by K T Munson
“Elisabeth,” Milo called, getting her attention. “You’re walking too quickly.”
Elisabeth stopped and turned back to find A.J. struggling to keep up and Milo bridging the gap between them. She blinked, realizing she had far outpaced them, like she always did when she was alone. She glanced down at her fingers and found they had been madly drumming against her leg. Her thoughts had consumed her, and she had forgotten about her companions.
“I’m sorry, A.J.,” Elisabeth said unsteadily as she straightened her back. “I forget myself.” She sighed.
“That is quite all right, Miss Avery.” His voice rang clear as he drew closer.
“Don’t let words bother you,” Milo said softly.
“Thanks,” she replied, but his words gave her little comfort. “Can you get my father on the line?”
He nodded as A.J caught up to them and they resumed at A.J.’s pace. The hallways were mostly empty because everyone was at the reception dinner. When they reached the base of the large staircase that led up to the guest rooms, Milo handed her the telecommunication disk.
“Elsa! How is my brilliant daughter?” His voice boomed his pet name for her over the communication piece.
“Papa,” she said as she felt the tension go out of her shoulders, “I am well. I just wanted to let you know that I’m done for the night and that A.J. is doing well.”
“And the presentation?”
She smiled, but when she glanced up as they rounded the corner on the landing of the stairs, the smile turned into a scream. A man dressed all in black suddenly slammed both knees into Milo’s chest, sending him crashing back against the stone banister. She dropped the communication device, and it skidded across the floor.
“Elsa? Elisabeth?” Malthael called out frantically. “Are you all right?”
She looked toward the device and opened her mouth to answer, but saw a long thin blade leveled at her. Her eyes went wide as she looked up at the man holding it. She could hear her papa yelling her name and demanding to know what was going on. Her hands started to shake—partly from fear and partly from her loss of control.
“Unhand her!” A.J. said, lifting his arms to attack.
The man turned and punctured the suit in one swift jab, causing it to deflate. A.J. gasped and tried to stop the leak with his ill-equipped hands. Elisabeth made it to two steps away from him before the blade was pointed back at her. She froze. Her hands were out by her sides, twisting in slightly circular motions. The man in black brought a boot down and crushed the communication device, silencing her papa.
“Miss Avery!” A.J. said as he filtered out of the suit.
“Go back to your other suit, A.J.,” Elisabeth said as she continued the motions. “I’ll be fine.”
The man made of stardust and gelatinous goo spilled over the side of the banister and down through the floor to his other containment suit. A glob of ectoplasm was all that remained. She knew he could make it to the suit, which wasn’t far off in storage, before he started to dissipate. She glanced at Milo and realized that the man threatening her life wasn’t there for him or A.J. He was there for her.
“What do you want? My father is rich,” Elisabeth said, narrowing her eyes.
She had to buy time—the demon dogs would come for her. She kept moving her hands in small circular motions, reaching into the spirit lines and calling them to her. He stayed silent and continued to stare at her with his impossibly dark grey eyes. Moments passed, and her chest rose and fell; she felt grateful that it still could.
He put the double thin blades away. Reaching behind him, he pulled a long sword from his back. She glanced hopefully at Milo, but he gave no indication of consciousness. Elisabeth calmed herself when she felt the demon dogs near. She took a step back. The man tipped his head to the side and took a few measured and lithe steps forward, bringing the blade down.
Like slivers of white, her guardians rose from the ground. An instant before the man’s weapon struck home, the Netherhounds appeared. The deadly bladed tips of their ribbon-like elastic tails shot out and blocked the man’s attack. He stumbled back, caught unawares by their sudden appearance. Unlike A.J., who was something everyone could see, her guardians were half spirits that only she and those like her could see until they materialized. They stood on two hind legs with their heads down, so she could see their strange curly ears and sets of ram-like horns on each side of their heads.
