Lord Rokkan’s Private Toy Read online

  “I stopped by the market on my way home from work,” said Megan. “I got lucky.”

  Ollie frowned. “How much did it all cost?”

  “It wasn’t too steep. The vendor wanted to get rid of the cheese anyway, he thought it was close to growing mold.” Megan didn’t enjoy lying to her family. In fact, she downright hated it. But the less they knew about Lou, the better. If any of the werewolves in charge found out that one of the citizens of District One was fraternizing with a mage from another district, they’d probably revoke mess hall rights… or worse. “I got all of it for barely anything. I used my money too, nothing from the family pot.”

  “You didn’t have to spend your money, sweetheart,” said Iris. “Stuff like this is exactly what the family pot is for.”

  “No,” said Megan. “We need to save the family money in case one of us gets hurt and needs a doctor, or in case someone gets fired.”

  “None of that is going to happen,” said Cal. “But just in case.” He reached a hand out and knocked on the wooden coffee table. “Just in case.”

  “How was everyone’s second shift?” said Megan, desperate to change the subject. “Anything interesting happen?”

  “A guy lost a finger to the buzzsaw,” said Ollie. “It was nuts. Blood everywhere.”

  “That’s awful,” said Iris.

  “Just terrible,” Cal added.

  They were silent for a few seconds, forcing Megan to be the one to press for details –– which she did. The Zandles didn’t have a TV or radio, and they’d each read all the books in the apartment, twice, so it was work stories and gossip that kept them entertained on otherwise quiet, sullen nights. They knew it was rude to talk about other people, and even ruder to get some sort of entertainment from other people’s misery, but, in District One, if you didn’t get to hear a good, funny story now and then, you’d go absolutely bonkers.

  The Zandles had lost a few family members to insanity over the years. Two cousins and Megan’s grandmother. When you start to show signs of losing it, of no longer having complete control over your mental faculties, the werewolves snatch you up real quick. It’s said they take the “crazies” to a psychiatric facility somewhere outside of town, but considering no one has ever been able to visit said place, and no one has ever returned, it seems more likely the wolves simply “dispose” of the people.

  Iris and Cal were both crying, tears of laughter, once Ollie finished the buzzsaw story. Megan was laughing too, folded into herself and holding her aching stomach. After they all finally pulled themselves together, Megan’s parents said goodnight and retired to their bedroom.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Ollie said once he and Megan were alone. “If you and mom and dad don’t want to go, that’s fine. I was hoping to join a traveling group anyway. I’ll try to find a better place to live, maybe somewhere we can work for better wages, and then I’ll send you guys word and you can come meet me.”

  “Doesn’t that plan strike you as a tad bit optimistic?” Megan was pulling out the couch bed. “I mean, if it were that easy to get out and join a traveling group, wouldn’t more people be trying it?”

  Ollie shook his head. “Not necessarily. People are more scared.”

  “Of getting caught trying to get out?” Megan scoffed. “Of course they are. Can you blame them? If the wolves catch you trying to escape… well you’ve seen what happens, and it isn’t pretty.”

  “Not that,” said Ollie. “I mean, sure, that’s scary too. But people are more scared about what will happen if they do get out. At least here, they know what to expect. They get up, go to work, get fed regularly… there’s security in having your expectations met.”

  “And out there, it’s a total free for all,” Megan took up the line of reason. “Out there, who knows where your next meal will come from.”

  “Exactly,” said Ollie. “That’s why no one is doing it. But I’m sick of living in fear. I want to go see what’s out there. It could be great. We don’t know. They could have tons to eat and good jobs that need filling in other districts.”

  Megan said nothing. She went to grab her bedding from the closet in the hallway. Tonight was her night on the bed, Ollie was on the floor. They switched off every other night or so. She put the sheets on and curled under the covers. Ollie was working on making the floor more comfortable by making a big pile of every extra blanket, cushion, and pillow they had.

