by Marjorie Liu
Heat exploded in my chest. I could move again. I grabbed awkwardly at Steven’s clothes, hauling him off the roots. Henry helped. My muscles were weak. So was my stomach. I leaned sideways, gagging. Cats pressed close, dozens, surrounding me.
“Amanda,” he said.
I shook my head. “Use your shirt to wrap his wounds. We need to stop the bleeding.”
He did as I asked, but glanced over his shoulder at the pale, bloated bodies waiting in the shadows. “What about them?”
I hardly heard his question. I stared at the spot where Steven had been sprawled—a cradle made of roots—and suffered the weight of all those trees bearing down on me, as though full of watchful eyes, and watchful souls, and mouths that could speak. Steven’s blood was invisible against the bark, but I could feel its presence.
Something changed us that night, I thought, and those once-men stirred as though they heard, coughs and quiet groans making me cold. They had laughed, before. Laughed and shouted and sung little ditties, and made hissing sounds between their teeth. Horror swelled inside me—mind-numbing, screaming horror that I was here, with them, again—but I fought it down, struggling to regain that spectral calm that had stolen over me.
Henry touched my shoulder. “We can go.”
Steven hung over his shoulder like a dirty rag doll. I picked up the shotgun but did not stand. I held up my finger. “Give me blood.”
He hesitated, glancing wildly at the monsters around us. I knew what he was thinking. Any minute now they would attack. Any minute, they would try to rip us to pieces and feed on our bodies: as in life, so now in this twilight death. I didn’t understand why they waited—though I had a feeling.
“Please,” I whispered.
Henry’s jaw tightened, his gaze cold, hard—but he leaned forward and bit my finger. Blood welled. I touched the tree.
And went blind. Lost in total darkness. I could feel the sharp tangle of vines beneath me, and hear Henry breathing—listened, with a sharp chill, to wet, rasping coughs—but those sounds, sensations, might as well been part of another world.
Another world, whispered a voice. We are more than we were.
My finger throbbed. I bowed my head. Pressure built in my stomach, rising to my throat—nausea, but worse, like my guts were going to void through my mouth.
Instead of vomit, my vision returned. I saw all those dead bodies again, endless mountains of corpses sprawled on stone streets, and the sun—the sun rising between the towers, glowing with a crisp golden light. Beautiful morning, with clouds of flies buzzing over blood that was still not dry.
We were born from this, said the voice, which I now felt in my teeth, in my spine and ribs. Blood that killed made us live.
Time shifted. Again, I witnessed blood, and the fluids from those decaying bodies flow and settle, feeding the roots of grass and weeds, and the trees that grew from the stone inside the dead city. I felt a pulse sink beneath the street into the soil, and spread. I felt heat.
A rushing sensation surrounded me—as though I was being thrust forward, like a giant fist was grinding itself between my shoulder blades. Faster, faster, and all around me, inside me, I felt a surge of growth—my veins, bursting beyond my skin, branching like roots, bleeding blood into the darkness.
Blood, that became a forest.
A forest that swallowed a city.
Many forests, I thought. Every city swallowed.
And the blood spread, whispered the voice. The blood changed us all.
As it changed you.
I slammed down on my hands and knees, as though dropped from a great distance. Fire throbbed beneath my skin, a white light burning behind my eyes. I remembered that night, naked and bleeding, on the ground—Henry screaming my name, Steven sobbing, both of them beaten bloody—and I remembered, I remembered a terrible heat. I remember thinking the men had set me on fire, that I would look down and find my skin burning with flames.
We tasted all of your blood, whispered the voice. We tasted a change that needed waking.
So wake and feed us again.
I opened my eyes. I could not see at first, but the shadows coalesced, and became men and trees, and small, furred bodies, growling quietly. My hand still pressed to the blood-slicked roots of the tree, and something hummed in my ears. I felt . . . out of body. Drifting. When I looked at Henry, I saw blood—and when I looked at the monsters that had been monsters, too, while they were men, I also saw blood. Blood infected: blood changed by something I still didn’t understand.
