The One We Feed (34 page)

“She seems
fairly strong,” said a man. “She’s listening to us.”

“Don’t be
silly, Devlin. It’s just a reflex.” She let go of my hair. My face cracked
against the ground. “There are only a handful in hundreds. That girl is the most
incredible find to date, and, as you know, I’ve been doing this a long time. Don’t
use her as a point of reference.”

Suddenly, from
the deeply suppressed record of my life, a name emerged. I whispered it,
feeling that, somehow, it meant something to someone.

She turned and
grasped my hair again, nearly pulling it from my scalp. “What did you say?”  

“Eva,” I
repeated, though my throat was lined in dust.

She scowled,
considering me for a long while. “Well, Devlin,” she said finally, “perhaps
your intuition is correct.”

“It usually is.” 

“Excellent!” She
leaned down and stared into my one exposed eye. “Know this: you mean nothing to
me. At some point, you will die. I will not care.”

I blinked. A
tear tickled my nose, but it was probably just a reflex.

“Do it. If she
really can swim, it’s time to toss her in.” Then she turned and was gone.

They jerked my
body back upright and held my arms tightly. My head was pulled back until my
mouth could be forced open. Something cold and metallic was shoved inside and
clamped down on my tongue. There was a sharp pull and a searing pain.

They dropped
me onto the cold ground, where I writhed and cried out, coughing up blood until
a pool of it formed on the ground. I got onto my hands and knees, fueled by
survival instinct alone, and tried to back away from them. In the corner, I
balled up and reached fingers into my mouth, feeling a space where once my
tongue had been.

The one with
the metal clamp held a piece of flesh in front of me, wagging it around as if
he meant for me to grab for it, like it was some kind of sick game. I think he
expected fear or humiliation, but something else entirely was going on in my
mind.

Rage was
growing, anger and hatred so profound that I could not contain them. They seeped
into my muscles and lungs, pushing me to my feet.

He waved the
tongue in front of me again, and the cord that chained me to this reality
snapped. Events came crashing over me like a tidal wave of sight and sound. Memories
reconstituted where once there had been blank space. Power twisted through my
core and into my squeezing fists.

I stood up to
my full height and smiled a bloody grin, myself once again.

Shouldn’t have
done that.

Cleo’s trigger
had been successful.

They
approached me, cattle prod in hand and, to my credit, a little fearfully. I
waited until they were close enough to grab me, and, as the one to my left
dropped his weapon to do so, I lunged straight for his throat. As I bit down,
he tried to cry out, but a Siren without his vocal cords was almost as useless
as violin without strings. I let them hit me with a jolt of electricity. It did
nothing, but I let go.

They dragged
me from the room, one life and one gift richer, laughing like a maniac.

Chapter
27

Cry Havoc

I landed on my feet, though
they immediately slid from beneath me on the disgustingly sticky floor of the
Rakshasa pit. They left the portal open for a time, filtering the foul air for
fresh, and, as if it was trying to escape, the stench rose all around me until
my eyes stung with it and my nose ran.

It was just as
it had been for Reesa. The bewitching of the Sirens was almost pointless; the
creatures had scattered at the sound of the hatch clicking open, almost as if
they were terrified. In the dim light that seemed to fight its way through the
moist heat of the pit, I could see vague figures huddled over what appeared to
be the remains of others. Whether they had died of starvation or had been
attacked by the hungry, I could not tell; they were in pieces already, stripped
of valuable meat, bones discarded like rubbish, though snapped in half and
sucked clean. Gore stuck to every surface and red eyes flashed at me from the
shadows.

Shut the
hatch,
I
thought up at the circling singers, until at last they obeyed. The slow creak
of the great metal hinge was like the sound of a vulture cry. There was the
clang, the click, and utter darkness.

I relaxed my
jaw. My reforming tongue began to pull itself together, causing a prickling
sensation that went from the base of my skull into my gut. In a single cough, I
spat up the pool of congealing blood in my mouth and licked my lips clean.

As if they
could smell it, the creatures began to circle. I closed my eyes in the blackness
and listened for them. I counted only a dozen or so, the strongest of the
strong, tongueless but still quite lethal.

They were
moving slowly, conserving as much energy as possible. In the tight space of the
metal tank, their guttural cries echoed painfully, until it sounded as if there
were hundreds of them closing in. If not for Devlin’s overwhelmingly rational
vantage, even I would have cowered.

I took a deep
breath, inhaling the smell of death and decay, the filth from which my army
would rise, and smiled. Bliss overcame me more quickly than ever before, the
delay of a self-calming pep talk no longer necessary. These were my people, my
children, even though they did not yet realize it.

