by K. E. Blaski
The old woman first stroked the metal like it was delicate china, then scraped at it as if she intended to peel it back in layers. The woman’s black hand appeared to be crippled, but its grip was as firm as the other’s.
“You feel nothing,” she said, not asking.
“If you mean the metal part, no, I don’t feel a thing. It’s like my feet are dead. You knew Kornelia was trying to kill me?”
“Heavy?”
“Very. My legs ache, my knees—it’s torture.”
“Pshaw—you don’t know torture.” The woman squeezed Jennica’s bony knees and Jennica got a closer look at the withered hand, its black fingers curled inward like they’d been burned. Had she been tortured?
“You seem to handle your pain,” the woman said.
“I have help. A numbing ointment.”
“Effective.” Again, she spoke in a tone that did not expect an answer. “Noble’s work is crude, but it served his purpose. Kept you from running.”
“That’s right. I can’t run,” Jennica confirmed. “Yet.”
“I can help you with that. But you must do something for me.”
This woman appeared to be twice as old as her grandmother, twice as frail. “Excuse me if I sound doubtful, but you don’t look like you can help me with much of anything. Besides, the last woman who tried to help me was murdered in front of me. And I don’t exactly trust you.”
“Skepticism. Perfectly natural. But Kornelia was no threat to you. And soldiers are no threat to me. Get over it.” She patted Jennica’s feet. “Come to the window. Come, come.” She beckoned with her lantern for Jennica to follow her to the window. Curious, Jennica rose and followed. “What do you see?”
“Two moons, stars, the city lights.”
“There.”
A hawk made lazy patterns in the sky, gliding on moonlit wings.
“Watch.” She extended a black and gnarled index finger, pointing at the dark creature. A stream of blue lightning sprang from her fingertip, slicing the night. The hawk was obliterated in a sizzle of blue smoke. The smell of crackling electricity clung like fog around the old woman.
“Wh—where’d it go?” But Jennica already knew the answer. She knew this woman had just exposed herself, had done something in front of Jennica that could get them both killed.
“Dead. Gone. No more.” The old woman held the lantern up to Jennica’s face. “You feel sorry for it? Too harsh of me?”
“No. I hate them.” The venom in her own voice astounded her, but she couldn’t help it. If she had blue fire, she’d disintegrate every last one of those things.
“You hate their creator, too.”
“Noble? Yes. I hate him.” It was the first time she’d said the words aloud, dared to. Their sound was liberating.
“Kill him,” the woman purred. “Kill him and I’ll give you back your ability to run. Kill him and set yourself free.”
“You’re the one who’s got blue lightning shooting out of your fingernails. Why can’t you kill him yourself?” The puff of smoke where the hawk had been was just beginning to fade. Jennica wondered if the witch would’ve used her fry beams on Kornelia. If that was what she’d meant when she’d said she would’ve helped if Jennica needed it. She fingered the scab on her neck. How long had the witch planned to wait before she helped?
Air squeaked through her nostrils when she exhaled. “I have no physical power against Noble. He can consume the soul of anyone within his line of sight. He is covered in scales forged in Urion fires. He heals himself with the power of Rosen souls. He extends force fields around his soldiers in battle. He has made himself indestructible, but he leaves his children naked in the sky, his soldiers vulnerable when they’re on their own. He always has the upper hand—except . . . when it comes to you.”
“Wait a minute. The soldiers have metal chest plates, and armor, super-scales on their faces and arms.” She remembered Logan’s football-player physique under his tunic. “They have plenty of protection.”
“Noble created his claws and teeth to pierce armor. He gives his soldiers and scientists little patches of scales, mere decoration. He lets his soldiers live until they are no longer useful to him.”
Everyone was disposable, then. Including her. “Well, I don’t have any advantage. The only thing keeping him from adding me to his harem is that his lust for information is bigger than his lust for me.”
“No, my dear. You live because in his twisted, sadistic cocodrilli brain—he loves you.”
A full minute passed before Jennica was aware her mouth hung open. There was nothing to say to this obviously insane woman.
