Renegade Red

by Lauren Bird Horowitz

  “Who?” Noa demanded.

  Hilo sighed. “An Attendant from our Sacred Temple, back from around the time Darius ascended to power. There was a story—just a stupid story!—that the pixie who was next in line to be the Mystic ran away. Supposedly she chose to disappear and live completely alone in the bowels of the Tunnels instead.”

  “Why?” Noa breathed, her poet’s imagination piqued despite herself.

  “Exactly!” Hilo huffed. “No one would just run off instead of becoming a god. It probably started as some gobbed-up morality tale for kids. In the story she didn’t even have a gobbin’ name! I mean, please.”

  “But why would this Attendant even be important?”

  “If she exists.”

  “Okay, yes, Hilo, on the very very very remote chance she exists.”

  Hilo looked affronted at Noa’s sass, but Noa didn’t care and stared right back. Even raised an expectant eyebrow. Hilo held Noa’s stare, challenging her, then finally looked away with a little hmph. Noa fought a victorious smile.

  “She’d be important,” Hilo answered, “because if she trained to be Mystic—even though she never took power—it means she would have studied our sacred Scrolls. And that means she’d have a greater understanding of our magic than any other Fae, even Otec Darius. She wouldn’t be the Mystic, but she would be a—”

  “Seer.”

  Hilo squirmed uncomfortably. “But it has to be another lie. I mean, she would have popped up to help in the Rebellion, right? If she really did run away as some sort of nutso protest against Darius? But the Rebellion died and she never showed her face. And tons of stupid Fae went desperately in search of her, hoping she’d save them, and came back as bodies washed out of the Tunnels!”

  “So … ‘seeking the Seer’ now means giving up and going off to die,” Noa realized.

  Hilo rolled her eyes. Duh.

  “But…” Noa said, foolish poet to the end, “but no one knows for sure….” She couldn’t help it, her heart began to thrum. “And she could do it, it’s what made you think of this in the first place—”

  “Lost my gobbin’ mind—”

  “She could help set the brothers free, save my sister.”

  “Going mad—”

  Noa glared. “Look, I’m not an idiot. I know this is the longest of long shots. But this is my sister, Hilo. I have to try. And I understand you won’t come with me. It’s okay.”

  Hilo rolled her eyes, exasperated. “I’m coming with you.”

  “Why?”

  “Would you believe I want to save your damn life?”

  Noa studied her. “No.”

  Hilo threw up her hands. “Would you believe I really want Judah back, then? And saving you—it would be helping him?”

  Noa bit her lip.

  “I know he loves you,” Hilo added softly. “That’s my gift, remember? They both do. And you—”

  Noa held up her hand. “Stop,” she interrupted. “Please, just … let me figure that part out.”

  Hilo frowned. “Look, if this Seer does exist? You’re gonna need me. Because the only way she could have survived all this time—through all the flushes, the searches, the raids—means she’s somewhere deep.”

  “How deep?”

  “Deeper than anyone’s gone and ever come back alive.”

  “You don’t have to help me,” Noa reminded Hilo again.

  Hilo’s hand shot out, and Noa recoiled, thinking the pixie was going to hit her—but Hilo touched the scar beneath Noa’s collarbone instead. Met her eyes. Resolute.

  “Yes. I do.”

  • • •

  When the brothers saw Kells, Callum stumbled so jarringly he dropped Judah. Not that Judah cared, because whatever else was mixed up in Judah’s brain, he knew Kells was not his father, was not Darius.

  Sprawled on the floor, Judah felt only relief.

  “Hail Otec!” Spider-Eye announced emphatically from the doorway.

  Judah wobbled to his feet, watched as Callum bowed jerkily in confusion to the sneering Fae seated in the Otec’s throne.

  “Hail Otec.”

  Kells’ eyes—the Otec’s eyes which were not Darius’s—traveled to the bracelet around Callum’s wrist. A slow smile gnarled onto his lips.

  Kells turned expectantly to Judah, and Judah had the slow feeling he, too, should have bowed and hailed. But since the bumpy ride up in Callum’s arms—no, since before that even, since the swirling chaos with that prisoner girl, her name, what was it—Judah was acting on impulse only. The sudden, explosive ones like Free the girl! This is Callum! Run from Darius! that broke like shells through this strange and numbing fog.

