The Winter Beast and other tales Read online

A FAMILY TRADITION

  Michael watched from the cold concrete bench at the bus stop. The street ran thick with cars, headlight beams crossing in the mist and fumes, and he watched as her shadow passed behind the kitchen window. She was alone. That meant he could kill her tonight.

  Idiot. Why are you in such a hurry this time?

  But he knew why — this one was too close to home, too close to his son. Michael had been getting ready to go, just starting to shoot up, when Gabe had walked in on him.

  "Grandpa told me that that wasn't insulin. Grandpa said that it was a medicine that great-grandpa William invented so that you wouldn't get poisoned when sick people scratched you. And he said that if you took it too many times it was bad."

  "This is insulin," Michael had lied. "You know I'm diabetic. And you were only four when your grandpa went away. He never said anything like that."

  "Yes he did. I remember."

  Gabe was suspicious, and too close to the truth since he pried open the lock box under Michael's bed and found Dad's scrapbook. Michael should have thrown that stuff away long ago. The kid was all too sneaky for a twelve-year-old.

  And now Michael had found one of them living in his own town, just a few miles away. Gabe had been with him when he spotted her coming out of a laundromat and saw the way his father had jumped. The sooner he was done with this one, the better.

  Michael took out the surgical gloves and worked his hands into them. He had sworn off break-ins years ago, even in ghettos like this one where screams in the night were ignored and even the police didn't come around to check-out gunshots.

  He craved the luxury of a nice clean gunshot. Ten years of bludgeoning women to death were beginning to wear on him. Oh, he had a 9mm Beretta under his jacket, but he didn't need a gun to kill one of them. It was there in case he got caught.

  Still, if he didn’t get caught, and could keep getting one each month, it would be over in his lifetime. His son could simply live, and Gabe wouldn't have to know about them, wouldn't have commando training instead of a childhood, wouldn't have to do this. He remembered how he felt when Dad had been sent to prison, all of it suddenly on his own shoulders. He had prayed every day that somehow there wouldn't be any more of them, that he would not have to kill anymore. Now he silently said that prayer again.

  Rolling his head and pretending to rub the back of his neck, so it wouldn't look like he was looking around, he stood and crossed the street, the rush-hour traffic beginning to thin. The apartment buildings, textured with dirty yellow stucco, looked like blocks of cheese on a black slab. The wrought-iron gate had once been automated with a card-key lock, but it was broken now. He unzipped his jacket to the cool moist night but found little relief. He always got hot when he was about to do it.

  As he neared her door, Michael slipped the lock-picks out of his pocket, and for a moment he was eleven again and his father was saying, "Do it casual, son. Act like they're just a set of door keys." Dad had liked break-ins. That was how he had been caught.

  Michael usually followed the target for a week, got to know her daily routine, and then surprised her as she was getting into her own car. But he had watched this one for a couple of days and she had never left her apartment. When the lady at the Sunshine Laundromat told him where this one lived, she had been so sure, so ominous, like she knew all about them — a woman named Mary who dressed covered-up all the time, nothing but a little bit of her face showing, even in the summer heat.

  He stopped at her door. Good. She had a Brink's dead-bolt and knob-lock set — made in China, not a problem. He listened. A television blared next door, and water ran hard in a sink here. That should cover the noise of his entry. Dad had always said to do break-in's early in the evening while everyone was busy and lots of strangers were coming and going.

  Inside the deep pockets of his jacket, his midget bolt-cutters felt cold and heavy. Through clenched teeth, the tool seemed to whisper a prayer for the dead. Chain or no chain, Michael would use it tonight.

  It took him ten seconds to open the two locks — too slow — he was out of practice. Now lock-picks away, bolt-cutters out, crack the door. No chain. Slide in quick and smooth. Cluttered front room. Not in the kitchen. A sound from the back room. Go that way, swift and silent. The familiar feeling of his nerves surging and his gut loosening.

  She was undressing, and started to turn just as he reached her. Grabbing a handful of her thick auburn hair, he bent her head back and raised the bolt-cutters, holding them like a hammer.

  Suddenly, nothing was right.

  She was scared. She made a tiny sound as she strained for breath, and it was nothing but terror. And she stood still, almost paralyzed.

  They never showed any fear.

  And there were pictures on the wall, and a stupid little ladybug clock. They never had things like that. They never decorated at all, except for house plants. Their homes were always thick with ivy and ferns.

  "If you call out, I'll break your skull," he said, dragging her to the tall brass lamp in the corner of the bedroom. Still holding her by the hair, he tore off the lamp shade and forced her face close to the naked bulb. He twisted her head side to side, his own face close, looking for the nubs where they shaved the little antennae around their mouths and eyes. He pushed her head forward and looked for the big sense-hairs at the back of the neck.

  He couldn't find them.

  The evidence was falling hard on him now — a shelf with knickknacks, a fox eating grapes — and his certainty caved-in. The pictures on the wall were old movie posters, The African Queen, Apocalypse Now. A glance at the bed showed him something worse. Nestled in a pile of fluffy pillows lay an old shaggy teddy-bear. Michael felt sick.

  I almost murdered her.

