A Study of Fiber and Demons Read online

  The bracelet tingled a bit against the hairs on his arm. Was it more prominent than usual, or was he imagining that? "If you can hear me, please tell someone we're trapped here. Sylvestra, Liam, and I. Professor Welling tried to kill us. We got away, but… we're in some cave on the coast, I don't know. On an island, maybe. Farrah, please, you've got to send someone out to find us. Farrah, can you hear me?"

  The tingle from the bracelet sharpened like an electric jolt and warmed under his hand.

  Alim's breath caught. "Farrah?"

  ?????

  He swallowed. No words, just confusion. Not his own, though. Someone was answering his psychic connection.

  But—and he didn't know how he knew this—it wasn't Farrah.

  "Hello?"

  What am I hearing?

  Alim's fingers twitched upon his wrist, wondering the same question back. The question didn't come as words, just… raw intent. Meaning without form, but his mortal brain tried its damnedest to translate it into abstract language.

  "Who's there?"

  Liam took a step closer. "What do you mean? You've connected with someone?" Alim nodded, trying to keep an ear to his own thoughts. "But not your sister?"

  Sylvestra frowned. "But who else could he…?" Her eyes widened as she puzzled out the answer, and she reached to grab Alim's wrist and the bracelet. Liam did so, as well, and the three of them stood in a tight huddle, all with one hand each on the bracelet.

  Alim tried to ignore their antics and focus on his new contact. He could guess what he had managed to commune with, but he wasn't sure on its intentions for them. "Can you… can you help us?"

  Wariness and sympathy rushed over the bond. Are you hurt?

  Alim almost answered no, but he remembered Liam's panic attack, Sylvestra's daring rescue when Liam had nearly drowned, and his own bruises on his hip and side. Even without all that, they were freezing and in need of food and fresh water.

  "Yes. We need rest and shelter."

  Human?

  "Yes. One of our own kind tried to kill us." He couldn't say how demons might feel meeting humans face-to-face, so he supposed it didn't hurt to take the opportunity to vilify Jack if it made the rest of them look more harmless.

  I will come. It will take time; I am hurt, too. But I will help you.

  "Time," the way Alim felt the phrase from their mysterious benefactor, was a relatively short but uncertain span. It expected several minutes, maybe as much as an hour. Longer than comfortable, but Alim supposed they could survive the wait. "Can you find us?"

  I feel it—my fiber. Not far.

  "Thank you. We will wait here."

  The sensation from the bracelet frizzled as the being on the other end refocused its attention away from their mental dialogue, and Alim, Sylvestra, and Liam all slumped against each other. The connection had not been painful, but there was a light-weighted relief once it broke. Alim's legs were shaking, and Liam wrapped an arm around his waist.

  "We have an opportunity to rest," Liam said. "We should take it, as we can't know what this creature's 'help' will entail."

  Alim didn't argue, and together the three of them lowered themselves into a huddled, quivering heap. The rest was welcome, but Alim wasn't sure he would be able to bring himself to stand again. Liam and Sylvestra continued to grip his wrist, as though the effort of letting go was beyond them.

  Alim tried to focus on the warmth of their hands as they waited, even as their grips shut out most of the faint light offered by the glimmering demonweave. Darkness encroached all around them, and Alim had never felt so vulnerable in his life. Not when the Directors' Board had coldly informed him by letter that his dream job had been given to Sylvestra; not when they had called him into the darkest, most severe alcove on campus to inform him that they had been made aware of his bribe-taking. He had been demoted and insulted by his peers and humiliated by his own students, but even the worst day at Pinnacle did not compare to this.

  They might still die. Humans and demons had not been in contact for centuries, except for humans' efforts to collect stray bodily by-product from the demons. If demons had been in the bizarre habit of stealing loose hairs from humans, Alim wasn't sure he would offer to help one in need. He had no notion of how far he could trust the voice he felt on the other end of that connection.

  The bracelet twinged against his skin, echoing back uncertainty. Well, at least he and the demon were starting off on mutual feelings.