The trees are alive, I thought, and felt like a fool.
The leader of the pack shuffled forward and dragged his clawed fingers over his face with a gape-mouthed groan. He cut himself, so deeply that blood ran down his skin and dripped from his bloated cheek. I heard it hit the ground with a sound as loud as a bell. And I imagined, beneath my hand, a pleasurable warmth rise from the bark of the tree.
“Henry,” I said raggedly, without breaking the gaze of the pack leader, the first and last man who held me down, so many years ago. “Henry, put Steven down. You’re going to need your hands.”
“Amanda,” he whispered, but I ignored him, and picked up the shotgun. I settled it against my shoulder, my finger caressing the trigger, and looked deep into those black, lidless eyes.
Feed us again, I heard, rising through me as though from the earth itself. All we want is to be fed again.
I hated that voice. I hated it so badly, but I could not deny it. Like instinct, stronger than knowledge; like my blood on the fence or Henry burned by sunlight. We had changed in ways I would never understand, but could only follow.
“You know what you’re doing,” I said to the creature, which stood perfectly still, bleeding, staring, waiting. “You know what you want.”
What it had wanted, all these years, I realized. Living half-dead, hungry for peace, listening to voices that wanted to be fed. Like me, but in a different way.
So I pulled the trigger and finished it.
I never did buy those pigs.
I found someone outside the Amish who would trade with me, and bargained for horses, good, strong Clydesdales, almost seventeen hands high. Four of them. I had to travel a week to reach the man who bred them, and all he wanted was four boxes of bullets.
We left at the end of summer. No one bothered us, but no one talked to us either. We were alone on the hill, though people watched from a distance as Steven and I took down the fence, board by board, and used each rail to build the walls of the two wagons. Real walls, real roofs, windows with solid shutters. I had seen abandoned RVs, and always admired the idea of a moveable home. Even if it was something I had never imagined needing. What we built was crude, but it would keep the sunlight out.
We left at the end of summer. I wrote a note and left it on the last post standing. My land, free for the taking.
I drove one wagon, while Steven handled the other. One of them was filled with food—everything we could store and pickle—and the other held Henry and our few belongings. The goats followed without much prodding. Cats were good at herding. When asked politely, anyway.
Henry rode in my wagon. He had a bed behind the wall at my back, and a hollow pipe he spoke through when he wanted to talk. After a day or two, I tied a long red ribbon to my wrist and trailed it through the pipe. Henry would tug on it when he wanted to imagine our hands touching.
“Do you dream of them?” he asked one day, his voice muffled as it travelled through sawed-off steel. It was sunny and warm, and birds trilled, tangled in sweet, wild music. Pasture-land surrounded us, but beyond the tall grass I saw a dark edge of a forest. I looked at it as I would a narrowed eye—with caution and an edge of fear.
We had travelled more than a hundred miles, which I knew because we followed old roads on my father’s maps, and we calculated distances every evening around the fire. No destination, just far
away, beyond where word could travel. I trusted my gut to tell me when to stop, and settle.
“I dream,” I said. “Don’t tell me you don’t.”
“I can’t,” he said quietly. “I still taste their blood, and it makes me afraid, because I feel nothing. No regret. No sorrow. I pray all the time to feel sorrow, but I don’t. My heart is cold when I remember murdering them. And then I feel . . . hungry.”
Sometimes, I felt hungry too, but in a different way. I hungered to be back inside the forest, bleeding for the trees, hoping that they would give me knowledge, again. More answers. Not just why we had been changed, but why we had been changed in so many different ways. I told myself that the virus that had caused the Big Death had affected more than humans. I told myself that maybe we had all been infected, but some had lived—lived, ripe for some new evolution. I told myself I was a fool, that it didn’t matter, that I was alive, starting a new life. I told myself, too, that I was a killer.