  She forced herself to speak, struggling to keep her voice steady. "M-money in my purse. On the bed. Please don't hurt me."

  My God. She’s just a regular person. And she thinks I’m here to rob or rape or kill her. Christ Almighty, how did I let this happen?

  "Wait a minute," he said, more to himself than her, "what's your name?"

  "Mary," she squeaked.

  He tightened his grip on her hair, and she winced. "Your last name," he demanded.

  "Allingham. Mary Allingham."

  "Not Swanson? Did you sail from Buenos Aires aboard the Isabella in 1956?"

  "I'm only twenty-two," she said, holding back tears of fright.

  He looked at her and saw a young woman with dark, lined eyes and thick lips, with a hint of baby fat in her neck. She was barely grown up. They aged very slowly, but no, not so slow as this.

  He put her on the bed, let go of her hair, and sat opposite on a stool in front of the vanity, still ready with the bolt-cutters.

  "I thought you were someone else," he said. "This heavily made-up woman at the laundromat said that you were . . . that you were— "

  "An alien?"

  "Something like that."

  The young woman blinked once in a deliberate way. "I'm familiar with the lady. She has spells of lunacy, you know. She tells people that she gets abducted by a UFO every Saturday night. They force her to cook pancakes for the crew on Sunday morning."

  She tried a brief thin smile, but her eyes searched and searched for a way out of this. Michael could see her mind working furiously, could almost read her thoughts. She thought he was a psycho. If she kept him talking, though, he might not do her any harm.

  Michael shook his head. He needed to go. Go and leave this poor girl to herself.

  "Do you have a car?" he asked. He would drive it the five blocks to where he had left his own, switch and be gone.

  Her eyes widened, the terror returning. "Y-yes."

  Jeez, she thinks I’m going to take her for a ride to the country so I can do her and dump the body. Which was, in fact, what he had done with most of them.

  "Give me the keys."

  She bent over her purse. And came
up with a .32 automatic clutched in her delicate hand, a little click as the safety came off.

  "Now," she said, scooting away from him, still afraid. "Put those clippers on the floor or I swear that I will shoot."

  His dad had made Michael start taking tae kwon do when he was eight, daito jujitsu and escrima when he was thirteen. He was still very fast, but not faster than a bullet. He laid the bolt-cutters down.

  She stood up and reached for her phone.

  "Look," said Michael, "I know I broke-in and . . . I'm sorry. I thought you were this girl who deals smack. I have a son who's only twelve— "

  "Quiet," she ordered, leveling the pistol at his head.

  The 911 call was brief. Name. Address. Intruder.

  After she put the phone down she looked at him sidelong, a hint of amusement at the corner of her mouth. "Alright. You can give me your explanation now. If it's good, I might even let you go. But if you lie I will shoot you and then tell the constables that you attacked me. And I know lies when I hear them. Believe me, I will know.”

  Michael believed her. Something about her told him that she would really know.

  Did that mean she would know the truth if he spoke it?

  It didn't matter. He just had to distract her enough so that her gun hand wavered and he could make a move. So he decided to tell her.

  "They're not aliens. They are of this Earth — that's one thing I'm sure of. They have too much sympathy with human ways and how we think to be from another planet. We don't even know if they are an old or a recent species, synthetic, natural, or preternatural. But one thing they are not, is simply people with a disease. There's a mind within them that is not at all human.

  "My grandfather William discovered them while returning from South America on a large passenger ship. One night, this woman who appeared pregnant started having convulsions in the middle of the dining room. Before anyone could do anything, her belly split open with a rush of noxious gas, followed by an eruption of fine black dust — this is how they reproduce — the dust is millions of tiny creatures, encysted in a spore-like form, and only one of them needs to get into you to begin the whole process of parasitic mutation. Anyway, a few hours later everyone on the ship became paralyzed with fever and seemed to be dying, except for my grandfather, who felt fine. He was young and brilliant, and he had had an emergency tooth-extraction that afternoon, the ship's dentist using an anesthetic known as ketamine. He made the half-right guess that the ketamine somehow killed the bug that had made everyone sick, so he gave a small dose to the ship's doctor. It didn't revive him; it sent him into shock and he died. Grandfather William could still see black dust floating in the companionways, so he took all the anesthetic to his stateroom and sealed himself in. Everyone was up and around by morning, but they did not look well, and later that day they brought the doctor's body up on deck and dissected it with his own surgical instruments, all of them watching with intense curiosity. My grandfather began injecting himself with ketamine every day.

  "In the end they made it to Miami and William tried to tell someone at customs and quarantine, still wanting to believe that this was some sort of plague, even though he had seen the little feeler-hairs growing around their mouths and eyes. The captain had another story of course, and my grandfather barely avoided arrest for stealing from the ship's pharmacy. In time, he went to a teacher that he respected, a friend of the family, and told him everything. The teacher advised that he check into a hospital for the mentally ill.

  "Like I said, William was a genius. He finished his doctoral work in chemistry that year, and another Ph.D. in biology two years later. During that time he invented a revolutionary chemical process, and sold the patent for about half a million dollars. And he obtained a copy of the ship's passenger manifest.

