Even if everything was all black.
The leather coat that he had given her had a great deal of zippers and little pockets. She sat on the bench seat and couldn’t help but fiddle with them. She had so many places to hide and tuck things. The pocket watch that Maverick had given her was already hidden away safely.
There were only a few things she refused to part with. A few scraps of fabric here and there that she tied onto her new leather belt or tucked into her bag of supplies.
Everyone here is so quick to give things away. A knife from Lyon, a pocket watch from Maverick, and new clothes from Aon. She frowned. She was quickly finding herself in debt to them. She disliked owing anyone anything. But it seemed Aon had thought of a way for her to pay them back.
“You heard me, Lyon. There is no need to shout.” Aon’s tone was terse and cold.
Lyon stood from the table to pace around the room, his white clothing looking once more out of place in the darkness that surrounded him. “You cannot use her as bait. You are ensuring that she dies a terrible death.”
“That is likely. But she will serve the greater good by doing so.” Aon steepled his fingers in front of his face. “By baiting the trap, she might yet save the lives of thousands.”
Maverick sighed heavily and sipped the glass of wine that had been given to him. “We all know you are not one to value the individual life over—”
“Over what, Elder of Words?” Aon interrupted. “Over the lives of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions, perhaps? Yes. You are right. I will sacrifice one mortal life to save Under. If that makes me cruel, so be it.”
“Have you asked her opinion on the matter?” Kamira asked. She was sitting sideways in the chair, her long, bare legs kicked up over the wooden arm. Her back was resting on Lydia’s arm. The two were clearly close friends. “Maybe the mortal should get a say in whether or not she’s put onto the rat trap like a slice of cheese.”
“The mortal has no say in the matter.” Aon gestured his hand dismissively. “She is mortal.”
“What say you, Ember?” Lyon asked her.
Ember froze, not liking it when the room was focused on her. Ini, Aon, Maverick, Lyon, Lydia, and Kamira were all staring at her. Creatures that were so much bigger than she was. So much more powerful.
So much more permanent.
“He’s right,” she muttered. “I shouldn’t get a say.”
Lyon furrowed his brow. “Pardon?”
“I don’t—” She reluctantly spoke up. “I shouldn’t get a say. Look at you all. Ancient, powerful creatures defending an ancient, powerful world. Who am I? I’m twenty-three. I’m from a world that’s already dead and gone. And my world brought yours a plague. If I can help stop it, so be it. I’m a fruit fly compared to you. I’d die from tripping over a rock and getting eaten by a plant if I were left to my own devices. Maybe this way my life can mean something.”
“Finally, a mortal with some sense.” She could hear the smile in Aon’s voice. “It’s taken long enough.”
Lydia smacked his arm.
“Why her?” Lyon shook his head and sat back down in his chair. “I do not understand why Rxa is fixated upon her.”
“As far as I can reason from the story she has told me, he might have imprinted on her like a baby goose.” Aon rested his clawed hand on the arm of his chair, running the sharp and pointed tips over the carved surface. “She showed him his first taste of compassion after returning from the grave. Coupled with her innocence in the circumstances surrounding his death, he is likely using her as a psychological lifeline to his own morality. Something to cling to in his newfound darkness.”
Great. I’m a glorified stuffed animal.
Lydia frowned. The blonde woman didn’t wear a mask, much like Lyon. Turquoise esoteric writing, with jagged points and dangerous-looking spirals, wandered down her cheeks and from the corner of one of her eyes. It was beautiful, if bizarre. “There’s no other way?”
Aon stood from the chair and moved to the wall. He picked up a black burlap bag from where it rested in the shadows. Opening the drawstring, he reached in and pulled out a large object. It wasn’t until he threw it onto the table, and it rolled, off-center and bouncing in a strange way, that Ember saw what it was.
Everyone at the table recoiled.
It was a human head.
And it was still alive.
Well…alive was relative.
