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.

Ew Ork, Ew Ork!

Arthur followed Al all through the great wide woods towards the setting sun. He had a dim idea that the world was a much larger place than he ever suspected. Already he had traveled more than any throcken of the great woods had before, even his mighty dinh. Thoughts of his dinh and his old ka-tet were painful, but with a child’s – or an animal’s – acceptance, the pain was fading quickly, replaced by sincere love for Al and his new ka-tet.

The bumbler stayed close to his new family. There were wolf-smells here too, and they made Arthur’s fur bristle. He looked around fearfully, but the smells were very old. But this larger world was full of other dangers and smells that Arthur had only vague knowledge of. There was a cave full of old death-smells. There was a odor of people, and a sickly musk like what clung to the wolf. He hadn’t know that people could get body-sick and mind-sick like that so that too many legs or eyes grew or so that the ones that did did not grow right. But none of the sick-people were left in the cave, only bodies. Arthur barked a warning shout at the corpses, but scurried on quickly. Even a bumbler knows that sometimes the dead rise.

The little throcken sifted all of this out from the smell-marks of the blue-faced people, more individual scents than he could believe. He remembered the long ant-line of people as they marched towards the hill where he met Al. He could tell they came this way because of how the smells grew slowly more dim. Maybe Al and his friends were trying to go back to their nest to kill the rest?

The nest was one of the on top of the ground burrows that people lived in, but the sides were rounded all the way to the ground and it smelled very strange. Arthur didn’t want to go inside, but he supposed that if Al went in, that he would too. But as it turned out they didn’t have to. Something appeared there in the clearing outside the strange burrow. Arthur sensed it’s presence in a collage of scents; the warm fur-scent of his mother, the familiar scents of his tet, spring clover, fresh muffin balls… His curling tail bobbed like a spring in joy.

Then the world changed. Light came and took all the trees away and Arthur found himself on smooth, hard ground. There were people all around and so much noise that he laid his ears flat and ducked his head down. But when he looked down, the ground was shiny like the surface of a stream and he saw a throcken-face looking back up at him, gold-ringed eyes wide in fear. He scuttled closer to Al, almost getting his small feet stepped on, and stepping right on top of Al’s large feet himself.

The smells were overwhelming, but Arthur couldn’t place any of them. They were none of the smells of forest or stream or glade or field. But Al’s smell was happy and there was no fear in the air. In fact, he sensed some burden easing in Al, like he had been pulling a very heavy weight in his mouth and at last he could set it down. Except this weight was in his head and he had to pull it with his head. Arthur realized that Al was hurt. He hadn’t known before, because the hurt-sense had been a part of him when Arthur first found him. But now he could sense the hurt going away. Not all away, but getting better. Arthur gave a happy little bark that was lost in all the noise of the strange new place.

Arthur left the arrival place and the throcken realized that he was inside of a people-burrow. It was so large! Many bumblers could live here and have all the room they could ever need. Delah. Except there was no food smells here. He worried, but there was another scent, one tht he had never smelled before, but which he felt as being familiar. The scent came from a green place, the only plants he could see or smell, and in the middle there was a red flower…

Arthur wanted to go to it and maybe lie in the little patch of grass. But Arthur was leaving. It was okay, somehow the scent of the flower was on Al, too. More sensed than smelled. Arthur couldn’t explain it, but bumblers feel little need to explain things. The smell was in Al’s head, and it made him better. Arthur loved that smell.

And of course, there was food! Arthur knew that Al would never let him be hungry. The smell was new and delightful and smelled strangely hot. The food inside was gooey and warm with bits of greasy meat…oh!

Al’s burrow was incredibly large and strange. It had holes in the sides, except there was something over them so you couldn’t go through them, which was good because the holes we high up. Higher than the tallest tree. But Al was happy here and he never let Arthur fall and he always brought strange, wonderful new food.

The throcken didn’t like going outside in this new world – he could sense that it was not the same one he left. Outside he was surrounded by a forest of towering people-burrows. There were trees, but only a few here and there and underneath the choking smoke-smell of the air, they smelled weak and sick. But he was brave enough to follow Al back to his own little burrow where the walls were closer and it wasn’t so high off the ground.

But Arthur knew a little of ka. Not a human’s understanding of course, but an instinct for it that so few people did. Al’s life was not one of only food and hours of playing with shiny twigs and flat white leaves in his burrow. His ka was greater, and Arthur had given himself over to Al’s ka so he could be with him.

The night that Al and his friends had a very big food gathering and they let Arthur play with the brightly colored leaves that had surprises inside that made them happy…that night they went out into the cold and the snow. And there in a field of wet stone and old metal the little throcken’s fur bristled. He hunched his back and stretched out his neck, smelling hard for danger. The evil moved and it made the junk leap up and strike.