  "He hired detectives and searched out many of the passengers. Most of the men were already dead, but the women hadn't aged a day. My grandfather tried to see a few of them, but they refused, and then all of them began dropping out of sight. By this time, he had got married and was doing independent research in his own lab. He found a bounty hunter who was willing to track down one of them and take a blood and tissue sample. Unfortunately, William didn't think it necessary to give the detective any ketamine, didn't know that a light scratch from the subject would infest the poor man.

  "But my grandfather got his samples and learned some alarming things over the next several years. He became determined to do further research. In the early 60's, however, ketamine was discontinued because some patients had reported severe hallucinations. Grandfather William used his research to compound a new version of ketamine that was less debilitating yet kept the creatures anesthetized until they reverted to their dormant stage."

  Her sharp stare had not softened. If anything, her eyes had grown harder, but she was listening with such grave intensity that it seemed she knew it all for truth. Yet the gun still pointed directly at him.

  "So," he said, "you haven't fired. Does that mean you believe me?"

  She blinked again, and he noticed that her eyelashes were long and thick. "Go ahead with your story," she said. "I shall tell you when you're done."

  The ladybug clock ticked loudly. The police were usually slow to respond in this neighborhood, but he needed to get out of this in the next minute or two. Ready to spring the instant she looked away, Michael continued.

  "My grandfather then took a big risk. He kidnapped one and brought her to his lab for an in-depth study. He was able to accelerate her reproductive system, and found that they didn't cycle for nearly eighty-eight years. He also realized that if one of them gave birth in a large city it would infect a couple of million people.

  "William made a mistake, though. He told his wife the truth. Then, before he could document the evidence, she discovered the one held prisoner in the lab — to my grandmother she seemed to be an innocent woman who had been kidnapped and tortured by a psychotic man. Grandmother had her own husband arrested and never saw him again. Grandfather's only defense was to tell the truth, and it might have worked, except that the victim and the documentation quickly disappeared.

  "Even so, he was committed to a nut house. Grandmother signed the papers.

  "My dad had just turned seventeen. Grandfather William had had the foresight to set up a nice trust fund for Dad, one that his mother couldn't get to. When Dad turned eighteen, she had to let him see his father. Together they decided that the only way to prevent a world-wide infestation was to kill them all now. Dad memorized the passenger list and spent his adult life finding and exterminating them. He got caught down in Houston in '01, so now I do it."

  She nodded almost imperceptibly. "Any brothers or sisters to help you with this?"

  "No, only me."

  "What about your mother?"

  Michael found that he was the one who looked away.

  "She was just some burned-out hippie chick that Dad was able to get pregnant. Then with Grandfather's money he easily got custody of me and rid of her."

  "What about your wife."

  "I don't have one."

  "You have a twelve-year-old son."

  "I did the same thing as Dad. He only wanted me as a backup plan in case he got caught or had a bad accident, and he wanted me to have the same. I let him push me into it. But I love my son and I swear that he'll never know."

  He looked up at her. She hadn't moved.

  "Do you think I'm telling the truth?"

  She spoke more calmly this time, with pity for he whose sins could not be undone.

  "I think that you believe you are. But you don't see the big picture. You're looking at this through your granddad's psychosis — reinforced by your own father's belief in it. Don't you see? You have all been victims of that drug, keta-whatever-it-was. You said that they banned it because it caused hallucinations. The dentist used it on your granddad before anything happened on the ship. Nothing happened, except that he stole mor
e of the drug and used it again and again until he created this whole imaginary experience and obsessively pursued it for the rest of his life. He taught it to his son, then gave him the drug that made it so, only now the drug was refined and improved, probably to heighten the hallucinatory effect.

  "Your grandmother was right. She must have seen that it all came from a psychopathic distrust of women. Those psychiatrists knew what they were doing. If they put your granddad in an asylum, have no doubt that he was insane."

  "He was not!" Michael nearly shouted. "He was brilliant, a genius."

  "And some geniuses are mad. Don't you know how easy it is for your parents to put their beliefs and fears into you without even trying? What do think happens when they set out to do it? A child is almost defenseless against that kind of thing."

  "But I've seen them myself, up close," Michael said. "I've seen the feeler antennae on their faces and the sporidial nodes under their fingernails. Hell, I've killed dozens of them — they don't die like human beings."

  "It is so obvious," she said, blinking back her disgust. "Your father said that a scratch from one of them would infect you. So you take this drug before you go in for the kill. Is it any wonder that you see them as you were brain-washed to see them? You are on this drug right now, I would bet, and I'm truly surprised that you do not see me as one of these beings. You likely did not take enough tonight, or it is only by some quirk of your brain chemistry that I am alive."

  Yes. He remembered that he had almost killed her.

  "The names," he said feebly. "The names matched the passenger list."

  "Your insane grandfather just made them up or got them out of a telephone book."

  The illogic of his own reality suddenly struck him. Which version made more sense?

  "If you are ever going to be a whole person," she said softly, looking deeply into him with her black eyes, "you must admit to yourself that you have murdered the innocent." The corner of her mouth twitched, a single fine strand of blonde hair standing out. "You must have fancied yourself as some kind of holy avenger, and now you finally know that you are really a serial killer. More the pity."

