Light Speed

by Arkadie, Z. L.

  He snorts. “You say that like you’ve been enlightened?”

  “I have. I know the legend. But not the face.”

  “And what do you know of my legend?”

  “That you’re a killer,” she says, and she sounds quite impressed.

  He laughs loudly and in my mind I see him tilting his head back to bellow out that sound.

  “Do I owe you apologies?” Chex asks as I slip on the second black boot. I feel my face drop in disappointment when I realize that I have to lace them up. I’ve seen Na’ta tie her boots many times before but I’ve never had to do it for myself.

  However, before Na’ta can respond, Chex is kneeling down before me, lacing up the string of one boot and then the other. I’m so enchanted by him that I reach down to run my fingers through his wavy black hair. But then I quickly withdraw my hand because I get a flash of truth.

  “There,” he says as he stands. “And, um, you didn’t have to take your hand away.” He holds out his arms and grins at me to say, “I’m yours for the taking.”

  I smile at him. He has no idea what alarmed me about him. When I touched the fibers of his head, I saw that the true color of his hair is not black but that of straw, like that of Baron Ze Feldis. His eye color is not truly black either. Why would a Selell go through so much trouble to conceal his true identity?

  “Shit, I forgot,” Na’ta curses as she appears behind the tree. “Sorry about that Adore. I keep forgetting you’re no earthling.”

  “See,” Chex says as he affectionately taps my chin. “You’re new.” He winks at me and I let the matter of his hair and eyes drop.

  I have often wondered how my sisters could trust so much in creatures who were conceived out of the ambitions of The Evil. I have always believed they are eternally tortured by their thirst and will manipulate and scheme to quench it. I considered this narrative fact. But now that I have closely experienced Selells of my own, my beliefs are starting to dissipate because Chex has not once threatened to harm me in any manner. Since we first fell in each other’s company, he’s only sought to protect me.

  As we stare into each other’s eyes, I can easily declare that he’s my tek ce’bek, my friend. But not in the way that Tryst is my friend. No—because I relish the moments when Chex puts his hands on me. Like when he holds me close to him or asks permission to explore my da’na’ra, my body. I want to know everything about him. I want to have known him all of his life! Although I’ve been alive longer than he’s been a human or Selell, I’m sure of it.

  “Okay, enough of this,” Na’ta hisses as she observes the staring between Chex and me. There’s a warning in the way she’s looking at me. “Tetra’s calling.”

  “About that,” Chex says, after breaking eye contact with me. He rests his eyes on her and just for a moment I feel abandoned by him. What a strange emotion this is that I’m feeling.

  However, I notice how those two words have instantly brought him Na’ta’s full attention. I think it’s the way he said it. She knows he objects to her plan.

  “If you need Ad’ru’s bond to get into Tetra, we can find him because I can smell him.” Chex wrinkles his nose as if the scent of Exgesis is foul. “But you might want to ask Ad’ru if this is what she wants to do before you go leading her to some place where dead vampire souls go to rot.”

  “Not rot— to wait,” she corrects him. Now she’s frowning. “And her name is Adore,” Na’ta barks, correcting him. “Don’t speak Enuian of you’re not Enuian, Selell.”

  Chex lifts his top lip to show teeth but this time a guttural growl roars in his throat. “If Ad’ru has a problem with me calling her Ad’ru, then she’ll tell me, not you.”

  “I don’t have an issue with him calling me by my real name,” I quickly chime in.

  “I do,” Na’ta hisses. She looks just as sinister as Chex.

  Like Chex, Na’ta has a sea of blood on her hands. She’s not like me, or Cl’auta or Falu, but she is more like Tapeetha. They both lust for the fight. However, unlike Tapeetha, Na’ta spends her days seeking out battles. Once she walked right into a coven of hostile Selell’s with Telman. Naturally a fight occurred. She was sliced across the face and then pierced through the heart with a poisonous blade. Sometimes I think none of us other than Na’ta could survive the wounds that befall her. Father healed her face then. However, she does have a long scar across her cheek which she received at the claw of a sea creature.

  “Na’ta,” I reprimand her while taking her by the shoulders to force the light into her.

