Darkly Human

by Laura Anne Gilman

  An owl calls, somewhere far away. My breath catches, but there is nothing more.

  The girl I was is long-gone, given over to the hint of grey, the ache in a knee, the faintest tremor in a hand. A job that will get me killed.

  My tia says that the day I was born, I was given gifts. How I used them, that was my decision. Every skill, every sense, every moment of training, only to reach this point, following some summons away from everything civilized, to breathe red dust and starlight.

  As though drawn by that thought, something whispers to me, from my left side. An enticement, a warning, a scolding, it’s all three and more. Don’t listen, my instinct tells me. Don’t look. Don’t move.

  I ignore it, although the sweat dampening the dust on my neck and forehead makes my skin itch. I want to move, to get up and move around, discharge nervous energy. I breathe, in through my nose, out through my mouth, the faintest shift of air silent as the rocks around me.

  But the rocks aren’t silent, not now. Not when I’ve been sitting among them this long. The rattlesnake loses interest, falls silent, slides between the smaller stones, and disappears, but my ears are open, now. Echoes and surface murmurs, but deeper inside there is another voice. Slower, deeper, redder to the first whisperer’s moonlit blues. The red of the dust. The red of the rocks. The red of the bones of the earth.

  The voice does not speak to me, but I hear it and in it I hear others, twining and folding into each other, scrabbling across and blending in, different words in different tones, all whispering verses of the same song.

  I breathe in, breathe out. A coyote howls, and is answered, bright white-blue. The two I saw before? They had no interest in me.

  Breathe out. Breathe in. The scope in my hands is heavy, foreign. My fingers curl around the cool, heavy metal, resisting the urge to throw it away, be rid of it. It has no place here, in this land of sand and bone.

  Something touches my spine, felt even through the leather of my vest, the thick cotton shirt underneath. It trails along, from tailbone to neck, and then slides below, stroking bone.

  I raise my face to the sky, the glittering sharpness of the galaxy prickling my skin. A shadow, closer than the coyotes, shifts and breaks. Dappled grey on grey in the starlight and moonlight it shifts closer, until it almost touches my denim-clad knee. A small face peers at me, whiskers silver, and I wait.

  Then it is gone, shadow into shadows.

  The sensation of touch remains. I am not done.

  I breathe. In, nose. Out, mouth. Something far above me coughs, once. A muscle in my leg twitches, an involuntary survival reflex. Breathe.

  The stones still whispered; I had lost their sound, distracted. The touch led me back, drawing me down. Collarbone to neck, to spine, to tailbone: the crown of my head is made of the same stuff as the dust.

  Another cough, fainter now, retreating. Breathe in. Breath out. The scope in my hands rests heavy and cool, the night air coiling around it, crackling on the glass. I will not see what comes to me, I understand that now. There is nothing to do but wait.

  My knees ache; the ache fades away. My hands rest, palm down, palm up, wrists soft. Each grain of dust glows like ancient rust; my eyes are all pupil now, taking in starlight, but I cannot see beyond my hands, the scope useless even if I were to lift it. My tongue is dry, my sinuses smelling distant pine and water.

  There is a softness behind me, the warmth of breath, foul with old bone and sinew.

  If my spine were not stone before, I could not bear it. Something presses against me, and I raise my face again to the sky, tracking the moon. It has slowed now, all of time has slowed, or stopped entirely, and I cannot tell. Only the whispers of the stone, the dust on my skin, the hot breath at my nape, and the sliver of sunlit moon overhead.

  The whispers tell me: when the moon is at perigee, it will begin.

  [I have fallen asleep. In the dream that wasn’t a dream I exhaled slowly, and closed my eyes. I’d missed the shot.

  The voice in my ear was quietly disapproving. “You missed the shot.”

  “Yes. I’m aware of that.”

  There was silence. I opened my eyes again and checked the scope, willing my hands to rest quietly, my breathing to stay even. The bird hadn’t moved, hadn’t even been aware of my interest, sitting quietly at an outdoor café, watching the crowd passing with bright, alert eyes. The noise of the traffic had swallowed the first noise, another burst of sound of no particular value to stand out from the rest. Wait, wait….

