21st Century Orc Read online

  “It’s a little more complicated than that,” muttered Bones, his voice fragile, on the verge of breaking. Tears gleamed in his eyes.

  “Shut up!” howled Gore, squeezing her trigger. But she couldn’t shoot. Blight. “You lied to me! You just wanted to help yourself! That’s all you are! A parasite! Feeding off of people’s goodwill! Never giving back!”

  “Gore…” Bones lunged forward.

  “Get out of my life!” screamed Gore as she hurled her brother away from her. She stomped over to the car, head spinning, blood boiling within her. Almost ripping the Magnum Orcus’s door off its hinges, Gore jumped into the driver’s seat and keyed the ignition. The Magnum Orcus rumbled, shuddering as if sick as Gore.

  “Wait! Gore! Wait! This isn’t what you think it is!” gasped Bones, jumping up to grab the side of the Magnum Orcus. “Please. You got to understand me. You got to realize I—”

  “How about you do what you do best and run away from your problems! Run away from me! Crawl into a bottle and die there! I wish you had done that years ago,” growled Gore, the burning inside rushing at Bones. She clenched her teeth and floored the accelerator.

  Leaving Bones in the dust.

  Just drive, Gore told herself. Just drive to the end of the horizon. Just drive until everything broke down.

  Only, Gore did so before the Magnum Orcus.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Interlude

  The Orc stumbled through the Narrows, clutching his chest. Why did it hurt? He looked at his hands. Clean but still stained with blood. Somehow. Tripping over a stone, the orc slammed against a wall, bricks breaking against his skin. Jagd. Why did he always muck it up? Why did everything he touch turn to shit? Why?

  “Gods forgive me,” whispered the Orc as he pulled out another handful of Blight bug. He closed his eyes. No. He didn’t need the old, broken gods. “Please, sis, forgive me. Forgive me for what I’ve done.”

  Stuffing the Blight bug into his mouth, the Orc waited for the drugs to take him away from this place, to take him away from the hurt like always. He just wanted to disappear into the nether of sounds and lights and taste, let himself fall into nothing and everything. To let all his worries melt away.

  But his chest still hurt. His heart still ached.

  Why?

  The Orc winced as someone strode past him. He cursed at the dwarf, who just ignored him and kept walking. Just another lost soul in a cursed world, unwilling to do a Blight-damn thing to help each other. But the Orc could only laugh as he picked himself and started stumbling down the street. He was the same. Just a selfish prick looking out for himself, never thinking about what his actions might bring.

  He deserved to disappear.

  He deserved to…

  He winced as the air cracked in the distance. Gunfire. Another gang-related shooting. He shook his head as the past surged up from the outside of his vision, sweeping him back into that battleground.

  Amidst the whirlwind of shouts and whispers and lying-truths, one voice rose above them all to whisper in the Orc’s skull, “How about you do what you do best and run away from your problems…”

  The Orc carried one of his comrades through the frozen muck as a pack of drygders fired whistler arrows at him from above, forming webs. One of the webs stuck to the Orc’s sergeant. The drygders reeled the sergeant into a nest of hungry mouths. The others in the squad soon followed. As fire fell down from above, an Valerian artillery strike, the Orc dropped his comrade and ran.

  “Run away from me…” growled the voice.

  The Orc heeded her instructions, bursting out of the past and stumbling head first into a streetlamp. His drugs spilled out of his pockets. But the Orc paid the rotten goods no heed as he continued running. He needed to keep running.

  Keep running.

  But the past dug its claws deep into his bones dragging him back into the time of dreams.

  Into the time of nightmares, when he fled everything. When he fled the war and peace. When he fled the cops and criminals. When he fell into the deep end of drugs, and started the inevitable spiral to the end. Until chains snapped around his wrists, and Momma G saved him.

  “Crawl into a bottle and die there…” whispered the voice as the Orc fell out of his dreams into a trash can. He winced. Glass pressed against his arm.

  The world crumbled around the Orc as the Orc fell further into the past, into the beginning of his spiral.

