Meeting Thunder

Author’s Note: Well, last night’s post may have created a monster. Or ressurected it, I suppose. This is actually a plot that I worked on before, but already I see myself expanding it and filling in a lot of what I skipped when I first did it, and the characters have already changed a lot since the first version of this got envisioned, but I think I’m already more attached to this version.

You can tell because I’m stretching the definition of mayhem to let this piece go in. The horse is a bit destructive here, so… it almost counts?


Meeting Thunder

“Quit looking at me like that,” Dillon muttered, shaking his head. He swore they all thought he was a horse that would spook at any second, jump over the nearest fence and break a leg or something else in a fall. He wasn’t. He was fine. He was a lot better than they thought.

“I’m just waiting for the drunk to reemerge.”

“That was two months ago,” Dillon said, and he had known even before he got half into the bottle that he would never be able to keep it up, not with his childhood. The smell of alcohol had burned its way into some of those old bad memories that he didn’t want to remember—didn’t need to remember. “And it was only for the one night. You know that, Burditt. I’m fine.”

“Any man who thinks he’s fine when his wife left him the way yours did is fooling himself.”

“No, I’d be fooling myself if I believed that any of you actually thought I wasn’t better off without her,” Dillon corrected. He knew no one thought much of her before he married her, and they thought even less of her now that she’d left him, and he didn’t entirely disagree. He mostly felt numb, as he had before. Maybe he’d feel it later.

Maybe he’d never feel it at all.

“I’m just glad I got you off the ranch,” Burditt said, and Dillon shrugged. He didn’t care what they did. He hadn’t cared about much since Meghan left.

“I’m not that bad.”

Burditt gave him another look, and Dillon shook his head, wishing the old man would stop trying to father him. He knew that Burditt meant well, and he did consider Dillon the son he never had the way that Larina and Thyda were the daughters he never had, but Dillon had gone through enough father figures over the years, and he didn’t want another just because his wife proved to be anything but what he’d thought she was when he married her.

“I think you—”

Burditt’s words were cut off by a shrill neigh and the sound of hooves pounding against wood. The stable shook with the bombardment, and both men frowned at the sight of the gate nearest them trying to shake loose from its lock. Somewhere down the row, wood splintered, and men cried out in pain. Dillon could hear the ground being trampled, thought it was impossible to see through the crowd that was gathered by the other end of the stable.

“Get back! That horse is insane!”

“He bit me!”

“Bit you?” A louder voice demanded. “Look what he did to Harry. He’s a killer! He’s got to be put down. Someone get the vet, now!”

Dillon exchanged a glance with Burditt. The older man shook his head. “Sorina would be over there telling them there’s no such thing. No such thing as a bad horse.”

“Just bad owners,” Dillon agreed, well aware of the woman’s mantra when it came to animals. He had heard that so many times before, first on his visits to the ranch with Morely when one of the horses was sick, and then later on his own when he worked for Sorina. He pushed his way through the crowd, forcing his way through the men driving the horse wild.

His eyes locked with the dark orbs of a panicked gelding. The horse panted, a bit of foam coming out around its mouth, and Dillon grimaced, taking a step closer.

“Son, you don’t want to do that.”

Dillon ignored the man that spoke, never having liked being anyone’s ‘son,’ even if it was common term around ranchers. He held a hand out to the gelding, eyes still on the horse.

“You know you don’t even have food, right? He’s not going to be fooled by that.” The horse turned toward the man who’d spoken, snorting, and Dillon moved between them before the gelding decided to charge. “You’ll get yourself killed like that.”

“Stop talking,” Burditt ordered, using the same tone he would when someone told Sorina she didn’t know anything about horses. Dillon forced all of the other noise out of his mind, listening only to the horse and what he was telling him in actions and body language.

He opened his mouth and spoke in a low, soothing tone as he refocused the horse’s attention on him. The fire in the eyes shifted, and Dillon reached for the rope attached to the halter, taking it with a loose hold, continuing his words as he edged forward.

The gelding threw up his head, jerking, and Dillon caught him, turning his fingers through the hair along the white patch that split the horse’s face down the middle. “Poor thing. You’re in pain, aren’t you?”

