"A Suicidal Race"

Trenton – 1984

Fires had something called 'alarms' to them.

Whip had heard that once. One, two, three, or four; that kind of thing. Your average dumpster fire would probably be a 'one', while a big old housefire could be a two or maybe a three. She didn't really know how the system worked.

But Whip was pretty confident that, however you rated a thing like a fire, the one now engulfing Nicnevin's giant unfinished building— the 'Aurelia Arms', a sign in the empty lobby called it— would rate the highest possible number of 'alarms' there were.

By the time she snuck out through an unlocked rear exit the top of the tarp-cocooned building was already blazing like a candle's wick. The sight of it set her heart racing; she was almost ready to bound straight back inside looking for Penance before one of the first firemen on the scene grabbed her and sensibly dragged her back down the block, depositing her behind a hastily assembled cordon.

At one point paramedics burst from the building's entrance bearing a body on a stretcher. Whip fought through the crowd to see them, but it was someone she didn't recognize: an older teen boy, his torso wrapped in bandages and one arm secured in a splint. He cradled his chest with his free hand, teeth gnashing together, writhing in agony, his eyes distant and wide.

It wasn't long before flaming pieces of the building began toppling down along the metal scaffolding surrounding it, sloughing off the smoking core of the doomed building like petals drooping off a wilting flower. Whip lost count of the number of fire engines pulling up to battle the blaze before she remembered Penance's last words to her and reluctantly pushed back through the large crowd gathering to watch the spectacle of the building's fate. She moved across the street to the riverside and followed the path beneath a nearby bridge, doing her best not to look back at the rising inferno.

She followed the Delaware downstream about a mile or so, coming to a tree-studded little spot. 'Old Wharf', a sign called it. She barely read the letters before gripping one of the sign's wooden posts and pressing the side of her head to it. She sank to her knees in the overgrown grass and slumped to one side. The sounds of sirens and the Aurelia Arm's ongoing collapse came to her from the distance. She willed herself not to look back at the massive plume of smoke rising into the sky.

Instead she stared at the peaceful water of the Delaware, her eyes distant and lost in its ripples. With everything she'd been through in the past few hours it was more than fitting for her to take a break. But then that wasn't the way of things, really. The past few hours had been horrible, sure. But this, right now, was certainly the worst of it all.

Whip stared at the water, and she waited.

After everything they'd been through, and everything she'd done, that was all she could do now.

There was really nothing worse than that.

x

x

x

Less than half-an-hour later a pair of bare feet shuffled along the irregular little asphalt path, making hardly a sound at all. Whip, still lying against the signpost, nonetheless alerted like a bloodhound.

The girl twisted her body about and looked up at the boy, her cinnamon eyes wide. She caught her breath and leapt to her feet, racing over to meet him.

"Penance!"

She gripped the boy's bare shoulders. He was in a better state than when she'd last seen him, but only in a relative way. He'd been doused in water, at least, and most of the crusted bits of blood and gore on him were washed away, at least partially. Enough so that anyone giving the kid a passing glance wouldn't immediately start vomiting. Or calling 911. Or both. And given the grand spectacle of the destruction of Nicnevin's building just down the street no one was likely to bother giving him a passing glance to begin with.

"Anyone on your tail? You steer clear of the cops, 'n all that? Nicnevin and her boys gonna try tracking us down?"

The boy stared at the girl's collarbone, his eyes a thousand miles away; he said nothing.

"We can't stick around here, right?" Whip took one of the boy's hands and tugged at him. "Let's move!"

She tugged on him, but he didn't budge.

"Kid!"

Penance's eyes slowly wandered up to Whip's face.

"Nicnevin is gonna come after you!" She again gripped his shoulders tight.

The boy responded by slowly pulling out a small object tucked away in the waistband of his bloodied shorts. He took one of the girl's hands and deposited it there, closing her hand over it. When Whip pulled back and opened her hand Nicnevin's gold butterfly pendant glittered in the sunlight. Both of them looked at it with similar awed expressions; in Penance's case it was almost like he was confirming that it was, in fact, real. When he looked Whip in the eyes again he merely shook his head.

