Margaret was at the very end of whatever fixity she’d reserved, her eyes didn’t want to focus, and she feared she might even drop the decanter. A down payment on all the murder she would unleash in the name of Aurora’s son.
“Why?” Margaret asked, lowering crystal behind the marble counter where Eric Owens could not reach for it.
“Because my mother and I capitulated. We surrendered. You command more respect in their eyes than we do.” Lord Owens replied, shrugging.
“More hatred too,” Margaret remembered The Metal Hammer, and the big man, Sammy, with all his boiling rage. Even memories of Sammy couldn’t embolden her own willpower now, this conversation needed to end soon before she burnt it all to the ground by collapsing.
“I suppose,” Lord Owens shrugged, resigned at the loss of his whiskey, “but you’ve promised me a great many deeds this evening, Lady Mayhem. I’m sure the least difficult will be persuading a fire-minded war-cult to fight next to you.”
Sammy, your wish is as good as granted. Your Maul shall sing your deeds for a hundred years to come, Margaret smiled at the thought, almost giggling.
“Consider it done, Lord Owens.”
Just a few more minutes, just a few more polite goodbyes, nodding and bowing and whatever scraping Eric Owens demanded. Margaret had nothing left to offer, her body was shutting down, pressed to its limits, she needed sleep.
12:15pm March 2nd, 39 Veilfall
Stockton, California
Thump-crack-crack.
Margaret was awake instantly, to a shotgun discharge, followed by a racked shell. With no clear picture of what had just happened, Margaret rolled out of bed, ignorant of any pain in her right shoulder or chest, tumbling to the floor. She was sticky, her sinuses full of copper and gunpowder. Although she’d fallen asleep with a pistol in her left hand, it was gone now.
A man was screaming, a guttural howl that was one part panic and two parts agony; the distinctive sound a man made when he’d lost a limb, his lungs and chest intact, but his extremities severed or burning. It was a noise she’d have recognized anywhere.
“Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!”
It sounded like Deck, his unplaceable accent muddled, as if repeating the expletive would summon forth a netherworld dwelling demon to visit upon his enemies.
“Lady Mayhem?” A girl asked, her voice soft and barely discernible over the shouting.
Warm viscidity blurred Margaret’s vision as she worked to blink her eyes open. She wiped the back of her left hand across her eyes, and face, then looked down to see that her arm and chest were also covered in smeared cruor.
Is that my blood? Margaret thought in a panic. She clawed across her belly and chest, groping her neck, frantic fingers jabbed painfully at burns, but she found no evidence of carnage.
“Ya’ fucking shoh’ me! You shoh’ me!” That was Deck that she heard. He was hyperventilating, gasping for air on the fall of each syllable.
“Lady Mayhem?” The second voice repeated, quiet as before.
I’m not shot, I’m not dead, so how bad could it be?
Margaret leveraged herself off the hotel floor, leaning forward and peering over her bed. The comforter was dingy and faded, pre-Collapse, and worse for the wear. It was coated in crimson sheen, save for where Margaret had been sleeping. Her pistol, an antique Austrian 9mm was resting where her left hand had been, untouched.
Sarn’t Deck Holloway was pressed against an opposing wall of Margaret’s hotel room. Free of his coat and plate carrier, his right arm missing just below the shoulder. Margaret could see tatterings of shirt, flesh, hanging loosely, and half-shattered bone, still covered with flecks of meat and muscle. Deck was clawing at his shoulder, screaming, at the ceiling, his face slick with salt and blood.
“Lady Mayhem?”
A third time Margaret heard the quiet voice. She turned to the hotel room’s door to see Erin, still in kit, a shotgun braced against her shoulder. She leaned forward, eyes on Deck, unblinking. The girl wore her hair short, shaved close at the sides and rear, as many young Antecedents preferred. Her only omission to femininity were long bangs that fell in her face.
“I’m all right,” Margaret said.
Erin replied, her dimpled lower lip moving, but Margaret couldn’t hear her over Deck’s garbled gibberish. The man was nearly frothing at the mouth, fat wads of phlegm and saliva rupturing over his lips like a waterfall.
“I’m all right, but I can’t hear you,” Margaret said, louder this time, clawing her way up and off the floor.
