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 SHATTERPROOF
REMASTERED EDITION
THE DISSONANT UNIVERSE: COUNTDOWN -3

BESTSELLING AUTHOR COLE MCCADE

WRITING AS
XEN
Copyright © 2018 by Xen
Kindle Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or

transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other
electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher /
author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other
noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the
publisher at the address below.

Xen
blackmagic@blackmagicblues.com

Cover Artist: Les Solot

www.fiverr.com/germancreative

Cover Photo by: Sam Burriss on Unsplash

https://unsplash.com/@samburriss

First Edition September 2016

Second Edition May 2018

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are
either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of
the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

Gandalf the Grey, Jell-O, Saran Wrap, the Weeknd, Dexter, Firefly, Buck Rogers, Peter
Pan, Nokia, Smithsonian, IHOP, Jackass!, Ferrero Rocher
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD & CONTENT WARNING
1
2
3
4
5
6
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8
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10
11
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18
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X
DISCOVER CRIMINAL INTENTIONS ON PATREON
ORIGINAL AFTERWORD: REVISED 2016 EDITION
NEW AFTERWORD: 2018 EDITION
GO VIP & GET FREE BOOKS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FIND MORE CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE & EROTICA AS COLE
MCCADE
DISCOVER SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY & HORROR AS XEN
 FOREWORD & CONTENT WARNING
THIS EDITION OF SHATTERPROOF HAS undergone some changes since it
was first published with Riptide Publishing in 2016. Back when I first wrote
this book, I was afraid—of my publisher, of the market, of the past
treatment I’d endured as a queer man of color with anxiety and depression
who had been told his perspective was too ethnic, too different, not to
market. I was so afraid that just being me was too much that I didn’t let
myself ponder being bold in other areas of storytelling. I let it make me
timid.
I don’t want to be timid anymore.
While I didn’t want to strip away the essence of this story, in
rewriting it for republication I also wanted to make it what it was always
intended to be: an introduction to my DISSONANT universe, which is a
series of stories along a timeline of centuries leading into a dark, strange
cross-genre world where magic and technology crash together with
destructive results.
In the old version of SHATTERPROOF, it begins with Saint saying
“My name is Saint, and I kill everyone I love.”
This version begins with Saint saying, “My name is Saint, and I am
the beginning of the end.”
This book, too, is the beginning of the end.
The beginning of a countdown into a collection of stories and
interconnected worlds I’ve been building in other venues for over fifteen
years, combining science fiction and fantasy and mythology and post-
apocalyptic dystopia.
This is where the dissonance begins.
This is where everything begins to unravel.
Saint’s and Grey’s stories belong to them, but stand as a window
looking out over the end of the world.
The cues are subtle, but there. The tiny threads, waiting to be pulled
—until it all begins to fall apart.
I hope you enjoy this remastered edition of SHATTERPROOF, and
the changes that make it a story that feels less timid, more brave, and more
like me.

But before you read, please be aware of content warnings for:

Graphically described attempted suicide by self-inflicted

gunshot.
Discussions of other methods of suicide and self-harm.
Instances of self-harm/cutting as part of a supernatural
ritual/blood magic.
Suicidal ideation.
In-depth discussion and depiction of mental health issues,
primarily deep and chronic depression.
A character describing himself using ableist language regarding
his own mental health. (I have feelings about what we’re
allowed to call ourselves versus what the abled are allowed to
call us; for example, I can call myself crazy but you sure as hell
can’t—but regardless, for some, reading those words can be
triggering even when self-directed and used in a reclaiming
way.)
Inner perspectives that depict struggles with insecurity, self-
doubt, self-hate, and intrusive thoughts.
On-page, unprotected cis male / cis male penetrative sex.
Mild bloodplay.
Discussion and implication of sexual assault. (No actual sexual
assault, to be clear. Just a confused post-coital conversation
 soothing retroactive fears about possibly misunderstood
consent.)
Depiction of a car accident.
Brief reference to drug use/substance abuse.
Scenes that take place in ambulances and hospitals, depicting
medical treatment and care.
Progression of a magic-induced wasting disease that can trigger
reminders of real-world terminal illness.

