“I know exactly who you are, Vulture,” he spat, removing his hood.
Krishani’s eyes widened as he stared into the raging black eyes of the Obsidian Flame. His skin was ghostly white, his head shiny and bald, tiny darker shaded spots skittered across his scalp. Krishani raised his head, tasting blood in his mouth. “What do you want?”
Klavotesi moved to his feet in a flash, and Krishani propped himself up on his elbows, crunching his knees to his chest. He was still fighting off symptoms of cancer plaguing the body.
“You’re hiding something.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Krishani said, getting to his feet. He stumbled a bit and cleared his eyes. He hoped all the disorientation would keep Klavotesi from finding out about Kaliel. He glanced at the Flame. Klavotesi wore a long leather jacket with wide hood, black slacks, muscle shirt, and heavy steel toe boots.
“How do you explain the shield?”
Krishani shrugged. “I can’t.”
The Flame’s fire drained from his eyes leaving his irises bright red, framed by thick white lashes. Krishani tried not to seem repulsed as Klavotesi raised a thin white eyebrow.
“Someone is hiding something.”
“It’s not me.” Krishani shoved his hands into the pockets and swayed on his heels, feeling lightheaded. Home, pills, food, sleep. His mind ran the words over and over like a miniature carousel in his head. He couldn’t lie, and he couldn’t let Klavotesi read his thoughts. He couldn’t let him find out about her. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, saliva mixed with a taint of blood. He didn’t raise the shield, but he knew who did.
Klavotesi narrowed his gaze. “That body is decomposing.”
Krishani glowered. “I need it.”
“You’re going to die,” Klavotesi said, and there was no remorse in him, nothing but sheer fact in his words. Krishani didn’t like memories surging his mind. Klavotesi tracked down the person who took the Flames and trained Kaliel. He had every right to stand against her, and no right to criticize Krishani about what he did to lessen the effects of what she did to him.
“It’s the only way to stop the hunger.”
“Isn’t it more painful that way?” Klavotesi pulled on the edge of the dagger and it shifted into a large scythe. A flat gray cloud formed above them, its small mass swirling.
Krishani blanched, not wanting to admit he was right. From experience the Obsidian Flame was always right. “Have you seen Cossisea?”
Klavotesi paused; hand on his scythe, black tingeing the outskirts of his red eyes. He looked angry, but for once it wasn’t directed at Krishani. “I don’t see her Vulture, I feel her. We are fused, her pain is my pain.”
Krishani didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what it was like, being Darkesh’s champions, his pawns. He never imagined it being the worst kind of torture because what he experienced consumed him.
“Darkesh sends his regards,” Klavotesi said, using the scythe to rip a hole in the fabric of time and space. The cloud above disintegrated as the vortex grew and Klavotesi stepped through.
Krishani coughed and fell to one knee, blood on his knuckles. He tried to hold himself together in Klavotesi’s presence but all the strength he had earlier that day was sucked dry by Vultures and the Flame, and he couldn’t get home on his own. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, dialing Elwen.
“Come get me, I’m at the harbor.” He snapped the phone shut and sunk into the gravel.
***
Chapter 26
Good Guys
Pux sat shoulder to shoulder beside Kaliel on her bed, his back against the wall, laptop straddled between her thigh and his. She was really taking his lack of pop culture knowledge to heart, forcing him to watch everything he’d missed since the invention of color television. Pux couldn’t even remember what he was doing in Evennses when Terra became Earth and technology exploded. Since Shimma made him human, he learned a lot about computers, phones, televisions, and even found if he was careful he could use them without ruining them. Originally his iPhone didn’t have anything but calling and text features on it, but Kaliel added a whole bunch of stuff he wasn’t sure he’d ever need. Still, some of the games were fun once he got the hang of them.
