by Scott Hale
To reach her, he’d have to stain his soles on the remnants of this poor guard’s soul. He thought of the Divide, and all the dead alike, and how he cried when they saw him. Because they did. They saw him. With their doll-like eyes, they had followed him and Justine as they crossed the battlefield to size up their losses. That had been a day later, after the fighting. During the fighting, they’d fled when the Arachne and carrion birds drew too close to the encampment. Crying, and wiping his eyes only to cry again back then, Felix remembered thinking that the corpses were mad at him. Not for making them fight, but for running, and coming back the next day.
Felix walked through the blood. The edges of the robe dragged through the puddle. Noticing this, he decided he wouldn’t wash it off later. He wanted Justine to see.
“Okay, everyone,” Gemma said into the room, “I have a special visitor here to see you all. Be on your best behavior. That’s right, I’m talking to you, Nubbins.”
You’re the Holy Child. You’re the Holy Child.
Felix cleared the blood, went around to the door. On the other side, a large, furnished room met him with the heat of a roaring fireplace, the smell of breakfast—eggs, bacon, sausage, and potatoes—and eight surprised, sleep-deprived eyes. At a table, reading a book, sat a young, thin man in his mid-to-late twenties; his right hand was missing all its fingers.
“That’s James,” Gemma said.
Felix nodded at him, and James nodded back, keeping his head low.
After that, he locked onto the large, battle-scarred brute sitting propped up against the hearth, as if he were soaking the heat from the fireplace into his massive back. Around his neck he wore a necklace made of shells.
“That’s Warren,” Gemma said. “Say ‘Hi,’ Warren.”
“Hi, Warren,” Warren said, sounding gruff, and then, staring at Felix and realizing who he was, looked as if he regretted it.
Gemma pointed to another guy. This one was sitting on one of the four beds in the room. He looked like he was a little older than Felix. “That’s Will, the Skeleton’s son.”
Will covered his mouth, lowered himself off the bed and onto his knees. “Y-Your Holiness.” He put his hands together.
“Pfft,” Gemma said. “And that lady over there—”
In a rocking chair, with a quilted blanket over her legs, sat a woman unlike any Felix had ever seen. She had bright red hair and pale, freckled skin, but it was the way she carried herself, even when she wasn’t doing anything, that stood out to him. She seemed so calm, she might just float away, like Gemma, but her hands and her face were as hard as stone—splotched, too, with scars or something else, like the bloodied stones in the tunnel. She looked the kind of a woman with mostly bad sides and just one good, and he imagined how good it would be. She reminded him of Justine, or maybe the human Justine wanted to be.
“—is Clementine.”
“You’re just a boy, aren’t you?” Clementine said.
Instinctively, Felix covered what little Corruption was showing on his right arm.
“Gemma, don’t you lay a finger on him, you hear?” Clementine said, her sweetness souring. “Get away from him.”
The vampyre threw up her hands and entered the room. She paced back and forth before finally settling at the table with James.
Felix said to Will, “Please, you don’t have to do that.”
Will came out of his kneeling trance and slowly got back onto the bed.
Why are you here? That’s that they’re thinking. Come on. Why are you here?
“We’re honored by your visit, Your Holiness,” James said. “What can we do for you?”
Felix stepped into the room. “I just wanted to… make sure everyone had everything they needed.”
There were no fetters in the room. Aside from the guard, who might not have even been guarding them, now that he thought about it, there were no signs the leaders of the Marrow Cabal were being mistreated in any way.
Clementine stood, the blanket piling around her ankles, and said, “You’ve got blood all over your feet.”
Do I care about that or not?
“There a bunch of guards out in the tunnel, or what?” Warren rumbled. “Not so tough sending you in first.”
“I’m alone,” Felix said.
This shut Warren up. He unpeeled his back from the hearth, palmed the floor, and pushed himself to his feet.
Felix took a small step back. Maybe he shouldn’t have told them that.
“We’re fine, Your Holiness,” Will said.
Gemma belched; droplets of blood shot through the air, onto James’ book.
