by Rhys Ford
“I swear to God,” Trent grumbled at my back. “No wonder all of your partners hated your guts. Answer me.”
“Low blow, Leonard,” I muttered. “Let’s just get to the car, okay?”
“What’s the hurry?” A challenging note crept into his low, husky voice, and oddly enough, it was a turn-on. “Talk to me about those guys. The ones we’re running from. Are they connected to your father’s family? Or to you somehow?”
“We’re not running from anyone.” We weren’t. Not really. I didn’t think anyone would move against me that quickly. I’d left the shock troops in a bit of a muddle, and while I didn’t know who they answered to, I hadn’t been bluffing about the one idiot’s shortened lifespan. Depending on whom he worked for, he’d either earned brownie points or a one-way ticket to a pig farm. “Just… move.”
For all my faerie blood, I ran pretty human. My mother had passed on very little of her innate powers to me. I healed quickly—always a plus since I had a habit of leaping before looking—but other than a few genetic quirks, I was pretty much magic-dead except for one misfiring stupid parlor trick: I sometimes could sort of tell when something or someone was trying to kill me.
More than usual.
It never was warning bells and klaxons. Most of the time I could be ready to step out in front of an out-of-control bus and I wouldn’t have a clue. But sometimes—very rarely—the teeny bit of fae instincts left in my stew kicked in and I knew something was about to go sideways for me.
We turned a corner shared by a produce wagon and a takuan merchant, and that elusive prickle was there, a half-sensed uneasy twitch in my belly and gut I could never explain as anything more scientific than a feeling. It struck at the oddest times, and never when it could be any more useful than seeing the rock I was going to stub my toe on. My mother thought it was a draught of snake oil I’d sold myself to connect to my fae blood. Nothing I’d said could convince her otherwise, and most of the time, I’d agreed with her.
This wasn’t one of those times. But then again, I did just poke a hornet’s nest with a lighted torch, so it all could have been in my head.
I wasn’t taking any chances.
“We didn’t learn anything new back there.” Trent continued to dog my steps. “To tell the truth, we’re further behind in the investigation because we took this side trip into… wherever this place is called.”
“North Point,” I supplied. “And Jie’s our best bet on finding a caster who’s selling their craft to kill. If anyone can ferret that out, it’ll be her. As for the rest of it, you’re just going to have to trust me.”
“Trust you?” Trent scoffed. “How the Hell can I trust you when you won’t tell me anything? Every time I turn around, it’s another illusion or lie. I’m kind of done with your smoke and mirrors, MacCormick. I want some damned answers.”
It was a decent jog to where we’d left the vehicle, one I’d done as quickly as I could, mostly to avoid any lingering crap from the altercation inside of the club, but also because I didn’t want to stand in the drizzle and explain to my new partner how much I’d crossed a few lines and potentially started a civil war within a powerful yakuza family.
If someone asked, I would blame it on the head injury I’d probably gotten in between explosions, fires, and death-defying leaps off squat benevolent society buildings, but the truth was, I was just sick and tired of playing a game of politics I had no hope of winning.
Ever.
The hard scrape of something on wet cobblestones made a distinctive tick-tick-tick, and this something was moving fast. I couldn’t track the sound. It was moving too fast, and I couldn’t make sense of its snap-close repetition. My first crazy thought was a rattlesnake somehow found its way into the city, but the echoing tapping waves weren’t right. Something harder, meaner was heading toward us, and I couldn’t find out where it was coming from.
It hit me the thing sounded like a crab—we got plenty of those in San Francisco—but it was too far from the pier, or else someone’s dinner escaped the pot and was on the run. We were close enough to the water to get the scent of salt in the wind if it shifted right, but there was no way any crustacean would survive that long haul.
“MacCormick! I said, wait up.” Trent’s hand closed over my arm, and he nearly yanked me off my feet.
He probably saved my life—or maybe killed me. I wasn’t sure which because I didn’t have time to think when we skidded across a patch of mossy scum on the walkway, ghosting over the wet, mottled concrete and asphalt.
Gods, what I wouldn’t have done for an actual pair of fricking wings.
