Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Thirty

 Notes: Meet the patriarch of the family! Jeez, what a dick.

Title: Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Thirty

***

Chapter Thirty

 

Photo by Franco Derbartolo

Touchdown is bumpy, made more so by the fact that Nephele hasn’t stopped ranting since Angelo’s call. She can’t talk, sure, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t accompanied her silent screams with pacing back and forth, smashing everything she can pick up, and making her familiars so jittery that Ciro ends up covered in rats just as an afterthought, the creatures quivering in their fur as their mistress rages. Ciro stays as still as he can, and his raven keeps a sharp eye out and pecks any of the little beasts who get too nippy. His arm is still clamped and bleeding, but the pain is a distant thing at this point.

Richard is the one having a harder time of it. His familiar is already irritated thanks to her wounds, and she’s not in the mood to put up with being the climbing gym for a horde of rats. Her snarls get louder and louder, and right before they land she finally breaks and crunches one of the offending rats in her jaws, then flings it against the wall.

Richard pales. The more familiars you have, the easier it is to let their passing go; he worked for Magnus for years, and Magnus hardly even noticed when you accidentally stepped on one of his cockroaches. Nephele is different, though. She’s insanely possessive, literally and figuratively, and the second her familiar hits the ground and dissipates she’s got a blade of pure power in one hand and is driving it toward Richard’s chest with a twisted expression of fury on her face. Richard can’t react fast enough to gather his magic against the attack, and Ciro is sure he’s about to see the man murdered in front of him.

Instead, the blade strikes Richard’s chest, cuts through his suit, and then vanishes into nothing. Nephele’s empty fist hits him instead, and for a brief moment she’s stunned speechless—genuinely speechless instead of forcibly so.

Richard manages a smile. “I’d not try that again if I were you, Miss.”

She mouths something that neither of them can make out, looks around, then stamps her foot when she sees the remains of her phone. Finally, she gathers her rats and makes them spell out on the floor HOW.

“You’ll have to ask your uncle that.” Richard glanced at his watch, then outside. “We’re almost to Boston. You’d better sit for the landing, Miss.”

She snarls silently at him, then points to her former seat. Richard, apparently not interested in pushing his luck any further, goes there, and Nephele throws herself into his chair and grabs Ciro’s free hand in both of hers. She weaves their fingers together and puts their hands on her chest, where he can feel her rapid heartbeat beneath skin and bone.

He looks at her, and she mouths, slowly and clearly, YOU ARE MINE.

We’ll see. He doesn’t say anything back, and they land in silence a few minutes later.

Richard is the first off the plane. Nephele takes a moment to push her hair back from her face and straighten her jacket before they face the landing party; she’s not immune to wanting to make a good impression on Victor. Still holding onto Ciro, she stands and leads them off the plane, her wave of familiars flowing in the wake. The Doberman, at least, finally lets go once they get to the ladder, and Ciro winces in relief and pain as the release of pressure leads to a surge of pins and needles.

The  Doberman runs ahead to the car waiting for them on the tarmac a few dozen meters away. It’s a long black limousine SUV, incredibly ostentatious. Ciro used to ride around in them all the time, but now he can hardly look at it without cringing. To think, this is what his father decides to spend his wealth on; riding around in a dick-mobile that screams compensation. His familiar pecks his forehead, and Ciro realizes he’s letting his emotions show on his face.

Pack it back in. Put it all away. He restores as much calm as he can and, blood still dripping from three of his fingers, follows Nephele into the back of the limousine where the Doberman had already leapt up inside. Richard gives Ciro a slow smirk before closing the door behind him, whispers, “Don’t worry, we won’t forget the girl,” and then there’s nowhere for his eyes to go except—

“Son.”

Victor Hambly has an entire row to himself in the back, one familiar resting on the seat beside him with its paws tucked together like a sphinx, the other sitting at his feet. Nephele’s rats seem incapable of crossing a line in the middle of the floor, leaving them crowding in on their side of the car. Victor, in a sharp black suit, white shirt, and red tie, whiskey glass in one hand while the other strokes the edges of his neatly trimmed goatee, looks like he could be a shoe-in for a Satan lookalike contest. The dogs really complete the image.

