by Liz Braswell
“How’d you know it was me?” Amy asked, running her hands back over her hair, trying to do something with it and failing.
“Your smell,” Kim answered primly.
“Yeah?” Amy wrinkled her nose, also sniffing. “Speaking of, it definitely smells a lot like cat here. …”
Kim looked startled and slightly mortified.
“So this is the Cat Cave, huh? The secret hideout?” Amy looked around eagerly.
“I’ll give you the tour later,” Chloe promised.
“What happened?” Kim asked.
“I found Brian left half dead on the street. I think the Tenth Blade probably thought they finished him off, or maybe some people came by and interrupted their ’business….’”
“And you brought him here.” It was a statement, a wry question, an accusation, all in one.
“What else was I supposed to do?” Chloe demanded. “I know it’s weird and I’m sorry—I could promise it will never happen again, but I don’t think I can promise anything anymore. I’ll make it up somehow. …” She sat on the couch, head in her hands. “No one really seemed to mind that much,” she added, to the floor.
“That is because you are the One, Chloe,” Kim said gently, sinking gracefully onto the couch next to her. Amy took a plush chair across from them. “They would die for you if you commanded it.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Chloe muttered.
“It’s the truth. I know this is hard, but you are our spiritual leader. You always have been. It’s not so much your destiny as your birthright.”
“But some of these people are too young to have ever even had a … uh, the One before! Why should they just suddenly accept me as their new leader?”
“Chloe, the One is not an inherited position, like a king or certain Republican presidents,” Kim said with the faintest smile and Chloe got her joke. “Just because someone is Kemnet’r doesn’t mean that his or her child will be. The One must be different: not only pure of heart, strong, determined, and willing to do good, but chosen and blessed by the Twin Goddesses with the abilities to make things so. Nine lives, to lead her people to battle again and again if need be. Connection with the past, previous Chosen Ones. Connection with the present, her Pride, in a way that is beyond metaphysical.”
Chloe looked at her.
“I don’t know about the last two.” Then she remembered a presence at death, a feeling of her mother being there. Comforting like a powerful protector, powerful as anything that could defeat death. “Okay, just the last one.”
“You stopped a battle between your Pride and the Tenth Blade single-handedly,” Amy pointed out.
“I died, remember? That’s what put the kibosh on things.”
“Even so,” Kim said, nodding.
Chloe sat back, feeling somehow defeated in the face of the eternally calm—and serene—girl next to her. “You don’t worship me, though, right?” she said in a small voice. “You’re, like, my only real friend here.”
Kim cocked her head, thinking about it for a moment. “I … revere the position of the One and her sacred duties,” she said slowly. “And no leader is ever perfect, even ones gifted with the divine. You, like every Kemnet’r before you—you could definitely use an adviser.”
“Hey,” Chloe said, annoyed but amused. “I said friend, not adviser.”
Kim turned her paws up, shrugging, but there was a wry smile on her lips. “I think you may find you need both in the upcoming days.”
“I’ll be the friend,” Amy said diplomatically. “You can be the adviser.”
“I never said I was going to take this on,” Chloe pointed out. “I’m from a culture of choices, you know. Not destinies.”
“As the old man said in that movie you took me to, ’You must of course do what you think is right,’” Kim said, referring to the night they had all gone to see Star Wars. “But whatever choice you make as the One, it can only be right.”
“No pressure, though,” Chloe muttered sarcastically. First Amy offered to be Jet Girl to her Tank; now Kim wanted to be Obi-Wan to her Luke. It was kind of bizarre.
The door to the emergency room opened and the doctor came out with her hands shoved deep in her pockets, just like on TV. She even bowed that way. Even though being bowed to all the time was weird, it was pretty good for the ego. Like the cute waiters at a Japanese restaurant. Of course, I’ll have to put a stop to it.
“Okay, your friend is pretty badly banged up. Not only has he lost a lot of blood, but there’s an injury to the back of his head that looks serious. His right arm is broken, five of his ribs are cracked, his left leg is broken, and some of his toes have been crushed.”