The bumbler, just the runt of his tet wanted to turn and run away, to follow his own smell back to someplace safe. But Al wasn’t running. He stood his ground, feet planted in the snow, his hands making something out of bits of branch. He pointed it at the metal thing and it threw a stick at it with a quivering twang! Arthur barked excitedly, leaping around his feet. He was fighting it!

Arthur was afraid and excited all at once. His round body bounced in the snow, hardly feeling the cold through his thick pelt. Al’s smell was the same, scared, but also focused, intent. He used his special branch to throw stick after stick at it. Arthur knew that if he had been at the den with when sick-wolf had attacked, that he would have killed it with his sticks. The metal monster threw big metal sticks high into the air, but Al didn’t run. Arthur wanted to…the metal stick was as big as a whole tree, stripped bare of branches. It tumbled end over end in the air, its shadow falling over them.

Al looked up at it, his fuzzy face grimly determined and he stood his ground. Arthur trembled, looking up at the metal tree falling on them. Then he darted between Al’s feet and planted his rump in the snow. Either Al would save them both, or they would die together.

The air whistled over the tumbling metal, and Arthur’s bravery gave out. He pushed his head against Al’s leg and closed his large gold-black eyes. In the darkness he could hear the rattling pops and the grunts and cries of fighting and the creaks and crunch of angry metal. The sounds ended with a final ground-shaking boom and a hot wind. When Arthur looked the field of snow and wet stone was as bright as day, a burning fire lighting the battlefield. He smelled blood and pain, but also satisfaction. Arthur looked up at Al, who was still alive and rolled over in happiness.

Something's coming...

We went after the White light we saw in our shared vision when we stepped off the Lost Highway. Buried in the remains of the Dixie Pig was a turtle, of course. Just a little figurine, but something important all the same. Important enough to burry there, important enough to guard, and powerful enough that they couldn’t touch it and just destroy it.

We fought hard and well, no less than I expect from my deadly new friends. We came close to it though, and there were moments when I thought I felt the chill of ka-shume settle over us. There wasn’t time to stop and make sure, though, not when a wrecking ball was arcing towards your head. So we just fought and we triumphed.

I’m worried about Eden though, because she doesn’t seem worried about us. It makes sense if you know Eden like we do, as close as khef. She’s always worrying about us, asking us what’s wrong practically before we know that we’ve got a problem most of the time. Part of it’s because she’s telepathic, but the worrying, the caring is all Eden.

But lately she’d been quieter, more withdrawn. I wasn’t sure what was going on yet, though Carrie tried to get it out of her. Eden kept her lips pressed tightly together and her eyes weren’t giving anything away. I probably have the hardest time reading her, and I pick so little up from her mind through khef, maybe because she’s psychic and she can block herself when she wants. I didn’t want to drive her off though. Most times you can ask someone a hundred times and they won’t answer you, then one day they’ll just start talking when you haven’t even opened your mouth. She’ll come to it in her own time, but it’d better be soon. Things aren’t winding down, they ramping up and if our dinh can’t get it together, we’re in for some real hurting.

I surprised myself with how close I came to doing some hurting myself. Carrie mentioned that Ashleigh had taken an interest in Penny’s schooling. Nothing bad about that, though so far he’d only contributed to educating her in the world of Marvel Comics. But she mentioned that she’d chided him about hacking into the tutors database and looking up her grades, downloading her lessons, and reading the tutors comments. About Penny, and about me.

It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that the tutor wanted to bring me up on charges of negligence with Child Protective Services, she misses a damned lot of school after all and we don’t get much time to catch up. But I was enraged that Ashleigh would do that. Go behind my back and interfere in her education. He talked to Penny about her school and told her she could skip grades.

She’s the smartest kid I ever knew, brighter than I was at her age for damned sure. But I don’t want her to end up like me, so fixed on succeeding that she…that she forgets the face of her father…

…I went to Ashleigh’s, the wonderful evening I’d had with Carrie nearly forgotten. I felt like he was trying to take care of Penny, like he thought I wasn’t doing good enough. It’s a damned good thing I didn’t have my guns with me. I wouldn’t have shot him…god help me I’ll never play the betrayer again, but the conversation would have gone a lot worse with one of those hand cannons pointed in his face. Not that it went well anyways.

“You’re not her father!” I screamed at him. “I…”

I was going to say that I was. It was on the tip of my tongue, the tip of my heart. I can’t even tell Penny how much I love her in words, how the hell was I going to make Ashleigh understand? But he knew what I couldn’t say.

“You’re not her father either!” He threw back. He might as well have taken one of his knives and run me through the heart. I haven’t been hurt like that since the thinny, and I don’t know which was worse. It stripped away all of my arguments, all of my reason and jerked the raw, naked truth out of me…

“She’s all I have!”

