When the Villian Comes Home

by Gabrielle Harbowy

  “Com’on, Mel! Wait!”

  Melichor just kept on walking. The Wilkins were gone for the day, driving a truck-load of animals to the spaceport for sale. Melichor had finished his chores early and was free. He was going to go for a swim, then sharpen his knife and kill something.

  But Angel would want to talk, and find out how he was doing, and braid flowers for him and play silly games. He didn’t want any of it.

  I don’t play tag. I’m a warlord, for fuck’s sake.

  “Mel! WAIT!”

  Melichor remembered how he’d sent one politician’s family into the sun in a small ship that kept out the radiation but not the heat. He’d put cameras in and made the politician watch as everyone he loved died on fire, screaming.

  Pity I can’t do that to the pest.

  Yet.

  “Are you all right, Mel? He beat you pretty bad last night.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You got two black eyes, Mel.”

  “Yeah, well...” The old bastard had discovered him about to cut one of the cats.

  “I wish you’d be better, Mel. You’d get in a lot less trouble,” said Angel. “The Wilkins ain’t bad folks. You just got to do what you’re told.”

  “I do!” snapped Melichor.

  “No one told you to go try and kill the cat,” said Angel.

  “I wasn’t going to kill the damn cat!” yelled Melichor. I was going to cut off one front leg and one back leg and toss it in the field to see how well it could outrun the Carnivori. And it was going to be fun.

  “Mel! Don’t swear!”

  “Fuck off, pest.”

  Angel pouted but still tagged along behind him. “Where you going?”

  “The pond. Come with me so I can use you for fish bait.”

  “Ain’t no fish in the pond,” said Angel.

  “Then I’ll use your body for pig food!” said Melichor, grabbing her arm.

  “Stop it! Stop it, stop it, stop IT!”

  She lashed out with her foot on the last word, catching Mel in mid-step and making him trip and lose his grip. She danced out of his reach. “You touch me, I’ll tell Ms. Wilkin. She’ll whip you until you can’t walk.”

  “I won’t hurt you and you know it,” sulked Mel. He tried to make nice. “I was just joking, anyway. I’m going swimming. You going to come?”

  Angel looked suspicious. “You really want me to come?”

  Only so I can watch if you drown. “Sure I do.”

  “All right.” Angel skipped on ahead, smiling.

  Life was just plain unfair. How could she still smile?

  That little bitch needs to make another “mistake.”

  He watched her skipping ahead, singing.

  I’m gonna kill those Wilkins. Then I’m going to make their little angel my little slave.

  And for the next five years, that thought was the only thing that kept Mel sane.

  He worked hard, did his chores, and kept trying to kill the old bastards.

  When he was twelve, he taught himself mechanics so he could rig the harvesting machines to break down. He managed to take the threshing machine apart and put it back together, and was going to change its setting so that it would cut the old man’s hands off. Then the old bastard stepped out of the shadows and announced that, since Melvin was getting so good with machines, he could damn well earn his keep by keeping them all fixed, and the neighbours’, too.

  From that day forward his chores doubled, and he’d be beaten if any machine had the slightest flaw or any chore was left undone.

  Meanwhile, Angel scored high on the online school test, and was allowed to take classes over the net. Every time her grades slipped, Ms. Wilkin was there with the strap.

  At thirteen, Mel learned everything he could about the animals, hoping to find a way to make them sick or die without being caught. There was not a damn thing. The best he could do was make sure the fence was down so the cows could go into the neighbour’s field and graze on the twistweed (a native plant, delicious and mighty toxic to cows).

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t fatal.

  Mel spent a week cleaning up and dodging the end result of irritable bovine bowels. And the old man took a set of horse leathers to him every night for letting them out in the first place. Then Mel was made to inspect and replace every single inch of the four miles of fence around the property.

  Eleven-year-old Angel caught a baby Carnivori. She got bit half a hundred times over the course of the year, some needing stitches, but managed to turn the vicious thing into a pet that could kill any farm pest. She won a gold ribbon and a cash prize for rat catching at the fair.