She waited a moment, a questioning look in her eye. Chloe didn’t say anything, unsure what she wanted.
“Can I ask…?” the doctor finally prompted.
“He sort of quit the Tenth Blade, something I guess you just don’t do. And he did it when we were all duking it out at the Presidio, trying to save me and my mom from the Bladers when he should have been fighting with them. So they made him number one on their hit list. Even though he’s like Order of the Tenth Blade royalty or something,” she added.
“That’s Brian Rezza? Son of Whitney, the head of the Order?” The doctor gave a low whistle. “And his own people did this to him?”
“They are obviously not his people anymore,” Kim said dryly.
“And they call us feral.” She sighed. “I’m going to be honest with you: I don’t know the extent of the damage to the head yet and if he does recover, it’s going to be a long, painful process. You don’t know his blood type, do you? Regardless, someone will need to get a couple of quarts of it.”
As hard as she tried to stop it, Chloe’s eyes filled with tears. Real leaders don’t cry so easy. Just more proof of her point.
“I’ll fix what I can here, but if you don’t want to take him to a real hospital, a lot of his healing is going to depend on his own body.” She ran a hand, claws now safely sheathed, through her shoulder-length brown hair. “We’ve never been introduced, I don’t think. I’m Doctor Calie Lovsky.” She put out her hand and Chloe extended hers, thinking that they were going to do that special “secret” Mai handshake Igor had taught her: slight extension of the claws to graze the other’s palm. Instead, like Ellen, she took the back of Chloe’s hand and put it on her forehead. Unlike Ellen, she didn’t bow.
“Is, uh, everyone going to keep doing this?” Chloe asked, turning to Kim.
“The kizekh will. For everyone else, it’s only the first time they are formally introduced to you.”
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Dr. Lovsky said, putting her hands back in her pockets. “We really need you.”
Her easy switch from doctor to worshipful servant gave Chloe emotional whiplash. The woman was older than she, waaaay better educated, and a doctor besides. What the hell is she doing looking up to me?
“Can I go see him?” she finally asked.
“Yeah, but as the old platitude goes, don’t stay too long; he needs his rest.”
Chloe started to walk past her into the room, then stopped. “I’m—I’m really sorry about bringing a human here.”
“Whatever the One wills,” the doctor said, shrugging.
They had moved Brian to a bed and replaced his clothes with a simple cotton hospital tunic. He had also been bathed; most of the dried and sticky blood was gone. As were two of his teeth, Chloe noted with a shiver of horror. Like someone had kicked him in the mouth when he was down. There was a white bandage around his head and another around his chest. A clean white sheet was pulled up to his neck.
“Hey,” Chloe said softly. “How you doing?”
A disturbing gurgle came from the back of Brian’s throat. He coughed a couple of times, trying to clear the blood out, but then winced because of the pain in his chest. His crusted eyes flicked halfway open. When he saw her, he smiled. Chloe touched his cheek.
“You’re going to be all right,” she whisper
ed.
Brian tried to say something, but it came out like the dry rattle of an old man. She leaned closer to listen.
Using all his remaining strength, Brian pushed himself up another inch.
And kissed her.
He held it as long as he could before he fell back to the bed again, passing out.
Chloe froze, refusing to believe what just happened.
He had kissed her.
It was a death sentence for a human. Man and Mai had not been able to love each other since the war between them first began, thousands of years ago.
Chloe knew it all too well: she had accidentally killed or almost killed—she still didn’t know—a guy she hooked up with at a club before she knew any of this. The last time she had seen Xavier, he was covered in sores and his face was swollen beyond recognition. She had called 911 and fled.
And now, because Brian was convinced he was going to die anyway, he didn’t think it would matter.
Six
Chloe managed to sneak back in to her house just as the clock turned five thirty. Great, a whole two hours of sleep. She stripped down and fell into a deep slumber almost before she hit the pillow.