  He stared at Cousin Kalask and his sister. He stared at the bottle in his hand. He made his choice.

  The Orc chose destruction. As always.

  Popping back into the real world, the Orc pulled out the glass from under his arm. A bottle like before. Still had some liquid in it. Alcohol wafted off the bottle. The voice snarled, “I wish you had done that years ago…”

  “As you wish, sis,” murmured the Orc, raising his hand to his head in a salute.

  He opened the bottle.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Recital

  “You got an ID?” asked the campus cop just as Gore tried to enter the ballroom.

  “Yeah,” growled Gore, reaching into her pocket.

  The cop cursed and reached for his gun.

  “You’ve gotta be shitting me,” hissed Gore as she raised her hand and prepared for another shake down. Blight… and she thought she already had her share of bad luck for the week.

  “Gore!” cried Debbie, dragging the rest of her dancing team with her to surround Gore, a dozen little hands wrapping around her arms, a dozen innocent faces shielding her from the cop as the dance team dragged her through the crowd and into the backstage. “Whew! You really have a knack for finding trouble!”

  “Or trouble keeps on finding me,” chuckled Gore as Debbie waved off her dance team. The gaggle of dwarves giggled and danced away, flipping and flourishing across the set.

  “Well, they aren’t mutually exclusive,” smirked Debbie before she turned around and pulled back the curtain just a bit, gesturing at the crowds gathering to watch the dance competition. “So… what do you think?”

  “I think I’m gonna be happier on the other side of this curtain and watching you dance.”

  Debbie hit Gore in the side, murmuring with exaggerated exasperation, “You know what I’m talking about. What do you think about the charity dance?”

  “What do you want me to say?” asked Gore, focusing her voice up to a absurd octave. “The people all saying, ‘Oh, yeah. The underground sex trade is such a terrible issue, that’s why I’m here. We need to stop these gangs from stealing young orcs and dwarves, and then selling them forever out of our sight. You know, the people we don’t care about. We totally care about them.’ Like that?”

  Debbie rolled her eyes. “You’re a asshole sometimes.”

  “Sometimes?” asked Gore, shaking her head, venom leaking out into her voice. Then her tone dropped and her eyes hardened to steel as she murmured, “You really think one dance competition with one dwarf talking about an issue will change anything? Even if you put all the money raised into the police or charities, you can’t change a damn thing while the bad guys are still out there.”

  “It’s a start. We all gotta do our part. Of course, the big break will be in a few days,” murmured Debbie, her face and posture not faltering for even a single second. Gore smiled. Debbie’s strength could not be underestimated, could not be broken by mere words. That’s why Gore loved her. A fierce blush rose in Gore’s cheeks. Then Debbie asked, “How’s the prep for the Grand Prix going?”

  Her eyes flashing black for a moment, Gore’s face fell and she murmured, “I’m not sure if we’re gonna be able to go through with that.”

  “What? Why?” asked Debbie, shock mingling through her voice. She turned around and grabbed Gore’s arm, growling, “Did something happen? What’s wrong? Did Bones do something?”

  Growling an affirmative, Gore clenched her teeth and fists tight. Her blood boiled within her veins, urging her to lash out at the world, to unlea
sh her bottled anger. No, Gore told herself, forcing her fists open. Her room had already received most of her rage. No need to destroy the rest of the world.

  Debbie’s grip tightened as she murmured, “What are you keeping inside, Gore? Come on, please, you can tell me what’s wrong and I can help. Trust me.”

  Closing her eyes tight, clasping her hands to her ears, trying to shut out the countless voice hammering against her skull, Gore shook her head and walked away. Should she tell Debbie? Should she tell Debbie how she broke into school to retrieve her family’s legacy? Should she tell Debbie how she’d almost got her and Bones killed? How they’d quarreled over the blood gem?

  Should Gore tell Debbie the truth ?

  “You can trust me. I trust you,” whispered Debbie, her grip loosening just as the two exited out into the back hallway. Gore smashed her forehead into the wall. The concrete split apart against her skull. “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have a feeling that you need to tell someone. Come on, you don’t have to do this alone.”

