by Aaron Crash
“I can’t. The hate is in me. The evil is in me. And I don’t want to be Human.” Tears dribbled out of her Onyx-colored eyes and down her cheeks. They should’ve been bubbling away, but they stayed on her skin. “I don’t want your love, Fernando.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Fernando clicked. “I want to give it. You can feel whatever you want. As a child of the Hive, my loyalty to you and the crew is unbreakable. For you are my new queen, my love, the source of my life, and the one goddess eternal, though you are best when you are Human and not a goddess at all.”
Elle softened at how he had changed the Phasmida queen litany. “But I hurt when I’m Human. Now, I don’t hurt.”
“The pain is part of life,” Ling said. “You say demons swim in Onyx energy. We exist in pain, and it’s through this wonderful, terrible teacher that we learn wisdom. That we get meaning. That we fall in love with the moment, this second, right now. I am very happy to be here, alive, and with you, in our pain.”
Elle lowered her hands and plucked a piece of thread from a pouch. It was for a telekinesis spell. She barked the Onyx and tossed the thread. From the dwindling current of detritus behind them, where the belly of the last colonizer spun in the neutron star’s whirlpool, Elle pulled a hundred hibernation pods out of the starship and placed them on the metal plain.
She released Blaze from the stasis spell. He, Ling, and Fernando ran to the pod that contained Trina’s unmoving body. The pods were venting gas and chemicals into the air.
“Bring her forward,” Elle ordered.
“But she doesn’t have a spacesuit,” Blaze said. “Elle, she’ll die.”
“She won’t die as long as I live!” Elle thundered.
Goddamn, but she was playing up this evil goddess thing.
They popped open the hibernation pod, and Trina floated out. Her black eyes opened, and her fanged mouth curled into a snarl.
“No!” Elle snapped. “I get to choose. And I choose to give you a choice!”
Elle took her last pair of handcuffs and snapped one around her wrist. She pulled Trina toward her and snapped the other end on the auditor’s wrist. A final bark and the Onyx energy dissipated from Trina’s skin. She was back to being pink and freckled, and her eyes were their normal green. Whatever unimaginable power kept Elle alive in the vacuum of space had been extended to Trina. The cuffs were gone.
Elle lifted both her hands and let out a scream. The Onyx energy of the captured ghosts and demons was still inside her, but she was sending the ghoulies back into the Lizzie Borden, releasing the energy from her soul before it could permanently destroy her. The remnants of the hundreds of Onyx creatures found themselves, in seconds, back in the Lizzie Borden’s cellar.
A moment later, an Etrusca tentacle rose up above them and came crashing down. A hundred others came slithering across the plane toward them. The Etrusca ruin was coming for them. Was it because it felt the change in Elle’s power level? No way to know.
Still vibrating with energy, Elle took Trina into her arms and floated away into the cargo bay.
Bill clicked in their ears.
“Yes,” Trina answered from inside the ship. “We know. You hate us, Bill. And we better get the hell out of here. And hey, I didn’t know you had a cat.”
Blaze raised an eyebrow. “We don’t have a cat. But it’s good to hear from you, Trina. Glad you’re back among the living.”
“Not living exactly. I’m, um, I believe the term is undead. But I feel pretty damn great for being a dead girl.”
Blaze wondered at that. Trina? Still a vampire? How was that going to work? And what was this about a cat?
Fernando and Ling scooped up Cali and carried her inside.
For a moment, Blaze was alone next to the remains of the demon robot, the very real demon blood, and the spare parts of the dismantled P13rce unit. The Etrusca tentacles were coming, but he had a minute, and he was sick of running.
They’d won.
And yet, what had his sister become? She had overdosed on the Onyx and had transcended her Humanity.
He thought of what she’d said before: power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
His sister’s voice infiltrated his mind. Now is not the time, brother dear, for you to turn soulful. We need to get our asses out of here. If I can’t be Human, you’ll have to be twice as Human for the two of us. And that means being a part of something bigger than yourself. To give freely to your family, no matter how much of a pain in the ass we all are.
