The Trap

I stood in the street, feet spread apart, sandalwoods heavy on my hips. I felt like I was in a western, which I suppose I was. The fact that the showdown was at midnight and the enemy were vampires didn’t shake the feeling. Call it low noon, maybe. But there was a lot to worry about.

Carrie and Penny weren’t part of it, though. I’d long known that they could take care of themselves. Carrie was almost an entirely different person than the heroin addicted prophet I’d first met. The first time we faced danger together, she could barely stand up on her own, let alone walk straight. Now she could keep up with the rest of us, and her new powers were flowering into something wonderful and deadly. Penny was still a child, but like Jake Chambers she was a Gunslinger. Last night they’d stood their ground against the vampires, and had killed them all. I was proud of both of them.

I wished I could stand with them, but my guns were needed guarding the store. Eden would need my backup again, though Alistair was covering both groups from the rooftop. Ashleigh was with us, but…Ashleigh….

Walter had laid one hell of a trap for us here. I had no idea how he got a Type One vampire here. Or if it had been here all along and the Man in Black just woke it up. Our search through the caves turned up half of the townspeople that had been turned, and even their master. But he was impossible to get to, sleeping beneath the stone where only air could reach. If Walter hadn’t protected Zepath from Carrie’s sight, she could have searched him out and just burned him in his tomb. He laid his trap well.

It was not a good time for the ka-tet to be weakened, but we were. Ashleigh hadn’t spoken any more about whatever issue was weighing on him. He acted normal for the most part, but signs of stress still showed around the edges. Like when he snapped at the priest. Minutes before sundown, when we needed the priests blessing, the southern boy gets into an argument with him. I snapped at him and said that I was beginning to think that it wasn’t such a good idea for him and Penny to be around each other. Every time I trusted him with her it seemed like something bad happened.

Maybe it was too harsh, I was stressed out and worrying about the attacks. I’ll apologize to him later, if we’re alive. And if he gets his head together. If he worked for me, I’d force him to take all his vacation time and relax. Of course, that’s what it might come down to. When we got back to New York, he had to decide if he could handle the knowledge of his own powers, the Dark Tower, and the Todash beneath it, or if he wanted Eden to make it all go away and go on as a desk jockey for the Tet Corporation.

What it basically came down to, was that I no longer trusted Ashleigh. That was a wound in our ka-tet, and it was dangerous. Not ka-shume, but one thing can lead to the other.

But there was nothing I could do about it but wait for Ashleigh to tell us what he needed, or do it himself. I rolled the cylinders on my guns and checked the rounds for the hundredth time and waited for the red haze to fall.

Questions

We rode into Zepath prepared for anything. I think we were all expecting the trouble to come from the train. Al kept glancing down the road in its direction, and he talked about it with a touch of fear in his voice, even though it was an old steam train, not a psychotic mono. Besides, at this point in Mid World’s history, Blaine had yet to go insane and Patricia was still alive. Chances are Blaine would have been very helpful and pleasant company.

I feared a trap like Tull, especially after we met the fire and brimstone preacher of the town. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine him stirring the town into a mob and coming after us. It was bad enough slaughtering slow mutants, I didn’t want to have to face gunning down a town of real people.

The town took notice of us right off. Six mounted people riding into town wearing guns – one of them with the sandalwood grips. But as much attention as we got with our strange appearance and the ancient guns, they also worked well to discourage that attention.

For the time being, though, the town seemed safe, and nothing we could sense or detect told us otherwise. So we had a birthday party.

I think that the ka-tet needed it. Something to celebrate, something to smile about and laugh about. It was the happiest I’ve seen Penny in a long time. The home cooked meal was excellent, somehow better than five star delicacies, and after two months with nothing to drink but water and nothing to eat but dried goods, her lumpy birthday cake seemed like the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted.

I handed her my gift with a little trepidation. I’d promised to buy her a horse when we got back to New York, and that was the sort of thing I was used to giving to people. This tiny laminated card seemed pathetic and weak. Penny no longer seemed determined to lie about her age, probably because the tet all treated her like an adult, but I hoped it was still important to her. She took the adult library card and her eyes lit up. And they lit my heart up.

Later that night Carrie sat on top of me in the bathtub, still holding me inside of her. Occasionally she would blow flames under the heavy cast iron tub to keep the water warm. She kept her arms around me, but lifted her head from my chest to look me in the eye. Carrie is getting good at “talks.” I swear, when Penny is old enough to date, I’m going to make Carrie talk to her about it.

