Of Humans and Monsters

by Candace Blevins

  “Come, let us sit and talk for a moment.”

  “Is that an order?” I wasn’t sure how far to take being angry, but he’d knocked me off balance with that dance and I was on uneven ground. Also, it felt like the way I’d have acted if I hadn’t met him earlier in the day. I was mostly over being ordered to kneel since he’d apologized, but it’s possible I was still a little miffed over that too. Plus, I didn’t like being put into a corner, where I had to either fall all over myself for him or give myself away as not being human.

  “A recommendation, or perhaps a suggestion, but if you’d like to continue dancing we can do that as well.”

  I sighed. “Actually, a drink would be nice.”

  I hadn’t been able to find any of my friends when I’d looked from the stage, but now I saw Nathan ten feet away and had to school my expression. He was wearing dress pants and body paint — and nothing else. Someone had painted a shirt and jacket over his muscular torso, and I wanted to run my fingers along the lines of his muscles from across the room. I gave him what I hoped was a friendly smile, and focused back on walking with Adonis without tripping over my own feet.

  As we neared a seating area someone came to us with two drinks. I took the one offered me and Adonis said, “It will be whatever you asked for earlier. If you want something else just let them know.”

  He was so damned charming, and the therapist in me realized I wasn’t so much annoyed with his charisma as I was irritated he was having such an effect on me. I didn’t want to listen to the logical therapist though. I was still pissed about not being given a choice.

  “Was there a purpose for bringing me to you? Or do enjoy throwing your weight around and ordering people into your presence to show you can?”

  I noted a flash of irritation before the charm returned.

  “I merely invited you to a social function. If someone made you believe you had no choice in whether to come or not, that is regrettable.”

  “If I’d chosen not to come, what would you’ve done?”

  His smile didn’t look even a teeny bit repentant. “Perhaps I did expect you’d come. It never occurred to me you might wish to decline.” He looked around the room, and it made me realize that while everyone wasn’t looking at us, they were likely all tuned in to our conversation. He looked back to me with an eyebrow raised. “I believe we need to have the rest of our conversation in private?”

  “No. I don’t believe we do.”

  He closed his eyes as if he were trying to hold onto his patience. “Your virtue is not in danger and neither is your life, but if you wish to bring a friend then you may do so.”

  There was the briefest of contact of our brains and he said Mordecai. There wasn’t enough time for me to say anything back before he disconnected, and that ticked me off all over again.

  “I wish to take Mordecai.” I started to ask for someone else simply because I didn’t want to follow his orders, but I didn’t want to be childish. Besides, we needed to talk about the plates sliding.

  “You trust Mordecai to defend you against me?” He said it as if the idea were laughable.

  “I think Mordecai’s one of the few in the room with the ability to stand up to you. Whether he’d choose to do so or not is up for debate, but I’m not without my own defenses.” I sighed. “While I’ve been advised it wouldn’t be good politically for me to attempt to kill you, I’ll assume you can grow your arms and legs back, so I can at least slow you down enough to get away.” I shrugged and met his gaze in challenge. “My guess is Mordecai can defend me without temporarily maiming you, but it’s your call on whether to invite him in or not.”

  A little more than a flash of irritation this time, but his voice sounded as if this were a humorous, lighthearted conversation. “Very well. The three of us shall retire to a soundproof area to talk.”

  At six foot ten inches tall, Mordecai is always bigger than life, and tonight he wore a wide, thick leather belt to hold his sword scabbard, and what looked like a bulging leather codpiece, and nothing else. Well, he sported what had to be a five-foot-long sword I was betting he’d used in battle many times, but that didn’t add to his clothes.

  We went into a room down the hall, Adonis closed and locked the door, and Adonis and Mordecai each gripped one of my arms as they transported us into the nothingness. Both let go of me once we were there.

  Adonis had looked irritated in the ballroom, but now he was obviously furious.

