Tenebrism

I spent another night on the couch, in my clothes, because I’d lay there like a paralyzed potato for so long after my shower of fucking revelations that I fell asleep there. When I woke up, hazily and for no real reason, it was dark in the room and outside the blinds. Rysa was a bunched-up lump on the other couch, her hair splayed over the arm. Keyd was probably...back in my bed. Great.

Not a lot of sleeping happened after that. Mostly it was staring at the ceiling, listening to the soft shifting of the blankets whenever Rysa moved around, making little sighs and smacking noises. I’d lost my glasses at some point and couldn’t read the clock, and there was a blanket over me I didn’t remember having before.

I could handle this, right? I just had kind of...different...reactions to Keyd, but I could deal with that. It’d be okay. Now that I’d figured out what was going on, this would all start to get under control. Dealing with Keyd would still be weird, but at least I’d know why it was weird. And I could avoid doing any kind of...touching, or close contact, or that long meaningful staring at each other that we’d been doing a lot of. Everything else, that could keep happening. Keyd was a real decent guy, and we’d kind of managed to get a friendship going, and I wanted to keep that. Didn’t need to make it messy with other...stuff.

Outside the blinds the sky slowly turned faded navy, then greyish-blue. Then everything just stayed grey. I couldn’t see the trees or the roof of the next apartment over. Foggy morning. Dark bird shapes darted over the patio fence in the mist, twittering at each other, and my neck started to ache from being angled up on the couch arm. I shifted under the blanket—seriously, when’d this gotten here? Somebody must’ve put it on me— and then threw it back. Wasn’t getting any more sleep tonight. This morning. Whichever.

My glasses were on the coffee table, and I shoved them on my face and went to use Martin’s bathroom to throw some water on my face and take a piss. Since Keyd was almost definitely in my room. The door was open about six inches but I couldn’t see my bed, or him, from the hall. But unless he’d spent the night sitting outside in the grass—which wasn’t that unlikely—he was in there. And I wasn’t ready to talk to him, or even see him. I hadn’t gotten all my, whatever, plans together yet on how to not act like a real awkward weirdo with him. But he was a pretty awkward weirdo himself, so he probably wouldn’t even notice.

Rysa might. Rysa noticed things. And they seemed to share everything with each other, even if I was pretty sure by now they weren’t dating. She was going to be the one to hide stuff from, like how much I suddenly wanted to bang her best friend. Or something. I wasn’t even sure. My dreams had a better idea of what I wanted to do to Keyd than I did. Letting myself actually think about it would be a bad idea, because I’d probably like what I came up with, and then it’d be even harder to get over this. No imagining meant no disappointment. Right?

That felt like a fucking lie even as I told it to myself again and again and scrubbed my face raw with cold tap water. I slammed the tap off and leaned on the sink, baring my teeth at my own stupid face. I was trying to make this not a big deal, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Goddammit.

Something ticked and creaked nearby, the sound of someone stepping on the carpeted floor. I tilted my head, holding my breath and listening. Someone was moving around in my room; I heard the door to the master bath open softly and close again through the wall. Keyd. Fuck, no. Not ready. Not ready at all. I needed to get out of here. Right now.

What day was it. Quick phone check; Thursday. Calc class. I could make it on time. So what if I was wearing the same clothes from yesterday. Not like anybody would know. I slunk out of my own goddamn apartment like this was some kind of walk of shame and drove to school through layers of fog—the real one sulking low in the streets, and the one in my head.

#

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been to calculus class, and shit, it was weird to be here. It was the right room and the right time and I recognized the handful of people already in there but there was still an itchy feeling of wrongness, like maybe everything had somehow changed and I wasn’t in the right place at all. I couldn’t even remember where I’d used to sit, so I picked a table in the back corner and slouched into it. Already this felt like a bad idea. I’d missed so much class recently (and a test, maybe? I felt like there’d been a test) that this was probably a lost cause. But with only one semester left after this one, I didn’t have a lot of empty slots to be retaking classes in.

While I was busy whining to myself about my decision to show up, Law walked into the room. Well fuck me, I’d forgotten he was in this class. That really showed where my head was at right now. And Law saw me, even though I was slumped down in my chair and had my sweatshirt hood up. He came around and threw his backpack up on my table, then he just stared at me. I could feel him doing it, and it was like my skin getting rubbed with sandpaper; irritating, irritating.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Law finally said.

Seriously not in the mood for his shit. Especially at eight in the morning. In the middle of an alien man-crush crisis which was all wrapped up in an even bigger alien problem. “None of your goddamn business.”

Law opened his mouth, and then snapped it shut again. Then he threw himself down into the chair next to me, even though he’d never sat by me in the entire time we’d had this fucking class together. I could feel his stupid pretty eyes boring into the side of my head. I could admit he had stupid pretty eyes, right? Actually, I’d always really noticed that Law was good-looking pretty much everywhere. He usually wore tight shirts too, so it wasn’t just his face that had the good-looking part happening. Was that normal to notice? Was that a for-sure gay thing or just like...appreciative? Christ, I had no idea anymore.

But one thing was for sure, I definitely didn’t wanna fuck Law. No way.

Professor Ortiz walked in right then, and Law didn’t talk to me again. He didn’t even look like he was fully checked into real life, slouched way forward in his chair, resting on his elbows, eyes half-shut and not taking notes. He had dark circles under his eyes and he kept rubbing at his face; I could see him doing it constantly at the edge of my vision. He looked like he hadn’t slept for a month. Or like he was really hungover. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him if he was doing okay, and then I remembered we didn’t like each other and he was an itchy ballsac and I didn’t care.

I’d been right; being in class was pointless. I took notes, but none of it actually settled into my brain and made any sense. I was just copying numbers and symbols and staring hopelessly at it all like it was a foreign language. There was no way I was scraping by with a passing grade, and I’d done this class Pass/Fail like a winner. Thinking about trying to fit this class into next semester honestly made me feel kinda sick and anxious.

I was packed up and ready to fucking go the second professor Ortiz excused us at the end of the hour. Law’s head snapped up as I shoved past the back of his chair, and he shook himself and glanced around like he didn’t even know where he was.

“Alan,” I heard him say, right when I got to the door at the back of the room. “Wait.”

“Sorry, gotta go.”

“I’m fucking serious,” Law said, grabbing his bag and coming after me. “I need to talk to y—“

“Some other time, all right?” My palms hit the crashbar on the last word and I escaped out into the hallway.

“Goddammi—” I heard Law bark, just before the door slammed shut and cut him off. Instead of heading left towards the main stairs where I’d be easy to follow, I banked right and ducked into the back stairwell at the end of the hall instead. Fuck Law. If he’d even looked at me this morning like he didn’t hate my guts, maybe I’d’ve stuck around to listen to him. I just wasn’t here to get abused by his raging dickholery.

The stairs dumped me out around the side of the building near a row of bike racks
I didn’t even look back to see if Law was following me. He probably wasn’t. Then again, he’d been phone-stalking me like a creepy ex for like two weeks, so maybe he was. I kept on jog-walking until I wasn’t anywhere near the business center anymore, and ducked into the library. It didn’t hit me until I was actually inside that the last time I’d been here had practically scarred me for fucking life with a giant weird goddamn magic frog, and even now I got a little creepy thrill down my spine. That day had changed my entire life; forgetting it was probably out of the question.

I walked towards the back of the library, between a row of bookshelves and the couple computer tables under the windows, and dropped into a chair near the end of the row. Good vantage point to spot Law, who was probably not even following me anymore, if he’d ever been.

Jesus. I couldn’t believe I was hiding from Law. I should have told him to fuck off, should’ve just heard him out so I could shut him down for good. I’d spent a lot of time taking his shit, years of it, because he was somehow Martin’s friend and it hadn’t seemed worth it to get into it with him when avoiding him worked almost as well. But if I could learn magic and fight aliens and maybe turn gay for aliens, I sure as hell could tell Law to shut his stupid face once in a while. That took a lot less guts than some of the shit I’d been doing recently.

The air conditioning in the library was up too high, and I yanked my rolled-up sweatshirt sleeves down my arms and huddled back into the task chair. Sure, I could leave, but I had nowhere to really go. Even if I’d decided not to avoid Law anymore, I didn’t have a class now and there was a second person I was avoiding back in my apartment. There was a more legitimate reason for that. Couldn’t solve that problem by telling Keyd or my own stupid feelings to back off.

It was another few minutes before I decided freezing my ass off in here wasn’t my favorite option, and left. I took a long roundabout path back to the underground lot, and while I was trudging past the art building I suddenly remembered I’d left all my camera film in my car on Monday. I’d never taken it out—it was still in the trunk.

That’d be something to do. And I did really want to see how that shoot had come out.

#

The darkroom in the art building was kinda like an afterthought; it’d probably been a janitor closet in a previous life. But it had counters and a sink and no windows, and that was good enough. It’d been retrofit with soft rubber molding under the door to keep out any extra light, and a couple red lamps on the counters, string tacked across the walls to hang drying negatives on. Supplies were kept in locked cabinets, pretty much anything we needed. We’d all done the intro classes so we didn’t get any in-class time for this; by this point professors expected us to just get the developing done ourselves in our own time and show up to class with processed film.

