by Sierra Dean
The knife between my ribs came as an unexpected shock.
Chapter Twenty-One
I stared down at the blade in my stomach, a few inches below my breast, and let out a burbled “Uh” of surprise.
Mormo emerged from the closet like a monster out of a dream, his size too large to properly fit in the small space. He loomed tall and imposing, towering over me in the way a shadow climbing a wall might. I touched the place he had stabbed me, thinking, Shouldn’t it hurt more?
“He’s here!” The spirit voices chanted in unison, before falling silent.
“Sssstupid girl.”
My fingers came away covered in blood, and that was when the pain hit me, like ripping off a Band-Aid. First didn’t feel anything, and in an instant it was as though I was being shredded from the inside. It was just a knife, but it felt like a million tiny claws and teeth were cutting me apart.
I let out an anguished wail, gripping the blade. I needed this thing out of me now.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Mormo said, his voice lilting with a strange kind of joy. “Unlessss you want to die right now, insssstead of later.”
Yes, yes I did want to die. Death would mean I no longer had to feel the agony of having the blade inside me. My blood was turning into molten lava, steaming me alive from within. My skin was crawling with bugs.
This was no normal knife.
I’d been hurt before. I’d been stabbed before. Physical violence wasn’t my favorite, but I was no stranger to pain. Clerics weren’t always popular, and my job was rarely easy. Yet in all my years of doing it, I’d never experienced any sensation quite like this.
Tears were streaming down my cheeks, and every breath was more difficult than the last, until I was only able to take the tiniest sips of air, hyperventilating as I tried to fill my lungs.
This all happened so fast Leo hadn’t come into the room yet.
When he emerged, it felt like months had gone by, each heartbeat an agonizing step closer to certain death. Instead it had only been seconds, and he looked as shocked as I felt.
“Tallulah.” His timing was impeccable. He arrived at my side as my knees gave out, and he held me close as he lowered me to the floor. In doing so he jostled the knife, and I let out a scream that was more like the cry of an injured animal than any sound a human should make. “I need to take this out.”
As he reached for the knife handle, I shook my head violently, barely gurgling a “No.”
He froze, hand hovering. “It’s going to hurt but—”
He went silent as Mormo moved in, towering over us. How Leo had missed Mormo’s presence up until that point I don’t know. I guess a knife stuck in me was pretty distracting, but still.
“Hello, sssson of Sssseth.”
Leo blinked a couple times, then grabbed the butcher knife clutched in my hand. I’d totally forgotten I still had it. Funny how blinding amounts of unbearable pain will blot out the little things.
“Who the fuck are you?” Leo was on his feet, standing between me and Mormo. I’d come here to save him, but looking at things now, I had to wonder if I was even needed. The guy was a mountain. He was half-god. What kind of safety could I offer him he couldn’t find for himself?
I wriggled backwards, using my elbows to pull myself farther from Mormo, towards the front door. Being outside wouldn’t be any better, but my instincts were telling me I had to get out of here.
“I am the one who hassss found you.” Mormo smiled, his twisted, inhuman face showing humor in a truly terrifying way that made Badb’s shark teeth seem downright charming.
Badb.
Why did the flickering vision of her face seem so timely now, like there was something I should be remembering? I slumped back down on the floor, my head thumping against the hardwood. Badb’s face disappeared and was replaced with Cade’s.
Brown eyes, thick brows knitted in concern. His broad boxer’s nose and too-serious haircut. What would he look like if he let it grow, gave up that small sliver of control and let the curl come back to his hair?
I smiled.
“I wish you’d gotten here on time,” I whispered.
My memory of Cade didn’t reply, he remained solemn and intense. If I had to die with his face on my mind, at least I’d remember him as he truly was, not some romanticized version.
Dying.
Badb.
Cade looked more intense, and muttered, “You idiot.”
I sat bolt upright with a gasp, then shrieked as the motion drove the knife deeper into me. When I coughed into my hand from the shock of the new pain, my fingers once again came back bloody. If I was coughing up blood, things were much worse than I had thought.