  “I heard something about District Three,” said Megan, looking up at the ceiling. “Apparently the district is run by mages, and they are actually pretty decent to humans. People have a lot more rights there, and they actually have a say in what happens to them.”

  “Who told you that?”

  Megan sat up. “A friend.”

  “What friend? You don’t have any friends.”

  “I do too have friends. There’s a girl who works bathroom duty with me sometimes. She used to live in District Three.”

  Ollie awkwardly laid down on his lumpy, uneven pile. “How far away is District Three?”

  “No sure.” Megan laid back down and closed her eyes. “I’ll have to ask her next time I see her.”

  There was another few moments of silence. Just as Megan thought her little brother had fallen asleep, and was close to drifting off herself, his soft voice interrupted the peace and quiet.

  “Is your friend hot?” he said. “You think she’d be into me.”

  Megan threw a pillow at Ollie. “Go to sleep, you little weirdo.”

  The pillow came flying back at her. “You go to sleep, you bully!”

  And she did. She fell asleep with a smile on her face, and dreamed of a better life in District Three, which later turned into a nightmare when dream-Lou announced that her and dream-Ollie were getting married and already expecting twins.

  Chapter Two

  Same Crap, Different Regime

  Aggie was old, cranky, and she somehow always smelled faintly of mildew. She and Megan often worked their cleaning shifts together, when they could arrange it. Megan was never sure if Aggie even liked her or not, but Megan liked Aggie, and that was all that really mattered to her.

  This morning, they were on kitchen duty. The people who worked the night shift just finished having their “dinner” and the cleaning crew piled in and started to get everything cleaned and ready for the first daytime workers’ meal.

  “How you feeling this morning, Aggs?” Megan asked the old woman as they scraped away at post with flat pieces of plastic broken off an old bucket.

  “What’s it to you?” Aggie gave her a mean look. “You know I’m never feeling nothing but pain and worry.”

  “You and everyone else around here,” said Megan. “I guess I was just hoping today would be different.”

  Aggie grunted in response. “That’s the problem with your generation. You’re always so damn hopeful, because when you was growing up, everything was just sunshine and smiles.”

  “Hey, I grew up during the war,” said Megan. “What are you even talking about?”

  “Sure you were growing up during the war, but you know what I was doing during the war?”

  “You were fightin––” Megan started to say but Aggie interrupted her.

  “I was fighting in it.” Aggie got the last bit of build up off the pan she was working on and moved onto the next. “My whole family, my husband, my kid all got killed in the war. After I lost my youngest, that’s when I decided I’d just about had it up to here with these paranormals. I went to the nearest recruitment center and signed myself up. I wish I could say it made much of a difference, but it didn’t do shit. We lost the war a month after I enlisted, and never even got to shoot me down one of them elementalists. You ever meet one of them things?”

  Aggie had told this story many times, and had asked this exact question of Megan many times, and every time, she would keep talking before Megan could even answer.

  “They can control the weather, you know.” Aggie nodded. “They can make it storm all day, ha
il all night, and then the following morning they’d make the sun so hot it boils your skin. They can strike a man down with lightning wherever he may be standing. They’re nothing but a bunch of abominations. Devils. That’s what they are.”

  Megan had finished scraping all her designated dishes. She snuck around the back of Aggie and picked up one from her pile, without saying a word. If the old woman noticed, she didn’t say anything.

  “No, I never did come face to face with the devil,” Aggie continued. “Only para I ever fought was a shapeshifter. Big, ugly thing. Way bigger than the wolves we got running this shit hole, and he had blue, shiny skin. Like a snake. He never did much, though. I put a bullet in him before he could. It was a lucky shot, I can admit that, but damnit if it didn’t good to make one of them things bleed.”

