Copyright Information
Copyright © 2000, 2011 by B.A. Chepaitis
Published by Wildside Press LLC.
www.wildsidebooks.com
Dedication
To the survivors: Sisters, brothers, friends, self.
Quotation
I release you, my beautiful and terrible fear. I release you. You were my beloved and hated twin, but now I don’t know you as myself. I release you with all the pain I would know at the death of my daughters.
You are not my blood anymore.
—I Give you Back, Joy Harjo, She Had Some Horses
Prologue
Home Planet—Manhattan, USA
It was a muggy day in the city, and all around the smell of urine, the smell of hot tar was in the air.
He paused in the street to stare up at a skyscraper, his eyes straining through the glare that bounced off the windows. This wasn’t the building he wanted, but it was near here. He sensed it in his skin, the remnants of a memory still palpable to him.
The little girl at his side tugged at his sleeve. He looked down as if he’d forgotten her.
“I’m hungry,” she said.
“Soon,” he said. “We’ll eat soon.”
She scratched at her arm. She wouldn’t whine. She never whined. She had other ways of showing her displeasure. He reached for her hand and she let him take it, but she dragged her feet as they walked. He made a sound of complaint, but he didn’t slap her the way he usually would. That put her on alert, made her wonder what was wrong.
They crossed 73rd street, went down three blocks and turned right. When they reached the building he wanted he stood in front of it looking up, holding the little girl’s hand. The people who passed by made no note of them. They were just two of the millions who lived or worked or walked in New Manhattan, just a small, rather mousy girl and a medium built, almost deliberately nondescript man in his early fifties. He ignored them too. He had other business to attend to. Someone he wanted to find. Someone who once lived here.
After all these years he could still catch the scent of her, so specific and so telling. The scent of an empath. A girl child with something wild in her soul.
He breathed it in deeply, and as he breathed, he remembered.
He’d seen her during the marvelous wreck of the Killing Times in Manhattan, when murder was the only means left to create human connection, the last ritual act in a world gone spiritually dead. In a final desperate attempt to feel alive the people killed and killed and killed again. It was a beautiful thing to behold, an ecstasy of blood and triumph, and there was nothing like it before or since.
While it went on he fed off it insatiably, growing ever more powerful. By the time he caught the scent of the empath girl he was as strong as he would ever be. Though their meeting was brief, his memory of it was precise and delicious to this day.
Many years had passed since then. She would be a grown woman now. He wondered if she remembered him at all. If not, he would remind her when they met again.
At his side, the little girl shifted from foot to foot impatiently.
He gave her arm a quick jerk. “Quiet, child,” he said. “You need to know her, too. That’s why I brought you here.”
She wiggled, pulling her hand from his, but he grasped her wrist and held her.
“Look,” he said, pointing up. “She lived there. Can you smell it?”
The girl turned her face up. “No,” she said.
“Then be quiet and let me enjoy myself.” He closed his eyes and breathed in.
She had been young and full of energy, her empathic gifts developed well beyond her years. She would be an implacable enemy, an invaluable ally, but that wasn’t the only reason he sought her. In all the time since then, she was the one scent he couldn’t define and had never found again.
“I don’t smell anything except dog crap,” the little girl said.
He ignored her, though he knew she was right. Here, where they stood, was nothing but his memory and crap. She’d been carried away in fire and the storm of time. He wouldn’t find her here, and the girl at his side would learn nothing more from viewing the past. They should move on.
“Come, child.” He turned away from the building and walked down the street.
“Are we gonna get some food?” she asked. “There’s hot dogs.” She pointed at a vendor.
His face expressed distaste. “That’s not how we feed.”
She was the most capable of all his children, and the most stubborn. She wouldn’t hunt. She refused to sex or be sexed. If he tried she clawed and bit and screeched abysmally. Threats of death were useless because she was entirely ready to die. But recently he’d found something more potent than death to sway her. He’d given her hope, in lethal doses, and that would ultimately make her do as he wished.
“If you want to see her, you’ll learn to feed as I say,” he told her.
“I want a hot dog,” she insisted.
“What do you want more—a hot dog, or a mother?” he asked.
She was sullen, silent. That, she understood.
“If it’s a mother, pay attention,” he said. “I’ll show you how it’s done.”
The city, so full of energy, was the best place to feed and to sex. For today, however, he’d just feed. Though sexing was infinitely more enjoyable and the best source of food, immediately after it left him languid, indolent with pleasure, and he wanted to stay alert.
As he walked with the girl he sniffed for food, and soon enough he bumped into a well-heeled, well-suited woman passing by. He grasped her arm and smiled at her. “Sorry,” he said.
Her face went white and her breathing briefly ceased. He released her and she stood swaying, then righted herself.
“Quite alright,” she replied, and walked on.
He sighed. A small feed, but it worked.
The little girl wrinkled her nose at him. “I want a hot dog,” she insisted. “With ketchup.”
He put a hand to her head as if to pat it, then quickly grabbed her hair and jerked her back. When he released her she fell forward onto her knees. He bent down to her. An older woman with white hair and a kind smile stopped near them.
“Do you need help?” she asked.
He lifted his face and smiled. “She tripped,” he said.
The woman instinctively reached out to the child. He put the girl’s hand on the woman’s arm, with
