by Paul Neuhaus
At first, as she worked to end the deamhan’s life, Quinn had no idea that something might be wrong. She watched with sadistic glee as the bat-thing put its hands to its throat and gasped. Its fiery eyes bulged, and it pounded on the inside of its mystic prison. Henaghan had made Sato die quick. She was going to give this abomination the same treatment.
But then a burning began in her chest. It increased in proportion to the maya she drained from the bubble. She couldn’t stop now. Not now. Not when she was so close. She decided to push past the discomfort. She redoubled her draining. As soon as she sped up the process, a knife of pain stabbed into her collarbone. Another in her side. Another in her back. She cried out, torn between her commitment to killing the deamhan and the sudden imperative to survive. Her brain short-circuited from the hurt and she locked in, teetering on an edge between failure and life. She felt her heart race. She felt razor blades flow through her bloodstream. Still, she watched the deamhan die.
In turn it watched her die, too.
The two of them were locked in a dance of imminent extinction.
Then the world exploded.
Quinn sat in a quiet, lightless space with Darren Taft. “Is this a dream?” she said.
“Does it matter?” the man said with a smile.
“I guess it doesn’t,” Henaghan conceded.
“Good,” Taft said, running his hand through his thatch of straw-colored hair. “I thought of something… On last thing I should show you.”
“Okay,” the redhead said.
“Did you ever read Edith Hamilton’s Mythology?”
Quinn shook her head.
Darren was surprised. “Really? Not even in high school? That’s like a classic. How about The Silmarillion?”
The latter book was J.R.R Tolkien’s cosmology of Middle Earth. The story of how it came to be and the gods and goddesses that ruled over it before Frodo and his pals came onto the scene. Quinn had read that one and she told Taft so.
“Good. This stuff I’m about to tell you falls under the same umbrella. It’s a deep cut of history. Or dogma, I’m not sure which. Close your eyes and I’ll give you the Discovery Channel treatment.”
Quinn closed her eyes and, as Darren spoke, images filled her head, illustrating what he said. “From the earliest days, the Asura and the Deva fancied themselves gods. Hell, they were gods—or at least the Asura were. The Asura were the gods and the Deva were the goddesses. They could Channel maya, they could create things, they could reshape things. They were gods. Once upon a time, the Cauldron and the Kiln weren’t as far apart as they are now. In fact, they orbited one another forming a giant yin-yang at the center of the Astral Plane. Most people don’t know this, but there used to be a god that bridged the gap. A powerful, Overseer god. Like Zeus if Zeus carried both a positive and a negative charge. Nobody’s sure if this guy created the Asura and the Deva. I think he did, but I concede it’s just a theory. Anyway, the Overseer was a pretty even-tempered dude. He watched over the Deva and the Asura, but he finally decided they were abusing their power. They’d gotten a little too cocky in their creation and their subjugation. He pushed them apart and forbade them from indulging in any further god stuff. He cursed them, so they could no longer touch. Then, right after that, he disappeared. Nobody knows where he went or why. He was just gone. For a long time after, the Deva and the Asura sat on their hands, figuring they needed to honor the Overseer’s last command. But, after a while, some of them got reckless. They missed their old godly ways. Specifically, it was a bunch of Asura who broke off and decided to test the old man’s resolve. They came to Earth and set about building up the creatures they found there. The Deva and the Asura still in the Astral Plane watched closely. They were sure the Overseer would come back and put the smack down on these young upstarts. Except the Overseer stayed gone. There were no repercussions whatsoever for the rebels. There was one wrinkle though. The rebels broke a taboo. They taught people like you and me how to Channel. That’s a big no-no in the playbook of the gods. The Deva in particular were offended by this and sent an emissary to monkey wrench the rebels’ plans. This emissary would undermine the Asura, wipe out all human Channelers and then she’d send word back to the Kiln. “All clear,” she’d say, and the rest of the Deva would come through and rule over the mundanes like proper goddesses. They wouldn’t even have to do any work. It was a turnkey solution.”
