I stopped well out of reach of Lurida Lumo. Well, out of reach provided he stayed in the shape he currently occupied. I don’t remember much from my studies, but I was certain that corporeal gods usually stayed in the form they chose when they descend. At least that’s what I hoped. Now, more than ever, I wished I’d paid more attention to my studies.
This close, I saw that his slick, blue skin was actually damp, shining with moisture like the stalactites above me. Did he sweat, I wondered, or was this just condensation? I wondered if Freya had an oil for that too.
“Aella,” he said again. I didn’t like this at all. “Yet dressed like a village girl.”
“Sometimes, you have to revamp your style,” I said, wondering how this god looked before he came to the mortal realm.
“You killed one of my guardians and took away my sacrifice.”
“I sure did.”
“Why would a Reaper do that?”
“We disagree on the purpose of nice village girls.”
He smiled, and it looked like the surface of a pudding being shifted from within. Holy Mother of Spikes, this thing is creepy. “Why do the humans deserve your protection when they are such weak, helpless creatures?”
When I was particularly angry at Adonis, Andre, or myself, I’d wondered the same thing, yet this was the first time a ready answer had sprung to mind. “Because we’re weak where they’re strong.”
“Surely, you’re not going to mention such abstract concepts as ‘love’ and ‘compassion,’ are you?”
This guy talked like Eldrid if Eldrid was made out of blue snot. “I don’t have to since, apparently, you already know.”
He shook his head slowly, probably so pieces wouldn’t sling off. “I have not had the pleasure of meeting a Reaper for some time.”
“Are you about to brag that there are Reaper bones in here? Because that’s kind of trite.”
“Oh, no. Nothing so…blatant. I’ve never had a Reaper sacrifice, not in all the long years of my existence.”
“And you’re not about to now.”
His smile widened until it was just a hair beyond where a human expression could go. “Your bravery is admirable. But what I intended to say was that, while I’ve never had a Reaper, I have had…these.”
He gestured with the same hand again, and it moved as if the bones inside were as rubbery as the flesh. I discreetly turned to look, keeping him well within my field of vision as well.
Until everything completely changed.
I jumped back a step, fell into a fighting stance, and fought not to scream. Whether it would’ve been a battle cry or a real scream of terror is open for debate. But either way, I at least managed to stay silent, which was a hell of an accomplishment.
From out of the cave’s blue-lit depths, two unmistakable figures emerged. I knew their long, stringy hair, their ridged eyebrows, their lean, sinewy bodies. In sixty-five years, their stench remained exactly as I remembered.
I knew their kind.
Demons.
Even now, I prefer not to sort through the memories of what the Demons did to the innocent little girl my mother tossed away like the evening’s trash. Every imaginable form and aspect of brutality got practiced on me sometimes as a guinea pig for new innovations but usually just to relieve their boredom. It was a total inversion, a complete perversion of what a child should go through. But what I do remember clearly is the laughter, the mockery, that my pain brought out in them. When Ganesh was defeated, I thought I’d never have to see one of these pasty-faced, baby-raping bastards again. Adonis told me they’d all been destroyed; the only Demons now were in my head. Yet here, now, in this weird-ass cave, were two of them walking toward me.
All right. No one needs to rescue me this time. I’m here to kick Demon ass and chew gum tree leaves, and I’m all out of gum tree leaves. I shifted from a defensive stance to offense, intending to bring the battle to them as soon as they got in range.
Then they stopped.
Something was wrong with them. Where were the intelligent, sadistic smiles that haunt my dreams? They stared straight ahead, glassy-eyed and blank-faced. Those damned Demon smiles didn’t come to their faces. They bore no weapons either, something that was unthinkable for the Demons since Ganesh overthrew the Demon order by having them all made mortal. Before that, not even decapitation could destroy a Demon. Their clothing was tattered and worn with age, something the vanity of Demons would never normally allow. They did not assume any battle stance I recognized but simply stood, faces and limbs slack as if waiting for some sort of order. And this made me positively rigid.
One was male, and the other was a rare female. Where had they come from?
“You may relax,” Lurida Lumo said. “They are under my control.”
Under his what? “That’s some trick,” I said at last, hoping my voice didn’t shake too much.
He gestured at them. They slowly turned their backs to me, something an unarmed Demon really would never do to a Reaper. Then I saw why. On the backs of their necks were hand-sized, slug-like creatures the same glowing shade of blue as Lurida Lumo. They pulsed slowly, and strands of the Demons’ greasy white hair stuck to them. They had bored into the Demons’ skin, and by inference, into their brains. Whatever they were, it was clear Lurida Lumo did have the Demons under some sort of control.
“Do you know,” he asked me, “how it is that Demons came to be in this realm?”
“No one knows that.”
“Demons were once servants of our great Creator, the one who made all things, including the other gods. But they were rebellious creatures, and the creator cast them out and sent them here to serve his most precious creation.”
Humans. And then the realization hit me like a mountain: “So you can control what the Creator could not?” My blood turned to ice crystals in my veins. What this god lacked in physical prowess he made up for in sheer power.
“You, my dear Aella, half demon, half witch, shall be my first Reaper sacrifice.” His smile paralyzed me.
