swipe of obsidian angled from left shoulder to right rib, gleaming as though the paint’s still wet, curved and wickedly pointed in the shape of an ogrillo’s fighting claw.
I know that design.
Okay. I take it back. I take it all back. Fuck
Now I’m fucking
“Wow.”
I shake my head and start to laugh. I can’t help myself. Out of all the clans in the whole fucking Boedecken-
Those are
I never even knew what maximum bad
Because I guess I just found out.
GIFT
And you know already it’s not a dream.
You know it by the smell of scorched pig fat trailing up from the lamp’s smoking wick. You know it by the dirty yellow light leaking in through the veiny grease-smeared parchment that covers the shack’s lone window, by the grey splinters in the weathered plank door on trestles that passes for a table, by the mildewblackened straw humped into a pair of beds back by the earth-wall hearth.
But you know only that this is no dream; you have not yet guessed that this is My Gift to you.
There is the feel of alien muscles, too long and hard for human; your arms are now a double-span longer than your legs. Your pebbled hide slides over ribs too heavy, not flexible enough, guarding a heart that beats too hard and too slow. Pale northern sun barely warms your spinal ridge through the heavy leather of your tunic. Your trifid upper lip parts around your upcurved tusks and you growl,
The smaller of the two ogrillo studs inside swivels on his stool till his back is to you. His spinal ridge is bent like a bow: pup rickets, maybe. His skull crest is bald and bleached with age.
The big one snorts.
You take a step, clearing the doorway.
Both studs go still. They stare at you so they won’t look at each other.
Finally the hunchback says,
You shrug.
Your heart thumps into a heavier cadence that swells your brow ridges with angry blood, and you look down at your arms, at the sleeves of your tunic; sleeves longer than any ogrillo ever wears, sleeves so long they’d foul your fighting claws. If you had fighting claws.
Your wrists are empty as a human’s. Blank except for wads of scar tissue.
The stumps of your shame.
You give your shame the answer you carry in a sheath sewn inside your tunic: an SPEF KA-BAR, seven inches of matte-black chrome steel blade so sharp that just its pressure against the side of the big one’s neck draws a thin chain of blood-beads gemlike along its edge.
The hunchback rises, slow, hands up and open, the human gesture of surrender. His fighting claws fold along his forearms.
The hunchback considers this.
Your eyes flick toward the window, instinctively, to check the light and gauge the hour, just a flick, less than an eyeblink, but they knew you’d do it and the big one jerks his head back from your blade and one fighting claw jams for your groin while his other slashes for the forearm tendons of your knife hand. You twist sharp enough to knock the groin stab aside, but you feel the tug below your navel and a sudden flood scalds your crotch and thickens the air with sweet hot blood. You flick the KA-BAR in a short arc and the blade sticks in bone; the big one howls and wrenches his arm away into the table and it collapses and he goes with it. The little one lunges fast as a pro but your other hand comes out full of Automag and a single squeeze of burstfire unlaces his belly and blows him spinning backward to crash into the shack wall.
The parchment window rips. Sunlight stabs a curl of gunsmoke.
A continuous clang sings in your ears.
The big one cowers, kneeling, tears painting crimson streaks along his snout. The hunchback sits crumpled against the wall, cursing in a low, steady monotone while he tries to hold his guts in place with both hands.
You step over to him, Automag leveled on the big one.
He stares through you.
You shrug.
His eyes drift shut.
