Zero Sum: An Alexi Sokolsky Supernatural Thriller (Alexi Sokolsky: Hound of Eden Book 3)

by James Osiris Baldwin

Her mouth drew to one side in irritation, an expression I saw every day in the mirror. "Of course you don't. Why do you think that is?"

  “I don’t know!” I finally raised my voice, but tamped it down to an angry hiss instead of a shout. “I don’t know, and I’m getting sick of it. I lost everything when I came to your aid. Everything. I’m part of this, whether I want to be or not, and I’m not willing to be kept in the dark while-”

  “You are involved,” Zarya said. “And that is, if you think closely about it, precisely why neither of us can tell you everything. Haven't you ever concealed things from a loved one?"

  Whatever angry thing I’d been about to say was cut off at the neck. “... Yes, of course I have.”

  Her eyes, liquid and inescapably eerie in their power to pierce me, to reach through me, closing a circuit in my soul. No... with my soul. "Have you ever lied to a loved one… because you love them?"

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t keep looking into those eyes, but I couldn’t look away from them. The smell of the peppermint oil she wore in her nose plugs was quieting my other senses. Taste, smell... they were closed down, leaving all of their mental bandwidth to be commandeered by blazing Light. The Whole Color.

  "I..." I froze, staring and transfixed. There was no way Zarya was an infant of her kind. Before her, I felt young, immature and awkward. "I... yes, of course."

  "Why did you conceal it from them?"

  "The work I did was dangerous. It shouldn't have involved them." I flushed, hearing the admission as soon as I made it. "But those were almost always about contracts—illegal, dangerous—or things that would have deeply upset or disturbed them."

  "Or they were things that would have deeply disturbed you to confess?"

  "Both. Sometimes." I was struggling not to edge away under the pressure of her focus on me. Her eyes bore into places I didn't want seen, places that were too painful, too vulnerable. It was a real pain, a kind of cringing that made me want to twist and wriggle away.

  "Do you think the work my Hound does is any less dangerous? Do you even imagine it is?”

  I readily recalled Norgay's brief description of what Angkor had done for the Tree, and sighed. "No. But it doesn’t matter: he lied to me and he chose you. That’s the end of it. I don’t have to be his friend."

  “You’re upset that he’s fucking me, and not you?”

  I flushed a deep cherry-red. “Do you have to be crude about it?”

  She turned her head back to stare me down. “It’s not crude: it’s straightforward. Because this is what that demand comes down to. You’re jealous, and you don't want me and Angkor to fuck.”

  "It's... I..." I couldn't even find the words. My hands tensed, and I shook them out to try and stop them from cramping up. "No!"

  "No what?"

  "Last I knew, you were a child of your species and I… I asked him to dinner because I found him attractive, and because he was good to have around. I thought we had a lot in common and he… I thought he cared." I forced my hands still and stiff by my sides, but the spasms went to my face instead. "Fuck! I know this is selfish, Zarya, and maybe it doesn't upset you, but this is... it's terrifying, and I can't just stop being angry. Alright?!"

  "Alexi.” She crawled toward me and lay her hands on my knees. "You thought he cared about you, so when you found out that he's fucking me, that meant he couldn’t possibly care about you?"

  "I... don't know." My lips turned downward, the muscles beside my mouth and eyes jumping. "Not really."

  “I mean, yes, you're right in the sense that, while I am not a Foal anymore, I am still a very young Gift Horse. Certainly the youngest Mare I know. But that makes me centuries older than you. Angkor is almost exactly the same age as I am.”

  “He told me he was fifty,” I said, sourly.

  Zarya bit back a laugh, catching her lip in her teeth. “He’s much older than that.”

  I shook my head, trying to clear it. "So you aren’t a baby.”

  “No. We are born in the Rind and we return to the Rind. Sometimes, they detach with us inside, and are carried on the currents to Cells like this one.”

  I nodded. “Norgay said you... had an uncle. Someone I knew? Or know? The other me? I figure that’s where the ‘Father’ thing comes from, isn’t it?"

  "Yes. My father is another of your Ruachim. But you know you’re changing the subject. You think Angkor can’t care about you and me at the same time. That caring, that love, is a zero-sum game? That if you give your love to one person, there’s nothing to give to anyone else?"