And that’s what we discussed. Not Penny’s romantic future, but Carrie’s role in it. What was she to Penny? Sister? Mother? Friend? I was tempted to say all of the above. But it was clear to all of us that we were becoming a family, a sort of ka-tet within the Tet of the Turtle. And if Carrie was going to be a part of it, I was going to have to let go of some of my protectiveness. When Carrie started suggesting bed times for Penny, I had to bite back some swift retorts. I’m used to defending Penny from everyone else. Except that I don’t need to protect her from Carrie, she’s not attacking. And she’s right. I’ve given Penny no boundaries. Why should I be surprised that she crosses them so easily? I agreed to talk to Penny (my daughter, I thought), about when was a reasonable time to go to bed.

Satisfied, Carrie heated the water a little more, and began to slide her thighs over mine.

It seemed that the Sheriff’s favorite thing to do was ask questions. In the first two days we were in Zepath, he cornered us three times to “ask us a few questions.” People were going missing in Zepath, and all of us felt the teeth of Walter’s trap closing.

But I wasn’t ready to start going door to door interrogating people and sifting the fields for clues. The people of Zepath thought that I was a real Gunslinger, and more and more I felt like one. Thanks to Lex’s stories – “know your enemies” was the reason he told me – I knew enough to act the part. No…not act. To become the part. The teaching that Lex had begun, the Tet Corporation and the Tet of the Turtle had finished. I was a Gunslinger.

And if I thought of myself as a true Gunslinger, then there were things I had to do. Taking over the missing person’s investigation wasn’t one of them. Not without certain requirements being fulfilled.

Eden, the gentlest woman I’ve ever known, wanted to take it on ourselves to help, so I told her about the questions. Before a Gunslinger committed himself to helping someone they had to be sure that those who wanted help were going to be open. If the people in trouble were hiding something, there would be trouble. Next, the aggrieved party had to recognize the Gunslingers as Gunslingers and acknowledge their job and methods. A lot of people are quick to ask for aid, but then quail at what the Gunslingers do. Lastly, the aggrieved party must request the Gunslinger’s help. They didn’t help where it wasn’t wanted.

I kinda slipped into thinking of it in lawyerly terms, but that’s basically what the questions were. A sort of contract between the Gunslingers and those they swore to help. Lex said that the Gunslingers couldn’t refuse a request for aid since the time of Arthur Eld, so long as those three questions were answered yes.

We asked the questions of the mother of a missing girl. She hesitated in answering them and I had to remember that at this point, the Gunslingers weren’t an old memory, a legend out of brighter days. Gunslingers were real now, they strode In World and had spent the last ten years fighting John Farson (not that this town seemed to know about any of that). But she said yes to each question, knowing what it meant.

After the third time her grief strained voice whispered “yes,” we were loosed. Walter’s trap didn’t matter. Even the ambush waiting for Roland at some indeterminate point in the future didn’t matter. It was no our duty, our ka, as Gunslingers to do this.

While Walter had drawn a curtain over Zepath that Carrie couldn’t see through, she could look in the surrounding woods, though she found no sign of the missing people. Talking to the friends and family of the missing ones didn’t give us any clues as to why they would have left, and there were no signs of them being taken.

Eden decided that it was time for Carrie to test the shroud that was hiding Zepath, but first we did a mounted perimeter check, to see if we could find anything unusual that Carrie might focus her search on. Some Cliffside caves to the north of Zepath seemed a likely enough place and when Carrie, Penny, Eden and I made our way down what might generously be called the path, I felt something from the caves.

Not the itching in the back of my eyes that would warn me that can toi were near. No, that sort of ambush wouldn’t be Walter’s style. He’d have laid something for us more unusual…and ironic. Something funny. What was it, though?

Just beneath the sharp salt tang of the sea air beating the cliffs below us I could have sworn I smelled the salt tang of blood as well. Maybe I hallucinated that part, but there was no mistaking the smell of burnt metal.

…Vampires.

The tangled threads of Fate

We headed off Grissom and his Ka-Tet a day or so outside of Zepath. We planned it out as best we could, but they turned out to be more disciplined than we counted on. But lead and Darks flew and, at least in this small battle, the White came out on top.

