The Children of the Sun (62 page)

She thought these words again, now. Thought them
loudly
, which was not an act she would have been able to describe had someone asked. It was just something she had come to be able to do instinctively, after much practice. She saw his smile widen and knew that he had heard her.

“I am very, very glad for that fact,” he said.

“You know what? Me too.”

They walked, holding hands and people watching. Theroen asked her, “Are you prepared for this next council meeting?”

They had set a date, less than a week away, for the first meeting since their victory in Waukegan. Two shook her head. “Not really. Between going over everything that happened again and working on the funeral plans for everyone, I’m probably going to spend half of it crying.”

Theroen nodded. “I am not looking forward to it either, but I must admit some desire to be done with it all.”

Two raised her eyebrows. “You’ll be ‘done with it,’ huh?”

“Not with the council,” Theroen said, and he gave a sort of disgusted laugh. “I think at this point I am, as they say, in too deep. I never would have thought that I would become so enmeshed in the politics of our people, nor so concerned over the preservation of anything founded by Abraham.”

“But here we are,” Two said.

“Indeed. And if I told you tomorrow that I wished to leave it all behind and go somewhere … anywhere … else?”

Two smiled. “Then I’d go with you because I love you, but you’re not going anywhere, you jerk. I saw you browsing Craigslist this morning.”

“That was mere curiosity,” Theroen said, a touch of defensiveness in his voice, and Two laughed at him.

“Yeah? ‘Historic Brownstone in Brooklyn’s Best Neighborhood. Move-in Ready!’ … that ring any bells?”

“I might have bookmarked a few interesting postings,” Theroen conceded, trying to seem disinterested. After a moment, he smiled broadly and turned to her. “At any rate, a suite at the W is more than sufficient for now, is it not? Or are you in a rush?”

“I’m not looking to go anywhere, baby,” Two said. “We’ll find something when we’re ready. Remember what you told me? All the time in the world.”

“Did I say that once upon a time? I believe that I did. Where do you suppose that time will take us from here?”

Two shrugged. “No idea. Wait, no, scratch that … I know exactly one place it’s taking us.”

“Oh?”

“Yep. It’s taking us to that bar, right over there, because I know they have a whole bunch of good bourbons, and it has been way,
way
too long since I drank good bourbon. I want to get drunk and find a dark corner and make out with a cute, tall boy with dark hair and light brown eyes. Know anyone like that?”

Theroen stopped walking, and when Two turned to give him a questioning look, he took her hand and brought it to his lips, kissing her fingers.

“I am glad to be here with you,” he said.

Two stood up on tip-toe, put her hand on his shoulder, and kissed him. “Good, because I’m glad to be here with you, too. Let’s stay like this for as long as we can, OK?”

“That sounds excellent,” Theroen said, and after a moment more, still holding her hand, he began to walk again. Two held her ground and he stopped, turning to look at her in confusion.

“It’s really done, right?” she asked, looking up at him and holding his gaze with hers. “It’s really over?”

Theroen looked back at her with his luminescent eyes, and instead of his normal, careful calm she saw on his face a sort of transcendent joy. In it she read the answer to her question even before he spoke. Yes, it was done. They had come through the fire and lived to tell the tale.

“It is over and we are here,” he said. “There is nothing more in front of us except you, and me, and the future. We are now where I hoped we would be when I first found you and brought you to me. We have survived Abraham, and Aros, and the Emperor of the Sun. We have come out the other side and can, at last, together, truly make a life of our own.”

Two pressed herself against him, holding him tight, and after some time like that she raised up on tiptoes again and pressed her lips to his. Theroen put his hands in her hair, kissing, touching, holding her to him. She thought of the little hill where they had first made love, where he had bitten her and brought her into this strange, terrible, beautiful world.

Are you ready to leave
? he had asked her, all those years ago, on the street in East New York. Sitting there in his Ferrari, she had heard in his voice a finality that had told her, for better or for worse, that her life was about to change forever.

Two thought of all the pain, all the despair, all the anger and hate that she had known since that time. She thought as well of the love and warmth and happiness that had come to her since the day Theroen had taken her away from the world she had known. Where would time have taken her, had she never met him? Away from Darren? Or only to a slow and agonizing death by addiction?

It didn’t matter; she would never trade it. She would never go back, even were the chance offered her to undo all of that pain. There was too much joy. Too much love. This place – this here and now – was where she belonged, and though she didn’t and couldn’t know what the future would bring, she was excited to find out what lay ahead.

She finished kissing her lover and put her head against his chest for a moment more. Theroen didn’t rush her. At last, when she felt she was ready, she looked up at him and smiled.

“Let’s see where time takes us.”

Hand in hand, together, they stepped forth into the crowd.

“Do you see it?”

“Yeah, man, I see it. What do you think it is?”

“… Think it’s a girl!”

“No fuckin’ way.”

“Seriously. Come on.”

They scrambled down the embankment, one after the other, coming to a stop in the rocky scree just before the ground became boggy. They couldn’t see the whatever-it-was anymore; the cattails were in the way now.

“Dude, I don’t think I wanna,” the blonde one said. He was eleven years old, thin and bare-chested, his tanned torso covered with scrapes and scratches from exploring the woods and marshes along the lakeside.

“Joey, we gotta see if it’s really a girl or not.”

“I said I don’t wanna.”

“Why not? Man … how many kids actually get to say they found a dead body? Come on!”

The other boy’s name was Angel, but he made everyone call him ‘Ainge’ because Angel was a pussy name. He was short and stocky, Dominican, with crew-cut black hair and a faded Paul Konerko T-shirt that he wore at least four times a week. He was eleven, too, and carrying a half-wrapped, foot-long submarine sandwich in his left hand.

