Page 65 of Odder Still
The Crosshairs of Another’s War
Each tightening of my grip forms a silent plea:
ignite yourself; shine into me.
I HAVE JUST ENOUGH time to connect the dots—the firth Lilias had circled on the map in her apartment, along with the schematics she’d labeledenergy reflector—without quite understanding the picture they make before one of Lilias’s lackeys aims a weapon at Dr. Coineagan. My legs move at the same speed as my lungs, slamming me into Coineagan the instant that my warning bursts from my lips. The bullet grazes my shoulder, my parasite consuming the tiny cut immediately. I shift myself underneath Coineagan as we fall, catching them before they can crash face first into the stone. They grunt and roll once.
Another bullet rattles Coineagan’s walker.
They shake a fist, even though the ignit’s mount blocks them from Lilias’s group. “Stop shooting Berti! What has she ever done to you!” Lying in the dirt, their legs splayed a little and their top drooping off one shoulder, they look so young, perhaps barely into their twenties.
I grab their walker, tugging it toward them. “Dr. Coineagan, we need to get you to safety.”
“I have never once been safe in my life,” they reply, so profoundly calm despite the gunshots Lilias’s lackeys and the sentries now exchange above our head that I almost believe them. “And it’s Elspeth, El if you must. Dr. Coineagan is my father.”
“Rubem!” Tavish calls to me from the nearest building, his bulk tucked behind a column a bit too thin and skinny to properly protect him.
“I’m safe—find cover!” It’s not a lie, technically. For now.
“What cover?” Tavish shouts back.
Around him, the town seems to agree. Finfolk drag their children into the water, while pixies dart as far from the shore as possible, some taking the plunge with the help of their mer-friends. I peek over the ignit.
Lilias rushes toward me, another three lackeys guarding her from behind while the first two continue firing at the sentries who duck behind the little stone wall. A red hole blooms in the center of one the pixies’ heads, and the woman drops. Her companion screams for aid.
It seems, for the moment, I’m the only aid available. I grit my teeth. If I keep telling myself that this is the last time, one of these times really will be the last, whether I want it to or not. It better not be this one.
I launch over the ignit’s mount, making it into arm’s range of Lilias before any of her lackeys get a shot off. Her lips peel back, her eyes catching fire.
“Thought you’d be in pieces by now.” She punches.
I slip to the side, slamming my elbow across her jaw. “Only emotionally.”
I’ve fought her enough times to feel the difference in my movements. We should be equals, but now I move with a speed that she can’t quite match, each blow pushing her back, slamming her down. With a sudden rush of exhilaration, I realize: I can win this.
Until her lackeys close in around us. Around me, around the ignit, and around the one person who might, maybe, possibly be able to give me back my life.
Dr. Coineagan—Elspeth—clambers up their walker and shouts, “Touch my ignit and I’ll drown you in glitter,” at the five selkies with guns. I’m beginning to heavily doubt the intelligence of scientists at this point.
One of the selkies takes hold of Glenrigg’s ignit and yanks it out of the machine. Its brilliant yellow light vanishes in the depths of a leather satchel. Two of the other four shift their aim to Elspeth.
If the world would turn a little slower, I might see a way to stop them both: the selkie carrying away this safe haven’s only defense and the bullets about to rain down on my last hope. But the triggers are already being pulled.
I vault to Elspeth, shielding their body with my own.
As Lilias’s lackey carries away the Glenrigg ignit, my parasite urges me to follow. I almost give in to it, fear for these people I don’t even know, slamming headfirst into the knowledge that I came here for one thing: to find Elspeth. And this—this is not my problem. I do not have to be this town’s savior, no matter what the absurd creature sharing my body seems to think. Not when that salvation may cost me my only remaining hope and myself along with it.
I rage against my parasite’s urging, rage against everything that tells me to protect this little makeshift town of outcasts, even though it sears through my chest to do it. Slinging Elspeth’s walker under one arm, I push them in front of me and half run, half trip to the town. I expect bullets in my back and the invasion of my parasite as it attempts to cover them up, turning me more into itself with every deliverance. Instead, I hear Lilias shriek.
“Don’t kill him—we need his blood!”
My blood.
Malloch must have realized that Lachlan had taken it and delivered that information to the rebels before Sheona killed them. My stomach churns with an echo of wooziness formed of fear and memory. Whatever use Lilias might find for my shimmering, inhuman blood could not be good. Or, if it were good, at least not moral.
A pair of Lilias’s lackeys sprint at me, but they’re caught in the fire of fresh Glenrigg sentries. It drives the selkies back. With a final unhappy screech, Lilias orders their retreat.
My heart still pounds all the way to the road, my parasite’s fear pulsing in time with mine. Lilias is leaving. But Glenrigg’s ignit will carry her straight past the BA, letting them to take her place. I have to force my lungs open and closed again, resting one hand on the frame of a shop.
