Empty Vessels

by Meredith Katz

  But she wouldn't have a chance to voice it even if she'd wanted to—it grabs her around the throat and squeezes. The world begins to develop spots, and she's weak with pain and lack of air, scrambling, trying to prevent—

  —capture, capture, I'll get captured—

  Her feet dig up furrows in the carpet as it drags her by the neck back to the window. She throws out her good arm to grab the frame as it pulls itself through the narrow basement window and tries to haul her after. Spurs digging in, she manages to keep her grip, but it'll be her neck that snaps if her grip doesn't, so in a final, despairing choice—death now or capture by them; how sure can she be that they won't just devour her?—she lets go.

  She's pulled through to the other side and it releases her neck. She sucks deep, grateful gasps of cold air which fill her lungs too fully and wetly with the force of the wind, and it picks up something it had left outside, and she thinks:

  Here it comes. I'm getting captured.

  The glass bottle descends.

  ***

  Keith snapped awake and threw the covers off himself before his vision even kicked in. He couldn't see Lucas, but knew he was there somewhere, a chill patch in the room. He didn't bother trying to make eye contact as he said, tongue still tangled with sleep, "We have to get down to the bone girl's place."

  With his senses not quite awake, he couldn't hear Lucas's reply, either, but he knew Lucas well enough to guess. "I had a dream. Probably a vision. It might not have happened yet. I hope it hasn't happened yet…"

  He yanked off his tank top and sweatpants with an unusual shamelessness, grabbing a fresh pair of boxers and jeans. "If it's happened, she's …dead? Gone? The Terrors came. In the dream."

  Finally, Lucas's voice faded in, and Keith found Lucas hovering next to him with concern on his face. "—the horned boy?"

  "Right," Keith said. He didn't need to ask for a repeat of the rest of the question, grabbing his phone and hitting redial instead of trying to fumble numbers in while still half asleep. It rang three, four times. "Pick up already!"

  Miraculously, the horned boy did. "Keith? I'm at work—"

  "I had a vision. About your friend." Keith zipped his fly up, phone clutched between shoulder and ear, hoping he didn't accidentally hang it up. "It might not have happened yet. If it hasn't, we have to change it. I could bus, but that'll take a while. Can you drive? If you can't, I'll cab."

  It had taken place at night in the vision. In windy weather, a storm, just like last night. It had been dark outside. He couldn't shake the feeling that it had already happened, was happening even while he dreamed about it. But if it hadn't, they needed to get to her as soon as possible, convince her to do different actions tonight. To stay over with one of them, to have food available already, whatever.

  "I can drive," the horned boy said, his voice absolutely flat. "Where should I pick you up?"

  "Ring Road. Stonybridge U. Outside the dorms."

  "Right. I'll close up here and be right over. If you're not there before me, I'll just keep circling until I see you."

  Keith shook his head, trying to clear it of its flurry of hopeless thoughts. "I'm heading outside now. See you soon."

  Waiting was agonizing, even if he knew it would be just as long to wait for a cab, and that driving was much faster than any other option. Lucas stuck near to him, expression heavy, brows furrowed.

  "Terrors?" Lucas asked, finally.

  "Yeah."

  "Did she go out?"

  "Yeah," Keith said. And then, "But they didn't get her outside. One broke into her place and got her there."

  Lucas's eyes widened a little. "Wait, seriously?"

  "Yeah—"

  The car that pulled up was a huge clunker, an old Ford of some kind. The driver's seat was so low that Keith wondered briefly how the horned boy could see over the dash, but even so, he could see that his antlers just barely cleared the roof. He dashed around, opened the passenger seat, hesitated, then opened the back door so Lucas could get in too, shutting it behind him. Who cared if it looked weird?

  He'd barely sat down and got the door closed when the horned boy floored it. Keith grabbed the dash and tried to fumble his seat belt on at the same time.

  "Please drive carefully," Lucas said in the back seat, helplessly breathless with an audible spike of fear.

