New world order, p.17
New World Order, page 17
part #6 of Crimson Shadow Series
As she realized this—thought it and felt it with a genuine swell of acknowledgement—Xander’s lips parted and, as if to assert the life that still echoed within him, drew in a ragged, painful-sounding breath.
It was enough to make the four hold their own.
It was enough to make Estella finally cry.
Fortunately, Serena was waiting behind her to catch her as her knees gave out.
****
“Well, he’s good and truly fucked,” Zeek said after a long, excruciating silence wherein he examined and catalogued the extent of Xander’s injuries, “but—yes, Estella—he is alive.”
“So he’s going to make it?” Sasha asked, beating Estella to the same question.
Estella glanced at the normally sultry but now just sulky therion, endeared by her concern and, noting this, looked around. While the corner was not big enough for everyone to occupy, everyone was, in their own way, listening in; everyone was just as concerned.
Endearing as this was, it also gave Estella a gut-wrenching moment of self-reflection. She’d been so focused on tracking down Xander—so on edge about everything that had happened—that she’d started to slip into a dark place where she didn’t recognize herself.
A dark place she’d had to help Xander out of so many times before.
That must be Hell… she thought absently.
Zeek made a noise that was both uncertain and uncomfortable. On its own it answered the question, but he still said, “I can’t say just yet. He’s been through… well, it’s no secret what he’s been through. Honestly, I’m not sure how he’s made it this far, and I’m even less sure what’s keeping him alive right now.”
Karen had been busying herself with cleaning Xander, mopping away blood with dampened towels they’d found in a supplies closet and casting them aside when they’d soaked up too much to be of any use. The pile was nearly tall enough to reach her waist. Hearing Zeek say this, however, she paused and looked up at him, narrowing her eyes.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked.
Zeek looked over at her, confused. “Mean by what?”
Karen tossed aside another blood-soaked towel. She’d been working her way up and had finally gotten to Xander’s head. She’d easily doubled the size of the pile since.
“You said ‘what’s keeping him alive.’ You could’ve said ‘how he’s staying alive’ or even ‘what he’s staying alive for,’ but you didn’t. You specifically worded it as though there’s some other force doing it for him; you said it like a doctor who’s referring to a machine or a drug that’s shouldering the process. Why?”
Zeek blushed at the question and looked back down at Xander for a long moment. It looked to Estella like he was either reanalyzing his process or meditating on some profound moment of spirituality.
As far as his aura was concerned, it was both.
“I guess I didn’t realize I’d said it that way,” he confessed, though he nodded his head as though agreeing nonetheless. “But, now that you mention it, I suppose it feels right to say that he’s not doing it himself. I guess, if I didn’t know any better, I’d have to say that he was being kept alive by… well, I don’t know; being kept alive by something.”
A long, confused silence passed.
“How bad is he?” Serena asked, though it felt like the question was more asked just so that she wouldn’t have to suffer the silence any longer.
Though Estella had come to find the blonde vampire’s urge to avoid silence somewhat off-putting at times, she was relieved for this particular effort.
Everyone else seemed to be, as well.
Still nodding, though now with a bit more vigor and purpose than before, Zeek turned back to Xander’s body. His shirt had been cut away, exposing a torso littered in a visceral sort of graffiti that made Estella feel a wave of sickness with each look. Though there was still some blood drying inside his left ear and the blackened well that had once been his left eye had been left untouched—demanding more care and precision than anything some hand towels could offer—the rest of him had been cleaned well enough to make out the bulk of the various messages and symbols that had been carved into him.
“I could go on for days about all of the torn muscle fibers and internal bleeding,” Zeek started. “He’s got a break in his left ankle and a decent crack in his right femur. Neither of which are bad enough to demand attention over the rest of him. Pardon me for saying so, but whoever did this obviously wasn’t interested in working much on his legs.”
Estella took in the sight of the name “STRYKER” carved lengthwise on his left side, rolling and dipping with each of his ribs. Surrounding the big, bloody letters, peppered in smaller, fairer ones, the word “die” had been carved several dozen times.