Professor Kowalski kept her set of the keys to the room and everything in it inside a little jar in one of the studio office rooms, so anybody could go and grab them and let themselves into the darkroom whenever. The studio rooms themselves got locked up at nights, but in the middle of the morning, everything was open. No art professors did classes this early, so the studio room itself was empty. But the keys weren’t in the jar, so somebody else was using the darkroom.

I knocked on the door first, just to warn anybody if they had undeveloped film out that’d get ruined. “Hey,” I said to the dull blue-painted metal. “Anybody in there?”

A muffled sound that sounded a lot like s’all good came back to me, so I pushed the door open. Eric and another guy in our class—Trevor or something, frankly I don’t think I’d ever talked to the guy before—were both in here. The regular lights were on and there were two developing tanks getting a wash in the sink. Eric looked like he hadn’t started doing much of anything yet, just had a clutter of chemicals and bottles and undeveloped canisters of film on the counter near him. Their bags were piled together in the corner behind the door. Good to know I wasn’t the only one who’d been slacking off on this project.

“‘sup,” Eric said to me. “It’s a last-minute party all up in here. You got a lot to do?”

“Just two rolls,” I said, slinging my bag off my shoulder. It’d be a hassle with all three of us in here—the room was about five by six feet with the counters—but I wanted to get this done. Possibly-Trevor gave me a chin-nod as a hello; he probably didn’t know my name either. I was just gonna go with calling him Trevor. He was a gawky little guy with a flop of brown hair and a beaky nose. And by little I meant the top of his head came up to my eyebrows, but that seemed little these days. Eric was decently taller than me, which was actually comforting in the weirdest way.

Eric and I had to bumble around each other in the space, and Trevor kept hanging around for some damn reason and taking up room. His negatives were done now and hanging off a cord, dripping into the plastic pans underneath. He was half-heartedly squeegeeing at them with tongs, but he was mostly chatting with Eric. I couldn’t really see what his shots were of—they looked blocky and geometric in big sweeps of black and negative space. Maybe some kind of architecture.

I just got settled in to work on my own shit. I’d always liked this part of the whole photography thing; the weird process of creating a picture out of what had just been lenses taking in light at different speeds. I wasn’t a super science guy, but I’d been into all that techy stuff in high school and getting into photography hadn’t really been too much of a reach from there. And developing film might’ve seemed like kind of a real boring repetitive process, but I’d always liked that too. It just kind of got me relaxed and in a zone. Kinda like the meditation Rysa’d taught me to do, actually.

Once I got into the focus of it, and Eric and Trevor faded out into background and I didn’t even notice them goofing around behind me. I only paid attention to the timer so I could shake the developer around on the film tank at the right time, every thirty seconds. This was the part that was really rhythmic and continuous, a timed pattern. Shake for ten seconds. Stop, wait. Shake for ten seconds. Repeat. Just over six minutes of that, over and over.

Then, stop bath. Run water over everything. Then fixer. Run water over everything. Rinse for a couple minutes. Then do the whole thing over again with my second film roll. Eric was finally doing one of his rolls too, and we stood shoulder to shoulder at the dual sink and kind of fighting over the space a little. But I was only really aware of him when his arm smacked into mine or he elbowed me in the side.

Fifteen minutes later I had two developed rolls of film to hang up on the strings via clothespins, long twisting grey sheets of tiny reversed images. I’d cut them up in manageable strips soon, but first I just wanted to look at them.

The first few negatives after the test shots were the ones of Rysa’s hands, and unexpected relief soaked through me. A part of me had wondered if the marks would even show up on camera. They were some kind of magic, after all. But there they were, the splintered patterns on Rysa’s skin turning solid white in the negatives, her hands a murky grey-black. A few of the early frames were overexposed, but then I’d got the settings right and everything started looking pretty good.

They were decent shots. Not stunning or even all that original, but decent. The focal point was obviously the tattoos, which people would probably assume I’d drawn on them, but that wasn’t against the project guidelines. I’d just have to make up some bullshit about what they meant for the presentation, and that was usually the worst part. The deeper meaning stuff. It couldn’t just be a nice-looking picture, it had to have the secrets of the damn universe in it.

One of these shots I didn’t even remember taking. Maybe I’d done it accidentally. But it was my favorite one. Rysa had just one hand held out towards the camera, palm flat like she was trying to block her face from a paparazzi. Out of focus in the background her head turned to the left, her hair swinging like it was in motion and her mouth partly open, almost smiling. It was natural but strange, half a pose and half a reaction. Like she was distracted, saying something...talking to someone. Oh. These were the shots I’d been doing when Keyd’d showed up.

Which was why the next frames in the roll pulled way back to a broad focus. Suddenly he was just there. The wing marks on his back were intense, stark white clawed over the hazy black of his skin. Even in the tiny negative images his body looked insanely good. But maybe that was just me actually remembering the shoot. Weird nostalgic heat curled up through my gut, and I sucked in a steadying breath and ground my knuckles against the edge of the counter.

You should’ve figured this out way back then, Alan, you fucking moron. Straight guys didn’t get all worked up from getting up close and personal with a hot almost-naked really fit guy. Or actually kinda enjoy having a wet dream about said guy. Or almost ask that guy if he had a boyfriend. Or not mind holding his hands. Or not really mind getting semi-kissed by him. Jesus, how many clues did I need?

Eric made a sudden whistling sound. “Nice, man. How’d you convince a chick to do that?”

“What?” There was one negative where just a tiny part of Keyd’s face had gotten into frame. Mostly his chin and part of his mouth. Everything seemed a little blurry, like he might have moved right when I’d taken the shot. Had I taken any in-focus shots of their faces? Something like that would be nice to have, when they eventually beamed back to their home planet or...wherever. Just to remember them.

“You got a girl to do nudes for you! That is baller, what’d you have to do? And is she single?”

“I just asked,” I said, finally looking up. Eric was staring at one of the negative strips that was just Rysa, full shots of her back that cropped at her waist. Really staring hard, like if he did it long enough the images would turn around and flash him some boob.

“Yeah right. If that actually worked…” Eric sighed kind of wistfully, and now Trevor was trying to edge over to get a look. Maybe I shoulda fucking waited until these doofuses were gone before developing these photos. They were just a little too personal.

“Got a smooth fuckin’ operator over here,” Eric said to Trevor, and slapped me in the shoulder with the heel of his hand.

Okay, yeah. Now I was really done. I started to unclip the negative strips from the cord. They were still wet, but I didn’t care.

“Hey, dude, you’re gonna ruin them,” Eric practically whined, like it was the worst thing he could think of. He reached for the cord near him and pulled one of the strips down, the one with just Rysa, and held it out and away from me.

“Hey,” I said, and held out my hand. “Here.”

Eric didn’t hand it to me. He just kept holding it up and staring at it. Was he fucking serious.

“All right. Enough, okay?” I went to grab for the strip. Eric tried to jerk it away before I could, but he was slow and not real graceful about it, so I grabbed for where his hand was going to be and not where it was. His wrist slapped right against my palm and I closed my fingers on him. Twisted—not hard, but enough. Eric grunted in surprise, and his fingers splayed open and dropped the negative stip. It splatted to the concrete floor and curled up a little.

I bent down to scoop it up, feeling Eric’s eyes on me. “She your girlfriend or something?” he said. He was rubbing his wrist and frowning.

“Jesus, does she have to be? Just fucking stop.” I stuffed the wet strip into my bag. I didn’t care if it got ruined. The shots looked like they’d come out pretty decent from the negatives, and I might’ve gotten a pretty good critique and grade on them…but I wasn’t gonna turn them in. Nobody else was going to see them, ever.

“Dude—” Eric said plaintively, like he was maybe a little sorry, but now I didn’t care. The little room was too stuffy and cramped and hot anger flushed over my skin and I just wanted out of here. I yanked the other negative strip down off the cords, shoved it into my bag with the other one.

There wasn’t any undeveloped film in here now, so I didn’t ruin anybody’s anything by shoving out the door and blasting bright light into the room. I heard Trevor say something like, “the fuck’s his problem?” before the door shut again. Man, I wished it was just one problem. I stormed out of the art building and headed for the first bench I saw, at the edge of one of the concrete paths that criss-crossed through a wide strip of lawn between buildings.

All the morning fog had burned off by now, but the sky was a flat non-color somewhere between grey and faded white-blue, and it hadn’t warmed up much. Wind whisked low across the lawn and trees rustled and swayed. I plopped myself down on the bench, and fished the negative strips back out from my bag.

Yep. They were bent and stained and’d picked up crumbs and lint and shit from my bag and were all around fucked up. No way they’d come out as good prints. Even if I’d wanted to do that, which I...didn’t. Kinda. They were still all I had to turn in. Maybe I’d overreacted in the stupid darkroom.

But if I hadn’t liked two people looking at these pictures, there was no way showing them off to a whole classroom would work. It was fucking stupid, getting all protective over a couple of warrior aliens—pictures of warrior aliens—but I couldn’t help it. I still shouldn’t’ve ruined them.

I knocked my forehead against my fists and breathed, letting the ruined negatives flop into my lap. The weak sun warmed up the back of my neck, and the wind rippled against my sweatshirt. Oh yeah, this was winter. The negatives flapped and tangled around each other, and I grabbed them up in my fist and held them still.

