Then I had the jolting realization that he might also be married with children—human children that were soft all over without the dangerous spikes Reaper babies sported along their spines. He wouldn’t need special gloves to hold his human children the way he would with ours. And human children wouldn’t accidentally shatter the furniture with their rambunctiousness or bite chunks out of each other in spite.
I wanted to slap myself. What was I thinking? I had bigger worries, much bigger worries, than the romantic fate of some peasant who’d once been nice to me.
Then why did it feel like the biggest thing in the world?
But before I could start having that argument in my head, a woman’s scream rang through the trees.
I dropped into a crouch, reflexes taking over. Discern direction, my training said. To the west. Determine distance. About a hundred yards although the thick trees and undergrowth made that a loose estimate. Investigate and evaluate danger.
The scream was human—it would be, out here, where neither Reapers nor Demons traveled. And really, Reapers didn’t scream. We roared, we bellowed, we grunted and snorted, but we didn’t scream. I had screamed during my time with my Demon father, under his tender care, but as everyone was quick to point out, I was different. Perhaps that was what made me clench up inside not with fear but with righteous anger. That scream was not of pain but of terror. I knew that sound all too well.
I slid through the undergrowth, barely disturbing the plants through which I passed. I thought again about my hair, the scent trail it left behind me, but this time, I wasn’t the one being followed and tracked. No, I was the one on the hunt.
The air still vibrated from the cry, and as I got closer to the source, I picked up odors on the wind. I was nowhere near as good as Andre, but I was no slouch. The smells were mostly human: sweat, well-worn clothes, even the faint trace of flowers. But there was another tang on the wind, something I’d never before encountered. No animal left a scent like that or any human or any Demon or Reaper. What the hell was that?
I emerged from the forest at the top of a wide, shallow gully. I came down the side of the hill, slithering along like a snake, and crouched behind some bushes. My small size made it unlikely anyone would spot me unless they happened to look right at me, and I got an unobstructed view of the gully before me.
Directly across, in the opposite hillside, was the opening to a cave. It wasn’t much wider than a palace door, but the edges were shored up with mortar and rocks, and a language I didn’t know proclaimed something along the top. Clearly, it was man-made but not recently if the weathering on these stones was any indication. Older than the Thousand Year War at least, so probably not a Demon shelter.
Stuck in the ground before it was an X-shaped wooden stand, the two cross pieces at least ten feet tall. This wood was also old though not as old as the door, and corroded metal bolts held the two pieces together where they joined. More ominously, shackles hung from the tops of the X.
My fists clenched. My Demon father had used shackles on me to hold me down for “training.” No one would ever shackle me again.
As I watched, two men dragged a teenage girl out of the woods. She was formally dressed in a long gown and wore both a necklace and wreath of flowers. She was not happy to be dragged, and the fear I’d heard in her earlier scream had now changed to fury.
“You pinheaded, dung-licking, crotch-rotted bastards!” she cried at the men, fighting like a gorecat. “Let me go!”
“By heaven, Amelia, shut up!” one of the men said. He was older, with gray hair and a beard, and reminded me of my own adopted father. He slapped her hard. I disliked him immediately. “Insulting us won’t help anything!”
While she was still dazed by the blow, they pushed her up against the crossed wood. The other man, who was younger and also dressed in something formal-looking, lifted one of her arms and snapped a shackle around it.
“No!” the girl screamed when she heard the metal click into place. She began to struggle anew. “No! Get this off me!”
It took both of them to get her other arm up and shackled, and they endured plenty of kicks for their efforts. They stepped out of range, both out of breath. She continued lashing out at them.
The younger man said, “Look, Amelia, I’m really sorry about this, but you’ve always known this might happen.”
She stopped and glared at him. Her face was bright red from the effort to escape. “You’re supposed to be my friend, Cal. We grew up together. I was the first girl you kissed.”
“I’m not happy about this, Amelia, believe me. But we have to appease Lurida Lumo.” He shrugged as if they were arguing about the color of the sky.