While it’s important for me to depict an unflinching look at unaddressed

mental healthcare needs in BIPOC communities, it’s equally important that
I not cause you harm through this story. Always choose yourself and your
health over any obligation to read and finish a book that may be harmful to
you.
Take care of yourselves, in whatever way is best for you.
-X
 1
“MY NAME IS SAINT,” HE said, “and I am the beginning of the end.”
Saint looked numbly down at the digital recorder in his palm.
Seconds ticked by on the screen. The black, sharp curvature of his
fingernail underscored the blocky numbers, accusing with every moment he
stared, silent in the sluggish, slow heat of the balmy Georgia night.
He was supposed to be recording his story. Recording the story, so
that when the spine of the world cracked and its pages ripped asunder…
something would be left to remember.
This was pointless.
He lifted the device to his lips again, hesitated, exhaled, pulled it
away with his mouth tingling. The sparks of man-made power flowing
through the recorder pricked at him uncomfortably, pulling at the more fluid
lines of older things that made him what he was, pathetic shadow that he
had become. Mortals’ magic of machines and wires had always itched—but
here he was, reduced to playing with their strange electronic toys full of
physics and formulae even the humans who had made them didn’t wholly
understand.
He pressed his lips together, brought the recorder tentatively closer,
tried again. “I call myself Saint,” he said, “because my true name is lost.
Taken from me, like everything I once was. I won’t say how, or by whom.
To name them is to give them power. But I’ve been made something other
than what I was meant to be, and the only way I have survived this past two
thousand years has been by means you may find atrocious, dear listener, if
you happen to be human.” He wet his lips, then smiled bitterly. “Something
I am not, and have never been.”
He fell still, then, looking down at those numbers standing mute
testament to the countdown wreaking havoc on his body, the pain imbued in
dying flesh. “There are names for what I am, but…those names don’t
matter, right now. Those aren’t the names I think of, when I lie here in my
ennui and watch the hours tick by and wonder how humans can stand living
when they know they’ll only die.” His heart rolled over, heavy and sitting
uncomfortably against his ribs. “Calen. Michael. Remy. Dorian. Philippe.
Arturo. Victor. Jake. Those are the names I think of, in the silent hours of
the night. Those are the names I have made part of me. So that even as they
die, I live on.”
He closed his eyes. Jake. Jake and his grass-green eyes; Jake and the
way he’d breathed Saint, Saint as if the name was a prayer to save him. It
had been eighteen years, and still he remembered the way Jake’s hands had
spanned his hips, and how those hands had been so emaciated and feeble
when his eyes glazed over and his body just…deflated, like there was
nothing inside to hold it up anymore. He’d been the last.
Saint just wasn’t sure when he’d decided he didn’t want another
Jake, going limp and lifeless in his arms.
He didn’t know if he could do this again.
But he didn’t know if he could stand not to.
“I shouldn’t care when they die,” he whispered, then pressed his
mouth to the electric-spark tingle of the recorder, the little stipples over the
speaker scraping against his lips. “I didn’t, before. The first ten, fifty, one
hundred…they’re just…food animals. That’s all they ever are. But they’re
more, too. The creative types. Artists. Musicians. Painters. Authors. Poets.
They’re brilliant. They’re beautiful. They live with this firefly spark of
mortal passion that burns out far too soon. They’re the only ones who can
make me feel. Everything else is monochrome, but for me they’re all the
colors in the world—and even when I want to resist, I can’t. Especially
when that fire goes off inside them, and they become… Light above, more
than I could ever be.”
He swallowed, thick and rough, then opened his eyes and stared
blankly across the room, his dark little warren of odds and ends collected
over decades, centuries. Shivering, he dropped his gaze to his arm, touched
his chilled skin, traced his fingers over the patterns marked into his flesh in
shimmer-dark ink, subtle workings stamped deeper in gleams of soft rune-
light that gave the ink a life of its own. Right there—the firebird, brilliant in
its sparks, coiling from his wrist to his elbow.
That was Jake, burned forever into his skin.
“They become transcendent,” he said. “In the way only mortals can.
Like a phoenix, just before it dies…only they never rise again. They burn
apart from the inside out. Their souls come alight, and they’re bleeding
them out through their art. I used to tell myself it was my gift to them.
Compensation for what I took from them. They might die, but their passion
would create things that could outlive us all.” His grip tightened on the
recorder; the plastic cut into his palm, the heat of the battery warming his
icy hands through the casing.
“As if there will be anything left, when this is through.”
He paused the recording and hit Rewind. The track skipped back to
0:00, then started to play. His own voice lilted out, crackling faintly, racked
with things he should never be weak enough to feel.
My name is Saint, and I am the beginning of the end.
What would happen, he wondered, if he never fed again?
He stopped the audio. Erased the track, tap-tap-confirm, yes,
absolutely sure. Started again, pressing his mouth to the recorder, plastic
slickness a dead, mechanical kiss against his lips.
“My name is Saint,” he said, “and if you remember nothing else,
remember that I died because I failed to save you all.”
Then he shut the recorder off, pitched it on the table, and walked
away.
 2
GREY WONDERED WHO HAD FOUND him.
He’d thought he’d planned it better than this. Quiet and alone in his
apartment, the pulsing throb of gut-deep, grinding music drowning out any
sounds he might make: the noise of the gunshot, his cries, the low quiet
whisper of the loa come to take him through Bawon Samedi’s gates.
It hadn’t been an easy choice, though it had felt increasingly like an
inevitable one. As if a road that once branched in many directions had
narrowed down to a single path, one walked by many feet before his, one
that drew him along step by step until he couldn’t have turned back if he
wanted to.
And he hadn’t.
Wanted to, that is.
No. No, he’d wanted this.
And then he’d fucked it up.
He’d considered more silent methods at first. Something less
absolute and terrifying than the rifle in the mouth, angled just so to make
sure there’d be nothing left of his brain, the top of his head completely
gone. Quieter methods were more likely to fail. He might get one wrist slit
the right way and not have the strength to slit the other, waking up later in a
pool of his own blood but still waking up. His body might force him to
vomit up pills. Hanging, both the rope and the chair might slip at the wrong
moment. A pistol to the temple could graze, miss, come out the other side.
But the Hemingway solution…
 Brutal. So beautifully brutal; so very effective. His last work of art,
splattered in blood and flesh over a canvas of gleaming floorboards.
That was how it worked, when you really wanted it. You didn’t
advertise it. You didn’t broadcast it to anyone who might stop you. You held
it close, a precious little secret clutched to your chest, and planned it out so
nothing could go wrong.
Only something had.
He remembered pain, blinding and hot. The wavering disc of the
overhead light cut in chop-chop-chop streams by the blades of the ceiling
fan, strobing in and out. The wet feeling of blood pooling, and the sad, quiet
thought of:
I hadn’t wanted to feel this.
I hadn’t wanted to feel anything ever again.
Then a scream he didn’t recognize, heavy footsteps, the clatter of
equipment, the jumble of sirens, his body moved about like a lifeless sack
while he felt like he was floating outside it, watching while deft, capable
hands took his vitals, staunched the flow of blood, eased something soft
under his head. The ambulance jouncing around him.
And a pale figure next to him, in EMT’s blues.
He struggled to focus. The lights inside the ambulance were too
bright, everything blurring in and out in a haze of white. Strange eyes.
Strange eyes like the rose color of sunset just before twilight, as if they
wanted to be violet but something inside had tainted their color with
crimson heart’s blood. Dusk, he thought dimly. They were the color of dusk,
flecked with motes of sunlight, set against a white, sullen face framed in a
messy thatch of black. A delicate face, grim with a sort of quiet, constant
fear that shadowed his angled eyes and set the lines of his jaw so
mutinously.
 The EMT didn’t look old enough, Grey mused with a sort of
detached clarity. He didn’t look old enough for those slim pale ghosts of
hands to be touching Grey’s body, piecing him back together, saving his
life.
Stop, he wanted to say, but his tongue was leaden and bloated, filling
his mouth. Don’t. Don’t bring me back. Just let me go. But first…
Tell me what you’re so afraid of.
Those hard, angry dusk eyes flicked to him as if the pale man had
heard him. He studied Grey intently, while the siren shrieked a high keening
wail and the ambulance careened around a corner hard enough to make
everything inside jerk and rattle.
“Why’d you do it?” he asked, so soft Grey almost didn’t hear him.
Grey swallowed thickly, forcing his tongue to move. His voice
struggled to come up, a cold and unmoving lump in the bottom of his
throat. “Does i-it…does it matter?”
“Yes.” The pale man lowered his eyes. His hands rested on Grey’s
chest, the wings of white doves; fingers tipped in black-painted nails,
chipped and gleaming, threw back reflections of those pensive eyes. “It
always matters.”
You’re wrong, he wanted to say, but his voice gave out on him again.
He closed his eyes, fighting past the dull throb of pain to find thought, find
reason, find anything other than an overwhelming sense of failure.
But against the backs of his eyelids he saw strange sunset eyes, and
felt the warmth of hands resting quiet and sweet just over his heart.
“What…” He choked, coughed, his mouth a desert. “W-what’s your
name?”
A low laugh answered, oddly melodious. “I thought we were talking
about questions that mattered.”
 It matters, Grey thought. It matters to me.
But he couldn’t get the words out. The dark was coming fast.
And when it swallowed him down he went willingly, and hated that
on the other side waited a blinding and damning light that shone too bright
to let him hide from anything.
Even himself.
 3
SAINT LOOKED DOWN AT THE man on the stretcher as his pale, coyote-gold
eyes sank closed. Thick, dark lashes swept to the high planes of ebonwood
cheeks. Blood smeared down the side of his face, leaking from the
bandaged wound that had carved a furrow in his scalp and even now spread
crimson on the gauze, the bright red of an arterial bleed. Blood loss left an
ashen undertone beneath dark skin; blood loss and strain—but Saint thought
he would be all right.
Physically, at least.
He wondered why the unconscious man had done it. So often Saint
wondered why, when so many of his late-night calls were suicides. Suicides
or drunks, and in both cases usually by the time he arrived, there was
nothing he could do.
Every once in a while, though, he found one like this. One who’d
done it wrong, or changed his mind, or gained some grace or curse of divine
intervention. What would this man call it, if he were awake? A blessing?
Or a curse?
His driver’s license, fished from his back pocket, said Grey Jean-
Marcelin. Thirty-seven. Even in his license photo he had a sort of
melancholy beauty, cut in the articulated hollows of his cheekbones and the
precise, full shapes of his lips and the stark angles of his eyes. His name
sounded familiar, but Saint couldn’t remember where he’d heard it. He
tended to dip in and out of the pulse of Savannah every twenty years or so,
going to ground until anyone who might remember him—who might
remember that his face hadn’t changed in decades and the people he dated
tended to end up shriveled, desiccated echoes of themselves, sealed away in
body bags—had moved on.
That, and after two thousand years…
So many of these humans just blended together.
At least there’d be no body bag for this one. Not tonight. Mr. Jean-
Marcelin would have an impressive scar, cutting a channel down the tight,
close-cropped burr of his prematurely white hair.
But he would live.
“Hey,” Nuo said from across the stretcher. “Xav.”
It took a moment for his alias to sink in. He was still getting used to
being Xav, and not Saint or Dominic or Ambrose or any of the other names
he’d used over the years. This time, he was Xav Cascia. The name had
made him laugh when he’d come up with it, printing it onto a fake ID and
laminating it with a little machine that made false identities much easier in
an age when verifiable information was harder and harder to lie about—and
it made him so tired to have to tweak human memories, following ley-lines
of probability and chance to test and predict every tiny ripple that could,
