The One We Feed

by Kristina Meister

  But I had no idea how. The only way I could think of was to remove the ability to fixate, but I had not the slightest clue how to do that either, and it wasn’t just that. All she had was her gift. It was all that kept her sheltered by the Sangha. How much would she suffer to be cast out, into a dangerous world, with nowhere to turn and no means of defense? If I did that to her, she would hate me, no matter how much better her life might become. I wanted to help her, but there was nothing I could do.

  I told him so with my eyes.

  “Let go,” he said gently. “You’re clinging. Some things just happen.”

  I looked at the girl-creature in my arms and was surprised to find that I was rocking her back and forth, easing her with the soothing touch Ananda had taught me. Her tiny fist lay balled against my chest. Her crazed expression had completely dissolved. She seemed perfectly lovely then, if tired to her core.

  “I can’t, Jinx.” I looked up at him, my heart conflicted. “Even if I knew how, I couldn’t.”

  His eyes narrowed. He was not glaring at me so much as examining me with an immortal’s perfect sight. I thought at first that he might give in. He got to his feet, put his hands in his pockets thoughtfully, then shook his head.

  “You’re not seeing it clearly, Lily.”

  Before I could even speak, he lunged forward. It was the first time I had ever seen him move so quickly. I tried to jump up, thinking he had heard something down the hall, but I was caught unaware by the flash of cold metal from his hand. I felt the impact in my right shoulder, where Petula’s hand rested so plaintively. She let out a cry of pain and lurched, but the knife was buried in my collarbone, pinning her to me.

  I tumbled backward, up and out of the chair, hitting the wall with a bloody thud, still holding the girl. She was screaming, tugging fiercely on the knife embedded in her palm. I caught her hand, shushing her, and squeezed her close, protectively. Behind her, Jinx stood against the door, watching me as if he expected me to pounce on him and tear him limb from limb. He was tense, breathing heavily, but all the same trying to explain in a gaze that he had not been trying to hurt me.

  It was not a mortal wound, and I could see that he knew it would not seriously hurt either of us. I was ninety percent sure he had a reason, but just for good measure I scowled at him, the girl writhing against me.

  “Hold still, Petula,” I whispered. “I’ll take it out.” My wound had already begun to heal, pressing the blade of his folding knife outward. I locked eyes with her and stared down her rage and fear. “I’m sorry. I won’t let him hurt you anymore. See, he’s way over there, and I have the knife.”

  The blade wiggled. She whimpered and twisted closer to me. With a sticky, red hand I covered her eyes and turned her face away from her attacker.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I growled at him. “Have you lost your mind?”

  He stood up straight and winked. “Desperate times,” he said simply, in a monotone that set my teeth on edge.

  “Why don’t you just come over here and cut out our tongues while you’re at it? What the hell are you trying to prove?” As my tissues knitted together, I grimaced at him and, as soon as I was able, pulled the knife from the back of her tiny hand. She cried out again, and fresh blood oozed from between exposed bone. I covered it with my fingers.

  “It’s all right, Petula, it will heal soon.” And it did, but as the last flaps of skin began to close, sealing blood and bone inside, her entire body jerked so hard that she pulled herself out of my embrace. I reached for her, but she was on her feet. With a loud wail, she threw her fists up to her eyes. Blindly, she spun in a circle as if in agony and, without warning, ran full speed into the wall.

  “Oh my god!” I gasped and jumped toward her. She lay on the ground, unconscious, blood spreading over her face from her broken nose. I lifted her head and put a stuffed animal beneath it, then turned on Jinx like a lioness. “I sure hope that wasn’t what you meant to have happen!”

  He looked from me to her and back again, obviously surprised. “No…. I…,” but before he could answer, I heard the elevator ping and the metal doors clang.

  “They’re back!” Without another word, I closed my eyes and sought that calm, cool center of my being. If they found us, they would only find him, the person they’d been looking for all along. It was a sound, strategic decision, I reasoned, but deep down, I knew I was punishing him.