I tried turning when Trent grabbed at me, but the uneven stones were slippery, and my feet slid out from under me. We went down hard enough to rattle my teeth, and as I tried to blink the stars out of my eyes, a flash of white sprung out of the shadows and scrabbled across my mouth.
Then forced its way past my lips and hooked its claws into my tongue.
There might have been screams—my screams. I couldn’t tell because all I heard was the thing’s vibrating body rattling against my teeth. I tasted stone and magic, a cold and bitter smear tainting the fear-laden sweat trickling down my throat. It was sour, hints of fouled garbage and rotting vegetables from the gutter the thing had sprung from. Every instinct told me to swallow, to clear the foul dribble on my tongue, but I knew if I did, I’d be inviting the animated creature to burrow itself into my lungs.
Its tail whipped about, nearly gouging my eye, and I caught a brief glimpse of what I was fighting. Segmented and ending in a curved hook, the scorpion twisted and dug out bits of flesh from whatever it could reach. The insides of my cheeks suffered a flurry of attacks, and my tongue’s edges shredded beneath its claws.
Panic coursed into my chest, tightening the space around my heart, and I clamped my teeth, closing in on its body and refusing to let it gain any more purchase. From what I could tell, I hooked it right behind its front pincers or a little past its head. Either way, it left me vulnerable for its heavy forward claws. I couldn’t get my hands loose, and for a brief second, I thought Trent was holding me down—a plant or something to help kill me—but he rolled me over, putting me on my side, freeing my arms.
“Hold on, Roku!” Trent spat out a mouthful of blood-tinted spit, a ruddy film coating his teeth from the cut on his lower lip. “Stay still. I’m going to try to grab it.”
I tried to snag the stony tail threatening to blind me, but it was too slippery to get a firm hold on it, and my panic was building, choking down the air I could pull into my lungs. My throat convulsed, and the scorpion slid in farther, its claws nipping at the tender flesh at the back of my throat. I couldn’t open my mouth to spit out the blood filling the space behind my teeth. If I did, the stone monster would lodge itself in my throat. But I was suffocating on my welled-up spit.
“Turn your head,” Trent ordered, angling my shoulders and partially cradling me in his lap, his thighs bracketing my head. We were lying in the gutter, the small rise of the curb digging into my back and the top of my head pressed into Trent’s hard stomach. I was getting spit and blood all over his pants, but he held me tight, refusing to let me budge. “Let that drain out of your mouth, and whatever you do, don’t let your jaw go slack until I tell you.”
Stupid things were leaking into my brain. Really idiotic last moment of life things.
Red and gold bokeh burst across my eyesight, spangled lights drawing fragmented hexagons from the string of tears in my eyes. They jeweled the dreary gray storefronts around us, a bleak landscape of boarded-up windows and failed dreams. A damaged plaster ahi hung from a rafter, advertising a fish store I couldn’t ever remember being open in all the time I’d come down to the warrens, and one of the spots caught the fish’s bulging eye, making it appear to wink at me as I struggled to breathe.
Trent loomed over me, a hard plane of bone, damp skin, and impossibly pale blue eyes. I could smell a citrus note in his cologne, and the little whispers in my head cackle
d that I wouldn’t make it to the girls’ grave to leave tangerines and Pocky if I died before Girls’ Day. Probably the dumbest thing I could focus on. It wouldn’t matter what day I died on, I’d always miss the next Girls’ Day, but it seemed so much more tragic to be just at the cusp of it and let them down.
I’d always let them down when they’d needed me the most, and even as I stood over their gravestones, I was reminded of that final, ultimate failure and knew guilt drove me to drape their carved rocks with flowers and fruit leis.
The moment was gone when the stone creature convulsed as Trent grabbed at it, and its tail whipped about to strike my cheek as its front legs scratched my flesh. Bile purged from my stomach, clearing away any melancholy regrets I nursed. My tongue swelled, pressing the wriggling stone into the roof of my mouth, and I couldn’t stand the pain much longer. My teeth hurt, banged about, and one chipped, or maybe the scorpion did, because a fine spray of powder coated the inside of my cheeks and the grit tickled my throat.
I couldn’t fucking breathe.