Another jerk of the horse’s head seemed to be an answer, and Dillon moved his fingers in small circles, taking a path down the horse’s head and along his neck, losing himself in the work. Sorina was the one that was truly gifted at this, but he tried to imitate her technique as he always had, even when he was still a kid.

“Damn,” the man behind him said, and the gelding tried to lift his head to react to the man’s voice, but Dillon calmed him again.

“Told you to shut up,” Burditt said, shaking his head. “What are you thinking, Dillon?”

“I think Morely would say he needs x-rays,” Dillon said, watching the horse’s reaction when he touched the creature’s back. “Your wife would be loading him in the trailer right now.”

“And you?” Burditt laughed. “Never mind. I know what you’re going to do.”


Ability Out of Control

Author’s Note: So today I decided (almost at the last minute) to use something from my side project for the collaboration, a story detailing Alik’s childhood. This unauthorized side project came out of my obsession with Alik, and it is almost a novel in of itself. I do not know if much of it will surface in the finished version of our collaboration, but this fits mayhem, and it is Monday today, so here goes.


Ability Out of Control

He’d just set the whole place on fire.

Alik looked at his hands. With the storm passed, he’d done his best to practice getting rid of the energy, and he’d thought he’d started to understand—if he took energy in, he could purge it back out, sending it through his lamp or something else electronic, shifting it down the wire, getting rid of it. That discovery had helped.

He could manage his pain, manage the aches, as long as he was able to touch the electronics and rid himself of the energy he seemed to hold onto, and that was a relief. He was starting to understand what he was and how to use it.

At least, that had been what he thought he was doing until a few minutes ago. He had purged the energy before, several times, enough to make him think that he would not have trouble with it, ever, but what he had not thought of was that he’d done it in a rather controlled setting, only a bit at a time, and he hadn’t factored in his emotions, either. This might have been nothing more than the simple flickering of lights he got when he touched his lamp.

Except that was touching his lamp and sending the energy through the power line.

This time, he’d just touched the outer wall of the store, hadn’t directed anything with the energy, hadn’t even thought that he needed to, and the energy had flowed out without him intending it to, arcing across the building with a sudden ferociousness that had left Alik with nothing to do but stare as the building was consumed in flames.

He knew it could be worse—they’d finished the going out of business sale the day before yesterday and the remainder of the store’s stock that hadn’t sold was loaded on a truck yesterday, so that wasn’t an issue. They wouldn’t have to pay for what hadn’t sold.

He would have to check the papers to see if they still had insurance on the building. This could actually help them—they’d been told that the structure wasn’t one that people would want to buy, not as it was—no one had been interested in the month it was on the market, but now, perhaps, they might be. The insurance might even pay out, giving them something to start over with, something that could help cover their bills until they were able to sell the house. He knew they had to move, had to reduce their expenses.

He needed a job of his own, too.

He’d have to spend the rest of his life trying to atone for this mistake. He hadn’t thought he was capable of this kind of destruction, but he was. He had a feeling he could do a lot worse if he was doing it on purpose. He had not meant to do this, but that did not mean that he had not done it. He had.

He had destroyed the store.

The store that had stood for generations in that same location, the one that had been founded generations ago by the first Kallases in Holteshire, the one that had been passed down with pride from father to son until his grandfather had abandoned his family. The store that was his father’s greatest love, what he’d devoted his life to, the same store that he had poured everything into—that was now burning to the ground.

“Alik?”

He blinked, turning to look over at the person who’d called his name. Had he been seen doing that? He should have run, now that he thought about it. He should have left. They’d accuse him of setting this fire—and he had—but he didn’t want to go to jail for it. It was an accident.

Something worse than jail would await him, though.

He’d seen it. He knew exactly what would happen to him if he admitted that he’d caused this fire. He could see the tree, could feel the rope around his neck even though that part was not of his memories, only his imagination.

He’d get lynched.

He had said that he would fight back, that he’d kill them before they could kill him. He looked at the fire. Yes, he probably could do it, but he didn’t know how he’d done that. If he tried again, he didn’t know that he’d be able to do it.

“I thought your father was selling the store.”

Alik nodded. That was what was supposed to happen. They were going to sell the building and the lot. They didn’t have any choice. They had no way of starting a new business there. “He was. He is. He was. I don’t—This shouldn’t have happened.”

“I think you’re going to need to come with me.”