Her attacker reacted to their second strike and narrowly dodged away from the lethal blades. Nathan, the guardian on her right, took hold of the sword with his tail and yanked it free, while Duke, the guardian with the chipped horn, attacked again with his deadly tail. The man flipped backwards, out of harm’s reach, and pulled out his twin blades from a sheath strapped to his lower back. He landed on his feet in a crouch and immediately lunged toward them again, but his blades went right through her body and slammed into the banister behind her without doing any harm.
Touching the dog demons had allowed her to transform into her spirit form. Since Elisabeth was only half Soul Collector, she needed help to travel the spirit lines, which her guardians did with ease. She watched the man in black, with his piercing dark eyes, as she faded into the floor, and then she was quickly far away from him.
“There you are,” Malthael said, putting his arm around her shoulder in a rare show of affection.
His hair was pulled back in a cord at the base of his head in an old monk style, and all that was left of his black horns were broken spikes. They had been torn asunder when he had refused his last assignment—her assassination. Those who had ordered it had felt it wouldn’t be wise to have a half-bred Soul Collector among the living because she would feel too many emotions. It would simpler to kill her, they’d believed, when she was an infant. Accidents were bound to happen when creatures like her were let loose upon the planets unchecked.
“It was terrible,” Elisabeth said, her hands shaking from the adrenaline. “I had to leave Milo.”
He took her long slender hand in his own black ones. “Milo is a demon and isn’t easily killed,” he reminded her. “What happened?”
“I think a man in black was there to kill me,” she said, putting an unsteady hand to her throat. “If Duke and Nathan hadn’t come when they did, I don’t know what that man would have done.”
She glanced around the greater under-hall, her eyes falling on the gate as she took in the all-encompassing hunter green of the room. The mass of their house was greater than that of many castles. Her adoptive father’s wealth came from Malthael’s bartering passage through the Netherworld or to other planets. Elisabeth’s gaze shifted to the twin demon dogs, who had faded back into spirits. She knew Nathan and Duke would be checking the perimeter. There were benefits, like the Netherhounds, to Malthael’s being a former high-ranking demon. Her papa was the Guardian of the Gate, and being in close proximity to the interplanetary gate allowed him to age slowly. Despite that, Elisabeth could see the lines on his black-and-gold-flecked face that had become more pronounced in his worrying over her safety. Since she did not benefit from the gate as much as her adoptive father did, Elisabeth wondered when she would begin to show her thirty years.
“Do not think of what could have been, my dear,” he said, interrupting her thoughts as he led her through the green marbled hall to the great stairs. “Simply tell me what he said.”
“Nothing.” She let out a heavy sigh. “He didn’t utter a single word.”
“I fear this is not over,” Malthael responded, his voice heavy as well. “We don’t know what drives him. This man may hunt you until he is dead or has what he wants.”
Elisabeth shuddered. “I feared as much as well.” She had thought it possible that he was hunting her because of what she was. It was not the first time someone had tried to kill her. She just didn’t know who the puppet master was this time or who had put a bounty on her head. Some wanted her blood, others wanted to control her, and some wanted her to bear their children. Being half of
something so terrifying meant she was both feared and coveted, depending on who was coming for her.
Her hands still shook slightly as she and Malthael left the chilled stony area and entered their living quarters. The house itself was a maze and if attacked it would initiate defensive protocols. It would lead the person seeking the gate to every room but the one that had the exit. Her papa released her to push the stone doorway back, and it swung free. When they were on the other side, he pulled the mounted candlestick and the door swung closed again, and she turned into the comfort of her father’s study.
They crossed the study to another exit into the hall. Elisabeth looked up and down it at the old tapestries. Malthael followed just behind without saying anything. He was always quiet when he was worried. She slowed as she approached one tapestry that looked almost three dimensional, as the tablet in the weaves seemed to shift with her movements. She had loved this one as a child because it seemed like magic.
“Will I be safe here?” she asked, stopping in front of it without looking at him.
