For a moment I believe he’ll overcome gravity somehow and re-assert his balance, but he falls. He doesn’t plunge far but the sound his head makes when it impacts with the edge of a boulder—and the angle of his neck when he lands—makes me turn away, the back of my skull aching in sympathy. A wet, meaty thud. I’m uncomfortably reminded of the term like an overripe melon. It’s a cliché but, in this case, all too true, the pulpy reddish matter splattered about.
His limbs twitch spasmodically but his eyes stare into eternity. Oh, he’s dead all right. I don’t have a chance to feel any triumph at the matter. The cell phone emits the tinny words of a man saying “Hello, hello?” over and over again.
The call has gone through. House Montu knows something is amiss.
Marlise.
Her death freezes through me.
“Bastard!” I try to descend, only to have my world explode in a blaze of agony so that I fall back. Something large and heavy has just side-swiped me. Vaguely I’m aware of Cynthia crawling over me to finish her climb, but my ears ring so much I’m not quite sure what the hell is happening around me.
As I regain some of my composure I’m able to piece together what occurred: Cynthia somehow smashing me with the pistol, the stock connecting with my temple, which throbs in such a way to suggest I’m leaking a steady flow of blood into my hair and onto the ledge.
Raising a shaky hand to touch the wound, I’m stopped midway by Cynthia’s boot smashing into my ribs.
“You fucking fool!” she shrieks. “You’ve killed him!” Her grief lashes out with a secondary almost-physical blow.
For a moment my world constricts to the narrow band of pain I’m tuned to, my inability to draw breath rendering me into nothing more than a crumpled bundle of quivering limbs. All I see in my mind is Paul’s face, his lips parted and the steady spread of crimson dripping. In the distance I hear the tinny crackle of the cell phone call that has gone through…
What must the person on the other end of the connection be hearing?
Marlise.
I’ve killed her.
Somewhere, deep within me an ember flares. They’ve killed her, an innocent. Whether the fury stems from a genetic quirk of this Kha’s make up, I don’t know, but I manage to curl onto my side and lunge at Cynthia. My fist meets only thin air before something heavy smashes into my groin, and has me back in foetal position faster than I can gather my scattered senses.
Cynthia strikes again, this time jabbing fingers into the soft flesh of my neck, half paralysing me. Jolt after jolt of daimonic power flashes through me. This is what someone who’s accidently come into contact with an electricity cable must feel like.
The only mercy is that my awareness cuts out, dropping me into blessed nothingness.
* * * *
Birdcalls, a soft, insistent swee-swee, lure me back from the dark. It seems odd that I am outside, lying on damp earth with rocks prodding into my ribs and limbs. The events preceding this predicament hit me at full force and I sit up, wishing immediately upon getting upright, that I’d been more careful.
I’m on the mountain overlooking Fish Hoek, the houses like some sort of malignant crust between the tarmac ribbons threading through the town. The golf course below to my right has tiny matchstick figures crawling about like ants. Breathing is only possible if I do so slowly, wincing at the sharp stab in my left side every time I move. An insistent dull pressure in my skull makes me wish I didn’t have to open my eyes to a too-bright world.
The dark figure watching me from a rock about two paces to my left resolves into Cynthia, holding vigil with that damned pistol pointed directly at me. “Your woman is deceased, whitey.” Malice glitters in her eyes.
All of this is so unreal I can’t quite conceptualise what Marlise’s death must mean. It’s all insubstantial in the face of my current predicament, which involves somehow ensuring that Cynthia…
I must kill her. A life for a life.
Yet somehow the idea of taking an active hand in another’s death doesn’t hold much appeal to a part of me that’s rapidly being drowned out by another baying for vengeance.
“She must die!” It’s Ashton.
Pressure builds up in me, a maelstrom in my heart centre, coiling up and down my spine. My fingers close around a fist-sized rock.
Cynthia smiles, gestures with the gun. “You can put the rock down, Neffie. You won’t need that hand to undo the compulsion, and I’m quite happy to ensure you’re in a lot of pain.” The way she speaks a corruption of my Ren communicates layer upon layer of contempt.
