by Scott Hale
But it was too late. She had already seen it.
“What do you have there?” she whispered. Her eyes narrowed. She bared her teeth and winked. “I can keep a secret.”
Aeson shook his head.
“Bring him here!” Pain yelled.
Joy rolled her eyes, turned her head: “Have some fucking patience for—”
Aeson swung the Red Death weapon at Joy’s side.
But before it touched her, she caught his arm by the wrist and stopped him.
“What is it?” Pain asked.
Joy’s face turned paler than it already was. Death’s nail was an inch away from her side, and already it was going to work on her, burning through her dress, eating through her skin.
“Do… do you…” Joy stared at Aeson; her lip quivered. “Do you know who… this is?” she asked Pain.
“Yes, yes! Bring him here. I have someone special to show him!”
Aeson could feel Joy’s grip loosening on his wrist. She was breathing heavily now. There was a pop; boils and blisters spread across her skin.
“You’re going to miss your babies! They’re almost there,” Pain said.
Joy’s eyes began to water. A smile flashed across her face. Knitting her brow, she let go of Aeson’s wrist. They stood there a moment in silence, staring one another down, as the snow built up around their feet, and the ice melted from their hearts.
“We’re coming,” Joy said, with a nod.
Aeson took the Red Death weapon and stowed it behind his breastplate. Hesitant at first, Joy finally took him by both hands. She was careful with him; gentle, even. She whispered a word. His feet left the ground. And then they were off, floating over the Cult of the Worm.
The Maiden of Pain could hardly control herself. “Come here, come here,” she said.
Joy landed the both of them beside Vrana. Aeson tried to look away from her, but Pain quickly came up beside him, took him by the head, and forced him to stare at her.
“Like what you see?” Pain whispered into his ear; her breath smelled of mildew. Her touch was like touching a cold, moss-covered stone. “She did everything for me. I’m sure she would do anything for you.
“You came a long way, didn’t you? That night I burned your shitty little village… I couldn’t even bring myself to kill you—”
He remembered. She had just laughed at him, instead.
“—and here you are. They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover and, what do you know—” Joy slapped the bear mask off his head, “—this book has a new cover. Look, Vrana, at who’s come to see you!”
For the first time since he’d seen her, Vrana moved on her own. She was alive. Yes, somehow, she was alive. The smoke stopped spewing from her beak. She twisted her neck and, with one pained eye, looked at him.
“It’s Aeson, isn’t it?” Pain scoffed at Joy, who was pacing nervously. “Oh, just go! Go!”
Joy lifted into the air and left Angheuawl in the same direction her Horrors had.
Pain nudged Aeson and spun him around to face the Cult of the Worm. “What do you think?”
Bide your time, he told himself. Bide your time. Every centimeter of his body tensed. He could feel it breaking down on the inside, the acid of anxiety eating away at his core. Bide your time.
“I wish I had someone love me as much as you do her,” Pain said, smirking. She picked a raven feather out of her ratty dress. “Soon, though, soon.”
“Please…” Aeson closed his eyes, pretended he was somewhere else, so he could get this out. “I don’t believe…”
“Believe this is happening?” Pain laughed. “Do you even know what is happening?”
Aeson shook his head.
Pain pointed to one of the double-headed stick figure icons on the wall. Her eyes rolled back into her skull and she screamed, “Kvuxl Vkxul!
The Cult of the Worm’s symbol crumpled, sucked inside itself, and a vortex opened behind it. A gray portal that, like the one behind them, led into the Void.
“Kvuxl Vkxul!”
Another symbol was torn apart by the spell; where it had once been, a swirling gate now stood, as if it had been there the whole time, simply waiting to be called forth.
“Kvuxl Vkxul! Kvuxl Vkxul!”
Two more portals opened at the center of Angheuawl. And every time one did, the Choir sang louder from the ground.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve seen our symbol, is it, Skull Boy?”
