Read Elei's Chronicles (Books 1-3) Online
Authors: Chrystalla Thoma
Elei's Chronicles (Books 1-3) (27 page)
“I don’t know. The Undercurrent hasn’t agreed to meet with them yet.” Kalaes nodded. “They’re waiting.”
Elei shuddered. “Are the Gultur really nicer now?”
“Yeah. Well, some of them seem to be, at any rate.”
“And what happens now?”
“No clue. Not all Gultur are affected. Not all of them are sick. Hera says it will take time to know if one of the two parasites will dominate the other, or if they’ll reach a balance. But the main thing is that it worked, fe. Your half-assed plan worked.”
“What plan?” He’d never had one, apart from spilling his blood into the water of the fountain.
Kalaes chuckled.
He thinks I’m joking
. “And now what?”
Kalaes pressed three fingers to the parallel lines tattooed on his cheek, his gang symbol, then pressed them to Elei’s cheek. He withdrew his hand, his face serious. “You heal and come home with me.”
“Home.” Elei swallowed past a knot in his throat. Damned painkillers, made him weak. Made him want to cry. He wouldn’t. “You said you take no strays.”
“For you I’m thinking of making an exception.” Kalaes ruffled Elei’s hair and his eyes held pain. “Come on, kid. You can do it. You’re strong.”
Kalaes had stuck with him all the way. Kalaes hadn’t put the fate of the islands above him, like Pelia had. He’d been right about Kalaes all along.
“The parasites.” He looked away, not wanting Kalaes to see his crumbling face. “The ones inside me. Can we get rid of them?”
“Too late for that, fe. It’d kill you. Better let them fight it out, decide on a new balance.”
“So we’ll never find out what I’m really like beneath them all, huh?”
Kalaes snorted. “You worried about that? You’re unlike anyone I’ve ever met. No need to get rid of the parasites to know that.”
Elei bit his lip, wondering what exactly that meant. He glared at Kalaes, but his eyes were closing. He probably didn’t look threatening enough, because Kalaes grinned. Hera liked him, and Kalaes looked happy. When he got better, they’d go home.
Maybe Pelia hadn’t planned to inject him with the deadliest parasite of the seven islands. Maybe that was why she’d said she was sorry. Yet, maybe she’d planned to send him to Kalaes all along. Because Kalaes cared.
And those things were worth a battle or two and all the pain in the world.
Table of Contents for Rex Rising
Are dreams real?
Still recovering at a hospital on the north coast of Dakru, Elei is convinced that his part in bringing down the Gultur is over. Rex has infected the other race and their dictatorial system is starting to collapse. Not every Gultur, though, has been affected, and on top of that, inside Elei’s body, Rex has matured and goes through another transformation. Elei isn’t sure he can survive Rex’s new strength — but that may prove the last of his worries as the Gultur descend on him again.
Rex Cresting © Copyright 2012 by Chrystalla Thoma
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, events, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
To Marion Sipe and Claire Bugler Hewitt
for being the best friends and critiquers a writer could ever hope for.
I
nserted
in Elei’s wrist, a thick needle dripped painkillers and serum into a vein. He stared at the sliver of metal thrust into his bruised flesh, wondering what drew him out of his drugged sleep. Then his eyes drifted closed again, dreams crowding behind his lids.
A vicious stab in his stomach jerked him wide awake and he curled around the pain, his breathing harsh and shallow. The room flashed with colors, and even as the pain subsided, he knew he wouldn’t be returning to sleep any time soon. Rex, the king of his parasites, had sensed something.
Danger
.
Trying to remember if he’d always reacted so strongly to the parasite’s alerts, Elei pulled out the needle, hissing at the sting, and threw it on the bedside table. Using his non-too-clean sheet to staunch the bleeding, he glanced around the room, blinking to clear his eyes. The meds made him sluggish, and his body felt heavy and cold like stone.
Everything was quiet. No noises drifted into his room from the hospital. On the surface, all seemed calm and peaceful.
But Rex had other ideas. Pulses went through the room, lighting it up in different hues, sweeping it for clues. A blue flash showed Elei the metal table, the needle in a small black puddle of blood, the metal bed frame, the iron door. A green pulse highlighted the leftovers of the food in a plate, blood on the bunched up sheet he held against his wrist, older blood stains on the gray mattress. A red pulse went through the room picking out a mosquito, a fly on the wall.
Rex had never done this before — this systematic sweeping, color after color, layer after layer. Had never inflicted such pain on him to get his attention, to force him to act.