There. It was out of my mouth, not just hinted at in the waters of khef, but echoing in his shabby apartment and shaking the windows. Everything after that was like talking underwater or something. I didn’t really hear him and he didn’t really hear me. We talked about it the next day, which I think was pretty brave of Ashleigh. I think they all think that I’d do anything for Penny, even kill them.

He fucked up. I overreacted. But the bottom line is that we both want what’s best for Penny. I got him to agree to include me in talking to her about what that means. I think we’ll be okay.

And we’re going to need to stick together. Two other things went on in that short week between returning to New York and the shootout at the Dixie Pig. One was good, and one was bad. Maybe even very bad.

I’d taken Carrie out to dinner. When she got back to New York (her first time in the Big Apple with a clear head), she realized she’d turned twenty a while ago. She told me she isn’t sure of the day, since her mom didn’t know (a prisoner of the needle more than Carrie ever was). I wasn’t sure what to get her, so I asked her what she wanted. Dinner out just to chat and relax, not to talk about Penny. I had to blush a bit… Carrie wasn’t the only one who’d been living for someone else.

“Okay,” I said. “Deal.”

I was looking forward to it, probably more than I let on. I’d been feeling…lonely. Which was funny if you thought about it, because for the first time in more than a decade I had real friends and I had Penny. Aside from Lex, I’d pretty much kept to myself. The best I can figure, and I’m not a deep thinker, is that Penny…all my friends… sorta reminded me of what life is supposed to be like and I started to feel the absence of the things I still didn’t have.

I went out to some Goth club, not one I’d hunted at before, but somewhere where people dressed all in black was the norm. I invited the guys, but Ashleigh begged off. I guess I couldn’t blame him. He was probably thinking of Carrie, and I figured she was thinking about him again now that she was clean. Alistair surprised me by being up for it, though. First karaoke, now clubbing.

The girls came to me, like the always do. I tried to talk up Alistair – I had no idea if he wanted any action, but I wasn’t going to leave him high and dry – but I don’t think he got much attention until I left. We chatted about jobs, the music, politics, all the usual small talk.

I’d already picked out the one I wanted to leave with, a pretty little brunette goth. Short, thin, no tits to speak of. She was about as far from my old long-legged, double-dee, blonde bimbo as you can get. She was wearing a black lace corset and these black wings tied to her back with ribbons. A little over the top. I was doing magic tricks, making my coin disappear and reappear, folding napkins into paper roses and pulling them out of seemingly nowhere. I brushed her cheek as I pulled my coin from behind her ear. I brushed her chest as I took the paper rose out of her scant cleavage.

Her black-painted lips were parted just slightly, her eyes half closed every time I leaned close to speak over the music. She wrapped her arms around my bicep and clung to me at the bar, her hard nipples grazing my shoulder.

I tried about fifteen times to suggest we leave, but I’d have had to fight my way out of the circle of girls surrounding me and Alistair. In the end I showed them another trick. I rolled my coin over my fingers, fast and faster. The strobe lights winked off of the old silver, flashing light into their painted faces. I took the girl’s arm and pulled her out of the circle while everyone was just staring, rapt.

I shook her a little to wake her up. “Hey, you wan to get out of here?” She nodded breathlessly and we called a cab, already kissing and fooling around.

He roommate glared at us sleepily as we came back to her place, but we closed the bedroom door on her and forgot about her instantly. There was something about her that caught hold of me, but I couldn’t place it. I didn’t realize as I undressed her, didn’t realize as I held my hands on her girlish hips and guided her over me, and not when we finally fell exhausted and sweating into the sheets to sleep.

It was when I woke in the morning. I sat up and saw her pale back stretched out next to me, dark hair spilling over her slender shoulders. My penis stiffend so quickly it ached and I was ready for another round. I leaned over and kissed her head and said “Good morning…” and I almost called her Carrie. After a second I remembered that her name was something like Sarah or Sandra or Sasha, but she looked an awful lot like Carrie. My erection went limp like a flag when the wind up and dies. Not because the thought turned me off, but because I realized that’s what had turned me on so much. I got dressed and told her I’d maybe see her later, but I didn’t think I was ever going back to the club again.

So when I picked up Carrie the next night, watched her coming down her front steps in a clinging, strapless dress, my heart started to beat faster. Dinner was nice. The ice-skating was nicer. On the ride back to her place I felt like we were speeding towards something. Or maybe more like we were two spheres of plutonium moving slowly together, nearing the point of reaching critical mass and exploding into…what…?

And then she brought up Ashleigh and the needle moved away from the danger zone, the sexual radiation returned to elevated, but safe, levels. Maybe it was for the best, maybe she’s not ready and maybe I’m not. But I had to wonder if we were ever going to stop fucking up, dancing around, if something was going to happen.

