Children of the Bloodlands

by S. M. Beiko

  Barton blinked. “Huh?”

  “Sorry,” Eli answered after a beat, emptying the cup. “I took the intel I needed from your mind. Sometimes it’s a bit automatic when I’m in a hurry . . .” Eli’s heart was racing; he could feel himself getting frantic. He had to calm down. “I’m not very good at idle chit-chat. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

  “I’m not going to argue when it comes straight from the horse’s mouth.”

  “Wise.” Eli put the cup back down when he noticed it was shaking in his hand. He looked up. “You came a long way to help, not really knowing if you could. And you left . . . that Deer girl behind to do it.”

  Barton rolled his eyes. “C’mon, man. You know she has a name.”

  “Sorry,” Eli said again, but it was through a scowl.

  “Also, stop apologizing. Listen. What happened with the plane. Solomon told us what you did. And you did everything you could, too. And now you’re alive, and you’ve gotta get back to the leadering thing. I get it. Use me as a library for however long you want, but there’s still a lot no one knows. What these kids are, what the trees are for, and why they want the stones. Or what’s going to happen now that you’re free. Since you have what Seela wants, it’ll probably come after you again.”

  “And after anyone who shields me,” Eli muttered. “Which means I can’t stay here much longer.”

  “Whoa, whoa, that is not what I said.” But Eli had already crossed the room, barely making it to the doorway before he caught himself in the frame, blood pressure bottoming out.

  Barton lingered beside him, looking unsure if he should lend a hand. “Don’t,” Eli warned, but it came out sounding pathetic, even to him.

  “Where are you gonna go?” Barton leaned up against the other side, but he didn’t stand in Eli’s way. “People are dying. More people are going to. This Seela thing may be quiet now but it’s biding its time for something big. We all have to be ready when the time comes to hit back.”

  Eli felt himself returning as he straightened. Something of the old razor-thin patience, at least. “If I didn’t know any better, which I do, it sounds as if you’re trying to make this my problem.”

  “Isn’t it?” Barton’s tone was light, but his brow was furrowed. “Yeah, you do know better than me about this. Which means you also probably know we can’t do this without you. I’m here, at least. I’m here because we all have to step up now. Whatever is going to happen, it’s going to affect everyone.”

  Eli stared down the concrete hall lit by basket-caged lights. Farther down, around a corner, and up a flight of steps he felt his father, the Owl Council — or what was left of it — felt Foxes and Rabbits, and above all that a sting of uncertainty they all gave off. The panic that had risen in him fed off them. What will we do? When will it happen? Will we be strong enough to make whatever compromises necessary to win a war?

  “And what about Harken?” Eli craned his neck, stretching the stiffness from it. “You see this little coalition as the powers that be gathering to prepare for battle. To assure we are the winning side. At least, that’s what you wish it was. I think you’re starting to see that in war, the individual doesn’t matter. Just the greater good.”

  Their eyes met, and Barton’s dropped to the floor. Eli caught an immediate memory flickering there just in front of him as if Barton had repeated it out loud: they were going to leave Eli to die . . . as long as they got the stone away safely.

  “I thought as much.” Of course the Owls wouldn’t be interested in saving Eli himself; after all, you can’t alter centuries of Narrative-preservation overnight. Perhaps ever. “Which means I owe you double. If it wasn’t for you, I really wouldn’t be here. No one else was moving to get me out of there except you.”

  Barton got the words out before Eli could snatch them from his thoughts. “So you don’t think they’ll try to rescue Roan? Wherever she is?”

  Eli folded his arms. “They’ll try to find Seela. He’s the priority. The stones are the only things that matter. And that’s what Seela wants from Roan, ultimately. A means to an end. They can thwart him if they get the stones back. Without them . . . well.”

  “We’re fucked,” Barton finished for him.

  Eli snorted. “Might as well not mince words.” He looked back out into the hall. “And might as well save face while I can. It won’t take long for the others to realize what I’m about.”