“There is no Lurida Lumo, you idiot!” Amelia said. “There might be a bear, or a mountain lion, or even a left-over Demon, but there’s no god who lives in that cave and eats sacrifices!”
“Amelia, you’re embarrassing yourself,” the older man said. “I’ve been on a dozen of these sacrificial treks, and I’ve never seen a single girl act like this. Being frightened is normal, but you’re behaving as if this were the end of your life.”
“It will be, you moron! Something will eat me, but it won’t be a damned god! Come on, Litwin, you have to know better than this. You can read and write! You’ve studied!”
“You will be transubstantiated into spirit, to be one with Lurida Lumo,” the old man Litwin said with the same annoying solemnity as Eldrid teaching one of her homilies. “It is a great honor and a most solemn calling.”
The younger man, Cal, took out a bag of something, poured it into a hole in the ground just inside the cave entrance, then lit it on fire with a flint. Purple smoke billowed out, and the wind sucked it almost at once into the cave itself. To him, it was probably an offering to their god. It was also a signal to whatever lived there that dinner was now served.
Cal closed his eyes and clasped his hands. When he spoke, it was clear he’d memorized the words because he gave them no inflection or meaning. “Lurida Lumo, I humbly bring to you this year’s sacrifice, the virgin Amelia. She is beautiful, as you require, and pure, as is proper for your offering. May she prove pleasing to your eye and spirit and cause you to grant us another year of prosperity.”
“Some stupid animal can’t grant you anything!” Amelia screamed. “Please, don’t do this to me, Cal. I’ll marry you if that’s what it takes!”
That got Cal’s attention, but before he could respond, Litwin said, “Lurida Lumo might appear as a mere animal. Because he is a denizen of the spirit world, and only visits our realm when it pleases him, he may choose the form he prefers.”
“Do you ever use that brain in your head for thinking, or is it just there to keep your skull from deflating?” Amelia snapped. That made me smile. She was tough and smart.
“Blasphemy is not the best way to spend your last moments,” Litwin said. “But because I appreciate your sacrifice, I will tell your parents you met your end with dignity.”
“I’ve got news for you, you jackass. I’m not meeting anything with dignity. I’m going down kicking and screaming!”
He sighed and motioned to his companion. Cal stopped before Amelia, out of range of her kicks, and looked at her sadly. “I’m really sorry, Amelia. If Kelinda hadn’t died, she’d be here, but they had to make a choice quickly before the time for sacrifices passed.”
“They picked me because I was the first girl they saw,” she said, starting to cry. “How is that fair? How is that right?”
“I’m sorry, Amelia, it’s just…” He shrugged. “The way of Lurida Lumo.”
The two men walked off the way they’d come, disappearing down a trail into the woods. Amelia screamed after them, her rage quickly turning to pleading and begging, but neither looked back. “I’m not a virgin!” Amelia cried out.
“Yes she is,” Cal told Litwin, who looked concerned.
“How do you know that?” Litwin asked.
“She left me for Connell.”
Litwi
n nodded. “Ah. Of course.”
Whatever that was supposed to mean.
When they were gone, the girl began to struggle with the chains and manacles holding her in place. She rocked the whole wooden cross with her efforts, but it seemed to be in vain. She was no nearer being free, and the cross was in no danger of giving way.
I waited until the two men were out of range of my own hearing and scent. I wasn’t afraid of them, but I didn’t want to kill them unnecessarily. Humans, even stupid ones, were considered precious to Reapers although I could never be sure if it was something innate in our nature or just force of habit. None of the other Reapers, even Eldrid, seemed to know either. And like the old man and his belief in his cave god, none ever want to think it through.
I slipped down the hill, across the little stream that ran down the center of the gully, and came up behind the girl. I said quietly, “Don’t be afraid. I’m here to help.”
“If you want to help, get me off this stupid thing!” she said, twisting around to look at me. She rolled her eyes. “Oh, hell, you’re just another girl.”