The Demons broke out of their stupor like a boulder crushing a wine goblet. In an instant, they’d covered the space between us, their talons grasping at me as I tried to maneuver. They made a sound I’d never heard before, a kind of high-pitched screeching that didn’t seem to come from their tightly-closed mouths.
I was terrified, but I was also well-trained, and I met the first one with a perfectly aimed swing at his neck. Only one thing could kill a Demon for sure, and that was decapitation. I can’t tell you how many training dummies I’d beheaded, how many melons split in mid-air, how many times I’d practiced bringing the edge of the blade down at just the right angle to slice through armored vertebrae and resilient spinal cords. So this blow was perfectly on target.
Except that it bounced off.
It was as if I’d hit an iron bar with all my strength. The impact knocked the sword from my hands, and my bones chattered from the reverberation. Luckily, it also knocked the first Demon into the second and sent them down in a tangle of flailing limbs among the bones on the floor. I stumbled as well but kept to my feet, more astonished than anything. They wore no neck armor, so what—
Those blue parasites.
They looked soft, but they were solid enough to deflect the blade of my Reaper-forged sword, which meant they were pretty damned solid.
The Demons untangled themselves; turned their dead, ugly ass-faces toward me; and charged again. The female grabbed my left arm, and I used her as a pivot to launch myself at the male. I kicked him in his ass-face then used the momentum to toss the woman over my shoulder. Two satisfying cracks boosted my confidence. Before I could reset, Ass-Face number one rushed at me and tackled me around the waist. We went down with a clatter of dried bones and a cloud of dust.
I should’ve gone into Reaper mode and torn these Demons apart as I’d done the spider earlier. But when a Reaper’s brain is engaged, she doesn’t tend to freak out. I was too puzzled by their presence and their behavior. What we
re they doing here? How did Lurida Lumo get them under his control?
I heard the blue god’s wet, wheezing laugh. He thought this was great sport, and I knew that in order for this to end, I would have to slay the wheezing God.
I grabbed Demon Ass-Face Number One by the sides of his head and looked into his eyes. “Who are you?” I demanded. “Why are you here?” But his eyes remained glassy, and his hands tore at me even as his expression stayed blank and empty.
I slammed his head into the floor, jumped to my feet, and kicked the female just before she reached me. By then the male was back, wrapping his arms around me and trying to pin my arms to my sides. Nothing but the tip of my sword was going to get through to these demons. First things first.
I turned in his embrace and wedged one foot between me and him. Without looking, I kicked him across the room. Between me and my sword was Demon Ass-Face Number Two. I leaped into the air over the charging demon, landed on my trusty boots, and grabbed my dropped sword, all without tearing my stupid dress. It was then that I realized I had a clear shot at the exit. I took it, rushing up into the passage at full speed. I heard the spider scramble and try to jump down on me, but I was going too fast, and it missed. It came after me though, and in that tunnel, it was faster than the Demons had been.
Extra weight seemed to pull at the hem of my skirt. The spider was crawling up my dress! This would never happen in trousers! The wretched thing jumped on my back, and my legs buckled under its weight. I rolled to pin it between me and the floor, drew up my knees, and kicked as hard as I could, bucking my back with all my strength. The legs tore loose, leaving more of the quill-like hairs stuck in me, and I rolled forward, spun, and threw my sword at it. It passed through the spider’s body lengthwise and knocked it back into the wall, where it landed and curled into a ball.
I should’ve gone back for my sword, but the urge to flee was just too strong. I ran the rest of the way into the open.
It was full dark now, and I slammed into the wooden X. Ouch. How do I always manage to do more damage to myself than my opponents do? I spun and waited to see what would emerge. For a long time, the only sound was my own rapid breathing. The night’s insects were silent, the way they fell when unexpected predators prowled nearby. Only the wind rattled in the trees.
I waited for pursuit, but nothing appeared. The blue light was plain in the darkness, and neither the Demons nor the spider nor that goopy son of a bitch Lurida Lumo appeared.
I was covered in sweat, webs, and bone dust, and I pulled the spider hairs I could reach from my back. Each one sent a bolt of liquid fire through me as it tore its way out of my flesh. I gritted my teeth and bit the sides of my mouth to keep from crying out.
Now, I had to decide what to do. I could run back to the castle and forget this whole thing. That would be the easiest thing. Just turn on what was left of my heel and forget this horrible place with its scary blue god and arachnids of unusual size. Except there was Amelia. Amelia expected me to meet her and take her to her aunt’s. Amelia, this brave young girl who fought a spider the size of her parents’ bedroom with nothing but a stick. Amelia, who stood up for me against her father, the council, even the entire village. For me. For our friendship. What kind of person, Reaper or human, could walk away from that?
I really had no choice but to go back to the village and try to warn them. I felt like an idiot. Why had I assumed the spider was their god? It was because I’d thought they were stupid, or at least willfully naive, and couldn’t possibly read the situation accurately. It was a level of arrogance I saw in all the Reapers and probably the Demons too.