“You little moron,” he said, trying to dry them off before they stained the pages.
She laughed and slouched down in her chair, looking triumphant.
“Where is…” Felix dug around in his mind for the name. “Where is Hex?”
Clementine cocked her head. “Shouldn’t she be with you and the Mother Abbess?”
Should she? Felix thought. His heart gave a hearty, angry beat.
“Thank you, Your Holiness, for the accommodations,” James said.
Felix could’ve sworn he’d heard James was their diplomat of sorts. And Warren was obviously the muscle. Clementine and Will… they were the Skeleton’s wife and son, but he didn’t know if they had any part to play in the Marrow Cabal. The same for Gemma. Hex was their leader—their real leader, supposedly—and she wasn’t here. How long hadn’t she been here? If Justine hadn’t killed her, why didn’t she tell him? And if she had killed her, again, why didn’t she tell him?
“Come in, why don’t you?” Clementine drew closer. “Get you cleaned up.”
Felix stared at his bloodstained feet. He could feel them sticking to the stone. When he glanced up, Clementine was almost near enough to touch him. Shocked, scared, he belted, “I am the Holy Child! Do not touch me!”
“Alright,” Clementine said.
Gemma snickered, whispered, “Shiiiit,” to James.
Felix exhaled slowly. He was at his own mercy; and it was still as bad as anyone else’s.
“You want to come in?” Clementine snapped her fingers for Gemma and James to clear out from the table.
James nodded, scooted back, and turned the chair towards Felix for him to sit in.
Gemma crossed her arms, squinted her eyes into the shape of defiance. She wasn’t going anywhere.
“If we’re going to work together,” Warren said, going to the table and taking a loaf off the plate there. “Might as well break bread together.”
Work together? Is that what she’s doing with Hex?
“I don’t know what Hex and the Worm are cooking up—”
Will gasped.
Gemma said, “Snap!”
“—and I don’t trust either of them—”
Felix fought every urge and impulse he had to tear into Warren with a wrath not even the Vermillion God could muster. It was one thing for him to think badly of Justine, but that was his thing, nobody else’s.
“—but you’re human, and I’ve heard good things. We all have. So, maybe you could tell us what you want us for. The Marrow Cabal is nothing more than hired killers. Don’t let Hex convince you otherwise. So, hire us. Or something.” Warren tore a chunk out of the bread with his teeth.
“What can you do for the Holy Order of Penance?” Felix asked. He wanted to sit at the table, but something was stopping him. “What, exactly, can you do for god?”
“You want to kill King Edgar, don’t you?” Warren said, still chewing on the bread. “We tried once. Second time’s a charm.”
“That’s not how the saying goes,” Gemma said.
“Maybe not in the Old World,” Will chimed in.
Gemma flipped him off.
“We can worry about that later.” Clementine shuffled closer towards him. “Are you alright?”
Felix’s head was congested with worry. These people knew more about what might be going on than he did. He was the Holy Child. But not to them, appar
ently. Will and James hit him with the usual ‘Your Holiness,’ but the others didn’t; he didn’t think Will and James even really meant it. Gemma struck him like that bully you loved to hate, and Clementine kept coming at him like he was wounded, like she was his mother.
It was off-putting. They were too familiar, too comfortable. Audra had been easier, because she had actually been imprisoned. He got to know her through glass, at his own pace, until he was sure he could trust her.
And he wanted to trust them. He wanted it, because they were the first real people he’d actually spoken to since the Divide, other than Commander Millicent, and even then, she was about as real as the battle-hardened cliché she resembled. They didn’t have chandeliers of light coming out of their bodies; they weren’t stone statues. He wanted it, because he knew Justine would hate it.
“Your Holiness,” Will asked, nervously. “Can I ask you a question?”
Felix nodded.
“When’s your god going to be here?”
He didn’t have an answer to that. He never would.
Felix backed out of the room, slammed the door shut. He took out the keyring he’d stolen from Justine’s room, and when he went to lock it, he wondered to himself: Did she leave the keys out on purpose?