Maybe it’s better that nothing happen. When ka and love get in the same cart it’s a wild ride. You seem love harder than anyone else, but you hurt more too. I’m not sure it’s worth it. But the damned thing is, if ka and love go hand in hand, you have no choice. Ka like a wind.

And I could feel it blowing. Then there was the second thing, the bad thing.

Carrie’d been looking forward to pushing the boundaries of the powers she never knew she had, but she needed help. Help from Bryce. We all knew there was going to be trouble over it, but we weren’t prepared for what happened.

He saw us down at the shooting range. Penny was putting rounds into the center ring at ten yards and Carrie was learning how to handle the shotgun she borrowed back in Mid-World. I didn’t feel the need to get it back now that I had real guns, and Carrie could use a little heavier firepower.

Bryce comes up to us, about to burst into flames, and starts screaming at me when he sees the sandalwoods. I’ve been through that, though. Moses Carver put them into my hands and I rescued them from Jericho Hill. That battle was as much a trial as Cort’s test… and if I haven’t earned them yet, I will.

So, as he’s spewing his bile at us, Carrie asks him how he is. She’d foretold his wounding and we could all see the limp he was sporting. But I wasn’t prepared for the ring of greasy blue light around his neck. He’d been bitten, and recently.

I wish Carrie’d seen the whole story, I might have been more prepared. His tet went out and their mission failed when a tet of harriers got in the way. Apparently…well, it seemed that I was there. Some James, some other me. A vampire. A regulator. He…I…mowed down his friend and put a bullet in his leg. And I was the one that bit him. God, if he never wanted to kill me before, he did then…

I was surprised that he didn’t have a go for it, or at least deck me. Maybe he would have, but I didn’t want to give him the chance. I left as soon as possible, and I almost didn’t show up for Carries training. I kept my damned mouth shut, though. We saw him walk off the next day, leaving the tower with that bloodsucker’s collar around his neck and he was alone. Which is a damned good way to get bitten again. We gave a report to Alice on that and she said she’d handle it.

But I think it’s going to come back to us. Ka is a wheel and I feel it coming around. Things are picking up speed, gaining momentum. Something’s coming…

The Thinny

New York seems like a dream to me now. I don’t necessarily mean that it’s so great that it’s like a dream (c’mon, it’s New York), but I mean that it’s…slightly unreal. I figured it was just that we’d been in Mid-World so long that the other world was starting to feel like home.

Or maybe it was ka. Like we have unfinished business there. Well, if it was ka, we’d found out eventually, no way around it.

Funny that New York should feel like a dream considering the homeward journey from Mid-World. The thinny…the dogan…

I’d run out of blood, though I’d tried to hide it. I knew that it’d be a few weeks yet before I really started to slow down. Until then I could hide the little tremors, and still the shaking. I didn’t even want to entertain the thought of drinking someone’s blood until I absolutely had to.

Carrie tried to force me to it, though. I wasn’t surprised, I should have known better. Carrie used to be a junkie too (ah…used to be…it’s nice to think of it that way), and she could see the signs, even if I was hiding them. Penny might have known too, she has a way of doing that, but I pushed the thought aside. I don’t like thinking that she knows about the blood-drinking, even though I know she does. Like by ignoring it I can pretend it away.

But the cramps in my gut and the tremors in my hands made it real. Carrie asked me step away. I was hoping without much confidence that she just wanted to talk about her struggling attraction to Ashleigh. Or maybe even that she was going to throw herself at me again (a much more pleasant thought than brooding over my starvation).

I wish she had. I had to remember that she was trying to help me but she took a kind of guilt tactic. Maybe not on purpose, but she kept saying that she didn’t want the thinny to get us because I was hungry and weak. She told me that Penny might die if I was too weak to protect her. I guess it really shows how horrified I am at drinking blood that I still refused. Of course, if a thinny was something you could shoot, it might’ve gone differently.

Still, it probably wasn’t a good idea for the ka-tet to be in the dark about my situation. After all, things were bad enough with Carrie on the tail end of withdrawls and Alistair slowly loosing his mind. I let Eden know that we needed to have a talk before we entered the thinn, especially because not everyone had read the books and knew what to expect.

As if that could have prepared us.

It looked about like I expected it to, I’ll give myself that much credit. And I went into it determined. We were mostly worried about Ashleigh, who was still messed up over his fall into the Todash darkness. I don’t know how anyone gets over that.

If the thinny at the Topeka turnpike was a shimmering mass of light and twisted sound, and the one in Eyebolt Canyon was a greenish amoeba of despair, this was something in-between. It crowded the road but allowed us passage. Of course, maybe it was just suckering us in.