I rounded up their horses after the battle, shaken. Carrie’d taken a bullet to the gut. Eden was sure that there was no internal bleeding and she got the bullet out, but even now I still couldn’t entirely shake my fear. I was worried about Penny, too. At first I thought she’d been hit, she was covered in blood. The truth was almost worse.

She was so worried about my vampiric needs that while I was worrying about Carrie, she and Ashleigh went to Grissom and his tet and cut them open to siphon out their blood. Jesus Christ.

When I came back, I knew I had to do something, but I didn’t know what. There wasn’t a line I wouldn’t cross for Penny, and it was the same with her. But how could I teach when to cross those lines? I wished my dad was still around so I could call him and get his help figuring out this parenting thing.

But I had Carrie, and as much as it hurt she gave me the kick in the ass I needed. I listened with my head down to her. She was right. I hated myself so much that I put myself at risk every chance I could. And if I wasn’t going to take care of myself, that meant that Penny was trying to. No nine year old girl should have to do that. Not for a parent, and certainly not to meet the neglected needs of an undead man.

What was I doing to her? I refused to drink Penny’s blood because I couldn’t bear the thought of hurting her. But she’s a tough girl. Tougher than most adults in our soft world. She’d been hurt in battle! How many fucking nine year olds have scars like her? She can take a puncture mark. How much more damage was I doing with my self loathing?

…There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for Penny. I’ve thought it and said it, and I’ve felt the truth of it. …For her I might have to learn to accept what I am…. Which was stronger? My love for Penny, or my hatred of myself?

My talk with her went well. She sat in my lap and I held her and we cried. I fumbled around explanations and questions and answers, trying to teach her what she needed to know. What she should know. I said the right thing almost by accident.

We were te-ka, destiny’s friends, and there was nothing we wouldn’t do for each other, no pain we wouldn’t give anything to spare the other. But there are pains other than those of the flesh. There are things worse than dying. And seeing Penny desecrate the dead for me… seeing her do those things just to save my life hurt more than dying. Penny saved my soul once…I guess I needed to tell her that. To remind her that saving my soul was more important than saving my life.

At Penny’s request, I didn’t talk to Ashleigh. I wanted to confront him about the whole mess, though I had my head on straighter this time, I didn’t plan on doing any yelling or hitting him or anything. But Penny thought that he was taking it hard on himself and if I talked to him it’d make it worse. Turns out he wanted to talk to me. We stood shoulder to shoulder next to the road to Zepath. There were fresh mounds where the dead were buried. Ashleigh looked drawn and pale, the worst I’ve seen him since he nearly fell into the Todash darkness.

He realized too late that he was slowly spiraling out of control. I wished I could do something for him, something to bring him back to us. Too bad my cards had been burned up when Carrie’s powers flared up. It was Thursday. But then, maybe it wouldn’t have helped. Ashleigh had always been on the edge of the tet, first to go home for the day, silent about his feelings and thoughts. Thank God Eden wanted to call a conference. She was dinh, she saw the tet’s need.

Ashleigh agreed to talk it out with all of us, and so I went back and we waited until he followed. I looked around the fire and thought with Roland’s words. “We’re a wheel and we roll as we do.” And then following that came a saying from our world. “It’s only flat on one side.”

We spoke about Penny first, but that crisis had already passed thanks largely to Carrie. She sat on the other side of Penny, the girl between us and I felt the bond that was growing there as an almost physical thing, more than just the love I’d found with Carrie, and more than the special bond between me and Penny. But we had to make sure that this problem wouldn’t raise its head again. Penny and I had solemnly poured out the blood she had gathered, but she had an idea. If everyone donated, we could store enough in the Tet Corporation’s special refrigerated thermos to have a reserve, and to make sure that if it was too dangerous to donate, that there was already blood to keep me going.

It was getting easier to talk about my vampiric needs.

But as much as I felt that tightening of threads between Penny, Carrie and I, there was still a sense of the ka-tet unraveling. And Ashleigh was the loose thread.

It wasn’t ka-shume thank God. We would have felt it, would have known, especially with the question mark of Zepath coming up on us. But all the same, something was wrong. Ashleigh spoke hesitantly, his usually smooth southern voice trembling. He claimed that this place was getting to him, that he couldn’t handle it. It was true that Mid-World felt different. It was more…real…than most of the alternate America’s we’d traveled through. And it was true that you could almost feel the gears that kept this world spinning slipping teeth. But I didn’t think that was it.

