Author: Heather Marie Adkins
Category: Literature
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“If I leave, you shouldn’t touch her,” I warned.
The woman nodded. “We will be safe.”
I followed Everett into the empty chamber. The council must have departed after making their decision, which kinda sucked. At least Councilwoman Meade had been on my side. Without her shrewd support, I felt exposed.
Everett leaned against the podium instead of circling behind his desk. He sneered as he said, “You are cleared to accompany Senka to the grave.”
The way he said it seemed so... final. Grave.
He plowed on. “However, I have some information you might be interested in. Some loose ends you could tie up for us before you go. Loose ends you’ll want to tie up.”
Intriguing. “What loose ends?”
“We know who murdered Maurice.”
25
They know who killed my brother.
Other than my mother’s cutting reminders, I'd managed to bury Rice’s murder beneath Senka. Finding his murderer had played second fiddle to keeping Senka – and the Hollow – safe.
My grief boiled to the surface, hotter than ever.
“Someone Weston hired?” I asked when I found my voice again.
“No. Weston wasn’t involved.”
I frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. Rice caught Weston at the encampment. Those pictures would have been a death sentence to the councilman. So he put a hit out on Rice.”
Everett shrugged. “The perpetrator identified by the SEA is in no way connected to Weston. Not that we can see. The man is a leader in one of the shadow touched encampments.”
I tried to maintain hold of the tenuous threads of my former beliefs. I couldn’t understand how Rice’s murder could be random. The hooded guy chose our apartment. Went straight to Rice’s room. Not our neighbor’s apartment. Not anyone downstairs. Not my bedroom.
Our apartment. Rice's room.
“Is it because of who I am?” I asked softly.
“The thought had occurred to me. A strike at the Reaper. You haven’t done yourself any favors by being such a bitch.”
I was more surprised he knew my nickname than at his underhanded insult. Honestly, the idea that Everett knew anything about me beyond my name unnerved me.
I knew I shouldn't trust the rein. If my intuition and Dr. Webster's expertise were to be believed, Everett had put Lila in that hospital bed. He’d opposed my presence in the council meeting, and openly scoffed at my plan. So why believe him?
But also – why would he lie?
My gut clenched at my predicament. I could call Shana. Get an update, an outside reassurance that Everett wasn’t fucking with me.
“What’s it gonna be, Nez?” Everett pressed, face bored. “You can’t do it, I’m gonna have to track down someone else. I don't care one way or another.”
“One last apprehension before I go?”
“Not an apprehension,” Everett said. “An assassination.”
I wanted to leave Senka with Warren, but he hadn’t returned for the verdict. Not that I’d seen, at any rate. Everett had offered an SEB rookie to sit with her while I was gone. As much as I hated the thought, it was my only option.
When I explained to her where I was going and why, she only had one question for me: “Do you believe him?”
I stared at her, not the least bit surprised he had pinged her intuition. “He’s the Rein.”
Senka bit her lower lip. “Being a... leader does not promise truth.”
“You think he’s lying?”
She shook her head. “I think you should be... careful.”
Senka’s declaration stayed with me as I picked up more ammo from the vault before heading to my Ducati in the parking garage.
I’d never liked Everett. I hated the way he pushed Lila around—though, to be fair, Lila did an even amount of pushing him around, too. He struck me as controlling, manipulative, and power hungry. But other than be rude to Lila, and to me by default because she was my best friend, he hadn’t proven to be a bad ruler.
But I’d never expected a councilman to fall to the shadows, either.
This Hollow was my life. Every minute of my existence lived and breathed keeping it safe and protected. A week ago, that had meant tracking down the shadow touched and bringing them in, dead or alive. But now...
My concept of right and wrong had twisted up inside me. Warren was shadow touched, but he was a good man, the darkness balanced by the light inside him, maybe, from his mixed parentage. Councilman Weston had served on the council for dozens of years. I didn’t know him personally, but I’d seen him around, and he always seemed quick with a smile and a kind word. But in the end, he was shadow touched, and the council hadn’t said a word about it. The rumor mill buzzed with Weston’s death, but our government hadn’t made any kind of formal statement.
Now, Senka’s concern that Everett might be playing me, coupled with my own sense of distrust. How better to do that than to manipulate my emotions over my brother’s death?
Who was the enemy anymore?
In the silence of the parking garage, I dialed Shana's Com. Any bit of reassurance from her would curb my unease.
Her voice crackled from the Com. “Hey, I’m drowning in a ten-fifty, two dead. Call you back?”
Fatal traffic accident. We didn’t have a lot of those in Senka Hollow.
“You know anything about a possible suspect in Rice’s murder?”
“I heard some possibilities at the last debrief. Then the quake hit, and Senka… Suffice it to say, my work load shifted.”
“Call me later,” I told her, and hoped it wouldn’t be too late to say goodbye.
The Fifth Encampment was as far away from the Res as a girl could get, clear across the Hollow. Several months had passed since I’d had a run out this way—the eastern encampments weren’t known for harboring many problems, and I tended to stay close to the Res, leaving other agents to handle this side of the world.
