Tenebrism

I was alone in a forest. Running through broken black trees, dodging leafless branches as they swooped down towards me. A black river rushed behind them, the sky overhead pressed down flat and grey. I didn’t know where I was going, but I had to keep running.

Running....no, not just running. Looking. Someone had been with me, and now they were gone. I had to keep looking, had to keep moving, had to find them. It wouldn’t be safe until I found them. Something bad might happen. Would happen.

The trees looked the same on all sides of me, the river always on my right no matter which way I turned. Branches scraped at my face and arms, the ground pitched and slipped under my feet, the dark air got hot and humid around me. It felt like I’d been running for hours, but going nowhere. The low grey sky had gone weird and silvery, and ghostly light streamed down behind the trees.

Something rushed in front of me, a huge blur of light that shot out from behind a tree, and I couldn’t stop in time. The forest swung and blurred around me, and suddenly I was on my back on the squelchy ground. I looked up, dazed, blinking though hazy blobs of light.

Ahieel stood over me. He was clutching something in his hand, and wearing those absurd slacks and button-down shirt. Silver light hazed around his pale hair and glowed behind his shoulders, and even his skin seemed bright and radiant. But he was covered in something dark and oily, and it didn’t look like mud. It was smeared in streaks across his arms almost like hand prints, trickling in trails down his face from his hairline.

I scrambled backwards over the slick ground, but Ahieel almost seemed to stay in the same place. I couldn’t put any real distance between us, no matter how much I shoved myself back through the mud. The whole time Ahieel stood perfectly still, eyes locked on mine, as I tried to claw myself away. My back slammed up against a tree, a whole wall of trees, a solid barrier at my back. Then Ahieel lifted his hand towards me and clenched it. Invisible fingers closed around my throat, pinning me back against the tree.

I gasped, pawed at my neck, but there was nothing real to grab. My fingers scratched uselessly against my own skin, and the pressure kept tightening. And then Ahieel was standing right over me again, a harsh bright shape surrounded by hazy mist. He raised the thing he was gripping in his hand. Sickly silver light slid over a long sharp edge. He lifted it above his head, and I could only watch uselessly. His mouth formed around a word, and a sound I couldn’t understand rang in my ears. Ahieel’s arm swung down in a sharp arc. My body jolted, shuddered. Air rushed hard out of my lungs. Ahieel’s voice was still echoing back from the trees as he tossed the blade aside, now stained in dark red.

I looked down in dull surprise. A dark line was splitting open across my stomach like a wide mouth. I lifted my hands, held them helplessly against it. Something was moving, squirming and hot inside my skin. I pressed harder, and a wriggling mess of black coils poured out of the gash. They pushed against my palms, squeezing out from under my hands, leaking like shadows between my fingers. Awful hot shadows that curled up around me and slid over my skin, wrapping around my arms and chest and neck. I fought and thrashed against them as they slithered around my face, tightened around my head and neck.

I got a last look at Ahieel, his hair bright and gleaming in the dark as he calmly watched me die, before a burning shadow twisted over my eyes and blotted everything out. I tried to scream, but I couldn’t even breathe.

And then I woke up, choking and gasping, my face smashed into a damp pillow. I’d kicked my comforter to the floor but I was tangled up in the sheet, sweating and prickling all over. I heaved in a hard woosh of air and rolled over onto my back, clawing the sheet away from me. Fuck. I could taste metal in my mouth, and something bitter in the back of my throat wanted to push itself up and out. I swallowed it back down while my heart galloped in my chest and my stomach churned.

Even long after the adrenaline had faded and my body had relaxed again, the dream wouldn’t get out of my head. I lay uselessly in the dark, trying not to remember it. The bleary red numbers on my alarm clock dragged by in slow bunches of five, ten, twenty minutes. It got too cold in the room without the blankets and I hauled them back up to the bed, but a couple minutes later it was too hot to keep them on. A weird feeling tickled constantly over my ribs, a phantom itch I couldn’t scratch away.

It was only about midnight when I decided to get up and do something. Even if it was only taking a walk around the complex or getting a drink of water; just something, anything at all.

The living room was dark and stuffy and real quiet when I padded out there. I went around the corner into the kitchen, got a water bottle out of the fridge, leaned against the counter while I downed half of it. I still felt too hot and squeezed inside my own skin, every heartbeat throbbing down into my stomach and up in my throat. Every time I closed my eyes I was back in that dark suffocating forest, with Ahieel swinging the knife down at me, his face streaked in black goo.

A shudder rippled over me and my skin pinched up into goosebumps, even though the room was warm and I was still mostly overheated. I patted uselessly at my face, my forehead—maybe I was just getting sick or something. Fever dreams or something like that. Or maybe all of this crazy shit was finally getting to me. I pressed the half-empty bottle of water against the side of my neck, which sort of felt better.

I closed my eyes for a long couple of seconds, and when I opened them again I realized that Keyd’s couch was empty. He usually took the one backed up against the wall, and from where I was standing I was looking right at it from the side. And no one was on it. Just a blanket lumped up over the arm. I moved into the living room so I could see over the back of the other couch. Rysa was there, knees tucked up so she could even fit on the thing, a hand curled up by her face. Sleeping. But Keyd was definitely gone.

The guy really didn’t sleep. Okay, it was only midnight, but I’d seen him go lie down at about nine. That’d been right before I’d shut myself back in my own room. So Keyd’d only been asleep for three hours, or he just hadn’t slept at all. I was kinda betting on the latter. My first guess was that he’d gone outside again. I glanced out at the patio first, but it was empty. The front door was closed tight, but it was unlocked. Bingo.

I found Keyd pretty quick once I got outside, just a straight shot a couple dozen yards down the walkway. He was leaning on the metal fence around the pool. The pool area locked down at about ten, so there was no one in there, but the underwater lights were still turned on and the whole thing glowed a bright jewel-blue. Keyd was mostly a black silhouette against it, all broad shoulders and messy hair. I rested my arms on the fence next to him, shivered as the cool metal bit into my skin.

“Hey,” I said, and Keyd acknowledged me with some eye contact and a little nod. Didn’t even have to say anything this time—both of us knew why we were out here, that sleeping was just not happening for either of us tonight. I really wanted to know Rysa’s secret. She had to have one; she handled just as much crazy shit as Keyd did and she was still out like a light.

A couple minutes went by. Neither of us said anything, and I watched the surface of the water wriggle over the glowing lights fixed into the pool walls. Somebody’s forgotten pool noodle was floating in there, a curled black U that was bumping up against the 3 ½ foot sign. The pool lights burned and flared in my vision and my eyelids ached with the need to sleep, but fuck, I knew if I went back to bed it’d be another couple of hours lying there awake and exhausted and frustrated. Standing out here wasn’t much better, but I couldn’t kick up the energy to do anything.

Keyd finally helped me out. All he did was take a slightly deeper breath in and shift his arm on the fence, but it jarred me out of my useless little daze.

“You wanna get out of here?” The words just fell out before I thought about them.

Keyd turned to me, eyebrows scrunching in. “What?”

That was about the most unguarded reaction I’d ever got out of him, and it made me laugh. “I really just need to do something; go somewhere. You could come, if you’re not too busy here.”

Pretty sure the joke went right over his head. Keyd just looked at me for a few seconds, like he was weighing how much I’d actually meant it. Then, finally, “where?”

“Not sure.” It was late enough, most things in this area were pretty closed down. Before, I’d thought about just taking a lap or two around the complex, but it didn’t seem like enough. I wanted to leave, get away from my own thoughts, and all my thoughts kept happening here.

The first thing I came up with was In-N-Out; it was open this late. Shit, actually, that sounded really excellent.

“You hungry?” I couldn’t keep track of their weird eating habits, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t seen either of them eat for at least a day. Hell, I wasn’t sure the last time I’d eaten. “I’m thinking late dinner, you know.”

The shadows on Keyd’s face changed; stretched and shifted. I couldn’t really tell what that meant, or what kind of face he was making. “All right,” he said, which I guess was as much of a yes as I was gonna get from him.

“Okay then,” I said, and pushed back from the fence. I liked having a plan. If Keyd’d been any other guy, I probably would have clapped him on the shoulder or something. But I couldn’t imagine doing that to him. Especially since the last time I’d tried to touch him, he’d put me on the ground. “Then let’s roll.”

We went back inside together, and I ducked real quick into my room to pull on some real clothes. I was a sloppy college kid as much as anyone, but I still couldn’t get myself to actually walk around in public in pajamas. Even after midnight. I toed on one sneaker from my closet, and kicked the matching one out of my backpack—the one that Law’d randomly given me back earlier today. I was glad to have the complete set back, since these were kinda my favorite shoes. Well, more like shoes I’d worn so much they were my favorite by default. The ones I’d been wearing since Halloween were newer and less broken in and not as familiar on my feet.

I met back up with Keyd out in the living room. He was half-sitting on the arm of the couch Rysa was still sleeping on, maybe looking down at her. It was hard to tell exactly where his eyes were pointing, but his head was lowered in her direction. He didn’t seem to notice me come in. For a second I just looked at him maybe watching Rysa, and at how peaceful his expression was.

“You think she’d want to come along?” I finally said.

Keyd raised his head, all that softness gone right out of his face and back to his default neutral thing. He glanced down at her again, back at me, and then shook his head and leaned off the couch. “Let her sleep,” he said.

I shrugged, and headed for the front door. “All right.”

Keyd followed me out, and surprisingly fell into step right next to me as I headed towards the parking lot and my car. I wasn’t sure what I’d actually expected him to do, but it sure hadn’t been that. It was almost a friendly move, and I figured I should put some effort into this too.

“So, uh, you like burgers?” I said, and then realized what a stupid fucking question that was. “You probably don’t even know what a burger is.”

Keyd made sort of a loose twisting motion with his hand, like he was turning a doorknob. I’d seen Rysa do that before, but I still didn’t know what it meant. “It’s food?”

I laughed. “Yeah, yeah, it is.”

“I’m sure it will be fine.”

“You guys ever have problems from eating stuff on alien planets all the time? I mean, you gotta sometimes run into shit you can’t handle, or that you’re allergic to, or something.”

“Not...often.” Keyd’s arm smacked against mine as we walked, and then I felt him purposefully put more space between us. “But we know it, when we do.”

“What happens?”

“It’s not pleasant,” Keyd said, and I decided I didn’t want to know any more than that.
Once we hit the parking lot, Keyd dropped a step behind me and let me lead the way across the blacktop to my car. I had no idea how he’d thought we were gonna go anywhere, but it didn’t look like he’d expected the car to be part of it. He definitely didn’t think it was as cool or interesting as Rysa had. At first he didn’t even want to touch it, and stood about two feet away with his hands locked behind his back. Just staring at the passenger door.

I was already inside with the key half-turned in the ignition before I realized what he was doing. I rolled down the window on his side and leaned over the center console. “You coming?”

Keyd huffed out a little breath. “How?”