“Hold on, Roku,” Trent pleaded, his voice breaking. “I can’t get a hold on it.”
The pressure against the back of my tongue intensified, and bits of the scorpion started fragmenting in my mouth. I heard a crack, and its body jerked, yanking at my flesh. Trent’s arms went wide, and the stone tail slashing at my face broke off in Trent’s hand. He flung it away, his arm a flashing blur at the corner of my eye. A second later he was back, digging into my mouth again, his fingers struggling to get a purchase on the stone.
The scorpion was intent on making its way down my throat, and my face ached with the effort of keeping my jaw closed enough to stay the stone animation but allow enough room to let Trent dig around my teeth to grab it. My Adam’s apple bobbed, the creature gained another minute crawl forward, and I clenched up, feeling its body begin to block my air passage.
Trent’s breath was hot on my face, and we were both soaked through with sweat. I smelled of fear, and oddly my hands hurt from curling my fingers into fists. I lay between Trent’s legs, stiff and sore with the effort of not moving, but the scorpion was gaining ground. The powdery slake of its battered body scratched my throat, and I gurgled, unable to clear away the spit I was drowning in.
Anguish filled Trent’s face, and then slowly a strong resolve ate away the fear in his eyes. His heart rate slowed, its pulse thumping through his body and into my cradled skull, and I felt him calm.
“I need you to hold your breath, Roku. Nod if you understand me, but I need to do this,” he said softly, and he smiled gently when I nodded. He looked older, more worn around the edges, and he rubbed small circles on my belly with his free hand, probably hoping it would calm me. “Whatever you do, do not inhale. Take as deep a breath as you can through your nose, and on the count of three, I need you to hold it, then let your jaw go slack.” I must have looked like I thought he was insane as he patted my belly with the flat of his hand. “Trust me, Roku. We don’t have time. Now, breathe in and I’m going to count.”
My chest hurt, and when I sucked in air, I couldn’t get much past the stone lodged in my throat. If anything, the scorpion felt like it was swelling, mantling to fill what little space I had left at the base of my tongue, and its body wedged into my palate, pushing the soft tissue into my skull.
I stared up at Trent, my stinging eyes flung wide open, because I wasn’t going to fucking die alone. I wanted to see someone, know they saw me when I finally bought it, and some small part of my brain hoped beyond hope Trent would hunt down whoever sent the cursed stone bug after me since I needed some damned justice. Justice I hadn’t given John or the girls. Justice I’d let wallow while I’d been begged not to soak the city’s streets in death and blood.
Three hit while I was contemplating Trent’s mouth, and I couldn’t remember if I’d taken a breath or exhaled… just that I had to hold whatever I had in me and hope for the best.
Whatever the fuck the best was going to be.
Something was wrong with Trent’s face. It… fluttered or shifted, growing harder around the edges. His fingers were pressing against my jaw, forcing me to open my mouth, and when I did, the stone creature dove in farther, ripping at my lip with its back claws. Something clear folded out of Trent’s right eye, a wisp of a lens catching on his too long lashes, and he blinked, shaking his head slightly so it fell, floating gracefully away from his face.
Leaving me to stare up at an eye made of blue ice and frozen steel.
A bloom of white mist frosted the air in front of his parted lips, and Trent thrust his fingers into my mouth, fighting the stone scorpion for space. His bare flesh hit the warmth of my tongue and froze the blood welling from the scorpion’s claw marks.
“Almost… got it,” Trent grunted. “Stay with me, Roku.”
My face stung with the bite of a snowy wind I couldn’t comprehend. The blast of a freezing touch across my tongue burned, and I almost gulped, fighting every bit of instinct I had to catch my breath… to do something to dislodge the creature trying to kill me.
I felt the scorpion crack as dark splotches dappled across my eyes. My heart was near to bursting when Trent yanked at the creature’s body, jerking the stone golem off my tongue and leaving me with a mouthful of blood and ice.
Rolling over, I cleared my mouth, hawking up what lingered on my tongue. Vomit followed, my gag reflex overloaded from everything pressing into the back of my throat. My jaw hurt, and I couldn’t stop heaving, emptying everything I’d eaten for the past year—at least that’s how it seemed. Shivering, I rested my weight on my palms and simply tried to breathe through the pain, but the burning tingles on my tongue and in my mouth weren’t subsiding, and when I looked down at the street curb, I found I’d plunged my hands into a thick layer of glittering snow.