  "Sorry, loves," the horned boy said. His voice was carefully light, but wobbling with tension. "I'm a safe driver, I promise."

  Keith clicked his seat belt into place. "Speed can't hurt. Just don't get us pulled over."

  "And don't hit anyone," Lucas added.

  "Trust me," the horned boy said. "I've driven in worse conditions than this." Then, with a ragged breath in: "So tell me this dream."

  Rubbing his forehead, Keith closed his eyes and recounted what he'd seen. The other two were dead silent as he explained it in short, awkward sentences. They were wordless a short while after as well, the sense of helplessness almost something he could taste in the air.

  "Well," the horned boy said finally. "Let's hope that it was a moment of prescience and not a live report."

  They drove quietly the rest of the way, the horned boy watching the road instead of either of his passengers. Neither Lucas nor Keith reacted as they passed the street corner where Lucas had died, though Keith was sure Lucas noticed it as well.

  That was the past. This was the now.

  The horned boy slowed as he pulled into the driveway, and Keith's eyes immediately snapped to the low basement window there.

  "Oh no," he breathed.

  The horned boy hit the brakes, and Keith was out of the car almost before he realized he was moving, stumbling a little as the car finished rolling to a stop. He didn't have eyes for anything but the broken window, the glass completely torn out.

  Behind him, he heard a door slam, then another. The horned boy had held the rear passenger door for Lucas so he didn't have to pass through it. Both slowly came up behind Keith.

  "Well," the horned boy said, with a sort of forced calm. "That's not a good sign."

  "We should… we should go in," Keith said. "Maybe it's something else, or… maybe we can find clues, or it didn't match the vision somehow, or…"

  The horned boy clasped his hands in front of himself, squeezing them together. "I don't have keys."

  "I'll unlock it," Lucas said. He slid himself through the broken window, and Keith scrambled up as carefully as he could in the glass-strewn gravel, moving around to the side door entrance.

  It clicked, and he and the horned boy entered.

  Once inside, there was no denying the truth. There were scratch marks on the inner door frame and a knife discarded on the kitchen floor. Spur marks were in the linoleum there as well, and on the inside of the window’s frame.

  Keith sat down heavily on the bone girl's torn-up couch. "Shit," he said. He felt strange. He'd barely known her, but he had known her, and even if she'd stubbornly refused direct help, he felt like he should have been able to do something. "What the fuck good are visions of things that already happened?"

  Lucas came over and sat next to him, leaning the cool immaterial pressure of his side up against him, wordless.

  They both watched as the horned boy wandered here and there, touching this or that, sniffing the air as if he could detect something that way. Perhaps he could. Finally, he came over, flopped onto the floor in front of those mismatched end tables with the air of long familiarity. His silver eyes were dark and strained, lips tight and down-turned.

  "Hey," he said, trying and failing to put warmth in his voice. "Tell me something."

  "Mm?"

  "You didn't see her die, did you?"

  Keith swallowed. They both knew what Terrors did to a person. But these weren't acting like normal Terrors. Before, that had been a point of fear, but maybe it could also be a point of hope.

  "No," he said. "Maybe. I'm not sure. It… it could have choked her or eaten her, but instead it dragged her outside to attack her
with one of those glass bottles. She thought that she was getting captured. She didn't think of herself as about to die. But being stabbed with a bottle like that, it'd be as bad as being stabbed with a knife."

  The horned boy squeezed his hands into fists, then relaxed them. "If she didn't think she was going to die, then she's not dead."

  "But—even if the bottles are for capturing, her body wouldn't…"

  "I know her body wouldn't fit in a bottle," the horned boy said, almost scathing. "But that doesn't mean she's dead. Not if she didn't think it. And you said she didn't."

  "Not sure you should have that much faith in a useless vision like that," Keith said, bitter.

  The horned boy shrugged one shoulder, fingertips drumming on the end table. "It's not your visions I have faith in, darlin'."

  "Then…"

  "It's her," he said, and smiled thinly with bared flat herbivore teeth. "If she's captured, she'll already be trying to escape. So there might still be something to do about these things."