  He didn’t have to turn to feel Barton nodding behind him. Eli took a breath, felt his vertebrae shifting with the phantom weight of his wings, and started down the corridor. Barton went behind him, out of curiosity, it seemed, more than actual support. Eli had to give him credit; he wasn’t dumb enough to imagine that he’d go with Eli afterward. Barton knew he had to stay behind to try to do the impossible — convince the coalition that his friends were worth preserving in all of this.

  But Barton had been right the first time: Eli knew better.

  ~

  “ . . . a matter of time.”

  The Fox, Reinhardt, stopped prematurely when he noticed the eyes of the gathering had turned to the doorway, that Solomon, battered as he was, still managed to get up and forget them all completely, limping to meet the ghost of his son across the room.

  “Solomon,” Eli nodded, extending a hand. Solomon didn’t even regard it or stop. He gathered Eli into his arms without a word and pressed him close.

  Eli froze. It would be inelegant to push him away now in front of everyone, and for once in his life he didn’t feel like he wanted to. He lifted a hand to pat the man weakly on the back, clasping him tight for a nanosecond before releasing him.

  “It’s good to see you,” Solomon muttered, voice low but clear enough to carry through the wide room. He fired the thought from his mind like a sharpened arrow: This itself will be a tribunal. Tread lightly before you make your grand exit.

  Eli nodded. He and Solomon were of a height, but Eli could feel the man’s pain as he fought to stay standing. “I’ll join you now,” he said and took Solomon’s arm to guide him back to the long table the other elders had gathered around. Barton stayed behind. When Solomon was seated once again, Eli elected to stand.

  “You’re looking well, Eli.” The woman in the hijab, Alena, dipped her chin. “We did not expect you to recover so quickly. The Moonstone surely helped with that.”

  “Surely.” Eli set his jaw, surveying the table with a flash of surprise. “Magistrate Park! I have to say you’re looking better than I thought you might since we last spoke.”

  The Korean man at Alena’s left gave a grateful if weary nod. “Sir. I can’t say the same about the rest of us from the attack. As you can see, we are the only ones from your original tribunal who made it back here. How Seela and his army of misfit orphans could move so swiftly over thousand-mile distances is just further proof our enemy has already outmatched us.”

  “But we’ve the upper hand again,” put in the Fox, Jacob Reinhardt, cutting a glance to Eli. In that spare instant Eli cast to see what was behind that icy stare: agitation. A soldier’s impatience. Apprehension at being suddenly thrust into a position left vacant by his now-deceased leader — a name swam before him . . . Mala? Then he felt a blow that he did everything not to show on his waking face — a man who was a Fox, throttling the earth beneath him, and Roan Harken’s devastated scream as she pitched over a fissure —

  “Eli?”

  Eli felt the blood rising back into his face, but he hadn’t moved, eyes narrowed at Reinhardt. “We have one stone,” he said quietly. “Seela has two. I’m not sure I’d call that an upper hand.”

  Reinhardt shared a glance with the rest of the gathering. He didn’t have the Owls’ perception, and they may have guessed Eli was testing this man. “Your stone was nearly in Seela’s grasp. You must realize how close you were.”

  Eli frowned. “Yes. I was there.” He ran his dry tongue over his teeth.
“And surely you must realize the obvious. Seela could have returned at any moment to strike you down. To stop you from taking me back. But he didn’t. Not only that, he left me in the open while his tree did its work. That was a gamble, certainly.”

  Eli saw Solomon narrow his eyes in thought, before he sat stiffly up, gesturing towards the doorway. “Seela probably didn’t imagine we had a means to free you. He couldn’t have predicted Barton had such an ability.”

  Eli turned. Barton was sitting in the shadows by the door, hands folded between his knees as he listened.

  “Maybe not,” Eli agreed. “But by now, Seela will have noticed I’m missing. And he’ll either come soon enough or leave us be to make us think we are safe. If it’s as Park says, and this thing can move from one continent to the next in a heartbeat, what’s to stop it from coming here now? Ten seconds from now?”

