Hidden Things

by Doyce Testerman

  “It feels like an earthquake out here,” she said as she walked up to Vikous where he sat alongside a row of tall, uncut cornstalks, chuckling to himself.

  “Mmm. Now you know the secret behind earthquake tremors in the middle of the Great Plains,” Vikous said. He looked up and his eyebrows rose. “Someone got a makeover.”

  Calliope glanced down at herself. The only things that had changed were the flannel shirt and a different coat.

  “I wasn’t talking about the clothes.” Vikous pushed to his feet. “How’d it go?” The tone of his voice made the question anything but casual.

  Calliope looked back to the tree-shrouded buildings where yard lights were already coming on. “Good. My sister hates me and switches back and forth between hiding her children from me and blaming me for the fact that she has them, and my mom pulled a Jack Horner on my shoulder, but other than that it was good. Mostly.”

  Vikous frowned in the growing gloom. “You all right?”

  Calliope turned away from the distant lights. “What was the great joke I missed?”

  “YOUR GUIDE HAS A FINE TALENT FOR SHAMEFULLY PUERILE HUMOR, CALLIOPE. MORE THAN THAT WE WILL NOT SAY, AS DEFENSE TO OUR REPUTATION.”

  Calliope smiled into the darkness. “It’s good to hear your voice again, Mahkah. I’m lucky to have such a fine traveling companion for the end of my little quest.”

  “YES,” Mahkah replied after an odd hesitation, “WE ARE SURE IT IS AN HONOR FOR YOU.” There was another short pause. “SHALL WE FLY TONIGHT, CALLIOPE? TRULY FLY?”

  Something tightened in Calliope’s chest even as she felt Vikous grip her arm. “That—that sounds amazing, Mahkah. Please.”

  The night before, Vikous had explained that the practice of staying close to the ground was useful for camouflage as well as hunting. Dragons paid a price in liberty in order to move virtually undetected.

  Until Mahkah leapt into the sky that night, Calliope had had no idea how great a price it had been. The first rush of cold air and speed and distance and motion tore a whoop out of her that could have been heard clearly back at the farm and washed away the stress and worry of the day as though it had never been.

  In some ways, it was the same as the night before: the heat from Mahkah’s body—more than enough to warm the air around them even as they flew—didn’t burn them. The strange texture of the scales, like fine sandpaper and so unlike the smooth, frictionless skin of a reptile, seemed to cling to them and hold them in place. Even so, Calliope suspected something extra had to be keeping them from falling; in junior high, she’d tried riding one of her uncle’s horses bareback after reading Black Beauty and had nearly broken her ankle twenty feet from the barn.

  But the difference between buzzing along familiar highways at an even height and speed and what she was experiencing now was a continent-sized gap. The ground rushed away from them so quickly it felt as though the whole world had flinched. In five heartbeats, they were looking down at the sparse yard lights of half a hundred farms spread out twenty miles in every direction. The town glowed in the distance; the moving lights of night-bound vehicles crawled like lost insects down the straight paths of invisible roads. The dragon’s wings stretched out on either side beyond the distance Calliope could see in the thin starlight. She shrieked with every massive downbeat of Mahkah’s wings, gasping and half expecting to die; terrified, and never wanting it to stop. Minutes passed before she could breathe normally.

  Almost normally.

  “How is this even possible?” she gasped. Her eyes felt stretched as wide as they could go, drinking in everything around her.

  Vikous, riding behind her, leaned forward. “Does it matter?”

  “It’s unreal,” Calliope said. “It’s a dream.”

  She felt him shift behind her and imagined his odd shrug. “If I tell you their blood is pure hydrogen, that they’re incredibly massive but just about lighter than air, does it matter?”

  “Is it true?”

  “Dragons are true. It doesn’t matter if they fly and breathe fire and can eat a town full of people, if they’re messengers for god or a symbol of everything lost that you wish you still had. They might be any of those things, or all of ’em, and it still doesn’t matter how they are. They are.”

  Calliope didn’t say anything else, letting the sway of Mahkah’s flight carry her thoughts. After a time, she realized that the deep vibration she felt in her chest was the dragon singing. It sounded like a chant. The words, if there were words, were nothing she recognized, but it sounded sad to her, and somehow brave. She began to hum along.

