“Why didn’t she tell us?”
Shandra stared off at the world below. “I don’t know. It must have been hard for her.”
Andy nodded. “I just wish….”
“I know.”
When Andy hadn’t been able to reach her kids a couple of days before, she had been worried, but certainly not alarmed. It had happened before, briefly, but they always reappeared. But this time… this felt different.
“We’ll find them.” Shandra pulled her gently to look over the edge at Micavery. “Look, we’re almost there.” The city lights shone below them, the silver of night ivy and the golden glow of luthiel.
Night had passed them by moments before.
She felt a presence in her mind. Belynn?
She closed her eyes, and her other half was waiting for her. “Sorry, no.” The other Andy gave her a half smile. “I think I found something. Reports of strange comings and goings from a house in the Embassy District.”
“Weren’t they tearing those houses down?”
The world mind nodded. “There’s one house in particular that’s seen a burst of activity. I think the people you are looking for might be there.”
Andy could see the place clearly in her mind, along with a map of the city. A lot had changed since the last time she’d been there.
“Thank you!” She hugged her other self.
The world mind Andy squeezed her back. “Bring our kids home.”
KIRYN WATCHED in horror as the acolytes laid hands on his sister, his own included. He could see it all, trapped behind the mask of his invader, but he was helpless to do anything about it. He was a spectator in his own body, another mind controlling his own.
Belynn’s back arched, and her mouth opened in a silent scream of terror. Sweat ran down her face in rivulets, her features distorted and stretched so far he feared they might break.
Now he understood how all those people must have felt when Davian had taken their will in the Possession and had forced them to his own will.
Kiryn kicked and screamed in his head, but to no avail.
Were all the acolytes’ victims like this? Did everyone have a screaming mind inside their own?
Could the acolytes hear their screams?
If he could only touch the ground. Maybe he could sense something. Do something.
His host was distracted. Intent on whatever they were doing to Belynn.
He tried to move his own hand, the left one that hung loose just a few tantalizing centimeters from the ground.
Nothing.
He signed his frustration, and his hand twitched. Just a little—but he felt it.
He tried again, but this time his hand snapped closed into a fist.
He could do this. He just needed a few more seconds and a little distraction.
Determined, he tried once again to sign his hand toward the ground.
Sooner or later, his invader would lose his hold over Kiryn’s mind, if only for a second.
That was all he would need.
“I FOUND it!” Denna’s voice came from the back of the house.
Dax raced back to where she stood and found her looking at a trapdoor in the middle of a storage room. “It had a rug covering it.”
They opened it and peered into the darkness below. A ladder was affixed to the wall, but they could only see a few feet down from the surface into the darkness.
The others gathered around.
“What do we do?” Denna’s hands were shaking.
Dax understood. He was nervous too. This had suddenly become very real.
“We go down to find them. Does everyone have a weapon?”
They each held up a motley assortment of things they’d brought that could be turned into clubs.
“We don’t want to hurt anyone. We just need to capture them and tie them up until we can get someone else to help us figure out what to do with them all. Remember, these are our friends and neighbors.”
Pieter looked disappointed.
“If they fight back hard, do what you have to. But try to keep them alive?”
Pieter brightened considerably. “Sure thing, boss.”
Dax laughed ruefully. “Don’t call me that. Come on. We already wasted too much time.”
He slipped down the hole and clambered into the darkness, the red fern sprig providing the only light. Kiryn, hold on. We’re coming.
Chapter Thirteen: Together
KIRYN WANTED to beat the air in frustration.
For once, he felt trapped by his inability to hear. Without access to his body, it shut him off in a way that was both maddening and stifling.
Without his sister awake to help him….
He was close. So close. But his captor was proving stubbornly adept at holding him off. He couldn’t quite reach the ground.
How long had his own possession taken? He couldn’t remember. The pain of it had seemed endless, but it couldn’t have been more than a few moments.
He tried to shout, to move, to avert his eyes from the sight of his sweet young sister as she writhed on the cot in pain.
Then she went ominously still.
Belynn’s eyes opened, and she stared at the ceiling. A strange mad smile curled her lips, one that didn’t reach her eyes.
“She has come.” Della’s grimace mirrored that twisted rictus.
There was a clatter in the hallway behind them. Kiryn’s captor turned, distracted.
It was enough.
Kiryn managed to force his hand to make a sign, extending his fingers, and touched the ground. He reached….
The world mind was there, waiting. They surged through him and into his sister.
Belynn!
DAX SEARCHED the halls, looking for Kiryn, for Belynn, for any sign the place was inhabited.
It was a warren of corridors, much larger than he had expected. He wondered if the intifada had dug all these or if they had been here before. The place was lit by luthiel lanterns but otherwise seemed abandoned.
He had just about decided it was another dead end when he heard chanting up ahead. Kiryn! “Come on!” He led the others down the hallway at a dead run.
