This Fond Madness

When she’d first seen the photographs of the stew of dead bodies that the Nidos lived off of, she’d retched. That image was one of the ones that never stopped haunting her. She still woke from nightmare images of her mother’s face in the rot-filled water, from cold sweats in dreams that she was drowning in the decay of people she knew.

  “I’d shoot you, you know,” Chris assured her; his words filled in the silence that had stretched out while horrors filled her mind. “I’d kill you before I’d let them throw you in one of those things.”

  “I know.” She looked up at him, and he kissed her forehead. For one of those perfect quiet moments, she wondered what life would’ve been like if she’d been born only a decade earlier. “Is it weird to be comforted by promises to be killed?”

  “Not if it’s a choice between quick death and something horrible,” Chris said.

  “I’d kill you, too,” she added.

  “I know.”

  They lapsed back into silence then, and Harmony debated asking him about the differences in the world. He was three years older than her; it didn’t seem like a big difference now, but he’d known a world she could only try to imagine, been old enough to truly see the change. For as long as she remembered, this was the only world.

  Chastity leaned against the wall. Her knees were bent, and she looked shakier than Harmony had ever seen her.

  “You’re lucky,” she whispered. “If we hadn’t seen you…”

  “You did.” Harmony listened to the sound of yelling outside their room. Their father had thrown something. Since Mom died, he was drunk more days than not. After what Harmony had seen tonight, she’d thought about stealing one of his bottles of vodka. Bodies floated in various stages of decomposition, arms and legs tangled together, eyes wide open and staring lifelessly. She’d stood silently looking into the giant cistern of corpses, too disgusted to even scream.

  “You can’t go back there, Harm,” Chastity warned.

  “I needed to know… I just wanted…”

  “Mom’s not in there, and anyone that is in there is beyond our help.” Chastity reached out, winced, and glanced at her arm. Her sleeve was wet with blood, but she kept her arm outstretched. “Come here.”

  Instead of accepting the hug her sister offered, Harmony grabbed the first-aid box on Chastity’s dresser. Once, they’d both had jewelry boxes sitting there. Harmony’s was pink; Chastity had a matching red one. Now, the things that littered the surface of Chastity’s dresser included knives, bandages, and bottles of antiseptic.

  Their mother had taught both girls to sew, and every time they did this, Harmony thought of her. Of course, she’d intended for them to sew skirts, not skin. Harmony cleaned her sister’s wound, and then she threaded the needle with the deep-blue fiber that she would have to snip and tug out later. Not getting the disintegrating thread meant going to the hospital, and hospitals were like grocery stores to the Nidos. It wasn’t openly acknowledged, but there had been enough reports of disappearances that anyone who paid attention realized that the claim of “only taking freely offered corpses” was a lie. As the population dwindled, the natural-death rate wasn’t high enough to satisfy Nidhogg’s appetites.

  “Promise me, Harmony.” Chastity lifted her gaze from the needle that Harmony held ready. “I want you to be safe. Once we’re able, we’re going to get out of here. We’ll go north, start over somewhere else. You, me, Christian, and Daddy. It’ll be better.”

  Harmony bit down on her lip, pinched the sides of her sister’s knife wound closed, and tried to keep her stitches straight and tight.

  “Everything will be different when we get out of here. It’ll be better,” Chastity promised.

  Neither of them commented on their father’s drunken ranting on the other side of the barred bedroom door. They were all coping with her mother’s death differently. Chastity fought; their father drank; and Harmony tried to ignore the increased number of missing neighbors, the way her sister insisted she stay in after dark, and the stench of her father’s almost nightly descents into oblivion.

  Things never got better for Chastity or their father, and none of them believed that they were going to improve. Chastity was wrapped in a sheet and set aflame on a bier to prevent the corpse eaters from consuming her. Their father was rarely sober, and Harmony had no expectation of living too many years longer. Chastity’s hopes for another life had been a fantasy; this was reality.

