Ravenous (Taint of the Gods #1)

31. RIEKA

31

RIEKA

T he door to the apartment closed in awkward silence, as though it too could feel the tension enter with the three of us. The view from the window looked less appealing now that I was back inside.

Eleen cleared her throat as she crossed around behind me, heading into the fully stocked kitchen whilst yanking at the tie that fastened her hair.

Rhydian had chosen to recline in the sitting room, throwing his coat off, the scarlet material like spilled blood over the white leather of the sofa. He lounged an arm over his eyes to shield it from the sliver of bright gold that cracked through the break in the drapes.

Not wanting to let the scent of recent events soak any further into my skin I headed for the bedroom and the bathroom contained within. No one said anything as I left the room.

The shower was a tall rectangle built into the corner of the room, the basin nothing but a stale white platform bolted to the wall beside it where a large round mirror reflected a version of me I didn’t recognise.

The moment I opened the shower faucet, whatever automatic lighting the room had set up switched on. The warm yellow that had been illuminating the room a moment ago disappeared in favour of the ring of blue light at the top and base of the shower stall. A ghostly glow had enveloped the room that even my reflection looked like a wraith risen from the Dark Sphere.

I waited until the steam had fogged up the mirror before stripping off the Thrall facade, letting the hot water sear my skin, the sensation preferable to the crawling that roiled beneath it.

There was a niche in the wall where I found some soap that smelled mildly of wildflowers and beside it, a dry washcloth. I lathered the cloth and began my attempt at removing any trace of that Nomen from my skin.

I’d washed myself three times before there was a knock on the door. Even from in here, I could tell Rhydian was on the other side. And with Eleen just beyond, entirely believing us married, it felt pointless to refuse him entry.

“Come in.”

I heard the door open and closed before Rhydian’s scent cut through.

Pine and earth. I inhaled deeply not even caring if he noticed. It was a far more welcoming smell than the one I still detected on my body.

“You forgot this,” he said casually, tossing a towel on the basin. His eyes followed the movement of my hands over my body, my sense of propriety having vanished after three weeks on the train without privacy. Yet it surprised me that I didn’t care.

My skin begged for mercy when I took the cloth for the fourth time to the area around the base of my neck.

Could Rhydian tell how raw I’d rubbed at my skin? How violently I’d been scrubbing away. Could he smell the burst blood vessels just beneath the skin? Was that why he’d ventured in here?

His vice-like grip stopped my hand on my shoulder and my breath stilled. “Give it to me.” It wasn’t an order, but I obeyed it like one.

Releasing my hold, Rhydian took the cloth from me and slid into the shower, the blond hair on his head, untouched by Lera’s taint, turned silver under the light.

Becoming saturated as the water of the shower drenched him, with his white shirt clinging to him like a second skin, Rhydian leaned around me to turn down the temperature, his breath a feather-light touch as his face came to within an inch from mine.

Fingers gentle, he began combing the hair from my back to softly wipe the cloth over my shoulder. He then wiped the cloth down the length of my arm, turning it over to clean the underside as well. And when he’d done that, he took my hand in his and gently wiped it down as well, along each finger and then over my palm. Upon deeming it clean, he turned his focus to my other shoulder and began the process all over again.

Rhydian cleaned my body. And I let him. I had no idea why. Perhaps in some screwed-up way, I wanted someone else to wash away my sins. He wasn’t sexual with how he touched my body, in the way he slid the cloth over the skin of my thighs. It wasn’t even sensual. It was precise. Calculated. Like the way my mother would take an apple in her hand and peel away at the skin in one long spiral, as though breaking it even once would ensure the apple wouldn’t become the perfectly baked fruit she intended it to be if she so much as sliced into the flesh.

It was the first time a man had touched my body and wanted nothing from me in return.

Entranced by the way the water fell in long rivers over his hair as he cleaned my feet, I had the sudden urge to run my fingers through it.

I didn’t.

Upon releasing my foot, his hand moved up the muscles of my stomach in slow vertical movements, swiping over each of my breasts as if they were holy relics. As his focus finally settled on my face, I considered his own features.

