Mercy (11 page)

“Hva I helvete?” the guy shouted, pulling away hastily as Pux pulled his hood off his face. The guy ducked beside the coffee table and pulled on a pair of pants as Shimma looked up, her eyes widening.

“Ahdunie,” Pux said.

“Holy fuck!” Shimma said, shifting so her arm was across her breasts. She bent over the couch as the guy yelled more explicit things at her, pointing at Pux. The guy had his pants on now, his fingers still working the top button. Pux averted his eyes feeling his face flush with embarrassment. He didn’t mean to stare. He moved out of the way as the guy fled down the short hallway.

“Vent litt, ikka ga,” Shimma said, running a hand through her hair and leaving it suspended, some gesture meant to calm the guy down. Pux didn’t catch the rest as she pulled on her underwear and jeans and followed the guy to the door. She shot daggers at Pux with her eyes as she passed him, not bothering to conceal her breasts anymore. Pux heard them talking in hushed tones by the door, more of the language he didn’t understand. He hung his head and slid his robe off his shoulders, not liking the way it made him itch. He scratched his hairy shoulders as he looked around the apartment. Black leather couches, coffee table, two square windows rimmed with white windowsills, small kitchenette, granite counters. It all looked very expensive, and very new. The door slammed shut and Pux scratched his neck as Shimma came into the room. She grabbed a white tank top off the floor and threw it over her head. She turned and Pux coughed; her nipples visible through the shirt.

She crossed her arms and glowered at him. “What in the fuck are you doing here?”

Pux looked at anything but her. “I need you to make me human,” he said, sounding boyish.

“Why?” Shimma spat, glancing at the door, a worried expression crossing her face. “You can’t just walk in on people like that. You’ve probably scarred that guy for life.”

Pux followed her gaze to the door. “What were you doing?”

Shimma narrowed her eyes, a teasing expression on her face. “Aw, don’t tell me they don’t teach fucking one oh one on Avristar anymore. Honestly, what do you think we were doing?”

Pux didn’t think he could get redder. “I guess … is he your boyfriend?”

Shimma laughed. “Nope.” She went to a small room off the living room, and pulled the elastic out of her hair, combing through it with her fingers.

“Do you have any magic left?” Pux asked, wanting to get away from Shimma as quickly as possible. He kept checking the rest of the apartment for the other two but it seemed that for the time being, Shimma was alone. He was grateful. Kazza and Kuruny were pretty ruthless, and unaccustomed to helping the less fortunate.

Shimma laughed again, a terrible cackling sound. “Do I have magic?” she repeated, mocking him. She came out of the small room and pulled a face. “I can make you human, but you have to tell me why.”

Pux looked at the floor. “Kaliel is alive.”

“No? Really?” Shimma said, that sly smile creeping across her face.

“You knew?”

Shimma shrugged. “You’re about a decade late hun,” she said, an accent coloring her words.

Pux did the math in his head and frowned. Only a year behind since he was in Evennses all the time. “Krishani found her.” He said it like that might make a difference but with Shimma he couldn’t be sure. She was weird.

“He did? That’s interesting.…” She grabbed something out of the fridge and threw it at Pux. He turned over the slippery thing in his hand, unable to read the label. Inside it was some clear liquid. He looked at Shimma, she unscrewed the top and tipped it back and so he did the same thing, trying to seem smooth about it. It tasted gross but he swallowed it.

“He’s going to hurt her.”

Shimma moved to the couch and stared at it but perched on the edge of the coffee table, crossing one leg over the other. “And why do I care?”

“You don’t have to care, you just have to make me human,” Pux rebutted, his eyes imploring her to agree.

Shimma hummed. “And what do I get out of it?”

Pux sighed and crouched, rifling through the pockets in his robe. He removed the smooth misshapen stone and held it in his palm. It was his Avristar birthstone, given to him a very long time ago. “Something that should have been yours,” he said, closing his fingers around the stone so she couldn’t snatch it. She shot him a knowing smile and let out a short laugh. “What?” Pux asked, frantic, misinterpreting her laughter for rejection. “I know better than to ask without offering you a boon,” he accused.

