Arctic air rushed into my lungs and I choked, gulping. My hands scrunched the thin fabric of my camisole at my chest. Trickles of stickiness ran down my face, sweat mixed with old blood. My eyes glazed over as I stared at the small body. It twitched. The kid’s twisted life-force hadn’t left yet. It was holding on.
Such a shame, all that knowledge going to waste. The voice slipped in through the cracks of my fragile mind. I tried to shake it off and failed. If you taste him, you can have all of that power for yourself. Knowledge is power. Aren’t you thirsty?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I STARED AT the boy until my eyes clouded over, then ran my tongue over my lips and tasted blood. It held an inviting tingle, a buzz of residual power. The voice in my head had spoken the truth. I could level the playing field. Cash needed that knowledge.
Taste.
The word bounced around my skull. Petra wanted to taste me, to know the truth. I could feel the boy’s essence oozing away, slipping like slime through the cracks in his body. I pushed down on his shoulder and pulled his head back by the hair to expose a delicate neck. I lowered my mouth. My teeth were razor blades sliding past salty skin. I felt no resistance—had my teeth sharpened with my subconscious need? Warm, coppery liquid flowed past my lips. My taste buds surged and my insides zinged. I connected with his body and I connected with his soul. My eyes fluttered, wanting to close, but I kept them open, watching my actions. As my insides sang, my brain rebelled. I knew it was wrong, but my body wanted it, ached for more.
I tried to focus on the lavender scent of his skin, and pinned my gaze on the sand behind his head, counting the grains until I became aware of dark symbols floating to the surface of his skin. They crawled onto mine. With my mouth still on his neck, I cradled him and, in a semi-detached state, contemplated the markings. They looked like hieroglyphic insects scuttling up my arms until they settled on my own skin. The pieces twitched and turned, trying to find a home. Were they waiting for me to finish? I drank and drew on his energy until there was nothing left of him and the symbols covered every inch of my skin.
I worried for the sanctity of my soul, only hoping this would make things right with Cash.
With the last atom of his aura safely inside me, I heard a whispered, Thank you for releasing me in my mind. Then a comprehension slammed into my consciousness with the force of a supernatural tidal wave. I lost hold of the boy and crashed backwards into the rocky wall. My head cracked and pain radiated down my spine. I convulsed, gasping for air.
Knowledge coursed through my body with a white-hot heat. Fast-forward patterns and visions danced behind my eyelids, cinematic memories that were not mine played, over and over. The thrum of a live-wire pinged down into my bones. I eventually calmed my breathing and, while I still tingled, inspected the blotchy alien skin on my hands as the symbols slowly dissolved. They became random skin lesions, then dark clouds churning in a stormy sky, and then there were none. The buzzing in my body faded, and I was left with an urge to vomit.
Blood.
I looked at the corpses in front of me and options to alter their DNA immediately materialized in my brain. Suddenly I knew that, while the body was still warm, it would respond to certain manipulations. I could make it move. Necromancy. I buried my face in my knees, trying to block out the visions.
Mutilated bodies marched across my vision: piles of arms, legs, and genitalia. It was the little shop of horrors. Sewn together were creatures born of evil, never living for long but alive, nonetheless. Horns on a human head, scales on a horse and wings on a mouse. Arms, legs, children, insects. Human body parts on animals. I rolled to the side and heaved, bringing up half the blood I’d just swallowed. When I saw the foaming mess, I vomited until my head pounded. When I could breathe again, I scrambled away.
You’ll never outrun the visions.
“Shut up.” I groped around with my hands, somehow realizing that I could change my vision to something like a bat’s and see more clearly. Not vision, precisely—echolocation. It seemed like I’d swallowed life’s instruction manual. Information and images bounced around in my head, making complete sense, while a few minutes before, they would’ve sounded insane.
More like Petra’s instruction manual. You know, she experimented on dolphins once.
“Stop!” I screamed, blocking my ears, and huddling into a crouch. What had I done? I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to be a monster like Petra.