The room was merely a ten-by-ten square with one door, a wide bed, a paneless window and an old dresser made of particle board that sagged at the center. Bathrooms were down the hall, a community experience with no divided walls or tubs. This hotel was not meant for long term visits, and though clean, piles of dust and lint had huddled up by the room’s four corners where brooms couldn’t reach.
“Can you watch my back. In the hallway. Sir,” Erin was louder this time, but only just, “I mean Lady.”
Margaret moved around the foot of her bed and peered over the ledge. Deck’s ruined arm was resting in a pool of clot. The hand was gripping an ugly, rust worn, .38 revolver, sporting a grip that seemed too small, even for a child.
“What the shit?” Margaret asked no one in particular.
“He came in your room. So, I followed him. No one can enter your room.” Erin answered, unwavering in her stance, brow relaxed. None of the muscles in her neck tensed. Margaret turned away from Deck’s bloody rapine to inspect Erin closer. She was only a few inches taller than Margaret, and leaning forward, they were almost eye to eye. She was pretty. She was very pretty, with thick lashes, eyebrows, and freckles that poured across her nose.
Margaret was too startled to be in pain yet, and the long sleep had done her good. She could focus again, and did so, jumping immediately into Erin’s skull. The memories were fresh, drifting on the surface like antique plastic, bobbing on waves. She could watch the last few minutes unfold. Erin had studied a drab painting in her own room, sitting on the floor, listening. Someone was walking down the hall.
Big guy, heavy steps. Two-hundred pounds? Walking carefully, choosing their steps. Why are they choosing their steps?
Erin’s internal monologue unfolded in Margaret’s mind. She had stood, peaking out, watching as Sarn’t Holloway opened the door across from Erin’s room. Margaret’s door.
He had a gun. This wasn’t a memory. Erin was aware that she wasn’t alone in her own head. She replied directly to Margaret.
I thought so. You are inclined, Margaret answered, for herself and Erin, as she turned back to the bleeding Sarn’t in her room.
“Holloway, look at me.”
Margaret articulated her voice, resonating across aural spectrums that the uninclined could barely understand. She was using her voice to command, old, simple magic that endowed the very words she spoke with power. Maggi Lopez had taught her this when she was only twelve or thirteen, “Stop bawling like a baby and tell me what happened here.”
Deck Holloway bit at the air, his chest heaving so high it seemed his collar bones might snap against the hammering movement. He upchucked part of his breakfast, stomach contents, titian and lumpy. With eyes wide, he returned Margaret’s scowl, his good hand shivering against the remains of his other arm.
“W-w-witches,” Deck stuttered, then found his rhythm, “can’t hurt ya’ if theys asleep.”
Margaret nodded, bracing her left hand to hip. Her mind was already cast about Deck’s as she spoke, voice no longer her only means of compulsion, “Is that right? Why would you be afraid of me, ‘hurting ya?’”
Deck snorted hard at the fetid torrent of mucus running out of his nose, his mind no longer his own. “Because I needed ta’ kill ya’.”
Deck Holloway hadn’t been the first man to make an attempt on her life, and he’d certainly not be the last. She was, more than anything, disgusted at the trust she’d bestowed on Deck. Her amusement at his offhand
and colorful remarks, a reminder of years long past.
“Why? Why kill your battlewitch?” Margaret’s voice dropped down in octaves, almost masculine now. She could even sense fear on Erin’s skin, sweating
With no stutter, Holloway answered, “The Plague Dog’d promote me for ya’ head, I was sure of it. I was sure of it.”
“Yes, she probably would have,” Margaret retracted from Deck’s simpering mind. The man had been a capable soldier, but his memories smelled like Maggi’s breath a thousand times over, stale with liquor and rotting teeth. She could only conceal her anger for so long, “The penalty for treason is death. You can take your own life, or Erin can execute you. Choose.”
Holloway nodded quick, his mind clouding again with pain, he stuttered once more, “I’ll d-d-do it myself. No brassboy’ll show me the Veil.”
Margaret smiled, then turned away from Holloway, to Erin, “Blow his fucking head off, brassboy.”