She was barely awake two hours later when she came stumbling downstairs. There was her mom, with doughnuts and coffee for breakfast. She dumped them onto the table, attaché case still slung over her shoulder, and beamed at Chloe.
“They had that chocolate kreme-with-a-k you like so much this morning …,” Anna started. “Wait, you look terrible. What happened?”
“Thanks,” Chloe grumbled. That was the humorous part; now came the difficult one. Would she start the whole avalanche of lies all over again? I’m just really stressed out about my makeup trig exam tomorrow. I could barely sleep. Two sentences, fourteen—no, fifteen words, and her mom would let the whole thing drop. And if she told the truth? Hey, Mom, my human boy, uh, friend, well, I found him half dead on the street last night when I was prowling around at 2 a.m., so I took him to the people who sort of held me captive for several weeks.
She and her mom looked each other in the eye, and each paused too long.
“Well, some coffee will make you feel better,” her mom finally said, turning her head quickly away.
Chloe came the rest of the way down the stairs, feeling both infinitely relieved and extremely disturbed. Uncomfortable. You’re not supposed to feel uncomfortable with your mom. That was for best friends you betrayed with gossip, guys who said they didn’t like you back that way, and guidance counselors who were pretty sure you had weed in your locker. You could be mad at her … but uncomfortable? It just didn’t seem right.
“Thanks,” Chloe said, stuffing her mouth with as much of the doughnut as she could cram in, like she did when she was little. “Hey, shpeaking of…” It was hard to form the words around the delicious, thick, totally fake nondairy kreme. “Could you help me study tonight? I want to run some practice proofs.”
Chloe meant it as a sort of peace offering to her mom, and it turned out to be exactly the thing to say: Mrs. King smiled, almost as broadly as she had before and tucked a stray wisp of her hair behind her ear. “Absolutely! We’ll get Chinese and make a girls’ night out of it.”
“Girls’ night with trig,” Chloe said flatly, raising an eyebrow. Uh-oh, I’m beginning to sound like Kim.
Her mom leaned over and kissed her on top of her head.
“Girls’ night with trig. Gotta run, don’t forget to—”
“Lock up, yeah, yeah. Got it.”
Chloe watched as her mom grabbed her purse and her glasses and whirlwinded out the door, a dust devil of Ferragamos and Anne Klein. Then she looked down at the rest of her doughnut and sighed.
At school Chloe walked in a daze through the halls, watching the early-morning bustle of students making what use they could of the few free minutes before the day began. The National Honor Society kids were putting up posters about some volunteer thing or other they wanted to get people involved in. The geeks were in a huddle, avidly discussing last night’s episode of Stargate. The cheerleaders were trying to sell Halloween candygrams to everyone who passed. For a dollar you could send a piece of candy with a note to anyone in the school and have it delivered to his or her homeroom on Halloween morning. In middle school, they had been cheap hard suckers. Now they were little wrapped Godivas.
Every year on Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween, and Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Diwali, Amy and Chloe had sent each other mysterious notes from “secret admirers,” with the sitcom philosophy that boys would see how many candygrams they each got and assume that Amy and Chloe were popular and desirable. Never worked, of course. Not that Amy had even needed them the last few years. I wonder if she’s going to be sending one to Paul?
“Candygram?” a television-perfect little cheerleader suggested in a peppy voice. Her body was tiny and she wore the home-game uniform, complete with tiny red-and-white skirt. She stood on her toes a little, bouncing.
But Chloe couldn’t even work up the energy to hate her; she just shook her head and pushed on. In the open area in the middle of the X where the math-science and English-history wings crossed, students were standing on chairs, hanging up autumn-leaf-colored bunting around a giant—and surprisingly tasteful—poster that read Something Wicked This Way Comes—Get your tickets to the fall formal at lunch! $601/couple, $35/single.
“What do you think?” Alyec asked, swooping in behind her and kissing Chloe on the cheek.