  It was true and he suddenly knew it. The power of her words seized him, forcing him to see what his inner self had already known. The way he was always praying that it was not so, the way he protected Gabe from ever knowing about them, it was because part of him knew. God help him, he had not only wasted his life, he had done horrible evil.

  Through the bedroom doorway, red and blue lights strobed harshly against the curtains of the front room. He heard the scratchy squawk of a police radio.

  The woman nodded toward the front door. "It is a shame, but no one will understand the truth. I feel sorry for you."

  She glanced at the pistol. "Perhaps it would be a kindness if I left this with you." She tossed it onto the bed. "I'll speak to the police for a moment, to give you time."

  Her hair shimmered blackly as she walked away. Hadn't it been reddish a moment before? Then he noticed that the movie posters had changed. Now they were photographs of a deep, lush jungle, and the ladybug clock had turned into a cockroach.

  He was starting to hallucinate again, and the world began to feel more familiar. The familiar lie that had been his sacred truth, that he had sacrificed his childhood for, thinking it to be a noble quest.

  No. No one would understand.

  He went to the bed and picked up the gun. The chrome plating made it an ugly thing. Michael wasn't going to suffer Dad's fate — sit in a prison cell for years, waiting for them to strap you to a table.

  He raised the pistol. The best way not to miss was to put it in your mouth, but he just couldn't do it that way. He pressed the muzzle to his temple.

  Something rapped hard against the mirror on the back wall. Michael looked into it, but only saw himself, speaking in the high-pitched voice of a child.

  The mirror exploded, and behind it, at a shattered window with a brick in his hand, stood his son. Gabe vaulted the window sill and ripped the gun from Michael's grasp. It was his own Beretta. The chrome .32 had never existed.

  "Dad," he screamed, "what's wrong with you? What did she do to you? Dad, please, I'm scared."

  Michael looked around. There were no pictures — the walls crawled with ivy, and dozens of tropicals hung from the ceiling.

  She came back into the room, the sense-hairs on her arms fully erect and the antennae at her mouth and eyes twitching wildly. She reached for Gabe with sharp fingernails.

  Gabe fired two rapid shots and she went down, her wounds leaking the black gel, her pores excreting the foul-smelling foam that Michael had seen so many times. The deafening report left a ringing silence.

  Michael tried to focus. "Son, what are you . . . how did you get here?"

  Gabe answered without looking away from the body. "Traffic slowed you down so much, I could follow you on my bike. I've done it before."

  "But the cops out in the parking lot . . . "

  Gabe looked at him. "There's nobody out there. I was careful to check."

  A nice clean gunshot. Twelve. The kid is only twelve.

  Gabe leaned over the body to get a look at her face.

  "Don't touch her, son. You haven't been inoculated against it. Now wipe your prints off the gun and leave it — it can't be traced to anyone. We need to get out of here in case someone really does call the police."

  Gabe moved to do it. "Grandpa really said those things I remember, didn't he."

  Michael nodded. Dad had been right about the neo-ketamine. If you took too much in a short amount of time, it did cause hallucinations. And once you did it, the damage was done; there was no reversing it. He could never take it again.

  Later, as Michael turned down the trim residential lane where they lived, all the porch lights glowing warmly, Gabe said to him, "Hey Dad, I saw from my hiding place the way you opened those locks in no-time, just like you had the keys. It was so great. Can you teach me how to do that?"

  Michael made sure to speak evenly. He couldn't let his boy hear the deep, hopeless grief.

  "Yes, son. I can teach you that."

  THE EXALTED

  Viktir stood on the deck of the coaster and mopped his brow uselessly with a dripping handkerchief, the air heavy and moist, the heat relentless even in the soft light of sunset. They rounded a small island and the city came into view.

  Long shadows crossed the face of Gorat Dule, the city of his birth, the land of his mother's bloodline. Viktir wanted this voyage to be a rebirth, this city a place where he would not be the strange one, shunned because of his foreign looks. He had not been old enough to remember when his sea-captain father had taken them halfway round the world to his own home in the West.

  The Khaziri boatman steered for the banks where a sluggish green river met the ocean, tenements and slums crowding the low ground, lorded over by ornate temples and palaces, dark and opulent, each rising greater than the last on the terraced hills above the river. Beyond the city lay nothing but a vast jungle. The Khaziri put him ashore without even lowering the sail then had his boys shove-off at once, their heads down, not looking at the demonic faces that stared at them from atop huge statues.

  The fey scent of poisonous flowers clung to the banks of the river, but the streets ran with the odor of rancid humanity, a breath of exotic spice at times winning through. Even in the falling twilight an unending flow of people jostled elbow to elbow in the ancient narrow streets. The alleys were impassable, each one choked with desperate folk living under makeshift awnings. Viktir pushed along, looking at faces, calm at first, then more and more urgent as the surprised expressions gazing back at him confirmed his fear, the way they stepped aside and would not let him close. He stopped and laughed aloud, a short, bitter bark of derision.

  He was the outsider here as well. He didn't look like them. Viktir could see it clearly around their eyes — they were of another people. He had cut a
ll his ties and spent all his savings because of an idiotic dream of being among his own kind. Mostly because Father had always told him that he looked like his mother.