with one misstep, become a catastrophic wave of cause, effect, and
complete and utter disaster.
He might be a shadow of what he once was.
But he still remembered the purpose he once had, and the
responsibility that came with it.
But for now, he wasn’t that creature anymore. He was Xav Cascia,
named for St. Frances Xavier Cabrini and St. Rita of Cascia. He’d gotten in
the habit, over the last century or two, of taking his false names from
Catholic patron saints, even if he predated most of them. And this time?
This time, he’d chosen the patron saints of impossible causes.
 He’d always had a fondness for bitter irony.
Nuo snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Xav. You okay?”
He shook himself, tearing his eyes from Grey’s unconscious face,
and looked up into the lines of exhaustion etched under the creases of his
partner’s dark brown eyes, her pointed chin nearly disappearing into the
high collar of her oversized EMT uniform.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You always get mopey over the suicide squad.”
He scowled and carefully slid another folded towel under Grey’s
head to elevate his skull. There wasn’t much more he could do for him
other than bandaging and compression, now that he was sure Grey wouldn’t
bleed out. Saint was just the ferryman, fording the river between life and
death over and over again. In a few minutes, Grey would be the ER nurses’
problem. Stitch him up, bring in the shrinks for a psych eval, make sure he
was safe to go home under his own recognizance. After tonight Saint would
never have to see him again; would never know the answer to that burning
question of why.
Why mortals would throw away even what little spark of time they
had, while Saint had been struggling for hundreds upon hundreds of years
to keep burning with a flame that was never meant to go out.
“I just don’t get it,” he murmured, and dabbed a trickle of blood
from Grey’s cheek. “I don’t get why people wouldn’t do anything and
everything they can to live.”
“You can’t know what’s going on in his life.” She leaned over to
check Grey’s pulse. “Whether it’s personal or chemical, people have their
reasons. Maybe he lost someone. Maybe he couldn’t get over a failure.
Maybe he’s just another artist who glorifies it as dramatic and poetic, and
doesn’t quite get that it’s real. Or maybe he doesn’t owe anyone an
explanation at all, and it’s just what he felt he had to do.”
Saint stilled, a feeling popping in his chest like globules of bursting
sickness. His knuckles curled against Grey’s cheek. He was so cool, as if
already dead, and his stubble had the texture of volcanic stone against
Saint’s skin. Every sensation was more real than real, a heightened
awareness deeper than the adrenaline rush of that critical moment between
life and death. It prickled on his skin—a whisper, a promise unfulfilled and
only waiting for him to speak the other half of a terrible vow.
“Artist?” he choked out.
“You haven’t seen the flyers around the market?” She snorted. “God,
you need to get out more. They call him ‘The Grey.’ There’s a Gandalf joke
in there somewhere, but he’s a painter. Got an installation down at the
Savannah Gallery. Really dark, gritty stuff. Haunting. You’d probably like
it.”
“Yeah,” he said, his lips numb. He stared at Grey, really seeing him,
the vividness of him, and his tongue dried to the roof of his mouth; dread
recognition wrapped barbed-wire coils around his heart. “Yeah, I probably
would.”
 4
BON DIEU, HE HATED ANSWERING questions.
Grey picked at a cold, congealed lump of hospital Jell-O, but the
tinny flavor of artificial strawberry couldn’t wipe away the sour aftertaste of
the questions the psychiatrist had asked, or the bitter taste of defeat. His
hands shook, blood loss making his fingers clumsy and numb—and the
morphine residuals weren’t helping, though the nurse had shut off the drip
hours ago. He wouldn’t be holding a brush again for a while.
For a while.
Did that mean, then, he was back to thinking in terms of days,
weeks, months, years…instead of in terms of minutes?
That was what the psychiatrist had asked him. If he could think
about tomorrow. If he could see tomorrow, instead of just an empty nothing
cut short by a line of red.
What kind of question is that? he’d demanded.
The only kind of question there is, the psychiatrist had answered. The
only one that matters. Think about tomorrow, Grey. Think about what
tomorrow could be for.
The only thing tomorrow is for is getting out of here.
We’ll see, Grey. We’ll see.
He wondered how long they’d keep him here, feeding him Jell-O the
same color as the blood he’d spilled all over his floor. How long they even
could keep him here legally, when at this very moment a nurse or orderly or
shrink was likely watching his every move and reading some arcane
symbolism into the clumsiness of his fingers on the spoon. Some message
he didn’t know he was giving off, that said instead of going home he’d be
on his way to Memorial Health in the back of a padded truck.
He closed his eyes. I’m not crazy. That’s the worst part.
It was just the sanest choice I could have made.
The door creaked open, the hinges squeaking. Grey lifted his head,
opening his eyes, and set the unappetizing Jell-O cup down. A short, slim
man stepped into the room. He moved like someone who made an art out of
not being seen, Grey thought. Someone who didn’t like to be noticed. He
pictured the man hiding in the brush with dapples of leaf-light falling over
his fey, fragile features, and wondered why he looked so familiar—until
recognition clicked.
Oh.
The EMT.
From last night. Those soft dove-hands on his chest, a throatily
accented voice that sounded Irish and yet was just off enough that he
couldn’t quite place it, dusk eyes that burned with a question he didn’t
know how to answer—almost accusatory against the backdrop of sulky,
petulant beauty that seemed too young for someone old enough to pull him
back from the banks of the Acheron.
He’d almost thought he’d imagined him. Some fever dream of blood
loss and despair.
Yet even now Grey felt the echo of his touch, handprints branded on
his chest in phantom warmth.
The man pulled out a chair from beneath the window, slipped out of
his jacket, tossed it over the table, and sank into the seat. Dark art played
down his bare arms in rolling lines, chasing each other through flowing
tangles of black ink, singing against his skin like musical notations. Grey
caught himself lingering on the tattoos, on the faint shimmer of them—as if
the ink had been drawn in silver and shadow. But when he lifted his gaze…
The man was watching him, steady and intent. Waiting.
As if he wanted something.
As if he knew something Grey didn’t.
Grey frowned. “Are you just going to sit there and stare at me?”
The man shrugged one shoulder and folded his arms over his chest,
slouching down in the chair, slender frame sprawled with artless grace.
“You’re not supposed to be alone.”
“I’m not?”
“They say the first few hours after a suicide attempt are the most
crucial.” That soft accent lilted, beguiled, husky and strangely hypnotic. “Or
the first few hours after you wake, at least. You were out for quite a while.”
Cold realization sank in Grey’s gut. “You’re here to make sure I
don’t try it again.”
“Unless you have someone you’d like me to call.”
He flinched. That cold, sinking feeling froze into a solid block of ice.
“No.” Not anymore. Who would…I don’t… “There’s no one.”
“Then you’re stuck with me.”
“I didn’t know suicide watch was in an EMT’s job description.”
“I’m on break.”
He narrowed his eyes. “That’s not the real reason you’re here.”
“Ah,” the man said, both brows rising, lyrical words rolling and
sweet. “He’s a clever one, he is.”
“What do you want?”
Another of those shrugs. Insouciant, taunting, as taunting as the peak
of slim brows and the steady, pinning stare of half-lidded eyes. “Maybe I’d
still like to know why. Why the renowned painter Grey Jean-Marcelin
wanted to take his own life.”
“I didn’t tell the headshrinker. What makes you think I’d tell you?”
“Because I won’t judge.”
“That’s what they all say.”
No answer but silence. Searching, expectant, wanting an answer he
couldn’t stand to say, waiting for him to turn his gaze inward and see the
things he’d blinded himself to for so long. The air felt too thick to swallow,
and he dragged in a struggling breath, looking away, looking for anything
but a weighted regard that just wanted a simple answer.
He landed on the jacket, and the name tag clipped to the breast
pocket. “Xav?”
The man smirked, a pretty thing of pouting, full lips that seemed
made for sighing breaths. “That’s one thing they call me.”
“Implying it’s not your real name.”
“Why would I need a fake one?”
“You tell me.”
Xav—or the man calling himself Xav—tilted his head to one side;
his wild mess of hair drifted across his face, a few inky black strands
curling their tips against his mouth. “An answer for an answer.”
Grey clenched his jaw. “Is this a game to you?”
“No,” Xav said softly. “I need to know why you want to die.”
“Shouldn’t you be asking if want has become wanted?”
Xav parted his lips, then stopped. Something flickered in his eyes,
something doubting and soft and hurt. Something Grey thought might just
be the first hint of the real person underneath this coyly mocking façade, the
same person who had glared at him so angrily in the ambulance, as if what
he’d done to himself had personally hurt the other man.
“I think I’m afraid to know,” Xav said.
 “Why?”
“Because if you want to do it…” He exhaled heavily. “I can help
you.”
“How?” Grey demanded, but Xav only avoided his eyes, looking
blankly at curtains turned luminous by the glow of afternoon light. “How?”
“You want to find out?” Xav stood, picked up his jacket, and slung it
over his shoulder. Sparking eyes fixed on Grey again, still so sharp, so
accusing. “Stay alive long enough to get out of here.”
Then he turned and walked out, leaving Grey with more questions
than answers.
And no idea what to think.
The door banged closed. The last Grey saw of Xav was a toss of dark
hair. Then he was gone, while the silence of the room resonated with the
one thing Grey couldn’t stand to ask himself:
How badly do you want to die?
 5
STILL WET FROM HIS SHOWER, Saint curled up in his papasan chair,
burrowed into his nest of blankets, and wondered why he’d done it.
Offering like that. Openly. Blatantly. He always gave them a choice,
but that choice was often a dream they would never remember, a whisper of
something uncomfortable about him that they couldn’t quite put their
fingers on. Deep down, every man who died for him knew what he was on a
primal, instinctive level that recognized something that was older than
mankind; older than even the first gods; old enough to be the first gods.
But it was never real by the light of day. Never something they could
name, label, understand.
Just that sensation under the skin, that pull, that call, that déjà vu
memory of a pact drawn in blood.
Saint had sensed Grey’s attraction. The man looked at him like he
was all colors and symmetry, itching through Grey’s fingertips and waiting
to be bled onto canvas. He knew that look. He knew what it would lead to.
And he’d thought about it for the rest of his shift, through the walk home,
through a shower that could never quite scrub off the medicinal smell of the
ambulance.
And as Saint had countless times, he’d put on the mask of the
knowing seducer—only this time he’d offered Grey not his body, but a
ticket out the door Grey had already kicked open for himself.
Dangerous. Saint wasn’t just playing with fire. He was playing with
his own life, teasing at a mortal man who had no clue what he’d stumbled
into, hinting he could help him die. All it would take was one wrong word
to turn too many eyes his way and transform his quiet, secret unlife into a
public spectacle.
Murderer, the headlines would say. Vampire. Incubus. Monster.
Freak.
It used to be witch. Demon. Trickster. Thief.
The words changed. The humans remained the same. As did their
fear of the things in the dark; the creatures under the skin of the world.
Creatures like Saint.
Hiding among them in plain sight, and using love to kill.
He only wore the skin of a human man, when all he was? Was a
vulture, hovering and circling while death came by slow inches.
Did that make what he’d done any better? Just because Grey Jean-
Marcelin wanted to die, did that make it somehow acceptable to prey on the
man’s life to save Saint’s own?
A bitter smile creased his lips. “Light above and void below, Saint,”
he whispered, his voice the only sound crawling up into the rafters of the
room. “When did you start to care?”
Biting his lip, he traced a fingertip over the tattoo coiled on his left
wrist. A gecko in blocky Aztec patterns, thick geometric lines. Arturo, tail
looping onto the back of Saint’s hand. What shape would Grey take? A
coyote, to match those tawny eyes?
Those eyes. There was so much desperation in them, but the light
behind them wasn’t dead yet. Even pallid and covered in his own blood,
Grey had been beautiful: full of a fire waiting to be stoked, smoldering
embers that could—if ignited—send him up in the most brilliant flames of
passion. There was a heart inside him starving for touch, almost as hungry
as Saint’s own. He could feel it, that click waiting to happen, a whisper of