  “You were supposed to have been told no human can deny me.” He spoke clear and slow, and I could feel the anger vibrating off him but I was annoyed and indignant enough I didn’t care.

  “I don’t appreciate being put in a corner! You and I aren’t going to be an item, so find a Plan B.”

  “By denying me, you’re announcing to everyone you aren’t human.”

  I crossed my arms. “I won’t be forced or coerced. You should’ve checked with me before trying to bully me into having sex with you, because it isn’t going to happen.”

  “I won’t force you to do anything, but you need to pretend. It’s the only way I’ll have time to teach you. People will think we’re spending a week in each other’s arms — it’s the perfect excuse for us spending so much time together.”

  “I can’t spend a week with anyone! I have a daughter and a professional practice. I have patients who depend on me during the day and a daughter who needs me in the evenings.”

  “I hate to interrupt,” said Mordecai, “but first I’d like to note Kirsten’s walking around now, not just standing in place, and second, I’d like to point out the plates shifted near the nuclear plant this evening, despite our work.”

  “Or maybe because of it,” I pointed out, but then remembered a question I’d had when I felt the plates move. “If the Celrau are actively working to make them move — if they’re creating pressure right this minute, shouldn’t we be able to follow the energy and find them while they work? If so, we can get rid of the assholes who’re actually doing it. Right?”

  “Possibly,” said Adonis, “but it would require the three of us and I won’t risk taking you into battle.”

  “She can hold her own,” Mordecai told him. “We’ve had her in hiding because of the worry of an ambush where she’d be vastly outnumbered or caught off guard, but if we’re on the offensive with the element of surprise, and we have the three of us fighting as a unit, we should be fine.”

  Adonis looked at me, his mouth already forming to say no, but he seemed to change his mind. “I need to hear it from you. You’re up to this?”

  “I’m tired of not being able to go home. Let’s find the bastards and take them out.”

  “When we blended this morning,” said Mordecai, “do you understand why we connected our brains via the corpus callosum?”

  I nodded. “It’s responsible for shuttling information between the two hemispheres, so it’s the ideal way for us to connect. This way, we’re still thinking with our own brain, and our corpus callosums act as a link, facilitating information between the three of us without affecting our thoughts.”

  They looked at each other and Mordecai shrugged. “It has to be the juggling thing. She already understands brain function.”

  “Mind letting me in on the problem?” I asked.

  “Not so much a problem as a puzzle,” said Adonis. “When we teach this to our kind, it can take months before they understand what their corpus callosum is and why we connect through it. We had a work-around to pull you in this morning, because no one figures out the proper way to blend without lengthy instruction and practice, but Mordecai insisted we try first.”

  “She’s an excellent pupil, and it isn’t the first time she’s surprised me.” Mordecai took my hand and told me, “We’ll return to the room, blend, and see if we can follow the energy. I’d like you to connect to my corpus callosum so you can see what I’m doing as I return us to the room.”

  I nodded, touched the center of his brain with the center of mine, and felt h
im stepping us into the other reality. I could sense him doing it, but not how he did it.

  Just as the flatlanders in Edwin Abbott’s novel couldn’t fathom the direction up, we moved in a direction my human brain couldn’t grasp. If I could figure it out, I could get to the nothingness. I’d have to get there with my soul powering the travel though, because my brain wasn’t equipped to deal with the next dimension.

  Mordecai didn’t ask what I got out of it, though I was sure we’d talk later. Instead, the three of us silently sat on the floor, joined hands, blended, and sank our single consciousness into the ground. We were an invisible mass under the earth, and as a unit we could feel the pulse of the planet in the river above, and the vibration of the Earth as it hurtled through space and time.

  Our bodies were still in the room holding hands, but our consciousness, our energy, was somewhere else.