He looked at the sheriff. He couldn’t object—if he did, all he would do was incriminate himself, and if he did that, he would meet a tree and a rope and a fate he’d sworn wouldn’t be his. He could hear his sister in his head, telling him how much they needed him, and he couldn’t let himself get lynched.

“Come on, kid,” the sheriff said, pulling him away. “Are you trying to get yourself burned up? I know your family isn’t thrilled about losing the store, but don’t go getting yourself caught in that thing. You couldn’t save the store if you tried.”

Alik blinked. Had the sheriff actually assumed that he was there to put the fire out? He hadn’t assumed that Alik set it? Why not? Why wouldn’t he think that Alik had done this?

“Sheriff?”

“I’m afraid I’m going to keep you in my office for a while, Alik. I don’t know how long it will take them to prove that this wasn’t arson, but I hope they can, or you are going to be in a lot of trouble.”


Heading Straight for a Fall

Author’s Note: So there were no snippets this weekend. It was not a good weekend for me, and I didn’t have much in me writer-wise. I was thinking of burning stories, editing made me want to cry when I didn’t want to burn, and one of the things I did write was a melodramatic piece where the character insisted he wasn’t going to die and asked someone to take care of his family if things went badly.

So… There was no Sunday silly in me. At all.

Fortunately, today is Monday Mayhem/Mystery, and so I have something for that, even if I seem to be stalled on what I had thought was my new story with Integrated Division.

It just took going for random music on my computer and deciding it was way past time I did something with “Diamonds and Rust” by Joan Baez.


Heading Straight for a Fall

You’re heading straight for a fall, she told herself, cursing the fact that she had picked up the phone in the first place. She knew that voice. She knew what it could do to her, knew how weak she was to that old familiar tone. She should hate him for that, but she hated herself for it more, knowing that he still had that power over her, that she still let him have it.

She’d thought she wouldn’t, and she would have said it was too late for it now, years out of the blue, with a call that came in the night without any kind of warning, the sort that compelled her to answer, thinking it was an emergency, and she supposed in some way, it must be—he wouldn’t have called unless it was—he wasn’t that cruel, and he’d been raised with better manners than that anyway.

“What is it this time?”

“Your specialty.”

“Something cold and cool yet brilliant as fire and twice as stunning?” She asked, sitting back against the pillows and closing her eyes as she played with her necklace. He would have laughed if he’d been able to see it. She was always a source of amusement, if nothing else.

“I don’t have time to flatter you tonight. I need to ask for your expertise. Nothing else.”

She shrugged. “Nothing else to ask for, is there?”

He didn’t answer that one, not that she’d thought he would. Whatever past they had, he’d wanted it dead and buried for a while now, though he had just as bad a habit of falling back into old routines as she did. That man could tease, and his eyes would sparkle blue as he did, making things just that added bit worse for any woman around.

Not that she let many others around. She didn’t do competition.

“You’ve heard the news, haven’t you?”

She snorted. “What use is politics to me? Or should I pretend I have any sort of interest in reality television and the stars that come from it? I don’t, you know. All I care about is compressed carbon. It is a beautiful thing.”

“Yes, I expect your terms would be quite mercenary, won’t they?”

“Always.” She didn’t mention that once she would have done it for free, that if he said the right words, she might go right to that place, laughing with him with the leaves falling and the snow with them, dancing around in the park when they were two young fools with no responsibilities, before the truth of what they both were came between them.

“Are your skills still what they were?”

“Darling, if one of us is rusty, it isn’t me.”

“Well, your tongue is sharp as ever,” he muttered, and she thought she heard him curse under his breath. She should, she supposed, put him out of his misery, admit that she knew what he wanted her to discuss, but she didn’t feel like making this easy for him. If she made it easy, they were like friends, and when they played at friends, they played at other more dangerous things as well.

The band on her finger still burned at the thought of him, and she’d have to remember to replace it before he showed up at her office. “You never did manage to refine my rough edges.”

“You were already hardened by fire by the time I knew you.”

“Don’t you ever tire of our game of puns?” She knew the answer—she wasn’t sure if it was the same for him, but she knew she stuck to them because they were safe. Talking of meaningful things brought them too close to what they’d never be again.

“Only when you make terrible ones.”

“Yours were worse.”

