Chapter Text
The night of the storm, Nathaniel could feel his mother’s blood drying sticky on his skin. The wind howled and her screams echoed in his ears, only this time they never reached their eventual gurgling end. It was like he was two places at once; gritty sand and blood coated his hands as he tried desperately to staunch the bleeding in one moment, while the wind and snow pelted his face in another, a constant reminder that he was about as far from that California beach as possible.
“Go north,” she had choked out, in between the screams that she had never before been weak enough to let through. “Go north,” and “He’ll never find you there,” and “They won’t stop howling.”
He’d gotten better, over the years, at deciphering meaning from the jumbled words of her visions. Better than all of the men in white suits that his father hired, better than the clients that waited impatiently for a glimpse into their futures. But as she bled out in his arms, every prophecy beneath her skin spilling out into the sand below, he couldn’t decipher anything more than the lesson already ingrained into his skin: never stop running.
Never stop running, and go north.
He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he lost her. It couldn’t have been more than a month, nothing compared to the years they had spent on the run and the years before that he had spent as nothing more than one of his father’s many assets. Time was already strange for a blood prophet, and within the walls of his father’s compound, he had known nothing beyond white walls and thin razor blades and the ever-present awareness that he was allowed to see every future but his own.
He hadn’t known the difference between day and night outside of training until they ran away.
“This is day,” his teacher would say, clicking a button to show a picture of the sun and bright blue skies. “This is night,” and he would see stars and the moon and glowing street lamps.
When his mother took him, he looked up at the glowing orb of the moon for the first time, felt the cool breeze on his skin and the damp grass beneath his feet, and could think nothing more than, “This is night.”
For that one, shining moment, the world had seemed just within his grasp. Every flashcard, every short video clip designed to teach him just enough that he could understand his visions about the world but not survive in it, formed a universe that he, too, had his place in. This was night. Soon, there would be day.
Then time started again, and Nathaniel suddenly understood why his father was so confident that he would never leave the compound. A picture of a white van would never have been enough to teach him the way his mother fumbled with the keys she had hidden in her shirt and started the engine with shaking fingers, constantly glancing over her shoulder and keeping Nathaniel pressed against her side so hard he could barely breathe. The video of two adults in suits smiling and shaking hands could never explain the way his mother slowed the van down at the exit of the compound, stared into the guard’s eyes for ten long seconds before he looked away and opened the gate, confronting Nathaniel with the sudden knowledge that his mother might be understood by someone other than just him.
After that, the world came fast and hard. There was no time for the slow and careful learning of his youth when it felt as though every second was a matter of survival. His mother taught him how to disappear into a crowd, how to learn what he needed by watching others and how to fake what he didn’t. For years on the run, he learned to pretend that he had always been a part of this world. After nearly eight years, his father reminded him that he wasn’t.
After she was gone, time lost the little meaning it had gained while they were outside the compound. Nathaniel moved through stop-motion pictures of day and night, no direction but the one her last words had imparted to him, trying desperately to recognize something from his visions. The howling snowstorm that screamed back memories of her death was the first familiar thing in weeks.
Nathaniel wasn’t dressed for the weather, but he had only stopped to buy clothes once since California. It had been warm there, the heat so stifling that sometimes he could barely stand the long sweatshirts and jeans that were necessary to hide the scars that covered his skin. Here, his ragged sweatshirt might as well have been silk for all the protection it offered against the storm. The hood, pulled low over his eyes, did little to protect his face from the stinging bite of the snow, and he’d tucked his hands securely beneath his armpits but lost feeling in them about an hour ago.
He was the only one on the street at the moment; all of the town’s inhabitants were smart enough to know when the weather had won. Or maybe his father’s men were closer than he had thought, and everyone had locked themselves away to avoid the impending bloodshed.
“This is freezing,” his teacher had said all those years ago, and a frozen corpse with blue-tinged skin flashed across the screen. “This is cold,” and he had held an ice cube against Nathaniel’s hand until it went numb. Nathaniel wondered how similar his skin looked to that body right now. He wondered whether his father’s men would take pictures of his frozen corpse and use it to teach the next blood prophet.
