In the early mornings, he heard the noises from the spider over and over again. Though the sound came through as clicks and taps, he could translate the message. Gulaga was screaming for him to spare her children, the way Sheba had begged Daniel to spare hers. Sometimes, the arachnid spoke with Michael’s voice, weeping for his parents in the dark. With each passing day, Mort(e) found it harder to believe that he had imagined it all.
It did not take long for him to start walking around the house on all fours, sniffing at things, rubbing the side of his face on doorjambs and table legs to mark his territory. The Messiah, the Queenslayer, reduced to his pre-Change form like some late-stage EMSAH patient.
As the weeks dragged on, these devolved states would last for hours, sometimes days. He would not speak, nor even think with words. During those phases, his mind emptied of the things he regretted saying to her. He would stop thinking about all the signs he had missed, the clues that she would choose the husky and his human city over her true home. Crawling around the house, he saw the world in muted colors. Random sounds, like tree branches bumping a window frame, made his ears perk up. For a few nights in a row, he fell asleep inside a cardboard box that smelled like sawdust.
One day, he started licking his paws and wrists, something he had trained himself to stop doing after the Change. Here, with no one watching, he covered every inch of his limbs, tail, and as far down his spine as his new body would allow. The taste of it transported him to the Martinis’ basement. The next day, while coughing up clots of hair and saliva, he imagined Culdesac finding him like this, the bobcat grousing about lazy pets who never learned how to survive in the wild.
Mort(e) concluded that he deserved this somehow. He drove her away. All those years spent searching, and he never learned to actually live. Before all this, loving her meant hoping to find her again. Now it meant letting her go. And for the first time, he hated it all. He wanted love to mean something else, though he wasn’t sure what exactly, so long as it brought her here again, so she could replenish her scent in the bed sheets. When that ran out for good, Mort(e) would have no reason to keep breathing.
A cold front descended on the ranch. Mort(e) slept coiled in a circle on the rug. With his ear to the floor, he heard the wood creaking, and the occasional insect burrowing into the soil. All the noises hurt, and yet the pain gave him strength, hardening him into a block of stone that would one day be indistinguishable from the ruins of this house.
Whatever fate awaited him here, he didn’t want to be cold anymore, so he decided to build a fire. Using a crowbar, Mort(e) levered each fence post from the dirt, stacking them under the overhang of the roof. With an ax he split the posts into smaller pieces of firewood. The damp air seeped into his fur, sucking out the warmth. No matter how much heat he generated with each swing, the cold would win.
As he lifted the handle over his head, the unmistakable reek of rotten fish entered his nose. No hint of canine in the odor, only scales and oil. The spider’s voice echoed in his mind again, faint yet still screaming, cursing him.
They had come for him at last.
“All right,” he said with a calmness he could barely recognize. Mort(e) entered the side door and picked up the shotgun leaning on the stove. He stationed the weapons all over the house these days for easy retrieval. On his way through the living room, he grabbed the rifle resting on the coffee table. He kicked the front door open and walked out, double-barreled, ready to meet his fate. Once outside on the porch, he leaned the rifle on the railing, then aimed the shotgun into the trees and fired. No targets, just pumping the forestock and blasting into the trees, the leaves bursting with each shot. The gun empty, Mort(e) dropped it, picked up the rifle, and switched off the safety.
“Leave me alone!” he shouted, the cold barrel pressed to his cheek.
A silence fell, but the scent remained, thick and noxious.
“Hold your fire!” someone yelled from behind a tree.
Mort(e) pulled the trigger again. “No!”
Something flapped over the house. A bat. Had to be. Mort(e) slid along the wall, aiming upward, but unable to see past the awning. He would not take cover inside. Whoever was out there needed to see him brandishing his gun like a crazy person.
“Mort(e), it’s Castor!” the voice shouted. “I need to talk to you!”
Maybe both species blamed him for destroying Lodge City. They joined forces to flush him out. But they would not take him alive.
“Mort(e), it’s about Sheba!”
As he scanned the forest, the bat flew over the house again, well within range. Mort(e) tracked it through the scope until the creature perched on the edge of the roof. Dangling over the porch railing, Gaunt of Thicktree resembled some demonic wind chime. The bat watched him through his polarized goggles. Mort(e) lowered the rifle. If Gaunt would risk his life by getting this close, then Mort(e) needed to listen. Besides, he had not spoken to a real person in weeks.
“Come on out, beaver,” Mort(e) said. He tried to remember how to tell Gaunt that it was good to see him in Chiropteran. But, good bats that they were, they did not have a word for see. It took Mort(e) two tries before he managed to squeak out, “I hear you now okay, yes.”
Gaunt gave four short squeaks. Eee-eee-eee-eee. Mort(e) did not understand. The bat may have been laughing at him.
The beaver came bumbling out of the forest, hands raised, his glasses perched on the crown of his head. Mort(e) leaned the rifle on the railing so Castor would not have to worry.
“You’re all friends again?” Mort(e) asked.
“We’re partners. Rebuilding Lodge City together.”
“It didn’t look that way the last time I saw you.”
“You were right about Nikaya,” Castor said. “Enough of us know that now.”