Oh god, he didn’t know how to open the door. At least Rysa’d tried. I reached across the front seat and got my fingers around the handle, gave the door an awkward shove. Keyd stepped forward and caught it before it swung shut, and then hesitated again. Just looking down into the front seat. Was he serious. What was the problem now?

I was about to ask when Keyd swung himself suddenly down into the front seat. Then he just... sat. Didn’t move, look around, or do anything at all. He was practically like a statue again, just staring straight ahead with his hands clenched in his lap. I didn’t bother to tell him about the seat belt. If we got in a wreck, well—he’d probably survive it no matter what. I’d seen him survive some pretty bad shit.

But he was clearly not a big fan of this whole driving thing. The engine turning over got him all tense, and when I started backing out of the space he really looked like he was on the edge of just throwing the door open and bailing. If he was this obviously nervous on the outside, then he had to be seriously flipping out in his head.

“Dude, you cool?” I said to him, and watched a muscle set in his jaw as he nodded once. Well, okay. If he said so.

The nearest In-N-Out was about three miles away, in a little strip mall near the freeway. Not a long drive, but it sure fucking felt like it with Keyd being all weird and tense in the seat next to me. I’d never seen a person sit so goddamn still. The only time he moved was whenever I stopped at a light or a sign—then he’d dig his elbows back into the seat and press his fingers into his legs.

There weren’t too many people out on the road, since it was past midnight on a weeknight. A junky little Ford gunned along in the next lane over for a while, somebody’s arm hanging out the passenger side window, holding a cigarette. The end glowed with fluttery dots of orange light in the dark.

Right before we hit an intersection, the noisy fucking car veered right in front of me at the last goddamn second and cut into the bike lane to turn. I had plenty of time to stop, but it was still totally bad driving. The seat belt cut hard into my shoulder and I saw Keyd’s hand grab for the center console.

“Nice signal, buddy,” I said as the junker whipped around the corner and roared off.

Keyd lifted his head. “What?” It was the first thing he’d said this whole damn time.

“Not you, that guy,” I said, jerking my thumb in the direction the car had gone.

Keyd pressed a hand to the window and looked down the dark road. I could still hear the shitty exhaust system sputtering in the distance. “And he can hear you.”

“Naw. Just, you know—talking to myself.”

“But I’m here.”

Wow, way to take it way too literally. I couldn’t be talking to myself because he was there. I almost laughed, but bit down on it. “Yeah,” I said instead. “Never mind, you’re right.” I was still fighting a smile when the light turned green again.

Having that little conversation seemed to have jarred Keyd back into the real world. He looked around the front seat a little, touched some of the things around him—like the pop-up lock and the AC vent—and then he put his hands in his lap and sat there quietly, looking out the window. But it was a more regular kind of quiet, not the anxious tension from before.

And about a minute later we were pulling into the strip mall. Since everything was closed but the In-N-Out, there were only a couple handful of cars in the lot and most of those were clumped right around the restaurant itself. I parked on the outskirts of the cluster of cars, about halfway across the lot from the restaurant. The storefronts were all dark except for their neon signs, and the Golden Spoon’s S had burned out. I snickered stupidly to myself and kinda wished Martin were around to point it out to. Keyd just...wouldn’t get it. And probably wouldn’t think it was funny even if he did.

I sighed, and hoisted myself out of the car as Keyd figured out the door handle and did the same on the other side. It wasn’t his fault he wasn’t all that fun. He was a fucking alien. I had to cut him some slack, Jesus. He probably didn’t think I was much fun either. It was practically a miracle we could get along as much as we were.

But then again there was Rysa, who was pretty easy to get along with and could handle jokes and didn’t make everything awkward and weird just by being around. It wasn’t the alien thing. It was just the Keyd thing. I’d bet the guy was weird on his home planet, too.

And okay, I was spending way too much fucking time thinking about him. I was here to eat some goddamn greasy food and not think about anything. Even if Keyd was here with me, whatever, it wasn’t like I was expecting a lot of talk out of him. He’d probably just sit there and say nothing and that would be fine with me. At least I’d have company, and that was better than nothing. Keyd wasn’t a bad guy, he was just—

Jesus, Alan, stop.

We hit the front of the building, and I yanked one of the glass doors open and strode inside way ahead of him. But Keyd reacted fast and slid through before it shut, sidestepping his whole big body easily inside. He really could move quick and smooth for a guy his size. And he looked kinda confused about nearly getting a door right in the face. I wasn’t even trying to be a dick to him, I was just mad at myself for letting this—whatever this even was—be such a big damn deal. I almost apologized to him for it, then figured that’d be weird, and didn’t let myself.

The restaurant was about half full, still pretty busy even past midnight. There were a couple of people waiting at the counter already—a pair of gawky teenagers and an older woman who was on the phone with someone, trying to get a clear food order out of them—and I got into the end of the line. Keyd came up beside my shoulder, quiet and awkward as ever. I could see him glancing around at all the sterile white tiles and bright red lines of the place and then staring up at the simple menu board, probably trying to make sense of what the fuck it all was.

“It’s cool, I’ll take care of it,” I told him. There was no fucking way I was gonna let the guy try to order. Keyd just nodded distractedly, his attention on the couple of servers rushing around behind the counter in their white hats and red aprons. The air smelled like grease and meat and my stomach rumbled in anticipation—fuck, how long had it been since I’d eaten?

The woman in front of us hung up her phone, and glanced carelessly in our direction as she tucked it back into the bunchy handbag slung over her shoulder. Then she did a pretty obvious double-take, right to Keyd. He didn’t notice, but I sure did. Especially when she sidled a step forward, away from us. Okay, come on, she should try meeting the dude in a graveyard and then having him follow her home and break into her place. We were in a fucking fast food joint; what did she think he was gonna do?

That was about when I realized that nearly everyone in the entire place was looking at us. Some more obviously; like the little girl who was peering over the glossy plastic of a nearby booth, her big dark eyes locked on Keyd even as her mom tried to get her to turn around and sit down. Other people were pretending they weren’t staring, but their eyes kept sliding over every couple of seconds. Keyd seemed totally unaware of any of it.

I must’ve been fidgeting, or doing something, because Keyd threw a quick glance my way for the first time since we’d come in here. Then he focused in on me, a sharper look in his eyes. He leaned down, staring at a spot somewhere between my shoulder and my chin. Then, he touched his thumb to the edge of my jaw, and very lightly tilted my head back and to the side.

I was too startled to move away or tell him to get off me. What was going on. This was right in the middle of the goddamn In-N-Out, and people’d already been staring at us. His fingers were real warm and dry, and weirdly gentle. He hadn’t forced my head to move, he’d just...nudged me, and it had kind of moved on its own.

“What happened?” Keyd asked, and it took a second for the words to get in past my ears and make sense in my brain. And even then I didn’t even know what he was fucking talking about. I felt around on my neck and found raw stripes of raised skin; long narrow scratches that stung a little when I touched them. They kinda felt like finger nail marks. What the hell; what had happened?

Then, I remembered. The dream. I’d been choking, clawing at my neck. I must have actually been doing it in real life, too. That was...kinda disturbing.

“Oh, fuck,” I said, clapping my hand down on the side of my neck. “Nothing. Just a…a thing, it’s fine. No big deal.”

Keyd dropped his hand. Shifted a half-step away. Christ, suddenly I could breathe again. I kept my hand against my neck, trying to keep the scratches covered up. I wouldn’t’ve left the damn apartment if I’d known about this. I still had the leftover scrapes and bruises from the fight the other day, too. Now I was getting kinda worried about what all the people in here might think was going on here—Keyd already looked weird and intimidating and kinda like a parolee who’d made bad choices about the homemade tattoos he’d gotten, and I probably looked like someone’d halfway beat the shit out of me. No wonder we were getting stared at.

I just really didn’t want anyone to call the cops. Jesus, I’d been having that kind of thought way too much recently.

“Hey, why don’t you...find somewhere to sit. Maybe outside,” I said to him. The weather was definitely decent enough for that, and maybe less people would be looking. The feeling of so many eyes on me was making me hot and itchy all over, and this hadn’t been part of my plan for going out tonight. I’d wanted to fucking relax.

Keyd seemed to dig that idea. He turned right where I’d pointed, and went out the side door of the building that led to the outdoor tables. About half the eyes in the room followed him as he went. As soon as he was through the door and it’d shut behind him, all those eyes traveled right back to me. It was my turn to order anyway, so I tried to ignore it as I moved up to the counter to talk to the blonde girl wearing a silly paper hat.

Once I’d ordered—how the hell were you supposed to order food for a fucking alien, anyway—I moved over by one of the waiting benches near the pick-up counter, acting really interested in my receipts. I could still feel eyes on me. Maybe I was imagining the staring by this point, but I didn’t really want to look up and prove myself wrong.

Our food came up in a couple of minutes and I was never so glad to grab it and get the hell outside. There was nobody really out here, except for Keyd and two girls about my age at another table. One of them was in pajama bottoms. The breeze was pushing Keyd’s dark hair around, and he had his chin propped on one hand and was staring off across the parking lot into the hard neon lights of the strip mall. The two girls were both watching him.

I plopped one of the red plastic trays down and slid it across the table at him, and sat down with the other one. The girls at the nearby table sorta side-eyed me, then went back to talking quietly together. I ignored them and watched Keyd instead, who seemed to be kinda thrown by the burger. He picked it up in its greasy wrapper, looked at it, turned it around a few times, put it down again, then picked it back up.

“Rysa told me you’re a scholar,” he said suddenly.

I just about choked in surprise—he actually wanted to talk?—and had to swallow a bite before I could answer. “Well, I’m a student.” Scholar sounded like I was making a whole life out of learning shit.

“Oh,” Keyd said, like he couldn’t see a difference at all. “What is it that you study?”

“Art,” I said. “Stuff related to it. But the only reason I’m doing that is because I couldn’t think of anything else I wanted to spend four years on. I don’t think I actually want to be any kind of artist. I have no idea what I want to do.”

Shit, that’d just kind of fallen out of my mouth. I didn’t even tell that to many people. Definitely not my parents, who were paying for my education. But...Keyd wasn’t exactly part of my normal life. If I told him things I never told anybody else, it didn’t matter. Anything I said to him wouldn’t come back to bite me in the ass later on.

“I’ve always known what I had to do,” Keyd said. He spun the burger around in the little red tray again. “I never truly had a choice. I’m glad that you do.”

“Sometimes I wish someone would just tell me what to do,” I said. “It’d be a hell of a lot easier. But you—so you had to join the army, no choice at all?”

Keyd’s eyes flicked away. “It’s because of my family and my birth,” he said. “I’ve had…many things expected of me, my entire life. Things I couldn’t refuse to do.”

“Do you hate doing them?”

It took him a few seconds to answer, and when he did he was obviously picking his words carefully. “Being a soldier earns something beyond respect. It’s protecting our entire people. I don’t hate that.”

“That’s good,” I said. “It really sucks to hate what you do.”