He’s staring at Ciro with an expression that Ciro doesn’t quite know how to parse. It’s not satisfied, exactly, or angry, or even unhappy. It’s…the closest he can come to it is “calculating.” “Back at last,” he says as they sit and the limo starts up. “I’ve gone to a lot of trouble over you these past six months, Cyrus.”

Ciro doesn’t speak. Usually that’s the best way to avoid his father’s ire, but in this case it backfires.

“Nothing to say for yourself, then?” Victor drawls before taking a slow sip from his glass. “Nothing to say about disrupting the entire family for your own selfish purposes? For hurting our bottom line so badly that I personally had to go back into the field so that we were able to fulfil our obligations? Do you know how badly you humiliated me, son?”

Ciro can guess. Oh, he can guess all too well. “You had Nephele,” he points out, because at this point he’s not going to escape punishment so he might as well earn it. “You always called her ‘the son I never had’ when you talked about her to me.” When he was young, hearing that had been like being stabbed in the heart, but Ciro had learned a lot about love and hate since then. He’d turned the corner to loving disappointing his father a long time ago, but it was especially satisfying to mess with him like this, when he knew full well Nephele was worse at the work than he was. “What, she wasn’t good enough?”

Nephele turns a betrayed expression on Ciro, her nails digging roughly into where she’s gripping his hand. Victor, to everyone’s surprise, starts to laugh.

“Listen to you,” he says with a chuckle. “Learning to play the game at last. If you’d spent more time learning how to use people when you lived at home, you’d have come so much farther in my esteem, my trust. We might even have been able to come to an agreement about the things that seem to mean so much to you.”

Ciro goes still while Nephele’s jaw drops in shock. It’s all lies, of course; he can’t trust anything Victor says to him, and yet…it shocking to hear that anything he’s ever done in terms of his father’s approval.

“And you.” He turns a glare on Nephele that has her shrinking back against the seat. “I didn’t send you out to California to start wildfires and piss off our allies.” Her eyes bug out in outrage, but Victor ignores it. “I could do something about that magic tickling your throat, but I think you’re better served keeping it for a while. Let it be an object lesson, Nephele—for both of us. You need to learn that there are limits to what people more powerful than you will put up with, and I…” He looks back at Ciro and smiles thinly. “I needed to learn that my son might be a better bargaining chip than I ever imagined he could be before.

“We’ll be home soon,” he says, pivoting effortlessly. “You’re clearly low on magic, Cyrus, so I probably don’t have to say this, but I will anyway—don’t try anything. No spells, no cantrips, no sneaking or spying with your bird. Nothing in the Tower. If I catch you fucking around, I’ll give you a permanent escort.” He nods at the dog sitting in front of him.

“We’ve got a lot of catching up to do, son. I expect honesty.”

Or else.

 

Hadrian's Colony: Blobby Interlude

 Notes: I just had to. Blobby needs his day in court, so to speak ;)

Title: Hadrian's Colony: Interlude: Blobby

***

Interlude: Blobby

 

Photo by Neequolah Creative Works

It was hard being so small. Pieces of pieces, barely whole long enough to know what whole was before pieces of pieces again. New forms to hold onto, to display the functionality of, to pretend to be so Kieron was okay. Blobby didn’t understand the idea of “minding” doing something, really; he didn’t mind taking any shape or splitting himself into smalls over and over and over again if it was what Kieron needed, but it was hard to keep track of all those smalls, especially when he had to split them all up.

Strong core programming, Maker had told Blobby when he was building him, was essential when it came to proper functionality. Plenty of bots made with impressive capabilities failed when their AI-infrastructure couldn’t properly link motion and intention, or when their option assessment was improperly adjusted or too broad, and they got what he called “analysis paralysis.” It was better to start small, Maker said. Start with just a few core modules and build out from there.