  A turn, there, just enough to show a profile, present the perfect head shot. My finger stroked inward, my breath exhaled, and I nailed it on the second try. The target went down, a boneless slip from chair to floor, a moment of suspended shock catching the rest of the café in its grip.

  I didn’t bother announcing my success. That was assumed: only failure was worthy of note.

  “Come in” the voice in my ear said, and disappeared.

  Break it down, pack it out. Once I was back on the street, nobody looked twice at the middle-aged woman in a business suit too subdued to be stylish, too well-made to be dowdy, neither too much leg or too much chest showing, my hair modestly covered, the very model of a proper businesswoman.

  A dark sedan was waiting on the corner. By the time I hit the airport, I’d left the case behind, ditched the suit jacket and the scarf, switched out my demure pumps for three inch heels, and hitched my skirt higher on my thigh. Anyone looking would see the thick black hair and the well-muscled legs, the flash of red of my blouse or the outrageously expensive hand-tooled Amesein bag slung carelessly over my shoulder. That woman? A Westerner, clearly, although not pale enough to be obvious. Face? Height? Features? No, sorry officer, no clue.

  “Are you all right?”

  The voice in my ear was back, this time 30 degrees off my left shoulder, and I didn’t pretend that it was asking about my physical well-being.

  “Fine.”

  “You’re not-“

  “I said I was fine.”

  “Boarding pass?” the security agent asked, and I handed it over, ignoring the shadow behind me. There was a “business class” line through the scanners, and I headed for that, the familiar routine of sorting out laptop, watch, keys keeping me occupied. I walked through without a hitch, and collected my belongings on the other side.

  The voice rejoined me, a minute later. “You missed the meeting. People were concerned.”

  “You had my presentation. Everything’s fine. The deal went through.”

  “Front office likes things to go as planned, no hitches.”

  Something caught in my chest. I ignored it. “I’ve always delivered.”

  “Always is a long time. Edges that were sharp can get…dulled.”

  I stopped at that, staring straight ahead. If I looked, I would show my hand. People brushed past us, intent on their own destinations, some glancing at us in irritation for blocking their way. We were drawing attention. “I haven’t lost my edge.”

  “I hope not. I like working with you. You make my life easier. Please don’t make it difficult.”

  I started walking again, and when we parted ways at our respective terminals, neither of us said goodbye.

  It wouldn’t end there. I could hope all I want, pretend that any job that ends with the deal being closed is a good job well done, but my bosses expected one thing of me, and that was accuracy.

  Second passes were not acceptable.]

  I wake at sunrise, aware of every single one of my entire fifty-two years. My legs ache, my back aches, my arms ache, and the dry night air has carved caverns into my sinuses, and blasted them with sand. I lay curled on my side, the stone cold beneath me. Cold, and silent. The red bones slumbered again.

  The memory of my dream lingers, the taste of the future to come. The reason I am here, listening to voices that didn’t actually exist, hedging my bets, losing my mind. Because of one miss, one second chance. A portent others - the wrong others - have seen. The whispers tell me I will f
ind clarity here, understanding.

  I roll over, groaning a little, and hit something.

  Soft, not hard. Warm, not cold. Smelling of old meat and hot mouth, and I open my eyes already knowing what I will find.

  Sand-buff and bone-red, it stares back at me. The eyes are tawny, rimmed with black, and when it opens its mouth, the gums are red, the teeth white, and the breath godawful.

  It doesn’t look all that much more impressed with me.

  Well holy fuck.

  I finish rolling over, feel my body creak in protest until it gets with the program. I raise my hands to the sky and stretch, things clicking and snapping back into line.

  “So what now?” I ask.

  The cat looks at me, closes its eyes, and goes back to sleep.

  Apparently, this doesn’t come with an instruction manual.