With a groan, he pressed the heel of his hand against his throbbing, possessed eye. Deprived of vision, the parasite switched to his hearing. The booming of regular heartbeats at different speeds filled his head — some louder, some quieter, coming from across the walls. None outside his door.
“What do you want, Rex?” he whispered, his heart hammering against his ribcage.
Maybe it was nothing. He was probably twitchy because Kalaes wasn’t there to make him feel safe, and that had triggered Rex’s reflexes. He’d become used to having the older boy close by this past week at the hospital.
Another pulse swept the room, blinding white.
Kalaes probably wouldn’t come in till later. At Elei’s insistence and reassurances that he felt much better already, he’d retired to catch some much needed sleep, whether in the hospital or elsewhere, Elei had no idea. As for Hera, she usually came during night time and now it was early morning. Not likely to show up soon.
He sat hunched over, breathing in and out, trying to calm down.
Another shudder shook him from head to toe, wrenching a small cry of pain from his lips as the gunshot wounds pulled, still not completely healed. Warm blood trickled down his thigh, tickling the back of his knee. Something was definitely different about the parasite. If anything, it was much stronger than ever.
“I
am
paying attention to you, dammit.” Elei pressed his hands against the throbbing wounds. “Relax.”
Of all the parasites he carried, Rex was by far the most powerful and still an unknown factor. Worse still, his body had scant defenses against it. Even telmion, the killer parasite he’d carried inside him since childhood, the only one offering any real resistance, was obviously struggling against Rex.
Spilled in the water of the Gultur sacred fountain together with his blood, Rex had been supposed to bring down the Gultur, the dominant all-women race who’d been genetically altered by Regina, another powerful parasite, in centuries past.
It had succeeded, hadn’t it? He tried to remember what Hera and Kalaes had told him. Something about Rex infecting the Gultur, about the resulting chaos.
He swung his legs off the bed, gritting his teeth. “Nothing’s wrong,” he whispered, soothing, but Rex sent lightning pain through his skull and blinding light to smother his vision.
If Rex believed Elei was in danger, it’d probably do anything to ensure his survival — and so its own.
It would help if Elei knew what Rex found threatening. He stood, swaying and blinking away black spots. He reached for his gun, then remembered he didn’t have it and had no clue where it could be. He should stop by Kalaes first, wherever he was, tell him about Rex’s warning and find a way to contact Hera. Getting his hands on some clothes and shoes wouldn’t be a bad idea, either, in case he had to run. Barefoot and in a hospital gown he wouldn’t make it anywhere.
He tottered to the wall and leaned against it. His bandaged thigh burned. Various other hurts flared in his torso. The gods knew how much time he had until the painkillers in his bloodstream wore off. After a small hesitation, he opened the iron door and stepped out.
A green pulse went through his vision, showing him a passage empty of human presence, with doors along either side. Since he’d never been outside his room in a conscious state, he had no idea which way to go. Choosing randomly, he shuffled to his right, passing metal doors identical to his. Women’s voices rang from behind one, and he paused. Maybe if a nurse was there, he could—
His body jerked and he gasped, almost falling to his knees. The corridor flashed white and he closed his eyes, blinded.
Okay, fine. I won’t knock.
Forcing the pain down, he hurried past the door as fast as he could. Obeying Rex seemed the only way to avoid the pain. Anger swam through despair and heated his neck. He wouldn’t be slave to a damned parasite. Maybe Kalaes knew a way out of this mess.
With Kalaes he’d be safe. He only had to find him.
Move.
His possessed eye throbbing along with every healing wound on his body, he limped to the end of the corridor and wrenched open the emergency double door. A flight of stairs led down and he descended in near darkness. The eye Rex controlled took over and everything around him glowed as if lit from the inside. He heard a commotion above — voices, footsteps, crashes, racing heartbeats — the sounds echoing inside his head. He thought he caught a whiff of sweetness and flowers.
Gultur?
No, that couldn’t be. They’d been infected, destabilized.
But the scent persisted, and Rex sent bright flashes and changing colors through his vision. With new urgency, he exited into the lower floor and hobbled toward what looked like an entrance hall, with a reception cubicle in one corner and rows of black
nepheline
seats.
He slowed. Where were Kalaes and Hera?
Rex sent another warning jolt through his limbs, but anger kept Elei on his feet.
Hells, no
. He wasn’t leaving his friends behind, not if someone was after them, but where could those two be? He stopped and opened the first door he found. An empty bed greeted him. The next two doors revealed more of the same. Opening the fourth one, he found an old woman in a bed.
She screamed.
