In the End (15 page)

The Naga stank even worse now it was dead. It was nearly sixteen feet long, and now it was dead, Lalael could see the rows and rows of jagged teeth in its mouth.

“
No,” Lucien said. “Not really. What do you think it is?”

“
Bullshit,” the captain said vehemently. “And I think it's a goddamn demon.”

“
That's not a demon,” Lalael said quickly.

Captain Joe shot him a withering look. “If you boys think I'm going to fall for any of your stories, you're spitting into the wind.”

“
I guess it looks like a demon to me,” Lucien said. “It
could
be.” He got one glance from the captain and amended: “Definitely a demon.”

“
You've seen these before,
ja?
”

“
I never saw any here before That Day,” Lucien said. Absolutely true, and Captain Joe nodded.

“
They are all like this?”

“
Nnno,” Lucien said slowly. “Not all of them.”

“
Because I hear some scuttlebutt about two big ones a lot of people saw in the city.”

Lucien nodded. “I saw them too.”

“
I heard they have giant bat wings,” Lalael supplied, a little desperate.

Captain Joe looked skeptical. “Kouji didn't say anything about that.” Kouji was one of the city folk who traded with the sailors. “He said they can hide their wings so they just look like people.”

“
That doesn't make sense. Bat wings or none at all, I heard they escaped from a burning building, so they must be impervious to fire.”

“
Ja!” Captain Joe said. “That's what I heard, that a mob tried to burn them.”

“
But there's only two of them, so they probably won't cause many problems... It's ones like that one –” the Naga, “– we should worry about. We found two of those
already, and pretty easily, so there's probably loads of
them
. We should strengthen the watch or put up better barricades or do a really thorough sweep of the marina to find all the places they could possibly hide. Clean 'em out.”

The captain paused the conversation to groom his beard; a habit which evidently meant he was thinking seriously about something. “The diseases are related,” he concluded after several minutes.

“
What? I don't know what you mean,” Lucien said, so casually that Lalael himself almost believed him for a moment.

“
How do you cure them?”

“
Hmm? Um. Well, it's complicated. You have to train for a really long time...”

“
A really long time,” Lalael nodded.

“
Yes, so long that – Laurie here is sort of my apprentice, you see.”

Captain Joe squinted at them. “I thought you were the same age.”

“
I had a natural gift for it. It's like acupuncture. You know... with chakras. And. And the humors. And leeches.”

“
What?”

“
I meant no leeches. Ever. Not a single leech.”

“
Poison,” Lalael said suddenly.

Lucien froze. “What?”

“
The demons – they're poisonous and people get sick when they're bitten.”

“
Yes, wow, good job failing to explain it. Clearly I can't graduate you from your apprenticeship yet. It's not that the demons are poison. It's the red tide. Some people are just naturally more sensitive to it.” Lucien gathered himself up importantly. “It involves a neurotoxin. Tetrodotoxin, you know, found in – ”

“
I don't want to hear your medical school babble,” Captain Joe interrupted. He had a low tolerance for jargon in any form, and vastly preferred plain speech.

“
We just didn't want to tell you it was that easy to fix because then you might not have let us stay.” Lucien grimaced. “Sorry.”

The captain harrumphed. “Well, you're pulling your veight and more, so we'll forget about it this time.”

***

It might have continued going as well as it had.

It happened in the wee hours of the morning. Lalael was on watch that night, but it had been quiet all evening and he had let his guard down. There were huge racks of curing fishskin on the boardwalk, since it was the only place both roomy enough and steady enough to house the operation, not to mention far enough away that the smell wasn't too much of a bother. On the other hand, it
attracted herds of stray animals, especially at night, hence the two guard posting. If they didn't shoo the animals away, they would have chewed all the skins to bits, or more likely devoured them whole, and
none would have been left over for experiments in fish leather.

Unfortunately, as they found out that night, the food chain didn't stop there.