Shimma stopped smiling and put the side of her fist to her mouth. “Yeah,” she grumbled. “You got that part right.” She sighed and pressed her hands to her thighs, glancing to either side of the apartment then at Pux again. She looked different with her hair down. She still had that same milky white skin, but it was darker, kissed by summer sun. Her blonde hair was perfect, a bit more strawberry than he remembered. Immortality served her well; she was very slim, almost to a fault. She stood, and Pux recoiled, hating the fact she didn’t care how much of her he saw.

She shot him a glare. “Can I trust you to stay here while I go out and get supplies?”

Pux stood up straight and nodded. “Yes.”

“Good. Don’t touch anything.”

“Do you have anything to eat?”

Shimma rolled her eyes and opened a cupboard, dropping a bag of Hershey’s kisses on the counter. “Knock yourself out with those. I’ll bring something back.”

Pux took the bag, unwrapping one of the little chocolates and popping in into his mouth. It tasted really good. He heard Shimma leave, and brought the whole bag of chocolates over to the coffee table, taking a seat on the floor.

O O O

Shimma found Pux passed out on the floor in the fetal position, the coffee table and floor littered with tiny foil wrappers. When she told him to knock himself out she didn’t expect him to take that so literal. She rolled her eyes and lifted her arms, pulling her burgundy pouch over her head and dropping it on the counter. It thunked loudly and the sound reverberated through the room but Pux didn’t move. She crept across the floor, straddling his pathetic animalistic body. His feet were wolf-like, his fingernails tiny claws, his ears cat-like. The hair on his head was combed back and curled around his ears. She wondered how she was going to make him look human, her transfiguration skills well out of practice. She poked him in the shoulder and he flinched, hugging his arms tighter to his chest.

“Pux!” she hissed, slapping him across the face as hard as she could.

He jolted awake, limbs flying in her direction, sending her hopping back until her elbow hit the island and she gripped it, a weird sense of pain and pleasure trickling through her. She cried and it turned into a laugh as she doubled over, waiting for it to wear down. She stole a glance at Pux. He was sitting, nervously smoothing down his sleeveless tunic, and running his fingers along his face to smooth out his hair. He picked at the edge of his ear as the pain ceased and she grabbed the bag dumping its contents onto the counter.

“I can’t believe you ate all the chocolate,” she muttered, her northern European accent thick. She glared at him and he gave her a sheepish look.

“I wasn’t supposed to?” He sounded small and childish. He had an accent but it was impossible to place. It was more in the way he pronounced the words than the lilt to his voice. He spoke in the modern Avristar tongue, which wasn’t anything like any human language but she understood him well enough.

“Move the coffee table and lie down on the floor,” she instructed. She put a watchful eye on him for a moment before heading into the bedroom to grab her altar, candles, and the rest of her herbs.

She didn’t want to do this.

She hadn’t seen her sisters in hundreds of years, but Istar? She distinctly didn’t want anything to do with him. He disowned her when he kicked her out of Avristar seven hundred and fifty years ago. If she had known what he was going to do … others from Avristar found her, betrayers, deserters, you name it, they all found her eventually. It was like this invisible string of energy between the kinfolk of Avristar. It didn’t matter where they ended up on Earth, they could find each other if they looked hard enough. Shimma’s only advantage was being part human; it made her blend in better.

Pux was on his back when she came into the room again. She lit a single candle and placed it on the ledge above Pux’s head, clicking off lamps and track lighting as she rounded the room. More candles went at his hands and feet, and she set the altar down beside him. She pushed the couch and coffee table further out of the way, so it was almost against the end table in the corner, and kneeled by his side.

Pux opened his eyes, their caramel brown catching her in the flickers of candlelight. “Is it going to hurt?”

She scoffed. “Aye,” she said mocking his accent. He cringed and she sighed, pushing herself to her feet and crossing the room. She opened the cabinet behind the mirror in the bathroom and grabbed a bottle of painkillers. She handed him ten and a glass of water. He frowned, looking at the little pills in his hand.

“Is it like the chocolate?”

Shimma laughed. “Sure. It’s magic, take it and you’ll feel no pain.” There was a mocking edge to her tone. Pux was so naïve it was a wonder he’d made it this long without dying.

