in my life.

  Wooden planks lined one wall. I’d shoved it to the side in order to get metal bars and other remains into here. Most things had gone toward fortifying the room against intruders. Nails pried from unused furniture. A chair dragged up the stairs. Two tarps draped across bolts in the wall formed a tent against leaks in the ceiling.

  All in all, I’d been rather proud.

  And alone.

  I spent my childhood nights tossing and turning from worry. When that failed I stared at the den in search of things to improve. Little things nagged at
my senses. Back then my abilities weren’t as strong. Now I could feel things with ease from across the room just by thinking the room was mine.

  Then, when I was a child, it had taken weeks to form any sort of bond. Even after all that investment and work the place was still nearly lifeless to my tactile feedback. My only awakened abilities were the fire and change. Those were a part of me. Even during those younger years. Warmth had always been at the center of my being.

  Hours later, when I dared the rooftop, Daniel was gone. He had left the bag of food which was cold. That didn’t stop me from grabbing it and shoving the food into my mouth.

  I attempted to sleep but ended up staring at the metal ceiling and wondering what the boy really wanted. When that confused me enough I tried to remember the other person I’d dragged through nothingness. Neither question was answered that night, or for many more to come.

  The next morning, back in prison, I sat in a lunch room. My shoulders felt hunched from the sheer mass of people around me. None pressed against my sides but their numbers were too many for my comfort. A good culling would free up lots of space.

  “Your father still coming?” I asked.

  “He gave his word.” Leo slowly sipped at his soup. The way he’d been bringing the spoon up amused me. Kahina had a household full of people who could learn a thing or two from his manners.

  “Good.”

  Roy would have a plan. We could talk without restriction hopefully, now that the veil had been lifted from most of my memories. He’d ask what I needed. I just had to make a choice before the man got here.

  I had no clue what the best option would be. Daniel would.

  “They should have given you a time.” Leo frowned.

  “A guard told me.” I shrugged. One of the men here had dropped me a few lines before my work shift started.

  “When then?” he asked.

  “It should be at wakeup, first thing,” I said. Our work day had been starting just before noon. Swing shift meant being woken up late then working through part of the night. The days had been getting longer which gave us daylight out in the yard.