Chaos Calling: Book 1 of The Xenthian Cycle, page 9
Roaring, the skyworm rushes around her, so fast it’s nothing but an orange blur as light flares around its hurtling body. Concrete cracks around and beneath her feet. In her distraction, the leash slithers from the skyworm’s neck like an unclasped necklace, freeing it to soar over her.
She gathers xhen as the creature banks sharply around the CN Tower’s base. Hot orange light pulses from its scales. Like a sickly meteor, it rejoins its companion. They twist around another condo tower before hurtling back in her direction to start a fresh assault.
Target their mouths. Shell and cup.
Anna obeys, tearing across the grass and past the museum’s outdoor collection of steam engines as though she’s given up and wants to die. With every stride, she balls xhen in the small of her back. The dead girl’s face flashes through her mind as the skyworms take the bait and fly lower, prepared to meet her head on. No distractions. Focus.
To her right, an antique train car explodes. Absorbed in crafting her weapon, Anna is slow to form a protective barrier. A piece of shrapnel strikes the back of her leg. She stumbles but ignores the sudden agony because they’re closing, closing, and panic won’t help her win. Instead, Anna waits until she can taste the sulphuric stink of their breath. Then she reaches behind her back and slams her glimmering ball of xhen down the leftmost skyworm’s throat.
Its orange body liquefies like an exploding star, ripped apart by her xhen from the inside out. Chunks of its disintegrating carcass careen into the second creature. It also crashes to the sun-bleached grass in front of the brew pub beside the train museum, plowing a deep furrow in the earth as scales, muscle, and who knows what else envelop Anna in a stinking cloud. From somewhere very far away, she hears faint cheers. Exhilarated, she wipes guck from her face and darts forward for a better look at her remaining adversary.
On the ground, the skyworm is easily three times her height. Recalling the garage, she readies another leash, carefully visualizing her xhen snapping into place like one of those cloth-covered metal slap bracelets she and Jason played with as kids. She hurls the leash at the skyworm’s neck. Something hums inside her as it locks into place. The pain in her back is still there, along with her other injuries, but it’s countered by her intense pleasure at the skyworm’s subjugation. The monster roars, twisting to squirm away. Anna can’t help it: she laughs.
The skyworm screams defiance, making her ponytail bob in the current of its fetid breath. Its writhing body flares a brighter orange, the lone mouth tentacle turning white. Cracks appear in the earth beneath her feet as Anna tightens the leash, keeping it taut so the skyworm can’t strike her with its thrashing tentacles, three on each side of its head. Another train engine explodes, too far away to damage her or it. It’s too distracted to aim, she thinks as its ghastly eyes lock upon her face, blazing with inhuman fury. She quivers, fear spiking beneath her bravado. Get this over with.
She pulls the leash tighter to slam the monster’s head against the broken earth. Yet the skyworm doesn’t move. Anna tries again. And again. I’m not strong enough!
Oh fuck.
The nearest purple tentacle snaps toward her legs. Anna barely jumps over it. She tries to lengthen the leash, but the skyworm strikes forward. Another dark tentacle gropes for her. She dodges, not laughing now. Sweat drips down the back of her hoodie. She’s concentrating so hard that she doesn’t see the pale mouth tentacle come over the top of her shoulder until it gives her a foul kiss on her cheek.
Visions flood Anna’s mind. She cries out as her brain tries to process the triplicate view from the skyworm’s three eyes and its tidal wave of hunger—deep enough to drown her world. Closely coupled to that hunger is desire, a fierce desire to consume her. And in that moment, battered by its monstrous delight, the skyworm whispers a word through her mind that she thought was secret, a word she thought no one knew, not even Jason or Dave.
XENTHIAN.
Sickened to the roots of her soul, Anna stumbles back and rips herself free. As she reels, another purple tentacle lashes onto her leg, instantly subsuming her again in the skyworm’s all-consuming hunger. Another tentacle finds her right arm. Anna’s xhen falters. Her kidneys are on fire. She gasps for air, but that burns her chest.