  He turned in sudden anger and ran headlong into a broad-shouldered man, a peasant wearing nothing but a loincloth and a dirty headwrap. The peasant spat at him out of reflex, then he noticed Viktir's clothing — no doubt he had never seen Western dress — and when their eyes locked his mouth spasmed in terror and he fell to his knees.

  "Please," he stammered, "please forgive me, Exalted One."

  Puzzled, Viktir could only look at him.

  The street around them cleared at once, a burly man in red robes pushing through the crowd, drawing a thick quirt from his belt. A handful of men dressed for medieval combat, bearing swords and shields, followed him closely. Without a word the man in red raised the quirt and threw himself into a vicious stroke, catching the kneeling man from behind. The peasant cried out, falling forward onto all fours, the stripe across his back raw and welling with blood. Grunting with the effort, the robed man lashed him again, and again.

  Viktir spoke without thinking. "Stop hitting that man!"

  The red robed man instantly stood at attention. "Yes, my Lord. What punishment do you decree for him?"

  Viktir felt as if he were in a play — one of those comedies of mistaken identity that were so popular in the West — but this one played as in a bad dream.

  He couldn't help but say, "What was his crime?"

  "Why, why," said the enforcer (Viktir now titled him) flustered, incredulous, "the Exalted One saw himself the high contempt, did he not? This swine tried to spit upon your Exalted self, my Lord. He should be sent to the Palace of Torments."

  "He didn't know," Viktir said. "He's had enough. Send him home."

  The enforcer nudged the peasant with his foot, the signal to begone. The man scrambled away, blood running down his back.

  "I see that the Exalted One is unaccompanied. May I offer any or all of my men as an escort?"

  "No. Go about your, ah, duties."

  Viktir obviously bore a resemblance to an important noble of this land. He thought it best to keep his face in the shadows and hope this sort of thing didn't happen too often.

  He wandered deeper into the city — down a cobbled way where prostitutes with young children sold themselves on the spot for a cup of milk, where many of the older kids sat begging and had no hands, and beyond, past an abandoned shrine where a god with an inhuman eye stared out from under a cloak of vines and creepers. Beneath patinas of mold and stain, most of the houses were faced with colorful tiles, flaunting pointed archways and abutted by crumbling courtyards where fountains once flowed. This had been a prosperous place at one time.

  Becoming lost as darkness fell upon the unlit streets, he found a homeless boy who would take him to the only place in Gorat Dule that resembled a hotel, the resthouse for travelling merchants.

  He woke suddenly in the dark, many hands grasping at him from both sides of the bed, a wide leather strap tightening across his mouth. More straps binding arms and legs held him stiff. A blanket was thrown over him.

  "Let us do it now," whispered one of them urgently. "Then it would not matter if we were caught."

  "No," answered another firmly. "It is our duty to share him with the others."

  They carried him outside, dropped him into something hard. Movement — he was in a cart, then almost immediately the clopping and snorting of horses, coming close.

  "Hold there tradesmen." A woman's voice. "What goods do you transport so late at night and hidden under blankets?"

  Everything seemed to stop, and the silence grew heavy.

  "If the Exalted One must know," muttered one of them, "it is my grandmother's corpse that we carry. We take her to her home village to prepare the body for the pyre."

  "Remove the blanket," commanded the woman.

  "The Exalted must know that it would defile us all."

  "Now," she said sternly. "Let me see."

  At the same time the blanket was thrown back Viktir heard a metallic scrape. A grimacing face beaded with sweat leaned over him and put a curved dagger to his throat.

  "Now my lady and lords, you will lay down your weapons and ride away or I will open him and exalt myself right here in front of you!"

  Viktir could see the woman (dressed in black leather much like a Western cavalier) and the two men behind her, all astride large, powerful horses. They sat absolutely motionless. Quick as thought, before anyone could react, the woman raised a pistol and shot the dagger man in the forehead without pausing to aim. The report shattered the night. Viktir heard the whistle of the ball as the man jerked and fell backward.

  Half a dozen men stood near the cart — more kidnappers than Viktir had thought. One of them drew a machete, but the woman slipped off her horse and closed with him in an instant, reaching for her sabre in a blur and cutting through his neck on the draw. With preternatural grace she changed this into another flowing movement and killed the next man with a curving stroke.

  The others ran. The two men spurred their horses and caught them in the darkness at the end of the street. They came back at a slow trot, wiping their blades.

  She came to the cart and cut his bonds. She had skin of tarnished copper and hair of polished bronze, a curious smile and a bearing that said she had never lost control of a situation. Her eyes, large and green and deep, danced with an unearthly light, glinted crimson at the corners, cut and shaped her face just so, much as Viktir had seen in the looking glass.

  She helped him up, saying, "I am Lady Sindla. You can ride double with me. We would likely be safe if we went back for your baggage, but I will have a servant fetch it later. Best to get off this street."

  Faces began appearing at windows and doors, staring aghast at what lay before their homes. Viktir didn't know that a body could hold so much blood.

  "You killed them all," he said hoarsely.

  "It is my right to do so. I know that you would have liked to torture them, but it simply isn't the time to take prisoners."