“I don’t know.” That was Malthael, always a person of truth. “We don’t know enough about him or his motivations. We don’t know what he wants.”
“Perhaps it is time we spoke to one of your contacts and acquired something,” Elisabeth said, her voice low, knowing Malthael would understand what she meant.
“You don’t like anything from the Nether,” he reminded her.
She glanced at him. “I don’t like the idea of dying either,” she responded, her voice forlorn. “Nathan and Duke cannot protect me unless I call them, and I can’t always calm myself enough to do so.”
“Do not let the fear of death change you,” Malthael told her. “We are all dying, and we cannot control when we take our final breath. We can, however, control how we live.”
“Says the demon who has lived many lifetimes,” Elisabeth said, smiling at him. Before he’d torn his horns from his head, he had lived many more lifetimes than a mere mortal would have.
“Your point is made.” He smiled back at her. “But so is mine.”
“I will not speak of my death again,” Elisabeth agreed, nodding before continuing down the hall.
“You may consider defending yourself,” Malthael mentioned, and she stopped dead in her tracks.
She turned back, her eyebrows furrowed and her voice angry. “You told me one soul…that if I took even one soul by force, that would be it. Now you tell me to use my powers to defend myself when I cannot deliver his soul and am, therefore, damning myself? It only takes one. How many times have you told me this?”
“You are right,” Malthael responded. “A lapse in judgment. I do not wish to see any harm befall you.”
“You are a contradiction, Papa,” Elisabeth said with a little half smile. “In one breath you worry for my safety, and in another you warn me of my impending doom.”
“It is the best that a reformed demon trying to be a father can do.” Malthael sighed heavily. “I do not know how you planet dwellers manage.”
“As well as you have,” she responded, patting him on the arm. “Perhaps it is time you taught me how to get to the Netherworld.”
“I fear it is more dangerous than this man hunting you,” Malthael responded contemplatively. “I shall connect with my contacts in the Netherworld. Perhaps they can track his movements and give us warning of when he might try again.”
Elisabeth looked at her papa then. He had glasses perched on the edge of his nose and wrinkles around his eyes. His age was starting to show. His hair was mostly black and tightly wound, but there were some grey strands in the band of hair at the base of his skull. There were lines all over his face that had not been there when she was a child. She was terrified of the man in black, and Malthael wanted her prepared for the worst, but she knew he had no intention of leaving her unprotected. There had been many attempts on her life. She comforted herself in the possibility that that was why she’d been momentarily rattled when he’d first appeared. Once her adrenaline had settled and her hands stopped shaking, logic and reason had returned. This man was not any more terrifying than what the Netherworld had thrown at her.
“I’ll stay within the house limits, and I’ll be careful,” Elisabeth said, hoping it would help ease his burdened heart. “I’ll take care of my work from here.”
“Yes you will, missy!” Tiss, a snake demon, slithered into the room. “You scared me half to death.”
Tiss pulled her into a hug as her lower half coiled in anxiety. She was crying and carrying on about how Elisabeth could have died. Elisabeth gave Malthael a look over Tiss’s shoulder that asked, You told her?
Malthael shrugged and looked away. Tiss had heard him calling Elisabeth’s name when she’d first been attacked. What else had he been supposed to do?
“There, there,” Elisabeth said, comforting her.
When the communication device in Malthael’s vest pocket began to vibrate, he’d never been more relieved. “I’ll tell you if I hear anything.”
Chapter 8: Hystera
Jinq and his spirit animal, Hibrius, watched the young girl as she moved through a series of stances that were part of a meditative exercise. A basis for hand-to-hand combat, it was a series of strikes and maneuvers that Kerrigan managed flawlessly. It made Jinq’s old bones ache. The exercise was primarily about achieving balance, both physically and emotionally. His gaze flicked up to her spirit animal, which was perched on a tree in the temple’s courtyard. It was rare for a saw-whet owl to choose a partner at such a young age.
