The Book Eaters(9)
The streets around were dead and still, as if the city were holding its collective breath, and she instinctively matched its silence with her own drifting, fluid walk. Eerie tranquility thickened the air.
Something reflective glinted in the streetlight and she halted, flattening into the nearest shuttered doorway. It was deep enough to hide the lines of her body and from this vantage point, she scoured the streets.
Two blocks down, a solitary man stood in the middle of an intersection. A cream suit cut with a 1980s flair draped his bulky frame. No scarf, coat, or gloves, despite the below-freezing temperatures. A tattoo encircled his neck, visible beneath the unbuttoned collar of his shirt.
Another man walked over to meet him, footfalls eerily silent. Navy pinstripe suit, and the same tattoo etched into his skin, that of a hungry serpent eating its own tail.
Devon wrapped her arms around her chest, squeezing herself tight though she wasn’t cold. These men were dragons. Not true mythological beasts, but adult mind eaters, so-named for the stylized tattoos coiling around their throats.
The symbol they bore was old as the Families themselves: an ouroboros dragon that ate itself endlessly. Mind eaters destroyed themselves with their own hunger, for the process of feeding consumed them even as it fed them. An ouroboros was the perfect representation of that bleak concept. Even if given Redemption, which enabled mind eaters to feast on books instead, the desire for mind eating never went away.
At some point in childhood, a knight must have inked in those tattoos, as they did for all their charges. Knights had been little more than cast-off sons, once, tasked only with limply enforcing peace between Families and escorting brides between houses.
With the advent of Redemption, they acted now as keepers of monsters, holding dragon hunger in check. Or at least, that was how it was supposed to work. In practice, they tended to wield their “tamed” dragons for their own benefit and gain.
She risked another glance. The two men stood facing each other, so close their foreheads almost touched. If they spoke, it must have been quiet, for Devon could hear no words though she listened acutely. The traffic lights cycled from green to red and still the dragons remained, inert and stationary on the empty road.
Once, she’d feared that life as a dragon would be Cai’s fate, tattoo and all. She had bigger problems these days. Like worrying whether her son would go insane before he starved, or whether he’d starve before he went insane.
How much Redemption would the knights have left in their stores? Surely their dragons were fast becoming unmanageable. Like her, they desperately needed to find the Ravenscars. Unlike her, they sought Redemption as a means to reclaim social power; Devon only wanted to save Cai.
Her knees ached from crouching so awkwardly, vision obscured by strands of hair that she dared not brush away. Focus, and control. Be present in the moment. If dragons were roaming, then knights would not be far behind, and that meant she needed to leave the city.
She closed her eyes and opened them again, in time to see a large Volkswagen with tinted windows rumble up from the opposite direction. Tense and still, she watched as the car braked at the intersection and opened its doors. The driver wasn’t visible. Both dragons climbed inside. The Volkswagen performed an illegal U-turn and drove off, heading back the way it had come.
Devon blew out a long breath and pulled her jacket tight, as if it were armor that could protect her from danger. Easing from the doorway, she ran home with silent steps.
* * *
Cai was awake when she got back, cradling a Game Boy in his lap.
“You’re home again,” he said, and she suppressed a wince. He spoke with the vicar’s inflection, used the same elongated vowels. These little changes threw her every time. Every victim. “Did you say there was skin cream? I’m itchy.”
“No, sorry.” She kicked off her shoes, feeling embarrassed and guilty. “Lad at the till carded me for vodka and I walked out, like an idiot. I’ll get you some soon, I promise.” Always making him promises. One day, she’d keep them.
“It’s okay,” he said, still absorbed by Mario’s endless quest. Outwardly, her son looked like any other five-year-old; small, a little scrawny, dark-haired. Her eyes and her features. The exceptionally long tongue, kept coiled in his mouth, gave him a mushy lisp that Devon found endearing.
But no five-year-old Devon had ever met conducted themselves with such certainty, or such adult poise. He was far too intelligent for his age. Of course, most five-year-olds didn’t consume the minds of other human beings for sustenance. Made a big difference, that.
Most days, she wasn’t sure how much of Cai remained and how much of him was overwritten with another person. Their memories and thoughts and morality, flooding his mind with their own. She dreaded him remembering and dreaded him having no sense of self. Misery lay down either route.
Devon sat next to him. “How are you feeling?” The couch sagged with their combined weight, springs creaking as she tried to find a comfortable recline.
“Better, I think.”
“You think?” she echoed, and brushed hair from his forehead with her fingers. It needed cutting again.
Cai squeezed the Game Boy tight. “I’m still hungry.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry.” He flushed.
“No, no. Don’t be.” Devon put an arm around his shoulders and hugged him so she wouldn’t have to look at his face. “You can’t help it. Let me worry about these things. You do you.” She added, “It’ll be reet, aye?” It was something an aunt had said to her once, and she found the phrase oddly comforting to repeat.