The curve of his chin. The angle of his cheekbone. The ridge of his nose. A blessing like Lera’s only went skin deep, so I found it unnerving how easily recognisable he was beneath this stranger’s face. And in some deep corner of my mind, I wondered if behind this face could he too see me.

I paused my searching on his lips where the smallest of pools had formed in the bow.

“You did good today,” Rhydian said, his hand paused by my chin.

I met his eyes, the blue turning cobalt under the glow of the lights. “Except for the part where I let myself get taken advantage of and had to cry for help.”

His brow furrowed as he reached around to turn off the water. “That’s not what I saw.” He exited the shower and upon reaching the basin, he slinked back against it crossing his arms over his damp chest. As the white material stuck to him like a second skin, I realised unlike my Worship Marks, Rhydian had not let Lera erase those intricate blue lines on his chest. Not even for the mission.

I rang out my hair as he reached for the towel. He tossed it casually in my direction, along with his answer. “You didn’t ask for help because you didn’t need it. I was what, one minute down the street, three at a walk.” He tilted his head slightly, his eyes following the path of my hands as I dried my body.

“You called for me so that what happened in The Deadwood didn’t happen here.” His eyes followed my movements as I tipped my head to dry my hair. “Not that I wouldn’t have blamed you if it had,” he added as he stepped away from the basin, a hand reaching out asking for the towel. After a moment I gave it to him.

I turned towards the mirror and watched his reflection approach me from behind, goosebumps raising on the flesh of my arms as he draped the towel over my head. A sensation that wasn’t entirely unwelcome.

The movements of his hands as he dried my hair were…Nice didn’t seem like the right word. Nice entailed a kind of distance between two people. No, this felt intimate. For all his clinical attentiveness, cleaning the sins from my skin, this felt like something entirely different.

He was engrossed in his job, giving the task the kind of undivided attention I’d only ever seen on the faces of the Sculptors on Artist Row.

This felt entirely self-indulgent.

When he had finished, he offered me back the towel. “I know you didn’t lose control. But you said something to him didn’t you?”

I wrapped the towel around me. “We had a conversation,” I said with a smirk.

A single one of Rhydian’s brows rose, as if in doubt of my words. “And he just left?”

“One tends to do so when their god orders it.”

The broadest of smiles filled Rhydian’s face revealing not one but two marvellous dimples, followed by the most glorious chuckle I’d ever heard.

From that space our minds shared, in such a delicious tone that I could feel it low in my stomach, Rhydian purred, “God Killer and God Impersonator. Wife, you’re beginning to terrify me.”

We left the hotel well into the night. The receptionist, some sort of sympathiser with the Runners’ cause had made the dining room we’d entered give the impression a party was in full swing. Loud music and a portion of the supplies were used to make the room appear to be in use whilst the nine of us snuck back through the hotel and into the secret passageway.

Upon re-entering the dark tunnel, I’d discovered why handing over the supplies to the hotel had been part of the mission. Two large vehicles were parked in the dark when we arrived. Large canopied compartments on the back had been filled with all the supplies that we had purchased in Old King’s Town, as well as the other Runners that we’d left at the other end of the tunnel.

I sat in the back of the second one alongside Eleen, and several other Brutes whilst Rhydian was required in the first transport with Wade and a few of the Pneumatics. As we drove, they used their blessings to muffle the sounds of the engines. We drove right out the exit and into the darkened forest. The Pneumatics were able to keep up our silent passage through the forest, provided we went slow. It explained why we had to leave the hotel so early in the night.

I’d been informed by Lera when she had returned my face to normal that because the train’s route was roughly a twenty-four-hour cycle, it would reach the area of Kensilla we departed from within thirty minutes of the same hour today. However due to the number of supplies we had to get back on board, we had to leave early to unpack everything. The window for re-boarding the train was less than three minutes. Any longer and Kensilla would be notified.

Suffice it to say the anxiety around me could feed a village.

Those paths I’d seen on our forward journey were roads. Used back before the God Fall when Kensilla used to be a Monarchy. The forest had grown so wild over them that only the Runners knew the paths now. The transports travelled on them for close to two hours, the route longer than the one we had taken on foot. We drove with the lights of the vehicles off. The Brutes amongst us, myself included were tasked with using our eyes to search out the forest in case we came across any Kensillan military patrols. We didn’t much to my relief, and finally reached the pickup location an hour before dawn.