I drew my sword and, with two sharp blows, severed the chains holding her. She fell forward to her knees then slowly looked up at me.
“I’m not ‘just’ anything,” I said and did a little flourish with the sword before I put it back in its scabbard. “And the words I think you’re looking for are, ‘thank you.’”
“You cut those chains with that?” she said in disbelief.
I shrugged nonchalantly. I didn’t get to impress people very often. “Yes,” I said casually, as if I did this sort of thing every day.
She looked at the chain fragments hanging from the manacles on her wrists. “But…those were solid iron. What is that sword made out of?”
I didn’t really want to get into Reaper metallurgy mainly because I always fell asleep when Eldrid started talking about it. So I said, “Double solid iron.”
She nodded as if that explained it. Whew.
I offered her my hand. She weighed practically nothing as I pulled her to her feet. “Wow,” she said. “You’re strong.”
“I work outside a lot,” I said. If she didn’t immediately recognize me as a Reaper, it could mean she didn’t know about us. The Thousand Year War had been over for twenty years, and there was a whole generation of young humans to whom it was only a story. Maybe to them, Reapers were no more real than the boogeyman or this ridiculous Lurida Lumo.
“Thank you,” she said and smiled. “My name’s Amelia.”
“I heard.”
“Yeah, our brilliant village priest, Litwin. He hasn’t had an original thought since he learned to wipe his own butt. He really believes there’s a god that lives in this cave who will smite our village if they don’t leave him a sacrifice every five years.” She shook her head. “Right now, there’s a damn celebration going on back in Cartwangle. I wonder if my parents are dancing and drinking too.”
“Can you go back?” I asked. “Or do I need to take you somewhere else where you’ll be safe?”
“Like anything could stop me from going back,” she said. “I can’t wait to walk into the village and bust up their stupid party. Wait until they hear that the only thing that lives in that cave is—”
In mid-sentence, her eyes opened wide, and she stared over my shoulder at the cave entrance. Even before I reacted to that, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I felt tingles along my armor-plated spine. I knew danger was behind me.
I drew my sword again as I turned, feet spread in a fighting stance, but what I saw froze me in mid-motion not from fear but surprise.
“—a spider the size of a hay cart,” Amelia finished, accurately describing what emerged from the dark entrance into the afternoon sun.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Normally, bugs didn’t freak me out. I mean, I lived alone at the top of an ancient castle tower. Some nights, I felt like the bugs were just letting me bunk there while I looked for my own place. And I’d seen plenty of spiders but none larger than the palm of my hand. This one was bigger than my bed.
I glanced back at Amelia. She snatched up a tree branch from the ground and brandished it like a club. “Just stay back,” I said. “I’ll handle this.”
“You’re going to fight that with just a sword?”
“Says the girl holding a stick.”
“Well, I don’t have a really big shoe handy, do I?”
Luckily, my hands didn’t shake, but my heart certainly did. I’d trained ever since I was rescued from the Demons to fight. I knew I could defend myself if I had to, but to defend another, and a human at that? Theoretically, that was the point of my existence since all that training was to eventually be the king’s bodyguard, but for the first time, I realized how difficult it might be. How do you protect something so soft, so weak, and yet so courageously foolish as to want to stand at your side, holding nothing but a stick?
The spider seemed hesitant to emerge into the sunlight. Just like a Demon, and I can fight them. Then I remembered that, in history class, I’d learned that the Demons kept the various societies of men locked in ignorance by encouraging them to worship animals as gods. There was Dagon the fish-god for the coast, Dahj the ram-god for those who dwelled in the mountains, and even Pai Lin the bear, the idiot god of the people of the far northwest. I was taught that often, actual animals stood in for these deities in their ceremonies. I suppose it was just a short leap from that to worshipping a specific creature that just happened to live nearby: a monumental bug, perhaps, like the one before me now.