Keyd just watched me for a few seconds. Then, “do you like what you do?”

“Yeah, enough,” I said. I really didn’t know how else to answer him. Not without really going into all the messy shit about how my major was pretty fucking stupid in the long run and I possibly regretted it. “It’s not anything like—I mean, I don’t save worlds and people and stuff, but yeah. It’s okay.”

“I’m glad of that, too,” Keyd said.

Fuck, I was getting so nervous here. And it was because the conversation was actually going pretty good. I was afraid of fucking it up and stalling it out. My hands were even sweating. I put my burger down and took a long swig of soda, cold beads of water from the cup running out between my fingers. I wiped them absently off on my shirt.

“So,” I said finally, nodding towards Keyd’s tray. He’d stopped spinning his burger around and finally taken a bite. “D’you like that all right?”

Keyd tilted his head slightly to the side. “It’s not too strange. We have things that are similar—in components, I mean. The taste is different.”

That was a lot more words than I’d expected. I’d been waiting for yes or no. I think Keyd was trying—really actually trying—to be better at this. To talk more. Even if he used words like components when talking about food, which made him sound really pretentious. Or maybe that was just a translation thing. Most of the time I forgot he and Rysa didn’t speak English. I was even used to the out-of-sync mouth thing now, to the point where I barely noticed it.

“Well,” I said. “It’s—whoa, what’s up?”

Keyd was screwing his face up and making tiny choking noises, like he was trying to keep back laughter or a sneeze. I had to bite back on a laugh; I hadn’t even known he could make faces like that. Keyd breathed in hard and shook his head, then he pushed his soda cup away. “I don’t think I like that,” he said, staring at it like he was afraid it was gonna jump up and pour itself into his mouth.

I did laugh then, and Keyd glanced at me. “Hey, it’s cool. You want some water or anything?”

“No, but thank you.”

I’d already half gotten up, so I sat myself back down again. I tapped my fingertips on the table and felt a little awkward. And noticed the two girls nearby were looking at us again. This time they looked kind of weirded out, like we were doing something a lot stranger than just sitting here talking. I wasn’t sure why, until I realized that to them I was speaking English and Keyd was saying crazy alien language back at me. That really had to look nuts.

It was harder to keep the conversation going after that, now that I was aware that just my half of it was being heard. Keyd and I mostly finished eating in silence. He ate pretty much everything in front of him except the soda, and I thought maybe I should’ve ordered him more. But he didn’t say anything about it—not that I’d expected him to. So I didn’t mention anything either.

Eventually, the girls at the next table over got up and left, and a few minutes after that Keyd and I did too. We walked back to my car, and Keyd paused just before we got to it, and turned to me.

“I enjoyed that,” he said. “Thank you.”

I actually had too. The more time I spent with Keyd, the more I actually wanted to. Especially now that he was using more words and being less uptight. It didn’t seem like he ever really got much of a chance to wind down and relax. I still wouldn’t’ve said he was exactly relaxed right now, but he was...maybe on DEFCON 4 instead of like 2 or 3. And him being more comfortable was making me way more comfortable. It was a good cycle.

“Hey, Keyd.” I leaned over the roof of my car, folded my hands together on the top. I heard the door handle on his side of the car thud uselessly back into place—I hadn’t unlocked the doors yet—and he glanced over at me.

“I just wanted to—” I said, and then stopped. I couldn’t remember what I’d been about to say. My thoughts had scattered; unfocused and collapsed. The neon signs from the strip mall stores were suddenly distracting, painfully bright, blazing light trails across my vision. Dry static rushed through the air with a breeze, tickling over my skin. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Keyd tensed at the same time, and his attention snapped away from me. He frowned, tilting his face up into the dark. Something was wrong. We both felt it. What—

A bright blur streaked right in front of me, a crack of harsh light and a shadow that followed it. It was fast, like a lighting strike, too fast to register what it really was. Leftover white bursts and streaks flicked and blobbed in my eyes, and I reeled forward against my car, my hands slamming against the plastic siding. A static shock charged up my arm, crackling through the hairs and between my shirt and skin. Pressure popped in my ears, and then the only noise was a pointless white hiss like endless waves. When I raised my head, blinking and dazed, Keyd was gone.

Just gone. What the hell.

I moved clumsily around the back of my car and around to the other side, my vision still flashing and swimming, dragging one hand over the windows and leaving smeary prints on the glass. Keyd really wasn’t there. Nothing was. There wasn’t even a sign that he’d been there at all. What the fuck had just happened, where the fuck had he gone?

I raised my head, blinking through the colorful spot and bursts still clogging up my eyesight. About thirty feet away from me, in an empty parking space next to a chunky Windstar van, there were a couple of shadowy scuffling shapes. The nearest streetlight had burned out to a heavy orange glow, and pools of light from the other streetlights didn’t reach. But it looked like two people, fighting or struggling against each other. Noiselessly, under the dull empty roar still plugging up my ears.

I took a dizzy step forward, misjudged, and slammed against the side mirror. Distant unimportant pain crunched through my hipbone. Fuck, come on, I had to do better than this. I shoved off the side of the car and got as far as the front hood before the shapes stopped thrashing around, and held still. One of them’d been thrown face-down to the ground, and the other one was crouched over them, holding them down. That one had a head of icy blond hair and bright white patterns twisting down his arms and glowing through the back of his collared shirt. Shit, Ahieel.

Where the fuck had the guy even come from, and how? He had Keyd totally pinned, flat on his stomach on the blacktop, a knee in his spine and one arm wrenched up behind his back. Keyd’s other arm was trapped under his own body, and Ahieel was putting more weight on that shoulder. Keyd wasn’t going anywhere.

I managed to lurch forward another step. “Hey!” I shouted, stupidly, with absolutely no fucking idea what I was doing or what my plan was. My own voice sounded gummy and far away.

Ahieel’s head snapped up. “Don’t,” he said, and threw one hand straight out towards me. I staggered to a stop. His arm was glowing, threads of light pulsing down from his shoulder, running between his fingers and into the center of his palm. I’d seen enough of his powers to know that this was a fucking bad sign. I wasn’t gonna move at long as he had that pointed at me. He was still crouched over Keyd’s back, holding him down with only one arm now, not at the best angle or position to do anything. But I still wasn’t gonna risk it.

“What do you want?” I said instead.

“This—” Ahieel tightened his grip on Keyd’s arm, bent it even further up his back, and Keyd jerked, arcing his body against the pressure, “—is going to come with me. I’m taking him.”

“No way. I can’t let you do that.” I hoped it sounded more confident than I felt.

Ahieel shook his head. “There’s no need for this,” he said. “Not for you. We have no quarrel, you and I. Stay where you are, try nothing, and I will do nothing to you.”

Fuck. “Yeah, and what if I don’t?”

“Whatever you attempt, I will stop you.” Ahieel’s arm seemed to give an extra bright pulse of light; a little warning. “In whatever way I may need to. I’ve no real wish to harm or kill you, but if you force that from me, it will be your own doing. So it is your choice, what happens now.”

Choose to do nothing and probably get away from this alive, but then Ahieel would take Keyd. Or, choose to step in and probably get myself killed, and then Ahieel would take Keyd anyway. Either way, this guy was gonna do something shady and awful and both my choices were fucking terrible.

I looked down at Keyd. He was panting through bared teeth, the side of his cheek shoved down against the blacktop, shuddering and staring right at me. There was a faint gold light around him, sort of a hazy glow with tiny sparkles drifting through it. I had no idea what the better of the bad choices was. Keyd’s eyes were nearly boring through me, fierce and unblinking. Was he trying to tell me something? Fuck if I knew what it was. Maybe he wanted me to try something. Be a distraction, and then Keyd could take the opportunity to fight back. I could maybe block something Ahieel threw at me with a shield of my own, but I didn’t know how much I could take and I had no way to counterattack. Frankly, I was pretty sure I’d just get myself killed.

But, if I got through this, survived right now, I could help Keyd later. I could go and get Rysa. I could do something. Couldn’t do a fucking thing if I was dead. That wouldn’t help either of us.

Ahieel shifted, raised his arm a little higher. The middle of his palm brightened, the glow spreading towards his fingertips, and I got an answering buzz running over all my skin and tightening through the roots of my hair.

“Okay! Okay. Don’t.” The words felt bitter and dirty in my mouth, and even worse when I heard my own voice saying them. I took a step back, held up my hands in a little surrender. “Don’t. I won’t...try anything.”

I could still feel Keyd’s eyes on me, staring at me, into me. But I couldn’t look at him.

Ahieel hesitated, and then lowered his arm. The patterns on his skin stood out sharp and bright for a couple seconds, and then faded back to a matte white. I dropped my own arms helplessly to my sides. My stomach rolled and clenched. Air burned uselessly in my lungs. I heaved in a breath, and my vision swum and sparkled with grey.

Ahieel climbed to his feet, leaving Keyd flat and still on the ground. Why the fuck didn’t he get up? He didn’t look hurt, just out of breath. The cloudy light glittered around him, heavy and swirling. Was that doing something, like holding him down somehow? Jesus, I didn’t understand how any of this magic shit really worked.

“You know I’m not just gonna do nothing,” I said to Ahieel. The guy was actually brushing off his clothes and straightening his shirt out, and he glanced up at me.

“Good. Go get her, and tell her to come face her judgment,” he said.

And then Ahieel leaned down and grabbed the collar of Keyd’s shirt, heaving him up to the his feet. Keyd didn’t really stand; he sagged heavily to one side like a broken puppet, his head hanging down against his chest. And then two blinding white wings unfurled from behind Ahieel’s shoulders and he got a foot up on the front bumper of the Windstar, dragging Keyd bodily after him.

Shit, oh shit. He was really just taking him. Right now.

It hadn’t hit me before, that this would actually happen. That this would be the result of what I’d decided. I couldn’t—wrong choice, I’d made the wrong fucking choice.

I started forward, but it was too goddamn late. Ahieel ran right up the hood of the van —that light around Keyd had to be helping him out somehow because there was no way Ahieel could lift the guy on his own like this—and then launched them both off the top of the roof with a heavy drag of air and a ruffle of static.

“No—no!” I threw myself after them, making a desperate swipe to try and grab onto one of them. My fingers dragged against the heel of Keyd’s boot, and then my hand was clutching on empty air. “Fuck!”

They were already banking high in the air, just a dark shadow against the brownish night sky except for the bright flares of Ahieel’s wings. In only a couple seconds, they were completely out of sight beyond the freeway. And I was left standing stupidly in the dark parking lot, alone.

And then suddenly I was on my knees, rough blacktop grinding into the palms of my hands. My stomach twisted and the taste of meat and onions was sickening in the back of my throat. Some of it tried to come back up, and I shuddered and dry-heaved before managing to hold on to it until the feeling went away. The dry static in the air was slowly fading, the itchy current along my skin disappearing now that Ahieel was gone, and I could almost take full breaths again. A cool night breeze ruffled through the back of my hair and flapped under my shirt, and I got myself up with some effort and sat back on my heels.