Shit. This project was really worth a lot, some stupid large percentage of my grade, and I had nothing for it now. Just negatives I couldn’t—wouldn’t—use. I had no other ideas and no time to get one done even if I did. Even if I pulled myself together for the rest of the semester, this might kill the class for me. If I didn’t end up in school for an extra semester, or fucking summer school, just to graduate it was gonna be a miracle.

But...then what? I’d graduate with a fucking BA in art and do what? I wasn’t gonna be an artist or a photographer; I wasn’t good enough and I didn’t have enough passion to make up for lack of talent. After graduation I’d probably stumble back into the kind of retail jobs that I’d always had during the summers, since that was all I knew how to do. Maybe, if I was lucky, some kind of office job.

And then fucking what? Be a desk jockey until I retired? Do adult shit like buying a house? Get... married, or something? None of that sounded like anything I wanted, ever. I’d never even had a girlfriend longer than about six months, or a job longer than the summer. I didn’t know how to do anything real. I had no fucking plans. Everything beyond next May, past the graduation I might not even make it to, was a goddamn void. And staring at these negatives scattered in my lap was like looking right in the face of the unimaginable pointless future I didn’t really have. What...what the fuck was I doing?

I was seriously too young for a quarter-life crisis like this. Didn’t most people wait until they were out of college? Most people didn’t have aliens plowing through their lives in the middle of senior year, either. There were other worlds and people and cultures and shit out there, fighting wars and fuck knew what else, and my biggest problem was how to graduate. It was such a stupid tiny issue. Meaningless.

Keyd and Rysa had all these responsibilities piled on them, fighting in this important war for their people and shouldering the protection of other worlds and they couldn’t be much older than me. What did they even see when they looked at me? They were making some kind of difference, or trying their hardest to, and what the fuck had I ever done?

This was just depressing. All because I’d developed some film, now my whole life felt out of control, and even I knew that was ridiculous. Things would have to be okay, obviously my life wasn’t gonna fall apart, and if I had to do summer school that wasn’t the worst thing that could happen and maybe I’d find a decent job afterwards. I could keep telling myself that and probably believe it, eventually.

This whole time I’d been absently watching people walking back and forth across the lawn, heading to classes or talking to each other, and as I sighed and leaned back on the bench I noticed someone coming up the path to my left. Even from the corner of my eye, I saw the flash of pale hair in the weak morning light.

I startled, scrambling backwards out of pure adrenaline instinct, even as a part of me started to screech at me, don’t overreact, you’ve done this before, not every blond person is a bad-news alien!

Except...except it was this time. Tall, ice-blond, dressed like a Gap commercial, striding right towards me. Ahieel. Not just some other coincidental blond guy. My brain overloaded with so many reactions I should have—most of which were run, run— that I couldn’t follow any of them fast enough. Completely shorted out.

Then it was too late, and there was nowhere to go and Ahieel was there. Shit, shit. I was trapped on the bench, he was too close. The last time I’d seen this guy, I’d trashed him pretty bad, and that must’ve pissed him off. I’d barely known what I was doing then, and I sorta knew better now, but I wasn’t about to start throwing magic in the middle of campus.

Ahieel did that thing, that polite but totally firm stance that looked like he wouldn’t move for anything. His hands clasped behind his back, chin tilted up, right in front of me. I wouldn't even be able to stand up without smacking into him, and so all I could do was sit there, trapped and pressed back into the bench like a cornered animal, staring up at him.

I did notice that he looked...tired. Kind of stretched and run down the way everybody around campus looked around finals. But he was still totally coming off as two hundred percent intimidating, and I wasn’t gonna underestimate him for a second.

“Alan,” he said, and it definitely didn’t sound as polite as any of the other times he’d talked to me. Guess actively attacking the guy would do that.

“Yeah, what,” I said through my teeth. How the fuck had he found me, again? Just like the last time, when he’d dropped out of fucking nowhere on me and Keyd. Except I hadn’t even gotten a spidey sense warning this time, since I’d been too busy feeling sorry for myself.

“You’re going to do something for me,” Ahieel said, and then spun sharp on one heel and slithered down next to me on the bench. Right next to me. Holy shit I didn’t like being this close to him. It was worse than being loomed over. I could smell something like ozone around him, and a faint static charge lifted my hair up and dragging it towards him. His own hair was messy and smeared across his forehead. I didn’t want him to even touch me.

“Do what?” I said. The negative strips were still draped over my lap and I really didn’t want him getting a look at those. But his light green eyes were locked right on mine, pale and almost translucent in the watery sunlight. Not much else was gonna get his attention.

Ahieel leaned in towards me, and I bowed backwards automatically. I didn’t have a lot of space to go—my bag was between me and the metal arm of the bench and all I could do was crush up against it. My heart was slamming around and I hated how scared this guy still made me, even if I’d sort of come out on top last time. There was something so unstable about him, a predatory determination that didn’t feel like it could be reasoned with or talked down. He was gonna get what he wanted, one way or another.

And what he wanted was— “You’ll bring her to me. Alone. Tonight at sundown.”

Well, that was pretty cliché of him. “Where?”

“Back to where you found her,” Ahieel said. Like Rysa was some kind of lost puppy.

“The fucking cemetery?” I said, and he nodded once. Why there? Why not the mirrored buildings he thought made him stronger, or why not just show up at my apartment and take us all off guard? Why stalk me to school, why give me instructions?

And he wasn’t even done. “You won’t bring Keydestas.” Ahieel’s voice got lower, way more threatening, that customer service attitude just vaporizing. “Or even tell him of this. Her, only.”

“I—” I said, and had no response. Not tell Keyd, who was basically attached to Rysa at the hip? There was almost no way to just casually take Rysa on a drive to the cemetery without Keyd finding out. It was fucking laughable that Ahieel thought I could keep Keyd from doing anything, either.

“If you refuse to bring her, or if you inform Keydestas, I know where to find you.” Ahieel oozed himself even more into my space, and then suddenly pulled back. “This game has been going on for far too long. It needs to end tonight.”

This hardly seemed like a goddamn game, but what else could I do? I nodded. The plastic edges of the negative strips dug into my palms and fingers as I clutched at them, and cold prickly sweat was rolling down just about every inch of my skin.

“Good.” Ahieel pitched himself to his feet, brushed off the front of those chinos he was wearing. I almost expected him to offer me his hand, like we’d had some kind of shady business meeting. The whole thing had lasted less than a minute. “Sundown. You’ll be able to find me.”

Then Ahieel just...walked away. Strolled down the path like it was perfectly normal for him to be walking around the campus. A girl passing by even checked him out, just a quick appreciative once-over. Well, god, he didn’t look any older than the students around here. And it wasn’t like he was unattractive. But it gave me a chill to see someone react to him so normally, someone who didn’t know what he really was. And it made it hit home that he’d really just been here, talking to me, because it’d happened so fast and out of nowhere I could almost believe I’d made it up.

The second he was out of sight around the science building, I was on my feet and moving, crunching the negative strips down into my bag as I went. My legs were already taking me straight towards the underground parking garage on some kind of reflex, and I was halfway there before I forced myself to slow down, stop, take a long breath and think.

Going right back to my place might not be the best idea. Ahieel had said he knew where I lived, but...what if he didn’t actually know, and was just gonna follow me home if I ran straight there? This could be a trap I was falling right into. I had to be smart about this; smarter than I’d been handling it up til now.

But Ahieel did keep finding me everywhere, that couldn’t be random, and I didn’t even have any of his energy left in me that he could feel if he was nearby, like Rysa’d said might’ve led him to me the first time in the plaza. So if he could do that, find me here...he could do that at my apartment too.

But if he did know where I lived, why didn’t he just show up there and barge in on us? That’d be a lot more productive than doing this. It still felt like a game, like he was just trying to fuck with me, with all of us, even though he’d said he wanted this all to be over. This whole weird personal vendetta he and Rysa and Keyd all had against each other didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, not in the way any of them handled it.

I probably stayed within view of the underground parking lot for twenty minutes, pacing around uselessly and cycling the same thoughts and options around and around in my head until none of it sounded good or sane or safe.

Christ, I was just gonna have to risk it, and go back to my apartment. And soon, because Ahieel had given me about a six hour deadline. Pretty sure he was serious about it, and we’d need time to figure out how to handle this.

#

I burst in through the door of my place, managing to drop my keys and send them clashing across the kitchen floor, tossing my bag towards the windows and just yelling into the apartment, “Rysa! Rysa!”

Out of fucking nowhere, Keyd popped up in front of me. I didn't even see where he’d come from. I startled back from him, suddenly and unfortunately remembering that I’d jacked off to him in the shower and I’d spent this entire day avoiding him and now he was here, right fucking here, not even a foot away, and we might be alone.

“Where’s Rysa?” I blurted out, craning to look around him and avoid his eyes. Jesus, where was she?

“Not here.” Keyd moved closer, then back again, sort of weaving around like he wasn’t sure what to do. “What’s wrong?”

No, an immature part of me bleated. Not you, go away. Not ready yet.

But Ahieel was more goddamn important than how squiggly and hot Keyd made me feel, and I had to get over it like an adult.