  I lick my lips, feeling the tang that meant they were bleeding. I must have bitten them at some point during the… I can’t remember. Maybe I don’t want to remember.

  “So now…what? I just go home?”

  Apparently, yeah.

  The cat doesn’t follow me home, for which I am thankful. Trying to explain its presence in my little condo complex would have been…problematic, and my MO is flying under the radar, not making it break out in red static.

  I get my marching orders the next day, a relief. Not yet RIF’d, not yet obsolete. Another chance to prove myself.

  The next two weeks are spent in Toronto, freezing my ass off. Sitting at a café, clutching a mug of tea in my hands while lovers, students, and tourists wander by, and I pretend that the cold sharpness of the desert air never happened.

  When I finally see my target, the voice in my ear crackling a confirmation, I smile. This, I know how to do.

  A perfect shot leaves my employers reassured. The assignments keep coming. Seven cities in three months, one after another.

  And then, finally, there’s a week at home, time to do laundry, buy new underwear, sort through the mail that piles up on my counter, courtesy of Aneja, who waters the plants and resets the alarms for me when I am gone. She also leaves the most terrifying things in the fridge for me to eat.

  I eat them, every time. I’m too afraid not to.

  Once, there’d been someone here to come home to. But he had his own cities to visit, his own rounds to make. He was a salesman. Cargo planes, selling to militaries all over the globe. He thought – still thought – I worked with a camera crew. He thought the stains on my clothing were oil, mud, my own blood. Sometimes, they were.

  Home.

  I leave my bags at the door, eat my dinner, put myself under the shower, and almost fall asleep there. I don’t rest easily in hotels, never when I was on the job, but this was a safe place. This was home.

  I was in bed, asleep before the water had entirely dried off my skin.

  And, home, I dream. The cold air, sharp and clear the way it can never be, in cities. Rock-dust everywhere, coating my skin and getting in my mouth, so I could taste the cold heart of the earth. My teeth ache, and my throat swells, and there is a meat-laden breath on the back of my neck, a warm heavy weight against my back.

  And then it’s gone, sliding into me, stiffening and flexing my spine, the cold heart of rock and the hot gushing blood and the rip and the snarl and the full-muscled leap until I could not know these things, the way I knew the touch of a pen, or the curve of a trigger.

  When I wake, there is red dust on my arms and blood under my nails.

  I get out of bed, pad to the sole mirror, and turn sideways, back and forth. No fur. No tail. No gleaming golden eyes, and my teeth were my own. But the spirit-beast within me knew its match in the desert, a thousand miles away.

  No matter how far I ran, it ran with me.

  I’m changed. Not strength, not as such. Not speed, or any animal urge. Still a middle-aged human. But changed. The truth of that settles inside me.

  I am as I was – no, less and more, at once. The reflexes that had slowed, the senses that had dimmed, replaced by others. Machine-cold logic giving way to desert-cold instinct - and more: boosted by the surge of blood-hot satisfaction in the kill.

  It felt strange, because it didn’t feel uncomfortable.

  I went to take another shower, to wash the grit off my skin.

  The fridge is empty of anything perishable – and the thought of eating another of tia’s unknown concoctions makes me shudder – so I get dressed and head to the market. Eating out of hotel restaurants and cafes so often gives me a craving for simple food, green salads and pepper-roasted chicken, and a gallon of ice tea. It always tastes vaguely of coffee in restaurants, no matter how many times they swear it was brewed fresh.

  The dream is tucked behind my ear, simmering but not stirred. I’ve almost forgotten it, in the shuffle of produce, deli and seltzer. I’m in the parking lot, shifting brown paper sacks into the back of my car, when it rises, rouses. A prickling tingle not on the back of my neck, but under my scalp, a dozen sharp-clawed fingers pricking my thalamus, breath exhaling out of my lungs as I close the trunk door and stretch, feeling the burn of muscles.

  I am unarmed, of course I’m unarmed. Weapons are for the job, not home, not home, not shopping, not in the middle of a supermarket parking lot, mothers with babies, senior citizens pushing carts, the slow glide of an SUV lurking for the next open spot.