It was the weekend, and Kaliel was free of school, work, and Michael. She didn’t want to talk about where Michael was, but it had something to do with the hospital, cancer, and radiation, the latter of which Pux didn’t want to understand. It sounded like some archaic form of torture, and was supposed to take all day, tiring him out and making him sleep for a long time. Kaliel looked wasted when she talked about it, like dragging the words out of her mouth took all the strength in her.
And that’s why Pux was there.
She didn’t have it in her to watch Krishani deteriorate like this, and Pux was always willing to lend her his strength for the tough times. This didn’t compare to the way it was before, when death was a blade stroke away. Before all this technology, when someone was dying, they were dead. Seasons didn’t change, and people didn’t carry on like nothing was wrong. Pux turned his attention to the screen, watching a kid with funny round glasses fly around. He completely missed some of the idioms and was lagging behind on the plot. Kaliel was horribly engrossed in it, lips pursed, eyebrows tight in concentration.
“What’s this one about again?” Pux asked, bumping his shoulder against hers.
She brightened. “He’s the only one who lived when the villain came for him. And now he’s the chosen one who can defeat the bad guys.” She didn’t take her eyes off the screen.
Pux couldn’t believe she could say things like that and not have a clue about who she used to be. “He’s probably going to lose.”
Kaliel laughed. “He’s not going to face him right now, he’s not strong enough.”
Pux opened his mouth to say something, nerves coiling his gut when everyone began cheering for the boy with the glasses, probably because of the flying. He was good at flying. The end credits rolled a few minutes later, the villain didn’t show up. Kaliel pressed her fingers into the keyboard and shifted, popping out the DVD. She moved the laptop and went to the stack on the dresser.
“What do you want to watch next?”
Pux shrugged. “You pick.”
Kaliel held one up, the picture of a boy with water in his hand on the front. “What do you think?”
“What’s it about?”
“Son of Poseidon, defeating … something. I can’t remember.”
“Does he defeat all the bad guys too?”
Kaliel laughed. “Yeah, because he has some dormant mystical power that awakens at the last second.”
Pux frowned. “That’s not even realistic.”
Kaliel flopped onto the bed and popped it in. She waited for it to load and dragged the bar across, fast forwarding the movie until it was near the end. Pux watched as the boy—who was about to be killed—surged with mystical power and sent a wall of water towards the villain. Kaliel laughed. “See? When he needed it most, his power awakened and he saved the day.”
Pux shifted uncomfortably. “That would never happen.” He blinked, stifling the urge to break down and tell her everything, but he didn’t know how to tell her that she was wrong. When it came to the Lands Across the Stars, the bad guys won, and she lost everything. And maybe that made her a bad person but he still saw her as the little girl he grew up with in Evennses thousands of years ago. A brave girl that swam with merfolk, talked to trees and wasn’t taken by Crestaos when he came for her.
It was painful for Pux to remember so much of the past and not be able to talk about it with her. He wanted to ask if she missed the Fire Festivals, and he wanted to dance with her to Celtic folk music. He wanted to take her home to the shores of Avristar, but if he did, she’d never be allowed to come back. He knew she’d never forgive him, not with Krishani being segregated to the life cycle of a Vulture and pawn to Darkesh. He never understood Krishani’s pain, but he was beginning to get it. It ached, being around Kaliel, knowing what she was. In other ways it was like their days in Evennses. The other day she asked if he wanted to go with her on a canoe trip when the lake didn’t have patches of broken icebergs on it.
He missed Avristar, but was in too deep. She needed him here and he wasn’t going to desert her. She looked at him inquisitively and he realized she had said something he hadn’t heard. “Sorry?”
“It’s completely plausible,” she said, all sarcasm. She winked. “What do you want to watch?” She prodded him to get up and move to the movie stacks. He rifled through them, looking for something that wouldn’t have any connotations or hidden meanings to her past and picked one that looked like it was about technology. He flung it at her while she snapped up the other case and added it to the top of the pile.
She smirked. “Ahh, Neo.”
“Neo?”