No, Ashleigh had suffered before we came here the first time. He’d fallen into the Todash darkness and had barely been saved. A friend hadn’t been so lucky. He’d been mercilessly attacked by the Thinny, his mind battered away, only to come out the other side and suffer a possession that nearly killed him. If that wasn’t bad enough, the Thinny seeped into him again on our second journey through Mid-World and had taken control over him and with his hand, had nearly killed Eden.

I wasn’t going to chalk up our fight over Penny’s education to all that trauma, but something was definitely wrong. We were supposed to be fighting for the White, and we were in danger of loosing that. I think that Penny and I got ourselves back onto the Beam if you will, but none of us were sure how to help Ashleigh, or even why it was happening.

I was worried for my friend. I tossed out the idea hesitantly, but we were ka-tet and friends, and if it wasn’t already hovering there in khef, I’d have said it anyways, on the off chance it would help. Ashleigh told us that when he found out about his powers, he just sort of went on with his life. He didn’t freak out and think he was possessed or hallucinating, he didn’t search to see if there were others like him in the world, he didn’t abuse his powers, or even really use them. He went to college to study computers, when it would have been easier for him to become a jeweler or glass blower and make a killing. Even after finding the Tet Corporation, he seemed almost more interested in designing their software than his work as a field agent. And after joining the Tet of the Turtle, he spent more time alone in his cube or at his little apartment than with us, despite the gifts he turned out. Even his apartment was an odd choice. The Tet Corp provided cheap housing that was nicer than his ratty little apartment, and his salary would have been enough to go up from there if he wanted.

It seemed like Ashleigh couldn’t accept his life. Not his powers, not his real job, even to the point of basically refusing to spend the money he earned doing it. I felt my skin prickle with goosebumps, and I had to wonder if maybe he and I had more in common than I thought. Maybe Ashleigh hated what he was too. It was a bitter pang of kinship, even more so as I began to come to terms with what I was.

He went into his tent silently, his long face the canvas for a painting of misery. Our lanky friend was too stubborn to give up now, but when we got back to New York… it was there on the table. Eden could erase his memories, alter his past so that he didn’t know about his powers, about the Crimson King or Mid World, or even us. He could cry off.

There was no ka-shume looming in our khef, but ka-tet’s are not eternal. People come and go, and only those bound most tightly to ka go on. Despite my reservations about knowing the outcomes of things before hand, I was tempted to ask Carrie if Ashleigh’s ka parted ways with ours. Except I think that this crossroads is too muddy for prophesy. And if we could see ahead and know if Ashleigh was meant to go on with us or stay behind, was there anything we could do?

It pained me to see a friend struggle with himself like this, wrestle with his destiny. But this was between Ashleigh and Ka.

Ka like a wind

They already knew I was a vampire, but it felt like they were just finding out. I could taste their blood on my lips, even distinguish the flavors. The slightly greasy spice of Alistair’s blood – I guess all the pizza hadn’t worked its way out of his system yet. I could taste a cleaner copper tang of Eden’s blood, the thicker texture of Ashleigh’s. And the slightly sweet taste of Carrie on my lips.

That they’d all bled themselves for me was a gesture whose meaning I wouldn’t ever have been able to explain to them. After what they did for me, I couldn’t go on starving myself. Pushing myself to the point of collapse for fear of drinking blood would be an insult to their sacrifices and their love.

So I began to take, sparingly, from Carrie. It was hard for both of us, and I still didn’t enjoy it, but it seemed to ease some of the tension around me. Penny relaxed and no one had to worry about me falling over at the wrong moment.

I think it was a step closer for Carrie and I. We’d separated ourselves from the company so she could look ahead with her powers. Penny was taking advantage of the privacy, at Carrie’s suggestion, to teleport to her heart’s content. I know she’d been itching to be able to jump around like that for weeks. No kid should have to have that kind of self control. It made me smile to see her blinking around the woods, giggling and laughing. She doesn’t laugh enough.

Carrie took the chance to berate me for being over protective. But of her, not Penny. I was taking blood from her and I know what that does to a body and I wanted her resting afterwards, not seeking visions, no matter how important. We’d delayed coming out here for her to prophesize until today, but now I was getting an earful for it. And I guess I deserved it.

Carrie’s spent enough of her life being coddled. Hell, she had to be. But she was off the heroin, she was filling out and getting stronger. I couldn’t blame her for not wanting to be made to feel weak. I tried to explain that I couldn’t stand it if she collapsed or something because I’d drained her of blood and she insisted on running around. I guess that’s not fair, though. I’m not very good with apologies, but I tried.

