Chapter 4 Xolotl #2
I sigh, slowly circling back to where she’s now lying in a heap.
It’s then I realize that she’s run her shoes off, and her feet are oozing blood all over the ground. It’s a little satisfying, seeing how miserable she’s become. She feels the way I feel at having selected someone light and bright and weak.
I swear, I saw the darkness clearly.
I saw it.
But now she’s all brightly lit soul energy, buzzing and flickering, with oozing and filthy feet and a limp mortal frame.
I nudge her with my nose. She groans.
I nudge her again, and then I whinny, loudly.
She lifts her head, her eyes blinking, and then she drops to the ground again, shaking. “Can’t.”
I snort, and I toss my head, and I paw at the ground. Then I scream in her face.
She finally shoves to her elbows. “Just kill me,” she wheezes. “It would be nicer.”
I toss my head, and then I lower one shoulder.
She frowns. “Are you telling me I can ride?”
Before she didn’t ask. She just climbed on.
I miss that stupid human. At least she was strong.
As she shoves to her feet, trying to stand on her bleeding and sore feet, I realize she’s not doing so well.
All the running I’ve forced on her, as exhilarating as it was for me, killing and leveling and destroying as I sped along, was terrible on her.
She’s practically wrecked.
I sigh heavily as I drop my shoulder even farther.
She finally manages, after trying three times, to scramble onto my back.
This time, when I take off, she just hangs on.
She doesn’t try to change my path at all.
I’m following a road the humans have created that’s labeled.
It takes me north to circle around a mountain range, and there are signs on the path that say “I-80.” I want to ask her what they mean, but I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing I’m ignorant about it.
I haven’t gone much farther, barely reaching a sign that says, “Cargill Salt Work,” when she seems to pass out. Her body slumps, swaying concerningly on my back.
I have two options.
Dump her and let the bond destroy her when it snaps, possibly putting myself to sleep in a strange place, surrounded by almost no humanity with which to power me back up, or waken her and somehow improve the state of her physical health.
Both options are unappealing, and I have no one to blame but myself.
I chose badly, and then I injured her in my fury, worsening a bad situation.
My nostrils flare.
The rage inside me grows.
The safest and most prudent path for me is to nourish her and explain a bit about our purpose so she can stop fighting me about it.
A little patience on my end could turn a liability into an asset.
A human who would fight the darkness so hard could be a powerful force if she would instead embrace it.
Just past the salt factory, where it appears they’re drawing salt from a local polluted lake, I halt and shift forms. She slumps to the ground after I do, her body falling in a heap that looks like a very unnatural shape.
I crouch down beside her and try to shift her so she’s lying flat. “Hello?” I poke her.
She doesn’t move, but she’s breathing.
“Wake up.” I kick her.
She’s still entirely still.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have killed the hundred or more people working here in this small plant before setting her down.
Some of them might have been able to help me discover what’s malfunctioning about this mortal specifically.
Other than her feet, which are now a bloody, sticky mess, she appears alright.
Her brow’s a little tacky and cold.
Her heart’s beating strongly, however, and her temperature’s about what it should be. It’s really not my specialty to figure out why humans are alive and how to improve their health. In the past, my generals have all been strong and robust. As they learned to use my magic, they grew stronger still.
I consider killing her again.
But being stuck out here, slumbering near this depressing lake, would be worse than being buried under that mountain.
No, I need to revive her and at least get to a better place first. I can’t seem to entirely give up on the idea of reforming her.
I reach toward her to pat her face or jolt her awake with a small shot of pain.
But when my hand touches her face, something distracts me.
I couldn’t read her thoughts when she was awake, but now there’s a memory floating near the front of her mind. I wonder whether it’s a dream she’s having, if she’s asleep rather than passed out.
She’s walking in the darkness on a fairly busy street.
I can’t tell where she is, but they’re speaking Spanish.
She has, so far, only spoken English to me.
She turns on a side street, and I realize she’s headed home.
She’s tired. She’s cranky, and her feet hurt.
Being human seems a miserable endeavor. I wonder why they fight so ferociously to keep their lives.
Then she’s bending over to tie her shoelace, and when she stands back up, there’s a man in front of her. His soul’s dark.