She giggled and pointed at the guy on the cover. “He’s the chosen one, and he’s going to release everyone from the robots that have enslaved the planet. Everyone is hooked up to machines, and they live in this virtual reality. Everything seems real, and people accept it as real, but it’s not real.”
Pux let out an exasperated sigh and shook his head. He picked the wrong one. “Please don’t tell me this guy won.”
Kaliel frowned. “I’m not sure. I never saw the third one.”
“Does he have special powers too?”
She scrunched up her nose. “Sort of … it’s like the force.”
Pux knew this one. She made him watch it three times already. “That’s from Star Wars right?”
“You learn quick young padawan,” she said, sliding the DVD in.
Pux bumped her shoulder. “I guess if I could control the outcome I’d make the good guys win too.”
“The good guys always win.”
Pux grimaced. “In the movies they do.”
The movie started and Kaliel pressed her back against the wall, moving the laptop back to its place on both their thighs. Pux didn’t say anything until the movie came to a close and Kaliel’s human mom reminded Pux it was time to head home. He checked the time, nearing five. He had another hour before he had to officially be out of city limits and avoid getting home in the middle of the night. The weird thing about being human was that he got tired around midnight, and had to sleep until at least nine to function. Shimma helped by introducing him to a thing called coffee, but he hated the taste and only drank it when he absolutely had to. He didn’t mind water, but it tasted like sewage, nothing like the pure sparkling water on Avristar.
Kaliel seemed sad to see him go, checking her phone for a message from Michael before they headed out the back door and into her canoe. She paddled through murky blue water, reaching the harbor minutes later. He shared her fear of water these days and was equally careful on the slippery docks as they made their way to the shore. Once on solid ground he pulled her in for a bear hug and released her.
“Are you going to see Michael?” he asked, his arms still circling her shoulders.
“Yeah, I have to pick him up.”
He wanted to do something like punch her in the shoulder but instead he just shook his head. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” He headed towards the Camaro, clicking the key fob to unlock it.
Kaliel laughed as she caught up, her Sundance parked beside the Camaro. “You mean like going down on him?”
Pux put his hands over his ears. “I don’t want to know what you do!”
She shot him a wicked smile. “I guess I should stop giving him hand jobs.”
Pux sputtered. “I don’t … do any of that.”
She shook her head, pulling open her door. She turned, metal cylinder in hand. “Relax … he sleeps a lot.”
Pux let out a breath, Kaliel wasn’t this spunky when he knew her before but he was getting used to the changes in her. “Okay. I’ll call you when I’m home.”
“Promise?”
“Guaranteed. I’m not going anywhere for a long time.” He rounded the Camaro and got in, loving the sleek smoothness of the ride. He waited as Kaliel pulled out of the parking lot and followed until she hit the Wal-Mart and turned left, while he turned right.
He cranked the music and zoned out to folk tunes for a while. The road passed in a blur, a series of rocks, lakes, and trees. His mind wandered to the conversation with Krishani at Grandma’s. Pux didn’t want Kaliel to remember. Things were normal. Sure, there were movies, books, and cell phones but she glowed. Maybe it was because Krishani still loved her, or because she had a real life in Kenora that didn’t come with parables, duties, and prejudice. He sighed.
She never talked about the otherworldly encounters. She pretended like Pux was a regular boy, and kept everything from that side of her life away from him. Michael on the other hand, was increasingly worried. He kept tabs on Pux and Shimma, nearly freaking out whenever there was even the slightest change. It was weird, Kaliel talked about Michael having cancer but never talked about herself. Michael talked about how close Kaliel was to figuring it out, but never mentioned the cancer. He smiled to himself, shadows engulfing the road, and eventually darkness. He flipped on the brights; really hating the lack of street lights or anything. Canada was so unfeeling compared to Avristar. Pux couldn’t remember the last time he’d encountered a bear on Avristar. Deer, wolves, squirrels, rabbits, foxes, quail, swans, and ducks were all common, but raccoons, bears, moose, beavers, coyotes, and skunks were foreign. Pux threw up the first time he saw road kill. He had almost run the Camaro off the road, but caught himself and rolled along on the shoulder until he composed himself.
