Beasts of the Walking City
Page 35
The girl’s face is shifting, flowing—as though the very bones underneath her skin are rearranging themselves. There is a large and terrible bird there, with a long beak and a thick cranial ridge, these glittering eyes that study Ghat coldly. Then there’s the girl’s face again, that she had come to know so well, and the eyes are open and startlingly violet and alive and the girl’s expression is terrified and her lips are pleading soundlessly to Ghat for help.
But then there is another face there, too. A face that Ghat felt she should recognize but doesn’t, quite, a man’s face that is somewhat bird-like at the same time. He has long, stern features, a hawk-like nose, a cleft in his chin and a dark and menacing grin that makes her stumble backwards.
Her boot crushes the broken parts of the glass on the floor, and Ghat looks down for a moment. When she looks up again the girl is next to her, only it was the man’s face that was present and studying her.
“Greetings, Chancellor.” Lasser Arbellin says, for she’s sure it’s him now. His face is on statues that are all throughout the Residence. But how could it be him? Dekheret’s nephew here, after so many centuries? And why?
“By my Great and Glorious Prick, it is good to be home again after so long.” His voice is deep and harsh and it rattles out of the girl’s throat like a dead thing.
Ghat struggles for something to say, and finds nothing. And as the figure reaches out to her then, reaches behind her and snaps her neck with a gesture that seems far too easy and far too quick, it occurs to her that she doesn’t actually need the grohver to fly. Why, she can do it right now, all on her own! And as the demon thing called Lasser begins to consume her body, to fashion a new one for himself from it, she rises up above the city, and looks down at all of the wreckage and all of the work still needing to be done, and then sees all of the chaos and terror that are waiting now, lying just over the horizon, a very guilty and selfish part of her is glad, so infinitely glad, to discover her very own wings.
About the Author
Del Law’s writing has appeared in a number of publications, including Glimmer Train Stories, the Sycamore Review, Passages North, repeatedly in the Mississippi Review, and has received an Honorable Mention from the O. Henry Awards anthology. A reluctant world traveller for his day job in Silicon Valley, he lives now with his artist wife, two kids, two dogs, and eleven chickens in the California’s rural Santa Cruz Mountains, about a mile from the San Andreas faultline.
Interested in a sequel? Let him know: Del can be contacted directly through his blog at http://houseonbearmountain.com. Like the book? Please review it online, and pass the word along to other Fantasy fans!
A portion of the proceeds from this book are being donated to Habitat for Humanity, a US Charity that helps build homes for people who need them. (Blackwell would be proud.)
Published by Choroleos Books,
Santa Cruz, CA USA
info@choroleosbooks.com
Digital Edition
Copyright © 2012 by Del Law
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