  As they rode away she said, "What lunacy came over you that you would stay at the human resthouse? You're lucky we have informants there."

  One of the men said to him, "Probably the same ones who told the human cabal about you. Forgive my rudeness. I am Lord Zorne."

  For their looks, they all could have been his cousins. Viktir introduced himself.

  Sindla asked him, "Are you from the provinces, Lord Viktir? You speak with a strange dialect."

  "I'm not a lord." He told them of his foreign upbringing.

  Zorne looked sidelong at Sindla. "Half-blood?"

  "Not possible. He is clearly Exalted." She turned to Viktir. "And your mother never told you about us?"

  "Only the language. Perhaps she meant to tell me when I was older, but she died when I was still young."

  Sindla shook her head in wonder. "So you know nothing about your own people — what a strange homecoming this must be. But don't worry. You are with us now, Lord Viktir."

  "And what did you do in the West?" asked Lord Durun, the Governor of Gorat Dule.

  Sindla had explained that she served the Governor as a commissioner of public safety and resided in his manse. She had brought Viktir to an exquisite palace of white marble, with delicate, airy towers and a hundred windows screened by fine filigree. He had spent the night in a silken chamber fit for a prince, unable to sleep, for even after midnight the black winds still pulsed hot and moist, and he lay beneath the mosquito net wondering at the strange and violent manner of this land.

  "I was a shipping clerk," said Viktir.

  "I see. Of course, that won't do at all — not at all. But we will find you something. Let's see." He turned to Sindla. "Don't we have a new plantation in Nahor Province?"

  She nodded. "That was to be given to Lord Kamli's son."

  "Have my secretary mark it for Lord Viktir. Kamli's b
oy is still young. He can wait another year."

  "Yes, my lord."

  The Governor smiled. "There. It's all settled now.

  Oh, and draw an advance for Lord Viktir. Enough coin to outfit him well — can't have him looking like some foreigner can we?"

  After they had been ushered away, Viktir told her, "I think I'll go walking in the city today, see it in clear daylight."

  “Until you know the ways," said Sindla, "I must act as your guide, and we will both need escorts. But we who are Exalted do not walk in the same street as humans. Today we will ride in palanquins."

  They toured the heights above the river, where dozens of palanquins sliced their way between porters, messengers, elephant drivers, and the ubiquitous red-robed enforcers. They saw and were seen by other Exalted at the market fair, the theatre, the bathhouse, and the gardens. At last she took them down a quiet alley ending at a temple on the edge of a steep drop. Made of pointed brass domes and walls crafted so fine they looked like beadwork, it enclosed a shrine mounted by the bejeweled figure of a malformed winged reptile. The incense burning there had a faint coppery odor, like the scent of blood.

  "There are many gods in Gorat Dule. This is Ata, first among the Exalted and our creator."

  Viktir led her outside. "I want to go down there," he said, looking out over the tumbling cluster of roof-tops that jammed the low ground.

  "Why? That portion of the city is for them. There's nothing to see in the human quarter."

  "I . . . I'm not sure if I am more like them than you."

  Sindla opened her mouth in a silent snarl. "That is ridiculous. If a look in the mirror hasn't convinced you, then let me ask you if this rings familiar: You played with them as a child, but you didn't like their silly, simple games and didn't understand why they did. As you got older it became harder and harder to talk to them — it just didn't feel right to be with them. Then they became afraid of you. Some of them tried to bully you or engage in sporting contests in hope of humiliating you, but none could match your strength, speed, or natural grace. And none could challenge you intellectually.

  "Have you ever wondered why you never take ill? Why you've never cried? Why the force of your will never falters? These are human ways, and not for us to suffer."

  Viktir was silent. Half of what she had said was true. "I still want to go down there," he said at last.

  So she took him to the river, armed men clearing a path through the overflowing streets. Hundreds of peasants stood in the river bathing or washing clothes, chatting loudly, tending babies, bored, grim, mirthful, and large with life.

  Sindla thrust her chin outward. "Look at them. Without any sense of dignity. Do you still wish to claim them as your people?"

  “What's happening over there?" Viktir said. In the street near the docks a man was on his knees before an enforcer and another man, this one in blue robes.

  "The one in blue is a tax collector."

  "Let's go over there." And before she could answer he climbed out of his litter and walked toward them.

  "No," she hissed, "the Exalted do not. . . . " Leaping out of her own palanquin, she caught up with him just as he reached the men.

  "Please," the peasant was saying, "if you take little Bishi you take my livelihood." He motioned towards the pygmy elephant that stood behind him. These were the only pack animals Viktir had seen in Gorat Dule. "Surely it is wiser that I work so that I can pay more taxes."

  The man spoke reasonably, but Viktir saw the desperation in his eyes, the pain when he looked back at Bishi. He loves his little elephant, Viktir realized.

  "You have had two warnings, Ajani," said the tax collector. He turned to the enforcer. "Take the animal."

  Viktir stepped forward. "How much does he owe?"

  The robed men stiffened, facing him without meeting his eye.

  "He owes fifteen pyas, Exalted One."

  Viktir found the purse of silver coins that Sindla had given him and spilled some into his hand. "Two of these?" he asked her.

