An Interrupted Cry

by Laura Anne Gilman

  A signpost, or a straight answer. Ellen would have given a lot, just then, for either. But that, Danny liked to say, was where the bills got paid. And it wasn’t as though she had to rely on a flipped coin, either. Not in this particular case.

  Ellen flexed and stretched her shoulders, trying to force her body to relax: some Talent might be able to work cantrips when they were tense, but every time she tried, it fizzled on her. Wren swore that would ease as she got more comfortable, but it hadn’t, yet. Resting a hand flat against her breastbone, fingers pointing toward her chin, and taking a deep breath, she reached into her core, imagining tigers dipping into the swirling colors there, neon-bright and cool to the touch.

  The threads she’d pulled in earlier had integrated with her own, her particular signature reshaping them for easy use. She scooped out a handful, feeling the neon shift to paler colors, sky blues and mint greens. When it felt ready, she shaped it with her memory of Danny: his voice, his appearance, his scent, the way his hand felt when it rested on her shoulder, either encouraging or stopping her, the way he paced when he was thinking and the way he rested his boot heels on his desk when he was reading, the way he dog-eared pages and the way he stood on the subway, one hand holding the rail, body swaying gently to the movement of the train. All the physical details, from the faint curl of his horns to the bend of his knees that she’d subconsciously collected, making up the sum total of Daniel Hendrickson’s physical self.

  It was a cantrip originally meant to track down physical evidence at a scene, but they’d discovered that it worked best with an incredibly strong sense of who, not what. Not so good for finding evidence, but incredibly useful if you were, for example, tracking a missing person.

  But—like so many of their cantrips—it took a lot of current and concentration to make it work. Even with her core topped-off and ready, she still felt her skin go clammy and her knees go weak, as though she’d not eaten for a week. But it was temporary: she didn’t let that break her focus.

  *Danny Hendrickson* His name, imbued with every memory, every sense of him she had, the depth and breadth of her knowledge of him.

  Current swirled around her now, almost visible sparks of blue and yellow. It tugged at her, leading her a step into the tunnel branching to the left. It swirled again, as though confused, then stopped, turning right, then left. She pushed at the swirl, willing it to lead her to wherever Danny was, when the sound of something approaching her broke her concentration, and the swirl dissolved into dark sparks, and disappeared

  “Damn it.”

  Opening her eyes, she absorbed the remaining current back into her core before it could escape. Pivoting to face the sound—it was coming from the other tunnel—Ellen crouched low, readying her body for fight or flight even knowing that flight would be useless unless she went deeper in: fleeing back to the tight squeeze exit would be asking to be caught by whatever was coming. Her breath slowed, her eyes widening, the hours of training with both Danny and Wren paying off in the instinctive readiness.

  The sound came closer, and she realized it was the sound of feet against stone. Not heavy, not booted. Not Danny. More than one. And that was all Ellen had time to identify before they were on her, nearly knocking her over. She grabbed, instinctively, then ducked as one of them took a swing at her.

  Wren and Danny both also preached, if you can’t run, and you’re not sure you’re going to win, try confusion.

  “I’m a friend!” she said, pitching her voice low, but set to carry, even as she moved into position to counter the blow. “Friend!” Even if they weren’t, it might slow them down enough for her to get the upper hand. But the flesh under her grasp felt human, and when they stilled enough for her to look, the face of her attacker was familiar, mud-stained and tear-streaked.

  The boy she’d seen, in her vision.

  oOo

  Ellen barely had time to react to the first blow before she had to pull a second body off her back, reaching over her shoulder to untangle tight-clenched fingers from her hair. “Calm the hell down,” she hissed, yanking the second attacker forward with one arm, pushing her down to the ground with the boy. “I’m here to help you.”

  “They’re coming, they’re coming after us.” The girl was sobbing, but at least she could speak: the boy seemed stunned into silence, eyes wide and staring.