I had an unfamiliar name and a cabin number. Considering I found myself there in broad daylight, I glamoured my body to mask my presence, and slipped among the shadow touched unseen.
Nerves had never been an issue for me. I wasn’t afraid to die. Joining the Bureau meant you worked the toughest cases and saw a lot of fucked up shit. I signed up for this career. Happily.
But something about this felt wrong.
The cabin in question appeared empty as I approached. Dark windows gaped like eyes beneath a hot desert sun. That sun was my biggest problem – I’d lose clarity of sight the moment I left daylight for the dim interior.
Gun drawn, I pushed open the door.
I blinked away the spots in my vision. The cabin held a small, wood-framed bed and a crooked table with only one chair.
A woman rose from the chair and leveled her gun at me.
But the woman’s identity stymied my immediate reaction to fire: Councilwoman Meade. The gray-haired crone who’d been on our side during the council meeting. I squinted through my distorted vision, sure I was mistaken.
I let the nose of my gun lower. “What are you doing here?”
Councilwoman Meade cried out, an anguished sound. Her gray eyebrows arched in surprise, before she squeezed her eyes shut and fired.
I whipped my gun up and returned fire, confused as fuck why this was happening. Two bullets tore into my abdomen in the split second between her shots and mine. My bullet barreled between her shocked eyes.
As she fell, a third shot burst from her gun on reflex.
Hot fire ripped through my neck.
I stumbled back a step. Sensation vanished from my hands, and I heard the distant clatter of my gun hitting the floor. I reached for my neck. My fingers came away soaked in blood.
Shock warred with pain. I collapsed into darkness.
Hushed voices pierced death’s veil.
“Can’t we just throw her in a shallow grave, or something?” an unfamiliar voice asked. “She’s going to die anyway.”
“You heard the boss. Transp
ort her to Headquarters. His rules, not mine.”
“I’ve never even used one of these fucking things.”
Through a haze of numbness, I felt the clasp of cold metal on my wrist.
“It’s supposed to be easy.” The distinctive beep preceding a Com dispatch rang through my thoughts. “FT23 to radio. One for transport.”
I tried to move, but I’d lost all ability to feel my limbs. The dusty ground had turned to a muck of blood and dirt beneath my face, and it was all I could sense other than the cold metal on my wrist.
I wanted to rip it off. I willed myself to rip it off before they could transport me to Headquarters.
Just let me die in peace.
The dispatcher’s tinny voice came back. “Uh, FT23, we don’t have you on a run. Can you advise?”
A different voice keyed up. “Radio, he is on an errand for me. Please initiate transport.”
Her startled voice returned, “Yes, Rein. Of course.”
Magick flooded me, and I gave in to unconsciousness.
I awoke one more time.
Fire burned in every part of my body. Fire, this time. Pain, instead of numb. I didn’t know whether to be thankful I was still alive, or to cry because I hurt too much to survive.
The pitch black around me was absolute. Cold stone beneath me. I reached out, hissing at the way my wounds sharpened. My hands hit stone all around me.
Can’t we just throw her in a shallow grave?
You heard the boss. Transport her to Headquarters.
The cuff still clutched my wrist. I ripped at it, crying out as the sharp edges tore into my fingertips. I got it off, thankful for the clatter of metal on stone.
Everett’s voice. On an errand for me.
Everett set me up.
The realization brought a fresh wave of wooziness, followed by the kind of anger that could burn entire cities. That asshole. He sent me to the encampment to execute me.
But why Meade?
She had closed her eyes when she shot. As if she didn’t want to.
As if something had made her.
He knew I’d return fire and kill her, too.
Two birds. One stone.
Crafty mother fucker. He wanted me gone. When I hadn’t died right away, he’d had me transported to Headquarters.
I was ninety percent certain he’d sealed me into Senka’s repaired tomb, where no one would ever find my body.
Shit. Senka. Was she in danger? If I was sealed in her tomb, he obviously had no intentions of returning her here.
My head whirled. Blood trickled down my neck. How was there any left in me? I pictured my body a mummified husk. Someone would open the tomb in a hundred years and wonder who I was. Put me on display in a museum.
My mother would worry.
I’d never see Mai again.
My tribe.
Shana.
Lila.
Warren.
I probably could have fallen in love with him one day.
The whirling intensified. Blood dripped.
I closed my eyes to a different kind of darkness.
26
I’d always assumed death would be an eternal nothingness. That my soul would join the universe, and I’d cease to be anything that once resembled Maurelle Nez. I’d become a star, burning bright until the void consumed me and I winked out of existence.
Instead, death was a small island on an infinite sea. I sat beneath a lone pine tree. The sharp scent of pine needles cleared the fog from my mind. The tree stretched so far into the black sky above that I couldn’t see the peak, and the sky stretched so deep into the horizon, I couldn’t tell where the sky ended and the black water began.
I tested my limbs and found them in working order. My bloody jeans and tank top had been replaced by a short dress of leather and beads, almost identical to the one my mother had worn the night before for our circle. My bullet wounds had vanished. I traced my fingers over the smooth skin of my throat.
I stood unsteadily on my bare feet to find the grass softer than any cotton. I dodged low-hanging branches and stepped out into the afterlife, feeling as if it were a little anti-climactic.