Maker had given Blobby three core modules. The first was “Do no harm to others.” There were a few caveats built into that one, though, most of them revolving around the second core module, which was “Do no harm to yourself.” “Doing” was loosely described—it included things like allowing himself to be damaged intentionally by someone else when he could easily avoid it, even if it contradicted their instructions. Blobby, like his sisters, was designed to become more of an independent thinker over time, and his early experiences would shape the person he became.

The final core module was “Prioritize the safety of your family.” “Family” was listed as Maker, Kieron, Catalina/Catie, and Lizzie. Secondary priority was given to entities he’d never met before named Xilinn and Pol, and tertiary priority was given to Ryu.

“Safety” was very broadly defined. It encompassed both preventive maintenance for family members and obedience to their instructions. Given that most of Blobby’s time had been spent in Kieron’s company, Kieron’s orders and preventive maintenance was currently top priority.

And Kieron had a lot to say. At first, leaving a piece of himself with Kieron while the rest of him was put into this eight-by-twelve-by-twelve-inch storage locker, which he’d expanded to fill completely, felt like a violation of Module Two, but now Blobby understood the wisdom in Kieron’s instructions.

They were in a place that severely threatened modules Two and Three. Blobby didn’t know how to tell if a place could be considered threatening on his own, but Kieron knew. He’d kept a piece of Blobby for their safety, and his instructions were very clear.

It was time to find a way out of this place, ideally without violating any of the core modules. But if he did have to violate a core module, Blobby knew which one it would be.

.. ._.. _ _ _ …_ . _._ _ _ _ _ .._

Morse code was an ancient human form of communication that was outdated and nearly useless in modern society, according to many of the thought-pieces that rustled around in Blobby’s sociological matrix. But Maker had found it important to include anyway, and now Blobby knew why. It was a means of communicating with a person when all other means were cut off, as long as that person was smart like Kieron and knew how to use it. .. ._.. _ _ _ …_ . _._ _ _ _ _ .._

I love you.

Blobby wasn’t sure he knew what love was yet. He was still developing his understanding of emotions and had nothing near the vast networks and matrices that Catie and Lizzie did, linkages upon linkages giving a depth to their emotions that Blobby could only dream of, if he knew what dreaming was. But love…he thought of the first thing he felt when Maker installed his visual nodes and Blobby could see him for the first time. He thought of how he felt when he first connected to Catie’s matrix and, by extension, to Lizzie’s, and how bright and sparkly they felt. He thought of how he failed over and over at walking, and how Kieron had reached down and taken some of his pieces in hand to help stabilize him. Gentle touch, a smile, the warmth of human body heat as Kieron held him close, protected him as best he could, helped him understand what was going on.

It was like every piece of Blobby had reoriented toward the sensation that he now associated with Kieron, his own true north. Kieron needed his help. Module Three was his top priority, but more than that, Blobby felt like he had a sensory tide within his form, one that ached to be back with Kieron. Was that love?

It was if Blobby said it was.

..  .-.. --- ...- .  -.-- --- ..-  - --- ---

Now, to get out of here and start investigating. The first thing to do was handle the lock and the pressure sensor in the drawer. Blobby focused on his own construction, chose the smallest proportion of himself he thought he could do without if necessary, and began to divide it.

Smaller and smaller, giving each new piece just enough components to remain responsive to the programming, then smaller yet, making tiny pieces of himself with inert components attached to the mainframe that they could use to cut and cling, shift and stall. The first thing he did was infiltrate the pressure sensor, which was surprisingly easy to do—it was a simple switch on the bottom of the drawer, and only took a tiny percentage of his new pieces to jam into thinking the pressure was constant no matter what was in the box.

The lock came next. That was harder, but Blobby figured it out quickly enough by adding sensory capabilities back into some of his tiniest pieces and enacting the AI-infiltration protocols that he hadn’t understood the purpose of before right now. A second later, he discovered the ID file for the drawer and activated it. The drawer popped open approximately one inch.

