The Nightshade's Touch: A Paranormal Space Fantasy (Messenger Chronicles Book 3) Page 12

“What do we have?” Kellee asked.

  “A few guards posted near the ramp.” Arran nodded toward them. “No comings or goings. Very little activity.”

  “They’re waiting,” I added.

  “Yeah,” Arran agreed. “But for what?”

  “Word from Sirius that they can let the prisoners go,” Kellee said.

  “Or kill them,” Arran suggested.

  Kellee studied the scene, shoved off the rock, and headed into the undergrowth. “Stay right here.” The bushes swallowed him, and he was gone.

  Arran continued to observe the fae below. I moved to his side, trying not to recall how, when we were younger, we had spent hours hiding and stalking through Faerie’s arena undergrowth.

  “We’re supposed to trust Kellee’s coming back?” he asked.

  “He’s scouting the other side, checking all angles before we commit to going in,” I explained. “You can trust him, Arran.”

  It would take more than words before Arran believed me, but ironically, he trusted me, and his nod said that was enough, for now.

  “Talen’s keeping Sirius busy, huh?”

  I explained the events back at the warcruiser, but instead of easing Arran’s worry, it increased his concern.

  He watched the buildings below, scanning for any sign of Kellee. He wouldn’t see him.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  He nodded again, but his look lingered. Whatever he was thinking, it was enough to make him rest his hand on mine on the rock. Had I been a good, decent person, I would have pulled away and shut him down, but the brush of his hand on mine said all the things we couldn’t. Sometimes, all it took was a touch for one person to understand the other, and it had always been that way with Aeon. Now, as Arran, nothing had changed between us.

  “When this is over, we should go somewhere,” Arran suggested.

  My battered heart leapt at the idea. “Where?”

  “Somewhere away. It doesn’t matter where. Just away from all this. When was the last time you relaxed, had fun?”

  Fun? “Probably in The Boot when I was just a secure messenger, before the fae came, before Eledan changed everything.” So much had happened since then. That woman with her cocky attack drone and simple life? She was long gone, buried with the rest of old Calicto. She’d been a dream anyway. Pretend. But in her moments, she’d had fun. More than I’d ever had during a lifetime on Faerie.

  But how could we have fun when Halow was crumbling around us? How could we rest, knowing so many were losing their homes, their lives?

  I took my hand from beneath Arran’s. Fun wasn’t for the Messenger. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  He touched my arm, drawing my eye back to him. “Don’t shut me out.”

  I knew what it felt like to be shut out. Kellee and Talen routinely kept me at arm’s length for reasons they believed a saru couldn’t possibly understand. In the beginning, it had been justified. But now? If I shut Arran out, he’d have nothing else. No one else. “I won’t.”

  Kellee stepped out of the bushes like he’d never left. He saw Arran’s hand on my arm and a flash of annoyance darkened his eyes. “A simple distraction drawing the guards away from the ramp should suffice. We know there’s at least a flight of fifty inside, from what we saw when they took the people. Kesh, slip in using your coat’s glamour and see what you can discover. They won’t expect it, and with Sirius away, their response to an attack will be slow and disorganized.”

  “We don’t know how long we’ll have. Let’s do this now.” I straightened.

  Arran handed me his pistol. “Take this.”

  I nodded my thanks, tucked the weapon out of sight, acutely aware of Kellee’s judgmental glare on us both, and turned to meet that glare head-on. “Try not to kill anyone,” I told him.

  “Me not kill anyone?”

  I shrugged. “Talen has a hang-up about killing fae. Mostly me killing fae. But if I can’t kill any, neither can you.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since the Game of Lies, apparently.”

  Kellee’s eyebrow lifted. He hadn’t been on board with my premeditated murder spree at the arena either. “Are you shitting me?” He flicked his hand open, releasing five razor-edged claws. “What am I supposed to do with these? Wave them menacingly?”

  Passing him, I patted him on the shoulder. “Maim them.”

  Kellee murmured, “Maybe I’ll aim for Talen’s legs when we get back.”

  It was banter, I hoped.