  “WOULD YOU SING WITH US, CALLIOPE?”

  “Oh!” Calliope started. “I’m sorry, Mahkah, I didn’t mean to—”

  “WE WOULD BE PLEASED IF YOU DID.” There was a certain tension—a waiting—in the dragon’s tone.

  “I . . . don’t know the words,” Calliope replied. Her voice should have been too low for even Vikous to hear, but that didn’t seem to matter.

  “WORDS, WE HAVE FOUND,” Mahkah replied, “ARE NOT WHOLLY IMPORTANT.” The dragon paused, then began the song again.

  Calliope listened, then hummed, then sang, and flew through the sky on a dragon. They went on in that way for hours.

  It was over all too soon.

  The grassy hills were quiet and dark when they landed and Calliope slid from the dragon’s back.

  “Thank you, Mahkah.” She spoke to the deeper shadows where the glints of the dragon’s scales shone. “You’ve been a good friend.”

  “YOU ARE MOST WELCOME, CALLIOPE. OUR TIME SPENT TRAVELING WITH YOU AND THE HARLEQUIN HAS BEEN SURPRISINGLY PLEASANT. THANK YOU FOR SINGING ALONG DURING THE LAST PART OF OUR JOURNEY. IT WAS . . . VERY KIND.” The great luminous eyes appeared, well above them, blinking once against the chill, starry sky. “IF YOU WOULD ENTERTAIN A REQUEST ON OUR BEHALF?”

  Calliope glanced at Vikous. “Absolutely.”

  “WE WISH TO KNOW THE CONCLUSION OF THIS STORY, IF YOU WILL,” the great voice thrummed out of the ground.

  “Oh.” Calliope glanced at Vikous, who made a gesture that put the decision back with her. “We . . . I . . .” She shook her head to clear it. “You want to wait for us?” She felt odd, granting a request to a mythical creature that she couldn’t quite perceive, but it wasn’t anywhere close to the strangest thing that had happened to her in the last week.

  “IF YOU ARE WILLING.”

  “Sure. That would be . . .” She hesitated, then said, gravely, “I would be honored.”

  “YES.”

  There was nothing to say in reply. Turning, Calliope walked into the trees with Vikous, a massive shadow that might have been a dragon watching them as they went.

  “So where are we?” Calliope asked after ten minutes of what felt very much like aimless wandering.

  “Just some old farmland.” Vikous nodded to indicate a hill closer to them whose silhouetted crest was broken by a more regular, man-made shape. “White was killed up there.”

  “By Mikey.” Calliope’s throat felt tight.

  Vikous glanced at her as they walked. “By Mikey. White told you?”

  She rocked her head from side to side. “Hints,” she said, then swallowed, willing her dry mouth to work. “How do you know this is the place?”

  She could feel Vikous’s eyes on her. “Quick explanation or complete?”

  Calliope thought about the police description of Josh’s body. “Quick.”

  “It’s where it would have to have been.” Vikous turned his attention back to the hill. “There’s a path—used to be a driveway—up ahead. Goes up to the house.”

  “Not that you’re going to get that far,” snarled an all too familiar voice from just behind and above them. Calliope spun to face the sound

  already too late

  heard the gun go off, but didn’t see it—was already falling. The ground rushed up and slammed the air out of her body. She saw Vikous already moving in the direction of the voice, then something thick and dank
obscured her vision.

  Walker got off another shot as Vikous closed in, tearing off his sweatshirt and coat to release his wings. He flexed his legs as he stalked up the slope toward Walker, and his shoes fell away in strips. Walker shot him again. Vikous ignored it, his face stretching into the hint of a smile. Another shot went off as Vikous swatted the gun away and down the slope. His left hand clamped on Walker’s throat with the sound of an axe hitting soft wood.

  “You’ve given up a lot to fit in, haven’t you, ‘Walker’?” Vikous said, grinning through all teeth. Blood, black against his matte white skin, trailed from two dark holes in his chest. “Don’t you think it’s kind of pathetic you’ve become exactly like the things you hate the most?” He dragged the man closer to him. “Because I do.”