After another half-minute, I climbed unsteadily back to my feet, already digging in my pocket for my keys and turning back towards my car. This whole time I’d forgotten that we were right by a crowded fast food restaurant, but it didn’t seem like anybody had seen any of what had just happened. Or if they had, they hadn’t wanted to come out and get involved. Still, I needed to get the fuck out of here, and fast. I had to get back to my apartment, to Rysa.

Ahieel had said he wanted her to come face her judgment—what the fuck did that even mean?

Keyd and Rysa had always kind of pitched this thing to me as some kind of three-way personal feud they had with each other...but I was getting the idea that it was really between Rysa and Ahieel, and Keyd was kind of collateral stuck in the middle of it.

Ahieel knew he meant something to Rysa, and he was using that to get whatever it was that he wanted out of her. And fuck, it’d worked on me too. I was the one running every light and stop sign to get back to my apartment, double parking in the street because I didn’t want to wait for the slow fucking gate to open, staggering up the walkway to my door with my keys jumbling around in my shaking hands.

When I stumbled clumsily inside, Rysa was already awake. She was sitting up on the couch in the dark, her hand gripping the back cushion.

“Alan,” she said. She definitely knew something had happened.

“He just took him,” I said, rushed out in a single breath.

I didn’t have to explain any more than that. Rysa was already shoving the blanket aside and throwing her long legs off the side of the couch. My keys tipped out of my hand and clattered to the tile, and I leaned over, digging my fingers against the stitch in my side and wincing with every breath. But I only got a second to rest, because Rysa grabbed me and backed me up against the door. My head thunked against the wood and the cramp in my side screamed, like my muscle was being torn open. I might have whimpered, just a little.

“Where,” Rysa said, getting real close up to me. In the dark her face was half-hidden in blobs of deep shadows.

“I don’t know!” Greasy food churned sickly in my stomach again, and I swallowed hard. “I’m so sorry,” I added, because I had nothing else to say. “I’m so sorry.”

“Did he say anything?”

“I—no. I don’t know!”

Rysa shook me once, hard, and the back of my head knocked into the door. The raised edge of the peephole dug into my skull. “Anything, Alan; he must have said something.”

“He said—he said that you needed to come face your judgment, or something like that, I don’t really get—”

But she’d let go of me, stepped away and let me slump back against the door. I heaved in a huge breath, my heart galloping against my ribs. I hadn’t really thought she was gonna hurt me, but she was bigger and stronger and she and Keyd got crazy about each other. She could have, even by accident—

The lights were still off. I pawed for the light switch and got them flipped on just as Rysa turned on me again, both of us wincing against the sudden brightness. “Where were you?”

“It doesn’t matter where we were. They aren’t there anymore.” Ahieel had headed north, but that didn’t mean he’d kept going that way.

“Did he do that to you?” Her voice was sharp, and I realized she was looking hard at my neck. I slapped my hand back over the scratches again.

“No, that’s—no,” I said. “That’s something else.”

Well, sort of. But a dream didn’t really count.

“He didn’t hurt you at all.”

I couldn’t meet her eyes, and guilt burned hard in my throat. “No.”

“Good.” She actually sounded relieved, and I hated myself just a little more. Why did she care so much? “We have to find them.”

“How?”

Instead of answering, Rysa closed her eyes. Her fingers curled up lightly into her palms, relaxed, then curled in again. She’d done this before to find Keyd, that day forever ago when we’d tracked him down in the middle of terrorizing the library. I’d totally forgot she could even do this, use their connection to sense him and what he was experiencing, but I was so fucking glad she could. This situation wasn’t totally hopeless, and maybe I hadn’t made the worst choice after all.

But Rysa’s mouth was slowly pressing into a tight little line, her hands clenching into hard fists. A little trickle of sweat rolled out of her hairline, and she suddenly blew out a breath and snapped her eyes open.

“No,” she said, but it wasn’t a comforting sound. She almost sounded dismayed. “I can’t...get to him. He’s not open to me.”

“Jesus, try again!” I said. “Can I—is there something I can do, or—”

Rysa shot me a look, one that clearly told me I wasn’t helping. “Don’t speak,” she said.

I shut up. I watched her take two deep breaths, setting her shoulders back and tilting her head like she was listening for something. Her eyes closed again, lightly at first, then squeezing tightly shut. Her hands flexed, fingers balling up and then splaying out against her legs. I could see her muscles trembling, cords standing out in her wrists and even her neck. Her face flushed, going red with effort.

“There’s...something...hard to see,” she said suddenly through gritted teeth, her eyebrows wrinkling harder together. “It looks like the things around it, the sky itself, has no appearance of its own. I can’t...see it. And something tall, a...some sort of tower.” Rysa opened her eyes again, reeled to the side, and caught herself on the back of the kitchen chair. She looked drained and pale, like doing this had really taken something out of her.

But I was thinking about what she’d said, what she’d seen. Something that looked like everything around it, something that was probably a building with a lot of mirrored windows. And a tower. Not a lot of towers here in southern California. Except for....

“Holy shit,” I said, and just about wrenched Rysa’s arm out of its socket as I whirled her towards the door. “I know where that is.”

#

The Crystal Cathedral was closed down at night, parking lot empty, mostly unlit. But the gates were open and there wasn’t any security, and we just drove right on in. I’d never been here before, even though I saw the place all the time—passing by when heading to the nearby shopping center, or just seeing it sticking up over the tops of the neighborhoods and strip malls surrounding it. It was just a normal feature of this part of town, something I didn’t think much about but always knew was here. And it matched what Rysa had described.

The tower didn’t have any lights, but its huge mirrored shape and the chunky glass building squatting behind it were easy enough to see. The shadows here were long and dark and the tower itself was a huge splintered spike against the cloudy brown sky. Glows from the streetlights and neighboring strip malls twinkled and blurred low on its silver sides, reflecting blobs of orange and gold light like the base of it was on fire. Why Ahieel had dragged Keyd here—if they were here—I had no fucking clue. The tower was one of the most visible things around for miles; maybe just that was enough to have caught his attention.

“Are they here?” I whispered to Rysa as we crept through the quiet parking lot towards the cluster of buildings. The whole area was real creepy at night, a sort of abandoned untouchable feeling to it. The only sounds were the wind in the palm trees and the occasional car gunning by on the main road. If we got caught sneaking around in here I’d feel pretty bad—this place was still a church, no matter how modern arty it all was.

“Do you feel anything?” Rysa replied, which seemed like a weird damn question until I realized I actually could—real faint and far away. The same way watching distant fireworks felt, thick low booms that shuddered through the air. But this ran under my skin and pulsed through my muscles, getting more uncomfortable and disorienting the harder I focused on it.

I sucked in a breath through my teeth. “Something’s sure here. What is—”

“You still have his spells, some of his energy, in you. Close enough together, they react to each other. That’s what you’re feeling.” She said it so flat and factual, it sounded like she’d read it out of a textbook. Her hand suddenly gripped around my wrist, and she tugged me along a little faster. “Come on.”

The tower got more and more sinister looking as we got closer. A small round building with a painted gold dome was stuck right into the open base of it, and hard lights from the walkway cut across it in stripes. Huge spiked beams jutted down from the tower’s hollow body like the bottom of some kind of ancient medieval gate. A breeze shifted through the heavy palm fronds above us, and the hairs on my arms and back of my neck wouldn’t settle down. It wasn’t all that cold, but shivers trickled down my shoulders and spine every few seconds.

A wide breezeway cut through the polished building sitting behind the tower, heading into some kind of landscaped courtyard between more buildings. Our shadows stretched narrow and long on the cement as we moved towards it. Every inch of my skin prickled by now, my fingers and chest tingling, and a low light buzz hovered around my ears like a noisy bug that wouldn’t go away. Rysa was nearly dragging me by this point, her tight hold around my wrist the only thing keeping me moving forward. The heavy thrum was deep down in my bones now, getting stronger with each step, harder to ignore.

There was something reflecting off the glass walls of the breezeway—a light that didn’t look like the artificial lighting of the place. This was hazy, unsteady and too pure white. It pulsed in the same rhythm as the constant humming and pounding going through me. Fuck, I didn’t like this at all, I didn’t want to be here. I should have stayed back in the goddamn car.

Rysa and I had just gotten close enough to actually see down to the other end of the breezeway when the air started getting thick and heavy around us. Pressure built up, plugging my ears and sitting heavy on my ribcage, and then broke open in a single rolling boom that slammed me solidly in the chest. All the breath wheezed out of me and I doubled over, my bones vibrating inside my skin. Rysa’s hand clawed into my arm and distantly I heard her grunt. It was nearly a minute before I could stand up straight again, and I was still feeling the aftershocks deep in my chest. Rysa looked like she had no idea what the fuck had happened either.

A movement at the end of the breezeway caught my attention. A sharp backlit shape stumbled out of the hazy light, tumbled down to its knees and caught itself on its hands. And stayed there. A knee dragged forward and one shoulder pulled up, but then they collapsed again, hunched over and head hanging. The person was just a black silhouette, but I knew that wild hair. Fuck, that was Keyd.

Rysa didn’t have to drag me along anymore. I was going on my own. My ears were ringing and my vision was all doubled up but it didn’t matter. Keyd was trying to get himself up to his feet again, but he looked like he was barely managing to stay steady on his hands and knees, and I just had to get over there.

Fingers dug in around my wrist, yanked me back hard. I thought my arm was gonna wrench right out of the socket, and my whole body swung helplessly around and whirled back towards Rysa. She caught me hard, my back slamming against her chest. Goddamn, she was just a wall of muscle and so strong. Her other arm dropped around me, cinching high around my shoulders almost like a headlock, and I was trapped.

“Don’t,” she hissed right in my ear. “Don’t.”

Her arm burned hot through my shirt—way too hot, a searing line against my chest. I hung against her elbow, trying to break her grip on me with my weight, but she only reeled me in tighter and pulled us both back against the wall of the breezeway. Static cracked over my skin and the air in my lungs was too dry and thin, bright flashes popped in my vision and nearly blocked my view of Keyd, still down on his hands and knees.

Then, a second silhouette strode across the end of the breezeway. Went straight to Keyd and nudged him with a foot, pushing him off the one arm he’d managed to brace under himself.

I froze, and stopped hanging against Rysa’s arm. Of course Keyd wasn’t alone, Ahieel was here, Jesus. What the fuck had I been thinking, trying to just run over there like that?

Rysa slowly loosened her grip on me and let me go, once it was clear I wasn’t gonna be a total idiot again. Ahieel said something, his voice throwing itself down the concrete hallway in hard echoes. The words were too warped to hear through the plugged-up buzzing in my ears. Keyd had managed to brace himself on one elbow, just staring up at the guy. I couldn’t tell how bad he was hurt, what was going on, what they were doing.