  The Wilkins rented her out to neighbours for clearing barns, and made Mel go with her.

  In desperation, Mel turned to electronics. He taught himself computers and programming and hacked into the Wilkins’ system. He had been hoping to make their money go away or make it look like their taxes were behind or that they had been ripping off the neighbours. But he discovered they had up-to-date software and anti-viral protection and that anything he did would set off alarms.

  Instead he spent his time on the computer studying—supposedly for a correspondence course in husbandry. It lasted until Ms. Wilkin caught him studying firearms. She twisted his ear nearly off as she whipped him while explaining the important virtues of non-violence and peaceful co-existence. He called her a hypocrite and was beaten until he was nearly unconscious.

  Angel snuck down to the cellar to hold his hand and tell him everything was all right. She tried to convince him to be better; to study hard and work harder so he’d stop getting beaten.

  Mel made something look like her fault the next day, just so he could watch the old man take his hand to her.

  Mel hated Angel. Even more than he hated the Wilkins.

  Angel kept her grades good enough that the Wilkins let her join one of the local farm clubs (and heaven help her if she was late coming home). The club went to fairs and competitions and even put on a play. The Wilkins made Mel go and watch. Mel added a half-dozen laxatives to the punch bowl for revenge, figuring a shitty performance deserved a shitty reception.

  He managed to get away with that one, but the old man found something else to beat him for.

  Mel turned fifteen. He was nearly as strong as Mr. Wilkin—maybe stronger, since the old bastard had made him do almost all the work. He was tall enough to stare Ms. Wilkin in the eye when she screamed at him.

  And, finally, he had a plan that was going to work.

  Mel took it slow, bits at a time. He took to finishing his chores early so he could spend fifteen minutes a day on his plan. It took six months to get everything he needed. Some things, he stole from the Wilkins—nails, ball bearings, screws and wire. The gunpowder and batteries and electronics he’d stolen from elsewhere, sneaking out at night and getting back before morning. The explosives he’d made himself. He kept the device hidden under the floorboards of the shed, where no one would find it.

  And it’s going to work, just like it did on Tyrene.

  He’d been twenty-one in the Tyrene prison. The leader of a prison gang didn’t want to share his drug profits with Mel.

  After the explosion, Mel dragged the bleeding, armless man in front of the surviving gang members and stomped on his head until it split, just so everyone knew who was in charge.

  In two days, I’ll blow them all to hell.

  “I know what you’re doing, Mel,” said the pest, from the doorway of his room that night. The Wilkins were out visiting the neighbours. Mel was sitting on the floor, reading a comic he’d stolen.

  The pest was starting to turn into a real girl. Her hips were wider and the breasts he’d told her would never be more than pimples were filling in.

  “No, you don’t,” said Mel, pretending to still be reading.

 
“You’re building a bomb.”

  Little bitch is smarter than she looks.

  He put down the comic book. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, come on, Mel, I’m not stupid! I know nails and fertilizer and ball bearings are missing and I saw what you hid in the bottom of the shed!”

  Mel stood up. “There’s nothing at the bottom of the shed.”

  “There’s a bomb, you jackass, and you’re so stupid you probably built it wrong anyway!”

  “I’m smarter than you!” snapped Mel, coming closer so he could look down at her. “I was always smarter than you!”

  “Then why am I getting out of here and you’re still stuck, Mel? Why?”

  “Getting out?” The idea froze Mel in place.

  “I got a scholarship to the boarding school at Transfer Station 6. I’m leaving at the end of the week!”

  Rage, long simmering, long held back, exploded out in a word. “LIAR!”

  “I’m not a liar!” she screamed at him. “I worked my ass off to get that scholarship and in four days, I’m out of here!”

  “I’m out of here in four days, too, if you keep your mouth shut!”

  “You can’t kill the Wilkins!”

  “Why the fuck not?”