Very dark.
He pulls something out of his pocket, and I realize it’s a knife. I try to reach through her memory and hurt him. He’s clearly diseased of mind and soul, and he deserves to die. But I can’t do a thing.
Because it’s just a memory.
The girl’s body begins to tremble, her nervous system doing its job as it pumps adrenaline through her system, and she begins to prepare for the possibility of her impending doom.
The man shouts. “Dame tu bolso.”
She frowns, and then she shakes her head. “No. No quiero problema, pero no puedo.”
“Dame tu bolso ahora.”
“Mi padre se murió,” she says. “él me dio este bolso. Puedes tener mi dinero.” She fumbles with her small purse, where it’s strung across her body. “Espero un momento.”
But the man isn’t waiting. He grabs her wrist, slices the purse strap, and yanks it away. Then he looks around, his eyes cutting right and left. He shouts a profane word, and then he kicks her right in the stomach.
She doubles over, clearly presenting no threat.
He spits on her, and then he kicks her again, and again, and again.
He’s smiling as he does it, relishing his power over another person.
Then he pulls the contents from her purse, throwing them all over the ground.
He slices the purse into pieces, and he takes the money.
He’s smiling when he leaves. “Te liberaré de ese recuerdo.”
And then he’s gone, leaving her to curl up in her misery.
When she finally moves again, her body wet from the cold puddle she was lying in, her face scraped, her arm and face bruised, she’s stiff and slow.
Surprisingly, even in her terrible state, she gathers up the pieces of her destroyed purse and cradles them next to her body, sobbing as she does.
She rocks back and forth there, weak and broken, but instead of staying down, she rises.
And when she does, I see the darkness in her that I saw before.
She doesn’t look haunted by the memory. She looks enraged by it.
That man’s lucky he’s nowhere near us in that moment, because she might have embraced what I offer just to end him.
She clenches her hand into a fist, and then she hurls the fragments and strips of gutted fabric out of her hand, where they scatter and flutter across the dirty, wet ground.
I’m barely processing what I saw when the small woman below me gasps and her eyes open. She glares at me, and then she forces herself up. “Where are we?” She looks around. “The middle of nowhere?” She smiles.
And I see the same darkness.
I may be closer to my goal than I realized.
This woman’s somehow a bizarre mixture of light and dark entwined, but the darkness hides just below the surface.
If I can free it, if I can free her from the memories of light she’s clinging to, I may yet forge her into something I can use. Her anger’s the key.
But she has to survive for that to happen.
“I pushed you too far and too hard,” I say softly. “You need to rest and recover.”
She looks down at her feet and grimaces. “I need some new shoes.”
“And a little medical treatment, perhaps,” I say.
She nods.
“Let’s keep moving, if you think you can, and we’ll look for those things.”
Slowly, with agonizingly jerky movements, she climbs back up on my back, and I start moving.
I go as fast as I can with her clinging to me so weakly, and I curse how far into the middle of nowhere we are.
I shouldn’t have listened when she directed me this way.
How far are we from the next human settlement?
How far are we from procuring what she needs?
I consider turning around, but I’ve already killed, burned, or leveled most of the places behind us, so I push ahead. I’m not sure how far we go, but it’s quite some distance down I-80 before I see it.
Some kind of small building with living humans inside.
This time, instead of automatically killing them as I always feel compelled to do, I hold off.
It’s hard, but I do it. As we approach, I see a little brown building with red lettering that reads, “Delle City Station.” I don’t feel or see a city, but the building looks like a human dwelling or shop of some kind.
Perhaps we can get the things my weakened general needs.
Before I can draw closer, she slides off my back, wincing and grunting, but not collapsing as she hits the ground. I can tell it’s an impressive act of willpower.
“I never introduced myself. My name is Whitney.” She frowns. “And we’re about to go inside that building.” She points behind her. “Right?”
I nod.
“And judging by the lack of fire, screaming, or stench, are the people inside likely to be alive or dead?”
I blink.
“Just tell me whether you murdered them already.”
“I thought you might require human assistance, so I let them live.” I frown. “But that doesn’t mean—”
She steps closer, the pain clear in her face.
“I’d like to strike a deal.” She forces a smile, a diabolical smile.
I can sense some of her darkness behind it, but also some of her light.
“You need me alive for some reason—this bond has something to do with it, I’m sure.
You may not want to share more details, and that’s fine.
” Her frown deepens. “I will try to stay alive, but only if you do a few things for me.” She tilts her head.
“Otherwise, I may as well just give up.”
I stare.
“Or maybe you don’t care,” she mutters. “I hate bluffing.”
That almost makes me laugh. My lip twitches, anyway, which is about as close as I’ve ever come.
“When bluffing, it’s better if you don’t let people know you’re bluffing.
” I walk past her. “I don’t need you alive.
I don’t need anything from any of you humans.
For the time being, it pleases me that you’re alive.
Stop trying to bargain with me. You’ll always lose. ”
She stumbles along behind me piteously, and I grow tired of waiting.
I swing her into my arms and carry her into the store. “You’ll find what you need to feel less frail inside, and you will use it.”
She huffs.
“I mean that.” I shake her. “No bargains, no deals. Got it?”
She nods.
Once we walk inside, the two humans freeze. “Hey, is the internet down for you guys too?” The woman holds up a block of metal and plastic. “My phone’s dead.”
“Are you alright?” The man beside her steps toward us.
I shove them back with my magic, their bodies flying into the shelves behind them and collapsing.
“Whoa.” Whitney twists violently away from me and drops to her feet. “I’m fine.” She hobbles forward, trying to get a look at the humans. “Are you two okay?”
“Who is that?” The woman pops up, backing away from us. “He looks like the devil himself.”
Whitney glances back at me. “All the black’s a little much.” She shakes her head. “But he’s very, very bad. You two should run.”
The humans’ eyes widen, their heartrates accelerate, and they scramble out the back. Clearly she doesn’t need their help, so I snuff out their life forces before they’ve gone a dozen steps. I hear them collapse outside.
“Was that really necessary?” She spins around and nearly falls over.
“Get what you need,” I say. “If you had need of them, I would’ve kept them alive, but you sent them away.”
Her eyes widen now, her lip trembling. Guilt pulses through her.
“I’d have spared them only until they had helped you,” I clarify. “Then they still would have died.”
“I hate you,” she whispers. “I hate you with all my soul.”
I actually chuckle this time. What a strange little thing, to think I would care about her feelings. “Noted.”
She does gather up quite a few things, stuffing some of them in a bag, and sitting down to use others.
She puts salve on her feet, and then she wraps them in long strips of fabric, and then she covers them with fuzzy socks, and then she stuffs them into new human shoes.
When she stands, she stays more-or-less upright on her own without grimacing.
It’s a big improvement.
“Is there anything else you require?” I look around. “You should grab it.”
She does, stuffing more things in another bag, and then tying them together.
She lifts them up, and they appear to be rather evenly balanced.
“You’re going to carry this for me.” She tilts her head.
“It should fit over your massive withers just fine. Mostly.” She sighs. “Or you could leave me here.”
I roll my eyes. “Time to go.”
“Where are we going, anyway?” She looks out the window. “Because it’s a whole lot of nothing until we hit Reno, basically.”
“But Reno’s a human settlement?” I can’t help my smile. “Yes?”
She scowls, which I take as a yes.
“That’s where we’re headed, then.”
“It’s a desert between here and there,” she says. “I could die out there.”
“We’ll be traveling quickly,” I say. “And if you’re capable of listening, I plan to teach you some things along the way. Then you could be of use to me when we reach this Reno instead of a hindrance in accomplishing my purpose.”
“I hate you and your purpose,” she says. “I’d rather die than help you.”
“That’s been made clear,” I say. “But you don’t know what you don’t know. I plan to show you, and then we’ll see.”
“You bring death,” she says. “And humans need life. You’re not going to change my mind.”
I laugh again. “Oh, your version of life and mine aren’t the same. Maybe I will.”
“Don’t bet on it,” she says.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” But I’m smiling when I shift back into my horse form, because I kind of am betting that I can convince her by not killing her. Imagining her as a general, directing armies into battle, clearing out the rot of the world as it currently stands, almost makes me smile.
It would be a glorious sight to behold.