“Why do you think he marries, keeps a harem to visit and fawn over, hangs out with a sniveling Tovar? He’s lonely,” the witch said, sounding almost sorry for him. “He’s been lonely for a long time. Power, control, flight—these are covers for his true desire: to love and be loved. His own mother twisted him into what he is today. He barely survived her. She injected him with Urion when he was but a child, along with many other unspeakable acts. Corrupted his psyche as only a mother can. But deep down inside, he is just a man.
“A man who wants you as a real wife, a companion, and, eventually, a lover, a mother to his children.”
Jennica’s hand flew to cover her mouth, but a torrent of giggles had already escaped.
“You laugh, but deep inside”—a blackened finger poked Jennica hard between her breasts—“you know it’s true.”
Jennica couldn’t hold back any longer. “You’re nuts. Love me? He loves tormenting me.” She stomped her metal foot, hard, so the metal would clank. “He loves making me suffer.” She scooped up the damp sheets by the window and chewed on a corner. “My water for the day,” she explained. “What he loves is prolonging my agony.” She dropped the sheets and spun, arms wide. “Until the night . . . when he can pounce.”
Midspin, she stopped and yelled, “What he’s going to love is raping me and sucking out my soul.” She collapsed on the edge of the bed.
The old woman appeared next to her and caressed Jennica’s hands between her calloused ones. The witch’s touch sent shudders through her. Shudders of revulsion, not desire. She’d told the truth: Jennica’s skin had no effect on her, caused no attraction.
“There, there.” The witch grabbed Jennica’s chin and rocked it back and forth. “You fret so. He loves you because you remind him of himself. Of everyone he knows, you’re the most like him. He told me of the fire in you, when you crushed Damen’s foot. Kornelia enters your room with a knife and ends up broken on the ground. I saw it myself just now when you relished the death of his hawk.”
She released Jennica to stunned silence. Jennica couldn’t imagine she bore even a passing similarity to Noble. Couldn’t ever, possibly, become anything like him.
The witch spoke low and close, in forced whispers. “Listen to me carefully, and do not interrupt. There is a sword being forged right now. A sword made from Urion itself. I can get it to you.” She pointed to her own throat, underneath where a man’s Adam’s apple would be. “Noble has the tiniest of a gap in his scales. A spot he has worn away with his incessant talking and scratching. Small enough that his other scales cover it, unless he twists his head just right. You must strike him there, with the sword. Push through, and once you have purchase, his scales will yield to the sword. Underneath the scales, he is flesh and blood.”
The old woman smiled. “Then take his head off.”
Jennica would’ve interrupted then, to point out how ludicrous this whole scenario was—her, wielding a sword? against Noble?—but she was still too stunned by the witch’s previous revelation to speak.
The old woman continued. “He’ll bleed Urion, and it will take time for his headless body to die as he tries to heal himself. The trick? Keep his followers from coming to his aid. And no, not everyone hates him. Back-alley tradesmen enjoy the status quo. Merceneries benefit from tracking down traitors and deserters. Grandens of the villages crave the riches he bestows.
Soldiers who fought by his side in the battles for unification, they worship him as if he were Aprica herself. He will have loyal protectors, but they can fall to the same sword.”
“But—” Jennica finally found her voice, and tried to cut in.
“Quiet.” The woman pinched the thin skin on the tops of Jennica’s hands and leaned in. Something had crawled inside the witch and died, its rotting remains thick on her breath. “You can get close enough to do this. Me, or anyone else—he’ll rip our souls away before we can get to him. But you . . . he longs to be close to you.
“After you separate him from his head, it’ll bite, thrash, rip. He may still be able to speak and command the hawks to protect him. I will take care of them. And with no one to sew him back together, eventually he’ll succumb. No one, not even the great Noble Tortare, can survive indefinitely without a head. You will have a chance to kill him and survive.”
Survive? Jennica wanted to ask what fiction the woman had read, but the reference would be lost on her. What she was describing was impossible. Approach Noble with a sword. Get close enough to slice him in a spot as small as a pinkie nail, a spot mostly invisible. Avoid his claws and teeth—and tail. Then decapitate him while defending herself against soldiers. Did the witch think Jennica was Wonder Woman?