  "Do you suppose it might try to harm us?" Liam asked Sylvestra after several minutes of silence that seemed to draw the darkness around them closer.

  "Why would it?"

  "Well, at the risk of being crude, what do demons eat?"

  Sylvestra glared at him. "I'm stripped down to the knickers, but you're still fidgeting about being crude?" She shook her head, clearly too tired to offer up more indignation than that. "Their digestive systems can't process meat. They're entirely herbivorous. Given our surroundings, I expect they mostly eat fungi and sea vegetation. They won't eat us."

  "You think we're safe with these creatures?"

  "I didn't say that."

  Their shared fears must have carried through the demonweave, as Alim felt a faint pique of concern channeling through it. Whatever Liam or Sylvestra's concerns, Alim at least trusted that the demon who produced that fiber was harmless for all the wary curiosity he could feel through the link. Perhaps the others felt it, too, as they settled into a tense silence while they waited for rescue.

  It felt like hours sitting on the cavern floor, shivering against each other. The demon felt his impatience and responded with pulses of Almost, almost, from the bracelet. He could feel the demon's presence as it neared, and with some satisfaction he realized that the demonweave did not require an attunement period to establish telepathy, but proximity to the genetic originator. While that meant it would be worthless for communication between humans, the innate scholar within him reveled at the discovery. He only hoped he would survive the ordeal long enough to record it.

  When a light in the distance illuminated some far wall of the cave, it took Alim a moment to register what he was seeing. A muted white glow cast shadows across crags, crevices, and ledges that filled the cavern, and the light grew in intensity as it neared.

  Here. I am here.

  Even closing in on them, the light was not strong enough for Alim to make out its source until it was nearly upon them. A white orb about the size of his skull suspended above a trio of beings, its light washing out their own natural glow.

  Three demons floated before them. Despite all his study on demon magic and having seen the anatomical diagrams drawn up by Sylvestra and stolen by Liam, as well as the teal demon's corpse, Alim could not help but gape at their appearances.

  They had strange bodies, almost human in proportion on their torsos, but their eight "legs" were shorter and tentacle-like. Although they were half-hidden under skirts of each demon's own weave, Alim could see those legs twisting and writhing, spinning the magic to keep their bodies levitated. Their faces were covered by carapace shells that resembled operatic masks.

  The demon in the center, its toga-like drape the exact shade of orange as Alim's bracelet, drifted forward. Its mask was lined with ridges that made it look like a misshapen human face caught in a perpetual agonized scream. What Alim felt through the fiber, though, was not so unpleasant an emotion.

  Curiosity, like that of a freshman student at the university. Human?

  Alim pulled away from the other two to stand, trying to show deference and gratitude in his posture. The demon tilted its head as he did, and amusement pulsed through their link.

  Oh! Not three heads. Three humans.

  Alim almost laughed. It seemed the ages of separation from each other had left both races mystified by the other.

  The amusement faded as the demon examined Alim more thoroughly. He could not see eyes through the shadowed holes in its carapace mask, but it tilted its head down to scan him. Floating as it was
, it was not much taller than Alim, though its two companions—one draped in fiery red demonweave and the other in rich umber—were a bit larger. They seemed to be guardians of some sort, with their arms held relaxed but ready at their sides, their clawed hands curled into half-formed fists.

  Pain? the orange demon asked, sympathy bleeding across their link.

  "Quite a bit, in fact," Alim said, not sure how to address this helpful creature. "Hungry, as well."

  The verbal expression was likely unnecessary, but he wanted Sylvestra and Liam to hear his end of the conversation. At least spoken word did not appear to alarm the demons, though the orange one turned to its companions to communicate something to them. Without bracelets of their demonweave, Alim could not hear whatever dialogue was going on between them, and they must have had some other means of communication between each other.

  The demon turned back to Alim. We travel to safety—warmth, food. Must walk. Slowly—I am hurt, too.