“I think they’re sticking it to people who can’t get a date again,” Chloe said, hooking her thumbs in her backpack straps.
“Yeah, well, who can’t get a date?”
“People who aren’t foreign, sexy, and dropdead gorgeous,” she said, kissing him back on the cheek. It was strange: normally they would kiss on the lips if there weren’t any of the more monastic teachers or hall monitors about. But right now it just didn’t seem right.
Especially after what happened last night. As soon as she had gotten to school, Chloe had called to find out about Brian, but the doctor said he was in the same state, possibly doing a little better than before. No other, “new” symptoms, even when Chloe questioned her carefully. She had to resist calling back every five minutes for an update to make sure the kiss they’d shared wasn’t killing him.
“Well, we can’t all be lucky.” He put his arm around Chloe’s shoulders and turned so they could both admire the poster. “I put Hannah Ellington in charge of signage and programs.”
“You put? I thought you were just on the music committee.”
“They all needed some … help.” It appeared that Alyec was using his powers for good, though: already the event looked like it was going to be better than last year’s, less like a stupid highschool dance and more like a college, well, formal.
“Did you hear what happened last night?” Chloe asked as they turned and began walking to history. Alyec shook his head. She told him, omitting the part about Brian kissing her. “… and if that isn’t bad enough, I’m having a real hard time wrapping my head around this whole ’being the One’ thing. You’re supposed to bow to me, you know,” she added, elbowing him in the stomach.
“I think the Chosen One’s chosen one gets a break,” he said, shrugging.
“But you’ll still worship me, right?”
“Haven’t I always?” He ran his hand back through her hair—like she had done to Brian the night before—and smiled fondly at her. It was a rare moment for him: there was no lust or teasing—just fondness.
They walked together to American civ, passing one of the few windows in the hall, which looked out on the strip of dying grass and fence that separated the school from the rest of the world.
Something wasn’t quite right. Chloe turned back to look again, but all she saw was what might have been the remains of a footprint in the grass, quickly disappearing as the tough, yellowed stalks sprang back up.
“Hey—did you just see something?” she asked, pulling at Alyec’s sleeve an
d pointing outside.
He frowned. “No—why?”
“I don’t know, I just …” She shrugged. “I’ve been getting super creeped out recently. I keep thinking I see someone or someone’s following me.”
“Nerves. You know what’ll fix that?”
“Sex. Yes, I know,” Chloe said, laughing.
They sat down at desks next to each other. When they had started dating, he had moved to sit closer to her—a rare thing so late in the term. Chloe was just thinking she might get through the day normally, without having to deal with anything really Mai related, when her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number.
“Hello?” she answered it.
“Chloe? It’s Sergei.”
Chloe’s heart sank, her stomach quickly following. Here was another very loose thread from the night of the fight. Yes, Sergei had taken her in and treated her like a daughter, acting like the father she never had, but he might also have sent assassins to kill her mom and cut off Chloe from all human contact. And while she was beginning to find that people were a little more complicated than she ever realized before, she still had no desire or ability to deal with the mess that was her relationship with Sergei. Chloe had gotten along recently by forcing herself not to think about the Pride Leader.
“Sergei,” she said, feeling her belly twist into ulcerous knots. Alyec raised his eyebrows, listening in.
“You sound well, Chloe.”
“I am, thanks. More or less.”
“I see you brought us a little visitor last night. …” Here it comes. Ms. Barker was erasing the board in preparation for class and shooting nasty looks at everyone who was talking on cell phones. Leader of an ancient race of lion people aside, Chloe didn’t want to be one of those obnoxious jerks who put a hand up for the teacher to “wait a minute” while finishing a call. She was in enough academic trouble as it was.
“… I think you and I, and maybe Olga, should get together and have a little chat about things.”
“Yeah, uh, sure.” She tried to sound upbeat and lighthearted, like that was a great idea.
“When you come to visit your friend today, then?” It wasn’t really a question.