Or why Rysa wasn’t doing anything. She was still standing right next to me, back against the wall, breathing tightly through her nose. Her hands were clenched hard at her sides. I wanted to say something, say her name, get her attention, anything—but I was afraid to make any noise. Neither Ahieel or Keyd had noticed us yet, but that could change. Ahieel had grabbed him by the front of his shirt, pulled him up to his knees, and was still talking to him in low twisted mutters.

That weird brightness at the end of the breezeway had disappeared, but I could still feel an invisible power, energy coiled and heavy around them. There was a build up in the air, dry and electric, and as I watched….something weird was happening to Keyd. It looked like he was sweating light. A weird golden glow started oozing out of his skin and running in big gloopy trickles down his face and arms. What the fuck was that, Christ, what was happening?

And then suddenly, Rysa wasn’t next to me anymore.

For one second, I had the stupid crazy thought that she’d bailed. But there was no fucking way she’d ever do that, and it only took a second to find where she’d gone.

She was walking down the breezeway, right down the middle, a tall shadow outlined by light.
I wasn’t a strategist or anything, but that didn’t seem like a real great plan. For a couple seconds I stayed back, pressed against the cool glass of the building. Sweat slid between my skin and the windows, stuck my shirt against my back. But I couldn’t do the coward thing, not again. I sucked in a breath, shoved myself off the wall and followed her.

Ahieel noticed pretty damn quick. He raised his head, turning away from Keyd and towards us, still mostly a solid black shape.

“You took longer than I expected,” he said, like we’d shown up late for a goddamn lunch date. Rysa drew up short, maybe ten feet from him. I nearly ran into her back.

“Daitohe hem emua loi dahe.” Rysa’s voice sounded somewhere between a snarl and a whisper, and that wasn’t the same language she and Keyd spoke. This one had a lot more vowels and not as many harsh edges to it. I’d heard her use it before, just once, with Ahieel.

“How dare I?” Ahieel said, and there was a real flare of fury in his own voice. “Remember what it is that you’ve done, what you are, before you accuse me.”

Rysa heaved in a huge breath, practically gulping air in. Something surged in the air, powering up from deep inside her and radiating off her skin. The next thing I expected was some crazy fucking magic to go down, and I backed away from her towards the wall of the breezeway…but nothing happened. The energy built up around her but stayed there, a thick and buzzing aura in the air.

“You need to let him go,” Rysa said to Ahieel, in a voice that was too calm to actually be calm.

“Oh well, certainly,” Ahieel said. He let go of Keyd’s shirt and shoved him away. Keyd dropped and barely caught himself, his forehead nearly smacking against the concrete. That thick glow still throbbed around him, blobs of liquid light oozing out of his skin and pooling around him. Even looking at it made my skin crawl, and my gut instinct was to get it the hell off of him. But I had no idea how to do that, and Ahieel was in the way.

A muscle in Rysa’s jaw flexed. “What did you do to him.”

“Something that might kill him, or it might not.” Ahieel sounded like he didn’t really care which one happened. At his feet, Keyd was crawling slowly out of the way, dragging himself by his elbows. Ahieel didn’t seem to care about that either—he was focused only on Rysa. “In the meanwhile, we’ll talk.”

Rysa bared her teeth. Sweat shone on her face and her breathing was getting shaky and uneven. That current of energy was still swirling around her, but it felt...different. Frantic, almost panicked. I wasn’t even sure if she was consciously doing it. Whatever was happening to Keyd—maybe it was doing something to her too.

“We have nothing to say that hasn’t already been said,” she said.

“Yet it still needs saying, because nothing has changed.” Ahieel moved, gliding a step forward. Shadows slipped over his face and blocks of yellowish light slid over his expression. He looked like he was smiling, but it was hard and ugly. “You and I are still here, doing this, when you know you could end it.”

Shit, I think I’d got it right. Whatever was going on, it really was between the two of them. Neither of them was even looking in Keyd’s direction any more, or at me. Keyd had pulled himself about twenty feet across the concrete, towards a cluster of people-shaped statues lurking creepily in the middle of some bushes. I started moving towards him, slow and careful, trying not to draw any attention to us.

The glowing liquid blobs around him were all gone now, but his skin looked hazy; bright and almost golden. But maybe that was just the lights or my own blurry vision. There was a trickle of something thick and dark at the corner of his mouth, his hair was a sweaty mess and his clothes were soaked with sweat and stuck against him. But I didn’t see any other blood, or whatever that black jelly was that they had in place of it. He was trying to get up again, and it was clearly making things worse.

“Keyd, hey—hey, stop,” I whispered, and grabbed his shoulder. A snap of static sparked between us and I barely managed to not yank my hand back. Keyd either didn’t hear me or didn’t care. He pushed himself up on one arm, held steady for a second, and then his muscles started to strain and shake. “Jesus, dude, stop!”

“Ijotoanan bahn,” he muttered, and collapsed again.

Something about that caught Ahieel’s attention. I’d been keeping an eye on him and Rysa this whole time, and now I saw his head turn and his eyes lock onto us over her shoulder.

“This is truly one of the problems,” he said. “It needs to be gotten rid of.”

“No!” Rysa snarled, and shoved her arm forward—a tight open-palmed strike straight into his face.

Or it would have been, if Ahieel hadn’t jerked his head to the side. Rysa’s hand clipped past his ear, and Ahieel’s arm flashed up and caught her right under the elbow. He shoved her arm up and lunged forward into her, keeling her off balance and then somehow getting a shot in at her legs, sending her careening towards the ground. It was all so damn fast, happening in just a split second.

But she knew how to land a fall, and it didn’t stop her for long. Those black whips burst out from her hands and lashed up towards Ahieel, right at his throat. He threw up his arm, bright light slashed in an arc through the air, and Rysa’s attack hammered uselessly against a shield. I felt the clash of it in my throat and gut. The whole thing’d actually looked half-assed on her part, but then Rysa used the couple seconds that Ahieel was distracted to tuck herself up and roll away, and came up crouched low on her feet. She hadn’t actually moved that far, just barely out of his reach, and I remembered the first fight at the plaza—where she and Keyd hadn’t been able to hit him. But she was close enough now.

And she was moving, sliding sideways in a guarded half-circle, to get herself in between us and Ahieel. It seemed crazy and unfair that she had to protect us, and all on her own. But Keyd was completely out of it. He was just done, not even trying to get up anymore. And I...well. I’d already proved how fucking useful I was when shit got serious. I didn’t even know how to help her.

Ahieel’s arms were glowing now underneath his shirtsleeves, and I expected him to start with those fucking harpoons of his. But I was wrong again. Neither of them did anything for what felt like ten eternal seconds. They just stared each other down, the air vibrating with coiled energy. Then Ahieel snorted out a hard breath, and struck forward.

It looked a completely open move, practically a bum rush, but at the last second he went low, dodging the burst of energy that Rysa threw at him practically before it was even out of her hand. The weight and force behind his shoulder rammed her right in the stomach, and she stumbled back with a huge emptying gasp that echoed through the courtyard. Jesus, what a cheap fucking move.

And Ahieel was on her right away. He grabbed her by the shoulders and wrenched her around, swinging her down to her knees. An oily ripple shimmered over her, flooding out from Ahieel’s hands and racing over her entire body. Her hands slapped down to the cement but she immediately tried to get up again, even though Ahieel still had a grip on her. But her movements were slowing down, stalling out, and then...she stopped. Locked in place on one knee, unnaturally still. She was facing right towards us, and even her eyes weren’t moving or blinking. A white-gold light clung around her, glistening close against her skin.

Ahieel took his hands off her and backed away a step, panting through his teeth. He set his shoulders back and shook himself, tugging that stupid collared shirt straight again. His eyes were still locked on her. I saw his throat roll as he swallowed, and his fingers splayed wide at his sides and then curled loosely back in.

“Now. Watch,” Ahieel told her, and then turned towards Keyd. And me.

Shit.

I grabbed Keyd by the shoulder, pulled at him and shook him hard. “Keyd,” I hissed, but I didn’t think he was even conscious anymore. He was way too heavy in my grip and not moving at all.

And then Ahieel was standing right over us, looking down. Déjà vu hit me hard, but my panicked mind couldn’t tell me why. My skin felt like it was gonna ripple right off my bones, and there was a sharp metal taste in my mouth almost like blood. I leaned over Keyd’s back, bracing myself over him. Things were gonna go different this time.

Ahieel glanced over Keyd and then focused on me. A thin slice split the skin across his cheek, and what was trickling out of it was white. It looked like he was bleeding glue.

“Do you need to be reminded of our conversation from before?” he said to me, real calm and almost polite.

“No, I don’t.” I curled my fingers into the back of Keyd’s shirt, tasting blood on my tongue, and didn’t move.

“Ah,” Ahieel said. He let out a soft sigh, like I was really disappointing him. “Well.”

Then his arm snapped up, his fingers full of sudden sparks.

Block it! a part of my mind screamed at me, and Rysa’s lessons all tumbled back to me in a panicked blur and I did—I tried. Dragged on that energy inside me and thought about walls and barriers and shielding, but too fucking slow. The hard little glow fired off Ahieel’s palm and hit me right in the shoulder. It was like getting a really aggressive shot with a needle—a sharp jab of hard pressure and pain, and I jerked back. My whole arm went dead and numb, and I watched my fingers wilt uselessly out of Keyd’s shirt. Then Ahieel rolled his own fingers into a fist and raised it, like he was curling an invisible barbell.

My body rose up. Just...lifted right off the ground. I wasn’t fucking doing it. My feet dragged on the concrete, and I scrambled to get them stable under me, but Ahieel pulled me too far up so I wasn’t even touching the ground at all. The numb feeling was spidering out from my shoulder, into my chest and down my side all the way to my leg. I hung uselessly in the air, twisting a little in the breeze, and wondered if this was it; if I was going to die right here and now.

Ahieel flicked his hand to the side. The world flipped over in a blur. Air rushed past me and my shoulder slammed into something hard, and then the rest of me followed. Concrete shredded against my skin and my limbs flailed uselessly around me.

I rolled up against the base of a palm tree, through a rough patch of tall thin grass and dirt in a planter around the tree. I felt distant pain throbbing through me, but it didn’t seem important. I clawed myself up to my knees, wrapping an arm around the tree to stay steady. My glasses were still on my face, but barely, and I shoved them clumsily back up my nose and stared through the smudged lenses.

Keyd was stretched out on the ground, and Ahieel was right fucking on top of him. He grabbed a hunk of Keyd’s hair and yanked him up to his knees. Keyd didn’t make a sound, but his lips snarled back off his teeth. Ahieel lifted his other hand, and something flexed, a ripple in the air. The white patterns on Ahieel’s arm started glowing, and I could feel energy running down his arm to his hand, almost see it pulsing down in waves. A compact core of power and light formed in his hand, bright sparking white with golden tendrils that flared off and dissolved into the dark air around it.

“Are you watching?”Ahieel called to Rysa, who was still frozen in place on her knees and didn’t have any fucking choice. That ball of energy in his hand was like a supernova now, almost too bright to look at and vibrating so hard I thought all my teeth were gonna rattle right out of my skull. Electric sparks were dragging up under my skin, crackling right under the surface, reaching towards it.