  “Enough,” Reinhardt growled. “We can speculate all night, or we can move. Denizen and human lives are at stake, the longer we sit here. Not to mention how this entire sordid affair has now leaked into the Mundane world. We already risked exposure with everything that happened with Zabor.” The corner of Reinhardt’s eyes twitched, as if he hadn’t meant to say all he had. He turned to the Rabbit who had been silent, hands folded on the table in front of him. “Commander Zhou? Has your team yet uncovered anything from the site we can use to track this thing down?”

  Zhou clasped and unclasped his fingers as he chose his words carefully. “Whatever materials we recovered disintegrated as soon as we removed them from the site. We know the grounds were shifted using the Emerald. But . . . I fear our stone has been corrupted somehow. We’ve been cut off from it.”

  Reinhardt pulled a hand down his face; Eli knew the man hadn’t slept in too many hours. Barely any of them had. Too many probable outcomes playing behind their eyes.

  “And what about the other stones?” Eli asked. “What have you heard from the Seals?”

  Another Fox — Akilah Fante, Eli plucked her name up from beneath her wrinkled head wrap — took a breath deep enough to raise her mighty bust as she fidgeted in her seat. “They are moving to bring the Sapphire out of the depths. I say leave it where it is. As long as it’s hidden and out of sight, then Seela can’t use it against us.”

  “If they want to join this fight,” Reinhardt put in, “then let them.” He certainly seemed eager for the inevitable bloodshed to follow.

  “And would you say the same about the Quartz?” another Owl, sitting next to Solomon, spoke up — he was the youngest of the four Council members, though at least in his thirties. “It can’t bring all the stones together, at least. The Quartz is the last contingency against that. Fia will never give it up, and I doubt Seela will be going to the Glen anytime soon to take it from them.”

  Eli could feel his heartbeat behind his eyes, suddenly overcome with the urge to shut them as the blood rushed to his head. “As we’ve seen so far, anything is possible, Mr. Gordon.”

  “This thing will pretty much stop at nothing. I’ve seen it myself.” Reinhardt nodded, picking up Eli’s comment to use for his own ends. “It captures and kills to get the stones. It has the power to take them for itself. You Owls may have thought you were high and mighty before, but this thing nearly killed your own Paramount. Let alone what it probably did to Alistair Corgan . . .”

  The blood surged higher, louder. Eli winced, the Moonstone getting suddenly hot at the edges. The meeting room was shimmering out of perspective, overlapping with a great hall that stretched before him, lit only by torchlight, by the burning eyes of the children he’d last seen at the plane crash site. The image sharpened closer still, and Eli saw a massive creature with a pendulant head hanging from a hook-bent neck, in its mutated arms a struggling girl —

  “The second I see the opportunity,” Roan snarled, “I am going to destroy you.”

  Despite the jarring experience of the meeting room slamming back into place and focus, Eli couldn’t help but smile.

  “I can’t imagine you think this is funny, Rathgar —”

  “You can call your man back from the mission in Mongolia,” Eli addressed Commander Zhou directly. “The Paramount is as good as dead. Seela has turned him into his servant in exchange for the stone. Something he might well have done to me. But he didn’t. Which goes to show there is more at play here.”

  The gathering was silent, staring. The commander didn’t move. Eli had to learn to be more careful with his words; he could feel the commander’s sense of betrayal, just now working out that his Paramount had given the stone up willingly in return for his life. Even though now it wasn’t much of one.

  “And how could you possibly know that?” Alena asked, though it came out more as an accusation. She openly glanced down at Eli’s chest, and though he kept the barrier around his thoughts as thick as steel, the Owls were the keepers of Denizen lore and could guess how. He might as well spell it out for the rest.

  “Because I just saw him now, as you were all going back and forth in your eternal runaround, trying to commit to whatever path of least resistance gets you what you want the fastest.” He gripped the back of Solomon’s chair lightly, though it was the only thing keeping him from falling over. “And Roan Harken. She’s there, too. And she’s alive. For now.” Eli shut his eyes again. “It’s the Dragon Opal. While I was in that tree, I could hear it. Hear her.” He undid the cuff of his sleeve, pulled it up, and thrust his arm into the light so they could all see the scars. “However ill-timed the visions are, they seem to be coming to me as they happen. We’re connected somehow.” He turned to Barton. “It started when she dragged me through the Bloodgate. For better or worse, I think I might be able to communicate with her. To know where she is. Which will help me greatly on my own mission, which no longer concerns any of you.”