He liked highway driving after the sun went down. It was too dark to see anything beyond the headlights and white and yellow lines on the road. He expected stars to appear soon, and if it was anything like February, the northern lights would appear, green and blue flames dancing across the sky.
That night the sky was a cloudy black. A flash lit up the sky, and Pux looked up, sheet lightning playing in the clouds. A pit formed in his stomach as he hit the brake, stopping cruise control. He watched the sky as white little bursts flared within milliseconds of each other. He was so fixated on the sky he didn’t see it coming. White flashes flickered, and a giant red fork touched down, blowing a hole in the road ahead of him. The headlights outlined silhouettes of two people, but all Pux saw were red stilettos and black combat boots. He swerved, half to avoid the hole, half to avoid them. He slammed on the brakes as the Camaro screeched along the metal barrier and skidded to the edge, running out of metal and careening off the road into uncharted territory. Pux held his hands up to his face as the car slammed into water.
He panicked as the car sunk, icy water flooding the interior. He banged the windows with his fist, and scrabbled to release his seatbelt with shaky fingers. It unlocked and he moved it around him, floating a little out of his seat. He tried the automatic windows but they wouldn’t go down, water reaching his waist.
He didn’t have time to think.
They were there.
They found her.
They found him.
He didn’t know how to do this, how to escape.
He wiped tears out of his eyes and kicked at the window, doing absolutely nothing to free himself. He was effectively trapped, and unless he got out there was no way he would survive. Feorns had longevity, not immortality. If he died, he wouldn’t come back. He thought desperately about Kaliel and how much she needed him. He promised he’d call when he got home. He promised he’d be there.
He didn’t break his promises.
He took a breath of the last bits of air as the car thunked against the bottom of the lake. Terrified, he plunged into icy water, determined to hold his breath. He didn’t want it to be like this. Part of him wanted all the comfort and boredom of his home in Evennses. Another part of him wanted his last time with Kaliel to mean something more. He let out a couple of bubbles, his human lungs bursting for air.
He glanced at his human fist and realization rushed into him. It didn’t work well when he was human. Earth didn’t have magic like Avristar; it didn’t hide in the bounds of their streams, valleys, and rainforests. It didn’t come naturally. He let out more bubbles, knowing his next step was gulping a lot of lake water and drowning. He focused on getting himself far enough so he’d be on the side of the road, his own morbid version of road kill. He calmed the screaming panic in the back of his mind and squeezed his fist, shuddering as he transported.
He fetched up against the gravel shoulder, his hands clawing at clumps of gravel. He was soaking wet, sputtering mouthfuls of slippery lake water but he was alive. He glanced at the concrete, seeing nothing but debris and a wide hole. His stomach lurched as two sets of boots pulled him to his feet, bringing him face to face with the Obsidian and Ruby Flames. Cossisea wielded a flaming red sword, which provided the only light in the pitch-blackness surrounding them.
“You belong on Avristar, feorn,” Klavotesi said, his eyes a radiant black.
Pux glanced at the sky, checking for bursts of lightning but they had vanished. The highway was deserted, and they were standing on the edge of the pavement, near the thin shoulder. Pux tried to seem unruffled and took a step back, shaking out his wet clothing. “I wanted my humanity.”
He knew all too well he couldn’t lie to the Obsidian Flame.
Klavotesi tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “You came because of a girl.”
Pux tried not to pee himself, but the urge was there. Aches and pains ran the lengths of his arms and legs and he very much wanted to pass out, giving way to the blazing pain across his temples. He crunched his hands under his armpits, shuddering at the wind. It seemed colder than before. He swayed on the balls of his feet, trying to think of something to say to keep them away from her.