Jes Battis - 03 Inhuman Resources by Jes Battis

Author:Jes Battis [Battis, Jes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

My father the demon was painting me.

Like Velázquez, he wore a black surcoat, but instead of the Cross of Santiago it was embroidered with three drops of blood. As I watched them, the drops danced, forming first a triangle and then a slowly spinning circle. Sometimes the blood looked real, and sometimes it was just thread.

He was tall. Maybe six-two or six-three even. His hands and face were nearly translucent, the same color as glazed porcelain. Veins flared underneath the surface of his flesh, and the blood that coursed through them was multicolored. Looking at them reminded me of the abalone that coated the inside of shells. Was his blood really different colors, or was it just a trick of the light streaming through the windows?

“Tess. You should really hold still. He can’t capture you otherwise.”

I turned at the sound of the familiar voice. Mia was standing to my right, wearing a voluminous yellow gown and holding a silver chalice. As I stared at her dress, the flowers on it moved before my eyes. I thought of the glasses that our data technician, Esther, always wore, with their shifting reflections. The flowers bloomed and then shriveled as I watched them, crumbling to red and yellow powder.

Two young girls knelt beside Mia, fussing with her dress and shoes. The girl on her right was Eve, my childhood best friend, who’d perished in a fire. Seeing her again was like a blow to the stomach.

Years ago, she’d run away from me, terrified when I channeled a bit of fire materia to make my hands glow. She was supposed to think it was pretty, but she fled from me instead, like I was a monster.

She died that same day. I’d crawled through the smoke and the flames, searching for her, but all I’d found was a blackened body, flaking away even as I stared at it.

In my dream, she was whole and beautiful. The last time I’d seen her like this was when Marcus Tremblay tried to kill Mia. I’d tapped into Mia’s reserve of power, and for a brief moment, my connection to the elemental planes where materia came from—the secret chambers of the visible universe—allowed me to see Eve one last time. She’d forgiven me, even if I couldn’t forgive myself.

Now she smiled at me. “¿Qué pasa, amiga?”

“What are you doing in my dreams again?”

“What are you doing in our dreams?” The girl on Mia’s left spoke to me. I’d never seen her before.

She was dark-skinned and had beautiful green eyes. She couldn’t have been more than twelve—the same age as Eve.

“I don’t know you,” I said.

She smiled. “That’s not really the point.”

A dog slept at Mia’s feet, and I realized that it was Baron, who belonged to Miles. He opened one eye and stared lazily at me.

I looked past him, and saw both Derrick and Miles standing behind the girls. Derrick was wearing a beautiful black suit with a white silk tie, and Miles wore a pristine white suit with a black tie.

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