by Erik Reid
By the time Lissa and I parted the wave of drunken bodies, our relative positions had changed. Two men walled me off, separating me from Lissa so we couldn’t build off each other’s momentum. I punched and blocked, kicked and ducked, but each maneuver forced me a few inches further away from her.
Just as I knocked this pair of idiots down, Lissa’s pair got the best of her.
“Gotcha now, bitch,” one man said, catching Lissa’s arms behind her back. He held tight, preventing her hands from reaching the shuriken on her belt.
She kicked down, stomping the heel of her boot onto his foot, but he didn’t let go.
“If you insist on helping,” she said, “now would be a good time for it.”
“It would be my pleasure,” I said.
I punched one man in the side with Oscar, doubling him over while he held Lissa’s wrists. The other man took a swing at me. I absorbed a punch across the cheekbone that spun my face around and jarred my sense of balance, but I recovered in time to reach for the man’s shirt.
I made a fist, balling up whatever loose fabric and chest hair sat on his lumpy, lard-covered bosom, and lifted him off his feet. Lissa bent forward, lifting her own attacker onto her back without buckling under his heft.
I threw. The man sailed across the open intersection and knocked Lissa’s attacker off her. They landed together in a sweaty, alcohol-soaked tangle, but they quickly unknotted their limbs and prepared to retaliate.
Lissa gave me a slight nod in thanks, though not a smile. Then her eyes widened and glanced over my shoulder.
My mouth was half-open in warning, catching sight of an incoming attack just behind her, but before I could vocalize anything someone pushed me from behind. At the same time, one guy planted a foot against Lissa’s ass and kicked hard. She stumbled toward me and I wrapped my arms around her, using her body to catch myself from falling while saving her from the same fate.
Our eyes locked for a split second. Her cat ears twitched downward and she swallowed hard as I stared into her vertical pupils, almost like Dani’s but softer. Amber and iridescent.
Suddenly, the blue flame inside the little glass jar on her necklace flashed black and stayed that way. Her eyes darted down, then back up at my face. In an instant, she grabbed her last throwing star from her belt and pressed the sharp edge of one spike against my throat.
“Demon,” she said. “It was you all along!”
I tilted my head back and pushed her off me, taking a quick cut down my jawline from the blade she had pressed against me.
“You’re a real piece of work,” I said. “I just jumped in here to save your ass.”
We both turned away from each other and toward the last two men that had started this mess. Lissa struck hers in the forehead, knocking him limp. He sprawled out on the ground while I pounded my target in the chest with Oscar’s full force. He clutched his shoulder and staggered backward, in the throes of a heart attack.
Now, Lissa and I could fight in peace.
“You’re a creature of the demonfire,” she said, touching the necklace that held a small tuft of flame. “You serve the destroyer, not the savior.”
The slightest movement of her wrist and shoulder telegraphed an oncoming punch, so I raised Oscar to meet her attack and blocked it without so much as flinching, grabbing her wrist and stopping her from jabbing through my skin with the shuriken she pinched between her fingers.
She raised one foot for a high kick, but I saw that coming too. My synapper-enhanced reflexes were hard at work, directing my other hand ahead in sync with her movements. I grabbed her ankle and tossed it back the way it came, throwing my weight into her motion. She spun faster than she was prepared for, tumbling and skidding to a stop along the ground. Her palms opened wide to brace her fall, letting the shuriken skitter across the cobblestones out of reach.
“I’m not a demon, I’m just some guy from Earth that could really use a big blue police box home right about now.”
“Earth,” Lissa said, adding a forced laugh at the end while she crouched and glared at me, ready to pounce. “She’s next on our list.”
My back stiffened. “List of what?”
“List of heretic witches to neutralize. Tell your mistress we have her sisters.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You did not come here by your own doing,” Lissa said. “There is always a woman, silver-haired with a sailor’s tongue. I shudder to think of the carnal price you paid for passage.”