His pulse leaped, the room lit up in a dizzying sequence, and the woman’s shriek threatened to split his eardrums. He backed out, swallowing hard, his heart slamming against his ribs. Voices rang farther to his right, at the stairwell. He limped into the next room and found it unoccupied. He stared at the empty bed, trying to gather his wits.
His memories of the previous days were hazy at best. Perhaps Kalaes said he was staying somewhere else. Maybe together with Hera? He wished he could recall.
Rex screeched inside his skull.
Holy gods
. Footsteps in the distance, coming down the stairs. Urgent voices. The click of guns ready to fire. The sound of a knob rattling down the corridor perhaps fifty paces away. Closer. Always closer. The sweet scent swirled on the air, tickled his senses.
Dammit, he’d been right. Rex had been right. They were Gultur, and they’d found him. His heartbeat went up another notch, kicking the insides of his skull.
Elei backed away from the door and turned toward the entrance hall. He half-ran, half-staggered across the large room, past a couple of wide-eyed people, his hospital gown flapping. His pulse throbbed in his ears and the pain faded as more adrenaline pumped through his veins. He reached the revolving doors just as a shot rang behind him, the bullet smashing a glass window. He stumbled but caught himself and pushed through the doors, his bare feet hitting the cold, rough asphalt.
With barely a glance to either side, he raced across the avenue toward the smaller streets that opened between gray blocks of apartments and offices. Hera had said he was at the north coast of Dakru, in Teos. He’d never heard of the town before, knew nothing about it and hadn’t the vaguest orientation.
Just perfect.
The sound of helicopters thundered overhead and he pressed on, grinding his teeth. Bullets zipped by, hitting aircars with ear-splitting eruptions of noise.
Get out of the avenue.
He chose a street at random and ran between graffiti-covered walls, evading piles of trash and cats fighting. A woman in a long coat stared at him, a dead rat clutched in one hand. Elei jumped over a rotting paper box and almost fell, his hurt leg giving a warning twinge through the haze of adrenaline. He kept running, aware of shouts and more gunshots behind him, wondering when his leg would give out and how in the hells he ever thought he’d escape the Gultur on foot.
The ties at the back split, and his hospital gown flapped, getting in the way. Impatiently, he tore it off and ran naked but for the thick bandages winding around his torso and thigh.
He burst into another avenue, and a woman squealed, pointing at him.
Unwanted attention
. Rex sent a blue pulse, then a green one, zooming on an alley too narrow for aircars. Elei sped up, his side burning, and zigzagged between pedestrians and vehicles to reach it. He entered the darkness of the alley at a dead run, tripped over a twisted tube of rusted metal and crashed, putting out his hands to stop the fall. He groaned at the impact. He rolled, his whole body one giant ache.
Move!
Blood trickled down his chest and back. His gunshot wounds had reopened — whether from his desperate running or his fall, or both. They burned like fire. On all fours, he crawled behind a blue trash container and huddled on the rough asphalt. The sour stench of rotten vegetables, meat and piss was familiar, as was the fear tightening his stomach.
Just like old times
. He never thought he’d flash back to his childhood in the trashlands of Ost while awake. He often visited the place in his dreams, dreams that often turned into nightmares replaying Albi’s death.
Everyone who cared for him died in the end.
Albi, Pelia
. But not Hera and Kalaes. He wouldn’t let anything happen to them. He needed to find them, make sure they were okay.
The adrenaline rush was fading. Shivers wracked his body and rattled his teeth as he fought to stay still. Large vehicles passed in the avenue, just a few steps away, and shouts rang. He was sure the Gultur were combing every nook and corner of the town. He wasn’t safe there, but the thought of using his leg again made him grit his teeth.
Braced with one arm against the container, he felt the wounds on his thigh. They were the worst of all his injuries. Shot at almost point blank, the bullets had barely missed the femoral artery. The bandage had slipped, and wetness met his fingers. He swallowed hard and rested his pounding forehead on his arm.
I’m screwed.
Cold wind blew through the alley, whistling, and Elei trembled, feeling the ice all the way to his bone marrow. Buck naked, sitting on the dirty cement, he hugged himself and clenched his teeth, afraid their loud gnashing might give him away.
A cat’s meow startled the holy crap out of him, and he hissed. The animal wandered closer, a black cat with green eyes that glittered. A female most probably, small and thin, she butted her head against his thigh. He shoved her off. Animals carried parasites and he had enough of his own, thank you very much.
The cat returned, unruffled, which was strange. Had nobody ever kicked her or was some parasite playing with her memory? When she butted him again, he fought the urge to grab her and throw her across the alley. Minutes trickled by. He sat as still as he could, shaking.