by Scott Hale
She lowered herself onto the bed, bracing herself against the woman’s knees.
Or, now that she was thinking about it, so close to Eldrus, she could do something else, instead. She could’ve gone anywhere to hide, but she went to Nyxis. That bath with Felix had been nice, but showing him her shadows afterwards… that’d been the ticket.
She put her head between the woman’s legs. In that moment, she could’ve sworn she heard God speaking to her again.
The following morning, Audra and Deimos sat outside, nursing hot cups of tea in their hands and cold compresses against their heads. Hungover from their night of vague debaucheries, they were propped up against one another, supporting each other the way they’d been supporting each other ever since escaping Penance.
“Did you send yours home?” Deimos asked, his voice rough.
“Yeah, you?”
“I did.”
“Did you have fun?”
Deimos took a drink of his tea, so he wouldn’t have to answer.
Audra shook her head. “Nothing wrong with letting loose. You’re not letting him go.”
“Please, don’t,” Deimos said.
Audra mouthed an apology.
They sat there for several minutes outside the small cottage, watching the morning fog roll over the snow-covered fields. There was no sun yet, just the hint of it caught in the distant trees; trapped. That was the world these days. Trapped on the precipice of enlightenment and annihilation. All it needed was a push one way or the other.
The shadow of God passed over their cottage, but neither of them looked back to face It. Same shit, different day.
“Deimos,” Audra said, at last.
“Hmm?”
“Help me do it.”
“Do what?”
“Get to Eldrus.”
Deimos nearly spilled his tea. “No, Audra. No. Why? He has to know you are the Speaker.”
“Exactly,” she said, licking her lips. “He’ll let me get so close to him, he won’t even feel it when I put the knife in.”
CHAPTER IX
When it was all said and done, Aeson could’ve passed for any Corrupted on the paranoia-swept streets of Communion. It’d taken Elizabeth five hours to finish the tattoo, and another three hours for the ink itself to settle convincingly into his skin. By the time it was all over, it was well-past midnight; they knew one another’s histories better than most anyone else; and Vrana had gotten into her bag—the one her mother had thrown to her before she died—and showed Elizabeth something inside it.
The key. The key from the Keep the Skeleton had tossed to her during the Black Hour after completing her second trial. When the Black Hour had ended, the Keep vanished, leaving behind only a crater, but the key had remained.
Carefully, as if it were radioactive, and maybe it was, Elizabeth took the key into her hands. They were all sitting at the table together. “You know, I was there on Lacuna.”
Vrana ruffled her feathers. “You were one of the ones in the black robes?”
“Yeah. Yeah, the Skeleton hadn’t been with us when we got there. He came out of nowhere. You… holy shit... You killed the Blue Worm, yeah?”
Aeson’s eyes widened.
“Yeah,” Vrana said. Elizabeth hadn’t realized it yet, but she had the Worm’s necklace on, hidden within her feathers. “Didn’t kill it, but yeah, R’lyeh and I put it to sleep.”
“We saw you escaping on the boat with the other Night Terror—”
“Mara.”
“—and we told the Skeleton, and he lost it. He used the Black Hour’s heart to try and stop you.”
Vrana couldn’t help but laugh. When they’d crossed the Widening Gyre, the ocean froze over, great, rotted skyscrapers rose from the sea, and violent, shadow-like creatures attacked them, all the while someone… the Skeleton… had been laughing insanely in that vast and damning dark.
“That’s weird you have this key, yeah?” Elizabeth said.
Aeson, entranced by his new Corruption, mumbled, “That is weird.”
“I’m not saying it’s fate,” Vrana said. “I’m not saying that. But if he’s as powerful as you say he is—”
“He is,” Elizabeth said. “Or was.”
“—then, it’s worth a shot.”
“To kill God?” Aeson rolled his eyes, shook his head. “Who cares? I mean, do you really?”
Vrana didn’t answer him.
“It’s God. I know enough about the Old World to say, ‘Yeah, that’s God, alright.’” He shook his head again. “The last time people fought against It, the Trauma happened.”