“I’m not the one who is a walking pun,” he said. “Or a lousy poet.”

She hung up on him.


An Investigation Gets Interesting

Author’s Note: So after deciding what I wanted for the Wednesday wardrobe piece today, I changed my mind about how much I’d shared on Monday for Monday Mayhem/Mystery, and I decided to repost to do the whole scene. Actually… I’m going to go with the the scene before it and the full scene.


An Investigation Gets… Interesting

“I think I’m going to bet on this new joint effort for peace being an abysmal failure.”

Pellton looked over at his younger teammate, tempted to laugh, though the situation was far from amusing. They needed peace, needed the joint venture to work, but they all knew that it was going to be difficult. Impossible, maybe, if one thought about it the way that Zenith did. Pellton could tell him to do all that he could to make it work, to give it every effort to help it succeed, but Zenith would do the opposite. Some would blame his age, though he was no longer a child, and the debate over whether or not he belonged on the team would start all over again.

“Your anger will not change our assignment,” Chuitanya said, glancing back over her shoulder. The Chular led them most of the time, their longer legs dictating their pace—not that most humans would be willing to let one of them walk behind them, no matter how much they wanted a joint venture to succeed. Her eyes thinned to slits before she turned away from the humans. Her scales caught the sunlight and changed colors to a shimmering, almost blinding green that had Zenith moving to shield his eyes from the glare.

“I’m not angry,” Zenith corrected, adjusting his coat as he spoke. “This kind of petty crime is a waste of the resources they’re always fighting about. The Integrated Division doesn’t have limitless funding or universal support. How many times do they spout that at me? At least once a week, isn’t it?”

Pellton shook his head. The resources they lectured Zenith on had little to do with money or approval. Their team was smaller than most, comprised of only two Chular and two humans, but they had things that no other team did all the same. That inequality created a lot of impatience that didn’t help when things were already strained in their office.

He was relieved to be out of it no matter what the reason.

“It’s a theft, and eyewitnesses said it was done by humans. That means that humans should investigate it,” Chutresh said, his scales shifting to a shade that matched his mate.

Zenith reached into his pockets, checking each of them, and shook his head when the object he sought was not there. “I hate that this place doesn’t have sunglasses. With those two around, it’s a wonder we’re not both blind by now.”

Pellton chose not to say anything to that. He didn’t know that he could—he didn’t have the same visual acuity as the other man, but reminding Zenith of that would only anger him. “This is better than being in the office, isn’t it?”

Zenith gave him a look. “Don’t say that like you wouldn’t be home with your wife if you had a choice. I don’t want to know what those two do on their days off, but at least you have a home and a family.”

“I have a choice,” Pellton said, keeping his voice as gentle as he could, not wanting to make an issue of it—they did well as a team despite the fact that none of them would have picked the others for their teammates. They might have agreed to work for the new division, but that didn’t mean that they had any say in how the division worked. “This joint effort is important to me.”

Zenith’s jaw tightened. “Sometimes I forget that you were born here.”

No one could forget that Zenith hadn’t been.

“We are close?” Chuitanya asked, trying to divert the conversation from that unpleasant topic.

Zenith closed his eyes, muttering the address to himself and pointing to a side street. “There. The house is the first on the right. On the north side of the street for you Chular.”

Chutresh started to hiss, but he stopped himself. They did not argue with Zenith if they could avoid it, and most of the time, they could. The human still did his best to provoke them, but then there was a great deal of unhappiness in him, and Pellton thought even the Chular could forgive him for his attitude.

“We must verify that this theft was truly done by a human. If it was not, then we do not need to waste any resources,” Chuitanya said, though suggesting turning this over to the regular Chular police force wasn’t the best idea, either, even if Zenith had objected to this assignment.

Chutresh stepped forward, using his reptilian strength to remove the broken door out of their path, and Zenith shook his head as he bypassed him, going to stand in the middle of the room. Pellton waited for Chuitanya to enter before he joined the other man.

“Where?”

“Do I have to do everything? The chair is broken. Why don’t you start with that?”

Pellton grunted. Just because the object had been knocked over sometime recently did not mean that what they wanted was there. Zenith could have narrowed their focus more than that, but he was in a mood again.