The Runners spent the next two unloading the vehicles, separating the items into manageable groups and then packing them inside crates similar to the ones Kensilla used for the weekly drops. Everyone knew exactly what to do. They knew where to be, who to talk to, and just how much time they had to do it. Everyone but me.

I spent most of that time taking orders from Filora. Further observation of the woman made me realise, that despite her age and likely years of experience, she seemed to defer to Rhydian when a decision had to be made. The tone he used never displayed that type of relationship though. Curious as to what kind, using my position as his "wife," I used a lull in the activities to ask her.

Filora sat quietly as she contemplated her answer, toying with the water flask she held in her hand. She offered it to me as she spoke. “You know about Rhydian’s mother?”

I did. Working in The Kitchen with Lily, our conversations, at least on her part always drifted to the topic of family. I knew her name was Eydis. That she was Kosha’s daughter and had died when a flu had swept through the train when Rhydian was ten. Sal was only a child at the time and was ill-equipped to provide the mending that Eydis had needed. I simply nodded.

Filora stared down at her hands with a sad smile. “She was my best friend. Both of us Runners, stealing supplies from towns, sneaking into Hunts to kill the Hunters and retrieve missed caches. Then when we were a little older than you are now, I got into a fight with a collared passenger. He was a former soldier of the Venerable Army sent to the rail as punishment. He must have worked out what we did for the train and thought killing me would prove his loyalty to the Republic.” She paused and met my eyes. “You are aware of the law of claiming, yes?”

“To kill one collared is to bear their burden,” I answered. It sounded more poetic than it actually was. After my conversation with Eleen in MedCom , I’d asked Lily to clarify what the law entailed since I was still confused as to why Wade was being punished for something other passengers were permitted to do without recourse.

It turned out that killing someone outside of the ring meant you intended to take their collar. Which meant you had volunteered to take that person’s place on the train and receive their supply. Some did this out of vengeance, others out of desperation to feed their families. But the consequences were always the same. The one who claimed the collar, then wore the collar and the burden of ensuring the train received their portion of rations fell upon them.

But for a Runner, they swear to never take a collar, for their burden is to serve everyone on the train. That is the oath they make. To never harm the passengers.

Wade broke that rule. In killing Bennic, knowing he could never wear the collar, he lost the train much-needed rations. That was why the council had voted to banish him.

However, I believed they were being lenient with his punishment.

“I lost everyone I loved to those collars,” Filora said solemnly. “My husband to the Hunt. My sister to a slave camp. Eydis knew that if I was ever caught by a Hunter, if I was ever collared, I would kill myself. I had prepared my entire life to aid the passengers of the train, but I would rather be dead than lose my autonomy.” I swallowed a lump in my throat.

“But one does what they need to do to survive and I killed that man. And when I turned my dagger on myself, Eydis stopped me. She snatched the dagger out of my hand and swore to me to take the collar on herself.”

My eyes found Rhydian over by the train tracks talking to Jordry. “Eydis chose love,” I said.

“Eydis chose love over duty,” Filora corrected me. “It is a weakness in the Kanyk bloodline. They do stupid things for those they love. Even to the detriment of their own well-being. She died shortly after Liliya was born.”

Filora roughly wiped away the tear that had fallen to her cheek. “So I took up her mantle out here. I recruit, I hunt and I make sure that boy doesn’t do anything as stupid as his mother.” I was struck by her words, her gaze hard upon me.

“I love that boy like I’d borne him from my own body. I swore to his mother I would protect him. He says you are his wife. I will treat you as his wife. But I will not hesitate to kill you if you betray him.”

Every sense I possessed told me she meant it. “Understood.”

There was a sharp whistle and silence fell on the clearing until Rhydian shouted, “Train is early. We now have two minutes to load. Move it!”

The whistle had been the signal from a lookout that the train was coming. But it was early and the only reason it was early was to meet a way-station deadline, points in the tracks the train was required to reach at certain times of the day, and there was only one reason to be going at that speed this early in the morning. There had been a Hunt.