Ahieel looked down at Keyd, and I saw where this was headed. And I knew that if that energy got anywhere near Keyd, it was going to kill him. There was just too much of it, too strong and too powerful. And that’s what Ahieel wanted—he wanted to kill Keyd while Rysa watched it happen. And for whatever fucked up reason he had to want that, if nobody stopped it right now, he was gonna get it done.

“Hey!” I shouted, and it only came out as a thin raw rasp. “Stop!”

Nobody heard me. Rysa was still locked in place on one knee, frozen and trapped. Ahieel heaved Keyd up a little higher, and the guy wasn’t resisting at all. I thought his eyes were even closed. I shoved my hands frantically around in the loose earth of the planter, closed around a rough clump of dirt and stone. I wrenched my arm back, aiming—shit, was I really gonna throw a fucking rock at the guy?

But what the fuck else could I do to get his fucking attention? And I was just about to, when the clump of pure energy in Ahieel’s hand gave a final flaring pulse. The energy under my skin screamed and pulled towards it, and I actually staggered forward on my knees.

Okay. Goddamn it, if he wanted his energy back so bad, he could fucking have it. Right now.

So I stopped holding it back.

A blast of dry heat rolled over me, like opening a hot oven door. All those little sparks under my skin exploded outwards eagerly, pouring off me and trapping me in a rush of heat—it was in my eyes, my mouth, running down my arms and boiling in my chest. All I was thinking was that it’d at least startle Ahieel, distract him for a couple seconds, buy Keyd a little more time, maybe Rysa could manage to break out of that spell and—

But I let go too much. It wasn’t just Ahieel’s energy pouring out of me, but the leftover scraps of what I’d absorbed out of Rysa in our training session. All of it went, screaming down my muscles and out through my skin, and I couldn’t pull it back and couldn’t stop it. It rolled into a big ugly mess of tangled raw energy, and I couldn’t control it, couldn’t direct it other than pushing it out. But it went toward Ahieel anyway, plowed right at him in a wild sparking mass. And I felt it hit him, an impact that shuddered through the air and ground down through my teeth.

Ahieel keeled backwards, losing his grip on Keyd and stumbling off-balance. His clothes rippled, hair blew back off his face. I heard a high-pitched yelp, or a sound like metal shrieking against metal. The crackling core of energy Ahieel’d been drawing up into his hand shorted out, exploding apart into the air with a deep and endless thrum that hit me right in the gut. A hard spike of energy punched out from Ahieel, maybe a last-ditch effort to shield himself, but it was way too fucking late.

The air went dry and electrified and hot. I sucked it uselessly into my lungs, and it burned all the way down and seared in my chest and I still felt like I was suffocating. A sharp whine cut through the air, ringing into a high dog-whistle pitch. There was a wild swell of energy with it, a vibration that surged up hard and strong. Then it all snapped, like a stretched rubber band breaking.

Every light in the complex went out.

For the longest couple of fucking seconds in my whole damn life, everything was black. Just a thick endless dark. Then my eyes adjusted, and the cloudy brown sky faded in, and the lights from the streets and buildings trickled back, and I could see a few things around me again. Plants waving in the breeze, dark statues lurking in the bushes, wavering reflections in glass windows. But it was all sideways, and looked a lot taller than it should be.

Because I was on the ground, on my side, cheek mashed against the concrete. I didn’t remember how I’d ended up down here, didn’t remember falling. Shit, had I been unconscious? What the fuck’d just happened? I lifted my head, everything swimming and sloshing, and looked dizzily around.

Ahieel was gone.

Completely gone. Where he’d last been was just shadows and air. Everything was still and quiet. Even the vibrations in the air had stopped.

I dragged myself up to one knee, wheezing for breath. All of me was shaky and boneless and numb, and my whole body felt real far away and disconnected. I couldn’t pull in air as deep as I needed to. I saw Rysa a couple feet away, hanging on to a bench and getting her feet back under her. So she was okay too, at least. Shit, what about Keyd?

Looking around made my head swim, and I dug my fingers against the cool concrete and had to close my eyes. Breathe in, breathe out again. With every try my ribs loosened up a little, let more air in. The spots in my vision were fainter when I opened my eyes again. And I finally found him.

He was lying on his side a couple dozen yards behind me. The breeze ruffled through his hair, flopped it against his neck. But he wasn’t moving.

The complex lights were stuttering back one by one, flickering and slowly glowing back on. Rysa was steady on her feet now, and she was making a slow but determined line straight to Keyd. Once she got to him, she slid kind of gracelessly down to her knees at his side, her back to me.

I didn’t think I could get to my feet and actually stay there. So I made my way over to them on my hands and knees. My head swam and everything had a gooey look to it, like looking through a smeared lens. I was only a couple feet away when Rysa reached out to Keyd and put her hands to his face. Something jarred, like the air itself had just been goosed, and bright sparks hissed and popped from under her fingers. Rysa yanked her hands away with a startled noise, rocking back on her heels. Thin threads of light bounced away into the dark.

Keyd hadn’t moved at all. I crawled closer, concrete digging into my knees and palms. I could actually see where Rysa had touched his face; a clump of darkened veins in the shape of a hand print. He was shaking in bursts, chills sweeping over him. His chest barely moved as he dragged in thin little breaths. But at least he was alive.

“Keyd,” I said, and touched him before I remembered what’d happened when Rysa’d done it. But nothing happened. He just felt ice cold and pasty, and something like a low current surged up into my fingers and arm. But it didn’t hurt. “Jesus, fuck. What’s…”

Rysa was staring at where I was touching Keyd’s arm. Then she reached for him again, jaw set. Something built up in the space between them, a pressure and thickness that whined through the air, buzzing more and more angrily the closer she got to touching him.

“No, stop!” I barked. Rysa yanked her hand back, eyes flashing to me. “Don’t do that, fuck. I don’t think you should touch him.”

Her mouth thinned out, and she huffed out a hard little breath through her nose. She sat back on her heels again as I shook Keyd’s arm, used the back of my other hand to pat at his cheek.

“Hey, Keyd. Shit, wake up, okay?” I said. His head rolled uselessly to the side. That veiny hand print was still there, dark and ugly. “Come on buddy, don’t fucking do this.”

Nothing. The guy wasn’t dead, but he might be real close to it. He definitely wasn’t waking up anytime soon.

I looked up at Rysa, trying to swallow my heart back down into my chest where it belonged. “What the fuck do we do?”

“Take him out of here,” Rysa said. She hesitated, then said, “you can touch him. I can’t.”

It took me a second to get it. “I can’t carry him!” The guy had to weigh twice what I did. I could maybe drag him, lift him up into something, but carrying him—

“Okay,” I said. It was hard to think between every harsh thud of my heart. “Okay, okay, I—look, I’ll go bring my car around, okay?”

Rysa made a noise that sounded sort of like an agreement, and that was good enough for me. I pushed myself up to my feet, caught my balance, and waited for a couple seconds with my arms held out from my sides, just in case. But I was okay. A little wobbly, and still seeing way too many spots, but okay. I could stand, probably walk, pretty sure drive.

“I’ll be right back,” I promised Rysa, and took off for the parking lot.

My car wasn’t parked that far away, but it felt like it took fucking forever to get to it. I was out of breath and dizzy by the time I was fumbling the door open, and had the key in the ignition before I was even all the way inside.

I drove across the lot and right up onto the sidewalk, because fuck it. The walkway was wide enough for at least two cars, so my little Honda had plenty of room. I had to bounce up over a manicured strip of grass at the edge of the parking lot and cut it real close between two palm trees, but fuck all that too. I took my car all the way down the breezeway and slammed to a stop. The headlights washed over Keyd and Rysa, who were still in pretty much the exact same place I’d left them—Keyd stretched out on the concrete and Rysa sitting close by his side. Close, but not touching.

She raised her head as I clambered out of the car, squinting into the hard white glare of the headlights and raising one hand in front of her face.

“Is he still—” I started, but I could already see nothing’d changed.

“The same,” Rysa said anyway. “And I still can’t touch him. You’ll have to.”

Keyd looked even worse in the harsh white light. His lips were bluish and the rest of his skin was colorless, except for the handprint that was still on his face; the dark veins raised up under his skin, which was raw and red like he’d been slapped. He was still out cold, and barely breathing.

I grabbed him under the arms and hefted him up as much as I could. The guy weighed a goddamn ton, and him being unconscious didn’t help either. I hooked my elbows under his armpits and managed to drag him the couple feet back to my car. Getting him inside it was even harder. I heaved him partially up against the back seats, then crawled in through the other door and hauled him all the way in. Rysa stood by the entire time, clenching and unclenching her hands against her legs, a muscle ticking in her jaw.

“Okay,” I said to her, when Keyd was folded up enough to fit and the doors were shut. “We’re good. Let’s go.”

#

When we got back to my apartment, Rysa and I carried Keyd in together. She could touch him now, but I could feel weird clashing ripples in the air whenever she did, and I was sure it was hurting her. Still, she hung grimly on to him and pretty much took most of his weight between us. I just held his legs up so he wasn’t dragging along the ground.

We put him in my bed. I figured that was, you know, better than a lumpy old couch. Now he was lying there on top of the blankets, flat on his back. His breathing was so light that his chest barely moved, and he still looked barely fucking alive. At least most of that handprint was gone now, and what was left looked like an old faded bruise. Rysa sat down on the edge of the bed, but kept a distance between herself and Keyd. She bent forward, her dark hair hiding most of her face, and I thought she might be saying something to him. But it was so quiet, and probably not in English.

I hung back in the doorway, too goddamn ashamed to even go in the room. I’d nearly gotten Keyd killed. I’d nearly gotten Rysa killed. All because I’d made one stupid choice. Because I couldn’t really use the goddamn magical powers I kind of had—or, more like, I hadn’t been willing to trust my own life to my ability to use them.

Goddamn it, I should have tried. Maybe Ahieel would’ve kicked my ass, maybe he’d’ve taken Keyd anyway. But then I wouldn’t feel like this, heavy responsibility and guilt churning around in my stomach every time I looked at Keyd. I could have put up a fight. Even if I’d’ve lost for sure. I could have done anything but what I’d actually done.

Rysa suddenly stood up, brushing her hands off briskly against the front of her shirt. She turned towards me, and I slunk out of the doorway and back into the hallway, out of her way. In a couple seconds, she came out of the room, shut the door behind her, and just….walked past me. Didn’t even look at me.

Fuck. Okay.

I sucked in a breath and, after half a minute, followed after her. I found her out sitting on the couch, leaning over her knees with her knotted fingers pressed against her mouth. She didn’t... look mad. But it was so damn hard to tell with these guys sometimes.

“Hey, uh—” I started, and it was actually easier to say when she wasn’t looking at me. But my stomach still churned and there was a sick pressure high in my throat. “Is he gonna be okay?”