Vrana tongued the inside of her beak. She dug her talons into the chair. Anger came easily to her these days, especially when it came to Aeson. He wasn’t supposed to question her…
“Maybe It’s not all that bad.” He shrugged. “We’re flesh fiends, Vrana. We’re genetically engineered to be sadistic, anarchic, pieces of shit. It… might… be fine. We’ve been in these woods ever since Caldera was…” He sighed. “Let’s just… not care anymore.”
A violent gust slammed into the hut. Streamers of icy air slipped through the cracks and crevices in the façade. The few candles still lit went out. Like motes of dust, tiny snowflakes danced around them; Winter’s own Will o’ Wisps that, if followed on a night like this, would lead to nothing more than hypothermia and frostbite, and a place on the plate of some scavenging beast come morning.
Aeson wasn’t wrong. Vrana could give him that. But they’d never had a winter like this one before. And it hadn’t started until shortly before the Vermillion God stirred. That had to mean something, didn’t it?
“I’m not going to do that, not care,” Vrana said. “Neither are you. If you didn’t care, how the hell did you get here?”
Elizabeth turned away from the table, as if to pretend she wasn’t there.
“We have a lot of shit to sort out,” she continued on, “but we can’t…”
“I’m not you!” Aeson’s face turned as red as his right arm. “I’m not a fighter. Not like you. Not like Bjørn. I tried, and I… I just… I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to fight with you anymore.”
Vrana twitched. The statement had a double-meaning. Reflexively, she dug her beak into her arm and worried at the flesh there, grounding the lice and other bugs that’d infested her feathers. She went at it longer than she needed to, because she didn’t know what she needed to say to him.
“I’m going to do what I have to do with the Skeleton, regardless, yeah?” Elizabeth said. “But I was just thinking… it might not be Gemma with the Skeleton. It… it could be R’lyeh, yeah?”
“Goddamn it,” Aeson said.
Vrana tried to smile at Elizabeth. She couldn’t sell him on the deicide business, but saving R’lyeh? Would he really say no to that?
“You don’t know,” he said.
Elizabeth shook her head. “But I wouldn’t be surprised. He was grooming her. And R’lyeh had this thing, yeah? Where she could eat poisonous things? He’d be all over that.”
Aeson closed his eyes, said, “Just stop.”
“We have to check it out,” Vrana said. “We can’t do that to her.”
Aeson backed out of the table, stood, said, “I’m going to bed,” and then a foot away from the table, stopped.
The hut was one room. Their bed was basically next to the table. There was no room for dramatic exits. There was no running away from this conversation. Not this time.
Aeson stood there, dejected. His shoulders went slack. He gave Vrana one quick look, and sat back down at the table.
Victorious, Vrana said, “Nature calls,” and excused herself.
Birds shit and piss at the same time. This was one of the first things Blix had taught her shortly after rescuing him when she’d been a little girl. Apparently, Pain had been aware of that detail, too.
What would Blix think of her now, squatted in the woods, shitting literal human excrement? Would they be better friends, given that she was closer
to him in appearance? Certainly, he would’ve taken to her new body better than the raven skull she used to wear, which, on reflection, was probably in poor taste around the crow. Or would Blix have shit himself seeing her? Thinking that maybe she had become the Cruel Mother they’d once hunted together.
There’s a thought, she thought, trying not breathe in the smell of digested muscle. I’m the Cruel Mother. I guess it’s come full-circle. She laughed, shit harder. What does that make Aeson, then?
Vrana wiped herself with handfuls of snow, not that she really needed to; she did it for Aeson. She stood, outstretched her wings, and shook the accumulation off them. The snowstorm wasn’t far from a whiteout, but she could still see, feel, the Vermillion God out there. Was It all-knowing? If so, would It try to stop them? Deimos had told her to know her limits, and she did, once, but what were they now? How could she have any at all? She’d survived Pain and Joy, the Void and back; she’d seen the lowest of pleasures, the highest forms of sadism; and killed more people than nearby Communion had citizens. Aeson didn’t believe in her goal to kill God, but after Worms and witches, what else was there to do?
Shit.