The last of the mythic images dissolved from Quinn’s mind and she opened her eyes. “Why’re you telling me this?”
Darren shrugged. “Sometimes it helps to know why the game board’s laid out the way it is.”
When Quinn awoke, all she could sense was movement. Forward momentum coupled with a generalized hustling on all sides. She blinked but couldn’t see. She realized she was on her back, looking up at the sky. Sound went in and out. She felt something touch her forehead. She swatted it away. A hand grabbed her wrist and held it down. The sensation returned to her forehead. A voice said, “Can you open your eyes?”
Henaghan opened her eyes. She was looking up at David Olkin. “Where am I?” she said.
“At the Ranch still.”
She looked to either side of the vehicle. Bedraggled men ran alongside. Olkin was one of them. The jeep was moving slowly. She was on a stretcher laid across the bed. Next to her was another stretcher. On it was the quiet form of Patrick Ferley. “What happened?” the redhead asked.
David’s expression remained stoic. He didn’t answer.
In Panorama City, Sam slept a fitful sleep. She was having a dream—the same dream she’d had for more than sixty years.
For still a third time, the dream varied in one significant way.
Sam was no longer the voyeur. She was no longer the violated girl.
She was the rapist.
The head she was in was, in many ways, like her own. Sam was half Asura, so she understood what it was like to think and feel as an Asura. The head she was in was Asura. The head she was in was Reginald Verbic’s.
Reginald Verbic was, after all, Sam’s father.
The hybrid did her best to protect herself from the horrors that took place, in the middle nineteen-forties in a bedroom in a house on Mulholland Drive. She had experienced those horrors for decades as an observer. She had experienced them in her most recent dream as a victim. She could not and would not experience those horrors as the perpetrator of the violence. She burrowed deeper into Verbic’s brain, away from the animal lust at the forefront and deeper into the man himself. Among the firing synapses, she spoke one question and it echoed through the space: Why?
A rush of images came up to meet her. A dark African veldt. Lightning flashing in the sky. A slow parade of proto-humans walking up the slope of a mountain, guided by lights. Into caves, the proto-humans went. Inside the caves, they were torn apart and reassembled. Reassembled in a slightly more advanced state than when they’d entered.
Evolution as eugenics. A slave race in the making.
Lurking at the edges, observing the processes at work, was an indistinct figure. A figure made of white light.
On and on, the progression toward homo sapiens continued. On and on, the white light waited and watched.
It watched until it was ready to act. When it was ready to act, it approached the Asura’s cauldrons of life and cut away a piece of itself. That piece commingled with the brew in the cauldrons, insinuating itself into the stew of magic and DNA. Changing it. Subverting it.
Then Sam saw a woman with red hair—a woman that looked startlingly like Quinn Henaghan. The woman was in a cave. She was talking to another woman. A woman made of white light.
A city on a veldt. The same veldt. The redheaded woman led an army of men. Men with weapons. Men with magic.
An angry cloud of tiny blue birds.
From a rise, far above the battle, a woman made of light watched carefully.
Years later. A balcony overlooking the city. Another redhead looking not quite so much like Quinn Henaghan. The woman w
as sad and alone.
Decades fell in upon decades. The Asuran diaspora. Once great masters scattered across the globe.
Reginald Verbic moving first through Europe. Like a vampire from a gothic novel. Undying. Unchanging except in the deepening of his bitterness.
Reginald Verbic in America. Reunited with an old comrade in arms.
Reginald Verbic in Los Angeles. Overseer of a kingdom. Years of prosperity and unrestrained indulgence.
Then, a figure from the past. A lady made of white light, checking and counterchecking. Changing the dynamic on the chessboard.
Then, the house on Mulholland. The rape of Eleanor Wasowska. A new cauldron. An ingredient for the brew.
A failed experiment.
Using one of Aisling’s descendants, Reginald Verbic tried to make an Aja of his own.
He tried and failed.
