Eve of Destruction

by C. E. Stalbaum

  Shaedra remained silent. There was nothing else to tell him, and it didn’t matter what she said, anyway. Arguing with a ghost was about as productive as stabbing herself with a knife. She would never actually convince him of anything, and he would never back down from his self-righteous pedestal. Most people thought the Vakari were haunted, and in her case it was quite literally true. Fane spirits were often malevolent things, the souls of magi who had never been able to find peace in the arms of the Edeh or eternal despair in the Void. Instead they lingered on here in the mortal world, attaching themselves to living magi and endlessly tormenting them…

  Many such spirits wandered about the ashes of Vakar, she knew, and more likely circled about the newer graveyard of Kalavan. There were methods to banish such spirits, but it was difficult and unpleasant. Some were also more resilient than others, and she’d always suspected that Alex would linger on no matter what she did.

  “Maybe saving this girl will finally bring you peace,” Alex whispered into the silence. “Or maybe she’s just another mistake.”

  “We’ll see, won’t we?”

  She turned to face him, but he was gone. She grunted and rubbed her fingers across the bridge of her nose. Two days spent here in silent vigil had been more draining than she’d anticipated. Part of that was just due to the nature of the city and the anguish of the Fane surrounding it, but the rest was self-inflicted. She’d never handled idle time well even when she had been fully human, and as an immortal she had gotten even worse.

  She brushed the bits of blood-covered brick from her palm and sighed. Alex might have been right. For all his arrogance, he was occasionally more perceptive than a ghost had any business being. Maltus had saved Shaedra’s life once, in a sense, by sparing her from the Enclave’s wrath, but she had never felt shackled by that debt. In truth, she wasn’t really here for him at all—she was here for the girl.

  It was odd, considering how little she knew about the young DeShane outside of what Maltus had told her. But Shaedra did understand the burden of living with great responsibility, of having others depend upon your every move and decision.

  And most importantly, she knew what it was like to let them down.

  “You’ve been standing in this spot a long time, Vassa,” a chiding male voice said from behind her.

  Shaedra didn’t bother to turn; she’d felt the two men gradually shuffling towards her for almost a minute. She’d already chased away the beggars and charlatans who once called this alley home, but these two men still prowled about from time to time. It had taken her the better part of a day to realize they were what passed for policemen in this town.

  “I don’t think anyone’s buying this morning, sweetheart, so why don’t you move along,” his partner said with a derisive grunt.

  “I’m comfortable here,” she replied softly. As the policemen drew closer, the hairs on her arms had started to stand like they were charged with static electricity. It was a reasonably accurate analogy: these men, like all living things, were like lightning rods attracting the energy of the Fane, and she could feel the power ebbing off of them.

  It was a sixth sense, of sorts, but she’d never considered it a gift. All it did was stir the beast inside her from its slumber. Her mouth began to water, and her nostrils flared at their scent.

  “That wasn’t a request, doll-face,” the first man said. “Why don’t you turn around for us?”

  She took a deep breath to steady herself, but she knew her hands were still shaking. Didn’t they realize they were just making it worse standing this close? They wouldn’t believe her even if she warned them…

  A revolver clicked as he cocked its hammer. “I said turn around.”

  She swiveled towards them, shielding her face behind her scarf. “Stay back.”

  He grunted. “I’d be careful telling us what to do, sweetheart.”

  “You won’t be turning any tricks with an outfit like that,” the second man sneered. “You cut up or burned or something? And is that blood on your jacket?”

  She raised her head just slightly and locked eyes with them. “Leave, for your own sakes. I’m ill.”

  The first man’s faced twitched as he looked into her eyes and her pale, gaunt face. “You ain’t kidding.”

  “What are you doing here?” the second one asked. He was shorter and fatter, and she noticed that he’d now drawn his pistol as well. “Some of the locals were saying they saw a crazy dame out here skulking in the shadows. Some even said they thought she was carrying a sword. Can you believe that?”