He didn’t know why he stopped in front of the dimly lit storefront, only that one moment he was stumbling forward and the next he was still, squinting to read a tattered sign taped to the inside of the window, each word new yet achingly familiar.
Wanted:
Human Liaison
Apply at Howling Good Reads
And, just above that:
H.L.D.N.A.
H.L.D.N.A. Human law does not apply. So he was near a Courtyard, possibly even in it already. That might explain the lack of other people. Humans might claim to live alongside the terra indigene, more commonly known as the Others, but everyone understood that human civilization only existed so long as the Others allowed it to. Most of the Others preferred to live in the wilderness that covered vast swathes of North America, out of sight but never quite out of mind, but those that didn’t mind humans as much, or at least, didn’t mind the occasional snack, occupied the Courtyards. They served as small points of contact between the two worlds and a constant reminder that the Others were never truly absent. And apparently, this Courtyard needed someone to further smooth that point of contact.
Nathaniel was human, or at least, human adjacent. Human in the Others’ eyes. And as much as the human world might fear his father, they would surely fear the Others more. Prey might fight amongst itself, but it still understood the predator. Nathaniel was more aware of his prey status than most of the humans who lived alongside the Others, and he was pretty sure he would prefer being eaten over going back to his father.
In the end, the snow made the decision for him. He could die out here, wait for his father’s men to catch him, or take his chances inside. At least this way he might die warm.
As soon as Nathaniel opened the door of the shop, a wave of warmth flowed over him. A small bell chimed as he entered, but while all of the lights were on inside, he couldn’t see any signs of life. His mother always told him that the Others had different ideas about human time. The few that chose to interact with the human world did so out of boredom rather than any real desire to make money, and their business practices reflected that. It was possible that no one had felt like coming in to work that day. Or the store’s hours were over, and he was going to be eaten for trespassing at any moment.
Nathaniel hovered by the doorway for a few minutes, the illusion that he had an escape route comforting even if he knew he would never be able to outrun the shop owner if things went poorly. Looking around, it became clear pretty quickly that this particular experiment in human business was a bookstore. Neat rows of bookshelves took up the majority of the space, with a small display in the center that featured a somewhat worrying collection of cookbooks mixed with books on human anatomy. A door on the left led into what looked like an empty café, with a sign above it that said “A Little Bite,” and the cash register sat directly against the back wall.
And then, between one second and the next, there was a wolf in front of him.
For all the time his mother had spent drilling the instinct to flee into him, true fear always made Nathaniel freeze. It happened in the compound when he or his mother couldn’t see what his father demanded of them. It happened in California when his father finally caught up to them. Now, it seemed that his father and this creature had the same effect.
He and the creature stared at each other for several long moments. Creature was the right word, because no picture of a wolf that Nathaniel had been shown could truly be compared to this. It would be like calling a house cat a mountain lion. Maybe they had been similar, millions of years ago, but no one would keep a mountain lion as a pet. And no one could mistake what stood before him for an animal.
The Wolf came up to nearly his chest, with shaggy black fur that did nothing to hide the rippling muscles beneath its skin. The green eyes that stared back at him were too intelligent to be an animal’s but too savage to be human, and Nathaniel was certain that its twitching ears could hear every beat of his pounding heart. Nathaniel’s father wore power like a crown; the Wolf exuded power with every breath.
The hammering of Nathaniel’s heart eventually clued him in to the fact that he wasn’t dead. The Wolf might have been waiting for him to say something, or simply savoring the sight of its next meal. Either way, Nathaniel felt that explaining himself couldn’t worsen his chances of survival.
“I’m here about the job posting,” he said, his voice surprisingly steady.
The Wolf stared silently.
“The Human Liaison?”
The Wolf shifted slightly.
“I’m a human.” Nathaniel winced; that was too obvious. Most people wouldn’t feel the need to point out their humanity. “And I can do…whatever you need. Whatever a Human Liaison does.”