“The old lady in the fortuneteller’s hut?” I asked. “Mistress? Ew, that wrinkled old crone was like seventy years old.”
Lissa cocked her head back and squinted at me. “She’s seven hundred years old.” She shook her head. “You’re trying to confuse me, demon. I am not so easily confounded.”
“You’ve confounded yourself pretty well,” I said. “What self-respecting demon would wear jeans and a torn up T-shirt?”
“Evil takes many disguises.”
“Said the woman with demonfire dangling from her necklace,” I said.
Her hand traced toward her waist while we spoke, and now her fingers twiddled just an inch from her last throwing star. I took a sharp breath and watched her pinch the blade and flick her wrist, letting the weapon fly in a straight path toward my face.
Without ducking or dodging, I reached up, pinched Oscar’s fingers together, and caught her throwing star between my thumb and index fingers. I tossed it to the ground.
“Go home, kitty cat,” I said.
“I have no home,” she said. “Your kind saw to that.”
She stepped backward, never taking her eyes off me. The black flame that billowed inside her necklace talisman flashed a bright blue again as she gained her distance from me. Then she turned to run, stooping low to collect the shuriken that was still half-buried in the chest of a man whose shirt was now drenched in blood. He yelled out as she yanked the bladed star free, then his eyes rolled toward the back of his head and he passed out on the ground.
Among the five men sprawled out in the town’s center, only one had eyes still halfway open. He climbed to his feet and surveyed his fallen comrades.
“You ruined our fun,” he said. I looked around at the four idiots on the ground. Two had noses that pointed the wrong way, with blood running all down their mouths and chins. One had his leg twisted up in a knot, while the last one had a growing lagoon of blood around him.
“Looks to me like you boys had plenty of fun,” I said.
“Wise-ass,” the man said, taking a step toward me with menace in his eyes.
I balled my fist and pulled my arm back, but when I punched forward, my fingers uncurled and my trajectory changed. Instead of clocking this guy in the face, I grabbed his throat and lifted him by it, tightening my fingers so hard I could feel his pulse.
“What the—” I started. With a quick effort, I let the man go and he fell onto the ground, choking and clutching at his throat. He looked up at me with bloodshot eyes, turned away, stumbled, then ran until he was lost amidst the small buildings that made up this town’s center.
I stared down at Oscar.
“Bad boy,” I said. There was no sense in playing it cool though. He was bonded to me, plugged into my nervous system enough to give me visual prompts whenever he pleased. He’d know the fact that my hand was growing a mind of its own freaked me the fuck out.
Sync Progress: … … Error
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked. “You’re upset I wouldn’t let you crush that guy’s throat? He’s not some monster bloodhound, Oscar. Oscar?”
Nothing.
I glanced up at the bedroom Kaylee and I shared. The shutters were still closed, and the room was still dark. Maybe I had worried for nothing and my snoring simki sidepiece would have slept through anything. Or maybe I had saved the fucking day.
All I knew was, it was time to send Oscar to bed.
***
That night, with a pair of synappers t
urning my brain into a mad swirl of nervous impulse, I dreamt.
Dreaming never was a comfortable affair for me.
A few times I’d had vivid visions of my parents, before they separated. Sometimes we hung out together doing family things in my dreams that never happened in real life: walking the boardwalk in a touristy beach town; playing card games and eating popcorn; blowing out the candles on a birthday cake while my parents sang.
Other times the dreams shaded into nightmares: holding my mother’s hand at her hospital bedside as the cancer ate away at her; punching my father in the leg with my puny middle-school fists as he walked away from us, a single packed bag slung over his shoulder and a bus ticket in his back pocket; falling into a bottomless black hole as the light overhead got smaller and smaller.
This night, the dream was somewhere between those extremes. I sat on a fallen log in the woods, wearing leather armor like a draykin guard. Gretna was there, standing at the center of a clearing and practicing her sword moves.