  Ellen knelt down to put her free hand over the girl’s mouth, and listened. There was nothing except the sound of their breathing, harsh and raspy, before it was sucked up into the moss and muffled.

  “Nobody’s coming,” she said, still keeping her voice low. “And if they do, I can handle them.” She hoped. The kids were Nulls, she could tell that immediately, no hint of current around them at all—so odds were, whatever fatae they’d run into had scared the bejesus out of them. If they were lucky, scaring was all they’d have to deal with.

  But even as Ellen thought that, she dismissed it. The only fatae who would be lingering around a known home haunt would be gnomes—even human predators didn’t spend much time near gnome-dens. The smell was too bad, Danny said, although he wasn’t exactly unbiased. But gnomes didn’t cause this kind of fear, even in Nulls, and gnomes wouldn’t have dragged Danny off, even if they’d somehow managed to get the drop on him.

  And she wouldn’t have a vision of someone being menaced by gnomes, they were more the annoying creeper kind of threat, not—. Her breath caught at the realization: she’d found them here, where she was looking for Danny. It couldn’t be coincidence. It couldn’t be.

  She managed, barely, to let go of the girl, forcing herself to lean back, trying not to spook them while still conveying urgency. “Tell me what you saw. Quickly!”

  The boy just stared at her, an ugly bruise on the side of his face, and she wondered how badly he’d been hit on the head. The girl, on the other hand, seemed eager to keep talking, her gaze so focused on Ellen in any other circumstance it would have been stalker-creepy.

  “We were just hanging out, over on the Greenway, when the lights went out?” Her face scrunched up, her mouth twisting as she tried to remember something. “Yesterday?”

  “Yeah,” Ellen said, nodding, making note that they’d lost track of days. Not good.

  “It was so dark, at first it was cool, ‘cause we could see the stars, I didn’t know there were that many stars. And then something g-grabbed us.” The girl’s voice stuttered, but went on. “Ugh, they were…they were all quiet and slithering and gross, and they tied us up with these ropes that weren’t actually rope, and we were able to scrape them away, and the guy said to run, so we ran, but —”

  “Guy? What guy? Where is he?” The words shook out of her without thought, her fingers curled around the boy’s upper arm, merely because he was closer. “Where is he?”

  She got a blank stare from both of them.

  “The guy who helped you,” she said more slowly, forcing each word out. “The guy who said to run.”

  “Oh. Back there,” the boy managed, waving his free arm vaguely the direction they’d come from. “But you can’t go there, they’re-“

  “They’re not human,” the girl finished for him.

  “I know,” Ellen said grimly, letting go of the boy. She pulled more current up, wrapping it around her arm from elbow to thumb, strong enough for them to see the cool sparks dancing just above her skin, if they weren’t completely Null. From the way they flinched away, they weren’t. “But I’m not exactly helpless.”

  “But what do we do?” The girl again, rocking back and forth where she sat, reaching out to grab the boy’s nearest hand, their fingers twining tightly enough it had to hurt.

  “You keep going that way,” and Ellen pointed over her shoulder, back the way she’d come. “You’ll see a narrow exit—that’ll take you into a subway station. Okay?” She waited for them both to nod. “And I need you to carry a message, can you do that before you freak out?”

  They were both in shock, both from the experience and the fact that their capt
ors hadn’t been human, but having someone listen to them, who talked to them like adults rather than patting them on the head like children, was exactly what was needed to get through. They both drew themselves up, the change visible even in the dim light.

  “You’re going to help him?” the girl asked.

  “I am.”

  “He helped us escape,” the boy told her, his voice flat and serious. “What do you need us to do?”

  She gave them the address for the PUP’s office, and had them repeat her message, word for word, until she was pretty sure one of them would remember it. No matter who was in the office—even if Lou was busy, or Bonnie had been called out on another case or collapsed for a nap without leaving a note—they’d understand.