  “Be careful, Kesh.” Arran’s warning washed over me as the coat hid my next step into the dark.

  Sota dove in low, tucking in close enough that my coat’s glamour absorbed his outline too. “You’re hurt.” He finally said what he’d been thinking.

  “If you scan closer, you’ll see I’m not.”

  “But—”

  “Later, Sota. Let’s get this done.”

  The fae had left the township undamaged, a departure from their usual burn-it-all-for-Faerie routine. It could be a sign they intended to release the prisoners, or that they hadn’t gotten around to cleansing Hapters yet. I figured it all depended on Sirius’s orders, which were ultimately Oberon’s. The king had killed billions of Halow people, so why save these?

  Your king needs you, Sirius had said. Strange words. The only time Oberon had needed me was to woo Mab, then hunt and kill his brother on tek-infested Calicto. Now that the king had Faerie, he no longer needed me. Your king needs you. The saru in me quivered with anticipation at the thought of being needed, or perhaps it was fear dancing at the edge of my thoughts. I pushed those thoughts and feelings away. They were of no use to me a million light years from Faerie.

  Hapters’s waning light folded around me as I slipped between abandoned single-story storage buildings and crouched at a corner, eyeing the ship’s open ramp. The guards would sense something was amiss if I tried to sneak by them too close.

  A moment later, an explosion rocked the air. I didn’t bother looking for the source. Kellee knew how to cause a decent distraction. It worked. The guards bolted from their posts and headed deeper into the township.

  I was sauntering toward the ramp when three more fae marched out of the ship to replace them. Being in glamour didn’t make me entirely invisible. Had they been looking directly at me, they would have seen the light wobble. Luckily, they were all looking toward Kellee’s pillar of smoke. I slunk inside.

  The ship was a smaller version of the cruiser, right down to the grown, smooth glowing walls. Somewhere, there would be a pilot, likely permanently fixed in place. A fate Talen had avoided. I shuddered at the memory of seeing him strung up, puppet-like, and hurried on.

  As a ship grown for war, it didn’t have a cargo hold, but if it was anything like our cruiser, it likely had prison cells in its belly. That’s where the people would be, but I couldn’t break them out. The prison bars would be bone and needed to be coaxed open. I had to go straight to the source.

  “You have a plan?” Sota whispered near my ear, still tucked close and hidden inside my glamour. The corridors were curiously empty. There should have been more fae aboard…

  “Kind of.”

  My stride tripped as we entered the womb-like pilot’s chamber. The pilot, what was left of him, was halfway swallowed by a wall. Only his torso and head were free to move. Vampiric vines looped around his arms and latched into his veins on his inner arms and behind his shoulders. The ship had absorbed him. Would it one day swallow all of him down?

  He had been handsome, once. But now dull, dark hair trailed in long strands down either side of his lean face. His eyes were black and unseeing. His skin, from his torso, to his face, to his lips, was a single shade of gray so pale it almost glowed from within—like the ship’s walls.

  I approached, still cloaked, nothing but a whisper of movement giving me away.

  “You step lightly.” His voice held a jagged edge, as though it faintly echoed, one voice over another. Once, it would have been smooth and ma
de for the telling of pretty untruths at court. “Not fae.” His head tilted. “Saru.” And then, with a small gasp, “Wraithmaker.”

  My glamour fell away, no longer required.

  Sota drifted up from my shoulder. “Guard the door,” I told my drone. He sailed into a position giving him a direct line of sight to observe anyone about to interrupt us.

  The pilot blinked dark fathomless eyes. He could feel exactly where I stood and hear Sota’s motors. He didn’t need sight to see. “You know who I am?”

  “Faerie’s touch surrounds a human shell. You are unmistakable.” A pink tongue swept across his lips. The only color on him. “Do you mean to kill me, Wraithmaker?” His teeth flashed as he spoke, as though he would like to see me try.

  My reputation was growing. “No.” I studied where the ship grasped at his chest. Small tendrils suckled at his skin, countless tiny mouths slowly devouring him. This would have been Talen’s fate. It was cruel, but why was I surprised? “Am I speaking with the fae or the ship?”

