by Jade Alters
I push into her and hold. I let my forehead down on Emery’s as throbs fill her. The only heat left in me pulses out inside of her. Emery’s hands dig into my back as her legs open upwards to take it all in. I pull back gently to rock against her a few more times. We ride out the aftershocks of orgasm together in quiet, tired breaths. When the last beat of ecstasy pumps out of my penis, I let my body flatten against hers. Emery lays an arm around my back. For the first time in years, I experience a trance, almost like sleep. There’s just one thing that keeps me awake. That smell.
There are plenty of things I expected to smell when we jumped into the back seat together. Sweat, among other things, are present, but one smell overwhelms it all. A smell I’m cursed and blessed to be more sensitive to than anything else. Blood. Just when I hear Emery start to snore a little under me, I take a glance down. A tiny streak of blood, no more than a few drops, runs down the side of her leg.
No girl as proud as Emery Dalshak would admit it was her first time. But I don’t say a word. I don’t so much as gasp. And I won’t. Not as a comeback, not as some witty quip. I’ll just let her sleep, for now. I lay my head down just above her chest, to see if I’m still capable of joining her.
Rock in a Hard Place
Rock,
Myers Flat, California
I can tell she didn’t expect us by the look on her face when their car pulls out from behind that gravelly hill. But then, who expects a rhinoceros in the middle of a dirt road in California? The Vampire is at the wheel, whatever his name is. Emery sits shotgun, eyes bulging at the sight of my massive, gray form. I dig my front foot into the clay to show that I mean business. The Vampire assures me he does too by revving the engine of their clunky old Toyota.
He floors it and zips to one side of the road to bank around me. A cloud of dust jumps up in the wake of their spinning wheels. He doesn’t realize what Emery does, and she looks too stunned to tell him. It’s not just some escaped zoo animal they’re facing. I leap from my spot to block the Camry’s path. The second my feet pound into the earth, the Vampire tries to yank the wheel the opposite way. The car spins out in a nasty beige storm, which gives me time to charge a nearby tree. I gore it with my horn and tear sideways. The trunk gives way. The tree topples across the road, making it impassable. The Camry screeches on its old rusty brakes, to a complete stop. The doors pop open. Emery stops the Vampire from getting too close by stepping between us.
“Rock? Is that you?” she calls out to me. Her voice rings out dry and empty across the overgrown old dirt road. She locks eyes with me. With hardly an effort, she finds the man deep within the beast. There’s no point in playing dumb any longer. My frame shrinks as I stand up on my hind legs. A horn shrinks into a nose, scaly, gray skin regains its normal, tan pallor. In a matter of a second, I’m my human self again.
“The better question is: is that really you?” I counter. “Disappearing for days without words. Ditching class and everything else… If the Council wasn’t so preoccupied with Helena and its missing members, there would be a full-on manhunt tracking you down out here.”
“Instead, they sent a lone bloodhound,” Emery huffs. “But how’d you track me this far? It couldn’t have been scent alone.”
“First, the Council didn’t send us,” I tell her.
“Us?” Emery asks.
“Well, that’s the second thing,” I announce, which signals the rest of our party to show themselves. Hoster climbs out from the harsh shrub layer at the wall of the forest. Emery’s eyes shoot to the first sign of movement. They triple in size when she sees who it is.
“Hoster? What, did you guys…team up to…track me somehow?” falls from Emery’s disbelieving lips.
“Sort of…” Hoster’s barely able to admit. An idle hand scratches the back of his head.
“He got us close, and I did the rest,” I have no problem telling her. “You make quite the impression about punctuality and discipline. It raises a few alarms when you don’t show up.” Emery’s dumbfounded mouth pops open while the Vampire makes his way around her. He strolls past me with an irritating bravado, like the man who was just a rhinoceros is no threat to him at all.
“If you’re going for clingy and overprotective, you nailed it, stalker,” he whispers to me, and walks on by. Something about his smugness implies he has experience on the matter. With Emery. It flashes my blood straight to the boiling point.