  “2nd Avenue under-tunnels, unknown fa—” the girl stumbled over the word, then corrected herself—“fatae, vision-related, going in to find Danny. Situation under control. Stand by for ping.”

  Ellen nodded, mental fingers crossed that they listed to her, and didn’t try to race in after her. If what these two told her was right, the quieter she did this, the better.

  Then she shoved them on their way, and headed deeper underground.

  oOo

  Everything hurt. I was used to being in motion, or at least being able to stretch, and being trussed like a roast… okay, it wasn’t the first time it’d happened to me, but was heading into being the longest wait to get free.

  The kids were gone, our captors lashing by me silently in pursuit. One, two…maybe three, maybe more of them, leaving me behind. I’d strained my ears, listening for some sound that the humans’d been caught, but once the pounding of their sneakers had disappeared into the blackness, the silence had returned, plugging me back into solitary.

  And I waited, feeling the burn starting in my shoulders and thighs, a creaking ache in my lower back. I wasn’t a kid any more, that this sort of thing was fun. And my usual response—to put my brain to work—wasn’t doing much for me now, because I didn’t have a damn thing to work with.

  I’d been around the block a few times in my life. Hell, I’d practically mapped out the entire neighborhood, over time, and talked to everyone who lived there. But I had no idea who—what—my captors were, and that was pissing me off probably more than the way they kept poking my legs and arms, testing me for tastiness.

  I assumed that’s what they were doing, anyway. Their fingers were hard and thin, coming out of the darkness at random intervals, no sound to warn me they were there, no smell beyond the omnipresent cold wet dampness of the tunnel, and by this point, no sensation in my limbs except the slight burn when they poked me, and nerve endings woke again.

  I had no idea how long I’d been down here, strung up like a side of beef, but eventually—aching muscles and poking fingers or no—I got bored. And me bored, my mother always said, inevitably ended in me stupid.

  “See,” I told a particularly bony finger, “this is why we can’t have nice things, because of breeds like you.”

  That earned me another poke, this time in the gut, and a lot harder.

  “So you do understand English. Good.” Few of the fatae breeds had their own distinct language—don’t ask me why, that was a question for a linguistics grad student in search of a research topic—but not all of them picked up human speech, either. And since these guys didn’t seem to be much in the way of talking….

  Another poke, this time to the throat, made me gag and lose my train of thought for a minute.

  “Fuckers,” I said, more to distract myself than because I really wanted to insult them anymore. “Either eat me or kill me or whatever it is you’re going to do, but enough with the goddamned poking!”

  If they were focused on me, though, maybe there were fewer of them hunting for the kids I’d helped get free. Weirdly enough, past that initial flurry of activity around me, they’d seemed almost to forget about the kids, or if anything was happening, it was beyond my ability to hear. Entirely possible, although the longer I stayed here, the more starved my brain was for sound, and the harder I was listening for it.

  Maybe they were out-of-sight-out-of-mind types. Or maybe their silence extended to hunting down runaway meals, too. Brain going in circles. Bad sign.

  “Look, I don’t even know if I’m tasty. Fauns are pretty indigestible, I’ve been told. Too gamey.”

  And then there was more silence, but at least the poking stopped.

  Wait. Was that good, or bad? I strained my senses to pick up any movement at all—the bastards had to breathe, right? No fatae breed could go without breathing, not even trolls, although it might take several minutes between intakes, for them.

  There, in the distance, the faint sound of respiration. All right, at least one of them was still there. Watching.

  So they breathed, about human-normal rate. And they were warm-blooded; the fingers were boney, but definitely covered in some hard flesh, not scales. And they could see in practically-pitch dark, well enough to function.

  I’d been captured by mole people. Great.

  Specifically, mole people who ate flesh—human, and otherwise. Even if I hadn’t been sure of their intent at the first, the putrid feel of their breath when I’d gotten poked in the throat was proof enough. You didn’t get that kind of halitosis from vegetables and fish, and there was a particular smell that came from eating human flesh. And I hated my life that I knew that fact.