  “How did you slip the oath, Vikous?” Walker strained against the grip on his throat. He pried at the choking hand, slamming his other fist into Vikous’s body. Vikous grimaced and clamped his other hand around Walker’s throat as well.

  Robbed of his voice, Walker clawed with both of his hands, straining forward. Rather than trying for a mirroring chokehold, his fingers scrabbled across Vikous’s chest until his fingers found purchase in the two bullet holes and dug at the wounds. Vikous’s face twisted, his lips drawing back and back in a shark’s grimace until he threw Walker away from him, roaring. Walker went with the throw and rolled to his feet a dozen yards away. Vikous eyed him, then tore his gloves away to reveal the claws beneath. “Let’s do this right,” he murmured.

  “Why are you fighting me?” The sharp angles of Walker’s face bent into a scowl. “The girl’s dead. Even if she weren’t, she would fail you, just like the last, and the last, and the last.” He sneered. “And with this one, you’ve practically made sure of it. At least my way, we won’t lose anything.”

  “We?” Vikous sneered. “You talk like you’re one of us. You’re a joke.”

  “Said the clown.” Walker massaged his throat, stepping to the right.

  “If we never risk anything, we never change. If we never change, we all die.” Vikous circled the whip-thin man. “Life means risk. Risk means letting them in, to do what they want.”

  “And letting them do as they choose means we’re all dead anyway,” Walker barked.

  “Choices made by following instructions aren’t even choices—they don’t mean anything.” Vikous wiped blood from his chest and flicked it away. “You know that as well as I do. You don’t get to play your new role with me.” Vikous stretched his arms away from his body in a gesture of harmlessness. “Who am I?”

  “A liar by gift.” Walker spat on the ground as he circled. “You try to bridge the gap between two worlds that should never touch. You offer hope where there is none. That’s why I gave up on doing it the old way. Everything ends.”

  Vikous’s smile returned. “Exactly,” he said, and leapt.

  Human eyes could never have tracked the speed of the blows exchanged. When the flurry slowed, it found the two locked in another clench. Vikous’s body was laced with welts; Walker’s clothing hung in bloody tatters. Vikous’s smile was, if anything, broader.

  “Why are you fighting me?” Walker nearly screamed. “You are the guide. It accomplishes nothing.”

  “I’m not fighting, you moron,” Vikous murmured. “I’m stalling.” He shoved away from Walker.

  “For what?”

  Gunshots tore the night apart, and Walker dropped to his knees. He twisted toward the sound, and another shot punched through the air, knocking him to the grass.

  “Hi,” Calliope said, walking up the slope. “Those two were for the holes in Vikous.”

  Walker sneered. “You can’t possibly think it matters if you kill—”

  Calliope shot him in the shoulder. Walker grunted as though hit with a tree. “I think I decide what matters right now since I have the fucking gun, asshole.” She edged toward Walker, the weapon extended, tipped her chin toward him. “That last one was for me.”

  Walker shook his head like a wet dog and glared up at Calliope. “You don’t have the faintest idea what’s at stake here.”

  “I know enough.”

  Walker sneered. “You’ll fail as you think you’re winning.”

  “I am going to bring Joshua back, you son of a bitch.”

  Walker sneered. “Exactly,” he said through bloody teeth. Calliope stared at him, shook her head, took a step forward, and kicked him in the face. He dropped to the ground, tried to rise, and went still.

  Vikous slumped to the ground. “Kinda wish you’d gotten up there a little faster than—” Calliope whirled, leveling the gun at him. He watched the weapon with an expressionless face. “What are you planning to do with that?”

  The gun shook. Calliope’s eyes, like those of Gluen’s security guard so many days before, were wide enough to show the whites all the way around. “What are you?”

  Vikous glanced down at himself. Enormous taloned feet gripped the ground. Blood dripped from his clawed fingers. He looked back up at Calliope, a leathery, clown-faced, albino parody of an angel with leathery bat wings, truncated and tattered and pale white under the moonlight, the stuff of forgotten myths and nightmare. “I’m your guide, Calli.”

  “Don’t call me that.” The gun didn’t move. “What are you?”