  We followed the fault line closer and closer to the disturbance. When we reached the nuclear plant we sensed the rending of reality around it. I’d need to think on this later — atoms make up this reality, and messing with them rends reality. Could you make a worm hole this way? Would one eventually be formed around the nuclear plant?

  We went deep around and under the nuclear reactor to avoid the disarray and chaos around it, returned to the fault line just north of the plant, and found the source of the disturbance.

  Whoever was fucking with the fault line was in a house directly over the underground rift.

  I knew the area, because my dad used to have permission to hunt very near the place. We took our consciousness back into our bodies still at the party, and stood without anyone saying a word. We’d been in agreement on our next move the instant we saw the house. There was no discussion, but we all thought it at the same time.

  We stayed blended as we stood, and they touched me again to take me through the nothingness. I felt more of what they did this time, and tried to hold onto it so I’d be able to do it on my own.

  We focused on the house we’d seen, the basement the Celrau had been in, and we emerged just outside the circle they were working within.

  This wasn’t the first time I’d seen Celrau gathered around a human sacrifice, but this time I couldn’t wall myself off from the evil because I worried I’d sever the connection to Mordecai and Adonis.

  The girl was spread out on the concrete floor, her hands and feet bound with too-tight rope and tied to four bolts the vampires must’ve sunk into the concrete in a square around her — her body agonizingly stretched to its limits, though she no longer felt the pain. Her flesh was cut, sliced, and burned with what I was sure were evil symbols, and a large ceremonial knife rested over the hole in her chest where they’d finally thrust it into her heart for the kill. Blood on her thighs made me wonder if they’d kept her a virgin or took it before they’d irrevocably ended her young life.

  Her wide-open, death-dulled eyes were going to forever haunt me, and I determined to kill everyone who’d had a part in the death of this once beautiful teen.

  The nine Celrau vampires were oblivious to us in their circle as they held hands and used the girl’s life force to disrupt the very earth they sat upon.

  From past experience, I knew my quarterstaff would penetrate their bubble, so I materialized a long one with a knife on the end, pierced the energy bubble, extended a laser out ten feet, and raked it across their shoulders — decapitating seven Celrau in one swoop. I let Mordecai and Adonis handle the two still alive, and I methodically stabbed my quarterstaff’s knife through the hearts of the ones I’d decapitated.

  A hot, harsh, acidic wind came from behind me, and I crashed forward as someone slammed into me. My knees went into the bloody body I’d been working on, and then I was face first on the bloody floor, draped over the Celrau corpse.

  The staff absorbed back into me as I fell, and I sprang to my feet as I manifested another — and drew upon a strength I’ve never experienced. It was as if gravity wasn’t as strong and the air wasn’t as thick. It was the difference between running through chest-deep water and running on a track with no obstacles. I didn’t have time to analyze though, because the creature that landed on me snapped its crocodile-like jaws at me and I had to jump/levitate away.

  I narrowed my focus to my opponent and took in his reptile skin, unnerving snake eyes, and clawed hands at the ends of his arms and legs. Even more adrenaline flooded my veins as I swung my arm while emitting a short laser with the intention of taking his head off, but his tough skin foiled my laser so I formed a quarterstaff with knives on both ends.

  I had no idea what this creature was — some sort of lizard monster, or perhaps a walking, upright crocodile. I adjusted my swing and aimed to sink a knife on the end of my quarterstaff into its chest, and hoped I guessed the location of the heart right, but my knife merely scorched his scales without penetrating before it bounced off.

  It was all I could do to move and dodge to keep the reptile monster from grabbing me, and I had the distinct impression he was trying to capture me without killing me — otherwise I’m sure I’d have been dead. As I moved and ducked, I saw Mordecai and Adonis handling eight of the reptiles, and I realized they’d blocked the rest from reaching me. One must’ve slipped through, and I only had a split second to note Mordecai was damned skilled with his sword, while Adonis could pack a helluva punch with his fists and feet.