Concentrate! A tingling wave of pins and needles spreads from the latched tentacle up and down her leg. The muscles in her thigh, calf, and knee begin to shake. Everything’s going numb. Her hold on xhen vanishes.
As she scrambles to reclaim it, the skyworm’s wicked face looms above her. A triple image flashes through her head. It’s a human face, confusing when seen from three directions but familiar. It’s me, she thinks at first, but the face is too young, the black hair too long. The dead girl, Anna thinks numbly, as the hunger sensation intensifies. It killed her! And I’m next.
Something—a tentacle?—strikes the backs of Anna’s knees. The girl’s image vanishes. Helpless, she drops to the grass, landing on something hard and ridged. She tries to twist, to grab it, but she can’t move. Panic constricts her throat because the skyworm’s jaws are widening, the pale tentacle inside descending for her face. Its roar is loud enough to break the world.
“Stay down!” a voice bellows.
Completely pinned, Anna almost laughs. “I am—” She gasps just before a close-range gunshot sounds. Someone wearing a black Kevlar vest and a blue short-sleeved shirt storms into her field of view, unloading a handgun into the skyworm’s face at point-blank range. The skyworm strikes out with a tentacle. The officer ducks. As she does, her hat falls to the concrete, revealing her graying hair. B. Edwards, Anna thinks with dazed amazement.
But the skyworm doesn’t flinch beneath the bullets striking its monstrous face. Only its roars change, ratcheting to a more piercing frequency. Orange light flares through its body as it shifts its tentacles to attack the officer. Anna feels the two pinning her to the ground loosen. She twists free. In a rush, feeling returns to her limbs, but not xhen. Anna grabs the long hunk of iron that was underneath her, perhaps from the destroyed train. One end is sharp and curved, like a pickaxe. Distract it!
Gripping the metal, Anna crawls forward on her hands and knees, but the writhing tentacles are blocking her way. Unable to get farther, she shifts tactics and whacks at them like vines in a jungle. The skyworm ignores her, its white tentacle pressed to Edwards’s cheek, who is on her knees and moaning in a high, long howl. The creature’s scales glow with scalding light, so bright that it sears Anna’s eyes. It’s going to kill her! She strikes blindly, so desperate to help that it takes her precious seconds to realize her metal weapon is useless.
“Stop! STOP IT!” she shouts, both at the skyworm and herself. Anna’s forehead prickles and her kidneys burn. Dropping the metal to grasp her returning xhen, she lunges forward. She shapes the energy into a long length as thick as her discarded iron bar. Gripping its base, she lunges for the skyworm’s slit-pupiled third eye. It pops like a rotten grape. The creature recoils, snarling.
Jubilation surges through Anna’s entire body. She shifts to a two-handed grip so she can swing and smashes the skyworm’s face. It reels. Anna sharpens her weapon into an axe-like shape, forming jagged edges to better cleave scale and tentacle. She aims for its gaping maw of teeth. The skyworm’s midsection and tail twist and thrash as it tries to find an angle to strike her. Frantic to maintain her advantage, Anna moves faster. After her paralysis, hitting her enemy fills her with manic, satisfying glee. “Die! Die! DIE!” she spits as pale fluid oozes from the skyworm’s scales. Each blow spatters her skin with clear, stinging ichor.
By the time she’s reduced the head to an oozing, mangled pulp, her hands are numb, and she reeks of sulphur. Anna staggers back from her kill. Exhaustion falls over her in a wave. Xhen flickers weakly around her palms, losing form. Her head aches badly and her side burns, but she doesn’t release the energy.
Instead, Anna drops to her knees, using xhen to push and cut through the inert, severed tentacles still wrapped around B. Edwards. There’s so much blood. It takes several minutes for her to clear enough of the skyworm’s carcass to find the woman’s grey face and the police vest punctured by no fewer than four tentacles. She’s dead, just like the girl.
