The Book Eaters(7)
Devon mulled that over. “Does that mean he was a broken writer?”
“Of a sort.” He seemed amused by what she’d said. “Yes, that is a good enough description.”
“Oh, I see! Are the Ravenscars going to fix him, Uncle?”
“They certainly will, love,” said her uncle, gazing into the fire. “They certainly will.”
3
DEVON BY NIGHT
PRESENT DAY
But where did the book eaters come from? There is no evidence to suggest they are a mutant strain of evolution at work, and humanity took thousands of years to develop paper-making technology.
The book eaters themselves tell wildly unbelievable legends of the Collector, an extraterrestrial being who created them to look humanoid, and who placed them on Earth for the purpose of gathering knowledge (book eating) and sampling human experiences (mind eating).
But the Collector, so their bizarre story goes, never returned. Hence the ’eaters remain, remnants of an abandoned alien science project.
—Amarinder Patel, Paper and Flesh: A Secret History
Devon dreamed of hell, as she often did these days.
Some humans had sexual fantasies in their nightly visions, or nightmares about going to job interviews naked. Her dream was neither, though it had elements of both.
It always began with the ground opening beneath her feet into a broad tunnel streaked with lava. Cartoonish, that. She fell without resistance or surprise and landed on her knees in a subterranean pit worthy of Dante’s Inferno, a book that she’d once tried to eat but had spat out because it tasted of brimstone and bile. She’d never had much of a palate for classics.
A voice spoke from the blackness, telling her politely that she would suffer for her sins, and she laughed with relief until she cried. A whip cracked comically, landing across her shoulders, and Devon woke abruptly with searing pain in her spine. She was lying on the bathroom floor, head twisted at an angle and neck protesting with a stubborn ache. Her phone, when she checked it, read 12:04 A.M.
Devon uncurled herself and threw up a belly’s worth of whiskey into the toilet. Human food was beyond distasteful and gloopy—she had been curious enough to try it a few times—but alcohol went down easier. Especially wine. Lovely, amazing wine.
Poison expelled, Devon crawled over to the sink and pulled herself to standing. A haggard, lined face peered out from the warped bathroom mirror, haunted by tired circles under each eye. That blend of traits and features, courtesy of her convoluted heritage. Chipped nails, chapped lips, and a Nirvana shirt with more creases than seams completed the bedraggled appearance of an accidental Goth after a bad night out.
“I used to be a princess, you know.” Her reflection frowned doubtfully. Princesses in the books she’d read were pretty, delicate things: few of them were six-foot-tall murderesses with a penchant for shorn-off hair and leather jackets. Funny, that.
Devon flipped herself the finger and set about brushing her teeth. Both sets of teeth, because her bookteeth needed cleaning, too. When her breath no longer stank of vomit, she went in search of her son.
Cai had moved from his room to the sofa and fallen asleep on the cushions in a tightly curled ball. So small, so painfully thin. Devon didn’t have the heart to move him back to his bed. He might wake if she did, and anyway, he hated being cooped up in that cramped space.
Not that she could blame him. The kind of life he lived would be misery for any child. At his age she’d spent more time outside than in. But Devon’s childhood hadn’t been ruled by a hunger that drove her to scoop out people’s brain matter with her tongue, as Cai’s was.
If her son were to have any hope of a functional life, he needed Redemption. Not the religious kind but the chemical kind: a Family-manufactured drug developed specifically for mind eaters. When taken regularly, it allowed him to eat paper the way she did.
The trick was getting ahold of some.
Her mobile phone buzzed on the kitchenette counter. She walked over, picked it up, and flipped the shell open.
CHRIS
ive found em. said what u told me to say.
Lets meet and chat? crows nest pub, 8pm tmrw. will u be there??
Devon thumbed the cheap plastic keys.
Only one of the Families, the Ravenscars, had ever produced Redemption. The Ravenscar patriarchs had kept the ingredients and process a tightly kept secret, which allowed them to maintain a position of power and money over the other Families.
All that changed when, a couple years ago, the Ravenscars had abruptly imploded. Some of the patriarch’s adult children had tried to break away from their Family, something that Devon could sympathize with deeply. A bloodbath fight broke out that ended with dozens dead, including the patriarch himself. Meanwhile, the surviving Ravenscar siblings disappeared, and took their stores of Redemption.
Good for them; not so good for her son. Cai had been raised on Redemption, like most mind eater children. In the aftermath of the Ravenscar coup, access to the drug dried up almost overnight. All remaining doses were with the knights and kept for their adult dragons.
Cai had only three choices for his future: consume humans, starve to death, or get “put down” by the Families.
Devon wasn’t going to let her son starve, nor would she let anyone kill him. The Ravenscars were still alive, somewhere, and that meant there was a chance they could help. If she could convince them it was worth their while.