Erin didn’t hesitate. She punctuated Margaret’s sentence with a trigger pull, and the discharge ripped Holloway’s face open. Flesh was stripped away, and his skull shattered around the forehead and orbital sockets. The impact drove his vertex into faux wood panels and liquified eyeballs drained down his cheeks, along with whatever remained of his brain. It took a moment, but his body slumped down the wall, following grey and pink fluid that coated his clothing, before falling into a heap on the floor; a lifeless twist of elbow and knees.
Margaret exhaled hard, her voice regaining its natural tambour, “Do you have a last name, brassboy Erin?”
“Abid,” Erin racked another shell into the 12 gauge, before lowering it and taking long, slow blinks.
“Did your parents know you were inclined? Did anyone know?”
Erin Abid shook her head, eyes fixed on Holloway’s lifeless body where it had collapsed. He no longer seemed like a person who had once lived, only a collection of parts thrown together in a corner, forgotten and contemptible.
“You’re no longer a brassboy,” Margaret lifted her left hand and stowed it on Erin’s shoulder. Under her fingers she could feel molle and chainmail, “Effective this moment, you’re Corporal Erin Abid. You’ll serve as my personal bodyguard, and servant, until such time as I release you to the command of General Townsend. Are we clear?”
Corporal Erin Abid nodded, silently.
“Fetch my pistol. Make sure it's clean. I need to wash up,” Margaret turned and stepped out of the hallway. Several patrons at the edge of the walk rushed away, their prying eyes a known quality now, curiosity turned to fear. Someone would have called the Stockton guard by now and she’d need to deal with that soon.
Something itched at the back of Margaret’s mind. It spoke in the voice of her mother, arms crossed, walking a wide circle around her. It was a voice of counsel, the tone Maggi used at lessons, stern, but not unkind. Is that all you’ll grant the girl? A promotion?
Margaret didn’t so much turn around as she took a step back and investigated her former hotel room. Erin was pulling the slide off Margaret’s 9mm to inspect it.
“Corporal,” Margaret started, waiting for Erin to look over her shoulder, “When things are calmer, and if General Townsend agrees, you can study with me. If you wish. You’re inclined. You should learn about your gifts. If you wish.”
Erin didn’t answer, she just nodded, the hint of a smile on her lips.
Giving her new Corporal a wink, Margaret turned back. The hallway was narrow, claustrophobic, impossible for two people to walk shoulders abreast. The carpet was an unremarkable blue patchwork, worn to slate at the center by years of traffic. Truncated at a washroom, the hall ended between two stairwells; one leading up, the other leading down.
Margaret felt her heart stop, skipping a beat, or two, then jumping forward again. The flesh at her throat pulsed for a moment and the burns under Aurora’s gown felt warm, uncomfortably warm.
I have to pee, Margaret thought, I don’t need this right now.
A door to her right opened. It made no noise, although Margaret could see a jitter in one of the hinges that should have whined. Beyond, a woman watched Margaret. Only a third of her face exposed, lips glistening with beeswax, paint shadowing her eyelids. Pupil and retina did not look out from the darkened room, instead a globe of swirling blue sea occupied the woman’s eye socket. A window singing of lapping brine, nibbling at Margaret’s ear, as a playful lover.
Fucking Aphrodite, Margaret thought, I have to pee.
“Do you think I care?”
Aphrodite jerked the door open and revealed the rest of her latest body. Margaret assumed it was a whore, but she couldn’t genuinely tell beyond the heavy makeup, rouge and fussed hair. The woman was wearing a dress of blue, hewn from bright silks and Georgette, and likely the single most valuable prize in the entire hotel. Long lace gloves ran up past her elbows, crafted in symbols that Margaret could not recognize.
“Someone just tried to murder me, and you want to talk now?”
“Do you think I care?” Aphrodite repeated, her voice a husky contralto, dripping like sweet honey. Margaret almost bit her lower lip in response to the sensation.
The woman was a foot taller than Margaret, and strong. Aphrodite grabbed Margaret’s left forearm, jerking her inside the room with presence and force she hadn’t expected.
Against the wall of Aphrodite’s hotel room, Margaret saw the door slammed shut without a finger laid upon it. The whore smelled like lavender and vanilla, a basic perfume for someone in such an expensive dress, but above that the room seemed to swim with an ocean scent so rich that Margaret suddenly lusted to walk barefoot in the cool tide pools.