  She rolls her angry eyes away from Chex and widens them at me. “I’m sorry, Adore. If you like him that much, then so be it,” she relents. “So you say you can smell him?” she asks Chex, this time controlling her anger.

  It’s safe to take my hands from her because the light has effectively subdued the part of her that is single-minded.

  “Ha!” Chex snickers after witnessing how the power of light controls her. “I think I’m starting to believe in God,” he mumbles out of one side of his mouth. Although I realize he’s being sarcastic. “So what now?”

  “We find Adore’s true bond,” Na’ta says to upset him. The light couldn’t stop her from taking that jab at him.

  If Chex is bothered by what she said, he doesn’t show it. Instead he nods at me for my consent and once again the way he’s looking at me takes my words away. I can only smile at him.

  He takes one deep and long sniff, closes his eyes, and carefully releases the tepid air. He smiles at me, just like I’m still smiling at him.

  “Got him,” he says.

  “I guess you have to lead the way,” Na’ta says and she doesn’t sound happy.

  “Just remember your place is behind me,” he jokes with her.

  She snarls and rolls her eyes at him.

  He leaps off down a path and we follow.

  Chapter 7

  Back to Life

  We exit the forest, leaving the muddy daylight behind us. The change in environment is abrupt as we walk the wind in a night sky with billions of sparkling white kets, or stars, clustered across it. The same tall and sharp blades of grass that grow in the Mashlands coat the landscape beneath our feet and a significant number of spiraling crop formations are strewn throughout. However, unlike the Mashlands, it’s peaceful here. We’re even being carried by a trail of cool, whispery breezes.

  Chex storms ahead, leading us to Lario Exgesis. The tail of the black coat he’s wearing flows behind him like a second layer of skin. I notice how comfortable it is for him to keep one hand hidden inside of it. That’s because he hides weapons in the inseam. I wonder if touching the instruments brings him solace.

  There are no words spoken between us at the moment. Na’ta is using all of her concentration in an effort to connect with Telman. She hasn’t stopped trying since we started over these strange lands.

  My mind is drawing from lessons I have learned over time about the power of the i’lek’u. I recall my studies of the lar’im the soul of a creature. Within it exists a light that is the size of a speck of sand. It’s called the a’hanterel and it’s made of delicate tissue. Only I, Ad’ru, with the power of light can access it. However, I have been entrusted to use the lar’im sparingly. It is the power to know more about the being than it could even know about itself.

  I have tried to connect to the energy that bonds me to Lario Exgesis but he is quite learned in our ways. He has invoked a defense that can even withstand me. However, I am more knowledgeable than he can ever know.

  As we travel over a sea of sameness, he continues to saturate my thoughts. If Exgesis can keep me from connecting to him, then why isn’t he able to obstruct Chex? He knows we are together. Even from his watery prison he saw the Mtknv hand Chex to me as a companion. Yes, now is the time to enter the a’hanterel of Lario Exgesis, and so this is what I do.

  The i’lek’u knows who I seek and once it latches on to him, my body comes to an abrupt stop. Even though my eyes are wide open, all I can see
is stark white light. I hear Chex and Na’ta asking if I am okay, but it sounds like they are far away.

  At this very moment I am also contained in Lario Exgesis’ lar’im. He’s on muddy earth surrounded by huts of yellow straw and pink, fleshy, humanoid creatures with tiny black spikes growing out of their scalps. What peculiar beings they are, just as jarring as the Mtknv, the Mash, and the Guards of Siffeo. I instantly notice that it’s natural for these creatures to hold their mouths with the top lip curled over their blackened and decayed teeth. Their eyes are fully black but there’s a yellow dot in the center of them; even as they stand still and breathe, they sound like a wild pack of snorting Earth animals called wild boars. Lario knows them as the Treesh, and although he’s repulsed by their anatomy, he takes care not to show it.

  “Where’s light and speed?” One of the Treesh creatures roars thunderously.

  “Close,” Lario Exgesis claims. He stands and sounds sure of this, but deep down he is not secure that his scheme will work. This is why he draped himself in the light.