I tugged on the ribbon and he tugged back. “Do you feel cold when you think of protecting Steven and your parents, or me?”
“No,” he said. “Never.”
“Then you’re fine,” I replied. “I love you.”
Henry was silent for a long time. “Does that mean you forgive me?”
I closed my eyes and pulled the ribbon again.
From the second wagon behind us, I heard a shout. Steven. I pulled hard on the reins, untied the ribbon from my wrist, and jumped down. The cats sitting on the bench beside me followed. I took the shotgun.
Steven stood on the wagon bench, still holding the reins. Fading scars crisscrossed his face and throat, and his bared wrists were finally looking less savaged. Pale, gaunt, but alive. He still wore his plain clothes and straw hat. Unable to let go. If he was anything like his brother, it would be years, or maybe never. His gaze, as he stared over my head, was far-seeing.
“Someone will be coming soon,” he said. “Someone important.”
I stared down the road. All I saw was a black bird, winging overhead. A crow. I watched it, an odd, humming sound in my ears. Cats crowded the road, surrounding the bleating goats. I couldn’t count their numbers—twenty or thirty, I thought. We seemed to pick up new ones every couple of days.
One of the windows in the wagon cracked open. Henry said, “Are we in trouble?”
“Not yet,” I replied, but tightened my grip on the gun. “Steven?”
“We don’t need to hide,” Steven murmured, staring up at the crow: staring, though I wasn’t entirely certain he saw the bird. “She’s coming.”
I didn’t question him. Steven had become enigmatic since that night in the woods—that second, bloody night. Or maybe he had stopped fighting the change that had come over him all those years before.
It was a clear day, but after a while I heard thunder, a roar. Faint at first, and then stronger, ripping through the air. I couldn’t place it at first, though finally I realized it reminded me of the military caravans. A gas engine.
A black object appeared at the end of the road, narrow and compact. Sunlight scattered on the chrome. It took me a moment to recognize the vehicle. I had seen only pictures. I couldn’t remember its name, though I knew it had two wheels, like a bicycle. And that it was fast.
None of the cats scattered. I steadied myself as the machine slowed, stopped. Dug in my heels. It didn’t matter that Steven seemed unafraid. I had no trust in the unknown.
A woman straddled the thing. Dark hair, wild eyes. Her jeans and shirt looked new, which was almost as odd as her gas-powered machine. I saw no weapons, though—and was comforted by the sharp look she gave me. As though she, too, had no trust.
“Your name is Amanda,” she said.
I held steady. Made no reply. Watched, waited. The woman frowned, but only with her eyes; a faint smile quickened the corner of her mouth.
“I’m Maggie,” she added, and tapped her forehead. “I saw you coming.”
Steven jumped down from the wagon. I stepped in from of him, but he tried to push past me and choked out, “Are you like us?”
High in the sky, the crow cawed. Maggie glanced up at the bird, and her smile softened before she returned her gaze to me and the boy.
“No,” she said. “You’re new blood. I’m from something . . . older.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
She shook her head, rubbing her jaw. “It’ll take time to explain, but there are others like you. Changed people. I’ve seen them in my dreams. I’m trying to find as many as I can, to bring them someplace safe.”
“Safe,” echoed Henry, from behind the wagon door. Maggie glanced sideways, but didn’t seem surprised to hear someone speaking. The crow swooped close and landed on her shoulder. Cats made broken, chattering sounds. Golden eyes locked on the bird.
“Something is coming,” Maggie said, reaching around to place a cautious hand on the crow’s sleek back. “I don’t know what. But we need to be together. As many of us as possible.”
I stared, feeling the truth in her words. But I held my ground and said, “You’re crazy.”
“Amanda,” Henry said, and I edged sideways to the back of the wagon. “Wife,” he said again, more softly, for my ears only. “What did we run from before, and what are we running toward now?”