Still no response, and his mother’s training was finally beginning to override his initial fear response. “Or I could leave. Actually, maybe I should just-"
The Wolf stepped forward and its body lost its form for a moment. Nathaniel closed his eyes almost out of instinct, and when he opened them there was a man standing in front of him. Only this, too, couldn’t truly be mistaken for a man. At first glance he might appear human; a tall man with dark hair and green eyes who might have been only a few years older than Nathaniel. But his eyes still shone with something that screamed “predator,” and when he moved Nathaniel got the distinct sense that he was being stalked.
“You do not smell like a human.” He sounded accusing, and Nathaniel couldn’t tell if the growl in his voice was natural or a threat.
“I’m not- I’m not an Other.”
“Obviously.” This time the growl was definitely intentional.
The man strode forward until they were practically sharing breaths, and Nathaniel had to dig his nails into his palms to fight the urge to stumble back. The man’s complete nudity did nothing to comfort him, although Nathaniel was too concerned with keeping an eye on his teeth to bother looking down.
The man sniffed, nostrils flaring in a way that shouldn’t have been possible. “You smell like chemicals.”
“There’s hair dye,” Nathaniel said quickly. “In my hair. That’s probably what you smell.”
The man’s frown deepened. “Take it out.”
Nathaniel felt like they were having two separate conversations. “I can’t- I can’t take it out right now. It doesn’t work like that.”
The man’s upper lip curled back into a snarl that was somehow just as terrifying on a human face. “Not now. Once you work here. We cannot have a liaison who stinks.”
Nathaniel thought he probably should have been offended, but fear and confusion won out. “Are you hiring me?”
The man looked deeply unimpressed with the question. “Do you not want me to?”
“No, I just- you don’t even want to see my resume?”
“Do you have one?”
“I- no.”
They stared at each other for another long moment of silence. Nathaniel felt as if they were pantomiming a process neither of them truly understood.
Eventually, the man gave a huff of frustration. “Every other liaison so far has quit or been disposed of. If you can do the job and you are not insufferable, we will hire you.”
“I can do the job,” Nathaniel said with far more confidence than he actually felt.
If all of the other liaisons had quit, he wouldn’t be missed too badly when he eventually moved on. He could lay low here for a while, in the territory of the Others where even his father’s men wouldn’t dare search, and then when the time came, he would disappear. Most people would probably just assume the Others had gotten tired of him and eaten him, if anyone noticed his presence in the first place.
The man considered him for a moment and then nodded. “The position comes with room and board. I’m assuming you will need that?”
There didn’t seem to be any point in beating around the bush. “Yes.”
The man nodded decisively. “There are efficiency apartments on the border between the Courtyard and the rest of town. They are all empty right now, but others might stay there sometimes. You will live in one of them.”
The man clearly wasn’t asking Nathaniel’s opinion on that fact, but he nodded anyway.
“The salary is hourly. We do not pay human taxes, and if you do then it is your responsibility to make those arrangements. As the liaison, you will have access to all of the areas of the Courtyard which are accessible to humans. Access to the Inner Courtyard will be based completely on our judgment. If you decide that your curiosity is stronger than our judgment, we will eat you.”
This time the man did seem to expect a response. “Understood.”
“I will show you your apartment and we will discuss the responsibilities of your job in the morning.” The man turned to go and then paused, frowning again as if the conventions of human conversation exhausted him. “Do you have a name?”
Nathaniel hesitated. He had been Chris when his mother died, but that name had died alongside her. He didn’t want to be Nathaniel here, not in the one place his father might not be able to reach.
“Neil. Neil Josten.”
The man narrowed his eyes, and Nathaniel understood almost immediately that he knew he was being lied to. A beat passed, and Nathaniel wondered if a lie like that was enough of an offense to warrant his death.
“My name is Kevin. I will take you to the apartment now.”
He turned away again and began to walk, and Nathaniel stumbled after him as soon as his survival sunk in.
They walked past the register and into a storeroom that Nathaniel hadn’t noticed before, moving through piles of boxes until they reached a door that led back outside. Kevin didn’t bother turning off the lights or locking the door of the bookstore, but Nathaniel supposed that no one was stupid enough to try and steal from the Courtyard.
