Silver stepped to my side.
“Very theatrical. This should make a wonderful impression, Cass.”
We waited together for the crowd to settle in an uneven crescent. The oldest Declan clone kept his cold eyes trained on us, waiting for our next move. Warm light turned half the skyline to an early dawn for a moment.
The sand shifted and slithered as James, Mez, Corinne, Kevin and Malcolm flanked us.
I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Listen up!” When I had as much of their attention as I could hope to claim I began. “My name is Cassandra Rainbow. These corpses were once Weavers. Now they’re just decaying flesh and separating bone. Your leaders are responsible and so are you.”
The parents in my captive audience hugged their children to their legs or picked them up to place them on a hip. I spotted the chef from earlier. She was under the arm of a barrel chested man twenty years her senior. They stared at me with wide-eyed fear as the flames behind me flickered and wavered in their glassy eyes.
“This. War. Is. Over. You’ve seen what we can do. I’m giving you the chance that your leaders failed to give my people. Live your lives in peace and we will seek no retribution.”
The Warp commander raised his voice over the murmurs at his back. “Leaving us here with no means of transport is a death sentence. Our home is razed to the ground. Our Master is gone. How is that not retribution?”
I noticed he didn’t say his Master was dead. Oh ye of too much faith.
Malcolm leaned in, voice low. “We can take them to the old compound? There aren’t near enough houses but they can rebuild. I’d rather know where they are, wouldn’t you?”
Chavarria looked down at his hands. “The wise learn many things from their enemies.”
Malcolm inclined his head. “Aristophanes?”
James’ chin went sideways at both men. “They’ve probably still got financial means. I’m worried about their hit squads being that close.”
Corinne’s voice was as far away as the thoughts behind her glacial blue eyes. “I doubt the guilty will stay. As soon as it’s feasible they’ll scatter and regroup. Those Warps that are of no further use will be left behind for us to manage.”
Silver slumped, looking tired. “Great. Let’s just do this so we can get out of here.”
In the end Maggie insisted on furnishing the basics for survival to those Warps that stayed at the old compound. Corinne’s prediction came true. Almost everyone in uniform managed to disappear inside six weeks. They were sneaky about it, breaking off in pairs and small groups until there were only a few left who refused to leave their families. All of the clones but the oldest Declan and former Warp commander fled. He preferred to be called Ivan and he watched me with the eyes of a zealot looking for a new messiah. His attention was most…unwelcome.
Our ghost town had morphed into a makeshift refugee camp for the very people who’d attempted to blow it to hell. Tents and pop-up canopies perched everywhere along with plastic tubs of donated supplies from the Red Cross. Somehow word had leaked to the Outsider community that a whole town had lost their possessions in a wild fire and had been relocated. I suspected Chavarria’s hand in it. He was hard to figure. The more I learned, the harder it was to dislike him completely. Thing One and Thing Two were nowhere in the survivors and it was my hope that they’d died with the Warp captives we hadn’t been able to free.
The covert branch of the government that Chavarria worked for had remained silent. It was the quiet before another storm we were sure. Malcolm still wasn’t positive we weren’t the true target. After all, it was easier to kill two birds with one stone away from the prying eyes of the public. Chavarria let slip that his warning of the drone strike had come from a friend on the inside, not his superiors. Nothing prompts reevaluation of your loyalties like finding out your boss considers you acceptable collateral damage. The Men in Black hadn’t poked around, but I didn’t imagine they’d stay away forever.
So far the Council wasn’t calling for blood revenge against the surviving Warps in the name of Rolling Hills and the Mesa Verde attack. Our decision to grant amnesty to our enemies hadn’t gone over well. Manuel’s passing was sad but not unexpected. Ramon and the rest of Mesa Verde left to take his body home. All except one.
The Wind Runner Clan gained a new member. Rose, the matronly drama queen, decided to marry Tim. It was a quick courtship. Both claimed they were too old to waste time. I didn’t know how they survived one another, but the elderly mechanic’s waistline was already thickening up from her cooking. Not to mention he’d practically adopted Hell and Enrique Martinez who were living with him now. Seeing a happy ending for someone else made my worries a little less but not by much.