  I made my laser white, but it wouldn’t penetrate the creature’s scales either. I tried blue, and then the brightest, most intense red I could manage.

  Finally, my laser penetrated a few inches into the huge reptile’s chest, but it merely pissed him off. I aimed at his wrist and managed to slice into it about an inch, and now his teeth were coming at me again as he apparently decided the hell with capturing me. I had to take last-second evasive action over and over — I was on the defensive and needed to be on the offensive, but couldn’t turn the tide.

  I jumped when Mordecai grabbed my arm, and swore as he pulled us into the nothingness. Adonis was already there, looking at his arm as it grew back.

  “There were too many and we weren’t going to beat them,” said Mordecai. “Showing up in the basement let us thwart their guards enough to stop the Celrau, but your weapons weren’t working on them, and they’re the offspring of…” He shook his head. “We’ll get into that later. We need to get you cleaned up so we can get back.”

  “I think I had some of your strength, and maybe some of Adonis’s.”

  “Three cubed,” said Adonis. “It’s mostly about energy, but it’s good you felt it physically. Mordecai is right about needing to get you cleaned up so we can return.”

  I looked down at myself and back up to them. They didn’t look much different than when we started.

  “Why am I the only one who got drenched in blood and guts?” Or, maybe those were pieces of Celrau heart, and not technically guts.

  “We’ve learned to fight without getting messy?”

  I glared at Adonis. “Umm, no. I think it’s because I did most of the killing.”

  Mordecai chuckled. “She has a point.”

  A room formed around us and a light flashed in a mirror. I looked, did a double-take, and stepped closer to be sure of what I was seeing. I was glowing. The guys walked to me so I could see them too. They were glowing as well.

  “It’s because we’re blended and we drew on so much energy,” said Mordecai. “Once we unblend, our auras will go back to normal.”

  “Should we unblend now?”

  “No,” said Adonis. “After the huge energy outlay, we need to stay together so we can rebalance before we separate.”

  “What do we do about the house? Will the reptile monsters bring in more Celrau and get started again? Is there a way we can make sure the girl’s family gets closure? I’ve been told the Celrau are good at disposing of bodies so they’re never found.”

  “A Drake Security team’s on the way — they’ll set up surveillance. It’s possible the reptiles will leave once they no lon
ger have anyone to guard. If so, our people will go through it for possible intel before figuring out the best way to clean our mess, if it’s still there.”

  “You called them?” I asked Mordecai.

  “No, I contacted someone else, and they called them. The team was coming to help us, but we were too far away for them to reach us in time. No one can know we aren’t in a room forty miles away while I play referee to the two of you — and we should get back before we’re missed.”

  I wanted to ask what the crocodile-lizard things were, and if they’d ever seen them before, and whether they were from here, Hell, or another realm. I wanted to cover the dead girl’s body and give her some respect, but I could sense Mordecai’s urgency, and felt his reassurance that the people coming from Drake Security would take care of her body and see to it her family got closure.

  We’d arrived in someone’s bedroom, and Mordecai pulled shiny black leather pants and a black leather corset top out of a closet, and walked me to a shower. Before I stepped in, the god-of-old ran his hands through and over my hair a few dozen times and the blood miraculously disappeared, but I didn’t ask him to do it to my body. I wrapped my now clean hair in a towel before I stepped into the shower, because no way did I want his hands stroking everywhere I had blood. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Mordecai on most days, and more touch than necessary right then wouldn’t have been helpful.

  I dried off as much as possible after my quick shower, but the clothes were too tight and I struggled to get into the pants. However, I finally managed to squeeze into them and didn’t complain. They worked fine with my leather boots, which either Mordecai or Adonis cleaned while I showered.

  “If you could clean my boots, why not clean the dress? How am I going to explain changing clothes?”

  “The dress is ripped,” said Mordecai. “You’ll say you had a wardrobe malfunction and Adonis provided a change of clothes.”

  “And everyone will think we had sex!”