He put the pills in his mouth and bit down on them, his face scrunching up in disgust. He went to spit them out but Shimma pressed the glass into his hand. “You can’t spit them out, they’re going to help.”

“They don’t taste like chocolate at all!” He took the water in giant gulps. He gagged as it went down and Shimma pressed her lips to her fist to stifle a laugh.

“You’re very lucky you don’t have to eat the black thorn,” she said, grabbing a handful and throwing it into the mortar. She threw everything else she had bought into the mortar and used the pestle to work it into a strong paste. She spoke in Romanian, her voice slurring as the candles flared and the energy in the room shifted. She poured the herbs into a marble bowl, an inch of oil in it. She let it mix and grabbed Pux’s right hand, working the paste into his palm. She did the same with his feet, his head, and his sternum. She held her hands out, chanting in a low booming voice as Pux twitched and shuddered violently.

Spasms rocked his body and she heard bones snap. He let out a loud cry, and she smirked. What she really needed was morphine or Vicodin but short of robbing a pharmacy she didn’t have any. She rounded him and stood by his feet as they changed, tendons stretching, his feet shedding hair and claws. She waited while the transformation moved up his arms, into his torso, his neck. His face was what needed the most work. The flat nose became a small pointed nose, his ears dropped to the sides of his face, hair disintegrated, seeming to melt off his face, revealing baby smooth skin. His eyes turned to almond shapes, his lips became fuller. The only thing that remained the same was his hair, slicked back, reddish brown. He desperately needed a haircut. She rubbed her hands together and took the mortar and pestle to the sink. She didn’t need to monitor the internal changes, it could take hours for his heart to sink to the right place, lungs to reshape, spine to align. She glanced at his human face contorted in silent pain and felt sorry for him. She wasn’t willing to go through this much pain for anyone. Pux was a special sort of person, wanting to save Kaliel from the boy she killed. It was poetic.

Shimma took up residence on the edge of the black leather couch with a cup of hot chocolate and watched, the digital clock on the microwave counting out the long hours through the night. She nodded off a few times, and when she woke up, Pux was staring at his human hands. His skin had a beige quality to it, not quite as white as some of the men in Norway. She smiled at her handiwork. He looked young enough to be maybe sixteen years old. He had the same brown eyes, but everything else about him was authentically human. She moved, making the couch squeak and put her mug beside the sink. The candles burned down and snuffed themselves, and she managed to clean everything else up before he woke. She glanced at him from the island and remembered the folder in her knapsack. She rummaged through and pulled it out. It was a lot of paperwork but the people she worked with were good at expediting the process.

“I got you diplomatic immunity so you won’t need to worry about the borders, but you will need to memorize the details in this package,” she began.

Pux looked at her with wide innocent eyes, pulling his knees to his chest, his hands fists. “Diplomatic immunity?” He mimicked the words she said, but his accent was very distinct.

“Yeah, so you can live in Canada without acquiring a work visa, or having to explain where your parents are,” Shimma said, fixing him with a look.

“I thought I’d use the boat.” He pulled the whistle out from around his neck and Shimma blanched. She covered her face with her hand and shook her head. He spoke in the modern Avristar language and she cringed, hoping the adaptation to English would kick in soon. She couldn’t send him away looking human but acting nothing like it.

“You can’t use a boat Pux, you have to …” She flapped the folder at him, hoping he’d take it from her but he kept staring at it like it was a three-headed dragon. He dropped his knees, sitting cross-legged and pulled his legs in. He looked silly in the brown tunic and breeches.

“What?”

Shimma let out an exasperated sigh, slapping the folder on the island and crouching so she was eye level with him. She grabbed him by the wrists and forced him to look at her. Despite how innocent, disheveled, and helpless he looked he had to understand this. “You’re human. You have to blend in. Don’t get caught by the police.”

Pux pulled his wrists out of her grasp and folded them under his armpits. “I can’t do this.”

“You can’t take it back,” Shimma shouted, her patience wearing thin. She paced, wondering how to explain it all to him. “Think very hard. These transfigurations come with knowledge, you have to focus.” She stared at him until he nodded and closed his eyes, rummaging through his thick skull. She fanned herself and opened a window, cool autumn air flowing into the room.