“Possibilities,” I whispered, pressing my brow against the hammered fence rail, dotted with my blood. I touched the wooden heart hanging from a delicate chain around my neck. “All those frightening possibilities.”
“I was never scared of loving you,” he murmured. “But I was a coward with the rest. I don’t want to be that man again.”
And I didn’t want to be that woman. I scratched my fingers against the wagon door and turned to look at Steven, who gave me a slow, solemn nod. I stared past him at the forest—silent and waiting, and full of power. Power it had given us—and maybe others. I leaned against the wagon, feeling Henry on the other side of the wall, strong in darkness.
My blood hummed.
It’s fitting that “After the Blood” follows “Where the Heart Lives,” as the latter is a prequel to my Dirk & Steele series, while the former exists as a possible future.
I wrote this as a sequel to another novella, “The Robber Bride,” both set twenty years after a deadly pandemic sweeps through the world, taking out 80 percent of humanity. What’s left is a fractured government, farming communities led by the Amish, abandoned cities overgrown by forests—and the rise of supernatural forces no longer contained by civilization. It’s a somewhat peaceful future, actually—not entirely unpleasant, even if it’s hard work. (And this is what happens when you live near Amish communities for an extended period of time—you write tales like this one.)
I felt somewhat queasy reading this story fresh, right now, in the middle of an actual pandemic. Amish vampires aside, the end of the world as we know it feels a little too close to home. And yet, and yet—life goes on, becomes something new—and we, for better or worse, become something new with it.
Tangleroot Palace
CHAPTER ONE
Weeks later, when she had a chance to put up her feet and savor a good, hot cup of tea, Sally remembered something the gardener said, right before the old king told her that she had been sold in marriage.
“Only the right kind of fool is ever going to want you.”
Sally, who was elbow-deep in horse manure, blew a strand of red hair out of her eyes. “And?”
“Well,” began the elderly woman, frowning—and then seemed to think better of what she was going to say, and crouched down beside her in the grass. “Here. Better let me.”
They were both wearing leather gloves that were stiff as rawhide, sewn in tight patches to reach up past their elbows. Simple to clean if you let them sit in the sun until the manure turned to dry flakes, beat off with a stick. Sally, who did not particularly enjoy
rooting through muck, was nonetheless pleased that the tannery had provided her with yet a new tool for her work in the garden.
“You know,” Sally said, “when I told the stable boy to take care of my new roses, burying them up to their blooms in excrement is not what I meant.”
The gardener made a non-committal sound. “There were ravens in my dreams last night.”
Sally finally felt hard stems and stubbly thorns beneath her fingers, and began clawing manure carefully away. “I thought we were talking about how only a fool would ever want me.”
“All men are fools,” replied the old woman absently, and then her frown deepened. “They were guarding a queen who wore a crown of horns.”
It took Sally a moment to realize that she was speaking of the ravens in her dream again. “How odd.”
“Not so odd if you know the right stories.” The gardener shivered, and glanced over her shoulder—but not before her gaze lingered on Sally’s hair. “Sabius is coming. Your father must want you.”
Sally turned around, but the sun was in her eyes. All she could see was the blurry outline of a bow-legged man, stomping across the grass with his meaty fists swinging. She glanced down at herself, and then with a rueful little smile, continued clearing debris away from her roses.
“Princess,” said Sabius, well before his shadow fell over her. “Your father requests your . . . Oh, dear God.”
The gardener bit her bottom lip and kept her head down, long silver braids swinging from beneath her straw hat. Sally, gazing with regret at the one little leaf she’d managed to expose, leaned backward and tugged until her arms slid free of the rawhide gloves—left sticking from the manure like two hollow branches. Her skin was pink and sweaty, her work apron brown with stains.
“Oh, dear God,” said her father’s manservant, again, and turned his head, covering his mouth with a hairy, bare-knuckled hand better suited to brawling than to the delicately scripted letters he often sat composing for the king. He made a gagging sound, and squeezed shut his eyes.