  Alim sensed the creature's own agony and glanced to its stomach. On its side was a rent in the demonweave that wrapped its body. The shadows cast by the white orb concealed what was beneath the fiber, but Alim imagined it was a laceration. The fibers that they had found in that locked room must have been ripped from the demon's toga when it had been punctured by that jagged metal beam, and the fibers that Feist and her crew had found had been what had bled out from the creature's wound.

  "Alim?" He glanced down at Sylvestra, though her eyes were locked on the demon. If she were frightened or even curious of these creatures, she hid it behind a completely stoic expression.

  "They're taking us somewhere warm with food. But we have to walk."

  Neither Sylvestra or Liam bothered to ask how far.

  Four

  The demons led them further into the subterranean labyrinth, taking them along a downward path that dropped them deeper and deeper into the expansive cavern. Alim was sure the three of them would have, indeed, fallen into some endless crevasse or off a steep ledge if they had continued trying to navigate on their own in the dark. The demons knew the way well and their glowing orb illuminated it, though because they could float, some portions of the path were easier for them than their human charges. Clambering over stony outcrops stung Alim's hands and feet and strained his already-suffering muscles to the point where he wondered how long until his limbs simply fell off, but the hope of a comfortable place to rest and be fed kept him onward without complaint.

  The orange demon tried to communicate some with him as they traveled. He tried to learn its name, but when he asked it responded with a blare of tangled emotions, and he wasn't sure how that translated. He started thinking of it as the Scout, given that it and its dead teal companion must have been exploring that ruin for something. Its brown and red companions he thought of as Sentinel and Watchdog, respectively.

  Scout prodded Alim for information, too, though surprisingly it did not ask how they had gotten into that cave or why. Instead, it asked about humans in general.

  Humans live in the sun?

  "We see the sun every day, yes. Unless it's particularly cloudy."

  Humans eat fish?

  "Some do. Some also eat chickens and cows and lamb."

  ???

  "Animals that live above land. They also see the sun."

  !!!

  Scout's gentle curiosity might have been charming if Alim weren't so worn from the entire day's nonsense. As it was, Alim was relieved to be spared more of Scout's questions when they reached a prominent mineral vein running through a nearby cavern wall. At first, the metal caught Alim's attention because of the intense reflection of light, but as they neared it, he realized that like the demonweave, it had an innate shimmering glow. Even closer, heat radiated off of it.

  Magic to keep warm. We used to live under the sun, too. We adjusted but still need the light, the heat. Scout led them to stand near a wide vein, and Alim inched as close to it as he could without leaning against the wall. Open relief spread across Sylvestra's face as she scooted closer and absorbed the warmth. Liam kept his arms folded and his expression still as he took a position by the vein, as well. I must confer with The Authority. Please wait here with my guardians. Alim nodded to Scout, who drifted off further down the tunnel without them. The orb stayed behind, hovering over Sentinel, but the glow of the veins would be enough to guide Scout on its own.

  "Sylvestra." Alim felt as though he would fall asleep standing up as he basked in the vein's heat, and Liam's abrupt utterance spooked him out of his sleepy daze. Sentinel and Watchdog did not react to Liam, standing as statue-like guardians while they waited for Scout's return. Sylvestra provided about as much reaction.

  "Mistress Geruz."

  She groaned and closed her eyes. "What, Liam?"

  Liam licked his lips before he continued, averting his gaze toward the floor. "I still owe you my thanks. You saved my life."

  "I couldn't let you die." Her answer was barely audible, as though it took the final ounces of her energy to say it.

  Liam did not take her obvious exhaustion as a signal to end the conversation. "You could have."

  "I'm not Jack." She crossed her arms over her chest, curling in on herself a bit. "You weren't entirely wrong in your accusations. About my research, and the lengths I went to in order to obtain the… materials." Alim wasn't sure if Sentinel and Watchdog could actually understand anything they said, but it was wise of Sylvestra not to directly reference the demon cadavers, regardless. "Looking back, I see how much of an idealist I was when I first started working at Pinnacle. I thought pursuit of knowledge was what mattered most, that if I could just keep that foremost in my intentions, I would excel as a scholar. All of the politicking was quick to teach me otherwise.