"She can't do that, anymore," he said. "She can't come after any of us."

Penance wandered over to the signpost and looked at its letters without reading a word. Whip still stared at the pendant in her hand. Eventually she looked over at the boy, her face full of wonder.

"Holy... holy shit!"

The boy let the beginnings of a smile form at one corner of his mouth.

"Right?"

He reached behind his ear with a trembling hand, looking for his last cigarette, only to remember he already 'smoked' it up in the building. He scratched at his throat, swallowing uncomfortably and licking his dry lips.

"S— shoulda put that cigarette in the cabinet with Galabeg before the fight," he chuckled. "Don't know why I got all dramatic like that, sticking it in my mouth and lighting up." He scoffed and waved a hand through the air. "'Showmanship'; that's why. Just had to be all dramatic and waste a perfectly good cigarette. Just to look 'cool'. How stupid is that, huh?"

Whip took a few steps towards the boy; she stared down at his back.

"You okay, Pen?"

Penance turned around, eyes wide, almost as if he were surprised to see Whip standing there. He put on a grin and shrugged, laughing.

"'Course! I mean— I can get a little hammy sometimes, when it's called for, but I've still got a good head on my shoulders when all's said and done." His grin spread. "An' it's a much better head than some. Hehehe! I mean, it still has a pair of shoulders to sit on, right?"

He laughed, and he laughed longer at his own joke than was even remotely reasonable. He laughed so long and so hard that he wasn't exactly able to pinpoint the moment that his laugh turned into something else.

He could pinpoint the moment Whip grabbed him and kept him from falling to the ground, gently lowering him to his knees as he bawled into her chest. His tears came fast and free; the girl remained silent as he wept, merely running one gentle hand through his hair as she held him close. And in a matter of minutes all the tension and pain of 333 years seemed to wash out of his body, locked away in those tears.

Afterward they sat side-by-side against one of the signpost's stakes, silently staring at the water, their backs to the fire and smoke rising off the Aurelia. No one disturbed the pair; by now every pedestrian in a five-mile radius had been drawn to the spectacle of the building's demise. Eventually the girl looked over at the boy, jostling his shoulder with hers.

"You could use a shower at some point, y'know." She smiled.

Penance returned the smile.

"This is me 'showered'. Mostly, anyway. There was a broken water pipe outside the building, by a dumpster where I woke up. Got me clean enough to keep the cops and medics from dragging me into an ambulance, at least."

Whip furrowed her brow.

"Where you 'woke up'?"

The boy nodded.

"I passed out after... after it was all done. I was still up in the building, then; I don't remember how I got outside."

"I do."

There was never much of an 'in between' with Penance's alertness; he was always either 'on' or 'off'. But this voice in particular brought him from zero to sixty instantaneously. The boy rolled to his knees so fast that Whip fell over on her side. Penance crouched on one knee, brandishing his charred black knife in one hand near his ear, facing the speaker behind them.

Diùlt didn't react to the boy's movement. The man barely seemed aware that Penance had moved at all, and his unfocused black eyes seemed to scan the water behind him. He lazily twisted his body around, getting a good look at the column of smoke upstream, and when he looked back at the boy his eyes showed nothing but emptiness.

He licked his lips as if he wanted to speak, but it seemed he was waiting to see whether Penance would drill his little knife through his skull or not. When Penance did nothing but hold his ground Diùlt finally spoke.

"She's... she's gone, isn't she?" He whispered.

The boy swallowed. He nodded, and when Diùlt's face twisted with some terrible mixture of disbelief and confusion Penance used his free hand to retrieve Nicnevin's pendant from his shorts; he dangled it in front of his face.

Diùlt drew a slow breath and hung his head. His entire body seemed to 'pancake' down, as if the life had oozed out of him.

By now Whip had gotten to her feet. She stood behind Penance, one hand on the boy's shoulder, and she glared at the man with white-hot contempt. For a second her gaze moved to the boy's knife, noting its black-charred surface and fern-like pattern of discolored streaks training along the metal, but just as quickly she returned her gaze to Diùlt.

