Soliloquies Anthology 30.1

By Coralie Olivier

There used to be a lot more humans before the world went to shit. Master Emilia calls them cockroaches: if you spot one, then the others are not far—crawling in the shadows, biding their time.

I tracked down my target to a human settlement. For days, all I saw was snow, to the point that I thought I was going the wrong way. Then, I found the settlement. They call it Cinders, on account of the dragon they use to heat the whole community. The town is protected by a metal dome, half of it buried in dirt and the other half buried in snow. The dragon’s den is in the center, connected by pipes to all the homes. You can’t take a step in this hole without having to climb over some pipe or another.

My target lives at the edge of Cinders, in a home that should not be standing. The planks are thin, nailed together gracelessly. The roof looks like it’s about to slide off any moment. There are no windows, just a big pipe stuck to one side of the house. I’ve been stalking this place for days now. I know my target is home from work—she works in the fields near the dragon den. Pathetic.

I knock. I know she won’t run. She’s smarter than that. I hear her voice through the thin slab of the door.

“Did you forget your keys?”

The deadbolt latch slides in its casing. The door opens. The woman before me is nearing her forties, her eyes tired and her hands stained by the dirt of the field. Her smile falls when she sees me. Her eyes are green like the pine trees outside of the settlement. She’s not carrying any weapons, or wearing any armor. Instead, most of her frame is obscured by an old woolen sweater. Her name is Seva, at least it was back then. Perhaps she has changed it now.

“Who is it, mom?” a little kid asks behind her.

My eyes land on the child. I’ve never been around kids, and I can’t tell how old they are. Young enough that my target shifts to hide them from my sight.

“Go to your room,” she orders the child.

After a moment of hesitation, the kid obeys, and disappears into another room. Seva waits until she hears the sound of the door closing to open the front door wider and invite me in.

“Let’s do this where it’s warm.”

I don’t care either way. I step inside. Within, the house looks sturdier somehow. The walls separating the living room and the rest of the house are straighter. The kitchen is open, with a rectangular table and chairs around it. The table is set for three, and there’s a bowl of something cooking over the stove. The light bulbs around the room are dirty, but they light the home all the same. It’s small, one might say humble. It’s degrading, compared to who this woman was, and what she used to have.

She knows who I am. She makes no pretense of telling me that I’m in the wrong place, or that she doesn’t know why I’m here. Instead, she sits at one end of the table and pours herself a tall glass of something sweet-smelling, some iced tea perhaps.

“You’ll indulge a dead woman for one last drink, won’t you?” she says.

She motions for the chair across from hers. After a moment, I decide to sit. I’m on the side of the door, so it’s not like she can run off without getting past me.

“I see they haven’t updated the wardrobe,” she says. “Except the sunglasses.”

She looks over my outfit. The duster is old, the armor beneath older still. The Ressalt crest was burned on the slick chest plate—a black wolf baring its teeth. A wide-brim hat hides the tips of my ears. I don’t remove the hat or the sunglasses.

“Were you born at the Castle, or brought there later?” she asks me.I don’t see why I should answer. It’s none of her business. I’m here to take her back in chains to Master Emilia, not to make conversation.

My silence doesn’t seem to bother her.

She takes a sip of tea and leaned back in her chair, relaxed. It annoys me that she doesn’t look worried, that she’s not begging for her life, but I have to remind myself that some years ago, she was in my shoes. She’s not some slave that’s been on the run for a couple of weeks. Once upon a time, she was a fixer. She knows how this game ends.

“I’m only asking because, in my experience, people brought to the Castle later are easier to sway. Maybe they’ve stopped using them as fixers. But when you were born there, well, they’ve got their claws into you from the beginning. I know ‘cause that was me a couple of years ago.”

She sets her glass back on the table but doesn’t let go of it, one arm outstretched in front of her while the other rests on the backrest of the creaking chair.

“Do you remember your parents?” she asks me next.

This time I don’t answer because I don’t know. All I’ve been told is that my mother died in the process of giving birth to me. Master Emilia trained me. I owe her loyalty.

“My mother was a maid for Harlan,” she tells me. “I think my father was a blood bag in his last life, though I’m not sure. I’ve never met him.”

Master Harlan is Master Emilia’s brother, which makes us property kin, of sorts. Nothing different from most of the targets I hunt down.

“Anyhow, I got into trouble a lot when I was a kid, but I could always hold my own. I suppose that’s how Emilia took interest in me. Though I was covered in bruises, clothes torn, black eye and all, she saw potential in me. Decided I would be her next fixer.”

She stares at my face which is obscured by the hat.

“I assume she’s the one that sent you, but I think I would have recognized you if you’d been one of her fixers in training back then. Which means one of two things. Either they brought you up later, or you were a well-kept secret.”

“Which one do you think it is?” I ask with a smirk.