It wasn’t. They were everywhere in Angheuawl, and in most, if not all, the towns he had passed through getting here. He had seen the symbol in the Dismal Sticks and… Caldera.
Aeson covered his mouth. When Pain had attacked Caldera, she had burnt an image into the ground. No matter what they did, they could never get the image to go away. Like a brand, it was there forever.
“Alone no more,” Pain said. “We will be everywhere soon, in every village, town, and city. King Edgar had the right idea with the vermillion veins. But our idea was better.”
“H-how?”
Pain grabbed Aeson by the shoulders and bit off a piece of his cheek. She spat the bloody hunk his face, and then kissed him, forcing her bristled tongue deep inside his mouth.
Aeson broke free of her grasp. He pressed one hand to his cheek, and crossed his arm over his chest. The Red Death weapon had almost fallen out.
“Belief. We have so many believers now, and we’re about to have more. Come here.” Pain snapped her fingers. Aeson was levitating again. “Come and see.”
Pain pushed Aeson into the sky and urged him forward; far enough away that he could see what was going on outside the town. There was Joy and her Horrors… and what appeared to be a small army of Corrupted battling in the snow. Below him, the vermillion sedan burst out of Angheuawl and headed for the fight. For a moment, it looked up at him, and he saw buried inside the writhing mass the burnt face of Ichor.
“Ever heard of the Marrow Cabal?” Pain asked, lowering him back into the town beside her.
Aeson stumbled and landed near Vrana’s feet. She was panting. She had been watching him the whole time.
Almost, he wanted to tell her. Almost.
“They’ll be ours by the end of the day,” Pain said.
Aeson crawled forward. He took Vrana’s feathered ankle in his hand and kissed it. She had to know. If he didn’t save her, she had to at least know he still loved her.
With a spell, Pain yanked him to his feet and put him in front of her. “Joy’s stupid children can’t fight for shit. They’re just there—”
“For fear,” Aeson said, shivering, on the brink of collapsing.
“For fear. I like that. When I drink your blood tonight, it will be to fear that I toast.”
“What’s the point?” Aeson asked, crossing his arms over his breastplate.
“It brings me joy,” Pain said, “to bring them pain.”
Joy returned to Angheuawl and floated down beside her sister. “They will be here soon,” she said, smoothing out her white satin dress.
“Good. Is that Skeleton with them?”
Joy shook her head.
“Next time. Prepare the Cult, we’re opening all the—”
Joy reached out and touched Pain’s face.
“What?” Pain asked, confused.
One look. Joy gave Aeson one look.
He pulled the Red Death weapon out of his breastplate and, with every ounce of hate and sadness, malice and madness; with every ounce self-doubt, self-loathing, and self-harm; with every burning piece of filth inside him, filling him, polluting him, ruining him, he drove Death’s touch into Her daughter’s heart.
Pain screamed louder than the Choir that praised her. She touched the Red Death weapon still protruding from her chest. It crumbled into nothingness, but the damage was already done. Behind her, and all around her, the portals to the Void began to react violently.
Joy looked at Aeson as if she hated him more than anything else in the world and ran into the Void, the gateway closing behind her.
Pain, gasping for air, dropped to her knees and dug at the wound in her chest. Her mother’s touch was poison. She cupped her breast and drank the wound, trying to suck out the force that had severed her tie to the Void.
“No,” Pain said, and Aeson heard her clear as day, for the Cult of the Worm had stopped singing. The light had left their eyes. There was a moment of silence, mutual confusion, and then the flesh fiends turned on those they had once held hands with.
There was another sound. A tearing of skin, and a loud thump.
Aeson turned around to find Vrana standing behind him. She tore off the Blue Worm’s silver necklace, threw it at him, and ran at Pain.
Vrana’s wings closed around the Witch. She picked her off the ground as if she weighed nothing at all, then threw her down, breaking her face on the hard soil. Vrana straddled Pain, pinned her limbs back. And then she started eating her.