“What’s keeping us from moving forward on this road?” She said after describing her vision. I could tell that she wasn’t talking about it, though. She was talking about us. There were a lot of reasons. Her break-up with Ashleigh was still only a little more than a month old. She was just twenty, and I was just tipping over forty, whether I looked it or not. And of course….we both knew I was going to die, and probably before Carrie could drink legally.

But even as that stuff went through my head, I had to admit that it wasn’t really keeping us apart. I tried to explain it to Penny as we walked back to camp. I wanted….needed…to be romantic for her. She’d had a damned hard life, and she deserved something good. She deserved to be treated with tenderness and passion. Carrie was always vague about her life after the prom but before being taken in by the Tet Corporation, but she probably lost her virginity in the back of some dealer’s car, putting out for a fix. Surrounded by anarchistic barbarians in a patched and dirty tent was not how I wanted to be with her for the first time.

Penny was sweet, she offered me candles she’d brought for her birthday cake. I got Carrie busy helping Penny set her tent up so I could hide hers. She saw what I was doing, it wasn’t like I could really hide it. Hell, everyone could see, even if they didn’t just know in the way we do about each other.

For a moment, I wondered what Ashleigh thought about it. We’d butted heads on more than one occasion, and I don’t think it was always about Penny. They hadn’t been apart that long, and it hadn’t been his idea to end it. He’d kissed her the first time we went through the thinny, something I was jealous of him for. Was he jealous of me now? Would he be suggesting some bare-knuckle sparring soon? I didn’t pick up on any resentment from him, but my telepathic abilities are next to non-existent.

Ashleigh wasn’t exactly in the front of my mind, though. I dug the bases of the candles into the dirt at the far end of the tent. They were meant for cakes, just tiny things, probably brightly colored, though I couldn’t tell. I lit them one by one and they started to melt right away. Carrie came in as I was lighting the last one. I snapped my zippo closed and looked at her. My face felt hot and it took me a while to realize I was blushing. I don’t blush a lot.

But when I looked at her face, Carrie was blushing too. I could only imagine the rosy color, but I could see her pale cheeks flushing and her large, dark eyes were wide. She looked over the tent, saw the tiny candles glowing, our bedrolls laid out one on top of the other to make a more comfortable bed. I was embarrassed, but by the look in her eyes I’d have almost sworn she was seeing the scene I’d imagined laying for her. A silk sheets and rose petals.

The build up was coming on quickly, a mounting tension that we were no longer trying to resist. I knew then what Roland must have felt when he first took Susan into his arms. Ka like a wind. At that point, if the tank had come roaring towards us, I don’t think it could have stopped us.

I pulled her into my arms and we fell into the blankets, kissing, exploring. She arched her back, pressing her breasts into my hands. Her legs wrapped around me. I tangled my fingers in her long, dark hair, my mouth on hers, on her neck. When I finally entered her, it was with a deep sigh, matched by Carrie. An exhalation of satisfaction, of completion. It left us pleasantly drained and exhausted. We were still surrounded by enemies, heading towards a bloody battle, and a trap beyond that, but it seemed like things were actually going right.

Ka. Love.

Degeneration

We took every chance we got to pick off a few of Grissom’s horde. And that’s about all that was left of Farson’s last fighting force. I’m not sure if only the crazed killers were the ones to survive the thinny, or if surviving the thinny just drove them mad, but we were now marching with the barbarian army we’d come to expect.

Killing a handful of them in whatever ways we had wasn’t going to change the outcome of the battle, we knew. And as much as we wanted to, we also didn’t want to. If we changed things, who’s to say it wouldn’t actually make things worse down the line? It makes my head hurt, I’ll leave the, what did they call it in Terminator? temporal mechanics, to Carrie.

But we did it because we were for the White, and it galled us every day to mingle with these servants of the Crimson King. It didn’t matter that they didn’t know they were his pawns, they willingly served the cause of anarchy.

And then we crossed the tribe of slow mutants. We could do nothing but succeed, or else Carrie’s vision would come to pass and I’d be dead, executed by Grissom. So we took command of a leaderless platoon and set out for their cave. It’s a good thing Eden had military experience. I was dinh of my old corporation for sure, but that doesn’t exactly educate you in how to organize troops for battle. In a fight, all I know are me and my tet. But she did a damn fine job. We all did. Maybe too well.

