by Andra Leigh
Dust a Bloods book
ANDRA LEIGH
Dust by Andra Leigh
Copyright © 2016 by Andra Leigh
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced, stored or transmitted in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogue are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
To Mum and Steve.
For the stepping stones to get this far.
A Blooded Stranger
The Gentle Reigness
Family
The Warned Reigness
A Lesson in Home
The Searching Reigness
Look Back…
The Runaway Reigness
Falling Inn to Dreams
The Kidnapped Reigness
Too Many Truths
The Dusted Reigness
Scars
The Wolf and the Reigness
Home
The Family’s Reigness
Dusted Decisions
The Returning Reigness
Millem Falls
The Returned Reigness
…But Don’t Come Back
The Ascending Reigness
Burning Alive
Acknowledgements
CHAPTER ONE
A Blooded Stranger
• Eliscity •
Eliscity was certain it hadn’t been her who had set off the alarm bells which were echoing through the med-building, reverberating off the stone walls. She’d been careful. Covered her hands, cuffed the flaps of fabric on the back of her shirt to her wrists and worn a hood. Besides, if it had been her, then the men with the boltbows would be running toward her, rather than away.
Right?
Ducking her head, she cursed herself for coming here. What had she been thinking?
The crowds of sick, injured and junkies on a come down were beginning to bristle with panic. If that bristle turned into anything more they were all going to be in trouble.
The guards were pushing through the jostling room looking keen to loosen bolts into people. Eliscity realised they were all heading in the same direction and curiosity got the better of her. Peering through the gaps in the streams of people, she searched for the cause of the disruption. After a moment she noticed the guards weren’t heading toward someone in particular but rushing to get out of the room.
It didn’t take her long to figure out why.
The faint smell of burning wick reached her nose just as she looked to the pulse cannons jutting from each corner of the room. They’d been lit. Half of the wick which circled around the cannon’s mouth had already burnt away. Which meant she had less than a minute before the wick ran out and the cannon emitted a pulse that would render everyone in the room unconscious.
Desperately, she looked for the nearest way out. A low row of windows banked the wall to her right. She could easily reach them in time if the room wasn’t surging with mass hysteria. But the crowd, startled by the bells, was shouting and pushing now. Yet few of them had realised the danger of the pulse cannons.
As the people around her shifted she caught sight of a young man who had seen the danger. For a moment she forgot about her pressing need to escape, distracted by how he didn’t seem to belong. His dark hair hung straight around his head, fringe sweeping sideways across his forehead, contrasting vividly against his pale skin. It was flawless skin, smooth and youthful. Beautiful.
As if sensing he was being observed, he tilted his head and met her stare. His eyes were fiery. She could see gold and orange specks amid the brown even from a distance. He stared at her for a moment, raising an eyebrow as if just as perplexed with her as she was with him.
Then a stray elbow caught her in the ribs, pulling her attention back to the danger.
She couldn’t be caught in the pulse cannon.
They’d figure out who she was.
They’d kill her.
Or worse, they’d take her back.
She couldn’t let that happen. The wick was almost at its end. No time to run. She had no choice. Perhaps no one would see. And if they did, who was to say they would remember or even believe it after being hit by the pulse cannon.
Mind made up, Eliscity did the only thing that would give her a chance of remaining conscious. Tearing the cuffs from her wrists she let the material fall. With the slits in the back of her shirt revealed she thrust her wings out from her.
The man’s eyes widened and rather than use the last second before the pulse went off to find cover, he stepped toward her. She wrapped the shadowy wings around her completely, cocooning herself, as the pulse shook through the room.
There was no bang or explosion. Just a sudden shift of pressure. Within her cocoon her ears blocked, ringing with a hollow echo. Pressure built, expanding into her head, egging her on to pass out. She fought against falling into the blackness. She had to stay conscious. Reminding herself to breathe, she struggled with the strange weight in her skull that threatened to suffocate her.
As quickly as the pressure built, it eased.
Unfurling her cocoon, Eliscity pushed herself to her feet and found she stood in a sea of fallen people. Everyone was unconscious. In a hurry to get out of the room, she stumbled over the slumbering figures, not making any attempt to avoid stepping on limbs. She had been heading for the windows when something made her stop.
The man. Fallen where he had taken a step toward her.
He didn’t seem to belong.
Not in a room of the sick and dying.
Flickering her eyes over him she saw a bag was slung over his shoulder, pinned between him and the floor. He wore loose black breeches tucked into worn boots with a matching shirt, the long sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Although, what drew Eliscity’s attention were the fingerless gloves he wore.
With a surge she changed directions, tripping over another’s chest in her rush to reach him. Kneeling beside him she grabbed his right arm and flipped his gloved hand over, teasing the material off his skin.
There it was.
Branded into his impossibly smooth skin.
The insignia.
The mark of the Blooded.
Barely daring to breathe, she hurried to inspect his left hand.