  "For a while, I resented who I used to be, thinking she was a naïve fool out of touch with reality. These days, I miss her. I'm tired of being disillusioned with myself for the things I do to get ahead in the university. So, no, Liam. I couldn't have let you die."

  "I am grateful, regardless." Liam's gaze shifted to Alim, and the sudden eye contact startled Alim. "And to you, as well."

  Alim had almost forgotten the scene from after they escaped the pod. How long ago had that been? Two hours? Four? Although Liam now stood with his typical posturing surety, bedraggled though he was, Alim's mind returned to when he had been struggling to breathe or move, collapsed on the ground and vulnerable in Alim's arms. Alim thought he should have rejoiced in the memory of seeing his worst enemy brought so low, but all he could think of was how helpless either of them had been in the face of Liam's suffering. Liam might have fainted from hyperventilating, hit his head on the stone ledge or been left limp and unmovable if it hadn't been for Alim holding and soothing him.

  Liam held his gaze as though searching for something Alim's eyes. Alim noticed the blue flecks in Liam's irises, and irritation flared up yet again at Liam's absurd rugged handsomeness. The irritation did not come entirely from envy this time, though.

  Alim couldn't look away from Liam's gaze, and that made him as uncomfortable as any jealousy could.

  "Don't mention it."

  "I wanted you to know—"

  "I was not trying to be demure. Do not mention it."

  Liam glanced away, but a small smirk crept over his lips. "May I at least express my gratitude that we have all survived this ordeal?"

  "So far," Sylvestra said, but Alim was relieved to hear a hint of her typical dry wit sneak into the brief remark.

  Scout returned shortly, carrying in its hands some beige lumps. It approached Alim and held out an offering. He took a sample without fully understanding, and Scout offered the same to Liam and Sylvestra. While Alim turned the lump in his hands, observing the loaf's spongy density, Scout pantomimed an eating gesture toward its own calcified face. He did wonder how the demons got food into their mouths through the carapace masks, but the pull of hunger distracted from his scholarly curiosity. Taking Scout's suggestion, he brought the loaf to his mouth a
nd took a tentative bite.

  It was a bit soggy and rubbery, but it did not hold any strong taste to offend his senses. It hit his stomach like a brick, and a mixture of faint queasiness and instant relief triggered from the weight in his gut. Liam and Sylvestra began nibbling on their own morsels as Scout reported to Alim.

  The Authority is nervous about human presence. We must present you. You will clean first, more food later, but must explain to the Authority why you are here.

  "That sounds more than fair." Even so, he dreaded what this Authority might determine for them if it took their presence as a threat.

  We will continue into our land. Be good, please. Scout's simple trust of them wounded Alim. He didn't deserve it. Scout only asked that these strangers behave themselves as it offered them hospitality, and hours earlier they had carted off Scout's dead friend to utilize as a means for the university to profit.

  Scout caught Alim's guilt over the bond and tilted its head. My friend is gone. You did not kill. You are still alive—I can help you.

  Was Scout projecting its helplessness to protect its friend onto them? How very human of it.

  "That's kind of you."

  We continue. Soon you will have rest, warmth. Soon wasn't soon enough for Alim, but they had little other option than to follow as the demons continued leading them down further into the earth.

  *~*~*

  Mineral veins streaked the walls of the demon city in intricate, curling patterns which offered warmth to the tiered, cavernous settlement. It was not populated like a human city, with only a couple dozen demons drifting along the stone walkways, occasionally stopping next to another to converse in silent communication. A few turned their masked faces toward Scout and its human charges as they were led through the city, but the escort soon turned them into a "building" of sorts cut into a nearby cave wall.

  The series of chambers crudely resembled a house or even a hotel, with painted walls and furnished rooms and curtained openings leading from one chamber to the next. Pieces of furniture—like half-guessed facsimiles of a human's notion of tables and chairs—were crafted from what looked like scrap driftwood and painted or upholstered in appropriately aquatic-themed shades of violets and blues. Surprisingly, the cloth of the furnishings did not appear to be demonweave, but rather simple linen. Where had the demons gotten that?