“Ahieel fucking found me again,” I said, and Keyd hissed in a breath. His hands landed on my shoulders, hot through my shirt, and he steered me over into the kitchen. I just let him do it, partly because I didn’t want him to stop touching me and partly because if I did shrug him off it’d be extra weird. I’d never had a problem with him touching me before and I couldn’t start now. Also, like a traitor, part of me wanted to be touched.

Keyd kicked a chair out for me in a surprisingly graceful move and lowered me down in it. That was when I realized I was still panting hard and shaking a little, and no wonder Keyd thought I needed to sit down. I raked my hands through my hair and rested my elbows on the table, staring down at the dark wood and taking a couple slow breaths. Being so obviously rattled was...embarrassing.

A water bottle set down carefully in front of me. I lifted my head, startled, then glanced at Keyd. He was standing close, hovering and watching me like a concerned parent. Did he just…? Well, he’d seen me get water bottles out of the fridge enough, it wasn’t that weird. Still. Unexpected, and stupidly thoughtful.

“...thanks,” I said, twisting the top off and gulping about a third of the water down as Keyd pushed the other chair out with his foot and sank into it, never taking his eyes off me.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. He just...showed up again. Like every time he’s done this. But he didn’t do anything. He just talked to me.”

Keyd’s eyes had narrowed into pale blue slits, and he leaned onto the table and closer into my space. “What did he want?”

I took another long swig of water before I answered. “For me to take Rysa to him. Tonight. And...not to bring you or tell you about it.”

Keyd pressed his lips together. “Of course,” he muttered after a few seconds. Then, “but you did tell me.”

I’d almost hoped he’d skip over that part. “I’ve made some stupid fucking mistakes about all this, and I’m trying not to do that again,” I said. “I didn’t know what was gonna be the mistake this time—telling you or not telling you. But it just feels better this way.”

Keyd’s mouth pulled halfway into an almost-smile. “I’m glad,” he said, and that almost made me smile too. It was true. Telling him had smoothed out some of my panic about Ahieel stalking me home or just showing at up at any time, and sitting here with Keyd felt safe. I really did trust him to look out for me, and I wasn’t completely helpless on my own either. This would be okay. We’d figure out what to do.

Keyd closed his eyes, a tiny crease pushing in between his eyebrows, then looked at me again. “Rysa’s returning now,” he said. Right, their mind-link thing. If they couldn’t send words, just images or feelings or whatever, I wondered how he’d get a specific message through to her like ‘come back’. Maybe just picturing Ahieel would do it.

“If she was out looking for him already, I’m gonna fucking laugh,” I said, and Keyd just kept looking at me, a slight lift to his eyebrows. He didn’t even have to say anything. “Why weren’t you with her?”

“Looking for is different from engaging with,” Keyd said. He hesitated, then said, “also you left without the tracking spell.”

Oh. Fuck. Right. “I’m sorry.” I wasn’t, not really. That thing was a little invasive,
especially when you had a desperate smouldering crush on the person at the other end. But I did feel a little bad if I’d worried him. “I had class, I didn’t think about it.”

Keyd made a huffing sound. “I suppose it’s fortunate. If I had seen Ahieel approaching you…” He left it at that, but I could imagine just from the tone in his voice. I honestly believed he would’ve come straight to me, fuck everything else. That was hot and terrifying at the same time.

“Where did he want you to bring her?” he asked, and I didn’t mind the topic switch.

“Of all places, the cemetery,” I said, and saw something that looked like confusion flicker across his eyes. “Don’t ask me, man. That’s what he said.”

“Perhaps...he thinks it’s fitting,” Keyd said. “If he plans on taking her from your world, then it’s best done in the place where we all came through into it.”

“That’s what he wants to do? Take her out of here?”

Keyd nodded once. “Yes, he—”

A soft scuffle on the patio, and then the sliding glass door pulled aside and Rysa blew in through the curtains, wings collapsing down into her back as she did. Keyd got on his feet in an instant, shot right across the room to her. It looked like he gave her an entire rundown in about ten seconds of fast muttering in their language, because she looked pissed when he was done.

I’d gotten up, moved closer to them as Keyd was talking, and now I said, “so...what’s the plan, here?” Which got them both turning to me.

“You’ll take me there,” Rysa said. “Like he said.”

“What?” I looked at Keyd, waiting for him to object to that, but he didn’t. It was like they’d already agreed without her even saying a word. “Are you serious?”

“Of course,” she said. “I’m sure he promised to do something to you directly if you didn’t.”

“Kinda, yeah,” I said. I know where to find you was fairly threatening. “But, this is probably a set up. I mean, obviously, right? He tells me not to bring Keyd or tell either of you...he knows I’m going to. He’s not stupid.”

Rysa nodded. “It’s very likely a trap. But then we can go in expecting that.”

“So who exactly is getting the upper hand with this? You know it’s a trap, but he probably knows that you’ll know it’s a trap, and you know he knows that—fuck it, you get what I mean!”

“What’s the other choice?” Keyd said unexpectedly. “You take Rysa there alone as he asks, and I stay here?”

That sounded really stupid when put like that.

“Obviously not, no,” I said. “If you guys think this’s...you know, the thing to do, then—we’ll do it.”

Rysa looked directly at Keyd. “Are you strong enough to fight?” It wasn’t a challenge or doubting him. Just asking for him to give an honest answer.

Keyd sucked a slow breath through his nose. “My bejji is restored,” he said, which must’ve been some kind of yes. Right, Jesus, his magic chest-dog thing had exploded or died a while back. I hadn’t seen it since, but that it was restored had to be a good thing.

“You don’t have to do this,” Rysa said to him. What? I’d known the guy for two weeks and I knew there was no way he’d sit out on this. Why would she even say that?

“Yes, I do,” Keyd replied. “I always do. Aion.” He reached out and touched her hand. “Ybia.”

Rysa shut her eyes, gave him a faint smile, and slid her hand out from his. “I know.”
Neither of them did anything for a few seconds, just stared meaningfully at each other while I felt like the biggest third wheel ever. Then Rysa turned around, and went back out through the patio door. What—where was she going? I started after her automatically, but a hand caught my arm and held me back.

“Let her,” Keyd said close to my ear, and his fingers stayed wrapped around my wrist for a couple long, long seconds and I remembered all the reasons I didn’t want to be alone with him right now. His hand trailed off me, but it didn’t make anything better. I was so fucking aware of him; his breathing, any tiny move he made, the constant warmth that just filled the air around him. My heart slammed around between my throat and my chest and I seriously couldn’t look at him.

“Is this even necessary?” I said instead. “Couldn’t we do something else that doesn’t involve just bowing down to this asshole?”

Keyd moved away from my back, and then I heard the sound of a kitchen chair getting sat on. Even though both he and Rysa were experts at moving quietly, they couldn’t shut creaky furniture up. I had a feeling he wanted me to come sit down, because when I risked a glance around he was looking at me, waiting. So I did. In the furthest chair away from him possible.

“There is...something else to discuss about Ahieel,” Keyd said slowly. “Why things are this way. But, not without Rysa here.”

“Something else you guys didn’t tell me?” I probably should have expected that, especially since I’d never felt like I was getting the whole story about all this. Even though Keyd’d told me he’d answer anything I asked him...but I probably didn’t know all the right questions. “Really?”

Keyd sighed. “It’s nothing that would ever put you at risk. I promise that.”

And I, like a super sucker with a huge crush, believed him. “Still,” I said. “Come on. You said you weren’t gonna do that.”

“I know.” He did at least sound a little sorry.

“And you really won’t say without Rysa here?”

He shook his head. “It’s for her to tell.”

They seriously respected each other’s privacy, that was for fucking sure. It was impressive and frustrating.

“Are you really okay to do this?” I asked, instead of pushing at him more. I wouldn’t get anywhere with that.

“No worse than Ahieel is,” Keyd said.

He had a point. Ahieel hadn’t looked great earlier; it seemed pretty stupid of him to pick a fight right now. But Keyd hadn’t come out of the last fight doing that well either, and even if his bejji was back...he seemed like the kind of guy who’d push through anything to do what needed to get done, even if he wasn’t ready or even strong enough. Part of that was admirable and part of it was fucking crazy. It was a good way to get killed.

Suddenly I just couldn’t be in the room with him anymore. Not alone, not thinking about all of this.

“I’m gonna go take a shower,” I said, shoving back from the table. Keyd didn’t say a word, but I felt his eyes on me as I walked out of the room.

#

I didn’t think about Keyd at all while I was showering.

Well, I did, but not like that. I spent the whole time imagining all the ways that everything could go completely fucking bad tonight.

Both Keyd and Rysa were gonna end up in some kind of fight with Ahieel no matter what. The last two times they’d dealt with this guy, Keyd had come away from it injured. What if he got really hurt this time; what if he died. That didn’t seem like a crazy thought. It was a real fucking possibility. And even thinking about it made me anxious and upset and like I was gonna choke on every mouthful of air. I mean, I had a crush on the guy, but this was a really intense reaction. But he and Rysa were intense people—everything with them was bigger, bolder, and scarier.

The face that looked back at me from the steamy mirror was tired and worn out. I might’ve even lost weight, and I definitely needed a shave. My hair was starting to dry funny and I combed my fingers through it, trying to get the cowlicks down. There was nothing real special about this face. But it was what Keyd saw; this stupid kid who’d never dealt with anything near as serious as what he and Rysa handled constantly. I wouldn’t even take me seriously. I’d never been in a war. I’d barely ever been in a fistfight.