  His partner glanced down to her pile of belongings on the ground. She’d covered them well enough to hide them from a distance, but from this close it wasn’t hard to make out her stash buried beneath a tattered blanket. He started to walk towards it, his pistol never veering away from her chest.

  “Is that a sword? What kind of crazy bitch sits in an alleyway with a screlling sword?”

  He leaned down to pull off the blanket, but his hand never made it. Shaedra twirled and kicked him squarely in the mouth. He flew backwards and shrieked as his jawbone shattered. The second man, acting purely on instinct, fired. His first shot only scraped her shoulder, but his second had enough force to flatten her against the brick wall. She winced at the familiar but still sickening sensation of bullets sliding through her innards.

  “Jay, you all right?”

  The fat man glanced quickly between his thrashing partner and the woman that should have been dead. When she inexplicably pulled herself to her feet and latched her eyes onto his, she could smell the fear rolling off him.

  And it pushed her over the edge.

  Shaedra grabbed his arm and broke it with a quick twist, forcing his fingers to reflexively open and drop the gun. She then slammed him against the wall and held him there, shifting her grip to his throat. At this point even his cries of anguish were little more than dull whispers in her ears. All she could hear was the desperate throbbing of his life echoing in the Fane…and all she could taste was his soul.

  She sucked him dry as he flailed in her grip, holding him firmly enough he couldn’t scream. There was no wound, no pouring of blood across her lips; she simply ripped his spirit straight out of the Fane. His skin went pale and his muscles weakened, and with his last breath he managed to claw enough at her arm to break skin. A glowing trail of blood dripped from her elbow to the ground as he finally went limp.

  She barely even noticed his death amidst her euphoria. The bullets slid out of her body and clinked to the ground as her wounds sealed. She looked down to a puddle in the street and lost herself in the reflection of the two solid white eyes looking back at her.

  It was probably a full minute before she finally came to her senses and dropped the corpse. It wouldn’t be wise for her to stay here much longer.

  Shaedra turned towards the first man as he clutched at his jaw and rolled around in agony. She was mildly surprised he hadn’t died from the impact, but with her hunger temporarily sated, reason washed back over her.

  “I warned you,” she whispered and leaned down. An old, nearly-forgotten spell stirred in the musty recesses of her mind, and she touched his jaw. A moment later a flicker of blue radiance shimmered across her palm, and the healing magic worked its way through the man’s body. He remained paralyzed in shock, and the scent of his urine-soaked trousers was overpowering from this close.

  She could have killed him—a large part of her wanted to. He was probably an awful man, or at the very least a fool. She doubted he would ever accomplish anything in his life, but she didn’t want to be the one who decided such things. She’d done enough of that over the centuries.

  “Leave,” she ordered, and spun around to her belongings. She pulled off the blanket and looked down at the baldric full of throwing knives and scabbard holding her saber. All she owned in the world were weapons, and they were a few centuries obsolete. In more ways than one, she was a woman out of place and out of time. But her hunger…

  Her hung
er was eternal.

  Chapter Eleven

  Eve had spent most of her life inside cities. Her family rarely took trips, and when they did it was almost always to visit a bustling urban center like Selerius or Rorendal. She felt like she had a good bead on them; she knew how their people worked and functioned, how they got around, and how they went about their daily lives.

  Then she had stepped off the train in Vaschberg, and it was like she’d traveled through a gateway into a completely different world. There weren’t any parks or streams. Groundskeepers didn’t maintain an elegant tapestry of vines around the city square, and people didn’t have their own gardens or greenhouses in their backyards—if they even had yards at all. Vaschberg seemed like one infinite expanse of putrid air, filthy streets, and seedy alleyways.

  Now she looked upon Cadotheia and wasn’t sure whether to be awed or horrified.

  “Blessed Kirshal,” she stammered as they stepped off the train.

  “Trust me, She wouldn’t want anything to do with this place,” Danev replied softly.