But the officer’s stony eyes flicker open. They find her, filled with an eerie gleam that Anna last saw in her mother’s eyes in the minutes before Chun-Mei died. “Anna,” Edwards breathes. Like they’re old friends meeting over coffee.
She rocks back on her heels. “I didn’t tell you my name.”
Those unearthly eyes stare past Anna’s shoulder. “He did.”
Hardly daring to hope, she turns.
To her regular sight, the pavement is empty. Yet her mind’s eye, filled with xhen, sees his familiar presence. Every hair on Anna’s body jumps to attention. You’re deluded! she remembers Jason shouting years ago. Everything you think you know about him is a lie! He’s not real!
Anna stares at the tall dark-haired man, dressed in the same elegant, unadorned black clothing she remembers. Kalos. To her shock, the face she recalls as being immeasurably old is perhaps a mere decade older than her own, though the aura of age seeping from her teacher remains ancient. Her hands ball themselves into fists as tears prick her eyes. Where have you been? she wants to scream. Why the hell did you leave us?
Edwards coughs. Reluctantly, Anna tears her gaze from Kalos and back to the dying woman. “Why?” she demands as the first of her tears fall.
“Listen to me, Anna Lin.” Sirens wail in the night. In the distance, people are starting to gather. Anna makes another xhen barrier to shield Edwards and herself from their intrusive eyes. “I chose this death when I saw your light in the sky.” The officer’s voice is quiet and her face peaceful. “He told me what you are, what was needed. You’ve given me a purpose.” She chuckles, the sound startlingly girlish. “I’ve been looking for that a long time.”
Anna takes her reaching hand, slick with blood.
“My life for yours. I don’t regret it.”
Xhen flares around their interlocked fingers, quick as a match flame. Pain, not hers, washes over Anna in a flood. She gasps. Edwards sighs, her relief palpable. Her breath is growing shallow, her words hard to hear. “You’ll need more help, all three of you, to survive what’s coming. He says you mustn’t refuse. To let us shield you.”
“To die for me,” Anna says. The years she spent raging at Kalos and longing for xhen to return take on a sudden, dark heaviness. “For us. That’s what you mean.”
Edwards squeezes her hand. “I would stay . . . help you. Give George my love. But that was . . .” Her eyes shift to the dead skyworm. “Glorious.” The hand in Anna’s goes slack. She stares into the officer’s sightless eyes, unaware of the tears slipping down her cheeks.
Go home, child. Rest.
Her anger stirs at the sound of Kalos’s unmistakable voice, as beautiful as she remembers. “But what are they?” she demands. “Why have they come? What do they want?”
Death and power. Your Kalxhan comes to shelter you.
“My what?” Anna tries to shake off her mounting confusion. Focus. “But that girl I found. Was she—”
Kalos is gone.
Still on her knees, Anna stares at Edwards, utterly spent. It’s not supposed to be this way, she thinks. No one else is supposed to know what we can do, let alone die for it.
“Anna!”
She blinks. The voice sounds like Malcolm, but it can’t be. Am I hallucinating? Jason says auditory hallucinations are more common than visual ones. She’s pretty sure he discussed it at dinner with their father when he was home once with Margo, but she can’t remember what they decided. Without the pulse of combat, she’s uncomfortably aware of her injuries. Her side hurts. Her palms ache. Her bleeding leg is fire. A tear rolls down her face. I need to go home.
“Anna!” It is Malcolm, storming through her barrier like it doesn’t exist, wearing a police vest thrown over his rumpled undershirt and sweatpants. Relief slams through her exhausted body as he takes her into his arms. “Oh, thank God.” He says more in Ukrainian that she doesn’t understand, clutching the back of her head with one strong hand.
This is real, she thinks. It’s all real. Releasing xhen, Anna sags against him, sobbing in earnest. For herself and B. Edwards, whose first name she doesn’t know.