“Are you listening?”
Jennica nodded, though she wanted to laugh again. She wanted to run screaming away from this horrible woman, but, of course, no chance for that.
“I’ll make you in his image. Invincible. He desires it. Worries he’ll kill you by accident. Confines you to protect you, but longs to see you, to touch you . . .
“His way? Archaic. My way . . . inspired. His way—each metal scale applied and fused by hand, one by tedious one. My way . . . new skin, grown over the old. Lightweight, flexible, smooth like real skin, but impenetrable, indestructible. No longer Rosen. No more purple girl. Silver steel. Lumnious, reflective . . . perfect.”
Jennica couldn’t stay silent and rose from the bed. “You want to make me silver? My whole body, metal like my feet?”
“Well, you could probably keep your face, but I recommend we make it silver too. An overall improvement.”
“I want you to leave.”
The witch sat there, immobile except for her left eye, twitching.
“Now.”
The witch slunk off the bed, her gnarled hand closed around the lantern.
“No, not the lantern. Leave it.”
The witch scuffled to the door and pulled it open with ease. The same door that Jennica couldn’t budge without help. “Think on it, Jennica.” She stepped out, and the door thudded shut behind her.
Jennica crawled up onto the window ledge and hugged her knees into her chest. Thinking was all she could do.
JENNICA
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE GIFT
After she carved the twenty-second mark into the bed, she held Damen’s knife away from her body like it was a much longer, much heavier sword, and stabbed at the neck of the invisible Noble Tortare. This was stupid. She sheathed and slid Damen’s knife into its hiding place.
Her fingers scuttled across the gouges she’d made. Eight more days of confinement and then Happy Release Day. Not that it really mattered. Even when she wasn’t confined to her bedroom, she was confined to the castle, confined to Astrune. She wasn’t going anywhere. Most importantly, she was never going home.
If she was counting the days correctly, it was now December 10 back on Earth. Uncle Ed would be at the veteran’s hospital, counseling the new arrivals, showing off his prosthetic leg and encouraging them to move forward with their lives. He’d survived and they could too. Eighteen months in Hoa Lo Prison, North Vietnam. He’d escaped, but with injury, infection, and rot—the doctors had had to cut off his leg to save his life.
He saved the details for the vets. Said only another soldier could understand what he’d gone through. And what would Uncle Ed say to her now? Keep on keeping on. Don’t let the bastards get to you. Fight like it matters.
And Grandma Lorinne? Stay true to yourself and everything will come out fine.
“Oh, Grandma, I miss you the most.”
After the divorce, when her parents had checked out—too wrapped up in their own anger—Jennica had turned to her grandparents, her great-uncle, her friends, plunging headfirst into school and getting good grades.
Grandpa Paul had told her, every chance he got, that school was the ticket to wherever you wanted to go—out of this town, out of this state, out of this country. Out of this world, Grandpa? She didn’t think he’d had Astrune in mind.
Her mother had had her own set of wisdom to share. “You can only depend on yourself—don’t think life is some fairy tale and when it gets tough your Prince Charming is ’round the next corner. That’s a load of shit fed to the masses to sell plastic tiaras and booby dolls.”
“Barbie dolls, Mom. They’re Barbie dolls.”
“Same difference.” Although it sounded like “Shame diphr’nce” when she’d said it midway through a two-liter box of wine.
Yeah, her mother was bitter after the divorce. Yes, indeed.
“Well, Mom, there’s no Prince Charming here.” But it’d make a great end to her story, wouldn’t it? White horse—whoops, no horses on Astrune—shining armor—well, that part was true, sort of; lots of folks with shine around here—slay the dragon—Noble was definitely a dragon, except instead of breathing fire his mouth dripped Urion. And finally, the grand kiss to break the spell.