Kneeling down next to the chair, Pellton touched his hand to the back of it and came away with the distinctive feel of left behind genetic material, a sensation both familiar and disconcerting. He frowned, rubbing his fingers together, trying to be certain of what he was reading.

“What is it?”

One thing the Chular female could do—she seemed to always pick up on shifts in their moods, knew when something was wrong when they weren’t saying anything.

Pellton glanced toward Zenith and back at her. “I’ve got a human, yes.”

“Well, I guess we get to work this after all.”

“What is wrong with this human? You seem… concerned.”

“It’s… I’ve never seen this before,” Pellton said, because he hadn’t and he shouldn’t be seeing it now. He tested it a third time. Either someone had found a way to manipulate his modification, or the results were the same. “The human is an unmodified one.”


 

“Cullings were outlawed over a century ago.”

The words were hissed with reptilian displeasure, Chuitanya’s nostrils flaring and scales rippling as she spoke. She bared her claws, standing to her full height as she exchanged a look with her mate. Pellton turned away, not wanting to watch the two of them deal with her emotions the only way the Chular knew how. He was trying to work a case here, not get caught up in angry politics again. He wanted no part of that. He just wanted to do his job and get home to his own mate.

Days like this, he regretted agreeing to join the newly fledged Integrated Division, but he’d been around long enough to know that if change was ever going to happen on this planet, it had to be with both parties working together, regardless of past atrocities and broken treaties. This new investigative force needed to succeed, or they’d end up backsliding back to a century ago and the warfare that had led to this unpleasant situation in the first place.

So he pretended he wasn’t bothered by the Chular, and the Chular pretended that he was more than a living computer, and it almost worked.

“That doesn’t change what I’m getting from this,” Pellton said, rubbing his fingers together as his body processed and cataloged the genetics he’d found at the scene of the crime. Their thief was a man in his late forties with light hair and eyes, without gifts or shackles. “This guy was pure human, no alterations or modifications, which we all know is impossible.”

“Impossible because the Chular say they stopped, not because that is true.”

That made all of them wince—even if Chular winced in a way that didn’t look much like it to humans. Coming from their youngest member, it was a harsh critique, should have made both of the aliens angry, but no one could argue with the proof standing right next to them. Zenith was not yet thirty, yet he carried the bitterness of a man three times his age, the dangerously unhappy product of an illegal culling that ripped him away from his entire family and trapped him here.

“If someone has started culling again, we’re going to find them and stop it,” Pellton told the other man, touching his arm.

Zenith threw his hand off, eyes dark with barely contained rage. “Just because we stop them from getting more doesn’t do anything to help the people they’ve already taken, and we don’t even know that this guy knows anything about the ones that brought him here.”

“He got away from them without being modified,” Chuitanya said. “That is very rare.”

Zenith might have gone for her, but Pellton caught his arm again, looking the other man in the eyes, hoping to make him think and calm himself. “Don’t.”

The other man closed his eyes, breathing hard as he struggled to bring his emotions under control. Pellton did not offer any comfort or platitudes—those tended to have the opposite effect on Zenith. He did not pretend to understand what Zenith felt. He was third generation, born modified because his parents and grandparents were, not like Zenith, who’d been normal until he was culled. He did not know how he would react if he’d been in Zenith’s place, nor did he want to. His life had been good.

“I doubt you want to hear it, but they may take this man and any like him back,” Chutresh said, retracting his claws, making no move to get closer to their youngest member. “They are not modified. That is different from what bars you from returning to your homeworld and your family.”

Zenith hissed a curse in Chular, and the others flinched. They considered their language sacred, unlike the modifiers who had forced Zenith to use it and only it, despite lacking the right skull shape to reproduce the sounds the lizards made.

Pellton let go of his arm, turning to look at the Chular. He figured it would be better if they said nothing for a while. They had not been a part of what happened to Zenith, but they were a constant reminder of it. What they had thought might appease him did not—he would not have been comforted to know that those culled could return home, not when he could not, nor would it be enough to stop those who were culling in violation of the law—they could not give him back all that had been taken from him or undo what had been done to him.

“We can wait outside,” Chuitanya offered. “Would you prefer this?”

Pellton turned to Zenith. This was his decision. He did not care if they left, but the other man might. “Your choice. We’re going to need whatever you can get from here.”