melody waiting to become a conjoined symphony, a rightness that said they
could fit together in a gestalt greater than they were apart.
And in dying, Grey would become immortal.
Saint should do this the way he always did. Steal into Grey’s dreams,
whisper the choice into the back of his mind. He would never know what
Saint was. Never see him as anything other than this strange man who had
taken over his existence, consumed his thoughts. Grey wouldn’t remember
his own agreement. Wouldn’t remember choosing an obsession that would
build his fire so high it would burn him to a husk from the inside out. He
would only know the heat of his passion, until it burned him out and his
light went dark in one last blaze.
His legacy would be Saint’s gift, and he would never truly know.
Then why, this time, did Saint want to be known?
Why, this time, was he honestly considering telling Grey the truth,
laying this transaction out for what it was, and letting him decide in the
light of day?
Did he think it would be different somehow, if Grey saw him for the
monster he was and chose him anyway?
Did he think, if he showed his true face to a mortal…
This time he’d get to keep one of these fragile human mayflies,
rather than crushing them in the tight and greedy fist of his needs?
A life thrown away isn’t really taken, is it?
He stared down at his shaking fingers. His veins made blue branches
in the troughs between his knuckles, marking the valleys of his tendons.
Valleys that sank a little deeper than they had just a few days ago; that
pulled a little harder, until a quiet, deep ache shot up the bones of his arm
when he did something as simple as clench his fist.
That hollow feeling was coming back—that hollow feeling where
everything he’d been, everything he was, the core of his existence had been
carved out of him before he’d been cast out into this colorless, lifeless
human world. He’d tried to wait, tried to hold out, but it had come on
sooner this time, as if his desperation to abstain had only accelerated his
downfall. Eighteen years. Eighteen years of pretending he was human,
pretending he was normal, pretending he wasn’t dying by inches while he
clutched by any means necessary onto the immortality he’d once taken for
granted.
Eighteen years of remembering the quiet acceptance in Jake’s eyes,
as he’d smiled and simply faded away.
Saint tilted his head back against the edge of his chair and watched
the sky lighten outside the window of his little tower home, the sun
reaching up over the city to swallow the stars and the night into its hungry
burning mouth. It was these moments that hurt the most—sunrise and
sunset, when the walls between worlds thinned and in the harmony of
shifting, melodic light-notes, he caught the faintest song of home, forever
out of reach. Shivering, he wrapped himself tighter in the blankets’
protective cocoon and pressed the recorder to his lips, and thought of that
soft, full, deeply rich mouth asking Does i-it…does it matter?
It mattered.
It mattered more than anything.
If it didn’t, Saint would never have cursed himself to this wretched
existence at all.
“I’ve become everything I hated,” he whispered. “That’s the hell of
it. She made me what I tried to destroy. I can’t stand to live like this much
longer. But gods, I…”
He closed his eyes. He hated being this weak, hated the tightness in
his throat, hated saying it out loud. But it had driven him for these many
long years, this demon riding his shoulders, this fear that shaped his
existence and was all that remained to keep him moving day after pointless
day. He took a hitching breath, traced his thumb over the recorder.
“…I don’t want to die,” he finished.
Then shut the recorder off, and flung it across the room.
 6
GREY WAITED OVER A WEEK before he finally broke.
They’d kept him in the hospital for four more days. Four more days
of IV fluids and tepid Jell-O; four more days of giving the shrink all the
right answers to make her think he was sane, safe, so very sorry. He’d made
an error in judgment, and his brush with death had scared him back onto the
straight and narrow. He wanted to live, he’d told her with just the right
choke in his voice. He’d wanted to live the moment that muzzle flash had
burst in his face, shocking through him with the terrifying reality of what he
was doing. He must have flinched, he’d said. He must have flinched,
changing his mind at the last minute, saving his life. He’d lived.
Praise the loa, he’d lived.
He’d always hated lying. Yet in so many ways, everything about his
life and career was a lie.
This really wasn’t any different.
So he’d told his lies. He’d slept. He’d recovered. He’d let people
poke and prod at him, and endured the pitying looks from the nurses when
days passed without a single visitor. Not even the downstairs neighbor,
who’d apparently heard the shot and called it in instead of leaving him to
bleed out.
Who would come for me? he’d thought, staring at the ceiling of his
hospital room bitterly. I climbed so high into my ivory tower that no one
could reach. I shut myself away where nothing could hurt.
He couldn’t remember the name, the face, of the last person he’d
called friend. She was just a ghost of soft brown skin and remembered
laughter, and the way she used to shove his shoulder and tell him to snap
out of it when he’d start brooding. That had been in the early days, back
when it was just brooding and not this consuming mire that sucked out…
everything. Memories. Faces. Names.
Entire lives.
Aminata. Her name had been Aminata, with her gentle Wolof accent
and the scar on her hand where she’d scraped herself open on a broken two-
by-four at the summer construction job where they’d met, in uni.
He couldn’t remember how many years it had been since she’d
called. He didn’t know if her number was even in his phone anymore, or if
she’d pick up if he called. She’d been the one who’d brought him
champagne for his first gallery showing, who’d asked him to hold her hand
in the moments before her first big interview at that downtown architectural
design firm, who’d burned his rejection letters and thrown her own out the
window and stood on the edge of night with him to say, Fuck it.
Fuck this world if it don’t know us, if it don’t need us.
Until the day she’d said, You’ve changed, Grey.
You’ve changed, and I don’t know you anymore.
He’d smiled, thin and bitter. No one knows me. Everyone knows who
I am, but no one knows me.
Yet Xav had looked at him as if he did. As if he did know Grey; as if
he could see right through him, and understood something Grey couldn’t
quite articulate himself. Each day, Grey had hoped to see those strange,
dusk-colored eyes. When he’d tried to sleep, he saw them: looking down at
him with such fury, snapping and wild. Watching him, lit bright as fire by
the sunshafts through the window—as if he could see into the heart of Grey
and know everything wrong with him, even as he murmured his name with
such red, mocking lips.
Touching him with those pale and fluttering hands, and tugging at
something dark and heavy and needy in the pit of his stomach.
He paced his apartment for the hundredth time in the five days since
they’d let him out, following a path of wood worn dull, the finish eroded
away practically in the shapes of his footsteps. He’d done almost nothing
but pace. His answering machine blinked, demanding he listen to the voices
of his agent, the reporters, everyone asking questions he couldn’t deal with,
shouting into nothing after he’d let his cell phone die and unplugged the
landline’s receiver. The veve hanging over the hearth went untouched, the
candles and incense unlit. Food tasted like sawdust. His paints looked too
dull, the colors gone. He couldn’t sleep. He didn’t know how to just pick up
and start again like it hadn’t happened, like he didn’t still want it.
He was stuck in limbo. Purgatory. Reaching for heaven or hell, he
didn’t know, but he needed someone to grasp his hand and pull him either
way.
This was insane. He couldn’t be such a goddamned failure that he
was thinking about—about—
About turning to some pretty, pale Dr. Kevorkian.
About letting someone kill him.
But the police had confiscated his shotgun, a condition of not being
drawn up on charges for the most ridiculous law on the books, when
actually committing the crime of suicide put the criminal beyond reach of
prosecution. He’d been put on some list. He’d never pass a background
check to buy another gun—he wasn’t white, straight, or pleasant enough for
that—and he didn’t know who to ask about buying one illegally. If he
couldn’t even manage the most foolproof way to die, though he still
couldn’t figure out how he’d missed…
 He’d botch another method, too.
He fingered the line of stitches running in a sharp diagonal line from
just above his ear to the curve of his skull, worrying at it fretfully. Fucking
hell.
He needed help.
You could just…live, a voice whispered inside him. A long time ago,
that voice had been louder. Stronger. Firmer. Full of hope. It had sounded
like Aminata, with her sardonic laughter.
But now, it was so quiet he could hardly hear it at all.
He snagged his keys and headed down to the lot before he could talk
himself out of it. His hands shook as he tried to fit the key into the ignition
of his truck, and he swore before jamming the key in, flicking the
headlights on, and starting the engine. Maybe Xav wouldn’t be there. Just
because he’d been on graveyard shift when Grey was picked up didn’t mean
he would be now. Or that Grey would even catch him, if he was out on
calls.
Stop. Stop overthinking it and just…drive.
So he drove, with the streetlamps leading him on like halos and the
trees lining the close-hemmed roads leaning over him as if herding him, the
long fingers of Spanish moss ushering him on his way. The thick Georgia
darkness was a choking blanket smothering him in its heat, oppressive and
trying to strangle the life from him. He almost wished it would. Save him
from doing this.
Whatever this was.
I’m falling for some kind of sick joke. I must be.
The lights of the hospital shone bright ahead. To most they were a
beacon of hope, safety, promise; to Grey they were the sterile medicinal
scent of bland gray walls and the feeling of being trapped, bound in
shackles made of someone else’s thoughts about his mental health. He
stopped on the verge of the curving drop-off lane that looped in front of the
emergency room entrance; he kept the engine running, fingers hard against
the steering wheel, leather sweat-slick against his palms, foot hovering over
the gas.
Any second now.
Any second now he’d talk himself out of this ridiculous idea, floor it,
and drive away from this completely dangerous, completely illegal
situation. No way in hell anyone with even remotely trustworthy motives
would offer to just…help people commit suicide.
Maybe he’s as crazy as you are.
A few people loitered outside the sliding glass doors, orderlies and
nurses on cigarette breaks, holding their smokes between two fingers with
that practiced air of veterans. An ambulance was parked off to one side, out
of the way, the back doors open. He couldn’t just walk in and ask for Xav,
could he? He—
A young woman slipped from the back of the ambulance. Tiny,
Chinese, her hair clipped back messily and drifting into her face, a few
tendrils catching on the shoulders of her uniform jacket. He remembered
her: the other face hovering over him, her fingers on his throat, his pulse,
her dark eyes seeming to mark streaking trails on the air in his wavering
vision. She settled to sit with her legs dangling over the edge of the
ambulance, brushing the rear fender, and plunked a mini-cooler into her lap.
A moment later Xav joined her, ducking the low roof of the ambulance and
swinging out with lithe grace before slouching next to her with a cellophane
bag dangling from his fingers.
Grey’s nails dug into the steering wheel. He’d never given a face to
Bawon Samedi, the vodou loa of the dead, but right now Samedi was a
pretty waif of a man with a jaw as delicate and fine as misted glass. He
looked…tired, Grey thought with a sort of surreal, distant numbness. As if
something had been sucked out of him since Grey had last seen him,
leaving just a little less weight inside the lovely shell holding him together.
His lips were paler; reddish-dark shadows circled his eyes, made only
starker by the slim dashes of eyeliner framing his lashes.
An unexpected stab of concern speared up behind Grey’s ribs,
forcing him to tear his gaze away. He looked fixedly out into the street. He
didn’t know that man from Adam or the devil, and considering what he was
about to walk into, there was no room for…whatever this was he was
feeling. This pull, made up of fear and prickling, breathless nerves and a
dark and strange gravity. Either he was going to do this, or he might as well
go home and figure out what to do with himself. Figure out if he could live
the rest of his life painting empty things with no soul, because the voice that
kept whispering do it had cut the heart from him and eaten the pieces.
Figure out if he’d ever find the courage try again, on his own.
Neg di san fe, his granmé would have said. Bondye fe san di.
People talk and don’t act. God acts and doesn’t talk.
