CHAPTER FORTY
“You saw something?” Gwyneth asked, looking worried. She was picking up on Tetsuya’s feelings.
“It was a dream,” he said dismissively, knowing that telling her would do neither of them any good. “Gwyneth, can you feel anything else from Thalia here? Is there any way for you to tell how near she is? I know you just said distance doesn’t matter, but is that a blanket statement?”
He would rather not waste time here if Thalia wasn’t nearby, especially with the increasing urgency they both felt.
“Distance doesn’t matter, but only for really strong emotions; if her emotions are stable, I won't feel her until I'm closer, and it serves more like a beacon. So I can find her more easily when she's calm and relatively nearby. Not particularly convenient in emergencies like this. It's funny, I didn’t feel anything from her when I arrived on this side of the Portal, but I was careful not to check since I wanted to surprise her. She can always tell when I’m probing her feelings, and it pisses her off.” Gwyneth gave a shaky laugh, wiping a tear from one eye. “Anyway, yes, it’s a perfect idea. She must be pretty calm now, so I can check for her; how big is this planet relative to the earth?”
Yamamoto answered this: “Two and two-thirds of our Earth would fit inside this planet.”
“Then I might not be able to tell about the entire planet from here. I can already tell you that from here, she’s not in range.”
“There are only two other docking stations on this planet that humans and similar species can tolerate; we’ll fly over them and see if you feel anything. If not, we’ll go straight to the next,” Harada said, relieved that there was a faster, surer way than the prototype locator device to detect Thalia’s presence. His anxiety for her was like a brushfire during a dry season, threatening to burn out of control at any moment.
***
Thalia was awake, but she wished she wasn’t. The real despair had passed; she had endured the death-wish felt so clearly by her sister and in a different way by her beloved while she was on the planet's surface, still possessed and controlled by the elementals. She had hated what they were making her do once she realized they could not teach justice, as she made it a point always to do.
The Fury in her would not pull back, never pulled back from battle when it was a just cause; and this was indeed a just cause. She did not regret the bloodshed itself, merely the way in which it had been accomplished.
The magnitude of what had happened on the little dead planet stunned and appalled her so thoroughly that her mind threatened to revolt and shut down. She was suddenly prone to uncontrollable trembling fits and crying jags.
She wondered what it said about her that she could almost reconcile herself to the violence, but could not come to terms with the sex. She was no prude; pagans and Faeries may have many faults, but inhibitions about sex are not generally among them. In this particular case, however, she squirmed with shame and fear over the memory of it that would not stop playing on a loop in her head.
She was not afraid Tetsuya would be unable to forgive her for it; she trusted him enough now to believe he would understand. She knew there was no way she could have controlled the elemental spirits once she had stepped onto the planet, and that was most of her shame as well as her terror: that she could not stop them from invading her and completely taking over her body. The fear she now felt of the planet - and worse, of herself - was crippling.
Never in her life before had she felt so helpless, so utterly unbalanced. Her own body ignored her will, burying her soul deep inside her without a voice; it was similar to how she imagined it would be if she were buried alive in a coffin. She did not for a moment believe Harada would blame her for that, but found it hard to give herself the same grace. She felt she had betrayed him, and her guilt added to her distress; and knowing the guilt was irrational did not dispel it.
The brutal sex with Sekiguchi had not been consensual for her, though anyone watching would have declared her the definite aggressor. This had not been her choice, though she knew that her private desires were a factor in everything the elementals had done through her.
She was appalled at the violence of it; she had practically mauled Sekiguchi, even drawing his blood with her fangs so she could lick it off him. He had very much enjoyed it, but that was not at all the point, since she knew that if he had not been willing, she – or rather, the spirits possessing her – would have forced him anyway. Never before in her life had killing mingled with her sex drive, and the combination repulsed her.
She was uncertain to what extent the sexual drive exploited by the elementals had actually been hers, but she did know that at least some of it had. Sekiguchi was not her soul’s Love, but she had loved him in several lifetimes to some lesser extent, and that love remained despite everything he was in this life. Besides that, he was attractive in a sensuous, dangerous way that appealed to the dark part of her nature.
The Fae are universally notorious for their weakness toward beauty, including beautiful faces and bodies; this was perceived by humans as a shallow trait, and Thalia could understand why - yet her Faerie side was not immune to it. She wondered, therefore, how much her Fae side had played into what the elementals had done through her. Sekiguchi was physically beautiful to her, though in a different way from Harada. Sekiguchi was smaller; his lean musculature enhanced his sleek, catlike grace; his missing eye drew attention to the remaining one, green as a forest and of a lovely shape when not reddened with bloodlust or hate. His black hair was long in front, silky, and seemed faintly purple in the right light. She could not deny that her body had felt his pull.