Vrana raked Pain’s flesh, splitting it into strands. She made six strands at a time, and then shoved them down her beak. Pain screamed out in agony.
Vrana ripped her jaw off, tore her tongue out of her mouth, and gobbled down both of them. Warm, hot blood poured out of the Witch. Vrana cupped her claws together and drank it like soup.
The Witch, somehow still alive, beat Vrana’s side. Vrana bore her beak down on each of Pain’s arm sockets, until they were easy enough to rip away from her body. And once they were, Vrana did just that. And then she ate them, too.
Blood and muscle and tendons spilled out of Pain’s shaking torso. Vrana gathered them with her twitching talons and sucked them off each of her fingers.
Pain was laughing now, so Vrana tore open her gut and buried her face inside it, and one by one, ate every organ inside. They popped and hissed and squirted inside Vrana’s beak.
Then, leaving the rib cage and head, Vrana mutilated Pain’s pelvis, until it was so mashed and beaten she had to lick it off the ground.
She worked her way down to Pain’s disembodied legs and choked them down her throat whole. It took her a moment to swallow them, but she did.
Vrana reared back, completely covered in blood and gore. She glanced at Aeson, and Aeson made no attempt to stop her.
Vrana grabbed Pain’s torso and ripped the ribs out of it. She ate them, one by one, leaving no scrap of flesh or cartilage unconsumed. And then, slowly, considerately, she closed her claws around Pain’s severed head, bashed it open until it split in two like a rock, and gulped down everything inside it, bones, too.
And then, when there was nothing left of the Witch but the few pints of blood that had escaped Vrana’s lips, Vrana stood up and wiped her mouth.
“Twenty pieces a person, for every person the Witch killed in Caldera that night. I promised Caldera that’s what I’d take from Pain when I found her,” Vrana said, blood and chewed-up body parts pouring out of her mouth. “There are two-hundred-and-six bones in the body, and seventy-eight organs. Between those, and everything else, I think everyone’s covered.”
Aeson nodded, and he was lucky he could do that. Blood splashed across his shoes. A few feet away, the Cult of the Worm were slaughtering one another, raping one another; completely annihilating one another. There were no words to describe the carnage. It was carnage beyond comprehension. Something only the blind could comprehend, for the eyes couldn’t behold what the other senses could sample. The overwhelming stench of violence and lust, the discharge of seminal and vaginal fluids, and balled fists holding clumps of shit like trophies. Too many bodies. Too much blood. Holes where there shouldn’t have been holes. It was, for the Cult of the Worm and the God they claimed to worship, their greatest masterpiece.
Vrana took Aeson into her wings and lifted them into the sky, where he morbidly thought to himself how fortunate he must be to be one of the few to see the eradication of an entire species.
His species.
There was no coming back from this.
CHAPTER XXIII
R’lyeh covered her mouth and coughed as quietly as she could into her hand, so as to not alarm the Skeleton. She closed her palm, sealing the blood she’d spat up into her lifeline. It wasn’t much, and it was watery, like it’d been diluted. It smelled sweet, too, like fruit. She went to wipe it on her pant leg, but there was already so much hacked-up gunk there it was starting to get obvious; so, she smeared it on the park bench, instead.
When it came to its name and lore, the Dead City didn’t disappoint. Caving inwards upon itself, like the slowest closing pop-up book, the place had all the charms and amenities of a sepulcher. Gray stone, old dirt; filthy glass, rusted metalwork—the true source of color in the city came from the green clouds of sickness and disease that roamed through it. Because the clouds were constantly moving, the Dead City appeared to be constantly breathing. The skyscrapers and subway stations, and businesses and apartments were transformed from decayed corpses to rotting corpses, and then back again, depending upon the time of day, and how much infection was spewing from their splintered, shattered, broken-down, busted-through lips.