  “Ugh. Do I have to?” asked Gore, smashing her head into the cool concrete over and over again. Dust flew out around her. She just needed to destroy something, needed to break the world like it broke her.

  “No. You don’t. You can just keep it all bottled up inside and let it fester until you’re consumed by your own thoughts,” murmured Debbie, sitting down next to Gore on a barrel.

  Gore sighed and took her head off from the wall. She looked Debbie in the eye, growling, “Damn. When you say it like that…”

  “I know I’m quite eloquent, aren’t I? I should’ve been an author or something like that,” smirked Debbie, though her eyes bled pity.

  Gore’s stomach rolled at the sight, at those condescending eyes of everyone who cared but didn’t do a damn. Except Debbie was different. She did a damn and then more. The dwarf had escaped a Blighted situation by the hair of her nonexistent beard, only to turn around and run back in. Because it was the right thing to do.

  How Gore wished she had Debbie’s strength. Wished she had Debbie’s heart.

  “Well, a bit of psychological-manipulative author who takes her subject material far too seriously,” chuckled Gore as she sunk to the ground in front of Debbie. Their eyes met, level. Gore cradled her head in her hands. “Ah… Where should I even start?”

  “Well, you already mentioned the beginning of your story. What happened next?” asked Debbie, her voice soft and warm and full of something other than pity. Compassion, Gore realized in a jerk. That ever-fleeting spark that almost flickered on the edge of extinction in this world.

  Compassion, Gore rolled that word around in her head, trying to understand it, trying to understand how another person could possibly understand her life if they had not lived it. Compassion…

  Rubbing her hands raw, Gore sighed and then let the rest of her story unfold. Of how after their mother had perished in the Tao Ein Fires, Gore and Bones had found themselves alone. For the next year, the two had nothing but the Magnum Orcus and a few burnt scraps of clothing on their backs. They had scrounged the ruins of the old Narrows for food, water, everything, scraping by on a few strips of rotten meat and leaded water a week. If the two siblings hadn’t had their orc physiology, they wouldn’t have lasted even a day.

  Debbie muttered, “You were brave. Always a survivor.”

  Then, once enough had become enough, once they’d conjured with a plan for survival, the siblings turned to crime. They were good too, real good. The perfect duo. The lost little orc girl looking for her family, luring unsuspecting adults and dumb teenagers to their doom, to a dark alley where Bones would wait in the shadows with a Ripper ball bat ready for their head.

  “You did what you needed to stay alive.”

  Bit by bit, Gore and Bones had saved up their “earnings” until they’d gotten enough to begin purchasing gasoline. And the orcs did what orcs did best. Fought. Only the two siblings fought with the Magnum Orcus as their sword. Gore smiled as she remembered fighting on the dirt roads edging the border, where asphalt faded into desert. They were natural demons on the road, always pulling out victories by the skin of their tusks, even against adults… Good money, too. Good times and good fights. Enough that one day Bones had saved enough to get Gore a present.

  Gore tapped her Wyvern bone earring. Her first and last gift.

  “He cared about you. He still does. That’s what siblings do.”

  But then, just when their lives became a little bit more livable… the siblings found Cousin Kalask. Or rather, Cousin Kalask found them.

  Gore’s heart turned cold. Cold as the glacial fields in the Southern Isles. But not as cold as Cousin Kalask’s eyes.

  The old orc had spotted the siblings at a race. Then he approached them with an offer far too good to be true. He offered them a family based on blood and love. And for a while, Gore had not found that family wanting. The people she had met… The warm smiles she had watched for the first few months as the siblings won race after race… But after a few months, the paint chipped away and the true depth of depravity within the Corpse Crawlers revealed themselves.

  For Bones, the depravity had come for him in the form of drugs and alcohol. Blight bug. Pixie Dust. Dragon Piss… any one of these drugs would have crushed even the hardest orc on their own. Bones took all three at once. Utter annihilation followed.

  Gore’s hands wrapped around her own throat. She still bore some of the scars from that time of nightmares.