So if he was going to act, he had to act now.
He sucked in his breath as if he could swell out his chest with
bravery instead of a strange mixture of terror and anticipation, then killed
the engine, stepped from the truck, locked it behind. He felt like a damned
zonbi, shuffling awkwardly up the drive with his hands stuffed into his
pockets, trying to look casual. He almost turned around and walked away,
but that would be even more obvious.
Xav and the Chinese girl were engrossed in conversation over their
food, Xav picking at a bag of dried apple crisps. Grey picked up on the tail
end of their conversation as he drew closer, their voices low and hushed.
 “—but is it helping?” the young woman—her name tag said Nuo Lai
—asked.
Xav shrugged and twirled a crisp between his fingers. “I keep
deleting the recordings and starting over again.”
“You can’t do that, you jackass.” She flicked his arm, and was
rewarded with a wan smile that didn’t quite reach Xav’s eyes. “Seriously, it
helps. My therapist said for amnesia cases, repetition and reinforcement
therapy can—” She broke off, Saran-wrapped sandwich halfway to her
mouth as Grey stopped a few feet away. She blinked owlishly at him. “Sir?
Are you lost?” Her eyes widened. “Hey— Wait, you’re—”
“You came.” Xav’s cool, smooth voice stopped her short. Guarded
dusk eyes flicked over Grey. “You’re looking better.”
“I don’t feel better.”
Nuo took a huge bite of her sandwich, her gaze darting between
them. “Xav?” she mumbled around her mouthful, but he only stood,
shaking his head.
“It’s all right. I’ll be back.”
He fixed Grey with a shrewd glance, then tossed his head and turned
to walk away. Grey glanced over his shoulder, but no one was even looking
at them—except Nuo. Heart beating a furious dance against his lungs, Grey
hunched his shoulders and trailed after Xav, shoving his hands so deep into
his pockets his jeans threatened to drag off his hip bones. He felt like a
junkie scoping out a new dealer, and tried to remind himself he wasn’t
doing anything wrong.
Except he was. Suicide was illegal in every state, assisted suicide
another name for first-degree murder, and if Xav didn’t get the chair for
getting caught he’d at least end up with life in prison—plus a few more
years for the theft of whatever medical equipment he used to do it.
 Stop overthinking it.
Xav led him around the side of the building, to a shadowed nook just
past a doorway marked Employees Only—one of the many brick insets that
made the tall hospital walls look almost corrugated. Xav ducked into the
enclosed, boxlike space, while Grey hovered on the sidewalk just outside.
“Get in here,” Xav hissed.
“Is there room?”
“There’s room.”
“But—”
A slim hand snared in his shirt and pulled. Grey choked on a sound,
stumbling forward and scraping his arm against the brick before sidling
inside; a raw burn twinged faintly against his skin, with that strange feeling
of blood welling up in tiny beads from an abrasion. His shoulders barely fit
into the narrow crevice, and he flattened himself against the wall, sucking
in his stomach as if that could somehow keep him from touching the pale,
pretty man standing so close to him; keep him from feeling the warmth of
his body heat filling the small space and washing over him in prickles like
licking tongues.
He caught a faint scent: soft clean skin and fresh shampoo and
something boyish and warm as candied apples. His fingers curled helplessly
at his sides, and he fought to ignore the sudden dryness of his mouth, the
heat crawling down his throat, the tumbling inside him that felt like
something had come unmoored and drifted away to rattle about freely
inside his chest.
Xav’s sultry little mouth quirked; his eyes glimmered against the
deep-cast shadows in the cramped nook. “Am I making you uncomfortable,
Mr. Jean-Marcelin?”
“No, I just…I…” He didn’t even dare breathe. One deep inhalation
and he’d be pressed against that slender body and wondering just what the
fuck he was feeling, when this sudden sparking breathlessness didn’t belong
to a man who was already dead. “There’s just…um…not a lot of space in
here.”
“There is not.”
“You. Um.” Grey licked his lips. “You don’t look well.”
“I am not well.” That quirk widened into a smirk, lazy and feline.
Xav’s gaze dipped down to Grey’s scraped arm, his nostrils flaring, before
he swayed closer. “Are you afraid I’m contagious?”
“No.” He shook his head. Bondye, Xav barely came up to his
shoulder, yet the man had him cornered like a cat with a mouse, and all
Grey could do was freeze and stare and wonder when that soft, luscious
mouth would open on killing teeth. “You…you said you could help me.”
“Perhaps.” Xav tilted his head; dark hair fell across his eyes in a
tangled shag. “Tell me something. Are you attracted to me?”
Grey pushed himself back hard against the wall. That thing rattling
in his chest crashed into his heart. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Okay.” He swallowed; there had to be a block of wood lodged in
his throat, because nothing was going down and his voice would barely
come up. “I’ve seen some weird pickup acts, but this one takes the cake.”
“It’s not a pickup. I can’t do anything for you if you’re not attracted
to me. It doesn’t work. I would die, instead—and you don’t want that, do
you?”
“What? But I—I—”
Xav’s lashes swept downward, their sooty curves distracting,
hypnotizing. “You don’t like men, then.”
“No!” Panic started to needle through him in little darts. “Wait, no,
yes. I like both! I mean…men and women, I…I’m bi, I just…”
“So you like me?”
“I…I mean…yeah. You’re attractive…but I, um…” His fingers
twitched. Xav was so close, that scent like green apples and burnt caramel
nearly dizzying him until he couldn’t think straight; something wasn’t right,
his thoughts receding until he had to reach through a fog to find words.
“You…you get to me. But you also weird me the hell out.”
“Fair enough.” Xav’s laughter sounded like he smelled: tart-sweet,
burnt about the edges. He leaned back, setting his narrow shoulders against
the wall and splaying his fingers against the brickwork. His eyes glittered.
“My shift is over at three AM. There’s an all-night coffee shop around the
corner. The Pot, or something asinine like that. Meet me there.”
Grey pressed his fingers to his temples. “I thought you said this
wasn’t a pickup line.”
“It’s not. Consider it more of a…client assessment.”
Xav pushed away from the wall and angled toward the exit from the
narrow space. His body brushed Grey’s: like being touched by fire caged in
glass, smooth and sleek and full of burning grace. Grey closed his eyes and
held his breath and tried to pull his head back on right. He didn’t…do this.
He never had. He’d always had trouble seeing beauty in people, save for his
family. Everywhere he looked, everyone he turned to, he saw people living
with these strange, quiet voids inside them, desperately seeking beauty and
yet never finding it, their skins nothing but flaking paint over the decaying
tangle of human pettiness and selfishness and loneliness and hate and
sadness and all that terrible complexity that made being human so hard.
So he painted what wasn’t there. What he wished would fill those
voids, but never could. If only because he hoped that somewhere out there,
someone would look at his paintings and see…and see…
 What was missing inside themselves.
What was missing inside Grey, too, when he had a hollowness all his
own.
He’d never found that missing something in anyone else. Had given
up trying, after a few abortive relationships that had ended in tears.
Girlfriends, boyfriends—it always ended the same way.
You never even see me. I feel like your job, while you’re wedded to
that canvas.
Be honest, Grey.
I’m just a placeholder for something you’ll always look for, but
never find.
The worst part?
They’d been right.
He’d tried to love them. Tried to feel something, anything over years
when it had gotten harder and harder to feel anything at all, everything
vanishing under a numbing filter that couldn’t do more than accept the
inevitability of it when another one left. He just…didn’t have the energy to
care. Didn’t have the energy for much of anything at all.
So he’d saved it for the one thing that lasted longer than any human
love built on the fundamental misunderstandings needed to feel like you
could touch someone who was worlds and galaxies away, but close enough
to tell themselves the same lies.
Yet here was this fey, sly thing, this man who looked barely more
than a boy, brushing up against him and filling his head with dizzying
things, making his stomach draw taut as a bowstring waiting to snap.
Xav’s body heat pulled away—replaced by a brief bite of pain,
stinging, as slim fingertips brushed over the abraded scratch on his arms.
Grey sucked in a breath, opening his eyes. An eternity had passed for him, a
lifetime of memories flashing hard and cutting deep, yet in the second that
had split between them Xav had just brushed past him. Xav paused,
glancing over his shoulder with something wicked glinting in his eyes. He
touched fingertips stained in traces of red to his lips.
“Besides,” he said. As he spoke, his tongue flitted out briefly, a hot
red dart that teased the blood—Grey’s blood—from Xav’s fingertips,
leaving behind a glistening sheen. “I think you’ll feel safer in a public
place.”
Grey’s gaze riveted on that red mouth, that redder tongue. “Why
would I need to feel safe?” he asked, but Xav curled a hand against the wall
and swung himself lightly around the corner like a child on a playground
merry-go-round, slipping out of sight. Grey leaned after him, watching his
back as he drifted away. “Xav? What’s that supposed to mean?”
Xav only flicked his fingers over his shoulder.
“Three o’clock, Mr. Jean-Marcelin,” he said, sweetly accented voice
rolling over the night, as sultry as the heat. “The devil’s hour. You’ll get
your answers then.”
 7
SAINT LEANED AGAINST THE SIDE of the ambulance, stole one of Nuo’s
cigarettes, and turned it over in his fingers without lighting it. The tail lights
of Grey’s truck receded, wavering red eyes lighting the night like watchful,
accusatory demons. For just a moment, he thought he caught a flash of
golden eyes in the rearview mirror, looking at him with a mixture of
desperation, skepticism, and a hope he couldn’t stand. That wasn’t a weight
he could bear.
But he’d put it on himself, and he’d carry it if Grey wanted him to.
Nuo settled next to him and nudged him with her elbow. “What was
that?”
He glanced at her mildly. “What was what?”
“Seriously?” She twisted her lips. “So you’re going to pretend like
Hottie McDeathwish didn’t just drag you off into a dark corner
somewhere.”
“Technically, I dragged him.” He idly stroked his thumb down the
length of the cigarette, lingering over the tiny difference in texture on that
dividing line marking the filter, staring down at the little chip marks in the
polish on his thumbnail. He’d lost a flake here intubating an old woman
who was choking on her own vomit. A chip there performing CPR. Scraped
the entire edge off on the crash cart for a cardiac call. Little bits all chiseled
away to save lives, as if that could somehow even out his debt.
He could wipe them smooth with a thought, piece together the bits of
his glamour that made him fit into the fabric of the human world, changed
how the edges of other things touched him until he occupied the space the
same way a human would. He chose to keep them, anyway.
As he chose to keep so many scars.
His lips tightened, and he looked away. “Don’t call him that.”
“Eh?”
“Deathwish. It’s not funny. It’s his choice.” He closed his eyes. That
old feeling was back in his chest, that pressure like something was sitting
on his heart. “Let it be his choice.”
It has to be his choice.
“Xav…?” Nuo asked softly.
He opened his eyes and looked down into her puzzled expression,
her brows knotted up, her nose wrinkled. What would she think, he
wondered, if she knew who and what he really was? He’d known her a few
years now, as much as he could know anyone when he played off the holes
in his human experience with a story about amnesia, but sometimes he
didn’t understand her. She had her own quietness, her own thoughts, her
own things held close to the chest, but she locked the doors of the precious
glass safe of her heart with a smile instead of with keys made of razors and
tears. Sometimes he thought he knew her. Sometimes he thought he never
could. As if what he was made it impossible to see and know a human heart.
Or maybe what he wanted to see wasn’t there at all, and he was
filling her silences, her nothings, with what he needed from her.
Was that all he was seeing in Grey? Something he needed, and
nothing more?
Yet for a moment, he’d tasted him. Arcane on his tongue, a whisper
of something that could be binding in heart’s blood and misery and the
beautiful darklight song simmering just beneath Grey’s skin.
The CB radio crackled from the front of the ambulance. Its sound
Another random document with
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order of Asteroidea to which Asterias belongs, the adambulacrals
themselves do not project much, but in all other cases they form
prominent mouth-angles, so that the opening of the mouth becomes
star-shaped (Fig. 211, p. 483).