Gaunt chirped in agreement. He added something about Nikaya sweeping out the caves.
“What is that smell?” Mort(e) asked.
Gaunt gave a disapproving screech. It literally meant bad, though in this context it may have been closer to nasty or disgusting.
On the trail, five of the Watchers emerged from the trees. That bigmouth Fram was noticeably absent. The beavers pushed a wheelbarrow covered with a blue tarp. The smell seemed to ooze from underneath the plastic, drawing flies. Castor signaled for one of the beavers to remove the covering.
Underneath was a pile of greenish-brown slime that nevertheless included distinct parts. A head with black eyes, tentacles spilling over the sides, a pair of stout legs. Two bullet holes in the chest leaked a clear fluid, while the mouth hung open like a bear trap. The husky had spoken of creatures like this. D’Arc ran off with him to look for the goddamn things.
“You saw D’Arc?” Mort(e) asked. “I mean Sheba. My friend.”
“Don’t you want to hear about this?”
“But you saw her? On her way to find the husky?”
The beavers looked at one another. Mort(e) didn’t care about the pity in their expressions. “She came for Falkirk and they left together,” Castor said. “That’s all I know.”
“Go on.”
The creature was female, Castor said. They named her Lola. They found her crawling near the remnants of Gulaga’s web. One of the Watchers panicked and shot her. Though wounded, the creature caught the beaver by the neck and tossed him against a wall, breaking his spine. When she retreated to the water, the Watchers cut off her escape. She tried to run through the stadium, only to get tangled in the strands of silk. It took more shots than Castor had expected, but the creature finally stopped moving.
“We came here to show you this.” The beaver grabbed the claw and lifted it away from the creature’s body. It had a thick keratin armor, supported by strong muscles under the exoskeleton, yet the tips of the pincers were delicate, almost like human fingers. It could strangle a beaver and then write him an apology letter.
“What abo
ut it?” Mort(e) asked.
“You don’t recognize it?”
“It’s a claw.”
“Exactly,” Castor said, letting the appendage drop. “It’s identical to the spider’s claws. Smaller, yes, but the same shape.” He ran his finger along the curve of the pincer.
Mort(e) had seen the spider’s limbs only from a distance. But he remembered well enough. While flying over the city with Gaunt, Mort(e) could have sworn that he even saw the spider pulling the web tight, like an old woman knitting.
“The husky came here to investigate anomalies, right?” Castor asked. “I’ll bet these things were related somehow. Maybe the fish-head was checking on her cousin.”
“Did you have to drag the body all the way out here?”
“You took some convincing the last time we visited. Remember?”
“I can’t help you on another adventure,” Mort(e) said. He stopped himself from telling Castor that he had lost enough.
“You don’t have a choice. You need to go to the city and get your friend out of there. Right away. Find the husky and give him the claw.” Castor gestured to one of his underlings. The beaver unhooked a cutlass from his belt. With one hand, he extended the claw from the wheelbarrow. With the other, he hacked away at the joint. The keratin proved resilient. Mort(e) could hear the blade biting into it, but it barely left a mark.
“I don’t think I’m the best person for this,” Mort(e) said.
“You’re the Messiah. They’ll listen to you.”
That’s not necessarily a good thing, Mort(e) thought.
“The night after we killed the fish-head, we saw something,” Castor said.
He described it as a tidal wave on the river, pushing the water aside so that it boomed against the riverbank in great white columns. And inside the churning foam: fins, tentacles, armored plates like great tortoise shells. The Watchers stood guard, guns raised, in case any of the monsters made landfall. But the fleet continued on its way, uninterested in the tiny settlement.
“They’re going south,” Castor said. “I’ll bet they’ve always—”
A grunt and a snort to their left, like some wild animal stalking them in the woods. Castor went stiff, his jaw fused shut around the last word he spoke. The beaver with the cutlass stepped away from the body. The claw, still attached, hung limply, the pincers touching the ground. No, Mort(e) thought. That did not come from the—
The creature bolted from the wheelbarrow, toppling it over. Impossibly fast. The beavers flinched. Mort(e) raised his hands as the greenish blur collided with him. He tumbled to the grass. Castor dropped next to him with a groan, face first. Rolling onto his belly, Mort(e) saw Lola running toward the house. When Gaunt saw her coming, he released his grip on the awning and flew away. The fish-head disappeared around the side of the building.
“You told me she was dead!” Mort(e) said.
“She was!”
Mort(e) got up and pursued the creature around the corner. The stink of ammonia made his eyes water. Through the haze of it, he spotted Lola perched on a boulder. The tentacles slithered like a pack of snakes. The skin changed from green to a dark gray—the same tint as the boulder. Lola turned and looked at him with massive black eyeballs. She blinked. Mort(e) saw the anger. He recognized the intelligence. As the creature leaned closer toward him—perhaps so Mort(e) could get a better look—he saw something else. He felt something else, the same thing he felt in his encounter with Gulaga. Though this fish-head was far from home and left for dead, she wasn’t afraid. And she wanted Mort(e) to know that.
Lola bounded into the forest.