“You smell like fire and sorrow, little Mar-gar-et,” Aphrodite answered, pressing her body’s firm breasts and abdomen against Margaret, who closed her eyes and head tilted back despite herself. It was rough, painful, and filled her sternum with a boiling sweet tea that almost choked her as she inhaled.
“I don’t have time for sorrow,” Margaret answered, softly. A whimper escaping the back of her throat. The burns across her body began to bite less, and the weight of Aphrodite’s whore started to only hurt in the ways Margaret most adored.
“Do you wonder if Townsend will still fuck you? With those burns? Do you wonder if he still desires you? Or will his attention wane in the years to come?” Aphrodite stepped back, releasing Margaret to stand on her own, addled. “The libertine Mar-gar-et, sitting alone at a dinner table. Face full of scars, forgotten battlewitch of the Antecedent Empire.”
Margaret exhaled hard and clenched her jaw, angry again, just as angry as when she’d realized Deck Holloway wasn’t a man to be trusted.
“I’m not so cruel. I was merely repeating your own thoughts.” Aphrodite grinned, teeth shimmering like rays cast on calm sea, straight and clean as antique pearls.
A noble woman’s teeth. Who is she wearing?
Margaret’s right cheek began to burn under the gaze of Aphrodite, “I’ll worry about Townsend’s desires. You seem plenty busy with ‘a return to the good old days.’”
When Aphrodite crossed her arms against her body’s modest chest, Margaret could see more symbols woven into the lace of her opposing arm. “Watch your tone, Mar-gar-et. If you want to have any face left. I have no hand in the machinations of your nieces.”
“Your Ramona started this!” Margaret leaned in, lips curled up until they hurt, flesh cracking and splitting under blisters.
Aphrodite nodded, and immaculate raven curls bounced across her body’s forehead, “Oh yes, she did. Divine work. A masterclass in deception and manipulation. Ramona is easily my favorite since Clara Ward, Princesse de Caraman-Chimay.”
Margaret pulled away from the flimsy wall, took one step forward, pinching her lips closed, refusing to wince, “Just tell me, what does Ramona want?”
Bound in a dress that Margaret herself coveted, Aphrodite’s body laughed like two cats copulating, her whining yowl bounced around the room, “If I were to warn you of Ramona’s deepes
t desires, how would you know that I didn’t warn her of your plans to murder Alexander Lopez?”
Margaret reminded herself who she was talking to. Her powers meant nothing here, she stood prone, defenseless. “You and Ramona don’t have the same goals?”
Aphrodite was genuinely amused, more so than Margaret had ever seen, “Ramona does as she pleases. I allow this until it interferes with what I want. You, on the other hand, you do what I want, and only what I want. Kneel at my feet, promise me your soul, your love. Then, and only then, we will discuss what I might allow you to do.” Aphrodite stopped laughing and Margaret felt cold water drip down her spine. Aphrodite’s face tilted, her jaw slowly fell open, and her tongue ran across perfect teeth, “If I wish it, you will fall to your knees, rip your tongue out and jam it into your cunt. Do you understand me? Do you really understand me?”
As if Margaret had found herself too close to a rattlesnake, she was facing a bored god. There was no angry ocean to churn and flash about in Aphrodite’s eyes, only a low and hungry calm that quivered in the anticipation of seizing on a thing for no better reason than she could. Aphrodite would choose to strike, or not strike, based on desires that no mortal could fathom. Just as Margaret wove her tendrils of magic around the uninclined, Aphrodite’s breath was power beyond imagining.
“I understand you,” Margaret answered.
“Worship is worthless unless you do it of your own volition.”
Aphrodite lunged toward Margaret. There was no time to reply, or even startle, no human could have moved that way. Her lips were across Margaret’s, succulent venison, fire kissed and slippery, chattering with pepper and salt, kissing away the blisters and burns before they had a chance to cry out. It was a seduction of familiarity, a shift in odor, the dart of crisp air and whispers at the soft lobes of Margaret’s ears.
Mar-gar-et, Mar-gar-et, worship me. Love me. I’ll make you beautiful again, I’ll give you back flesh. I’ll make you the most beautiful woman on Earth. The ladies of Owens will weep at your glory. What will your new title be? I like Duchess. Or Grand Duchess!
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