“You killed her.”
“No, you did, doing whatever it was that killed Paul.”
“It wasn’t me!” I shout. A searing fire within my heart says Marlise is dead, Marlise is dead, over and over again.
“Get up, filth. I don’t have time for ‘he said, she said’, conversations after the fact.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I’ll make you get up. You choose. Either you do it the easy way, of your own volition, or I make it extremely painful. And dampen your power or I shoot you where you won’t bleed to death immediately.”
“We could die, both of us, and they’ll never get that damned stone,” Ash whispers.
That’s a vain hope. House Montu would never give up. Even if it takes them decades, they’ll work here until they find the stele.
Cynthia rises and, by the way she moves, it’s clear she’s wary. She keeps her free hand loose, almost as if for balance. Her right hand clutches the pistol, which doesn’t waver. Unshed tears glint in the corners of her eyes and I wonder exactly what her relationship with Paul was. Lovers? A small stab of guilt niggles at me but I make an effort to ignore it. This woman is partially responsible for Marlise’s death, and if I somehow escape here today, I will go back and make the rest of them pay as well.
Near me Ashton surges, a bright fire of malevolence.
“Your powers,” Cynthia says. “Dampen them.”
It takes some effort, but I close my eyes long enough to visualise a squaring away of my energy. I do this in a way that suggests to Ashton that he needs to make himself scarce. But he’s outside of the Kha. There’s no way of telling how much he’s aware of.
With a groan I stumble to my feet, having to reach out for support offered by a boulder. The sandstone is rough under my fingers. My skin looks waxen against the lichen, the tone almost yellow, like that of a corpse. A sudden wave of nausea floods my system and I have to swallow hard to stop myself from vomiting right there in front of the damned bitch who has her gun trained on me.
Cynthia motions for me to lead the way, and I hobble past her. I’m certain she’s well aware I’m only biding my time, looking for that one chink in her armour so I can lash out. After all, I don’t really have anything to lose. Each limb protests my ascent and I have to pause often to catch my breath, bright sparks wiggling in my field of vision. If I stretch my awareness beyond my Kha with care, I detect her daimonic essence, which flares around her, questing, drinking in her environment and searching it for anything that may present a threat. Ashton had better tread with caution if he wants to prove himself as the ace up my sleeve.
Two false tunnels gape at us out of the wall of rock, looking far more innocent during the brightness of day than they did on that night when I was up here with Marlise. Nothing here strikes me as untoward.
I pause long enough to straighten my spine with an audible clack-clack of vertebrae sliding into place, pretending to ignore the death glares Cynthia offers me as I take my time. Where the hell is Ashton? I can’t capture a whiff of his presence, not even the slightest sense of being watched.
“You gonna stand there all day and flex your muscles, big boy?” Cynthia asks. “We don’t have time.”
If there’s one thing I know for certain, if I find this stele and hand it over this hell-bitch, I won’t be descending from the mountain. I pause, mid-stretch, and regard her as mildly as possible. There’s no point in aggravati
ng the woman any more than she already is.
“Do you want me to deactivate the compulsion, or do you want to fuck up your mission more than it already is?”
Cynthia emits a low hiss, her agitation reaching out for me so that I am forced to take a step back. “Stop playing games. Let’s end this as soon as possible. The thing isn’t in one of those two, is it?” She inclines her head toward the larger of the two gaps.
I gain the distinct impression she has no great love for enclosed spaces.
“It’s around the corner.” With a theatrical sigh, I trudge to the left of the largest of the two entrances, around a bulge of rock that hides the crack in the mountain where the cave’s narrow slot gapes at me.
It’s not just that I’m going to die at the hands of some psychotic madwoman. Something isn’t quite right. I pause at the initial climb, just before the maw. The air here is damp, the kind of moisture I associate with stone that has never had a chance to fully dry, like one would find in basements. The air washing against my face holds a chill, not unlike that of a fridge.
