Laura Gilman - Blood from Stone

*Follow me* A visual with the words, a thick black anvil of a storm cloud opening up, a stovepipe chimney down into the heart of the storm, swirling around her with all the power of The Alchemist’s overpowered, overfull brain.

She grabbed the kid with both hands, keeping him down on the ground with her, trying to send some reassurance, and leaped into the maelstrom.

Inside, there was a second of calm, the winds howling around outside them, and then monsters leaped at her, claws black and bloody, their teeth serrated and their scales slick with oily, viscous substances she didn’t want to think about. Once they would have terrified her; once they would have made her run like hell.

She had walked on the wrong side of madness since then. She had led people to their deaths, had taken lives from the undeserving, and decided who was deserving and who was not.

Her own monsters inside were just as frightening as anything Max carried. Worse, because she had birthed them.

*You know nothing* Max spat, even as he was laying his own current over hers, forcing them to integrate and work together. *You understand nothing.* The monsters grabbed onto her, digging their claws in, their bilious blood dripping into her veins, sending directions of what to do and how to do it directly to her core. It was a little like rape, and a lot like school, and entirely horrible. That was exactly the impact he intended, she was pretty sure. Bastard.

Her only consolation was the thought that whatever she was seeing, the guys after them were probably getting a taste of the same feedback in their un Talented skulls, under the force of Max’s wild energy. She hoped that they did shit their pants, and then some.

Whatever they were getting, it was working. The bullets didn’t so much miss them as decide to veer erratically away from them, zinging into trees and puffing up dirt where they hit the ground. If they could hold out…no, they couldn’t. The goons might run out of bullets, and the cops might show up, but that wasn’t going to solve the problem of getting the hell out of here.

Her brain formed the thought, but Max’s finished it.

*now* was the only warning they got, and the ground moved under their feet, disappearing into the storm along with sound and sight, smell and taste. They did not exist, except in Max’s overstimulated, current-overrun mind, his will the only thing holding them in reality.

And then the ground dropped in under their feet, their stomachs dropped in after them, and sensation returned.

Wren threw up.

So, she was oddly reassured to note, did the kid.

“Fool brat. Fool. Deserve to get herself killed.”

Max was behind them, his clothing filthy, his shoulder-length white hair literally standing on end from the static he was generating.

“You’re not listening. You never listen, you didn’t listen and then you listen to someone else. You think that gets overlooked? Never diss crazy people, little girl. ’Specially when they crazy for you. You came back?” he spat. “You almost died. Brain’s dead, there is no coming back. Back is the new front and front and center means get the hell back.”

He was being typically cryptic, and she didn’t have the energy to argue with him. Sprawled on the floor—tile, black-and-white squares, the smell of disinfectant in the air, she determined from the clues that the old bastard had translocated them into some bathroom somewhere—she didn’t have the energy to do anything more than wipe her mouth and blink the tears from her eyes.

“You okay, kid?” she asked instead, turning her head to look at the boy.

He sat in a puddle of his own vomit, and looked at her with eyes that were huge, blue, and scared.

“No.”

“Smart kid,” Max observed, calming down a little, smoothing his hair down with hands that crackled with current and just made things worse. “Might actually survive to grow some hair, that one. Might. Maybe.”

“I don’t like him,” the kid told Wren.

“Nobody does, kid,” she said, hauling herself up to her knees and testing if she felt strong enough to get all the way up yet or not. “But he just saved our asses. Say thank you.”

The kid looked up at Max and, politely, said “Thank you.”

“Didn’t do it for you. Or for you, either,” he added irritably, when Wren started to say something. “Did it for…neveryou-mind. Just can’t stand Nulls think they got the right to interfere in our business.”

Wren shook her head, too tired to respond to that, either. Max had been a bigot when he was sane, too. The first time she had met him, Neezer had warned her…

Neezer.

For some reason, the “sense” of her old mentor was stronger than it had been in years. She had begun to forget what he looked and sounded like, over the past few years, but suddenly the memories were all there again, strong and clear. John Ebeneezer had been the one to tell her what she was, train her how to use current safely, had got her through most of high school without failing out or cracking up—and then disappeared when he felt himself start to wizz, rather than risk her safety with his madness.

She had yet to forgive him for that. Especially now, knowing what she knew.

She could almost see him, sitting behind his desk in the lab, marking papers, looking up to utter some annoyingly right bit of wisdom she was too much of a teenager to appreciate….

Wren froze the memory in midprogress, and turned to stare at Max. She sniffed at him once, twice, like a dog scenting a bone. Familiar. Familiar in a way the body never forgot, the mind never let go of.

The grizzled old wizzart took a step backward. The wrinkles around his bright eyes deepened, and his lips drew back from rotted old teeth.

“Where. Is. He?”

The words were growled out, her voice dropping a full octave, making the kid forget his own misery long enough to scoot away from both of the adults, his blue eyes wide.

She had the pleasure of seeing uncertainty and a smidge of caution flicker in Max’s eyes. “I don’t—”

“Max. Where. Is. He.” A definite growl now, edged and hungry. She could sense the current-signature all over the old man now that she was looking, the specific flavor of someone else’s magic. Someone not Max, and not her, but familiar all the same. Neezer. Neezer had been near him, had worked current around him. Recently.

In the bedrock, in those woods. Hidden, wizzed: but alive.

Neezer was alive.

“Old man, you tell me…”

“No.” He could growl better than she could. “Told you to go. Shouldn’t have been there. Shouldn’t have known. Won’t go back, too late now. Gone. Keeps moving. Pissed at you, girl.” Max glared at her, and like a sea change, or clouds moving, there was a spark of sanity in those eyes again, and his words were clear and to the point.

“He doesn’t want to see you, brat. He doesn’t want you to see him. You grok?”

Knowledge hit her like a brick to the head. Oh yes, she understood. Didn’t mean she liked it. Or that she was going to accept it. “It doesn’t have to be that way,” she said softly.

“Yeah. It does. You escaped. Good for you, maybe. But you did it your way. Us, we are what we are. And we’re dangerous, brat. You had your chance, maybe, and didn’t take it. School’s over. So stop looking for us.”

“I wasn’t looking for you, you fell over me!” she said, distracted by his comment, the way he had probably intended. Damn Max: crazy or not he knew how to play her.

“Pish.” The sanity faded, and the wizzart was back. “Men’s room. Pretty thing. You wanna see my dick, you’re sprawled on the floor like that?”

If he was trying to shock her with being crude, he needed to work up better material than that. But the point was made: she wasn’t going to get anything more out of him on anything useful, and going back to the site wasn’t going to turn up Neezer—Max was right, by now he had moved on, or hidden himself again.