  Debbie’s voice echoed in the distance, “The past is history, Gore. You don’t have to relive it.”

  When she didn’t fear the gunfire in the streets or the bloodied gang members running in and out of their temporary house. When she did not flinch at a car exploding in a few feet away her. But when she hid under the bed, waiting for her brother to come back home. Smelling of alcohol and drugs like he always did. She tried to ignore those leaden footsteps, those stumbling steps that crunched down on her spine like boots on glass. She tried to ignore her brother in his drunken rages as he ripped apart the entire house searching for her or more drugs. Tried to shut those memories away in the darkest recesses of her mind, where no one could or would ever venture, not even her.

  Of course, there came a point where enough became too much, where the scales tipped and the balance shattered, where someone decided to pass the point of no return. Bones barreled past that point with record speed.

  He tried to sell her to Cousin Kalask. He sold his own sister, his own flesh and blood to a gang for more drugs.

  The orc shivered, her breath running ragged, her heart in her throat and torn to shreds as her eyes dulled into almost translucence, the soul behind them fading as the memories from that time surged into her mind. A time in which she was not even a living being but an object to be carted around. Blight. The memories rushed at Gore in a wave. The orcs. The metal cages. The hands. The darkness. The utter despair…

  She touched the scars she’d carved into her own flesh, to make her less desirable.

  “Gore?” murmured a distant voice, a distant light to the present and future tearing through the mire of the past. “Gore! It’s all right! I’m here. I’m right here. You’re not alone anymore.”

  A soft hand caressed Gore’s cheek.

  Jolting back into reality, bursting through the surface of her thoughts into the real world, Gore blinked and looked up to see Debbie’s crying face staring at her. Those big brown eyes. That perfect face twisted by reflected pain. If only Gore could…

  Gore, her voice echoing as if from somewhere other than her own throat, murmured, “Why are you crying?”

  “I’m crying for you, silly,” stumbled Debbie through her face full of snot. “I can’t help it. Whenever I hear something sad, I just—”

  “Um, Debbie? We’re gonna go on in like fifteen minutes so… Oh, Leaf,” sputtered a voice from the ballroom. Gore glanced around to see one of Debbie’s dancers peeking out of the door. She raised a hand to her mouth as she gasped, “By
the Leaf, what’s going on? Are you going to be—”

  “I’ll be fine,” interjected Debbie, cutting off the dancer’s protests and waving her back inside. “I’ll be fine. Just continue practicing. I’ll be with you guys in like five.”

  The dancer raised an eyebrow, glaring at Gore before nodding and retreating back inside.

  “Damn… look at what you did, Gore. I’m gonna have to perform in a little bit,” laughed Debbie, gesturing to her mascara. Black lines trickled down Debbie’s face, black rivers of makeup.

  “Yeah. Sorry about that,” growled Gore, her voice raw. She coughed and reached into her backpack for a handkerchief. She found an oil-stained wash cloth. “Um, would this work?”

  “What? Oh, sorry, I was just kidding. Though that would be very nice. Thank you very much.” Debbie grabbed the wash cloth from Gore and wiped her eyes. Gore’s eyebrows shot up. The cloth came away darker than when Gore used it to wipe her engines. “So…”

  “Yeah?”

  “What happened with Bones? I assume since you weren’t murdering him every time I saw you two together that you two hammered out your differences. Or bound the chainmail, at least.”

  “Those are horrible analogies.” Gore shook her head. Why had she even allowed Bones back into her life in the first place?

  “Technically metaphors. Though the binding the chainmail would seem quite appropriate for your situation. Or whatever your orc equivalent is…”

  “It’s inter the song-hammer, I think. I don’t know. I know less than nothing about orcish culture…” Gore ran her fingers through her hair. “I wish that I had dug the song-hammer back up though. Now, at least. After he tried to trick me again. Tried to make me give him a family heirloom so he could sell it to Cousin Kalask for drugs.”

  “I can see why that would piss you off. And… well, you’re… you.”

  “What?”

  “How do I say this?”