Blaze had to laugh. “Coming, Elle. And stay the hell out of my mind. You don’t want to go digging around in my nasty-ass thoughts. You open the wrong door, and you won’t ever be able to look at me the same.”
He spun and fled into the ship.
Bill had the trick ready to trigger another spacetime wave using the miles and miles and miles of Etrusca ruin below. Like before, when Bill initiated the SWD engine, the pulse rocketed across the structure and in a flash, the whole thing was gone.
It all disappeared, just like the other ruin. Blaze knew that they’d see the Etrusca ruins again as the Lizzie Borden streaked away through the darkness of space.
Now, what was this about a cat on board?
TWENTY-NINE_
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Hours later, Blaze sat next to his sister on Cali’s bed, in her werewolf cage. They’d reinforced her room with more metal and Elle had cast more spells. Fixing up the ship, re-magicking the sigils, had depleted the last of her souped-up Onyx skills.
Elle touched Cali’s sleeping face. “She’s going to live. I’m thinking about trying the whole romance thing with her again. An evil Onyx witch and a vicious werewolf, what could go wrong?”
Dark circles drowned his sister’s brown eyes, and new wrinkles curved around her mouth. Becoming a goddess had taken a lot out of her.
“None of that romance bullshit until you sleep,” Blaze warned. “And let Cali be alone for a bit. She’s been through enough in the past few months.”
“You’re right,” Elle agreed. “Too bad I’m too evil to really listen to you.”
Blaze sighed. “Elle, what’s going on with you? I mean, really? How you were, what you could do, it’s a game-changer, but if you snap, we can’t cage you. No, we’d have to put you down.”
“Good luck with that.” She smirked, then turned serious. “I can’t do that again. If I pump myself so full of Onyx energy again, like that, I won’t come back…it was Fernando. He brought me back. And not just me, he saved us, Blaze. He and Bill saved us all. I’m thinking about sleeping with him again to thank him.”
“Seriously?” Blaze asked, sighing in complete frustration.
She shrugged. “Well, not sex, since Fernando isn’t equipped. But you know, get a few drinks in me, see what happens.”
“No,” Blaze said. “I’m putting a stop to this right now.”
“Good luck with that,” she echoed herself. “But no, you’re right. Still can’t believe he’s in the process of translating Onyx speak.”
And that was what had saved them all. Fernando had used his translator and the few phrases he’d been able to parse out of the mystical language that Elle had learned from Granny to cast spells. The Clicker had enough ability to cast a spell to speak with Cali. Elle had tried before but that had completely failed. Fernando succeeded. It could be Fernando didn’t have all the drama with Cali, and so that made him far more effective in communicating with her in her wolf state. Or maybe it was his bedside manner, or maybe it was his Clicker mind, but he had not only calmed Cali but convinced her to stay still while he put new hydrogen shells in her bracelets. At the same time, Bill had messed with the triggers to prevent Xerxes from closing the bracelets remotely. They then sent her off on a starcycle to wreak havoc.
As for the ghouls in the cellar, Fernando spoke to them in Onyx speak. He had made them all a deal: freedom for help against the colonizer monster. Little did the Clicker doctor know that Elle would consume the souls to supercharge her ow
n abilities and then dump them back into the cellar.
Elle turned pensive. “I can’t use that consume spell again. If I start eating up the ghoulies we fight, I won’t stop. And those syringes, two at a time? No. Again, overdosing, getting that much power, I can’t think straight. I talked with Bill and Fernando, and we’re going to come up with a gauge for my Onyx levels. Not too low and not too high. Either one could kill me.”
“That makes sense,” Blaze said. “But how did you know Xerxes’s true name? It was Iz, wasn’t it?”
His sister nodded. “I could see it all so clearly. It was like all of reality had become a pool of water, and I saw straight to the bottom. Iz served the biggest and the baddest thing possible. If the Onyx is an ocean, the Unholy Master, the Lord of Abomination, is the kraken at the heart of it all. He is death. She is oblivion. All rot comes from it.”