They rounded a corner.
There was an open doorway. On the other side, a group of people in black robes knelt around something. Or someone.
One of them, a young woman with intense green eyes, looked up, saw him, and gave a warning shout.
As she leapt up, Dax got a glimpse of what they were huddled around. It was Belynn.
“Fight!” He growled, and his little gang lifted their improvised weapons and surged ahead to take on their strange enemy.
BELYNN SWAM in a sea of green pain.
She was surrounded by the chanting, but she barely felt the hands of the acolytes as they touched her all at once.
The world spun crazily around her head, worse than the most terrible hangover she’d ever had. A drink would have helped dull the pain, but it was far too late for that. By abstaining, she had opened herself up for this horror.
You are the gateway.
Something huge was coming. She could feel it, stirring somewhere deep in the fetid, fevered swamp of her mind.
It was heralded by an awful stench, like the rotting of a thousand corpses, a cloying odor that filled her nostrils and made her gag.
Lilith.
Gordy hadn’t described feeling anything like this.
She fought to control herself, to make herself an island in the midst of all the pain. To resist the awful pressure being brought to bear on her soul.
For a moment she succeeded, and the pain subsided just a little.
She could feel Kiryn close to her, but he, too, was in pain.
Then the thing surfaced, and she was washed away like flotsam and jetsam in a storm. It entered her, sliding its greasy tendrils into her mind, along her nerves, through her very muscles and tendons and bone.
Becoming her.
She tried to scream once more, but her body was no longer her own.
It was of no import. She swatted it aside like a fly.
Belynn!
Andy recoiled at the stench inside her little girl. Stench was truly the only way to describe it. Whatever was inside the girl was strong. Almost as strong as they were. It was limited only by the vessel that held it—Belynn’s mind.
Andy cursed. This was worse than the clouds that had enveloped the minds of the poor souls in Agartha. That had been like a numbing fog.
This was poison, pure and simple, a dark soul unlike any which they had ever encountered, and every moment it resided inside Belynn’s mind, the damage multiplied.
They had misjudged the threat. If this creature were to force her way into the world mind, it would be as bad as Davian. Or worse, for it was clearly insane.
It flowed over them, coating them with its slime, trying to force its way through their guard. They could feel its glee, its eagerness to overcome them.
Part of them wanted to recoil, to retreat back to the safety of the mind, but they feared she would follow before the link could be broken.
So they pushed back.
The battle was joined.
ANDY TOOK the stairs two at a time, landing on the porch and practically crashing through the half-open door. Shandra was right behind her. Hang on, Kiryn and Belynn.
Guided by the world mind, she found the back room and its trapdoor and went down the bolt-hole at a breakneck pace.
They had her kids.
Once she reached the solid floor at the bottom, the sounds of fighting guided her to the scene of the crime.
She pushed her way through, shoving past friend and foe alike.
All that mattered was Kiryn and Belynn.
Now she understood why Colin had given his life for her, in another place underground so long ago. Even though he wasn’t her father, he’d felt this overpowering instinct to protect her. If she could have ripped these acolytes limb from limb with her bare hands, she would have done it.
And yet the scene she found in the midst of the chaos confounded her.
Kiryn knelt next to a cot, his hand on the floor, his eyes closed, his other hand resting on Belynn’s shoulder.
She was sitting up, her eyes wide open but blank as the sea.
The world mind had gone silent.
“Belynn!” Andy dropped onto the cot and put her hands on Belynn’s cheeks and reached into her daughter.
She was plunged into madness.
DAX FORCED the middle-aged man he was fighting back against the wall hard, knocking the breath out of him.
His friends were gaining the upper hand, with three of the enemy out of commission and hogtied.
Someone new entered the fray, pushing her way past him, followed by another woman.
He forced the man to the ground and pulled his arms together behind his back, then tied them securely.
They’d practiced this while they waited—Pieter had learned to tie knots from his father, a rancher out on the Verge—and now he was pretty good at it. He’d been an excellent teacher, and the skill was coming in handy now.
Gordy fought alongside them. He’d appeared at the end of the hall as the fighting started. Dax was relieved to see his friend had evaded the acolytes.
When Dax had the man secured, he ran back down the hall to see who the newcomers were.
As he reentered the room, the second person, an older but still beautiful black woman with hazel eyes, fell into a defensive crouch, ready to fight him.
“Hey, I’m a friend. I think. I’m with Belynn and Kiryn.”
The sounds of battle faded away outside.
“Sorry, I wasn’t sure.” The woman stood and extended a hand. “I’m Shandra. Belynn and Kiryn’s mother. And that’s Andy, their other one.”
“Dax. Kiryn’s… friend.” Things had all happened so quickly. They’d had no chance to define what was going on between them.