The voices started up almost at once. We knew they were coming, we knew that to expect. But when it came, we weren’t ready for it. Of all of us, I’ve seen the most weird shit, I’ve been the most places. I guess you could say I believed the most. And of all of us, only Ashleigh had a harder time with the thinny.

Lex called out to me from the green mist. I knew it wasn’t Lex. I knew it was the thinny playing tricks on me. But that knowledge just sits there up in your brain, it doesn’t reach down into your heart or your guts or your balls where the fear hits you. If it was just a voice making shit up, I could have laughed it off. But it reaches into you and takes something that already there, some fear or doubt, and it hits you with it. So that when you hear it, it’s not fake at all, it’s as real as fear.

It was no secret that I hate being a vampire, or that I’m ashamed of the things I did when I was a Top Hat Cat. Haven’t I learned better? Wasn’t I coming to believe that maybe even a vampire can do some good? But like the voice of the Rose is the voice of yes of it’s alright, the voice of the thinny says nothing will be alright. You will fail again. There’s no hope.

I started walking into the fog, God help me. In a way, it was like the Rose that I longed to see, even though I knew it meant my death. I knew that it would end my existence, end my torment. It was freedom.

I didn’t even realize that I was walking into the mist at first. I heard the shouting, but it didn’t make much sense, I thought it was just more voices in the thinny. I looked down and I could see my toes through my boots. Everything was glowing green like how old x-ray machines at the airports used to look. The green began to creep up my foot, towards my leg and I could see more and more bone.

I took a step back when I realized that’s what was happening. It wasn’t the peace of the Rose. When I was a bit further away I could hear the voices of my friends calling. Telling me that it was wrong, that I was more than a killer. It was like pulling the gun away from my head each night, like trying to separate two very strong magnets.

The thinny called for the guns with the voice of my old Dinh. I didn’t deserve the carry them, I was staining their long and noble history with my touch… Maybe I was no harrier…but I was still a vampire, a blood drinker… I picked up the guns, wrapped in their own gun belts, those ancient killers that had so recently hung from Cuthbert Allgood’s hips. I couldn’t believe later that after all that had happened, that I was just going to toss them into the fog. That I had rescued them from Jericho Hill only to through them into the mouth of madness.

But the voices calling for me to stop, that said I had earned these guns weren’t fake either. Their love was as real as my doubt. I let go of the guns and they fell back into my open backpack and the spell seemed broken. Lex’s voice faded away and the thinny gave up. …but only to move on to a different target.

Not surprisingly it almost got Ashleigh. The look on his face scared the hell out of me. But we grabbed onto him until he got it under control. Or as much under control as he could. I know that Eden has been working with him to get through some of what’s been done to him. I hope she can help.

We thought it had almost got him, but we were wrong. It did get him.

But before all of that, we had to get through the thinny. Alistair and Eden made it through pretty well, thank God. I wasn’t sure about Alistair at first, in his weakened mental state, but his new pet and his love for collecting gave him something to cling to.

I was very proud of Penny too. I’d barely heard her parents voices, just a broken off sentence before Lex hypnotized them, but I recognized them as they blamed Penny for their deaths. I told her that we were her family now, we all did. But I wasn’t quite brave enough to tell her that she’s like a daughter to me. That I wish I was her real dad because if she’d been in my life, I never would have gone wrong. But her wide, dark eyes turned away from the thinny back to us and my heart stopped breaking.

We were almost out, the thinny didn’t seem to be bothering Arthur. I’m sure that if he wandered into it, that it’d reach for him and devour the little furball, but it didn’t seem to have any power of his mind. Or maybe the bumbler’s simple little mind had no weaknesses to exploit.

But Carrie did. I knew that she pretty much thought she was just a walking ball of weaknesses, and the thinny used our voices to tell her that. Of all the tricks and low blows, it pissed me off the most to hear my voice telling Carrie that she was worthless.

Eden and I got in front of her to stop her from walking into the fog, each one of us putting a hand on a slender shoulder. It surprised me how much weight she’s put on since she ran out of her junk. Her collar bone was still a slim line under my palm, but there was more than pale skin stretched over it. Her body was jealously hanging on to whatever sustenance it could get before the heroin could take it away again.

She didn’t seem to be able to hear us, she kept pushing against our hands weakly, trying to get to the thinny. She had just about the same look on her face as she did when I hypnotized her. Eden threw her arms around Carries neck and hugged her.

I looked at her, annoyed and I had to stop and think, why would I be annoyed that Eden would hug Carrie and save her? I eased back off the balls of my feet and realized that I’d been planning on doing that. And more…I think I was going to kiss her.