“He, she, it,” Blaze muttered. “Sounds bad.”
“It is bad, and he’s awake, and she is working to destroy all of reality.” Elle sighed. “Funny, but the Etrusca remained a mystery. Even though I could see everything so clearly, they were still an enigma.”
“I thought you couldn’t think straight,” Blaze said. “And yet you could see things so clearly?”
She nodded. “That’s it. It’s a pinche dangerous combination. Like what I said to you. I’m sorry for what I said. You’re not a cliché.”
Blaze shrugged. “Possibly. But I have learned a little about the ties that bind. Maybe something about love.”
Elle rolled her eyes. “That’s my least favorite four-letter word that begins with L. Love is a lot of work. Lust is so much easier.”
A knock sounded on the steel of Cali’s room. Trina broke through comms. “Hey guys, can I come in?”
Blaze triggered the door using his display, and the former auditor, now vampire, stepped inside.
“Hey, Trina,” Blaze said.
She pulled up a chair. “So, Elle, I’d like to thank you for saving me. Well, and you too, Blaze.”
Both brother and sister nodded, smiling at her warmly.
“So how is this going to work?” Blaze asked.
Trina flushed her skin back to being freckled and pink. That was nice. “I like you, Blaze. Elle, sorry, but you and I aren’t meant to be.”
Blaze dropped his head. “Ugh, no more romance talk. I meant your vampire shit going on, Trina. How is that going to work?”
“Elle gave me a choice. Look at me.”
The gunny raised his eyes. Trina’s freckles were gone, her skin was translucent, and Onyx ink ran through her veins and arteries. Her eyes were obsidian, and she opened black lips to show fangs like midnight glass in her mouth.
Then, before his eyes, the Onyx energy faded, and she was back to being a fresh-faced former IPC auditor. “I have a choice. In my Human form, I’m pretty normal. But as a vampire, I have their abilities. And their hunger.”
“She’ll need blood,” Elle said. “And she needs to be close to me. A part of me is helping her control her power. If I die, or if I get too weak, she’ll vamp out, and the choice will be out of her control.”
“That’s right.” Trina nodded. “And if I do become a vampire, I’m asking you to kill me, Blaze. I don’t want to add to the evil in the universe.”
Blaze didn’t want to think about that. He simply nodded. It was promise enough.
She brightened. “Speaking of blood, do you have any around? I’m starving.”
“Well,” Elle said, “I’ve been cooking. We’re having a victory feast, right, Blaze?”
He didn’t respond right away. He was wondering how he and Trina could be together since she was still infected with the vampire virus. But he didn’t ask. He wanted a break from the romance shit for a second.
Finally, he laughed. “Hell yes, we’re feasting, sis. And I have the perfect cigar for the occasion!”
THIRTY_
╠═╦╬╧╪
The crew set up a big table in the cargo bay.
The Lizzie Borden was on autopilot, and so far, none of the treacherous pocket anomalies had disrupted the spacetime wave they were riding out of the Sargasso Expanse. They were headed toward Hutchinson Prime, where Granny would be. If all went well, they would evade another archduke and find Granny, and she would tell them where the Onyx Gate was, or would be.
But now they had to evade the IPC as well. Blaze and the entire crew of the Lizzie were wanted criminals after their troubles on Fleabugger. Even the Union was involved in the search, though Blaze wasn’t afraid of that bureaucratic nonsense. Security Director Alvin Denning and the IPC were the real threat.
Blaze and the rest of the crew stood around the table in the cargo bay, eyeing the variety of dishes. Meelah leaves and Meelah caterpillars for Ling, high-protein fungus for Bill and Fernando to munch on, and for the Humanish guests, Elle had cooked up her famous carne asada, refried beans, onions and peppers, and crispy corn tortillas. Blaze had his Romeo y Julieta Churchill in the pocket of his leather vest. He’d fire that Cuban up once he’d stuffed himself. Nothing better than fine Terran tobacco rolled on the thighs of Human women warmed by Caribbean sunshine.