  Would it be worse to think you had a future and lose it?

  Harmony had been eight when the new god arrived. She’d never really known a world where there was any doubt that gods could be real. All she could do was kill the monsters and hope that if this god was real, so were other—better—gods.

  “Are you going to stay quiet all night?” Chris prodded.

  “Sorry.” She leaned her head against him briefly. “Dad was weird; we’re working downtown; the news about Taylor… I guess I’m feeling… I don’t know.”

  “Me too,” he said.

  “We’re almost there. Let’s go kill something. Maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll get more than one tonight.”

  ***

  The shift in Harmony’s mood as she pondered the inevitable violence in their night was markedly different from Chris’ reaction. Every time they cornered a Nido, Chris was filled with fear of losing Harmony. Afterward, he was cheered, but until they were past the fighting, he was apprehensive. Harmony was comforted by the prospect of violence—of revenge—in ways he almost envied.

  They entered Old Downtown and started to prowl the clubs. There weren’t as many people out this near curfew. Those who were fell into one of four categories: the devoted, the deniers, the deadly, or the dying. Which category a person fell into wasn’t always apparent at first sight. There were cues, of course. The people still denying the hell they were living in were the ones most likely to be wearing shoes not suited for running. Admittedly, though, the dying were prone to such folly on occasion. They weren’t necessarily rushing to their deaths, but sometimes their “what happens, happens” approach meant that they were as likely to flee from the corpse-feeders as not. The devoted wore shoes fit for running down prey. The deadly were clad in boots, easier to load with weapons and still useful for running.

  “My girl’s not feeling well,” Chris told the doorman as they approached the line outside the Norns. “Can we get inside so none of the N—so no one notices?”

  Harmony’s posture had shifted as they’d walked. She leaned on him, appearing fragile, and simultaneously tilted her head so that the bruises along her collarbone were visible. “It’s okay. I can wait out here,” she murmured to him. “I don’t mind—”

  “I do,” he snapped. He pulled her closer, caught her hand in his, and lifted it to his lips to kiss her wrist. In the process, the sleeve of her jacket slid back, exposing the bruised and needle-marked skin of her arm. He wasn’t sure what she’d injected into her body. Drugs? Nothing? It wasn’t disease: he was certain of that. Harmony’s pallor, bruises, and demeanor were all lures. She counted on the illusion of sickness, and most nights, it was enough.

  Chris caught her gaze. “Harm?”

  “I’m fine,” she lied. She hadn’t been fine in a long time, but that wasn’t something he knew how to fix.

  The doorman motioned them in. “You shouldn’t have her out here when she’s sick, man.”

  The frown Chris gave the man wasn’t faked. “If I could keep her somewhere safe, I would.”

  Harmony winced. “Come dance with me.”

  Sometimes, he wished they could go out to the clubs for an actual date. Instead, their evenings were spent training, hunting, and killing. It had long since stopped being the life he wanted, but he couldn’t leave here without her. He wouldn’t. Instead, he kept his arm around her, and together they made their way into the crowd. Time hadn’t healed him; no amount of killing seemed to bring him peace. It had helped her, but he had been fighting for a couple of years before she had joined him. Maybe that was the difference:
he was tired.

  Harmony tensed as she saw her prey: a Nido approached, trying to sniff her out.

  Chris wondered how far she’d go to ensnare them. The bruises on her arm were injection marks. As much as he believed that she wouldn’t sicken herself too much to fight, he also knew that if she could carry a disease that lured them, she would. Mentally, he made a note to try to get some clothes worn by the recently ill. Doing so was difficult, because the scent of illness faded too soon, but it was a strategy that added a little bit of extra verisimilitude.

  “Couple fight now,” Harmony whispered as he pulled her toward him.

  “Harm—”

  “Teammates, Chris. I’m not as vulnerable as I look. You know that.” She looked down, so her forehead was resting against his chest while she spoke.