When Ashleigh kissed her as we left the thinny behind us, I definitely felt a little thrill of jealousy. Well…I suppose that as she leaves her addiction behind and doesn’t need someone to care for her, she won’t let her fear of dependence stop her and Ashleigh from being together. Good for them.

That night, whatever compulsion or essence the thinny had left inside Ashleigh woke up and made its move. He took out his knife and stabbed Eden. I kept trying to shoot the blades out of his hand, but at close range it’s even harder to hit a small moving target. He hurt Eden, he cut Penny… and I couldn’t stop him. I tried to graze him, just knock him down or throw him off balance, but he was moving so fast and Carrie was trying to knock him down her all her ninety pounds. My hands shook…he was hurting them…trying to kill them… But I didn’t want to kill one of my own. I kept thinking of how I shot Lex, and I couldn’t do it.

Thankfully for all of us, especially Ashleigh, Eden wasn’t limited to gunplay.

Alistair led us on, until the Turtle took us home.

New York again. I promised myself to get laid here – I was tired of being alone every night – but there were things to do first. The whole ka-tet stayed to give Alic our debriefing and I was proud. Even Ashleigh stayed, despite what he’d been through. We ordered pizza and chuckled while Alistair fed Arthur one pepperoni at a time.

…And I asked to meet with the Carvers… Marian and Moses came in, one tall and smooth, the other bent and wrinkled, but both infused with a vitality…a presence. I offered them the guns. While the voice of the thinny hurt me, almost lulled me to my death, it didn’t make me believe that I hadn’t changed. But that didn’t mean that these guns that I picked up belonged to me.

The old man handled them gravely, his easy grin gone from his face. His hands traced the scrollwork on the barrels thoughtfully. And he gave them back to me. …Alright. If I’m going to carry these guns, I’ll try to be worthy of them.

Good to the last drop

I told everyone I was going to use the “log of ease,” to borrow one of Roland’s terms. And I’ve found myself doing a lot of that lately. Penny didn’t get it at first, she hasn’t read the books yet, so I had to translate.

“I need to take a shit,” I said. She blushed and giggled in that utterly charming way that stole my heart. But I was lying. It was the only thing I could tell her that’d keep her away, though. I never wanted her to see what I had to do.

I went far enough away for privacy and then opened my backpack. No one questioned why I took it, maybe because Cuthbert’s guns were in there and they figured I just wanted to be armed away from the others. I pulled out a thermos.

It looked pretty normal, just a smooth, stainless steel tube that you might keep coffee in. of course, it was a little more than. There was a layer of insulation and a layer of liquid nitrogen or something to keep it cool. It was my blood.

I opened it and the smell hit me, repulsive and delightful at the same time. My nostrils dilated, drinking in the scent of blood, noting the staleness and noting the warmth as the coolant began to give out, but not caring. I shook the thermos a little and heard the thick sloshing sound come up from the bottom. Not much left.

I drank it down quickly, partly in hungry greed, partly to get it over with quickly. I’ve never savored the taste. I half swallowed, and then my throat closed up. This was the last. After this there was nothing with who knew how much wilderness to go before we could return to New York. I spat a red mouthful back into the thermos and stared down at the blood, turning it so the late afternoon sunlight could reach the bottom.

The jittery, suffocating panic that made me spit out the blood cooled down and hardened into something heavier. Trying to ration myself drop by drop was only going to drive me crazy. This was the last and there was no changing it. I put the thermos to my mouth and tilted my head back and felt the last slide down my throat…

Bumbling

Even billy bumblers know loneliness and the throcken that would soon come to be known as Arthur was lonely. He was on his own now, and had been for a long time as the lives of bumblers go. When he was young there had been other bumblers. And people as well.

There was a place near the forest where lot of people lived in their strange on top of the ground burrows. They never bothered the bumblers and sometimes there was food or a dish of milk left out. The bumbler didn’t know, but he kenned, and the khef of his parents and ka-tet told him that not long ago the bumblers had lived much closer to the people. Maybe even with them. It was a strange thought, but only a little. After all there was sometimes food and stones were never thrown.

The bumbler also kenned that once there had been a great deal more people. That once all of the odd on top of the ground burrows had been full of people. Some had died and some had gone away. When the bumbler was still very small and only beginning to understand these things there was a loud commotion from the people-burrows.

The curious throcken slinked through the forest and watched with their large gold-ringed eyes as the people-burrows burned. There were more people there now, but they looked like they were fighting with each other. It did not look like the fun sort of tussling that the bumbler enjoyed with his ka-tet and some of the people were making pain-barks and whimpering.

One of the people saw the throcken and shot an arrow at them. They scattered into the bushes and hid until the people were gone. The bumblers didn’t understand it in the way that people did, but none-the-less they knew that another piece of the world had moved on.