The Demons. That was a whole other level of shit. Whatever Lurida Lumo was, whatever he wanted, he was powerful enough to enslave Demons. Even Reapers couldn’t do that. Even my mother, probably the most powerful witch of all time, only kind of did that with Ganesh. But even he still tortured her. So what chance did this village full of humans have against the god that I had now thoroughly pissed off?
They had no chance. And I knew it.
Or rather, the only chance they had was me.
First, I had to stop Amelia from leaving. Then, I had to convince the village’s elders that I wasn’t some sort of lunatic. I knew they hated and feared me, especially since I broke that boy’s legs. But I had to try. To abandon them would be to confirm Eldrid’s theory that I wasn’t the Red Reaper at all.
I headed back toward the village, this time ignoring the trail and cutting straight through the woods. Red Reaper or not, here I come.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It should have been impossible, but I was lost.
How did I get lost? I mean, I was running from the cave to the village, two places I’d been before, and even though I didn’t take the road, I certainly knew the way. A Reaper’s sense of space and distance was pretty damn good. So where the hell was I?
I stumbled through trees that grew bigger and thicker than I remembered. The undergrowth snagged on my dress and hair. I should’ve seen the lights of the village through the forest by now, but I couldn’t even see the stars or moon because of the canopy overhead. Only my heightened Reaper vision kept me from blundering face-first into the jutting end of a broken limb. That was a good thing; Reapers could heal, but we didn’t regrow things like eyes if they got poked out.
Finally, I stopped. There was no point in continuing. I looked around and couldn’t even see the path I’d just made through the weeds and briars. Things scurried through the undergrowth around me, hissing and spitting in ways that sounded a lot like mumbled speech, slurred like the bugs were all…drunk? But I saw nothing.
I closed my eyes. When one sense is removed, the others step up, and I had confidence that I’d be able to hear the village if I left myself open to it. I couldn’t be that far away, could I?
The air here seemed dry and thin, as if the moisture had been sucked out of it. Odd for a forest. Very, very odd. But I heard only the sounds of the wilderness, which seemed to echo in the night. Things moved faster and slower than seemed right. I knew most of them, strange though they sounded in this forest. Was the sound being absorbed by the trees? No, that didn’t seem right. And what of these voices? They came back, louder this time but still hovering just beyond the edge of comprehension. The sound swirled around me; was it coming from within or without? What threat is this?
It resolved into one word, over and over, and eventually, I recognized it.
Aella…Aella…Aella…
The voice now sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. It wasn’t Lurida Lumo, Damato, or any of the Reapers who might be searching for me. A thin, whimsical voice, nothing like the deep bass of my father, Andre, or even Keefe. The voice in the back of my mind that was always searching for Aaron told me it wasn’t him. A psychic connection—my mother, then? No, it wasn’t my mother, whose voice occasionally seemed to whisper to me on the wind. This sound, my own name, crawled like cold dead fingers up my armored spine. Who was it? What was it?
A shudder ran through me. Was it Ganesh? My mind knew what my brain refused to acknowledge. Ganesh is alive. He must be because I would feel it if he didn’t live. I’d just seen two live Demons; had they somehow told him where I was? Was he coming to reclaim me as he promised so many times all of those years ago?
I fought that down. It wasn’t possible. Those Demons in the cave were not emissaries; they were victims. They had no wills of their own. And Ganesh is dead. Everyone knew that. Except my stupid mind, insistent on playing tricks on me. If Adonis said he decapitated Ganesh, then Ganesh is dead. That is the way of things, and there’s no…
Aella…Aella…Aella…
I opened my eyes. The voice came from directly ahead, so I carefully picked my way through the weeds, moving toward whoever wanted me so badly. The forest remained black, dry, featureless, and impenetrable.
Then I did see a light: a single, glowing window far ahead through the greenery. I pushed toward it, and only when I’d practically reached its door did I
recognize it as Yazel’s hut.
That was on the far side of the village. How had I gotten here without going through the damn town? What was going on here?
At least it oriented me, and I knew where the path was from here. But before I could take it, the door opened, and Yazel said, “Come in, Aella. I’ve been expecting you.”
“I’m in a hurry,” I said. “I’ll come back and talk to you later.”
“Time has stopped for this,” she said. Her voice was distant and hollow, just like the one that had called my name. “It will cost you no haste to hear me out, and it will surely aid you in what you wish to do.”
“Right,” I said. Apparently, she’d put an extra spoonful of creepy in her evening tea. “If you’ll excuse me?”
I turned to go and happened to glance up at something white in the trees above me. It was a magnificent snowy owl, huge and mystical-looking. It had just launched itself from a branch no doubt after spotting a forest mouse somewhere below.
Except that the owl was poised in mid-air, frozen in the midst of its flight. Its wings were spread wide and its talons extended. But it wasn’t moving. It was stopped, just as Yazel had said about time. I guess she meant it literally.
“Horton’s balls,” I whispered then looked back at her. “Did you do this?”
“The universe did this. I was just the agent.”
“Why?”
“Because one day, the fate of the world will rest on your shoulders, my dear Red Reaper.”
I stared at her. Her voice, sepulchral yet powerful, left no room for disagreement. “I suppose I’ve got a second then,” I said as I went inside.
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