Slowly, I circled. To the left and right, nothing but rocky beach and listless black waves. Ahead of me, the island stretched into the distance. Two enormous clouds hung in the sky, one black as the night around it, and the other as white as snow. Beneath the place where the clouds met, something flickered.
Fire. Small and contained. White smoke curled into the sky, mingling with the clouds.
Someone was here.
As I made my way down the island, sound returned. The buzz of cicadas. A chorus of crickets. The waves lapping at the shore. And somewhere far away, the distant beating of drums. A disorienting feeling of coming home washed over me.
I stepped into the firelight.
“You have traveled far, sitsi’,” a male voice rumbled from beyond the flames. My daughter. “Please sit.”
I obeyed, kneeling on the soft grass. I strained to see into the shadows on the other side of the fire and smoke, to see who had spoken. But the person seemed nothing but shadow and smoke himself: formless, the hint of a smile, mist for eyes.
One long shadow reached through the flames. An arm, half-finished as if the sculptor had yet to complete the project. Clasped between ill-conceived fingers, an ear of corn.
“Shuck, sitsi’.”
“Yes, hastiin.” Yes, elder. I tugged on the husk to reveal a beautiful cob of yellow corn beneath. As I worked, I asked, “Am I dead, hastiin?”
The figure wavered behind the flames. “Do you feel so?”
“No, hastiin.”
“Then you are not.”
“Where am I?”
A pause. I thought I glimpsed eyes in the mist. “Look deep into your past, sitsi’. Remember your ancestors.”
“Nihodilhil.” The word came from a place so deep inside me, I’d forgotten it existed. A place where my father’s voice told the stories of our people and a young girl and her twin listened with starry eyes. “The First World. Where life began.”
“You have not forgotten.”
For a moment, his rumbling voice struck a chord in me. I paused before I pulled off the final bit of husk and silky thread from the ear. I stared hard into the flames. I wanted to make sense of the mist and shadow, make a man of the unfinished speaker.
I wanted it to be my father.
“What am I doing here, hastiin?”
“You seek answers. I do not have them. Shuck the corn.”
I removed the last of the husk and corn silk.
The shadow arm appeared again through the fire, seemingly unbothered by the heat. I placed the corn atop the waiting hand.
Another arm appeared, this one more mist than shadow and missing half its substance. With two fingers, this hand plucked a kernel from the ear and offered it to me. I opened my palm.
The arms and the ear of corn disappeared once more. I stared down at the single golden kernel in my hand.
“What is that you hold, sitsi’?”
“Um. A kernel of corn?”
The flames danced as if the misshapen figure had sighed, the weight of his irritation blowing like the wind.
Pain blossomed in my arm. I cried out, closing my hand around the kernel as I flipped my elbow to see a wasp hanging from my skin. I brushed it away. The point of contact on my skin burned like hell.
“Try again, sitsi’.”
I glared into the smoke and flames, ninety percent certain the figure had sent the wasp to sting me. “It is maize. It is the lifeblood of our people.”
“Ah, yes. Good. That kernel holds all the potential of life inside it.” Eyes flickered between the flames. “Tell me why, sitsi’, and I shall give you the guidance you seek.”
I opened my palm, ignoring the protest of my stinging arm. Like any good wasp sting, it would hurt more before it began to heal.
I remembered long days in my childhood, running barefoot among the corn.
Watching my grandmother’s lined hands pinching seeds into the ground. Sitting beside her outside her hogan, corn silk stuck between my fingers.
“Corn is life,” I said, my gaze on the kernel. “You plant a kernel. It grows to feed a dozen people. It grows to shed and plant more kernels, which in turn each feed a dozen people. It is an endless cycle. Birth, death, rebirth.”
The shadowy man smiled beatifically and there — my father, his face so like Rice’s, hidden deep within the mist.
“Well done, sitsi’. Take your kernel. Cross the island into the land of sunset. There, you shall find the answers you seek.”
In the place of sunset, beneath Blue Cloud and Yellow Cloud, First Woman waited for me.
Where First Man had formed of mist and shadow, First Woman had birthed of light and fog. Her willowy form wavered behind an identical fire, a person made of sunlight. In my youth, listening to my father’s stories, I’d never envisioned her as such a beautiful being of light. First Woman represented darkness and death. She’d frightened me.
I settled across from her, more awed than frightened.
Eyes shimmered in the swirls of her light. “Tell me, shich'é'é. What is turquoise?”
The snarky part of me that generally guided answers to questions like this wanted to say, “A rock.” But after my encounter with the First Man, I knew full well that wasn’t the answer she sought. I didn’t fancy being stung by another wasp.
“Turquoise is a stone of protection, wisdom, power, and luck,” I said dutifully. “It is believed that to wear turquoise is to become one with the universe.”
First Woman nodded. “Well done, though you forgot to mention immortality and its use in guarding burial sites.”
“Nothing is immortal.” The words slipped out before I even knew they’d taken up arms in the conversation.
“Ah, but you are wrong, shich'é'é. Everything is immortal. It simply depends on which side of death you stand.” She motioned. “Give me your neck.”