Yet in her own defense, she knew she would never have acted on her latent attraction to Sekiguchi of her own will, for so many reasons.
Tetsuya had struggled with jealousy of Sekiguchi already, she knew, though they had not spoken much of it. He sensed her attraction to the other man, and knew they shared a history; Tetsuya was traditionally monogamous, and since he was the only lover who could truly satisfy her in any lifetime, she had no problem honoring that. She would never have willingly betrayed the trust of her beloved.
And of course there was now also the problem of Sekiguchi, quite apart from the larger problem of Harada; she had not intended to encourage his infatuation with her, knowing it would only hurt everyone involved. Her intention had honestly been to honor Tetsuya's request that she never seek him out, for her own sake. Now she had gone far beyond mere encouragement; she winced as she remembered again how she had pushed him down and leaped on him like a lioness about to devour, except that she stopped at lightly breaking his skin, and had not actually ripped out his throat.
Suddenly it dawned on her that it was there her feelings had played a part; it had probably saved his life that she hid love in her heart for him. But that would not make it any easier when she had to face him next. It tormented her to know that her own feelings had given the elementals a handle to use against her good intentions.
Turning to her feelings, she recognized that she felt raped, violated, and undone – not by Sekiguchi, whom she understood had really believed her to be acting freely, but by the spirits of this place. She could not blame or hate them, knowing their madness and having felt so keenly the pain, grief, and rage that had driven them to these lengths; but she had never before in this lifetime felt so helpless, so bruised and broken.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
She wondered with dark humor if perhaps she had simultaneously endured and committed the first no-fault act of rape and sexual assault in existence.
There was a light knock at her door, and instinctively she covered her face with her hands.
“You’re awake,” Sekiguchi said in a tender voice she had never heard from him before. “I brought your supper,” he said, setting a tray down on the small table near the head of the bed.
She managed by a great effort of will to take her hands away from her face and look up at him. “Thank you,” she said softly.
He sat beside her on the bed and gently threaded his fingers through her hair. She sat and hated herself for not knowing what to do with this horrifying situation; hated herself for still feeling attraction to her enemy, hated that she felt she was betraying Tetsuya by feeling it, and hated that she now had to wound this already devastated soul by pushing him away. No matter how gently she tried to do it, she knew she would break him. The love in his face and voice was real; soft, tender, a little shy.
She began to cry, and wished again that she was dead rather than having to find a way out of this desperately tangled web of love, violence, and hate.
Sekiguchi pulled her toward him, leaning her head on his shoulder and holding her close, his face in her hair. “Please don’t cry,” he said. “You’re magnificent.”
She shook her head and cried harder. “You don’t understand,” she said between sobs.
“How could I? I’m a mortal; you’re divine,” he said in a soothing tone.
“You’re wrong, Teiji,” she said, lifting her tearstained face to look at him. “I’m mortal; I’m half Fae, but the Fae are still under the curse of mortality, just as humans are. I’m no goddess, believe me.”
“You are the only goddess in my pantheon,” he countered. “Are you ill? You were burning with fever when we first returned,” he asked, putting one hand against her forehead.
“I am ill, yes,” she agreed. “I’m heartsick.”
“And I’m lovesick,” he said. “Somehow I don’t think that’s what you meant, but I can wish,” he added a little sadly.
This made her cry harder, and again she let him pull her against his chest, his arms around her to comfort her. She hated that he was so soft toward her now, because it only made her task even more unbearable.
“Teiji, please; I’m engaged to marry the one I love, the one my soul was born with,” she said miserably, pulling away after a few moments.
“It’s a bit late to remember that,” he said after a pause, his voice still gentle.
She pushed back a little and looked into his eye. “You didn’t feel the spirits on that world, did you?” she asked. “You don’t know what happened to me when we stepped outside, do you?”
He looked surprised, then his eye narrowed suspiciously.
“Spirits, Thalia?” His tone was becoming bitter again. “Will you really insult us both, not to mention your beloved Vice-Chief, by blaming what you did on spirits?”
“Not entirely,” she replied hopelessly. “I know how it sounds, and I know what you’re probably thinking, but you really don’t understand what happened.”
“Explain it, then,” he said, and she could hear the pain in his voice. He knew now that she had not implicitly renounced her engagement to Harada in her unbridled lust for him on the planet, and she saw that he had not been able to prevent himself from hoping it had meant that.
“You read my file, obviously, so you know I’m connected to the elements on Earth,” she began, making her voice as objective as possible.
“Why Earth? You’re half human, but the Fae have a separate origin, do they not?”
“That’s what I was going to address, actually. You don’t have Fae here, and I don’t think anyone really made a point to tell you the distinction, but I’m fully native to Earth. The Fae are natives of Earth just as Humans are; you just don’t have Fae in this universe. I came through the Eridanus Supervoid; I’m from the Earth on the other side. This was the first time I had ever set foot on another planet.”