That was the problem, wasn’t it? She had nothing left; he only thought he had nothing left. They both wanted to go to Heaven, but for entirely different reasons. This was a job for someone like R’lyeh or Bjørn, not Aeson. Right?
She sighed, and her breath froze in the air. She didn’t know anymore. They had both gone so far beyond what they’d been, that they’d become what her people used to be. In a world that had finally seen its dreams come true, they were truly night terrors.
Yards away, Vrana noticed the hut door was open. Pain had gotten the shitting and pissing part right, but when it came to a bird’s strengths over mammals, she had conveniently forgotten to improve her eyesight, hearing, and sense of smell.
The wind changed. Snow turned to ice. The soft, dreamlike sounds of the woods became harsh. Winter stopped burying the world. It had decided to stab it, instead. The shards of ice rang through the trees, like shattered glass. The air, cruel and killing but oddly comforting, sharpened; it sliced across Vrana as if she were a whetstone.
Braving this, pushing through the mounting windspeeds, Vrana marched towards the hut. Light and shadow moved erratically and quickly before her, as if a coven of witches were taking flight across the moon. It was too late for the Black Hour, wasn’t it? Elizabeth had told her she’d heard the Skeleton was causing Black Hours anywhere, at any time. Was this him? Was it God? Was there even a difference between the two?
“Vrana.”
She croaked. Going sideways, Vrana twisted her neck and found Elizabeth amongst the trees, nothing more than a reddening face peering out from all the layers she wore.
“Didn’t mean to scare you, yeah?” She laughed. “Not that you probably scare at all.”
“I do,” Vrana said.
While Elizabeth closed the distance between them: “Aeson. Yeah… I’ve had people I’ve cared about like that, too. What happened t-to h-him?”
Vrana was half-tempted to offer her a wing to warm her, but they weren’t there yet.
“Forget about it.”
“Did you need something?”
Elizabeth nodded at the shape of the Vermillion God. “You’re really thinking about taking It on, yeah?”
Vrana heard two long strides, and then nothing. She looked at the hut. The front door was still open. Why hadn’t Aeson shut it? She searched Elizabeth for any indication of blood. There was none.
“I don’t know,” Vrana said, going back towards the hut. “Being out here isn’t good for either of us. And if R’lyeh’s with the Skeleton…”
She turned around. Elizabeth was close behind her, but not close enough to attack.
“Why help us?” Vrana asked, five talons readied to plunge into the ex-cabalist’s neck.
“Why not?” Elizabeth shrugged. “You know R’lyeh. She had somewhat good taste in company, yeah?”
Vrana heard more noise; this time, from above.
“And I figured if I said no, you’d kill me,” Elizabeth said. “Right?”
“Maybe…”
Vrana’s attention trailed off. There was the noise again. Above her. She searched the branches and boughs, but only managed to get ice in her eyes. Blinking it away, centering on the hut, she saw it: a flesh fiend on the roof. It was there, and then it wasn’t; because it’d slipped down the chimney.
A heartbeat.
And a scream.
Aeson’s.
Vrana had wings, but they were no use to her now. She hunched down, bolted like a rabid chimp. His scream had awoken something inside her. Something the Void had put there. A seed of malice that’d taken root in the deepest parts of her. She didn’t see red, but white. White as white satin.
The wind picked up, hit her in waves. She braved them, beak open, belting out throaty cries.
Aeson screamed again. A body hit one of the walls. The whole hut shook.
Reaching the hut, and she saw Aeson spin out of it, slinging a thin line of blood across the ground. She grabbed for him, without thinking, then threw herself towards the flesh fiend following through the doorway.
She dug one hand into its shoulders, and the other into its stomach. Gripping him, they tumbled across the threshold, into the hut. Rolling across the floor, they crashed into the table, sending Elizabeth’s black bag flying into the air.
The flesh fiend was ravenous with hunger. It pushed its hands and feet against Vrana’s body. The skin and muscle from its shoulder and stomach ripped away in two veiny, greasy chunks. It had fat to spare, this one. Unlike most fiends she’d seen, this one was ripe. Its body was like an eggplant; a tiny head, mostly mouth, atop a swollen torso that ended in a shit-stained ass that nearly dragged on the ground when it walked.