“Fine,” Joey said. “But if it’s a … a person, we’re calling the cops.”

“Right, yeah, sure. We’ll phone it in! That’s what they say on CSI.”

“Just fuckin’ go, Ainge.”

They moved forward into the cattails, stepping lightly on the marshy ground, trying to avoid the pools of water and the thick, black muck that would suck the shoes off their feet. The tall plants rattled and shook with their progress. Ainge munched on his sandwich, holding his right arm out to part the reeds.

“Hold on,” Joey said, lifting a hand. “I think I see it.”

“Her,” Ainge said around a mouthful of bread and cheese and capicola.

“Shut up. Look, there’s a sandbar. If we go around …”

“Yeah, sweet!” Ainge stepped out onto the sand. His silver-black high tops sunk in a little, but it held his weight. Joey followed him, and in a moment more they passed through the last of the cattails and got their first good look at the whatever-it-was.

“Holy shit, it
is
a girl,” Joey said in a breathless voice, and even Ainge seemed stricken speechless by what lay before them.

She was pink and naked, lying on her side half-submerged in the mud, her face pressed into a thatch of cattail roots. She didn’t have any hair, and her skin was cracked and leathery, but she didn’t look gross or rotted like Joey had feared. One of her breasts was exposed, the brown nipple resting just atop the black muck of the bog, and he couldn’t help but glance down between her legs. They were crossed, and there was nothing to see. He looked over at Ainge.

“What do we do now?”

Ainge, apparently over his momentary shock, took a gigantic bite from his sandwich. “Poke her with something.”

“Are you nuts?!”

“Well what else are you gonna do? Push her over, anyway. I wanna see her face.”

“Dude, I am not touching that.”

“You are such a pussy,” Ainge said. “Hold this.”

He thrust his sandwich toward Joey, who took it, giving it a brief, disgusted glance. Ainge had asked for extra-extra mayo and it was oozing out the sides, practically dripping down on the sand below.

“Don’t know how you eat this shit,” Joey told him, and Ainge laughed, giving him the finger.

“There’s no sticks here. It’s just cattails. Wait, hang on …” Ainge plunged his hand into the water and pulled forth a long, waterlogged branch. He shook the muck off of it and stepped up next to Joey.

“After this we’re getting out of here,” Joey said, and Ainge nodded.

“Sure, right. Look … see her titty?”

“Yeah, I fuckin’ see her titty. Just do it, man!”

Moving at a glacial pace, Ainge reached out with the stick. Eventually it pressed into the girl’s bicep, and he lingered a moment before withdrawing it.

“Hmm,” he said. It was a noise of deep contemplation.

“What was that?” Joey asked. “I thought you were gonna push her over.”

“How am I supposed to push her over with a stick? It’ll break.”

“Well, what was the point of poking her then?”

“I dunno, to see if she was, like … gross. Gimme my sandwich.”

“You are such a huge idiot.”

“At least I’m no pussy,” Ainge said, and he gave Joey a huge, shit-eating grin before taking another bite.

“If you call me a pussy again, I’m gonna—” Joey began, and then the girl in the water shoved upward with both arms, pulling a ragged gasp of air into her lungs and making a terrible, clotted retching noise. A thick stream of black, silty liquid poured forth from her mouth, and even as she vomited forth this noxious substance she turned to glare at them with bloodshot eyes. There was nothing whatsoever to be found in her gaze but raw animal rage.

“Mama!” Ainge shouted, and he dropped his sub on the sandbar, turned tail, and ran crashing through the cattails. Joey lasted a moment longer, but only because his entire body was held in rigor, as if a great electric jolt was running through him. The sole thing that seemed able to function was his bladder, which voided a good deal of its contents into his pants. Then he, too, was off and running.

The girl in the water finished expelling the filth that had filled her lungs and stomach and sat coughing, looking around, blinking in the daylight. She grimaced in pain as she flexed her joints, listening to her burnt skin crackle as it snapped and split with the movements. Her stomach, now empty, gave an audible grumbling, and she snaked an arm forward to pick up the forgotten remains of the fat boy’s sandwich. It was gone in three bites, leaving her mouth gritty with sand. She drank from the stagnant, murky water, unconcerned by the possibility of disease.

She was alive, and this was, for the moment, a fact of enormous wonder. It took her some time simply to remember who she was and how she had come to be here. At last, her mind began to piece the scattered shards of her memory back together. She thought of where she had come from, and what she had done, and what she had passed through to reach this point.

She thought of those who must now believe they had escaped her wrath. There were people still left who had been there, in that very house, on the night that those closest to her were held down and murdered for their blood. The Emperor and the Left Hand were dead and gone, yes, but the other two who had been there that night – Colonel Palowski and Major Davidson – had not yet met their fate. She would find them, no matter how long it took, and she allowed herself a moment to contemplate what she would do to them once she had.

Sitting there in the muck, naked and dirty, her extraordinary body burnt and broken but already healing, the girl in the water began to laugh.

The End

Keep Reading for a Sneak Preview of Ch
ristopher Buecheler’s next book:

The Broken God Machine

Author’
s Note

What an amazing journey this has been.

In 2009, I released an eBook that had its genesis in sketches and story ideas dating all the way back to my early teens. I had no idea what to expect. Of course I hoped it would succeed, but I knew there was every reason to expect that it would not.

Somehow, it did. It succeeded beyond not only my levelheaded hopes, but beyond my most optimistic predictions. I won’t say it went beyond my wildest dreams, because I’ve got a pretty vivid imagination, but it pushed pretty far in that direction.