You need to know about La Parentèle. They’re the people who’ve taken it upon themselves to govern the use of the Art around the world.
They’ll take an interest in you. Some will be curious, some afraid. Some will try to recruit you. There will also be Kin who will try to kill you because of what you carry.
And believe me, they can kill you.
I was an idiot. I thought I could ignore them and live the way I wanted, out in plain sight.
I’m not suggesting you should hide from them. You don’t want to be alone and ignorant when they find you.
Learn everything you can about them. Then, when you’re ready, seek them out. Find allies before enemies find you.
I left you people who can teach you. Listen to them.
Eight cowled intruders just stepped out of the shadows into my kitchen from...somewhere else.
Their hands move in sync like a dance troupe.
One says, “Sever Locality,” and sweeps a gesture around the entire room. The walls, ceiling and floor turn transparent and ghostlike. Beyond them is darkness.
Another puts his palms together, fingers toward the floor, and says, “Sever Proximity.” He then sweeps his arms apart like a swimmer doing a breaststroke. Nobody moves, but everyone and everything spreads apart as the floor expands beneath them. My kitchen is now an arena.
The remaining six make an identical motion: an overhead hand-chop down to the floor. “Sever Passage,” they say in unison.
The two closest are facing me from opposite sides of the kitchen.
A transparent wall of light appears in front of each, stretching from ceiling to floor. The walls speed forward to cross just in front of me, then continue past either side of me, ending in the ghost walls at my back.
The walls form an inverted V around me. Anje is beyond the wall to my left. I reach for her, but my hand stops in midair. I throw my shoulder into the barrier with the same result. The sensation is strange—less like hitting something than running out of space to move within.
“Sever passage...the wall?”
The remaining four have boxed Mathild inside walls of light stretching from floor to ceiling. She’s still holding her cigarette, and the enclosure is filling with smoke, but none of it escapes.
Sever? They are cutting...separating things from each other.
Mathild takes a drag of her cigarette and smiles at me.
The intruder with Anje in the partition to my left turns toward me.
“Tell us where Adia Beton has been taken.”
I’m not helping people called Kin Slayers find my little sister. “Get out of my home.”
He tips his chin toward Anje.
“Tell us, or we kill the normal.”
“The fuck you will,” Anje says.
That’s their first mistake. Anje is anything but normal.
She leaps toward him. She’s faster than he expected. He hesitates.
Their second mistake is thinking it’s eight versus two. With apologies to Walt Whitman, I contain multitudes.
I summon the Monkey tattoo. A presence fills my head. A second pair of eyes and ears sharing mine. A second mind inside my own sharing what I know. And what I’ve seen.
“Kru Anucha, we need guidance.” I think to the presence.
“To win we must understand. To understand we must test.”
A word I didn’t choose leaves my lips.
“Mǔn!” The voice is mine, but also Anucha’s—the man who taught Anje to fight.
“Dâi khâ, Kru!” she answers. Yes, Teacher! Then she starts spinning forward.
The intruder holding the wall passing from my left to right points at Anje’s legs.
“Sever—”
He pauses mid-command, tracking her movement with his eyes.
“They can maintain one severing while using another,” Anucha says in my mind. “Unfortunate. But spinning worked. Perhaps they must clearly see a thing to sever it?”
Anje turns through one rotation, then another, constantly changing which leg leads and which is hidden. He tracks her, hand raised, mouth open around the word. On the third turn she leaves the ground and whips a kick into his head. She lands behind him and spends the rest of her spin driving an elbow into the base of his skull. He folds onto the not-ground. She plants one finishing strike to the back of his head. The wall he’d created as half of my prison goes out like a switch.
“It is evident that Anje’s teacher was a transcendent master.”
Now my path is open to the intruder on my right.
Now the other six can reach Anje.
“Anucha, guide her,” I think as I split my focus.
The one to my right is too far away for me to interrupt him as he points at my right leg.
“Sever Mind from Leg.”
All sensation of my leg vanishes. I collapse awkwardly to the floor. The not-feeling only lasts a moment.
“Some severings are temporary. Why?”
Anje doesn’t hesitate. She charges the nearest of the four holding Mathild’s cage. He turns to face her and says, “Release.” His section of the cage vanishes, and the remaining walls snap into a triangle. Mathild’s cage has only three sides.
“Ah. A severing lasts only if its maker holds it—and each of them is already holding one.”
“Sever Mind from Leg,” whispers my opponent as he points at my other leg.
Awareness of my left leg disappears and I begin to fall the other way just as I’m struggling to stand up again.
I throw my head and torso forward into a roll and get both feet back under me just as the not-feeling in my left leg dissipates. This isn’t going to work, so I pause in a squat with my legs out of view for a moment.
