Abduction

by Alan Baxter

  ‘Death is a result of order, because the cost of order is entropy. We have eternity, but we live in the chaos that this much magic causes. You have order, because you have largely driven magic from your realm. Those of you in possession of it live unnaturally long lives, no? But all things there wither and die, some much sooner than others. Most humans and animals have a lifespan that barely registers, pathetic moments between the ticks of the eternal clock. Others among you have discovered some power with what you call the arcane and you live longer. Others are afflicted with various life-extending conditions, or they carry our blood and their lives are longer still.’

  That last was a reference to Kin, Alex realised, and his heart ached for Silhouette. I’ll tell you something of love, you evil bitch.

  The Lady sniffed, turned back to her Lord. ‘But regardless of length, there is entropy and eventually all things die. Why am I telling you this, human?’

  ‘I don’t know, my Lady.’ He suspected it was an elaborate way to set him up for death, but he refused to play her games.

  ‘It’s hard for pathetic creatures like you, however long-lived you might be, to comprehend the time we experience. We entertain ourselves in many ways, but few compare to playing in the land of order. The mortal realm.’ She said the word mortal like it was a despicable disease. ‘My Lord conceived of a plan to give us access to that place all the time. You see, the realms work in mysterious ways and the connections between this realm and yours are fragile and tenuous things. Only for brief moments can we cross over, so very brief, and if we miss our return, we are stuck there for periods too, our powers greatly reduced. It is most frustrating.’

  Alex knew she was talking of the thin days, the solstices and equinoxes and others scattered through the year he couldn’t recall. He kept quiet, let her talk.

  ‘My Lord’s plan was genius and used extensive magic. You see, we needed something over there that was a connection to the true power here. Something living, but not subject to entropy. My Lord devised a way to leave his heart in the mortal realm and that gave us free rein between the worlds.’

  Alex frowned, confused. ‘His actual heart, my Lady?’ How could something live without its heart?

  She smiled sadly as she turned to look at him with pity. ‘Yes. Time, you mayfly. You brief instant. You have no conception of it. He devised a way to lay in repose here while his heart resided in the mortal realm. “Take a while,” he said to me. “Enjoy yourselves over there.” He knew I could return his heart when I missed him too much and chose to revive him. A century, by your standards, or an aeon. No matter. And I could still do that, of course, if I only had his heart.’ The Lady’s amber eyes glowed like fire in the small, dim room as she fixed Alex with her gaze.

  Realisation dawned as he sorted through the bizarre tale she was telling. ‘His heart was the anchor stone,’ he whispered, trembling at the implication.

  The Lady raised her arms above her head, morphed back to her Fey form. Her blood-red dress swirled around her body like thick smoke. ‘You cast my Lord’s heart to the Void, you pathetic creature!’ she screamed and Alex buckled and writhed as pain pulsed through him in never-ending, agonising blasts.

  11

  Silhouette tumbled into Faerie and vomited. The gateway gave out into a mirror replica of the location she had stepped through, only twisted in every way. Weirdly hued light washed the land, strangely bright. Three suns travelled overhead in varying arcs, purple, blue and orange. The grass she landed on was blueish-green, both dark and pale at once, depending on the angle of her eye. It shifted beneath her in a nauseating wave and seemed to be many writhing tentacles of semi-translucent flesh more than blades of vegetation. She vomited again, tried to crawl away from the living turf on shaking hands and knees, but it was everywhere. She squeezed her eyes shut, determined to ignore it while she clawed for some kind of equilibrium. The sickly candy aroma of the Fey permeated the place, thickening in the back of her throat. The magesign present was overwhelming. Magic drenched her senses to a degree she had never imagined possible, threatened to drown her mind. It was all too much and her gut rebelled.

  After what seemed an age of retching uncontrollably, she managed to drag in a breath and scoot back into the cover of heavy, strange-shaped leaves. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve, stared out into the bizarre land as her human nature battled the repulsion of her Fey blood. Distances seemed to flex and warp; faraway hills seemed suddenly near, then far again as she tried to focus. She was among tall and ancient trees, their bark gnarled and deep-wrinkled. The ground beneath the gently squirming grass was dark, almost black like rich potting mix. Her mind began to adjust to the mesmerising depths of ’sign that permeated everything.