7
Cutting Ties
The jeep stopped. The ground was no longer uneven. They were on concrete. Two men came in and grabbed Ferley’s stretcher. Two more men came in and grabbed Quinn’s stretcher. As they ran with her, Henaghan raised her chin and looked ahead. Around the front stretcher bearer, she could see they were back at the Landscaping building. Crickets chirped. Had it not been for the vivid memories of recent conflict, the girl would’ve called the scene peaceful. A man appeared and stumbled alongside her. She didn’t recognize him at first due to the jostling movement of the stretcher. “Quinn? Are you okay? I heard you were here.” It was Brad, the new proprietor of Taft’s Books. He looked terrible. Stretched thin and green around the gills.
For the first time, Henaghan took stock of her own condition and she realized she felt like shit. Most of her left side was numb and nausea spread through her body like tentacles. “I’ll live,” she said. “What happened?”
Brad shook his head. “I wasn’t there. I was fighting in the woods off to the left. Suddenly, me and my boys saw a bright flash. No one’s sure what happened. They say you were fighting a monster and then you kind of went off like a flashbulb. The light spread and made everyone sick. Resolute and Tilted both.” They came to the front door. Brad peeled off to go around the building as Quinn was taken inside. “I’ll catch up to you later,” the young man said. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
Henaghan looked to her left as Olkin scrambled to catch up with her stretcher-bearers. He had to get in line behind her rear carrier in order to squeeze through the door. The first stretcher, the one with Ferley, was put down on the ground and Quinn’s was laid next to it. An office with some ancient desks fronted the building. Behind the office, racks of gardening implements lined the walls along with maps of the expansive property.
David crouched down between the two stretchers. He too looked like he was battling a severe bout of dysentery. He examined Ferley first.
“How is he?” Henaghan said.
“Not good. He was raked along his torso and back. By the deamhan. Deep, deep wounds.”
The redhead put her hand to her mouth, realizing she might vomit at any moment. “Do we have a doctor? We gotta get Ferley looked at.”
The agent shook his head. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with Dr. Terry. No dice.”
Quinn looked around as more men filed in carrying either supplies or more wounded on stretchers. All of them looked pasty. “Brad said something happened when I was fighting the monster. An explosion. Is the deamhan dead at least?”
Olkin plopped down on his ass. “It was lying on the ground off the side when I came down to get you. It might’ve been unconscious. It might’ve been dead. I wasn’t about to check its pulse.”
The redhead grabbed her former boss’ wrist. “What happened down there, David? Why is everyone so sick?”
A man Quinn didn’t recognize handed Olkin a canteen. Olkin unscrewed the lid and handed it to Quinn. “Do you need help sitting up?”
Henaghan tested her muscles and found them wanting. She nodded.
David slid over and helped Quinn sit up against the wall. She took a swig from the canteen and passed it back to him. He took a drink. “I dunno. In order for me to know what happened, I’d need to know what you were doing down there. Before you had what appears to be your latest ‘mini-stroke’.”
The redhead strained to remember the moments before the flash of light and her loss of consciousness. Finally, she answered, “It was a trick. I’ve done it before. It’s how I killed Sato. I snapped a bubble around the deamhan and drained all the maya out of the bubble.”
Olkin thought for what seemed like a long time. “It’s a genius strategy,” he conceded. “If—and this is a big ‘if’—you don’t lose control and pop your own bubble.”
Quinn rubbed her temples. Her head was pounding. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
David shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t be one hundred percent sure. My guess is you put a bubble around the monster and started draining the maya out of the bubble. You had another episode, the bubble popped and suddenly you were drawing the maya out of everywhere. All the Channelers down on that battlefield—and it looks like a ten-mile radius—had a deep part of themselves suddenly syphoned away. It’s a good thing you passed out when you did, or we would all be dead instead of just sick as dogs.”
Henaghan looked at him, slack-jawed. “Fuck,” she said.
“Fuck is right. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go puke.”