The beavers arrived. A few aimed their rifles into the woods, only to lower them in frustration. Mort(e)’s stomach twisted, sending another clot of hairballs to the top of his throat.
“They’re headed for the dam,” Castor said. “They’re headed for Hosanna.”
CHAPTER 14
Communion
Falkirk climbed the staircase to apartment 5C. A single fluorescent light illuminated the crumbling linoleum floor and the cracked plaster walls, painted a mustard color. At the door, he gave five knocks before opening. Inside, he found D’Arc where he had left her, kneeling beside a window with the curtain drawn. A sliver of overcast sky provided the only light in the room. Holding a telescope, D’Arc watched the apartment building across the street. The room was empty save for the rifle and sword leaning on the windowsill.
Falkirk dropped the satchel full of food on the floor. The cook at the mess hall gave him some vacuum-sealed simulations of the dog treats that Falkirk ate as a pet. Though vegan, the imitation treats were almost as good as the real thing.
“See anything?” he asked.
“Just the squirrels. When they left for work. Same time as yesterday.”
Falkirk told her to take a lunch break. As they switched places, she asked him if he would eat with her. “I already ate three of those treats on the way here,” he said.
Before this stakeout began, they spent two weeks interviewing translator users all over the city. The users had nothing in common other than a high rank in the Colonial army. A few admitted to knowing some of the victims. One of them, a cat with a hook for a hand, broke down in tears upon learning that her former commanding officer had been murdered.
The search for anyone with a connection to the ice gun also came up empty. But they caught a break when D’Arc, while combing the endless spreadsheets, noticed a discrepancy in the list of refugees entering the city. The database did not include people with a pending military status—in other words, anyone who might be of use to Tranquility. As a result, the records suffered from an indefinite lag time. Armed with the full list, D’Arc came across a translator user who had served in the Potomac campaign, near the weapons facility in Virginia. And, even better, no one had seen him for over a week.
Falkirk groaned when he saw the species: opossum. An inscrutable race. When the war ended, few opossums felt the need to wait in line for refugee status in Hosanna. They could survive on anything and barely needed shelter. The user D’Arc had found went by the name of Yatsi, an advisor to Tranquility who helped train recruits in infiltration and spying. Yatsi moved to the city three seasons earlier, staying at the residence of his brother, a sanitation worker who called himself Teyu. When D’Arc and Falkirk visited the apartment, no one answered. They interviewed the neighbors, all of whom claimed that neither of the brothers had stayed at the apartment for days.
Yatsi was most likely a target, not a suspect. But the opportunity to run a stakeout with D’Arc proved too good to resist. For at least a little while, Falkirk would have her to himself, away from the idiots who jokingly called him Skydog.
His personal feelings aside, D’Arc lived up to her supernatural reputation. She was bright, inquisitive, precise, able to adapt, eager to learn. She made the most of her time at the barracks, enlisting the help of her young bunkmates to learn about city life. Given that all the cadets were animals, the layout of the barracks was more conducive to pack behavior. Isolating dorm rooms were removed, replaced with a communal sleeping area. In a matter of days, D’Arc went from never seeing another dog to spooning with dozens of them every night.
As far as the cadets knew, D’Arc was a law enforcement officer out in the frontier, shadowing a Tranquility agent while waiting to hear about her application to join the al-Rihla. While the first-year cadets gained experience by handling paperwork for headquarters, D’Arc got to do some actual investigating. Every morning when she met with Falkirk, she shared stories about her new friends, the food they cooked, the habits that the various species kept. One night, a pug named Razz brewed a homemade alcoholic concoction, a kind of moonshine. The next morning, Falkirk needed to pull over to let D’Arc vomit. She kept saying she was sorry. “It’s all right,” Falkirk said, laughing.
Without mentioning it, D’Arc extended her time in Hosanna, and ev
entually stopped talking about the ranch. Out of respect, Falkirk stopped asking about it.
Ever since this penance began, Falkirk’s life had been wound so tightly around his neck. But now, he felt this burden begin to ease at last. When D’Arc saved him from the web, a future revealed itself, in defiance of the present. The Prophet taught that no one was beyond saving, even people whose own mothers had cursed them. Do not give up on me, Michael, he thought. I know the way back now.
“There’s a communion this week,” he said.
D’Arc looked up from her meal. “You mean a prayer gathering?”
He said yes. The Sons of Adam held the communions once a month. The strators and the elders lined the balcony of the Prophet’s residence, leading the faithful in song and praise. Sometimes Michael even made an appearance.
“The people who go,” D’Arc said. “They’re all believers?”
“Not all of them. A lot of them want to see the humans.”
“But you believe. Don’t you?”
“I believe.”
“Even though . . .”
“Even though there are reasons not to?”
D’Arc lowered her head and took another bite of her lunch.
“If you go with me this week, some of your questions may be answered,” he said.
“Do I have to sing?”
“Yes. And if you mess up the words, the strators will arrest you.”
She stopped chewing and stared at him.
“I’m kidding!” he said. It may have been the first joke he had ever told her.
“But wait,” she said. “The humans are seriously devoted, aren’t they? Razz told me that the strators would all jump off a cliff if the Prophet told them to.”
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