"It's over," she said. "You really wanna die, too?"

The man raised his head back up, straining as if his neck were made of lead. He shrugged.

"That's an idea, isn't it?"

He leaned forward and took one long, sow step towards them. Then two. Whip curled her hands against Penance's shoulder at each step, but the boy remained unmoved. When the man realized Penance had no intention of striking him he came to a stop, again hanging his head.

"You got me out of the Aurelia, didn't you?" Penance asked. "Why?"

"The cotton balls," Diùlt mumbled. "I didn't soak them in the sedative. Not long enough. But... but that was because I was distracted. It was... just because I didn't... remember?" The man stared at the ground between them, his eyes distant and glassy. "And the backpack..." he pointed into the air with one wavering finger and his eyes slowly rose up to meet Whip's gaze. "There was something in the backpack, wasn't there? Something... there..."

The girl nodded, but she didn't elaborate.

"...something that let you get the better of Slaic..."

Diùlt scratched at the nape of his neck, teeth grit, as if the whole base of his skull had been coated in poison ivy.

"I searched it? Didn't I? The backpack? I remember... I don't..."

Penance lowered his knife and slowly got off his knee.

"My fight with Nicnevin didn't last long," Penance said. "And the flames were spreading when I passed out. You were there, weren't you?"

Diùlt looked up at the boy, his teeth bared and brow furrowed, as if Penance had interrupted him while doing complex math in his head.

"Of course I was. I said I got you out—"

"No," the boy shook his head. "I mean you were there when we fought. Even before, right?"

Diùlt looked away from the boy.

"You didn't stop me from getting to her," Penance reasoned. "But not because you were afraid. And that's not why you ran away from me upstairs either, is it?"

The man sank to his knees, shaking his head.

"What have I done?"

A low boom sounded in the distance; Penance's eyes were briefly drawn to the horizon as a sizeable part of Nicnevin's tower sloughed off like a peeled piece of skin and tumbled to the earth below.

Whip took an aggressive step towards Diùlt.

"You should worry about what we're gonna do to you, asshole!"

Penance, not looking back at the girl, slowly moved one hand behind him, pressing it to Whip's chest and preventing her from taking another step forward. The boy approached Diùlt and got to his knees to be face-to-face with the man.

"What have I done?" Diùlt repeated, holding his head.

"You did what needed to be done," Penance said. "Even if you didn't know it at the time."

Diùlt made eye contact with the boy.

"I killed her!" He hissed.

"She wasn't really alive, anymore. Not in any way that mattered."

The man's face contorted with a sneer.

"What would you know about it?" He looked away from the boy with contempt.

"Enough," Penance said. "And don't talk to me like I'm a child, Diùlt. Don't forget I'm more than ten times older than you. And maybe Nicnevin was ten times older than me, who knows? But when I say she wasn't alive in any way that mattered, it's because I know. I haven't really been 'alive' for a long while now. Not in any way that's really mattered, I don't think."

At this the man looked back up at the boy.

"I've been tired," Penance explained. "Very tired. She had to be exhausted—"

"She was... she was a woman of will—"

Penance held up one finger.

"But she didn't have the will to stop. Addicts don't; I know that, too." The boy sat back on his rear, crossing his legs. "When all you're living for is an addiction, it isn't really living—"

The man scoffed, shaking his head.

"Nancy Reagan should hire you as her speechwriter," Diùlt chuckled, but then his countenance quickly changed.

The man again narrowed his eyes, brow trembling, and in a flash his left hand was at Penance's throat. Whip lunged forward but the boy held up one hand to stop her; Diùlt wasn't even providing enough force to squeeze Penance's throat shut.

"I'm not going to kill you, Diùlt," the boy said. "Stop trying to make it happen."

The man's grip slackened further, and finally he let his limp hand fall off Penance's neck.

"I didn't want this," he said. "Any of this. I didn't... I didn't choose it—"

"None of us did," Penance said. "Whatever Nicnevin once was— what she wanted to be, again— that person never would've chosen to become what she turned into. The 'me' from hundreds of years ago, he never would've chosen to become what I am, either."

