“You’re a monster. A beautiful monster.”
Aubriana Harvester knelt, her knees pressing up against Plague Dog. Her arms reaching for shoulders, one hand cradling the creature’s face. Energy that beat with her pulse could crack like a whip when commanded, or it could unravel, draping a hundred hooks below the angry swells. Each hook dug into Plague Dog, found purchase and tugged at her mind, her body, the ruins of her knee and face. Jerking at the ivory bulbs that jittered below sallow eyelids. The very fabric of Plague Dog was pulled asunder, collected up and categorized, pressed against the most intimate reaches of Aubriana’s soul. For a few brief seconds, Plague Dog would remember the sound of a sodium street light humming and the kiss of warm water in a shower.
She’d also remember the day that Aubriana woke with no jaw.
The sad and desperate creature’s entropy began to slow, tighten, like a bolt about to break, then finally freeze. The only living necromancer could as easily halt entropy as she would rend a body apart with it. Whatever province stuck to Plague Dog, killing the world around her, was a thing that Aubriana herself could command.
Just as Plague Dog remembered glimpses of a life she never led, Aubriana caught memories on the young woman’s breath. She saw Plague Dog’s father die, and felt the sting of a twin sister who cast her to sea, a total betrayal. For a second, Aubriana also felt a profound love well up in her throat. The need that a child felt for mother’s breast, unvarnished affection for her aunt, a woman who strode the world a titan at less than five-feet-tall.
“Oh, Amy,” Aubriana leaned in, inhaling canker and putrefaction, “I’m so sorry.”
She was sorry too. Aubriana Harvester knew a great deal of what it felt like to be murdered by someone she loved.
Plague Dog still quaked under sobs, shivered and twitched as though exposed to the winds of ice, but Aubriana did not let go of her. No matter the stench of death that flooded across her clothes, no matter the way her bones popped, or her skin shirked beneath touch.
Somewhere in that embrace, Plague Dog finally grew still, and her mind silent. A thing like sleep spreading through her decaying marrow.
Aubriana sang a song to the woman who couldn’t die.
“In Dublin's fair city,
Where the girls are so pretty,
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone,
As she wheeled her wheel-barrow,
Through streets broad and narrow,
Crying, ‘Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!’”
Dread Harvester by LacticWanda.
(END)
The world of Veilfall will return in “Battery Acid,” a full-length sequel to “Mayhem.” Keep your eyes open for the anthology “Veilfall,” and novella, “A Day in the Life of a Dead Whore.”
Learn more about Maggi Lopez in “The Bruja,” (available in softcover & eBook,) and Aubriana in “Dread Harvester,” (e-reader only). Order your copies now & follow author Michael Molisani on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads!
www.michaelmolisani.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR & ARTISTS
Michael Molisani has had a mind full of terrible horror and bewildering beauty his entire life. Unable to exorcise these visions of worlds beyond imagining, he set out to become a writer. Having no idea what a terrible decision this was, he soon went mad, burrowing into the unspoken mysteries of how to tell a story worth reading in a style both pleasing and entertaining. When he's not hard at work writing, Michael Molisani can be found falling backward in time on the sidewalks of Virginia City, Nevada; or exploring the remote mysteries of The Great Basin. Michael and his wife, Kimberly, reside in Northern Nevada.
Nan Fe can be followed on DeviantArt (https://www.deviantart.com/nanfe), or Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/nanfe1789/)
Karolina Jędrzejak (RinRinDaishi) can be followed on DeviantArt (https://www.deviantart.com/rinrindaishi), or Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/rinrindaishi/)
Audia Pahlevi (Moonarc) can be followed on DeviantArt (https://www.deviantart.com/moonarc)
LacticWanda can be followed on DeviantArt (https://www.deviantart.com/lacticwanda)
Mayhem Page 44