A quick step forward, a jerk of her shoulders, and the blade swung out in a blocking maneuver. Her honey-colored wings shifted position along with her tail, helping her balance her weight against the force of her motions. A tight bun of blonde hair sat on her head, leaving her tan skin visible from the tips of her draykin ears all the way down her neck and toward her heaving chest, with that hint of cleavage forcing itself into view beneath her metal chest piece.
“We’re lost,” she said.
As she swung her sword in a wide arc, her body swiveled, revealing the other side of her neck. A hunk of skin and muscle was missing, with dark red visible beneath. In this dream, I didn’t startle at the mortal wound or fixate on it. It was just how her neck looked now.
“I know,” I replied.
“It’s your fault, Kyle,” she said. “We should be at Benoch’s door by now.”
“You didn’t have to follow me when the road forked,” I said.
“Yes I did,” she said. “You know I did. I had orders.”
“Orders can be broken,” I replied.
“So I’m dead because I stayed true to what I believe in? No. I don’t accept that. I’m dead because you charged off on your own. It was an abuse of power. You knew we’d all follow you.”
“You followed Oscar,” I said. “We all did.”
“Then ask yourself,” Gretna said, sheathing her sword in the dirt and looking me right in the eyes. “Shouldn’t Oscar be following you?”
CHAPTER 16
I woke to the bouncing of the mattress and Kaylee’s warm legs bracing against my hips. She perched on top of me, buoying the whole bed as she shook me awake.
“You’re a bundle of energy,” I said.
“Yep,” she replied. “Come on, let’s eat!” She hopped off the bed and ran from the room, jumping down the stairs with a loud thud on each landing.
I peeled myself off the bed with considerable difficulty. My body ached from the previous night’s effort, first with Kaylee, then with Lissa. I started down the stairs with one saddlebag in hand, but a noise from down the hallway drew my attention.
A small door sat open. Dani stood next to a stove with a shallow tin pot on one burner and a frying pan on another, packing some supplies into a saddlebag.
“I’ll have bacon and eggs,” I said. “Unless they come from pig- and chicken-people. Can’t be too careful in Silura.”
“If you want a hot breakfast, we’ll have to buy it,” Dani said. “Aside from sugar and a few spices, there’s nothing stocked in the inn’s guest kitchen. I did make these though.”
She held out a palmful of small, round candies with white and green swirls. “Hard candies with a touch of noxyweed and flavored with dried mint I found in a cupboard.”
“I’ll bet Clara appreciated that,” I said. “Got a better sleep than I did.”
“No,” Dani said. “Clara wouldn’t eat the candy, she just held onto it with a distant look until she fell into a fitful sleep. I’m worried about her, Kyle. She’s carrying the weight of Gretna’s death on her shoulders.”
I took a deep breath and looked away. “I’ll talk to her. She should know it’s my fault Gretna’s dead. Not hers.”
That seemed to take Dani by surprise. “Oh, Kyle,” she said. “Gretna was a well-seasoned guard. That bloodhound took even her by surprise.”
“I didn’t pause to consult any of you, I just charged ahead. We shouldn’t have been anywhere near Kaylee’s enclave or the bloodhounds in it.”
“And then Kaylee might be dead right now,” Dani said. “You wouldn’t blame yourself for that, because we would never have known she even existed, but there’s still a cause and effect relationship. Action and inaction, they both have consequences.” She took my hand and squeezed it. “I don’t blame you. Gretna wouldn’t either.”
“I’m not so sure,” I said. “But thank you.”
“Here,” Dani said. “Take these. I have a few others for Clara, but you’ll need your rest. You look exhausted.”
Dani dropped the small mint-flavored sleep aids into my palm. Of the several that sat there, one glowed.
“What’s with this one?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s the one Clara clutched all night long,” Dani said. “I think her magic activated while she was sleeping, but I’m not even sure that’s possible. Maybe Benoch will understand how that works.”