He pretended to lock the door, but didn’t. He didn’t even check to see if the key would fit.
Felix hurried out of the tunnel, a whirlwind of questions raging inside his head. Locking the metal door that led to the tunnels, he sprinted out into the Hall of Remembrance, only to stop dead in his tracks.
Justine and Hex were walking towards him, the stone Holy Children flanking them. Justine kept walking, but it was Hex who stopped when she saw Felix. Fighting a limp, she went down on one knee, covered her heart, and with her blue, tornado-shaped hair in her eyes, said aloud: “Your Holiness and my Lord. It’s an honor.”
Justine left Hex where she was kneeling. She closed the gap between her and Felix, took the keyring off him. “Thanks for returning these to me,” she said, with a wink. And then: “Hex has sworn the Marrow Cabal’s loyalty to the Holy Order.”
Hex, still kneeling, glanced up. Her reverence was quickly giving way to annoyance.
Felix didn’t give her permission to rise. Not just yet.
“We have Narcissus. That’s thousands of soldiers,” Felix said. “What do we need the Marrow Cabal for?”
Hex, like the rest of the Marrow Cabal, was quick to give up on formalities. She stood and limped her way towards them. Rumor had it, she’d been wounded badly in the battle outside Angheuawl.
“We have our finger on the Heartland,” Hex said. “Always have.”
The stone Holy Children formed a wall between him and Justine, and her.
She laughed. “Plans were in place before that Demon woke up.”
“To kill King Edgar?” Felix blurted out. “Didn’t you try that before?”
“We have new weapons.”
Justine took Felix’s hand. He started to jerk away, but stopped himself.
“I want to show you a gift Hex gave to us.”
Hex’s eyes narrowed; her cheek twitched. Was that a tear? She didn’t look like she’d been happy to give whatever gift this was.
No more words were shared between them as Justine went with Felix, hand-in-hand, deeper into Cenotaph. Hex held up the rear, with the stone Holy Children practically holding her up with their blank-faced threats.
Somewhere in the southern wing of the cathedral—Felix hadn’t made a mental map of the place, yet; it was on his to-do list—Justine stopped them in front of two grand, wooden double doors. On the doors was an engraved image of Lillian covered and carried by countless vermillion veins.
“I’d take that down,” Hex said. “Make your god and Edgar’s God look awfully similar.”
“All gods are the same god,” Justine said, taking out the keyring and sliding a key into the door’s lock. “It’s just a matter of choosing between brand-name and generic.”
Felix couldn’t say it here, but Justine was saying too much. Hex didn’t need to know these things.
“What’s your god?”
Justine turned back to her, smiling coldly. “Not sitting on top of a volcano, slowly driving the world insane.” She unlocked the door. “Through here, Felix.”
Hex whispered, “Felix?”
Great. Now, she knows my name.
He’d been to two new rooms today, and he much preferred the first. The second room wasn’t a room but an abandoned chapel. Old, dusty pews had been thrown to either side of the chapel, forming pagan geometry with their shapes. Scattered pages from holy texts—Helminth’s Way, not The Sinner and the Shadows—were plastered to the tiled ground; those thin pages were covered in dirty footprints; desecrated. But there was more on the ground than pages or splinters. There were veins. Vermillion veins. Reaching, wanting vermillion veins.
“What… what the hell?” Felix backpedaled into Justine.
Justine nudged him forward, saying into his ear, “It’s okay,” and pointed ahead.
Ahead, in the gloom, surrounded by broken busts and cracked statues, a lump lay atop the altar. Severe shapes protruded from the lump, like spears, as if it were a slaughtered animal offered up to god as tribute. The Holy Order used to do that. And the vermillion veins? They were running across the floor from the lump. Had Hex brought them an offering? Was that her gift?
“Ichor,” Hex said. “You have company.”
The lump lurched one way and then another. The spear-like shapes jutting out of it lost their stiffness and went limp.