And you think I wanted it? I don’t even want this. I thought you released me.
My head snapped up. For a panicked moment I thought the boy was still alive. But the sound came from the deepest part of my mind. And then I really freaked. I hyperventilated until black spots became rainbows and swirled around my vision. He was inside me, the boy was inside me. I hadn’t just swallowed his knowledge; I’d swallowed his entire soul.
He’s not the only one.
That’s right. The witch, when I was a baby. There were two of them inside me. Holy fuck. Blood roared in my ears and more visions came. I knew how to bend human DNA to my will and, it seemed, I could alter more than humans. The visions of Petra’s gory game flickered in my head, I could almost hear her cackle. But it was a memory—whose I couldn’t tell.
I groaned. “When will it stop?”
Silence.
“Answer me!”
I bit my lip and tears fell. I cried for my sanity, for my friends, and for my future. I missed my mother and wanted her arms around me. I’d never before ached for her embrace so deeply. I wanted the hugs, the safety, the warmth and the kisses. I didn’t want to be alone. I sobbed silently, my body shaking from a need so deep that no sound could climb out.
I don’t know how long I sat there. The white noise in my ears and disturbing visions slowed and eventually faded to black. The memories distanced themselves and fatigue rolled over me. I’d have fallen asleep if not for the cold night air prickling at my skin, making my teeth chatter.
Petra would be back soon. I had to get out. But I was tired. My shoulders slumped, heavy. I was so tired.
“Well, I can’t say I expected this, love.”
“Marc?” I blinked at the moonlit shadows, actually feeling relief.
He took one look at me and gasped. In a flicker, a dark business suit replaced his nakedness. He wore the face of his older, suave version, stubble dappled his strong chin, and something I hadn’t seen before glittered in his blue eyes. Fear? Concern? His brow furrowed as he approached, smoothing his hair from his forehead.
“Little Red, you’re going to wake the neighborhood with all that noise in your aura. You need to power down, love,” he said softly and touched his finger to my cheek. His touch was warm, and I relaxed into his hand. His eyes darted around the bloody scene. “I suppose they had it coming, yeah?” He lowered himself to my level and cupped my face in his hands, moving my head from side to side, then let go.
“Don’t look at me,” I said through my fingers.
“Why ever not?”
“Because I’m a monster.”
“Not that I care, but you’re not a monster. You’re not human either.” He pulled my hands away from my face. “I know this must come as a shock to you—the power and the strange sensations. But you aren’t alone. There are many others like you, well, not exactly like you, but with abilities that can’t be explained to the general population. You have your mentor, the Samson boy, and if your father had trained you properly, you wouldn’t be in this mess. I’m talking about the ignorance, not the literal bloodshed. Like I said, I don’t care how you play your Game, that’s your own business.” He looked puzzled. “You’ve completed your partnership ritual with Cash, yeah?”
“Uh—no.” I looked away.
“Oi!” He grabbed my chin and tugged my face toward him. “I fancy you, Little Red. You’re well fit, and a right laugh sometimes—a breath of fresh air, really. But the point is, I’d rather not have to cancel your existence here. When I said you had forty-eight hours to make your decision, I meant it.
You need to connect with Samson immediately. If you don’t, it may be wise to find a weapon to protect yourself from the alternative. I can’t ignore it for much longer. You’ll sort it out when you get back, yeah?”
“What’s the alternative?”
“Your father—or me.”
He stood, looked around and rubbed his hands together. “Right. What’s all this, eh? What happened?”
“I’m so sorry Marc, I… I didn’t kill that one, only that one.” I almost laughed at the absurdity of my words. But shame washed over me at the sight of the dead boy. “Holy shit, I just killed a kid.” My head fell to my hands again. And I’d drunk his blood and absorbed his life-force. I retched into my hands, but nothing came out.
“That twat wasn’t a kid.” Marc snorted in disgust. “He was an abomination, he was. Just another reason why these sodding witches need to be eliminated. You did the world a favor if you ask me, which you didn’t, but I’ll tell you, anyway.” He nudged the body with his foot. “He looks like an old geezer, but he can’t be more than ten years old, yeah?”