Sekiguchi was interested in spite of himself. “I had heard of the Portal, but was uncertain which sources to trust; and I have too much here to do to study it.”
“It’s fascinating, and I was thrilled to be invited to cross it,” she said. “My point to you is that my power has always been channeled through Gaia, the Earth. I have never been anywhere else until today.”
“So the elements were different, you’re saying?” he asked, furrowing his brow. He was very intelligent; that was another thing she had always appreciated in him.
“The chemical composition of the entire planet and atmosphere is different, although only slightly in this case,” she said. “So yes, it naturally follows that the elements are also slightly different. Perhaps on a planet with extreme differences, my power would dissipate altogether; but in this case, it changed.”
“I would not have thought there still were certain elements,” he said, puzzled. “I’m certain there has been no water on the surface for centuries, as one example.”
“Precisely; it’s a desert planet. But the spirits of the elements remain with the planet until the planet itself is entirely dead. If you don’t like my calling them spirits, fine; call them energy signatures. I don’t care. The point is they are real, and they are powerful, and on that planet they have been maddened with pain and rage for too long without an outlet.”
Reluctant understanding dawned on Sekiguchi’s face. “You were the first outlet they encountered,” he said.
“For a very long count of years, yes,” she agreed. “My Fury is part of me; it’s half of who I am, and that Fury is what got me out the door of the ship and onto the planet. I take full responsibility for that. But no part of me, Fury included, ever expected the kind of interaction that followed once we disembarked.” She shivered at the memory.
“You did look different when we were still onboard, as compared to when we got inside the building,” he agreed, remembering.
“Those … things … were unable to reason any longer, though once they could have; they rushed me. I hardly knew they were there before they were inside me, overwhelming me. Their emotion was enormous; I know it sounds strange, but it was too big for me to hold. It was my own Fury that gave them the chance to get in, not realizing what would happen. I never thought my will and my thoughts could be so completely overwhelmed, lost in a flood of elemental vengeance.”
“What was different about your actions today, as opposed to what you would normally do?” he asked, genuinely curious.
She was relieved to see he believed her now; he no longer thought she was lying in order to protect her own conscience.
She thought about it, trying to dissect it as honestly as she could. “Probably the main difference is that I believe in speaking to those I punish; I always tell them why they are suffering, because I believe the whole point of justice is to teach, and it’s most effective to teach with words and acts combined. You may remember how I spoke to the Mimawarigumi, for instance,” she reminded him.
He laughed softly, his voice revealing his pain. “Yes, when you ‘rescued’ me.”
She shook her head. “I’m still mad at you for that,” she chided.
“I know,” he said, but smiled at her.
“Anyway, those spirits gave me no opportunity to speak, except when they wanted me to express their thoughts, and then I was almost a puppet. I also normally haven’t used lethal force in this lifetime. On earth I can only kill in the same ways other humans can; I don’t think you realize how limited my elemental power actually is, since you were thinking of the old myths as still applying.”
“There was nothing limited about your power down there,” he said, his eye lit with the fierce joy he took in the memory.
“Yes, because it wasn’t mine,” she reminded him gently. “I was pushed down somewhere deep; I couldn’t hear my own voice above the screaming in my head from those maddened spirits. The only thing that helped steady me was killing as many of those creatures as I could.”
“That sounds very much like my usual state of mind, though fortunately I have learned to compartmentalize to some extent. I have a beast inside that’s always raging, always howling for blood,” he said, his eye dark with intensity.
“Yes; so you intend to kill and destroy until it stops howling,” she agreed. “I saw that in you before, but it was not until we went down there that I think I began to understand it.”
They were silent for several moments, deep in their own separate thoughts.
“So you were not the one who fucked me so gloriously, I imagine,” he said at last, his voice soft with regret.
“No, I wasn’t,” she agreed, her voice also soft. “Although you know I still have love for you of a kind, and always will. But I do believe it was my influence that saved your life, if I can flatter myself that far. They were ravening, unthinking; I think they would have ripped out your throat with my teeth, had I not been in there somewhere.”
“I very much want to call you a liar, but sadly, I know better,” he admitted, looking down at the floor. “It may well have been better if you had let them rip my throat out, you know. Your idea of mercy can be quite cruel, Thalia.”
With that, he rose to leave. He paused to touch her face, his fingers gentle, looking down at her with a sad, wistful smile that was out of character in the extreme for anyone who knew the fierce leader of Hellfire Rising. Thalia recognized that look, though; she had seen it before, and it broke her heart every time. “I’m sorry, Teiji,” she whispered, her eyes full of tears.
He left without another word, and she cried herself back to sleep, her dinner growing cold beside her.