flexing.
“Which way?” she said.
“You really want to know?”
“Yes.” She scowled. “Take me to my father.”
“You won’t like what you find.”
“I will be the judge of that, vachine.”
Vashell chuckled, and sighed. His fingers touched his ruined face, tenderly, and he glanced up, and over, at the raging waters, pointing. “That way.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I am sure, girl!”
“Where does it lead?”
“Why,” Vashell smiled, a demonic vision on his tortured face. “It leads to the Vrekken. And to Nonterrazake beyond.”
Anu stared at him for a while, holding the brass barge steady in a gentle equilibrium against the current. “That cannot be,” she said, finally.
“Why not?”
“Nonterrazake is a myth.”
“It is a reality,” said Vashell, smugly.
“You have been there?”
“It is something I do not wish to discuss, child.” His eyes became hooded.
“I can cause you much pain, and bring you a savage death,” said Anu, face ugly with anger in the snowladen gloom.
Vashell shrugged. “There are some things far worse than death, Anu. That, you will learn. You want me to take you to Kradek-ka, then I will take you to Kradek-ka, although I promise you, you will not thank me for it, nor like the things you learn. But such is the nature of humanity, is it not?” He laughed, then, at his own private joke. “And that of the twisted vampire machines.”
Anu guided the Engineer’s Barge up the river, and as night fell, and the raging torrents grew calm again, she moored the craft in the centre of the wide river in order to gain a few hours’ sleep.
She moved to central chambers below deck, and watched as Alloria made herself comfortable on a narrow bunk. “How do you feel?” asked Anu, and saw the way Alloria looked at her. As if she was a lethal, unpredictable, uncontrollable wild animal. Anu sighed.
“I will be fine once I leave this country,” said Alloria, voice gentle, eyes red-rimmed. Only then did Anu realise she had been crying. “Once I travel home.”
“You are upset?”
“My country is besieged by a savage clockwork race, and my husband must risk his life in battle. Yes, I am upset. I fear my children will be slaughtered. I fear my husband will have his throat cut. But most of all,” she stared hard at Anu, “I fear your people will conquer.”
“I am not part of their war,” said Anu.
“You are one of them.”
“They cast me aside!”
Alloria shrugged, her fear a tangible thing, and Anu realised with great sadness that she had lost Alloria. Alloria had seen the beast raging in Anu’s soul; it had shocked her to the core.
“You are still vachine,” said Alloria, and turned her back on Anu, snuggling under a heavy blanket.
Anu moved back to the upper deck, and checked the bindings on Vashell. With his vachine claws, he would have easily escaped; but now, neutered as he was, a machine vampire gelding, he could do little harm.
“You should let me go,” said Vashell, looking into Anu’s eyes.
“No.”
“I will tell you the way. Draw you a map…in my own blood.” He laughed, and Anu met his gaze. “I do love you, Anu. You know that?”
“You would kill me! You saw me disgraced. You revelled in your power and violent abuse.”
“I have many faults,” said Vashell. Then he gestured to his face, and chuckled again. “You have taught me humility.” His voice grew more serious, emerging as a low growl. “But I do love you. I will always love you. Until the day I die. Until the day you kill me. You thought, back in Silva Valley, I was full of arrogance and hatred and superiority. You were right. I was despicable, and I understand why you spurned my offers of marriage; it wasn’t just your fear at being different, Anu, it was deeper, in your soul, under lock and key.” He sighed, and looked up at the heavy, cloud-filled sky. More snow began to tumble, and it drifted like ash. “We are destined, you and I. To live in a world of mixed love and hate, each strand intertwining around our hearts, our cores.”
He gazed at Anu, eyes filled with tears.
“I will still kill you,” said Anu, with tombstone voice.
“Good! I would not have it any other way. Go to sleep now. I will try nothing, do nothing. Trust me. After all…you took away my claws, you took away my fangs. Don’t you realise? I am like you, Anu. I am neutered. I am an outcast. You turned me into yourself. I can never go back.”
Anu walked down to her cabin, a narrow affair with nothing more than a bunk and brass walls. She locked the door, and realised with horror that Vashell was right. By removing his vachine tools, she had destroyed his rank, his standing, his nobility. She had deformed him from a beautiful vachine. There would be no repair by the Engineers; only terminal condemnation for his very great weakness.
So where would he go? What would he do?
No. Anu had attached Vashell to herself, to her mission, with chains much stronger than love. She had condemned him with a force of exile; an extradition of country, but more importantly, also of race.
The morning was bright and crisp, and snow had fallen lightly during the night, covering the brass barge with a light peppering of white. Vashell uncurled from slumber as Anu crept up the steps, and he stared at her with a bleak smile. Already, his face was healing, skin growing back over his destroyed features; but he would never look the same again. Despite his advanced vachine healing powers, he would be savagely scarred. Anu had, effectively, taken away his handsomeness. Removed his nobility.
Within a few minutes the brass barge was nosing up river, and for the course of the day they came upon more and more tributaries where a decision had to be made on which path to follow. Unfalteringly, Vashell would point, sometimes with a smart comment, other times in brooding silence as his moods swung from savage brutality to almost joyous abandon, as if high on a natural heady cocktail, where he would joke about his ruined features, and mock Anu, saying she was now the only girl for him, and they could breed twisted canker babies together.
As night fell, Anu sat on the deck for a while, huddled in a cloak. Vashell revelled in the cold. Alloria, who had been brooding and silent for the day, returned to her small brass room and huddled under blankets, crying softly to herself. Anu attempted to comfort her, but Alloria had taken to ignoring the young vachine.
“Tell me about Nonterrazake,” said Anu.
“No.”
“Tell me!”
“No!” He laughed. “There are some secrets a man must keep. Some dark truths he must hold to his heart, like spirals of soul; I could tell you, but it would melt your sweet little mind, curl the edges of your heart into blackened wisps of hatred, burn your soul with an eternity hell-fire.”
Anu shrugged. “Will the Harvesters really come?”
“Yes.” Vashell’s tone turned serious. “You should not have done what you did; you have angered the Harvesters beyond reprise. They will never, ever, stop the hunt.”
“Then I will kill them!” Anu snapped, annoyed at Vashell’s negativity.
Vashell shrugged. “When they send five? Ten? A hundred?”
“There are that many?”
“You do not understand what they are,” he said, voice gentle.
“Well, they will have to catch me, first,” snapped Anu, eyes narrowed.
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” said Vashell, scratching at his wounded face and the itching, repairing skin.
“Meaning?”