  Megan listened eagerly, even though she’d heard it all before. Ever since she was a kid, she’d always been fascinated by the para-human war. Her parents hated talking about it, and would never let Megan read anything that covered any of the events of the war. Her dad had been drafted to fight in it, but managed to get out of it because of his asthma. For many years, all Megan really knew about the war was that nearly three quarters of all human lives were lost, and that after the humans surrendered, the paranormals took control of all activities and goings-on on Earth.

  After Lou got sent away, however, Megan started to do a little research. She had always been told that the war was a taboo topic and that paranormals were all monsters. But she’d known Lou her entire life, and knew she wasn’t a monster. This got her thinking, maybe there was more to this story than the humans liked to admit. She began visiting the District One library in secret and trying to find anything which talked about the past, the war, and the paranormals. Of course, information was limited. It wasn’t like the District One library was well funded or stocked, but what she did find made her hungry for more. A few years after that, she met Aggie, and Aggie, whether it was true or not, claimed to know everything about the war.

  “Aggie?” Megan said after the old woman finished her latest story and had grown quiet. “Can I ask you something? There’s an aspect of the war I never really understood.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve heard that the paranormals justified the near extinction of the human race because the humans weren’t taking care of the Earth. And now, there’s all these movements from certain paranormal races to re-educate humans, to teach us how to live symbiotically with the Earth.” Megan frowned. “You said you were alive before the war started. What were humans doing to the Earth that was so bad? Were we really destroying the planet?”

  Aggie scraped at her last dish without saying anything. Her eyebrows were furrowed and she ran her tongue along her thin lips a few times.

  “Here’s the thing,” Aggie finally said. “It don’t matter what the humans were doing to the planet. Even if we were about to kill her, the planet was ours to kill. God gave her to us. Not them.”

  “So we were killing the planet?”

  “I didn’t say that!” Aggie said defensively. “All I said was that it don’t matter what we was doing. Even if you think a group of people is doing something wrong, that doesn’t give you the right to kill them all.”

  Megan sighed. “That’s true.” Having finished washing her pile of dishes, and a few of Aggie’s, Megan moved on to her next task; cleaning the oven. She maneuvered to the other side of the kitchen, opened the heavy metal door, and got to her knees.

  Aggie remained quiet, which Megan feared was the old woman’s way of telling her she overstepped. Megan was too young to have lost anybody important to her in the war, so sometimes she forgot how devastating it was for some. Aggie, for instance, lost her entire family and her children. Megan couldn’t imagine what that would feel like. Looking into the soot-covered mouth of the oven, she opened her mouth to apologize for her inquisitiveness, which she thought had come off as more callous, but she was interrupted by a loud crashing sound coming from the otherside of the mess hall.

  “What in the hell was that?” Aggie dropped her crusty dish into the industrial stainless steel sink and waddled her broad, awkward body over to the door of the kitchen. She woman her weight into the door and yelled out of the small opening. “Who’s makin’ all that damn racket? Do I need t’call the shift mana––”

  Aggie trailed off. Her eyes widened. She stood staring, slack-jawed, out the door.

  “What is it?” asked Megan. “What’s going on?” She let out a small sigh as she strained her weary legs and asked Aggie again, “What?”

  The woman made a few non-district sounds and then walked slowly back inside the kitchen, letting the door closed.

  “He got the guard…” The color had drained from her face. “I’ve never seen one like that… Not since…” Again, the woman lost her words.

  Megan quickly made her way across the kitchen, pushed past Aggie and opened the door fully. The iron-y smell hit her olfactory senses first. Then her eyes saw the blood. There was a puddle of it, in the center of the mess hall, and a wide line of the stuff leading towards the hallway, where Megan could just make out the shape of a large figure dragging behind him a hairy, unmoving body. They disappeared around the corner.

  Megan stepped out and examined the scene. Considering the amount of blood in comparison to the lack of commotion, she guessed it must have been some sort of sneak attack.

  “Did you see?” Aggie had stepped out of the kitchen, still wearing an expression of pure shock. “That thing? Did you see it?”

