by A. J. Vrana
“What if I don’t make it back in time?” she questioned.
“Go,” he groaned. “You’ll make it.”
“How can you be so sure after everything that’s happened? How will you know it’s me and not death beside you?”
Kai’s mouth quirked, and he couldn’t stop the laugh that rumbled from his chest. It hurt like all hell, like his ribs were about to shatter, but having Miya nearby left him with few shits to give about the sorry state of his body. Tugging her hand to his lips, he marked her palm with a bloody kiss and said, “That fucking raven could claw my eyes out, and I’d still know it’s you next to me.” Her murky green eyes found his, and the fear melted from his bones. “Besides, I’m pretty sure death smells nothing like you.”
Miya leaned over and pressed her mouth to his. “You’re right,” she whispered. “Death smells far sweeter.”
Silently, she lay down next to him and extended her arm, the gesture a command. Gavran swooped down, perched on her shoulder, and chortled victoriously.
“We’ve got prey to hunt,” she said, then lifted the dream stone.
Kai’s vision was fading, exhaustion and blood loss pulling him to darkness, but he resisted. He lolled his head to the side and stared at Miya’s face. She looked serene as she readied herself for the greatest test of her life.
From across the room, Kai saw Ama smile.
53
MIYA
When Miya opened her eyes, she was staring at The Mangy Spade’s ornate brass chandelier. In place of the cobwebbed ceiling were thatched branches, swaying smoothly overhead. She sat up and surveyed her environment. The air was thick with otherworldly smoke, the usually warm-brown furniture now washed out like an old photograph.
She heard weeping, a distant knelling like the voice of a solemn bell. The wolves were still and pale like marble, but Gavran’s spectral body remained perched on her arm, his blue-black feathers shimmering as the bounds of his form shuddered in the haze.
Rusalka—the source of the wails—stood several paces away. Her sobs crescendoed as her head twisted towards Miya, then halted. All emotion fell from her face, her expression blank save for the tears marring her cheeks. She looked different—not like the decaying monster Miya had come to know, but like a young woman whose heart had been broken. Her once Medusan hair flowed down her back like waves of clear water, her skin shining like pearls where it had once been sickly and dull. And her eyes—previously like wide tunnels—held in them a glint of emerald.
Miya rose to her feet, her attention never leaving the demoness. “You’re here.”
Her mouth opened, but she struggled to speak. “Only…a little.”
“Keeping one foot in each world is hard.” Miya shifted her weight. “You making sure I live up to my word?”
A stilted nod, like a puppet made of wood.
“I hope this brings you peace, Yvette,” Miya said softly, then turned to leave.
“I’m jealous…”
She peeked over her shoulder. “Sorry?”
Rusalka’s head ground to the side like her spine was made of rusty gears. “Of all those I’ve compelled…” her voice reverberated against the walls, “none have resisted me…like the black wolf…”
Miya frowned, but she was willing to hear her out. “What are you trying to say?”
“Love is so rare,” Rusalka wheezed. “Everyone thinks they know it because they feel it. But emotions are fleeting as dandelions in spring.” She dragged in another painful breath. “Emotions…are not love. Burnished words…are not love.” Slowly, agonizingly, her body rotated to face Miya, her shoulders slumping and her skin sagging as it lost its lustre. “Love is ugly, jagged, and sharp. It cuts. It bleeds. It’s teeth and claws and depthless terror, and anyone who can embrace that is blessed.” Her thin, cracked lips stretched over saw-like teeth, her ghoulish eyes gleaming as the emeralds corroded with re-surfacing malice. “I know this because I fed on those who thought they knew love. I devoured their pretty, gilded promises—their childish, beating hearts. Oh, how they made me beautiful. How their naïvety nourished me.” She gasped, her hand curling into a skeletal fist. “But real love is like a broken wishbone in my throat. It offers me nothing but pain.”
Miya averted her gaze as the grim words washed over her. Rusalka was being genuine, and what she said held true. Kai had survived her curse because he had no delusions about what it would take to be rid of her, and he was willing to bring back the foulest parts of his life to accomplish that.