Nothing.
The skin of his left hand was bare. There was no ink. No mark of the Born. Despite the way the missing mark unnerved her, Eliscity couldn’t ignore the mark he did have.
She couldn’t leave him.
With the pulse over, the guards would be bursting back into the room at any moment. Eliscity could only hope she had enough time to get him out.
●
Dusk had come quickly and quietly, splashing dye across its canvas with well-practiced purple and orange strokes.
The people on the ground didn’t pay the art work any attention. To them, it did nothing more than signal the switching in shifts. The workers of the day were closing up shop and hurrying to vacate the streets before the unscrupulous night vendors took their places. They would skulk out of alleyways and lurk in the shadows of doors, sniffing in short sharp bursts and rolling merchandise between dirty thumb and forefinger.
Eliscity would never take a sunset for granted. They were too beautiful for that. She figured she may not have control over her life or when her death would come, but even if it were tomorrow she would know she’d witnessed her last possible sunset. She would have paused for a minute to enjoy a moment of beauty.
As the final curve of the sun sunk below the ho
rizon, Eliscity curled her fingers into the palms of her hands, hiding the veins that grew like ivy under her nails. She stepped away from the roof’s edge and retracted her wings. They were neither smoke nor solid, but a glistening shadow that was both transparent and opaque as they shifted and shimmered in their tattered form. They glided into the two vertical slits in her back, until only the slits, with purple and blue veins branching from them, remained.
Dipping her head, she flicked her eyes behind her. The man lay on his back, splayed out in the position she had managed to manoeuvre his heavy, unconscious form into. He looked comfortable enough, if his relaxed jaw and sleepy tilt of his head was anything to go by, so she didn’t bother rearranging his limbs.
Shifting her body slightly to twist toward him, her eyes settled on his hand at the same time her thumb moved over to press her own palm.
As the light dwindled, black crept in fast to smother the colour of the day. But despite its engulfing grey she easily saw the delicate pattern needled into the base of his palm, between thumb and wrist. It was a broken teardrop.
The man’s bag sat open at his feet where she had left it. Small vials and bottles of pills spilled out of it, explaining exactly why the pulse cannons had been lit in the med-building. He’d robbed them, just like she’d planned to before he had set the bells off. But he’d taken too much. It had been noticed. Obviously not knowing who the thief was, the guards had lit the cannons to knock everyone out and give themselves a chance to conduct an easy search. A few roofs from the med-building now, Eliscity suspected the search was still happening. What did it matter if the young boy who had been wailing over the stump of his arm bled to death while unconscious? Who cared if the woman with blue lips and bruised eyes rocking on the chipped and stained bench forgot to breathe under the influence of her high?
On the roof, Eliscity shook her head and sunk down to lean against the low stone wall that bordered it. Pulling her knees up to her chin, she wrapped her arms around herself and opened a small green vial she’d taken from her Blooded stranger’s bag with a fumble. She tipped her head back as she spilt what she hoped was medicine for pain into her mouth, not bothering to measure a dosage.
She’d sniffed at a few of the vials before choosing this one. Its sweet leafy scent had hit at something nostalgic. Something she couldn’t remember. Perhaps something from her life before the Clinic. It was a hopeful thought – a ridiculous assumption. But she’d gone with the vial nonetheless. Maybe that was mad. Of course it was. Of course she was.
At least – this time – no imaginary hand had appeared to help her decide. Her hallucinations had stayed in check.
Massaging the spot over her heart, she tried to encourage the medicine to work on that area. Since the adrenaline that had been coursing through her had burnt away, the ache through her heart had returned. Her wrists hurt. The base of her spine pulsed painfully. The blood pumping through her body felt heavy and sluggish.
She shouldn’t still be here. It went against all the rules she had made for herself. But the man lying in front of her,
with his one insignia and bag of stolen medicine, was like
her.
Maybe she’d seen him before.
She doubted it. Rather than recognising her he’d stared at her like she confused him. But still, she couldn’t rule it out. The fact that Eliscity didn’t know his face meant nothing. Any one of the strangers she ducked her own face from on the streets could be someone from her past. But unlike these strangers, even if this particular man wasn’t someone from her own past, he had been at the Clinic.
It was that which stopped Eliscity from leaving Wrethic immediately.
She needed to know he was okay.
She knew that was silly.
He was the past she was running from.
‘Look back, but don’t come back’.
But it was too late now.
He was waking up.
Eliscity hadn’t expected him to wake so soon. She crept to her feet and eased into the shadows. She may have saved him, brought him here and watched over him while he slept, but she wasn’t about to place her life in his hands by letting him know her.
The man’s breathing changed, hitching in his chest as he stirred. Eliscity watched as his hand found his head, a small moan escaping his throat. Pushing himself up on his elbows, he looked around the open roof, eyes skimming over the place where Eliscity had hidden herself, though not pausing on her.