Blobby extended a tiny sensor and looked around. The room in which he was being kept had two cameras inside of it, and his drawer was visible to one of them. He calculated the angles of the camera’s vision and determined that, if he exited via the far left side of the drawer in pieces no larger than half an inch thick, he would be able to escape with a high probability of success. Once he was out, he could divide and follow Kieron’s rough schematic in order to scout the best way to get them out of the compound.

It felt—good, he was pretty sure was the emotion, a solid and steady one that seemed to burnish every part of himself just a bit inside as he began his escape. Bit by bit, piece by piece, he was doing great until—

It felt like stumbling when taking a step. Too many pieces pushed out at once, and Blobby tumbled to the floor in a heap, the drawer popping all the way open. He reached up and shut it quickly, but he could already tell once of the sensors was going off. He followed the code back to the outcome of that and saw that it meant that soon, a person would come for a physical check of the room.

Wow, that was great! What a fantastic shortcut to getting out of here. Blobby would have to remember for future reference. He settled into an innocuous pile in the corner right by the door and waited for the person to arrive.

Module Three would not be denied.

 

Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Twenty-Nine

 Notes: What's this, a kerfuffle in the air? A hint of something golden and delicious? Could be good!

Title: Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Twenty-Nine

***

Chapter Twenty-Nine

 

 

Photo by Anna Kozakova

It gets worse on the plane.

There are so many rats that Ciro can’t count them all. Rats scampering across the floor, rats on top of the six seats in the main compartment of the plane, rats walking over his feet as he’s guided to his chair by a very impatient Richard. They stink of Nephele’s magic, and Ciro’s raven hops on top of his head in an effort to distance itself from them.

The rats aren’t the worst of it, though. That’s reserved for the Doberman waiting for Ciro beside the chair that always used to be his when they flew. The second he sees it he instinctively freezes; he hates that he does, but he can’t help it. He hears Richard scoff behind him, then shove him forward with a muttered, “You knew it was coming.”

He did. He does, he just wasn’t ready to think about it. Nephele’s presence might feel like a punishment, but his father doesn’t see it like that. To Victor Hambly, the best punishments are the ones that leave marks.

“Sit down,” Richard says, and his cougar coughs out a warning. He sits, hoping the numbness sticks once the real pain starts.

Nephele sits down across from him, a frown on her face. “I don’t like this part,” she says petulantly as Richard sits down right next to Ciro, boxing him in. “Uncle Victor doesn’t have to do this. Ciro is mine, I should be the one to decide what punishment he gets.”

“You don’t like it, then take it up with him.” Rats start to swarm Richard, but a single growl from the Doberman familiar stops them in their tracks.

Nephele’s familiars kill by overwhelming their targets. Uncle Magnus’s familiars couldn’t even be used for murder, not unless they carried poison or were transformed into pure magic at the last moment. It’s the same for Ciro, but Victor…any one of his familiars can kill a person. Ciro’s seen them do it. And they absolutely wreck familiars. One Doberman against a horde of rats should be a foregone conclusion, but Victor’s dogs have the same sense of iron determination as their witch does.

Nephele wouldn’t be able to stop the Doberman before it killed too many of her familiars for her to stay conscious, and if Victor wanted to, he could have it bite right through her throat before she could stop him. Ciro’s options are even more limited.

He keeps his eyes on his lap as he extends his right arm. The Doberman sniffs it briefly, dismissively almost, before opening its long jaw and sinking its teeth into his forearm. Into it, and the combination of painful pressure and the agonizingly sharp bite cutting through his skin brings tears to Ciro’s eyes. He gasps, and Nephele shifts uncomfortably in her seat, but Richard is watching him like he’s the best show the man has ever seen.

“Tell the pilot to go already,” she says petulantly, and soon enough they’re taking off. Ciro doesn’t spare a glance for the distant ground; he can’t afford to think about the place he’s leaving for good. He can’t quite help it, though. Angelo. For the briefest moment, he lets himself think about his lover’s golden magic and his warm, tender hands.