Silver’s pregnancy progressed at an alarming rate. Mez insisted she move in with him and Kal and put her on permanent bed rest. He keeps pressing for a return to Axsa so that Sil can monitor her condition, but my twin stubbornly refuses to leave me. Gestation for the Aniy is slightly longer than for humans so the irregular speed of fetal development is unexplainable. Mother and growing babies seem healthy at the moment. Maggie is worried, I’m worried, we’re all worried. We have no way of knowing how the battle to defeat the Soul Eater affected my future nieces or nephews—or for that matter, any of us that had been involved.
James does his best to keep his thoughts on Silver’s predicament private. I catch him standing in his sister’s room from time to time, holding a piece of Kara’s clothing under his nose or sitting on her rumpled bed covers reading one of her books. He’s sad and I wish I could help him grieve but he hasn’t invited me.
My dreams tell me nothing. No more visits from Noemi or Gerome, no more hunches or visions. All that’s left is hope. Hope that the Soul Eater really is gone. Hope that Earth will survive the struggles of the developing human race.
In my experience endings are a false security. Nothing is ever truly gone or done, it just starts anew as the beginning of another story. Perhaps like a phoenix, out of the ashes of destruction we could be reborn.
Epilogue: Daepscua-The Shadow of Death
Silver woke alone in the specially extended king size bed. She ran her palm over the still indented pillow next to her own. Mez’s side was cold. The night dim house was eerily silent. It made her feel as if she were stuck in a dream. No air conditioner or heater running, no wind hitting the eaves or rustling the trees outside the second story window. It was too still. The silence was thick enough to make a person’s ears hum with the flow of blood through their own veins.
A telltale rattling of silverware on a dish came from downstairs. Her eyes fell to her rounded stomach. Correction, Kara’s rounded stomach, with her and Mez’s unexpected offspring inside. This body wasn’t hers. Circumstance had trapped her there, and to be fair, past then present mistakes hadn’t helped. Swollen ankles throbbed as they slid from under the gray covers and lowered to the cool wooden floor; just another reminder that she had no control over what was happening to this body.
Maggie and Silver had put their heads together and decided not to risk interference unless a life was at stake. Maggie said she was roughly four months along developmentally. The accelerated growth had them all puzzled. Soon they would be able to spy out the sex of each baby with an ultrasound. Fetal thoughts and sensations overlapped into her dreams sometimes; nothing but flashes of sound and warmth with no coherence or intelligible intent. At times the babble seemed like a gaggle rather than a budding duo.
Cass fumbled along a sleep clouded thought. “You okay, Silver?”
Twins were bound close and we were closer than most. “I’m alright, just peckish. Go back to sleep, Sister.”
“Peckish? Are you a chicken?”
“Shut up and sleep, Cass.”
Thoughts carefully shielded to not disturb Cass, Silver turned back to the subject of her absent mate. Rippling sheet shadow canyons and the dying scent of his skin lingered. If Mez was up for a night time snack then she might as well join him. Stomach acid
gurgled and churned in agreement. God, she was so freakin’ hungry these days!
Loud foot slaps on the varnished floorboards accompanied her progress into the short hall with its blank baby blue walls and white floorboards. Kal was the only resident inclined to decorate and his tastes ran from odd to downright laughable. Random magazine clippings scotch taped to the wall at odd angles or a rusted car part from a junkyard used as a planter on a table.
The newest addition to the ‘Kal collection’ was a single flower planted in a margarine tub in the hall bathroom. Layers of petals in different shapes made its three dimensional existence appear to be more obvious than anything else around it. Ten broad white ovals framed petal spokes divided in three by equal colors on their shaft with a center of green and brown stamen haphazardness. Silver could see the appeal but the pollen made her sneeze so she avoided using those facilities. Perhaps that was his way of staking out territory, but she didn’t think so. Kal had a major green thumb.
This house was less grand than the one Silver and her sister used to live in together next door. Their abode, though still spacious, was clearly built for a family, not for entertaining. It was more…homey, with cool serene colors and careworn scuffs and smudges here and there. A couple of the door jambs had lines to mark the growth of a former tenant and the knobs on everything bore the signs of use in tiny scratches.
All of the bedrooms were upstairs leaving the ground floor to more utilitarian rooms - the kitchen being one of them. It was difficult to move around without one of her roomies poking their nose in. Teleportation wasn’t even a sure fire method because Mez and Kal’s olfactory senses were always on high alert.
Kal loomed large in the entrance to his room. His true face with its large obsidian eyes and jagged dentition, rather than his human wrapping, regarded his noisy adopted daughter. His busy fingers finished tying the terry cloth robe closed with a final firm tug. The wild yellow puppy faces on the uneven fabric wagged overlarge red tongues.