  “I still worry,” he said. They could only use so many scenarios before they were caught. They rotated sections, rotated clubs within the sections, but even that wasn’t enough. Different scenarios made sense.

  “It’s what we do; it’s worth it.” Harmony’s voice sounded raw. “If we’re going to die, it has to be for something, Chris. If we’re going to live—”

  “I know,” he interrupted. You’re my reason, Harm. My religion. He put his hand on the back of her neck. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Not too fast.”

  “Count five and go.” Chris watched the Nido approach with the same trepidation he always felt. He and Harmony had a system, and it worked—but so had the system he and Chastity had used.

  “You don’t understand.” Harmony shoved him and turned away, running into the Nido’s arms as if she were unaware that he was there all along.

  Now comes the hard part.

  Chris stepped up to the bar and ordered a drink. He wasn’t going to walk out the moment Harmony left. More than half the time, Nidos in this part of town worked in pairs. It made this section harder to work, but it also meant that hunting here usually meant two kills. Of course, it also meant that their side often took more risks—and more casualties.

  In the mirror that hung behind the liquor bottles, Chris watch as the Nido said something to Harmony. In barely three minutes, he had an arm around her, leading her away, taking her outside. The challenge for Chris was in not looking over his shoulder, not racing outside, not scooping her up and insisting they escape north to try to find a safer place to live.

  Instead of doing all the things he wanted to, Chris waited, half hoping that the Nido’s partner would arrive and half hoping that there was no partner so he could move on to the next step of this strategy: run after his emotional girlfriend.

  ***

  Harmony nodded and held on to the Nido’s arm as he directed her to a side door of the Norns. Her heart was steadier every time she did this, as if there was a calm almost in reach, and she wondered guiltily if the calm was death. She wasn’t going to slit her wrists or do anything drastic, but she was well aware that most hunters died. Dying while fighting for a better future seemed like a good way to go, maybe even a way to reach the kind of afterlife where she could be happy, where she could enjoy the sort of existence that people talked about when they talked about before.

  The crack of metal on metal echoed as the door hit the handrail on the cement ramp into the alley. If she hadn’t been going outside to kill him, stepping into the poorly lit alley would be unsettling. As it was, she found the dark comforting.

  “Do you have a car or something?” She slid her free hand into her pants pocket to withdraw the knife hidden there, but before she withdrew it, a beam of light flashed on, aimed directly at her and blinding her temporarily.

  “You won’t need that,” the Nido beside her said.

  Then another voice drew her attention: “She’s my only other child. We’ll be even now, right?”

  “Daddy?” Harmony stumbled, partly from the inability to see and partly from the panic that washed over her. “Daddy! What are you doing here?”

  She jerked her arm away from the Nido, but he caught her, gripping her biceps with a bruising hand before she could go very far. Think, Harm. Think. She couldn’t expect Chris to hear her if she screamed; the music inside was too loud. All she could do was buy time until he got there—except every scenario she knew was a blank then. Her father was it, the last family she knew she still had. Her sister was dead; her mother was dead.

  The light lowered, and she saw another Nido standing beside her father. This one looked like a reasonably attractive woman, and she stood beside Harmony’s father like she was his date: a small smile on her lips and a hand resting lightly in the crook of his folded arm.

  “She looks a lot like the other one,” the female Nido said.

  Harmony looked at her father. “Daddy?”

  He shook his head. “I tried to save you. I told you what would happen. You didn’t listen.”

  The Nido patted his cheek with her free hand. “We took care of the problem last time, and we’ll fix this too.”

  A cry escaped Harmony’s lips. It might have been a word, or it might have been only a sound. She wasn’t sure. The Nido restraining her stepped away, and she almost fell. She took several steps toward her father. “How? Why?”

  There were two Nidos with her father, and even though she wasn’t being held back, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, much less what she could do.

  “Your sister caught their attention. What was I to do?” Her father glared at her through bloodshot eyes. His sallow, fleshy face didn’t look anything like the father she remembered.

