Topher, don’t do this, I think. Run. Hide.
The other Nahx watching us turn and run, taking their light with them. In the dimness I can see my attacker raise one armored fist above my head, knowing full well he can crush my skull with ease. It’s all I can do to keep my eyes open. All I see is a blur of black. With my last molecule of strength I lurch back, and his fist connects with my rib cage instead of my face. I actually hear my ribs crack, and I scream out with the crushing of my lung. Vision blurring, I vaguely feel my knife still in my hand. My shoulder roars with pain as I try to move my arm. The Nahx above me raises his fist again.
Two things seem to happen at once. I feel my knife swish out of my hand, and at the same moment it appears in the Nahx’s throat, right in the weak spot the videos taught us about. He jolts back, grabbing at his neck. There’s a loud hissing noise, and then his weight sags on me, pushing down on my crushed ribs and forcing my last breath out of me. Despite my best efforts, stars float in my eyes, and I see a shadow above me before I disappear into blissful nothingness.
PART THREE
WINTER
“There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.”
—EDGAR ALLAN POE, “The Black Cat”
EIGHTH
She’s so badly injured. I don’t know what to do. One arm doesn’t seem to fit her anymore, and her blood is draining out, I’m not sure from where.
Precious little human, please don’t die.
I gather her up and run, run with my mind filling up with the idea of the sun on her hair and the smell of pine needles and the rushing river. But now she smells sharp and sour, of blood and fear and other things. Tears. Tears. The smell is powerful, terrifying. I stumble away with her. Halfway down the passageway, I find a dart rifle and snatch it up, slinging it over my shoulder.
Where do I go? Out into the light, out into the city. Away from the others, from my people. They didn’t see me leave. They were distracted by a human with a gun.
At that moment, like my thoughts spilled out of my head and into the world, I hear the human behind me. He is yelling at me. A bullet pings off my back, another one off the top of my skull. I keep running, leaping up a flight of stairs. When I reach the top and turn to look at the human, something slices into my shoulder from front to back, between the armor plates. The pain feels familiar, hot and harsh. I reel back and have to catch my balance. In the dim at the bottom of the stairs I see the human, with his weapon raised. He looks unnervingly familiar, too.
“GIVE HER BACK!” he screams.
He can’t mean this little human. She’s mine, isn’t she?
Please don’t die. You can’t die.
I can run much faster than the human with the weapon, even with his arrow sticking out of my shoulder, even carrying the girl. I run and run and run. Up into the street, away from the human, away from my people, I run until I can no longer hear the human yelling or his footsteps behind me, until the sky grows quiet, until I find a high tower. My mind buzzes again, like there is something I’ve forgotten to do, or something I shouldn’t have done, or something is rattling loose.
Who was that human who was chasing us? I look down at the broken human in my arms. She is the only thing that is keeping my mind tethered inside my head.
Her heart is beating fast now, but strong, too. There is blood on her face and her legs, but it’s not pouring out of her anymore. I cling to her, my hand wrapped around the hole in her calf. Her blood oozes through my fingers. She is curled up in my arms as I find the stairs and start upward.
RAVEN
I sense movement first—upward movement. I feel myself rise, but it’s not a smooth ride. It’s soothing, though, like being rocked, and I drift off again. When I come back, the movement hasn’t changed, but I can now see. There’s a bright light rocking above me and dancing on dark gray walls. I see the number 18, then a few moments later the number 19. Then a shock of pain makes me close my eyes again.
The third time I awake, the rocking continues. This time I am able to distinguish that the numbers, which are now up to 31, are on doors. I blink and my vision clears even more. Someone is carrying me. With horror I realize it is a Nahx.
I try to move, but he clasps me tightly, my arms pinned at my sides. Struggling causes a pain like none I’ve ever felt before, and I feel my eyes roll back into my head as my attempt to scream for help turns into a moan of agony. The Nahx holds me even tighter, and we plod onward, upward . . . 35, 36, 37. The motion is hypnotic, and though I try to resist, I close my eyes again.
A noise wakes me, a blood-chilling, heartbreaking noise, like an animal, a dog who has been beaten half to death. It takes a full minute to realize I’m the one making the noise.
My senses return, one by one. Hearing—over my own inhuman moaning I hear someone moving nearby, clicking, the sounds of doors opening and closing, something tearing, something rattling. Smell—every negative smell imaginable assails me—the tinny metallic smell of blood, sour milk, urine? Have I pissed myself again? And charcoal, faintly, more the memory of a smell than an actual smell.
Taste—there is bile in my mouth, and blood, gurgling through my moaning. I push it out with my tongue and it dribbles down my chin.
Touch—pain, like I’m on fire. A spike in my calf, a knife in my chest, my whole right side feels like it is hanging, dangling by a strip of flesh. My face feels thick and disembodied, as though it is floating over me, throbbing with blood. The moan threatens to turn into a scream. I wrap my mouth around a familiar word, to try to capture the scream before it utterly destroys me. It comes out as a whimper.
“Topher . . . Topher . . . help . . . please. . . .”
Vision. I open my eyes, seeing only dark at first, but gradually the dark dissolves from the edges in, until I can see blurred details of a room. There are golden, glowing windows to one side, and dark shapes, low modern furniture placed far apart. Penthouse, I think. It’s like a word in a foreign and ancient language, so far away from what my life has been for the past months that it almost makes me laugh. It’s a punch line, for the longest joke in the history of humor. I’m in a freaking luxury penthouse. I’m dying in some spoiled bald accountant’s bachelor pad.
With my good hand I feel my face gingerly. It doesn’t feel like a face; my hair is matted to my forehead and my hand comes away bloody. I close one eye, then the other. They both appear to work. Searching with my tongue, I confirm that all my teeth still seem to be in place. I feel beneath me—leather. I’m lying on some kind of leather bench. I think I’m bleeding all over it.