“Since he’s still alive now, most likely,” Rysa said. At least she’d answered, but she sounded distant, and she was staring into a corner of the room. Her hair was tangled and clung against her face and neck, and pieces of grass and dirt stuck to her clothes. She was still wearing the shirt I’d loaned her.

“Most likely?” I echoed, but Rysa didn’t reply. Okay, so she didn’t want to talk about Keyd.

“What about Ahieel,” I said instead, and this was something we really had to talk about it, Christ, because, “how the fuck did he find me and Keyd?”

“I don’t know.”

Something in her voice told me that I’d better just shut up and stop asking questions. But then she lifted her head, looked right at me. “He won’t come back,” she said. “Not tonight, not right away.”

“How d’you know?” I muttered. I didn’t want him coming back any time. Just the fact that he’d found me, again, made me want to get the fuck out out of town completely. Maybe to a different goddamn country. But I couldn’t do that, and I didn’t want to sit here twiddling my fucking thumbs with that nutty asshole possibly knowing exactly where we were right now.

“He’s been injured himself.” Rysa’s voice had gone tight. “And the amount of energy he used...it will take a while for him to be at full strength again. It would be insane for him to come after us again now.”

Right now. “But what about after that?”

“I don’t know,” Rysa said again. “With Keyd like this—” she glanced back towards my room, mouth pressed into a worried little line.

“I thought you said he’d be okay!”

“But it might take days. Weeks, even. I’m not sure. Even then, I don’t know how strong he’ll be after what Ahieel did.”

“What did he do?”

“I wasn’t there to see,” she replied, which sounded like such a Keyd answer, close to a dry joke. Except there was no way it was. And then she added, “but I expect he can tell us exactly, if he wakes.”

If. Goddammit. Every time I thought I couldn’t feel fucking worse about this. I swallowed against the bile in my throat and dug my fingers into the couch cushion.

Fuck, okay, just focus on something else. Rysa had just said something about Ahieel being injured. Had I done that? I hadn’t exactly seen what’d happened after I’d slapped him with a shitload of random energy. He’d left, that’s all I knew. But maybe Rysa had seen. Maybe she could tell me what the fuck I’d even done.

But when I looked over at her, she’d curled up against a corner of the couch and closed her eyes. I wasn’t sure if she was sleeping or just overwhelmed with everything. I sure fucking was. When a couple long quiet minutes had gone by and she hadn’t moved, I got up carefully and left the room.

I went back into the hall bathroom—the one that was Martin’s—and threw some water on my face from the sink, then sat on the edge of the bathtub. The cold porcelain soaked through my jeans and into the backs of my legs. I laced my fingers together—they were shaking, and I couldn’t stop it. All the adrenaline had washed out of me by now, and without it my body was barely holding it together. I curled my hands in against my stomach and leaned over my legs, pressing my forehead to my knees. Throwing up was still a real possibility, and I ground my back teeth together and breathed real slow through my nose. My shirt was damp and clammy against my neck and goosebumps rippled up and down my arms and spine.

A minute dragged by. Then another, then a couple more. It was maybe ten minutes all together before I moved at all. I straightened back up in stages, carefully. But I seemed okay. Good enough to get back on my feet, and handle doing something that I didn’t want to do. But I couldn’t put it off, or I was gonna drive myself fucking crazy. I had to at least go in there, face what I’d done.

So I left the bathroom, and headed to my own room. I pushed the door open a crack, and leaned just my head inside. Keyd was on his stomach, head flat on the mattress and facing the door. And awake.

Eyes open, definitely alert and aware. He saw me right away. He looked real unhappy to be conscious at all, but he lifted his head just a little as I came the rest of the way in.

“Alan,” he said. It was the first time I could remember hearing him say my name. It sounded the same as when Rysa said it; throaty and drawn out, like aw-lawn. The relief at seeing him conscious and hearing him talk was so strong that I actually went light-headed for a second, and couldn’t say anything back.

Finally I managed, “hey.” I nudged my knee into the desk chair, pushed it partly across the room. Keyd just watched me and didn’t tell me to get lost, so I sat down. Still a couple of feet away from the bed and him, which seemed weird and unfriendly. So I scooted forward until I could’ve reached out and touched him if I wanted.

“You look better,” I said, caging my hands around my knees.

“Well. I am conscious,” Keyd said, like that was the lowest rung of the better ladder.

“Honestly you were pretty fucked up before, so...I’d say you’re better.” But he still looked like he’d maybe gone a round or two with a brick wall after having the flu for a week. I wasn’t gonna tell him that. His eyes seemed weirdly bright, reflecting too much light, almost like they were glowing. “But Rysa said you’re gonna be, uh, down for the count for a while. What’d he do to you, anyway?”

Keyd almost winced. “I’m...not sure how to explain,” he said slowly. “Not to you.” Then his eyes flicked up to me fast. “Sorry, but it’s only—”

“No, I get it.” I really just didn’t know enough about this shit. Even if he told me what’d happened, I probably wouldn’t understand what the hell he meant. “But you’re gonna be okay.”

He nodded once. “I believe so.” His hand moved up towards his chest, but stopped around his ribs and curled into a fist. “My own energy will overtake the other in me—I feel it already. But...it will likely be some time. Until then, I—”

Keyd closed his eyes, and a muscle flexed in his jaw. His fingers twisted into his shirt, and he huffed out a short frustrated breath.

“Until then Rysa’s gonna make you take it easy, huh.” I actually had to bite back on a smile; I still remembered all the sulking he’d done last time.

Keyd opened his eyes again. “Yes. Exactly.”

“Well,” I said. “I dunno how fun I am, but I could hang out with you while you’re stuck here. Some of the time. You know, if you want.”

“You’re…” Keyd shot me a puzzled look, then his expression smoothed out again. “I’d like that,” he finished.

“Okay,” I said. “It’s a plan,” I said. I’d almost said it’s a date, but stopped myself. Luckily. Because that would’ve been sorta weird.

It got quiet between us. Keyd had closed his eyes, but he wasn’t asleep. He kept shifting around, and after a minute he turned himself awkwardly onto his back. Just doing that seemed to tire him out, because he was breathing harder and sweating by the time he was done. His skin looked all washed out and grey. Fuck, he wasn’t anywhere close to better, if just rolling over wiped him out.

That only reminded me that I had something I needed to say to him. And that I should get it over with before I lost my goddamn nerve.

“Keyd, hey,” I said, and he opened his eyes. “I’m really…I didn’t mean for this to happen. I made a big fucking mistake, I know that. And you’re—this is my fault. It’s completely my fault and I know it. If you’re pissed at me for it, I’d underst—“

“I’m not,” Keyd said, which tripped up my momentum and I sort of stuttered out of words.

“Um,” I said instead. “Okay. Just...goddamn it, I’m really fucking sorry. I didn’t—I made the wrong choice, okay, and I know that, and I knew it then, but I—” —was trying to save my own ass. But I couldn’t say that to him, because it was such a pathetic weaselly fucking answer. Especially because the trade for it had been him, and it’d nearly got him killed.

Keyd looked back up at the ceiling. “You didn’t know what Ahieel would do.”

“Bullshit, it wasn’t like I couldn’t guess, okay? I knew.” I scrubbed the heel of my hand across my forehead and breathed out through my teeth. I was mad that he wasn’t mad. This was stupid. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apo—“

“Stop, Jesus, can you just let me fucking do this, okay? I’m saying sorry, so now you just gotta say you accept it and we can be done.”

Keyd turned his head, met my eyes, and said with a stupid amount of sincerity, “I accept your apology.”

I rubbed a hand over my face again and almost laughed. It was still a total lie and we both knew it. “All right. That’s what I wanted to hear.”

“Alan—” When I looked at him again, none of that intense honesty was gone. “I am sorry you’re upset.”

Yeah, so was I. There wasn’t even a reason to be getting this upset. Keyd was okay. Rysa was okay, I was okay. Everybody was okay. But there was something close to panic clawing at me, like something really fucking awful was going to happen and there wouldn’t be any stopping it this time. If Keyd could just get mad at me, I’d at least have some reason to be worked up like this. I raked my hands back through my hair; my fingers were shaking. I pressed my forehead into my wrists and kept my arms curled around my head. “Shit.”

A careful weight settled on my knee, and I peeked up between my wrists. Keyd had put his hand on my leg. All I could do was stare at it stupidly, until Keyd started to let go again.

“No, don’t,” I said, and Keyd stopped. He was still watching at me with that totally involved look, like he was actually worried about how okay I was. Maybe because he’d basically been tortured and almost killed an hour ago and was pretty out of it, but it was almost too weird to handle. I didn’t know what to do with this new version of him, and I didn’t want to start liking it, because it probably wouldn’t last.

But none of that was why I’d stopped him from letting me go. Keyd still had his hand almost on mine, hovering right on top of my knuckles, and he was just looking at me and waiting.

“I think—” I started, then figured I might as well just go ahead and try this rather than waste time explaining. So I put my other hand on top of his, sandwiching his hand between both of mine. Keyd’s eyebrows twitched together, but that was all he did. I was still shaking a little and maybe squeezing him too hard because of that, because the pressure helped to steady myself. So did a couple of slow breaths. And then I could focus a little better.

Keyd’s hands were big but kind of narrow, rough in places and sturdy. His skin felt hot and kind of dry. I closed my eyes, concentrating on what I could feel past that—the energy that came from him. It wasn’t like usual, what I’d felt from him before. It’d always been a low vibrating thrum, like deep bass notes played in a repeating pattern.

That was still there, but something else was too. A feeling that was higher and sharper, kind of like a bunch of little insects all swarming together. Bundled up somewhere in the middle of him; smaller, foreign, out of place. It was throwing off waves of that feeling, just radiating it out through Keyd’s body and the rest of his energy, out of sync with everything. It was jarring and uncomfortable and it probably felt even worse for him. But he was right; it didn’t feel anything like Ahieel’s energy.

I concentrated on it. Reached out to it. Last time I’d thought about walls and blocking and barriers, now I pictured a hand reaching forward. Keyd’s energy drifted towards my mental hand-thing and tried to cling to it too. I kind of nudged at it, pushing it all aside. No, go away. Not you.

It went, but hovered close and eager, just waiting for a chance to stick back on. I’d have to watch that. But for now, I focused on the buzzy lump of bad energy instead, that was already clustering up around the mental hand I’d stretched out to it. You. Come here. Get out of there.

My skin started prickling, and I opened my eyes. There was a light between our real hands. I could see the glowing outlines of veins under the skin of Keyd’s fingers and wrist. It was all coming to me, flowing towards any place our hands touched. The light coated over my skin and then sunk into it, fading out as it traveled up my arm. I could even feel it, a sharp buzzy tingle wriggling higher and deeper into me. It kinda felt like my blood was carbonated, but it didn’t hurt.

“Fuck,” I said. “Wow. That’s fucking working. I think.”