  She gathered her own magic and shifted into her panther form, better for camouflage. Her clothing morphed into thick smoke-grey fur and her vision shifted. But something interrupted her transformation, pain stabbed at her right paw. A wave of panic made her heart race as she wondered if this fucked-up place was going to have a detrimental effect on her abilities. The Fey bastard could have warned her about that.

  She shifted back to human form and her finger burned where Kreek’s ring gripped it. She slipped it off and hung it from a heavy silver chain she wore about her neck. The chain had been a gift from Joseph, her Clan Lord. The Kin who had saved her and her human mother when they had been lost and confused. Had taken her in, raised her in Kin ways, kept her as close as a daughter after her mother died all those centuries ago. And she had turned against him for Alex. She wondered if he would ever forgive her for that. She hoped he would. She pressed the thick rope of silver to her lips at the thought of Joseph, then pushed the sentiment away.

  As she hung the chain back around her neck, the ring’s influence settled through her again, its oily malevolence heavy in her mind. At least it worked this way as well as on her finger. She shifted form again and the transition came easily. The chain, restricted from shifting by the ring, sat nestled out of sight in the deep fur of her neck.

  The nature of the realm around her became a little clearer, a little less confounding through her panther eyes. She slunk through undergrowth, moving quickly from the Fey gate in case any other creatures might come by. A sensation in her heart did nothing to dispel the remaining nausea. She felt the darkest parts of herself rising, ebbing through her blood. It was her Fey nature, she knew, the tainted blood that made her what she was. That she always tried to resist. It was the dichotomy of all Kin, to embrace the powers of their kind without truly acknowledging the source. In this place, ignoring her heritage was impossible.

  The fur at her hackles bristled. Someone was watching her. She paused, scanned slowly around. Eventually her gaze rose up into the trees and a large, multi-coloured cat caught her eye. It perched on a branch, hunched tight, its eyes piercing red. Its mouth was split in a horribly wide smile of sharp, interlocking teeth. They stared at each other for several moments. The creature’s rictus grin exuded pure malice and evil. Slowly, it faded from view, all except its beaming teeth, that eventually hung disembodied in the air. With a flash, they winked out. Silhouette stared hard at the spot. Was it still there, invisible, or had it gone? Was it a threat? Was it really some monstrous incarnation of the Cheshire fucking Cat? She could feel no presence up there any more and slunk nervously away.

  With no idea where she was or where she needed to go, she stayed in the shadows of the woods and kept moving. Kreek’s words about being adrift on a massive ocean haunted her and she wondered if her actions were folly. As she moved away from the gate, the sensation of nausea eased, but was replaced by something else. Isolation, loss, loneliness. Without the sickness in her soul, the full impact of the place settled over her. Its strangely undulating ground, its eye-confounding light, the completely alien sounds all around, the utter drenching of magesign, everything conspired to make her feel smaller and more insignificant than she ever had before.

  Her senses spiked at the sudden realisation of silence. The v
arious sounds of birds and other unseen creatures had been disconcerting in their otherness, but not nearly as frightening as the instant lack of sound that suddenly surrounded her. She sank low to the ground, sniffed, scanned, attention piano wire taut.

  ‘What is it?’ a voice said, part wonder, part amusement.

  ‘Not of this place,’ another said.

  Silhouette lifted her gaze to the branches interlocking above her head to meet half a dozen pairs of eyes looking back at her. The creatures were crouched on the branches like fat owls a metre or more tall, but their feathered bodies, in varying shades of red, brown, umber, were incongruous with their ape-like heads. She growled deep in her chest, a bass rumble of warning.

  Laughter rippled around the group as others emerged from the foliage. ‘From the mortal realm?’ one said.