They all took their seats. Blaze lifted his frothy mug of Clicker beer. “A toast. We beat the bad guys, and we have the best lead we’ve ever had on closing the Onyx Gate. To more victories!”
They all toasted, even Cali, who was awake for the moment, though she looked sleepy and shy and so small next to Elle.
Bill had been carried in by Fernando. Elle had healed his wounds, and the Clicker engineer had come up with a sling so his brother could transport him around, but his stumps gave testament to how awful the necrotechnical archduke had been.
Ling raised his cup of red bush tea since intoxicating liquors removed him from reality, and the last thing the Meelah wanted was to miss out on one moment of life. For the Shaolin master, he saw every second as wonderous. But then, Meelah lived about half as long as Humans and only a fraction of an average Clicker’s lifespan.
After the toast, they dug into the food.
Trina had a goblet of fresh blood to drink. Cali, Elle, and Blaze had started a cycle of transfusions to keep their resident bloodsucker nourished. Clicker and Meelah blood wouldn’t work. It had to be Human.
Glancing around the table, Blaze realized he was pretty much the only pure Human there. Cali was a werewolf, Trina was a newly turned vampire, and Elle, well, her VHI was at a hundred percent again, and she seemed Human, but looks were deceiving. And yet, she was there, laughing, eating, subtly flirting with Cali. That wasn’t going to end well, Blaze knew it.
Someone mentioned the mysterious cat, and Trina blushed. “No, really, I keep seeing it. When Elle carried me on board the ship, it was there, a big calico.”
“Damn,” Blaze said. “If it’s a calico, it’s a girl. Another woman on board? I can’t get a break.”
Elle laughed. “And you love it.”
“Could it be a ghost cat from the cellar?” Trina asked.
Blaze thought for a minute. “Remember that one thing we fought? It was like a beast-looking catman. We thought it might’ve been an Egyptian goddess, but no, just a cat demon.”
“And big,” Elle said. “No, this might be something else. I’ve been looking for a collection of Onyx energy on the ship, but I don’t see anything. I think Trina might be completely and totally insane.”
“I totally am,” the Trina replied. “I willingly joined this pinche crew. I must be out of my mind.”
“Not a crew.” Blaze gave Elle a long stare. “You joined our family, Trina.”
Elle smiled at him as they shared a moment.
Trina nodded. “Crazy or not, I’ve seen this cat around. It’s big and pretty, and she seems like she…I don’t know.”
“Seems like what?” Blaze asked. A dark premonition prickled in his guts.
“Seems like she knows things,” Trina said. She then rolled her eyes. “God, that sounded so stupid.”
They
went back to laughing and talking until Blaze pulled out his cigar. “Ahhh, a post-victory cigar. The best kind.”
He lit up the stogie with his fusion ax. “They say you should light a cigar with a wooden match, but I’ll take a little fusion energy any day to get my cigar going.”
“How can you enjoy that stink?” Trina asked.
Blaze leaned back, sighed happily at his full belly, and breathed out sweet tobacco smoke. “It’s the smell of victory, baby. It’s the smell of victory.”
Xerxes was gone, they’d evade the next servant of the Unholy Master, the Lord of Abomination, and they’d find Granny.
It would only be a matter of time until they closed the Onyx Gate forever.
Books, Mailing List, and Reviews
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Other Works by Aaron Crash
War God’s Mantle: Ascension (Book 1)
Books from Shadow Alley Press
James A. Hunter
Strange Magic (Yancy Lazarus Episode One)
Cold Hearted (Yancy Lazarus Episode Two)
Flashback: Siren Song (Yancy Lazarus Episode 2.5)
Wendigo Rising (Yancy Lazarus Episode Three)
Flashback: The Morrigan (Yancy Lazarus Episode 3.5)
Savage Prophet (Yancy Lazarus Episode Four)