The spider clung to the cave wall, its front pair of legs curled around the edge of the entrance, then dropped silently to the ground. It was as tall as my waist. I could see the individual hairs on its first pair of legs as they edged closer.
It was mostly black with yellow patterns on its body. I got a clear look at the massive fangs. I smelled something acrid and stinging and saw thick fluid drip from the tip of one fang. When it hit the ground, it sizzled.
“Maybe it’s only poisonous to gravel,” Amelia suggested.
I tried to use my training. Assess the threat. Well, it was a big honking spider with venom that burned rock. So I’d say the threat was high. Examine the terrain. Flat open ground between me and the bug with only the X-shaped prisoner stand for cover. The gully wall behind us prevented any strategic retreat.
“Any ideas?” Amelia asked. “Because running is looking mighty good to me.”
“I don’t think we can outrun it,” I said, my voice already turning into a battle growl. “So let’s keep that as plan ‘B.’”
“And what’s plan ‘A,’ then?”
Determine strategy. If I attacked, I’d be at a disadvantage, so it was best to wait and let it make the first move. I’d have to hope that once the spider committed itself, it would leave an opening.
Well, I was wrong about that.
Spiders, I knew from observation, attacked in one of two ways: ambush from either a web or some other hiding place or a leaping charge. I should’ve realized at once that this one had to be an attack predator because its victim was left outside, not forced into the cave itself. If I’d realized that, I would’ve been ready for the leap. As it was, I was still sorting through the lessons Andre and Eldrid had drilled into me when the spider, weary of waiting for his dinner, jumped.
My reflexes kicked in, and I jumped too. Right between it and Amelia.
Amelia screamed.
If you’ve never felt a spider’s legs wrap around your entire upper body, you can’t imagine how disgusting it is. The creature’s strength was enormous, and it pinned my arms with very little effort. My sword was caught against my chest, the point almost in my face. The spider’s rank odor filled my nose and made my eyes water. It was a miracle it didn’t knock me down, but I’d spread my feet in a battle stance, and that was probably all that saved me.
Through my watering eyes, I saw Amelia swing her stick awkwardly, but with all her strength, at the beast. �
��Get off her! You hear me? Get off her now!” It had no effect.
The thick black hairs pierced my exposed skin like porcupine quills. It wasn’t very deep but immediately caused a maddening itch. The abdomen was soft, pulpy, and disgusting as it pulsed against my knees. But the worst was the pain from the two enormous fangs as they sank into the meat of my shoulder. I’d been hurt a lot when I lived with the Demons but never like this.
I screamed, this time in pain and real fear. It felt as if the liquid iron used to make swords was being pumped into my skin. I bit down on my sword’s tip, not caring that it cut my mouth. I couldn’t move, couldn’t see, couldn’t think. It began to efficiently wrap my feet in webbing.
I pivoted, tore my boots free before the web hardened, and ran as hard as I could into the sacrificial crosspiece, slamming it between me and the wood. The legs gave a little although the fangs remained deep in my flesh. I drew back and slammed again, and this time, I was ready. I got my left arm free, grabbed the nearest leg close to where it connected with the body, and bent it backward. There was a loud crack as the exoskeleton snapped.
The spasm of pain that went through the spider allowed me to get my right hand free as well, and I punched it hard right in its cluster of eyes. That made it release me and fall away. My sword fell as well, but I caught it with my foot, kicked it back into the air, and grabbed it by the hilt. I tore at the remaining webbing that threatened to tangle my limbs.
Amelia was suddenly at my side, trying to grab me as if I was about to collapse. “Come on, let’s get out of here—”
“Stand back!” I said, surprised by how thin my own voice sounded. Was I really hurt that badly? “I’m fine!”
“Watch it!” she screamed and pushed me aside just as the spider, injured but not cowed, scuttled toward us. I fell to the ground, yelled at the pain as my shoulder struck the hard dirt, and watched Amelia run to hide behind the crossed wood. The spider was faster, though, and I got to my feet just as it shot webbing out and pinned her face-first to the wood.
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