  Bow, hail the Otec—those ideas just wafted lazily. Judah was far too tired to do any of that. To be frank, he felt like shit.

  There was no way in hell he was bending to the floor.

  Kells glared at Judah. Another shell of remembrance exploded. “You look different, Gatekeeper,” Judah croaked, realizing he knew this man, this Otec who was not Darius. The Kells in Judah’s memory had been the prisoner of Darius, a shriveled, sneering gargoyle forced to guard the Portal in the prison world. That Kells had lived so long without Light he’d withered to a crusty, gnarled husk.

  This Kells was no husk. This Kells, Kells the Otec, was handsome. Youthful. As if he had traveled back in time.

  Handsome Kells turned briefly to Spider-Eye. “The Blue Son is clearly loyal. Find him a suitable post. The Red Son,” Kells said, turning back to Judah with a faint curl to his lip, “remains as ever. But you all have clearly done good work with him, he’s basically decomposing before my eyes,” Kells laughed. “He’s no threat. You may leave us.”

  Spider-Eye led Callum from the room.

  “What the hell, Kells?” Judah asked, cringing as he tried to smirk. Kells was right about him, he realized—his body felt like it was dying. Irritation exploded inside his brain, making his thinking sharper.

  A chair would be nice, you ass, Judah thought internally.

  “Are you really so dense, Red Son? We’re in Aurora. Light is plentiful. Of course my body rejoices.”

  Judah squinted painfully, almost gagged. Partly from the pain, and partly because of what he saw when he looked closer at the ex-Gatekeeper’s body. Kells’ hair was dark and lush, his face unlined, his stature straight—but it all looked weirdly grotesque. As if beneath the pristine skin, something dirty had been buried.

  “Maybe I should be asking what happened to you, Red Son. But I’m guessing it’s that new trinket ’round your wrist.”

  Judah looked down at his wrist and was surprised to see the little chain, entubed in red, clasped there. Like Callum’s. Since when do I wear jewelry?

  “Arik’s been having all the fun experimenting these days,” Kells sighed. “I suppose it’s my fault. My directive after all, to innovate. After I killed your vile father.”

  Sharpness exploded in Judah’s head again. “I saw Thorn kill you and feed you to your Portal.”

  Kells roared with laughter. “That’s your reply! No scorn for your father’s murderer? No anguish? Anger? Tears?”

  Judah clenched his jaw—crap that hurts—as Kells wiped away a mirthful tear. “Well I suppose I did you a favor too, eh? As for Thorn, that Clear brute actually did me a favor. Many favors, truth be told, for someone so unmannered. Not least of which was ‘feeding me to my Portal.’”

  Judah struggled to pay attention. His mind kept wondering about the girl—Noa?—he’d pushed into the chute.

  “My Portal, Judah,” Kells continued emphatically. “I was that Portal’s keeper. It loved me like a caged lion comes to love its captor. Its cage became its universe, and in that universe I was God.”

  “That’s why you weren’t there with us, in the Portal mind-trap thing,” Judah managed, wincing. “The In Between.” Even thinki
ng hurt, but luckily, this section of his memory—the time he had spent together with Noa, yes that was her name—seemed more solid.

  “Of course not. My lion would never devour me.” Another flicker of irritation resurrected Harlow’s gnarled groundskeeper, just for a moment. “How did you escape?”

  “Thought my way out,” Judah smirked, fully worth the pain.

  Kells raked Judah carefully with his eyes. “Lying to me despite the bracelet. You. How very … unexpected.”

  Judah smirked again, this time more sharply. He didn’t know what Kells was talking about with the whole bracelet thing and didn’t really care. He began to flex his fingers, see how far his sharpness could go.

  The answer, he realized, wincing terribly, was not far.

  Kells was muttering on, mostly to himself. “He’s never had skill, maybe the fact that he’s Red too … We’ve seen that with the Smoke sometimes, doesn’t work as well on Greens. Invention is a process, after all—”

  “Invention?” Judah interrupted, ears pricking at the word.

