A couple dozen gun shots echoed from the canyon. The Clarion office’s windows were all open and the smell of eucalyptus was strong. The front of the building faced out onto one of the most grimy, crowded streets in Darkside, but the back leaned over the beautiful wilderness of a Blighted Space. Brontosauruses munched happily on the tall trees.
“I need you to stop,” Cass said.
“Stop?” I asked incredulously. I’d seen Cass scream at a reporter with a stab wound to the leg for not sticking around to interview the woman who stabbed her. More than once I’d heard her say that “self-preservation is not a helpful instinct for a reporter.” “Are you . . . feeling okay?”
“Don’t tell anyone,” she said, “but it’s getting too dangerous out there. And you’re a great photographer, but you’re also a kid. This is strictly me being selfish, by the way. I have enough to stress about without a dead teenager on my conscience.”
I laughed. She laughed.
“Promise me,” she said.
“I can make no such promise.”
She frowned, and handed me a copy of the Darkside Post. “You saw this?” Darkside Police Commissioner Bahrr was on the front page, standing on the hood of his truck with a shotgun in his hands. Hunting chupacabras and rakshasas in the Northern Marsh.
“That asshole,” I muttered.
“He’s nervous,” Cass said, “about the queen making a speech. He’s threatened by her. Wants to get his own share of the press, so he poses for this.” She threw the paper down. “One of my journalists is working a source. She found some paperwork, intentionally misfiled at police headquarters: a shipment of five thousand handcuffs reported missing last month.”
“How do you misplace five thousand handcuffs?” I asked.
“You don’t,” she said. “This is no accident. The commissioner is supplying the Shield’s soldiers with weapons and other tools. And with all those cuffs, they could kidnap literally thousands of othersiders—and the Shield could break them. No one would be safe. That is why I need you to stop.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I’m serious,” she said. “I won’t buy any more photographs from you. Not until all this blows over.”
“I get it,” I said. “Even if I see the perfect shot, I’ll skip it.” But I remembered what she’d said to me once: Forget getting the shot. Focus on the truth. That’s the hardest thing for a photographer to capture.
She stood, and came toward me. And I flinched, because who had ever seen Cass express any emotion other than an angry one? She chuckled, at my fear, and then she hugged me.
“Take care of yourself out there, Solomon. Even when we’re not looking for trouble, it has a way of finding us.”
After that, I wandered. Away from the eucalyptus-smelling canyon, into the denser disorderly streets. Bright lights in some windows; dark patches where the Blight had struck and turned the land foul.
I loved Cass, trusted and respected her—but I couldn’t stop. I was an addict, now. Hunting for the truth.
The world was full of monsters, and my camera wasn’t much of a weapon against them, but it was the only one that I had.
Maraud was still paddocked, down at the Underbridge. Which is why, when I heard the screams and followed them to the soccer field at the end of the alley in front of me, I couldn’t do a damned thing to stop what I found.
The cry was distinctive. Nothing else sounds like a snake hissing and a lion roaring and goat bleating all at once. It was a chimera, but this one was in greater distress than I’d ever heard. Huge three-headed fire-breathing monsters are usually the things that inspire fear, but this chimera was itself very much afraid.
Sure enough, I found it roaring; swinging its terrifying tail; belching fire in chaotic jets. Only when I got up close could I see what it was fighting.
Destroyers, soldiers of the Shield. A horde of them. They came in pairs, swinging chains, and alone, with torches and long, sharp weapons.
Trees burned all around the field. Two people were already sprawled motionless on the ground, but there were an awful lot more where they had come from.
An unarmed Destroyer walked out, waving his arms. Taunting it. The chimera charged—and another Destroyer swung a chain, which wrapped around the monster’s hind legs. Thrown off-balance, it came down in a heavy crash. The taunting Destroyer was firmly in its jaws, and it bit down hard.
That triumph did not amount to much. More came, closing in on it now that it was down, sharp weapons aimed for soft parts.
“Stop!” I screamed, but I might as well have been speaking to people in another reality. They were laughing. Cheering. Hooting, hollering.
Abruptly, the animal’s cries went from angry roars to heart-hurting whimpers.
A crowd of people stood and stared. A couple of them were crying. I looked to a woman who I felt certain was an othersider—but if she was, she was too afraid to use her ability to intervene.
“Hey!” said one of the Destroyers, seeing the camera around my neck.
“Take a picture,” another one said, holding up the chimera’s forepaw. The thing was bigger than his torso, and he could only hold it aloft for a couple of seconds.
“Go fuck yourself,” I said, which was when I noticed how hard it was to breathe.
I sat down on the dead grass. A white stripe of chalk ran past my feet. In summer, kids played here. I looked up, trying to focus on the stars, something faraway and safe that could help me calm down. But I couldn’t see the stars.
Smoke billowed up from the burning trees set ablaze by the chimera’s breath. The cylinders of flames burned like bonfires on a chilly beach. They hooted and bellowed, these monstrous murderer savages, and I clenched my eyes to shut out the feral sight of them, but I could still hear them.