Except in the case of the ambulacral and adambulacral plates little

regular arrangement is to be detected in the ossicles of the skeleton
which, as has already been mentioned, form a mesh-work. If,
however, the arm be cut open and viewed from the inside it will be
seen that the edge is strengthened above and below by very thick,
powerful, rod-like plates. These are called the "supero-marginal" and
"infero-marginal" ossicles; they are not visible from the outside, since
they are covered by a thick layer of the body-wall containing other
smaller plates (Fig. 190, marg). In many genera, however, they are
exposed, and form a conspicuous edging to the arm above and
below. In many genera, also, there are three conspicuous series of
plates on the back of each arm, viz. a median row, called "carinals"
(car., Fig. 191), and two lateral rows, termed "dorso-laterals" (d.lat.,
Fig. 191). These three rows, with the two rows of marginals, one of
ambulacrals, and one of adambulacrals on each side (11 rows in all),
constitute the primitive skeleton of the arm, and appear first in
development.

The structure of all these elements of the skeleton is the same. They
may be described as scaffoldings of carbonate of lime,
interpenetrated by a mesh-work of cells fused with one another, by
which the carbonate of lime has been deposited. The matrix in which
the ossicles lie is a jelly-like substance traversed by a few bands of
fibres which connect the various rods with one another. This jelly is
almost fluid in the fresh state, but when heated forms a hard
compound, possibly allied to mucin, which will turn the edge of a
razor.

When the covering of the back is dissected off the coelom is

opened. This is a spacious cavity which apparently surrounds the
alimentary canal and extends into the arms. It has, however, its own
proper wall, which is called the "peritoneum," both on the outer side,
where it abuts on the skin, and on the inner side, where it comes in
contact with the wall of the alimentary canal. The outer wall is called
the "somatic peritoneum," and it is possible to dissect off the rest of
the body-wall and leave it intact; the inner wall, from its close
association with the alimentary canal, is termed the "splanchnic
peritoneum." This wall can only be distinguished in microscopic
sections from that of the alimentary canal, to which it is closely
applied.

The coelom is filled with a fluid, which is practically sea water with a
little albuminous matter in solution. Through the thin walls of the
papulae oxygen passes into this fluid, whence it easily reaches the
inner organs, since they are all in contact with some part of the
coelomic wall. Similarly CO2 is absorbed by the coelomic fluid from
all parts of the body, and diffuses through the papulae to the
surrounding water.

The Starfish possesses no definite kidney for getting rid of

nitrogenous waste. In most of the higher animals with a well-
developed coelom it has been proved that the kidney is simply a
specialised portion of the coelom, and in many cases some parts of
the coelomic wall still retain their excretory functions, which
apparently the whole originally possessed. In the Starfish and in
Echinodermata generally this primitive state of affairs is still retained.
From the cells forming the coelomic wall, cells are budded off into
the fluid, where they swim about. These cells from their movements
are called amoebocytes. If a substance such as indigo-carmine,
which when introduced into the tissues of the higher animals is
eliminated by the kidney, is injected into the Starfish, it is found soon
after to be vigorously absorbed by the amoebocytes. These later
accumulate in the dermal branchiae, through the thin walls of which
they make their way[442] to the outside, where they degenerate.

The coelom is indented by five folds, which project inwards from the
interradii. These folds are called the "interradial septa"; they are
stiffened by a calcareous deposit, which is not, however, sufficiently
dense to constitute a plate. In one of the septa the axial sinus and
stone-canal (see below) are embedded. These septa are to be
regarded as areas of lateral adhesion between the arms.

Fig. 188.—View of upper half of a specimen of Asterias rubens, which has been
split horizontally into two halves. ax.c, Axial sinus; g.d, genital duct; oe, cut
end of the oesophagus, the narrow neck of the stomach; py, pyloric sac;
py.c, pyloric caeca; r, rectum; r.c, rectal caeca; sept, interradial septum; st.c,
stomach lobe.

The alimentary canal consists of several distinct portions. The

mouth leads by a narrow neck called the "oesophagus" into a
voluminous baggy sac termed the "stomach," which is produced into
ten short pouches, two projecting into each arm. The stomach leads
in turn by a wide opening into a pentagonal flattened sac, the "pyloric
sac," which lies above it. Each angle of the pyloric sac is prolonged
into a tube—the so-called "pyloric duct"—running out into the arm,
where it immediately bifurcates into two forks, each beset by a large
number of small pouches and attached to the dorsal wall of the
coelom by suspensory bands of membrane called mesenteries.
These ten forks are called "pyloric caeca"; they are of a deep green
colour owing to the pigment in their wall. Beyond the pyloric sac the
alimentary canal is continued as the slender "rectum" to the anus.
The rectum gives off two small branched pouches of a brown colour
called "rectal caeca." This comparatively complicated form of
alimentary canal is related to the nature of the food of the animal and
the method it employs to capture its prey.

Fig. 189.—View of a Starfish (Echinaster) devouring a Mussel. 1. The

madreporite.

The favourite food[443] of Asterias consists of the common bivalves

of the coast, notably of the Mussel (Mytilus edulis). There is,
however, no animal which it will not attack if it is fortunate enough to
be able to catch it. The Starfish seizes its prey by the tube-feet, and
places it directly under its mouth, folding its arms down over it in
umbrella fashion. The muscles which run around the arms and disc
in the body-wall contract, and the pressure thus brought to bear on
the incompressible fluid contained in the coelom, forces out the thin
membranous peristome and partially turns the stomach inside out.
The everted edge of the stomach is wrapped round the prey.

Soon the bivalve is forced to relax its muscles and allow the valves
to gape. The edge of the stomach is then inserted between the
valves and applied directly to the soft parts of the prey which is thus
completely digested. When the Starfish moves away nothing but the
cleaned shell is left behind. If the bivalve is small it may be
completely taken into the stomach, and the empty shell later rejected
through the mouth.
It was for a long time a puzzle in what way the bivalve was forced to
open. Schiemenz[444] has, however, shown that when the Starfish
folds itself in umbrella-like form over the prey it holds on to the
substratum by means of the tube-feet of the distal portions of the
arms, whilst, by means of the tube-feet belonging to the central
portions, it drags apart the valves by main force. He has shown
experimentally: (1) that whilst a bivalve may be able to resist a
sudden pull of 4000 grammes it will yield to a pull of 900 grammes
long continued; (2) that a Starfish can exert a pull of 1350 grammes;
(3) that a Starfish is unable to open a bivalve unless it be allowed to
raise itself into a hump, so that the pull of the central tube-feet is at
right angles to the prey. A Starfish confined between two glass plates
walked about all day carrying with it a bivalve which it was unable to
open.

The lining of the stomach is found to consist very largely of mucus-

forming cells, which are swollen with large drops of mucus or some
similar substance. It used to be supposed that this substance had
some poisonous action on the prey and paralysed it, but the
researches of Schiemenz show that this is incorrect. If when an
Asterias is devouring a bivalve another be offered to it, it will open it,
but will not digest it, and the victim shows no sign of injury but soon
recovers. The cells forming the walls of the pyloric sac and its
appendages are tall narrow cylindrical cells crowded with granules
which appear to be of the nature of digestive ferment. This
substance flows into the stomach and digests the captured prey.

A very small amount of matter passes into the rectum and escapes
by the anus, as the digestive powers of the Starfish are very
complete. The rectal caeca are lined by cells which secrete from the
coelomic fluid a brown material, in all probability an excretion, which
is got rid of by the anus.

When the meal is finished the stomach is restored to its former place
by the action of five pairs of retractor muscles, one pair of which
originates from the upper surface of the ambulacral ossicles in each
arm and extends to the wall of the stomach, where they are inserted
(Fig. 190, ret).

The tube-feet, which are at once the locomotor and the principal
sensory organs of the Starfish, are appendages of that peculiar
system of tubes known as the water-vascular system, which is
derived from a part of the coelom cut off from the rest during the
development of the animal. This system, as already mentioned,
consists of (1) a narrow "ring-canal," encircling the mouth and lying
on the inner surface of the membranous peristome; (2) a radial canal
leaving the ring-canal and running along the under surface of each
arm just above the ambulacral groove; (3) a vertical stone-canal
running from the madreporite downwards to open into the ring-canal
in the interspace between two arms. The madreporite is covered
externally by grooves lined with long cilia, and is pierced with narrow
canals of excessively fine calibre, the walls of which are also lined by
powerful cilia. Most of these narrow canals open below into a main
collecting canal, the stone-canal, but some open into a division of the
coelom termed the axial sinus, with which also the stone-canal
communicates by a lateral opening. The cavity of the stone-canal is
reduced by the outgrowth from its walls of a peculiar Y-shaped
projection, the ends being rolled on themselves in a complicated way
(Fig. 190, B). The walls of the canal consist of a layer of very long
narrow cells, which carry powerful flagella, and outside this of a crust
of calcareous deposit, which gives rigidity to the walls and has
suggested the name stone-canal.

The tube-feet are covered externally by ectoderm, inside which is a

tube in connexion with the radial water-vascular canal. This latter is
lined by flattened cells, which in the very young Starfish are
prolonged into muscular tails; in the older animal these tails are
separated off as a distinct muscular layer lying between the
ectoderm and the cells lining the cavity of the tube. The tube-foot is
prolonged inwards into a bulb termed the "ampulla," which projects
into the coelom of the arm and in consequence is covered outside by
somatic peritoneum. Just where the ampulla passes into the tube-
foot proper the organ passes downwards between two of the
powerful ambulacral ossicles which support the ambulacral groove,
and a little below this spot a short transverse canal connects the
tube-foot with the radial canal which lies beneath these ossicles (Fig.
191).

Fig. 190.—A, view of the under half of a specimen of Asterias rubens, which has
been horizontally divided into two halves. B, enlarged view of the axial
sinus, stone-canal and genital stolon cut across. amb.oss, Ambulacral
ossicle; amp. ampullae of the tube-feet; ax.s, axial sinus; gon, gonad; g.stol,
genital stolon; marg, marginal ossicle; nerv.circ, nerve ring; oe, cut end of
oesophagus; pst, peristome; ret, retractor muscle of the stomach; sept,
interradial septum; stone c, stone-canal; T, Tiedemann's body; w.v.r, water-
vascular ring-canal.

The tube-feet are, therefore, really a double row of lateral branches

of the radial canal. The appearance of being arranged in four rows is
due to the fact that the transverse canals connecting them with the
radial canal are alternately longer and shorter so as to give room for
more tube-feet in a given length of the arm. Each tube-foot ends in a
round disc with a slightly thickened edge. The radial canal terminates
in a finger-shaped appendage, called the median tentacle, at the
base of which is the eye.
The manner in which this complicated system acts is as follows:—
When the tube-foot is to be stretched out the ampulla contracts and
drives the fluid downwards. The contraction of the ampulla is brought
about by muscles running circularly around it. The tube-foot is thus
distended and its broad flattened end is brought in contact with the
surface of the stone over which it is moving and is pressed close
against it. The muscles of the tube-foot itself, which are arranged
longitudinally, now commence to act, and the pressure of the water
preventing the tearing away of the sucker from the object to which it
adheres, the Starfish is slowly drawn forward, whilst the fluid in the
tube-foot flows back into the ampulla.