  She nodded, a knife's edge to her silence.

  Viktir tossed the two coins to the tax man while the enforcer stared in disbelief. "Mark this man as paid."

  He dined at the Governor's table that night with Sindla, Zorne, and a dozen more Exalted who resided in the palace. Sindla was the only woman who dressed like a man.

  Lord Durun lectured him over the dessert wine about how the Exalted behaved in public. Not stern, he was all smiles in fact — a kind father gently explaining manners to a confused child.

  "And Lady Sindla was quite right in saying nothing at the time," he told Viktir. "We absolutely never contradict one another in front of humans."

  Then he dismissed Viktir and all the others except for Sindla.

  Viktir had been in his bedroom for an hour when she slipped in without a sound. She no longer wore her leather riding suit, only a sheer silk nightgown that fell to her knees, open above the breasts, the thinnest of straps running over her bare shoulders. She went and sat next to him on the bed with her legs tucked beneath her.

  "Lord Durun didn't ask," she said, "but I must know, for we never do anything without reason. Why did you pay the elephant driver's tax?"

  "It was as he said, better he should work and pay tax in years to come."

  "That is a lie. I think you have a kind of morbid curiosity about them. But I don't understand it, especially after they tried to kill you."

  "What do you mean? They could have killed me in the resthouse. I'm sure they were kidnapping me for some kind of ransom."

  Sindla's jaw dropped open and she almost laughed. "You really don't know, do you? It can be passed directly through the blood. Humans can be made Exalted. It is rarely done — most of us were born Exalted — but it is the basis of our power over them. All these humans who serve us with complete loyalty: the watchmen, the tax collectors, they do not enjoy their work — they wish to be Exalted. Those humans at the resthouse were taking you to where a group of their friends waited. They planned to open your veins, drinking your blood until there was none left. And the worst part is that you would have liked it."

  Viktir looked at her for a long minute. "I've decided not to stay here. Tomorrow I'll find a coaster that's headed west. And you can have your money back. I've got a gold ounce hidden in my boot, enough to get me halfway home."

  This time she did laugh. "Believe me, Lord Viktir, you are home. In any case, they'll not allow you to leave."

  "What, am I a prisoner?"

  “Of course not. We may not force or coerce one another in any way. You are free to go. But word has been spread that no boat accommodate you, and none of the Exalted will aid you. Most of the land around the city is untamed jungle. Considering what happened when you went among humans alone, you have little choice but to stay with us."

  She leaned in close then. Viktir caught the scent of her and suddenly a lust he had never felt began to stalk him. She touched his shoulder and let her fingers slide down the length of his arm. Part of him wanted her badly, but he knew that it was his exalted half.

  "Did you come here to seduce me? An incentive to play along, to bring me into line?"

  "No," she said, her eyes nonetheless going soft, promising sensual abandon. "I came to show you something about yourself. Something that lies deep."

  She pressed her thumb into a place on his wrist and pain shot up his arm. A sharpened agony running the length of screaming nerves, a pain so dear he had never felt. An exquisite, beautiful pain. He cried out in his suffering and did not want her to stop, for ecstasy rode on that pain.

  Then she did stop, and he gasped for breath. And unfocused desire coursed wildly in his veins.

  "That is just a fighting trick I know, something I might do in a casual encounter. If I want to get closer I . . . " She pressed in against him, and he felt her breasts lightly brushing his chest. Then he felt her teeth along the cord of muscle above his sho
ulder. Then, slowly, the bite, the deep and rending bite. And it was so lovely he pushed her away in shock.

  She smiled her curious smile. "If we want to get truly intimate, we take a little blood with the bite."

  Then he knew what he lusted for: release from the pressure of his hot blood. The pain had made his blood rise to an intolerable point. Yes, he wanted it. He wanted his blood to spurt from an artery and her to drink.

  "Would you like me to do that for you?" she whispered.

  He tore away from her, going to the basin and splashing water on his face. "No. I want you to go. Leave at once."

  "Very well," she said, no sound of footfalls as she walked away. She turned back to him at the door. "Fight it if you wish. But you will succumb in the end. It is time for the pilgrimage to Karathu, and you are to partake in the great communion."

  "Where?" he said between breaths.

  “The holy city of the Exalted. The birthplace of our people. Karathu."

  They spent days on the river, going upstream in a small galley. It was only one of dozens and dozens of river boats, and Viktir figured that all the Exalted of Gorat Dule had joined the pilgrimage. The river was wide and slow, and long oars swept them along a green haze of murky water and fog-enshrouded rainforest.

  Karathu lay at the bottom of a sheer cliff where three streams fed by waterfalls came together, the swollen jungle walling it in. It was a small city of palaces, ancient and gilded, clustered thickly around a large clearing, all connected by streets cobbled in white marble.

  When the galley landed, porters came from the city to take the baggage from the boat. They were monsters — hairless men with low, sloping foreheads ringed by a surgical scar, their eyes milky. Their bodies had been deformed into the shape and bulk of an ape, yet their hands were small and delicate, like those of a child. Viktir thought of the child beggars in Gorat Dule and had to look away.