  “I don’t know if you... he could care about me if he’s involved with you, no.” The edges of my ears were burning now, I’d blushed so hard. “For most of my life, I only had the one friend. I cared about him to the exclusion of all else.”

  But that wasn't true now... not really. Not with Jenner, Binah, Talya, and Zane in my life. I knew it, and it embarrassed me more than what we’d been skirting around the entire conversation.

  Zarya regarded me with that piercing white gaze again. "Vassily. You're talking about Vassily, and now that he's dead and worse, you can't be honest with him and tell him that you love him.”

  “Stop.” I pulled away from her touch and looked down, at the walls, at the roof, anywhere but her.

  “You wanted to be with him like Angkor is with me. Your feelings weren't those someone has for a friend, not even their only friend. And the thought of Angkor having sex with anyone else makes you think of all the times you heard Vassily in the other room with a girl... and wanted to be her."

  My hands shook—but not with tics. With rage. “Zarya-”

  She was up in my face, following me as I backpedaled. "And now you're coming angrily to me, that girl-”

  “Shut up!”

  “-and telling me to stay the fuck away from your man and not get involved with him.”

  I wasn’t sure when the knife landed in my hand, or how I wound up on top of Zarya with the weird, rainbow-anodized blade buried in her chest. “SHUT UP!”

  She stared down at the weapon like she didn’t know what it was, or what it was doing there, then up at my face.

  “You bitch! You lying bitch!” My hand wrenched the knife free and stabbed her again, driving it through her ribs. “You’re lying! You’re all fucked in the head! You’re all...!”

  Zarya barely even struggled as I ranted filth—vile, hateful, vitriolic filth—puking up the hundreds of conversations and arguments, the stupid, boring nights at the strip club, the locker-room talk and my father’s bile about faggots and punks and fairies. I screamed about it, about the filthy house and even filthier school, about poverty and the rumors in the schoolyard, about the way I’d noticed Vassily’s lips when I was no older than ten and had the skin burned off my back with cigars when my father saw us hug outside the school gate. And once the hate was out, the grief came in a wracking riptide of memory.

  I remembered laughing hysterically with Vassily as a child, strange hiccoughing sobs from a throat unused to laughing. He was curly-haired, already painfully handsome at eleven years old, and he had me pinned by the arms and hips under our blankets while he roared like a big cat. We called the game “lions”, because we both growled and meowed and pounced on each other, tumbling over the bed and often onto the floor. It always started with playfighting—it always ended with frantic, innocent pleasure from nothing more than friction. Neither of us knew what we were doing. Lenina did. One night, she caught us at it. We were made to sleep in separate beds, and were forbidden from speaking of “lions” ever again.

  And we had obeyed. Lenina and Mariya’s disapproval had pushed the desire and shame down into the darkness and drowned it. The dance between Vassily and me had always been there, submerged under my monastic iron will and his determination to fuck and drink himself straight. We got drunk together once—only once. He kissed me. I still remembered it, even though the rest of the night was a blur: his hands on my body, his mouth sweet with the taste of blueberry liquor, f
rantic tugging on my shirt in the dizzy moments before I passed out. When I woke, he’d acted like it had never happened. He told me the night was a blur.

  Zarya was right—she was right about all of it. I was trying to find something in Angkor, and it had been denied me, again. I fell across her chest as she spasmed and gasped, weeping, confused by how wet my hands, face, and chest were. It took me a few minutes to connect everything: her glassy stare, the pour of silver blood wicking off into the air from two dozen punctures through her torso and neck, the click in her throat, the knife still buried in her heart.

  For the first time in my life, ever, I froze over a kill. My GOD. I’d killed her. I’d lost control, and murdered her.

  “Zarya. No. Oh GOD, no.” I was shaking too hard to do anything except paw at her neck, searching vainly for a pulse, and then collapse next to her, tears streaming down my face. “No. No, please.”

  Zarya was beyond the point of being able to respond, mouth gaping spasmodically with soundless, agonal gasps. But I knew what she would ask for if she could speak.