I opened my
eyes. They were inching in, little fiery shapes of violet and smoldering
blue-black, flickering in hatred and fear. I lifted my hands and my face, and
in the voice of a Siren, sang “Amazing Grace.”

As I came to
the end of the first verse, I fell silent. They had turned to stone all around
me, their auras shivering with uncertainty, but they could not ward off the
calm of my presence nor the permissive tenderness of my magic touch. I reached
for the closest figure. It recoiled, but only slightly.

“I won’t hurt
you,” I whispered and took a tiny step forward.

They could no
longer understand words, but, like animals, it was the tone that swept them
closer. I reached out to one, my fingers inches from the bright purple of its
head. It snarled weakly, but it could smell me and, through me, the outside
world.

The others
came closer, crowding any escape I intended to make, but I was not afraid. One
of them sniffed at my hair. Another, emboldened by the first, touched my arm
briefly with the elongated fingers and claws of a monster, then brought the
fingers hastily to its own nose. I kept reaching for the one in front of me,
until at last it leaned forward, and, shivering with the slow deterioration of
its muscles, put its face in the palm of my outstretched hand.

Its features
were covered in saliva and blood. There was an open cut across its cheek where
the elongating jawbone had displaced skin. I could tell from the heat given off
that the wound was infected. Lifting my other hand, I found its mane of
tangled, matted hair. An old injury on the scalp was covered in a thick scab. I
brushed it gently and felt my heart break.

Beside me, one
of the others took hold of my arm and squeezed as if to see if I was real. I
let go of the creature before me and returned the embrace. One by one, I
greeted all of them, and slowly their auras calmed, transformed from the colors
of violence and darkness to those of growth and light.

I brushed the
hair from their deformed faces, held them close, perhaps like their own mothers
had, until we collapsed together, in a tangle at the center of the pit. They
were too weak to stand for long, or fight, or even feel pain. They were numb.

My hindbrain
began to tingle in condign disgust, pulling me from the peaceful state. I
fought it off. This moment was not for Mara or the others like him. This moment
was for them.

I lifted my
hand to my face and bit into my wrist as hard as I could. Warm blood trickled
over my overly sensitive skin and speckled the already rancid floor. Their
bodies stiffened. They were starving, and, no matter what they felt for me,
they needed to eat. I smiled and with my bloody hand caressed the face of the
one at my left.

“You can’t
hurt me,” I said quietly. “Please take it.”

I did not have
to say it a second time. A split second later, his great mouth had closed over
the wound. Huge teeth widened it, and, like a great leech, he sucked. The pain
surprised me, but there was no time to gasp. On my right, another had
understood the command and attacked my shoulder. Before long, three more had
found a place, tipping me back onto the slimy floor.

I closed my
eyes. They were faster than Karl’s pump. I needed the
jhana
as soon as
possible. As unconsciousness came, the heightened reality swooped in. Instantly,
I hovered above myself, watching them twist me about as if I were a horribly
stiff doll. I began to realize that, if not for their profound malnourishment,
they would have been surprisingly gentle with me. One of them had already
lifted my head from the ground and placed it in the crook of its knee. Another
had been careful to turn my arm the right way around, so as not to break it.

No such thing
as monsters,
I affirmed to myself as I drifted to Ananda’s shoulder.

“No, there is
not,” he replied. He was sitting in a hotel room beside the phone. The sun was
high in the sky outside the window, covering a bleak desert landscape in a
white haze.

It’s time.

“You are safe?”

Yes.
Find
the compound and wait there with the truck. It will take a while, but before
tonight they will be finished.

He smiled and
picked up the phone receiver. “You are amazing, my dear.”

Maybe if you
keep saying it, it will come true?

“It already
has.”

I danced away
from his mind and found the boy. He was racing over the crumbling asphalt of a
heat-assaulted highway, his motorcycle at top speed, faster than the eye could
track.

“I know,” he
said into his helmet mic. “On my way.”

When I found
Devlin, he was sitting in Mara’s office, and it was only by grace of the
jhana
that I could see the tension in his frame. He was not seated, really, but
perched. His fingers were very close to white-knuckled over the arm of the
chair. As I touched his mind, I could feel the obnoxious twinge of mental
exhaustion.

Mara paced
behind the desk, wearing both our siblings’ faces at once, smiling as if he was
enjoying the agony he caused.

“I’m really
not sure that is a possibility, Devlin,” he said sweetly. To me it sounded like
my dear sister, but to Devlin it was the echo of a long-dead enemy. The voice
left tracks of regret through his brain.