“His only weakness,” Rusalka grinned, her gums white as ash, “is that he is a man…and men are liars to themselves most of all.”
“We’re all liars,” replied Miya. “I guess we only pay attention to the lies that hurt us most.” Gavran croaked by her ear, and she reached up to scratch his feathery breast. “But believe me when I say I’ll end this. Not for you, but for Kai. For me, too.”
A low chuckle vibrated from Rusalka’s chest. “Your love…will kill me…”
Something clawed at Miya’s heart then—pity, anger, sadness—she wasn’t sure. “Are you leaving?”
“I know you’ll fulfil your promise.” The smile slipped from her face, and her eyes locked onto Miya’s. “Make him bleed, Dreamwalker.”
Before the scraping in her chest left any more welts, Miya spun and deserted The Spade, leaving Rusalka—no, Yvette—behind her. She would be gone soon, laid to rest by her faith in a single promise: that Miya would end Velizar once and for all.
Miya threw open the doors and found herself staring into the dark, hilly forest of Black Hollow. Although she had no way of verifying her location, she felt it in the bottom of her soul. The roots below came to life, greeting her with their sleepy moans as she traipsed over the leafy ground.
Gavran fluttered next to her, then shot up to the sky and surveyed the land. He swooped and sliced through the wooded maze, leading the way. Even though he’d flown far out of sight, Miya could feel him in her pendant. Power thrummed through the dream stone, whispering to her in tongues only she understood.
This way, it said, and she followed without hesitation.
As Miya stepped deeper into the woods, the foliage around her changed; the leaves curled at the edges and shrivelled to a lifeless sable. Velizar was sucking strength from his surroundings, desperate to regain some semblance of power.
The failed creator had devolved into a wanton destroyer, and it made him so very easy to track.
The birches were charred, their milky skin like tarmac and their wispy branches dry and bent. The soil—a mosaic of earthy browns, rusted reds, and sage specs—bled into scorched black sand. As colour fled and the light vanished, an overpowering stench like burnt rubber washed over Miya. A chill coiled around her exposed neck, and as she approached, a deep, haggard breath thundered all around her.
“You’ve lost another wager,” she called into the gloom. “Only this time with yourself.”
A raspy, feral growl shredded the stillness, and before Miya could get any closer, a cacophony of gravelly voices invaded her. “Another step…Dreamwalker…and you’ll be eaten whole.”
She ignored the threat, and as she strode forward, a shadow rose before her, its edges quivering. Two golden eyes beamed from the abysmal form. Its face was indiscernible until something resembling a mouth—a hole where there should have been lips—yawned open and released a blood-curdling screech. The forest shook and the decay spread, wilting all in its path.
Miya raised an arm as dirt whipped past her, but she remained undeterred.
“You can’t scare me,” she said. “There’s nothing I haven’t already seen from you.”
The gaping cavity widened, stretching like dough until it crawled up the side of the shadow’s would-be face. “You will fear me, Dreamwalker, especially when I am gone.”
“I welcome the day you’re gone.” She tried moving forward, but a cutting gale pushed her back.
“I have felled you countless times!” Velizar protested, pie
ces of his spectral shield moulting away. “Do you remember them, Dreamwalker? The faceless girls on the hill?”
Icy air slit Miya’s skin like a thousand needles. The world around her vanished, and she saw the women, absent of any features, lined up in perfect rows on the sprawling knolls.
“You fear me,” he reiterated from atop the mound, “because you are defined by me. And you are nothing without your enemy.” The king of corpses spread his arms wide, beholding his domain with pride.
As if commanded by his gesture, the women’s heads jittered like marionettes, shaking off the dregs of death. They wrenched left and right; flesh rived and bones splintered as they came free from their necks and levitated. Miya kept her gaze trained on Velizar, fighting the churning in her gut. Then, the floating heads swarmed her, skulls bumping and tongues lashing as they nipped and shrieked. Miya swung her arms to fend them off, but her fingers only grazed flesh like bruised fruit.