  Kells smiled. “Another of Thorn’s unexpected gifts. He saw it first, that human need to rise, create, empower. To make strength even without magic. Invention.” Pride crept over Kells’ face, like an oily sheen: “I’ve started quite the revolution since I killed your worthless father. I’m getting Fae to think. Experiment. Push past any limits of the gifts.”

  “Wait—” Judah muttered, “those alarms? That … Smoke? And, and Review…” Judah broke off, squeezed his eyes shut; a young pixie’s face had suddenly appeared inside his mind along with the words, the memories rapidly exploding. The girl was tough but young and melting within cold white hands—Judah shook his head, ignored the pain, shoved the face away as far as it would go.

  “All my inventions, inspired by my directive,” Kells said proudly, “and we’re finding new ways to distill Fae magic every day.” His eye fell again on Judah’s bracelet. “Though I must give Callum credit for this latest beauty, kinks though it may have.”

  Judah’s skin prickled. “What do you mean?”

  “Callum’s talisman!” Kells said scornfully. “The one he made for that little mortal wench! Arik has it encased in Red serum. It’s actually quite genius—submerging a piece of the target’s soul in the essence of mind control.”

  Judah looked at his own bracelet with dread. He was forgetting something important, or else hadn’t remembered it yet—then suddenly, like a pile driver, the memory flushed through him with such force it actually knocked him over. He bowed over his knees, slapped his hands to his temples and screamed in agony.

  Kells crowed in delight. “Remember now, do you? Who made yours? Was it Arik?”

  But Judah barely heard him over the roaring in his ears, fire razing his skin. White hands, pale white hands, were touching his chest everywhere; one of them wore a bracelet, encased in red—

  “Callum, no!” Judah wailed, for he was seeing and feeling it again, would always see it and feel it, over and over forever. “Callum!”

  Kells shrieked and clapped his hands. “Callum, of course! A good son to the last!”

  Judah twisted onto his side, began to writhe and seize madly on the floor. Kells could barely breathe for laughing. Finally, as if it were just too much—too much joy or too much justice—Kells took a small green vial from his pocket and crushed it against Judah’s back.

  Judah’s body stopped seizing, and for the first time in since what felt like forever, his body became calm, controlled. His heart stopped its erratic, pulsing fling, and the terrible memory blurred and blurred until he no longer had to see its details. It pulled itself into a nice round bubble, tied at the end, and floated gently out of view.

  Judah sat up slowly, sore and tired but sedated. Bits of glass from the vial tinkled from his back to the ground.

  “My brother … cut my soul…,” Judah murmured, looking at his wrist in awful wonder.

  “What there was left of it, anyway.”

  “What does that mean?” Judah demanded, wincing again. Crap bastard, the physical relief is only temporary.

  “Just that maybe your bracelet not working doesn’t have to do with a defect in the invention. Maybe it’s just a defect in your soul.” Judah tried to growl in indignation but whimpered instead. “Oh come on, Red Son. You’ve never had any loyalty! No sense of duty! You burn things down, you run away, and you make the mess! Always have! Callum’s the one who cleaned it up, who did his duty, who actually desired to be a useful person. No wonder we can’t tap into anything useful inside you!

  “Look at you even now!” Kells pressed. “All this time, conversing with your father’s killer! Not shedding a tear, not asking a single question about what happened! Who knows if there was even any soul in you to cut!”

  Judah growled into a stumbling, clumsy lunge at Kells. Kells stepped easily out of the way, then ripped the bracelet from Judah’s wrist.

  “But I think I’ll take this anyway, just in case,” he hissed over Judah, sprawled again on the floor. “See what my people can do.” With that, he crushed another bottle on Judah’s back, this one muddy-colored.

  Judah’s physical pain vanished—along with any feeling at all below his neck. His mind and face became intensely alert, however, sharp without pain, and even sharper without the bracelet.

  Kells cocked his head. “Interesting.”

  “What did you do!” Judah demanded, feeling, finally, his voice as his own again, even as he could not move any part of his body.

  “A mix of Green and Blue serum, to paralyze the body but not the mind. Blue essence is tricky. Until now we’ve been trying it as Smoke, Blue Smoke; but it tends to … undo the spinal cord.”

  Judah grimaced. “Arik mentioned it.”