Vrana got up from the ground. Past the fiend, she saw Aeson and Elizabeth together. She was trying to calm him. He kept pointing to something in the woods.
Jumping, Vrana beat her wings to hold her midair, and drove the talons on her feet straight into the flesh fiend’s skull. Restraining him, as he pawed for Aeson far out of reach, Vrana grabbed the boards of the ceiling, tightened her legs, and swung her legs backwards.
With a wet, sucking sound, Vrana’s talons ripped off half of the flesh fiend’s skull and flung it into the fireplace behind them. The creature’s mutilated brain slid out of its head like a patty of ground beef. The beast wavered there a moment, and fell forward, dead.
“Are you okay?” Vrana dropped to the ground, smashing the brain beneath her toes. “Aeson!”
He wasn’t responding. Elizabeth was holding him by the wrist, as if he may take off at any second. He was still pointing into the woods.
Vrana ran outside. Her eyes followed his finger to the dark, iced-over trees to which he pointed. There were more eyes there, and hot clouds of breath from the evil things hiding beyond the light. Vrana quickly counted ten, and screamed, “Run!”
Aeson and Elizabeth took off so fast, the snow practically melted around them.
Vrana ducked inside the hut, grabbed hers and Aeson’s bags, and Elizabeth’s as well. She didn’t know if they would need them, but beside each other, it was all they had. She grabbed the short sword underneath Aeson’s pillow, and careened out of the hut.
Aeson and Elizabeth hadn’t made it far. Fifteen feet. And the flesh fiends—ten, no, fifteen; no, twenty—weren’t but a yard away from the hut.
Vrana couldn’t kill them all. And they wouldn’t let her. The pack of them were breaking apart, flooding the woods, to close in on them from all directions.
Vrana lifted off the ground, wind be damned, and beat her wings to make up for lost time. In seconds, she was closing in over Aeson and Elizabeth. She could pick him up, but not her. And if she had to choose, well, the choice was obvious.
“I told you!” Aeson screamed at her.
Elizabeth, still holding his wrist, glanced back. The flesh fiends we
re laughing like hyenas, tearing at themselves and one another, as they tore through the snow, leaving everything they touched red and steaming.
Vrana landed in front of Aeson and Elizabeth. A numbing punch of exhaustion hit her gut.
“Here,” she gave the short sword to Aeson.
Wild-eyed and shaking badly, he couldn’t hold it.
Elizabeth wrenched the weapon from him and took off ahead.
“I’ll carry you,” Vrana said, but as she tried to take him into her talons, she realized she couldn’t. He was too heavy, or she was too weak. They were unbalanced. He was too much to bear. He kept slipping through her grasp. She’d used to be able to, but not anymore. Like Pain and Joy, she was nothing but a monster without the Void.
Giving up, Vrana threw her wing around him, urged him on. He only had on his plainclothes and boots. If he survived this, parts of his skin wouldn’t.
“Run for Communion!” Vrana belted at Elizabeth.
Elizabeth changed her course for the field of black and the torches burning beyond it.
“They… won’t… help,” Aeson said.
Vrana held him tighter—he kept slipping—and said, “They don’t have to. They just have to be there.”
The flesh fiends were getting closer. She could feel them. Their heat and their hunger like a belt of exploding stars. Snow was being thrown into the air from their movements; and the woods sounded as if they were being harvested. The beasts were smashing through the trees, flinging shrapnel everywhere they went.
At times, Vrana felt a feather plucked from her back—they were that close.
The wretched screaming of the fiends boxed her ears.
Aeson gasped. His legs locked. He fell.
Vrana stopped, turned. Two flesh fiends were inches away, their mouths salivating, their sexes dripping. Behind them, even more, seconds from joining in.
“Get up!” Vrana screeched.
She dug her hands into Aeson’s arms. Blood dribbled down them from where she’d accidentally stabbed. She flung him over her shoulders…
The two flesh fiends leapt at her. They collided into each other, and into her. Holding Aeson, she fell to the ground with them. He gasped. She could feel the air as it exploded out of his lungs.