  “Not really,” Megan admitted. “Did he take down the guard?”

  Aggie nodded. “He tearing into the guard’s throat when I opened the door. He looked at me for a second, with the devil’s eyes, he looked at me.”

  Megan frowned and looked back down the hallway. “Should we follow them?”

  Aggie laughed. “Yeah, sure. You go right on ahead and follow them. But don’t you think for ev’n one second that I’m gon’ cover for you.” Megan could tell the woman was trying to downplay what had just happened, probably in an attempt to temper some of her own fear. “When they get everythin’ settled and send another guard over here, and he starts askin’ questions, don’t you go thinkin’ I’ll lie for you.”

  Megan considered this, and decided Aggie was right, it was better to stick around and get her work done. Whatever was going on had nothing to do with her, and the only thing the wolves hated more than humans skipping out on work was humans sticking their noses where they didn’t belong. Besides, Aggie seemed legitimately spooked, even if she wouldn’t admit it.

  “Do we clean up the blood?” Megan asked.

  Aggie shrugged. “Technically, we are on kitchen duty, not mess hall duty. I say we just leave it.” She stared at the blood and Megan noticed a shudder travel through her body.

  They heard voices just outside the side doors of the mess hall, which lead to the courtyard. “I told you to bring me the guards alive!” There came a deep, un-wolf-like growl. “Did anyone not kill their guard?”

  Megan ran quickly to the window and cupped her hands around the side of her face to get a better view. A huge, green skinned, horned monster was standing in the center of the courtyard. He was in profile, from Megan’s vantage point. Forming a half circle in front of him were others like him, each with similar builds and horns but different colors of skin. Three out of the four in the group stood in front of the lifeless, bloody bodies of wolf guards. The other one had a living guard in his grasp, tightly keeping both the fidgeting, snarling wolf’s arms pinned behind his back.

  “Sir,” he said. “I have a live guard right here.”

  The big green one nodded and motioned for the other creature to step forward. A crowd was beginning to form on the outskirts of the courtyard. Megan felt a presence next to her and snuck a glance sideways. Aggie was at the window.

  The wolf guard was thrown to the ground at the foot of the leader. The monster bent down and spoke to him. Megan tri
ed to read their lips, but to no avail. Bringing her gaze up, she caught sight of her brother standing on the other side of the courtyard.

  Ollie.

  Without thinking, she turned from the window and ran towards the hallway, careful to not slip in the blood puddle.

  “Where are you going?” Aggie called after her.

  “I have to get to my brother,” Megan yelled back. “He could be in danger. We all could be.”

  * * *

  Megan had to throw a lot of elbows and demand a lot of people move in order to make her way to the front of the crowd, where Ollie was standing. Luckily, even though she’d just ran from one side of the massive building to the other, she still had enough anxiety-induced energy to get to her brother.

  “Hey.” She grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “No way!” Ollie turned back to the show. “Things are just getting good.” He pointed to the new character in the courtyard. “Recognize him?”

  The wolf was struggling to get out of the grip of two of the colorful creatures, who each had a good grip on one of his arms. “Who is it?” Megan asked, just before noticing the sun-catching, bronze ornament on top of the captive’s head. She gasped. “Is that…”

  “The lord of District One,” said Ollie. “Yes. Yes it is. And he’s about to get dethroned by that big son of bitch right there.”

  “How do you know?” Megan found herself whispering and realizing she, like the rest of the crowd, was transfixed by the monumental and historical event unfolding in front of her.

  “That’s what the green guy said.” Ollie was whispering too. “He said he’s the lord from District Eleven and that he is here to take District One for himself and his people.”

  “District Eleven?” Megan tore her eyes from the action and gawked at Ollie. “But there are only ten districts.”

  “Were,” said a middle-aged man standing on the other side of Ollie. “There were only ten districts. A new one sprouted up a few months back, and it’s being run by these power hungry lizards.”