After S’samph dropped her off, Eleri sang softly to herself as she walked into the clinic. It was a song her mother used to sing when they were waiting for the magtrain together on the way to drop Eleri at school before making her own commute to work. It was a snippet of a tune, a flittering reminder of the time her family had been happy. Eleri couldn’t remember all the words, but she remembered the warmth of the melody. It was before Rhys lost his scholarship for the university. Before he’d stolen drugs from her medkit. Before he filled his veins with iridescence.
CHAPTER 22
ELERI
The clinic was dark as she walked in. Aglao was still in their hibernation chamber, which meant Eleri would do her best to manage all cases on her own or call the on-call healer in Abwele if there was something she couldn’t solve independently. Lights flickered on as she stepped inside and made her way to the center console to get to work on some charting she’d neglected in her excitement to get to her driving lesson with S’samph.
She sat down in front of the interface and started inputting her credentials. The first chart came up, and she was about to record her notes from the appointment with an urtazi who’d come down from Indras, complaining of an uncontrollable acid ooze, when a horrible clattering shattered her focus. The air stilled. Then a harrowing wailing echoed around the room. Eleri whirled around to find Minio had crashed straight through the doors and into a shelving unit stacked with empty specimen containers and other equipment.
A familiar sense of insidious cold slithered just beneath her skin as she rose and made her way toward Minio. It was the wrong thing to do. Her bones ached in protest with each measured step. This was something she’d seen before, and her whole body rebelled against her inertia.
“Minio?” The name came out as the barest thread of voice. “Are you well?”
He lurched toward her, wings unfurled and a clawed hand outstretched. His fur stood on end, but only when he was close enough could Eleri identify the tell-tale silver rings around his eyes. She should run. This did not end well, could not end well. But her boots stuck fast to the floor.
“Don’t you see, Seela?” Minio asked to the ghost of a distorted memory. “She doesn’t want me. I would never betray you, Seela.” His voice crackled over the syllables of the ghost’s name. “You have to believe me.”
Eleri braced herself against the nearest wall. Seela must be the female who had ended her relationship with Minio back on Brasnia Prime as aresult of his addiction. She wasn’t sure how he’d found iridescence on Cassiaq-IV, but she shouldn’t have been surprised. There was no escaping it. Once doctors had started using it, once it became one of Earth’s primary and most lucrative exports, there was no stopping the tide. No one knew better. No one knew the havoc it would wreak through the Terran Colonies, bright fingers curling next around the IA consortium planets before there were few places untouched by its sweeping reach.
By the time she left Gaia, the IA was conducting a formal inquisition into the massive oversight, but it was too late already. As a human-trained nurse, Eleri spent long hours in the clinic helping manage the influx of cases. However, nothing could have prepared her more than the hours spent cowering and hiding from her raging younger brother. That experience might save her now. Depending on how much they had taken, addicts could be reasoned with.
“Seela isn’t here, Minio.” She kept her voice soft and gentle. It had sometimes worked with Rhys. As long as you could prove you weren’t a threat, he would agree to go sleep things off. Sometimes. Other times, it would only incite rage. Other times, Eleri would find herself hiding in a closet with her hands slapped hard over her mouth to prevent any sound from escaping until Rhys got bored or exhausted and retreated.
“Stupid female, you’re just like all the others.” Minio’s affect was flat, but she could sense the tension rising. His wings furled and unfurled, creating false wind through her hair. “My sister is right about you.”
“Of course, she is.” Eleri glanced around the clinic. If she could back away and just make it to the pharmacy console, she’d be able to grab a syringe of sedative. But she couldn’t run. It would only make him more agitated. Her footfalls were measured as she started a slow pace backward. “Tell me about Seela.” Eleri kept her voice placid as she tried to distract him from the distorted memory storm raging behind his eyes.
“Seela is perfect. The most beautiful kyrot on planet. She’s mine, you know. My sister arranged the mating. We’ll be wed when the moon-tides burn lavender. I’m going to stop using. I promised her.”