“What was that?” I turn to offer him the chance to challenge me again. Instead, he just keeps on walking.
“That was exactly what you heard,” the Vampire tells me. He crouches down to shove his fingers underneath the tree I downed. I almost laugh at the attempt. It took the force of a two-ton beast to knock that thing over. He really thinks- holy shit. The trunk gives a little budge when he puts his legs into it.
“You. Cotton swab,” Darius calls over to Hoster.
“Yo-yo-you mean me?” he stammers.
“Well I’m not talking about the Fey hiding in the woods back there,” the Vampire says. His supernatural hearing is even keener than the stories say. “Yes, you. What’s your deal? You a Warlock? Magician? Shifter?”
“Astral,” Hoster corrects him.
“Cool. Spirit your way over here and haunt this tree or something. Make yourself useful,” says the Vampire. It’s so nonchalant, Hoster almost complies. All that stops him is Emery’s wild glare around the road.
“Fey? What are you talking about, Darius?” then she looks to me. “What the hell is going on here?” Despite my frustration, I force myself to walk towards her. I glance back over my shoulder to shout:
“Fey Deller! Come on out! Not sure what you were waiting for…” I mumble.
“Fey Deller…you’re here too?” Emery mumbles as she watches her mint-skinned roommate fade in from the trees. “I don’t…what is this?”
“This, Emery Dalshak,” I say as I arrive in front of her. I slip my hands under hers. They lay limply in my calloused grasp. “Is what happens when you accidentally make people care about you.”
“You and Helena are my first human companions,” Fey Deller tells Emery. “The room seemed too empty without you.” Emery’s mouth hangs open in shock, while her bow curves up, almost somber.
“I… Thank you,” Emery whispers, hoarse.
“Hey, horndog!” Darius calls back. The second I realize who he’s talking to, the strings of my mind pull tight again. So tight, in fact, that one might just snap. I try to turn around as he goes on, “If you really want to showboat, why don’t you clear the way you blocked for us!” I’m stopped only by Emery’s hand around my wrist.
“Fey Deller. Help them move the tree, would you?” Emery asks with the gentle politeness of a tea party. Fey Deller goes off with both hands out, to summon sapling trees from the earth for assistance. Their push begins to rock the massive tree as Emery pulls me away.
“Them?” Hoster echoes. He drags himself to the side of the tree and puts a hapless foot on the side of it. The last I see of their effort is Hoster’s Astral body shimmering to life beside him to push. Then Emery pulls me back behind the old Camry. I flinch when she puts me in a tight hold - one I never taught her on the Sealbreaker field. A hug. She squeezes me until I relax my head into her neck.
“I can’t believe you found me,” Emery whispers.
“Of course I did,” I counter. “As soon as Hoster told me about Helena, I knew you wouldn’t leave her.”
“This isn’t your fight, Rock. Or Fey Deller’s, or Hoster’s!” Emery scolds me, even while she holds me in her embrace.
“Are you kidding me?” I lean back from her to glare down, straight into her eyes. “What happened to Helena was because of me. Even if I was just trying to do something nice. Those Core Line bastards…they did what they did because of me. And that got Helena kidnapped by some kind of supernatural terrorists!” Emery’s mouth pops open to object, but the longer I go on, the more irrefutable it is. “And it might not be Hoster or Fey Deller’s fight�
�but you need them. You need me. You need all of us and you know it.”
“That includes Darius,” Emery tells me. “Rock. Can you keep from choking him to death?”
“What if I just choke him unconscious? Just so I don’t have to listen-”
“Rock,” Emery stops me. I smile to show her I’m kidding. She hangs from my neck like a perfect little Magical necklace. “I can’t believe you found me here.”
“You are happy to see me,” I scoff. Emery gives me the slightest chuckle, as adorable as it is rare.
“You caught me,” she says. Her face is just too perfect. Huge brown eyes looking up at me. Her lips open just under an inch. I lean in to test the waters. Emery doesn’t retreat, so I jump in. We connect at the mouth, just like we did on the Rec Field. The bond is just as instant, just as strong. I don’t know what she’s done to wrap Hoster and Darius around her magical little finger, but there I am right with the fools. Some Chief I am.