She answers with a chuckle. She takes another sip of her tea. I watch the level of the drink in the glass drain slowly. As soon as the glass is empty, I will punch the daylights out of her.

“Do you know why fixers are always humans?” She quizzes me.

“The sunlight?”

This time, she laughs.

“The sunlight. When have you ever seen true sunlight? Not daylight, but actual sunlight? A hundred worlds collided into each other. The cloud of debris is so thick that sunlight can barely pass through. No, it’s not the fear of the sunlight. They could very well pick some poor sods, turn them into vampires, and send them out to hunt runaway slaves. Vampires are excellent hunters. But no, all their fixers are humans. Did you ever wonder why?”

She takes another sip. Halfway down now.

“It’s because vampires have lost all humanity. They can’t think like us, so they never find us. Only humans know the desperation for survival that pushes everyone to freedom. It’s their greatest, most shameful secret. They need our humanity as much as they fear it.”

I scoff.

“Humanity? I heard you were one of the best fixers of clan Ressalt. You think you have any humanity left, after all the property you brought back?”

She purses her lips. Guilt makes her eyes flicker around the room, like she’s become unmoored and she’s desperately searching for an anchor. It feels good to knock her off her pedestal by reminding her that she’s no better than me.

“I’m not proud of what I did,” she tells me. “A day doesn’t go by that I don’t think about those people I forced back into chains. But the instant I realized I was wrong, that the vampires were using me, I left. I made others leave, too. Convinced all of them that there was another life out there for them, a better life. You could leave too.”

“And what? Live in a hole at the mercy of the whims of a dragon for survival?

Counting each day until a fixer comes for me?”

“Then you’ll convince them to leave too. Yes, it’s a cycle, but if we can break it every time, then we rob them of their powers. And when they have no more humans to feed on, they’ll starve to death, and we won’t have to worry about them anymore.”

She takes a big gulp this time, almost all that’s left in the glass. I let my hand glide toward the pistol at my belt. I am ready to pounce.

“This life is not so bad,” she says. “You would get used to it, if you gave it a chance.”

I shake my head.

“I don’t think so. I think I’ll bring you back to Master Emilia in chains. She has special plans for you. Then, I’ll tell her where to find this place. How many humans live here? A thousand? It’s been a long time since they’ve had that many slaves, I’d wager.”

The woman sighs. She picks up the glass, almost brings it to her lips, then lowers it without drinking.

“I was afraid you’d say that. Are you sure I can’t change your mind?”

“I’m not your typical fixer.”

“Too bad.”

Quick as lightning, she throws her glass at me. I duck out of the chair to avoid it. It crashes against the wall. She grabs the table and tips it over. Now that she’s standing, I can see that she’s holding her own pistol, aimed squarely at me. She fires but I avoid it by a hair. With speed impossible for humans, I close the distance and grab her by the neck. She chokes in my grasp, eyes wide. I knock the pistol out of her hand before she can fire again. I lift her high, until her feet can’t touch the floor anymore, then smash her against her chair. It shatters into splinters against her back. She coughs and sputters as I let go of her neck. I place a foot on her wrist to keep her pinned down.

“You’re right,” I tell her. “They need humans to hunt down their property, but they also know that humans are weak. So, they figured out a way to take the weakness out.”

I remove my sunglasses, so she can see my crimson eyes. I can see the panic on her face when she sees that my teeth are just a little sharper than they should be. Now that’s more like it.

“That’s not possible,” she says. “Humans and vampires can’t-”

“They found a different way.”

From the back of my belt, I take a pair of manacles.

“Are you going to cause me any more problems now?”

Something hard knocks against my back. It doesn’t hurt, but it knocks my hat off my head, revealing the pointed tip of my ears. I whirl around. The kid came running out of her room, armed with the broom, and they struck me with it.

“Leave my mom alone,” they shout.

I don’t have the chance to respond, or even think about doing something to the kid. A sharp piece of wood stabs me in the stomach, right under my chest plate. I grunt, eyes wide. I stumble back. The woman pushes it deeper as soon as she can get up.

We stay at a standstill for an eternity. The pain stuns me. She has the fury of survival in her eyes. Then, she removes the sharp leg of the chair from my body. There is a hole in my stomach, and I start losing blood fast. I fall against the upturned table, clutching my abdomen. This can’t be the end. I can’t just die like this, here. I was made to be better than humans.

“Is she dead?” the kid asks, their voice sounding distant already, even though they’re standing right in front of me.

“Doubt it. I suspect it’ll take more than that to kill them.”

I try to open my mouth to speak. Blood surges on my tongue like acid reflux. I cough.

“Go see Mr. Bailey, tell him to get security. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

I hear the kid rush off. My vision is dark now, as if someone turned off the lights. My eyelids close, and I don’t have the strength to open them again.

“Do you want to die?”

I think I shake my head.

“Then perhaps there’s a little humanity left in you after all.