The girl hadn’t even finished growing, but already she had a spirit animal. They would be bound forever in life and in death. It was the way of their world, and yet she couldn’t have lived more than thirteen or fourteen winters. Some clans, like his, connected with their spirit animals when they were children, but members of the owl clan usually didn’t until they were older, at least seventeen winters.
The owl’s body was mostly brown and white, and it had little wings. Its oversized head was half absorbed by its body, making it appear almost perfectly round. It watched Kerrigan with golden eyes under hooded lids, apparently falling asleep. She finished the movements and settled into a final pose. Sweat clung to her brown hair and tan face. The peppered marks around her hairline were a deep black.
The owl family was well known for their fighters, and apparently this girl was one of the best. It was no doubt the reason that Hipasha had suggested her goddaughter would make an excellent companion. Jinq knew young Kerrigan should have excelled and been accepted into a profession, but she was going to struggle because her mother had killed herself. Suicide was considered the greatest sin amongst their people, the act not even allowed to regain honor.
When she gathered her things, the owl swooped down and landed on her shoulder. She patted him on the head before hurrying up the steps, giving Jinq only a passing glance but tensing when she saw him.
“Kerrigan of the Owl Clan,” he called, turning toward her.
She hesitated as though she still wanted to run, but finally faced him. He could tell from her weary eyes and tense stature that she was used to verbal abuse. It was not uncommon for children of a suicide to be treated like pariahs, particularly by their peers. Without even a father to support her, Kerrigan could not have had an easy time of it. She seemed ready to flee and fight all at once.
“Who are you?” she demanded as her owl tilted its head to the side.
“I am Jinq of the Panther Clan,” he said and watched as her tension subsided.
“Keeper.” She tipped her head in respect. “My godmother told me you would be seeking me out.” She shifted the bag on her shoulder. “I can be ready to leave directly. There is only the matter of provisions.”
“Good,” Jinq responded, watching her body language for any worrisome signs. “Tell me, Kerrigan, do you know what our mission is?”
She shifted and swallowed heavily. “We are seeing why there is a sudden string of suicides in a village on the
northern edge of the southern border. I’m to be your assistant.”
In Hystera only certain people were allowed to know about the gates. He was a Keeper of their people, especially attuned to the planet and, therefore, to the gate. It was like a tear in the planet. Yet the general citizens of the world did not know about the gates or the other worlds, including Kerrigan.
“Do you know why Hipasha choose you?” Jinq asked, a little uncertain himself but attuned to how the Owl Clan operated.
Frowning a little, she diverted her eyes. “Because of what my mother did.” Jinq could sense her shame.
“Very likely,” Jinq said, comforted by her display of emotions and attempt to control them. “Let us depart now.”
“Now?” Kerrigan asked, hurrying to catch up.
“No time like the present,” he replied, looking to the sky as they walked down the great steps that lead from the temple.
“We don’t have any supplies!” she protested, and her owl’s talons tightened as she bound down the steps.
“We have Mara,” Jinq replied calmly.
“What is a Mara?” Kerrigan asked after a moment’s pause.
“That,” Jinq said, gesturing toward a large elephant with a pack on its back, “is Mara.”
“Whoa,” Kerrigan said, her mouth slack jawed as she stopped to stare.
Jinq smiled as he reached the bottom of the steps and continued toward the gate. Mara was drinking from a large ceramic pot filled with water. She filled her trunk, then raised it to her mouth. She glanced over at them as they approached, and Jinq patted her on the side as his panther rubbed up against her leg. She patted Hibrius on the head with her trunk before returning to her water.
“Where is her spirit partner?” Kerrigan asked, glancing around.
“Mara is alone,” Jinq said, patting the elephant’s side. “She bonded with a young girl in a village further north who died before they could complete the bonding ceremony. She has been alone longer than I have been alive.”