“They went to town on his ribs,” Zeek went on, indicating with his pointer finger without making contact with Xander’s midsection as he did. “Every single one’s broken, most in more than one place. Same with his collarbone: broken and cracked; two total breaks on the right and one on the left.”
The word “WEAK” was gouged in a long, shallow arch over Xander’s stomach. In sloppy, uneven letters, “how many deaths will yo” was carved, unfinished, into the meat of Xander’s left shoulder, starting a short distance from the side of his neck and curving around onto the top of his arm. Estella had to suppress the urge to trace her fingers across this, reminding herself that the horrible wounds wouldn’t heal from her touch alone.
“He’s got a pair of arms that will, best case scenario, never work right again. Right arm’s broken in more places I feel comfortable counting without an X-Ray machine or an auric; wrist’s dislocated, but that’s hardly a concern. Same sentiment for the dislocated left shoulder, but not so much for the compound fracture he suffered here,” Zeek held out his hand, palm up, towards where the skin was broken by a bone he’d since set back into place.
Estella forced herself to take in the multitude of crude eyes that had been carved all over his body. The almond-shaped symbols—sporting a hollow circle and, within this, another carved-out circle that served as a pupil—were scattered about in various sizes. The one at his throat was wide enough to arch around the sides of his neck and nearly merge with the ‘h’ in “how” that began the message that traveled to his shoulder. More eyes, some large and some quite small, were decorated around the wounds in his stomach; a trail of medium-sized ones seemed to travel up his right side. Another, carved vertically so that it would fit, took up his right bicep. Then, across each of his palms, was a pair of eyes that stared out from behind the thick bangs of his curled fingers. The words “ALWAYS” and “WATCHING” had been carved on the backs of his right and left hands accordingly.
“And,” Zeek sighed, taking in the sight of Xander’s hands, “as if those sick fucks weren’t thorough enough already…” He carefully drew attention to Xander’s left pointer finger while also nodding towards his right, “They broke both his trigger fingers, too.” Shaking his head at this, Zeek straightened and gave Estella an apologetic look. “Could you help me turn him around?”
Estella bit her lip and nodded, extending her aura and lifting him as she had before so that Zeek could show them Xander’s back. It was all she could do to not cry out at the question that waited in thick, bloody letters for them there: “WHERE IS TREPIS NOW?”
The spiral burn scar that Xander had grown up with since Kyle had held him against the stovetop as a child was now “highlighted” with a variety of jagged designs that stemmed from it. Estella thought these looked like something a child might do with chalk to an old runic symbol cast in concrete.
“The bruising here”—Zeek gestured to an area that was so purple it might as well have been black—“is a part of that internal bleeding I mentioned earlier; potential organ failure. Then there’s his spine, which… well, let’s just say his arms and trigger fingers will be the last of his concerns if he pulls out of this.” He flinched at his own words, gave Estella an apologetic look, and then nodded for her to set him back down.
She did so. There, on his chest—the largest of the violent messages scrawled across her husband’s flesh—the word “ODIN” stared back at her; each jagged line making up the letters the thickness of a finger.
“Meanwhile, to state the obvious: he’s missing an eye,” Zeek started to finish, “he’s got a broken jaw and a busted nose, he’s concuss, there’s substantial trauma to his lungs—one’s more than likely deflated from all the broken ribs—and, along with all the other love letters I’m sure you’ve been noticing carved all over him, somebody also decided to declare him a ‘traitor’ along the calf of his left leg.” He groaned and shook his head, then wiped his face. He looked suddenly exhausted from the summary alone, and Estella began to wonder what the workload would do to him. His hand paused on his face to scratch absently at his cheek, and then he finished with, “Then there’s the gash at the base of his belly,” Zeek indicated the still furious-looking wound that he’d worked to return Xander’s intestines back into. It still hung open like a stunned man’s mouth. “I’m pretty sure whoever did this was hoping it would be the killing blow: disembowel him and leave him out in the sun for all the world to see.”