I took off my glasses, rubbed the smudges off them while I let the water run warm in the sink. Least I could do was not look like a scruffy bum. I did a quick shave and felt a little better. But I still looked tired, still looked like a kid, still didn’t look like anybody special or worth listening to.

I went back out into the living room. No sign of Rysa, and Keyd was sitting on the couch. Not doing much of anything, just leaning over his knees and staring at his clasped hands. Thin bars of light were falling through the pulled blinds, falling in stripes over his legs and shoulder. I could’ve picked that sharp profile out of any damn crowd at this point, but I’d never really noticed the details of his face before. I had to fucking admit it—he had one I wouldn't mind spending a lot of time looking at. His eyelashes were thick but short, there was a tiny indent in the flat plane of his forehead and a pale nick of a scar just under his ear that the fall of his hair almost covered. There was absolutely no hint of a beard or stubble growing in on his face, and with that black hair he had he should’ve been scruffy by like...noon. But I’d never seen him shave, ever. The tattoo was on the other side of his face and I couldn’t see any of it from where I was standing by the couch arm, and that was disappointing.

He still hadn’t noticed me, or maybe he had and it didn’t matter to him He’d left a little gap hanging open between his lips and was breathing out through his mouth, in through his nose. Real rhythmic, controlled. Did he always breathe like that, or was he meditating? I was gonna interrupt him either way.

“Keyd?” My voice came out sounding hesitant and kind of nervous. That was no good at all. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hey, Keyd.” Better.

He glanced at me without moving his head, so it was just those crazy blue eyes looking up at me from under his dark eyebrows and oh goddamn it, took me right off guard. Heat went right through my stomach and settled against the base of my spine. I dug my nails into my palms and tried to think about things like upcoming battles and mean blond guys and not how much I wanted to swing a leg over Keyd’s lap and grind on him like a teenager in the backseat of a car.

“I think—“ No, no, Jesus, Alan, you’re already fucking it up. Try again. “We really need to talk.”

Keyd just kept watching me. He seemed more closed off than before, like he’d retreated back behind that neutral mask he liked so much. He didn’t say yes but he didn’t say no, so I moved around and sat myself on the coffee table. Our knees slotted in between each other’s, because there wasn’t a hell of a lot of room between the table and the couch. I’d thought it was going to be better than sitting right next to him, but it wasn’t. It was too close and weird.

“So,” I said, because I’d started this already and couldn’t back down now. “Look, I...“

...I had no idea what I was going to say. I’d had an idea before but now it was just...nothing. Feelings I couldn’t put into words and maybe shouldn’t. Ahieel showing up as a big fucking problem again put the whole crush issue on a backburner, but I couldn’t shove it totally aside when Keyd was around. When he wasn’t right in fucking front of my face it was easier to forget what this felt like. He had an effect on me, and since I couldn’t really stop it, I had to ignore it. But I wasn’t good at it yet.

“Look, I know you guys are...just, with this fucking fight that’s gonna happen, I want you to....be okay,” Just jump right into it, just get the words out. “I mean, just take care of yourself. Yourselves. I mean—Jesus—“ This was coming out all wrong, embarrassing and desperate and so fucking obvious. Good thing Keyd was bad at everything involving communication. “I know I’ve fucked up with this before, but I don’t want to see you guys get hurt or anything. I really don’t.”

“Rysa and I can take care of this,” Keyd said, without looking at me.

“Yeah, like you’ve really taken care of it the other times,” I said, which was a shitty thing to say because one of those times had been my fault.

His eyes snapped up to me then, and held. We were both leaning forward over our knees, and since I was sitting on the table it put me about at his same height—we were pretty fucking close to each other. My knuckles were touching a leg that wasn’t mine. I could feel the heat just baking off his whole body, and I had to lean away because all I wanted to do was get closer to it.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” I said, scrubbing at my face with the heel of my hand. “I didn’t mean—just be careful, okay? Don’t get yourself hurt.”

“Does it really matter to you?” His voice had gone real low and kind of weird. His eyes were still locked on me, and I couldn’t look away.

“Yes, it fucking matters,” I said. “You matter, okay? You just...you do.”

Keyd just kept on looking at me, and the hot frantic pounding in my chest just got worse and worse, exciting and terrifying. I couldn’t remember ever being like this around another person. And then the question was... why not?

“So do you,” Keyd said. This was just getting fucking unbearable. The way Keyd was talking to me, low and serious and so engaged, like I was the only thing that mattered right in this second. But I knew it was basically his job to watch out for dumbasses like me on planets that weren’t prepared for a bunch of alien bullshit, and maybe we were also sort of friends except it was hard to tell.

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Reality’d popped back in and reminded me that Keyd likely had no damn interest in me other than part of his and Rysa’s alien crusade or whatever it was. “Just, seriously. Don’t get yourself killed throwing yourself between Rysa and Ahieel. Pretty sure she wouldn’t want that.” And Ahieel had always trounced Keyd much harder than he ever had Rysa. He wanted Rysa in one piece, more or less. Keyd, he seemed to consider better off dead.

That got Keyd pulling back; leaning away and sucking in a breath, dragging his hands along his legs towards his hips. I couldn’t help but watch that and get a little hot around the ears, dry in the mouth. Fuck, really?

“I would rather do that than nothing at all.” His voice had gone clipped. Not brushing me off, but suddenly I’d lost a handle on the conversation, we’d fallen off the same page and there was no more of that intense eye contact or rushing pulsing heat of being too close together. When I looked at how close my knee was to his, I moved it away again, discomfort prickling in my gut. Shit. Reading everything wrong, again. He was an alien, I needed to remember that. There was no way to ever be on the same page because we had different fucking books.

“Okay.” I’d said my thing and now I was done. I got to my feet, and Keyd shifted automatically out of the way to let me shuffle out from between the table and couch. Still, I couldn’t help saying, “I meant what I said.”

Keyd gave me a careful look instead of an answer, silent and almost puzzled, like despite me repeating myself five hundred fucking times he still didn’t know what I was telling him. That he couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that I was worried for him, and for Rysa. They were soldiers, maybe nobody ever worried about them. This was their job, and maybe acting like they couldn’t handle it was more insulting than anything. But I’d just wanted him to know, somehow, that I cared about him. About both of them.

#

I spent the rest of the afternoon wondering if I really had insulted Keyd and if I should apologize, and then deciding it would be better if I just didn’t talk to him at all. I’d just end up saying more stupid shit, making it worse. I stayed in my room with the door shut, and only poked my head out when I heard Rysa’s voice again out in the living room. But then I thought I should just leave her and Keyd alone, and slunk back inside.

When the sun started to disappear behind the roofs of the nearby apartments, Rysa and Keyd showed up at my bedroom door so they could get their armor. God, another reason this plan of Ahieel’s didn’t make sense—he’d given them warning and they had time to get suited up. Both of the other fights, they hadn’t had time or opportunity to wear their armor. Ahieel’d never been wearing any either, but I had to assume he had some. He was a soldier too.

With every piece of deep black metal that Keyd and Rysa fit and strapped on to themselves or each other, I got more and more restless and nervous. Fuck, this was really happening. I keep wiping my sweaty hands off on my jeans as I sat on my bed and watched them put it all on. I’d thought before that the armor looked so cool and badass, and I’d forgotten it had a purpose.

“It’s almost sundown,” Rysa said as she adjusted her sword at her side.

“Yeah. We should probably get going,” I said. The cemetery was a pretty good drive from here, and it was a weekday. There could be traffic. We could fly there, I guess, but I wasn't sure if Rysa knew how to get there and Keyd definitely couldn’t lead us if we were even gonna pretend I’d followed Ahieel’s instructions. And I still hated the flying thing. So I said, “my car?”

Rysa nodded, and I actually saw Keyd making a face.

“I’ll follow,” he said. “Even if Ahieel expects me, perhaps he shouldn’t see me at first.” Which was what I’d been thinking.

“All right,” Rysa said, and I accidentally caught Keyd’s eyes across the room. He almost looked apologetic, but I shook my head. He didn’t need to start this off with doing something he hated, and it made sense for him to hang back a little. I didn’t know if he got the message.

And then...it was really time to go. The three of us left my room and headed for the front door, the floor creaking a little under the combined weight of them in their armor. Rysa went out the door first, and as it was slowly swinging closed behind her I grabbed Keyd by the elbow. The only reason it stopped him was because he let it...but he did stop, and turn around.

“I was serious about before,” I said, watching the door drift almost fully shut behind his shoulder before I looked him right in the eyes. “Be fucking careful tonight.”

“Alan…” he said, almost a sigh, like my caring inconvenienced him, and reached to put his hand on my shoulder. I caught it before he could, just an instinct that happened, and pulled his arm down. That tugged him down too, bending him closer and bringing his face near me. I got a hand on his neck, above where the armor ended, on the muscle under his hot skin. I didn’t know what I was doing, I was just following an instinct. Something that seemed like it made sense, like I had to do it.

