These things were pared away, cut free, and cored out, until only the meat of her brain remained. All the electrical triggers and processing functions, the command network that allowed her toes to curl and eyes to focus.
“Aubriana!”
Margaret yelled, tossing her head back to the ceiling’s dark framework above, breathing deep, and exhaling even harder, “I’ve made good on my bargain.”
11:20pm March 25th, 39 Veilfall
San Francisco, California
“All right you’se fucking cunts, get the fuck out of here!”
Badger shouted from the floor, forward of Vivendi’s lounge. He was wielding a broken liquor bottle like a hatchet, three-quarters of the square glass sheared away, leaving one jagged side as a weapon.
Margaret looked around for Erin, then noticed a figure jerk upwards suddenly away from a table. It was Erin. She was bleeding from ears and eyes, her pomade-slick hair a scattered mess, and jacket half pulled off. She jumped away from a table, grabbed one of the wrought iron chairs, hefted the back above her shoulder, and tossed it down to the floor with all her force.
“Badger!” Margaret stepped away from Cuttersark’s kneeling body and pointed toward Erin once Badger made eye contact.
The lounge was mostly empty by now. Skulking denizens stumbling out of their chairs, rushing for rearward exits. They’d been close enough to smell the blood that percolated out of Lady Cuttersark’s face, holding their breath and their cocks while Margaret ripped an eyeball out. Now, they could thank the gods above and below that they wouldn’t find themselves covered in liquid charcoal.
“Whoah! Whoah! She’s dead, little tomato!” Badger was yelling as he stumbled over another chair and rushed to the left of Erin, prying her back.
“Fuck you! And fuck this bitch!” Erin shouted, raising her fists high and stomping down on something. At this angle Margaret could only make out tables which still had white china scattered about them and stacks of candles hanging from steeple hooks.
“You didn’t tell me that you’d take her fucking eye.”
It was Lady Cuttersark’s voice, but she was speaking slower, not enunciating words with the same precision. She rolled her neck, slowly, three-hundred-and-sixty degrees at her shoulders, before her body stood up again.
Margaret grabbed two napkins off the closest table, white linen, thick and folded. She whipped one, like a wet towel, to her hip, then started cleaning Cuttersark’s face. The Eye of Shahr-i-Sokhta was firmly lodged in her skull, golden starburst obscured by viscous blood and threads of meat.
“You and I are square.” Margaret nodded, once, for her own benefit.
Lady Cuttersark’s surviving eyeball strolled to Margaret’s face, offering a grin caught between a mad giggle and a genuinely angry grimace, “Square?”
Margaret stopped, tossed the first napkin away, covered in thick crimson and night.
“Story was, you stabbed my mom in the eye. I told you, whatever you two had going on didn’t include me. But, if someone stabbed your mom in the eye, what would you do?”
When Cuttersark had sneered or smiled, it had pulled at her thick and supple skin, giving the impression of a fat baby who’d found breast milk sour. In contrast, Aubriana Harvester brought dread to her expressions, a flat, undeniable loathing for everything she surveyed.
Aubriana shrugged her new shoulders, “Fair enough.”
Margaret turned her head back to Badger and Erin. Commotion continued, and now a table was tossed over.
“Quit fucking off! Kill every candle in this place and find me the chandelier controls!”
Margaret pointed up, but it seemed mostly for her own benefit since neither Badger nor Erin bothered to glance over.
“This is fantastic.” Aubriana growled with her new voice, left hand reaching up for her face, flexing her fingers and clawing at the air.
“Um,” Margaret turned away from her escorts. Badger was now screaming something she couldn’t understand.
“I haven’t felt anything in decades. This is fucking exquisite.” Aubriana stumbled forward, moving her legs with clumsy starts and stops. Once she found her footing, she rushed toward the closest table, where she grabbed a handful of mashed potatoes and peas, shoving it all into her mouth with a wet gagging sound. “I fucking hate peas!”
Aubriana grabbed another handful, the green pods turning to slop between her fingers, leaking down her chin, mixed with blood and ink. She was chewing wildly, her jaw working in exaggerated mastication.