  Petula stirred as the heavy footfalls of half a dozen men clattered down the hall at a dead run. The hazy fog of her aura was a dismal black.

  “You see?” she said distantly, her eyes closed. “There is never enough time.”

  Jinx spared one disturbed look at her before he set his teeth and picked up the pocket knife from the slick bloodstain on the table. Some part of me knew I should have been wringing his neck for an answer, but, thankfully, the rest of me knew it would do no good.

  “I’m going out first,” he said to the air. “Follow me.” He backed against the wall beside the door and peered through the crack. “I shouldn’t have cut the lines. They knew as soon as they couldn’t get hold of the others that it was a diversion. Some fucking ninja I turned out to be. Splinter would piss himself.”

  They ran past our hiding place, tiny flashes of black, and on to the control room. I could hear the one who had accepted the package of tongues shouting at the two who had stayed behind, demanding to know why they hadn’t been in communication. If Jinx ran now, he might just make it.

  I leaned forward and whispered in his ear. “It’s safe outside.”

  His eyes glazed over, and he gave a shallow nod. Without saying anything, without a single glance at the bloody girl lying on the floor, he slipped through the door and into the hall. I turned to face the others. All but one were crowded into the room.

  “Have you checked on Petula?” the apparent leader demanded.

  “No, but we didn’t know…,” another began, but it was too late. They were already on their way back out again. They turned and looked right through me to the boy at the elevator. I spun. Jinx was standing at the keypad, cussing up a storm as he tried to remember which buttons I had pushed.

  They tore down the hall towards him. I smiled, drunk on the high of imperviousness and passivity, intrigued by their urgency to get to him. I put myself squarely in their way and laughed. The first man crashed into me and staggered backward like a domino, black and white and sprawling. I danced back to the elevator, giggling like an invisible woman should, and tapped the proper code on the buttons.

  I assumed the elevator would be waiting there, but it seemed that someone else had summoned it to the top floor and, like most ancient elevators, it decided to take its sweet time. Jinx turned to face them, knife in hand, but as they got to their feet, I realized it would not be a fair fight. The domino, being braced by the men helping him up, reached into his holster and pulled out a shiny black gun.

  Something clicked. The halos of color instantly fizzled out. The fury I had felt earlier that day clouded my judgment but somehow sharpened every move I made. Like a mother bear, I charged and jammed the man’s wrist into the air as he fired.

  The muzzle flare burned my hand, but the sensation was so distant from my consciousness that it might as well have happened to someone else. I stepped forward and with all my considerable strength bent his arm back on itself the wrong way. There was a crack, like celery being twisted. The man screamed and tumbled backward. The others tried to draw on me, too, but I was not a scared woman any more. I was a raging inferno.

  I grabbed one man’s face and brought it down onto my knee. I felt his skull crack. Blood slicked my leg. A second gunshot rang through the hall and deafened my right ear for a moment. Incensed, I swung around and hit the man across the face so hard his jaw broke, hanging at a sickening angle. A third man staggered away, his right forearm a bloody pulp. Then I heard the ding and a strangled cry.

  “Come on!”

  I turned. The elevator was open. Jinx was leaning agains
t the button panel, his finger pressing the “door close” button. I sprang forward. A third gunshot echoed around me as I slammed into the back of the elevator. The doors closed on their carnage and the Muzak wafted by.

  “I...hate...this fucking song,” Jinx gasped. “Where is…Ipanema...anyway?”

  I reached out for him; something in his voice sounded wrong. He didn’t resist me as I peeled him from the panel and turned him. A dark red stain was growing across his midsection, until the whole front of his stomach and pelvis were crimson. I looked him in the eye, certain it had to be a mortal wound.

  “Jesus, Jinx! Keep pressure on it!”

  “Don’t worry…,” he coughed. “Just keep going.”

  The elevator slid into place and the doors opened. I took hold of his arm and pulled him over my shoulder. Contestants in the three legged race from hell, we hobbled toward the front door, until the ding called me to my senses.

  “Lily, the elevator!”