  “Because everyone will know you did it, fuckhead!”

  “Oooo!” Mel made a big, phoney surprised face. “She swears! She’s almost a real girl!”

  “You bastard!” She shoved him, hard enough to move him back. “You sick, torturous, moronic bastard! Who do you think they’re going to blame?”

  “Maybe they’ll blame the precious little Angel!”

  “They won’t, because I’ll tell them if you don’t take it apart!”

  “Fuck you, you little suck up!”

  “I’m not a suck up! I’m just not a screw up!”

  “I bet you’re not a suck up! I bet you sucked the old man off so you could go!”

  Angel’s hand flew up hard against the side of Mel’s face, rocking him back. “You asshole!”

  He grabbed her hard and spun, throwing her onto his bed. She tried to get up and he shoved her back, then sat on her legs so she couldn’t move. He grabbed her shirt in both hands and pinned her body down with his.

  “You will not fuck this up for me, you hear me?” he growled into her ear. “You may be pretty and perfect and little miss righteous, but I am Melichor Blackheart and I will not be fucked over again!”

  “What?” Angel’s face twisted in confusion. “What are you talking—”

  “I’m a fucking warlord!” he screamed, shaking her with his every word. “I’ve waited eight goddamn years to get these bastards! And once I’m done with them, I’m going to fuck the entire universe! You hear me?”

  Memories that had been fading in his head surged back to life. Men and women dying at his hand. His gang of a hundred loyal murderers, ready to do his bidding. Girls and women lying underneath him just like this.

  He grinned. “And I am going start with you!”

  The pest screamed and tried to fight. He ripped her shirt open and pinned her arms above her head. She wore a pretty pink and white bra and he was going to rip it off her and strangle her with it.

  “I’m back!” he said, his hand closing around the front of her bra. “Melichor Blackheart is back!”

  His hand yanked hard on the sheets beneath him.

  “Melviiiiiiin! Melvin!!!”

  He was alone.

  His arms were small and thin and the room looked too big.

  “No.” Panic shivered through his body. “No. No, no, no, no, no no no no no no NO!”

  “Melvin Bright! You get your skinny ass down those stairs and get your chores done now!”

  It can’t be possible.

  He jumped up and ran to the bathroom mirror.

  “Melvin! NOW!!!”

  He saw a seven-year-old. A too-skinny, brown-eyed, tousle-haired moppet, with skin brown from the sun, wearing only a pair of shorts in the boiling heat of the Klaridian summer.

  Oh, god, no.

  A hand closed over his ear.

  Not again!

  “Again and again and again,” said the old man. “Until the cryo chamber wears out.”

  “That,” said Colonel Flint. “Is the most awful thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “I just sent him home,” said the old man. He rubbed his hand over the cryo-chamber where Melichor Blackheart lay suspended in time. “I was in the other cryo-chamber. I had it programmed to wake me when he stepped into it.”

  “You used a phoney time machine to lock him into a permanent loop of the period in his life he felt the most helpless, and then put him in stasis so he could stay in that loop virtually forever,” said the colonel. “Command takes a dim view of such things.”

  The old man shrugged. “Do you remember Newton Station?”

  “I heard of it.”

  “My family was there,” said the old man. “I was away at a conference on psychology, physiology and technology. My ship docked two days after Melichor put the larvae in the water.”

  “I understand your motive,” said the colonel. “But I can’t allow you to do this. He needs to stand trial.”

  “There is no way to take him out without killing him,” said the old man. “Which would also be fine with me, I assure you.”

  The colonel sighed and reached for his tablet. General Angelica Yin was of the “catch and rehabilitate” school. She was not going to be happy at all.

  ERIK BUCHANAN grew up on the Canadian prairies where he spent his spare time acting, writing, studying martial arts, and reading everything he could get his hands on. He moved to Toronto, Canada, and combined his love for history, mythology, weaponry, and theatre into a 13-year career as an actor and fight director. Erik left the business after the birth of his daughter and now makes his living as a writer and communications professional. His novels Small Magics (2007) and Cold Magics (2010) are both published by Dragon Moon Press.