It’s the silent expectance that has me balking. How the hell did I manage to enter this place at night, during a storm? Perhaps it was because it already was so dark, it didn’t bother me as much to fumble my way over the tumbled stones down the throat of this particular location.
“What is it?” Cynthia asks behind me. “Go in, will you.”
“Wai—” I don’t get a chance to finish my sentence.
I think we both hear the sound, a bone-deep chunk-clunk-chunk of loosening stone—a large rock—rough surfaces tearing and squeaking against each other and releasing a small shower of pebbles that rattle down the walls on either side of us.
We both look up at the exact moment that a dozen rocks varying from fist- through to coconut-sized bounce down, their downward motion almost cheerful.
Something crashes into my side just as a particularly large fragment shatters where I stood only moments ago, and I am flung against a wall, the breath knocked out of me. I’m sprawled half into the mouth of a dark hole that wends its way a few hundred metres through a mountain, with goodness knows how many lateral passages and pits for the unwary. This mountain is honeycombed with tunnels, cracks and abysses. It can swallow me, and no one will ever find my remains.
Cynthia’s shape is silhouetted against the sky as she staggers toward me, her skin slick with blood flowing freely from a wicked-looking gash on her forehead.
“You don’t quit, do you,” I mumble.
The crackle of her indrawn daimonic powers is staggering. Nothing like a knock to the head to awaken one’s magical ability, eh? I don’t have time to react. Whatever Ashton did, he’s got her on uneven footing, and we’re down to combat—Inkarna style.
Her teeth bared, Cynthia lashes out first, attempting to punch me in the face, the strike reinforced by a gathering of power. Her fist misses me but the daimonic blow slams me so hard into the wall my head cracks against the rock and all I can see is bright sparks wriggling across my field of vision.
Already I can feel the pull of daimonic essence being gathered, the same way a fisherman would reel in a net. Two can play at that game, though I’m so dazed my own process takes off in fits and starts. She’s going to release before I can.
But she’s not ready for this kind of fighting. The air is heavy with the icy tang of her fear, and she’s got the nosebleed to end all nosebleeds. Whether this is from the bump she took to her head earlier, courtesy of Ashton’s poltergeist activities, or her efforts to fight on a full Inkarna level I don’t know. It won’t matter if she can keep me off centre. She’s going to incapacitate me easily enough.
“Don’t you want the stele?” I ask.
She answers by rushing me, displaying her uncanny strength by shoving me against the wall, her fists bunching my t-shirt so hard fabric tears. The small mercy is she hasn’t fully grabbed her powers.
When I try to pull at my own abilities, it’s through a haze of pain. Damn. Where the hell is Ashton? Has he expended himself in that spectacular rock fall? If so, I’m so royally stuffed it’s going to take a miracle to get me out of this predicament. I may be taller than Cynthia, but her muscles are toned and she knows exactly how to hit the most sensitive spots.
Though I snatch her wrists, her knee comes up to connect with my groin. There’s no way in hell that I’m going to let go, however, so I twist and we both fall the few steps down into the slot. Maybe it’s the adrenalin or my jumped-up awareness, but I don’t feel any pain from the impact. At least not yet.
Cynthia lets out a small whimper but brings her head down. I save myself at the last moment, but she still clips my right temple and, for a few heartbeats, all I can do is lie back, my cheek pressed to slick damp stone and try to clear my vision of exploding star bursts.
There is another way. That much I know, though I don’t want to do it. The words of The Book of Ammit would be easy to recite. Full-blown Inkarna Cynthia may not be, but those evil words would still serve to sever her connection and plunge her immortal souls into the slavering jaws of The Devourer. She has blood on her hands, this woman. Her Ib weighs more than the feather of Ma’at. Even now Marlise is possibly dead. Cynthia had the power to stay the executioner’s hand and she didn’t.
Marlise never asked for any of this, yet she gave and, in her own way, she tried to understand. She could have been so much more, given the opportunity, and now we are both tangled in House Montu’s machinations.