Trent’s contact lens sat on the curb, an innocuous grayish disc seemingly too thick to have been in someone’s eye, much less worn about for hours on end, and when I coughed to get a rush of icy water out of my lungs, it blew over, tumbling across the narrow sidewalk. My partner’s feet shuffled in the circle of snowflakes surrounding us, and I regretted losing the warm comfort of his body when he stood. I couldn’t see much else. It hurt too much to turn my head, and I gave up after a mewling effort, too worn out to do anything but breathe.
Crouching over me, Trent eased me back, resting my bruised body against the curb. His sneakers were no longer white, muddied by the road’s filth and wet from the frost. His one sparkling blue eye was vivid against his skin, the color of storms and winter fury, but the other was flat and human, a lie he’d told with a piece of frosted plastic. He seemed larger, more forceful, and when he brushed his fingers across my lips, I couldn’t help but flinch, recalling the searing burn he’d shoved into my mouth.
“Are you okay?” Trent cupped my face, letting me steal his heat. “It’s a netsuke, I think. Another one. Once I got it out of you, what’s left of it curled into a ball. I shoved it into an evidence bag, but I don’t think that’ll hold it if it comes to life again. Because, you know, plastic.”
“You’re faerie.” I sounded like I’d swallowed a ball of lightning and chased it with a fifth of rotgut gin, but there were so many questions flying around in my brain, I couldn’t not talk. Every word hurt, and I scraped each one out, regardless of the pain. “Or at least half. You’re like me.”
“I’m nothing like you, Roku. Wish I was but I’m not.” His handsome face darkened, and that single brilliant tempest-blue eye turned bleak and sad. “I’m a damn splice.”
Twelve
TRENT AND I never got our talk. We didn’t even try. Every time I brought up what happened, he shut me down, and between the trips down to the ER, a few scrapings at the arcane morgue to make sure I wasn’t carrying any debris from the scorpion, and general running around like chickens with our heads cut off, there simply wasn’t time. I’d allowed myself to be dragged down to Medical again. Then Gaines dropped me off at home, ordering me to the station for
a midmorning debrief. When I woke up, Bob the Cat had already helped herself to breakfast by chewing through the new bag of cat food I’d stupidly left on the kitchen counter, and I cursed my coffee maker for brewing slowly.
I hadn’t known what to do with Trent. What to say to him. How to even handle the damning evidence of his fae blood. I had a lot of questions but no answers. Certainly none I could find in the spilled kibble or the coffee grounds I dumped in the sink before I left for the station. I needed time to think and a bit of peace to work out how to talk to my new partner about picking me raw and open while hiding everything about himself.
An eternity of shuffling about with barely enough time to eat, much less sleep, and I was dead on my feet, despite the fitful sleep I’d gotten in. My bone marrow was weeping with fatigue. Oddly enough, my tipping point was when Gaines informed me the SFPD was denied entrance to the benevolent society’s building, so the reconstruction unit had to find another way up.
This led to a long discussion about paperwork duties between me, Gaines, and my new partner. We’d spent a good hour being yelled at about being irresponsible, a one-sided conversation mostly directed at me, but Trent caught the foamy bits of the word tsunami hitting me. I excused myself from the debacle with a short, curt reminder that I had a long-standing date with a set of headstones and a handful of tangerines, then left Gaines to chew on my partner a little while longer. It was Saturday, and I didn’t have it in me to face my dead, but familial obligations dug their claws in, and I made a quick stop at the graveyard, promising the girls I’d be back the next day. When I was calmer. Saner. Or maybe simply more alive.
They needed more from me than flowers, fabric koi, and citrus. I wanted more time to visit with the ghosts of two little girls who I missed so much I woke up crying sometimes in the middle of the night, imagining one of them calling out to me for water or something inane like picking up a dropped stuffed animal they needed in order to sleep. I said a quick prayer and left before I broke, unable to do more than stumble through sharp memories, bleeding out with every step I took away from their graves.