  “Unlike you, Arik was quite bereft at Darius’s passing, you know.”

  Judah scowled. “He would be.” He narrowed his eyes at Kells. “You hated Darius just as much as I did. More, even. So why are you trying so hard to be him now? I mean, you’re running his Clear society! Did you forget you’re Green?”

  Kells glared at Judah, voice low. “Darius took everything from me—my love, my freedom, and my Light. So now I will take everything Darius had and more.”

  “Greedy much?” Judah sniped. “You’re back in Aurora and pretty again, you don’t have to go all psycho. You’re healed!”

  “Healed!” Kells’ face contorted. He picked up a sliver of broken vial glass and dug it into his forearm right under Judah’s face. Dark, black sludge began to bleed from the wound. “My body, yes, but not my gift! Because of Darius! He Banished me to that place so long, no amount of Light will ever return my blood to Green!” Kells swung his arm away, disgusted, let the blackness ooze. “I’m not Green! Not anymore! I’m nothing! So I don’t care who’s in what caste or how the vermin squabble! I will have my revenge, I will have everything he wanted! I refuse to be powerless, do you understand?”

  “That’s why you’re inventing ways to distill the gifts—Smoke, serum, relics. Fae magic, without the Fae—”

  “I told you, everything that was his. His Realm, its magic,” Kells said bitterly, “and his family too.” He looked away, muttered something Judah couldn’t hear.

  “Darius never had me, and neither will you,” Judah spat at his back.

  “Oh, little one,” Kells whispered, coming back to kneel at Judah’s paralyzed side, to stroke Judah’s curls. “I don’t need to have you. I have something better, something I found in the Portal. I’m going to unleash it soon, and when I do, I’ll start with you.”

  • • •

  Callum was uncertain, and it was unpleasant. He didn’t like the roiling he felt inside as he followed Spider-Eye down the hall and left his brother (because I now know without a doubt he is my brother, and I can feel it too) with the Otec who was not Darius. The Otec who was like a man from a dream from a long t
ime ago, except in that dream, Callum had been small, just a boy, and the Otec who was not Darius had not been Otec yet, and had been young. He’d been a young man, and with the woman Callum loved, the woman with the long, long hair so black it was almost blue and smelled like nightshades.

  Lorelei.

  The name cut across the roiling, across the uncertainty, the twisty-turvy back-and-forth.

  Lorelei. My mother.

  Callum remembered how he had been only as tall as the new Otec’s waist—the Otec who wasn’t Darius—and the new Otec (who wasn’t Darius) was laughing, but he wasn’t Otec yet. He was Kells. Uncle Kells. Lorelei’s friend.

  Callum remembered like remembering a movie: how Kells and Lorelei had walked hand in hand through the gardens. How Kells had lifted Callum in his strong arms, high into the way-up-sky. How Kells had let Callum touch a budding rose (with my small fingers, and it felt like silk) and then had made the rose so happy its petals burst into bloom, right inside Callum’s hand. How no matter how many times Kells did this trick, how many times the scene replayed, Callum shrieked with surprised laughter, and Lorelei (my mother, my mother Lorelei, with blue-black hair), would laugh at Callum’s laugh, and laugh at Kells’ touch which was rough and leathery (and crispy tan, from so much sun and dirt and making things grow.).

  They started to come back faster, faster and flush, movies on movies and memories on memories: the many afternoons Callum spent with Kells piling higher and higher, but each one bursting green and fresh. Kells’ broad, strong frame bent over his as they dug holes together (their backs in curling Cs), as they planted seeds and pebbles, buttons, little toys. Always four hands: two crisp and rough, two small and soft, digging, digging, nails dirt-deep, tucking secrets into silt. Then Callum’s round face would turn up to find Kells’ eyes (gentle eyes with little sun-lines, kisses my mother called them); Callum would clap his hands and shout Now! Now! until Kells would grin and wink at Lorelei and make those seeds burst up with joy. Little green shoots exploding out to stalks and leaves, and then it was Callum’s turn: to squeeze shut his eyes and dig in his hands and make the buttons and pebbles grow up too, into plants with threads for petals and woven stalks, pollen of bumpy yellow sandstone.