When Keyd let out a startled huff of air, I felt it on my mouth. Fuck, we were close together. My hand was sweating where it gripped his and I needed to do something before I lost my nerve or Keyd said anything, because he looked like he was going to and I couldn’t handle that. Words weren’t doing any goddamn good.

So I kissed him. That’s what I did. It wasn’t like we hadn’t done that before. Hell, he’d started it the last time. My mouth touched his and then stayed there, hooked on like a magnet. I felt him breathe in against me, sudden and sharp, but he didn’t move away.

What the fuck are you doing, said a voice I didn’t listen to, and my free hand touched the side of Keyd’s jaw and tipped him, just a little, so our noses didn’t squash together.

There wasn’t any tongue or sucking on lips or sloppy face-mashing. It was like the other times we’d stumbled weirdly into sort of kissing each other. Just...contact. Mouths, breathing, light pressure, warmth. But the first time hadn’t been a real kiss, and the second time I hadn’t known I even liked it. This was something different. Calm, relaxed, almost peaceful despite the flutters in my gut. Some strange little zen moment of stillness together, caught and connected. I didn’t want to ever stop.

This was the fucking insane option I hadn’t bothered to consider. Maybe I should have. Jesus. I hadn’t realized how nice it’d actually be. To let this happen instead of shoving it all back, avoiding it, trying to get over it, especially once I’d actually admitted what all this confusing shit I’d been going through meant. Maybe I’d just wanted a final test, to make sure I wasn’t kidding myself.

I wasn’t. Not with how this felt.

But it wasn’t just up to me. When I pulled away, Keyd had shut his eyes, and he swayed forward. Just the tiniest move, but I was sure I saw it happen. Then his eyes opened, and all I saw there was unreadable emotionless blue. His face showed just as much nothing. It wasn’t a good reaction to getting kissed. A heavy rock sunk into my stomach, crushing all the excited butterflies dead, and I knew it’d been a stupid fucking thing to do.

I would’ve said something right then, apologized, told him it was a mistake and I was sorry and I wouldn’t do it again, but Keyd didn’t give me a chance. He straightened up, took a step back, pulled himself smoothly out from under my hands.

“We should go,” he said, calm and cool like nothing had happened at all.

“Right,” I said. Big fight coming up. Probable trap. The important stuff. Keyd had the right idea shutting me down, beyond the fact that he just wasn’t as gay as I suddenly was. We were about to go get in a fight, what the fuck was I thinking?

I followed Keyd out the door and into the parking lot, suddenly sweating and nervous and sick to my stomach. Only a little of that was from the kiss.

Rysa was already by my car, waiting for us under the darkening sky.

“I was starting to wonder if you were coming,” she said, with a tiny quirk to her mouth. Not really a smile—fuck, who could smile right now—but the almost joke let me breathe again.

“I’m ready,” I said, maybe the biggest lie I’d ever told. Keyd stopped so close to me that his metal-covered arm was brushing against my shoulder.

“I’ll be right behind you,” he said, and then glanced at me. I looked away, gritting my teeth against the sorry, sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, that wanted to come out. I dug in my pocket for my keys as I felt a hard rush of air blow past me from Keyd’s wings, as he launched himself into the air.

“All right,” I said to Rysa. “Let’s do this.”

#

We drove to the cemetery in silence. The only thing I could think of to say to Rysa was the same stuff I’d told Keyd, which hadn’t impressed him, so I just kept my mouth shut. I almost wished I had a magic bond with them so I could just beam them my thoughts and it wouldn’t come off wrong or insulting.

We both knew Keyd was following along behind us, and I didn’t know about her, but it wasn’t comforting. I didn’t like any of this, that we were walking right into it like idiots, because it still felt like a trap.

We were there too soon. Pulling into the same parking lot that Martin and I’d shown up at two weeks ago, hours before my whole life had gone insane. Keyd was right—it did seem fitting in a weird fucking way. Despite fitting into my car even worse with the armor and a sword hanging off her, Rysa managed to climb out pretty gracefully. I didn’t see Keyd anywhere, but I had to assume he was nearby, tailing us but staying out of sight.

There was also no sign of Ahieel, and the faded pink sky had streaked with dark purple clouds and had started turning worn navy blue. Definitely sundown. He’d said we’d be able to find him, but all I saw was a scraggly lawn of headstones stretching up into the dark line of shadowed trees further back up the hill. Somewhere up there was the place me and the other guys had hauled a cooler to, where the crypt was that Keyd and Rysa had been trapped.

“We should head up there,” I said. “I’d bet that’s where he’ll be.”

Rysa stared up into the treeline, her face set. She’d pulled back her hair into a tight little bun at the back of her neck, and she looked fierce and ready to kick somebody’s ass. Good. I wanted to see that happen; at this point I wanted to see Ahieel go down almost as much as she and Keyd did. This guy didn’t fucking stop.

Keyd was still nowhere around as Rysa and I climbed up the hill together and shoved into the older overgrown part of the cemetery. He had to be here nearby, and so did Ahieel. But as Rysa and I crunched through dead leaves and pushed through scraggly bushes, we seemed like the only two people for miles. Trees blocked most of the sky, trapped us in shadow.

I was just starting to make out the hulking square shape of the crypt in the last of the light, when a surge of prickles washed over me, and I faltered in my steps. Rysa stopped in front of me at almost the same time, so I knew I wasn’t just being weird and imagining it.

“I feel something,” I said. An itch over my skin, a pressure in my spine that made me want to twist and run. Bad feelings all around.

“Yes,” Rysa said, and looked up into the sky. Looking for Ahieel, looking for Keyd, I wasn’t sure, but something else had caught my eye. On the ground a few steps away from me, a tiny white glint. As I looked, it started to move. Then more spots of white appeared, like little bright worms poking up through the dirt, twisting and knocking leaves and twigs aside as they burrowed out of the ground. Not just in one spot, but in patches all around us.

“Rysa...” I started, edging away from the nearest one, and then—

Light exploded all around us, silent bursts of silent white-gold blazing up from under our feet. Everywhere, blinding, covering the trees and ground and sky like the world had just been whited out and erased. Power hit me like the deep strum of a bass in my stomach, shaking down to my core and sending me stumbling, but it did something worse to Rysa. I heard her yelp in surprise, and then a clash of metal that sounded like she’d collapsed.

“Rysa!” I shouted, but my voice came out a distorted buzz, echoing and barely human. My teeth practically rattled in my skull and my stomach rolled dangerously, like I was gonna throw up. Shit.

I swallowed the feeling down, stumbling around in the dizzying blinding light until I nearly fell over Rysa, who’d gone down to her hands and knees but was trying to climb back to her feet. Me tripping on her didn’t help either of us.

“What the fuck is this?” I shouted, if she could even hear me. I caught her by the arm, helped drag her up, and she caught me by the shoulder to steady herself. A hard metal edge of armor dug into me, hot and buzzing and weird against my skin.

Rysa said something, her mouth moved, but I didn’t hear any of it. She took a step forward, heavy with effort like she was trudging up a slope that wasn’t there, and reached her arm out towards the light.

Her arm whirled back with a bright snap and a hard bright scream of vibration, sending her staggering away. A crackle of white electricity danced around her wrist for a few seconds. She bared her teeth at her hand, shoulders heaving, flexing her fingers in and out.

I’d been so worried about this whole thing being a trap, and it was. A fucking literal trap. Rysa couldn’t get out, and I wasn’t sure if I could either. Keyd probably couldn’t get in. No wonder Ahieel hadn’t actually cared if I followed his instructions or not; it hadn’t mattered. As long as Rysa ended up here, he’d got what he wanted. Maybe he’d even wanted Keyd to show up just to end up in this fucking trap too. Thank fuck he’d been hanging back, except…

Maybe that was bad. Maybe while we were stuck in here Ahieel was gonna take him on. Or the other way around. Ahieel sure wanted Keyd dead, and Keyd would definitely kill the guy if he knew it needed to happen. Either way, nothing good could possibly happen.

“Can you get through to Keyd?” I bawled in her ear, and she shook her head. Yeah, didn’t think so. Too much of Ahieel’s bullshit blocking everything for their bond to work.

Well, wasn’t this what I was good for? I should be able to suck up all this shit, or at least some of it. Enough to punch through it at least, get us out of here.

“Alan, don’t.” Rysa seized my arm when I reached for the barrier, yanked it back. She was almost wheezing now, like she was being crushed under a ton of weight, and her armor still almost hurt to touch. It had to be ten times worse for her. “You can’t take in this much energy!”

“I gotta fucking do something!” I said, but she had to be right. There was so much of this shit, absolutely everywhere, even without touching it I felt like I was breathing it, cooking in it, drowning in it. “What do we do?”

Rysa tilted her head back, frowning upwards. The column of light seemed like it went on forever, but the air was so fucking bright above our heads it was hard to tell. Then purply-black glittery smoke started to ooze out of Rysa’s armor, roiling around her in clouds, a tiny jangle of familiar energy in the chaos around us. What looked like a huge two-headed swan with a long dragging tail erupted out of the dark haze, twirling straight upwards on enormous wings. Rysa staggered down to one knee again, twinkles of purple-black shimmering away around her. The bird—Rysa’s bejji that I’d never seen before—soared upwards into the blinding light.