  Harmony shook her head. “And Mom?”

  He stepped closer, so he was near enough that she could embrace him. “That wasn’t my doing. I didn’t know… She was sick, and I only left her at the hospital for the night. I didn’t know they—”

  “But you knew when you… what? Told them where Chas would be?”

  “I had to make a choice,” he pleaded. “I tried to save you.”

  Although the two Nidos watched them, they didn’t interfere. Harmony looked into her father’s face, but she couldn’t summon any words for him. Night after night, she’d hoped he would recover from the dual tragedies of her mother’s and sister’s deaths, but he wouldn’t. He was responsible, and now they both knew it.

  “You told them where Chastity was… and now me too?”

  “All I did was add it to the necklace. I warned you, but you wouldn’t listen.” He pointed at her. “The tracker is on that. I had no choice.”

  Harm’s hand went to the charms around her throat. She yanked the necklace free and threw it at him. “You had a choice.”

  “You don’t understand,” he insisted. “They would’ve killed us both. They would’ve killed all three of us before, when Chastity was blaspheming. I saved you then. What was I to do?”

  “Not give either of your daughters to the monsters. If there is another world where we meet after this life, I hope Chastity and Mom are there waiting for us.” She slipped her hand into her pocket. “Maybe they’ll forgive you, Daddy. Maybe I will too.”

  She withdrew the knife and shoved the blade hilt-deep into his throat. As the Nidos grabbed her arms, she watched her father clutch his bleeding throat. It wouldn’t help. She’d learned where to stab a human; she’d severed his carotid artery.

  “If I hated you, I’d have let you go into their foul stew while you were still alive,” she told him as he died.

  The distant sounds of music, the sizzle of a nearby streetlight, and her father’s dying were all she heard then. The Nidos gripped her arms, but she kept her hand tight on the hilt of her knife.

  I don’t want to die.

  If she didn’t get away, she’d end up drowning in corpses. The images in her mind were almost as vivid as the real thing had been. This time, though, Chastity wouldn’t be there to rescue her.

  Harmony let her body go suddenly limp, surprising them and dropping to the ground as they lost their grip on her. That was one of the first lessons she’d learned: do the
unexpected. Most captives tried to tug away or shove, so her captors were likely to be ready for that.

  As she rolled to her feet, she launched herself at one of the Nidos. She knew she couldn’t kill them both, but she wasn’t going to let them take her away. Better to die fighting than drown in the dead. Her shoulder stung from an unavoidable stab wound, and she knew dimly that there were other wounds she wasn’t registering yet. None of that mattered though. I want to live. I want Chris to live. She knew he should’ve been there by now, and the thought of reaching him, of keeping him out of their vats, was enough to give her an extra surge of adrenaline.

  “Harmony!” Chris yelled.

  She wasn’t sure when Chris had come outside. All she knew for sure was that she was on the ground, on top of the Nido, and her knife was wet in her hand. A trickle of something dripped down her cheek. She didn’t know if it was her tears or her father’s blood. The temptation to look at Chris warred with the fear that he’d look at her with disgust.

  “Harm,” he repeated, softly this time. He had hands on her waist, lifting her up with little effort, as if she really was the rag doll she suddenly felt like. He pulled her away from the dead Nido and her now-dead father.

  “You’re bleeding,” she said foolishly. Bleeding was normal; death was normal.

  He took her hand, and uncurled her fingers from the hilt of the knife. “There was one inside, too, or I’d have been here sooner.”

  “This time… I thought… I really thought I was going to die,” she whispered. “I don’t want to die.”

  Instead of saying things that would make her fall apart, he suggested the same thing he had not long after Chastity died: “We could go north. Try to get to somewhere safer.”

  She leaned against his side, not just because of the ritual but because she wanted to feel close to him, and this time, she gave him the answer she never had before, “Yes.”

  And they walked away from the Norns, away from the father who’d betrayed her, and away from a life that held a too-soon expiration date.