"The others: they chose loyalty." Diùlt shook his head. "They chose to be true to her, and I—"

"The others fostered her delusions," Penance shook his head. "They cared for her, yeah, but maybe you were the only one who cared about her."

"Those are synonyms," the man growled.

"They're not," Penance gave Diùlt a sad little smile. "Trust me, I'd know."

Again the man looked at Penance. His contemptuous sneer softened.

"What do you care about how I feel, anyway?"

The boy's sad smile faded.

"She couldn't come back from what she'd become. And Uallas—"

Penance swallowed and craned his head uncomfortably.

"—it took him until the end for him to come back. Until it was too late, really. I used to be sure that becoming immortal was a curse for the wicked. I've had time to kinda rethink that, though."

The boy gave Whip a brief look, an uncharacteristic embarrassment flushing up in his cheeks.

"Maybe we're not all evil, exactly, and maybe it's the years that get unkind to us, and make us unkind. I really don't know. But all the same we have what should be this gift: this extra time that just gets wasted, and even living ten lifetimes we don't learn the lessons we need. We fight each other— kill and die, over and over and over— and nothing's solved by any of it. If we were any normal race of humans we'd have killed ourselves off way before Nicnevin was ever born."

"What's your point?" Diùlt said.

The boy's sad little smile returned.

"My point is that if someone like you can't make it back to the person you were— with only a few years of mistakes to your name," he pointed at the man, "mind you pretty fucking bad ones— what kind of hope would I have?"

The man looked to one side. He said nothing.

"Me," Penance said, "I haven't had any kind of hope. Not for a long time. But now I'm thinking I'd kinda like to try."

Another low boom shuttled through the air; by now neither Penance nor Diùlt bothered to acknowledge it, other than the boy abstractly motioning towards the destruction with one lazy hand.

"Maybe she's at peace, now," Penance whispered. "And maybe this was the only way. That should give you comfort, I think. And if that doesn't help you find peace then so be it, but you should look for it."

The boy got to his feet and crossed his arms.

"And I can't help you with that."

Diùlt stayed on his knees for a moment, and he winced as a final thunder-like echo blew past them: another piece of the disintegrating Aurelia Arms landing hard. Eventually he bowed his head and got to his feet, reeling like an elderly drunk. He looked to Penance, then Whip, and seeing no sympathetic eyes he turned on his feet, moving off like driftwood in a lazy lake.

"Diùlt," the boy called after him.

He turned his head in Penance's direction one last time, and Penance managed at least a modicum of sympathy with his eyes.

"She wanted you to live, then, back when she took you in as a kid. She'd want you to live now, too, I'm sure."

The man looked away, uncertain, and then he shuffled off on unsteady feet. Penance and Whip watched him disappear around a copse of trees.

"You gonna leave him to maybe come back on our heels like that?" Whip demanded.

"We're never going to see him again—"

"How're you sure?"

The boy shrugged. When Penance realized Whip wasn't accepting his answer he spoke.

"You feel like killing him?" He looked over his shoulder at the girl. "He'd probably let you if you wanted, you know."

Whip looked to one side, her freckled cinnamon skin twisting as she scrunched her lips. She waved a dismissive hand and shook her head, sighing.

"You were downright charitable with him," she said. "Didn't have to coddle him so much, did you? I'd have told him to take a walk off the nearest bridge."

The boy smiled.

"There's a couple reasons I don't want him to do that, actually. I guess I don't need more than one, though. And it's the big one, anyway."

"What's that?"

He turned to face the girl, never losing his smile, but drawing a sad sigh before he spoke.

"I'm tired of all the killing. And the death."

Whip's sour expression softened. After a moment she gave the boy a playful smirk and hooked one finger through the remains of his shorts, tugging him along.

"An' I'm tired of havin' to go buy you new clothes every time you get 'em bloodied and slashed up to hell, but here we are."

Penance matched the girl's playful smile, allowing himself to be tugged along behind her.

"This is only the second time, by my count—"

"Twice more'n most people," the girl grumbled.