Hex went past Felix and Justine and into the abandoned chapel. She stopped halfway to the altar, where the light from the hall was still strong, and, again, said, “Ichor.”
The lump made a cooing noise, like an infant. It turned over on the altar. Its body crunched and squished as it did so, as if simultaneously hardened by char and covered in pustules.
Hex searched the dark, grabbed a book, and hurled it at the lump.
The lump howled. Almost immediately, as if trained to answer to pain alone, it dropped from the altar. Slowly, it began inching towards Hex, until finally, it crossed the line of light she stood at.
“Oh my god,” Felix gasped.
She called the lump Ichor, and Ichor must’ve been the man it’d been before this… had… happened to him. The only part of Ichor that was human anymore was his face, which was a hunk of stretched flesh fitted with an empty mouth and two eye-sockets in which his eyes had been pushed and turned around. The rest of Ichor was one burnt cage of tightly wound vermillion veins. Larger trunks of fused veins acted as makeshift limbs for those he’d lost. He smelled awful, too, like manure and dirty toenails.
“This is my brother,” Hex said. She rested one hand atop his head. “He is my pet, but you and the Mother Abbess may play with him as you please. And please, don’t take it gently on him.”
Felix snapped his head to Justine.
“King Edgar had given certain individuals ‘seeds of heaven,’” she said. “These were meant to help spread the vermillion veins by planting them. Ichor… was exposed and became something else. All the veins go back to the Vermillion God, Felix.
“He has no Speaker. He’s only a man who’s summoned a god that he can’t begin to understand. So, we don’t need to kill Edgar. We only have to know exactly what he’s thinking and what he wants, and make him think we want the exact same thing. Ichor’s going to help us with that. Our little spy into the vermillion network.”
“And if that doesn’t work,” Hex said, “then there’s always the Dead City.”
CHAPTER VIII
Audra threw back her flagon, drained what was left of it, and with a mouthful of ale, planted a sloppy, wet kiss on her new friend’s lips. The woman, already drunk and overzealous, followed that up with a lustful attack all her own. Audra and the woman—she never thought or cared to get her name—went at this for a while, hands up each other’s shirts, until someone in the bar sta
rted shouting.
Taking her hand off the woman’s breast, Audra glanced at the fight breaking out between the bartender and some three-sheets-to-the-wind patron. She laughed, cheered them on, and glanced across the table.
Deimos and his new friend—a Corrupted by the name of Maynard—had their lips locked and were fumbling at one another’s belts to no avail. Without his mask, Deimos wasn’t a looker. Bald, heavily scarred, with one eye clouded over, though she never managed to figure out if he was blind in it or not. But she wasn’t much of a looker these days, either. She wasn’t clean or shaved, and she hadn’t slept a full night’s sleep in Holy Child knows how long.
Holy Child. Felix. She smiled, thinking of the time they’d spent in the bathtub together, unburdening themselves. That’d been nice.
Nevertheless, she was happy for Deimos. Johannes, his husband, had been killed a few years ago by Corrupted, and as far as she could tell, he hadn’t been with anyone since. He needed this, even if, in the morning, it wouldn’t mean much.
Audra’s new friend leaned into her and whispered, flicking her tongue against Audra’s ear, “Let’s go back to your place.”
What did her older brother, Vincent, call them? Sitcoms? Old World comedy shows, usually about eccentric couples?
Audra stripped off her new friend’s underwear and pushed her back on the bed. Through the wall, she could hear Deimos and his new friend groaning and panting.
How was this for a sitcom? A lesbian Corrupted and a gay Night Terror living together, and all the wacky hijinks that ensued.
Thinking of Vincent made her think of her twin brother, Auster, and thinking of him, she thought of the eldest, Horace, and her older sister, Lena. And then Mom and Dad. And… Edgar.
Audra bit the inside of her lip. She stared down at the drunken, writhing woman before her. She could do this, people like her, in conceptual terms, for the rest of what would most likely be a short life here in Nyxis. No expectations. Nothing to prove. She was always happier when she was nothing. Or so she told herself.