  Gripped by anxiety, he looks up at the sky. He’s expecting us—me, Chex, and Na’ta. He conjured up his scent to have Chex guide us here into the hands of these creatures, the Treesh, who reside in the bogs along the southern border of the territory which borders Ronoloh. He is playing two sides. He and the Olligark stole the Scepter of Gant from the Mtknv, who are its guardians. Now he’s consorting with the Treesh to steal it from the Olligark. He’s deceiving both factions. Exgesis is reliving every moment right now and those images excite him.

  “You get us the scepter or you die?” the creature threatens.

  Lario shrugs his shoulders with smug nonchalance because he does not fear the Treesh creature’s threat. If any of the Treesh creatures come in contact with the light, the pain will be so severe that, although it won’t kill it, it will make it want to die.

  His a’hanterel has informed me well. He knows that Na’ta will seek to save Telman at any cost. And, strangely, I am fervently in his thoughts. He is vexed by the way I smell, even the tone of my voice, and how being near me rouses desirous feelings that have never been alive in him before. Like a Selell craves blood, he craves me. However, more than he lusts for me, his bond, he is driven toward seeking ultimate power. I also see that Lario Exgesis doesn’t want to have those yearnings for me. That is why he is choosing to deliberately betray me, in hopes that his aspirations will isolate us.

  And then I understand why he covets the Scepter of Gant: it will make him king of all universes. I also see why Na’ta and I are needed to recover the instrument. And that’s when it becomes clear to me that we must do what Exgesis wants and take the Scepter of Gant out of the Olligark’s hands. Only we must return it to the hands of the Mtknv; the only problem is that it will never be safe in their hands as long as incessant invaders like the Olligark seek its power. Nevertheless, they are its rightful guardians.

  I blink to focus once I’m fully back to myself. Na’ta grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me.

  “You’re back,” she sighs in relief. “What the hell where you doing? We saw the light inside of you; it was the only way we knew you weren’t having a seizure or something.”

  I glance at Chex and he’s scowling at me. I think I frightened him and I am very sorry for that. But after taking a few calming breaths to steady myself, I tell them both what I have just experienced.

  “Then you stopped us just in time,” Na’ta says, relieved. “This is Ronoloh. It’s the empty land.”

  “The empty land?” Chex asks curiously.

  “Nothing lives here and you can’t stay here too long or the lohs will make fertilizer out of you.” She narrows her eyes to study the ground below. “The loh is the grass. Ronoloh means high grass. But we’re safe; apparently the human in us doesn’t taste like chicken.”

  Chex sniffs, amused by her remark; but I don’t understand. A chicken is an Earth creature, a fowl…

  “Forget it, Adore,” Na’ta says, noticing my puzzlement. “It was a joke.”

  “Oh.” I look down at the crop circle that swirls beneath us. I really feel “new” now and I don’t think I like it much.

  “So why does he need your light and my speed?” she asks, moving forward with the matter before us.

  When I look up, I take an embarrassing glance at Chex, who winks at me while wearing an endearing smile and my shame suddenly fades.

  “He thinks we can use my light to get past the Olligark.” I notice Chex crease his brows curiously. After a brief pause to wonder what he’s thinking, I continue. “I believe they are in a universe called Ol.”

  “Yes, it is Ol,” Na’ta confirms.

  “So… like Exgesis, you’re familiar with this shit?” Chex asks, but even I can detect the indictment in his tone.”

  “Screw you vamp,” Na’ta barks. “If you’re trying to pin me to that psycho-maniac then I’ll kick your ass right here, right now!”

  Chex rolls his eyes and sniffs forcefully.

  “Stop you two!” I scold before realizing it. I’m weary of their bickering. “Answer the question,” I demand of Na’ta.

  She takes a moment to assess the seriousness in my heated expression. I’m showing her a look she’s familiar with. In all the years of my life, Na’ta has been the only other creature who’s moved me to anger.

  “I know of them,” she says bitingly, rolling her eyes from me, to Chex, then back to me. “Ol is a pitch black universe. That explains why he needs your light.” She pauses. “But why my speed?” she ponders.