Right in front of my face, dangling from my wrist, was the bracelet Badb had given me. The skeletal hands clasped in together like a macabre game of “Ring Around the Rosie”. Though that nursery rhyme was pretty fucked up if you listened to the lyrics. The links glowed faintly.
I couldn’t be killed as long as I was wearing it, that’s what she’d told me.
No matter how bad it hurt, I wouldn’t die, that was how it was supposed to work. If that was true, the agony was only temporary, and in spite of every sign pointing to my death, this wasn’t the end for me. The blade was enchanted, that much was obvious from the pain. I glanced down at the wound through a film of tears, my hands trembling as I touched the handle of the knife.
The placement was all wrong for a kill, I could see that clearly now that I really looked.
If he’d wanted me dead, the knife should have been higher, or more centered. Or lower, where he could have fucked up my stomach or liver.
Instead he’d nestled the blade precisely where it would cause me a lot of discomfort and keep me down for the count, but not kill me.
Shaking, I gripped the knife and sucked in a deep breath.
What if Badb was lying?
If she was lying, it wouldn’t matter at this point. I’d bleed out, and Manea would get her hands on Leo no matter what. But I had to at least try to do something. Even if it was something profoundly stupid.
Leo was squared off against Mormo, the man and the monster almost equal in height, and for a moment I truly thought Leo might be able to take Mormo on.
Then I remembered Mormo was a god.
Sure, a traitorous, ass-kissing, ugly-as-fuck god, but an immortal creature nevertheless. Leo was still human, in spite of who his father was. If this came to blows, Mormo would wipe the floor with the demigod.
Mormo was clearly trying to avoid attacking Leo directly.
“Sssstop, boy. Thissss will only be more difficult for you. Sssstand down.”
Leo jabbed at him with the butcher knife, lunging towards the god with the obvious intent of returning the favor for what Mormo had done to me. The god weaved out of the way, scuttling down the hall towards me like a spider backed into a corner.
“I’m not here for the taking, freak.” Leo held the knife up, looking slightly awkward with it in his hand. I doubted he had any regular need to use a bladed weapon. “Go tell your beloved death goddess to fuck off.”
Whoa. Check out the balls on this guy.
“Sssstupid.” Mormo was standing over me now, and he grabbed me by the hair, hoisting me back up to my feet while I tried—and failed—to catch my breath. The handle of the knife was in my hand, and my mind was reeling, trying to settle on what to do next. Being dragged around by my hair wasn’t the best way to help me focus.
“Hey,” I wheezed. “What’s with you calling people sssstupid all the time?” I mimicked him as best I could, but feigning his signature sibilance reduced me to a new fit of coughing. Blood droplets splattered on the floor around my feet.
Badb might have been full of shit. Perhaps she’d been lying to get Manea’s favor, but at this point I’d rather risk it than suffer this sensation any longer. Whatever the knife was doing to me, I couldn’t take another second of it.
“Sssstupid mortalssss desssserve to be dissssmissssed
.”
I glanced at the creature who leered at me with his monstrous, hideous face, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt he didn’t care whether I lived or died, or how badly I suffered. His face lacked any kind of empathy. The way he looked at me was not unlike the way someone looks at a bug they’ve just crushed underfoot.
I was nothing more than a smear beneath his cloven hooves.
Fuck. That.
“Dismiss this, asshole.” I pulled the knife out of my ribs, and it felt like all my internal organs went along with it. Any subtle surprise the action might have had was diminished by my scream, but it didn’t make any difference. Mormo hadn’t expected me to fight back.
I plunged the blade into his neck, which he’d so thoughtfully exposed to me when he pulled me off the floor.
Mormo dropped me, and since I had absolutely no strength left beyond what I’d used to stab him, I landed on the hardwood with a loud, painful thud. The god was yowling, clutching at the wound and staggering backwards towards the door.