Zenith grimaced. Half the reason he was still alive was because his modifiers hadn’t stopped with one upgrade—they’d pushed his body to its limit with them, and he was a better living machine than Pellton in all but one aspect. His way of learning genetics was too unpleasant to be used on a regular basis. Then again, Pellton sometimes thought that Zenith wouldn’t use any of his augments if he could avoid it.

“He wasn’t alone,” Zenith said, eyes closed, pointing to the desk. “The last time anyone was here before them was well over three months ago, based on the amount of dust and the life cycle of the insects around here.”

“Any idea what made them come here?”

“Near starvation, probably,” Zenith answered, looking over at the Chular. “You didn’t need me to tell you that. The fact that they weren’t modified means their cullers were either killed or arrested before they could modify them. They won’t trust your kind.”

“Hence the theft,” Pellton said. He touched the genetic marker left behind by the other thief. Female. Late twenties. He frowned when he failed to get more from the genetics. He had only experienced that one other time.

He crossed back to Zenith, taking a sample from him and frowning.

Chutresh and Chuitanya hissed with concern. “What is it? Why would you need Zenith for a baseline?”

Pellton ran his fingers over what was on the desk from the woman’s contact with it. She’d gouged the wood—and he should have had plenty to work with. Sample size was not the problem. “She’s not showing up—I can get a sense only that she’s female and in her twenties which shouldn’t be possible, either. Genetics carry the whole code.”

“Unless the code is so modified that it isn’t recognizable,” Zenith said. He shook his head. “I can’t help you with the analysis there. Except… maybe she’s a shifter. Their genetics tend to be in flux, so they’re harder to read, right?”

“Shifters do not have long life-spans. Can you tell anything of her? She may already be ill.”

Zenith looked to Pellton. “You want to follow them, or you want an analysis of what’s here? You won’t get both.”

“We should trail them while we can. This place isn’t going anywhere.”

The other man nodded, leaving the room.


A Story and a Snippet

Author’s Note: So here’s a possibly funny story for today… I thought I was in a terrible mood to write fluff (and I was, I really was,) and since I’d somehow convinced myself that I needed a Tuesday Truffle (something sweet) piece, I asked for help finding one. Liana Mir generously prompted me with something to tie in to the collaboration, and I managed to write fluff.

Then I opened up this window, got set to post it, and realized today was Monday. Monday is Monday Mayhem/Mystery. I had the wrong piece. So that is something to look forward to tomorrow, I guess.

Today, I will take a snippet from my latest work, a science fiction mystery. I kept wanting to give the full scene, but it’s quite a bit longer than a “snippet.”


An Investigation Gets… Interesting

“Cullings were outlawed over a century ago.”

The words were hissed with reptilian displeasure, Chuitanya’s nostrils flaring and scales rippling as she spoke. She bared her claws, standing to her full height as she exchanged a look with her mate. Pellton turned away, not wanting to watch the two of them deal with her emotions the only way the Chular knew how. He was trying to work a case here, not get caught up in angry politics again. He wanted no part of that. He just wanted to do his job and get home to his own mate.

Days like this, he regretted agreeing to join the newly fledged Integrated Division, but he’d been around long enough to know that if change was ever going to happen on this planet, it had to be with both parties working together, regardless of past atrocities and broken treaties. This new investigative force needed to succeed, or they’d end up backsliding back to a century ago and the warfare that had led to this unpleasant situation in the first place.

So he pretended he wasn’t bothered by the Chular, and the Chular pretended that he was more than a living computer, and it almost worked.

“That doesn’t change what I’m getting from this,” Pellton said, rubbing his fingers together as his body processed and cataloged the genetics he’d found at the scene of the crime. Their thief was a man in his late forties with light hair and eyes, without gifts or shackles. “This guy was pure human, no alterations or modifications, which we all know is impossible.”

“Impossible because the Chular say they stopped, not because that is true.”

That made all of them wince—even if Chular winced in a way that didn’t look much like it to humans. Coming from their youngest member, it was a harsh critique, should have made both of the aliens angry, but no one could argue with the proof standing right next to them. Zenith was not yet thirty, yet he carried the bitterness of a man three times his age, the dangerously unhappy product of an illegal culling that ripped him away from his entire family and trapped him here.

“If someone has started culling again, we’re going to find them and stop it,” Pellton told the other man, touching his arm.