Estella heard Sawyer growl “Bastards!” under his breath.
Dianna, who looked ready to cry, moved to hold him, but only got as far as his arm before a sob loosened itself from her throat; she muffled its followers into his shoulder.
Estella glanced back at Serena, who didn’t seem to notice her looking. She just stared, her purple eyes transfixed on Xander’s body, as her head swayed with slow, trembling passes from side-to-side. Estella wasn’t sure if she knew she was shaking her head or if she was just having trouble keeping everything upright.
All around her, Estella saw everyone in some state of shock. The auric density of their combined sorrow was heavy enough that even those with no sense of how to perceive them seemed weighed down by it. Nobody spoke above a mumble, and what was said was neither surprising nor assisting in nature. Nobody knew what to do; nobody knew what to say.
Until…
“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY! THIS AIN’T A FUCKING FUNERAL! MOVE! I SAID MOVE IT, ASSHOLES!”
Serena’s aura spiked and twisted before receding back into her body. “Son a whore! SETTLE THE FUCK DOWN, ZANE!”
“FUCK!” the small-yet-deafening voice of the Vaileans’ first child, Gregori, chimed from the open office door—Sana and Tim working to reel the small vampire back inside with them.
Serena rolled her eyes and looked apologetically to Estella. “I’m sorry, Goddess,” she said in a near-whisper—the closest Serena could get to a real whisper—“That kid’s getting to be more like Zane every day.”
“It’s fine,” Estella whispered back. She couldn’t help but smirk, but her mind’s eye told her she was the only one. “I’m sure this won’t surprise you, but that particular word is making a constant appearance on the minds of just about everyone in here.”
“I bet,” Serena nodded, though it was a solemn and joyless nod, and gave one last, quick look towards Xander before turning to meet her husband. “And I doubt there’s any pussy to go along with that otherwise beautiful, pussy-laden word.”
“STAY UP THERE, LITTLE BUDDY!” Zane called up to Gregori before turning back to the task at hand and shouldering his way through the crowd, working his way towards Estella and the others. “The fuck you looking so goddam sad about?” he demanded when he’d finally reached them. He spared a glance at each of the others with a rapidity that bordered overdrive before locking eyes with Estella and taking Serena’s hand into his own. “He’s alive. He’ll make it.”
It wasn’t a question.
Nothing about how he said it sounded uncertain.
A sang, bearing no ties to his aura save the natural connection he’d been born with, knew that Xander would be alright. The absurdity of it was a distant concern to Estella as she found herself smiling—beaming!—at this. She nodded. A heavy whimper on its way to being a sob slipped past her stretched lips. She kept nodding.
Behind them, she sensed Zoey and Isaac working their way more delicately through the crowd towards them.
“I understand that you weren’t here for my breakdown of his injuries,” Zeek began, “but—”
“He breathing?” asked Zane.
Zeek’s aura shifted, almost seeming to recoil from the question. “Yes, but only bare—”
“His heart beating?” asked Zane.
Another auric twitch, this time a sag like impatient shoulders. “Yes, but, again, just—”
Zane nodded, seeming bored. “And we’re still talking about Xander Stryker, right?”
This time Zeek visibly reacted, holding up his hands like he was about to lecture a child. It was the sort of gesture that Estella could imagine Zane using when trying to explain to Gregori why he was being unreasonable. “Yes. Yes, of course,” the anapriek said, the “but” echoing-yet-unspoken on every word, but never getting the chance to be uttered.
“Good. I was beginning to get nervous,” Zane spat. It felt more like an accusation—an attorney jabbing some obvious piece of evidence at a particularly dense opposition—and he let that linger a moment before offering a winning grin. Estella was sure it was that sort of grin that first got Serena under his arm. “Then work your anapriek magic—I hear your kind’s pretty good with healing and such—and dump a few buckets of that ass-flavored synth blood into him. As luck would have it, the co-creator of the stuff is here”—he pointed a thumb back to Zoey as she slipped into view, and Estella had to wonder if there wasn’t an auric trace to him—“and I’m certain you won’t even have to ask to get her to help.”