  “I have a hundred names,” Vikous said. His voice was calm. “A hundred things that people call my kind, because we don’t have a name of our own. We hid it a long, long time ago, and we can’t have it back.” He looked up at her, his plastic-black eyes shining. “I’d tell you if I could, Calli, but I can’t.”

  “Don’t call me that!” The barrel of the gun shook.

  “Sorry.” He sniffed, looking around at the torn ground as though searching for a place to lie down. “Look, shoot me.”

  Calliope twitched. “What?”

  Vikous shrugged, his tattered wings shifting behind him, finally free of their confinement. “Or don’t, but you can’t waste any more time on this. You have to go, with or without me.” He frowned. “You’re okay, right?”

  Calliope lowered the gun a fraction. “I thought he’d shot me again.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that. Knocking you down was the only thing I could think of. Did you hurt your shoulder?”

  Calliope shook her head. “I’ll live, but you’re—” She cut herself off. “God, how do you do that?”

  Vikous blinked, assuming his most innocent expression. “Do what?”

  Calliope glared. “Go . . . go put your coat on.”

  Vikous quirked an eyebrow. “I can move?”

  “Yes. Coat. Please.” Vikous pushed himself up, grimacing at the ache of the blows he’d taken, hissing through his teeth as the movement pulled at the open wounds high on his chest. Calliope frowned again. “You sure you’re all right?”

  “Of course I’m not all right; I was shot. Twice. Protecting you.” Vikous shook his head. “You and your questions.”

  Calliope tilted her head. “Remember that I still have the gun.”

  “Good point.” He tugged his coat on as best he could, wincing. “Ready for the end of this?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Me too. Can I lean on you?”

  She made a face. “You’re still dripping blood.”

  “Right.”

  Together they walked, still talking, toward the distant house on the hill, oblivious to the dark shadow that moved through the trees behind them.

  “I’m kind of surprised you didn’t kill him,” Vikous said.

  Calliope looked at him. “Should I have?” Vikous shrugged and winced. Calliope turned her attention back to the dark path. “I’m tired of death,” she said finally. “It seems like this whole thing has been about death, even when it doesn’t have anything to do with what’s going on. Did I tell you my dad had cancer?”

  Vikous shook his head. “Is he all right?”

  Calliope made a face. “I guess so. It’s impossible to tell; he doesn’t look all right.” She
looked at Vikous. “But you see what I mean? Joshua died, you died I guess, Mahkah nearly ate us, Dad had surgery and maybe treatments for cancer and no one even told me until I showed up at the door with a bullet hole in my shoulder. My sister doesn’t want me around her family, like I’m carrying death around with me, and I’m not sure she’s wrong.”

  “It’s not you.” Vikous adjusted his coat. “This . . . all this right now is just life. One of the things that happens in life is death. That’s part of it.” He grimaced as he stepped over a tree stump. “Granted, you’ve got a few more of the exciting parts going on right now than normal.”

  “Exciting,” Calliope deadpanned. “I’m so excited I can barely breathe most of the time.”

  “I’d say that’s my line.”

  “Give it—”

  “Good evening and well done, my dear,” called out another voice from the shadow of the house. Calliope recognized it even before the speaker’s bulging eyes loomed out of the darkness. Faegos stepped out of the deeper shadow followed by the tall, swathed figure of Kopro. “I believe we have a bargain to conclude,” the shrunken man continued. “Something you can provide me, in exchange for something I can provide you.”

  He gestured, and Joshua White walked out of the shadows.

  19

  “HEY, CALLI,” JOSHUA said.

  Calliope’s heart contracted, pushing the air out of her in a rush. Give it time, I was going to say, she thought. That’s funny. She stared, her mouth slightly agape, scanning his calm face, eyes that held a hint of sadness or regret . . .

  Except that it wasn’t him.

  Calliope’s eyes narrowed. The thin light of the half-moon didn’t reflect off his skin. There were odd shadows across his face that she realized were the siding on the house directly behind him.

  “You’re . . .” she began.

  “A ghost, yeah,” he finished, making a familiar gesture with both hands that made her heart thump painfully. “A memory might be more accurate, but I’m not really sure.” He frowned. “It’s hard to concentrate sometimes.”