There was no red haze of battle for me this time. Ashleigh looked like it’d taken hold of him, the way his hands seem to move on their own, throwing knives, or the way his mind threw everything else. But this was a slaughter, not a battle. I hurled knives to keep our guns secret, and I threw as well as I could. We had come here to kill. But this wasn’t something I lost myself to. Rather than springing to that terrible life, I forced my hands to do their work. I was still good at The Kill, always would be, but my hands didn’t want to this time.

I made Penny promise not to attack any non-combatants. She kept asking my why not? Ashleigh understood, all the rest understood. I thought that maybe since she was a child herself that she saw no difference in fighting other children. But later I thought that maybe she was just trying to be like me. I killed, therefore she would kill.

Moments like those are when I knew that I had to die. To get out of her life. She wanted to be like me, and I was a monster, in body if not in mind anymore. I don’t want her to want to be like that.

But she listened to me, even if she didn’t understand. I don’t think she fought at all during the battle, so maybe she was overcompensating. I wish I could have asked the same of Carrie.

The plan was simple. Drive the mutants into their caves to contain them. Smoke them out and cut them down as they emerged. Efficient, very little risk to ourselves, quick. And it worked. The mutants came charging out at us and we shot them all down. It was over in less than sixty seconds, leaving only the cowering elderly and young inside. And Carrie lit the fire. They started to burn.

The men we’d been given went inside and made a quick end of it. It turns out we didn’t need to smoke them out. Damn it.

We organized watches near our new platoon. Those men might have a little soldier left in them, but most of the camp was a mass of depraved degenerates and we weren’t going to take any chances. Alistair had detected some pretty massive amounts of Darks being put off by something up ahead, which Carrie checked out clairvoyantly. She recognized the spirits who’d attacked Jericho hill the night before the battle.

We didn’t think Grissom’s army had much to fear from them, assuming that one of the psychics Alistair detected in the army would be commanding them. We were wrong about their threat, but that came later.

Carrie asked if she could talk to me in my tent. No one winked, or gave us sly glances. It wasn’t like that yet. We sat down on my bedroll and Carrie leaned in to me and put her arms around my neck. I wrapped my own arms around her as her shoulders started to shake.

Of the tet of the Turtle, only she’d had to kill innocents. Mutant or not. I wish I’d planned that fight better… it didn’t have to go down that way, I could have saved her this. But there was no door that could take me back to fix it now. The only thing I could do was hold her and grieve with her. We cried together, for all the innocents we’d killed.

When you’ve cried long and hard, it leaves you feeling drained. The tears were done and we sank down to the bedroll. I might’ve expected that one thing would lead to another then, but that wasn’t how it was. Neither of us felt the desire. We shared our grief and we shared our guilt and we gave each other what comfort we could. It was almost like making love in every sense but the physical.

I don’t know, I don’t tend towards introspection. I get to thinking about what I am and what I’ve done and I start to crave the taste of gunmetal. But it was enough to be with Carrie, and to think that maybe I helped.

I felt something wrong and woke to see that Carrie had already sensed it and sat up. Except that her eyes were half-closed and her breathing was still shallow and even. She was still asleep. I called for Eden and the others and together we all managed to wrestle her back into my tent and hold her down, while Eden looked for the spirit inside her. It’d buried itself deep though, hiding.

Penny found it. Maybe it was the ka that was growing between the three of us - me, the girl I loved as a daughter, and the woman I was in love with. Eden grappled with it in Carrie’s mind, stopping it from turning her fire onto all of us, while Penny and I laid into it with everything we had. Shaking Carrie and yelling at her probably only woke up the rest of our company, but it was my intent I was trying to use to keep the thing off-balance. Just enough for Penny to mentally fuck that thing up. I could feel her love for Carrie join with mine, and our anger at the thing trying to hurt her and she used it to hit that spirit-bitch, hard.

Carrie began to open her eyes. She blinked her long lashes, making me fall a little more in love with her. Everything started to go dark.

I’d pushed myself long and hard on this march, and it’d been almost two weeks since I’d allowed Penny to see me drink blood, the last of my blood. The dead weight of my own body came rushing at me all at once, the strain of adding my will to Penny’s mental attack was too much. My eyelids were too heavy to hold open. I tumbled into darkness.