That whole no-empathy thing was feeling pretty good right about now.
Whatever he’d done to the knife was working its terrible magic on him, like Badb had promised. I would have liked her to be a bit more specific about how the bracelet’s enchantment functioned, but as long as it did what she suggested it would, I didn’t care about the fine print.
“Bitch,” Mormo spat.
I tilted my head back, unable to prop myself up to get a better look at his struggle. “Don’t worry, it won’t kill you, you immortal prick.” Pressing my hand to the open wound between my ribs, I sucked in a breath, the world around me going hazy. I doubted I’d be conscious much longer.
In the darkness was a faint ray of sunlight, growing ever brighter as I drifted out of my sensible mind. It was still night, so I understood I was imagining the light, yet I was drawn to it anyway. Somewhere, like an echo or a barely remembered thought, I heard Mormo thump against the wall, fighting with the blade and cursing me up and down. The three Keres were whispering about death, but they sounded more like insects now than actual threats.
The world was fading fast, and so too were all my earthly worries.
“Leo…” I had the vague sensation of him coming closer, and then there was new, strong pressure on the knife wound. I winced and choked back another bout of coughing long enough to say, “Don’t trust anyone.”
He laughed humorlessly. “How about you pull through this, and then you can tell me who to trust, okay?”
“Cade. Trust Cade.” If there was anyone alive outside of the temple who could bring Leo in safely, it would be Cade. Bad luck be damned.
“Shut up, okay?”
“Not…the boss…of me.”
“No, but apparently my dad is.”
Sure, before he didn’t want to acknowledge it, and now he was using the fact against me. Whatever, I was too tired to fight anymore.
I closed my eyes and followed the light.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Warm sunlight kissed my skin.
I opened one eye a sliver, then the other, and lay still, basking in the glow of daylight. Nothing hurt, and there was no blood on me when I lifted my hands and looked them over. Everything was fine.
So, surely I was dead, right?
Instead of panic or sadness, I just stayed there, drinking in the perfection of a sunny day. Most of my life had been cast in shadow and rain, forever trailing the storm. Blue-skied summer days were as rare as a four-leaf clover for me.
Whatever this was, I wanted to enjoy it a few minutes longer before admitting to myself what it meant.
I didn’t get that.
Sunny leaned over me, her perfect blonde hair falling over one shoulder in waves, the color of wheat and honey. Her skin was tan, cheeks aglow with a peachy rose shade that made her look like she’d been running. Her beautiful features were set into an expression of concern that was so intense it bordered on anger.
I expected her to be smiling. If this was my passage to the afterlife, surely she’d be smiling.
Something about this whole situation was wrong, but I couldn’t put into words what was bothering me.
“Lu?” She touched my cheek, her skin soft and hot. I leaned into her hand and closed my eyes, smiling to myself. How long had it been since we’d been together? Years. Years and thousands of miles divided us, yet I could remember the exact smell of her—sundried linen and flowers—and it felt as if no time had passed at all.
I opened my eyes again and took her in. Sunny was my opposite in every feasible way. She was tan, blonde, and elegant, and looked like our mother. Or what I dimly recalled our mother to look like. I took after our father, all darkness to Sunny’s light.
My perfect sister.
I knew without needing to see it she bore a mark in the shape of the sun on the back of her neck, exactly where my storm cloud was.
We were an anomaly, a never-before-seen aberration: twins who were both chosen to serve, but each destined for a different god.
I went to Seth. Sunny went to Apollo. And twenty years went by where we passed each other like ships in the night, always apart but never really leaving each other.
How do you give up one half of your soul?
It’s a hole that never fully heals, especially if you don’t want it to.
Taking her hand in mine, I squeezed, holding our linked fingers close to my heart. “I knew I’d see you before I died.”
“Lu, you’re not dead.” She lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles, brushing hair away from my cheeks. “And you need to wake up.”