Fig. 191.—Diagrammatic cross-section of the arm of a Starfish. adamb,

Adambulacral ossicle; amb, ambulacral ossicle; amp, ampulla of tube-foot;
branch, papula; car, carinal plate; d.lat, dorso-lateral plate; inf.marg, infero-
marginal plate; p.br, peribranchial space; ped, pedicellaria; s.marg, supero-
marginal plate. The nervous ridge between the bases of the tube-feet and
the two perihaemal canals above this ridge are shown in the figure but not
lettered.

If each tube-foot were practically water-tight, then each would be

entirely independent of all the rest, and it would not be easy to
suggest a reason for the presence of the complicated system of
radial canals and stone-canal. Just at the spot, however, where the
transverse canal leading from the radial canal enters the tube-foot
there is a pair of valves which open inwards and allow fluid to pass
from the radial canal into the tube-foot but prevent any passing
outwards in the reverse direction. The presence of these valves
renders it probable that the tube-foot is not quite water-tight; that
when it is distended under the pressure produced by the contraction
of the muscles of the ampulla, some fluid escapes through the
permeable walls; and that the loss thus suffered is made up by the
entry of fresh fluid from the radial canal. The radial canal in turn
draws from the ring-canal, and this last is supplied by the stone-
canal, the cilia of which keep up a constant inward current.

In the fluid contained in the water-vascular system, as in the

coelomic fluid, there are amoebocytes floating about. These are
produced in short pouches of the ring-canal, nine in number, which
are called after their discoverer "Tiedemann's bodies" (Fig. 190, T).
From the cells lining these the amoebocytes are budded off.

The nervous system of the Starfish is in a very interesting

condition. The essential characteristic of all nervous systems is the
presence of the "neuron," a cell primitively belonging to an
epithelium but which generally has sunk below the level of the others
and lies amongst their bases. This type of cell possesses a round
body produced in one direction into a long straight process, the
"axon," whilst in the other it may have several root-like processes, or
"dendrites," which may spring from a common stem, in which case
the neuron is said to be "bipolar." The axon is often distinguished as
a "nerve-fibre" from the round body which is termed the "nerve-cell."
This is due to the fact that for a long time it was not recognised that
these two structures are parts of a whole.

Now at the base of the ectoderm all over the body of the Starfish
there is to be found a very fine tangle of fibrils; these are to be found
partly in connexion with small bipolar neurons lying amongst them
and partly with isolated sense-cells scattered amongst the ordinary
ectoderm cells. This nervous layer is, however, very much thickened
in certain places, so as to cause the ectoderm to project as a ridge.
One such ridge is found at the summit of each ambulacral groove
running along the whole under surface of the arm and terminating in
a cushion at the base of the median tentacle of the water-vascular
system. This ridge is called the radial nerve-cord. The five radial
nerve-cords are united by a circular cord, the nerve-ring, which
appears as a thickening on the peristome surrounding the mouth.
The sense-organs of the Starfish are chiefly the discs of the tube-
feet. Round the edges of these there is a special aggregation of
sense-cells; elsewhere, as in the skin of the back, only isolated
sense-cells are found, and it becomes impossible to speak of a
sense-organ.

A prolongation of the radial nerve-cord extends outwards along one

side of each tube-foot. This is often spoken of as the "pedal nerve,"
but the term nerve is properly retained for a mere bundle of axons
such as we find in the higher animals, whereas the structure referred
to contains the bodies of nerve-cells as well as their outgrowths or
cell-fibres and is therefore a prolongation of the nerve-cord.

Fig. 192.—Diagrammatic longitudinal section through a young Asteroid passing

through the tip of one arm and the middle of the opposite interradius. This
diagram is generalised from a section of Asterina gibbosa. ab, Aboral sinus;
ax, axial sinus; ax1, basal extension of axial sinus forming the inner
perihaemal ring-canal; br, branchia = gill = papula; g.r, genital rachis; mp,
madreporite; musc.tr, muscle uniting a pair of ambulacral ossicles; nerv.circ,
nerve-ring; n.r, radial nerve-cord; oc, eye-pit; oss, ossicles in skin; p.br,
peribranchial sinus; p.c, pore canal; perih (on the right), perihaemal radial
canal, (on the left), outer perihaemal ring-canal; py, pyloric caecum; rect,
rectum; rect.caec, rectal caeca; sp, spines; st.c, stone-canal; t, median
tentacle terminating radial canal; w.v.r, water-vascular radial canal. The
genital stolon (not marked by a reference line) is seen as an irregular band
accompanying the stone-canal, its upper end projects into a small closed
sac, also unmarked, which is the right hydrocoele or madreporic vesicle.

At the base of the terminal tentacle the radial nerve-cord ends in a

cushion. This cushion is called the "eye," for it is beset with a large
number of cup-shaped pockets of the ectoderm. Each pocket is lined
partly by cells containing a bright orange pigment and partly by
visual cells each of which ends in a small clear rod projecting into the
cavity of the pit (Fig. 193, A, vis.r). The pit is apparently closed by a
thin sheet of cuticle secreted by the most superficial cells.

An exposed nervous system and simple sense-organs such as the

Starfish possesses lend themselves admirably to the purposes of
physiological experiment, and so Starfish have been favourite
"corpora vilia" with many physiologists.

Fig. 193.—A, longitudinal section of a single eye-pit of Asterias. s.n, Nucleus of

supporting cell; vis.n, nucleus of visual cell; vis.r, visual rod. B, view of the
terminal tentacle showing the eye-pits scattered over it. (After Pfeffer.)

The light-perceiving function of the eye is easily demonstrated. If a

number of Starfish be put into a dark tank which is illuminated only
by a narrow beam of light they will be found after an interval to have
collected in the space reached by the beam of light.[445] If all the
median tentacles but one be removed this will still be the case; if,
however, they are all removed the Starfish will exhibit indifference to
the light.

If the under surface of a Starfish be irritated by an electric shock or a

hot needle, or a drop of acid, the tube-feet of the affected area will
be strongly retracted, and this irritation will be carried by the pedal
nerves to the radial nerve-cord, with the result that finally all the
tube-feet in the groove will be retracted and the groove closed by the
action of the transverse muscle connecting each ambulacral ossicle
with its fellow. If, on the other hand, the back of a Starfish be irritated
this may produce a contraction of the tube-feet if the irritation be
strong, but this will be followed by active alternate expansions and
contractions, in a word, by endeavours to move. Preyer[446] by
suspending a Starfish ventral surface upward, by means of a small
zinc plate to which a string was attached which passed through a
hole bored in the back and through the mouth, caused movements of
this description which lasted for hours. Irritation of the back causes
also activity of the local pedicellariae, which open their valves widely
and then close them with a snap in the endeavour to seize the
aggressor.

The uninjured Starfish in moving pursues a definite direction, one

arm being generally directed forwards, but this may be any one of
the five. The tube-feet of this arm are directed forwards when they
are stretched out, by the slightly unequal contraction of the
longitudinal muscles of opposite sides of the foot, which persists
even when the circular muscles of the ampulla are contracting. They
thus may be said to swing parallel to the long axis of the arm. The
tube-feet of the other arms assist in the movement, and hence swing
obliquely with reference to the long axis of the arm to which they
belong, although they move parallel to the general direction in which
the Starfish is moving. A change in the direction of the swing of the
tube-feet will bring about a change in the direction of the movement
of the animal as a whole. If now the connexion of each radial nerve-
cord with the nerve-ring be cut through, each arm will act as a
separate Starfish and will move its tube-feet without reference to the
movement of those in the other arms, so that the animal is pulled
first one way and then another according as the influence first of one
arm and then of another predominates. Similarly, when a Starfish is
placed on its back, it rights itself by the combined action of the tube-
feet of all the arms, extending them all as widely as possible, those
which first catch hold being used as the pivot for the turning
movement. If, however, the radial nerve-cords are cut through, each
arm tries to right itself and it is only by chance that the efforts of one
so predominate as to turn the whole animal over. From these
experiments it is clear that the nerve-ring acts as co-ordinator of the
movements of the Starfish, that is to say as its brain.

If a section be taken across the arm of a Starfish (Fig. 191), it will be

seen that between the V-shaped ridge constituting the radial nerve-
cord and the radial water-vascular canal there are two canals lying
side by side and separated from one another by a vertical septum.
These canals are not mere splits in the substance of the body-wall,
but have a well-defined wall of flattened cells. They are termed, for
reasons which will be explained subsequently, perihaemal canals,
and they open into a circular canal called the "outer perihaemal ring,"
situated just beneath the water-vascular ring-canal (Fig. 192, perih).
These canals originate as outgrowths from the coelom. From their
upper walls are developed the muscles which connect the pairs of
ambulacral ossicles and close the groove, and also those which
connect each ossicle with its successor and predecessor and help to
elevate or depress the tip of the arm.

In most of the higher animals the processes of many of the ganglion-

cells are connected together in bundles called "motor nerves," which
can be traced into contact with the muscles, and thus the path along
which the stimulus travels in order to evoke movement can clearly be
seen. No such well-defined nerves can be made out in the case of
the Starfish, and it is therefore interesting when exceptionally the
paths along which stimuli travel to the muscles can be traced. This
can be done in the case of the muscles mentioned above. Whereas
they originate from the dorsal walls of the perihaemal canals,
ganglion-cells develop from the ventral walls of these canals, which
are in close contact with the nerve-cord, so that the nervous system
of the Starfish is partly ectodermic and partly coelomic in origin.
Stimuli reaching the ectodermic ganglion-cells are transmitted by
them to the nervous part of the wall of the perihaemal canal and from
that to the muscular portion of the same layer of cells.

Besides the radial perihaemal canals and their connecting outer

perihaemal ring there are several other tubular extensions of the
coelom found in the body-wall. These are:—

(1) The "inner perihaemal canal," a circular canal in close contact

with the inner side of the outer perihaemal canal (Fig. 192, ax1).

(2) The "axial sinus" (ax) a wide vertical canal embedded in the
body-wall outside the stone-canal. This canal opens into the inner
perihaemal canal below; above it opens into several of the pore-
canals and into the stone-canal. The separation of the axial sinus
from the rest of the coelom is the remains of a feebly marked
metamerism in the larva.

(3) The "madreporic vesicle," a closed sac embedded in the dorsal

body-wall just under the madreporite. This sac by its history in the
larva appears to be a rudimentary counterpart of the water-vascular
system, since this organ in correspondence with the general bilateral
symmetry of the larva is at first paired. Into this a special process of
the genital stolon projects.