  With a sudden ache, Keith wanted it to be true. How nice to believe, anyway, that this wasn't a foregone conclusion, that it wasn't hopeless. "You really think so…?"

  "I have to, love," the horned boy said simply.

  chapter five

  They puttered around a little longer, but there really didn't seem anything to find at the bone girl's place. Besides, the atmosphere felt oppressive. It was impossible, once noticed, not to keep seeing the signs of a struggle. The corner of Keith's eye kept catching the broken glass, the scratch marks.

  Eventually they let themselves out the same way they'd let themselves in, letting Lucas lock the door behind them and then climb out through the narrow window, the only one of them who wouldn't get scraped up by glass for doing so.

  "Well," the horned boy said finally, although it seemed less like the start of a sentence and more the need to make some sort of sound, some intelligent speech, to break up the silent horror. He chafed his hands together, blowing on them with a gust of visible breath.

  The air in the window shivered as an illusion of glass appeared in it.

  Keith blinked. "Why—"

  "When she comes back, she won't want the place swarming with police and herself having to come up with an excuse," the horned boy explained, lips twisted into something that only resembled a smile. He spread his hands. "Others cover for Others, even in situations like this. It's about the only thing I can do right now. So, should I drive you two back to the school?"

  Keith opened his mouth to agree, then hesitated, looking the horned boy over. His empathic skills were rock bottom—at least in terms of his psychic abilities—but he was picking up a sort of tension that hadn't been there even when they were searching the apartment, a nervousness. It made him abruptly reluctant to part.

  "I've already missed class," he said carefully, watching the horned boy. "Do you want to go somewhere and talk about next steps?"

  The horned boy blinked, turning slightly-wide silver eyes on Keith. "You'd probably be best off staying out of it further. Unless you get a vision of her whereabouts, I mean. Then, by all means, let me know."

  Keith studied him, trying to keep in mind that this Other was as much stag as he was human. He observed the alert tilt to the horned boy's head, the way his eyes kept shifting as if he were trying to keep a watch on everything around them, the way he sat his weight a little forward as if he were prepared to take off running.

  But he also saw those nostrils flared, trying to get a scent.

  "I don't think it's safe to go straight after her," he said.

  Bingo. The horned boy flinched, obviously guilty, and dropped his eyes. "I wasn't…"

  "You were, weren't you?" Keith took a step closer to him, keeping his voice calm. "I don't want to be dreaming about you dying tonight."

  He wished, not for the first time, that he had a name to call him, some way to make that kind of personal connection to convince him with. Keith had read, when practicing for job interviews, that repeating the interviewer's name in conversation made them feel more connected to you, more interested in what you had to say, felt you were more confident. It hadn't landed him any jobs yet, but it seemed plausible enough.

  Then again, that was probably a good part of why the Others didn't give out their names easily. Tradition always held that the use of names was binding.

  "I don't want to dream about you dying," he repeated instead, wanting to wrap the horned boy up in the words and convince him, name or not.

  "You said you didn't see her die," the horned boy retorted, but some kind of fight went out of him, head bowing. "The scent won't last forever. And I won't be able to follow it in the car."

  Lucas cleared his throat to regain their attention; Keith snapped into sudden awareness of him again. Lucas, seeing that they were no longer stuck in their own shared world, said, "They don't go out during the daytime 'cause they don't like the light. Right? As long as we don't head into a dark cave or whatever, we should be safe following it just to try to find wherever they're coming from. So following right after her might be a good idea, actually."

  Keith made a face. He still didn't like the idea—Terrors lately were doing a lot of things they shouldn't be capable of. "Even if something is making them overcome their base nature, they should still be… just… dark creatures, right?" he asked, hesitantly, stumbling over the sentence.

  "Do you mean, should they be able to move around in the day now? Well… they haven't been," the horned boy said. "Nobody's seen any, the disappearances have all been at night… So whatever's been pushing them to act differently, it hasn't done that yet."

  "That we know of," Lucas noted. "Yet."