The ka-tet of bumblers continued to live in the forest, hunting and foraging. Sometimes they even still made people-noises to each other, and they all barked happily.

Three months before the bumbler would follow a band of people to the big hill by the sea at the end of the forest - before he would hide in terror and believe he was going to the clearing at the end of his path, before he would meet another human with a fuzzy face who would give him a new ka-tet – the bumbler was playing in a shaft on sunlight falling through the canopy, chasing a butterfly.

He might catch it and eat it in a little while, but for now, he liked the way the light flashed on the bright colors of its wings and he liked the smell of the grass and the warmth of the sun and he liked to spring and jump and roll. His corkscrew tail twitched back and forth and he compressed his long body, ready to launch himself in a fantastic leap. The butterfly had just slipped between his grasping paws and the bumbler decided to try very hard to catch the bug, not just try a little. But he stopped, and if his body hadn’t already been tensed to spring it would have tensed anyways.

A shadow passed over the bumbler, casting darkness and cold over him, save that the sky was cloudless blue. Striped fur bristled making the small throcken look twice as big. He stretched out his long neck, his head questing right and left. His eyes were wide but it was his nose and ears that he looked with. Even though he neither saw, heard, nor smelled anything amiss, the bumbler broke into a run, the butterfly forgotten, dashing as fast as he could towards the burrow.

Even bumblers can feel ka-shume.

Soon the cries of throcken echoed in the forest, shrill squeals of pain and terror. The young bumbler ran faster, even knowing that he was running into danger. There, below the sharp barks of fear was a lower growling. Closer to the burrow, the bumbler picked up the scent. The familiar smells of his ka-tet, both old and new, and now the fresher scent of a predator. Something big and dangerous, and something sick.

The bumbler began to bark, a staccato beat as he ran. A plea.

He leapt a fallen branch and saw the burrow that had been his home for a long time. The earth around it had been torn open, clods of soil scattered throughout the grass. The smell of blood and fear was thick in the air. Looking closer, he saw that what had looked like just one of the mounds of thrown earth was the crumpled shape of a bumbler. In the middle of the carnage stood a wolf, as dark as the day was bright. It was a mutie, with gaping holes in its head instead of ears. Its fur was tangled and had fallen out in clumps to reveal mottled skin, thick with scabs. Some disease had eaten away its face, leaving patches of glaring white bone. Its lips were gone, freezing the wolf’s face in a permanent snarl.

As the little bumbler watched, the wolf darted its pointed head into the den, fangs clicking together. It lunged again and this time it threw its head back, lifting the writhing body of a throcken. It growled and shook its head in a brisk negative. The snap of tiny bones was loud in the clearing. The bumbler looked around, searching with nose and ears for the rest of the pack, but only briefly. The animal instinctively knew that this wolf would have been driven out of his pack long ago. It was a lone wolf, mad and dying. A healthy wolf may have caught a single bumbler and vanished with its prize. This creature wasn’t interested in killing for hunger.

One of the bumblers cornered in the burrow made a dash for it. The wolf dropped the dead throcken and snapped its head forward, fangs clamping down. But as it did another bumbler, the largest of the pack, leapt out. The larger throcken hit the wolf in the face with his whole body, scratching and biting. The wolf dropped the caught bumbler and shook its great, shaggy head. Spittle and blood flew. Still the bumbler clung fiercely to the wolf. One of its searching claws found the wolf’s eye and clawed, the sharp fingers raked through the soft orb, spilling thick, yellowish fluid.

The little bumbler at the edge of the clearing hopped forward towards his wounded ka-mate. The female bumbler looked up and gave a long, quiet whine of pain. The bumbler that would come to be known as Arthur could see the ring of ragged holes where teeth had sunk in. He could see the white of bone through some of these and he could smell the death-stench.

A snarl of pain caught the little bumbler. He turned, putting himself between his wounded ka-mate and the ravening wolf and saw it shaking its head fiercely. The largest bumbler was no longer biting and scratching, but only trying to hang on. Its back legs had lost purchase and his hindquarters flopped wildly about as the wolf snarled and howled. The wolf twisted its head and managed to catch one of the bumbler’s rear legs in its jaws. The snap was smaller and more brittle than the rapid crunching of broken bones that had crippled the other bumbler. The wolf threw its head and the heavy throcken lost its grip and was thrown off.

The smallest bumbler stood its ground, his whole body shaking, his twisted tail vibrating like a spring. The wolf turned towards him, regarding him with one yellowed eye and one bloody socket. He made small, choking noises. The bark of defiance was caught in his throat and would not come out. The wolf padded closer slowly, moving in to kill. To rend and tear and leave the meat to rot in the sun.