  And every instinct I had told me death was hunting.

  There are a dozen blind spots around me, a dozen tinted windows, a dozen or more bodies who could hold a threat, and my lips draw back from my teeth.

  Perfect work, the weeks of it, and I thought it was a test, but I can see it now for what it was, the last hurrah of a broken tool, them milking every last use before throwing it away. But they don’t throw anything away, not where it might be found again, found and reused by someone else. This isn’t a drill, this isn’t a test: this is my severance package. Here, in my den, my defenses down, they’ve sent someone to remove me from the board, once and for all. More than one, if they respect me at all.

  I’ll be damned if I go quietly.

  I don’t need a weapon when the first one approaches me. Not a gun, not a knife, nothing that might draw attention or leave too much trace. My hand reaches back as the woman passes me by, a cart rattling in front of her, and I catch the side of the syringe before it touches the fabric of my shirt, batting it down almost lazily, without effort, a toy not even worth my playing. She gasps but they sent professionals, and even as the first attempt fails I’m dropping to my knees and tilting left, away from my dominant instinct because they will know they will have been briefed, the same briefings I received, the same crackling voice in their ear and part of me hopes it’s not the same voice, that there was some grace left in the world, that someone else gives the kill order.

  The gunshot hits where I’d just been, leaving a splintered mess of the bumper of my car. Needle-woman has already moved on, nowhere near the scene, and there may be a third waiting, while the second lines up another shot, but if they thought that highly of me they would keep me, right?

  The second shot nicks my leg, just below and behind the knee, and I drop to the ground, snarling, feeling my tail lash before I’m aware I don’t have one. The same angle, the same shooter, and I pivot on the ball of my foot and spring even as the compact car drives by, window down to take a third shot. I lean in, arms hooked against the inside of the door, and grin at the driver, the shooter pressed back into his seat by the sharp edge of my elbow. He could fight me, but his finger was already on the trigger and it would only get messy at such close quarters.

  My teeth close around the edge of the driver's jaw, yanking at flesh with the intent to rend, and all I feel is disappointment when the flesh doesn’t come free. Then there’s metal jammed against my ribs, and I twitch, even as the driver tries to swerve the car. It’s too late to shake me, I’m inside, twisting and jabbing with my knee and the gun fires, missing me but echoing painfully in the confined space.

>   “Damn it!” someone yells, and I swipe at the driver’s face, fingers curved into talons and despite the fact that I keep my nails trimmed short and filed flat, she flinches, and blood comes away on my fingertips.

  Then I’m wiggling backwards, out the window, dropping to the pavement with the rasp of sour breath in my throat and a double heartbeat in my chest, and the car speeding off into the distance, the smell of blood and gunpowder on my hands.

  I’m still alive.

  “Well, fuck.”

  Three hours later, I sit in the kitchen table, coffee steaming out of the mug between my palms and my thoughts coiled around the facts, such as they were.

  I shouldn’t have survived. I’m past my prime, physically. Reflexes slowing, too much thinking interfering with reaction times. Being smarter and savvier could save me on the job, where preparation and thinking were key, but that? Whatever the fuck that had been?

  I should be sore, I should be bleeding. I should be dead.

  There had been blood under my nails, when I woke up. And flesh in my teeth, when I rinsed and spat. And the thrum of a more-flexible spine, the lash of a tail still twitching in irritation that prey had escaped.

  The old women had told me, when I turned eleven. “The blood flows, and it gives you power,” they had said. “But when the blood stops, that gives a power, too.” I’d only listened to the first half, then; caught up in the first flush of being a woman, all the possibilities unwoken in me. What power could they have, those old women, wrinkled and near-dead. But what was old to a young girl meant something else when you were fifty-two.

  My employers had severed our association, citing my age as. But I was more than the sum of their parts.

  “All right then,” I said to the thing inside me, not knowing if it was paying attention, or off licking its ear, or something. “All right. I’m listening, now.”

  Mad Cats and Englishmen