  “The Pact,” I whispered, suddenly frantic. I grasped the knife hilt, swallowing, and pulled it free. The blade didn’t catch the way it would have in a human chest. Zarya’s flesh was pulpy and firm, like the flesh of a good, ripe peach, but it was blue instead of yellow or red. The sanctified, pure floral smell of her blood cut through the horror, the old pain, the new pain. Hunger overrode grief. Still choking with grief, I pushed her tank top up underneath her breasts, baring her sternum. I slit across and then up, and haltingly slid my hand in under her ribs until I found her heart. It was not difficult – her heart was enormous, easily twice the size of a HuMan’s. Five arteries led out from it, and five veins in. I cut it free, hardly believing what I was doing, and brought the mirror-coated organ to my lips.

  It was perfect. Hot. Sweet. Two mouthfuls, and I couldn’t feel my face anymore. Another three, and the worst of my pain was gone, comforted by a perfect, total satiation. I was hallucinating in vivid color as I rolled to the side again and buried my face against her shoulder. Zarya was still hot to touch, almost feverishly warm. She was no longer breathing, or capable of breathing. Her chest was torn apart, heart gone, lungs pulled apart into indigo pulp. Shivering passed through me in waves, but I didn’t pass out this time. I gained... distance. Clarity. I stepped back into the past.

  It was a cool fall morning. The leaves had turned brown. I was young, eighteen, lunging Katerina in the round pen. Vassily was hanging on the fence while he watched us, his breath pluming frost into the air. Now and then, I twitched the lunge whip in Katerina’s direction and broke her stride, forcing her to skid to a stop and turn back the other way. She was beautiful like this, a wild specter of a horse who snorted, bucked, and tossed her mane as she ran in loops around me without tack, bridle, or bit.

  “Why do you do this?” Vassily asked me. “Run her around and around? Is it just so she can burn off steam?”

  “No.” I clicked my tongue and dashed the whip on the sand, urging her to a gallop. Katerina’s hooves slid on the gravel, kicking them to dust as she bunched and surged forward.

  “Then why do it?”

  I didn’t reply straight away. I let her run—let her flee—from the promise of the fearsome looking, eight-foot lunge whip. It had a handle that was taller than I was by several feet, and a tail longer than that. Despite its size, the whip was never used for striking. Once I noticed that she was breathing harder, I dropped it on the ground and held up my hands.

  Katerina ran another lap before she noticed that the whip was gone. She slowed to a canter, then to a trot, a walk, then turned toward me, snorting like a steam furnace. For a moment, we watched one another. I could see her spirit in those big brown eyes, the galaxy swirl inside of the impassive marble surface of them. The space between us vanished, and as the connection was made, the horse lowered her head and ambled across to me. I reached for her, laying my hands against her withers as Vassily watched on in reverent silence.

  “It’s called ‘joining up’,” I said, quietly. “Horses are driven to run. They HAVE to run. They run for pleasure, for the joy of it, and they run to escape danger. They think when they walk and run. To come in here with me, with a stimulus like this, is a massive exercise in trust for her. She’s scared of the whip—so she runs, and she fights, and she fears... and she waits, because she knows that when the whip is gone, I’m here waiting for her. She looks to me, and in that moment, she joins up with me. She submits to me. I submit to her. That way, we both know we can work together.”

  Vassily’s face flooded with a smile. He grinned, blushed, looked down. “So you’re her stallion substitute, huh?”

  “No,” I replied. “Stallions don’t lead herds. Horses are matriarchal. Herds are led by the mares.”

  “So you’re boss mare?”

  I leaned against the arch of her neck, and breathed in the hay-and-sweet grass scent of her. “Yes.”

  Beside me, Zarya twitched.

  It was her finger, brushing against my wrist. Then a tiny spastic tic ran through her neck, a fluttering against my face. It startled me out of my waking dream, and what I saw took my breath away.

  The Mare’s torn chest was filling with a clear, shimmering gel that swirled and coagulated through her tissues. Smoothly, rapidly swelling up from deep inside her torso, it rebuilt the flesh I had torn away. It was translucent at first, but quickly thickened and solidified until she was re-formed. Then, she lay still.

  “Zarya?” My voice was a dry croak.