Not a lot of seconds passed. Then the shadowy bird dove back down to us, swooped once around Rysa’s shoulders and then seemed to just puff apart and sink back into her. That probably meant it couldn’t get out either, that the trap had a ceiling too.

I still thought that I could so something. “Hey, look! Maybe I can just like...divert it enough so you can get out. Not absorb it, just redirect it,” I shouted into Rysa’s ear, and after a tense hesitation, she nodded.

“Be careful,” she said, words I saw her mouth make more than I actually heard.

Yeah, I was all over that, but we didn’t have a lot of time to waste.

I moved to the wall of light and just...reached into it. I was already a lot closer than Rysa’d got, but it was hard to tell where the actual barrier started. My hand was barely visible in all the hazy light, and it was like reaching deep into an angry hive of bees. I grit my teeth, kept on going, stretching forward. Then, pain started. The sharp vibrating turned into pricks of heat, then turned into burning, into searing.

“Jesus, fuck!” Everything up to my elbow was miserable scorching agony, and I could feel it seeping into me, traveling deeper and further up my arm. I couldn’t take all this in, Rysa’d been right about that, and it was sure trying to dig its way into me. I was pushing it back, but that wasn’t gonna last and it wasn’t gonna get us out of here. I didn’t know how to divert it unless I had something else to shove it into.

So I dropped to a knee, slammed my other hand flat to the dirt, with my arm still jammed into the barrier. Goddammit I hoped this worked. If it didn’t, it’d probably kill me. I heaved in a breath, and stopped holding the barrier’s energy back.

As soon as it was in me, I rushed it right out again. All it took was thinking, like Rysa’d taught me—get out get out get out of me. And it went. It still fucking hurt, like my skin was being raked off with an iron as a blaze of energy roared down my arm, through my chest and out the other arm into the ground. The damp earth heated up under my hand, steam hissing out of it as the dirt dried up and split apart in a huge patch, and dead leaves started to darken and smoke. Fire seemed like a distant concern, something I couldn’t worry about.

A bar of light about as wide as my hand flickered in the barrier. from the ground up to my arm. I saw a glimpse of dark trees and bushes, flashing in and out like bad TV reception. I couldn’t feel my own damn arm anymore, but I bent what was maybe my elbow and maybe just a burned up fucking piece of bone by this point, and the unstable section of the barrier widened. I couldn’t get to my feet, so the opening wasn’t very tall, but it was the best chance and we had to try.

“Rysa!” I bellowed. “Here! Go!”

She dove forward without hesitating, tucking down and tumbling through the tiny window I’d forced open. A bright hum and a snapping pop like a transistor blowing out that I felt deep in my stomach, and she was gone. Safely through it, fucking hopefully.

Other than getting Rysa out of here of here I hadn’t thought about what I’d do. I couldn't keep this up much longer and I didn’t want to be stuck in here. I only had one choice, and it was to throw myself under my own arm in a clumsy head-first roll through the barrier.

For a second, I thought I’d missed it. That the trap had slammed closed on me and it was killing me—everything was blinding light and roaring world-ending noise and jarring vibrations that felt like they were shaking me apart down to my atoms. Then, I was rolling across damp dirt, crunching leaves and twigs under me, coming to a stop on my stomach. I could still feel the trap buzzing angrily behind me and static snapping and cracking across my skin, a haze of light coming from my left. But I was out. And Rysa was out. And my arm hadn’t burned off like it’d kinda fucking felt like—it looked fine and in one piece.

From the outside, the trap was a tube of gold-white light blazing between the trees. What looked like pure white veins spread around it like hands, twisting out of the ground like some kind of frame to support it. I’d managed to get us through it in a clear spot between two twisting branches. How’d Ahieel fucking made this?

My blood still buzzed and prickled everywhere through my body and I had a splitting, spine-deep headache, but I clambered to my feet and looked around for Rysa. No sign of her. Other than the buzz of the trap, the whole area was quiet and deserted. I wasn’t about to start shouting for anybody either—Ahieel was definitely here, and I wasn’t gonna draw him right to me.

Then. A silent flare of light lit up the trees near the crypt, a bright flash behind the silhouettes of trees. Something was going down over there. The smartest idea would be to get the fuck out of here. I knew that, but I couldn’t just leave Rysa and Keyd. I didn’t want to make myself a liability or distract them, but I had to get to them. I could help. I just had.

I clambered through the bushes, ducking around trees and keeping low. The angry buzz of the trap faded away behind me but now I was feeling a new jangle of energy up ahead, the familiar feel of Keyd’s and Rysa’s and a third one that was Ahieel’s sharper and somehow higher-pitched energy—even if it didn’t really make an actual sound. Another bloom of white-gold glared through the trees, close enough this time that it flooded over me like a spotlight. Shadows darted around in the flash of light, just yards away from me.

Someone shouted, less of a word than just a roar of rage, and it sounded like Rysa. A big flare of energy smacked me deep in the chest, and a shriek that didn’t sound human at all tore through the trees. Branches rustled and then cracked above me, like something heavy was crashing through them, and something hit a nearby trunk with a hard thud. A person-shaped shadow cartwheeled down from the tree and crashed to a heap in the dirt just a few feet away from me.

“Keyd! Keyd, fuck.” I was next to him in a second, on my knees and my heart pounding like a drum. But Keyd was moving around, groaning softly and already trying to pick himself up. He was uncoordinated, clumsy, probably dazed as hell from being slammed into a fucking tree. I tried to help him, getting a shoulder braced under his arm and levering him to his feet. He was even heavier in the armor, and not fun to pick up. Static zapped me hard whenever I touched him and burrowed electric skewers down to my bones.

“Whoa, hey!” I said, when Keyd tried to move back towards the fight the moment he was standing again, and grabbed onto his arm.

Keyd tried to shake me off. “I’m fine,” he said shortly, but then he reeled back a step and had to grab for my shoulder to steady himself.

“Just fucking breathe for a second, okay! Jesus Christ, this is what I fucking meant about you.”

He whirled on me, and for a second I thought I’d just pissed him off again. But he looked more surprised than anything, like what I was saying finally’d got through to him and maybe he’d realized how fucking careless he was with himself.

“I can’t leave her there,” he said.

“You’re not leaving her, you’re waiting until you can walk in a goddamn straight line and don’t get yourself fucking killed. That doesn’t help anyone. Especially Rysa.”

Keyd seemed to realize he was still leaning pretty hard on me, and pushed himself away. He took a couple purposeful breaths, staring at me pointedly while he did it, and was opening his mouth to say something, when we both noticed a bright light off to the side, getting bigger. I turned, distracted, and got a glimpse of a burning arc of light like some kind of tiny comet, headed straight for us.

I jumped for Keyd, meaning to…do something. Push him out of the way, get a shield up around us, anything.

But Keyd tried to do the exact same thing to me. He just about clotheslined me right in the chest, and we knocked each other down hard to the dirt. The air slammed out of my lungs, grey crinkled in over everything and went away just as fast. White light bloomed around us, silent and blinding.

When the spots in my eyes flickered away, Keyd was on top of me, crouched on his elbows and knees. His forehead was rammed against my shoulder, and his hair tickled against my cheek. One of his hands curled around the back of my head, fingers pressed against my spine. I had both my arms cinched up along his back, fingers sliding against the metal plates of armor.

He’d thrown up a shield too. I could feel it and mine, both humming above us. They were about the same size and sort of sliding back and forth around each other, fighting to fit into the same space. Both were almost invisible except how they made everything around us a little wriggly, like heat lines baking off the ground.

Keyd lifted his head, looked up at the wavery air over our heads. “What—“

I actually laughed, stupid and unsteady. “Rysa taught me, remember.”

Keyd’s hand tightened on the back of my neck and he opened his mouth like he was gonna say something, but was forgetting it as he looked at me. His eyes were bright and wide and fierce, and this was the absolute worst time to be really really attracted to him.

Another stray blast of silent white light smashed into the shields around us. Energy strummed deep in my chest and twanged up my arms, and one of the shields sputtered out and collapsed in a ripple over the both of us. Keyd rolled himself right off me, going up to a knee with his fingertips spread on the ground like a runner at a starting block. He definitely looked ready to fight, but I still had this feeling he wasn’t anywhere near a hundred percent and hadn’t been even before tonight.

A jagged splinter of light light up the trees in front of us, and Keyd glanced at me. “I need to—“

“Yeah. I got it. Go.”

He took off without another word, the second shield dissolving as he sprinted through it. Fuck, he was fast. And quiet, barely rustling the dark trees and bushes around us. Then he was gone.

I picked myself up, and followed him. I was gonna help in this fight no matter what, even if I still felt like I’d gotten a direct dose of electricity right to every organ in my body. I didn't have to go far. There was kind of a natural clearing of trees about two dozen feet ahead, a lopsided area about forty feet across filled with worn mossy gravestones, and I stumbled right up to the edge of it.

There he fucking was, with his back to me. Ahieel. Wearing full armor a lot like Keyd and Rysa’s, except it was all a brilliant golden-white metal. I almost couldn’t look at it, especially because light reflected off it from the blazing spear he had in his hand. Christ, I remembered those things. That shit was bad news.

Rysa and Keyd had flanked him, but they had the same damn problem they’d had before—they couldn’t get close, because Ahieel fought long-range and they had nothing to match it with. Maybe this was why they’d been at this with each other for so long. They outnumbered Ahieel, but his fighting style outclassed them. So neither of them ever had an advantage.