  THE PRESUIL’S CALL

  Gregory A. Wilson

  For Senavene

  Ja’keth Aralock, Fourth Warden of the Hammers, servant of the Successor King and Supreme Ruler of the Do’vend Empire Ar’sheth, was tired.

  It was more than tiredness, really; it was bone-weariness, practically full-on exhaustion. Not from exertion, though he’d had plenty of that over the past few days. Tracking a bellinot was no easy affair, even when the thing was careless. But this was no ordinary bellinot; it had been trained well by its masters, and in truth it had not been far from the border, scuttling rapidly on its eight segmented legs with barely a whisper of noise, when Ja’keth finally caught up to him. The fight had been swift and deadly, with little doubt about the ultimate outcome. In fact the bellinot seemed somewhat listless during the fight, disinterested, as if it had already accepted its fate and had decided to commit suicide by allowing Ja’keth an easy way inside its defenses, and one powerful slash with his axe had ended its life forever.

  Still, this was minor compared to the kind of tracking he’d done before, even with all the work beforehand in discovering who or what had trained the bellinot in the first place. And as for what he had done to the trainer…

  “Sha’nac’s Blood, leave it alone,” he growled to himself, running a hand over his furry snout in mild annoyance while the other hand tightened slightly around the strap of the pack slung over his shoulder. The thoughts he had when he was this fatigued were reason enough not to let himself get this way. But he knew a few hours of sleep wouldn’t be enough to feel fully rested. His heart was tired, and for that there was only one place which promised respite: Belor’s Reach, and home.

  The Regent General Es’peth Bartuul, graying muzzle locked in a frown, had said little when Ja’keth had made his request; Es’peth always kept his true feelings
to himself, even when they were (as was often the case) less than generous.

  “One week.”

  “One week? That’s—thank you, Regent, I am grateful—”

  “Show your gratitude by doing your work all the better when you return,” the Regent General said as he turned and strode away. “Which will be on the eighth day by noonsun,” he added over his shoulder, not looking back, “or your notice of removal from the Hammers will come on the edge of another Warden’s axe.”

  That very day Ja’keth had set out for home, traveling for a day by wagon over the border and into Steumgard. Few creatures lived on the road between the Imperial City of Edreath and Steumgard, other than guardsmen and an occasional fox or rabbit that darted away as the wagon approached, and for this Ja’keth was grateful. He even chose to sleep in the wagon rather than pay for an inn, or commandeer a room from the owner as Imperial law permitted him to do. He’d had more than his fill of the usual fearful silence which quickly pervaded the places he entered, and the hateful glances or whispered curses from the more foolish creatures within earshot now inspired more weariness than anger. The next morning he continued his journey on foot, traversing the remaining miles to the lower hills before turning off the main road and up onto the gentle grassy slopes.

  There was no path for some time, and indeed none was needed; it was early fall, and harsh weather was still several months away. Ja’keth passed no one as he trudged up the grassy sward, the sun warming the soft breeze which ruffled his fur, but for once he not only needed but welcomed the solitude. There wouldn’t be much of it when he got to Belor’s Reach—he hadn’t been back for four years, and then only for a few days. Certainly Far’sha would be happy to see him, and Mor’leath…even Ca’rrack, Blood poison the old fool, he thought with a slight grin. And Har’eth, of course. Har’eth would be the happiest of all.

  It would be a strange feeling to be welcome anywhere. Respect was easy; his cloak and Warden’s brooch ensured that. But to be admired—or loved—that would be an odd sensation indeed. He needed it. The promise of rest was drawing him home, but the possibility of peace…a few days or even hours with no missions, no discipline, no iron axe at his back while a fugitive ran from his relentless pursuit…was even more intoxicating. Far’sha would probably scold him and demand he cut some firewood behind the inn as penance for his lengthy absence, but even that felt like grace and comfort.