“Don’t be alarmed,” she said, and then carried him with her through the veil.
He started screaming again.
“Don’t let go of my hand!” she shouted. Her voice sounded much louder and sharper. Sound was jangly and crisp and traveled far there.
He was panicking, and trying to wriggle free, and she couldn’t do anything but hold on and wait for him to calm down. Slapping him would have meant dropping the sword first, and she liked the sword.
She supposed it was possible that this was a legitimately frightening experience for Rick. She couldn’t entirely recall what her reaction was when first being carried across, but perhaps she too was frightened initially. Having him behave this way was no less convenient, though. The circumstances were too perilous for panic.
The space they had just occupied on Earth was being perforated by bullets from the semi-automatic machine gun one of the guards had begun firing. If they were merely invisible, they’d be dead.
The bullets tickled. She thought so, at least.
“Aaaahhh, Jesus what is… What’s going ON?”
“They can’t see you or hear you or hurt you so long as you don’t let go of me.”
“Why am I so tall? What is this??”
“Calm down, damn you.”
He calmed a little, so she began dragging him to the far end of the room. It was slow-going, as he walked more or less like a man on stilts for the first time.
There was a dark corner where—once she let go of his hand—she imagined he would be safe. She led him there.
“The ground is soft,” he said.
“Yes, and so are the walls and the ceiling. We can swim through the bedrock to the surface if you wish, but not yet.”
“No, let’s go! If we can go, let’s just go!”
“I’ve made promises. I’m going to keep them this time. Now I’m going to let go of your hand. You will fall back to Earth when I do this. Promise you will make no sound. If you do, they will discover you. Do you understand what that will mean?”
“Yes, all right.”
“You understand?”
“I understand.”
She released him, and watched as he shrank to his normal height. His eyes widened and he appeared on the precipice of vomiting, but he kept silent. It was fortunate, as the men with the guns were firing around the room at every stray sound:
“Is she dead?”
“Where is she?”
“Check for a body.”
“Oh my god, what did she do to him?”
“I’m gonna be sick.”
Eve stepped behind one of them, inserted the sword in his forehead, and materialized until the light went out in his eyes. She stepped out again before the hail of gunfire riddled the already-dead man she was leaving behind, and also the man standing next to him.
They were so happy to use their guns they were prepared to use them on one another in a vain attempt to hit her. Bullets were indiscriminate, and firearms were what men who didn’t really understand what it was like to kill used. This was why the goblins preferred swordplay. It was a sentiment she agreed with.
The man who shot at her was next. She didn’t bother with subtlety, appearing next to his non-gun-hand side and using the sword until he stopped moving. Likewise the next two, whose arms she removed before they could get a shot off, then their heads to stop the screaming.
The last three threw down their guns and tried to get away. She put herself between them and the steel door exit, and made excellent use of the goblin sword. She didn’t even need the veil.
That left Margaret.
The small woman had neither bothered to run nor to raise a weapon, unless the camera was considered one. She was slavishly devoted to documenting everything happening around her, and transmitting the information to whomever might be observing the video. Eve hoped it was a large audience. The more who feared her, the better.
“Do you speak to him?” Eve asked, walking slowly from the doors to the center of the room, over the remains of the unprepared soldiers.
Margaret was pointing the camera at Eve, not looking up from the view screen for the device and not answering direct questions.
“Margaret.”
She looked up, confused, as if the television show she’d been watching had suddenly begun to address her directly.
Eve pressed the tip of the sword against the woman’s throat. Blood from the blade dripped down Margaret’s suit.
“In your hand,” Eve said, “there is a telephone. Do you speak to him on this?”
“Yes” Margaret whispered. “Yes I… I do.”
“What is his name?”
“I don’t know.”
Eve pressed the point forward. “I’ll ask again.”
“His name is Mr. Talbot. I don’t know his first name.”
“Talbot.”
“Yes.”
“Give it to me.”
Margaret handed over the phone, and then Eve cut her throat.
She held up the phone.
“As promised, I have killed everyone,” she said, over the sound of Margaret’s sputtering death on the floor. “Now I’m going to find you.”
A man looked at her through the glass of the telephone.
It was an impossible face. She hadn’t seen it for more than a thousand years.
“I look forward to seeing you try,” he said.
The screen went dark.
“Wait!” she said, but he was gone. She threw the phone across the room, and listened to it shatter on the wall. Pieces clattered to a soft ending in the blood pool of dead men.
She let the sword slide from her hand and listened to the metallic clatter as it bounced. Everything was loud and smelly and dirty again. She felt weighted down, painted in crimson and sweat.
This was the world as she’d always thought of it.
“Rick, it’s time to leave,” she said. Her voice was supposed to be a whisper, but it sounded so loud.
Rick didn’t reply.
She checked the corner where she’d left him and found it unoccupied.
He was gone.