  Another clapped its wings against its sides then reached out from beneath those wings with long, sinuous arms. ‘I think so!’ It dropped from the tree, reaching for her.

  Its brethren dropped with it and Silhouette leapt to one side and bolted through the trees before they could land on her. Hoots and shouts burst out behind as they flapped and ran and crashed through the wood.

  She ducked left and right through the trees. Brilliant. Only been here five minutes and I’m going to get eaten by a pack of giant fucking monkey birds!

  She skidded to a halt as two dropped in front of her. Realising the others were coming in from behind and having no idea where or how many they might be, Silhouette roared and leapt forward. Time to take the fight to them. She struck out with one mighty paw, long, hard, sharp claws extended and caught it by surprise. It tumbled to the ground, screaming as it pawed at the rent flesh of its face. Not waiting for a reprieve, Silhouette kicked back with her hind legs, catching the second creature in the midsection, driving it back. She dropped forward onto the fallen one and tore out its throat in one swift and savage bite. Branches snapped as others dropped through the trees all around her.

  The next few moments were a blur of rage and fright, feathers and blood. Screams from the creatures were disturbingly piercing, almost like the femme fatales of old movies, contrived and impossibly high-pitched. They fought back for a moment, but Silhouette’s ferocity knew no limits. Her frustrations and fears from losing Alex boiled over and she let her fury out, set it to work on rending these creatures to pieces.

  With five dead around her and a sixth spasming limply against a tree, the others crashed and howled away. Shouts for mercy and promises of revenge retreated with them. Silhouette stood, head low, panting for breath as the adrenaline of the fight ebbed. The black Fey part of her rejoiced inside, begged to be released.

  Silhouette realised she could fit in more with this place if she did let it rise, even slightly. She remembered Kreek’s words about accepting the influence of the ring and her own nature. She raised her head, looked around. She had run to the edge of the woods and faced down into a valley. At the head of the valley a township of some sort nestled, buildings scattered as if they had been shaken like dice and tossed across the valley floor time and again, piled atop one another. Dark wood walls and black slate roofs, cobbled streets and all manner of beasts and creatures. Parodies of cattle and horses stood around or pulled wagons. Sounds drifted up to her, hisses, wheezes and clanks. Smoke rose from chimneys and some wagons rolled without creatures pulling them, strange engines pulsing magesign at their rear. She could feel the massive magic of the place even from so far away, powering everything like buzzing arcane batteries among the machines and livestock. And among them all stalked the tall, spindly creatures she recognised as the Fey. Like Kreek, their woody sinuousness moved jerkily everywhere she looked. Tiny in the distance, they were nonetheless clearly all as tall if not taller than Kreek had been.

  Silhouette looked down at her grey paws. With a sound of resignation, she slunk back into the trees, away from the corpses of the ape-birds, away from the pathetic mewling of the one taking altogether too fucking long to die, and into deep shadow. She sat back and shifted into her human form.

  Shapeshifting was a rite of passage for all Kin. Finding your shape was a moment to be savoured. Almost all found some form of predatory mammal — big cats, wolves, bears. Kin believed their true nature existed within their totem form, within their animal nature. Many chose to live without shifting often, or only partly shifting to enhance their monstrousness, half human, half beast. Others chose to affect lifestyles like the horror stories of humans, vampires or werewolves. Although recent experience told Silhouette that she still had a lot to learn on those scores.

  Regardless, older Kin practised other forms. Shifting to the totem shape came relatively easily and became second nature with practice. Forcing another form took far more energy, practice, dedication. She remembered the Council of Obsidian, the medusa-like serpent of one, the rickety shape of another that she now recognised as having a heavy Fey influence. She wondered how long it had taken them to perfect those horrific arrangements. For most Kin, their totem appearance was enough.

  But she realised now what Kreek had meant about accepting her Fey nature. The horrible creatures that had attacked her had recognised her as different. If she wanted to have any chance of moving freely through Faerie, she needed to move unnoticed.

  She fingered the ring at her throat, twisted it back and forth on the silver chain. She let its Fey influence soak in more deeply, gave in to its cajoling. At the same time, she relaxed her grip on the oily, dark presence deep inside herself, her Fey heritage.