  He was probably right. Everything around them was artificial. The streets were meticulously shaped, pristine walkways that were surprisingly free of waste or litter. The buildings were mostly made of gray stone or red brick, but the largest ones appeared to be coated—or painted—in gold. Majestic towers spiraled up into the sky, some so high they cut through the dense layer of smog. Very few structures, even local shops, were less than three stories tall, and many were at least double that. She had heard people speak of Cadotheia’s steady expansion, but it didn’t seem real to her until she actually stood inside it. The city was growing up as much as it was growing out.

  “Three million people all crammed into a few square kilometers,” Zach said as Danev lead them away from the station. “I’ve slept in barracks that were less crowded.”

  “Try and keep the commentary to a minimum,” Aram warned as he loomed next to them, methodically eyeing anyone who stepped within ten meters.

  Eve nodded and grabbed Zach’s hand. It was almost easy to forget they were the enemy here, and she was suddenly thankful that Aram had insisted they “tone down” their eastern fashion sense, as he put it. They’d each bought a few new outfits in Vaschberg before they left. Zach’s earth-toned pants and tunic were functionally the same as most others he wore, but mercifully he’d also been convinced to give up his ugly hat. She had never understood why he wanted to hide his nice hair, anyway. The downside was that she’d been forced to wear this mud-colored abomination generously referred to as a dress. At least her new soft leather boots were comfortable and easy to walk in.

  Danev, for his part, had eschewed his normal gleaming white ensemble for a darker vest and coat. Aram had thrown on a beat-up leather jacket, but otherwise he hadn’t changed much.

  Personally, Eve still thought they stood out like a herd of balma at a petting zoo. The average Cadotheian pedestrian looked like he had just stepped off an assembly line—and he probably had. The vast majority of the city’s population was stuffed into factories all day, churning out everything from clothes to guns and farm equipment. Only a handful of stragglers clung to classic professions that the factories hadn’t swept away yet.

  “I always thought politicians tried to build their train stations in the most flattering part of their town,” Zach said softly as they headed off down the street. “To attract tourists and investors.”

  “This is the most flattering part of town,” Danev told him. “There are six different Steamworks factories less than five blocks away from here.”

  Eve made a face as she side-stepped a pair of dirty, burly men who nearly bowled her over. They didn’t apologize; they didn’t even glance back over their shoulder. She thought for a moment that she might have accidently woven an invisibility spell on herself, but then she made eye contact with a shop owner on the side of the street. He glared at her with all the vitriol of a man kicking dung off the bottom of his boot.

  “We need to get off the street,” Aram said. “Soon.”

  Danev nodded. “Jack’s house is on the other side of the city. We might as well get a carriage.”

  He stepped to the curb and tried to get the attention of one of the many carriages tumbling through the streets, thoughtlessly sweeping pedestrians out of the way. Eve just shook her head and crossed her arms. For all the promises of work that drew in immigrants and the poor from across the country, she couldn’t imagine people actually living like this. Just standing here right now she could pick out a half dozen people with disfiguring wounds—shattered legs, missing hands…

  A few hundred kilometers away they could head to a temple and have one of the priestesses tend to their wounds, but she wondered how many of these people even knew that. No self-respecting Sister would build a temple in a city that thoughtlessly billowed death into the clouds, and yet Chaval had convinced millions that living here was in their best interests. They had their doctors and their leeches, their amputations and their chemicals. Most importantly, they had their belief that this was the face of tomorrow, and it was powerful enough to mask the immense misery she saw in every pair of eyes that looked back at her.

  Finally Danev got a driver’s attention, and the four of them piled inside. It wasn’t the most spacious carriage Eve had ever been in, but at least it granted a modicum of privacy.

  “You see our mysterious benefactor anywhere?” Danev asked his bodyguard once the horses began moving.

  “No,” Aram replied, “Though honestly I was more worried that the three of you might start singing or wildly clapping your hands just to draw even more attention to us.”

  Zach grunted. “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “It was bad enough. If Chaval didn’t know that we were here already, he does now.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Danev soothed. “After we talk with Jack we can meet up with my people and lay low until we figure out our next move.”