“Why?” he said
through gritted teeth.

“Well, you
see, the Sirens enjoy working here.”

“With the
girl, you don’t need them anymore. If you awaken her, she can control the
Rakshasa.”

“Why would I
do that?” Mara laughed. He curled my sister’s thin fingers over the back of his
armchair and shook his head in amusement. “No, she’ll stay as she is until I
can control
her.”

“How will you
learn to unless you wake her?” Devlin said, though his voice was a sharp as
glass.

“I’m
collecting.
”
Mara held up my sister’s finger. “When I have more than one unique creature,
then
it is safe to experiment, then one of them is expendable. Until then, I
need the Sirens here.”

Devlin took a
deep breath, his composure taxed to its limits.

Just a little
longer
.

As if he heard
me, he let go of the arm of the chair and leaned back, relaxing into the idea
Mara had presented.

“Very well,
then,” he murmured in a disinterested tone, “but I
will
need them back,
eventually. I pulled them away from their other pursuits under the pretext of
their debts to me. They’ll soon have worked those off. If they don’t go back to
earning more, you’ll have no leverage to keep them here should they decide to
leave, in spite of the
glorious
opportunity you’ve presented them.”

Mara closed
Eva’s eyes and appeared to be deep in thought. “I take your point. So be it. Warn
me, won’t you, when the time comes?”

“As you wish.”

“I confess, I
was surprised you came here.”

Devlin raised
a reptilian brow. “Where else would I be?”

Eva’s laugh
rang out. It had always been such an adorable laugh, infectious in every way. Devlin
did not smile.

“Bored, are
we?”

“Always,”
Devlin whispered, his eye gleaming.

“Lucky me.”

I left them
with a parting surge of gratitude and well-wishes to the Crusader. When I found
Reesa, she was where I had left her, lashed down to her padded metal table, the
tubes in her arms pumping poison into her. Her eyes flicked back and forth
behind her eyelids. She was reliving her short life again and again, reworking
the miseries, reexamining the lessons. She would, until every last secret had
been revealed and truth pulled from noise.

I mapped out
the terrain of the compound once again. The tank was buried in the ground
several stories deep. Above it was the guard room, sealed from the long
corridor connecting it to the main structure by a heavy metal door. Cameras
kept vigil over both hatch and vault door and scanned the hallway. The barracks
and common areas were largely empty, while the labs that branched off on either
side bustled with activity. In their sterile depths, other Rakshasa were being
tormented, tested, and, in some cases, autopsied. Sirens submitted to strange
vocal tests in a soundproofed room, while a man in a coat and sophisticated ear
phones spoke to them in sign language through the window. Humans crouched in
cages like the one I’d lived in, terrified and drugged, uncertain of what their
fate might be when their keepers returned. And then there was Mara’s lair, and
his little stairwell to the surface.

That was the
only way out, and he controlled it. Our only option was to force him to flee
and leave the way unbarred.

Shouldn’t be a
problem, really
,
I thought, coming out of my catatonia with an evil grin on my face. I opened my
eyes in the darkness and realized, quite suddenly, that I could see.

As if I’d
donned night-vision goggles, the scene around me stood out in shades of black
and white, rendering the Rakshasa a bit more ghastly than they would otherwise
have been. Then I realized my mouth was full of thick, warm blood. I turned and
looked at the creature bracing my head. On his wrist was a long gash, still
dripping onto my collarbone.

While I slept,
they had been feeding me. Keeping me alive, even as I had been returning the
favor.

The one we
feed.

“No such
thing,” I whispered.

For several
hours, they rotated around me, until each one had given me a little piece of
themselves, though it was entirely unnecessary. They could have cut my throat
and hung me upside down. It wouldn’t have mattered. I could have fed an army
forever.

When they had
drunk their fill, they unclamped their mouths from whatever opening they had
made, and the skin sealed. I watched them recline, curl up like puppies, their
stomachs finally full. Slowly, their wounds began to heal, hair became sleek,
skin smoothed out, the stretching muscles relaxed. Right before my eyes, they
turned from gaping, skull-like horrors, to things that looked vaguely human. Their
nails seemed sharper, their teeth whiter, and their eyes clearer.

Choose your
weapons.

I lay back
against my last feeder and stroked the head of the one closest to me. My hands
had changed; the fingers seemed to have stretched and were tipped with long,
sharp claws. I licked my teeth. They too were different. I was one of them now.

The creature
wriggled up to me and laid its head in my lap.

“Gather your
strength, my dears,” I whispered.

Lazy ears
pricked.