Page 86 of Love, Nemesis
Removing his knife, Lethe cut a line across his hand and then offered it to Cal.
Cal looked down at it and hesitantly offered his own. Lethe shook it.
“They can do what they want to you, but they can never copy your soul. Welcome to the Riders, kid. I hope you’re prepared to fight like one,” he said, eyes focused on Cal’s.
They’d never done any such handshake in the Riders, but Cal didn’t have to know that. At the end of the day, Lethe knew the biggest advantage to the boy would be his illusion of power, the illusion of choice.
Cal didn’t know what was out in the world—not really. Maybe he would have followed Lethe one way or another. Couldn’t help himself. Curiosity and ignorance combined were an unfortunate streak to any person with opportunity.
All the same, Cal didn’t really have a choice now either. As it often was with the Strike, you approached one, but you rarely ever ran from one. You were released or you killed it. That was the only way to get out.
But the belief that you could run, that was important for someone like Cal, someone who didn’t know what it was like yet to have nowhere to go.
The battlefield had already been set.
The only way out was onward.
Chapter 23: Battlefield of the Past
LETHE PROCEEDED DOWN the path of the silent genocide. As he passed the people, they bowed and then twisted back, transforming and assuming new roles as new people, posts, horses, or other objects from his past. The houses behind them collapsed as if they were dominoes and rebuilt themselves in sheets across the city.
The walls of Xal Xel fell back like cards, and from their collapse rose the dark towers that, a thousand years ago, Mystic time, had marked the outskirts of the Strike’s greatest city, named after its monument, The Bleeding Grin.
“Don’t touch anything,” Lethe said, looking back once at Cal. The boy turned left and right, his eyes wide and taking everything in.
They reached the town center, and the largest Xal Xel tower split open, darkness crawling forth like spiders hatching from a carcass. The tower bent down and back, and from it formed The Bleeding Grin, returned to its former glory from Lethe’s memory. A screaming crowd appeared around him, throwing their fists up toward it. A stone balcony was carved out from the face of the mountain. A stage bubbled from stones on the ground. Lethe grabbed Cal’s shoulder to prevent the appearing crowd from pushing him away.
“What is this?” Cal whispered. “Lethe,” he prodded in alarm.
“We’re inside my memories,” Lethe said. “But time doesn’t apply to the Strike…not like it does to us. The more powerful ones maybe able to see us through the past. For us, memory is like a movie screen, but for them it’s a two-way mirror.”
“Even though they’re dead now?” Cal whispered, looking around. “And it’s only a memory?”
“It’s how they look into the future. We’re looking at them now. Just know, some will be looking right back at us,” Lethe explained.
“Can they hurt us?”
“Maybe.”
Cal searched the roaring crowd, “Well then, this isn’t like a memory at all,” he whined.
Lethe kept his eyes focused on the stage as a familiar group appeared upon it, a group of slaves with a single purple-eyed Strike among them. Shrouded in black, Amiel held fast to a woman, a knife to her throat.
The woman was Anne Rue. Lethe would never forget her.
“Kill her!” Lethe heard a woman howl and then laugh. Cal seemed to hear it too. He started searching until his eyes locked onto the corner of the stage.
“Evira,” Cal said, nudging Lethe. “Evira is here.”
“Kill her, now!” Evira shouted again.
Several others with her cheered, demanding a slit throat for which the Bleeding Grin had been named. “Give us a smile!” they called.
There were mixed opinions from the crowd. Many had already turned, submitting to the absolute rule of the Strike and drawing the broken arrow on their body as a sign. Of the rest, a new example would be harvested and killed each week, bending the survivors into submission.
The Strike had created food, water, and shelter. First, they had asked for nothing of those they sheltered, and then, all at once, they asked for everything. The resulting rebellion in the city had been tolerated patiently. The Strike hadn’t facilitated any mass slaughter, no angry, demanding speeches, just one more fresh body each week. It was a slow, controlled strangulation of the Resistance, as calm and sure as the wrap of a python. All along, the notorious beggar, Anne Rue, had refused to accept food and water from the Strike, even at the risk of starvation.
Lethe’s eyes moved up to the balcony, and there, with his hands spread across the banister, was a face he well recognized.