Later. Something in my mouth…. Hot and alive, sending energy back into my limbs. My body drank it up… I tasted blood…

Blood and Fire

The Turtle must’ve been watching out for us because everything was going smoothly. I won’t stoop to the cliché, but let’s say that I would’ve been a little more comfortable if we’d had more trouble. No one questioned the presence of a nine year old girl traveling with us, no one hassled Carrie or Eden, even though women were scarce, and we were generally just left alone. It made me feel like something worse was coming.

We’d done well so far, making our way along with the Grissom’s men, and we made it through the Thinny, though it was a stomach-churning sight. It devoured hundreds… I don’t think any of slept very well that night.

Even if it weren’t for the Thinny, I had a lot on my mind that evening. Carrie and Penny walked off to talk. Maybe I could have picked up on what they were saying, especially from Penny…but I didn’t want to pry. Whatever it was, it upset Penny. Ashleigh went and talked to her, which is good. He makes her laugh, and when she came back she was smiling even if her eyes were a little red.

Carrie and Eden had both already talked to me about blood and Penny was urging me to just bite someone just about every day. I know she was just worried about me, but how do I explain to her that it makes me hate myself?

That night I invited her into my tent. I asked her to get out my blood and hand it to me. I thought that maybe if I let her help me…feed… that it would help her. Make her feel like she was taking care of me, you know? I drank the cold blood more slowly than I usually do, not wanting to spill any. It was hard enough letting the person I love more than anything watch me drink human blood…I didn’t want it running down my face like a monster.

I guess it was what upset Penny before. Carrie told her not to get on my case about drinking, tried to explain how it makes me feel. It made me think back to my conversation with Eden.

“I want to watch her grow up,” I told Eden. “I want to see her graduate high school. I want to see her get married, be there to give her away…” I could even see her all grown up, taller than Carrie, but still short. I could see her face, the childish lines smoothed by age into startling beauty. “…But I don’t think I’m going to.”

I wish I could’ve promised Penny, but I knew that I wasn’t going to get to do those things. I didn’t need Carrie’s visions to tell me that, either. It was my own nature and there was only one escape from it.

Holding Penny as she cried on me I let myself hope for a second. How many times had I put a gun to my head and not pulled the trigger? Penny had already saved my life a hundred times over. Maybe…

Well…Ka….

It was enough that Penny loved me, that she’d seen me drink blood and not turned her face away from me. After all, there was more to my life now than blood. Penny probably thought she was being coy. Sometimes she can be amazingly cunning and full of guile, but there are times when that mischievous glint in her eyes shines through. And she giggles.

She asked me about Carrie of course. I’d been a bit worried about that actually. Penny’s always giggled and teased me about the women who stare at me, or who approach me while I’m out with Penny. I’m not sure if she thinks it’s cute, or if maybe she’s sorta looking for a mother-figure as well. But what she expects and the realities of a relationship are two different things. I wasn’t sure how she’d react to sharing me with someone else. I had to admit, it’d been part of what was keeping me and Carrie apart.

I asked her if she would be okay if me and Carrie got together and I put as much of the reality of that into my words and thoughts as I could. I wanted her to really understand what it might mean…if it happened.

When she gave us her blessing, I was more frightened than relived. Since Penny approved, there was nothing really standing in our way… And I might not have much time with her. Of course… that was the rest of why we hadn’t at least given it a chance yet. We both knew that I was going to die and that it was going to be sooner rather than later. Did I want to get involved with her only to leave her on her own again? Did she?

We’d set up our tents as far from the rest of Grissom’s men as we could. Maybe we were risking discovery in staying a little ways away, but no one tried to bring us in for security reasons or anything. I think that the Thinny robbed the band of a lot of their professionalism. But we were keeping watch just the same, we didn’t trust these soldiers. And Penny was looking for an excuse to get me together with Carrie.

I didn’t think it was worth it to try to tell Penny that you can’t push love any more than you can push Ka, but I’m not sure she would’ve understood. Besides, it made her happy…and it made me happy. When Ashleigh woke us up and he and Alistair and Eden were crawling into their tents, we stayed up and talked and played cards and I showed Penny magic tricks. I tried not to think about it, but the idea was seductive. Me and Carrie and Penny… like a family. Not a ka-tet, but just a family. Would this be what it was like?

The night wore on and we settled down into more silent watchfulness than conversation. Penny said she was going to go to bed. I know it’s harder to stay awake when you’re bored and the poor kid hadn’t had anything to do but talk to grownups while riding along with the army for almost two weeks. She couldn’t even really let herself teleport and that was something she was as used to doing as walking. She gave me a hug goodnight and what might’ve been a wink.

I sat down next to Carrie by the fire and after a while I asked if she wanted to learn my coin trick. It was a good way to build manual dexterity and all my little magic tricks had come from this one little parlor trick. It was something that Lex first showed me to get my fingers faster to help with my reloading speed.

She moved closer next to me so she could watch as I took out the silver coin that came from Gilead. I held it between my thumb and first finger and rolled it to the second slowly. Then the third, explaining how to raise and lower the knuckles and catch the edge of the coin to make it dance.

I was enjoying her nearness, her arm pressed against mine on my left, touching the rose inked into my bicep. When I finally noticed her head beginning to droop I stopped the coin and chuckled. I nudged her with my shoulder.

“Carrie, wake up.” She looked at me and blinked. “You were about to go under.” I smiled. I couldn’t help it. “I didn’t even think of that. I guess I forgot. Tell you what, let’s practice with cards.”

I fished my deck out of my pocket and slipped the cards out of the worn box. I leaned in close to her and held the deck in one hand. My fingers moved surely, twisting the top half of the deck and slipping it under the other half. Again, twisting the cards and slipping them under. Again and again, slowly, explaining what my fingers were doing.

“Okay, now you try it,” I said. The cards settled in my palm and I held the deck out to her. She reached up and closed her hand over the cards, her fingers brushing mine… I turned to look at her and our faces were only an inch apart… or was it half an inch… a quarter inch…?

And then our lips touched and we kissed. She tasted like roses.

My head felt light and the stiffness between my legs was sudden. I think we would have ended up in my tent except for the sudden flames. The fire roared up, doubling in size with a quiet whoosh of heat. We pulled back, startled, and the cards in our hands were smoking. They crackled, then burst into flames. We flung them away from us and they were lifted on the hot air from our fire, whirling above us like fireflies until they burned down to drifting ashes.

The fire burned in a six foot pillar of bright light for another second, and then the flames collapsed in on themselves, just tiny tongues licking up from the embers.

Red and Blue

Memories and reality were mixing like oil and water. The Dixie Pig had been taken down to make way for new Sombra headquarters or something, but the kitchen was just like I remembered it.

I remembered the way that the smell of cooking meat made me sick and how it made my mouth water, and how my watering mouth made feel even more sick. Always after I had to make a trip through the Pig I’d go out hunting, like it stirred up the vampire part of me. But now the kitchen was empty and cold, and I moved through it with my hands near my guns.

I remember the hallways, doubling back on themselves, laid out in some Escher labyrinth studded with posters out of a twisted version of the Roman Coliseum. Bloosports for the Great Old Ones, going mad from ennui.

I was a hunter, but this time my prey wasn’t children and psychics, but the ones who collected them. Lead flew, bursting the tick-like bodies of the Grandfather Fleas. It felt good so blow them away and see the blood spray the walls. They hadn’t earned their meal anyways.

And then we found the door, the way back to Mid-World. I knelt and let Penny paint my face, but it took all of my self control to hold still and let her. I told myself that this is a thing that Roland might’ve done: taken the face of an enemy to survive, to do what he had to do…

…but isn’t that why Roland almost failed his quest? Isn’t that what Eddie and Jake and Susannah saved him from? Roland also gunned down all of Tull.

So there we were, surrounded by low men and vampires and humes all set for a bloody holiday in Mid-World. Like that restaurant at the end of the universe in that brittish book. All set to get off watching good men die. I wanted to kill them all. And then I felt my impulse returned, felt it touch my ka-mates and reflect back to me. Yes, kill them all.

I pulled iron and the sandalwood grips never felt so good in my hands, never felt so right. Bullets and blood flew. I saw a taheen wearing a human skin impale Eden on a spear. But even as her pain echoed through our khef, so did her determination. She might die here, but if that was so, then she was okay with that. Maybe it was a good death.

When the bloodbath was over, Alistair had saved Eden, and the tet of the Turtle was left standing. We found gear and horses outside, all that we’d need to get to Jericho Hill and see the Horn of Eld safely to its fate. But the outriders called me Hendrick, the name of the man I’d gunned down in contempt. We still had to wear the paint and we couldn’t just mow down all of Grissom’s army…

…But even though I knew that… I wasn’t sure if I could stand by and let the barbarians do what they intended to do. The face paint was blue, but I felt Red.