To
JAMIE
(a.k.a. Poosen)
and
JESSICA
(a.k.a. The Real Yaolan)
Having one lifelong friend I could absolutely trust and rely upon is a blessing, but I have been lucky enough to have two. You guys mean more to me than you know.
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
—WILLIAM BLAKE, “The Tiger”
EVERYONE believed Diabolics were fearless, but in my earliest years, all I knew was fear. It preyed on me the very morning the Impyreans viewed me in the corrals.
I couldn’t speak, but I understood most words I heard. The corral master was frantic in his warnings to his assistants: the Senator von Impyrean and his wife, the Impyrean Matriarch, would be arriving shortly. The keepers paced about my pen, surveying me head to toe, searching for any defect.
I awaited this Senator and Matriarch with my heart pounding, my muscles poised for battle.
And then they came.
All the trainers, all the keepers, dropped to their knees before them. The corral master reverently drew their hands to his cheeks.
“We are honored by your visit.”
Fear shot through me. What manner of creatures were these, that the fearsome corral master dropped to the floor before them? The glowing force field of my pen had never felt so constrictive. I shrank back as far as possible. Senator von Impyrean and his wife strolled over and looked in at me from the other side of the invisible barrier.
“As you can see,” the corral master told them, “Nemesis is approximately your daughter’s age and physically tailored to your specifications. She’ll only grow larger and stronger over the next several years.”
“Are you quite sure this girl is dangerous?” drawled the Senator. “She looks like a frightened child.”
The words chilled me.
I was never supposed to be frightened. Fear earned me shocks, reduced rations, torment. No one must ever see me afraid. I fixed the Senator with a ferocious look.
As he caught my eye, he looked startled. He opened his mouth to speak again, then hesitated, squinting, before his gaze broke from mine. “Perhaps you’re right,” he muttered. “It’s in the eyes. You can see the inhumanity. My dear, are you very certain we need this monstrous thing in our household?”
“Every great family has a Diabolic now. Our daughter will not be the only child to go unprotected,” said the Matriarch. She turned to the corral master. “I wish to see what our money will pay for.”
“Of course,” replied the corral master, turning away to wave at a keeper. “Some chum . . .”
“No.” The Matriarch’s voice was whiplash sharp. “We must be certain. We brought our own trio of convicts. They will be a sufficient test for this creature.”
The master smiled. “But of course, Grandeé von Impyrean. You cannot be too careful. So many substandard breeders out there. . . . Nemesis won’t disappoint you.”
The Matriarch gave a nod to someone out of my sight. The danger I’d been anticipating materialized: three men were being led toward my pen.
I pressed back against the force field again, the tingling vibrating along the skin of my back. An icy pit opened in my stomach. I already knew what would happen next. These were not the first men who had been brought to visit me.
The corral master’s assistants unchained the men, then deactivated the far force field to shove them inside with me before raising it again. My breath came in gasps now. I did not want to do this. I did not.
“What is this?” demanded one of the convicts, looking from me to their impromptu audience.
“Isn’t it obvious?” The Matriarch linked her arm through the Senator’s. She cast a satisfied look toward her husband and then addressed the convicts in a most pleasant tone: “Your violent crimes have brought you here, but you have an opportunity to redeem yourselves now. Kill this child, and my husband will grant you pardons.”
The men goggled at the Senator, who gave a disinterested wave of the hand. “It is as my wife says.”
One man swore violently. “I know what that thing is. Do you think I’m a fool? I’m not going near it!”
“If you don’t,” replied the Matriarch with a smile, “you will all three be executed. Now kill the child.”
The convicts surveyed me, and after a moment, the largest of them broke into a leering grin. “It’s a little girl. I’ll do it myself. Come here, girl.” He stalked toward me. “You want this bloody or do I just break her neck?”
“Your choice,” the Matriarch said.
His confidence emboldened the others and set their faces ablaze with the hope of freedom. My heart punched against my rib cage. I had no way to warn them away from me. Even if I had, they would not have listened. Their ringleader had declared me only a girl—and so that was what they saw now. That was their fatal mistake.
The big one reached down to grab me very carelessly, his hand so close that I could smell his sweat.
The smell triggered something within me. It was the same as every time before: the fear vanished. Terror dissolved in a swell of rage.
My teeth clamped down on his hand. Blood spouted, hot and coppery. He shrieked and tried to pull back—too late. I seized his wrist and threw myself forward, twisting his limb as I went. His ligaments crackled. I kicked at the back of his leg to knock him down to the ground. I leaped over him and landed with a stomp of my boots on the back of his head. His skull splintered.
There was another man, who’d also been too bold, moved in too close, and only now realized his error. He yelled out in horror, but he did not escape. I was too fast. My palm thrust into the cartilage of his nose and drove it straight into his brain.
I stepped over the two bodies toward the third man—the one who’d had the sense to fear me. He shrieked and stumbled back against the force field, cowering as I had done earlier, when I was not yet angry. He held up his shaking hands. Sobs convulsed his body.
“Please don’t. Please don’t hurt me, please no!”
The words made me hesitate.
My life, my whole life, had been spent this way, fending off aggressors, killing to ward off death, killing so I would not be killed. But only once before had a voice pleaded for mercy. I hadn’t known what to do then. Now, as I stood over the cowering man, that same confusion filtered through me, rooting me in place. How was I to act from here?
“Nemesis.”
The Matriarch was suddenly standing before me, separated only by the force field. “Can she understand me if I speak?” she asked the corral master.