I nodded. “Guilt isn’t the only thing that kept me up last night though.” I skipped over the part about Kaylee. I didn’t regret how quickly we hooked up, but I suddenly felt… embarrassed. No sense in hurting Dani’s feelings or making her feel like I chose Kaylee over her.
“Oh?” Dani asked.
“There was a woman with cat-like features. A demon hunter. She got into a fight with some drunks and I helped her out. She called me a demon and ran off.”
Dani’s warm demeanor didn’t falter for a second. “I had my own misgivings about you when we first met, but I trust you, Kyle. Five-fingered or not, you’re one of the good guys.”
“Let’s hope so,” I said.
Dani left the kitchen first, with me close behind. Her dark hair was freshly brushed and fluffy, bouncing with each light step she took down the steps. Clara and Kaylee waited at the front door under the watchful eye of an exhausted draykin innkeeper.
Outside, our horses were still tied up where we left them. We found a quaint café nearby with a large window so we could watch our animals while we ate.
I poked at my breakfast in silence while the girls chatted amiably over tea and biscuits, followed by a hot, savory soup made from eggs and vegetables I didn’t recognize. I barely registered the flavor of any of it. I was too fixated on Oscar and what our next move would be.
Oscar, I thought. Status update, buddy?
Sync Progress: 5%
How does sync progress work? The intervals between updates seem sporadic.
Point of Information: OSCAR-Host synchronization transpires at the rate of biologic rhythmic wave crests and peaks when host systems run at biologic capacity
You answered me! Okay, now what can you do to help us find Benoch? Are there other options you can unlock, like an address registry or a helpful little pointer arrow to let us know if we’re on the right track?
Nothing.
You clearly have your own agenda here, Oscar. Help me help you.
Still nothing.
“Fuck,” I said. It slipped out, unintended, just as a spoonful of egg soup approached my mouth. A stem of something green flopped off the spoon and splashed back into the bowl.
“What’s the matter?” Dani asked.
“I wish I knew which way we should be going,” I said. “I think our demon lord lives up in the mountains. It matches the queen’s story about the last human hero burying A’zarkin beneath a glacier.” And Lissa’s story about tracking her prey there. “We can’t skip the very important ‘meet the wise man for info and weapons’ stage before we hit the final boss though. We’re not BoTW speedr
unners chasing after Calamity Ganon.”
“We’re losing him,” Dani said. She smiled at me while she said it, but she was right.
“My bad,” I said. “The point is, our big baddie is up north. We should go that way, see if we learn anything useful about A’zarkin along the way, and keep our eyes peeled for signs of Benoch.”
“Okay,” Kaylee said. “Let’s do it!”
“I’ve got Oscar glued to my fist,” I said. “Dani has a blood debt to honor, and Clara has her own point to prove. You’re free to go though, Kaylee. There’s nothing forcing you to tag along.”
“I know,” she said. “I’d like to come. I might be the first simki to see the mountains, or to marry outside my enclave! Plus I still owe you a rematch.”
“A rematch?” Dani asked.
“Kyle and I made up a game last night,” Kaylee said, “to see who can have the most orgasms in one night.”
I nearly spit out my mouthful of soup when Kaylee said that. She was so natural about it. Eager, even.
“I see,” Dani said, turning toward me. Her smile seemed strained now. “That’s why you wanted to spend the night with Kaylee. I’m so slow sometimes, I really thought it was because you wanted to look after her.”
“I don’t need looking after,” Kaylee said.
“Dani,” I said. “It wasn’t something I planned.”
“No matter,” she said. “Kyle and Kaylee. It has a nice ring to it.”
Dani pushed away from the table then, her meal unfinished. She dropped a few rounds to pay for our breakfast and turned away before saying, “I’m going to check on the horses and make sure they’re ready to ride. Excuse me.”
I slurped down my food and left with Clara and Kaylee a few minutes later. Dani was already setting up the saddlebags and making sure the horses had their morning meal.