Page 92 of Odder Still
I relax into my parasite, and as one, we squeeze the dying aurora’s otherworldly hand with ours. Its energy rushes into us. We can’t tear our gaze from Lilias, her cruel grin fixed to Tavish and her knee lifting for another stomp, but we can feel the motion of the energy twisting out of the aurora’s body in the tank, up through the strands that connected it to the other dimension, and down through our own filaments, so bright and hot and wonderful. As it burns up, we resurrect from the ashes. All we know how to say is:Thank you.
We feel its acknowledgement as its consciousness fades.
With this fresh rush of energy, I pull my parasite—my aurora—deeper into myself. We wind together, one cell at a time, overlapping until there is no moreus, no morewe, because I am the aurora, and the aurora is me, a single person, perfectly united. My aurora’s tendrils course through me, supporting every beat of my heart. They throw themselves into the lake of blood forming in my lungs, transporting and transforming and clearing. I take in one deep, fresh breath, then another.
Lilias’s boot slams into Tavish, too heavy, too bloody. He yelps and curls, but the yellow ignit does its work, and he relaxes back into intoxicated mutterings and tiny sobs, so confused as to why he hurts that it breaks my heart anew.
As I pull my legs under me, my fishnet gloves catch on a fallen test tube rack. I tear them off, leaving only the ones woven through my skin in iridescent crisscrosses. I stand. My head goes light, and a gush of blood leaves my side, but I pull the wound closed with a fresh weave of my aurora flesh.
Lilias’s gaze snaps to me. She stiffens.
I step toward her. “Maybe you were right, once.” My voice sounds like the old human one and more, as though its deep pitch harbors something else within it. A threat, perhaps. Or a promise. “But I’m not that man. Not anymore.” I smile. The black cords that wind erratic patterns up one side of my face tear beneath my gums and coil around my incisors, forming them into rainbow-flashing fangs. “It turns out I am still getting odder.”
As I pass the cask of ignation, I slam my fist into the side. The glass splinters. The silvery liquid gushes out through a hole in its center, spilling over my hand and along my arm. It keeps pouring out behind me.
Lilias could press her blade to Tavish’s throat and stop me in my tracks, but she has always been more rage than reason. She launches herself at me.
The ignation’s energy pounds through me as I duck her attack. I twist the knife from her grip and drive it into her shoulder so hard she slams to the floor. It pierces out the other side of her back as I pin her down. The tip of the blade scrapes against the glass tile. Her shriek reverberates through the room. She struggles, but I hold her down as her blood trickles across the transparent flooring.
The silver glow of the spilled ignation mixes with it. As it reaches the knife in Lilias’s back, her lurking and seething turns to tension. Her back arches, and her mouth opens in a soundless scream that looks as though she might swallow the world.
In my aurora vision, the ignation touching Lilias’s wound seems to tear open a doorway in her flesh. The same threads that wind through the ignation mutants rush into her. They hit her heart, then her brain.
On her skin, the gashes form. They cut up her neck, blue and orange, and tear along her cheeks, taking over one eye with scarlet so violent it could be blood. She draws in a breath like it’s the first one she’s ever taken. When she looks at me, I know—know—she’s not Lilias anymore.
A rush of revulsion floods me, because I also know, even if I don’t know why, that this is wrong in every way—wrong for the living, conscious thing that’s threaded through her and wrong for the powerful, terrible woman it has overwhelmed. My chest catches it in something between a curse and a scream. I jerk back from her.
She cocks her head, staring blankly. Not-Blue walks by us, Lavender still trailing her in bewilderment. Not-Jean watches, her shoulders wavering, and to our left the orca curiously rubs its rainbow-marred back against the laboratory’s glass viewing wall. Slowly, in twitches and lurches, Lilias stands, her rage gone. After all she spent to get here, everyone she stepped on and everything she kicked aside, she meanders with the rest of the ignation-mutated herd, a ghost awaiting orders.
Her yellow earpiece gleams on the floor. I snatch it, wiping it free of blood and ignation as I rush to Tavish. The rest of the world seems to turn a little slower than my pounding heart. With shaky hands, I press the little device into his ear.
A sob instantly wracks him. He huddles inward, his arms wrapped loosely around himself as though he’s still fighting to understand what happened to him. So much blood coats him. It streaks across his face and stains his once-stunning blue outfit and clumps his fiery-red hair in scarlet. The shimmering silver glow of the spilled ignation mixes with it, giving a ghastly beauty to the terrible sight.
My chest aches. I drop to the ground at his side, touching him gently, like he might shatter under too much pressure. “It’s over, she’s gone.”
Some of the tightness leaves his face. “Ruby?”
“I’m here.” As tenderly as I can, I lift him into my arms, cupping his head with one hand. “Where does it hurt?”
“It—” The word seems to catch in his throat. He chokes on it.
And it comes again, the rushing of the ignation, the tearing open of space itself, this time through the tiny burst vessels in a boot-sized scrape along Tavish’s side. The chaotic other-world threads twist into him, cutting the first small gashes through his insides. He screams.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Edge of the Knife
I will not ignite for you, but our flames we’ll exchange.
I will not rise for you, but each other we’ll raise.
Lifting together, we’ll go higher than ever.
My hold, always a caress, not a cage.
Committing each day to knowing you better,
in mutual endeavor, and not a crusade.
