I declined to shake. “How do you know about reavers?”
I found his sigh eerily familiar. It so closely echoed the one Vayl put to use after I’d lost my temper. Usually it was followed by words like “How can you stare through the scope of a rifle for three hours without saying a word and yet, as soon as you hit traffic, begin yelling? Like that. Can you be sure that man is an idiot? Maybe he has low blood sugar. And that woman you just compared to a female dog. Perhaps she just learned her husband is in the hospital and she is rushing to be with him.”
I’m sure the cosmos has a greater purpose for surrounding me with patient people. But mostly it just makes me want to scream. Like now, while I waited for Asha Vasta to get the lead out and make with the explanations. While he pondered his reply I took another look upstairs, past the drab, window-filled walls of an old apartment building. There. A blur of movement out of the corner of my eye, but nothing more concrete. “I’ve never heard of the mahghul,” I said.
“I am not surprised. Though quite ancient, they have been confined by their creator to this land alone.” I thought he was going to go into more detail about the mahghuls’ maker, but he just shook his head sadly. “I am afraid they have found abundant fodder from which to feed and have, therefore, thrived when otherwise they might have perished.”
“So what are they?”
“They are parasitic fiends, seen by humans only when their blood has run. They can smell a murder coming days, sometimes even weeks, before it occurs. They flock to the rooftops, waiting, watching. But more than that. Making the husband think,
My wife has looked at another man
. Making the business partner suspect,
The books are unbalanced because I am being cheated
. Making the daughter believe,
There will never be an end to my misery. I might as well die
.”
“You can’t seriously be telling me some sort of otherworldly ambulance chaser makes people kill each other. Or themselves. Whatever happened to freedom of choice?”
“Certainly their suggestions would never work if people’s minds were not already open. If they were not already willing to listen.” Asha shook his head. “You would not believe how many are.”
I glared up into the darkness. “Why can’t I see them?”
After all, I’m not quite human anymore
. And then, to soothe the savage tear that thought put in my heart,
at least in the ways that don’t matter
.
“It is easier if you know their favorite roosting spots. There. Right at the corner of that roof, where it juts out slightly. Do you see?”
I couldn’t have without the extra visual acuity I’d gained by donating blood, and gaining power, from Vayl. And even then I got more of an impression than an actual photo image. Cat size. Bat wings. Alarming foot speed, aided by four muscular legs accentuated by impressive talons.
“What are those spikes beneath their eyes?” I asked.
“Their most terrifying aspect. In the moments of murder, the mahghul drive the spikes into the brains of both the victim and the murderer, and through them feed off the fury, the terror, all strong emotions such violence invokes. They leave no memory of their own attack. And so they can follow a murderer for years before the authorities put an end to their frenzy.”
“How do you fight them?”
“With you it is always the fight, is it not?”
“How —”
He held up a finger, signaling he hadn’t finished his thought. “Sometimes the best way to win a brawl is never to begin it in the first place.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “People are so good at that.”
“I can see why Raoul chose you.”
I took a step back. “You know Raoul?” I grabbed his shirt and yanked him into the recessed doorway of the nearest store, a bakery that looked like it had been plucked out of the thirties, with bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling and day-old breads displayed in the dusty window. Within seconds I’d pulled my bola and stuck the tip of the blade to the base of his throat. “You’re working for the Magistrate, aren’t you? What’s your plan, huh? Do you really think Raoul gives a shit whether or not one of his peons bites the bullet? He’s got thousands like me.” Well, at least one that I knew of.
Asha’s eyes, colored a sickly green by my night vision, rounded with alarm. “The mahghul,” he whispered. The flap of wings, the scratch of claws on concrete, confirmed his warning. “Jasmine, do not bring this plague upon yourself.”
“What makes you think you’ll be spared?”
“I am Amanha Szeya.”
“What’s that mean?”
“They sucked me dry long ago.”
Chapter Fourteen