“You put the noose around our necks,” one of them hissed.
“You tied us to the pyre,” said another.
“You lit us ablaze,” they chanted in unison.
Miya stumbled back and tried banishing the vision. “It’s not real,” she whispered, focusing on the forest floor, searching for the familiar crunch of dried leaves.
“It is real,” came a girl’s familiar voice. “You just never liked reality.”
Miya looked up and came face to face with Elle. Her jaw was crooked, her left cheek drooping, and her jugular bruised with a thin line where her necklace had drawn taught, choking the air from her lungs. Her eyes were blotched with red, her pupils pale and blank.
“I’m dead because of you.” She struggled to form the words, her lips roiling.
“No,” Miya whimpered, shaking her head. “I found you, Elle. We were in the playground by the woods. Don’t you remember? Your father killed you.”
“Because he thought I was you!” Elle roared, slimy blood spewing from her mouth as she hovered closer. The others crowded around, each of them muttering their own tale of how the Dreamwalker had damned them.
Miya wiped the viscera from her face. Hands shaking, she tried peering over the heads in search of Velizar but found only more victims of his cursed cycle. They were endless—a sea of women who’d lost their lives to his menace.
“We are your victims too!” Jaws unhinged, faces warped, and flesh peeled back as they keened. Their cries were followed by an eruption of flames that consumed each woman’s head. Now alight, they flung themselves at Miya and battered her with sweltering screams.
Terror ravelled up Miya’s limbs, binding her in place. With nowhere to escape, she clapped her hands over her ears, but her eyes were pinned open as tears streamed down her face. Somewhere behind the fear, she felt a gnawing guilt that’d followed her through lifetimes.
These women were dead because of her too. After all, she was the one who bound the wolf. She’d enslaved one god to punish another, and she’d condemned countless women in the process.
Was it true? Was the Dreamwalker just as sinister as her mortal enemy?
“The world would be better off without you,” he crooned. “Without your chaos.”
“No,” Miya choked, heat licking her face.
“The flames are hungry, sweet girl. They yearn for your soul. But first, they’ll have to eat through your body.”
“No,” she insisted, but something inside her wavered. She had no way out. She was trapped—doomed to be killed by the man who’d killed her a thousand times before.
“Why not sate the fire? Put an end to your pain, to this wretched existence in which you’ve trapped yourself.”
Maybe she deserved it just as much as he did.
Velizar’s shadow stretched, consuming the ground like slow-moving lava. It pooled around her feet, threatening to overtake her. “Shall I tell you one final secret before your end, Dreamwalker? Something that took me an eternity suspended in umbrage to understand?”
She was met with rotting teeth and a sickle-like grin cutting across his cavernous face. His jaundiced eyes bulged like swollen yolks as his voice warbled closer, and his sour breath washed over her. “There is no good and evil. There is only power.”
If that were true, then she’d never been good, and Velizar had never been evil. They were an unstoppable force and an immovable object, bound to collide forever. Maybe the morality of it all didn’t matter. Kali believed herself to be just, but Miya wasn’t Kali.
Miya was the Dreamwalker now, and she would forge her own path.
Velizar’s hand came over her face, and her vision blotted with darkness. Skeletal fingers bit into her cheeks and temples as his palm clamped over her mouth. He exhaled with delight, the stench worse than a corpse left out in the summer sun.
Miya snatched his wrist and dug her nails into his grey, pliant skin. With all the force she could muster, she anchored her feet and pried his crab-like hands away just enough to speak. “Is that the best you can do? Insult my moral compass?”
Velizar howled with laughter, and between his spindly fingers, she saw his mercurial shield devour the adjacent trees. “What moral compass? You are chaos; you have no compass. You are the maelstrom that spins the needle. As long as you reign, there will be no path through the storm. And yet you feel righteous, coming here to snuff out the final embers of my life?”
“I’m not here to arbitrate right and wrong.” Miya unlatched his claws one by one. “I’m here to put you out of your misery.”
His face twisted and he staggered back, the burning heads following suit. “My misery?” He choked on the word like it was an affront. Outstretching his arms, the shade that had spread throughout the woodland retreated, coagulating around Velizar’s emaciated figure.