  I took only a half-second to prop him against the glass of the window, then spun around and raced back to the doors. The arrow on top indicated that the elevator was going up, but up from where? With a glance at my bleeding friend, I planted my left foot and kicked the two doors as hard as I could with the right. The metal dented nicely, but not enough. Two more good, solid, preternatural kicks, and it folding like a paper crane. The emergency light flashed, and an alarm sounded in the metal cage trapped in the shaft just beyond. The doors tried to open but ground in their tracks. Satisfied that our pursuers would not be leaving it anytime soon, I turned my attention back to the boy.

  “Totally against building codes anyway.”

  “Where’s a clipboard jockey…when you need one, eh?” He sagged against the window, breathing shallowly, his face waxen. When I again shouldered his weight, he felt limp against me. “Sorry I...stabbed you, Lily,” he coughed. “I….”

  “Don’t worry about it, Jinx.” I carried him around the tailgate of the truck, threw open his door, and shoved him inside as hastily as I could. He sank into the seat with a moan and gripped his stomach. Desperately I pressed my hands over his. My eyes caught sight of the glove compartment.

  Did he?

  I popped it open. Stuffed inside was a shiny metal bag. The label read “U.S. Army Issue Celox Coagulant Pack.” The sense of things predetermined clotted in my chest.

  “Today officially sucks,” I whispered.

  Chapter 5

  The Revolutionary

  We sat in silence while the neon sign blinked obstinately, insisting that the best hamburgers in the north could be found there. Based on the fact that ours was one of three cars in the parking lot and that there were a waitress and presumably a cook inside, I felt as if I knew why the sign was so large. Seagulls pecked at the ground near an overflowing dumpster. Pothole puddles were being used as bathing tureens. The moisture in the air stuck to everything, forming a thick cloud across the windshield, made worse by his labored breathing.

  I looked at him; the coagulant powder had turned his blood into a disgusting sanguine jello, but his bleeding had stopped, and that was the important thing. I began to reach for him several times but stopped myself. As Arthur had said, the boy was not a boy. He was, in fact, my senior by many years. I was acutely aware of these facts, but I couldn’t help it. Mortality was still a loud clanging in my mind, tolling for someone, if not for me.

  “Are you okay?” I whispered.

  He leaned back, clutching the damp spot. “Fuck no!” he growled, his pain and anger sounding slightly more Gallic than usual. “Why do people always ask that? I just got shot, for Christ’s sake!”

  I swallowed, my hands glued to the steering wheel. The last twenty-four hours had contained so much, but none of it mattered just then. “What do you need?”

  He pointed at the over-compensatory sign. “Mon Dieu, I know it’s bullshit, but that sounds delicious!”

  The laugh that tumbled out surprised even me, but soon I was getting out of the car and helping him to the door of the diner. Inside, the young waitress gave us a wide-eyed grimace, her hoop earrings swinging.

  “Oh my god,” she said, with absolutely no emotion in her voice.

  Jinx managed to stand erect. “It ain’t mine.”

  “Oh,” she said, and grabbed two menus. “Table by the window okay?”

  I snorted, but in a moment we were sitting beside a bottle of ketchup that looked like it had never been washed, two forks rolled up in thin napkins, and a sticky, laminated fountain-drink menu. Glancing around, I realized why they weren’t worried about the potential biohazard sitting across from me. I tried not to touch anything, and, as she walked away, leaned forward.

  “You’re not dying, are you?”

  “Screw you!” He sent me a wry look. “It’s not the first time I’ve been shot in the gut.”

  I leaned back. The more irascible he sounded, the better I felt. “Right...okay.”

  She came back with two glasses of water. “What can I get you to drink?”

  “I’d like a plate of lemons for my water, if that’s okay,” I began, and when she looked at me as if I’d committed a venal sin, I rounded out the order with, “and a cup of your strongest caffeinated beverage for the kid.”

  Jinx shifted uncomfortably and slapped a bloody hand on the dirty table. “No, no fucking metabolic boosters. I’m werewolf, fucking hungry! I need meat—the biggest, thickest, bloodiest steak-ground thing you make, A-sap. I’m talking still mooing. Hell, just bring the fucking cow out, and I’ll gnaw a piece off it.”

  Her eyes sought mine for a translation. I glanced at the menu and tried to smile, as if it was all an inconvenient joke from someone who just didn’t get it. “Bring the coffee anyway, and the largest, rarest steak you make, please.”

  “Soup or salad?”

  “You have either?” I replied, stunned.

  Her head tilted upward snootily, as if it should be obvious that the fog wasn’t strong enough to keep all culture out. “Yeah. Which one?”

  I glanced at the boy. His eyes were so narrowed that I thought he might have developed laser vision. It was clear that he did not want to waste energy on words.

  “What kind of soup?”

  “Chicken.”

  Meat. Perfect. “Soup.”

  She scribbled. “Vegetable or beans?”

  “Um.” I waved at the air. Beans had protein. “Beans.”

  “You want toast or biscuit?”

  “Look, woman, I don’t fucking care what kind of carbohydrate you put on the stupid plate!” Jinx roared. “We both know it’s just a butter-delivery device so just get me the fucking steak!”

  “Jinx,” I hissed. I glanced at her; her mouth had fallen open. “I’m sorry,” I lied. “He’s in shock. He needs protein. He’ll have a biscuit, thanks.”

  She looked unconvinced but stomped away, tossing sassy looks over her rounded shoulder.

  I sat still, as if nothing were the matter. The last thing we needed was for the cops to walk in. I smiled artfully at Jinx, turning my control over my muscles into a performance for the Academy. “She could spit in it, you know.”

  “I don’t fucking care if she pees in it.”

  To my surprise, he picked up the glass of water and began to gulp it down, then tossed himself back and squeezed his eyes shut. He seemed to be in a great deal of pain, and as I looked at his midsection, I could see that the false clot was shifting from the open wound in his stomach. Perhaps because of its interference, the gap was not knitting shut as quickly as mine had, nor did it seem to be as clean a closure. I was tempted to ask about it but was certain that if I did, he would grab the plague-carrying ketchup and fire. I sat there, feeling useless, until a memory hit me.

  “I’ll be back.” I got up and walked to the bar counter. She was standing there, a tray in front of her, my tiny plate of dried-out lemon slices waiting beside the saucer for the extra-strong coffee she was making. As I walked up, she seemed to retreat into the appliances.


  I smiled, but we both knew it was a compulsory gesture.

  “Do you sell memorabilia?”

  “Huh?” Her ponytail swung as her head slid back on her shoulders in confusion. “You mean T-shirts and stuff?”

  “Yes,” I sighed. “I’d like one.”

  Her eyes twitched in Jinx’s direction. He was busy emptying the sugar packets into my glass of water and stirring like a madman.

  “Yes, for him.”

  She walked over to the glass cabinet and unlocked the sliding door. When she emerged, she had a bright red shirt that bore the logo of the restaurant and a black shirt embossed with the words “BIG MEAT.”

  I pointed at it.

  “You sure?”

  “Definitely.”

  She shrugged and tossed it at me, lapsing into a grin as if it was a bet she’d just won. “I’ll put it on your bill.”

  “Thanks.”

  On the way back to the table, I snagged the ice-water pitcher and a second box of sugars. When they appeared beside him, the boy looked up at me as if I were a saint. He was using a teaspoon to measure out proportions of salt, turning his water into saline.

  “Why don’t we just ask if she has a hypodermic needle lying around and be done with it?” I said, slumping into the booth.

  “Last thing I need is to fight off hyper-syphilis, too,” he grumbled, cringing in apparent agony.

  Sweat was beading on his forehead. The napkins were both already soaked with chunks of gore. I reached back and grabbed some more from the table behind ours. There was nothing I could do, really. All he wanted was the steak.

  “I’m sorry, Jinx. I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”

  “It was my idea. Shut up.”