“Rock,” Emery whispers between my lips, “I am happy to see you, but…we have to move.”
“Helena,” I realize, and take a half-step back. “Let’s bring her home.” Emery nods and turns me around by the shoulders.
“Would you help those poor bastards with the tree?” she asks. Darius, Hoster and Fey Deller are engaged in what appears to be a team Olympic sport gone wrong. The tree flops over a foot at a time, over widow-makers that jut from every angle.
“Alright,” I sigh, and shift back to my massive rhino form. I charge with my head low to skewer the tree and heave it off to the side of the road.
“Now the question is how to get into this place,” Emery ponders once the dust settles. She and Darius turn back for their car.
“I know a way that used to be minimum security,” Fey Deller interjects. “If we’re lucky, it still will be.”
“Al...right,” Emery adjusts to that little bit of information.
“We’ll explain on the way,” Hoster waves off her confusion and heads for the car.
“Hold on, before we make this into a clown car. How the hell did you get here, if you didn’t drive?” Darius asks.
“On horseback,” I tell him. “My horse-back.” Darius is left slack-jawed when I take the driver’s seat. “I’ll take the first shift.”
“Shotgun,” Emery calls.
“Cozy up back there,” I tell Darius. He eyes the cramped backseat beside Fey Deller and Hoster with frightful nausea. He grunts and sighs the whole time it takes him to cram his body in the back.
“You think your blood is spearmint flavored?” Darius prods Fey Deller, not two minutes into the awkwardly quiet and cramped trip.
“I have never tasted Fey blood,” Fey Deller answers, dry, unaware. Darius lets loose a long sigh. And so the long ride begins.
Point Arena
Emery,
Point Arena Academy Research Facility,
Point Arena, California
The first thought to cross my mind when we pull up below the Point Arena Facility is: really? After making our way down the coast in the most cramped car ride of my life, we cut through suburbs and downtown streets to this? The Facility is in the westernmost nook of Point Arena, atop a stack of wicked, tide-beaten rocks that look more like tails of a flame than chunks of earth. It also looks to be about the size of a farmer’s tractor shed. The structure of it isn’t all that different from one, either. Metal slats on the exterior protect it from the crash of foam from the Ocean, even as we creep through stony alcoves and half-pipes toward it. The Camry, along with any hope of a quick escape, is a half-mile back where the rocks began.
“Are…you sure this is it?” Hoster asks what we’re all thinking. Another hiss of water rushes up over our heads as we cross through a deep trough beneath the shack, remnants of a wave pours over the side and shower the ground all around us. Everyone is soaked, at least up to their socks, from trudging through the salty spray.
“I couldn’t forget. Trust me. I’ve tried,’ Fey Deller tells him. A new kind of cold comes over me at the thought of where we’re going. A Facility from the days of the old Council. A place where crimes against nature brought Fey and Demons into our world. But that hardly matters now, compared to one other aspect of the Facility. It’s where they took Helena. “What you see above us is but a boil on the outside of the massive body beneath the rock.”
“Gross,” Darius mutters. I can’t help a snort at his childishness. Even now. Even at the foot of such a monument of horror.
Fey Deller leads us around the perimeter of the shack in the shadows of coastal rock formations. There’s even a tunnel leading through, to the very edge of California. The barnacle-coated stone separates the United States from the Ocean. We walk along it, directly beneath the cliff-side Research Facility, to a massive pipe. The gentlest seaside breeze wafts the stench of death, shit and who-knows-what-else over us. I’m not the only one who almost sprays vomit all over my shoes. Rock has to grab the side of the cliff to steady himself.
“I’m surprised...figured you’d be…used to smells like this…or do you not shit in a litter box?“ Darius tries to tease him. It comes off as even less mature than usual, with his own hand on his chest to keep the acids down.