Its single remaining eye was open, bloodshot and wild, its mouth opening and closing as it tried in desperate futility to attack the warm flesh that it could sense.
Lydia groaned. “I told you Maeve was going to bring just a head. Why does she always bring back just the head?”
“While these creatures—zombies, drengil, call them what you will—are not impossible to kill, they are problematic in their tenacity and their voracity.” Aon stood by the table, his hands clasped behind his back, the burlap bag abandoned on the floor.
All the while, the head gaped and bared its teeth uselessly from where it sat, plopped on the table like a hideous animated roast.
“As far as I can estimate, the bodily functions are reduced to electrical signals that originate from the brain.” Aon sat down in his chair casually, as if nothing had happened. “The poison lives inside the soft tissue of the skull and commandeers the body. But while this might appear as a plague or as a simple disease…it relies, like all our woes, on the power of an Ancient to drive it. Otherwise, the brain would be starved of oxygen and other requirements to continue sending its signals to the body. This is not a purely mathematical condition.”
“That is why destroying the brain disables them.” Maverick leaned forward to examine the severed head closer. “If we cannot engineer a cure for this, then what do you recommend?”
“I never said that.” Aon leaned back in the chair, his featureless masked face looking toward Ember. She tried not to shrink back at the sudden shift of attention. “I said it was not a purely mathematical condition. We have part of the solution sitting with us this morning.”
Ember shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. Once the poison has overtaken the mind, my blood doesn’t do anything. It isn’t a cure once the person has died.”
“Yes. But you are assuming that I am a creature of limited intelligence like those who designed the serum that changed you.” Aon chuckled. “I assure you, I am not.”
“Sometimes I think if you were ten percent less smug, you might cease to exist.” Lydia shot him a look. “So, what’s the plan, then? Are you going to use her as a science experiment, or use her as bait?”
“Both.”
The room groaned at Aon’s reply.
Lyon looked the most exhausted by the conversation. “I do not like sacrificing her to either you or Rxa.”
“Noted. But as the young girl said herself, she is not likely to survive for long in Under on her own. We all know how ill-fated a mortal can be in this unwelcoming world of ours.” Aon gestured toward Lydia. “Don’t we?”
“Don’t bring me into this.” Lydia picked up her glass of wine and got up from the table, walking over toward the fire. “Stop using me as an excuse, Aon.”
“I am merely citing example.”
“You—” Maverick began, clearly gearing up for an argument.
“Stop!” Ember shouted. The room froze. All heads turned to her. “Stop it. All of you. I’m agreeing to this. He asked, and I agreed. To all of this. My life was always meant to be a short one. My life was always meant to be sacrificed. That’s the end of it.”
No one spoke for a beat.
“Thank you, Ember.” Aon sounded quite pleased with himself.
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
“I politely request to be present when you…do whatever it is you plan to do to her, Aon,” Lyon said quietly.
“Why, so you might nag me for my cruelty?”
“So that I might provide support to the girl.” Lyon clenched one of his hands into a fist briefly
. For a moment, he honestly looked frustrated. He looked like he might care.
Why? I’m nobody to them.
“Very well. You can hold her hand all you like.” Aon pushed up from the chair again and picked up the head from the table that still sat there, grotesquely mouthing at the air in a desperate attempt to kill them.
He tossed it into his fireplace.
“The rest of you are dismissed. Lyon, Ember, with me. I find myself eager to begin my work.”
“What about all the people gathered in your ballroom?” Lydia asked as she stood from her chair. “What happens to them?”
“If we survive Rxa’s attack, then you can take them south to the Temple of Dreams with us as we take him there to imprison him. As for now? I care not. Make them finger sandwiches if it amuses you.” Aon took the fire poker and jabbed at the head, rolling it farther into the flames.
The Queen of Dreams pinched the bridge of her nose. “You’re such an ass sometimes.”
“I am what I am, my dear. As I have always been. Now, let’s adjourn. We have work to do, and not very much time to do it.” Aon set the poker back into the set with the sound of metal sliding on metal.