“Lady,” Badger shouted, “I think we need help!”
Gods be fucked.
Margaret bit her lower lip and turned away from Aubriana. She had shoveled another handful of food into her face. Talking through the food, unintelligible, she spit clumps of mashed potatoes.
Turning, Margaret rushed between the wrought iron tables and chairs. By the time she reached Corporal Erin Abid, the girl was sitting on the floor, next to the remains of a witch that Margaret had called out for execution. Any details of that woman were now spread across lacquered floor. Her forehead was bent in, drawing a deep plum hue. Her sockets languished with clabbered claret, behind eyeballs that jutted out like curious rabbits from a hovel. The remains of a nose bent off to one side, and her front teeth concaved. Deep blue layers of cotton bound her cooling body, embroidered with golden thread in the shape of doves or pigeons, Margaret couldn’t say. In death, the witch had pissed herself and smelled strongly of urine and sandalwood.
Kneeling next to Erin, Margaret watched her eyes despite dim light. Her sclera had turned bloody, and ruby tears traced her face from ducts, bruising a garish shade of purple.
“Calm,” Margaret commanded, sticky left palm pressed to Erin’s scalp, reaching into the girl’s mind. She throttled down adrenaline, worming her way through the terror and shushing it to sleep, a familiar beast that Margaret could tame.
Margaret glanced to Badger, his silver and black uniform glistening sanguine, reflecting candlelight, “I’ve got this. I want every light in this room off, save the chandeliers. Bar the doors.”
Badger seemed happy to accept an assignment he understood. Whatever happened to the little Corporal was beyond his comprehension or his desire to deal with. The man was a savage artist of murder, not a counselor of comfort.
Removing her hand from Erin’s head, Margaret hiked up the side of her slip so she could sit down next to the young Corporal.
“Talk to me,” Margaret used her command voice, low and soft, but resonation crawling along the triggers in Erin’s mind that would oblige her beyond any limits of trauma, “I can’t help if you don’t tell me what happened.”
Erin’s lips moved with easy calm, even though her hands were shaking, index fingers tapping rapidly along trouser knees. “I thought she blinded me. I couldn’t see. I tried to break her neck with my hands, but I don’t know how.”
“You did good, kid,” Margaret nodded, reaching to wipe some of the blood off Erin’s ears, “Don’t worry about it.”
“I know,” Erin replied, “that was stupid. I never broke someone’s neck before.”
What?
That was a disjointed answer, and for the moment Margaret chalked it up to trauma.
“Can you see now, candy striper?”
“I can see. I just don’t want to see.”
Erin’s shoulders trembled as she spoke, and more blood escaped her eyes. Her upper lip was glossy with mucus and this close Margaret could smell her breath, stale and rancid from a half-finished lunch.
Pausing, Margaret listened to the room around her. Aubriana was shouting something, but she decided to ignore her, “I’m going to step into your mind, I want to see what you see and hear what you hear. This will be intimate, okay? You’ll feel me in there.”
Erin nodded, eyes wide, blood drying in her lashes, crusted. Her hair was thick with pomade, and a spider crawled up, out of her locks, skittering across Margaret’s middle finger and stopping on her knuckle. It was a black widow.
Fucking girl and her fucking spiders.
Margaret gritted her teeth, ignoring the arachnid. She stepped into Erin’s mind with ease, windows and doors wide open. She could hear the ticking of a pulse and remember the smell of a hot engine burning sage brush as it crawled dirt roads. It wasn’t like prying apart Lady Cuttersark, there were no sophisticated passions or disgusting diversions here. The girl worried about her dog, Gertrude, who was back in Nevada. She lusted after a fight for the sake of the fight, it boiled in her blood and made her feel vitally alive. Her father had taught her kata, a martial art that served little in a real war. She kept red wax candles in her satchel of personal effects, lighting them on a high full moon to pray to Ares, Lord of War. If you want to play with fire, you’ll get burnt, someone repeated inside her skull, a memory she’d held as a mantra.