The intruder who is now free from holding Mathild’s cage steps forward to challenge Anje. The other five hold position and raise their hands toward her.
“She will not be able to overcome six skilled opponents.“
I create a tattoo to collect the pain and damage from overcharging my body earlier. It appears as a Tombstone. The tattoo flares incandescent, the glow blinding everyone looking at me—including the intruder I’m fighting.
I also buy Anje time as all six of her opponents flinch from the light.
I fade the Tombstone. The glow dies and the pain just stops. I can’t keep it submerged long or it will kill me when I bring it back. Every second I keep it buried compounds the eventual payload. I’ve got seconds. I charge my opponent while he’s still blinking the flare from his eyes.
“Anje, Bagua!” Anucha says through my mouth.
“She will understand. Now, she will win you time.”
“Dâi khâ, Kru!” Anje’s straight-line charge slows, her motions becoming liquid as she begins to move laterally to his advance. She orbits his position, her shoulders and hips rotating as she circles, changing what she presents to her enemies with every step: front, side, back, side, front.
He attempts to engage Anje, but she retreats. Each time he advances, she adjusts, keeping her opponent between herself and the other five, breaking sightlines whenever she can.
The other five recover from the flare, point toward her, and speak in an overlapping chorus:
“Sever Leg from Mind.”
Nothing happens. “Her movements confuse their aim.” Anucha is pleased. “But they will adjust.”
I’ve reached my target. I’m inside his reach now and too close for him to gesture and speak an activation phrase. Instead he abandons the Art and brings his forearms up into a high cross, lead hand checking, rear hand cocked at his jaw. Anucha recognizes the martial style.
“He is a Kali master. His martial discipline mirrors his mystic Art. He is still deadly.”
Anje’s opponent changes tactics. He bends his legs, points at his own feet and says, “Sever Gravity.” He then leaps with tremendous momentum, tucking into a ball and rotating to hit the not-ceiling feet first.
Sightlines restored, the others have a clear target.
Two “Sever Will from Leg.” Anje stops in place.
Two “Sever Arm from Will.” Her arms drop to her side.
One “Sever Mind from Sight.”
The one in the air speaks “Release” as he kicks off and rockets back down, driving his shoulder into Anje’s unguarded torso and knocking her prone.
My pain and damage are gone, but I can’t risk surfacing any more physical enhancements. But I have the Fist tattoo, which I never fade. The tattoo I gained when I was fifteen from an elite young boxer whose skill I stole...along with his life. The reminder.
Anje has control of her arms and legs again, but repeated strikes hammer her head and upper torso, keeping her pinned to the not-ground.
“We must hurry,” Anucha warns.
I know, old man. Don’t think I don’t know.
Our joined minds agree on the counter to my opponent. Three moves: a jab to clear his guard, a feint to get his momentum headed where we want it and a hook into the path of where his head is dodging.
The jab goes out, and his lead hand isn’t checking—it’s hunting. Knuckles into the nerve of my forearm and my jab arm drops dead to my side. Kali can sever connections too.
I whip my left arm forward, showing an all-or-nothing haymaker as a feint. He does what he should and dodges hard toward my useless right.
My body glows as I form a tattoo to swap the nerve damage from one arm to the other.
His eyes widen at the glow, suspicion arriving too late.
I am waiting with the hook loaded in my “dead arm” which meets a dodging, unprotected head with bone crushing force. Something in his neck cracks. The second wall blocking me from Mathild’s cage dies.
“Glaeng taai!” Anucha shouts through my mouth. Play dead. He’s banking on the intruders not knowing Thai. Anje goes still.
I surface the Tombstone. It’s only been a few seconds, but the compounded pain hits me like a bomb.
My heart seizes. Stops. I collapse on top of my opponent. My consciousness spins.
I surface my most desperate tattoo: a picture of the rabbit from Bambi.
Thumper.
ba-DUMP.
One perfect heartbeat I borrow from myself every night and bank for exactly this. Now returned.
There is nothing for the span of a breath.
“They are coming,“ Anucha warns.
Then—
ba-dump... My heart picks up the rhythm.
I plant my hands and start to rise. The pain and damage are back in full, and now my chest is suffering too.
“Sever Will from Body!”
Anje’s attacker gets me from where he stands over her unmoving form. My body collapses again, suddenly bereft of its pilot.
He holds the severing to keep me incapacitated.
So I hand the keys to my co-pilot.
“Ton née!” Anucha shouts, and Anje and my body are both back in motion.
Anje sweeps the legs of her guy and moves to grapple him on the floor.
My body heads for the triangle of walls holding Mathild.