Keyd was staring at me. “Are you—“

“Yeah.” God, my arms itched. But deep, down in my bones. “I dunno know much of this I can do, but…maybe it’ll help.”
“I can—“ Keyd said, and suddenly I didn’t have to work so hard on keeping his energy from coming along for the ride. He was holding it back himself.

“Yeah, fuck, wow, that works better,” I said. I could still barely believe I was even doing anything at all. All this was so weird and abstract—well, actual touching was part of it too, but controlling it was actually going on in my mind. Training with Rysa had taught me that a lot of this stuff was mental, but…hell, it was still pretty crazy that I could actually do it.

But we were gonna have to sit here and hold hands for a while for it to do any good. Probably for a long time. There was a lot of that stuff in him.

My chair gave a soft sproingy creak as I sat back in it. Might as well get comfortable, even if my arms wouldn’t stop itching. Keyd kept staring at our hands, like he wasn’t even sure what was going on. Or maybe that he was expecting me to let go. This was pretty weird, after all, and Keyd and I’d only really had two decent conversations together and this wasn’t a real natural next step in our relationship.

After at least a solid minute or two, Keyd finally looked up at me. I braced myself for some kind of dismissal, a clear hint to let go of him and take myself the hell out of the room. I wouldn’t blame him—he’d said he wasn’t mad, but he might not want to see my stupid face.

It was another real long second before he said anything. And then it was only, “you curse a lot.”

Which wasn’t anything near what I’d been expecting. “Yeah, probably,” I said. Thinking about it, I’d never heard him or Rysa swear. Or nothing that translated as swearing. “Does it bother you? ‘cause I can like, seriously tone it down, or—” I always did when I was at home around my family, it wouldn’t be that hard.

“It doesn’t,” Keyd said. Then he almost smiled; just a tiny little stretch at the corners of his mouth. “It’s just interesting.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“It did, at first, seem rude,” Keyd went on, rolling his head back so he was talking at the ceiling. “Now, I think I like it.”

I laughed; it just got startled out of me. “Really.”

“It’s very disrespectful, where I’m from.” He paused, and then, “not here, I suppose.”

“It’s kinda rude here too,” I told him. “I just don’t usually give much of a fuck.”

Keyd flicked his eyes over to mine, and I could practically see him processing it as a joke. And then he smiled. Really smiled, not just a twitch or the smile baby or my imagination. Lines creased at the corners of his mouth and some teeth showed. I’d never seen him do that before. It made him look completely different. Not so alien. Nice. Definitely something he should do more often.

I was kinda grinning back at him and neither of us was breaking eye contact and it was all going on for a little too long. Even without the handholding it would have been too long. But I didn’t want to let go of him yet, since it was actually helping him out. So I tried to move one of my hand up to his wrist instead, so maybe it wouldn’t be so weird. Keyd noticed and twisted his own hand around, which screwed up what I was trying to do. Now instead of just a pile of hands on top of each other, it was more like a handshake. A firm handshake that wasn’t ending. The light between our hands looked dimmer, but that was probably because actual light was starting to come in through the blinds. The fucking sun was coming up. Jesus Christ, what a night.

I watched the glowing lines brightening and fading under Keyd’s skin and bleeding into mine, tracing little splintered patterns like spiderwebs over us both. Maybe because I was completely beat, or because it was that time of early morning that never exactly feels real, but watching it was mesmerizing and surreal. Almost relaxing. The light moved in waves, steady and repeating.

“Alan.” Keyd’s hand tightened on mine. “Are you asleep?”

I jerked my head up. “What, no.” It was a lot brighter outside the window now, the light inside my room bleached into whitish-blue. I must’ve completely zoned out.

Keyd gave me kind of a look. “If you need to sleep, I won’t die in the meantime.”

“No, man, I’m okay.” I wasn’t tired. Exhausted, sure, but wide awake. And I told him that.

His quiet reply sounded like one long rushed word in his own language, and I couldn’t even pick out the sounds—it all washed meaninglessly past my ears.

“S’that mean?” I said.

“Weary from battle.”

Warrior race; of course they’d have a specific term for something like that. “I didn’t actually fight, remember.”

Keyd’s grip on my hand got a little firmer. “You asked to be taught to use your ability. Tonight you went where you knew there would likely be a confrontation. Perhaps you didn’t fight, but you acted like a soldier tonight.”

My throat got unexpectedly prickly and clogged, and it took a second to swallow it away and get out some words. “Well, fuck, okay. If you wanna look at it that way, sure.”

Neither of us said anything for a couple seconds. Then Keyd said, “I think that was an admirable thing to do.”

Another rush of prickles shoved up my arms, all the way to my shoulders and around to my spine. There was no way I deserved any of this. “You do, huh.”

“Whenever you’re given decisions to make, you always involve yourself more,” Keyd said, and suddenly I couldn’t look away from him. “It puts you in more danger, by your own choices.”

“You’re actually making me sound like an idiot,” I muttered.

His fingers dug into my hand. “That’s not what I meant. You make these choices, but you have no obligation to be involved. You could tell us to go at any time.”

“No, I can’t.” The words came out with unexpected force. Even Keyd seemed a little startled. I sighed and sat back in my chair, but didn’t let go of him. “Look. You’re right. I didn’t have to be part of this. And I didn’t want to be, but that was before. I know you guys now, okay, and I—” a quick memory of how I’d raced back to my apartment earlier tonight in a dead panic, just because of this guy, and I swallowed back on the words that I’d originally planned to say, “—and I know a little more about Ahieel. And I don’t like what I know. It doesn’t even matter who’s the right side at this point, that guy is fucking unstable. So I’m with you guys, and I’m sticking with that. And I’m not just gonna throw you out, okay?”

Our grip on each other’s hands had gotten real intense and kind of sweaty. I didn’t know which one of us was holding on harder.

“Thank you,” Keyd said then. His voice was real quiet and I leaned in automatically to hear him better. “I’m sorry that we weren’t more honest with you, that we didn’t explain things as we should have. We thought it would keep you safe, uninvolved, the less you knew. In a muted world, it’s often the best option. We were wrong this time. It kept you from trusting us. We’re not…specifically trained, for contact like this, and we haven’t handled it well. I—both of us—apologize for that.”

Possibly the longest thing I’d ever heard Keyd say at one time. He really had a nice voice. Not that deep, like I would’ve guessed from how he looked, but it was smooth and calm and there was something really involving about it. I paid attention when he talked.

“Yeah, I know, I got this excuse already,” I said. “And it was a real nice idea to try and keep me out of it, but it’s way too late, you know.”

“I know,” Keyd said. He still didn’t sound happy about it.

“To be fair, I didn’t make you guys tell me anything, even after you said you would. That’s on me.”

Keyd rolled over suddenly onto his shoulder, and clapped his other hand down to the knot of them already on my knee. I startled, but held on. “Alan. You can ask anything you want to know. I’ll answer.”

That meant a hell of a lot more coming from him, because this was the guy who hated talking. And of course I couldn’t think of anything right now, but I’d come up with something for sure when I hadn’t been up all night trying to stay alive and my brain was in better working order. I’d make a whole goddamn list of things to ask this time.

“Okay. But later,” I said. “You, uh, look kinda tired.” That wasn’t even an excuse. Sweaty strands of hair were plastered against the sides of his face, and he was putting some real effort into his breathing. “Maybe I should go. Let you sleep.”

Keyd shifted slightly, closed his eyes. “If you like.”

But I didn’t go. I didn’t even really want to. I just didn’t want Keyd pushing himself too hard to talk to me. So instead I shut up, kept holding his hand, and didn’t go anywhere. Keyd didn’t seem to mind.

About another ten minutes went by, with both of us just sitting there. The light in the room brightened up to pale yellow. The only thing keeping me from drifting off right here was that thread of concentration I had to keep up, focusing on that jarring buzzy spark inside Keyd and pulling it towards me.

“So what will be your next choice,” Keyd’s voice said, and I lifted my head. He was looking at me again, and his eyes were almost colorless in the early light. “To learn more about using your ability?”

I looked down at our hands, the traces of energy that I was still dragging out of him. Thought about the choice I’d made, because I hadn’t had any confidence in what I could do. Because I didn’t know enough. And then, later on, how something I’d done—just me, on my own—had hurt Ahieel enough to make him back off. I needed to know what I was capable of. “Yeah.”

Keyd caught my eyes again. “Rysa said you were a relatively quick learner.”

“Yeah, well, she’s a good teacher. Kind of a hard-ass though.”

Another nearly-real smile. “I would imagine.”

“But yeah, I really should learn more. Since I can’t really do anything but shields, and not even that good, and I could probably accidentally do shit to you guys still if I touch you and don’t pay attention…yeah. That could still be a thing.”

“We’re touching now,” Keyd reminded me.

“I just mean, like…anything else.” Anything else like what, Jesus, what the fuck was I even talking about.

“Let’s see.” Keyd lifted his hand that I wasn’t holding, and touched my face. His palm flattened out on my cheek. I could feel the calluses on his fingers, and heat soaked into my skin.

So this was weird, but it wasn’t proving anything. “Yeah, but I’m not—“

His hand moved, slid around the back of my head. His fingers slipped into my hair. I forgot about the words I’d been saying. We were a lot closer together than before suddenly, and was he leaning up or pulling me down or Jesus Christ was the fuck was he doing, was he actually going to—

Yeah, he was. He did. But not for long. It was quick and completely chaste. Close-mouthed. It wasn’t even really a kiss. It was just like what I’d done back in the cemetery, when I’d thought he was just a statue. Mouths just kind of bumping together. When he let go, he let go completely. And then he just leaned back against the pillow and looked at me. Like he hadn’t even just done anything, as if nothing had happened at all.

“It doesn’t appear to be a problem,” he said.

“What,” I said stupidly. My ears were ringing.

“Touching.” He sounded so fucking casual about it.

“Right. Yeah. Sure, yeah.”

I took in a breath and let it out slowly, glancing around the room. The sun was definitely up now, and I heard somebody’s footsteps go by on the walkway outside my bedroom window. How long’d I been sitting in here anyway? It was definitely time to go. Rysa probably wanted to talk to him, or check on him, or something. And I had other things to do, too. Like sleep, or...or just anything.

I just seriously had to get out of the room. I pulled my hands out of Keyd’s, and the connection into him that I’d almost been getting used to broke—just snapped and sizzled apart. Keyd made a startled little noise and I figured I should have warned him, but it was too late now.

“I’m…gonna go,” I said. Maybe louder than normal, since it was hard to hear over all the blood roaring around in my head. Every beat of my heart was like a slap in the chest.

Keyd didn’t say anything, and just watched me as I got to my feet. I took clumsy steps backwards until I was at the other side of the room, feeling for the door handle behind me. I practically fell backwards into the hallway, and then I shut the door hard behind me. Leaned back on it. Put my hands over my face. Let all the air out of me in a big emptying rush, then sucked in another breath. Did it again, and again, until my chest was burning with too much oxygen and my head was swimming.

What the fuck had just happened?