Ember sighed. What have I gotten myself into?
The walk down into the basement of Aon’s estate was a quiet one. Lyon wasn’t one for casual conversation, and it seemed Aon was more than happy to avoid small talk, as well. Ember, meanwhile, wasn’t used to having people to talk to.
So, she stayed silent.
She was nervous. She kept reaching for the strap to her spear, but it wasn’t there. Instead, she shoved her hands into her pockets, or fiddled with the zippers of her new leather coat.
“Oh.” She blinked. “Thank you, Aon.”
“Hum?” He turned his head slightly to glance at her. “For what?”
“The clothes.” She smiled faintly. “Thanks.”
“Trust me, it was as much for my benefit as it was for yours.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. She knew it was meant as an insult, but it was also a little funny. “New clothes are hard to come by when you spend every day fighting for your life. I’m sorry for any inconvenience my appearance caused you.”
“It wasn’t so much the appearance as it was the smell. There is a reason I do not spend time at the House of Flames.” Aon grunted.
“Well, anyway. Thank you. The clothes are appreciated, no matter the reason.” She smirked up at Lyon. The tall, pale blood-drinker looked worried, his usually doleful expression drawn tight.
“You are welcome. Ah. Here we are.” Aon pushed open a large wooden door. It creaked a little on its hinges. “Forgive me, I have not used the doors in my home in a long time. I fear I’ve forgotten where some of my rooms actually are.” He chuckled. “This impediment upon my magic is both amusing and irritating at the same time.”
The room Aon led them into was large. The walls were carved out of huge, smooth stone blocks stacked upon each other. The mortar was thick and grayed with age. There were tables in rows along the walls and in the center of the room. And on all the surfaces were…things. Gadgets. Copper tubes, brass pipes, glass vials. Wires and strange blinking lights.
And where there weren’t gadgets, there were paper and books, piled on top of each other, covered in the same strange esoteric writing that she saw everywhere else. It wasn’t a scientific laboratory, however. Or at least…not purely. Strange symbols were drawn on the floors, walls, and ceilings. They gave her a strange feeling simply by looking at them.
“Your magic has suffered?” Lyon asked. “I am unable to pass through the fold, but my powers remain otherwise untouched.”
“The magic I own that derives from the creations made by the Ancient for whom I am a royal remains untouched. But most of my more complicated spells come not from the shadows that reign in Under, but from weaving together an intricate web of strings that I pull from each of the Ancients’ sources. From blood, and moons, and the like. What is black, if not the combination of all colors?”
“The absence of all the colors,” Ember muttered. “Depends on if you’re talking about light or paint.”
“Indeed. Clever child. And I am both the absence of all, and the combination of all, all at the same time.” He motioned for them to follow him farther into the room. “Once that contradiction is understood, a great many doors open to the mind.”
“I’ll work on that,” Ember muttered again. “Don’t think I’ll live long enough to figure it out, though.”
Aon chuckled. “Ah. Yes. This is what I need.” He pulled a large muslin cloth off a leather chair. One side had an odd-looking armrest with straps on it. “Please take a seat, Ember.”
She swallowed thickly.
A hand fell on her shoulder. Lyon. He looked down at her with a tender, if sorrowful, expression. “Aon will not kill you. He has promised this.”
“A lot can be done to somebody without killing them.” Ember sighed. “But I agreed to this. It’s fine.”
“Remove your coat, roll up your sleeve, and take a seat, please.” Aon gestured to the chair. “This might sting.”
She did as he asked and watched as the man in all black strapped her left arm into the armrest. “I’m used to pain.”
“Are you?” Aon paused, his masked face turning to her. “I suppose by your standards.” He turned to a table nearby and began to tinker with various bottles and devices.
Ember thought it was better not to watch. She turned her head away and found something else to look at. Jars of colored liquid that caught the amber light. “When we train to be hunters as children, we’re taught to withstand pain. The weak are culled, the strong survive. That is the way of Gioll. And every weak soul left to turn into a drengil is just one more body that needs to be put down.”