  “At least introduce yourselves before dinner,” I said, but the fun had gone out of it. I was tired, numb from the constant aching, and my only comfort—that the kids had escaped—was dulled by the fact that I didn’t know the kids had escaped.

  Not for the first time I wished I’d been born Talent, not so I could blow my way out of here—we were far down underground enough it would take someone of Wren’s skill to find enough current to use—but so I could send a ping out to say goodbye. Or maybe ‘get your ass down here now!’

  But even if the kids made it to the surface, the odds of them telling anyone—at least, anyone who might believe them—was slim. But slim was more than none. It wouldn’t be enough to save me before I was cut down and served up, probably. All I could hope was that, once they heard—and got everything two shaken teenagers could remember—the PUPs would make sure the mole people didn’t nab anyone else.

  I probably should feel bad about depriving a breed of their preferred food source, but not so much, actually. Let them learn how to make stew of river rats, be useful members of society for a change.

  And then the single source of breathing was gone too, and I was alone.

  “Shit.”

  Being alone was better, if only because it meant I probably wasn’t going to die right away, but it also meant I had no distractions, except…. Wait. Yes. There was sound. Distant, but definite, and loud enough that it was probably human. Had Bonnie and her crew actually figured out where I was? Or was this totally unrelated?

  Shit, had they caught the kids, bringing them back? Or some new poor bastard?

  There was a crack of what sounded like thunder, and light flashed down the hallway, too bright to do anything other than make my eyes water and sting, my body trying to flinch away from the intensity. It was followed by another crack of thunder, louder this time, and in that instant before the light faded I opened my eyes enough to see that I was wrapped in thick, grey—green ropes of unknown origin, and on the wall next to me were a row of hooks. Literal, metal meathooks, large enough to hang a cow, and probably rusted enough to kill a sailor, but also probably still sharp enough to cut a rope against, if I could just get myself close enough to reach.

  Once-a-week yoga classes, and dislocating your shoulder is a small price to pay for being able to feel the ground under your feet again. Thankfully it was a short drop, and I was up out of my crouch and moving before my body had a chance to protest. Adrenaline was a wonderful thing.

  The blackness had returned, but I’d scoped out the feel of my cage already, and knew more or less where to put my back s
o it was against a wall. A cold, sleek wall. Metal? A touch confirmed that—too cold to be wood, too sleek to be stone, unless someone had quarried marble down here.

  I had no idea what they’d used, of how they’d gotten the hooks into it, and I didn’t care. There was one exit out of this hole, the same one the kids had fled down, but it led toward whatever was making the light and sound. Which was probably good for me, but also meant that there would be more mole people there, dealing with the intrusion. Fifty-fifty chance of me making things worse, going that way. But staying here didn’t seem a great choice either. I went forward.

  And two steps toward my escape, something grabbed me from behind.

  oOo

  Ellen had learned, a long time ago, that life wasn’t even in the slightest bit fair. Fair would have been her parents listening to her, not either ignoring her or pretending she had an ‘overenthusiastic imagination’ until she was a teenager, then letting the doctors convince them she was having a hormone-related mental breakdown. Fair would have been someone in her family having a lick of Talent, and recognizing her for what she was, instead of having to practically stumble over it, years later. Years too late.

  But she was above all practical, and if they had, odds were she would never have been mentored by Wren Valere, never known Bonnie or Pietr, and never worked with Danny. Overall, her life didn’t suck. Even the visions she’d been gifted with—she could do something about them now, could help people. She wasn’t willing to say it all came clean in the wash, but there were… payoffs. She’d learned how to read scenes, ask questions of people so they’d answer without meaning to, look at evidence and maybe see what other people missed.

  But none of that was helping her right now, because there was no one to ask, no scene to read, and no evidence to examine. Just her, and a too-dark tunnel, and a boss who was missing, presumed clunked over the head and dragged off somewhere to be eaten.