  "But if we don't go, we can't follow the trail. You can leave if you want," the horned boy said. He was smiling faintly without it touching his eyes, a dull dark silver. "But I want to know where she is. I want to make plans. I don't think you can stop me, anyway?"

  Keith swallowed, closing his eyes. Behind his lids, he saw the bottle's sharpened spout descending again. "—Let's go, but be careful," he said. "And wherever their base is, we don't actually go in after her. Whatever happened to her, she won't be… um… well, whatever form the sealing bottle has her in, it won't be her body. It's not like we'll be saving her physically, so let's take the time we need instead of rushing in."

  Even as he said it, he didn't know if it were true. He knew, between the two visions he'd had, that the physical part of them probably didn't actually survive, but if it was true that their essence was sealed, then hypothetically, that would stick around.

  If, if, if.

  "Depends what they want to use her for," the horned boy said, but didn't disagree outright. He looked at the two of them with distress, then turned and began to lope off into the woods behind the apartment.

  Keith and Lucas shared a look, and Keith began to jog after, suddenly glad he'd been working on the couch to 5K lately. Even so, he felt awkward and unsteady. Leaves and sticks crunched underfoot with the sound of his footsteps coming down heavily, while the horned boy ran in total unnatural silence ahead of him, and behind him, Lucas didn't press any weight to the ground.

  Even surrounded by company, Keith felt very alone. The day was bright, but the shadows between the trees felt heavy, and he found his senses straining, trying to feel the patch of fear that would mark a Terror's location.

  The jog went on and on, the horned boy hesitating here and there, head tilting as he picked up scents, then darting on, left or right or forward, once backward. He lost the trail, he explained briefly as he doubled back around, and needed to find it again. Keith tried to catch his breath at that brief pause, but it hardly lasted long enough before the horned boy was off and running again.

  Keith lost track of time during the journey, legs heavy, lungs hurting, not able to talk to Lucas without air to speak, just doing his best to keep himself moving.

  He sincerely hoped that they weren't attacked at their destination, because he doubted he'd b
e able to run away.

  When they finally stopped, it was because the forest had started to thin, and they'd found an old dirt road leading past several houses in among the trees. The horned boy halted in front of a specific one—an old, abandoned, massive thing. Darkness almost rolled from it, and Keith knew that this was the place long before the horned boy had circled it twice and come back, leaning his hands on his knees, antlered head bowed, to catch his own breath.

  "Her trail ends here," the horned boy said. "A mansion in the woods. How cliché."

  Keith, leaning against a tree and trying to keep himself from gulping air heavily enough to give himself a stitch, fumbled his phone out and checked the GPS, marking the location. It wasn't as far as he'd feared—their path had been winding and over rough ground. Even so, it'd still be a good hour walk back. "Alright. We—"

  "Keith," Lucas whispered.

  The horned boy had straightened again and started to walk toward the door. Keith made a strangled noise and somehow managed to run a few steps forward again, flinging a hand out to catch him. He grabbed antlers and hauled back. Stumbling, arms pinwheeling, the horned boy let out an indignant honk.

  Yanking him back like that, Keith suddenly remembered that first dream. A dragon with his head pulled back by the horns, a bottle descending. He didn't let go.

  "It was that easy for me to catch you," he hissed under his breath, afraid to speak too loudly. "How hard do you think would it be for actual hunters—like Terrors?"

  The horned boy stared at him with wide eyes, then ducked and pulled. Keith was yanked forward off balance, then pulled straight off his feet as the horned boy twisted, his neck stronger than should have been possible. Keith's back hit the wet ground hard, and a boot pressed onto his stomach, leaves stuck to it. He hadn't really paid attention before to how the horned boy's boots laced almost to his knee, but he couldn't help but notice it now, staring at the sole pressing heavily there, then up to the horned boy, wide-eyed and snorting air angrily through his nostrils.

  Lucas flung himself down and threw an intangible arm between them. "Alright, enough," he breathed, pushing the words out hard for how quiet he was. "You know he has a point!"