  Flawless but inanimate, Zarya looked much like any other corpse... until I felt the life sweep through and around us. Her eyes suddenly kindled with light, opening wide. Ocean was in those eyes: fathomless, endless, and intoxicatingly, perfectly alive.

  I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Paralyzed by awe, I watched as Zarya’s chest swelled with a rattling breath that turned into a brutal hacking cough. She reached for me, and I took her in my arms and embraced her without any hesitation. No crawling skin, no embarrassment, no painful nervous tics. I felt like I should be crying, but no tears came.

  “Try not to hit my lungs next time, okay, bat’ko?” There was a wheeze underneath the dulcet smoothness of her voice.

  I hugged her tightly, and buried my face in her hair, against her neck. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I killed you, I-”

  “Did what I’d hoped you’d do.” Zarya embraced me, chest to chest, holding me with the kind of raw, supernatural strength that told me she could have fought me off and snapped my spine over her knee if she’d wanted to. But she hadn’t. “You’re still young, bat’ko. I have to speak with Norgay. Angkor has told me they’re finished.”

  “... Told you?” I pulled away a little, still resting within the circle of her arms. “How? Telepathy?”

  She smiled. “He’s eaten me enough times that we can speak that way.”

  “In any other circumstance, that would have been just a euphemism.” I sniffed, looking down. Meeting her eyes had been hard before. Now it was impossible.

  “It’s not.” The Mare stroked my face, the silver stubble that was growing in over my scalp. “Go talk to him. Apologize. Be honest with him. And... don’t hurt him. Please.”

  She had a way of making ‘please’ sound like a word of power. I nodded. “Alright. And I’m sorry—I will never lose control like that again.”

  “I won’t hold you to that promise, bat’ko.” She smiled, cheeks dimpling. “Because I need to be Pacted. And because you love doing it.”

  “You need it?” Puzzled, I reached up to stroke her wrist.

  “All flesh must be eaten; all blood must be drunk. But that’s a story for another time. You need to go see Angkor.”

  Shamefaced, I began to pull away from her, but an impulse seized me and I bent down, almost putting my face to the floor, to delicately, chastely kiss her on the side of her throat. Zarya made a low sound of pleasure, writhing sensuously, then laughed and gently pushed me away. I
bowed my head to her, and withdrew.

  Chapter 42

  The world outside the tent looked different than before. Brighter, fresher. I wandered back toward the command station in a daze. Doug was back in his seat. The screen with the logo was still up, so I beckoned to him to get a word.

  “Don’t worry—it’s on mute.” Doug called back. “He’s waiting for Zarya. Is she... uh... alive?”

  “Yes.” The air moved over my skin like fingers. Every one of my senses was heightened: I could smell the age of the building, and the strangely clean, natural smell of everything. The light danced; I noticed the weathered laugh lines by Doug’s eyes—and more strangely—the wary humor in them. Here was a man who used comedy as armor. “Did Angkor go back to his room?”

  “He went out with the corrun, I think,” Doug replied. “First field out the back of the building. Can’t miss it.”

  I nodded stiffly, and withdrew with a last, lingering look toward the tent, where Zarya was only just getting out. “Thank you. For your discretion, as well as your help.”

  “Discretion is my middle name,” Doug said. “Douglas Discretion Digger the… wait, no, ‘dodecagon’ isn’t a numeral. There’s actually no numbers that start with ‘D’. Weird.”

  While Zarya began her conversation with Norgay, I went out under the Phitonic shield that covered the grounds. The building gave way to rubble and long grass. It felt remote. Surreal, even. Angkor was perched on a crumbling wall, watching the horned horse-like creatures – the corrun – as they dug brambles and roots from out of the mud. I was still far off when he half-turned his head. “Has he finished talking with Zarya?”

  The extent of his extrasensory perception took me off guard for a moment. I stopped dead in my tracks. “Not yet.” My chest tensed. It was one thing to talk about him with Zarya, quite another thing to face him like this. I lifted my chin and steeled myself. “I came to see you. And apologize.”

  Angkor didn’t look over at me, but he was visibly tense in his legs and arms, muscles taut with readiness. “Well, I understand why you would be angry. So-”