  “Because you’re able to carry me,” I say, just as quickly as the revelation occurs to me.

  “Ah,” Na’ta breathes and looks off to reflect. “Humph. Why didn’t I ever think of that?”

  “What are you confessing Na’ta? Have you antagonized these creatures before?”

  She shrugs nonchalantly. “If I answer, you’re going to give me that deadpan look of yours. That’s why I choose to plead the fifth.”

  “What?!” I shout. “What does that mean?” I’m nearly weary of her antics.

  “She’s saying yes,” Chex answers as Na’ta stares at me with wide and worried eyes.

  “One day, Na’ta,” I shake my head at this thought and my eyes water a little. “You will be the first of us to die from a murderous hand.”

  She tilts her head to one side. “You should try frightening me with the possible.”

  We glare at each other. I know what she’s referring to. Like Tapeetha, she doesn’t fear death because she’s tested the limits of our destructibility. They are both convinced we can’t die.

  “Whatever, Adore,” she finally says with an indifferent shrug. “And apparently you’re in charge here. So just promise me that we will not leave the alternate universes without going into Tetra.” She lifts her eyebrows at me and holds them until I answer.

  “I promise,” I say sincerely.

  She shifts her eyes away from me and puts them on Chex. “And you?” She waits for his answer and I’m surprised she even asked. This is a civil act and suddenly I’m proud of her.

  “If she’s in, I’m in,” he replies with his gaze fixed on me. Then he scowls seriously at her. “So where’s this place—Ol?”

  “Follow me.” Na’ta darts downwards to enter a corridor that’s cut into the crop circle beneath us.

  Here we’re surpassed by tall blades of coarse grass. The first thing I notice is that it’s warmer down here than it was up there. It’s never like that in Enu. The temperature stays the same whether in a cave, a valley, a mountaintop, or under the seas.

  “And don’t touch the grass,” Na’ta warns.

  “Duly noted,” Chex says as he slips off his jacket and spreads it open on the ground. Just as I thought, he’s carrying daggers and other sharp instruments. He has hundreds of them lined up and kept in place by loops from one hem to the other.

  “The infamous arsenal,” Na’ta says studying each instrument carefully.

  He lifts on
e side of his mouth into that lopsided grin, showing teeth. “You’ve heard.”

  “But none of that is going to work against the Olligark. I’ll be back.” And without another word, Na’ta invokes the power of speed and she’s gone.

  Chex and I are once again alone. The lingering silence is awkward.

  “I must say…” he starts as he rises out of his squat to stand. Then, he hesitates once I make eye contact with him, “I like how you handle your sister. She comes off all badass, but you’re the real badass.” He’s leering at me.

  I do wonder what desires are veiled by the look in his eyes, but I am more curious to learn the meaning behind his words. “What is ‘badass’?” I ask.

  Still gazing at me in that manner, he moves to face me and he’s quite close. “A badass is someone with real control,” he says. “You control me. You control her. Hell, you even control Ktkl!”

  I smile. “You said his name.” I’m happy he didn’t call such a remarkable creation like Ktkl and his species ‘water people.’”

  “You like that?” He asks in what I’ve noted is his seductive tone of voice.

  And rendered speechless, I’m only able to nod.

  “I like you,” he whispers.

  My head feels like it’s floating away from my body and I gulp the air that’s trapped in my throat just to remind myself that I’m still in control of that part of my body. “I like you too,” I croak in a squeaky voice.

  It’s silent. We stare into each other’s eyes. I wonder what he’s going to do next. Is he going to ask to touch me? Maybe kiss me?

  Instead he says, “I still hate that you’re bonded to Exgesis. I hate it a lot.”

  I touch his chest where his heart used to beat, without consent. “I don’t choose these things. If I could, I would choose you and not him.”

  “Shit,” he sighs, and instantly his lips are on mine and his cold tongue is in my mouth. This action between us… it’s like a slow and steady search. The longer we exercise, the warmer our mouths become. My heart, my head, and every cell of my body beg him to merge into me. And he’s lifted me up off my feet, pulling me tight into his hollow chest, and long, firm sexual extremity.