She’d had her first kiss under the Route 20 overpass in the seventh grade. She remembered it as short and unremarkable—the kiss, not the boy. Ritchie was his name. She smiled. They’d tried to touch tongues and quickly decided they didn’t know what they were doing. Some sporadic kissing over the last four years, with her friend Sam, kept her longing for the grand kiss, the one kiss that would astound her and leave her trembling and wanting more. No one here was likely to give her the grand kiss. Just Noble’s soul-sucking kiss of death.
Kissing aside, she’d happily settle for someone to hold her just because they wanted to, and not because she’d lured them in with her lust-inducing skin. She had to admit, when Damen had comforted her after she’d met her first hawk, his touch on her skin had felt . . . nice. And then again, when she’d hugged him here in Nyima’s room. Until he’d called her Nyima, that is. His Freudian slip had purged the niceness right out of the room. And their first kiss could hardly count. Noble had ordered her to kiss Damen to make sure the inhibitor worked, plus she’d been mad at Damen at the time. No, that kiss was stricken from the record.
Maybe under different circumstances she could be with Damen—he was her age, attractive in that sexy boy-next-door kind of way. Those eyes of his were swoon-worthy for sure. Sometimes, the way he looked at her, it felt like his gaze was searing right through her. Plus he’d always be honest, even if he refused to apologize.
Jennica’s feelings for Damen were . . . complicated. One minute she wanted to punch him, the next minute she wanted him to hold her and maybe try the kiss again. She needed to rid herself of whatever it was that she felt for him. It’d never work. She just wished she could stop thinking about him and talk to him instead.
Too bad he’d ditched her just like the rest of them: Aingeal, Joss, the Cidrans from the old woman’s lantern who’d flown off so fast after she’d released them that she didn’t even get a chance to ask their names. The witch woman had said there was nothing wrong with Damen, so the only reason he could have for not sending her notes was because he didn’t want to.
Then she imagined that Damen was there, with Marcis holding the door open. Damen smiled a dazzling glad-to-see-you smile. He seemed so real.
“You are real.” Relief washed over her in a sheeting downpour. Afraid Damen would see her excitement, she rushed to Marcis instead, stopping three feet short of him when she saw the scars torn through his face.
He misinterpreted her reaction. Holding out his a
rms to her, he said, “I’ve taken inhibitor. It’s okay, I’m safe around you now.”
She threw her arms around him. He spun her off her feet in a bear hug and she laughed, not out of frustration or hysteria, but because a veil had been lifted from her heart. Damen and Marcis, were here with her.
“Shush, now,” Marcis said. “I’m not allowed to see you, but I couldn’t stay away. Logan’s guarding the door. He’ll let us know if there’s trouble.” Marcis set her solidly on the floor and she turned her attention to Damen, slumped against the wall. He‘d seemed so pleased when she first saw him, but now he acted . . . like he’d been picked last for kickball teams. Did her hugging Marcis first make him upset? That would mean he did feel something for her. He had a box tucked under his arm—a metal box with bars across the front. A cage? Something shifted its weight inside.
“Damen? Is everything all right? Are you banned from seeing me too?” She wanted to rush into his arms too, but she forced her feelings deep inside herself, and held back. She couldn’t risk a repeat of their Nyima scene. That would crush her for sure.
“I was forbidden, but not now. Just Marcis. I’ve come to release you early. Noble’s orders. He said I could bring you this.” He thrust the box out toward her. A small white paw pushed between the bars. “I thought you‘d like some company.”
Jennica took the box. An unmistakable feline howl greeted her. “Sounds like a cat.” She set the box on the bed. “How do I get him out?”
“Here.” Damen released a latch on the front, the bars lifted, and a large dirty white rabbit sprang from the cage and bounded around the bed. He laid his long ears back against his head and hissed.
“Oh,” was all she could manage to say.
“It’s a hare with the soul of a polecat. Their souls were exchanged,” Damen’s eyes searched her face. “It reminded me of you.”
“Oh,” she said again, looking at the scruffy, bad-tempered creature that alternated between snarls and hisses.
Damen shook his head, appearing to struggle to say the right thing. “What I mean is, it doesn’t like being in this body. The polecat’s spirit is—constrained, like yours. I thought you had that in common.”