  “We are one.”

  I waved my hand in front of his eyes. He didn’t react. He looked vulnerable, but my body would broadcast any ill intent and I’d seen how quickly these ships could defend themselves. Attacking him would likely get the doors locked and the prisoners killed. My death and Sota’s would follow soon after.

  “How much do you know of me?”

  “I know you. You are saru, birthed by Faerie and risen from the earth. You are the Wraithmaker, marked by a king and pulled by his strings. You are the Messenger, sent to hold back the dark. A message to all.”

  His mind had been tainted, but I’d be a fool to dismiss his words as insanity. The human myth, the fae myth, they didn’t matter. Only one truth had any worth here. “I am saru. I live to serve. You understand?”

  “We do.”

  I braved stepping closer even as every cell in my body wanted to cringe away from the sight. He didn’t have the sweet floral scent of the fae. He smelled like the warcruiser, like a rich Summerlands breeze loaded with pollen or a bracing Winterlands wind that bit and nipped, like something changing and untamable.

  I lifted my hand, holding it close to his cheek, but didn’t touch him. “What if there’s another way?” I asked.

  “Another way?”

  “Change is coming.” I pressed a hand to his cheek, expecting it to be as cold as he looked, but his skin was soft and warm. He didn’t feel sickly. “What if we did not have to serve them?”

  He chuckled darkly, and the ship shuddered. “My choices ended long ago.”

  “Kesh?” Sota rumbled.

  “It’s okay.” I brushed my thumb down the pilot’s cheek, felt him lean into me, and touched his lips. He had been beautiful and proud and strong once, like Kellee. I looked again at the surrounding chamber. Perhaps, this pilot was still all those things, but changed in his form. I was standing in front of a fraction of what he was.

  Magic tingled through my fingers, summoning a glittery glow to his parting lips. “I have a ship and a pilot,” I told him. “And both are free. They are not slaves—”

  “We know,” he whispered and his mouth turned down. “We hear her. She speaks of a silver fae like no other and the saru with fire in her heart, a vakaru relic, and a champion. She says you and yours have just begun. Her name is Shinj. She wants you to know her name. And she asks that we help you, Wraithmaker.”

  Talen’s ship had a name and knew us. More than that, she was sentient enough to understand everything going on around her? Shinj. I’d known she could think for herself and I’d sensed there was more to her, but to have her name, to know her intention, it was a rare gift. “Will you help me?”

  “We refused to, until this moment.” His lashes fluttered over blank, unseeing eyes. “We see you. We see all of you, who you were, who you are yet to become, the thread of light running through you. Some shine brighter than others, and you… you are blinding. We will help you, Messenger, but you must do something for me in return. A bargain, a trade. You must agree.”

  I might have been saru, but I’d spent enough time at court to know better than to agree to any bargain with the fae without knowing the terms. “What are the stakes?”

  “I ask only a small thing. Worth nothing to you but everything to me.”

  I tried to guess at his meaning. Few things were worthless to me. I had nothing, so everything was worth something. But if this thing truly was worth nothing, I could give nothing away to save the people. It was a trick. It had to be. “Truly worth nothing to me?”

  “Truly.”

  “Free the people now and I’ll agree.”

  His eyes closed. “It is done.”

  “And your price?”

  “Kiss us.”

  What? I schooled my face, though he didn’t see me and could likely read the fear surrounding me. I had already touched him and he hadn’t pulled me into the ship, so why did I hesitate? A kiss was nothing. A kiss for the lives of Hapters’s people.

  I swallowed and tilted my head, leaning in. Just a kiss…

  Sota’s motors whirred. He watched closely, always ready for the unexpected.

  My lips touched the pilot’s. Magic fizzled sharply on my tongue. He opened, just a little, and returned the kiss so gently I wondered who this fae had been before for him to kiss with such reverence. His sweet sigh brushed my lips as we parted. The kiss was nothing, just a brush, a tease, but it left the taint of sorrow sinking through me, heading for my heart.

  “The nightshade, Messenger. Beware.”