(4) The "aboral sinus" (Fig. 192, ab), a tube embedded in the dorsal
body-wall running horizontally round the disc. The aboral sinus
surrounds the genital rachis (see p. 452) and gives off into each arm
two branches, the ends of which swell so as to surround the genital
organs. It has no connexion with the axial sinus though the contrary
has often been stated by Ludwig.[447]

(5) The "peribranchial spaces," circular spaces which surround the

basal parts of the papulae (Fig. 192, p.br).

Besides these, large irregular spaces have been described as

existing in the body-wall by Hamann[448] and other authors, but for
various reasons and especially because they possess no definite
wall they appear to be nothing more than rents caused by the
escape of CO2 gas during the process of decalcifying, to which the
tissues of the Starfish must be subjected before it is easy to cut
sections of them.

The question as to whether or not there is a blood system in the

Starfish has an interesting history. It must be remembered that the
examination of the structure of Echinodermata was first undertaken
by human anatomists, who approached the subject imbued with the
idea that representatives of all the systems of organs found in the
human subject would be found in the lower animals also. So the
perihaemal canals were originally described as blood-vessels. Later,
Ludwig[449] discovered a strand of strongly staining material running
in each septum which separates the two perihaemal canals of the
arm. Each of these radial strands could be traced into connexion
with a circular strand interposed between the outer and the inner
perihaemal ring-canals. This circular strand again came into
connexion with a brown, lobed organ, lying in the wall of the axial
sinus, and this in turn joined at its upper end a circular cord of
pigmented material adhering to the dorsal wall of the coelom (lying in
fact within the aboral sinus), from which branches could be traced to
the generative organs. Ludwig concluded that he had at last
discovered the true blood-vessels, though the facts that the radial
strands and the oral circular strand absorbed neutral carmine
strongly and that the vertical and aboral strands were pigmented,
constituted a very slender basis on which to found such a
conclusion. The colour apparently appealed to the imagination, and it
is undoubtedly true that the "plasma" or blood-fluid of other animals
often absorbs stain strongly.

The strands were accordingly named "radial blood-vessels," "oral

blood-ring," "aboral blood-ring"; and the brown vertical strand was
called the "heart," although no circulation or pulsations had ever
been observed. When later investigations revealed the fact that the
so-called heart was practically solid, the term "central blood-plexus"
was substituted for heart, although it was still regarded as the central
organ of the system. The name "perihaemal" was given to the
spaces so called because they surrounded the supposed blood-
vessels.

In order to come to a satisfactory conclusion on the matter some

general idea as to the fundamental nature and function of the blood-
vessels in general must be arrived at. Investigations made on
various groups of animals, such as Annelida, Mollusca, Crustacea,
Vertebrata, show that at an early period of development a
considerable space intervenes between the alimentary canal and the
ectoderm, which is filled with a more or less fluid jelly. Into this cavity,
the so-called "primary body-cavity" or "archicoel," amoebocytes,
budded from the ectoderm or endoderm or both, penetrate. In this
jelly with its contained amoebocytes is to be found the common
rudiment both of the connective tissue and of the blood system. The
resemblance of the archicoele and its contents to the jelly of a
Medusa is too obvious to require special insistence on, and therefore
in the Coelenterata it may be stated that there is to be found a tissue
which is neither blood system nor connective tissue but is the
forerunner of both.

In the higher animals as development proceeds the jelly undergoes

differentiation, for some of the amoebocytes become stationary and
connected with their pseudopodia so as to form a protoplasmic
network. A portion of this network becomes altered into tough fibres,
but a portion of each strand remains living, and in this way the
connective tissue is formed. In the interstices of the network of fibres
a semi-fluid substance (the unaltered jelly) is found, and this is
traversed by free, wandering amoebocytes. In other places the jelly
becomes more fluid and forms the plasma, or liquid of the blood,
whilst the amoebocytes form the blood corpuscles. The blood
system thus arises from regions of the archicoel where fibres are not
precipitated.

Now in the Starfish the whole substance of the body-wall intervening

between the ectoderm and the coelomic epithelium really represents
the archicoel. The formation of fibres has, it is true, proceeded to a
certain extent, since there are interlacing bundles of these, but there
are left wide meshes in which amoebocytes can still move freely.
Apart from the skeleton, therefore, the tissues of the body-wall of the
Starfish do not exhibit much advance on those of a Jellyfish. If
anything is to be compared to the blood system of the higher animals
it must be these meshes in the connective tissue. From observations
made on other Echinoderms it appears probable that the colour of
the skin is due to amoebocytes loaded with pigment wandering
outwards through the jelly of the body-wall and disintegrating there.
The strands regarded as blood-vessels by Ludwig are specially
modified tracts of connective tissue in which fibres are sparse, and in
which there are large quantities of amoebocytes and in which the
"jelly" stains easily. Cuénot[450] suggests that they are placed where
new amoebocytes are formed; this is quite possible, and in this case
they ought to be compared to the spleen and other lymphatic organs
of Vertebrates, and not to the blood-vessels.[451]

The organ regarded as the heart, however, belongs to a different

category: it is really the original seat of the genital cells and should
be termed the "genital stolon." Careful sections show that at its
upper end it is continuous with a strand of primitive germ-cells which
lies inside the so-called aboral blood-vessel, and is termed the
"genital rachis" (Fig. 192, g.r). The germ-cells are distinguished by
their large nuclei and their granular protoplasm. The genital organs
are only local swellings of the genital rachis, and from the shape of
some of the germ-cells it is regarded as highly probable that the
primitive germ-cells wander along the rachis and accumulate in the
genital organs. The genital rachis itself is an outgrowth from the
genital stolon, and this latter originates as a pocket-like ingrowth of
the coelom into the wall separating it from the axial sinus; when fully
formed it projects into and is apparently contained in this latter
space.

Not all the cells forming the genital stolon become sexual cells. Many
degenerate and become pigment-cells, a circumstance to which the
organ owes its brown colour. In very many species of Starfish many
of the cells of the genital rachis undergo a similar degeneration, and
hence is produced the apparent aboral blood-vessel. Further, the
rachis is embedded in connective tissue which has undergone what
we may call the "lymphatic" modification, and this for want of a better
name we call the "aboral" blood-ring.

The size of the genital organs varies with the season of the year;
they are feather-shaped, and attached to the genital rachis by their
bases, but project freely into the coelom of the arm. From their great
variation in size and also from the shape of some of the cells in the
genital rachis, Hamann concludes that as each period of maturity
approaches fresh germ-cells are formed in the rachis and wander
into the genital organ and grow there in size. It is probable that the
aboral end of the genital stolon is the seat of the formation of new
germ-cells.

In the Starfish, therefore, as in other animals with a well-defined

coelom, the genital cells ultimately originate from the coelomic wall.

The genital ducts are formed by the burrowing outwards of the germ-
cells. When it is remembered that the fundamental substance of the
body-wall is semi-fluid jelly, this process will be better understood.

When the ova and spermatozoa are ripe, they are simply shed out
into the sea and fertilisation occurs there. The development is
described in Chapter XXI. The free-swimming larval period lasts
about six weeks.

Having described a single species with some degree of fulness, we

must now give some account of the range of variation of structure
met with in the group.

Number of Arms.—In the overwhelming majority of Starfish the

number of arms is 5, but deviations from this rule are met with not
only as individual variations, but as the characteristics of species,
genera, and even families.

The number 5 is rarely diminished, but amongst a large collection of

specimens of Asterina gibbosa, belonging to the author, some 4-
rayed individuals are met with. One species of Culcita, C. tetragona,
is normally 4-rayed.

On the other hand the number 5 is often exceeded. The families

Heliasteridae and Brisingidae are characterised by possessing
numerous (19-25) arms. In the normally 5-rayed family Asteriidae
Pycnopodia has 22 arms; and in the Solasteridae the genera
Rhipidaster and Solaster are characterised by possessing 8 and 11-
15 arms respectively; whilst Korethraster and Peribolaster have only
5. The common Starfish of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Asterias polaris,
is 6-rayed, whilst most of the other species of the same genus are 5-
rayed, though 6 rays are often met with as a variation.

In some species the fact that the number of arms exceeds 5 seems
to be connected with the power of multiplication by transverse
fission. Thus Ludwig[452] has shown that in Asterias tenuispina the
number of arms is usually 7, but sometimes 5, 6, or 8, and that in
most cases the arms are arranged in two groups—one consisting of
small arms, the other of large.

Shape.—Apart from the varying number of arms, differences in the

shape of the Starfish are due to two circumstances:—

(1) The proportion of breadth to length of arm; and

(2) The amount of adhesion between adjacent arms.

The adhesion can go so far that the animal acquires the shape of a
pentagonal disc. This is the case for instance in Culcita. The fact that
the body of this animal is really composed of adherent arms is at
once made clear when the coelom is opened. This space is found to
be divided up by inwardly projecting folds called interradial septa,
which are stiffened by calcareous deposits and represent the
conjoined adjacent walls of two arms.

In the family Heliasteridae the mutual adhesion between the arms

has gone on merely to a slight extent, for the interradial septa are
still double.

Skeleton.—Most of the schemes of classification have been

founded on the skeleton, largely because the greater number of
species have only been examined in the dried condition, and little is
known of their internal anatomy or habits. There is, however, this
justification for this procedure, that the habits and food of the species
(with the exception of the Paxillosa) which have been observed in
the living condition appear to be very uniform, and that it is with
regard to the skeleton that Asteroidea seem to have split into
divergent groups through adopting different means of protecting
themselves from their foes.

The description of the various elements of the skeleton will be

arranged under the following heads:—(a) Main framework; (b)
Spines; (c) Pedicellariae; (d) Ambulacral skeleton.

(a) Main Framework.—The type of skeleton which supports the

body-wall of Asterias is called reticulate. As already indicated it
consists of a series of rods bound together by bundles of connective-
tissue fibres so as to form a mesh-work. This is a very common type
of aboral skeleton, but in a large number of Starfish a different type
occurs, consisting of a series of plates which may fit edge to edge,
leaving between them only narrow interstices, as in the
Zoroasteridae, or which may be placed obliquely (as in Asterina) so
that they imbricate or overlap one another. In a very large number of
Asteroidea the supero- and infero-marginal ossicles are represented
by squarish plates even when the rest of the skeleton is reticulate;