“Sever Will from Leg!” the five unengaged intruders shout together. Nothing happens. Again. The will they’re cutting my legs off from isn’t the one driving. Apparently they can’t visualize that the will moving me belongs to a ninety-year-old Thai man who died three years ago.
This must be getting frustrating for them.
But I have one more problem to overcome. My body is spent. Anucha gives me fighting skill, not strength. His final gift was from a body that could hardly lift a glass of water, much less throw a punch.
I have no choice but to use what I took from Anje.
I call the Caged Tiger tattoo.
The rage and strength flooding into my body also bring a tidal wave of fear and shame. If I weren’t cut off from my body, I’d be curled up in a fetal position, screaming and sobbing. Anucha isn’t so much driving anymore as he is riding a berserk beast.
My body surges toward the nearest intruder holding one wall of Mathild’s prison. There is no skill or fighting style to what happens next. I simply drive him to the floor and pummel him without mercy. Blood sprays from every impact, painting bright crimson fans across the not-floor.
The third wall of Mathild’s prison collapses. Her smoke gushes forth, seeks out the eight intruders and envelops their bodies in grey cocoons.
I fade the Caged Tiger and collapse on the not-floor, unable to move.
“You are not a particularly sane man,” Anucha observes. “Remind Angelique to smile as she fights. It unnerves opponents.”
Then I fade the Monkey tattoo as well.
Anje is at my side when I regain consciousness I hadn’t realized I’d lost. Bruises cover her forearms and shoulder. One colors the right side of her jaw.
“Fucking meow,” I rasp.
“She killed the rest of them. All but one. Suffocated them,” Anje says as she helps me sit up.
“I didn’t suffocate them as much as make them believe they couldn’t breathe,” Mathild lilts.
The flat is back to normal except for the seven bodies in my kitchen and the surviving intruder sitting on my couch, staring blankly off into nothing.
“I couldn’t convince her to stop,” Anje says. “I should have forced her to.”
“Dear me. You think those meat-hooks of yours can solve anything?”
“I should have tried,” Anje says, looking down at her hands.
“She would have killed you, Anje. If there’s a debt to be paid, she’ll pay it. Not you.” I want to reach out and take her hands, but mine are covered in a dead man’s blood.
“Now, Cassius, I made an oath not to harm her. And she did so well against the Kin Slayers.”
Anje’s eyes boil with hatred. “You led them here on purpose.”
Mathild leans down as though sharing a secret with Angelique. “Did you know that when he was younger, your Cass was quite the nerd? Anime. Comic books. He loved one comic in particular. The X-Men. I flipped through some of it. Silly children’s notions of good and evil. But there was one idea that I quite liked: how they trained for battle.”
“You put us in a fucking Danger Room.” I finally find the strength to stand.
“You should be grateful, Cassius. Now you know how your enemy fights and you have experience dealing with their Art. You’ll certainly run across Delineators again if you recover Adia. And these weren’t the dangerous ones. Their Captain, Josi, would have casually killed you both.”
Mathild moves to leave the kitchen. I step in front of her. “You could have broken out of that cage any time you wanted and helped us.”
“Dear. I was never in their cage, now was I?”
Suddenly Mathild is behind me, standing next to the surviving Kin Slayer. Everything is different. Her outfit is a sensible black skirt suit, heels and sunglasses. Her hair is pulled into a bun and her jewelry is gone, replaced by a single jade-and-silver hairpin. She’s now in her mid-forties. She looks like she’s just come from a charity fundraiser.
She snaps her fingers at the Kin Slayer, who is now dressed like a bodyguard...or a man-toy.
“Come now, Reginald.” She offers him her arm, which he takes obediently. “Don’t you think he looks like a Reginald?” She beams at me for an instant. “Regi and I have a date ahead of us. I expect to hear every fascinating detail of his entire life story.”
“You’re going to torture him for information and then kill him.”
She looks the man over appraisingly. “Nothing of the kind. I can guarantee Regi is about to have the most extraordinary night of his life,” she says as she affectionately tousles his hair.
The fear I buried during the fight grips me now. For the Kin Slayer or me, I’m not certain. Maybe both.
“Find Adia, Cassius.”
Mathild turns and blows Anje a kiss. “Ta-ta, meat-hooks.”
Then they simply disappear, leaving nothing behind except cigarette smoke.
I turn to Anje.
She looks at the seven bodies and the crimson sprays on the floor, then at my blood-spattered fists.
“Don’t think this gets you out of your promise.”
She sits cross-legged in the middle of my kitchen. She waits for me to join her, which I do. Slowly. Painfully.
“Now, Cass, I want you to explain everything.”