Well, now I was here. At least one more body to help them out.

I wanted to have some energy in my hand and there it suddenly was, like a radioactive tennis ball between my fingers, thrumming and weightless. Energy that’d snuck into me from the trap. I hurled it right across the clearing, and it smacked right into Ahieel’s back and burst apart.

It couldn’t’ve hurt him much, but it did get him swinging around in my direction, and I threw up a shield around myself. As soon as Ahieel saw me, recognized me, a snarl rippled across his face. Maybe he hadn’t expected me to get out of the trap, or that I’d dare to goose him with a piece of his own power, or that I’d even get involved. Last time he’d told me that he didn’t really want to do anything to me, but he would if I got in his way. I was definitely in his way now.

I almost expected Keyd and Rysa to tell me to get out of here, to want me somewhere safe. But that didn’t happen. Rysa used Ahieel’s diverted attention to lunge forward and lash out a handful of dark whips at him. They hit his arm and clung to him, braiding around his shoulder and neck like a bunch of leeches, and hauled him off balance. Ahieel staggered sideways, armor clashing against itself, growling out a word that I didn’t hear as English. Keyd darted in, his black sword in his hand, and Ahieel blocked it clumsily with the spear, his arm twisting unnaturally to manage it. Now that Keyd was close, Ahieel was in a bad position. He could only use the spear to block and he couldn’t really throw it.

Except he did. At Rysa. Just swerved around and launched the thing at her even as Keyd was going in for another strike. Rysa tumbled herself backwards and her whips snapped apart, barely in time to avoid the explosion of light and sparks as the spear hit a gravestone. Keyd’s attack went way wide because his attention swerved completely off Ahieel and onto her. Ahieel played so fucking dirty. He already had another spear in his hand, the thing just dropping down from his arm in a roll of light and forming into his hand. He slashed it at Keyd as he took quick steps backwards, getting more distance between them, and when I lobbed another handful of energy at him it bounced harmlessly off a shield at his back. Fuck, I wasn’t doing much good at all.

Rysa was getting to her feet a ways away, and Keyd was now too far from Ahieel to land a hit, but Ahieel was too close to really use his spear. All their attention was locked on each other, but nobody was making a move, just a tense standoff between three giant aliens in armor. The spear crackled and whined in Ahieel’s grip and Keyd’s sword hummed with its own pattern of energy. Rysa had her own real metal sword gripped in her left hand, a few loose strands of hair plastered across her forehead.

Then I saw the little white wormy things burrowing out of the ground, in patches all around Keyd’s feet. Oh, shit.

“Keyd, move!” I roared at him, and he did. Didn’t even hesitate, just dove out of the way right as four or five twisting branches erupted out of the dirt, twining around each other like clawed hands. Jesus, another one of those fucking traps? How many were there around here?

Rysa sent out another bundle of whips from her other hand just as Ahieel started forward, this time getting them wrapped and tangled around Ahieel’s ankle. She jerked his leg out from under him and he crashed to a knee. I was on the lookout for more goddamn traps as Ahieel twisted, lobbed the spear almost underhanded towards Rysa. The thing nearly skimmed along the ground and then exploded right in front of her, or maybe on her, it was hard to tell. But when the flare of sparks died away she was much further away, only half-standing, and the whips had shattered apart again. Keyd was on his feet again, moving closer, but froze when Ahieel whirled to him.

“Why do you try?” Ahieel said, his voice loud through the clearing. “You won’t ever kill me, we all know it. You can’t bring yourself to, because of her.” He sneered the last word at Rysa, who was panting through bared teeth and braced against her sword. “This traitorous coward.”

Keyd seemed to forget he had a fucking sword, and just football rushed straight at Ahieel. His wings came out at the last second, lifted him a foot or so in the air, and then he just slammed down on the guy with a crash of metal, a knee in his chest and a hand around his throat. Ahieel didn’t really fight him off or even try and block him.

Keyd snarled something not in English, bearing down hard on Ahieel and his eyes wild and furious. Ahieel just kept letting him, just lying there not fighting back, and I kept expecting to see more of those little wormy trap things coming out of the ground. I didn’t, but I did sense something else. A low swell of energy, coming from Ahieel, building fast and powerful somewhere deep inside him. I didn’t like it, it felt like another trap...

Holy fuck, he’d wanted Keyd to do this, to get all up close and on him and angry and unfocused. He was letting him do this because he wanted Keyd right where he was, he was gonna do something bad. I didn’t like that growing feel of energy, I really didn’t like it. It chattered down to my bones, put my teeth on edge, and all I could think was that Keyd needed to get the hell away from him and yelling at him wouldn’t work this time.

So I jumped a gravestone and sprinted across the clearing. Smashed into Keyd shoulder-first, tackled him right off Ahieel. Keyd hit the dirt and rolled, and before I could do anything else Ahieel grabbed me by the shoulders and spun us over, slamming me to the ground. A burst of pain exploded at the back of my head and greyed everything out, and I was already a little dazed from throwing myself into a guy in a full suit of armor. Dizzily, I reached out to push Ahieel off me, my head throbbing and all the air crushing out of me under his weight. I ended up with a fistful of his hair and another hand on his shoulder, doing fuck-all.

“If you would just,” Ahieel hissed at me, and closed a hand around my throat and oh shit, “stop interfering. You’ve forced this to happen.”

That steady swell of energy I’d been feeling suddenly crescendoed up into full-on flare of power, and a huge formless mass of energy blazed into the space between us. It mostly came out of his chest, almost like he was summoning his own weird frog-spider thing, but it just stayed like that, an overwhelmingly intense concentration of pure light energy without any shape.

I kicked, struggled, thrashed around, but I wasn’t going anywhere with a couple hundred pounds of alien in armor sitting on top of me, choking me. Where were Keyd and Rysa, fuck, I needed some goddamn help! The small supernova vibrated between us, moving closer to me then back closer to him as we both struggled at it, like the worst and most intimate game of catch ever. There was nothing but burning light all around us, the trees and the gravestones were gone and everything was a white world of nothing.

Ahieel had a total advantage over me, and I couldn’t keep it up. It started to push against my chest and then in, and oh god oh fuck that was bad, like getting stabbed by a cattle prod right through the heart. Molten pain boiled through my whole body, my vision whiting out and everything turning to pure torture. Existence was agony. Every part of my body was screaming, I was probably screaming; I had to make this stop or I was going to die. Ahieel would fucking kill me, right here, in a goddamn graveyard.

It was hard as hell, but I shoved back against the mass of energy again, resisting it with every goddamn thing I had left in me. Now that part of it had actually got in me, I could command it better. Out out out get away get away get the fuck away from me! My flailing hands caught Ahieel by the wrists and tried to push him back too, even though it hardly fucking worked. I twisted around, rocking my body back and forth until Ahieel’s own armor worked against him and he overbalanced and tipped off of me. I rolled right with him, scrambling on top of him and using that split fucking second of surprise to shove the giant crackling ball of pure energy right back into him. All of it sunk straight through the armor plate on his chest, and Ahieel made a garbled incoherent shriek as our eyes locked together. For the first time, I saw actual real hate blazing there, and knew if I got out of this alive I’d be on his shit list forever.

But I wasn’t out of it yet. I’d pushed his own damn energy back into him, and now I could feel the energy I’d sucked up from the trap rushing out of me too. And I had the other type of energy in me too; cool familiar pockets of it stored away from when I’d touched Rysa’s and Keyd’s armor earlier, and maybe some left over from training. I zapped that into Ahieel too—all of it, everything I had, poured it down my arms and into my hands and straight into him. The metal of his armor heated and vibrated under my hands when the oen energy joined in with everything else, and then my hands actually sunk through it, a chunk of the chest plate just dissolving like it was made of sand. My hands slammed right down to his chest, to his skin, and energy kept on pouring out of me like an unstoppable break in a dam.

Ahieel screamed, and the veins in his neck turned dark and visible, dark purple pulsing out beneath his skin and fading away in bursts. His fingers clawed at me but uselessly, and the dark color in his veins spread up into his face. I couldn’t pull my hands away, I couldn’t stop just mainlining energy straight into him even though I didn’t want to do it anymore, he’d had enough, I think I’d won.

Then Ahieel went still, dropped limp. I’d emptied every scrap of energy I had straight into him. I couldn’t move. My arms were hot and trembling and someone was breathing loud and fast in half-panicked sobs. Was that me? Blobs of white and black covered my vision, and through them I could see Ahieel’s now completely pale face wavering in front of me, still and slack.

“Alan!” A voice called my name, and hands grabbed me by the shoulders and yanked me away. The connection snapped like a rubber band and real world slammed into place around me. It wasn’t very good at staying there—everything wobbled, weaved around like a funhouse mirror, and colors were wrong and sickening. I closed my eyes, gagging and heaving with my forehead pressed to the dirt. Then I collapsed, my numb tingling limbs just giving up on me.

I heard a voice saying words above me, hands touching me, and when I opened my eyes all I could see was a crumpled hunk of white-gold armor, lying motionless a few feet from my face. All I could think, as the world twinkled and swayed and pulsed around me, was that this might finally be over.