This understanding, my fiery sense of Ma’at perverted, lifts a growl from deep in my chest. Where I get the power from, I’m not sure, but as I rise, I push Cynthia from me so hard she smashes into the wall opposite, her limbs almost boneless from the impact.
What dim light still reaches this far into this cave outlines the woman’s fluttering lashes as she tries to open her eyes, her breath whistling in and out of her mouth. Where the gun is now, only the devil knows but I have to finish her because she would not extend me the courtesy of walking away alive.
“I can’t do it,” I whisper.
Even now she stirs, her limbs twitching as she tries to regain control of her faculties.
“Then we’ll all die. You. Me. Marlise.” It’s Ashton, his presence a nebulous mist swirling about me, raising the small hairs on my arms. “They haven’t killed her.”
He must have gone back. There’s no time to thank him. Cynthia lurches into a seated position, her muscles bunching as she prepares to fly at me. The inrush of power whines on the edges of my awareness, verging on audible.
I don’t have time to negotiate. I strike. Where the power behind my blow comes from, I don’t ask, but my senses blur as though I view the scene through two pairs of eyes—mine and Ashton’s, who is slightly superimposed upon me, adding his force of will to mine.
My fist connects with Cynthia’s skull and something crunches upon the impact of knuckle to cartilage. A rush of energy so intense it burns through my tendons flows from me. The world grows dimmer, the light from outside fades and a terrible ringing starts in my ears.
Cynthia drops with a meaty thud. Where her face was is a concave hollow, her features collapsed inward. No human fist should be able to offer so much damage. Sheer blazing agony envelopes my hand and I blink stupidly, holding my arm up to the light. Already the skin is bruised and I flex the fingers experimentally. Nothing’s broken but I’m going to be hurting for a long while yet. That’s if I make it through the next day or two. Blue-green motes flit about my extremities, the residue of our altercation.
It sinks in then when I glance down at Cynthia’s body. I’ve taken yet another life. The horror of that is dizzying and I have to sit, unable to look away from the woman’s corpse.
No mere human should be able to devastate like that.
“What have I done?” I murmur. Shadows wriggle at the edge of my vision.
Ashton’s voice rings hollow in my head. “What should have been done a long time ago, sweetcakes. I thought it was kak havi
ng to hang out with you in the same body, but I’ve grown quite fond of this deal.”
“You tried to kill Marlise that first time.” My voice echoes off the stone. Empty.
Cynthia has been reduced to so much meat. How long before the decay sets in? That being a fact, should I even bother doing anything about the body?
“Wouldn’t you have an extreme reaction after regaining your body?”
“No.” Well, maybe. I can’t tell anymore.
I recall waking in that hospital ward. So recently… Yet it feels as though months, even years, have passed since that first moment. My heart goes out to Ashton’s parents. I don’t ever want to see them for the shame of disappointment. They’re a million light years from where we are now.
“They’re ineffectual.”
“They’re your parents.”
“We’re a danger to them.”
I can’t disagree with that statement. So many loose ends. Groaning, I rise, pointedly looking away from the woman’s body. “So, they haven’t killed Marlise. Why?”
“I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. The little girl was having an argument with the old man. Didn’t pick up all the details, but whatever was up the old man wasn’t budging.”
They must have known something would go wrong, but then why let a half-cocked Inkarna and an initiate handle something for which they were clearly not ready? What I do know of House Montu is that they have a very high turnover among their initiates. Most of them don’t make it past their trials. Could it be that this was a trial for Cynthia? Survival of the fittest and now her misjudgement has taken her out of the game? It’s doubtful whether she’ll get her second opportunity, although she was so damn close there’s always a chance I’ve just ensured myself an immortal enemy. And Binneman knows I’ll come back for Marlise, no matter what transpires here on the mountain.
I shudder.
Of the stele? Should I take it with me, stash it somewhere temporary and try save Marlise? Or should I do the sensible thing and run, run as far as possible without looking back until such time that I can build up House Adamastor’s resources?
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