There was no fear in here, no terror. Whatever the witch with bulging eyeballs had done to Erin was a different kind of magic, and not something Margaret had ever seen.
“Look at me,” Margaret said softly, listening with Erin’s ears to the sound of her own voice.
Under fluttering candlelight Margaret was looking at a scrawny girl with misshapen shoulders, perhaps fourteen. Her auburn-red hair was tied back in a ponytail. She was smiling, though Margaret was not. The handprint of Tilapia was nowhere to be seen.
Margaret recoiled. That’s me as a child. What the fuck is wrong here?
“You wore paracord, in your hair, didn’t you? As a child?”
Erin seemed to find comfort in the startle. Tied close to the older witch now, there’s no reason she couldn’t hear the percolation of Margaret’s thoughts.
“I did. What did Badger look like to you?”
Erin was genuinely more relaxed now, and she scrunched her nose in reply, “Uglier than normal. It seemed like his skin was shriveled. His teeth looked like a dog’s.”
Badger had never been balanced. His past wasn’t much better than Margaret’s. He had been recovered somewhere in Ohio, a child caged and forced to fight feral dogs and other children. Margaret had been in his mind often enough, over the years, to know that part of him still lived in that damp and feculent pit, ripping animals apart with his bare hands while they clawed flesh from his chest and stomach.
“That’s basically what the real Badger looks like.”
Margaret withdrew her mind, and her hand, leaving Erin to her privacy. She cast the black widow off her knuckle with a quick brush.
I’m still that little girl with her hair tied up in paracord?
“Why?” Erin pressed her elbow under one side so she could sit up.
“I don’t entirely know. I don’t know if this will wear off or not. At a guess? I think maybe you tangled with a scourge-tongue. They’re curse witches. Maybe you’re a cypher, and all she did was damn you to only see and hear the truth.”
Or, maybe she damned you with that power.
Erin was licking the back of her wrists and smearing away the blood on her face, “I don’t understand. Everything I see is the truth now?”
Margaret’s lips parted, her teeth still blackened with charcoal, and she bobbed her head back and forth, “Maybe? I don’t know yet. I won't know for a while.”
Erin blinked, as if she was still blind, then stood up with the ease of a young woman not even yet twenty, “You think I’m damned.”
“I don’t honestly know for sure,” Margaret spoke quietly, her voice carried no further than Erin’s ears and she chose each word carefully, knowing the girl would only hear the truth. “But, yeah. You’re probably cursed. I don’t know if that can be reversed. I don’t know anything. I’m a nightmare mirror, I don’t know the first thing about curses.”
Erin looked down at Margaret as she shifted, placing knees under her, kneeling. There was a sense of flavorless calm around her, the taste of a sunny morning hangover or the hum in your ears that summoned when the plains were too quiet.
She’s in shock.
“Will you help me?”
Margaret offered a hand, and Erin accepted it to pull her off the ground. No matter how many years separated the two, Margaret could only look up at the girl, even with her short, block heels. “I’ll help you as much as I can, candy striper.”
Margaret didn’t quite mean that, and she wondered what Erin actually heard. She wasn’t electing to abandon the girl, but she also had no idea how she could teach a cursed witch.
This place steals everything, Margaret thought, sourly.
Aware that the hour would not wait, Margaret pulled Erin toward the bar. She spoke as honestly as she could, “We’re running out of time. It's almost midnight, and I’ve given the most terrifying witch in history a body so that she can help me draw out an ancient spirit whose power I barely understand better than yours.”
11:48pm March 25th, 39 Veilfall
San Francisco, California
“Vodka is a disinfectant!”
Aubriana was pouring clear liquor into Lady Cuttersark’s empty eye socket.
The dress of white leather was now smeared in umber and crimson, a shifting palette of colors that reminded Margaret of the Collapse. It wasn’t the aesthetic, it was the dusty way her liquid charcoal had dried and cracked, like a sky of smoke and fire.