SEVEN
It took only a little time to get from the sub-level back to the parking lot. She chose a route that didn’t involve normal conveyances—stairs or elevator—and instead walked into the bedrock and pushed her way up.
It wasn’t an easy trick to learn or teach. Proper technique required finding a level on the other side of the veil that was distant enough from the edge of the world to make rock as gentle as water, but with enough solidity to give one purchase. It was also very difficult to breathe in this scenario.
Still, she made the surface in what felt like only a few minutes. In Earth time it was more, which was why when she got there, Rick and his car had already driven away.
Also, the building was on fire. Loud klaxons were sounding inside and the sky was awash with red flashing lights from emergency crews approaching the road.
It was not a good time or place to step out of the veil, so she didn’t.
She needed to get home to Rick, and make certain he was all right.
* * *
Travel in the veil was deceptively easy, although there were tricky elements if one weren’t paying careful attention.
Once you understood how much smaller the world became the deeper you went, it was a simple enough thing to find a level that allowed for one stride per mile if one were so inclined. It required concentration—this was the tricky part—because time accelerated as well.
She had a way to return to Rick’s home without a car, then. But if she were incautious she would advance herself a week or longer.
The pace she settled on got her back to his front door by mid-afternoon of the following day according to his clock, in about four hours of her time.
At the door, she lowered herself to the edge of the veil. Again, spacial concepts like lowered and raised and up/down and far/near were at best approximate descriptions. All it meant was her time came close
to syncing with his.
She pushed through the front door and into his living room.
He was there, on the couch, drinking beer and staring at his wall. It didn’t look as if he’d gotten any sleep. Dee was buzzing around, apparently ignorant of his mood.
It was good to see he had gotten home all right, and that Dee had made it as well.
I could leave him here, she thought. He would never know.
But there was more to talk about. He had driven away without her. She wanted to understand why, and what it meant.
She stepped out of the veil.
He seemed unsurprised when she solidified before him, but that may have been because the drink was dulling his senses.
“I was wondering if you’d come back,” he said. He eyed her up and down, for long enough to make the moment uncomfortable. “That’s a hell of a trick.”
“It’s not a trick.”
“You’re covered in blood. Did anyone see you like that?”
“No.”
“You should shower. Probably burn those clothes or something.”
Of the many things she anticipated hearing first from him, a shower wasn’t on the list.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
* * *
She took the shower, and changed into fresh clothing. The old clothes—it had been a pink blouse and white shorts before the events of the evening turned both to a more crimson shade—she left in a plastic bag beneath his sink. She considered following Rick’s advice but had no way to make fire and didn’t believe the ventilation in his living area was adequate for the smoke.
On returning to the living room, she found him essentially unmoved.
She took a chair at the table. It didn’t seem the time to sit close.
“So I guess I should apologize,” he said. “I figured if you came back I owed you one for not waiting.”
“Where did you go?”
“There was a fire exit right there. When you dropped me out of whatever that veil thing was and you went over to cut people’s heads off and all that… once I got past the urge to throw up I was like, I’m pretty sure everyone’s too busy to even notice me, so I took off. Stairs went straight up to a side exit next to the lot, and… Honest, I’m pretty sure I didn’t even think of waiting around. I just got in the car and—”
“Yes. I understand. That was the intelligent thing to do.”
“I kinda freaked out.”
“It’s all right. I’m sorry I put you in such danger at all.”
“Not sure you did. I’ve been running through the whole thing, right? Pretty sure it was my idea to push on this… whatever it was we stumbled over. I mean, I didn’t expect anybody on the other end to be ready to kill us over a few dumb questions, not really. Paranoid me was all about that, but I don’t think I took it that kind of serious.”
“The threat was realized only after someone involved with that company recognized me for who I am. I don’t imagine our lives would have been in danger otherwise. Your lone entreaties for information would have been ignored.”
He nodded slowly.
“Okay. I guess that does change it a little.” He pushed himself up in the couch, so their eyes were level. She could see redness on the edge of his pupils. He looked more ragged than she could remember ever seeing him.
“Recognized you for who you are, huh? So who are you?”
“You know who I am. I’ve told you.”
“That was before you put your arm through a guy and ripped his chest open. I know who you told me you are, but maybe that’s not right. Maybe who you told me you are is who you want to be. Who you are is something else.”
“And what would that be?”
“I don’t know. But this whole mother-of-the-world pacifism thing you have going on, I don’t think I’m good with that any more.”
She was trying to see this from his perspective, but it was difficult. Violence required an answer of violence. This was the dialogue of his entire world.
“I… I was protecting us,” she said. “I saw no option but to answer their threat in kind.”