Furry eyebrows arched in query, he said, “The swelling in your ankles will not improve if you insist on getting out of bed. Maggie was specific, Silver. If you persist in being obstinate, at least have one of us be with you?”
“Kal, I can’t just lay there staring at the ceiling all the dang time. Yes, Maggie was specific. My aunt, the doctor, said I should get up twice a day to walk for ten minutes at a time not counting potty breaks. You guys have really got to get this whole overprotective Aniy business under control!”
He wove his neck and clicked his usually light hidden teeth as he offered a bent arm. “Lean on me.”
Silver’s voice took on the weight of her frustration, coming deep from within her chest. “Argh! Fine, but I can make my own peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I don’t need your help for that!”
A bass rumble unfurled in Kal’s throat and she suspected he was swallowing a laugh at her expense. They made it down the heavily varnished stairs without any stumbles and into the moonlit kitchen. Mez was a shadow within a shadow at the tiny drop-side table in the breakfast nook.
Silver flipped the wall switch and tugged her elbow free of Kal’s grasp. “Mez, why are you sitting in here alone with no damn lights?”
When her eyes adjusted she saw melting chocolate ice cream in a thin white porcelain bowl. Silver’s gaze rose. Mez’s hands were flat to either side of the dish and it was clear he hadn’t eaten a bite. The freezer door was still open and a half empty carton sat cardboard flaps winged outward on the counter.
Kal asked first mainly because Silver didn’t need to, “What is it, Nefa?”
Mez’s head turned so slowly she thought it might be stuck on forward.
“My faedor has been murdered. Modor is suspected. There will be Judgment.”
Kal’s voice softened. “When?”
First of all, Mez had never spoken of his father. Not once. She’d assumed he was dead. Yes, his attachments were visible but there was no way to tell how significant they were unless you interacted with them. It was rude to do so without permission. Silver was regretting her politeness at the moment.
Mez answered in a dead, flat voice. “I felt him pass, Eam. There was much pain in his last memories.”
Silver’s next questions felt fairly obvious. “Did you see the killer? Why is Fid Tal implicated? She’s the freakin’ Fid of Bleo. They better have some serious proof.”
Mez shook his head in answer to the first question but didn’t seem able to dislodge any more words from his flattened lips.
Kal flicked his nictitating lens. “Because she is the one who hated him the most.”
Hands shaking, Mez pushed his chair back with a loud scrape and carried his bowl to the sink. “I must go home to help her.”
His eyes beseeched Silver’s for a hint of understanding. “Please come, Min Leoght Cor? I need you and I cannot bear the thought of you being away from me with our children yet unborn. Please?”
Her open palm slammed the freezer closed and the whole thing shook as if the stainless steel rectangles might fall off. “Shit, Mez! Cassandra can’t leave Earth with things the way they are. What about Baelc Eftborenne? What if they try to kill me again? I’m a hell of a lot more comfortable defending myself and these babies here!”
Air hissed through clenched teeth and his chest expanded as he gestured with wild waving arms and fisted hands. “And I feel safer on Axsa! My people do not make so much war as yours, even with the rebellion. We do not stack our dead to rot away in the sun simply because they do not believe the way that we wish them to!”
Something inside snapped, releasing indignation and wounded pride. “Oh, so my planet isn’t good enough, Mez? I guess that means I’m not good enough for you either! Maybe Mommy Dearest had it right all along and you did form an attachment beneath you? Is that it?”
Kal’s authoritative shout bounced off the ceiling. “Aetstandan!”
A fireball of anxiety flared low in her gut. She knew what she had to do.
“Cass? Wake up.”
Her sister’s faculties took a moment to gather until she was aware enough to grouse, “Wake up, go to sleep, which one is it?”
Silver’s pulse pounded in her temples as she spoke out loud and broadcast at the same time. Mez’s shoulders loosened at her words. “I’m leaving for Axsa tonight.”
About the Author
Vaun Murphrey lives in Lubbock, Texas with her husband, two sons and a shaggy black and white four-legged friend. Her life is composed of one ordinary day after another, at least from the outside – on the inside she travels to different worlds. If Vaun ever seems distracted, now you know why… be patient, she returns on a regular basis to visit Earth.
PHOENIX (The Weaver Series Book 4) Page 26