Without another word, Malcolm stands. He’s only three inches taller than she is, but he lifts her as easily as he would one of their children. Too exhausted to wonder at that, Anna turns her face into his chest, thankful beyond words for his presence. She hides her eyes from the first responders and spectators starting to crowd in, waiting for someone to ask questions she can’t answer without sounding insane, or accuse her of murdering Edwards and the girl, or summoning the skyworms, or a thousand other idiocies.
But no one stops them. No one says a word. When Anna lifts her head, all she sees are stunned faces giving them a wide berth.
Malcolm carries her to a car she doesn’t recognize and helps her stretch across a plaid blanket that covers the leather back seat. She’s asleep before her head hits the cushion.
Part II: Questions
10. Malcolm — Epicentre
Toronto, ON: Tuesday, August 19
Malcolm Nazarenko pulls his next-door neighbour’s borrowed Cadillac into her Junction driveway and turns off the ignition. Anna’s alive. We’re home. Now what?
When he’d awoken earlier that night, he had been bewildered to find himself on the playroom couch, clammy as a fever patient. Motionless, Malcolm had listened to the house as he forced down the fear clawing at his throat. Nightmare? Mine? One of the kids? But no telltale cry came from upstairs. His own mind was astonishingly blank.
Anna, came his next thought. Reflexively, he’d sat up, feeling in the darkness. When he touched nothing but cool cushions, Malcolm bolted upright, alert in every fiber. Where is she?
Gone, whispered the knot in his gut. Shivering, Malcolm rushed upstairs. By the time he’d determined that Anna wasn’t in the house, his teeth were chattering hard enough to rattle his jaw. His head was pounding in time to his pulse. Something’s wrong, his bones muttered. Find her.
This is nuts, he thought, fumbling for the ibuprofen in the cupboard over the stove. It’s just a cold. Erin probably picked it up at daycare. He shook two pills into his palm and grabbed a water glass. I need rest. He popped the pills into his mouth, swallowing them dry. But Anna should be home by now. His eye fell on his phone, lying on the kitchen counter. He had a text from her, sent at 11:09 p.m.:
Dinner ran late. On my way.
No other messages. Malcolm stood in the kitchen, mulling over his wife’s unusual digital silence. She’s worn down with her parents’ house, but this is odd. When did it shift? She started acting weird last night after chasing off those raccoons—
“The garage!” He dashed for the back door. Outside, he’d tasted the tang of sulphur on his tongue a second before smelling rotten eggs. Gas leak? he wondered. The closest line is halfway down the block. His unease had quadrupled as he burst into the garage and pulled the light bulb string dangling from the ceiling, his eyes sweeping the space like searchlights.
No Anna.
Around him, the garage had been eerily still. The smell of sulphur, which he had dismissed earlier in the day, was so overwhelming it made him gag. Every hair on his body screamed with its wrongness as another gut-churning shiver swept over his damp limbs. Where the hell is she?
A half second later, he spotted the SUV’s flat tire. When did that happen? From there, his eyes hopped to a pair of out-of-place plyers, an assortment of rearranged toys, and a plastic bin awkwardly pushed into place. Dragging it out and popping the lid was the work of seconds.
“Christ!” Malcolm had staggered back from the stinking, fearsome thing inside. Anna hid it, he thought, half wild with fear. She must have. But what is it? Did it hurt her? Are there more?
The last question brought a scorching awareness to his mind, accompanied by a massive, thrumming pull. It lurched through Malcolm’s belly from his solar plexus all the way to his kidneys, physically spinning him to face southeast. She’s that way, he thought with sobering certainty, his body quivering like a magnet drawn by a massive lodestone. Go. Now!
The next thing Malcolm knew, he was standing on Nancy Coleman’s doorstep, trembling as he begged their neighbour to stay with his sleeping children while he borrowed her car. Mercifully, she hadn’t asked questions, although her sharp eyes promised a thorough follow-up. He hadn’t cared. In his rush to open the Cadillac’s door, Malcolm had dropped her keys three times. He drove down Keele Street with manic speed, wishing he’d grabbed his emergency siren along with the police vest he’d somehow managed to throw over his clothes.