Lalael was drowsing at his post. He had been smelling rotting fish skin for so long that he had stopped smelling anything at all. And then, very suddenly, everything began happening at once: He heard a scratching in the dark, but he and his fellow guard had been driving away a particularly persistent pair of dogs for most of the night, so he yawned, picked up his broom, and turned to whack some noses.

Except they were the wrong noses, and there were too many of them. At least twenty pairs of glowing eyes reflected in the faint light from the watchfire that Lalael's fellow guard was standing next to. The nights were getting colder, but Lalael couldn't go too close to the fire without giving himself away, or so Lucien said.

All that didn't matter now. The eyes were shifting, coming closer, and Lalael backed slowly away. There were more of them appearing in the dark. Dozens now. Something hissed, and then Lalael knew what they were – spider-frogs. They had four legs, toed like a frog, but the joints were bent above their backs like a spider, and although their heads were barely discernible from their necks and torsos, they still retained a vaguely humanoid shape to them, but with bulging yellow eyes, slitted noses, and poisonous mandibles on either side of their pale, fleshy mouths – they killed by paralyzing and strangling their prey.

A few of them held dead or half-eaten animals – squirrels, raccoons, cats – in their front claws, but one by one they were losing interest in these, their eyes fixed on Lalael and the other guard, who had finally noticed.

“
Mother of god,” he said. “We're surrounded.”

“
If you can convince yourself to believe in a higher power, right now would be a great time to start asking for favors,” Lalael replied quietly. “Do you have any weapons?”

Alyosha pulled a nine-millimeter Beretta out of his waistband, mace out of his jacket pocket, and hefted a length of two-by-four he kept for a club.

CHAPTER
TEN

Something startled Lucien awake moments before he heard the first echoing report of a gunshot. And then another. Another. Another. He flung himself out of his bunk, scrambling into a shirt and pants as he dashed through the galley, grabbed his daggers from the cupboard they were hidden in, scrambled up the companionway, into the cockpit and out onto deck. Then he heard the screams and the shouting, and four more gunshots. There were lights on the boardwalk, not just torches but – flashlights. If he hadn't known it was an emergency before, that would have told him more than he needed to know.

Boardwalk. Tanning racks. Watch. Lalael's shift.

Lucien was in flight and hurtling towards the boardwalk before he knew what he was doing.

Lalael was in the midst of chaos. He had overtipped the garbage can that held the watchfire and scattered the embers out into a wide circle around him, which was helping a little to keep back the enormous horde of demons that surrounded him. There was a crowd of harbor people on one side of the horde, doing a fair and admirable job of holding their own, but their rescue mission was already failing: Lucien himself was seconds too late to save Alyosha: The man was swarmed. A moment later he stopped screaming.

And Lalael stood in the middle of his circle of embers and, to Lucien's utter bewilderment, shot four demons in quick succession exactly between the eyes.  This was clearly not something Lucien needed to be asking questions about right now: He didn't know anything about guns except that they had rounds, and a limited number thereof, and he hadn't been keeping track of Lalael's shots, so he needed to get Lalael
out of there
, and then in quick succession get both of them out of there because their cover was entirely blown. He landed heavily on two demons at once, snapping their spines, and jumped off into the air again.

Lalael didn't exactly need rescuing, though: His face was cold and calm, and his shoulders
straight, and he was doing this thing that Lucien did not understand, looking for his next target almost
before he had finished shooting the previous one. He wasn't even flustered to see Lucien there; he just shot next to Lucien's head. Lucien's back and wings were splattered with demon brains a millisecond later.

“
Lalael, fly!” Lucien yelled. He snatched up a half-burned length of wood and clobbered a nearby demon with it, drawing one of his daggers and stabbing to finish it off. He hopped himself over the embers with a flip of his wings and got his back against Lalael's. Lalael did not appreciate this.

“
You're in my way,” he said, petulant. “I need to shoot where you're standing.”

And the firelight was lighting him – both of them – from every angle, and Lucien had seen the shine on Lalael. It was brighter than the last time, and flickers played over his clothes and hair like he had an aura of flame or lightning. “You're going to run out of bullets!”