“Yeah, he is—was—Petra’s Grimoire.”
Marc’s head jerked up. “Bollocks.”
“She kept him young so she could stash her knowledge in his DNA. It’s in mine now. I…” I took a deep breath, struggling to let the words out of my mouth. If I said it aloud, it would be true. “I think I swallowed his soul. He’s in me.” And then like an avalanche, it all came rushing out. I told him about Steve, about using my powers to pull the boy down, drinking his blood, the strange glyphs that crawled up my arms, even me absorbing the witch when I was a baby. I told him everything.
Except the voices. I wasn’t ready to admit that to myself.
“Are you sure you’re telling me everything?” Marc cleared his throat, nervous.
“Yes,” I said and avoided eye contact to calm my inner energy, in case it betrayed my lie. I knew Marc could sense auras like me.
“Hmph. In that case, I know what you are.”
“What—what am I?” Fairy princess? Something made of sugar and spice and all things nice?
“A Soul-Eater.”
Guess not.
“You feed off the life-force of others. We haven’t seen one of you in this world for generations. In fact, it’s suspicious that you’re here at all. At the start of the revolution—when the Prince took the Earth from the Queen—your kind were used to maintain order, like peacekeeping soldiers. But as a Soul-Eater’s nature is so out of balance with the universe, taking, never giving, most of your kind regressed or devolved into insignificance. I’m not sure that you will be well received.”
“Gee, that sounds swell.”
“Don’t interrupt. On one hand, you will be feared for your disregard of the natural order—on the other, you’ll be in high demand for your ability to sway the Game. It would certainly explain how you took more of my essence than I’d allowed, and it would also explain your ability to take on the nature of the soul you absorbed as your own. As to how you managed to oust the planned inhabitant of your own body, someone helped with that. And I mean to find out who. Soul-Eaters aren’t that clever, yeah?”
His words slapped me in the face, hard.
Soul-Eater. Devolving. Regressing. Insignificant. High demand. Not that clever. They bounced around my brain. No matter how tightly I held my hands over my ears, the words wouldn’t sit still. My chest ached, and I wanted to hide under a rock, or crawl into the darkness of the cave and never come out.
A slice of me rebelled at the label he’d given me. “But if Soul-Eaters aren’t part of the natural order, then it’s not possible to fix the Game for myself. My only result would be to regress in the after world. It doesn’t make sense. Why would I steal my place in this world, then rampage and gorge on souls if I’d just wither away when my Game is finished?”
“Oh my sweet, you misunderstood. You’ll be used to sway the Game for others, not yourself. Eliminating rivals, Simons, that sort of thing. Traditionally, Soul-Eaters aren’t very smart, so they make good slaves. You were probably conned into stealing that body in the before.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Although, you don’t look stupid. You seem to have all your marbles, yeah? It doesn’t add up, you’re right.”
“Who is Simon?” I asked.
“Simple Simons, love. It’s what we gods call the human pawns. You’ll get used to all the terminology once you’re at the Ludus.”
I groaned. “And what’s a Ludus?”
He sighed. “You need to connect with your mentor, do the ritual, then he can start teaching you. Ludus is another name for game in Latin. It’s also the name of our training institution. There’s one on every major continent. It’s like Switzerland—neutral territory for Players to train, learn, socialize, etcetera. I’m not saying any more. I’ve already overstepped the boundaries of my role. I’m supposed to be impartial, but I find myself opening up to you when I shouldn’t.” His jaw snapped shut with a click and he turned back to the dead boy’s body. “You say you had symbols—glyphs—creep up your arms from his. Describe them to me.”
I did my best to relay the shapes, even drawing one in the sand.
Marc smeared it into blurred lines. “Those symbols are from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.”
Another book. Was it the one Cash needed?