The short time indoors had almost been enough to make Nathaniel forget the freezing weather outdoors, and he stuffed his hands into his pockets and ducked his head against the wind as the cold slammed into him like a brick wall. They were only outside for a few minutes, following a path that Nathaniel couldn’t make sense of through the snow, but by the time Kevin stopped in front of a plain brick building Nathaniel was already shivering again.
Kevin withdrew a key ring from his pocket and inserted one of the larger ones into the door. “You will need a key to get into the building and a key for your specific apartment. I will have copies made for you by tomorrow morning, but for now, do not leave the apartment unless you know someone can let you back in.”
Nathaniel wasn’t sure where Kevin thought he might go in the middle of a storm of this magnitude, but he nodded anyway. Once inside they climbed a short flight of stairs to a hallway with three doors, and Kevin stopped by the first door on their right. Another key, and then Nathaniel was entering what would hopefully serve as his home for the next few weeks. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually had permission to live somewhere.
The apartment was small and sparsely decorated, but compared to what he was used to it might as well have been a mansion. The front door opened into a room that served as a combination of a living room and a kitchen; a half-fridge, sink, and stove were tucked against the wall with the door and a couch and small table and chair took up the rest of the space. A door to his left led to what he assumed was a bedroom.
“Water and electricity will be provided. You are responsible for the upkeep of your room, but if you have problems with maintenance you can ask us to call a human service. There is a place to do laundry at the Courtyard’s community center, but you will have to pay for it.”
Kevin paused, frowning as he looked Nathaniel up and down. “Don’t humans usually have more things than this?”
“I don’t.”
Kevin didn’t seem satisfied with that response. “You already stink. If you show up to work tomorrow looking like this, no one will want to approach you. You will be pointless.”
It was idiotic to snap at something that could eat him without a second thought, but Nathaniel was cold and tired and the adrenaline from the past few hours was beginning to wear off. “I don’t have anything else. I don’t know what you expect me to do about that.”
Kevin’s frown deepened. “I will send someone tomorrow to take you shopping and get something more appropriate. We will take it out of your first paycheck.”
When Nathaniel didn’t offer up any objections Kevin nodded decisively. “I will see you tomorrow.”
And then he was gone, and Nathaniel was truly alone. He stood by the door for a few minutes, trying to make sense of what had just happened, but eventually gave up and entered the bedroom. This was small too, a bed tucked against the right wall with a few feet of space and then a chair and desk, and another door that was probably for a bathroom. A small chest of drawers was tucked under the bed, but that seemed to be about everything in terms of furniture.
Nathaniel slipped off his shoes and moved closer to the set of drawers. Maybe he could store his new clothes there in the future, but for now, he would keep his few possessions in the pockets of his jeans where they had remained for the past few months. Always better to be prepared for a quick exit.
Nathaniel flipped off the lights, plunging the room into darkness but for the small sliver of light from a streetlamp that crept through the window on the back wall. The blankets smelled like dust and moth balls when Nathaniel crawled under them, and he wondered briefly if the Others always kept the apartment beds made or if these had belonged to the last Human Liaison. He didn’t particularly care either way; all that mattered was that they were warm.
His shivering gradually began to subside as he wrapped his arms around himself, slowly allowing the tension to seep from his frame. He was warm. He was secure. Safe, even, at least for now.
Maybe, just for these next few short weeks, he could truly be Neil Josten. No one here knew him; he doubted the Others would even want to. And even his father wasn’t powerful enough to challenge the Courtyard, at least not directly. If he ever discovered Nathaniel here, he would almost certainly find a way to get him outside of the Courtyard’s boundaries and back to the compound. But he wouldn’t be desperate enough to extend his search into the Courtyard until he had made extensive preparations, and by that time Nathaniel would be long gone. Neil Josten could survive for a few weeks at least.
Neil pulled the blanket tighter around himself and closed his eyes, confident for the first time in years that he would wake up the next morning. Soon, there would be day.