  "No humans are allowed in Karathu," Sindla told him. "These are the servitors, made from human stock by our sorcerers and alchemists."

  A guide marched them to a palace with a roof of golden domes, a residence for those who had come to take the great communion. "The rites are deeply rooted in the origins of the Exalted," Sindla said, "for we did not always exist — our creation is a mystery. Communion can only take place once a year, on the three nights of the full moon of spring." She went to the window, looking up at the cliff face where hundreds of small flying creatures darted between caves and crevasses. "That will be soon. Already the little holy ones are gathered above the city. They will bring you home to us."

  "Why do you call it a communion?"

  "When the little holy ones take, they also give."

  Viktir watched them for days. They flew on bat-like wings, their lizard bodies covered not with scales but with rubbery skin mottled green and brown, looking much like the god Ata. And they were certainly carnivores, gliding into the jungle at twilight and returning with live rodents in their jaws. Then came the first night of the full moon.

  Sindla led him through a maze of streets to the clearing in the center of the city. Hundreds of the Exalted stood encircling a huge tree. Black and gnarled and ancient, it stood bowed over with the weight of countless twisted branches, each heavy with a purple tuberous fruit. Sindla went and picked one from the tree.

  As the moon rose high the Exalted began to chant, the night sky suddenly thick with thousands of the flying creatures. The chant now came faster, rising in pitch. The moonlight flashed crimson in Sindla's eyes as she prepared to meet her god in the flesh. She broke open the tuber, and from deep within oozed a pulpy paste. It smelled like rotting meat. Taking Viktir by the arm, she smeared some onto his exposed wrist then did the same for herself. All around them the Exalted did this as well, some placing an extra dab on their other arm or even opening their robes to make a spot on their chests. When the little holy ones dived on them, it was shockingly quick.

  A confusion of wings descending, then the strong sharp grip of reptilian talons on his forearm, fanged jaws piercing his flesh, baited by the stinking pulp. The creature began to drink and Viktir shuddered in ecstasy.

  Suddenly it broke away, instantly replaced by another. Then another, again and again, and Viktir shuddered and shuddered, and did not know who he was.

  He awoke the next morning knowing they almost had him.

  It took all his will, but he refused to go with Sindla on the second night. Instead, he wandered the empty city, the arches and domes shining dimly gold in the moonlight. A light behind a curtained window drew him near, for he knew that the servitors had no need of light. He saw inside, through a tiny part, a few of the Exalted who had stood near him at the communion. They seemed to be in hiding, and he wondered why. Then one walked past the window and he knew.

  On the third day, in the afternoon, when the heat drove the Exalted to retire for a few hours, Viktir went to Sindla's chamber. He wore only the bottoms of his silk pajamas.

  He found her sitting up in bed, waiting for him, as if she had heard his coming through the walls and doors. She slipped out of her gown in one motion and looked at him. "Now you understand."

  He went to her, taking her roughly and biting her hard on the shoulder and neck. She cut open his chest with her fingernails and drank of him.

  He watched her sleep while the sun set, and even though she never opened her eyes, he could see what it had done to her. Yes, he could see it clearly. When twilight came he stole away to the communion ground without waking her.

  The Exalted waited while the rising moon cast its glow across the night sky. Viktir wished for it to rise quickly, lest he lose his nerve. No matter what happened, he doubted that he would survive this act of defiance. Better to die here than live in this nightmare, he thought. How many? How many can I touch? And will it make any difference?

  Then the chant sounded, calling the swirling mass of flying creatures, and Viktir shrugged out of his robes, exposing his upper torso. He broke open a tuber and smeared the paste over his arms and chest and back. The Exalted standing nearby recoiled from him, seeing what he meant to do. And the little holy ones fell upon him as one.

  Blinding pain. Spiritual ecstasy. His self, turning upon his self. Agony calling him back.

  The concentrated scent of the fruit drew all of them, far too many to get at him at once. They hovered and snapped and lunged, and Viktir cried out as dozens of fangs sank into his flesh, then dozens more, then dozens more. At last they turned to the assembled Exalted, who, though shocked, had no choice but to continue the communion. They could not quell their lust.

  Viktir drifted among the galaxies, slowly becoming aware of the figures standing over him. He lay on the grass where he had fallen, blood leaking from a hundred wounds.

  "He has lost a lot of blood," one of them said. "Do you think he will die?"

  "I don't know," said another. "He seems to have the strength of the Exalted."

  A wailing scream came from behind them. "He is not! He was never one of us!"

  They made way for Sindla, and she threw herself down beside Viktir. "What did you do to me?" she sobbed, crying harder and harder.

  "I've made you human." He tried to take her hand. "It can be passed through the blood," he said weakly, "as you told me."

  "No!" she shrieked, turning to the others. "He has tainted my blood. I am Lady Sindla. Exalt me at once." She reached for a bleeding wrist, but the man pulled back.

  "You do not understand, Sindla," the man said. It was Durun, who had been governor in Gorat Dule. "We no longer have that power. We all took communion with him."

  They took no vengeance upon him. They carried him gently, as one who is honored, and took him to a place where he could heal. He slept easy that night. He was among his own kind.

  THE END

 
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