Marc’s jaw clenched. “She shouldn’t have that kind of knowledge. It’s too powerful. The book wasn’t always called that. It originally came from the Queen and contained secrets of her experiment here on earth. It was entrusted to a select few generations before they were cast out of paradise. No witch should have this knowledge. It shows the way back to our home and the metaphysical requirements to get there. Perhaps we have a traitor in our midst.”
“But, isn’t that book all over the world in a bunch of museums? It can’t be that secret.”
His eyes were lightning and his energy crackled. My tongue tingled at his power display.
“Not the real one,” he said and smoothed his hair from his eyes and over his head. He grabbed my chin and directed my gaze to his scrutinizing eyes. “You feel different. What did you do?” His energy gently pulsed at me. Testing. The last time he did that, I remembered it being a little overwhelming—dizzying even, but now it seemed negligible.
“I told you. I absorbed his essence,” I said.
“But your signature is different—stronger. The same, but also changed so you could almost be a different person.” He let go and stood back.
Ha! Two different people. The two souls inside me spoke with one voice. No wait, three people, if you include yourself. It was four, but she gave herself up when you fell into the cave so you could live. A life for a life.
I steadied myself on the wall. Did they just say I used the life of one soul to keep myself alive? The first thing Steve had said to me was that he couldn’t find a pulse. So whose soul had I taken?
Put it this way, it wasn’t the first time she gave you life.
I covered my mouth. The voices were wrong. But as the thought formed, so did another—the memory of my dream where my mother had been arguing with the witch. Maybe it hadn’t been a dream, but an insight to the passengers inside my body? What if, when I was a baby, I’d taken my mother’s soul as well as the witch’s? I tried to stop the sobs that jerked my shoulders. I used the life-force of my mother to recharge my…
“Oi, love. You listening to me? I asked if you can read the glyphs?”
My insides slowly turned numb.
“Are you—oh, I’ve seen that face before. It happens when a young one is about to snap. Listen, I’ll give you the best piece of advice I can. Play the hand you’ve been dealt, yeah? You can’t change who you are, or what you were born with. But you can decide what to do with your gifts. Control your controllables and accept the rest. You haven’t even touched on crazy yet. Wait until you get to the Ludus.”
The hand I’d been dealt. I was a female, with fewer rights than men. I had the abilities of a witch and ate s
ouls so I could store them up and use them like a cat with nine lives. Then when I’d run out of souls to steal, I’d really die and devolve into oblivion. I had to face this head-on—like Cash. He’d started hunting to make his father’s death worth something. If my suspicion was correct, my mother gave her life for me, twice. I couldn’t let that be in vain.
“Love. The glyphs?”
“Uh… right…” My voice trailed off as I searched my brain for answers. I rifled through memories until I spotted the hieroglyphs, but meaning slipped through my grasp like water through fingers. The more I tried, the harder it was to catch. My head hurt. “Something’s blocking me from seeing the them.”
“Good, keep it that way. Plausible deniability. Don’t tell anyone about this.” His eyes dashed around the area, lifting briefly to view the opening of the pit. “Don’t suppose we’ll get you out that way, yeah?”
Even with what I knew about telekinesis and DNA cell mutation, it wouldn’t get me out of a deep cave with my depleted energy. With a few changes to my body, I could navigate the walls myself, but the thought of deforming my own body made me shudder. I didn’t care if I had to die here.
That might take a while with two of us in reserve.
I jumped when Marc clapped his hands and held one out to me.
“Right-O then, love. I’m going to go out on a limb here and hope you remember it one day when push comes to shove. Your town’s gone a bit barmy and lives are in danger. The quickest way back is through the in-between—my dimension. Nobody else on this planet, not even other gods are able to walk freely with me. It’s my own personal triumph over evolution. However, based on your particular adaptive skills, and the fact that you still wear my essence like perfume, I think you’ll survive this way of travel.”
“You think?” I squeaked, still wired from the energy intake. Marc’s news hadn’t helped calm my nerves. Hmm, let’s see, enter the multi-dimensional “in-between” with him to save lives, or starve here in a forty-foot pit? With my body’s ability to regenerate and the spare souls, it would be a slow death.
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