The large bumbler stood, slowly. Its rear left leg was mostly gone, torn free except for one tough tendon dragging the severed paw. The gold rings of its eyes blazed fiercely. It crouched on three legs and sprung, but it succeeded only in tearing out a tuft of mangy fur. The wolf turned and uttered a rough bark of irritation, but turned back towards the young bumbler. It was healthy and not yet hurt at all.

Fear washed over the little bumbler like the wolf’s fetid breath. His muscles trembled but would not otherwise move. He saw himself reflected in the bloodshot orb of the wolf’s good eye and saw his death there. Then he heard a loud, clear bark. He blinked his large gold eyes and saw the large bumbler behind the wolf. The big throcken lifted his snout and barked again. The little bumbler knew he was being told to run. He didn’t want to though, his friends were dead or wounded and a part of him welcomed death rather than a life alone. The big bumbler uttered a last bark, ringing with finality.

The little bumbler turned and ran. The wolf would have caught him regardless, but the dinh of the bumblers leapt forward and sank his teeth to the gums on the beast’s hamstring. The wolf howled as tainted blood welled up around the wound. It turned and bit savagely into the bumbler, but even as bones cracked and organs burst it would not let go.

The youngest bumbler ran and ran, leaving its dead ka-mates behind.

The months after the loss of his ka-tet were terrible for the young bumbler. Without a ka-tet, without a home we wandered to the east through the old forest. He made people-noises to himself, but there was no one to share his laughter. A part of him wanted to lay down and die, but there was a small voice inside that urged him to wait. Some instinct that said not yet.

On the first day that the little throcken smelled the salt of the ocean in the air, he also heard the distant sounds of hooves. He knew the sound of horses, and he knew that they were an animal that, like billy bumblers, liked people. Lonely, he followed the sounds and watched a large group of people riding and walking. He thought it was very odd and unnatural they way the horses let the men sit on their backs, but then, they were very big.

The group was moving east towards the ocean and the bumbler thought he might go to them. But there were no laugh-barks and he could not smell much food. Still… he was alone in the forest and he wanted to hear voices, even if they weren’t his kind.

The people left no food, although the bumbler smelled a little of it cooking. He would sneak close enough to the tall stone burrow and listen to the people talking quietly. He didn’t think they were very happy either.

The night that he met the man with the fuzzy face the bumbler knew what he had been waiting for. The man was in the woods, but the little creature didn’t understand what he was doing to the trees.

The man saw him and the bumbler began to back up. It had been a long time since he had been this close to a person and never by himself. He wanted to make a people-noise, because people liked that and then came food. But the man put food on the ground anyways, and then he left.

The food was strange but delicious and even after it was gone, the bumbler took the strange but good-smelling not-quite-leaf it was on back to the little hole he had scratched into a burrow. He watched the people and he watched the furry man most of all. Of all the people on the hill, they smiled the most. He remembered that when the mouths on their funny flat faces went up, that they were happy. He pulled the corners of his own mouth up and back, showing his teeth.

When the bumbler was thinking about going closer to the people and making some friendly noises, the army came. They were like ants. One, two, three…the bumbler lost count. There were many more than three people. Maybe three threes of people. He thought that this might be closer to the number, but it was hard. He knew that there were a lot of them, and they hard strange, hard blue faces.

The next hours were a nightmare of sound and fury. The bumbler scrambled into its hole, digging deeper as strange thunder shook the ground. Running footsteps shook the hill and the tiny burrow nearly collapsed onto of the throcken. Voices shouted and the smells of blood and sweat and piss and smoke were strong. He buried his burning nostrils in the dirt and squeezed his eyes shut. In his mind the explosions and the screams of the dying mixed with the growling of wolves and the death-cries of his ka-tet.

The bumbler stayed hidden in his collapsed burrow until hunger drove him out. The battle was long over, but it had left its mark on the hill by the sea. Black smoke and the stench of burning flesh rose from a mound near the big stone burrow. Great divots had been gouged out of the earth here and there. Sticks were sticking out of the ground like a carpet of needles. Blood was everywhere.

Most of the bodies had been moved, but some few still lay where they had fallen. The little bumbler began to hop to each of these, watching them carefully for signs of life. But even though some of the faces were fuzzy, all of them were blue. The man who had given him food was not here.

This gave the small throcken some heart and he scampered down the hill. He would find the person with the fuzzy face and maybe he would set down some more food. Then the hunger would end, but more importantly, the loneliness would end.

He stopped at the bottom of the hill and sniffed the air. Which way to go? The bumbler began to move south, but then the breeze shifted, saving his life and leading to his new ka-tet. The salt-scent from the waves below the cliff slacked off and new scents came to him on from the forest. The wind from the south was foul with blood and sweat, and a hint of the blue mud from the faces of the dead people. The bumbler wrinkled his nose and moved off to the east.