He moved to turn away, steering Serena with him and motioning for Estella to follow. She made no effort to resist; needing Zane’s confidence that Xander would be alright at that moment.
“And, while it ain’t gonna happen, I feel it’s worth mentioning that, if Xander does die, I’m gonna feed your elfy ass to my not-always-furry buddy here,” he added with a hearty pat to Isaac’s shoulder as they passed him.
Estella sensed an angry spike at the threat to Zeek from Karen, but nothing more.
Everyone watched as the Vaileans retreated with Missus Stryker to the office at the top of the stairs. Zoey stayed behind with Zeek, already planning on helping with the care and healing of Xander; Isaac stayed with Zoey, feeling there was no other place in the world for him.
Estella felt the tears begin to fall, but much of the sorrow had left her at that moment.
****
Behind them, though nobody would have seen it otherwise, Xander and Ruby made a connection. It was, while not with their hands as Estella had imagined it, felt by both sides, and if anybody had been looking at that moment they might have seen the two of them give the slightest of twitches as it happened.
Chapter Nine
All Paths Lead to Ruby
“Time flies over us,
But leaves its shadow behind.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
It shows him the ‘what if’s.
It shows him the ‘never was.’
It shows different channels; paths.
It shows everything… and nothing.
Xander does not like what he is seeing.
Xander does not know what he is seeing.
Xander does not believe what he is seeing.
Xander does not understand what he is seeing.
But, most of all, Xander does not know how to stop seeing what he is seeing.
They are not dreams—Xander has dreamed quite a bit and is beginning to know the difference without being sure how he knows the difference—but they were things he experiences in his prolonged, extended unconsciousness.
He watches as time winds back, dialing itself to before he was born. His father and a team he’d specially chosen for an important mission cross a foggy barrier as they ascend a particularly terrible mountain in Romania. They are not successful, but, then again, they never had been. However, time has not wound back for a rerun. No. And this run’s failure is in no way a repeat of the one their time had known. In this run, Xander sees the failure that his father suffered extend further; the failure that motivated his father and Stan to lock away their target within her castle is not enough. The sliver of success to come from that mission, in this new run, is an all-out failure. In this alternate path, Lenuta breaks free. Xander watches through eyes that are everywhere and nowhere—all-seeing as only a god could be, he imagines—and sees the murderous varcol’s horde stop them at the door, keeping them away from the freedom and opportunity that waited just beyond. Watching and unable to do anything more, Xander sees what remains of his father’s team as they are dispatched one-by-one; the mythos subduing Joseph and Stan—the auras of many holding their own at bay while the arms of many others keep their bodies pinned and immobile—baring their teeth and hate. Lenuta comes, all purrs and impurity, boasting a new heart and a vendetta ripe and ready for harvest. Xander watches, screaming from a mouth that is not there with air that did not exist, as he is shown an alternate timeline where Lenuta wins—Joseph Stryker torn down, fed from, raped in every way a person could be, and thrown off the mountain for the wolves to scavenge upon. Then, free to do so, Lenuta sets upon the world; sets her sights on the Stryker line first and foremost.
In this time—with the dominos falling as they would had a single domino not fallen to the left, but, rather, to the right—Xander’s mother never makes it to childbirth; in this time Xander never was.
The pain of nonexistence hurts more than he ever imagined.
It steers him back, sets the single domino right and travels forward. Time rights, and Xander sees himself born. He cries, small and frail and uncertain, and his mother cries, also small and also frail and, yes, also uncertain. Xander sees this through his own eyes but with a mind that is wiser than it was; wiser than it ever will be. He hears, in a mind that is both his own and is not, a voice, familiar and strange all at once; it sounds like life and death made one:
