Skyglass: Chapter 11

Gut and Gore

MOSS

I woke from the midday nap Yunayuna had forced me to take, cradled in the hammock she’d strung for me in a closet-sized room. It wasn’t my own bed or blankets or bedroom, but I felt safe there. The remnants of a bad dream scraped against my temples, but I managed to ignore them and hold a hand up to my face.

The strings of my parents’ p-coms were still tangled around my fingers; I’d fallen asleep with them gripped in my hands. Judging by the rush of pins and needles, I hadn’t loosened my hold as I’d slept. But I did now. I unwrapped the bite of leather strings from around my fingers and hung the coms around my neck.

I hadn’t turned them on once; I hadn’t even considered it. I wasn’t ready.

A red shape crept from the closet’s shadows. A cat. Phoenix. She burrowed under my blankets and bit my leg.

“What the–?” The hammock flipped, slamming me shoulder-first into the floor. The cat sat back and watched me untangle myself from the blankets.

“Yes?” I asked her testily.

She coughed once. A crumpled, spit-soaked wad of paper landed before me, garnished with a couple of cat hairs. I read it and looked back at her.

“Great,” I muttered. “You gonna tell everyone you’ll be coming with us now?”

She mewed in accord.

“Plan on telling them why?”

She nodded.

I cursed. “This is going to go so well.”

Phoenix just watched me, apparently deeming my reaction unworthy of a reply. I jabbed my head toward the closed door. “Well. Go on.”

She crawled into my lap and latched onto my shirt with her claws instead.

“Uh, what are you doing?” I tried detaching her, but she refused to do anything more than look pointedly at the door. After a moment, she looked back at me, and said, “Mrow.”

“What?” I grumbled, still trying to unhook her claws.

She rolled her eyes, released a paw, and jabbed it at the exit.

“You want me to take you out there? Like this?” I groaned long and wearily. “You’ll kill them all with shock.”

She shrugged and dug her claws in harder, pricking my skin now. I seethed, but brought her out onto the bridge, where everyone was taking a break near the dining table–laden with covered food meant for the party later that night.

“Sleep well?” Marko asked as I trudged out. He lounged on a couch bolted to the wall, lit from behind by the Gut’s hazy jade daylight. He had a goblet in hand, sun-gold mead inside. He sipped it slowly, eyes on me; I was careful not to meet them.

We hadn’t spoken much since the morning in my old bedroom. Things always seemed to be like that between us–moments of intensity, followed by lengths of quiet.

“Not really–” I started to reply, but Devin interrupted us with a frenzy of squeaks as he caught sight of my red-furred cat and bounded over to introduce himself.

I was suddenly, strangely nervous for Phoenix.

“A cat,” Sable said, an eyebrow cocked at the creature in my arms. The guitarist was seated on the ground, legs tangled with Yunayuna’s.

Zinn strode over and gently moved Devin aside so he could stroke a finger up the cat’s nose and down her spine. “Well, that explains a lot,” he murmured.

I narrowed my eyes at him. Did he know? Had he figured her out already? Phoenix-the-cat made no indication one way or the other–she just arched into his hand and purred so deep and throaty I felt myself blush. She squirmed a little and I let her down before she could do anything else unseemly.

“Where’d you find her?” Devin asked, poking Phoenix’s toes and trying to feed her one of his goat-shaped gummies. “Are you gonna keep her? Is she yours?”

“Um, she found me,” I said, looking at Phoenix expectantly. “And I’m pretty sure she’d kill me if I tried to keep her.”

Phoenix hissed in accord, batted Devin’s candy across the bridge, then sat, stilling her fidgety tail. Her fur smoldered ’til crumbly cinder cascaded from her raw, wet flesh. I sighed as blood trickled through the fibers of her bunched muscles–of course, she had to make it dramatic.

Devin scrambled toward the fresh-skinned feline, moaning some terrible wordless hurt. I grabbed him before he could tackle her and try to glomp her back to life. Everyone else just silently gaped as the cat’s muscles squirmed, stretched, and rewove themselves into Phoenix’s human shape. The red of her raw meat darkened into skin like glinting black sand.

Zinn–so smug and all-knowing–caught himself against the wall. I let my grin out for a moment–he might have figured out that she was a cat, might have known about her fire-self, but he obviously hadn’t expected to see her naked. He seemed to be having trouble unsticking his eyes from her.

Devin crawled on all fours until he was nose to nose with Phoenix. “I’m so glad you aren’t dead, kitty,” he sobbed. He crawled into her lap and hugged her tight with his arms and legs.

“Devin,” she said, but he wouldn’t move. “Devin.” More insistent this time.

He pulled back–slightly–and she put her mouth briefly against his. Then she petted his hair (bloodred and white like a wounded arctic fox these days) before standing and facing everyone else.

“Hi, sweetlings,” she said. “I turn into a cat sometimes.”

“Yeah, only I don’t believe you,” Sable said. “Considering the fact that you’re a galactically renowned Blowup artist.”

“Oh, right.” Phoenix swung her gaze at Zinn. “Only, I currently don’t have a com to do anything deceptively fancy like that. Just ask Zinn. I may have…destroyed the one he was lending me.”

“Fine. If that’s true, then how? And why? And what are you?” Sable’s curiosity was struggling desperately to break through her usual deadpan face.

“I am so glad you asked,” Phoenix said. “May I have one of your knives?”

Sable stood and offered her one, blade first. Phoenix glanced at Devin. “Want to do the honors?” she asked.

He sprang up and pinched the knife between two fingers, delicately avoiding the sharp side as he shifted his grip to the handle. He faced Phoenix. “Now what?”

“Now you stab me. Anywhere you like, sweetling. Anywhere.”

I stared at her–the cat revelation had been one thing, but this, too?

Devin’s face went very still, almost stony. “Anywhere?” he asked.

She nodded.

His bloodred brow drew together just barely. “And you promise you’ll be okay?”

“I promise,” she murmured.

“Okay,” he said, and stabbed her in the heart.

Marko’s goblet shattered as he started from his chair–but not fast enough. Phoenix had already turned to meet him, whipping the wobbly, melting blade from her chest, waving him back with it.

“See how I bleed?” she asked our friends. “I’m fire.” She opened her mouth and puffed out a delicate wreath of blue flame to float around the ceiling. “I came to earth not to help your helpless little band–though I admit doing that has become somewhat of a passion and obsession of mine. What I really came here for was murder.

“I am–quite obviously–not human. I’m from the sun, where my father number two stole me to be his very own, and very sick, little sex toy. I escaped, but now I’m hunting him for revenge–and on the night of your show, the two of us are gonna have a little…get-together at the Ventriloquist. I hope that’s okay with you all, because you have no choice in the matter.”

After a very pregnant pause, Sable let out a long-suffering groan. “Well, judging by the lack of astonishment on both Zinn and Moss’s faces, they already knew about your little secret. And I don’t give a squirting piss about what you do to your father–assuming, of course, that you replace my knife. Devin’s the only one whose opinion still needs voicing.”

Our singer’s eyes were giant and shiny, and he had a huge grin on his face. “You are so cool,” he said, and tackled her again.

“Well,” Yunayuna said. “Shall we go slaughter the goats?”

Proceed to Chapter 11, page 4–>