The One We Feed

by Kristina Meister

  A woman crouched down beside me, took hold of my hair, and lifted my face. She let out a sigh. “They always give in.”

  Her voice roused me. It was calming, as if I had been listening to it all my life.

  “She seems fairly strong,” said a man. “She’s listening to us.”

  “Don’t be silly, Devlin. It’s just a reflex.” She let go of my hair. My face cracked against the ground. “There are only a handful in hundreds. That girl is the most incredible find to date, and, as you know, I’ve been doing this a long time. Don’t use her as a point of reference.”

  Suddenly, from the deeply suppressed record of my life, a name emerged. I whispered it, feeling that, somehow, it meant something to someone.

  She turned and grasped my hair again, nearly pulling it from my scalp. “What did you say?”

  “Eva,” I repeated, though my throat was lined in dust.

  She scowled, considering me for a long while. “Well, Devlin,” she said finally, “perhaps your intuition is correct.”

  “It usually is.”

  “Excellent!” She leaned down and stared into my one exposed eye. “Know this: you mean nothing to me. At some point, you will die. I will not care.”

  I blinked. A tear tickled my nose, but it was probably just a reflex.

  “Do it. If she really can swim, it’s time to toss her in.” Then she turned and was gone.

  They jerked my body back upright and held my arms tightly. My head was pulled back until my mouth could be forced open. Something cold and metallic was shoved inside and clamped down on my tongue. There was a sharp pull and a searing pain.

  They dropped me onto the cold ground, where I writhed and cried out, coughing up blood until a pool of it formed on the ground. I got onto my hands and knees, fueled by survival instinct alone, and tried to back away from them. In the corner, I balled up and reached fingers into my mouth, feeling a space where once my tongue had been.

  The one with the metal clamp held a piece of flesh in front of me, wagging it around as if he meant for me to grab for it, like it was some kind of sick game. I think he expected fear or humiliation, but something else entirely was going on in my mind.

  Rage was growing, anger and hatred so profound that I could not contain them. They seeped into my muscles and lungs, pushing me to my feet.

  He waved the tongue in front of me again, and the cord that chained me to this reality snapped. Events came crashing over me like a tidal wave of sight and sound. Memories reconstituted where once there had been blank space. Power twisted through my core and into my squeezing fists.

  I stood up to my full height and smiled a bloody grin, myself once again.

  Shouldn’t have done that.

  Cleo’s trigger had been successful.

  They approached me, cattle prod in hand and, to my credit, a little fearfully. I waited until they were close enough to grab me, and, as the one to my left dropped his weapon to do so, I lunged straight for his throat. As I bit down, he tried to cry out, but a Siren without his vocal cords was almost as useless as violin without strings. I let them hit me with a jolt of electricity. It did nothing, but I let go.

  They dragged me from the room, one life and one gift richer, laughing like a maniac.

  Chapter 27

  Cry Havoc

  I landed on my feet, though they immediately slid from beneath me on the disgustingly sticky floor of the Rakshasa pit. They left the portal open for a time, filtering the foul air for fresh, and, as if it was trying to escape, the stench rose all around me until my eyes stung with it and my nose ran.

  It was just as it had been for Reesa. The bewitching of the Sirens was almost pointless; the creatures had scattered at the sound of the hatch clicking open, almost as if they were terrified. In the dim light that seemed to fight its way through the moist heat of the pit, I could see vague figures huddled over what appeared to be the remains of others. Whether they had died of starvation or had been attacked by the hungry, I could not tell; they were in pieces already, stripped of valuable meat, bones discarded like rubbish, though snapped in half and sucked clean. Gore stuck to every surface and red eyes flashed at me from the shadows.

  Shut the hatch, I thought up at the circling singers, until at last they obeyed. The slow creak of the great metal hinge was like the sound of a vulture cry. There was the clang, the click, and utter darkness.

  I relaxed my jaw. My reforming tongue began to pull itself together, causing a prickling sensation that went from the base of my skull into my gut. In a single cough, I spat up the pool of congealing blood in my mouth and licked my lips clean.

