Selene

The bus station crouched under a blue sky, the sun tending westward and the shadows getting long. Long silver hybrid buses, gliding on pockets of frictionless space, nosed steadily past. Selene stopped at the pay phone, picked it up, and fed two credit-coins into the slot. Her finger trembled as she dialed, and she leaned against the side of the pay phone’s box. The shakes were beginning to hit in waves now.

She stared blankly at the phone’s numbers as she took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. How had she gotten here? She couldn’t quite remember. Walking aimlessly, one foot in front of the other, working her way toward the bus depot.

But before she left town, one small thing. Was there still someone she could trust? Her hadns were shaking too badly, and her throat was on fire.

Something is very wrong with me.

Four rings. Five. Not the voicemail. Don’t let it go to voicemail.

“South Side Precinct, Pepper speaking,” he barked into the phone. Selene squeezed her eyes shut, tears leaking out from between her lids. Thank you, God.

“Jack?” she whispered into the phone. Her fingers and toes were so cold. “Jack, it’s Selene.”

“Can’t you stay out of trouble for one fucking day?” he hissed, his voice dropping. Did he have someone else in his office? “Where are you? Nikolai’s thralls are jumping all over us. He’s going to be pissed, and guess who he’s going to come down on?”

She winced. So they’d found out she was gone. Of course—Jorge would have come and checked on her, brought her more food or something. Or even just to make sure she was behaving, Nikolai would have given orders. “Don’t tell them. I need a safehouse, Jack. Someone tossed my apartment. There’s a dead werecain in my bedroom, I shot him in the head.”

“Jesu fucking Christos!” Jack whisper-yelled. “Ain’t you got no fucking sense? Goddammit, Selene!” Papers in the background, the sound of someone moving, a clicking sound. “Where are you?”

“Safehouse, Jack. I need a safehouse. Something’s wrong with me.” Her teeth were chattering too hard and her skin burned. “I think. . .oh, goddammit, please, Jack, for the love of God, help me.”

There was another click, then nothing. Silence. Total silence. The dial tone sounded in her ear. The sound of her money clicking into the innards of the phone was lost under the roar of traffic. Sirens screamed in the distance.

Can’t really blame him. He’s got a wife and kids to support, he can’t afford to do anything that might piss Nikolai off. Thanks a lot, Jack. Wonderful.

She looked up Farris Avenue to Eighth. Then down to Tenth, opposite. There were flophouses around her, but she might end up robbed or beaten if she went to any of those. And the shakes were beginning to make her look like a junkie. She’d attract attention if this kept up. Getting on a bus and having a seizure didn’t sound like a good time. What was wrong with her? She was thinking through mud.

Jack. . .Danny. . .The sum total of her support network, gone.

Wait a minute. Danny.

It was idiotic. There was blood all over Danny’s apartment, and it was just as naked as her own now that she’d torn the wards down. She couldn’t go there.

But nobody would expect it, would they.

No, she couldn’t go there. Couldn’t look at the blood, drying into the carpeting. Her own footprints in her brother’s blood.

Where else could she go? She had no real friends, simply showed up to teach her classes, graded her papers, went home carrying her work with her. Even the fellow teachers wouldn’t talk to her, because she taught the class nobody wanted to take: the mandatory Paranormal Studies you needed to keep federal funding since the paranormals with their big lobbyists—funded by Nichtvren treasure, the rumor was—got the vote. Even if they didn’t think she was paranormal she was still contaminated, and imposed on them.

Where can I go?

There was nowhere to go except out of town. She just had to keep it together long enough to buy a ticket to somewhere, anywhere.

I’ll sleep under a bridge if I have to. She leaned against the pay phone. The chaos of a city street resounded around her, the transit hopelessness of the bus station. What is wrong with me? Shock, or… The thought wouldn’t finish itself, and the shakes started to jitter under her skin as if her bones were dancing.

She glanced up at the sky, shivering, and the searing sunlight struck through her eyes, all the way to the centre of her brain. It hurt, searing her eyes, and her skin prickled.

Oh, no.

The enzyme treatment hadn’t worked after all. It had only staved off the inevitable.

She blinked, her eyes watering furiously. Then she trotted down the cracked pavement, leaving the phone receiver dangling from its cord. It swayed gently in the breeze.

Blind animal instinct plunged her into the bus station. Should I buy a ticket or find a closet? She hitched in a breath, swallowing it as she broke free of the sunlight coming in through the glass doors and into the fluorescent lighting. The relief was instant, but it made the burning and crawling over her skin even more insistent.

Closet. If I have to wait for a bus I’ll start to convulse. Christos.