“Keep talking, Vampire…” Rock chokes. “See what comes out, besides words.” I’m shocked when Fey Deller beats me to the punch of sliding a hand over each of their mouths. When she pulls them away, the boys breathe much easier. There’s also a fancy new piece of equipment on their faces. Equipment being a loose term. It looks almost alive - like a harmonica made of leaves and grasses.
“What are those?” Hoster asks as he scrambles back against the wall, away from Fey Deller’s reaching hand. She pins the back of his head against the stone with a graze of her fingers on his lips. A grassy bar grows across him too. His relief is immediate.
“Organic filters. They do what trees do for air, but much quicker,” Fey Deller tells him. I straighten up for mine. Fey Deller grows one across my face and her own at the same time. Incredible. In a second, the most horrific thing I’ve ever smelled becomes the most pleasant. Each breath draws in a dimly sweet taste of air.
“I…didn’t know Fey could grow things like this,” I murmur. Fey Deller’s answer has a metallic echo as she walks around to the mouth of the pipe.
“Normally, they don’t… I learned how to make these here. Before I escaped,” she tells me. I follow her into the pipeline first, trailed by my three… men. What label to assign each or any of them escapes me. I have to find Helena first.
On my first steps into the dark steel tunnel, I see where the smell is coming from. Each of us picks a side of the pipe to walk on, to avoid the steady stream of lumpy liquid between us. I’m not sure sewage is the right thing to call it. In it is a soup of red, orange and brown. A rainbow film of oil glides by on top of it every few seconds beneath the dim running lights that line the tunnel. There are big chunks of something mixed in, too. Some of it is gelled. Some of it resembles, more distinctly, what I feared it was all along. Flesh, Skin, scales, bones and even whole parts like ears and teeth float out to the Ocean in the stream from this Godforsaken pipe.
“How long ago did you escape?” Hoster’s whisper bounces up and down the pipe.
“Five years ago,” Fey Deller tells him.
“Holy shit,” Rock mumbles the exact words that run through my mind. “You came to the Academy because you knew…they’d protect you from the Kyrie? Is that it?”
“It’s the reason many Fey come to the Academy,” Fey Deller tells him, eyes ever forward. “We’ll come up on the waste nexus soon. There will be personnel everywhere from here on out. Emery, can you put a trick on us?” I don’t bother with an answer before I snap both fingers.
“No one will hear or see us. Just don’t bump into anyone,” I issue to the group. Despite the fact that we can talk freely, everyone quiets at the blink of light ahead in the tunnel. We climb a steepening incline towards the distinctly louder sound of pouring liquid. Thank God for t
hese organic filters.
Fey Deller leads by example, squeezing between the dense fountain of sludge and the steel walls of the tunnel. There’s just enough room to reach up and grab the ledge of a platform above, where the top of the pipe is open. We pull ourselves up into a dull, metallic gray room full of people in full-body protective suits. Countless smaller versions of the main sewage line jut from every wall, converging in a track over the pipe, where it all pours out. We choose our opening to duck under tiny pipes and sidestep waste workers carefully.
“Hey!” I call to Darius when I catch him staring at one of them from inches away. His face shoots towards me. “They can’t see you, but if someone bumps into you, we’re toast!”
“Alright, alright,” Darius waves me off and slips around the worker. We crouch and high-step over drainage pipes to avoid the paths of focused workers, all the way to a heavy iron door. There’s a viewing window to a painfully bright red hallway.
“Is that a keypad lock?” Hoster sighs when we reach the door.
“This wasn’t here last time,” Fey Deller murmurs. The five of us flatten against the wall to avoid a passing worker while we brainstorm how to surpass it.
“Hey…can’t you possess the door?” I ask Hoster.
“I can…but heavy doors like that don’t just blow open with a breeze. Plus if equipment is malfunctioning, someone’s liable to report that,” he objects. We all put our heads down for another frantic moment of consideration. “Wait…I’ve got this,” Hoster breaks out with a sudden spike in confidence. “Watch my body and stand clear of the door.” Before any of us can ask what he’s up to, Hoster’s shoulders slump against the wall.