  Eve glanced briefly out the window before deciding that she’d seen plenty of Cadeotheia already. She slipped her hand into her satchel and pulled out the spellbook Maltus had given her. She’d tried to read it as much as possible to keep her mind off what was going on, and to her pleasant surprise, it had been working reasonably well. She couldn’t actually weave any of the spells yet, of course—they were far beyond even next year’s scheduled classes—but it was still interesting to try and make sense of them. The techniques were highly advanced theoretical sorcery, the kind only a few hundred magi in the world fully grasped. It was actually flattering that he’d assumed she would be able to understand it at all.

  Their idle time at the Pampered Goddess had afforded her plenty of time to read, and it had almost made her wish she’d brought along her violin, too—her father would have been mortified at how little she practiced these days.

  “I imagine you’re a good student,” Danev commented. He shifted his large frame in a vain effort to get comfortable on the rough wooden seat.

  “Most of the time,” she said. “I don’t generally have trouble understanding the material, but…”

  “You don’t always do the assignments,” he replied knowingly. “Sometimes you feel like the instructors are just trying to drown you with busywork.”

  Eve blinked. “Basically. How did you guess?”

  “Just a hunch,” he said with a smile. “Tara was the same way.”

  “She conveniently never mentioned her poor study habits to me before,” Eve murmured.

  “With good reason. That’s not a class book, is it?”

  She shook her head. “No. Mr. Maltus gave it to me before I left, actually.”

  Danev’s face tensed and he glanced out the carriage’s small window. “Curious.”

  “It’s beyond me, but I’ve been doing my best with it,” she said. “At first I thought maybe I shouldn’t because of…well, because I guess we don’t know if we can trust him anymore. But it’s fascinating stuff.”

  “Enclave agents aren’t known for handing ou
t spellbooks,” Aram commented. “He must have had a very good reason for it.”

  Zach frowned. “There’s nothing dangerous in there, I hope.”

  Aram glared at him. “All magic is dangerous—especially to the uninitiated.”

  “I’m hardly ‘uninitiated,’” Eve scoffed. “I’ve been studying my whole life.”

  “But you haven’t taken the Oath Rituals.They exist for a reason.”

  Danev waved a hand. “I’m not worried about it. I think you’re better off learning whatever you can, personally. Goddess knows we may end up needing it before this is over.”

  “I kept meaning to ask you earlier but never got around to it,” Zach said after a few moments. “Who were the other members of this Valmeri Seven group? You, Mrs. DeShane, Mr. Maltus, Chaval, this Polard guy…who else?”

  “Jean Lashowe, a temple priestess in New Haven,” Danev added. “And Karyn Marose, the mayor of Selerius.”

  “Marose? The presidential candidate? Wow, you people sure get around.”

  “We went our own ways and made our own choices,” he said distantly. “I don’t know about Jack, but only a few of us managed to keep the ‘revolutionary spirit’ alive, so to speak. Simon actually did, in a sense.”

  “And you?”

  Danev shook his head and smiled faintly. “I might not have joined the cause, but I haven’t exactly led the opposition, either. Jean may be the only one who still has a clear conscience. She’s spent her life helping people, at least.”

  So did mom, Eve wanted to say, but the retort died on her lips. Her mother had been a teacher for Eve’s entire life, but what about the time before that? Apparently she’d done a lot of things she probably regretted.

  Then there was Mr. Maltus. Eve didn’t know what to think about him at this point. For all the things he’d done for her—for them—why had he lied back in Lushden? Why hadn’t he told them what was really going on?

  Eve wasn’t sure how long she stared down blankly at the book, but eventually they arrived at a dilapidated three-story apartment building. Her impression of the “best part” of Cadotheia had been pretty low, but this area was in another league entirely. Aside from the fact that half of the buildings looked like they’d been target dummies for academy students, the people here could have just crawled out of a coal mine. A nice sculpted fountain dominated the center of the street, but the “water” bubbling out of it looked more like sludge than anything drinkable. Regardless, two children were playing inside it, and a soot-covered woman Eve assumed was their mother sat nearby. Just behind them to the left was a fenced in area that might have been a park, but all that remained now were some broken swings and empty carousels.