Another two shots. “No, I think I still have a couple left. Duck.”

Lucien ducked and Lalael shot over his head at a demon that had been about to pounce.

“
The humans have already seen us, Lalael.” Lucien swung the makeshift club; the demon skittered back quick enough for his shot to miss, and Lalael, without looking, shot it in the eye. “You know what you look like right now?
Not human.
You know what else is around us now? A whole lot more
not human.
If you don't get your wings out and fly, I'm going to pick you up and carry you off myself – see if I don't!” Lucien was snarling by the end of this tirade.

“
Do I have four more left or three? I've lost count.” Lalael shot. And shot. And shot. And – ran out. He took his eyes off the horde around him to calmly load a new magazine. Lucien stabbed and clubbed three demons that immediately attempted to pounce on the idiot. “The humans won't hurt me,” Lalael said when he had finished and shot again. “I'm killing demons and so are they. It's fine.”

Lucien promptly dropped the board, sheathed the dagger, caught the angel around the waist and heaved. He couldn't carry him long, but at least he wasn't working against quite as much physics this time. On the other hand, this time Lalael was struggling. Well, if he wanted to be like that...

Lucien judged that he had gained enough altitude that firstly Lalael's instincts would kick in to save him, and secondly that they would have
time
to save him.

He let go.

It really was a shame that they had to keep ruining clothes by bursting their wings through the seams. That had been a really nice warm coat once, and now Lalael was wearing it in tatters around his shoulders as he righted himself in midair.

A shot rang out. It wasn't from Lalael's gun (which he still held as he ascended, already wearing his scolding face). Lucien heard the bullet whizz by, uncomfortably close, and Lalael froze in the air, hovering. Was he
insane?

“
Don't be a stationary target!” Lucien screamed at him.

“
But they can't be shooting at
us,”
Lalael said, looking back on the human crowd in shock. “We helped them.” Another shot. This time, it punched through a few of Lucien's secondary feathers, uncomfortably close to wing bones and the side of his torso. “Well, don't just stay there!” Lalael shouted. “Go!”

And then they were gone.

***

The rocky overhang under which they had spent the first night after the end of the world seemed as good a place as any. It was remote, concealed.

They landed, and Lalael went to start a fire.

“
Not a good idea. We could have been followed,” Lucien said.

“
There's no one around for five miles in any direction.”

“
Still.”

Lalael scowled. “It's cold. I'm freezing.”

“
That's your own fault, isn't it. I gave you a chance to keep your clothes intact.” Lucien's shirt was in better condition. He had only managed to do up one button before he'd brought his wings out, so that was all he lost; he hid his wings and did the rest up now.  Lalael wrapped his wings around himself and shivered, glaring at Lucien. He still had his gun, which Lucien eyed uncomfortably.  “That thing isn't good for you,” he declared.

“
Excuse me?”

“
That.” He waved at the gun. “You should have dropped it or gotten rid of it.”

“
Excuse
me?”

“
You weren't yourself.”

Lalael bristled. “I see.”

“
Oh. Good.”

“
It's because I was good at it, wasn't it?”

“
No...?” Lucien frowned. “It's because you shot brains all over my back and didn't bat an eye.” They were beginning to smell.

“
Next time I'll let the demon rip your spine out, then, fine.”

Lucien sighed. “That's not what I meant.”

“
Right. What you meant was that you're allowed to decide what's good for me.”

“
Well. Yyyes.”

Lalael stood up and did a fair job of looming over Lucien despite their four inches' difference in height. “Absolutely not. You
never
get to decide what's best for me. I do.
Do you understand.”

“
Calm down.”

“
No. I'm not helpless, and I'm not an idiot, and I don't need a nursemaid,
thank you.
I was
good
at something. I was good at
that.
Without trying. Alyosha handed me that gun and said 'Full magazine,' and I said, 'How many does that mean?' and he said 'Twenty,' and I said, 'Okay.' And then I turned and thought to myself, 'This is probably how this thing works,' and it
was.
I was good at it like I should have been good at music or fighting or healing. I didn't have to think about it. It was like I'd known how my whole life. It was like
I was meant to do that.
”

“
You think you were meant to shoot things.”