The bus station was familiar from other hunting trips—she’d fed down here, in the alley behind, hooking and desperate to get enough cash to feed Danny, who could barely stay in his body while he was away from her. And not so incidentally, feed herself—both her stomach and that other, deeper hunger between her legs. It was a wonder she hadn’t been knifed or robbed during that nightmare time. Then she’d landed the teaching job, and Danny had sold a few bits of gossip, and they had moved into the rooming house on Sarvedo Street. . .and a few weeks after that, she’d met Nikolai in that alley, and her life had changed overnight again.

And look how much good that did me.

She walked purposefully down the bright-lit hallway toward the bathroom, inserting herself into the midday crowd. There were a few homeless people, and the travelers of course, mostly younger women with children. There were also a fair number of men in uniform—army, mostly; the navy boys were further south and the paramilitary organizations were quietly being absorbed wherever the infrastructure needed rebuilding. Good prey, her curse whispered faintly, and her skin prickled again. A rush of Power slammed across her nerves, and she spotted a door that most probably gave onto an utility corridor. Got to find a dark place, she thought incoherently, and her fingers tingled.

Hide me, she prayed. Oh, God, hide me.

The Power answered, cloaking her in a faint blur. It would be draining to keep it up for any length of time, but she only needed to make it into the corridor. The janitorial staff wouldn’t be out in force until well past dark.

Cold, creeping fire started in her palms. Her toes were numb, she was dragging her right foot behind her like a cripple.

Oh, Christos.

She made it to the metal door and blindly put her hand on the knob. Nobody was looking—the blur should hide her unless they were paranormal, and she seriously doubted she could hold off a werecain—or anything else—while she was jittering and jiving from the Turn.

I’m going to be a Nichtvren. A weird image of birthday candles and a pink-frosted cake sprang to her mind. Gonna be a Nichtvren, gonna be a Nichtvren, heigh-ho the dairy-o, gonna be a Nichtvren. The knob gave under her fingers—the Power she was pouring into it helped. If she didn’t Turn she was going to be so drained as to be useless.

And won’t that be fun. Christos. Someone, anyone, help me.

There was nobody. As usual, she had to help herself.

Selene ducked through the door, taking care to close it quietly behind her. A slamming door would dispel the blur and cause questions.

She was in a long, concrete-floored tunnel that went down into the bowels of the bus station. The prickling cold spilled up her arms and legs. She’d have to crawl soon.

Why didn’t the enzyme work? It only delayed the Turn, goddammit. Seventy percent is bad odds, isn’t it? Oh, God. Jesu, help me, I’m going to be a bloodsucking fiend, I’m going to be like Nikolai, I’m going to be awful, a damned soul, damned, damned. . .

Amazing how childhood religious training came back to haunt her. They were big on Jesu in the camps. Big on suffering in silence instead of taking up the Gilead sword of righteousness.

Sometimes Selene wondered if the Republic had the right idea, fighting so hard. She wasn’t the only one—but she was probably the only paranormal who ever wondered. The others probably counted their blessings to be out from under the Gilead thumb. It was a sentence of death to be paranormal during Gilead’s time; nowadays you were only shunned and shunted into menial jobs or taken for government experiments. What a choice.

There. A broom closet or something like it. She fumbled with the door, the lock throwing itself open in response to the Power, and she saw metal shelves with assorted things on them. Light fixtures, light bulbs, there were fluorescent tubes stacked in racks bolted to the wall in back. Selene stepped in and drew the door closed, locked it, plunging the room into complete darkness except for one small strip of light coming in under the door. She had to try several times before she could focus enough, forced her attention to one still small point.

One of the Greater Words was in her repertoire, the word of Closing, syllables that would bar an entrance. She sketched the symbol that went with it on the door with a numb finger, feeling the Power bleed down her arm and into it, her lips stuttering over the Word. It had to be pronounced right or it would fail, and she’d be out the Power as well as with a ruined Word and backlash on her hands.

Light slid out from her fingertip, a violet glow reminding her of Marina, and Selene let out a choked laugh. Draining herself this rapidly meant the Turn would speed up. It was already up to her biceps, and her legs below the knee were cold and unresponsive.

The glyph wavered, guttered. . .

And held.

Sighing in relief, Selene collapsed against the door. Cold fire swept up her legs, racked her pelvis, and the crackling of bones re-forming echoed in the closet. Selene drove her teeth into her tongue. Don’t scream. It will break the binding. Don’t scream. Don’t scream. Jesu, just don’t scream, don’t scream, don’t scream.

The chill fire spread up her neck, and Selene’s jaw locked.

Now she couldn’t scream even if she wanted to.

Her scalp crawled. Bones continued their cracking, her muscles sliding and writhing under her skin, the cold prickling working its way into her very core.

She tasted blood, and some other chemical tang. Then, dimly, she felt the medallion warm against her chest. The heat didn’t stop the prickling, fiery, nerve-wrenching cold of the Turn, but it was. . .comforting.

I’m going to make you pay for this, Nikolai. I’m never going to be able to get a regular job now. It was her last coherent thought before the cold raced through her belly and down her chest toward her heart.