With military precision, the Runners spread out. Those who were to guard us ran for the edge of the clearing. The Pneumatics in charge of the supplies began to raise the largest of the crates overhead and float them into position over the tracks, concentration etched into every line of their faces. The rest were left to the Alatus. The smallest of crates were carried into the air by hand, strapped to the bodies of Slyphs like Amida. The other passengers, like Eleen, Mal and Jordy were to be returned to the train by Echoes like Anika.

It was Si’mon’s job, as ordered by Rhydian, to carry me aboard.

I wrapped my arms around his neck, feeling his hand tighten around my waist. “Hold tight.” I barely had a chance to secure my grip before launching into the sky, the air rushing by as he rose.

He came to a hover just over the tracks. From over his shoulder, between each beat of his rainbow wings, I caught sight of the train.

It was enormous. A great red serpent weaving through dark green grass. I couldn’t tell how long it was. It kept disappearing and reappearing beneath the canopy. The morning sun reflected off the black windows like scales.

Something caught my eye on the edge of the wood. A shadow.

I pushed out my senses and felt—wrongness, like rotten fruit and stale blood, hunger and desire and greed.

A figure—no, several figures waded through the trees a hundred meters inward from the clearing. Figures that were misshapen.

Before I could warn anyone, Rhydian yelled, “RABIDS INCOMING!”

Figures emerged from out of the tree line and ran straight for the Runners guarding the clearing.

It didn’t feel real what I was seeing. Blessings ignited. Wind howled, fires blazed as the Runners were engulfed in combat with the creatures who had emerged from the forest. They were less men and more Brute. Faces half beast, bodies stuck halfway in transition. One creature whose body was covered in bristly black fur swung out of the tree line and jumped atop one of the Runners and began bounding their fists on the man’s chest whilst another, an Echo with black wings and the face of a bat pierced the air with a sonic cry.

The cry lasted seconds. Something, though I couldn’t see what tore it from the sky, the creature now shattered on the clearing floor, the cry silenced.

“We have to help them,” I shouted but Si’mon flew towards the tracks instead. In fact, all the Runners designated to the tracks were moving closer. “What are you doing, we have to get down there?”

“And do what?” Si’mon’s voice was stern, his eyes on the train less than a mile away. “If I stay and fight, if we stay, we miss the train and you die. And I will not have that on my conscience.” He dared a look over his shoulder and quickly looked away, his face blanching.

Hovering, with his back to the battle below, I pulled myself up to look over Si’mon’s shoulder and saw what had made him pale.

Fur-covered bodies, faces animalistic, fangs and claws bared. Two Bear-Blessed Brutes, both in their metamorphic state were attempting to tear one another apart. One of them was Si’mon’s husband, Malden, only discernible because I was familiar with his scent from morning training.

An opening appeared and the Runner’s jaw suddenly opened wide allowing him to rip into the creature’s neck.

The creature dropped dead and Mal rushed at another, one that was attempting to attack the Runners who were forming protective circles around the Pneumatics moving the supply crates.

Jordry and Rhydian were guarding Wade against a Drake covered head to toe in hard scales. A steel sword in the Bloodhound’s hand glinted red with blood as Rhydian sliced it through the tendon in the back of the Rabid’s leg. When the man went down Jordy rushed forward and placed a hand on the man’s head. It began turning a metallic shade of gold. Alchemist Gold.

Desperation filled the air like fog as the crates continued to hover in the air. The sound of the train on the tracks grated against my mind, as some small part of my brain said run. They could be wrong. Run and be free. Run and die free.

A cry ripped through the clearing as a female Pneumatic was struck by a Rabid, the crate she wielded plummeting to the ground threatening to crash on the tracks below. Si’mon spun around just in time for me to see Wade lash out an arm at the crate. He caught it a meter from the ground, and quickly returned it to the sky as the female Pneumatic turned her attention to the Rabid who’d attacked her.

She positioned her hands out before her as though about to catch a thrown ball, then drew them together in strained precision. The Brute screamed in agony, coiling in on himself before everything he was turned into a bloody pile of compacted meat and bone.