  She recalled the conversation with Kreek. Navigating the Other Lands is next to impossible for non-Fey, he had said. You, as a first gen, might have an easier time, but you will have to indulge the Fey half of yourself. Let it out.

  I don’t even know what you mean by that, she had told him.

  You will when you get there.

  In this place, with the power of this amulet, as a first gen, she knew it would be easy.

  This is what he had meant. Kin-born folk would not have a strong enough Fey influence in their being to shift the way she needed to, but she was half human and half Fey. Equal parts. In the mortal realm, her human half took precedence in form, her Fey nature made her Kin and her totem was the grey panther. In this twisted realm, it was reversed. Her Fey half was strongest and she had to let it out.

  She brought to bear everything she knew about shifting. Slowly, so very carefully, she let a Fey form leak out of her being. Hanging on tightly to her mind, to her human thoughts, her Kin identity, she let her limbs elongate, her skin darken to the swampy green-black she had seen on Kreek. Like trying to hold a weight from rolling downhill, once she began to loosen her grip, momentum took over and the transformation was swift and complete. She cried out, in despair as much as pain, as her body shifted into a shape it had never known before. With it came that slick malevolence, the evil need to corrupt and disturb that was the driving force of the Fey.

  She bit it down and rose unsteadily. She felt stretched and fragile, but as she began to walk, strength and confidence came into her movements. She looked down and realised there were no features to the body, no breasts. Her genitals were an almost invisible simple split at her crotch. Thinking back to Crabapple’s office and her first encounter with Kreek, she remembered his unmistakable masculinity, the brief flash of his hanging penis to prove it. Was that all there was? Did the lack of breasts signify they were nothing like mammals? But they raped humans and interbred, created Kin. Did they need to emulate human form to do that? There was more magic than biology at work there, she knew. Like evil fucking tree people or something. A smile tugged at her thin, lipless mouth. This form felt powerful and good, but she refused to give in to that lascivious self-pride. She needed to remember who she truly was.

  And a part of her, a part she tried desperately to ignore, suggested that maybe, just maybe, this was her true self.

  Darvill ground his teeth as he drove the hire car along the southern freeway out of Sydney. That bitch,
she had such potential.

  ‘Let it go,’ Hood said, staring out the window at the Royal National Park whipping by. The Pacific Ocean was a broad, seemingly endless expanse beyond it.

  ‘Let it go? Dad, the bitch ducked and ran. Literally ran away from us. I trusted her.’

  Hood grunted. ‘Proof you can’t trust anyone but family.’

  Darvill nodded, accepting the truth of that. He cast a sidelong glance at his father. At the thing his father had become. Was he still family? The trip to the airport had resulted in two more killings by his father’s bare hands, but fortunately the clean-up guy from the hotel was still with them and had gone straight to work. That had proven to be good forward planning on Claude’s part. Then the long flight to Sydney aboard the private jet had been eventful. Darvill had managed to talk his father down from killing the pilot, though that had been touch and go for a while. Then Chang had fallen firmly in Hood’s sights, and it had taken considerable effort to protect her. Then the cow just fucked off the moment they got to Sydney. Ran away into the crowd, taking her small bag and who knows how much Black Diamond money and tech with her.

  ‘We’ll track her down after we take care of business here,’ Hood said, still staring out the side window. ‘You should have let me fuck her up on the plane like I wanted to.’

  ‘Yes, I should have. Now I want to finish her myself. You might have to let me take that one, okay?’

  Hood barked a laugh. ‘I approve of the sentiment, but no promises.’

  They drove in silence for a while. The one advantage of the long flight, after Hood had been convinced not to kill Chang or the pilot, was that he had subsequently sat in some kind of forced meditation for hours. Darvill had persuaded him of the need to try to control whatever urges were owning him and Hood had seen the sense of that. It seemed he had been, to some extent, successful. The man was almost recognisable as Darvill’s father once more. Almost.