“
I think that if I was as good at that as I am at breathing that there might be
other things
I'm good at too,” Lalael snapped.

“
But it's shooting things. With
guns.
Only humans have guns,” Lucien said reasonably. “There's
probably a good reason why the Realms never adopted them.”

“
Because clearly every decision the Two Realms ever made about how to run their fucking –”

“
Lalael.
That's how humans swear.”

Lalael took a breath. His voice went quiet and intense. “You're just like the rest of them. This isn't about
what
I'm good at, it's about me being good at anything. You're worried that I'm going to upstage you because you're used to being great at everything you do.”

“
Don't be ridiculous. I'm not great at everything.”

“
Name one thing,” Lalael replied promptly. Lucien hesitated a second too long. “Exactly. My. Point. So don't you
dare
try this again, and I am appalled that you tried it at all just because you have some kind of random distrust towards a goddamn inanimate object. I am
my own person,
and I
will
control my life now, and if you have a problem with that, I'll spend the rest of eternity on the other side of the world.
”
Behind Lalael, the pile of twigs and kindling burst into flame with a loud snap.

They both ignored it.

Lucien held Lalael's glare for several long seconds. “So. No more trying to go back, then,” he said quietly.

Lalael didn't bat an eye. “I renounced Ríel the moment I put a bullet square through a demon's head with my eyes closed.”

Lucien nodded, carefully keeping his face blank. “Congratulations, then. Welcome to the free world.”

Neither of them said another word for the rest of the night.

***

Lalael watched Lucien brood for most of the next day: He sat on the ground at a little distance away from the overhang and didn't move from that spot for hours.

Lalael went foraging for food around noon and brought back a rabbit an hour or so later. Lucien didn't eat any of it. Lalael didn't know if he would have let Lucien have any of it even if he'd wanted
some. He decided, after a length of time thinking about it harder than it perhaps warranted, that the best
thing to do would have been to be passive-aggressive about it: First he would have said something about how he'd shot the rabbit, and then he would have pretended to be very concerned that Lucien would have moral objections to eating any food that didn't die a peaceful, quiet death surrounded by its family and friends.

Yeah. That would have been good.

He spent so much time devising precisely what he'd say that he almost regretted that Lucien didn't give him a chance to say it.

That night, he wrapped himself in his wings to sleep next to the fire – he couldn't remember adding any fuel to it, but it wasn't acting like it needed any – and looked up at the crisp, clear November sky and watched his breath cloud in the air above him.

***

In the morning, Lucien gathered up his things. “I'm going back.”

“
And you thought I was the one going crazy.” Lalael was in the middle of building a screen out of branches, insulated with grasses and dead leaves, which would hopefully keep some of the cold out at night. He had had to add kindling this morning.

Lucien watched for a while, silent. “I'm not going to the marina. I'll find somewhere else. Opposite side of the city, I think.”

Lalael snorted. “Good luck with that. They won't have an ounce of food to spare. What are you planning on doing for them? Healing?” He snorted again. “Might not even be worth it to them.”

“
Well, I don't have anything else,” Lucien said loudly. “Left the things we got out of the fire when I was saving you.”

“
I don't know what you want me to do about it.”

“
I don't.”

“
Good.”

“
Fine.”

Silence.

Lalael went back to propping up branches against the overhang. “Good luck, then. You'll want to be off so you can find somewhere before nightfall.”

“
Yeah,” Lucien said slowly. “I guess I'll... see you when I see you.”

“
Yeah.” And even though it rubbed Lalael's feathers the wrong way to say it, “Thanks for all your help.”

“
Don't mention it,” Lucien replied faintly.

***

Lucien flinched and held his hand up to block the light from the LED flashlight being shone into his eyes.