Si’mon turned and faced the oncoming train, cutting me off from watching the fight below. The train ran on magnetics, so no sound came our way except the rush of air as the giant serpentine prison forced its way through the Kensillan countryside.

The Runners were spread out a hundred meters or more, the highspeed train inching closer towards us. The wind whaled as it pierced the air. Ahead of me, dropping in perfect synchronicity, the floating crates fell. One after the other plummeting down and disappearing through the open roofs of the carriages. Amida and the other Slyphs released their cargos, those too disappearing into the carriages. And then Anika dropped Eleen, the Current disappearing into the train.

“Now,” Si’mon said, giving me the instruction that had been drilled into my head an hour earlier. I released my arms from around his neck, and Si’mon lowered me down. Five seconds was how long it was going to take for me to drop through the ceiling of The Fight Hall , five seconds and—

I whipped through the air as both my hands were wretched from Si’mon’s grip, and the crimson-enamelled exterior of the train rose to meet me. I collided with the train, something cracking on impact and I immediately began sliding down the curving roof, the smooth surface giving me nowhere to grip.

My arm suddenly lashed out at the train, claws ripping through my nailbeds as they embedded themselves in the crimson material.

I hung from the wall of the train by one hand, a hand I had no control over.

“Climb Rieka!” It was Rhydian. He was using his bless—

I climbed, embedding the other hand’s claws into the surface, climbing further up the train’s exterior until I was lying prone on the roof, my heading hanging out over the open ceiling looking down on a frantic Eleen. Relief flooded her face and she cried out to me to jump the same instant my claws retracted and that tingling sensation I felt in my chest vanished.

Over my shoulder, Amida and Anika were already in the same position on the train, their wings flat against their backs and crawling towards my position. My thoughts drifted to the other Runners in the clearing. Were they close enough to get on?. Why weren’t the women getting them aboard, how were they going to get on the train?

“Rieka!” Eleen shouted again and I looked back down into the carriage. It was a thirty-feet drop at least. But her expression said to trust her.

The train was going too fast to try to attempt any form of sitting. So I slid my body along the edge of the hole, lowered myself until I hung from the edge and I let go.

The same sensation as last time fell over my body. As though I had fallen into a giant pile of pillows. I hovered in the air for a few seconds before I felt the ground arrive beneath my feet. The sensation was so jarring I lost balance momentarily and stumbled forward.

Eleen caught me. “What happened?” she asked, her eyes wide with fear.

Amida’s curt voice sounded before I had a chance to speak. “A Rabid Organic.”

With her wings flittering behind her, she came to land just in front of me where she proceeded to examine me in quick darting glances, as though she were checking to see if I still had all my original body parts.

“An Organic?” Behind me, Sal approached moving closer so she could confirm what Amida had said.

The Slyph was pissed off. “We were attacked by a group of Rabid’s. There was an Organic amongst them. He lashed out a gods damn branch at Si’mon and he dropped Rieka.”

“Rapids.” Eleen sounded concerned. “Was it a planned attack?”

The carriage had fallen silent around our conversation. Anika who had just landed, her white wings glittering beneath the light that shone through the skylight, approached us. “Perhaps it would be best if we wait for the others to have this conversation.”

I took a step forward. “The others, they weren’t left behind?” The idea of Rhydian trying to protect his friends and help me at the same time set a stream of guilty thoughts through my head before the wolf inside me growled at them to disperse, reassuring me it was his job to get me back aboard. Especially since he needed me alive for whatever deal he’d made with the buyer.

Anika’s lips shifted into a hard line. She wasn’t going to answer me. She didn’t know for sure who had made it back aboard.

I let that thought settle into my stomach as I watched the passengers sift through the supply crates. According to Sal, I’d cracked another rib. Ten minutes later, mended, my hands full of military ration packs, I saw Rhydian in the doorway of the carriage, looking slightly battered, but altogether uninjured. I took a step towards him, intent on—well, I wasn’t sure but whatever reason I’d had to approach him quickly vanished when he called for all the Runners to meet in the council chambers in five minutes.

The council wanted to be debriefed on the run.

He gave me one quick glance and then left back the way he came. The council doors shut soon after.

And since no one but the Runners left the hall, it was clear that wasn’t a meeting just anyone was privy to.