His dark eyebrows collided into a frown. Finding his feet he continued his stationary search of the area, his body tense, coiled like he was ready to spring. He was on alert. Ready to attack.
Eliscity held her breath. Desperate for him not to notice her.
Let him think he was alone.
“Angel?”
She jumped at his smooth voice. Was he calling for her? Was she ‘Angel’? If so, why had she been named after a fabled guardian of the dead?
“Angel?” he asked again, calling carefully into the darkness.
Eliscity was afraid that he had spotted her. Then she realised his words were in question rather than greeting. She let the question hang in the air and the Blooded stranger didn’t ask for a third time. Instead he brought his bare hands up in front of his face, turning them over, examining them. His eyes darted from his insignia to his surroundings again.
Eliscity cursed silently as she realised she had forgotten to replace his gloves. He’d know that she had seen his insignia. An insignia that would mean nothing to the general population of Rylock, but she had made it obvious to him that she had actively searched for it by removing his gloves.
His hands dropped as he whirled about frantically. His eyes fell on his open bag and he lunged for it, dragging it onto his lap.
Eliscity’s pulse shot up with the prospect of him figuring out there was a missing vial. She was suddenly afraid that he would search the roof, scour the shadows for her until she was forced to run. But he didn’t. Instead he tied up his bag and slung it over his shoulder. He climbed to his feet and strolled casually toward the end of the building, stepping up onto the low lip of the roof’s edge. Crouching, the man shot a quick glance back over his shoulder, grinning slightly at the roof that looked empty.
Then he jumped.
Eliscity’s shock rocketed her out of her hiding place and over to the edge of the roof. What was wrong with the man? They were three storeys up and he’d just thrown himself off it.
Catching herself before she blundered over the roof, she skidded to a halt and carefully leant over the wall, peering down the flat of the building. Rather than fall to his death, the man was scaling down the face of the shabby housing building. He was travelling from window sills to shutters in leaps, tossing his body with ease to catch them with the tips of his fingers.
“Show off,” Eliscity muttered, pulling back from the edge. She too could leap from the building with every chance her wings would catch the air and make for a controlled fall that she would be able to land – but they were still only shadows so she was more likely to wind up splattered on the dirty ground below. Yet the man who had thrown himself onto the face of the building had no wings. As far as Eliscity could see, he had no Blooded changes whatsoever.
In that moment Eliscity made a decision. She wasn’t letting him get away. He was a Blooded human and he was free. She couldn’t let a rare combination like that out of her sight. Maybe he had answers. She would follow him and find out.
She opted for a subtler method of descent. Rushing to the building’s trapdoor, she dropped through it and sprinted down the staircase. He’d had a head start and had taken the faster route, but the man’s back was only just disappearing down an alleyway between a cookhouse and a butcher shop when she sidled out of the building.
Reaching behind her, Eliscity grabbed the two flowing bits of material at the centre of her shirt and secured the cuffed ends around her wrists. Knowing the purple slits in her flesh were now hidden, she stepped around a sunken faced boy who was
scratching his skin raw, to follow her Blooded stranger. She guessed the boy was on something. She had seen many effects of the Blood highs after her escape, hard not to, living on the streets of Hynxt.
She wasn’t familiar with much of Rylock. But she understood it was a large Realm, spanning further than the close knit cities. The cluster of cities were split in two. The Northern Cities were wealthy, pampered and protected by the Lord Reigner in his palace in the city of Heuthan. The Southern Cities were poor and overpopulated. She had taken up residence in the poorest city, Hynxt, after she had escaped the Clinic. It was crowded, dirty and hot – but had served as the perfect place to stay invisible. Hynxt was the most southern of the Southern Cities, stretching in a taut line above The Horizon. She didn’t know much about The Horizon, but had gathered it wasn’t somewhere you travelled if you fancied remaining alive. So she’d stayed away.
A few days ago she had left the filthy, collapsing building she stayed in in Hynxt and made the journey into Wrethic. Wrethic wasn’t all that different from Hynxt. Same crumbling infrastructure, same damp sticky scent, same swarms of flies waiting for someone to lie down and die in the streets. A charming place…
The only difference was that Wrethic was the only city in the south to have med-buildings. If the sick and injured in Cyse, Hynxt, Stource or the Cityel Border wanted medicine they would have to travel to Wrethic to get it. Something that contributed to the high death rate within the Southern Cities. Eliscity suspected this may be the Lord Reigner’s intention. After all, how difficult could it be to put a med-building in each city?
It had taken her days to decide to attempt the journey in search of medicine, under the rule that she would not do anything inconceivably reckless.
So what was she doing? Following her Blooded stranger through Wrethic.
Eliscity kept low as she left the sunken faced boy behind and rounded the corner. The smell of grease and piss clung to the wall of the cookhouse that she chose to edge down. She figured that was preferable than the scent of death that dripped from the wall of the butcher shop.