AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Instead of a maddened feeding frenzy, they held their prize aloft, swimming him back to the pool's center. In their red wake, the water shone most brightly in the blood trail. Their singing overtook the grunts and screams emanating from the mother. The cavern was ablaze with their song, pulsing with a life and light that should have been impossible in this forgotten, underground space.
Jack crouched alone atop the island and tore his gaze away from the knot of females surrounding the birth. When my eyes met his across the water, he nodded again. Without looking away from me, he joined his siren voice to the swelling harmony. The sight of the human sacrifice descending into the clustered bodies was discordant with the ethereal choir reverberating through the air, water, and stone. I searched for the child who'd been held hostage, and found it being comforted, maybe by the same old one who'd come for it earlier.
Wanting to be closer, but unsure if it was safe, I gave Spot a gentle push toward the water. He turned his cartoonish head and dipped down to lick the blood off my face. I scrunched my eyes shut in submission, more interested in being blood free than avoiding axolotl spit. When the licking stopped and he butted me with his forehead, I looked down at the gentle giant. Splayed flat, he slapped his tail on the stones and meeped.
I laughed, the sound coming out hollow and quiet, remembering the last time I’d ridden Spot. Running from danger then, too. I murmured, "Literally nothing about my work has anything to do with how a normal person does anything."
Spot swam me to the opposite side of the island, and we both climbed up to join Jack. The alien axolotl towered over our squatting forms, and we all looked down to watch this vanishingly rare event unfold.
The singing intensified as the baby slipped free to float motionless and limp just past its exhausted mother. No one moved to assist, and Jack grabbed my forearm lest I forget where I was and instinctively jump in to help. He knew me well. The adult naiads shredded the human corpse, parceling it out while reserving the rich organ meats for their two weakest members.
As the water turned crimson, light surged around the naiads and exploded out to the edges of the pool. The thing that had been Adonis broke apart. It returned – in component pieces – to rejoin the interconnected weave of a broader sphere. Inners believed every living thing adds its own thread to the universal warp and weft of all beings. The sludge of his misused existence was drunk down by the clan’s elders, pulsing transformed energy out in a wave.
The surface above the baby was disturbed, bubbles and waves erupting to the surface. The mother submerged, human heart in one hand and liver in the other, into water too bloody to see through.
Chapter Seven
Much later, Jack and I relaxed on a dry stone slab at the edge of the cavern, sharing a flask and watching Spot give rides to naiad children. All traces of blood and tissue had been consumed, either by the naiads or their commensal microflora. The clan was less skeletal, their singing buoyed with joy. The newest of their number was being passed from one adult to another, accompanied by body language that must be universal.
"You didn't need me. I didn't do a single doctory thing," I groused. “In fact, I was explicitly anti-doctory. I killed a man.”
"Nonsense. You were a healer tonight. You saved that youngling’s life, and the lives of every creature that monster would have enslaved and tortured after today. More specifically, you provided a vital medical supply. No different from epinephrine for anaphylaxis or D-50 for hypoglycemia."
"She didn't need our help. You said this was a ‘difficult birth’."
"It was. It always is. The child will wither and die without the strength of the clan and the energy of the diatoms in the water. They can subsist on fish and invertebrates, but for a new life, they need more," Jack said.
"You've brought them humans before." I entertained visions of Jack laboring to do this on his own, stalking bad guys and luring them into his ambulance. Part of me was torn as to the ethics of this. Remembering the man I’d just killed, and his victims, a bigger part was not.
"Yes."
"Why?"
Jack leaned back into the cavern wall. "They'll kill to keep a baby alive. Someone with my skills can make absolutely certain some innocent doesn't end up down here. I bring them the worst I can find. The universe is a cruel and random place, generally devoid of justice. I enjoy putting a finger on the scales."
"Why not a cow or something?"
"The worse a thing is, the more harmful and out of step with the greater warp and weft of life, the better. No mere animal can manage that. I sent a huge boar through once, and the child died, so never again. Their transmutation of evil fuels a new, pure life."
I must have still looked confused, so Jack forged ahead. "You're protected in a way, getting to empathize without others' emotions being forced on you. But I'm not. I felt it all. His victims' pain, his pleasure. He wasn’t in it just for the money. He reveled in what he did. That's why he died today. Why we've removed his ripples from the pool of this world and replaced them with new ones."
I digested this, leaning against the stone and listening to the happy squeals of children at play.
After a time, Jack said, "They are eaters of cruelty and decay. Like fungi of a forest floor, they ingest what would otherwise choke and befoul – converting it to beauty and love. They are the alchemists of the earth, and I am merely their delivery boy."
I sighed and tossed a pebble into the water to make rainbow ripples through the glowing pond. I had seen so much shining beauty tonight, but it was tempered with having ended a life. Even if it would have happened anyway. "I'm knackered. I would shank a bitch for a cozy blanket nest, some Willie Nelson, a bourbon nightcap, and fuzzy socks."
"That is oddly specific. And probably enough shanking for one night." Jack side-eyed me.
I side-eyed him.
"What, too soon?" Jack asked.
"Why is it that when I work with you, amazing shit happens, but I also almost die with alarming regularity?"
Jack grinned and threw his arms into the air. "I know! Isn't it great?" He leaned closer and lowered his voice to something approaching intimate. "It's kinda our thing." He cocked his head. "Wanna know about my potentials for next time?"
"Save the lead for the ride back. I'm enjoying the gold."