  As if they could smell it, the creatures began to circle. I closed my eyes in the blackness and listened for them. I counted only a dozen or so, the strongest of the strong, tongueless but still quite lethal.

  They were moving slowly, conserving as much energy as possible. In the tight space of the metal tank, their guttural cries echoed painfully, until it sounded as if there were hundreds of them closing in. If not for Devlin’s overwhelmingly rational vantage, even I would have cowered.

  I took a deep breath, inhaling the smell of death and decay, the filth from which my army would rise, and smiled. Bliss overcame me more quickly than ever before, the delay of a self-calming pep talk no longer necessary. These were my people, my children, even though they did not yet realize it.

  I opened my eyes. They were inching in, little fiery shapes of violet and smoldering blue-black, flickering in hatred and fear. I lifted my hands and my face, and in the voice of a Siren, sang “Amazing Grace.”

  As I came to the end of the first verse, I fell silent. They had turned to stone all around me, their auras shivering with uncertainty, but they could not ward off the calm of my presence nor the permissive tenderness of my magic touch. I reached for the closest figure. It recoiled, but only slightly.

  “I won’t hurt you,” I whispered and took a tiny step forward.

  They could no longer understand words, but, like animals, it was the tone that swept them closer. I reached out to one, my fingers inches from the bright purple of its head. It snarled weakly, but it could smell me and, through me, the outside world.

  The others came closer, crowding any escape I intended to make, but I was not afraid. One of them sniffed at my hair. Another, emboldened by the first, touched my arm briefly with the elongated fingers and claws of a monster, then brought the fingers hastily to its own nose. I kept reaching for the one in front of me, until at last it leaned forward, and, shivering with the slow deterioration of its muscles, put its face in the palm of my outstretched hand.

  Its features were covered in saliva and blood. There was an open cut across its cheek where the elongating jawbone had displaced skin. I could tell from the heat given off that the wound was infected. Lifting my other hand, I found its mane of tangled, matted hair. An old injury on the scalp was covered in a thick scab. I brushed it gently and felt my heart break.

  Beside me, one of the others took hold of my arm and squeezed as if to see if I was real. I let go of the creature before me and returned the embrace. One by one, I greeted all of them, and slowly their auras calmed, transformed from the colors of violence and darkness to those of growth and light.

  I brushed the hair from their deformed faces, held them close, perhaps like their own mothers had, until we collapsed together, in a tangle at the center of the pit. They were too weak to stand for long, or fight, or even feel pain. They were numb.

  My hindbrain began to tingle in condign disgust, pulling me from the peaceful state. I fought it off. This moment was not for Mara or the others like him. This moment was for them.

  I lifted my hand to my face and bit into my wrist as hard as I could. Warm blood trickled over my overly sensitive skin and speckled the already rancid floor. Their bodies stiffened. They were starving, and, no matter what they felt for me, they needed to eat. I smiled and with my bloody hand caressed the face of the one at my left.

  “You can’t hurt
me,” I said quietly. “Please take it.”

  I did not have to say it a second time. A split second later, his great mouth had closed over the wound. Huge teeth widened it, and, like a great leech, he sucked. The pain surprised me, but there was no time to gasp. On my right, another had understood the command and attacked my shoulder. Before long, three more had found a place, tipping me back onto the slimy floor.

  I closed my eyes. They were faster than Karl’s pump. I needed the jhana as soon as possible. As unconsciousness came, the heightened reality swooped in. Instantly, I hovered above myself, watching them twist me about as if I were a horribly stiff doll. I began to realize that, if not for their profound malnourishment, they would have been surprisingly gentle with me. One of them had already lifted my head from the ground and placed it in the crook of its knee. Another had been careful to turn my arm the right way around, so as not to break it.

  No such thing as monsters, I affirmed to myself as I drifted to Ananda’s shoulder.

  “No, there is not,” he replied. He was sitting in a hotel room beside the phone. The sun was high in the sky outside the window, covering a bleak desert landscape in a white haze.

  It’s time.

  “You are safe?”

  Yes. Find the compound and wait there with the truck. It will take a while, but before tonight they will be finished.

  He smiled and picked up the phone receiver. “You are amazing, my dear.”

  Maybe if you keep saying it, it will come true?

  “It already has.”

  I danced away from his mind and found the boy. He was racing over the crumbling asphalt of a heat-assaulted highway, his motorcycle at top speed, faster than the eye could track.

  “I know,” he said into his helmet mic. “On my way.”

  When I found Devlin, he was sitting in Mara’s office, and it was only by grace of the jhana that I could see the tension in his frame. He was not seated, really, but perched. His fingers were very close to white-knuckled over the arm of the chair. As I touched his mind, I could feel the obnoxious twinge of mental exhaustion.

  Mara paced behind the desk, wearing both our siblings’ faces at once, smiling as if he was enjoying the agony he caused.

  “I’m really not sure that is a possibility, Devlin,” he said sweetly. To me it sounded like my dear sister, but to Devlin it was the echo of a long-dead enemy. The voice left tracks of regret through his brain.

  “Why?” he said through gritted teeth.

  “Well, you see, the Sirens enjoy working here.”

  “With the girl, you don’t need them anymore. If you awaken her, she can control the Rakshasa.”

  “Why would I do that?” Mara laughed. He curled my sister’s thin fingers over the back of his armchair and shook his head in amusement. “No, she’ll stay as she is until I can control her.”

  “How will you learn to unless you wake her?” Devlin said, though his voice was a sharp as glass.

  “I’m collecting.” Mara held up my sister’s finger. “When I have more than one unique creature, then it is safe to experiment, then one of them is expendable. Until then, I need the Sirens here.”

  Devlin took a deep breath, his composure taxed to its limits.

  Just a little longer.

  As if he heard me, he let go of the arm of the chair and leaned back, relaxing into the idea Mara had presented.

  “Very well, then,” he murmured in a disinterested tone, “but I will need them back, eventually. I pulled them away from their other pursuits under the pretext of their debts to me. They’ll soon have worked those off. If they don’t go back to earning more, you’ll have no leverage to keep them here should they decide to leave, in spite of the glorious opportunity you’ve presented them.”

  Mara closed Eva’s eyes and appeared to be deep in thought. “I take your point. So be it. Warn me, won’t you, when the time comes?”

  “As you wish.”

  “I confess, I was surprised you came here.”

  Devlin raised a reptilian brow. “Where else would I be?”

  Eva’s laugh rang out. It had always been such an adorable laugh, infectious in every way. Devlin did not smile.

  “Bored, are we?”

  “Always,” Devlin whispered, his eye gleaming.

  “Lucky me.”

  I left them with a parting surge of gratitude and well-wishes to the Crusader. When I found Reesa, she was where I had left her, lashed down to her padded metal table, the tubes in her arms pumping poison into her. Her eyes flicked back and forth behind her eyelids. She was reliving her short life again and again, reworking the miseries, reexamining the lessons. She would, until every last secret had been revealed and truth pulled from noise.

  I mapped out the terrain of the compound once again. The tank was buried in the ground several stories deep. Above it was the guard room, sealed from the long corridor connecting it to the main structure by a heavy metal door. Cameras kept vigil over both hatch and vault door and scanned the hallway. The barracks and common areas were largely empty, while the labs that branched off on either side bustled with activity. In their sterile depths, other Rakshasa were being tormented, tested, and, in some cases, autopsied. Sirens submitted to strange vocal tests in a soundproofed room, while a man in a coat and sophisticated ear phones spoke to them in sign language through the window. Humans crouched in cages like the one I’d lived in, terrified and drugged, uncertain of what their fate might be when their keepers returned. And then there was Mara’s lair, and his little stairwell to the surface.

  That was the only way out, and he controlled it. Our only option was to force him to flee and leave the way unbarred.

  Shouldn’t be a problem, really, I thought, coming out of my catatonia with an evil grin on my face. I opened my eyes in the darkness and realized, quite suddenly, that I could see.

  As if I’d donned night-vision goggles, the scene around me stood out in shades of black and white, rendering the Rakshasa a bit more ghastly than they would otherwise have been. Then I realized my mouth was full of thick, warm blood. I turned and looked at the creature bracing my head. On his wrist was a long gash, still dripping onto my collarbone.

  While I slept, they had been feeding me. Keeping me alive, even as I had been returning the favor.

  The one we feed.

  “No such thing,” I whispered.

  For several hours, they rotated around me, until each one had given me a little piece of themselves, though it was entirely unnecessary. They could have cut my throat and hung me upside down. It wouldn’t have mattered. I could have fed an army forever.

  When they had drunk their fill, they unclamped their mouths from whatever opening they had made, and the skin sealed. I watched them recline, curl up like puppies, their stomachs finally full. Slowly, their wounds began to heal, hair became sleek, skin smoothed out, the stretching muscles relaxed. Right before my eyes, they turned from gaping, skull-like horrors, to things that looked vaguely human. Their nails seemed sharper, their teeth whiter, and their eyes clearer.

  Choose your weapons.

  I lay back against my last feeder and stroked the head of the one closest to me. My hands had changed; the fingers seemed to have stretched and were tipped with long, sharp claws. I licked my teeth. They too were different. I was one of them now.

  The creature wriggled up to me and laid its head in my lap.

  “Gather your strength, my dears,” I whispered.

  Lazy ears pricked.

  “They took her from you, I know. You miss her don’t you? Reesa, the girl?”

  The one in my lap turned and looked at me.

  “I know where she is.”

  The two at my feet drew themselves up and listened.

  “The tiniest of you, yet the strongest. We must find her.”

  My voice was calm, with not a hint of magic in it, and yet it was as if I were a beacon, they were so intent.

  “Can you fight, be clear-headed and purposeful?”

  Th
e largest of them, the one whose face had been split in half, leaned forward toward me and nuzzled my neck. As a human, he had probably been at least six feet tall, built like a line-backer. Now he was lean and wiry, with a precision glare and a vice-like jaw. Now, he was unkillable.

  I sat up. They helped me to my newly transformed feet as a group, though it was unnecessary. I thanked them each with an embrace, or a kiss, or a glance, and they listened.

  “When they check on us,” I said, “lift me up. It’s too far to jump alone. When I’m up, I’ll pull you up after me.”

  The large one blinked at me and looked up at the hatch as if considering.

  “Don’t worry about the Sirens. They won’t hurt you anymore. I promise.”

  A small, probably female Rakshasi made a sound like a choking cough. I turned in time to feel her hand clamp around my elbow. Her other hand was over her mouth. She coughed again and slid a long claw between her teeth. I shushed her and pulled her chin down as if she were a toddler and I was a dental hygienist. The tiny bud of a tongue was growing in the black lacquer of her throat.

  I smiled at her. “You’ll be able to talk soon. If you want to, that is.”

  She lifted my hand to her forehead and dipped a few times, like some kind of improvised bow.

  “You’ll all be all right again, soon,” I said to the others who were testing their own mouths. “I could probably take it all away if I wanted to, but I thought you might like to see what strength feels like? Yes?”

  A low growl rumbled around me. I could not help but give a dark chuckle.

  “Rest,” I whispered. “Heal. When it is time, I will tell you. Soon, it will all be over.”

  They backed away from me, to the only portion of the room that had been organized. A great pile of debris had been built like a wall, creating a kind of nook. Remnants of clothes and hair lined the bottom. Like a nest of rats, they lay down together, end to end, skin on skin, and closed their eyes.

  As they slept, I went to work.

  First, I tested the limits of their strength. It was greater still than that of the other immortals I had met, which in many ways was simply the extremity a human body could reach if it had to. The Rakshasa musculature was fundamentally different, with larger belly, tighter attachments, greater resistance. I crouched low and sprang up many times, so close to the hatch I could almost touch it.