“God of chaos,” he rumbled. “Remember that a storm is nothing without a ship to wreck, without survivors to tell the tale. You are nothing without me! I am creation! I am order! Without me, there is no ship!”
A rueful smile crossed Miya’s face. She really did pity him. “This isn’t about me. It never was.” She inched closer, the blaze dwindling as Velizar’s victims retreated. “It’s always been about your brother. You grieve him, your loss of control over him.” The obsidian mass guttered like a candle, then shrunk away as Miya closed in. “You once told me that creation and destruction are like brothers, two sides of the same coin. It’s you, god of creation, who is nothing without your brother. And I’m here to tell you that you’re never getting him back.” The dream stone rose up, luminous and alive. Miya locked eyes with the phantom and said, “Your little brother’s long outgrown you. He understood from the beginning that what you call chaos is only change.”
Gnashing teeth and throaty snarls yipped from the vacuum in front of her, yet the foliage blighted by Velizar’s taint unfolded with newfound life. As Miya breathed in, lightning flashed from above. Rain descended at the Dreamwalker’s bidding and extinguished the flames enveloping the women’s slaloming heads. One by one, they turned to ash and scattered to the winds. With his creation usurped, the phantom fled, and the miasma thinned.
“Change is a storm,” Miya called after him. “And I am that storm.”
She pursued him into the midnight mist. A dim lavender glow enveloped her as she went, permitting her just enough sight to watch her step. In the apparition’s stead, she found a glistening mass huddled against the concave groove of a dead oak. It rippled and swelled, fighting to take form.
“Stop,” Miya commanded. “Stop trying to be something you’re not. Show me your real face.”
The fiendish ooze bowed, its lumps morphing into discernable shapes—shoulders, knees, the arch of a back, and finally, a head. Miya waited patiently as the oily liquid raked into unkempt sable hair and revealed skin blemished by gashes. Finally, the head rose, and two aurous eyes found Miya’s.
“You won’t have me,” Velizar spat.
“Yes,” said Miya, “I will.”
From the sky above, a raven cawed, then dove
beak first towards them. The god of creation threw up his arms and ducked as Gavran beat his wings and roosted on Miya’s outstretched arm. A cloak of violet and black feathers blossomed over her, and when Velizar lowered his hands, Miya was studying him through her iridescent bone-beak mask.
“I thought of having him peck your eyes out.” She stroked Gavran’s bill with a slender finger. “But those ugly yellow balls in your skull are the only thing setting you apart from your brother.” Crouching down, she clasped him by the chin, then whispered, “And I don’t ever want to forget them.”
He opened his mouth to bellow something back, but Miya didn’t wait. Grabbing a fistful of his hair, she slammed his head into the ground. The black sand crumbled beneath them, the ground breaking away until they both plummeted into a low, dense fog. Miya let go of her prey, allowing him to shamble about as he gathered his bearings.
She wanted him to see. She wanted him to understand. Trapped in his cell, he had nowhere left to run.
The Emerald Shade rose as he staggered. It towered over him, its mammoth bole a barricade blocking his escape.
Miya glided forward, pushing Velizar towards the willow. “I warned you,” she began, repeating the words she’d said to him upon her first death. “Your control is meaningless.”
The god of creation teetered back as the earth quaked with chaos’ every step.
Her voice echoed in the hollow chasm of the in-between. “I promised you’d never be rid of me.”
She stopped in front of Velizar, the tendrils of plumage from her robe caressing his knees. Winding her copper chain around one finger, her pendant floated up in front of her. As she tore it from her neck, sparks lit across the stone, morphing into shadows that coalesced into a wide, curved blade. The dagger flashed to life, shimmering with gold, purple, and viridian.
Clutching the ivory handle, Miya tilted Velizar’s face up with the tip of her ethereal weapon, their eyes meeting for the last time. “And so I have returned, just as they always feared. And just as they foretold,” she smiled wickedly, “the Dreamwalker has come.”