  “You know of the Nightshade?”

  “You are right. There is another way.” He bowed his head but kept his haunting eyes on me. “Now kill us.”

  I stepped back. Once. Twice.

  “Kill us.” His voice had lost its echo, making each word solid, real.

  “That was not our bargain.”

  “It was. Kill us, Messenger. It costs you nothing.”

  I lifted Arran’s pistol, aiming between the pilot’s sorrowful eyes. I understood now why he had wanted the kiss. To feel again, one last time. It was wrong, what they had done to him. I wished I had known him in another life.

  “Free us, Messenger.” A single diamond-like tear rolled down his cheek.

  My heart hardened against all the injustice of Faerie, against the abuse of its own beautiful creatures. This was no life at all. His freedom cost me nothing.

  I pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 12

  The fae flights scattered throughout the township discovered that Hapters’s people weren’t as manageable when not drugged. Once the people dispersed, digging up their buried weapons, the fae fled the township, probably hoping to regroup under Sirius once the guardian returned—not anytime soon if Talen had his way.

  I wasn’t needed, and as the people drifted back to their homes and lives, I sat down on the ship’s ramp. Behind me, the ship had fallen silent and cold, its lights extinguished. Sota drifted above, motors humming.

  I’d seen countless saru take their own lives. I’d thought them fools, thought them weak. But I realized they had looked into the future and known, without any doubt, that the future was not a place they wanted to be. Arran had taken the starfruit to avoid his future and his past.

  He was right. I had mastered my saru existence by making myself cruel.

  The nameless pilot who had wanted something as simple as a kiss had known me better than I knew myself. And I’d thought to go in there and champion saru companionship, as though the pilot and I were the same. I was a fool. A weak, unworthy fool.

  Kellee climbed the ramp and looked down at me. After a few moments of silence, he regarded the dead ship and said, “I thought we weren’t killing any fae?”

  I stood, shoved the pistol at his chest, knocking him back a step, and walked away.

  I wandered aimlessly, watching people pick up the pieces of their lives. Faerie’s march on Halow could not be allowed to continue. Faerie wasn’t beautiful; it was a lie. Halow, in all its
natural human messiness, was the true beauty. Faerie would devour it whole the same way that ship was devouring itself. I couldn’t let it happen.

  And there was one way to stop it.

  Your king needs you.

  Oberon.

  “Messenger?”

  I’d been wandering so long the sky had turned dark and I’d lost track of time. A woman leaned out the doorway of a domed dwelling. Her eyes crinkled with kindness. She stepped back and wordlessly invited me into her home.

  Talen needed me. Hapters was a long way from safe. Kellee was somewhere nearby, doing his marshaling, helping people return to their homes. “Thank you, but I can’t.”

  Hulia, in a halo of dreadlocks, appeared behind the older woman. “Kesh, you look dead on your feet. Come eat, drink. You’ve earned it.” She saw me wavering and added, “Get your ass inside.”

  Sota buzzed in over my shoulder, not about to hang around and wait to be told twice. The home was compact, with all the rooms built around a central living area. The older woman who had invited me in joined a stocky man in a kitchen, where food bubbled and simmered. My stomach grumbled and my mouth watered. I hadn’t eaten much of anything in days and the gentle thrumming of the bond inside me implied Talen was fine. Maybe I could afford a break.

  The middle-aged pair had stripped out of the ragged clothes the fae had clothed them in and wore the simple cotton over-garments of folks used to working the land in hot weather. The man said something to the woman, and her responding laughter was true, honest. It was a delight to hear.

  Hulia cleared a table, wiping it clean of dust that must have blown in when the fae had raided the house. She grabbed a bowl of fruit and set it down in the center and then added smaller bowls, clearly familiar with the house.

  “Sit,” Hulia ordered.

  I knew better than to argue. “I can’t stay. There are—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, there’s more shit to save. I get it.” Her glare twinkled. She came around to my side of the table and pulled out a chair. She quietly added, “Let Janet and Miquel thank you the only way they can. You can get back to hero-ing when your belly is full and you don’t look ready to collapse.”