Lyon frowned down at her. “Are you implying…”
“The weak were put out of their misery. Yeah.” Ember shut her eyes. “I lost a lot of friends when I was little. But it was the only way to survive.”
She jerked in surprise as something cold touched the crook of her elbow. She looked down to see Aon rubbing a small, damp cotton swab on her elbow. Alcohol, maybe?
He produced a needle attached to a thin plastic tube. She watched, curious now, as he fed the needle under her skin. She watched the tube fill with crimson as her blood ran down the short length into a vial.
He filled one vial with her blood before capping it with a cork and replacing it with a second empty glass vial. He repeated the pattern with a third. Then a fourth. A fifth. A sixth.
With another ball of cotton in his clawed hand, he removed the needle with his flesh and blood one and pressed the ball to the wound. “Hold that there.”
She did once more as she was told.
Aon turned back to the table, placed the six corked vials of blood into a wooden rack. He came back with a piece of medical tape and stuck the cotton ball to the needle wound on her arm and undid the leather straps.
“You are free to go. You may be a bit lightheaded, but you will be fine after you rest. Lyon can show you back upstairs to your rooms or to your fellow survivors if you prefer.”
“That’s it?” She raised her eyebrow at the man in black.
“What did you expect?” Aon straightened. “Torture? Wherever would you have come to that impression?” The man in black turned to the one in white. “Really, my reputation is wholly unearned.”
“No,” Lyon replied dryly. “It isn’t.”
Ember stood from the chair and threw on her new leather coat. “If I can be of any more help, let me know.”
Aon only grunted in response. The man was already fiddling with equipment. It was clear that they were dismissed. Lyon gestured for her to go first, and they made their way out of the room and back upstairs.
Halfway to her rooms, she shook her head and chuckled.
“What’s so amusing?” the tall blood-drinker asked.
“Both of you. Ancient, powerful creatures…playing games like that. It’s
nice to see.”
“Nice?”
“It means you aren’t gods. It means you’re just people.”
“Some might find that dismaying.”
“I don’t.” She smiled. “I find it oddly comforting. Sure, any one of you could still squish me like a bug. But it means you aren’t like these stone statues. Even if you do resemble them.”
Lyon sighed. “I suppose that is what I get for wearing white. It is the color of my house, and I am not in control of my pale countenance, which—”
She laughed and playfully nudged his elbow. “It wasn’t an insult. I hope I look half as good as you do at twenty-three hundred years old. Trust me, I won’t.”
Lyon smiled gently down at her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “You are an odd soul, to shine so bright in so much death and darkness.”
“Live for every second. It’s a survival technique, but…it’s also an outlook. If I can enjoy the second I’m in—every one of them—then I will have appreciated the gift of life that was given to me. It’s easy to take things for granted. Clothes, food, shelter…” She ran her hand down the main zipper of her leather coat. “You gave me a knife. Aon gave me clothes. You both have fed me and given me somewhere warm to sleep. Maverick gave me a pocket watch. I don’t know that you understand how much that means to me. How little I’ve been given in my life and how much has been taken away. I’ve been shown more kindness in the past two days on Under than I have in the past two and a half years on Gioll.”
“It doesn’t mean you should accept your death as inevitable. It does not mean you shouldn’t strive to continue.”
She shook her head. “I don’t plan on dying. I plan on doing everything I can to make sure I don’t. But see my previous comment about ‘squished like a bug.’” She laughed again. “One of you could sneeze wrong and wipe me off the face of this world, I’m sure.”
“Not I. Dtu, perhaps.” He chuckled. He came to a stop in front of a door she vaguely recognized as one that led to her room. “Get some rest. I will check on the other survivors and ensure their needs are being met. Although, for all his crass words, it is not like Aon to neglect his duties as host. I expect they are fine.”
Mask of Poison (Fall of Under Book 1) Page 23