Shandra arched an eyebrow but said nothing.
Andy sat completely still on the edge of the bed. Kiryn and Belynn were also frozen in place.
“What’s she doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Kiryn, are you okay?” Dax reached out to touch him.
“No, don’t—!”
Shandra’s voice faded away as he fell into a dark, surging abyss. He slammed into something hard. He got up and shook his head, looking around.
Kiryn, impossibly, was there with him.
“Dax? How…?”
“I don’t know. I was watching you and Belynn and Andy. I touched your shoulder, and… here I am.” He stared at Kiryn. “Wait, you can hear me?”
Kiryn nodded. “Inside my head, the rules are different. So Mom’s here?” Kiryn was transparent, literally a ghost of his normal self. At the news, though, he began to glow.
“And Shandra too. Where are we?”
“In vee, maybe?” Kiryn stared at him. “If you’re here… you must have some Liminal in you too.”
“Maybe? I never knew who my father was.”
Kiryn nodded. “Do you trust me?”
Dax nodded. “Completely.” He didn’t know why it should be so. They had just met. But nevertheless, it was true.
“I’m going to try something. It won’t hurt. But it’s invasive.”
“More invasive than what we did the other night?”
Kiryn grinned. “Yeah, actually. You ready?”
Dax nodded. He might regret this later, but Kiryn and Belynn needed him. “Whatever I can do.”
“Good.” Without delay, Kiryn touched him, and then his ghost self merged with Dax.
Dax swam in a sea of emotions and thoughts and memories, a flood tide of Kiryn’s essence of self.
The first time I cried.
When Belynn and I ran after each other in the apple orchard.
The first time I had sex.
Ripples of laughter from my mother.
The smell of red berry pie fresh from the oven.
The day we met.
Dax spun through it all, was all of it at once. His own memories flowed the other way.
My first day at college.
Smelling the flowers in my mother’s garden, my toes deep in the moist loam.
The pain of birth.
Held tightly in my mother’s arms, the day my cat, Lightning, died.
Lying in bed with you afterward.
They were one, moving with one mind. It was far more intimate than the simple mechanics of sex. But Dax-Kiryn didn’t feel violated.
He felt whole.
“We have to help them.”
“We have to go.”
Together they reached into Belynn’s mind, where the battle was going on, and joined the fray.
SOMETHING PRIED at the space between Andy and Shandra, the space where there should have been none. A foul wind sucked at her, surrounding her and blowing past her and through her.
Fuck and Forever, she’s strong.
She knew, now, what they fought… a biomind, or at least a memory of one, so strong that even Jackson had feared her. Shandra, hold on!
THE FLESH-AND-BONE version of Andy pushed through a headwind of her own. Belynn’s mind, once such a beautiful and ordered thing, had become a fetid swamp that oozed and belched.
Something whispered her name. Andy. I have watched you for a long time….
“What are you?” She struggled to push forward, to free herself from the quicksand that was trying to suck her under.
It laughed and sounded pleased. Maniacal, but pleased. Your grandfather knew me. He created this me, in fact. Andy had a flashing vision of something huge and contorted and dark in a translucent vat of liquid.
She knew what she was looking at instantly. Lilith. “It can’t be. You’re not real.”
She was drowning in the horrid embrace of Lilith
’s arms. Where was the world mind? Where was Belynn?
That infernal laugh again. I am as real as you, now.
Andy’s anger boiled up inside her. How dare this creature—this thing—violate her daughter? She gathered herself to push back, a mother’s fury honed to a spear’s point. Then she threw herself forward into Lilith’s bulk, piercing her with the heat of the sun.
Light flared around Andy in the dark swamp.
She pushed forward, bearing down on her nemesis with all her might.
Lilith howled like a wounded beast.
Then stench and ooze withdrew in a flash.
Andy was alone on a white plain.
No, not alone. Kiryn stood there, impossibly, in front of her. But it wasn’t just him. He had merged with someone else “Kiryn!”
“We have to find Belynn.” His fingers moved quickly, and his gaze darted back and forth. “We’ll be stronger if we merge.”
Andy hesitated only a second. There were things a son shouldn’t know about his mother, things he might see, feel. But she had nothing to hide. Belynn was more important than her own embarrassment.
She reached out to him/them, and they flowed together.
She became they, and she saw/felt/was both Kiryn and his new friend, Dax.
When I first met Shandra.
Breeding the fish at the hatchery.
Sitting in the apple tree high above the world, where no one can see me.
Staring up at the sky through the plas walls of the rain tent, talking with Colin about Old Earth.
Climaxing together and collapsing on my dorm room bed.
Sleeping alone after I fought with Shandra over letting them go to Micavery.
The memories flooded through and past her, and she let them go.
They weren’t hers, and there were things she didn’t need to remember.
The Shoreless Sea Page 13