To Ciro’s surprise, the pain in his arm recedes a little. He immediately sends his thoughts up to his magic—don’t. Don’t waste your energy on me. We’ll need all of it once we get back to the tower. He gets a careful impression of It’s not me from the raven, which…how is that possible? There’s no other place the magic could come from. It’s not Nephele making things more comfortable for him; she knows better than to test Victor that way. She’s carefully ignoring the situation instead, playing with her phone in one hand while the other tap-tap-taps on the armrest, clawlike nails beating an irritated tattoo.

Ciro breathes deep and closes his eyes. He hears a derisive noise from Richard and ignores it; let the man think he’s doing everything he can to bear the pain. Instead, he’s turning his mind and magic on the wound itself, testing it for influence. What’s going on here? He can feel blood drip from his arm onto the floor, the rough pressure of the Doberman’s tongue, the points of the teeth and the burn of the bite, and yet…something is staving off the worst of the sensation. He’s damaged, but it isn’t consuming his mind. Why?

All of a sudden his raven leans over and pecks him right in the middle of his forehead. The answer hits him like a rush.

Angelo. This is Angelo’s magic. He’s sure of it even though he can’t parse it out from his own, can’t feel the thread laying on him. He knows it’s there now, though. Angelo is doing his best to protect him even though they’re miles apart.

How long will it last? Is it a conscious spell, or an aftereffect of their intimacy? Can Angelo take it away? Can it be used to track him? God, please don’t let it be something that another witch can use to track him. Ciro can handle giving himself up to his family, just barely; he’s going to do everything he can for Maria, even though he fears the worst. But Angelo…well, it would be like giving Annette over to them, except even more wrenching because while Ciro loves Annette, he’s fucking in love with Angelo.

Don’t hurt yourself for me. I couldn’t stand it. Maybe Angelo can’t stand it either. Maybe they’re a pair of self-sacrificing idiots. Maybe—

Nephele’s phone rings. “Turn that off when we’re in the air,” Richard grouses.

“Shut up, it’s not the noughties anymore,” she snaps back. Ciro opens his eyes and sees her glaring down at her phone. “I don’t know this number.”

“You’ve got telemarketers calling you at thirty thousand feet? You—”

“It’s not a fucking telemarketer! No one outside the family should have this number,” Nephele replies. After a second, she answers the call. “Who is this?”

Ciro can’t hear what the person on the other end is saying, but the way Nephele’s eyes light up is indicator enough. “Oh, Mr. Fabroa! Fancy hearing from you!”

Oh fuck, no! Angelo is on the phone? Ciro tries to reach over and grab it, but the Doberman growls and bites down harder, holding him firmly in place.

“I suppose you discovered what’s left of your house.” There’s a long moment of silence on Nephele’s side as she listens with a smile on her face. “Mmhmm. Check it for bones, because—oh.” She pouts then. “You found her, huh? Well, then you can let her know we’re coming for her entire family and she’d better count the minutes she’s got left to live.”

Annette. Ciro breathes a faint sigh of relief as he realizes the two of them are together. Angelo will help her and her family hide, they’ll be better at it than he was, his father won’t—

“Ex-cuse me?” The outburst has both Ciro and Richard flinching. “You don’t talk that way to me!” she screams into the phone. “I’ve got him right here and I’ll happily have my rats gnaw a finger off so I can send it to you and let you know I’m serious, you piece of—ha! I’d like to see you try it!” She leans forward, gripping the phone so tight her knuckles blanch. “You’re just mad because you didn’t hide him well enough! Well, he’s mine now and so is your little bitch, and I’m going to make sure you never see either of them aga—”

Something surges out of Ciro, some combination of his desire to get her to shut up and the strange power that’s protecting him. He sees it go like a little golden dart, flying straight at Nephele. It vanishes inside of her and then…

Her voice is gone. No matter how she tries, she can’t speak a word. Even her hissed breaths are almost silent.

She screams and screams in silent rage, smashing the phone into the armrest until it breaks, and Ciro lets himself feel hopeful for the first time since he knew what she’d done.

He isn’t in this alone.