Olkin got halfway to a standing position when Patrick Ferley awoke and cried out. The Tilted gopati sat bolt upright and, disoriented, looked around. “Margaret!” he said.
David plopped back down on his backside and looked at Quinn. Neither of them knew who Margaret was and it didn’t matter. The agent placed his hands on Ferley’s shoulders. “Pat, you’re gonna be okay. It’s me: David Olkin. You’re safe. You’re gonna be fine.”
Ferley’s eyes locked onto David’s. Then he looked over at Quinn. Awareness and recollection hit simultaneously. “That thing? Is it dead?”
“I’m not sure, Pat. I think so. I think Quinn killed it.”
“Good,” Ferley said. “That’s good. Then it’s time for paurvāparya.”
Olkin was taken aback. Quinn was just confused. “No, Pat,” David said. “What’re you talking about? You’re gonna be fine.”
The redhead was suddenly agitated by the conversation. “What happened? What did he say?”
David sighed. “‘Paurvāparya’. It means ‘succession’. ‘Continuity’. He wants to hand off his leadership before he dies.”
Quinn’s headache grew worse as her blood pressure rose. She rolled over onto her side, so she could get a better look at Ferley. “Has anyone checked his condition? For real?”
“How do you mean? I don’t—”
But Henaghan was already gone. She sent her consciousness into Patrick Ferley, into the highways and byways of his physiology. Immediately, she could sense the man’s body was shutting down. The claw marks on his back were superficial, but the ones on the front had done grievous harm to his internal organs. His brain and his senses were preparing for a complete stoppage. His spirit, if that was the right word, was preparing to depart.
Quinn came back out of Ferley with a gasp. She rolled back over onto her back and took deep gulps of air. Olkin looked down at her and she shook her head.
David turned back to Ferley. “Okay, Pat. Do you want me to fetch someone for you? Who do you want to take your place?”
Ferley tried getting something from his pocket. He struggled with it until Olkin moved his hand out of the way and took the object from the pocket himself. It was a yam made of bronze. The ancient symbol of the Jihma. To Quinn it had always looked like a letter “Y” with a horizontal stroke across the top. David put the object into Ferley’s hand and Ferley held onto it tight.
Patrick looked over at Quinn, locking eyes with her for a long moment. Then he grabbed Olkin’s hand and put the metal symbol of office into it.
David was stunned. “Pat, I can’t take this. I’
m not even Jihma. There has to be—”
Ferley cut him off. “No, there is no one else. Not with your logic and good sense. Do this for me. Please.”
“Pat. I—”
“Please.”
Olkin looked down at the symbol in his hand. He was flummoxed. “Okay, Pat. Okay.” He turned to his friend, but the light had already left Ferley’s eyes.
Back at the Burbank house, Josie went into the backyard, kicked off her sandals and immersed her feet in the rippling water. She was coming down from the effects of Caress and she wanted a tangible, real-world sensation to anchor her return. She stood there for a moment feeling the warm ripples until a voice from above said, “You took it, didn’t you?”
Taft didn’t react with alarm this time. She knew the voice was coming from the tree above her. “I saw something,” she said. “An endless black void with stars and nebulae and floating asteroids. Some of the rocks were black and some were white.”
Lailah dropped down out of the tree into Quinn and Molly’s yard. “What do you think it means?”
“I have no idea at all,” Josie said truthfully. “It was amazing, though.”
Lailah kicked off her white sneakers and put her own feet in the bubbling pond. “Do you feel any closer to your powers? To your Channeler side?”
The shorter girl looked the taller one in the eye. “I’m not a Channeler. Not a regular Channeler. I mean I can’t be. You know that. I’m a Changeling.”
Lailah nodded. “I knew there was something about you that was different. I’m jealous.”
Josie was stunned. “You’re jealous? People hate Changelings. People think I’m a freak.”
Lailah shrugged. “People are fucking stupid. I see the world my dad moves in and I wanna be part of it. It’s not fair I’m not. I’d take it any way I could get it. Channeler, Changeling. Whatever. It’s all good to me.”