The Dead City was dead, but the Green Worm had taken its husk and, with it, had given itself a form. The Green Worm was the city. Every street and highway, road and lane; every business district and residential span; every park and playground and putrid pothole that plummeted into the sewers below. Like a ghost beneath a sheet, or a spirit inside a doll, the Green Worm was what it possessed. That’s what the weird people in the suits had told R’lyeh and the Skeleton, and that’s what R’lyeh was thinking about now, as she filled her lungs with the same kind of creature that had taken everything from her.
R’lyeh coughed again, but no blood came out. A good sign. As with every other infection or poison, her body was rejecting the Worm. Hell, how could it not? This was the third time she’d crossed paths with their kind. Fourth, maybe, if the Mother Hydra was one. Is that what she was meant to be? A hunter of Worms? She liked the idea as much as she hated it. But wasn’t that why most people did the things they loved? To stop the things they hated?
The Skeleton paced back and forth near the small merry-go-round, giving it a good spin here and there. Ever since they had been escorted into the City, he had been acting strange. Aloof, that was how her mom would describe it. He’d come so far, and yet it seemed like this was the last place he wanted to be.
It’s the Worm, R’lyeh thought. He thinks he has to kill another one.
The Skeleton stopped near a demolished drinking fountain and adjusted his cloak. The Black Hour’s heart’s growth appeared as if it had stopped for the time being. The black moss hadn’t spread any further. Maybe he didn’t want to be here, because this was exactly where it wanted to be.
I want to kill it. R’lyeh tapped her fingers on the blade of the sword across her lap. I want to kill something.
R’lyeh rose to her feet. Unsteady, she took a deep breath and waited for the nausea to pass. Another cough; no blood. Swinging the sword at her side, she made her way towards the Skeleton. With him, the past couldn’t touch her; he was the boney barrier that kept the bad memories back. He couldn’t die, so neither could she. That’s how these things worked. The Green Worm was this city, and she was the company she kept. No different than anybody else.
“I used to be obsessed with the Old World,” R’lyeh said, going to the merry-go-ground.
The Skeleton stopped at a toilet, the last standing part of a bathroom that used to be here. “That so? Don’t look like you’re having a field day.”
R’lyeh stifled a cough. “I wanted to be a librarian.” She grinned. “A badass librarian.”
“Hate to be a bearer of bad news, but I can’t say I’ve ever met something of the sort. I think being a librarian and kicking ass are two mutually exclusive things.”
“I got the ass kicking part down.”
The Skeleton laughed. “Hope so. Expect we’ll be fighting our way out of here soon.”
“Okay,” R’lyeh said, swinging the sword a little faster. “That’s fine.”
“I take it Elizabeth and Miranda’s teachings of non-violence didn’t take?” the Skeleton asked.
“No—” R’lyeh’s eyes wandered over the city, noticing that same phrase was repeated again and again across walls and billboards, “—not really.” And then, forcing the image of Miranda’s mutilated body out of her mind: “Wait, were they supposed to work?”
“They wanted them to.”
“Why?”
“Because they thought you could be more than a killer.”
R’lyeh twisted her mouth. “I am more.”
“Never said you weren’t.”
“I’ve been through hell.”
“Me and you both.”
R’lyeh stormed over to the Skeleton. “You see that there?” She pointed to a cell phone store. “That’s where people would go and buy phones, things that let them talk to each other, no matter where they were in the world.”
“Fascinating,” the Skeleton said, unimpressed.
“And that—” R’lyeh drew his attention to what appeared to be a courthouse, “—was where people were judged, to decide if they were innocent or guilty of crimes.”
“Yeah, alright.”
“That’s a gym, where people worked out to get stronger. And that’s a—” she coughed, “—place where people who didn’t have a lot of money got help from the government.” She smacked the Skeleton’s arm—
Black winter; red summer.
—and shook off the Black Hour’s image. “That’s… that’s a library. There’s probably computers in there. For a lot of people, that and the Internet was everything—”
“R’lyeh.”
“—because it had everything. You didn’t have to wait for someone to tell you something, or spend your whole life looking for something. If something bad was coming, you’d know about it. You’d have time to get—”