“The guys with the swords, sure. Maybe I’ll spot you both of them. Even there, though…you could have walked us both out without hurting anybody, couldn’t you? Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You are wrong. I could have, yes, I could have taken you into the veil where nobody could hurt either of us, and we could have left them bewildered and powerless to stop our exit. But that would have only sufficed for the moment. They knew your name, and I have no doubt they know where you reside. I can’t keep you in the veil forever, and I can’t stay here and protect you forever.”
He shook his head, took a drink from his beer, and thought some more.
“Before I ran off I watched you tear apart five people. Did you leave anyone alive?
“Of course not.”
“Of course not, she says. Even Margaret?”
“Yes.”
“By my count that’s eleven. I don’t want to be worth the lives of eleven people, ever. There had to be another solution. We could’ve called the cops or something. Notified a congressman, or… I don’t know, but we live in a civilized country where people don’t just go out and kill folks with impunity. If you got me out of there I would have been okay. Did you start the fire too?”
“The… No. I saw it, but I didn’t start it. I wouldn’t have known how.”
“Sorry, I thought maybe you can breathe fire too. I mean, why not?”
“I can’t. Nobody can. Even dragons could not.”
“Dragons are real, now?”
“They were. They’re extinct. How did you learn of the fire?”
“It was on the news. When I saw it, first thing I thought was maybe I should call up Dr. Marks. I don’t even know what I was planning to say when I reached him, but that didn’t end up being a problem because his line’s been disconnected. I’m kind of wondering, if I drove out there, if his place would still be standing or if it’s been torched too.”
“That’s a real possibility, yes. Whoever was behind all of this is destroying a trail, it would be reasonable to think the doctor was one of the things that needed to be destroyed.”
“He’s a person. Not a thing to destroy.”
“Don’t be angry with me, I’m not the one setting the fires, I told you.”
“Yeah.”
He quieted, and settled on a point on the wall behind her on which to fix his gaze. She wanted to sit beside him and take his hand, and offer some sort of comfort. Something was clearly broken between them, but surely it was not permanent.
“I want you to understand,” she said, once it was clear he had no new conversational thread to pull. “Violence is sometimes the only answer, but I didn’t ask for it to be this way and I didn’t make it this way.”
“You’ve told me the story. But Eve, that was a… a fantasy. A myth. In this place where I live, evisceration isn’t a negotiating tactic. You can talk about things that happened tens of thousands of years ago as if they’re still important, but we’ve come a long way since. We’re pretty damn civilized now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. I can tell you the odds are good I’m the first kid on the block to witness a murder.”
She laughed. “Oh, I doubt that. Whether you see it directly or not…”
“That is my definition of witnessing, yes.”
“You enjoy the meat from the cow and then claim ignorance of her death! Your civilization no less violent than it ever was, only now it’s committed by proxy.”
It was his turn to laugh, out of surprise more than amusement.
“That’s pretty good. But this is not a debate on the horrors of capitalism, wartime economies, or, I don’t know, economic deprivation as a form of abuse. I can have that argument if you really want to, but let’s keep our perspective. You chopped a man’s head off. Let’s talk about that.”
“It was more than one head.”
<
br /> “Not helping.”
“Did you not feel that your life was in danger?”
“I did, yes. And I will admit that’s the first time I’ve been in that position. But I saw your face, Eve. When you were doing it, I saw your face. You can tell me all you want that you have no place here, but you didn’t look unhappy. And what you were doing was something I can’t imagine myself ever doing. I think I’d probably end up dying first.”
“I didn’t… No that isn’t true, I didn’t enjoy it. They were threatening someone I care for, and my path was clear. What you saw was the peace of clarity. I knew what I was supposed to do, and I was not going to back away from that.”
Not again, she thought.
“What you were supposed to do was get us out of there safely.”
“I did that.”
“Without killing everybody in the building!”
“I told him I would!” she snapped.
When she raised her voice—something she almost never did—she saw Rick wince. It was barely a second, but it happened.
Fear.
It was then she knew she had lost him.
“Told who?” he asked.
“There was a man,” she said with a forced calm. “When you and I were separated I was placed in a room where a man on a speaker claimed he knew who I was. He demanded to know what I had learned of him and his organization. I don’t know why, but it seemed apparent his concern was based primarily on my having the information, rather than the information itself escaping. I don’t know how my intervention is meant to impact whatever manner of scheme we stumbled upon.”
“He didn’t say?”
“Of course not. But he was convinced we knew far more than we do. Since his concern was likely keeping you alive I did not say how much or little we knew. What I did say was, if he did not let us both go, I would… do exactly what I did. I needed him to understand I wasn’t bluffing, not only for that moment, but for any future moments. I gave him an opportunity to release us without any harm befalling anyone in his employ, and he chose not to listen.”
“But who is he?”
“I don’t know. I saw his face for only a moment, and thought perhaps I knew it, but I couldn’t have. It isn’t possible. There are only two of us, and he is not the second.”
Immortal Stories: Eve Page 10