“I’m sure it will be a lovely event.” Eleri was close to the console now. Sweat and salt burned a trail between her shoulder blades. Her trembling fingers closed around the handle of the pharmaceutical cabinet, and she pressed her thumb into the biosig panel and waited for the telltale blip of approval. Minio stalked ever closer. His outstretched wings loomed wide over her, blocking out all lightfrom the room. She couldn’t find the sedatives blind. She’d have to turn and look. It was a gamble, but something had to give.
“I’ve done something terrible, haven’t I?” The wings snapped shut as quickly as they’d unfurled, but his claws remained poised just above her head. A sharp tip pressed hard against the cabinet behind her, rattling the medicines inside. Glass shattered as Minio clapped his other claw-tipped hand hard on the top of the metal box.
“Everything is going to be fine.” Eleri swallowed hard, not sure if she dared turn away from him to look in the cabinet. It wouldn’t work. Even if she managed to grab the right syringe amidst the chaos, there came the matter of not letting him overtake her while she tried to find the right spot for an injection.
“Haven’t I?” His voice pitched with anger at her lack of clear response. “You’re not Seela, are you? But I’m meant to have you anyhow.”
“Please back away.” Her voice quavered despite her best efforts to keep her tone neutral and level. It was too late. The last resort would be to find an opening and run. Stars above and stones below, she was in trouble. Minio emitted a series of clicks followed by an enraged shrieking that pierced her eardrums. Eleri sank to the ground amidst the broken glass vials and covered her ears to prevent rupture. She felt behind her, trying to find something unbroken, and tossed it as hard as she could until it landed with a crash on the other side of the clinic.
The sound was enough to turn Minio’s head. She used the opportunity to crawl past him, scrambling to her feet with an adrenaline-fueled alacrity. Her boots pounded hard against the tiles on the floor, crunching over broken glass, as she raced toward the door. A claw caught in her braid, sending her tumbling forward, hair wrenching backward as she fell.
Eleri clutched her arms above her head, trying to shield whatever was incoming. The doors to the clinic slid open, flooding the atrium with sunlight. Eleri hurled herself forward, landing hard on the threshold.
“Help me,” she gasped to no one in particular. S’kasia stood a few paces away holding a basket of something while deep in negotiations with an urtazi male. When the door crashed open, she turned her head and dropped the basket. The bright frill around S’kasia’s neck flared as she hurtled forward, hissing at Minio.
“Get away from her.”
“She’s mine!” Minio wailed.
“I will not repeat myself.” S’kasia lashed out with her tail, looping it around Minio’s leg and whipping backward to throw him off balance. Eleri shrieked as he fell away from her with a significant chunk of her hair ripped from her scalp. Despite the throbbing in her head, she recognized the opportunity afforded to her by S’kasia’s bravery. Eleri forced herself to move. While she crawled outside of the clinic and managed to get to her feet to run to the main road, S’kasia opened her mouth then and emitted a sound too high for Eleri to hear. But no doubt others in the area would be alerted. Minio’s fury rose with the noise Eleri couldn’t hear, and it wasn’t long before he tore free of S’kasia’s grip and raged after them into the road.
Eleri ran hard out of the clinic with S’kasia close on her heels. Her legs wobbled like useless rubber bands as she fell hard into the blue dirt near the levibike charging station. S’kasia blocked behind her, taking the brunt of Minio’s raging. She was unfazed as he tried to claw at her and parried his blows with surprising grace.
“Do you think you will win, kyrot pup? I did not train in the goddess’s temple to lose to someone like you.” S’kasia’s words were taunting. Eleri focused on catching her breath as it ricocheted just out of reach of her lungs.
By this point, a crowd had gathered to stare in stunned silence. It was just past first sundown, and many of the workers were in town to grab food or supplies after ending their workday. S’kasia grunted as Minio finally landed a blow against her chest. The rumble of a levibike engine broke through the unnatural silence. K’kaen surged forward, bursting through the throng of onlookers to shove S’kasia out of the way. He punched Minio square in the jaw, causing the kyrot male to slow in his assault.
“You ravik!Whatis wrong with you?”