Tilting her chin down, Aubriana’s face was cleaner, despite a spate of blood still oozing out of her eye. She glared after Badger, lower lip pulled down like a predator who couldn’t decide which prey to seize first. Lady Cuttersark had drawn herself up tall, shoulders squared back and head held high, but Aubriana Harvester was hunched forward, her head swiveling on her neck, and her legs separated, waiting for spring and strike.
“Now you’re flammable,” Margaret said flatly, reaching for the bottle of liquor. Aubriana didn’t release it easily, but persistence paid off, “In a few minutes I’m going to try and summon something into this room. A spirit, I think. An old one.”
The golden Eye of Shahr-i-Sokhta was visible, sans blood, and a flicker of saffron sparkled across the ancient disk. Aubriana ignored Badger and Erin, wallowing her good eye on Margaret, “Your old ‘spirit’ is already here. She didn’t even notice the finger-paint at the door.”
Margaret drank from the vodka, as if it was a field canteen, up ending the glass bottle and letting it fall past her tongue. “How do you know?”
Aubriana twisted to move away, watching, skulking, a predatory animal choosing each step with care, silken and noiseless.
“This eye can see, it's alive. It's talking to my bones with real power.”
Erin stepped up behind Margaret’s right, watching the body of Lady Cuttersark with intense focus. Margaret glanced to her, much of the blood had wiped away from her face, but she was quivering in a grimace, “You should get behind the bar. Stay low. There’s nothing else you can do but watch.”
As if Margaret had never spoken, Erin opened her mouth and started to speak, but no words would follow. She tried a second time, “She’s all bloated up and rotting, and she's leaking water. She has no jaw; her tongue is just hanging there. Like a rope.”
A smile parted Aubriana’s lips and she made a hissing chuckle that started at the back of her throat and worked its way up like food poisoning, “Aww, you don’t know who I am? This is my city.”
Gods be fucked, what have I done?
“Gods be fucked, Erin, get behind the bar!”
Margaret tried to snap the fingers of her left hand and failed. Erin tipped her head down and scurried for the bar, a moment before the spotlights around the abandoned stage went dark. With all the candles cold, and wall stanchions lowered, only the chandeliers overhead remained. They were pre-Collapse, electric, and set on dimmers.
“I’m betting it can only manifest in absolute darkness.”
“You’re right,” Aubriana growled, stealing back the vodka for herself, drinking it this time, instead of washing her eye with it.
“Badger!” Margaret shouted up to the stage, holding a hand to the side of her lips, “
Did you find the switch for those overheads?”
“Sure did boss,” Badger replied, his voice projecting.
Margaret nodded to him once, lifted her chin up high, then made a cutting gesture across her throat. Badger gave a thumbs up and leapt down off the stage.
It was an old habit, and probably didn’t help, but Margaret licked her palm once and slapped it to her bare chest, pressing in. She’d licked some of the dusted charcoal, and her saliva burned like whiskey and sung like honey. She pressed on her sternum and began to whisper some of the old words. Words that her mother had taught her. Her mind drawing in, around manifest barriers. First, she would create an outline, a basic idea of what she wanted, and layer by layer would come the details, the shading, until it was wholly what she imagined it could be.
“You’ve said it wrong,” Aubriana spoke, as Margaret opened her eyes once more, “you’re speaking Elamite, a dead Bronze Age language.”
“It’s what my mother taught me,” Margaret replied softly, aware that her barriers were spun up and as ready as they could be.
Aubriana shook her head, a look on her face like she’d sipped at sour milk.
“Who do you think taught her?”
Without drawing her eyes off Margaret’s, Aubriana repeated the same phrase, using a different accent, a more focused speech pattern, pausing and stopping at different times, expelling new words to Margaret’s ears. When Badger killed the lights, a series of spheres hung around Aubriana, each one a deep shade of dead roses, dimming by the second, and bleeding rubies, crystalline cruor.
Margaret had never seen Maggi manifest that.
When the last of the broken roses fell to Aubriana’s feet, there was no more light of any kind. Not one candle flickered, no glass reflected, there was simply no more illumination. Margaret could no longer hear Aubriana’s husky breath or Badger’s footfalls. It was as if sound had become mortified in the absence of light.
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