Was it a dream? Had any dream ever been this real? The smell of her, the way her hand felt in mine. I felt so full of love I thought I might burst at the seams. For most of my adult life I’d been wandering around as an incomplete person, and now that I felt whole again, she was telling me it wasn’t real.
I couldn’t accept that.
Yet that nagging feeling of wrongness returned, only this time I could see things a bit more clearly. Of course I wasn’t dead, that was the whole point of the bracelet, wasn’t it? And if I was dead, I wouldn’t be basking in the sunlight with my sister. I’d be walking the night road with Hecate, and she’d probably be pissed off I hadn’t stayed alive long enough to fulfill her favor.
Now that I was really thinking about it, I’d been an idiot to think this was some perfect afterlife, welcoming me in with open arms.
For one thing, that would mean Sunny was dead as well, and that was not how I wanted to reunite with my twin. I’d prefer to never see her again than to be the reason she died young and pretty.
“I’m dreaming.”
Sunny nodded, stroking my hair, her thumb rubbing circles on my knuckles. When we were younger, before they separated us and took us to our respective temples, we would vanish for hours, hiding from our parents for no other reason than that we could. We’d hide together in closets or under the deck at the back of our house. We’d emerge covered in mud or dust, and somehow the blame would always fall on me.
I was the dark sister. I was the black sheep.
Sunny was the embodiment of flawlessness.
I couldn’t be mad at her about it either, because I worshipped the ground she walked on. Even at a young age, when I was angry about my future and told them I wouldn’t go to the temple and I’d run away, Sunny was the voice of reason. She was the only thing that kept me sane.
So it was funny, now, to see her when I was evidently going crazy.
“You’re not real.” A single tear streaked down to my ear, and I tried to look away from her, not wanting to see her if she wasn’t actually with me. If this was a cruel byproduct of Mormo’s blade, it was worse than the pain. The hurt I’d feel when she vanished would eclipse anything the knife had left behind.
“I’m real enough.”
I fought back more tears, blinking fiercely. “I wish you were here, Sun. You’d know what to do.”
She was the smart one, the levelheaded one. If Sun
ny had been tasked with bringing Leo to the temple, he’d already be there, and things wouldn’t be such a mess. I was the fuckup, and now I was proving it yet again.
“Since when were you such a quitter, Tallulah Belle? You have a job to do.”
“I got stabbed.”
“You think Seth cares?”
A little bubble of laughter escaped my throat. “No.”
“You think Seth will accept any excuse?”
I shook my head, closing my eyes. A dull ache was building in my chest, my lungs burning with each new breath. “It’s not an excuse.”
“Wake up and finish what you started.” She gave my hands one more squeeze, so tight the small bones of my hand seemed to grind together, and I grimaced. “Wake up.”
“Wake up.” Her voice changed, deepening, becoming more commanding, more masculine. “Tallulah, come on, this isn’t my apartment. I can’t explain a dead body to the owners.”
Leo’s hand was pressed hard against my ribs, blood oozing up between his fingers, coating his skin with a film of deep crimson liquid.
“Ow,” I groaned.
“Hey, there you are.” He touched my face, giving my cheek a firm slap when I started to close my eyes again. “Nope, you’re stuck with me now.”
“Where’s Mormo?” I twisted, trying to look behind me to where I’d last seen the god. The hall was empty, and the front door of the apartment was wide open. To my relief, I noted the Keres had stopped their incessant whispering. All that was left was the sound of my own labored breathing and the muffled din of the French Quarter outside.
“Gone. Like poof gone. Do you ever get used to that?”
“Yeah.”
“I need to get you to a hospital.” He pressed down on my ribs harder, and I scowled. Was he intentionally trying to make this more painful, because if so, he was doing a bang-up job.
“Okay.”
Leo paused. “I sort of thought you might argue about it.”
“No. Hospitals have blood. I’ve lost a lot of that.” I held up my red hand to prove it to him. “I’d like to get some back, even if it’s not mine. I’m not picky.”