  Eli was surprised that, as the voices at the table rose, the loudest among them was the de facto leader of the Foxes. “You can’t be serious,” Reinhardt shouted. “After what it cost us to bring you here? You’re going to go back out there, for what? Suicide?”

  Eli lifted an eyebrow. “To bring back your Calamity Stone. Whatever the cost.” It was a gamble. Eli would not easily forget the Moth Queen’s visitation — that had not been a dream. You will free one another — whatever that meant. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe he and Roan Harken were merely destined to destroy one another, and that could be the only freedom they deserved.

  Alena raise her hand. “Wait a moment, Jacob.” She turned to Eli. “We may have an upper hand, after all. We may be able to strike when they’re vulnerable.”

  Eli narrowed his eyes at her. It was Solomon’s hand covering his that ultimately made him break their warring gazes. He spoke only in thoughts. I know you think you have to go, he said. But you’ll have quite a journey ahead to think it over. Killing Roan Harken isn’t always the answer. Or killing yourself, for that matter.

  Eli would have laughed at that.

  “You’re needed here,” Reinhardt scowled. “But if you’re able to get the girl to trust you, then you might be our only chance to get the Opal back safely . . .”

  The room was silent. Solomon took his hand away. Eli actually felt a heavy clump of dread forming in his stomach. It really had been too easy to convince them that killing Roan was the solution. Déjà vu, definitely. He looked at Barton, whose face was twisted in numb rage. Even the Foxes were agreeing to murder their own. For the greater good.

  Eli remembered her eyes, glanced down at his arm. It’s a long journey . . . goddamn empathy.

  It took too great an effort to make it look graceful and natural, but Eli rolled his shoulders as his immense, heavy wings burst from them, tearing the linen on his back easily with the force. He flexed his fingers as they lengthened, the black talons shining in the guttering fluorescents that seemed only to deepen the shadows in the faces of the gathering.

  “I will try to bring the
Opal back, to keep it out of Seela’s hands.” He cut the rest of them a shining stare, one he knew had turned from grey to amber as he let the Therion’s body become his. “I will do what must be done. Whether Roan Harken is still attached to the stone at the end of it or not, I know none of you will stop me out of sentimentality for her.”

  There was a sound like a thunderclap when his wings stretched wide, and the gathering stiffened as one. Eli could have sworn he saw bloodlust in the Owls’ eyes, maybe even Reinhardt’s.

  “Father,” Eli inclined his head to Solomon, “I’ll check in.” He turned to Barton again, reached into his mind, planted a thought there with as much reassurance as he could muster.

  I will try to bring her back alive, he promised, though he scarcely believed it himself.

  Barton froze, as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard Eli properly, but Eli had already smashed into the rusted-out ventilation shaft and flown out into the forbidding chill of the Russian dark.

  West, the stone tugged at him, and the wind took him in her arms, guiding him quicker through the long night ahead.

  An Empty Sky

  Corgan had virtually dragged me most of the way up the stairs. Which was fine — after the first ten flights I got tired of fighting, so I let the monster do the legwork.

  “Where the hell are we going that is this high up?” I’d grumbled. All my pent-up tension had turned into sour impatience.

  Corgan was more forthcoming with the conversation than I’d anticipated. “Master wants you to be comfortable. His summoning chamber is his sanctuary. Only the best for his true daughter.” That last bit came out with a touch of bitterness. Maybe jealousy.

  Killian’s summoning chamber was above ground? The pit in which I’d originally woken up seemed more like the province of a grotesque shadow demon, not some tower.

  I couldn’t tell much of where I was, anyway. Sparsely lit, stone hewn. It’d be way too cliché if this was a castle, but it seemed to be fitting the bill. Water rushed nearby, and I’d been pulled up into a great hall that might or might not have had windows — it was nighttime and hard to tell, and I’d been yanked out before I had the chance to really get a better look. All I could think of were the huge dark shadows on that back wall, turning their eyes on me.